AREN'T ALL CHRISTIANS QUEER?

As a Christian pastor, I always had a rather different theology than seemingly everyone else.  The tribe I could most comfortably belong to was called the United Methodist Church.   I liked their John Wesley pretty well, and they seemed to like me enough to at least let me in their door and eventually ordain me.  

I absolutely affirm the belief in a Triune God, but my trinitarian theology is a bit screwy where most other statements of faith are concerned.   For me, God’s image involves a Soul (Holy Spirit), a Mind (Father), a Body (Son).   The Alpha is female, the Ruach Spirit that sources all creation including the Mind and Body by means of Love.   Love is the ground of all being.  The Alpha and Omega. 

I absolutely affirm we humans are created in the same trinitarian image with a Soul, Mind, Body that forms our one being.   We are our own three-in-one.

Then there is my own sacramental theology.   Also a bit screwy.  I affirm two sacraments: Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.   But what makes them Holy for me is that, per my own belief, in Baptism we identify with Christ in his death and resurrection.  In Communion Christ identifies with us in our death and resurrection.  The crucified God, as Jurgen Moltmann puts it, joins us in our own brokenness & bleeding, our own pain & death.

In actual fact, the rite of Baptism predates Christianity and the Church.  To the extent that the Church itself was called to repentance and Baptism, willing to die and rise with Christ, I can also affirm that in our baptism we identify with the Church that identifies with Christ.   Holy Baptism joins us with those joined with Christ, the Church as a means; not an end.          

So as a Church pastor, I was privileged to officiate the Baptismal Sacrament quite often.  In every situation, however, I began with the biblical story of Christ’s own Baptism.  Why was Christ baptized?  John the Baptist wanted to know.   Yet, the answer itself in scripture is somewhat obscure.   Had Christ sinned and needed a cleansing that only Baptism could provide?  That answer is a no.   Had Christ repented and chosen some new direction for his life away from the comfort zone of carpentry in Nazareth and into the risky business of servant evangelism? I believe that answer is quite likely yes.   Jesus appears to have left behind his parents’ plan for his life back home in Nazareth, and even left behind the world’s plan for a messianic warrior King such as David.   Jesus appears to have repented.   He died to his parents’ and worlds’ plans or dreams for his life.  And he rose to God’s very different plan and dream for his life.  

Always I asked the Church’s obligatory questions as a Congregational rite within the Holy Baptismal liturgy.    But privately, well in advance of any public vows, I asked each person being baptized, or each parent involved, a very different question.   Are you willing to leave behind either the world’s or your own plan and dream for your life (or your child’s life) and turn around and instead enter into God’s plan and dream for your life?   Are you willing to repent of your identity as a child of the world and instead become God’s child drawn into the work of God’s heavenly love, and away from the maybe easier, maybe safer, maybe more popular, maybe more prosperous work of the world?  Are you willing to sign over your own or your child’s spiritual custody to God for adoption into God’s family with Jesus Christ as brother, and then follow his example as a new member of God’s family?    

Because that is what Jesus chose for himself in way of repentance in turning his own life around from homeboy carpenter to Holy Messiah.    Holy Baptism involves, in my own theology, a letting go of something old (a death) and a holding on to something new (a resurrection).   It involves dying and rising with Christ.  Identifying with Jesus Christ as God’s unique and special child, no longer representing the world’s plan or dream.   Or any worldly Kingdom. God's dream is always more unique, more diverse, more loving, and more influential because it represents God's own unique Kindom on earth as it is in heaven.

Well, by now you may well have at least chosen to coexist with my theology and continue reading, or you’ll have rejected my screwy beliefs about Baptism and are not even reading this sentence.   For those of you who are still at least reading along, I now have a question that may or may not cause you to wish you’d quit while you were ahead.   Here’s the question:  Aren’t all Christians queer?

Depends, first, on what I mean by queer.

What do you think I mean?

You may have guessed right.

I mean by queer the person who has been born into a world, and into a family, that expects him/her/them to be (1.) Cisgender  (2) Binary in gender and (2) Heterosexual in orientation.   That’s “their” plan and dream for that person’s life, that person’s future.   It’s the price of belonging to the world.   Conforming to the world’s norm.    Doesn’t matter if God has a different plan or dream.   We belong to the world.   We do it the world’s way.  We belong to our earthly family and we do it the parents’ way.  

We do it their way or else.

Or else what?

Or else we are queer.  

That is, we repent of the world’s or the family’s plan and dream for our future and we go with who God made us to be as God’s own unique child.   Maybe not as safe, or easy, or popular, or prosperous.   But more loving, and more a child of God’s Kindom (not of this earth).  

That kind of queer.  

No longer living up to the world’s or family’s expectations, plans, dreams for our future.  Dying to the past and being resurrected / reborn into the future.   Transitioning from an exclusive world to an inclusive God.   From the world’s “conformity or else” to God’s plan of “or else unconditional love.”   That kind of queer.  

Christian queer.

Because if we as Christians are baptized and remember having repented, died with Christ, been risen with Christ in our Holy Baptism, then we of all people know what it’s like to be queer.   

I realize my own theology is queer.   Non-conforming.   For me it is like following the Holy Spirit away from the world’s expectations, plans, and dreams.  Repenting. Dying to my past. Transitioning. Coming out as a new identity the world may not like or approve of. Coming out like the baptized Jesus, who was perhaps the queerest of us all.