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#the Incredibly Homophobic Sermon happened
keep-looking-here · 3 years
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teeth.
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Had a bit of fun with this one. We’ve been studying e. e. cummings in lit class and his poetry isn’t entirely up my alley but turns out messing with syntax is actually kinda enjoyable. 
Poetry taglist: @butterflycastiel @oasis-of-you​ @countshrekula​ @a-paper-crane​ @alicewestwater​
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June 30 devotional: liberation for our oppressors too??
[ Today’s devotional comes from Chris Glaser’s The Word Is Out: The Bible Reclaimed for Lesbians and Gay Men (1994). It’s his entry for June 30.
Se puede leer el pasaje en español aquí, p. 183. ]
content warning for today’s Bible story: a man almost commits suicide because he believes he is going to be executed, but is stopped before it can happen.
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But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” - Acts 16:28
Paul and Silas are beaten and jailed for delivering a young female slave from those who were exploiting her psychic powers. Midnight finds them praying and singing hymns to God, when an earthquake opens the prison doors and unfastens all the prisoners’ chains. The jailer awakes. Knowing that the penalty is death for allowing an escape, he intends to take his own life. But Paul shouts, assuring him that no one has escaped. 
Paul’s generosity of spirit prompts the jailer to ask about the gospel, and he is converted, caring for their wounds and feeding them. 
The chair of the committee guiding my preparation for ministry opposed my ordination because I was gay. Years later, on a visit to the church I served in a non-ordained capacity, he asked more about the gospel we proclaimed. His son had come out to him. In our dialogue that followed, I invited him to serve on the board of my ministry. 
Our liberation is not complete until we free those who imprison us. Through prayer and singing, God will give us the grace to prove redemptive even to our captors, and proclaim the gospel of the integrity of spirituality and sexuality. 
God of Mercy, we pray for the liberation of our captors rather than their harm. Grant us grace to be gracious. 
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[ Whew. This is difficult stuff. (I mean first of all, and this is not even the part of the Acts 16 passage that Glaser above has chosen to focus on, I can’t keep myself from pointing out that there’s more going on with the enslaved young woman than most commentators bother to explore -- my pastor gave a sermon focusing on her last year that I appreciated.) But let’s just look at what Glaser does focus on in this passage: the mercy that Paul shows his persecutor. 
That’s what’s really hard for me -- what about you? 
What do you think the balance between mercy and justice is? Must our oppressors be set free from their own oppression as Glaser says, or is it more just for them to be punished?
....
Did this jailor “deserve” to be shown mercy by Paul? Sure, he was just “doing his job” in jailing innocent people, but we know how poor an excuse “I was just following orders” is; it doesn’t justify letting injustice occur, ever. 
This man was a cog in Paul’s mistreatment -- and for the jailor to get his just desserts, Paul doesn’t even have to lift a hand against him! Paul doesn’t have to kill the guy himself; he just has to watch passively and let the jailor do the dirty work for him. 
And he doesn’t. Instead he speaks out, saving the life of his persecutor. 
When I read Glaser’s commentary -- that this passage reminds him of the man who prevented him from being ordained, who stopped Glaser from living into his God-given vocation for years because of his homophobia....it fills me with wonder that anyone can express such generosity of spirit as Paul did so long ago and Glaser did not-so-long-ago.  
Glaser was severely mistreated by a man claiming to represent God’s Church -- yet Glaser was willing to dialogue with him. When this man came back years later and confided in Glaser that his son was gay, Glaser’s response wasn’t “You hurt me, I want nothing to do with you” or “Serves you right! a homophobe like you has to live down having a gay son, how’s that for justice!” No. Glaser talked to him, treated him with compassion, and welcomed him even deeper into his life. 
I can’t imagine how hard a decision it is to show that generosity of spirit -- and maybe, maybe, it’s not a decision we make at all. Maybe generosity of spirit is generosity of the Holy Spirit -- not a thing we achieve on our own but a gift the Spirit bestows upon us. ...Upon all of us, all the time? or only in certain circumstances? I’m not sure.
I’m not sure that God demands that we always make peace with our oppressors on this earth -- because too often, those oppressors will just keep grinding us and other vulnerable people into the mud if we try to open our hearts to them. I do stand by a post I wrote a while ago that Christians must stop pressuring ourselves and others to forgive -- forgiveness is not an easy path, I don’t know that it’s always the right path, and it cannot be compelled. 
But Paul’s story in Acts and Glaser’s story in his devotional for today is evidence that generosity of spirit, an openness to dialoguing with those who once hurt us, can at least sometimes bear good fruit.
Paul saves his jailer, and this jailer has a mighty change of heart.
Glaser converses with the chairperson who denied him his ordination, and gains a partner in the efforts to fight homophobia in their denomination. He likely also helped the son of this man -- if he had turned the chairperson away with a “serves you right!” instead of sitting him down and helping him explore God’s good news for LGBT persons, that father might never have learned how to love and support his gay son. 
...That’s something that helps motivate me, if nothing else can -- when we make the effort to help liberate our oppressors from their own unjust ways, we are also helping others they may oppress. 
Finally, I think it’s valuable to note that while Paul acted with immediate mercy, saving his jailer without any evidence that the man felt remorse for jailing innocent people, Glaser did not immediately cultivate a relationship with his persecutor. He might never have talked to the guy ever again, if this man hadn’t reached out to him first, years later and with a heart ready to listen to Glaser’s side of the story. 
So perhaps sometimes, we are called to show incredible mercy -- the kind of mercy that humans can’t possibly show on our own! -- quickly, before we can say it is “deserved.” But perhaps other times, we are called to wait, to withhold that generosity until the wrongdoer expresses remorse or openness. And maybe there are also times when the time for reconciliation won’t come in this lifetime at all. 
What do you think? 
Must we forgive everyone at every opportunity -- even without them showing remorse? even if they are still causing harm?
What does it even mean to “forgive”? is it just a simple statement, “I forgive you”? or is it a longer process than that? do we have to keep in contact with the people we forgive?
Do you agree with Glaser’s statement that “our liberation is not complete until we free those who imprison us”? (It reminds me of liberation theologians who argue that God’s preferential option for the poor is “good news” for oppressors as well as those they oppress -- because in harming others, oppressors impoverish their own spirit and need God’s liberation too.)
More comments on forgiveness that I have found helpful can be found here. ]
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