Today: Something Small

...that's really oh so big. I LOVED this article, and want to record it here.

Feast of the Unclean

For the record, I'm still conflicted about the concept of Open Table*, to which the author alludes at one point, but that's an entirely different post.

If you haven't got time for the whole thing, at least read this, which is but a sliver of the awesomeness:

"But the whole idea of gay pride still makes my skin crawl. I’ve got a problem with gay pride....Freedom springs from a completely different understanding. Back in the day, before our parades were sponsored by banks and beer companies and pandered to by politicians, nobody called it “gay pride.” It was simply “gay freedom” or “gay liberation.” Gay liberation: when you realize that love is more powerful than law. Gay liberation: when you realize that the oddest, most shamed, most stigmatized children of God are beautiful and beloved. Gay liberation: when you watch all kinds of unlikely strangers become a family, without boundaries. Gay liberation: when you understand that whoever you are, you belong to a larger body.

That sounds pretty Gospel to me. I believe it is the liberation of Christ Jesus.
And so I believe queer people, too, have a gift to offer to the Church. Unsurprisingly, it turns out to be the gift of scandal; the gift of the cross.

And this gift is not about making queer people and our allies feel better. It’s not about making the Church fair and liberal and modern. It's so that the whole Church may truly embody the folly and the scandal of Jesus, in witness to the world.

Scandal, Jesus teaches, shows us how to see. If we look only upon what seems right, correct, familiar and lawful, we see the tiniest part of God’s handiwork. We must gaze, as Jesus gazed––foolishly and with love––upon every person who seems sick or wrong or just plain outlandish. And when we actually dare to touch that person, then a little more of God’s enormous, disturbing mission is revealed. We see how God is always at work restoring creation to wholeness. “Whoever welcomes you,” says Jesus, “welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me."

AMAZING. Happy Thursday, everyone!

*This has nothing to do with restricting access to communion for the GLBTQ community, just so I'm clear. It has to do with Baptism, and it's something I need to read and think more about. It's also often called Open Communion.