The Continued Crucifiction of the Transgender Christ...

There is a core reality of the cross... that the life of the shepherd has been taken for the sake of the sheep. That act is done, and has been done in a way that transcends time and space. That means to this day when we take up persecution, when we enable oppression, we bring down the hammer onto the wrist of christ. That means to this day when we are the victims of persecution, when we are beaten and broken by our neighbors and the system they enfranchise, that wounds upon our bodies are wounds upon Christ's body. Maybe we are not the person holding the hammer, often we are the one enabling that hammer, too often we are not the one stopping it.

At any point in time we have to ask our selves: how are we crucifying Jesus in our day and age? How is the society we allow to exist around us ringing with the strikes of the hammer against the nail? For the event whose resonance redeems all time and space as surely enters into the pain we inflict upon each other through all time and space. Where is the nail biting against the Body of Christ?

On November 20th what the world is called to do is recognize the nail it is plunging into the Body of Christ, specifically into the Transgender Body of Christ. The hammer is lifted by many, and while white cisgender christian men play a major role they are enabled by a diversity of others. Feminist authors who continue to refuse to acknowledge transgender women as women and transgender men as men. Gay Men and Lesbians who wish to "drop the T" in order to more quickly gain legal protections for themselves. The countless number of us who do not know what the term cisgender means, much less take the time to process it as aspect of our identities.   

This wound plays out in many ways. A severe lack of housing and employment security within the transgender population. Problems accessing basic public accommodations, from buses and streetcars to restrooms. Rejection from families, faith communities, and basic social service providers. An inability to find affordable and appropriate health care. All of these caustic realities create a society that continually denies the inherent dignity of transgender individuals. Living without basic levels of respect from the society in which one inhabits is dynamically caustic and escalates the possibility of depression, substance abuse, and suicide.

It also creates a society whose environment enables physical violence. The base reality is that per capita transgender women, especially transgender women of color, are the most likely to be the victims of a deadly hate crime. Over the past decade the number of recorded murders of transgender women has gone up. As of now in 2015 there have been twenty four such murders, one every other week. Their deaths are often ignored, their killers never found, and if tried rarely are charged to the full extent of the law. 

There are many places where our society is ripping a nail edge across the tendon's of Christ, a pressing and cutting edge, an edge that cannot be ignored, is the edge of persecution against the transgender community. If we cannot begin to bring a halt to the ringing of that hammer then we cannot truly begin to be fully transformed by the redemption offered by Christ. If we cannot begin to acknowledge and name our sins, known and unknown, against the transgender community then we cannot enter into the depth of God's forgiveness in our day to day lives in their midst.

A first small step is to know the names of this years victims of fatal hate crimes, from thence to learn their stories, and from there to bring about a society where this is not an event we face every fortnight. This week may these names be prayers on your lips. They are sheep of God's fold, children of the family of which we are all members, washed in the blood of the lamb as we placed them on the cross as part of Christ's body.

Papi Edwards, Lamia Beard, Ty Underwood, Yazmin Vash Payne, Taja DeJesus, Penny Proud, Bri Golec, Kristina Gomes Reinwald, Keyshia Bilge, Vanessa Santillan, Mya Hall, London Chanel, Mercedes Williamson, Jasmine Collins, Ashton O’Hara, India Clarke, K.C Haggard, Shade Schuler, Amber Monroe, Kandis Capri, Elisha Walker, Tamar Dominguez, Kiesha Jenkins, Zella Ziona...    You are remembered. Amen.

The Good Shepherd abandons their flock for any sheep...

Eric Gill: The Good Shepherd

It was the first real supervision with one of my field placement supervisors in seminary. To be clear we had met before but this was the first time when we had built up enough trust that he could start being honest and I would listen.  The conversation was about preaching in specific, but ministry in general. My supervisor explained how week after week the gospel presented a reality that struck home to their reality as a parent in a mixed-race household. That it was more often than not that it was in this place the pertinent questions and movements of the Spirit would first be recognized.  My supervisor then looked at me and noted that it was very easy to confuse the movement of the Gospel with what it initial stirs up in oneself. The challenge then, to me, was to learn to differentiate between what the Gospel stirs up in me, in my context as a gay male struggling for an end to the oppression of the LGBTQ+ community, and the actual primal universal movement of the Gospel. This is, in the end, the difference between being a hired hand and a good shepherd.

The Gospel sets the prisoner free. Any one caught up in the process that frees an individual or group from the prison of oppression and abuse is caught up in the Gospel Work. The trap, however, is that it is too easy for all of us to not see beyond the walls of our own prisons. We mistake the work of the Gospel to be the freeing of ourselves and those like us from the prison in which we find ourselves… and not recognize that our own liberation, and those like us, is only the small place where we encounter the Gospel Work that is so much greater than any one specific struggle, no matter how pertinent and requisite it is for our time.  

Any struggle we are taking up, be it our own or that of another, is an icon into the reality of the Gospel Work towards the full harmony of creation with the creator. The difference between an icon and an idol at any point is a tenuous one at best. Too readily we can make a specific struggle the begin all and end all of our considerations of the Gospel and forgo the actual alpha and omega, Jesus Christ. Too readily we can be interested in saving our own skins and letting the wolf take the sheep.  Too readily we can fail to see how our flight to safety leaves other shepherds and other flocks ready prey for the wolves. Too readily we can seek to trip up other shepherds and close the gate on other flocks to ensure the safety of our own. Too readily we can mistake another shepherd or flock as a pack of wolves.

The hired hand abandons the flock for personal safety… the Good Shepherd abandons the flock to stand between sheep, regardless of flock, and wolves. Too readily we become hired hands, seeking to save our own skin, or shepherds seeking only to save our own flock. Too rarely do we model the Good Shepherd and place aside our own skin, stand for more than our own flock, and are truly prepared to place ourselves on the line for any sheep caught in the sight of any wolf.