Our relationships are faulty...

Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them, "What did Moses command you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her." But Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."  -Mark 10:2-14

I think we need to be honest... our relationships are universally faulty. That is why we can are so captivated by stories be they comedies, dramas, or tragedies... because there are faults and failings that permeate our relationships with each other. The problem is that while we can recognize in art the faults inherent to our relationships we seem to be unable to do so when it comes to our day to day lives.

As a rule our attempts at relationships are incomplete. We do not become irrevocably "one"with a person to a state of fullness, completeness, and wholeness. But we maintain these expectations regardless of how problematic they are. We maintain them even though, on account of their impossibility, they create a system where happiness and peace of mind are impossible to find. When it comes to creating relationships without faults, without comedy, drama, and tragedy... we are going to fail.

Expectations are Important!

Fail is a strong word. I think that overall we do not want to speak of our relationships with individuals as failing. In a lot of cases even mentioning the possibility will get people in a tizzy. We want to be that which can provide all and everything for another person, complete them, bring them into the fullness of who they are, leave them with no emptiness or concern. We want to be God... but we are not God. So our relationships are, in the end, faulty.

This is a difficult truth to recognize. We want to be the perfect friend, spouse, parent, child. We want to live into these amazing standards that if we could just get right then life would be golden. We do not want to read a statement that says we fail to contribute everything another person needs in the midst of our relationship with them. We confuse the statement, we cannot be another persons all and all, with the statement, we are not giving our all.

Let us say that I honestly commit my all to a relationship, every fibre of my being committed to another person... I am still not going to be able to provide everything they need. It is just not going to happen and that is a reality for each and everyone of us. The reality is that to complete disregard everything but the needs of another individual is not a healthy place for any of us to be in. The reality is that to expect someone else to enter into that space for ourselves or another is to put forward a set of expectations that is abusive.

Hardness of Heart does not build relationships.

When Jesus speaks of the hardness of heart held by husbands towards their wives, and do note that the chastisement is only directed towards husbands, it is my belief that what he was speaking to was the propensity of husbands to make themselves like unto God. He was speaking to their propensity to expect wives to utterly disregard their own needs and sacrifice their very beings in an attempt to provide everything for them. When wives failed to live into these inherently abusive expectations then husbands could discard them. This type of thing will no longer stand... it is not the purpose of the relationships we are called to have with one another.

What the pharisees are talking about is a system of relationships where men are served by women, where men can cast out women when the needs of the man are not met, and where women are basically powerless. What Jesus is talking about is a system where distinct individuals were created and are joined as one equal mutuality, where needs are held in common and provision of them flows from God, and where the abuse and discarding of either party by the other is an offense against God.

We were not created to be alone, we were not created to be as gods lording over each other and forcing others into self sacrifice, we were created to live in mutual relationships that seek provision from God. This is a truth that should permeate itself through every relationship matrix in our live and for which our calls to be spouses should be Icons.

Over the past centuries this and other parts of scripture have been abused as calls to create a hierarchy of privilege with straight males staying at the pinnacle and all others in subservience to them. This has had continual impact on the lives of women and members of the LGBTQ+ community who are asked to either meet the expectations of straight men or be cast aside. In reality what Jesus is doing here is not laying down a new prescription about marriage but requiring the pharisees to interpret their understanding of the laws about divorce in the context of the summary of the law, thou shall love the lord thy God with all they heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul, and thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself.

Our relationships are going to be faulty. They will not fulfill all our needs. They will be outside of the false expectations society presents for them. As Christians we have to recognize that is ok and that these expectations are not our expectations. The expectations for our relationships is that they are seeking to be done in the midst of love for God, love for ourselves, and love for others and bringing others to do the same. When we require expectations in our relationships beyond this we are hardening our hearts. When we recognize that living into the summary of the law is a life long journey of understanding for all involved, not a static set of laws and expectations, something that we and those around us are going to fail as we go about it... then and only then can we begin to take it up in truth. Then, and only then, can we embrace the faults, the comedy, the drama, the tragedy... not as points of failure but points of success.

At the start of the conversation: Where Sacramental Marriage Equality will place the Episcopal church...

The Episcopal Church has gone about the inclusion of the LGBT community in its own curious way. As we are a prayer book people our process of inclusion has been about allowing the inclusion of LGBT individuals into our prayer book rites. While at some point a hurdle has been placed before every rite in the Book of Common Prayer the two major hurdles for the LGBT community have been that of entering into the rite of Ordination and the rite of Marriage. There might have been better paths we could have taken but I am not sure if, given our strengths and weaknesses as a church, we were actually capable of any other. This path does, however, have ramifications that, on account of our perspective, I am not sure we recognize.

What has been asked from the LGBT community is that the Grace manifested in their lives be recognized and named as such by the Church. That the inward invisible grace alive and well in the LGBT community be placed in the context of the Church’s outward and visible signs. The struggle we have been taking up is that of bringing the church to a point where it is capable of discerning, openly and honestly, the fruits of the spirit that manifest themselves when Christ’s Crucifixion is Proclaimed within the LGBT community. This is the basic struggle the church has encountered throughout history as outsider groups have begun to openly make such proclamations and in so doing call into question things taken for granted by the church.

A trap that we have fallen into repeatedly, in these discussions and others, is speaking about access to the sacraments as inalienable rights. This is simply bad theology. When we are dealing with matters of Sacrament we are dealing with matters of Grace and no individual has an inalienable right to Grace. Grace is the fundamental reality of God’s creating, redeeming, and sustaining us from which the natural order flows and it is upon that foundation that arguments of inalienable rights are then built. One simply cannot build a functioning theology of God’s Grace thats foundation is the inalienable rights of individuals.

The problem is that while the grace denoted within Ordination and Marriage might be the ones that we are most prepared to discern and able to facilitate they only engage the tiniest fraction of the fruits of the spirit manifesting themselves in the LGBT community and the greater LGBTQ+ community. The Q+ signifying individuals whose reality simply is not readily contained within the terms Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender but is also contained neither within heteronormative nor cisnormative contexts. Discussions of Ordination and Marriage allow us to engage and work with members of the LGBT community whose lives generally conform to our preexisting concepts of ordained clergy and married couples. Individuals who are as close to white european heterosexuals as one can be and also be LGBT. It also means that we are primarily focused on LGBT adults.

Now these are good conversations to have, we have to start somewhere and on account of our context as a church these were the conversations that we were going to fall into before all others. The problem is that the church, even at points the LGBT individuals in the church, think this is THE conversation with the LGBTQ+ community. That a church with LGBT individuals being ordained and married is a church inculturated and aware of the Grace of God manifesting itself within the LGBTQ+ community. This is simply, and overwhelmingly, not the case.  

This summer we will be continuing the conversation around wether we will recognize the grace manifest in many same gender couples for what it is, Marriage. Some want space to keep the conversation percolating on local levels, some want local levels to be able to name the grace for what they know it to be, some want the time for this conversation to be over and the recognition of this grace to be Marriage throughout the church. There is a chance that, on the national level, the conversation will be closed. Regardless, however, the local conversation will be far from over.

In some places an end to the conversation on a national level will make the conversation easier on a local level and in some cases it will not. That is the case with any of the outcomes above, and I think what will make the final decision at the end of the day is which of the three possibilities before us will best facilitate further honest and open conversations with the LGBTQ+ community that lead, as we have found them to do, towards the inclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals. It is, in my mind, the perpetuation of those conversations that is of utmost importance, far beyond the actual pronouncement around marriage.

What the LGBTQ+ community has within it to transform the Church in regards to its witness about the Grace of marriage is huge. The LGBTQ+ community inherently moves us towards an understanding of Marriage outside of the oppressive gender norms inherent to its use in our history. As the church fumbles towards an understanding of the Grace of Marriage that is not determined by patriarchy it is the queer voice that will be key in the subversion of this gender oppression and the undermining of patriarchy. This is, however, only the smallest of ripples that the LGBTQ+ community has to offer a church willing to be transformed by the grace manifesting itself in our midst as we proclaim Christ Crucified. 

The conversation so far towards the inclusion of the LGBT community in regards to Ordination and Marriage is not THE conversation the church needs to have with the LGBTQ+ community. It is the conversation we needed to have so that we could have in our midst those able to facilitate the actual conversation between the church and the LGBTQ+ community. The LGBTQ+ community is truly diverse, way beyond the spectrum of those individuals whose lives and patterns, like my own, can readily fit into the expected norms of the church. For those of us from the LGBTQ+ community who fit in It is rather easy to forget that the rest of the LGBTQ+ community exists and has overwhelming value for the church. It is easy for those whose only experience of the LGBTQ+ community are the LGBT individuals who readily fit into the church to even know that we are not all that there really is to know. It is easy for us to fall into an echo chamber and think that because we all are hearing the same thing the full conversation is taking place. 

No matter what happens this year at General Convention the conversation will be extraordinarily far from over. The conversation to include the LGBTQ+ community that can readily conform to our general expectations within our norms is the easy one, it is the minor one. The actual conversation is the one ahead of us, the one were we begin to ask not how can the church readily include the LGBTQ+ community in its midst but how can the church be transformed to a deeper and greater understanding of God’s Grace through the unique proclamation of Christ Crucified by Queers. The conversations will be like unto those that tore through the church after the early Jewish followers of the Rabbi Jesus began to be transformed by early Greek followers of the Way of Jesus. It is for those that we must prepare ourselves, more than anything else. 

Will the Body of Christ Proclaim the Crucifixion as One Body? LGBTQ+ Sacramental Equality and the hallowing of the Episcopal Church

A perfect sacramental storm has begun to brew in the Episcopal Church. The various fronts are all meandering towards General Convention where we will discuss, and hopefully reach a resolution, on the issue of full sacramental marriage equality in the church. Meanwhile, however, a local storm is brewing off the coat of Florida, where over the past week the leadership at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke in Orlando sought to reschedule an infant’s baptism on account of his two fathers. As some are battening down the hatches and others hoping to surf the waves, I find myself reflecting on how this reveals the heart of sacramental theology.

The issue is that sacramental marriage equality is not the same thing as civil marriage equality. The writing of one’s name into the Book of Life at baptism is not the same thing as getting your name in the county records at birth. In cases of civil marriage and one’s name in the county records one is dealing with a situation where the primary reality is that of individual rights and freedoms. There is a corporate reality to it when it comes to access of services, and any undocumented worker or couple seeking the rights and privileges of marriage can fully explain how necessary that corporate reality is, but the argument and focus is on the rights of the individual in pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.

The sacraments of marriage and baptism are different creatures. They are corporate affairs of the Body of Christ. Though the arguments towards respecting the dignity of the individuals involved is an inherent one to our baptismal covenant it is, indeed, a secondary one. When approaching why it is that we should recognize the sacramental nature of an individual in baptism or a couple in marriage the onus of the argument is that of the community recognizing God in their midst present in such. To be clear the sacraments in these cases are about the revealing of the already existing Truth within the individuals to the community of believers for the sake of transforming the community. This is hallowing, the transforming process of sanctification.

In Baptism the community is transformed in the revelation that a member that it did not know was keenly missing is found. In Sacramental Marriage the community recognizes the outpouring of Gods grace within a couple so that they are known as an Icon of the greatest commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself. The community is then called upon to be transformed by these revelations and to consistently support the individuals involved such that they remember that which they are known to be.

The issue that arises is what happens when a community cannot handle the revelation of such an Icon in their midst. This is the earliest of Christian controversies. What occurs when a woman, or a slave, or an uncircumcised proclaims Christ Crucified and names themselves, to a group of freed circumcised men to be an equal part of the Body of Christ. The answer is chaos, strife, argumentation, the breaking apart of the accepted societal norms that were maintaining the peaceful running of the community. Our call as Christian community, however, is to enter into this place of contention and work its way out. To break the rules, as the Episcopal Church is want to do, first and figure out how the Holy Spirit makes it work later. The strife of a community grappling to recognize an unknown revelation of Christ’s love is inherently preferred over the strife that occurs when a community refuses to grapple with the proclamation of Christ Crucified from those it deems unworthy so to do. The onus of the other’s cross, the burden of strife, should always be taken up by the Christian community and never placed upon those seeking to bring a new revelation of Christ’s love.

Gamaliel’s wisdom to the Jewish elders about Christianity holds true to this day for the church. When we hear those proclaiming Christ Crucified we must not burden or silence them but allow them to be for “if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them-in that case you may be found fighting against God!”. (Acts 5:38b-39) The reality is that the Episcopal church has spent over half a century observing the proclamation of Christ Crucified by the LGBTQ+ community within and outside its midst. During that time we have had radical moves of welcome, when St. George’s Episcopal, New Orleans, was the only church to open its doors for a memorial service after the UpStairs Lounge Arson in June of 1973, to the more common acts of rejection such as the recent resending of a baptismal date at the Cathedral in Orlando. What we have found, again and again, is that Christ is with us in the midst of being transformed by the proclamation of Christ Crucified by members of the LGBTQ+ community.

As this storm continues to brew and the fronts collide in Salt Lake City in two months time the question before us is not whether same sex couples have the right to sacramental marriage. It is not whether the children of same sex couples have the right to be baptized in the church. The question before us is whether the Episcopal Church is open to being transformed by the Grace of Christ as revealed in the proclamation of Christ Crucified by the LGBTQ+ community. 

The messiness of the situation, the strife, the pain is not going to go away anytime soon... what we will be deciding is wether we as a church are willing to take up that messiness, that strife, that pain together as one Body in Christ or will we enter into full Proclamation of Christ Crucified with our LGBTQ+ members... or will we continue to persecute in oh so many ways those in the LGBTQ+ community who wish to proclaim Christ Crucified in our midst and in so doing place the onus of the mess, the strife, the pain upon them. My continued prayer is that come July we will be one Body in Christ proclaiming Christ Crucified, sharing our mess, our pain, our strife together as one in a great act of hallowing each other into the new heaven and new earth.  

Wedding Cakes Iced in Transgender Oppression

The reality is that right now in the majority of America it is legal to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community. In most of the country one can readily fire or evict a member of the LGBTQ+ community for no other reason except that characteristic of their being. There are other characteristics, intrinsic ones such as race or sex, and chosen ones, such as religion, that are protected but not sexuality or gender expression. We talk about the issues around the new forms of Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, but what these really do is make the already legal discrimination easier, as the burden of proving that the discrimination should not be allowed is placed on the victim. They also make the fact that such discrimination is legal a known reality, they enfranchise those who otherwise would not realize that they could discriminate.

 

The fight for this has primarily been around providing goods and services to gay weddings, be it cakes, flowers, photography, or in the most recent case of note pizza. The reality is that gay couples are not actually finding it difficult to obtain bakers, florist, photographers, or caterers to provide services for their weddings. They might find set backs and inconveniences, which they should in no way face, and the reality is that any service provider who alleges to provide to the general public should provide to the general public, but the actual fall out from these acts of discrimination are minor. Again, this does not mean they should be ignored or discounted but that they need to be recognized for the small reality, both in scope and numbers, that they are.

The reality, however, is that the focus on bakers not providing cakes for weddings distracts us from a larger reality, both in scope and numbers, that is predominately ignored. The number of cases, at least where the issue has come to court, of wedding vendors denying services to a same gender couple is, as far as I can tell, under twenty five in the last decade. Each one gets a lot of publicity from both sides and is touted as the reason why we must have various protections, be they for religious groups or the LGBTQ+ community. Compare this, however, to the fact that since 2008 over one hundred transgender individuals have been violently murdered in the United States. Seven transgendered women have been violently murdered since the start of 2015, while there have been no cases filed about wedding vendors failing to provide services to same gender couples in that same time.

I honestly do not understand why the focus of these discussions continues to be around wedding vendors. These acts of discrimination are miniscule in relationship to the violent hate crimes committed against the transgender community. The majority of hate crimes that end in murder against the LGBTQ+ community in America are Transgender Women of Color. More transgender women were murdered in 2012 than reported cases of wedding vendors denying same gender couples services up to that point in American history, a total of about eleven by the end of 2013. The core reality is that hate crimes against our community, specifically targeting the most vulnerable of our members, has been occurring for decades but the non-discrimination ordinances and laws that would send a clear message about the status of LGBTQ+ individuals is for the most part breached in regards to wedding vendors providing services to, by and large, the least vulnerable of our community.

We are now facing a reality where we have marriage equality in states where there are no non-discrimination laws. The effect of this is that those members of the LGBTQ+ community who can readily navigate around discrimination have access to the privileges and responsibilities they need to normalize into the predominant norms of our culture, with the small chance of having to find another wedding vendor. In the midst of this the animosity to passing non-discrimination ordinances and legislation, which in the end always crumbles into nasty rants portraying transgender individuals as sexual predators, is greater than ever. This is the price of how we have engaged LGBTQ+ rights in this country, seeking first the more rarified protections allowed to some by marriage, while placing aside the need for basic protections for all of the community. The west coast and the north east have, for the most part, a functioning reality for the entire community, but those of us in the fly over zone are left in the lurch outside of isolated islands of municipal ordinances. 

Nationally, and in the vast majority of states, our laws tell our citizens that it is perfectly acceptable to discriminate against members of the LGBTQ+ community, even if they can legally marry. This adds to a general milieu that enfranchises hate crimes against the most vulnerable in the community. The horror is that we are struggling to bring about non-discrimination legislation in a way that does not confront the very real harm, and murder, of our members. We are allowing the discussion perpetuate itself in the petty realm of wedding cakes and not confronting the true horror of our society and the tide of transgender blood.

It might be argued that the realm of wedding cakes, no matter how petty, is a palatable realm in which we can get said legislation passed. The reality, however, is that the point of struggles for equality before the law is to confront society with the actual horrors they are perpetuating and to make those abuses of individuals society considers palatable no longer palatable. The goal is to lift up those individuals we now leave destitute to a place of basic recognition; to not only change the law but alter the cultural and societal fabric in which our laws are grounded. If we do not consistently require ourselves, our neighbors, and our legislators to fully confront the horrors they are allowing to perpetuate then we are, in fact, aiding in their perpetuation.