Were the Gospel of Love preached with ‘the eyes of enlightened love’, there would be no need for Queer Christianity.
After all, there is no difference between Queers in love than any one else. For all lovers, discovering the truth of the heart is like the unveiling of the body; flesh kissed, the unhygienic sharing of saliva, the sacramental ritual of divine ecstasy, souls and bodies united in love.
The sacred ground of our existence is laid bare. Our queer floppy body parts, both male and female, funny beyond measure when deeply loved, reveal the mystery of our innermost truth. Agony and ecstasy is the stuff of gospel love, but regardless of how much the body and soul must suffer, it is into joy that we were born, for joy that we exist and in joy that we will let go of life; let go for the mystery of joy from which all Creation comes.
We celebrate our naked bodies as expressions of our loving Creator Spirit, the Mystery beyond understanding or that words can convey. In this way, Christ our Great Mother calls All of Creation to herself.
Gospel Truth is the truth of the heart, a visionary truth that knows that there will be a day in time when the world will belong to the poor, to ‘the lion and lamb’ together, the self-evident guileless truth of the child that leads them. Gospel Truth is the Holy Spirit of Truth that we dare not sin against, the truth of a day in time when the world will act as a universal family, ‘the Queendom’ of God. It is the light of the star that the Magi saw shining over Jesus of Bethlehem at his Epiphany, the Messiah that would save the world from loveless carnality, predatory sex, the enslavement of the poor by the employers of greed. From this perspective, Paul of the Bible is a visionary, the missionary of a gospel of a new humanity, a church built up in love and built by love so as to be the embodiment of love, the Body of Christ.
Why do we need Queer Christianity? We need to distinguish in the biblical text between the ideas expressed by Saul the first century pharisee of the kind that crucified Christ and the Paul of I Corinthians 13, the visionary of Gospel Love and Truth. For the undiscerning the ideas come all mixed up. Unfortunately no theory of scriptures can save us, however inspired and perfectly truthful they may be, unless the reader lets the text ‘raise their eyes’ to a higher vision that makes them sacred and holy. They require the ‘depths of seeing’ as in the mysteries of love, the truth where love sees the hidden heart, the web of deepest relationships that binds us together, the revelation of grace that is unconditional love.
The old Saul appears when he rails against Gentiles (non-Jews) in what we now describe as intolerable hate crime. He describes them in comparable ways to Nazis when they talk about Jews. As Jesus made abundantly clear, Gentiles are not dead in their sins any more than Christians. They have not lost all sensitivity and nor are they given over to sensuality any more than Jews or Christians. It is racist talk to speak of Gentiles as perverted, closed minded, ignorant greedy people fit to be burned in the holocaust of Hell. It is an unmitigated attack on women to demand that they obey their husbands, particularly while proclaiming a Gospel of Peace that seeks to reconcile all people into one family of God. Unlike Jesus, Paul has an obsession with looking like Mr. Clean (like the Pharisees). He damns those that steal in the very breath that he justifies slave employers, the perpetuators of systematic theft and greed. Worse still, Paul expects slaves acquiesce to its abject cruelty.
We need Queer Christianity because we need a questioning Christianity. An unquestioning slavish reading of Paul’s writings turns the Gospel of Christ into a gospel of hell on earth, a Christianity of oppression and repression.
The faith of Queer Christianity is that Gospel Truth will ultimately have its day in history, the Gospel of Love that overcomes all hate, the redemption of body, mind and soul.
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