Here are my answers to RevGalBlogPals extremely random Friday Five:

1. What is the first thing that comes to your mind (right now) that you want to share about yourself.

Oddly, there's little I feel I need to share at the moment. I'm a little sunburned from our retreat yesterday.

2.  What is your favorite piece of jewelry or accessory? Why?

I'm not big on jewelry, but I like my UCC cross triumphant and orb.



It looks different from other crosses, and I get asked about it a lot, which gives me a chance to talk about the United Church of Christ.

3.  If you could have a starring role in a T.V. show/movie/series, which one would it be, and what would your character be like?

Doctor Who. I'd be happy to be a slightly wacky companion, but I'd like to be the Doctor - if for no other reason, so that there would be a female incarnation for once.

4.  What is one thing you will eat this weekend?

Almost certainly, a hamburger.

5.  How do you waste time? (If you do, that is...)

Blogging.

Two articles came my way this morning.

In a New York Times article, "The Ripped, Bikini-Clad Reverend", the Reverend Doctor Amy Richter tells of her feelings around a bikini and her entry as a female body-building competition, as well as being told she (at 5'10") is too petite to be a priest. Others said it would be "too weird" to see her at the altar if she were pregnant and wondered whether a priest should be allowed to hold hands with her husband.

What is it about the female body that so frightens the church? Is it a fear of powerful, intelligent women? Is it a fear of women's bodies themselves?

I don't think we can chalk it up merely to the mystery of women, because women, too, are among those who have objected to women in church leadership. Women know about women, and yet some still are uncomfortable with female clergy.

Nearly a century after the right of women to vote was recognized in the USA, there is still a gulf in expectations of what men and women can - and should - do. And it is not merely a divide with privileged men on one side and oppressed women on the other; both men and women buy into these expectations in varying degrees.

In the Internet Monk post "'Esau' Christianity? Douglas Wilson Needs a Bible Study," Chaplain Mike takes issue with Mark Driscoll's attack on "effeminate" male worship leaders and Douglas Wilson's attack on "effeminate" worship services. For Wilson, to be masculine is to have images of battle, judgment, and wrath.

Is violence the hallmark of masculinity? We certainly see violence in masculine-identified sports such as boxing and hockey, and images of war in American Football. But if masculinity is defined as physical conflict, what do we do with clergy, scientists, mathematicians, musicians, engineers, accountants, salesmen, clerks, letter carriers, and dozens of other men in non-combative occupations? Must musicians smash their instruments like the rock band The Who? Must our clergy call their male parishioners to physical violence against the enemy? Does this line of reasoning support events like the church shootings over the past few years?

So what would Jesus do, anyway?

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" But he turned and rebuked them.
-Luke 9:51-55

So is Jesus effeminate? If so, maybe Christianity is more feminine than masculine!

In Driscoll's and Wilson's search for authentic Christianity, they have confused it with gender stereotypes. Christianity ought not mean being physically strong, aggressive, violent, are brutal. Neither, however, is maleness. Rev. Dr. Amy Richter shows that women can be strong. And, as a my female hockey-playing friends can attest, women can be aggressive. If one reads the news, one can find many examples of violent and brutal women.

Both the fear of women as clergy and the fear of effeminate male clergy are rooted in the same two falsehoods: that women are inherently less than men, and that the Holy is intrinsically male.  Neither is the case, and both falsehoods are harmful to both men and women, as well as people who do not identify at either end of this socially-constructed binary. It is also harmful to Christianity, as it deprives the body of Christ of the richness and diversity that is inherent in God's creation.
 
The Lord's prayer includes the line "Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven". Let us not instead impose on heaven what we privilege on Earth. And, perhaps with time, we will learn not to privilege on Earth that which is not privileged in Heaven.

I am organizing a small retreat in Princeton Illinois for GLBTQ people. We'll have fellowship, meditation, and tell the sacred stories of our own lives.

The retreat will run June 8-10. Friday evening will be a time to register and meet each other (snacks provided).

On Saturday, we will have several workshops to help us tell our stories in different ways - writing, drawing/painting, singing, etc. Attend one or more workshops that resonate with how you want to tell your story - don't feel obligated to be at all of them. Three meals will be provided on Saturday.

On Sunday morning, breakfast will be provided, then we will have a worship service that incorporates some of the stories we have told.

Registration is limited to 20 double occupancy.

There is a flyer attached.
OurSacredStoriesFlyer.pdf

So I've been thinking about eternal souls that transcend time and space and temporal bodies that occupy specific time and space. If you think of time as a dimension, our lives become four dimensional. Now, since we have trouble understanding four dimensions, imagine for the moment that we all look like Flat Stanley.

If we took photos of every moment of our lives, we'd have a bunch of flat representations of us, just like Flat Stanley. If we stacked them in order on top of each other, we'd have a three-dimensional representation, with the height of the stack being time. We would be small at the bottom (as infants) but larger as we went forward in time. Some of us might get smaller at points, too, as we lose weight.

My point here is that our bodies are four dimensional if we include the time that we are alive. If our souls, however, are eternal, then they're not going to be fixed at one place and time, but transcend it.

If you read some of my posts about creation as story, you're familiar with the idea that our temporal lives may be characters improvised in God's great work. If so, then our souls are the actors, and our temporal lives the characters.

That means our lives (characters) are part of our souls (actors).

So what would this mean?

Well, it might mean that our lives as we know them are part of our whole selves (souls) the way our heads, arms, legs, etc.  are part of our temporal bodies. And that offers an interesting possibility:

Just as my hand (for instance) has a certain length, width, and depth, so my life has dimensions as part of my whole self. That doesn't make the flesh worse than the spirit, nor better than it. The flesh is an important part of my whole - perhaps of my soul itself.

And if my life is a part of my soul, for me to intentionally cut it short would be to amputate part of my whole self. Likewise, to extend my life past its useful length doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.

This line of reasoning leads me to value my life as an important - perhaps essential - part of my whole being, while recognizing that it is only a part of my whole.

It also leads me to value of the lives of others, while recognizing that death is only an edge of this part of others - opposite the edge of birth.

Maybe this cosmos is not our home - maybe it's more like a hat, glove, shirt, or shoe that covers the part of our being that lives here.

On Sunday, I'm shutting up about homosexuality and the Bible for a year.

There are people who go much farther in depth on the issue of homosexuality and the Bible. If you really want to learn about what scholars are saying, there are books, videos, academic papers, and articles on the worldwide web.

But if you have made up your mind already, there's not much I can say to you. Instead, I suggest you take a page from Jesus' ministry:

Jesus ate with people who were considered unclean sinners. If you want to follow Jesus, have dinner with a sinner. If you don't think think gay people can be Christians, ask one to lunch. Rather than quoting scripture at us, get to know us, and let us get to know you. Who knows? Maybe your example of piety will convict us of our sin. Of course, it's also possible that you will find we are not the sinners you think we are.

Are you willing to risk it? I am.

If you're gay and Christian, join me on my year of being out and not defending homosexuality.

If you're Christian and think homosexuality is a sin, join me in a year of meeting each other where we are.

Jesus said:

"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." - John 13:34-35, NRSV

I love you, too.

On Sunday, I'm shutting up about homosexuality and the Bible for a year. So this is a series of comments to get this out of my system. I  this post: Jesus.















Yep.

Jesus said nothing about homosexuality.

On Sunday, I'm shutting up about homosexuality and the Bible for a year. So this is a series of comments to get this out of my system.

Romans 1:26-27

Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

With regard to women "exchanged natural for unnatural". This is the single place that could possibly be lesbianism, but it doesn't actually say that. In fact, it's not very specific at all.

With regard to men, it does say that men were consumed with passion for one another, and committed shameless acts. The acts are not specified. Is it mere lust? Or committed relationships?

These are also the consequences of idolatry - people who turned from God to worshiping idols. But what of people who are believers and who follow the words of Jesus, and are in committed same-sex relationships?

It's also important to recognize that this is a letter from an apostle to a church. It's not prophecy. It's not the red-letter words of Jesus.

1 Corinthians 6:9-11

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers--none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Male prostitutes, sodomites. We know Paul didn't say "sodomites" because that word was invented in the late 14th century. What did he really say? These words are translated from the Greek word arsenokoites.What does arsenokoites really mean? It's hard to say. It can be translated a lot of ways, including rape or incest. The same word gets used in 1 Timothy 1:9-10.

Most people read the translations rather than the Greek, and receive the translator's understanding of the words. Most people have already been taught that homosexuality is against God's law. We don't always realize the biases that we and others bring to the text.

On Sunday, I'm shutting up about homosexuality and the Bible for a year. So this is a series of comments to get this out of my system.

This is going to be really short.

Leviticus is the law of the Levites, the priestly tribe of Israel. The law covers food, worship, sex, and a lot about when women are unclean and have to be set apart from others (during and after their periods, after childbirth, etc.)

Yes, it says that man shall not lie with man as with a woman. What does that mean? Is it about male dominance over females and that men shouldn't be that way with other men? Is it about the victors raping those they defeated in battle? Is it about consensual sex?

If you're going to make Leviticus your guide to life, be sure to read the rest of it. Pay attention to the dietary restrictions, and the fabric blends. When you have those down, come and talk to me about how a committed relationship between two people of the same sex is what Leviticus is talking about, and that it applies to contemporary Christian believers.

On Sunday, I'm shutting up about homosexuality and the Bible for a year. So if Easter begins my year-long fast, I better get my fat-Tuesday on now.

First, Sodomy:

There are a whole lot of words that get tied to stuff in the Bible even though the connection is tenuous at best. Look up "Onanism". A lot of people use this as a synonym for masturbation, but look up Genesis 38 and read what Onan was supposed to have done - used the withdrawal method to avoid giving his brother's widow a child. How does that turn into masturbation? Onan's seed spilled on the ground. At some point, someone probably misunderstood what Onan had done wrong. The sin was that he disobeyed God by refusing to give his brother's widow a child, but someone probably thought the sin was spilling his seed on the ground. Next thing you know, it's any ejaculation outside of a vagina, and then it's masturbation.

So we have sodomy. These days, sodomy most often means homosexuality, but not so long ago it meant non-vaginal intercourse between a man and either a woman or another man. This included fellatio and anal sex. Go back farther, and it's a connection to Sodom being a hotbed of sexual sin. But where in the Bible does it actually say that?

A lot of people point to Genesis 19 where the men (or people, depending on translation) of the town come to Lot's place and demand that he bring out the strangers so they may "know" the men. Of course, "know" means "have sex with", right?

Well, maybe.

I have not painstakingly gone through the Bible and looked at every example of sexual congress, but I have seen three common ways of describing sex: know, enter into, and lie with. The cases of "know" with which I am familiar are about consensual sex within marriage. "Enter into" usually means the same. "Lie with" shows up in places like Deuteronomy 22: "the man seizes her and lies with her" - usually meaning rape or prostitution.

I don't think the townspeople wanted to be married to the strangers.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes know just means know. In the chapter prior to the altercation with Lot, the phrase "I know him" (using the same Hebrew word, yada) appears. It's actually part of the same story. Another example of homosexuality?

You decide.

Here, in Genesis 18:19, it is God speaking about Abraham. (Your translation may use chosen or some other word, but most translations use know, because the Hebrew word is yada.) If you're going to say "know" always means sex - even just in this story, then you're saying God has sex with Abraham. I don't think you want to say that.

In Ezekiel 16:46-50, Ezekiel is speaking for God (see 16:1. "The word of the Lord came to me:"). He's comparing Jerusalem to Samaria and Sodom. We especially want to look at 16:49-50 (from the New Revised Standard Version):

This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.

Look at that list of sins:

• Pride
• Did not aid poor and needy despite excess of food and prosperous ease
• Haughtiness
• Did abominable things before me

"aHA!" some people will say. "Abominations! That's the homosexuality!"

Could be.

Or they could be worshiping idols (Deuteronomy 7:25, Deuteronomy 13:14). Or engaging in temple prostitution (I Kings 14:24). Or using dishonest weights in commerce ((Deuteronomy 25:13-19, Proverbs 11:1)). Or any of a number of other things called abomination (Hebrew to'ebah).

Yes, Jude 1:7 mentions fornication and strange flesh, but does that mean homosexuality? Or sex with people outside one's tribe? Or prostitutes?

I'm not saying it's impossible for Sodom to be about homosexuality. I just don't find the arguments very persuasive.

A lot of people are fasting during lent. I'm doing something, too, but I'm not going to make a big deal out of it.

Yet I am planning a year-long fast, and it begins on Easter.

"Easter?" you might ask. "Easter is a FEAST time, not a fast time!"

Indeed, it is.

Easter is a day of celebration, of resurrection, of promise, of transformation. It's the first day of the Easter season, which runs for seven weeks through Pentecost, the traditional birthday of the church. And it is in this time that I will begin my fast.

I'm fasting from the homosexuality and church debate.

More below the fold.