FROM THE BOUNDARY: Same-sex what? – Part three
“His light was for all time, and his love was for all men.” That’s the Jesus I follow – the Jesus of love, reconciliation, inclusiveness, acceptance and hope. He lives in every human heart which loves.
He’s not, and can never be, the Jesus of a mincingly moralising church. He’s a Jesus who’s intimate, emotional, physically expressive. He gets angry spontaneously, and loves spontaneously. He says what he thinks. His close friends were men. We’re told that one he “loved” freely lay on his breast at supper. But he accepted the friendship of prostitutes. He forgave an adulteress – no matter what the law required – and sent her on her way. He is a Jesus who laughs, weeps, tells jokes. He’s not afraid of the body, of Eros. Maybe, for some, he’d be a scandal today too. Why? Because his tolerance for humanity is pretty well limitless. He’s intoxicated by life. He comes eating and drinking. He’s not troubled by sexuality because he relates to us all as friends. At the root of his sexuality is compassion, and the heart is the true sexual organ. Yes, he proclaims joy and life. He rejects fear, guilt, anxiety and hypocritical moralising. For anyone to proclaim the Gospel on the one hand and make homophobic remarks on the other would, for him, be a denial of truth itself.
You know, I don’t pretend to justify LGBTQ-ism. I don’t need to. It’s been with us since the dawn of man. Our sexuality is such a complex thing. It makes us, all of us, at one time or other confront our own repressions, anxiety and guilt. But then that’s all part of the journey to discover our true selves. It’s part of the soul’s journey to self-realisation. We’re all sexual beings. Our sexuality is unique to us. We all have our fantasies, desires, inhibitions, AND that terrible and repressive urge to be NORMAL, whatever normality is. ‘Chastity’, I suggest, is not so much abstaining from sex, but an open and almost child-like recognition of its life-giving qualities as an aspect of our yearning to be our true selves. It’s only when our sexuality becomes destructive, when its activities result in exploitation and abuse, that it becomes a sordid, tawdry, shabby, unhealthy thing, and demeans the personhood of others.
Religions have for so long been repressive of the body. It’s as if they’ve devalued physical life. Yet the body is, in its way, the soul that we see. It outwardly expresses the subtlety and mystery of the person, and acts as a window into life. If the world can be seen as a grain of sand, why not the meaning of life in a girl’s hair, or the hands of a man?
All this is lost on the ayatollahs, for whom proof texts have been turned into idols. But the great commandment, to love God and neighbour, even our enemy, is a higher truth. Jesus never said ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’. No. He recognised that we’re all sinners and proclaimed that higher truth. It has this consequence – that a person is no more a sinner for being gay than for being straight. “Who am I to judge?” gay people, asked Pope Francis. “I am what I am because of who we all are,” remarked Martin Luther King. Our lives are Me-We, all humanity. For the Christian, there’s no such thing as being anti-LGBTQ. There’s only being pro-Gospel. In Bishop Curry’s words, “Love is the only way.”
Will the ayatollahs ever understand this? Will the persecution of LGBTQ people ever end? By God’s Grace it will. But for now, LGBTQ people? Well, with Martin Luther King somehow we must “stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you…’.” After everything, why? Because we stand with Jesus, God with us, not Caiaphas.
Go safely, then – until the next time.
Hope Vatican-wise, from the boundary: “And do not forget: be revolutionary!” (Pope Francis)