This is the text of my first sermon, given at Open Table London on Sunday, February 18, 2018. Gospel reading was the story of the Good Samaritan, Luke 10:25-37
In our planning meting for this service we wondered how we were going to honor LGBT history month. We have got a lot to praise and to mourn and family of our past to be thankful for, but the reality is that we are writing tomorrow’s LGBT history right now. What will it look like, a generation or two from now, and what will it mean to be us? I look at this fictional Samaritan, and I think I can see where we can go from here.
There was a time when the word Samaritan didn’t mean anything good to a good Jew. Some even tried to insult Jesus himself by using “Samaritan” as a dirty word. So he knew what he was doing when he chose a character he knew they would hate at first glance. But today, the word Samaritan has a much different meaning. Good Samaritan laws protect those who help strangers in need. I know of half a dozen hospitals in America called “Good Sam.” And if you dial 116 123, you’ll get a listening ear from a stranger through Samaritans. Because of Jesus’ story, “Samaritan” is forever synonymous with doing good to others.
If Jesus had told this story today to a bunch of so-called fundamentalists, he might have told the story of The Good Queer. Some LGBT people don’t like the word “queer.” It reminds them of rejection from families, or of being bullied. Maybe it was an insult accompanied by physical blows. If that’s the case for you, it’s your right to hate it, but I hope you’ll forgive me for using it. Because like “Samaritan”, I believe that queer is a dirty word that can be transformed into something good, and a name to wear with pride. Once it was an insult, something strange, threatening, heretical, a scapegoat for the inadequacies of people desperately wanting to be called righteous as long as they only had to be good to themselves and people like them. One day, it will mean to be open, pushing oneself out from what is comfortable into what is beautiful and true. It will mean accepting and loving. It will mean neighbour. But all that depends on the stories that we are writing with our own lives right now. Despite being hated and told all sorts of lies about our identity, do we choose to be neighbours to those in need, no matter what we do or don’t get out of it.
I hope that as queer Christians, we are looking towards the future and what we can achieve as a community, remembering what we have already done. Yes, our history is fraught with persecution, but it is also full of “Good Queers” who looked with compassion on those left for dead. William Arondeus helped hide Amsterdam Jews from Nazi detection with false papers. When this was no longer sufficient, he blew up the Public Records office, and was executed for his action. He was a “Good Queer” who is now honoured as Righteous Among the Nations. There were good lesbians who advocated and cared for gay men who were dying of AIDS, even as they received the full force of rage and pain and still present sexism. They did it because it was the right thing to do, because the medical establishment had passed by on the other side of the road. “Good queers” of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners raised funds for the families of striking miners because they sympathized with the injustice of power against the vulnerable.
At the end of the story, the Samaritan is still a Samaritan. He hasn’t gone through a conversion or repented of what the Jews saw as heretical beliefs. We are who we are. All our goodness and potential is right there inside us, and we don’t have to change our sexuality or gender identity to be part of building the Kingdom of God. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of wasting my time justifying my existence, trying to prove that I’m still good enough to be called a Christian. Yes, I’m here, I’m queer, now let me get on with following the ways of Jesus. I want to follow the way of compassion, to seek out the strangers and outcasts and refugees and undocumented immigrants and people on benefits and people who need to use the wheelchair bay at peak time. I want to push outside of myself and honor the humanity of people who don’t look like me or talk like me or use two legs like me or worship like me. I want to be an instrument of peace and a relief to pain. Let’s get talking about what there is for us to achieve within, but especially outside of our own personal interests. Wouldn’t it be great for our community, our family, to band together and make THAT our LGBTQ historical legacy?
