As Pride 2022 comes to a close, I want to share some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head. When I've been tasked, as seminarians and fledgling ministers often are, with preaching on Trinity Sunday, I have usually pointed to the Church as beloved community being a reflection of the nature of God: made up of parts and yet in union. Like any trinitarian analogy, it is imperfect to the point of skirting heresy, and every time I make it, I can hear my father's insistent reminder, "Church is not God." So, just as I would caution one against taking the Church as Icon of God thought too seriously, I would advise caution as I blaze ahead.
Pride feels to me, and I imagine to many others, not unlike Church. At its best, it's a celebration of liberation and wholeness in the face of worldly forces which seek to imprison and destroy. However, what stands out to me the most is that it is a declaration of community. Being LGBTQ+, especially if one is still closeted or doesn't live in a Queer Enclave, can be an incredibly solitary experience. During Pride, folks of all kinds come together, pointing to a common experience and identity, despite the many and varied differences in those experiences and identities, and declare that they belong to one another.
LGBTQ+ folks, as both individuals and a community, are wonderful expressions of the Triune God. Despite our very best attempts at boiling God down to terms which our human minds can encapsulate, God continually defies definition. Our language simply cannot encapsulate the fullness of God. Likewise, our language cannot encapsulate the fullness of the human experience. There are those who try, drawing clear lines between genders, strict rules of conduct, exerting control on the connections and boundaries between people, but all this does is reduce, restrict, and ultimately ruining those subject to these efforts. The nuance of experience represented by those in the LGBTQ+ community is a reflection of the nuance of God. Just as we often experience God more fully when we accept that we can only ever grasp God in fleeting, ephemeral mystery, we experience our own humanity more fully when we embrace and embody the blurring of our boxes.
Wherever you are, I hope you're looking beyond the boxes, the closets, the prisons, that keep you from embracing your full, messy, complicated humanity.
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