Ephesians 4:7-8,11-16
When I think of this passage I often start to think about the different roles we play. I begin to think of work and all the jobs that need to be done for us to complete our daily tasks for the patients. There are doctors and nurses, pharmacists and clerks, housekeepers and office staff. We all work together to make the patients visit with us safe, productive and efficient. In fact, our focus is so collaborative that we have been noted for many years as the best in the nation for our type of facility by independent monitors. I like the word collaborative. We work as a team. Each person is respected, each person's contribution to the whole is realized and appreciated, every single job. I ma not sure everyone likes their job like I do but the jobs they do are top notch. I am actually proud to work in such a place.
This kind of interpretation of scripture seems easy. We all have different talents and gifts. It isn't until I start speaking in terms of very personal 'talents' that I start to get in some hot water. I can see such diversity in God's creation. It's all there for the seeing. Jesus would say 'for those that have ears hear and for those that have eyes, see...' Many people who love to see things in neat cubicles in black and white don't see the diversity of God's creation. These people certainly don't appreciate the roles that sexual diveristy has in God's kingdom.
It is hard to deny the gifts and talents of the gay community. Still there are people who are not comfortable with people using parts in ways 'not intended by God'. Of course they see being gay in only one way, defined by some act that they apparently can't get out of their heads. It's as if we placed a vision in their heads that they can't stop thinking about, like a snippet from a song that run over and over in your head. Being gay though is more than one act of sexual expression or sexual pleasure. I suppose people are coming around to that notion as they see people like my husband and I who act 'normally', are loving and productive people in society.
On Friday evening we participated in a rally for a trans person who had been roughed up by a bouncer at a bar. I may have mentioned it in a blog entry. It points to another part of God's diverse creation but yet another group that people seem uncomfortable with. Yet they are who they are, created by God and on their own journey to wholeness. They wish to be productive and loving as the rest of us do. Why do we have such trouble accepting everyone in God's created world? Why can't we accept what they have to offer and who they are? If ever there was a group called to a difficult road in life and who seem misunderstood, disrespected and marginalized, it is the trans community. Yet God loves them at least as much as God loves anyone else.
I could go on with more examples but the real question is can we respect the diversity of God's creation? Do we appreciate ourselves and each other? Can you be the best gay man there is, revel in it, appreciate it and use it as a tool for your own salvation and love? Big tasks for sure, appreciating yourself and others.
But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said,
‘When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive;
he gave gifts to his people.’ The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
‘When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive;
he gave gifts to his people.’ The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
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