My husband and I seem to have lived parallel lives until we met. We have such a rich repertoire between us and seem to have experienced so many of the same things before we actually met each other. One huge difference though is when each of us came to the realization that we are gay. He in his mid twenties and me, good 'ol Catholic boy that I was, did not fully grasp and accept the fact that I am gay until I was about 50 years old.
When I read this passage today it explains in my mind some of the fervent behaviour I had when I came out. When you accept Jesus as your Lord and savior you are entering into His life and death. There is no escaping the joys and sorrows of being fully human. The crux of the matter is entering fully into being human and perhaps more importantly, accepting, cooperating and being the person that God made you to be. For a gay person that surely means being the best gay person you can be. Fully human, fully engaged, filled with love.
It means embracing whom God made you to be so I was ready willing and able to explore fully all things gay. I wanted to be one with my peeps. This was not so true of my husband but he relented. We went to gay expo's, read gay literature, went to gay pride in NYC and we wound up marching a few years later with the governor of New York as a newly married couple. Woo-hoo! Fun times.
I have given you some ideas but what does it mean to embrace the totality of who you are as a gay person? If Lent is a time to cooperate with all that God has created you to be and to be fully human as Jesus was, then being gay should be one heck of a good time!
It does not involve reckless and mindless sex. It could mean mindful and mind blowing sex though. It surely does involve our sexuality, loving ourselves and embracing the uniqueness that being gay affords us. Exciting times.
As gay people, we are graced with a unique perspective about what it means to be fully human and to embrace the cross we take up in Jesus. Still exciting times. Are we also aware though that carrying our cross means we will intimately understand when people do not accept us? Our perspective for humanity is varied, different and very blessed. We have so much to offer humanity and in fact, we have been integral part of so much of the arts and advancements of mankind over the millennia.
When we spend time in Lent to becoming fully human, know that embracing the fullness of being gay is part of that. The possibility that Jesus himself was gay is not out of the realm of possibility. There are Scripture scholars that point to some convincing evidence that it was so. If so, all the more reason to embrace Jesus and the fullness of humanity that he lived.
Go in love. Go and love.
Romans 6:1-11
What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
No comments:
Post a Comment