Contents of this page:

• December 1 - The Holy Spirit
• December 2 - Abraham
• December 3 - Sarah
• December 4 - Isaac
• December 5 - Tamar
• December 6 - Mary
• December 7 - Jacob
• December 8 - Joseph
• December 9 - Moses
• December 10 - Rahab

These devotions appear in the November-December issue of the Presbyerians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns More Light Update. (http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~riley/PLGC.html) Copyright 1998 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution.

"The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy." Luke 1:25

If only we had this attitude toward every child born! Yet this very attitude may prompt still more attempts to make a child conform to our expectations and suffer the consequences of nonconformity. I once read of a study that revealed those who "planned" their families were more likely to abuse their children, apparently for not living up to the plan! Trangender children, gay boys, lesbian girls, and bisexual children have not fit "the plan" and endured the name-calling, ridicule, emotional distancing or downright abandonment, punishment and abuse given any child who doesn't fit in.

We don't think of the Holy Spirit as being in the baby-making busienss. The Holy Spirit also must conform to our expectations of what it's to be and do. The Holy Spirit also suffers abuse for nonconformity. When accused for having a demonic spirit rather than God's Spirit, Jesus snorted, "People will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter: but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin." (Mark 3:28-29)

Most Christians, distrust a Spirit who may blow where it will, as Jesus described it in John 3. "Put a lid on it!" they'd advise charismatic or even merely emotional Christians. And to connect that pure Spirit with sex! My God, what are those queer people up to?

But here we have it in Scripture, our sacred text. The Holy Spirit impregnated Mary. Pretty earthy. Certainly the Incarnation further elevates the sanctity of the body, whose nooks and crannies are already shaped by God, first in creation, then in conception ("You knit me together in my mother's womb" Psalm 139:13). God has already connected the Holy Spirit with sexuality.

Of Jesus' forerunner John, an angel said "Even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit," and he leapt in the womb at Mary's announcement to Elizabeth. "Now this refutes the Baptists!" Martin Luther might say in defense of infant baptism.

As we later learn in Acts, neither God nor the Holy Spirit is a respecter of persons, but fills even unbaptized, unJudaized Gentiles, giving them gifts of the Spirit. It really bugs many Christians that the Spirit has done it again in GLBT people.

But the Spirit bugs us too, as it leads us - as it led Jesus just after his baptism - into the wilderness to be tempted to give up our faith and to renounce our trust in God. No telling what the Spirit is going to do with us and in us. It's downright spooky.

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. What is born in you will be holy.

"An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Matthew 1:1

Before going forward, we must go backward, and look at the family Jesus came from. (And his family goes way back. Luke traced it all the way back to Adam and Eve to suggest Jesus' relationship to all peoples, not just Jews.) Abram was told by God to "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing...In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:1-3). "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness," Paul quotes Genesis 15:6 in Romans 4:3.

"Go from your country and your kindred..." Jesus is a chip off this very old block! "Who are my mother and my brothers?" Jesus asks rhetorically. "Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother" (Mark 3:33, 35). Jesus will make Abraham's family even larger - not by procreating, but by extending the family inheritance to others who believe and do the will of God and become part of the family of faith. Thus all the families of the earth shall be blessed by the revelation to the Hebrews of a God of mercy and righteousness.

God's family just keeps getting larger and larger. Luke-Acts traces the Jesus movement from Galilee to Jerusalem, then to the far reaches of the Roman empire. This new family grew not by ordaining a particular sexual expression but by inclusiveness. Gay-affirming Christians are on the same track, proclaiming an inclusive church, anathema to those who promote the "traditional (thus limited and exclusive) family" agenda, but in line with Abraham and Jesus.

"Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me," Jesus reminds the traditional family values set (Matthew 10:37).

I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. (Genesis 22:17)

"Why did Sarah laugh, and say, 'Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?' Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?" Genesis 18:13-14

"Nothing will be impossible with God," Gabriel told Mary, announcing the old and "barren" Elizabeth's pregnancy. "Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?" the angel rhetorically asked in the story announcing the nativity of Isaac.

There's a barely perceptible advance between the two stories. Sarah overhears the angel's announcement; hears herself described in third person giving birth to a long-promised child. But the angel speaks directly to Mary, and invites her cooperation.

But the gist of both stories is that the impossible, the wonderful work of God, cannot be done to us, but with us. In the first, a patriarchal mindset implies only the assent of Abraham. In the second, God breaks through that mindset to seek Mary's assent.

Remember when you, like Sarah standing just inside the tent entrance, stood just inside your closet door and perhaps laughed at the possibility that God was going to do something new in you? Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Nothing will be impossible with God.

Now Christians stand with Sarah just inside the church door, laughing at the thought that God may be doing a new thing in the church, to make it inclusive. Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Nothing is impossible with God.

In the context of the seeming impossibility of the salvation of the wealthy, Jesus himself would teach, "For God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:16).

The angels of God are now asking the church in its recent ridicule of the Spirit within us, "Why did you laugh? Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?" And they seek Mary's assent from the church: "Let it be with me according to your word."

Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? Nothing will be impossible with God. Let it be with me according to your word. For with God, all things are possible.

Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" Genesis 22:10-11

This incident must have driven Isaac to a lifetime on a therapist's couch. We can empathize because we have had our spiritual fathers and mothers in the church ready to sacrifice us because they believe it to be God's will. Sometimes our biological fathers and mothers, too.

With Isaac, we remember being a child of promise. Many of us tried so hard to be the best little boy or the best little girl in the church family. When our sexuality became known, it was as if our church had this crazy notion that God wanted our removal. We carry within us the psychic scars of this reversal of affection.

Yeah, we ended up on therapist's counches, joined support groups, and have even done the television talk show circuit, telling our stories and sharing our pain. The church is just now hearing "Abraham, Abraham!" When the true will of God finally dawns on the church and it discovers the ram in the thicket, will we be able to forgive their misguided zeal for God, even their misguided love for us?

And will we then stand with the ram in the thicket as Jesus hung with criminals on crosses, declaring that our God is not blood-thirsty, but love- thirsty? Will we join Jesus in saying, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do?" Will we assent to being resurrected, still bearing our wounds, but refusing retribution and reaching for reconcilation, at-one-ment?

Because we have not withheld ourselves, I believe that we will hear God's blessing: "I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice" (Genesis 22:17-18). Mercy begets mercy.

Forgive them, for they know not what they do. But tell them what they are doing!

Then Judah...said, "She is more in the right than I..." Genesis 38:26

The first woman mentioned in Matthew's genealogy, Tamar has a story that is complicated enough for a television mini-series, but also reads like a daytime soap opera. Her husband Er dies and her father-in-law Judah follows the law to give her Er's brother Onan, infamous masturbator or coitus interruptor, who also dies. Judah resists giving Tamar another son, and sends her away. Later, Tamar allows Judah to think she's a prostitute and gets pregnant by him (send the children to bed now!), later revealing her ploy to obtain justice. Judah recognizes that, by his own legal standards, she is more just.

William Sloane Coffin has said, "The problem is not how to reconcile homosexuality with scriptural passages that appear to condemn it, but rather how to reconcile the rejection and punishment of homosexuals with the love of Christ." If the conservative or even moderate Christians are going to play legalistic games with us, they will find with Judah that we are more in the right than they are. Surely the love of Christ is more difficult to reconcile with their rejection than a paltry few debatable verses (and never from Jesus) with our sexuality.

We must be as clever as Tamar to make this evident to the church.

"Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves," Jesus warned his disciples in facing persecution for proclaiming the gospel (Matthew 10:16).

See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of them, for they will hand you over to the righteous right and flog you in their congregations...

"The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called the Child of God." Luke 1:35

We considered this scripture earlier when we contemplated the role of the Holy Spirit in the nativity. Now it's time to consider the same passage in reflecting on Mary's role.

Mary was the first charismatic "Christian." She was filled with the Holy Spirit. She did not speak in tongues, she did not preach the gospel, she did not dance in the Spirit. Instead, according to Luke, she paraphrased a prayer that her predecessor Hannah had offered to God when she learned she would give birth to Samuel. And she gave birth to a movement that would transform the world, and specifically, us.

Last evening, Mark (Chris' partner) and I rented and watched a video, The Apostle, Robert Duvall's homage to "low" sourthern evangelical Christianity. Though the protagonist is, to say the least, tarnished - Mark admired the character's absolute faith. The apostle argues with God, sins mightily, and yet boldly proclaims the truth of salvation in a way that common folk could understand. After committing a terrible sin, he baptizes himself in a river and discerns - perhaps egotistically - his calling as an apostle. (As I think of it now, this is not unlike Pauls' late acquired apostleship.)

I recalled how, when I first came to an awareness of my "terrible sin" as a child - that of being homosexual - I fervently attempted an about-face, consciously washing away my sinful identity while taking my daily shower. I prayed for the infusion of the Holy Spirit that would make me like everyone else.

Trouble is, the infusion of the Holy Spirit does just the opposite. Like the charismatic Christians who "annoyingly" raise their hands in praise, or speak a cathartic "gibberish," the Spirit led Mary away from the normal - to conception first and marriage second.

The Spirit has led us too along a path most of us would rather not have taken: being queer in Christ. As with Mary, the Spirit has midwived in us a movement to recover the innate relationship of sexuality and spirituality, the integral nature of body and spirit, as well as the inclusive nature of the Body of Christ. Just as Mary's conception warranted stoning by the religion of her day, so our conception prompts attacks from the religion of our time.

Mary, may we, as you, open our wombs to the Holy Spirit, so that the movement which is born of us is vouchsafed sacred.

"Surely God is in this place - and I did not know it!" Genesis 28:16

If Jacob and Esau were gay and lived in Atlanta, Jacob would go to the preppy bar Blake's and Esau would go to the leather and bear hangout, the Eagle. I know many of our prejudices in both the straight and gay community would equate Jacob with gay malehood - y'know: gentle, smooth, indoors, a chef, momma's boy, and (loathe to admit it) calculating. But Esau fits another stereotype that's gaining ascendancy: rough, rugged, hairy, outdoors, athletic, a man's man, and (loathe to admit it) a little slow on the uptake.

But Jacob made it into Jesus' genealogy by hook and by crook, though, if Esau could have had such foreknowledge, this would have been the last thing on Esau's mind when it came to being cheated out of the family inheritance and their father Isaac's blessing. As bad as he is, Jacob is nonetheless chosen by God. Escaping Esau's wrath, he came to a place for the night. Not surprisingly, using a rock for a pillow gave him a curious dream that gave us that song about climbing Jacob's ladder. He woke with the awareness that "Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!" The rock becomes the first stone of God's new house.

Later, of course, Jacob would wrestle with God on his way back to reconcile with Esau. To Esau's great credit, the reconcilation was affected.

Seems to me that we are in the place where we play both roles. Cheated out of our inheritance, yet forced to flee. We recognize the presence of God even in the odd places we've slept on the run. We've wrestled with God and received God's blessing. We've faced danger from wrathful siblings, and been willing to reconcile with the ones who stole our inheritance. Like Jacob with Laban working seven years for Leah and another seven years for Rachel, we've worked long and hard for our relationships. Like Esau, we've remained behind to care for aging parents and the family home.

Jesus was in the place where he played both roles, too. "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Human One has nowhere to lay his head" (Luke 9:58). Beloved and chosen, yet betrayed and abandoned. Crucified, yet affecting reconciliation. Rejected by religious and political authorities, yet receiving God's blessing and inheritance of a commonwealth of which he is the firstborn. The rejected stone becomes the cornerstone of God's new home.

Surely our God is in this place - and I did not know it! How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. Genesis 28:16-17

"When some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt." Genesis 37:28

Inflation probably upped the price of betrayal from twenty to thirty pieces of silver in Jesus' time. What siblings did to their brother Joseph, jealous of his dreams and his belovedness, a disciple would do to his descendent Jesus, also envied for his dreams and belovedness.

We can testify that not much has changed. Money has bought many a Christian: first the rich man who will face difficulty getting into the kingdom of heaven because of his enormous financial gifts to reactionary hate groups in several denominations; second, the wealth of our opposition arrayed against us like the giant Goliath to the boy David; and third, our church siblings so worried about "the bottom line" that we become expendable on the altar of the church's earthly treasures.

Joseph would be put in a place where eventaully he would save the very brothers who betrayed him, saying to them, "Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as God is doing today" (Genesis 50:20). The brothers thus followed Joseph into Egypt.

Jesus would be put in a place where eventually he would save the very world that crucified him, saying to us, "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:17). Christians thus follow Jesus into the commonwealth of God.

In facing our own betrayal at the hands of our brothers and sisters in faith, we find difficulty seeing more light at the end of a very long and very dark tunnel. We fail to see that we are leading them to that light simply by continuing to follow Jesus in the shadow of the church. They are following us following Jesus into more light after all.

Even though they intend harm to me, God intends it for good, in order to preserve my people.

"Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God. They took their stand at the foot of the mountain...When the Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain, the Lord summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up." Exodus 19:17, 20

Much, much later, from Mount Nebo and Mount Pisgah, Moses would view the Promised Land that he would not live to enjoy. Given all that he endured, Moses deserved all the mountaintop experiences he was given.

Leadership is tough. People whine. People complain and k'vetch. They second guess and offer hindsight. They pick at your foibles and remember your sins and failures, eternally gossiping about them. They want somebody to do it (often explicit in the "it" that should be done), but won't do it themselves. Good thing Moses had God. As it says at the end of Deuteronomy, "Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face" (34:10)

Matthew thought Jesus matched Moses, thus placed him on a mount for his famous sermon. But instead of starting with ten commandments, Jesus started with ten beatitudes, "happy are those..." rather than "thou shalt not." Jesus called us to live beyond the letter of the law into its spirit of love of God and fellow creatures. Thus we would be blessed.

Luke placed the sermon on a plain, a level place, indicating the egalitarian nature of God's commonwealth. Jesus was the leader, is still the leader, but he calls us all to be leaders. We wanted him to do it all for us - save us, deliver us, take care of us. Such desperate need led to our crucifying this messiah then and repeatedly since. Yet we must "work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling," as Paul told the Philippians (2:12), not without Jesus' help but with his help, not alone but as a community. Together we must discern truth and love. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.

There are those who want to retreat to scripture to determine whether homosexuality is a sin. But the answer lies no more there than in Horatio's stars. The answer lies within the heart of Christ, the Spirit that pulses within us and urges us to let go our fears and fundamentalism and embrace yet more love.

"For it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for God's good pleasure." Philippians 2:13

"Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live because she hid the messengers we sent." Joshua 15:17

A prostitute in Jesus' lineage! What will Christians think?

Many Christians delicately avoid the fact that God works through people that they would not. Indeed, they'd word that last sentence in past tense: "God worked through people that they wouldn't," Surely, they think, God wouldn't do that anymore.

The first gay man I ever met was a male hustler who worked Selma Avenue in Hollywood. In high school, I did not know how to meet other gay people. But I had seen men hanging out on Selma whenever I went into Hollywood for a movie on Hollywood Boulevard or for pizza at Micelli's on Las Palmas. Selma runs parallel to Hollywood Boulevard and both streets intersect Las Palmas. (I know I'm really dating myself, since police harassment long ago moved the hustlers down to Santa Monica Boulevard.) Rumor had it these men were gay, and though the word "hustler" was added to such rumors, I wasn't sure what that meant, and, of course, was afraid to ask. I just thought this was how gay men met. I was in for a surprise!

The first gay Christian I ever met was a minister who lived on - guess what? - Las Palmas in Hollywood! It occurred several years later. I had read about Bill Johnson's ordination in the newspaper, contacted him, and he invited me to his place for dinner.

This contrast serves as metaphor for those who would observe the gay community, either as one trying to affirm one's own homosexuality or as one trying to deny our legitimacy. Our sexuality may be more apparent than our spirituality. To discover our spirituality, friend or foe must be invited and must be willing to enter our home and commune with us.

Jesus must have known about having a prostitute as part of his heritage. Maybe pride in that fact was why he stood in harm's way to protect a woman from being stoned for adultery, defended a woman of ill-repute washing his feet, and called a Samaritan woman who had had five husbands and lived with a man unmarried to proclaim his gospel. Within their sexuality, Jesus saw their faith.

"Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you and you with me...Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches." Revelation 3:20, 22