Pride Sunday: God's Love

August 2 2020—18^th Sunday In Ordinary Time

Homophobia, transphobia, racism, heterosexism and all the ‘isms’ are rooted in ideas of supremacy, abuse of power and control.  Jesus is called the king of kings and lord of lords. Yet, Jesus is the servant of all and the friend of sinners.  The so-called weakness and foolishness of God in Jesus Christ are greater than the so-called power and wisdom of human governments.  God’s sovereignty or supremacy should never be defined by analogy to the kings, rulers or ruling classes of this world who dominate, oppress, exploit, scapegoat and marginalize.  Instead, we have to migrate to an entirely new paradigm, or , as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “ a new creation ” in which old ideas of supremacy are subverted so that we can rise to a deeper understanding of God as pure light, with no shadow of violence, conquest, exclusion, hostility, or hate for anyone.  This is what Paul is trying to tell us in the second reading, nothing can separate us from God’s love for us.

Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.  Now some would have us think that affectional affiliation or gender labels do not apply.  But Paul tells us that neither “present things nor future things” can separate us from the love of Christ.  I think he stated this because he knew human nature and he knew that perhaps future generations would try to claim there were limits to who could be included in the love of Christ.  Christ’s love has no such limits.  Therefore, how do we dare separate love of the LGBTQ and racialized communities from the love of our hearts because Christ has definitely not excluded them from His love.  Love is a verb.  Love demands action, which brings us to today’s gospel.

Parker Palmer has suggested that the miracle of the loaves and the fishes is a metaphor for the real miracle, which is that Jesus got the people to share what they had with them; when everything that people had was tallied there was enough to share with those who had nothing.  So, it is with us.  If everyone who has, shared with those who have not, there would be enough for everyone, not just to survive but to thrive. 

Just as Jesus told his disciples there is no need for people to go away to find what they need; So, we—his current followers—should share what we have with people in need and each other.  

In this current climate of homophobia, transphobia, covid-10, racial injustice, we ourselves are to give people the support they need; each of us as we are able.  It may be a simple as listening to someone’s story without interrupting or coming to the defense of someone who is being harassed or writing a letter or an op-ed.  It can be as big as sponsoring or co-sponsoring an LGBTQ refugee from a country that is not safe for them.  Remembering our mustard seed from the gospel two weeks ago, it’s not the size or grandiosity of what we do but the doing that matters.

Today’s gospel ends with “Those who ate were about five thousand men, not counting women and children.”   Although only the number of men were included in the counting, the fact that women and children are mentioned means that they count.  They too were fed and satisfied. 

The gospel writer was linguistically limited by the patriarchal systems of that time.  However, he wanted to make clear that for followers of Jesus, everyone is included.  Everyone is fed and satisfied.  Today, although patriarchy is still with us, we have the language to include everyone, regardless of gender or affectional affiliation.  The questions are: are we willing to open our hearts to the same inclusivity as that of our linguistic ability?  Are we willing to love inclusively as Jesus loves?  We are all temples of the Holy Spirit.  We are all children of God, no matter where we fall on the gender continuum or where we fall on the affectional attraction scale.  So let us treat everyone, without exception, as a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit where their God-seed is nurtured, where the Spirit in me, greets the Spirit in you.  Amen.