11th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Proper 6), Year A

    Called Out to Ministry

Let us, like the psalmist (Psalm 116:12), be ever mindful to ask what we can return to God for all of God’s bounty to us.

This week's lectionary Bible passages:

Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7) & Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19 or Exodus 19:2-8a & Psalm 100; Romans 5:1-8; Matthew 9:35-10:8, (9-23)

“One of the ways that queer folk can follow Jesus is in imitating his compassion for the harassed and hopeless in our communities, especially young people searching for hope and meaning.”

Julianne Buenting

“When we deny our ‘calling,’ hope eludes us.  Without hope, how can we heal others?"

Jack Seymour

“The gifts that LGBT people bring to ministry are as important as the needs of LGBT people for ministry.”

Ken Stone

	What particular types of ministry are especially necessary among LGBT folks?

LGBT people of faith, however, do not simply need ministry.  They are also called to ministry.  Like the disciples of Jesus, many LGBT folks find themselves responding to a summons from God to work among those who are, as Jesus recognizes, “like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36).

Many Christians find it difficult to accept LGBT persons as ministers.  Some denominational policies explicitly prevent LGBT people of faith from serving as “shepherds.”  For people who support such policies, the suggestion that God might call LGBT people and give them “authority” for ministry seems incredible.

However, biblical tradition often speaks about a God who accomplishes incredible things.  In Genesis 18:1-15, for example, Abraham and Sarah are told that they will have a child.  Sarah laughs when she hears this news, for both she and Abraham are very old.  Natural childbirth seems to be physically impossible at such an advanced age.  Even Paul, recounting their story in Romans 4:19, notes both “the barrenness of Sarah’s womb” and the fact that Abraham’s body “was already as good as dead.”  The notion that God would call Abraham and Sarah to be parents, in their particular life circumstances, is therefore hard to believe.  Yet in Genesis 21:1-7, Sarah does give birth to a son.  God works through Sarah and Abraham even though their life situation makes childbirth unlikely.  We might even say that God is able to create family under circumstances that appear to be “unnatural.”

This same ability to accomplish miraculous things, which may not seem natural to onlookers, is evident in the Gospel’s story of call and ministry.  After all, it is not only Jesus who is “curing every disease and every sickness” (Matthew 9:35).  When he sends out his disciples, he tells them that they, too, will “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons” (10:8).  It is easy to imagine the disciples of Jesus finding it difficult to believe that they would soon be curing the sick or raising the dead.  Like Sarah and Abraham, they are called to do things that appear to be impossible.  With God-given “authority,” however, they are able to minister to others in amazing ways.

The pain and alienation that many LGBT folks have known from an early age may actually make them particularly well-suited to minister to others who are, for whatever reason, also subject to pain and alienation.  Perhaps the sort of compassion for the “harassed and helpless” that characterized Jesus even comes easier, at times, to those who have themselves been “harassed and helpless” than it does to those who have always fit into society’s norms and conventions.  Of course, it is important not to glorify or justify the difficulties faced by those whose life circumstances put them at odds with prevailing norms for sex, gender and family. 

When God calls us to ministry, however, God calls us as particular people who have been shaped by particular experiences.  If God can allow an old woman to give birth to a child, or human disciples to raise the dead and heal the sick, then surely even difficult and painful experiences can be turned into gifts for ministry.  As Paul suggests in Romans 5:1-8, “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.”  Perhaps this same transformation from suffering to hope explains the willingness of the psalmist in Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19 to respond to God’s deliverance by becoming God’s servant.

	How might the specific experiences of LGBT people of faith serve as resources for a ministry to those who are “harassed and helpless”?