16th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Proper 11)

    Divine Lover

How do you encounter God – in fear and flight, or in faithfulness and freedom?

This week's lectionary Bible passages:

Genesis 28:10-19a; Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24; Psalm 86:11-17; Romans 8:12-25; Matt 13:24-30, 36-43.

“For lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender folk, trust is often hard to come by.  Yet the struggle is worth it, because trusting in God’s love heals us and sets us free to love in return.”

Steve Sprinkle

“The ground of our hope is not the guarantee of victory but the struggle itself for a more just world – where every living being is regarded as the image of God. We may encounter the Divine in our takang risk on a lonesome journey of exile."

Namsoon Kang

“All sorts of people in all sorts of circumstances participate in God’s ways, knowing God’s presence and responding with courage, faithfulness, and hopeful anticipation.”

Warren Carter

	God’s love is always surprisingly personal. How has God’s surprising love touched your life? Your situation?

Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24 continues the theme of flight into the arms of God. The psalmist recognizes that God is everywhere, knowing the psalmist’s thoughts and actions. There is nowhere to flee, no circumstances of despair, stress, depression or conflict from which God is absent. Yet the psalmist does not lament this encounter or seek to hide from it or feel hounded by God.  The psalmist welcomes it and embraces the ever-present embrace of God. Basic to the psalm is the love of God that loves the psalmist into loving God, self, and the psalmist’s community. Psalm 86:11-17 celebrates similar trust and security.

	How would you tell someone else the story of your encounters with God?  What seemingly unlikely people and events would be part of it?  What does that communicate about how God works in human life?

Romans 8:12-25 continues to contrast two ways of life under the rubric of “flesh” and “spirit.”  (See last week’s conversation.) The former term refers to a way of life hostile to God’s life-giving purposes; the latter refers to a way of life that participates in God’s loving ways. It is the latter way that dominates this passage. Life in the Spirit offers welcome qualities for LGBT communities. It means belonging to or the special identity of being children of God (verse 14). It means freedom from fear (verse 15). It does not mean escape from the suffering and brokenness of the present (verse 18). But it does mean not only experience of salvation now but also a hopeful longing for participation in the final establishment of God’s good purposes (8:19-20). It means being set free from bondage and recognition of solidarity with all God’s creation (8:22-23).  Life in the Spirit is a life of hope, not of failed nerve or lack of courage, but of actively participating in God’s ways and anticipating their completion.

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 describes weeds and wheat growing together until the final judgment when the weeds are destroyed. This parable has often been used as a “text of terror,” a weapon that threatens people with condemnation to hell. Some groups have used it to declare God’s inevitable judgment on those whom they oppose for whatever reason (as LGBT people). Such readings are utterly out of line in part because they usurp God’s role. But they also ignore another emphasis running through the parable. The “good seed” planted by the master produces wheat in abundance. Such fruitful wheat can never be confused with weeds. In terms of the Romans 8 reading, a life marked by actively pleasing God, the divine lover, disqualifies the fruitless attempts of those who hatefully declare wheat to be weeds.

	Like the Jewish people, GLBT folk can learn to argue creatively with Bible texts.  How might you wrestle with this text until it yields “good seed” for you, your community, and even your adversaries?