Out In Scripture Archive

You don’t have to leave your mind, heart and body behind when you encounter the Bible. This Human Rights Campaign resource places comments about the Bible alongside the real life experiences and concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people of faith and our allies.

Out In Scripture is a collection of over 175 conversations about the Bible. With the skilled help of 100 diverse scholars and pastors, from over 11 different denominations, you will discover a fresh approach to Scripture. Here you can be honest, question and go deeper.

Out in Scripture is a great devotional resource as you consider your life of faith and put that faith into action. It is also especially helpful for preachers preparing sermons based on the Revised Common Lectionary.

The Bible’s not about beating you up, but lifting us all up. It includes the seeds of liberation and justice. You, too, can be out in Scripture.

The lectionary is a three-year plan of selected Bible readings for each Sunday of the year. To figure out what are the assigned passages for a particular week in the Church Year, check out the 2009-2011 Lectionary Calendar. Find out even more about the lectionary at the Consultation on Common Texts

Select Bible conversations from the following seasons. The conversation will appear at the bottom of the page.

Year B

Year C

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18th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Proper 13), Year A

Bread — and Struggle — for the Journey

    Our spiritual journey to authenticity often involves struggle,
    even withour preconceived notions of God. The scars we may
    take away fromthe struggle can be signs of hope and our hard
    won newness.

This week's lectionary Bible passages:

Genesis 32:22-31 & Psalm 17:1-7, 15 or Isaiah 55:1-5 & Psalm 145:8-9,14-21; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21

Who's Out in the Conversation
What's Out in the Conversation
Prayerfully Out in Scripture

Who's in the Conversation
A conversation among the following scholars and pastors

“This story of transformation indicates that the journey to ‘a new name’ is often marked by struggle. As transgender folk will testify, like Jacob we often bear the marks of that struggle in our physical bodies.”

Mona West

“All are welcome to God’s banquet table. Only by breaking the bread that sustains our physical and spiritual lives can we become companions in Christ. To deny any believer a place at the table is an abomination.”

Miguel De La Torre

“At times the struggle for justice can leave scars. However, doing this work is the right thing to do. It is our call from God and where our hope rests.”

Deborah Appler

What's Out in the Conversation
A conversation about this week's lectionary Bible passages

Life giving images of bread are found in Isaiah 55:1-5 and Matthew 14:13-21. Chapters 55-56 of Isaiah use imagery and language to describe new possibilities in a future that God will provide for all of creation. All who hunger and thirst will be filled without need for money to buy bread (verses 1-2). God’s everlasting covenant will include the sexual outcast and the foreigner who will be given “names better than sons and daughters” (Isaiah 55:3, 56:3-5).

This same imagery can be found in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000. The bread that Jesus provides for the diverse crowd of men, women and children parallels the messianic banquet that is the symbol of fullness of the realm of God. Jesus’ action of taking, blessing, breaking and giving the loaves and fish to the multitudes is reminiscent of the action he will repeat with his disciples which institutes the Eucharistic meal or Holy Communion of the church. The “banquet” that occurs in the wilderness in the feeding of the 5000 with five loaves and two fish is juxtaposed with Herod’s banquet (Matthew 14:1-11) in which John the Baptist was beheaded — which is the larger context for this miracle in Jesus’ ministry.

The promise of a banquet that is offered to all, and the invitation to participate in a life-giving covenant that honors those who have been marginalized in religion and society because of their sexuality and otherness is indeed life giving bread “without money and without price” for LGBT people. This is a powerful image of Eucharist or Holy Communion for LGBT people who have been denied access to the table either as participants or celebrants — “Ho, everyone who thirsts…come!”


	What are the Eucharistic or Holy Communion practices of your faith community? In addition to an inclusive banquet, what are other images from Scripture or the liturgy of the church that are life giving for marginalized people?

The word “companion” is derived from the Latin, con pan, “with bread.” Only companions (comrades) share bread. When I share bread with you, then that substance that enters my body to nourish my physical life is the same substance that enters your body to nourish your physical life. This holds true with Holy Communion or the Eucharist which spiritually nourishes both our lives when we partake together as companions. Breaking and partaking of bread testifies to our mutual need for physical and spiritual life. Becoming companions in eating bread occurs regardless of our gender, race, ethnicity, economic class or sexual orientation. We all need physical and spiritual life. It is through sharing meals together that true intimacy and caring can take place. The unrecognized Jesus is only made fully known when a meal is shared together – through the breaking of the bread (Luke 24:35).


	How does this understanding of Eucharist or Holy Communion — the need that all people have for physical and spiritual life — apply in a global context.

Genesis 32:22-31 records the famous story of Jacob’s wrestling match with God right before he is to meet his estranged brother Esau. In the struggle, Jacob’s name is changed to Israel and he will forever walk with a limp. Discovering our true identity in God often involves struggle — a life long struggle to peel back the layers of a false self in order to expose who we are authentically in the image of God. That image of God, however, is contained in our ordinary human lives, signified in this story by Jacob’s limp. This story of transformation, like the promise from Isaiah 56:3-5, indicates that the journey to “a new name” is often marked by struggle. As transgender folk will testify, like Jacob we often bear the marks of that struggle in our physical bodies.

It is so easy to have religion – to be part of a community that tells you what the truth is – and then blindly follow it. But all too often, this truth is nothing more than the cultural beliefs of a people having little, if no connection, with the Word of God. To wrestle with God so that one can see God face-to-face requires the risk of losing the certainties of life. The mystery of God leaves much room for complexity. An encounter with God may mean we walk away limping – an injury caused when one abandons the false crutches we called truth, or an injury awaiting us from the community of faith we come from when we challenge preconceived truths about God.

Sometimes, however, those injuries and scars are proud marks of making it through the struggle — of demanding the blessing at all costs. In Indigenous African religions and Native American tribal cultures, initiation marks are displayed proudly as signs of being part of the community. There are those in the LGBT community who have struggled, risked, and won inroads into co-creating a just community. Their scars, though a constant reminder of the struggle, are also signs of hope to others that there is hope in wrestling, even with God!


	How do you identify with Jacob’s struggle and limp?

Genesis 32:22-31, like Isaiah 55:1-5, looks toward community restoration — Jacob with his estranged family and the exiles of Judah with those with whom they will rejoin in Jerusalem. Restoration and feasting go hand in hand — restoration and feasting for all people, not just a few chosen. Paul’s words in Romans 9:1-5 (and the verses that follow) indicate that God continues to extend the promise of transformation first attested to in the story of Israel’s ancestors to all people. Many Christians teach that all that matters is getting saved. Our culture’s hyper-individualism has reduced salvation to a personal act. But here we have Paul willing to forfeit individual salvation for the sake of his community.

Psalm 17:17 and Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21 lift up the themes of God’s steadfast love and compassion to all people and God’s willingness to hear those who call out in times of distress. This basic affirmation is at the core of the notion of liberation theology’s understanding of God’s preferential option, commitment, to the poor.


	What does communal salvation look like? How does a community get saved? What does it mean and what will it look like for the LGBT community to find their salvation, that is liberation from the forces of sin imposed upon them due to heterosexism? Who, like Paul, is willing to pay the ultimate price – even losing his or her assurance of heaven -- for the sake of their community?

	Read aloud the story of Jacob’s struggle in Genesis 32:22-31. As you hear this story, imagine yourself to be Jacob. Prayerfully ask yourself these questions: • What is my struggle? • What certainties am I being asked to let go of so God can bring a new name forth in me? Write your prayerful answers to these questions in a journal.

Bible passages are selected based on the Revised Common Lectionary, copyright © 1992 by Consultation on Common Text (CCT). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Year A

Year B

Year C

18th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Proper 13), Year A

Bread — and Struggle — for the Journey