Madeleine Anderson (Pride Evensong) | September 17, 2023

Good evening! My name is Madeleine Anderson, and I’m a member at St. Thomas’s here in New Haven. I thank you for the invitation to speak tonight. It means very much to me to have the opportunity to be here for this Pride evensong, as a person of faith and as a person who is queer.

Recently, I saw a post on social media that went something like: “People who are both queer and Christian: Are you stupid or do you just enjoy pain?” And while I don’t agree with the binary choice imposed by that question, I understand the impulse behind it, and I deeply empathize with it. Those of us who are queer and who have some sort of history with the institutional church usually come out of that experience with a whole host of baggage to deal with. And, of course, the experience of wrestling with your faith is by no means limited to the queer community. For people in that position, it’s not uncommon to decide that they need to step away from the church – maybe for just a season, maybe forever. If that’s what someone needs, I get it! And I think God gets it too. Because even for those decide to stick around and give this whole God-thing another try, it’s a risky thing to do.

That’s what we hear in the lessons for today. “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found out and reburied, then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” Frankly, doesn’t that sound like a foolish decision? Selling everything you have? What if the treasure is no longer there when you get back? What if it is not as valuable as you thought it was? What if you regret it? When you are in that in-between moment – after you make the decision to pursue that treasure, but before you reach it – you are left vulnerable and exposed, with only your faith to push you forward.

Jacob’s experience in the reading from Genesis must have felt something like this as well. Alone, that night on the bank of the river, he too is about to take a leap of faith. He has sent away his family and everything he has, because the next morning he is going to encounter his twin brother Esau. Esau, whose birthright he swindled and whose blessing he stole from their father years earlier. Esau, who, the last time they had met, had threatened to kill him. Jacob plans in the morning to beg Esau for forgiveness but he doesn’t know how Esau will respond.

So when God appears to him that night, at that vulnerable, in-between moment, Jacob starts wrestling with God, and he decides that he is not going to let go. He is going to demand a blessing, and he is not going to give up until he gets it. And rather than being angry at Jacob’s presumptuousness, God, perhaps unexpectedly, agrees. God tells Jacob that Jacob has struggled with God, and won, and God blesses him for that.

In that story, what I hear is a coming out narrative. I’m not speaking in the literal sense of saying “Jacob was queer” (though, I will note, Jacob comes out of this story with a new name and a changed body). Rather, I’m referring to the emotion core of that moment when you’re standing at a threshold, when everything is about to change, and what you need to say or do is roiling up within you feelings of hope and fear and excitement and sacrifice and joy all swirling around, and you don’t know what is going to happen except you do know that afterwards, your life is going to be different.

So to that question that I read at the beginning, I would give this answer: I am queer because I am a Christian. And, I am a Christian because I am queer. By that I mean, it is my identity that teaches me

how to be faithful, and it is my faith that enables me to live boldly and authentically, without fear or shame. At times when I have stood on that threshold in my life, I needed faith to get me through that moment, and those moments taught me how to have faith.

Because faith too can be wild and risky and foolish and make no sense. And at the same time, faith is what gives you the courage to boldly demand that God bless you. Faith is having the perseverance to continue wrestling with God until you get that blessing. Faith is having your heart open to seeing the ways in which God wants to restore your life, and the ways in which God wants to change your life. And when you finally see it, faith will show you what you need to do. Amen.