William Lord Margraf | September 22, 2024 (Pride Evensong)
Oh Lord, may the words of my lips recall that only in you alone do we find our true home.
In our Gospel this evening, Jesus is caught somewhere between the immortal words of Dorothy Gale in the Wizard of Oz, “There is no place like home; no place like home” and hometown alienation in Thomas Wolfe’s “You Can’t Go Home Again.” Since leaving his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus had come into his own becoming a healer, a teacher, and a leader of a ragtag band of followers. Beyond Nazareth, Jesus found opportunities where he could heal wounds, mend hearts, and look into the suffering and despair of others so deeply that he was able to heal conditions that had caused the afflicted to despair, be cast out, and be traumatized. But when it came to offering these same teachings and healings at home, his lifelong neighbors willfully failed to see the beauty and the meaning of what Jesus had become. They could not accept him as changed and evolved—because the challenge of seeing themselves as becoming changed and evolved was way too threatening.
Jesus’s metamorphosis was difficult for them. It was odd and disorienting. This new Jesus was just too plain queer for them. It was queer because Jesus spoke of a world reimagined, renewed, and redistributed. Where love opens countless possibilities. Where unexpected connection nurtures relationships without bounds and without bondage. Where you are loved exactly for how you have been created and honored as beautiful, essential, and unique. And, yet, Jesus was simply bringing to life the ancient texts he and the Nazarenes had followed for centuries. This was queer because Nazareth could not lean into God’s hope for them to be their truest selves—even when it was right in front of them. While the hope offered in those scriptures gathered dust, the comfort of rigid, soul-crushing, life threatening expectations was too familiar to give up. The forbidden act of being ones true self was an act of social treason against their stifling code of fear, hate, and resentment. But while Jesus was amazed at the resistance of his old neighbors, he knew what was queer in Nazareth was vitally necessary in the world. Jesus was certain Creation required of him to not be discouraged by the doubts and dismissive denigrations of those closest to him.
He had already seen way beyond Nazareth that the powerful connections he fostered with the broken allowed for healing and forgiveness and relief from loss, illness, and alienation. But being rejected in Nazareth would have its silver lining. Having felt his own loss and alienation for himself in Nazareth, Jesus had a greater determination to go and partner with those broken in body and spirit to build the Kingdom elsewhere, anywhere, everywhere! Our celebration of Pride today and our living into Jesus’s Way in all its queerness give witness that being different and rejected in familiar places means we can continue to believe that our queerness is so needed in a world starving for new ways of being community, celebrating differences, and assuring that the ways we love will save the world. In Jesus, we draw our courage, power, and our rightful place in creation. Today God is creating a new thing in you. Today God desires for you with your queerness— just as it—to heal the world, build the kingdom, and proclaim how God loves the world in all its rainbow assortment that God so intentionally created.
Let us go forth and be our truest holy and queer selves in the glory of God and with the happiest of hearts.
Amen.