Who will listen to me?

I’ve asked this as a priest whose very sanity is not respected in most Christian denominations, much less my ordination. It’s also a question for a queer Christian or even a left leaning Christian talking to a conservative family. Or for that matter - a queer Christian talking to the queer community – for different reasons of course, reasons in this case profoundly important. It has to do with power.

And our texts today basically say, it isn’t about whether they listen or not. It’s about being a prophet anyway. That’s plainly stated in Ezekiel. It’s a bit more oblique in Paul, but it’s there. It’s in our weakness that God perfects power. I’ve heard more than one argument that Paul’s weakness was homosexuality.  None of those arguments are terribly compelling. I also will not frame queerness as weakness. Like it or not, though, others will. Chances are, though, the ones who will frame queerness as weakness are the ones who have rebelled against God. This also applies to those who see poverty as weakness or the feminine as weakness or bleeding hearts as weakness, etc.

Jesus could do not works of power in his home town, because the people there would not accept power could be found in the ordinary, in the familiar, much less in weakness. So Jesus went elsewhere. There are even many stories in the Gospels where the gentiles see the power in Jesus when the Israelites do not.  The unclean woman who spent all her money and found no cure drew power from Jesus, in a crowd full of the clean and healthy. Almost all the prophets had something that could be held against them; Moses’ stutter, Jonah’s resentment, etc. The powerful in this world do not need God’s power, nor can they understand it.

It’s absolutely true that a prophet speaks truth to power, whether they listen or not. However, I think we miss the other side of the coin, to speak power to those the powerful deem weak. There’s a very brief and poignant moment in Jesus Christ Superstar that has always struck me as the truest moment in the whole musical:

 Neither you, Simon, nor the fifty thousand

Nor the Romans, nor the Jews

Nor Judas, nor the twelve, nor the Priests, nor the scribes

Nor doomed Jerusalem itself

Understand what power is

Understand what glory is

Understand at all

Understand at all

I know I often fail to understand. I often burn with the passion to speak truth to power, to tell them what’s for – as Jesus spoke to the Pharisees. My perceived weakness, however, pretty much guarantees results like Jesus got in his hometown. In fact I’ve posted in online threads about LGBT inclusion only to be completely ignored by the straight people arguing about it.

What I don’t have, and need to pray for, is a similar burning passion to get past my “Who will listen to me?” fears within queer circles. That is where results are more probable. Again, not that it’s about results, but who actually needs and deserves God’s power in these messy times; those who are suffering or who will suffer before long.  In Ohio a bill was recently introduced to prevent custody being taken away from parents who want to send their kids to queer conversion facilities. 

I know that there are things in my life I could never have done without God’s power. In these times, telling those who are powerless or soon to be powerless in the eyes of the law need to be shown that God’s power is for them. We need to be sharing god’s power with each other more than ever.