By Elliot Weidenaar, Western Theological Seminary Intern
I have spent much of my life in Iowa – a place that in my childhood was largely socially liberal. In the past ten years that has changed. In the past five years I have fled Iowa three times: once to the District of Columbia, once to London, and now I live in Holland, Michigan. There are many things that I could probably write about being in Holland or about my background, but none of them seem to flow from my heart well or easily. So in response to this odd constipation of the heart, I began to meditate on the passages that we as an ecumenical church have been touching on in the lectionary. As I meditated I continually heard the voice of God saying “ Here stands my child, standing in exile.”
This season of my life is one of exile, and the seasons of exile in our lives often tend to be the ones we draw from; after all, they inform how we understand ourselves and others in reference to our belief systems. However, as I continued to meditate on this I began to wonder if perhaps all queer people live the majority of their Christian lives in exile. You see, I have been queer much (if not all) of my life, and there is often a level of hurt and tension that comes between you and your faith community when you are queer. My heart, soul, my nephesh began to ask God “What does it mean for me, for my community to live our lives in Exile?” So I began to scour the Bible for something that might bolster my heart, answer my question, or tell me that my theory was wrong. I was soon drawn to the Magnificat.
In Luke 1:46-47 the virgin says “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.” Here, a young women without means or prospects actively follows God out of the comfort of her betrothal and into the wilderness of the Incarnation. If Joseph had not obeyed God, and had quietly divorced Mary what would she have done? She knew that by following God she was walking into a period of exile – a period of being outside the natural order of Greco-Roman society.
So within my own heart leapt up hope in that moment. If exile is a portion of all of our faith journeys, including the faith journey of the Virgin Mother, then this too shall pass. This desert in which I and, I would argue, we collectively as an ecumenical church, are standing in can be navigated. It can be navigated, and it will not be navigated by us but rather by the great pillar of cloud that leads through all of our trials and triumphs in faith.
Frankly this year has been a hard one, both on a personal level and for the queer community in regard to our relationship with the church. At the start of this year the United Methodist church announced it would split over unreconciled differences in regards to homosexual marriage and clergy. Six months later the Reformed Church in America released a document that provided similar recommendations. However, just as with the Virgin Mary, there is hope for the relationship between the queer community and the Church. Recently the Pope has endorsed the idea of homosexual civil unions because family is one of the central tenets of our faith. Exile gets much easier when one can see Mount Sinai. I will leave with you a poem I wrote many years ago in one of the greatest periods of personal exile.
I am in love with the Holy Mother Church,
Yet she will never love me as I love her.
Unwieldy and imperfect
She has been a hateful, absent and neglectful mother.
Lost inside her own bottle, the one labeled evangelical.
So I went into the desert to find my Father,
The one my mother never shuts up about.
I walked 40 days and 40 nights, following a star.
And I found him – in a burning bush at the foot of a mountain.