The Christian tradition began when a certain Jesus of Nazareth lived radically, in ways that frightened status-quo religion and society. The whole time he lived radically he empowered people around him to live and lead radically & lovingly too. Together they formed a new community of love with open doors and malleable walls. Then, he was crucified, died and was raised up by God, to new life on earth. By his resurrection, and then through the outpouring of the Spirit, the world experienced that death could not stop the formation of a new movement. In that moment God gave birth to something radical and new and wonderful--the church.
On Tuesday night, while my own denomination (The Reformed Church in America) debated yet again whether or not to add homophobic language into our Book of Church Order, so as to keep out Gays and punish those who support them, our local Highland Park NJ Open and Affirming congregation was filled with mourning, broken, hopeful people--people of every sexual identity, people of every religion--together because we were grieving the violence inflicted on the LGBT community in Orlando.
That night, I felt strangely located. My denomination on one side (the stagnant, stuck church...the church of sinful, homophobic choices and wrongheaded legislation) and Pulse and other Queer Safe Spaces on the other. My little local church, a staging ground for Pulse and its congregants to be mourned for, and celebrated. My little church--an acting participant in a denomination that commits the sin, over and over again, of calling sin something that is a God-given core--a person's sexual identity. Where did we fit?
But I didn't feel strangely located for long. In seconds I knew that there was only one place I wanted to be, and where I knew my congregants would want to be--together with the people of Pulse.
My church building was filled on Tuesday with people who have found safety and solidarity in places like Pulse. I would say that Pulse, and other Queer spaces, have been church--have been the Kingdom of God--the new radical and wonderful thing that has been born even while the Empire Church (represented through old, dead, denominations like my own) has tried, viciously sometimes, apathetically other times, to keep status quo. God, and God's LGBT leaders, have been at work forming Queer Safe Spaces for a very long time--thanks be to God.
Pulse was pulsing with the Spirit until early Sunday morning. It was serving as a place where LGBTQ people were living into their Imago Dei, their image of God. It was the place where they were coming alive, staying alive, finding beauty and love and a future. I live in sure and certain hope that Pulse will rise again. In fact, I would say its rising has already begun--and the Spirit is being poured out like on the day of Pentecost.
As I listened to testimony after testimony on Tuesday night, hearing words of vulnerability, compassion and acceptance, I had no doubt where my spiritual home should be. It is, and will be, in the places that pulse like Pulse--in the places where God is alive and at work, comforting those who mourn, healing the broken and raising us all to new life now on this earth. Maybe, through the crucifixion of God's Holy Pulsing Community on Sunday, June 12th, 2am, there will be a new rising, a new awakening. Maybe a new interfaith denomination will be born. Maybe we should call it Pulse--and all its Elders and Deacons, Rabbis and Pastors and Imams, should be Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual, Transgender...and we'll wait for them to decide when it's time to open leadership to the rest of us.
Peace, Seth