Thank you God for Ministers who open their lives with all its struggles for others to see Your handy work...Rainbow Pastor David
December 24, 2017
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It is my honor to share with you a glimpse into the life of
Father Shannon T.L. Kearns. I first learned of Father Shannon from the website Queer
Theology. Father Shannon is one of many ministers in the LGBTQI+ Community
that have come from Evangelical Backgrounds where HATE and ABANDONMENT go hand
in hand. I too have felt the sting of rejection from the Evangelical Church.
Feel free to read my blog post entitled Be The You God Created You To Be to
learn more about my experience with coming to terms with the ME GOD CREATED ME
TO BE. Praise God for His Love and Understanding in our times of
great need. He always comes through when we let go of us and let Him fill us
with His Glory.
Now I will let you read a wonderful message I received today
from Father Shannon.
I came
out as transgender my second year of seminary. I had wonderfully supportive
friends and a faculty that was mostly on my side but didn’t always know what to
do with me. I had to listen to professors make trans-phobic statements in class
and deal with classmates who, even after I had been medically transitioned for
a while still couldn’t get my pronouns right. And I had to be a walking
explanation for what it meant to be Trans. It was exhausting. I was still
working pretty much full time, attending seminary, and trying to hold a
struggling marriage together.
It was an incredibly difficult time. When I left the evangelical church, my faith shifted from the emotional to the intellectual. It had to. I needed to understand my faith in a different way. I needed to understand the historical context of texts and doctrines. I needed to shift from thinking that the Bible was God’s love letter to me where every word was mine to understanding the Bible as a collection of texts written by and for specific communities.
But when I began my transition my faith was pretty much entirely intellectual and I found that I had no real emotional or spiritual support to get me through these physical and emotional and spiritual changes.
See, what the evangelical church gets right is that our faith, our spirituality can’t just be about intellect. It has to be about our hearts being in relationship with something bigger than we are. I had to find a way to engage my heart again without dismissing my head in the process.
It was during this time that I took my preaching and worship class coupled with an exegesis for the arts class. In less fancy language exegesis is about sussing out what the text is really about; reading into the cultural context and figuring out how to make it relevant. Then in my preaching class we learned how to take the historical context and put it into language that was engaging and practical.
We were studying the book of John, reading the story of Doubting Thomas, and suddenly something shifted in me. I was engaged with the Bible again for the first time since my evangelical days. And instead of the text being used as a weapon against me; instead of having to use the Bible to defend my right to exist, I was instead seeing myself in the text and allowing the story to enter into my life. My head and my heart were once again engaged. And I realized that by transitioning I had come back from exile; the exile I had felt from my body, from the Bible, from God, from my heart. It was a transformative moment for me.
Queer Theology is seeing you in Scripture. It means being able to bring all of you to the text and find yourself reflected back. Whether it’s seeing the story of your scars in the story of Jesus and Thomas, or your community in the early church in the book of Acts, or something as simple as reading a Psalm that offers comfort and peace for a difficult situation.
The Bible is OUR text, too.
So
how do we learn to see ourselves in Scripture?
It takes some time and some patience. We have to unlearn old
ways of reading and learn new techniques. (You might want to check out Marcus
Borg’s “Reading the Bible Again for the First Time” for some initial
reflections and helps.) We
need to approach Scripture with a sense of curiosity instead of fear, with
openness instead of preconceived ideas.
We
need to bring ourselves to our reading.
Next time you read a story in the Bible think about how it
relates to your life as a queer and Trans person. Think about which character
you might be in the story. Think about how you would have reacted had you been
there. Put what you’re going through into dialogue with the text. Allow your
own story to speak in and around the text as it’s speaking to you.
If
this seems to overwhelming to do alone, we do have a couple of resources to
offer:
· Walking Toward
Resurrection is an eBook I wrote after my experience with the
Doubting Thomas story in seminary. It’s a Transgender Passion Narrative;
looking at the Passion of Jesus as a text that speaks in and to the transgender
transition experience.
· Sanctuary
Collective is Queer Theology’s online community and in it you get
access to Reading Queerly; a six week course that teaches you how to read
Scripture and see yourself in it. We look at texts throughout and talk about
how and why they relate to the queer and trans experiences. Not only that but
you can dialogue with other folks who are going through the course and explore
Scripture together.
Seeing ourselves in Scripture is a gift. It’s a gift that
Scripture gives to us and it’s a gift that we give to the church and the world.
Blessings
on your continued journey,
Fr.
Shay
Learn
more about Father Shannon T.L.
Kearns, here
Check
out Queer Theology, here or on Twitter
I pray the Peace of God rest upon your household throughout
the rest of the holiday season.
Blessings and Peace on your continued journey,
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