"Versatile God": Queering the liturgy
My wife elbowed me after the eucharist last Sunday. "Why were you laughing during communion?"Because God works in strange ways, sometimes.
As the pastors prayed the Great Thanksgiving during the World Communion Sunday liturgy, Fritz said, "Merciful God . . . ."
Except I heard, "Versatile God . . . " and couldn't help laughing.
(That's what I get for praying under the influence of too much queer theology [especially Robert Goss, whom I read all of last week].)
"Versatile" is the word that men who have sex with men use to describe a guy who enjoys both top and bottom--the "active" and "passive" positions during sex.
I laughed because the thought of Jesus as a versatile man seems radically appropriate, undermining all of the patriarchal theology and heterosexist assumptions of many congregations.
And doesn't that seem like something Jesus would do?
We tend to focus on race and ethnicity when talking about diversity in the church. But sexuality is an aspect of the diversity that God created, too.
I am sure someone, somewhere, has reflected at length on the versatility of God, an active/passive diety who delights in being with us in creative, subversive, passive and active ways--both to pleasure Godself and to pleasure us.
For me, mishearing one word in the Great Thanksgiving queered the liturgy in a way that gave new and richer meaning to the eucharist, changing my experience of receiving the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation--a physical and spiritual act in which Christ penetrates all that (and whom) we are, nourishing us to take an active role in the world on his behalf.
It is a moment that makes all Christians queer, undermining our sexual and gender identities in order to take into ourselves the power of a bisexual God who is neither male nor female, gay nor straight, but forever "in between" the human categories that hide and even serve to negate our baptismal identities as One in Christ.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Monday, October 03, 2005
Comments:
Oh, that is beautiful.
Especially with the Mithras/androgynous influences and images in the early christian church development.
Wonderful spiritual insight, thank you.
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Especially with the Mithras/androgynous influences and images in the early christian church development.
Wonderful spiritual insight, thank you.