Come Out as Love
by Rev. Cory Coberforward
John 7:1-15
After this, Jesus went around in Galilee. He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders there were looking for a way to kill him. But when the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near, Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” For even his own brothers did not believe in him.
Therefore Jesus told them, “My time is not yet here; for you any time will do. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil. You go to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.” After he had said this, he stayed in Galilee. However, after his brothers had left for the festival, he went also, not publicly, but in secret. Now at the festival the Jewish leaders were watching for Jesus and asking, “Where is he?”
Among the crowds there was widespread whispering about him. Some said, “He is a good man.” Others replied, “No, he deceives the people.” But no one would say anything publicly about him for fear of the leaders. Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. The Jews there were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?”
Psalm 136:1-5 (Responsive Reading)
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods.
His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords:
His love endures forever.
to him who alone does great wonders,
His love endures forever.
who by his understanding made the heavens,
His love endures forever.
Read the written message below with music videos
It can be illuminating to remember that the Bible says that Christ was largely debated among his people even when he was there and doing miracles, and those scriptures describe how even his brothers didn’t believe him. We see this throughout history when awakened beings speak from the truth of their God-consciousness, and even those closest to each of us don’t always seem to understand our spiritual perspectives. In our reading today, we also hear about how his brothers encouraged him to come out to the festivals to present himself and his ministry more publicly because, “No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret.” Christ was presented with a plight that many know, especially those who are 2SLGBTQI+, where he felt the need to keep his love and his light private because society wasn’t ready for it, and he wasn’t ready for the persecution that history tells us came. Like with many 2SLGBTQI+ folks, through his misgivings, Christ decided to come out and share himself through his communal engagement and activism, and during the festival entered the temple to teach. And also like many queer folks, the crowds were astonished at his insight and wisdom, finding that they had much to learn from his heart of love.
Jesus was sharing a perspective on love and our unity with God and other people that we still aren’t used to truly hearing. Many Christian churches have instead turned their focus on the person of Jesus and believing in him, instead of focusing on the Divinity of Christ that Jesus knew himself (and us) to be. As he told us, “Just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they may be in us,” so that “they may all be one.” This is the same message that many other traditions have shared at their core, from the Buddhist scriptures to the Tao Te Ching.
Christ’s message was one of finding that we are already whole and seeing that “Heaven is within you,” not one of persecution and judgment toward people’s gender expressions and sexual orientations. Many people believe that the Bible is full of chastisements towards 2SLGBTQI+ people, and yet what is in there in that regard is few in number and hard to truly understand without cultural study and deep linguistic analysis.
But it’s true, many of our volumes of scripture throughout the traditions have things that must be deconstructed, from colonialism to strict ideas of sexual and gender morality. And in order to deconstruct these we have to start with the “mystical heart” of these traditions, the often present and deeply profound teachings about loving others as one with ourselves, as well as how we should not judge but instead find wisdom in letting our false sense of separate self pass away. This will help us to see what is cultural and what is truly profound, what speaks to surface attitudes of a certain time and what speaks to our hearts and our shared Divinity within. We can’t take it for granted that every chapter and every sentence of any book is “Divinely inspired” and literally true. For example, the great scientific and spiritual thinker Emanuel Swedenborg didn’t consider any of the letters of the New Testament to be truly scripture, just the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Revelation! And he viewed these as scripture because he believed they had a specific type of internal symbolism.
Just like with our own lives, we can get caught up in judging a specific aspect of someone else’s expression and forget to remember our shared life and light in those moments. This often (read: always) stems from our sense of division and separation. We can learn from Christ and queer folks in this regard, as they stood up to those seeking to often destroy them and they pointed to what we all share: how we all bleed, how we are all human and all our love is valid and should be respected between consenting adults. Further, they taught us how to open our love even further, by showing us our often-cloaked bigotry and distorted thinking, allowing that light and that compassion to start to heal us as it naturally does.
This is exactly what Christ did, a lesson that most of us are still learning and sometimes opposing, telling us that the way we think about ourselves and others is destructive and distorted. Like the Buddha, like Krishna, like others, Christ was telling us that God is with us and heaven is within, but we’re missing this in favour of our sense of false self, addictions, and division. This “ego” (in the broadest sense of the term) keeps us down, missing our birthright as children of God and as the light of the world, both of which Christ called us to realize. Christ wasn’t saying that his individual person was “the way, the truth and the life,” but that he was aware of himself to be one with the Divine Parent, and with this realization comes the fullness of the way, truth, and life that we too must eventually follow. We see him also say, “Not my will, Father, but Your will be done,” and many other phrases pointing to this truth. To him, there is no such thing as a truly individual person, so yes: even what we would call the personality of Christ came to express the Divinity that we all ultimately share. This is also why Christ said he will always be with us; the Christ (known by many names) is not something any of us can truly lose.
This weekend at the tri-Pride festival in Kitchener, we at the church had a table celebrating in Pride. There we heard from many that were still carrying the traumas that the Christian church at large had inflicted upon them. Many wondered how we reconciled Christianity with being in support of Pride. Besides being quite gratified to hear that we are a church that welcomes people of all beliefs, many were touched to hear about how we strive to centre from Christ’s message of love and shared light, not from the judgmentalness and distorted condemnations that many religions tend to gravitate to (beware the yeast of the Pharisees!). And although our church has been quite open and welcoming over the years, this is not only due to Christ and Swedenborg’s teachings but also the wisdom and love shared by the queer and oppressed peoples in our midst.
2SLGBTQI+ friends and family have been through quite a lot. They have often had to carry heavy crosses, and many have sacrificed themselves for the greater good in various ways. We see in our story Christ grappling with coming out publicly with his work, knowing that it wasn’t his time and wary toward those who already wanted to harm him. Many queer folks grapple with just the same, even today, sometimes knowing that they aren’t quite ready to face some of the reactions from family and society. In the mode of Jesus, these people are also empowered by Divinity, one that expresses itself through all of their human light and especially their love and connections.
Some believe that our church’s tradition’s namesake, Swedenborg, was anti-gay, despite having truly no evidence for this. They rely on assumptive thinking when analyzing some of his spiritual diaries, etc., not realizing that if an 18th century European (presumably) cis white male didn’t clearly disparage gay couples in his many thousands of pages of spiritual and moral exploration, then he most probably wasn’t against them! That being said, many of our teachers and even heroes have sometimes fallen on the wrong side of history and compassion on an issue during their earthly life, or maybe they were silent. However, we can still learn from their mistakes and shortcomings as we also learn from their insights, we don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water!
In a way, we are all blessed with having both positive and negative examples in our lives, both from others and ourselves, all of which teach us something! The more selfish aspects of society call on us to lean into health and shine light for positive change, which can often involve supporting organizations that are active in working for social justice and speaking truth to (false) power. The more selfless examples in life also call on us, teaching us how to truly see and empower that selflessness in ourselves and our world. The selfless light of these examples shines on and starts to disintegrate our false barriers, those that keep us in the role of victim and victimizer instead of the love that we truly are.
Your life is love (or so I’ve heard),
Cory