Pastrix Page 8

  In his young adulthood, Stuart had been told by his evangelical church that in order to fit in the tent he must go through a process of becoming less gay and more straight. He loves Jesus and loves the church and so he tried. By all accounts Stuart tried really hard, and in the end it was never enough. He could never manage to be less gay and eventually he left that church.

  He and his kind and creative partner, Jim, had been coming to House for All Sinners and Saints for six months when Stuart showed up in a dress shirt and tie. Earlier that day he had stood as godfather and baptismal sponsor for the child of his friends, a straight couple who have known Stuart for a number of years. After the baptism there was a little reception at this couple’s house. To Stuart’s surprise, during the reception, his friends rallied the attention of all of their guests so they could say a few words about why they had chosen Stuart as their child’s godparent.

  “We chose you, Stuart,” they said, “because for most of your life you have pursued Christ and Christ’s church, even though as a gay man all you’ve heard from the church is that ‘there is no love for you here.’ ” It was as if his friends had said to him, “You, Stuart, convert us again and again to this faith.” And when I thought of that story in the coffee shop, I began to realize that maybe the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch was really about the conversion—not of the eunuch, but of Philip.

  In the story, the eunuch was riding along the desert road in his chariot reading Isaiah, and he was returning from Jerusalem having gone there to worship. But I started to wonder if he was also familiar with Deuteronomy, specifically 23:1, which says, No one whose testicles are cut off or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.” (Why John 3:16 is the most popular verse in the Bible and not Deuteronomy 23:1 is beyond me.)

  This law strictly forbids a eunuch from entering the temple. Their transgression of gender binaries and inability to fit into proper categories made them profane. They did not fit in the tent. But the eunuch went to Jerusalem to worship despite the fact that in all likelihood he would be turned away by the religious establishment. The eunuch sought God despite the fact that he had heard that there was no love for him there.

  So, when the Spirit guided Philip to that road in the desert, I wonder if the Spirit guided Philip to his own conversion. As he approached the chariot he may have been thinking, OK… I’ll just beat the queer with the scripture stick until he becomes what I think he should be.

  But I’m not sure it went as Philip may have expected. The only command that we know came from God in this instance was for Philip to go and join. Yet what we don’t know is whether the Spirit also gave the eunuch a command. “Invite this nice Jewish boy in—a representative of those who cling to the law and reject you from God’s house. Invite him to sit by you. Go… join… invite… ask questions.” Perhaps Philip, in this conversation with a gender-transgressive foreigner—which consisted only of questions—learned what seeking the Lord really looked like, in a way that could only be learned from someone who did it in the face of so much opposition and rejection.

  I started to think that maybe I couldn’t actually understand what it meant to follow Jesus unless I, too, had a stranger show me. I regretted not meeting Kelly, not inviting her to join me at my table. I regretted not asking her questions.

  This desire to learn what the faith is from those who have lived it in the face of being told they are not welcome or worthy is far more than “inclusion.” Actually, inclusion isn’t the right word at all, because it sounds like in our niceness and virtue we are allowing “them” to join “us”—like we are judging another group of people to be worthy of inclusion in a tent that we don’t own. I realized in that coffee shop that I need the equivalent of the Ethiopian eunuch to show me the faith. I continually need the stranger, the foreigner, the “other” to show me water in the desert. I need to hear, “here is water in the desert, so what is to keep me, the eunuch, from being baptized?” Or me the queer or me the intersex or me the illiterate or me the neurotic or me the overeducated or me the founder of Focus on the Family.

  Until I face the difficulty of that question and come up, as Philip did, with no good answer… until then, I can only look at the seemingly limited space under the tent and think either it’s my job to change people so they fit or it’s my job to extend the roof so that they fit. Either way, it’s misguided because it’s not my tent. It’s God’s tent. The wideness of the tent of the Lord is my concern only insofar as it points to the gracious nature of a loving God who became flesh and entered into our humanity. The wideness of the tent is my concern only insofar as it points to the great mercy and love of a God who welcomes us all as friends.

  So in the story of the conversion of Philip and the eunuch is some hope for the church and maybe society itself. Under God’s really big tent we can ask questions, invite those who represent the establishment to come and sit by us and read the scriptures. We all can be converted anew by the stranger, and see where there is water in the desert and enter fully into the baptism of God’s mercy with foreigners, with the “not us.” And then go on our way rejoicing, having converted each other again and again to this beautiful, risky, expansive life of faith.

  CHAPTER 10

  Cotton Candy

  For whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

  —2 Corinthians 12:10

  The cotton candy machine barely fit in the back of my Honda, but I was determined. The young Hispanic man in his work shirt and blue Dickies closed the rear door of my car, having lifted the machine, a hundred paper cones, and a milk carton–shaped container of pink sugar into it, but not before giving me a good luck you crazy white lady look. My back was already bothering me so I was slightly hunched over and trying not to lift anything. The L5-S1 disc in my lower back is more like a piece of cardboard from a homeless man’s street sign and less like the pillow off a fairy-tale princess’s bed, as it should be, and subsequently I can’t stand for long periods of time without being in pain.

  I should have known better than to have stood for so long while preaching at Matthew’s nice suburban Lutheran church that morning. But when you’re all robed up it just looks rude to stay seated during hymns and prayers. Regardless, after having the cotton candy machine loaded into my car, I still had to go to Costco before setting up for a special day at my own church.

  It was late summer in 2009 and House for All Sinners and Saints was sputtering along, but not managing to draw more than thirty-five or forty people on a Sunday. Some weekends during the summer, when many people were traveling, there were even fewer. So, to try to get everyone who was sporadically attending over the vacation season to all attend one service, I had decided we were going to celebrate Rally Day.

  A quaint tradition in Lutheran churches, Rally Day is an effort to get all the families together after the end of the summer to celebrate the beginning of a new year of Sunday school. There are often picnics and parties and dunk tanks and balloons. House for All Sinners and Saints had no children but my own and certainly had no Sunday school, but I thought, fuck it, we’re having Rally Day.

  It was all my idea. And like an asshole, I did all the work. That’s why a cotton candy machine, six dozen burgers and buns with all the fixings, an industrial-size bag of Doritos, and a couple of cases of soda were all in my car and I could barely stand up. But it would all be worth it because we’d finally get everyone there on the same Sunday and, OK, maybe it would cost three hundred dollars, but I’d put a basket out and people would totally pitch in.

  JP, one of the founding members of House for All Sinners and Saints, came early to help set up chairs for liturgy, and after making sure he had everything he needed for the prayer station and the altar table, I went back downstairs to prep for the Rally Day party. I hope six dozen burgers is enough, I thought.

  Having a Rally Day event, complete with a cotton candy machine at a church without children, was just the sort of random thing that started getting House for All Sinner
s and Saints noticed by the ELCA. That and the fact that we were almost exclusively a congregation of single, young adults: the exact population that other ELCA churches can’t manage to attract at all. For these reasons, I would be getting up at four a.m. the next day to board a plane to Chicago, where I would be keynoting a Lutheran theological conference. They wanted to hear more about my church. And this Rally Day without children story would be fun to tell.

  It took longer than I expected to chill the soda and stack the napkins and prepare all the burger fixings, so I didn’t end up going upstairs into the sanctuary of the church until five minutes before the liturgy started. As I made my way up the hundred-year-old stairs, the familiar smell of incense and unswept floors made me smile. But the place seemed quieter than usual.

  I walked into the sunlit space and took in the sight of stained glass gleaming off the twenty-six people who were here for church. Twenty-six. Twenty-fucking-six. After all my emails promoting Rally Day and the pain in my back and the time at Costco. After the great idea and the bag of Doritos and the three hundred dollars. After all of that, there were fewer people than we’d had all summer. And the whole point of my awesome Rally Day idea was to get more than just forty people at church for once. Twenty-six.

  I didn’t know what to do but turn around and go back downstairs with the swiftness of someone who has forgotten something and must go fetch it. But if I had forgotten something, it was my good will toward humanity.

  I locked myself in the women’s room and knelt on the peeling linoleum floor. Dear God, I just hate everyone right now. If you don’t remove this anger and resentment I’ll never get through this liturgy. Please, please, please, I beg you. Please. Help me.

  I got through the liturgy without scowling. But only just.

  The prayers of the people calmed me down. Amy asked to forgive her boss. JP asked for help with a new year of seminary. Someone else’s uncle had died. A niece was born.

  After the service, we fired up the grill, assembled the cotton candy machine, and placed a collection basket on top of the soda cooler. Everyone was in a good mood except me. And, turns out, six dozen burgers was plenty. The extra forty-eight burgers were cooked up, wrapped in foil, and later given to hungry people in Triangle Park. Every car that rolled up to the stop sign by the church was offered a cone of cotton candy, and some even took it. It was like the reverse of the loaves and fishes story. The tale of how Jesus fed thousands of people with a few loaves and couple of fish is told exactly six times in the Gospels, and there are only four Gospels. So in two of them, it’s told twice. It might be important.

  My parishioners had given away all the food left over from the dozens of people I had hoped would show but didn’t, which proved to be a great joy.

  For them.

  I was busy doing the cleanup and resenting everyone while trying not to show it. My back felt like it might very well snap in half. I really just wanted it all to be over. I had a plane to catch in just a matter of hours. People might have been enjoying themselves, but the sooner I started the cleanup process, the sooner I could go home.

  “Nadia, you’re not OK, are you?” Stuart asked. No. I was a mess inside.

  “My back’s just really bad today,” I said. True, but not the whole truth. The whole truth was that Rally Day was a failure. The reason behind having Rally Day was to get more people to church and instead we got fewer. I hated everyone for not doing what I thought they should have done based on how hard I was working. I mean, I picked up a fucking cotton candy machine and went to Costco. Shouldn’t that have been enough to get people to come and put their ass in a chair for an hour?

  “Jim, Amy: We are going to pray for Nadia right now,” Stuart, our Minister of Fabulousness, said.

  The hell you are.

  But Stuart is so good and loving and not at all assholey like me. Nadia, I chided myself, girl, you gotta just submit to this blessing.

  I stood there, my black clergy shirt warmed by the Colorado sun and the hands of my parishioners, and I submitted to the blessing of being prayed for. And it was hard. But then something happened. It sounds crazy, and if someone told me this story I’d assume they were lying or delusional. As Stuart’s big drag queen hands lovingly rubbed my lower back and he sweetly asked God to heal me, the muscles in my back went from being a fist to an open hand. The spasms released.

  I thanked them for the prayer, and they offered to help with the rest of the cleanup.

  “Where does this go?” Jim asked, as he dumped the ice out of the soda cooler. He indicated with a nod of his head what he was asking about. It was the basket. A completely empty basket. Not a single dollar in it. Now I not only hated all the people who didn’t show up, I also hated all the people who did. They had laughed and had a blast and ate and ate and ate and gave the food away, and not one of them put a dollar in the basket. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  On the drive home I called my friend Sara who serves an equally odd, but much more established Episcopal church in San Francisco. I relayed every detail of the whole disappointing day and how the lazy people didn’t come to Rally Day and the selfish, greedy people did and how I hated them all. And how I was a total failure as a church planter, and oh, by the way, I had to get up at four a.m. to get on a plane to Chicago; the Lutherans were flying me there because they wanted to hear about my church, but that’s because they didn’t get that these people are awful and I was a failure.

  “Honey, just tell them the truth. It will be a gift.”

  Whatever.

  It was almost midnight before the resentment and self-loathing shut the hell up long enough for me to fall asleep. But then at two a.m. I was startled awake with what can only be described as a bitch slap from the Holy Spirit. My eyes sprang open and out loud I said, “Oh wow.” The force of the realization hit me: My back didn’t hurt. It hadn’t hurt after they prayed for me and it didn’t hurt now as I laid in my bed, startled awake. I had received a healing. A temporary one, my back still has issues, but still… I had received a healing and I was too wrapped up in myself and my feelings and unmet expectations to even notice.

  And come to think of it, I hadn’t really noticed the joy people had in being together and handing out cotton candy in the street. I hadn’t really noticed that some hungry people in Triangle Park got to eat iron-rich burgers for dinner that night. I hadn’t really noticed that Amy, Jim, and Stuart got to have the experience of caring for their pastor and that it was a blessing to them. I had decided the event was a failure since there wasn’t the right number of people and no one chipped in any money. How small.

  I was reminded again of the loaves and fishes. Thousands of people were sitting around listening to Jesus when his disciples realized it was getting late and no one had ordered pizza. So there they were, faced with feeding all those people who they frankly wished would just go away, and Jesus said, “Well… what do you have?” And here’s the great thing about the Gospel of Matthew’s account of the feeding of the multitude: The disciples said, “Nothing.”

  “What do we have?” they asked. “We have nothing. Nothing but a few loaves and a couple of fish.” And they said this as though it were a bad thing.

  The disciples’ mistake was also my mistake: They forgot that they have a God who created the universe out of “nothing,” that can put flesh on dry bones “nothing,” that can put life in a dusty womb “nothing.” I mean, let’s face it, “nothing” is God’s favorite material to work with. Perhaps God looks upon that which we dismiss as nothing, insignificant, and worthless, and says “Ha! Now that I can do something with.”

  I had looked at the twenty-six people at Rally Day, and when Jesus asked, “What do you have?” I said, “Nothing.”

  And I had missed it all.

  Hours later, I was standing in a conference center facing one hundred pastors. I clicked through my PowerPoint presentation telling stories of House for All Sinners and Saints. I told them about how we started and who the people were. I t
old them the fun things about us. About our annual blessing of the bicycles (a blessing of protection for all the cyclists who brave the streets of Denver) and how we once brought communion to the airport because one of our members had been denied it at her parents’ church back home. I told them how we have a Reformation Day “selling of indulgences” bake sale.

  I got to the end, took a deep breath, and said, “And last night I cried myself to sleep.” With all the honesty I could muster, I told them the whole thing: the cotton candy, Costco, twenty-six people, praying on the linoleum, Triangle Park, Stuart’s prayer, the empty basket, my crippling resentment about unmet expectations, and the Holy Spirit’s bitch slap.

  Afterward, during the conference center lunch of turkey sandwiches and oily pasta salad, people at my table didn’t ask me questions about how they could do HFASS-type stuff at their churches. Instead, they told their own failure stories. With heart and humor I was regaled with tales of badly handled firings and church secretaries with drinking problems and Vacation Bible School nepotism, and I realized that sometimes the best thing we can do for each other is talk honestly about being wrong.

  CHAPTER 11

  Pirate Christian

  You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

  —Matthew 5:43-44

  A man named Chris Rosebrough posted a photo on his Facebook wall of himself and me together. “My good friend Nadia,” the caption said. He would pay for this.

  Chris, under the name Pirate Christian, has a large public following as a heresy hunter. His Pirate Christian internet radio show broadcast attacks all kinds of Christians who depart even slightly from his own understanding of the faith. He is the Rush Limbaugh of the Christian world. Pirate Christian Radio says this of itself on its Web site: