<p><em>Breath of the Spirit is our electronic spiritual and liturgical resource for our members and potential members. Nothing can replace your chapter or other faith community but we hope you will find further support here for integrating your spirituality with your sexuality and all the strands of your life.</em></p><p>Near the beginning of his public ministry in Lukes gospel Jesus proclaims a passage from Isaiah and then shockingly concludes this reading with the statement that the prophecy is now fulfilled. What Jesus meant to communicate at that moment we cannot be sure but we do know that Jesus attempted to live out that prophecy in his life: bringing glad tidings to the poor offering sight to the blind and offering freedom from oppression. To fulfill those prophetic actions though Jesus first had to live in such a way that his life became intertwined or entangled with those very populations. Might that entanglement with others be essential to our mission as followers of Jesus?</p><p><strong>January 23 2022: Third Sunday in Ordinary Time<br></strong>Nehemiah 8:2-4a 5-6 8-10<br>Psalm19:8 9 10 15<br>1 Corinthians 12:12-30<br>Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21</p><p><strong>A reflection by John Falcone</strong></p><p>This weeks readings call to mind&nbsp;Willie James Jennings &nbsp;liberation theologian Yale Divinity Professor of Africana Studies and Baptist preacher.&nbsp;Ive been watching his videos recently (I have a bit of an intellectual crush on him; also I love how he wears his bowties). Jennings frames Christian experience in terms of history difference justice and love. He argues that Christianity must understand itself as a religion of healthy interpersonal interracial and intercultural&nbsp;<i>entanglement</i>. (Check out parts&nbsp;<a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx-tvJRD7O4>one</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVRF3VCyDgw&amp;t>two</a>&nbsp;of his 2021 Payton Lectures.) Perhaps this message may be exactly what LGBTQ+ believers allies and all believers need to hear at this crisis-filled moment.&nbsp;This weeks readings highlight the issues with which Jennings frames our faith. They ask us to consider&nbsp;Whats our relationship to the Jewish experience? and How does being different fit into Gods vision of justice and love?</p><p>The reading from Nehemiah addresses the Jewish roots of our faith (that is our history). This pivotal story addresses&nbsp;how the Jewish nation was re-founded and how the Jewish people were re-introduced to Gods Law. The people have returned to their homeland after generations of exile in Babylon and they have finally rebuilt Jerusalem. Ezra reads the Torah while others interpret and explain. The listeners are moved to tears. How might we feel at such a moment: hearing Gods vision for justice and peace as it emerges from a tumultuous history? What must it be like to feel at home again or to be at home for the first time? How many in the LGBTQ+ family know the experience of not being at home in houses or worship or even in their own bodies? How many in our world today experience this same type of generational exile from their homelands due to war or poverty?</p><p>If Nehemiah addresses our history Pauls first letter to the Corinthians focuses on difference justice and love. He presents an extended metaphor about interwoven bodily organs: some are proud some are humble but all of them need each other. We are the body of Christ each different each deeply connected each equally to be valued and loved. Our bodily organs Pauls argues are hopelessly entangled with one another as are we as members of Christs body. If we are to survive everyones gifts are necessary!</p><p>This entanglement is at the core of our faith. Note that God planted the early Christian community&nbsp;at the intersection of Jewish and non-Jewish ways of life. In this weeks gospel we hear&nbsp;a two-fold selection from Luke. First (Luke 1:1-4) we hear about the research that went into compiling Lukes narrative: how the author assembled and sorted interviews and documented sources. Then&nbsp;(4:14-21)&nbsp;we hear Jesus proclaiming Isaiahs pivotal vision of Jubilee justice: good news to the poor liberty to the refugees sight to the blind and freedom to the incarcerated. Jesus homily on this passage is short and shocking: This scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. This fulfillment implies that Jesus mission is completely entangled with the lives of poor refugees disabled and imprisoned all people that many in Jesus time would have said it was best to avoid!</p><p>In fact the first Christian communities were founded by Spirit-led acts that entangled radically different people and communities: not just&nbsp;individually but in their cultures their histories and their full-bodied practices.&nbsp;Consider the issue of eating together. In the First Century&nbsp;ce&nbsp;Roman Empire sharing food was a key form of care and of mutual respect. Specifically sharing food that had been blessed and offered to idols was a central part of everyday practice from celebrating national holidays to participating in neighborhood festivals to negotiating at a business lunch. In addition Roman policy mandated that idols of Rome or the Emperor must also be honored at these kinds of meals. For many Jews both inside and outside of Roman-occupied Palestine these behaviors were ethically politically and religiously unacceptable. In turn many others throughout the Empire viewed this Jewish reticence as anti-social unpatriotic and irreligious. Why couldnt they just eat act and pray like everyone else?&nbsp;</p><p>The New Testament describes how early Christians wrestled with loving entanglement. In Acts chapter 10 Peter receives a vision from heaven where Jesus tells him that nothing is unclean. Peter reacts strongly against Jesus message but immediately afterward a group of Gentiles is filled with Gods Spirit and they begin speaking in tongues. In the end Peter decides that he has no choice but to baptize them. Peter realizes that no difference can keep people or communities from joining together when they are led by the Spirit in love. (Might Acts 10 describe the true birthday of the Church? After all at Pentecost in Acts 2 it is exclusively Jews from every nation under heaven who visit Jerusalem hear the Apostles and are baptized.)&nbsp;</p><p>The early followers of Jesus deeply different yet drawn to love one another struggled to negotiate their racial cultural and very physical mixing. They struggled to pray with each other to eat with each other and to share political economic and everyday life. Unfortunately within a few generations Gentile cultural dominance and a growing sense of anti-Judaism overshadowed their challenging work of entanglement. But as LGBTQ+ people can testify the pull to get lovingly tangled up in each other across every barrier of difference is a divine calling that can never be quenched.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>In this fractured and crisis-filled moment the&nbsp;work of good healthy loving entanglement remains difficult and urgent. God calls us to be connected to one another without erasing our own insights and experiences or anyone elses. God calls us to take other people seriously to see life history and social issues through their eyes. God calls us to fall in love with all Gods creations our fragile selves precious human and non-human siblings and the precariously balanced ecosystems that hold us together. God calls us to challenge injustice with courage and yet to approach with patience those with whom we differ. Our experience shows us there is always some wound or some unmet need that lies beneath peoples fury or fear.&nbsp;</p><p>What can we do to get better entangled in the lives of our family members our next-door neighbors and our fellow human beings? What can lesbian- gay- cis- and straight-identified people do to get better entangled in the lives of our trans and queer siblings especially those who are younger than us? What can trans queer and young people do to get better entangled in the lives of their (often clumsy and uninformed) possible allies? Can you think of one person of a different race or political orientation that you might become better entangled with? Whats the first step that you might take to create such a healthy entanglement?&nbsp;</p><p>We Christians of the West have a long history of absorbing and erasing those who are different: Jews peoples and cultures we colonized Native Americans and others. But looking back on our origin stories uncovers a different way to live out our faith. The Spirit calls us to love others by feeling-with and seeing-with them not just individually but by getting tangled up in their cultures histories and ways of life. </p><p>Its time to get better entangled.&nbsp;</p><p>__</p>[caption caption=John Falcone align=left]<img src='https://www.dignityusa.org/sites/default/files/falcone_0.png'>[/caption]<p></p><p></p><p><em><em><strong>John P. Falcone</strong>&nbsp;is a practical theologian religious educator and a practitioner of Theatre of the Oppressed (PhD Boston College). He has been a Dignity member for more than 20 years with close links to Dignity NY where he met his husband Matias Wibowo in 2005. He is currently Theologian-in-Residence at St. Matthews Bethnal Green (Church of England) in Londons East End.</em></em></p><div class=oldwebkit></div><p><strong><a href=https://www.dignityusa.org/civicrm/mailing/subscribe>Get Breath of the Spirit scripture reflections in your inbox every week.</a></strong></p>