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The spiritual resurrection of Christ, to me, seems far
less compelling. On the surface, divorcing belief in
Christ from whether his corpse revived has one
advantage: it kills any Christian pretension to moral superiority; therefore we can join humbly
join the rest of their brothers and sisters in struggling for
a better world. But other implications of the spiritual
resurrection view disturb me greatly. If Jesus’ bones
really are in the ground, what does that say about the
power of death? Were the writers of the Gospels (and the
early Christian movement) having a collective
hallucination, which gave rise to the delusion that
“goodness is stronger than evil/love is stronger than hate/light is stronger
than darkness/life is stronger than death?" Was the death of
Jesus, the feminist and queer struggler for justice, who
believed he was the liberating agent of his God, simply
a twisted cosmic joke? The implications for queer
justice are no better. Do queer men who work for justice
in our society really deceive themselves into thinking
things will get better? What the hell does “justice” mean,
anyway? Won’t the homophobes and gender-enforcers win,
in the end? Do we fantasize about a world that will
never happen on the basis of non-existent evidence and
next-to-nil probability?
I ask myself these kinds of questions all the time. I
study history, critical and textual theory, and
Christian writings as hobbies—some people say I’m a
glutton for punishment. I participate in communal
Christian worship regularly. And I also listen, when I’m
able, to the intuitions of my own heart. All three of
these aspects have a place for me, and the more they
interact, the more convinced I am that the bodily
resurrection of Christ serves as the basis for my own
hope. Jesus did not come back as a ghost, but as a
transformed, glorious, and still-physical person. The
mystery and wonder of this reality pervades the Gospel
stories about the appearances of Jesus, as well as the
letters of Paul. Jesus-scholar NT Wright,
paraphrasing historian Ed Saunders, claims, “The New
Testament writers are struggling to say something [about
the physicality of Jesus], which they passionately want
to affirm, but for which they don’t yet have language.”
I submit that perhaps the resurrection of Christ can
give hope to other queer men, as well. Jesus, the queer
Christ, will lead us to a queer world where oppression,
disease, and death have died. Christ himself
will prove that he has always been a defender of queer
men, against everyone who has called us unclean or
consigned us to the fires of hell.
I guess, with that admission, I’ve ruled out being a
full-blown postmodernist—someone who believes that grand
stories or metanarratives don’t exist. Some queer men
will have problems with this Christian story for many
reasons. After all, they note perceptively, God-language
is the ultimate power game. Isn’t the certainty I
express a barely-veiled power claim that will, in fact,
oppress queers who choose not to become Christians?
There is a tremendous danger, they assert, in projecting
our own stories outward onto the cosmos, as though
our story is the only true reflection of the mind of
God. They are right. These questions challenge us,
especially those queer men who name the name of Christ,
to exercise great humility in our knowledge claims. But
the humble and defiant “incredulity” of Lyotard is
itself a metanarrative based on improvable axioms,
as any world-view is. The post-modern worldview tends
towards nihilism (not to be confused with amorality).
Nothing has fundamental meaning, claim the nihilists.
Perhaps the verbal diarrhoea of much (but not all)
post-modern and queer theory masks a subtle existential
angst—we sense, deep in our bones, that we will never be
understood, and that our temporary victories are hollow.
Despite this strong post-modern lethargy, post-modern skepticism and
deconstruction makes an important point that Christians
and queer men especially need to heed. The resurrection
of Jesus is not an excuse to draw battle lines of us
versus them on any issue. It is not an excuse to use our
rhetoric as a weapon against real people to destroy
their lives. AIDS is not God’s weapon against queer men.
Homophobia and bashing (including outing closeted gay
politicians who do not persecute queer people) are not
forms of justice. And activism, whether Christian or
queer, that cloaks assimilation and buying into an
inflexible political agenda with the call to action
isn’t worthy of the name; we should call it
manipulation, instead.
Rather than rejecting metanarrative altogether with certain
post-modernists, I argue that the resurrection of Jesus
doesn’t give Christians—and Christian queer men—the
right to oppress anyone. According to Robert Goss and
other queer scholars, the resurrection is the ultimate
vindication of Jesus’ message, and a demonstration of
God’s very real and concrete solidarity with oppressed
people. Jesus is vindicated—his message is real, his
solidarity with women and queers unbroken, his victory
of over death and oppression certain and coming soon!
Death will not win. Empire (American, Roman, or any
other) will not be able to stomp us out. Mainstream GLBT
organizations that enforce the gender binary or try to
squeeze all the colours of the rainbow into one mould
have had their day: we do not need to be married, nor do
we need to fuck without any sense of respect or
hospitality, to achieve queer liberation. And best of
all, our bodies and our sexual experiences have enduring
value, because the body is a fluid and glorious site for
interaction with the sacred, even with the God who
raised Jesus from the dead.
What does this mean in practical terms? It means that
queer men can have confidence that all
our work will not fundamentally disintegrate, even if we
must deconstruct and then reconstruct it until
oppression ends. Before I was born, the Stonewall Riots showed us
that drag queens and leathermen could
resist oppression, kick some ass, and change the world.
There was a recognition—what the New Testament calls
faith—that there was something liberating and right
going on. The death of Matthew Shepard, horrible and
ambiguous as it seemed, continued and perhaps
accelerated a shift in public consciousness about
violence against queer people. Trans Days of Remembrance
open our minds to those who cross or blur the gender
binary, sometimes at the cost of their own lives. Hurricane
Katrina, though devastating, catalyzed a tremendous
outpouring of love to a city full of queer people,
contrary to the ranting of televangelists on the
Religious Right. Do we recognize these events as moments
and seasons of liberation and change? Should we? Do we
have the courage for this kind of recognition? Are we
willing to deal with reality but refuse to conclude that
our actions are meaningless? Do we have the audacity to
say boldly, “We see the spirit of Jesus Christ in this,”
even if people disagree strenuously with us? ... (continue reading)
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2 COMMENTS ON THIS ESSAY:
I keep wanting to correct the tiny typos that I see...especially the last sentence: "The peace of Christ be yours." LOL. Minor thing!
Fantastic essay! I think one of the most exciting ideas suggested by your essay is the idea of adopting a subversive masculinity, a masculinity of which Jesus (at least in this characterization) is a superb example. I also appreciated the inclusion of a critique of our postmodern disdain for metanarratives. While I think this disdain arises quite naturally out of the radical critiques and the sheer volume of alternative readings of "important" texts that have accompanied poststructuralism and deconstruction, I also think there are radical possibilities (and even something of a practical imperative) to be found in reconstructing metanarratives on a wider, more inclusive foundation, by weaving together the millions of personal narratives that structure our daily existences, as queer men, as masculine, as feminists, as people of color, as people with disabilities, etc. - that out of this melting pot or mosaic or what have you, certain patterns begin to emerge and it is these patterns that offer us an opportunity to write our own story, our own grand narrative and lend our movement direction, sweeping up the whole of humanity in its march forward. This is just a flowery way of suggesting that the problem lies not with these grand narratives, but with their exclusivity. I also thought your approach to forgiveness was refreshing. I think what I've found missing in some of the essays was a failure to question or seek forgiveness for our own transgressions against one another or understand our attackers. On the surface this doesn't sound very radical, until you realize that we ourselves are the attackers at times and that change begins with ourselves. Wow, that was a lot more than I was going to write. Anyway: Thank You!