Alleluia! Let the Liberation Ring!

When we proclaim, "Alleluia! Christ is risen!  The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!"  I hear a single word:

Freedom.

Freedom from the doubts about myself and whether I am worthy of this tremendous Love;

Freedom from the tomb of shame built by listening to others and not to God;

Freedom from the depression of feeling that I am alone and forsaken.

Freedom and liberation.  That's the real essence of Christ's final act before his ascension.  It is to say to the Romans and those Judeans who found him a threat to their own places of power, "You didn't win!  Love wins.  Love and life will reign victorious over hate and death. So take that!"

The story of Christ's resurrection and the liberation won through that act is a powerful statement and one that minorities, particularly the LGBT minority, can and do find great strength and hope.  Anyone who has felt the pain that comes from public votes taken to deny or strip away rights of citizenship knows the figurative, if not literal, feeling of the cross.  The gay community has been nailed to the tree repeatedly by the church and by the state, just as Jesus was executed by an unholy alliance of jealousy and power.  

As Paul says in the letter to the Romans, "For if we have been united to him in a death like his, we will certainly be resurrected in a life like his."   If we understand that Christ died for all us, including us queer ones, then we also know that in Christ we gain new life in the resurrection.  And, the best part about it, is that Christ is resurrected.  I don't believe in or belong to the Church of the Crucifixion because that is not the end of that story.  Similarly, I have hope and faith that the votes taken today to strip LGBT people of various civil rights or parts and pieces of our baptismal vows will not be the period at the end of the sentence.   Because Easter always prevails over Good Friday.  Some say, "Maybe not in my lifetime,"  but that's only if you count your "lifetime" as the days when you are in a body wandering the planet.  

Whether I am incarnate for the time of the gay community's full recognition and resurrection is really immaterial to me.  I know that it is coming because I know Christ is a liberator of the prisoners and the oppressed.  And I know that Christ did not die in vain but has come alive in victory.  And that victory will extend down to those who today we try to oppress and will lift them up.  No government or religious body can stand in the way of that redemption.

Alleluia!  Let the Liberation Ring!