To Our Brothers and Sisters in the Lord — A Letter from the Fireman 301 Group

“By day he led them with a cloud, all night long with a fiery light.” (Psalm 78:14)

To wish to be led, to wish to be protected, is human. The Israelites of old felt God’s presence in the wilderness. Although we live today in the urban jungle, spiritual barrenness sometimes feels like a wilderness — leaving us cold and alone. And in the wilderness, we all long for someone to take us by the hand and say, “I will be with you always.”

As both LGBTQ+ and Christian, we sometimes feel doubly estranged from others. Survey after survey tells us we are a minority, already standing on the margins of society; within that minority, choosing to trust God further pushes us beyond the edge of the edge. And yet, paradoxically, it is in this wilderness that we find companions, build a small home, and slowly experience how God leads and renews us. We long for God’s Kingdom to come — where every power-structure fails, the oppressed are lifted, the small become great, those who came last go first; and at the same time we need not compare ourselves, because in this paradise nothing is relative. What we see is not the differences between us, but what we share and cherish.

Our group is called “Fireman” — from our imagination of God’s image. In our experience, God is sometimes like a light, like a flame, shining into our occasionally darkened lives and warming our wounded hearts. God does not have to exist in personified form; rather, God lives in every corner — perhaps a book, perhaps a photograph, perhaps a landscape. As Paul says: “In him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28). Reading The Heart of Christianity in our course, Marcus J. Borg likewise says: “Because I believe God is not less than personal.” (p. 90). With this conviction, we remind ourselves to feel God in everyday life; even though the world says we are outside the edge of the edge, we must trust that the light of God reaches every corner — and besides, the earth is round; one person’s margin may be another’s centre.

The stone that most often trips up LGBTQ+ believers is the concept of “sin.” Born as we are, we already carry no small number of social labels; if we now trust in Christ, are we not piling on the further burden of religious guilt? Marcus J. Borg answers: at its root, sin means separation and estrangement — it refers to being cut off from a state to which we belong (p. 193). This is striking — with a little reflection, we can transpose it to LGBTQ+ people and society. But is sin unforgivable? Scripture tells us that we may confess and be forgiven. Read alongside Borg’s definition, “confessing” takes on a thought-provoking sense: acknowledging that I have been separated, estranged from a state of belonging, whether by my own will or by force. And God tells us that, having acknowledged this, forgiveness is possible.

The one who forgives is, of course, God. But our group does not think God will descend on a rainbow-coloured cloud in human form and tell us, “Children, your sins are forgiven.” Rather, God is present in our every movement. So, after we acknowledge our separation, God leads us by action back to our belonging. The message is clear: our action must be rooted in love and justice. Love is feeling our shared humanity and connecting all members of the body. Justice is refusing to look down on others, refusing to inflate ourselves or belittle ourselves. The problem may not be solved at once — but we trust the Spirit’s contagious power. Love and justice can spread like wildfire across the whole wilderness. When every person abides in love and justice, talk of “majority” and “minority” fades; we see ourselves in each other, we are one body.

We therefore believe in letting God touch our lives. In society, people interact and influence each other; invisible forces are planted in our lives. We often speak of “spreading positivity” or “venting negativity” — but feeling God’s presence is none of these. It is not euphoric excitement, nor is it brooding complaint. It is a quiet calmness. Within that calmness we can see God shining through all things (The Heart of Christianity, p. 103). So we must remember to make space to connect with God, to enter the thin places now and then, that our hearts may be renewed — newborn-fresh. As Marcus J. Borg writes: “The Christian life is about a new heart, an open heart, a heart of flesh, a compassionate heart. The Christian life is about the Spirit of God opening our hearts in the thin places.” (p. 188)

Borg also tells us that our lives face more than “sin”: blindness, exile, bondage, closure, hunger, lostness (p. 194). Faced with these many problems, we need God to reveal to us — through our actions — how to open our eyes and see grace; to find belonging and contribute; to free ourselves and embrace liberty; to receive spiritual nourishment and live richly; to return to the path and press forward. We do not long for God to appear and rescue us; we long for God to guide us so we may solve the problems of our lives ourselves. At the same time, we believe God is not a monopolistic path of redemption. Just as BMCC respects different people’s different theological perspectives — different upbringings and temperaments make different ways of relating to God natural — yet a small thread of faith in our hearts remains shared. By faith we can clear away much of the toxic vapour around us. Faith is a trust within relationship, a way of seeing the world. Through this relationship we learn to love by seeing the world that God loves, to appreciate every beauty, to love ourselves and others.

BMCC, as its name suggests, treasures the harmony of a household — mutual support like teeth and lips. Yet teeth may sometimes bite the lip, or the lip may open and forget the teeth. Even so, this relationship remains essential. Because of this home, we can see our differences — and, more importantly, our shared. In worship, in faith small-groups, we try to live out our own theology, are inspired, and gain more experience.

The Psalmist says: “He makes the winds his messengers, fire and flame his ministers.” (104:4). God sends angels swift as wind and fire — powerful and effective — to accomplish the work God has appointed. We believe that, carrying faith and walking by love and justice, we too can be like wind and like fire, saving our own lives. Let us feel God’s presence fully, and allow God to guide us as a fire-light in the night, so that we may follow that fire-light on our own feet and walk out of the wilderness.

May your hearts be moved always,
Fireman group, BMCC 2023 Growth Course 301