Addressing the Whale in the Middle of the Room: A Queer Approach to Scripture

For the last two weeks, our Bible studies have been exploring the Book of Leviticus. Its barrage of laws and regulations are challenging to read, even more so to understand. But for our ONA (Open and Affirming) Community—which emphasizes the full inclusion of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer neighbors, many of whom have been scorned by church communities for their sexuality or their gender identity—the clobber passage found in Leviticus 18:22 is a glaring obstacle to appreciating the entire book. With this in mind, we’ve been talking about the need to not shy away from delving further into those more challenging Scriptures—especially those that have been weaponized against our vulnerable neighbors—in order to reclaim them, and thereby allow for the living word of God found in the entirety of Scripture to shape our lives in accordance with the justice, mercy, and love of Christ Jesus.

So, for today’s Midweek Message (which is a little longer than usual, I know), I want to offer an excerpt from my 2011 Doctor of Ministry project titled, “We’re ONA…Now What?: An Ecclesiology of Hospitality Emphasizing LGBTQ Perspectives.” This is from a chapter titled, “Addressing the Whale in the Middle of the Room: A Queer Approach to Scripture.”

In the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Jonah offers timeless lessons on a multitude of topics constantly jabbing at the human condition: the folly of our preconceived notions and judgments against our fellow humanity, mustering the willpower to rise to unwanted challenges, grappling with what might be perceived as the sadistic nature of God, and so forth. Jonah is a rich story about a man with adamant principles forced out of his comfort zone and into the turbulent unknown. He travels begrudgingly to Nineveh by way of being thrown from a boat bound for Tarshish, being swallowed by a great fish and then vomited onto dry land. His interaction with sailors out of Joppa, his desperate prayer from the belly of a fish, his encounters with a nation of supposedly wicked people, and his dialogue with God all intersect with our life experiences in convicting, inspiring, and hope-filled ways. There is so much to be found in the pages of Jonah, but when I think of that awe-inspiring book, what immediately comes to mind is that Jonah was swallowed by a whale because he refused to obey God. That interpretation [consumes] everything else, and what a shame.

Why is it that such a powerful story goes largely unappreciated? Why do the few verses in Jonah that account for a great fish swallowing God’s wayward messenger overshadow all the others? By and large, that is how the story has been told, and that is the main message, if not the only message, that is taken from Jonah as a result.

The ONA congregation, however, has the gift of a queer lens through which to revisit this text, if it would only seize that gift. In her essay, “A Queer Reading of the Book of Jonah,” Sharon Bezner writes:

“The traditional meaning and interpretation of the book of Jonah is one that has been established by the prominent theologians of the last two hundred years: white heterosexual middle-class Anglo-Saxon men. One can only wonder how the text would be interpreted by other groups of people, people whose life experiences are nonwhite, nonheterosexual, non-middle class, non-Anglo-Saxon, and non-men. What would it look like for [queer] people to read and interpret the book of Jonah?”

Bezner’s question goes unanswered when the ONA congregation refuses to revisit these texts through a queer reading. By affirming LGBTQ perspectives, this becomes an act of ecclesiological hospitality.

When it comes to the lived experience of LGBTQ people, the Bible has been used against them as a weapon far more than it has been shared as a message of God’s love. A handful of texts that have been hurled at LGBTQ people are often called “clobber passages,” because they are used to promote homophobia and violence against them. In borrowing a term from Phyllis Trible, Robert Goss has identified them as the queer community’s “texts of terror.” When there is a lived experience among [many] LGBTQ people that ranges from feelings of fear and self-loathing to anger and resentment, the ONA congregation that affirms LGBTQ people’s perspectives has a shared apprehension in engaging the entirety of the Bible.

I offer this example: Recently, our congregation hosted a series of events on the topic of immigration reform to gather people in our community who are eager to advocate for undocumented immigrants in our midst. As it has been used in the past to justify slavery and the abuse of women (for which the Bible is still being used), the Bible is now often used in our area of the country to justify racism and territorialism. In an effort to counter that usage of the Bible and to promote the immigration reform events, our church’s Social Justice Class placed a message on our marquee that read, “Treat the foreigner as a native. –Leviticus 19:33.” The placement of the Bible citation on the sign was intentional. The class felt that without it, the message would not offer as much potency or draw as much attention to what was being suggested about how we handle immigration reform. However, when one of our lesbian church members drove into the parking lot later that day for a committee meeting, her reaction to the marquee message was not what the Social Justice Class had in mind.

Seeing the word ‘Leviticus’ on the marquee gave this church member a chilling reaction that felt to her like a symptom of PTSD. The clobber passage of Leviticus 18:22 flashed in her mind when she saw the word ‘Leviticus.’ Suddenly her own church, where she felt safe being out and comfortable in who she was, was now displaying hostile messages toward her that made her feel unwelcome. When she raised this in the committee meeting, it was made apparent that she was not alone in feeling this way. The ‘Leviticus 19:33’ portion of the marquee’s wording came down promptly. When the Social Justice Class got word of this, however, representatives from the class reached out to this church member offering their reasoning for including the Bible reference on the sign. After that, ‘Leviticus 19:33’ was placed back on the marquee, but a feeling of unease remained.

The tension from this situation is an indicator of our ONA congregation’s apprehension about addressing the whale in the middle of the room. Tragically, for the distressed congregant who encountered a hostile message on her own church’s marquee, the clobber passage of Leviticus 18:22 is the androcentric whale that has swallowed the entire book of Leviticus for her. Leviticus in its entirety is perceived as a damning tirade against LGBTQ people because the patriarchal, hyper-masculine whale of unchallenged hermeneutics has devoured the fullness of its message. The name Leviticus is one that is not to be uttered in the ONA congregation’s house; but just as surely as Jonah is a broad story that offers much more than a tale of a great fish swallowing God’s dissident, the inspiration and revelation that Leviticus has to offer are extinguished when the wrongfully oppressive translation of one verse is heralded as the book’s summarizing headline.

To ease the tension and, more pointedly, to offer a healing balm on the wounds inflicted by centuries of the Bible’s manipulation against LGBTQ people, it is time for the ONA church to address the whale in the middle of the room. The first step in this process requires that we courageously set aside apprehension and fear about reengaging texts that have gone too long with only one interpretation.

To move from the Bible being viewed as a weapon and toward it being understood as our friend is a spiritual movement from hostility to hospitality; free space is culminated around biblical interpretation wherein LGBTQ experiences illuminate the areas of God’s Word that were previously swallowed up.

Essentially, if the ONA church is unwilling to revisit the sacred texts in which it is grounded with an emphatic incorporation of LGBTQ perspectives, hospitality toward LGBTQ people is only half-hearted. Inaction on the part of the congregation in this respect does disservice to its own efforts at hospitality, as well as its desire to seek the fullness of God’s Word in the pages of the Bible.