The Slow Way: “Sin Bravely”- Pride Month and the Lens of Jesus

In the quiet and holy sweetness of finally listening to my own conscience, I found in my relief the voice of God, there with me: “Hi, honey.” God said. “I’ve been here the whole time."

for the frantic strivers, serial doers, and weary achievers

I have a sticky note in my office next to my desk, beside the note that says, “sanctity has to do with gratitude” (that’s from Ronald Rolheiser), and Fred Rogers’ exquisite question: “Who has helped you love the good that grows in you?” This note says two words: “Sin Bravely.” 

It’s the kind of note my older boys love to tease me about. They love to tease me in general, but they find my tendency to go deep — to always bring the story back to God, and to cover my life and theirs in words (our kitchen is always filled with butcher paper quotes), both endearing and worthy of love-induced mockery. 

“Really Mom? ‘Sin bravely?’”

Reader, I think I read once about a memoir written by Maggie Rowe by the same name. I don’t know anything about this book. (If you’ve read it, let me know!) I’m sure that Maggie Rowe deserves all love and attribution. And I appreciate why my boys think it’s funny. But the truth is, I don’t think they can understand the power of sinning bravely. “Sin” as I understood it most of my life, “sin” as I read it when I look at that sticky note beside my desk, is not the same thing as I’ve taught them, as their pastor says each week: falling short of love. 

When I read “sin bravely” I think of the sin of my younger years, the long lists of wrongs that must be avoided to label a life as good, that make a person trustworthy, holy even. Learning to “sin bravely” is actually the very thing that untangled the meaning of sin for me, that taught me to lean into the transformation of God’s love above all else. My younger self was a heavy-laden carrier of rules, burdened by notions of purity, service, self-sacrifice, and expectations of my role in eternity. In college I took so deeply to heart the words from the book of James, “if anyone knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them,” that I was often late to class picking up trash around my campus. The burden of the good it seemed I should do versus my then-understanding that my life mattered less than everything else, often meant the big things that ought to matter for my own sake — my rest, my education, my desires — were pushed aside. 

The slow release of rules for the sake of the transforming love of God eventually turned over and reordered my container of faith, and it changed how I read the Bible. I learned a practice I teach my middle and high school students — Jesus glasses — where we put the teachings and Person of Jesus on our eyes when we read the rest of the Bible because we know there are places where it gets tricky. Jesus, I tell them, is the lens through which we are invited to view the world, our experiences, and yes, even scripture. 

“Sin bravely” means that for me. Divine Love compels me to risk what once was the rule I was supposed to follow. If the lens of Jesus compels me to see a rule through new eyes, then I choose the lens of Jesus. 

I haven’t written much about how I became LGBTQ+ affirming almost a decade ago. It was a slow process, one that was born of relationships with dear-to-me queer folks, revelations of the high percentage of young LGBTQ+ people who suffer suicidal ideation, higher reports of abuse, exploitation, and intimidation than their heterosexual peers. As I learned stories of traumatized teens who were taught to view same sex relationships as sinful, who were taught by their spiritual guides or who inferred through their community’s response to queer identity and culture that they must repress their desires at all costs, I also came to understand how that repression brought about trauma that they will carry all their lives.

There’s a teaching in the New Testament, in the Letter to the Galatians, where the Apostle Paul explains how God’s Spirit at work in the life of a person or a community that follows Jesus is like a tree that produces good fruit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  If a life or community that is rooted in the Spirit of God produces relationships and behaviors that are good, beautiful and true, how could the trauma and hatred oozed daily on vulnerable queer young people in the American Church, resulting in mental health crises, addiction, and far too often, suicide, be anything other than Anti-Spirit? When it came to issues around LGBTQ+ exclusion in the Church, the fruit was rotten. Which meant the root, possibly even the seed of this particular tree, was not rooted in the life of the Holy Spirit. Love doesn’t abuse, exclude, or mishandle the lives of God’s beloveds.

This was the work of the lens of Jesus in me, along with my own scriptural study of the few verses where the same Paul, who wrote about the fruit of the Spirit, seems to bring the hammer down on same sex relationships. (Happy to go into how I interpret those few verses, reader, if you’re itching for reading materials or clarification.) 

What I knew then was the quiet and holy sweetness of finally listening to my own conscience and finding that my relief was the voice of God there with me: “Hi, honey.” God said. “I’ve been here the whole time. You can trust me.”  

That transformation of conviction came around the same time as my book Found was released. I was pregnant with Ace when, as an elder on the board of my church in San Francisco, we made a massive and ultimately very public decision to extend membership and leadership to every believer, regardless of sexual or gender identity or practice. Even writing that feels strange. Who gave me the right to extend membership to anyone? Who was I to decide that my church should open its doors? (Another question: How can a church call itself a church and not open its doors?)

But open our doors we did. And in the process, we lost around forty percent of our community. Twitter had a heyday with us. So did lots of conservative print and online magazines. And, in the midst of fielding phone calls and emails from hurt and angry church members, I gave birth to a baby with Down syndrome. It all happened in the course of six weeks. I didn’t have the energy to stand on my Twitter platform and list my reasons. Maybe I should have. Instead, Ace and I worked on getting his facial muscles strong enough to breastfeed. Then he started therapies at home. Then when I came up for air, we worked on healing our church community, both from the trauma our years of exclusion had caused our LGBTQ+ siblings who had needed care and community, and the still burning embers of the split.

What making that choice showed me was not that I was evil and backwards before and now I’m enlightened and finally a real Christian. It was that I missed out on so much, and thank God I learned to sin bravely. Thank God, the love of Christ compelled me to see beyond a few verses that can be interpreted in several different ways, and instead leaned more deeply into the long and faithful story of love in the life of Christ, and the consistent passages (which are not affected by culture or time) that speak to the life of generosity, self-giving love, and the fruit of the Spirit of God. 

I wrote a chapter about my decision to become affirming in my forthcoming book and found so much relief, not simply because it felt right to stand boldly with my LGBTQ+ siblings, but because writing about it felt like I was writing about how I’ve come to know Jesus, how I’ve come to understand the movement of the Spirit of God in the world. There is no argument where I can convince someone who wants to cling to particular verses that seem to reject LGBTQ+ relationships, especially in the course of one chapter. Changing one’s mind on this particularly thorny subject in the Church is not about finally understanding the original Greek of Paul’s letters, or reading the right scholar. It’s about perspective, experience, lens. I can’t convince anyone that I’m right, and that’s not my job. 

But I did feel joy in telling the story of how I put on my Jesus glasses, saw my queer siblings in the way I believe God had been inviting me to see for a long time, and learned to imagine scripture in a way I never had before. When we moved across the country, I knew one of the most important things for our family would be finding a church where LGBTQ+ people are not only honored but are leaders. I couldn’t be more proud that my kids are growing up in a church with solid and faithful leaders who tell their stories of faith right alongside their stories of coming out. That our church is a home where everyone’s full lives are honored, seen, and loved. 

This June, during Pride month, I want you to know that. 

I have been given a gift that I will never stop thanking God for. To stand in the place of courage. To sin bravely for the sake of love. Which, actually, it turns out, is not to sin at all. 

A Slow Practice

Where are you being invited to “sin bravely”? 

Today’s slow practice is simple. Let’s spend some time with that passage from Galatians, the list of “fruit” that Paul wrote would grow from a person or community planted in the Spirit of God.

Maybe today there’s a situation or relationship that’s on your mind. Maybe you’re like I was a decade ago, unsure of what you believe about specific scripture passages. Or maybe there’s simply a situation in your life that you need wisdom around. Let’s take a few minutes to consider that idea, question, relationship, or situation in light of what Paul called “the fruit of the Spirit.” 

Take a deep breath with me. 

Breathe in: Spirit, we invite you here. 

Breathe out: Grow your fruit in our lives.

In silence, imagine these words moving like a balloon from your feet all the way to the top of your chest, one at a time. You don’t need to think or have any feelings or responses to the words. Just imagine them moving through your body. 

Love.

Joy.

Peace.

Patience.

Kindness.

Goodness.

Faithfulness.

Gentleness.

Self-Control.

After you have imagined them slowly moving up through you come back to them and imagine them again. This time instead of the word rising through your body, can you watch each word coming toward you like a balloon from a far away distance? As love comes toward you, what comes to mind? Is it a person? A thing? A feeling? A memory? 

Pay attention and make note of what each word brings up in you.

Love.

Joy. 

Peace.

Patience.

Kindness.

Goodness.

Faithfulness.

Gentleness.

Self-Control.

This time I want you to bring whatever situation or relationship is on your mind to your practice. Imagine that the balloon is in your hand, delicate and available to you. It is a gift the Spirit wants to give your relationship, your situation, yourself. As you imagine each word as a balloon in your hand, ask the Spirit what you need to know about this word and your situation? Hold the balloon for a few moments, listening before you move on to the next.

Love.

Joy.

Peace.

Patience.

Kindness.

Goodness.

Faithfulness.

Gentleness.

Self-Control.

Give yourself all the time you need with each word. And close with this breath prayer:

Breathe in: I receive your fruit in my life.

Breath out: Thank you for the gift of love. 

A Note from Micha:

Friends! I’ll be on vacation next week, so your inbox will be bare and there will be a replay episode of The Slow Way Podcast on July 4. But we’ll be back in action July 8 with the Slow Way Letter. Thanks, as always, for being here with me. Sending you rest and joy!