The messages from God in today’s readings have us wrestling with the limits of society’s definitions of love. We see the theme of the centrality of the “other” of society in the story, vision, and community of God. 

The readings open with an encounter between Peter, the great “founder” of the Church, and Cornelius, a Gentile and Roman centurion. Both, we are informed, are deeply good, deeply “God-fearing” people. But we are also supposed to notice a contrast between Peter, the man from the founding Jewish community of Christ-followers, and Cornelius, who would have been regarded as “allophylos – someone of a different class of people,” according to biblical scholar Margaret Aymer in The Women’s Bible Commentary (542). In other words, an outsider, a Gentile. This story, along with many in the book of Acts, will ask the question, who belongs in the Church? The answer, you will see, is far more radical than the current Catholic hierarchy allows it to be. 

The scene just before the lectionary reading begins involves a dream of Peter’s in which God tells him to eat unclean food. Peter protests, citing its uncleanliness, before hearing God’s response: “Don’t call anything profane that God has made clean” (Acts 10:15). This prepares Peter for his interaction with Cornelius, after which he says, “I begin to see how true it is that God shows no partiality – rather, that any person of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God” (Acts 10:34-35). According to biblical scholar Sean D. Burke in The Queer Bible Commentary, the dream makes this passage one in which Cornelius’s presence is a queering of communion – the sacred meal at the heart of the Christian tradition in which, theoretically, all are equal (1036). It is ‘queering’ in the sense that it makes the Communion table one in which all are welcome, not just those who have grown up knowing the rules of eating, praying, and living in the Jewish communities closest to Jesus. It challenges Peter and Paul and all of those at the center of Acts, at the center of the early Jesus movement, to make their tables visibly, strikingly different. 

You might notice that the interaction between Peter and Cornelius bears a resemblance to the evolving relationship between the Catholic Church and the LGBTQ+ faithful. In The Queer Bible Commentary, famed Queer theologian Robert Goss says of this very passage:

“Compulsory heterosexuality has become the new purity map for homophobic Christians…it generates the moral revulsion of many Christians against LGBTQ folk….Christian fundamentalists satanize queer folk and project their own fears upon them as a group” (576). 

One does not have to look far today to see a primary target of purity politics: transgender youth and their families. Scores of bills limiting everything from their participation in sports (a critical form of social and emotional development, for one) to their ability to access life-saving gender-affirming care, have seen discussion at state and federal levels this year, the latest wedge issue in an increasingly divided country. There’s always a problem with scapegoating – but this time, it’s children’s lives that are on the line. 

The Vatican itself bears a large share of responsibility for scapegoating trans and Queer kids, as feminist and queer scholar Judith Butler outlines in their latest book, Who’s Afraid of Gender?:  “By scapegoating queer people,” they write, “the Church projects and disavows the harm to children that they have done and the reparation that is yet to be made, continuing to cause even more harm to queer youth around the world” (95). 

Butler’s criticisms concur with the messages of love in today’s other readings as well. The First Letter of John insists that love stems from the fact that “God has loved us,” not that “we have loved God” (4:10). Purity politics, in any age, hinges on the idea that there is a right and a wrong way to show one’s love toward God. But today’s readings flip this on its head. It is God’s love of us that, at the end of the day, has the last word. It is God’s love that is only ours to give, not ours to control. 

Jesus’s Farewell Sermons, seen in excerpt in the Gospel reading today, place a high value as well on love being at the root of all of God’s teachings. “This command I give you: that you love one another,” he says, in a line that has resounded through the whole history of Christianity (John 15:17). His parting words show that the true mark of faith is the recognition of God’s deep, abiding love of all equally – no exceptions.

To sink into this week’s readings, consider basing a meditation off of ‘queering’ your own understanding of yourself, your community, and your actions in the world. You might use the following questions as a daily or one-time examen:

• What makes you “queer” or different from others in relation to your understanding of your gender? What is holy about it, and what kind of love does it offer to the world? 
• When have you elevated your love of God over God’s love of all of us? How have you freed yourself in the past from judging others too harshly?
• Where do you sense rigidity, or a line in the sand, over who deserves your love and respect? It might not be related to gender or sexuality for you. Who is the person in your life whom you might have labeled as “other?” How can you widen your circle of compassion?

Many groups have stepped into the mess that is legal attacks on transgender dignity and self-expression, including the Transgender Law Center. While by no means a faith community, they nevertheless embody in their work the goals of radical Catholic Social Teaching. They have a project devoted to helping LGBTQ+ individuals seeking aid at the U.S.-Mexico border. They host Black Trans Circles in the south and midwest in particular. They center storytelling along with legal aid, fighting daily for a more just, egalitarian world with trans and gender nonconforming liberation at the forefront.