A Sermon – Rev. Whitney Bruno – June 21, 2024 – for LCUCPC – 2 Corinthians 6:1-13 and 1 Samuel 17:57-18:5, 28-29; 19:1-12; 20:1-4, 16-17, 30-34, 31:1-3, 6, & 2 Samuel 1:17-27
National Indigenous Peoples Day 2024 – ‘David and Jonathan’
Jonathan loves David. David loves Jonathan. Scripture is very clear on this – they swear covenants with one another, much like we do at a wedding. They prefer each other’s love over the love of women. They choose each other.
So they’re clearly gay, right?
Well… yes and no.
Welcome to the wonderful world of reading today into the past! Today, we’d say Jonathan is homosexual – he only sexually likes men. And David is bisexual – he sexually likes men and women. (Remember how he lusts for Bathsheba?) But those are our terms. Specially, those are North American 2024 terms. Even twenty years ago we had a different idea of gender and sexuality. Forty years ago, we were in the AIDS Crisis and we had a different idea of these terms too. A hundred years ago many of our laws were written, and our translations of scripture done, and the people then, too, had different ideas.
We are trying to read over 2000 years into the past and into a culture that is not our own at all. In David and Jonathan’s time, as far as we can tell, politics determined how female or male one was. And this determined who it was or was not acceptable for you to be intimate with. Your personal desire no one really cared. They cared much on how your gender and sexuality ranked you against them! The partner who dominated, who had more power, is who gave sex. The partner who submitted, who was weaker, received sex.
The scandal for Saul is his son – who should be number 2 male in all the land – is choosing to be David’s partner… which either lifts up David to number 2, or lowers Jonathan to number 3.
David already to married to Saul’s daughter Michal. And Saul’s son is entering covenants with David too.
Saul knows it – he is being replaced.
I don’t know of any term ancient Israel had for gender or sexual diversity. The world was much more a hierarchy of who ruled who in life, and therefore, in the bedroom. (Bathsheba sure didn’t choose David. But she was ruled by him and so forced by him to be his wife.)
In 1990, at the Third Annual Intertribal Native American, First Nations, Gay and Lesbian American Conference, which was held in Winnipeg, a new term was proposed: “Two-Spirit.” This is to explain First Nations’ experience of gender and sexuality. Why? Because the concept of straight or gay, lesbian or transexual, and all those that we use are based on settler ideas. What is a homosexual? Someone who is one gender who is romantically attracted to their own gender. That concept implies – well, what is gender? A set of roles and expectations. Who sets these? Culture. Whose culture? And what decade of that culture? See, if one sex romantically attracted to their own sex, and there are only two possible sexes in traditional, 1800s, North American settler culture, what do we do with the 2024 knowledge and awareness there are more sexes than two?
Scientifically, there are 6 karyotypes, 6 sexes – and your brain, your body, and your
reproductive systems can have different biological sexes. I imagine, you, like me, don’t know your karyotype. Are you XX or XY? Maybe. But 1 in 500 people are XXY. 1 in 1000 are XYY. 1 in 2000 are just X. And 1 in 18,000 are XXXY. The chances are high someone here is a different biological sex than they thought they were. But our culture tends to only recognize 2 of these 6.
What do you do when your own culture, say Ojibwe or Navajo or Lakota, has had more than 2 sexes traditionally? Before science even could look at DNA?
Traditionally, Ojibwe First Nations have had four genders – A woman who does woman things. A woman who does male things. A male who does woman things. And a male who does male things. Each have their own names. Each have their own roles in the community. The French labeled them all “pedophiles.” French concepts of woman and man were imposed on the Ojibwe culture. When once the middle two genders were lauded as spiritual leaders, now they were derided and shunned.
We heard a book today from a Lakota perspective – who traditionally have 3 genders. And more cultures have their own different numbers of genders and sexes and expectations of them.
Two-Spirit was a way to acknowledge all North American indigenous cultures different ideas of gender and sexuality. Two-Spirit people must be First Nations, and then not fit settler ideals of male or female, or settler ideas of heterosexual. If these people were settler descendants, they might call themselves lesbian or gay, masculine-female or effeminate male, transexual or bisexual, or other terms. Or they might not. Each community has various acceptance levels of Two-Spirited people. Some have traditionally only seen 2 genders and matching sexes. Some have adopted these beliefs from settlers. And some are glad to return to pre-settler ideas of gender or sexuality.
In my settler mindset, when I first heard “Two-Spirit” I thought surely the person is intersexed, or trans. I put my culture on Anishinaabe culture. I’ve learned since that Two-Spirit is first indigenous, and second, not conforming to settler traditional settler gender and sexuality standards.
In my North American 2024 mindset, I read Jonathan and David as gender-nonconforming and sexuality-non-conforming. In their culture and in their age, people were far more concerned how they were, or were not, climbing the social hierarchy with their relationships. Were they, by their terms, fulfilling their gender roles? Yes. “LGBTQ2S+” — These are my terms, my concepts, not ancient Israel’s terms and concepts.
So why does all this matter? It shows us that around the world, and in all cultures, the ideas of gender and sexuality are always changing. There is no one forever set way to be male. No one forever set way to be female. And indeed, there is no one forever set way binary of male-female. Cultures change. Expectations change. We learn more in science. God changes our bodies and we develop new karyotypes.
In God’s great wisdom, we are different from one another. Different cultures. Different experiences. It means we need one another. We need each other’s truths. We can’t hold all truth within us – I cannot know what it is like to be a gay man. I need a gay man to tell me. I cannot know what it is like to be two-spirited. I need a two-spirited person to tell me. Scripture is full of people’s experiences – with life, with each other, with the Divine. This is a source of truth – truths others have shared with us about their experiences.
And we are living our own Gospels. Living our own truths. Others need us to be true to ourselves and cherish the little sliver of the ultimate truth that’s been entrusted to us, personally.
Let’s make a good trade and have open hearts with one another. Let’s give one another grace, and space, to be who God has made us. And let’s celebrate that each culture, and each person, has truths to share with others. May we learn from one another. And may we praise God for sharing truth among us all! Amen.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 