A wider mercy than we imagine

By guest con­trib­u­tor Ryan Bloyd-Wiseman

This com­men­tary is not pri­mar­i­ly a defense of a church host­ing a drag show in its parish hall. Beneath the out­rage, anx­i­ety, and social media debate exists a deep­er ques­tion: Who belongs in the life of the church?

Or per­haps deep­er still: Who gets to bear the image of God?

Long before human­i­ty divid­ed itself into cat­e­gories of the wor­thy and the unwor­thy, scrip­ture tells us that human­i­ty was first called beloved.

“In the image of God, God cre­at­ed them.”

The open­ing chap­ters of Genesis describe a world abound­ing with life and difference:

Light and dark. Land and sea. Creatures fill the sky, water, and earth.

And even with­in cre­ation itself, we encounter abun­dance rather than rigidity:

Sunrise and sun­set. Shorelines and marsh­es. Places where one real­i­ty meets another.

And God calls the entire­ty of cre­ation good.

Then God looks upon humankind — bear­ing the image of its Creator for­ev­er — and calls us very good.

Creation reveals not rigid divi­sion, but holy complexity.

Variation. Interdependence. Becoming.

And at the heart of this incan­des­cent cre­ation stands human­i­ty itself, bear­ing for­ev­er the image of the one who made it.

For decades now, The Episcopal Church, as a denom­i­na­tion — not just the one here in Winchester — has been engaged in these ques­tions prayer­ful­ly, imper­fect­ly, and often courageously.

In 1976, the General Convention affirmed that gay and les­bian peo­ple are “chil­dren of God” deserv­ing “love, accep­tance, and pas­toral con­cern and care.” In the years that fol­lowed, the Church con­tin­ued lis­ten­ing to scrip­ture, to tra­di­tion, to human expe­ri­ence, and to the wit­ness of LGBTQ+ Christians whose lives con­sis­tent­ly bore the fruits of faith­ful­ness, love, and grace.

Over time, that lis­ten­ing changed the life of the Church itself. LGBTQ+ peo­ple were and are ful­ly wel­comed into the sacra­men­tal life of the Church, includ­ing ordi­na­tion and mar­riage. Protections against dis­crim­i­na­tion were added to church canons. Trans and non­bi­na­ry Episcopalians were affirmed in their dig­ni­ty and vocation.

Not because the Episcopal Church stopped tak­ing scrip­ture seri­ous­ly. But because many came to believe we still need­ed to take the Gospel more seri­ous­ly. When we look hon­est­ly at the life of Jesus, we do not encounter a Savior obsessed with guard­ing the bound­aries of belong­ing, but one who con­stant­ly cross­es them.

Christ moved toward the very peo­ple oth­ers were most cer­tain God would avoid.

And some­how, around crowd­ed tables, in bor­rowed homes, and along dusty roads, those very peo­ple kept dis­cov­er­ing that the heart of God was wider than they had been taught to believe.

In the Gospels, Jesus con­sis­tent­ly directs his strongest crit­i­cism toward reli­gious sys­tems that are more con­cerned with guard­ing bound­aries than with reveal­ing mercy.

Part of our strug­gle is that we often approach both cre­ation and one anoth­er with far more cer­tain­ty than humility.

Creation itself is tex­tured, var­ied, and mys­te­ri­ous. Not every­thing can be reduced to cat­e­gories that feel sim­ple or eas­i­ly controlled.

The Church still seeks wis­dom, dis­cern­ment, and faith­ful­ness — but per­haps with greater humil­i­ty about the lim­its of our cer­tain­ty, espe­cial­ly when con­front­ed with lives and expe­ri­ences more com­plex than we first understand.

Not every­thing mys­te­ri­ous is threat­en­ing. Sometimes mys­tery is sim­ply the place where God refus­es to shrink cre­ation down to the size of our com­fort or cer­tain­ty. Creation does not sus­tain itself by our abil­i­ty to cat­e­go­rize it cor­rect­ly. The whole cos­mos exists with­in the ongo­ing gen­eros­i­ty and love of God.

Now, for some, drag may feel strange or uncom­fort­able. That dis­com­fort is real, and it does not make some­one hate­ful. But Christians are not called to build entire the­olo­gies around our discomfort.

If any­thing, the sto­ry of the Gospel sug­gests that God is often encoun­tered pre­cise­ly in the places we least expect holi­ness to appear.

After all, few expect­ed to find the Messiah in Nazareth. Or wash­ing feet. Or eat­ing with tax col­lec­tors. Or dying on a cross.

God tends to show up out­side the bound­aries that reli­gious peo­ple believed they had secured.

So this event is not about mock­ing faith. In fact, it is about faith­ful­ly liv­ing out the val­ues we have as Christians.

It is not about replac­ing wor­ship with per­for­mance. Our reg­u­lar wor­ship ser­vice will still gath­er at 10:30 that morn­ing, just as it does every Sunday. The drag show will take place lat­er that evening in the Taylor Recreational Center.

The event is also a fundrais­er sup­port­ing orga­ni­za­tions our church has long part­nered with — groups ded­i­cat­ed to serv­ing LGBTQ neigh­bors and oth­er vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers of the community.

It is not about reduc­ing the Church to pol­i­tics or activism. It is about open­ing a parish hall rather than clos­ing a door. It is about refus­ing to let fear have the final word on who may enter our spaces and be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty. It is about choos­ing con­ver­sa­tion over car­i­ca­ture, rela­tion­ship over sus­pi­cion, hos­pi­tal­i­ty over fear.

And hon­est­ly, part of this is sim­ply about joy. Not shal­low spec­ta­cle. Not mockery.

But the kind of com­mu­nal joy that appears when peo­ple who have spent years expect­ing rejec­tion encounter wel­come instead. Christians should rec­og­nize that kind of joy.

The Gospel is full of tables where exclud­ed peo­ple dis­cov­er, often to their sur­prise, that grace has made room for them, too.

Welcoming and affirm­ing peo­ple of every nation­al­i­ty, immi­gra­tion sta­tus, sex­u­al­i­ty, gen­der iden­ti­ty, creed, and back­ground is not a depar­ture from our faith.

It is the embod­i­ment of it, just as it is one of the clear­est ways we know how to prac­tice it.

As the late author and fel­low Episcopalian Rachel Held Evans once wrote, “The apos­tles remem­bered what many mod­ern Christians tend to for­get — that what makes the Gospel offen­sive isn’t who it keeps out but who it lets in.”

The Episcopal Church does not pre­tend every Christian agrees on these ques­tions. Even with­in our own tra­di­tion, faith­ful peo­ple con­tin­ue wrestling with scrip­ture, the­ol­o­gy, and human sex­u­al­i­ty. We believe wrestling faith­ful­ly is part of dis­ci­ple­ship, too.

We know many Christians dis­agree with us. We do not claim to speak for all of Christianity.

But week after week, we gath­er around scrip­ture, prayer, bap­tism, and the table of Christ, try­ing, how­ev­er imper­fect­ly, to fol­low the way and life of Jesus, who moved toward those oth­ers had learned to fear, exclude, or leave behind.

And we believe the Church is most faith­ful to Jesus when it does the same.

Rev. Ryan Bloyd-Wiseman is Priest in Charge of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Winchester.