Happy Pride Month!

Rev. Dr. Steven Koski

“The wrong idea has taken root in the world. And that idea is there are lives that matter less than other lives.” ~Fr. Greg Boyle
God’s love revealed in Jesus nudges us toward an expansive love and an ever-widening circle of inclusion. We are nudged to move beyond the walls of exclusion we build with fear-based judgments. Nudged beyond those walls we find ourselves in a spacious field of infinite love where everyone knows their own unshakable goodness. This is the Kin-dom of God where we don’t simply tolerate those who are different from us but celebrate and delight in them.
We came from Love. We are made of Love. We are here to love. We don’t need to learn how to love. We need to unlearn all of the ways we have learned to judge, fear and hate.
So, Happy Pride to all my friends in the LGBTQIA community. You, all of you, are a gift from God. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are not broken or flawed or need to be fixed, converted or rescued. You are loved beyond your comprehension and no amount of hate, fear or judgment can change that. You are not less than. You are a person of immense worth and value. You are beautiful. You are enough. You are not only good enough. You are God enough as you bear the image of God’s own goodness.
I grieve and apologize for the way the church has rejected, excluded and treated you. This in no way reflects the expansive love of God revealed in Jesus that includes, affirms, celebrates and delights in you.
This affirmation does not reflect your need to hear it for you to be whole as it reflects my need to say it for me to be whole. My story, our story is not complete without your story.
My prayer is that we all might breathe deeply the spirit of One who nudged us toward an expansive love and ever-widening circle of inclusion. As we are continually nudged toward the discovery of our own goodness and light, my prayer is we might become the mirrors where those treated as “other” and “less than” might see and inhabit their own goodness.
May we live these words of Jesus translated by Father Greg Boyle, “Seek first the kinship of God and watch what happens.”