You know the parable: After the work, after the harvest, after the painful hours of crushed dignity and thankless labor, the day grows cool. As the work becomes easier and the task less thankless, some new friends come to join us in the vineyard. It comes time to collect the glory, and suddenly everyone has the same wage.
I understand why those workers in the parable who were there in the morning were angry about that. Because I’m sometimes angry about that.
Madison McClendon
Shortly after graduating from seminary, I remember the tizzy in my circles when Jim Wallis of Sojourners finally announced he’d changed his mind on same-sex marriage. Everyone was celebrating the decision of this leader of the evangelical left. His choice was celebrated; his moral courage proclaimed.
A year or so later, David Gushee, theologian and ethicist at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology, followed suit. I was happy for him. I even served on the board of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, who invited him to come speak for us after his thoughtful change of heart.
But despite both these celebrations, I, a queer person, had to sit with why I didn’t feel like blowing up some balloons and throwing confetti. Why I still felt, somewhere in my heart, that justice had not yet been restored, that something in this celebratory mood was, itself, an ongoing part of the way in which people like me are ignored, dismissed, marginalized and forgotten.
Gushee did deliver a wonderful address at one of our first opportunities to be an official presence at an ABC-USA gathering. But part of me wondered, even then, if it wasn’t a little painful watching that first speaker at such a momentous occasion be a straight man. Our path to respectability had been achieved, all at the cost of our visibility, our ability to celebrate our own accomplishments, and our right to see people like us honored with the place of privilege at our gatherings.
One might say I should learn to be comfortable with that. After all, isn’t the message of the parable that God gets to reward everyone the same? That this is liberatory? That it’s never too late, that you can always change, that we should always be thrilled to have help no matter what time of the day it arrives?
But I’m not willing to grant that point, not yet. Why?
Wages on earth and in heaven
Because while the wages might be the same when we get to heaven, the wages aren’t the same, not at all, before we get there. And until those wages are the same for those who labor on earth, the work isn’t done. It’s still high noon, the sun of oppression still beats on our backs, and unfair, unearned adulation for those who arrived late to the party obscures the ongoing grief and pain of those still excluded, still experiencing the pain of rejection.
“While the wages might be the same when we get to heaven, the wages aren’t the same, not at all, before we get there.”
After all, it’s the people who show up at 3 p.m. who get adored. It’s the people who walk in as the last hour of work begins who get published. It’s the people who show up late who get the headlines. Our final reward, the one we get in heaven, might be the same, but on this side of heaven we live in a society that heaps adulation on the people who arrive late to the party, the people who “change their minds,” the people who show up after the work has been done.
I believe we will all celebrate together, one day. We will all see a renewed world where we can feast side by side. I believe we will receive our final wages and be glad for what we are given. But until that day comes, there is still soul work to be done and wages to be paid on this side of heaven. Because the work of redemption is the work of reparation.
You might have heard about Richard Hays, whose book (co-authored with his son) about how he has changed his mind about queer people in church is coming out in September 2024. Hays, as a preeminent New Testament scholar and former dean of Duke Divinity School, had previously authored a book chapter that defined New Testament ethics as against queer people among a certain kind of center-right Christian for more than two decades.
And he decided he was wrong. You might have heard of this, or at least heard of him. He’s quite notable.
But have you heard about Erin Wagner, Anna Swygert, M Jade Kaiser, Kipp Nelson or Verdell Wright?
These are only five names of countless people in similar circumstances. Each went public about their rejection by the United Methodist Church for either ordination, licensing or commissioning as ministers because of their queer identities.
This list includes public shame, but there are much longer lists of private pain. And public or not, these rejections occasion deep grief, lamentations that continue to this day in the form of unpaid wages, stalled careers, mental health difficulties and feelings of inadequacy and unwelcome in your own church communities.
“The work of redemption is the work of reparation.”
There are names we may never know, either because they gave up before their dreams were born or discovered their courage at a time when it was too late. Some may be names of people who have gone already to pray for us among the company of the saints. Their private griefs never were acknowledged, even as the men who created the conditions for their rejection now get to change their minds, and have their photos taken, and go to their book signings, and say with nothing but their words that they were wrong.
Glad to have helpers in the work
Despite all this, I still forgive them. I am glad to have Wallis, Gushee and Hays on my side. Recanting this sin against me and my queer siblings is a part of their redemption and a part of my healing. I believe we will all celebrate together, one day. We will all see a renewed world where we can feast side by side. I believe we will receive our final wages and be glad for what we are given.
But until that day comes, there is still soul work to be done, and wages to be paid on this side of heaven. This is work that goes beyond a few press releases.
Because the work of redemption is the work of reparation.
Here’s how you could help us
When invited to speak about their work, here is what those who change their mind should say: “Thank you, but I know a queer colleague who would do much better explaining this to your audience.”
When they see their paycheck come in from their book royalties, there are an abundant number of queer and transgender organizations fighting for their lives who could use some of that money.
When those who still have hiring responsibilities at their organizations post new jobs, do queer candidates make the final cut? Or do candidates who know just enough queer theology and faith to talk a tough game — but whose lives aren’t so queer as to cause talk — always somehow manage to be the ones who make it through in the final round?
And do they know the names of those they wounded? Have they taken the time off their press tour to sit quietly with those people, and see their tears, and beg their forgiveness?
Because this is the true work of an empire of God united in true equality and vibrant glory and rainbow hope.
It is a world that does not simply celebrate the changed minds of the already powerful.
It is a world that heals the unjust pain of those who have had cause to mourn.
Madison McClendon earned a master of divinity degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2012. She serves as moderator of North Shore Baptist Church in Chicago, and serves on the board of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America/Bautistas por la Paz, in addition to previous service on the board of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists and BJC. She lives in Chicago with her queer family, most especially Todd, and a sweet pit bull terrier, Moira.
This article first appeared in The Christian Citizen and is republished here with permission.
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A new book on the Bible and LGBTQ folks by a straight, white man is not what we need | Opinion by Susan Shaw