God’s Beautiful and Diverse Creation: A Reflection for Pride Month - by Rev. Tamara Siburg

         ​June is a month that many take time to celebrate Pride and I wanted to take this time to publicly state as a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), that every single person, including the LGBTQIA+ community are beloved children of God created in God’s image.
        In the face of increased hate and violence against LGBTQIA+ and in the face of those who use religion to discriminate against and/or to “pray away the gay”, it is important to state that there are many Christians and Denominations/churches that are fully affirming and accepting of all LGBTQIA+ for being authentically themselves as the person God created them to be. So, this Pride I celebrate all LGBTQIA+.
      Christians believe in God who is the creator of all things. In The Bible we find some stories of this creation. Within the creation stories there is so much that is left out that we have come to learn about the world through scientific means. I believe God has gifted and divinely inspired our sacred scriptures, science, art, and so much more as ways for us to better understand God and God’s amazing creation, which is not just all around us but that we too are a part of that amazing creation.
        Often when religion is used against LGTBQIA+ individuals a creation story, like Genesis 1 is often brought up. “God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear’… God said, ‘Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night… And it was so… God created humankind in God’s image, in the image of God, God created them; male and female God created them” (Genesis 1:9-27, NRSVUE).
        This story of creation is simplified to help us understand the vastness and greatness of God’s creative power. God made many separations of “this and that,” including that of when God created humans, “male and female God created them.” It can be argued that this specific example is a way in which the early writers/re-tellers of Genesis could best understand that there is more than one kind of human and help emphasize all humans are made in God’s divine image. God separates the land and sea, the day and night, and many other things out of the chaos but if we think further and bring our own experiences of God’s beautiful creation into conversation with these many types of separations, we can see that this simplified, black and white, this and that type of thinking is not the whole story of God’s creative power.
        Yes, we have light and dark, but we also have shadows and the beautiful plants and things that come from the shaded areas. We have night and day, but we also have dawn and dusk. We have land and sea, but we also have beaches where the two meet and we can experience the awe-inspiring beauty of sunrises and sunsets on full display in those places. And we have both male and female and everyone in-between all created in God’s own diverse and expansive image. All these in-between places like those of sunrises and sunsets give us tangible examples of how God didn’t just create in binary, “this or that” ways that are easy for us to understand but that God created beauty also in the in-betweens.
        We seem to collectively agree that some of God’s best works are found in the in-betweens, like sunsets on beaches. God created these times and spaces of beautiful transitions and transformations within creation and created all the in-betweens of life and called all of it good.
        And if God is as amazing of a creator as Christians confess, God can and does create just as beautiful humans who happen to fall in-between or beyond that of male and female. Because if both males and females are created in God’s image, then clearly God’s image is so much more diverse and expansive than anything our human brains can fully understand, and perhaps that’s where our fellow children of God who happen to be trans, nonbinary, and intersex can help us to better understand the expansiveness of God and God’s creation.
        God didn’t just create in binary, this or that sort of ways but also created all the in-betweens, and this June, may you join me in celebrating God’s great and diverse creation that are us, humans. Pride month is about being proud of the person whom God created each of us to be and to live in hope that one day all people will able to live openly as their true authentic selves that only they and God fully know.
        I, myself, know what it is like to be a part of the LGBTQIA+ community and to know the struggle to claim the truth that God created me like that. Over the years, I continue to learn how to live openly as the person whom God created me to be, that being a woman who is called by God to be an ELCA pastor who also happens to be queer.
​         I pray one day, all may be able to live openly as the person whom God has created them to be without fearing for their safety and livelihood. And please know that if you or a loved one are part of the LGBTQIA+ community, I see you and I stand with you. Happy Pride! 

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