ELCA Pastor Preaches 'The Queering of Christ the King'

(The following article was written by Rev. Tom Brock of pastorsstudy.org.  You can follow Pastor Brock on Facebook - here and twitter - here.)

Heidi Neumark is pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church of Manhattan, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  A few years ago she preached a sermon “The Queering of Christ the King” on Christ the King Sunday.  Here are some excerpts from one of the most bizarre and unbiblical sermons I have read:
 
…People who have no trouble viewing an image of Christ on the cross wearing a crown can become very upset at an image of Christ covered in the lesions of Kaposi’s sarcoma or Christ as a woman on a cross, sometimes called Christa. I would say that such images are faithful, visual representations of today’s gospel where Christ the king says, “what do you mean you didn’t see me? I was hungry, I was sick…” In picturing God, the church has, for the most part, taken the image of king and discarded the rest. Making God over in our worldly image of power, God as a white man in a crown on a throne.….when I said last year that…perhaps we should celebrate Christ the Queen Sunday instead of Christ the King Sunday, I got some pushback.
 
One person suggested it was not Biblical. Where does the Bible suggest that Jesus was a Drag Queen? Point taken. But stay with me for a minute. I realize that the whole Drag Queen culture is offensive to many feminists because men dress up as an exaggeration of an oppressive idea of what a woman should be… a woman with big boobs, in a tight sparkly dress and 7 inch heels…Drag artists work hard to shake it up. To do gender-bending things. And so did Jesus. Jesus himself often said and did shocking things on purpose because people needed to be shaken out of stereotypes…King? Queen? What gender is the body of Christ? What gender is the church? None. And all. It doesn’t matter. Queer theology and our baptismal theology have a lot in common. Queer theology moves beyond the imposition of restrictive labels—gay, straight, intersex, androgynous, L G B T and so does Jesus. Jesus was about building a different community… (see here)
 
Please say a prayer for Pastor Heidi and her church.  To say that Jesus as the woman “Christa” on the cross is a faithful image and to compare what Jesus did to what drag queens do is unfaithful, unbiblical and tragic.  Much of this started back in the 1993 when 2200 feminists from around the world held the “Reimagining God” Conference in Minneapolis.  The Conference insisted that we need to move beyond traditional “God the Father” language and imagine new images for God, like the goddess Sophia.
 
The above sermon is what happens when people refuse to submit to the Scriptural language for God and feel free to invent their own images.   
 
Christians, may we ever worship the one true God:  Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
 
In Christ our King,

Pastor Tom Brock
pastorsstudy.org