Queering the Kingdom

I will begin this exegetical essay by disclosing the fact that I do not approach biblical texts as a blank slate. None of us does. Each of us reads and interprets scripture through a specific lens, or hermeneutic.

As I write this paper, I am aware that my biblical interpretation is shaped by the multiplicity of my identities and their interaction. I identify as queer, bisexual, and female—identities that have been historically marginalized and have forced me to approach scripture with a posture of skepticism and distrust. I know what it feels like to be injured by the (often unintentional) weaponization of the Bible. I know what it is to spill tears and lose sleep in the process of grappling with questions about gender, sexual orientation, the church, and ordination. Yet I also acknowledge the privilege that comes with being a white, cis-gendered, gender-conforming, middle-class, educated U.S. citizen. My perspective is limited by the ways that this privilege prevents me from noticing what others without such privilege are able to see readily. In addition, until the writing of this essay, I have not disclosed my identity as a queer bisexual publicly.

Biblical scholarship in particular, and academia in general, have traditionally conceived of subjective experience and personal identity markers as a hindrance to be eradicated for the sake of ‘pure’ biblical exegesis. This view is problematic not only because such bias is impossible to avoid—all exegesis or “drawing out” is, in fact, partially eisegesis or “putting in”—but also because it obscures the fact that our subjective experiences and unique identities are actually gifts that aid us in noticing truth in a text that has been overlooked by those who do not share these particular experiences and identities. For this reason, I will intentionally bring my whole self to my interpretation of scripture.

My personal hermeneutic, shaped by the above factors, as well as by my Lutheranism and my affinity for Liberation Theology rooted in relationships with the undocumented community and experiences living and studying in Latin America, is that the Bible is God’s liberating self-revelation to us. Through the Bible, I expect God to bring to life, lift up the lowly, privilege the poor, disrupt systems and status quos, break down walls, and blur boundaries. Within my hermeneutic, if the Bible is not being utilized to liberate and contribute to the flourishing of all God’s people, then it is being misused.

My exegesis is “queer” in the following ways: 1) I identify as queer (an adjective), which means that my interpretation is automatically filtered through a queer lens and 2) I am approaching the text with an actively queer stance—that is, I am reading with the intention of subverting systems and challenging the status quo embedded within the text and its traditional interpretations and applications (a verb).

Frankly, I struggled with choosing a passage of scripture to queer because I discovered that, as many have pointed out, the Bible is already queer.[i] From the Exodus to Ruth and Naomi, from David and Jonathan to Song of Solomon, from God born of a poor, unmarried girl to Jesus of Nazareth flipping the tables of moneychangers and questioning established religious authorities, from the gay centurion in the gospels to the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts, the Bible is saturated with queerness as both an identity and a stance. The problem is that a majority of scripture readers throughout history have either failed to notice this truth or actively refused to acknowledge it. Because the Bible is already queer, I will not be engaging in queer apologetics of the so-called ‘clobber texts’ in this essay, as one might expect me to do. To do so would be, in the words of Black, lesbian poet Audre Lorde, to attempt to dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools, which will never be successful.[ii]

My passage of choice is the story of Jesus and the Gerasene demoniac depicted in Luke 8:26-39. I will argue that the exorcism is a liberative transformation facilitated by Jesus that is akin to the process of coming out. I will do this by addressing the world behind the text as well as the world within the text. My broader thesis is that Jesus wants us to come out and embrace our God-given identity and truth in order to use our queerness as a gift to preach the gospel and contribute to the liberation of others. In other words, queer folk not only belong to the Kingdom of God, but we also play a vital role in its realization. This is because the Kingdom of God is queer.

The passage begins with highlighting Jesus’ transgression of boundaries upon entering into Gentile territory: “Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee” (Lk. 8:26)[iii]. The phrase “opposite Galilee” is “more than a geographical designation”; it also signifies Jesus’ crossing of cultural, religious, political, and ideological boundaries.[iv] Already, we are reminded that the queering of human-made borders and categories is central to Jesus’ mission.[v] The passage is also situated within the larger context of Luke’s gospel, which is written primarily for a Gentile (non-Jewish) audience and gives voice to traditionally marginalized groups including women and the poor.[vi]

Jesus is then met by an unnamed man “who had demons” and for a long time “had worn no clothes” (Lk. 8:27). Such a description and lack of name depict this man as less than human.[vii] Further, though the man is from the city, “he did not live in a house” with people “but in the tombs” alone (Lk. 8:27). This image of a lone man among tombs emphasizes his physical alienation and estrangement from his community, as well as signifies a state of spiritual death.[viii]  Why is this man dehumanized and living apart from his community? I argue that it is because he is queer in a society in which to admit so would be to challenge the dominant cultural and sociopolitical institutions of empire dictating acceptable forms of identity and practice.

Of particular significance in Greco-Roman society during the first century CE, this man’s context, were the institutions of marriage and the household.[ix] This is largely because marriage and family “were perceived to provide continuity and stability in the social order,” advantageous to the ruling authorities within the Roman Empire.[x] Rather than an expression of loving connection or companionship, marriage was a contract to ensure the legitimate lineage of the paterfamilias (male head of a family or household).[xi] In fact, household codes often took precedence over polis (city) laws because Roman officials viewed the household as the basic structural unit of society and integral to maintaining the Pax Romana. Given this context, therefore, any person whose identity threatened such codes (e.g. widows, or in this case, queer persons) would be viewed with suspicion by government authorities. It is no wonder, then, that Jesus himself, a product of and advocate for a non-traditional family structure, was perceived as a threat to the established order!

Given the way in which this man has been “seized” by the “unclean spirit” and “driven by the demon into the deserts” (Lk. 8:29), it appears as though he has been occupied—body, mind, and spirit—by the heteropatriarchal norms and expectations of the society that surrounds him, and, as a result, forced to conceal his true identity in isolation and shame, cut off from any sense of community. In Mark’s account of the story, the man even engages in self-harming behavior, “always howling and bruising himself with stones” (Mk. 5:5), as a result of his affliction.

We see even more evidence of this man’s occupation by colonizing forces as the passage continues and we are told the name of the demon, which is actually a multiplicity of demons: “Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Legion’; for many demons had entered him” (Lk. 8:30). Various biblical scholars have pointed out the connection between the name of the group of demons and the Roman military occupation of the land.[xii] A “legion” was a unit of the Roman army typically containing five to six thousand men. During the first century CE, the Roman military presence was a constant reality that confronted residents of the area of the Sea of Galilee.[xiii] In his commentary, Herman Hendrickx argues that this name must have undoubtedly conjured up an image of the Roman military in the mind of those who heard this story during the first century―a people oppressed and afflicted by the occupation of the Roman military.[xiv] To inhabitants of the Roman Empire, the presence of the Roman legions meant “the loss of control over every dimension of their own society.”[xv] It is therefore reasonable to believe that this Gerasene man is possessed not by a demon of his own queerness or individual sinfulness but by the oppressive multiplicity of colonizing, heteropatriarchal, queerphobic norms upheld by the Roman Empire in the interest of preserving its own power and stability. Such structural evils completely occupy the queer man, and as a result, marginalize and distort his God-given identity and behavior.[xvi]

This view is supported by biblical scholar, Paul Hollenbach, who has argued that the people afflicted by demons in the New Testament were victims not of consequences of their own sin but rather of “class antagonisms rooted in economic exploitation, conflicts between traditions where revered traditions are eroded, colonial domination and revolution.”[xvii] My argument is also held up by Goss who speaks of an “oppression sickness that fractures personal and social structures of meaning.”[xviii] In the midst of such colonial domination, oppression sickness, and fragmentation of social support systems characterized by Roman military occupation, it is not surprising that this man finds himself physically and socially ostracized from his community. In this way, it appears as though what Jesus is really doing in this passage is “challeng[ing] those with power in the Jewish religious establishment which had accommodated itself to, and cooperated with, the Roman occupying forces.”[xix] Given the approximate time that Luke’s gospel was written, it appears as though the author intended to send a message to readers that acknowledged their plight under the oppression of the Roman Empire.[xx] Yet the author most likely had to do so by subtle means, so as not to get into trouble with the ruling authorities. One of the ways in which he seems to do this is by destining the Legion to possess the herd of swine, which subsequently rushes into the lake and drowns. As various biblical scholars have pointed out, the insignia of the Roman legion occupying Jerusalem at this time was a boar.[xxi]

Throughout his gospel and the book of Acts, Luke demonstrates that Jesus is for the Gentiles, the social outcasts, and the marginalized. Furthermore, the author demonstrates that not only does Jesus side with these ‘queer,’ or outsider, groups, but he also declares that they are to play an integral role in the Kingdom of God. In this way, the author of Luke-Acts queers established religious boundaries and expands the definition of ‘church’—that is, who is in and who is out—teaching us that the Kingdom of God is itself queer.[xxii]

It is clear that the Legion in this passage does not want to be confronted by Jesus’ power: “‘I beg you, do not torment me’—for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man” (Lk. 8:28). “Torment” in this verse most likely refers in a literal sense to torture in juridical examination.[xxiii] The demons recognize the immensity of the power possessed by “Jesus, Son of the Most High God” (Lk. 8:28), and they are afraid because they know that he is not on their side. Jesus has made it known that central to his purpose in announcing the Kingdom of God are these castings out, “public symbolic actions directed against the political and religious social order that produced oppressive sickness.”[xxiv] The Legion therefore pleas that they “should not be brought (yet) to judgment,”[xxv] and they beg him “not to order them to go back into the abyss” (Lk. 8:31).

While Jesus’ power is bad news for the oppressive forces of occupation who fear their own banishment and destruction—namely, the heteropatriarchal norms of the Greco-Roman imperial system and the colonized mentality, internalized queerphobia, and identity distortion they produce—it is good news for the one whose body, mind, and spirit have been colonized. In a matter of a few verses, we witness the man’s complete healing and transformation.[xxvi] He is restored to the fullness of his dignity and God-given queer identity; he becomes clothed and “in his right mind” (Lk. 8:35), signifying Jesus’ humanization of him; and he sits peacefully at the feet of Jesus. Jesus liberates and heals the man not only physically, but also psychologically, socially, and vocationally, restoring his “God-given freedom to be fully [himself].”[xxvii] Further, Jesus commissions him to take part in the healing of his community and the realization of shalom rather than focusing on the limited notion of individual salvation.[xxviii]

It is extremely significant that Jesus is the one performing the miraculous action of the exorcism. Jesus liberates. Jesus unbinds. Just as he declares in Luke 4, quoting the prophet Isaiah, Jesus has come to inaugurate the Kingdom of God—“to bring good news to the poor[,] to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk. 4:18-19)—not to enforce respectability politics or uphold personal piety in order to maintain the status quo. In Jesus’ view, the greatest obstacle to the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God was “not the poor wretches writhing and foaming in front of him, but rather the greed and wickedness of the powerful who benefited from the unjust social and political structures which had so damaged them.”[xxix] Jesus queered the empire of his day, and he queers the empire of ours.[xxx] In fact, it is for this very reason that those in power—Roman officials and Jewish religious authorities—demonized and killed Jesus himself.

As a direct result of this exorcism—this liberation, this ‘coming out,’ this divine affirmation of queerness and restoration of the man’s God-given identity—the townspeople are frightened (Lk. 8:35). They even ask Jesus to leave (Lk. 8:37). Why? Should they not be amazed, or at least relieved? Perhaps they, like the Roman officials, benefit from the oppression and distortion of this man’s identity because they contribute to the maintenance of the status quo and their sense of power, stability, and control.[xxxi] Alternatively, the townspeople, who are also afflicted by a colonized mindset, may fear the consequences that they themselves might face as a result of challenging the established institutions of the Roman Empire.[xxxii] Whatever the case, Jesus’ power and agenda strike terror into the hearts of those who witness this miracle, much as they do to the comfortable among us today.[xxxiii]

What does this man do once he experiences liberation through Jesus? He sits at Jesus’ feet, and begs to stay with him (Lk. 8:38). It is not surprising that he should want to remain with Jesus in light of what Jesus has done for him in exorcising the occupying forces that had distorted his true self, restoring his humanity, and affirming the totality of his identity. For perhaps the first time in this man’s life, his queerness is not only accepted but fully embraced. Instead of granting his request, however, Jesus commands the man to go home to his community and speak of what God has done (Lk. 8:39). He is commissioned.[xxxiv]

Two verbs in the final verse of the passage are of particular interest. The first is the command that Jesus gives the man: “διηγοῦ,” which literally means “thoroughly narrate,” and also carries the connotation “relate fully.”[xxxv] The verb “διηγέομαι” is in the Greek middle voice, suggesting that the narration or relation that Jesus is requesting that this man give to his community involves a high level of self-involvement.[xxxvi] It is not a detached speculation of “what God has done,” but rather, a personal account of God’s transformative and liberating power in this man’s life through the person of Jesus. Such a mission empowers the man to use his voice to tell his own story and rewrite the harmful narratives that have been projected onto him,[xxxvii] similar to the way in which Jesus has empowered me to do so with this essay.

The other Greek verb used in the passage that is especially significant is “κηρύσσων,” which literally translates to “proclaiming” or “preaching.”[xxxviii] According to the author of Luke’s gospel, this man heeds Jesus’ command and returns to his “house,” proclaiming the good news of his restoration “through all the city.” Various derivations of this verb are utilized throughout the synoptic gospels to describe the actions of John the Baptist and Jesus in preaching baptism and the gospel of the Kingdom of God. In other words, this man is called to act as an evangelist in his home community, Decapolis. In fact, this queer Gentile is the first evangelist to appear in Luke other than John the Baptist.[xxxix]

This means that the man is ordained directly from the lips of the messiah! Well if this is not an indication of Jesus’s “yes” to queer ordination, then I don’t know what is. Could it be that Jesus unflinchingly embraces queerness as a prerequisite for ordination? Could it be that not only does Jesus not view queerness as a deficit or problem to be solved but he also celebrates it as a gift to be shared? This certainly seems to be the case as Jesus empowers and gives agency to the queer man to tell his queer truth, rooted in the Queer Truth himself, Jesus.

The miracles performed by Jesus throughout the gospels are not simply bizarre, supernatural acts meant to confound or entertain their witnesses. Rather, they are signs of the Kingdom of God meant to point their witnesses to God’s power and goodness.[xl] This means that through the transformative, cathartic, liberating act of empowering a person to come out and embrace one’s God-given queer identity, Jesus is, in fact, pointing to God’s character.   Reading the passage in this way inverts the mistaken cultural and religious expectations that suggest that the Gerasene man’s possession consists of his God-given queerness, or, more generally, his individual sinfulness, rather than an oppressive Legion of colonizing forces rooted in occupation by political empire. Priests today have harmfully attempted to exorcise “gay demons” from queer persons.[xli] Not only is this an example of toxic theology, but it is also one of lazy, careless exegesis. Instead, I have ventured to illustrate that what requires exorcising is the Legion of demons occupying and afflicting queer persons today by demonizing all that runs counter to established sociopolitical, religious, and cultural norms.

As a woman, a queer person, and a survivor of trauma, I read myself into this man’s story, and not only is this inevitable, but it is also good. This type of honest, embodied reading serves every person who has ever encountered a text and believed that it did not apply to their specific lived identity or reality, or worse, that it did so in a condemning way. This type of reading encourages those who are marginalized and have been weaponized by the Bible to give themselves permission to identify not with the sinner who is condemned or the problem that is fixed but with the survivor and hero who is commissioned by Jesus himself to proclaim the gift that is the queerness of the Kingdom of God.

Just as the field of biblical studies becomes richer when it embraces the subjective lived experiences of readers of scripture, so the church becomes richer when it embraces the gift of the queerness of the Kingdom of God manifest through Jesus’ liberating acts, including his empowerment of the queer community to speak our God-given truth.

My exorcism metaphor for ‘coming out’ is limited, however, in that it suggests a singular liberating event. The oppression and violence that queer persons experience do not end with our coming out. On the contrary, they often worsen as we tell our truth. The very act of writing this essay has been difficult for me because I am in constant need of Jesus’ liberation from the insidious forces that occupy my body, mind, and spirit, distort my identity, and threaten to silence me with shame.

And yet, the morning after I began to write this essay, I remembered the following dream from the night before: I was sitting at a long conference table surrounded by several unfamiliar faces. Suddenly, a woman I did not recognize pointed a gun at me from a few feet away. Although my instinct was to run, something told me not to. Instead, I reached out my hand and grabbed the barrel of the gun. When the woman warned me to back away, threatening to fire if I did not “take it back” (a confession of some sort), I encouraged her to go ahead. Somehow, I knew that she wielded no power over me. The woman proceeded to pull the trigger, but no bullet fired.

This dream reminded me of the way Audre Lorde argues in “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” that true death is silence. She says, “I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.”[xlii] Even if the woman’s gun had contained a bullet that could fatally pierce me, thanks to Lorde, I knew that living with self-betrayal, having contorted myself at the whim of another in order to survive, would be a worse death sentence than being fatally shot. Just as Jesus liberates the man possessed by Legion in Luke’s gospel and empowers him to claim his God-given identity and voice, so Jesus has done for me.

At the same time, the sources of privilege identified at the beginning of this essay shield me from the forms of oppression experienced by transgender folk and queer persons of color, as well as by those who do not benefit from the economic security, higher education, and U.S. citizenship status that I possess. I recognize that it is naive to assume that coming out is optimal, liberating, or even safe for everyone. As Virginia Ramey Mollenkott illustrates, this is most definitely not the case.[xliii] On the contrary, while many queer folk who are ‘out’ may view those who are not as lacking integrity, Mollenkott argues that such ‘tricking’ is a necessary survival tactic for those who cannot afford to be public about their queerness. This unfortunate reality highlights the truth that while the Kingdom of God is already at hand, it is not yet fully realized.

I am also wary of ascribing Lorde’s experiences and words to all queer persons of color, as though she has the capacity or the responsibility to speak for all Black queer folk, or even all Black lesbians. To do so would be to undermine the particularity of each person’s unique identity and experiences, and to resist the act of queering itself.Still, just as Jesus does with the human being in this particular passage, and just as various scholars have done with the queer Bible, so this course has liberated me to embrace a God-given identity and truth that have always been present.

Works Cited

[i] See: Robert E. Goss and Mona West, eds. Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2000); Deryn Guest, Robert Goss, and Mona West, eds. The Queer Bible Commentary (London: SCM Press, 2006); T. J. Hornsby and K. Stone, eds. Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Scholarship (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2011); Lindsey S. Jodrey, “John 1 Beyond the Binary” in Come and Read: Interpretive Approaches to the Gospel of John (Lanham, MD: Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2020 forthcoming). Keith Sharpe, The Gay Gospels: Good News for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered People (UK: O-Books, 2011); Rev. Nancy Wilson, Our Tribe: Queer Folks, God, Jesus, and the Bible (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995).

[ii] Audre Lorde, “The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” in Sister Outsider (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007).

[iii] All scripture cited from The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989).  

[iv] David Forney in Feasting on the Gospels: Luke Volume 1 Chapters 1-11, ed. Cynthia A. Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), 236, 238, 240.

Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997), 335. 

[v] Green, The Gospel of Luke, 335-336; Herman Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World Volume Two-B: Ministry in Galilee (Luke 7:1-9:50) (Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 1998), 174.

[vi] Plutarco Bonilla A. in Feasting on the Gospels, ed. Jarvis and Johnson, 237.

[vii] Green, The Gospel of Luke, 338; Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 173-174; R. Kent Hughes, Luke Volume One: That You May Know the Truth (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1998), 305.

[viii] Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Composition of Luke, Chapter 9,” in Charles H. Talbert, ed. Perspectives on Luke-Acts (Danville: Association of Baptist Professors of Religion, 1978), 737-738; Green, The Gospel of Luke, 338; Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 174; Edna Jacobs Banes in Feasting on the Gospels, ed. Jarvis and Johnson, 236.

[ix] Jeremy Punt, “‘All in the Family?’ The Social Location of New Testament Households and Christian Claims on ‘Traditional Family Values,’” Journal of Early Christianity Volume 21, 2010, Issue 2, 152-175.    

[x] Ibid., 152. 

[xi] Ibid., 153.

[xii] Darrell L. Bock, Luke Volume 1: 1:1-9:50 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994), 773-774; Green, The Gospel of Luke, 339; Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 177-178; Hughes, Luke Volume One, 306-307; Feasting on the Gospels, ed. Jarvis and Johnson, 236-241.

[xiii] Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 177-178.

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 178.

[xvi] Hughes, Luke Volume One, 305.

[xvii] P.W. Hollenbach, “Jesus, Demoniacs, and Public Authorities: A Socio-historical Study,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 49 (1981), 573 cited in Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 186 and Sharpe, The Gay Gospels, 99.

[xviii] Robert Goss, Jesus Acted Up: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto (Harper San Francisco, 1993) cited in Sharpe, The Gay Gospels, 99.

[xix] Sharpe, The Gay Gospels, 71-72.

[xx] Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 178.

[xxi] Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 178.

[xxii] See also: Sean D. Burke, Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch: Strategies of Ambiguity in Acts (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013); David G. Forney in Feasting on the Gospels, ed. Jarvis and Johnson, 240.

[xxiii] Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 175.

[xxiv] Goss, Jesus Acted Up cited in Sharpe, The Gay Gospels, 100.

[xxv] John Nolland, “Luke 9:21-18:34,” World Bible Commentary 35b (Dallas: Word Books, 1993) cited in Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 175.

[xxvi] Bock, Luke Volume 1: 1:1-9:50, 771, 777; David G. Forney in Feasting on the Gospels, ed. Jarvis and Johnson, 240; Green, The Gospel of Luke, 335, 338, 340; Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 181, 184; Hughes, Luke Volume One, 308.

[xxvii] Green, The Gospel of Luke, 341; Sharpe, The Gay Gospels, 73.

[xxviii] Edna Jacobs Banes in Feasting on the Gospels, ed. Jarvis and Johnson, 240.

[xxix] Green, The Gospel of Luke, 341; Sharpe, The Gay Gospels, 73.

[xxx] Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 189-191.

[xxxi] Bock, Luke Volume 1: 1:1-9:50, 779; David G. Forney in Feasting on the Gospels, ed. Jarvis and Johnson, 240; Green, The Gospel of Luke, 336; Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 188; Hughes, Luke Volume One, 309.

[xxxii] Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 182.

[xxxiii] Hughes, Luke Volume One, 310.

[xxxiv] Bock, Luke Volume 1: 1:1-9:50, 766, 780; Plutarco Bonilla A. in Feasting on the Gospels, ed. Jarvis and Johnson, 241; Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 184-185.

[xxxv] James Strong, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Madison: Abingdon Press, 1890), 1334.

[xxxvi] Bock, Luke Volume 1: 1:1-9:50, 770.

[xxxvii] David Denborough, Retelling the Stories of Our Lives: Everyday Narrative Therapy to Draw Inspiration and Transform Experience (New York: W.W. Norton, 2014).

[xxxviii] Strong, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, 2784.

[xxxix] Green, The Gospel of Luke, 336.

[xl] Hendrickx, The Third Gospel for the Third World, 185.

[xli] Sharpe, The Gay Gospels, 68-69.

[xlii] Audre Lorde, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” in Sister Outsider, (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007), 41.  

[xliii] Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, “Reading the Bible from Low and Outside: Lesbitransgay People as God’s Tricksters,” in Take Back the Word, ed. Goss and West, 13-22.