At an age (many years ago) that some Millennials are now—and that Jesus was then—I strode eagerly into the wilderness.  And when the tempter told me to prove I was a child of God, by changing my queer to straight, I pulled my Bible from my hip pocket and shot Scripture right back at them. (Not to mention that they’d kinda got it bread-to-stones and not the other way around.)

Change ministries having proven unprofitable, they took another tack. So I teetered with them on that pinnacle of possibilities. If I had enough faith to throw myself headlong into abstinence, heaven would hold me. Or so they said. But still I wasn’t falling for it. I’d walked long enough with a Jesus who loved me—body and soul and spirit and privates and partner and heart and others-wise—to know I had no desire to test the premise.

Finally, from the mountain they showed me the kingdoms of normal. The confederation of acceptable. The realm of respectable. The nation of shame-and-guilt-deadened living. With careers and castles and sacred litanies open to any who dwelled their (it’s not a misspelling). And I could live their too, they said. Just by worshiping the ground they walked on. By shifting my loving to hetero-comfortable. And grunting the prayers of a numb masculinity. With a sign: A happy homo who quashed the queer lives here.

No more flamboyance. No more chosen families. No gender bent. No gender queer. . No trans. No leather. No dykes on bikes. No hook ups. No voguing. No faerie dusting. No drag. No discreet hook ups. No horny bars. No lusty apps for anxious young men. No naked beaches of delightful old queens.

No flesh for the Word made flesh!**

Then I wondered, why in hell I had stood there so long (or stood there so long in hell). I turned and walked forward into the desert. The tempter just needed to go. What had they been thinking. That I’d abandon the adventure with my sexier Savior? For what? A warm beer and stale pretzel on some broken-springed sofa in the basement of their godhouse? Really?

It could hardly have been called a temptation.

*The Gospel lesson for the first Sunday of Lent this year was
Matthew 4:1-11: Jesus is tempted by the devil.
**Yes, I know that’s from a different Gospel..