S3E06: Mark 5:1-20
Ellie Brigida: Welcome to Sweetbitter, where we explore the queer history of the Bible and Christianity. We're your hosts, Ellie Brigida...
Leesa Charlotte: ...and Leesa Charlotte.
EB: This episode, we're talking with Nicole Garcia, the first transgender Latina pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
LC: But before we get into that, let's bring in our resident Christian, Alyse Knorr. Welcome, Alyse.
Alyse Knorr: Hi.
EB: Hi. Super excited for today. What do you got for us? What's our passage?
AK: I have Mark 5:1-20, and I'm going to read you the New Revised Standard Updated Version translation.
EB: Great.
AK: "They came to the other side of the sea, to the region of the Gerasenes. And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs, and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain, for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces, and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him, and he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.’ For he had said to him, ‘Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion, for we are many.’ He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the region. Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding, and the unclean spirits begged him, ‘Send us into the swine; let us enter them.’ So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine, and the herd, numbering about two thousand, stampeded down the steep bank into the sea and were drowned in the sea.
The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened. They came to Jesus and saw the man possessed by demons sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion, and they became frightened. Those who had seen what had happened to the man possessed by demons and to the swine reported it. Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. But Jesus refused and said to him, ‘Go home to your own people, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and what mercy he has shown you.’ And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone was amazed.”
EB: Okay, that's a lot.
LC: It's a lot, yeah.
EB: I'm like, okay, so this man is possessed by demons. Jesus shows up, takes the demons, puts them into the pigs. The pigs run into the water and drown themselves. Is that what happens? Or they swim away?
AK: Uh, I hope they got away. I hope they made it.
EB: Okay. And so there were – what is it? What did they say? 20? How many? How many swine?
AK: It is 2000.
EB: So there were 2000 demons in this one man. And Jesus took the 2000 demons and put them into all these pigs and sent them away.
AK: 100%.
LC: Is this any connection to like, why you're not meant to eat pork?
AK: I don't think so. I don't think so.
LC: Is it that like all swine are, like descended from demons.
EB: Yes, yes.
AK: I'm not sure about that. I have a couple of perspectives on this passage. I'm gonna start with that of the Reverend Naomi Washington-Leapheart, a black queer preacher, teacher and activist.
Reverend Naomi Washington-Leaphart: I love this text in Mark 5. Jesus is in a boat headed, you know, he's always going someplace, and arrives essentially at a cemetery where a man who has been chained up in the cemetery is expressing the trauma of that circumstance, right? He is screaming and howling. He is injuring himself, hurting himself. Why? Because he is chained up, living among the dead and Jesus encounters him. Actually, the man sees Jesus coming and says, "What would you have to do with me?" So you see this man who has been discarded and is living among the dead, recognizes and knows the divine, which – stop right there, right? That church people, religious people, don't have a market on knowing the divine, right, that this man recognizes Jesus is appropriately, you know, reverent and afraid and kind of – and Jesus asks him, "What's your name?" Which, to me, indicates that Jesus acknowledges the personhood, the identity, of this man. I'm not asking you, what do people call you? I'm not calling you something that I heard. I'm not naming you according to your circumstance, or the thing you did five years ago or whatever. I'm asking you to tell me your name, right? And the man responds by essentially saying, "What has possessed him?" He says, "I am Legion. We are Legion." And that word would have meant something to the original hearers of this story, or the people who were there to witness this, right? He's trying to describe what has taken over his life, what is possessing it, and the thing that has possessed him is afraid of Jesus, right? Because the thing knows Jesus comes to bring freedom and life, right? And won't allow me to stay here occupying this man, right? And Jesus sends, the text says, sends the spirit that had possessed the man into the herd of pigs that were just there, right? And the pigs couldn't handle it, and they end up jumping into the water and dying. And everybody is pissed. Everybody who sees this is upset, because, you know, we need those pigs to live like that's our livelihood, like, how you gonna come in here? I don't care that this man is now liberated. I don't care that he now can walk out of the cemetery where he's been living. I don't care that he, the text says, is clothed and in his right mind. I don't care, you have disrupted our thing here, and they wanted him to leave, right? I love this story, because there's so many – there's so much, right. We have literally thrown people away and left them to live among the dead, and then when they have the nerve to be traumatized by that experience and acting in ways that are traumatized, we say, "See, we knew you – see, that's why you need to be over there," right? And then Jesus comes, and we, you know, we're shocked that people know the divine, you know, who aren't members of our churches. And we don't always feel happy when people get set free. You know, why you got to be all liberated? Why you got to – you know we aren't, we aren't always happy. So I love that story because there's so much there that is a commentary about our own society, right? And Jesus's refusal to ignore or look away.
AK: Alright, so we've got some themes there about how society has outcast this man to live in a cemetery at the edge of town. I mean, how traumatic is that? And they've chained him up, and he's been so like grief-stricken by that ostracization that he's broken his own chains and now he's just he's living at the edge of society. They've outcast him. They've either called him crazy or they've made him crazy by ostracizing him. Either way, it's society's fault that he's in this position. And so the reason I picked this for today's episode – so today we're going to hear all about the story of Nicole Garcia, the first trans Latina pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church. And I picked it because M Jade Kaiser, a guest we've had on here before, the co-founder and director of Enfleshed, has a beautiful reading of this passage from a trans perspective. Basically, M is a big fan of like, we don't need to just look for characters who probably were trans according to our definitions today of trans. We can find them there, like they don't have to be surface identifiers. They can be like – we can read allegory there. And so M reads this as like, this is a person who's been ostracized, who you know, people have said, "There's something wrong with you. You have demons, and you need to go live at the edge of town." And Jesus speaks to that person and helps them.
EB: So, we're talking about like, "God help the outcast."
LC: I just was about to say that, Ellie! I knew that it would come back to a song for us.
EB: Of course. "God Help the Outcasts."
LC: I love that song.
EB: It's honestly such a good song. But I mean, I do love that as a theme for what we've been talking about over the season, what we're going to continue to talk about, is that we're not searching for some meaning that's not here in the Bible, right? Like, it's very clear in the Bible, Jesus cared about the people that society cast out, like the LGBTQ community, so, like, it's right there in this passage.
AK: Yeah, and M points to the fact – we'll hear from M in a minute – but points out the fact that Jesus calls him "this man" and, like, affirms his gender, and that he's basically, like, these stories about your demons, like they're not true, like you know, there's just this act of incredible kindness and solidarity. And we know that for the trans community in particular, the most important thing is affirming community members, right? And so your trans youth are significantly more likely to thrive if they have people who affirm them and support them. And that's what he does, and then the fact that society wants him to leave after that. The community is like, not happy about this, because they think he's challenging the status quo. And so M has this beautiful piece that they wrote for Unbound, which is a website that's all about the intersections of faith and justice. And at the end of the piece about this passage, which is just gorgeous, M says, this man Legion "will not be the first to tell this [story]. But through it, he will find his kin. And on the edges of town, they will love each other. Wildly. Queerly. A legion of their own."
EB: I love that.
AK: So here's M with some more, you know, unpacking of the passage from their perspective.
M Jade Kaiser: So there's the story of the man with the demon who like lives on the edges of his town, and the people keep trying to chain him, and the text says he's too strong. They can't chain him. And so I was thinking about him as this demon-possessed person through the lens of transness, in the sense that I wondered, for instance, if he was trans, the text says nothing of him being trans, but I actually think, like any character, could be queer or trans, we don't know. And so what if we thought about him as trans, and the community calling him demon-possessed because they don't know how else to understand the strange enactment of his gender and how the demons that he struggles with are actually their demons, but internalized. I know that he talks about him cutting himself and what it means to be immersed under other people's destructive narratives and how we have to deal with the things that we inherit and internalize. And when he meets Jesus, Jesus keeps referring to him as a man, like this man, you know, to the demons like, "Leave this man." And so I wrote a piece where I was playing with like, that being Jesus affirming his gender, right? And then he gets off his knees in the text, like he stands up again after that.
EB: Thank you, Alyse. I think a lot of our listeners will have a lot to unpack from the passage that we just read. We're gonna talk about it today. We will be back after a quick break.
LC: And we're back. As we said at the top of the episode, this episode we're chatting with Nicole Garcia.
EB: And we will let her introduce herself.
Reverend Nicole Garcia: I am the Reverend Nicole M Garcia, M.A. LPC. That's the whole thing. I am currently the Faith Work Director at the National LGBTQ Task Force. My office is based out of Washington, DC, but I have the absolute pleasure of working at my kitchen table in beautiful Louisville, Colorado the majority of the time. I consider myself and identify as a queer, transgender Latina. So I was assigned male at birth and lived 42 years as a male, and at 42 years of age, I decided I had to initiate a gender transition. So since I was 43 years old, I've identified as a transgender woman, and I transitioned and became my mother. So I am a proud Latina. Mama was a very strong, compassionate, and opinionated person, and my sisters have assured me I am my mother. I was raised Roman Catholic. I was born and raised in Boulder, Colorado, and went to Roman Catholic churches up until my early 20s, and I always have described myself as a really good Catholic boy. I loved going to mass. I loved going to church. One of my first memories is kneeling on a cold kitchen floor when I was four or five years old with Grandma Celia as she taught me how to pray the rosary. And I still have the rosary that she gave me then the rosary she gave me was old and worn, and I still have it. I don't use it all the time now because it's so delicate, but it has to be close to 100 years old, and has had the rosary prayed on it thousands of times. So it's very, very special to me. Another reason why the rosary is important to me is because I was born on December 12, the feast day of La Virgen de Guadalupe. Yo soy una guadalupana. I know in my heart I have always been guided and protected by La Virgen de Guadalupe, and her image is in every room of my – well, maybe not all the bathrooms, but her image is in every room that I occupy. She's a very important part of my life, and that's why I continue to say the rosary to this day, not to ask her to intercede on my behalf to her son Jesus Christ, as a good Catholic would. But rather, I want to emulate the way she was devoted to her son Jesus, she said to the angel Gabriel, "Yes, I will bear this child," even though it meant death. But she gave birth to Jesus. In the Gospel of John, she initiated the ministry of Jesus. When the people came to her and said, "We're out of wine," she went to her son and he said, "What? It's not my business." And she just turned to the people and said, "Do as he said." So she initiated his ministry, and she was there at the foot of the cross. She was there after the resurrection. She was always with her son, if not in body, but in spirit. And that's what I want to emulate in my faith, is not just living a religion in order to die, because that's what I hear so much of the time you have to do X, Y, and Z, and so that at the end, you will go to heaven. But what we really get from the message of Christ is that we need to live for today, and we need to live for ourselves and for each other. This world is just really hard. Life is so difficult, especially in these times of the pandemic. And what has been so sad is the pandemic has driven us apart rather than bringing us together.
LC: Wow. Can you imagine how different religion might be in the world if we actually focused on how we are on earth instead of what happens to us when we die?
EB: I would love that. I mean, I do think that that's like, my ideal of how to live a religious life is to like, be the best person you can while we're here, and then like – and I do feel like part of what we learned in Catholicism is like, be the best person you can while you're here, so you go to heaven. So there's like, a little bit of guilt, I think, always in the Catholic Church, of like –
LC: It's about your eternal life, not about not being a jerk.
EB: Yeah, like you know, maybe we shift that to, how about we just be a good person and not worry about what happens after death?
LC: Anyway, let's hear more from Nicole.
RNG: Like most young Latino boys, at 18 I wanted to be a priest. But mama and grandma said no, I was the oldest son in the family, and I had to get married and have kids, so I tried hard to live into that role. And I'm actually one of the only male cousins who didn't go into the military. Almost all of my cousins went into the military, because all their fathers, my father went into the military. My stepfather went into the military, but I ended up going to CU Boulder. And you have to understand, I went into CU Boulder in 1978, so CU Boulder during the late 60s and early 70s was a hotbed of radical political and social action. At one point, the UMAS, the United Mexican American Student Association, had been asked to try and increase the number of, as they said, Hispanic kids who went to CU because in the early 70s there were about 38 people with Spanish surnames at CU Boulder, and in a couple years they had gotten the number over 300. And it was in the spring of 1974 where all the Spanish surname students who were part of the UMAS program didn't get their financial aid approved, and the students revolted, rebelled, and took over the financial aid office for two days, and they demanded and got their financial aid. And so that was in 1974, so when I got to CU in 1978, because my name is Garcia, I was automatically enrolled in the UMAS program, and I was automatically enrolled in all the Chicano Studies program classes, and so most of my teachers were individuals who had participated in the social uprising in the early 70s. All of them had gotten their Master's degrees, and they were all working on their PhDs. And so I got a rather – some would call it a radical education. And that's when I realized that I was Catholic because of colonization, not because of faith, that when the Spaniards came over in their galleons, along with the conquistadores, came the priests and we all became Catholic. But I realized that my faith was based on colonization, and I had been praying to God for years to make me the man that I thought I was. I tried to live into what my parents and what my grandparents and what my cousins wanted me to be, but I never was able to perform my gender like my male cousins. I was constantly being chastised and smacked on the back of the head and told to get out of the kitchen, told to go out and play with the boys instead of playing with dolls with my sisters and my female cousins, so I never knew how to perform my gender. So I prayed to God to fix me. And so in my early 20s, a mixture of the colonization, the hierarchical nature of the Roman Catholic Church, the patriarchal domination, and feeling that God just never listened to me, never answered my prayers. I'm like, I'm done. The church let me down. God let me down. And so in my early 20s, I just turned my back and walked away. And by the end of the 80s, I ended up in detox, wondering what happened. You know, I got my BA in Political Science at CU Boulder, but I was working as a sales clerk in a national retail outlet, making just above minimum wage, living in the back of one of my cousin's trailers going, what the heck? So that was my first foray into sobriety and trying to figure out where my life had gone terribly wrong. And I found out that if you actually show up to work on time and show up sober and actually do your job really well, that you get promoted. So I ended up as an assistant store manager, and as luck would have it, I fell in love with a beautiful woman. She fell in love with me. So in 1994 I got married, and I thought she would fix everything. I would finally live into who I was supposed to be and to make sure it would happen, I had cousins who worked for the Department of Corrections, and they had been telling me for a long, long time, all you should come and work for the department. You get a state job, and, you know, you get great benefits, and you'll get a great retirement. So I did it, I applied and I got hired. So I ended up working as a corrections officer in a state prison. And when I put on the uniform, it was like putting on a facade. I pretended to be, you know, the man that everybody wanted me to be. And eventually, old friends started to join me, a couple shots and a couple beers would help me get to sleep at night. And the wife and I, you know, drifted apart, and I ended up leaving prison and going and becoming a parole officer. And then, after a year, wife decided she didn't want to be married to a very angry, drunk person, and I blamed her for everything that had gone wrong in my life. And so we got divorced, and I ended up buying another house and suicidal, extremely depressed. Why did I walk away from everything I was supposed to have? You know, together, we made really great money. We had a beautiful house in downtown Denver. We had new cars in the driveway. It was everything I was supposed to have. And why was I so miserable?
EB: It's stories like these that make me so sad. Because, I mean, as a queer person, I can identify with being in the closet, and I know how difficult that was, but also, like, in a way, I feel lucky because I wasn't in the closet for too long, I feel like. And so to hear – I mean, there's plenty of people who I've talked to, like, with Lez Hang Out, or just like, personal stories of people who come out later in life, and I always feel so much empathy for them, of like, how difficult it must have been to try to suppress the person that you are for 40 years. So difficult. And it's like that's so heartbreaking to me to know that, because of the church, because of religion, transgender people feel that they have to suppress their entire being and their whole identity. That just seems like such a heavy weight to feel.
LC: Yeah, the idea that the church participates in that, and the idea that people just don't mind their goddamn business, it's very upsetting.
EB: It's tough, yeah, but let's hear more from Nicole about her particular story.
RNG: And I went, got back into therapy, stopped drinking, and I realized in therapy that my dirty secret couldn't be kept anymore, that I had always loved wearing women's clothing. And when I came to that realization, I remember sitting in my living room screaming out, "If I'm going to come back, you better show up this time." And so I knew I had to come back and start talking to God again. And I went to a conference, met some really, really good friends, and one of them told me about this Lutheran Church in downtown Denver, St. Paul Lutheran. In therapy, I had been told by my therapist that in order to start the process, I had to start living as my female persona, as Nicole, when I was not at work. Right now, because I was still a state parole officer and I wasn't ready to come out at work, but my therapist said you have to start living as Nicole when you're not at work. So I'm like, okay. Remember I worked for the Department of Corrections, my haircut back then was, you know, nothing on the sides, flat on the top. And so I had to buy a wig, and I had to learn how to do makeup, and I put on my wig, did my makeup the best I could, picked out the prettiest outfit I could find, and walked into this church in downtown Denver, terrified, you know, because so much of what we hear from churches is that, you know, if you're not straight, white, and cis, then you're going to hell. And so I fully expected these people to turn and laugh and point at me, laugh at the man in the dress, but they were lovely. They welcomed me with open arms. The pastor was a gay man, and in their welcoming statement it included the term "sexual orientation," and I thought, well, maybe they would want me in their church. And the pastor liked high church, which is very similar to a Roman Catholic mass, so I knew all the words. I knew when to bow, when to cross myself, because this was really high church for a Lutheran church, and I loved it. And at the end, they gave me coffee and asked me to come back, and I started taking what's called the catechumen classes. So basic, introductory, you know, "what does it mean to be a Lutheran" classes. And all the issues I had with the Roman Catholic Church were addressed by Martin Luther, and I fell in love with Lutheran theology. What I love about being Lutheran is we live in the tension of life, where there are no absolutes. We are 100% sinner. We are also 100% saint. We firmly believe in the law and we firmly believe in the gospel, that you cannot prove text, you cannot lift one text out of the scripture, and expect that to explain everything about our beliefs. What I love about being Lutheran is we have to know scripture, for scripture interprets scripture. You can't look at one verse without looking at where else it might be used, or as a concept. And I hate to burst your bubble, but Jesus really didn't have a lot of original material. You know, if you go back into the Hebrew Scriptures, you will find Jesus like, picked right out of all these Hebrew Scriptures and addressed what God has been talking about for thousands of years.
EB: I know we were talking before this passage about how religion and the church really suppressed Nicole into not being comfortable being herself. But I love that, like she's talking about this concept of God really bringing her back to her identity and loving her, right? It's like, I find the story and the journey of different types of religion being like – not all religions, not all religions, but still, like this Lutheran Church that she was a part of was welcoming and accepting after she had already come to terms with things, went through therapy, started talking directly to God. I just think it's beautiful. I'm very happy that we have this turn of events.
LC: Yeah, that's how it should be. Like, we've both had conversations like that with our friends. Like, what else does one do except say, okay, cool, like, what should I call you? Like, what are your pronouns? Like, do you want to borrow a dress? I don't know. You know what I mean. Like, it should just be welcoming. There's nothing it should be other than that. And particularly, you know, in a religion that preaches love and, you know, bringing it back to the Bible verse at the beginning of the episode, like accepting outcasts and calling them by their gender and affirming them, you know.
EB: Agreed.
LC: It's beautiful. It's exactly how it should be. Listen up, churches of the world. So we've been talking a lot about this and this way of reading the Bible, and I know it's come up in our Bible study sessions as well, looking at ways of reading the Bible with this queer lens. So Nicole talked some more about how she practices this way of thinking.
RNG: We all bring our own lens to reading scripture. We all bring our life experiences. We all bring our background, our upbringing, everything we have into reading scripture. And for most of history, scripture has been interpreted by the dominant power most of the time, and in the United States, it's white cisgender men. And we are taught to read scripture through the eyes of a white cisgender man. Guess what? That ain't me. And so I read scripture through a queer lens, through a queer liberation lens, through this concept of radical inclusion. When we read scripture through a queer lens, we see that there are a lot of queer characters in the Bible. Everybody's heard of David and Bathsheba, probably not one of the best examples of David's behavior, where he lusted after a woman who was married. He ended up raping her and then having her husband murdered. Not one of David's best, you know, examples. But there was also David and Jonathan. And the love between David and Jonathan is very similar to the love that existed between David and other female characters, and throughout the Bible, you know, heterosexual love was transplanted and superimposed on the bisexual love that David had for Jonathan. I firmly believe that there's a possibility that David could have been bi. He had this great love. Another character from Judges is Deborah. Deborah, I believe, if she had the opportunity, could have identified as a trans man. She wore men's clothing, she carried a sword. She wore the battle gear to go into battle. You know, she was a judge, one of the only female, or I should say, the only female judge in the history in the Hebrew Scriptures. And she acted like a man. She was married because she had to be. But there was only a reference to that. Most of what they talk about is her going into battle. She was a trans man. So everybody's heard of Joseph and the Technicolor dream suit or something. Jacob, his youngest son was Joseph. Jacob gave Joseph a coat, and the coat is described, depending on which translation, as a coat with long sleeves or a multi-color coat, it was a very special coat, and the word specifically used for the coat is "ketonet passim." Now remember, the way that we understand how words are interpreted is how are they used in other places in scripture. When the Dead Sea Scrolls came about, we had more examples, and that's why we have the New Revised Standard Version rather than the Revised Standard Version. A lot of updates, because we figure out a little bit more of how words are used out of context. Well, the only other place that ketonet passim is used is in the story about Tamar, when Solomon gave his daughter Tamar a ketonet passim, it is described as a princess dress, a dress for a princess. If you look at the footnotes about Joseph and his coat, it says something to the effect of a known, true description often referred to as a coat with long sleeves. But you look at what it says when it refers to Tamar, it's a princess dress. So if you look through a queer lens, Jacob knew that his son was really not his son, but his daughter, and gave him – her – a princess dress. And Joseph's brothers were incensed. They took the robe and tore it into pieces and threw him into a well, and then eventually came back, pulled him out of the well and sold him into slavery. So looking at scripture through a queer lens gives these characters a lot more depth, rather than, you know, the whole story is that, you know, Joseph eventually saves his whole family, and that's how the people of Israel ended up as slaves in Egypt. But there's a lot more to the story.
LC: So all of this talk of, from the Christian community – hashtag not all Christians – but all of this talk about the LGBTQ community co-opting rainbows, actually, the Technicolor dream code started it all in the Bible with Joseph.
EB: The Bible started that rainbow. Let's be real.
LC: Exactly.
EB: We are taking it.
LC: Keep the rainbow.
EB: But I find that interpretation so fascinating. Do you know the song "Coat of Many Colors" by Dolly Parton?
LC: No, I don't know Dolly Parton. I was thinking of the musical, Joseph and the Technicolor Coat.
EB: Well, definitely the musical. But there's also another song by – I mean, Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat is like, such a staple. Like, I think most people know it. Like, even if you're not religious. It's like one of those pop culture references in the Bible. I also love that, like a very well-known Bible – I guess I'll say character – a very well-known story in the Bible can be read as trans and as Joseph expressing his gender identity in a way that his brothers and his family maybe doesn't understand. But "Coat of Many Colors" by Dolly Parton, you should definitely listen to it. It also takes Joseph in the Technicolor dream coat and uses it to talk about, basically, people making fun of her because she's poor, like, and her family was poor. So, like, there's so many ways that you can use that story to relate to, I think, outcasts or people that society put down. So here's more from Nicole about her journey to ordination.
RNG: And then one day I was at mass, or I was at church, at 7am service at St. Paul, and as pastor was raising the host, I discerned a call to ministry. That's where I need to be. And before I knew it, I had applied for candidacy, because not everybody – you just don't go to school and then go to the church and say, I want to be a pastor. There's a whole long freaking process to be a Lutheran pastor, and we call it candidacy. So I filled out all my paperwork, wrote all my essays, and submitted my application to candidacy, filled out the 25 pages for acceptance of seminary with all the essays, and turned it in. And I was convinced that there was no way that the LCA would grant entrance to a transgender Latina. To my chagrin, they I was granted entrance. But Luther Seminary was one of the most of the conservative of the LCA seminaries, so that was my out. I even went to the campus and I did a tour, and, you know, let them know, and I made sure they knew I was a transgender Latina, and here I come, in all my glory. And I was sure I could say, I wanted to be a pastor, but they said, yes, I was trapped. And so I ended up quitting my job with the state in July of 2013 and ended up working as a seminarian on staff at Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in Boulder. And, you know, Mama and I just, you know, kept plugging along, and eventually I got my Masters of Divinity from Lutheran in 2018.
EB: Clearly hearing Nicole's story, she is absolutely incredible and has overcome so many obstacles in her journey to ordination. She served as the Director of Congregational Care at Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in Boulder, Colorado, before taking on more leadership roles in the Lutheran church.
RNG: Mount Calvary unfortunately decided it was time to close, and they sold the property and a group of people approached me, and by some miracle, a piece of property came up for sale in Boulder, which has five acres with a building and a parsonage for $1.5 million and there was money in the bank to buy it. So they bought the property, asked me to be their mission developer, and I was very clear in my mind that I would create a radically inclusive Church. So what does that mean? Well, in my experience, working with a lot of churches that claim or want to be radically open and welcoming, most of it is built into the front end. There's a lot of discussion as to why should we invite, you know, LGBTQ people in our church, and there's a lot of education about the community, and so they're like, yes, we can welcome people. And what ends up happening, and this is just my opinion, is that yes, you will put this beautiful welcoming statement out, saying that you accept people of all sexual orientations and gender identities and expressions, and that's where the work stops. And people will say, "Yes, come in. Here's a bulletin. We will teach you how we do things." And nothing changes. So being radically inclusive means actually looking at your liturgy, actually looking at the songs, and maybe even sing a song that's written after 1800. I know, that's a radical proposition. And maybe not sing songs that are from the ELW, the Evangelical Lutheran Worship, or whatever you know, book of hymnals that you have, that you know, everybody loves all the standards by, you know, Charles Wesley. But there are other songs that are being written and you're actually looking at what you are saying. I will still say, "God the Father" without thinking, because that's been drilled into me for decades. But if we truly believe we are "imago dei," created in the image of God, then how can God just only represent one gender? And most of the pictures of God are taken from, you know, the Italian Renaissance. You know, white men with white hair. But if we are all created in the image of God, if you want to see the face of God, look in a mirror, and we all see different images. So God is in us all. So God is in Father, God is we, God is they. We are God. We are a part of God. So God can't just be the father. God is our parent. God is our creator, and they can't get around calling Jesus "Son," because it's, I mean, that's just the metaphor. It is what it is. God took a specific Middle Eastern Jewish man. God doesn't look like Kenny Loggins.
LC: Nicole also told us about how she personally experiences her faith today and how her faith intersects with her queer identities.
RNG: I think it really comes down to the fact that Christianity is a religion that I grew up in. I grew up in the Catholic tradition, and I feel a very close personal connection to Jesus Christ as my lord and savior. But if I truly believe in an affirming, welcoming, inclusive, all-powerful God, then there's that possibility that God talks to people in other ways. I believe God can talk to somebody through Muhammad or through a series of spiritual practices, or through the wind or through the stars or – but for me, God talks to me through Jesus. People get fixated on this fact that Jesus died and rose. They really get into this concept of sacrificial atonement, that Jesus died for my sins and therefore I'm cleansed. But what people forget is the message and the example that Jesus set for us, the fact that Jesus didn't sit at Herod's table, the one time when Jesus is characterized as seeing with Herod is to be called up into basically being judged by Herod. Jesus never sat and broke bread with Herod, but Jesus sat and broke bread with tax collectors. Jesus sat at tables as women adored him and served him, and later in Scripture, especially in the Acts of the Apostles, women were leaders in the church, very much so, that Jesus didn't associate with the rich and the powerful. Jesus sat with us, the people, that having faith in Jesus can – yes, in scripture, Jesus heals everyone that has sufficient faith. And we should try and have faith, but it's not like faith is something that we can generate from within ourselves. Faith is a gift from God, like grace, and it is given to us by reading scripture, and not just certain passages, but everything, getting an idea of how God approaches us. And God has approached us the same way throughout history. I read Hebrew scripture and, you know, I've been talking a lot about prophets lately, and preaching on prophets for some reason, and it really comes down to the fact that God says, "I love you all so much and give you everything you need." And people are like, "Yes, we love that. Oh, that's shiny." And they go running off and get into a lot of trouble. And then a Prophet goes and he says, "God told you he loves you. You all screwed up, but God will love you again. Come on back." And they go trotting back, and God says, "I love you. I will give you everything you need." And people are like, "Oh yes, I love you. We will worship you. And, oh, that's shiny." That's so much of what happened time and time again. And that's so much of what Jesus said. "I love you so much. You're made perfectly. Celebrate in the love that I have for you, and love yourself, and then, in turn, love everyone around you." And that's a very simple, straightforward message, is accept who you are, accept who God created you to be. I ran from God for 42 years and ended up depressed and suicidal. And when I finally accepted that I didn't have to be fixed, that I had to accept myself as a transgender woman, the person that God created me to be, I flourished. And when I least expected it, angels come into my life. I had no idea I could go to seminary, and then a pastor told me, you can. And it worked the times when I thought, you know, caring for mama and not sure what to do next. You know, my sisters moved into the house, and the three of us cared for her until the day she died. They're my sisters, but they're also angels sent by God to help me as I cared for mama. We have to realize that, we have to ask for help when we need it, and we have to be of help when we need it. I have been told and realize I've been an angel in other people's lives in many different ways.
LC: I do feel like this feels like, this feels like how it should be. And it's really beautiful to hear that that's, you know, Nicole's journey, and that she has finally accepted herself and her relationship with God and the church. And it's really lovely to hear.
EB: I love it. I just, I love that message too. Like, I think we can all, every single human being on this earth could really hear and internalize that message that God made you how you are meant to be, just like, even if you don't believe in God, right? Just like, just that acceptance of like, everything about me is how it was supposed to be, like, I don't think that leaves – I think that still leaves room for growth, because I also think like growth, being a human being who can grow and change, is also part of who you're meant to be, right? I love it. Now we're going to tell you a little bit more about Nicole and where she is now. Right now, Nicole is working as the Faith Work Director at the National LGBTQ Task Force. She is also faculty emeritus with the Trans Seminarian Leadership Cohort. She's helped countless people in all of her many activist and religious leadership roles.
RNG: You know, I've had people come up to me. I was at Pride Fest in Boulder a few weeks ago, and not quite in faith, but you know, somebody who had been struggling with their gender identity for so long, when they started seeing me, they were probably in their late 40s, and for about two years, we would go back and forth. I want to start. I want to stop. I want to start. And finally, they transitioned, and I hadn't seen them for a couple years, and they showed up at the table a beautiful woman, just beaming this smile, saying, "I finally did it. I finally became who I was meant to be." There are, you know, so many times when I've talked to people who have come, you know, because I've keynoted a few conferences and like the Reformation Project and the Q Christian Fellowship, and many times afterwards, I get emails from people saying that I've helped them come to terms with the fact that the church that they had loved hurt them so badly, but that church isn't the entirety of God's love, that sometimes it takes time to find the right community, but the right community is out there for you, and sometimes you have to start your own community. I hope through this podcast that I will give someone some hope, plant that seed. I will not give you faith. I will not give you the gift of grace. What I can do is plant that seed and hopefully – no, I know the Holy Spirit will do the rest of the work and help that seed blossom and bloom in you, so that the faith that you once had in Christ, or that faith that you once had in Muhammad, or that faith you once had in Buddha will be revived and restored and revitalized, and you will have hope, hope that this world that is so, so enveloped in chaos, enveloped in hate, enveloped in division, can somehow find a way to heal.
EB: I love that. I mean we said before, I just love Nicole's attitude, her message, and I really do hope that our podcast helps some of you out there. I know some people have already reached out saying that it helped them feel more affirmed in their identity, in their faith, in your lack of faith, either one. We're affirming of all of it.
LC: Yeah, it's been really lovely to chat to people on social media. So please, you know, sometimes it can be, you know, putting out content all the time, it's really nice to have something coming back to you, too. So if you're feeling that way, and if this podcast has helped you, please tell us your stories. We love to hear it. It's a big reason, a big part of why we do this. So hopefully we hear from you soon.
EB: Until then, here's a taste of what's to come on Sweetbitter.
Stephanie Budwey: That when we use language in church, such as sons and daughters and brothers and sisters, this makes them feel excluded. You know, one person said, "Well, I hear this language, and I'm like, okay, you don't want me here and I'll leave." So really thinking about that need to be careful of the language that we use in prayers and that we use when we sing songs, because there's so much binary language that is in worship that we just are so accustomed to that we're not aware of it. Also the word in German that one of my interview partners used is [German phrase], which means to be spoken or to be said out loud, and they talked about the need for intersex to be [German phrase]. So this need to remove the shame and stigma around intersex, and this is kind of what I try to outline and what I call a theology of both/neither, to bring awareness that intersex people exist, that they are made in God's image, and that creation itself is diverse, as all human beings are.
Madison Stafford: Church culture starts to come in. And the thing about my church is that you have, like, the doctrine part, and then you have culture part. And the culture part totally depends on where you live as well. Like if you go to Utah, church culture over there is totally different than church culture over here. And it shouldn't be like that, but it is, I guess, churches everywhere kind of struggle with that problem. But I guess in like, stereotypical church culture, the average cookie cutter member will grow up, they tend to get married pretty young, and they have lots of biological kids. And it's not doctrine that you have to do that, I've learned through part of this journey, but that's just what people tend to do, because the church is very centered on families, and just happens to be centered on stereotypical families. But being asexual, I don't fit into that cookie cutter mold. I did get married young, so I did fall into that. I never thought I would get married, but I did, and that's cool. I like being married, but I'm not fitting into, like, the cookie cutter kids part. Like my husband and I are planning on adopting kids in a couple years, but I'm not having them biologically, and I don't know if I'll have like, six, like, the average family have in Utah. You have to, like, distinguish between the church doctrine and the church culture.
LC: Thanks for listening to Sweetbitter. Our next episode will be released on May 29th.
EB: If you enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe, rate, and review. It really helps, especially written reviews on Apple and Spotify.
LC: Like any church, we have an offering plate, too. We can’t pass it down the pew, but you can give us your tithings on Patreon at patreon.com/sweetbitter.
EB: Sweetbitter is an independent production by me, Ellie Brigida, Alyse Knorr, and Leesa Charlotte. Our assistant producer is Thea Smith. Our audio engineers are Cora Cicala and Ana López Reyes. Our content producer is Lungowe Zeko, and our artwork is by Istela Illustrated.
LC: Thank you to our guests this week, the Reverends Naomi Washington-Leapheart, M Jade Kaiser, and Nicole Garcia. You can read more about our guests and where to find them on our website, sweetbitterpodcast.com.
EB: Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and Bluesky at @sweetbitterpod. Stay sweet!
LC: And bitter!