Coming Out as Sacrament
By Rev. Mona West, Ph.D.
A sacrament is an act that mediates the grace and mystery of God.Coming out is a sacrament for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT)people of faith because it sets us on a lifelong path of manifesting God’s grace inour lives. Coming out is crucial to our spiritual development because it starts uson a journey of integrating our GLBT identity into our whole life. Or to say itanother way: embracing our GLBT identity is an invitation to go deeper inour spiritual journey.Coming to terms with being part of the GLBT community—acknowledgingwho we truly are and have been created to be—is one of those “break-in”moments in our spiritual life. Break-in moments are those moments of invitationthat happen throughout our life in which we catch glimpses of something more,something bigger in which we participate. In those moments we catch glimpsesof our own divine nature: the true authentic self that is the image of God in us.This true self gets layered over with the ‘stuff’ of life. Our true selfin God’s image gets covered up with a false self, made up of our fear, ourdefense mechanisms, and our survival techniques. For GLBT people, part of thatfalse self is an identity we try to live into based on our conditioning in aheterosexist culture. We grow up with strong messages that are counter to ourtrue self. We accumulate layers of the false self trying to fit into a heterosexistideal. When we come out, we let go of this false image and we begin theprocess of making room for our true self to emerge—the true self that Godintended. We are engaged in the work of transformation.A Central ThemeChris Glaser, author of Coming Out as Sacrament, claims that coming outis the central theme in the lives of GLBT people. He indicates that the expressionhas had its own history in gay and lesbian culture. Before World War II, ‘comingout’ was an initiatory event in which a person was introduced to gay society. Itwasn’t until the 1960s that coming out began to be associated with hiding one’ssexual orientation, most commonly referred to as ‘being in the closet.’1 ForGlaser, coming out is a ‘unique sacrament—a rite of vulnerability that reveals thesacred’ in the lives of Queer people of faith.2 Glaser also claims that coming outis a central theme in scripture:Coming out is a theme in scripture in a way that homosexuality is not.The latter has as few as five debatable references. But coming out isa recurring if not central theme of the Bible, easily recognizable tothose familiar with the experience and process of coming out aslesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or as family, friend, or advocateof someone who is. This links our own experience with that of ourspiritual ancestors as well as opens us up to the universality of thelife-giving and life-changing coming-out process for every humanbeing. Just as coming out to God opens up the chosen or called inthe Bible to God’s own coming out, so our vulnerability creates awelcome sanctuary for God’s self-disclosure.3Glaser goes on to apply coming out as a hermeneutic for re-viewing scripture—arevisiting of familiar stories read through the lens of coming out. He identifiescoming-out themes in such stories as the Garden of Eden (coming out ofinnocence and shame), the book of Exodus (coming out of oppression), the bookof Esther (coming out of privilege), and the Samaritan woman at the well in John4.1-42 (coming out as ourselves).4A Profound Spiritual ProcessLesbian feminist theologian and Episcopal priest Carter Heywardemphasizes that coming out is a process containing dynamic tension thatis fruitful ground for both solidarity with others and the manifestation of thedivine in the lives of GLBT people. She identifies a ‘profound theologicaltension’ between revelation and concealment that is at work not only inGLBT lives as we negotiate the closet, but in the nature of divinerevelation itself:Because we cannot bear so much reality, G-d’s presence is oftenconcealed from us: We do not realize what is good until we are readyto help generate the conditions for it. Yet the knowledge of G-d canbe called forth. It is available to us whenever we are ready. What wedo not see now also is important to our knowing and caring forourselves, one another, and our relationships. Revelation—of divinityand of the fullness of humanity—is a matter of timing, of seasoningour capacities to risk seeing and showing forth our goodness whenwe are ready to live into what we see.She continues:And in the hidden places of our lives, preparations can be madeeven now toward enabling us to respond to those kairotic momentsin which the time will be right for us to open ourselves more fully toone another and to the larger world. Like bread, we are beingprepared to rise.5Heyward encourages those of us who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgenderto recognize that our coming out has a profound impact on ourselves and others.She calls us to be accountable and honest about the ways owning our sexualitybrings us into ‘right relation’ with the world.Therapist Kathleen Ritter and Catholic priest Craig O’Neill draw from theiryears of working with gay and lesbian clients to offer yet another model ofcoming out as a spiritual process. In their book, Coming Out Within: Stages ofSpiritual Awakening for Lesbians and Gay Men, they apply an eight-stage lossmodel to coming-out stories. Ritter and O’Neill claim that coming out involvesletting go or losing a falsely constructed heterosexual life image.6 Their model ofloss includes the stages of initial awareness, holding on, letting go, awareness ofloss, gaining perspective, integrating loss, reformulating loss, and transformingloss.7 They claim that moving through this loss process provides profoundpsychological and spiritual healing. Ultimately it is a process that leads fromdeath to life:For centuries, gay men and lesbians have lived with death, bothpsychic and physical. In earlier cultures, they were accorded the roleof “midwives” or companions for those who were dying to a newbirth…. Today, people of same-gender orientation are still very muchthe outsiders of the culture, and their alienation once again puts themin a unique position to choose for themselves a qualitatively differentlife image. In other words, having little to lose in terms of status,respectability, or prestige, they can begin to see themselves ashaving been released from society’s strictures. Losses can becomegains, and deaths can become resurrections.8Coming out is a process that involves not only acknowledgment of one’s sexualorientation, but also an integration of one’s sexuality into life.Coming Out, Coming InThere is another layer of coming out implied but not named in thesevarious multi-stage models: coming out spiritually. As Ritter and O’Neill mention,Queer people have a rich heritage as spiritual people. For many, part of thecoming-out process includes claiming that heritage. Christian de la Huertadescribes the spiritual history of GLBT people as shamans, priests, healers, gobetweens,two-spirited people, and keepers of beauty.9 De la Huerta claims thatcoming out also involves coming in—GLBT people discovering their true spiritualselves.Coming out spiritually is not only reclaiming GLBT spiritual history forourselves, but for many it is risking being identified as a spiritual person withinthe gay and lesbian community. There is an irony here: GLBT people of faith riskridicule and rejection by the heterosexual community and our traditional religiouscommunities when we claim our sexual orientation, and we risk ridicule andrejection by our own community when we claim our spiritual identities. De laHuerta quotes a lesbian minister who experienced this irony:It is still not ‘fashionable’ to be a queer person of faith…. [I] fearedbeing considered a traitor by the very community I loved the most.For many of us, it’s still our secret that we believe in something. It’sstill our secret that we practice and that we go to church. We’reapologetic about it. We’re just as afraid to come out as spiritualpeople among queer folk as we are to come out as queer amongstraight folk.10A Biblical Coming Out StoryOne of the most powerful coming out stories in all of scripture is the storyof the Hebrew exodus from Egypt, found in the second book of the Bible:Exodus. This story demonstrates how a diverse group of people called Hebrewscame out of their bondage and slavery by saying yes to God’s offer of liberation.Their saying yes to God and risking an unknown future set them on a path oftransformation. When they came out of Egypt they were literally transformed intothe people of God. (Exodus 19:3-6)This new identity did not happen overnight for the Hebrews, nor did ithappen the minute they crossed the Red Sea. This new identity was the productof gradual transformation as the Hebrews learned through the ups and downs ofthe wilderness what it meant to live fully into this new way of being.When the Hebrews came out of Egypt, they shed an old identity andbegan embracing a new identity in relation to the God who had delivered themand called them out. There were times they became afraid in the wilderness—the unknown territory of their new identity. Often they were so afraid that theywanted to go back to their familiar old closets of slavery. (Exodus 16:1-3)Eventually they make it to the land God had promised them and they arecharged by God to continue to tell their coming out story. (Exodus 12:24-27) TheHebrews (now called Israelites) kept the story of the Exodus (coming out) alivethrough its telling and retelling so that future generations could participate in itspower and reality.This story has important spiritual lessons for GLBT people of faith whoembrace their coming out as sacrament. God calls us out; to live authentic livesas GLBT people and when we say yes to God we are set on a life-long path oftransformation. We leave the old identity of the closet behind, and when we areafraid of the sometimes unknown territory of our new identity, we are invited justlike the Hebrews, to trust God’s leading on this journey.Coming out is a sacrament and the most powerful aspect of sacrament isthe ability for many to participate in that power. So, as GLBT people of faith, letus continue to tell our coming out stories so that present and future generationscan participate in their power and reality.1 Chris Glaser, Coming Out as a Sacrament (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1998), p. 9.2 Ibid..3 Ibid., p. 49.4 Ibid., pp. 50-755 Ibid., p. 30.6 Kathleen Ritter and Craig O’Neill, Coming Out Within: Stages of Spiritual Awakening forLesbians and Gay Men (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992).7 Ibid., pp. 59-61.8 Ibid, p. 215.9 Christian de la Huerta, Coming Out Spiritually: The Next Step (New York: Tarcher/Putnam,1999).10 Ibid., p. 126.