| Transgender issue is not about sexuality, but call  By Robert G. Brennan, Jr. At our recent annual conference we wrestled together with the most potentially divisive issue weve had in years transgender clergy and the ministerial status of the Rev. Rebecca Steen. It was sad and disturbing to hear the veiled and sometimes not so veiled threats in the air. I hope that this time now may be an opportunity for all of us to trust each other enough to enter into holy counsel with one another. Rather than set in concrete our own opinions on this, let us afford the Spirit an opportunity to give us gbwc_superuserance. Clearly, the Scriptures are rather mute on the specific issue of sexual reassignment surgery. But I believe in other ways the Scriptures really do speak to the issue that is now before us. In Genesis 1:27 it says: So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Without a doubt, this was the most frequently quoted passage of Scripture I heard during the annual conference session. But I believe that even in biblical times there was a third category. There were men. There were women. And there were those whose sexuality had been changed the eunuchs. Eunuchs were men who had been castrated, a practice widely shunned by the ancient Israelites. Such people were not permitted to worship. No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord, it says in Deuteronomy 23:1 (NRSV). Sexual potency and the ability to bring about offspring was a sign of Gods rich blessing on someone. To be childless or barren was to be accursed by God and to live in shame. It is surprising then to consider the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. The apostle Philip was directed by the Spirit to travel a wilderness road toward Gaza and encountered a eunuch who was a court official for the Queen of the Ethiopians. The eunuch was returning from a spiritual pilgrimage to Jerusalem and struggling with a passage out of Isaiah regarding Gods suffering servant. He met Philip, who proclaimed to him the good news of Jesus Christ. How extraordinary that the first Gentile convert to the Christian faith (save perhaps Cornelius in Acts 10) was a eunuch. It is a story about the explosion of the Spirit into the world and an indication that these are now messianic times the old rules dont apply anymore. And what became of this eunuch? We simply do not know. Is it too much of an assumption to believe that the Spirit placed Philip on this wilderness road precisely so that the Gospel might travel through this eunuch to the people of Africa? To the faithful Jew this would have been outrageous, even an abomination. But to the Christian it is just another remarkable surprise that the Spirit blows where the Spirit wills, that God chooses whom God will choose, that the lowly will be lifted up, the outcast brought in. As we continue to stumble through the quagmire of what it means to be a transgender clergy and I dont begin to claim to have a handle on all the complex issues involved I would like to suggest that the most fundamental issue we must consider is not sexuality. It is the call of God. The Rev. Robert G. Brennan, Jr. is pastor of Mt. Nebo UMC in Boonsboro. | 
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