After ‘The Backwater Sermons’ came out, this poem from it, ‘Jesus at the Gay Bar’, went a bit viral, so I thought I’d share some of the basic theology behind it.

The poem quite obviously riffs off of the below section of Mark 5, drawing a parallel between the unnamed woman in the passage, and queer people - more particularly, the "boy" in the poem, a young LGBT man struggling with his queerness, and, it is suggested, struggling with how that reconciles with his faith.

MARK 5:25-34

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ Immediately her haemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?”’ He looked all round to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’

To understand the parallel more clearly you first have to understand the context behind Mark 5. Under Levitical law, as it was followed at that time, the woman would have been deemed ‘unclean’ by religious authorities, and she would have been cast out from society for the ‘good’ of that society.

LEVITICUS 15:25-30

If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, for all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness; as in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean. Every bed on which she lies during all the days of her discharge shall be treated as the bed of her impurity; and everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her impurity. Whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening. If she is cleansed of her discharge, she shall count seven days, and after that she shall be clean. On the eighth day she shall take two turtle-doves or two pigeons and bring them to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting. The priest shall offer one for a sin-offering and the other for a burnt-offering; and the priest shall make atonement on her behalf before the Lord for her unclean discharge.

Religious authorities, leaning on the harshest proscriptions of scripture and disregarding its wider message, deemed the woman in Mark 5 a danger to society, disgusting, and someone to be cast aside. Do we see any parallels to queer people and our relationship with some religious authorities today?

And, of course, going back to that section of Leviticus, Jesus should be horrified by the touch of this woman - the Levitical code states that her uncleanliness is passed on by touch, after all - but he is not horrified. In fact, by reaching out to him in faith the unnamed woman is welcomed.

Jesus defies expectations and "rules" and instead provides healing and love. But, in this poem, there is no healing, Jesus states "there is nothing in this heart of yours that ever needs to be healed" Or... is that not quite true?

You see, there is healing in this poem - it's just not the healing you'd expect. In the poem, just as in Mark 5, and throughout the Gospels, Jesus does the unexpected (especially if what is 'expected' is the 'letter of the law' as proscribed by religious authorities). The boy's queerness is not healed, because, as stated, it does not need to be healed. And it is through not healing their queerness that the boy (and hopefully the reader) is healed of whatever it was that made them reach out to Jesus in the first place, and beg to not be queer.