THIS IS NOT merely a survivor’s memoir; it is a grab-your-Bible-and-learn book; it is a love letter to God and the author’s queer family. In her prologue, “Lost,” Emmy Kegler sets out her agenda: “I want to tell you about the lost chapter of the Bible, the one with the story of a shepherd who leaves 99 sheep behind and goes out looking for the one that is lost. The one with the story of a woman who sweeps her entire house looking for the one coin that is lost. The one with the lost son who wanders from home and a lost son who stays and stews in his resentment and a lost father struggling to unite his broken family.”
In her first of many footnotes, Kegler identifies Luke 15:1-32 as that “lost” chapter. She spends the rest of her book conveying God’s expansive love for all who are deemed lost.
Kegler focuses on details of her story, about how bewildering it was to discover she was gay during the AIDS pandemic, in the year after Matthew Shepard’s murder. She observes, “Perhaps this is why I was fascinated by Jesus’ death: I saw the experience of my own people reflected in it.” In another chapter, Kegler recounts the pain of attending a church youth group for two years, with the leadership ultimately asking her to “pray the sinner’s prayer” when she revealed her sexual orientation.
Despite repeatedly encountering homophobia in church communities, Kegler persists in her attempts to have a relationship with God and a church family. She finds her way to St. Olaf College’s campus chapel; attends seminary, where she wrestles with the paradoxes in the Bible; and becomes an ordained Evangelical Lutheran Church of America minister serving in Minnesota.
Kegler brings her theologian’s hat to the book as well, insisting that readers see the queer community as made in God’s image. She addresses “clobber passages,” examines Paul’s motives in conversing with the early church about Christ’s death and resurrection, and ponders the definition of “sin.” She indicts the U.S. church for aligning itself too often with empire rather than with Christ.
Although Kegler sometimes harbors ill will toward those who oppress her, she does not place them in eternal damnation but at a never-ending banquet table with a God who resides outside time and space. “I have accepted being called to serve as a minister in a religion full of people who daily deny my humanity, my goodness, and the worthiness of my love, my vows, and my family,” she writes. “Dare to be found.”
Wendy Besel Hahn (wendybeselhahn.com) lives in Reston, Va., and writes about faith, family, and politics.
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