Luke 23

All four gospels provide a lengthy depiction of Jesus’ trial, and each writer brings their own lens to the story. Luke asserts Jesus’ innocence, portrays him as stunningly gracious, and surrounds him with people — those who hate him, those who adore him, and those who simply don’t know what to make of him.

For the first 25 verses of chapter 23, we follow the story of Jesus facing down Pilate, who seems increasingly desperate to release Jesus, declaring him innocent three times before ultimately giving in to the demand of a crowd that wants him crucified. The crowd relentlessly accuses Jesus of nonsense because they cannot say the wretched truth of it aloud: Jesus makes them uncomfortable. Jesus’s vision of the world would disrupt the power structures they benefit from. He stirs up the people, they say, glancing toward what they really mean.

And so Pilate sentences him to death. On the long walk to the cross, women are beating their breasts and wailing for Jesus, a sign of honor and despair, and Jesus comforts them and warns them. The state executes Jesus by nailing him to a cross between two “real” criminals. Jesus asks God for mercy for his executioners and promises one of the other victims of state execution a place in paradise. It all happens so fast, and then he dies, and the curtain of the temple tears down the middle, and the heart of the world is ripped out of its chest.

As the crowds disperse, Jesus’s friends and followers, including, always, the women, watch from a distance. A man, a Roman soldier, echoes the declaration of Jesus’s innocence (he does not declare Jesus’ identity as God’s son, the way he does in Matthew). Another man, who we commonly call Joseph of Arimathea, asks for Jesus’s body and lays it in a tomb. The women go to prepare spices and ointments, but before they can return to the tomb, the Sabbath comes, and so they rest.  

On Good Friday, we focus on Jesus — on his pain, his suffering, his broken body, his battered spirit. But Luke gives us a story densely packed with crowds and characters. Since it is June and not Holy Week, we have spaciousness to consider this queer web of humanity that weaves its careful way around the cross and how it points us to the new world that Jesus promises.

The parallels practically draw themselves between the treatment of Jesus and the scapegoating of queer people, especially those who are trans, Black, people of color, disabled, youth, or poor. All the vicious and vacuous accusations against LGBTQIA+ people of grooming, of being depraved, or of defiling the family clang noisily to cover the true crime of queer and trans people: We make people uncomfortable with our beautiful bodies and our outlandish dreams of a world where thriving, liberated communities live boldly. We stir up the people, and that simply won’t do. The comparisons continue. In the face of the lies, there are always politicians like Pilate who are willing give us up to the teeming hordes if it will keep them in power a little longer; in the march to the cross we see a gruesome anti-parade full of people proud of what they had accomplished as they made their way to the worst possible conclusion.

Queerest of all, perhaps, are the ones who stayed after it was all over and tended to the body. Association with Jesus was becoming more dangerous by the second, especially now that he was dead. Here was a body convicted, tortured, executed, streaked with gore, and left for the birds. Here was a body any reasonable, polite, or self-preserving person would have avoided at all costs. Joseph compromised his position of status among the religious elite because he knew what had happened was wrong, and he believed Jesus had something to do with the coming reign of God. He saw the truth of the body and let it assure him of that hope rather than striking in him fear or despair. He offered the body the decency of burial in a theretofore empty tomb.  

Then there were the women of Galilee who had possessed no leverage to disrupt the machinations of the state and who had wailed and heard Jesus’ devastating prophecy. From a reckless distance (for there was no safe proximity to Jesus at this point), they observed. They planned. They considered the spices and ointments that would complete the burial of the body.

Even as a corpse, the body of Jesus was proof of life — proof that he had been there, proof that those who loved him had really loved, proof that the transformation he had inaugurated might really continue.

The undeniability of that body gives me hope for queer life, too, even as we face a cascade of threats. People with stolen power seek to eradicate our health care and our intimacies and our presence in space with other people, but they will fail as long as anyone is brave enough to stay and see the truth of our bodies.

Ruth Coker Burks did not plan to begin caring for people with AIDS in 1984 when she was in her mid-20s. When visiting a friend in the hospital in Little Rock, Ark, she noticed a room with a door wrapped in red that all the nurses seemed to avoid. She felt compelled by God to sneak in. There, she found a young man, frail as could be, who wanted his mother. When it became clear that his mother would not come, she stayed with him for 13 hours until he died. Then, in an even more outlandish act of mercy, she cared for his body. She paid out of her own savings for his cremation and buried him in the family cemetery she had inherited, Files Cemetery in Hot Springs.

“I always wondered what I was going to do with a cemetery,” she said in a 2015 interview with the Arkansas Times. “Who knew there’d come a time when people didn’t want to bury their children?”

That man was the first of more than 1,000 people living with and dying of AIDS that Ruth would care for over a decade. Around 40 of them are buried in her family cemetery, where she dug grave after grave for remains that no one else would claim.

Ruth is one of countless people who forged their lives in solidarity with those with AIDS, witnessing their bodies in life and death and standing against powerful systems that thirsted for the deaths of queer people. She remembers the people she cared for, she knows where she tenderly buried the bodies and cremains, and she can testify to the realness of people who many would prefer to forget.

This history is painfully recent — Ruth is in her 60s. In fact, it feels practically current as the United States seeks to dispose of inconvenient people. We see this in the slashing of funding for AIDS research, the targeting of gender affirming care, and the marginalizing of reproductive care. We see it as even liberals reduce trans girls to a political wedge issue. We see it, too, in the destruction in Iran, the abandonment of Gaza, and the relentless work to squeeze the voting power of Black people into oblivion.

But we also see the shimmering reflection of that history among those who insist on witnessing, caring, and naming. The history of the AIDS solidarity movement resonates in Trans Day of Rememberance/Resiliance, through determined efforts to stop the abduction of immigrant neighbors by ICE, and in networks of mutual aid that help people access health care.

To witness the truth of a body, in life and in death, is an act of hope and a promise that we are here then, now, and always. Not only that, it proclaims that our here-ness changes the shape of the world and ushers in the kindom of God. Let’s stir up the people and tell them what we see.

Rev. Adrian White is a pastor and writer in Louisville, KY. Adrian embraces a calling to share the good news of God’s extravagant love and create sacred spaces where all people can thrive. They earned their M.Div at Vanderbilt Divinity School and served for six years as a More Light Presbyterians board member. Adrian enjoys board games, crochet, and going for walks with their spouse Wynn and dog Bex.