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 Incompatible: How the Church Cast Out LGBTQ Christians & Where We Go Next. 

Incompatible: two things so opposed in character as to be incapable of existing together. LGBTQ Christians exist. They worship beside you, preach from your pulpits, direct your choirs, and love God and neighbor, just like you. Yet denominations continue to split over issues around inclusion, and LGBTQ Christians are told their faith and sexuality are incompatible. When two young congregants approach their pastor on the subject of LGBTQ inclusion in the church, they embark on a journey through the history of Christian belief and practices around human sexuality. Centered around the events leading to the current split within The United Methodist denomination, this funny and informative graphic novel explores how the full inclusion of LGBTQ Christians is a faithful witness to the work of the Holy Spirit.

Incompatible is now 50% off, plus free shipping, for a limited time at wipfandstock.com when you use the coupon code: CONFSHIP

“Incompatible is a stunning work of art, a potent mix of graphics and story that offers not only a glimpse of how we got to where we are but shines a hopeful light on the path forward.”
—Matthew Paul Turner, author of What Is God Like?“

“Charlie Baber succeeds admirably in bringing context to the debate over LGBT rights and inclusion—both biblical context and historical context.”
—Randall Balmer, professor of religion, Dartmouth College

And don’t miss the new Wesley Bros Liturgical Calendars, now available in our Etsy shop.

Marking time with the Liturgical Calendar reminds us that we are living in God’s story.

Liturgy, a word meaning “the work of the people,” is written and designed to incorporate us in the great script of God’s gracious love. Of course, the risk of tradition, creed and recitation is that, well… we can take it all for granted.  We can forget the greatness of God, the incredible calling into a world where Death is not the end, Sin is not the victor, and the powers that seem to shape our lives do not have to define us.  And. AND. Tradition and creed and recitation can shape our imagination to see that calling into God’s great love.

Typically, the Liturgical Calendar is presented as a circle, immediately challenging our view of time as it appears on or normal wall or desk calendars. The circle is a visual representation of the eternal mystery of God’s love, incorporating the natural cycles and rhythms of life into lives patterned by the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I invite you to follow the calendar image with me as we walk through the calendar now.  The Christian Year begins, not on New Year’s Day, but with the first Sunday of Advent, four Sundays before Christmas.  Our year begins with a promise that pulls us into the past and future at the same time: the Prince of Peace has come, is coming, will come again. The images I’ve created for my calendar from Advent to Lent evoke the wonder, the celebration, and the fear experienced by the Holy Family surrounding the birth of Jesus.  The dress and appearance of the characters in my artwork is inspired largely by modern day Palestinian shepherds. As Mary feeds the infant, three red swords pierce her heart, symbolizing the pain she would experience as the mother of Jesus, soon to be realized in the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt at Herod’s command to slaughter the sons of Bethlehem. Even while the family is laden with colors of blue for royalty and gold for holiness and purity, they are refugees and immigrants, the poor and the powerless.  The purple is a reminder of lament and penitence even as we anticipate the coming of Christ.  The birth of Christ is celebrated closely to the shortest day of the year, a symbol of light breaking into the longest of nights.

The year moves onwards into a season of preparation called Lent (an old word possibly meaning the “lengthening of seasons”). As the days grow longer, we follow Jesus into his forty days fasting in the wilderness.  Though the wilderness was only the start of Jesus’ ministry, we let it prepare us for Holy Week, knowing that our own call to ministry comes after the stories of Easter and Pentecost. The imagery here shows a famished Christ figure looking out over the events surrounding his death. The waving of palms heralding the Messiah, followed by the betrayal, the cross, and the tomb.  The colors of this season continue in purples, with red or black even making an appearance in Holy Week, all reminders of the sorrow and suffering of Jesus.

At the bottom of my calendar, the Holy Spirit dove, like a flame descending connects the image of the empty tomb to a Pentecost represented by immigrants detained behind fences in the United States.  Pentecost is a bright burst of red fire and passion on the Liturgical Calendar, leading us into six months of “Ordinary Time,” the living of everyday life and ministry.  I intentionally chose to draw from actual photographs taken in the last few years of Latino men, women and children…families…caught in an ideological war that makes them the villain of the story. The Pentecost event reveals to us that the spark of the Holy Spirit is already at work in every person, and for those who open their hearts to Christ, the spark becomes a flame.

The final image on the calendar takes us through Ordinary Time into the final Holy Days of the year: All Saints and Reign of Christ.  The imagery moves from the curse to the gift, from swords (or in this case, fences and jails) into plowshares. The Holy Spirit Dove is now portrayed as a vast Seraphim, a mysterious multi-winged and many-eyed creature of fire containing galaxies in its wings.  It is monstrous and vast, and it can’t take its eyes off of worshiping the victorious Christ.  Yet even in victory, Christ is the Lamb-Who-Was-Slain, and we who proclaim Christ as Lord must live accordingly.

Thus the year ends and begins again, and we who are baptized into the patterns of Christ, who regularly partake of the Body and Blood of Christ through Holy Communion, are we not called to live lives shaped by the rhythms of grace?  The inward spiral of the circular calendar invites us into deeper spiritual connections with God. At the center of my calendar, a simple reflection from 1 John 4:20 calls us into daily reflection on our ordinary lives as they connect to the extraordinary Christ:

“For if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?”

You can purchase this Liturgical Calendar at the Wesley Bros Comics Etsy store.