Continuing the Conversation about Homosexuality and Faith

The Very Rev. John P. Streit, Jr.
September 28, 2003
Cathedral Church of St. Paul , Boston,
and Broadcast on WCRB 102.5 FM

Several weeks ago I preached a sermon on the radio about the Episcopal Church’s decision at our General Convention to confirm New Hampshire ’s election of Gene Robinson, who is a gay, as bishop. In that sermon I raised what I imagined concerns or objections people might have to this decision and then I tried to address them, I tried to explain why these concerns might not ultimately be limiting.

Since then I have had some experiences that helped me see what I said might have been helpful, but it was incomplete. In that earlier sermon I addressed objections but didn’t offer any theological or Biblical reasons for why this could be a good thing, how God might be seen at work in a gay man becoming a bishop.

The gospel reading we just heard (Mark 9:38 -50) is a vivid and stark statement about how important it is for us to make every conceivable effort to avoid sin. Although I would argue that Jesus was not being literal when he suggested that we might cut off our hands or pluck out our eyes when they are agents of sin, he was clearly trying to be forceful in his teaching that we should do whatever we can to avoid sin.

The church has taught since its inception that homosexual practice is a sin.

If this is the case, then how can anyone imagine that electing a gay man as bishop is part of God’s plan? How is this not simply an obvious case of what we all tend to do, or want to do, which is to explain, rationalize, REDEFINE inappropriate behavior, excusing it so instead of having to change, repent, we simply claim that there is no problem and move on.

Most of the accounts of the prophets describe this dynamic; a nation filled with people who are smug and self-satisfied in their conduct, and so God sends a prophet; a lonely, often reluctant voice to remind the people of God’s laws, God’s will; that they may succeed in fooling themselves but they can’t fool God. Sometimes this occurs on a smaller scale, prophets address not national but individual misconduct, usually on the part of a king or leader. In either case almost always the prophet is ignored, with devastating consequences. On rare occasions the warnings are heeded and repentance and change follow.

The Episcopal Church’s decision to elect and then affirm an openly gay man as a bishop seems to many people to be the latest example of this unfortunate history, of explaining away or redefining sin to justify our own behavior.

There is another way to look at this, also very much in the Biblical tradition.

Let me begin by saying something fundamental and important that I believe to be true, a belief that I suspect is shared by virtually everyone in the Christian church, regardless of denomination or whether they would describe themselves as theologically liberal or conservative.

I believe that God is alive, and that God is active in the world, acting through the Holy Spirit. When we talk about the living Christ, we don’t just mean the memory of this great man Jesus lives on in our hearts, the way Martin Luther King, Jr. or Abraham Lincoln do, but that Christ, who is with God, is alive, is a part of God.

If Christ is living, with God, and if the Holy Spirit is active in the world, how does this happen, how does this work? If I pray to God and ask for an answer to prayer, how does God answer me?

In the Bible this seems to happen most often in two ways. The first way is through direct contact: the Angel Gabriel appears to Mary, speaks directly to her. Isaiah receives a vision of God while serving in the temple. Moses hears a voice speaking to him from a burning bush in the desert.

Sometimes God speaks directly and we still don’t understand or hear this clearly. God spoke again and again late one night to the young boy Samuel, whom he was calling as a prophet, but Samuel thought he was being called by Eli, the priest with whom he lived and served, and so he kept going in, waking Eli up, and telling him, “You called me, here I am.”

This happened repeatedly until Eli realized who was calling Samuel, and so he told the young boy if it happened again to respond, “Speak, Lord; your servant hears you.”

Just as Samuel needed Eli to help him understand that it was God calling out to him, we often need other people to help us see or hear God at work in the world or in our lives. This is the second way God seems to act, through other people. It is the way I most often experience God acting in my life. There is evidence that God even acted this way in Jesus’s life as well.

Jesus was absolutely clear in his own mind that he had come to minister and witness to the Jewish people and NOT to those outside the Judaism. When he sends the twelve disciples out he is quite explicit about this, telling them: “Do not turn your steps to pagan territory, and do not enter any Samaritan town; go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” (Matthew 10:6)

He models this behavior himself when the Canaanite woman comes to him to ask that her daughter be healed; first Jesus won’t even speak to her, and when she continues to beg him for help, he tells her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” (Matthew 15:24)

But the woman still won’t give up, and she kneels at his feet, still pleading. Jesus is clear that this is not something he thinks God is calling him to do, and he still refuses, but clearly he is growing impatient and he insults her, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” (Matthew 15:26) She will not give up. She tells him that even dogs are allowed scraps of food from the table.

Her persistence apparently touches him, causes him to change his mind, and he reverses his action and her daughter is healed. There is healing for this young girl, and I would argue, for Jesus as well. He is changed by the encounter.

This is how God often seems to work in the world, through the actions and persistence of other people, who help us see or understand things in a new way, and in this understanding help us move in a new direction.

We see this happening in the Book of Acts, when Peter and Paul are engaged in a debate about the importance of following the commandments God had given the Jewish people; not simply the 10 commandments, but all the laws that are laid out in Leviticus and the Book of Numbers. Peter insists that the followers of Christ need to keep these laws, and so, for example, adhere to the Jewish dietary restrictions. Paul, who was spending time preaching to and living among non-Jews, argued that they were being drawn to this fellowship, wanted to become followers of Christ, and that this desire was what mattered for them, not Jewish law, and so Gentiles should not be required to follow Jewish law in order to be included, to be baptized and become a part of the Christian community.

The original followers of Christ were being impacted by those outside the body, others who wanted to be included, who also felt called to follow Jesus, and ultimately Paul’s vision for the church was embraced, and the church broadened it’s understanding, changed it’s focus. In this instance God acted both through other people (Paul and all the Gentiles who wanted to be Christians) and through direct communication, as Peter had a dream that he understood God was telling him that Gentile converts need not follow Jewish law.

 As I look at the pattern of God’s actions in the world, as recorded both in the Bible and in history, God intervenes again and again, sometimes through direct communication and action, sometimes through the agency of other people. Almost always these interventions seem unexpected, surprising, leading people into new places, new understandings. It also seems to be the case that God’s acts to broaden the covenant, to include more and more people.

So God first spoke to Sarai and Abram, inviting them to leave what was familiar and known, to journey to a new place, promising if they did so they would be blessed beyond all measure, so much that their descendents would number as the stars in the heavens or grains of sand on the beach. And so they did, and so it happened; a covenant with just two people. They were even given new names to signify the change.

Then came the covenant with the People of Israel, whom God led out of slavery into freedom, also bringing them on a journey from a familiar place to a new, unknown place. This covenant, given the people at Sinai, was a covenant with an entire people, a nation.

With the birth of Jesus, the coming of Christ, we see another change, another broadening of the covenant, beginning with the encounter with the Canaanite woman who asked for healing for her daughter who was not Jewish, but continuing with Paul, whose missionary zeal that almost literally knew no boundaries, reaching far beyond what people imagined to be appropriate and acceptable and so including Gentiles, pagans.

This was God moving beyond a particular people or nation, being open to all. This movement continues, it seems to me. As I noted in my sermon several weeks ago, people of faith imagined, for a long time, that slavery was a part of God’s plan for the world. It was supported by scripture, both Old and New Testament, and also supported by tradition for a long, long time.

But there came a point when people imagined that buying and selling other human beings like cattle or pigs could not be a part of God’s plan for the world, no matter what the Bible said or no matter what our tradition had supported. Slavery was unacceptable.

This understanding, this change in thinking and practice, was brought about through people; abolitionists, who kept exerting pressure and making a witness against this practice, even acting to help slaves escape, or harbor those that did escape, even though this was against the law.

In hindsight it is easy to see the hand of God, moving again, beyond the existing limits to encompass and include people who had been previously excluded. And once slavery was abolished the church still tended to exclude even freed slaves, denying them leadership roles. We celebrate Absalom Jones as the first black person ordained in the Episcopal Church (and here at the Cathedral we remember Alexander Crummel, the third black person ordained in the Episcopal Church, and the first in our diocese, ordained here at St. Paul’s.) but don’t always remember his ordination came, in part, because he was not welcome in the white church, and so left, started his own church.

This understanding of divine history may make God seem like a giddy adolescent, one who can’t make up his or her mind, but we affirm and believe that God is eternal and unchanging, we remember Paul’s statement that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, so how can I ascribe these changes to God?

God may be eternal and unchanging, but that doesn’t mean we understand God’s will perfectly, nor does it mean that every aspect of God’s will is shown to us all at once, at the same time. I think it is also true that OUR understanding of God changes and grows, WE may understand better, grow closer to God’s will.

Remember that for centuries the church (and the world) believed that the sun moved around the earth, that the earth was still, both because it looked as though this is what happened, but also because it says this in the Book of Joshua. Galileo, through his observations and experiments, understood differently, that the earth moved around the sun.

The church silenced him, demanded that he retract this belief, but of course ultimately he was proven right, the church wrong. The earth moves around the sun, not the other way around, no matter what the church said or believed.

Nothing changed. The earth always moved around the sun, but as we learned more, as we listened to others (like Galileo) we learned more, observed more, and we understood more; in fact we understood better.

I believe this dynamic is at work with the election of a gay man as bishop, and with the subsequent confirmation by the church. People upset with this decision have said that the church is simply reacting to secular society, but that’s exactly how the Canaanite woman’s daughter was healed, that’s exactly how Gentiles got included in the first century, that’s why the church no longer teaches that the sun orbits the earth; that’s how God works in the world, at least according to the Bible.

I understand that others may not share my belief, and I think it is possible that I am not right, but whether this decision was right or wrong, it is not true that the Episcopal Church was operating outside our scriptural and faith tradition, but we were operating very much within that tradition. It may prove to have been a mistake, just as the church has made mistakes in the past, and so the decision is very much open for discussion and debate, but what is important to remember in this debate is that God is alive and acting in our world, and that God’s actions are often new and unprecedented, at least according to the Bible.

I believe, like the Canaanite woman’s daughter, we in the church are being healed, are being made more whole.

And I give thanks.