"When Christian Get It Wrong: In Dealing with Homosexuality" Midweek Lenten Sermon

When Christian Get It Wrong: In Dealing with Homosexuality
Rev. Collette Broady Preiss, Redeemer Lutheran Church, Good Thunder, MN
Lenten Wednesdays 2013: Round Robin

Well, here we are in Lent again, with the beginning of another round robin sermon series. Part of me is wondering why I agreed to do this again, after last year where my colleagues decided at a meeting I didn’t attend to preach about forgiveness just as I was getting divorced. So this year, I thought I’d better attend the meeting and have my say, and what did I end up with: preaching about homosexuality! Somehow I still ended up with the short straw!

But seriously, I’m completely with Adam Hamilton here, I think one of the biggest things Christianity has gotten wrong in the last generation is about homosexuality. And the Barna Group study, which Hamilton’s book draws on shows that too: the #1 answer given by people outside the church when asked how they would describe Christians is “anti-homosexual” 91% of those interviewed gave that answer.

That troubles me, for two reasons: first, because I don’t want to be known as a church that is anti-anyone, and second, because Christianity’s discussion around this issue has exposed a deep misunderstanding about the nature of Scripture and its authority in our lives.

 Let me start with the second piece, about how we interpret and apply scripture in our churches and in our lives. If we were to judge by the amount of attention given to this issues, one would think that the bible was nearly all about sex, and specifically prohibitions against homosexuality. In fact, there are just 7 bible passages that mention things even remotely connected to homosexuality. There are more than twice that many that say women shouldn’t be leaders in the church, and more than 10 times that many that talk about specific dietary restrictions for followers of God.

So this is the question, how do we decide which of Scripture’s laws and instructions we still follow, and which no longer apply? Dare we talk about some of Scripture being antiquated without endangering the authority of the whole Bible?

Well, thankfully we are not the first Christians to encounter these difficult issues. In fact, the Christian church faced just such an issue in its very first years, not long after Jesus had ascended back to heaven. You see, the 12 original apostles (well, 11 I guess!), with Peter as their leader went around preaching the message of Jesus. And when people became believers, the apostles told them that they needed to become Jews before they became Christians, that is they needed to be circumcised. Because in their understanding, Jesus was a fulfillment of the covenant God has made with God’s people from generations back, beginning with Abraham, and the sign of that covenant was circumcision.

Then along comes Paul, that 13th apostle, late to the game, and he begins to preach that circumcision is unnecessary, that the Old Testament covenant no longer applies because of what Jesus has done. There began to be two factions within that first Christian community, those who believed circumcision was necessary and those who though it no longer applied.

So how did they resolve their disagreement? Well, Peter had a vision. The story is in Acts chapters 10 and 11. One night while he is sleeping, he has a vision of a sheet being lowered from heaven. It’s filled with all kinds of animals that the Old Testament law calls unclean, things like shellfish and animals with cloven hooves and birds. And he hears a voice, “Get up Peter, kill and eat.”

“No way!” he says, “nothing unclean has ever passed these lips and I’m not about to start now.” Three times this happens, the sheet full of unclean animals descends and he hears the voice, “Get up Peter, kill and eat.” And after his third refusal, he hears the voice from heaven say this: “What God has made clean, you must not call unclean.”

I want to read to you what Adam Hamilton says about this passage because I think it’s right on: “In Peter’s vision, he hears God telling him to do something expressly forbidden by Scripture. Peter is told to set aside a clear teaching of Scripture, and he is given permission to eat what had formerly been unclean...Peter has an epiphany! He suddenly understands: The rules are changing! Peter’s world is changing, and he move beyond the mind-set that says, “The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it.” Instead he says, “The Bible says it, but I think God is up to something new, so I will listen to and follow God.’” (Pages 98-99)

This kind of change of mind-set, change in the rules is what biblical scholars refer to as “progressive revelation”, the idea that God speaks to her people in every time and place, giving them new insight through scripture and prayer to help them understand what God is up to in their everyday lives.

The problem with this “progressive revelation”, of course, is that in our present moment, there are all kinds of voices claiming to have received revelation from God on the issues of homosexuality, and they are saying radically different things. The church is divided on this issue.

And anyway, the transformation from Christians getting is wrong to Christians getting it right doesn’t usually come by direct revelation anyway; it comes by a more subtle, yet more powerful way. Transformation into a more Christ-like people comes through love.

That’s what the story of the woman at the well is about: transformation through love.

Jesus sits down at the well, and the woman comes unexpectedly at noon day. And they have this remarkable conversation. There are so many reasons that conversation should never have happened: Jesus is a man and she is a woman, they shouldn’t have been having a conversation in public; Jesus is a Jew and she is a Samaritan, they shouldn’t have been sharing a ladle of water; Jesus is a rabbi, a respected teacher, and she is an outcast. The other woman would have been there early in the morning, while the day was still cool to draw their water, to have that moment of community and connection before their day began. But this woman wasn’t welcome there, because of her lifestyle.

But did you notice that Jesus speaks no word of judgment to this Samaritan woman about her lifestyle? He simply says, “What you have said is true.” He simply talks with her, crossing over all kinds of social boundaries to do so. He takes her questions seriously, he shows her the respect that others don’t, he invites her to receive his abundant life even though other would exclude her.

The best way for Christians to get it right, in dealing with homosexuality or anything else, is to take our cues from Jesus himself: to sit down to honest and open conversation with those who are different from us, to invite participation from those we might be inclined to exclude, to show love without judgment.

Which is so much easier said than done. The “solution” I most often hear to the internal struggle of the church to show love to LGBTQ people, especially from Christians who think homosexuality is a sin, is that we should “love the sinner” and “hate the sin”.

My friends, it cannot be done, at least not by humans. You cannot feel hate about a major part of someone’s life and act in a completely loving way toward them. I’ve tried to do it myself, with a certain someone in my life who shall remain nameless, and I failed miserably. As long as I was hating his sin, what I felt when I saw or spoke to him was not love, but anger and self-righteousness.

And I know he felt that, even when I was convinced I was trying to be loving. It has only been since I have completely relinquished my right to judge his actions, that I have been able to act in a way that feels like Christ-like love to him.

And the witness of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters in the world shows that the same is true for them. I want to read just a couple of comments from gay Christians that I talked to about that phrase “love the sinner, hate the sin”

One man, who has been a church organist his whole life says this: “Speaking as a gay man who has had that phrase pointed in my direction by a huge number of people who don't know me and never will, I would say unequivocally 'no', it is not possible to love the sinner and hate the sin. An LGBTQ person cannot hear that and feel anything but excluded. I do not believe it is possible to love someone fully when you are calling them a sinner (the implication is that the speaker is not a sinner, which is an absurd position in a Christian worldview).”

Another young man in the church said: “I think this concept confuses loving with liking. Liking is the act of preferring, and loving is a comprehensive caring for someone. If I'm caring for someone completely and unconditionally, whether I like all their behaviors or aspects is irrelevant. In fact, it seems that to focus on "hating the sin" is to block yourself from totally loving that person. I've never heard "love the sinner, hate the sin" said in a way that couldn't be translated as, "yea, you're great, but I feel a pressing need to tell you what I don't like about you." I prefer not to be loved like that.”

Perhaps, as one of my straight friends put it, the key to getting it right as Christians is: “I to worry a great deal about the love part and not much at all about the sin part.”

Which is basically the conclusion that Adam Hamilton comes to too. I’ll close with this quote from him:

“Not all Christians see the issue of homosexuality in the same way. The church is divided on this issue. But even in a divided church, we can agree that we wish to be the kind of church in which men and women who are gay and lesbian find the warmth and welcome and love of Jesus Christ. I think Christians get it wrong when they speak in ways that bring harm and alienation to God’s gay children. I think we get it right when, even in our uncertainty, we express the love and welcome of the one who offered living water to the woman at the well.” Amen.