Jesus says LOVE is above all other things: If the Church were Christian #3

When I started college 10 years ago, I was different.  I was raised in Southern Iowa, a small town called Mediapolis.  I was near a larger town, Burlington, but really I was in Mediapolis and the surrounding country for most of the my life, even until now.  It was farm land, a slower place with open spaces and beautiful sunrises and sunsets.  I miss it sometimes, like I miss the simplicity of being a child where I didn’t have to make decisions, pay bills, and be a grown up and stand on the sides of issues.  It’s easier that way.

When I moved to college 10 years ago, everything changed.  My first roommate was named Chad, and from the beginning we hit it off as friends.  He was a nightowl, I a morning person with quirks.  We bickered a little, but laughed a lot. 

And one night, he started talking about himself, and I realized that this guy was probably different.  He spoke honestly, though at times in code, fearful as he would later tell me to be open with someone who was from such a small town.  He was from Chicago, the child of divorced parents, had been given a chance in his early teens to perform in theatre, and had become the youngest person to ever play the Beast in Beauty and the Beast.  But there were more things about Chad.  He was different, and yet I couldn’t put my finger on it for the longest time, mostly because I was naïve. 

Finally, I figured it out.  I asked him, and slowly he was willing to tell the truth.  He said it took as while because I talked about my father as being a lifetime member of the national rifle association and that I was a Christian, He told me that he had met other Christians like me before and that the thought of us being so off tuned with our message of Jesus’ love for the world made him seriously question having conversations about anything.  But finally, one night, he told me.  My friend Chad is the first gay man I ever met.  My first gay friend.

I had not been raised to see homosexuality as right.  It wasn’t really talked about in my family, as least I can’t remember it being talked about.  I don’t remember much about church saying anything about it, I mean it was ten years ago, but I’m sure they did say some things, especially in the conservative environment I grew up in.  But once he told me, he didn’t have to change anything about himself around me, because I was changing. I respected him in a way I had not respect other people.  He was my first gay friend….and I had to reconcile my thoughts on Christianity and homosexuality.

I believe this is the moment most of us face when we come face to face with members of the GLBTA community for the first time.  Maybe you know someone who is gay; most of us do these days.  And you know what, I rarely find them to be much different than anyone else. 

In only a few weeks, this state is going to have a moment unlike any other in its history.  For the first time, we as Minnesotians are going to vote on whether we believe that marriage can be instituted onto two people in this society or to two people in this society who each individually meet certain categorical features.  Now I won’t speak what those guidelines are for fear of censor in the public setting, but you probably get what I’m saying.   And you know, as a person who has many many close friends and even students who are gay, I’m going to tell you that as a pastor, I could never vote to limit love. 

But I want to know that I’m doing it not just because of my morals, but because of my faith.

The Biblical Understanding

There are several passages in the Bible which speak wholeheartedly against homosexuality, or at least it seems that way.  Passages about a man lieing with another man, with stories of unclean acts, a passage in Corinthians from Paul, and a few others.  They are there, and they glare out at us because we don’t understand them fully.  And we don’t always understand them fully because we don’t have all the context in which to understand them.  And today, I hope we come to a better understanding.  Because understanding is the only hope we have left.  We must come to understand the reality of what is happening in these passages, the reality of something that happens and then something that happens that might even show greater understanding. 

Now I’m going to ask you to consider something as we do this.  Consider your what your heart might tell you.  What does that mean.  I want you to use John Wesley’s principles of discernment so that you might bring your heart into the situation.  Wesley’s quadrilateral, which isn’t really his but at least helps us enough to comes to terms with ideas, is that of scripture, traditions, reason, and experience.  This means that with every passage we consider, we look to our heart and our experience just as we look to scripture….

Of all of the passages in the Bible that seem to stand against homosexuality, one glaring one exists that stands above all the rest. It is famous, and has been used more and more by people to claim the sinfulness of homosexuality.  I want us to read it out loud today.  It is in Genesis, and you will know it from the start.  It is the story of Sodom and Gamorrah. 

reading of the story of Sodom and Gamorrah

This story is powerful, painful, and harsh.  God strikes down the people and leaves the town in ruins.  And it’s all because of homosexuality….or is it. 

Before we get there, I want to read another passage, this one from Hebrews, and it’s in excerpt form because otherwise we might be a here for a little while.  here these words….

Hebrews 2: 2-3

These two stories are synced.  This story in Hebrews, which is a text that was written to help the Jewish people understand how Jesus was a part of their tradition, well, it’s a reference back to this passage, and actually the passage from Sodom and Gomorrah a response from an earlier passage, only a chapter before in Genesis, when Abraham stops everything he’s doing and offers three men a fatted calf and everything else just to make them feel welcome.  The story of Sodom and Gomorrah, that’s the antithesis.

The real moral of the story is in twined within each of these. It’s a story of hospitality.  Consider Abraham, who stopped what he was doing and offered the meal and greeting to passing men.  Then consider Lot, who did the same for the two angels in his midst and provided them with shelter.  BUT the townpersons came out, they came for something different.

The men of the town aren’t there to welcome them to town, to give them shelter, but are there to “know them”.  Or in Biblical Hebrew the word is “yada.”  Now knowing one another in the Biblical sense is not always about sexual intercourse, but in this situation it does seem likely.  And so we are led to assume they want to “know” them in the sexual way.  But If that true, I don’t hear permission or invitation in this passage.  Maybe we could go on a few dates, get to know each other, see how it goes…. No, I hear demand. 

And as they seek to press on the door (breaking down the door to get what they want, the men of the town are going to take what they want…and that makes their act attempted rape.

And there is nothing more stripping of pride, more grasping of power than rape.  For anyone in this room who might have experienced rape personally or have someone in their family who has experienced it, we know but yet might never truly know how horrendously powerless it leaves its victims.  There is nothing more intimate than the sharing of our bodies in sexuality, and there is no more stripping of a persons identity than to force sexuality onto it.  And so when we look at it, this is about a power grab, a physical and emotional and psychological break of what is known in the Hebrew world as the hospitality code.

That hospitality code, it’s Hebrews 13.  Do not lack to provide hospitality to strangers, for you might be entertaining angels.  Thus, all persons are meant to be provided with shelter, nourishment, clothing is needed, and safety.  It’s like the universal declaration of human rights.  And trust me, raping someone, heterosexuality or other, is not welcome in this hospitality code.

I also want to say one more thing.  Lot, in 3,000 year old tradition, offers his two daughters as substitutes for this.  Don’t think that this is a legitament replacement and that the passage would have gone differently had they men simply took out their lust on the women.  No, whoever wrote this passage intends very clearly to remind the audience that at all ends, the men of the town have done a horrendous thing by exchanging the need for hospitality with their personal need for sex.

So now, we begin to realize how important God puts hospitality in the kingdom of the God.  Welcoming the stranger with graciousness and love is more important than almost anything else. And there is quite a bit on love that needs to be heard in the Bible, and most of it comes from Jesus, who has a few things to say about the hospitality code in his own right.  Let’s hear just a little bit from him about hospitality.

“Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”
Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40)

“Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets. (Matthew 7:12)

“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? (Matthew 5:43-47 )

Member of this community, we have an Entire biblical Canon, filled with Love.  We have a Biblical cannon that says all are welcome, that tax collectors, children, prostitutes, the neighbor, everyone is welcome.  We have a book that tells us to provide hospitality to angels in our midst, to all persons, and yet we as a church are struggling to let the Church be that witness of that Book. 

I watch college students every day, my own students, gay, straight, transgender, a university, a generation who is begging us to change our views, to stand up for what has become the single greatest issue of a generation.  I work with a generation who I believe to be the last great hope for the political nightmares of the world, for the climate issues we now face, for the poverty that could come if we stop caring about each other and go our own ways, for the world where violence is the end of misunderstanding between faith traditions and death is on the doorstep for tens of millions of starving people around the world. 

And in the midst of it all, I see people, filled with hope, looking for someone to share their lives with, to wake up to the desire to love and be loved by someone who is of their orientation, to sit and die with their most beloved persons, to simply be in a world where hardly any of us can “be” any more.  The time has come for the church to live it’s call, to learn to provide hospitality to all, but to provide it with the love and the grace and the welcome that Jesus the Christ provided to every single person he ever met, from prostitute to tax collector, from rich man to poor man, from widow to Pharisee. 

So the world might remain a place of fear of others,

        BUT NOT MY CHURCH

the world can remain full of bigotry and hatred if it likes,

        BUT NOT MY CHURCH

the world might remain a place of violence and of hopelessness

        BUT NOT MY CHURCH

the world might continue to be divided and to call for division of love and withholding of legal designations of love

BUT NOT MY CHURCH

the world  might remain behind the times and be an agent of frustration and loss

BUT NOT MY CHURCH!

The time has come for this Church to wake up, for each of us to stand up and to make a choice: will we be part of the inbreaking of the kingdom of God or part of that which holds back this radical love.  Isn’t that what it’s all about.  Love. 

Don’t you think that God loves you…

Are We Not Meant to be a Reflection of God in the world.

To Love as closely in unison to God’s love as we can attain, even if that means we change from our views and stand on the side of God….to become something we never thought possible, to come to terms with our friends and our families and to learn to love all persons.

This Church can kick me out, can send me home, can tell me I’m wrong, but I am a Christian, have been to seminary, have studied the scriptures, and have listened to the words of Rabbi Hillel: The whole of the Torah is contained as follows “Love God and Love your Neighbor.  All the rest is commentary.” 

        My friend Chad and I are still friends, and in fact he and I spoke this weekend before I decided to preach this sermon, and he said one thing to me that is most clear: hate cannote drive out hate, only love that can that…quoting MLK.  It is a journey that we are on, a journey that takes us to new places, and while many of us may have rejected moving forward in our conversations on the GBLTA community as a fully free and welcome group in the church, today we need look to God’s love and grace, and in so doing we might envision wider dreams and if we envision those wider dreams, then the kingdom of God will truly be broken open in this world for ALL persons.