Today’s post is part of a larger initiative of more than 50 bloggers, all sharing their thoughts on how to “bride the gap” between people on the topic of faith and sexuality.  You can find the links of other bloggers participating in this undertaking at Bridging the Gap, an outreach of New Directions Ministries of Canada. In the near future I will be providing a review of their interactive DVD resource, Bridging the Gap: Conversations on Befriending Our Gay Neighbors (clips available here), along with a blog interview with Wendy VanderWal Gritter, the National Director of New Directions.

Okay. That was the very official sounding introductory blurb. Now let me just talk to you who follow this blog regularly for a minute; those of you who feel fairly banged up and battered emotionally and spiritually by some within the church over the issue of homosexuality. You know where I stand on the issue of homosexuality. I’m a lesbian who is happily married to the finest of women and I’m a Christian who is committed heart, soul, and mind to God through Christ Jesus. Though today’s blog is part of a bigger project and in participating we’ve been encouraged to not defend a particular position I could never in good conscious hold back from sharing up front that a personal relationship with God is available to all who seek God; gay, straight, bisexual, transgendered, queer, same-sex attracted or confused. I have to go through this little bit first on the off-chance that someone would chance upon this blog today for the first time in desperate need of hearing that God loves them just as they are. Here’s a word from my heart to yours free of agenda or hidden motive. The word is this; be assured that right now in this very moment God loves you. You always have been and you always will be, and there is nothing you can do or become that will make you more or less worthy of that love. You are God’s beloved, precious and cherished in His sight. Please hear that and take it in as deep as you can allow it.

After having said all that for the one person who might stumble across this blog today, this post isn’t about being a gay Christian. Neither is this post about ex-gay ministries or gay-affirming congregations or about the issue of homosexuality within the church today. It’s not even about differing opinions on faith and sexuality or the Bible and homosexuality but instead it’s about how we are to embody honor and respect in our conversations and relationships with those with whom we may disagree on the topic of homosexuality.

Let me be clear about something. To possess a willingness to enter into a conversation with someone else means having a shared commitment to listen to them as much as having them listen to you and we all know fully well there are those on both sides of the gap who have no interest in conversation but instead are given only to diatribes that wound and destroy. I would suggest that for the time being we put those folks to the side; not that we forget about them, or write them off as impossible but instead we begin by turning our attention and energy to one another; to those on the other side of the gap who are equally committed as we are to meeting in the middle; not in the sense of compromising our convictions but in the sense of approaching the other from a place of compassion and grace that says, “Despite our differences you are my brother, you are my sister. Know me and let me know you.” When we who share that same commitment can find a way to come together in Christ then together we can reach out to the edges, to those stuck in their agendas and deafened by their own rhetoric and through our unified spirit and in the Spirit’s power and love draw them in.

So. Here we are. We’re standing here on this side, they’re standing over there on that side, and the place we want to come together is in the middle where Christ is calling us to meet one another. How do we do it? I mean really. How do we take that first step in their direction when we’re all too aware of the risk involved, the all too familiar risk of being rejected and ridiculed, of having words of hate targeted at us, of being patronized and stereotyped or judged and condemned? How about this as a starting off point? How about casting our vision toward the people on the other side of the gap and seeing that for them there’s no less risk than there is for us. We’re all making ourselves vulnerable to one another, willing to risk being hurt by the other for the hope that a community of mutual love and respect can be born and nurtured up among us. As Christians we follow Christ who led by his love for God and the other was forever crossing bridges at incredible risk and had he not take that risk time and again, the blind would never have healed, the leper never restored to community, and the outcast and sinners would have forever been left alone at the table. It makes me wonder what healing and reconciliation we’re preventing in the lives of ourselves and others by hesitating in stepping forward, let alone what incredible glimpses of the invisible kingdom could be seen by all the world were we to step forward with open hearts and hands. Risking all for this moment to lose nothing in the end.

And for me, there’s one basic truth underlying what I just wrote that I keep coming back to every time I’m not sure if I want to bother to keep trying or to reach out again or to stay in the conversation. It’s just this; that what we have in common with one another is more than what divides us. Okay. I got it. They think homosexuality is a sin and that same-sex relationships aren’t God’s ideal for humanity while they think we’re being intolerant and exclusionary in who we welcome and don’t welcome into the church. I’m not minimizing the harm in either position but really folks, for the greater good, that being God’s glory, and the witness of Christ’s church in the world, could we let all that go and focus instead on what we share together? How about these for a start?

1. We’re all human. At least on our good days.

2. We’re all created and loved by God.

3. we’re all of equal worth and value.

4. We’re all equally flawed and messy.

5. We all desire to do what’s right before God.

And then 6 through 10,000 would cover the gambit from we all want to be loved and to love, to none of us want to be seated next to a screaming baby on an international flight. Make your own list by looking at your fears and joys, at your greatest desires and expectations and then attributing them to the other; that one over there on the other side near the edge of the bridge. If I can look across the gap and see him or her as God’s very own, then I stand of chance of being part of what God so longs to do among us; that we would let go of all our judgments of the other and of our need to be right and for them to be wrong, and just allow God to be God, extending Divine compassion and mercy as equally in their lives as God has shown time and again in mine.

I don’t know. Maybe I missed the point of what this whole synchroblog on “Bridging the Gap” was intended to be about, but then again, i’m still trying to figure out what “synchroblog” means anyway.

And along with playing with my sweetie, I’ve cleaned the house, had my hair highlighted back to my natural hair color (at least according to my selective memory), baked cookies for hospitality hour at church, and even curled up on the floor a time or two next to one of our cats who had found a perfect spot near the entry way window to enjoy the warmth of the first of the summer sun. [Note to self: You are too old to lay on the hardwood floor and not pay for it later you knucklehead!]

I just wanted to give you a heads up that a) I’m still here with no plans of abandoning ship or site, and b) I’m going to be participating in a synchroblog project tomorrow, Wednesday, June 24, that involves more than 50 bloggers. Each blogger will be adding a post to their own blog that deals specificially with how they think we might begin and/or continue to bridge the gap between people on the issue of sexuality and in particular homosexuality. This initiative is being sponsored by Bridging the Gap: Conversations on Befriends Our Gay Neighbors, which is an outreach of New Direction Ministry. I didn’t hesitate to accept the invitation to participate in this blogging event and would encourage you to set aside some time tomorrow to come here and read my post and then go to Bridging the Gap where you can follow links to the other bloggers posts so that you might hear the wide range of voices of those who are committed to meeting on the bridge and joining hands in Christian fellowship to which we’ve been called.

A rabbi gathered his students around him one day and asks, “How do you know when the night is almost past and day is about to break?”

“Rabbi, is it when you see a tree in the far distance and you can tell that it’s a tree?” ventured a young student.

“No,” answered the rabbi.

“Rabbi, is it when you see a dog coming just over the hill and can recognize that it’s a dog?” guessed another.

“No,” the rabbi said again. “It is when you look in the face of every man and every woman, and see that they are your brother and your sister. When you can do that then you know the night is nearly gone and a new day is about to dawn.”

Sometimes the differences between us are so great that instead of just finding ourselves traveling on different roads in different directions, we end up on the same road bound on a collision course with one another. At such times the impact jars us into  forgetting what we hold most fundamentally true at the center of our being and faith. We forget that as human beings living on the same planet we are all bound and connected to one another in ways both seen and unseen. We forget that every human life without exception is of incalculable worth. We forget that everyone we see, those we love as equally as those we despise are rooted in the same Spirit and born of the same God. We forget because sometimes remembering asks too much of us. When we’re fed up or worn down to the bone we don’t want to remember that every man and woman is our brother and sister because that would lead us to do everything in our power to treat one another with human dignity and to extend understanding, forgiveness, compassion and love, even in those times when the other does not want, will not receive, or will never return what we have extended ourselves to give.

I’ve seen much in recent years coming from the church and directed at the church that’s been heartbreaking at best. It’s not only on the issue of homosexuality that we find ourselves opposing one another as humans and as Christians but if we were ever forced to choose a single issue as the paradigm for how divisive our conflicts can become and how bloody the battlefields can flow, homosexuality would come in head and shoulders above all the others. In no other conversation we engage in should we be more committed to being mindful in our dealings with one another and yet all the symptoms of massive forgetfulness are glaringly present among us and the other. And when I say us, I mean we who are GLBTQ Christians and we who are straight Christians who believe homosexuality to be sin and when I say the other I mean we who are GLBTQ Christians and we who are Christians who believe homosexuality to be sin.

We are all us. We are all the other. We all forget.

• We know we’ve forgotten when we’re convinced we possess the whole truth so that we have nothing to learn from the other.

As GLBTQ Christians we have nothing to learn from the ex-gay or the conservative Christian or anyone who does anything but fully support, affirm and embrace the life, ministry, and relationships of gays and lesbians. As evangelical Christians we have nothing to learn from the gay or lesbian Christian and their witness of faith as long as they continue to practice what we know to be sin. We have the real truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and the other is nothing more than uninformed, misled, or deceived.

• We know we’ve forgotten when we stop listening.

Because we have the whole truth in our back pocket there’s no need to listen to the other. Oh sure. We make every appearance of listening to them. We posture ourselves into listen position. We become silent. We lean forward. We look intently at the other and even throw in the nod of a head to emphasis what a good listener we are, but all the while our external body is clothed in signs of listening, our mind is racing to construct an eloquent rebuttal that will begin at the first pause in the conversation, a rebuttal that often has nothing to do with responding to what was just spoken but everything to do with what we want to be heard by the other.

• We know we’ve forgotten when we presume to know the others motives and intentions better than they do.

When the other says or does something we don’t understand and that makes no sense to us; when certain actions they engage in don’t seem to mesh with the words they proclaim, we seldom pause to wonder what’s going on with them or to ask them directly why it is they believe what they believe and even if we asked and paused long enough to listen, when all is said and done we’d just as likely tell them they’re wrong, that their motive wasn’t the love they profess guiding them but lust or intolerance. What they have to say in their own defense is rendered invalid in our assumptions. They are filled with hate. They are justifying their sin. They are motivated by lust and self. They are driven by ignorance and fear. They are intolerant. They have an agenda. We presume and they presume and in all the presuming we come to believe the worst in each other without ever coming to know their heart and the joys and fears and faith of the one who stands on the other side.

• We know we’ve forgotten when we ignore the individual in preference to the generalizations and stereotypes.

It can require too much effort to deal with the other side as a collective of individuals and to invest ourselves in hearing their side of the story and what has led them as individuals to believe what they believe and stand for what they stand. In the ongoing conflict we fall into a rhetoric of the masses, referring to the other as though they were a monolithic entity without heart and soul and spirit. The gays. The church. Those gays. Those conservative Christians. We make blanket characterizations and sweeping generalizations of the other, even as we grimace under each slanderous stereotype that’s hurled in our direction. We are all the pot calling the kettle black. At time we are all the one walking through life pointing out the splinters in our neighbor’s eye while the log jammed in our own gets more deeply lodged with every foot fall.

• We have forgotten when we label and name-call.

Once the generalizations and stereotypes are in place the name-calling ensues. They are homophobes, bigots, and haters. They are perverts, sinners, and sodomites. I have many faults (the emphasis on many is mine) only name-calling is not one of them. Maybe because I was one of those kids on the elementary playground who suffered the brunt of name-calling. Fatso. Four-eyes. Slowpoke. Maybe because I went out of my way in high school to avoid the hallway where the mean kids puffed up their own egos by verbally demeaning anyone who wasn’t quite as hip, slick and cool as they saw themselves to be. For whatever reason, I have no tolerance for name-calling on any side of any issue. Name-calling ends any chance at understanding. It closes every door on dialogue. It never builds up. It only belittles and destroys. It wounds the soul and spirit both of the one who hurls the name and the one who gets smacks in the face by it. Even if they don’t flinch at its impact, something has been taken from them and from us.

I’m not saying I don’t understand the pain, anger, and frustration that leads those of us who are GLBTQ Christians to name-calling. Sometimes the onslaught is so unrelenting in our pursuit of equality, the rhetoric so brutal and it’s consequences so tragic that there seems no outlet big enough to release our pain and indignation and so rather than turning to fist we turn to words. I get it. I understand it. But it doesn’t make it right. Not on either side. Ever. Not if we’re talking about Fred Phelps or Carrie Prejean or judges who find in favor of marriage equality or whatever queer most offends the sensitivities of the most non-gay affirming conservative Christian or political pundit.

When you look in the face of every man and every woman, and see that they are your brother and your sister…then you know the night is nearly gone and a new day is about to dawn.

Isn’t that what we all want? Don’t we really just want a new day to dawn upon this earth when all people are treated with dignity and every human being knows beyond a shadow of a doubt they are loved and worth that love? A day when the church swings open the doors to welcome everyone as their brother and their sister, giving no regard to the differences between them because all they can see is the grace of God and the love of Christ that embraces them all?

The only chance we have for such a new day dawning is if we stop forgetting what we really know in the marrow of our bones; that every man and woman is our brother and sister and our spirits are woven together within the fabric of the Spirit of God. If we could only practice mindfulness, being attentive to the Truth of the Spirit over the truth we each think that we alone possess.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know and to add to the insightful observations of St. Kermit of Sesame, “It ain’t easy being green….or queer.”

We’ve been blasted so long and hard in political and religious circles that despite our determination to stay the course; confronting ignorance with education, lies with truth, and hate with love, sometimes the collective toil becomes too much and we feel that urge to do to them what they done did to us.

I’m no different and I take no pleasure in admitting that. When the lies escalate into the ridiculous, when the hypocrisy becomes all too apparent and opposing voices turn mean-spirited and cruel, a place in me rises up that wants to strike back. But I don’t. Not because I don’t feel like it, not because I don’t want to, and certainly not because I’m at any shortage of snarky sarcastic stab ‘em in the ribs comebacks.

There are more than ample reasons for taking the high ground in the debate. Gay civil rights groups warn that we risk hurting our cause by losing our growing public support when we give in to our emotions and react from raw places of hurt and rage. We know all too well that it’s the mean-spirited back at you words and actions that take center stage in the media’s lens rather than the reasoned and passionate words of justice and equality and the responsible daily actions of millions of GLBTQ Americans from sea to shining sea.

Justice advocacy organizations remind us of the words of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ghandi and the call to create social change through peacemaking and justice through non-violent resistence.

Another reason to avoid adopting the strategies of our opposition is one we all know inherently to be true, and that is if we engage in the same behavior, attitudes and actions of those who oppose us; if we make generalizations about all of them, reduce cogent public discourse to verbal playground fist fights, and disrespect the human worth and dignity of the other, then we’ve become no different, and if we’re no different than the more extreme of our opposition then any victories we achieve toward full justice and equality will be outweighed by what we’ve lost in the end. Ourselves.

True. All true. Everyone of these independent of the others is more than enough reason to remain calm, cool, and collected in the face of injustice and intolerance, but can I ask you to hang around one minute longer for one final reason that compels me above all the rest to choose to be different? Do you have your note paper and pen within reach? I’ll wait while you go get them. Top kitchen drawer under the phone. Just above the dish cloth drawer.

Okay, now that you’re ready, here it is.

Jesus.

For those of us standing within the Christian faith what other reason do we need but this? Now, I know it sounds like Sunday School 101 to say Jesus is the reason, (or like the beginning of a painfully clichéd religious Christmas card) but seriously, there are times when despite the validity of all the other reasons, this is the only one that holds my mouth in check, my blogging fingers at bay and my heart softened to those who attack me and by me, I mean us.

When a segment of Christ’s body sets boundaries around a table that never belonged to them in the first place, when my gay brothers and lesbian sisters spend years of their lives questioning their worth as children of God because of the harsh condemnation erroneously spoken by some Christians in Christ’s name, and when two little boys come home at the end of a school day and hang themselves by dinnertime for having been called “gay,” because some faith-based organizations and religious leaders have attached and repeatedly reinforced shame and disgust to the term nearly everything in me wants to go primal and hit, punch, and scream at those who would do such things and then dare to sleep peacefully at night. Armed only with strategic reasons in my back pocket for choosing to do things another way I’d scratch out eyeballs and let those sharp-tongued comebacks that flit through my brain out for public airing. But I don’t and not because I’m a good person. Oh please, don’t give me that kind of credit because it would be completely misplaced and undeserved.

The only reason I have any trace of compassion and love for those who dismiss our faith as GLBTQ Christians, who spread misinformation about us and work tirelessly to prevent us from participating in the same basic rights they enjoy everyday is because I know every person who hates “my sin”, detests “my lifestyle”, and rejects my faith is themselves, a child of God; loved with the same unconditional love and enveloped in the same extravagant grace that has been lavished on me. We are all God’s beloved or none of us are and God’s mercy reaches out to cover all of us or it leaves everyone of us exposed and without safe shelter in divine grace. This is more than theory or theology. It’s a fact that I can’t get away from no matter how hard I might want to try, and in responding to it as a fact I must be committed to holding everyone I encounter with honor and respect; not because I have to but because Grace compels me to desire it even more than my flesh desires retaliation and revenge.

My faith doesn’t demand I invite my adversary to dinner or require I submit to their scorn while silencing the truth that resides within me. My faith only invites me to recognize my enemies deeper identity in God, and that when I respond I do so in a way that regards them with the dignity befitting them even if they haven’t yet arrived at a place where they can return the same to me.

I don’t live in this place with any consistency. There are days when screams of outrage and frustration have bounced off the interior walls of my heart as well as the inside walls of our home, but I’m trying each day to live into what my heart knows, and if our faith means anything at all, if God’s grace has ever really come to us and entered into our souls, if Christ’s saving power has truly saved us from ourselves, then no other choice remains for us but to commit ourselves to the daunting, but not impossible call to “love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.”

A recent example can be found over at Pomomusings where Adam Cleveland Walker posted this week on “The Bible and Homosexuality: Enough with the Bible Already!“  As I write this post Adam’s has already generated 136 comments. By the time I hit the publish button on this post that number is almost guaranteed to be higher. While I appreciate both the content and the honest reflection of what Adam shared in his post, what most intrigues me are the comments that followed that highlight the common patterns among comments that such a post will likely engender. Here are a few of the categories of comments I’ve noticed and a sample of each from the comment section of Adam’s recent post.

• Comments that express agreement and appreciation.

Thanks Adam, for your thoughts and for speaking such great wisdom into a field of land-mines and charred ground. The Church needs more people to make the case for homosexuality, the case for the radical inclusivity and never-ending merciful love of Jesus. – Wesley

• Comments that express disagreement in the conclusions of the writer but appreciation for their thoughtful reflection around the issue.

While I understand and fully appreciate your point, I guess I feel like there is a false dichotomy here. For much of this post, it feels like you’re asking people to have to choose either Scripture or our experience, but not both. Can we both study and follow the Bible AND see people as just that–people, not theoretical issues? Can we hold the two in tension, doing our best to live in a way that honors the person of Christ? I would like to think I’m trying to do that in my own life. I liked when you said that “Christians need to actually live out the love and compassion that Jesus exemplified in the scriptures.” That’s my thought exactly. – Joel

• Comments that offer further information and resources, sometimes in agreement and other times in opposition to the original blog.

Presbyterians Today has recently run a series of well written articles by a fellow who studied two different churches, one for and one against ordination. He argues that both groups have in fact based their argument on this issue not on scripture but on their experience…its just that the experience of one group is that they don’t have any experience. – Jim

• Comments that respectfully disagree with the blogger’s conclusion or their method for arriving there.

Adam, over the years, I have truly enjoyed your honest thinking, creative ideas and the talented ways that you express them. [...] Thank you for the continued thought that has led to further reading, deeper conversation, and soul-searching. Truly, I appreciate the post and the heart behind it and I feel that I understand the point that you are making. [...] That said, I do not agree with the conclusion. This grieves me because I know that hurts people, which in turn, hurts me. May the GLBT community (and everyone else) not consider me an enemy but a loving friend. You are in my prayers, conversations and conscience a great deal. On a side note and as previously mentioned by the many others, this is certainly one of my favorite parts of the emergent conversation – that we can disagree and still love.

• Comments that vehemently oppose the blogger’s conclusions.
  

  This post [...] is pure propaganda. The flaws are obvious in your argument. What is known of Jesus’ words are found only in the scripture. In fact Jesus and the scriptures are inseparable. Jesus and the apostles quoted the Tanakh (Law and the Prophets to the Hebrew impaired) profusely. Jesus emphatically asserted that He came to fulfill the Law not abolish it. The scriptures are clear; homosexuality is a sin, among other sins. Jesus never tolerated any sin. He told everyone He encountered “go and sin no more” The argument against the Bible is a fast-growing cancer in what calls itself the church. Without scripture you can make the Lord be anything you would like Him to be. – Chris P.

• Comments that reject both the blogger’s views along with their faith and Christian identity.
  

  Bottom line is that God discriminates. What you describe is not Christianity at all. It is a pagan moralism and a god made in your own image. – Jason

  Adam, I appreciate your candidness in this post. I would love for you to be this open in all your writings. It would make it much easier for people to recognize that you are not a Christian or a minister of the Gospel. As it is now, you likely deceive many people, most notably yourself. – Brandon

It’s this last group of Christians, those who feel comfortable and free to reject someone else’s faith based on a particular theological perspective that makes me spiritually woozy. I find it troubling on so many levels and I don’t think that will ever change no matter how many times I witness or experience it. I can’t get use to it even though I’ve met more than a few Christians in my life whose behavior reflected little of the life of Jesus as revealed in the Gospels and been acquainted with others online who exhibit incredible disrespect, rudeness, and arrogance with anyone they disagree with theologically. Among my archived emails are those from self-identified Christians who have called me a liar, a fool, a false prophet, and a pervert. Far beyond my amazement at those who hurl names are those who write to let me know that I obviously do not love, know, worship or follow Christ. Despite the audacity of such words it would never cross my mind to verbally reject the one saying them as a member of Christ’s body; not in person and not anonymously on their blog. If it sounds like I’m saying “I’m better than they are” that’s not at all where my heart is. It’s just that after years of being the target for such comments and watching the faith of others trashed like Adam and John I’m just no closer to understanding how it is that some Christians are able to be okay with lobing  such destructive and assumptive words at anyone else.

I don’t understand. I don’t understand how someone can encounter the grace of God in their own life and demonstrate so little for others. I don’t understand how certain individuals can hold gay people under the fire for the Levitical prohibition of “man shall not lie with man as with a woman” while seemingly ignoring or excusing away countless admonitions to “judge not least you be judged,” “call no man a fool,” and “love your enemies and do good to them.” I don’t understand how Paul’s teaching to not associate with sinners can trump the life of Jesus who repeatedly sat at table-fellowship with sinners as well as those judged unclean (by vocation or ethnicity) by the Pharisees.

Above all else, it makes no sense to me how anyone standing within conservative evangelical Christianity can reject the faith of another when the foundational premise of being a Christian from their perspective (and mine) is established in a personal relationship with God through Christ. The language we use to fill that all out theologically will be different from believer to believer but that Christian identity begins in a personal relationship has long been the understanding of Christians from the early church on. A Christian might argue with another individual’s theological conclusions but to pass judgment on their personal relationship with God, as well as their love, heart, desire, and devotion to God isn’t within their ability to do as an outsider to the relationship. Yes, I can observe the visible fruit of a life (Galatians 5) but I will never intimately know all there is to know about a personal relationship that I’m not a part of, including that of the Divine-Human relationship.

I don’t understand and maybe I never will. Maybe it’s not even important that I do. Maybe it’s enough that what I find reprehensable behavior in another Christian, I never do, even to that one. Rather than trying to make sense of how someone standing in the Christian faith can reject the faith experience of another, I’d do far better to tend to my relationship with God and how I’ll live out my days and engage in the world as someone who stands confidently and gratefully in my identity with Christ. And when others judge me, and they will just as they’ll just you, I need to remember that it’s of no consequence. All that matters is the One who shares in a personal relationship with you and I; the only One who knows our heart and love firsthand.

Oh and by the way, over at Adam’s post, the comments have reached 145. I told you so.

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Adam’s post drew the rejection of some because he not only dares to state an affirming position toward GLBTQ people but suggests that there are some within the Christian community who have elevated the Bible to a thing to be worshiped. By the way, while I wouldn’t agree with Adam that the Bible needs to be put on the shelf by anyone, I would argue that the Bible isn’t the beginning, middle and ending of God’s revelation to us (which I believe is what Adam is suggesting as well). Instead I uphold the Westleyan Quadrilateral that argues the Scriptures, the traditional history of the church, human reasoning, and personal experience are four sources that lead the believer to draw theological conclusions. This method of theological reflections stands in constrast to religious fundamentalism and conservatism which elevates the Scriptures above all else and more often than rejects personal experience and human reasoning entirely as being unreliable because of human desire, will, and sin.

Yesterday I was working away on an upcoming entry that follows up on the topic of coming out but when my RSS feed notified me there was a new entry posted to John’s site I closed up shop and headed over his way where I read “I’m Only Saying: If My Gay Loved Ones Go To Hell, I’m Going With Them.”

…If my gay friends, whom my life experience tells me can no sooner stop being gay than I can stop being straight, have to go to hell after they die, then I’m going with them. Too many gays and lesbians in my life have been too good to me in this life for me to leave them behind in the next. I won’t do it. That’s really all I was saying.

What I am not saying (and certainly haven’t said) is that the Bible is wrong, or should be changed, or that fundamentalist or “conservative” Christians are wrong or should change. I’m not even saying that it’s true that gays and lesbians are born homosexual in the same way I was born straight. Maybe I’m wrong about that. I don’t care. I leave those kinds of questions to the future, and to those in the present who, unlike me, find debates on insolvable matters engaging. (And you better believe I have no interest in alienating my fundamentalist and “conservative” Christian friends, for whom I have nothing but love and respect. I wish I had blood relatives who’d ever been as good to me as some of my conservative brothers and sisters in Christ have been.)

Again: I’m saying nothing more than this: If any of my dear gay friends get condemned to hell for no other reason than that they’re gay, then I will choose to go to hell with them. I am sure Christ will let me make that choice. I’m not sure of a lot of things, but I’m positive Christ understands sacrificing oneself for the love of others. (John Shore, Suddenly Christian)

If John, the married straight guy, were to sit down with Anita, the partnered gay girl, and we were to weave our way through the minutia of homosexuality and the Bible, we’d no doubt find places where our ideas diverged, yet the differences wouldn’t matter all that much because ultimately John and I would find ourselves talking less about the finer points of homosexuality that were at odds and more about matters of faith we share in common. We’d talk about Jesus, maybe kick around some thoughts on atonement or reconciliation or hey, how about this, the depth and breath and height of God’s love. Christians talking about the love of God. Imagine! The reason we’d be able to navigate beyond the hot topic and onto the essentials is that overarching our interaction would be a shared sense of respect for the other, recognition of the other’s faith in Christ, and appreciation for the person they were without judgment. I believe the same would be the case with Shush and Jon and Adam and Christian and others.

I’m rambling on about this for a couple reasons:

1. I was really moved by what he wrote and wanted to share it with you. If you appreciated his post I’d invite you to go leave a positive comment over at his site. I know that would mean something to him.
2. Many of us came from or are still walking in the evangelical Christian tradition where the rhetoric concerning homosexuality remains negative and oppositional, but there’s another voice raising up among evangelical Christianity. While their theological positions of homosexuality are perhaps varied from ours and from each other, they recognize GLBTQ Christians as equal relatives (not distant black-sheep cousins) in the family of God and they express a commitment for GLBTQ people to gain access to equal treatment under the law.
3. These are blogging communities where you can contribute your wisdom and insights as a Christian and they’ll be received with respect by the blogger and by the majority, though not all, of their readership. While I hope SisterFriends will be your home base, I encourage you to visit these other blogs and get involved, but not only in conversations involving homosexuality. When we’re on the journey to reconcile our faith and sexuality, our focus can understandably become somewhat myopic but it’s good to occasionally lay that all aside and get engaged in other faith questions you feel passionate about or are interested in. Please check out the BlogRoll on the right column for additional blogs and websites.

So that’s about all I wanted to say. Now…go click a link and feel the love!

We are conservative. We are progressive. We are evangelical. We are liberal. We are seeking, searching and emerging. We have found the Answer. We are content to live in the questions.

We light candles and sing Georgian chants in the scented haze of burning incense. We sing “Amazing Grace” and weep as we do. We lift our hands in worship. We hold our hands in silent meditation. We dance down the aisles. We genuflect before the cross. The walls of our church are brick and glass. The walls of our church are mighty oak trees and endless blue sky.

We celebrate Eucharist. We receive communion. We come to Christ’s Table. Once a month. Every Sunday. Paper thin wafer. Chunk of earthy bread. Cup of sweet grape juice. Chalice of dry red wine. We sip. We dip. We have a baptistry. We have a font. We dunk. We sprinkle. We all wade into the deep swirling waters of Spirit and Mystery and God Most Divine.

We call God Heavenly Father. We call God Heavenly Mother. He. She. We come to God as Creator, Redeemer, Friend, Source of All Being, Holy Spirit, Indescribable One. Alpha. Omega. Mystery. Name Above All Names. God Above All Gods. I Am.

Just as diverse as our styles of worship, the places where we worship, and our attempts at naming God, is our theology. I believe this. You believe that. On some things we will agree. On many things we never will.

We are seeking to know God ever more. We are falling, ever falling, more in love with Christ. We are committed to living authentic lives, transparent lives, faithful lives, made in the image of God, committed to the purpose of God. We are passionate. We are opinionated. We are strong and we are devoted to searching, seeking, growing, following, changing, obeying, transforming, and living for and to the Glory of God and to the Risen Christ, God’s Son.

We are equal in faith, equal before God. We are no more wise in understanding, no nearer to God, no more privy to God’s Spirit speaking than the one who stands beside us or the one who stands against us. We believe what we believe because it is what seems most true to each of us. And yet, at times we might be wrong or they might be wrong or you might be wrong. Or maybe, just maybe, collectively together we could be closer to the truth that we could ever be on our own, as we glimpse the same thing from different places, putting together the pieces of something bigger than any of us alone can grasp. We can teach one another. We can learn from one another.

The same spirit of Christ that dwells in us, dwells in you. It is Christ that unites us. It is to unity in Christ to which we will default. When our differences begin to splinter us, let the grace of God, the love of Christ, and the unity of the Holy Spirit bind us inseparably. In this we pray. In this we believe. To this we commit ourselves.

Amen.

…and certainly I’m not surprised that GLBTQ people standing outside the church scratch their heads befuddled at our continued efforts to seek ordination or have our relationships affirmed and celebrated within the church. There’s no sense in trying to deny that within the institutional policies of some churches and in the rhetoric of certain Christians anything but a welcome has been extended and the stories of heartbreak and oppression toward gays and lesbians by the church is staggering.

• The pastor of a lesbian couple, both active in the church for years, refuses to baptize their newborn son, arguing that as lesbians they are unable to raise the child in a real Christian home.

• The gay music director of a church is fired when it’s discovered he has AIDS, leaving him to face extensive medical treatment without insurance coverage.

• A lesbian clergywoman hides her sexual identity and her life partner for nearly twenty years because church policy demands she hide who she is rather than to live openly at the threat of being expelled from ministry.

• A lesbian in her early-twenties commits suicide after being told repeatedly by her parents that she’s no longer welcome in their home or will be acknowledged as their child until she gives up being lesbian and begins living a Christian life.

• A gay Christian youth is confronted by the pastoral staff of his church and physically restrained while an attempt is made to exorcise homosexual demons from him.

• By vilifying gays and lesbians as a threat to the American family, Christian television personalities grow wealthy through the financial gifts of their faithful and frightened followers and Christian churches often prove to be the greatest supporters both in financial contributions and man power of state and national legislation meant to bar equal benefits and recognition of same-sex couples.

• In congregations around the country gay couples aren’t allowed to commemorate their commitment in a church setting, gay clergy are removed from service, and gay members are denied the right to partake of communion.

• Sermons are regularly preached from pulpits around the country that perpetrate lies and false stereotyping about gays and lesbians while pastoral care of gay and lesbian Christians goes untended..

I wish the church was better than society. I wish it were more loving, more compassionate, more committed to justice for all people. More willing to extend grace than judgment. And yet, the same people that comprise the larger world comprise the church. The church as an institution stands as flawed or righteous as the people who gather within its walls, set its policies and proclaim its truths, whether they be right or wrong. There are large corners within Christ’s church where love has been replaced with law and a God of judgment appears to have replaced a God of grace.

And still I haven’t left the church because most days there are more reasons to stay than there are to go. Most days. And so I stay in the church.

When I think of why I stay in the church, a memory comes to me from my experience last year in working with the homeless in one of the poorest areas of San Francisco known as the Tenderloin. Among the people living on the streets I heard disturbing stories of churches within the neighborhood that locked their doors during the day to those who stood weary and freezing outside and on Sunday mornings refused entrance to any homeless man or woman who smelled of alcohol. Whether their stories are accurate or exaggerated I’m uncertain. I pray they’re only the imagined tales of a few but sadly I fear they’re the real experiences of too many because I’ve seen the same scenario unfold among churches toward gays and lesbians. We’ve all seen it. Many of us have felt it firsthand.

But I’ve seen something else and because of what I’ve seen I stay in the church for it was on a cold winter morning that I experienced what the church is to be within the sanctuary of St. Anthony’s. As I entered through the heavy wooden doors I looked over the grandeur of this old and glorious cathedral and there among the pews homeless men and women lay huddled and asleep as a robed priest moved among them straightening the prayer books from the morning’s mass. He moved like a whisper so as not to disturb them from their sleep, breaking the silence with nothing more than an occasional gentle word to those who nodded a greeting as he passed by. I was to learn that each morning the doors of St. Anthony’s open wide to the poor so they might enter into a church that lives up to its name, an authentic church that has become a safe refuge, a sanctuary of God that offers warmth and welcome to all who enter.

Likewise there exist individual congregations within the collective church that provide an oasis for gays and lesbians and all God’s people. These congregations are places where all worship side by side, where the life and gifts of everyone are gratefully received and where all loving relationships are acknowledged and nourished. There are no outsiders but all who desire to be so are family. And so I stay in the church, not only because such oasis congregations exist but because they allow me to dream of what the whole church could become. I dream, I pray, and I hope.

There’s another reason I continue to participate in the life of the church and that’s because not only do I believe in what the church can and should be in this world but because, simply put, I am the church. The church isn’t a building or an institution. The church is every individual believer and is built in the human heart rather than from stone. As William L. Countryman says in Gifted by Otherness: Gay and Lesbian Christians in the Church,

We will waste no time justifying our presence in the church. As baptized Christians, we ourselves are the church, and we are obviously here, as we always have been, end of statement.” No one need extend a welcome to me. No one need clear a space for me and invite me to the table of God. I am already in the church so no welcome is necessary and I have already been invited by Christ to the table and my space was secured a long time ago by His precious and gracious gift of love.

So why do I bother with the church? I bother with the church because God bothered with me, as flawed as I was and as flawed as I remain. The church is imperfect and so am I, yet I dream for the church God calls us each to be and am committed to offering what I have and who I am to bringing about its transformation. In the meantime, I’ll see you at the table!

“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.Father, I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which thou hast given me in thy love for me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world has not known thee, but I have known thee; and these know that thou hast sent me. I made known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

Yesterday’s ordination and the days leading up to it have been an amazing time for me, filled with sentimental reflections of all that has led to this day and curious wonderings about what God has planned for tomorrow. That wild collision of past and future we often experience in the now of life’s remarkable moments. Our passage in John is such a moment for Jesus as he reflects upon the completion of his earthly ministry while looking ahead to the days that await his followers. And so I’ve chosen to take a detour into the text with the thoughts that have been flooding my mind and heart in recent days.

My reflections have taken me back to this chair; a chair from my kindergarten Sunday School of more than 43 year ago. My grandparents attended the tent revivals back in the 1920’s that led to the building of that church and as teenagers my parents played in the churches marching band where more than 60 years later they continue to be members…of the church, not the marching band.

I have such clear memories of growing up in that church; of sitting in this chair and swinging my legs back and forth, the bottoms of my shoes barely touching the floor; of listening to my teacher tell stories from the Bible while attaching brightly-colored felt figures onto the flannel graph board. Though I haven’t been in that old three-story building for more than twenty years, I could walk through it blindfolded today and find my way in and out of every nook and cranny because so much of my childhood was spent inside its walls. If the doors of the church were opened there was a good chance my family would be there. I loved church then as I love church now. I loved being surrounded by people who knew my name and loved me. I loved the stories and the music and the way the old wood floors in the sanctuary rumbled when the church organist hit the low notes.

It was in this old chair I first began to learn of God. I learned to have faith in God’s care and in the love of Christ. I learned to believe in the continual presence of God’s Spirit in all my days. I was taught all about Jesus and what it meant to follow him; of serving the church, of giving God the first part of every penny I was given or earned, of sharing the Good News of Jesus with others. It was in the church of this chair where I first came to the table, where I spent my youth in summer camp and on mission trips. It was in this chair and all the chairs that followed where I fell head over heels in love with God, where joyful worship inspired me, where community was lived out around me and where I first came to hear God’s call.

It was also the church where I learned how to tell the difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’, between ‘true’ Christians and ‘those’ Christians, and where God’s grace held against a judgmental understanding of God’s justice lost every time. It was also the church where I heard things and saw things that didn’t fit with what my heart told me about God. It was where I was given answers to every question and where questioning those answers was seen as a lack of faith.

Today I find myself standing in another Christian tradition, one that I have chosen, one that is authentic for me and reflects what is most true for me about God and the Christian faith. Though the distance is great between here and there, as is the distance from one edge of Christianity to the other, both traditions are a part of who I am and who I am becoming. I didn’t forsake one for the other but each has impacted my life and faith. Some of what I was given there I cherish. Some of what I was given I have left behind. Lest you think otherwise, this was by no means an effortless transition, moving from that chair to where I stand today. Theological tensions, warring perspectives on current issues, opposing ideas of even what it meant to be a Christian, all these fueled a religious battlefield that was fought in my own heart, and among my closest loved ones.

I’ve seen this clashing of ideologies and viewpoints continue to play out within the church in recent years. It’s a wonder that we who learned to play fair and share our toys in preschool now bicker over our ideas of God and faith so heatedly that conversations break apart into debates and table fellowship erupts into food fights. Conservative Christians slam liberal Christians. Southern Baptists denounce American Baptists, Mainstream Protestants criticize Evangelicals, proponents of infant baptism argue proponents of believers baptism, those who affirm gays and lesbians stand against those who hate the sin but love the sinner. And so it goes.

In the Gospel of John we hear bits of conversation and see story after story that emphasis what was the most significant aspect of the Christian faith for John and that was the incarnation of God in Jesus. For John all that Jesus is, is because God is. The story John told of Jesus is the story of God because they are one. Two beings in perfect oneness. And now in these final words of Jesus, this oneness is extended, beyond the confines of the divine relationship to all of us.

Unity isn’t an option for the church, a nice extra to round out the Christian life but it’s an essential component of who we are as those who follow Christ. Even while affirming their value and necessity and honoring the ongoing call to church unity, “being one” isn’t referring to ecumenical dialogues, joint partnerships or any human endeavor. In our passage Jesus isn’t addressing his followers and what they are to do. Jesus has finished talking with them and has turned full attention to God, and in prayer Jesus places the future unity of the community of faith, not in the hands of the community (fortuitous planning given what we know of ourselves!) but rather, he entrusts it to the care of God, because our oneness resides within the very substance of the relationship between the Father and the Son.

John’s use of Father/Son language throughout his gospel account has everything to do with emphasizing the intimacy of the relationship between God and Jesus. It’s a relationship of deepest connection, revealing the inseparable union of the Incarnation. Just as the opening words of John proclaim that “the Word was with God and the Word was God” so this prayer of Jesus’ builds upon it; “You Father is in me and I am in you…we are one.”

So it is that the church isn’t to mimic the unity of the Father and the Son, our oneness isn’t be like that the oneness that exists between God and Christ but to recognize that we share in the very mutuality of that relationship. We aren’t one with God and Christ but we are one in God and Christ, immersed in the very essence of their union, comprised of the very same spiritual DNA, if you will. That’s what makes it possible that at this very moment we are “one” with all those who have come before and all those who will follow. With our oneness rooted in the oneness of the eternal God there’s no limit to how far our unity may reach.

But what about ‘them’? Notice how even our language gives away our separateness rather than our oneness. But really, does our oneness hinge on resolving every conflict, patching up every disagreement, finding middle ground that will satisfy everyone? No. There are times when opposing voices must be lifted up to address what is unjust in the church and in the message it gives to the world. Unity doesn’t require that we conform or compromise our values and beliefs, it simply asks that we open our hearts to everyone, even those we don’t understand, whose theology rattles us and whose viewpoints make us shudder.

A story is told of an old rabbi who once asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun. “Could it be,” asked one student, “when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it’s a sheep or a dog?” “No,” answered the rabbi. Another asked, “Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it’s a fig tree or a peach tree?” “No,” answered the rabbi. “Then what is it?” the students demanded. “It is when you can look on
the face of any woman or man and see that it is your sister or brother. Because if you cannot see this, it is still night.”

“Being one” means we no longer set our vision in the intolerance of night but allow the light of God’s love to illuminate the face of each man and woman as our brother and sister. It’s not about loving because we have to love though our teeth are clenched and our knuckles white. It’s simply about knowing how passionately we are loved by God…love so deep and wondrous that the thought of it takes our breath away. And then, living in the fullness of that magnificent love we love ‘them.’ We love as we have been loved and as we are being loved at this moment, and it is that love, God’s love, that makes us one. We who have received all love have no right, and should have no desire, to withhold love from anyone. No one is to be left out. No one is to be written off. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer confessed, “I can no longer condemn or hate other Christians for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble they cause me. In prayer the face that may have been strange and intolerable to me is transformed into the face of one for whom Christ died, the face of a pardoned sinner.”

Unity established in the divine relationship allows us to live out compassionate consideration rather than antagonized condemnation with all believers. It frees us from defaulting to attitudes reflected in the language of “us” and “them” to truly seeing ourselves and speaking of ourselves as “being one.” We are already one, sharing in the oneness between the Father and the Son. Our call isn’t to create unity in some future tense but to live out of our oneness that already exists in God.

The repetitive message of Ephesians 4 removes all doubt. “There is one body, and one Spirit, one hope in one calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and one Father, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.”

And so we the church, arguing over doctrine, debating war or human sexuality or the reproductive rights of women or the headline of the day, who come to blows time and time again, lurching and stumbling like weary boxers in the final round, are called to lay it all aside and meet at one table.

Perhaps we will never stand at the same physical table and break the bread. Perhaps our differences are so glaringly opposed that we simply cannot, but before Jesus who is the Living Table we can stand, and together in his presence, we are one.

May we be one, so that the world might know of the love of God given extravagantly and indiscriminating to all; a love embodied in the life of Jesus, and now lived out in God’s church. May it be so.