My point being that Peace Lutheran is a wonderful place, a sacred and safe refuge for D and I and for so many others who have stumbled into this house of worship filled with genuinely good and imperfect people and heavily influenced by some of the finest Swedes you’ll ever meet this side of the fjords.

I wish you could all just show up one Sunday morning, worship with us, and feel their welcome….but if you ever all decide to turn up in mass, all I ask is that you give me a heads-up. I need to be sure there are enough cookies for the hospitality hour.

D and I originally went to Peace for a couple years when we first got together and then were away for about four years while I fulfilled my ordination requirements. When we returned, Peace was different. The pews once full on Sunday mornings were now only occupied by a few dozen dear and familiar faces. The entire clergy and support staff had been reduced to the pastor and the office administrator. The choir that had once filled the three rows near the glossy black grand piano could now barely fill a standard-sized station wagon. The diverse array of outreach ministries and community involvement that Peace had been known for in the area had largely been set aside or abandoned because of limitations of budget and bodies. The Sunday School Hour, including their amazing children’s program was no more.

In our absence, this thriving congregation had confronted one of those agonizingly painful times that occurs in any number of churches where humans are involved. Life in the church got messy and uncertain. Conflicting stories developed. A few families left. Feelings were hurt and spirits wounded. And those who remained, who had faithfully endured the fire, showed the exhaustion and battle scars of their collective dark night of the soul. Though D and I were depleted from what we had just experienced at another congregation, we wept for Peace and we worried about their future, now our future with them.

But as Walter Bruggemann wrote in his Lenten prayer, through loss comes gain, through death comes new life.

Battle scars are healing. Weary souls are being restored. The rows of once sparsely-filled pews are being filled again; filled with joy and life and thankfulness, and with a people living out their individual commitment to the Gospel of Christ through being an inclusive, justice-minded, creation-conscious community in and to the world. In financial difficult times we’ve just accomplished an amazing feat together. Last Sunday morning we gathered outside in the rain around a round red charcoal grill and burned our mortgage papers, celebrating that with no debt remaining, we can look ahead to investing ourselves and our resources toward ministries that will reach beyond our walls. Last Sunday was also the first time in nearly five years our children gathered before worship in their new Sunday School classrooms. Tonight over bowls of steaming soup and warm bread we’ll gather for Soup and Sacrament, our weekly Lenten meal and meditation. Yes. Peace is breathing deep again and breathing with life that’s extending beyond our four walls to embrace the world. Once a month the sanctuary is over-flowing on Sunday nights with our Jazz at Peace series that brings people in from all over the Bay area. Neighbors to Peace come with dogs, cats, lizards, ponies and bugs in tow to our annual Festival of the Animals and every fall Peace hosts Holy Convergence, a spectacular interfaith worship service and afternoon that brings together Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Bahia and every seeking soul.

There’s so much more happening at Peace these days but most of all what’s happening is the unfolding of hope long unrealized. There were days I wondered. I wondered if Peace would survive. I wondered if these dear people who had been through so much and been through it with so much dignity could hold on a little longer.

I wondered, but I don’t know why I did when in my own life every loss has led to gain and every death has brought the dawn of new life. There are times I get so stuck in the sorrow and suffering of the Lenten seasons of my life that I forget it’s not the destination where I’ll reside forever but instead it’s merely a moment on the path, a path that always and unfailingly leads to yet another Easter morning and to resurrection and new life.

Today your spirit might be empty from all the loss and death is a veil separating you from life but your spirit will be filled and the veil will be lifted. And if you can’t believe that for yourself today, if you can’t believe it for God, then I and all the others who have already walked that road and caught a glimpse of what lies ahead will believe it for you until you can. You can and you will. Just wait and see.

ELCA NEWS SERVICE
August 21, 2009

ELCA Assembly Opens Ministry to Partnered Gay and Lesbian Lutherans, Urges

MINNEAPOLIS (ELCA) – The 2009 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) voted today to open the ministry of the church to gay and lesbian pastors and other professional workers living in committed relationships.
The action came by a vote of 559-451 at the highest legislative body of the 4.6 million member denomination. Earlier the assembly also approved a resolution committing the church to find ways for congregations that choose to do so to “recognize, support and hold publicly accountable life-long, monogamous, same gender relationships,” though the resolution did not use the word “marriage.”
The actions here change the church’s policy, which previously allowed gays and lesbians into the ordained ministry only if they remained celibate.
Throughout the assembly, which opened Aug. 17, the more than 1,000 voting members have debated issues of human sexuality. On Wednesday they adopted a social statement on the subject as a teaching tool and policy guide for the denomination.
The churchwide assembly of the ELCA is meeting here Aug. 17-23 at the Minneapolis Convention Center. About 2,000 people are participating, including 1,045 ELCA voting members. The theme for the biennial assembly is “God’s work. Our hands.”
Before discussing the thornier issues of same-gender unions in the ordained ministry, the assembly approved, by a vote of 771-230, a resolution committing the church to respect the differences of opinions on the matter and honor the “bound consciences” of those who disagree.
During the hours of discussion, led by ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson, the delegates paused several times each hour for prayer, sometimes as a whole assembly, sometimes in small groups around the tables where the voting members of the assembly sat, debated and cast their votes.
Discussion here proved that matters of sexuality will be contentious throughout the church. A resolution that would have reasserted the church’s current policy drew 344 votes, but failed because it was rejected by 670 of the voting members.
Pastor Richard Mahan of the ELCA West Virginia-Western Maryland Synod was among several speakers contending that the proposed changes are contrary to biblical teaching. “I cannot see how the church that I have known for 40 years can condone what God has condemned,” Mahan said, “Nowhere does it say in scripture that homosexuality and same sex marriage is acceptable of God.”
But others said a greater acceptance of people who are gay and lesbian in the church was consistent with the Bible. Bishop Gary Wollersheim of the ELCA Northern Illinois Synod said, “It’s a matter of justice, a matter of hospitality, it’s what Jesus would have us do.” Wollersheim said he had been strongly influenced by meetings with youth at youth leadership events in his synod, a regional unit of the ELCA.
Some speakers contend that the actions taken here will alienate ELCA members and cause a drop in membership. But Allison Guttu of the ELCA Metropolitan New York Synod said, “I have seen congregations flourish while engaging these issues; I have seen congregations grow recognizing the gifts of gay and lesbian pastors.”
During discussion of resolutions on implementation of the proposals, Bishop Kurt Kusserow of the ELCA Southwestern Pennsylvania Synod asked that the church make clear provision in its policies to recognize the conviction of members who believe that this church cannot call or roster people in a publicly accountable, lifelong, monagamous, same-gender relationship. A resolution that the denomination consider a proposal for how it will exercise flexibility within its existing structure and practices to allow Lutherans in same gender relationship to be approved for professional service in the church. That resolution passed by a vote of 667-307.

One of the first lesbians in ministry I had the opportunity to know was Susan. Susan was a pastor of a small congregation in a rural area of the Northwest. Susan had been in a committed, monogamous same-sex relationship for more than 15 years but because of her denominational (the ELCA) requirement that only non-practicing homosexuals be allowed to serve in ministry within the church, Susan and her partner lived their lives and love in the closet. During the 15 years of their relationship, Susan and her partner lived in separate homes five miles apart and outside of a small circle of queer friends no one knew that Susan was gay or in a relationship. Susan was put into a position by the church that to safeguard her love for serving the church and pastoring God’s people she had to deny her other great love; the woman who God have brought into her life.

I don’t know where Susan is today or what her life looks like but as I read this news coming from the ECLA’s General Assembly, I can’t help thinking about her. I wonder if she and her beloved are still together or if the tension of living a hidden love eventually became too painful to endure. I wonder if she was finally forced into a position to give up her ministry or give up her relationship. I wonder if her life has continued on the same course so that now it’s 25 years spent denying her wholeness and her relationship out of a passionate commitment to hold onto the ministry and people to whom God had called her. Wherever she is today and whatever her life presently looks like, I’m thinking of her today, as I’m thinking of all the closeted gay and lesbian Lutheran seminarians I came to know and respect during my own seminary training. I hope their hearts and burdens are lightened with what is unfolding at the General Assembly of the ELCA, and I pray that in the future they will experience the joy of serving the church they love in wholeness and truth.

There’s reason to hope. May it be so.

One of the many ways that we are attracted to each other is sexually. We want to touch and be touched. We want to give and receive pleasure with our bodies. We want too know each other in our full nakedness, which is to say in our full humanness, and in the moment of passion to become one with each other. Whether it is our own gender or the other that we are chiefly attracted to seems a secondary matter….

To say that morally, spiritually, humanly, homosexuality is always bad seems as absurd as to say that in the same terms heterosexuality is always good, or the other way round. It is not the object of our sexuality that determines its value but the inner nature of our sexuality.  If (a) it is as raw as the coupling of animals, at its worst it demeans us and at its best still leaves our deepest hunger for each other unsatisfied. If (b) it involves some measure of kindness, understanding, affection as well as desire, it can become an expression of human love in its fullness and can thus help to complete us as humans. Whatever our sexual preference happens to be, both of these possibilities are always there. It’s not whom you go to bed with or what you do when you get there that matters so much. It’s what besides sex you are asking to receive, and what besides sex you are offering to give.

I’m not going to comment further on what Buechner has articulated so eloquently because nothing I could write in response would ever add a drop of greater truth to it.

If you aren’t familiar with Frederick Buechner then learn about him and once you’ve learned a little about him, read some of his marvelously crafted and prolific writing that will reveal even more about the man, the preacher, and the writer. My favored recommendations include: Listening to Your Life, Longing for Home: Reflections at Mid-Life, Secrets in the Dark: A Life Lived in Sermons, Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith (a collection of three of Buchner’s best known including: Wishful Thinking, Peculiar Treasures, and Whistling in the Dark)  and The Faces of Jesus: A Life Story.

Share your thoughts and reflections on the excerpt above, on anything else you’ve read by Frederick Buechner, or for that matter on anything that in recent days has graced your life and deepened your walk with God. The lines are open. Operators are standing by.

Throughout the service on that crisp autumn morning my attention was drawn almost exclusively to the male couple sitting one pew in front of me. The man on the right had a tall and muscular frame, an athletic brute of a guy with muscles so rippled they threatened to split the short sleeves of his teeshirt wide open. The man sitting to his left was emaciated and frail, a skeleton held together with a paper thin layer of flesh and blood. When he turned to look over his shoulder I could see his eyes were sunken in, his skin pale and slightly gray. Through their gentle exchanges and touches it was easy to see these two men were lovers and easier still to see that one was dying of AIDS and dying soon. I don’t remember any of the sermon or the songs that we sang or the prayers that were said. What I remember is the thin man resting his head on the other’s left shoulder as the service progressed and his energy wained. I remember how his lover’s gargantuan arm wrapped gently around the fragile frame of his partner and drew him close. Occasionally they’d exchange words; spoken tenderly and loving, knowing glances held nearly nose to nose.

But none of that was as moving as this; when it came time for communion, the muscular man lifted his partner into his arms, cradling him across his chest like a parent with a sleeping toddler, and carried him to the table where they received the bread and the cup together and all the while that frail dying beautiful man smiled. He smiled into the eyes of his partner, smiled at the pastor who fed them from the table, and smiled at all those friends in the church who reached out to touch and greet him as he was carried back to their pew.

Do I even need to tell you I wept at the sight? I did. I wept silent hot tears, not merely at the sight of a man I knew wouldn’t be among the living much longer, whose death would be grieved by his lover and this congregation but even more so, I wept at the beauty before me; of this couple caught up in a dance of grieve and love and choosing to spend a part of their last days together among the people of God at the table of Christ.

I also wept for this reason. Only a year before when I was still in the closet to myself about my sexual orientation, I’d been moved by a local news story I’d seen about an agency that was providing meals for people, primarily gay men, homebound by AIDS. I love to cook and thought this would be a wonderful way to do something meaningful. I found the phone number for the agency in the phone book and called them, arranging a date when I would go in for an interview. I was told that if I was approved I would then be required to attend a training weekend to be held at the local AIDS Crisis Center.

I never went for the interview. I was afraid; afraid that if anyone found out I was volunteering for an agency that was primarily caring for gay men, my own sexual orientation might be questioned. I was convinced at that time that I was straight and that homosexuality was a sin but someone might mistakenly think I was gay and I could imagine nothing worse at the time and so I never showed up for the interview and never took a meal and a kind word to a man like the one who sat before me in church that morning. That explains most of my tears that morning in worship; tears of regret and shame. On that Sunday morning I asked God to forgive me and God forgave as God always forgives but it took a few years before I was eventually able to forgive myself.

I still regret that as a Christian I refused to offer a compassionate hand because I was so concerned with the possibility of guilt by association. More than regret it, I’m puzzled by it. Why did it never cross my mind that Jesus risked guilt by association all the time; every time he sat at table with those judged as sinners and outcasts or entered the home of a tax-collector or touched someone with leprosy or stood between a woman caught in adultery and an angry mob? Even if homosexuality were the sin I had been taught fervently and erroneously to believe it was, how could I have ignored the example of Jesus’ life and ministry, not taken note of the overriding call of God to love all people, and forgotten basic human kindness?

I have no clue why I’m sharing this story. The first story, about the lovers at communion, yes, but the second story, of my refusal to cook a meal for someone who needed to be fed, no. After all, it’s not one of my proudest moments and somehow, through the magic of a well-crafted plot I’d like to give it a clean and tidy ending but every story doesn’t have one. I just hope there’s something in this that will mean something to someone; perhaps the assurance that we all mess up, that we all have regrets, that we’re all just trying at each and every moment to do the best we can and that when our best falls short, redemption is still available. Maybe my messy story speaks to the paralyzing and damaging impact of religious-inspired intolerance and the lack of compassion that often accompanies self-righteousness. I don’t know. I’m just putting it out into the universe.

I just want to save this to read it over and over again . . .when I sit in church and wonder whether I am “worthy” to take communion.

Dear Wendy,

Thank you for your willingness to share the struggle you face at the communion table. I’ve heard it so often from other GLBTQ Christians, and in my years of mainstream Christian ministry it was and continues to be a common concern expressed by others regardless of their sexual orientation; those people raised to believe that God’s favor is earned through righteousness and holy living; those individuals who carry with them regrets and mistakes from the past that because they haven’t let go of, believe God hasn’t let go of; and so many people who honestly think that who they are in the present moment just isn’t enough to make them worthy to come to the table. They think they need to do something different or be something different and then and only then can they come and eat of the bread and drink of the cup. Nothing breaks my heart more than the thought that anyone would give pause to coming to the table because they think they don’t belong there, that the table is set for everyone else but not for them. I have to believe if I feel as I do even now as I write this, that God is moved beyond compassion that we will ever understand for the soul who sits in the pew, unable to rise and make the walk to the bread and the chalice or for the one who even as the crust breaks away in their mouth wonders “Am I enough for this? Do I deserve to taste such goodness and grace?”

While I participate in the life and ministry of a Lutheran congregation, I’m ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The reason I pursued ordination in that denomination was primarily based on their history and view of Christ’s table as open and accessible to all. They tell this story. Alexander Campbell, who would come to be one of the founders of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) belonged to a very strict Presbyterian Church in his homeland in Ireland. At the time, if you wanted to receive communion, it was necessary for a group of church leaders to come to your home and interview you. They were to judge if your doctrine was sound and you were living a life they deemed as righteous. If you passed inspection, you were given a small token which you would then bring with you to church and lay on the communion table. This was your golden ticket to receive the bread and cup. The story goes that one day, Alexander Campbell couldn’t stand it any longer and so he went through the regular procedure and received his token but when Sunday came and he walked forward to the table, placed the token he had earned on the table and then he turned around, walked back up the aisle and out the church doors. He did this because he’d come to a moment of spiritual revelation in his own life where he realized it wasn’t the place of the church to decide who was worthy of receiving communion because it was Christ’s table and we come at Christ’s invitation.

The churches approval of you or anyone, how we live or what we believe has nothing to do with the table. Our sexual orientation has nothing to do with the table. The communion table holds different meanings to different people, but ultimately as Christians we come to the table because Christ invites us to come to remember him. (Luke 22:14-19). Jesus says “Just come and remember me. Remember, I’m the one who happily ate with any and all who would sit with me at table. Remember, I’m the one who broke bread with those who others had judged unclean and unholy. Remember, I’m the one who pushed over the tables of the moneychangers because they dared to make God inaccessible to those who couldn’t purchase the required sacrifices they bartered at inflated prices. Remember, I’m the one who went willingly to the cross because I refused to be silent about the extravagant love of God that shook the wall others had constructed around it to the ground. Remember me.”

Wendy, the table has been prepared and set by Christ. The bread and cup are his alone to give and he extends it to all and to everyone and that, my dear SisterFriend, includes you! God calls to each of us to come; eat and drink, remember Jesus, receive grace upon grace. It’s the greatest act of hospitality and generosity this world has ever known, that God has a table big enough for everyone. We don’t change to come to the table, but rather the table and all that it symbolizes has the power to change us, calling us to walk deeper in God’s grace and in newness of life. We don’t deny who we are to come to the table but we bring all that we are, our wholeness and our humanness into God’s presence and there we’re fed and strengthened for the journey.

You could say none of us are worthy to come to the table and you’d be right. You could also say all of us are worthy to come to the table and you’d be right. Such is the gift of redeeming love and grace beyond measure. It’s why more often than not, I’m so awed and grateful for the table and all it means to me that I feel it would be more true for me to approach it on my knees rather than on my feet. And I hope, more than hope, I pray Wendy, that the next time you stand before the table you’d be able to silence the doubts long enough to hear Christ say “Come, there’s room for you here. I’ve been saving this one bite of bread and this one sip from the cup just for you. I’m so glad you’re here.”

On a warm Saturday morning in April, Dana and I were married before nearly 200 friends and family members at Peace Lutheran Church here in Danville. Gathered together under one roof were Jews and Christians, Catholics and Methodists, Presbyterians and Lutherans and Unitarian Universalists; those who consider themselves religiously unaffiliated and an ample sprinkling of agnostics and spiritual seekers. All came to celebrate our wedding day and in doing so they gave Dana and I a gift beyond measure…by their very presence they were each an active participant in a grace-filled moment of healing and reconciliation in our lives. A moment to always be cherished, a moment beyond our wildest dreams.

Upon coming out as a lesbian seven years ago I was, without deliberate intention on anyone’s part, wounded and alienated by those I most loved, from religious institutions I most trusted, and especially from within myself, where ignorant and irrational voices accumulated over a life time made the assault coming from others pale in comparison to that when was coming from within. The specifics of my story are less important to be told here than the communal experiences in which many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons share.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people experience wounding and alienation on some level each time there’s another hate crime recorded, another marriage-protection bill considered, another false stereotype perpetuated by a religious spokesperson or politician, another occasion used to scapegoat gays as child molesters, another confrontation with a disapproving parent, another friendship lost, another message from the pulpit decrying the sin of homosexuality, another faith community re-clarifying its stand against the ordination of gays and lesbians, another anti-gay joke told and the laughter, however strained or subdued that follows, another sneer by a stranger when same-gender lovers dare to hold hands.

But for all their devastating power, there is greater power still in the collective moments of healing and reconciliation. Healing and reconciliation that come when a church or temple not only puts a sign outside their doors but then actively lives what that sign implies. How? By welcoming gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons to fully engage in the life and ministry of that faith community, by speaking the words gay and lesbian often from the pulpit, by affirming gay relationships and families to the same extent as are straight relationships and families, by entering into dialogue around issues of sexuality and religion in a way that stretches everyone gathered to consider inclusivity in a broader sense than ever imagined, and by boldly speaking up for justice outside the walls of the church or temple, wherever and whenever prejudice and discrimination rise up against a people.

Healing and reconciliation are experienced each time a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender person hears of another religious leader who has personally risked it all by standing as a witness to the ordination of a lesbian or has officiated at the marriage of two gay men, another church or temple that has broken away from its organizational leadership rather than to silently condone exclusionary policies that limit not only membership and ordination, but ultimately God’s love to one sexual orientation alone, another parent who is willing to re-evaluate their beliefs for the sake of love and relationship, another sign-carrying, smile-wearing, hug-giving band of PFLAG’ers marching in a gay pride parade, another person who stops an anti-gay joke before the laughter, and another gathering of friends and family who applaud and cheer when wife and wife are introduced for the first time.

Please understand that healing and reconciliation are not only what we offer to the gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person who walks through the doors of our faith community, but ultimately they are the gifts we give ourselves. By enlarging our embrace, we enlarge our own capacity to be embraced by the passionate love and holy presence of God among us. By being a voice of reconciliation to others, God’s voice calls those alienated places within us to new and uncharted levels of reconciliation. By being a hand of healing to another, God touches the hidden places within us that yearn desperately for healing. We all need to be recipients of healing and reconciliation, not because we are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or straight, but because we are human. Let us consider too that in opening our churches and synagogues to all God’s people we open our doors to the abundance of gifts and they enriching ministry they have to offer, for which the end result will be a church and a temple more reflective of the diversity and creativity of the One True God, by whatever name, we all worship.

…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!

-
Tom was a great guy, a man with a strong Christian faith and a genuine passion for entering the ministry. He was there every Sunday, playing the organ or piano, leading the choir, teaching the kids. The problem was the church didn’t consider Tom suitable for ordained ministry because of something in his personal life. You see, Tom had once been married and divorced. Years had passed and then Tom met Linda, a woman active in the church and they married. In doing so Tom sinned according to the churches understanding of Jesus’ teaching on remarriage.

Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” “What did Moses command you?” he replied. They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God `made them male and female.’ `For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”Mark 10:1-12

Many gay and lesbian Christians are familiar with this passage since some Christians will occasionally use it as one of the passages to prove that homosexuality is wrong and I’ll address that later but for now, let’s stay with the question of divorce and remarriage. When I was a child growing up within conservative Christianity, I heard sermons that spoke strongly against divorce. I remember when divorce was viewed as so scripturally unacceptable that women were encouraged to stay in their marriages even if their husbands were physically abusive. Instead, if their husband hit them they were to get on their knees in a posture of prayer and submit to the beating and in doing so their husband might be won over to Christ. In context my church wasn’t some radical fundamentalist off-beat exception. Not by any means. There was nothing radical about that view at the time in most evangelical, conservative circles. Eventually the church grew beyond this naive, dangerous, and abusive in it’s own right teaching. They were confronted with the reality of domestic abuse and their hearts went out in compassion and love. They became educated and increased in their understanding and changed their teaching in accordance to their new vision.

So let’s get back to Tom. Even after the church had begun to shift it’s understanding on divorce, it still required that for ordained ministry a man or woman could not be remarried. As good a man as Tom might have been there were no exceptions to the rule, a rule established on the teaching of Jesus as offered above. The church understood Jesus to be saying that for anyone to divorce and remarry someone other than their original spouse was to commit adultery, not just once but continually. It wasn’t a one time act of adultery but every time the two came together sexually they were sinning again and again. They were practicing sin. Because of this, the church offered two solutions to Tom and others in a similar situation. Either Tom could return to his first wife and remarry her or, if she had since remarried and was no longer available, he was to remain single.

I can’t tell you what year it was that the church softened it’s policy but Tom is now an ordained pastor and while the denomination still takes a strong stand against divorce, they’re open to
considering ordaining those who are remarried case by case. In their official position paper, this same denomination that once penalized those who were divorced and remarried now states:

“We believe in healing for crumbling or broken marriage. Divorced and remarried persons are accepted in love and grace as members, provided they have received Christ as their Savior and demonstrate the Christian life. We believe God alone is the final judge. High standards have been set for ministerial credentials. The Corporate Bylaws cover the subject of divorce and remarriage relating to clergy. There are ethics committees established to consider individual cases upon appeal.”

They once believed the Bible to be absolutely clear on it’s teaching on divorce and remarriage but now have extended grace toward these people who were once set apart. Why? Perhaps because divorce, once considered to be a ‘sin’ outside the church, came into the church. Faithful church members and clergy began to experience divorce in their own lives and so grace was extended to accommodate the unfortunate reality of their life circumstance. I believe Jesus would have us do no different and I applaud the church for widening its embrace. Thank God for a change in the church that damaged so many for so long.

And yet, here’s the rub. The church is filled with gay and lesbian Christians and still Biblical passages are used to deny their welcome into the church as full members. The denomination I belonged to that now allows for divorce and remarriage among all its members and to clergy by exception says about homosexuality

“We are opposed to homosexuality. Based on the teaching of the Holy Scripture, it is declared to be sin. We encourage those engaged in homosexuality activity to cease such acts, and to seek forgiveness and deliverance through Jesus Christ.”

And so gays remain unwelcome in that particular denomination and in many others. They are denied communion. They are refused the privilege and responsibility of all Christians to participate in the life of the church. Those who are called to ministry by God are denied access by church leadership. Once again, the church offers its two solutions to gays and lesbians that sounds very familiar to those once offered to its divorced members. We may either repent and go through the motions of changing into heterosexuals (reparative therapies, counseling, ex-gay ministries, prayer healing) or we can remain single for the rest of our lives. If we deny who we are, the church will welcome us. If we spend our lives struggling to be cured from something that needs no cure, the church will surround us with support. If we walk away from our loving and committed relationships and commit to living a life of celibacy to which we know we aren’t called, we will be restored to the family of God.

If the church views both homosexuality and divorce/remarriage as sin then how does it theologically and scripturally justify exempting one from a biblical mandate while constraining the other? And if no scriptural justification can be offered then how can the church continue to grant grace for those who are divorced and remarried while not doing the same with those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered?

Perhaps the church needs to realize that homosexuality isn’t restricted to ‘ungodly’ people somewhere out there but that it’s among them, preaching in their pulpits, singing from their choirs, teaching in their Sunday School classes and sitting beside them in the pews each Sunday. We are them. The family of God is divorced and remarried. The family of God is gay and lesbian. The family of God is single mothers, illegal immigrants, the homeless and oppressed. And all are equally created, equally loved, and equally welcomed by God.

Now let’s get back to the passage:

Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” “What did Moses command you?” he replied. They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” “It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.” Mark 10:1-12

As I mentioned earlier, this passage is used by some as proof that the only form of relationship approved and designed by God is that of male and female. From here they jump into the Creation argument, that argues homosexuality is wrong because in the beginning God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Ste….oh, you know the rest! And besides, that’s for another essay.

When using this passage to argue against homosexuality there’s usually a failure to mention what Jesus was responding to when he mentioned the sanctity of the marriage relationship. Jesus was answering a question about divorce between a husband and a wife. He wasn’t asked to endorse or condemn same-sex relationships. Had that been the question then Jesus’ answer would hold different meaning but that’s why context is a critical component to biblical interpretation.Jesus is asked a question about divorce between a man and a woman. Jesus directly answers the question by speaking about marriage between a man and a woman. Jesus further expands his teaching later by commenting on remarriage between a man and a woman. If Jesus is givinga strong word to anyone here it’s to straight people, men in particular, who are considering divorcing their wives. In this passage Jesus has nothing to say about gay people because homosexuality isn’t the issue. Sometimes it really is that clear and simple.

There’s an online article comparing remarriage and homosexuality, written by the late Dr. Lewis Smedes called “Like The Wideness of the Sea?” Dr. Smedes also produced a video on the same topic that’s available through Soul Force called “There’s a Wideness In God’s Mercy.”

“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.