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!

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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.”