Much the same can be said of the final clobber passage, Romans 1:21-28. Here, at the start of what is inarguably one of the New Testament's essential books, the Apostle Paul draws a picture of the "foolishness" of gentile ways, ways that have led to what he describes as "degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another." The context here is important, however: it represents the first stage in an argument addressed to the Jewish members of the Roman church, an argument through which Paul will attempt to show them that their disdain for gentiles is un-called for, since Jewish Christians have no reason to presume that they are any better, leading Paul to exclaim that Christ died for Jew and Gentile alike so that he could have mercy on everyone! ⁽²⁾

        That having been said, it is impossible to deny that Paul expresses discomfort here with what he regards as the "unnaturalness" of same-sex activities. The obvious response is that Paul would be correct if homosexual activities were nothing more than an "unnatural" outlet for those who are heterosexual by nature, but are indulging in homosexual activity just for the heck of it; most Christian gays and lesbians are only too happy to agree with Paul, pointing out that for them it would be a heterosexual relationship that would prove itself "unnatural". Alas, there is a pretty good comeback to that one…a comeback expressed most articulately by New Testament scholar Robert Gagnon.⁽³⁾

        Gagnon makes the point that the concept of "naturalness" invoked by Paul in Romans comes neither from Paul's own imagination nor from the world of ancient Greek philosophy, but is rather the one laid out in the second chapter of Genesis, in which God brings forth an appropriate helpmate, an appropriate sexual partner, for Adam, namely Eve. And so while it may be the case that the scripture passages clearly condemning same-sex activity boil down to simply three (on the one hand, two texts from a book that is seldom used in Christian circles, Leviticus; on the other hand, a far more central passage in a far more central section of the New Testament, namely Romans), Gagnon's claim is that the real weight of the Bible's discomfort with homosexuality lies here, with the heterosexual norm established in the opening chapters of Genesis. And so while it may be easy for us simply to ignore Leviticus, and while it may be easy for some of you simply to ignore Paul (that would be big mistake, as I'll try to show later on), the point people like Robert Gagnon wish to make is that it is inappropriate to ignore the plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face norm established at the very start of the central Biblical narrative, with the joining together of Adam and Eve. Which raises, quite unavoidably, the question of how we, in the church, deal with norms: the very question I hope to address after we've had a chance to stretch our legs, and sing a hymn.

        When we read a text, we read it in context. We have, of course, already been doing that, this morning, as we seek to understand ancient texts in their ancient context. And yet, as our congregational meetings made abundantly clear, ancient texts and contexts provide only a part of the backdrop against which this faith community wishes to weigh the question of same-sex marriage. Without disparaging Scripture, without thumbing its noses at the traditions of the Church, the Knox faith-family has insisted that it needed to incorporate distinctly contemporary insights, if our decision was to be a faithful one. I am in strong agreement with that. And while there are countless relevant contexts that need to be heeded, there are three that stand out as especially important.

        The first is the context of modern science as it pertains to what we know (at any rate, what we think we know) about sexuality in general, homosexuality in particular. At the risk of indulging in a grotesque generalization, I think it is the case that science--on the whole--is convinced that sexual orientation tends to be fixed at an extremely young age. And so, while scientists debate the extent to which this is the result of genetic hard-wiring versus childhood environment and circumstances, science is pretty clear that our sexual orientation is beyond our control, which comes as welcome news for those who want to found their advocacy for same-sex unions on the rock of science.

        My caution here concerns the continually evolving face of scientific knowledge. At the end of the day, science is not so much a body of results, but rather a way of engaging the world through experimentation and inductive reasoning. Right now, the science of human sexual orientation points in one direction; what if new scientific data indicates that children who--by the age of 6--manifest clear symptoms of same-sex orientation, can be changed if subjected to a year of intensive psychological reprogramming? Is that a band wagon on which the church would want to leap? To take an even more current example--though one drawn not from the hard sciences but from the social sciences--what if social scientists like Stanley Kurtz turn out to be correct when they argue that the legitimization of same-sex marriage in places like Sweden is already harming the institution of heterosexual marriage?⁽⁴⁾

Will the church change it's stance again, if that turns out to be true? My point is this; much as I appreciate science, we need to use its findings cautiously as we seek to hear God's call.

        For that reason, I am personally far more interested in a second context: the context of personal testimony that has been increasingly available over the past 40 years, as homosexual persons and those who love them have been able to come out of the closet. I take such testimonies very seriously: not because they are infallible (believe me, the testimony I am presently sharing with you is far from infallible), but because testimony (including Scripture's testimony) must be heard as we seek the truth.

        And I have been especially impressed these past months, by the testimony that some of you have been willing to share with me, including some of you whom I regard as elders: those from my parents' generation or older. I have been deeply moved by the stories you have shared with me as people who came of age 20 years before I did, but whose own children are my contemporaries. And so I have heard the heartbreaking stories of friends who were married to men that they adored, only to discover (15 or more years into a marriage) that the person they had married had been living a lie, and was now going to depart in order to take up life with a male lover. And I have heard the truly tragic stories of the children who wandered away, never to be heard from again, until a late night phone call revealed the whereabouts of the remains of a son or daughter who was convinced that their families would never be able to accept them as the gay or lesbian person they knew themselves to be, and that they therefore had no choice but to make a new life away from their family. And yes, I have also heard the triumphant stories of those of you who have struggled valiantly to relearn some of the anti-gay, anti-lesbian scripts you memorized as children, in order to accept and embrace homosexual sons and daughters who remain a rich and rewarding part of your lives.

        All of them stories very much in synch with what I have heard from homosexual people both inside and outside this congregation: people whose realization that they are somehow "different" rarely causes them an initial burst of joy, people who often go through a time of denial, a time of trying to pretend that they could change, people who eventually (and this can often take years) come to that place where they have accepted themselves for who they really are: not because their homosexuality is the only facet of their identity, but because their homosexuality is intricately woven into every other dimension of their identity. Unlike the findings of science which will inevitably give way to new findings, such testimonies are impossible to dismiss, even though any given one only reveals a small fragment of the truth. Nevertheless, it is clear to me that there is a growing body of anecdotal evidence, to the effect that self-acceptance brings healing and life, self-rejection brings isolation and psychic death, to those who are wrestling with the realization that they are attracted to people of the same sex.⁽⁵⁾

But why act on that insight? Why can't people of same-sex orientation simply find a place of succor and nurture within their families and spiritual communities? Having acknowledged a same-sex attraction, having been honest about who they are, having accepted who they are, why the need to actualize the attraction in the form of a covenanted relationship?

        Of all the contexts that have factored into my thinking as I have wrestled with the question of same-sex attraction (not only over the past week, but over the past 25 years), the one to which I continually return is the context of the Church, the context of the community charged with the unique responsibility of tending the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Over the centuries, we have--of course--taken a number of different stands vis a vis gay and lesbian persons. At our least Christ like, we have simply condemned: condemned not only actions but the people who have engaged in those actions, condemnations which--at their most brutal--have hearkened back to an advocacy of the Leviticus 20:13 death penalty. More characteristically over the past 20 years, even conservative churches have moved to a middle position: warmly accepting homosexuals, without affirming their relationships. Only recently have some of the churches been willing not only to accept homosexuals, but to affirm their practice of homosexuality.

        And it's hard to deny the initial attractiveness of that middle stance.⁽⁶⁾     The comparison sometimes made is with alcoholism: welcome the alcoholic but not the alcohol, or so goes the saying. Applying that to the present discourse, we would say that we want to welcome the homosexual, but not the homosexuality. Come to church but please leave your intimate relationships out of it! My difficulty with that sort of analogy, however, is that comparing the use of alcohol to an intimate, committed relationship, trivializes the latter. There is so much more to an intimate relationship, than the sexual pleasuring that takes place within it; in other words, there is far more than sex at stake, in the question of same-sex relationships.

        Barbara Amiel, the Canadian writer, penned a beautiful column back in January.⁽⁷⁾   In response to the wedding of Elton John and his long-time companion David Furnish, Amiel spoke of how she would have been honored to have attended the wedding, had she and her husband, Conrad Black, not been dealing with all kinds of other problems. Among the very important points she makes in that column, Amiel notes that "human beings are a pair-bonding species and I'm at a loss as to why any liberal society would want to deny the expression of pair-bonding instincts in homosexuals." Her concern here is not with the sex act itself; she is talking about the way in which the vast majority of human beings yearn to "pair-bond", yearn to find another person with whom to navigate life's adventures, someone without whose presence we easily lose our bearings. (I hate to think what my life would be like without Sherry; for your part, you don't even want to imagine what my life would be like without Sherry!) That sort of relationship is not a mere add-on like a glass of good port and an after dinner cigar; it's basic to what makes us human. But, of course, as Christians don't need Barbara Amiel to teach us that; Genesis 2, with its story of Adam and Eve teaches that quite nicely: teaches that Adam's deep longing could not be met until God brought forth a fitting partner for him. And while it may well be true that Genesis 2 establishes a heterosexual norm for that central relationship, do we as the Church--as a church of saints and sinners--really want to deny that sort of relationship to the hardly insignificant minority who will only find such a relationship in a person of the same sex?

        The longer I wrestle with that question, the more insistently I find myself ill at ease with the different standard we Protestants apply to homosexual relationships, as opposed to our way of dealing with the remarriage of those once married but now divorced. In the case of divorce and remarriage, we don't have to dig into Leviticus to find texts condemning the practice: Jesus does not hesitate to compare that practice to legalized adultery. The late Lewis Smedes, who for many years taught ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in California (it's a prestigious Evangelical seminary), Dr. Smedes in a powerful article dealing with same-sex marriage, recalled a time in the history of his own Christian Reformed denomination when their Synod re-affirmed its refusal to bless the second marriages of previously divorced individuals.⁽⁸⁾   He then describes the way in which that changed, as more and more divorces took place, and as it became increasingly impossible to apply the divorce/remarriage rule-book without regard to the human pain that rule was causing for those who yearned for a second chance. Which prompts Lewis Smedes to ask a pretty basic question. "Does the church's dramatic move from the exclusion to the embrace of divorced and remarried Christians provide a precedent for an embrace of homosexual Christians who live together in a committed partnership?" He answers that question in the affirmative, looking forward to the day when the Church will be prepared to bless same-sex marriages.

        And I hasten to add that Dr. Smedes was writing here as someone who was far from convinced that homosexual orientation was God's ultimate intention for anyone. I plan to question that assumption in a few minutes, but for now please recognize the importance of what Dr. Smedes was moved to affirm: namely that it is more than a little hypocritical to color outside the lines when it comes to the remarriage of divorced persons, but to offer nothing other than a life of celibacy to those countless gays and lesbians who manifestly do not possess the gift of celibacy. Indeed: as a rule of thumb, let me simply state that anytime you find yourself getting ready to recommend a life of celibacy to another person as the solution to their life problems, it's time to take a deep breath and think long and hard before you open your mouth to speak.

        In the words of the One we call Lord: "Woe also to you lawyers! For you load people with burdens too hard to bear, but you yourselves do not lift one finger to help them,"⁽⁹⁾   words that stand in powerful contrast to another set of words he was also heard to have spoken. "Come to me, all you that are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me: for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."⁽¹⁰⁾   Let's sing another hymn.

"Help us Accept Each Other"

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Part Three: Contexts, mainly the Church of the Holy Spirit

        Let me refresh your memories. I have been speaking about the church of saints and sinners. And I have asked a question of the church. Given that same-sex relationships are not the norm, given that they may even fall outside the bounds of the standard issue relationships God desires for us, why have we been so reluctant to offer the same blessing to such relationships that we have been willing to extend to the no-less questionable relationships of those who have entered into a second or third marriage? That's the question with which I concluded the last section. Here, in this final section, I want to push the envelope further; I want to ask another question, namely this:

        Are there grounds…are there grounds for wondering whether same-sex relationships may not be problematic at all? Are there grounds for believing that God--far from being displeased--is actually cheering on those churches that are opening their doors, not only to homosexuals, but to their relationships?

        There are, of course, many ways of skinning this particular cat; some folks I know simply argue that God doesn't make "junk", and since God--at least in some sense--is responsible for the creation of gays and lesbians, the presumption is God affirms those who were simply "born that way." Unfortunately, I find that a difficult route to travel. Why? Because I believe ours to be a fallen world: a world in which God permits all sorts of things to take place that can safely be said to break God's heart. To assume, just because something "is", that it "is" in precisely the way God wants it "to be", is to assume too much. For me, that route is not available; something more is needed..

        For an increasing number of folks, that "something more" is to be found in a small handful of Biblical texts that appear to affirm not only homosexual persons but their relationships, as well. It would take me too far a field, this morning, were I to address these four texts in a detailed way; but let me quickly summarize. From the Old Testament there is, on the one hand, the Book of Ruth with its powerful depiction of a friendship between Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi and, on the other hand, the story of the passionate friendship between David and Jonathan, a friendship described in the book 1^st Samuel. Of the two, I find the suggestion of intimacy between David and Jonathan by far the more plausible; there are at least a couple of points in the narrative where the text virtually screams at us to notice that these two young men are more than just friends. For those of you who are interested in following up on that possibility, I can recommend some further reading.⁽¹¹⁾

        As for the New Testament, here again two texts are frequently cited. The first comes from the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 8: 5-13), that includes a version of the story of the healing of the Centurion's servant in which the Greek words used hint at the possibility that the servant in question was more than a servant. Here again, however, none of that is spelled out by the text, nor is it ever made clear whether Jesus (who was otherwise silent on the question of homosexuality) was aware of the precise nature of the Centurion's relationship with his servant. Once again, I can recommend some further reading, for those who want to dig more deeply.⁽¹²⁾

        The other New Testament text that may have a homosexual reference is one we read in Church just a few weeks ago: the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch who, as you may recall, is quite possibly the first gentile to enter the Church. The relevance of this story is that there was a connection, in the ancient world, between Eunuchs and homosexuality, some scholars going so far as to suggest that some of those who served as eunuchs were actually gay men, men who posed no sexual threat to the women they served, not because they were castrated but because they were gay.⁽¹³⁾   As with these other texts, it would be presumptuous to assume too much and yet, in the case of the Ethiopian Eunuch, I find it fascinating that the first Gentile to gain admission to the Church was not merely a gentile, not merely a black man, but someone about whom there would have been the unmistakable air of "sexual misfit". Which prompts, yet again, that most basic of questions: What is the Church? What are we to say of this odd institution, this originally Jewish institution that managed to haul in--as its first non-Jewish conscript--someone whose genital deformity and/or status as a "sexual outsider" would have marked him as a decidedly questionable candidate for admission to the ranks of God's people?

        Well: as you realize, I have already referred to the Church as the Church of saints and sinners, a place where mercy is offered and received. Here, as I bring these remarks to a close, I want to remind us that the Church is also rightly regarded as the Church of the Holy Spirit, a place in which it is always appropriate to inquire as to the whereabouts and activities of the Holy Spirit. And the point that must be made is simply this: the Church by definition is fundamentally a Church neither of law nor of laws, but foundationally a Church of the Spirit. Surely that is what Jesus is saying to his disciples (John 16: 12-15) when he tells them, just prior to his death: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…" Why do we so readily assume that the promise of the Spirit's guidance was offered only to the first generation of Christians? Why do we so often presume that the Spirit has no new truths to unfold to us? In a similar vein, I wonder why we don't take Jesus at his word (Matthew 16:19, 18:18,19) when he says to his first disciples: "Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Here again I need to ask: why do we so often assume that the power to loose and to bind was only given to the first generation of Christians? Why do we presume that the Spirit might not use our generation to set a new group of captives free?

        And why, pray tell, do we seem so reluctant to claim the spiritual freedom that both Jesus and Paul sought to win for us? Here I must be honest: as a Christian who comes to the Church from a Jewish background, it breaks my heart to see us hurling texts from Leviticus at one another. In the seventh chapter of Mark, when Jesus dispenses with all food regulations--regulations that come directly from Leviticus--he makes it clear that the foundation of the Church is not the law. And Paul, in Galatians--when he does away with the need for circumcision--does precisely the same thing, making it clear that the foundation of the Church is not the law. And while I realize that food issues and circumcision issues may seem trivial to us, I can assure you that even now they do not seem trivial to observant Jewish ears. More to the point: it's not that Jesus didn't care about food (I'm sure he is deeply concerned to see a world in which obscene gluttony and dire hunger live side by side) but that his concerns over the proper use of food cannot be contained within the parameters of the Mosaic law. Which again leads to a question, namely this one. (And this is a biggie, so please listen up!!) Could it be that the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the living Christ, is doing something in this generation around questions of human sexuality, not unlike what Jesus himself managed to do for his generation around questions of the proper use of food? Just as Jesus' own generation was asked to learn that the way in which we share our daily bread is more important than the ingredients we use when we bake the bread, is it possible that our generation is being asked to learn that the quality of commitment (the quality of fidelity) we bring to our relationships, is far more important than surveying precisely which body parts are involved in the sexual dimension of those relationships? Is it possible that God's Spirit is nudging us in that direction? And if so, how would we recognize the Spirit at work in so dramatic a shift?

        Let me answer that final question ever so briefly. Over the past few months, as I have re-read a handful of the literature around the issue of same-sex marriage, I have been impressed by the testimony of a small handful of brave charismatic Christians. Some are gays and lesbians who--having been rejected by their own churches--have founded flourishing alternative Christian communities. Others are straight Christians, folks like Evelyn Schave and her husband Dennis, people who heard a call to minister to gays and lesbians.⁽¹⁴⁾ Having answered that call on the assumption that their job was to convert them away from their homosexuality, they persistently heard the Spirit reminding them that all God was asking of them was that they bear witness, within gay and lesbian communities, to the unconditional love of God made known in Jesus Christ. I realize that I am something of an oddity: a United Church minister who has the time of day for that kind of testimony from the charismatic wing of the church. And while it is true that such testimonies must be used with considerable care, I refuse simply to ignore what the Spirit appears to be up to in some unlikely corners of the Church.

        In addition, I have been struck these past weeks as we have worked through a number of texts from the Book of Acts, struck by the powerful parallels between the Spirit's work of expanding the walls of the Church in the first century Mediterranean world, and the ways in which the walls of the Church appear to be expanding in this generation.⁽¹⁵⁾   Once again, it appears that the exiles are being welcomed home; once again it appears that the outcasts--the once unacceptable ones--are being shown that there is a place for them at the banquet table. Can I be certain, can I be certain that the Spirit of God is not responsible for that kind of movement, for that kind of expansiveness?

        Finally, at the end of the day, the other way in which we (meaning the Christian Church) will come to recognize whether or not this movement of inclusiveness is truly God's work, is when at least a handful of congregations in each community step out in faith (notice, I finally got around to including the sermon title in the sermon!!) stepping out in faith in order to see whether we have in fact, heard the Spirit correctly, asking the Spirit to bless us as we seek to bless the unions of our gay and lesbians brothers and sisters in Christ. That this is a prospect that some of us find terrifying is not to be denied. And yet…and yet! When I look at the sorry record of exclusion of and hatred toward homosexual persons that has been the legacy of far too much of Christian history, this much I do know. I know that Jesus Christ is not happy with any of that. And I also know that if forgiveness is available to those who have permitted and even encouraged such actions in the name of Christ, forgiveness will also be available to those who step out in faith, reaching out in love and compassion to gay and lesbian people, even if we do that in ways that God does not, in fact, intend. And please, please: don't hear any of that as my being wishy-washy! Let me be clear: while I will never presume to know the mind of God on this or any other issue with anything even vaguely resembling infallibility, let me unequivocally state that I am only too happy to participate in the life of a congregation that has decided to step out in faith in just this way, offering to the gay and lesbian community not exclusion, but embrace, including the unique embrace of a congregation that wishes to bless their committed relationships.⁽¹⁶⁾ .

        Two final "words". First: a word to those of you who are deeply disappointed by the stance I have taken this morning. I urge you not to act hastily, but to take time to ponder and pray over the summer months, asking God to give you the clarity you need, as you seek to decide whether you are able to remain a part of the Knox family of faith. I believe that there is room for Christians to disagree on these issues, including room for those who disagree to remain a part of the Knox faith family. But that can only be a personal decision each of you will need to make. For that reason, I also have a word for those of you who are delighted with the conclusion Knox has arrived at in the matter of same-sex marriages, but who may be struggling to show patience to those Knoxonians who are not on board. For those of you in this camp, I place a photo of the Dalai Lama on the screen, the Noble Peace Prize recipient who is almost universally praised for his deep spirituality and compassionate ways. Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama is not hesitant about offering unqualified condemnations of same-sex relationships,⁽¹⁷⁾   a stance which, I must confess, gave your humble servant considerable cause for sober second thoughts. But the reason I place his photo before you is to remind you that most of us who favor the blessing of same-sex marriages would have no trouble regarding the Dalai Lama with affection and respect, despite the fact that he disagrees with us on this issue; my prayer is that we will seek to extend the same sort of affection and respect to those within this congregation (and within the wider Christian faith family) who are unable, at least for the time being, to walk with us on this question.

                …because, at the end of the day, none of us is going to get the answer to all of the questions just right, but all of us--not in the name of the Dalai Lama, but in the name of Jesus Christ--can surely seek to do justice, can surely seek to love kindness, can surely seek to walk humbly with one another, and with our God. And glory be to God, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God, from generation to generation, in the Church, and in Christ Jesus: now and forever more. Amen.⁽¹⁸⁾

At sermon's end, the congregation was invited to sing
the John Oldham/Ron Klusmeier hymn:
"Deep in our Hearts"