“How the Bible Says it is OK to be Gay”

Martin Copenhaver, one of the best preachers in the UCC,  tells a story in which a Jewish friend of his says, “this is the outline of all liberal protestant sermons: The psychiatrist says .  .  .  the New York Times says .  .  .  A cartoon in the New Yorker says .  .  .  but, perhaps Jesus put it best when he said .  .  .”¹

I love one half of the formulation in this morning's question.  “How the Bible says .  .  .” Implicit in the question is the belief that Scripture might have a different, and more important, perspective than psychiatry, the New York Times or even a good cartoon.  We need more of that sort of reverence for scripture in our tradition.  But, I regret how the second half of the question is posed, for of course, the Bible doesn't say much of anything is okay.  The Bible says things are beautiful or idolatrous, sinful or wondrous, evil or holy.  Terrible is a biblical category.  So is wonderful.  But fair-to-middling doesn't make an appearance. 

I've seized on your terminology for an important reason.  The common assumption is that in the debate over homosexuality, the Christian Right have the rules on their side, a Bible that says homosexuality violates God's will.  And liberal America has a political philosophy which holds that the autonomous, self sufficient, free person is able to do whatever he or she pleases.  Okay is a liberal word.  It refuses to pass judgment.  I'm okay and you're okay.  It is okay to be gay.   It is okay to be straight.  You do your thing and I'll do mine and so long as no one gets hurt, what's the difference? 

The theologians I love have taught me to be suspicious of this kind of liberalism.  Not because I am conservative, but because I am a Christian.  And any ideology whose bedrock assumption is that people should be free to do as they please flies directly in the face of the Christian doctrine of sin.  A doctrine which holds that we are flawed creatures who, when set free to do as we please, will typically do the selfish thing, subjecting ourselves to the “tyranny of our own desires.”²   

But we're not here for a civics lesson and you're not here to agree or disagree with my politics.  God is still speaking, and we are here to listen for God's word. 

Which speaks a wonderful truth to today's question.  For while liberalism makes a good argument for the fact that homosexuality is acceptable, the Bible goes on step further to say quite clearly that gay people are good.  Not all right, but beautiful.  Not tolerable, passable, okay.  But wonderful, beloved, glorious. 

This might sound absurd, even to those who wish it were true.  For despite the fact that Jesus mentions homosexuality as often as he mentions frequent flier miles, organic food and diesel engines, which is to say, not once, if conservative Christianity has taught America anything it is this: the Bible opposes gay people. 

Let's move quickly to prove them wrong.  Unlike a previous generation's psychology which followed Freud to believe that homosexuality was some sort of disorder (and in a toxic combination of both misogyny and homophobia often blamed it on a gay person's mother) today's thought accepts that a person's sexual orientation is an essential, ingrained dimension of who you are.  Homosexuality is no more a choice than is heterosexuality.  If you're a straight man, ask yourself, “when did I first decide I would be attracted to women?” It is a ridiculous question.    

But in the Bible’s most infamous comment on same-sex activity, Paul presumes that those who engage in gay sex engage in isolated acts of deviation from a universally shared heterosexual norm.  “Women,” Paul says in the first chapter of Romans “giving up natural intercourse exchanged it for unnatural .  .  .  And men, giving up natural intercourse with women were consumed with passion for one another”.   In this understanding, homosexual activity is a choice heterosexuals make.  Like a truth-teller deviating from honesty in order to tell a lie, a person engaged in same sex activity momentarily departs from the morally preferable universal standard. 

This was Paul’s first-century Jewish worldview, and it is one adopted by contemporary Christians who label homosexuality a “lifestyle” and try to convert gays and lesbians “back” into heterosexuality (as if they ever left in the first place).  To my mind, subscribing to a first-century sexual anthropology that modern understandings of human sexuality have refuted makes as much sense as believing the earth is flat because the ancient Hebrew cosmology assumed it so.  The earth is round.  You don't learn to be gay.  You're created that way.  Neither of these realizations diminish our appreciation for the Bible.  In fact, both can enhance it.  

I like this metaphor.  Life is a long road trip.  You don't have your CD collection or your i-pod.  Just a broken radio.  The only station you can find is playing the most amazing piece of music you have ever heard.  It soars, it ebbs, it reaches crescendos that make you want to floor the pedal and race through the beauty, it affirms you, it convicts you, it makes sense of existence. 

But as I have said, your radio is broken.  And while the music is occasionally clear, there are interludes of pure, unlistenable static.  Much of the time you hear both at once, this wonderful song, slightly obscured by the hiss and the fuzz of a broken receiver. 

The stories of Israel and Jesus are this piece of music.  A piece that God composed.  And the authors of the Bible are our broken radio.  Sometimes they give us the story in its pure form.  Other times God's beauty is hidden in the static of ancient politics or prejudice.  And sometimes as is the case with this unfortunate reading from Romans, the signal is lost altogether – all we get is an ugly hiss. 

The question before us is this: Are we going to listen to the Bible carefully, straining to hear the gorgeous melody of a nonviolent lamb who conquers by giving his life for ALL people, or are we going to listen indiscriminately, confusing the static for the symphony itself? 

[Let me take a brief detour here.  If sermons had footnotes this would be one.  The approach I just suggested opens itself to the charge of Biblical literalism, whereby we accept those aspects of scripture that we agree with as the word of God, and reject the rest.  Now, on some level I think everyone reads the Bible this way.  Neither Ralph Reed nor James Dobson has taken a public vow swearing that never again will they eat shrimp scampi, yet the Bible prohibits shellfish. 

But, I don't think the accusation applies in this instance.  There are Biblical themes that I don't like.  The second coming for instance.  The claim that God will conclude history totally violates my modern perspective.  But, this belief is shot right through the New Testament.  Jesus mentions it frequently and it pervades Paul's thought.  So, I place my questions and my doubt and my dislike underneath the doctrine’s pressure.  I try to believe it, or at least accept it.  I hope it shapes me.  I don't ignore it. 

Homophobia is not one of the Bible's major themes.  Sure, it makes the occasional appearance.  But so does the justification of slavery.  So does the demand that women wear hats to church.  Even on 100 degree days! Most every Christian in America has rejected these latter two teachings as absolutely opposed to scripture's primary theme: the truth of God revealed in Christ.  And we should be proud to belong to a church that sees the former in this exact same light. 

Back to the sermon: we need to be clear in stating that our belief that homosexuality is natural, is not primarily a negative response to the Christian right.  Instead, first and foremost, it is a positive theological conviction.  God creates some people gay, and because God declares creation good, homosexual people must therefore be good.  Genesis doesn't say that God made straight people on the sixth day and gay people two weeks later.  We are all children of the same creation, same creator. 

Paul picks up this theme from Genesis in our reading from First Timothy when he says, “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected.” The true meaning of the Greek word used in this context is “beautiful.” The meaning here, Karl Barth argues, “is that everything created by God is good, [in that it] is right, is well-ordered and therefore is beneficial.”3

Now, you're going to have to bear with me for a moment.  Most weeks I would be  moving directly into some sort of conclusion, hopefully a moving one.  But, you've asked me to unpack a bit of the Bible.  So, rather than rhetoric we're going to end with what might be a bit of fussy exegesis.  Hopefully, though, it will help us look at scripture in a new light.  Barth suggests that when Paul says humanity is “beautiful” he means something other than the Genesis claim that we reflect the image of God in its pure power.  For of course Paul believes that we need to be saved, and we need to be saved because we have fallen, and in the fall, Paul thinks, the image of God was wiped from us.  We are broken and imperfect creatures, not God-like, but human – in desperate need of salvation. 

So, how can we say that we are beautiful, beneficial even? Creation is the most important act in the Bible.  But after creation, comes the Fall and our ensuing radical distance from God.  This makes the redemption of creation, the salvation of creation, the work of Jesus Christ, the most beautiful act in the Bible. 

Let's move now to our reading from the first chapter of John.  Here, scripture says that we are created through Christ.  Barth wants to argue, and I love this argument, that while we no longer reflect God's perfection, we are called to reflect the work of the one through whom we were created.  We are beautiful not because we reflect God's power, but because we reflect God's mercy.4 We were all born through Christ to do the work of Christ: to love God, and to save each other.  And we all have a role to play in salvation. 

This means then, that by rejecting gay men and lesbian women the church has stymied the work of Christ.  For if Paul is right, all a part of God's salvation drama, gay people must have a unique role to play in that story.  What could that role be?     

Well on one level (the most important level) the answers to that question are countless.  For every gay individual brings a distinct and personal self to the church.  Ask yourself,  who here has helped save me? Who helped me move? Who held me up? Who has modeled good parenting, committed love, joyful singing, a commitment to peace, an active faith? Who helped save me? My guess is the answer has almost nothing to do with that person's sexual orientation.  Before we fall into any category, we are individuals crafted and created by God with individual gifts that no one else has. 

But, of course we also fall into categories.  And here, in a church  faithful enough to fly directly in the face of dominant Christianity, a church Christ-like enough to unapologetically welcome gay and lesbian people, we are blessed to be saved by the beautiful category of homosexuality.  By you beautiful people. 

We all have doubt.  We all have reasons (good reasons!) to stay away from church, to abandon our childhood faith.  To write the church off as a disappointing institution, and Christianity off as an ancient and confusing myth.  We all have hurdles to clear in order to be here.  But, not all of us have heard the Church say “you are not welcome here.” Not all of us need to hear a sermon preached in order to challenge two-thousand years of liars who twist the truth and smile as they tell us we are not “okay.” Not all of us have been told we are beyond the pale of salvation. 

It is only gay and lesbian Christians who have to clear those hurdles in order to sing a hymn, teach Sunday School, feed the hungry, share a cup of coffee in the church basement and praise the God who made them.  And in leaping into God's embrace over the obstacles our religion has placed in their path, our gay sisters and brothers teach the rest of us how petty our excuses are, and just what it means to be faithful.  In their brave response to grace, we see faith that has the power to save.  And so we learn to be faithful.  And in our faith we are saved.  I thank God for you.  Amen.