I’m Ready to Say Yes

by nance In Writing 7 Comments

A version of this post is featured on Sojourners

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The year is 2005.  We are sitting down to dinner with our friend, Michael, in his apartment.  Michael is gay and he’s wrestling with what that means.  He is also searching for a church and he is drawn to ours because his theology and his understanding of God appear to align with it.  At some point in the meal he stops the conversation and asks bluntly,

 

“Do you think I would be welcome at your church?
Is there a place there for someone like me?

 

Jason and I exchange a look and the table falls silent.  Finally I look up at Michael and say quietly,

“No.  No, I don’t think there is.  I’m so sorry.”

church

Fast forward several years.  We’re in a new city and a new church.  Jason gets an email from someone interested in checking out said church the following Sunday.  She explains that she is gay and believes God made her that way.   She’s not interested in debating the point.  She’s just interested in finding a church.  She thinks ours might be a good fit and asks the exact same question that Michael asked:

 

“Do you think I would be welcome at your church?
Is there a place there for someone like me?

 

Jason agonized over that email for days and it pained him immensely to write her back and say no.  No, I don’t think there is.  I’m so sorry.

This is not to say that there aren’t some churches out there for folks like Michael & the woman who sent the email.  Just not ours.  And there’s the rub.  There are few churches that claim, like ours, to be “scripture-oriented, Christ-centered” churches who also allow space for monogamous gay relationships.  So what’s a gay person to do?  Where should they go if they want to attend an evangelical church with all the attendant theology that brings?

Confession

A friend of mine asked me last week when I was planning to write about homosexuality, especially in light of the recent SCOTUS decision.  I said something vague, like, “oh someday, I guess.”  I told him that it’s just not my thing.  I told him it’s not my topic.  But you know what?

I told him a lie.

I lied to him and I’ve been lying to myself.  If I’m truthful, I haven’t written about it because I’m scared.  I’m scared of being subversive and divisive.  I’m scared of losing my ‘street cred’ as a Christian.  I’m scared of rocking the boat too hard.

But I’m sick of saying no.  I’m tired of telling people that there is no place for them at my church.  I’m ready to say yes.

The Story of Amy

This past year a gay woman joined our church community group.   We’ll call her Amy.  She’s been in a monogamous relationship for over 7 years and she was returning to the Church after a long hiatus.   She was worried last Fall when she showed up on our stoop, wondering if she would be able to tell us her story and be herself.

It was a stretch for a few folks in our group, to be sure.  Some thought nothing of it while others felt unsure.  But here’s what ultimately happened:  Amy showed up.  Week by week, month by month, she showed up and she showed us who she is.  She volunteered with us, prayed with us, discussed and argued over Scripture with us.  She laughed with us, ate fondue with us at the annual Christmas party, and responded to the needs in our group with kindness and great care.  She threw herself into the group headlong and allowed us to truly see her.   The same as everybody else.

We folded her in and she us.

The Larger Church

But what of her place in our larger church body?   As easy as it would be to skirt the edges on this and speak in subtleties, I think the answer sits in that still murky terrain of marriage.  Would we perform the wedding ceremony for Amy and her partner?   They desire the covenant of marriage.  And they can fulfill all the requirements of that covenant.   So could we, would we, perform the ceremony?

If we say no, we are saying that even though they show up like the rest of us, even though they are an integral part of our body like the rest of us, even though they exhibit the fruits of the Spirit like the rest of us and love God with all their heart, soul, and mind like the rest of us,  — even though all those things, — we are still going deny them the chance to participate in the Church with the whole of their lives.

We are saying that despite ALL those things, they are not enough.   That’s what I used to say and it grieves me to remember it.

For the Church, the 3 pillars for discerning the will of God are:

  •  scripture
  • tradition
  • reason

Hebrews 4 tells us that the Bible is living and active.  If that is true, then our interaction with it also ought to be living and active and to mature and grow like all living things.  So we could sit down and argue those 6 passages about homosexuality until we are blue in the face.  Or we could consider the context and the culture and the tradition in which those verses were written and then consider the maturity and the growth that we’ve experienced as a people and as the Church since that time.  And we could look at Amy.

We could look at Amy and say yes.

Yes, you are created in the image of God and God was pleased to make you exactly as you are.  Come in and eat with us.

7 thoughts on “I’m Ready to Say Yes”

  1. I agree. All are welcome at the table. All should be shown love. You are also brave for writing this article.

    Replace the word homosexuality (and synonyms) with the phrase, “I’m having sex with someone’s wife.” What would you tell me? I can’t help it. God made me this way. I want to marry her. Can’t she just get divorced and marry me? I love her. Her husband treats her wrong.. this can’t be a sin can it? How could true love be considered living in iniquity?

  2. Your solution to feeling bad that Christianity says your gay, monogamous friends are engaging in open, unrepentant sin is to ignore, whole-cloth, large swaths of what your church would call the inerrant Word of God. If we can explain away a consistent tenet of Biblical teaching on sexuality from the Patriarchs through Paul based upon “cultural context”, and we can from ‘reason’ state that God’s mind has changed on this topic, how can ANY of God’s promises be counted on? If God is mutable on this issue how can we count on Him to remain immutable on the means of salvation?

    I’d encourage you to read this: http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2015/07/01/40-questions-for-christians-now-waving-rainbow-flags/

  3. While the Bible does not change, the cultural context in which it is read and interpreted is always changing. Because of that, the way the Bible has been interpreted has changed throughout the history of the church.

    To name just a couple examples, it used to the universally accepted, orthodox position of the church that the earth was the center of the cosmos. To believe otherwise was considered heresy. One couldn’t be saved and believe that the earth revolved around the sun. Today, no churches preach that position.

    A more recent example, the idea that the Bible supported the practice of slavery was held by the majority of churches until the last century or so. Again, almost no churches would preach from that position today.

    The question of what the Bible says about women in leadership is still being debated in various churches and denominations today.

    Throughout all of these shifts, the Bible has not changed. It’s changes in the cultural landscape that have prompted people to reexamine how the Bible is interpreted.

    As for The Gospel Coalition’s 40 questions, here’s a point by point response:
    http://benirwin.me/2015/07/02/40-answers-kevin-deyoung-gay-marriage/

  4. Your suggested word substitution is a false equivalency.

    In the case of someone who is having an affair, that is clearly a violation of their marriage vows. It’s also a violation of the Bible’s second greatest commandment, to love one’s neighbor (or in this case, one’s spouse) as one’s self.

    The issue of marriage equality is one where same sex couples are seeking to enter into long term, monogamous, loving relationships.

    I don’t see how one can be substituted for the other in this blog post.

  5. The idea of a geocentric universe is a misinterpretation of Hebrew word. Irrelevant to this conversation.

    It’s ironic that you would mention slavery, however, as “enslavers” shows up in 1 Timothy 1:10 right next to
    “the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality… and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine”. Kidnapping and trafficking were clearly opposed in Scripture. Indentured servitude was not.

  6. [The idea of a geocentric universe is a misinterpretation of Hebrew word. Irrelevant to this conversation.]

    Can you be more specific here? Which Hebrew word was being misinterpreted?

    And why is this subject irrelevant to the topic at hand? In your initial comment, you asked something related to how biblical interpretation changes in relation to cultural contexts. I’m merely trying to point out that the way the Bible has been interpreted throughout the history of the church has changed numerous times and I pointed out just three examples where that has taken place (and I could name others).

    [Kidnapping and trafficking were clearly opposed in Scripture. Indentured servitude was not.]

    You’re making an interpretational move here. Scripture doesn’t specify the type of slavery practiced in the early church (see Philemon, for example). To say that scripture only speaks of indentured servitude is an interpretation that would have been seen as odd by most of the church until just a few hundred years ago.

    And since you mentioned the mistranslation of Hebrew/Greek words, many scholars point out that the Greek word used in 1 Timothy (“arsenokoitai”) that gets translated “homosexual” was a very rare word in the Roman world and is notoriously difficult to translate. If Paul meant to write about same-sex sexual relations, there are many other more common Greek words he could have used.

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