Resources that support the unconditional welcome of people of all sexual orientations, gender identities & their families in the church home of their choice.
|
|
Resources that support the unconditional welcome of people of all sexual orientations, gender identities & their families in the church home of their choice. | |
A Sermon by Fintan Moore
First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
River Falls, Wisconsin
Sunday, October 22, 2006
One wedding at Spirit of the Lakes stands out in my memory. It was the wedding of Patsy and Beth. Patsy is a former physician and a health educator. Beth is a retired postal service worker. They met at Spirit of the Lakes and they fell in love working in the garden. Those of you who know Minneapolis will know that Lake Street is not the most romantic corridor in the metro area, but it was there as they weeded and planted and watered and picked out the trash that Beth and Patsy fell in love. When they announced their intention to marry, the congregation was delighted but no one was more delighted on the day of their wedding that Pauline, Patsy’s 90 year-old mother, Pauline.
When Gavin Newsome, mayor of San Francisco, decided that the law allowed him to open up marriage to same-gender couples there was a huge response. Thousands of couples flocked to the San Francisco City Hall to get married. The first couple to be married was Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin – two women who had been together for more than 50 years.
Two couples, two marriages. One a civil marriage in an administrative setting, the City Hall. One a religious marriage, a sacred covenant in the context of a faith community. I bring these stories to you this morning because I want to humanize the topic we are here to discuss this morning – the topic of same sex marriage.
The topic of same sex marriage raises all kinds of feelings and thoughts and responses whenever it is raised up for our attention. Many of us do not know what to do or think or believe with regard to this issue. As Christians, we turn to the Bible for inspiration and we find ourselves addressing a question to the Scriptures – “What does the Bible say about homosexuality?” It’s perfectly natural that we should raise this question and address it to the Scriptures. However, I have three problems with this question this morning.
The first is this: The Bible doesn’t offer a clear sexual ethic – it certainly doesn’t deal in a comprehensive way with romantic love and the organization of the family. Romantic love draws people to one another and family holds them together. The Bible has lots to say about who should have sex with whom and when and where but not much to say about love and family.
My second problem is related: I don’t have time this morning to go through the 7 or so sentences in the Bible that appear to speak to homosexuality. Fortunately you have, on the table before you, copies of a wonderful article by Walter Wink which addresses each of these verses – and the larger context – with respect and profound biblical scholarship.
The third problem is this: I don’t believe that the primary question raised by the campaign to amend the constitution of the great state of Wisconsin is a question of sexual ethics as much as it is a question of political ethics. Let me be clear, I’m not saying that this has nothing to do with sexual ethics but that it has to do first and foremost with political ethics.
Politics is how we choose to organize ourselves as a society, as a civilization. You know that the Greek word for “city,” polis, lies behind the word “politics.” Politics is how we organize ourselves, how we organize the relationships between individuals, communities, states, nations, etc. I believe that the campaign to change the Wisconsin Constitution to bar same sex couples from marrying is fundamentally about political ethics.
As I was on the road here this morning, I was listening to National Public Radio and I heard Karl Rowe speaking. He was coming out of a meeting with Republican party officials in Ohio, I think it was. The comment that stuck in my consciousness was this, “We must energize the conservative base.”
Now, I don’t know much about US politics and I have no right as an alien in your midst to tell you how to do things. However, I’ve been here since 1993 and it seems to me that there has been a fundamental shift in US political organizing. In the Clinton era, and you could probably say the same of the Reagan era, the “center” was the political prize. Everyone had their sights set on winning the political center. Today the prize is the political base – an extreme base. This was never so clear as it was in the 2004 General Election when the Presidency was up for grabs and there were constitutional amendments to ban same gender marriage on the ballot in 13 states. The marriage amendments brought millions of conservatives out to vote and they voted for the Republican presidential candidate while they were at it. The campaign to amend state and federal constitutions to ban same sex marriage and its legal equivalents is an attempt to energize the conservative base. It is a divisive and a polarizing strategy.
Fast forward to October 2006. If you or I had a penny for every time we have heard the phrase, “those people,” in this campaign, we would be very wealthy people. And who are “those people” we are hearing about?
Those people are Islamists, terrorists, detainees. Those people are so different from us that we have almost nothing in common. Those people do not deserve the same treatment, the same rights as us.
Those people are immigrants, aliens. Those people are sneaking across our borders at night bringing drugs and diseases and needy children along with them. Those people are not like us. Those people do not deserve the same treatment, the same rights as us.
Those people are gays and lesbians. Those people belong to the same category of people who practice pedophilia and polygamy and bestiality. Those people are definitely not like us. Those people do not deserve the same treatment, the same rights as us.
Jesus was born into a divided world: Gentiles, Jews, Romans, soldiers, tax collectors, Temple priests, scribes, Pharisees, Samaritans…. Coming from Ireland, I can tell you that the Empire, the Colonial Occupiers love a divided population. The divisions were deep. People mistrusted the other, they were suspicious of those people.
My favorite account of the life of Jesus is Mark’s Gospel. I like Mark for a variety of reasons, one of them is its brevity. It’s easier to be an expert scholar of Mark’s Gospel than any other – because it’s so much shorter. If you’ve read Mark, you know that it proceeds at a break-neck pace, it’s all narrative. It’s heavy on actions and light on words. We are told over and over again that the people were amazed at the teaching of Jesus but we seldom hear what that teaching was. The actions in Mark speak louder than words.
The vast majority of the action in Mark’s Gospel takes place around Lake Galilee. Picture the region if you can. On one side of the lake there are Jewish villages and towns with Gentile villages and towns on the other. Let’s trace the travels of Jesus on this map in your mind. He performs an exorcism in a Jewish village one day and in a Gentile village the next day. He heals the daughter of a Centurion in the Roman Army one day and the daughter of the leader of the synagogue the next. He feeds thousands of hungry people in a Jewish area one day and he feeds thousands of hungry people in a Gentile area the next. If you trace the journeys of Jesus backwards and forwards across this region, the pattern will look like the work of a darning needle.
Does anyone darn anymore? I know I don’t but every time I go home my mother sneaks through my things in search of something to darn. My last evening at home is always spent chatting with my mother as she uses her darning needle to drag the opposing sides of the holes in my socks and knitted sweaters back together. Jesus’ travels around Galilee remind me of a darning needle. And he doesn’t just travel alone, he is dragging his band of disciples, women and men, all around with him. They pick up people everywhere they go. Actions speak louder than words. God’s people are one, they are not meant to be alienated and separated from one another.
Finally, Jesus decided to bring his work to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is now, as it always has been, a divided city – a wonderful city but a divided city. As he attempted to do his darning work there, it became obvious that he was going to get torn to pieces – literally. Torn to pieces for teaching and demonstrating that God’s people are one, that they are not meant to be alienated and separated from one another.
On his last night with his friends, he spelled it out clearly. If they didn’t get what he was about in Galilee, perhaps they would understand this. This is my body. The people of God is my body. My body is about to be torn to pieces. Do as I have been doing. Make the choice, are you going to be tearing my body, my people, apart, or are you going to be about healing my body, uniting my body?
The motto of the United Church of Christ is “That they all may be one.” “That they all may be one.” I love this aspect of our church. Every two years at the General Synod, time is dedicated to celebrating the most recent congregations and denominations from all over the world to have joined in Full Communion with us. We are not a united church in the sense that we are honoring something that happened in the past, we are a uniting church, we are about the healing of the Body of Christ, we are about the bringing back together of the Body of Christ.
I believe that we are confronted at this time with a question of political ethics. I believe that the Gospel has something very clear to say about how we are to deal with this question. I believe that the Gospel is very clear that we are to be a uniting presence in the world. We must not allow ourselves to think of our fellow human beings as “those people” – so different from us that they deserve different treatment, different rights from us. We must not allow ourselves to be separated and alienated from one another. We must crisscross what divides us and unite the Body of Christ.
Printer friendly version