I begin with a confession. It’s Angie’s birthday, so the timing’s not great, but I’ve got to get it off my chest: I have committed adultery. Indeed I’ve been at it for almost 30 years now — in fact, ever since our wedding in July 1982. For to remarry after divorce is to commit adultery. This is the traditional teaching of the church. And for good reason — it is the teaching of Jesus. It’s crystal clear in Mark and Luke. It’s true that in Matthew there is an exception: if the divorce is due to your partner’s adultery you may remarry, but only the husband, not the wife. It’s also true that for Paul there is yet another exception to the rule: a marriage may end if there are irreconcilable religious differences — Christian and pagan — but Paul is not very keen on remarriage. So the Bible itself does not speak with one voice. But Jesus is clear: as Angie and I were divorcees, our wedding wasn’t blessed and our marriage is a sin (and thus Angie, a Roman Catholic, cannot receive Communion in her own Church).
We are living in sin — or are we? Most of you, I assume, are not of that mind. But why? Is it because you have surrendered to the lax, permissive spirit of the age? Or is it not because you realise that the gospel cannot be reduced to commandments, righteousness to rules? Isn’t it because you understand — and these points are absolutely crucial for responsible Christian ethics — because you understand that for any word in scripture to be God’s word for us today, there must be a resemblance between the ancient social situation and practice and our modern social situation and practice, because only then can we say that what the biblical text was talking about then is the same thing that we are talking about now? Isn’t it because you understand that whatever the Bible affirms or condemns, its reasons must make sense to us now, they must be reasons that we can own, reasons that aren’t contradicted by what we actually see, know, and experience? And isn’t it because you understand that to hear God speaking to us in the Bible, we must listen, not to isolated notes, but to the overarching melody — which is, of course, a love-song — and that we must, like hip jazz musicians, improvise the music in our own contemporary context?
Isn’t that why we are not legalistic about divorce and remarriage? Isn’t that why though slavery is uniformly accepted in the Bible, we cannot accept it today? Isn’t that why though the Bible is a patriarchal world, a world of male dominance and female submission, we can no longer condone the marginalisation of women in the workplace or their abuse in the home? Isn’t it because we believe the biblical themes of divine grace and human flourishing are trumps, and because we follow the trajectory of pioneering but unrealised (if you like) biblical “breakouts” — like Paul’s radical declaration that there is now neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for we are all one in Christ?
So I have committed adultery — or have I? But what if I had said, “I am gay”? And that I am in a committed and exclusive relationship that my partner and I intend to be life-long, and that we would like to have it blessed? That is the issue that is now before the church. Let’s think about it.
Let’s start with a fundamental principle of all followers of Jesus — Paul’s neither/nor: the principle of radical inclusiveness. So important was this principle for Jesus that he not only broke with tradition for it, he made enemies and, finally, got lynched for it. The scribes and Pharisees, the gatekeepers of the faith —
They drew a circle that shut “them” out –
Heretics, rebels, things to flout;
But love and I had wit to win –
We drew a circle that took them in.
The circle included Samaritans and Gentiles, the chronically ill and disabled, women and children, tax collectors and other collaborators, and, of course, “sinners”. All of these people were objects of religious exclusion, and some of outright fear and loathing. But Jesus welcomed them, treated them with courtesy and dignity, and gave them a sense of self-worth. And he did these things publicly, not privately, on town streets, at village meals, in witness to the kingdom of shalom he proclaimed, in the teeth of moral opposition. And homosexuals? Nothing explicitly is said. But Roman centurions — they were notorious for liaisons with their orderlies, and of one in particular, whose servant Jesus healed, Jesus says that in this pagan officer he found more faith than in all Israel.
Still, “love the sinner, hate the sin”, right? Jesus didn’t expect the prostitutes he forgave and befriended to go on plying their trade, did he? So isn’t the big question: “Is homosexuality a sin?” Absolutely. And in the Bible, it absolutely is. In Leviticus it is called an “abomination”, and Paul called it a “shameful” perversion. That much is clear. But remember our principles of sound biblical interpretation. We cannot, like fundamentalists, simply say, “The Bible says”, end of. That would be irresponsible. What the Bible says — that is only the beginning of interpretation; we must go on to ask what the Bible is saying it about, and why it is saying it. Is the way the Bible understands same-sex relationships the way we understand them? Can we agree with the reasons the Bible gives for their condemnation?
In Leviticus, the condemnation of homosexual relationships comes in the context of several chapters dealing with the violation of a range of so-called “purity regulations”, rules on not mixing fabrics or eating shellfish or touching blood, rules also on fixed roles for men and women. That is, rules framed around concerns of ritual cleanliness and gender hierarchy, with a view to drawing strict boundaries to secure the identity of Israel in opposition to surrounding nations. But none of these concerns are our concerns. Indeed, they were not the concerns of Jesus either — except to oppose them. For Jesus purity ceases to be a moral category, gender hierarchies are levelled, and human boundaries are crossed by love.
For Paul, however, there is an additional factor in the condemnation of same-sex relationships: namely, a particular understanding of the “order of creation”. In the world view of Paul’s culture, there was no idea that homosexuality might be a natural disposition rather than a “lifestyle choice”. If it is believed, as it was believed, that all people are created heterosexual, then of course homosexuality can only be seen as deliberate depravity. And, for sure, there was plenty of sordid behaviour on view in the first century Greco-Roman world: temple prostitution, sexual exploitation, promiscuous relationships. But as Rowan Williams observes: “Is it not a fair question to ask whether conscious rebellion and indiscriminate rapacity could be presented as a plausible account of the essence of ‘homosexual behaviour’, let alone homosexual desire, as it may be observed around us now” — and specifically in the behaviour of gay Christians?
Here, I think, is the nub of the matter. What the Bible condemns is not homosexuality as we know it, and the Bible condemns it for reasons that cannot possibly be ours. In the Bible there is no concept of sexual orientation, nor is there any idea of loving relationships between two same-sex people who want to covenant together as partners for life. These things are just not on the biblical radar. They are, however, surely on ours — unless, that is, you disregard the accumulating evidence about sexual orientation, and judge gay relationships by the worst you see rather than the best. And don’t all of us, as a society, as a church, have a shared interest in encouraging and supporting — and, yes, blessing — all loving and enduring human relationships?
Finally this. It’s not only what you know, it’s who you know. We must not only think, we must also look. I have seen — haven’t you? — the caricatures, fears, and revulsions of some people melt away through the warmth of contact and friendship with gay people, and through the undeniable goodness and loveliness of their partnerships. Above all – who you know — there is knowing Jesus. As the American Presbyterian minister William Sloane Coffin wrote: “For Christians, the problem is not how to reconcile homosexuality with scriptural passages that condemn it, but how to reconcile the rejection … of homosexuals with the love of Christ.”
May God be with us in Church Meeting — and may we be with God. I pray that we may accept one another as Christ has accepted each and every one of us (Romans 15:7), and that we may maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3).
At a Church Meeting on May 29th, my church, Bethel United Reformed Church, will seek the mind of Christ and come to a decision regarding the blessing of civil partnerships in our sanctuary. Please keep us in your prayers.
“I haven’t always been a preacher. There was a time when I could never have imagined standing in front of a crowd. My name wasn’t Peter back then either. I was Simon the fisherman. It was a nice little business really. We weren’t rich, but there was enough and I was very content. I did my duty, but I wouldn’t say I was very religious - I certainly wasn’t looking for a rabbi to follow.
Large parts of Britain went to the polls yesterday in elections for local government. Labour did very well, the Tories and their Liberal allies got a beating. As always on these occasions, the winners are claiming too much and the losers are claiming they didn’t do that badly. Ho hum.