A Pastoral Letter After Orlando

After Orlando, many are wondering how we, our churches, and our denominations can reach out in embrace of the LGBTQ community.  I wrote this letter months prior to Orlando, but did not share it broadly. The time seems right to do so now.  This is my story of how I came to see things differently. It is my hope that this letter might make a space for broader inclusion and acceptance of all people who are seeking to love God and also their neighbor -- in spite of our differences. 

Dear friend,

I am writing you as a sister in Christ as I know you have concerns about our church at this time. I am writing with the hope of our remaining united in the bond of peace.  I am not necessarily expecting to change your or anyone else's mind about same-sex relationships in general or same-sex marriage in particular.  This seems to me one of those issues where everyone must act on his or her own conscience. I do, however, want to share with you from my own journey with the hope that you might understand how and why I have come to believe what I believe. 

Growing up in West Texas in the 1980s and 1990s, I did not know anyone who was gay. That is to say, I did not know anyone who was openly gay. To me, gays were abnormal and prime subjects for all manner of snide comments and jokes told by me and my friends at their expense. Gays, for me, were perverted and sexually deviant and if there were a rumor that someone might be gay he or she was to be ridiculed or avoided or, if absolutely necessary, tolerated.  

This negative view I had of gays predated my own acceptance of Christ when I was 16 years old and was therefore shaped more by only a cursory familiarity with Christianity and what I thought the Bible said.  Stories like Sodom and Gomorrah were in the cultural vernacular and were for me proof of the threat gays posed to a community.  But when I gave my life to Christ and first began reading the Bible and growing in faith, my hostility towards gays was not bolstered, but actually softened. Though I certainly still believed that homosexuality was a sin, I was now aware of my own sin and shortcomings and beginning to allow Jesus' admonition against judging others to convict and change me.  In fact, by the time I was in my latter years of college I felt deep remorse for the way I had acted towards gays in general and, in partnership, those people I suspected might be gay.  Though it is important for understanding my journey to again recognize that even at this time in my life I still did not know anyone who was actually openly gay.

That changed in 2001 when I moved to New York City and met and worked with a dozen or more openly gay people, including both my supervisors at the tour company where I worked. Though I was not exactly comfortable with their being openly gay and in openly gay relationships, I knew that I could not be closed to them as persons.  And I was not. We worked and ate and laughed together and they introduced me to their partners.  Though I was repulsed by much of the raunchiness I saw being conducted on the streets at the Gay Pride Parade that year and in some isolated cases on the streets of New York, what I found among my gay coworkers and now friends was mostly what I had always found amongst straight people -- a mixture of good and bad people, and relationships, and expressions of love and fidelity.  Most interesting to me as someone considering ministry, what I also discovered among those people was my first faithfully Christian friend who was openly gay.  He was gay; but he also went faithfully to church. And by all appearances he seemed to love the LORD. In fact, in many ways he was more faithful to God than I was.  It was then that I first began to have the hint of a question about what I had always believed -- or believed that I should believe.

After I left New York, I moved to Durham, NC where there were far fewer openly gay persons than in New York. I cannot say that I was friends with anyone who I knew to be gay during all three years of my seminary experience. Duke Divinity School, though having a reputation for being a liberal school, was in fact mostly conservative on this issue, with then none of its most prominent faculty at the time being openly affirming of gay rights in or outside of the church. But the question I already had inside me: What about my gay friend?  And though my professors did not necessarily advocate for gay inclusion, what they did do was even more important. They gave me a place to learn to let that question of mine and others be asked. And it was in the asking, and the questioning and the searching that my eyes began to be opened to an entirely new way of understanding what the Bible is and how we are to read it.

For example, my seminary professors encouraged me to approach the Sodom and Gomorrah story and try to discover what the story itself says, as opposed to what others have said it says. What I discovered then was that it is not a story about the evils of same-sex relations in general, but rather a warning against the ultimate self-destructiveness of a community which oppresses and exploits the powerless -- specifically, women and the alien.  I also discovered what Ezekiel said about Sodom, that her sin was "pride and excess of ease (some translations say 'gluttony'), but she did not help the poor and needy," (Ezekiel 16:49).  What this helped me to see was that for a long time I had actually misread the story, misinterpreted its meaning, and had done so simply because I had accepted what others told me the story meant, rather than thinking on it myself.  My eyes were now indeed being opened to new ways of seeing.

Beyond my new understanding of that one, single Biblical story, however, my seminary experience more generally gave me the gift of beginning to think through what I believe the Bible is in its substance and what we mean when we say it is sacred scripture. In the community and culture where I grew up I heard the expressions "Word of God" and "inerrant" used as synonyms or descriptors of the Bible.  As I began to think and read and understand how the Bible was comprised and who wrote it and in what context, my understanding of Scripture and how it is to be used began to shift. I discovered that the Bible is not so much a word dropped down directly from God to humankind, but is rather humankind's attempt to put words to their own experience and understanding of God. In the Biblical scholar N.T. Wright's metaphor, the Bible is likened as a library, full of different genres --some historical and some literary and others poetic and governmental -- each written from the  unique, but always limited perspective and understanding of the individual authors and their communities, contexts, and times.

I take as an example one very significant issue in the early church. The matter at hand was the inclusion of Gentiles in the early church and the question was whether these non-Jewish converts to Christianity would or would not have to follow the Jewish law -- with its mandates for circumcision (Exodus 12:48) and dietary restriction (Numbers 9:14).  The Bible had clearly laid out a set of mandates for foreigners in times past; yet certain voices within the church -- most especially Paul -- stated that "circumcision is nothing" and that there was neither Jew nor Gentile in Christ. These early church debates are recorded in 1 Corinthians and in Galatians and Philippians and most especially in Acts. Ultimately, Paul's voice won out and Gentiles were included without having to be circumcised or held to the strictest Jewish dietary customs.  And though the debates have changed, what we inherited was a more expansive church and an understanding that what the Bible mandates for one time and context and people may not necessarily be fitting for all others times and contexts and people.

But more than anything I might have learned in a seminary classroom, my meeting, falling in love with, and marrying Irie and coming to understand more fully the story of the history of African enslavement has most deeply shaped my understanding of the way I read the Bible. "Slaves obey your masters," was a word written from Paul to a particular people and time. It may very well have been a prudent and wise word for the circumstance, but over the centuries it was a scripture abusively misused to justify the enslavement of people around the world. And how many souls had been sent to the lower decks of some westward bound slave ship bound in chains with those words of Paul as permission?  It was in the Bible; but was it the right word from the Bible?  Looking back over those many centuries with so much blood spilled by the lash of the slaveowner and by the sword of the soldier, we can all say no.  And it is for this fact alone that I decided that what was once written in the letter of pen and ink may not in fact be what God is now saying in Spirit. "For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life," (2 Corinthians 3:6).

Of course, "slaves obey your masters" is not the only word from the Bible which today's church has struggled with. Jesus' strict injunction against divorce and remarriage was another which I was soon forced to wrestle with.  Upon completion of my studies and soon after I was ordained, a couple came to me seeking to be married. They had each been divorced before, and yet appeared to love and want to enter into a serious covenant with one another. Having known many divorced couples within my church, family, and community, I did not consider not marrying them on grounds of what the Bible said. But I did pause to reflect more deeply why that was.  This led me to a more fuller developed understanding of what marriage is intended to be. 

I began to reflect on how when Jesus spoke against divorce and remarriage he was doing so in a very different context -- a time when men had all the power and could simply divorce a woman at will, leaving her financially and socially destitute. His words were meant to protect the most vulnerable from being thrown to the gutter. Unfortunately, and with sad irony, Jesus' words spoken originally for protection were for centuries actually used to keep people in abusive marriages and prohibit them from entering into more healthy and life-giving relationships. 

As I thought on this, what would be an important insight entered my mind. I remembered what Jesus said when criticized for healing on the Sabbath -- "the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath."  It began to dawn on me that I could say the same about marriage -- that marriage is not a weighty burden to be hung around the neck, but a gift given to serve humanity for the purpose of human flourishing.  This, to me, was what God intended when He said, "Be fruitful and multiply."  Or, in other words, "Give life."

I married that couple and then soon lost touch when Irie and I moved to Vermont.  But just this past week the woman from the marriage contacted me on Facebook to tell me her husband had passed some time ago and that my Daily Lessons are a comfort to her. I was not even aware she was reading them, but I am glad I can still in some way be her pastor.  That began when I said yes to officiating the wedding. 

Things were different in Vermont. Like New York, there were more openly gay people including several teachers and students at the schools where Irie worked and even a pastor of another church in our town. Civil unions were legal and many gays were living in open relationship with each other.  Most of the gay people we knew were kind and decent people, some of whom we formed meaningful friendships with.  Inevitably, however, whether explicitly or implicitly the question would be put before me as a pastor and friend: Did I approve of these people and accept them and their partners completely?  

And it was at that time, in my own spirit that I decided that I did accept and approve of them completely.  I could not look upon these friends and call the intimacy they shared with those whom they loved sinful.  They were committed to one another, and many of them were committed before God in a religious covenant.  They were giving life to the world, blessing it together with their relationship.  These relationships were emotionally and spiritually valid and "bearing fruit" in abundant ways. In my eyes, it was good.

When same-sex marriage began to be debated in Vermont in 2007, I openly supported it. To withhold marriage by way of use of the Bible alone seemed to me a double standard when so many others were able to be married in spite of what the strict injunction of the Bible says.  And I had no other reason to say no. Many of the couples I knew were in Godly, committed covenantal relationships. And they were a blessing to the church, their community, and in some cases their children. To me, this was the gift marriage was intended for; and it was enough to say yes too.

I understand we have individual scriptures such as Romans 1 which speak disapprovingly of same-sex relations. This is not surprising as most Jews at the time considered same-sex relations to be an act or result of sin. But there are many physical conditions such as blindness and lameness which when the Bible was written were also considered to be linked to sin. In fact, the blind and the lame and the sexual minority were together banned from entering the House of the LORD (Leviticus 21).  They were all seen to be unclean and unworthy of inclusion.  I cannot imagine how painful that must have been.  

I thank God our understanding of disability has changed over these thousands of years since. Physical deformity is no longer seen to be a manifestation or condition of sin. One who is blind or lame is no longer considered inherently unclean. Along the way, we arrived at a new understanding on these people. 

I believe we ought to do the same with people of same-sex orientation. They are not unclean or "inherently disordered" as they were once often described. In other words, they are not problems to be solved, but human beings to be understand and accepted in society and -- I believe -- in the House of the LORD also.

In the book of Galatians Paul boldly proclaims that there is neither Jew or Greek, slave nor free, male nor female in Christ (Galatians 3:28).  The church struggled for long centuries to understand the fullness of this passage's meaning -- first with the inclusion of Gentiles and later with the emancipation of slaves. As Paul also said, we saw "through a glass darkly," (1 Corinthians 13:12).  Now, it is my understanding that the fullness of this message also includes those of same-sex orientation and marriage. I have changed the way I see this, but am at deep peace with it in my spirit.

And, I am also at peace in my spirit with those who see it differently. For me, it is a matter of individual conviction and in no way a test of fellowship. Others in the Body of Christ have differing views; but we still belong to one another.  As Paul said to the Corinthians when they were debating the dietary customs, "whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God,  (1 Corinthians 10:31) and above all love (1 Corinthians 13).  Again, as Paul said, we see through a glass darkly, meaning no one has a full and complete picture. That is why we must treat each other with kindness and humility and commit to love those who see things differently.

There have been many issues which were matters of contention within the church before. More shall come after. Yet, in challenging matters like these, I often think of the wisdom offered in Latin by a church father of yore:

In neccessarriis unitas,

In dubii liberate,

In omnibus caritas.

In what is necessary unity,

In what is doubtful freedom,

In all things love.

"There is only one thing that is necessary," Jesus said, and that is our saving relationship with Him.  In the light of that all else pales, except love --which never ends. 

I love you my friend; and I hold you in my prayers.

My peace to you my sister,

Ryon