I was saddened to hear of Doug Marlette’s death in an auto accident. I gave up on comic strips years ago, but I always enjoyed Doug Marlette’s Kudzu. He was able to poke fun at American religion while subtly expressing a deep fondness for the struggles of living with the imperfect institutions that are our churches and with the imperfect people who are members. For many years, I had on my office door the following cartoon:
Yes, they are still with us, Junia and Macrina. They are slowly acclimating to life indoors and to life among other cats. Macrina, the kitten, is more skittish around humans; but is absolutely fearless around the other cats. Her mother Junia is tamer. It’s actually quite amusing to watch mom arouse into action when she hears her baby crying, usually because she decided to wrestle an adult cat 6 times her size and is in a headlock.
Here’s Macrina:
And here’s Junia:
Several entries down, you can find some of my sketchy reflections about sexuality. I encourage, whether or not you plan on attending the forum on Sunday, to think about what I’ve written. In some respects, Luke Timothy Johnson’s Commonweal article makes some of the same arguments, in more developed fashion. For me, trying to think about homosexuality inevitably relates to two other issues: How we approach scripture, and how we make moral decisions. Most people, most of the time, think that moral decisions are simple questions. There is right and there is wrong, and scripture spells out clearly what is right and what is wrong. But in fact, we don’t do that, in our personal lives or in the church. Take divorce for example. We don’t have a problem with it. We accept divorced and remarried people as full members of our church; we recognize that while it may not be a good thing, sometimes it is the only option. Yet scripture is unequivocally clear that divorce is a bad thing, a sin. Jesus said it, Paul said it. Whoever divorces and remarries commits adultery.
Our experience, as a church, as a culture, and as human beings has taught us that the clear commands of scripture, in this case, are not the last word. Some Christian groups take other scriptural texts much more seriously, and much more literally than we do. For example, the groups who practice, or have practiced community of goods, because that’s what the early church did in Acts. There are groups that expect their members not to serve in the military because Jesus says “Love your enemy” and “Turn the other cheek.” If we come to a different decision than members of those groups, it is not because we take scripture more or less seriously than they. It is because we make different conclusions about morality and ethics than they, that we make a different decision about what it means to follow Jesus Christ.
But it is important, not simply to say, that’s their opinion, or they’re wrong. It’s important to examine how they come to make those decisions. I said in my earlier post that homosexuality is not primarily about the authority of scripture. It is about our cultural values and expectations. Divorce is OK today because we live in a culture that views divorce as acceptable. That wasn’t the case fifty years ago. We don’t think Jesus literally meant that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God, because our culture thinks it’s OK for people to accumulate wealth.
We bring our values to the text, and look in scripture for arguments that will support our values. It is important that as people who want to be faithful to God we recognize the degree to which we read scripture through the lens of our culture. Instead, we need to allow ourselves to be transformed by scripture, rather than transforming scripture to make it of palatable to our cultural biases. In fact, most of our moral and ethical choices are based not in scripture but in our culture’s values. Indeed, for the most part, we have reduced ethical and moral questions to questions of personal behavior, and above all, sexuality. Those aren’t the priorities of scripture, either of the Old Testament or of the New. But more on that some other time
Corrie and I have cats. Our first, known as the Magnificent Maggie Pie, joined us in 1990. She passed on at the age of 19 in 2003. Before she died, we had adopted two others, Margery Kempe, whom we found making a pilgrimage between two of the chapels at Sewanee crying at the top of her lungs (Google her to find out more about her namesake). When we moved to Spartanburg, we adopted, or rescued (from Fundamentalists) Thomas Merton (whose conversion we continue to pray for daily). After Maggie’s death, Bodhi (Bodhisattva) joined our family, adopted from the Buddhist Vihara in Mauldin. At Thanksgiving, 2004, Pilgrim (she of many toes) joined the family.
At that point, I put my foot down. I said, enough is enough. But this spring, as is probably inevitable, we began to see a mother cat with kittens in our backyard. By the time we mobilized, or decided that we would have to take responsibility for them; there were just two, a mother and her kitten. We were able to catch them, get them their shots, and now they seem to be becoming a part of our family. But really, six cats is more than enough. The mother, whom we’ve named Junia (read Romans 16) is all black except for three white paws and a few white spots; the kitten, whom we’ve named Macrina (you can Google her too, to find out why we found this name appropriate) is all black. They seem to be adjusting to life indoors, and with four other cats, but if the perfect home were to come forward, we might consider adoption.
What I love about cats is their contrary nature. They are deeply needy and dependent, just like dogs, but they don’t want you to know it, so they perform all kinds of rituals to assert their independence, but in the end, they will sit in your lap, and demand that you scratch their ears, after all. And one would think, that with six cats, there would always be one in your lap, but no, they must assert their independence. But one is sitting on my wrists even as I type this.
There are two interesting articles in Commonweal regarding the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the Church. Commonweal is a Roman Catholic publication, but the articles are interesting and important because one is written by a prominent New Testament scholar, Luke Timothy Johnson, who has become famous for challenging some of the work of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. The other article is by a laywoman. The links in our enotes may not work, so you can find them online here
In my sermon on Trinity Sunday, I mentioned the alternative translation for “master worker” in Proverbs 8. The NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) points out that the early Greek translations had “little child” (apparently translating a slightly different Hebrew word than the one that appears in the standard Hebrew version of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament) Most commentators would probably argue that “master worker” is the more likely translation. It occurred to me as I was preaching the second time through, that these alternative translations are another example of what I was trying to get at, the playful, open, uncertain aspect of theology and of faith. Both of those translations are plausible, both lead to significant insights, and there is no reason to assert that one is right, one is wrong.
My favorite theologian, Augustine of Hippo, was quite clear that any interpretation that was linguistically and theologically possible, was valid, so long as it supported his inviolable standard: “love of God and of neighbor.” And he wasn’t even particularly concerned in figuring out what precisely the author might have meant. For Augustine, because scripture, the Word of God, bore witness to Jesus Christ, the Word of God, it is quite likely that God might allow us to interpret scripture in ways that the author might not have intended.
To view our faith as a dance, as play, to delight in it, is to allow it free reign to lead us wherever it might takes. The spirit blows where it chooses, Jesus says in John 3:8. Our response ought to be, to go with the flow.
I rarely turn on the TV these days (except for reruns of The Daily Show), so I missed Bill Moyers conversation with Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefforts Schori. The interview is available in streaming video here. She is articulate, gracious, and honest. They talk about science and religion as well as recent developments in the Anglican Communion. The European edition of Time interviewed the Archbishop of Canterbury. The story and links to the podcast are here
Liz Gandolfo wrote a wonderful article on Bishop’s visitation to St. Francis last month. Check it out here. The reason Fr. Taylor is doing a Spanish-language service at St. James is because of the astounding success of the work at St. Francis.
It wasn’t until I made it to Furman on Monday morning to prepare a final exam that I learned of the latest controversy to hit campus–the vandalism of a display detailing the geological history of the lake. Apparently the placard depicting the “descent of man” was stolen and others that described the natural history of the earth in terms of millions of years were defaced. You can read the story (and comments) here. The comments are not terribly edifying, but they do make clear how virulent the opposition to the scientific world view is. Oh, and don’t worry, although I’ve not seen it personally, I doubt there’s anything in the display that this member of Furman’s Religion Department would take issue with (I won’t presume to speak for my colleagues).
The other fascinating news is the opening of the Creation museum in Kentucky. There was a wonderful article in the NY Times about it but since that won’t remain available for non-subscribers, I will link to the Yahoo News post. The most fascinating tidbit for me–the presence of dinosaurs on Noah’s ark. The museum gets high praise, even from secularists and scientists for the technology and art in the displays, but I’ll confess that in one of the photos I’ve seen, it looks very much like a dinosaur is in a nest of giant golf balls, not eggs.
Having mentioned in my last post that I think conversations about and with Gay and Lesbian Christians are important, I thought it might be informative if I said something about how I arrived at the position I currently hold with regard to homosexuality.
I first had to confront the reality of Gay and Lesbian Christians in the early 1980s when I began my studies at Harvard Divinity School. Getting to know gays and lesbians as classmates and then as friends shaped my later experiences. I was a member of the Board of Directors of Ministry to the Homeless, which sought to provide a pastoral presence to homeless men and women on the streets of Boston. Its director was gay; he was also an ordained Disciples of Christ minister. I saw Michael’s gifts at work in Boston, changing the lives of homeless people, and the attitudes of other people. Michael later died of HIV/AIDS, a legacy of his life before he came to know the life that we have in Christ.
I remember a conversation I had with an old and very dear friend who was a graduate of the Mennonite Biblical Seminary. We got together at some point in the mid-80s, and our conversation turned to gays and lesbians. I recall quite clearly that my friend was advocating same-sex blessings while I was deeply opposed. As a single person at the time, it wasn’t clear to me that relationships needed the church’s blessing (this was long before I became Episcopalian). Since then, I have maintained friendships with gays and lesbians and I am aware of couples who have been together as long as Corrie and I.
The point is that my theological and pastoral understanding of homosexuality is rooted in my experience of individuals and families. When people ask me about the biblical verses that seem to reject homosexual behavior, my first response is not to try to interpret or explain those texts but rather to begin with experience. My reasoning goes something like this:
1) There are people who for whatever reason (is it biological, cultural, tied to their personal experience?) can find fulfillment in relationships only with members of the same gender
2) God has created us as sexual beings and as beings who live in community
3) God, the Trinity, is a relational being, and being created in God’s image, we also are relational
4) While I do believe some people are called to celibacy, denying one’s sexuality and sexual being is potentially very dangerous (the recent scandals in the Roman Catholic Church prove that)
5) The gift of love between two people is a gift from God. It is also fragile and needs the support of a wider community for it to flourish
6) Given all that, the Church has a responsibility to work toward the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in its life, and ultimately to find ways of recognizing and blessing the love that gay and lesbian couples share.
I am well aware that many people of faith would disagree with what I have said here, but I would encourage everyone to think about what I have written. It is my conviction that most people’s attitudes towards homosexuality are not based on biblical or theological grounds. Rather, most people have an attitude for which they seek supporting arguments in scripture and theology. I woucld encourage people to reflect on those underlying attitudes—where do they come from? On what are they based? Better yet, talk to your gay and lesbian neighbors, coworkers, and fellow church members. Ask them about their experiences and about their lives, and ask them as well about their faith journeys.
