Michael D. Smith
If I speak in the tongues of heterosexuals or of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I preach at Louisville headquarters [1], and understand all definitive guidance and all authoritative interpretations of the Constitution, and if I have all Reformed faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
If I deny all I am, and if I deliver my patriarchal body to be burned, and have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is open and inclusive; love is not closeted or selective; it is not hostile or unjust. Love does not insist on its own orientation; it is not fearful or phobic; it does not rejoice in moralisms, but rejoices in freedom. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all Presbyterians.
Love never ends; as for General Assemblies, they will pass away; as for permanent judicial commissions, they will cease; as for the Book of Order, it will pass away. For our confessions are imperfect and our ordinations are imperfect; but when the perfect comes, hierarchies will pass away.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I affirmed my sexuality.
For now we see in a governing body dimly, but then whole sexual body to whole sexual body. Now I know in parts; then I shall understand in connections, even as I have been fully connected.
So Bible, tradition, theology matter, these three; but what matters most is love.
[1] A reference to the Reverend Jane Adams Spahr, a lesbian, being refused permission to preach at the daily chapel service at the Presbyterian national headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky.