Like most of you, I was profoundly disappointed when Amendment A was defeated by the presbyteries of our church. Like some of you, I find myself disqualified for ordination according to the standards prescribed by the Book of Order under the heading G-6.0106.
I suppose that requires some explanation. Charlotte and I had our first date on April 10, 1945. That is precisely 80 years and one day after General Lee surrendered his army to General Grant at Appomattox. A veteran of the Confederate Army was still living at the Old Confederate Home in our town at the time of our first date. Come September 7, we will have been married for 53 years. Apart from the grace of God in Jesus Christ, I have received no greater blessing than the privilege of sharing most of my life in heterosexual union with this utterly delightful human being.
But I am still disqualified for ordination by the current regulations of the United Presbyterian Church (USA). According to G-6.0106, I am obligated to search out every self-acknowledged practice which the Confessions call sin, and examine myself as to whether I truly repent of this practice.
Woe is me, for I am undone! The Westminster Larger Catechism specifically names "stage-plays" as a sin in violation of the 7th commandment. You can look it up in the Book of Confessions at 7.249. The Larger Catechism was written by the Westminster Assembly in England during the 1640s. That's barely three decades after the death of William Shakespeare. My sin is that I do love the plays of Will Shakespeare, lascivious as some parts of them undoubtedly are. I confess the self-acknowledged practice, not only of reading his plays, but also of attending both stage and screen performances of them at every opportunity. I simply refuse to believe that some 17th century Puritan's definition of sin should be made a rule of my faith and practice in the Year of Our Lord 2002.
But wait! I take great comfort from the good old Westminster Confession of Faith itself. Listen to this from the Book of Confessions at 6.175: "All synods and councils since the Apostles' times, whether general or particular, may err, and many have erred; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as a help in both." Presbyterian sessions may err. Whole presbyteries may err. The General Assembly itself may err. And Lord knows they have erred, over and over again. In spades. Yet G-6.0106 explicitly makes the Confessions of the church a rule of practice, in direct contradiction to the clear statement of the Westminster Confession of Faith. On its face, G-6.0106 is unconstitutional, un-Presbyterian, and un-Reformed.
G-6.0106 is, however, the rule of the church under which Presbyterians are expected to live. And we all know it has nothing to do with the sin of loving Shakespeare. The aim of G-6.0106 is to bar self-acknowledged homosexual persons from ordination and/or installation as deacons, elders, or ministers of word and sacrament.
There are thousands of us who continue to believe that this provision of the Book of Order is not only wrong, but also destructive in ways that go far beyond the question of who can be ordained as church officers. It implies an ecclesiastical stamp of approval upon the widespread heterosexual conviction that all gays and lesbians, without distinction, are to be despised and rejected as somehow less than fully human. The havoc wrought by this unjust bias in our society is sometimes deadly, but always hurtful in the daily lives of gays and lesbians and people who care about them.
For Presbyterians who are appalled by this, the hot question is, "Where do we go from here?" How can we remain in community with people who differ from us on so crucial a matter as this?" How can we work in harness with people who are passionately convinced that they are right about all this, and we are wrong?
I can only speak for myself. Other people may make other choices. I choose the path of loyal opposition, which I take to be an option profoundly rooted in the very character of Presbyterian polity itself. For what it is worth, let me explain the logic by which I arrive at that decision.
As I face this question, the first thought that comes to mind is the fact that there has never been a time in the entire history of the Christian movement when Christians were not divided among themselves in very much this same way. The issues that separate us have taken many different shapes, depending on special circumstances of time and place and cultural history. But the struggles to determine who of us is right, and who is wrong, and whose ideas will prevail, has plagued the church in every age of its existence.
One of the startling wonders of the gospel of Christ is that God the Holy Spirit has kept on quickening women and men to authentic faith in Jesus Christ, in spite of the unholy mess we Christians keep on making of our religion.
That should come as no surprise to Presbyterians. A Presbyterian by definition is a person who is endlessly skeptical about human beings, but boundlessly optimistic about God. Presbyterians have no confidence in the wisdom and goodness of our own hearts, or in the rightness of our own opinions. Our confidence rests in what God has done, and is doing now, and will yet do, to bring forth from people like us the full measure of that superb humanity for which God created us, and to which God calls us.
All of this comes into sharp focus for me in the 14th and 15th chapters of Paul's letter to the Christians at Rome. The time is approximately 58 A.D. The Christian movement itself is hardly more than twenty years old, and already the Christians in Rome are divided into two quarreling groups. Paul describes one group as being "weak" in faith. The other group he describes as "strong." Obviously Paul thinks of himself as one of the "strong" Christians. You can bet your penultimate peso that the ones Paul calls "weak" did not give themselves that name. My guess is that they were strong as kraut and looked way down their noses at the so-called "strong" Christians.
We can't be certain about the precise make-up of these two groups, but one thing is clear. The Christians Paul calls "weak" were strict disciplinarians. If you were a serious Christian, there was a list of things you were supposed to do, and a list of things you were not supposed to do. Like most disciplinarians, these "weak" Christians had a much more comprehensive list of thou-shalt-nots than it had of thou-shalts. Thus began that curious picture of Christian life as a series of things you don't do.
I warm to my task. I know people like that. Control freaks. People who not only color inside the lines, but who enjoy making life miserable for those who color outside the lines.
The "strong" Christians were not like that at all. For them, the whole gospel of Christ is freedom. Liberation. Joy. Irresistible grace that makes all legalistic striving after perfection obsolete. No one qualifies for the unconditional love of God in Jesus Christ. The love of God in Jesus Christ is for everybody--no questions asked.
Since Paul obviously considers himself to be a "strong" Christian, you expect him to mount a campaign against the "weak" Christians and fight for the "strong" Christians to dominate the church. But it is just here that Paul drops an apostolic bomb-shell. Right in the middle of the quarreling between "weak" Christians and "strong" Christians. "Welcome one another," says Paul in Romans 15:7. "Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you."
Wow. How is it that Christ has welcomed me? All out. No strings attached. Utterly without regard to any human failing or deserving on my part. To the death and beyond. And nothing in all creation has any power to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
For that reason, the gospel of Christ liberates me to look at people who are very different form me in a very different way. If you know you have been welcomed by Christ--all-out, no strings attached, to the death and beyond--you can no longer measure the worth of any human being by the usual human standards of who is acceptable and who is unacceptable. Of who deserves your love and respect, and who doesn't. The only appropriate response to the astonishing welcome Christ has extended to you is to try to welcome the other in something like that same way.
I confess to you that I find that quite impossible to do, out of the threadbare resources of my own human heart. As Will Willimon once said, "I am just a whole lot pickier about who I choose to welcome that the Lord Jesus Christ is." It is no trick at all to welcome people who share my likes and dislikes. I automatically welcome people who have the right theology and the right politics and the right social and economic views and the right sense of humor and the right tastes in literature and music. That's a piece of cake. By "right," of course, I mean "just like mine."
But what about all those dreadfully boring and irritating and really quite impossible people who are so different form me on all these counts, and therefore quite unacceptable? How on earth am I supposed to "welcome" them?
In one way or another, that question is always on my mind when I come to the Lord's table, and eat the bread, and drink the wine. In the living presence of the crucified and risen Christ, I become acutely aware of how miserably I have failed to welcome anyone in anything like the way Christ has welcomed me--all out, no strings attached, regardless of any failure or deserving on my part. To the death and beyond. The love of neighbor Christ asks of me I have not given. The lovelessness I despise in myself has controlled my attitudes and actions toward people who are different from me.
As the Apostle Paul once cried out, "Who shall deliver me from this deadly existence?"
But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! What I have not done out of the threadbare resources of my own heart, Christ has done on my behalf. I cannot be Jesus. That job is already taken. But by the absolutely amazing grace of God, I can participate, here and now, in Christ's own resurrection life of unconditional love and perfect welcome, even for hard cases like me.
It is Christ's love I ingest when I eat the bread. It is Christ's welcome for quite impossible people I drink in when I take Christ's cup to my lips. What has proven to be quite impossible for me has now become my own startlingly new possibility, by the grace of God and the power of God the Holy Spirit. In the strength of this bread and this wine, I really can start out fresh to welcome all those so unwelcome others as Christ has welcomed me. If I am able to take even a few tiny baby-steps in that direction, you may be quite certain it is no tribute to any moral virtue on my part. If you notice any improvement in me whatever you are witnessing a sheer miracle of grace, wrought through me by God the Holy Spirit. Take it as a tiny signal that Christ is risen, and Easter is true, and God's kingdom really is underway in the world.
"We proceed," as a my great friend John Danhof used to say, "by death and resurrection." I'm certain this is why the Lord's Supper was meant to be celebrated not just once, but over and over again. We will never be able, in this life, to approach Christ's table, confident that we have finally learned to welcome one another in anything like the way Christ has welcomed us. In your dreams! But we never have to leave the Lord's table depressed because, again and again, we have failed to do so. The One who is able to make all things new can and does empower us to participate afresh in his own boundlessly welcoming love. Nothing now stands in the way of our taking our own tiny baby-steps in that direction.
It is this understanding of the gospel of Christ that challenged my very heterosexual, junior high school notions of what it means to be a homosexual human being. I cannot claim my incorrigible heterosexuality as a divinely approved virtue that makes me somehow more acceptable to God. One brief glance at the vicious damage inflicted upon persons as the result of heterosexual passions should convince anyone of that fact. The question for every Christian, whether heterosexual or homosexual, in the light of the gospel of Christ, is this: given our shared failure to express the love of God in all our relationships, what is the shape of that new life to which Christ liberates us and for which Christ empowers us? Will we learn to live for each other, and not against each other? Can we learn to place the well-being of other people higher than the gratification of our own passionate desires? In short, can we learn to welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us--also in the use we make of our own sexuality?
If we consider our own track records--whether as heterosexuals or homosexuals--the honest answer is that none of us has ever remotely achieved that dazzling quality of self-giving love, and we all have the scars to prove it.
But that reckons without the counter-intuitive gospel of Christ, who welcomes each one of us exactly as we are, scars and all. The question is whether God the Holy Spirit is able to bring forth from failed human beings like us a living testimony to Christ's compassion, Christ's love, Christ's all-embracing welcome of the other. As a minister of word and sacrament, I was called and ordained to let the world hear Christ's everlasting "yes!" to that question. And if a wreck like me can be ordained to that office, I cannot well imagine anyone who, in principle, cannot be.
Does that mean that God endorses each and every use I choose to make of my sexuality? God forbid! Like every other failed human being I can only live by the glorious hope that I can be empowered by Christ to use my sexuality in ways that express Christ's desire for the well-being of the other, and not my own desires.
I have known heterosexual Christians who, it seems to me, have been empowered to do this, at least in fragmentary ways. I have known homosexual Christians who, it seems to me, have been empowered to do this, at least in fragmentary ways. I regard every such instance not as a sign of extraordinary human virtue, but as an extraordinary, God-given signal that Christ is risen and Easter is true, that our deadly misuse of all God's gifts does not have the last word about us.
"Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you." It is no longer difficult for me to extend Christ's welcome to gays and lesbians. But frankly I'm having a devil of a time welcoming people who seem so obsessed about barring gays and lesbians from ordination as deacons and elders and ministers of word and sacrament in the church. I am forbidden by the very shape of the gospel as I understand it, to concede that they are right and I am wrong about this issue, in spite of the overwhelming vote of the presbyteries. But there is surely a vast difference between being right and being faithful.
That's why I think Paul invited his group, the so-called "strong" Christians, to welcome the so-called "weak" Christians in the way Christ has welcomed them all, the "weak" and the "strong" alike. The very first line of Romans 14 goes like this: "Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions." I take this to mean that when I deal with the so-called "Confessing Church" Christians, or the Presbyterian Coalition people, or the Presbyterian Layman people, there is something vastly more important going on than who is right and who is wrong. Christ never welcomed me because I was "right" about anything. Can I find the grace to welcome these people that I consider so wrong-headed about so many important things, even when they may not be inclined to welcome me? The Scripture says I must. The gospel of Christ says that, by the grace of God in Jesus Christ, and by the present power of the Holy Spirit, I can. Pray with me and for me that it may be so.
This does not mean I intend to drop my efforts to remove article G-6.0106 from the Book of Order. As my friend John Ed Withers said on the floor of Grace Presbytery, we Presbyterians were wrong when we excluded black people from full citizenship in the church. We finally got it right. We were wrong when we excluded women from full citizenship in the church. We finally got it right. Those changes came about because a minority of Presbyterians remained in fiercely loyal opposition to wrong-headed policies that were rooted in long-standing customs. Fiercely loyal, because they knew these changes would work out for the well-being of all Presbyterians, including those who fought the changes tooth and toenail, every step of the way. Fiercely loyal, because they understood at depth that Christ alone is Lord of the church, and that Christ never turns that lordship over to any human beings, not even to terribly well-meaning majorities. Loyal opposition of the truly faithful sort always undertakes its opposition of behalf of those who disagree, and never merely against them in a spirit of bitterness or moral superiority.
If we finally get it right on the question of the ordination of gays and lesbians, it will happen only by the power of God the Holy Spirit, who can and does make it possible for right-headed and wrong-headed people to welcome one another, as Christ has welcomed us. So may it be.