THE TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 

October 12, 2008

Napa Valley Lutheran Church, Napa, CA                                   “CHATTING TOGETHER”

David Hamilton, Pastor                                                          

Well, I think I’m going to sit here (in a chair) this morning for this, rather than stand over there (in the pulpit) like I usually do.  It’s not so much because I’m tired today (although I have to admit that this has been a very wearying week.)  And it’s not because the sermon is so long (although I do have to warn you that this is the longest sermon you will ever hear me preach!)  It’s more of a symbolic thing.  I’m aware that that piece of furniture (the pulpit) can be a bit authoritarian.  I get to stand up there and speak down to you, like a voice from on high – and really, when you see the old-style pulpits in the European cathedrals, ten or twenty feet above the congregation, you get the idea that the Church has liked to invoke the power of the pulpit, often over and against the people in the pew.  So I want to disavow that symbolism of the pulpit for today, and talk to you “on the same level,” face to face, without any fancy furniture getting in the way.  I’m not thinking about this time so much as “a sermon” this morning; in fact, I’ve put the title of “Chatting Together” in the bulletin not so much as a sermon title but as a description of what I want to do.  Does that mean I’m going to let you talk, too?  No – at least, not during these few minutes.  But after the service, I’ll be over there in Luther Hall, and I would welcome any who want to talk to me about the things I’ll be talking about to please join me there. 

So, what are we going to talk about?  Well, if you’re connected to the congregation’s official email group, or even, I suspect, part of the unofficial “grape vine,” you have some inkling about this already.  Maybe you’ve read my email to the congregation this week, or maybe had a conversation with someone who has, and you know that the subject of same-gender marriage has taken center stage here at Napa Valley Lutheran Church.  Of course, you should know that already, since we’ve had articles in the church newsletter and two congregational forums to talk about the matter since that day in June when the California State Supreme Court ruled that the state Constitution could only be read as guaranteeing equal marriage rights for same gender couples as it grants to heterosexual couples.   

This change in state law motivated me to ask our own Church Council to spend some time talking about the issue as it might relate to Napa Valley Lutheran Church.  Knowing already that the Napa Valley is something of a wedding destination for heterosexual couples, I wanted to hear the wisdom and advice of our elected lay leaders on the subject – and particularly on the question of how they thought the pastors here should respond if and when we began to receive inquiries from same-gender couples about performing weddings for them.  (By the way, after our conversation here had started, I asked a couple of my clergy friends if they were discussing this in their congregations.  “No,” they both told me.  “What will you do if you get a wedding request?” I asked.  “Probably do the wedding, and maybe let the council know that we did.”  I guess that falls under the category of “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”  But anyway, that’s not the way I prefer to operate.  I prefer to work from some level of open communication and consensus.  Which is why I asked for this conversation in the first place.) 

So the Church Council dutifully, and I have to say seriously, talked with Pastor Julie and me, and suggested that folks in the congregation should be heard as well.  And so the first of two Sunday morning forums was held in which a free and honest exchange of opinions was offered.  It was clear from that morning to me, and to the Church Council, that the gamut of opinion here runs as you might expect:  from full acceptance of same-gender marriage, to a complete rejection of it, and several layers of opinions in between. 

In the fourth month of the Council’s conversations on the subject, it seemed to me that there were four options that the Council might consider, reflecting the variety of opinion within the congregation:  prohibit the pastors from accepting any such requests; encourage the pastors to accept such requests under the same conditions that heterosexual couples’ requests are dealt with; find some middle ground that might permit such weddings away from the church property but not within it; or to not set a policy for the congregation, but entrust it, as questions of weddings have always been, to the discernment of the pastors to do as they felt would be appropriate in any given, individual request.  It was this fourth option that the Council adopted, as a statement of guidance to us pastors – but also to try to honor the great diversity of opinion that we all had heard so clearly when the congregation met.  No policy except to leave it to the pastors to decide case by case, until such time as the State of California or the ELCA might make other decisions that would affect us. 

Now, I think you need to understand that, in effect, this left us back at exactly the same point we were at the day after the State Supreme Court made its ruling, and before I had even asked the question – that is, without a congregational policy as to whether we as Napa Valley Lutheran Church endorse or reject same-gender marriage, and entrusting to the pastors the responsibility to discern how best to minister to the needs of actual people who may contact us in the hope that we may be able and willing to minister to them.  That’s where we would have been even without any conversation; but of course, the conversation itself has a value that makes it worth having.  

(As another aside, in adopting that statement, the Council really didn’t think – and I mean this in all honesty – the Council did not believe that it was setting a policy for the congregation.  In fact, they were explicit in saying this is not a policy of the church, and so there is nothing here for the congregation to vote on.  However, as I’ve said to several people since that Council meeting, if people in the congregation feel like they need more opportunity to talk about this, there is nothing to prevent further conversation from happening – nothing to prevent it, that is, except people withdrawing from the conversation.) 

I want to come back eventually to what the Council said about “entrusting” the pastors with this decision-making, but first there’s a more fundamental question I need to address, which is this:  “Wait a minute,” some of you might be saying, “How could there be any latitude in this issue?  Isn’t it just plain wrong for two people of the same gender to want to marry?  Isn’t that in the Bible somewhere?” 

I want to spend some time on that question, because in a very real way, for us as a Church committed to the Bible, it behooves us to answer that question the best we can.  I enter into this portion of our “chat” with some trepidation, because the conversation here is going to be subtle, not black and white, and also without nearly the amount of certainty that some of you would prefer.  You know as well as I do that our culture is not a culture that is particularly fond of subtlety; if people begin to talk about “on the one hand, and on the other hand,” or say “Well, it depends on what you mean by that word,” we accuse them of talking like lawyers and politicians, of shading meanings and not just saying “Yes” or “No.”  Like this:  “Senator, the economy is in shambles, we have 40 million people without health insurance, and the mortgage meltdown seems to have no end in sight.  If you are elected president, what will you do about this?  You have two minutes in which to give your answer…”  I think I need at least 30 minutes to even begin to talk about the Biblical material in a meaningful way (you can see why I’m sitting down!), but I also think I don’t have your attention for that much longer.  So I’m going to just draw some broad brush-strokes, and if these things are of interest to you, we can talk more after the service over a strong cup of coffee. 

There are exactly five verses in the entire Bible that talk specifically about some form of homosexual behavior.  (There’s also the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the book of Genesis, and a similar sort of story in the book of Judges.  But both those stories really do not have anything at all to do with the debate over homosexuality – they are about rape and sexual violence, and so I’m not going to spend time on them this morning.)  Five verses – two in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, and three in Paul’s writings.  Now let me quickly say, just because there are only five verses, that does not mean that we can simply ignore them.  If there were only one verse that said, “You shall not murder,” that would be enough to pay attention to.  But let me also say that those five verses that explicitly mention some form of homosexual behavior are also not the only verses that should be taken into consideration when we talk about this subject.  More on that in a minute.  Back to our famous five (Lev. 17:22, Lev 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, I Corinthians 6:9-10, and I Timothy 1:9-11.) 

There is in scholarly circles a great debate about each of these five verses.  The crux of the matter is this:  what exactly are these verses condemning, and is what is condemned related at all to the question we are asking, which is about two people of the same gender establishing a mutual, loving, committed relationship with one another.  The question about definitions is most pronounced, surprisingly, in the New Testament texts, although the Leviticus texts have their own challenges.  But the words that Paul uses, which are Greek words, are not so easily or unambiguously translated into English.  For example, the two words that Paul uses in the First Corinthian passage – malakos and arsenokoites, pardon my Greek – are not entirely clear in meaning.  The first is simply the normal Greek word for “soft,” and was for many years translated into English as “effeminate.”  The second word seems to be one that Paul made up himself, because it can’t be found in any Greek sources prior to Paul’s use of it here.  It seems to come from two other Greek words, the word for “male” and the word for “bed.”  Scholars debate what to make of this, and how best to put it all into English.  It may not be a blanket condemnation of all homosexual behavior, but may be pointed particularly at sexual practices that were common in the Greek world of Paul’s day; in this case, the practice of what is called “pederasty,” which is a sexual relationship between an adult man and a young boy which was a common practice in those days, a practice which we would still strongly condemn as sexual abuse.  This translation, in fact, is the translation that Martin Luther used (although, of course, from Greek to German) when he translated the New Testament – a combination of words that condemn the use of young boys by older men for sexual purposes.  So there’s some ambiguity there, and a real question about whether or not this verse helps us in our debate about same-gender marriage. 

I don’t have the time this morning to go into that kind of detail with each of the five verses in question, but the challenges of translating these verses well, and understanding them in their original contexts, is not disputed.  The crux of the matter, as I said, is what exactly are these verses condemning, and do they have meaning for the questions we are asking in our day and age?  I’m not enough of a scholar to say, “This is definitively the right answer here” – but apparently no one else is, either.  So it makes me more than a little reluctant to condemn that which I do not fully understand. 

If, in all honesty, we come to admit, as many scholars have, that these five particular verses are not as cut and dried as they might once have appeared to us, then what are we to do?  Are we left with no guidance at all?  As Lutherans, we would have a next move to make.  We would move beyond these five verses into the rest of Scripture to pay attention to its overarching themes and story.   

Personally, I find the Book of Acts to be helpful in my reflections on the subject, even though the question of homosexuality doesn’t come up in that book at all.  What does come up, however, is a crisis in the church over who can be let in, and who should be kept out.  The first great fault line in the church was the line between Jew and Gentile.  Jesus, as you know, was fully Jewish, as were all of the twelve disciples, the Apostle Paul, and most of that first generation of believers.  Jesus was accepted by them as the Jewish Messiah.  And so, when Gentiles began to respond to the preaching of some of the apostles, and expressed a desire to join the church, a crisis of major proportion broke out.  It could have split the church, if the people in the church had let it.  Gentiles were unclean, by long-standing Jewish tradition and Scriptural law.  And so one party within the early church was of the opinion that the only way Gentiles should be allowed to become members of the Jesus’ group was if they first became Jews – submitted themselves to Jewish circumcision, pledged to obey the various dietary laws, and obeyed the other commandments by which the Jewish nation had lived for almost two thousand years.  These, I suppose, would have been the “conservatives” in the church, those who wanted to conserve the traditions and the historic pattern of their life together from the past twenty centuries going back to Abraham. 

But it was the other party that won the day – the party that said that if God had called the Gentiles to faith in Jesus, then who were they to stand in the way?  A council was called at Jerusalem among the apostles and the elders of the church, the leaders, who debated the situation – and probably pretty heatedly, I imagine – until they came to an agreement.  The agreement was this:  that Gentiles would be accepted into the church if they simply avoided eating meat sacrificed to idols (a position, incidentally, which Paul later on softened in his writing to the Corinthians), if they would observe two dietary prohibitions against eating blood and that which has been strangled (which I guess we no longer observe if we eat rare prime rib and chicken), and that they abstain from fornication.  Everything else in the Jewish law, the Gentiles were not to be burdened with.  Simple faith in Jesus was the determinative entry point.  And it says that when the Gentiles heard that word of welcome, “they rejoiced.”  (Acts 15:1-35)   

I don’t think that I can over-emphasize both the extent of the crisis and the radical nature of the solution in the church in that day.  God bless them that they managed to stay together long enough to come to a consensus.

The story of Scripture seems to be throughout the story of an ever-widening circle of people called into relationship with God.  It starts with Abraham and his family, spreads to twelve tribes, extends into the Gentile world through the ministry of Jesus and the work of the Apostle Paul.  Those who were excluded suddenly found themselves invited and included – that’s exactly the story the parable from Matthew’s gospel that we read this morning tells.  When one set of invited guests turns down the invitation, other guests are brought into the celebration.  “Go out into the main streets,” the king tells his servants, “and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” 

The story of Scripture seems to be throughout the story of an ever-widening circle of people called into relationship with God.  Even though, in the beginning, all humankind is created by God and declared to be “good,” and even though throughout the Old Testament the prophets are forever pushing the people of Israel to see the world beyond their own little tribe also as God’s beloved world (see the book of Jonah as the most pointed example of that), God’s people seem intent on trying to draw lines and boundaries.  But the gospel seeks to cross those lines, to break those dividing walls down.  The Apostle Paul is particularly strong at this:  “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female,” he says, “for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  That’s Galatians 3:28. 

People are people, each and every one created in God’s own image, and they are all the object of God’s love and the recipients of God’s gracious invitation.  The divisions that humans would make between themselves cannot stand. 

Now I recognize that for a lot of people, none of this quite adds up to an acceptance of homosexuals as being equal to heterosexuals in God’s eyes, or that it would be a rationale for same-gender marriage.  And I’m under no illusions that this little chat, long as it is, will change many of those minds.  I would be content today if it simply suggested to some of you that faithful, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving, Holy Spirit-filled, Christian people could come to the conclusion that same-gender marriage does not fall into the same category of condemned sexual practices from our Scriptures; and that, in fact, to allow same-gender marriage may even better serve God’s purposes by moving some people out of promiscuous, unhealthy behavior and into a committed, lifelong, mutually loving relationship with one other person that would have the social and spiritual support needed to be strong and lasting. 

It’s not about accepting some “homosexual lifestyle” – although, I have to say, I’ve never completely understood that terminology.  Is there a “heterosexual lifestyle,” too?  When people use that phrase are they suggesting that there is some unique level of promiscuity among homosexuals that doesn’t exist in the heterosexual world?  If so, wow, that’s pretty naďve.  All I can say is that I’ve counted, and the homosexual couples I know have had much better success at long-term relationships than the married, heterosexual friends I have.  It makes me sad to say, but my married heterosexual friends are barely batting .500 these days.  But we’re not talking about some stereotypical “lifestyle” here. 

So let me be clear.  I am against:  fornication, adultery, child abuse, prostitution, promiscuity, rape, and sexual violence; and I firmly believe that the Bible is against those things, too.  I am for strong and lasting marriages, faithfulness in relationships, deep friendships, healthy families, and I think the Bible is for those things, too.   

I am also for people being allowed to discern who God has created them to be, and living out their own personhood in the integrity of their own faith, and with the loving compassion and support of their faith community.  Life is hard enough without judgment and shame being laid upon a person for that which is, for them, a given in their life.  We all just do the best we can, with what we have and with what we are.  And we’re stronger if we walk that road together, in the faith and trust that God will be at work in the lives of others, just as God has been at work in our own. 

And this is where I think the most important part of this issue hits our own lives.  We ultimately do not control what the voters of the state of California will do on November 4 regarding marriage; we ultimately do not control what the outcome of the debate in the ELCA will be over same-gender relationships, blessings, and ordination.  We might have some small voice or influence in the matter, along with 35 million other Californians, along with 4 ˝ million other Lutherans.  But these decisions are going to be made one way or another and we may or may not agree with the outcome.  We should be realistic about what our power is in this regard.  But here is where we have great power – how will we live in community with one another?  What choices will we make?  Some have said that they fear this issue of same-gender marriage may divide us as a congregation.  Listen to me well – this issue has no power over us, to divide or separate us from one another.  That is a choice for us to make; there is no power outside of this community that can divide this community.  The power for division, or for unity, lies within each one of us. 

And I guess here I better wrap it up, but I want to get back to this council statement - that again, if you want to meet and discuss some more, starting this morning over coffee, and continuing on forever, I would welcome that – this statement which leaves the situation for now a little vague and ambiguous as to what might happen next, but “entrusts” us pastors to muddle through the best we can.  I assure you, this is not a trust that Pastor Julie and I take lightly.  We intend to continue to be in prayer to God and in conversation with all of you as we seek to discern what is right for this congregation and for all the people we seek to serve - not only in this regard, but in all of our leadership among you.  We do not take that responsibility lightly; and if in this case, any of you think that I have not led as well as I might, I apologize for that.  I can’t believe it would have been the first time, and I can almost promise you it won’t be the last!   

But this is what it means to live together in community at the foot of the cross, and gathered together around the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion.  We seek to live out together the values that Jesus taught – compassion, gentleness, abundant forgiveness, honesty, faithfulness to God and to one another.  Community gives us lots of opportunity to practice our values, especially forgiveness.  And in light of those values, we don’t have to be afraid of hard and honest conversation; we don’t have to be threatened by disagreements and differences in the way we see the world, the Bible, and our own selves.  There is so much that we share in common, so much that unites us, and so much that we are called to do as a church that we can only do together. 

I trust you – I trust you to be wise and faithful, to be respectful and open to each other, to be patient and forgiving, to live out those values that lie at the heart of Christian community.  No one said it would be easy – but I trust you to do what we say we intend to do:  to welcome one another, to live out our faith, to share God’s love. 

And I trust God – that God will be right here in our midst, leading, guiding, encouraging, strengthening, forgiving, blessing, loving.  Amen.