A Lenten Experience of Law and Grace

Law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
Romans 5:20

Through the mysterious algorithms of Facebook I was reminded of a blog post I wrote seven years ago after testifying in favor of Marriage Equality at a State House hearing. Thankfully, the legal issues have been largely settled, but the conflict in the church goes on. Much of what I wrote then applies to the conflict in the United Methodist Church today.

It was in many ways the perfect Lenten experience.

I was at the State House for almost six hours before it was my turn to testify.

I spoke briefly (but passionately, I hope) about how I believed that God is always calling us forward as Abraham and Sarah were called to leave home and journey toward "the land that I will show you." We are working toward the Kingdom of God and we are impatient with the present because we look for a future that will be more just. And I believe that Marriage Equality is part of a more just future.

While I waited and watched, I had a lot of time to reflect and meditate. (A good Lenten discipline.)

As a Christian it hurts to hear the Bible (and Jesus!) misused to promote an unholy trinity of tradition, fear and ignorance.

One woman lamented the fact that until her testimony, no one had mentioned “the sin of sodomy.” She assured us that a same sex couple cannot really teach children about sin because their lives are immersed in sin. She told us that “it grieves our Lord and Savior, and his Blessed Mother in heaven.”

One wonders how she knows this.

The Bible has over 30,000 verses, and there are, in fact, six brief passages that condemn homosexuality. None of them are in the Gospels. Oddly, they only condemn male homosexuality. Each of the passages is problematic in one way or another. And not one of them is addressed toward a faithful, committed, monogamous same sex relationship. But listening to some of these folks one would think that everything from Genesis to Revelation was written just to condemn homosexuality.

At times I felt like I had fallen into the Bible Study from hell. No wonder that to many people outside the church it looks like Christianity is fundamentally about self-righteousness and condemnation. This was a weaponized Gospel. Devoid of grace. Abounding in judgment. It was painful.

In an earlier post I spoke of ours as "a time when so many Christians seem to hate immigrants (and LGBTQ people, and people of color, and poor people) so much more than they love Jesus." That statement drew immediate and fervent response from several traditionalists. Just because they believed something was sinful, they argued, that did not make them haters.

As an intellectual argument, it sounds plausible. But in practice it does not work. Expressing the belief that homosexuality, or "the practice of homosexuality," is sinful is experienced as hateful.

And that night at the State House there were many Christians who seemed to hate gay people a lot more than they loved Jesus.

“But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”

There were wonderful grace-filled stories told by parents about their gay children and by children about their gay parents.

Partners told of their struggles to build a life together.

A neuro-scientist talked clinically about studies of sexuality and the brain, and then introduced his brother, who is a pediatrician and cannot marry his partner.

Altogether it presented a very vivid illustration of Paul’s argument about law and grace in Romans. The more the traditionalists invoked the Law (Natural and Religious), the more “the trespass multiplied” by them against their sisters and brothers.

The Law was used as a club; in the apparent belief that if they could pound home their point with sufficient force, then they could make same sex relationships go away.

They are against Same Sex Marriage because they are against homosexuality, and they are against homosexuality, at least in part, because they do not believe that the Bible is a living Word. For them it is a dead letter. As Paul argued in his second letter to Corinth, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The dead letter of the Law can be used to wound, but it cannot heal and it cannot bring life.

We need to remind ourselves that we are called to be “ministers of a new covenant, not of letter, but of spirit: for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (II Corinthians 3:6)

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

And the Greatest of These Is Love

Captain Daniel Hall and Captain Vinny Franchino

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. 
And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
I Corinthians 13:1-8,13

On February 24, 2004 I spoke at a press conference of clergy supporting equal marriage. I remember the date because it was Elaine's birthday and in my remarks I referenced our marriage of (at that time) thirty-five years. 

"As a Christian," I said, "my support for same sex marriage is rooted and grounded in the theology of marriage itself. Marriage is a covenant between two people; a promise made before God and the community to love one another forever. We make this commitment in spite of the fact that we know that forever is not ours to give; it belongs to God. And the fulfillment of the commitment is never just a human effort; it is always a gift of grace."

Not long after that a woman in her eighties, one of the saints of the congregation, asked me to visit with her. She wanted to talk with me about her grandson who had recently told her that he was gay and that he was in a serious relationship.

The grandson and his partner had been fighter pilots in the Navy. They were graduates of Annapolis. But in the era of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” they had resigned their commissions and taken civilian jobs in the Pentagon. Even so, they were worried that if their relationship were known it could jeopardize their security clearances.

The young man’s parents, a wonderful couple, had been invited to share in the discussion and it was clear that they were fully supportive of their son. Their only concern was that we all understood the need for complete confidentiality.

Mildred was comforted by the thought that there were responsible and thoughtful Christians who supported same sex relationships. And she was glad that I was supporting equal marriage, but she could not completely let go of the reservations that she had lived with for so many decades.

The memory of Mildred’s grandson came to mind when I read the story of two Apache helicopter pilots who became the first active-duty same sex couple to be married in the chapel at the West Point military academy. Captain Daniel Hall and Captain Vinny Franchino met at West Point in 2009 when Hall was a senior and Franchino was a first year.

“We couldn’t tell the truth for fear of what would happen to us,” Franchino told a reporter. “So we put it in our minds that we were never going to say we were gay, we were never going to get made fun of, and we were certainly never going to get kicked out of the Army.”

When congress repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2011, the couple felt safe enough to go out on their first date, which took place in 2012.

Franchino said that although he’s been through a lot with his new husband, nothing was worse than when he had to hide his identity.

“We’ve experienced everything from people feeling awkward around us to being called faggots while holding hands and walking down the street, stuff like that,” Franchino said. “But despite what we’ve been through, nothing was worse than having served during the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ years.”

Mildred passed away before the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and I don’t know what became of her grandson and his partner. I would like to think they were married in the chapel at Annapolis and have been living happily ever after.

But this is a story that still casts a dark shadow.

One wonders how it is possible for the United States Army to be more loving than our beloved United Methodist Church. How can the army be ahead of the church when it comes to accepting and affirming our gay and lesbian siblings?

And as happy as I am to see a photo of the army captains embracing under the traditional arch of crossed swords after leaving the chapel, reading some of the comments on the story reminded me how deeply the Christian faith has been wounded by the hatefulness of some of those who call themselves by that name.

Consider this:

“An act of hate against God, mocking marriage. I have to wonder what these two boys are expecting to accomplish, committing such a sin. Homosexuals will not inherit the Kingdom of God, after all, if they choose to be enslaved to that spiritual disorder.”

Or this:

“Despite the efforts of a liberal of a liberal society to normalize this behavior, it is not and never will be. This country is bombarded daily with stories of the ‘first gays to _________’(fill in the blank). Call me what you want, but I will never accept, condone, support, or recognize this behavior as anything but immoral and against the laws of God and nature.”

There is no excuse for such hatefulness. And disguising it as Christian faith just makes it worse. The comments are crudely written, but more polite language would not make the sentiments less offensive. Those who dress up such views with cleaner rhetoric do no less damage.

This is toxic. It is unloving and it is unlovable. 

It is a slander to our faith.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

First, Do No Harm

Words strain, 

Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, 
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, 
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, 
Will not stay still.
T.S. Eliot

The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher, 
that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. 
Morning by morning he wakens— 
wakens my ear 
to listen 
as those who are taught.
Isaiah 50:4

Words.

I have taken my time trying to find the right words to respond to the tragedy in Orlando. In college I would often put off writing an essay because I kept hoping that eventually I would have some brilliant inspiration. That seldom happened.

(Okay. By “seldom” I mean never.)

It has not happened here, either. But I will add to the torrent of words already written about this with a small comment on one facet of the tragedy.

Words are all we have to work with. Words are never enough. But they always matter.

Words can heal and words can harm.

Those of us who claim to be followers of Christ must search for healing words in the wake of the worst mass shooting in American history.

But first we must confess that for too long too many of us have been saying things that harm rather than heal. Instead of sustaining the weary, we have oppressed them.

At its best, Christianity subverts the inequality and injustice of the status quo and calls us toward a future that is more just, more peaceful, and more compassionate than the present.

This has been true for all of the great reformers and reform movements, from our Jewish ancestors rebelling against the oppression of Pharaoh, through the witness of the great Hebrew prophets, to the first century Christians. It was true in the Wesleyan reform in England and the Abolitionists in America. It was true in the Social Gospel, in Woman’s Suffrage, in Civil rights, and it is true now in the movement for LGBTQ inclusion and full equality.

At its best, Christianity calls us toward a future, which Jesus proclaimed as “the Kingdom of God;” a place where the poor are lifted up and the mighty are cast down, where everyone has a seat at the table, where the last come first and the poor have a special place, where everyone has enough and no one has too much.

But at its worst, Christianity has been a prop for inequality, oppression and injustice. 

Within hours of the massacre Christian pastors posted videos declaring that what happened in Orlando was not a tragedy. The only tragedy was that more homosexuals were not killed. If we lived in a righteous country, they said, the government would be arresting people for homosexuality, convicting them in a fair trial, and then executing them. You can see their posts here and here.

Seddique Mir Mateen, the father of Omar Mateen, the gunman who died in a shootout with police after killing 49 people and injuring 50 more in the attack on Sunday morning, took a more moderate view than his “Christian” brothers. 

He said that he was saddened by his son’s actions during the holy month of Ramadan. And then he commented on his son’s motivation. “God will punish those involved in homosexuality,” he said, it’s “not an issue that humans should deal with.”

The elder Mateen is apparently a rather strange person with his own mental health issues, so it may not be surprising that he would use “deal with” as a euphemism for massacre. But the earlier part of his statement is more problematic for both Muslims and Christians. He says that “God will punish those involved in homosexuality.”

And for 44 years the section on Human Sexuality in our United Methodist Book of Discipline has contained a statement saying that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” Supporters of that statement are quick to point out that the “sin” is not homosexuality, the “sin” is “the practice of homosexuality.” 

Although that qualification is very important to the traditionalists, it does not soften the condemnation for our LGBTQ members and friends. 

John Wesley's First Rule was, "Do No Harm." 

Our first response to the deaths in Orlando should be the confession that for many years we have been doing harm to our LGBTQ neighbors. 

What we now know is that the gunman was apparently conflicted about his own sexuality, that he hated gay people, and that although he swore allegiance to ISIS, his primary motivation was that hatred.

And we know that the self-loathing and the hatred were supported by religious beliefs.

This is a stark reminder for Christians. When we call homosexuality (or the practice of homosexuality) a sin we contribute to a climate which says that LGBTQ people are “less than.” We devalue their lives. 

And that devaluing has real world consequences.