an open letter to the Uniting Church
Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ.
As Christians, we seek to understand what it means to live in faith
before God in every aspect of our lives. As people of the Uniting Church we seek to build each other up
in faith and love so that we
do not lose the way. With Jesus Christ as our example, we reach out to
others in love and in service
to bring food and water to those who hunger and thirst, to welcome
strangers, to clothe the naked,
to care for the sick, to visit those who are in prison and to care for
the least within God's family.
For this is what we understand Christian ethics to involve, to show love
to our neighbours as to
ourselves. We do not seek to serve only our own, or those like us, but
we reach out to declare
ourselves part of an inclusive community of faith and service.
We have varied, rich and often different traditions and a grand
vision of being one in
Christ. We demonstrate
that hope to the world in
our name, as The Uniting Church in Australia, and we display it in our
logo. We seek unity in One
Spirit that is the Spirit of Life, of Reconciliation and of Love.
I have sought to understand what it means to live in faith before God in
every aspect of my life,
including my sexuality. It has been a long and often painful journey to
this point. I did not choose
to be gay and I only discovered the realities of my sexuality by a
process of maturation. That
process was very much linked to becoming one with Christ as I matured in
faith, in my spirituality
and in knowledge of my sexuality. What I do choose is to seek full participation in the
life of the church. I choose to
grasp hold of the promise of the Gospel, that there is no condemnation
in Christ.
I walk
after the Spirit in full recognition of my baptism and affirmation of
the Spirit in my life. Those who
suggest that my sexuality implies that I am walking after the "flesh"
deny both my spirituality and
the presence of the Spirit in my life.
On reflection, my situation is very much like those early Gentile
Christians who were regarded by
some Jewish Christians as unclean in the eyes of God. The assumption
was that Gentiles as Gentiles
could only be part of the People of God by first becoming Jews. This
meant of course, circumcision,
eating Kosher food, living by the Jewish law and renouncing or repenting
of their former life as a
Gentile. Those early Jewish Christians were scandalised and shocked to
see that God had poured
out the Spirit upon the Gentiles as Gentiles. Peter had nightmares over
the issue and Paul was lead
to teach that in faith there is neither Jew nor Gentile nor any other
mark of distinction in Christ Jesus.
The writer of Mark's Gospel went to great lengths to show that those
whom some followers of the law
regarded as outsiders were in fact insiders. And Luke teaches a
wonderful lesson of inclusivity when
he tells of Philip being lead by the Spirit to affirm the faith of the
Ethiopian eunuch (another despised
outsider) by baptising him.
There are some who make "eunuchs" of gay men in
declaring them unfit for
positions of leadership in the church. They construct marks of
distinction to control the definition of
who may participate and who cannot. In short, they are like those
early, hard-hearted, doctrinaire,
circumcised Jewish Christians and ask that homosexual people cease being
homosexual people
before they are admitted fully as Christians. Some seek to make us
heterosexual people first, crying, "be born again in our image. Be like us!" Others, out of concern for
what they describe as
"loving the sinner but hating the sin" do not seek to change us. Instead
they ask us to deny ourselves
the forms of intimacy that are natural to us and to enter into a
celibacy of convenience for their
consciences. In so doing, they engage in an idolatrous projection of a
heterosexist hegemony that
serves the creature rather than the Creator. And worse, they exchange
the truth about God for a lie
and deny our experience of God's Spirit with us.
The truth is that homosexual Christians are already bearers of the
Spirit and are graced and made
whole as homosexual people of faith. They do not need to be born again
or to repent of being
homosexual, for they are already Children of God and participate in the
rule of God through grace
and faith. And when they fall short they do so in the same manner as
their heterosexual brothers and
sisters, for we are all capable of sin and all people do sin. In Christ
we all find deliverance and
forgiveness. It is the same Spirit of Christ that inspires our
ministries, guides our studies of
Scripture, theology, history and ethics and informs our Christian
praxis. We gay Christians know
Jesus as our Friend and Liberator who finds wisdom and faith among the
outcasts and gathers us as
his own.
I value the use of Scripture, reason and experience in discerning what
God is saying to me at this
moment. I draw upon my skills as a Biblical and theological scholar and
upon the reflective
strengths of prayer. The Bible says nothing about homosexuality. Where
it does mention
homoerotic sexual practice it is from within a social and cultural
milieu that is different to our own.
The modern concepts of homosexuality and heterosexuality are
simply not present in the Bible.
Like Peter and Paul, who adjusted their understanding and reasoning in
terms of their experience, I
involve myself in the same hermeneutic process. What I find sinful is
when we fail to recognise one
another as persons created by God, redegmed by God's Christ and inspired
by God's Spirit. I see the
denial of another's humanity as sinful. I see sin in the doing of
violence to others, in the
exploitation of one another, in the vilification of those who are
different, and in the rejection of the
gifts of the Spirit in others.
Making a compromise fails just as it did for
Paul and James at the first
ecumenical council. However, the Bible gives us many examples of
alternative positions on some
issues but it still retains its integrity as canon. For example, it
offers us a model of unity in Spirit
while allowing for the expression of differing opinion and action. For
example, Leviticus 21:20 and
Deuteronomy 23:1 prohibit eunuchs from serving in the temple but Isaiah
56:1-9 shows their
offerings being acceptable to God. Ezra 9:1 stands against the people
of Israel marrying foreigners,
especially the Moabites. But the story of Ruth shows Boaz marrying
Ruth, a Moabite and a name
was established in Bethlehem through David and Jesus as Ruth's
descendants. Jesus brought healing
and forgiveness while breaking the laws relating to touching the dead or
menstruating women and
associating with outcasts and foreigners. He showed the alternative way
of new grace in faith and
love. Jesus' view point is clearly expressed in the parable of the
wheat and the tares. In cultivating
good relationships in an eschatological framework the teaching is to
treat all people as "good wheat"
Matthew 13:24-30.
To do that will mean exercising patience and keeping dialogue open,
recognising all the strengths of all of our members
and challenging all of our deficiencies. It will mean being truthful and
honouring the diversity of Biblical
interpretations that our members hold, in a mutual and reciprocal
affirmation of diversity. It will
mean letting the Spirit guide our lives in the same manner that Paul
advised those early Christians
struggling with questions of Gentile inclusivity. For it is time to
bring in the outcasts again to
reclaim the promise of God who finds the outcasts acceptable in worship
and service.
There is a solution at hand to the tension that exists within our diverse Church communities. It is to treat all people of faith with
respect as "good wheat" and to
embrace inclusivity for the sake of justice, mercy and peace.
There is a solution at hand and it is to recognise those who come in the
name of the Lord are blessed
and have been brought forward by God without marks of distinction.
In the name of God I call for justice, love and reconciliation so that
we can all get on with the tasks
to which God has called us.
I call upon the Uniting Church in Australia to live as the inclusive
Church in step with the Gospel of
Jesus Christ to which the Apostles Peter and Paul witnessed.
I call for our churches be made safe places so that homosexual people
can worship and serve in ways
that are free from homophobia, discrimination and harassment.
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