Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City
June 24, 2007, Pride Sunday
The Reverend Barry M. Signorelli
Zechariah 12:8-10; 13:1
Psalm 63:1-8
Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 9:18-24

   

     My sisters and brothers, I greet you with joy on this Pride Sunday, the day on which our city recognizes the place of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in our community and celebrates our contributions to the marvelous rainbow that is our society.  It is also a day when much of our Church, including this parish family, recognizes the place of GLBT people in the household of faith, lifting up and proclaiming aloud to the world the inclusive nature of God’s boundless love and welcome.  Of course, I must say “much” of the Church, because there are still those in the Body of Christ who would seek to cast us out of the community of faith, who would have us believe that God hates some of those he has made, or that God demands that we live our lives unfulfilled and constrained so as not to offend those who are “normal.”  I am proud this day to be a part of a community that is not taken in by the lies of the excluders; proud to be part of a community that offers radical welcome to everyone; proud to be part of a community that is willing to stand up and say, “Enough!  Do not pervert the Good News of the Kingdom which has come near to us!”  I am proud to say with you, “We will not let you condemn those among us whom God made to love their own gender, because WE ARE THEY.”

     When the Nazis made Danish Jews wear yellow stars to identify themselves, all the people of Denmark responded by donning the yellow stars.  They said to the Nazis, “We are They.”  During the civil rights movement, white activists stood side by side with African-Americans to face down billy-clubs, fire-hoses, and dogs, saying to the bigots, “We are They.”  And now, in the face of religious intolerance, our own Bishop Sisk (a practicing heterosexual, no less!) has declared his solidarity with GLBT Episcopalians, declaring publicly that We – the entire people of God – are They.  We are called together by God into one Body, one Faith, invited to sit down to feast together at one Table by the host that will seek us in the highways and byways if needed to bring us in.  In the Kingdom of God where there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, so too can there be no queer or straight, any more than there is rich or poor, young or old, single or coupled, healthy or sick, or any other division that we sinful humans might construct to exclude those we don’t like or find uncomfortable.  God calls us all to be one, and if we do not respond to that call with faith and confidence, then we are guilty of rejecting God’s invitation.  If I’m invited to a barbeque, it’s certainly my right to ask who else will be there; and if I don’t like one of the guests, it’s my prerogative to stay home if I choose.  What I cannot do is tell my host not to invite the other.  How can we ask the same of God?

     But oh, some will say, God has made clear that gays and lesbians are sinful and bad – it says so, right there in the Bible!  And then they will invariably quote a verse or two from Leviticus, the ancient law-book of the Israelites, saying that for a man to lie with a man is an abomination.  There are a handful of other verses – seven or so, I believe – sprinkled throughout the Old and New Testaments that seem to confirm this view.  But most of those are plagued with problems of translation and interpretation; they are not the clear-cut, unambiguous prohibitions their proponents make them seem.  And significantly, Jesus was absolutely silent on the subject.  Not a single word.  No mention of it, ever.  Yet from the furor raised by the Christian homophobes, you’d think that homosexuality was the most important theological imperative of all!  Yet the Son of God somehow forgot to bring it up.

     But beyond the linguistic, cultural, and interpretive problems inherent with condemning sexual minorities through an appeal to Scripture, there is a deeper underlying problem.  Those who would reject the place of LGBT people in the Church make their appeal based on Law: it’s wrong because there are Rules that say it’s wrong.  This is why Leviticus is always their opening salvo; because God gave the Law to Moses, and this is in that Law, well it’s a slam-dunk.  The problem is, Leviticus says a lot of things are abominations, and our opponents conveniently tend to forget that.  I’ll bet, for example, that a lot of them have eaten shellfish with impunity – but in Leviticus, that’s forbidden.  If they’re paying a mortgage, they’re paying interest, so they’ve broken the Levitical law against usury.  If they happen to have touched a dead body and not undergone the prescribed ritual purification, then they are unclean and should not be allowed among the community of the faithful!  (Beware those morticians!)  Oh, come on, they might reply, those rules no longer apply to us, you can’t expect us to follow them; and that’s just my point: if you are going to appeal to one verse of Leviticus as being binding on us as Christians, then you must accept that all of Leviticus is binding on us.  And by the rest of your lives, you are showing that that is not so.

     Laws can, and must change as our understanding of ourselves and the world around us evolves.  God’s Law is eternal and unchanging, but the ways in which we understand how to pattern our lives in accordance with that law must change over time.  And what is that eternal and unchanging Law of God?  Jesus affirmed that is summed up as “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.”  The rest is merely our attempt to respond to that.  And here’s where we meet the greatest danger, because our human pride and prejudices can so easily influence our understanding of what is “naturally” of the Law – understandings that can become ludicrous later on.  The very first controversy in the early Church was whether Gentiles had to be circumcised before being baptized.  Women must keep silent in the churches. Slavery is an acceptable way of life ordained by God.  We look at these erstwhile “eternal verities” today and  realize how right it was for us to move beyond the mindset of the times that gave them birth.  So too do we know today that same-gender sexuality is not a mental illness or psychological defect, but a naturally-occurring phenomenon among many species, including our own.  If we consider that God has thrown this into Creation as an intended random variable, are we still bound by a law that condemns it?

     In today’s Epistle, Paul argues that slavish adherence to the Law is not only not required, but is actually a hindrance to the followers of Christ.  Now, a lot of the time I have problems with what Paul declares, so it feels strange to use him to back me up here – but in his letter to the Galatians, he nails it perfectly.  “The Law,” he says, “was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.”  When we do not understand the nature of God’s will, we need rules to show us the boundaries of what is acceptable.  But it’s important to remember that the purpose of those rules is to inhibit, to constrain; the Law can only condemn, it cannot in and of itself, give life.  It can help to create an environment in which life can flourish, but it does not guarantee that life will indeed flourish.  I know that it’s against the law to murder someone, and so I have some degree of relief from the fear that I might be killed at any given moment.  This in turn frees up my emotional energy to devote to living a fulfilling life.  It doesn’t mean that I won’t be gunned down unexpectedly, and it doesn’t guarantee that I’ll actually apply myself to living a fulfilling life.  But if I do murder someone, the Law will be there to bring me down.  It can only condemn, it cannot by itself give life.

     Now imagine that the Kingdom of God were come in its fullness to earth; every individual on the planet is filled with unconditional love for his or her neighbors and seeks to treat them as fellow children and heirs of God.  In such a world, would a prohibition against murder be necessary?  Of course not, for every person would do only what is in accordance with God’s will.  Now, I don’t expect that such a utopia will come into being anytime soon, but as followers of Christ, we are called to become ever more Christ-like – seeking every moment to embody the nature and will of God, who loves all Creation and has made all things good.  We are asked to live as if we were in that perfect Kingdom, no longer needing laws and rules, because our wills are attuned to God.  We are asked to act like God who throws the doors of the banqueting-hall wide open and says, “come in, all my beloved children!”

     And all of us who have received the light of Christ, in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, all who are filled with all the fullness of God, will enter in and feast with all those others who accept the invitation.  And we will no doubt be surprised at some who are there, just as they may be surprised at our presence.  But it’s not our party; the guests do not dictate to the host who should be at table.  It is our part to cast aside our differences, to throw away the rules and embrace one another, and revel in the wonder of a God whose love is beyond all knowing.

     I wish I could say this day that such a scene was at hand, but I cannot.  The struggle will continue, and as Jesus promised, we must take up the Cross before we can reach the feast.  But even as we march for the full inclusion of all, even as we argue and debate with one another, we do so in the certain knowledge that in the end, all will be well.  As Bishop Gene Robinson said in this very pulpit last Tuesday, it’s not about whether all will be included, it’s about when.  As so, although we know that the Kingdom is not yet fully come, let us nonetheless pause this day to celebrate how much of it has come to be; and let us dedicate ourselves to living in that Kingdom, even as we work to bring it into being.  And finally, let us pray to be worthy and loving opponents to those who work against us, remembering that they will be at the banquet, too.  All are one in God’s sight, and all are called to God; because in Jesus, God threw away the rules to come to us in love and say, “We are They.”

     Amen.