Homosexuality is Not a Sin: The Christian Education of a Baptist Minister
Matthew 5:43-45
John 9:1-3
Acts 10:9-16
Let me begin by confessing an evil, wicked, shameful sin of mine. When I was a young boy, I----this is difficult to admit, very hard to say so please bear with me----when I was a young boy----gosh this is difficult----I didn’t think it would be this hard to admit, but when I was a young boy I pulled for----Duke. Yes, I pulled for the Blue Devils (please notice that I put the emphasis on the word Devils)----I pulled for the Blue Devils when Vic Bubas was the coach and the team captain was Bob Verga.
My feeble attempt at a little differentiation, my oddness, my weirdness, my deviant behavior, did not go over too well with my family of origin. While my father and mother and two older brothers watched the Carolina/Duke game on the big television upstairs in the living room, I was sent downstairs to the basement to watch the game on a small television all by my lonesome self. I’m not making this up.
It did not take me long to repent of my sin. I wanted to be loved and accepted and to fit in. I wanted to belong so I quickly became an obnoxious Carolina fan.
These days I’m only slightly obnoxious, but I’m still obnoxious enough to tell you that if I had my way, which since this is a Baptist church I don’t get to have my way, but if I did have my way, we would not welcome and affirm Dookies. We might welcome them, as in allow them to sit on the pew and put money in the plate, but we definitely wouldn’t affirm them.
I guess that’s the tricky thing about being a welcoming and affirming church. It’s a real stretch to welcome and affirm everybody, particularly people who don’t welcome and affirm you. For the record, I’m not real tolerant of intolerant people. I’m trying to work on that. I’m trying to work on that and be patient with others who I would like to slap silly because not too long ago I would have needed to have been slapped silly myself for some of the same stuff.
Which leads me to today’s sermon, a sermon titled “Homosexuality is not a Sin: The Christian Education of A Baptist Minister”. Or put another way, what I have to offer you is a good old fashioned Baptist testimony. I grew up in one of those conservative Southern Baptist churches and giving your testimony was a big thing. Well, I have a testimony about what God has done in my life. To be sure, it’s not your typical Baptist testimony. But it is a testimony, a testimony which I believe could have only been made possible by God. If anyone had told me 20 years ago I would no longer view homosexuality as a sin and that some of my best friends would be homosexuals I would have told them they were crazy. As you will hear, my journey has been a long one. That’s why I say it has been an education. And I say it is a Christian education, because what I have learned has been learned in the context of the church and has been made possible by Christians who just happen to be gay or lesbian or bisexual. And as I said, I believe without the help of God I would not have gotten this Christian education.
So here’s my Baptist testimony, with a little prophetic twist thrown in at the end for good measure.
Well, let’s start in the beginning. I am in the fifth grade and I’m starting to notice girls, actually one girl in particular. While I’m noticing this beautiful female I also notice that a male classmate of mine, unlike me, does not appear to be noticing females. How he could not be impressed with this female I have my eye on confuses me. My classmate is pretty much a loner. He keeps to himself. And sadly he is the object of more than a few verbal abuses delivered by his classmates. School children can be cruel.
At this point I have no clue there are homosexuals in the world. I just know some people are odd, different, odd and different in more than just their personality. They don’t fit in with the majority. And because they don’t fit in they pay a high price.
In middle school my education continues. I learn about more than calculus and U.S. History. I learn my family suspects we have a relative who is gay. He is a cousin. A fairly attractive person. He’s not Robert Redford, but he is handsome enough not to have any trouble finding a woman. We start suspecting he is a homo, a fag----those are the terms we used. My cousin who is much older than me is not married, is not dating---dating a woman that is, and come to think of it, has never gone out with one of the XX chromosomes. This is odd because my cousin has a good bit of money and drives a nice sports car. If you are fairly attractive, have a big wad of money in your pocket, drive a red MG and you don’t have a woman the way we figure it------something’s up.
About the same time we suspect there’s a homosexual in the Ayers clan, a male friend of mine is dating a girl on the school basketball team who reports to him that her coach, who is a female, is a lesbian. This is a new vocabulary word for me. Never in my wildest imagination did it cross my mind that a woman would not want a man. We conclude this basketball coach is a pervert. We accuse her of being a predator, trying to make young heterosexual females into lesbians. We believe the woman should be fired immediately. She is horrible! She is disgusting!
From that day forward we suspect all female coaches are lesbians whose intention is not to teach girls how to play a sport, but to see them naked in the locker room.
The middle school/high school years were interesting years. I call them the testosterone years. Our male voices deepened. Hair grew in new spots on our bodies. A lot of attention was given particularly to facial hair. Should I shave or should I not shave---this month?
Becoming a man, a man’s man. Proving our masculinity. To do that we had to demonstrate we were more of a man than someone else. And so,----- and so we found easy targets, the weakest links. What better group of people to pick on than homosexuals. We didn’t knowingly pick on a homosexual. In those days we weren’t familiar with the phrase coming out of the closet. No one in our class had fessed up to being a homo. But we did pick on homosexuals in the sense that we regularly called other males homosexuals as a way of shaming them, saying they were inferior. And chances are some of the people we called homosexual were homosexual.
The first crack in my cemented perspective came my freshman year at that great university in Chapel Hill. Living across 115 Lewis Residence Hall, living right across from my room, was a guy named Tim. Nice guy, and a Lutheran to boot. He got me to go one time to his Lutheran church and I discovered those Lutherans drink the real stuff. And they didn’t call it The Lord’s Supper. They called it some weird name, the Eucharist. Anyway, Tim invites me to a dorm Bible study on the 3rd floor led by a guy named Rick. I go for about a month. And then I start suspecting. There’s that word again, suspecting. I suspect Rick is a homosexual.
I stop going to the Bible study and I forget about going to the Baptist Student Union. I had had reservations about the BSU before I met Rick. I went to a few of the BSU meetings and I found the people to be real close to Jesus. So close, in fact, I wasn’t worried they wouldn’t make it to heaven; I feared they were going to overshoot heaven.--------------Well, Rick was a big BSUer and that he was a homosexual was the straw that broke the camel’s back. No way was I going to the BSU and hang out with a homo.
Rick knew what was going on with me. And he told me, “One day you are going to change.”
Just what I needed, a homosexual Christian preaching to me.
But Rick turned out to be right. I did change, slowly, inch by inch. I changed to a great extent because of Tim.
I noticed Tim was going up to the third floor all the time. And it wasn’t just for Bible study. He and Rick seemed to be hitting it off. Tim, all of a sudden, had a hop in his walk, a smile on his face, and he had gotten a tad feisty. All us men on the first floor of Lewis Residence Hall started suspecting. Suspecting not that Tim was a homosexual, but that evil Rick was trying to turn him into a homosexual.
We remained friends with Tim for a while. Tim went with us Lewis men to church, mostly to the Methodist Church because the general consensus was the girls were better looking there. And we went out to eat with Tim, mostly to Bullock’s BBQ in Durham which was the only good thing in Durham. But soon we made up a cruel rhyme about Tim, specifically, a rhyme about his sexual orientation. We said this in front of Tim repeatedly. And though the relationship at that point continued, it was never the same.
It was never the same.
The following year I moved to south campus and I lost touch with Tim, but Tim forever changed me. Tim taught me all the things I had believed about gays were myths. And even though I did not like him, so did Rick. Both Tim and Rick are good people. Not perverts. Not weirdos. Not predators. Not sick people. They are not all the things I had believed about homosexuals. Tim and Rick are human beings with a deep faith. They are Christians. They are people with lives marked by integrity. I can not argue with their lives. Oh, they were not and are not perfect, none of us are, but I cannot argue with their lives.
Getting to know Christians who just happen to be homosexual is the single most important factor that changed my mind, that transformed me.
My experience has been like that of William Sloane Coffin who writes, “What did the most to help me battle [my homophobia], more than the accumulation and analysis of the evidence available, was to spend time with gay people. Familiarity bred only respect, never contempt.”
I am reminded of two quotes that appeared in The Charlotte Observer. A conservative Christian commenting on homosexuals said he “loved the sinner, but hated the sin.” To which a Roman Catholic priest replied, “How can you love someone you do not know?”
Let me tell you something that is beautiful. We have had people come to Wedgewood and say up front that they don’t want to be homophobic, that they would never want to do or say anything to harm a homosexual, but there’s just something about homosexuality that makes them uneasy, uncomfortable. They admit there’s a hurdle they haven’t been able to get over. They say that, they are honest about it, and then something happens. They get to know, underline that word, they get to know, really know some gay and lesbian Christians and I see them changing before my very eyes. They see what I have seen, that some of the best Christians we have at Wedgewood are our homosexual members. And to paraphrase Jesus, they say, “not even among the heterosexual Christians have I found such faith.”
When Christians talk to me about their reservations about gays and lesbians I ask them, Have you gotten to know the homosexuals in your faith community? And I say, Have you realized the presence of homosexuals in your church is a miracle? I believe any time a homosexual walks through the doors of a church it is a miracle. Why, why would anyone who has been rejected so much open himself or herself up to more rejection?
A sad story. Eight years ago Bill Skinner, the much beloved organist at Wedgewood, died of AIDS. Bill’s family never acknowledged his homosexuality or that he had AIDS. They never accepted him. On the day of Bill’s funeral the funeral home director comes to me right before the funeral and informs me there is a problem. Bill’s family does not want Bill’s partner and Bill’s friends to be in the room with them before the service. I tell the funeral home director we have two rooms. Bill’s family can go in one and his partner and friends can go in the other. I’ll go in both rooms and pray with both groups before the service. Then the funeral home director says there is an additional problem. The two groups are fighting about who will sit on the first pew in the sanctuary. I tell the funeral home director we fortunately have two front pews.
A sad story is still sadder. Bill is loved by Wedgewood, but eight years ago Wedgewood had not publicly stated that we welcome and affirm gays and lesbians. And so Bill does not tell us he has AIDS until a few months before he dies.
I’ll say it again, any time a homosexual walks into a church-----it is a miracle.
Sad stories. I’ve heard them. I’ve seen the tears of gays and lesbians. I’ve heard them sob. I’ve heard them weep. Someone, some Christians, some church, needs to tell the world about the tears and say as boldly as possible that homosexuality is not a sin. Saying homosexuals should be tolerated is not enough. Saying homosexuals are welcome in a church just like all sinners are welcome is not enough. Saying gay and lesbian clergy can be clergy as long as they are celibate is not enough. The Church needs to say boldly that homosexuality is not a sin.
Some people believe homosexuals choose to be homosexual. No, what I have witnessed are homosexuals choosing to deny their sexual orientation, some even going so far as marrying a person of the opposite sex and having children.
Homosexual Christians do not need a church that forces them to live a lie. They need love, acceptance, and affirmation. They need a church that has learned homosexuality is not a sin. They need a faith community which is honest about biblical interpretation.
Yes, the Bible. But what about the Bible?, some will ask. What about those verses that indicate homosexuality is a sin? How can you say homosexuality is not a sin when the Bible clearly says it is?
For those of you interested in a fuller treatment than time permits this morning I recommend the work of Walter Wink. Here’s a quick summary of Wink. Wink admits there are three passages that condemn same sex behavior, far less texts than many use to buttress their anti-homosexual position. Wink, however, goes on to point out that those who wish to condemn homosexuals on the basis of Bible verses, are not as enthusiastic about the Bible’s teaching in Leviticus 20:13 that demands that everyone who performs homosexual acts must suffer the death penalty. You see, Jerry Falwell, the big Bible believer, really does not believe all the Bible like he says he does. Even Jerry says homosexuals are to be loved. And yet, Leviticus 20:13 says that homosexuals should be killed, something no one in their right mind would support today. So let’s be honest about our biblical interpretation. We are all selective.
And that is what Wink hammers away at, our biblical selectivity. He delineates twenty Hebrew sexual mores, noting that in contemporary society we agree with only four of them and disagree with sixteen. In other words, we are picking and choosing and what we are choosing to focus on is homosexuality while we ignore the other stuff.
I admit I pick and choose. I’m just asking you and other so-called Bible believers to admit it also. If you haven’t yet admitted you pick and choose, please allow me to take a stroll through the Bible with you.
Now picking and choosing is a tricky thing. We tend to pick and choose that which supports our world view, that which supports our theology. So we need to be careful about this. For often what we need to read, what we need to live, is what we reject so quickly. On the other hand, sometimes we pick and choose because we do not worship a book, but a God revealed to us in Jesus Christ, and we have enough sense to know that everything in the Bible does not match up to what we know about Jesus.
But here’s another point that must be made. Jesus, himself, did not believe allof the Bible of his day. Jesus did some picking and choosing as well.
Plastered throughout the Old Testament is the idea that if you are good, God is going to bless you real good, and that includes financial blessings. If you are bad, well, bad things are going to happen to you. But---------but when you come to Jesus, he says the rain falls on who? The just. Well, they knew that. But Jesus goes on to say that the rain also falls on the unjust. With that one statement Jesus wiped out, wiped out a large chunk of the Bible. And in that same passage when Jesus said love your enemy, Jesus also wiped out a huge portion of the Old Testament. All that killing they thought was the will of God was not the will of God.
Or consider the time Jesus came across a man born blind. The Bible of Jesus’ day taught that if bad things happen to you it could be because of your sin or the sins of your parents, but Jesus said the man was not born blind because of his sin or his parents’ sin and with that statement Jesus wiped out, wiped out a large chunk of the Bible.
And let’s not forget Peter. Ever since Peter was a little boy he had been taught the book of Leviticus, taught what was clean and unclean. And then one day as an adult, he had a vision, a vision in which he was instructed the Bible he had read was wrong about what was unclean. Well, Peter was dumbfounded. He said, “No way Jose. The Bible wrong? So the hard to accept vision came to him a second and a third time to get through his thick skull, his cemented perspective. Yes, Leviticus is wrong, Peter. What God has made clean, you must not, you must not call unclean.
My experience has been like that of Peter. I used to think homosexuality was wrong because the Bible said it was wrong. But I had a vision. Yes, I had a vision, a vision that came to me repeatedly. Because of some wonderful Christians who just happen to be gay and lesbian I learned homosexuality is not a sin.
I told you I was going to throw in a little prophetic twist at the end. Here it is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if gays and lesbians and bi-sexual and transgendered individuals turn out to be the salvation of the modern Church? I believe, as Clarence Jordan put it, that the modern church has gone awhoring. What if, what if homosexual Christians and others end up being the ones who rescue the modern church from its impotence, its infidelity, its arrogance, its dishonesty, its irrelevance, its neglect of the marginalized, its addiction to clergy, its obsession with power and bad money and property, its adoption of the business model, its focus on the trivial. What if, what if homosexual Christians turn out to be the ones who get the church to talk less about the faith and to spend more time actually doing something Jesus did? What if gays and lesbians teach the Church how to love and accept and affirm?
This much I know. It was not very much fun being ostracized, watching the Duke/Carolina game downstairs on a small television all by myself. I suffered only a little, only for a short period. I cannot imagine the pain and suffering homosexuals experience. What I can imagine, though, is God using the pain and suffering of gay and lesbian and bisexual Christians to help the Church once again be Church.
May it be so. May it be so at Wedgewood. May it be so in many churches. Amen. And amen!
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