Category: theology

learning curve

wonderfulexchange26 Comments

This Saturday, there is an open invitation to the congregation(s) to come to the rectory to talk about sexuality and the church.  This comes after discussions that whirled around Lambeth, and the realisation that far more people were wanting to talk about the church’s understanding of homosexuality than I had anticipated.

We’ve spoken before about ‘the current tensions in the Anglican Communion’ (I am so tired of that phrase), but it was focused on church structures rather than understandings of sexuality.  So, today, I am trying to plan the workshop and develop a few small handouts.

It’s hard, isn’t it?

I sat down to map out the areas we might need to touch on, and quickly wrote down (in no particular order):

  1. understandings of homosexuality
  2. misunderstandings
  3. is gender constructed?
  4. biblical criticism:  how do we interpret?
  5. bible as rule book or record of relationship?
  6. is revelation ongoing?  / role of Spirit
  7. how do we determine what is culturally bound?
  8. theologies of the body
  9. sex, faithfulness, marriage
  10. celibacy
  11. sexuality, identity, relationships
  12. role of liberation theology

The goal, of course, is that the people who come do most of the talking/ thinking, and I just help to build scaffolding.  And all this has to happen in about 90 minutes.

Preparing this sends me back to questions I have asked before:  is it possible to ‘start’ with homosexuality or do you need to go right back through the early discussions on gender and liberation?

If there were one thing you would hope everyone would understand by the end of such a conversation, what would it be?

how we learn

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David asked, ‘Is there still anyone left of the house of Saul to whom I may show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?’ (2 Sam 9)

I thought I knew this story of David and Johnathon and Saul, but the (C of E) daily prayer lectionary has caught me off guard again. You know the broad brush strokes: At first we have Saul, loved by God, and chosen to be King. Then David comes along, and is loved by both Saul and Saul’s son’s Johnathon. But as David and Jonathon grow up and Saul grows old, Saul gets suspicious. God’s favour rests on David, and God (terribly) abandons Saul. Saul’s jealousy leads to madness, and he ends up waging war against young David whom he loved. But David and Johnathon’s love proves different: it binds them through war and betrayal, and ultimately beyond death. So, todays’ passage, ‘is there anyone left to whom I can show kindness for Jonathon’s sake?’ evokes both pain and love instantly.

But it’s what happens next that is interesting. There is one person left to whom David can show love: Jonathon’s son Mephibosheth, who is crippled. David takes the boy, who is lame in both feet, and restores all of Saul’s land and wealth to him. David takes on his servants, and tells them to till the land for Mephibosheth’s sake, so there will always be food for him — and for the servants. And then he makes Mephibosheth a part of his household so that Mephibosheth for ever eats at David’s table and is raised as his son. Because David loved Johnathon he learned to welcome his son.

So what? you say. David took on Jonathon’s son. I grant, it’s not earth shattering put like that. But remember: Mephibosheth was crippled; lame in both his feet. And just chapters before, we read this:

David… said on that day, ‘Whoever wishes to strike down the Jebusites, let him get up the water shaft to attack the lame and the blind, those whom David hates.’

So, David’s love for Johnathon leads him not only to take on Jonathon’s son, but to change his mind: the crippled boy becomes part of his family. One whom he loves. The lame and the blind sit down together to eat.

And no doubt some said it was an abomination: The crippled cannot be given land and status. They cannot be loved and treated as equals. You can see the sign of their sins in the flesh. Everyone knows they are sick and need to be cured. And unless they are cured, they are defective, defiled. Accursed.

Well, David had thought so too, till love taught him better.

You know where I’m going with this, don’t you?

There have been lots of conversations over the past few weeks about how Christians should understand homosexuality. Prejudices, assumptions and bible verses mix, for good and for ill. For salvation and destruction.

I do believe that we can take scripture seriously and affirm and bless committed, faithful relationships between people of the same gender. And we could sit down and read scripture together so that I could show you why I think that.

But I wonder if any of us really change our minds first by looking at scripture. Or does it always happen as it did for David, when we find that we love someone who shatters our expectations and opens our eyes to something new?

holy, holy, holy

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If you have not yet read Bishop Brian’s recent lecture on the Anglican Communion, it is well worth doing so. Plan time for it. It’s not one for multi-tasking.

It is one of the most sensible and interesting perspectives I’ve come across recently, and I want to recommend it rather than take issue with it. So think of what follows as a digressive thought, rather than a challenge per se. Oh, and although this may look like an essay, please think of it as ‘early draft’.

Early on in the lecture +Brian offers a summary of the clusters of values which can be seen to be operative in the current debates of the church. The first approach he describes as a ‘debate for the extension of the claims of natural justice’: an approach which he says characterizes many liberals in the West. The second approach he describes as being ‘concerned with the development of holiness, in relation to which a bibilically grounded sexual ethic is of vital importance.’ He says this approach prevails among many evangelicals in the West.

I’d like to extend that category.

For me — who might in many ways be classed with the first group, the ‘question’ of a Christian understanding of homosexuality is very much a question of how the church can help people move towards holiness. And to that end, a bibilically grounded sexual ethic is indeed vitally important, though perhaps not as clear cut as some of the ‘evangelical West’ +Brian referred to may claim.

Holiness is a word that drives to the heart of the sacred. It can only be defined or described in relation to the being of God. We encounter holiness as we encounter God: Moses stands on ground made holy by the presence of God; God’s people come to know him as the Holy One of Israel; and as they learn what it means to live in relation to this God, they learn to hear God say ‘You shall be holy for I the LORD your God am holy’ (Lev 19, etc). In that understanding of the law, the holiness tradition begins: be holy for I am holy. It is an early intuition that in time leads Israel to understand that they are made in the image of God, and an early experience of the meeting point of human and divine life that finds its fulfillment of Christ.

So, we cannot let Holiness be claimed as the preserve of any one part of the church. It is part of our foundation.

If holiness begins and ends with God, then it is only ever ours provisionally. It is ours in reflection, maybe. Ours insofar as we are allowed to share in the Divine Life. But holiness itself is defined by God’s being. It is what God is in Godself. It is therefore inherently elusive; both beyond our grasp, and eternally ‘other’.

Beyond our grasp, but not necessarily beyond our reach. Holiness is something God allows us to share and partake in. But we need to be wary of thinking we can hold it tight.

If Holiness begins with who and what God is, then our human, responsive holiness must surely also be grounded in who and what we are. To whatever extent we share in holiness, we must relate to holiness from the truth of our being. Which is easier said than done.

Our self-knowledge is never perfect. It is often elusive. And it should never be static. But we believe that in Christ, we can come to know ourselves better, more truly, as the beloved of God. So holiness begins with the ‘most true’ things we can say about ourselves, and the ‘most true’ things that can be said about us. Holiness is a learning to live out of that place, as we respond to God. It is therefore more a process and an approach to being than it is a ‘state of being’ which we have achieved. It is a way of directing our longing always towards God, always towards the good, always towards our best understanding of what we are called to be.

Living in holiness is about finding a meeting point between the truth of who we are and the truth of God. It is about letting ourselves be made in the likeness of Christ.

OK, so what has that to do with current debates on sexuality? Continue reading “holy, holy, holy” →

a moment’s hesitation

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If you missed Gene Robinson’s article in the The Times on what it means for him to be making vows in his relationship with his partner Mark, it is well worth reading.

It begins with a comment he lived to regret about always wanting to be a June bride. He said it in an unguarded moment after a long and serious discussion. But of course, his opponents took it and ran. He offers the more measured words he should have used, and then says this:

The worst part is that it’s reminiscent of the years and years that I had to self-censor everything I said, so as not to give away the fact that I was gay. Gay and lesbian people learn at an early age to filter every single word before uttering it, straining out anything that might indicate who we really are on the inside. I know from my own experience, and from that of countless others, that this is an exercise in self-alienation. In a nanosecond we listen in our heads to what we’re about to say and, before speaking, edit out anything that might indicate to the listener that we’re gay. We get really, really good at it, until it becomes second nature. But it takes a toll on our souls.

This may not sound like oppression – it’s not the same as being thrown into prison or burnt at the stake – but it’s one of the silent, painful results of oppression. The result of any oppression is living in fear – fear of discovery, rejection and retribution. It’s what most gay and lesbian people live with every day, all over the world.

That ‘nanosecond’ of self-editing is deadly. For some, it is a tendency of personality. There is an over-activeness of mind, combined with an underlying self-doubt that means there is always a gap between thought, feeling and action that means spontaneity is an elusive desire. For others, it comes about through circumstance: an experience of rejection or abuse is internalized so that the person comes to believe they are not acceptable as they are and learns to slip on a mask before each word and action so that no one will see who they are. There are other ways and other reasons too.

Beneath it is the terrible lie that we are not good enough, not acceptable; neither lovable nor loved.

When we face (or try to face) the issue of inclusion of LGBT people in the church, it is in part a justice issue: letting the marginalized speak, rejecting prejudice based on sexual orientation, refusing the hypocrisy of ‘don’t ask don’t tell’. But it is also about recognizing what the church needs to learn from this community — about seeing Christ there.

Gene Robinson points to something that is widely shared in the gay community: a learned self-censorship and pretense that is a defence against pain and rejection. But that is not just a gay story. The gay community focuses it for us: gives us words for something that is a part of our common humanity. And those who have come through it, come ‘out’, can therefore show us the way to redemption and to healing. They have learned a costly self-acceptance that the whole church needs.

There is no difference here; just the diversity of creation and the shared grace of God.