By Pastor Peter Marty
January 2004
I don’t know why the sexual orientation of some other people does not bother me the way it does some of my best friends. I really don’t know why. Maybe it is that all human sexuality strikes me as a mysterious gift of God — powerful, wonderful, and something none of us will ever completely decipher. Because I lack the words and the way to describe adequately all the facets of my own sexuality, it’s hard for me to get too excited about trying to analyze someone else’s sexuality. If my first and most dominant assessment of every person I encountered involved some preoccupation with their sexuality, I’d be a troubled individual. Just think of all the talents, energies, gifts, loves, insights, generosities, and hopes anchored in their souls that I’d miss!
Besides, every time I start worrying too much about what other people say, do, or believe that might be “wrong,” I begin to discover that there is even more to take care of in myself. It’s the old “speck and log” syndrome. Jesus pointed out that we are champions at noticing a piece of sawdust in someone else’s eye while squinting through a giant timber in our own eye. It was a caution against delighting in the deliciousness of other peoples’ sin and missing our own.
Had Jesus spent so much as even a sentence on homosexuality, I might tune in to the whole matter more keenly. But there is nothing even close to a mention. If the Ten Commandments are God’s best work for spelling out what impedes right living, homosexuality is conspicuously absent from that list. Sometimes it’s hard to get God to respect our boundaries and take an interest in the things that concern or bother us. When a person disturbs or offends me, my greatest problem is often not the offense; it is the troubling notion that that person belongs to God just as surely as I do. In such instances, I’m not so worried about God loving me less. It is the prospect of God loving that other person I can’t stand, just as much as God might love me. That’s the kicker.
The most outstanding feature of God’s grace is its indiscriminate character. I’m thoroughly convinced of this, even if I cannot always appreciate it. All of the factors that determine how God might show favor rest solely on God’s wishes. Our capacity to discriminate, establish devilish screening devices, and discern unpalatable idiosyncrasies in other people cannot hold back God’s grace. Jesus refused to respect the boundaries people set up between respectable and disreputable people, between right-thinking and wrong-thinking people. In the end, it was utterances like his “prostitutes and tax-collectors entering the kingdom before the rest of us” that — literally — hung him.
One of the particular joys of serving St. Paul Lutheran Church is that our congregation embraces this indiscriminate grace. We’re not always sure what to do with it, or how to delight in it. But we do our best. The fact that both gay and straight persons (to use the common cultural terms) can find a home at St. Paul is one of the best testimonies we give to modeling Christ’s love for the world. A healthy, Christ-centered church can afford to be of more than one mind (two? three? three thousand?) if it is of one heart. That’s what is so wonderful about having some of those “best friends” I mentioned in my opening sentence as members of the same church I attend.
Living with diversity is a mark of discipleship. It’s the way Jesus planned it. It’s a mark of love. Admittedly, there are some Christians who will only join a church where everyone else agrees with them. But living in a community with differences is the better way. At St. Paul, we get to model love. And the greater the love, the greater the respect for diversity. That is true in your family, in your community, and in this your dear church.
"Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving." ~Frederick Buechner, author