A Christian Foundation for Fully Affirming Those Who Are LGBTQ+

Transcript of the sermon preached by Pastor Shawn Coons on June 4, 2023

For the next two weeks, we're going to hear messages on the general theme of, "Welcomed, Included, Embraced: How We are Called to Reflect the Inclusive Love of God." And it is no coincidence that this coincides with Pride month, a very appropriate message for this month as we celebrate Pride, and everyone being able to express who they truly are. Part of this celebration for us in the church is acknowledging that we have not, as a whole, always done right by folks who are LGBTQ+. Certainly as a whole, I think for the most part things are getting better, churches are getting better. We're able to reflect the inclusive love of God much more than we have in the past.

But I think it's important for us, especially as churches, we have a number of years ago declared ourself a welcoming church, and wanted to be very intentional and very public about that. But it's important for us to know why. I mean, it may just feel right and that's great, and it's great that we do it, but often as Christians, we want to have a good, solid, biblical and theological reason for why we do what we do.

And being a welcoming church, being a welcoming person in this way is solidly Christian, is solidly biblical, and it's great to have a further understanding of why that is. So we're going to explore today the Christian foundation for inclusion of all people, including folks who are LGBTQ+. We're going to look at this, what I'm going to call and others have called the arc of inclusion that we see in the Bible, and then we see beyond the Bible in Christian tradition.

And we're doing so through a story this morning from Acts 15, which Terry began just a moment ago. And it's a story of inclusion. It's a story of inclusion in the early church of the Gentiles, Gentiles being those who were non-Jewish.

And it is good for us as Christians to be reminded that the Bible, even the New Testament, is a very Jewish book in some ways. It is the story of Jewish people, almost more than it is the story of Christians. Jesus was a Jew. Jesus' followers were Jewish. The people, largely, that Jesus came and preached with and did ministry with were Jewish. The early church in Acts was Jewish. The early church leaders were Jewish.

So the first reading that Terry did is talking about Paul and Barnabas, and they're doing good work. Paul was a solid Jew. His title he gives himself was a Jew among Jews, a Pharisee among Pharisees, which is a Jewish leader. And Paul and Barnabas are doing good work spreading the gospel, but they're also trying to spread the gospel to Gentiles. And Gentiles were certainly welcome into the church from early on.

But at this point in the history of the Book of Acts, it's thought that, okay, yes, Gentiles can be followers of Jesus, but they're going to have to follow Jewish law. They're essentially going to have to be Jewish as well. Because many people saw Christianity at that point, not as a separate religion, but just as a kind of a sub-sect of Judaism. And Paul and Barnabas are trying to seek to be as welcoming, to be as inclusive as possible. And so they're pushing back against some of these rules and these laws that are trying to be put on these folks who are not Jewish.

And so they come back to Jerusalem after doing some of their work. After wonderful results, they come back and they start to meet with some of the Jewish leaders or the Christian leaders at that point, who many of them were the apostles of Jesus. And that's where we're going to pick up in Acts chapter 15, verse 12.

They've met, they've talked, and now we're getting to the result of what's going to happen.

The whole assembly kept silence and listened to Barnabas and Paul. They told of all the signs and the wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, "My brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first looked favorably on the Gentiles, to take from among them a people for his name. And this agrees with the words of the prophets, as it is written, 'After this, I will return and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen from its ruins. I will rebuild it, and I will set it up, so that all other peoples may seek the Lord. Even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called.' Thus says the Lord who's been making these things known for long ago.

"Therefore I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God. Well, we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols, from fornication, from whatever has been strangled, and from blood, for in every city, for generations past, Moses has had those who proclaim him, for he has been read aloud for every Sabbath in the synagogues," says the word of the Lord.

So this passage begins with Barnabas, with Paul kind of making their case, and they're basically saying, "Look at what God is already doing. Look at all the good works that we have done. And it's not through our own efforts, it's through God's effort among the Gentiles." And James, who is representing the leadership here of the early church, announces a compromised deal, if you will, between what some were wanting and what others are wanting. There's kind of this middle ground they arrive at.

They say, "Okay, no, they don't have to follow all the Jewish laws. They don't have to be circumcised. We are going to ask that everybody follow these particular four laws." And then that's where they talk about things polluted by idols, the fornication, not partaking of anything strangled or of blood. Out of all the Jewish laws to lift up, those seem kind of like an odd four to lift up.

But a lot of this has to do with the situation that's going on in Israel and surrounding areas at this point. Under the Roman Empire, there's a lot of temple worship, a lot of Greco-Roman temple worship. And these particular practices were things that were going on within those temples. And so they're kind of saying, "Okay, all these kind of worshiping other gods in various ways that are all around you, that you walk down the street and you see them, you may be tempted by them. Don't do those. Keep your public witness up, as separate from that."

So it seems odd to us today, but at that point it was a daily occurrence. They saw it all around them, and just basically said, "Stick on your course, stay with God, not with these other gods."

So we see once again this kind of compromise here, and it's kind of broadening the circle of the church, welcoming more people in. And we're going to paraphrase Martin Luther King here. The arc of God's story bends toward inclusion. The arc bends toward inclusion. But here's the thing, this is not the beginning of inclusion in God's story, and it's not the end of inclusion in God's story.

There's this ever-expanding embrace that we see from God. So let's go back to the beginning. In the beginning, the very beginning of Genesis, actually Genesis chapter two, where the biblical story starts, let's say small, with two people, with Adam and Eve. And if you read the narrative of Genesis for that time, we are following just Adam and Eve for a while, and then Adam and Eve's family, and then their descendants. And so God starts real small with just a handful of people, but then the story expands, and there's more generations of people. And we hear the story of God beginning to deal, not just with one family but with multiple families, in this one small area of the world.

But eventually we go through Noah, and we have a reset, and then we get to what the heart of Genesis is, it's Abraham, Abraham and Sarah and their family. And for a while, for many chapters, we get the story of Abraham and Sarah, their sons, and it's just this one family, although it's a big family, we get several generations of it. And there's a dozen sons at one point, but then Genesis ends with this family, with one particular son of this family, Joseph.

And if you remember the story of Joseph, the end of story of Joseph, he is in Egypt, and he's reunited with his family in Egypt. And that's where Genesis ends. And where Exodus picks up is, now we are with, several generations later, we are with the Hebrew people, all the descendants of this one family, and they number thousands.

And these are the slaves who are in Egypt. The story has just gotten bigger. We're not just with one family anymore, but a people, the Hebrew people. Moses leads them out of Egypt, they wander for a while, and then we get to Israel and they start to become a nation. Although they're kind of a quasi nation. They're 12 tribes now, descended from the 12 sons of Jacob, but eventually they come to be a nation, a nation of people. Now, God's embrace has expanded beyond just this one family, beyond just this groups of family, into this nation of people.

And eventually we even go beyond the nation of Israel. We're still kind of in the Jewish family here, but there's Jews, not just in Israel. There's Jews all over. There's this Jewish diaspora that is part of God's story.

And then we get to Jesus. And Jesus goes beyond just the good Jewish people, and he starts to include the bad Jews as well. There's tax collectors in there, there's prostitutes, there's sinners. And then he even goes beyond that. And so there's a few Samaritans that are thrown in there as well, lepers, and people who were kind of traditionally seen as outside the good Jewish circle. That arc of inclusion keeps expanding.

And that's when we get to our scripture for today, where, okay, yes, we've expanded it to pretty much still mostly include the Jews and those Gentiles who are willing to become Jews as well. And then the doors are blown wide open, with this compromise that we get from James.

So we see this arc of inclusion continually surprising people. All along there were those, and good Jews and good folks in God's eyes who said, "We know where the boundaries are, we know who is in and who is out." And then God says, "You thought you knew." And that circle widens, and that's where we are again today.

We can continue to see this throughout the history of the Christian Church, with the one time understanding of slavery. Slavery seems to be okay in the Bible. It was okay for the majority of the Christian world, for thousands of years. We see this with the inclusion of women in ministry, at least in our tradition, and we see this with inclusion of folks who are LGBTQ+.

But then we have to go back and say, "Well, doesn't Paul write about homosexuality? Doesn't Paul say homosexuality is wrong? Not according to God's plan? And looking at those verses would be several more sermons, but the short answer is, "Different time, different contexts." Paul and the biblical writers knew nothing about what we know today, as relationships among people who are gay, among people who are straight, that there are gay relationships that are loving, that are monogamous, that are respectful.

That was not seen back in Paul's day, or at least that's not what Paul was writing about. Paul was writing about temple practices. Paul was writing about power differences. Paul was writing about temple prostitution. Very specific examples that have nothing to do with whether it's same gender or not. It just has to do with the power dynamics, with the abuse that may be going on, about promiscuity. The principles Paul was addressing were monogamy, was love, was respect, healthy loving relationships. And we know today that any two people can form these healthy loving relationships. It doesn't matter what their gender are.

So in all these cases of expanding this arc of inclusivity, including Acts 15, there are changes that we make in who we see as in and who as out, but the principles behind them don't change. And that's what we need to rest on.

The principles don't change. Love, respect, justice, building each other up, healthy relationships. For many people, and we know in society our perspectives have changed, just as a society, somewhat dramatically over the last five to 15 years, let's say. For many of those people, it happened when someone they knew came out to them. Someone they knew, someone they loved, and it became personal. And for many Christians, it really was driven home when they met someone, when they knew someone, and they saw how their identity played out with their faith.

I remember reading a book, it's called God's Yes to Homosexuality, or I think it's The Bible's Yes to Homosexuality, and I can't think of the name of the author, but he describes in it how he was certain that the Bible did not approve of homosexuality. But then he knew gay Christians, and he saw what denying their identity did to them. He saw that when they tried to follow the Bible as he understood it, they were miserable, they were depressed, they were suicidal. He saw when they embraced who they were and lived, they became better people. They became better Christians. They were able to do more with their lives and honor God more.

Peter in Acts chapter 15, in a portion we skipped, said, "God, who knows the heart, showed that they, the Gentiles, were accepted by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as the Holy Spirit was given to us." Peter looked at what was going on in the life of the Gentiles, and he said, "I see God at work there, and if God is at work there, how can I put limits on that? How can I say God is at work in your life, but the Bible doesn't say it is, so God really can't be at work in your life."

And that's what happened with a lot of folks, with people they knew who were gay. They saw God at work in their lives as they embraced all of who they are. And they said, "If God is doing all these great things in their life, how can God not approve of who they are?"

If good things are happening and those good things are from God, then who are we to get in the way of that? I mean, Jesus even says that, says, "We will be known by our fruits, by the fruits we produce."

Paul and Peter are showing the good fruit that is growing in the Gentiles. They're essentially saying, "God has already accepted the Gentiles, whether the church has or not. God has already included them." And the question is, will the church catch up and include those who God has already included? And that is the question that many churches are facing, many churches have faced. God has already included those who are LGBTQ+. When is the church going to catch up to God?

We'll be known by our fruits, by the good and the love we produce and share. Often the church has produced spoiled fruit in this area. We need to change that. We have a lot of ground to cover as a whole, before we catch up to God's loving and inclusive embrace.

I want to close with a song we'll watch in just a moment. It's from Spencer LaJoye who learned, unfortunately, the ground that the church has to cover. They're a musician who grew up as a closeted Queer student at a conservative Christian college. Spencer wrote a song called A Plowshare Prayer, using the imagery of swords to plowshares from the Book of Isaiah, turning weapons into instruments of creation. The premise of Spencer's song is simple. What would a prayer sound like, if it was used as a balm rather than a weapon, a plowshare instead of a sword? They had been on the receiving end of prayers that had been used as weapons, and so they poured their heart into this song about God's loving and inclusive welcome. I think it is the perfect way for us to be challenged, the perfect way for us to be moved to widen our embrace and our hearts as well.