In preparation for today’s service, I gather together all the materials I can find on the subject of homosexuality. I gather official denominational studies. I collect a stack of books from varieties of perspectives. I surf the web. I spend several days reading, making notes, preparing an argument.

Then about Tuesday, I stop and ask myself a question. What is my goal – what is my goal, in addressing this question from the pulpit?

As your pastor, I know very well that homosexuality is a tender subject among us. It is an issue on which we have diverse opinions and very complex feelings. I also know that this is a real question among us; it is not just a theoretical one.

There are parents sitting here this morning who are wondering why their child is gay, if it means they’ve done something wrong, if anyone else has ever struggled with this. There are gay and lesbian Christians who are active members of the church, but who live in the closet because they don’t want to lose their jobs, their homes, or your friendship. There are those of our community who, with courage, claim their identity and hope that my words will be graceful, not hurtful.

Each of us has our own background, confusion, and experience with this issue. It is time we talked about it.

My goal this morning is to open the conversation. And what is the best way to begin a conversation? It’s not by presenting an argument. That’s how you begin a debate, not a conversation.

The best way to begin a conversation, in which you want others to feel free to speak their mind, so that no perspective is silenced, is simply to speak from your heart, out of your own experience.

So let me set aside my pile of books and share with you at least a part of my own journey.

One day in early spring, Jim wants to visit with me. Generally a very gregarious, energetic man, he is deflated, quiet. We have known each other for 5 years, sharing in mission teams, church leadership, and fishing. I consider him a friend. He asks, “What do you say after someone you love says, “I’m gay”?

He has received a letter from his youngest son, Andrew. Andrew, an attorney in his early thirties, has been living in Washington, D.C. for 8 years following his graduation from law school at Georgetown University. Andy writes to tell his father that he is living in a partnered relationship with another man. After wrestling with his identity for more than a decade, he is now determined to muster the courage to publicly share what he has privately known to be true for years.

Andy wants to come home for Father’s Day. He suspects that his mother and father will struggle with his news, with their faith, and with the relationship between parent and child. He writes, “Dad, may I come home?”

Jim has no framework out of which to even ask his questions, let alone wrestle with them. This is his beloved son! How can this be? This is his beloved son! How can this be?

Together, we begin a journey of exploration.

Jim begins in denial. He knows very little about homosexuality. After all, what is there to know? God created people male and female for the purpose of reproducing the human race and provided marriage as the proper setting for it. Sexual activity between people of the same sex is obviously a distortion of nature prohibited by both scripture and common sense. What more does one need to know than that?

And yet, while he knows very little about homosexuality, he knows a great deal about Andy. A bright child. An honor student. A marathon runner. An civic leader. A devout Christian. In other words, he is as ideal a child as parents could hope for in a world where nobody is perfect. Jim reflects, “If he is gay, he must just be going through a phase of some kind, and when the right girl comes along he will resolve it. In the meantime, let’s all keep our heads and not panic!”

When Jim can no longer deny it, he seeks to explain it. How had his son become gay? What had caused it? At first, only two options seem possible. Either Andy has chosen a style of life in contradiction to nature and the will of God, or his parents had unknowingly contributed to a distorted development of his sexuality. Since it does not seem likely that such a highly ethical boy has suddenly chosen a deviant way of being, the fault must be in Jim and Mary’s inadequacy as parents. “Janet, am I a weak father? Was I absent too much?”

Even in this confession, Jim can not find solace in blame-casting. This is where his education begins. He learns that there are several theories on the causes of homosexuality, that they stand in conflict with each other and that none of them can be sufficiently established to produce a consensus, and that the only certain truth at this point in time is that nobody really knows. The fact is that across time, nations, classes, races, and cultures, a consistent percentage of people in all populations are homosexual and the fault cannot be laid at anyone’s feet. We learn that nobody knows what causes heterosexuality, either.

“Janet, what does the Bible actually say? I know that Jesus spends his whole life going to the poor, the marginalized, people who are called unclean by their society. He treats them with compassion. His harshest words are for the Pharisees who believe that they are righteous in God’s eyes, that others are not, and that God’s opinions are identical to their own.”

Jim and Mary and I begin to study. We learn that the word, homosexual, does not appear anywhere in the Bible. That word is not invented in any language, until the 1890s, when for the first time the awareness develops that there are people with a constitutional orientation toward their own sex.

In the whole Bible, there are only seven brief passages that deal with homosexual behavior. The first is the story of Sodom and Gomorra. The attempted gang rape in Sodom has nothing to say about whether or not genuine love expressed between consenting adults of the same gender is legitimate.

Neither does the passage in Deuteronomy 23, which refers to Canaanite fertility rites that have infiltrated Jewish worship. Passages in I Corinthians and I Timothy refer to male prostitution.

Two often quoted passages prohibiting male homosexual behavior are found in the book of Leviticus. Leviticus also stipulates that any man who touches a woman during her cycle is to be stoned to death, that adulterers are to be executed, that interracial marriage is sinful, that two types of cloth are not to be worn together, and certain foods must never be eaten.

Jim and I reflect that few Christians, no matter how fundamental, believe that Christians are bound to obey all the Levitical laws. Instead we are driven to ask deeper questions about how to rightly interpret scripture, how to separate the Word of God from cultural prejudices, that is, how to separate the message from the envelope in which it comes.

The final biblical text is found in Paul’s letter to the Romans, in which he unequivocally condemns homosexual behavior. The background for his understanding is the common Roman practice of older men exploiting boys, which he is right to condemn.

Jim and I struggle with this passage. If Paul knows about and condemns all forms of this behavior, even the most loving, what then?

Paul also tells women not to teach, not to cut their hair, not to speak in church. Do we follow his teaching?

He tells slaves to obey their masters, not once, but five times. Are we prepared to say today, as Southern slave owners argue 150 years ago, that slavery is God’s will?

Jim remains conflicted about this passage.

I find a less tentative place to stand when I say that I want to live as an admirer of Paul, but a disciple of Jesus Christ. Paul himself says that we should not follow him, but Christ alone.

So I come back, again and again to the life and teaching of Jesus as the center of my faith. In that light all other biblical teaching must be critiqued. There are seven passages about homosexual behavior in the Bible, all of which are debatable as to their meaning for us today. There are hundreds of references in the Bible that call us, as Jesus commands, to love our neighbor, to work for peace among all people, and to leave judgment to God.

Since Jim can neither deny nor explain it, he plans to write a letter to Andy exploring the ways he might try to fix it. While Jim is praying about divine intervention and researching psychological therapies, Mary has a long telephone conversation with Andy. Andy, as a devout Christian who knows from early childhood that something was very different about him and who suspects from adolescence that his difference was something unacceptable to God, devotes himself to prayer and trust in the grace and power of God. His pastors say that God loves all people unconditionally and can change people who come with a broken and contrite heart. So for years, night after night, he takes his broken and contrite heart to the throne of grace, praying for God to change him. But God does not change him. Does this mean that he is so defective that even a gracious God can not love him? What else is a teenage mind to conclude?

Jim makes appointments with psychologists, seeking a therapeutic answer. He discovers that most psychiatrists and psychologists have long since come to the conclusion that homosexuality is not an illness and that no known system of treatment can change it. Behavior can be changed by conditioning people to be celibate or even to function heterosexually. But the inner affectional orientation of homosexuals does not change. The best that therapy can do is help gay and lesbian persons accept the reality of their being before shame and pain drive them to drink or drugs or worse.

When you can’t deny it, explain it, or fix it, the only thing left is to mourn it. Jim says that both these choices involve a death. On the one hand, he can choose to reject his son. “If that’s the way you are, you are no son of mine!” Jim can not embrace this option because we can not believe that the Andy we know is any sense a broken person!

The other choice is to suffer the death of misunderstanding, ignorance, and attitude. Then Jim and Mary mourn the loss of a nice and tidy view of the world in which everything fits neatly into boxes of black or white, right or wrong, true or false. And, as a Christian, they mourn the loss of security provided by a few biblical passages that can tell you which is which so you don’t have to take any responsibility for making a judgment.

The final death for these parents is to recognize that their pain is secondary to their child’s suffering and to take up their role as supporters of the life they brought into the world. When that happens for Jim and Mary, the question becomes, “How is Andy handling this in terms of his own life, faith, health, and happiness? It is Andy’s problem, not ours. He doesn’t need to increase his struggle by making the problem our own and then asking him to resolve it for us.”

Jim remembers the day of acceptance. He finds the Serenity Prayer. Lord, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed; the courage to change what can be changed; and the wisdom to know the difference.

For Jim, this means the acceptance of something in the being of his son that neither he, nor Andy, has chosen…something that neither he, nor Andy, can change.

He tells me that he is celebrating the amazing gift of Andy in his life. He is making a commitment to walk by faith and run the risk. He tells me that he would rather err on the side of helping hurting people than on the side of hurting helpless people.

Jim shares the letter he sends to Andy in anticipation of the Father’s Day visit.

Dear Andy:

There is a story in the gospel of Luke about a father and his son. It ends this way:

While the son was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. He said, “Bring out a robe – the best one – and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found! And they began to celebrate.

See you soon.

Love, Dad.

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RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Donald E. Messer and Sally B. Geis, eds. Caught in the Crossfire: Helping Christians Debate Homosexuality. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994.

Walter Wink, ed. Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999.

www.religioustolerance.org
Listing of internet sites on homosexuality and the Bible from different theological perspectives.

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BIBLICAL REFERENCES TO HOMOSEXUALITY

Genesis 19:1-11 in the context of God’s promise to Abraham (Genesis 18-19) and the parallel story in Judges 19: 22-30.

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 in the context of other laws in Leviticus 18-20.

Deuteronomy 23: 17-18.

Romans 1: 26-27 in the context of the letter’s introduction (Romans 1-3).

I Corinthians 6: 9-11 in the context of Paul’s instructions (I Corinthians 5-6).

I Timothy 1: 8-11 in the context of establishing the church as a bulwark of truth and practice.

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¹Paul Wennes Egertson. One Family’s Story from Homosexuality and Christian Faith. I am grateful for the development framework outlined in this story of a father’s journey. It gave me some helpful categories in which to frame my sermon and Jim’s letter to his son.