Tag Archives: marriage amendment

Love Will Win

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President Obama’s support for gay marriage made headlines yesterday. In Minnesota the issue will come before the voters in November: Should the Minnesota State Constitution be amended to define “marriage” as between a man and a woman? One of my colleagues weighed in on the question from the pulpit of the Oak Grove Presbyterian Church. I post it here because it says more clearly than I what I believe.

“Standing on the Side of Love”
Oak Grove Presbyterian Church
Galatians 3:26-28
Bill Chadwick
Sunday,April 29, 2012

Today I invite us to think together about the amendment that is before the voters of Minnesota this fall that would place into the state constitution the requirement that marriage is reserved for one man and one woman.

I have a pastor friend, now retired, who loved to rile people up.  If I might play amateur psychologist, my theory is that as the child of an alcoholic he was uncomfortable when things were calm.  Well, my parents were teetotalers.  As am I.  I love calm.  I hate conflict.  I would much rather not talk about the amendment.  I do so only because of the ordination vows I took almost 35 years ago.  I am preaching today about the Marriage Amendment only because I am attempting to follow faithfully my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  I might be mistaken.  I once again remind you, that in the Presbyterian way of doing things, “Just because the preacher says it, doesn’t mean you have to buy it.”

I believe that to be faithful the Church always needs to take a stand, just like it did against slavery, just like it did in favor of human rights for women, for people of color.  The Church ALWAYS needs to take a stand on behalf of human rights for all of God’s children.  And especially so when it comes to fair treatment of LGBT folk, since the church has consistently led the way in their persecution.

When my grandchildren ask, “What did you do when the issue of human rights for gay people was still being debated?” I don’t want to have to say to them, “Well, as you know, Grandpa doesn’t like conflict, and I didn’t want to offend people, and I was afraid it might affect contributions, so I kept my mouth shut.”  I especially don’t want to say that if the questioning grandchild happened to have been born gay.

There is so much to say that I couldn’t do it in one sermon, so I put a bunch of stuff in the bulletin handout.  What I would like to do primarily in the sermon is to tell stories, most of them personal.

My story.  It has been a long journey for me to get to where I am today.  The Presbyterian Church was just starting to talk about the ordination of gay people when I graduated from seminary 35 years ago.  The following year was the first vote at General Assembly, when the proposal was roundly defeated.  In the lead-up to that vote I preached a sermon using Acts 10 and 11 as my basis.  That is the story of Peter praying at midday on the rooftop in the city of Joppa.  He has a vision in which a sheet comes down from heaven laden with all kinds of animals, clean and unclean (according to Jewish dietary laws), and Peter hears a voice saying, “Rise, Peter, kill and eat.” And Peter protests, “Surely not, Lord.  Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.”  The voice spoke from heaven a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”  This happened three times.  Immediately following, he encounters Cornelius, a Roman centurion who has had his own vision.  Long story short, Peter realizes what the vision was trying to tell him:  It’s time to change his mind!  The gospel is not just for Jews, God’s love is for uncircumcised Gentiles as well.  That is absolutely mind-blowing for Peter!  It’s against the scriptures.  It’s against tradition.  But God was doing a new thing and commanding Peter to get on board.

So the gist of my 1978 sermon was this:  I am still not quite ready to ordain homosexual individuals, but I am open to the possibility that the Spirit might someday change my mind.

Over the next few years I continued reading the latest Biblical scholarship and scientific research.  I met and became friends with several very committed Christian people who happened to be gay.  They had undergone extensive therapy and prayer for years and still couldn’t change who they were.  I finally came to the conclusion that people simply are born who they are; gay people clearly have God-given gifts for ministry and that we should welcome all God’s children to use their gifts in ministry in ordained positions.

And we should encourage people to form committed relationships.  I was happy to bless civil unions.

But marriage?…  It somehow didn’t seem right to me to call a same-sex commitment “marriage.”  Why?  Just pure emotion, tradition, inertia.

Nothing logical about it.  I am embarrassed to say that it was only a few years ago that I moved to the point of fully supporting marriage equality.

Another story.  My younger brother, John, and I were extremely close growing up.  I was so excited when he and his wife started having children.  I didn’t have any of my own yet.  I loved being an uncle.  Many of you had the joy of watching Claire and Jim grow up here at Oak Grove.  A couple of GREAT kids!  Claire grew up, fell in love with a wonderful man, and married him two years ago.  Jim grew up, but when he falls in love he will not be able to marry the one he loves.  By the time Jim was three or four years old, I was very sure that he was gay.  Jim didn’t choose to be gay.  Why shouldn’t Jim be able to share the same right to marriage as his sister does?  Jim has told me that a lot of his relatives got married at Oak Grove and it would mean a lot to him to someday be married here.

One comic has said, “Let gays marry.  Why shouldn’t they be as miserable as the rest of us?”  That may be kind of a funny line.  But I’m not miserable.  My marriage means the world to me.  On Tuesday Kris and I celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary.  My marriage is a place of safety, welcome, commitment, companionship, intimacy, trust.  That can all happen without marriage.  But our relationship is acknowledged, encouraged and celebrated by the world and by the church.  Why should Jim be excluded from that acknowledgement, encouragement and celebration because of an accident of birth?

Marriage says “We are family” in a way that no other word does.

About two months ago while flipping through the TV channels one evening I came across a presentation of the Broadway play, Memphis, which won the Tony Award for best musical in 2010.  Have any of you seen it?  I wasn’t familiar with it, but the TV program was just starting.  I was quickly captivated and I watched the entire thing.  And then a few weeks ago a touring production came to the Ordway in St. Paul and Kris and I went to it and thoroughly enjoyed it.  (Unlike most straight men I love musical theater.)  The play is set in the 1950s and is loosely based on the career of a Memphis radio disc jockey.  In the musical the lead character is called Huey Calhoun and through the course of the play Huey meets a wonderful singer named Felicia, and eventually they fall in love.   Huey asks her to marry him and she says, “Yes.   Yes, I love you with all of my heart and I would marry you, Huey, …if I could.”  She means, if it were legal.  But he is white, and she is black.  In Memphis in the 1950s it was against the law  for a white person and a black person to marry.

Doesn’t that just make you shake your head in sadness?  In amazement?  I am utterly confident that fifty years from now—or probably less, maybe half that—almost everyone will be shaking their heads about the current ban on gay marriage in the same way that almost everyone shakes their heads at the ban on interracial marriage of a half-century ago.

Even if this amendment passes, it is just a temporary bump in the road on the way to the inevitable.  According to the Gallup Poll (May, 2011) 70% of young people in America favor gay marriage.  When the loudest voices opposing gay marriage come from the Church, it’s one more nail in the coffin…of the Church.  The Church is brushed aside by the younger generation as being narrow-minded, judgmental and irrelevant.

You sometimes hear the statement, “Gay marriage is a threat to heterosexual marriage.”  How so?   Two of our very good friends, Suzanne and Diane, were legally married in Massachusetts eight years ago.  My wife, Kris, flew out to be in the wedding.  We see them socially on a regular basis.  Eight years.  Their marriage has not affected my marriage one bit.  Any more than your marriage (pointing to congregation) or your marriage affects my marriage.  Whom you choose to love does not affect whom I choose to love.

Another story.  About a woman named Ruth.  (I’m indebted to St. Paul theologian David Weiss for this insight.)  You (probably) know Ruth’s words, even if you don’t know her story: “Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.”   (Where do we so often hear these words?)  This is one of the most often quoted texts at straight marriages.  But these words were spoken by Ruth to her mother-in-law, Naomi.  These words were spoken by a woman whose people, the Moabites, were condemned in the Bible – forever.  She has no business pledging – and fulfilling – a vow of faithfulness like God’s own promised faithfulness. But while her love for Naomi was ethnically and culturally odd and her (later) marriage to Boaz (a Hebrew) was religiously dubious, thanks to her odd love and dubious marriage she became the great-grandmother of King David. Her off-limits love became a blessing. 

I could give other germane Biblical stories:  The stories of Rahab, Hosea, the parable of the Good Samaritan, several women in Jesus’ life, and others.  As Weiss notes, “The Bible is full of stories about a God who welcomes surprising people into God’s family. Stories about heroes and heroines whose praise-worthiness lies in their promised faithfulness to another person.”   (See Weiss’s book, To the Tune of a Welcoming God: Lyrical reflections on Sexuality, Spirituality and the Wideness of God’s Welcome (2008, Langdon Street Press).

If you support marriage equality, what can you do?  Outfront Minnesota is an organization working to defeat the Amendment.  The Outfront folks expect that there will be an onslaught of misleading advertising this summer financed by the Mormon Church and others.  An Outfront trainer noted, “We believe that the way forward is not to be found in loud and angry debate with the opposition.  We think this only entrenches people.  Rather, our research finds that the single most effective way to advance our position is through one to one conversations. So, our strategy over the next months is to facilitate a million conversations. And, we have scheduled numerous trainings to help people plan those conversations, and feel comfortable having them.”  You can find information on the Outfront website.  Please hold gentle conversations with your friends and neighbors.

Final story.  Tuesday afternoon I was toiling away in my study when our receptionist came and knocked on my door to inform me that there was a man here who has just moved from another town and he is looking for a new church and wanted to know about Oak Grove.  I’m always eager to tell folks about Oak Grove so I bounded out to greet him.  We introduced one another and then walked out into the hall where I started to give him a little tour and tell him about the church.  But he stopped just outside the office and interrupted me, “You have a flag out front,” referring to the rainbow flag.

“Yes,” I said.  And I was thinking “Hmm. This could go either way.”  (I remind you that in 2008 a man came into a church in Tennessee with anger in his heart at what he called “liberal gay-lovers” and he opened fire, wounding seven and killing two.)  This was not in the back of my mind; this was in the front of my mind.  Was this man in front of me happy that we had the flag or was he here to set me straight, so to speak?

He continued.  “Does the flag mean you welcome everyone?”

“Yes, that’s what it means.”

A big grin spread across his face and he pumped my hand again.  “That’s what I’m looking for!”  And for the next twenty minutes he told me about his spiritual journey and how he had been hurt by some of his previous church experiences. He said he was looking for a church that would preach positive messages and where everyone was welcome.  At the conclusion of our conversation he shook my hand again and said, “I’ll see you Sunday at 8:15.”  (And he was here.  And he received a very warm welcome from you Oak Grovers.)

We are in the season of Eastertide.  The essence of Easter is the message that Love wins. Why take the temporary detour of this amendment?

 Love will win.

Verse – “Literally”

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From Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 30, 2012

We seminary students went to see

our liberal Prof destroy, annihilate,

the right-wing Prof from the seminary

across town in a Church-sponsored debate.

 

Our Hero showed the Bible could not be

interpreted literally without

becoming nonsense:  John said, “Behold the

Lamb of God!”  Baaa!  (A raucous laugh rang out.)

 

The conservative said he trusted God

to help folks understand the types of tales

found in the Bible. He did not find odd

the miracles, healings, parables.

 

Our man was sarcastic, reasonable;

their guy was meek like one from the Bible…

Steve’s walk down memory lane arrived as I prepare to moderate a public meeting tomorrow night (Tuesday, May 1) that could repeat the history of religious arrogance. Pro and con positions  will be offered on the proposed “marriage amendment” to the MN State Constitution that would define marriage as between one man and one woman. Lord, help the moderator…and the speakers…and all who attend to speak boldly and clearly, but also with some meekness. This is not a laughing matter.

The Shadow of the Grand Inquisitor

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Conscience is the “still, small voice” (a whisper) that makes ancient truth appear uncouth. Conscience and dissent change the world.

It is a great sadness to learn of Archbishop Nienstadt’s reported threat of disciplinary measures against priests in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis who openly dissent from the proposed amendment to the Minnesota State Constitution that would restrict marriage to a man and a woman (“Priests told not to voice dissent,” Star Tribune, 1/18/12).

The protest of the priests and parishes under Archbishop Niensted’s jurisdiction will be mostly silent. They will simply go on about the business of being the church. Their Protestant brothers and sisters either stand by in quiet support or choose to speak out loud what they cannot.

It is customary practice – and a good one – to regard the internal matters of another church as off limits to non-members. Both as a person of significant frailty and as a Presbyterian minister, Jesus’ injunction to take the log out of my own (Presbyterian) eye before reaching for the speck in my (Roman Catholic) neighbor’s eye gives me great pause.

I choose to speak out of great love and respect fore the Roman Catholic Church, my priest colleagues and friends. I tremble that my words will be mistaken as disrespect or that they will turn the clock back to the era before the Second Vatican Council (“Vatican II”) that blew fresh air across the whole Christian world. Before Vatican II, Protestants and Catholics lived in self-imposed religious ghettos on opposites sides of the main street. Today the dividing line has been erased. People are talking, and what many of them are saying is the same…whether out loud or in the chain of whispered protest that happen when the old authoritarian patterns squelch conscientious dissent.

Jesus the Prisoner and the Cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor

We all do well to remember Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov where it is the Church, not Satan, that puts Jesus on trial in the parable of the Grand Inquisitor. The setting is the City of Seville during the 16th Century Spanish Inquisition. The night sky is lit with the fires of heretics being burned at the stake.

Christ has returned to the City of Seville – an unexpected Second Coming without notice or fanfare – to take his place once again among the poor and destitute. As at the first coming, his love for human dignity and freedom of conscience threaten the civil and religious order that has lit the fires of heretical burning martyrs – in his name and for his sake, at the command of the Cardinal of Seville.The Cardinal takes Jesus prisoner – a prisoner of the Church. He tells him that since his departure, the Church has corrected each mistake he had made in the temptations in the wilderness. He tells Jesus that he is a fool for failing to provide the people with what they most want – a hero who will take away their dread of standing alone in freedom before God.

“You thought too highly of them (i.e. ordinary people),” says the Cardinal, “for they are slaves, though rebellious by nature. Look around and judge, Jesus; fifteen centuries have passed. Look at them!   Who have you raised up to yourself?  I swear, man is weaker and baser by nature than you have believed him to be! Can he do what you did? By showing them so much respect, you failed to feel for them; you asked too much from them – you who loved them more than yourself!”

In the end the Cardinal does not execute him. With loss from his “bloodless lips” he sends the Church’s Prisoner off into the night and tells him never to return.

The Archbishop of the Diocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis is not the Cardinal of Seville. But the Grand Inquisitor’s dark shadow has fallen across the Diocese among those sworn to obedience to the Archbishop’s authority. It has also fallen over their parishes and their Protestant friends. A pall of silence has fallen over the parishioners for whom the Prisoner had “too much respect.” The conversations take place in whispers and in privacy over back fences, or in parish councils where priests and Catholic lay leaders discuss how to be faithful to their own consciences while living under the vow of obedience.

It is one thing for the Church to promulgate an official position on marriage; it is quite another for an Archbishop to tell a priest he must be silent if he dissents on a theological matter, much less on a political and possibly partisan matter.

The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) strongly re-affirmed the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers.  It made clear that the entire baptismal community constitutes the Church, and that the Church’s teaching office and hierarchy exist to serve the people, not the people the hierarchy. Vatican II lifted up doctrines that date back to the Early Church Fathers: the sensus fidelium (the sense of the faithful) and the sensus fidei (the sense of the individual’s faith).

Among the documents produced by Vatican II was Dignitatis Humanae that celebrated the dignity and freedom of religious conscience. The document opened the Church’s arms to other religions, and there was a great swelling of joy within the Roman Catholic Church and in other Christian churches touched by the Spirit of respect for other views and practices.

No longer were conscience and dissent regarded ipso facto as enemies of the Gospel or of the Church. Those of us in churches separated during the 16th Century Protestant Reformation were embraced by our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters as partners in ministry.  The Second Vatican Council’s spirit of ongoing reform (“aggiornamento”) re-awakened in Protestant communions the call to continual renewal and reform by the Holy Spirit, a 20th Century reformation that refreshed us all.

The proposed Marriage Amendment is a moral question, and the Church’s leadership has a right and responsibility to address it, in light of Traditio (sacred tradition, or the movement of the Holy Spirit among earlier disciples) and the movement of the Holy Spirit among disciples today.

Priests, ministers, and lay people – Roman Catholic and Protestant – on both sides of the pre-Vatican II divide – do not share a single view on the question of the proposed Marriage Amendment that Minnesota voters will decide next November. What we do share is a deep belief in the freedom of the pulpit, the freedom of conscience, and the freedom of the Holy Spirit to work through an informed laity and the church’s ordained leadership in together interpreting Scripture and tradition. We share a deep belief in the sensus fidelium embraced by the Second Vatican Council.

Jesus leaving the city never to return

“By the light of burning martyrs, Jesus’ bleeding feet I track, Toiling up new Calvaries ever With the cross that turns not back; new occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient truth uncouth; They must upward still and onward, Who would keep abreast of truth” (James Russell Lowell, 1845).