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BILL HOLDRIDGE: Let's have a word of prayer to begin to ask the Lord to
bless the evening and then we'll get right into the
program.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your love which is
directed towards all men through your son, Jesus Christ. Lord, you love
through the gift of your Son and we praise you for that. We thank you that
you loved so much that you gave your only Son that whoever would believe
in him would not perish but would have eternal life. We present to you the
discussion of this evening and pray that you and your name and your glory
would be extended and that you would be glorified. And we thank you for it
in the name of Jesus we pray.
Well I'd like to introduce our first
speaker this evening. Reverend Carl Hansen, who is rector of All Saints
Episcopal church in Carmel. Many of you know him as the author of the
column that appears weekly in the Monterey County Herald entitled,
"Friends in Faith." This is also being distributed by the Scripps-Howard
news service. And so we are very happy to be able to have Reverend Hansen
come and address us this evening on the subject, "Is homosexuality a gift
of God?" Would you welcome Reverend Carl Hansen. [applause]
CARL
HANSEN: Good evening and happy St. Patrick's day to the Irish in the
audience. Your hospitality is really something. As I walked in a button
popped off of my coat somewhere in the room. And where I buy suits they
don't give you extra buttons. So I was kind of dismayed and found someone
to cut the long black thread dangling from it. When I came up to sit down,
there was my button on the table.
I want to thank Pastor Holdridge
and Pastor Steve and the good people of Calvary Church for hosting this
evening. It's a pleasure to be here and I appreciate the invitation of
John Rankin to explore, and let's be candid, to debate perhaps the issues
which surround homosexuality and the Christian faith.
I enter this
dialogue with some misgivings. The most serious one is that what we are
doing here tonight feels very inappropriate to me. When we ask the
question, "is homosexuality a gift of God?," it is impossible to
distinguish between homosexuality and homosexuals. It will be said that we
are talking about the action and not the individual. Now this would be
true if we were talking about sexuality in general. How a person uses his
or her sexuality which is a most appropriate conversation in ethical or
theological discussion and would apply to everyone in the room. But we're
not doing that. Rather we're speaking of the validity of homosexuality,
whether or not it is from God. We're talking about people, their identity,
their self-worth, their worth in our eyes, their worth in God's eyes.
Is homosexuality a gift of God? I believe that we need to repent
before God and before our homosexual brother or sister for even asking the
question. Of course homosexuality is a gift of God. To the gay and lesbian
persons who may be here tonight, let me make this very clear. You are a
gift of God. I hope you do not have to hear that from me in order to know
that. We are all required by faith to use our sexuality in godly ways and
for a godly purpose, heterosexual and homosexual. And I pray that someday
it will not be necessary for this kind of debate to take place in the
household of God.
I have some other misgivings as well. One has to
do with starting places. Much of our discussion will focus this evening on
biblical revelation, and how each of us thinks about the Word of God will
influence how we think about homosexuality. My faith tradition, like much
of Christianity, encourages the study of Scripture in its historical
setting. Scripture is not inerrant in every passage because people are not
inerrant. While the truth of God's unconditional love in Christ is
unchanging, we change. And the Word of God must be reinterpreted for its
truths to remain constant. Now this is not a matter of liberal or
conservative, nor is it a radical point of view on the fringe of
Christianity. Rather it is a widely held viewpoint among both Catholics
and Protestants, and among the Jewish community with regard to the Hebrew
Scriptures. And it only makes sense that what was written so long ago can
not be adopted fully today. I might add that interpreting the Bible
differently in different cultures while holding to its basic truth of
God's unconditional love, has been the practice of Christians through the
centuries.
I start from the place that some parts of the Bible are
more important than other parts. The legal and moral instructions for
example in all of their particularities from Exodus and Leviticus to St.
Paul are far less important than the teachings of Jesus and the standard
of agape love revealed in Jesus' life and death and the experiences of the
apostles. These stories compel us to live the Gospel in our own day. Not
by trying to recreate ancient mores and social structures, but by bringing
the kingdom of agape love, the reign of Jesus Christ, into the attitudes
and relationships of modern society. Now it's perfectly legitimate to view
the Bible differently. But if we don't share common ground on how we view
Scripture, further debate about what the Bible says seems to me to be
pointless. This is to say that we are not really debating homosexuality
here tonight, but rather how we interpret the Bible. Surely biblical
interpretation is a larger subject than we are prepared to address
tonight, and one wonders if there is much point in debating such an
emotionally charged subject as homosexuality, when the premises upon which
we base our conclusions are so different.
Well there's more that
causes me concern as we enter this discussion. We need I think to ask why
we are here. Are we here to change people's minds? I will confess that it
would please me to have all of you stand up at the end of this discussion
tonight and declare with enthusiasm that I have won the debate. That Mr.
Rankin is wrong and that your hearts have been moved to honor your
homosexual neighbor, to work for his or her rights to live in peace and
opportunity and offer the fellowship, the sacraments, the pastoral
guidance of your churches, to help homosexuals live wholesome, fulfilled
and faithful lives. But I know that isn't going to happen because it's not
words which change us, it's experience. We can debate until we have
explored every biblical reference, every scientific study, every Gallup
poll, every anecdotal story, and we will all end up where we started
because we can choose our evidence. Words and studies can say what we want
them to say and they do not change our hearts usually, people do. Words
can be chosen to reflect our preconceived notions, but we cannot choose
people. God has chosen them to be who they are and when we encounter them,
we are moved. So I don't expect to change anyone's mind. But I am here to
help create the possibility that you would consider making a homosexual
person your friend.
The people of Jesus' religious community knew
the words of their Bible well and obeyed God's commandments as well as any
of us here tonight could ever hope to. Yet they were wrong. Spiritually
they were dead wrong. Jesus confronted them because of the attitudes they
held toward others. We know from the gospel stories that they were proud
in their superiority over those whom they perceived as sinners, because
they did not live by the holiness code in the book of Leviticus. They
liked to boast about their piety. Yet apparently they were satisfied to
let their behavior conceal their own lusts and anger towards others. They
were scripturally-based but they were not love-based. Or as St. Paul would
describe it later, they followed the Law, not the Spirit. Most
bible-believing rejected Jesus because he challenged their
scripturally-based ideas and their exclusive claim upon the fellowship of
God. Jesus looked into their arrogance and their hypocrisy, beneath their
outward behavior to their inner selves and he saw their hardened hearts.
He stretched the definition of neighbor to include everyone. And he
promised that anyone who strayed would be found and restored to the flock.
When Jesus ate meals with the self-righteous church of his day, they
wanted to throw the rabble out and he taught them about acceptance and the
universal love of God. But there were a few who listened. For those who
received Jesus the old passed away. A new way of thinking began, not based
on legalisms but upon a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, soon to
be spirit- filled, driven by the power of God. And so it is
tonight.
Jesus is present as we ask the question, is homosexuality
a gift of God? That's like asking if being a man or a woman is a gift of
God, or being left-handed or right-handed, or Native-American or
African-American or Anglo-American. We don't decide what we are. But we do
decide what we are going to do with what we are. The former is God's gift
to us. The latter is our gift to God.
The biblical evidence about
homosexuality does not hinge upon a few passages buried in the midst of
thousands of teachings and stories. Five or six verses does not constitute
an ethic of sexuality, not to mention a basis for moral behavior, even if
they were written for society today, much less a culture two to three
thousand years ago. The Bible is full of taboos and we have a knack for
picking the lessons and the taboos we wish to enforce, depending upon our
own prejudices and fears. Men who wish to dominate women can find much
biblical support for it in the Hebrew Scriptures and the writings of St.
Paul, or even in the actions of Jesus. Whites who wish to feel superior
over blacks can somehow find the justification in the story of Abraham and
his two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Christians have used the Gospel story to
stir up hatred for Jews and bring persecution upon them for centuries.
Jews and Palestinians continue to use the evidence of Scripture to claim
that God is on their side. You can add your own examples to the list I'm
sure.
The book of Leviticus will surely be quoted among the
Scriptures which forbid homosexuality. God makes it very clear that the
regulations in the book of Leviticus must be followed. But I can assure
you that there is not a person here who follows most of them. In fact, I
would be willing to bet that there is not a person here who follows any of
the regulations in the first seventeen chapters of Leviticus. But when it
comes to 18:22 and 20:13 we begin to pay attention because it suits our
prejudice against homosexuals. We no longer practice slavery or polygamy
or the sacrifice of animals. We don't execute people for blasphemy or put
adulterers to death or kill children because they have cursed their father
or mother. And we certainly don't sell our daughters into slavery. We
charge interest on loans, I know that well, which is strictly forbidden in
the book of Leviticus and in fact all of Scripture.
On the other
hand, Leviticus was more lax than we are today in some things. It was OK
for a married man to sleep around as long as he didn't do it with a
relative or a woman who was owned by another man. Yes, women were
considered property, which is still deeply embedded in the genes of most
of us men. But at least today we have a public consciousness which
requires us to act otherwise. We should ask ourselves why Christian
churches do not typically lead God's fight for the liberation of women,
but in fact ridicule the movement as feminist liberalism.
Overall
the Bible teaches us not to live by regulations but by agape love. This is
the love experienced in Jesus which calls us to live with integrity and
honesty, as opposed to hypocrisy and self-deception. Agape love requires
that we be genuine, allowing God to heal our inner self so that we can
honestly be kind and compassionate. Agape love calls us to respect all
people in the great diversity of our humanity in God's image. And
recognize that when one person is hurting we all hurt. Agape invites us to
live genuinely and responsibly, attentive to the moment and to the people
around us. It demands faithfulness to prayer, to loved ones. Agape is
empowered by trust in God, the personal experience of God's goodness and
the joy which is the consequence of extending that goodness to others.
Agape is a welcoming kind of love as opposed to the guarded fearfulness
which sees faith primarily as something to be defended from unsuitable
people or ideas. Rather, we must be vulnerable and tolerant of
perspectives other than our own. Agape love is compassionate, open to the
experience of others, seeking God in unexpected places and persons.
Finally, agape requires that we continue to grow, ever realizing that we
do not have all the answers, and that our discernment is never perfect in
this life. These are some of the golden principles of life in the spirit,
and we are called to live them within our relationships. Homosexuals do so
just as well as heterosexuals do. We all have trouble living agape love.
Purity in the midst of our sexual intimacy is hard for all of us. The
church needs to offer its acceptance and pastoral care to all people, to
help us live with integrity and fulfillment in committed relationships.
For some, it is only in a same-sex relationship where agape can be found.
Archbishop Tutu of Cape Town, South Africa, respected by
Christians everywhere, has said, "the church has not yet got there, but,
if we were to say that in relationships it is desirable that there is
fidelity between a couple, why should we not extend the same conditions to
same-sex relationships?" He said, "This is my personal position. I am
passionate in my opposition of any injustice. And I believe I know where
our Lord would stand." The archbishop added, "I think there is something
wrong, when we persecute people and make them hate who God has made them
to be. And if there is a way in which I can assist in the rehabilitation
of people's self-worth, I certainly will do all I can."
I would ask
us now to look at ourselves and our prejudices. How many of us here
tonight believe that lewdness and promiscuity are inherent to
homosexuality. How many of us have blindly accepted the common notion that
being a homosexual means that one is attracted sexually to children. How
many of us believe that homosexuals are out to indoctrinate young people
to their kind of lifestyle. How many of us blame gay men for the AIDS
pandemic because it is more easily transmitted in homosexual sex. When we
hold these attitudes and stereotypes, we dehumanize a whole segment of
humanity in the same way that the Nazis dehumanized the Jews, even as we
were dehumanizing African-Americans in our own country.
Is
homosexuality a gift of God? Perhaps the greatest gift of homosexuality is
that it can cause heterosexuals to ask important questions about the
sexuality we all share. When we are able to get beyond the regulations of
the Bible, which is exactly what Jesus invites us to do, we will hear the
Spirit calling us to a truly sacramental love, where our sexuality is the
expression of God's unconditional love for us. When we stop debating
homosexuality, perhaps we will face the issues of promiscuity and sexual
abuse in our society today. We might be willing to face our denial about
the rampant sexual abuse of children in our society, mostly by
heterosexuals. We may even begin to challenge the patriarchal attitudes
which cause us to claim ownership of other human beings and of nature. We
might even talk about the issue of rampant infidelity in marriage and find
ways to empower our marriages not only to last for a lifetime, but to grow
in love and joy. These are some of the sexual matters which we really
should be discussing tonight, rather than debating the validity of our
homosexual brothers and sisters. For too long, we have concerned about who
is in and who is out of the household of God. We should be discussing how
we might all help one another to be more faithful. Thank you.
[applause]
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