The Supreme Court and Same-Sex Marriage

The Facebook posts regarding the Supreme Court’s decision to declare the legality of same-sex marriage across the US have been predictably interesting. Like many others, I’ve been thinking about this topic for quite some time, and I am going to weigh in with my own observation and recommendations, at least for those who operate in the realm of the Christian community.

For a very long time, clergy have officiated at weddings in a dual representative capacity. On the one hand, they represent the Christian church; on the other hand they represent the State (as in , The Government). We often provide evidence of this dual representation by closing the ceremony with words like these:

“By the power invested in me by the church of Jesus Christ and the State of XXX, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

Whether those words are spoken exactly that way or not, the dual agency is real.

I’ve officiated at quite a few weddings, all in the state of California. It is humbling to me that when I say the words that declare the marriage of the two people standing before me, it has the power of law. Upon my word, at that moment in time, those people are married to each other. The Church and State both back me on this.

This is a powerful reality because I sign the marriage license sometime later in the day, mail it off a few days later, and the County Recorder enters it into some computer within the following weeks. Nevertheless, those folks were married the second I said they were married. The Church and State both grant me that authority.

Church and State in the US have had this complicit relationship for many years and everyone’s been pretty much okay about it.

Until now.

We religious folks have long believed that marriage is our business. That is, we see marriage as a sacred bond and, therefore, part of our turf. Up until recently, Church and State have been in agreement about what constitutes a marriage (we have had some conflict with the State about what constitutes a divorce, but we somehow got comfortable with that one).

As of this morning, the Federal government has sent all religious people—regardless of their views on same-sex marriage—this message:

“We own marriage. You do not.”

And, apparently, they are right.

So maybe this is an opportunity for Christian leaders to reflect in some new ways about our relationship with the State and with the culture at large. Perhaps we’ve been complicit with the State when it suits us, but have expressed outrage when the State reveals its true character as the dominant power structure in the US.

So here’s what I’m thinking. Consider these words of Jesus:

“ . . . if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.” (Matthew 5:40)

I know this text is addressing the issue of retaliation, but perhaps we can allow it to inform our thinking on the issue of marriage. The State has taken our coat—the definition of marriage—as its own. Maybe its time for us to hand the State our cloak as well—that is, our role as agents of the State in the performance of marriages.

In other words, maybe we need to get out of the marriage business.

The State already owns that business. People have long been able to go the courthouse, pay for a license, and have a court deputy perform a brief ceremony, resulting in a legal marriage. It’s quicker, easier, and a lot less expensive than a big, fancy church wedding with a reception.

Maybe it’s time for us to look at what a train wreck marriage has been over the years in this country, and rethink what we do to solemnify and bless this union that we have traditionally referred to as “marriage.” Maybe we need to revisit the concepts of covenant and faithfulness and reframe them under the lordship of Jesus Christ, and let the State do its job of deciding who gets married and who doesn’t.

We can be for or against this Supreme Court decision, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. Religious groups in general and Christians in particular don’t own marriage. That coat has been taken.

It might be time for us to weave a new cloak.

The Power of the Imaginative Story: Matthew (part 6)

Jesus shakes up his listeners by declaring that certain conventional and legal actions (or inactions) are not at the heart of goodness, not at the core of righteousness. He reminds them of what everyone already knows (“You have heard . . .”) and then pulls the rug out from underneath their feet by pushing them away from their perceived moral and ethical safety zones (“But I say to you . . .”). So:

Not committing murder doesn’t eradicate the internal anger that resides in one’s heart.

Not committing adultery doesn’t magically erase the objectifying of someone as a mere object of sexual desire.

Following the legal rules that allow a man to divorce his wife—thereby forcing her into a new marriage relationship in order to avoid becoming destitute—doesn’t wipe the slate of oppression clean.

These first three admonitions, while clearly not ignoring the fact that actions and thoughts do not necessarily have the same consequences (actually killing someone brings a more severe result than just thinking about murder), bring to the forefront two important emphases:

First, there resides in the human heart the potential for the worst of human actions. Therefore, all people stand together in a sea of dark possibilities. It’s one thing to make a right judgment about something, as in bearing witness to some observable event (such as, “Officer, that car made a left turn and crashed into the light pole;” or, “I saw that man strike that woman and run away with her purse”). It’s another thing to claim that the possibilities for wrongdoing and error do not exist in those of us who haven’t committed any crimes. Such a claim is at the heart of judgmentalism.

So, just because a person didn’t pull the trigger on the gun doesn’t mean that her inner anger, an anger that makes murder a possibility, has no unrighteous power.

Just because a man hasn’t cheated on his wife doesn’t mean that his constant lusting over his neighbor’s wife doesn’t have the potential to destroy lives and relationships.

Second, legal permissions and boundaries do not necessarily mirror what is truly right. In Jesus’ day, a man could divorce his wife, sometimes on flimsy grounds, as long as he gave her a certificate of divorce (most likely a legally-recognized document that freed her to marry another). To be a divorced and disempowered woman in that time would be a sure ticket to destitution. Jesus wouldn’t allow for such a legally protected action, as though the boundaries of the law eliminated the destruction that would surely follow.

I wonder how things would change for us if, when we heard that someone did something awful, rather than saying, “How could he do that?” we lamented, “I am capable of the same thing.”

I wonder how generous our hearts might become if, while respecting the reality of our national laws, we didn’t allow legal regulations to be the ultimate definers of righteousness? For example:

Do the existence of immigration laws and national borders mean that “neighbor” is defined only by the legalities of residency and citizenship?

When the courts make a declaration requiring obedience—whether related to abortion, marriage, immigration, discrimination, and any number of other important issues—is the conversation over for followers of Jesus? Or do we look to him and wait for him to say, “But I say to you . . .”?

The words of this sermon in the gospel of Matthew—typically called “The Sermon on the Mount”—have been studied, reflected upon, and cherished by people for centuries. But they are not necessarily words of comfort. They force us as readers to confront ourselves and challenge our own perceived securities.

There is a road leading down from a mountain in Mexico where I have ridden my bicycle several times. There is a big sign on the side as the road begins its winding, eight-mile descent. The sign reads, “Curvos Peligrosos.” Dangerous Curves.

There should be a heading at the beginning of this message from Jesus that reads: “Palabras Peligrosas.” Dangerous Words.

Ministry and Sin

When I was serving as a full-time pastor, people would occasionally apologize to me for using course language in my presence. Those apologies always amused me, since I am a veteran of the US Navy and have within me the ability to cuss with words that are better imagined than described. I have come to find swearing to be more amusing than offensive.

There’s this thing that people have with Christians in general and ministers in particular: We’re supposed to be shocked by sinful stuff and don’t want to get any of it on us. But the truth is, while we don’t want to be defined and formed by actions and thoughts that veer us away from God, we’re generally pretty cognizant of our own sin (even though we, like most people, tend to overlook some of our sins in favor of others). On top of that, all Christian ministry is engagement with sin.

All of it. Every &#%$ bit of it.

If sin is, as the Bible suggests, missing the mark, straying from the right path and, in general, forgetting about God, then sin is the context for all ministry.

In seeking to minister the healing love and touch of Jesus Christ in a broken and hurting world, we cannot avoid engaging with the sin that wracks the lives of human beings. And, in doing so, we can’t help but come away with blood on our hands, complicit with those whose lives are torn by the sin they have embraced and the sin that has been inflicted upon them. The sinner and the sinned against—those are our people.

For example: I believe that divorce is wrong. All the time. Every time. Without exception. Yet, I have counseled people to file for divorce when abuse and abandonment have destroyed what was once declared to be a marriage. I not only counseled those people to enter into the tragic and broken place of divorce, but I have also gone with them, providing what support I could. I didn’t tell them that divorce, for them, was to be a good thing and that they had followed all the biblical rules for divorcing. I told them that, together, we would be entering in a tragic place and would rely on God’s mercy, forgiveness, and grace to meet us on the other side.

For example: I believe that abortion is wrong. All the time. Every time. Without exception. But if someone’s daughter or granddaughter had become pregnant as the result of rape, or her life was significantly at risk because of the impending birth, I would give consideration to abortion, and would stand by the person should the decision be made to terminate the pregnancy. I would not call the abortion “good.” I would know that I was joining in on a willing journey into sin, crying out for God’s forgiveness as we made a painful and tragic choice.

For example: I believe that the laws of the land should be observed and obeyed. But if I were still serving as a pastor and an undocumented worker (code for illegal alien) came to my church, I would offer a safe place. I would not contact the authorities. And I would be a law-breaker. But the law of God’s universal love for humanity would trump my allegiance to the legal system. And if the authorities showed up one day to haul off the worker in cuffs, they would have to bring an extra pair for me. My sheltering of the stranger in the name of Jesus would not shield me from complicity.

Ministry draws us into close proximity to sin. It also brings us in close proximity to Jesus, who is already at work in the most broken, suffering parts of human life.

Jesus—the one called the Friend of Sinners. The one with our blood on his hands.

Heresy and Minority Opinions

Consider the following quotations:

“. . . Higher math deals with ideas, asks questions which may not have single answers.”

“If we begin with certainties, we will end in doubt. But if we begin with doubts and bear them patiently, we may end in certainty.”

“By love God may be gotten and holden, but by thought or understanding, never.”

Each of these represents a possible heresy. The idea that mathematics could provide something other than precise and unquestioned answers? Oh, please. Tell that to my eighth grade math teacher. Certainties leading to doubt? Never! Our doctrines are certain, our interpretations are accurate, and if we stand firm, we will never doubt.

And God is not to be grasped by pure understanding? But what about the A’s you got in all your apologetics courses?

I read these three quotations in Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (pp. 134-5). It’s a book about writing, and is becoming an incredibly valuable addition to my small collection of resources about being a writer.

The first quotation is from Madeline herself, as she reflects on what she was thinking about when she wrote A Wrinkle in Time.

The second is from Francis Bacon’s work, De Augmentis (1623).

And the third is from the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing (late 14th century).

The book was first published in 1980. I don’t recall if anyone organized a heresy hunt to chase Madeleine down when these words were made public, since they were lauded by reviews from several Christian periodicals.

I know a man who wrote a book about God and the Bible, encouraging his fellow Christians to consider that their faith is not a concrete building constructed of propositions extracted from the Bible, but rather an embrace of the deep mystery that is God’s love expressed in and through the person of Jesus Christ. It was not a dismissal or denigration of scripture—I know this man, and his love of the Bible. Nevertheless, after the book’s publication a major Christian bookstore chain banned all of his books from their stores. I haven’t shopped there since.

Have we entered a new age of inquisition? Not inquiry—that would suggest curiosity and openness to new, unexplored possibilities—but the kind of inquisition that used to burn people at stakes or exile them to distant shores. Instead of incinerating their bodies, we now incinerate their characters and their careers. We push them out of the fellowship of believers and declare them unclean because asking hard questions seems to be the flashing warning light that signals heresy must be looming ahead.

Someone posted a thoughtful comment the other day about this blog series, wondering out loud if we sometimes label something as heresy when in fact it is merely a minority opinion. I think he might be on to something.

Certain models of practical theology insist that theory and practice, when it comes to Christian ministry, cannot be separated. We come to our theological reflections with some sense of meaningful practice already embedded in our thoughts and actions. Engaging prayerfully and thoughtfully with specific theological issues (which relate to real life and human interaction) results in the emergence of a new practice that is infused with new meaning and purpose.

Before we immediately label something as a heresy, we should allow it to be a minority opinion (unless it has already taken the world by storm), or at least a view that is “other” than the traditional one. If we let these opinions stew around only as theories and then argue them as such, then we never really know if they are valid or not. We have to ask how our theologies play out in real ministry and step out of the safety zone of theoretical insistence.

So let’s argue about same-sex marriage. Then let’s pray together and ask God to show us what ministry looks like in this new world, and how our thinking is informing our participation in what God is doing in the world.

Let’s argue about divorce and remarriage. Then let’s sit down with remarried couples and ask them where they have experienced the presence of the Spirit of Christ in their lives.

Let’s argue about the nature of Hell and the reach of God’s love and see if we can stop stabbing each other in the eyes with our heresy sticks. There might be some minority opinions that we need to consider.

Keep in mind: Jesus’ words in Matthew chapter 5 (part of the Sermon on the Mount) are filled with minority opinions. Think about it: Six times he says, “You have heard that it is said” (majority opinion); six times he counters with, “But I say to you” (minority opinion).

When we take on the role of being heresy hunters, we may become the assassins of minority opinions. We might be wrong. And we should tremble at the possibility.

Same-Sex Marriage: A Parallel

In the conversation about same-sex marriage, please allow me to offer a theological parallel that might help us.

There was a time, not too long ago, when the evangelical church, in general, didn’t know what do with divorced people. In the little church where I grew up, while we didn’t see many divorces back in the 1960s, if someone did suffer a marital break up, they just disappeared from our faith community. There was simply no place for them. There was this unspoken assumption that something was wrong with that person that wasn’t wrong with the rest of us—a leper among the healthy.

A greater problem emerged when these divorced people remarried. After all, we had a text of scripture, words from Jesus, which prohibited this:

“I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 5:32)

But when the national divorce rate skyrocketed, churches started reaching out by creating divorce recovery groups and embracing these people, even those who had remarried.

There was a practical side to this accommodation. If a high percentage of people are now divorced, and some are remarried, ignoring or shunning them would be to turn away from some very deep human needs. Such neglect would also affect whether or not people would find a place in the community of faith. Churches could shrink pretty quickly.

I’m not sure, however, that there was a lot of theological exploration on the issue. There were (and still are) churches that draw a hard line about biblical grounds for divorce and remarriage, and how people who violate those grounds will be subject to church discipline and, if necessary, dismissed from the church. Others, however, seem to have decided that God’s grace and love trumps the text.

There were some who took the theology of the problem seriously. They looked at the texts of scripture (such as the one above) and realized that Jesus’ words were in reaction to the male-controlled process of easy dismissal of an unfavored wife, one who would be desperate to remarry in order to keep from becoming homeless. Jesus also extended the culpability in the sin of adultery by claiming that even a lustful thought about a women (again, he spoke directly to the men in the audience) produced the guilt of infidelity (Matthew 5:28). In other words, there was a pervasive solidarity in the sin of adultery. It was real for everyone, and wrong for everyone. Everyone with a mind and body had the stain of adultery on them. All were in need of forgiveness.

But another question had to follow: Was divorce and remarriage the unpardonable sin? If one lacked the so-called biblical grounds for divorce, was that person eternally consigned to a solitary life? Or could there be forgiveness available for the one who helped destroy a marriage, and grace to start anew? Some of these thinkers said yes. In these situations, everything was not okay. Something sacred had been broken and destroyed. The marks and scars would always remain. But there could be forgiveness and grace.

I am watching to see if the churches that are talking about the implications of same-sex marriage will engage in deep theological and biblical reflection on this topic—not to dismiss Scripture, but to question our own hermeneutic (interpretation) as was done with divorce and remarriage. And not to be theologically reckless, tossed about by every new cultural preference that blows across the landscape, but to be theologically alert, willing to think broadly and to pray humbly.

And I hope we will remember that we follow Jesus, the one called by the religious elite “the friend of sinners.”

Really—Is This Marriage?

In the debates I’ve heard within the context of the church regarding same-sex marriage, the call to preserve marriage as a union between a man and woman is referred to as “traditional.” It’s a fairly accurate term, since marriage has been looked at that way for a very long time. It is too bad, in my view, that anyone who finds a shift in that tradition difficult is often labeled as a hater or a denier of human rights.

On the other hand, those of us who are heterosexual followers of Jesus and interested in the debate about marriage might be missing something in the conversation. There’s a mirror being held up to us and we are avoiding taking a look at the reflection.

First of all, while the statistics are a challenge to accurately nail down, the evidence suggests that divorce rates in the US are ridiculously high (including for folks who are Christians), marriage rates are falling and premarital co-habitation is rising.

We have to look in the mirror and ask ourselves: Is this the tradition we are seeking to preserve? It is, after all, our reality. Or is it a lost ideal that we treasure? Is traditional marriage something that we heteros have mangled and crushed so thoroughly that it is hardly recognizable as marriage any longer?

There’s a story of an artist who would take several cellos, smash them with a sledgehammer, cover them with resin, and then sell them as art. It was as though he was asking the art community, “What do you think: Is this art?”

It seems like the gay community is lining up for marriage licenses and asking the rest of us, “Given that you’ve slaughtered the traditional concept of marriage, what do you think: Is this marriage?”

Second, when we look closely at all the people whose images are reflected in the mirror, do we only see them and us? If we look carefully we will see a common humanity that stands in tragic solidarity before God, all made in God’s image and yet fractured and broken. At the same time, it is a humanity that constitutes the world that God loves, a world that God, through Jesus Christ, is reconciling to himself, not counting their trespasses against them (see 2 Corinthians 5).

Since the battle for same-sex marriage rights may be over, we heterosexual Christians have the opportunity to do some self-reflection and start the conversation anew. Rather than point outwardly at the other while attempting to preserve a sense a righteousness, it is time for us to confess our own brokenness before God—including the sexual misadventures, fantasies, and deviances that roll through our heterosexual minds—and recognize our complicity in the sins of the world (see Jesus’ words in Matthew 5 about the connection between the mind and sin).

If we expect to participate in the ongoing ministry of Jesus in the world, then we will have to do so confessionally and with repentance. Our rapidly changing culture—one in which our story of faith is losing its dominance—is still our context for ministry. We don’t minister in the abstract; we minister in what is real.

And to do so with integrity, we need to look deeply into that mirror.

On Being Right

I had a lively conversation with some of my students yesterday. We talked together about some of the more significant issues that Christian leaders are facing today: Same-sex marriage and ordination, illegal immigration, religious pluralism, and so on. These are issues that were not on the larger cultural table even twenty or thirty years ago, at least to the degree that they are now.

We talked about how we are always struggling with assumptions about what is acceptable, biblical, and right, while at the same time being confronted with principles that create difficult tensions for us. So our faith tradition might, for example, stand in opposition to same-sex marriage. Yet, if a same-sex couple were to approach one of us and ask for help and counsel, would we refuse them? What if their adopted child had been coming to our church with a friend, and the parents later showed up, wondering if they could be part of such a community of faith? What if we lead a church in a California or Arizona border town, where emotions run high regarding illegal immigration, and a family in our neighborhood—a family without proper US documentation—needs help, do we reach out or turn away because of their illegal status? Either way, do we feel an obligation to turn them in to the authorities?

These are not random, hypothetical questions. They happen. And without deep, theological reflection, we run the risk of sacrificing human beings on altars of rightness. The tensions are not insignificant, and Christian leaders need more than a list of rules in order to respond with integrity.

Here’s a precedent from the Bible. The rule for the first followers of Jesus was that, in order to enter into this new life and to receive the Holy Spirit, a person had to become part of the Jewish community. It made sense: Jesus and the disciples were Jewish, they were all in Israel, Jesus said that he came for his own people, and so on. But when the Holy Spirit fell upon a group of Gentiles in Antioch, a tension was created. Now the rules were crashing against a new reality that involved real human beings and the apparent work of God. The early Christians struggled with this, and the former rule of ethnic affiliation ultimately gave way to the new principle of God’s intentions for the world (see Acts 10-11).

We need to think a lot about where we begin with people. There is a tendency for us (and with most people) to put others in categories (gay, illegal, divorced, apostate, etc.) and react with sets of rules that keep things orderly. That way, we can end with things left in tact (this didn’t work for the earliest Christians, who found their whole world turned upside down when the Spirit fell on the Gentiles). Rather than begin in those categorical places of “sin” (as if we don’t fit in any of those categories), we might consider beginning with other people as co-humans made in the image of God, co-sinners seeking new life. That place of commonality changes our assumptions about others and draws us into the recognition of God’s common grace (as my Reformed friends might say) to us.

Along with Peter and the early Church leaders, we must hold loosely to our rules. After all, the people of God have a long and chronicled history of getting things wrong. We are not exempt from that.