Several members of the Covenant Network Board and staff participated in the gathering in Minneapolis, August 25-26, of the Fellowship of Presbyterians.

The tone established at the outset was one of warmth, kindness, and respect, and the articulated values included an appreciation for PC(USA) denominational staff, avoidance of stone-throwing, and a commitment not to speak or act out of anger.  For this we are thankful.

We are grieved, however, at the premise underlying the gathering  –  that in order for some Presbyterians to engage in faithful ministry, they must “differentiate” themselves from the rest of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

To a Corinthian church rife with factions, the Apostle Paul insisted that no part of the Body of Christ can claim that it has no need of another part, as if the right hand could dissociate itself from the rest of the Body and remain faithful to its Head.

We do not believe that when Paul urged the Philippian church to be of “like mind,” he intended that they huddle exclusively with those who share one opinion, but instead that they all strive together to share the mind of Christ.  We are convinced that no one group or individual has a corner on God’s Truth, and that we are more likely to discern the mind of Christ when we are engaging intentionally and consistently with Christians whose assumptions, experiences, and commitments challenge, sharpen, and strengthen ours.

We urge the brothers and sisters of the “Fellowship” who are looking for “a place to stand” to join the rest of the PC(USA) in seeking to stand humbly under the Lordship of Jesus Christ (G-2.0104b).  When our differing interpretations of Scripture lead us to divergent understandings of what faithfulness to Christ entails, may we bear with one another in love, firm in the conviction that nothing in all creation can separate any of us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

David A. Van Dyke
Mary Lynn Tobin
Co-Moderators, Covenant Network of Presbyterians

A sermon by Dr. Randy Bush

Here is a simple recipe for how to misuse the bible. It has five ingredients. First, find a word or phrase that interests you and pull it out of the context in which it was written. Second, insist that the English translation means exactly the same as the word’s original meaning in Greek or Hebrew. Third, insist that the writer, in today’s case, the apostle Paul, used the word in the 1^st century AD in exactly the same way as we would use the word in the 21^st century AD. Fourth, disregard the larger message of the gospel lest it distract you from the biased point you’re trying to make. And fifth, if you are criticized for abusing scripture in this way, accuse your critics of not taking God’s word seriously and of being influenced by secular values instead of God’s eternal truth. Repeat this last step as needed, increasing the volume if necessary.

Human sexuality is one of the trickiest topics to discuss in church. We talk all the time about the incarnation, about God becoming flesh, but we struggle to talk about physicality. We talk every week about love, but almost never talk about intimacy. It’s funny, because what other word in the English language do we routinely whisper? Oh dear, this Sunday, the pastor is… going to talk about sex. The bible actually talks quite a lot about sex and procreation. On the other hand, for as controversial as the topic is, there are only eight verses in the bible that speak about homosexuality, with two of the most direct passages coming from the writings of the apostle Paul. The one from I Corinthians we’ll look at today; the other one from Romans we’ll look at next week.

I began by giving you a recipe on how to misuse the bible. Let’s change those same five steps into things that can guide us in properly interpreting God’s word. So, first, instead of finding a word or phrase that interests you that you rip out of its biblical context, let’s examine the phrase carefully in light of its scriptural context.

In Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, he makes this comment: “Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God?” Now that gets our attention! No one wants to be a wrongdoer excluded from God’s kingdom, so we read a bit further and discover a list of 10 groups that appear to be excluded from the kingdom of God: fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers. From out of that list, you never hear preachers focusing on drunkards or partygoers, but many have chosen to focus on the two words that appear to relate to male homosexuality and to rip them out of the context of Paul’s letter.

…  I invite you to read chapters 5 and 6 of I Corinthians, in order to more fully understand chapter 6:7-11… which starts this way: “In fact, to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud – and believers at that. Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers – none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”

In this section of his letter, Paul is talking about three topics: sexual immorality involving a church member living with his father’s wife, church members suing one another in civil court, and church members sleeping with prostitutes. The focus of this section is not homosexuality, but rather a much larger issue related to the behavior of Christians and the purity of the church. Now let’s move on.

Our second recipe ingredient is to look carefully at whether our English translations accurately reflect the meaning of the scripture’s original Greek words. Out of that list of ten vices, two words have gotten an excessive amount of attention – the words “malakos” translated as “male prostitutes, and “arsenokoites” translated as “sodomites.” Are those accurate translations? That’s hard to say, especially for the second word that simply combines the term for “males” with the word for “bed”. When Paul used “arsenokoites,” it was the first time that word ever appears in known Greek writings. So we can’t look at how other authors used that word and then decide what Paul means by it. But we can be pretty sure that Paul did not imagine the word meant “sodomite” because that word did not even exist until 1611, when the writers of the King James bible decided that was how Paul’s 1^st century word should be translated into English.

Rather than give a lecture on etymology, let it suffice to say that these two words, “malakos” and “arsenokoites” seem to be related to forms of male prostitution and the pimping of male slaves. There is an element of abusive power and economic gain present in these words that is missing from our English translations. Which leads us to the third recipe ingredient: Paul was writing for a first century AD audience; how does that compare to our 21^st century reality?

Imagine opening your bible and reading the following verse, “Thou shalt not buy anything from the pagan halls of Wal-Mart.” If that happened, I imagine Sam Walton himself would personally pay for a new translation of the bible to be placed in every hotel room and church pew in America.  There are some words that do not appear in the bible because the knowledge of the things to which these words refer did not exist in bible times – words like Wal-Mart, Big Mac, nuclear weapons, space travel, DNA chromosomes and genetic predispositions.

Too many people have taken a few, isolated words written by Paul 2000 years ago and dropped them right in the middle of a very modern conversation about human sexuality and homosexual orientation, claiming that one speaks directly to the other. Stop and think about Paul’s world for a moment. Paul was first and foremost a preacher, an orator. That meant, like other orators in his day, he used standardized lists of things to make his point. He would roll out the phrases “greedy, immoral, idolaters, and drunkards” the way contemporary pundits say “red state, gun-toting, Fox News watchin’ conservatives” or “blue state, latte drinking, New York Times readin’ liberals.” Second, Paul was a Pharisaic Jew, focused on issues of ritual purity and the law while living in a Greek culture that practiced questionable rituals but not a lot of purity. As a Christian apostle, Paul wanted the church to look different from the world around it. So when the church said nothing while its members were intimate with prostitutes or one was now living with his stepmother, Paul got upset. When believers were suing one another in court instead of showing sacrificial love for one another, Paul challenged them.

Regarding homosexual practices, if we can speculate on Paul’s thoughts at all, it seems that he is speaking out against practices of pederasty – situations where older males had relationships with youth as sexual slaves. Paul rightly saw this Greek practice as abusive, as linked to pagan worship habits, and as an exploitation of others that should not be part of the life-spirit of the Christian community. Any intimacy that is exploitative, that is abusive, that is one-sided and enslaves another is not in keeping with the mutual, self-giving love literally embodied by God in Christ. But Paul’s conversation about pederasty and sexual slavery is different from a conversation today about genetic disposition, same sex orientation, and loving, mutual relationships.

Step four in our recipe: We cannot let the message of a few verses be read in isolation from the message of an entire chapter, an entire book, or especially the entire gospel as expressed in the bible. In 1 Corinthians 5, verse 10 and 11, Paul rattles off a list of vices to make an oratorical point about immorality. In chapter 6 verse 9 he expands this same list to include the words “malakos” and “arsenokoites”, which most likely refer to male prostitutes and pimps or sexual slave-traders. Paul’s categories all describe abusive practices; but these categories should not be broadly defined in order to support anyone’s prejudices and biases. Paul speaks out against the greedy, but that does not forbid us from eating in moderation. Paul speaks out against drunkards, but that does not bar us from sharing the wine of communion. Paul speaks out against pederasty and prostitution, but that does not forbid expressions of intimacy in loving, mutual, faithful relationships.

But let’s suppose that Paul, in this verse, truly intended to forbid all expressions of homosexual intimacy. He would then be saying that salvation is tied to behavior and following a particular law, which would be a statement totally at odds with everything else in Paul’s letters. Paul’s whole message is that we are saved by grace, not by the law. We are washed, sanctified, justified by grace through Jesus Christ, not through our own efforts to earn salvation by obeying legal requirements. Where there are behaviors that are abusive, destructive, violent and selfish, God’s grace enables us to step away from these habits and enter into a new life. That is far different from believing God calls us to isolate a group of people whom we have de facto decided are in violation of a law and thereby are automatically excluded from God’s grace and God’s realm. Such would be the direct opposite of Paul’s entire message and contrary to the heart of the gospel.

As I wrap this up, I want to be clear with you. I cannot tell you precisely what Paul intended when he wrote these verses in his letter to the church in Corinth. All scripture must be read first and foremost with a spirit of humility, seeking God’s help to understand its timeless truth. It seems evident that Paul rattled off his list of vices mostly because all of us fit into several of those categories. He listed the vices as a way to remind us that all of us fall short of God’s intent, even as all of us have been saved by God’s grace – washed, sanctified, justified, as Paul put it. And this new freedom is to be lived in community: In congregations that hold one another mutually accountable. In churches that work to do what is right in a world far too prone to do what is unjust and immoral concerning many of our sisters and brothers. For as a community of individuals, we are partners in the ongoing miracle of incarnation – this “enfleshment” of God that is both expressed through acts of tender compassion, through dances and caresses, through familial affection and sexual intimacy.

This is not an extremist, liberal position; this is a centrist position. It arises from the very heart of the gospel and the heart of the scriptures. God’s love for creation as proven in the incarnation and resurrection of Christ is the center point around which people of different cultures, experiences, and orientations stand side by side. As Paul affirmed in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, we are to live in our diverse cultures with a common spirit of faith. To affirm in Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free means we will proclaim a gospel that challenges all abuses of power and injustice. To affirm in Christ there is neither straight nor gay means that the same criteria for love and intimacy will be used by all, as we work to ensure that conditions of respect are extended to all people regardless of sexual preference.

As Paul said in Ephesians 4, put away falsehood. Let us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. This is at the heart and center of what we believe. To live as members of one another in all our words and deeds, intimate or otherwise, is to become the living body of Christ in the world. To that, may we join with Paul in offering a hearty “Amen.”

AMEN

Rev. Dr. Randall Bush
East Liberty Presbyterian Church
Pittsburgh, PA
July 19, 2009

-Robert L. Brawley

In 1 Cor. 6: 9-10, Paul gives a long list of “wrongdoers [who] will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Presbyterian New Testament scholars Paul Achtemeier and Marion Soards, whom I hold in high esteem, think that when 1 Cor 6:9 uses the Greek terms

malakoi and arsenokoitai among males and excluding such people from being heirs of God’s kingdom. Thus, in the contemporary debate about the ordination of non-celibate gays and lesbians, they use this text to limit the issue to “homoerotic practice” aside from any other criteria that make people hold interpersonal relationships dear.

But is it really so clear that 1 Cor 6:9 is about “homoerotic practice” and is it really so clear who is excluded from being heirs of God’s kingdom? I suggest that there is actually a lack of clarity. The lack of clarity shows up in several ways. One is in the variety among translations. Another is the difficulty we have in making direct correlations between biblical texts and the way we construe reality today. Most importantly, however, the argument about clarity does not adequately consider the context in 1 Corinthians 6, and this context is eye-opening with respect to how Paul deals with sexual behavior among the Corinthians…

Read the whole essay.

Remarks to the Covenant Network of Presbyterians
Atlanta • November 2, 2007

John Wilkinson
Pastor, Third Presbyterian Church, Rochester, NY

For the past 10 plus years, I have been both privileged and perplexed to be a Covenant Network board member. So much for term limits!

And – like Anna Carter Florence’s young friend – I am a Chicago Cubs fan. Really. Martin Marty said one time that to find the best theological definition of hope, look to a Chicago Cubs fan. Our favorite hymn, by the way, is “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past,” with its all-too true affirmation about the dream dying at opening day.

With your permission, perhaps we can set the context a bit by overhearing testimony from the Apostle Paul.

I Corinthians 12:14-26 (NRSV)
14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 21The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ 22On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, 25that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

I was glad to hear the “Far Side” referenced yesterday afternoon. I am primarily a Doonesbury reader, which, with rare exceptions, will not preach. Peanuts used to preach. But now Peanuts is making a comeback. A new book on Charles Schulz – and a PBS special. And so Tuesday morning – and I am not making this up –  I found Peanuts, after many years.

Linus and Lucy are arguing.

Lucy: “Santa Claus is TWICE THE MAN THE Great Pumpkin is.”

Linus: “You’re crazy.”

Lucy: “The great pumpkin doesn’t even exist.”

Linus: “Why don’t you keep quiet – you don’t even know what you are talking about.”

Lucy: “Well, you’re so stupid, you believe anything.”

Charlie Brown (who has been watching it all): “I’m always disturbed by denominational squabbling.”

Some 16 months ago, when we departed from Birmingham, we were not sure what to expect. We weren’t even necessarily sure we knew what had just happened. Simple, straightforward topics like divestment and the Trinity were given attention, plenty to be sure, but at the end of the day, it was the report of the Theological Task Force, entitled “A Season of Discernment,” or as I called it one time in a stroke of marketing genius, “Harry Potter and the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church.”

As you know, the first four recommendations were passed by something like 91-9. Recommendation 5, after considerable parliamentary machination, both in committee and on the floor, passed 57-43, a margin that any of our several hundred presidential candidates would be very happy with. We will get to Recommendation 5 in a bit.

You will remember the heated debate leading up to the Assembly, which continued there, and followed thereafter. The heat was sustained by perceptions of what had or hadn’t happened, what it did or did not mean, and what the impact would or would not be.

Fueled by internet frenzy, two scenarios, rather drastic ones, were cast: that a flood of controversial ordinations would take place and that full schism would happen. Not quite on either.

What has happened is a season, or rather a spectrum of seasons: deep anger, to the point of departure, deep confusion, deep anxiety, mild hopefulness, and everywhere in between. And even now, still we are not quite sure.

What did happen is this: The General Assembly acted as faithfully as it knew how, and adopted a series of recommendations. You know them, or well enough:

• a call to stay together – visible oneness and renewed covenanted partnerships
• encourage to use discernment – whatever that means
• encouragement to study the theological reflection section, not as a new confession, but as an example of theological reflection by a highly diverse group
• an exploration of alternative forms of discernment and decision-making – not to toss Robert’s out – be still my soul – but in order to ask the question about the best way to decide things
• and then #5 – a new Authoritative interpretation, or AI, based on G-6.0108

You may disagree with it, but it seems clear; and it seems clear that the AI’s job was to make things more clear:

• Church-wide standards – which cannot be added to nor subtracted from
• Application, locally, by the particular ordaining and installing body on an individual, case-by-case basis

The big issue was what has historically been called a scruple – a term that the TTF report does not use – or departure. And what happens when one declares one.

Let’s unpack this a bit. First, you may remember that at the time, the Covenant Network of Presbyterians offered the overall Task Force report a favorable review, and the infamous Recommendation 5 a somewhat mixed review. The phrase repeatedly used – that nothing had really changed – was all too true when it came to what we continue to call Amendment B, some 10 years later, G-6.0106b. The Covenant Network continues to believe that that constitutional provision reflects dysfunctional polity, faulty theological reasoning, misguided biblical interpretation and a deep absence of pastoral sensitivity.

Since we came into being to pass an amendment A, it’s not quite accurate to say that we’ve always been about deleting B. But for some 10 years – with some of our dearest friends at it much longer –  we have been about change, changing our teaching and practice.

We do this not just to open the door, or rather to help nudge the church to a point where it might open the door. God knows how many of our clearly gifted and profoundly called sisters and brothers might have those gifts tested through the vocational discernment process and offer their service to a church that so desperately needs it.

We do it for that reason, but not only that. The church wounded itself when it adopted Amendment B, and the peace, unity and purity of the church will never be furthered as far as it might until that wound is healed.

So, the Covenant Network still believes B-gone by God. At the same time, the Covenant Network saw in the Task Force recommendation –  which is now not a task force recommendation but an action of a General Assembly –  and especially in the new AI, an opportunity, an opportunity to do and be church differently. Discernment became the watchword – discernment perhaps being a corollary of the “testimony” we’re discussing here – discernment that might lead us unto a different kind of future by reminding ourselves of and relying on some bedrock Presbyterian principles and practices.

The church sets standards. There is a clear and time-honored way of doing so. They are for the whole church. No governing body – no session or presbytery particularly – can add to them, nor can they subtract from them. No local option on standards. And standards matter when they are applied, applied fairly, equitably, “discern-ably,” if that’s a word, not in a pre-determined way, not in a one-size-fits-all way, but as they were, and are, intended, on an individual, case-by-case basis.

Remember, as we’ve said, standards are set by and for the whole church. No G.A., nor any lower governing body, may act on its own to change them. They cannot even codify an approach as to how those standards would be applied. That would in effect create a new standard.

They cannot be ignored. They cannot be augmented. They can be applied.

If the word “local” is ever to be used accurately in this conversation, it is in the application process, what has been called “local discernment.” I simply call it a session or presbytery doing its job.

Two things happen in that discernment process, what we typically call an examination. A candidate shows up, or rather shows up because already there has been some discernment, by an individual and by a nominating committee who has deemed some kind of appropriate fit.

A candidate shows up. What the Task Force did do was place a newfound, or rather a recovered, emphasis on rigorous examination. And in the context of such a rigorous examination, a candidate may declare a departure from a church-wide standard. That is nothing new. In fact, coming from the former northern church, I am told that in previous eras, the declaration of departures, or scruples, was a fairly common practice in the southern church, a practice that led to a greater sense of theological integrity as well as covenantal community. Conscience is a critical aspect of faith, and we believe strongly that God alone is Lord of the conscience. So a candidate may declare a departure.

As Presbyterians, believers as we are in the sovereignty of God, we believe that theology and polity are inextricably linked. Our polity is an extension of our theology and our theology has embedded within it the kernels of how we organize and order ourselves. Put in the negative, there can be no Presbyterian dichotomy between what we believe and how we behave.

Therefore, a candidate may declare a departure on a matter of doctrine or on a manner of life. That is not novel either. The Adopting Act of 1729 used the phrase “doctrine, worship or government” when working this all out. Our beloved Book of Order continues that tradition by codifying language more than 200 years old: “The inseparable connection between faith and practice, truth and duty.” That’s G-1.0304 for those of you keeping score at home. The Task Force report clearly and plainly sought to restore the balance of ”faith and practice” – belief and behavior – to an equal footing, and it seems to me that if the commissioners in Birmingham had not understood this proposed AI to be about both, then the debate would have lasted about five minutes.

So, a candidate shows up and may or may not declare a departure.

Parenthetically, as you are aware, some number of congregations have left our denominational family, or are exploring doing so, or have expressed the impulse. If we take Paul’s words seriously about the body, and how we need each other, might we be grieved every time that happens, as we are grieved when Amendment B hurts another part of the body?

I try to track the stories of congregational departure. Invariably, they will cite this new AI as a reason, sometimes the final straw, often embracing the suggestion that the new AI permits anyone to declare anything to be a non-essential. That’s true, by the way, but it is also not new. What those stories also invariably fail to acknowledge is that the examining bodies are never compelled to accept such declared departures. That is to say, I can identify a fourth person of the Trinity, express my doubts about the adequacy of the canon, refuse to take an elder with me on home communion or ponder the possibility of re-baptism. But that doesn’t mean that the examining body will accept such departures.

And that’s the point. Discernment. By a candidate or by the body. Departures may be articulated. But they may not be accepted. Or they may. That’s the point of an examination. It is a governing body’s role and responsibility, and not a higher one’s, to determine fitness for service, and only in the context of individual examinations. Only the examining/ordaining body can assess a particular candidate’s position in light of his/her statement of faith, manner of life, reasons for apparent departure from more common understandings of the point at issue, and the like.

This AI makes clear that sessions and presbyteries are to assess persons’ fitness for office on a case-by-case basis, making a good-faith effort to apply only standards established by the whole church, but with respect and mutual forbearance in non-essential matters of conscience. Mutual forbearance. A phrase worth remembering.

Yes, this raises the expectation bar for examinations. Yes, candidate A could declare a departure that would be accepted and candidate B could declare the very same departure that would not be accepted. Yes, there is risk involved. High risk. There always has been. If the result of an examination were predetermined, then why bother at all?

In short, a presbytery or session has the responsibility to consider each particular candidate in light of its experience with that candidate, including his or her demeanor, statement of faith, answers to questions posed during examination, demonstrated manner of life, etc., etc., etc.  And a candidate has the opportunity, engrossed in our constitution, to express his or her conscience and to engage in meaningful and mutual discernment with the examining body about what such departures, points of difference, might mean.

It seems as if the 217th General Assembly’s authoritative interpretation of G-6.0108 left no participant in recent church controversies entirely content. Those who urge greater acceptance of gay and lesbian persons, such as the Covenant Network, were disappointed that restrictive standards remain in place. Those who wish to exclude such persons were disappointed at the recognition that standards must be applied with flexibility and particularity.

What does that mean for us?

It means that we press on with our educational agenda – fully utilizing our educational resources – theology and the Bible – to make the case for change. We will publish books, DVD’s, CD’s, shill shamelessly for Jack Rogers’ book, have conferences, hear stories, tell stories, embody stories.

We will also continue to be very active in legal efforts to ensure that this new AI is properly and fairly implemented. If, as been rightly suggested, we’ve moved from a legislative to a judicial season, we must make witness in this new season with the same passion and zeal with which we have approached our earlier tasks.

What this also means is that we bring our energy and resources to bear on the new church intimated by the Task Force report and emerging and evolving before our very eyes. A subtext of the assembly conversation was the re-emphasis of presbytery life. We must show up for those conversations.

In the course of the last several years I visited about 20 presbytery meetings. It’s not as exciting as it sounds. And to a one, even in the midst of differences around this conflict, all were asking the same questions. Who are we? Who are we to become? What kind of leadership will we need? How do we exist with diminishing, or the perception of diminishing resources? How do we envision our new life together? (And…what we do with our camp – sometimes the most contentious question of all!)

If these are the conversations presbyteries are having, and if new environments for examinations are unfolding in this new context, then we simply must be there to help usher this new thing in, to form and reform and transform presbyteries into what they were originally intended to be, true crucibles of dialogue and discipline.

It is happening in some places. It’s not always straightforward work, or glamorous, and it’s never easy. Building meaningful relationships, either on one side of the aisle or across the aisle, never is. But it must happen, and might it even happen before controversy hits the floor.

My friend and Covenant Network colleague Tim Hart-Andersen reminded us several years ago of a saying found on a wall in a Presbyterian church in Cuba: “There will be better times, but this is our time.”

This is our time. A conservative friend identified the Task Force report and the new AI as post-modern, and did so in a positive way. I’m not sure what that means.

But I do know that a new church is emerging, more local, more missional, and we have resources – including leadership – to bring to that table. And even as that church emerges, it can be a place where true discernment happens, where fair and equitable examinations happen.

And I do know as well, that in a broken and fearful world, and in a broken and fearful church, the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, and that the Spirit gives us resources, gifts and graces, for a church hungry for good news seeking to witness in a world aching for reconciliation. In stewardship season, we are called to be stewards of those great gifts – the word (incarnate and written), our theological heritage and its covenantal trajectories, our polity, our relationships.

Every time I leave Rochester, I take a little detour on the way to the airport so that I drive past Mt. Hope Cemetery, where many saints are buried, including Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony. Susan B. said that “failure is impossible,” which I believe to be both a political affirmation and a theological truth.

I want to be part of that “failure is impossible” conversation, and I believe that we, the Covenant Network and its friends, are called to be part of that conversation. Together.

No authoritative interpretation of a constitutional provision will make that happen. But if, as we believe, God is doing a new thing, perhaps we have been presented with a modest opportunity, a glimpse, a season, to do things just a little bit differently, to inch toward the horizon just a little farther, to ease Charlie Brown’s anxiety just a little bit, toward a church as just and as generous as God’s grace – a provisional, in the meantime, demonstration of God’s righteousness and mercy and love.

Reframing the Dialogue on Sexuality in the Church

2005 Northwest Regional Conference
October 15, 2005

Address by Susan R. Andrews
Pastor, Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church, Bethesda, MD, & Moderator of the 215th G.A.

My great escape is reading fiction, and luckily I am blessed to have a wonderful woman in my congregation who reads 5 or 6 novels a week – and passes the best ones on to me. A couple of weeks ago I finished Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See – a lyrical look at ancient Chinese culture. The melody of the book is women’s lives and women’s relationships – which was the only road to redemption in the rigid patriarchy of that day. Bride prices, paramours, “bed business,” physical abuse – all of this was expected and condoned in the cultural practices of the fifteenth century. And of course central to the dance of sexuality was foot binding – which back then, and in some places today, is the most important qualification for a proper and sexually charged marriage. The tinier the foot, the more perfect the lotus shape, the more prestigious and costly is the bride. As a result, girls of twelve are subjected to this torture fueled by fierce mother love – mothers teaching their daughter the necessity of suffering and subjugation in order to carry on the family tradition, and in order to garner enough dowry money to support the parents in their old age. The actual description of one of these foot-binding rituals  – and the months of pain and pus and possible death – literally turned my stomach, forcing me to stop reading for a while when I became nauseated.

But lest I scare you away, the book also has some breathtakingly beautiful passages – particularly those describing the tradition of laotung and  nu shu. Within the privacy of that ancient women’s culture, there was a tradition of friendship which provided the foundations for a woman’s emotional survival. Young girls were matched up by a matchmaker with another girl born on the same day, under the same sign. These girls would be bound together for life; and through adolescence and marriage, childbirth and old age they would stay devoted to one another – visiting and nurturing one another, sharing joys and sorrows, and exchanging messages painted on a fan using a distinctly female dialect called nu shu.

What is unclear in the book is whether this relationship was ever sexual. Though the girls shared a bed as children, and were tender and affectionate with each other throughout life, the book is vague as to the overt genital contact of the relationship – and I think that was intentional. Because, in the big picture, the relationship was what mattered – the deep friendship, the cherishing of the heart of the other, the life-long covenant of tenderness  and loyalty with one another. Yes, it was the spiritual and emotional content of the relationship that really mattered.

Now I share this extensive image of laotung, because it sets the tone for what we are talking about today: a new way of imagining sexuality – a reframing of the dialogue around sexuality. And sometimes what we think is new really has ancient roots in the wisdom of the human story – and the biblical story. Healthy – and ethical – sexuality has always been understood as one part of a bigger picture – one dynamic of a richer relationship – one expression of a multi-faceted mystery called covenant. And when we separate sexuality out from the whole, we lose the value of this exquisite blessing from God.

John Money was an early scientific researcher in the area of human sexuality at Johns Hopkins University, and he made some astounding discoveries in the field of gender identity and sexual orientation. One of his discoveries was that all of us fall somewhere on a very wide scale between being exclusively heterosexual on the one side, and exclusively homosexual on the other. And though a small percentage of the American public falls at one extreme or the other, most of us are somewhere in between –  a 90/10 or 30/70 or even 50/50 mix of homosexual and heterosexual orientation. Of course, it is our conditioning and upbringing and faith tradition that lead toward the exclusive choice most of us make. At the same time there is another, growing branch of research that shows not a genetic, but a hormonal predisposition toward same-gender behavior, in those who identify themselves as gay or lesbian. All of this mix suggests that sexual orientation is a convoluted and complex identity, and it simply cannot be codified in rigid rules of right and wrong.

In addition, if the truth be known, sexual behavior – though we rarely talk about it – varies greatly among us. Perhaps some of us gathered here are still happily making love two or three times a week after thirty years of marriage. On the other hand, maybe some of us are content with two or three times a month – or a year – or less. I believe that in long, covenantal relationships, sexuality has become so much a part of a much larger, more elegant tapestry, that it simply doesn’t get the spotlight in our personal relationships that our church has given to it in recent years.

In my congregation, there are two women who have lived together for 27 years. Everyone assumes they are lesbians – meaning sexual partners. Actually, their relationship is platonic, they have separate bedrooms, and they find all the assumptions about them rather amusing. But it also doesn’t matter to them, because they are family for each other – a modern expression of laotung – and they thank God every day for giving them to each other as a gift. Two years ago when I was traveling as moderator, I met a gay couple in Southern California who had been together for fifteen years. As they described their life as parents of two small children, what I heard was the exhausting script of every young couple trying to raise active children in today’s world. Nursery school and soccer practice and weekly church involvement was much more on their minds than hot sex in a gay bar; but somehow our cultural norms make it hard for them to be just one more couple at the monthly PTA meeting. And all of this, because we have allowed sexuality, instead of relationships and character, to define too many people in our world today.

Now, so far, all I’ve been talking about is fiction, and medical research, and popular culture. But as Christians, we are called to base our behavior and our believing on scriptural and theological foundations. So let’s see where we can go to weave the reality of the world around us into the ancient truth of the Gospel.

I would like to suggest that reframing the dialogue about sexuality within the church needs to make room for two frames side by side, each enhancing the light let in by the other. One frame reaffirms the truth of the tradition, and the other frame reclaims the tradition in new, grace-filled ways.

So, let’s look at frame one. The foundational reaffirmation of the tradition starts with the authority of scripture – the very heartbeat of our life as people of the Word. We simply cannot modernize the Bible right out of our deep, rich scriptural past. So when we talk about sex, we begin with the Bible.

But, you might ask, which part of the Bible do we begin with, when we talk about sexuality? Adam and Eve reveling in their nakedness and then hiding in shame behind their fig leaves? The steamy eros of the Song of Solomon – sizzling poetry describing two star-struck lovers who can’t take their hands off each other – even though nowhere does it explicitly say they are married? Or do we begin with rape  – the rape of Tamar and Dinah? Or the polygamy of Abraham and Jacob and  Joseph and Solomon and . . . well you get the picture. Or, is our biblical norm about sexuality expressed in the adultery of David, or the sexual disgust of the Apostle Paul, or the celibacy of Jesus? Yes, my friends, if we are going to build our sexual ethic on the bedrock values of scripture – just which sexual values and which sexual behaviors are we called to mimic?

In my preaching on sexuality over the years, I have usually based my exhortation on the words of the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 6. Though he may personally have had trouble with his sexual urges – after all he did say that it is better to marry than to burn – nonetheless, when it came to understanding the moral complexities of sexuality, Paul struck an interesting balance. In a large section of Corinthians where he is dealing with the cultural differences between Christianity and the pagan world, the apostle talks about food and communion and women covering their heads and circumcision. And then he says this about sexuality:

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial.” “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything…The body is not meant for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body…Do you not know that our bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!…Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?…Therefore, glorify God in your body. (I Corinthians 6: 12-20).

I think Paul is profound in proclaiming that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit – that sexuality is a sacred gift to be used to glorify and enjoy God. But, Paul makes it clear that erotic love becomes destructive if it is not shaped by moral and spiritual love.

Mocking the secular mantra of his day, Paul plays devil’s advocate. “All things are lawful,” he says, affirming that through Christ, it is gospel and not law that sets us free. But then Paul lifts up the moral dimension which is the foundation of Christian freedom. As Christians we are free in God and for God and through God. But we are not free from God. Though all things may be lawful, not all things are helpful – not all things are beneficial. Though all things may be allowed, not all things edify or build up the community, or the soul, or the Body of Christ. 

I want to digress for a just a minute in order to underline just how important historical moment is. The setting for this particular passage is temple prostitution, and that is the “fornication” that Paul is referring to here – a situation which makes little sense to us today – unless we want to consider the clergy sexual misconduct that is still practiced in our Christian “temples” today. In our 21st century world, our setting for sexual ethics is different – a world where 80% of college students have sex together regularly – many of them with the people they will eventually marry – a world where growing scientific research and cultural homophobia are clashing and have led our religious communities to become embroiled in divisive and ugly debates about homosexuality – a world where 9 out 10 of the heterosexual couples married in most of our churches have been living together before the wedding.

The controversial sexual behaviors being practiced today are different than those prevalent in Paul’s day. But using his language, we still need to ask: Does any of this contemporary behavior glorify God and build up the other? Or, is it a kind of spiritual prostitution that desecrates our union with Christ – the words Paul uses to describe the Corinthians?

Way back in the dark ages of the 60’s, when I attended a women’s college in Massachusetts, there was a very strict protocol regarding male visitors. Men were not allowed in our rooms except for two hours on Sunday afternoon – and then the door had to be open, with three feet on the floor at all times. My sophomore year, everything changed, literally overnight. “In loco parentis” was abandoned and all restrictions were lifted. Within months, men were hanging out around the clock – with no feet on the ground for most of the night.

Now, at Wellesley, we also had this quaint habit of dressing up for Halloween. And that year my housemother, wonderful Mrs. Ellinwood, showed up at Halloween dinner – dressed as a madam of a brothel! She didn’t need to say a word about how distressed she was by all the changes. Her revealing tight dress and fishnet stockings said it all. I observed back then, and I believe now, that sexual license without moral grounding leads to both romantic disappointment and degrading dehumanization.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has authored what one commentator has called, “the best ten pages written about sexuality in the twentieth century.” In “The Body’s Grace,” Williams affirms the sacred space of erotic love. But he also underscores an ethical imperative. And he does this by grounding his ideas in covenant theology – in the faithful and utterly dependable covenant God has with us, and the faithful and exclusive covenant we are called to have with God – the One God, beside whom there is none other. Because we are created in the image of God, Williams suggests, we are called to embody this same covenant ethic of loyalty in our relationships. Or to use Williams’s own words, “To desire my joy is to desire the joy of the one I desire…it is to ask the moral question: ‘How much do we want our sexual activity to heal and enlarge the life of others?’”(1) Isn’t that lovely – a sexual ethic that “heals and enlarges the life of the other?”

What such a reciprocal and mutual covenant ethic suggests is that asymmetrical – unbalanced – sexual relationships are simply not part of God’s vision. Sexual behavior that exhibits power over the other, sexual behavior that focuses on me instead of thee, sexual behavior that hides in the shadows of shame instead of unfolding in the sunshine of God’s delight – such imbalanced behavior does not “heal and enlarge the life of the other.” Using Williams’ critique, I believe we 21st-century Christians must proclaim unequivocally that prostitution, promiscuity, adultery, pedophilia, clergy sexual misconduct, patriarchal heterosexual marriage, furtive teenage sexual experimentation, “hooking up” for casual sex – all of this is wrong, not because it breaks some antiquated rule, but because it does not “heal and enlarge the other.” It is wrong because it does not honor the faithfulness and fidelity of covenant. It is wrong because it does not glorify God in the temple of sacred sexuality. It is wrong because it does not take seriously the biblical tradition that has grounded us and defined us as reformed Christians for 400 years.

So, all of this biblical loyalty and grounding forms the first frame that we need to look through as we talk about a new way for a new day in our dialogue about sexuality. But there is a second frame which is equally important for a church that is reformed and always being reformed by the Spirit of a living God. And that is the frame of reclaiming the tradition in new and grace-filled ways.

I have always believed that the Christian story unfolds within the warm embrace of two doctrines of grace.  One is the doctrine of incarnation – of God’s incredible generosity in becoming flesh in all the realities of our human living. And the other is the doctrine of redemption – God’s incredible generosity in transforming death and sin into life and wholeness. I also believe that in our current controversies we have forsaken the first doctrine of incarnation in order to emphasize the second doctrine of redemption. And part of reclaiming our tradition is re-establishing the proper balance between incarnation and redemption. God continues to become flesh today – here and now – a lively word in the very real human drama of a changing world. And so, biblical “truth” needs to intersect with contemporary realities.

Yes, we need to affirm that sexuality grounded in the grace and truth of Jesus Christ does not invite open license. But neither can it be codified within narrow prohibition – as I have discovered in my thirty years of ministry. What about the 60-year-old widower who in the agonizing valley of grief after the tragic death of his beloved wife, found himself falling in love with one of our young single female elders, and discovered that his courage to marry again was nurtured by the sacred healing of their sexual love? What about the 24- year-old young woman – an elder and a child of the church – who has just fallen in love with another woman – and discovered the joy and delight of eros for the first time her life? What about the two graduate students, male and female, living 500 miles apart, patiently waiting to marry until they finish their studies, but wanting to grow deeper in a holistic love for one another with body as well as soul? And what about Michael Schiavo? Was it wrong for him after years of being faithful to his brain-damaged wife – was it wrong for him to fall in love with another woman and father two children with her, even as he refused to divorce Terry so that he could continue to advocate for her death with dignity?

I wrestle with these situations, as I’m sure many of you do. But the complexities of real people’s real sexual lives have led me to a place where applying biblical truths is not always easy. I believe that in order to reclaim our tradition in new and grace -filled ways, we Christians need to realize that this second frame for seeing our theological task is wrapped around two patterns etched into our theological window. One is Christological and the other is contextual. And the two patterns are connected – because when applying scripture himself, Jesus was often contextual, acutely sensitive to the nuance of the particular situation he was addressing.

We know that Jesus had very little to say about sexuality per se. But he had a great deal to say about the covenantal relationships within which sexuality is expressed. And when quoting the Hebrew scriptures which formed the foundation of his own theology, Jesus often re-interprets old words within new contexts. For instance, in quoting Genesis about a man leaving his father and his mother in order to cleave to his wife, Jesus is liberating old understandings of marriage and divorce, by elevating the status of the wife equal to that of her husband. These are not words primarily about restricting marriage to a man or a woman, as they are often used. Instead they are words about the sacred and committed nature of mutual covenant. In a similar way, Jesus’ gentle reproof to the woman caught in adultery and to the Samaritan woman at the well who has been married five times – these reproofs are calls to repentance. But they are about the image of God within these women, encouraging them to see that sexual relationships based on cheap or patriarchal imbalance of power, simply abuses that image of God within them. And so a biblical hermeneutic about sexuality, based on the few teachings of Jesus that exist, is not literal or legalistic, caught within a straight jacket of doctrine. Rather it is contextual and Christological – built on Christ’s intuitive and emerging wisdom, placed within the larger framework of covenant.

When I traveled in Africa, I discovered that contemporary sexual issues are causing turmoil within our global partner churches, just as they are here at home. Contrary to some media reports, I did not go around Africa pushing a homosexual agenda. In fact, I talked about it only when it came up naturally in conversation. What I did discover is that the issue of polygamy is every bit as contentious in Africa, as glbt ordination is here within the PCUSA. I was privileged to attend the Opening Worship of the Eighth Gathering of the All-Africa Conference of Churches – a colorful assembly representing 80 Christian communions in Africa. At one point, I found myself sitting next to a village tribal chief from rural Cameroon. He is a new Christian, full of the Spirit and excited about spreading the Good News. He is also a joyful polygamist – the husband of ten women and the father of 100 children. When I asked him if he found any tension between the teachings of the Bible and his own lifestyle, he said “Not really.” In fact, in order to maintain his authority within his village, he needs to honor the traditions of the past. If he rejects those traditions, he may well lose his ability to persuade others about the joy of Christian conversion.

I talked about this tension with Christian Ngange, the Spirit-filled pastor of the Bastos Presbyterian Church, the flagship congregation of our partner church in Yaounde. Christian is a strong, moral leader, and he has built a thriving and growing congregation that combines fervent evangelism with passionate outreach and justice advocacy. Last Christmas he had the joy in one worship service of celebrating 55 infant baptisms,  26 adult baptisms, and 60 confirmations.

I asked Pastor Ngange about the polygamy quandary in Cameroon, and how he, as a pastor, handles it. The answer he gave was both Christological and contextual, with an emphasis on covenant theology. The crunch comes for him when polygamists seek baptism. What is a pastor to do? Some pastors refuse to baptize unless the husband chooses one wife – and rejects all the rest. But then what happens to those other women and children who are financially dependent upon the husband? Other pastors baptize all the wives and children – but not the husband. But Pastor Ngnange, what does he do? He baptizes all of them – husband, and multiple wives and children – but with the explicit commitment on the part of the husband to take no more wives  – a visible symbol of his new Christian identity. Now that is a contextual answer if there ever was one – but an answer that honors both the grace and the truth of covenant in Christ’s name.

My friends, if we are to view biblical sexual ethics from a contextual and Christological perspective – if we are to embrace a new way for a new day – then I think we are left with two more tasks. The first is this. We simply need to redefine what we mean by purity – what it means to be the “holy” people of God. As I traveled around the church two years ago, I listened for the voices of Presbyterians talking about issues of peace, unity and purity. After all, at that point the Theological Task Force was still hard at work – trying to discern what these three words mean in our contemporary context.

I have to tell you that what I heard from the hinterlands was very disheartening. For all too many of us, peace means silence – simply refusing to talk about the issues that divide us, hoping that they will somehow miraculously go away. Well, my friends, as new opposing overtures move toward the 217th General Assembly, it is clear that these issues are not going away. And what about unity? Well, for too many of us unity seems to mean uniformity – everything will be fine if everyone will just agree. And purity? Well, purity on both ends of the spectrum all too often means, my way or the highway. On the right: a church that does not adhere to the holiness code of Leviticus is apostate and must be refined by the punitive discipline of the church. And on the left: a church that does not completely incarnate the radical justice of the prophets – completely – now – is a hypocritical and abusive institution. My friends, such ideological combat pushes us inevitably toward schism and judgment. And I believe both of these extremes gloss over the reality of sin, which is, of course, in all of us. And, these extremes fail to incarnate the gracious spirit of Jesus who seemed to prefer eating and hanging out with sinners. Yes, Jesus seemed to prefer a new way of dealing with human imperfection and disagreement. He replaced the purity of law with the purity of love.

And it is purity of love that is most emphatic in scripture. Think about it. God grants Sarah a son, despite her irreverent laughter. Shiprah and Puah audaciously lie to Pharaoh in order to save Moses’ life. Jacob is blessed despite his fratricidal deception. David is the chosen progenitor of Jesus, adultery and all. Isaiah insists that God’s post-exilic house will be a house of prayer for all people – including the foreigners and sexual outcasts explicitly forbidden by Leviticus. Jesus touches lepers and women despite the prohibitions of the holiness code. Cornelius is told to ignore the purity of kosher food laws in order to offer the purity of Christ’s hospitality. And Paul? He risks the wrath of the institutional leadership at the Council of Jerusalem by insisting that Gentiles are part of God’s chosen people – no circumcision necessary.

I believe that the recent report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity has cut through the simplistic and legalistic definitions that too many of us hold onto when we think about peace, unity, and purity – those precious words embedded in our ordination vows. There is nothing either/or about the Task Force report. Instead these 20 people have lifted up the reality of a Living Christ – a both/and incarnation of God’s love. In place of silence, they are asking us to embrace the difficult peace – the peace of intense dialogue and discernment – asking us to lift our conflicts into the light of scripture as we covenant to seek a new life together with those with whom we disagree. And unity? Rather than glaring at one another over the deep chasm of disunity, they call us to realize that unity in Christ means the opposite of uniformity. Rather, unity means a dynamic cohesiveness – a flexible equilibrium – sealed by the Spirit who purposely creates our diversity and differences in the first place. And in place of the self-righteous purity of law – whether it be the purity of holiness or the purity of justice – the Task Force implores us to embrace a purity of love that proclaims unequivocally, “We need each other.” Yes, the Task force promises that the spirit of Christ can empower us to hold onto one another, even as we hold onto our deepest convictions.

My friends, our biblical story tells us that the reign of God has been inaugurated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But the fullness of that abundant vision has not yet been accomplished. And so we live in that not-yet-ness – waiting for the time when all will be one, yearning for the time when every tear will be wiped from every human eye. And so the second task of reclaiming our tradition in new ways – after we redefine purity – our second task is to embrace an interim ethic. Keeping before us God’s vision of shalom, we are invited to groan, as we wait patiently to be fully born as the reconciled people of God. Now, I know that for some of us gathered here and across the church, such groaning and waiting is almost too painful to bear – as injustice and prejudice continue to dis-empower and exclude precious people from the offices of the church. But let us remember the promise. The baptismal touch of God’s grace never dries up. And one day, soon, the baptismal blessings of our glbt brothers and sisters will become a fountain  – an abundant stream of valued, ordained leadership within our church.

Several years ago at a Covenant Network board meeting, the board members were despairing over another defeat of an amendment to remove G6.0106b from the Book of Order. I’ll never forget the words of Oscar McCloud, one of the wise patriarchs of justice within our church, and a seasoned veteran of the Civil Rights movement. “What are you moaning about,” Oscar said. “Justice is never easy, and justice is never quickly won. We’ve only been at this battle for 25 years within the courts of the church. For those of us who have been engaged in the Civil Rights movement for racial equality, it has taken us hundreds of years – and the battle even now is far from won.” What Oscar seemed to be saying to us that day was that the journey is long. And like Moses, not all of us will see the fruits of our efforts. But, my friends, the journey is not just about winning. The journey is also about the struggle – the struggle that honors God, the struggle that strengthens our souls, the struggle that connects us to one another in the arduous work of the gospel.

I want to end with one more story. Despite our willingness to address contemporary issues, the congregation I serve is pretty traditional and conventional. Two years ago I had the privilege of officiating at the wedding of two of our home-grown young adults. Bob is the son of the patriarch – the early elder who founded the church and chaired the two major capital campaigns to build first the education wing, then ten years later, our glorious sanctuary. Howard, the patriarch, is long gone; but Bob proudly wears that heritage, upholding the traditions and protecting the needs of the founding generation. Somewhere along the way, Bob fell in love with Sue – when she was a 16-year-old high school student in our youth group, and he was a 38-year-old bachelor. Much to his credit, Bob kept his feelings to himself, and did not approach her for a date until she was 21. Five years later, Bob and Sue came to me, simply glowing, ready to enter into the Christian covenant of marriage. And we agreed that they would be married on a Sunday morning, within the context of worship – inviting the whole congregation to celebrate their joy with them.

But then, three weeks before the wedding, Bob and Sue came to see me again, hemming and hawing, and finally admitting that Sue was pregnant. What did I think they should do? Should they go ahead with the public wedding? Would it be upsetting and embarrassing to the matriarchs and the patriarchs? Well, for me, that was a no-brainer. We went ahead with the celebration, and with their Christian covenant-making. And six months later, when Jackson was born, not one old lady clucked, and not one word of judgment was spoken. You see, sex was not the issue. Covenant was the issue – Christological, contextual covenant – the covenant of marriage within the covenant of community between two covenantal partners who long ago had been blessed by the baptismal covenant  – the lavish unconditional covenant love of Jesus Christ.

My friends, when it comes to biblical sexuality, there is a new way for a new day. And it is based upon the ancient truth of God’s generous gospel.

May it be so – for you and for me. Amen.

1 Eugene Rogers, editor, Theology and Sexuality, Blackwell Publishers, 2002, p. 313

Susan R. Andrews
Sermon, Friday Evening
November 5, 2004

Song of Solomon, Chapter 2
I Corinthians 6:12-23

My first year in seminary, I found myself teaching sex education to a bunch of junior highs in a Congregational Church outside of Boston. It was the early 1970′s, and the only denominational curriculum available was that produced by the Unitarians. I don’t know who was more embarrassed – the kids or me. There I was naming all the anatomical parts and passing around diaphragms and IUDS and multi-colored condoms. Those adolescents were so horrified, that I’m sure they delayed any sexual exploration for at least an extra five years!

The worst part of it, however, was that the curriculum was spiritless. It was all facts and terminology and biology. And it was totally lacking in values or scriptural content or moral grounding. And so, three years later, when I once again taught sex education to junior highs at the First Presbyterian Church in Allentown, Pennsylvania, I wrote my own curriculum. I did include a birth control show and tell. But more importantly, central to each class was a passage of scripture – including the two texts we have heard this evening. My hope was that the young people squirming in those chairs in front of me would sense the sacred quality of sexuality – the sacred goodness and joy and delight and pleasure that God has implanted in our bodies. I wanted them to leave knowing that their sexuality was a precious gift – a gift to be lived out responsibly and joyfully to the glory of God.

Phyllis Trible has written – pardon the pun – the seminal modern commentary on the Song of Solomon. Entitled “A Love Story Gone Awry” (in God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, Fortress Press, 1978) she suggests that the garden imagery in the Song of Solomon is the recreation of the Garden of Eden before the fall. It is an ode to erotic love that describes what could have been, and can be again. She reminds us of the suspicion – even hostility – that the church has given to this love poetry.

Trible does a deft comparison between the Garden of Eden and this re-created Garden of Eros described in the Wisdom literature. In the Garden of Eden we find sexuality entangled with guilt and judgment and shameful nudity. In the Song of Solomon we find love woven with play and imagination and delight – a nudity that is both exalted and desired. And there is no guilt found anywhere. In Genesis we find pain in childbirth, unequal power between the lovers, and a suggestion that adult love demands leaving ones father and one mother. But in the Garden of Eros, childbirth is eagerly anticipated, the Rose of Sharon invites her beloved into her mother’s chamber for the consummation of their love, and their relationship is a rich mutuality of power and passion. Though God is never named in the Song of Solomon, God’s delight and creativity saturates every verse and is embedded in each fleshy word. And twenty-five years ago, when those junior high students in Allentown heard their married youth advisors read these words to one another – a dialogue of intensity and abandon and desire – those adolescents experienced a God’s love story not gone awry, but embodied in sacred sexuality.

Now it may seem a stretch to connect St. Paul to the vivid sensuality of this Wisdom literature. But with his usual theological intensity, the apostle reaffirms the main point of the Song of Solomon. He proclaims that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit -that sexuality is a sacred gift to be used to glorify and enjoy God. And, Paul makes clear that erotic love becomes destructive if it is not shaped by moral and spiritual love. The apostle is directly confronting the dualism of his day – the thinking that the body and the soul are somehow separate and that therefore, what one does with one’s body simply doesn’t matter when it comes to the sanctity of the soul.

As with all of Paul’s writings, these verses are penned within a specific context. And so we must be careful how we use these particular words to express universal truth. As we know the letters to the Corinthians are the most situation defined of all of his letters. He is writing to the church at Corinth to answer their specific questions and to comment on their specific behavior. Can faithful Christians eat meat previously used in pagan rituals? Should women keep their heads covered? Should the rich wait for the poor before they eat their community meals? And what about sexual behavior? In the surrounding Greek culture where promiscuity and temple prostitutes and pedophilia was socially acceptable, how is a Christian to understand the holy demands of sexual behavior ? Of course, underlying all these controversies is the question about freedom. If a Christian has been set free by the saving and forgiving power of the Risen Christ, does that mean that the Christian is free to engage in any kind of behavior?

Mimicking the mantra of the day, Paul plays devils advocate. “All things are lawful,” he says, affirming that through Christ, it is gospel and not law that sets us free. But then Paul lifts up the moral dimension which is the foundation of Christian freedom. As Christians we are free in God and for God and through God. But we are not free from God. Though all things may be lawful, not all things are helpful – not all things are beneficial. Though all things may be allowed, not all things are for the best – not all things empower and honor others – not all things – edify or build up the community or the soul or the Body of Christ. And so when it comes to the freedom of sexuality created by God, the question becomes for Paul, how can our sexual behavior glorify God and ennoble the other? How can agape – the moral love which is incarnated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus – how can this moral love be fully expressed through erotic love?

I want to digress for a just a minute in order to underline just how important context is. The context in this particular passage is temple prostitution and that is the fornication that Paul is referring to here – a context which makes little sense to us today – unless we want to consider the sexual misconduct and abuse that is still practiced in our Christian “temples” today. In our 21st century world, our context for sexual ethics is different – a world where 80% of college students have sex together regularly – many of them with the people they will eventually marry – a world where growing genetic research and cultural homophobia are clashing and have led our religious communities to become embroiled in divisive and ugly debates about homosexuality – a world where 9 out 10 of the heterosexual couples married in most of our churches have been living together before the wedding. The controversial sexual behaviors being practiced today are different than those prevalent in Paul’s day, and so using his language, we need to ask: Does any of this contemporary behavior glorify God and ennoble the other? Or, is it the kind of spiritual prostitution that desecrates our union with Christ – the language Paul uses to describe the Corinthians.

I have now joined the group of former Moderators, and like some of my colleagues in this sanctuary, I continue to cherish the privilege it was to represent all of you during last year. But I also share with some of them the scars of misrepresentation – the experience of having my words distorted by partisan reporting. Maybe that just goes with the territory. And so, here I go again! 

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has written what one commentator has called, “the best ten pages written about sexuality in the twentieth century.” Entitled “The Body’s Grace,” Williams grounds his words in the kind of elegant sensuality and moral integrity of our two scripture passages for this evening. He affirms the sacred space of erotic love. But he also underscores an ethical imperative. And he does this by grounding his ideas in covenant theology – in the faithful and utterly dependable covenant God has with us – and the faithful and exclusive covenant we are called to have with God – the One God, beside whom there is none other. Because we are created in the image of God, Williams suggests we are called to embody the creative ethic of God. Or to use Williams own words, “to desire my joy is to desire the joy of the one I desire…it is to ask the moral question:”How much do we want our sexual activity to heal and enlarge the life of others?” (Eugene Rogers, editor, Theology and Sexuality, Blackwell Publishers, p. 313). Isn’t that lovely – a sexual ethic that “heals and enlarges the life of the other?”

What such a reciprocal and mutual covenant ethic suggests is that asymmetrical – unbalanced – sexual relationships are simply not part of God’s vision. Sexual behavior that exhibits power over the other, sexual behavior that focuses on me instead of thee, sexual behavior that hides in the shadows of shame instead of unfolding in the sunshine of God’s delight – such behavior does not “heal and enlarge the life of the other”. Using Williams’ critique of asymmetrical relationships, I believe we 21st century Christians must proclaim unequivocally that prostitution, promiscuity, adultery, pedophilia, clergy sexual misconduct, patriarchal heterosexual marriage, furtive teenage sexual experimentation, “hooking up” for casual sex – all of this is wrong – not because it breaks some antiquated rule, but because it does not heal and enlarge the other – because it does not honor the faithfulness and fidelity of covenant – because it does not glorify God in the temple of sacred sexuality.

So, I hope we can affirm that sexuality grounded in the grace and truth of Jesus Christ does not invite open license. But neither can it be codified within narrow prohibition – as I have discovered in my thirty years of ministry. What about the 60 year old widower who in the agonizing valley of grief after the tragic death of his beloved wife, found himself falling in love with one of our young single female elders, and discovered that his courage to marry again was nurtured by the sacred healing of their sexual love? What about the 24 year old young woman – an elder and a child of te church – who has just fallen in love with a woman – and discovered the joy and delight of eros for the first time her life? What about the two graduate students living 500 miles apart – patiently waiting to marry when they finish their studies – but wanting to grow deeper in a wholistic love for one another with body as well as soul? What about 75 year old Catherine and 80 year old Frank – old and single and both dying of cancer – who want to comfort each other flesh to flesh and bone to bone – without entering the morass of legal and financial issues that plague their two bickering families?

I wrestle with these situations, as I’m sure many of you do. But the context of real people’s real sexual lives has led me to a place where I am not always sure about what God forbids. But I know in my body and in my soul what God celebrates. Sacred sexuality is about glorifying and enjoying God with the full worship of our bodies. Sacred sexuality is about reflecting the image of God in us by desiring the joy of the one we desire. Sacred sexuality is about shaping erotic love with agape love – healing and enlarging the life of the other – even at the cost of sacrificing our own needs. Sacred sexuality is about sharing our bodies in the context of covenant – a faithful and monogamous and enduring relationship that reflects the dependable fidelity of our utterly faithful God. And sacred sexuality becomes – in the wide grace of God’s redemptive plan – a way to be beneficial – a way to edify and build up the larger community of God’s people.

Friends, we are about to come to this generous table – where the very body and blood of our Living Lord will be given to us joyfully and freely. There is no dualism at this table. There is no separation of mind from body or soul from sensation. Here in taste and smell and touch we will be fed with the nourishing presence of the Living God. As spiritual people, as sexual people, as ethical people, as beloved people – let us come. Let us taste and see that the God is good.

May it be so – for you and for me. Amen.

Reconciliation Matters: C67 Now and Then

 John Wilkinson
Pastor,Third Presbyterian Church
Rochester, New York 

Address to the 2002 Covenant Conference
November 7, 2002

II Corinthians 5:16(RSV): From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer. 17: Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. 18: All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19: that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20: So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21: For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

“Irresistibly imposed.” Those words from II Corinthians– “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself”– irresistibly imposed themselves on a committee, a Presbyterian committee, of all things. At least that’s the way that Edward A. Dowey, Jr., who chaired the committee that offered the Confession of 1967 to the Presbyterian church, described the way in which those words captured a committee’s imagination. “Reconciliation,” articulated by the Apostle as the centerpiece of Christian theology and appropriated by a committee nearly two millennia later, forms the centerpiece of a statement — what we this afternoon will call “C67″ — that served as a theological and ecclesiastical watershed for the Presbyterian family.

A bit of background is called for. As you know, one of the many ways that Presbyterian history in the United States can be mapped is through the rhythm of schism and union. The pattern usually involves some kind of theological controversy, theological on the surface anyway, that also reflects a deeper struggle over power and decision-making and styles and practices of ministry and governance. Then, once bodies split, they almost always soon thereafter begin conversations about how they may get back together again.

Two major Presbyterian streams dissolved and then sub-divided in the constellation of events surrounding the Civil War, the issues of abolition and slavery and the war itself, and the church’s response. Almost immediately, those two streams began conversations about getting back together, but it was not really until the late 1940′s and 1950′s that those discussions gained much traction. A near-miss proposed union in 1954 of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (the P.C.U.S., the so-called “Southern” church), the United Presbyterian Church in North America (a denomination representing the Scottish covenanting tradition) and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (the P.C.U.S.A. without the current set of parentheses, the so-called “Northern” church) led to the union of the “Northern” church and the United church in 1958 to create the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, reflecting perhaps the longest ecclesiastical title in the history of Christendom. The bottom line was that a new Presbyterian church emerged in 1958, representing several streams of tradition.

Throughout those decades of union and reunion discussion, the issue of theological standards was always at the top of the agenda. Though the issue of application of standards was something of an issue of contention, union committees often reached quick consensus on the standards themselves: the Westminster Confession of Faith, plus a package considering the Larger and Shorter Catechisms as well as either an update of the Westminster standards or a contemporary statement of faith.

Then:
Such was the case as we turn to the theological identity of the newly united U.P.C.U.S.A. It took an overture, of course, to really get the ball rolling in the newly united church, from the Presbytery of Amarillo. That overture, about the need to state the faith in a new way for a new time and generation, passed, with appropriate appropriation of the Westminster standards, and the committee that received the overture concurred with the sentiment that the church needed a “brief Statement of faith in clear, concise, and contemporary language” seeking to “bring to all the members of our Church some sense of participation in the thrilling revival of theology.” The thrilling revival of theology. How wonderful that sounds.

In the fall of 1958, therefore, the Special Committee on a Brief Statement of Faith began its work, chaired by Edward Dowey of Princeton Theological Seminary by way of McCormick Theological Seminary and by way — along with his colleagues on the committee — of study with some of the great names of 20th century theology.

The notes of the Dowey committee fill some half a dozen boxes at the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia. They capture what you might imagine they would capture, a group of dedicated, initially perplexed but eventually fairly convinced professors, ministers, leaders, seeking a way through an extraordinarily complex task in order to offer something useful to the church. They succeeded, and the manner in which they succeeded deserves not just a nod of recognition 35 years later, but re-examination and re-appropriation of how what they said then speaks to us now, for such a time as this. Because it does.

This is only nominally a history lesson this afternoon, but there are some things we should remember. We should remember that we Presbyterians are a confessional people, serving a confessional church. That is to say while “theology matters” all of the time, the work of the Dowey committee, and the call for a new confession, represents a particular moment when theology really mattered. The task they were given sought to do many things, but primarily it sought to give new articulation to some very foundational Reformed affirmations, at the same time providing a supplement, some say correction, some say abandonment, some say worse and some say better, to the Westminster standards that had served as the sole foundation of American Presbyterian theological identity.

One of the things we will need to bookmark for another day is not only the addition of C67 to our confessional corpus, but the creation, the formation, of a book of confessions, called appropriately the Book of Confessions, that captures theological formulations from the ancient church, the Reformation era and the 20th century. It took several years for the Dowey committee to develop that concept, just as it took them several years to develop the notion of a theme for this new statement of faith.

How to start? Whether “we hold these truths” or “four score and seven years ago,” how one starts matters. How to start? Was a central theme advisable, and if so, which one? Should it be “redemption,” what God has done for us in Jesus Christ? Should it be “revelation,” the ways in which we come to learn about God? In the end, Paul’s words about reconciliation “irresistibly imposed” themselves as the way in which we understand both redemption and revelation and became the calling card of the confession.

Unlike Westminster, which began with an affirmation of scriptural inspiration and authority, C67 was less interested in the how of the Bible and more interested in the that of the Bible, that the Bible testified to the reconciling ministry of Jesus Christ and therefore offered to the church a vision of reconciliation, a confession leading to Scripture and leading from scripture. As Ed Dowey remarked one time, this confession would start not with a book, but with the Word.

Our confessional tradition is fluid, rather than static, so the year, 1967, matters. Dowey wrote one time that the “genius” of the Reformed tradition is “a confessionalism that has adapted to its historical environment, subordinate to the scriptural witness and stating the faith in language appropriate to the evolving needs of the specific churches for which they have been composed.” (G.A. Minutes, 1959, page 267) It took many drafts and much debate to get to that point. Being a confessional church, I would submit, is like that. Reconciliation is like that.

C67 was originally intended to be “C65.” That a date was chosen at all as the title of the document is instructive — it suggests a timeliness to the whole enterprise that also seems very Reformed — God speaking a new word to the church in a new and particular moment in time, based on the timeless testimony of scripture.

And so, along with being a confessional church, we have been a contextual church. We believe in providence, in the loving acts of a sovereign God; we believe that that same sovereign God places us in context, historical, social, religious context. And what better context than the United States of the 1960′s to make a confessional statement to the church and for the world?

Historians of religion label the 1960′s a “watershed” era, a “turning point,” as do sociologists of religion. Consider this: the beginning of massive population shifts and the initial emergence of new immigrant groups; the civil rights movement; the women’s movement; the Vietnam war as political and cultural event, and the attendant anti-war movement; Vatican II, names like John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, John XXIII, Betty Friedan, the Beatles.

Or consider what was happening in the church and the broader religious landscape: the rise of secularism; the rise of evangelicalism; the beginning of the decline of mainline church membership; what sociologists like Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney call the decline of religion’s cultural influence or what historians like William Hutchison and Sidney Ahlstrom call religion’s “loss of hegemony.”

Context therefore does matter to a confessional church, just as it did for those faithful ones who produced the Scots Confession or the Second Helvetic Confession or even the Theological Declaration of Barmen. Context matters, even as Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Perhaps the most influential context for the formation of C67 came at a unique confluence of religion and culture in a theological movement called “neo-orthodoxy.” A definition of neo-orthodoxy is a bit elusive; those who practiced it and taught it never really considered themselves part of a movement. Its banner carriers include names like Emil Brunner in Europe, Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr in this country, and most principally the great Swiss theologian Karl Barth. Neo-orthodoxy sought to serve as a corrective both to liberal Christianity and conservative Christianity, by focusing on the centrality of Christ as the Word of God, per the first chapter of the Gospel of John, the centrality of the Bible as it gave witness to Christ and a historical consciousness that took the world very, very seriously.

The Dowey committee was steeped in neo-orthodoxy, reflecting deep appreciation especially for the thought of Karl Barth. Beyond the more affirmative appropriation of the trajectories of neo-orthodoxy, the C67 committee saw as part of its task to challenge a view of orthodox Calvinism reflected in the Westminster standards and codified in the Princeton theology of the nineteenth century. This may be a bit more historically trivial than what concerns us at this gathering, except for the fact that we are living with historical and theological trajectories now more than a century old in American Presbyterianism. The issues “then,” many of them involving views of biblical authority and interpretation and Christological understandings — what we declare about Jesus Christ — continue to dwell with us “now.”

Dowey and the drafting committee sought to provide some remedy to the Westminster position on the Bible, specifically around the issue of inspiration. A counter view to that position understood the committee’s real concern not to be Westminster, but a nineteenth-century appropriation of Westminster headquartered in the scholastic Calvinist positions of Princeton theology. Read Westminster on the Bible. See what it says. The committee, however, deemed Westminster to be inadequate, because it led with inspiration rather than revelation. This position was founded on the neo-orthodox presumption that the Bible was both Word of God (vis a vis a liberal position) and subject to the learning of modern biblical scholarship (vis a vis the orthodox position).

The committee’s work itself involved a series of eight years or so of meetings, drafts, debates, compromises. After several years of formative work, including the development of the material on the Bible as well as the settlement of the “reconciliation” theme, the committee turned to the topic of ethics. The committee from the start embraced the concept of a strong ethical statement about the church’s role in society; it now turned to the task of specificity.

In 1964, and particularly in 1965, as the committee’s work proceeded to its conclusion, the church experienced other developments. One of the key developments in the C67 story is the rise of two groups — call them “special interest” groups or “affinity” groups, call them, as does sociologist of religion Robert Wuthnow, “struggle” groups.

One such group, which came to be known as Presbyterians United for (a) Biblical Confession, claimed as its task the renewal of the church through biblical and evangelical means. Its focus came to land on the way that the proposed confession considered the issues of biblical authority and interpretation. P.U.B.C. was quite satisfied with the Westminster understanding of the Bible, and quite dissatisfied that C67′s perceived abandonment of that position implied an abandonment of a Presbyterian commitment to the authority of the Bible.

Several of the extraordinary biographical moments of this whole story came as Dowey himself, characterized in the report of one meeting with P.U.B.C. leaders as a “lion in the midst of a group of Daniels,” engaged P.U.B.C. rigorously and winsomely in debate. This single topic could become a conference in itself; suffice it to say for the moment that P.U.B.C.’s commitment to “revision” enabled some modifications to happen in the final version of the confession, allowing that group’s constituency to register its support in the confession’s passage.

Such was not the case with another group, known then and now as the Presbyterian Lay Committee. The Lay Committee’s work began in the early 1960′s, prior to the center stage events of C67. J. Howard Pew, Presbyterian elder and successful businessperson of Sun Oil renown, was convinced that American Protestantism, and particularly the Presbyterian brand of it, had lost its moorings. Pew and the Lay Committee would have agreed with the P.U.B.C. concerns about biblical authority; their more heightened concern was with C67′s social statements. The church, to Pew and others, had no business “meddling” in political affairs. The most celebrated moment in the C67 story, in fact, came in December of 1966 as the Lay Committee purchased a full-page advertisement in The New York Times and countless other newspapers across the country to protest the proposed confession. While P.U.B.C. embraced a strategy of revision, therefore, the Lay Committee’s strategy of rejection could not allow for the support even of a revised statement.

The 1965 General Assembly in Columbus, Ohio overwhelmingly approved a draft of the confession, thus handing the work of the Dowey committee to a committee of fifteen, chaired by Sherman Skinner. The Skinner committee treaded lightly and faithfully on the previous committee’s work, but heard more than 2000 forms of critique, many of them focusing on the issue of biblical authority and the confession’s ethical statements.

While enfolding the majority of the 1965 version into its final offering, the Skinner committee did offer a P.U.B.C. approved compromise on the Bible, coupling the Word (upper-case “W”) of God in reference to Christ with the word (lower-case “w”) of God “written” to refer to the text of Holy Scriptures. The Skinner committee also adopted a fourth ethical provision, on human sexuality, that met the approval both of the Dowey committee and any Presbyterians who were looking for a clearer statement on issues of human morality.

Following a successful 1966 General Assembly in which the Skinner Committee made the original committee’s offering even more accessible to the church at large, all that remained was one more round of presbytery voting. In late spring 1967, the Confession of 1967 became a reality, along with a Book of Confessions and a new set of ordination vows.

So, what does it say? That question will be more fully explored in the context of several workshops, but more than a few highlights now will help to set the stage for those and other conversations. The best treatment of the confession is an “unofficial” commentary produced by Dowey himself following the final vote for ratification. But here goes.

The structure of the confession is Trinitarian, flowing from God’s work of reconciliation to the church’s ministry of reconciliation to the fulfillment of reconciliation. One of several pivot points happens early, in ¶9.03, which serves as a kind of purpose statement and a reminder about the role of confessions in Reformed theology.

The real pivot point, however, happens as ¶9.07 re-frames II Corinthians for the present confessional task, and then as ¶9.31 makes missional hay with that confessional affirmation: “to be reconciled to God is to be sent into the world as his reconciling community,” which Dowey called “the force of the entire confession,” even with two passive infinitives. (Commentary, page 112)

We have said enough about the theme of reconciliation itself. Perhaps the fact that it was not roundly criticized means that it should be provoking us a bit more. This reconciliation is not about political correctness or about smoothing over real and honest differences — it is about the gospel mandate. Gayraud Wilmore wrote later that “Reconciliation, the great theme of the C’67, does not rest upon rhetoric, but upon deeds, upon performance, upon the structural transformations that only the responsible use of power can affect.”(“The Path Toward Racial Justice,” in Journal of Presbyterian History, volume 61, number 1, Spring 1983, page 117.)

Beyond the theme of reconciliation, there are several substantive streams of thought that will not receive any significant attention this afternoon: important paragraphs such as ¶9.08 that focuses on the humanity of Christ, his earthly ministry, largely ignored in the history of confessional statements, and on his life as a Jew from Palestine. An even more prominent theme given scarce attention here is a revolutionary doctrine of the church, an ecclesiology that affirms, per ¶9.31, for example, the call of the church to be Christ’s reconciling community dispersed in the world.

As we have noted already, the two controversial touch points of the confession revolved around the Bible and social issues. Dowey would argue that the confession was biblical throughout; in fact, it serves as a kind of exegetical, hermeneutical exploration of II Corinthians. But the four paragraphs on the Bible, ¶9.27 through ¶9.31, remain primed for conversation. Notice terms like “sufficient revelation” and “unique and authoritative” and “received and obeyed.” Notice the term “witness without parallel.” Notice especially in ¶9.29 the interplay between the human quality of the words and the divine nature of the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and the call to critical study.

I would submit that the confession is biblical throughout; in fact, it is a some 4700-word exegetical exercise on one biblical text. Nowhere is that biblical understanding more pointed than in the litany of ethical and social concerns that served as the confession’s other prime controversy, the praxis of the church generated by the act of confession. In ¶9.43 the committee makes the case that the church is called to face particular crises in particular times. It initially posited three such situations, knowing that the Skinner Committee would most likely add a fourth to the list.

• ¶9.44 focuses on the issue of race, within both church and society. It speaks to what historian Gayraud Wilmore, who served as the lone African-American member of the C67 committee, has called the “ambivalence” of the Black Presbyterian experience. It also embraces the commitment to “integration” as proclaimed, in the early and middle 1960′s, by Martin Luther King, Jr., applying the concept of reconciliation in an effort to break down barriers of discrimination.
• ¶9.45 speaks as much to the world of the past, a Cold War world, as it does to the emerging world in the Vietnam War. It would not be until 1967, in fact, when the U.P.C.U.S.A. produced a particular statement on the Vietnam War. The words “even at risk to national security” provoked heated debate and even elicited a statement from the Department of Defense stating that Presbyterianism and military service were not incompatible. This paragraph does expand Presbyterian thinking to include — through the rubric of reconciliation — the church’s call to make peace as well as the traditional issue of waging just war. It also reads as a very current statement in light of the issues facing us in late 2002, in Iraq and North Korea, for example, as we face the rumor of war.
• ¶9.46′s consideration of “enslaving poverty in a world of abundance” gives echo to Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” or the aftermath of books like Michael Harrington’s The Other America. Reconciliation in this case would confront economic systems, class distinctions, technological oppression, and links, much as the Roman Catholic understanding of a “preferential option for the poor,” Jesus’ earthly ministry with the needs of the economically impoverished.
• ¶9.47, on human sexuality, seeks to envision a sense of reconciling order for the “confusion” and “anarchy” of relationships between men and women. The issues it raises continue to be our issues, though our issues have broadened and deepened as well. That’s why we are here. How people make decisions about sexual behavior — in the then-new face of birth control options or the threat of disease, and how human sexuality is exploited in the then tip-of-the-iceberg world of television, should still concern us, we ourselves, our young ones.

This paragraph is concerned about confusion. It captures a moment on this side of a more complete conversation about the roles of women in church and society, and, of course, about homosexuality, about G.L.B.T. concerns, about the travails facing this denomination formally since 1978. More on that in a moment, but consider now how the biblical and theological themes of reconciliation might be brought to our current conversation.

Now:
So, briefly and quite incompletely, that is the “then” of C67, enough historical background to be dangerous and enough confessional provocation, I hope, to provide stimulus for our own little thrilling theological revival. That was then. What about now? The Bard of Duluth, Robert Zimmerman, whom we know as Bob Dylan, wrote in those same 1960′s that “the times they are a changin’.” Well, Bob, show me a time that’s not! Why we re-visit C67 is not nostalgia, or even relevance, but truth, truth for today.

Since then, the only constant has been change, and change has been constant, accelerated by new forms of globalization and technology. The earlier era faced war in Vietnam, Cold War, war on poverty. This era faces war on drugs and war on terrorism. We think much differently about the environment. The Berlin Wall has fallen, as has apartheid in South Africa. This is not the 1960′s. It’s not the 1970′s, or 80′s, or 90′s, for that matter. The culture is different.

The church is different as well. We enjoy no cultural hegemony, if we really ever did. Denominations look different; brand loyalties shift. Secularism is on the rise, as is evangelicalism. James Davison and others have written of “culture wars,” battles in society and religion, ideological realignment with clear church implications, reflected in the Presbyterian family by the continuing role and presence of affinity groups, including those who organized “against” something then and those who organize “against” something now. And we continue to face decline defined by membership statistics and defined much more broadly than that, and perhaps more deeply.

And yet, and yet God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The call to reconciliation, first articulated by Paul, re-articulated by Calvin and Barth or by a modest little committee, embodied by a great company of saints in word and deed, in many times and places. That call to reconciliation is more pregnant now than ever. Human depravity takes on new forms to which the transformative ministry of reconciliation in Christ must be offered.

It could happen in the particularity of four ethical statements, or the adding of new ones to the mix. If you want an interesting adult education exercise, invite people to list what issues they believe that a contemporary confession should consider. C67 seems pretty fresh in such a conversation. Issues of race haunt us still. Issues of war and peace haunt us as well. Poverty has taken on new forms, or more evolved forms. And all three are inextricably linked in our urbanized, globalized world.

And what about sex, and what about human sexuality? Can ¶9.47 teach us anything about G-6.0106b, for example? Perhaps. Perhaps we would do well at least to think about what human sexuality is not, according to C67. It is not confusion. It is not exploitation. It is not anarchy. It is a gift of reconciliation.

Reconciliation is about hard work, and not casual and surface harmony. Leonard Cohen’s wonderful song “Hallelujah” declares that “love is not a victory march.” Reconciliation is not a victory march. It is a gift to be received with gratitude and tended to and nurtured, a precious gift. Reconciliation between beloved one and beloved one. Reconciliation between co-worker and co-worker. Reconciliation between a certain constitutional provision and a biblical vision of Jesus’ extraordinary hospitality and common sense Presbyterian polity, reconciliation with those who have been so injured by that provision, and reconciliation between those who think one thing about that and those who think another. Or reconciliation even between the demands and possibilities in the most current iteration of our broken and fearful world.

We must reclaim the biblical vision of this, articulated not only by Paul but affirmed throughout the pages of scripture, and most certainly in the gospel narratives of Jesus’ ministry. And we must re-claim the confessional task. We owe that to each other, even as we owe it to the great tradition in which we gather.

To gauge the trajectory of the confession’s impact after the drama of its adoption is to be drawn into the murky waters of church growth and decline, of rising partisanship and shifting allegiances, of a new denominationalism that continues to seek definition and stability and unity.

And yet, the Confession of 1967 serves, to utilize John Calvin’s visual metaphors, as lens, window, mirror, prism to the past and as a looking glass into the future of American Presbyterianism.

Any statement of faith that takes Jesus seriously, the Bible seriously, the church seriously and the world seriously should be taken seriously. Whether it is a Reformed understanding of biblical authority, a compelling Christology or a vital social ethic, the Confession of 1967 will continue to matter as the church pays attention to it, and even more so, to the reconciliation it proclaims. It reminds us of the possibilities of a thrilling revival of theology, and also reminds us that we are at our best when we are teaching and learning and engaged in the mission of the church rather than fussing with one another.

At the new-member classes at Third Church, I often remark, half jokingly, that we could do a lot worse for ourselves than reading the Brief Statement of Faith before going to bed every evening, with its mantras of “in life and in death we belong to God” or “in a broken and fearful world the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing.” A member of the Membership Committee came up to me one Sunday after church. “You know,” he said, “I’ve been doing that. I’ve been reading the Brief Statement every day.” I was stunned and grateful. Stunned that anyone had actually listened to me, and grateful for the benefits of that discipline!

We don’t have many mantras in our tradition. Here is one, from a very intentionally non-liturgical confession — ¶9.55. “With an urgency born of this hope.” With an urgency born of this hope. With an urgency born of this hope. With an urgency born of this hope might we claim and be claimed by the promise of reconciliation– for a church in very real need and a world aching for good news.

In the “Little Gitting,” T.S. Eliot writes: “And all shall be well and/All manner of thing shall be well/When the tongues of flame are in-folded/Into the crowned knot of fire/And the fire and the rose are one.”

And the fire and the rose are one. And all manner of creatures are one. And all manner of Christians are one. And all manner, yes, even of Presbyterians, are one. And our fallen selves and our redeemed selves are one. And the broken and fearful world and its creator are one. And the church and its Lord are one. Thank God for that ever present and not-quite-yet gift of reconciliation, in the name of the one in whom such reconciliation is found, and no other, even Jesus Christ.

Struck Down But Not Destroyed

Curtis Jones
Pastor, Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church
Baltimore

Sermon to the
2002 Covenant Conference
Opening Worship, November 7, 2002

II Corinthians 4: 7 – 12

We have a tradition in Baltimore. I stand before the congregation, and I say “God is good!”
[Congregation responds:] “All the time!”

I bring you greetings from the Presbytery of Baltimore and from the Madison Avenue Church that has so graciously allowed me to serve over these past fifteen years. I pray God’s blessings on all of you — to the wonderful pastor of the church and this host congregation, to Covenant Network, to some of my dear friends as I look out over the crowd, and to many of you who I hope to get to know a little better before we depart from this place.

For those of you who don’t know me, let me see if I can put you at ease. There is a story that is told about man who arrived late for a worship service much like this one. He slipped in and tried to take a seat so as not to cause a disturbance and sat down beside a very stately, elegant lady.  He opened the bulletin, and to his surprise he knew the guest speaker. He turned to this woman and said, “Ma’am, you are about to hear the driest, dullest, most boring sermon in your life.” The woman was obviously disturbed, and he took note of that, and she responded by saying, “Sir, do you know who I am?” He said, “No, I do not.” She said, “I happen to be the wife of that dry, dull, boring preacher.” With the appropriate pregnant pause he regrouped and looked her straight in the eye and said, “Ma’am, do you know who I am?” She said, “I certainly do not.”  He said, “Good! Good bye!”

I would like to speak today on the theme of “Struck down but not destroyed.” I, like some of you, may have been taken aback by the events of Tuesday night. I came here hoping to celebrate victory with Vice President Walter Mondale. I came here hoping that our country was, at least, moving in a different direction towards reconciliation, only to discover that we are as divided as we were during the time of the reading of the acquittal of O.J. Simpson — only to discover that this nation is still several nations; some black, some white, some brown, some rich, some poor, some gay, some heterosexual. Tuesday was painful in many respects. It was so bad that after listening to all the gloating I could not listen to the news anymore on Wednesday morning. I turned on my stereo: Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke. I needed some relief.

Then I realized that this is not a “they and them.” We are seated on the same side of the table hopefully trying to find solutions to what has become a perplexing dilemma. So, it is in that light that I have chosen a perplexing writer, for Paul has generated as much sadness as joy. He is about as clear as he is perplexing: Paul who sometimes waxes eloquent when he says there is neither east nor west, male nor female, gentile nor Jew, slave nor free, and then turns right around and says “Slaves, obey your Masters,” “Wives, be obedient to your husbands.” It is the sheer volume of Paul’s writing which dictated that the man cannot be ignored; and whether you attribute all of these varying and seemingly contradictory statements to the redactors or to later disciples who would compile his works, or whether you attribute them to the mystery of God, we find ourselves struggling inside of this earthen vessel — to use the RSV version. Paul captures the human predicament reaching all the way back to Genesis, making reference to having been made of clay. He says that inside the earthen vessel with all of its imperfections, we have the treasure to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.

I don’t know about you, but to me that is good news! It somehow says that I might be broken, there may be a hole in the bucket, a chip in the Corning Ware, but inside the earthen vessel we have the treasure. It is this treasure that gives us our common ground and our common purpose, even when we don’t act like it. It is this treasure that unites us, be we Democrats or Republicans. It is this treasure which helps us survive our common ground, be you from Mars or from Venus.

We have come to this point, and we acknowledge that our candidate does not always win, that our issue is not always paramount, and that our train does not always come in. We understand all too clearly that human beings have their ups and their downs, what Martin would call the vicissitudes of life. In fact it is suffering that is the norm in life. Oh, we act so surprised when suffering should somehow enter our living. We are so surprised when people don’t love us back the way we love them. We are so surprised that people do not tithe and maintain beautiful structures like this one. We are surprised when our children don’t call us as they should call us. We are surprised when we find ourselves like Job surrounded by friends who do not have the answer to satisfy the pain in our souls, and we look for an understanding that will help us and give us some sort of assurance that the Lord is still on the throne and still in the blessing business.

I want to greet you because of the work that you have done and are engaged in, the very difficult work of talking about the body of Christ and the love that we ought to have for one another. And when you talk about love, you will be crucified — that is the norm of living. When you try to do right you will be put down and rejected. That is the reality of living. My grandmother used to tell me, If you don’t want to be criticized, don’t say nothin’, don’t do nothin’, and you won’t be nothin’.

I stand before you as an Africentric African-American black male ­ that’s a mouthful — one who is familiar with what it means to be oppressed, one who has a trilogy of stories in my family history, one who laments today that our country is preparing for war, and Botswana has 39% of its population that is HIV-positive. Our enthusiasm for war has overshadowed many of the pressing issues of the day. The poverty level has gone to record numbers ­ 40,000,000 people are under the poverty line, and it does not make the headlines. We have the greatest resources, we are the legitimate superpower. We have a medical industry that can deliver and make a difference in the world.

We can set the trend for what should be; and yet what we do is build bigger barns to store greater wealth. Anybody who is under the illusion that we are inciting Saddam because he represents a potential threat needs to come to grips with the reality that Iraq is the second largest oil producer in the world, and George Bush who could not find oil in Texas has his eye on somebody else’s vineyard. Do you remember Jezebel, Ahab, and Naboth? We want Naboth’s vineyard, and the excuse is terrorism, as though our hands are clean. We prop up these individuals. We educate them, we finance them, and when we are finished with them we kick them to the curb in a self-righteous fashion. Somebody said you’ve got to be careful with self-righteousness, because sometimes self-righteousness is nothing more than jealousy with a halo.

Church: In all of what is before us, the challenge to love and to try and find the common ground once again requires that we speak truth to power and be unapologetic for having done so. There is a saying — “I sought my God, and my God I could not see. I sought my soul, and my soul eluded me. I sought my neighbor, and I found all three.” We come to this critical kairos moment in time, and we find ourselves beaten up and broken down, but within this earthen vessel we still have a song, a sermon to preach and to live, we still have a friend that we must go to, and there are still bridges that we must cross and mountains that we must climb, and giants that we must fight. And still within this earthen vessel the Lord God has given us the strength and what we need to press on.

I remember Reinhold Niebuhr writing about an incident that took place when he was much older in life. He had already been stricken by stroke, and when he spoke he no longer spoke with the vigor and the energy and the excitement, and his face was twisted, and the saliva would run down the side of his cheek. And one of his students had gone to hear him speak, and afterwards he went back to talk to this great man, and he said, “Dr. Niebuhr, why do you continue to preach? You have accomplished so much. The world is indebted to your accomplishments.” And you know Reinhold preached that the great sin of humankind is pretense, the sin of pride, to believe that we are something other than who we are; and the student asked the great teacher, “Why don’t you just retire and rest easy in comfort in the latter years?” And Reinhold said, “If I were to stop preaching right now because of my stroke, if I were to stop because of my physical condition, it would be antithetical to everything that I have ever believed in and written about. As long as the Lord God gives me breath and gives me strength, I am going to proclaim the glory of the Kingdom of our Lord God Almighty.”

Church: within this earthen vessel we sometimes look like we are defeated, and our troops have been scattered. It looks like our fields are plundered; but the Lord God has given us the ability to stand on holy ground. Moses was 80 years old. He was trying to retire. He did not want to go back to the place of his beginning. But the Lord God will sometimes fix you. You know, God will identify your fear and send you back to the very place of your failure. It seems sometimes like you can’t be of use to God unless you demonstrate that God is greater than your fears. That is what the songwriter meant when he said we must “lean on the everlasting arms of God.”

Church, church: there is an illustration in my childhood. My parents one Christmas purchased for me a punching bag. It was a transparent punching bag, the kind that you blow up, then you push that little nipple in, and hope that it doesn’t pop out., and once you have inflated the punching bag you hit it with all your might, and it rolls over and comes back up. I was determined that I was going to knock out this punching bag and hit it so hard that it would stay down, and so I hit it again. It rolled over, came back up, and this time it hit me!

When I asked my parents after several attempts to knock out this punching bag, Why won’t the punching bag stay down? my parents said to me, “Do you see the little man on the inside?” — (it very possibly could have been a little woman) — and I said, “Yes, I see it.” I didn’t realize that it had been weighted and anchored so that it would defy gravity when inflated and roll back up and stand erect. I didn’t realize that something on the inside is greater than that which is on the outside. I hadn’t yet made the connection that Paul seems to have made here when he said, “We have the treasure inside of this earthen vessel.” We sometimes confront life, and we are afflicted, but not crushed; we are perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed because of the something that we have on the inside.

Let me see if I can make this theologically more sound. What Jesus says in the 14th Chapter of the gospel of John, in the 18th verse he says, “I will not leave you desolate” or “comfortless” — depending on your translation; and then in the 20th verse of the 14th Chapter he says, “Then that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” Do you understand where I am going now with this? In the 23rd verse he says that if a person loves me and keeps my commandment, then my father will love them, and we will come and make our home in them.

Paul, this great writer of clarity as well as perplexity, says that if God is for you who can be against you? One of the realities that the church has got to come to grips with is that we have got to stop acting like the victim. We have a victim consciousness when we look around, and we say, “Woe is me.” I am the only one standing, everybody else has left. Our churches are dying. We pretend that the numbers game constitutes hell; but if we understand the story of Gideon, it is not the number and not the troops in your army, but who stands with you.

Oh church, if I had a word for the Democrats and the Republicans, if I had a word for those who point the finger at the diversity of God’s creation — it is interesting how our response to difference is fear. Difference does not mean deficiency. It just means difference. God made us and said that we were good. If someone has a problem with a black person, with a poor person, with a Republican, with a Democrat, with a gay person, with a lesbian person, see, your problem is not with that person. They can’t help who they are. Your problem is with the God who made them. What we have come to know and to appreciate of our creation is that God is a God of diversity. Nowhere in Scripture does it talk about cloning. This is a God who doesn’t even make the snowflakes identical! God takes great pleasure in creation. God has made us who we are.

There is a sign over the temple at Karnak that says, “To thine own self be true.” Oh, we’ve got to be true to the Lord God that has made us. E.e.cummings has said, To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight. Never stop fighting for who you are. We are a people of love, and we haven’t been the best lovers. The African-American community has not yet embraced the struggle of injustice against gays and lesbians in the ways that many of you have struggled against racism. Our church has yet to stand with all of its members. We cannot seek purity in the church by excommunicating people that we don’t like and believe should not be there.

There is a dimension of peace and harmony that gets worked out over time, over time. The contradiction that is before us is that if we put people out of the church because they are not like us, we make a critical mistake, because families and family members are not all the same. God forbid the day when we start putting our children out of the house because they failed to live up to our expectations. Instead let’s greet them where they are and love them and not be the judge over them, knowing that we, too, have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and no one, no one is God but God alone.

My vote and my faith are for the Lord; and sometimes when I do that, I vote against myself.

God bless you and keep you.

Beyond the Human Point of View

 Presentation at the Covenant Network of Presbyterians Luncheon

211th General Assembly
Fort Worth, TX
June 21, 1999

The Rev. Peter J. Gomes
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and
Pusey Minister in The Memorial Church
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Excerpts from this address appear in Covenant Connections Vol. 2, #3.

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view.” II Corinthians 5:16

My colleagues in Cambridge are quite bewildered as to why I’m here. When I told them that I was coming to Texas for lunch, they thought that even by my standards that was a slightly hyperbolic sort of statement. But it is in fact the case. I have come for lunch — not to be lunch, not to do lunch, but to share lunch with you on this remarkable, stimulating, and courageous occasion, and I am happy to do so. I was flattered to receive the invitation, and very much aware of what it portended: some of you know that I am not unfamiliar in certain Presbyterian circles.

Many years ago, I preached in the great high kirk of St. Giles’ in Edinburgh — as close to a Vatican as Presbyterians would permit themselves to acknowledge — and the minister of the high kirk, my dear friend Gilleasbuig Macmillan, warned me before the service. He said, “Just for your own good I want to assure you that the people will give you a careful listening, but they’re not like your usual American congregation; they’re not very exuberant, and hardly anybody will say anything to you at the close of the service. We do stand at the door, however, and I don’t want you to take this amiss.” So I preached as God gave me utterance, we then went to the door, and it was exactly as he had said. Dozens and dozens and dozens of Edinburgh Presbyterians passed by with a slight nod of the head and maybe a little incline but without further word or gesture, until one woman came along and took my hand in her two, which is a very dangerous sign at the door of a church. I do not permit it at The Memorial Church. She took my hand in both of hers, she looked me straight in the eye, and she said, “Och, it must have been a great honor for you to preach to us this morning.” So it was; and before anyone has to say that to me today, I will say that it is a great honor for me to be among you.

Now, I must tell you that your invitation is courageous, and it may have been courageous for me to accept it. Needless to say, the Southern Baptists didn’t ask me to speak at their convention, although I belong to the larger Baptist fellowship. Your invitation to me is very brave, and the situation reminds me of one of your brethren whom I hold in high esteem, Tom Gillespie, president of Princeton.

About nine years ago Tom invited me to give the Commencement address at Princeton Seminary and I happily accepted; and between the acceptance of the gracious invitation and the time that I was to appear at Princeton, I created a spot of bother, I guess one would say, and gained my fifteen minutes of notoriety on a subject that has seemingly obsessed the Presbyterians for many years. So, not wanting to embarrass Tom, and not wanting myself to be embarrassed, I called him and told him that I thought that, considering everything, I should withdraw from the obligation and we would call it a draw. I was aided in that decision by a letter from several Christian students from Princeton who, in the name of the gospel, asked me not to come because my presence would be divisive.

Who was I to divide the Presbyterians? So I prepared not to go. Well, Tom Gillespie, praise God, would not hear of it. He said, “You were invited and you must come, and I promise you a warm-hearted and faultless reception here at Princeton,” even though our views — he didn’t say this, but I understood it — on the subject of sexuality are not only different but pretty widely publicized. So I girded up my loins and made my way to Princeton Junction, and found my way to the Chapel. As you know, Princeton Chapel is an enormous parking garage of a place, and thousands and thousands of people were there, and there was that slight undercurrent that you know so well — nothing explicitly stated but you could feel that there was a little something going on. It was just as Tom had said, however, with everything very nice and pleasant. Then came the moment when I was to preach, and up I went into the enormous pulpit — it takes half an hour to get into that pulpit — and there was a hushed moment of expectation. I said to them, “I want to commend you at Princeton for your courage, I want to commend you for your hospitality; you have done a brave and good thing in inviting me, an out and open and affirming and practicing Baptist, to speak to you on this occasion.” Some people were shocked, many were reassured, others a bit relieved, and some a bit bewildered.

There are no surprises here among you, I suspect, as to why it seemed useful and perhaps even helpful for me to appear, and I’m delighted to do so. There are virtues in having a stranger among you. For one, I will be gone by two o’clock this afternoon and we may not ever meet again, at least in this life, and when and if we do it is bound to be under different circumstances. I realize, as Charles I said, and knew from his own experience, that “There is nothing more dangerous than a Presbyterian fresh off his knees.” I’m very much aware of the power of convictions and the power of contrary convictions. And so I come among you as somebody who is with you but not necessarily of you, and that is an important perspective to maintain here today.

The first thing I want to affirm — and that is the word I will use in this setting — is the importance of what you are doing as the Covenant Network. This is far more important than simply an internal matter of housekeeping or denominational polity or politics within the Presbyterian church. I hope you are aware that the witness that you make in this Covenant gathering, and in the covenant of communities of which you are a part, is witness not just to the Presbyterian Church: some of you might feel that if it were just to the Presbyterian Church it would not be worth your time, and I feel that way too. Your witness is not just to the Presbyterian Church; it is to the whole church of God, and to the whole of civilization, because it is not only religious people who will see what you are doing and what you stand for, but that vast army of the secular, the bewildered, the confused, and the people on the outside of any household of faith. They are the ones who will be curious about people of Christian convictions that extend beyond the conventional view of their own polity and communion, and will look to your witness and from it take courage and high example.

The importance, therefore, of what you are doing cannot be overestimated, not only within your fellowship but well beyond it. It is important not just for sexual minorities, not just for gay and lesbian people within the church and beyond the church, but important for the sake, first, of the vitality of scripture.

I am going to say a little bit more about the particular reasons for your importance, but the first reason that your witness is important is that it attests to the vitality of scripture. The second reason is that it affirms the current activity and power of the Holy Spirit. And the third reason is that it is a testimonial to the future vitality of the church.

Now let me talk about each of these briefly. Why is your work important for the vitality of scripture, and a way of appropriating scripture which is consistent with the whole history of the church in general, and in particular with our reformed Protestant inheritance of treating scripture and its relationship between the printed text and the vital word? A conundrum that I face frequently in my courses on the interpretation of scripture, and in my general commerce across the country, is being addressed by people in any one of my privileged minority statuses, including that of a gay man, a black man, an unmarried man, a Harvard man, a Baptist man — any one of them, choose your label — as people ask, “How can you keep loyal to a book which is used to do in every one of your distinctions? How can you maintain fidelity, when it would make so much more sense just to chuck the whole thing, or do what Thomas Jefferson did and rewrite it, editing out all the things you’d rather not have in it?” Why are we so committed to that which on a superficial basis would appear to be the instrument of our own destruction or our own inhibition?

I was in a debate once with a very distinguished member of the Nation of Islam, one of the black Muslims, who argued that Christianity is so unnatural for black people, that the religion of the slave master and the oppressor is one that does more harm than good, and that that is why the only natural religion for a black person in the modern world is the Nation of Islam. How does one respond to that, at so many other levels, at so many particular divisive levels?

It strikes me, as I think about how to answer that question each time it’s put to me, that I’ve never thought of myself as apart from the community of scriptural experience, scriptural interpretation, and scriptural authority. It has never been mine to look at from the outside, for I was born into the faith of my fathers and my mothers, and I was nourished by it and continue to be nourished in it. I am not there on probation; I am not an on-looker. It is my church, my faith, my book; it belongs to me as I belong to it, and the notion just beggars credulity that I should chuck the whole experience or reconfigure my experience to conform to it because there are parts of it which do not describe the world as I now know it or as I have experienced it. It simply does not make sense, nor has it ever made sense for the people of God.

This makes me realize what our evangelical friends refer to as the “perspicacity of scripture,” and realize what a dynamic and vital book it is, that in every age and in every place and in every clime it has the capacity, without changing one jot or tittle, to include within its gracious orbit people who heretofore or in other circumstances would have no way of being included.

It is a book that invites, that opens, that compels, that consoles, that comforts, that redefines our relationship to ourselves, to each other, and to God. And the book that is capable of doing that is the book to which I am prepared to devote all the powers and skills and graces that God has given me. The Bible in its dynamic way is an inclusive book, and our ancestors understood that. Our earliest Christian ancestors understood that the Jewish book was a book that was capable of accommodating a different revelation; and as they moved through their human experience they discovered the capacity of this book to draw them in. It certainly was true of our ancestors at the time of the Reformation, and it has been the experience of Christian people throughout the world ever since. This is not a book that belongs to somebody else, or to some prior period, or to some particular school of interpretation or exegesis. And every attempt to put a fence around this book, to keep it from change, and to keep people from it, has gone down to defeat.

The history of the interpretation of scripture is a history of the capacity of God’s word to speak in many tongues and in many ways, and to draw all people into its gracious embrace. It strikes me that that is perhaps the most compelling and exciting case for what we would call the ‘authority’ of scripture. It does not mean bowing down to some inert text or to some absolute school of exegesis, but in this case means recognizing in the history of the people in the book and in the encounters of the peoples of the world with this book, the experience of people who have been called to new life and who have recognized in that experience and in that relationship the vitality of their own image created in the image of God. It is from that book that that operating principle comes. Therefore I affirm the authority of scripture, in the sense of its exemplary model, its authority for us in describing the relationship that God intends for us to have, and for all of us to share. And I recognize that the authority of scripture is based on one fundamental principle of modesty which acknowledges the fact that God knows more about human vocation and salvation than we do.

That is a very important principle for my fellow exegetes, my fellow historians of interpretation, my fellow biblical scholars and expositors: it is very important to remember that God knows more about vocation and salvation than we do. This principle requires that the church take the unaccustomed position of a certain generosity and a certain modesty in imputing its values upon the values of scripture and God. That is the first thing that we must remember. We are committed to the vitality of scripture, we take the book seriously, we take the history of the book seriously, we take the interpretations of the book seriously. But we understand that the book is but a means and not an end. We do not worship this book. If you do worship it, you are in the wrong church and in the wrong tradition. There are other places in which to worship books, such as in the Morgan Library in New York City; or you might visit any fine collector of rare bindings. You can worship books there, but you can’t worship books in the house of God.

The second thing that I want to affirm by the good example and the powerful witness of this Covenant Network is the affirmation of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit which makes us believe, and makes us know that God speaks, not simply that God spoke. God speaks in the present tense, and the great question that we always have to be alert to is what the Spirit is saying to the churches today. It is interesting to know what the Spirit was saying to the churches in Antioch, in Calcedon, and even what the Spirit was saying to the churches in Geneva; but it is equally important to ask what the Spirit is saying to the churches today. In the Presbyterian Church (USA), in the last year of the twentieth century, for example, what is the Spirit saying? What does the Spirit require? In order to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches, we have to listen, and that is a rather unfamiliar posture to so many of us in the Protestant and Reformed versions of Christ’s catholic church. We are not good listeners. We tend to stop speaking, which is not the same thing as listening, for usually we stop speaking in order to prepare our next set of remarks rather than to listen to what is being said.

What your Covenant Network represents is a force both for listening and for hearing throughout the whole church. And that sometimes may be a difficult task for you. You may sometimes feel inhibited or strapped in by the notion that one of your tasks is not so much to convert or to triumph immediately, but simply to be heard, simply to be listened to. That is a long and tiresome vocation; but it is the vocation that has been thrust upon you, and it is the vocation that you have chosen. We know through the history of our experience as believers in this country, and in the world, that if we really do hear what the Spirit is compelling us to do, we will be forced to change our ways. We may hear things that we’d rather not hear. I suspect that’s one reason why public worship in the great generality of Protestantism is such a noisy enterprise. On Sunday mornings at ten o’clock or eleven o’clock in most Presbyterian churches, I would be willing to bet, there is not three minutes of unstructured sound in the services. If somebody is not speaking, somebody is singing; and if somebody is not singing, somebody’s about to sing or the organ is playing or somebody is strumming on a guitar: we desperately block out the silences for fear that we might hear something that might make a difference.

You are in the business of both listening and hearing what the Spirit has to say; and then by your example, by your witness, by your perseverance, you are persuading others to listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Now, we realize that we’re fighting tremendous odds in any effort to bring the church from where it has been to where we think it ought to be, for the church exists in this wonderful conundrum. It is an agent for change created out of the most powerful elements for change that one can imagine. The Creation is certainly an element for change, the Incarnation is certainly an element for change, the Resurrection is certainly an element for change, the coming again of our Lord is certainly an element for change — we are built for change. And yet the church by itself is probably the most conservative institution short of private banks. We are terrified of change. We have been dragged kicking and screaming into every positive and constructive movement that the world has faced, and our track record of change is not very good. Show me where we have stood on the frontlines and I’ll applaud it, but there won’t be many such instances. Your Co-Moderator has already indicated that if one were to be judged this moment on the church’s position on women, or the church’s position on race, few would be able to stand. “If Thou shouldst judge iniquity, O Lord, who could stand?” I believe that the question of the full inclusion of homosexual persons in the ministries of the church will have the same kind of indicting quality when the question is asked, “Where were we, where was the church, when the movement came, the moment to affirm the gifts which God has laid upon those people whom he has called into his ministry?”

My friend Will Willimon, a Methodist, and dean of the Duke Chapel, reminds me that it is clearly within his memory that forty years ago, as he was entering theological school and the ministry, the vast majority of Methodist preachers were still, in tall-steeple and no-steeple churches, holding onto the inherited racial orthodoxies of a 1958 South Carolina. Now, he says, many of those people are still in the ministry, and the great terrifying question always concerns where they were thirty years ago on this issue, or even twenty years ago. It is possible that God does move in mysterious ways, but sometimes God takes a very long time to do it; and you and I and the church have to give an account of our stewardship on these matters.

It would be nice to think that on the issue of sexuality, the church finally might get it right; but my researchers tell me that you Presbyterians have been debating this subject since 1978 at more or less every one of your conferences. On the one hand one should congratulate you for your consistency and your steadfastness, and on the other hand one could think that you’re obsessed with sex, and that what you like about sex is never coming to any conclusion. My great hope is that for the sake of the rest of the church you will finally come to some conclusion, and our prayer is that it will be the right conclusion. Resistance to change is natural and persistent. And you Presbyterians are devoted to order, as is well known around the world, not because you are orderly but because you are chaotic; and that is why you do everything decently and in order — like the person who washes three times a day: either he is very dirty, or he is very clean.

There is something of that with you, and those of us on the outside just can’t wait for some of you to hang up the wash. The work of the Spirit may at times seem chaotic, risky, and very dangerous. Although Presbyterians are Trinitarians, they tend to place two-thirds of their emphasis on two-thirds of the Trinity, that is, on the first two members. The third member is a little loosey-goosey, a little hard to define and very hard to orchestrate or corral. The important thing to remember about the Spirit’s work at Pentecost, for example, is not the ecstasy which is usually invoked on Pentecost Sunday, the confusion and the excitement and the high energy level. That’s an interesting point, but if that were preached in my sermon course I would say that it’s a ‘B’ point, not an ‘A’ point. The ‘A’ point is the Spirit-induced understanding. That was the thing that the Spirit did, and that was how the people could say that they each heard in their own language the wonderful works of God. The work of the Spirit is designed to foster understanding and ultimate reconciliation. You are about that work.

The final thing I want to say to you is that you members of this Covenant Network are in my opinion the future of the church, and that I think most people recognize that. I think that is why you encounter as much resistance as you do. Most people recognize that this is the way of the Spirit. You can play King Canute if you want to and vote not to allow the tide to come in; you can do it and you may even prevail in that vote. You can play Dame Partington and command the waters to recede by a majority vote in a clean procedural action; but the water will not recede.

You are the future of the church because you represent the kind of hospitality, openness, and lively reading of the word of God that in the long run is going to be the evangelistic seed for the church of the next millennium; and it is to that that you should be lending your energies. You are witnesses to the sure conviction that we must transcend the world of which we are a part. You must not be driven by the agenda of the secular world, you must not be driven by fashion or custom or convenience. You are driven by conviction, and most Christians realize that there are times when conviction crosses in a very jagged way the cultural consensus. You Presbyterians cannot be the church of the cultural consensus, for we do not need another denomination to bless the status quo, or another group of people who pander to the fearful anxieties of our culture. We do not need that: America has enough churches of that order and you ought not to be among them.

That leads me to my concluding remarks, which bring me back to where I started. This talk had a title that somehow got mangled in transmission. The title you have been given is “The Human Point of View,” and I read one of your notes saying that you weren’t quite sure what that was all about. Well, the reason you weren’t quite sure what it was all about is that it wasn’t accurate. The title is “Beyond the Human Point of View,” which makes a very big difference, especially if you’re taking as your text II Corinthians 5:16, which says, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view.” Remember, this is that dead white male Paul speaking to his community about the fact not only that did he not know Jesus after the flesh, but that the knowledge of Jesus after the flesh is now irrelevant.

“We regard no one” — including Jesus — “from a human point of view,” says St. Paul, for we have been brought into “a new creation,” a new relationship. New standards obtain. “Beyond the Human Point of View” is where Christ has always wanted his church to be. And it seems to me that that is the point of view you are trying to affirm and represent in the Covenant Network.

When I looked at the last Baptist of whom I knew to speak to a group of Presbyterians, I realized that it had cost him something. My old friend Harry Emerson Fosdick was very wise to preach to you but not to join you, for your predecessors would have done him in. You can’t do me in, because I’m not joining. But in his great sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” the tone towards its close becomes actually electric. Remember when he says that the times are too important for these petty little divisions within the church to obsess the church, to curtail the mission of the church in a needy and dying and dreadful world? We should not be obsessed with these “lesser matters of the law,” as Dr. Fosdick says, quoting scripture.

I hope the day passes when your denomination is defined by its sexual politics. I yearn for the day when you will all be free of textual harassment, which is not a bad way, I think, of describing the enterprise. It is a good Presbyterian professor, Diogenes Allen, who said, “The only way forward is forward,” for there is no other place to go. You cannot go backward and you cannot stay here. They know that, and that is why they are so concerned about how you carry on your business. The only way forward is forward.

Well, three things for you to remember. The cause is just, you are on the Lord’s side. The cause is just, the record is clear, the experience of the gospel is in your direction, you are sailing with the wind of the Holy Spirit. If you feel a little grim about that from time to time, remember, “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake…for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.” That’s the first thing.

The second thing is that the struggle is real. This is not a metaphorical enterprise, this is a real battle. Fear and ignorance must never be underestimated, and there is always more money for fear and ignorance than for their opposite. Just look around and you will find that that is true.

So, the struggle is very real, which means that patience is the most important witness — which is the third thing. Patience is the most important witness. How does the old hymn go?

Not to the strong goes the battle,
Nor to the swift goes the race;
But to the true and the faithful,
Victory is promised through grace.”

Does that mean that I’m optimistic? No. I am not optimistic; and no Presbyterian I know is ever optimistic. We live in a fallen world ruled by totally depraved people who do not understand the sovereignty of God.

I am not optimistic, but I am hopeful. What is the difference? Optimism cannot stand the bright heat of the noonday reality: mere optimism wilts and has no inner resources with which to combat the seeming hosts of evil all around it. Optimism fades very quickly; but the hopeful are the ones who, in spite of the circumstances, in spite of apparent reality, in spite of the moment, understand that hope endures all things and ultimately carries all before it in God’s time. When we had Nelson Mandela at Harvard last fall, somebody asked him whether in prison he had been optimistic that this day would ever come. He said, “I never was optimistic, but I never lost hope.”

You must remember that God knows where you are. God knows what you are doing. God honors the witness and the ministry that you are making. And while God may not deliver victory into your hands on your timetable or when you think you deserve it or want it, you are on the Lord’s side. You must never, ever give up. Never give up, never go away, never cease to work for the goal of a whole church, a whole ministry which reflects the image of God in all of its splendor, all of its diversity, and all of its glory.

That is the work that you have chosen for yourselves. But perhaps more insistently, that is the work that has been chosen for you.

“From now on, therefore,” my brothers and sisters, “we regard no one from a human point of view.” We have moved beyond that. And by God’s grace we will reach that moment, that place and time, when all of this will be seen as a mere prelude to the great ministry and work to which all of God’s people have been called.

I wish you well in the struggle. Do not give up.

Thank you.