In the very beginning of it all, we know God looked at all of it and said it was good. Very good indeed. What a wonderful start to a love story. The feeling that it is all very good indeed. The feeling that of complete love, love that makes you feel whole.
In the beginning our sexuality was looked at and called good. Now, let’s not forget that things got broken along the way. Really broken, really twisted. It took tablets from heaven, men in sack cloth (on the good days when they were not naked), threats of plagues, migrating communities, destruction of worship space, and ultimately the hard work of God taking on flesh, living, dying, and rising again to live in communities now just to show the hope to bring it all back together. And the good news. . . we are still waiting for all the King’s horses and all the King’s people (inclusive language) to come back in a GREAT second coming and put it together again. So that is a way too short understanding of theodicy, salvation, and atonement, but maybe we can get the gist. Creation was good, it was broken by us, and we await when it will really really get put back together in New Creation.
But for the now, you and me and the collective church around the world, are trying to do our part. We are trying to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. Most days I don’t do this very well and to be honest there are days I don’t think the church does it very well. Do we really love all people as God would have us love them?
The way I see it, God loves us through grace in a way that is welcoming, inclusive, and powerful. It is not weak love. It is bold love, radical love, passionate love. It is forgiving love, accepting love, and changing love. It opens doors and invites you into the mystery of all of God. We as the church hold a lot of the keys to the door of God. We hold sacraments, community, and worship in our hands with our power as mortals. But we hold them only in temporary form, because all of these things our God’s. It is the Lord’s table we invite people to join, it is the People of God gathered, and it is word of God shared and proclaimed every time we gather to worship. Not our table. Not our people. Not our word. But do not deny the fact that we hold a liminal threshold into this love.
Praise God that God’s love is boundless. It luckily is reaching people and pushing through our limits of our churches and touching hearts. But it should not have to. We should be about that work too. We should be about the places where God’s love is at the boundaries and be pushing with God to love more people.
Now, here we are skirting around the topic of homosexuality. For many just by being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or anywhere falling on a sexuality continuum find themselves as beyond the bounds of church, feeling unwelcome not only to our tables of fellowship, but to God’s table. Now as United Methodists we celebrate an open table, a Eucharist, a time of thanksgiving for GOD’S work. We celebrate the way that our doors are open and so are our hearts. We should live that way. Live in a way that is open and with welcome table. That means young or old, straight, LGBTQ, addict, gambler, liar, and priest are all welcome to the table to hear again that God says “taste and see that the Lord is good”, and you too are made whole though Jesus Christ. I don’t hear us saying, “this is the body of Christ broken for you, but not your other friend, you know the one over there.” No, to each person, the body of Christ is broken and shared.
If you would like you could pull out some scripture and we could have a long discussion of sin, brokenness, poor examples of healthy relationships (please someone bring up Britney Spears—because really if anything is degrading marriage I have a theory and it involves her—but I also must admit she was my first concert. Oh Lord hear our prayers. . .), and also you might want to talk about Paul and the New Testament. All of those things are really good conversations and I would like to be part of them.
But first I want to talk about how my sexuality is a gift from God. Yours too for that matter. All of you, reading this, it is a gift. It is a way to manifest grace and to show deep love whose ONLY source is God. Then I want to talk about that word, LOVE. Because all those conversations listed above (Paul or the ones that involve Deuteronomy and how all of us wear clothing of mixed fibers—sinners all!), I can’t really seem to fall into them. I get stuck on that Love God and love your neighbors step. You see, Jesus, my Lord and Savior, told me to do that as the first thing. And like I said, I haven’t mastered that yet. So I am trying, to love God and love my neighbor and the great thing about the gospel is I want you to join with me and doing this. All of you. All means all to me and when we get past this step of loving God and loving neighbor really well, putting the world back together into the wholeness, where we too might step back from the world and call it really good indeed, then I will get back to the semantics conversations. Until then, I will be loving and hope you will be too.