Closing Statements

And the conference is tomorrow!  As such, here, in its totality, is my entire case against a so-called Biblical sexuality.

1) In a culture where death by lynching was an accepted reality even 60 years ago, where not only could people opposed to outlawing lynching run for office openly, and where such people who practiced it are called “Grandpa” instead of “inmate”, it is the duty of any Christian in such a culture, indeed any human being with the barest sliver of a conscience, to hold those who declare an entire class of people sinful, evil, unnatural, or condemned by any Divinity, especially in instances where the so-called offenses are consensual in nature and result in no harm to person, property, or the social well-being, to the strictest standards of political, legal, and spiritual accountability.

2) Because of the nature of the current debate over homosexuality and the current culture that the debate is found in, those in a position of leadership or social influence who declare homosexuality to be ungodly and sinful must have the burden of proof.  If they wish to convince the Church that the loving God whom created all of Mankind and its sexuality would condemn an entire people as sinful, tell them their base identity evil, and force them to deny themselves the very happiness and fulfillment that their hetero brothers and sisters have or risk their immortal soul, they must do so under the strictest scrutiny.  As a Church called to enact Justice and Peace, we as followers of Christ have no other moral option but to insist that they must do so by proving beyond all reasonable doubt, yes, all reasonable doubt, that such is and has always been the case within the Christian religion.  The damage and loss being asked of LGBTQ people for no other reason than the personal discomfort of those against their way of life demands no other standard.

3) Those for Biblical Sexuality cannot remotely meet this burden:

                a) The Bible neither understands itself as a rule book nor the Word of God

b) Jesus the Christ, whom the Bible refers to as the True Word of God, is the final authority within the Christian religion, and his recorded ministry does not involve the subject once.

c) Homosexuality is a modern term important only to a modern world.  Ascribing a 19^th century concept to 1^st century and earlier works would be dismissed as an anachronism in literally any other area of human scholarship.

d) Any and all understandings of the Bible condemning homosexuality come from cultural bias not interpretive diligence, extending even to irresponsible if not deliberate mistranslation.

i) The early chapters of Genesis are poetry and counter-myth, not a chronicle of actual historical events.  Any argument relying on the story actually revealing how God made anything is fallacious.

ii) Homosexual Anal penetration was a common method of shaming in the ancient world, almost always done by heterosexually married men.  Sodom and Gomorrah were condemned because they were xenophobic rapists, not immaculately dressed interior designers or restaurant managers.

iii. Leviticus 18 and 20 lists Old Testament sexual offenses generally, the vast focus being on familial couplings not homosexual encounters.  Even then, “thou shalt not lie with a man as a woman” only covers one sexual position with one gender that mimicked, again, war-time rape.  To say that all homosexual encounters would be outlawed from this verse, and thus an abomination, is at best a stretch

iv. As this is the whole of the testimony of the Hebrew Scriptures on the subject at hand, noting that the KJV has triple the texts on unicorns than it does on homosexuality, we now turn to the New Testament.  As Christ, again, had no words on the subject, we must bypass the gospels and, yes, even the Book of Acts for our next text.

v. Paul in his epistle to the Romans does call homosexual acts “para physis” or against nature this has two problems.  The first problem is that nature for Paul’s time is not “all of nature” but “individual nature”.  Also, God goes against nature in grafting the gentiles into the people of God later in the same epistle so it is very difficult to say that going against nature is necessarily an evil thing.  Lastly it fails utterly to understand Paul’s entire argument.  The entire point for chapter one of Romans is found in chapter 2, “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.”  That Paul is quoting a Roman speech or oration and then using it to call out the hypocrisy in the Roman church.  The subject literally does not get brought up again.  Once more, Paul is not saying that homosexual relations are sinful and natural, he is saying that Romans say it is sinful and unnatural and yet are doing them anyway.

vi. While other verses in Paul’s letters are translated to talk about homosexuality, the fact is the words in question are largely unknown and have not been proven.  The words in question are incredibly rare and there is no text, either within the New Testament or even the Greek in which the New Testament was written, that shows any connection between those words and homosexual urge, inclination, or practice.

vii. The actual translation of Jude 1:7 is “Sodom and Gomorah and the surrounding cities indulged in gross sexual immorality and went after the flesh of others (or flesh of strangers) are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of era-long fire.”  None of the words used in this verse have any evidence to back their use to refer to what is understood to be homosexual activity.

viii. And all of this ignores the fact Eunuchs were widely understood to have homosexual tendencies, yet they are clearly included to the Body of Christ without question (Acts 8:27-39) and the fact that David is described as having “romantic love” for Jonathan, the same word “ahabah” used to refer to the feelings of the lovers throughout the Song of Solomon.  It also fails to the Church did not have much to say on the subject of same-sex relationships until over a thousand years later and indeed produced same-sex wedding liturgy.

ix.  All these facts show unequivocally that the belief that the Bible supports one and only one sexuality is simply non-sensical.  If an individual community feels strongly that homosexual relationships are bad then we as their loving brothers and sisters in Christ advise them strongly not to have one.  The facts presented here show that the Biblical Sexuality camp cannot meet a burden of clear and convincing proof or even the preponderance of the evidence, let alone the fierce standard of beyond any reasonable doubt as this situation warrants.  As such, the entire church needs to act like it.  No reasonable and ethical person can continue to uphold such draconian, damaging, and unfounded beliefs as this and we as a Church need to reflect this reality.  Anything less is to slander and make base the very Sacrifice that founded us.  Amen

Mysticism and the Cost of Discipleship

Good morning!  You know, I have been preaching up here for awhile now, and I’ve realized in my preaching that in order to help bring the gospel home to people I’ve had to reveal many different facets of myself.  Sometimes Keven the Teacher has had to appear behind this pulpit, taking you deep within the history and the language of the Scriptures to help you see their insights.  Sometimes there is Keven the News Reporter, telling you of current events and local concerns.  Still other times there is Keven the family man, wryly telling bad jokes and recounting wild stories as the situation warrants.  Today, however, I must bring out someone different.  In my honest estimation, our gospel text for today is by far the toughest lesson a Christian must learn.  It is not tough in the sense our lesson is difficult to understand, the language and context are clear enough.  It is also not tough because it is hard to relate to, indeed it strikes to the innermost core of the Christian life, moreso than any news report or statistic ever could.  It is tough because it makes a very clear demand of us; it imposes a dire reality so incredible and so fearsome that the sinful human mind often has but one recourse: to find any excuse to minimize that demand or simply ignore it entirely.  It is for that reason I bring out a Keven you may not have seen much before.  Today I am not the History Teacher or the Campfire Storyteller.  Today, I am Keven the Mystic.

                Keven the Mystic doesn’t really hide himself.  He’s really always been there.  Keven the Mystic is a gentleman you see, he doesn’t like to impose or cause a stir.  Indeed, in our own very secular world Keven the Mystic tends to upset people.  God has always been close to me, akin to an ever-present watchfulness, and my service to Him has led me on many an unexpected and uncomfortable adventure.  As many before me in the mystical tradition, I admit I have had premonitions of the future, dreams that would tell me of events and experiences days before they would happen.  I also see the responses to my prayers in the mundane workings of the world around me, and believe it or not, I have also performed an exorcism or two.  These things don’t make me special or an authority in and of themselves; they are merely a part of who I am and how I see the world.  It would be many years ago now, I was in the middle of my seminary career and working as a nighttime security guard for a medical device plant in nearby Plymouth.  It was a boring job, but the people were nice enough.  The other security guard on shift was a Muslim, and his family was from Somalia.  We would talk about the Koran a lot because that’s obviously what interested him, and I of course took the opportunity not only to learn about his faith but also share mine.  Every day, however, he would try to convert me away from Christianity and what was funny about it was that he used the exact same arguments and evangelistic techniques the Baptists used to try to convert me away from Lutheranism at Bethel.  I can’t tell you how hard it was for me not to smile.

                As time went on, however, the building we guarded began to have…well, certain things happen.   At first the cleaners would come out of areas with a very haunted expressions, and eventually they would demand to be transferred or they would just quit.  Then the murmurings and rumors would begin to circulate until at last one of the workers at the factory asked me in a very hushed tone, “Keven…is this building…I mean…have you seen…”  “Is the building haunted?” I replied, finishing the question they were too afraid to even ask.  I dismissed it, telling them that quite honestly while we had gotten strange reports, neither I nor my partner had experienced anything out of the ordinary.  They smiled that awkward, unsure little smile you get when you want to be assured that what the person is saying is true, but somewhere down deep you still aren’t convinced.  Well, then my partner and I did have an experience.  He quit that very night in fact and I never saw him again.  Now, for those of us who have had mystic experiences, one of the first things you have to contend with is that there is never going to be enough proof to make people believe you.  Rampant fear, distortion of the senses, predisposition toward belief, all these things you can throw at the situation and walk away thinking the people having those experiences are just crazy.  But the fact is I graduated college just two courses shy of double-majoring in psychology and Legal Studies.  I am aware of what clinical hallucinations look like, and none of us in that building fit the bill.  I graduated law school with my Juris Doctorate, I know what it takes to be declared legally insane and I know that people who have bought supposed haunted houses have sued the previous owner for damages and have won.  I also have graduated seminary, and am very much a believer when our ancestors tell us through our Scriptures that the Physical and Spiritual are not as separated as we like to think they are.

                Now, I am not here to regale you with ghost stories nor am I here to convince you of bogeymen.  As a theologian and a minister it is clear that such things are at best lesser matters over which the faithful can and should disagree.  I told you that story, that experience, to prime you for another one.  And if that story made your chest tighten, if you found yourself holding your breath and your heart racing just a tiny bit, believe me when I say to you “You haven’t seen anything, yet.”

                While that story that I just told was certainly one mystical experience of mine, it certainly was not the first.  My first mystical experience was in my first year of law school, of all places.  I’d done a lot to get there.  I got good grades in college.  My family was successful, the family business was successful.  My father and his brothers took a small dirt-moving company in rural Texas to a business that built roads and bridges, that laid foundations for great buildings in several of the southern states.  My father worked hard, my family was happy, and we wanted for nothing.  Indeed, my graduation present had been a brand new 1997 Ford F-150 extended cab.  Everything was looking fabulous and I was on track to be one of the youngest attorneys on record. 

                It was a crisp fall evening, and I had just gotten out of one of our Intervarsity club meetings at Hamline.  I was a good little Lutheran, probably a little too close to becoming a 5 point Calvinist at the time, but that is neither here nor there.  The autumn leaves were falling off the trees, caught by a quick breeze and carried off to who knows where.  The street was strangely dark that night, the lamps only illuminating so much despite the moon being full.  My mind was afire there on that sidewalk, and I excitedly explored new ideas and thoughts brought on by that Intervarsity experience.  I don’t really remember what I was thinking that night, but I do remember when God interrupted it.  For whatever reason, whatever my train of thought was, it shifted, and this idea suddenly came into my head.  “If you could live a bad life so another could have a good one, would you?”  I shook my head as a man suddenly coming out of dream.  It was an odd idea, and I tried to dismiss it as I kept walking on that lonely street.  The idea wouldn’t leave, though.  “You have had a good life up to now.  You have money, family, and a bright career ahead of you.  If it were possible, would you trade all that so someone else could have a good life instead of you.”  And then I stopped.  And when I stopped I had actual words enter my mind, not loud but definitely not from me.  They said, “Keven, would you really?”  I thought about it deeply for a minute or two, and then, in my heart of hearts, I answered, “Yes.  Yes, I would.”

                To say that the rest of that year was…horrible, would be an understatement.  Indeed, what happened would continue on for the next several.  Almost immediately after that moment my parent’s marriage fell apart.  My Father found a mistress, the business failed and was sued into bankruptcy.  We lost the house and I lost my mother to pain pills.  My brother…moved away.  All we knew living up here was that Kent had dropped out of flight mechanics school and someone else was suddenly living in his home.  Under no circumstances would he tell us where my brother was, and neither was he very forthcoming about who he was or really even why he was there.  The police were sent more than once, but with absolutely no success.  We really thought he was dead.  Law School, of course, was nothing less than an absolute hell.  The teachers there lie to you about how to get good grades, and with all the family issues going on, I ended up graduating late.  Even after graduation it would take me two years to be able to even take the bar exam.  I passed it but the Minnesota Bar had grave concerns about my family’s debts.  I got my rejection letter from the Bar a week after I had been fired from my security job – over Christmas.

                I was unemployed for six months.  To make sure my father wasn’t homeless, my wife and I took him in, but I had no idea how manipulative that man was, and he damned near almost cost me my marriage.  One night, I tried to sleep but couldn’t.  Alone with my thoughts like that fall evening so many years ago, my mind poured over every horror I’d been through, every trauma.  Unemployed, my own Father trying to ruin my family, and my son Brendan … we couldn’t even afford diapers for him.  All these became a waking nightmare there in the dead of that night, and finally, remembering that conversation I had with God on that lonely little sidewalk near Hamline, I cried up to heaven, “Please God, no more!”  and then I threw my arms up, like an abused step-child expecting to be hit.  I’m ashamed of it now, but that’s what I did.

                And I wasn’t hit.  Indeed, just the opposite.  A few days later, one of my resumes finally came through.  I got a well paying job on the spot.  It wasn’t going to last forever, but it got us on our feet.  We paid debts, kicked my father out, and moved someplace far more conducive to raising a family.  There was still years and years of hard work ahead of us, but we got there, and the nightmare was over.  It was finally over.

                When I began this sermon, I told you this text was by far the most difficult lesson for a Christian to learn, so difficult I see even other preachers try to avoid talking about it.  I see pastors with 6 figure incomes, new cars, and nice houses; Christian attorneys, people who by now who are partners in law firms, and they both say them say thing.  “Jesus didn’t really mean all your possessions” “He’s not that serious about this discipleship stuff.”  and when they do I have to try to hold back a smile.  I wish God had just taken my money.  Believe me now when I tell you, Jesus is very serious about this discipleship stuff.   When Jesus is telling his audience that they must hate their families, that they must abandon all that they possess and take up their own personal cross, he is not saying Christianity is a one hour a week commitment.  He makes no bones about the cost of following him and he is quite clear about the pricetag: it will cost you everything.  In your service to him you will be broken and remade, you will have what you hold dearest ripped away from you and you will give it up gladly.  You know you are owed nothing.   

                And as a Christian, you will give it up.  You will learn to be ever more mindful about what you value more than God and you will take steps to remove it.  You will wake up every day, painfully aware of everything that will go wrong and that you will remain powerless to affect any of it.  It is not because God is angry with us or that God hates us, or that God wants this life for us as his children.  Rather we come to the mature knowledge that in a world where sex trafficking and slavery have officially reached all time highs, where children are homeless and starving in rich industrialized countries, and where murder, corruption and rape run rampant, we come to solemn and sober realization that God has higher priorities than making sure I have an enjoyable day, an enjoyable week, or even an enjoyable life.  And because this is the world we find ourselves in, a world so completely devoid of even the most passing resemblance of compassion and justice, as a disciple of Jesus you become all too aware that if God takes something from you it is not for no reason.  You will not only give up what you claim, you will do so gladly, for after living in such a world of pain how can you not give the Maker what He needs to fix it? 

                The reality is we as Christians do give everything to God knowing full well God gives most of it back, and though the day will be far beyond our ability to handle, God will sustain us, and somehow we will make it through to see tomorrow.  But make no mistake, Jesus is not asking for our family or our things, he is asking for our Gethsemane.  He is asking in what circumstances will we be shaken, in what circumstances will we be abandoned and betrayed, so overcome with fear that we too will be found sweating blood.  And in that moment, Jesus asks us do we love God enough to trust Him, no matter the outcome?

                And so, in conclusion, as your pastor, I must ask, “How serious are you about this Christianity thing?”  Because the Church does not fail because of lack of churchgoers, it fails fail due to lack of Christians.  Amen and Amen.                    

A Matter of Heart...

          What is this?  Is this Church?  Why isn’t everybody in pews?  Where’s the organ, the chancil, and the altar?  What about the sanctuary and all those other hard to remember terms they don’t teach in seminary?  And what about those funny guys in the long dresses?  How can this be worship?  How can this be Church?

                Well, sometimes things are not always what they seem, and just because it isn’t what we are used to, doesn’t mean it isn’t just as true.  But mistaking something for its trappings, getting fooled by the outside and not looking within is something we as humans will always struggle with.  We don’t like change, we don’t like it when differences crop up into our lives.  Between bills, work, family, and all the drama that gets put into that mix we like things to stay the same, we like things the way we are used to, the way we can handle them.  Humanity’s been like that since Adam and the fall, and it was no different for people living in Jesus’ time as it is today.

                Most people don’t really appreciate how different Jesus’ ministry was, how so very radical  compared to what was going on at the time.  I want you to imagine yourselves as Israelites living in Palestine, as 1^st century Jews living within walking distance of the Holy City. The temple and the synagogue are the biggest contact points of your faith, the places where you fully embraced your identity as Jews.  The synagogue was where you learned about your ancestral religion: Your learned what to eat, what to wear, and what to do.  The temple, however, was where you most publicly proclaimed your identity and where you performed the most important rites as an Israelite.  Here the Day of Atonement was performed, here the sacrifices and the various offerings were made to absolve all Israel of her sins.  Here was where you were supposed to meet God.

                But not all of your fellow Jews are happy with things the way they are, indeed the strife with your countrymen is almost equal to the strife you feel with your Roman conquerors.  In the first century there are four major divisions of the Jewish faith that you must contend with, all quite different from one another.  There were the Sadducees, the ruling class of Israel.  Surprisingly secular believers, they do not believe in angels or spirits nor do they really believe in an afterlife.  They pick and choose from their Bible, taking the verses they like and conveniently excluding what they don’t.  Only the first five books of Moses were Scripture to them, you see.  Cutting out ¾ of your book means cutting ¾ of your responsibility and where life would be at odds with the Prophets, the Prophets could simply be discarded.  Still, while deeply flawed by power and compromised by convenience, it must be noted that these are the only Jews among your people who are not racist, that do not believe Gentiles are bad simply because they are gentiles and by extension they do not believe Jews are good only because they are Jewish.

In addition to the Sadducees, however, there are the Pharisees and they are not so far from our evangelical movement.  They are a Scripture driven movement, a missionary movement, and a grass roots association interested in keeping the Scriptures central in the daily lives of their fellow Israelites.  No one person leads it, no organization heads it, rather it is rallied by its charismatic preachers who often decried their government and were quick to advocate war against foreign powers.  Their adherence to the whole of Scripture often makes them legalistic, obeying the bare words on the page but caring little for the spirit in which those words were given, but at the same time you will be hard pressed to find a Jew more openly living their faith or more interested in relieving the suffering of their people than this group.  

After the Pharisees are the Essenes, Puritans and End Time Believers.  They believe most of the country has fallen into horrible sin, so they do not mix with the common Israelite, seeing them as too tainted, too unclean for Holy Living.  They have removed themselves from society and live in the desert far away from the false government and the false religion that have taken on God’s name.  When God comes to judge their nation, it is their intention to be “Left Behind”, looking forward to the destruction of the temple and the coming of a great teacher.

There are also the Zealots, a group of Jews who feel that the only response to an unclean and gentile ridden government is its violent overthrow.  They were inspired by the Maccabees, the Jewish generals who threw off gentile oppression and foreign entanglements by the sword.  These are your constitution party members, the liberty lovers and the militiamen seeking to return their society to its perceived origins.  They are believers in their weapons and are fervent in their opposition to their government, but they are also the Jews most willing to give their lives in defense of their friends.

But finally, there are the people like you and me.  People who are somewhere in the middle, perhaps seeing one side or another but in all honesty just trying to eek out an existence that both gives credence to your people and shows faithfulness to your God.  You know the Temple isn’t perfect, you know the flaws of your leaders, and you know the dangers of losing your way of life, but it’s also all you’ve got to work with.  And so you work, you live, and you wait.  You endure the times and raise a family, doing your best with what you have…that is until someone comes along and shows you a better way.

And that someone comes…a man, a lowly carpenter’s son, rumored to be of illegitimate birth.  He is a rabbi, but he is not like the other rabbis.  He has no education, no formal training.  He didn’t apprentice himself to another teacher like the others did, he simply took up the mantle one day and, shockingly, people listened.  But people did more than listen, they followed.  They followed by the thousands.  And when this rabbi took disciples, he didn’t take the cream of the religious crop.  He didn’t go to the Scriptoriums, the religious schools for their best students, he took everybody.  He took fishermen, tax collectors, Zealots!  He even taught women!  And what did this man teach?  He taught that the root of all evil was neither Sadducee nor gentile, but the love of money and power and any Jew was quite susceptible.  He taught that gentiles were not an enemy of the religion or the state and they were indeed capable of great faith.  He taught the Temple was about to be judged and replaced with nothing, that the new holy community could be comprised with just two people without any buildings or sacrifices for sins.  He taught that there are no unclean foods and that working on the Sabbath is not necessarily against the law if those works are for good.  He taught that the Scriptures are Holy and Good, but they need filling to be complete.  But more than any of that, in a land of schisms and disagreements, in a land more and more given to violence this rabbi taught that Peace was the answer, that love for neighbor was the solution, that simple faith in God even unto death was the way.

                Now, all of you may be wondering, what in the name of the Holy of Holies does this have to with our gospel text?  Well, I’ll tell you.  As a Jew or even a Gentile in the first century the question arises, indeed begs to be asked how then is this Jesus still a Jew?  How can this sect of Christians still consider themselves part of Judaism when they will eat any food, have no use for temple or sacrifice, are willing to include gentiles into the people of God, and understand their Hebrew Scriptures as now secondary to the message of the gospel?  Yes, this Jesus might be important, indeed he might be the most important man who ever lived, but how can Christianity be thought of as having Jewish roots?

                And the answer is that appearances can be deceiving.  What looks one way can in fact be another and THAT is a theme that Luke deeply addresses in his gospel.  Luke begins his tale as a Gentile would.  Important people, people of divine importance, are often heralded before-hand.  So important is this Jesus, however, that even Jesus’ herald John is heralded beforehand.  Yes, this all occurred as a gentile would think fit, but these heralds are not gentile, they are Jewish.  Jesus and John are born to Jewish parents.  John’s father is a Jewish priest and Jesus’ parents have him circumcised and presented at the Temple according to Jewish law.  The inherent Jewishness of the Jesus story is hammered home time and time again and the relevance of the Jewish scriptures and their filled-full-ment in Jesus is not some outlying afterthought or a tangential footnote, but is central to the fulfillment of God’s promises to his people.  Indeed, where the story seems least Jewish, it in fact shows quite the opposite.  Joseph and Mary are recorded in Luke as obeying the Roman census.  Most jews rebelled at every census, but Joseph and Mary did not.  Their scriptures told them to obey the gentile king, to pray for them and indeed intercede for them while under their rule.  The Prophets proclaimed this, and Mordecai in Ruth lived this, even to the point of seeking royal permission to defend themselves against Haman and their enemies.  Joseph and Mary were not less Jewish for obeying Caesar; they were in fact more Jewish than all the rest of their countrymen.  And so it is for this part of the story, Jesus having just proclaimed the faith of a centurion now goes into Nain and raises a widow’s son, just like Elijah the Jewish Prophet did so many centuries before.  But unlike Elijah, who raised a gentile widow’s son, Jesus goes to the Jews and returns a Jewish widow’s only son back to her.  God has indeed returned to bless his people.  They were not left out.

                So yes, things changed.  The trappings of the past, the trap-things, the outside appearances that ensnared, yes they were discarded but the heart was no less true to its heritage.  God is not an exclusive God.  Claiming the Gentiles did not mean dismissing the Jews, and the blessings of the future in fact did not include the cursing of the past.  Both were upheld and one did not happen at the expense of the other.  So it is with us.  So often we look at the future and we see great cataclysmic change.  We look at our society and our children. We say “look how different it’s all going to be”…except it’s not.  2000 years from now we will still be silly, ridiculous humans in need of Jesus, but I will not lie to you, my friends, things will look different.  We will have a different president, we will live in a different world.  Our children will grow, they will not be exactly like us and our church will look very different in the years to come.  It’s only looks.  God is the God of the old and the new, and he gives the same heart to them both if we ask Him.  So yes, things will change, just not really.  And we can take heart in that.