September 18, 2003 Morning

Psalm 90

“So teach us to number our days: that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” (Psalm 90:13)

Psalm 91

“I will say unto the Lord, ‘Thou are my refuge and my stronghold: my God in whom I will trust.” (Psalm 91:2)

Psalm 92

“It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord: and to sing praises unto thy Name, O thou Most High;
To tell of thy loving-kindness in the morning: and of they faithfulness in the night season.” (Psalm 92:1,2)

2 Kings 18:1-8

“And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that David his father did.
He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it.” (2 Kings 8:4)

Ephesians 1:1-14

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:3)

This morning, I awoke with some heaviness of heart on hearing the news. Canada passed two milestones this week that will have a profound effect on religious freedom. First, parliament rejected, by a close margin, a motion that would have affirmed the traditional definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others. Second, parliament voted to add gays and lesbians to the list of protected groups in the hate crimes provision of the criminal code. This will mean that the lawsuits against institutions that have behaviour codes for its employees or for its members based on traditional Judeo-Christian morality will have a firmer basis for success.

Welcome now the new love that cannot speak its name, the love that is not loved in this world, the love of Christ. And welcome to the closet, fellow Christians, unless you have the courage to stand and face persecution.

Already, lawsuits have cost some religious institutions thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend their right to have codes that require its students and faculty to abstain from sexual contact except within the bounds of a traditional marriage. So far, religious freedom has been respected after costly court battles, but I believe these changes in the law, despite assurances to the contrary, mean that equality rights will trump religious freedom. In some instances against private individuals, the courts have had mixed rulings that acknowledge the right of religious beliefs “in private” as long as there is no public expression of those beliefs. There is a wonderful service called “Lex View” which comments on these cases regarding religious freedom.

I believe the next step will soon be that those churches and religious institutions that uphold traditional moral codes will lose their charitable status and tax exemptions. Then, after that, the next step will be that those churches that still uphold the moral code will be driven underground. They will be like the house churches in China, subject to police raids.

I don’t grieve these changes because I have anything against gays or lesbians who wish to have their relationships recognized, or to have the ability to be considered “family” when their partner is in intensive care. I would have no objection to some kind of recognition of civil unions that would include a range of dependent relationships that might include even non-sexual relationships. Just don't call it marriage.

Marriage is a special institution because it recognizes the procreative nature of the male and female union, and fosters the relationship that allows children to be brought up and nurtured by their biological parents. Yes, many heterosexual partners do not procreate, either because they choose not to, or can’t. And many homosexual partners have children from other relationships. But it remains a biological fact that every child is the offspring of a male and a female and yearns for his or her mother and father, even in cases of adoption. Already there are young people searching for the fathers who donated sperm for artificial insemination. Marriage is the best alternative for the raising of children. It pre-existed the laws of Canada. Like human rights, which are God-endowed, marriage has a definition in natural law that can’t be abrogated by an ersatz sense of the “rule of law” that cuts itself loose from the moorings of natural law and becomes only the whims of the majority…..rule of law as the tyranny of the latest opinion polls.

To remove the procreative nature of marriage from the definition is to describe something else other than marriage. It’s like redefining a rainbow to say it now only includes the color spectrum up to blue. The rainbow will still exist, but our view of it, based on the definition is truncated. It is also to assert that men and women are interchangeable, that there is basically no differences between them.

As profound and important an institution as marriage, in its full definition is, it’s nevertheless fragile, and has taken many, many hits of which these latest changes are only the coup de grace.

Marriage can only exist as a viable institution in the context of a society that believes that sexual restraint, fidelity, monogamy, chastity and concern for the next generation are good things that should be taught and defended. We have already lost that. Even among church members, divorce is about as frequent as it is in the general society. We’re even losing our ability to defend our faith with relevant arguments, never mind defend a moral code that makes us seem judgmental and hate-filled to the rest of society. Gays and lesbians argue that their relationships have just as much right to be honoured and celebrated as those of heterosexuals and our minds are unable to come up with reasons why not.

Because the trend has been in the courts here in Canada that you can no longer separate the action from the identity, that is, to make the distinction Christians have always made between the sin and the sinner, one risks being called a “hater” for saying that some behaviour is better than others, or some institutions are better or more beneficial for children or society than others. We have lost the ability to discriminate in favour of what is best over what is better. The lowest common denominator of equality rights means a new totalitarian secularism that will further marginalize religious faith, because equality rights do not apply when it comes to religious faith. Nor does “hate provisions” even though religious faith is already in the criminal code.

It’s interesting too that even getting the statistics to prove that traditional marriage has benefits to society in a range of areas from lower crime rates among children of those relationships to a much lower level of poverty among children of married unions will become increasingly difficult to find, as the Centre for Cultural Renewal has found in developing its Index of Social Indicators.

When my husband and I went on a research trip for my second novel, we took a day to take an excursion boat from Boston to Provincetown. Provincetown had been for decades, long before gay rights became fashionable, a place where gays and lesbians have been free to express themselves and their love for each other in public. It’s a quaint community of weathered cedar shingled shops and art galleries, as it's also been a long time artist colony as well. On the tip of Cape Cod, it's a gorgeous piece of real estate, surrounded on three sides by ocean.

We rented bikes, rode around the narrow streets and out to the dunes where we walked to the beach. I watched a lesbian couple on the boat have a lover’s spat. A guy in a long tulle ballet skirt, a purple wig and some flattened boxes of Special K wrapped around his chest to signify, as that his name was Mike with a K, greeted the boat. We found his high camp welcome entertaining and fun.

We saw many homosexual couples of both sexes. I felt right at home in the milieu as I used to work in the news media and have many friends and colleagues who are gay or lesbian. What I loved about Provincetown was the ready friendliness, the willingness of these young men to look me in the eye and give me a warm greeting as we passed them on our way to the beach, the sense of connection. I loved them.

I remember as well going to an Episcopal church in the Boston area several months ago and if I were to guess, I would have said the priest was probably gay, not that wearing an earring these days necessarily signifies that. He was warm and kind and connected well to the disparate little group receiving the noon Eucharist. I could see how easy it was to respond to him affectionately and I’m sure his congregation loves him and would defend him and say that his ability to connect with people was a sign of the Holy Spirit.

I look at this brand new bishop in the Episcopal Church, Gene Robinson, and I’m sure he’s a very, very nice man, someone who is warm and kind and perhaps a lot more approachable than some of the ones who argue against actively gay bishops.

Here’s where I find it so easy to get tongue tied, and so easy to get frustrated at the way we are losing our categories to be able to effectively debate these things.

Even within the church, people ask, why not? Why can’t we be loving? Doesn’t Jesus’s love include everyone? Why is this sin singled out?

I believe we must be loving. We cannot single out homosexual behavior as a sin more pernicious than pride or self-righteousness or envy. I would want a gay or lesbian walking in the doors of either of my two churches to feel loved and welcomed.

Yes, Jesus’s love includes us all. But, where I part company with the Gene Robinsons of this world is that I believe that Jesus’s love is supposed to transform us. With supernatural power, He has made us new creations and in order to manifest our new identity in Christ, we must die to our old natures. The dying to sin that a homosexual must go through is no different from the dying process that a heterosexual must go through. We all have our besetting sins. It’s not individual actions so much as a sin nature that needs to be destroyed in us, so that we can love with Christ’s love. It is clear in Scripture that homosexual sex, along with fornication, adultery and a slew of other sins will not inherit the Kingdom.

This means that those in leadership in the church must meet a higher standard, a different test. They must exhibit that supernatural transformation in their natures and uphold what the Church has always taught. If they don’t do the latter, they cannot do the former, since right belief, not obeying the law, is how our behaviour changes, because it is by hearing and believing that we receive the Holy Spirit, and it is by the supernatural power of the Spirit that God transforms us. It is a terrible tragedy how the leadership of so many Christian denominations has failed to meet this high standard. That they have failed to meet it is not an excuse for lowering the standard. We have no right to lower God's standards for us.

Christianity is a revealed religion. The Scripture is not some “cleverly devised fable” that we can reinterpret for sentimental reasons because we do not understand the severity of God’s mercy and His eternal love for us.
The debate about homosexual marriage or the blessing of same sex unions, or of allowing practicing gays and lesbians into the priesthood may seem like a debate that’s sidetracking the Church. That’s because the debate is not really about same sex relationships. It’s about authority. Do we believe the Gospels? Do we believe in the ancient Creeds? Do we believe that God’s Word is the same yesterday, today or forever, or do we believe that truth is an ever changing, ever progressing phenomenon which we can never fully grasp, so you have your truth and I have mine and why can’t we, as Rodney King says, all get along?

In the church we are losing that joyful awareness of the supernatural power of God. And we lose it all the faster the more we allow the times to water down the message, a message which has always been an offence and a stumbling block to the world. Do we think our generation would not crucify Christ? Can not every one of us find ourselves in the crowd that either mocked Him, washed their hands of Him, gambled for His clothing, fled so as not to be identified with Him, or denied Him publicly? I choose to love Him, but I’m not as faithful as I want to be. It grieves me that I am not fully His, that I still have high places where I spend my time worshipping other gods. I ask for those high places to be torn down.

In the first lesson this morning, I find it interesting that the king in question destroys the brazen serpent of Moses that he had lifted up, a gesture that Jesus refers to in relation to Himself. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.” (John 3:14)

The raising of the serpent was a type, a shadow, a forerunner of Christ’s powerful redemption of mankind on the Cross. But people were worshipping the brazen serpent instead of the God it pointed to, or represented.

Hmmmm. Today, we would be horrified that a religious relic of such historical importance was destroyed, much as we mourned the Taliban’s destruction of the giant Buddha’s in Afghanistan. I also don’t believe that Cromwell’s efforts to destroy all religious statues and images constituted a great moment in the history of Christianity. I would hope today at least we would put it in a museum somewhere for all to see.

But I understand that God wants to be first, because His being first in our lives is what’s best for us and best for everyone around us. He is the highest Love, the brightest Good, the deepest Truth, so putting anything in front of that mars the image of God in us. What this says to me this morning is that many of our churches are burning incense to a shadow or type of the Christian faith, something that’s similar enough to the real thing to give us a “warm fuzzy” but now a trap for us because it has turned love into puppy dog sentimentality and leniency and the re-making of God in our image is “nice guys and gals”. He’s becoming the great kind Aunt/Uncle in the sky, dispensing blessings like candies, helping us all feel warm and connected, but powerless against the compulsions of sin in our lives that would have us break our promises to our husbands and wives and our children. We’re burning incense to the serpent that Moses raised in the wilderness instead of worshipping at the foot of the Cross of Christ.

My friend Cheryl heard a pastor once who talked about the “Thou shalt nots” in the Ten Commandments. He spoke about how we usually hear those “shalt nots” as stern warnings of punishment if we cross those boundaries. The pastor said that when we fully understand what Jesus has done for us, then we can enter into those “thou shalt nots” joyfully because we find we have the power in Christ, through the Holy Spirit to not be beholden to covetousness, bearing false witness, putting other gods before the One True God, whatever commandement we have habitually broken. Instead, we find the freedom to stand fast in the liberty of Christ and find, lo and behold, as naturally as breathing we do not have to break the Commandments and it is wonderful to have the power to keep them.

My prayer for you and me today is that we understand the meaning of the verses in Ephesians from the second lesson. I pray that we would believe and appropriate into our actions the understanding that we have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places with Christ. In other words, we have all the power of heaven and the authority of Christ to resist the devil and the lure of the world and the compulsions in our fleshly natures.

I pray that we would believe that He has chosen us before the foundation of the world so we can be holy and without blame before Him in love. In other words, that we would understand that He wants us to make it. He’s chosen us. He loves us. He died for us so we could take His nature.

I pray that we would know we are God’s adopted children, accepted in the Beloved, Christ, who has redeemed us by his Blood. I pray that we would know that He has made known to us the mysteries of His will and that in the fullness of time, he will gather together all things in Christ.