The Two Systems

April 16, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Our Wednesday studies engage a wide diversity of people who are not (yet?) members of our congregation, but who find their spiritual centering in our midst. This week we were discussing this passage at the end of John 3.

31 The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things. The one who comes from heaven is above all. ³² He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony. ³³ Whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true. ³⁴ He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. ³⁵ The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands. ³⁶ Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath.

We have talked in the study many times about the overarching power of grace, and the danger of “works righteousness.” Some people “get it,” and others don’t, because they seem to have a great deal invested in their own sense of personal righteousness as dutiful, believing Christians. As I try to probe with them what it is they are “hanging on to” this explanation began to unfold itself for me.

It seems there are basically two rules or systems which may govern our relationship with God and one another. The one is the rule of rewards and punishments. The other is the rule of grace. In the Bible, of course, we find language that is descriptive of both, and so it takes enormous discernment to give weight to each of these and to decide by which rule we will live.Under the rule of rewards and punishments, we will always strive for reward and try to avoid punishment. We will measure our achievement and calculate our relationship both to God and to other human beings on the basis of how we can gain rewards and what we might lose or suffer. The bottom line is that we will expect our behavior and good works (or our abstaining from bad things) counts for something, and that in the end—the judgment day—we will receive the ultimate rewards of eternal bliss, a heavenly mansion, a heavenly banquet, a crown, etc.

But under that rule of rewards and punishments, we become more like Muslims than different from them, for they too hope to receive entrance to Paradise on the judgment day, except of course that their doctrine affords them no advance certainty that God will grant to them the eternal reward.

The rule of grace, on the other hand, cares little about rewards or punishment. We stop measuring our performance against a standard which is impossible. We simply live under grace, honest in the knowledge that we do not deserve it yet confident that we have already received it without measure. Under grace, we are not ultimately terrified about damnation, for the scripture assures us that we may draw near to the throne of grace with confidence.

Moral theology, especially under the definition of the medieval Catholic system, would attempt to marry these two rules together, but in fact that results in a tragic, upended mishmash in which grace must be subordinated to law. When Lutherans insist— relying on where St. Paul tells us that all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, and that all are justified by God’s grace apart from the law— we do not mean that grace is merely the strength we need from beyond ourselves to perform all the required works and deeds and abstinences of moral law. Rather we mean that we are wholly and completely justified —not by any effort on our part nor by refraining from anything, nor even confessing to our sinful nature and our manifold iniquities—only and totally as a free and undeserved gift from God for Christ’s sake.

If it is not the melding of these two rules, which I think is destructive at best, here is the bottom line: It is left to each of us to choose under which rule we will order our lives—whether under the rule of rewards and punishments, or under the rule of grace. If we voluntarily choose the system of rewards and punishments, we may be caught up in a giddy hopefulness for an exclusive parcel of eternal real estate, but in this life we will be preoccupied with fear of punishment and with being given credit for each correct moral choice we make and the sum of our accomplishments.

But if we voluntarily choose the rule of grace, all those things pale before the wonder-filled knowledge of God’s generous love and forgiveness, whereby gratitude for God’s gifts of grace so overwhelms our hearts that our life itself overflows with generosity and compassion.

This topic will be more fully explored on my other web site Gay Catechism. 

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Gay Catechism, Bible & Interpretation, Ecumenical Issues, Living by Grace, Fundamentalism, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

Enveloped on the mountaintop.

February 14, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Today being the feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, it deserves some comment. I had to preach on it this morning.

It’s a difficult thing no matter whether you’re a cynic or deeply pious. As the story is told it’s too supernatural–ranks right up there with the Ascension on the list of things no one really believes as narrated.

Yet the narrative tries to convey something intensely mystical and meaningful. In the midst of his public ministry, Jesus seemed profoundly different to his disciples. Something happened that allowed/permitted/forced them to see him in a new and blinding light.

Typically we call that a “mountaintop experience,” and it must have been for Peter James and John, the “inner three” who get lot of attention in the Gospel stories but we are never fully told why. As told in Luke 9, the three of them were “weighed down with sleep” (and you will remember that in Matthew and Mark, the same three disciples are with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and, yup, there they fell asleep too).

Just like the other nine disciples, these guys were not perfect. They had feet of clay. They were as flawed as any human being alive right now—but: the witness of these disciples is that a veil was ripped away, and they saw Christ Jesus as God sees him. They were overshadowed and enveloped by a Cloud— a glory they could not understand and could hardly describe— but the Jesus who came out of the transfiguring Cloud with them was not One to be afraid of, or One to hide from, but One who was to lay down his life for them.

I cannot guarantee you a mountaintop experience. You will find your own mountain, and it probably won’t be a pretty picture in the piney woods with postcard views from the top. For some of us, it may be the mountain of our own failures, or sorrows, or mistakes, or addictions, pain or internalized homophobia. But if we climb the mountains we have heaped up in our lives, there, at the top of these heaps of human experience, we encounter the Cross. And it is not a trigger for terror. It is the revelation of the One True God of grace, forgiveness, compassion and lovingkindness. It may be Law which drives us up the mountain of despair, but it is pure Gospel to find the love of Jesus Christ awaiting us at the top.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Homophobia, Gay Catechism, Doctrine, Bible & Interpretation, Living by Grace, LGBT Christian, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

The birth of joy in a season of darkness.

December 23, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

A church member called me this morning from the Midwest, where she had gone for Christmas, to report that her nephew was killed yesterday on a highway in Texas. It has abruptly changed her holiday plans as she and her family now drive down to Texas for a funeral the day after Christmas.

Our parish has suffered five deaths in the extended family during this December, beginning with the loss of our pastor emeritus Harry Durkee on December 2, who had served from 1960–1991.

I am mindful that my mother lost her father in December also. Years later her mother succumbed to cancer on Christmas Night. The holiday season seems especially unfair as a time of joy to be taken away by the cruelty of death.  Even as I do my final preparations for Christmas Eve, I cannot shake the sadness of so much death and loss.

We modern people are wimps when it comes to dealing with the reality of death and grief. They are hard, but they are also bracketed by love and grace, and resolved only in a life of faith. I used to think it strange that St. Thomas and St. Stephen were memorialized on the church’s calendar during the days surrounding Christmas. But perhaps it is the wisdom of centuries of faithfulness that Christians offer up to God in prayer. We are certain that God’s gift to us cannot be undone by the meanness or the unfairness of sudden and untimely death.

What better time to remember those we have loved who have lived in faith, than in the very season when we also proclaim a holy birth among us – the coming of Jesus into our world of darkness and sorrow?

Jaroslav Vaja captured the essence of this in his Christmas hymntext, “Before the Marvel of This Night”. In his imaginative poem, the angels before God speak to one another as they prepare to “tear the sky apart with light” and come down to announce the birth of Christ and peace:

The love that we have always known,
our constant joy and endless light,
now to the  oveless world be shown,
now break upon its deathly night.
Into one song compress the love
that rules our universe above:
sing love, sing love, sing God is love.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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Letters from prison.

December 21, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

This week I am trying to send out a few Christmas cards — I have essentially given up on that gracious communication with the bulk of our friends, because I get weighed down with everything else, more and more, as Christmas approaches. But I am writing now to several inmates in California prisons, to men who have written to our church from time to time. These men (all men, so far) have written because of one of our own community who is doing time now for a parole violation, and he has told other inmates that, yes, there is a church in Los Angeles which welcomes gay people. So, although the communication is a bit “stiff” in prison letters because every word going out and coming in is pre-read by prison staff, I can only assume that the guys writing to us are probably gay.

A couple of weeks ago, one of them wrote from Kern County. He isn’t ready to tell me what he did that got him convicted, or even how long he is in prison for. But he says this is his first time in prison, and it’s December and I realize he will spend Christmas in a cell.

“Since my imprisonment I have become ever stronger in Jesus Christ and God and church and hold my Christian beliefs even more dear to my heart than ever before.

“What I need: is someone — some church– and some church members to help me and take me under their wings and into their church and allow me to prove myself as a person, as a fellow church member and child of God.”

This young man’s plea is as clear as any I have ever heard. It seems risky for upstanding church-goers to be concerned about convicts who will have to prove themselves in order to be accepted again in society. But as to being a child of God, he has no need of proof. The church is the community of those who put their faith in Christ. Regardless of the division of people into categories—Jew or Greek, male and female, young or old, imprisoned or free, LGBT or straight, there are no subcategories for the children of God.

How can I be so sure of that? Because each of us is made a child not by something we do or accomplish, or avoid doing, or even repent, but by the gracious act of God alone. We are God’s children just because God says so. It’s about love, not “Brownie points,” sexual conformity, or the lack of a criminal record. It’s about a love so strong that nothing can tear us away from it.

In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul agonizes about all of the things in life (he mentions “hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword” as examples) that may conspire to cause pain, failure, regret or worry, but then he says, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I am open-hearted enough to read his phrases very broadly, where he says “in all these things” and especially “things present nor things to come (like our modern world). Can we not see that, if Paul were writing today, he might have mentioned other examples: “poverty, racism, gangs, homophobia or sexual orientation, divorce, unemployment, drugs or alcohol, obesity, health problems or gun violence,” and still come to the same conclusion: “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

To my friends in prison: may God keep watch with you at Christmas, knowing that not even bars and walls can separate us from the love which is given to us freely. Keep the faith you have in God’s gracious acceptance. And may the people of God keep faith with you!

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Homophobia, Gay Catechism, Violence, Doctrine, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs, Living by Grace, Faith, Recovery | Print | No Comments »

Is God indulgent or hard-hearted?

December 9, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”   Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21; Romans 10:13
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,” will enter the Kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 7:21

These clear contradictions seem to stymie us nowadays, and Christians still argue whether God is lenient or hard-hearted, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the tenth generation or very indulgent and forgetful of our offenses. Is heaven a place where only a handful will ever get in, or where the gates are never shut?

These apparent contradictions seem to say to us that the ancients and the early Christians were not all of the same mind on the charity and lovingkindness of God. It is not just we who cannot agree on the meaning of Scripture, for Scripture itself gives us different images which seem to contradict (speak against) one another.

Yet for me the overwhelming weight of the Biblical message, not just of spot passages and bumper-sticker length verses, is of God’s endless grace and acceptance. (Forgiveness is one metaphor for God’s grace and compassionate acceptance.)

Seriously, folks, can we actually say (and be theologically correct) that God loves everybody? As we know a certain unmentionable preacher-type from Topeka who argues against this vehemently. If God doesn’t love everybody, then why should we put up with or tolerate or condone anybody who doesn’t toe the line or walk the talk?

But we are the progressive (liberal) Christians, we think. We get it, even if those fundagelicals and Talibangelists don’t.

Alas, the full implication of the phrase “Everybody’s welcome” usually goes over our heads. It doesn’t merely mean that if everybody is welcome, then I am welcome—as reassuring and good as that seems. It doesn’t merely mean the invitation to receive God’s love is to me and to people like me. “Everybody” is an impossibly dangerous, radical word. If everybody is welcome, it means that even people I don’t particularly like or approve of are also welcome. It means that God’s unearned and unlimited grace does not have to be vetted by me personally before it is offered to everybody else in the world.

This takes some degree of self-examination to sink in thoroughly. It doesn’t penetrate our skulls as easily as the mantra “God loves me,” or “I am Jesus’ little sunbeam.”

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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Lasting Peace: the Unsplit Life

October 23, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

On the train to Riverside today I finally picked up a book I had set aside last July: the anthology “Wrestling with the Angel” [Brian Bouldrey, ed.; New York: Riverhead Books, 1995]. Today I came to Andrew Holleran’s chapter in which he wrestles with Catholic guilt more than any angel.

Holleran (Eric Garber) is a gay novelist and essayist roughly my contemporary in age but far more advanced in finding his voice as an activist. You can Google for a lot about his life and work if you like.

So much of what he writes about religion parallels my own awareness if not experience, and I can’t help wondering if it is more because he was Catholic and I Lutheran that he left most of the faith behind and I never did. Holleran identifies, at least he did in 1995 in “The Sense of Sin” as a “cafeteria Catholic,” taking what he wants from the religious smorgasbord and leaving the rest behind. But his chief insight in his brief autobiography of confession reveals that he could neither abandon his childhood and adolescent Catholic faith nor fully embrace it.

“The sense of Sin is, of course, missing in some people, keen, more keen, keenest in others. When I drew up a list of my own one evening, I was surprised to see that all of mine amounted to sins that did not include homosexual acts themselves but the consequences of hiding them from people who loved and expected more out of me, perhaps than I’d given the world. In other words, I suspected myself of shame, withdrawal, and finally that most classic of Catholic sins, despair. Still, none of them seemed correctable; I hadn’t any more faith in homosexuality’s virtues, really, than I did in the existence of God—though the latter was no something I could bring myself to entirely disbelieve, either.”For me, this no-man’s land, this love-hate experience is what happens when one has absorbed the Religion of Christianity without ever finding a manner in which to live out the Christian Faith. Guilt truly is the gift that goes on giving, and we have good reason to jokingly insist that the Lutheran persuasion is “Catholic Lite: one third less guilt.”As a young writer and preacher I was always more than a bit brash, but taking the longer view now in mid-life and mature years I notice with enormous gratitude that I did not pick up much guilt about sex and sexuality in childhood and adolescence. Lutheran preachers were far too conventional and inhibited even to mention that sexuality exists. There were no warnings or scoldings from Sunday School teachers. Luther’s Small Catechism sticks to the basics of the Christian faith —faith in God and Christ and the Spirit and the Sacraments— rather than building moral fences and trying to provide guidelines to control our daily impulses. So to this day I insist that attitudes about human sexuality and homosexuality cannot, in and of themselves “split the church.” Opening our minds about gay and lesbian people and relationships is not an “abandonment of the historic faith” because, the Lutherans would insist, the true Christian faith does not contain doctrines about sex in the first place.

Holleran’s dilemma is that he cannot live with the dire ultimatums which either Catholicism or fundamentalism presents to him, but he realizes at mid-life that homosexuality and sexual liberalism are not a substitute faith, either. Even as a fallen child of his Church, he sees his sexuality in Catholic vocabulary: “a cross one had to bear.”

“That one kept thinking in Catholic phrases was, of course, part of the legacy of a Catholic childhood. The gay Catholic operates on two levels, I suspect; on the one hand, he believes it is quite moral to act on his sexual orientation, to form a sexual bond, of whatever duration, with another man; that the antihomosexual tenets of Christianity are parochial, culture-bound, and heterosexual; that the active gay man has acquired, and provided others, a human dimension available uniquely in erotic intimacy; that kindness, beauty, tenderness, love can be experienced only through the medium of another person. On the other, he suspects that he has turned sex into a form of fast-food junk, that he is trapped in a way of life from which there is no escape and no real chance of finding any lasting peace of mind. In other words, this was cognitive dissonance as a way of life.”All that I can counter is that I do not suffer that dissonance and I preach to dismantle its power over others. But my understanding is not to trivialize the core message of Jesus nor to re-Puritanize sexual expression. That I have remained not celibate but monogamous is not because I have struck some self-devised compromise with God or have internalized homophobic guilt about having casual or anonymous sexual experiences. It is because I have experienced the greatest personal and spiritual growth in relationships (one man, one Lord) which are long-lasting and able to grapple with the tension most human beings live with between the superficiality of the flesh and the overwhelming depth of the soul.If all of that is really a cross one has to bear, it is the cross I have chosen not because of a bifurcated life (hiding my sexuality from the church and hiding my faith from the boys at the gay bar), but because of my awareness that I live only one life and will struggle to keep it integrated. If I can live without splitting my life, then maybe the Church can live without splitting itself apart.—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Sex, Gay Catechism, Catholic matters, Doctrine, Ecumenical Issues, Faith, LGBT Christian, Fundamentalism, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

The institutional and the theological high ground.

September 24, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

This summer has been a tipping point for the ELCA, the largest of the Lutheran churchbodies in the United States. Somehow, while many observers weren’t paying much attention, but the Holy Spirit was near, this largely Midwestern-based Protestant church slipped from the conservative column to the liberal. Its actions in Assembly a month ago in Minneapolis are still being weighed and measured for significance.

Yesterday, Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson (who is also the President of the Lutheran World Federation) issued a “pastoral letter” on the tipping point — what he thinks about how Lutherans should feel about the major change in the ELCA’s view of same-gender relationships and lesbian/gay clergy.

For review, there was no official prior policy against same-gender relationships. No Lutheran pastor has been defrocked or disciplined by the ELCA for officiating at a lesbian wedding. Not so for the Presbyterians and the Methodists, who have drawn their line in the sand way to the right of the Lutherans.

But there was an official policy against rostering (ordaining, commissioning or hiring) out lesbian and gay clergy who are in same-gender relationships.

And there was no policy to forbid gay or lesbian persons from being clergy if they promised to be celibate forever, although the defacto rule is that any congregation that blanched at the thought of a homosexual pastor with a same-sex spouse would have blanched at the thought of a celibate homosexual pastor, too.

You can read Hanson’s pastoral letter on my other web site where I store bigger documents. In it, he takes the institutional high ground, and at times is almost eloquent in reminding the denomination that we have a mission to accomplish and we are only hurting ourselves and our mission if we get into a schism over lesbian/gay clergy.

For the record, the schism will proceed as previously scheduled. Hanson’s letter is not likely to convince anybody to change their mind. But the schism will be small—perhaps 100–200 congregations may bolt, out of a total of nearly 10,000 congregations.

But it still hurts when people we thought understood the Gospel as well as Lutherans do decide to say “we’re out of here,” like where Paul says, “the eye cannot say to the hand, `I have no need of you.’” (1 Corinthians 12:14–27)

Hanson reminds the church that Lutherans have always deftly distinguished Law and Gospel, what he says Martin Luther called “the highest art among Christians.” To make this important distinction and apply each appropriately is in fact nothing less than interpreting the Scriptures rather than shooting them from a gun at a social issue.

My turn: Hanson speaks in generalities, but I would have been a bit more specific, in reminding the whole church that heterosexuality is neither Law nor Gospel. The Christian Church long ago gave up trying to make “be fruitful and multiply” into a commandment that must be obeyed by all believers in Jesus. Heterosexual love, or sexual expression, or even reproduction, cannot be commandments, as Jesus and Paul both made clear.

But neither is heterosexuality Gospel. No one will be saved or redeemed or put on God’s right side by heterosexuality. No one earns a heavenly mansion by virtue of heterosexual behavior. We are saved by grace (Romans 3:23–24; Ephesians 2:4), regardless of Paul’s curious take on women being saved by bearing children. He even says, in 1 Corinthians 7:16, that a woman or man might save the unbelieving spouse —salvation by marriage?  But his broadest theme, over and over, is that we are saved by grace alone.  Sex, sexual orientation, sexual expression, are not part of the equation at all.

I have continued to say this wherever possible: the ELCA’s ~ or the Episcopal Church’s ~ action to open its doors and its ministry fully to LGBT people is not a departure from traditional or correct Christian doctrine because human sexuality, in all of its perplexing diversity, is not part of Christian doctrine. Christian doctrine is about Jesus Christ and what he has done. It is not about us and what we have done, whether sublime or perverse. No one, whether Jew or Greek, circumcised or uncircumcised, heterosexual or homosexual, “has a leg up” before God.

Yes, I know the conservative rant to the contrary. But it is a hopeless stretch to insist that any one or another specific sexual behavior is a sin which disqualifies one from God’s love – and yes, you can find Bible verses to attempt to so insist – because there are other Bible verses that blow that thesis away!  Jesus said “Anyone who comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37); and “Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life” (John 6:47).  There is just no extra credit for being heterosexual.  There are millions of people of faith out there who are not heterosexual. They have come to Jesus and they believe in his message of hope and grace. Regardless of what a congregation or an entire churchbody may say, Jesus will not drive them away, but because they have put their faith in God’s grace through Jesus Christ, they have eternal life.

Moreover, since no one is without sin (Romans 3:23), no one, including no heterosexual has the right to cast the first stone.

No one has the right to judge.

No one.

Just say No, when homophobic people start to rant that they are now being driven out of the church. No, they are walking away all by themselves.  They are doing, or preparing to do, what millions of LGBT Christians have not done, even when our churches would not welcome us if we were open. We remained faithful to Christ and to his church. Now we rejoice that the ELCA is being faithful to us. If others cannot accept that, perhaps they never did understand the Gospel after all.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Sex, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Gay Catechism, "The Closet", Doctrine, Bible & Interpretation, Ministry, Faith, LGBT Christian, ELCA | Print | 1 Comment »

The Biblical Issue in Three Parts: Part Three

August 6, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

This is the third and concluding part of the discussion of Acts 15, continuing from yesterday.

What do I mean by “internal evidence”? I mean these obscure references in the “short list” of four commandments which are themselves now quite obsolete. Christians gave up even minimal imitation of kosher laws long ago.

Internal to the Christian church we decided that avoiding what has been strangled (the manner in which animals were killed and prepared as food) or meat which has not been drained of its blood (Leviticus 17:15) was not a defining doctrine of the Christian faith. Thankfully, we are again more aware that as stewards of God’s creation we should be concerned for the humane treatment of animals, including animals which are raised for slaughter for human food. But nowhere do I see Christians damning one another over the inhumane or humane treatment of animals, or citing the Bible as the final word.

But external to the Christian church, another of these minimum prohibitions has also become quite irrelevant. To my knowledge, there are no meats being sold in the supermarkets today which have already been ritually sacrificed to pagan gods. I think that sort of went out with ancient paganism, and even today’s neo-pagans (oh my!) haven’t re-relevantized Acts 15:20, 29.

Now, how do we have conversation with those sisters and brothers who don’t approach Scripture, or approach Acts 15, the way we do? Often their method of biblical interpretation is far less sophisticated: if you can flip and point to it somewhere in the Bible, you can use it. In other words, if you can read it and quote it, you can slap it on somebody and insist “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.”

There is where I look back to some of the testimony in Acts 15 again. I’ve quoted Peter’s testimony previously in this blog. It is important, because he is speaking directly to other Christians who had opposing points of view. They were the so-called Judaizers, those who insisted that for a Gentile to become a Christian he must first become a Jew and take upon himself all the commandments of Judaism including the commandment that he be circumcised.

^{7 After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. 8 And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; 9 and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. 10 Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? 11 On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”}Simon Peter, like Bishop Rogness in the St. Paul Area Synod of the ELCA, is acknowledging that he sees the work of the Holy Spirit in the deeds and wonders of the church. Peter saw the work of the Spirit in the faith and life of Gentile believers who had come to Christ. Bishop Rogness saw the work of the Spirit in congregations led by lesbian or gay pastors (and drawing into Christ’s body LGBT people of faith).Clearly, this steps beyond the relatively simple issues of what the Bible says and what it means. This steps into the area of trusting that God is alive and present today, that we Christians who are living today are entrusted not only with the content of faith—the doctrine which everybody from Peter Akinola to Fred Phelps to Gene Robinson all say they believe and want to preserve—but with the witness of faith lived in the presence of the living Spirit of God.Clearly, the Bible does not settle all questions of Christian faith. It contains all we need, however, to ask the relevant questions of Christian faith. And it provides guidance for answering them, not final answers.

It has been said a million times or so (I have lost count, actually) that the only way people change their minds about LGBT people is when they meet them and come to know them. This works first among families, when a gay son or a lesbian daughter shares his or her discernment of sexual orientation. Then tears are shed and words are said, some of which are regretted later. But finally people come around and realize that loves makes a family, not gender. The family regains the son or daughter it thought it would have to kick out the door. And what is lost is prejudice and homophobia.

This could also be said of the Christian family. The only way Christians will change their minds about LGBT people is when they meet them and come to know them. Lesbians, gay men, bisexual persons and most recently those who are transitioning from male to female or female to male, have come forward to be honest and tell their stories and also express their abiding faith in God’s grace. And like Simon Peter, and Peter Rogness, the church really finds that it must re-open its arms to its own—because the Bible tells us that this is the way Christ wills it to be.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Sex, Gay Catechism, Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, Ministry, Faith, LGBT Christian, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

The Biblical Issue in Three Parts: Part Two

August 5, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Friends, we are still in Acts 15, continuing from yesterday. The third part appears tomorrow.

James was serving as the presiding elder of the church, in much the same position as Bishop Rogness or any other bishop. He expressed not his opinion but his decision, based on the testimony brought to him that God had done many signs and wonders among the Gentiles—among people whom other strict conservative Christians considered reprehensible and outside the grace of God. James references both the Scripture (Simeon and the prophets) and the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the immediate context of this decision. In drafting the letter which communicates this apostolic decision, James and the other apostles said this:

^{23 “The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the believers of Gentile origin in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. 24 Since we have heard that certain persons who have gone out from us, though with no instructions from us, have said things to disturb you and have unsettled your minds, 25 we have decided unanimously to choose representatives and send them to you, along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, 26 who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27 We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. 28 For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: 29 that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”}Please note: “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” This is the amazing confidence —apostolic certainty of faith—that the church has the authority from Christ himself to relax the rules and lighten the load, to “impose no further burden” than the essentials. Out are the complete 613 mitzvot or commandments of the Torah. All that is left are four essentials.The “essentials” of course don’t seem to make sense to us now. The human story moves on. The essentials in their day were to avoid foods that had been offered as sacrifices to idols, from blood, from what has been strangled — these seem to be hold-overs from kosher food law — and from fornication (in Greek, porneia).

This last is serious because it makes the “short list” of four things which Gentile believers should avoid. It is the only one of the four which has anything to do with sexuality, by the way. Problem is, we can’t say with absolute certainty what the early church meant by porneia, except we get the English word “porn” from it. It probably refers to prostitution or to sexual relationships which break the marital covenant, that is, infidelity. The notes in the New Interpreter’s Study Bible NRSV (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003) says that fornication “likely refers to marriage with a close relative.” Incest, in other words.

“Conservative” Christians and fundamentalists, however, liberally expand their sense of what “fornication” means to include far more than what is meant in the original Greek New Testament. They include everything they want to condemn.

And for our purposes here, this is the sticking point: Does fornication also mean sex between two persons of the same sex because it is outside of heterosexual marriage? Is the intent here, in this key passage, to draw strict boundaries and remove all “wiggle room,” to build a wall or draw a line in the sand, to declare a “culture war” against anything that steps over the line? Obviously, conservatives and fundamentalists have drawn that line, and they insist that the Bible backs them up.

But the clear message in Acts 15 is that James’ decision, and the guidance of all the apostles in reaching this decision, was not to build walls but to tear them down, not to draw a line in the sand or declare a war, not to exclude but to include any people of faith (Gentiles) who had been very rigidly excluded by the religious rigors which the apostles are consciously abandoning.

I repeat part of the quote from Bishop Peter Rogness: “There are some who will simply say Leviticus calls homosexuality an abomination and that ends it. The problem with that, of course is that that reasoning would have most of us sinning because of wearing clothes with mixed threads or eating unclean foods or all the other things the Leviticus Holiness Codes condemn. Yet some of Leviticus we still take very seriously. So interpretation is involved.”

Catch the final phrase here: “So interpretation is involved.” Christians of the Lutheran Reformation have always been conscious that in order to be faithful to Scripture we must continually interpret that Scripture in the light of a changing world. The interpretive issue on the human sexuality and homosexuality question mostly comes down to two different questions to pose after reading and analyzing Acts 15.

1. Does the decision reached by this Jerusalem council give Christians a new final answer to our moral questions under the Law of Moses in particular and the teachings of the Bible in general? Or,

2. Does the process used by this Jerusalem council give Christians a model and a set of tools by which we are to draw our own conclusions and offer our own guidance for lives of faith in our times?

Clearly, we know that Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are not the final word from the Christian Bible on sexuality (these anti-same-sex rules are part of the 613 commandments or mitzvot of Judaism, and they did not make James’ short list). But we must together wrestle with whether or not Acts 15 is the final answer, sort of a “replacement commandment,” or a new approach to finding our own answers on moral questions.

It is pretty clear that I think the second is the correct interpretation. I say this not because it is self-serving, or because the Levitical laws and their threat of capital punishment is thereby set aside (they are already set aside for Christians either way you want to read Acts 15). I say this because the internal evidence of James’ decision reveals to us that all Christians must be prepared to hear testimony, listen for the guidance Holy Spirit, be surprised when a changing world invites a changing faith response on the part of Christ’s followers, which can easily have tectonic implications equal to the decision which stopped the practice of circumcision and set aside the commandments in the first century church.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Part Two appears tomorrow.

Posted in Doctrine, Sex, Gay Catechism, Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, Ministry, Faith, LGBT Christian, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

The Biblical Issue in Three Parts. Part One.

August 4, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

The following three blogs are lengthy because I took the freedom and opportunity to finish something I had started—to address those conservative Christians who are not merely opposed to homosexuality but passionately angry about the presence of gay and lesbian people in the Church, and who insist that they cannot reconcile because we have very different understandings of the authority of Holy Scripture. I am also posting these essays on my Gay Catechism web site.

Kudos to ELCA Bishop Peter Rogness for his report to his St. Paul Area Synod Assembly in May. The full text just appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of the Network Letter (Lutheran Network for Inclusive Vision), and on line at the Synod web site. It is six pages, but worth reading all of it. 

Rogness’ main subject is to express his own views, values and teaching in response to the proposed ELCA Sexuality statement and particularly to the proposed changes to Lutheran policy which still currently tries to exclude LGBT people from the ranks of its clergy.

More and more, people are saying what the big fight in the Christian church about sexuality is over is really how we read scripture.

I quote only Rogness’ summary of Biblical issues in the context of what conservatives insist is clearly condemned in the Bible.

“People are right to take Scripture seriously in this conversation; we wouldn’t be Lutherans with integrity if we didn’t.

“There are some who will simply say Leviticus calls homosexuality an abomination and that ends it. The problem with that, of course is that that reasoning would have most of us sinning because of wearing clothes with mixed threads or eating unclean foods or all the other things the Leviticus Holiness Codes condemn. Yet some of Leviticus we still take very seriously. So interpretation is involved.

“We begin with the basic question of whether what we speak of today—faithful, lifelong relationships between two persons of the same gender—is what the few biblical references are speaking to, and the answer is, probably not. We probably understand some things about sexual orientation differently today. But that doesn’t mean the Bible is irrelevant on this matter, or has no guidance to offer. . .

“This leads us to a point where, … very astute, committed, biblically-grounded scholars can come to different conclusions. The Bible clearly holds marriage between a man and a woman as a holy estate. It also holds before us the value of trusting and loving care for one another in families—and in all other relationships. And then it’s left to us, with humility, to recognize Paul’s words that “now we see in a mirror dimly,” [1 Corinthians 13:12] and, faithful to what we know of God revealed in Scripture, to make our best judgment.”

I wish there was room to include Rogness’ entire report. He is deliberate and thorough in working through the logic of agreeing with the ELCA Task Force recommendations on ministry policies to allow partnered lesbian or gay persons to serve as clergy of the church—a somewhat different conclusion (but a liveable one) that that of the Episcopal Church’s general convention two weeks ago.

Rogness’ thinking has obviously been affected by his own pastoral experience with the clergy and congregations of his synod. “In St. Paul and Minneapolis, we have several congregations where openly gay or lesbian persons, trained and gifted for ministry, have served because their congregations called them to serve,” he writes. “We are prohibited from placing them under call on the [clergy] roster. But anyone who is familiar with that ministry can’t dispute that something good is happening there.”

I am somewhat familiar with one of them, Reformation-St. Paul Lutheran Church in St. Paul, MN. With countless other dear friends in the movement, I was there for the extraordinary (extra ordinem = without the permission of the Bishop) ordination of Pastor Anita Hill, an extraordinary pastor and leader.

Rogness’ reference to her ministry closely parallels the experience in the early church when controversy threatened to tear the tiny community of Christ’s followers apart over whether or not to accept Gentile believers into full communion with Jewish believers without these converts having to first submit to circumcision (dear Lord, is it always about sex?). In Acts 15 we have the direct report of that first “Church Council” meeting:

^{1 Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” 2 And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders. 3 So they were sent on their way by the church, and as they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, they reported the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the believers. 4 When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. 5 But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, “It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.”}Remember the Brick Testament? I talked about this chapter most recently on April 29. It is one of the premier texts we have on how disagreements in the church of Christ ought to be approached. ^{12 “The whole assembly kept silence, and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles. 13 After they finished speaking, James replied, “My brothers, listen to me. 14 Simeon has related how God first looked favorably on the Gentiles, to take from among them a people for his name. 15 This agrees with the words of the prophets, as it is written,16 ‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; from its ruins I will rebuild it, and I will set it up,17 so that all other peoples may seek the Lord — even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called.}Thus says the Lord, who has been making these things ¹⁸ known from long ago.’

19 Therefore I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God, ²⁰ but we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Part Two appears tomorrow.

Posted in Doctrine, Sex, Gay Catechism, Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, Ministry, Faith, LGBT Christian, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

On lust, love, and 100 guests.

July 13, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

We had dinner last night with friends—a couple for whom I performed the marriage ceremony last summer. Although they have been together for something like 14 years, they will celebrate their first anniversary of legal marriage in a few weeks.

Of course we got to talking about the significance of the California Supreme Court’s decision to allow Proposition 8 to stand (therefore, same-sex marriages are not valid nor recognized) but affirming that Proposition 8 does not nullify the 18,000+ couples same-sex marriages in 2008 (therefore both valid and recognized).

Even if the Roman Catholic Church has eliminated Limbo as a place between heaven and hell, the California Supreme Court has recreated Limbo as the place to consign already-married same-sex couples.

And even while we’re watching the early skirmishes in federal court over both

Proposition 8 and DOMA, it looks as if the outcome of neither of those cases could possibly affect the 36,000 + of us who are legally marriage lesbian or gay couples. Limbo.

For some crazy reason, my mind ratcheted back to a conversation with another friend 25 years ago. He had come out to his (Lutheran) pastor in St. Louis, Missouri, and even though the man was kind and not harshly judgmental, his view was that there is no such thing as genuine love between two persons of the same gender. Only lust. Therefore, this pastor could argue that St. Paul’s condemnation of lust (Romans 1:24, tied to his condemnation of same-sex passion several verses later) could withstand any arguments from his own writings in 1 Corinthians 13 and elsewhere about the supremacy of love. Yes, the Bible upholds love and Christian ethics based on love, but since homosexual desire is merely lust, it is not entitled to any “loophole.” At least so goes the argument as I remember it being relayed to me.

Mostly I just shake my head in sadness that anti-gay critics will go to such lengths to rationalize their rejection of us and our different expression of love. Real speak: in the minds of some heterosexuals same-sex love couldn’t possible be love because they can’t imagine loving someone of the same sex. But call it lust and the necessary rationalizations fall neatly into place so that they reject lesbians and gay men.

According to www.dictionary.com:

lust

–noun

1. intense sexual desire or appetite.

2. uncontrolled or illicit sexual desire or appetite; lecherousness.

3. a passionate or overmastering desire or craving (usually fol. by for): a lust for power.

4. ardent enthusiasm; zest; relish: an enviable lust for life.

5. Obsolete. a. pleasure or delight. b. desire; inclination; wish. 

–verb (used without object)

6. to have intense sexual desire.

7. to have a yearning or desire; have a strong or excessive craving (often fol. by for or after).

Thinking about my own life and my spouse of 33 years and that of our friends—spouses for 14 years— it seems ludicrous to dismiss these lifelong relationships as “lust.” Between us, we’ve lived through major life changes, serious illnesses and injuries, change or loss of jobs, the AIDS pandemic, elder care, financial catastrophes, and an awakening consciousness of our own mortality. We have been through what many couples go through, and whether you want to use the “love” word or not, in God’s truth these lives are about fidelity, trust, sacrifice, commitment and constancy. No, the word “lust” just doesn’t fit any of that.

Lust, it seems to me, is a distracting hunger for something you don’t have and would sure like to get. Lust applies more to a televangelist or a politician who takes strange measures to arrange for tricks or affairs–even the Jimmy Carter variety (see the Playboy interview, 1976). At its lower levels lust is an energizer that lures most of us in our youth to play the dating and mating game. We hunger for acceptance, touch, warmth, companionship, fun and flesh. Lust dims with age, if it is not completely extinguished by the reality of having to get up early in the morning and needing to get a decent night’s sleep.

Yes, lust can become a preoccupation, an obsession, that drives some people to make bad judgments, to “hike the Appalachian Trail” or for some tragic individuals to power a mid-life crisis speeding down the road, and maybe to crash into a Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting. Yes, lust exists, but no, the gender of one’s life partner does not really have anything to do with it.

Back at the restaurant table last night, we got to reminiscing about our friends wedding last July. One of them got a little weepy remembering not so much the vows they exchanged as a couple, but the questions which I had asked the 100 guests.

“Families, friends, and all who are gathered here with Name and Name, will you support and care for them, sustain them in times of trouble, give thanks with them in times of joy, honor the bonds of their covenant, and affirm the love of God reflected in their life together? If so, answer, ‘We will.’

“And, in your many different paths of life, I ask each of you to reflect and to offer your pledge: will you promise to spread tolerance and acceptance, peace and goodwill among all people, so that you help to make the world safe for love, for diversity, for courage, and for commitment you witness here today? If so, answer, ‘We will.’”

It was the loud “We will!” responses that these men heard from their families and friends that brought some tears last night.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Gay Catechism, Sex, LGBT Christian, Recovery, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

Can you trust me?

June 24, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Tonight I was trying to finally connect a friend of a church friend with a friend of another church friend. One of them needs at home-care, and the other has done a lot of elder care. There are other issues, too, not the least of which is that the two women have not met each other. The elder needs to be able to trust this stranger she will pay to care for her in her own home. And trust is a big issue for elders, whether or not they realize it. All too often we read the horror stories of elders being taken advantage of, sometimes on the order of huge sums of money.

Trust is a major issue for lesbian/gay people, too. We have been taken advantage of, big time. Some of us have entrusted “our secret” only to have been outed by the person we thought was sensitive, honest, caring and could respect a confidence. Over and over, highly-placed people in the church, whether a local congregation, or the office of a bishop, have broken trust in a completely un-Christian way.

Is it any wonder that LGBT people don’t trust the church? Maybe it’s like hot gossip. We think that the sensationalism of some items of information somehow trump all other ethical considerations. In past generations, a broken confidence could be used to blackmail a homosexual. Nowadays its’ more like all over the internet, for free. But the damage to a life is still done, a confidence is betrayed, and trust is broken.

But it occurs to me that this is precisely where the power of coming out picks up its own momentum. When we are honest—completely honest—about ourselves, our lives, our sexuality, our relationships there is nothing else than an unethical person can do to hurt us. If everyone already knows I am gay, then my friends are my friends knowing I am gay, and those who cannot be my friend will just avoid me because I’m gay. At least they all know where I stand, who I really am, and whom to ask if they have honest questions. If I am completely honest, my honesty about my sexuality and life present an implied challenge—or even a demand—to everyone else that they be honest with me and about me. If it is widely known that I’m gay, it would be preposterous for others to spread rumors or try to use innuendo to hurt me because, well, everybody knows.

The high cost, and high danger, of not coming out, of not being completely honest about my life, is that telling only partial truths, or stretching the truth, or manufacturing pure fiction to fill in acceptable details (which is like painting over reality with a wide brush), will eventually reveal to others that I cannot be trusted.

In years past, many homosexuals simply split their lives down the middle, between day and night, and made sure that the two never intersected. They thought that they were extremely careful to cover their tracks, so that the decent people who knew them as decent people would never have reason to suspect that their public lives were only part of the story. They thought. No matter how well-intentioned, a lie is never perfect, and in its flaws and erosions over time, it damages trust. People might not suspect that I am gay, but they know for sure that I am evasive, ambiguous, distant, opaque where I should be open, present, and transparent. They will come to not trust me even if they’re not sure why.

But when I come out, the two parts of my life simply re-weave into one life. My sexuality, my friends, my whereabouts, what I did last weekend, my boyfriend, my partner for life are not dark secrets, not fiction, not sketchy, not a lie. And the people who can handle that (increasingly they are the majority of people) will trust me because by my honesty I have removed all the reasons not to trust me.

In effect, I am who I am: a gay man with a life partner (using myself as an example). Take it or leave it; take me or leave me. And if I have entrusted myself, my life, my reality to you, I expect you to be honest with me. If you support me in my quest for dignity, respect, self-esteem, equal rights and the grace of God, then stand with me. But be honest, because if you can’t support me, then say so up front so we can all get on with out lives.

I say all of this in a Christian context, because I think this basic kind of honesty and trust-building is fundamental to the Gospel. We say that we trust God’s word, and that means we rely on it without the background fear that God lis really Charlie Brown’s Lucy who will pull the football away (grace and love) at the last second, or the fear that there is a trick question on the final (the judgment day) which will erase our good grades and cause us to flunk.

Gay and lesbian Christians are truly/truthfully living on faith because we are entrusting to God the honesty of our lives in the confidence that God is being totally honest and trustworthy with us. If that isn’t faith I don’t know what is. Can we trust God? And if God is trustworthy, shouldn’t God’s people, the Church, be trustworthy also? Can we trust Christians to be who they say they are—disciples, not judges—? Can I trust you?

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Gay Catechism, "The Closet", Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace, Faith, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

Blows me away.

June 15, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Wayne Besen makes, as usual, some excellent points is his column critiquing the Ex-Gay industries, especially Exodus International and Focus on the Family. (See: “What’s Their Point?” What they spread as love is narrowly focused not to love the homosexual they supposedly want to help, but only themselves.

Besen, who is Jewish and I believe not particularly religious, nonetheless has the integrity and intelligence to question whether the religious motivation of Ex-Gay ministries is genuine. He reminds us that if the Christian faith wants to spread the love of God, they are doing a strange job of it by alienating tens of thousands of LGBT people, not only from “evangelical Christianity” but from religion in general.

For every guilt-ridden homosexual who temporarily falls under their spell, they lose hundreds, if not thousands, of gay people who view their conversion program as intolerant. If your ministry causes many gay people to write off not just Christianity, but all religion, by what measurement can you consider your evangelizing a success?

If these ministries want to love homosexuals and save them from a homosexual life-style, more often they drive young people to depression, abject despair, and suicide. Despair often contributes to self-destructive behaviors as well, so Besen cites a recent Emory University Study suggesting a link between banning same-sex marriage and HIV infection rates! (News: Georgia Political & Policy Digest; Emory News Release.)

Is this what a loving God would really want? A lot of guilt-ridden, repentant, dead homosexuals? For once I am glad that someone form outside the Christian community can publish a critical look at the Ex-Gay expression of beliefs and tell them directly, “you are not being persuasive.”

It reminds me of the scene in Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All For You, in which the good sister carefully determines that one of her former catechism students, who was homosexual, had gone to confession for his sins and not done any other same-sex acts since his last confession.

GARY. Yes, Sister?  SISTER. You still believe what you do with Jeff is wrong, don’t you? I mean, you still confess it in confession, don’t you?  GARY. Well I don’t really think it’s wrong, but I’m not sure, so I do still tell it in confession.  SISTER. When did you last go to confession?   ALOYSIUS. This morning actually. I was going to be playing Saint Joseph and all.  SISTER. And you haven’t sinned since then, have you?  GARY. No, sister. (Sister shoots him dead.)SISTER. (Triumphantly.)  I’ve sent him to heaven! Christopher Durang’s play was screamingly funny, but when I saw it live in Los Angeles years ago, I also remember that my chest was pounding when Sister Mary pulled out her revolver. There is something just too real about homophobic hatred even when it is disguised as love or prayer or good intentions.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Homophobia, Gay Catechism, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Doctrine, LGBT Rights, Ex-Gay | Print | No Comments »

I thought you should know.

May 31, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I just had an interesting conversation this evening, at a Lutherans Concerned/Los Angeles reception/happy hour with a young woman enrolled in seminary. The subject we stayed on for a few minutes was “coming out.”

I don’t get around to this very often in this blog any more, even though I identified it two years ago as a subject worth blogging about —especially for Christians who are sometimes deeply conflicted about being lesbian/gay and Christian. Most of my conversations are with people who are already out, or at least partially out ~ somewhat open about their sexuality even if they’re selective about how they’ve shared it with. It kind of spooks me when I meet someone new who is only recently coming out to self or others. It’s hard to imagine any more that closeted people are still, well, in their closets. As time goes by, kids come out at earlier and earlier ages, so that a completely open gay boy of 13 or 14 is not unheard of. In contrast, when I was that age, it was homosexuality that seemed to be unheard of, and I was into my college years before I had the freedom and furtiveness to search the campus library for any information about it.

The young woman told me that she had come to her local Lutheran church directly from another church. She had been highly regarded there, apparently, and about to be elected or appointed as an officer of that congregation when (it sounded almost like an afterthought) she felt that full disclosure would be important. So she met with key people and said something like, “I just thought you should know,” that is, that she has a female partner of a number of years, etc.

They apparently didn’t take it well, hadn’t imagined it, and told her immediately that she couldn’t be an officer of their congregation, and in fact couldn’t even serve on a committee. But she could still come to church. That lasted about two weeks before she left and found a welcoming, LGBT-positive Lutheran church in the same neighborhood.

As in the church she left behind, there are hundreds—thousands of churches that still have closeted lesbian/gay members (some young, some not young at all) who must watch their backs and whose pastors and fellow parishioners probably don’t suspect they are lesbian, gay, etc. How can this be? I wonder if it happens because the self-righteous and un-welcoming churches must somehow assume that the general public has heard their zero-tolerance policy clearly enough not to attempt to come in or try to infiltrate. They must be shocked, shocked, to discover a Lesbian has sneaked past the gates. But what about the very young teenager who was born into a Christian congregation, only to discover their true inner sexuality 13 or 14 years later.

What was remarkable to me was that we had this conversation now, in 2009, rather than 1989 or 1979. Is this kind of secrecy/fear or rejection/exclusion really still going on in 2009?

You bet it is. The young woman reminded me of a Lutheran parish, I think in Minnesota, that after being a Reconciling in Christ (welcoming) congregation for a time, voted to bail out of the program: they actually decided to become unwelcoming. And to my mind the only reason that can still happen in this century is because the kids growing up there are afraid to come out.

How can I talk to kids, for example, who are14 or 15 years old about being Christian and lesbian or gay, or bisexual/transgender, etc., when they probably don’t know how to talk about it, or how to meet anybody like themselves to talk to? The internet of course—places like this blog—is a door that is wide open for kids who may be uncertain, intimidated, scared or, God forbid, already abused or severely punished because they tried to come out or to get truthful information.

Twenty years ago, Lutherans Concerned periodically sent out mailings to every Lutheran congregation in our region. Sometimes we included a simple poster, with our phone number in very big type.

665-LCLA

We imagined a scared kid who didn’t dare let on to anybody that s/he wanted to know more about being lesbian or gay. Maybe the secretary of the church would allow the poster to be put up on a bulletin board. And maybe these kids would see it, and without revealing even a nonchalant interest in it, could see the number from across the room and memorize the phone number.

Yes, we did get a few calls like that, but the young person on the other end of the phone line was too scared to give us a full name or an address to send more information or a monthly newsletter.

Enter the internet, and the information is all here and nobody has to give names at all if you don’t want to, and even a 14 year-old Christian kid knows how to surf the web and then delete your browsing history so other users of the computer won’t have a clue where you’ve been cruising. Of course, getting good information and advice on coming out doesn’t take away the frustrating, painful, risky work of actually coming out.

If you are that kid, remember: (1) God loves you as you are (2) don’t panic; (3) the love and truth of the Gospel is much bigger and more powerful than all the little narrow minds in your local church; (4) you’re only a teenager for a short time, so you will have greater and greater freedom to explore and express your real self as you grow; (5) Google for help, for answers, for advice and for trustworthy counsel (and I don’t mean Twitter or Craig’s List or chat rooms!); (6) if necessary, delete your browser’s history; (7) trust your own inner feelings and experiences because the Holy Spirit may be speaking to your heart and guiding you to do the right thing for your life.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in "The Closet", Gay Catechism, LGBT Christian, Coming Out, ELCA | Print | 1 Comment »

Break down the door before you suffocate!

May 23, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

 Two frogs are sitting in a pot half full of water on the stove. There are bubbles all around them. “You know, it just doesn’t get any better than this,” said the first one.

“What do you mean? Are you crazy?” said the other. “This water is getting hot. I think we should get outta here.”

“Why are you always so negative?” said the first. “It’s not boiling, after all. It’s only simmering.”

“I can’t believe it! I suppose now you’re going to tell me the pot is half full, not half empty.”

I read an interesting piece yesterday in Instinct magazine, which surprised me. It’s a pretty-boy fashion magazine that catches our eyes but seldom gets read.

Joel Perry’s article”Is There Still a Closet?” is a relatively sympathetic look at those (how few? how many?) sexual minority persons out there who are still hiding. His article is not edgy—he doesn’t contemplate anything as exotic as transgender politician or a bisexual bishop—but he talks about his friend Davis from small town North Carolina who still sings in the church choir and says, “You try not to live a lie; however, you have to cover your tacks well.”

Perry is probably more sympathetic than I might be. Maybe a transgender politician must hide, but a 42-year old medical assistant can get work almost anywhere. Why would he stay where he can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t live? Why would he try to hold his breath for a lifetime because there is no air in the closet? Or maybe in North Carolina?

Or is it that he just doesn’t know how to come out gracefully, or where to begin?

My friend, most of us didn’t start out to be radical activists. But there came a moment when we finally realized that the pain of inaction outweighed the risks of action.

The truth is that coming out is a multi-part test of one’s own inner integrity. You don’t come out only once, but many times to different audiences. The outcome of any of these will vary, depending on how well prepared you are, and what kind of people you trust with your integrity. It can be painful, and it can be relatively easy and enjoyable. depending on how each coming out event unfolds. Typically, my friends report that at least for some —family especially—they already know and were just waiting for them to talk about it.

Another important thing to remember is that the risk and pain are temporary. Once the coming out process is behind you, your life takes different turns. If doors slam shut, others will open. If some friends shun you, you will make other, more genuine friends. If you grow in the process of deciding you must breathe free, you may discover that other people are also able to grow and change their views and opinions. The family, friend or co-worker who is often overheard telling homophobic jokes may actually change his or her tune just because you were honest about yourself.

And the most important thing to remember, if you are a person of faith, is that God already knows your secret. The thunderbolt has not hit you, no matter how long you’ve been hiding your little secret, so many it’s time to reconsider how damning your sexuality really is. Could it be that God knows, and God still loves you? That the all-wise and omniscient God, the one who knows the heart, fully understands and does not condemn you? That grace outweighs condemnation, and love is more important than sin?

Could it be that you’ve been avoiding thinking about God for fear of the consequences, only to realize that God’s Spirit may be your best friend and advocate as you go through the coming out process?

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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