As I mentioned in my sermon this past Sunday, my family and I happened to be driving through downtown Kansas City on Saturday night. We were driving up Grand past the new Sprint Center where Elton John was getting ready to do a show. Out front were a handful of folks whom I assume were from Rev. Phelps' church in Topeka holding signs condemning homosexual people to hell. They even had a pick-up truck driving around the arena with a giant billboard saying America is now like Sodom and Gomorrah.I wanted to yell something at them, but my four year-old was in the car and I didn't feel that was a very good example. Also, although it might have made me feel better, it would not have done anything other than make them feel more righteous in their hate. I thought later about them and realized that they were a group of people ungrateful for the grace they have received, but then so are we all at one time or another.
Phelps and his gang are the worst of the lot when it comes to defaming gay people and presenting Christianity as a religion of bigotry, but just because most Christians aren't out there with nasty signs doesn't mean that there aren't nasty things being said in pulpits and Sunday School rooms across the nation.
There's a new study by the Barna group that says the majority of young people in the nation find Christianity to be judgmental and anti-gay. It seems the church's stance on homosexuality is one of the main reasons young people are turned off to the church in general. They recognize the hypocrisy of condemning people for who they are and how God made them They also recognize ignorance when they see it.
The stakes are higher than most Christians care to consider. Not only do American Christianity's narrow-minded views on sexuality leave thousands of people with minority sexual orientations confused, rejected and even suicidal--the irony being that the one place they should find guidance and direction is the place they are most likely to find condemnation--but the church's failure to listen to the experience of these hurting people in our midst reveals the utter bankruptcy of our beliefs to a generation of young people looking for something to believe in. A generation will be lost to the grace of God unless minds can be opened and lives can literally be saved.
After the service Sunday, I was sort of wondering if I should have held off once again mentioning the need for the church to accept and care for gay and lesbian people when a church member I know well came up to me. She took me aside and shared with me that her daughter is gay. It had been a difficult struggle for both of them, but they have both come to accept the daughter for who she is and to celebrate her as she is. She thanked me for what I had to say.
Also, last week I had a church member talk with me about the national event "Seven Straight Nights for Equal Rights," which asks heterosexuals around the country to have a week of action promoting equal rights for gay. lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. We talked about trying to make it happen in St. Joseph next year. It sounds great to me!
Who knows? Maybe there's hope that the children and youth of First Christian will grow up learning that God loves them for who they are and desires them to show the same kind of grace to others.
Grace and peace,
Chase
2 comments:
We'd love to have your participation in Seven Straight Nights next year! Let us know how to contact you at info-at-sevenstraightnights.org
I am always amazed when christians show such intolerance. We seem to forget that Jesus made a point of living outside of what was acceptable society. Socializing and ministering to the lepers, the sinners, the tax collectors, adulterers and prostitutes. Jesus was a living example of the love that is God. And yet when faced with the question WWJD? we choose to be judgemental and hateful. For those who try to practice love and tolerance and love as Jesus loved, the church can be a very uncomfotable place.
I've recently found myself drawn to the writings of Bishop John Shelby Spong. He has this to say about the church and sexual matters:
"With these sexual battles draining its energy in hopeless conflicts they are destined to lose, no one seems to notice how little attention the Church leaders pay to the Christ figure, who identified himself with the marginalized of his society, the lepers, the Samaritans and even the woman taken in the act of adultery. He broke the bands of religious prejudice against women by engaging the woman by the well in conversation, by encouraging Mary, the sister of Martha, to choose the role of a pupil for herself and by having female disciples who "followed him all the way from Galilee." How was it then possible for Christianity, formed by the followers of this Jesus, to diminish throughout its long history and always in the name of God, the lives and the humanity of so many? ...... I think of the Church's traditional victims: the Jews, the "heretics," the scientists who introduced us to a new understanding of the world and finally people of color, women and homosexual persons everywhere, and wonder what these ecclesiastical victims think when they hear church leaders say: "the Bible is the inerrant word of God." The gospel of John quotes Jesus, I think correctly, as saying "I came that they might have life, abundantly." One cannot give life and diminish people's humanity at the same time."
We need to stop diminishing people's humanity, after all we can not claim to be Christian unless we live and love like Christ.
I am so grateful that you post your views and thoughts, I only wish I could attend your services. I feel blessed to have the benefit of your insight. Please keep posting...
...and live abundantly, love wastefully and be.
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