I've been attempting to set out a positive way forward, through the impasse created, in how the church thinks about homosexuality. This is, of course, all one piece of a larger theology of sex, relationships, and marriage, that's grounded not in "natural law" or Genesis, but in Jesus. I want ultimately to articulate a theology that finds its beginning in baptism, not gender (and certainly not genitalia).
Specifically when it comes to homosexuality, though, this impasse is created in a problem of language. More specifically: The discussion of homosexuality when the label sin is used to portray same-sex cohabitation as unacceptable to many in the Christian community. It's not that homosexual persons are not sinners. We all are. "No one is righteous, not even one” (Rom 3.9). The issue is more complex than that. Is there an alternative?
I think there is.
All human life is tragic.
Some years ago I was pastor of a small congregation, two men living together in a homosexual relationship, both graduates of a Bible school and with a clear Christian testimony, became friends of some in the church and eventually asked me if they could join. They both knew what many said the Bible taught concerning homosexuality and knew that my position -- because it was that of the church -- was based on this biblical teaching. My response was: Of course you can join. This is not a church for those who are perfect but for those seeking Christian fellowship and a place to worship and grow in Christ.
I don't think any of us ever used the word sin. If they had asked me if I considered homosexual practice a sin, I don't know what I would have said. I hope that I would have said something like this: Do you believe that a same sex relation is what God intended when he created humans as sexual persons? They would have answered, "No, but this is the only way that we have found it possible to live and love. While others may say that we have a choice, for our part we feel that this relationship is the only one that fulfills our life and meets our needs". In several other ways, they had communicated much the same to me.
Not that a same-sex relation is tragic as opposed to heterosexual relations, but that it is tragic because all human sexuality must be understood as necessarily an experience of the tragic. The key word here is understood. The difficulty for many heterosexual persons with regard to homosexuality is that they have no way of understanding how such a practice and relationship can be part of an authentic human experience, much less one that is Christian. The concept of the tragic may be one way of understanding the complex experience of human sexuality that underlies both heterosexual and homosexual tendencies and practice.
When I understand what motivates a rebellious child to act out in anti-social ways, I gain insight in how to relate to that child rather than simply use labels to describe their behavior. In somewhat the same way, if homosexual behavior is simply labeled as "deviant" or a "perversion", one is not only free from attempting to understand, but one makes no attempt. What is needed is an underlying structure of human existence rather than a practice of human behavior to begin to understand and then engage in discussion with homosexual persons with regard to the church.
Thing is, the tragic doesn't happen to is as a result of being created. It's not even the result of Genesis 3. The tragic happens because we're particular people born in particular families into particular histories and cultures. The tragic happens as a result of our finitude. Sometimes the only choices to be made are "bad" ones. But that's because not everything is entirely open to us, this side of the Eschaton.
The tragic exists precisely because human persons experience the freedom of self-conscious existence with virtually unlimited possibilities while, at the same time, remaining bound by necessity to the dust out of which they are created. The tragic is the result of the fact that humans cannot be in more than one place at a time, and they are aware of that.
When caught in a dilemma in which responsibility to help another is the most important, a decision has to be made. Failure to be able to meet both demands is tragic. Even the first humans were confronted with the tragic. Not everything that is possible, not everything that is good, can be chosen or accomplished or experienced. Being aware of that constitutes the tragic.
Kierkegaard called this irreconcilable tension between possibility and necessity Dread. I prefer to call it the tragic. Dread became for him simply the psychological/spiritual moment of absolute self-awareness. The tragic is more a construct of human existence that underlies all human life, not merely a moment of awareness. As a construct of human existence, the tragic cannot be avoided though it can be denied, as Ernest Becker profoundly described in his Denial of Death.
Faith, Kierkegaard said, can overcome dread. But it can't overcome the tragic. The tragic can't be overcome and eliminated without destroying human life as we know it. Redemption of the tragic is an eschatological event. That is, it will only occur when the "new heavens and the new earth" emerge with the end of this temporal order. It's only then that "there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain" (Rev 21.4). Until that time, redemption of the tragic will be provisional and partial with intimations of that eschatological reality illuminating the landscape of the tragic while calling us to embrace the tragic with redemptive grace.
Redemption happens within the tragic but never from it. When Jesus healed the paralytic who had been unable to work and had lain by the pool of Bethesda for 38 years, this was a miracle of release from his tragic situation (John 5.1-8). But we aren't told what happened to him nor how he was able to make a living, having lived by the charity of others for all those years. If he ended up healed but without the means of making a living for himself, that too is tragic.
My friend Stan Hauerwas has written: "Marriage and family require time and energy that could be used to make the world better. To take the time to love one person rather than many, to have these children rather than helping the many in need, requires patience and a sense of the tragic" (A Community of Character). And I think he's right. We've developed whole theologies about sex and relationship that ignore the tragic. Like our theologies about homosexuality.
Human love is tragic. It offers fulfillment to human desire, hopes and needs that can never be met in even the most perfect human relationship. So sexuality itself is intrinsically tragic. The sexual nature of humanity perhaps lies nearest to the core of the self in terms of human intimacy. This is why sexuality is such a profound and yet complicated -- and yes, tragic -- component of the structure of humanity.
Sexuality itself is tragic because it's a component of the very structure of humanity that is woven through with the tragic. We don't understand what it is to be a human person until we understand that. And we cannot understand the struggle to integrate unfulfilled, sometimes chaotic, and often self-defeating sexual experience into authentic human personhood until we understand that.
When, in coffee hour at church after Sunday worship, a man in his late 40s tells me, "I always wanted to have children, but after getting married when I was 25 I discovered that my wife could not and would never be able to conceive a child. Yes, adoption was one possibility, but my dream of having a child of my own well never be realized". I respond: "Yes, I understand that, it is tragic". When a single woman in her late 50s tells me, "When I was in my 20s I thought for sure that I would be married. All of my friends found someone, I never did. I have lived all these years hoping for someone to love me in a special way. It never happened". I respond: "Yes, I understand that, it is tragic".
When a homosexual person tells me, "I knew that I was homosexual from the time I was a teenager. I tried to deny it, but finally accepted it, and though it is against what so many say the Bible teaches, I have someone to love me and to live in a relationship that I could never have otherwise". I respond: "Yes, I understand that, it is tragic".
When we fail to account for the tragic, before we rush to sin language, we're not being Christ's body in the world. When Jesus confronted the woman at the well (John 4) he drew forth the truth that she had lived a life of promiscuity. "You have had several husbands and the man you are living with is not your husband." Jesus perceived the tragic component of a woman's life lived under these circumstances. The moral issue with regard to living with a man not her husband was never brought up! Jesus didn't label her a sinner, but empowered her to confess that he was truly the Messiah sent from God. My point is that to label the sexual orientation and practice of a person as "sinful" fails to understand the tragic construct of that person's life. John 8 -- another account of Jesus dealing with a sexual "sin" -- reads just the same way.
That's because sin is not a condition that precedes grace. For until one is welcomed into the Kingdom of God through grace, the tragic only is a condition to be handled in religion. Grace is always God's first word. We hear God's "Yes" before we hear the whispers of God's "No" (Karl Barth).
Until we each have discovered our own sin, always through grace, to be called a sinner by others is not only graceless, it is tragic. It breaks the common bond that makes us human. Saul of Tarsus would never have accepted the accusation that he was a sinner until he experienced the grace of God through his encounter with the risen Christ. Until the tragic nature of sin is revealed though grace, it lies untouched and unredeemed, hidden like a deadly virus that thrives on self-affirmation only to emerge in self-condemnation.
Jesus never labelled folks he encountered as sinners, but rather offered them the power of his own person and inclusion in the Kingdom of God as an eschatological promise of redemption of the tragic. Looking over the crowd who followed him, he had compassion on them because "they were like sheep without a shepherd" (Mark 6.7). Later that day he instructed his disciples to feed them and, as a result, more than 5,000 were fed. This "miraculous meal" was an eschatological sign and promise of redemption from the tragic. For a meal only lasts one day and holds back the tragic for a time; then hunger again rises up to remind humans that their existence is fragile and weak.
Redemption from sin begins with understanding, not with condemnation.
I'm not throwing sin away. I'm only insisting it takes its proper emphasis. We're bound to one another not only through the tragic and not only through sin. We're also bound to one another through death.
When Paul wrote to the Corinthian church with regard to sexual sin, he placed that particular sin in the same category as greed, worship of idols, and being abusive, a drunkard or a cheat (1 Cor 5.11). Paul only discovered that he was a sinner following his experience of grace through Jesus Christ. It's of no benefit to the Kingdom of God to call someone a sinner; instead, offer the grace of God so that they discover this for themselves.
The resurrection of Jesus is God's response to sin and death. It is God's "Yes" of grace, an affirmation we celebrate in baptism (Romans 6). That "Yes" is not only the first word of the Gospel, though. It is also the last word.
Jesus proclaimed the coming and the actual presence of the Kingdom of God in his own life and ministry. "But if I am casting out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has arrived among you" (Matt 12.28). But the Kingdom, while bringing redemption within the tragic, did not promise redemption from the tragic until the end of this temporal order and the coming of the Kingdom of God in glory. At the same time, Jesus said that his Kingdom was not of this world (John 18.36). Paul taught that the Kingdom of God is not a matter of living by religious rules and regulations, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit the tragic, did not promise redemption from the tragic until the end of this temporal order and the coming of the Kingdom of God in glory. At the same time, Jesus said that his Kingdom was not of this world (John 18.36). Paul taught that the Kingdom of God is not a matter of living by religious rules and regulations, but of " a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Rom 14.17).
Jesus confronts and reveals to the world with the reality of what God intended for humanity and the way it is supposed to be, calling what is into a redemptive relation with God as Creator and Redeemer. The church is a sign of the Kingdom and acquires its identity and role in relation to the Kingdom. As such, the church is not the Kingdom of God, but an eschatological extension of the Kingdom into the present world order. In the end, it is not the church but the Kingdom of God that is presented to the Father by the Son in its fullness and completeness (1 Cor 15.17).
The church is not just that people who accept us "as we are" but is also that people who experience God's transformation and live as God intended.
If, as I've tried to demonstrate, modern homosexuality isn't the same as what is condemned in the Bible, then what can we say? Might the experience of the tragic in these relationships also bear witness to God's love in Jesus Christ? For the church to exclude its neighbor, the homosexual person, is to forsake its own relation to the Kingdom of God and its authentic mission on earth.
Sin, it seems to me, isn't the place to begin talking about homosexual orientation and practice.