Constantinople, one Christian wrote that it was impossible to go into a
bakery for a loaf of bread without debating the nature of Christ. Was he
the eternal Son of the eternal Father or was there a time when he was
not? With bishops physically assaulting other bishops over this question
and emperors changing sides on a regular basis, the debate spilled out
of the church into the streets, where the Athanasians favored passages
from John's Gospel and the Arians shot back with passages from Mark.
When I read this chapter of early church history, I thanked God for letting
me live in a later one. Then I got back to planning classes and grading
papers. That was before the 2003 General Convention of the Episcopal
Church, however, when a majority of delegates from across the United
States confirmed the election of the Rev. Gene Robinson as the first
openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion.
Since then, North Georgia has come to resemble Constantinople in at
least one regard: no Episcopalian goes anywhere without being asked
for his or her position on homosexuality. While no physical assaults have
yet been reported, the debate has split churches and threatened
budgets. It has also involved heated references to scripture. Robinson
fans tend to favor passages from the Gospels, while Robinson foes
shoot back with passages from Paul. In the crossfire, it is not hard to
understand why Anthony the Great fled civilization for the desert in the
middle of the fourth century. Depending on who your neighbors are,
snakes and hyenas can look like pretty good company.
The problem I run into at the bakery is that I do not have a position on
homosexuality. What I have, instead, is a life. I have a history, in which
many people have played vital parts. When I am presented with the issue
of homosexuality, I experience temporary blindness. Something like
scales fall over my eyes, because I cannot visualize an issue. Instead, I
visualize the homeroom teacher who seemed actually to care whether I
showed up at school or not. I see the priest who taught me everything I
know about priesthood, and the professor who roasted whole chickens
for me when my food money ran out before the end of the month. I see
the faces of dozens of young men who died of AIDS, but not before they
had shown me how brightly they could burn with nothing left but the love
of God to live on. I see the face of my 16-year-old friend, still waiting for
his first true love, who says that if he found out he was gay, he would kill
himself. Other people have other stories, I know, but these are the
stories that have given me my sight. To reduce them to a position seems
irreverent somehow, like operating on someone's body without looking
him in the face.
I used to believe that swapping stories was one way to get closer to
people who see things differently than I do, so that both of our truths get
stretched, but I have almost given up on that. Where I live, at least, there
is little sense that life stories can be "true." Only scripture is true, so that
the debate about the place of homosexual Christians in the church today
hangs on what various biblical writers did or did not mean by one of five
passages that were written at least 1,950 years ago.
I love the Bible. I have spent more than half of my life reading it, studying
it, teaching and preaching it. While I do not find every word of it as
inspiring (or inspired) as some of my fellow Christians do, I encounter
God in it reliably enough to commit myself on a daily basis to practicing
the core teachings of both testaments. When I do this, however, a
peculiar thing happens. As I practice what I learn in the Bible, the Bible
turns its back on me. Like some parent intent on my getting my own
place, the Bible won't let me set up house in its pages. It gives me a kiss
and boots me into the world, promising me that I have everything I need
to find God not only on the page but also in the flesh. Whether I am
reading Torah or the Gospels, the written word keeps evicting me, to go
embody the word by living in peace and justice with my neighbors on this
earth, whatever amount of confrontation, struggle, recognition and
surrender that may involve.
In this way, I have arrived at a different understanding of what it means
to follow the Word of God. The phrase has become a double entendre
for me, meaning not only the Word on the page but also (and more
crucially) the Word made flesh. If Jesus' own example is to be trusted,
then following the Word of God may not always mean doing what is in the
book. Instead, it may mean deviating from what is in the book in order to
risk bringing the Word to life, and then facing the dreadful consequences
of loving the wrong people even after you have been warned time and
again to stop.
These days I guess everything sounds like a position, even a confession
like this one. I do not know what is right. All I know is whom I love, and
how far I have to go before there is no one left whom I do not love. If I am
wrong, then I figure that the Word of God will know what to do with me. I
am betting my life on that.
