Fifth Sunday of Epiphany
February 4, 2001
Year C
Title: Queer As Christians: Wrong Number? (Part 2 of 3-part series)
Theme: Fear about whether or not we are “right” or “wrong” sometimes
holds us hostage—and we forget that we aren’t Christians because we
are “right” but because God is right about us.
I don’t know about you, but I usually get about one phone call a month
from people who have simply called the wrong number. I’ve gotten these
wrong number calls anywhere from 2 PM to 2 AM and it never seems to
fail that they catch me at the wrong time and the wrong moment. And, of
course, you know, that the phone call immediately after that wrong
number is going to be the same person, who is going to either rudely
hang up because they are too embarrass to actually say that its them
again—or apologize profusely again, and maybe laugh with you a little bit
about it, as you try to figure out with them why they are getting the wrong
number. The worst part is being on the other end, when you try the
number you got for a second time, and you’re the one apologizing to the
person on the other end for mistakenly calling them yet again.
Sometimes I won’t even try it again, especially if I got an especially
peeved person on the other end. Fear of making someone even
madder drives me to the phone book or to call back at some later time.
Who likes getting wrong numbers—getting them or receiving them? Of
course, no one does—especially at 2 AM. We want to reach the people
we are intending to reach—and we don’t want to bothered with wrong
numbers—we’d like to be guaranteed that each time we pick up the
phone we’re calling the right number—so there won’t be those awkward
moments with some stranger on the end. I think sometimes people would
like THAT guarantee in their spiritual lives—a guarantee that they there
weren’t going to be dialing a wrong number and reaching a stranger on
the end. We don’t want to be wrong about anything, but especially about
the spiritual questions because we believe that they hold such eternal
implications. We don’t want to make the mistake of calling the wrong
number and finding a stranger on the other end, do we? And I know that
there are a lot of gay and lesbian Christians who have that fear as well,
the fear that we might actually be wrong about it being OK to be gay and
Christian. Some people I know spend a lot of time thinking about this
issue, and so I knew that I needed to address this in this QUEER AS
CHRISTIANS sermon series. What if you and I are calling the wrong
number, especially as queer Christians?
Every group of queer Christians—African-American slaves, divorced
people, women, lesbian and gay people, I include them all because each
group has felt at times like outsiders to the church—each of these queer
Christians has had to wonder at times whether they were right or wrong,
whether they were receiving the right spiritual phone call, or whether or
not they were dialing the right number and wondering whether they were
going to be getting a friend on the other end of that spiritual line.
Women must have wondered whether or not they were receiving the
right call from God when they stood up to sexism in the church, even
though there was a lot of Biblical justification for treating them as second-
class citizens. African-American slaves in the early 1800’s must have
wondered whether or not they were right about the evils of slavery, even
though there was a lot of Biblical justification for slavery. Gay and
lesbian people often wonder whether or not they are right or wrong
about loving someone of the same sex, even though there are passages
in Scripture that have so often been interpreted to condemn their love. I
mean, let’s ask the question: are we wrong, could we be wrong, about
the goodness of our love and our lovemaking? Do we have the right
number? Do we have the wrong number? It’s a question I get asked all
the time—and it’s a question rooted in yet another question that most of
us have asked at one time or another—how can I be both gay and
Christian?
Now, you are going to kill me, but I am not going to try to answer that
question with an elaborate response. The reality is that Christians of
good will disagree on that question—you just have to look at the
denominational fights in the Methodist and Presbyterian churches to see
that. I know where I stand—and I know where you probably stand. I, of
course, believe that you can—primarily because we are doing it as we
speak, aren’t we? Being gay and Christian? But one of things I’ve
learned as a gay minister who works in the gay community is that I am
never going to be able to convince people with great arguments that you
can be both be Christian and gay. I can have the best arguments in the
world, I can be logical and insightful and thoughtful and think I make a
convincing case, based on the Christian tradition and Scripture, but over
and over again, I find people not necessarily convinced by good
arguments. And its not because I am all that bad of an arguer—I can do
the debate thing. And its not because I don’t have a sound argument—I
do, but what I found is that people come to peace over this issue, about
being gay and Christian, because they begin the real process, perhaps
for the first time in their lives, of trusting the goodness of their love and
lovemaking and—most importantly, they begin to trust the goodness of
God. They begin to trust the goodness of the God who knows their
heart and knows the goodness of their lovemaking. And I suspect even
divorced people had to go through the same experience of trusting God,
even though Scripture seemed to condemn the end of their marriages.
Or slaves had to trust the truth they knew, that owning another human
being was wrong, even though white Southern slave owners had the
“Biblical argument” so to speak. Arguments, logical, neat arguments,
about whether or not people have the wrong number never convinced
anyone, I think.
So, what do we do, we queer Christians? How do we know we have the
right number? How do we know we are right about the issue of
homosexuality? Could we be wrong? Do we have the wrong number? I
don’t think so, to be honest. But I also think we really miss the point if we
get lost in the question of whether or not we are right or wrong.
Christians of good will disagree on this issue, and a lot of other issues.
What we forget and over again, on both sides of this argument, and
whole host of other arguments between Christians, is that we are not
Christians because we are on the “right” side of this issue or any other
issue. We aren’t Christians because we believe the right things and DO
the right things and SAY the right things. We are Christians, not
because WE are RIGHT, but because God is RIGHT ABOUT US. Let me
say that again: we are Christians not because we are right, but because
God is right about us.
Sometimes we get really lost in the issue of what WE do as Christians, or
what we HAVE to believe, or our choices and particular beliefs as
Christians. But I want to remind us what the heart of Gospel is all about,
which is grace and the real truth that it is grace that calls out to us, and
not us calling out to grace. Look at the story we heard today from the
Gospel of Luke. I want you to notice something here. This is a story
about Jesus’ first disciples being called to go with the journey with him. I
want you to notice WHO is making the call here—the phone call here—
so to speak. It is Christ choosing them, not them choosing Jesus. It’s
Jesus making the phone call, its Christ telling them to push away rom
shore, its Christ telling them put down there nets, not the other way
around. It’s a reminder that we didn’t call God, we didn’t pick up the
phone to make the call, but it was God who called us, it was God who
first cried out to us, it was God who first picked up the phone to call us.
And you know what? God doesn’t do wrong numbers! As the Scripture
says in First John, we love because God first loved us, we are who we
are as Christians because God first loved us. To put it another way, we
are not Christians because we are right about who God is, but, rather we
are Christians because God is right about us—that we are a people of
incredible worth, that we are people worth dying for, that we are people
worth pursuing until the ends of the earth, until we hear God’s call to be
God’s own. The story from Luke says that we are caught, that we are
like fish caught in a net, that Jesus catches us within his web of love.
So, maybe we should pay less attention to wrong numbers, to living our
lives in fear of dialing wrong spiritual numbers, of being held hostage to
our fear about being “right” about the issue of homosexuality or any
other controversial issue we Christians seem to be continually arguing
over. And maybe we should pay more attention to the one right call, the
one right number, that we know has been made in our lives—a number
dialed not by us, but dialed by the God of the universe who calls us to be
followers of the Christ. God didn’t call us by accident, folks—this is not a
wrong number. You and I, we are not loved because we are necessarily
“right” about anything, to be perfectly frank—we are loved because God
was right about you and I—about our worth, our beauty, our potential for
incredible grace and incredible transformation. Buechner reminds us, in
our first reading, that all of life is grace, that we are called to live our lives
joyfully because a party has been thrown for us, a party that wouldn’t
have been the same without us. We don’t have to DO anything to be
loved, we don’t have to BELIEVE anything to be met by God. Why?
Because we’re not loved because we hold the right beliefs or do the right
things or even that we’re nice people. No, God loves us because God
loves us, period. Living in fear about whether you and I are right or
wrong about this or that issue is still believing the idea that we’re the
ones doing the calling, that we’re the ones picking up the phone to call
God. But we’re not the ones doing the calling. God is—and the Good
News is that God doesn’t do wrong numbers. We never have to worry
about their being a stranger on the other end. God is right about you
and me, that we are people of incredible beauty, of incredible worth, of
incredible goodness, and a people whom God has pursued until the
ends of the earth, until we heard the call to be God’s own children. And
so here we are, a people who know grace, a people being transformed
by grace, a people made new by grace—all because God was right
about you and about me. Amen and amen.
