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| The Rev. Hal Chorpenning |
A Sermon delivered at his home church, the First Church in Windsor, UCC, 16 June 2002, by the Rev. Hal Chorpenning. He was Associate Conference Minister for Wider Church Ministry, Connecticut Conference at the time.
From the July 2002 issue of "O/AM News"
Leviticus 11.9-12 and 18.19-22 Matthew 5.31-32
I have to tell you that Don DaRos [scripture reader] called me yesterday afternoon to confirm that he actually had the correct texts to read this morning...he did! They aren't easy to hear, but we have to deal with them, because they are in our canon.
"There is more light and truth yet to break forth from God's Holy word." So said John Robinson, Separatist pastor and Cambridge scholar, in a sermon to the Pilgrims as they left Leyden in the Netherlands to make their way across the Atlantic to New England in 1620. Robinson had begun as a priest in the Church of England and a don at Cambridge, but his conscience, his intellect, and his faith led him away from the Anglican church and eventually to flee Britain with other like-minded souls.
You may have heard Robinson's words before: they are often quoted in our Congregational tradition, because they address one of the most important aspects of the way we have historically interpreted scripture - and one of the ways we have come to hear and act upon the word of God in our midst.
Robinson was admonishing the Pilgrims that they ought not be swayed by orthodox Lutheran or Calvinist dogma, and that is still a part of who we are as the United Church of Christ today: we are not called upon to adhere to strict orthodoxy or to see creeds as tests of faith, but rather as testimonies of faith.
So, if we take seriously these words of Robinson, which are nearly 400 years old, how do we make sense of them today?
There is, in fact, a technical term for this theology: "progressive revelation" - it's the idea that God didn't stop communicating with humankind when the last words of the Bible were written or when it was stitched together from disparate parts as the canon. We are a people - as the inheritors of the Congregational tradition - who have always reinterpreted the ways God calls us to be the church. And it is no different today than it was in 1620 or in 1630 when this church was gathered.
In recent years, there has been a lot written about "emotional intelligence," "multiple intelligences," and "women's ways of knowing." There are also spiritual ways of knowing - and this is nothing new; it goes back at least to John Wesley in the 18th century.
Here are four spiritual ways of knowing the sacred: scripture, reason, tradition, and experience.
As one sage at our former church, First Congregational UCC in Boulder, put it: "You can take the whole Bible literally or you can take the whole Bible seriously. You just can't do both at the same time."
If there really is "more light" yet to come from God's word, then we have to be receptive to it with open ears, eyes, hearts, and minds. We need to allow our tradition, our reason, and our experience to inform our reading and our interpretation of scripture.
So, how do we approach the prohibitions of Leviticus seriously, even if we don't take them literally? And how do we justify not interpreting them literally, even if others do?
One way of looking at scripture is to approach it in three steps: says/meant/means
What do the passages in this morning's readings from Leviticus say? "Everything in the waters that does not have fins and scales is detestable to you," and "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman." It's pretty clear: no same-gender male sexual activity, and also no lobster or steamers.
What did those passages mean to the ancient Hebrews? It meant that they were set apart from other peoples, and that they were required to follow ritual purity laws that built cultural walls between them and everyone else. And of course, there is a panoply of laws in Leviticus that helped regulate the ritual purity of Jewish men and women in the ancient Near East.
So, what does it mean for us today? Does it mean that we forego fried scallops and catfish? Of course not. Why?
In part, it is because of Paul's interpretation those who are in Christ are not bound by the law. And it has everything to do with Jesus' ministry: Jesus was continually overturning the system of ritual purity by emphasizing God's compassion for all of humanity. That theme of compassion, rather than purity, informs what God is saying through Jesus, and what we strive to enact as Christians.
And in part, we use our reason and our experience to inform the way we think about things today, whether it's clams or the loving relationships between two men or two women.
Since today is Father's Day, let me tell you a story about another member of First Congregational in Boulder. JC is a social worker in his 40s, and he is executive director of a government-related agency. And JC is a gay. He and his partner, Tom, served as foster parents to a young boy, a year or so older than Cameron, whose name is Dominic. And as a three- and four-year-old, he acted out like few kids I've ever seen.
Now, you have to understand that Dominic's mom was a drug addict and his birth father was long gone. His mom tried repeatedly to clean up her act, and each time fell back into the vicious cycle of addiction. As you might suspect, Dominic had a lot of issues on his plate to deal with, having been raised with such a lack of parental stability. And then he was bounced from foster home to foster home, until he found parents who could deal with his behavior.
The first time Dominic knew unconditional love is when JC and Tom took him in as foster parents. Eventually, they were able to adopt Dominic and his little sister. Those two men made a huge difference in Dominic's life by providing a loving family, and secure home, and a deep faith.
So, the next time you hear one of our conservative brothers or sisters use the words, "Family Values," I hope you'll think of Dominic and his dads, JC and Tom.
I've got a question for you: if you're willing to eat shrimp cocktail, and wear clothing made of two blended fabrics, how could you think about using Leviticus as a justification to say that a loving, committed relationship between two mean is an abomination?
There is indeed more light and truth yet to break forth.
I don't want to soft-pedal these texts: they are difficult to grapple with. They are hard to hear and sometimes hard to figure out. But thankfully, we are in a faith tradition that encourages latitude in biblical interpretation.
So, how do we approach Jesus' own words on the subject of divorce? Divorce is common in our society: it's not a pleasurable or a desirable event for any family, but it is a reality, and we have to deal with it. We could take a hard-line stance like the Roman Catholic church and prohibit divorce. But that's not who we are as a denomination.
My step-mother-in-law was a devoted Roman Catholic, married to an surgeon, who caused the end of that relationship and divorced her. Because she chose to remarry, she is no longer welcome at the communion table in her own church. And she feels acutely damaged by that exclusion.
And I'll bet there are some dads (and moms) sitting in this congregation today who have had similar experiences with being ostracized because of divorce - whether being shunned was at the hands of the church, family, or friends. Rather than condemning people who have suffered through the end of a marriage, we need to acknowledge their pain and the anguish of their families. We in the church need to be about the business of wholeness and transformation; seldom is judgment a path toward those ends.
Let's look at Jesus' words using that framework of says/meant/means.
The text says that whoever divorces his wife or marries a divorced woman is committing adultery. It's pretty straight-forward.
What did that mean in Jesus' context 2000 years ago? Women were people without legal status, and were systemically oppressed by a patriarchal system. That is also why both the Hebrew prophets and the early church showed special concern for widows. Women were basically regarded as non-entities, who could be disposed of, almost without a second thought. Think of the status of women under the Taliban, and you'll begin to get the picture. What those words meant in Jesus' context was that you could not simply discard a woman.
So, what does this text mean for us today? Does it mean that we must prohibit divorce? Or does it imply that we ought to ensure that all persons are valued not only by God, but by society, as well- that "the least of these who are members of my family" are cared for by those who have the means and the ability to do so?
It's interesting to me that some more conservative congregations in the UCC and in other Protestant denominations are willing to interpret Jesus' prohibition on divorce as being from another social and cultural time and place, but they insist that we take literally the Jewish law codes that predate Jesus by several thousand years - well, at least the one about sexual behavior between two men.
The church is and ought to be about welcome, not exclusion. And it is up to each of us to live out that welcome to people whom others shun.
There is more light yet to break forth.
I'd like to leave you this morning with some thoughts from the new United Church of Christ identity ad campaign, which was designed by my friend Ron Buford, PR manager for the UCC in Cleveland.
I spent the better part of a day with Ron a couple of weeks ago, and he told me that he was in Los Angeles, and he found a postcard with a quotation from Gracie Allen, of all people. As she was putting her things in order before her death from cancer, she wrote a note to her husband, George Burns, which said: "Never place a period where God has placed a comma." From that wonderful sentence, we hear echoes of John Robinson saying that "there is more light to break forth," that God hasn't had the last word quite yet.
Ron told me that after he pondered Gracie Allen's words and rolled them around in his head, he was awakened in the night by a thought, which thankfully he wrote down: "God is still speaking," which together with Gracie Allen's words form the basis for the new ad campaign.
If God is, in fact, still speaking, should we not use every tool, every sense, every form of intelligence at our disposal to hear the still small voice?
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma."
"In the Midst of New Dimensions"; words and tune written in 1985 by Julian Rush, an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church [p. 391 in the New Century Hymnal -- not copyrighted. The fact that Rev. Rush was a gay man truly gives a profoundness to the work, I feel. (ed.)]
1. In the midst of new di-men-sions,
in the face of chang-ing ways,
Who will lead the pil-grim peo-ples
wan-dering in their sep-arate ways?
Refrain: God of rain-bow, fier-y pil-lar,
lead-ing where the ea-gles soar,
We your peo-ple, ours the jour-ney
now and ev-er, now and ev-er,
now and ev-er, now and ev-er-more.
2. Through the flood of starv-ing peo-ple,
war-ring fac-tions and de-spair,
Who will lift the ol-ive branch-es?
Who will light the flame of care?
3. As we stand a world di-vid-ed
by our own self-seek-ing schemes,
Grant that we, your glob-al vil-lage,
might en-vi-sion wid-er dreams.
4. We are man and we are wom-an,
all per-sua-sions, old and young,
Each a gift in your cre-a-tion,
each a love song to be sung.
5. Should the threats of dire pre-dic-tions
cause us to with-draw in pain,
May your blaz-ing phoe-nix spir-it
res-ur-rect the church a-gain.
