1 Corinthians 1: 1-18

January 16, 2005

Elizabeth Macaulay

The teachings of the apostle Paul reach toward us yet today. You can hear them in the words of Archbishop of South Africa Desmond Tutu who says this:

Love is much more demanding than law.

We heard in the reading from The Message this morning. We heard words of love and we heard words of passion. The words of a follower of Jesus – Paul - desperate to teach the church in Corinth the power of the truth: that no law – even religious law - has the power of the love taught and imagined through the teachings of Jesus Christ.

No law is more powerful than love.

And therein lies the challenge. Because laws are clear edged and black and white. And love? Well, love is multi colored and impossible to boundary. And it is so very demanding.

No law is more difficult than love.

And so it is that we are called, we who seek to follow Jesus, to a most difficult way of life.

Thanks be to God.

We learn about that life – the difficulties and the glory - through living in Christian community – carrying on this thing we call church.

And we, like the Corinthian community – we have a heck of a time living into the difficulty of love.

Because we are so different from each other. We are five generations. On Wednesday of this week we held services for Mae Brucklemeyer, our oldest member who lived to be 103. The world she lived and the one in which Sophia Surressig, the child baptized last Sunday will live are fantastically different. So we live differences caused by our age and so many more.

We are gay and straight. We are men and women. We are single or married or partnered or closeted. We are people of color and people of European descent. We are wealthy and we are financially struggling. We are able bodied and we are physically challenged. We are beautiful and we are plain. We are fit –although ninety minutes a day of exercise is daunting - and we are plagued by our inability to get off the couch. We are full of hope and we are so tired of being hurt that we have shut down our hearts. We are Democrats and we are Republicans. We are soccer moms and we are single men and we each have our own opinions and we are the church.

The body of Jesus the Christ. A people called to live the difficulties of love.

It is so very ironic that one of the issues that is plaguing our church has to do with the very issue of love. How we live it. How we embody it. How we express it.

There are few Bodies of Christ not dealing with the issue of how it is persons who are gay, lesbian, transgendered or bisexual are to be welcomed into the Body of the church. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America just came out with a study, and the United Methodist Church has been discussing the issue for decades. At denominational and local church levels, the struggle is agonizing, threatening to split Christians one from the other. The issues are these:

Is the expression of love between persons of the same sex outside of Christian teaching?

Are clergy allowed to bless unions between same sex couples?

And, are persons who are in relationship with a same sex partner able to serve as clergy?

The church writ large and at the local level circles around a few texts taken from Scripture – mostly from Leviticus - and uses them to bolster arguments against full inclusion. Others look to the sweep of the teachings of Jesus – he who does not once mention the issue, he who was so very clear about inviting those on the margins to sit, eat, and join in ministry with him. Those wisdom seekers find no cause for the exclusion of people from the Body of Christ based upon sexual orientation.

In the United Methodist church a clergy woman who was in open relationship with her partner was charged and stripped of her credentials. She remains on staff at the church she served. But she must do so as a lay person, not as an ordained minister.

Because she loves and lives fully her sexuality, she may not serve the church as one ordained.

Because we have laws about such things. Church laws.

We each are called to consider this issue: is this law based upon the vision of love taught by Jesus our Christ?

We celebrate this weekend the ministry and vision of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He who envisioned a world in which all of God’s children would be free at last from the bondages of oppression that bind them. When all of God’s children would know themselves to be made in the image of a God of love and treated with the dignity that is their birth right.

A world in which we live honestly and openly the difficulties of love. A world in which no matter what the law says about the dignity and worth of others: laws that perpetuate things such as racism and homophobia - we who follow the teachings of Jesus know that the way of love has greater claim on our lives than any law that would diminish, bind, or demonize our brothers and sisters.

What Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned was a world in which our differences were celebrated as we claim our commonality as children of God. Children who have names, histories, hearts and aches.

He taught and we know that changes to our hearts happen when we are able to look at someone different than ourselves and see there, first and foremost, their human being as a reflection of the holy.

When we are willing to build relationships, we are free at last.

Would you raise your hand if you are in relationship with a beloved one in your life who is gay, lesbian, transgendered or bisexual?

Do you see the scope of the issue we as church have been so long silent about? Because for most of the people represented by your raised hands, there has been the heartache of being taught that they are somehow outside of the circle of God’s grace.

The church has been too long silent. We have been so afraid of the power of our disagreement over this issue that we have dodged open and difficult conversation. And in our silence, we have participated in oppression.

I want to be clear about my own stance on this. I believe that each one of us was created as a reflection of God. I believe that we are crafted as marvelously complex and unique persons, and one of those marvelous and unique things is our sexual orientation. I believe that we do not choose that, any more than we choose our eye color. I believe that the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of Paul would have us consider how to live the way of love together in community cherishing and valuing our differences as we honestly own the difficulties of living the way of love together.

I believe this because I hear that message of inclusion preached through the gospel. And I believe this because I have lived with a family member and friends who have known the scorn and judgment and desolation of being judged somehow unseemly by our culture. I have seen the tears of gratitude come when gay or lesbian people are able to come to church and feel safe. I have heard the stories of mothers and fathers who want to support their gay or lesbian children and find in their churches a ringing silence and so they struggle alone. I believe this full inclusion of God’s children who are other than heterosexual is the way Jesus would have us live.

And you may not. We may disagree. That’s ok. But we do so with respect and mindfulness because we may be tempted to sort ourselves into camps of believers who forget what brought us together in the first place:

The teachings and vision of Jesus the Christ. Teachings that point us to a way beyond our fractures.

Listen. While we are arguing ourselves to distraction over the issue of who gets to love whom and how, five million children are dying of hunger, men women and children are being killed in Iraq, and our earth is experiencing the effects of centuries of abuse.

What would Jesus do? I think he would be amazed the church built upon his vision would allow starvation and war to go unremarked while we throw punches at each other about what kind of loving we will allow.

Love is a demanding thing.

Let us live it with integrity in this community of faith we call church.

Amen