"Create a Heterosexual Family" Was Not Jesus' Message

by Ray Gaston

The significance of Gene Robinson's consecration as a bishop cannot be underestimated. It is an act of unity that works towards healing a schism that has caused so much violence and pain down the years -- the schism between the church and those who have felt the call to same-sex love. As Peter Tatchell, the gay rights campaigner, has said:

"We were stoned to death in antiquity, burned alive during the medieval era and, in Britain, hung from gallows until the mid-nineteenth century."

Such violence was often sanctioned by reference to what queer theologian Robert Goss has called "texts of terror" -- those passages of the Bible that are said to condemn homosexuality, and in the case of Leviticus 20:13 call for people's execution. But when one looks at the passages often quoted by Christian homophobes, they are few and far between, and apart from two lines in Leviticus are highly ambiguous. I don't want to spend time here dissecting those texts as others have done a fine job on this in the past. Rather I would like to call into question much of what passes as biblical family values, and therefore the reason for the marginalisation within the church of lesbian and gay Christians and others today.

When I hear people talking about biblical family values, I often smile. For what "family values" are they referring too? . . . Genesis does not provide a model for living, but shows how God redeems human violence and uses all sorts of people to work out his purposes.

When I hear people talking about biblical family values, I often smile. For what "family values" are they referring too?  If we take a look at the Old Testament and start with Genesis, in the first family deception and murder are at the centre of the stories, and as the chapters of Genesis roll on we soon come across adultery, child abuse, and further deception and murder. Genesis does not provide a model for living, but shows how God redeems human violence and uses all sorts of people to work out his purposes. The Old Testament stories are truly honest about the depths to which human beings can sink in their grasp for power and control. But they also show the heights of love and commitment that are possible between human beings. Read this from the Book of Ruth, who is speaking to Naomi:

And Ruth said "entreat me not to leave you, or to return from following you.  Where you go, I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God my God; where you die, I will die and there will I be buried.

Or this from 1 Samuel 18:

When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul . . . Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul.

It is interesting that two of the most beautiful passages in the Old Testament about love and commitment between human beings are referring to same-sex love -- a biblical reality not mentioned by the literalists.

When we turn to the stories about the Christian revelation -- Jesus Christ -- we find even less support for the modern Christian obsession with the heterosexual family unit. Jesus is rejected from his hometown, he denies his mother, sister and brother in public, he calls on people to leave their families and those who do so will have new mothers, sisters and brothers in abundance. He says that believing in him will cause rifts and feuds in families.

Jesus himself is no "family man," and one gospel consistently refers to "The disciple whom Jesus loved." . . . This is a radical community of love, healing and forgiveness that challenges the boundaries of blood ties -- family, tribal and national, with a vision of the whole people of God.

Jesus himself is no "family man," and one gospel consistently refers to "The disciple whom Jesus loved."  Jesus' central message is the Kingdom of God -- a way of life the beginnings of which the community of faith is to live out in the here and now. This is a radical community of love, healing and forgiveness that challenges the boundaries of blood ties -- family, tribal and national, with a vision of the whole people of God. A vision St. Paul also sought to promote when he proclaimed there is neither Jew nor gentile, male or female, slave or free all are one in Christ Jesus. Instead of embracing this message, the church has created a new God in its worship of the heterosexual nuclear family that takes it away from the open and challenging community of faith that Jesus and Paul spoke about.

It is this idolatry (false worship) that leads us to marginalise all sorts of people in the church -- lesbians and gays, the divorced, single people -- under the fiction that we are following the orthodox path. Orthodoxy means simply "Giving true glory to God." The testimonies of lesbian and gay Christians that I have had the privilege to hear -- where despite the church's condemnation Christ has chosen them, touched them and freed them from the evils of homophobia to become faithful witnesses and express their sexuality in same-sex love -- speak to me of God's glory.

Gene Robinson's radical humility, openness and depth of faith in the face of violent threats and bitter hatred speaks to me of God's glory. Those who refuse to listen to the stories of lesbian and gay Christians, who refuse to acknowledge Bishop Gene, remind me of those in the Bible for whom Jesus had his harshest words, those who sought to divide the world into the clean and the unclean. And the so-called unifiers -- those afraid of the institution collapsing -- remind me of those who faced with the resurrection in Mark's gospel, run away in fear.

The stone has been rolled away, and our lesbian and gay sisters and brothers are no longer going to be entombed by unbiblical and un-Christian homophobia, for Christ is Risen, He is risen indeed -- Alleluia!

 

The Rev. Ray Gaston is vicar of the Parish of Leeds, St Margaret's and All Hallows, England. He may be reached by email at ray@allhallowsleeds.org.uk