Reconciling in Christ Sunday
Texts: John 14:15-17; 16:7-11
Acts 8:26-39; Gal 3:23-28
YouTube: https://youtu.be/CR5hVdB-1Vs
Preached from Sermon Notes
Pastor Paul’s Testimony: How My Mind and Heart Have Changed
This is a sermon today, a proclamation of the Word of God in Jesus Christ. But more than usual it is also my personal testimony — specifically, how my mind and heart have changed in understanding my relationship to LGBTQ brothers and sisters in Christ.
A goal of undertaking the Reconciling in Christ process1 is that LGBTQ siblings will, by the end of the process, feel safe enough to give their own personal testimonies here in public like this. But at the beginning of the process, I think it unwise to assume its fully safe yet. So I begin with my testimony as a straight white male this morning, as an example of how my heart and mind have been changed.
The process for me began more than thirty years ago, when LGBTQ people began to more regularly find their voices in speaking out — in ‘coming out,’ as they say. As a straight man, I had never before been confronted with the issues of how their testimony confronted my straightness. So here’s basically what happened for me. I began, as a straight white male, by assuming that if LGBTQ people live according to their desires then they are sinning. But now, over the years, I’ve become convinced that my beginning assumption about ‘their’ sin is the sin, especially if it contributes to blocking an LGBTQ from living into who God created them to be.
Quite a radical turnabout! Maybe some of your heads are spinning a bit. How does a person go from the assumption that being gay is a sin to seeing that assumption itself as the sin. It is my hope that, in undertaking the Reconciling in Christ process, each at our own paces, we may experience the grace of being a safe and welcoming place, where our LGBTQ brothers and sisters flourish in what God created them to be.
If you are straight and inclined to the assumption that being gay is a sin — again, the assumption I began with, since it has been such an easy one to make, prior to the courage of LGBTQ people speaking out — how might that change of heart and mind happen?
I believe the most important key is to learn to listen to our LGBTQ brothers and sisters in Christ and to trust what it is they tell us. When they tell us that their personal sense is that God created them to be who they are, created to be of a different gender or sexual orientation, we need to open ourselves to believing them.
Here’s another thing I’ve discovered: the next best thing is to listen to our children’s and grandchildren’s generation on these matters. I grew up in a time when, especially as a straight white male, these issues were never anything we talked about. Many of you are of my generation. We never talked about it, right? And our family and friends who are gay never felt safe to talk about it. But in the last thirty or so years, our children and grandchildren grew up in a different climate, where their friends and family do feel safe enough to ‘come out’ and to share with them their experience — that this is how God created them to be. And our children and grandchildren are listening, and trusting, and believing. And I think we should to. So we older folks need to also learn to listen to our children’s and grandchildren’s generation on these matters.
One other important related point: as our children and grandchildren watch us in the wider church still struggling with this like the Reconciling in Christ process, it really turns them off. They don’t want to be part of a church where many of their friends and family aren’t welcome. They can’t understand why, in many case across the wider church, we’re still arguing about this.
And here’s the gracious bonus for our life as a church in proclaiming the word. I’ve come to believe, through my own change of heart and mind, that the grace goes beyond just learning to listen and trust. Engaging in this process can help us to understand the Bible in fresh ways that can guide us into being a better and more faithful church. Our children and grandchildren are right: if we don’t learn to be more welcoming to LGBTQ people, then we are not being faithful to Jesus.
Back to my personal testimony. The key person in my life is my friend James Alison, who is a gay Catholic priest, theologian, and author.2 We met in 1995. In my case, James not only could share from his personal experience about being created by God to be gay, but he began to teach me how to read the Bible and understand our own Christian tradition in more profound and faithful ways. Ways that also help us to become church in a better way.
Here’s a crucial hope for undertaking the Reconciling in Christ process: in learning to listen to and support our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, we will learn a better and more faithful way of being church.
A brief glimpse of how my friend James Alison taught me to read the Bible and understand the Christian message in a more faithful way. Today’s readings give examples:
First Reading (Acts 8:26-39): Philip encounters a eunuch, a type of transgender person. The eunuch has been reading the middle part of Isaiah and is astounded by the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 who dies for sin of his people. Philip teaches him that this is Jesus of Nazareth, who died on the cross. It is a revelation to this eunuch that he might be fully welcomed as a child of God. The eunuch is also, no doubt, heartened by verses very close to this passage, Isaiah 56:4-5: “For thus says the LORD: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” As a child of God, he can take the next step. Here was some water that he might be baptized as such. And Philip baptizes him on the spot.
Second Reading (Galatians 3:23-28): when we get to the New Testament, there’s a matter that I don’t think we’ve fully comprehended: namely, how much of a problem there is with the law. In today’s passage, Paul gives us a different way to think about the law. He says that the law as a temporary thing, given to us by God in the childhood and adolescence of our development as a species. We haven’t grown up yet to be the human beings that God created us to be. When we fully mature in the way of Christ, he says we won’t need to the law in the same way any longer. In other places, Paul talks about, like Jesus did, that the whole law is fulfilled in love. It’s all about love. When we fully mature, we see the unity created despite our differences: baptized in Christ, we are no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. Might we add gay or straight? We are one in Jesus Christ.
This summer (Proper 11) we read something even more drastic: “For Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace” (Eph 2:14-16). Abolished the law?! Paul has understood that when Jesus is sentenced to death under the law by both the Jews (the Bible) and the Romans, we need to begin to see, ‘Maybe there’s something wrong with our law.’ What is it? What’s wrong? For Paul and for Christ, it’s about how the law has been corrupted by sin itself to divide us human beings. We see that sin of division all around us right now. And there are some Christians who are saying, ‘This is the way it should be, the way God made things, and so we should be in charge.’ They buy into this corruption of the law that continues to divide us and to fight against one another. This is the opposite of the goal of the Gospel to unite us into being one human family, God’s children. Bottom line: the law has been corrupted to the sin of dividing us, unless we learn to see the Law completely in terms of love — testified to by both Jesus and Paul.
Gospel Reading (John 14:15-17; 16:7-11): Our Gospel Reading for today is from Jesus’ farewell address from his disciples. We take verses from both John 14 and 16, because, believe it or not, they’re all from one long address. He starts out by saying that, if I go away, I will send you the Holy Spirit, who he names as the Advocate, someone who will advocate for you when people try to oppress you for standing up for love. The Advocate who will bring you the spirit of forgiveness. And who will teach you what? How the world has been wrong, fundamentally, about sin, justice, and judgment. Have we begun to understand, even now, the subtleties of the ways we’ve been wrong? I believe that it is related to the kinds of issues raised to us by our LGBTQ brothers and sisters that we have the new and fresh opportunity to begin to understand these things: how it is that we’ve been wrong about what sin is and justice is. So we learn to advocate for others. When the law is used to divide us by unjustly condemning others as sinful, we advocate for them.
Let me end with one more really important aspect of what the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, is about. It’s about the gift of forgiveness, because we need that spirit in order to undertake a process like Reconciling in Christ. We need that forgiveness first of all for ourselves. A crucial part of my testimony is that I had to come to the realization that my assumptions about sin and justice and judgment were really off the mark. I can’t begin to accept my being wrong about such important things unless, in Jesus Christ, I’m able to forgive myself — and so to know the joys of being set on a more faithful path. We will also need to be able to forgive one another, for we will be in different places along the way in this process. As people of different generations, we will experience this process differently.
In undertaking this process, we will need to understand our Lord’s death on the cross in new ways. The first part is coming to know how wrong we have been about sin, justice, and judgment. The second part is to know that he forgives us, and we can forgive one another as we embark on this process. So I hope that we can undertake this with some anxiety, yes, but also with a sense of hope and anticipation that we can learn to be church in a better and more faithful way. Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, October 6, 2024
YouTube: https://youtu.be/CR5hVdB-1Vs
Notes
1. See the Reconciling Works website for more information: https://www.reconcilingworks.org/
2. See James Alison’s website to learn more: https://jamesalison.com/
