Then the officials said to the king, “Let this man be put to death, for he is weakening the hands of the soldiers who are left in this city, and the hands of all the people, by speaking such words to them. For this man is not seeking the welfare of this people, but their harm.” Jeremiah 38:4
All Jeremiah was doing was speaking the truth about the inevitable. He wasn’t arguing, he wasn’t happy about that truth, and he certainly wasn’t causing that truth to be any worse. He was just recognizing the choices his nation had made and the inevitable, irreparable consequences that were now set in motion. He was saying, “this is happening and you cannot change it…you can either choose to die right here on this hill or you can embrace reality and choose to live.” Jeremiah suffered a harsh retaliation for daring to speak that truth…for daring to recognize the inevitable and for daring to suggest that we should embrace it and figure out how to live with it.
Does any of this story feel to you like the same-sex marriage issue the American church is now facing?
As of the publishing of this post, there are 17 states in the U.S. who recognize same-sex marriages. The other 33 states have bans (either Constitutional or legislative) to same-sex marriages, and all but 5 of those bans are currently under judicial scrutiny for being overturned. There is a rapidly growing pressure in all 33 of these states to at least create some kind of “civil union” whereby the state’s interest in “licensing” and the church’s interest in the sacrament of marriage can be separated…a compromise whereby the state and the church can each maintain the control they need. Every national opinion poll I have seen shows the majority of Americans now favoring same-sex unions, and that number seems to be growing daily. In short, the pendulum is swinging pretty certainly toward same-sex unions.
I am no Jeremiah. In some sense, I truly wish I were. But in a lot of ways, I am happy I am not. But I am going to suggest something here to the church in America and it is not going to like it. I suspect I will be accused of “weakening the army” and of “destroying the morale of God’s people”. Who knows? There may be a cistern waiting for me very soon. But I am just going to say it…
Same-sex marriage is here. It is the consequences of our own choices. It is happening. Our government is doing this, one way or another. You do not have to agree with it. You probably can argue eloquently about how wrong it is. As was true with Jeremiah, that argument seems to be less and less helpful as time goes on. Same-sex marriages are happening already, if not in your state, certainly in 17 other states (so far), and those couples are then moving back to your state.
The question is, will they be in church or not? Hopefully, they will be. Hopefully, within the next few years, same-sex couples will be sitting in our pews along with you and with me and with all the gossips and the liars and the gluttons and the adulterers, and we will all be worshiping and studying scripture together and praying together. As a church, then, we have an important decision to make about how we will relate to them. We should be thinking now about what love will look like in that case. We should be figuring out now how to minister with and to each other and, yes, how to have the conversation about all the implications of this relationship.
We should be asking what this will mean for the registrations at our next marriage retreat, or what this will mean for the family photos in the next church directory. We should be thinking about what love looks like when a same-sex couple walks into a couples Bible study or Sunday School class, and we should be having that conversation with all our leaders. We should be preparing our childcare workers for the child with two daddies or with two mommies and how that may affect our conversations. Hopefully, we will figure all of this out a little more quickly than we figured out all these same issues with divorced people!
The scriptural debate will rage on. The discussions about God’s perspective on the issue will not end anytime soon. But, in the meantime, it has become an inevitability and we need to move toward figuring that out. I guess I just felt compelled to say that.
And now I will go and take my place in the cistern.
One response to “Your Church’s Response to Same-Sex Marriage”
Blake, how come you set problematic topics in front of us? Is it because you think the church actually must wrestle with these questions instead of relying on sound bites to do our speaking to the world for us? Here’s a grudging “thank you” for spurring us on to love and good deeds.