Recently I’ve been hearing expressions of sadness from certain clergy colleagues, not only here in New Covenant Presbytery but elsewhere, now that approval of General Assembly overture 10-A, which removes proscriptions in the Book of Order against the ordination of gay and lesbian persons living openly in relationships with partners, is imminent (and in fact has now happened; the 87^th presbytery voted affirmatively today).

 

My own view of what has happened is just the opposite, but is a view that now appears to be held by a majority of individual Presbyterians denomination-wide, though, admittedly, not by majorities in particular presbyteries, including this one.

 

I don’t believe that what we Presbyterians have done is a sad thing at all. Rather, I think what we have done is a correct and righteous thing and, most importantly, a thing that emerges from what Jesus and Scripture teach us at the level of their most fundamental meaning, a thing that is as righteous and correct as the abolition of slavery was in its time and as the extension of all of the privileges of church membership and office to all persons regardless of gender, race, nationality, status in life or marital history have been in more recent times.

 

Some ministry colleagues are offering sour grapes to their congregants and suggesting that, once again, our Church has given in to the influences of secular culture and that what has happened is just the latest example of why, numerically, Presbyterianism, like mainline Protestantism generally, has been declining since the early 1960’s. I disagree.

 

While I agree the sexuality debates have been long and tiresome – it was 1978 when Elder William P. Thompson, the stated clerk of the General Assembly of the old United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., first offered the opinion that persons who openly engage in homosexual relationships are ineligible to hold church office, an opinion that the Assembly then adopted as “authoritative interpretation” and that Bill Thompson later publically and loudly regretted – I absolutely disagree that “the forces of culture have won the day” on this one.

 

Rather, what I believe is this: The Presbyterian Church, a human institution as fallen from grace and as flawed as the rest of us, in its tradition of being reformed and always reforming (reformata semper reformanda) as it is guided by the Holy Spirit, has once again re-applied the Gospel of love to a now better understood world, a world in which gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender persons, we now know, aren’t who they are by choice but rather by genetic predisposition or early psychological formatting, just as everyone else is who he or she happens to be.

 

We have once again applied our theology to what we now know. It’s not the first time it has happened, nor will it be the last. Presbyterians in this country as well as earlier in Great Britain have always struggled to apply the Gospel, which remains unchanged, to the world’s changing circumstances and to what we learn about the world and ourselves. In the middle of the 19^th century in this country, Presbyterians split over the theological and ethical question of whether slavery could be justified biblically. Church people in one part of the country where slavery was basic to the economy argued that the Bible supports the institution of slavery while Presbyterians in another part of the country said it surely doesn’t.

 

More recently, similarly long and tiresome arguments have centered on the rights and places of women in the church, the questions of whether they can lead and preach and of whether God wants them to, and on the question of whether divorced persons, fallen as we are, can or should ever expect to lead again in Christ’s church. Just what did Jesus teach about that anyway?

 

In each of these cases, we Presbyterians have reapplied our theology and our singular and unchanging proclamation of God’s love to the circumstances we’ve found ourselves in and have become the better for it, a more correct and righteous church.

 

So I disagree (respectfully and kindly, I hope) with my ministry colleagues who find reason to be sad this evening. I don’t find this a time to be sad. Rather, for me, it’s a time of increased hope. It’s not a time when some of us have won and others have lost. It’s also not a time for any of us to gloat. But it is a time to give God praise, I think, because it’s a time when once again we have re-applied our unchanging gospel to a changing world, a world that we know more about than we did yesterday, and we have done a good and righteous thing.

 

Thanks for listening.

 

-- Bernie