To Be A Sanctuary

In fairly rapid succession, three significant events have happened on the West Coast regarding sexual ethics and Christianity--the Washington state senate passed a marriage equality bill, which the House is also expected to pass and Governor Chris Gregoire is expected to sign; the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that California's Proposition 8 (a ban on same-sex marriage) was unconstitutional, and less politically inclined but still garnering significant ink in the blogosphere, documents from Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill Church in Seattle were revealed to have placed a young man under an onerous and judgmental yoke of church-administered "discipline" for his pre-marital sexual activities.

All three of these stories hit close to home to me, quite literally--I currently live in Washington state, and I lived in California when Proposition 8 was on the ballot in 2008. And all three stories do, I believe, share a common denominator--a propensity for the Church to do one of two things regarding a person's sexuality: sit in judgment, or never discuss it for fear of giving offense.

As to the former, the Gospels are abundantly clear that we are not to judge one another (Matthew 7:1, Luke 6:37, John 8:1-11, 15). While I may judge societal ills from the pulpit (which I never actually preach from!)--violence, poverty, and the like, the repeated use of "neighbor" in Matthew 7 and the use of "no one" or "nobody" in John 8:15 indicates that even as a pastor, I have no authority to judge another individual person. That is the purview of God, and God alone.

And as to the latter, I meant every word of my sermon last Sunday when I said that church HAS to be a place where people feel safe enough to be themselves without judgment, because that is the ONLY way we can answer the call to engage the tough stuff rather than simply duck it, to answer the call that church was made for more than etiquette, and to truly tackle divisive wedge issues we may disagree on, and still love each other the next day.

Yet I have many gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans friends for whom church was a hostile entity, quick to judge and slow to love, friends who I have apologized to for how their churches treated them. Statistically, gay and lesbian youths are much more likely to attempt suicide or be homeless than heterosexual youth. While I am surely familiar with what Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 both say about same-sex intercourse and have my own interpretation of those verses, I fear that many churches, in hastening to jump from chapter 18 to chapter 20, skip over chapter 19, which contains this immortal verse: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (19:18) If churches have been hastening to condemn same-sex couples for violating Levitical law, it seems we have violated Levitical law ourselves in doing so. And not just any Levitical law, but one that Jesus cites in Matthew 22 as one of two laws upon which hangs the entirety of the law and the prophets.

So, my biggest question is, at what point is the Church (the entire body of Christ, as a whole) going to admit we have not been loving our neighbors as ourselves, and that this has caused dire consequences?

For while I have spoken so far about the Church as it relates to gay and lesbian persons, this is where I believe the Mars Hill story becomes exceedingly relevant--a church that is incredibly popular in my age bracket, located in Seattle, just a two-hour or so drive north of me, tried to force a young man who confessed to extramarital sexual activity to bare his soul while banning him from dating anyone (inside or outside the church), and asked him to sign a contract to that effect. When he refused, Mars Hill pastoral leadership circulated an open letter asking church members to not associate with this fellow on any other basis than to admonish him for what he did--in a word, ostracism. Being disowned. Kicked out. Exiled. The same risk that many gay and lesbian persons have faced when coming out to their families and/or churches. You see where I'm going with this, how all three of these events are intertwined?

So my next question is, when does this stop? When will churches respond to sexual relationships between consenting adults--even relationships that they may consider to be sinful--with unconditional love instead of conditional love or outright separatism?

I have always resisted the movement to re-label Christian places of worship from "sanctuaries" to "auditoriums" or "worship centers." Part of that resistance is rooted in tradition, but an even bigger part of it is what the term sanctuary conveys at its most fundamental level. In Scripture, the sanctuary in Jerusalem was where someone looking for a safe haven would turn to. After David's death at the start of 1 Kings, Joab, David's disgraced military commander, fled to the Jerusalem sanctuary hoping to survive the politics of Solomon's succession. Taking hold of the horns of the altar, Joab proclaimed his belief in the sanctuary as a place of safety, but he was killed anyways. It is an eerily applicable metaphor for how I fear the role of the Church has become for many, many people--what was once a shrine for sinners (all of us, from Joab on down) to save themselves is now a place where people can see their spiritual lives forcibly ended.

It is time for the power of the word "sanctuary" to make a resurgence, to apply not only to the physical worship space of the church, but to the entire church, so that all may know that from wherever they may have come, and whoever they may be, they are welcomed into the body Christ without judgment and without condition.

Yours in Christ,
Eric