Week 5—This is the Big One

Broadening our Perspective

       We begin with a passage from Glennan Doyle’s book, Untamed (p. 221ff).

       “There are wild, mysterious forces inside and between human beings that we have never been able to understand. Forces like faith. Like love. Like sexuality. We are uncomfortable with our inability to understand or control these mysteries.

       “So we took wild faith... and we packaged it into religions. We took wild sexuality– the mysterious undefinable ever-shifting flow between human beings—and we packaged it into sexual identities.

       “It’s like water in a glass... We created these glasses to try to control uncontainable forces. Then we said to people: pick a glass—gay or straight. (By the way, choosing the gay glass will likely leave you unprotected by the law, ostracized by your community, and banished by God. Choose wisely)

       “So folks poured their wide, juicy selves into these narrow arbitrary glasses because that was what was expected. Many lived lives of quiet desperation, slowly suffocating as they held their breath to fit inside.

       “Somewhere, sometime, someone—for whatever courageous, miraculous reason—finally... decided to trust what she felt, to know what she knew, and to dare to imagine an unseen order where she might be free. She refused to contain herself any longer...She raised her hand and said, ‘those labels don’t feel true to me. I don’t want to squeeze myself into either of those glasses. For me, that’s not exactly it. I am not sure what it is yet, but its not that.’

       “Someone else heard the first one speak and felt electric hope run thru his veins. He thought: Wait. What if I am not alone? What if I am not broken after all? What if the glasses system is broken? He felt his hand rise and voice rise with ‘Me too!’ Then another person’s hand slowly rose and then another and another until there was a sea of hands, some shaking, some in fists—a chain reaction of truth, hope, freedom.

       “I don’t know if gayness is contagious. But I am certain that freedom is.” 

Mercy, All the Way Down: Hays ch. 11, 13, and 16:

       Jesus’ ministry in the gospels is primarily to Israel—to Jews. And yet the Gospels do include—seemingly deliberately so—several incidents in which Jesus encounters gentiles/foreigners. These episodes offer glimpses of what is to come.

       In Matt. 8:5-13 a Roman centurion–Israel’s enemy– asks for healing for his servant. In a similar story a Canaanite woman–the “other”—asks for healing for her daughter. Both are breaking the boundaries of ethnicity and culture, showing the wideness of God’s mercy to those outsiders.

       John has a similar story of Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman at a well. Samaritans were from the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and separated from the Jews (from Judah) of the Southern Kingdom by not accepting the Jerusalem temple as the place of worship. Jesus’ response: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.” Soon after this, Jesus reveals himself for the first time as the Messiah to this Samarian woman.

       In stories like this and the parable of good Samaritan, R. Hays writes: “A consistent theme of these stories is that Jesus does not reject Israel’s scriptures; instead, like the prophets before him, he insists on interpreting them in light of the conviction that love and mercy lie at the root of God’s purposes. That insistence on God’s wide ranging mercy brought him into conflict with some others, including scholars and religious leaders who were passionately committed to the authority of Israel’s God-given law but interpreted it in a more restrictive way.... Should this contrast of perspectives inform the church’s present conflicts over sexuality?”

       As we turn to Paul’s writings, Hays writes:

       From the church’s beginnings there have always been fierce arguments about ethical standards and identity-defining boundaries...

       The letters of Paul vividly demonstrate the ongoing struggle in the earliest churches to clarify their relationship to the diverse cultural worlds (both Jewish and Greco-Roman) in which their mission was taking shape. 

       Most of Paul’s letters are to churches he founded or to pastors he’s mentored, answering very specific and for the most part practical, questions about life together. As Paul deals with conflict, confusion, and concerns in new churches, he appeals time and again to unity based in love

       But Romans is different. Paul doesn’t know the Romans. He is likely writing in anticipation of his trial before Caesar. In this book, he is laying out his systematic theology– a single broad, comprehensive explanation of the gospel. Hays writes “Romans—for all its complex theological twists and turns—should be understood at root as Paul’s passionate appeal to the Christians at Rome to accept one another in love despite strong differences of opinion and cultural norms.”

       Hays summarizes the book of Romans by saying: “The gospel is a word about mercy, all the way down. No one deserves mercy, but we all need it. And in the end—in some unfathomable way—God will show mercy to all.” That is the theme of the book of Romans—be sure to keep that foremost in your mind as we break it down. 

This is the Big One

        This week's passage is The Big One. Last week's clobber verses were fairly easily dispatched, but our one remaining clobber verse is the one that's usually the sticking point. It certainly was for me. It's one where we need to use all the tools we've gathered throughout our journey to dig in deep to discern exactly what this passage is about.

       So often the clobber verses are pulled out of context, and thrown down in the midst of argument like a prosecutor triumphantly holding up the final damning piece of evidence to convict the guilty party. And yet, Scripture always needs to be read in context—both its historical context and its literary context. As we saw last week, the time we spend exploring the background in which a verse is found is one way we demonstrate the respect we have for God's word. It shows that we care deeply enough to really explore what God is saying through the biblical writers.

       This week’s clobber verse is Rom. 1:26-27: Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

       At face value, this seems to be the clearest of the clobber verses, as well as the only one to address lesbian sex. It raises intriguing questions about what is "natural" and what is "unnatural", and what is the "due penalty" for perversion.

       But most important, it should cause us to wonder about the context—what is happening in the world, in the culture, in the church, that prompts this passage? How does it fit into the larger argument that Paul is making in Romans?

       Romans is Paul's most comprehensive explanation of the gospel– which, let's remember, means "good news"—so whatever else this passage means it ought to ring as good news. So how does this harsh clobber verse fit into that good news?

       To see that we need to back up and really look at the context of this passage. We need to explore a big chunk of Scripture. Rather than quote it here, I'm going to ask you to open your Bible or search online and read all of Rom. 1:18-28. Ask God to speak to you through this passage, to open your eyes and your heart.

       Paul trained as a rabbi, a teacher of the law. In Romans you can see this background in play, as he builds a complex, logical argument. As you read Rom. 1, try to follow Paul's argument and where he is going. Keep asking, what is this chapter about? What is his point? The clobber verses in v. 26-27 are not a detour or a tangent, they are part and parcel of a complex, broad, sweeping statement Paul is making. Keeping an eye on that bigger, broader argument is key to understanding the clobber verses. So keep your Bible open to this passage as we trace that argument.

What is Paul's point?

        Paul is making a grand, large argument here—building it piece by piece. It will take two more chapters to fully unfold. So let's parse it out:

       His overall argument is about the sinfulness of the whole world, but in chapter 1 he’s focusing on the gentile (non-Jewish) world. In Rom. 1:18-21, Paul demonstrates that even though they don't have Scripture or the prophets, they "have no excuse" for not believing, because the evidence of God is all around them—in the creation itself, in the innate moral code.

       Paul's argument about the sinfulness of the gentile world would be familiar to Jewish Christians—they would be nodding their heads, clucking their tongues about those immoral gentiles. But then… in chapter 2 Paul turns the tables on these Jewish Christians and shows how even the Jews were no better than the Gentiles—that they, too, are sinners. Rom. 2:1: You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.

       All this is leading up to a very familiar verse: Rom. 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

       Paul's point, unfolded over three deep and complex chapters, is how the entire world—Jew & Gentile—is broken by sin and in need of a Savior. We are all sinners. This is all pointing to what Paul will spend the rest of the book explaining: why Jesus came to rescue us (all of us) from a fruitless way of life, to offer us the gift of salvation. Rom. 5:8: But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. 

Where is Aphrodite today?

       If Paul's point, then, is about the broad, global nature of sin and brokenness, and the universal need for a Savior– why focus on same sex relationships? Paul's argument is so broad, so global, so comprehensive, to suddenly switch to something so particular just seems… odd. One would expect the culmination of these verses to be a more common sin like greed or pride or lust for power. Something that underlies the very essence of sin and brokenness itself.

       Remember this most important principle of biblical interpretation: context, context, context. So let's begin with the literary context—the paragraph immediately before our clobber verses. 

       Rom. 1:22-25: Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. 

       Does "worshiping the created rather than the Creator" sound like what is happening when a same-sex couple commits themselves to one another in marriage? When they build a life together? Despite the allusion to "sexual impurity,” it doesn't sound much like it's about sexuality. Rather, it sounds very much like idolatry. And that fits the bigger, broad, global argument, because idolatry is a major concern throughout the Bible, in both Old and New Testaments.

       When we think today about visiting Rome, we might think of visiting some place like St. Peter's Basilica, beautiful sacred spaces devoted to worshiping who we believe to be the one true God. But in the 1st c. Roman world, as you walked down the street, you'd see, not a Catholic cathedral but rather an assortment of temples devoted to the various Greek and Roman gods. Spaces devoted to idolatrous worship. And inside those temples would be both male and female prostitutes. Worshipers of these pagan gods would visit the temple and have sex with one of those male or female prostitutes to join themselves symbolically to that pagan god or goddess. That connection between sexual relations and pagan cult prostitution is lost for us today because we don't have any of those pagan temples around us, but for people living in that polytheistic culture, it would be obvious.

       Pagan cult prostitution was, in its historical context, merely the most visible and obvious example of this bigger truth—that all of us are prone to idolatry– to putting our trust in the wrong things. In the chapters that follow, Paul will share the good news of the gospel: how Jesus has broken into the world to set us free from all that holds us in bondage in order to live the life we were created for—a life of love and joy and belonging.

Leaning into Mercy

       Hays concludes his chapter on Romans by reflecting on Rom. 15:7: “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” That’s not just a shrugging compromise; it is the climax and consequence of the intricate, passionate argument of the whole letter....

       The gospel proclaims mercy for all, all the way down.”

Lord, help us to listen well to your Spirit, and to notice and celebrate the ways that you are constantly working to proclaim mercy, all the way down. Empower us by your Holy Spirit so that there might be an outflowing of your love and grace. Help us to follow you in loving, including and serving all, regardless of gender, race, class, or sexuality. To reflect your broad, expansive love and mercy for all people. Amen.