Leaves I agree with Gary that this debate tastes of dehumanisation and that we need to be careful when dealing with straw people but since Nathan raised the issue in the context of methodology and hermeneutics it seems worth asking the questions. (I’m not suggesting that you would disagree with that Gary:-)!).

It seems to me that Gary’s question about what level of sin disqualifies a person from holding a position (whether of membership or leadership) within the church is a good one worth exploring. Nathan comments that even if there was only one apparently called, gifted and blessed homosexual minister, there would still be a challenge to answer. I can think of one such example. Roy Clements (previously pastor of Eden Baptist Church, Cambridge) is certainly one of the finest preachers I’ve ever heard and as far as I know was an excellent pastor prior to his resignation a few years ago after been ‘caught out with another man’, a closet affair which had been going on for many years. He is undoubtedly in the conservative-evangelical container, has an excellent grasp of the Gospel, handles the Bible with great skill and has a compassionate heart for people. He now heads up a ministry of teaching and writing (see http://www.royclements.co.uk) where he defends both the Gospel and active homosexual partnerships. I love his work and have benefited much from his insights and Christ-centered teaching. Some evangelicals in Britain, including many of those who were once his friends (?), have now labelled him as ‘dangerous’ because he represents for them a huge challenge. Here is one, from among their own number, who believes as they do on every core tenet of the Gospel but has reached different conclusions concerning the area of sexuality.

Should he be sidelined? Ignored? Condemned? Let he who is without sin cast the first brick. I’ll hide down the back and watch! And after you’re done you might as well turn around and ‘do’ me too.

My thoughts are blurred because we all know that when it comes to sin, we have our pecking order of acceptable and non-acceptable ones. I’ve even got a favourites list! But homosexuality isn’t primarily about sin. Homosexuality is about people. People like our bank manager, people like our favourite artists, people like our brothers, people like me and you. It’s about the love, loneliness, pain, fragility, identity, sinfulness and freedom of us all. It’s about our broken rebellious humanity seeking acceptance, belonging and value through that which we share in common – our dependant creatureliness as those who struggle to live and love and play and die in faith, hope and love outside Eden. It’s about holding treasures in clay pots. It’s about grace abounding through the chief of sinners. Most importantly it’s about Christ bearing the sins of the world! It’s about the Father’s heart reaching out to us all through his Son’s crucified hands and wanting to heal broken people.

Yes, I believe that Scripture, and not experience, must be the primary and final authority for sexual ethics and morality, even though I don’t believe in an infallible Bible. Yes, I believe that homosexual acts depart from the only acceptable avenue for the full expression of sexuality, which is heterosexual marriage. Yes, I believe that homosexual acts constitute an active negation of marriage , not merely a variant expression of sexuality. Yes, I believe that male homosexual acts involve practices that are injurious to the body and that involve a high risk of infectious disease. Yes, I believe that whilst homosexual orientation is probably caused for each individual by several factors in combination (the old nature/nurture debate that we’re all waiting for a definitive, scientifically flawless conclusion to!), at the level of action each person is morally accountable. Yes, I believe that change is possible. Yes, I believe that we must bring the Gospel (good news remember!), the fullcounsel of God, to individual people because love delights in the truth. Yes, I believe that we need to work harder to understand the relation between morality and truth. Yes, I believe that we must express our disapproval of homosexual practice in the context of our own sexual fallenness. Yes, I believe that we must work harder to find avenues of ministry consistent with our moral stance. Yes, I believe that we must seek (demand?) sexual purity above reproach amongst church leaders. Yes, I believe that any sexual intercourse outside of the covenant union of marriage disqualifies one from pastoral leadership. Yes, I believe that celibate unmarried people can and should be baptised (ordained)

into all spheres of Christian ministry. And yes, Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:28-30 need to be taken off dawky Christian calendars that hang on the back of dunny doors and applied afresh to real life.

In his book ‘Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace’, James Torrance tells of an experience that a colleague of his, Roland Walls, a member of the Community of the Transfiguration in Roslin village, a few miles out of Edinburgh, had. One day James noticed in his garden a piece of sculpture he had not seen before. Roland told him about it. A young sculptor, brought up among the Exclusive Brethren, one day confessed to the fellowship that he was gay. As a result, he was asked to leave the Assembly. In his distress, he found his way to the Roslin Community, where Roland found him on his knees in prayer in the chapel. The young man poured out his story and unburdened his heart. At the end of their conversation, Roland simply put his arms around him and gave him a hug! That hug symbolized everything for the man. He knew he was loved, accepted, forgiven. He went back, found a block of sandstone and carved out a figure of the two Adams. They are kneeling, embracing one another. Christ lays his head on the right shoulder of fallen Adam, and fallen Adam lays his head on the right shoulder of Christ the second Adam. The only way in which one can distinguish between the two Adams, is by the nail prints in the hands of Christ. That sculptor saw himself in fallen Adam, and in that symbolic hug he saw himself accepted in Christ, the second Adam. There one sees the Pauline theology of an Irenaeus – that what was lost in Adam has been restored in Christ. That is the biblical concept of ‘the one and the many’ – that we, the many, can see ourselves accepted by grace in Christ, the one Mediator, who fulfils God’s purpose – to gather together all things in Christ, the head – the doctrine of ‘recapitulation’.

Irenaeus used the metaphor of ‘the two hands of God’ in his criticism of the heretic Marcion. God our Father has ‘two hands’ -the Word and the Spirit -by whom he created and redeemed the world. Marcion had taught that the Creator God of the Old Testament was different from the Redeemer God of the New Testament. No, according to Irenaeus, the God who created this world (and Adam) has redeemed this world (with Adam) by the same Word and the same Spirit. The one by whom and for whom all things were created has taken our humanity to redeem us – ‘to bring many sons to glory’. It is by these ‘two hands’ that God gives himself to us in love to bring us to intimate communion. We can extend that metaphor further. Think of a hug! When we hug somebody whom we love there is a double movement. We give ourselves to the beloved, and in the same act by putting our arms around the other, we draw that person close to our heart! That is a parable of the double movement of grace, the God-humanward and the human-Godward movement in the priesthood of Christ and the ministry of the Spirit. In Christ, the Word made flesh, and in the Holy Spirit – his ‘two hands’ – God our Father in grace gives himself to us as God. But in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, and in the Spirit we are led to the Father by the intercessions of Christ and the intercessions of the Spirit. We are lifted up by ‘the everlasting arms’. As in the mediatorial ministry of Christ, the Spirit is the interceding Spirit, through whom Jesus Christ our ascended High Priest presents us to the Father.

In the parable of the prodigal son, when the son returned from the far country, he was eager to buy his way back into his father’s favour. He requested work: ‘Make me like one of your hired servants. But while he was still a long way off his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son threw his arms around him (hugged him) and kissed him’ (Lk. 15:19-20). He received him back joyfully. I think we can hear the son’s response: ‘Daddy, I love you! It is wonderful to be back home!’ …and then, ‘Dad, I have been a fool!’ It is a parable of ‘evangelical repentance’ – the response to a father’s love, not a condition for it. Is that not the meaning of grace?

May grace mixed with mercy be see in us all,

Jason Goroncy

20th October 2003.