Wesley's Quadrilateral: My view of LGBT rights by way of Scripture

This Epiphany season I am preaching a series of sermons on “How We Know God” using Wesley’s Quadrilateral as a template. Each Sunday in worship I will be talking about one of the 4 sources we use to know God: Scripture, Experience, Tradition, and Reason. Here, in anticipation of the General Conference on A Way Forward coming up in February, I will be writing about how these 4 sources of knowing God have informed my current opinions on the involvement of LGBT people in the United Methodist Church. May these reflections spark you to reflect on your own opinions and how God has been present in shaping and changing your beliefs. 

Is homosexuality a sin?

There are 7 passages in scripture that are about homosexual acts. None of them deal with the concept of being a homosexual and personhood, because that was not an idea present in the cultures in which the scripture was written. 

There is little argument among Methodist pastors that these passages condemn homosexual acts as a sin when taking them on their own. The problem comes when you take them in context of the whole Bible. There are a lot of sins clearly stated in the Bible that we no  longer recognize as sins. This has been going on since before the Bible was canonized. Jesus himself was known for breaking Old Testament laws he felt by their very practice were breaking the heart of the law. One example is his willingness to work on the Sabbath when it meant healing someone. Jesus also very clearly stated that the most important laws were to love God and love others. So if by our laws, we keep others from loving God, Jesus says its better for us to drowned. If by our laws we are not loving others as we would want to be loved, we are breaking the most important law. I would even argue that if by the practice of that law we are sewing seeds of hate in our communities, we are in trouble. 

Jesus insisted on practicing the spirit of the Law rather than the letter, and we don’t know the spirit behind many of the laws around homosexuality. We do know many rules around sex had to do with religious rituals in pagan religions where sex was treated as a form of worship. God wanted his people to trust him for their yields, not fertility gods. Also, scripture condemns sex being forced as a symbol of power to shame others. We clearly see this in the story of Sodom, as the men seek to rape the visitors to their city. 

In the early church of Acts, there were consistently laws broken as the Holy Spirit baptized lawbreakers: Gentiles who were not circumcised, ate unclean food, etc. Women were told by Paul to keep silent at the same time that he was putting women in positions of leadership. God seemed to be redefining what was sinful, and who was allowed full access to the Kingdom of God. 

What about marriage? One woman and One man?

Let’s starts by just saying the marriages in the Bible were not limited to one man and one wife. Bible heroes often had multiple wives and concubines. Women were treated as property and baby factories, not equals in marriage. Women were traded for political and economical reasons. Marriage was not entered into because of love. God disrupted the subjugation of women consistently in both the biblical text and the church. In every age, God has empowered women and treated them as equals in cultures that have not. But let us not for a minute forget the context in which scripture was written, and how the people in it often looked like the culture they were in. 

With that said, our liturgy for the wedding ceremony views marriage as a  covenantal relationship. In the Old Testament, these covenants were a common contract built around the relationship people had together. In our wedding vows, language is covenantal, not gender specific. We don’t require women to have children, nor require men to be owners of family property. Rather women and men make the same vows centered around honor, love, and faithfulness. In scripture, covenants are not limited to one man and one woman relationships. God cuts covenants with men. Men cut covenants with other men. Gender in no way limits covenantal arrangements. If we believe our liturgy that marriages are covenants, there are no limitations of gender by scripture. 

Calling in the Bible 

God calls people. The church confirms those calls. God has always called imperfect people, because lets be honest, that is all he has to choose from. But our differences as called people actually strengthen us. We are a stronger church because of our diversity in gender, race, geography,  etc. God has consistently gone against the norms of culture to call unlikely people forward to be his judges, kings, prophets, teachers, and apostles. If he didn’t want LGBT pastors, he wouldn’t call them into ministry. There are much more vital metrics for measuring God’s call into ministry than demographical identity. These are the things we already measure in our long candidacy process.