Nine Words
By Chuck Poole
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them asked Jesus a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:34-40).
Homosexuality is a human difference, not a spiritual sin. It has taken me a lifetime on the path to a deeper life with God to learn to say that single, simple sentence. It is nine words which, at the risk of sounding naïve and simplistic, I believe hold the answer to the religious world’s long struggle concerning those who are drawn to persons of their same sex.
There isn’t any spiritual difference between gay people of God and straight people of God. We all worship, sing, pray, serve, try and fail in the same manner. Whether we are straight or gay, we have the same capacity to be moral or immoral, kind or mean, careful or reckless, righteous or unjust, generous or selfish. In all those ways, we are all the same.
All of this finally came clear to me nearly two decades ago as I was sitting by the bed of a dying man in a nursing home—a man who had lived a long life of integrity and fidelity, prayer and devotion, who happened to be gay. As I sat near his bed in the last weeks of his life, it occurred to me that he and I were different from one another only in that he was a gay person; It was a human difference, not a spiritual one.
Of course, given our long history of turning to scripture to support what we believe, we are confronted with the important question: “But what about what the Bible says concerning homosexuality?”
The Bible includes several passages which are often assumed to address same sex attraction and love. There appear to be seven such passages. (I say “appear to be” because it is not clear how many of them actually address a committed relationship between two adults of the same sex.)
Take, for example, the first of those seven passages—the story of the city of Sodom in Genesis. chapter 19. Often pointed to as a story about God’s judgement against homosexuality, Genesis 19:1-11 recalls the story of a group of men who attempted to sexually assault Lot’s angelic visitors. It was an attempt at sexual violence which everyone on the planet condemns, but which had nothing to do with a committed relationship between two people of the same sex.
In the Old Testament, there are two more passages which are often invoked to condemn same sex relationships: Leviticus 18:22, You shall not lie with a male as with a woman, it is an abomination, and Leviticus 20:13, If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination, they shall be put to death. Those words belong to a Levitical “holiness code” which also prohibits the eating of pork (Leviticus 11:7-12), forbids rough beards (Leviticus 19:27), and excludes from worship leadership anyone with blemished skin, failing eyesight or poor posture (Leviticus 21:16-20). These are verses to which no Christians I know assign any continuing authority.
That leaves the four New Testament passages which are often assumed to indict same sex relationships. One is Jude 1:7, which refers to the aforementioned passage in Genesis chapter 19. Two more are I Corinthians 6:9-10 and I Timothy 1:10, both of which are on the list of possible passages, because they contain the word “sodomite,” which could be a reference to what we think of as a same sex relationship, but which also may refer to the sexual exploitation of boys by men. This is something everyone condemns, but something which has no more relation to a same sex relationship between two adults than the heterosexual exploitation of children has to sexual intimacy between a man and a woman.
Of those seven Bible passages often assumed to be about same sex intimacy, one remains, Romans 1:25-31, which says:
Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator . . . God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another . . . And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness and malice . . . Full of envy, murder, strife . . . They are gossips, slanderers, God haters.
Because of the part of this passage which refers to those who have exchanged their natural sexual inclination for “a way of intercourse which is not natural,” this passage is sometimes assumed to be Paul’s indictment of homosexuality, which it may be. But, to read the full paragraph is to see that it also describes those of whom Paul speaks as being “God-haters,” who are full of envy, murder and malice. This does not describe any of the gay persons I have known, who are no more or less likely to be God-haters, full of envy, murder and malice than any of the straight people I have known. Whomever Paul is describing in this first chapter of Romans, he is not describing the prayerful, thoughtful child of God who happens to be a gay person.
All of which is to say that, of the seven passages in the Bible which are often assumed to be about same sex sexual intimacy, it isn’t clear which ones, if any, address committed same sex relationships. The words and spirit of the Bible, with the very troubling exception of Numbers 31:13-35, condemn all forms of sexual violence, promiscuity and exploitation—both heterosexual and homosexual. The question is whether or not the Bible addresses, or even anticipates, committed same sex relationships.
But, even if some of those seven passages were intended to address committed same sex relationships, most of the Christians I know would not be able to say that it is because of their commitment to the authority of the Bible that they hold a religious objection against gay and lesbian persons. Most of the Christians I know continue to own possessions, resist evildoers, and wear jewelry, in spite of what the Bible says in Luke 14:33, Matthew 5:39 and I Timothy 2:9. That is not to say that there is something wrong with owning possessions, resisting evildoers or wearing jewelry, but it is to say that there is something wrong with using the Bible to indict others in ways in which we would never use it to judge ourselves.
I believe that most popular religious judgments about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons have less to do with the Bible than with the way we were raised—what we’ve always thought and been taught. One very large factor, especially for many men who grew up, as did I, in the deep south Bible Belt of the 20th century, is that much of our thinking about gay persons was shaped more by immature masculinity than by mature Christianity. At school, at work, and even in the church, we emphasized our masculinity by ridiculing those who were drawn to persons of their same sex, calling them names and making fun of them. (The sin, in that case, is not the sexuality of those who are gay, but the meanness of those who are straight.)
In the religious world of my origins, we talked a lot about Jesus. But when it came to how we treated those who were born beyond the bounds of comfortable majority, we often failed to embody the spirit of Jesus. This is one reason why people in our part of the world who had a gay or lesbian son or daughter often encouraged them to move to New York or San Francisco, where they might be more sheltered from hurt and harm than in the Bible Belt.
Ponder, for a moment, the irony of that: The part of the country which claims the most followers of Jesus is one of the most difficult parts of the country in which to be different; this is a sad commentary on how far the popular Christianity of the Bible Belt has strayed from the Jesus of the four gospels.
As far as we know, that Jesus, the Jesus of the four gospels, never said anything about same sex relationships. He did, however, have something to say about what matters most in life. When asked, as recorded in Matthew chapter 22, what matters most, Jesus is reported to have said that what matters most is that we love God with all that is in us, and that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. This means reading all scripture and seeing all persons in the light of and through the lens of love. Which is not unlike what we find in Matthew 7:12, where Jesus is reported to have summed up all the law and the prophets in a single simple sentence of nine simple words: Treat others as you would have others treat you.
I heard one small example of this described in an interview shortly after the death of President George Herbert Walker Bush. In early December of 2018, as the world mourned the death of President Bush, National Public Radio aired a conversation in which two women, Bonnie Clement and Helen Thorgalson, who owned a store near the Bushes’ home in Kennebunkport, Maine, remembered, with much affection and gratitude, the gladness and warmth with which their longtime friend, George H. W. Bush, had served as a witness at their wedding. It was a small example from President Bush concerning how to relate to gay and lesbian loved ones and friends—as loved ones and friends, without making one part of their life, their sexual orientation, the most interesting or important part of their life. It is seeing that human difference for what it is—a human difference, not a spiritual sin.
To learn to discern the distinction between a difference and a sin is an important step along the path to spiritual depth. For me, that has meant coming to see and say the truth which travels in those nine simple words: Homosexuality is a human difference, not a spiritual sin. The truth is that it has taken me a lifetime to see and say that truth which many dear and good people of faith do not embrace. But it is a truth which many others have always instinctively known. And, it is a truth which many more might someday come to see and say—not in spite of the fact that they are prayerful, Spirit-filled, serious Christians, but because they are prayerful, Spirit-filled, serious Christians.
— Charles E. Poole is pastor of Northminster Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi. This sermon was preached on May 17, 2021 and is published here with his permission.
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