My daughter was angry with me one day when she was three years old. She said she wanted to be a particular girl at her day care. I asked her why she wanted to be that girl. She replied, because that girl has two moms (that is, no dad to be annoyed by). Ouch!
That was a decade ago. In my child’s world same – sex unions, families headed with same – sex partners, are commonplace. In her world this is not a debate.
At the same age my world was very different. Divorce rates were the big question in our time. Supreme courts were striking down old marriage rules, making divorce easier. I had friends whose parents were separating. That was a big deal then. You could be—and many were—ostracized from church if you were divorced.
My daughter has her friends’ parental rotation memorized; all her cohorts do, they build their schedules around in which part of the city one of them needs to sleep. Her generation takes so much for granted that was shocking in mine: Public breastfeeding in the early 1970s? Not a chance—yet now, despite the occasional story about an uptight restaurant owner, this is a common occurrence.
The list of changes, subtle and grand, over the past half century, has filled volumes and will continue to do so. In the midst of all that, church has also changed; usually several steps behind society. Canada opened voting booths to women in 1918; our denomination took another half century, and then considered it again two decades later, to allow women to have a voice on equal terms.
We are currently in the midst of a debate around issues of sexuality. This debate is about a quarter century, at least, behind the rest of the world we live in. This debate is going to be messy and bitter.
That’s too bad. Folks on either side of the divide are going to trot out scripture, eagerly parsing bits of Latin and Greek for their true guidance on who can sleep with whom and who can lead worship. But, as in the past, the pieces of scripture that will not be placed front and centre are all of the ones about loving one another as God has loved us.
Church has to be a safe place. A safe place where we are embraced by each other in the love of God through Christ.
There are many interesting conversations our denomination needs to have, conversations around how best to show and share the love we recognize with each other and society at large. And I understand we must have this conversation about sexuality because no matter how high we build our walls society does have a way of entering our sanctuaries.
Church has to be a safe place—an open door sanctuary, filled with prayer, music, praise and laughter. That happens when people share the Good News with each other. You know that moment, in worship, in Communion, when all the surface differences melt away and suddenly you’re in a community of God’s children? That’s the safe place we need to work on.
Despite what many middle – aged, self – important men will tell you (it usually is men, I know, I’m one of them and middle aged) the Bible is not a sex manual. It is the story of how God so loved the world!
It’s going to be a bumpy year; a year that will challenge your orthodoxy. Pray. Praise. Worship. It’s not that complicated.
