In my memory the Presbyterian Church in Canada has been discussing sexual orientation and gender identity for at least 30 years. Sometimes the subject has been on the back burner. Other times, like now, it has occupied centre stage. But it has been there the whole time.
I remember one intensive period back in the early 1990s when I was in the Presbytery of Montreal. We were discussing the ordination of homosexuals at the time. Everyone in the presbytery was expected to attend a workshop on the subject. We had our choice of three dates. My wife, Shannon and I chose one scheduled on our Saturday off, which was obviously no longer a Saturday off.
When we got there the first thing we were asked to do is divide into groups according to our opinion on the issue. We could choose the group which agreed with the ordination of homosexuals, the group which disagreed, or the group of those still undecided. Shannon and I joined the undecided group. One reason for my choice was I did not appreciate being asked to pigeon-hole myself in front of the entire presbytery. The other reason was I really wasn’t convinced by what I was hearing from either of the other two groups. One group sounded much more biblical about things but I wasn’t hearing much Christ-like love and grace from them. The other group had a passion for justice but their biblical arguments didn’t convince me. It turned out that a lot of people joined the undecided group that day. It was the largest group by far.
It is now more than 20 years later and the discussion has expanded from ordination to same-sex marriage and the full inclusion of LGBTQ people in the life of the church. I can’t help but think the same three groups are still out there, though the proportions may have changed considerably. Could the undecided group still be quite large? We don’t know. I suspect they’re too busy trying to make sense of the other two groups to voice an opinion of their own. Yet I must admit that I still find myself in much the same place, after all of these years. It’s not that I don’t have an opinion. I’m just not sure I like everything I see in the other two groups.
I have wrestled with this subject for almost 30 years, and most intensely recently. In all of that wrestling there is one biblical passage that my reflections keep drawing me back to. Strangely it was not one of the passages raised in the Body, Mind and Soul document, the PCC’s study paper on the subject. In fact it’s not a passage that deals with sexual orientation at all. It happens to be a passage that both “traditionalists” and “progressives” have used in their defense but it doesn’t really support either position. It’s also a passage that has its own history of controversy, a controversy hinted at in the footnote most Bibles attach to it. That passage is John 8:2-11. According to the footnotes most ancient manuscripts of the gospel of John do not include it. Many scholars suggest it was written by a different author and added later, since the language and writing style are unlike anything else in the gospel. In fact many of those same scholars speculate that the passage was originally in the gospel of Luke (after 21:38) before it was mysteriously removed, for the language and writing style matches nicely with Luke. Maybe, they suggest, the passage was just too controversial at the time Luke was first circulated but was eventually reintroduced into John.
This controversial passage is printed in full in the side bar. It tells us that some scribes and Pharisees had brought a woman to Jesus who had been “caught in the very act of committing adultery.” Her accusers were clearly incensed. In their mind she had violated God’s standard for sexual practice as set out in Genesis 2:24 (“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.”) Drawing on another passage from the scriptures (Leviticus 20:10) they said, “in the law Moses commanded us to stone such a woman.” (Curiously they only wanted to condemn her, yet if she was caught “in the very act,” she was clearly not the only one caught!) Then they put the question to Jesus. “Now what do you say?” they asked. If we have any doubt about why they were confronting Jesus the text makes it very clear: “They said this to test him.” Another translation says, “They were asking this question as a trap.” But what was the test? What was the trap?
Jesus’ response has always amazed me. He clearly recognized the trap and had to figure out a way to sidestep it. He “bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.” Maybe he needed some time to think. As he did it seems he recognized several things. He recognized that these men were making at least two assumptions: first, that the woman had violated God’s plan for sex and, second, that she deserved to be condemned for it. You could call that the “traditionalist” point of view on the subject. He also recognized that they were trying to trap him into saying the two opposite things: that she did not deserve to be condemned because what she did wasn’t really all that bad after all. You could call that the “progressive” point of view. But what if Jesus agreed with the first assumption and not the second? Was there a category for that?
Another thing Jesus recognized in those moments of doodling in the sand was that those men were dealing with the whole matter as if it were an abstract issue of theological interpretation. They even treated the woman as nothing more than an object lesson for their zeal, one to be brutally discarded when they were done.
When Jesus finished his doodling and thinking he stood up and did two things. First, unlike the scribes and Pharisees, he didn’t deal with the question as if was simply an abstract issue. He recognized how deeply personal it all was; for both the woman being condemned and the men doing the condemning. He addressed the scribes and Pharisees, and he was very personal about it: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Reflecting personally on their own sin they realized they were in no position to be so self-righteous. As Jesus continued doodling they all “went away, one by one, beginning with the elders.” Then, after they left, Jesus stood up again and spoke to the woman, also in a very personal way: “Woman where are they? Has no one condemned you?” And she said, “No one, sir,”
The second thing I notice is that Jesus did not adopt either one or the other polarizing categories his adversaries were trying to trap him into. Jesus’ last words to the woman were, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” Unlike the “progressive” trap set for him he did not dismiss what the woman had done. Yet unlike the “traditionalist” position he did not condemn her for it. The results of what Jesus did that day are astounding. Jesus showered an amazing flood of grace into a situation where there was absolutely no grace before. And he did it specifically because he approached the subject personally rather than as an abstraction and specifically because he sidestepped the “traditionalist/progressive” trap.
When I think of the discussion about human sexuality we have had in the Presbyterian Church in Canada over the last 30 or more years I can’t help but think it has been a trap for us; a trap like the one the scribes and the Pharisees tried to set for Jesus so many years ago. After all these years we continue to deal with the subject largely as an abstract issue; for some it’s a moral issue, for others it’s a social justice issue but it’s an issue none the less. Often we even go out of our way to avoid dealing personally with the people on the other side of the discussion. (Ever notice that villainizing opponents rather than having reasonable conversations with them becomes an effective ploy to de-personalize a debate?) And after all these years the best material we can produce on the subject is still telling us, “There are really only two ways to think about this. You can be a ‘traditionalist’ or you can be a ‘progressive.’ Here are the arguments for each side. Now make up your mind and pick one.” The irony of course is that we’re urging people to pick one of two sides while at the same time we’re praying that somehow our denomination won’t become divided when we do. Didn’t Jesus say something once about not putting the Lord your God to the test? (Matthew 4:7, Deuteronomy 6:16). The sad thing is the whole time we’re doing this we risk sidestepping “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 13:13). In fact the tone of the current debate could make grace either easy to forget or unnecessary to remember. Grace will be easy to forget if we see this exclusively as a “moral issue” for we will be consumed with distinguishing the sinners from the righteous. That’s exactly what the scribes and Pharisees did when they confronted Jesus in the temple. Grace will be unnecessary to remember if we see this exclusively as a “social justice issue” for justice is about something someone justly deserves and grace, by its very definition, is something that is completely undeserved. Indeed the whole point of the gospel story is that none of us deserve God’s grace and yet it is freely and lavishly offered to all of us in Jesus Christ!
Jon Wyminga, Cariboo Presbyterian Church, B.C.
