And we wonder why it is so difficult for the world around us to separate these two words church and hate. It’s understandable why people in the world around us would not be able to do that. Obviously, we have a lot to talk about today but before we do that we need to make sure that everyone gets this. Regardless of the tension that you are feeling because of what we are talking about today you are in a safe place today full of people just like you. We have all made mistakes, hurt people, been hurt by people, have parts of our lives and stories that we wish we could change, erase, delete and do-over, we aren’t perfect, we don’t have all the answers, we have lots of questions. If that sounds like you, me too. So welcome and a special shout out and welcome to all of our new friends who are here today for the very first time, all of our friends that are tuned in and watching online, and to all of our friends and family that are a part of the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, queer community that are either here or watching this today. We really are glad that you are here, we hope that you feel that and experience that in your time here with us, and that you want to come back. We mean that.
ILLUST> You know I think the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender queer community commonly referred to as the LGBTQ community, that is how I am going to refer to it today, is a little confused by the response of the church. After all, we live in a state Colorado that has legalized gay marriage. In fact, we legalized gay marriage and marijuana in the exact same year. I was talking to my friend Jim about that, he leads Flatirons Church up near Boulder and he said well you know that’s Biblical. I said what? He said it’s Biblical. I said what are you talking about and he said well the Bible says if two men lie down together they should be stoned. He had a gay man tell him that. Pray through it. It will be okay.
The title today “those” people is not intended to be disrespectful or demeaning. It is intended to stir things up and point us to one of the biggest problems facing the church. Throughout the history of the world the church has always had “those” people, Gentiles, Samaritans, women, blacks, divorced, remarried, hippies, liberals it’s a long list oh you are one of those people. Today, it is the LGBTQ community. Just think about it. This pastor’s comments sound really familiar….
ILLUST> I don’t want to be closed-minded or judgmental, but in good conscience I simply can’t approve of the lifestyle. I personally believe it’s a choice, not something predestined or forced by anyone. When people choose this lifestyle, some of them go as far as to claim that God made them the way they are, pushing onto God their responsibility for their own choices and behaviors. Activists may use the word love to justify their behavior, but those who disagree with them are seldom treated with love. They send out hate mail peppered with a wide range of threats and abusive speech, with many calling for our damnation. But even so, we have learned that we must not respond to hate with hate; we must love these people…those people…and seek to help them, even though we do not approve of their behavior. (SOUND FAMILIAR? ARE YOU READY?) Just so we are clear…I am not talking about the gay community. I am talking about the church community.
Is the real problem the real issue the people that are being talked about in that video…or is the real problem with the people doing the talking? What would Jesus say to us about our response to and experiences with the LGBTQ community? That is what I want us to talk about in the time we have left together today. Let’s do this John chapter 4. If you have a Bible you can turn there. If you want or need a Bible, we have Bibles on the back tables that you can grab right now if you would like if you close or on your way out. Or you can hit read off your program, hit our app, and then hit You Version, and it will all be right there in front of you. Everything I read is also going to be on the screens. So Jesus is walking through Samaria, is tired and thirsty, sits down at a well and asks a Samaritan woman who is there for a drink. So here we go starting with verse 9…
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
So Jesus asks her for a drink and she is shocked. Here’s what you need to know about this culture. Samaritans were considered half-bred dogs by the Jews and so they didn’t associate with them, and men didn’t speak publicly to women. That explains her confusion. I was born of a different race and gender…I’m genetically different. Why is that important? Because that is what many in the LGBTQ community claim to be too, genetically different, I didn’t choose to be this way, I was born this way. That statement and argument tends to get church people all fired up.
ILLUST> I met this week with a friend who loves Jesus and tries her best to follow him. She is an absolutely beautiful person who to this day is willing to be honest and admit that she still struggles with same sex attraction. It is really hard for her to continue to follow Jesus and deal with the pain of that. As we were talking I asked her “if you could change this about yourself would you?” She didn’t hesitate. She said absolutely. Just two days ago I asked my friend, a man who years ago was instrumental in getting me into ministry and has been one of my mentors, a man who in the past year has gone public with the fact that he is transgender and while he remains married to his wife has now has changed his name to a woman’s name and dresses publicly as a woman. I asked the exact same question, Paula, if you could change this about yourself would you? The answer was the same. Yes, of course. Nobody would choose this.
The church response is to debate that, disagree with that, and demand that is not genetic and yet what does Jesus do with the issue of genetics? He ignores it, we don’t even need to address that, it’s not the issue, we have something far more important that needs to be addressed here and that you need to see. It’s true of this young lady and of all of us too…
ALL OF US ARE SETTLING FOR LESS THAN WHAT JESUS HAS FOR US. The key word there is all isn’t it? If we want to love and not hate in moments like these we need to zoom out to what is true of all of us. I may not have that struggle, but I have struggles. We are all sinners hopeless without the grace and forgiveness of Jesus. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, the wages of sin is death. That is the path that all of us are on without Jesus. Church people get that, we memorize, quote it, and believe it. Here’s the part we struggle with. There is no hierarchy of sins. No sin is worse than any other. We struggle to see all sin as equal and it is not all our fault.
Think about the world around us. If you asked someone outside the church, even someone in the LGBT community which is worse theft or murder? I believe 100% would say murder. If you tried to tell them no they are the same it would be hard to get them to agree. Our legal system even punishes crimes differently. These two also happen to be sin. I was thinking about it this week are there crimes that aren’t sin. I’m going with speeding. Anyway, you get the point. This kind of thinking, they are all the same, doesn’t come naturally to us outside the church, it makes sense that we would carry it inside with us too and we do. At the end of the day sin is sin and we are all hopeless without the grace and forgiveness of Jesus. All of us are settling every day for less than what Jesus has for us.
ILLUST> So why is it so difficult for us to get there when it comes to our friends and family who are a part of the LGBT community? I think it is difficult because we don’t struggle with it ourselves and we can’t understand it. I can’t understand how a mother can drive her car into the ocean, get out and allow her children to die, I don’t understand how a terrorist can fly a plane full of innocent people into a skyscraper. I don’t understand some of your struggles and you don’t understand mine. There have been lots of people who don’t understand my story. It happened years ago, but how could a pastor, who loves his wife and his kids and his church, betray them all and have an affair? Some of you don’t understand that. People come and leave our church because they don’t understand that. It happened from the moment I told my story here 7 years ago and it still happens today.
Maybe we are not supposed to understand. Maybe it is not on us to figure it all out or to speculate about genetics, or developmental experiences, or family dynamics. As followers of Jesus we are never asked to understand. Read the book, it’s not in there. In fact, In Isaiah 55 we are told that there are lots of things we are not going to understand. That’s not we are called to do. Remember where we started this series 6 weeks ago? Jesus said by this all men will know that you are my disciples by your love. We are called to love.
ILLUST> Billy Graham once attended a rally in support of President Bill Clinton after the big sex scandal had become public. He was asked by a reporter why he was there supporting the President after all that he had done to his family and this country. Billy Graham said “it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge, and my job to love”. So Jesus starts with love but the next step is not going to feel very loving at all. Let’s keep reading…
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
Bam, there it is. Jesus points to the sin in her life which doesn’t seem very loving. What you say is true…5 former husbands…one current lover. So pause…here’s a question. What if this woman was gay…what if Jesus said “you have had 5 lesbian wives and are with a lesbian lover”? Test time. Would that have been any different? Absolutely not, not in God’s eyes. Good we are making progress. So here it is her sin is exposed, it’s out in the open, now what? What are we going to do with it? Well, what are our options? What would the world do with it? Answer, nothing, do what you want, if it feels good do it, condone it. What would the church do with it? Answer…condemn it. Watch how Jesus responds…
JESUS CHOOSES COMPASSION OVER CONDEMNING OR CONDONING. Grace says condone it…hang on forgiveness, truth says condemn it…quote them Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6, all grace all truth the Jesus approach is neither of those things it is compassion. Go home this week and read this whole chapter. Study it. You know what you are not going to find. Jesus never tells her what she is doing is wrong or to stop doing it. He doesn’t have to. He tells her that she is settling in life and shows her what it is in her life that is standing between her and the life she is looking for. He chooses compassion over condemning or condoning.
Somehow we have convinced ourselves that the LGBTQ community is not at all interested in hearing the truth. We are convinced that they just want to parade into the church and have us condone their lifestyle. There may be some that want that, but that is typically not true. The people in this community who are interested in church know the truth, often better than we do. The only way they know how to defend themselves from our vicious truth attacks is to know it better than us. Many of them do. They are not asking us to ignore the truth about anything including their lifestyle. They are asking for a safe place to experience that. How do we know that? From the conversations that great churches are having with people in the LGBTQ community. You know what conversations do? Conversations lead from us to condemnation to compassion.
ILLUST> A few years ago I read a book called Love is an Orientation, where I came across Maddie’s story. When she was 9 years old her dad calmly took her to the basement and chained her to a toilet. The chain was so tight that she couldn’t move. He told her if you ever tell anybody I will kill you. Each day she would yell cry and plead for him to unlock her. He would instead toss her a plate with food scraps on it. After 3 months of being locked up with no explanation her dad apologized and let her out to return to fourth grade the following fall. She said I wanted to believe his apology until he started raping me. By the time it stopped she was 14 years old and her life had been taken from her. She said…I’m not attracted to girls, but no man will ever touch me again. So she lives her life as a lesbian.The life that she is choosing is confusing and uncomfortable and one that a lot of us just don’t really understand. I get that. But how can we not have compassion when we hear that story? I read this week that the suicide rate for people age 13 to 28 is four times higher when they are same sex attracted or a part of the LGBT community. It is 8 times higher when their families reject them. In my conversation with my transgender friend this week she told me that in the transgender community alone the suicide attempt rate is 41% and the success rate is 33%. The next highest category is schizophrenic which is 5.6%. How can we not have compassion when we hear that?
ILLUST> As I sat down and talked with two friends this past week who both struggle with same sex attraction you know what they told me? They told me that they learned pretty quickly not to call themselves lesbian. They quickly shifted to bi-sexual. You know why? Because when men hear that you are a lesbian they take it upon themselves to prove that you are not. They beat you, abuse you, torture you, and rape you to prove that. We don’t understand. How can we not have compassion when we hear that?
Do you realize what it is that we the church are asking Gay Christians to do? We are asking them to be celibate or to force them to accept and work through a same sex marriage. We are asking them to not act on the desires of their heart. Have you ever thought about how much that must hurt? It’s easy to think no big deal we ask our teenagers to wait until marriage. Do you see the difference? With a teenager it’s just a matter of someday. Someday you will get to act on the desires of your heart and it will be amazing. The only answer we have for them is never. How can we not have compassion when we hear that?
Jesus makes it clear that following him requires sacrifice and that it is not an easy road but do we ever really give much thought to the road that we ask the LGBT to walk if they really want to follow Jesus. Compassion ultimately opens the door for conversation just like we see with Jesus here. Let’s finish this. So she is obviously a bit incomfortable and tries to change the subject. It is obvious you are prophet and some day the Messiah is coming and will clear all of this mess up. Jesus says I am he. Watch how she responds…verse 28…
28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him… 39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers. 42 They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
So how would this story have ended if she had been a lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender or a cross dresser…answer the exact same way. Gender doesn’t matter, race doesn’t matter, genetics doesn’t matter, behavior choices doesn’t matter, family dynamics don’t matter, immoral decisions don’t matter…regardless of how your story reads…I am right here…I came for you. I love the heart of Jesus. You know what I wish? I wish that everyone I know…gay, bi, trans or straight could experience that Jesus. Too often they can’t. We get in the way because we are uncomfortable and we don’t understand. We need to be a place for them to do that. So, if we really want to separate church and hate it ultimately comes down to this question…
ARE WE GOING TO BE A BRIDGE OR CONTINUE TO BE A BARRIER? One answer is going to feel like love, the other answer is going to keep us from ever being able to separate these two words church and hate. Ultimately, many people, who were not at all like Jesus, believed and put their faith and trust in him. I don’t think that was because Jesus knew her story, she was likely the talk of the community. I think it was because of the way, despite their very prominent differences, the way Jesus handled her heart. His compassion was compelling and ours should be too. 2 Corinthians 5:17…
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
God is trying to make his appeal to the world through us? How is that working out? How is that really going? Is God making his appeal through us? The hard truth is this how we, the church, typically respond is not very appealing at all. It appears as though God is passing his judgment through us. You are going to hell. It’s not our job, we don’t have the right to do that, it’s not our call, it’s above our paygrade and worst than anything else, it feels like hate. Something has to change.
So we have decided here at DCC they we are going to be a bridge. We are going to continue to walk into the mystery and misunderstanding of all of this with grace and truth, with compassion and love and are going to create safe space for people with this struggle, this unanswered prayer, this heavy burden to pursue Jesus with our guidance and the guiding work of the Holy Spirit and the scripture and decide their best option as they think about their future and seek to grow in Christ.
Some in the LGBT community will be frustrated with us because we will not come out as affirming the lifestyle. We hope that you extend grace and understand that we can’t because that statement is unclear and means so many different things to so many people.
There are some in the LGBT community who love our church and are willing to live in and walk in this ambiguity and tension with us. They are extending grace to back to us because they understand that we see the world differently. There is mystery and misunderstanding, but if all of us are willing to fill the gaps with grace it is amazing what can happen and what God can do. We are going to figure out how to be the hands and feet of Jesus to these incredible and beautiful people who are pursuing God with all their heart with a huge burden and unanswered prayer. If Jesus was all grace and all truth, we must embrace and embody both as well in this place we call DCC.
Let’s end today by getting back to the reality of all of our lives today gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, queer or straight. It’s all about Jesus. We are all hopeless without the love, grace, and forgiveness of Jesus. There is so much hope for all of us today. So whatever it is that you carried in here today, whatever your struggle, challenge, hurt, pains, concerns, addiction, or sin in your life there is hope for you.
We getting ready to sing a song and then we are going to take communion together. So as it is being passed, if you are a follower of Jesus just take it and hold it, and I will come back up in a few minutes and we will take it together. If you are not a believer, aren’t sure, are confused, don’t really know what you believe or just don’t feel right about taking it no sweat just pass it on to the person next to you. Either way listen to the words to the song we are about to sing. All this pain, I wonder if I’ll ever find my way. I wonder if my life could really change at all? Answer…yes…there’s hope for all of us. He makes beautiful things out of us. Let’s Pray.
