Editorial: A Number of Positions on Homosexuality

Well. No one has ever asked the question of me, thank goodness. And I've tried, personally, to avoid addressing the matter at all, because my curiosity centers much more around the affairs of God than the affairs of church polity. But the buzz about the current Lutheran conference, including the insinuation of some that God sent an F0 tornado down upon the very building the conference is held in (really? F0? Is that all the smiting our God goes in for anymore?) - these events, as well as long brewing in the Episcopal and Methodist churches, have prompted a lot of thinking on my part.

And now, God help us, I finally need to vent.

To wit: when considering the nature of sin and questions of sinfulness, I try always to keep in mind the principle of self-first. That is, to ponder the plank in my own eye before elaborating overmuch on the faults of others - the same principle Dostoevsky captured marvelously in the Brothers Karamazov: "make yourself responsible for all the sins of men...the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all."


So: While I do, in fact, against the general trend of American Anglican thought, still view homosexual intercourse to be sinful, my first and largest thought is that it simply is a sin toward which I am not prone. It is not much of my affair. I have plenty of others, so many that my first impulse is, rightly or not, not toward judgment. I don't have it in me to condemn. I don't have the ground to stand on, or the heart to do it. It's simply the way I am.

And to the largest degree possible, I believe it is the way which Christians ought to be. If anyone sins, to some very real degree it is our fault and our responsibility, because the line between we and they is anything but solid.

I only believe what I do about homosexuality because, having wrangled with the pertinent scriptures, I cannot see my way clear of their implications. I am not impressed by the counter-interpretations, and cannot imagine that the biblical writers were only thinking of particular homosexual behavioral instances.

The variety and contextuality of the passages are the very things that convince me that homosexual relations are sins in the eyes of God, Old and New Testament alike. Until new evidence comes to light, I do not see how a clear-eyed and pragmatic reading of Scripture can come to any other conclusion, though I understand that many believe differently.

But what I also do not see is where Scripture proclaims what precisely we ought to do about it. Clearly, after Christ we are going to stone no one. Which is not to say that sin now goes unpunished and everyone runs around doing what they want without consequence, but it is to say that the drift of Scripture places judgment less and less into human hands and more and more into the hands of God alone. In fact, it might be said that that was the very mission of Christ: our salvation is our judgment, and both of these are entirely in the hands of Our Lord.

Now of course, every community must engage in gatekeeping, and the church is no exception. Paul rightly urges the early churches to spurn those who threaten the community itself. They must be turned out. But I've heard no one say that homosexuals just by their presence in worship or in the pulpit threaten the integrity of the body of Christ.

But you can go to church with homosexuals. They don't do anything differently than anyone else. They sing the same songs, say the same prayers, preach the same sermons, serve the same Eucharist. If they gossip and backbite and slander, I'm sure they do so not because they're homosexual, but simply because they want to belong. There is nothing noteworthy about them, except, of course, that they are made in the image of God, for which everyone is at least worth mentioning.

You see, no one ever actually deals with homosexuals, anymore than anyone meets with the African American race, or the Universal Hispanic Alliance. One only ever really meets individuals. Those are the people with which you have to deal. You can ignore politics to whatever degree you are able, but you have to deal with Mary and Martin and Joe and Kate - whatever their characters, whatever their affiliations. We are all individuals always meeting, or failing to meet, other individuals. When my Methodist mentor heard about the ordination of Gene Robinson, the gay bishop recently ordained in New Hampshire, and wondered what I thought, I could only say "I hope he's a good bishop."

I believe that is precisely on the level at which Christ would have made the determination, and perhaps part of the reason Jesus never addressed the topic himself. To some degree, it's a nonsensical question. Homosexuals aren't, so far as I know, part of an institution that hypocritically judges people the way the Pharisees were, or part of an idolatrous and self-congratulatory nation that heaps wealth upon itself at the expense of widows, aliens and orphans the way Israel did. And if "they" are, their sexual behavior likely has nothing to do with it. If there's any issue unlikely to be a good basis of sorting and condemning human beings, it's sexuality, which manifests itself in people so individually, so interiorally, and so varyingly over the course of a lifetime.

I mean, it strikes me that the central question here isn't one of sexuality at all, but one of Docetism. The unspoken question I hear is whether or not we're going to let homosexuals sit in our pews, stand in our wedding chapels, preach from our pulpits, and chair our ecumenical conferences, or whatever it is that bishops do.

Thankfully, the question of church participation has been answered for two thousand years, at least since Augustine. Sinners get to preach. Wretches get to serve the Eucharist. Righteousness is not a condition for participation in the body of Christ, though it is of course something of the purpose.

Whether or not one's sins are publicly visible is only a distracting point. I hear that the number of male pastors, preachers, and priests who habitually view images of naked women over the internet is very much ungodly. Should they remain? Maybe, maybe not. I believe the least we would grant them were their proclivities known is a trial by character, an assessment of an entire person and their work. Were their habits to remain secret, I believe the very least we would offer them would be a lone accounting with their God.

I think we should extend the same two deals to closeted and open homosexuals. I believe it is their right as human beings and creations of our God. I cannot understand how straight people of any stripe could deploy one sin and condemn whole swaths of society because their sins happen to be somewhat more public. Does a homosexual make a worse priest than an embezzler, or an adulterer? Than anyone else equally qualified?

After all, the problem, from a Christian perspective, with the Scarlet Letter was not that she got one, but that everyone didn't. We don't get to treat people differently because we happen to know what their sins are, while ours remain more private.

The issue of repentance is equally distracting. We all know from celebrities, politicians, and athletes the value of public contrition, which is virtually nill. True repentance is ceasing the behavior. We are all unrepentant sinners. If we weren't, we would live in a very different world. Our confessions are as flawed and human and limited and imperfect and sin-stained as the rest of us - and nonetheless by grace we are welcomed into the body and bride of Christ, because Jesus himself welcomes us.

God loves a penitent heart, but are we ourselves not to love every heart?

It is true that, were I to hear a sermon preaching the rightness of homosexual congress, I would view that teaching as in error. But, notwithstanding that I can't imagine any such thing in the church I currently attend, it would only be about the three thousandth sermon preached in America eschewing biblical principles for the idiosyncratic follies of any particular moment. Preachers and bishops are often wrong. But they are never wrong for being who they are, but only what they say and do. Their bare presence is not a political or religious utterance until we or they make it one. Clerics are not statements. They are people, human individuals.

The idea that we cannot countenance any such is the most unbiblical teaching I might imagine. We don't get to deny anyone anything we claim for ourselves; this is the essence of the Golden Rule. If this is marriage, then it is marriage, flawed and sinful as it might be. If this is Eucharist, this is Eucharist, however compromised and imperfect the breaking of the bread. If this is positions of church authority, then it is positions of church authority, even for the sinners in our midst.

We always hear that the laws of this nation are based on a Judeo-Christian ethic, a thought which continually strikes me odd, as the Christian ethic is an entirely non-litigious one, and the lawerly scribes and Pharisees were precisely those that Christ condemned. It was the equation of law and morality that Christ overturned, because the law always fails to address the particularities of the human heart and must condemn people without considering God's own greater judgments, because it cannot know them. So, the ponderings of conferences aside, I think we might at least have a run at eschewing legalized morality within our church.

So what do I propose? I guess I would like to introduce not so much a specific policy as a series of guidelines that I wish Christians would adopt.

First, deal with your own particular sins; when considering others, be slow to judge, swift to forgive, and quicker still to love.

Second, treat in individuals rather than political bodies; love the image of God in each person, because that is the only way you're ever going to see it.

Third, accept the universality of sin and show no preference for private over public unrighteousness; many are invited, but few are chosen. The inviting must come first, and it must be authentic.

And fourth: unless specifically acting to counteract an existing policy, establish no writ concerning homosexuals or their practices one way or the other. Even the Golden Rule isn't good legislation, and polity cannot possibly address the issue of conscience, and might lead to us being similarly judged by God himself.

And no one wants that.

Notice: Summer Hiatus

Well, people, I've finally cracked. With my transfer from Me University to Luther Seminary well underway, I'm hiatusing this blog to spend the summer focusing on my two friggin' novels and that television script you've never heard about, as well as a probable class on Atonement Theory at the church.

Oh yes, dear readers, I have other interests! I may or may not take the opportunity to share serialized versions of one of those mentioned novels here, as they are in fact religiously-themed works. I'll have to think about how proprietary I actually feel.

Meantime, I wholeheartedly apologize to the spring semester. I did the readings, but never had time to jot down my notes. Perhaps, when I'm taking notes and writing papers for official credit, the posting will come easier.

From the Lectionary: The Readings for Sunday, May 17

Acts 10:44-48

44While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. 45The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, 46for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, 47"Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" 48So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.
Psalm 98:1-9

1O sing to the Lord a new song,

for he has done marvelous things.

His right hand and his holy arm

have gotten him victory.

2The Lord has made known his victory;

he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations.

3He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness

to the house of Israel.

All the ends of the earth have seen

the victory of our God.

4Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;

break forth into joyous song and sing praises.

5Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre,

with the lyre and the sound of melody.

6With trumpets and the sound of the horn

make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord.

7Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;

the world and those who live in it.

8Let the floods clap their hands;

let the hills sing together for joy

9at the presence of the Lord, for he is coming

to judge the earth.

He will judge the world with righteousness,

and the peoples with equity.
1 John 5:1-6

1Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. 2By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, 4for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. 5Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

6This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth.
John 15:9-17

9As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.10If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. 11I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

12"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another."

Crisis: An Aging Population

Crisis: In 2001 the average age of retirement hit a minimum of 63, and the bottom of a fifty year decline. Since Reagan's social security forms have taken effect, it has risen and is scheduled to continue to rise. Within the next fifty years, experts predict that a significant number of people will never retire, but will remain productive and active workers until their deaths. The number of elderly in the developed world will continue to increase both absolutely and proportionately for the foreseeable future. Despite these trends, and despite their considerable political power, elderly people remain on the fringes of mainstream society.

This is going to change. Not only is the average human life span continuing to increase, medical advances can and will allow elderly people to remain active and successful far longer than at any time in history. The current generation will live 5-10 percent longer than their parents. Even if 120 years represent a firm ceiling to human lifespan, and even if no medical breakthroughs contain or eliminate serious diseases, these trends will occur simply as existing sanitation, nutrition, and health education and genetic knowledge spread around the world. The generation of baby-boomers will be the most active and youthful-appearing elders the human race has ever seen.

Their retirement and that of following generations will take place later in life, with less of a break in relationship to ordinary work, and with the assumption that people will continue work in some form. Retirement will put few people out to pasture, but will be a time for people to use their experience, intelligence, and success to create new lives for themselves. (Thirty years of doing the crossword is going to seem a bit much for anyone.)

This cannot happen without broader effects on society. People who expect to live longer have babies later. The birthrate will hold, but the next population explosion will be of old people. Organizations, the competitive ones, at least, will embrace the wealth of experience, adaptability, and world-wisdom that only older people can accumulate. (22 percent of job growth since 1995 has been people over 55, already). Older workers who aren't about to retire represent less of a risk (and, statistically, less of an average health-care cost than young families) in any marketplace, and they will integrate into the mainstream - just as information economies start requiring less physical stamina anyway.

Knowledge workers today will be hired for up to six different careers throughout their lives, and two or more of them will come after age 55. (The fastest growing population of Internet users? the over 50 crowd). Social security will not be a pension, but a stipend. This will of course loom large in a world of increasing health-care costs and mounting differences between rich and poor. Yet, everyone's health will be better, because health technologies decline in price the same way technologies do - think of laser eye surgery. It's not that poor people's medical care will get worse, it's that expensive medical care will get so much better so quickly.

*bonus crisis: 6.5 million American people, mostly older black men, are about to be released from long-term prison sentences begun in the mid-1980's, having been arrested almost entirely for drug activity. They are poorly educated, tied to impoverished communities if any, have poor work histories, will be too old to return to crime, are for the most part ineligible for social security, and are unprepared and untrained for life outside of prison. Their releases will start in a wave in 2010. Some American cities are about to be inundated by aging former felons. They will have few if any prospects. What on Earth are these people going to do?

From the Lectionary: The Readings for Sunday, May 10

Acts 8:26-40

8:26 Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." (This is a wilderness road.) 8:27 So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 8:28 and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.

8:29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over to this chariot and join it." 8:30 So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" 8:31 He replied, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.

8:32 Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. 8:33 In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth." 8:34 The eunuch asked Philip, "About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" 8:35 Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.

8:36 As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?" 8:38 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. 8:39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. 8:40 But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

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Psalm 22:25-31

22:25 From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.

22:26 The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD. May your hearts live forever!

22:27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.

22:28 For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.

22:29 To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.

22:30 Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,

22:31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.

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1 John 4:7-21

4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 4:8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 4:9 God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 4:10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 4:11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.

4:12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. 4:13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 4:14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. 4:15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 4:16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

4:17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 4:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 4:19 We love because he first loved us.4:20 Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

4:21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

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John 15:1-8

15:1 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 15:2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 15:3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 15:4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 15:5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 15:6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 15:7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 15:8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

Editorial: Accept Me, Dangit!

Since I didn't write anything else this weekend, I present my 'autobiographical essay' for admission to Luther Seminary. Bonus: When I became a Christian, I was the same age as that girl in the quote I open with. Extra Bonus: That was Peter Powers who said I had an increasingly sophisticated mind!

I appreciate any remarks you might have.

“The child is not dead, but sleeping.” - Mark 5:39

I sleep well; I’m a good sleeper. I pass my dormant hours without much interruption. I’ve slept through thunderstorms, fire trucks, and ambulances. I sleep like the young. I sleep like the dead. But the world, of course, has never paused with me. So I’ve also slept through more than 6 million murders, 2.3 million rapes in America alone, and the deaths of 56 million children to starvation. All these things occurred while I was not watching, throughout the unconscious nights of my existence, only one third of my time upon this earth.

And while I cannot argue with Salman Rushdie when he says that “nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time,” Christ points me precisely in that direction. The crux of faith is neither belief nor works, but consciousness: increasing mindfulness of Christ. The onus of Christianity is not on words or deeds but orientation. Disciples want to be like Christ. I want to step behind Christ’s eyes. And the vision of Christ beckons me into empathetic wakefulness, into awareness of sorrow and consciousness of joy. The light of my faith shines on and through and from a cosmos of mounting complexity and thrilling tension. I hum with paradox. A broken, healing world hums with me.

When I was twelve, I wanted to kill myself. Afflicted with what I would later recognize as a depressive disorder, I contemplated suicide. I did not because of a unique and reassuring vision: alone in the bathroom one morning, I imagined myself swimming along the surface of a lake. The water, I knew, was the undying love of God. Utterly transported, I would not and could not sink. Though to this day I have not learned to swim, the vision implies more than simple grace.

My Christian mother was asking me to make a decision about the church. I was fast approaching the age of Methodist confession and confirmation even as I fell further into inarticulate grief and unaccountable isolation. Connecting to God was difficult. Everything was, save this: fishing with my un-churched father at a nearby lake. This recognizably supplied the waters of my vision. God was doing through me what I am always doing myself: reconciling opposites, joining pious mother to unbelieving father, getting faith and doubt to talk.

I said yes to Jesus at the same time I said yes to church and my mother and yes, above all else, to the waters of the love of God. I also said yes to joy and yes to a self not bound by the sorrow I had so inchoately felt. The sprinkling of my baptism shone golden in a springtime light. I felt months of simple elation. This too, it seemed, was mine. I did not understand. Terrified and astonished, I wanted to hide the joy that threatened to burst right out of me.

Television, of all things, provided clarity. After Sunday service, I would hurry to watch a series of debates between a conservative and a liberal theologian. At the end of a particularly heated topic, they talked about being friends despite their disagreements. “What I respect about you,” one said to the other, “is that even when you err, you err on the side of love.” And I knew: I wanted to err on the side of love, forever. Intellectual argument, at a slant, had given me direction and a way to articulate a dazzling transformation.

So when I had the choice between state schools and a small, private Christian college, I chose the latter. My secret motive was to hear intelligent people talk about God, to continue the conversation. I never tired of it. That the debates got harder and the questions more complicated only intensified my interest. For my first two years I read theodicy, all the explanation and justification, it seemed, that anyone had ever given for suffering. And I found no answer, no sufficient grounds for a good God to allow even my adolescent depressions, let alone permit humanity’s broader ills and deeper cruelties.

At the bottom I found Dostoevsky’s “sticky little leaves” opening in spring. I sat on the campus lawn beneath a budding oak tree, at the nadir of despair. I watched the patterns of shadow and sunlight on the grass as clouds swept overhead, and remembered chasing them as a child. Again, it seemed I did, and the field was not made of grass, but the love of life in God. What else encompasses both darkness and light? What else endures through joy and sorrow, pain and bliss, but the God who is love, and who authors life? And what can one do but live and love in kind? When a philosophy professor remarked that Christianity, in sum, is a simple celebration of creation, my head pointed toward my heart. One feasts on life by the gut, the stomach, when understanding ends.

And my comprehension would end, again, of course. Fueled by an anomalous acedia, my postgraduate non-theism ended in Minneapolis, when I got off the light-rail after visiting a friend. Twenty people, seeing the Bible I was reading, had spent most of an hour quizzing me about God. I departed the train in a daze. I got lost somewhere in the four blocks home. It took me three hours to find my way in a city I had inhabited for more than a year. It had never occurred to me before that God might be authoring my confusion, might be casting me into urban wilderness because I had a different path ahead.

That my third vision subsequently depicted God as a sandstorm of ancient and incomprehensible force only deepened my commitment to the spiritual discernment I had begun. Through conversations with the vicar of the Episcopal church that I had begun to attend, I heard a call. Just as the answer to my fledgling despair and rapture of God was conversation, just as the answer to evil was my embodied response of love, so the answer to adult ambiguity and an unfathomable God was clear proclamation and one decision at a time.

So, I loved the stranger and shouted about the silence. Taking an opportunity, I taught a series of classes at my church on the kinesthetics of God working in the world – yes, but how does it happen? – and the nature of truth – yes, but what does it actually do? These classes led to sermons, and my lay speaking in the church. I delight in seeing another person understand, in passing the fires in my mind. I volunteered to blog as the church’s amateur theologian so that I could continue at all hours.

Thus I’ve stayed awake. I cannot sleep for any of these things; I sit up each night before I speak. Why shouldn’t I? Grief need not be the only thief of peace. Just listening to a lecture wakes me up, let alone speaking out. And I’m the only person I know who found undergraduate study easier the harder the classes got. I did not understand when a professor remarked that I had an increasingly sophisticated mind. But I should hope that wisdom would increase. I would strive for deeper knowledge, and welcome more adept intelligence. So much religious language about awakening must mean something.

I think so that others can think. Always coming out of caves, I waken so that I can awaken others. The years I spent at a Christian college were joyous not so that I could possess them, but so I could find a way to transmit to others that illumination of thought and delight in words about God. My first favorite writer, after all, was Martin Luther. As we confess, so we believe. As we believe, so we live our lives, so we give embody our mission and our purpose. A school tied to confessional tradition should not be remiss in education, in waking people to awakening.

I want to teach. More specifically, I want to teach theology to students not very different from the person I was the day I sat beneath an oak and realized that love is the field upon which all being plays. Christian faith is helped tremendously not by more thinking or less thinking, but by right thinking about God. Happily, this can be achieved by rigorous consideration and modest amounts of sanity and grace. Because theology is nothing if not embodied, good thinking toward God changes lives. We live out our ideas no matter what they are. How then can we not even determine what we believe?

Through my church, I started my project at Wikicreedia.org, where any believer can contribute to a new creed, not so that anyone would jettison ancient beliefs, but so that everyone could deeply and collaboratively confront their meaning. I believe the current church is in disarray about not only what is true, but about what truth does. Nonetheless, church is the chief place where meaning about God can happen, the reception hall of heaven’s wedding to the world. I must attend. On our pilgrimage to Christ, we are left to walk only with other pilgrims.

I believe this must be enough, though I believe we need to go together, to be all of one body even when we are not all of one mind. While I affirm the Nicene and Apostle’s Creeds each Sunday, I am glad I do not agree with each policy, decision or theology of the Episcopal Church. And I am grateful that my current church welcomes me to walk alongside them regardless. It beckons me, in fact, to constantly edge closer, to bump hips and hands with the rest of the bride of Christ.

Sleep is relentlessly individualistic. But my awakening has been into the simple awareness that I am not alone. Individual moments punctuate greater themes. The lake of God’s love meant a mentor who saw me through confirmation, introduced me to formal theology, and began the conversations about belief that limn my life with meaning. The field of God’s love meant two years of intimate debates with a friend about the paradoxes of free will and God’s sovereignty, and the intuition that response is a kind of answer to deep riddles. And yes, the storm of God’s love meant discernment, re-involvement with a Christian congregation and the end of an estrangement from our Trinitarian God.

Such developments should not surprise anyone. The universe is proving intricately relational, and love is demonstrably the best kind of human relationship. And I must say that the best type of love is Jesus Christ. I believe that the purpose of human life is to plunge whole-heartedly into the paradoxes of love, into all its immanent secrets and transcendent disclosures. I believe that truth takes the shape of relationship: self and other, similarity and alterity, answer and question, known and unknown. I believe that truth is thus fractal, not fractious. I believe that Catholicism gave us Martin Luther as surely as Newton gave us Einstein and my initial love of argument implied that I would one day write, speak and teach about God. All answers contain the next questions, and all questions lead to some new assurance.

This progression is not triumphant linearity but the turns and terms of a conversation we have with God about the nature of ultimate reality. Truth is not relative, but simply larger than we are. Truth bursts our understanding as though we ourselves were wineskins. Like Saul on the road to Damascus we are blinded not by darkness, but by light. In a world overwhelmed by meaning, we grope our way forward with words about God. I would hope that my time at Luther Seminary would prepare me to extend a hand to other pilgrims, and thus transmit a fire very much brighter and fiercer than myself.

From the Lectionary: The Readings for Sunday, May 3

Acts 4:5-12

5The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, 6with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. 7When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, "By what power or by what name did you do this?" 8Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders, 9if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, 10let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. 11This Jesus is 'the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.' 12There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved."

Psalm 23:1-6

1The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.

2He makes me lie down in green pastures;

he leads me beside still waters;

3he restores my soul.

He leads me in right paths

for his name's sake.

4Even though I walk through the darkest valley,

I fear no evil;

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff-

they comfort me.

5You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies;

you anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

all the days of my life,

and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD

my whole life long.

1 John 3:16-24

16We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us-and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 17How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

18Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. 19And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him 20whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; 22and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

23And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

John 10:11-18

11"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away-and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father."