I WILL, WITH GOD’S HELP
by
S. Craig McConnell
Parishioner, All Saints’ Episcopal Church
May, 2004
Will you seek and serve Christ in all
persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
I will, with God’s help.
Will you strive for justice and peace
among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
I will, with God’s help.
Book
of Common Prayer, p. 305
Those words from our Baptismal Covenant are the ones that
speak to my heart the most deeply.
For most of my life I have sat quietly on the sidelines, not
making waves unless situations arose that critically affected me
personally. I come from a very loving
family. Although some family relations
were strained when I came out of the closet, life eventually returned to what
we call normal. I’m not, at least on the
surface, treated any differently now than I was before I came out to my
family. We just don’t talk about it. I suppose I do well at choosing my friends,
both gay and straight, because my being a homosexual never seemed to be an
issue for any of them. That has been a
blessing, and they have become an extension of my family.
I recently moved to a condominium in Midtown, after having
shared a home with a good friend for the last 12 years. He and I were never partners, in the sense
that we were never romantically involved; we were just good friends who shared
a home, sleeping in separate bedrooms.
A little over a year ago, I was having a conversation with
my mother, and two sisters (both younger than I am), about the possibility of
my moving out on my own. The older
sister asked, “Why do you want to move? Don’t you like your roommate
anymore?” I explained that it had
nothing to do with my roommate and that I had just come to a point in my life
when “it was time for me to either live with the person I’m sleeping with, or
live alone.” To this my youngest sister
replied, “Whoa, that’s way too much information!” I responded, “Why is that? Don’t you live with the person you sleep
with?” The older of the two then stated,
“Yeah, but we’re married.” I immediately
came back with, “That’s my point, exactly.”
My mother remained amazingly silent during this entire transaction, and
this is where the conversation ended.
Upon recent reflection over this conversation, I realize how
ironic, and somewhat hypocritical, my sisters’ chosen response was. The older of my two sisters lived with, but
was never married to the father of her first child, and the younger lived with
her husband for some time before marrying him.
The bottom line is that marriage is an option for them. It isn’t for me.
I have never spoken out on the issue of same-sex unions,
civil unions, or marriage between two persons of the same sex, because it
didn’t seem to directly affect me. I am
single and, while I have always held hope that I might one day be in a loving
and lasting relationship, the issue of a relationship being made “official”
just hasn’t seemed that important to me.
I have been severely mistaken in that assumption.
Christ teaches us that not only are we to serve him, but
that we have served him already, whether we realize it or not. He tells us that whenever we feed the hungry,
help the poor, offer shelter to those in need, that we have indeed done the same
to him. By the same token, when we deny
the hungry, the poor, and those in need, we have denied Christ. When we deny justice, deny love, and give
into our fear, then we deny Christ.
In other words, Christ is in us and we are in him. It’s all about love.
A new commandment I give to you, that
you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one
another. By this all will know that you
are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
John
13: 34-35
I, therefore, can no longer be silent. For, although I do not presently have need
for a union to be blessed or a marriage to be made legal, whenever my gay and
lesbian brothers and sisters are denied justice, I am denied justice. Further, Christ is denied justice.
I do not deny anyone’s right to his or her opinions or
feelings. I do however take very strong
issue with those fundamentalists or biblical literalists who relish in using
the Bible to deny justice to those they cannot seem to, or choose not to love,
but fail to use that same literalism as it applies in their own lives.
We are told that governments do not have the right to
“redefine” marriage, and that marriage between persons of the same sex will
destroy the sanctity of marriage, yet the definition of marriage has changed or
been redefined dramatically since the Bible was written. How many Christian men do you know that have
more than one wife, or have married their brother’s widow? Is marriage only valid if the wife is a
virgin at the time of marriage? Does a
Christian man have the right to take concubines, in addition to his wife or
wives? The Bible speaks a great deal
about the man’s rights as far as a marriage is concerned, however, women’s
rights on this issue (and pretty much any other) are virtually nonexistent. The
Bible can also be used to forbid, or make illegal, divorce. And yet, we live in a country with a divorce
rate of 50 percent.
Our very definition of God changed from the opening pages of
Genesis to the closing pages of Revelation.
God was an angry, wrathful and vengeful God, who became loving, kind and
forgiving.
While I find that the whole of the Bible is an extremely
important part of my life as a Christian, if I am to be a true Christian, a
disciple or follower of Christ, I must focus my attention most on what Christ
taught. Christ taught love, peace and
justice. Christ made a place for
EVERYONE at his table, a place that is not merely tolerated, but embraced. He taught us to love one another as we do
ourselves, even as he has loved us. I
fully believe that it comes down to one of two things, love or fear. I’m working very hard on moving toward love.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have
not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and
understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to
remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and deliver my
body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous
or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, hopes all things,
endures all things. Love never ends; as
for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for
knowledge, it will pass away. For our
knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect
comes, the imperfect will pass away.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I
reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then
face to face. Now I know in part; then I
shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but
the greatest of these is love.
I
Corinthians 13
I suppose that in the end, I must ask myself the following
questions:
Will I seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving my
neighbor as myself?
Will I strive for justice and peace among all people, and
respect the dignity of every human being?
Will I refuse to remain silent when I and my gay and lesbian
brothers and sisters, and therefore Christ, are denied our place at the table?
To me, the only answer can be: I WILL, WITH GOD’S HELP!
