I’ve recently been invited to a couple of gay weddings. So — what with being Christian and all — I asked myself the famous, “What would Jesus do?” (Which I don’t too often ask myself, actually, since Jesus could, for instance, raise people from the dead and turn water into wine, whereas I can barely drag myself out of bed in the morning and/or turn water into coffee. Safe to say many of His options are none of mine.)
Wondering what Jesus would do if he were invited to a gay wedding naturally enough led me to the New Testament. And therein I found these quotes:
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices — mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” (Matthew 23:23-24); and
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” (Matthew 23:13); and,
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.” (Matthew 23:15)
And last but hardly least:
“Love your neighbor as yourself,” [said Jesus]. “There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:31)
When I next went looking for anywhere in the Bible where Jesus says anything at all about homosexuality, I learned that Jesus spent about as much time talking about gays and/or lesbians as I do talking about button collecting and/or sea horses, which is to say none whatsoever, ever. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Jesus did say many crucially informative things about homosexuality, but that when he did, no one around him just then happened to have handy an ostrich feather, or a sappy stick, or whatever it was they used for writing utensils back then. Which would make sense, actually. If you’ve spent any time at all reading the New Testament, you know that Jesus’ disciples weren’t exactly Johnnies-on-the-spot. They were just normal, everyday guys.
Which I think is kind of the whole point, actually.
Jesus sure did love him some everyday people.
Throughout the New Testament, in fact, the only kind of people with whom Jesus consistently takes frightful exception are the very “teachers of the law and Pharisees” that we find him dressing down in the passages above. One thing that often gets lost in our considerations of Jesus is the degree to which he is exactly the wrong person to anger. You don’t have to spend a lot of time in the New Testament before you understand that the only kind of people who seem to ever truly piss Jesus off are those who put religious dogma above what he most clearly stood for, which was God’s love.
Around Jesus you can whine, lie, shift your loyalties, be late, be greedy, be too ambitious, be stupid, be a coward, be a hypochondriac, constantly complain, fall asleep at every wrong moment — you can do nothing right, and it won’t in the slightest way seem to offend him.
But you put dogma ahead of love? You transmogrify God’s law into a justification for denying God’s grace?
Then yikes, man. Then you’ve got yourself a problem no one in this world wants.
I’m not sure how exactly we came to so often consider Jesus the soft and dreamy, namby-pamby type. (Not that there’s anything wrong with being namby-pamby! I have an uncle who’s namby-pamby!) But it’s hard to believe it came from the accounts of Jesus we have in the Gospels. That’s just not the guy on those pages.
Jesus is scary when he’s riled. And the only people who rile him are those who, in His name, set themselves up as sanctimonious judges of others.
I think I had better go to the weddings of my gay friends. I’m almost scared not to. In some of his parables it’s pretty tough to figure out what exactly Jesus means by what he says. But he didn’t even almost waffle about his “Love your neighbor as yourself.” He very explicitly declared that (in conjunction with loving God with everything you’ve got) to be the “first and greatest commandment.”
If there’s any wiggle room in “first and greatest,” I sure can’t see it.
So I’ll attend my gay friends’ weddings, in the exact same spirit I’d expect them to attend a similar function of mine. And if it happens that, in the course of either of their weddings or receptions, I find myself wondering if I’m doing the right thing, I’ll be sure to remember the first miracle of Jesus recorded in the Bible.
It’s the one where he turned water into wine.
At a wedding.
Additional Reading in Christian Issues...
- From hell to Crazy Town
- They’re here; they’re queer; they’ve plenty to fear: LGBT students form secret club at conservative Christian university [now including updates]
- When evil is serious, it reaches for a Bible and cross
- Guest post: “A Good Week to Hate Christians”
- From gay-hating fundie to righteously angry lesbian. Now what?
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
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A gay couple at our church will be getting married this fall and (assuming I’m invited), I will be there if at all possible and I am pretty sure our pastor will be officiating.
On a positive note, the only “difficulty” for our congregation with this is that although MD has just passed legislation to legalize gay marriage, the new law doesn’t take effect until after the wedding…. which means they may have to have the ceremony in DC rather than in the comfort of our church.
Jesus loved everyone. Gay straight, strange, or normal everyday people. Being a Christian, I know that that’s what a good church will teach you, and that’s also what the bible says, hence, “love your neighbor as you love yourself”. The bible does talk about how being gay is outside of the will of god, yet sin is sin. God doesn’t value one sin over the other. Me stealing some candy, or me killing someone god looks at as sin. And he is just to all to forgive, but let me get back on the main subject. If I was to reject everyone , or “not go to the weddings” of any person who commits a sin then not only would I be alone but NO ONE would get saved. No one would get to meet the father. And that would defeat the whole purpose of getting saved.
God doesn’t take us to heaven as soon as we accept him so we can spread the gospel and the good news that Jesus is our savior and god is our lord.
In summation, for me to be in the will of god I have to keep myself right As a Christian so I’m going to do what Jesus did. Be a mobile church. I’m going to fellowship with people who aren’t in the will of God so they can have the opportunity to meet him. So invite me to your wedding if your gay, I’ll go and support you as my friend. I’ll shake your hand, and I’ll love you like a brother or sister.
I say go and enjoy what God gave us all the power to love whom ever he puts in our path. God loves us all and he doesn’t make mistakes. Love one another and live you life to the fullest.
I think I would ask them to think about what they are doing before getting married, because although Jesus doesn’t really talk about it, the Bible does condemn homosexuality. So if they still continue to get married I wouldn’t go because I can’t support something that is against the Lord.
The fact that you even had to struggle with this decision and consult your religious doctrines to check to see if it would be acceptable means YOU ARE NOT A GOOD FRIEND. You should not have been invited to any of these weddings. And god help me if any anti-gay bigots try to attend MY wedding.
OR maybe I know how to make a point.
Clearly Eshto, you have not read much of John’s work.
Seems that jumping to conclusions is not limited to those fundamentalists on the right. LOL
Thank you, thank you. As a mother of a gay son, I will share your article, hoping that others will share it too. Who knows…if one mind is opened, we may save the world entire!
It is difficult to respond to this if you are someone who doesn’t agree, especially without sounding like a fundamentalist (which I certainly am not fond of). But I will try. The premise of this article is that if you tell someone that what they are doing is wrong then you are a Pharisee/hypocrite and do not love your neighbor. That you can’t love someone unless you agree with all their behaviors. This is a fallacy.
I was once reminded not to ever read or quote just a Bible verse for a good exegesis, especially to support a topical subject. Yes, I agree, Jesus did not say don’t have sexual relations with the same sex but he also did not say don’t sleep with your mother or father, or with children under 16, or sleep around or get married 5 times. The closest scripture to this is the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus did love the woman at the well, he spoke to her-Jews didn’t speak to Samaritans let alone Samaritan women, and he went on to tell her of the wonderful grace and eternal life available to her. He loved her. He did not end the conversation by saying it is ok with having had 5 husbands and living with a different man now-He loved her by saying, now go and sin no more.
As Christians we should love our neighbors as ourselves, they are made in the image of God and we should treat them so. This IS the second greatest commandment. We are all in need of God’s grace, maybe even more than our neighbor, whether they are gay or a drug addict or a hater of Christians. That doesn’t mean we are obligated to throw away the convictions of scriptures and sin in order to love them. Sometimes love means being honest about sin, however hard that may be.
As far as going to the wedding…if you quietly don’t go because you don’t agree with it, would they still love you as their neighbor and friend or hate you because you are, like them, living out their convictions?
This was a very well-thought out reply and kindly said. I do love gays but I agree with all that you’ve said.
The problem with this line of thinking is that it sets you up as a judge. You are ruling that same sex couples in a loving relationship is sinful. Yes that puts you right there with Pharisees. There are NO scriptures that condemn loving commited relationships, same sex rape(Lev.) and uncontrolled lust/ sexual religeous rites(Romans) and of course the whole S&G story(again rape) there are really bad translations of ancient text that you can twist to support judging, and if you do according to Jesus you “will not enter the Kingdom of God”, period. So pray for forgivness and repent, these thoughts do violate a commandment of Our Savior, unlike loving same sex marriages, and not that I am for pedastry, but there is an example of that in the NT (Matt.
as well, and not even a mention of it by Jesus, just …your faith has made him well. A roman, his armor bearer(lover) etc…
That’s actually not the premise at all, as much as you want it to be. The premise is that you and others like you believe that you’ve conclusively cornered the market on what God has to say about gay people as a result of your interpretation of Scripture. And you doing so has taken on this destructive momentum in our country that has both taken away some very important rights they as citizens deserve, has inspired some very dangerous legislation in Uganda and other parts of the world, has caused gay kids to go into suicidal despair and lastly, alienated gay men and women from Jesus.
There’s just no one responsible for the messages all of these people have received outside of those of you sending them the messages your theology has given you. That’s the premise. That’s the discussion. That’s the issue.
Re RJ’s post:
Well-written!
I love my gay friends, but am not sure about their weddings. (But I don’t really get out much anyway, so it’s a non-issue.)
Sometimes I feel so attacked just for having an opinion or an observation. I am learning. I am not mean-spirited.
But, I still wonder about parts of the Bible like Romans 1:21-27 & 28. Those verses are kinda scary! They make me really question things.
I am not one to just go along with the crowd. And, I sure am not one to agree with (the) church people, either.
I would like my ideas to be respected, whether I agree with the popular /cool choice…
or not.
This is a serious question – if people actually can prove that your ideas about homosexuality have caused harm to them, their friends and their family – is it fair that you ask those ideas to be respected?
I don’t respect bigotry, and nobody should have to.
Actually no RJ, Jesus DID NOT tell the woman at the well to “go and sin no more”. (Read John 4 again) In fact He never declared her behavior to be sinful in any way. It may have been, it may not have been, but Jesus was not focused on if it was sinful in the least. The often mis-applied and abused quote you referred to comes from John chapter 8 regarding the woman taken in adultery. And even in that passage where there was a person actually harmed by the action, the focus was never on calling out her sin. (BTW – This passage was added to the text later and is very questionable as to it’s authenticity)
Are we called to “throw away the convictions of scriptures and sin in order to love them”? No of course not. But in comparing homosexuality to being a “drug addict” or a “hater of Christians” you are not standing on the convictions of scripture. You are corrupting the scripture itself to promote a false doctrine. This you are obligated to stop doing.
FWIW, I agree with your statement that “love means being honest about sin, however hard that may be”. But it is time for you to bring that honesty to your analysis of homosexuality. For this is an area where the church is sorely lacking in honesty.
There are many places in the Bible that talks about Homosexuality. For just a couple try Romans 1:24-32 and 1st Tim..
The inspired word of God has never asked us to NOT love the homosexual person. In fact he has said in the New Testament to love everyone but not their sin.
The Bible doesn’t single out just this sin but many sins.
People (even Christians, sorry to say) ask whether gay is ok or not. In First Timoty it talks about groups of people who are considered lawbreakers and rebels, ungodly, unholy and irreligious-People who kill their fathers or mothers, murderers, the sexually immoral, those practicing homosexuality, slave traders, liars and perjurers etc. So gay people are listed right along with murderers as well as liars etc. We all struggle with one of these sins and no sin struggle is worse than another. All God ask is that we keep struggling, especially since Jesus died to set us FREE from our sin struggles, whatever that sin may be,
Some people say they were born this way, if that was true and the Bible is true than why would God make me this way and then doom me to a life of sinning.
If God made you a certain way then when I am proud or tell a lie then I can use the excuse that I was born this way and I am going to stay this way.
A person who kills isn’t suppose to say “I am a killer-God made me this way so therefore its okay if I kill.
God loves each of us whatever our struggles are. He knows life is hard for us so He promises to be with us and to keep fighting against whatever sin has a hold on us.
I can tell you from experience that I had a sin that was so easy to commit and I fought very hard but then I realized one day that I had never taken that to God in my prayer time. I prayed for forgiveness and God took away the sinful struggle I had. So I know with Gods help one can overcome your struggles.;
To close I find many places that God talks about husbands and wives. Just one for you to look up is 1st Cor. 7:2 I pray that Christians will finally accept Gods word in this area.
Mary you’re just completely wrong. And I hope you’ll consider reading the hundreds of gay men and women’s stories on this blog about the damage you’ve done as a result of your theology to their lives and the lives of their families. I’m not saying that to be unkind to you, but this is all very easily offered by those of you who believe this kind of thing yet many of you seem completely unwilling to actually take a deep look at how your beliefs are actually impacting millions of people on an emotional and spiritual level.
(the word ‘homosexual’ wasn’t even around during the time the Bible was written).
No that word was not around but “men playing with men sexualy” and “women playing sexually around with women” was.
We are to love but not to love their sins of lesbians and gays. Prayer is all of our only answer to the sins that easily destroy us.
Typical filthy lie from a conservative Christian.
You pick and choose and twist verses from the Bible to fit your own hateful objectives.
In the miracle where the centurion asked for Jesus to heal his “servant” (Luke 7: 1-10) there are 2 aspects to note. First of all, the Roman centurion was already an outsider by the simple fact that he came to Jesus to ask for this miracle. The other aspect is that the word translated as “servant” is, in reality, the Greek word for “male lover”. Space constraints prohibit deep exegesis on this, but all Greek language experts affirm that this particular word is only used in this place. So, Jesus clearly had the opportunity to condemn the man for being homosexual. But what did he do? He responded in love!
Lovely!! Thanks so much!!
FANTASATIC!!!!! So nicely written. Thank you.
Good thing too… I can’t seem to speak well today at all!
Love it John… I spend a lot of time being angered at those who would put words in my mouth… this time, however, you make speak freely for me!
This is adorable and gives me ammo for when any crazy christians start spouting off the hate.
Thanks!
I not only go gay weddings, I perform them and sign the marriage licenses.
Rev. Jane A. Willan
UCC pastor
Burlington, IA
Rev. Jane,
You officiated our wedding and made it one of the best experiences of our life. Thank you again for your kindness and shedding light on the misinterpretations of the bible some use to discriminate against same gender couples who love each other and are ousted by their own churches.
Well done to this article!
Although I accept the “Bible” as the inspired Word of God…I also realize that it is imperfect in that we must use human words, language to convey the mind of Creator who will can never fully comprehend nor truly know what He intends. The very fact that the original texts were written in ancient Aramaic and Hebrew (with some of the Christian Testaments in Greek) which were then translated into Latin by St. Jerome in the Second century, much, as the adage goes is “lost in translation). Of course, the Canon (content) of the present day Bible was not concluded until the Council of Trent some 1300 years after the death of Christ and the Apostles. This too compromised the Bible in that the Apocryphal books were excluded (Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary Magdala, etc.). Along comes the Reformation and translation into Elizabethan English takes place. So,literally interpreting the Bible, understanding the Bible is a very rocky road and leads to a very defective interpretation. Taken in the context of the time, Scripture can help us to TRY to understand God the Father’s revelation of Himself to us. The final and complete revelation of Him is, of course, through the incarnation of the Son, Jesus Christ, who comes not to “change or abolish” but breathe new life into the “Law”. When studying for the diaconate, we were instructed to first read and study the Gospel of John and then the remainder of Scripture. For in John, the very essence of Jesus and His Father is revealed – a mutually loving relationship which we should emulate in our lives. There is no condemnation, no judgement, no fire and brimstone. Sin is to be avoided but when it does occur, pick yourself up after acknowledging your failing, be repentant and do better. As for all the fundamentalist talk of sexual sin – specifically homosexuality – not a single word is attributed to Christ. As for Paul, there was no concept in the ancient world for same sex love relationships. In fact, in the early Christian Church, same sex COMMITMENT rites were conducted by bishops for individuals in love, wishing to bond together for life. Many times, as a gay man, physician with spiritual and theological training I am asked by patients what will happen when they stand before God as “abominations” – condemned to hell. My answer is simple: called upon or not, God is present and where there is Love, God is. Whatever failings or sins may have occurred in our lives, are wiped away by the Blood of Christ if, in our lives, we have loved others and done our best to do so in action. We are not judged by God…we stand before Him…judged by ourselves. The fruits of our life…caring for others, easing their burdens, loving them…are what matters to Him.
I love this. Thank you for writing it.
Agree that we need to love the people around us, and many of the other arguments you make. But, you are perpetuating a misunderstanding about how the Hebrew Bible and New Testament have been “lost in translation” by being a bit vague about the chain of languages involved. Yes, things were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. But the fact that Jerome put the text into Latin doesn’t mean that we only have the Bible through the lens of Latin and Elizabethan English. We have pretty decent manuscripts of the early Hebrew and Greek–in some cases, better than the sources Jerome and the translators of the King James Bible had.
I’m totally fine with having a discussion about how to translate key passages, or to debate what they mean–but it is simply not the case that you get to dismiss concepts in the Bible by claiming that they are shrouded in a mist of mistranslation through 3-4-5 languages.
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