Open House at Levi's: Reflections on Mark 2:13-22
by Dale K. Edmondson

AWAB's quarterly publication, The InSpiriter, often features Bible studies and articles on Biblical passages which are especially pertinent to the current discussion of homosexuality and the church. The following article was published in the Fall 2001 issue.

Jesus has been invited to dinner at Levi's house; and the scribes and the Pharisees, the ever-present watchdogs of morality, are scandalized. Jesus was a rabbi; and he should have known he wasn't to eat with tax collectors, members of a socially repudiated profession. And at the table with them were other social outcasts —"sinners," the Pharisees called them. How could a good Jew be so oblivious of boundaries? Sharing a meal had deeper significance in Jesus' social world than it does in ours. It wasn't a casual act, but one which implied a mutual acceptance: you just don't eat with unacceptable people.

Levi had invited Jesus, but that invitation wasn't the whole of the story. Look at who came with him! A cadre of sinners — marginalized folk, disenfranchised people. Lesson one: when you invite Jesus to your place, you'd better be prepared for the folk who come with him. When you invite Jesus to your place, he turns it into an open house. He breaks down the walls between the right people and "the other people."

Dinner with Jesus is a picture of the reign of God — a model for his church. You find table-mates there who wouldn't have been together, except for Jesus. It's a radically different community. A new community. And the new sometimes breaks the old wide open. To make sure no one missed this point, Jesus described the radical thing that was happening as new wine being poured into wineskin bottles. But be careful, he was saying, that you use new wineskins; new wine will split the old ones.

Have you noticed how time and again God is involved with the new? The Second Isaiah captures this understanding when he portrays God as saying, "I am about to do a new thing . . ." (Isaiah 43:19). And James Russell Lowell when he says, "New occasions teach new duties / time makes ancient good uncouth."1 Observers of the moral history of humanity have seen it in the ending of human sacrifice, the abolition of slavery, the rejection of child labor, the overthrow of apartheid. New wine, new occasions, a new community. When we meet together in Jesus' name, it is an "open house." All are welcome and all are loved.

Some find this a very uncomfortable idea. Community leaders in sixteenth century Italy did. They were outraged by Paolo Veronese's painting of the biblical story. He painted it in modern dress, showing an opulent table of genteel Italian society. They dragged Veronese before the Inquisition to answer for picturing Jesus in the company of "buffoons, drunkards and similar vulgarities."2

The notion of such inclusiveness is uncomfortable. When I began my ministry, people in some congregations were fighting to maintain a wall which would keep out persons of color. Racism tore at our churches. This penchant for purity is still alive today, but I believe its most virulent expression is now being directed against homosexual people. Most denominations in our country are divided over welcoming them and affirming them in the life of the church. Baptists are divided, too, and some local congregations have been "disfellowshipped" (an interesting Baptist term).

I'd like to tell you a bit about the life of one American Baptist congregation, what it has affirmed and why it considers that affirmation an imperative of the gospel. I can speak personally, because I want to tell about the congregation it was my privilege to serve before I retired some months ago — the Judson Memorial Baptist Church of Minneapolis. The church had long prided itself in its prophetic stance in issues of justice. It liked to think of itself as "open to everyone," but it had never wrestled with what it meant specifically to be open to gay people.

Sometimes, of course, it takes a particular situation to put a "face" on an issue. That occasion presented itself one Saturday night when our director of music was attacked on the street and brutally beaten for no other reason than that some knew him to be gay. He called me a little after midnight to tell me what had happened. He said with determination that this was not going to keep him from the organ the next morning if he could help it. With his permission during the prayers of the people, I told the congregation what had happened. We engaged in a prayer of healing — for him, physically; for all of us, spiritually; and for our city where this act of hatred had occurred. Nearly everyone in the congregation signed a letter that morning addressed to the mayor and the police chief expressing outrage at what had occurred and commending the police officers for the caring way they had attended him. The letter called for every effort to apprehend the offenders. Word of our letter reached the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and a popular columnist asked if he could write a story about the incident and about the church's reaction. (In talking with me, the columnist asked, almost with incredulity, "And you say this is a Baptist church?")

The response from the community was extraordinary. To be sure, there were a few hate letters — one accusing the pastor of going against the laws of God and leading his people into sin and another, using carefully coded phrasing, saying that our staff member got what he was asking for. But there were many letters expressing gratitude for a community of faith that saw homophobia as a spiritual issue. Some people who were not gay found Judson for the first time and made it their home because they wanted to belong to people they believed were courageous. And there were gay and lesbian people who found they could worship God there without denying their identity. The church became the richer for it all. Brian Wren had never seen our church, but it seems to me he was describing it without realizing it when he wrote in his hymn: "Joined in community, / treasured and fed, / may we discover / gifts in each other, / willing to lead and be led."3

Now, sometimes actions come first and the rationale follows. Sometimes circumstances demand that people act simply out of the character that has been formed over the years. Only later do they "give an accounting of the hope" that is in them (I Peter 3:15). As time went on, the church began to articulate its rationale for what it knew by faith-instinct to do. Here are some of the reasons this congregation believes it is important to welcome and affirm sexual minorities into its life.

At the most basic level it wants to announce that God loves all people, regardless of race, age, circumstance, or sexual orientation. That is the good news. That is the heart of the gospel. That is what Jesus makes clear. "God so loved the world . . ." All people. Everyone needs to hear this word: "God loves you."

But circumstances and others' judgments, even one's self-judgments, sometimes make it hard to hear this word. Howard Brown writes about Tim in his book, Familiar Faces, Hidden Lives. Tim was 22. He'd been active at college in gay rights causes. He hadn't revealed his sexual orientation to his family, but in a TV special on gay liberation, he spoke publicly for the first time. His parents saw the broadcast. The author writes:

Before Tim's next visit home, for his sister's sweet-sixteen party, his parents had questioned his brother and sister and concluded that they had a "fag in the family" after all. When he appeared at the party, his father remarked: "Son, if you want to be queer as a three-dollar bill, that's your business." Tim walked away without saying a word. Then his mother approached him. She put her arm around his shoulders. Tim took this to mean that she was going to accept him. "Tim," she said, "I've made only one mistake in my life." Tim asked her what she meant. "Twenty-two years ago," she said, "I should have had an abortion." Since then, Tim's mother has taken to telling neighbors and friends that he is dead. And Tim's father speaks to him as if he were a complete stranger when Tim calls to speak to his sister or brother.4

The good news, Tim, is that God loves you. It is hard to feel it, to believe it sometimes, because you must see it lived out and experience it in being accepted. God loves all of us, Tim, regardless of race, age, circumstance, or sexual orientation. In becoming Welcoming & Affirming, the church announces that wonderful fact.

In making its declaration, the congregation wanted gay and lesbian people to know there is a place for them in the Christian church. There is a place for them in a church which tries to practice what Jesus taught and lived and which honors the scripture in its central affirmations, not in literalistic interpretations of statements wrenched from historical context. I know it is hard for homosexual people who have been excluded from the church to understand that the actions of some do not reflect the convictions of all.

A minister I know well can tell you about an unanticipated surprise he had one day. A woman in his congregation told him about a Thanksgiving dinner she had attended at the home of some friends. Several gay men were at the table. Following the meal, the host picked up a copy of a sermon that the woman had given him some months before and invited the guests to take turns reading paragraphs from it. The sermon was by her minister, and its message was that there's room for all in Christ's church. She reported that the men sat there in disbelief that a church wished to say this, and some of the men cried. That minister will tell you that if he never has another pastoral experience, that one's enough to make it worth-while.

A church that's welcoming and affirming wants everyone to know that there's a place for them here, including those who have been alienated from the church for years.

A third reason the church acted as it did is that it wanted to add its weight to the cause of justice for homosexual minorities. Isn't that a political issue? Yes, it is. Just as political as Amos the prophet saying to the powers of Israel, "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5:24). Just as political as Archbishop Romero of El Salvador preaching these words shortly before his martyrdom:

A church that doesn't provoke any crises. A gospel that doesn't unsettle. A word of God that doesn't get under anyone's skin. A word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of a society in which it is being proclaimed--what gospel is this? . . . [Preachers who preach that way] do not light up the world they live in.5

Where discrimination exists in employment or housing because of sexual orientation, or restrictions prevent committed same-sex couples from having the same financial benefits that committed different-sex couples have, then there is injustice. The biblical story of God is that God sides with the oppressed. Faith in the God of justice calls us to throw our weight on the side of justice.

A final reason the church declared itself Welcoming & Affirming was to stand with its gay brothers and lesbian sisters. There's pain in isolation. We need, all of us, to have people who will stand with us. One of the New Testament words for the Holy Spirit is the word "paraclete," which can mean, "one who comes alongside." John Donne reminded us that none of us is created as an island. We have a need for someone who will come alongside us and be with us.

During the German occupation of Denmark, a Nazi order was given for all Jews to wear yellow stars as identification. In this way they would become easy targets for control (and abuse). But on hearing the order, the king of Denmark placed a yellow star on his own clothes; and many Danes followed his lead. How could one tell, then, who were the people to be persecuted? In putting on the yellow star, the king became one with the Jews and made himself vulnerable to their plight. Suppose we were to stand with our gay brothers and lesbian sisters in such a way that the lines would be obscured between heterosexual people and homosexual people — we would all become equally vulnerable . . . and equally blessed.

At the end of the day, the most important thing the church might be able to do would be simply to stand with our sisters and brothers, regardless of race, age, circumstance, or sexual orientation — to stand, knowing that they and we — all of us — are people whom God loves. People who are invited to God's open house to dine with Jesus and all his wonderful table-mates.		 Back
 
  1. James Russell Lowell, The Present Crisis (1845).
  2. Susan A. Blain, ed., Imaging the Word, vol. 3 (Cleveland: United Church Press, 1996), p. 145.
  3. Brian Wren, "We Are Your People," 1973 (rev. 1994).
  4. Howard Brown, Familiar Faces, Hidden Lives: The Story of Homosexual Men in America Today (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), p. 81.
  5. Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love, trans. James Brockman (New York: Harper Collins, 1988), p. 213.
  
 
The Rev. Dr. Dale K. Edmondson is the recently retired pastor of the Judson Memorial Baptist Church (W&A) of Minneapolis and the winner of the 1999 Ralph Garfield Schell Award presented annually by the Ministers Council of the ABC. Currently a resident of California, he is active in the new Pacific Coast Association.