Previous Post – Gay Christians Follow Up – Wendy Gritter

When people discuss (or debate) what the Bible says about homosexuality, it generally is brought up that Jesus was completely silent about the issue.  For some, this suggests to them that Jesus did not condemn it.  He did not hesitate to condemn other sin, so his silence speaks volumes.  Others argue that His silence demonstrates that He held true to the Old Testament teachings that prohibit same-sex relationships.  In other words, if He disagreed with centuries of teaching on so important an issue, surely He would have said something.  My argument is this: Jesus was not silent about homosexuality.

Before you get excited, I am not going attempt to tell what Jesus did or did not believe about same-sex attraction or gay relationships.  Neither am I going to claim that we’ve missed a reference to these topics in the Gospel records.  If the debate could that easily been put to rest, it would have been long ago.  Our problem is that in looking for some explicit affirmation or condemnation, we miss His more important response.

If Jesus had spent a life time teaching about every actual and potential theological issue, question of sin or interpretation of Scripture, He would have died an old man not have brushed the surface.  This does not mean He had/has nothing to say about these many issues, but rather than He choose to use His few years on earth a different way.  He modeled for us and called us into a way of life that would form us into a people that would be best prepared to, by His Spirit, respond to the challenges of life and mission.  It is a way of life made possible because, through His death and resurrection, we can live Christ together into the world.

Little Flowers Community is by no means a paragon of missional and moral perfection.  However, we have become a community that is welcoming and safe for people to belong- people who often feel alienated and excluded from the church, including people who are gay.  While it is not always easy to navigate, we’ve built honest, generative and uncompromising relationships with people while unabashedly live and preaching the gospel.  People who see this often ask me how we became this way.  Interestingly, it was not by design- at least not directly.

Early in our formation as a community, we became deeply convinced by the Anabaptist tradition we had adopted that we were to embrace an approach to spiritual and missional formation that was centered around the life and teachings of Jesus, seeking to live explicitly His teachings together in our community.  We wanted to do more than worship Jesus as Savior, important as that is, but we also wanted to follow Him as Lord.  And so, we started with the Sermon on the Mount.

We are still on that journey to this day and will continue on it for as long as God sees fit to work in and through our community.  While my book, “The Cost of Community” explores in great detail the beginning and foundations of that journey, God continues to shape us into His people.  Unlike an emphasis on personal piety alone, which is too often the primary (or even exclusive) focus of many evangelical churches, our shared formation is such that we are propelled into His mission as a result of living His life and teachings.  It is in this way that we have become a community that has been able to welcome the unwelcomed.

“Jesus subverted the patterns of religious expectation, where people had to align themselves first in wholeness and holiness before they could even presume to approach God. Instead, God reached out even in the midst of our brokenness to declare and demonstrate himself as our loving Father.” (The Cost of Community, pg. 147)

Yes, we need to continue to discuss and debate these issues.  If this week has taught me anything it is that we all have a long way to go to better understand each other and the God we love and serve.  However, we must recognize the the quickest way into discovering God’s heart for people and how to respond to them with radical grace and unconditional love is to become the people Jesus has called us to be.

“This is a significant paradigm shift, moving from a posture of policing to an almost maternal care for the new life being formed in our community. We bear the greater responsibility at this stage. Our behavior, not the outsider’s, must be held to a high standard. The Sermon on the Mount is critical in forming us into the kind of soil in which people can be fruitfully rooted.” (The Cost of Community, pg. 191)

So Jesus was not silent about homosexuality.  While He did not make an direct statements about the topic, He gave an unquestionably clear call to a way of life for His people- a way of life that would form us into a people who would respond to any and all circumstances and questions with love, grace and an authority established by lives of Christlikeness.