I am leaving this week to attend the House of Bishops meeting
in New Orleans . This is a very important meeting. The primates
(38 top archbishops of the various Anglican provinces around
the world) of the Anglican Communion met this year
in Dar Es Salaam Tanzania and
gave
the Episcopal Church until September 30th , two Sundays
from now, to repent of her decisions to bless homosexual
behavior and to permit the consecration of bishops
unrepentantly engaging homosexual sex. This coming House
of Bishops meeting that begins Thursday (20th of September)
and runs through next week, is the last chance for the Episcopal
Church to comply with this request and commit to ending both
practices.
The Episcopal Church has already refused to enact the
first part of the Primates' proposal which would have
provided a way for parishes (like
Good Shepherd) and dioceses that wish to remain
faithful to the scriptures and 2000 years of Christian teaching
to co-exist in a separate structure under our own Primatial
Vicar during this time of dispute in the Communion.
Now we will see whether the Episcopal Church will be willing
to comply with the second part of the proposal and repent of
her unbiblical and destructive actions toward those who are
living in sinful sexual relationships.
This is a very serious issue.
Some have argued that since Jesus welcomed prostitutes,
adulterers, theives and other "sinners" to eat with him,
it is wrong to teach that homosexual behavior is sinful.
God declares homosexual behavior sinful in several places
throughout the scriptures.
In Leviticus 18:22 God says:
"You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is
an abomination."
When Jesus condemns "sexual immorality" in Mark 7:20-23,
the word recorded in that text for sexual immorality, "porneia," was
a rabbinical shorthand for all of the sexual sins listed
in Leviticus 18 including homosexual behavior
"What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For
from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual
immorality , theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness,
deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these
evil things come from within, and they defile a person ."
In Romans 1:24-28, God says through the apostle Paul:
"Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts
to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,
because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped
and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed
forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to
dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations
for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise
gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with
passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with
men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave
them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done."
And in 1st Corinthians 6:9 we are told:
"Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit
the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually
immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice
homosexuality"
As all of these texts make clear, God reveals both in the
Old Testament and the New that homosexual behavior is a
sin.
It is certainly true that Jesus welcomes sinners and offers
forgiveness. Thanks be to God!
Otherwise I would have no hope and neither would you.
But the reason that prostitutes, theives, liars and adulterers
were drawn to Jesus of Nazareth...the reason I am drawn
to him...is not that he ignores sin or pretends that it is
somehow blessed by God. I know my sin. The prostitutes and theives
etc...knew and understood their sin as well. It would have offered
no comfort for Jesus to ignore it.
Rather than pretending that theivery was good or that prostitution
was just another form of honest labor, Jesus confronted sin
clearly and honestly and offered his love. And his offer
, boiled down to its core, was this: “I know what you have done.
I love you. Repent, come to me, and I will forgive you."
And, of course, that is his message to us all.
To recieve his offer of forgiveness, however, we must agree
with Jesus that we are sinners and be willing to repent.
In Jesus we find both a clear-eyed conviction, a perfectly
honest assessment of sin, and an open door to reconciliation
with God. Jesus does not offer to ignore our sin, but to
cure it and reverse its effects.
God's Word teaches, in fact, that sin as a sickness,
a deadly infection, from which all must be rescued. During
Christ's earthly ministry, he loved people too much to
simply name the disease, pronounce the prognosis, and depart.
He offered healing, a way out.
You are not, he said, doomed to die in your sin unless you
desire that end. You do not have to be chained to sin for eternity.
Come to me, repent, and I will forgive you and give you a new
life.
It is interesting to note that the only ones who truly heard
God's call to faith in Jesus Christ in the four Gospels were those
who knew themselves to be sinners in need of repentance and
redemption. The Pharisees were unwilling to hear Jesus' proclamation
because they wanted so desperately to see themselves, and have
others see them, as righteous. They did not want to need
a Physician. Jesus rebuked and corrected, but the Pharisees
and teachers of the law who opposed him would not bend the knee
and seek repentance.
It strikes me that the Episcopal Church, in blessing
homosexual behavior, seems to encourage a rather pharisaic
attitude. Those caught in this particular sin, according
to the Episcopal Church, must be persuaded that they have
no need of a physician. Jesus' loving call to repentance is
replaced with a blessing.
Perhaps now you can see what a disastrously harmful teaching
this turns out to be. It does grievous harm to those who accept
it because it sets them in a place where repentance is impossible.
Some have asked why there is so much attention to this particular
sin as opposed to so many others revealed in the scriptures?
The answer is that this the one sin that the Episcopal Church
as chosen to bless. If had been drunkeness or envy or another
sin, certainly the dispute would have centered there.
The Church is supposed to be a hospital of the Spirit. Christ
uses his Church to heal people and turn them away from the soul
damaging and destructive effects of sin. But in order to
do that people must be made aware of those things God considers
sinful. If the Church refuses to pass on God's Word clearly or,
worse, teaches that what God considers sin is actually
"good" then people will remain in their sin and will
not seek the healing Christ offers. Imagine a hospital
refusing to treat cancer or acknowledge it to be an illness.
I do not know what will happen at the House of Bishops meeting.
The Episcopal Church will almost certainly not comply with the
Primates requests. But I am not sure what will happen subsequent
to that refusal. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates
should, according to the Dar es Salaam plan, meet again and
impose some form of discipline on the Episcopal Church.
The Archbishop of Canterbury may or may not wish to do
this. He personally agrees with the blessing of same sex unions
but has, up until now, decided that in his official capacity
he must uphold biblical doctrine. We must pray that he continues
to do so. Otherwise we will likely face not only the break-up
of the Episcopal Church, but a Communion-wide division as various
provinces determine whether or not they will be faithful to
the Word of God.
I do not know what will happen.
I do know that the Church of the Good Shepherd , so long
as I am pastor, will remain faithful to the revealed Word
of God. We will do so for the glory of God, for our own sake,
and for the sake of those caught up in the sin of homosexual
behavior. We can do nothing else and remain true to our Lord
Jesus Christ. I hope and pray you will join me and the leaders
of the parish as we pray for the Church and seek to follow our
Lord wherever he leads.
In Christ,
Matt
