Phone Call - Respect Makes a Difference

I answered the church phone yesterday. It became an interesting conversation. Turns out, the caller was seeking information to substantiate a rumor she had heard about Drag Queen Story Hour being held at our church. “Is it true?” Well, not exactly. A lot of the details were wrong, and the event is not going to occur at our church. “So, the church decided not to hold it.” Again, not quite true. The church never made the decision to allow the event, but the decision not to hold it was not our own.

The conversation shifted, as she brought up a verse in Leviticus about men and women wearing clothing of the other gender being considered an abomination. Well, the same term is used for eating shellfish, catfish, and people having had contact with bodily fluids then participating in cultic rites. It’s the same range of things deemed under the umbrella of ritual purity laws that Jesus ignored as irrelevant. Such definitions were about keeping fertility cult practices separate from the worship of Yahweh.

Conversation went to women being submissive to men, so I mentioned Ephesians 5:21, where Paul talks about all submitting to one another, followed by the often-quoted verse 22, which contains absolutely no verb in the Greek, “wives to your husbands, as to the Lord.” The passage goes on to describe husbands, children, parents, slaves, and slave owners all needing to live in submission to one another. Then we discussed how elsewhere Paul says that in Christ there is no distinction over gender, nationality, or slavery.

She raised a concern about being careful we are not falling into sin, and I reminded her of Jesus’ summary of all the law and prophets as loving God and loving one another. As sin is by definition going against God’s will, everything that is sinful must be in opposition to loving God and loving one another. I have yet to hear any explanation for how sexual orientation or gender identity is harmful to others, how it is unloving. Besides, if God is essentially loving, God is not looking for a way to trip us up for condemnation, rather, God is actively seeking our reconciliation.

We discussed how the terms homosexual and homosexuality did not make their way into the Bible until the Revised Standard Version in 1946. She said something about her 1611 King James, and I mentioned that she was not reading the 1611 version, but an edited and updated edition that had been changed many times in many passages. That is easy to verify in looking at the copyright statements inside the cover.

I brought up the Genesis 19 passage of Sodom and Gomorrah and how Ezekiel interprets the sin of Sodom as pride for having the goods of the world and refusing to share them with those in need. Rather than offer hospitality to strangers, they wanted to abuse them. That falls under the banner of the term pederasty, which the church understood as applying to the text of Romans 1, 1st Corinthians 16, and others commonly wielded against homosexuality today. Our popular interpretation of that shifted only after the RSV in 1946.

She mentioned being a member of a Southern Baptist Church, so I shared my SBC background and bona fides. I mentioned how my parents were SBC missionaries, how I had grown up in Brazil, how I had attended school at Mississippi College and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and served as a missionary in Mexico and Brazil. No, we did not attend SBC churches in Brazil, as there are none. We were part of the Brazilian Baptist Convention churches. Yes, I also attended SBC churches in FL, TN, MS, KY, SC, NC, and VA. I told her I had only been in the United Methodist fold for about 6 years.

She asked if I knew of other churches where Drag Queen Story Hour had been held, and she was surprised to discover that I did. Then I explained why I had ever considered offering space at the church to hold the event. We talked about the 40% suicide rate among LGBTQ+ teens, specifically over hearing that they are unworthy and have no place in society. We talked about how as I have become visible and interacting with the LGBTQ+ community many have come to me with tears in their eyes thanking me. I have to ask what they are thanking me for. They thank me for being among them with a message that they are of worth to people of faith and to God.

Holding drag queen story hour at church is not about anything sexual. I had just come from a meeting of the town council in Monroe where the city lawyer clarified at the insistence of a councilmember that the town had no authority to block a drag queen story hour event or limit attendance to adults, specifically because it was not a sexually-explicit or adult event. I reminded her that the council wanted to block it, but they knew they could not, specifically because it was not the kind of event they were portraying it to be.

We talked about how the message that the LGBTQ+ community has received loudly and repeatedly is that they are unwanted, unworthy, and not acceptable to God and to Christians. She agreed wholeheartedly with me that such is not message she wants them to hear. How, then, will they hear any different message if we do not carry them a message of love, acceptance, and inclusion the way Jesus did to the “sinners, publicans, and tax-collectors” of his day? He was repeatedly called down for ministry and finding fellowship with those deemed unworthy and unwanted by the religious community around him. Are we not siding with the attitudes of the religious community which opposed Jesus?

We didn’t solve all the issues. We did not end the conversation with both of us on the same page at every point. We did have civil conversation. We did listen to one another’s concerns. We both felt heard. Neither of us felt attacked or condemned. I hope I left her some points to ponder. She definitely came away from the conversation with a different mindset than that which prompted her call.

She did not begin the call from a place of condemnation of people, of hate, or of anger. She began the call from a place of concern. I think that perhaps makes all the difference. Even if our concerns for others are misplaced, the fact that we share concern for others makes a big difference in how we can talk about issues, how we can respect those with whom we disagree, and how we can move forward into better understanding.

For as much as I feel like I am not doing much of anything significant among the LGBTQ+ community around me, they seem to find it significant to know that as a minister of the gospel I care about them. Why do we have so much trouble getting that message across above all the public angst and political wrangling that seems so prevalent? Do we care enough to make God’s message of love and grace for all people heard above the ruckus? At the end of the day, if I have loved my fellow human beings as myself, while remaining in love with God, have I not fulfilled all “the Law and the Prophets”? What else is there to do?

— ©Copyright 2022, Christopher B. Harbin 

http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/

My latest books  can be found here on Amazon