I intend to vote against Amendment O and urge you to take the same action. My objections to this amendment are theological, ecclesiological, and pastoral.
First, theological. Amendment O clearly assumes that,
regardless of the content or quality of the relationship, a union
of two people of the same sex is totally inconsistent with the
principal teaching of scripture, and utterly incapable of bearing
witness to the gospel of God's reconciliation of the world in
Jesus Christ. I disagree.
Scripture, which we hold to be the rule of Christian faith
and life, is to be read not in isolated fragments but from
its living center. That center, as our Reformed confessions
instruct us, is the good news of God's steadfast covenant love
and reconciling work realized for us all in Jesus Christ. We
are called to respond to God's activity by trusting in God's grace
and by living in a manner that corresponds to God's covenant love
and faithfulness.
As understood in the Reformed tradition, the marriage of a man and a woman reflects God's covenantal love, signifies our vocation to life in fellowship, and provides for our participation in the birth and nurture of new life. So understood, marriage has always been honored and cherished by the people of God.
While both scripture and Christian tradition point to the marriage of a man and a woman as the exemplary instance of life in relationship as intended by God, it does not follow that other forms of human relationship may not also be signs of God's covenantal purposes. The decisive marks of a covenantal relationship are not gender or any other physical property but mutual love, abiding fidelity, and the dedication of the relationship to service of God and neighbor. If a same-sex partnership bears these marks, it cannot be summarily dismissed as utterly contrary to the will of God.
In other words, marriage is appropriately understood by the church to be the paradigmatic though not the exclusive expression of life in relationships of love and fidelity. I do not say that a same-sex union is identical with marriage; I say only that it may be a witness to the covenantal love of God. Even if it differs in form from the marriage of a man and a woman, the material content of a same-sex union may be in conformity with God's will that all human relationships, and especially our most intimate relationships, reflect in their own way the abiding and faithful love of God.
God's steadfast covenant love is obscured, dishonored, and betrayed by all acts of infidelity, promiscuity, abuse, and indifference, whether these occur in heterosexual or homosexual relationships. Amendment O precludes even the possibility of a witness to the reconciling love of God in Jesus Christ within a same-sex partnership, however mutually self-giving, abidingly faithful, and deeply dedicated to the service of God and others the partners in this relationship may be. I think this limits the wealth of God's reconciling grace in a broken and sinful world, and for this reason I oppose the amendment.
Second, ecclesiological. As the body of Christ, the church is a community of forgiven sinners, ever in need of God's forgiveness of sins and of God's renewing Spirit who moves us toward ever deeper love of and obedience to Christ. The Reformed tradition emphasizes responsible Christian discipleship and rejects every form of antinomianism. At the same time, however, it also acknowledges that Christian life is a continuous struggle, and refuses to define Christian life or the life of the church in perfectionist terms. I see a tendency in Amendment O toward a perfectionist conception of what it means to be Christian and what it means to be church.
Christian gays and lesbians are members of the church. While they are certainly no less sinners than the rest of us, they are our companions in Christ. Like other Christians they have heard and said Yes to the gospel, they have been baptized, and they come with the rest of us to the Lord's Table. Known or unknown to us, they pray beside us and with us. As sisters and brothers in Christ, they look to us for help in their journey of faith and in their struggle to be responsible disciples of Christ. Even if you should consider all homosexual relationships as intrinsically disordered, would you not want to distinguish between promiscuous and faithful same-sex relationships and pray with and for those who are committed to live in fidelity?
I reject moral relativism, but I also reject moral absolutism. Neither, I think, is able to help church officers deal responsibly and sensitively with the question of same-sex union ceremonies when the partners involved are members of the church and wholeheartedly affirm with the church that sexual activity properly belongs in a loving, faithful, permanent, exclusive, and monogamous relationship. Will the logic enshrined in Amendment O drive us eventually to a very selective fencing of the Lord's Table against a certain group of church members who are singled out as particularly egregious sinners?
As I read it, Amendment O draws a line in the sand and says in effect: Beyond this line the Spirit cannot work, Christ cannot be present, witness to Christ cannot be found, and thanksgiving and blessing are not to be pronounced. Such an attitude may protect a certain conception of the purity of the church but it obscures the radicality of the gospel. For this reason, too, I oppose the amendment.
Third, pastoral. Many in this room are ordained ministers,
elders, and deacons. One of the vows we made at our ordination
was the promise to serve all the people of God "with energy,
intelligence, imagination, and love." Does Amendment O help
us to fulfill this vow in relationship to homosexual Christians?
Are we attempting to codify into law every pastoral action
in this area and leave nothing to the prayerful discernment of
pastors and sessions?
Amendment O is ostensibly designed to prohibit active participation
by church officers in public same-sex services that are indistinguishable
from marriage ceremonies, but its language of "any ceremony
or event" is sweeping and could have serious if unintended
consequences.
Would it also prohibit the baptism of the child of a gay couple, an act that would invariably involve praying for God to strengthen the couple's relationship and their parenting responsibility? Would it restrict a pastor's giving thanks at a funeral service for the love that a gay couple have shared? Responding to this question, one defender of the amendment says, "A funeral service does not provide approval for a relationship; it celebrates the life of a person and the resurrection of Jesus Christ." As though the "life of a person" can be abstracted from the concrete relationships that helped make that life what it was!
Amendment O is the use of a sledgehammer where delicate brush strokes are needed; it insists on classifying human life and acts of ministry in boxes labeled all-good or all-bad and fails to acknowledge how both human life and Christian ministry take place in a world where there is much ambiguity as well as obvious sin and guilt and where the wheat and the weeds are always intertwined.
Let me be clear. My disagreements with Amendment O are not a plea for official church liturgies for use in same-sex union services. Nor do I suggest that with Amendment O defeated, we may consider ourselves free to bless every homosexual relationship in sight. Least of all am I arguing that the church adopt a substitute amendment that would mandate that all church leaders must attend, pray, and offer blessing at same-sex union events or ceremonies. Now as ever, we will need to trust and respect each other to exercise our ministerial leadership and pastoral care with both wisdom and compassion.
In summary, I hope you have heard my affirmation of the importance and sanctity of the loving and faithful marriage of a man and a woman. I hope you have also heard my conviction that we should not recoil from supportive ministries in the name of Jesus Christ to gays and lesbians in our congregations who now live or seek to live in partnerships marked by mutual love, fidelity, permanence, and service of others. What this requires of particular pastors in particular congregations is best left open rather than attempting to settle it once and for all with preemptive legislation.
If you share my view that there are troubling theological, ecclesiological, and pastoral questions raised by Amendment O, you will vote in the negative as I intend to do.