the mouse in the living room

jesus, so far as we know, said nothing about homosexuality. it is said that he loved two men (the rich young ruler and john--i know, agape not eros, a distinction to which i will return). but he did say a lot about economic injustice (and when he needed a coin for the empire, he never seemed to have one).

if i may paraphrase g.k. chesterton, it would be possible to develop a huge cloud of blog tags about whether jesus thought homosexuality is a sin (chesterton said whether he believed in fairies) but about whether jesus said that the rich are in deep shit (i don't remember what more polite victorian/edwardian phrase g.k.c. used) there is no room for debate.

earlier this week, i sat in on what the local congregation with which i most often worship in bellingham calls its "alms ministry." for one hour a week, people are allowed to come into the church building and beg. the beggars are treated well, and the people who distribute the alms are much like peter and john in the temple in that they offer the beggars jesus christ. but they are not like peter and john when they tell the beggars that there is only $150 a week to give out.

this is a lie. the church has much more money than this. the lease payments on some of the mercedes i see in the parking lot on sunday mornings are more than $600 a month. the truth is that we as the church--and not just in this congregation--love our toys more than we love our brothers and sisters in need. we choose to give only $150 a week in "alms." i understand the lure of toys: i have been tempted the past few weeks by a new bicycle. the ones i've been looking at cost between $600 and $1000. fortunately i personally have about $3.50, and no credit card, so i can't go out and indulge my temptation.

that one hour tuesday morning has been almost the only time since returning to bellingham that i have been engaged in any discussion or activity about an issue jesus seemed to think is important. (i mean, in the daily office last night we read again about his feeding of the multitudes, but we don't discuss this "in church".) instead, i hear about "the question:" homosexuality.

last week i went to a movie night at some friends' house, and the movie was "inlaws and outlaws." last night i went to a birthday party, and one of the other men there was a pastor of a local congregation of the church of god of andersonville, indiana, and he asked me, "what's the deal with homosexuals in the episcopal church?" (his was not a coy question. his own take is that there is sin in our lives, some of it heterosexual, some of it homosexual, but just as paul writes to the roman, we all are sinful, and so have no room to condemn each other.)

with tens of thousands of children starving to death each day, largely the result of the actions of the empire as much as the death of the holy innocents of bethleham was an impirial action, with the world's "only superpower" using its powers to destroy governments and people throughout the world, with corn prices so high that the poor of south american are doing without tortillas as the rich of north america are burning the corn in their chevrolet denalis, the upcoming lambeth conference will be reported throughout the world as a debate about how sinful it is for the american episcopal church to have selected and consecrated gene robinson as a bishop.

one of the more insightful essays about the wider implications of the debate expected at lambeth was in the july 2008 harpers, which puts it within the context of imperialism and its aftermath. it is of course much easier for us to say "tush, tush" about good old gene robinson, "isn't it a shame he started packing fudge?" than it is to look at our own responsibilities for the greed and suffering in our world.

it is much easier to talk about the mouse in the living room, to shriek and look for a better mouse trap or say how harmless the mouse really is, than to deal with the same issues jesus found important enough to talk about so forcefully that the empire found it necessary to try to silence him.

so, back to jesus and his love for at least two men. i confess i find the term "homosexuality" an oxymoron. sexuality is about reproduction; it is one of the ways diversity is kept within a species. but in our modern culture informed more by the scandalous magazines at the check-out stands of the grocery stores than by careful formation by the church in the real implications of the scandal of the cross, there is not much room for love, only for sex, and sex is no longer about reproduction but about lust and appetite-fulfillment.

as my friend from the church of god and i talked last night, i tried to encourage him to look at what happens between two men, between gene robinson and mark, for instance, as not about sex but about love. why do we define people by something that my friend said "takes about three minutes every two weeks?" is this the only time he loves his wife? is this all that there is between any two people who love each other? and if it is, should we split the church yet again over this small act while ignoring the huge acts of sins we ourselves commit? (i seem to remember jesus saying something about splinters and logs.)

it is fascinating that although all of the evangelists speak of the bridegroom, it is only john, in both his gospel and in his revelation, who speaks of the bride. (and paul speaks of neither.) i suspect such imagery, although very important in the mystical tradition of the church, east and west, and celebrated in the popularity of the song of songs and explored in carmelite spirituality particularly, makes many of us good old boys, whether mega-church pastors in colorado or cardinals in rome, uncomfortable. if we follow the imagery even paul does use about the submission of the bride to the husband, which he says is a mystery and is about the church, it means that we must die daily to our own will, to seek not power but knowledge, and not knowledge we can express on wikipedia but knowledge of the most intimate and personal sort.

knowing the holy one, the father who is revealed in the son, is eternal life. and it is also the way we come to love god, whom if we do not know we cannot love. and loving god prepares us to love our neighbor as ourself. and when we truly do that, fulfilling the first and great commandment, then our living rooms will be freed of pesty intruders small and great.