Luke Timothy Johnson
standing against the scritpure on homosexuality does not mean throughing out the scripture alltogether
read the narratives and discover new meanings
see the spirit led movement to include the gentiles ... analagus
healing of the man bron blind -- jesus condeimns those who stand on their own understanding of what God can do and close their eyes to what God can do.
look up earlier speech
gal 3 28 .. all those who are one in christ ... not male or female ... all the status markers that in thw orld devide humans should in the church be relativeized
he adds -- neither Gay nor straight
how does sexual activity particpate in the holiness of the church if we no longer make odious distinctions between gay or straight
holiness equally excludes hetro and homo sexual promiscuity etc.
what might sexual holiness mean positively?
how can an active sexual life exhibit signs of holiness?
helps us realize how deficient our positive understanding of sexuality is .. we usually think of avoiding the negative.
1) loyalty, 2) fruitfulness 3) chastity
the fact that the idea of loyality is not always realized does not mean we opt for promiscuity ... the same should be true of gay marriage.
this is exactly why Gay lesbian couples look for approve .. to strengthen their unity
we expect heterosexual couples to be life giving but many of them cannot have children naturally; there are a variety of ways of being fruitful
applies too to homosexual love. homosexual couples can be fruitful to adoption, foster care, and the building of strong households and community
chasitity is the most difficult .. it's a matter of sexual virtue : self control, reverence, modesty, delicacy, concern for the other, privacy
a way of being sexual that recognizes it's place in creation as an activiity that does best when not engagued in crudely .... it shoujld be asked of homosexual love although we don't know what it really means
the call of God transcends all our starting points and summons us to a shared obedience to the living God I cor 7:19: neither circumcision nor un- matters but only keeping the commandments of God.
when Paul states that people should remain in the condition they were when called by the lord, he does not mean that they do not need to change; he means that no human condition (including orientation) neither prevents us from respnoding to God's call nor exempts us from doing so
doing the truth in love that paul sees as the sign of christian maturity demands of us all a growth past the truth of eros by which we are tempted to define ourselves. God's rule calls us to relational love (agape). desire to will the good of others even if they do not will the good of us.
gays and lesbians may regard that language as repression ... they insist on the truth of eros.
four more qualifications
1) the call is not to abandon or deny the truth of eros but rather standing on that truth, growing to a larger vision of truth as agape. Paul does not ask the community to stop being male and female, etc. Diversity is part of the gift.
2) Moving forward is not going backward. To grow to a larger truth is not to deny the starting point in Christ.
3) Such growth into maturity is required of us all; not more of gay and lesbian christians. It is more incombant on those ordinally considered the strong to give to the others.
Gal 4 and 5. God's plan for humanity lies in the reconciliation of all humans. The church is where this is to happen.
The church is to be the sacrement of the worlds possibility ... the church's gift is the gift of reconcilation .. the mandate is to give such reconciliation , else it has no reason to exist.
Pauls prayer for the ephesians is that they will actually realize the gift that they have been given.
Paul wants that they live the life worthy of the calling you have received with perfect humity, patience. To realize reconciliation of doing that embidies this set of remarkably gentile dispositions. Reconciliation's goal is not that someone be proved right but that all be established in the right and in peace.
all the dispoisitions of early christinas are also required of those that hold authority.
Paul drops here entirely the language that considers jew and gentile -- they are not important here to development in the church.. we can extend that to gays and lesbians.
the church's sacrement of reconciliation oto the world is relationshiops that reveal the pattern of God's reconciling love
it's not self-realziation that we seek but a realization in Christ
ephesians 4:21 -- the truth that is in Jesus ..
so truth in love must be measured up to the truth in Jesus
paul speaks of this transformation of the mind as a growth to maturity or adulthood .. contrasts it with being children.
1 Cor 13: when I was a child, I used to talk like a child, think like a child, reason like a child. When I became an adult, I put aside childish things.
in MIND be adult.
there is a sense in which children are narcicistic .. they see themselves as the center of the universe. Growth toward adulthood is growth toward awareness of and concern for others. The adult must ask for the wellbeing of others even when it does not bring pleasure.
so the dispositions and practices of Paul are manefestations of agape
be imitators of God as his dear children. Follow the way of love as Christ loved you.
Paul tends to mention the negative characteristics from which we are to turn rather than the positive.
sexuality ... Paul fills out the bad list quite quickly . places nothign in the positive column .. christian discourse from the beginning has been much stronger on the vices.
neither straight nor gay christians can have any problem with what he lists.
Paul gives his greatest attention to matters of speech. Speech can be a fire lit from hell consuming the whole of creation.
lying is knowing the truth and choosing not to speak it.
never let evil talk pass your lips.
Be angry and do not sin. clean anger does not hurt the community, but distorted anger. Healthy anger is a precondition to truthful reconciliation. Those that have been hurt, even by the church should be allowed to speak out of that anger if there is to be true reconciliation.
community should give thanks to God -- address one another singing pslams and hymns and spiritual songs.
there is a time when obendience to God must include an explicit "no" to scripture.
but even such a "no" to the normative force of scripture relies on the overwhelming yes to scripture in our lives, or we wouldn't know what obedient faith was or see God in everything without scripture.
defer to others out of reverence to god.
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eros is agape drawn to intensity
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reject the idea of vatican I that the vatican IS the church
think globally and act locally
the child who sees how stupid the parents are doesn't become an adult .. the child who sees a way to adulthood regardless of what the parents think becomes an adult.
next stage: for as many of us as possible to speak clearly ... identify the lie and speak what we regard as truth.
there is no story of Jesus and the slave girl. If scripture spoke so in far of slaves being obedient to their masters, how did we decide that we simply don't accept them. Answer: the abolitionists movement became not a movement but a shared conciousness slaves are people not properties.
once that threashold is reached, christians are able to respond to the law of love.
stand against the lie!
kenneth dowling kenneth.t.dowling@gmail.com
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
can pass the law, but if you haven't changed people internally, you haven't gotten where you need to be
change the catholic church, you can change the world!
suppose God is gay
--> fight for justice
tough to do something that's right ... continue even when it's tough on your family
first great awakening taught us that got lay in our souls
2nd great awakening ... God not only in you but in women and in slaves
abolitionists boldly rejects the passages as being from the culture of the time ...
know your religous grounding and use it rather tahn reject it.
.... slaves found teh bible the source of insipiration rather than rejecting it.
... make the story of moses their own
unfortionately, the femenists and gay rights movements in teh 70's didn't do this -- in large part, they rejected religion in their movements.
that was a mistake, we were trying to correct the mistake. Women have entered theology schools and shown that Jesus was a great feminist
gay is now accepted by progressive jews and catholics
so we're learning to read the bible and say "you've got it wrong"
catholic dissent
there is a role for dissent -- they apologized (eventually) for gallileo
cardinal newman ... talked about the importance of the laity and lost his job as editor of a magazine
arianism - for 50 years after the council, the bishops, the pope, the priests began to go back on the council and believe in arianism!
the age of the church is peculiar ..... newman
contraception -- the holy spirit gavve us an excuse not to trust the bishops and we need to take responsibility for morality and theology
reclaiming the best of the catholic hcu8rch by saying whoat we learn from god is that we are supposed to love god and love our neighbor, not hate, not bully , not meanness, but love.