A Christian Response to Homosexuality

 

We see people these days responding to homosexuality in a broad spectrum of ways from total and affirming acceptance to gay bashing and gay violence.  The former (far left of the spectrum) comes out of an “enlightened” modernistic creed of individualism and a lack of transcendent authority concerning human sexuality.  The latter stems from a fallen human instinct to abhor and reject what is different.  Neither response is Christian.

The Christian response is wisdom, grace, and unconditional love.  Paul writes in Colossians 4:6, "Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity.  Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned, as it were, with salt, so that you may know how you should respond "  In other words, the Christian response to homosexuality is to be God’s kind of love- the same Agape love Jesus showed toward the Samaritan woman at the well while she was still in her aberrant lifestyle, or toward Nicodemus still in his confusion about Kingdom truths, or Matthew while he was still deep in his greed and extortion as a tax collector.

The Church should allow the love of Christ to flow through us such that those caught up in homosexuality may turn to Christ and not away from Christ.  Speak Truth, of course, but allow the Holy Spirit to lead the person into a new life in Christ.  The Holy Spirit will do all the convicting that needs to be done to bring this about.  Our role is to be inviting, supportive, encouraging, and most of all, loving.

"Under God's Umbrella"- from Chapter 7, the Amazing Indian Land Years

We lived in Indian Land Community, Lancaster, SC and our beloved home there for most of the thirty-one years of my career Duke Power Company and Duke Energy, Charlotte, NC.  This was the home in which our sons, Rob and Jimmy, grew into adulthood.

In our early years in Indian Land, my focus was on my career and providing for our family.  It became a rather self-focused and myopic time for me. It was in 1980 that the Lord changed all that. 

We were attending Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Fort Mill, although we later attended Christ Church in Lancaster. One Fall Sunday morning I was in Saint Paul’s churchyard awaiting the start of the adult Sunday school.  It was a beautiful morning with the large oak trees of the churchyard full of color.  Nancy was off doing one of her ministries, and the boys were already in Sunday school. 

God and I had a talk about things that morning.  Our conversation (don’t worry—no audible voices) that morning was about the convenient form of deism that I had adopted which had kept God compartmentalized and uninvolved in most corners of my life.  As a lifelong Christian, I knew that was not what my faith was supposed to look like.  I knew His place was at the center of my life, and He was supposed to be Lord over all of my life.  That was where I had placed myself, and I figured it would get a bit crowded if God also moved in.  

In my arrogance, I made a deal with the Lord about a trial period to see how things went.  If one could make a deal with the devil, then I guess I thought I could make a deal with God. Looking back, I’m astounded at my condescension before God.  Perhaps the towering oak trees protected me from a much-deserved lightning strike at that time.  But it was, nonetheless, a surrender of sorts, and God used it.  From that point on, the Holy Spirit began to set my feet on a proper Christian path.  I would have never guessed what that was going to be like.

This conversation with God was not happening in isolation. Nancy’s brother, Jim, and our dear friends and fellow parishioners Tom and Gail shepherded Nancy and me during this time. I would describe this as my born-again moment, as Jesus describes it to Nicodemus in John 3.

This is the time in my life when Christianity began to make sense of this nonsensical world in which I was living.  Christianity offered me the answers to the first-order questions of life such as:

·         Who am I?

·         Whose am I?

·         From what (or from whom) do I derive my identity?

·         For what purpose was I created?

·        What does real human prospering and thriving look like? ( i.e. What’s really important in life?)

·         What is my ultimate telos and destiny of my life?

I was coming to understand that Christianity is about turning this upside-down world right-side up, and this changed the trajectory of Nancy’s and my life:  My career was blessed by it; my marriage was blessed by it; my being a father to Rob and Jimmy was blessed by it.  I was brought joy, peace, and purpose in a newer and fuller way.  I began the long journey from self-absorption to self-giving, a journey I’m still on to this day.  

Let me add that Nancy and I made and are this journey together into a more mature Christian faith, but my sense is that she has always been out front and leading the way. I am hugely grateful to her for that.

The 1980s were, therefore, a time of remarkable growth in my knowledge, love, and service to God. Tithing became an honor as I began to learn how to give back to God. Cursillo (a three-day weekend retreat) taught me about being intentional and disciplined in my pursuit of God and about the indispensable aspects of Christian community in that endeavor.  My Cursillo small group, a small clutch of men at Christ Church, Lancaster, were center stage to this spiritual growth.   This small group, of which I was a part of for twelve years, taught me the value of mutual support and accountability with my fellow pilgrims.

This Cursillo men’s group eventually became involved in Kairos Prison Ministry in the South Carolina state prison system from which I learned an enormous amount about working in the power of the Holy Spirit and that The Holy Spirit was the key to making a difference in people’s lives.

After a few years I was asked to be the lay rector of a Kairos weekend at Manning Correctional Institution.  There were thirty inmates and fourteen volunteers as part of that weekend, and I found it to be one of the most challenging yet rewarding undertakings of my life. That weekend taught me immeasurably about trusting God by simply stepping out and doing what He was calling me to do.

In the early 1990s, a soon-to-be close friend, Doyle, was released from state prison, and he returned to Lancaster County where he had grown up.  Doyle had a rocky upbringing which led to his being incarcerated in the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) in Columbia and again later as an adult in the South Carolina Department of Corrections.  Doyle had attended Kairos in the Department of Corrections and through one of our Cursillo group members at Christ Church he was invited to be part of our men’s group.  

Doyle wanted things to be different in his life, and God helped him do just that.  He became a solid and mature Christian in those years, eventually becoming part of the core leadership at Christ Church.  He sought ways to give back to his community, to his new church family, and, most of all, to the incarcerated youth in the Department of Juvenile Justice where he had once been a resident.

Doyle, along with a few others in the state, had a vision of starting a ministry in DJJ modeled on the Kairo ministry in the adult prisons.  It was called "Epiphany." On the first Epiphany weekend in the DJJ, Doyle was the lay rector, and I was his coordinator (the person who took care of logistics and other details).  I was the lay rector of the next Epiphany weekend a few months later.

What was extraordinarily special about that second Epiphany Weekend was that my sons, Rob and Jimmy, and a group of their friends from across our diocese, all college age or above at that time, joined us to minister to these incarcerated and street-hardened boys of DJJ.  

The effectiveness of my sons’ and their friends was enhanced by their being only a few years older than these incarcerated teenagers.  The greatest gift they conveyed to the residents of DJJ was hope—that is, the reality their lives were not over but just beginning.  Their lives could be different from what they had experienced in their young lives through a relationship with the God who created them.  It was an amazing thing to watch. ...

Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life

Jesus says in John 14:6, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."  To believe such a thing in this age of intolerance, shaming and name-calling is a risky thing.  But I do believe it.  Let me list the reasons.

First of all, I understand all too well my fallen human nature.  I know the futility of any of us finding our way back to God on our own efforts and through our own resources.  Jesus is God doing for us that which we cannot do for ourselves.

Secondly, I know the only thing I can do is respond to His grace with trust and belief, for as it says in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." Even then, my faith requires God's grace working in me. 

Finally, it is Jesus alone, through His death, resurrection and imputed righteousness onto my life, who re-unites sinful me with my perfect Father.  Christ does this even while I'm still embroiled in my sinfulness, for as St. Paul writes in Romans 5:8, "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." What's more, Jesus has sent His Holy Spirit to reveal, convict, and guide me into a more perfect way, to become what I already am in God's eyes.  

Yes, I know Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life.  How about you?

From Chapter 2 of My Autobiography- Under God's Umbrella

From Under God's Umbrella: A Journey through Life, ISBN: 979-8-8229-0047-9 

An institution that was formative in my growing up years was Kanuga, a church conference center in the mountains of North Carolina near Hendersonville. Our family regularly rented a cabin for a week in the mountains at this beautiful place which Nancy’s and my children and grandchildren all know well. At an exceedingly early age, I remember cane pole fishing with my older brother and father in Kanuga Lake just below Kanuga Lodge. We used poles given to my brother and me by my Aunt Alice (Alice Randolf Hartley Pane, one of my father’s sisters). This was in the early 1950s, and I’m amazed how vivid this memory is to me to this day.

I attended other camps and conferences over the years, but Kanuga was the closest to my heart. I attended the Young People’s Conference for a series of years and eventually worked as a kitchen helper at Kanuga in the summer between my junior and senior years in high school. Interestingly, our son Jimmy also worked in the kitchen at Kanuga between his junior and senior years in high school.

The tradition continued with Nancy and me taking our boys to Kanuga summer after summer. Jimmy and his wife, Caroline, are continuing the tradition to this day, and we have been renting a cabin at Kanuga with them in recent summers. That makes four generations of Hartley's who love Kanuga. Great memories there for us all!

Kanuga became for me what the ancient Celtic church called a “thin place,” which is where the fabric between heaven and earth is drawn so thinly that one can almost reach through and touch the face of God. 

For years, I have used Kanuga as a spiritual retreat. On the far side of the lake sits a bench on the edge of the trail behind the large, iconic Kanuga cross (visible in the picture below). The bench is peacefully and beautifully shrouded in a tunnel of mountain laurel, and it became a special place for me to commune with God and offer up both my joys and struggles.  I have come to call it the "God Bench."

Today, my favorite thing to do at Kanuga is to rise at dawn, walk to the God Bench and visit with the Lord, inviting one of grandsons to come with me; hopefully, I can do the same with Sinclair, my granddaughter, when she is older). Amazingly, my grandsons almost always would say yes to my invitation. My discussions with them in that place have always been deep, insightful, enjoyable, heartwarming, and mostly about God. There is another bench we come to before reaching the God Bench that the grandsons now call the Devil Bench. They throw sticks at it as they run past it to get to the God Bench. There is something delightfully metaphorical about this.  Kanuga will always have a special place in heart because of these times.

Jordan Peterson Podcast with Eric Metaxas- Wakeup Call to the American Church

I recently listened to this podcast.  Doing so led me to reevaluate how I am living the Faith and how the Church should be interacting with our contemporary secular culture.

I often tell myself, "I can't expect non-Christians to act like Christians."  This has allowed me to respect people where they are and seek to serve and love them just as they are.  This has rarely involved challenging their behavior and beliefs.  Many Christians are where I am because it avoids conflict, and we all (well, almost all) of us want that.

Metaxas challenges this way of being a Christian in his book, A Letter to the American Church.  I think he is right.  His book brings to mind one of my favorite Bible stories, the Samaritan woman at the well in John's Gospel.  I love its gentleness, but at the same time, Jesus is unequivocal in challenging the Samaritan woman's lifestyle.  I seldom do such things.

In today's climate, it is more than just avoiding conflict; it is trying not to get cancelled, censored, or censured.  Metaxas' thesis is, however, if we have faith, we will do the right thing, stake our lives on the Truth, live with the courage to stand against what we know is evil, and trust God to deal with the consequences (shades of Dietrich Bonhoeffer).  As Christians, our silence in the face of evil can and will be a catastrophe.  The Church is in a battle we all need to fight.  We are called to speak up for those caught up in the extremes of our contemporary pagan culture.  

Eric draws the parallel between our silence and the silence of the Church in Nazi Germany in the 1930's, a very uncomfortable parallel indeed.

Earth Day-2023

Being good stewards of Creation is a noble goal indeed.  My problem with what I am hearing on this day are the radical, myopic, and falsely urgent solutions that are being made for doing this.  I also question today's appeal for getting the minorities and those economically marginalized to get on board by using statements that they are the ones most impacted by climate change.  I observe and conclude that the contrary is true, and the last two years have proven this out, at least in this country.  The poorest among us have been most negatively impacted by Biden's policies prioritizing a radical climate agenda at the expense of the prosperity of the country. This is true because the poorest among have less cushion to weather higher prices brought on by excessive climate spending and inflation.  I also fear long term that the reduced prosperity in the West by misguided attempts to save the plant will stall the amazing decades-long reduction in poverty that has taken place in developing countries.  

The answer is simple- allow time (and we have the time) for solutions on the supply side of energy production to mature and for us to stop broadcasting an inappropriate and unsubstantiated climate urgency that is wrecking people's lives.  

We need to start talking more wholistically and realistically about the current climate agenda.  "Wholistically" would mean: consideration of the greening trend for the planet and probable greater food production that comes from higher CO2 in the atmosphere; negative impacts on development in the global south because of the reduced prosperity in the developing countries brought about by current climate policies; etc.   (Presently, 3rd world leaders are simply salivating over the prospect of wealth re-distribution in the name climate reparations).

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter-2023

 Being an Easter People?

John 20:19-31

As you know, our Sunday morning Lectionary is designed to take us through the Bible in three years, but on certain Sundays, because of the significance of the readings, we will read the same gospel passage in all three years.  This is one of those Sundays.   See if we can grab ahold of what the church considers so significant about this Sunday that we would halt our scripture rotations to emphasize this Gospel passage.

The setting for today’s Gospel story is in the Upper Room on the evening of the Lord’s Resurrection, Easter Sunday.  Jesus had been crucified that previous Friday and placed in a tomb provided by Joseph of Arimathea.   In his Gospel account, St. John writes about Jesus having risen from the dead on that morning and appearing to Peter, Mary Magdeline and to himself, John.  Nonetheless, we find the disciples confused and afraid, huddled in the Upper Room “for fear of the Jews,” as John puts it.  They are afraid they too will be arrested and crucified.   

But then… everything changes.  Jesus comes and stands among them and says, “Peace be with you.”  All fear, confusion and doubt melt away.  He’s alive, just as Mary Magdalene, Peter and John said. 

Jesus then breathes on them the “Ruach of God,” the Breath of God.  Rauch is an ancient Hebrew word that can be translated breath, spirit, or wind.  We know the Rauch of God as the Blessed Holy Spirit.  With the Holy Spirit, Jesus empowers his disciples to live a new life in the reality of what they had just witnessed, which was the Resurrection of our Lord from the dead, and Christ commissions them to share this “Good News” with the world.  In this moment they become an Easter People.  As the hymn we just sung says, “Breathe on me, Breath of God, fill me with life anew, that I may love what thou dost love, and do what thou wouldst do.”  Being and Easter People, therefore, is not lived by our might or power, but by the Spirit, the Ruach of God.

Another key component to our becoming an Easter People is our Faith and Trust in the promises that God presents us at Easter.  It is no accident that St. John goes on to tell us the story of one of Jesus’ disciples, St. Thomas, on that evening, as well as Thomas’ experience the evening a week later.  This story highlights faith in what God has done at Easter as what opens the way for us all to become Easter People.  In other words, the great promises of God are actualized in our lives when we surrender in faith in what God has done for us on the Cross and at the Resurrection.   This is what allows us to live in this life as God’s Easter People.

Although we read from John 20 every year on this 2^nd Sunday of Easter, our Old and New Testament readings that support the Good News that John 20 proclaims do change.  There are many such readings for the lectionary writers to have chosen from.  One such reading is the passage today from 1 Peter 1.  Take up your bulletin, if you will, and follow along with me:

·    In verse 3 Peter writes, “… [Jesus] has caused us to be born again to a living hope.”  

·  Not only that, but in verse 4, Peter writes that this promise from God is imperishable, pure, and everlasting.

·  verse 5 tells us that, even though we are an Easter People with a great inheritance, we are still grieved by various trials in this life, which, Peter says, are a test of the genuineness of our faith.  We see once again the importance that our faith and trust in God plays in our salvation. 

·    Because, as Peter writes in verses 9, in it all, “we obtain the outcome of our faith, which is the salvation of our souls.”

So then, what does it look like for you and me to be an Easter People?  Let me conclude with these observations to this question:

1. First, to be an Easter People is to live a life that is as radical as the Resurrection itself, radical at least when compared to the standards and norms of this world.  To be an Easter People is a spiritual adventure in which we dare to live into something much bigger than ourselves with a faith that opens new vistas, new ways of seeing things, new ways of living, and a new understanding of who we are and whose we are. That is Resurrection Living. That is being an Easter People. 

2. Being an Easter People means offering up and shedding the debilitating effects of sin and guilt in our lives, laying them at the foot of the Cross.  

3. It is allowing the Holy Spirit to equip us supernaturally to transcend life’s burdens, challenges, and disappointments, and to do so with peace and joy.  

4. Being and Easter People is to have a greatly expanded worldview in which God is at the center, seeing everything as God sees it, and seeing others as God sees them.  This worldview makes our materialistic worldview seem very small and our secular concepts of living life to the fullest very limited.  

5.   Being an Easter People is a pilgrimage from self-absorption to self-giving.  It is to take on a sacrificial love akin to God’s own kind of love, Agape Love, to use the word that the Greek-writing authors of the New Testament uses to describe it.

6.   
And finally, being an Easter People is life that is open-ended for us just as God originally intended… not limited by time and space, not limited by death, but eternal with death no longer leaving our stories incomplete.  Jesus has conquered that barrier.  We are free to become the people that God intended us to be… healthy and whole in body, mind and spirit, perfected, completed, and everlasting.

Last week, Father Ross mentioned that Jesus’ Resurrection is so central to the Christian life that we Christians have taken Sundays as our Sabbath; in other words, every Sunday for us is a “Little Easter.”  Just as creation began on the first day of the week, we became a new creation on the first day of the week, the Day of the Lord’s Resurrection.  We became an Easter People.