The Absolute Worst Fucking Pain of All

The saddest aspects of the fallout from the election of Gene Robinson have begun. Since his election as Bishop of New Hampshire, conservatives have spewed forth schismatic rhetoric expressive more of hate and exclusion than of sound theological thinking. It’s easy to disagree vehemently with these types because they are so obviously polarized opposite to my thinking. But the reality of true Christian disagreement came home for me today.

And it hurt.

A lot.

After one of my services yesterday, a long-time member of the congregation came to me and asked to see me in my office today.

"My wife and I have a problem," he said. I knew right away what that problem was. After all, I had told the congregations last week that I would be happy to sit down with anyone who was having trouble with Robinson’s election and I would listen to their thoughts as carefully as I could. Coming from this particular person, however, I knew I was in for a struggle because he and his wife and son have been loving members of the congregation for years. They are simple, straightforward folk who have only one focus - their love of Jesus and the church.

And they love me, too. We have been through a couple of cancers together, the accidental death of a family member, and various and sundry other crises over the past several years. I knew what their problem was and that I was going to have to take an opposite view. Consequently, I didn’t get much sleep last night.

As I thought, when they showed up in my office this morning, that was their "problem." Homosexuality was a sin and they just couldn’t accept that a bishop was going to be consecrated who was openly gay. They didn’t say it with any anger. It was more pain than anything else. They felt they had to leave the church because of it, yet they wanted to make sure I knew they weren’t angry with me or the local church at all. When we expanded on their theology a bit, I discovered they based their objections on the Levitcal passage which refers to homosexuality as an abomination before God. They had to take that at face value, they said. Even when I pointed out to them that the Hebrew word for abomination was also used with things like eating pork and touching the skin of a pig, they would not waver. They new that. The incongruity wasn’t sinking in. "You know," I said, "according to Leviticus you can kill your neighbor for mowing his lawn on Sunday." "I’ve thought about it, at times," he replied. "You could even knock off your son for sassing you," I shot back. "Thought about that a couple of times, too, but I never would do it." They just weren’t getting it, yet they continued to express their love for the church and I could feel the conflict within both of them. They didn’t want to leave, but they felt they must. She told me how she had been brought up in the Pentecostal church, and they went there once in awhile, even now. "How they are railing against the Episcopals," she said. "It makes me angry to hear what they say about my church!"

But it still wasn’t sinking in.

We talked for an hour about their deeply spiritual experiences, about how, when he had had complications after his cancer surgery a couple of years ago, he had seen angels and heard the most beautiful music he had ever heard as he watched people from all nations going up to heaven, thinking he was going, too. (I was with him at his bedside during that experience. We were both moved to tears then and were again this morning.) We talked about our love for each other, and we prayed together. They still had to go, they said, just for a little while, to think and to pray. I said OK, but I wanted them to do something while they were gone. I wanted them to pray for Gene Robinson - not that he would renounce the election, or go straight, or anything like that. I asked them to pray for him and to pray to God that he would be a good bishop and to pray for his ministry as bishop. They thought for a minute, and decided that that would be a good idea and they would try it. "And I," I said, "just so we both know that the other is doing something to open up the heart to hear the word of God, will pray for Bishop Duncan (the Bishop of Pittsburgh, the most conservative and outspoken, in the meanest sense, opponent of Gene Robinson’s election), for his ministry, and that he would be a good bishop, too." They said that would be a good idea, too. I told them to keep in touch with me and to let me know how things were going. I assured them that I and the church would never leave them. If they needed me, I would be there, no matter what. We agreed all together, that they were just backing off to get a better look. I blessed them and sent them on their way with hugs and I love yous.

I went back to my office and cried.

This is the pain that is really being caused by the institutional dogmas. The kind of pain that these strident bishops don’t have a clue about. We have an opportunity to come to a new understanding of God. God has given us that. Instead, we cling to the old fears, the old need for control, the old traditions and doctrines designed only to keep strangers at bay and protect those we choose to protect. Everyone should have to sit with genuine, loving people, who are brave enough to come to their priest openly and share their conflict - willing, in their own way,  to open up a little, and yet must go through the agony of separation from something they love so dearly, because somebody, a long time ago, beat it into them, out of their own fear and lack of understanding, that a particular group of people was evil and should be kept out of the church. This institutional assassination of people who believe they are called by God just like the next guy, is not of God, but of men. It can’t be anything else. Today, I felt as badly as I have ever felt over this issue. I have to let these good people go to find their way, because they feel the church isn’t showing them the way anymore. I can only hope that God will watch over them and guide them more gently than I seemed to be able to this morning.

Please say a prayer for them and for all good people who are lost in this whirlwind.  Pray that they, and we, might hear the still, small voice in the storm asking us to love, just love, with everything we have.

And pray for the strength to do it.

11:52:14 PM
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