What Would Gamaliel Do?

I have, of late, had a serious case of writer’s block. Not that I don’t have anything to write about. I do. Perhaps it is more that I have too much to write about, and clearing the boards seems a well nigh impossible task. Rather than cleanse, I am content with constipation. (Content?  A poor description, perhaps. Who would be content with constipation?) I am, quite frankly, more willing to sit and do nothing than to sit on the pot and let it all out. Being overwhelmed has that effect.  So maybe this piece is the laxative I need. (Detect a scatological timbre here, yet?)  Writing is like that. Sometimes you can’t stop the flow. Other times you have to move heaven and earth to squeeze out a couple of lines. So here goes.

Let me begin by saying that, while I have not been writing, I have been reading. Reading is a Good Thing. Reading, for a bound-up writer, is like popping a couple of bran muffins into the system. It’s good roughage (scatology again). It gets you thinking and you discover a need to reply or express a thought or two. Some of my reading has taken me into the realm of, what else? - writing. And I had a revelation.

Someone wrote or said that a writer can’t expect to write the one, obvious solution to all the world’s ills or make the one succinct statement that will get the whole world to say, "Aha!"  It just doesn’t work that way. There will always be someone who disagrees with you and thinks you’re full of shit. There will always be someone who agrees with you and thinks you walk on water.

Let them duke it out.

Your responsibility is to write what you think and what you feel. And you must, first and foremost, write for yourself. Sean Connery’s character in Finding Forrester, a movie about a reclusive writer, asks the rhetorical question of his young protegé, "Why is it that the best words we write are the ones we write for ourselves and not for someone else?"  To hell with expecting the world to get on your bandwagon.

I conclude that my scriptorial constipation is due, in large part, to wanting to write the one, definitive, statement which will end the controversy over homosexuality in the Episcopal Church. It comes from within me and my own inability to understand the level of hatred and violence and pain being wrought within the church over this issue. Putting it into context: for me, the issue of homosexuality, as with women’s ordination, and all of the other so called divisive issues in the church, are non-issues.

And there’s the rub.

Because it’s a non-issue for me, I can’t understand either side getting so worked up about it. There are more important things to be doing as the church, like righting economic injustices, ending a war, ending the present day oppression and slavery in the world, which we are, in large part, responsible for. But, as a friend of mine told me not too long ago, the church doesn’t have the luxury of picking its battles. They get handed to us, ready or not, and we have to deal with them as they come. The confirmation of Gene Robinson has sparked a controversy that goes deeper than scripture or theology. It has scared the hell out of people and they are reacting in the only way they know how - by lashing out, threatening, and leaving. It’s unfortunate, but that’s what we’re stuck with. So my problem is not about whether I stand for or against the ordination and full participation of gays and lesbians in the church.  My problem is my desire not to get involved in the pain of either side, pro or con, and that’s a little cold. So I offer a Middle Way (good Anglican that I am). Maybe someone will hear it and say, "Aha!"  But I'm not betting on it.

The most frequently quoted anti-gay texts are from Leviticus, Genesis, and Paul’s letter to the Romans. Depending on your interpretation, each either condemns or contextualizes the act of homosexuality making an argument for or against acceptance within the church. As I read the passages, I can see there might be another way.

For example, the Holiness Code in Leviticus pretty much speaks to each person individually: don’t do this or that, eat this, don’t eat that, treat people this way or that way. It speaks to a person and his (her [I place "her" in parenthesis, because in Levitcus a woman didn't much exist - an unfortunate reality that has been kept alive in this time by some, as well]) actions before God. The Holiness Code tells individuals how to live a moral life. The norm in Judaism, at least until the Scribes showed up in the fifth or fourth century before Christ, was that you worked out your own moral behavior based on your interpretation of the Ten Commandments and Torah. It was through self-examination or possibly a question from another that brought you to being conscious of your own sinfulness. It required you to be honest with yourself, but it was also between you and God. The trouble with the position taken today by members of the church is that they are more worried about what someone else is up to and how that affects their feelings and the institution than they are about their own behavior. Judging one another is something God does not call us to do unless we, too, want a dose of the same.

So how do we deal with the present situation? It isn’t an easy answer because we have to give up being so hateful and scared to pull it off. We all need to back off, pay attention to our own lives, and not spend so much time worrying about what everyone else seems to be getting away with. Acts 5:12ff, I think, gives us the way to accomplish this.

Peter and the apostles were less than revered in the sight of the High Priest and the Sadducees. They were jealous of them and had them thrown in prison. When they were found teaching and healing in the name of Jesus, the Sadducees were enraged and wanted to kill them. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, highly respected in the community, stood up, and reminded the council that others, Theudas and Judas, had come before, thinking, too, they were somebody, gathered a few hundred followers each, and ultimately were killed or died and their followers were dispersed.

"Fellow Israelites," he said, "consider carefully what you do to these men. For in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them - in that case you may even be found fighting against God!"

As impossible as it may seem for some people to hear this and to live by it, it is good advice. We each have too much to do to keep our own lives in order and to do the work we have been called to do. We do not need to add the task of being God’s whistle blower to the list. We should learn to give God a little credit for bringing something about. Just because it is a shock to our reality personally, doesn’t make it wrong. This is a hard thing to swallow, but God does not make decisions based on what we think is acceptable. God brings what is best to the world at the time the world most needs it, whether the world knows it or not. Maybe we ought to try the Gamaliel gambit and give God the benefit of the doubt.

10:19:14 AM
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