Most deputies shared stories of the effect of that resolution on their friends and parishes. LGBT people experienced it as the door swinging shut once again and clergy had difficulty explaining how the Episcopal Church could really Welcome You if LGBT people are only welcome so far. One deputy quoted from Acts 10 – the reading we’ll hear at tonight’s Integrity Eucharist – where Peter says that we should not call anyone profane or unclean. That, he claimed, was the actual effect of B033.
I find this train of thought hard to understand. If I welcome people into my home, there are still rules. Those welcomed should not eat every crumb in the entire house, poke around in medicine cupboards in the bathroom, and have free reign to dig around in my closets. Being welcome does not include giving the one welcomed free reign to do whatever.
I’m welcomed into a restaurant and will be treated well, but if the sign says “No shoes, no service” it does not mean the restaurant is unwelcoming, there’s just a code of conduct that is expected. Would these people argue in this analogy that such a restaurant is discriminatory or hurtful because it has a modicum of decorum standards?
I just don’t find this line of logic convincing.
I love Scripture quotes out of context. What Acts 10:15 says is “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean”. Where in the Scriptures has God made homosexuality clean?
Trying to understand the underlying metaphors seems crucial to me. Here the image seems to be the church as a service provider with church goers as clients or members – so if you refuse a member access to a particular service – in what way can you say they are an equal member?
So what really demands critique is not the conclusion but the root metaphor. The church is not a members club or a service provider. The church is the body of Christ, a school for saints and a hospital for sinners.
People are not called “unclean”. Behavior is.
Of course, Acts 10 must be interpreted in light of the first Council at Jerusalem, Acts 15:
“We should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from [b]sexual immorality[/b], from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.” Acts 15:19-21 (NIV)
FWIW One significant strand of interpretation on Acts 10 argues that it takes for granted purity legislation about food. (Nowhere in Acts are Jews portrayed as straightforwardly breaching the food legislation and Cornelius is portrated as a God-fearer). So that what we see is in Acts 10 a debate about food of questionable purity. Or, if you want food whose provenance is uncertain.
If you imagine a situation in which Jews are eating in Gentile houses: even if the Gentiles provide food that respects the purity laws, there remains a question about whether its purity can be guaranteed. Notice that the upshot of the vision is not that Peter tucks into a plate of shrimp but that Peter sees that it is not breaking the law simply to associate with (and eat with of course) Gentiles. (Of course the argument is that Acts 10 assumes that Jews will obey the food laws but the vision answers worries about whether the food has somehow become impure because it’s been grown, or transported or prepared by Gentiles who don’t really know the ins and outs of purity law, In other words, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.â€)
Such, more or less, is offered by Markus Bockmuehl and Richard Bauckham as I recall.
The apostolic father’s three levels of interpretation and meaning notwithstanding, the purpose of the vision was to get Peter to agree to get off his butt and go to Cornelius’ house with the entourage that showed up at the house where he was staying.
As I said in a conversation with a couple of extremely well-read, intelligent and wise Episcopalians last night, : )
who also agreed with me, : )
even the hopeful common denominator of “plain reading” is being demolished by such eisegetic reading. That just has to stop. It’s getting under my skin.
I used to think we had enough of the Ephesian 4 gifted office of Teacher. I now see a clear deficit. There are way too few actively releasing this gift and office in their ministry.
I do not believe that is the Holy Spirit’s fault.
Let me add one thing purity in Scripture is essentially connected to holiness. So it’s no surprise that if you abolish purity you substantially redefine or even erase entirely the character of God’s holiness and it’s shape in human lives, FWIW the significance of purity and its significance in our relationship with the holy God is explicitly affirmed by Jesus (Mark 7.20), Paul, Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, Revelation. Of course, Acts teaches us that Gentiles do not need to keep all the purity laws that it is Israel’s privilege to honor but remaining undefiled as Gentiles grafted into Israel’s stock, is for the church and the individual believer, essential to friendship with God.
#4 Julia has it right. But they don’t want to hear “hate the sin (behavior) love the sinner (person). They are not lesion/gay or whatever, they are people who have CHOSEN a lifestyle that is considered to be sinful. So they are very welcome to be anything they want to be in the church as long as they have not chosen a lifestyle/sin that they cling to and do not repent of. They are no different than an unmarried couple living together.