Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?”
Do you also wish to go away?
I considered this question during my years as a seminary student when I came to realize and understand the ELCA’s stance on homosexuality and the policies that supported that stance. In the late 1990s, when I was a student, gays and lesbians were not allowed to serve as pastors nor was there any support from the ELCA to bless same-sex unions. Could I become a pastor in a church with such policies and positions? As many of you know, I had a mentor in junior high and high school, a Lutheran pastor, whose homosexuality was revealed only when he revealed that he had AIDS. The congregation where he was serving decided to keep him on as their pastor until he was no longer able to serve, even though they would have had every right ”” under ELCA policies at the time ”” to dismiss him. Could I become a pastor in a church that had such a right and which, on many other occasions, acted on that right? Would becoming a pastor in the Lutheran church imply full support of the ELCA’s stance, becoming complicit in a system that denied gays and lesbians the opportunity to answer God’s call to serve as pastors in this church? Would becoming a pastor in this church mean becoming a part of a system that kept people like my mentor in the closet, that denied blessings to those who were in love, that perpetuated the cycle of ignorance and fear?
Do you also wish to go away?
Since Ms. Rautman opened the door shall we walk through it? Firstly, did her ‘mentor’ contract AIDS in a monogamous homosexual relationship? Doubtful, don’t you think? More likely it was contracted through multiple-partner sex as is the norm in that community. This sort of takes the gloss of the whole ‘love’ argument does it not? I suspect that the only ‘love’ going on was the love of unprotected gay sex with more than just a few partners. He wasn’t denied any blessings. He turned his back on blessings, and instead engaged in a high-stakes game of sexual roulette in which he lost.
He did go away. He rejected Jesus to worship sex. He rejected Jesus when he decided not to call people to turn away from their sin but to embrace it and to affirm it. He rejected Jesus when he led people away from the Kingdom of God not toward it.
It’s a weird business when the church’s own clergy are teaching that it makes no difference whether one trots through the wide gate and takes the easy path, or finds the narrow way and walks the hard road.