Spring Convocation    April 29, 2003
Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg                                      

by the Rev. Dr. Richard Nelson
Power Professor of Old Testament
Perkins School of Theology

Our Role as Preachers

            In the next few years, the congregations and people of the ELCA face a sequence of stressful events. An interim report from the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality will appear this summer. We will engage together a study document for congregations throughout 2003 and 2004. Resolutions concerning same-sex unions and ordination will be offered for the consideration of the 2005 Churchwide Assembly. In 2007 there is to be a new social statement on the broad scope of human sexuality. These are conversations that must take place and decisions that must be faced, but we all recognize that there are serious risks involved.

            Many of us in this room serve as preachers. About the only thing I still remember from my first homiletics course is the inspiring and intimidating title of the textbook authored by our professor: As One Who Speaks for God.¹ That’s pretty serious stuff. I hope to explore some of what it means to “speak for God” in the ELCA’s present critical situation by reflecting on my own struggle to craft a faithful sermon for tomorrow’s Eucharist. In a sense what follows is a sort of preacher’s journal.²

            First we preachers must ask ourselves about goals. What does God call us to do? I re-read my letter of call and revisited my ordination vows. I urge you to do the same. This was inspiring and re-centered me on my core task of preaching the Word of God in accordance with the Lutheran Confessions. But not surprisingly, it also left me with more questions than it really answered. 

            What outcomes can we reasonably expect or at least hope for from our preaching? Certainly some goals seem out of reach. There is little chance that our learning or talents will empower either you or me to devise a solution to the ELCA’s practical and theological problems with homoerotic genital sex. It is certainly true that our generation has learned to hear God’s word with fresh clarity and contextual depth, so that the truth of evolution no longer torments us nor do we spurn the gift of women pastors. However, I know I have kicked around the primary texts about sexuality for years and see no real prospect of some astounding exegetical advance that will provide us a breakthrough in what seems to be an impasse.

Nor do I imagine that our gospel preaching, no matter how skillful or impassioned, will mean that the more fervent advocates of opposed positions in our denomination will close ranks as one body after 2005. Debate will continue whether the ELCA chooses to leave the core issues in limbo or makes decisions that go against the conscience and faith convictions of one faction or the other.

            Some goals certainly seem unworthy of our solemn calling to proclaim the living Word of God. Can it really be my task to convert or persuade my hearers to adopt my perspective on this issue? Am I to use my oratorical skills to solidify the convictions of a group I know already agrees with me? I am sure that some of my fellow pastors will be more certain than I am about their judgment as to what the ELCA should do, but I do not believe the pulpit is the place for garnering support, as though this were all some sort of political campaign.

            Is a therapeutic goal all that I can expect tomorrow afternoon? That we all leave this conference feeling a lot better and more upbeat? As though we do not disagree at a deeply fundamental level? As though our denomination were not in grave danger?

            I know the formula of course. I can anticipate that in my sermon the law from God’s word will accuse us all and God’s word of gospel will liberate and justify us. Fine. But then of course, it will be back to the ethical heavy lifting of figuring out what actually to say and do. Is the gospel all I can offer you as a preacher? Is it enough? Yet is that so little?

            At the least I can try to be a model for what we all might do. I can handle the word as honestly as I can. I can refrain from claiming any authority, certainty, or insight that I do not have. Being as Christocentric as possible, I can do my best rightly to divide the word of truth according to law and gospel, neither silencing or superceding God’s law with God’s gospel, nor turning the gospel into a new and more daunting law.

Paradoxically, the more our differences deepen in the ELCA, the more we need each other in the body of Christ. We dare not conceive of ourselves as mutually hostile parties in a political battle. At the same time, we cannot simply choose to disagree and leave it at that, as though this were not an issue that strikes deep into the heart of what it means to be a Lutheran Christian. We must travel together, perhaps to resolution, perhaps to an ad hoc decision without real resolution. In the gospels, Jesus binds and casts out many demons. Perhaps we preachers can be faithful enough and transparent enough to let God’s word diminish or even cancel out the demonic power of this issue to divide us or devastate us.

We Need to Exegete Ourselves.

As I faced my assigned task, I soon discovered a need to exegete myself, to examine the person of the preacher. I questioned my faith in the efficacy of the preached word. Did I really trust God to use us beggarly preachers to speak a word to this church that will really do whatever it is God wants done?

            I have had some years of experience with this issue, sometimes in rather responsible positions. For example, I was part of the advisory group for the document Human Sexuality: A Working Draft (1994). So then, do I remain so ambivalent? Even though I have become increasingly clear on what the overall message of scripture is on this topic, why am I still so unclear about what I personally believe about it? Why am equally unclear about what I think the ELCA should be doing in regard to it? Is this the result of laudable scholarly reserve or spineless avoidance? Am I stubbornly refusing to submit myself to what I judge to be the relatively plain statement of New Testament scripture?

            I am sure you and I share some common characteristics as preachers. We are not fundamentalist in our approach to scripture, but seek to read it in its original historical and social context and to do so according to the rule of faith. Like Luther, we will be most concerned with what highlights and pushes Christ and his saving work, rather than with other topics. We will not treat the Bible as a compendium of proposition and laws. Yet as Lutheran Christians, raised on the Small Catechism, we also assume that the Bible offers useful guidance to justified, sinful Christians seeking to conform their lives to God’s moral will, as well as to a Christian denomination seeking to write a social statement or create official policy. We are not antinomians in the sense of opposing any place for biblical law in Christian life or ethics. Insofar as we still remain sinners and not justified persons only, and insofar as we are citizens in the civil realm, the Bible has an important parenetic, teaching function.

We Need to Exegete Our Audience

In addition, the faithful preacher seeks to exegete the audience. What might we expect our congregations to be concerned about in a crisis like this? What fears and emotions, concerns and blind spots can we anticipate? Sexuality is a flashpoint because it relates to the very core of human identity. Preaching about sexual orientation evokes strong emotions, because sex is about self-understanding and self-definition, about the boundaries and structures by which we make sense of the world and find our place in it. Moreover, we humans often define and protect our identity by singling out the alien and outsider and carefully distinguishing ourselves from that Other.

We may thus expect, and have experienced, a rhetoric of hostility and self-certainty, of name-calling. Many will fear, perhaps with justification, that expressing their theological or moral objections to homoerotic sex will be devalued and caricatured as hateful prejudice. One often hears that all resistance to change, no matter how theologically or exegetically responsible, has homophobic roots. This assumes, unfairly I think, that the explanation for a religious opinion is to be sought out in a psychological dysfunction. Many others will fear that advocacy for change will be met with disdain, withdrawal, anger, and defensive reactions. Those of us who are gays and lesbians may well be afraid of ostracism and contempt.

Our people may worry about loss of control over their own congregational life. Congregation members are likely to fear that they will be pressured by crusading bishops to call pastors whose lives they see as distorted, even dangerous. On the part of some there will be anxiety and anger triggered by the prospect of even more change in an ever changing church, a church they may no longer feel at home in. On the part of some there will be despair that their own sexuality will continue to be despised and classified in terms of sin and perversion, experiencing disappointment that the church, the family in which they live as God’s child, will continue to reject who they feel they are at their very core.

You must deal with those realities in your preaching. Yet you to whom I will be preaching tomorrow are hardly a typical congregation. You are a theologically knowledgeable and sophisticated gathering. Many of you have professional and vocational concerns about the unfolding situation in our denomination. Here are some observations as I try to read you.

1. You sense the danger of a loss of this church’s fundamental nature and character. It seems at times that our core values as faithful Lutherans are in irreconcilable conflict. Does this all boil down to a head-on collision between sola gratia and sola scriptura? Does it seem as though we are being asked to choose between God’s radical liberating gospel, the gospel justifies the ungodly through faith alone, and scripture taken as our norm for faith, ethics, and practice? Or to use another set of foundational categories, what would certain decisions mean for the ELCA’s fundamental orientation on the ecumenical scene? Is our essential identity bound up with the western Catholic tradition or to modernity and American mainstream Protestantism? Certainly some of you are worried about our ecumenical relationships with the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodoxy.

2. You fear a threat to our denominational unity. What we are facing is not a mere matter of procedure in polity or something that can be categorized as an “open question.” Anyone who knows the history of Lutheranism in America knows what disagreement at this level can mean. Lutheran unity has been undermined before by disputes like this. Indeed, some in this room have lived through just such a schism. You may well fear that our still youthful ELCA will prove to be fragile. The struggles of unification are still fresh in our minds and the nostalgic attractions of our previous church bodies still speak deeply. Some people, respected and well-regarded people, are already talking about leaving if they do not get their way and are setting in motion the political maneuvers needed to back up these threats.

3. Connected to this are hidden, seemingly unworthy fears that are harder to admit. Pastors may reasonably fear lay and congregational reaction, perhaps loss of membership in our congregations. Is there danger to our pensions, our jobs, our eight seminaries? Is there some kind of threat in all this to the status of women clergy?

            4. I also read us as confused. What is this all about anyway? Law and sin? The power of the gospel? Toleration and appreciation of differences? Love of neighbor? Putting inadequate or erroneous former cultural notions behind us? Is this a hermeneutical problem or an ethical problem? Are we flirting with antinomianism or with legalism?

5. Yet at the same time, this audience also likely to agree on certain things. Let me risk trying to state these common convictions.

• Based on the civil function of God’s law, we will believe that homosexual citizens should enjoy fill civil rights and protections under the laws of our nation. We are not likely to propose that every sort of morally problematic behavior should automatically be prohibited by civil law.
• Based on the theological function of God’s law, we will assert that homophobic prejudices and conduct are sinful. The gospel teaches us that both heterosexuals and homosexuals stand together as justified sinners before God.
• We will tend to believe that the church should repent of stances that have promoted violence and discrimination against gays and lesbians, and at the same time repent of its hypocrisy in condemning homoerotic behavior more enthusiastically than other sexual activities that are far more destructive and dangerous.
• Based on numerous Old and New Testament texts, I think most of us will agree that marriage is a divine ordinance of a covenant of life-long fidelity between one man and one woman, one that reflects in a deep and mysterious way the unity between Christ and his Church.³

Exegeting the Situation: Ironies, Tragedies, and Potentials

            We preachers need to diagnose the context into which our proclamation is directed with unflinching honesty, and I will try to describe the ironies, tragedies, and potentials of our situation.

Will our peculiarly Lutheran theological habits prove to be our salvation or our undoing? We are Lutherans for heavens sake, and one would think we of all people would have the resources to move this controversy beyond a worldly battle of competing political pressure groups into a transformative theological discourse. But that we are Lutherans is also in a factor in the problem. We insist that faith in God’s radical, liberating gospel turns all human divisions upside down and overcomes all human insufficiencies – yet we confess this in the context of taking the Bible seriously as norm and authority over our teaching and practice. As Lutherans we accept and value science and human wisdom, but we do so in the context of our traditional doctrinal resistance to the winds of theological compromise.

            We are Lutherans, for heavens sake!

• We know about the bondage of the will and do not imagine than sin is nothing more than a series of bad options freely chosen.
• We know that all aspects of human life, even the most noble, fall under the shadow of sin.
• We know the difference between law and gospel and the function of each as the Holy Spirit uses God’s word in the drama of salvation. We do not despise the law, nor do we undermine the gospel by appeals to the merit of human virtue.
• Ours is an ethic based on the neighbor’s needs rather than merit in God’s eyes or on treating the Bible as a compendium of laws.
• We submit ourselves to Holy Scripture without fundamentalist delusions or the idolization of the Bible.
• We rejoice in our catholic connections to the church’s tradition, to our ecumenical partners, and to the experience of Lutheran Christians in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

We in the ELCA have outstanding resources to see this crisis through.

• A positive track record in our decisions over abortion and women’s ordination.
• A wiliness to pursue disagreement on a theological level – not just who can outvote and outmaneuver whom, (although I fear it may boil down to that in the end).
• Human resources: theologians, ethicists, scripture scholars second to none, pastors and bishops who are expected to exhibit these same talents and qualities, and lay people intensely exposed to catechesis and gospel preaching.

And yet as preachers we must honestly recognize the difficulties in our situation. First, turmoil cannot be absent from conversation under these conditions, not will it stop even after decisions have been reached. There may be so much “agenda noise,” that a group, no matter how well intentioned, cannot work through these issues. Second, we must acknowledge the pressure of time’s arrow. A “no” on ordaining sexually active homosexuals or blessing same-sex covenants cannot be the end of the matter, for such a “no” will continue to be open to recurring challenge by those calling for a “yes.” In contrast, I suppose that a “yes” would for all practical purposes be irreversible.

            It is healthy that we are engaged in a conversation in which we seek to persuade and are open to persuasion based on theological argumentation. But we also cannot ignore the process of reaching actual policy decision through the use of political strategies. We must admit the possibility that we may remain engaged in honest conversation over this topic and still get nowhere. It is possible that this divergence takes place at such a deep level in people’s value structures that no arguments, including and perhaps especially biblical ones, will make any difference in the long run. It is possible that 2005 will roll around with us prepared to do nothing more than duke it out in the political arena, in which the so-called winning side will out-petition, out-memorialize, out-maneuver, and out-vote the opposition.

Questions and Observations:

Are we reading scripture with honest input from the social and biological sciences? My reading suggests that scientific findings frequently appear casually, imprecisely, and selectively in these debates. Science is often marshaled for rhetorical purposes rather than as a substantive argument.

Are we reading scripture first, but then silencing it or covering it over as other avenues of knowledge are pursued; using scripture as a first word perhaps, but not a word given the full weight it deserves?

It is certain that the biblical writers were influenced by the culture and the science of their day, by particular social norms and attitudes, many of which were deplorable. But in recognizing this, are we thereby blocked from saying that they still correctly perceived and expressed God’s relationship to humanity? Any historical or culturally sophisticated reading of scripture opens up the possibility of assessing critically what is said. The recognition of the time-bound social circumstances of certain scriptural admonitions has seemed clear to us concerning the ordination of women or braiding hair or slaves obeying masters. But it does not seem at all as clear in this case. All texts are conditioned by culture and bound to unrepeatable historical contexts and social. To what degree are they thereby silenced? How can we let the Bible unfold its meaning according to its own categories – including those of myth, Hellenistic Jewish culture, Greco-Roman philosophy and science – when we no longer accept those categories?

What is the relationship between the rule of faith and the rule of love in interpreting scripture and the enlightenment categories of equity, tolerance, and freedom of choice?

What about the church’s tradition? Most if not all, previous readers of scripture, from the Fathers to the Reformers, never saw there anything but non-tolerance and non-blessing of same sex erotic behavior. How normative is this rejection for us? In humility, we consider tradition carefully. But certainly we are not faithless or disloyal if we find flaws in it, or suggest a correction.

Does the burden of proof lie with those who seek to change the church’s traditional position or with those who seek to limit the radical power of the gospel?

Contempt is usually directed at the “hate the sin and love the sinner” formula. Nevertheless, it is a false alternative to suggest that the church must choose between affirming homoerotic behavior and reviling homosexuals. To condemn homosexual behavior and condemn homosexual people is fundamentalism. To condemn behavior and affirm people is the traditionalist position. To affirm behavior and affirm people characterizes the revisionist stance.

Is sexual orientation so fundamental to one’s personhood and identity that to fail to express it genitally is to diminish one’s humanity? How does this relate to the voluntary celibacy by catholic priests and nuns and the chastity practiced by single and widowed Christians?

            I think we tend to share some unexamined presuppositions that I do not believe are necessarily valid.

• Is it really true that ordination is the exact equivalent of full acceptance for gays and lesbians in the church and the only route to it?
• Is it really true that the ordination of practicing homosexuals and the recognition of same sex covenants would be nothing less than fully validating homoerotic behavior as acceptable to God and God’s people? That such ordination would be tantamount to affirming that same sex orientation is a created good and completely without any sinful implications?
• Is it really true that the two issues of ordination and same sex unions have the same theological and practical implications?
• Is it really true – if we decide that the plain sense of the Bible read as a canonical whole considers homosexual acts an offence to God – that we absolutely must seek to constrain such behavior and avoid promoting or blessing it? Is it possible to recognize scripture’s plain objection to homoerotic sex and yet go on to decide it doesn’t decisively matter in light of other theological realities?

Picking texts responsibly

As texts for tomorrow, I have chosen Genesis 3:8-13; 16-19; Romans 1:18-32; and Matthew 15:21-28.

I did so in spite of my conviction that no one can today interpret or preach on the Romans text without ambiguity, fear and trembling, and anxiety. I have come to believe that there is so much “interpretive noise” about this text, so much passion and secondary literature, that the interpreter cannot really listen to it responsibly. I am fully aware of my own failings and limitations, and those of you, my audience. This text has many interpretive problems that push me right to the edge of my professional competence. I despair of getting behind the violence and virulence of Paul’s language and his culturally bound opinions to the theology he is expressing. I am keenly aware of our negative experiences with certain biblical texts about women and the numerous Old Testament “texts of terror.” And of how we have often used the Bible to justify a hierarchical, oppressive, and patriarchal status quo.

Of course there are many other relevant texts that address our concerns. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. “Have you not heard that from the beginning God made male and female?” (Mark 10:6)  Acts 10: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” How about something nice from Ephesians, “speaking the truth in love” or “we are all members of one body”? Yet, afraid as I am of Romans 1, I was drawn to it like a moth circling to its doom in a candle flame. If I do not acknowledge the textual elephant in the room, about which we are all afraid to speak, who will?

There was another consideration. The church has made up its mind and sometimes changed its mind about many practices and issues, for example divorce and remarriage, the public position of women in the church, charging interest on loans, and slavery. But the biblical texts about these things continue to be read among us, so that we must continue to reassert and defend our common evaluations of their impact on us. However, Romans 1:18-32 will not be routinely heard in the ELCA, no matter what decisions we choose to make.  It is not in the Revised Common Lectionary. It will be effectively silenced.

Genesis 3:8-13; 16-19.

            The Eden story is similar in logic and function to Paul’s argument in Romans. They are both mythic etiologies of the disordered human condition, intending “to explain what endures in the present as a result of the events reported.”⁴ Let me highlight the parallels between Genesis 2-3 and Romans 1.

• Our present predicament originated in a primordial and universal defection from God.
• This foundational idolatrous disloyalty and disobedience continues to have ongoing negative results.
• These results include distortions of human sexuality and in the relationships between the sexes. In addition there are other consequences in many areas of human life.
• These texts are not about individual choices and individual vices; they are universal in scope and point to deep structure damage done to human society.
• God has brought about this negative and universal state of affairs, in Genesis by expelling from the garden, in Romans by “handing over.”

I also observe that the Eden story and Romans 1 are also about possibilities and not just punishment. There will be bread to eat and there will be babies to love! There is the gospel, which is the power of God.

Romans 1:18-32

            I can only make a few observations about this controversial text. Paul does not argue here that homoerotic sex is wrong. He simply assumes that it is and takes it for granted that his readers will agree. Paul presents his frame of reference universally as God’s created order and humanity’s collective experience. However, we modern readers can see that he understands matters in terms of the biological theory of his own day,⁵ in conformity with a widespread Jewish tradition of disparaging gentile religion and culture,⁶ and on the basis of his immersion in the Old Testament.

            Paul’s theme is the gospel as defined in vv. 16-17 (“the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith”) and he is making the case for the universal need for salvation (3:20). He does this by offering illustrations of the general corruption of human existence, first by a specific and shocking example (inappropriate sexual behaviors; vv. 24-27), and then by an exhaustive list of flawed attitudes and behaviors (vv. 28-32). It is clear that his argument will work only if all his readers end up seeing themselves as condemned by their thoughts and actions -- both Jews and gentiles, both those who engage in disordered sexual activities and those who do not.

Because the gentile world exchanged God’s true glory for images and exchanged truth for the lie of idolatry (vv. 23, 25), God handed them over to impurity (v. 24), degrading passions (v. 26), and a debased mind (v. 28). Whatever the portrayals of sexual activities in vv. 26b-27 were intended to describe (and this is not totally clear in the case of the women),⁷ they are negative outcomes of humanity’s alienated state.

Paul’s main interest, then, is endemic human idolatry and the divine wrath that has been its result, so that he may convince us of the universal necessity of the gospel. His invocation of homoerotic behavior is essentially illustrative in character; nevertheless, his evaluation of these activities is not neutral but profoundly negative. He can use disordered gentile sexuality as a rhetorical tool because his Hellenistic Jewish readers shared his convictions. 

It is worth noting that Paul describes the primary and fundamental negative result of God’s act of “giving over” as humanity’s “debased mind” (v. 28) and out-of-control sexual passions (vv. 24 and 26). The behaviors he characterizes as sexual exchange (vv. 26b-27) are a secondary result of these excessive passions. This view corresponds to the way homoeroticism and non-standard heterosexual behaviors were frequently understood in the Greco-Roman world.

Remarkably, Paul and modern understandings of homoeroticism do correspond at a couple of points. Paul agrees with us that what we call same sex orientation is not voluntary, but something one is “given over to.” Moreover, just as we understand that there are social, culturally constructed components to homosexuality, so too Paul speaks not of individual transgressors but of a whole society gone astray. The negative judgments of this text are not aimed at one person or group, but at gentile humanity as a whole. Paul speaks of an entire culture, the whole non-Jewish world, “given over” to a sexual pattern marked by excessive passion and inappropriate exchange. In Paul’s terminology, these problematic behaviors represent an exchange of what is natural for what is “contrary to nature.” In the Greco-Roman philosophical context, what is natural goes beyond merely what is typically expected or merely conventional, but refers to innate realities that conform to the established and universal order and structure of things.  

            In coming to terms with this text, we must ask how we could affirm that God’s wrath is not evidenced by homoerotic behavior without giving the same exclusion to all the other attitudes and behaviors in the list that follows in vv. 29-32. The universality of these damaging effects of God’s wrath precludes our condemnation of each other, for we are all in the same boat.  At the same time, the negative nature of all these attitudes and behaviors would seem to preclude us from condoning any of them.

Matthew 15:21-28

The peculiar incident of the Canaanite woman’s encounter with Jesus touches on themes that emerge when we read Romans and consider our present dilemma. It speaks of her exclusion from the gracious benefits that are the exclusive prerogative of a divinely approved in-group. It plays out against the background of a negative appraisal of Gentile religion and culture. Read in the context of the Old Testament, the reader is reminded of the (supposedly) sexual aspects of Canaanite religion.⁸ Like her, the ELCA needs a demon exorcized and struggles with inclusivity in the face of biblical principles and apparently absolute theological axioms.

In this text a pariah woman seeks to have a tormenting demon cast out of her daughter.  But Jesus has an absolute principle that seems to make her case hopeless. He states that his mission is only to Israel, as he previously had said in Matthew 10:6: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But by persistent, wise, and tricky argumentation, she overcomes this supposedly absolute theological axiom. In the end, Jesus casts out the demon and commends her assertive insistence in pushing the theological envelope as evidence of her great faith.

In comparison with his source text Mark, Matthew has changed this story in important ways, highlighting the woman’s excluded status, her persistence, and the skillful ingenuity of her disputation.

First, her excluded status. The real focus of the story is not the miracle but the woman. Matthew’s story begins by identifying her as explicitly a “Canaanite,” with all the negative implications of that Old Testament designation. She comes out “from” her foreign region. Matthew does not explicitly say that Jesus actually entered alien territory.

Second, her persistence and assertiveness. She opens the dialogue, making her plea to Jesus as “Son of David.” Matthew adds to the obstacles in her way. Jesus initially is simply silent. The disciples demand that he “send her away,” and the text implies that they are walking away and she is chasing after them. Only then does Jesus respond with what sounds like an absolute exclusionary principle: “only to Israel.” Matthew then has her bow down before him and ask again.

Third, her clever disputation. Jesus repeats the principle of Jewish election by introducing a little parable of dogs and bread in apparent denial of her request. Matthew eliminates Mark’s “let the children be fed first,” which looks forward to a different arrangement in the future, and turns this in into a clear-cut, seemingly absolute axiom. But she pushes the implications of his parable. She turns the focus away from the children’s entitlement to their own bread and toward the legitimate expectations dogs have from their masters’ table. Finally, Matthew adds to Mark that Jesus praises her faith. Her faith and persistence, indeed her rhetorical sophistication, force open the barrier of exclusivity. Blocked or restricted four times: by silence (v. 23a), “send her away” (v. 23b), “I was only sent to Israel” (v. 24), and “it is not fair to take the children’s food” (v. 25), she wins out in the end.

            She has to come out to him. She follows and he walks away with his disciples. She is a Canaanite, evoking Jewish traditional prejudice of a sexually uncontrolled and idolatrous people (think again of Paul’s attitude in Romans). But she uses the connotations and sound of that label as a word play with “doggie” (chananaia, kunarion) to break through the axiom of exclusion. She ignores silence, she ignores what he says, she presses ahead. She grants his presupposition of Jewish election, but then she extends his parable and in so doing reverses its meaning. OK (nai), I am only a pet dog and the bread is properly the children’s, but I can still be fed now. OK, it’s not good to give away the children’s bread, but that isn’t necessary – rather, crumbs are what pet dogs may appropriately expect. In her argument, the parabolic table does not belong to the children, but to those who are the dogs’ masters.

            But – and I think this is critical – the outcome of this story is not unambiguously a liberation of the excluded from the rule of election nor an abrogation of the axiom of Jewish primacy. Jesus gives in here for her benefit, but nothing else changes. The principle and rule of “only to Israel” remains in force. The primacy of the Jews is still upheld; the election of Israel is still a theological axiom. Faith trumps election, but exclusion and election remain. There is no gentile mission in Matthew until after the resurrection.

What Is It that I Believe?

Now, in the interests of honesty, I will set forth what I believe.

• Homosexual persons are justified saints through faith alone, welcomed into the church’s life along with their fellow justified sinners.
• Scripture’s censures and disapproves of homoerotic acts as a departure (Romans 1) from the ideal pattern of human sexuality (as set forth in creation, Ephesians 5:28-33, Christ’s teaching in Matthew 19:4-6).
• The ELCA ought to affirm what is potentially good about permanent same sex relationships: the love and care of children whether adopted or biological, an understanding that fidelity is better than promiscuity and that enduring love is better than depersonalized or temporary encounters.
• The ELCA may be able to develop ways to declare the created and foundational normativeness of a faithful male-female marriage, while still finding room for the faithful baptized who enter into other arrangements. I think it would be best if formalized mutual promises of life-long fidelity by homosexuals were made without the official approval or encouragement of the ELCA as a matter of individual pastoral judgment.
• That the ELCA can utilize and celebrate the talents of homosexual persons used to glorify God and serve humanity and could conceivably accept into its ordained ministry those who choose to express their homosexuality in faithful and responsible ways. But, but we should only do so if we can somehow figure out how to do this without going beyond or contradicting what scripture permits and asserts. Whatever liturgical or rostering choices it makes, the ELCA cannot simply declare that homoerotic sex is a divinely created good or that it is a ethically neutral or a completely unproblematic practice.
• It is wrong to undermine the consciences of our fellow believers in the pursuit of Christian liberties to which we feel entitled. A re-reading of 1 Corinthians 8 (food offered to idols) is in order here. It is also wrong to bind the consciences of our fellow believers by unnecessary and unwarranted denominational directives and human rules. 

It is only faith like that of the Canaanite woman that will see us through this crisis. In our conversations over homosexuality, as in all else we do as the church of Jesus Christ, we walk by faith. Scripture, through the story told in Matthew 15:21-28, discloses that true faith does not always mean a mere passive acceptance of God’s apparent will or what seems to be God’s final word. Faith can mean objection, protest, boldness. Perhaps that word is final, but perhaps there is wiggle room. Think of Abraham standing up to God on the road to Sodom, of Jacob wrestling, of Job contesting heaven’s injustice, of Hannah breaking through priestly prejudice, of David pleading for the life of his innocent baby son. Think of blessed mother Mary at Cana, prevailing over her son’s insistence that his hour had not yet come. Think of this Canaanite woman and our Lord’s (perhaps rueful) admiration: “Woman, great is your faith!”

_______

1. Stanley D. Schneider, As One Who Speaks for God: The Why and How of Preaching (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1965).

2. Two helpful articles are Charles L. Bartow, “Speaking the Text and Preaching the Gospel,” in Homosexuality and Christian Community (ed. Choo-Leong Seow; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), pp. 86-98, and James F. Kay, “Homosexuality – What Then Shall We Preachers Say?” pp. 99-109 in the same volume.

3. “Marriage is a lifelong covenant of faithfulness between a man and a woman. In marriage, two persons become "one flesh" (Gen. 2:24; Mt. 19:4-6; Mk. 10:6-9; Eph. 5:31), a personal and sexual union that embodies God's loving purpose to create and enrich life.” From “A Message on Sexuality: Some Common Convictions” as adopted by the Church Council of the ELCA, November 9, 1996.

4. Hermann Gunkel, Genesis (trans. Mark E. Biddle; Macon: Mercer University Press, 1997), p. 29.

5. William R. Schoedel, “Same-Sex Eros: Paul and the Greco-Roman Tradition,” in Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture (ed. David L. Balch; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 43-72.

6. Wisdom of Solomon 13-14; Josephus, Contra Apion 2.236-54; Testament of  Naphtali 3:3-5; Philo, De specialibus legibus 1.13-31.

7. James E. Miller, “The Practices of Romans 1:26: Homosexual or Heterosexual?” Novum Testamentum 37 (1995): 1-11.

8. I must also confess that the reference to dogs caught my ear, since some interpreters of Deuteronomy 23:18 interpret the word “dog” there as “male homosexual prostitute.” There is also some archaeological evidence suggesting that dogs may have been sacred in Canaanite religion. See Richard D. Nelson, Deuteronomy: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville: Westmister John Knox, 2002), pp. 280-81.