a trajectory of hope

“Slave nor free.” 

It has become a commonplace to liken the change in attitude many of us seek over sexuality issues in the Church today to the change that was once achieved in the hearts and minds of nations over slavery. The Church and the wider world both once saw texts in the Bible that actually approved of slavery. Then people realised there was a bigger picture. Eyes were opened. Hearts were changed. 

Can this work for gay people too?

Tim Tennent from Asbury Seminary in the US (writing on the Seedbed website in 2013) is amongst those who disagree. Following William Webb's Slaves, Women & Homosexuals, he finds a story of hope within the Scriptures themselves when it comes to slavery which points towards the eventual position we now hold. For sure, he says, the Bible always had room for the dignity of the slave, but through time and into the writings of the New Testament, there was a change which paved the way for the abolitionist movements of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.  He finds no such redemptive trajectory for gay people to cling to.

Well, I am afraid that I am one of those awkward people who is never quite as convinced by that trajectory away from slavery within the Scriptures. 

Sorry. 

For me, the Scriptures exist with a continuous and difficult tension: the equality of persons created in the image of God is clear. But so too is the fallenness of human society and the way people use people. God’s people are to raise others up - and so slavery in the Old Testament has safeguards on it. Slavery may happen - but it may never be absolute. There are jubilees (Lev 25:39-43), proclamations of release (Deut 15:12-18), decrees of hope, and at the beginning the fourth command of the Ten in Exodus 20 insists that the Sabbath is to include the maidservant and manservant. Exodus 23 specifically includes in that command “the slave born in your house”. 

This isn’t a story of development. This is a tale of safeguards placed on a fallen humanity from the very beginning. This is why those who opposed the ending of slavery in Britain and the US and elsewhere were wrong but not - in their day - ridiculous. We are too quick to judge others by the standards of our own time, a judging which is neither historically nor Biblically fair.

Experience of Hope

In the New Testament, Paul’s plea about Onesimus (“have him back for good - no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother”) does not simply reject slavery in the new light of the freedom Christ brings, but offers a way of living that is true to all that the Scripture already demonstrates. It’s not new, it’s authentic. The slave/master texts in Ephesians 6 also come within this framework. There is no sudden change, no new trajectory toward change, even. All live in brokenness with hope. Those who (hundreds of years later) came to argue that abolition had to be better, that freedom was more godly, that equality more reflected how people truly are, had to do so by claiming higher truths than a mere battle of proof texts could allow. Arguing for the status quo and against change wasn’t hard; Wilberforce in Britain and Lincoln in the US had to use other Biblical places than texts on slavery alone in order to make their case. 

Richard Burridge of Kings College, London, argues that it wasn’t simply the Biblical story that changed the slavery debate. His Eric Symes Abbott Memorial Lecture from 2007 is worth a good look. In it, Burridge gives the Biblical arguments used by both sides and then looks at the impact that Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, the Clarkson brothers and the Clapham sect made by revealing the realities of the contemporary slave trade to the British public. They told stories. They made the truth personal, and they made it known. Josiah Wedgewood designed a medallion inscribed with the slogan “Am I not a man and a brother?” over a picture of a slave. Olaudah Equiano was a slave from Ghana who successfully published his story in 1789 after being freed. John Newton’s great contribution came around the same time with the publication of his work, ‘Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade’, nearly forty years after his conversion. Burridge comments: “If there was Biblical study driving the abolitionists, it was a result of reading and re-reading their Bibles in the light of that listening to the experience of former slaves and slave-traders.”

Matthew Vines, writing in his book ‘God and the Gay Christian’ is careful to comment: “Neither Peter in his work to include Gentiles in the church nor the abolitionists in their campaign against slavery argued that their experience should take precedence over Scripture. But they both made the case that their experience should cause Christians to reconsider long-held interpretations of Scripture.”

Treasured texts were shaped by real voices. 

And people heard the word. 

The Same Story, Heard Differently

So in line with Vines & Burridge and against Tim Tennent and others (whom I repeat I admire enormously), I actually do think it may be possible to argue for a ‘trajectory of redemption’ on the homosexuality question within the Scriptural witness. It may be the stories of real people we meet that open our ears, but then with newly open ears we hear the Bible freshly. More: the Bible itself starts to re-write the story of how gay people are seen. For it is actually some of the very texts that are often used to argue against the acceptance of homosexuality that take us there.

Lev 20:13 enforces the death penalty upon practising homosexuals. 

“If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death.” 

There is however no question of the death penalty for homosexuality in the New Testament. That’s a change. 

I mean - that’s a huge change. Why?

Well the place that comes closest to offering the language of Leviticus 20 in the New Testament is Rom 1 which has a long list of sins that “deserve death”, for example gossiping and disobeying parents. Homosexual acts in Rom 1 aren’t however in that list; people there rather ‘received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion’. Even the most traditionalist reading of this has to say - there’s been some softening from the Levitical bloodlust. 

But much more than that: Romans 1 & Romans 2 belong together. Paul attacks the sin of the world - idolatry, the end of right relationship with God, the loss of righteousness - and brings into play his stereotypes whereby for the Gentile that looks like acts of sexual excess committed at the altars of fake gods, and for the Jew it looks like prostitution in the same places. Pretty grim. But he then goes on to say: 

“There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil; first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honour and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile,” Rom 2:11.

Are you seeing it yet? This is the huge change.

OK, let me keep going - stick with me…

In Leviticus, an idolatrous act had a consequence. The consequence was simply death. One act, one result. Committing the act in the first place was itself seen as the result of abandoning God (and yes, I am with those who see the sexual act described in both Leviticus and Romans as textually act of idolatry rather than a ‘simply moral’ transgression) - so the Act was by definition Deathly. 

Now, St Paul uses that same act as an example of how those who have abandoned God can return and know eternal life. There is hope. And this includes not just Jews but Gentiles too. An even bigger sin. A far bigger hope. 

For a moment - hold my clarification of two paragraphs back and stay with it. Act of idolatry or moral transgression? Because if I am right and it is the former, surely the former is the greater sin? And yet St Paul holds out hope for that. For those who regard us gay people as guilty rather of the latter, may I say we see you as guilty of the former - and wonderfully equal with us before God’s throne of mercy.

For when the Cross opens the door to Redemption, it flings it wide open to everyone. Paul expresses this by using the most flagrant language he can, from beginning to end in Romans.

This is absolutely the trajectory of hope, the story of redemption, and it includes those whose brokenness from God is revealed by whatever kind of failing, whatever kind of story, whatever kind of past, whatever kind of present, whether they be Gentile or Jew. The New Covenant really is New. Romans, perhaps the New Testament text that has been used above all others to say homosexuality is bad and forbidden and beyond the pale, in fact finds itself to be the very text that brings all sorts of people into the realm of redemption. 

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and all are justified freely by his grace.”

Throw away the padlock, and be done with a moral underclass. People are people. There is neither Gentile nor Jew. Neither Romans 1 offender, nor Romans 2 offender. Not in spite of St Paul, but because of him. This is some arc of hope right here.

Let’s push this further.  Because Paul uses language about those whose brokenness from God makes them moral offenders - adulterers and prostitutes and homosexual offenders. But does he mean to say all gay people are homosexual offenders? Is he saying that all straight people are adulterers and prostitutes? 

Or might we see that if hope exists for such as these, perhaps we might find it too for those who are not “moral offenders”. Those who are decent but different, should they exist.

Oh, if only the text gave us such an example.

Oh, - wait a moment, maybe it does…  

Building the Story of Hope

Again, I will repeat with apologies that I don’t see a clear redemptive trajectory in the Bible story concerning slavery. Moses recognises slavery and also recognises it is imperfect. He ensures room for redemption from the beginning, and presses for good care of slaves. When it comes to slavery, Paul lives in Moses’ world. The same place. Room for room.

But Moses’ world is abandoned in the New Testament when it comes to - for example - eunuchs. 

Eunuchs. Not people we often think about. Certainly not people regarded normally as “offenders”. Not rapists. Not adulterers. Might these be those “decent but different” people we can read of in the Biblical text?

But here’s a line about Eunuchs from Deuteronomy 23 in the King James Bible: 

“He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord." 

Nice.

Eunuchs are forbidden from entering the congregation of the faithful; their sexual ambivalence was not acceptable. Moses is clear. 

Yet this begins to change - even within the Old Testament.

In Isaiah 56 (several hundred years after Moses) a time is prophesied when they will be welcome in the Temple, the presence of God. 

“Let no eunuch complain, ‘I am only a dry tree.’ For this is what the Lord says: ‘To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant – to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure for ever.”

If there is any question of their physicality or sexuality being linked with idolatry in Moses, Isaiah sweeps that to one side. Eunuchs might be eunuchs, and yet might also be godly - keepers of the covenant. Their reward? “An everlasting name” in the temple. In the Temple. In God’s very presence.

Coming in to the New Testament period, Jesus, in Matthew 19.12, makes their state no mere mistake, but even a sign of grace and godliness: 

“For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” (ESV)

Some use this reference as an encouragement to celibacy; Jesus and Paul both knew the word for celibacy, and Paul uses it, but Jesus here does not. He chooses not to. Folk argue what “eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” might mean, but what it doesn’t mean is Deuteronomy 23. Jesus now accords people once given no option but death a place in his Book of Life.

And this story arc reaches completion in Acts 8 with the conversion and baptism of the Ethiopian by Philip. It’s no coincidence it’s Isaiah he reads; and it’s Life he receives. He confesses Jesus, is baptised, and onward the Eunuch goes, rejoicing. Still a Eunuch, but in right relationship with his Saviour. 

That’s what I mean by a Biblical trajectory of hope, a story of redemption. That’s some journey from Deuteronomy right there. From exclusion to family. From exile to home. 

Here is a welcoming of those whom God’s people had formerly cast out. Decent but different, the eunuch is not a rapist or a sexual offender. He can’t repent of being a eunuch. I would not be surprised if Philip took some stick for what he did from those who wanted a strict keeping of Moses’ rules. But Luke records it as grace, as holiness, as wonder and as right. 

“What can stand in the way of my being baptised?”

 Well - in days gone by, quite a lot; but now - nothing. Nothing at all. A Eunuch, a sexually ambiguous foreigner, becomes a member of Christ’s church. 

Nor slave, nor free. 

That battle was won by mighty people fighting for truth, with the help of giants who told their stories for all to hear.

And here we see - unlike for slavery - there is a story of a change in attitudes within the Scriptures to some who have previously been excluded because of sexual differences. 

So we too have to tell our stories. Clearly, honestly, generously.

Because our stories may help everyone hear the whole Scriptural Story better.