Last Sunday, I preached and led worship in two very different settings. In the morning I was at the church where I am the pastor. In the afternoon, I led worship for a local gathering of developmentally disabled people. They worship together once a month and the leadership for this rotates among local churches.

In the morning I shared with my congregation how it is I have come to the place in my faith where I affirm that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons can be people of authentic Christian faith and still be GLBT. I don’t believe homosexuality in itself is wrong or sinful. I shared how growing up I had very little awareness of gay and lesbian persons, even into my college years. I shared my initial discomfort when I was forced, as I got to know gay and lesbian persons, to think very seriously about this issue. I shared some of my quandaries over the interpretation of the few passages in the Bible that discuss same sex sexual relationships. While I can’t say just when it happened, I have come to a place of acceptance of GLBT people as persons who can be genuinely Christian without changing that part of who they are. I shared that the most significant factor in getting to this place was my experience of GLBT who were also people of deep and genuine Christian faith. I compared this to the experience of Peter in Acts 11, as I mentioned in my last blog. At the end of the second time I preached, the congregation applauded.

In the afternoon, my sermon was strikingly different. The “members” of this worshipping community had been talking about animals, and raising money for the Heifer Project. In their education class that day they were hearing Job 12:7-8: But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. I thanked this congregation for its work in raising money for the Heifer Project. I thanked them for their care of the natural world, and encouraged them to continue doing what they could in that way. Then I said that one reason we should care for the natural world is that maybe God speaks to us in animals and nature. When the branches of a tree are blowing gently in the wind, maybe God is saying “hello” to us. They seemed to like that idea.

It was a day of contrasts – simplicity and complexity. Human sexuality is a confluence of biology, sociology, psychology, family history – pretty complex stuff. Thinking that maybe God waves “hello” to us in the trees or laughs with us in the waves is kind of a simple idea. Maybe being a person of faith involves both – simplicity and complexity.

I have come to think that the core of Christian faith is having a heart shaped by some simple values. Words such as these lead me to think thus.

What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8, Literature of the Hebrew Prophets

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength…. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus (Mark 12:30-31, Christian New Testament)

Refraining from all that is detrimental or harmful; engaging in and cultivating what is wholesome, skillful, good; purifying one’s mind – this is the teaching of the awakened.
Buddha (The Dhammapada, 183) [O.K., I am still learning from Buddhists]

In the end, when we look at our life, the question will be simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?
Jack Kornfield, The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness and Peace

Now to be sure applying these values to the complex realities of the world in which we live is, well, complicated. Seeking the simplicity of love in the depth of our lives does not mean seeing the world simplistically. Being in the world authentically, and as a person of Christian faith, asks of us a loving heart and a creative mind.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David