Quite a few of the folks who are discovering Desert Oasis Chapel are coming back to church after some pretty bad experiences with religion. Some have just plain gotten kicked out for being gay, given “the right foot of fellowship,” or have been notified that they cannot be or talk about who they are. Very recently a guy told me that he liked me and he liked Ian but he was not going to attend this church. Of course I asked why not and he said somebody had told him we’re fundamentalists and he was never gonna go near a fundamentalist church again. I told him that I sure understood that but we are not fundamentalists. In fact, between distorted doctrine and harsh attitudes, I cannot stomach most fundamentalists and the main spokesmen for that dogma.
But we’re also not social gospel types and we’re not, theologically, “liberal” and for sure we’re NOT new age, so what are we. Looking for words can be tough. We could say we’re theologically “orthodox” but that sounds too much like Greek or Russian Orthodox though the word just means “straight in their doctrine.” “Evangelical” is a touchy word because a lot of fundamentalists have usurped the word as a euphemism for their rigid beliefs and practices. So what are we? Theologically, we really do have to stay with evangelical but you’ll notice I don’t use the word much – too scary for lots of people.
So today we’re talking about the difference between fundamentalists and evangelicals or, as some have put it, between religion and gospel. Part of the fun (and challenge) of doing this ministry is that we are, so to speak, a minority within a minority. We’re Christians sharing the good news in the gay community who often believe that God hates them and have, for that reason, turned against God. And we’re gays and lesbians telling the Christian community that their understanding of the biblical message about gays is all wrong. Talk about being caught in the cross-fire! But, it’s worth it. We’re worth it.
Jesus was stunningly un-religious. He got killed because he was so opposed to the teachings of the Jewish leaders of his time – they hated him for what he said. They, however, believed they were the true believers and everybody else was inferior to them. In the late 19th century, the church was reeling from discoveries in biology and astronomy and geology and lots of people started to doubt the Bible. The earliest fundamentalist wanted to put down the basic doctrines they believed in to support the faith. Over the years, they became more strident and defensive and, later, offensive. Later still, the religious right tried to make American politics into their mold. Without seeing it, they (many of them) became the Pharisees of our time, legalistic, judgmental, exclusive and puritanical in their fights against anybody who saw anything differently from them. These are the guys Jesus warned us about! Their ugly attitude and rigidity appealed to people who were just like them or who wanted “all the answers.” But for any of us who did not fit exactly into their peg, we were scolded, kicked out, condemned, and not so graciously notified that we were on a fast train to hell. So I sure can’t blame all kinds of people for bee-lining it away from a crowd of people who’d rather blast you than embrace you.
So, how are we different. Well, if you’ve come here more than once, you’ve found out we’re not judgmental and not legalistic. That’s refreshing. But what do we believe? Let’s look at a few things today.
As a gay church that is, in fact, evangelical, we believe these things.
• Jesus really is God and Jesus really was a man. The Nicene Creed said, “fully God and fully man.” We work to keep these in balance and, brothers and sisters, it ain’t always easy. The fun-less fundies hugely emphasize the deity of Jesus which would be fine but they seriously understate his humanity. The left-wing crowd (theologically speaking, not politically) emphasize his humanity but discount his deity. The more extreme, of course, write off his deity – say he was just a prophet or a really good guy. Neither extreme works, both are, in fact, heresies. A heresy is a doctrine or dogma that has foundational roots in truth but is, in teaching or in emphasis, contrary to the original true teaching. This stuff, in theology, is called Christology – who do you say Jesus was? Now you start to know what we say here: fully God and fully man – knowing all sides of both. God incarnate became a man who was human, subject to all that we struggle with. Jesus gave up his God-status to be one of us so we could join with him to be made right with God.
• The Bible is God’s word, absolutely authoritative for all the issues of faith and practice and the definitive word about our relationship with God. The fighting fundies tell us it is inerrant, has no errors and made no mistakes on anything. This is an utterly absurd dogma, not because the Bible’s full of errors but the idea of inerrancy forces the Bible to be something it’s not supposed to be. The Bible reveals and declares God’s plan of redemption for humanity. It is not a science book. Science was unknown to people in the time of the Bible. Science is very, very useful. It tells how things happened and works with us to correctly understand how things happened. The Bible speaks about why things happened and the absurd battle between some myopic scientists and some defensive Christians for the past 150 years has shoved the church into a backwater so far that thoughtful people dismiss much of what it’s saying. So we can continue to debate the age of the universe and evolution and intelligent design and the relationship between humans and other species but we’re not going to do it from the pulpit of this church because it’s a gigantic distraction. What’s important is that the Designer, the Author and Architect of our faith, was and is at work to make us right and sacrificed His Son to dramatically notify us of that intention.
• Human beings are fallen but not evil and the route to restoration is the renewing of the individual’s heart. The ferocious fundies want all of us to behave just right and agree with them on everything and, if necessary, by God, they’ll legislate it. They don’t ever trust human nature or human impulse, they’ve gotta save us all from our own desires or, they often put it, from the attacks of Satan – by which they really mean ourselves. Hey, I am not dismissing evil, incarnate in the Devil or in individual impulses. Here’s my point. The fundamentalists want people to obediently behave correctly and think correctly and act correctly (according to them). The gospel leads us into a relationship with God so deeply rooted in love and grace that, over time, we come to a profound gratitude. And out of that gratitude we come to a place that any action that we commit or any thought we consider that offends the Lord, grieves our heart. I come to the place that I hate the thought of offending God. I still have freedom to sin, to screw around, I just hate to hurt Him who loves me so much.
A proper understanding of the gospel is one of balance. We still have to talk about grace and works, about spirit and law, more about human nature, this is just a start. I want us to get it right but not rigid. When I get to see God and Jesus face to face, I want God to tell me I told it to you right, but not that my being right was more important than your rights. Look at Jesus, he really respected people. The only ones who really ticked him off were the crowd who said they were talking for God but were separating the people from God. To them he said, “Bad news, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, it’ll be worse for you on the judgment day than for the people from Sodom and Gomorrah.” These are the ones Jesus warned you about – they’re still everywhere. Watch out for them but don’t let them spoil God’s love affair with you. God’s good news is way to important and you’re way too important to God.
Welcome back.
Thanks.
Pastor Nick