Welcoming the ragamuffins (2 of 3)

  (A continuation of my last blog post, we are all ragamuffins)

   When Jesus was walking the earth during His ministry, He hung out with a lot of people that were the "ragamuffins" of that time. The woman at the well, publicans, lepers, prostitutes. He hung out with people that everyone else would shun. People that we would have shunned..... people that we do shun.

  From reading the Gospels, I believe I am right on this: If Jesus was walking among us today, He wouldn't be hanging out at our churches and fellowship halls. He'd be hanging out with the drug addicts, drunkards, prostitutes, homosexuals, the poor. He'd be going to AA meetings, hanging out in mental hospitals, be going to places like Exodus International, had they not shut down. He'd be in the ghettos, skid row, wherever there are hurting people who need Him.

  We have groups of people who we want to avoid and who we look down on. Perhaps the one we look down the most and don't want in our churches are the homosexuals. Its one sin we have made worse than others. Is it any wonder they hate Christians so much?

  Just in my church alone, I have heard some stuff that would scare any gay person that was there and heard:
  Once a speaker referenced gay people from the front, I can't remember the context. A man seated behind me leaned up and muttered "they need to round up all the queers and hang them"
  Another time, my Sunday School class was doing a different social issue all month, and one Sunday was the issue of homosexuality. There were a few people making some pretty mean comments, but two especially said things like "the perverts", "I'd rather have my kids around a murderer, than around one of THEM." And they had other similar comments. Ironically, one of them was later caught in an  immoral scandal that hurt his family.

  If we have these attitudes toward gay people and other sinners whose sins we view worse than ours, is it any wonder the church is becoming irrelevant to the world? That sinners won't darken our door?

  How would you react if a friend sat across from you and told you they were cheating on their spouse? That they were gay? That they were addicted to pain killers? That they were an alcoholic?  Would you love them, or run for it? Would you keep their confidence, or tell people? Would you be Jesus to them, or kick them while they were down?

  It is said of Christians, that we shoot our wounded. What a sad statement, but all too often, that is the case. I shared the following story in a previous blog post, but it goes along well with this idea of ragamuffins in the church, and of shooting our wounded. Southern Gospel singer Kirk Talley told it on a live CD:

There was a young man who attended a fairly large church where he played a guitar on the worship team. He was struggling with same-sex attractions, and went to his pastor about it. His pastor seemed understanding and I think said he'd pray for him. The next service came. While the young man was on the platform with the worship team, the pastor told of his coming to him about his same-sex attractions - in front of the whole church - then turned to the young man and said something along this line: "Get out of my church and don't come back. We don't want your kind here."

  Talk about shooting the wounded, and not making ragamuffins welcome. What a sad commentary for a pastor, and for anyone who sat there and just watched that young man walk out of the church.

  Not all churches are like that. I ran across a blog a while back that I keep up with, as its a very encouraging blog. The young man who writes it struggles with same-sex attractions, and has been fortunate to find a church who loves and accepts him. What if all churches were like that? Instead of shunning sinners whose sins aren't the "nice ones" we are comfortable around, that we'd welcome them and love them to Jesus.

  Andrew's post is a bit long, but its worth reading, so I am putting it here. He raises some good points. No church is exempt from having people who struggle with this issue. Yes, yours also. The chances of you personally knowing a person dealing with it are higher than they are of you not knowing. Its one sin and issue the church has made so bad, that the people in our churches who are dealing with it are scared to death to tell anyone. How would you react if someone told you?

To my Calvary Family:
It’s good to be here this morning with friends and family. As we have been wading through what God has to say about our human sexuality, we’ve reached a topic of conversation that we as a community do not engage with very often: Homosexuality.

I have not often talked about this topic outside of close friendships, but when I heard that Calvary was spending time trying to better understand those who experience life as a “sexual minority” I felt that I needed to contribute.

I am one of you. I worship with you, serve with you, rejoice with you, celebrate with you, and weep with you. However, I am also gay.

I did not choose my sexual orientation. I did not choose to only be attracted to people of my same gender. However, this is the experience I found myself in as I entered into puberty and started growing into an adult.

As I fought through adolescence trying to ignore my growing attractions, I assumed this was something that would fall away as I grew into maturity. However, I was alone with my thoughts, feeling afraid that I could never be honest with anyone about this. The first time I came out to anyone was to my good friend Jeremy. When I finally said the words, that I was attracted to men and not to women, he showed me love and acceptance. He told me that he would always be there for me and that our friendship would not change because of this.
He helped me find the courage to talk about this with more friends and pastors. Despite great fear, I opened myself up to more believers that I trusted, and I found many loving people who accepted me and supported me. They gave me a great environment to keep processing my experience, and they stuck with me faithfully when I experienced the highs and lows of trying to figure out what it all meant.

As I stared into an unclear future I knew two things:
1) I was exclusively attracted to other men.
2) I desired to live a “normal” life with a wife and children.

Four years ago, I entered into professional counseling to talk about my conflicting desires, and hoping that maybe I could find the cause of them so I could deal with it and experience the “normal” life I wanted. A definitive “cause” never surfaced, and I don’t believe it ever will. I learned to let that part go. And, after much counseling, prayer, and reflection, I realized that my attractions were not changing. I also realized that I did not wish to bring a woman into what would surely be a complicated and difficult marriage.

I was faced with a choice of how I would live. I had grown up my entire life in the church. My convictions were strong. My faith was not simply a matter of the intellect, but was deeply rooted in my heart. Faith was not something I could simply “take off” or set aside. I continued to study Scripture and God affirmed the conviction I held that same-sex sexual relationships are not what God desires of us. In light of this, I found that the only decision I could make that would be consistent with my experiences and my faith would be one of celibacy.

Celibacy isn’t a word we use a whole lot these days. It is a ‘churchy’ word that means a person will not engage in any sexual intimacy for either a period of time or for one’s entire life. But I’ve also come to see that it’s a positive calling towards serving the Kingdom without the responsibility of a spouse. While a life of celibacy is what God has for all of us who are unmarried, it is not assumed that many believers will take on this burden for a lifetime. The assumption is that all will eventually get married and pursue a spiritually, emotionally, and physically intimate relationship with their spouse. But for me, I had to work on figuring out what it would look like to never pursue a sexual relationship with another. I had to face a future that would set me apart from my friends and peers:

I would never have that one person whom I cherished above all others.

I would not have that partner who walked with me through all of life’s good times and bad.

I was choosing a life where I would have few people to look to as my role model. I was choosing to spend many evenings alone. I was choosing to open myself up to a deep pain and loneliness that would be hard to combat no matter how strong my faith was. I still have times where it feels overwhelming to look ahead to my next 60 years. However, I have remained convinced that this is the life God has for me.

I will not lie to you. This is often a difficult road to walk, trying to be faithful to the Gospel’s demand on my life. We all are called to sacrifice much in order to best follow Christ. My sacrifice just happens to include sexual intimacy.

I have continued along this path as I have served among you and share life with so many of you. Several close friends have been there every step of the way. They’ve cried with me, encouraged me, welcomed me into their families, and allowed me to pour out onto them all the extra time and love I have to give.

Some of you may be wondering right now why I would feel the need to share so much of my story with everyone here today. Trust me when I say this was not a decision I came to lightly.
While I have several “safe spaces” where I can talk about the joys and sorrows of my life, the broader Church has been very much a “don’t ask, don’t tell” environment. I read a sermon this summer that explained this really well.

Pastor Dan Scott from Christ Church in Nashville preached on homosexuality back in June or July. Some of you may have read or listened to this same sermon as Pastor Bill and a few others shared it on Facebook. I appreciated the entire thing, but a couple of points really stuck with me. Allow me to highlight them:

“It would be far healthier for a church and its people if a homosexual person were able to appropriately reveal their struggle than to force him or her into a “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation. When congregations quietly accept a person’s contribution to their church while suppressing the reality of their struggle, it corrupts the integrity and witness of that church. It also creates denial mechanisms that disillusion individuals who grow up in that church.”

“The bottom line then is that many people we love are attracted to members of their own sex. Just like the rest of us, they struggle to live godly lives. If they are not welcome among us, or if we must shame them into an unreasonable silence about the nature of their struggle, we simply don’t have much to offer the world except condemnation. For all these reasons, we must become more mature in the way we deal with our friends, family and brothers and sisters in Christ who experience same-sex attraction.”

It’s as if what we communicate by our silence is that I will remain a welcomed part of this community as long as I don’t talk about this aspect of my life. I would not say that this is intentional, but it is an unhealthy dynamic that exists within the church. I came to see that one of the only ways to help make the church a safer place was to step up and speak. That’s why I’m up here sharing this morning. That’s why I’m opening myself up to answer any questions you all may have. I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll gladly share my heart with you all and keep the conversation going.

I stumbled upon this quote from Tim Keller last month and found it to be profoundly relevant as to why I felt I needed to share this morning.

“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything.”

Another great thing that I found was a blog post written by a man named Matt Jones. He recently came out publicly and wrote some beautiful articles about the reasons why he chose to begin talking openly. I found that I resonated with these reasons and wanted to share a few of them with you.

Matt says, “This isn’t just about me. There are still countless men and women whose knuckles turn white when the pastor mentions homosexuality because, suddenly, he’s talking about them, who feel like they are walking this path alone and are haunted by anxiety that someone may discover their secret. I know they are there because I’ve been one of them.”

He continues, “Living out of the closet as a celibate, gay Christian gives me the opportunity to speak to a world that has lost its mind when it comes to sex and relationships. The culture at large (including the Church) has drunk deep the lie that sexual activity is essential to being human and that true joy or flourishing are impossible to find outside of a romantic relationship.”

After all that, Matt says, “As I stand up and speak out, reminding the Church what it is called to and how it could love more fully those in and outside itself, the Church will do the same for me. I’m choosing to live openly because I love the Church too much to let it love LGBTQ people so poorly, and because I know that as I press into it I, too, will learn to love better.
“And so we will all become a little bit more like Christ, together.”

For ALL of these reasons, I felt it was important to help open up the dialogue at Calvary by sharing my story.
And to the Church family that has mentored me and encouraged me these last 12 years, thank you.
In Christ,
Andrew Asdell (original post here)

    Imagine a church where we could step up and admit this struggle, or some other struggle the church condemns us to silence on. Jesus welcomes all with open arms, should not the church do the same?

  What would happen if this young man came forward in your church? In mine? What about your family?

  I firmly believe there are more people dealing with all kinds of issues in our church who are afraid to admit it: homosexuality, marriage conflicts, addictions, depression, and the list goes on. Until we truly welcome the broken, the hurting, the sinner - no matter what his sin is - we will have hurting people in our midst who are going to keep on hurting until they give up or leave the church for one that will do them more good.

   One of my favorite stories in the Bible is when the woman caught in adultery was brought before Jesus. She had been caught in the sin, and the religious leaders were ecstatic to see what Jesus would do. They were all for stoning her. They may have even had stones in their hands, but Jesus said those words that took the wind out of their sails "let him who has no sin, cast the first stone." What if that took place in our church? Would we want to cast a stone at the adulterer, the alcoholic, the homosexual, the child molester? Or would we just show them the door and say as the Pharisee, "Thank God I am not like THEM."

  Is it not time to set aside the idea that we are all OK, and admit we have doubts, struggles, even sins? Is it not time to make the church a place for hurting people to come and get love and help, instead of condemnation and feeling the need to hide their struggle?

  There is a danger of people thinking God is like the church. I am afraid that has been some of my problem down through the years. My sin is so terrible that even God is disgusted, that He can never truly forgive me completely, and that I'd have to work at making Him love me......

  But the truth is God isn't like too many of His followers. He loves totally and completely. He is neither disgusted or disappointed in any of us, no matter what the sin or struggle. He forgives completely. The same drop of blood that will forgive a lie, will forgive the most horrific sins of murder, rape, etc. There are no limits to His grace and love. The church will put limits, but God never will. He welcomes all, and the ragamuffins are included just as much as Mother Theresa or the Apostle Paul.