FOR A SEXUAL DISCERNMENT TO COME

Gerald Biesecker-Mast

A Coming Sexuality

I confess a desire for a sexuality of word and deed to come, not yet revealed, a sexuality of the new creation and a new humanity, a resurrection of body, soul, speech, and text in the reconciling love of Jesus. I yearn for the dark glass of this world through which we peer at one another to be washed clean, for mind and heart to be cleansed of the human stain, and for the new creation to burst forth.

I find support for such an apocalyptic desire in the teachings of Jesus, who preaches a resurrection without marriage and anticipates a wedding feast in which all of us are the bride (Matt. 22). I also find support in the writings of Paul, who refuses to naturalize any form of sex as ideal, instead associating all kinds of sex—including both heterosexual and homosexual relations—with the form of this world that is passing away (1 Cor. 6–7). The body of Christ, on the other hand, is identified with the world that is coming to be.

This coming body, this body of Christ—God’s body—destabilizes and subverts all other bodily relationships. This body, to which we as baptized members have been joined, is a peculiar body in which head and body have been superseded by the Godhead (Eph. 5).

Imagine a body that is female all the way up to the neck with a male head. Then sprouting from the male head is Christ. Which makes the male head look a bit like a female body. And then when we see God at the head of Christ, we see that Christ appears also as God’s body.

Is Christ male? Yes, insofar as he is the head. But if Christ is also God’s body, of which God is the head, then Christ is also figured as a female God-headed body. Likewise, the male head, insofar as it is headed by Christ, becomes part of Christ’s body—thus occupying the female position.

This is a great mystery, a harbinger of the resurrection body, neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave or free, a body to come, a sex to come, which is not one.

A Coming Discernment

My purpose thus far has been to gain some apocalyptic momentum for a brief deconstructive trek through the texts appearing in this issue of Dreamseeker Magazine. Rather than to critique or affirm these texts, I seek to discover in them the trace of a posture not yet recognizable, not yet speakable, a discernment on the way.

How might the coming reign of God show up in the texts of our moment? More specifically, how might the sex to come, the body to come, be made visible—even if only in a ghostly fashion—in texts which argue about homosexuality, in church debates and schisms about gay and lesbian covenanted relationships, in the sacrifices and disciplines taking place throughout the Mennonite church, even as we write and read?

The introduction by Michael King takes us on a brief tour of the texts that follow while seeking to establish a dialogical posture by which to evaluate the contrasting perspectives to be encountered.

We find ourselves immediately amid a drama in which the struggle to achieve "genuine conversation" is posed against various looming and experienced obstacles such as silence, exclusive concern for persuasion, reluctance to engage directly, desire for exchange only with like-minded people, and, perhaps most significantly, the social risks imposed by denominational dynamics and disciplinary proceedings.

The implication here is that "genuine conversation" would be significantly improved by the removal of these obstacles. At the same time, King acknowledges that for those who oppose homosexual relationships in the church, precisely the removal of these obstacles represents a profound threat to their posture: "The very act of wanting to discuss homosexuality tends to be viewed as radical—why do you want to talk about it if not to change things?"

Thus, King acknowledges here what is in fact the political and social significance of this Dreamseaker issue and of his desire for "genuine conversation." Far from being positioned somehow between two sides as a broker for "conversations across differences," King as editor and this issue he edits can be read as a highly political challenge, indeed a potential threat, to those who seek to maintain the status quo sanction against visible homosexuality in the church.

Furthermore, his advocacy for providing "safe places for genuine conversations," could very well be experienced as subverting the safe space the Mennonite church has established for normative heterosexuality, just as that heterosexual "safe space" threatens the experience of well-being and social affirmation that visible homosexuals seek. One is thus left to question whether there is (or ever could be) any such thing as a safe space for "genuine discussion across differences."

However, to note that the discussion launched in Dreamseeker Magazine is both political and risky is not a criticism or a failure of the project, but rather an acknowledgment of our inability to escape history and conflict. Indeed, it reminds us that all of us, however we experience threat and trauma in this discussion (and some experience it more painfully and unjustly than others of us), we are nevertheless called as Christians precisely to take up the cross and seek the reconciliation that Christ has already accomplished for us.

Having found in King’s introduction an unsettling acknowledgment of the risky terrain ahead, we move on to Loren Johns’ challenge to the church to live up to its complex confessional call for both homosexual celibacy and loving dialogue. The Johns text seeks to identify this official church position with a difficult middle location somewhere between "liberal reactionaries" who ignore the church’s call to celibacy and "conservative reactionaries" who ignore the church’s call to dialogue. He places himself firmly on the side of standing with the church, rather than "over against it in its ethical discernment."

Yet the movement in Johns’ text exceeds the simple identification of this "middle" ground with the church and suggests the radically "inclusive" potential of the Mennonite church official statements to which he refers. For, if we follow Johns’ argument, we see that it is not that the church’s authoritative texts simply make a call to accept both the church’s authority and to recognize the limits of that authority. Instead the texts quite clearly advocate both positions—celibacy and dialogue—as authoritative.

This leads to a highly complex posture with as yet unrealized ramifications which already begin to appear in Johns’ text. On the one hand, Johns claims that "the clarity of each call has been obscured by the presence of the other." On the other hand, Johns calls on church members to accept the authority of church discernment, as well as the limits of that authority. If we apply the latter claim to the former, we have in Johns’ reading of Mennonite confessions about sexuality the call to accept as authoritative the mutual obscuring of the demands for both celibacy and dialogue.

Furthermore, we have a call to accept the limits of that "obscure" twin call. Put differently, the church is called to a loving dialogue that obscures the call to homosexual celibacy. At the same time the church is called to loving dialogue about the limits and problems of loving dialogue. The church’s authority demands its own questioning, including the questioning of that questioning.

That means the circle of valid activities according to Johns’ reasoning includes those he would seem ready to exclude: reactionary conservatives who have "wrongly blacklisted certain individuals and congregations for contributing to dialogue on this issue" as well as reactionary liberals who have "wrongly . . . taken far too lightly the discernment of the church in calling for celibacy on the part of gays and lesbians."

On the one hand, it is hard to imagine such a radically inclusive circle being functional. On the other hand, does not the church as it is in fact constitute precisely such an impossible circle?

One faithful response to such an impossible situation is confess once again that Jesus Christ, not our own strategically developed organizational structures and polities, is Lord. Everett Thomas does this in a persuasive way by reminding us that both our creedal affirmations and the discernment process leading to such affirmations are rooted in the authority of Jesus Christ.

In so doing, Thomas locates the difficult, ambiguous, and "obscure" Mennonite church confessional claims about celibacy and dialogue, not simply in the authority of the church, but directly in the Christian theological conviction that Christ is the source of both truth and grace. More specifically, truth is identified with creed on the one hand, while on the other hand grace is identified with the historical consensus that produced the truth.

As I see it, the power of this recognition of both truth and its historicity, lies in what Thomas’ text implies but does not quite get around to saying. The historicity of truth undermines the creedal authority of any truth, and the creedal authority attached with a truth makes it difficult to recognize the truth’s historicity. Thus, to use the language from Johns’ article, the truth of creed and the grace of consensus "obscure" one another.

But here that obscurity is rooted in none other than Jesus Christ incarnated. As such, we cannot but recognize that our affirmation of Jesus’ Lordship—and thus of a commitment to both truth and grace—is not only an "absolute conviction" but also an obscure mystery, a christologically rooted impossibility. Holding on to both truth and grace, then, is not so much an embrace of mutually reinforcing postures but a destabilizing stance that opens us to what we are as yet unable to grasp.

Then here comes Weldon Nisly’s story, guiding our feet into the pain and suffering—the cross-bearing agony—of that impossible opening. This is a moving story and in its narration resonates with many gospel and Anabaptist points of reference, including the memory of the sixteenth-century forebears who dared to dissent from the religious authorities in Rome and Zürich.

With such a heroic and inspiring horizon in view, it may seem impertinent or disrespectful to ask about the political force of Nisly’s story. Yet, as should be apparent thus far, I do not see politics as somehow a "fall" from grace or humanity, but rather the sign of the human historical circumstance in which the gospel appears.

In Nisly’s story, the familiar discursive landmarks of confessional assertion, on the one hand; and dissenting action, on the other hand, appear once again on the horizon. For Nisly, his decision to engage in dissenting action becomes a struggle to make his actions signify as "obedience to God" rather than "rebellion against the church." The venue for this "obedience" is what Nisly calls the "pastoral task," which he defines as follows: "to be inclusive without letting homosexuality be the defining, consuming, or dividing issue of the church."

This is a worthy goal; at the same time, the story of pastoral obedience Nisly tells only barely manages to provide cover for the highly political choices he is nevertheless making in the story. We learn for example that the Seattle Mennonite Church has never reached consensus on the issue of including those in same-gender relationships and that members of the church have expressed to Nisly "their delight or distress about our being too inclusive or not inclusive enough."

Between these two claims about lack of consensus and multiple viewpoints we find two casual observations that the Seattle church has sent representatives to the Brethren Mennonite Council or Supportive Congregations Network meetings and that the congregation expressed written opposition to the statement on homosexuality included in the 2001 Membership Guidelines of Mennonite Church USA.

Finally, Nisly acknowledges that despite the absence of consensus (or as he puts it ever so carefully, "even as we have never sought consensus"), "we have lived with an implicit inclusion and more recently an explicit blessing for members in same-gender relationships."

Nisly’s account here describes almost perfectly the conundrum of "loving dialogue" noted earlier. In this congregation, ongoing dialogue without consensus in fact means including those in same-gender relationships as well as providing support to organized dissent against Mennonite Church USA policies on same-gender relationships. In the case of Nisly, the "pastoral task" seems to have become identified with the controversial blessing of same-gender unions.

The distress caused by this choice is indeed acknowledged by Nisly, although at the same time relativized by his observation that every choice open to him on this issue as a pastor was sure to cause hurt and pain. My reading of his story highlights the extent to which the phrases "pastoral task" and "obedience to God" in Nisly’s narrative cannot stave off the highly political "rebellion against the church" that his actions could not but be experienced as constituting.

Yet exactly in this "rebellion" or challenge to official policy, and not simply in his desire to be "obedient" is Nisly’s action precisely authorized by official Mennonite church confessions which require us to "mutually bear the burden of remaining in loving dialogue with each other in the body of Christ," and "take part in the ongoing search for discernment and for openness to each other." The rebellion of Nisly is a biblical rebellion, akin to the rebellions of Abraham, of Moses, of Rahab, of Rebekah— rebellions which also constituted sacrifices, often of those nearest and dearest, in obedience to the call of God.

At the same time, the actions of the Pacific Northwest Mennonite Conference can well be imagined as impossible actions, a seeking to be obedient that also constitutes a sacrifice. Is it possible that both the sacrifice of Weldon Nisly and the sacrifice of PNMC officials are flawed yet generous gifts to be received with fear and trembling and hope? Is it possible that these sacrifices could be the condition of possibility for reconciliation, and thus salvation?

In moving through the remaining essays, we find efforts to manage or negotiate the same kinds of discursive oppositions that we have thus far given considerable attention. C. Norman Kraus distinguishes between the irreversible chaos of Pandora’s box and the manageable disorder of Fibber Magee’s closet, aligning the gay and lesbian challenge to heteronormativity with the messy closet over the explosive box, but identifying the conservative reaction with the terror of the opened box rather than with the pragmatics of cleaning the closet.

John D. Roth astutely points to locations in Kraus’ text where his own rhetoric seems to reflect the very fear of which he accuses conservatives—thus calling into question the extent to which the Kraus text is able to sustain in its own rhetorical form the preference for Fibber over Pandora as the ruling metaphor. But Roth’s text, calling as it does for empathy and care from Kraus toward the conservatives, seems prepared to ditch such practices altogether when it comes to the place of gays and lesbians in the church in favor of a final discernment (or at least a discernment that settles matters for this moment, however long that moment lasts).

Put differently, Roth seems to be prepared to abandon that part of the church’s official confessional statements about homosexuality which calls for "loving dialogue," an "ongoing search for discernment," and "openness" in much the same manner that "dissenting" congregations are prepared to abandon the celibacy requirement for gays and lesbians. Roth then equates homosexuality with military service as practices that the Mennonite church historically opposes and about which the church may therefore have the right to announce a final discernment.

Here I must allow myself one declaration of bewilderment: How is it that the Mennonite church has reached a point of drawing a firm line in actuality against a practice (same-gender relationships) about which we have said ongoing loving dialogue is absolutely crucial while tolerating in actuality a practice (military or police service) about which we have never said that open dialogue was needed?

To be sure, Roth does not demand that the church end the dialogue on homosexuality, but the amount of his text imagining in a somewhat favorable light such an end seems to me at least to suggest the political leaning of his call to Kraus for more empathy toward those who fear the gay Pandora. This desire for a final discernment (or at least sympathy for such a desire) in Roth’s text seems to overshadow his affirmations of genuine conversation, more empathy, and cross-cultural exchange. (This takes place in much the same way as we have already noted the call more broadly for open dialogue and celibacy, consensus and creed, obscure one another).

As we consider Everett Thomas’ claim that rules help discernment, we return again to the trenches. We are reminded of the suspension of Nisly’s credentials that took place under MC USA membership guidelines. We are reminded of the decision by Allegheny Conference to find the practices of Hyattsville Mennonite Church inconsistent with the membership guidelines. We are reminded of the decision of Camp Friedenswald’s board to exclude programs for gays and lesbians.

And as I write, a gathering of Allegheny Conference delegates has just voted to discipline Hyattsville by taking away their voting rights and by denying all members of their congregation the right to serve Allegheny Conference or MC USA in elected positions.

These conference actions and the sorrowful experiences that resulted from these actions demonstrate how rules, even when they work, not only produce decency and order but also suffering and division.

The only barely veiled pain of seemingly necessary rules which appears in Thomas’ text rightly sends us to the Scriptures and to more personal narratives, for which I experience profound gratitude. Thank you, God, for the journeys of Mary Schertz and Ruth S. Weaver and Paul Lederach. Thank you for the ways in which their minds have changed and for the ways that our minds can change.

Thank you for the tribulations that confront our easy assumptions and accepted creeds. Thank you for the church from which many of us learned that homosexuality was wrong and then from which we learned that this assumption has caused so much pain and grief. And then from which we learned that our reconsideration of this assumption offends many and threatens to divide the church, just when we were beginning to be blessed by the gifts of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.

Thank you for the desperate hope that many of us still have that the church will be able to discover a new thing amid your grace and glory and through the body of Christ. Thank you for Mary Schertz’s immersion in Scripture, for her discovery and embrace of multiple biblical voices, and for the voice of hope that she offers and that we need.

Thank you for Ruth Weaver’s conversation with Martin Lehman, the mountains of truth through which she has traveled, and her desire for growth and new perspectives. Thank you for the biblically rooted confession of Paul Lederach that in Jesus Christ neither heterosexuality nor homosexuality is anything; but a new creation is everything.

Thank you for Marlin Jeschke’s recollection of a time before our affections had been so neatly divided into heterosexual or homosexual identities, for his call to selflessness in sexual life, and for his distress at the cultural subversion of stable families and the moral integrity of both heterosexual and same-sex relationships.

And thank you for the desires of Michael King for genuine conversation, of Loren Johns to stand with the church in its complex call to celibacy and dialogue, of Everett Thomas for grace and truth, of Weldon Nisly for pastoral integrity and loving obedience to the God of peace, of Norman Kraus for discerning recontextualization, and of John Roth for cross-cultural empathy and settled decisions.

Thank you too for those who will never read these texts, for those who are fearful of such texts, and for those who will read these texts and be offended. God bless us all.

A Coming Body

How we long to exceed the bounds of our historical quandaries, to find perfect communion with the other, to leave our bodies for an unearthly harmony of spirit and meaning! Yet is not the meaning of the incarnation the great good news that we are being saved in our bodies, in our history, in precisely our conflicts and sufferings? The church, with all its divisions, heresies, and excommunications, is the flawed human instrument through which the reign of God and the coming creation is being revealed.

On the horizon an apparition is taking shape. A transgendered body with many heads and several minds, this figure horrifies and fascinates. As we beloved members of Christ’s body look more closely, we might see that we are gazing at a distorted reflection in the dark glass through which we look. The apparition is us—we who have been washed in the blood of the lamb and gathered from every tribe and nation in anticipation of the Lamb’s wedding feast. The Spirit and the bride say, "Come" (Rev. 22:16).

—Gerald Biesecker-Mast, Bluffton, Ohio, is Associate Professor of Communication at Bluffton University and author of Separation and the Sword in Anabaptist Persuasion: Radical Confessional Rhetoric from Schleitheim to Dordrecht (Cascadia Publishing House, 2006).