WE'VE COME THIS FAR BY FAITH

Mary H. Schertz

T his is not a time in my life when I "have it together" regarding the issues of the church and same-sex unions. Nor is it a time when I am using "I don’t know where I am" language to avoid saying where I am.

Earlier I have been at all these places. When I first learned about homosexuality, as it was called then, I was fairly sure that it was wrong. It was at least strange and made me feel sort of breathless—as if I’d had the wind knocked out of me psychologically. Mostly I was ignorant—I was in college and then Voluntary Service those years. I cannot imagine today’s children being so ignorant so long, but it was a different era.

Later I was sure that homophobia was both sinful and a justice issue—and it was as imperative to eradicate as racism, sexism, or any other kind of "ism." Even at that time, I would not have equated a traditional understanding of same-sex unions as sin with homophobia. I made the same distinction that the Purdue and Saskatoon documents do.

Still, I understood accepting same-sex unions to be part of the package of learning and creating tolerance. The way seemed straightforward and, in most respects, the path appeared to be well-marked and well-trod by civil rights movements of one kind or another. The church needed to get on with the program on this issue as with so many others.

I still believe that homophobia is a sin and a justice issue. But I am less sure that the path for the church is well-marked on the broader issues of membership and same-sex unions.

For most of my career as a seminary professor, I have simply not stated an opinion. Sometimes I have said I did not know what I thought or that I could sympathize with the arguments from both sides.

I have mostly been honest in this equivocation, but I have also sometimes been afraid. In rare instances as a young professor, I was afraid of my seminary administrators, but in many more cases I have been afraid for my seminary administrators—and afraid for the seminary.

Personal fear, fear for my "voice" or for my career, has not been a large part of my experience. I think that I have a healthy respect for what the church can indeed do to individuals. But I also have, by whatever grace or good fortune, a healthy respect for my ability to survive and even thrive regardless of what the church does to me, whatever that means.

However, in light of the vitriol that has characterized the discussion at many levels—congregation, conference, denomination—I have for years felt safer just not saying much. The seminary is a sturdy institution. At the same time, we are very alive to our denominational ties. Despite our sturdiness and the great good will for the seminary in the denomination, we sometimes feel vulnerable. The volatility of the issues of church membership and same-sex unions has not been the only point at which we experience a measure of vulnerability, but it has been an abiding one over the course of my sojourn here at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. So I have taken refuge in silence—unsure in any case what I might have to contribute to the discussion.

The reason I am breaking that silence at this point has to do with a conversation Weldon Nisly and I had at the Bridgefolk gathering of Catholics and Mennonites at Eastern Mennonite University in July 2005. He essentially put before me a call. The seminary and seminary professors, he said, simply must speak—and listen—on this topic. We must dialogue with one another. We must create spaces where church leaders and members may converse with one another. He understood that the faculty members have a variety of opinions.

He understood that we do not have answers. He understood the difficulty and the risks. He was not anticipating any miracle, or indeed any specific outcome. He was not expecting that we would support his viewpoint, or indeed any viewpoint.

He was simply expressing trust that such an effort, costly as it might be, would in some way that we cannot foresee at this time bless the church and those who have committed themselves to Jesus and to walking in his way.

I was honored with his trust—and the pain and hope from which it springs. I do not know if a person who has not been through the vale that Weldon has walked could have moved me so. But he has, and he did.

In the spirit of Weldon’s call, then, let me say as simply and concretely as I can where I am on these issues.

Experience

Experientially, I have two anchors, two wellsprings of hope in this muddle. They are my classes and students on the one hand and my congregation on the other hand. The letters in our church periodicals, various denominational actions, rhetorical battles of one sort or another have been dispiriting. But actual discussions in the classroom and in the congregation, difficult enough, have been careful, respectful for the most part, and honest.

We have not come to agreement in any of these discussions. But I am grateful for each perspective, for what I have learned, and for how I have grown in these authentic and heartfelt conversations with students and fellow church members. These conversations are where I have experienced the Spirit, and they are the source of my belief that we can indeed move through this quandary to some better place with God’s help.

For a number of years, Perry Yoder and I taught a class on biblical perspectives on sex, power, and violence. In the various offerings of that class, we had students representing every imaginable position on same-sex unions. I think our focus on biblical texts rather than ourselves and our positions was the key factor in the character and tone of these discussions. We looked at all sorts of texts that had to do with human relationships before God. We asked all sorts of questions and looked at Scripture and ourselves with a view to what was life-giving as well as what was right and just. We looked at specific texts in light of each student’s and each instructor’s "top ten texts," the "texts without which I cannot live."

The gift my students and Perry gave me in the years we were doing that class was a conviction that this discussion does not have to be alienating. It can, in fact, help us all to grow toward God.

Another aspect of my experience was my moderating my congregation through a discernment process on same-sex unions that resulted in my congregation being disciplined (and then reinstated) in the Indiana Michigan Mennonite Conference. That process, both the discernment part of it and the conference relations part of it, was tough. It was tough on us as a congregation and on us as a conference. It was tough on me as a seminary professor and congregational moderator. That process brought us, a congregation that tends to be highly articulate, self-confident, and resourceful, to our knees before God in a new way.

However, that perhaps too infrequently assumed posture on our parts did not give us any answers, at least not any answers that resolved the issue or satisfied us all. We did come, by the grace of God, to a point where we could go on as a congregation, as a wounded and incomplete but nevertheless viable body of Christ.

I will always be grateful for that grace—and for the congregation. I learned that we have God and we have each other—and both realities transcend the challenges and opportunities the issue of church membership and same-sex unions put before us.

In all the muddle, we have survived—my beloved seminary, my equally beloved congregation, and I. We have not survived intact. We have losses and we have wounds. But we also have a kind of fitness of the soul. We may not be holy, but we are holier. We may not be wise, but we are wiser. We may not be as compassionate as we should be, but we are more compassionate than we were.

Bible

As a Bible scholar, I have also, through the muddle, amid the muddle, come to a position. It is a position that pleases no one and pretty much distresses everyone. Perhaps because of its innate unpopularity, perhaps because of the fear to which I spoke earlier, perhaps because it has never seemed to me to be particularly helpful, I have never articulated it very fully and will not do so here.

But in the interest of responding, however inadequately, to Weldon’s call, here is what I think. Unsatisfactory as this position may be to anyone else, it represents my best effort to be true to the biblical text from which I draw life.

I think there is more than one way to read the Bible with integrity on this issue. There is more than one way to live a faithful Christian life in realtion to this particular aspect of our humanity and sexuality.

I think that one can read the Bible and, with integrity and sound exegetical and theological judgment, come to the conclusion the Mennonite church has articulated in its 1995 Confession of Faith—that sexual union belongs within marriage between a man and a woman and that membership in Christ’s body carries the expectation of that practice. Many people have articulated that position—none better or with more pastoral concern than my colleague Willard Swartley.

I also think that one can read the Bible and, with integrity, strong exegesis, and sound theological judgment, come to a conclusion that the Mennonite church does not espouse. That conclusion has not been very fully articulated, at least from a Mennonite perspective, although some of the authors in To Continue the Dialogue (Pandora Press U.S., 2001) make a significant contribution, as have colleagues and students in biblical studies over the years.

If I were to articulate this construct carefully, I would begin with the texts that admit eunuchs and Gentiles to the covenant. I would then relate this dynamic both to the larger thematics of the canon (holiness, love, reconciliation, atonement, and so on) and to the specific texts on sexuality.

I think, although perhaps it is too soon to tell, that this work would lead us to recognize that sexual union between covenanted, monogamous same-sex partners may also glorify God and that the body of Christ would be enriched and blessed by such couples.

Where Does This Get Us, If Anywhere?

I wonder sometimes whether the church can hold both these positions within its body. I only know that, however uncomfortably, I can and do hold both these positions in tension within myself. But that is not the source of my hope. The source of my hope is that we have as a congregation, a conference, and a denomination, thus far at least, held both these positions—one sanctioned and one not sanctioned—within our communion. And God has been alive in our midst.

Beyond our own congregational, conference, and denominational success in holding together thus far, the source of my hope is more fundamentally my baptism. Whatever else my baptism at too young an age meant or failed to mean, I was clear then and have remained clear that I was baptized both into a congregation and into the church universal.

There are far greater differences in the church universal than this one we are so painfully experiencing. Yet we all remain children of God and, despite countless divisions, at some level we know and recognize the essential unity of the church. We know and recognize each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

It has been a hard journey these past years as we have struggled together to discern our way. Not everything we have done and said to and about each other has glorified God. There is ample room on all our parts for confession. But we’ve come this far by faith. And God is with us yet. Whom shall we fear?

—Mary H. Schertz, Elkhart, Indiana, teaches New Testament at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary and directs the Institute of Mennonite Studies there.