HOMEPAGE MY PROFILE ESSAY ARCHIVE MESSAGE BOARDS CALENDAR
A Wedding that Changed a Community
The couple stood holding hands before the altar where they would soon take their vows to “love, honor and cherish” each other forever. The congregation was in place ready to witness these vows and filling almost every seat. The organist was playing the music associated with “Holy Matrimony.” Everything was ready. This much anticipated event was about to take place. Before the wedding itself began, I delivered the homily to the couple, whose names are Alister and Michael, and to the congregation.
The place was an Episcopal Church in Highlands, North Carolina, located on the map near the point where both South Carolina and Georgia touch the Tar Heel state. A hundred years ago this area was the home of country music, hellfire and damnation preaching and illegal distilleries that made and sold a beverage called “Moonshine.” Over the last century, however, this area has been transformed into a resort where wealthy southerners have built magnificent summer homes in which they can escape the heat and humidity. The elevation of Highlands guarantees long, comfortably warm and beautiful summer days, followed by cool and crisp nights. Housing developments have been built all over the area, usually around a magnificent eighteen-hole golf course, a country club to which all home owners belong and a lake created by damming up a stream flowing through a valley until it has flooded countless acres. These homes all have incredible views, high ceilings, magnificent balconies, open fireplaces and sometimes even elevators. Their selling prices would start well beyond one million dollars. Some owners in retirement now live here year round, but the majority are still May to October residents. Most restaurants in Highlands do not remain open all year. It is primarily a southern summer resort. Most of these residents reflect the conservative religious and political attitudes of the Deep South. This would surely be a majority Republican stronghold. It would not, however, reflect the “Tea Party” type of Republicanism. These people are too bright, too successful and too genteel to be unthinking ideologues. Of necessity, their careers have required that they engage the real issues and the real world of the twenty-first century. They are not angry, southern, bitter-enders. The romance of the “Gone with the Wind” era is still in the distant background, but all recognize it as a relic of history, not as the wave of the future.
The summer residents have built artistic and intellectual resources into their community’s life. They sponsor a series of concerts made up primarily of chamber music quartets and ensembles that feature incredible guest soloists on such instruments as the clarinet, the violin, the harp and the French horn. This music program, planned and directed by a brilliant pianist, who performs with the Atlanta Symphony during the rest of the year, plays to sellout audiences and has for the last 40 years.
They have also developed a set of public lectures to engage and challenge the minds of these very bright people with new ideas presented by a host of nationally known experts. For a number of years, this lecture series included groundbreaking thought in the field of theology and scripture scholarship beyond what even many seminaries are willing to offer. It is an altogether exciting and charming town in which the New South has been laid over the foundation of the Old South. I have been privileged to be an invited lecturer in this community annually for at least a decade. In that capacity, Christine and I have gotten to know its residents well. Among our many close friends was this couple. Alister is a member of an old South, elite Mississippi family. Michael is a member of a prominent Italian family in New York City. Both have been quite successful in their separate careers. Both are also open and proud gay men, who have lived together as partners for 38 years.
Their home is one of the area’s most exquisite, having cultivated the side of a mountain into a beautiful garden. They have also by their leadership in both their community and their church won the love and respect of their neighbors. A new priest, warm, intelligent and sensitive, came a few years ago to be the rector of their church. He was not reticent about affirming their life together. Added to that was the recent decision by the United States Supreme Court opening the institution of marriage to all Americans. Since it was now possible and legal and since their priest was now supportive, they decided to get married in their parish church this summer. I was invited by them and their rector to perform the actual marriage and to deliver the sermon at the ceremony. Their rector would assist in the wedding and be the celebrant for the wedding Eucharist. For this community and for this church, it would be a first; perhaps it would be a first for all of Western North Carolina. So the people gathered with both joy and some apprehensiveness. They knew that by their very presence here, they were doing a new thing and that by sharing in this experience they would create a new community.
So I addressed the couple and that assembly with these words:
“There is incredible joy in this church today. It comes from many sources. There is always joy in love and love has drawn Alister and Michael to each other for many years. Love has also drawn us to them and that is why this church is filled with guests and worshippers. There is also great joy, that we, as citizens of this nation and as Christians in this church, can do here today what deep down we know is right.
“This conviction of rightness has been a long time in coming. There was so much fear of, ignorance about and prejudice against gay and lesbian people that our society had witnessed lots of organizations being formed to “cure” homosexual people. All of these were fraudulent; their “cures” never worked. A cure can be achieved only if the diagnosis is correct. No cure can be achieved if the diagnosis is wrong.
“Homosexuality is not a disease. It never has been; it never will be. Sexual orientation is not a lifestyle of choice. It is an expression of one’s being. Homosexuality is not something one does, it is something one is. In the struggle to overcome this prejudice, the Bible has been quoted with regularity to prove that homosexual people were “sinful.” Most of these quotations came from the book of Leviticus. People used that ancient biblical text as a weapon to justify both their prejudice and their hatred.
“None of those who claimed this literal Bible as their authority would ever have gone to a doctor who practiced medicine out of a medical textbook written when the Bible was written. They know that the world changes and that knowledge grows. They certainly had not chosen to abide by any of the other literal mandates from Leviticus.
“They do not eat kosher food prepared in a kosher kitchen. They do not put to death those who worship a false god. They do not propose the death penalty for those who have sex outside of marriage. They do not treat epilepsy and mental illness as if they resulted from “demon possession.” On the issue of homosexuality, however, they insisted on quoting this ancient text literally whenever it appeared to justify their prejudice, give substance to their fears or affirm their ignorance. In the process of doing these things, well-meaning, but uninformed, people actually turned Christianity from being a source of life into being an instrument of oppression and death. They apparently did not notice that in the gospels there is the universal invitation of Jesus: “Come unto me all ye,” he said, not “some of ye.” They do not recognize that the promise of the Johannine Christ was abundant life for all. Abundant life never results from rejection and the withholding of love. They did not listen when they sang the hymn: “Just as I am, O Lamb of God, I come.” Perhaps this essential biblical inclusiveness finally broke through their prejudice, causing their eyes to be opened to the reality that love always enhances life, while hatred and fear never do anything other than to replicate themselves. “Of course, some saw this more quickly than others. Justice Anthony Kennedy saw it more quickly than Justice Antonin Scalia, both of whom were Ronald Reagan appointees to the Supreme Court. Some churches saw it more quickly than others. Some politicians and other leaders also saw it more quickly than others, but once the vision became clear to a few, the movement in our society was rapid. Today, homophobia is dying across the world. That undoubted fact is part of the joy in this church today.
“Everyone who has come to this service today will be changed. Expect that! This church after today will never be the same, nor will this community or region. In this service we are walking into a new place in our consciousness. Love has triumphed over fear and hate. Open yourselves to this reality and rejoice in it. Give thanks for your own journey out of the darkness of prejudice into light and love. We thank Alister and Michael for their role in guiding us to a new understanding of what it means to be human, for that is what the two of them have done this day. Michael and Alister, as the two of you have blessed us with your friendship and love, so in this service, in the name of God, under the authority of the Supreme Court, and according to the laws of the state of North Carolina we bless you and recognize you as married partners. Those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder.”
John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.
Question & Answer
Ann Drew Burke at a series of lectures in Toronto, Ontario, asked:
Question:
What are angels?
Answer:
I can tell you something about where and when the concept of angels developed in western Christianity, but I am not sure whether I, or anyone else, can ever define the word. Nor do I know whether these described beings are real or are figments of our imagination. I hear people talk about their “guardian angels” watching over them and I have no idea of what those words means to them. All lives seem to me to have to navigate through pain and tragedy with some regularity, so having a “guardian angel” does not seem to me to be of much help. We use the word “angel” rather loosely. I am quite convinced, for example, that I married an angel and that our four daughters are angels, to say nothing of our three granddaughters, but I suggest that such a statement is more the description of a subjective feeling that it is an objective statement of reality.
The word “angel” itself comes from a transliterated Greek word, which means literally a messenger. Any crucial advice that one got from a messenger came to be thought of as a message from God. Then the messenger himself or herself began to be thought of as speaking with the voice of God. In time a supernatural dimension was added to the meaning of the messenger and thus he or she came to be called “an angel.” To the degree that these creatures were literalized and then defined as if they were themselves supernatural represented an alien influence on Judaism and actually compromised the Jewish claim that divinity was monotheistic.
In Jewish mythology, Satan was an angel serving in in God’s court in the book of Job, but later he came to be thought of as a “fallen angel,” and ultimately as “the devil,” which reflected, I believe, the Zoroastrian dualism of ancient Persia.
If I think of angels at all, I think of them as nothing more than human beings through whom I receive enlightenment or insight, which is so valuable to me that I call it a gift from God. That is not a supernatural assertion so much as it is a suggestion that understanding, insight and second sight comes to us from beyond ourselves.
I hope these random thoughts help. I am so engaged in the task of dealing with the reality of human concerns in this world that I spend little time trying to discover truth about beings that are not human or who are thought to inhabit a realm that is not of this world.
I loved doing the series of lectures in Toronto at the College Street United Church of Canada recently. Thank you for being there.
John Shelby Spong
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