Final Court Of Appeal

Final Court of Appeal

By:  Episcopalian priest Cynthia Bourgeault

The Episcopal Church is a member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion based in the United States with dioceses elsewhere. It is a mainline Christian denomination with over a 1,835,931 baptized members within the US. 

 Today I would like to offer some thoughts from Episcopalian priest Cynthia Bourgeault a faculty member  of  “The Center For Action and Contemplation” located in New Mexico.   I believe she poses an important question for discernment.   “What does the Bible say about sexual orientation?”  

As a Christian, may I suggest that we are bound, when I listen to this diversity of biblical voices, to set my compass by the teachings and the path walked by Jesus himself?  Where biblical testimony is internally inconsistent (and even Jesus experienced it this way!), I am bound to honor Jesus as my final court of appeal.  Would you not agree?  And thus, the bottom line must inescapably be that nowhere does Jesus condemn gays or lesbians (or any other person identified in the diverse range of LGBTQ+), and certainly nowhere does he wish harm upon anyone, even those whom the religious culture is so quick to condemn as sinners.  His harsh words are reserved entirely for those whose certainty about their religious rectitude causes them to condemn others. Jesus is all about inclusion, forgiveness, and empowerment.  In the light of his compassionate presence, people are set free to live their lives in strength and hope, regardless of whether they be considered outcasts by those in the “religious know.”

There’s a part in each one of us that would prefer the certainty of an unchanging rulebook to the radical open-endedness of God’s ongoing self-revelation in love.  But as a Christian, when confronted by a tension between a religious certainty which leads me to violate the law of love and a deep unknowing that still moves in the direction of “loving my neighbor as myself,” (Matthew 22:39) I am bound to choose the latter course. 

“I will be what I will be” is the name God asked Moses to know God by in the book of Exodus (3:14).  With that as one line of bearing on my thinking, and the steadily increasing revelation of God’s mercy and compassion as the other, I am compelled by my Christianity to refrain from any behaviors or judgments which arrogantly demean the dignity of another human being or cause them to lose hope.