Less than the gospel is not the gospel

As headlines go, this one was a doozy: "Manhattan church evicted for preaching the Bible."

The blog post was about The Gallery Church in New York. The church recently was asked to leave the space it had been renting from a restaurant. I'll let Denny Burk, the author of the blog, explain why:

Last April, I preached at a church in New York City called The Gallery Church. It’s a small evangelical congregation meeting in a restaurant right in the heart of Manhattan. Pastor Freddy T. Wyatt had planned a series on sexuality and gender, and my contribution was on the meaning of marriage.

A few weeks after my part in the series, another speaker brought a message on what the Bible teaches about homosexuality. As a result of that message, the owners of the restaurant informed The Gallery Church that they could no longer meet in their establishment.

I'll state right now that I don't know exactly what the sermon said, though it's probably safe to guess that the message wasn't "It's OK to be gay; God made you that way." It's possible that the sermon included suggestions like "The compassion of Christ is boundless, and being gay is no barrier to have a relationship with God."

And I definitely feel frustrated on account of Freddy T. and the others of his church who found themselves out of a space they (presumably) had planned to be in for a while. I feel for them, but I’m not sure I see much cause for the outrage I'm seeing in Burk's post.

Here's how the situation appears to have unfolded. First, the Gallery Church had a sermon in which it outlined a "tough stand" on homosexuality. Second, management at the restaurant, which is based in New York and must be mindful of its the views of its customers, decided it would be bad business to be associated with the views expressed in that sermon, and asked them to leave.

If a church wishes to espouse a view it can expect others will object to, but chooses to espouse that view anyway, there’s no cause for complaint when that backlash comes. In fact, when it comes to more serious matters, like the actual gospel itself, Jesus told his followers to expect not just pushback but actual persecution, and the biblical authors enjoined their readers to count it joy to suffer for the gospel.

The gospel, it's worth noting, is not a moral standard. It's a message of reconciliation between God and humanity, and among humanity. It led to the early Christians being persecuted for a number of reasons, not just because they didn't worship the official gods, but also because they stopped paying as much attention to social niceties about whom to eat and drink with, and crossed all sorts of social lines.

So I have to challenge the notion that the Gallery Church was evicted for preaching the Bible. Homosexuality is barely a footnote in the Bible. Given that telling people “Your lifestyle is a horrible sin” is going to alienate people, and given that the message of Jesus and the Apostles was not “You are sinner” as much as “God is calling all people to be reconciled to him through his son, who has risen from the dead,” I don’t think this reaction indicates any antipathy to Jesus or the gospel, as much as it does fatigue with the evangelical message of “You are a sinner and deserve to go to hell.”

Most of American society is familiar with the evangelical message on homosexuality, as it has been proclaimed many times by many people, from many pulpits. What’s lost, because we never get around to saying it, is Jesus’ message of, “I’d like to come have dinner with you. Does this Friday work for you?” or “I’m sorry your parents told you that you couldn’t live in their house anymore when you told them you were a lesbian. Do you need a place to stay?” or even “Want to watch the new Superman movie with me?”

Try a message like that, and people just might start beating the door down to come to church.

Copyright © 2013 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Knowing your own voice

It happened late last Wednesday night as we were driving along a country road that seemed to be a thousand miles from anywhere. The girls in the backseat asked where we were, and my wife answered: “Driving through Whykickamoocow.”

Whykickamoocow. It's a word my wife picked up from me, and a word I picked up living in New Zealand 25 years ago. It means “out in the middle of nowhere,” but it says it so much more picturesquely than “Podunk” or “the boonies,” and it says so without the condescension in those other two phrases. It's one of a handful of linguistic and behavioral tics I've held onto all these years that still say how much my AFS experience meant to me.

I keep thinking of language as a way to communicate with other people. That Wednesday night I realized, that's not the whole story. My words aren't just how I communicate, they're my voice. They literally are a record of where I have traveled and the experiences I have had. They show who I am.

I grew up outside Pittsburgh in the 1970s and 1980s. You won't hear me say “warsh,” except as a joke; my parents both came from outside the area, and as a consequence, the added R always has sounded wrong to me. Still, you can be sure I'll order a hoagie if we go to Subway together, and I just might wash it down with some pop.

And if yunz tell me that “Kennywood's open,” I know you want me to check my zipper, because you sure aren't talking about the amusement park.

I lived in New Zealand for all 1987, and it left its mark on me in ways other than having a pastoral word for remote locations. Thanks to the relentless teasing of my younger brother, I no longer use British words like “boot” and “bonnet” for the rear and front of the car. On the other hand, I still pronounce my host country's name as New Zilland.

Also, to this day I will not let anyone in my family eat a kiwi. A kiwi is a small, flightless bird, and a Kiwi is a native New Zealander. Those green fruits with a brown skin? Those are called kiwifruits. Calling them kiwis in my presence is a big no-no.

For that matter, I'm as likely as not to remind my girls that they need to wear their gumboots when they go outside during the rain.

After I graduated college, I moved to Haiti, where I lived and worked with a cast of missionaries from the Twin Cities. In their company, I learned to stop asking “Do you want to come with me?” and just ask people, “Do you want to come with?”

Among its many other gifts, Haiti itself gave me my first second language. From Haitian Kreyol I took the word “degaje,” meaning “to make do with what you have.”

I use that word often; my children also hear other phrases with stunning regularity: Ban-m men ou when I want them to give me a hand before we cross the street, or Tann ti momann, oui, when I want them to wait a moment.

And none of this even considers the bits of accent that flavor my speech and the speech of my children.  Sometimes, but usually only when we've been visiting her friends or her brother, I can hear the Southwest in my wife's voice. Often I've heard the city in the tones and cadences of my daughters' speech.

The way we speak can speak worlds about where we come from and where we've been. And as my wife inadvertently demonstrated last week, our words even can say something about whom we've been with and the company we keep.

Do you ever wonder what your words reveal about you?

Copyright © 2013 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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