Jesus knows relationships are hard. He struggled with the relationship with his disciples. They would get it, they wouldn’t. They’d do something great and inspiring, and then turn around and do something idiotic.

Jesus struggled with the relationship with other religious people. His strongest words were for the religious. He never directs it toward the outcast, marginalized, oppressed, or “sinner.” It is always toward the religious.

In our Matthew text, Jesus addresses the crowd and reminds them of the ways of life and death that God has given them in the Torah. He reminds the crowd of their calling, and then he makes it harder. He reminds people of their relationship between God and their neighbor.

You have heard it said… but I say to you…

Jesus reminds the listener of their relationship with the law and of their relationship with their neighbor. I want to be clear as day before I move onto another relationship we must address. I’ve spent a lot of time sitting with Jesus on these teachings. I hear him reminding us of the tradition that propels us forward from that we heard in Deuteronomy.

God has laid out the commands, by loving the Lord your God and walking in God’s ways you shall live and God will bless you. God continually reminds us that we have the choice of life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life. Choose blessing. So that in loving the Lord your God, you may have a long life.

Right relationship with God. Right relationship with neighbor.

I sat with Jesus all last week, and he reminded me of yet another relationship. There is a relationship of words and context. The relationship between what is said, and the context of where it was said. If I were to say “Put your hands up!” at a concert, it would be received much better than if I said that at the bank. Context matters. The relationship between what we say, and where we say it. Jesus is waking me up to the law and how God wants me to live. It’s about reconciling relationship. “You shall not murder” is also about recognizing the little murders we commit when we judge one another. When we call names. When we get fired up over the wrong things and harm one another. Those are tiny murders that go unnoticed.

Jesus says don’t be angry. I must confess to you that I am angry. I’m angry at the state of the world. I’m angry that I’m trying to be a person of integrity in a nation that doesn’t seem to value it. I’m angry with my neighbor. Not my neighbor in general, like you, but my very next door, first-stop-on-the-Halloween-trek neighbor and her views on LGBTQ+ folk. I’m also angry with myself. I am like the Apostle Paul when he wrote in Romans 7:15 I don’t understand what I am doing. For I don’t practice what I want to do, but instead do what I hate. We put on band aids when we physically bleed. But what do we do when we’re mentally bleeding?

This anger is no good. It will hurt relationships. It will get between me and my neighbor and me and my God. And we cannot pretend that just going to church is going to take care of it. We need transformative steps to end the violence we do to ourselves and our loved ones with our thoughts and words. Seek reconciliation. Talk to a therapist. Address your anger. If you have a problem with a sister or brother, leave your gift at the altar and reconcile and then come and offer your gift. This is why we start our worship with the passing of the peace.

Restore the relationship between you and your neighbor and then come to God. For God is much more ready to meet us and offer us reconciliation than we ever are. I have gone to therapy to help me offer that grace to myself and with those with whom I am angry.

Some of my anger may come from the fact that I am a child of two divorces, my parents’ and my grandparents’. The text from Matthew is a text of terror. It was used by a priest to condemn my mom to hell when I was in 4^th grade. That was the first crack in my relationship with organized religion. Especially with that priest.

Jesus is saying “whoever divorces his wife…” This is addressed to men. Men who could marry multiple women. Men who had sole possession of property, wealth, and power. Men who held the power to divorce, not women. Men who could divorce callously, and the woman could either starve, go into prostitution or try to marry someone else. Jesus’ teaching is directed toward the men, not the divorced women. The priest missed that. Context matters.

My friend and colleague the Rev. Heidi Carrington Heath stated, “Jesus died and rose again that we might have new life and have it more abundantly. Jesus did not die that we might stay in relationships where our souls are dying and neither person can live fully into the human being that God created us to be. You are loved and beloved.”

If you had to end a relationship because you found it was not equal and you grieved the decision and it was not made callously, you will hear no condemnation from this pulpit or from God. If there is still anger in your heart, then there is still work to do. Forgiveness is still needed.

What you’re saying in forgiveness is that what happened is so not okay that you refuse to be associated with it anymore. You can love someone from a distance. Sometimes divorce is the best option and leads to healing and wholeness.

I say this because I’m considering a divorce. Not between Kate and I. But between myself and a hateful branch of Christianity.

Last Sunday, I was featured in an article in the Akron Beacon Journal.[1] It was about my neighbor and me. There was an ordinance passed by our city council for LGBTQ+ housing and employment protections. Gay folk can still be fired and evicted simply because they are gay. And there is no legal recourse. This hearkens back to the days where black folks could be fired, refused services in public businesses and restaurants, and black families could be evicted because of the color of their skin. This hearkens back to the days where biracial marriages were illegal. We see from our perspective in history that those were unjust laws and they were wrong. The laws were wrong then, and they are wrong now.

I see the same injustice in current laws, and as a person of faith I spoke out. As a person of faith, not as a representative of this church, I added my voice saying I believe these protections will add more life, not death. I want employment and housing protections for my neighbor for I have those protections. And I wish to love my neighbor as myself. I enjoy those laws, they should too. It’s not special rights, it’s equal rights.

My next door neighbor disagrees. Yet I’m trying to be in relationship with her. To show her that LGBTQ folk aren’t a threat to her. That her rights aren’t being attacked. That she need not sue our city over these protections. And that I will still shovel her walk and clear snow for her. Because that’s what good neighbors do. When I’m her age, I would want that for myself. And that’s what the article was about.

On Monday, Cindy comes into my office and shuts the door. She then plays for me a voice message that was left in her general mailbox. It was a man who read the article. He identifies himself as a Pentecostal Christian and then then proceeds to unleash a hateful diatribe saying that I’m a white-trash gay lover, but he didn’t say gay and other things not fit to utter from the pulpit. I could be brought down and my teachings could be easily brought down, and this church could be burned down. He ends it with, “that’s just my opinion. Thank you.”

Before this phone call, Ken Zuehlke led us through an exercise in our Second Sunday Safety committee, so we were ready. We locked down the church. The staff, moderators, and my Pastoral Relations Committee were all notified. We filed a police report. I felt personally responsible for a second. The stress I’m bringing on my staff and on the Hobby Horse teachers. The visibility and stress I’m bringing you.

This is the second threat to me as your senior pastor. I am stressed and I am mad. Yet someone very wise once told me that anger is a secondary emotion. It often covers up something.

For me, it is covering up pain. Pain that we treat one another so poorly. I have felt the pain of divorce second hand, I can’t imagine what it would be like to go through. And after that to be told that you are automatically going to hell because some priest or preacher can’t be bothered with the context of when and where Jesus is speaking those words.

My anger covers up the pain that the church has caused with its callous teachings which add only more death to the world. It is not the way of life. The most vocal Christians in our culture sometimes seem so far from Christ.

I was in the paper, not because my ego demands it or that I seek the spotlight. I don’t think that’s in me. Maybe a little as I’m up here each and every week to preach. But y’all keep me in check. And I hope my words provide life and healing. I see how Jesus was constantly getting folks to look at their relationship to God and their neighbor. Choose life! Don’t go the way of anger, reconcile. Don’t go the easy route of scorched earth, but seek to preserve your relationships.

But after that phone call, I don’t think I can be in relationship with such hate. It is this hate that leads families to cast out their LGBTQ kids onto the streets. That cause such depression and despair that LGBTQ kids are more at risk to attempt or complete suicide.[2] It’s the callousness and hate directed toward a whole group of people that I cannot abide. I have made no secret of my conviction. From the interviews with the search committee to my preaching. I have not shied away from it.

I know some of you are not where I am. You’re not sure. You’re not going to march in the streets. Maybe you feel that it’s 2020 and we can ignore this because it’s all good. Listen. I am a straight male ally who has simply stated that LBGTQ folk shouldn’t be fired or evicted for being who they are, and I received a threat to my person and a threat of arson to our building. Imagine what LGBTQ folks hear or read.

I could tell you stories that would make you enraged and weep. I’m sure the LBGTQ folk among us have even worse stories of the things they were called and the physical and/or verbal beatings they have endured. And if you don’t believe me, the Rev. Pam Branscome can tell you even more stories from her past churches.

I am considering a divorce with the hateful type of Christian. I think they are so far from Christ, that I don’t know what to do or how to respond anymore. So please pray for me. I don’t know what to do. I will take comfort that Theologian and writer John Pavlovitz gives me the words I lack. I’m still trying to follow Christ. I still call myself a Christian. “But there is a Christian I refuse to be.”

I refuse to be a Christian who lives in fear of people who look or speak or worship differently than I do.

I refuse to be a Christian who believes that God blesses America more than God so loves the world.

I refuse to be a Christian who can’t find the beauty and truth in religious traditions other than my own.

I refuse to be a Christian who uses the Bible to perpetuate individual or systemic bigotry, racism, or sexism.

I refuse to be a Christian who is generous with damnation and stingy with Grace.

I refuse to be a Christian who can’t see the image of God in people of every color, every religious tradition, every sexual orientation.

I refuse to be a Christian unless it means I live as a person of hospitality, of healing, of redemption, of justice, of expectation-defying Grace, of counterintuitive love. These are non-negotiables.

Yes, it is much more difficult to say it these days than it has ever been, but I still do say it. I am still a Christian—but I refuse to be one without Jesus.[3]

I thank John for his words. I hope that through my example and leadership you can see my conviction and in seeing that it inspires your own closer walk with God. I hope you share those convictions because that’s what I aspire to be and where I’m going. And if you don’t, then let’s reconcile and stay in relationship. No need to get angry. No need to call names and threaten, for you have heard it said by Jesus that this isn’t the way. There is a better way.

Christ’s way is the better way. I’m trying in my imperfect way to follow it. Because this is who I am. Who are you? I’m a Christian that believes not in “Meh Grace.” Not in an “okay grace.” I believe in God’s AMAZING grace that saved a wretch like me.

Saved me to care for the marginalized. Saved me and showed me that I am loved just as much as my neighbor. But I no longer know what to do with the hateful, threatening form of the faith. I don’t know what the right relationship is to such hateful fundamentalism, other than to do what Jesus did. Save my harshest words for it. To beg them to stop spreading hurt and hell in the world, and to let the unforced rhythms of God’s grace change their lives as it has changed mine.

God has set before us the ways of life and death. I don’t know about you, but I can only choose life. Life in the face of death threats. Life in the face of threats of arson. Life in the threats of being ridiculed and having my faith in Christ doubted by the hateful among us. In spite of it all, I will choose life. I hope you will too.

Works Cited

[1] https://www.beaconjournal.com/news/20200208/medina-split-over-lgbtq-protections

[2] UCLA stats on LGBTQ youth: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/lgbt-youth-bullying-press-release/

^[3][3] https://johnpavlovitz.com/2016/10/21/the-kind-of-christian-i-refuse-to-be/