God of Scandal

I met my fiance Diane at a Charismatic Episcopal Church about seven years ago. In case you aren't familiar with the CEC, (most people aren't), imagine smooshing together an Assembly of God congregation with a Catholic church that rejects the Pope and wants it's male priests to be able to marry. If you can do that, you'll have a pretty good idea of what it's like. The CEC features liturgical services; a patriarchal, socially conservative structure with no ordination of women and governance by an all-male Rector's Council; contemporary worship music; and prayer in tongues. Incense burns, bells ring, prophecies are spoken, and occasionally a worshiper falls to the ground, slain.

It's a cafeteria tray full of carefully selected Christian tidbits.

I helped found the church from the rubble of a fractured Presbyterian congregation. I spent hundreds of hours searching for space and preparing it for holy use, developing printed material for the services and for marketing, building a website, writing newsletters, teaching classes, leading Bible studies, participating in strategic visioning and planning, and assisting the Rector's Council. I was so deeply involved in so many things that we eventually made up a title for my role.

I loved and served that church and it's people with my whole heart.

Throughout those years the priest grew to be my best friend. In my eyes he could do no wrong and I worked hard to further his goals and those of the Rector's Council. We met often as friends and as co-laborers.

I attended church alone, having come to my faith solo at age 38. My husband didn't understand the seismic shift which picked up pace as the years passed, morphing me from a broken and unhappy near-alcoholic to a bustling, smoldering brand, consumed with a love that didn't include him (by his choice.) Our marriage had always been rocky, and while the shift improved many things as I strove to be the Proverbs 31 wife, it introduced new problems and left old ones unresolved. We'd built a foundation on infidelity, substance abuse, and mutual distrust, and it couldn't hold up under the pressure of change.

But God was working, even as our life together turned increasingly brittle.

During this time frame I met Diane. Her family was new to the area, and she came to our church ready to plunge in. She attended all the extra curricular events, participated in all the women's Bible study groups, and volunteered for any work that needed doing. Over time, she also began stepping into leadership.

Our friendship grew as her own marriage floundered and failed after many years of sorrow and struggle. By the time the final detonation of my marriage sounded, Diane's husband had already moved out, and I moved in. The timing was orchestrated so perfectly that we could hear the strings tuning even through the tortured screaming of marital collapse.

Our poor church didn't know what to do with us. Divorce was verboten under the most straight-forward of circumstances, so they had no clue how to manage the scandalous questions about our relationship that were carried on the humid breeze of murmuring. My sycophantic, disordered relationship with my beloved priest disintegrated, creating an additional untethering that felt naked and painful.

The result was scandal. So much so that we were asked to stop coming even to the poorly attended Wednesday night Eucharistic service.

In addition to being heartbroken, Diane and I were ourselves scandalized by the shift from friendship to one-ness. I was extremely Catholic in theology and had been writing about the sacredness of sexuality for years. Diane was a solidly trained Baptist girl who believed that homosexuals were doomed to hell. We didn't understand, but we knew that we knew that we knew our coming together was divinely ordained and divinely orchestrated.

In the four years that have passed since those tumultuous days I have prayed often for forgiveness about the scandal that resulted, asking God what I should do about it. A new priest leads the church now. He was in training when it all happened, and recently began to engage in dialog with us. His reaching out resulted in my praying the same prayer anew.

And when I did, I received a revelation:  

God works through scandal. 

Think about that for a minute.

The biblical history of God and His people is rife with the stuff. Consider Joshua's men being saved by the prostitute Rahab: scandalous. Consider Mary's pregnancy out of wedlock: scandalous. Consider Jesus' repeated violation of law, a reality so scandalous most Christians won't admit it even happened. Consider Jesus' shocking demand that we eat His body and drink His blood, a scandal which caused many of His followers to desert Him.

And these are just a few examples.

Our God works through scandal. He is the very God of scandal, uprooting social norms and throwing over tablefulls of accepted behaviors. He brings about miraculous change and growth through it.

In the week that has passed since this realization, I've been able to relax in a way I'd not been able to do since my marriage took its final, shuddering breaths. My conscience can rest, knowing that the great God of all gods has worked through the very scandal He and Diane and I co-created. He is doing amazing work now. I don't have to try to repair it. In fact, I'm not supposed to.

Perhaps Diane and I will be called to visit that church some day, to attend a funeral, or to speak about the magnificent, confounding, scandalous workings of He who is Love. If that day comes, I'll find the courage to do what I am called to do.

But for now I know that all I have to do is wait for that call.

He is doing the rest.

Not settled at all.

Dolce was asked a follow up question by the priest (Fr. O) who prompted this discussion. He asked for her reflections on these verses, and how she might define the vices listed in them:

Ephesians 5:3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. 4 Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. 5 For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. 7 Therefore do not be partners with them."

(The selection of NIV was his. It's not my favorite translation.)

What I've realized in contemplating the verses for several days is that there are really multiple responses:

1. Explore the definition of the Greek word πορνεύω (porneia) which in this passage is translated to "sexual immorality".
2. Look at how usage of  πορνεύω changed from before Christ to the first several hundred years of the Church as Christian sexual morality was refined, and how it has continued to change right on down to our present age.
3. Examine how a current use of porneia applies to life today.
4. Explain how Dolce and I personally apply the passage according to individual reflection and revelation.
5. Lather, rinse, and repeat for the other vices listed. (For example, I'm sure an examination of the Greek term translated to "greedy" would be interesting, given how various Bible versions treat it in combination with idolatry.

Any discussion about Christian morality deserves this type of evaluation. Despite the stereotypical fundamentalist claim, there in reality is no "Clear Teaching of Scripture".

As for answering Fr. O's question? Looks like it might take a few posts.

How do same sex couples interpret Eph. 5:21-33?

This morning, Dolce and I received a lovely text from a young priest at the church we attended for some years before moving to Massachusetts. It's part of a socially conservative new denomination which strives to reunite the liturgical, evangelical, and charismatic Christan streams. Dolce and I were active in leadership and in the life of the church when our marriages went through the final death throes of their long-drawn out demise. As God knit the two of us closer and closer together, the church didn't know how to handle us.

Understandably.

It was a pleasure to read the request this young Father sent us today. He asked how Ephesians 5:21-33 can be understood and applied in same sex relationships. And he asked very respectfully.


Here's the passage:

21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. 24 Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word, 27 so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind—yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. 33 Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband.

As with all scripture, there are multiple levels of application, intent, and meaning. First I'll address the contemporary cultural context. And for ease of discussion, I'll assume that Paul is the author.

At the time of the missive's writing, there were two forms of Roman marriage in places like Ephesus. Marriage was a contractual business that could come about by a variety of processes and ritualistic approaches. But the two contractual forms (in simplified essence) were that a woman and her property either remained subject to her father, or became subject to her husband. The forms ebbed and flowed in popularity over the years, but it would appear that in verses 22-24 Paul was clarifying that in leaving her father, the proper form of marriage was to become the property of her husband. He appeared to be stating that this form was the Christian form.

This echoes the "leaving and cleaving" reference in verse 31.

The second cultural issue is Paul's instructions for men. At the time, marriage was rarely romantic. Men who demonstrated romantic love for their women were viewed as emasculated sissies. Paul acted like Jesus again, instructing that this should change, and that men -should- love their wives.

So it appears that he strove to move marriage from a contractual thing to a Christian thing. From a legal construct to a sacramental reality. From a set of rules to a rule of love.

From this cultural perspective, the passage doesn't apply to same sex couples (or to modern heterosexual couples for that matter). In 2014 we don't view women as property to be transferred, we're thankfully lacking the era's gender discrimination and bias, and we don't have the same contractual models of marriage to contend with.

It's very clear that same-sex marriages were not something that existed, but then, the entire concept of marriage didn't mean what it does now. Fidelity was not assumed for men. Polygamy was common. All sorts of broken sexuality took place that nowhere near modeled the gorgeous scriptural images of marital love about which Solomon and Paul wrote. 

As far as a message to today's culture, I think that Paul is calling us all back to the sacredness of sexual union, and reminding us of how God wants us to view each other within marriage. He calls us to be subject to each other. To be faithful defenders of each other. To be one as He and the Father are one, in mystical union.

How do I see this as applying to same sex couples? I guess the question is more how do I NOT see it applying?

In good marriages of our era there is a sharing of responsibility and leadership. In Christian marriages which God brings together, the man may be deferred to as the head and final arbiter for times when consensus cannot be reached. This model can flourish and bear bountiful fruit.

Smart same sex couples create a similar structure. Someone needs to be the head in the case of non-agreement. For Dolce and I, we are both heads of different parts of life. We are subject to each other, and God is the head of us both. Given that He put us together, and given that we defer all decisions to His will, the times when we are not of the same opinion are shockingly few.

In marriages that humans bring together rather than God, it won't matter how much deference is given to the man as head. The fruit will be stunted and bitter.

I'm grateful to this man of God for appearing to us today, and leading us into exploration of this epistle. We do so love to contemplate His word.