Many communities and United Churches celebrate 2SLGBTQIA+ Pride during the month of June.
On the first Wednesday in June, we had a Pride worship service at 7 pm. We had it on a Wednesday night because we know there are some young people who have to attend church with their parents on Sunday mornings, and are attending churches that tell them that God doesn’t love them or want them because they are gay, lesbian, or trans. So we wanted to hold our service at a time when those people might be able to come and hear this one single message: God made you. You are beautiful and deserve to be loved and treated with respect. You are valuable. That’s it. We didn’t hope to increase membership – although, you know, that would be awesome… we just wanted to preach love. We wanted to love others in our community who sometimes don’t feel loved in church. SO, we had a Pride service. We studied the scripture from Romans 2, we sang a bunch of songs, we prayed for a better world with more healing and more justice, and we finished up with Dancing Queen. Oh yea, we sang ABBA in church. Why Romans 2? I’m glad you asked.
One of the scriptures most often cited by homophobic churches in support of hatred and even violence against queer people is Romans 1:26-27 “For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. Likewise, the men abandoned natural relations with women and burned with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” The passage goes on to include a few things about sorcery and other kinds of evil for 4 more verses, and then Romans chapter 1 suddenly ends. Here's the thing. When Paul originally wrote this epistle to the church in Rome, it was written in a style called SCRIPTA CONTINUA. In that style, there was no punctuation, no paragraph breaks, no page breaks, and certainly no chapter breaks.
The whole epistle to Rome looked like this:
For 16 whole unbroken chapters, one letter, no commas or periods, no paragraph or page breaks. Just like that. So the scribes who had to hand copy these letters for distribution introduced the idea of breaking long letters into separate pages or chapters. By splitting the long works into smaller sections, it became easier to make copies without getting lost. Just finish the chapter and then call it a night. Or get some food, etc. Sometimes a page or even a chapter break would be completely arbitrary. That’s why some chapters begin with “For this reason….” Because the chapter was arbitrarily broken in the middle of a thought or story. So about Romans chapter 2, which originally, was just the next few words after the text above from Romans ch 1… It says, “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment has committed an equal sin.” Without the arbitrary break, Paul wrote that many people were living with all kinds of different rules, laws, and lifestyles – and that was between them and God to sort out. And that followers of Jesus had NO business judging others, because in the moment they judge, they have committed a sin as well. That’s what it means. That’s why we talked about Romans 2. Everyone who uses Romans 1 to justify hate, judgement and violence, needs to read the next page. But… they don’t. So we had our Pride service and some folks came, and it was a lot of fun. And I announced it to the town on Facebook. And the town responded. 98 reactions posted. 91 IN FAVOR of the service
7 against. Among the comments,
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t know there was a church in this town that loves everyone. I’m glad there is.”
“This gives me hope. That’s what I thought church was supposed to be.”
“Wow. A church I’d feel welcome in.”
And a few private messages from members of other churches…. "Thank you for creating a church my child could feel safe in. Please pray for us."
Happy Pride, y’all. It doesn’t just stop in June. We’ll have another Pride service in the fall.
We love you.
You’re beautiful.
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