Homosexuality, Robert Schuller, The Crystal Cathedral, and What Jesus Did

Robert Schuller's church, the Crystal Cathedral, made news recently because the choir was asked to sign a covenant that denounced homosexuality. Robert Schuller rightly came out against the covenant saying he knew nothing about it, and rejected the anti-gay sentiment found in the document. I say "rightly" because Schuller himself made the statement that the Church is a "hospital for sinners, not a museum of saints." Even if we were to categorize homosexuality as a sin (something I am not sure I am ready to do) this statement reflects the fact that the Christian Church should not exclude a particular group simply because of a particular behavior. Traditionally, during different times in Church history, Christians have picked out a particular behavior, called it a sin, and excluded anyone who participated in that behavior from the Church. At one point it was anyone who drank, at another it was anyone who smoked, people who went to movies were at one point excluded. At other times, women who lived alone and practiced alternative health care were excluded from the Church, labeled as witches, and killed. So it is now with the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) population.

This makes me wonder if the Church has not placed the wrong emphasis on sin in its interaction with the outside world (the world outside the walls of the Church). We learn from scripture (and Schuller's statement above) that sinners were meant to live within the walls of the Church, not to be kept outside. In the Gospels, Jesus was constantly battling the religious leaders because they were doing what most churches/Christians do today, excluding people because of what they perceived as sin. Constantly, the Pharisees were criticizing Jesus and the disciples for doing work on the Sabbath; a practice they could label a sin based on their interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus, however, showed a new (or older) way of interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures to redefine what it meant to honor the Sabbath, thereby removing the "sin" label. Maybe he would do the same with homosexuality. Where the religious leaders would have excluded the disciples, Jesus included them in His Church, and they ended up becoming the leaders of the early Church, growing it in ways no one else could have. This was a perceived sin that was in fact no sin at all. But how did Jesus react to actual sin? This is illustrated in John 8 when the adulteress woman is brought before Jesus by the religious leaders who ask Jesus what they should do with her, reminding him that the Hebrew Scriptures command to stone her. Jesus tells them that the one who is without sin should be the first to throw a stone. When Jesus looks back up they all had left. Jesus asks the woman if any had condemned her, to which she replied, "no." Jesus responds, "then I do not condemn you either." where the religious leaders would have excluded this "sinner" from Church, Jesus accepted this woman for who she was. So whether homosexuality is a perceived sin (being no sin at all) or an actual sin, it should in no way prevent us from including the GLBT community into the walls of the Church.

Evangelists, as they witness, traditionally point out a person's sins and try to show them their need for Jesus. But Jesus never focused on a person's sins, but instead focused on their hurts. Jesus' desire wasn't to show people how bad they were so they would come to him, his desire was to show people love and compassion, without having any ulterior motive. Jesus' focus was not to exclude people because of their sins (something he adamantly objected as a bad practice among the religious leaders). Instead, Jesus' focus was to include people because of their hurts.

Somewhere along the line we have become like the religious leaders of Jesus' day, misrepresenting Scripture to justify the exclusion of particular groups from our fold. That is not what Jesus wanted and not what we were meant to do. Let us no longer focus on our differences. Let us instead do what Jesus did by focusing on our common humanity and having compassion and love for others, thereby including them in the body of Christ.
Blessings,
-Brandon