Wisdom and Beauty

Proverbs 8:4, 22-27
Psalm 8:1-5, 9


Rockville United Church
Rev. Dr. Duncan D. Newcomer

June 3, 2007

When the Mayflower Puritans left Holland - their first enclave away from England - their minister, John Robinson, too ill for the pilgrimage, gave them this benediction: “For God hath yet more light and truth to break forth from his Holy Word”.

Nearly Shakespearean! Astonishing theology! More light. More light emerging, crackling like lightening, streaming forth from the Bible, God’s Holy Word.

The United Church of Christ has coined a bumper sticker translation of this wonderful notion of progressive revelation. They just said: “God is Still Speaking.” You probably know they, we, got that by completing Gracie Allen’s admonition: “Never put a period where God has placed a comma.”

Now, Christians who don’t like gay marriage, gay clergy, gay sex, don’t like this more light, God is still speaking, idea of progressive revelation. For them God has spoken! And is not still speaking! Coma, not comma, is their grammar. And I want you to know, right away here, that there is one finger print on this anti-gay closed book pair of ideas. Their idea number one: I don’t like gay, homosexual, things, and their idea, number two: The Bible is closed, God has spoken. These are two smoking guns with one and the same fingerprint: the finger print left belongs to embattled, angry men.

Not liking gays, and putting a period after the bible, both are pretty much “guy things”. First, these men like to get in the last word. And second, these men like to have, or feel like they have, the upper hand “on” women and other men. So heterosexual marriage seems to symbolize that for them. And homosexual marriage confuses them, makes them wonder who’s got the upper hand between men and on women when it’s two men? Two women is less of a problem, because women count less to these embattled and angry men.

Now, when John Robinson said, in 1620, that God will shine more light from the bible, certainly he did not foresee gay liberation flowering from the Mayflower.

But it is poetic justice and more than intellectual coincidence that within the Presbyterian tradition Robinson’s “more light” words became, not so many years ago, the bumper sticker label for the gay liberation movement within that reformed faith.

There is an inevitable kinship here. The Puritans rebelled against the patriarchy of the Pope in the name of the still-open-bible word of God; and those who support the liberation of gay sexuality simply do not give men the upper hand nor do they read the bible as closed-ended.

If you connect these two dots: male authority and a closed book versus gay liberation and an open book, all of the current wars in the church suddenly become clearer.

I discovered recently that a long time friend of mine, who was a Presbyterian, credits himself with coming up with the name “more light” for the then a-borning gay clergy movement within the Presbyterian Church. He was a member of the forming committee for opening up the Presbyterian Church to gay ordination and gay marriage. Somebody said, “What should we call ourselves?” I guess “open and affirming”, the UCC words were taken, or too secular sounding. My Reverend friend said, “How about “more light” after the words of the Puritan founder, John Robinson?” Now my friend has a church next to Harvard in the Cambridge Square, Mass. He is an American Baptist Minister now because the Presbyterian Church will not make a home for him. When I was approved by the National Capitol Presbytery recently for ministerial standing, I was angrily and painfully aware that he would not pass that muster as I did, and he is far more in love with the Presbyterian traditions than even I am, and that is just not just.

Now, I say, if these gay-excluders are so bible based, what do they do with the raging “she” that flaunts her cosmic wisdom in Proverbs 8? Can Sister Sophia enter the Trinity? She sure sounds like she thinks so, in Proverbs 8. Pre-existing with God before creation and all. Can Sophia share power with the “he” in Psalm 8, he who brings forth the beautiful heavenly and earthly creation? Can her wisdom co-exist with his creation? Can her insight co-exist with his world? The Bible seems to say so.

Then why is it so hard to find agreement on this Bible and homosexuality issue? Why are denominations, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran splitting into parts over gay sexuality and Bible words. And why is the religious right so seemingly un-Christian about all this? Largely, because most of the conversation about a religious view of homosexuality, has been male dominated. What quote/unquote “to do” with gays in the church was never a both gender human discussion. It was and is a male political discussion. A certain kind of masculine rhetoric has framed the issue, even framed it as a debate. It’s been a debate not a dialogue. Now, I was a debater in high school. Debaters score points and win or loose tournaments. But in dialogue you tell stories with feelings plus ideas, you give and take. You get somewhere. It’s a process, a mutual journey. Truth and truths are found and made by dialogue talk. Debates clarify points to make and take positions. Anti-gay religious people don’t listen, for example, to a story from a gay high school boy, they argue to establish the authority of scripture and then they do something “parliamentary” with that, like make a law or a ruling or a policy.

Now we have two good genders in creation, male and female. This is not about men being bad and women good. But men have dominated this discussion and have imposed a masculine rhetoric on this topic - the sexuality of boys and girls, and what, biblically, to do with that.

We have two good genders, and we have two good bible selections today, Proverbs 8 and Psalm 8. Proverbs 8 says that wisdom is a “she”. Wisdom is a woman. Wisdom is feminine and existed with God before the beginning of time.

Psalm 8 has a masculine creator of creation, a “he”. Something comes out of the mouths of babes and infants in Psalm 8. Oddly it’s a bulwark to defeat foes and to silence enemies! It’s hard to know how such a fort breaks forth from the mouths of babies, but that’s how he sees it!

Now what difference does it make, especially what difference does it make that wisdom in this Bible passage is feminine. Especially what difference would it make about the church’s response to the gay boys and girls, men and women in, and out, of the church? It’s not that there aren’t women against gay things and gay things in a closed-book church. But, the difference is, would be, by in large, women talk about it all differently.

We know from cultural anthropologists (like Deborah Tannen) and our own families that women really like to make points by telling stories. It’s often really frustrating for men because we need to know the point first and then the story can illustrate the point. And we can be thinking if we agree or disagree with the point while she’s telling the story, and then we can settle the issue with our point, our last word, on top. But in the story way of talking the story really becomes the point and gives rise to another story. This is not Robert’s Rules of Order! But there is not Roberta’s Rules for story-order, yet.

Look what a difference the presence of women has made in the raised awareness of sexual abuse, especially the sexual abuse done by male protestant clergy. Women in the church, the Protestant Church, exposed and corrected the massive practice of male clergy abuse 10 to 15 years before the Catholic Church even started. Why? Because of women. And the stories they would tell. Stories that wouldn’t see the more light of day in the patriarchy of the male dominated Catholic Church.

So, I propose that church men pass a parliamentary policy that for the next 5, 10, 15 years only women in the churches could talk about what “to do” with gays in the church. Then we would end up having a human discussion not a political debate. And after all the issues are human issues in the first place.

Then the male voice could come back in. For example, you find a humility in Psalm 8 that is men at their religious best. You also find an abstract wonder-puzzlement that men tend to love about looking at the moon and the stars and wondering about mortal’s place. Thinking abstractly and philosophically about people being lower than God.

Such a process would be a great conclusion to the church’s learning how to live by more light, in and for more light. It would also tend to moderate the voice of female wisdom in Proverbs 8 where she calls, raises her voice, goes to mountain tops, roads and cross roads, stands at gates, even blocks doors. She’s not even humble about being lower than God. She, also, is over whelming sure she’s got it right herself. But, when the voices are equal, when the wise women also have the air time to talk about gay things, the humanity of it all will come to the surface, stories will take over policies and dialogue will form relationships, and people will live in more light because the other light came on. Men will not, alone, be able to solve the “so-called” problem of gay sexuality in the church because, mainly, men have an almost undeniable urge to get the last word in, like a sermon!, and keep the upper position, the upper hand, like a preacher in a pulpit! But homosexuality is a human development issue. Homosexuality isn’t a thing within an ideological, rhetorical or even theological category. It’s about, human beings with a story that needs to be told, and heard! What better place than the church, this church, for that?!

Amen.