LGBTQ+ People Are Welcome at the Table Part 2
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For the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about how Jesus breaks down boundaries that have been used to exclude people and extends an all-inclusive, unconditional invitation to his table.
We looked at patriarchy and gender hierarchy and how they were used to subjugate and exclude women, and we looked at how patriarchy, nationalism, and purity codes were used to condemn and exclude sexual minorities.
We saw how the trajectory of Scripture moved from their exclusion in the Law (Deuteronomy 23:1), to the promise of inclusion in the prophets (Isaiah 56:3-8), to Jesus’ acknowledgment and acceptance of sexual minorities (Matthew 19:10-12), to full inclusion for sexual minorities in the early church with the baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8:25-39).
These passages show us that God’s intention has always been to include sexual minorities in his family. When we use Scripture to marginalize and exclude people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, we are actually working against God’s design for his family and for his church. Unfortunately, this is not the message we hear in many churches today, in fact, we hear just the opposite.
With this trajectory of Scripture in mind then, we now want to take a closer look at the Scripture passages that traditionally have been cited as justification for excluding sexual minorities—those in the LGBTQ+ community. We’ll start with the passages we find in the Old Testament first, and next time we’ll focus in on the New Testament passages.
Before we dive in to the first of our Old Testament passages though, let’s take a minute to remember some of what we’ve already learned about the larger themes of hospitality and patriarchy in the ancient world, and the purity codes of the nation Israel specifically, and how they formed exclusionary boundaries. These boundaries will come into play as we look at these Old and New Testament passages, and hopefully, they’ll help us to see why they have been interpreted in such an exclusionary manner.
Let’s start with what we’ve learned about hospitality. If you’ll recall, hospitality, the opening of your home to a stranger or traveler and the offering of a meal, was a societal custom in the ancient near east. It was seen as a way of affirming kinship, friendship, and goodwill. It was also a way of acknowledging status, conferring honor, or signifying peace between parties. And in the ancient Hebrew culture, offering hospitality to a stranger was actually commanded by God. Keep that in mind, as it will come up later in our discussion.
Patriarchy was also a societal norm in the ancient world. Remember, patriarchal cultures viewed women as inferior, weak-willed, and generally less valuable than men. Any physical characteristics that were outside “the gender norm” for that culture, for instance, anyone with “sexually different” physical features like eunuchs, or any behavior exhibited by a man that was thought to be “effeminate”, “soft”, “passive”, or in any way “womanly” was condemned. For example, if a man dressed too extravagantly, was overly emotional, expressed fear in battle, took the passive role in sexual encounters (whether voluntarily or against his will), or even if he had too much sex with women, he would have been outside of the cultural gender roles, and his behavior would have been seen as “unmasculine” and therefore, shameful and degrading.
In patriarchal cultures, men were to be the dominant aggressors, never passive, and they were to maintain power and control at all times. Women on the other hand, were to be passive, never dominant, and they were to be submissive and subordinate to men in all areas. In the ancient world, these cultural gender norms of the day set clear hierarchical boundaries, and breaking those boundaries was severely condemned. It was seen as “detestable”, “unnatural”, and an “abomination”.
Given these gender boundaries, sex in the patriarchal ancient world was all about male power, dominance, and status. As long as men took the dominant role, they could have sex with just about anyone of lower status, male or female, providing they were not another man’s property, and rape was thought of as a “right of dominance”. For instance, it was not only common in warfare for men to take women and even young boys, as slaves and concubines and do with them as they wished, but also for the victors in battle to rape the defeated soldiers as a way of showing their dominance and degrading and disempowering those who had been defeated.
For the nation Israel however, sex was thought of in terms of the propagation and purity of the family lineage, and as a part of the community’s welfare and protection.
As we’ve already seen, Mosaic Law put boundaries in place to limit how sex was used (and abused), and to set the nation Israel apart from the way their pagan neighbors behaved.
Procreation was the goal of sexual behavior in the Hebrew culture, and any sexual behavior that was not procreative, was deemed unclean, unnatural, or excessively lustful.
Finally, we need to remember that the purity codes of ancient Israel played a huge role in setting boundaries, not only concerning sexual behavior, but in all areas of community life. The purity codes were concerned with order and wholeness, having things in their proper place, unmixed, and functioning in what was considered a normal, purposeful way. Anything that seemed out of place, things that were seen as disordered, that were not functioning in the normal, natural way (based on the culture of the day), or anything that was mixed, or outside of their traditional categories, was thought of as impure or unclean.
And certainly, anything associated with Israel’s pagan neighbors, the food they sacrificed to idols, their abusive sexual practices like rape, temple prostitution, and later, pederasty—older men taking younger boys as sexual partners—as well as their pagan idolatrous worship practices, were all deemed impure and unclean.
O.K., with all that in the backs of our minds, I think we’re ready to jump into our first scriptural passage in the Old Testament that many have used to condemn LGBTQ+ people. It’s the story of Sodom and Gomorrah found in Genesis 19 and its parallel story found in Judges 19.
Actually, it’s interesting to note that most biblical scholars today, both affirming and non-affirming, don’t believe either of these stories should be considered in the debate over same-sex behavior at all. They are really not about same-sex attraction, but instead, they’re about threatened gang rape. These stories are disturbing, but let’s look at what’s happening and try to interpret them in the cultural context we’ve been talking about.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah actually begins in Genesis 18. Here’s the prelude to the story:
“Now the Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. 2When he raised his eyes and looked, behold, three men were standing opposite him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed down to the ground, 3and said, ‘My Lord, if now I have found favor in Your sight, please do not pass Your servant by. 4Please let a little water be brought and wash your feet, and make yourselves comfortable under the tree; 5and I will bring a piece of bread, so that you may refresh yourselves; after that you may go on, since you have visited your servant.’ And they said, ‘So do as you have said.’ 6So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah, and said, ‘Quickly, prepare three measures of fine flour, knead it, and make bread cakes.’ 7Abraham also ran to the herd, and took a tender and choice calf and gave it to the servant, and he hurried to prepare it. 8He took curds and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and set it before them; and he was standing by them under the tree as they ate… 16Then the men rose up from there, and looked down toward Sodom; and Abraham was walking with them to send them off… 20And the Lordsaid, ‘The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave. 21I will go down now and see whether they have done entirely as the outcry, which has come to Meindicates; and if not, I will know.’” (Genesis 18:1-8, 16, 20-21 NASB)
Notice, we are told that Abraham offered generous hospitality to the three strangers who arrived at his home. He showed them value, honor, and respect. Surely, the biblical author wants us to compare this hospitality to the events that happen next.
After a conversation between Abraham and Yahweh (apparently one of the three angelic visitors) about the outcry from Sodom and Gomorrah, two of the visitors head down to the city to check it out. We already know from a previous story that Abraham’s nephew, Lot, and his family, live in Sodom. When the visitors go down to Sodom, they meet Lot at the city gate:
“Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he stood up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground.2And he said, ‘Now behold, my lords, please turn aside into your servant’s house, and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you may rise early and go on your way.’ They said, ‘No, but we shall spend the night in the public square.’ 3Yet he strongly urged them, so they turned aside to him and entered his house; and he prepared a feast for them and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.” (Genesis 19:1-3 NASB)
Notice, that Lot has just offered the same generous hospitality that his uncle, Abraham, had. Now, let’s continue with the story.
“Before they lay down, the men of the city—the men of Sodom—surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter; 5and they called to Lot and said to him, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them.’ 6But Lot went out to them at the doorway, and shut the door behind him, 7and said, ‘Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly. 8Now look, I have two daughters who have not had relations with any man; please let me bring them out to you and do to them whatever you like; only do not do anything to these men, because they have come under the shelter of my roof.’9But they said, ‘Get out of the way!’ They also said, ‘This one came in as a foreigner, and already he is acting like a judge; now we will treat you worse than them!’ So they pressed hard against Lot and moved forward to break the door. 10But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door. 11Then they struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, from the small to the great, so that they became weary of trying to find the doorway.” (Genesis 19:4-11 NASB)
There are a few interesting things to take note of here. First, the author obviously wants us to notice that both Abraham and Lot treat these visitors with value and honor. They both offer generous hospitality to the strangers in stark contrast to the people of the town. Then, the story says all the men, young and old, in fact, it says “all the people” of the town, surround the house and demand that the strangers be brought out so they can “have relations” with them. Now, you have to stop and ask yourself, is it really plausible that the entire population of this town was same-sex attracted, including the children? Is sexual attraction even the issue here? If it is, then why does Lot offer his daughters as an alternative? In the parallel story in Judges 19, the Israelite man who is threatened, throws out his female concubine and the mob rapes and abuses her and leaves her dead on the doorstep in the morning. Horrifying!
Given what we know about how little women were valued (just look at how the women in both these stories were treated), and how sex was used in the ancient world to dominate, degrade, and disempower men who might be a threat by forcing them to become “like women” and take the passive sexual role, it seems much more plausible that this was a threatened gang rape for the purpose of devaluing, shaming, and doing harm to these strangers.
As shocking as it is to us, in the patriarchy of the day, the rape of one’s concubine, or even one’s daughters was apparently seen as less abominable than a man breaking the gender hierarchy boundaries and being treated like a woman by being penetrated.
Of course, we know the end of this story. God saves Lot and his family, and then destroys the wicked town by “raining” a flood of fire and brimstone. I don’t think it’s a coincidence by the way, that this story has remarkable similarities to the story of Noah and the flood. The message of both stories speaks to how God feels about human violence and our dehumanizing behavior toward each other. This idea is confirmed over and over again in Scripture.
Sodom and Gomorrah among others, are icons in Scripture for idolatrous, beastly cities, but apart from a couple of New Testament passages that speak about Sodom’s sin as humans wanting to have sex with angels, all the other mentions of Sodom and Gomorrah in Scripture (there are more than 20) speak of their wickedness in terms of devaluing and oppressing marginalized groups, idolatry, pride, abuses of power, and not caring for others.
This passage from Ezekiel sums it up:
“‘As surely as I live’, declares the Sovereign Lord, ‘your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done.’ 49“‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom:She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 50They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. 51Samaria did not commit half the sins you did. You have done more detestable things than they and have made your sisters seem righteous by all these things you have done.’” (Ezekiel 16:48-51 NIV)
Ezekiel is comparing Jerusalem, the holy city, to Sodom and Samaria, and declaring that Jerusalem’s sins, their detestable acts, were greater than theirs. Notice that the sin of Sodom mentioned here had nothing to do with same-sex behavior, and as we know from Scripture, neither did the “detestable acts” of Jerusalem. The sin God is upset with here, has to do with idolatry and being unconcerned, inhospitable, unjust, and uncaring toward others. It is abusing and using violence against your neighbor. Hence, the importance of hospitality in the Law, and the biblical authors’ explicit recounting of Abraham’s and Lot’s hospitality and respect for the angelic visitors in Genesis 19 and the hospitality of the host in the Judges 19 story.
Jesus reiterates this idea of hospitality when he is sending out his disciples to minister in the surrounding cities.
He says, “And whoever does not receive you nor listen to your words, as you leave that house or city, shake the dust off your feet. 15Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land ofSodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment, than for that city.” (Matthew 10:14-15 NASB)
It's pretty clear that Genesis 19 and Judges 19 are not about homosexuality. They have nothing to say about how God feels about caring, committed, covenantal same-sex relationships. They are a scathing commentary on what happens when humans don’t treat others with value, care, and honor. Loving and caring for others is what’s important to God. Sound familiar?
Jesus spelled it out in his declaration of the greatest commandments. Love God and love others. These commands were not new, they have been infused throughout the biblical story from the beginning.
This leads us to the next passages that are frequently used to condemn LGBTQ+ people and exclude them from the table. Go forward in your Bibles from Genesis 19 to Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 and you’ll find the only other mention of same-sex behavior in the Old Testament.
Leviticus 18:22 says, “‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.”
And Leviticus 20:13 says, “‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”
Pastor and biblical scholar Dr. James Brownson has this to say about these prohibitions in his book, “Bible, Gender, Sexuality”:
“Because the active role in male-male sex is portrayed so negatively in the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19) and the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19), we see very early in the biblical witness a resistance to sanctioning this kind of behavior, whether or not it might have been accepted elsewhere in the ancient world. It was too closely linked with violence of the worst kind and inhospitality toward the most vulnerable. In addition, given the fact that male-male sex is associated with cultic prostitution in the ancient world generally, and in the area surrounding Israel in particular, there were also religious reasons for rejecting both the active and passive roles in male same-sex behavior, particularly since the active role belonged to those making use of cultic prostitution…To degrade others in this way was to violate deep biblical values: the call to love one’s neighbor as oneself, as well as the call to justice and hospitality.”
In the patriarchal culture of ancient Israel, to force a man to have sexual relations “as one doeswith a woman” was to force a man to become like a woman and be penetrated, which would have degraded and dehumanized him and violated his honor. Likewise, for a man to voluntarily take the woman’s role in sexual relations (as in cultic prostitution) was to bring dishonor and “uncleanness” on himself. Both actions are deemed “detestable” in Leviticus and punishable by death. Notice, there is no corresponding prohibition regarding same-sex behavior for women, which should tell us something about why the behavior was prohibited. It wasn’t about same-sex attraction.
O.K., by now, we should have a pretty good idea about what was in view for the Old Testament biblical authors, who, inspired by the Spirit, penned these prohibitions of male same-sex behavior. The same-sex behavior we see in the Old Testament, rape, and abusive and exploitive same-sex behavior for the purpose of demonstrating power and dominance over a male of lower status by treating him as a woman, was outside of accepted gender roles, broke patriarchal gender boundaries and shamed and dishonored another.
Voluntarily taking part in this behavior, as in the case of the male temple prostitution of Israel’s pagan neighbors (mentioned in 1 Kings 14:24), not only broke the gender role boundaries, but also broke the purity code boundaries that prohibited Israel from behaving like the pagan nations around them, thus rendering them unclean and defiled.
Add to these boundaries, the fact that same-sex behavior was not procreative (which was the ultimate purpose of sexual relations in the Hebrew culture), and we can begin to see the ancient reasoning behind the laws prohibiting male same-sex behavior for the nation Israel.
Matthew Vines, author of “God and the Gay Christian” and founder of The Reformation Project, an organization that works to advance LGBTQ inclusion in the church, sums it up this way:
In the ancient world, “Sexual identity was defined not by sexual orientation, but by conformity to patriarchal gender roles. Men who were dominant in sex were generally viewed positively, whether they had sex with males, females, or both. Men who were seen as passive in sex were viewed negatively. People didn’t come out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, because the sex of one’s partners mattered far less than the gender role one took with those partners.”
“Lifelong, monogamous, equal-status same-sex relationships were not an option in the ancient world.”
So, if loving, committed, covenantal same-sex relationships were not an option in the ancient world, and would not have been in plain view for the ancient biblical authors, then the Old Testament really doesn’t speak to whether God blesses these relationships or not. We only know that abusive, harmful, exploitive, devaluing forms of sexual behavior are prohibited.
We also need to take into consideration the fact that Christians don’t even follow many of the prohibitions deemed detestable abominations in the Old Testament anymore, like sacrificing a blemished animal (Deuteronomy 17:1), charging interest on loans (Ezekiel 18:13), having sexual relations with a woman during her period (Leviticus 18:19), eating unclean animals (Deuteronomy 14:3-21), or a woman wearing a man’s clothing or vice versa (Deuteronomy 22:5)—a prohibition based on specific idolatrous worship practices of the day, and the only prohibition in Scripture that people try to use to justify the condemnation of transgender people.
When we take all of this into account, it not only becomes apparent that the same-sex behavior we find in the Old Testament, looks nothing like the loving, committed, covenantal same-sex relationships we are talking about today, but also, that as Christians, we are no longer bound by many of the Old Testament laws. Jesus set us free from all of that. We are bound by his new covenant law; to love God and to love others as he has loved us.
The Old Testament then, does not provide justification for condemning our LGBTQ+ siblings. To the contrary, it sets a trajectory forward to Jesus, and to loving, valuing, caring for, and including all people.