LGBTQ+ People Are Welcome at the Table Part 4

This year, we’ve been in a series called “The Table”, talking about how Jesus breaks down boundaries and welcomes everyone to his table, no matter their race, their ethnicity, their physical or emotional abilities, their sexual orientation, or their gender identity. We’ve spent so much time looking at the historical and cultural context of the Scripture used to create these boundaries, because it’s Scripture that is being weaponized by Christians today, to exclude and to harm these marginalized groups.

A few months ago, we took a deep dive into the Old Testament passages that were used to exclude sexual minorities in the ancient world, and we discovered that the exploitive, devaluing, abusive same-sex behavior the biblical authors were seeing around them was very different from the loving, committed, covenantal same-sex relationships we are talking about today.

Last time, we investigated the New Testament passages that have traditionally been used to condemn LGBTQ+ folks. We took a closer look at the culture and context of ancient Greece and Rome (you probably learned more than you ever wanted to know about Greco-Roman sexuality), and we learned that in addition to the lustful sexual excesses of the time, exemplified by the Caesars and the imperial family, the most common forms of same-sex behavior in the Greco-Roman world were pederasty, prostitution, and master-slave exploitation. Again, not even close to the loving, monogamous, equal-status same-sex relationships we are talking about today.

Now that we’ve gotten our minds around what the Old and New Testament writers would have been seeing as far as same-sex behavior goes, we need to turn our attention to a couple of passages that don’t address same-sex behavior directly but are used to exclude LGBTQ+ people and to condemn their relationships as wrong, right from the start. The passages we’re going to look at come from Genesis 1 and 2, but because they are referenced by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, we’ll start there.

We’ve looked at this passage a couple of times now. It’s Jesus’ conversation about divorce in Matthew 19. If you’ll recall, Jesus is confronted by a group of religious men asking if they can break their marriage covenants and devalue and discard their wives whenever they grow tired of them, as Moses allowed, leaving them without support and vulnerable to exploitation and hardship. He begins this conversation by quoting a part of a passage from Genesis 1, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female…” Which infers the first part of that verse, as well as the verse before, “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man [adam – human] in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ God created man [human] in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:26-27).

Remember, the question Jesus was asked had nothing to do with gender. The men were asking about whether they could devalue their wives. That is the question Jesus is addressing. He was making the point that from the beginning, both men and women were created in the image of God, with equal value and authority to rule, and therefore, by devaluing their wives, these men are acting contrary to God’s design for humanity. This passage is used today however, to make the case that gender must be an either/or binary, thus effectively excluding those in the trans community, and that marriage must only be between a man and a woman, which excludes those in same-sex relationships. But let’s look closer at these Genesis passages.

First, we need to acknowledge that when we read Genesis, we are reading ancient Jewish meditation literature. The ancient Jewish sages and rabbis would read and reread the Scripture, thinking deeply about it, and then, discuss and debate it in community. The interesting thing is, it seems that many did not read the passage in Genesis 1 as a binary as we Christians tend to do. It appears that they may have read it as a merism—a literary device that takes two points and uses them as a way of including everything. Merisms are all over Scripture. When the ancient authors wrote that God created the heavens and the earth, they meant that God created everything. Or when they wrote that God is Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, they meant that God is all in all. Reading Genesis 1:27 as a merism then, would be to read it, male and female and the entire gender spectrum.

It is possible that the ancient sages and rabbis may have read the verse this way because there are at least six different gender identities mentioned in the Mishna and the Talmud, the sacred Jewish writings that expound on the Torah. The Mishna, which was edited around the 2nd century C.E., is a compilation of what had been oral traditions establishing laws and practices which were based on rabbinic interpretation of the Torah. The Talmud, written and compiled from about 200 C.E. to 600 C.E., records the conversations and disagreements of rabbis and scholars about the laws of Torah and the interpretations of the Mishna. In addition to legal issues, the rabbis of the Talmud tell stories about their teachers and their students, and present interpretations of biblical stories and texts.

Take a look at the spectrum of gender diversity referenced in these sources. First, of course, the most predominant references are the terms: male, “zachar”, and female, “nekevah”, but even these words have an interesting twist and may not be as clear as we think. When you look closely at the definitions, the word for “male” in Hebrew comes from a word that means “to remember”, and the word for “female” comes from a word that can mean “designated or appointed”.

Here’s a thought. Is it possible that the significance of the creation of image-bearing humanity in all its diversity, goes beyond mere anatomical gender and the act of procreation? Just as Adam’s name means “human” and Eve’s name means “life”, delineating their unique identity (human life), could the labels “male” and “female” also speak to humanity’s intended purpose—being appointed out of all of creation to remember who our Creator God is, and to reflect his likeness? Just something to think about…

According to “Gender Diversity in Jewish Sacred Texts”, an article put out by “Keshet”, an organization working for the full equality of LGBTQ Jews, in addition to “zachar” and “nekevah”, the Mishna and Talmud also reference an “androgynos”, a person who has both “male” and “female” sexual characteristics. They are outside of the gender binary. We would call these people “intersex” today and they make up about the same percentage of the population as people who have red hair. The texts also reference a person whose sexual characteristics are indeterminate or obscured, and a person who is identified as “female” at birth but develops “male” characteristics at puberty and is infertile. A “saris” is a person who is identified as “male” at birth but develops “female” characteristics at puberty or later. A saris can be a saris “naturally”, or become one through human intervention. They would be known as eunuchs in our Bible translations.

All this to say, that if we Christians are reading Jewish literature, how is it that we have decided to interpret the “male and female” in Genesis 1 as a binary, while the very authors of the literature may have accepted that it is much more diverse than that? O.K., back to Matthew 19.

After Jesus quotes from Genesis 1 in his discussion with the hard-hearted religious leaders, he continues with a passage from Genesis 2, “‘…For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh… So they are no longer two, but one flesh.’” This is the passage used most frequently to define marriage as one man and one woman, and so exclude and condemn anyone in a same-sex relationship. But again, we need to look deeper.

Jesus is reminding his audience of the story in Genesis 2 which tells us that after bringing all the amazing diversity of creation into being and proclaiming it all “very good”, the Creator surprisingly declares that there is something that is “not good”. He says it is not good for the human to be alone. So, he decides to make a “suitable helper” for the human. The word for “helper”—“ezer”—is not meant in a subordinate or hierarchical sense. In fact, it’s a word most often used in Scripture to describe the powerful help God himself provides to his people. Like in Psalm 33:20, “Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help [ezer] and our shield.” Or in Psalm 70:5, “You are my help [ezer] and my savior; Lord, do not delay.” The word for “suitable”—“kenegdo”—in this verse means “corresponding to, or in front of, in the sense of standing opposite to, across from, or standing face-to-face with or in the presence of”. It means someone who is “a counterpart” or “a partner”. Notice that neither word is gender specific, nor do they imply anything about difference in physical anatomy. The solution to the human’s “aloneness” problem is not about needing someone “different”, it’s about needing someone “similar”, as we can see by what happens next in the story.

In addition to the fact that God is already present with the human, so the human is not actually “alone”, he then brings all the animals to the human, but none among the created animals was found to be a “suitable helper”. In other words, a “counterpart”—a “similar partner”—was not found among the animals, so God took “one side” of human (the Hebrew meaning of the word we translate as “rib” actually means “side”) and made “woman”—another human—unique and yet the same. If the problem had just been biological difference and procreation, why would the animals have been the first attempt at a solution? It only makes sense if the problem is about “being alone” and the human need for companionship, partnership, and kinship. 

Then the human said, “At last this is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh…”, a phrase used multiple times in Scripture not in a hierarchical or gender specific way, but to describe a relational bond of kinship between family members. Like in Genesis 29:14, when Laban tells Jacob, his son-in-law, “You certainly are my bone and my flesh”, and in 2 Samuel 5:1, when the tribes of Israel speak of being the “bone and flesh” of King David. These aren’t sexual or anatomical references, they are speaking about kinship and family.

Genesis 2 goes on to describe how “the man shall leave his father and his mother” and “cleave” or “cling” to his wife and they will become “one flesh”. First, we know there is more going on here, because in the ancient world, the woman would leave her family and become a part of the husband’s tribe and family lineage, not the other way around. And again, “one flesh” isn’t a sexual reference, it refers to a relational bond of kinship as we just saw. The word translated as “cleave” or “cling” in Hebrew, (dabaq), is not usually used in Scripture in a sexual or gender-specific way either. For instance, it’s used in the book of Ruth to describe the deep feeling of commitment Ruth has for her mother-in-law (Ruth 1:14), and in the book of Deuteronomy, it’s used for the loving, faithful, committed relationship the nation Israel was to have toward God—they were to “cling” to him (Deuteronomy 11:22). The Greek word that Jesus uses in Matthew 19, “kollao”, comes from the word for “glue”. It means to be “bonded together” or “intimately connected in a soul-knit friendship”. This “clinging”, “cleaving”, or “joining” and becoming “one flesh” is describing how we leave our first covenantal kinship bond—our family—and partner in unity with another, to create a new kinship bond—a new covenant relationship.

Yes, this first relationship, this first “marriage”, in Genesis 2 was between a man and a woman. Remember, the biblical authors writing within the patriarchal culture of the ancient world, viewed same-sex relationships as idolatrous, impure, and stemming from excessive lust, and sex was about procreation alone, within strict hierarchical gender role boundaries. It’s what they knew based on their culture at the time. But looking deeper at the context and the words used, the underlying foundation of this “one-flesh” relationship is not sexual, or anatomical, it is a bond of kinship, a “covenant”, a relational bond and committed partnership between “ezer kenegdos”, united and working together as one, which certainly can include, but does not require, gender difference or procreation. It doesn’t have to be either/or, it can be both/and. Heterosexual, covenantal marriage can be a beautiful blessing and is surely the majority in our world, but that doesn’t mean that covenantal, same-sex marriages cannot be just as beautiful and blessed.

In addition to what the ancient biblical authors believed about gender and procreation in marriage, we also know that they believed marriage (sometimes multiple marriages) and children to be the norm and the goal for everyone. To be unmarried, widowed, or childless was the cause of deep shame and hardship in the ancient world. Certainly, that is not our thinking today. Those who choose to enter into a marriage covenant make committed promises to love, honor, and care for each other whether they are of the same sex or opposite sexes and whether children are in the picture or not. And those who choose to remain unmarried and enter into deep, meaningful, covenantal friendships, still fully and purposefully reflect the image of God in their singleness, as both Jesus and the Apostle Paul, among others, make clear.

It's interesting to note that this concept of the marriage covenant is used later in Scripture to describe the relationship between God and his people—the nation Israel—as well as the relationship between Jesus and his followers—his church—those who are being transformed into his “likeness”. God’s people in covenant partnership with him, working together in unity with him and with each other. Certainly, this “marriage” covenant between God and his people does not have to do with gender difference, sex, or procreation. While these are all good things in a marriage, covenant goes deeper. The marriage covenant is a loving, trusting, committed, relational partnership between human beings, joining their lives and working together as one, and it represents in a small way, the loving, trusting, committed covenant relationship the Creator desires with all his image-bearers. Jesus leaves no doubt in that Matthew 19 conversation, he values each and every human being, and he values committed covenantal relationships.

If the marriage covenant is the picture used to describe the relationship between Jesus and his followers, then it’s time for those who claim to follow Jesus to stop our harmful interpretations of these Genesis passages, and to start thinking differently about gender difference and how we define the marriage covenant, who can enter into it, and what its foundational purpose and blessing are really about.

To bring this discussion to a close, let’s sum up what we’ve learned in the last few months about the Scriptural passages used to not only exclude LGBTQ+ people from full inclusion in the church, but also to vilify their very existence.

In the Old Testament, we saw that the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 and the Levite’s concubine in Judges 19, are about devaluing and dehumanizing others through violence and gang rape, not about same-sex orientation, or same-sex relationships.

Next, we looked at the prohibitions of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 but we found that the male same sex behavior described there reflects culturally-bound purity concerns and patriarchal gender roles, not to mention the fact that Christians today do not abide by many of the Old Testament laws, as Christ set us free from the law 

In the New Testament, we discovered that the same-sex behavior that was in Paul’s view when he wrote Romans 1:26-27, was the unrestrained, self-seeking lust of his Gentile neighbors, in addition to the breaking of the patriarchal gender boundaries of the time and the undermining of the procreative purpose of sexual relations within the Jewish culture. Paul could not have been condemning being gay as opposed to being straight, as sexual orientation was unheard of at the time.

We also learned that scholars still debate the meanings of the two Greek words used in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10, “malakoi” and “arsenokoitai”. They may have referred to some form of same-sex behavior but most likely it was behavior that was exploitive and devaluing, not the committed, covenantal, same-sex relationships we are talking about today. And, most certainly, “malakoi” and “arsenokoitai” were not originally translated as “homosexual”, as that wording was not used in a biblical translation until 1946. We need to acknowledge that this is a harmful and misleading mistranslation that causes untold damage to our LGBTQ+ siblings.

And finally, we discovered that the writers and readers of the Hebrew Scriptures, including Jesus himself, were well aware of people who existed outside of strictly “male” or “female” gender identities, and therefore, we can infer that they read Genesis 1:26-27 as a merism, not as a binary. The poetic Genesis creation story reveals that the beautiful design and diversity of God’s creation, including all of his beloved image-bearers, cannot be contained in binaries.

We can also see, when we closely examine the context and the language used in Genesis 1 and 2 and in Matthew 19, that marriage is fundamentally about a committed, covenantal relational partnership, a reflection of the covenantal relationship God desires with each of us. The Bible doesn’t teach that marriage requires procreation or gender hierarchy. Both heterosexual and same-sex couples live out this committed, covenantal vision of marriage every day.

If Christians would take the time to engage in thoughtful study of the scriptural passages that are used to exclude and demonize LGBTQ+ people;if they would investigate the culture, context, and language of the ancient scriptural authors; if they would be willing to listen to the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQ+ people; and if they would be open and humble enough to engage in gracious, open-minded dialogue; they just might find that Scripture does not actually say what they think it says. In fact, they might just find that the trajectory of Scripture actually leads us toward greater love and inclusion, not the other way around; that instead of pushing people away, Jesus opens up the doors and welcomes everyone to his table.

Now, more than ever, we need the words of Jesus and his disciples to be heard above the noise, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). And “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:8-10). And “Beloved, let’s love one another; for love is from God, andeveryone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8).

If these episodes have challenged your thinking and you’d like more information, or if you’d like to discuss these ideas further, you can contact us at singlouder.love@gmail.com or visit our website at singlovelouder.com. You can also visit the Reformation Project website at reformationproject.org. The Reformation Project is an organization working to advance LGBTQ+ inclusion in the church and they have lots of helpful information and resources available. Much of the information in these episodes comes from information learned through The Reformation Project. 

I hope these episodes have informed and challenged you to think deeply about Scripture and to engage in inclusive conversations with new eyes.