Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (4 page)

Denny’s eye contact was intense as I talked. His look was a mix of compassion and concern—and bewilderment. “So, Wes, can you help me understand this better?” he asked gently when I had finished. “What do you mean when you talk about homosexual desires?” I fumbled for an answer, and he tried to help with a concrete scenario: “For example, are you turned on when you watch a men’s underwear commercial on TV?” I couldn’t help but laugh inside. Denny was clearly unacquainted with what it would mean for someone to struggle with homosexuality. I answered that that could be part of it, yes, but it was so much bigger. Somehow every part of my relational makeup was affected by this. As I would later write in a letter to a friend, “A sexual orientation is such a complex and, in most cases, it seems, intractable thing; I for one cannot imagine what ‘healing’ from my orientation would look like, given that it seems to manifest itself not only in physical attraction to male bodies but also in a preference for male company, with all that it entails,” such as conversation and emotional intimacy and quality time spent together.

“What I wish,” I finally said to Denny, “is that I could feel the church to be a safe place. I’ve come to you because I know you and I trust you,” I went on, “but even more than that, I’ve come to you because you’re my pastor, and I want to see this whole church
thing be what it’s supposed to be. If you’re willing and if you have the time, I’d love for you to
pastor
me.”

After that, for most of the second semester of my senior year of college, Denny and I met once a week. We had a standing appointment: I would wander across the street from my house on campus to the church building, and we would make small talk for a few minutes, and then our conversations would turn serious. I confessed sin at those meetings. We talked about what it would mean for the church to truly support its homosexual Christian members.

At several of our meetings, Denny and I discussed recent statements by evangelical Christian leaders that I had found helpful. Gordon Hugenberger, the pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, for example, had recently written to his parishioners:

I do want to emphasize that I do
not
consider homosexuality to be worse than any of the zillion sins I commit every day. In fact, it is a tribute to the infinite grace and mercy of God that the sanctuary roof stays up each day that I walk into the room. In any case, we are not on some kind of crusade to single out those who may be dealing with this issue. Although I want the liberty to be honest with the Bible and to address this topic from time to time, I have no intention of so stressing it that the many homosexual guests and visitors who are not interested in changing will feel put off or unwelcome (or at least no more put off or unwelcome than the many materialists who are not yet interested in changing). On the other hand, I want to say enough so that those who are trying to surrender this part of their lives to Christ will be encouraged, and also so that the rest will not be misled by a culture that increasingly is allowing only one side of the discussion to be heard.
²

Denny spent many hours trying to convince me that Hugenberger was right: my homosexual temptations weren’t any more (or less) tragic than temptations to greed, pride, or anger that Christians face on a daily basis.

Denny and I also talked about a statement that Richard Bewes, rector of All Souls Church, London, a sister church to mine and Denny’s, had made. The statement and what Denny said to me afterward sum up the spirit of our weekly times together.

We also wish warmly to affirm those sisters and brothers, already in membership with orthodox churches, who—while experiencing same-sex desires and feelings—nevertheless battle with the rest of us, in repentance and faith, for a lifestyle that affirms marriage [between a man and woman] and celibacy as the two given norms for sexual expression. There is room for every kind of background and past sinful experience among members of Christ’s flock as we learn the way of repentance and renewed lives, for
Such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God
(1 Corinthians 6:11).

This is true inclusivity.
³

“They
get
it, don’t they, Wes?” Denny said simply, smiling, when I had stopped reading and folded the piece of paper. “It’s about warm affirmation. It’s about battling together for holiness, in repentance and faith, on a daily basis. It’s about the church being the church, as we
all
struggle toward wholeness.”

“I don’t know if you’ve shared your struggle with anyone else, but
if you haven’t, you need to,”
I wrote recently to a fellow homosexual Christian. “Speaking from personal experience,” I told him:

I would encourage you to share it both with wise, older Christians who can speak from their maturity into your life but also with younger Christians who are your peers. I don’t think I would have made it this far in my struggle with homosexuality had I not had the several close friends to whom I turn often for support, perspective, laughter (yes, it’s
really
important in this battle, I think, to not get too heavy-hearted), encouragement, counsel, rebuke, warning, and—most of all—prayer. When I cannot feel God’s love for me in my struggle, to have a friend grab my shoulder and say, “I love you, and I’m in this with you for the long haul” is, in some ways, an incarnation of God’s love that I would otherwise have trouble resting in.

I could not have written those words in college because I hadn’t told any peers about my struggle or experienced the kind of rich comfort and support I have since enjoyed. It was only after graduating and moving to Minneapolis to be involved in ministry at a large urban church that I would discover how crucial nonerotic friendships with peers of the same sex are in my pilgrimage toward wholeness.

At Denny’s advice, soon after moving, I made an appointment to meet with one of the pastors of my new church (already a friend of mine of several years) to tell him about my sexual struggles. No more secrets. I had tasted something of what it meant to walk in the light, and I wanted more. I wanted more than anything to see the church be the church and to know what it can mean to feel the freedom of openness and the consolations of community.

In the following weeks, I also met with a counselor, which proved to be a turning point. He told me pointedly, “I would hate for you to come to a point, say, two years from now and look around at the friends you’ve made here and have to say, ‘I never
became close friends with any of them.’” Then, in a question that has haunted me ever since, he asked, “Do you find yourself holding other males at arm’s length for fear that if you come to know them deeply and intimately, it will somehow be inappropriate or dangerous or uncomfortable?” I had never thought about this before, but as soon as he asked it, that question felt like a stab of hot, white light piercing some corner of my heart I hadn’t known existed. I left that meeting feeling that I needed to find a guy friend—or two or three—my own age with whom I could share my secrets, who could walk this road with me.

One night, sitting on the dirty carpeted floor of the bedroom of a downtown bachelor pad in a circle of guys my age, I came very close to breaking down and asking them for help and for prayer. A black light was glowing from where it was attached to a corner of the bunk beds, incense was burning on a shelf, one of the guys was strumming a guitar, and we were all shooting the breeze after a spaghetti dinner. Knees tucked under my chin, I felt my heart start to pound and my palms grow sweaty when one of the guys brought up the topic of homosexuality: “Have any of you ever had a gay or lesbian friend?” Another one of the guys, Charlie, said yes, he had had a close friend in college who had wrestled with homosexual inclinations. “He and I would go rock climbing together and talk,” Charlie said. “Mainly I listened to him. We would celebrate when he hadn’t looked at pornography for a day or two—or even just for several hours. And we would remind ourselves of God’s grace that would be there when tomorrow’s temptation came.”

As I listened to Charlie describe his relationship with his friend, I heard what seemed to me at that time to be a rare compassion, understanding, and respect in his voice. It was several weeks later
when, after dinner at an Indian restaurant downtown, I decided to take a risk and trust that this same sensitivity might be there for me. “Could we talk about something before we head home?” I blurted out, feeling only a little relief from the sense of dread that had been gnawing in my gut as we had chatted over dinner.

“Sure,” Charlie said. Was he wondering why my voice was shaking? He pulled off the road, parked his Ford Explorer in our church’s lot, and turned off the engine. It was October, and I shivered as the cool fall air found its way into the vehicle.

“There’s something I’d like you to know about me,” I began weakly. I told him that I knew I was gay. I had known since puberty, or soon after, and had probably experienced some foretastes of my sexual orientation even as a child. I told him I had prayed for healing. I said I just wanted Christian friends—including friends my age, peers—who would be there for me, who would help me figure out how to live with a tension and confusion that at the time seemed overwhelming.

When I finished, Charlie was quiet. “Did you want to say anything else?” he asked. I shook my head, wondering if I had said too much. “Wes, I just want you to know that I don’t think this is weird.”

“But it
is
weird!” I exclaimed.

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Charlie said, still quiet. “I mean, I don’t want you to feel like this is weird for me to hear. I always feel overwhelmed when people share things like this with me, like, Why me? What did I do to deserve to listen to a—like, a sacred trust, like this, you know?” We kept talking until we got too cold; then Charlie started the engine again, we prayed, and he drove me back to my apartment.

The rest of my time in Minneapolis was a mixture of intense, dogged affliction and loving pastoral care and nurture from Charlie and a few others—pastors, older married friends, other singles—whom I told about my sexuality. I began to learn to wrestle with my homosexuality
in community
over many late-night cups of coffee and in tear-soaked, face-on-the-floor times of prayer with members of my church.

“These years at Daybreak have not been easy,” wrote Henri Nouwen of his life at the L’Arche home for disabled persons. “There has been much inner struggle, and there has been mental, emotional, and spiritual pain. Nothing, absolutely nothing, had about it the quality of having arrived.”
⁴
I feel similarly about my time in Minneapolis. When I moved away after two years, I knew my wrestling wasn’t over. But I knew also that something good, something decisive, had happened to me. No longer was I simply struggling; I was learning to
struggle well,
with others, in the presence of God.

I have found two biblical images to be especially apt descriptions of my life as a homosexual Christian. Both are from Paul’s letters. The first is found in 1 Corinthians 6:9—11. “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” Paul asks and then gives a list of habitual sins that are evidence that God’s reign has not yet conquered the rebellion in all human hearts: “Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” Paul paints a bleak picture, not least for those who feel a stinging indictment at his mention of homosexuality.
But the picture is not finished. “And such were some of you,” Paul says, with an emphasis on how things have changed: “such
were
some of you”—
formerly
—
in the past.
“You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” There were some of you in the Corinthian church, Paul says, who were stained by the sin of homosexual practice. But you have been made clean, he continues, probably referring to the Corinthians’ water baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the action that symbolized their spiritual cleansing and incorporated them into the fellowship of the church. With this initiatory sign of faith, the Corinthians were scrubbed clean from the dirt of old habits, forgiven, and made part of the community of believers. “You were
washed.”

I know that whatever the complex origins of my own homosexuality are, there
have
been conscious choices I’ve made to indulge—and therefore to intensify, probably—my homoerotic inclinations. As I look back over the course of my life, I regret the nights I have given in to temptations to lust that pulsed like hot, itching sores in my mind. And so I cling to this image—
washed. I
am washed, sanctified, justified through the work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Whenever I look back on my baptism, I can remember that God has cleansed the stains of homosexual sin from the crevasses of my mind, heart, and body and included me in his family, the church, where I can find support, comfort, and provocation toward Christian maturity.

The second image that describes my struggle comes from Romans 8:23—25. Along with the fallen inanimate creation, “we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our
bodies.” Paul pictures Christian believers as having a “down payment”—the Holy Spirit—on their future inheritance. But indwelt by the Spirit, we not only feel happiness at the pledge but also a gut-wrenching hunger for its consummation. Like mothers experiencing labor pains, we can only
wait.
“For,” Paul continues, “in this hope [of our future bodily redemption] we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”