This sermon was preached by Dan Harper at First Church, Unitarian, of Athol, Massachusetts. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2003 Daniel Harper.
Note from 2025: This sermon was written a long time ago. Today, I would change some things in it. But I’m leaving it here because it gives a little insight into another time.
Story
Back in the olden days, two thousand years ago, in a far away land called Judea, there lived a rabbi named Jesus. In those days, in that land, it was illegal to do any work on the sabbath day. The sabbath day began on Friday when the sun went down, and ended on Saturday when the sun went down. for that whole time, no one was allowed to do any work.
This rabbi by the name of Jesus was wandering around the countryside. He would go from town to town, and he would tell people how to be good people, how to be the best people they could possibly be. As he traveled, he began to attract followers, people who liked what he said and who wanted to stay with him to learn more.
Jesus and his followers were traveling one day. It happened to be a sabbath day. They were walking along, and they were very hungry. They hadn’t had anything to eat all day, and they didn’t have anything to eat that night. They came to a field of grain, and they decided to pluck some of the grain so that they could have something to eat that evening.
As they plucked the grain, some Pharisees came along. The Pharisees were people who were in charge of enforcing all the religious laws. The Pharisees saw the followers of Jesus plucking grain. But wait! It was the sabbath! No one was allowed to pluck grain on the sabbath, because plucking grain was work, and you weren’t supposed to work on the sabbath day!
The Pharisees came up to Jesus, and said, “Why are all your followers plucking grain? Don’t they know that it isn’t lawful to pluck grain on the sabbath?”
But Jesus said to them, “I know that’s the law of the sabbath. But I also know that the whole point of that law is to help people. We do no work on the sabbath so that we can take the time to think about what is most important in life. If we worked every day without ever taking a rest, we would soon forget what is important.
“You guys have it backwards,” said Jesus. “You think that the law about not working on the sabbath day is more important than people. Well, it’s not. When it comes to religion, the most important thing is the people.”
I think Jesus is absolutely right, and most Unitarian Universalists would agree with him here. Another way to say the same thing is to say that we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all people. In our religion, we believe people are what’s important.
Readings
This morning’s first reading is from the Hebrew Scriptures, the book of Leviticus, chapter 18, verses 1 through 3, verse 9, and verse 22:
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: I am the Lord your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not follow their statutes…. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether born at home or born abroad…. You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination….
The second reading this morning is from The Women’s Bible Companion, from the article on the book of Leviticus:
Illicit sexual relations and pollution
The Holiness Code — a scholarly designation for chapters 17 through 26 [of Leviticus] — sees illicit sexual relations as sources of cultic pollution…. The sexual regulations begin significantly with an admonition not to imitate the practices either of Egypt, whence God had delivered them, or of Cannan, the promised land to which God would bring them. The ensuing list of forbidden unions covers various degrees of incest, including brother-sister marriage — historically practices by Egyptian royalty — and male homosexuality — apparently practiced by Canaanites. The point of the warning is that the Israelites must set themselves apart from the surrounding nations, in their sexual practices as well as their dietary laws, which likewise distinguish between the cultically clean and unclean…. The Israelites…are required to set themselves apart…by observing strict rules of cultic purity in the two aspects of life most crucial to personal and national survival: food and sex.
Sermon
In the children’s story this morning, we heard a story of two competing points of view. On the one hand are the Pharisees, who believe in a literal — we might almost say fundamentalist — interpretation of religion. You can’t work on the sabbath, say the Pharisees, even if you’re starving you can’t do any work because it’s against the law. On the other hand, we have Jesus who understands that religion always requires interpretation. “The sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the sabbath.”
The same kinds of debates are going on today. One in particular has caught my attention of late: the place of gays and lesbians in churches and synagogues and other religious institutions. On the one hand, there are those religious groups who condemn homosexuality. Some Mormons say if gay and lesbian persons don’t “renounce” their sexual orientation, they are guilty of sin. The Catholic church seems to be pursuing a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The United Methodists are close to splitting on the issue of same-sex marriage. Orthodox Jews condemn homosexuality. On the other hand, religious liberal groups like the Unitarian Universalists, the United Church of Christ, and the Reform Jews all recognize same-sex services of union, and are working actively to discourage homophobia in their religious institutions.
Or to put it another way: one the one hand, we have those who believe that humankind was made for religion; on the other hand, we religious liberals believe that religion was made for humankind.
Like it or not, we are in the middle of this debate. We have to understand this debate.
As near as I can tell, it all comes back to the Bible, at least for Jews and Christians — and Unitarian Universalists, because we do come out of the Christian tradition. Unfortunately we Unitarian Universalists have this tendency to ignore the Bible. This is a mistake on our part. We live in a society that is dominated by the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures. We cannot afford to ignore the Bible, because the Bible is setting the agenda for the debate that is swirling around us.
Besides, I believe that we religious liberals have the same right to interpret the Bible as do the fundamentalists and the religious conservatives. The Bible — along with the Qur’an, the Bhagavad Gita, the Analects, the Tao te Ching, and the Diamond Sutra — is one of those books that belong to the world. We have the same right to the Bible as do all the others, and we have our own way of interpreting the Bible, because we always apply reason and intellect to religion. Faith is not enough — you have to think about religion.
So let’s think together about gays, lesbians, and church, and see what conclusions we come to.
We can start with the issue of marriage, because same-sex unions seem to encapsulate the whole debate about homosexuality and religion. Unitarian Universalists, along with Reform Jews and the United Church of Christ, support same-sex marriage. Some of my gay and lesbian friends tell me that no, we do not support same-sex marriage, we support same-sex unions. In their view, a marriage isn’t a marriage unless it carries with it all legal rights and responsibilities or it isn’t really marriage. [Editor’s note: Remember, this dates back to before same-sex marriage was legal in the United States.] They’re right, of course. But if I officiate at the wedding of a same-sex couple, in my eyes, in the eyes of my religious community, that couple is married.
In my seminary class on worship services, we had to write both a complete wedding service and a complete service of union for same-sex couples. I decided it was a trick assignment in a way: you didn’t have to write two different services, you only had to write one service. Wherever you had to mention the gender of the couple, you just inserted “he/she” or “bride/groom.” From my point of view, there is absolutely no religious difference between mixed-sex and same-sex weddings. Yes, there is a difference from the point of view of the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. If I officiate at a same-sex wedding, those two people are not legally married even though they are religiously married. That just means that there is an unjust, hurtful law on the books.
Our conservative Christian friends want to go further. They want to deny any legal recognition of same-sex marriages. Why? In their view, same sex marriages can not be religiously sanctioned. And why is that so? Because that’s not what it says in the Bible. The Bible specifically says, “You shall not lie with a man as with a woman.” Forget for a moment that this passage says nothing about women who lie with women. It’s right there in black and white, say our conservative Christian friends — homosexuality is a sin, an “abomination.”
True. That’s what it says in the book of Leviticus. But, as we heard in the second reading this morning, Bible scholars tell us there is no simple black-and-white answer. First of all, the scholars say, when the Bible talks about holiness and purity, they mean something different from our contemporary notions of holiness and purity. Maybe the best way to explain this is to talk about what happened to you if you engaged homosexual acts. By transgressing against the laws of holiness and cultic purity, you could not come directly before Yahweh. Yahweh didn’t want any unholy or impure persons coming before him. But guess what — women by definition were not holy enough or cultically pure enough to come directly before Yahweh.
It is at this point that the religious liberal says, “Hey, this is ridiculous — what do you mean, women aren’t holy enough or pure enough?” It is at this point that the religious liberal says, “Hey, it looks like I cannot accept everything in the book of Leviticus; there is something in that book that is really alien to me.” Doubt and scepticism have set in. The religious liberal finds herself or himself compelled to look carefully through the rest of the book of Leviticus.
That’s exactly what I’ve been doing lately — I have been looking very carefully through the book of Leviticus. Can I accept without question everything in this book? What else was this book trying to tell me to do? As I asked myself these questions, I ran into Leviticus chapter 11 verse 10: “Anything in the seas or streams that does not have fins and scales… they are detestable to you and detestable they shall remain. Of their flesh you shall not eat.”
Do you realize what this means? This means no lobster! This means no clams or mussels or quahogs. Don’t try to tell me that quahogs are sinful! Sorry, but this New Englander is not going to give up quahog chowder just because Leviticus says so. In the words of George Gershwin’s song: “The things that you’re liable/ To read in the Bible’ They ain’t necessarily so.”
Then there’s chapter 3 which tells us how to properly perform religious animal sacrifices. The book of Leviticus specifies that religious people shall slaughter and burn animals as offerings to God. Sorry once again, but in this church we are not going to burn up the “fat covering the entrails” and “the appendage of the liver” so that God can enjoy the smell.
Oh, yes, and if you take the name of the Lord in vain, according to Leviticus we are supposed to stone you to death. Sorry once again, but I’m not going to do this. If you drop a hammer on your toe and slip and say “God damn it!” I am not going to take you out the edge of the village and stone you to death.
In the Bible, we are going to find things we can no longer believe. At the same time, as I look through the book of Leviticus, I find it contains things I can believe, things of deep wisdom. For example, Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18 says, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself….” This is the so-called Golden Rule, and Jesus tends to get the credit for saying it first, but Jesus was just quoting Leviticus.
Then there’s Leviticus chapter 23 verse 3: “Six days shall work be done; but the seventh day is a sabbath of complete rest….” I can see the wisdom in this rule. A couple of years ago, I started keeping one day a week as a sabbath day because I found myself working longer and longer hours, to the point where I was ruining my health. Funny thing is, I still get the same amount of work done, but now I have one day a week for resting and taking care of my spiritual life.
As you read the Bible, you find both the good and the bad. You can find gems of real wisdom, and you can find statements that sound stupid or appalling to us today. But we religious liberals simply can not suspend judgment when reading the Bible, or anything else for that matter. With anything we read, or hear, it’s up to us to sift through it and decide what makes sense and what does not make sense.
I’m convinced that all the great religious figures of the past were in fact religious liberals. In spite of whatever else you might have heard, Jesus was a religious liberal — as we heard in the children’s story today. “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath,” said Jesus. He found people in his day who used religion to punish others. But Jesus — and Confucius, and Buddha, and Socrates, and Gandhi — they all knew that religion was made for people, and not the other way around.
In the Bible, the point is not to obey the letter of the law, but to understand the spirit of what is being said. The point, actually, is not the law at all: the point is to live with the understanding that all persons are worthy of love. Or as Leviticus itself states it in chapter 19 verse 18: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Indeed, based on Leviticus 19.18, I have to say that there is absolutely no justification whatsoever for discriminating against gays and lesbians. Now you can go back and talk with your conservative Christian friends, and if they tell you that the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin, you can say, true, but you can quote Leviticus 19.18 to them. And you can tell them that eating a lobster is also a sin!
I’ve made us Unitarian Universalists liberals sound pretty good, haven’t I? I’ve made it sound as though we are all such reasonable people, and we always agree on what is right to do. But we don’t always agree. Unitarian Universalists widely agree that same-sex unions are part of what we do, but that wide agreement is fairly recent. Beyond that, there is a certain amount of disagreement about whether or not Unitarian Universalists should take a stand on gay rights in the wider community.
I’ll give you an example of one issue that has proved divisive in a number of our congregations recently. As you may know, many gay, lesbian, and bisexual people recognize a rainbow flag as a symbol of a person or institution that welcomes persons of any sexual orientation. In recent years, some Unitarian Universalist congregations have been displaying rainbow flags in front of their buildings to make it clear to everyone in the community that here is a place where we don’t care about your sexual orientation. But a significant number of UU congregations find that when this idea is raised, some people in the congregation do not want to display the rainbow flag. Some of us are still not sure how homosexuality relates to our religion. We have rejected what Leviticus says about homosexuality — but what is it that we affirm about homosexuality, and about the sexual orientation of human beings?
I don’t have a complete answer, but based on my experience I have found one or two things I affirm about homosexuality. I’m a religious educator at my core, and I care deeply about children. I have watched as children grow up, reach adolescence, and slowly confront their sexuality and their sexual identity. I have watched young people who have questioned their sexual identity, who have struggled with accepting the fact that they are gay, or lesbian, or bisexual. And from what I can tell, there is no religious difference — there is a difference in sexual orientation, but no religious difference — between young people who are gay and young people who happen to be straight.
Let me put it another way: Linda and Paul are the same age (and while I am thinking of real kids, of course I am not using real names). As I watch them grow from children into adolescents, it becomes clear that Linda is gay, and Paul is straight. I am not going to reject Linda, or tell her that she is sinful, just because it turns out she is gay; I am not going to treat her any differently than I treat Paul.
When I watch young people grow up, when I hear their stories, then I know that we, as a religious community, have to support them no matter what their sexual orientation. I know, too, that teenagers who are gay or lesbian are much more likely to commit suicide than are their straight peers — they experience so much hatred and rejection! So for me, as a matter of moral and religious truth, the way it must be is this: a person’s sexual orientation can make no difference to me.
And for me, as a matter of moral and religious truth, our religious institutions must welcome all persons, no matter what their sexual orientation. Religion is made for humankind — this I believe. Religion is made for humankind, no matter whether gay or straight — this, too, I believe.