Gender in German: Time to abolish it (or change its name)

After a long hiatus, there was a topic that came up in an online conversation that has inspired me to write about a topic near and dear to me: German grammatical gender. Mind you, I have mastered German pretty well — in fact I can write paragraph after paragraph of flawless German (though for some reason every four or five paragraphs I have one that goes completely all to hell). I also actually think I do get why German has gender — and (hopefully) can show you how it works so that you can appreciate it.

What bugs me is the way grammatical gender is perceived, both inside and outside the German-speaking realm. This is what Mark Twain, in a fit of frustration, wrote about the subject:

Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. [...] A tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female -- tomcats included, of course; a person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and not according to the sex of the individual who wears it -- for in Germany all the women either male heads or sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.

[...]

In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) is not -- which is unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish is he, his scales are she, but a fishwife is neither. To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description; that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse. A German speaks of an Englishman as the Engländer; to change the sex, he adds -in, and that stands for Englishwoman -- Engländerin. That seems descriptive enough, but still it is not exact enough for a German; so he precedes the word with that article which indicates that the creature to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die Engländerin," -- which means "the she-Englishwoman." I consider that that person is over-described.

So it is easy to make fun of — if you don’t understand what gender is for and what it really is.

Grammatical gender in German actually has nothing — I mean nothing — to do with “gender” in the sexual sense. Zero. De nada. Twain’s observation above that a girl (das Mädchen) and a female (das Weib) are both “neuter”, while a cat is female regardless of its real gender (die Katze), should clue you in on this, but Twain definitely missed the point.

After some 20+ years of speaking the language on a daily basis, I think there is another explanation for the origin and purpose of grammatical gender. If you look at how plurals are formed, they are fairly consistent across each of the three genders. Usually this is taught as “if it is masculine, then it forms the plural like this”. I think that that is actually backwards. It is “masculine” because the plural is formed a certain way, not the other way around.

If a word’s plural adds an umlaut and an -e, like Topf -> Töpfe, then it almost certainly is masculine. Or if it remains unchanged in the plural, then it is also most likely masculine, like der Knochen -> die Knochen or der Knoten -> die Knoten.

If a word’s plural adds an -en or -n, like die Frau -> Frauen or Lampe -> Lampen, then it is almost certainly feminine.

If a word ends in a diminutive (-chen or -lein, such as Mädchen), or adds -er to form the plural, then it is almost certainly neuter. Hence das Mädchen becomes die Mädchen in the plural, or das Kind becomes die Kinder.

In the end, the “gender” is thus a tool for marking words for forming plurals in certain ways. It is nothing to do with sexual gender.

Granted, there are exceptions to these rule above, and Germans reading this will no doubt start posting them in response. The thing is, no language is 100% consistent — English is a particularly sloppy and irregular language. While German is indeed far more regular and systematic than English, that does not mean it is completely consistent. I submit that the plural is the real basis for the so-called “gender”.

So why bother with grammatical gender? Well, it actually helps make the language far more supple and subtle in phrasing and word order. German is able to play with word order in sentences in ways English can not remotely compete with. Consider the following three sentences:

Der Junge gibt dem Hund den Knochen.
Den Knochen gibt der Junge dem Hund.
Dem Hund gibt der Junge den Knochen.

All three nouns in this are “masculine” — der Junge (the boy), der Hund (the dog), and der Knochen (the bone). All three sentences thus mean almost exactly the same thing: The boy gives the dog the bone. The only subtle difference is one of emphasis. Where the first version matter-of-factly says the boy gives the dog the bone, the second emphasizes that the THE BONE was given, and the third emphasizes that THE DOG was given a bone. All this just by swapping word order — something which is impossible in English without adding prepositions. The bone gives the dog the boy means something completely different and only makes sense when we add those prepositions or use passive voice: The bone was given by the boy to the dog.

English had this same system once upon a time, when it was still Anglo-Saxon, before the Norman invasion of 1066. The genders, along with nearly all traces of the cases (dative and accusative), were lost over time as English became the language of simple peasants, while the elite spoke Norman French for some 300 years. We get by without it in English, but I think the language is actually somewhat poorer without it. Yes, it is easier to learn for new speakers, but it is also far less flexible and efficient in expressing complex thoughts.

Seen that way, the “gender” could really just as well have been called the “flavor”, with “der” words being sour words, “die” words being sweet words, and “das” words being salty words. The masculine, feminine, and neuter labels have caused all sorts of misunderstandings — and not just by non-native speakers.

To illustrate this misunderstanding: German and English have diverged dramatically in the way they try to become “gender neutral”. Where English tries to abolish all traces of gender from daily language, such as avoiding the -ess ending and preferring neutral terms instead — flight attendant instead of stewardess, chair instead of chairman, etc. — German has gone the polar opposite way.

German feminists get really offended if you forget the -in feminine ending for a woman’s job position, for example, or forget to use it in the plural. So instead of forming the plural for der Lehrer as die Lehrer to encompass all teachers, whether male or female, they insist on using the plural feminine form of -innen — Lehrer und Lehrerinnen — or sometimes resorting to the rather clumsy short form of LehrerInnen with a capital I.

This results is some really tortured and clumsy grammar. Where politicians, for example, would address others as a group as liebe Bürger (“dear citizens”), now they resort to liebe Bürgerinnen und Bürger (“dear female and male citizens”).

In our church, this had an even more strange effect — one that I tried to point out at our synod in a debate on the subject, but which unfortunately got nowhere. You see, our church — the Old Catholic Church in Germany — is quite vocal about supporting women’s ordination. Which is fine, I support it, too. But part of the point of women’s ordination, I think, is the notion that a person’s gender should not matter in performing their function as clergy. Otherwise, if there is a difference between the genders, that unwittingly opens up a hole for arguments as to why women should not be ordained.

Either gender matters for the priesthood, or it doesn’t. I happen to think it does not. But if it does…then what? And if it does not, then why insist on it being mentioned?

So ironically, by insisting on saying die Priesterinnen und Priester (“female and male priests”) instead of just die Priester to mean “priests”, the feminists among us are in effect forcing us to note the gender where gender isn’t supposed to be relevant.

This on top of the fact that science is showing us how gender is far more complex than a mere binary of male and female. It just is not the case that a person is solely male or solely female. The two blend into each other, like a continuum. Some people are well on the male side of that continuum, some are well to the female side, but in the middle there is a grey area. What about intersexed or transsexual people in Germany? How are feminists going to label them? Would an intersexed priest — not outside the realm of possibility! — be a Priesterin or a Priester? Would a transsexual teacher be a Lehrer or Lehrerin?

If we simply dump the whole idea of grammatical gender having anything to do with biological or sociological gender, then the whole problem disappears — while maintaining the grammatical flourishes and subtlety that grammatical gender provide.

For those Germans reading this (and I would be happy to translate this into German to make it easier for them to read!), think about it. If you really want German to be an inclusive language, and I hope you do, then let’s stop using “masculine/feminine/neuter” to describe grammatical gender. Or at least stop mixing grammatical gender with gender politics. Because it just makes no sense to do it.

Can gays really be Christians?

The following was posted on Quora as a response to the question, “In the Bible it states, "thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind, it is an abomination", Lev 18:22. Can someone be gay and be a genuine Christian, that is, accepting the Bible as the word of God, or that it contains the word of God, and doing ones best to follow it?”

The thing about such Biblical literalism — aside from the fact that this passage may well not say anything like the English translation you quote, as Lana Fisher correctly points out — is that you have to first understand what the Bible is and how it came to be. That in turn greatly affects how it should be interpreted.

The first question is, did the Bible create the Church of God, or was it the other way around? Did someone sit down and write it, and then we Christians all agreed to follow it as written? Or was it more like the Church already existed and then decided which existing writings were canon?

Any cursory reading of Church history shows that it was plainly the latter. The Bible did not fall from the sky fully formed, but took centuries to find its present form (and even now Christians can’t fully agree on which books belong to it, like the Biblical apocrypha). The various books that make up the Bible — along with many others, like the Gnostic texts — were floating around with varying degrees of acceptance by the early Christian congregations, but no “Bible” existed yet. Various lists circulated in those days containing books considered canon; they generally lined up, but there were sometimes significant differences.

Then the Church got together in a general council and decided on what books should be compiled into the Bible. Not only that, but they picked up on the already existing practice in Judaism (which evolved into modern rabbinical Judaism) of following an established tradition of how to interpret that canon — that is, the interpretations of learned experts approved by the Church took on a kind of canonicity of their own. Joe Shmoe can interpret the Bible any way he likes, but in the eyes of the Church, only that established tradition matters and Joe Shmoe has no authority to claim the Bible says this or that.

Thus the Church began that tradition with what we now call the Church Fathers, learned men (and they were generally men, or at least few writings from the period from women survive) who began to interpret the Bible based on that earlier Jewish tradition. And here is where it gets really interesting for this question.

The Church Fathers generally rejected a strict literalist interpretation of the Bible. Let that sink in a minute and read this quote by Origen of Alexandria, one of those Church Fathers (emphasis mine):

15.  But as if, in all the instances of this covering (i.e., of this history), the logical connection and order of the law had been preserved, we would not certainly believe, when thus possessing the meaning of Scripture in a continuous series, that anything else was contained in it save what was indicated on the surface; so for that reason divine wisdom took care that certain stumbling-blocks, or interruptions, to the historical meaning should take place, by the intro­duction into the midst (of the narrative) of certain impossibilities and incongruities; that in this way the very interruption of the narrative might, as by the interposition of a bolt, present an obstacle to the reader, whereby he might refuse to acknowledge the way which conducts to the ordinary meaning; and being thus excluded and debarred from it, we might be recalled to the beginning of another way, in order that, by entering upon a narrow path, and passing to a loftier and more sublime road, he might lay open the immense breadth of divine wisdom. This, however, must not be unnoted by us, that as the chief object of the Holy Spirit* is to preserve the coherence of the spiritual meaning, either in those things which ought to be done or which have been already performed, if He anywhere finds that those events which, according to the history, took place, can be adapted to a spiritual meaning, He composed a texture of both kinds in one style of narration, always concealing the hidden meaning more deeply; but where the historical narrative could not be made appropriate to the spiritual coherence of the occur­rences, He inserted sometimes certain things which either did not take place or could not take place; sometimes also what might happen, but what did not:  and He does this at one time in a few words, which, taken in their “bodily” meaning, seem inca­pable of containing truth, and at another by the in­sertion of many.  And this we find frequently to be the case in the legislative portions, where there are many things manifestly useful among the “bodily” precepts, but a very great number also in which no principle of utility is at all discernible, and some­times even things which are judged to be impossi­bilities.  Now all this, as we have remarked, was done by the Holy Spirit in order that, seeing those events which lie on the surface can be neither true nor useful, we may be led to the investigation of that truth which is more deeply concealed, and to the ascertaining of a meaning worthy of God in those Scriptures which we believe to be inspired by Him.

(Origen of Alexandria, De Principiis IV.15, 3rd century AD — Source: ANF04. Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second)

* — What is meant here is that the Holy Spirit speaks to us through the Church as well as through our individual consciences.

To summarize Origen, we need guidance and understanding in interpreting Scripture, because sometimes the Bible was meant literally, sometimes it wasn’t. Clearly Jesus was being quite literal when He said to love our neighbors and to love God, but the Earth was plainly not created in six calendar days and the Flood didn’t really destroy the whole world. What matters is the spiritual truth contained in the narratives.

He also wrote, with another Church Father, Gregory of Nazianus, supporting him:

For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars? And that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? And again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from the tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally.

(Origen of Alexandria, De Principiis IV.16, 3rd century AD — Source: ANF04. Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second)

St. Augustine wrote similar things roundly criticizing a literal interpretation.

So…how do we decide? We refer back to earlier precedents in the writings of the Church Fathers, while also allowing for a range of opinion to exist. Only where the Church has definitively spoken in a general council is there any one possible interpretation binding on all Christians. The Church decides, not individuals, and only when it is in consensus. As Vincent of Lérins said in his famous rule of catholicity — i.e. that which is established canon and binding — id teneamus, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est; hoc est etenim vere proprieque catholicum:

[6.] Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense “Catholic,” which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally.

St. Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory, 434 AD (Source: NPNF-211. Sulpitius Severus, Vincent of Lerins, John Cassian)

Dogma — in other words, something Christians must believe because the Church has decided so — is therefore only that which the Church has proclaimed in general council.

Which brings us to this question of homosexuality in particular. Has there ever been a general council that has defined this text to say what you think it says? Is homosexuality a sin or abomination? Of the seven ecumenical councils (i.e. those recognised by the Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Old Catholics, and in theory Anglicans), none say anything about homosexuality. Nothing. De nada. There were regional councils that did condemn “sodomy” at various times, though what they meant by that term changed over time, so we can’t even be sure that they meant homosexuality per se (e.g. a loving long-term relationship, as opposed to just having extramarital sex with people of the same gender or pederasty or beastiality or any of the many other things the term was applied to). But there has never been a definitive dogmatic statement from the whole Church — a statement establishing that this has been believed “everywhere, always, by all” — declaring that homosexuality as we understand it today is in fact a sin and that this passage means what you say it might mean. In fact there is some evidence that same-sex relationships in some forms may have been tolerated, even celebrated (see Adelphopoiesis), particularly in eastern Europe. At times the Roman Catholic Church has actually worked to decriminalize homosexual relations between consenting adults, like by supporting the Wolfenden Report in the UK in the 1960s or the National Federation of Priests' Councils in the USA noting their opposition to “all civil laws which make consensual homosexual acts between adults a crime”. Thus any claim to homosexuality being dogmatically defined as sin fails St. Vincent’s simple test — and thus a range of opinions is perfectly OK.

To answer your question based on the above: Yes, it is entirely possible to be gay and be a faithful Christian, unequivocally. I certainly hope many more do so, and am glad to personally know a great number of gay Christians (both clergy and laypeople) who enrich our church’s life. As for the great pain that many Christians have caused gays by claiming otherwise, I am deeply sorry and hope that their wounds will heal, whatever path they take.

On gay marriage in the Church

Recently in a discussion over on Facebook, the topic of gay marriage within the Church came up. The thing is, on the one hand I'm convinced that gays should not only be welcomed into the Church, but should not be barred from receiving Holy Orders or serving in offices of the Church. But on the other hand, I also believe quite strongly in marriage (in spite of the breakdown of my own) and that a "gay marriage" within the Church is not, at least on the face of it, possible. I'd like to explain why and sum up my arguments in the other discussion.

The major complaint I have with those arguing for sacramental gay marriage is that they inevitably reduce marriage to be merely the celebration of the love between two people. That love is of course a wonderful thing and should be celebrated, whether the partners are male or female (or transgender, while we're on the subject), but to make something be truly "marriage", it has to be about more than that.

To try and differentiate, I'll talk about "matrimony" and use that term to refer to the Church's sacrament of marriage. Note that this has little to nothing to do with civil weddings and how the state chooses to view such partnerships – this discussion is strictly about Holy Matrimony as the Church defines and celebrates it.

It's self-evident that matrimony involves love between two people, but to reduce it to just those two people makes it stunted. Matrimony also means providing a foundation for something else, producing children. (Edit: As someone else pointed out, "matrimony" comes from "mater"/"mother" + "monium"/"the state of", i.e. "the state of motherhood/parenthood".) Some would of course quickly argue that I'm trying to make marriage be only about making kids, but that's simply wrong – holy matrimony offers a healthy and blessed foundation for reproduction, but that doesn't mean that the newlyweds absolutely must take that offer. Some may simply decide not to have kids, some may not be able to, but that doesn't change the basic assumption that one integral aspect of matrimony is indeed providing a basis on which we produce the next generation and pass on our love to them.

I don't marry someone because I want to have kids, I marry that person because I love that person. That love in turn produces the wish to create children as an expression of that love, not just to the betrothed, but to their children, to God, and to the wider community of the Church – and above all to create new life. By marrying and having children, we too become creators of life like God, a form of theosis if there ever was one. If matrimony is reduced to just those two people, then all those other forms of love are ignored, and it is stripped down to something much more mundane.

None of this means, however, that gays can't have a sacramental wedding in the Church. I mean in no way to degrade or denigrate gay partnerships. The blessing of a same-sex partnership in the Church is just as sacramental as any other liturgical action of the Church: Anything the Church does in corporate, assembled, ceremonial fashion is a sacrament, so long as it does not contradict Scripture and Tradition.

Of course, you may be thinking of the Seven Sacraments – baptism, Communion, confirmation, penance, matrimony, Holy Orders, unction of the sick – and wondering how I can claim gay partnerships are on that list. I don't claim that at all. What I do claim is that that list is not exhaustive. Any sacramental rite the Church performs is a sacrament, and that list is meant to mean a minimum of what the Church must do, not a maximum. So that list can be expanded by any local church, with the sole limitation that it can't contradict Scripture and Tradition, while also not requiring any other local church to accept that rite. So some local churches may choose to bless same-sex partnerships, some may not, and it is best left to them to decide, rather than try to redefine one of those seven sacraments to suit one's own personal tastes and wishes.

Some people are called to receive Holy Orders and be priests, some are called to matrimony, some are called to both, some to neither. There is no right to receive sacraments, only a calling. Perhaps gays are simply not called to matrimony under this definition, but they are called to express their sacred love in other ways. Why not celebrate that for what it is, as yet another expression of love, rather than try to bend and twist existing millennia-old sacraments to suit one's own preconceptions?

Thus it is of great importance to clearly define what matrimony is, while not degrading or ignoring one important aspect of it. In the process, we have to orient ourselves on the wider Body of Christ – that is, with the wider ecumenical community and with Scripture and Tradition. Otherwise, we cut ourselves off from that wider Body of Christ. On the one hand, one can certainly understand the blessing of same-sex partnerships to be a sacramental rite, not least because there are indeed some precursors in Tradition (even liturgies!), but one cannot redefine one of the basic Sacraments of the Church without also making those same sacraments – and with them the Church – completely arbitrary. Holy Matrimony is one thing, sacramental blessings of partnerships another, but please, let's not confuse the two.

Just what is a gay service, anyway?

A few days ago, the German Old Catholic diocese posted a story on their site celebrating "five years of gay-lesbian services in Karlsruhe". Here is a translation of the text into English:

For the past five years, the Old Catholic parish in Karlsruhe has been host of so-called "Queer Services", which take place every two months in the Old Catholic Church of the Resurrection in Ökumeneplatz. To celebrate this anniversary, Bishop Matthias Ring will take part in the service on 9 October 2011 at 6 pm. The ecumenical project team that is preparing the service is pleased to welcome the bishop of the parish who church has been the venue of the services from their beginning, with no charge for the use of the church or the parish hall.

I'm not going to get into the thorny issue of homosexuality and Christianity here. Suffice it to say that enough heat and light (more heat than light) has been generated in the blogosphere to fire a thousand suns.

But I am perplexed at just what a "queer service" is supposed to be. Which isn't surprising, because I also don't see why it is necessary to have extra "women's" services or services for singles or whatever. The thing is, I find this phenomenon to be very unhealthy, because it turns the Church into little more than a fragmented collection of interest groups each trying to get their special share of attention, and tailoiring "their" services to their own needs -- which practically by definition will be alien, or at best strange, for others. It is a kind of auto-ghettoizing, whether intentional or not.

Yet the Church has always been quite clear that Christ is the Savior of all people. We have no record whatsoever in the New Testament of special meetings just for, say, Judeans or tax collectors or unmarried women over 35 with a car (sorry, chariot) and two cats. On the contrary, we are told explicitly that in Christ, there are no Jews or Gentiles, no male or female, all those divisions are overcome in the form of the Holy Church of God. Every attempt is made to have rich and poor, man and woman, all walks of life represented in each and every gathering. Paul's Epistles repeatedly berate the early congregations for not including everyone and not treating them scrupulously equally, and encourage every effort to bridge and transcend, not cater to each and every person. No special treatment, just one in Christ.

The major concept behind any service, regardless of denomination, and in particular in the Eucharist, is to attempt to create a vision of the Kingdom of God in our limited space. That is impossible if you begin to customize services for particular interest groups. Yes, I'm sure it is useful for marketing and publicity reasons. Yes, I know gays, women, etc., have all been oppressed and treated badly for centuries and could use a bit of special attention and care. Yes, I know that traditional forms of liturgy tend to be male- and Euro-centric and may have little to say to women or children or whomever. That's all well and good. But special services for individual groups is simply the wrong way to go about it.

Certainly the Church should reach out to groups who are or have been marginalized, and should do what it can to welcome them and to reach them with God's message of love and hope. Certainly things could be done to modify the liturgy or practice to accomodate as many people as possible, and attempt to include as many as the Church can.

But the truly exciting, breathtaking part of Jesus' message is not "take us as we are", but "that they may be one". That is the ultimate vision we get in Galatians 3:28 -- There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And again in Romans 10:12: For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. Or most spectacularly in Acts 10:10-16,34-36:

About noon the next day,
as they were on their journey and approaching the city,
Peter went up on the roof to pray.
He became hungry and wanted something to eat;
and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance.
He saw the heaven opened
and something like a large sheet coming down,
being lowered to the ground by its four corners.
In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures
and reptiles and birds of the air.
Then he heard a voice saying, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’
But Peter said,
‘By no means, Lord;
for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.’
The voice said to him again, a second time,
‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’
This happened three times,
and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven.
Later, Peter began to speak to the disciples:
‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality,
but in every nation anyone who fears him
and does what is right is acceptable to him.
You know the message he sent to the people of Israel,
preaching peace by Jesus Christ—
he is Lord of all.’

The vision of us all being one in Christ is what the ultimate attraction is and should be, and we should never lose sight of that, least of all for short-term goals such as pandering to ever-narrower special interests in hopes of filling the pews. The more we divide ourselves, the harder we make it to unite and to make that vision a reality.

No matter how well intended, using a church service to deliberately draw distinctions between us -- even if intended as a stepping-stone to something more -- turns this vision upside down, and ironically delays the ultimate realization by cementing division, rather than bridging it by providing a common home. By providing a service with a label, it reduces its participants to that label. Our home is Christ, not our own ghetto.

There is a perfect example of this -- V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Anglican bishop. From all I have been told and have read, he is a very spiritual and kind person. Aside from his sexuality, he seems to be quite orthodox and even a bit inventive in communicating difficult issues. And gays were understandably happy to have one of their own in such high office. But think about it. +Gene is nothing more than "the gay bishop". You see him on TV and in magazines all the time being interviewed about being gay, but never on the finer points of Christian morality or charity or any of those other things, except perhaps as throwaway questions at the end of the interview. He has been quite effectively reduced to being just gay, and all else is ignored. "Queer services" accomplish the same thing -- an own goal if there ever was one.

Ultimately we all have to ask ourselves: Do you want the people who come to your services to celebrate God, or their own sexuality or gender or skin color? Do we go to church to worship God, or ourselves? Is the Church a vision of the way things are, or of the way they should be?

Queens and quandaries: Sermon for Palm Sunday, Year C

Luke 19:28-40, Psalm 118:1-2+19-29, Isaiah 50:4-9a, Psalm 31:9-16, Philippians 2:5-11, Luke 23:1-49

When I was planning today’s service, one particular phrase leapt out at me. I’m a bit of a history junkie, particularly for English history; those of you familiar with English history may well have thought the same thing when hearing that particular phrase.

The phrase I have in mind is in the psalm we heard as we processed into the chapel, Psalm 118. The phrase is, “This is the LORD’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

Legend has it that this was uttered by Princess Elizabeth, upon hearing that her Catholic sister Queen Mary had died, thus making Elizabeth Queen of England. There is a special resonance to them for Elizabeth, because during her sister’s reign, Elizabeth was a constant potential rival, as Protestants in England repeatedly started uprisings to overthrow Mary and install Elizabeth on the throne. Mary repeatedly and openly considered executing her own sister, to protect the Catholic faith in England. Elizabeth had to constantly swear her loyalty and grovel before her sister to spare her own life. So with Mary’s death, Elizabeth must have felt immensely relieved – while also facing the enormous burden of ruling a deeply divided England, at war with itself over religion.

I admire Elizabeth a great deal (though I should add that my daughter having that name is actually a coincidence). You see, most people, when thinking about the Church of England, think of her father, Henry VIII. But in reality Henry, aside from severing ties to the Pope, left little trace of influence on what Anglicanism became. His son Edward VI (again the name is a coincidence, I swear) tried to radically Protestantize the church; Mary succeeded him and re-catholicized it, reversing everything her father and brother had done; and finally came Elizabeth. More than anyone else, Queen Elizabeth I left her mark on the church. “This is the LORD’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

The reason Elizabeth’s words resonate with me is because of her vision of the Church. She felt strongly that Christians should be united in one church, and also saw that the only way to do so was to tread the Via Media – the middle path between Catholic and Protestant, uniting the best of both. To this day we say of ourselves, we are Catholic and reformed.

There is a short poem attributed to Elizabeth that sums up her pragmatic way of seeing Truth in competing visions. It is about the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and goes like this:

“’Twas Christ the Word that spake it,
The same took bread and brake it,
And as the Word did make it,
That I believe and take it.”

In other words, if you believe Christ is truly present, if you appreciate the dignity of the sacrament of Communion, then you are welcome at the table.

This vision of unity, sadly, came at a price – many people resisted it, from both extremes of the spectrum. The Puritans and Pilgrims regarded anything remotely Catholic as being work of the devil; the Catholics despaired of restoring ties to Rome and the wider church, while also despairing of a more vigorous sacramental theology that they felt was lacking in the Church of England. There were still uprisings, there was still conflict, there were even plots to assassinate Elizabeth from both sides. In the end, all had to make sacrifices in order to live with the compromise that the Church of England became, which was in turn passed on to all other Anglican churches worldwide.

Elizabeth’s vision remains important even today. The Via Media, I think, offers the only hope of reconciliation of all Christians around the globe. It is more important than ever to try and find this middle path, to unite as many people as possible. The Anglican Communion is, of course, currently rocked by anger and division over teachings revolving around human sexuality, particularly homosexuality. It is also struggling with the bait placed in front of Anglo-Catholics by Rome, to lure them into a uniate Anglican church in submission to the Pope. The centrifugal forces at work are enormous. Particularly the strife over homosexuality is painful and difficult, with accusations of heresy and intolerance flying around. People claiming to be Christian seem to have nothing better to do that self-righteously hurl insults at each other. But the thing is, we all – regardless of our denominations – have a duty to try and bridge these differences, and to be united in Christ. Whether we like it or not, we need each other – Evangelical and Catholic, liberal and conservative, high church and low church. Each bit of the immense spectrum of Anglicanism carries a bit of the full picture of Christianity within, and each bit has something to contribute. Indeed Anglicanism mirrors the Church as a whole, covering the range from Catholicism to a diluted form of Calvinism.

So if we are to fulfill Christ’s final plea as He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, “that they may all be one”, then we have to accept that we all, each and every one of us, have a place in the Body of Christ – and that means being willing to compromise, to sacrifice things we may hold dear in the name of greater unity. We cannot expect the Other to make the first step; we have to individually all make first steps, to build trust, to recognize the fullness of faith in all corners of the Church, whether Catholic or Protestant or Orthodox or indeed Old Catholic.

Recently I attended an Anglican conference in Düsseldorf. As it happens, I would place myself squarely in the liberal side of things regarding sexuality and women’s ordination; I would also place myself squarely in the high church Anglo-Catholic wing of Anglicanism. But at this conference, the range of Anglicans represented was huge. The church itself in Düsseldorf was a good example – as I entered, I noticed there was no altar, just a table; and on the table, nothing except a huge Bible. No tabernacle or aumbry, either. It doesn’t get much more low church and evangelical than that.

In particular there was a fellow there I had heard about, the rector of a particularly conservative evangelical parish here in Germany. Indeed he and his parish are so angry about the liberal drift in parts of Anglicanism that they no longer call themselves “Anglican”, and have resigned their official representation at Anglican conferences (while still being observers). I had visited their website a few times, and my curiosity was piqued, particularly by the profile of the rector, who is originally a white African from Malawi, of English extraction.

It so happens that he and I ended up riding next to each other in the car to the station, and then taking the same train (he had to pass through Hannover to get to his home parish). So I struck up a conversation, and we talked about church politics.

The thing is, we come from opposite ends of the spectrum. He favors things that I disapprove of, like lay presidency at the Eucharist; he disapproves of my stance on homosexuality and the catholicity of the Church. Conservative evangelical versus liberal Anglo-Catholic. But he is a good case in point for what I am talking about, in that we need each other. He is vehemently against homosexuality. But he is also not a wild-eyed lunatic. He, like everyone else, is a rational human being, searching for the truth as best as he can. I am certainly no better than he is – we are both sinners, we both have our flaws, and we both admit that freely. And in spite of our disagreements, we both showed a generosity of spirit towards one another that is sadly lacking in the whole debate storming the Church worldwide. Meanwhile his parish is flourishing, attracting more people to Jesus. Obviously we need more like him, just as we’re doing our best here to build up the Church in Hannover. We need each other to win as many people as possible for the Gospel, because in the Holy Church of God, we have – and I say this with great conviction – the last, best hope for humanity to save itself, with God’s help.

This means we all have to be ready to make sacrifices. We have to tolerate other opinions, even ones as wildly different as those between myself and my fellow train passenger, even if those opinions may seem to us intolerant or even heretical. We have to each make the first step in de-poisoning the debate, to raise the level of the rhetoric, to love those we agree with, but more importantly, to love our enemies and make them friends. We can and must reconcile with one another, even if it takes painful sacrifices.

This is particularly true as we celebrate Palm Sunday. Jesus went to Jerusalem riding a colt through a certain gate as a way of proclaiming Himself the Messiah, by deliberately echoing a messianic prophecy. He was in effect throwing down the gauntlet to the High Priests and King Herod, knowing full well what the result would be – his certain death. They chose a particularly horrific way of killing him, by lashing him with whips, by ramming a crown of thorns on his head, by mocking him, spitting on him, then driving nails through his hands and feet to let him hang there to die, in public and in the deepest humiliation. Even his fellow victims mocked him as he hung there. Jesus despaired of the Father leaving him: Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani – my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I can’t imagine a greater sacrifice than what Jesus did, and He knew in advance that all this would happen – yet he didn’t turn back from His course. He experienced the full measure of human pain and suffering – being completely alone, lost in the world, abandoned to die. He made the ultimate sacrifice.

So if we are to fulfill His vision – that we may all be one – we must all be ready to sacrifice, to compromise, to see value in other opinions and love those whom we disagree with. The divisions in the Holy Church are entirely of our own doing, a sign of our own fallen nature – but in reality we are united in one baptism and one faith, whether we are Anglican, Old Catholic, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist and many other denominations aside. The Body of Christ is one and holy, incapable of being divided – only we fail to see past our own prejudices and wishes, and perceive division, even inventing discord in order to justify our own church’s right to exist.

In other words, we must return to Queen Elizabeth’s holy vision, the Middle Way that accommodates everyone in the Body of Christ. One baptism, one faith, one Lord. Once we escape our own self-imposed limitations, once we tear down the walls of our own making, and open ourselves to the Christ present in the hearts of all of us, then God can work His wonders through us – and we can all say, “This is the LORD’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes”. Amen.