Vikki Randall lives in Monrovia CA, and has 28 years of pastoral experience, serving large and small churches, mostly in PCUSA. She did her M.Div. studies at Fuller Seminary, and received a D.Min. in spiritual formation from Azusa Pacific Seminary, where she has served as adjunct faculty in undergrad theology for 20 years.
She is founding pastor of Haven Fellowship, an intentionally inclusive and affirming faith community. She is passionate about transformation and experiencing God’s presence. Vikki is co-editor of Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God. See also: The Craziness of Christian Love: Notes on a Sermon by Vikki Randall.
She is founding pastor of Haven Fellowship, an intentionally inclusive and affirming faith community. She is passionate about transformation and experiencing God’s presence. Vikki is co-editor of Preaching the Uncontrolling Love of God. See also: The Craziness of Christian Love: Notes on a Sermon by Vikki Randall.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.* No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends... I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
- John 15:12-13, 17, NRSV (updated edition)
Love is at the center of the gospel. When we withhold love, withhold acceptance, there is a hole in our gospel. The gospel becomes incomprehensible nonsense if we add asterisks, exceptions, qualifications that keep some people out.
Inclusion intuitively fits our picture of Jesus as loving, and embracing the full diversity of humanity. It fits the gospel record, in which Jesus is always busting through boundaries, opening the doors wider, challenging us to love deeper.
Affirming and inclusive theology is a consistent theology, a theology centered in love. Having a consistent theology is important to our faith. When we feel bound to a theology that doesn't make sense of our knowledge or experience of the world, we experience cognitive dissonance. This tends to distance us from God as unknowable. It tends to separate our heart from our head.
But when we adopt a consistent theology—one that makes sense of our experience of both God and our world—our faith becomes real and invigorating. You can see your faith lived out in real life, in ways that matter. My prayer is that as you are led to a greater, wider, affirming theology and a bigger, more inclusive and loving picture of God, that you will find renewed passion for a transforming faith.
A Clobber-less Story of Only Love
In my work with “affirming-curious evangelicals” I often focus on "clobber verses," because those are usually the barriers to inclusive, loving theology. But as we celebrate the beautiful diversity of Pride Month, let’s turn instead to a very clobber-less passage that is purely and completely about love. Only love. One of my favorite stories, the story of the Ethiopian eunuch, recorded in Acts 8:26-39.
I love this story. I love that Philip doesn't come in hot with his own agenda and prepared evangelistic script. Instead, he lets the Ethiopian eunuch take the lead. Everything that follows—this wonderful, grace-filled conversation—is directed and led by the eunuch and his questions, his concerns. We can see Philip reflecting the uncontrolling love of God in this conversation.
Long before Philip shows up on the scene, the eunuch is reading a messianic prophecy from the book of Isaiah. And so when Philip shows up his first two questions are: How will I know unless someone guides me? Who is this man?
For most LGBTQ folks, the news that they hear from the Christian church is Bad News. It is the Bad News of shame, of exclusion, of having to hide their true selves. But the news of Jesus that Philip shares is definitely Good News.
If you believe, as I do, that the center of the gospel is love, if you believe that Jesus is opening the door wider and truly welcoming in ALL people without asterisks, exclusions or exceptions, that is Good News. But no one will know that unless we show them. There are voices out there—loud voices—proclaiming a gospel of Bad News. I believe that if we have been transformed by the Good News of a gospel centered around love, then we need to be sure that voice is heard as loudly and clearly as those who are proclaiming a false gospel of hate.
What will prevent me?
The Ethiopian eunuch's third question is particularly apt. As the chariot carrying him and Philip draws near a small body of water, the eunuch raises the question of baptism—the sign and symbol of God's grace and love, but also of inclusion in the Christian church. And so the eunuch asks: What will prevent me?
It's a good question.
The Ethiopian was an outsider—different from Philip in several ways: He is wealthy, privileged, in a position of influence. Philip is crossing ethnic and cultural boundaries. This story marks the beginning of the evangelization of gentiles, non-Jews, and the beginning of the Ethiopian church, which is why this story is beloved among that community.
But it's not just Ethiopians who see this story as the beginning of their story.
As a eunuch, this man was an outsider in a much more significant way. A eunuch was a slave or servant who had been castrated before puberty. They were destined for positions of trust, particularly around women. It was a way to get trusted and non-threatening help in positions of power.
Yet, while eunuchs were often given a position of trust and responsibility in many places in the middle east, they were viewed in Israel with suspicion. Eunuchs existed as “sexual outsiders”—much like transgender folks in our culture.
This eunuch was on the road to Gaza—he was returning from Jerusalem. The text says he'd gone there to worship, but quite probably, when he got there, he was turned away. Deut. 32:1 and Lev. 21:20 state that eunuchs—those who have been castrated—shall not be admitted to the Temple. They are, both literally and figuratively, "cut off." In the ancient world, reproducing and carrying on your legacy was considered of prime importance—as we see in stories from Abraham onward. So the infertile eunuchs were considered cursed.
Because the man in the chariot is a eunuch—a "sexual outsider"—this text has become significant among many people who traditionally have felt like "outsiders" in the Christian Church, especially those in the LGBTQ community. It gives them hope that they, too, can be invited in. It is considered the birth of the queer church.
It's interesting that the eunuch is reading the “suffering servant” passage from Isaiah. Isaiah is speaking here to a people who have been exiled to a foreign land—to Babylon. As Isaiah's prophecy continues, a few chapters later we come to a prophesy of life for Israel after the exile, when they finally return home.
It's a prophesy about the new kingdom they will build in Jerusalem, but Christians have traditionally understood it to be a prophesy about life in the coming Kingdom that Jesus, the suffering servant, will bring. About the great reversals to come—and the ways the coming of Christ into our world changes things.
And so the prophet tells us in Isaiah 56:3-5
Do not let the foreigner joined to the LORD say,
“The LORD will surely separate me from his people”;
and do not let the eunuch say,
“I am just a dry tree.”
For thus says the LORD:
To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast my covenant,
I will give, in my house and within my walls,
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that shall not be cut off.
In his commentary on Isaiah, Walter Bruggemann notes how extraordinary this reversal is—that those who have been “cut off,” both literally and figuratively—are now welcomed in.
Being childless in the ancient world was a curse—your name, your life, will be forgotten. Yet the promise in vs. 5 reverses that curse. The childless eunuchs will be given a monument, a name, an everlasting name, even—that will never be cut off. Bruggemann writes, "The community of Judaism is to be a community that remembers, cherishes, and preserves the name and identity of those otherwise nullified in an uncaring world."
We can be that community. During Pride month and every month, we can remember. We can celebrate and proclaim that the prophesies of Isaiah have been revealed and fulfilled in the wide, inclusive, boundary breaking love of God.
Happy pride, y’all!
Expansive and loving God, Let us be people who say yes. Yes to welcome. Yes to invitation. Yes to radical acts of hospitality. Yes to breaking down barriers. We say yes. Amen.