When we celebrated Pride month in May of 2019, every time we tried to fly our Rainbow flag over the church sign, some troubled soul came by in the dead of night and tore it down. After this had happened for several weeks, we decided to extend Pride month into August and (after taking some new security measures) we declared August 4 “Rainbow Sunday” and festooned the church and grounds with more rainbows of every kind than anyone could destroy. (Click pictures to enlarge)
To mark the occasion, Pastor Sally preached this sermon, in which she used modern Biblical scholarship to examine the passages of scripture that intolerant “Christians” use most often to justify closing their doors to LGBTQ worshippers.
If you want to look them up, here are the passages Pastor Sally discussed in her sermon:
- Leviticus 18:22
- Genesis 1:20-21
- Mark 7: 18-20
- 1 Corinthians 6:9-10
- Romans 1:24-27
- 1 Samuel 18:1-3
- 2 Samuel 1:26
In each case, she shows that the meaning of words in the ancient world was quite different from the interpretations imposed by conservative, English-speaking churches many centuries later.
