Drawing the Circle Wide

Rev. Dr. DeWayne L. Davis

This Week at Plymouth, September 13, 2024

“Any religious tradition that makes its peace with harming people is to be feared. And any religious tradition that fails to grow and respond to the ongoing work of the Spirit will stagnate and die.”

—Christopher B. Hays and Richard B. Hays, The Widening of God’s Mercy

When I decided to go to seminary, my biggest fear was rejection. For years, I watched churches refuse to accept LGBTQ people and fight to prevent them from fully participating in communities of faith. I assumed that many of my colleagues believed that my being and identity were outside of the grace of God, incompatible with the biblical understanding of sexuality and, thus, the moral vision of faithful discipleship. To protect myself, I decided I would form no relationships with them because I assumed that’s how they wanted it. While I was surprisingly overjoyed to be wrong about my colleagues, many of whom showed me love and hospitality beyond my wildest dreams, I will never forget reading The Moral Vision of the New Testament by Richard B. Hays in several classes. In this widely read and regarded book, Hays argued that because the Bible expresses “unqualified disapproval” of homoerotic activity, LGBTQ people are “a broken people, alienated from God’s loving purpose.” It became the go-to authority for Christian churches that objected to the presence and ministries of LGBTQ people.

For a long time, I have debated, wrestled, and fought the assertion that LGBTQ people were morally unfit to live into their calls to ministry, encountering many who relied on Hays’ book for that perspective. But now, things have changed. Hays has joined his son in rethinking those previous conclusions about the place of LGBTQ people in our communities of faith. The authors have come to understand that the Spirit is never a source of harm for God’s people but rather the driving force behind God’s ever-widening mercy. Just as I was mistaken in assuming that my seminary colleagues would not fully accept me into their community of faith, I am happy an author whose work did so much unintended harm opened himself to the movement of the Spirit to reconsider old beliefs.

I inevitably cry when we sing “Draw the Circle Wide” at Plymouth Church. Declaring our intent in the song that we will ensure that nobody stands alone fills me with the feeling of being held safely within a community of trust, beloved and included without doubt or question. More and more people who have left the church are now testifying to the ways the church has harmed them, including how often a narrow view of God’s mercy, creativity, and hospitality foreclosed the possibility of God’s prerogative to work in and through those on the margins we have deemed unfit. But, shaped and inspired by the love and hospitality of God, we can be “visible signs of God’s mercy,” drawing the circle wide for all God’s children. Amen.