In the sick and obscene department comes this news about High Point Church in Arlington, Texas via MSNBC:
ARLINGTON, Texas - A megachurch canceled a memorial service for a Navy veteran 24 hours before it was to start because the deceased was gay.
Officials at the nondenominational High Point Church knew that Cecil Howard Sinclair was gay when they offered to host his service, said his sister, Kathleen Wright. But after his obituary listed his life partner as one of his survivors, she said, it was called off.
“It’s a slap in the face. It’s like, ’Oh, we’re sorry he died, but he’s gay so we can’t help you,”’ she said Friday.
Something like this is just nuts.
Wright said High Point offered to hold the service for Sinclair because their brother is a janitor there. Sinclair, who served in the first Gulf War, died Monday at age 46 from an infection after surgery to prepare him for a heart transplant.
The church’s pastor, the Rev. Gary Simons, said no one knew Sinclair, who was not a church member, was gay until the day before the Thursday service, when staff members putting together his video tribute saw pictures of men “engaging in clear affection, kissing and embracing.”
‘It’s not that we didn’t love the family’
Simons said the church believes homosexuality is a sin, and it would have appeared to endorse that lifestyle if the service had been held there.“We did decline to host the service — not based on hatred, not based on discrimination, but based on principle,” Simons told The Associated Press. “Had we known it on the day they first spoke about it — yes, we would have declined then. It’s not that we didn’t love the family.”
And so to prove their love they refused to bury their beloved kin. Maybe they should have thrown his body outside to the dogs to really make their point.
In Matthew 22 we read:
36‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ 37He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
Here's my question for Rev. Simons:
When you turned this family away didn't you break the greatest commandment of all? After all, Jesus says not a bad word about gays. But he does preach about love and compassion as being available to all.
You can call or write Rev. Simons by clicking here if you want to ask him yourself.
Those of us who are Christian need to stand up and say loudly that actions like these do not represent the teachings of Jesus or God's will.
Update: My letter to High Point Church.
