By Shari Mason

First Congregational Church

Last Sunday during the prayers of gratitude, the church celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision. Yet, not all churches were celebrating. A quote from Meeke Addison, an American Family Association spokeswoman, “There’s no biblical defense, there’s no biblical support of homosexuality.”

There is this tension in how the Bible is read. Bishop John Shelby Spong writes, “A literal Bible presents me with far more problems than assets. It offers me a God I cannot respect, much less worship; a deity whose needs and prejudices are at least as large as my own. I meet in the literal understanding of Scripture a God who is simply not viable, and what the mind cannot believe the heart can finally never adore.”

To read the Bible seriously, rather than literally, brings me to the parables of a God who names the outcast as the chosen, a God who remembers those others have forgotten and a God who continually draws the circle of inclusion larger and larger. To read the Bible seriously, not literally, brings me to a God of expansion.

As for the Bible belt, the God I have experienced prefers elastic waists bands and yoga pants.

Namaste.