The mysterious Old Testament story of the dead boy who was brought to life again by Elisha, and the perfunctory Gospel story, of the healing of Peter's feverish mother-in-law by Jesus, both illustrate the limitless compassion of God for the flawed, frail creatures that we are.

In the case of Jesus, compassion was his point of entry into every human situation. Nothing a human being might have become, nothing a human being might have done was alien or repulsive to him; and nothing could strain that compassion to its limits, or cause it to be withdrawn. While we are often busily at work reinforcing our prejudices or rejecting ourselves and each other, frequently for very shallow reasons, God is just as busily accepting us, no matter what.

No human being, however worthless in our eyes, is without value to God, or past God's caring. God is not fickle.

Jesus encountered, and consorted with people regardless of whether society or the religious establishment approved of them.

Very often they did not approve, but this did not deter him from reaching out to them. His love for them was not conditional, nor was it constrained by conventional morality. He saw into the hollow hearts and the unquiet souls of all anxious people, and responded to them with the compassion which filled his heart and soul. He was touched by suffering, entered it and claimed it as his own, not with a pained expression on his face but willingly. He looked deeply into the person behind the personage, to see if there were possibilities for putting that suffering to good use, or to see if it were time for the suffering to be transformed into a new strength.

St. Mark relates how, late in the evening after Peter's mother-in-law had recovered, people kept bringing all who were sick or troubled to Jesus, and that he healed great numbers of them. The whole population of the town was gathered round the doorway to watch these personal encounters, these intimate moments of healing and restoration.

Compassion means to bear something with someone; to suffer through some experience with someone; to share oneself with someone in weakness and in strength; to be with someone so profoundly, and so intensely, that the destructive possibilities in the suffering are not merely countered, but transformed into new hope and new energy for living. Compassion has nothing to do with condescension; with offering sympathy from a superior height; with stooping down to someone else's level to proffer a helping hand, or with expressions of consolation or pity which have hidden strings attached to them. It has to do with entering any situation as an equal, without judgment, without pride, and without expectations or plans for the outcome of such an encounter. It is to enter areas of conflict, pain and stress in the life of another as God enters the world, quietly and with great humility.

I am not talking of self-abasement, showy martyrdoms or highly visible forays into the gutter. I am talking about being with someone: just being there wholeheartedly, without reserve. Perhaps saying a word or two, perhaps exploring a silence. Listening, waiting, open to the presence of Christ in the other, however slowly that is revealed, and whatever the consequences of the revelation.

To be able to be with someone, one must be powerless. Power and compassion do not mix. The "being with" can come only through an understanding which is personal and intimate, and without compassion there can be no understanding at all. We fear what we do not understand. We seek to control it, to manage it, to gain power over it. We are diminished and restricted by what we fear, but love casts our fear and negates power. Our friends the psychologists have identified a variety of human fears and hatreds which they call phobias. Aureophobia is a hatred of gold; hagiophobia is a fear of saints; and homilophobia is a morbid dislike of sermons.

The Bishop's Commission on Human Sexuality has been studying, another phobia. Homophobia. It means a hatred of those people we call homosexuals if we are being polite about it; or, queers, fags, dikes and a host of other ugly names if we are giving full rein to our fears. So pervasive is this phobia, that some people are infuriated or sickened by the mere mention of the word homosexuality, and that has often led to verbal, physical and emotional abuse of those people who have, or who are believed to have, a sexual preference for members of their own sex. The Church has been as guilty of this as society at large.

Indeed, as I suggested in my Annual Report last week, the Church's position on human sexuality in general has been full of equivocation and hypocrisy for centuries. It became clear to our Commission that attempts to treat homosexuality as essentially different from heterosexuality are misdirected. Human sexuality is capable of being expressed in a variety of ways, and responsibility for the way it is expressed must rest with each individual. For some this is an easy burden, for others it is a heavy one.

Some Christians have believed that a moral pattern of conduct is an inherent part of Christianity. That is, there is a rule applicable to every situation, every question, every ethical dilemma. There is a right side and a wrong side to be on in every circumstance. Behavior is either good or bad, moral or immoral, and ethics, especially Christian ethics, exist to help us decide which is which, by stating the rule, and instructing us on how to apply it. If that is the case, then helping bewildered men and women through the agonizing complexity of relationships in the modern world should be simple.

I have to say that I have not found it so. In my experience it has been more helpful to approach these questions, not from a conventional or static moral judgment, but from a concern for full responsibility in personal relationships.

Christianity is not a book of rules. It springs from a living, dynamic relationship with God, and with each other and its fulfillment is in relationship. It is in this light that we may wish to re-examine our fears and phobias.

The word homosexuality does not denote a course of conduct, but the state of loving one's own, not the opposite sex. Full responsibility in human relationships places the same demands on all people, regardless of their preference or orientation. Homosexuality is a state found in nature, and it makes no more sense to deplore it than it does to condemn left-handedness. Society has sometimes tried to prohibit the acting out of this preference, as has the Church, at least officially, refusing in both cases to concede that a homosexual relationship could ever include fidelity, true sharing and a commitment just as strong and enduring as its heterosexual counterpart. I am not able to condemn such relationships because God alone can judge the human heart.

Human sexuality is neither good nor evil. It is a fact of human nature and a force of immense power. Like every other God-given gift it can be, and often is, misused. When it is misused, when our sexuality becomes a weapon, or a way of gaining power over another, it can degrade us utterly. When it is used responsibly, it can elevate, strengthen and inspire us in an awesome way. It must be true that it is the nature and quality of a relationship that matters. It cannot be judged by its outward appearance but by its inner worth.

Homosexual affection can be as selfless as heterosexual affection, or as selfish, but it cannot be seen as in some way morally worse. Such affection may be an emotion which some of us find aesthetically disgusting, but we cannot base Christian morality on our capacity for disgust. It seems to me to be contrary to the spirit of the Gospel to say that all homosexual behavior is, of its nature, sinful: motive and circumstance degrade or ennoble any act, and to list specific sexual acts as sins is to follow that letter rather than the spirit, to kill rather than to give life.

I want you to be clear about what I am saying. I am not trying to exalt or glorify homosexuality, or to promote it as a way of life at the expense of marriage and family life, or the single person whose preference is to remain celibate, but I am saying we should acknowledge it as a factor in the lives of many people. I am not saying that all homosexual acts are noble or wonderful or exhibit full personal responsibility by the people concerned, any more than I would say that all heterosexual acts are good, creative, wholesome and responsible. I am trying to move beyond these apparent differences of expression to a place where the current confusion and hypocrisy of the church in all sexual matters can be clarified, and we can hammer out and agree upon a single standard for the creative expression of our sexuality, accept full responsibility for the choices we make, and the decisions we act upon. We are not there yet.

If the only proper place for sexual activity is within marriage, what does the Church want to say to young people who masturbate; to young people, or older people, for that matter who are living together and sexually active; to people who go from bed to bed, changing partners every day or every week; to married people who are sexually active outside their marriage; to people who have no desire to marry, or to be parents, but who are not committed to celibacy; and to people who are divorced but sexually active.

There has been a stunning silence from the Church about the Christian responsibility of such people, except from those who insist that marriage or celibacy are the only alternatives permitted to Christian people. That message is not being heard, and it is useless to go on pretending that it is. I believe that we cannot stand on some lofty peak of perfectionism, or cling to a morality born from the, compromise between pagan and Christian thought, and thoroughly muddled by the social conditions of the Dark ages. We are not in any position to demand an impossible conformity while the tide of human life sweeps by us. Rather we may recognize, compassionately, the complications and bewilderments that human loving creates, and seek to discern a creative and life-affirming way through an immense variety of particular experiences that are unique, personal and sometimes touched by splendor. We may also want to ask what it is that we do to ourselves in our inner lives when we attempt to follow codes or ideals that do not come from the heart, and which have no roots in feeling or true conviction.

At the very least I would suggest a morality which would inform all sexual liaisons and relationships with a sense of mutual responsibility and commitment which takes seriously the "thouness" of each partner and precludes the sexual power games of coercion, exploitation and seduction. We would affirm the primacy or centrality of commitments made in the vocation of marriage, and the vocation of raising children, while recognizing that these are special vocations to which not all people will be called. We need to see our sexuality as one gift among many, and to recognize that our culture has singled out and inflated its importance to the great detriment of us all. Above all, we need to see our lives in their wholeness, their richness and their fullness: to live them authentically, passionately and joyfully, loving a God who is Creator, not rule maker; our neighbors, who are people, not objects; and ourselves, who sometimes need our own caring and compassion.

Editor's Note: For more on David Ward on this web site, see Ginger Greene Comments on the 1970 Riots.