Jesus & LGBTQI+

Luke 7:36-39, Luke 19:1-10

I have been weeping
more than I expected.
Not because the questions are new,
but because the faces are not.

Someone who stayed away from church
for over thirty years
because being gay
and belonging to Jesus
seemed impossible.

Someone who lived in silence
for twenty years
because he was afraid to speak.

Someone who went looking
for a safe place
to tell the truth
and did not find it in church.

We are talking about people.
Not issues.
Not arguments.
People made in the image of God.
People loved by God.

And Jesus,
I wonder what You make of us.
We have said that everyone sins
and then treated some sins
as though they required
a different door.
We have shown sympathy
to heterosexual failure
and suspicion
to homosexual failure.

Jesus,
forgive us.
For jokes.
For whispers.
For sermons
that made frightened people
wonder whether life with You
was possible for them.
For every time someone spoke honestly
and we made them wish
they had remained silent.

Christians read the Scriptures
and come to different conclusions.
The disagreement is real.
But before all our answers,
Jesus stands among us.

Jesus,
who spoke fiercely about lust
and hypocrisy,
Jesus,
whose demands were never small,
and somehow sinners
still wanted to be near Him.
Truth did not make Him cruel.
Holiness did not make Him distant.
Conviction did not make Him afraid.

He could say,
Follow me,
and people heard
an invitation
before they heard
a threat.

What happened to us?
Heterosexuality does not save us.
Homosexuality does not damn us.
We are saved by grace,
all of us
empty-handed,
all of us
unable to boast.

You are not merely
the sum of your desires.
You are more than a label.
Made by God.
Known by God.
Loved by God.
Bought at a price.

And when someone says,
There is something
I need you to know about me,
perhaps first
we need to listen.
To say,
Thank you for trusting me.
You are my friend.
You are welcome here.

We are not the Holy Spirit.
We are called
to follow Jesus.
To love.
To listen.
To repent
when our words have wounded.

Lord Jesus,
make us that kind of church.
A church
where grace is more than a word,
where truth is not a weapon,
and where a wounded person
walking through the door
finds not shame,
not fear,
but Jesus
already there.

Original message by Paul Dale
The Bridge Church Macquarie Park NSW
20 September 2026