The lesbian neighbor, the African American neighbor, the rich neighbor, the poor neighbor, the gay male neighbor, the Asian neighbor, they and all humanity are my neighbor.

How then, given this biblical instruction, could I deny to my gay neighbor what I claim for myself; if God calls you into ministry, that the church should honor that call? How can I deny to my gay neighbors, what my husband and I claim for ourselves; if the gift of love is given to you, that it should be honored by marriage?

I am proud to say that my denomination, the United Church of Christ, has come to the same conclusions about the biblical warrant for ordaining openly gay people into ministry and supporting the freedom to marry for all.

As a woman, I have had to struggle with a lot of prejudice against a woman being ordained into the Christian ministry. When I said I had a call from God to be a minister, I was told that women can’t be ministers, they have to, as the text from Timothy states, “keep silent” in the churches and “not teach or have authority over men.” (1Timothy 2:12) And really it’s pretty much impossible to preach and keep silent in the church at the same time!

I had to chose to honor my call and to listen to Gal. 3:28 that says, “[T]here is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male or female, but all are one in Christ Jesus.”

All are one, everybody equal—that’s in the Bible too.

We in the United Church of Christ chose to oppose slavery in the 19th century, even though the Bible does say “slaves be obedient to your earthly masters.” (Eph. 6:5) We did so because someone cannot be both your slave and your neighbor. We in the United Church of Christ have been ordaining women for more than a century despite Timothy. We did so because you can’t deny women are your neighbor. And we in the United Church of Christ have been ordaining gay men and lesbians for decades, and more recently supporting marriage equality. We did so because gay people are our neighbors. Each time, our church has suffered ridicule and rejection for what our President John Thomas has called our “radical welcome.” And we are far from perfect in our welcome, but must continue to struggle every day to realize that radical welcome in reality and not just in rhetoric.

So will I change on this issue of ordination or marriage for gay folks? I hope so. I hope I will try to deepen and broaden my response to the challenge to love God with my whole heart and my neighbor as myself. All of us know, if we are honest with ourselves, that we need to work a lot harder to respond to that divine command. You know it too, don’t you?