This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 118
Richard B. Hays is pictured above. He died on January 3, 2025. Hays was an ordained Minister in the United Methodist Church and was the retired Dean of the Duke Divinity School. The picture above comes from an obituary published in The New York Times on January 16th. The quotation is from one of Hays' favorite Bible readings.
The headline on the obituary in The Times called out Hays as a theologian who "had a stunning change of heart." During much of his life, Hays provided a "full-on argument from Scripture against gay relationships," but in 2024 he recanted his earlier views. His book, The Widening of God's Mercy, was published in September 2024 as an "act of repentence."
What struck me most in Hays' obituary was the reason that Hays gave for changing his mind about same-sex relationships:
Mr. Hays changed his mind about same-sex relationships, he said, because God changed his mind....
In “The Widening of God’s Mercy,” published in September by Yale University Press and written with his son, Christopher B. Hays, Mr. Hays maintained that if the Bible is read holistically, as a complete narrative, it reveals a God who continually extends grace and mercy to ever wider circles of people, including those who once were outcasts....
In Mr. Hays’s view, the Bible repeatedly presents a portrait of a God who changes his mind and evolves his thinking — a concept that might make many Christians flinch.
This view of God, as a Creator who changes his mind, replaces an "abstract" idea of divinity with what we might call, from our own perspective, a "human" one. And if we humans are all fashioned in "the image of God," which is one of the claims made in the Bible, then that "favorite" verse of Hays - "this is the day that the Lord has made" - could (and I say, "should") inspire us to realize that we are able to (and I would say "expected to") change what we do, and change our human world, as we understand, better, and more inclusively, what it means to be human, and alive.
This day, today, is the day of the Creation. Let us rejoice, indeed, and be glad in this day, and make this day an exemplar of what is our best impulse and understanding of the love and mercy that have placed us, all together, so mysteriously, here!
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