Posts Tagged with Wesley

Expanding Our Vision

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Text: Acts 10: 1-5, 9-15, 19-20, 24, 27-28, 34-36, 44-48 

Eighty five years ago, I probably would not have been welcomed in this pulpit. 

As a woman, ordination was out of the question. 

A combination of tradition and a patriarchal society and a way of reading the scriptures precluded the church from welcoming women as preachers and pastors.

It still does in some places and traditions.

But here I stand… ordained, my calling from the Holy Spirit confirmed by the church.

As a young(ish) woman, I have always lived in a church that ordained women.  I have always been a part of a church that valued the contributions women made in ministry, in leadership, and in the world.  It has been a given.

But I also know what it took to get here. 

Late this spring, folks from Immanuel joined with other churches in our circuit to read together through a series of essays called, “I’m Black.  I’m Christian. I’m Methodist.”   

While their experiences were contemporary, these pastors wove into their narrative the history and legacy of exclusion and discrimination of our church.  While some Black Methodists chose to leave, for those that remained within this denomination, separation and exclusion and discrimination continued to be our legacy. 

Our church divided over slavery, rather than taking a stand for the full humanity of our siblings.

When we finally re-united, it was as a segregated church, with black churches and clergy all set apart in the Central Jurisdiction until 1968. 

The impact of that structural racism continues to be felt today. 

What surprised us the most as we read through that book of essays, however, were parallels between these stories of exclusion and discrimination and our current debate within the church about the lives and leadership of our LGBTQ+ siblings. 

I am here today because how we understood God’s call in the life of women changed. 

In the same way, we have claimed a more expansive vision of what it means to be the church from other cultural and ethnic backgrounds. 

The church is more diverse and beautiful and powerful today because we have recognized how the Holy Spirit is moving through one another.

I wonder where God is going to change our minds next…

This isn’t a new question…

It is a question as old as the church. 

As we journey through the book of Acts, we see God’s Kingdom widening.

From Jerusalem, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

The faithful Jewish disciples begin to welcome and share the good news with those on the margins of the community…

And those who are converts in more far flung places…

And now we have a story about God speaking into the life of a Gentile and how God moves Peter to share the good news.

As the leader of the apostles, Peter had been visiting all of the house-churches where the followers of the Way were gathering in the wider area, especially on the coastal plains of Sharon. 

He had just been to Lydda and then spent some time in Joppa.

And it was there, moved by the Spirit, that Peter had raised a faithful servant named Tabitha from the dead. 

He was able to do amazing things, working and teaching in that community. 

He was faithfully serving God and thought he knew exactly what that meant. 

He presumed that he understood the rules of faith.

But just like Saul in the chapter before, Peter was about to have his world turned upside down yet again.

He was about to catch a glimpse of the scope and the breadth and the depth of God’s love for all people.

Our story today starts in the home of a gentile.  A captain of the Roman army, named Cornelius, receives a vision from God and sends for Peter.

Let’s talk a little bit about this guy and what it means…

A Gentile is anyone who is not Jewish, someone who was not a part of the family of Israel, either through birth or conversion.

An outsider… as far as the faith was concerned.

There were gentiles, like Cornelius, who were described as “God-fearers” or “God-worshippers” which meant that they would have practiced elements of the Jewish faith and worshipped the God of the Israelites, but they were limited in their participation.

The temple had many different courts, and the requirements to move further and further into the temple, towards the holy of holies, left many out. The big open area you see in the photo is called the Court of the Gentiles. That was the only part of the temple Gentiles could enter, divided from even the steps leading up to the building by a wall. 

These folks would not have kept the same ritual laws and for that reason, it was forbidden for Gentiles to enter these holy places or for Jews to enter the homes of Gentiles… lest they encounter something that would have made them unclean.

But many faithful god-fearing folks like Cornelius continued to show up. They continued worshipping God from those outer courts. In spite of the barriers, they wanted a relationship with God.

And God wanted a relationship with them.

So God prepares Peter’s heart for a more expansive vision of who was included in the Kingdom of God.

Before he is summoned to Caesarea and the home of Cornelius, Peter is given a vision of the clean and unclean joining together and he is asked in the vision to eat something that is unclean.

He doesn’t want to embrace it.

Everything in his very being tells him that it is wrong.

The holy was being profaned by the ordinary.

And then the voice in his vision speaks:  “Never consider unclean what God has made pure.”

There is a knock at the door and the Holy Spirit whispers to him… go.  

Peter is summoned to the home of Cornelius, and although he was not allowed by Jewish custom to enter, he did.

He entered the home of a gentile and broke bread with the unclean. 

And when Cornelius asked about why God had brought him there, Peter shares the good news of Jesus Christ.

As he preaches to the entire gathered household, the Holy Spirit descends upon them and they receive the gift of faith.

The profane, the ordinary, the unclean… these people who were outside of all that Peter knew to be holy… the spirit and presence of God filled their lives. 

He and his companions could see it… feel it…

And Peter exclaims:   “These people have received the Holy Spirit just as we have. Surely no one can stop them from being baptized with water, can they?”

None of the disciples could deny their gifts.

Water was brought and Cornelius and his whole family were baptized on the spot…

They were part of the family of God…

At various points throughout the history of the church, faithful folk stood up and exclaimed:  These people have received the Holy Spirit… just like we did – How can we stop them from being baptized? 

How can we deny them a place at the table? 

How can we continue to reject their leadership when God has so clearly spoken in their lives?

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism was against women preaching in principle… until he witnessed the Holy Spirit working through the lives of women like Sarah Crosby, Grace Murry, and Hannah Ball.  He relented and licensed them for preaching in the circuits across England.

Likewise, Wesley was a staunch opponent of slavery the very first Discipline of the church prohibited members from owning slaves. 

In fact, that Methodist egalitarian spirit is what drew large numbers of Black people to the movement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. 

As Rev. Erin Beasley writes: “Under Methodist, all Christians became brothers and sisters despite their background… “ and no matter their gender, ethnicity, or class. 

And yet, even as God pushes us to expand our vision of who is included, that long-memory of what we had believed is hard to shake off.

It is not easy to let go of control.

Or upend our expectations.

Or give way for others to lead in new ways. 

Sometimes the witness of the Holy Spirit is sometimes rejected by those who are trying to follow God’s will. 

Even after John Wesley licensed women to preach, it was not until 1956 that women were granted full clergy rights in the church.

The anti-slavery position of the early Methodists quickly became more lenient as they sought to establish more congregations in the South. Black ministers like Richard Allen were not allowed to be ordained as elders… requiring them to be supervised by white clergy… eventually leading these folks to leave the church.  

It is hard to let go of our traditions, our rules, our power. 

We hang on to what we know and understand. 

There is an uproar in Jerusalem when the hear about what Peter had done. 

The apostles summon him back to the city to account for his actions. 

They start with criticism. They launch into accusations. They read off the rules.

I can imagine their frustration growing as they start to wrestle with the implications of what has just happened.

The leaders of the early church, like Peter just days and weeks before, believed that faith meant one thing, and God was trying to show them it meant something else.

It doesn’t stop the Holy Spirit from moving however.

Not only does God act by giving us these unique and undeniable experiences of grace and power and Holy Spirit-led transformation… like Peter experienced with Cornelius…

But God also expands the vision of the whole church by calling those who have had these life-altering experiences to tell their story.

The apostles were furious and demanded an explanation.

Peter gave them one.

He told them about his vision.

He told them about how God led him to the house of Cornelius.

He connected what he had experienced of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit with what he witnessed first-hand in Caesarea.

In chapter 11, verse 16-17 he testifies: “I remembered the Lord’s words: ‘John will baptize with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, then who am I? Could I stand in God’s way?”.

“I really am learning that God doesn’t show partiality to one group of people over another,” Peter says.

I give thanks that the apostles rejoiced in his witness. 

They came to understand that God wants to be in relationship with all of us.

With the whole of creation.

With you and me.

And we keep learning that lesson…

We keep discovering and remembering and learning all over again just how far our vision needs to expand…

With black and white and brown.

With young and old, and gay and straight,

Folks who are married and single and divorced and widowed.

cis-gender, transgender, and non-binary folks,

with those struggling with mental health and those who love them.

With life-long Americans and with people who have just arrived in our country.

Are we there yet?

No.

Have we sometimes taken steps backwards? 

Absolutely.

Like Peter, we are still learning that God shows no partiality to one group of people or another.

It has been a hard lesson… centuries and millenia in the making…

But God keeps pushing us… stretching us… calling us into a more expansive vision of what the church can and should be. 

God is God.

And we can fight it.

We can resist it.

But God will keep pouring out the Holy Spirit on whomever God chooses. 

An Altogether Joy

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Text: Psalm 30:2-3, 5; 1 Thessalonians 5:12-24

One of tasks of preaching is to take a part a text, study it, let the Holy Spirit do her work, and then share the good news back with all of you in bite-sized, easy to digest nuggets of helpful information.
So imagine my dismay when I dive into our chapter from Almost Christmas for this week and I read:
“Joy cannot be manufactured, sought, or studied.” (p. 86)

Well, shoot.

I can’t break it down into three simple steps.
There is no top ten list for an Altogether Joy-filled Christmas.
You cannot create it through a project from Pinterest.

Sure… there is plenty of almost joy this time of year that does come from our blood, sweat, and tears.
A few years ago, my niece wanted nothing more than an American Girl doll. A friend of mine had one from childhood that she was now parting with as an adult and so I was able to purchase Samantha with a number of books and outfits for a fantastic price.
When my niece opened that box on Christmas Day – she was so happy that she literally burst into tears. Her squeals of joy and excitement simply could not be contained. It was overwhelming and ridiculous and everything we hoped for.
I would have paid a thousand dollars to create that kind of experience for her or my other nieces and nephews all over again.

But that joy is fleeting.
It is a burst of energy that fizzles out nearly as soon as the wrapping paper is tossed in the trash can.
I think about the feeling I have sitting by my Christmas Tree at home each night, with those gentle lights twinkling.
I feel truly happy to just be in that space.
But in a couple of weeks, we’ll pack it all back up and there will feel like there is something missing where that bright spot of joy used to be.
Maybe that’s because it was only an almost joy… when it fades we feel emptier than we did when we began.

An altogether joy is a joy that lasts… a joy that sustains us even through difficult times.
And that kind of joy cannot be manufactured, sought or studied.
Altogether Joy is a gift.
Joy is a gift of God’s grace.
It is a gift of God’s mercy.
It is the very gift of God’s presence with us.
Immanuel.
Matt Rawle writes in this final chapter of Almost Christmas, that “receiving joy often means we have to get out of the way and allow the Holy Spirit to move.” (p.93)

How do we do that?
How do we create space for God’s grace to move in our lives… even in the tough times?
I think we find guidance in the words of Paul to the Thessalonians.

Acts 17 tells us that Paul and Silas first came to Thessalonica and proclaimed Christ, but not all were open to his message.
Some of the leaders became jealous and stirred up a mob which led to a riot.
Many were arrested and Paul had to flee for his life from the city.

So when he writes back to the Thessalonian believers, he knows that hanging on to their faith in the midst of hostility has not been easy.
He knows that many have suffered because they received the gift of Christ in their lives.
He knows that in the face of such persecution, it would have been easy to abandon the message…
And yet they have continued on!

Perhaps that is because they had received the gift of God’s joy.
They knew God’s mercy.
They knew God’s grace.
They knew God’s presence.
And it sustained them even when they found themselves in the darkest places and in the toughest moments.

Paul’s words at the end of this letter are an encouragement to keep going.
They are a reminder to keep creating space for the gift of God to take root in their lives.
In the midst of such trying times, it would be easy to be on edge, snapping at one another for the slightest thing.
It would be easy to get discouraged by setbacks.
It would be easy to listen to the voices of those who are turning back and turning away.

Instead, Paul asks them to each do their part.
Encourage those who are straggling behind.
Reach out of those who are exhausted by the fight and pull them back on their feet.
Be patient with one another and aware of when you are pushing each other’s buttons.
Look for the best in each other.
Pray.
Pray, pray, pray.
Pray always and everywhere.
Thank God for what is before us… the good and the bad.
Rejoice always.

If joy is a gift… then I think that means that we need to create space to focus on God’s mercy.
We need to focus on God’s grace.
In the best and worst moments we need to focus on God’s presence.
As Matt Rawle reminds us, “For Wesley, salvation and joy go hand in hand. There is no joy for those who feel there is no forgiveness. There is no joy for those who have no assurance of salvation. Without joy there is little for which to give thanks. Joy comes from knowing that God is near and salvation is offered to all.” (p. 90)

God is near and salvation is offered to all.
God’s gift of grace and mercy and love is not just for us.
It is for those who are falling behind.
It is for those who are discouraged.
It is for those we have forgotten.
It is even for those who are persecuting us.
And if we can find room in our heart to remember that, we might just glimpse what an altogether joy looks like.

Our Wesleyan hymn for this morning is one of my favorites… Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.
Charles Wesley’s words remind us that the newborn King has arrived not just for me.
Not just for you.
But with mercy and peace he has come to reconcile God and all sinners.
God has made a home in all places and among all peoples.
The gift of God’s presence is for all.
All nations are filled with joy in light of this gift.
All people, not just the ones who think like us.
Everyone is invited to proclaim the good news of this precious gift.

Maybe that is why, in his sermon, “The Character of a Methodist,” Wesley goes to great lengths to remind us that Methodists are not people of one opinion.
We are not people who discriminate.
We don’t boil our faith down to one issue or cause.
Because if we did, we would soon believe that we have the truth… the answer… the gift… and those who disagreed with us do not.

No, a Methodist is one who has received the love and presence of Christ.
A Methodist is one who extends the same grace to others that we ourselves have received.
A Methodist is one who never speaks evil of a neighbor, but seeks always and everywhere to share the gifts of salvation we have ourselves received.

What does this look like?
I stumbled across the story this week of a guy named Stan. Stan goes to church in Denver and his church was working to support a family who had come on hard times. Medical bills had overwhelmed them and there was nothing left for Christmas. So, among the various things the church was going to do to support them, Stan volunteered to go pick up a Christmas tree.
Stan put his son Jay in the truck and they headed up into the mountains to cut one down. But the truck slid off the icy road and crashed into a boulder. His boy was covered in glass from the windshield and both were shaken by the trauma.
As cars sped by, no one stopped…
In the midst of trying to create joy for others, they found trouble themselves.
But then a car pulled up and a couple got out. The woman began to comfort the boy and put him in their vehicle while the man helped Stan move his truck farther off the road. Then the drove Stan and Jay home. In their shock and dismay, they never got the couple’s names.
Frustrated that he had failed in his task and his truck was wrecked and eager to do something to help out this family, Stan took on the task of delivering the other items to their house. He walked up to the door, rang the bell and waited.
When the door opened, there stood the couple that had helped Stan and Jay in their own moment of need. (Story adapted from one by Steve Goodier – http://stevegoodier.blogspot.com/2008/12/surprised-by-joy.html)

That’s what an altogether joy looks like.
It goes the extra mile to help out a stranger.
It shows up when no one else will.
It is grace and mercy and presence.
It is God with flesh on.
And we discover it when we allow ourselves to accept the gifts of God in our lives.
But we also find it when we turn around and share it with others.

May it be so…

A Way Forward? To Each Their Own Convictions

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Text: Romans 14:4-12

 

“How do we know we are following the way of Christ?… How do we navigate the culture around us?  What happens when Christians disagree profoundly with each other?”

There are just a few of the questions that Rev. Christine Chakoian believes Paul is trying to answer in his letter to the Romans. (CEB Women’s Study Bible Introduction)

And they are questions that we are wrestling with today.

What should we do when United Methodists, faithful followers of Jesus Christ profoundly disagree?  How do we find our way forward?

 

In Paul’s time, the conflict he saw in the Roman community was a clash between Jews and Gentiles – people who followed the laws of the Old Testament and those who had never lived under that law but who were accepting Jesus Christ.

At this point in time, Christianity was not really a separate thing from the Jewish faith…  It was a movement that had begun within the Jewish community, but it was also quickly taking root in Gentile communities who had no knowledge of or cultural connection with the Jewish faith

This created all sorts of problems:

Should someone be circumcised into the Jewish faith before being able to follow Jesus?

Did the Jewish dietary laws have to be followed?

What are the holy days that must be honored?

When you got to a cosmopolitan, diverse place like Rome, you had folks in the same community who held vastly different opinions about how the faith should be practiced.

People who ate meat and people who didn’t.

People who were circumcised and those who weren’t.

“One group, “Jeanette Good writes, “believes that the ‘right way’ is to rely solely on texts of old interpreted literally, and the other group is adamant that the ‘right way’ is to believe that God is being revealed in new ways to each generation.  Both groups are ‘in their camps’ and are sure their positions are the right ones.”  [1]

 

Sound familiar?

 

It would be impossible for us to talk about what comes next and how the various proposals to lead us forward might play out without getting a sense of the current landscape of the United Methodist Church today and the camps that people have fallen into.

We have them represented here by these four vessels of water.

The way I describe these camps is going to use terminology initially coined by Tom Lambrecht, the vice-president of Good News, a more conservative coalition within the UMC and then adopted by Tom Berlin.  Tom Berlin not only wrote the stewardship book that we shared together this summer, but he serves a theologically diverse church on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.   Both were members of the Commission on a Way Forward and both are noted as authors of two very different plans that have been proposed that we will discuss next week.

 

If you were here last week, we talked about six scriptures that have historically been understood to condemn homosexuality within the bible.  If you missed this message or the one from the week before, you can pick up a copy on the back table.

We also discussed how our task as people of faith is to think theologically:  to ask and reflect upon how God is working in the world today.   We begin with scriptures like these and we interpret and translate and make sense of them in light of other scripture, the tradition that has been passed down to us, and our own human reason and experience.

These four sources, what we call the Wesleyan quadrilateral, helps the church translate the gospel to the world, but also helps the church make sense of the world around us. Last week, I asked some theological questions that we are called to wrestle with as a result of reading these passages:

  • Does the description of people in this passage reflect our experience of LGBT+ persons today?
  • What do scripture, tradition, reason, and experience lead us to claim are taboo sexual acts today, framed by our understanding of Christian community?
  • What is natural for LGBT persons? What are the fruits we see in the lives of LGBT persons?
  • How do we talk about sex, sexuality, and identity that rejects the way people use and abuse one another and helps all people to honor their bodies?

 

Those who would find themselves in the progressive camp read these six scriptures, faithfully interpret them, reflect theologically, and believe that they do not condemn LGBT+ persons.

They believe that some these passages refer to culturally bound understandings of holiness that no longer apply in Christian community.

These passages are not talking about loving, mutual, relationships between two persons, but instead about exploitive violent actions and abuse or cultic sexual practices.

Members of this camp would also point to scriptures that they believe affirm LGBT+ persons within the scriptures.

For example, King David and Saul’s son Jonathan had a close relationship.  After Jonathan’s death, David laments:  “I grieve for you, my brother Jonathan!  You were so dear to me!  Your love was more amazing to me than the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1:26)

They might also point to the time when Jesus healed the servant of a Roman centurian in Matthew 8 and Luke 7.  Here, the Greek word for servant or slave – doulos – is not used, but instead, the word, pais, is used to describe the unwell person.   A pais in this time was either a child – a son,  or a close personal attendant, or was sometimes used to refer to a younger male lover.  Progressives see this as a possible example of Jesus encountering an LGBT+ person and not hesitating to heal… in fact, even affirming the strength of this person’s faith.
Progressives would call us to look for the fruit in the lives of all persons who claim the Christian faith – do they love God and their neighbor?  And for those who have experienced the call of God in their lives to serve, it wouldn’t matter if they were gay or straight.  Progressives believe that the same standards for holiness should apply to all relationships, whether gay or straight.  Is anyone being harmed through this sexual act?  Does this relationship demonstrate mutual love and respect?  How are chastity and fidelity expressed through this person’s life?

Progressives also would point to the marginalization of LGBT+ persons, not only in history but all around us today as well.  They see current prohibitions in church law as harmful not only to our witness, but to the actual lives of LGBT+ persons.  They would point towards statistics that show that LGBT youth are at a much higher risk for both homelessness and suicide than their peers and that LGBT youth for whom faith is important to them had a 5x higher rate of suicidal thoughts than their straight peers. [2]

As Jesus calls us to reach out to the sick, the oppressed, the hungry in order to offer life and life abundant, progressive United Methodists believe that a church that is not actively in ministry with LGBT+ persons and fully inclusive is being unfaithful to the gospel.

Those who would find them in the traditionalist camp read these six scriptures, faithfully interpret them, reflect theologically, and believe that scripture is clear about the prohibition of homosexual acts.

While justice might be a key word to describe progressives, covenant might be a key term for traditionalists.

They believe that these passages, along with others, describe what personal holiness looks like within the Christian community and that if we interpret the meaning away from these scriptures, than all of our understandings of personal holiness might be compromised.  God has created us in a particular way, man and woman were designed for one another, and only within the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman are sexual acts pleasing to God.

When we choose to follow Christ, traditionalists would argue, we reject the ways of this world and allow ourselves to be conformed instead to Christ.  That is the covenant under which we now live.

Traditionalists believe are called, in community, to hold one another accountable to this covenant.  That means there must be a clear, shared understandings of what is right and what is not.  To be faithful to the gospel, one must call out sin and invite repentance and transformation.  If we fail to do so, then we are allowing that person to remain on a path that might permanently separate them from God’s love.

 

So these are the camps in which we find ourselves today.  Progressives and Traditionalists, who each love the church, love Jesus, and love scripture.

 

When we turn back to the Apostle Paul and his description of conflict within the early Christian community in Rome, he appears to have solid advice for us to rely upon today.

“One person considers some days to be more sacred than others, while another person considers all days to the be same.  Each person must have their own convictions.  Someone who thinks that a day is sacred, thinks that way for the Lord.  Those who eat, eat for the Lord, because they thank God.  And those who don’t eat, don’t eat for the Lord, and they thank the Lord too.”

To each their own, Paul appears to be saying.

These practices, these convictions, they are not essential to what it means to follow Jesus.

If you are celebrating particular holy days in the Lord’s name – great!

If you choose to refrain from participating in the Lord’s name – great!

Because you are doing it all in the name of Jesus.

Whether or not you keep kosher laws or are circumcised or whether you prefer pew chairs or pews – as long as you are focused on your Lord – that’s all that really matters.

Paul goes on to say that we should not judge one another for our various convictions.  Each person will stand before the Lord in their own time.  We are not to force our own convictions about practices upon one another, nor are we to be a stumbling block to another person’s faith by allowing our practices to interfere with those of others.

 

Within these progressive and traditionalist camps in the United Methodist Church today are those who take Paul’s words to heart.  Tom Berlin uses sugar packets instead of vessels of water to demonstrate these various positions.

As you can see there are progressives and traditionalists represented here who have their own deeply held convictions about how we should relate to LGBT+ persons – justice and full inclusion or covenant faithfulness.

But there are those within each of these camps that understand people who have been wrestling with these questions arrive in different places.  These folks also don’t believe that the answer to this particular question is essential to our faith.

Lambrecht and Berlin would refer to these folks as compatibilists.

Compatibilists are willing to remain in community with those who disagree with them.  They know and understand that our very church is full of a diversity of perspectives on this topic, but that what unifies us as United Methodists – what IS essential is our understanding of grace, our focus on personal and social holiness, and the connection that allows us to be in ministry across this globe.

Compatibilists might best be described as those who firmly hold their own particular theological convictions, but also respect the theological convictions of others.  As we live together within the church, what is important is that there is freedom of conviction and no one is forced to act against their own beliefs.

As long as you love God and love your neighbor and seek to live and die for the Lord, the non-essentials of our faith should not divide us.
There are those within each of the progressive and traditionalist camps, however, who would reject the idea that this is a non-essential of our faith.

They would argue that Paul is talking here are about practices like what we eat and wear – truly non-essential things.  But values like justice and covenant are not something you can compromise.

Traditional non-compatibilists believe that our call to covenantal holiness requires us to maintain these standards across the church. They want the church to be faithful to what they believe are obvious prohibitions within scripture.  We are not called to be blown to and fro by the winds of culture, but must hold firm to the tradition that has been passed down to us.

Progressive non-compatibilists believe that our call to justice for all people requires us to see anew who Jesus is standing with in the margins.  They want the church to be faithful to what they believe are the obvious cries for inclusion within scripture.  We are not called to a legalistic faith, but must allow the Holy Spirit to lead us and recognize the presence of God in LGBT+ persons.

 

Within the United Methodist Church today, this division has created our current conflict.

Progressives are dissatisfied with the current language within our Book of Discipline and by and believes that it harms our witness for Jesus Christ in the world today.  They believe that they are being faithful to the gospel by disobeying the Book of Discipline in order to celebrate same-gender weddings and welcome LGBT+ folks into ministry of the church.

Those who are Traditional Non-Compatibilists see these actions and feel like the covenant we have made with one another has been broken.  They feel personally harmed by this betrayal and some are leaving these churches as a result.

Traditionalists who are frustrated that the covenant has not been honored are seeking to maintain the discipline of the church by naming and formalizing consequences of these actions.  We have a process for accountability within our Book of Discipline that begins with the filing of a complaint, and you may have heard in the past few years of such complaints being filed here in Iowa against pastors who have officiated same-gender weddings or who have publicly come out as queer.

Those who are Progressives see these actions and feel like it not only personally harms people who are LGBT+ but has also harmed their congregations as people have left their churches because we are not fully inclusive.

Within the United States, there are regional differences that are apparent.  The Western Jurisdiction is more progressive than other areas and in 2016 consecrated Karen Oliveto as a bishop, a woman who is married to another woman.

Annual conferences across the North Central and Northeastern Jurisdictions have committed to ordaining clergy based on their fruit, not their sexual orientation.
Southern Jurisdictions and Annual Conferences throughout the connection are advocating for a church that maintains its faithfulness to scripture and traditional understandings of marriage.

And there are global factors.

The conversation we have had today is largely U.S. based, but the United Methodist Church is a global denomination.  While assumptions should not be made about any particular area of the global church, it is thought that the majority of our African and Filipino brothers and sisters would describe themselves as traditionalists.  In many of their own cultural realities, homosexuality is rejected and in some places even an illegal practice.  Others, in parts of our connection like Western Europe, would align more with the progressives.  The goal of the Commission on a Way Forward was this:  To design a way for being church that maximizes the presence of a United Methodist witness in as many places in the world as possible, that allows for as much contextual differentiation as possible, and that balances an approach to different theological understandings of human sexuality with a desire for as much unity as possible.

 

Is the question of human sexuality an essential of our faith?  Will our response divide the church?

Or is it a non-essential?  Is it a place where we can respectfully disagree and create space for one another?

The plans that we will explore together next week will answer those questions differently.  The impact of these plans on our particular congregation can only be known if we have a sense of where this church itself stands.

For that reason, I want to invite you each to take and fill out one of these yellow surveys.  We will compile these anonymous responses in order to have a sense of the impact any of these plans might have on this church.

I’m going to give you a few minutes to do so right now.  There are four simple questions to answer.

First, based on what we have described today, where would you place yourself on this spectrum of progressive/traditional and compatible/non-compatible?

Next, three questions about how you personally might respond if there were or were not changes to our Book of Discipline.

As a reminder, here is a general description of the Book of Discipline’s current language:

The Book of Discipline affirms that we should be in ministry with all persons and reject homophobia.  It also states that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.  Marriage is defined as between one man and one woman.  Self-avowed practicing homosexuals may not be ordained as clergy.

 

What I want to leave us with today is a phrase that John Wesley clung to in his own ministry – a phrase that exemplifies the spirit of our passage in Romans today:

 

In essentials, unity.

In non-essentials, liberty.

In all things love.

 

May God continue to lead us as hold fast to the essentials of our faith, respect differences in non-essentials, and may love been the source of all that we do.

Let’s stand together as we are able and affirm some of those essentials that form the core of our faith.

[1] Jeanette Good.  Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4, p 65

[2] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/queer-youth-religion-suicide-study_us_5ad4f7b3e4b077c89ceb9774

A Way Forward? 25-cent words

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Texts:  Philippians 4:8-9, Matthew 22:34-40

This past year as I taught confirmation, one of our lessons focused on how we are all theologians.
I wrote that word up on the board and one of our students exclaimed – WOW! That’s a 25-cent word!
There was an old idiom that you shouldn’t use a 50-cent word when a 5-cent word will do.
But just because a word is complicated doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it.
So we unpacked it. We defined it. And suddenly, that 25-cent word wasn’t so scary anymore.

Today, we need to talk about some 25-cent words.
These are words are important and form the background of both the conflict within our denomination and in how we might move beyond this tension.
So… will you pray with me?
Compassionate God, all creation delights in the presence of your Word.
May the authority of your Spirit bring understanding into our confused minds, and truth into our troubled hearts, that we may praise and serve Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (from the Worship@North website. https://northchurchindy.wordpress.com/ )

We are going to start in the same place as our confirmands. Our first 25-cent word is… theologian.
I am a theologian.
I have a Master of Divinity from Vanderbilt University and I spent three and a half years studying divine things like scripture and ancient texts and history and the thoughts of other theologians.

But you know what?
You are a theologian, too.
You see, a theologian is simply anyone who reflects upon God’s action in the world today and as United Methodists we believe that every single one of us is called to this task.
Every generation must wrestle with our faith in a changing world.
The church needs to see problems and challenges like sexual abuse or global migration so we can provide a faithful response.
But, we also need to be able to figure out how to communicate the truth of our faith to a world that increasingly can’t understand us.
Theology helps us to do both.
Whether or not you knew it before worship today, you are a theologian.
I want you to claim that! Say out loud and proud: I am a theologian!

And as a theologian, your job is to answer a simple question: What can I say that is faithful to scripture as it has been passed down through tradition, and that makes sense in light of human experience and reason? (paraphrase of Book of Discipline p. 81)
As Paul told the Philippians, we are to focus our thoughts on what is excellent and true, holy and just. We are to practice what we have learned and received and heard from our mentors and teachers of the faith.
That is theology!
And as United Methodist theologians, you have four sources in discovering God at work in the world.
Scripture. Tradition. Experience. Reason.

These four sources make up our next 25-cent word: quadrilateral.
“[John] Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason.” (p. 82)
All four are important. All four are necessary. All four help us to see where God is working in the world.
We start with scripture.
We end with scripture.
Scripture is the absolute foundation of all of our theology… so as theologians, we had better be reading and pouring over scripture in our lives.
But… and… scripture is always being interpreted.

First, scripture is interpreted by other scripture.
You cannot take a single verse out of context but need to look at the fullness of the entire passage and story.
And, we come to see as we read the bible that there is an overarching story within the scripture itself… a story of creation and redemption, a story of mistakes and forgiveness, a story that ends in the restoration of all things.
In our gospel, religious leaders ask Jesus to interpret and prioritize scripture for them. His response is one that provides us guidance when we in turn interpret scripture today – how does this verse lead us to love God and love our neighbor? (Matthew 22:34-40)

Next, we have the witness of how people have interpreted that scripture through time. Tradition shows us the “consensus of faith” that has grown out of a particular community’s experience. (p. 85-86)
Not all contexts and communities are the same. The experience of Czech immigrants in the Midwest was very different than that of African slaves in the Deep South. Each community passed on the gospel and created practices of faith that show us how the scripture made sense in their lives. We also connect tradition with the theology of previous generations that have been passed down to us in creeds and writings.

Tradition shows us how communities have understood God, but we also each have or own unique experiences.
Who you are and what you have been through is always with you when you open up the Bible – your pain, joy, anger, gender, economic reality…
It is why you can read the same passage of scripture repeatedly over time and discover something new with each reading.
But Wesley also talked about how God continues to reveal through our experiences and the fruit that we are bearing in our lives. When he saw the call in the lives of women around him, he began to license them as preachers.

Our final source of theology is reason. As the Book of Proverbs reminds us, each person is called to “turn your ear toward wisdom, and stretch your mind toward understanding. Call out for insight, and cry aloud for understanding. ” (Proverbs 2:2-3)
We believe that God reveals truth in many places, not only in scripture, and that we should pursue such knowledge and truth with our whole selves. Science, philosophy, nature: these are all places that help us to gain understanding.
Where we find contradictions within scripture itself or between a passage and wisdom of the world, reason asks what greater truths a verse might be speaking or how to prioritize and discern which is truer.

Our Book of Discipline reminds us that

“United Methodists as a diverse people continue to strive for consensus in understanding the gospel… while exercising patience and forbearance with one another. Such patience stems neither from indifference toward truth nor from an indulgent tolerance of error but from an awareness that we know only in part and that none of us is able to search the mysteries of God except by the Spirit of God. We proceed with our theological task, trusting that the Spirit will grant us wisdom…” (Book of Discipline p. 89)

The simple truth which lies at the heart of our conflict today is that people of faith, United Methodists who care about the scriptures and who come from diverse backgrounds, cannot come to a place of consensus in how we approach matters of human sexuality and in particular how we understand homosexuality.
We might use the quadrilateral differently or prioritize some aspects more than others.
But I think part of the difficulty is that we don’t even have a common understanding of the question we are seeking to answer within the scriptures.
And that means a couple more 25-cent words:

First, homosexuality. This word was initially coined in the 1880s in German and made its way into English usage in the 1890s. The word itself simply refers to sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex. Some modern translations of scripture use this word, but it didn’t even exist at the time the King James Bible was translated.

Many who seek to answer the question of what we should do today start from this definition. Their concern is largely with the physical acts associated with any given sexual orientation. Many prohibitions in our Book of Discipline focus on this as well, using the phrase  “self-avowed, practicing homosexual.” The question being raised by this group is largely about how we use our bodies and whether or not such use is good and holy.

Others focus on a more expansive understanding of the complexity of human sexuality, referring to a wider group of people through the term LGBTQ+.

Science and sociology have helped us to see in the last fifty years that our identity is complicated.
FINAL-genderbread-for-webThis graphic talks about four different aspects of our identity – all of which are placed on a spectrum. Our biological sex, how we identify our gender and how we express it, who we are attracted to… all of these factors play a role… which is why the terminology we use keeps expanding as well. There is a handout at the back that has this graphic as well as some common definitions within LGBTQ+ if you are interested. The question being raised by this group is also about how bodies, but tends to focus more on embodiment and identity as a whole person.

As a denomination, when we bring these questions to General Conference, we seem to have reached our limits of patience and forbearance with one another.
But as people of a local faith community, my prayer is that we can still remember with humility that now we see through a glass darkly and that we still might extend patience and forbearance towards one another as we explore a few scriptures together.

When we open the scriptures, there are six verses that our tradition has used to condemn homosexuality.
Genesis 19: Sodom & Gomorrah
Leviticus 18 & 20: Abomination
Romans 1: Exchanging Natural Relations for Unnatural
1 Corinthians 6 & 1 Timothy 1: “malakoi and arsenokoitai”
As United Methodist theologians, we start with scripture, and we end with scripture so we need to wrestle with these passages as background for our theology today.

 

Before they went to bed, the men of the city of Sodom—everyone from the youngest to the oldest—surrounded the house and called to Lot, “Where are the men who arrived tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may have sex with them.”

First – Genesis 19: 4-5, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Angels from God arrive in order to determine if there are any righteous people in the town. The men of the city knock on the door of the house they are staying and seek to force themselves upon the visitors.
However, this is a great place to start using scripture to interpret scripture. While later Christian tradition adopted sodomy as a term for sinful, non-procreative sex, within the scriptures itself, the sin of Sodom was not sexual in nature. In Ezekiel 16, the prophet names the sin of Sodom as being proud and not helping the poor and needy. This was a culture that relied upon hospitality – when guests arrived the duty of the community was to welcome them and provide for their needs. To violently force yourself upon these visitors, attacking them, raping them, was against every hospitality code of the time. This is a clear violation of the command to love your neighbor.

The question we wrestle with theologically is whether or not our experience of LGBT persons today is reflected in this text.

 

You must not have sexual intercourse with a man as you would with a woman; it is a detestable practice.

 

If a man has sexual intercourse with a man as he would with a woman, the two of them have done something detestable. They must be executed; their blood is on their own heads.

The next two scriptures come from the Holiness Code in the book of Leviticus (18:22, 20:13). In many translations, sex between two men is named as an abomination, or detestable. Both of these chapters are concerned with sexual practices that were forbidden to the people of God as they were entering the Promised Land. It is a rejection of practices both in the land of Egypt and practices that may have been common among others in the land of Canaan.
The Hebrew word that we have translated as abomination or detestible is probably not a fair translation of the word. “Toevah” is understood by many today to instead mean ritually unclean or culturally taboo. The Israelites are called to be holy and set-apart and to adopt cultural practices that are different from their neighbors. In the larger context of Leviticus, these include commands about food, clothing, bodily fluids, and how you treat the stranger among you.
Today, our tradition still considers many of the practices within these two chapters of Leviticus to be culturally taboo, but not all of them. And we have moved away from many of the other prohibitions within these texts that we consider to be culturally bound – like eating shellfish or the cutting of hair. And that’s because we hold a different understanding of what makes us unclean in the eyes of the Lord. Peter’s vision in Acts 10 shifts the conversation within the Christian faith and his encounter with the gentile Cornelius leads him to proclaim, “God has shown me that I should never call a person impure or unclean.” (Actus 10:28)

Theologically, we ask today what scripture, tradition, reason, and experience lead us to claim as taboo sexual acts, framed by our understanding of what forms us as a Christian community that loves God and our neighbor.

 

That’s why God abandoned them to degrading lust. Their females traded natural sexual relations for unnatural sexual relations. Also, in the same way, the males traded natural sexual relations with females, and burned with lust for each other. Males performed shameful actions with males, and they were paid back with the penalty they deserved for their mistake in their own bodies.

Our next scripture comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans. His argument here in the first chapter is that Gentiles and Jews alike are without excuse and full of sin. The Jews have been given the law and claim to follow it but don’t. The Gentiles don’t have the law… instead they should have seen God revealed through nature itself. Augustine and Aquinas and others have carried this concept through our tradition and our use of reason: we can know God through the world around us.
Here in this chapter, Paul argues that the Gentiles should have known God. However, they rejected God and turned instead to idols. As he describes cultic practices of worship, he claims that their idolatry led God to abandon them to their desires. As a consequence, natural sexual relations were exchanged for unnatural ones and these people were filled with jealousy, murder, fighting, deception, gossip, and disobedience to their parents. (Romans 1:29-31)
Theologically, the questions we wrestle with today start with asking what is natural. If one understands homosexuality to be a choice then it would lead you to think that such acts are unnatural. However, for others who believe that persons who are LGBT were created that way, it might be unnatural for them to act against how God has made them.
This is another place where we might ask where our experience shows fruit in the lives of LGBT persons. Paul’s argument here is that same-sex acts are the result of idolatry and cultic worship and these people are filled with other bad behaviors. What are the fruits we see in the lives of people we know who are LBGT? What are the fruits of people who are not LGBT? Do they love God? Do they love their neighbor?

 

Don’t you know that people who are unjust won’t inherit God’s kingdom? Don’t be deceived. Those who are sexually immoral, those who worship false gods, adulterers, both participants in same-sex intercourse,[a] thieves, the greedy, drunks, abusive people, and swindlers won’t inherit God’s kingdom.

 

We understand this: the Law isn’t established for a righteous person but for people who live without laws and without obeying any authority. They are the ungodly and the sinners. They are people who are not spiritual, and nothing is sacred to them. They kill their fathers and mothers, and murder others. They are people who are sexually unfaithful, and people who have intercourse with the same sex. They are kidnappers, liars, individuals who give false testimonies in court, and those who do anything else that is opposed to sound teaching.

The final pairing of scripture is from 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10. We group them together because they refer to the same two words – malakoi and arsenokoitai. These words have been translated in multiple ways through our history of bible translation.
Malakoi literally means soft and has been translated as effeminate, as the passive homosexual partner, or as a male prostitute.
Arsenokoitai is a word that appears only two times in all of Greek literature – right here in the Bible. It is a word that Paul appears to have made up from two other words: Men and Bed. How tradition understands this word has changed drastically over time. Some think it refers to the dominant homosexual partner. Others think it refers to pimps – men who sell sex. Others think it is connected with temple prostitution, or the practice of older men taking young men (soft men) as sexual partners within the culture of the time.
In the context of the litany of other acts included in this list however, perhaps the Message translation most accurately captures the spirit of this passage. “those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don’t qualify as citizens in God’s kingdom.”
The truth is, we have all done these things. But the grace of God is present in our lives and has redeemed us and so our call now is to honor God, creation, and our neighbors… and that includes honoring our bodies.

What can we say theologically about sex, sexuality, and our identity that rejects the way people use and abuse one another and helps all people to honor their bodies?

 

As I faithfully wrestle with a theological response to the presence and promise of LGBT persons in the life of the church, I am fully aware that I might end up coming to a different conclusion than you. We are all theologians after all, all tasked with using scripture, tradition, reason, and experience to weigh what we believe to be faithful responses in the world today.
The very conflict within our denomination is the result of this very tension and next week we’ll explore how people of faith have found themselves aligned with various positions today.
But my prayer, above all else, is that we would continue to lift up as our number one priority the love of God and the love of one another – and that includes those who don’t agree with us.
Our call as people of faith after all is to provide a welcome so vast and so radical that all might come to know and experience the saving grace of God lives. May it be so. Amen.

Lessons for the Journey

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Last winter, my immediate family planned a trip to Hawaii to escape the cold and the snow.  We often like to travel all together, but because of my weekend work responsibilities, the rest of the family took off earlier, while Brandon and I stayed here in Iowa to get through church on Sunday morning and then fly out. 

Our original plan had been to fly out on Sunday afternoon, but about a month before the trip, they cancelled that flight and rebooked us for first thing on Monday morning.  So our alarms were set for 4am, our bags were packed and we were ready to go.  And then the text message came.  Our flight had been cancelled.   There had been storms that weekend in Dallas, flights were backed up and ours was being bumped.  We had been rebooked for Wednesday morning. 

I instantly got on the phone and tried to see if there was any way we could get out of town sooner.  Except the hold time with the airline was estimated to be an hour or more.  Brandon and I live near the airport, so I decided to go and try to get in line and talk with an actual agent at the ticketing counter.  Only, the lines there were nearly out the door.  Everyone was trying to get out of town and no one was going anywhere.   There were no earlier flights to be had.

We decided to make the most of the day and built a fire in the fireplace at home and tried not to grumble.  The next day around noon, we got another text from the airlines.  Our flight Wednesday morning out of Des Moines had been cancelled, too. 

I think I spent about three hours on the phone with the airlines and the soonest they could rebook our tickets was on January 1st.  It would be another two days before it would be possible to get out of Des Moines due to the back up all throughout the system.  I cried.  The good lady from the airlines tried her best to help make something work, but it was a mess.   

I finally asked if the flight from Dallas to Hawaii was still taking off the next morning.  It had been only the Des Moines leg of the trip that had been cancelled.  And sure enough, it was still going to be leaving at 9 am Wednesday morning.  Brandon and I looked at each other, and decided to drive to Dallas.  

We picked up the rental car around 4pm, left Des Moines around 5, and drove through the night.  When we arrived, exhausted, around 4am, we found a quiet corner in the airport to take a short nap, made our flight, and made it to Hawaii to spend the rest of the trip with our family… only three days late.  

 

In our scripture this morning, the Israelites are on a journey as well.  While Brandon and I were trying to escape the cold of winter for a warm, sunny beach, the Israelites had escaped slavery in Egypt and now they were headed for the Promised Land.  God was leading them to the land flowing with milk and honey.  Only, they didn’t quite know how to get there and they trusted God to lead them.  

This was supposed to be a fairly simple trip, and yet at the outset, God planned to lead them the long way round.  The pillar of smoke and fire was taking them on a journey that would avoid most of the difficulties they might encounter along the way.  But no road is easy and the setbacks they experienced were far greater than a few cancelled flights. If you continue reading through the rest of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the Israelites experienced loss, frustration, bickering, and ended up wandering for forty years in the wilderness.  There were times in the journey when the destination seemed so far away that they wished they were back in Egypt.  And despite the daily guidance and food provided from above, there were even times they forgot God was with them.  Ultimately however,  just like we finally touched down on the rainbow isle and got to spend our vacation with my parents, siblings, and three amazing niblings, the Israelites finally made it to Canaan.

While we might not be on a physical journey, the people of the United Methodist Church and the people of Immanuel are on a journey, too.  John Wesley often talked about how we are going on to perfection and I think part of that means that we as the church should always be working towards the Kingdom of God and growing not only in our personal faith, but we should be transforming the world around us to look more like the “Promised Land” every single day.  As a church, we need a compelling vision to hold in front of us, a picture of the destination we are longing for, so that we can actively work to bring that reality into being. 

But like the Israelites, our journey has been and will be marked by setbacks. Most journeys are.  We, too, have experienced loss and decline.  In fact, I bet some of you in this room can remember when this sanctuary was built in order to accommodate when we had over 500 in worship every single Sunday.  And, there are times of disagreement and disunity.  We won’t always be able to find the best worship times for every person and we won’t all agree on what a faithful Christian response is to some of the toughest conversations of our day.  

Last week in fact, an email came out from a new group that has formed within the UMC called the Wesleyan Covenant Association.  The email contained a video that highlights the three central beliefs of the organization.  That God is good, the Bible is true, and that Promises should be kept.  And yet, how those three very simple statements were defined is not something that all United Methodists agree upon.  So I became part of a group of young clergywomen that created a statement in response, trying to expand and enlarge the conversation.  

When Bishop Bickerton talks about this journey of faith we are on, he knows that it will not be easy.  But he offers a couple of simple lessons that might help us arrive together at our final destination.  As I have thought about the journey of the Israelites,  my own adventures in travel, and the journey we are currently on as a church, I find them helpful.

The first lesson I want to highlight is what my colleagues and I were attempting to do last week as we drafted a response to others in the church.  And that is the see yourselves and others as a work in progress.   I think this faith that we share is not simple, but it is complex and messy and real.  We are always learning and growing and going on to perfection.  Or as Paul put it, “Now we see a reflection in a mirror; then we will see face-to-face.  Now I know partially, but then I will know completely in the same way I have been completely known.” (1 Cor. 13: 12).  And so that means we should constantly be in dialogue with one another.  We need to admit our shortcomings and leave ourselves open to the possibility that we might be wrong.  We do not need to have it all together or have all the answers… we are still on a journey!

The second lesson relates to that idea.  In the famous words of Vanilla Ice, we need to stop, collaborate and listen. It is often the people we disagree with the most who can help us to get farther on our journey.  We need to collaborate across generations, with our older folks helping out our young parents and our younger folks providing support and care for their elder counterparts.  In his book, Bishop Bickerton shares a story from Zimbabwe and Bishop Nhiwatiwa.  In the Shona language, the word used for the spirit of collaboration is chabadza .  “If you approach a person working in a field, you do not say, “May I plow your field for you?” Instead you say, “May I help you plow your field?”  Chabadza represents a willingness to enter into relationship with someone else on the journey.” (p. 36)   And it is a willingness to let to, let others help, and to let it be done another way.  This is the spirit that we embody here at Immanuel whenever we put the needs of another person above our own and let go of our way in order to let God move us in a new way.  

The final lesson is one that I needed to remember many times on our long journey to Hawaii.  You need to lighten up, loosen up, and have a little fun.  The journey we are on is difficult, and if we don’t open ourselves up to find the joy in the midst of the journey it will feel like its longer than it actually is.  We need to enjoy the ride, remember that we are loved by God, let the Holy Spirit encourage us every step of the way.  Here at Immanuel, there are so many opportunities to have a little fun as we grow in this journey of discipleship.  You can sing and dance with the kids in Children’s Church.  You can laugh together over coffee in Faith Hall.  You can step out of your comfort zone and make a new friend.  You can stand up and let God move you when the music starts playing.  You can roll with punches and smile more and see where the Spirit will move.  

Above all, no matter where we are on this journey, God is with us, pushing us, pulling us, prodding us, and never letting us go.  Like the cloud of pillar and fire never left the side of the Israelites, the presence of God is in this place and will continue to guide us every step of the way.  Amen. 

Was John Wesley a Deacon?

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Through John Meunier, I was directed to “Four John Wesley quotes everyone should know” by John Pedlar.

They are good quotes, and ones that, as a student of Methodist history and theology, I knew well.

But as John shares, James shares an important insight at the end of his piece.  It is in response to Wesley’s quote “the world is my parish.”

Wesley’s quote about the world being his parish is usually seen as his missional justification for preaching the gospel wherever he was. But he also knew that he was exempt from the parish boundary rules as a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. He had no parish of his own, and was free to preach where he liked

I think for me, that quote from James Pedlar asks the question – are we hindered in our ability to preach the gospel where it needs to be preached BECAUSE of our parish/appointment?

In the context of Wesley’s ministry, territory was everything.  Your parish was a geographical location and your people where those within its borders. I think he’s right that John was free from that because of his academic placement.

So, what would that look like today? Would it be more appropriate to think of John Wesley in today’s terms as a deacon?  As a pastor without an appointment?

The more I think about it, the more I think Wesley would have been a 21st century United Methodist Deacon rather than anything else.  As far as I can tell, he did not regularly administer the sacraments… he encouraged people to go to their local parish congregation and recieve them there.  He was an academic and a preacher, a writer and a teacher, an organizer… and I have a feeling that he would have been very unhappy under the appointment system.

In our world, our “parish” or our congregation can be limiting if we let it. If we stick within the walls of our church and only preach to those who come to us, the gospel is confined. Sometimes this isn’t intentional. Sometimes the demands of newsletters and repairing the roof and worship planning just gets in the way of our ability to be in the world preaching the gospel.

If we were not limited to one congregation – or even two or three or five (in some yoked parishes) – how would the job of ministry change? If the parish were not your primary appointment, but you were still an ordained elder with sacramental responsibility, what would your days look like? The first place I see being thrown out the window is pastoral care, but perhaps that is not fair…

That being said… sometimes Elders under appointment self-limit themselves.  As my bishop reminded a group of young clergy, we are appointed to communities, not to congregations.  The world of ministry around us is far bigger than we sometimes assume.  There are plenty of opportunities to serve outside of our local church communities, also.

The question for me is always one of calling… what are you called to be and to do?

Wesley was called to use his post as a vehicle for transformation of his church and of disciples of Jesus Christ.  He had some freedom to move and travel to enable him to do that.

I am called to deeply inhabit this community to share the love of God with them in every way that I can.  I have some freedom and authority because of my position to do that as well.

Thank God that there are many ways that we can serve!

cut and paste liturgy of JOY!

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I am definately a cut and paste liturgical writer.  I don’t have the time and energy most days to do the good hard creative work it takes to listen for God speaking and to craft liturgy.  And there are other people out there who do it so much better than I do!

There are a few places that I typically turn for inspiration – the favorite of mine being Thom M. Shuman (TMS).  Another favorite haunt is the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Discipleship and the Worship Planning Helps there.  I use hymns and turn them into responsive readings.  We sing.  We pray.  We make liturgy happen.

But sometimes, those pieces need to be all woven together.  Sometimes a bit of this and a chunk of that speaks to me.

Recently, a colleague Sean McRoberts and I created a communion liturgy using the basic liturgy in the Hymnal, but incorporating the Charles Wesley classic:  O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing.  And when it came up as a possibility for music this Sunday as we think about the gift of JOY we await at Advent… I had to throw that into the mix, too.

So, here it is… in its fullness.   The cut and paste liturgy of JOY!

Prayer of Confession

Ever Present Peace, you came to save us, but that is so hard to remember in this hectic season. Our impatience for Christmas to arrive gets in the way of listening to our children singing in their rooms. We let the blinking lights blind us to your quiet presence in a noisy world. We get so caught up in the stories of violence, we cannot hear your voice reminding us not to be afraid.

As you poured out your mercy on all who have gone before us, shower us with grace and forgiveness. Then, our eyes will be opened to all your wonders, our ears will echo with the anthems of the angels, and our emptiness will be filled with the life gifted to us through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. (TMS)

Words of Assurance

Dear ones of God, this is the good news: God comes to us to bring the healing of hope, the joy of justice into our hearts.
We need wait no longer. We will go and tell everyone what we have seen and heard! Thanks be to God. Amen. (TMS)

In Christ, your head, you then shall know, shall feel your sins forgiven;

Anticipate your heaven below, and own that love is heaven.

The Great Thanksgiving

The God who is coming to us be with you!
And also with you!
Lift your hearts to the One who turns barren deserts into seas of grace.
We lift them to the Lord!
Beloved of God, let us come to the table with songs of joy on our lips. (TMS, adapted)

O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise,
The glories of my God and King, the triumphs of His grace!

It is right to give you thanks and praise,
Great God of the Coming Dawn,
for in each new day you surprise the earth with splendor.
Your Spirit moves across the face of the waters and brings forth life.

At the dawn of all things in a garden you worked the earth.

Elbow deep in mud you fashioned us, gifted us, gave us work to do.
Made from the earth, Made by your hand,
We forgot who we were

We forgot who you were
and we tried to remake ourselves.
We rejected your love and fell into sin and death.
Yet even in our darkness you continued to speak light and life.
…And so we come to live on the edge of your new and promised day.
[We come to wait for your Son Jesus Christ our Lord]

[His] coming was announced by wilderness prophets
and [he] arrived to the song of angels
in the choir stall of a manger.
In Jesus you not only took our name but our flesh.
He was the One promised
He announced the new day and the acceptable year
When blind folks would see
And poor folks would rejoice
When captives would be set free
And the oppressed would once more walk upright in liberty.

In stories he spoke of waiting bridesmaids and prodigal sons,
With tears and compassion he brought a dead man to life
and gave a woman at a well the living water she sought.
With anger he overturned tables and challenged the powerful.
On the cross he revealed the power of weakness
and in the emptiness of the tomb
he gave us a glimpse of your tomorrow
that does not end in death. (AJ – see note at bottom)

He speaks, and listening to his voice, new life the dead receive;
The mournful, broken hearts rejoice, the humble poor believe.
He breaks the power of canceled sin, he sets the prisoner free;
his blood can make the foulest clean; his blood availed for me.

On the night when he was betrayed
he sat at a table with his friends.
He took bread, blessed it, broke it, served it to them, and said,

“Take this. Eat it. It is my body, given for you. Do this to remember me.”

In the same way he took the cup,
Blessed it, served it to them, and said,
“Drink from this every one of you.

This is my blood poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sin.
Do this to remember me.”

And so we remember.

And so we offer our praise and thanks and our very selves
As a holy and living sacrifice in union with Christ’s offering for us.
[We offer our lives as he remembered that he offered his for our own.] (AJ)

I felt my Lord’s atoning blood close to my soul applied;
Me, me he loved, the Son of God, for me, for me he died!

May the gift of your Spirit, Advent’s Hope and Peace,

be poured out on the simple gifts of the bread and the cup,
and on those who come simply to find healing and hope.

And when we have been fed by your surprising grace
and filled with your peace, may we go forth to the world,
where our weak hands will become calloused by compassion;
where we will bend our feeble knees, reaching down to lift up the fallen;

where we will become fountains of living water for those parched by the wilderness of their lives.
Then, when sorrow and sighing have been chased away from us,
and we gather with all generations around your Table in heaven,
everlasting joy will be our song, and gracious hope will be our refrain,

as we sing to you through all eternity, God in Community, Holy in One.  (TMS)

Glory to God, and praise and love be ever, ever given,

By saints below and saints above, the church in earth and heaven.

The Lord’s Prayer

Sharing the Bread and the Cup

Prayer of Thanksgiving

Benediction

Jesus! The name that charms our fears, that bids our sorrows cease;
‘tis music in the sinner’s ears, ‘tis life, and health, and peace.


My gracious Master and my God, assist me to proclaim,
To spread through all the earth abroad the honors of thy name.

(AJ – Written by Alex Joyner. Advent Great Thanksgiving – Copyright General Board of Discipleship.  www.GBOD.org Used by permission.)

Judicial Retention and the Trust Clause of the UMC

Posted on 1 Comment on Judicial Retention and the Trust Clause of the UMC

This week in Iowa, three Supreme Court Justices were voted out of office.  And I’m a little upset about it.

A huge part of my frustration comes from the fact that they were voted out because of a homophobic reaction to one decision they made during the course of their tenures.  In a unanimous ruling by the court, a law that limited marriage between a man and a woman was deemed unconstitutional.  The decision itself can be read here.  It is extremely well written, and worth the read. One of the first responses our bishop, Bishop Julius C. Trimble, made was that in no way does that decision impact what we do or do not have to do as clergy.  We are not being forced to marry those whom our Discipline says we are not allowed to marry.  But as far as the state is concerned, as far as the institution that the state is concerned with, the rights should be granted to all.

I realize that folks are of all sorts of different opinion about the issue of same-sex marriage.  I respect your beliefs.  I hope you will respect mine.

My frustration is with the precedent that this particular retention vote sets for the future of our judiciary.  In conversations that I have had with others in the past week, I have become ever more aware of two things.

1) Folks don’t understand the role of the judicial system.  There are all sorts of arguments going on saying that a court shouldn’t be making law and shouldn’t be accepting cases of such a highly volitile nature and I have even heard more than once that the courts don’t get to interpret the law – they just need to enforce it.  Basic civics lesson – the courts job IS to interpret the law.  It is to recieve cases, brought by the people or the state, that bring forth questions of constitutionality.  Is a particular law constitutional?  The congress can’t decide that, the people can’t decide that, the executive branch can’t decide that… it is the court’s role to interpret the law and hold it against the constitution to deem its worthiness.  AND – they issue opinions.  That is their role.  Their rulings are deemed opinions because they are interpretations in particular times and places.   The executive branch enforces the law, the congressional branch makes the law, but the judicial branch interprets.  It always has been and always will be its role.  The congressional branch is absolutely free to make amendments to the constititution that will then change what that opinion might be in the future… that’s part of the checks and balances system.  Instead of being upset with the unanimous decision of the justices, the anger in this case should have been directed towards those who refused to bring an amendment to the table.

2) In a facebook conversation, someone mentioned that folks who voted “no” on retention were afraid to speak up and tell why they did so.  “don’t you think the fear of being personally and politically attacked keeps people from having a civilized conversation about this subject or any other for that matter?”  I responded, ” ironically, the fear of being personally and politically attacked for an unpopular opinion is exactly why that vote is so damaging to our judiciary system.”   The very reason that we moved away from an elected judiciary is so that money could not buy court decisions.  The very reason this vote is so troubling is that it will take balls for justices to make unpopular rulings in the future.  To always be wondering who you might upset because of your decision takes the unbiased factor out of the judicial system.  Now, I’m prone to be naive… but I will admit that there are flaws in the system we have.  It was pointed out that each of the justices currently on the court are registered democrats… however, two of those voted out were appointed by a conservative governor.   In any case, for the retention vote to be used not as a means of disposing of poor judges, but as a referrendum on one particular issue destroys the objectivity of the court.
Perhaps I am so frustrated by point number two, because I feel like there should be some protections there to enable justices to go against the flow, to rule for what is right and not what is popular, to make a stand for actual justice.  I say that because I, myself, like all other pastors, regularly have to make those sorts of decisions.
The very nature of the pastorate means that we have to speak the truth – even when it is not popular.  We are called upon to comfort the afflicted… but also to afflict the comfortable.  We are called to speak truth to power.  We are called to pull at people and challenge them to grow.  We are called upon by Christ to turn the values of this world upside down and inside out.  And constantly, that means that we are called upon to lift up the concerns of those who have no voice, those who have no power, those who have no hope.  The bible tells us to leave our gleanings for the poor and not gather them up for ourselves.  The bible tells us to be good to the foreigner in our midst.  The bible tells us to forgive, to turn the other cheek, to love our enemies.  To preach the gospel often means that we are speaking out on behalf of the minorities in our country.  It often means saying unpopular things.
Which is why I am grateful for some protection.  If a pastor depended on their popularity to maintain their pulpit – the gospel would never be preached.  But in my tradition and in others as well, we have this lovely little thing called the Trust Clause…

 Which means… any United Methodist Church belongs to the Church and not the people.  Any pastor who serves in said church is accountable to the Church and not the people.   That may be a slight oversimplification… but I hope you get the point. 

In trust, that said premises shall be used, kept, and maintained as a place of divine worship of the United Methodist ministry and members of The United Methodist Church; subject to the Discipline, usage, and ministerial appointments of said Curch as from time to time authorized and declared by the General Conference and by the annual conference within whose bounds the said premises are situated.  This provision is solely for the benefit of the grantee, and the grantor reserves no right or interest in said premises.
John Wesley used something called the “model deed” to protect the security of the places where the Methodists worshipped.  It created a sense of conformity… in that those who preached must hold to the doctrines espoused by the church, but it also meant according to one scholor that the preaching houses, “cannot be alienated from their original intent and are not subject to the theological or ecclesiastical fancies of local leadership.” 
If you preach against gambling in a community that has just recieved permission to build a new casino – you can’t be kicked out of the church.  If you preach tolerance and welcoming of the sojourner in a community frustrated by an influx of migrants – you can’t be kicked out of the church. Just because something is unpopular does not mean that it is grounds for dismissal.
I think part of the reason this retention votes is so disheartening is because I empathize with those who are called sometimes to make unpopular and difficult decisions.  I have watched them over the course of this campaign refuse to fight back, refuse to give in, and I have watched them and supporters of the judiciary work to educate the public. 
When I am called upon to be prophetic, to speak hard things, it would be easy to argue back when others disagree… but I am inspired by the courage and respect that these three justices in particular showed. 

I am lucky enough to be a part of a system that allows me to make tough decisions and I get to keep my job.  My heart goes out to those not only for whom that was not the case here in Iowa, but for those across the world who take tough stands every single day and are punished for it, who are ridiculed, who are persecuted, and who die for those decisions.  I am more lucky that I realize.  And I pray that I might use this gift for good and not squander it.

Copyright © 2024 Rev. Katie Z. Dawson. All rights reserved.