salvagedfaith

A Way Forward? Which Way?

Posted on September 2, 2018Leave a comment

Text: Acts 15

The book of the Acts of the Apostles is the story of how the good news of Jesus spread from Jerusalem, through Judea and Samaria, to the ends of the earth. Along the way, the culture and traditions and scriptures of our spiritual ancestors encountered a variety of peoples and backgrounds.
When should the gospel be adapted? What was essential to maintain? Which traditions and practices should be enforced and which were merely contextual?
These were all questions being asked by the disciples and the communities they encountered along their evangelistic journeys.
Peter, in Acts 10, has a vision of the clean and unclean together and then is brought to the home of a Gentile centurion. Moved by the Holy Spirit, he baptizes the entire household… even though it was forbidden for a Jew to visit with outsiders.
In Antioch (Acts 11), Barnabas goes to minister to the Gentiles who were being converted. He is joined by Paul and together they not only convert many, but there is prediction of a famine and together the people there gather money to take to Jerusalem in response. This is not only a church of new believers, but ones who understand their connection to a larger community.
Gentiles were converted in Iconium and Lystra, but tension grew between Jews who followed Christ and those who did not. Those who rejected this new message stirred up conflict between new Gentile converts and Jewish Christians (Acts 14).
To complicate matters, other missionaries began to visit some of these places and the messages being shared about which practices must be followed as a part of the faith were different.
In particular was a very important question: Did you have to be circumcised in order to be saved by Jesus?
Now, circumcision had been an important identity marker for what it meant to be the people of God since the time of Abraham.
Jews who followed Christ did not see themselves as entering a new religion, but merely living into a new expression of that faith. Circumcision was still an important part of who they were.
Gentiles, however, were making a much larger change. Some, like the Roman centurion, were God-fearers… Gentiles who worshipped the God of the Jews but who had restrictions on what they could participate in because of their status as Gentiles. Others were pagans and were converting to a totally new faith. Circumcision would have been a significant cultural departure.

Last week, I shared with you a spectrum of theological stands that shape our church today ranging from progressive to traditional.
Imagine for a moment that this conversation was instead about circumcision.
Those on the progressive incompatibilist side might make the claim that since God is revealing a new way – no one anywhere has to be circumcised. Those on the traditional imcompatibilist side might claim – this is the same God we have always followed and everyone who wants to be saved must be circumcised. And surely there were people in the middle, who thought that Jews who wanted to be could, but Gentiles didn’t have to and so on.

Someone had to make an official decision about this so that the conflict among communities might cease. Local churches in these far flung places were confused about what was required and what wasn’t and it was hurting their ability to convert new followers to the way of Jesus.
And so the apostles and elders of the faith gathered together in Jerusalem in the year 48 to consider this question.
They heard testimony from people like Paul and Barnabas, and disciples like Peter and James made pleas. And together, the Jerusalem Council made a decision for the whole church.

In many ways, our General Conference functions every four years like the Jerusalem Council. We gather to listen and to share our stories and our witness and to make decisions that will guide the future of our entire denomination.
In February, when a special session of General Conference gathers, the decisions we make will impact not only our larger cultural witness, but also the practices and the people of local congregations like Immanuel.

As we hear this text from Acts 15, it is easy to focus on the Jerusalem Council itself… the leaders of the faith who have gathered together to make this decision.
But I admit, that in these past few weeks I’ve been thinking a whole lot more about all of the communities back in Antioch and Iconium who were waiting for a decision.
They sent off their representatives, but it would be some time before they heard a final answer. They knew that there were a variety of different directions the Council could take and so I imagine they began to prepare their hearts for a range of possibilities. Would they have to be circumcised? Would they be free to practice how they had been? Would there be other ways the Council might ask them to come into compliance with the faith?

Friends, we are those local communities waiting for a decision to be made. That decision will impact us in one way or another and so now is the time for us to begin praying and preparing ourselves for whatever might come.

Last week, I asked all of those who were here to identify where they personally fall along this spectrum of theological responses to scripture regarding LGBT+ persons. Because the impact of decisions upon OUR local community might look different from that of our neighbors.
This is simply a snapshot, but these are the responses from 110 of you who were in worship last Sunday morning. Nearly 60% of you identified yourselves on the progressive end, 27% of you on the traditionalist end, with about 13% of you not responding to that particular question. So I’m going to use your responses to help frame how Immanuel might be impacted by any of the particular plans in front of us. One thing I want to highlight is that in the answers for all of the questions, no matter whether you agreed or disagreed, nearly the vast majority of you continued to say that you would stay at Immanuel.

The first thing I want to explore are a couple of options based on this theological spectrum of perspectives. The first one is our current reality… the status quo. If nothing passes at the special General Conference, this is the default to which we revert.

Our Book of Discipline currently prohibits both the ordination of self-avowed, practicing homosexuals and same-sex marriage, which is a traditionalist perspective. However, there are places and people who are not following those prohibitions. In more progressive areas of our denomination, sometimes this happens with no enforcement of the rules at all. In more traditionalist areas, there are often charges filed and sometimes clergy are suspended or their credentials are removed. But there is vast inconsistency.
Currently, Immanuel’s response to this has been to largely to ignore the question. If we agree or disagree with the larger denominational stance, we don’t bring it up. Within our congregation are individuals and families who are impacted by this question, but they don’t push it within the larger church. Unlike other congregations within the greater Des Moines area that have strongly identified with a progressive or traditionalist perspective and have made outreach efforts around that perspective, we don’t talk about it.
And I think this is largely because identify ourselves as a family church. And families disagree about things, but still want to gather together around the Thanksgiving table. We might have private side conversations over pie, but it isn’t going to be the thing that we focus on. So we follow the rules of the denomination, whether we agree or not.

One of the plans included in the Commission on a Way Forward Report, although not recommended by our Bishops, is the Traditionalist Plan (begins on page 67). This plan would end the confusion and inconsistency by determining once and for all that we will not ordain or marry LGBT persons within the United Methodist Church.
There are two ways that accountability and enforcement are increased.
First, all bishops, annual conferences, and members of the Board or Ordained Ministry must certify that they will uphold, enforce, and maintain The Book of Discipline related to self-avowed practicing homosexuals. Those who disagree with the Book of Discipline and cannot make such a statement have three options.
1) Not certify the statement. This will result in all funds from the UMC being withdrawn and the annual conference will no longer be allowed to use the cross and the flame.
2) Certify the statement and break the rules – automatic penalties.
3) Leave the denomination to form/join a self-governing Methodist church, aka a new denomination that might be affiliated with the UMC.

What would be the impact of this on a local church like Immanuel?
Well, first of all, nearly 85% of you replied that if the current stance in our Book of Disciple remains unchanged [status quo] or strengthened [increased enforcement] you would stay as a part of Immanuel. We’d have a disagreement within our church, but again, I think largely we are focused on our community together and not on the larger denominational dynamics.
One of the complicating factors of this particular plan is that as a local church, we don’t have a lot of say of what happens at the levels just above us.
The Iowa Annual Conference, for example, might decide that it either will not certify the required statement or it might form or join a self-governing Methodist church that is more progressive. If that were the case, then this local church would have the opportunity to decide if we wanted to go with the Iowa Annual Conference, or if we wanted to stay with the United Methodist Church.

Another plan that has been presented along this same theological spectrum is the Simple Plan. This plan was not part of the Commission on a Way Forward report but was submitted by the United Methodist Queer Clergy Caucus. This particular plan seeks to remove all discriminatory language around homosexuality within the Book of Discipline.
It does so by striking statements like “Ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted in our churches.” However, it does not add any additional affirming language, nor does it add language that would increase enforcement towards those who are traditionalist. No clergy or church would be required to perform a same-gender wedding. If and when a congregation wanted to allow such weddings, they could have that conversation and make that decision.

Based on your responses to our survey, that would be a possibility. Nearly 70% of you said that you would agree if same-sex marriages would be allowed in our sanctuary. However, I also imagine that since this congregation deeply values relationship, we wouldn’t jump into any decisions without first having some family conversations and make sure it was the appropriate choice for our church.
Very similar dynamics are at play in the question about the appointment of queer clergy to Immanuel.

So far, we have been working along this spectrum of theological perspectives. The Commission on a Way Forward wanted to break us out of those dynamics a little bit and so the next two plans I’m going to present fall within a sort of compatibilist realm, but are trying to do something a little different.

The One Church Plan (begins on page 19) is a proposal of the Commission on a Way Forward that was supported by a strong majority of our Council of Bishops. The fundamental theological statement within this plan is that our position on homosexuality, whatever it might be, is not an essential of our faith. It is not something that we should divide our church over.
Like the Simple Plan that I just shared with you, it removes all language that is restrictive towards LGBT persons. However, it adds in every one of those locations statements that ensures freedom of conscience for those who think differently. For example, in the section about the ministry of an elder it states:
“In conferences where civil law permits a pastor to perform same-sex marriage services, no elder shall at any time be required or compelled to perform, or prohibited from performing, any marriage, union, or blessing of same-sex couples, or of any couples. Each elder shall have the right to exercise his or her conscience to refuse or agree when requested…”
What would be the impact of such a plan on Immanuel? This particular plan allows us the freedom of conscious, much like the Simple Plan. This plan does specify, however, that same-sex weddings are not allowed in local congregations unless the congregation chooses to approve them by a simple majority vote.
Any congregation that felt like it could no longer remain a part of the United Methodist Church, potentially non-compatibilist congregations, this plan points to already existing mechanisms within the Book of Discipline for them to leave.

The other primary plan presented by the Commission on a Way Forward is the Connectional Conference Model (begins on page 37). This model also affirms that this question is not an essential of our faith and maintains the unity of the United Methodist Church by creating three branches within the denomination based upon our perspectives on human sexuality.
The difficulty with this plan is that it requires changes to the constitution of our church which would have to be approved by 2/3 vote of all of the annual conferences combined. If this happened, there is a plan of implementation with decisions filtering down.
First, each United States Jurisdiction would vote in 2020 which connectional conference it would want to join. After that decision, any annual conference within that jurisdiction could vote to join a different connectional conference if it so chooses. Then, beginning in 2021, any local church that disagrees with where the annual conference has affiliated can choose to join a different connectional conference.
As a result, different churches within our city might belong to various connectional conferences, but we would all still be a part of the larger United Methodist Church.

As a local church, we could decide to just go with the flow and follow the decisions made by the entities above us, or if we disagreed with their direction, we could vote to join another. Whichever conference we ended up affiliating with would determine our policies on ordination and weddings.

The final plan that has already been published and is available for conversation is not a plan of the Commission on a Way Forward. It is simply named, a Plan of Dissolution, and the purpose of this particular plan is to claim that this actually is an essential of our faith and for that reason, we must divide the church.
Rather than any one perspective claiming victory over the denomination, however, the goal of this plan is to dissolve the UMC in its entirety. Then at the 2020 General Conference, delegates will be elected to help form 2 or more new denominations that likely would fall into the same spectrum we have been discussing. As those new denominations are formed, local churches would have the opportunity to affiliate with and join whichever they felt called to join.

In the year 48, the church was at a crossroads. Would they embrace the Gentiles who were following the way of Christ? Would the Gentiles shape the church, or would the Jewish faith shape the Gentiles? Leaders of the faith gathered together in Jerusalem to allow scripture, the Holy Spirit, tradition, testimony, and reason guide them in making the best decision for the church.
I imagine as those local communities of faith sent their delegates, they joined together in fervent prayer.
And so that is what I hope you might do with and for us.
Pray. Pray hard. Pray every day.
Pray for God to guide us as we make these decisions, hard decisions, that will impact our church at every single level, from our local church here in Des Moines to the hospital we have built in Sierra Leone, to our seminary in Russia, to our publishing house in Nashville. Pray.

A Way Forward? To Each Their Own Convictions

Posted on August 26, 20181 Comment

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

Posted on August 19, 2018Leave a comment

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.
This 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.

A Way Forward? Fixed And Free

Posted on August 12, 20182 Comments

The United Methodist Church is at a crossroads.

On the one hand, we do incredible work together because of our connection across the globe. Missionaries go from everywhere to everywhere. We are present amid disaster and crisis providing relief. New faith communities have been formed in West Des Moines, Camaroon, and Russia. And these things happen because we pool our resources to do the most good.

On the other hand, we are a diverse, expansive, global denomination working in many different contexts from many different backgrounds. Within that diversity is blessing and also conflict – including conflict about the role of LGBTQ+ persons in the life of the church – particularly whether they can be married in the church or ordained/consecrated by the church.

Next week, we’ll turn our attention to scripture and dive deeper into how they relate to what it means to be Lesbian, Gay, or Queer today.

But for today, we wanted to start with the big picture of how we got to this place as a denomination. Behind any particular verse is the tension between flexibility and permanence.

What is written in stone?

What is subject to change in time and context?

How do we know the difference?

In February, our denomination will hold a special session of General Conference and how we answer these questions will determine our identity for the future.

How did we get here?

As people of faith, we are heirs of both the tabernacle and the temple.

That is the premise that the pastors of Lovers Lane United Methodist Church shared with their congregation when they addressed our current dilemma at the beginning of this year. (https://soundcloud.com/llumc/sets/fixed-and-free)

As we heard in our scriptures for the day (Exodus 25:1-9 and 1 Kings 6:11-13), as the context and the people of the Bible changed, God had different ways that the people could come to know and worship God.

In the midst of the wilderness, the people had no home. They were always on the move, never setting down roots, everything was always changing and uncertain.

And so God sends them instructions to build a tent – a tabernacle – a movable place of worship that would go with them wherever they were.

Every person within the community was called upon to contribute something – richly colored yarns, gold, silver, wood, leather, precious stones – all of them used to create a moveable place for God to dwell among them on the journey. Wherever they traveled – God was with them. (Exodus 25:1-9)

Generations later, the people stopped moving. They had established themselves in the land and they wanted permanence. They wanted a king like the nations around them. And they wanted to build God a temple.

King David himself looked around at the palace he was living in while the Ark of the Covenant was still residing within the tabernacle. But it wasn’t until his son, Solomon, was established on the throne, that the temple in Jerusalem was constructed.

This temple, this permanent dwelling place for God, was important for the people in the time of the Kingdoms. No longer did the people all travel together with God in their midst. Now they were settled in far off places. The temple represented something stable and unchanging, the home base to which they could return. God now dwelt somewhere a part from the vast majority of the people – but if you followed the rules and went to the temple, you could be with God. (1 Kings 6:11-13)

That tension between what is fixed and free, an institution and a movement, is at the core of our struggle and our identity.

Are we focused on the God of the tabernacle – who hears the cries of the oppressed and marginalized and who makes a home among the people wherever they might be?

Or are we focused on the God of the temple – who has made a covenant and established laws and who calls us to repent and return home so we might experience life abundant?

It is both… a tension we must hold… but sometimes it becomes a tug of war that threatens to tear apart the church.

Even when we focus on the Word – both the one who walked among us and the living word we discover in this text – we see this tension.

As the gospel of John reminds us, “In the beginning was the Word… the Word became flesh and made his home among us.” (John 1: 1, 14) The roots of this passage are that the Word tabernacled among us.

But Jesus also said that upon the rock of Peter, he would build his church. Solid, foundational, able to withstand time and changing winds. (Matthew 16:18)

Too often, what we find reflected within the words of scripture are our own predispositions towards temple or tabernacle.

And, we must be aware that there is also a shadow side to either of these inclinations. If we lean too heavily upon viewing God through the lens of the tabernacle, we might be tempted to believe that wherever we are, whatever we believe, must be okay because God is right there with us. On the other hand, if we lean too heavily upon viewing God through the lens of the temple, we might be tempted to believe that faith means being rigid, legalistic, unmoveable. The tabernacle needs to be balanced with accountability. The temple needs to be balanced with grace.

There is an awful lot of history between the time of Christ and our denominational roots in the 18^th century. The church spread and conquered and fractured and reformed. The bible itself was put in the hands of everyday people. The Holy Spirit moved, and institutions grew.

One of our beginning points lies with John Wesley, a priest in the Church of England. The institutional church around him was very removed from the people of the day. And so, he felt a call to leave the cathedral and John Wesley went out into the fields, where the people were.

He preached in homes, and from the top of tombstones in the graveyard, and his brother, Charles, took old drinking songs and turned them into hymns. They gathered people into small groups for accountability and care and formation, but always encouraged them to remain connected to the established church.

Now, something that is important here is that Wesley never wanted to start a new church – he simply wanted to reform his church and help the people reconnect and experience the power of God in their lives. From England to Scotland to the American colonies – wherever the church was, small groups of Methodists were growing.

If you ever have trouble placing our history as a church, remember this – the Methodist movement grew up alongside the American Revolution. And when England lost and the Church of England left the colonies – all of those in the Methodist movement were left without churches and leadership. And so reluctantly, John Wesley ordained Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury as superintendents or bishops and sent them to lead the people called Methodist in the new country.

And because we were established around the same time as this nation, our governance matches the governance of the United States. Our church is a democratic based structure with three branches – a Judicial Branch, an Executive Branch, and a Legislative Branch.

When the people wandered in the wilderness, God dwelt among them in a tent that was free to move.

When the people were established in a kingdom, God dwelt among them from an established temple in the capitol.

And when the people were forming a new nation, our church came to look like the new democracy with a book of laws and rules at the center of who we are.

I know we’d like to think that book is the bible, and… well, it is… but there is another book that holds us together as a denomination: The Book of Discipline.

In many ways, this has been our attempt to hold the tension between the fixed and the free, the movement and the institution.

This book provides stability in the sense that it is our reference point and foundational document of our identity. It contains the Articles of Religion that have been handed down through generations and a constitution describing who we are and how we function, and which is very difficult to change.

But it also provides flexibility in the sense that everything else within this book can be changed every four years by a simple majority of delegates to the General Conference.

Like the United States Government, we have a judicial branch – a Judicial Council of 9 persons who are elected to rule on matters of disagreement. We also have an executive branch, our Bishops, who are tasked with upholding the Discipline and caring for the ministry of the church.

Lastly, the General Conference is our legislative body. It is our version of Congress, only our gathering time is much shorter – for a couple of weeks every four years. It is where we gather to discern God’s will for the future of our church in the world. It is the place from which we boldly proclaim where God is and sometimes we have gotten it wrong and sometimes we have gotten it right.

If you look at the history of our church, it has not been one continuous solid history.

If you trace the line from the Church of England, the lighter brown set of roots, (and the side of our history that I know better), we can see that our lack of welcome and inclusion for African American siblings led to the formation of not one, but three new denominations.

Conflict over slavery and the authority of the bishops split the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844 – years before the Civil War.

Sometimes splits were the result of contextual differences. Sometimes because there was greater freedom needed that the more established church couldn’t hold within itself.

But the church has also merged and reconnected and joined with others for missional reasons. In 1939, previous splintering was repaired as we became the Methodist Church.

And in 1968, we merged and formed a union with the Evangelical United Brethren Church.

One of our own – Rev. Harold Varce was a pastor in the EUB at that time and he was there at the founding of the United Methodist Church. In fact, thanks to Harold, that “United” from the EUB tradition made its way into our name.

What would be the witness of this new denomination?

How would we hold in tension the call to find God at the margins with the oppressed and to boldly proclaim the established truth of God?

One of the first things that we undertook was to write our Social Principles. While not church law, they are “the prayerful and thoughtful effort on part of the General Conference to speak to the human issues in the contemporary world from a sound biblical and theological foundation as historically demonstrated in United Methodist traditions.” (Preface)

And so in 1972 – with the denomination only four years old, much of the attention was focused on our section regarding human sexuality. It was a time of great experimentation and misconduct in society at large and this was our first opportunity as a church to speak.

In the midst of our larger statement was a phrase “persons of homosexual orientation are persons of sacred worth.” An amendment was made and approved which said, “We do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider it incompatible with Christian teaching.”

In many ways – right there in the midst of that statement which says two very different things – is that tension between tabernacle and temple. God’s presence dwells in the life of LGBTQ+ persons – they are of sacred worth… and the practice of their orientation is sinful to God and requires repentance.

Since 1972 – we have experienced a back and forth, push and pull, tug of war over whether we will fully embrace and include gays and lesbians in the life of the church or if we will stand firmly against the tides of culture upon the traditions of our established church.

That tension has reached such a point in the life of our denomination that it has overtaken much of our witness and work.

And so we reached a point in 2016 where we could not move forward without discerning a new way forward. Over these past two years folks have gathered to pray, discern, converse, pour over scriptures, wrestle, and finally we are at a point where their recommendations of various possibilities will come to a special General Conference, focused solely on this topic in February.

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll back up and look at the scriptures behind our conversation. We’ll look at the landscape of our current dilemma. And in the final week, we’ll explore together the implications of the various proposals.

Here is what I want us to remember today.

When we were in the wilderness AND when established as a powerful nation – God dwelt among us.

When the temple was in ruins AND when the church was being persecuted – God was with us.

God has been leading, calling, pushing, prodding, rebuilding, connecting, pruning, and forming God’s people from the very beginning.

Not once has God left our side… although sometimes we have turned our backs upon God.

In some ways, I think God gives us what we need as far as a structure for whatever moment we might find ourselves in history. Anything that will help us grasp onto the very simple fact that God love us and calls us to be God’s people.

Through the ups and downs of churches that have split and reconnected and reimagined their existence, what is constant is the Lord and Savior of us all.

So whatever comes, whatever changes, whatever new possibilities lie before us, I pray that we would trust that God is present in the midst of it all.

Amen.

Your Greater Purpose

Posted on July 23, 2018Leave a comment

Text: Isaiah 1:10-20

This morning’s scripture… wow.
These are the words God speaks to the prophet Isaiah as he is called into service. This is the message that Isaiah is called to shared with the kings and rulers of Israel, the children of God.
God, who created them…
God, who rescued them from slavery in Egypt…
God, who formed them into a people…
God, who loves them now is filled with anger and frustration and heartache.
The children God raised have rebelled.
They have abandoned God’s ways and have turned against one another.
And yet in their worship, they pretend as if everything is okay.

Isaiah is sent to these rulers to point out that there is a disconnect between their practices and their praises of God.
They claim to be faithful.
They go through all of the motions.
But their actions inside the sanctuary have no impact on what they do when they leave the temple. The poor, the needy, the strangers in their midst are suffering… sometimes in the name of God.
All of that worship… and there is nothing different in their daily lives, or in the lives of their neighbors, because they have spent that time with God.

Des Moines University reports that nearly 30% of Polk County households were food insecure at some time during 2017. 30% of households couldn’t put enough food on the table.
The median income for African American households in Polk County is $26,725. That number is less than half of the median income for all households in the county.
86% of households earning less than $15,000 annually live in housing they cannot afford. That number of $15,000/year is a full-time job at minimum wage. The Polk County Housing Trust Fund estimates that 8,350 affordable units are needed in central Iowa to meet current needs. Based on fair-market rent for a two bedroom apartment, Des Moines/West Des Moines employees must make at least $16.83 an hour.
The impacts of these numbers:
Homeless children are 2x more likely to have a learning disability, repeat a grade, or be suspended from school.
Low-income students are 4x more likely to be chronically absent, often for reasons beyond their control due to unstable housing, unreliable transportation, or lack of health care.
Of third-grade students who qualify for free and reduced lunches, less than 60% read proficiently.

These are realities of our community.
These numbers reflect choices we have made as participants within it.
They reflect who we as employers hire and how much we choose to pay them.
They reflect the investments we’ve made in public education – how we support teachers, taxes, our giving of volunteer hours.
They reflect decisions about zoning, real estate investment, infrastructure, health care and who we have elected to make decisions about those policies.
They reflect the vast need for organizations like Hawthorn Hill and Bidwell Riverside.

And so God speaks:
I hate your worship.
Your prayers make me nauseous.
Organ or electric guitar… who cares? – I loathe your music.
You focus on the color of the carpet and what you sit on and I’ve had enough.
Your sermons offend me.
Who asked for the offering plate to be passed around?
That sweet smell of King’s Hawaiian bread at communion stinks.
Do you know why?
Because even though you hear my words and sing my praises, you live your lives as if none of it matters.
Stop.
Listen again to my words.
Pay attention to what I have called you to do.
Work for justice.
Help the down-and out.
Stand up for the homeless.
Go to bat for the defenseless.

God is inviting us to not simply worship, but to go out and be in ministry with the most vulnerable people in our midst. As our call to worship reminded us – we are not here to tell God how awesome we are… we are here to remember how our awesome God hears the cries of the needy, hears OUR cries, and then responds through the hands and feet of every day people like you and me.

There is so much in this world that can distract us from that core purpose.
We find ourselves in competition with other churches to offer the best programs and attract the most people.
We get sucked in by the temptation we discussed in this week’s chapter of “Defying Gravity” to cling to the gifts and abundance in our lives, rather than holding them loosely and sharing them with others.
I personally find myself overwhelmed with the desire to keep the peace, to hear all of your various points of view and find the happy medium in decisions we make… that sometimes I forget to go back to the basics and ask what God wants us to do.
And so, we all need to hear these words from Isaiah.
We need to shake loose the cobwebs of our memory.
We need to allow these words jolt us back into alignment with God’s greater purpose for our work and worship together.

The good news is that we are already responding to this call in so many ways.
Our gifts to the DMARC Food Pantry Network put healthy food on the shelves at Bidwell-Riverside.
Our contributions in various special offerings have provided couches for the common space at Hawthorn Hill and playground equipment for their kids.
On a weekly basis, volunteers from Immanuel take milk and juice to the shelter for families to use over the weekend.
Through time, through prayers, through money, we are making an impact on those statistics I named earlier.

A young woman named Amie arrived at the New Directions Shelter, one of the ministries of Hawthorn Hill in October of 2014. She was a brand new mother and walked in off of the street with her newborn after Child Protective Services deemed their home environment was unsuitable. Amie and her daughter were able to stay at New Directions for about a month while she worked to make the adjustments and fill requirements from CPS. She was soon able to find an apartment and a job that would help her get back on her feet.
In her exit survey, Amie wrote:
“I just want to say thank you to everyone for helping me achieve my goals during my stay. I’m so blessed I found you all! I feel that New Directions has helped me become a better mother to my daughter!! There isn’t enough room on this paper to describe how grateful I am to you all! I would so love to give back one day and become a volunteer. Thank you so much!”
Since then, Amie has moved to a new job with Bidwell Riverside and was promoted to a Shift Supervisor. She is using her gifts and her compassion to help families experiencing food insecurity. She’s going back to school at DMAAC to work on an Associates in Human Services. And, she has gone back to New Directions to do volunteer work – helping to organize an Easter Egg for families who are there over the holidays.

This is what happens when we allow God’s greater purpose to lead us.
This is what happens when we create opportunities for vulnerable neighbors to be transformed… when we work with them, listen to them, and empower them to thrive.

When we don’t just sing about getting to heaven, but actively work to help our neighbors experience heaven right here.
When our worship and our witness stand up for the defenseless…
When our offerings are used not to build up our egos, but to build the Kingdom…
When we allow God’s word to shape and form not only this hour, but every hour of every day…
When we leave this sanctuary and head out into the world, still crying out – Here I am, Lord, send me…

Then we will have been transformed into the people we were meant to be by God.
Rich or poor, young or old, sinner or saint… we are all God’s children.
And God has a purpose for us.

Staying Awake

Posted on July 8, 2018Leave a comment

Scripture: Acts 2-:7-12

This afternoon, our Volunteers in Mission, VIM Team will head to Omaha. Maybe you could already see the sleeping bags, luggage and tools outside our main entrance as you came in to worship this morning. We’ll pack everything up, get everyone securely in the vehicles, and head out.
And pray that our drivers don’t fall asleep! I’ve got three things that I do to help me stay awake… whether driving, or staying up all night with youth at a lock-in, or listening to a preacher drone on and on and one like Eutychus experienced in our scripture this morning.

In fact, I think if Eutychus had employed these tactics, he never would have fallen out of the window!

First… you need snacks!

Not anything heavy, mind you… that kind of has the opposite effect.

No, you need a snack that will give you just a little bit of energy. My go-to is a crunchy and salty item like pretzels, but a sour, chewy item works for me, too. Nuts are an ideal option… providing healthy fats and protein to keep you engaged.

Second… you need to keep engaged.

When driving, I turn up the volume on the radio and sing along. Or listen to a podcast or audio book that tells a story that forces my mind to pay attention. During lectures or speeches, I bring along some knitting or a coloring book… something that keeps me mentally engaged will often also help me to focus on the road or what is being said.

Third… it helps to have a buddy.

Whether you phone a friend or have someone in the vehicle with you, having a conversation helps! It also helps to be able to take turns and switch off who is driving to give one another a break.

Lastly… you have to keep the blood flowing.

You might think this is crazy, but when I’m really tired, I hold my hands above my head and shake them.

Okay… you try…

There you go!

Anyone feel more awake?

Sometimes we need to just move our bodies and stretch and send that jolt of energy through our system.

In our scripture for this morning, the apostle Paul comes into town and everyone wants to hear him. They all get together, share a meal, and the conversation goes on far into the night. And this one young man, Eutychus, falls asleep while listening.

I imagine something like this happened countless times as Paul traveled spreading the good news of God.

However, this particular young man was sitting in the window. And when he fell asleep, down he went. He fell three stories from that window.

A fall out of a window three stories up could kill a man… and Luke tells us in this account in Acts that it did.

VIM Team – remember that… practice ladder safety this week!

But Paul rushed down the stairs and through the power of Jesus Christ healed him and they all went back upstairs, ate some food, and kept talking until daybreak.

How many of us are like Eutychus… sitting out there on the edge of the crowd, unengaged, drifting off to sleep?

In her reflection upon this scripture, Marcia McFee notes that “sometimes we simply go through the motions – in our lives and in our worship. Perhaps it is not about staying awake in church, but staying awake as the church.”

I thought about that a lot in this last week as we as a church were called to respond to flooding – both in our own building and in the neighborhood and homes of our members.

For years… before I even got to Immanuel… we have been talking about being in ministry with our community. We had a Community Outreach Leadership Team – COLT – that worked to build some connections with local schools and do some fundraising.

We continue to do things like Donuts for Dudes and Divas at Hillis Elementary that was begun as part of that effort and our book drives for Change a Child’s Story is an extension of that work, too.

But in other ways, those efforts have sputtered a bit.

We’ve kind of fallen asleep at the wheel – going through the motions as staff, as members, as a church.

There are a lot of opportunities all around us in this greater community to be in ministry with our neighbors, but too often, we let them slip by unnoticed.

Immigration. The lack of a living wage and the impact on families in Iowa. Mental Health.

These are all places where our scriptures have clear commands to welcome and advocate and provide and heal… but we are missing out on the chance to go out and do something about it with our neighbors.

Sometimes its because we are busy tending to our own internal church programming.

Sometimes its because a need in our community is too overwhelming.

Sometimes its because we fear that a faithful response will appear to be too partisan.

But, as Marcia McFee points out, “the risk of becoming numb, living our lives as if asleep, is that it begins to affect the way we experience the fullness of God’s abundant blessings and promises, even and especially in the midst of pain.”

You see, ministry with* isn’t just about what we offer to the community around us… it is about how we as a church are re-energized and inspired and brought to life by what God is already doing in the lives of our neighbors.

Over this last week, I’ve been using social media to stay connected with the neighborhood flood recovery efforts. Not only was it a great opportunity to share about the work of UMCOR and flood buckets and to offer help, but I was so inspired by the ways that our neighbors were helping one another out. There is a great spirit of compassion in Polk County and Iowa that truly is amazing.

But I also think we should see this flooding as a wake-up call for us as a church. Because it is a reminder of the vast opportunity for partnership right outside of our doors.

In that spirit of “staying awake” let’s go back to my travel tips for some lessons we as a church can remember as we partner with our community.

First- we need snacks!

We’ve got to eat, after all.

So to stay awake as a church, I think we need to look towards all of those times we gather around food as an opportunity to pay attention to what is happening in our community.

How are we creating space and inviting people to join us for coffee time and our Wednesday meals or our other big celebrations?

And how can we take our church out into the community for more gatherings at local restaurants. When we hold small groups at places like Christopher’s or Java Joe’s – we are building relationships with our neighbors, supporting their businesses, and creating opportunities to over hear and find new ways to partner.

I had a meeting with one of you at a local coffee shop not too long ago, and it was amazing how the table next to us were intrigued by our conversation and asked questions about how they, too, could get involved. That doesn’t happen if that same meeting had taken place here at Immanuel.

Second… you need to keep engaged.

As I think about all of those tactics I use to keep myself occupied while driving or during a long meeting – knitting, coloring, singing – I realized that they are all things I already love to do. I’m keeping engaged by tapping into a passion of mine and allowing that to be the vehicle that helps me stay focused. As individuals within this church, we all have passions and gifts that bring us energy and life. Maybe its pottery or acting or woodworking or yoga or animals or crossfit. Whatever it is, when you offer that activity up to God and allow God to work through it then you’ll find your spirit re-energized.

Many of you know that I’ve found this gym that I love and I’ve been part of it for just over a year. I’ve made friendships there with people I never would have come across in my daily journey before… but found community around a shared passion. And together we share about opportunities to help one another out – whether it’s all wearing purple for pancreatic cancer awareness or food drives or inviting each other to come and check out our churches.

Do what you already love to do… but intentionally look for how God is already moving in the lives of the people you meet.
Third… it helps to have a buddy.

We do have individual passions, but ministry happens wherever two or more are gathered. And that means you need to bring someone along with you or keep talking about what it is you are experiencing.

As a church, I think we don’t do a very good job of this.

I know that so many of you are actively involved out there in the community, but we never talk about it! We fall into that midwestern trap of being humble and self-effacing rather than shouting from the rooftops where we are out there in the world sharing God with other people.

So, this morning, we are going to practice. I need five volunteers… and I want you each to tell me about a way that you (or someone here in the church) is out there in the community loving, serving, or praying…

Lastly… you have to keep the blood flowing.

Yes, shaking our hands above our heads is crazy. It made you feel silly… and to be honest, I feel silly every time I do it in the car.

But you know what, being silly, keeping loose, being flexible – those are all things that we need to keep in mind as we partner with our community.

We won’t be able to control everything.

We won’t like the direction every activity takes.

That’s because it’s a partnership.

And when we allow our selves to stay loose, to be flexible, to go where the Holy Spirit leads us, it might feel awkward or uncomfortable or silly… but it’s also holy and good work.

Friends, the good news is that even if we had closed our eyes in the past…. Even if we were nodding off… even if we stopped paying attention… heck, even if we fell asleep and fell out of the window, three stories down, and perished… we can wake up.

God’s eternal alarm clock is sounding off, calling us to shake off the slumber, to get up, to go out, to grab a hold of the life-giving energizing power of the Holy Spirit and be about the work of the church.

So friends… it’s time to not only stay awake. It’s time to get going for God.

Amen and Amen.

Like a Child: Say You’re Sorry

Posted on June 3, 2018Leave a comment

Text: Matthew 18:21-35

Last week, Pastor Todd helped us to launch our series, “Like a Child,” by reminding us of how Jesus welcomed little children in not one, not two, but three of our gospels.
In each place, Jesus reminds the disciples, and us, that unless we humble ourselves or have the faith of a child, we will not enter the Kingdom of God.

So as we start summer here at Immanuel, we thought that we might explore deeper what it means to have faith like a child.
What does it mean to shed the bad habits and baggage that we have learned to carry as adults.
What can we learn from the little ones in our midst about what it means to love God and love our neighbor?

I am the proud aunt of eight nieces and nephews.
And I’m the type of aunt that is often found on the floor, playing with the cars, painting nails, and reading books, than watching from afar.
So, I’m often in the middle of it all when a younger sibling takes a toy that someone else is playing with or throws a fit when they lose a game.

I try not to do too much policing myself, as an aunt. Mom and Dad usually have a better understanding of when to intervene and what type of correction they would prefer to be using in the moment.

But as I thought about all of the times that either their parents or myself have intervened to calm a situation, I realized that the words that always come out of our mouth are:
“Say you’re sorry.”
It doesn’t matter who was in the wrong.
Both kids usually have to say sorry.
Typically, both are also redirected away from the source of the conflict and towards something they can either all use together or that will keep them a part.

Do you know what I realized?
I don’t think we ever have to teach children to say: “I forgive you.”

The dictionary defines forgiveness as when we stop feeling angry or resentful towards someone for an offense, a flaw, or a mistake.
In our gospel reading this morning, the word translated to forgiveness comes from the Greek aphiemi (a-fee-a-me), which means to send away or to give something up; to let it be or let them have it.
Forgiveness is about release.
Forgiveness is about restoration of relationship.
And forgiveness is almost always about the person wronged.

You see, as adults, when someone offends us or hurts us or takes away one of our toys, animosity builds in our heart towards that person.
We not only remember and take note of the wrong… we allow it to come between us.
Forgiveness is when we let go of that anger or frustration or resentment and enter back into relationship with that person.

But you see, kids don’t have to learn how to forgive.
One afternoon, my nephews were fighting over a Transformer and whose turn it was to play with it.
Both had their sticky little fingers on it, and to be honest, none of us adults could remember who had it first or how long they had it. All we knew was that tears were about to flow and the pitch of their voices kept rising.
What we feared is that either they would break this toy they both coveted or one of them would end up hurt from the struggle.
So, my brother called a time out, the Transformer got put on a shelf until another time, and their dad declared it was time to sit and read books for a while.
“Say you’re sorry”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry.”
Both kids crawled up onto my lap and we started reading my favorite about the monster at the end of the book.
No more anger.
No resentment.
Right after the book was finished, they went off to play, together, with their cars.
Children don’t need to learn how to forgive, because children don’t allow mistakes, offenses, or wrongs to come between them.
You simply say you are sorry and you move on.

Adults need to practice forgiveness because we have lost that child-like faith in one another.
Somewhere along the way, as we grow we learn how to hold on to their hurts.
We remember wrongs done to us and nurse that pain until it grows.
One afternoon, my brothers were playing with action figures and one of them decided that to keep his sibling from playing with their favorite one, a batman figurine, he was going to bury it somewhere the other couldn’t find it.
There were two problems with this scenario.
First – Tony forgot where he buried the Batman and it was forever lost to both of them.
Second – Darren never forgot that Tony forever lost his favorite toy.
To this day… as we find ourselves sitting around as family, the lost Batman story comes up.
I think that Darren finally forgave Tony a few years ago, when he received a three foot tall Batman figurine from him for Christmas.
Of course, this small thing was not something that really came between them or damaged their relationship. But there was a moment when that child-like ability to instantly move on faded for them and for all of us who are grown. The offense stuck with them enough that it kept coming up in conversation even 25 years later.

How do we recapture that child-like faith?
How do we go back and rediscover that spirit of mercy and patience and love that allows us to say we are sorry and move on?

First, children don’t carry grudges because they don’t live in the past.
They are focused on what is right in front of them… the activity, the people, the relationships.
Yesterday’s hurt has no place in today’s relationship. Forgiveness requires that we stay in the present moment.
So taking a deep breath and focusing on the person rather than the past will allow us to let go of the anger and the pain as we forgive.
Peter tries to address this by asking a question of Jesus in our gospel reading this morning.
“Lord, how many times do I have to forgive someone who has wronged me?”
Peter is starting to get what it means to follow Jesus.
He knows that the gospel is about grace and mercy and love.
So he knows that people deserve more than even a second chance.
“Should I forgive them seven times?” he asks.
Seven times.
Seven chances.
Seven times you have been hurt or offended or wronged by someone.
Seven moments where you let the pain that you feel, the anger and the hurt go so that you can enter back into relationship with them.
Seven times!

To be honest, that sounds like a lot.
I know people today who have unfriended someone on facebook because of a single comment or have left a church because of a single instance of hurt or pain.
Our response these days to hurt rarely involves giving someone a second chance.
We take our toys and we leave and we allow the anger to become a gulf between us.
Peter is going far above and beyond what the standard is for forgiveness in society today.
But Peter isn’t going far enough.

Scholars debate the translation of Jesus’ response here. Seventy-seven? Seventy times seven?
However you read the text, Jesus is telling Peter to stop counting. Stop looking to the past. Stop keeping a record of wrongs.
Simply forgive.
Always forgive.
Never stop forgiving.

The second thing we need to remember is that children don’t calculate the costs of revenge.
Instinctually, they might lash out and hit back if they are hit, but more likely they will turn to tears or go running to the nearest adult to solve their problem.
Their sense of self recognizes that to get over this situation, they need more than their own resources.
What I find fascinating about the response of Jesus to Peter is that he is inviting us to open our scriptures and remember the Torah. In Genesis, chapter 4, Lamech proclaims that where his ancestor Cain was protected with a seven-fold vengenace, if anything happened to him, God would avenge Lamech’s death seventy times seven over.
This connection with ancient scripture reminds us that vengeance is the Lord’s.
Cain had murdered his own brother and yet it was not the job of humanity to take his life. God sent him away, but God also protected him from the wrath of others.
You and I are not called to exact revenge or carry resentment or seek to end someone’s life or livelihood as a result of pain.
Our job is always to forgive.
And forgiveness means letting go of vengeance because it belongs only to God.

Finally, children don’t have learn how to forgive because they know that their life depends on relationship.
Their home, food, clothing… everything they have depends on the people around them.
To allow hurt and pain to come between you and another person might result in the loss of something that you need to survive.
In that sense, children are also extremely vulnerable and cannot fight back or run away from serious harm inflicted by those who are supposed to care for them the most.
As adults, we believe that we are independent.
We believe that we can live without others.
And so rather than forgive and enter back into relationship, we cut ourselves off from on another.
A child-like faith is reclaiming that we are all part of the same body of Christ.
We need one another.
I need you.
You need me.
And that means that we have to forgive, to let the hurt slip into the past, so that we can move forward in relationship and ministry together.
As Jesus continues to respond to Peter, he shares a parable about the forgiveness of debts.
No matter how large or small the offense.
No matter how many times we have been wronged.
Our job is to forgive. To let go. To let be.
So that we can enter back into relationship with one another.

And, so that we can enter back into relationship with God.
For you see, when we allow something to come between us and our siblings, we have also allowed something to come between us and our Lord.
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.
When you send away the anger that has come between you and another person, you will discover that you have also torn down the wall that was separating your heart from God’s never-failing love.
And friends, we need that love.
We need that relationship with God.
Our very life is sustained by the One, who in the words of Psalm 103, forgives all our sins and heals all our diseases and redeems our life from the pit.
the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love.
God does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
As far as the east is from the west, so far as God removed our transgressions from us.
God sent them away. Let them go.
God has forgiven you.
So, our job is to forgive others.
Oh… and don’t forget to say you’re sorry.

What’s Mine is Yours

Posted on May 20, 2018Leave a comment

Later this morning, our church will welcome nine new members.

These young people have been working hard all year long to learn more about the faith that we hold together. And they will stand before the congregation at our second service this morning and will confirm and profess that faith for themselves.

While a few of them are newer additions to this congregation, most of these students were born into this family, were baptized right here at Immanuel, and have long been a part of this community of faith.

In our last class, we sat and read together from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. The same passage that we heard just a few minutes ago.

And we remembered that at the beginning of the confirmation year, we were different people, from different schools, different ages. But throughout the course of the year, Jesus broke down the barriers between us and created a new person out of our group.

So now they are no longer strangers.

And thanks to the amazing work of our mentors, they now have some connections across generations. Through their volunteer work this past year, they have joined Immanuel members serving at CFUM and Joppa and have helped lead worship and have shared their gifts of music with the church. They’ve come to committee meetings and have used their voices and ideas to help shape who we are and where we are going.

They belong to God’s household. This church, this community of faith that has Jesus himself as the cornerstone.

Throughout this Easter season, we have been thinking together about what it means to abide in God, to make a home in God, to interact with one another in this community of faith as family. And what I love about this passage from Ephesians is that it is yet another reminder that “Christ is building us into a place where God lives through the Spirit.”

We don’t always talk about the power of the Holy Spirit, but on a day like today, that Holy Spirit takes center stage.

On this day of Pentecost, fifty days after the resurrection, we remember that the Holy Spirit came upon those first disciples like tongues of fire.

It filled them, it transformed them, it gave them abilities of which they never knew they were capable!

That day, God turned those apostles into the foundation of God’s home.

And ever since then, God has been building a glorious temple.

Brick by brick.

Person by person.

Christ has been building us into a place where God lives through the Spirit.

In John’s gospel, Jesus was preparing to say goodbye to the disciples. He knew that the end of his earthly ministry had come, and he was trying to get them ready for what came next.

And Jesus promised that a Companion would come, the Spirit of Truth, who will not only testify about Jesus, but would pass on all of the things that Jesus himself had received from the Father.

He is telling the disciples, what was mine, is now yours, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

My ministry… it’s now yours.

My love… it’s now yours to give.

Healing power… it’s now yours to share.

The good news of the gospel… it’s now yours to tell.

The work of Jesus Christ continues through the disciples through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And friends… it continues through you as well.

This was not a one-time offer for a select group of individuals who lived a very long time ago.

No, Jesus is telling us that through the power of the Holy Spirit he will continue to live in every person who believes.

The church is not a physical place, a structure, where we gather once a week for an hour.

The church is a people, as that good old hymn reminds us, a people that are filled with the Holy Spirit and who testify to the good news of Jesus Christ and in whom God lives and moves and cares for the world.

As Emmanuel Lartey writes in his commentary, “The Holy Spirit connects the creative genius of the Father with the redemptive love of the Son and the courageous witness of the church.”

Bishop John V. Taylor describes the Spirit as the “Go-between God” – “connecting the past and future in a present full of meaning.”

This story does not exist solely in the past. It is not something we recite or remember.

This is OUR story.

It is still being written and conceived.

It is being lived out through our very actions in the world.

The Holy Spirit is present in this place, right here, right now, and Christ is building us into a place where God lives.

And just as you could probably name the spiritual forefathers and foremothers of your faith… Our confirmands look to so many of you as the foundation of their own faith journey.

You are the strong support upon which their generation stands.

You have taken what you have received from God through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit and you have shared it with them.

You’ve given your prayers.

You’ve shared your time.

You’ve provided food and encouragement and smiles.

You’ve said – “what’s mine is yours.”

And already, these confirmands are themselves part of this temple that God is building, giving support, lending insight, helping to form the faith of not only one another, but also their mentors.

There is one bad habit that we have as the church however.

We tend to think of confirmation as a graduation – the end of a journey – instead of the beginning.

And we tend to think that once we have joined the church, that’s it, we’re doing growing and learning and letting the Holy Spirit move us.

Or maybe we think that once we’ve been a teacher or a mentor, or once we’ve retired, or once we’ve reach a certain age, THEN is when we’ve reached the end of this journey and we can be done growing and letting God us us.

But friends…

No matter where you are in your faith journey…

No matter how young or old you are…

Whether this is the day of your confirmation or the 50^th anniversary of your confirmation…

God still lives in you.

The ministry of Jesus is still yours to undertake.

The Holy Spirit still has work for you to do!

Your ministry might change through time… You might gain new skills and take on new challenges or you might retire from some things to let others have a voice…

But God is never done with you.

This community will always need your presence, your prayers, your gifts, your service, and your witness.

Christ is building us into a place where God lives through the Holy Spirit.

I believe that God lives here.

I believe that the power of the Spirit can help us do amazing things.

I believe that this church makes the love of Christ known in this world.

This is where God lives.

Thanks be to God. Amen.