Posts Tagged with history

UMC 101: A Doctrinal History of Difference and Charity

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Text: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of the first wave of exiles who return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and the walls of the city.

But just as important as rebuilding was rediscovering who they were as a people. 

In our passage from today, Ezra reads aloud to all of those gathered the words of the Torah.

It becomes obviously very quickly in our lesson today that the people didn’t know what it contained. 

Generations of Judeans had experienced exile after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians. 

They had been removed from their homes and their lives were upended. 

In many ways, they forgot who they were and the God who had saved them.

As Ezra reads from sun-up until noon, the Levites help to interpret and make sense of what is being read and the people weep with emotion because they now understand God’s word.

But this isn’t simply a recitation of laws.

It is the history of their people.

It is the story of creation and the stubborn, sinful nature of humanity.

It is a story of redemption and rescue. 

It is a story of how God never gave up on the people and faithfully kept the covenant.

And while in some ways, the people are grieved by what they have lost and forsaken, the leaders see this as an opportunity for celebration because we have rediscovered a path forward.   

And so, the people rededicate themselves to some basic practices that would help them remember who they were and be faithful to God’s instruction in their lives. 

Right now, the United Methodist Church is having a sort of identity crisis.

There are folks who would describe themselves as more traditional who want to recapture what they believe it means to be faithful to God’s instruction in their lives. 

In their own discernment, they are grieved by what they believe has been lost or forsaken, but are turning it into an opportunity to discover a new path forward.

And as such, the Wesleyan Covenant Association is preparing to form a new denomination that will allow them to do so: The Global Methodist Church.   

I believe that one way or another, this new denomination will form in 2022 and there will be a split in our denomination. 

From conversations that we have had previously in this congregation, I believe that most of the folks here would not characterize themselves as part of the movement to leave.   

You might be more progressive in your thought, or maybe you value being part of a community where many perspectives are welcome.

But there is a lingering question that keeps coming up…

Where will that leave the United Methodist Church? 

I believe it is just as important for those of us who remain to remember who we have been to discover where we might be going. 

What is the story of our people… and how does it make us weep and grieve, and how can it be an opportunity for our future? 

When we began United Methodist 101 a couple of weeks ago, we talked about what we hold in common with other Christians, but also how our emphasis on faith and love put into practice meant we emphasize certain beliefs – like grace and service and community accountability.

As the Book of Discipline puts it:
“The pioneers in the traditions that flowed together into the United Methodist Church understood themselves as standing in the central stream of Christian spirituality and doctrine, loyal heirs of the authentic Christian tradition… grounded in the biblical message of God’s self-giving love revealed in Jesus Christ.”

p. 56

And yet, like a stream that ebbs and flows, the doctrinal history section of our Book of Discipline paints the picture of a church has never been rigid or unyielding.

There is a core “marrow” of beliefs, but beyond these “essentials,” there is room for difference.

Or as Wesley put it, “As to all opinions which do not strike at the root of Christianity, we think and let think.” (p. 56).

We have the freedom and ability to both hold on to the core of Christian beliefs and to think and reason and disagree with one another in love about everything else. 

I think this is a vital and important thing to remember as we make our way forward in this hyper-partisan and divided world. 

In his 1750 sermon, “Catholic Spirit,” Wesley lays out what it means to be charitable in our thoughts. 

Quoting from 2 Kings: 10:15, he lays out what it means to be one in heart… to be right in heart.

It isn’t about sharing the same opinions, or even sharing the same worship practices.

No, Wesley lays out what he believes are the essentials:

First, he wants to know if your heart is right with God. 

Do you believe in God and believe in Jesus, and is your faith and belief “filled with the energy of love?” (John Wesley’s Sermons, p. 304) 

In this limited time that we have on earth, are you trying to do God’s will.. more afraid of displeasing the one we love, than of death or hell?

Second, is your heart right with your neighbor? 

Do you have love for others, full of goodwill and tender affection? 

Not just the folks who love you, but even your enemies…  “Do your bowels yearn over them?” Wesley asks… which is kind of like staying, do you spend your time worrying about them – praying blessings over even those who would curse you? 

And do you live out that love in actions?  Do you take care of the wants of their bodies and souls?

If so, take my hand.  

Let’s show love to one another… the kind of love described in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, full of patience and humility. 

Let’s pray for one another that the love of God and neighbor would grow in our hearts.

And let’s join together in the work of God in the world. 

As the Methodist movement grew in Great Britain, sermons like this, along with the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England and Wesley’s commentary on the New Testament, became the standards for teaching.

We also taught our theology through a rich history of hymns and practices of community like the General Rules we talked about last week. 

And each year, the preachers were called together at a conference where Wesley would instruct and supervise their work. 

These were the boundaries of our doctrine. 

And then, these standards were shared in an American context. 

The Methodist movement grew up alongside the American Revolution and when England lost and the Church of England left the colonies, American Methodists were left without churches or leadership. 

Reluctantly, John Wesley realized the necessity of an independent church and provided a basic liturgy, doctrinal statement, hymnbook, and General Rules. 

At the Christmas Conference of 1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church was formed with the Articles of Religion as its only core doctrine. 

But there was an interesting shift that happened.  Unlike Anglicans, who were required to subscribe to the Articles, Americans simply were instructed to keep their teaching to within those boundaries. 

Or as the Book of Discipline puts it: “The doctrinal emphases of these statements were carried forward by the weight of tradition rather than the force of law.” (p. 60)

Truth be told, we launched out into the frontiers of the continent and placed much more focus on that “practical divinity” that launched the Methodist movement… evangelism and nurture and mission… instead of worrying about formal doctrines.

The same was true for the formation of the Evangelical Association and United Brethren traditions.  Spreading the good news and calling believers into a life of witness and service was more important than theological speculation. 

Philip Otterbein and Martin Boehm came from German Reformed and Mennonite traditions respectively, but the leaders of these traditions discovered that although they had differences, they were brethren…

Jacob Albright who began the Evangelical Association, was a German Lutheran who was formed in a Methodist class meeting.

These distinctive theological traditions all rally around the core essentials of the faith… our love of God and neighbor put into practice in the world.

“If your heart is with my heart, give me your hand” 

shows four bars representing Methodism, German Reformed / Mennonite, Lutheran, and Free Church traditions that flow into the UMC

In this graphic by Rev. Jeremy Smith, we get a glimpse of those different streams of theology and tradition that flow into the United Methodist Church today.

Naming the richness and diversity of the church, our Book of Discipline also reminds us that “Currents of theology have developed out of the Black people’s struggle for freedom, the movement for the full equality of women in church and society, and the quest for liberation and for indigenous forms of Christian existence in churches around the world.” (p. 61)

All of that means that as we have become a global denomination…

As we open our arms to folks of different theological traditions…

As we allow language, culture, and lived experiences to encounter our traditions…

Then, rather than become more rigid or uniform, our church expands its ability to keep discerning the most faithful way to live out the gospel in real life, in this community, today.   

Next week, we will talk about some of the tools we have at our disposal as United Methodists for that work. 

But we do so without sacrificing the core of what we believe.

All along the way, we have continued to include in our doctrinal standards the Articles of Religion from the Methodist Church, the Confession of Faith of the EUB Church, the standard sermons of Wesley and his Explanatory Notes on the New Testament, and the General Rules of the Methodist Church.

And we protect this core in our constitution, which declares that these may not be revoked, altered, or changed.

What I have come to understand, however, is that while we might all cling to that same “marrow” of essential beliefs, there is much that we will disagree on.

John Wesley gives us this advice: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity (or love).” 

Earlier I asked the question:

What is the story of our people… how does it make us weep and grieve, and how can it be an opportunity for our future? 

I must admit that my heart weeps and grieves right now for two reasons.

First, when I remember and rediscover this rich history of theological difference, I have a hard time coming to terms with why my siblings in the United Methodist Church might want to leave and separate from me around a theological difference that isn’t at the core of those beliefs.  Why can we not stay united around our essentials?

But I also am grieved by the idea that our continued holding together has caused immense harm to our LGBTQ+ siblings, because we have not in fact created space for freedom.  In fact, at our General Conference in 2019, we made our positions around human sexuality more rigid and punitive. 

We are stuck in a system that has winners and losers based on the outcome of a vote. 

Our denomination is currently echoing the partisan divide of the nation and the hostility, misinformation, and bad feelings that it engenders.

This week, I stumbled upon a hymn written by Charles Wesley that seems written for this moment.  Echoing the same message as his brother’s sermon, “Catholic Spirit”, “Catholic Love” call us to return to the core of love of God and love of neighbor.

WEARY of all this wordy strife,
  These notions, forms, and modes, and names,
To Thee, the Way, the Truth, the Life,
  Whose love my simple heart inflames,
Divinely taught, at last I fly,        5
With Thee, and Thine to live, and die.
 
Forth from the midst of Babel brought,
  Parties and sects I cast behind;
Enlarged my heart, and free my thought,
  Where’er the latent truth I find,        10
The latent truth with joy to own,
And bow to Jesu’s name alone.

Friends, in the midst of a world and a denomination full of division, what might it mean for us to embrace the charity and love that the Wesley’s called us to embody in all things.

Instead of focusing on partisanship and fighting for our own way, maybe we need to simply focus on love.

Maybe we can show one another a love full of patience and humility.

Maybe we can pray for one another that the love of God and neighbor would continue growing in our hearts.

And maybe, even if we practice in different ways and move in separate directions, we can still find ways to join together in the work of God in the world. 

May it be so.

Weaving a new thread…

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Every three years, I have to go to sexual misconduct/boundaries training.

It is required for all clergy in my conference of the United Methodist Church. We hold a lot of power in our role over the lives of parishioners and breaking that sacred trust by misusing that power to exploit someone else is absolutely unacceptable.

We are in fact held to a higher standard because of the weight of the responsibility we hold in the lives of the people we serve.

Facing the reality of our history of this kind of abuse is important.

Acknowledging the acts of our colleagues who continue to perpetuate this kind of abuse has not been easy. In fact, it feels like it is often swept under the rug, rather than actually confronted and named so that congregations and people might find healing.

Is sitting through the training comfortable? No. In fact, as a woman, sometimes hearing the comments of my colleagues is incredibly uncomfortable and I wonder why I’m there and why they aren’t paying more attention.

Often it doesn’t feel like to goes far enough to really be able to create change… because honestly, it keeps happening. And the training itself can be incredibly heteronormative – typically using examples of a male pastor and a female congregation member…. well, what do you do it it is a same gender situation?

Sometimes, as a woman, I wish the training addressed how sexism and misconduct and boundary violations can go the other way and how we might protect ourselves from them. Anecdotally, women in ministry experience that far more often than our male colleagues do and so there might be different things we need out of such a training. Or, maybe we should acknowledge that a training addressing the particular experiences of women might also benefit the men in the room. Oh… let’s also not forget transgender colleagues…

It isn’t perfect… but this kind of training is important.

It is essential.

And calling out the misbehavior of clergy does not make me anti-clergy.

Critiquing the training doesn’t mean I’m anti-training.

Learning and acknowledging the sexist history of my tradition does not make me anti-church.

All are about a love of the work and the institution and the desire to in fact make it better.

I have thought about how this same view about sexism and abuse and clergy could be substituted with and applied to our national conversation on racism and excessive force and police. Acknowledging the patterns and the history and misbehavior of particular officers doesn’t make me anti-police… Lifting up the need for training doesn’t mean I think everything these officers are doing is wrong… Maybe like the critiques I would make of our boundary training, there are things that these law enforcement officers are experiencing that could be better addressed if the training were modified… Just like in my own experience and tradition, I look at this with a critical eye because I care for the people who have been called to the work and because I care for the communities they serve. I just want it all to be better.

Our conference made a commitment this summer at our annual conference to work towards becoming an anti-racist conference.

We should probably make a commitment to actually be an anti-sexist and anti-homophobic conference right along with it. Because we aren’t there yet, either.

I see it as acknowledging the places we have failed and where we have room to do oh so much better.

It’s what church is all about, after all, right?

Being able to see your sin, repent of it, and step into transformation.

We can’t always see it ourselves.

Sometimes we need to be challenged and made uncomfortable to see these truths.

Like when Nathan confronted David.

But the idea is littered all over the words of the prophets as they call out the faults of the nations and the leaders and the people… and challenge them to repent and to do better.

Some of these realities were ones that were going on for generations!

The conversation we are having all across our country on racism exists because we haven’t truly learned our history yet.

We have erased it and swept it aside and ignored it… much like we have given male pastors a slap on the wrist for sexual misconduct and then appointed them to a church with a bigger salary.

I was astonished this summer when I learned parts of our national history in our exploration of the National Parks during worship.

There are countless examples of the beliefs and experiences of people who were indigenous to this land or enslaved by our ancestors that we have either forgotten or never been taught.

And perhaps the one that really shocked me the most was to learn more about the Dred Scott case in exploring the Gateway Arch and the Old St. Louis Courthouse. The majority opinion of the Supreme Court wrote that our Constitution demonstrated a “perpetual and impassible barrier was intended to be erected between the white race and the one which they had reduced to slavery.”

We’ve been working on some of this reckoning in the United Methodist Church as well, especially on our history with Native Americans.

We are lamenting and confessing and repenting around the role we played in the Sand Creek Massacre… even as we are celebrating the work of people like John Stewart among the Wynodotte people (https://um-insight.net/in-the-church/umc-global-nature/plan-now-wyandotte-land-return-global-ministries-founding-20/)

Wounds that are not exposed to the air and to the light can fester and become infected.

Light brings healing.

I’m deeply troubled by the actions of our national administration to ban diversity and anti-racism and anti-sexism training not only in the federal government, but now also among any contractors. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/M-20-34.pdf and https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-combating-race-sex-stereotyping/)

We should feel discomfort at our history.

Because that discomfort is what urges us onward to do better.

We should also see and acknowledge and celebrate the diversity that is all around us.

When Dr. King spoke of how he didn’t want his children to be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, he didn’t mean that he thought our awareness of the beautiful tapestry of our varied pigmentation or culture or differences should be erased.

He was actually critiquing that the threads woven in the Constitution, continued in the Dred Scott decision were not rectified fully by the Emancipation Proclamation. One hundred years later, they were still being felt. The “Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.”

He dreamt of a day we could sit together in our differences and all be free.

Our history is complicated…

Our people are, too…

But it is our story. Our history.

And it’s legacy has stretched through and laid the foundations for where we stand today. It is woven into the fabric of who we are and how we got to this place.

Acknowledging that allows us to weave a different thread for future generations.

Grounded with our Ancestors

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Text: Matthew 1:1-17

The very name of our church, Immanuel, means “God-with-us.”
God is with us.
Right here in this very time and place.
Living, moving, breathing.

In times past, we relegated God to the heavens while we mundane humans continued our life here below.
And then we cried out in times of tragedy… “God, where are you?!”

In other times, the suffering in our midst was so stark that we thought surely God was dead… or even worse, didn’t care.

But that is not who God claims to be.
God takes on flesh and makes a home among us.
And his name is Immanuel.
God is here.

Diana Butler Bass is a respected Christian academic whose books offer hope and meaning to many. In particular, she is helping us all to navigate what it means to live as people of faith in a world that increasingly doesn’t care about what Christianity has to offer the world.
In her book, Grounded, she wrestles with what it means to really understand that God is with us. She describes it as “a social and political question with sweeping consequences for the future.” If we really focus on rediscovering and relocating and reacquainting ourselves with God, Immanuel, with us right here… it will reground our lives.
It will center us.
Give us purpose.
Remind us of who we are.
And…
It will call us to a new way of being in this world.
As Butler Bass writes,
“God is.. that which grounds us. We experience this when we understand that soil is holy, water gives life, the sky opens the imagination, our roots matter, home is a divine place, and our lives are linked with our neighbors’ and those around the globe. This world, not heaven, is the sacred stage of our times.” (p 26)

We are turning the corner on the Christian year and preparing for Christ to be born among us once again.
So I wanted to invite us to look at some of those relationships throughout the month of November that Butler Bass claims ground us in the life of God. Our roots – or our history and ancestors…. Our home lives… our neighborhoods… and this common, kingdom life to which we all belong.
How should we look upon those relationships if God is truly present in the midst of them?
How might our relationship with one another change?

Today, we celebrate the saints who have completed the race and now rest in the presence of God.
We remember their lives.
We cherish their memories.
Each one planted seeds of faith and hope and love in us and have shaped us.
I asked you to share with me some of your own stories of these saints in your individual lives.

One of you told me about Gramma Gert – or GG – the nucleus of your family. She never drove, but either walked or got a ride to church every Sunday. If you had anything to pray for… you took it to GG… because you knew it would get plenty of Godly time and attention.

Someone else fondly remembered their third grade Sunday School teacher, Mr. Going who taught them the Lord’s Prayer. Rather than simply memorizing it, they took it line by line and rewrote it in words that were easier for a child to understand. Mr. Going made faith real.

Another of you shared with me the story of your great grandmother who came to Iowa from Norway in 1862 at the age of six. She dictated her own life story and left these words at the end… Love one another, Jesus has said, “If you don’t love one another you don’t love me”… and she addressed her children and their future families saying, “I have prayed for you all, I put you all in the Lord’s hands… God bless you all, may we me up yonder where there is no parting anymore.”

Whether it was a parent, or teacher, a neighbor or great-grandparent, these people of faith left a mark on your life.

One of the things I have been challenged by in Butler Bass’s book, however, is to remember that our roots are far deeper than our memory.
We are shaped and influenced by generations that have come and gone… and yet we seem to have forgotten their stories.

I actually thought I was doing pretty good by this account.
My mom and I have done a bit of genealogy work on our families. We have spent hours researching names through the Mormon genealogy center. We’ve created family trees that go back not just hundreds, but thousands of years. In fact, one line that we traced goes back all the way to the year 6!
Together with great-aunts and cousins, we have trampled through cemeteries in south central Iowa to find tombstones of relatives long dead and gone.
We’ve even gathered iris bulbs from one of those long forgotten places and brought them home to bring a piece of the family back with us.

But Butler Bass notes that we save things and we gather information, but we don’t often collect what those details mean to our lives. “We have more information about the past,” she writes, “but less actual connection to it than those in previous ages.”
The truth is, I don’t know the stories of most of those names I have collected together in my family history. I can tell you where they lived and died and where they are buried… but what did they experience in this life? What brought them joy? What struggles did they over come? Their stories are largely forgotten because we stopped handing them down.
And even on days like today, when we celebrate communion with the saints of God, with those who have gone before us, when we invoke their presence and their memory… do we have any sense of whom we are eating with today?

Our text for this morning is in essence a family tree. It is a genealogy of Jesus Christ shared with us by the apostle Matthew in his gospel.
And truth be told, often we glance at those names and the same sense of dryness and lack of life and history overcomes us.
We gloss over their names as a boring list of people we don’t know.
But they are our spiritual ancestors.
And who they were matters.
And who was included in those histories matters.
One of the things that you might notice if you compare the genealogy of Matthew and Luke is that Matthew actually includes the names of some women!
We find the story of Tamar… who was left widowed and childless in an age in which that was a death sentence. This family tree continues only because she tricked her father-in-law, Judah, into getting her pregnant by dressing up as a prostitute.
Rahab was an actual prostitute who was part of the battle of Jericho… Joshua sent spies into the city to scout it out and Rahab is the one who sheltered them. As a result, her family was rescued and she married into one of the important families of Israel.
Her son, Boaz, married an foreign immigrant, Ruth, who tricked him into the relationship by getting him drunk one night.
We are reminded in this genealogy that Solomon’s mother was Bathsheba. His family story is one of adultery and murder as Bathsheba was taken advantage of by David.

These are stories of scandal, but also intense strength, compassion, resolve, and determination. These women and the lives they led are our spiritual ancestry!
I wonder if Matthew perhaps included these women in his ancestry of Jesus as one way of grounding the story of Mary and Joseph and rumors and scandal circulating around his birth. But also, it was a testimony to the faithful ancestors that gave someone like Mary the courage to keep trusting God would be with her in the midst of the journey.

How does knowing these stories ground our sense of purpose, identity, and ability to navigate the trials and tribulations of our lives? Might we call upon these ancestors and their faith in God to help us persevere in our own journey?

Another thing you’ll notice if you look at the family tree included in Matthew as opposed to the one in Luke, you’ll actually find two very different stories of where Jesus comes from and what his life means, claiming political and spiritual authority from different sources!
Matthew grounds the life of Jesus in the history of the Jewish people. As verse 1 proudly states: A record of the ancestors of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham. He is the heir of the Kingdom of David and of the covenant of Abraham. He is the King of the Jews.
Luke’s version ignores most of kings and focuses on ordinary, everyday folks who don’t appear in grand stories of scripture. And his version goes all the way back, not just to Abraham, but to Adam… emphasizing the whole family of earth.
There was actually a joke I heard frequently growing up that all the Czechs on the south side of the Cedar River were related to one another. Not originally, of course, but because “bohemies” couldn’t swim, we all ended up marrying one another.
I saw this in my own lifetime… My Babi (grandma) was a Benesh and my Deda (grandpa) was a Ziskovsky.
Just two generations later, a second cousin from the Ziskovsky side married a fourth cousin from the Benesh side…
That’s in essence Luke’s point… Instead of emphasizing one thread of one famous family, he brings home the point that we’re all eventually related to everyone else. His is a family tree that is a lot like the image on the front of your bulletin… with a single origin for us all.
What does it mean for our relationships with one another, if we recognized our common ancestory and inheritance as children of God? If we remembered that our stories all start in the same place, grounded in the same history, created by the same God?

Today, we feast with our ancestors.
We remember the lives they lived.
We remember the faith they handed down.
And their lives help us to become even more grounded in our relationship with the one who not only created us, but who is right here with us.
A God who was, and is, and is to come.
Immanuel…
God with us.

Bible 101: Art, Science, History of Interpretation

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Text: Luke 11: 27-28

Over these last few weeks in Bible 101, we have explored how our scriptures were put together, translated, and some of the creative tension that was baked into the text itself.
Today, our focus is on interpretation. Once we understand what a scripture meant in the time and place it was written, how do we then live and apply it today.
After all, Jesus said that blessed are those who hear God’s word and obey it, who put it into practice, who allow it to shape how they think and live.

There is part of me that wants to offer you six simple rules for interpretation.
To give you a set of guidelines to follow.
To say this is the United Methodist way of approaching scripture.
But the reality is, interpretation is messier than a list of how-to instructions.
It is as much an art as it is a science.
It is as much about the mystery of the Holy Spirit as it is about the rigid teachings of our ancestors.
And because of that, faithful United Methodists today disagree about how to read and apply scripture.

That was the struggle lifted up by our friend, Al Lockin, near the beginning of our Bible 101 series. What are we to make of our differences? How can we read the same text and come to such different conclusions?
When we hear the word, but our interpretation of scripture leads us to obey, to practice, to live out the teaching of Jesus in different ways, what do we do about it?
This particular question is so important for this moment in the life of our church, because in just two weeks, our denomination will hold a four-day conference in St. Louis. The reason we need to have this big meeting is because we don’t agree on how to interpret and live out the scriptures as they relate to LGBTQ+ persons. As I shared with you last summer during our series on A Way Forward, faithful Christians read the same six scriptures and come to different conclusions about what they mean for us today.
And while in some ways what we are debating in St. Louis is that interpretation, the deeper question, the bigger question is actually this: are we willing to continue to be a part of a church, of a community, of a denomination with people who disagree with us?

So today, I want to step back from the rules and guidelines of interpretation. I want to offer a reminder that confronting differences in how we live and apply scriptures is not something new.
In fact, scripture itself lifts up the reality that faithful people interpret things differently.
As we have shared these past few weeks, even the Torah itself, those first five books of scripture, hold within them contradictions and tensions and different interpretations of events.
Were there two of every kind of animal, or for some animals on Noah’s ark were there actually seven pairs? Well… it depends on if you are reading the interpretation of the priests or of the other oral traditions.
Our biblical canon even contains different historical accounts – in the books of Kings and Chronicles, we find different takes on the same events, told from different perspectives. It would be like holding in your hands two different histories on George Washington – one told from a military expert writing in the 1800s and the other from a modern day expert in leadership… you are going to get different stories… but its all about the same set of events.

When we get to the time of Jesus, the recognized and agreed upon texts of the Jewish faith were fairly established… but there were different schools of thoughts and ways of understanding what those texts meant and how we were called to live them out.
Earlier this week, I posted in our facebook group a video from Rob Bell that talks about what it meant to be a disciple in the time of Jesus.
While all children would have learned and would have memorized the torah… the first five books of scripture… after the age of ten, most children would finish their education and would go and learn their family trade.
But what Bell describes as “the best of the best of the best” would embark on a new phase of education.
They would go and apply to become a disciple of a particular rabbi whose teaching that student wanted to embody. One rabbi might look at a verse and say that this is what it means…. But a different rabbi from a different town might look at it slightly differently. And they would commit their life to learning from that rabbi.

One of the things that tends to happen, however, when you have different ways of interpreting God’s message is those differences can become institutionalized.
In the gospels, we see a number of schools of thought present… kind of like different denominations today.
The Pharisees held together the written law of the scriptures with an oral tradition of interpretation called the Talmud. They believed in an after life and that a messiah was coming to usher in a new age. Much of their practice was shaped not around the temple, but around gatherings in synagogues.
The Sadducees rejected that oral teaching and focused only on what was written in the law. And since there is no mention of an afterlife in the Torah, they didn’t believe in one. They also focused their practice around the Temple. A unique feature for a group that held close to a literal interpretation of their texts is that they were open to much of Greek thought and incorporated it into their teaching.
You’ll also find descriptions of the Essenes in this time. This was a sort of monastic movement with strict dietary laws and a commitment to celibacy. Their relationship to the written and oral law was often more spiritualized and we have discovered writings like the Dead Sea Scrolls from communities like the Essenes that show us very different ways of approaching the life of faith.

Much of our New Testament, aside from the gospels, was written by Paul – a Pharisee, taught by the Rabbi Gamaliel, who was a student of Hillel. One of the more fascinating things that I found as I was doing research for this message is that Hillel was known for his seven rules of interpretation… and many have worked to draw parallels between those seven rules and the writings of Paul and how Paul himself worked to interpret Jewish scriptures into early Christian teaching.

As the church began to be established, one of the things that the early Christian leaders did was to try to form a standard, a core set of beliefs that we all hold in common together. We call these creeds. For example, the apostle’s creed was not written by the apostles, but summarizes the core of that teaching. Let’s turn to page 881 and read aloud the traditional version together.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth;
And in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;*
the third day he rose from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic** church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

But as time has moved on from this time of creedal confessions, we have watched as time after time, our different ways of understanding God and the scriptures have created new schools of thought, and fractures and splinters and new denominations and movements… including the United Methodist Church.

In our core scripture for today, Jesus has been teaching the disciples and was casting out demons. Even in the midst of that miracle – there were different interpretations happening in the crowd around what was happening.
One woman finally shouts out – Blessed is the woman who gave birth to you!
I find this a really thing to shout out in this moment, but perhaps one of the reasons she felt the need to raise her voice is that in the midst of all of the conflict and chaos of interpretation, she wanted to affirm where Jesus was coming from.
She wanted to celebrate his particular brand… his line of thinking… the people who formed and taught and shaped the way he was approaching scripture.

What I find really fascinating here is that Jesus challenges her words… It’s those who hear God’s word and live it, obey it, put it into practice that are blessed.

Our work is not to focus on the people who formed us, or the rabbis we follow or the perspectives we belong to. Our job is not to get so stuck in one school of thought or to be focused on the past.
Our job is to take God’s word and live it out.
Our responsibility is to take ownership ourselves for how we put into practice the faith that has been handed down to us.
In fact, one of the core teachings of the United Methodist Church is that we believe it is the theological task of each and every single person not to regurgitate the work of others, but to engage with the scriptures and to wrestle with what they mean today.

In the past, we have talked about some of general framework in the United Methodist tradition for approaching scripture and applying it to faith today.
You’ve heard about the quadrilateral – scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.
But guess what… even faithful United Methodists don’t agree on THAT as a general framework… or how to apply it… or what to do when faced with disagreement between tradition and something like experience.

When we go back farther to the writings of John Wesley, I find some very helpful advice as we encounter our differences today.
One… he talked about being a man of one book… but he always had a number of other books in his hands…. Other translations of scripture… writings and teachings from history and tradition… wisdom from the natural sciences of his day… even a manual for how to heal people who were sick.
But over and over, he also reminded us that as we each engage in our work of interpretation, that personal responsibility, we are not called to do it alone. He formed people into groups of accountability. He reminded people of their call to be the church. And in various ways he reminded us that we are called to embrace humility and love and compassion when we are confronted with conflict in our interpretations.
As he wrote in his sermon on the Catholic Spirit “If your heart is as my heart, take my hand.”
In essentials unity, in non-essentials, liberty, in all things love.

Bible 101: From the Septuagint to the Message

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Text: John 1:1-14, 2 Timothy 3:16-17

First question I have for all of you… how many of you felt like last week’s discussion of quantum mechanics and elephants was a tiny bit over your head?
That’s okay!
Each week we are going to explore a different way of approaching the bible and a different part of its history, so to make up for all of the science last week, I thought we might start this morning by playing a little game.

NAME THAT TRANSLATION!
I do not promise that you will get all of the answers right… but I do promise you will learn something in the process!!!

John 1:6-8 The Message (MSG)
6-8 There once was a man, his name John, sent by God to point out the way to the Life-Light. He came to show everyone where to look, who to believe in. John was not himself the Light; he was there to show the way to the Light.

This bible was created and translated by Eugene Peterson between 1993 and 2002. He went back to the original languages and his goal was not to translate word for word, but to get the sense of the phrases in the original text and convey the idea. This is an idiomatic translation – or translating phrases rather than words.

 

John 1:6-8 Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
6 A man was sent from God, to whom the name was John.
7 This man came into witnessing, that he should bear witnessing of the light, that all men should believe by him.
8 He was not that light, but that he should bear witnessing of the light.

The Wycliffe bible is a whole group of translations that were made in the 14th century into Middle English. Most Christians at this time only had access to scriptures through hearing them orally or through seeing verses in Latin. In some ways, his goal was the same as Peterson’s – to translate the bible into the common vernacular. They worked not from the original languages, but from the Latin version of scripture – the Vulgate.

 

John 1:6-8 Mounce Reverse-Interlinear New Testament (MOUNCE)
There came on the scene a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear testimony about he light so that everyone might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear testimony about the light.

This version of the bible was created for people who wanted to study the bible and explore the original languages… but who didn’t actually know Greek! The purpose is to help teach a little bit of Greek at a time. A traditional “interlinear” bible would use the Greek word order and then show the English word for word correlary – but that makes the sentence structure hard to understand. So the Mounce version starts with the English sentence structure and then adds in the Greek words.

I will often use a version like this to discover what the Greek was and then I can go back and consult a Greek dictionary to see if there are other meanings or how it is used elsewhere in scripture.

 

John 1:6-8 King James Version (KJV)

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

The King James Version is a translation into English that took seven years from 1604-1611. King James oversaw the translation himself – giving instructions to make sure that this translation would capture the structure and polity of the Church of England. 47 scholars were used in the translation and they went back to the original languages for their translation, adapting them slightly with known Septuagint and Vulgate texts.

Fun fact: The English alphabet at the time had no J!  So it was King Iames Bible which talked about Iesus Christ.

 

John 1:6-8 Common English Bible (CEB)
6 A man named John was sent from God. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that through him everyone would believe in the light. 8 He himself wasn’t the light, but his mission was to testify concerning the light.

This is a very new translation of the bible which is distributed by Abingdon Press, the United Methodist denominational publisher. The goal was to make the bible accessible for people today and easy to read, aiming for a seventh-grade reading level. They also wanted it to appeal broadly to many cultural contexts over 120 scholars from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. More than twenty-four denominations were involved in its work. The key feature is that instead of churchy and traditionally biblical words, you will find more seeker-friendly words.

 

In various letters,Paul writes to the young man, Timothy, whom he is mentoring in the faith. Along with advice and doctrine, one of the things he reminds him is that the scriptures help him to be wise and give him the words he needs to help others grow. He includes that famous line “every scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training character, so that the person who belongs to God can be equipped to do everything that is good.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
We read that passage within our own biblical texts and we automatically apply that sentiment to the whole of scripture. This entire text has been inspired by God and it is useful for helping us understand who we are and whose we are.
One thing that often fails to cross our minds is that the Bible that Paul and Timothy were reading was very different than the ones we have in our hands today.
Early Christians spoke Greek – the language of the empire – and the scriptures that they would have been basing their teaching and writing from would have been a Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures known as the Septuagint.

When Alexander the Great conquered the Persian empire (which would have included Jerusalem and the people of Israel), Greek became the common tongue. He was known not only for conquering vast swaths of land, but he also collected books and scrolls for his library at Alexandria.
Seventy-two scholars were employed to translate the Torah, two hundred years before Christ, and it took them only seventy two days to recreate those first five books of the Hebrew Bible. The very name, Septuagint (LXX) comes from the seventy days and seventy people.
Tradition has it six scholars from each of the twelve tribes (or seventy two people) were each asked to do so independently… and independently recreated identical versions of the Torah.

Talk about inspired!
The authors of the New Testament frequently relied upon this Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures in their own writing, so it is likely that Paul and Timothy were referring to the Septuagint in their own discourse and as they were teaching others about the faith.
Christian father, Jerome, however, working around 400 years after Christ, instead turned back to the original Hebrew. His translation of the scriptures into Latin is known as the Vulgate and was used by others in their further translations into English.

But something I think we often don’t think about is how we got from there to here… how that inspiration of God works… and what it means when we open up our bibles and read vastly different things.
A couple of weeks ago, one of the passages that we were all invited to read as part of the Bible 101 challenge was a selection from Job 38.
In some of the final chapters, as God kind of puts Job in his place by rattling off a whole series of ways that God is superior and cosmic and knows everything from the time when eggs will hatch to the course of stars in the skies… some of us read about a gigantic hippopotamus… and others read about the behemoth. Some of us read about a huge alligator and others read about the Leviathan.
There is a world of difference between a hippopotamus and a mythic beast.
So what gives?

As we went through some of those various translations, one of the things that you may have heard is that the purpose of each of our translators is different.
Some are trying to give us a word for word exact replica into a new language… and if there isn’t an equivalent word, sometimes they just use the word from the original text.
Some are trying to merely get the sentiment of a phrase, with idiomatic translations and so they might try to say the same thing or explain the original phrase with more words in the process.
Others are trying to make the bible as accessible as possible… and to use words or concepts that are foreign to our ears like behemoth don’t help. They find the closest equivalent in English, in this case, and simply allow the meaning to change slightly.

It is always good to understand what the motivations might have been behind the translation of the bible YOU are using, because it might help you get a sense of how to approach that text. And when you read from a variety of translations, you get a fuller sense of how God has been speaking to people throughout time and place.
Because in the end, each author and translator began their work, inspired by God, in order to help bring to a new generation in a new time and place the messages of God.
While the exact words might differ and the phrases might not match, they are inspired to share what is “useful one way or another – showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17 MSG) Thanks be to God. Amen.

A Way Forward? Fixed And Free

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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 18th 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.

 

37814071_10155608720195866_3274315691594874880_nIf 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.

 

Discerning What Matters Most

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This faith community began in the 1920s , as the neighborhood of Beaverdale was starting to rapidly grow.  Reverend Orf, the pastor of Crocker Hill UMC,  recognized the growing need for a church presence in this area and so area churches banded together for a committee, remodeled an old farmhouse, and on Easter Day, 1925 the first worship service was held at this location.  

As the community grew, the congregation made plans to build a church and the part of our building that is now the music room and offices was built in 1941.  A big part of the design at the time was to build a church structure that would be in keeping with the style of the homes being built all around us.  Classrooms were added in 1947 – part of Immanuel’s long legacy of education.   Our church also opened itself up to the community in this part of our history, housing some of the local elementary school classes in our Fellowship Hall as the schools got too large for the students of the day. 

As the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren church were merging in 1968 to form a new denomination – the United Methodist Church, this congregation was continuing to grow and completed work on this sanctuary.  In the 1960s, youth bell choirs were formed, with adult bells following a decade later – another part of the way music has been a rich part of our tradition.

In 1970s, we began a new ministry that reached out to shut ins with tape recordings of the worship services.  Members from Immanuel were instrumental in helping to pave the way for Vietnamese refugees to be welcomed into our state. 

And since that time, we have continued to grow in faith, we are known as a caring and mission focused community, and we have been willing to take leaps of faith to respond to the needs we recognized within the church and the community, like our expansion of Faith Hall which was completed in 2004.

 

The Apostle Paul wrote to the people of Philippi to encourage them in the faith and as a church.  And he reminds them that the God who began a good work in them would not abandon them, but would continue to help them to love and bear fruit for the gospel until that day when their work was finally complete. 

And the Philippians needed some encouragement.  While they had been on fire for God at the start, they also had experienced intense persecution because of their faith.  Many were wondering how they could continue to go in in the face of the opposition they were experiencing.  What should their church look like now?  How could they continue to serve when so many around them were dying and falling away? 

Paul’s letter called them to press on with rejoicing even in the midst of their difficulties and to return to God in a spirit of discernment, so they could discover a more excellent way and so they could be strengthened for whatever would come next… until that day when God fills the entire world with the love of Jesus Christ. 

 

There simply is no comparison between the struggles we experience today in the United States and the persecution experienced in places like Philippi and in other places that are hostile to the Christian faith today.   We gather in this room this morning without fear of death.  We can sing at the top of our lungs and share our faith and the only consequences for doing so might be some angry words or cold shoulders. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t face bumps in the road or our own kinds of trials.  That doesn’t mean that parts of our journey aren’t difficult. 

And so, we need encouragement in our faith sometimes, too.  And like the Philippians, we constantly find ourselves asking the question, what should our church look like now?  How do we continue to serve in the midst of declining membership or in the midst of a culture that cares less and less about what the church has to say?  What are we to do when the good news of the gospel seems to be falling on deaf ears? 

What is it that we are fighting for?  What kind of church are we going to invest in becoming for the future? 

 

I began our message this morning by remembering a few fragments of our past, because the practice of spiritual discernment about next steps always begins with looking to see what we can learn from where we have been.  And as I look at the history of who this church has been, I see that we began as a community of people who were willing to take risks and go to new places where we thought we might reach new people. 

This church began as a renovated old farmhouse – a house church – that welcomed people into a family.  But we didn’t just stay there.  As the needs of this community of faith continued to grow, we expanded and grew ourselves.  And we took care to continue to resemble the community around us – even thinking about making our physical structure look like the homes in the neighborhood.  As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Although I’m free of all people, I make myself a slave to all people, to recruit more of them.  I act like a Jew to the Jews, so I can recruit Jews… I act weak to the weak, so I can recruit the weak.  I have become all things to all people, so I could save some by all possible means.” (1 Cor. 9: 19-22)

So as we think today about what we might be called to next, I think its important to remember that we as a church were willing to take risks to meet new people and willing to adapt to the community as it changed around us so that the community might feel at home in our midst. 

 

One of the problems with looking backward to find the answer, however, is that we can get caught in analysis paralysis and stay there.  We can try to recreate exactly what we did before or keep researching and studying and waiting for exactly the right moment and we miss the opportunities that are right before us. 

In What Are We Fighting For, Bishop Bickerton reminds us that as a church, we simply can’t wait any longer.  He talks about the act of hitting a baseball and how difficult it is to time your swing just right.  While it is easier in slow pitch to be able to see what is coming at you, as the game goes faster and faster,  we often wait far too long to swing.    And Bishop Bickerton says that the church game is going faster and faster and changing more and more rapidly every day.  There are so many moving parts to a church and we need more technical expertise to reach people today.  We have to adapt and be nimble, and react more quickly to the ways our community and culture are changing, or we might find that we have waiting too long, we have missed the pitch, and our church is no longer relevant. 

All around us, there are pitches coming our way.  There are opportunities a plenty.  In fact, there are so many great ways that we could be in ministry today that it is tempting to try to do everything and toss out a whole bunch of new programs and activities like scattershot and see what works.  But that itself is exhausting.  Instead of scattershot, we need help to discern a clear focus.  And part of that discernment is asking who is the new community that God is calling us to take a risk and step out in faith to reach?  How can we be faithful to our heritage as a church, while also paying attention to where the Holy Spirit is leading us next? 

As an administrative council, we spent some time last fall in discernment looking at a number of the opportunities, realities of our surrounding community, and ways that we are particularly gifted to lead and serve.  We noticed things like that our surrounding neighborhood is now only 80% white, that we have more elementary schools in our community, and that over 1/3 of the families with children around us are now single parent families.  We also have more younger, couples moving into the homes of the neighborhood. 

How is God calling us to step out in faith and reach them for Christ? 

As we continue to discern, we start by connecting our passions and our gifts as a church with the ways we will choose to live in the midst of this place.  We can take the things that we value like music and education and being a caring community and we can carry them with us as we go outside of these walls to reach new people. 

But we also should be willing to test the things that we have always done and do them not just because they are what we like to do, but to ask always if they are faithful to God’s will for our community.  Do our activities and our programs resemble God’s love?  Are they filled with the knowledge of our Lord?  Are we bearing the fruit of the gospel in what we do?  Are we doing them simply because they are easy, or are we rising up to meet the demands of call of Jesus Christ? 

 

Next week, Trevor will be preaching once again and he will help us think about a final part of our discernment… how do we know what really is the core of who we are as a church that will always be the same and will never change no matter how the world changes around us, and where are the places where we can be more nimble and flexible, so that we can continue to grow towards completion for the glory of God.    What are the things we should be willing to fight for, no matter what? 

 

The Long Hurt

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The second most difficult thing in the world to do is to harbor anger and pain.

This week, I read the story of a woman who had refused to forgive. As John van de Laar tells the story:

Whenever a visitor came for a cup of tea or coffee, she would pour the drinks and then reach for an old and battered plastic sugar bowl. Then, apologetically, she would tell her story of the beautiful bone china bowl that her mother had owned, but that her sister had taken when her mother died and they divided up her possessions. She had never forgiven her sister, and had turned her bitterness into a daily routine that kept it fresh and growing.
Every single time she reached for that plastic sugar bowl, she rekindled the anger.
She had never forgiven her sister.
Van de Laar goes on to say that we sometimes let “our lives be defined by our wounds.” We spend all of our days looking backwards at what was and refusing to see the possibilities of healing and hope and forgiveness in our lives.
And while on the surface, it may not seem to take much energy or thought, the truth is that refusing to forgive is exhausting. It is a burden that you carry with you every moment. It is bitterness that never leaves your mouth.
As Nelson Mandela once said – “Resentment is like a glass of poison that a man drinks; then he sits down and waits for his enemy to die.”
And the only person that it hurts, is yourself.
September 11th, 2001 is a terribly sad and painful day in our history. And on this day, exactly 10 years later, we have a question to answer: How are we going to let that day define our lives?
Is it a wound, perpetually reopened, refusing to let us move forward?

Is it a source of anger and bitterness that causes us to lash out in fear?

Or in the midst of our grief and pain, can we also remember the tremendous acts of courage and love from that day? And can we look not only backwards but also look forward to as David Lose puts it, “a future that is not defined by the calamity of that day but instead is shaped by hope, possibility, and the grace of God.”

That is what forgiveness is after all. It is letting go of the pain. It is releasing the anger. It is refusing to allow what has happened in the past define your future.

Photo By: Alex Bruda
And while hanging on to old wounds might be the second most difficult thing in the world, the act of forgiving is the first.
Forgiving goes against our nature. We want revenge. We want answers. We want apologies. We want justice. We want someone in this world to pay. We want to hold guilt over another person. Overcome by sadness, anger, and pain, we do not want to move on.

As I have talked about many times in these messages – my own extended family is trapped in a pattern of unforgiveness. I, myself, find it extremely difficult to let go of that pain and imagine a future of mercy and love. Even when I find myself getting close to the point where I can, something else happens, another wrench thrown in, that makes saying, I’m sorry and I forgive you, that much harder.

And yet, over and over again, I find these words in the scriptures that say: Forgive.

Proverbs 17:9 – He who covers and forgives an offense seeks love, but he who repeats or haprs on a matter separates even close friends.

Matthew 6:14 – If you forgive people their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

Colossians 3:13 – Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

Mark 11:25 – And when you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgiven him and let it go, in order that your Father who is in heaven may also forgive your own failings and shortcomings and let them go.

Luke 6:37 – Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

from Romans this morning: Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

Or the even more difficult passage from Matthew: “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

Forgiveness is the most difficult thing in the world to do, and yet over and over and over again, the scriptures command us to forgive.

Why?

Because without forgiveness, there is no life.

Without forgiveness, there is no hope.

Without forgiveness, there is no future.

And we are not talking about the people who hurt us here… we are talking about ourselves.

You see, if debts always have to be paid and sins must always be punished, then there is no hope for us.

And there is no hope for our communities.

You see, a family does not work without forgiveness.

A marriage falls apart without forgiveness.

A church cannot survive without forgiveness.

Even a nation will find itself spinning out of control if revenge and justice are the only goals that it seeks… if it cannot find ways to compromise and show mercy and yes, even forgive.

Left to our own devices, we do not have the strength to do the hard task of forgiveness.

But in the midst of remembering the events of September 11th… in the midst of grieving the destruction and loss caused by four hijacked airplanes and grieving the death and destruction cause by the cycle of revenge that came afterwards… we also take time to remember the events of 2000 years ago.

You see, that is when our ability to truly forgive was realized.

On the cross, looking out on a world of brokenness and destruction, facing his tormenters in the eye, Jesus Christ called down forgiveness and not vengeance. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”

Our future was forever changed through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The wounds that we caused were forgotten. The sins we committed were forgiven. The debts of the past were canceled.

The future of Christ is one of mercy and not judgment, hope and not despair, healing and not violence, abundance and not scarcity, love and not hate, new life instead of death. (from David Lose, paraphrased)
That is the power of forgiveness.
Life, love, hope, healing, mercy.

The most powerful stories that I have heard in recent days are the ones in which loved ones recounted the conversations they had with loved ones who were trapped high above the ground in towers one and two of the World Trade Center.

They are stories full of tears and goodbyes and I love yous. I was driving down the road, listening to a woman tell of the last time she spoke with her husband and I had to pull over, because the tears just overwhelmed me.
But what I realized in the midst of those stories is that not once did those courageous people who died tell their loved ones to seek revenge.
They spent the few precious moments they had saying I love you.
They said, I’m proud of you.
They said, I’m sorry.
They said, All is forgiven.
They said, remember I love you.
And as we remember those who perished. As we grieve… and we must… we also need to look to our futures. We need to put away the wounds.
I we keep pulling out that old beat-up plastic sugar bowl and refuse to seek peace or forgiveness, then evil has already won and we are truly defeated. (van de Laar paraphrased)
It is hard and painful to forgive… and we cannot do it alone.
But the good news is that through the love and grace of Jesus Christ, we can find the strength and courage we need to let go. To admit when we have caused pain. To say, “I forgive you.”

Today, as we remember, let us forgive… and let us imagine together a future in which God’s peace truly reigns.

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