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
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.