Text: Mark 9: 33-37, 42-43, 10:13-16
For twenty-seven years, faith communities across the United States have been observing the “Children’s Sabbath,” lifting a united voice of concern for the children in our midst.
Marian Wright Edleman has been instrumental in this work throughout her life. She recalls in a letter of introduction to this year’s observation that fifty years from Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign, we are still in the midst of the struggle to end racism, materialism, poverty, and war.
“Many are driven to despair,” she writes, “by assaults on children and family well-being – including rampant and resurgent racism; the devastations of poverty…; the daily, deadly toll of gun violence…; and the heartless ripping of children from the arms of parents seeking refuge in our country. But this time demands that we persist in hope, not despair, and fight with all our nonviolent might until justice is won.”
“All children deserve lives of hope, not despair,” Edleman proclaims.
All children.
So this morning, we are joining together with Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and other Christians to remember that all children are precious in God’s sight and to answer the call to make a positive impact on their lives.
Our faith, after all, demands that we think about the children.
In the gospel of Mark, which we have been following during this fall series, includes not one, not two, but three different instances in which Jesus prioritizes ministry to and with children… that that’s just in two chapters.
We are called to welcome children, to build them up rather than tear them down, and to even become like them.
The children around us… our children… teach us about what it means to be faithful.
And deciding to follow Jesus means being willing to say that YES!, we are able to set aside our desires and plans and limited vision and open our hearts and our lives to the needs and the gifts of the children around us.
There is another key part of these passages that might be difficult, but it is important to highlight. Our responsibility to care for these children… to set aside our agendas… to prioritize their needs… and to not impair them from abundant life… it isn’t an option.
It is a central part of our faith.
And Jesus even says that if we get in the way of these little ones – well, our own souls are at risk.
It’s that important.
So, I want to take some time this morning to talk about how we, through both the larger United Methodist Church and right here in our local community, how we can say YES! to Jesus by being in ministry with all of God’s children. I want to lift up ways we can “persist in hope, not despair.”
This past week, I was in Atlanta for our fall board meeting of Global Ministries and I want to begin by telling you about signs of hope and good news I saw through our connectional ministries.
Our Global Health Unit has a strong focus on maternal and child health and many health systems are being strengthened because of the funds that we have raised through Imagine No Malaria and other initiatives.
In Mozambique, midwives and community health workers are focusing on not only pre-natal, but ante-natal visits to help monitor health and provide education about diseases that threaten pregnant women and children. The efforts are paying off with a dramatic increase in healthy births.
Among all of the data that is collected through these visits there was one in particular that caught my attention. Last year, nearly 187 of these individuals were treated for malaria at these ante-natal visits. This year, because of our efforts to reduce transmission – only 13 individuals had to be treated. That is a 93% reduction! And a cause for great hope for children who might grow up and thrive.
We also heard a report from National Justice For Our Neighbors on our work along the border in these past months. This organization is a United Methodist ministry that provides legal help for immigrants and refugees. Their work has focused on the border with providing accompaniment for those who are seeking asylum.
In one such instance, a mother and her child from Guatemala presented themselves at the border and were separated and placed in detention until their Credible Fear Interview to verify their need for asylum. After 38 days, her interview finally came, and a JFON attorney named Virginia, helped the mother, Delia, present her case to the officer and was granted asylum. Having been found to have credible fear, Delia then had to post a $1,500 bond – which was raised by JFON.
But then, they had to raise funds to travel to where her child was being held two hours away.
One of the conditions of asylum is that individuals must be able to stay with family and so funds also had to be raised in order to get this mother and child to their relatives in another part of the United States. In the weeks for it took to complete this process, the JFON lawyer actually opened up their home for this family to stay with her.
Both of those programs and ministries are possible because we as United Methodists have said that YES we are able to care for the most vulnerable around us. We have combined our apportionment resources and special giving to be the hands and feet of Jesus all across this world.
But we also see the impact of these struggles right here in Des Moines. The neighborhood all around us is changing and part of the reason is that immigrant and refugee families are making a home in our midst. They have found here a safe place to start over, raise their children, and build a new life for themselves.
It’s the reason why Hoover High School is the most diverse school in our state.
But we also see this represented in the lives of children who attend the schools closest to our church.
We wanted to take some time today to hear about the needs right here in our local community, from one our elementary schools – Monroe.
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Text: Mark 9:38-41
Sometimes the best thing a preacher can do is to be real and authentic.
And so I’m going to confess that I’m really struggling with how to share this text with you this week.
This fall, we are loosely following the lectionary – the three-year cycle of texts that help us to explore the fullness of the scripture. Rather than just preaching on my favorite texts each week, the lectionary challenges us to think outside of our comfort zone.
But we also are building up to our Stewardship Sunday at the end of this month, and as we organized the texts and the themes, we wanted to ask the question – Are you able to support the ministry of others? Are you able to invest in the work of your fellow siblings in Christ – even if you don’t always do things the same way? Are you able to encourage people you disagree with?
I still want to preach that sermon.
But I admit that it is harder to preach today than it was a month ago or a year ago.
And that is because what we see all around us, in both the church and our larger political landscape and indeed in our world, is a whole lot of us vs. them mentality.
I was sitting at an event in Chicago two weeks ago with other members of the General Conference delegation from our jurisdiction. And there is this particular person with whom I have a very difficult time finding any common ground. They weren’t even sitting at the table with me, but I could see them across the room and every single time they caught my attention, I could feel my anxiety rise. My heart beat faster. My chest clenched up a bit.
I realized that I see this person as my enemy.
We are on the same team.
We both love the United Methodist Church.
And yet everything we believe appears to be so diametrically opposed… and not only that, but I feel like their position actually harms people I love within the church.
I don’t want them to win.
And I don’t know what to do about that and how it is impacting my own soul.
Politics is the social life that we share together and we have witnessed our political discourse crumble to pieces.
In these past few weeks, anyone who has tried to say something about what is happening in our nation, particularly around the Supreme Court – for or against it – is immediately swarmed by people who both criticize their position and criticize them for not going far enough.
We are so entrenched that we cannot even see clearly.
The red side and the blue side are enemies and the slightest mention of anything political and you can watch a room fill with tension as people discern when to engage and how in order to be victorious.
But, friends, there simply have not been any winners in these political battles.
We have all lost.
As we have been following the gospel of Mark this fall, we come to a moment of struggle for the disciples. They have worked so closely with Jesus and even though they don’t always get it completely right, they understand who their tribe is.
To use a sports metaphor, Jesus is the coach and they can point to the other eleven players.
They know who their teammates are.
But as our pericope begins, the disciple John tells Jesus about how he and some other disciples noticed these other people who were doing ministry in his name. Specifically, they were casting out demons, something that the disciples themselves had just failed to do successfully a few verses earlier.
What was their very first response to encountering these people?
Resentment. Hostility.
They tried to stop them.
If they aren’t part of our team, our tribe, we have to shut them down.
Into our tribalism and partisanship, into our entrenchment and division, Christ speaks.
From the message translation:
“No one can use my name to do something good and powerful, and in the next breath cut me down. If he’s not an enemy, he’s an ally. Why, anyone by just giving you a cup of water in my name is on our side.”
Whoever is not against us is for us.
Those are really hard words to hear when you feel like you are on the battlefield.
They are hard words to hear when you consider someone your enemy.
They are especially hard words to hear when you look at the actions or the policies or the attitudes of someone and you actually believe that they will harm you or people you love or things you care about.
And maybe that is why I have struggled so much with this text this week.
Because there are bigger issues out there in the world than simply accepting or encouraging the ministry of someone who sets up communion a different way that I do.
I think our division is so intense because we believe there are issues of life and death, holiness and faithfulness, justice and covenant, on the line as a result of the direction we take… from either side.
But I wonder if what Jesus is really calling us to in this passage is a different way of engaging those battles.
What if instead of seeing those on the other side of the aisle or the other side of the church or in another part of this world as enemies, we saw them first as allies.
Jesus says that you demonstrate you are on his side by giving others a cup of water, giving the hungry food, clothing the naked, comforting the mourning.
Not by destroying those with whom you disagree.
If we continue just a bit farther in this chapter, Jesus talks about how if your hand or foot or eye causes you to stumble, cut it off. And then he reminds us that everyone will go through a refining fire sooner or later… and we need to consider how our actions demonstrate our faithfulness.
I think Jesus is calling us to get busy doing good, to worry about our own actions and our own failings, and to let God sort out the rest.
I got to thinking about my friend, Doug, as I thought about this work.
Doug was a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor in the community that I first served in Marengo.
While we are both Christian, our two traditions have very different understandings of communion, ordination, and the place of women in the church.
The very first time I met Doug, I admit I had a lot of anxiety.
This was a person whose faith taught him that I couldn’t and shouldn’t be a pastor.
Everything in my being was preparing for an argument or to figure out a way to defend myself and my personhood. I had already drawn lines in the sand. I had already thought of him as a potential enemy.
Do you know what Doug wanted to talk about?
He wanted to ask if I would be willing to join him and some other pastors for breakfast every Wednesday morning to talk about the lectionary.
He didn’t see my as an opponent or someone he had to convince, but as an ally, a colleague, a friend.
He was offering me a cup of water…. Or coffee in this instance, in the name of Christ.
He was doing ministry in Jesus’ name.
And he recognized that I was doing the same.
We shared breakfast every Wednesday morning for four years.
And when we are invited to this table, we are called to set aside our weapons and our armor and to see people we believed to be enemies as brothers and sisters.
We will not agree.
We will not do things the same.
We might even believe that the actions of another person might harm our witness or people we love and care about.
But if we engage one another in love…
If we greet them in the name of Christ…
If we offer them a cup of water…
If we open ourselves to allow them to do the same for us…
Then at the very least we are preserving that place in our own souls that dies a little bit every time we consider someone to be our enemy.
Once we allow someone to sit with us at the table and break bread and share a meal, we discover that there are new ways to have a conversation about our differences.
We find there are good things that we can do together in Christ’s name.
And we have a chance to build the kind of trust and relationship that will allow us to truly hold one another accountable for our actions. We will finally have the authority and respect in one another’s life to call out actions that are done in the name of Christ that harms the body. And we can do so in love, with compassion, trusting and knowing that we are on the same team and that if our sister or brother is calling us to account it is because they want what is best for not only our own soul, but for the church and the world that we share.
So are you able to invite someone you disagree with to the table?
Are you able to point out the good things they do in Christ’s name?
Are you able to encourage them and love them so that one day you can both hold one another accountable?
May it be so.
YES! We are Able to Claim Our Faith
63% of American households have pets. According to estimates from the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association that Americans own approximately 73 million dogs, 90 million cats, 139 million freshwater fish, 9 million saltwater fish, 16 million birds, 18 million small animals and 11 million reptiles.
And as one pet therapist noted: “Love is the most important medicine and pets are one of nature’s best sources of affection. Pets relax and calm. They take the human mind off loneliness, grief, pain, and fear. They cause laughter and offer a sense of security and protection. They encourage exercise and broaden the circle of one’s acquaintances.” (http://www.sniksnak.com/therapy.html)
In our gospel lesson from Mark this morning, we discover how a woman, who was callously called a dog, broadens the circle of God’s love… even for Jesus.
First, some important background. Jesus is traveling with the disciples on the border lands of Israel – out by Tyre and Sidon. Not only were they in Gentile territory, but there was long held animosity between the people of Israel and “those people.”
As Mark’s gospel relates, Jesus really doesn’t want to be bothered. He ducks into a home for some peace and quiet, but somehow this woman knows that he is there. Before they know it, she’s inside, prostrate at his feet.
In Matthew’s version of this story, she appears yelling and shouting, begging and pleading for the healing of her demon-possessed daughter. And, Jesus – the one who is always supposed to have the answers and who models to us how to treat others – surprisingly just ignores the woman. Doesn’t even bother to give her the time of day.
When he finally does respond to her pleas, it is with these words: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
Jesus is making clear that his focus, his mission, is first to the children of Israel. And this woman, this Syrophonecian, was not his problem.
We can see parallels in the kind of animosity taking place between these cultures with how Europeans denigrated Native Americans. Like the Israelites, Europeans believed that the land of America was their promised land. It was a gift from God. But those who already occupied the land had to be deal with first and what came as a result was the demonization of a whole group of people. The others were seen as nothing more than mongrels, barbarians, dogs.
She belongs to the wrong culture. She is the wrong gender to be making such a request. She was not included and not welcomed. And yet, she drops to her knees in an act of worship and begs Jesus to help her.
Biblical scholar Scott Hoezee, writes, “this woman is asking for a place at the table, but Jesus, chillingly, relegates her to the floor of life. ‘It’s not right to toss perfectly good bread meant to feed the children to the dogs.’ Jesus calls her a dog. It’s a kind of slur, an epithet, and the disciples no doubt approved.” (Scott Hoezee http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/index.php)
Jesus has denied her want she wants, what she needs. And, he has insulted her in front of the disciples.
But what I love about this woman is that she doesn’t back down. She is quick and witty, she rolls with the punches and she boldly speaks back. “Okay, so you want to call me a dog? Fine. You say that as a dog I don’t deserve the food off the table. Fine. But you know what? Even dogs get the leftovers. Even dogs get the crumbs that fall under the children’s feet. Even dogs deserve that… so, c’mon! throw me a bone here Jesus!”
We don’t know why Jesus initially excluded this woman, except that he felt like he had a mission to preach the Kingdom of God to the Israelites.
So in a sense, he had drawn a line – a boundary – he had placed a limit on what he was willing or able or felt called to do.
He had drawn a circle that shut her out.
But then this woman had the wit and the courage and daring to flip his statements on him and to draw the circle big enough so that she was not only included, but that others could be included as well.
This woman reminded Jesus, in this moment of his human weakness, of the promises of his divine calling. We proclaimed them together in our call to worship. Our help is the God of Jacob. God is faithful forever. The Lord gives justice to the oppressed and makes the blind see and loves the righteous and helps orphans and widows.
She acknowledges that Jesus might have a call to first help the people of Israel, but she claims her own faith and her own place within the larger vision of God’s mission in this world.
I think that far too many of us hesitate to say “YES!” to God’s work, because we don’t believe that we are included or important. Maybe, because someone IN the church has made a comment that has put us in our place or has denigrated us… whether they meant to or not.
You are too old or you are too young.
You don’t dress the right way.
You have made different choices about how to raise children or care for aging parents.
You can’t get up early enough.
You stay up too late.
You are too busy.
This church is full of imperfect, human people and we all have a vision in our head of what our mission should be about. Sometimes, as a result, we step on one another’s toes and say things without thinking.
When we find ourselves on the receiving end of such words, it is natural to want to tuck your tail between your legs and slink away.
But I want to remind you of the persistence of this woman.
She claimed her faith.
She claimed her position.
She claimed her reality.
And she claimed her place.
You know, I admit in a church that it is easy to get caught up in one idea of what we are supposed to be about. One defined goal. But if we aren’t careful, we allow that one thing to so define our work that in fact we have drawn a circle. We have built a wall and we have imprisoned the gospel. Because, although we may think we know exactly who should be included in our ministry, we must remain open to whomever God sends our way.
Dan Nelson writes that “Even Jesus, who presumably has divine authorization for his limits allows those limits to be stretched by another’s necessity. In other words, the rule here is that there is no rule, only a creative tension between our finite capacities and the world’s infinite need.” (http://sio.midco.net/danelson9/yeara/proper15a.htm)
Our finite capacities and the world’s infinite need.
As a fully human person, Jesus was aware of the limits of his time and energy, but as fully divine, Jesus never stopped being aware of this woman’s need.
Paul wrestles in the book of Romans with whether or not the love of God for any person changes – if people can ever fall out of their standing with God. And his answer is simple: NO.
God never turns away from us. God is always there, from generation to generation.
The church, gets it wrong sometimes. We forget that we are charged with the task of making God’s name known throughout the world – to all people in all places.
Like ungrateful children, sometimes we take the bread that was set on the table and meant to be shared and we toss it carelessly on the floor.
But as the Syrophonecian woman reminds us – even there, even in the crumbs, even in the scraps, the gospel finds a way to feed and transform and bring life to people.
We need to hear the voices from those we have set on the outside, on the margins.
We need every person who has ever felt like they have been excluded to claim their faith.
Shout out your needs.
Tell aloud your faith.
Speak your truth.
Because when you do, when you say YES to God, even if and when you feel like the church is saying NO to you, you transform the church.
You help us to recognize those we have unintentionally left out.
You enable us to respond to pain we couldn’t see.
You make us a better church.
You stretch us and stretch our hearts and stretch the gospel around the world.
We are finite and there are limits to what we can do – but when every single one of us claims OUR faith, we are able to wipe away the boundaries around the gospel – and we will find that God will give us the strength and power, mercy and compassion, that we need to be in ministry in new ways and places each and every day.
YES!: Are Ye Able?
Text: Mark 10:35-45
This summer, we invited each of our households here at Immanuel to read a book together: Defying Gravity by Tom Berlin. Berlin invited us to try to break free from the gravity of this world, the culture of more, and the kingdom of self-centered ways in order to follow Jesus and find freedom within the Kingdom of God.
This fall, as we approach our Stewardship Sunday we are going to be exploring ways that the early disciples found themselves saying YES to Jesus. Ways that they, and we are invited to break free from what is burdening us, so that we can follow Jesus Christ.
On first glance, the disciples James and John in our scripture today don’t seem to be breaking out of the kingdom of self-centered ways. In fact, they seem to be completely focused on their own success and glory.
In the verses immediately before our scripture reading for this morning, Jesus is predicting his own death and resurrection… but these two don’t seem to be paying attention.
In fact, they are too busy trying to find their way to the best seats at the table.
I’ve discovered whenever we go to have meals with my nieces and nephews that this very topic, where people get to sit, is really important. Sometimes, before I’ve even taken off my coat at the door, I find a nephew tugging at my hand, showing me where my seat is. It is always very strategically placed next to him.
The only problem with all of this maneuvering is that I only have a right side and a left side. And there are now four nieces and nephews all vying for one of those coveted spots. Someone’s feelings usually get hurt because they didn’t get the chance to ask first and sometimes a fight breaks out. Usually we have to do some negotiating so that if I sat next to one of them last time, it gets to be someone else’s turn. Or perhaps we are there for the weekend and we can all get a chance.
Suffice it to say – I almost never get to sit by my husband at family meals.
Well, James and John, they, too have their eyes on the best seats, right next to Jesus, at this great heavenly feast and coming of God’s glory that they keep hearing about.
They have conveniently forgotten all of the tough times that await.
Or maybe they haven’t.
Maybe they are terrified about all of these predictions about death and trials and rejection and they are doing what we all naturally do when we encounter our fears… they are trying to secure their own future.
Biblical scholar Charles Campbell suggests that “fear breeds the desire for security.” (Feasting on the Word).
We find ourselves fearful of all sorts of things in this world. Fear of strangers, fear of terrorism, fear of falling behind, fear for our children.
A good friend of mine went out for a run by herself this weekend and posted on facebook that the entire time she was uneasy and anxious in light of the recent attacks upon women who were alone, minding their own business, living their life.
And you know what – fears breed the desire for security. People quickly responded with ways to work to keep safe – from wasp spray, to sonic whistles, a buddy system and more.
Fight, flight, freeze… we seek security and protection from our fears by buying things to help us fight back or get away or we allow the fear to keep us from engaging all together.
These disciples weren’t running away from this difficult journey of Jesus, but they wanted to fight for a seat by his side when it was all over. And James and John rush to ask the question first. They want a guarantee of where they will land at the end of it all.
Jesus invites them to consider a different way. He turns their eyes from the heavenly seat of glory and instead invites them to think about images of baptism, communion, and the cross.
He’s asking them to break free from the gravity of fear that leads them to seek their own spot at the table and to instead embrace the Kingdom of God that is the way of the servant.
Are you able? Jesus asks them and us.
Are you able to drink from this cup?
We are being invited to say YES to the holy practices of the table. A table of love and grace, mercy and forgiveness. Around God’s table, all are welcome – sinners and saints – and there is no seat that is more important than any other.
Around God’s table, we discover that it is in giving that we receive and we learn that God has always provided enough to sustain us. We don’t need to fight or grasp or cling to secure our own future, God has already done the work. Christ is the bread of life, broken for us, and when we eat and when we drink, we offer ourselves as a holy and living sacrifice. We become the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood, shared with the world.
Are you able to receive my baptism?
We are being invited to say YES to the sacred practices of death and renewal. At the font, even this morning, we remembered that our very life was nurtured by God in the waters of a womb. We are invited to enter these waters and die to our old selves and to rise with Christ. And we are reassured of the grace of God that will continue to make our lives new.
In response, we are called to embody a life that rejects the kingdom of the self and all that would pull ourselves and those around us, into that black hole of thinking that we are never enough or we will never have enough. We become living witnesses to the gospel, standing against injustice and oppression and evil and proclaiming hope.
When Jesus asks James and John if they are able, the truth is that he knows they are able.
He knows that no matter the shortcomings and the fears that led them to ask this question, they can and will break free. Charles Campbell sees this as a great promise to us as the church today. He writes:
“We need not always live in fear; we need not continually seek our own security. Rather, we have Jesus’ promise that we can and will live as faithful disciples as we seek to follow him.” (Feasting on the Word, p. 193)
Are you able to take up my cross?
In a world in which rulers show off their authority and the powerful push people around, Jesus invites us to say YES to a different way. The cross, you see, is not just about the forgiveness of my personal sin. It forms all of us into a community of faith that is not organized by winners and losers, the honored and the shamed, but by how we love and care for and serve one another. As Saint Francis of Assisi invites us to pray:
O Divine Master, grant that I may not seek so much
to be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love,
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
When we say YES to Jesus, we are set free from our fears and our drive to secure our own future. And we are empowered by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to truly follow Christ. We are able, not because any of our own abilities or knowledge or power… but because the practices of this church like baptism and communion fill us with the grace and strength we need to keep saying yes, day after day.
There will be many things around us that cause us to fear. But by living into the practices of community Jesus has offered, we find the courage and the strength to change the world one moment at a time. We are building a kingdom where no person will ever have to fear again. Thanks be to God, Amen.
The Tie that Binds
Text: Colossians 3: 12-17
I want to start off our message this morning by thanking all of you for the gentleness, patience, and tolerance that you have shared with one another these past few weeks. As a community, we have been exploring the larger conversation taking place in our denomination about human sexuality. There are still lots of questions and unknowns, but thank you for making the time to listen and pray and reflect. As these months continue before February, please feel free to ask questions and we’ll let you know of opportunities to have further conversation as they arise.
One of the things that these past four weeks highlighted for me, however, is that we are truly bound together in love. For the vast majority of those gathered here, our presence in this community of faith is rooted in something that goes beyond our disagreements or differences. And so I want to take some time today to explore that.
Will you pray with me?
Holy God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts and minds be holy and pleasing to you, Our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
Be tolerant. Forgive. Allow peace to rule your hearts. Teach and warn each other.
Paul invites us through his letter to the Colossians to think seriously about what it means to be a community formed by Jesus Christ. A community that takes seriously its baptismal vows. A community bound together by the love of God.
Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.
What unites us is not the rules we follow or our ethnicity or which team we root for, but Christ – who is in all things and in all people.
And the image of Christ should be renewing and transforming our lives and our community so that whatever we do, we do it as one coordinated body.
The truth is that this is harder than it sounds.
We have a really hard time putting into practice these things as a congregation because the demands of the world outside of this community are so heavy. Work. School. Sports. Dance. The lawn needs mowed and dinner needs made. Our lives are being pulled in a thousand different directions with every single one of them demanding that we wear a different hat or become a different person in order to be successful.
The vast majority of us spend less than 3-5 hours with our church community each week. 3-5 hours is all the time we have to look towards Christ, pray together, sing, hear the word, eat some cookies, and then we all head our separate directions once again.
You know… some of us spend more time each week in the fall in community at football games than we do at church.
I’m not saying that’s a bad thing! I know I was gathered together with friends around the television yesterday watching Iowa and Iowa State.
But it made me realize that perhaps congregations today have much more in common with football fans than with the kind of community Paul is calling us to embody in these scriptures.
We are brought together around our common love – football in one case and God in the other. We sing and cheer together. We pray together – “Please, God, let us get a first down.” And when the game is over and the refreshments are cleaned up, we head home… back to our lives.
My experience with going to football games is that for the most part I don’t know the people around me. I know that we share a common passion and for a couple of hours we are all on the same team, but I have little, if any sense of obligation to the people who are around me in the stadium. I don’t get their phone number and check in on them later in the week. I’m not going to be invited their kid’s wedding ten years down the road.
Some of you, I know, are long time season ticket holders, however, and faithfully show up at every game, week after week. And I’ve heard a few stories about the community you have formed with the people around you. Over the years, you’ve gotten to know one another – you talk about what you do and how your families are.
I imagine the same thing happens here at church. When you sit in the same pew week after week, there are others who do the same. You take that time before worship and after the postlude to ask questions about how life is going. You know the names of their kids. You ask how work or school is going. You follow-up with someone has been sick.
There is a bond of love that starts to be formed as we gather together each week.
Before our Father’s throne we pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, our comforts and our cares.
What happens, however, when there is conflict?
What happens when we disagree?
What happens when we are offended by something that another has done?
If we were simply fans in a stadium, maybe you would stop talking with that person or switch seats. There is little if any sense of obligation to one another, much less accountability for one another.
But that is not true in the church.
In our baptismal vows, we promised to proclaim the good news and live according to the example of Christ. We promised to pray for one another. We promised to surround one another with a community of love and forgiveness so that we might all grow in our service to others.
Our congregation has 451 professing members on our rolls and has listed 87 people who have been baptized as infants or children. That means there are 538 people who are bound together under the care of this congregation. 538 people for whom we have made vows to surround with love and care.
There is a really key part of those vows that is really hard to remember.
We promised to surround one another with forgiveness… because we are not always going to get it right.
I know that when we look around, we do not see 538 faces in our midst.
Some members of our body simply live in new places, but their connection to our church continues and then come back and visit when they can.
Some members of this community can no longer be physically present with us on a Sunday morning, but we try to reach out in love and help them to remain connected through visits, cards, and calls.
But others are no longer active in this community because of something that went wrong.
Maybe an inappropriate comment was made.
Maybe they felt like they didn’t have it all together like they should.
I need to name a simple truth:
We are not saints. People in this church will let you down.
But you are not a saint either. And you will let others down at one point or another.
When we do fail one another – when we make mistakes, when we fall off the wagon, when we lash out in anger or frustration – well, that is actually when we need one another the most.
That is when we need this community of folks who are not only brought together by Christ’s love, but bound together by that love. And as Christ’s life transforms our community, then how we treat one another changes as well.
We share each other’s woes, our mutual burdens bear;
And often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.
Too often, I have seen churches allow conflicts and problems to remain hidden. We don’t share with one another the woes in our lives for fear of judgment. And out of fear of being judgmental, we aren’t willing to hold one another accountable for the promises that we have made.
But listen again to the words of Paul in his letter to the Colossians:
Put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.
Be tolerant with one another.
Forgive each other.
Put on love.
Friends, you are part of a community that is unlike any else in this world. We are bound together by Christ and these words, these values, this attitudes, form the core of who we are and how we treat one another.
And the Body of Christ, we are called to be honest, share the truth, but always with those attitudes at the core of what we say and how we act. In that way, no matter our conflict or struggle, we can always love one another back into community.
When was the last time that you reached out to one of your brothers or sisters in Christ and gently asked why they haven’t been in church for a while? Give someone a call and listen more than you speak.
When was the last time you texted your friend and reminded them about the great children’s activities that they’ve been missing? Pull out your phone right now… and do so with compassion for the busyness that is probably bringing a lot of stress into their life.
When was the last time you stopped to visit the older couple who used to sit right behind you? Forgive yourself for not doing so sooner… just go!
Have you ever told the person who sits next to you what it means to you to give faithfully? Or shared how much it means to you that they are present here in worship each week? Or asked them if there is anything you can pray for in their life?
For too long we have talked about people and their problems and their failings behind their back rather than reaching out and letting them know that we are here, and we want to be on this journey with them.
I have seen too many churches treat one another as strangers instead of as brothers and sisters in Christ’s love. Siblings, bound together by a love so strong that it cannot be broken.
When we asunder part, it gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart, and hope to meet again.
This church knows how to love, how to serve, and how to pray. When someone lets us know that they are in need, we show up. When a loved one is dying, we bring prayers. When someone is recovering from surgery, we show up with food.
Our greater challenge is to continue pushing ourselves to love when it is difficult. When we are disappointed. When we aren’t satisfied with how things are going. How to love as family, flesh and blood of the one Body of Christ. You never cease to amaze me with your outpouring of love… so now let’s allow that love to continue to move us deeper into relationship, deeper into the tough questions, deeper into the dark and troubled places of our lives. Even there… especially there… let us be bound together in love.
A Way Forward? Which Way?
Text: Acts 15
The book of the Acts of the Apostles is the story of how the good news of Jesus spread from Jerusalem, through Judea and Samaria, to the ends of the earth. Along the way, the culture and traditions and scriptures of our spiritual ancestors encountered a variety of peoples and backgrounds.
When should the gospel be adapted? What was essential to maintain? Which traditions and practices should be enforced and which were merely contextual?
These were all questions being asked by the disciples and the communities they encountered along their evangelistic journeys.
Peter, in Acts 10, has a vision of the clean and unclean together and then is brought to the home of a Gentile centurion. Moved by the Holy Spirit, he baptizes the entire household… even though it was forbidden for a Jew to visit with outsiders.
In Antioch (Acts 11), Barnabas goes to minister to the Gentiles who were being converted. He is joined by Paul and together they not only convert many, but there is prediction of a famine and together the people there gather money to take to Jerusalem in response. This is not only a church of new believers, but ones who understand their connection to a larger community.
Gentiles were converted in Iconium and Lystra, but tension grew between Jews who followed Christ and those who did not. Those who rejected this new message stirred up conflict between new Gentile converts and Jewish Christians (Acts 14).
To complicate matters, other missionaries began to visit some of these places and the messages being shared about which practices must be followed as a part of the faith were different.
In particular was a very important question: Did you have to be circumcised in order to be saved by Jesus?
Now, circumcision had been an important identity marker for what it meant to be the people of God since the time of Abraham.
Jews who followed Christ did not see themselves as entering a new religion, but merely living into a new expression of that faith. Circumcision was still an important part of who they were.
Gentiles, however, were making a much larger change. Some, like the Roman centurion, were God-fearers… Gentiles who worshipped the God of the Jews but who had restrictions on what they could participate in because of their status as Gentiles. Others were pagans and were converting to a totally new faith. Circumcision would have been a significant cultural departure.
Last week, I shared with you a spectrum of theological stands that shape our church today ranging from progressive to traditional.
Imagine for a moment that this conversation was instead about circumcision.
Those on the progressive incompatibilist side might make the claim that since God is revealing a new way – no one anywhere has to be circumcised. Those on the traditional imcompatibilist side might claim – this is the same God we have always followed and everyone who wants to be saved must be circumcised. And surely there were people in the middle, who thought that Jews who wanted to be could, but Gentiles didn’t have to and so on.
Someone had to make an official decision about this so that the conflict among communities might cease. Local churches in these far flung places were confused about what was required and what wasn’t and it was hurting their ability to convert new followers to the way of Jesus.
And so the apostles and elders of the faith gathered together in Jerusalem in the year 48 to consider this question.
They heard testimony from people like Paul and Barnabas, and disciples like Peter and James made pleas. And together, the Jerusalem Council made a decision for the whole church.
In many ways, our General Conference functions every four years like the Jerusalem Council. We gather to listen and to share our stories and our witness and to make decisions that will guide the future of our entire denomination.
In February, when a special session of General Conference gathers, the decisions we make will impact not only our larger cultural witness, but also the practices and the people of local congregations like Immanuel.
As we hear this text from Acts 15, it is easy to focus on the Jerusalem Council itself… the leaders of the faith who have gathered together to make this decision.
But I admit, that in these past few weeks I’ve been thinking a whole lot more about all of the communities back in Antioch and Iconium who were waiting for a decision.
They sent off their representatives, but it would be some time before they heard a final answer. They knew that there were a variety of different directions the Council could take and so I imagine they began to prepare their hearts for a range of possibilities. Would they have to be circumcised? Would they be free to practice how they had been? Would there be other ways the Council might ask them to come into compliance with the faith?
Friends, we are those local communities waiting for a decision to be made. That decision will impact us in one way or another and so now is the time for us to begin praying and preparing ourselves for whatever might come.
Last week, I asked all of those who were here to identify where they personally fall along this spectrum of theological responses to scripture regarding LGBT+ persons. Because the impact of decisions upon OUR local community might look different from that of our neighbors.
This is simply a snapshot, but these are the responses from 110 of you who were in worship last Sunday morning. Nearly 60% of you identified yourselves on the progressive end, 27% of you on the traditionalist end, with about 13% of you not responding to that particular question. So I’m going to use your responses to help frame how Immanuel might be impacted by any of the particular plans in front of us. One thing I want to highlight is that in the answers for all of the questions, no matter whether you agreed or disagreed, nearly the vast majority of you continued to say that you would stay at Immanuel.
The first thing I want to explore are a couple of options based on this theological spectrum of perspectives. The first one is our current reality… the status quo. If nothing passes at the special General Conference, this is the default to which we revert.
Our Book of Discipline currently prohibits both the ordination of self-avowed, practicing homosexuals and same-sex marriage, which is a traditionalist perspective. However, there are places and people who are not following those prohibitions. In more progressive areas of our denomination, sometimes this happens with no enforcement of the rules at all. In more traditionalist areas, there are often charges filed and sometimes clergy are suspended or their credentials are removed. But there is vast inconsistency.
Currently, Immanuel’s response to this has been to largely to ignore the question. If we agree or disagree with the larger denominational stance, we don’t bring it up. Within our congregation are individuals and families who are impacted by this question, but they don’t push it within the larger church. Unlike other congregations within the greater Des Moines area that have strongly identified with a progressive or traditionalist perspective and have made outreach efforts around that perspective, we don’t talk about it.
And I think this is largely because identify ourselves as a family church. And families disagree about things, but still want to gather together around the Thanksgiving table. We might have private side conversations over pie, but it isn’t going to be the thing that we focus on. So we follow the rules of the denomination, whether we agree or not.
One of the plans included in the Commission on a Way Forward Report, although not recommended by our Bishops, is the Traditionalist Plan (begins on page 67). This plan would end the confusion and inconsistency by determining once and for all that we will not ordain or marry LGBT persons within the United Methodist Church.
There are two ways that accountability and enforcement are increased.
First, all bishops, annual conferences, and members of the Board or Ordained Ministry must certify that they will uphold, enforce, and maintain The Book of Discipline related to self-avowed practicing homosexuals. Those who disagree with the Book of Discipline and cannot make such a statement have three options.
1) Not certify the statement. This will result in all funds from the UMC being withdrawn and the annual conference will no longer be allowed to use the cross and the flame.
2) Certify the statement and break the rules – automatic penalties.
3) Leave the denomination to form/join a self-governing Methodist church, aka a new denomination that might be affiliated with the UMC.
What would be the impact of this on a local church like Immanuel?
Well, first of all, nearly 85% of you replied that if the current stance in our Book of Disciple remains unchanged [status quo] or strengthened [increased enforcement] you would stay as a part of Immanuel. We’d have a disagreement within our church, but again, I think largely we are focused on our community together and not on the larger denominational dynamics.
One of the complicating factors of this particular plan is that as a local church, we don’t have a lot of say of what happens at the levels just above us.
The Iowa Annual Conference, for example, might decide that it either will not certify the required statement or it might form or join a self-governing Methodist church that is more progressive. If that were the case, then this local church would have the opportunity to decide if we wanted to go with the Iowa Annual Conference, or if we wanted to stay with the United Methodist Church.
Another plan that has been presented along this same theological spectrum is the Simple Plan. This plan was not part of the Commission on a Way Forward report but was submitted by the United Methodist Queer Clergy Caucus. This particular plan seeks to remove all discriminatory language around homosexuality within the Book of Discipline.
It does so by striking statements like “Ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted in our churches.” However, it does not add any additional affirming language, nor does it add language that would increase enforcement towards those who are traditionalist. No clergy or church would be required to perform a same-gender wedding. If and when a congregation wanted to allow such weddings, they could have that conversation and make that decision.
Based on your responses to our survey, that would be a possibility. Nearly 70% of you said that you would agree if same-sex marriages would be allowed in our sanctuary. However, I also imagine that since this congregation deeply values relationship, we wouldn’t jump into any decisions without first having some family conversations and make sure it was the appropriate choice for our church.
Very similar dynamics are at play in the question about the appointment of queer clergy to Immanuel.
So far, we have been working along this spectrum of theological perspectives. The Commission on a Way Forward wanted to break us out of those dynamics a little bit and so the next two plans I’m going to present fall within a sort of compatibilist realm, but are trying to do something a little different.
The One Church Plan (begins on page 19) is a proposal of the Commission on a Way Forward that was supported by a strong majority of our Council of Bishops. The fundamental theological statement within this plan is that our position on homosexuality, whatever it might be, is not an essential of our faith. It is not something that we should divide our church over.
Like the Simple Plan that I just shared with you, it removes all language that is restrictive towards LGBT persons. However, it adds in every one of those locations statements that ensures freedom of conscience for those who think differently. For example, in the section about the ministry of an elder it states:
“In conferences where civil law permits a pastor to perform same-sex marriage services, no elder shall at any time be required or compelled to perform, or prohibited from performing, any marriage, union, or blessing of same-sex couples, or of any couples. Each elder shall have the right to exercise his or her conscience to refuse or agree when requested…”
What would be the impact of such a plan on Immanuel? This particular plan allows us the freedom of conscious, much like the Simple Plan. This plan does specify, however, that same-sex weddings are not allowed in local congregations unless the congregation chooses to approve them by a simple majority vote.
Any congregation that felt like it could no longer remain a part of the United Methodist Church, potentially non-compatibilist congregations, this plan points to already existing mechanisms within the Book of Discipline for them to leave.
The other primary plan presented by the Commission on a Way Forward is the Connectional Conference Model (begins on page 37). This model also affirms that this question is not an essential of our faith and maintains the unity of the United Methodist Church by creating three branches within the denomination based upon our perspectives on human sexuality.
The difficulty with this plan is that it requires changes to the constitution of our church which would have to be approved by 2/3 vote of all of the annual conferences combined. If this happened, there is a plan of implementation with decisions filtering down.
First, each United States Jurisdiction would vote in 2020 which connectional conference it would want to join. After that decision, any annual conference within that jurisdiction could vote to join a different connectional conference if it so chooses. Then, beginning in 2021, any local church that disagrees with where the annual conference has affiliated can choose to join a different connectional conference.
As a result, different churches within our city might belong to various connectional conferences, but we would all still be a part of the larger United Methodist Church.
As a local church, we could decide to just go with the flow and follow the decisions made by the entities above us, or if we disagreed with their direction, we could vote to join another. Whichever conference we ended up affiliating with would determine our policies on ordination and weddings.
The final plan that has already been published and is available for conversation is not a plan of the Commission on a Way Forward. It is simply named, a Plan of Dissolution, and the purpose of this particular plan is to claim that this actually is an essential of our faith and for that reason, we must divide the church.
Rather than any one perspective claiming victory over the denomination, however, the goal of this plan is to dissolve the UMC in its entirety. Then at the 2020 General Conference, delegates will be elected to help form 2 or more new denominations that likely would fall into the same spectrum we have been discussing. As those new denominations are formed, local churches would have the opportunity to affiliate with and join whichever they felt called to join.
In the year 48, the church was at a crossroads. Would they embrace the Gentiles who were following the way of Christ? Would the Gentiles shape the church, or would the Jewish faith shape the Gentiles? Leaders of the faith gathered together in Jerusalem to allow scripture, the Holy Spirit, tradition, testimony, and reason guide them in making the best decision for the church.
I imagine as those local communities of faith sent their delegates, they joined together in fervent prayer.
And so that is what I hope you might do with and for us.
Pray. Pray hard. Pray every day.
Pray for God to guide us as we make these decisions, hard decisions, that will impact our church at every single level, from our local church here in Des Moines to the hospital we have built in Sierra Leone, to our seminary in Russia, to our publishing house in Nashville. Pray.
A Way Forward? To Each Their Own Convictions
Text: Romans 14:4-12
“How do we know we are following the way of Christ?… How do we navigate the culture around us? What happens when Christians disagree profoundly with each other?”
There are just a few of the questions that Rev. Christine Chakoian believes Paul is trying to answer in his letter to the Romans. (CEB Women’s Study Bible Introduction)
And they are questions that we are wrestling with today.
What should we do when United Methodists, faithful followers of Jesus Christ profoundly disagree? How do we find our way forward?
In Paul’s time, the conflict he saw in the Roman community was a clash between Jews and Gentiles – people who followed the laws of the Old Testament and those who had never lived under that law but who were accepting Jesus Christ.
At this point in time, Christianity was not really a separate thing from the Jewish faith… It was a movement that had begun within the Jewish community, but it was also quickly taking root in Gentile communities who had no knowledge of or cultural connection with the Jewish faith
This created all sorts of problems:
Should someone be circumcised into the Jewish faith before being able to follow Jesus?
Did the Jewish dietary laws have to be followed?
What are the holy days that must be honored?
When you got to a cosmopolitan, diverse place like Rome, you had folks in the same community who held vastly different opinions about how the faith should be practiced.
People who ate meat and people who didn’t.
People who were circumcised and those who weren’t.
“One group, “Jeanette Good writes, “believes that the ‘right way’ is to rely solely on texts of old interpreted literally, and the other group is adamant that the ‘right way’ is to believe that God is being revealed in new ways to each generation. Both groups are ‘in their camps’ and are sure their positions are the right ones.” [1]
Sound familiar?
It would be impossible for us to talk about what comes next and how the various proposals to lead us forward might play out without getting a sense of the current landscape of the United Methodist Church today and the camps that people have fallen into.
We have them represented here by these four vessels of water.
The way I describe these camps is going to use terminology initially coined by Tom Lambrecht, the vice-president of Good News, a more conservative coalition within the UMC and then adopted by Tom Berlin. Tom Berlin not only wrote the stewardship book that we shared together this summer, but he serves a theologically diverse church on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. Both were members of the Commission on a Way Forward and both are noted as authors of two very different plans that have been proposed that we will discuss next week.
If you were here last week, we talked about six scriptures that have historically been understood to condemn homosexuality within the bible. If you missed this message or the one from the week before, you can pick up a copy on the back table.
We also discussed how our task as people of faith is to think theologically: to ask and reflect upon how God is working in the world today. We begin with scriptures like these and we interpret and translate and make sense of them in light of other scripture, the tradition that has been passed down to us, and our own human reason and experience.
These four sources, what we call the Wesleyan quadrilateral, helps the church translate the gospel to the world, but also helps the church make sense of the world around us. Last week, I asked some theological questions that we are called to wrestle with as a result of reading these passages:
- Does the description of people in this passage reflect our experience of LGBT+ persons today?
- What do scripture, tradition, reason, and experience lead us to claim are taboo sexual acts today, framed by our understanding of Christian community?
- What is natural for LGBT persons? What are the fruits we see in the lives of LGBT persons?
- How do we talk about sex, sexuality, and identity that rejects the way people use and abuse one another and helps all people to honor their bodies?
Those who would find themselves in the progressive camp read these six scriptures, faithfully interpret them, reflect theologically, and believe that they do not condemn LGBT+ persons.
They believe that some these passages refer to culturally bound understandings of holiness that no longer apply in Christian community.
These passages are not talking about loving, mutual, relationships between two persons, but instead about exploitive violent actions and abuse or cultic sexual practices.
Members of this camp would also point to scriptures that they believe affirm LGBT+ persons within the scriptures.
For example, King David and Saul’s son Jonathan had a close relationship. After Jonathan’s death, David laments: “I grieve for you, my brother Jonathan! You were so dear to me! Your love was more amazing to me than the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1:26)
They might also point to the time when Jesus healed the servant of a Roman centurian in Matthew 8 and Luke 7. Here, the Greek word for servant or slave – doulos – is not used, but instead, the word, pais, is used to describe the unwell person. A pais in this time was either a child – a son, or a close personal attendant, or was sometimes used to refer to a younger male lover. Progressives see this as a possible example of Jesus encountering an LGBT+ person and not hesitating to heal… in fact, even affirming the strength of this person’s faith.
Progressives would call us to look for the fruit in the lives of all persons who claim the Christian faith – do they love God and their neighbor? And for those who have experienced the call of God in their lives to serve, it wouldn’t matter if they were gay or straight. Progressives believe that the same standards for holiness should apply to all relationships, whether gay or straight. Is anyone being harmed through this sexual act? Does this relationship demonstrate mutual love and respect? How are chastity and fidelity expressed through this person’s life?
Progressives also would point to the marginalization of LGBT+ persons, not only in history but all around us today as well. They see current prohibitions in church law as harmful not only to our witness, but to the actual lives of LGBT+ persons. They would point towards statistics that show that LGBT youth are at a much higher risk for both homelessness and suicide than their peers and that LGBT youth for whom faith is important to them had a 5x higher rate of suicidal thoughts than their straight peers. [2]
As Jesus calls us to reach out to the sick, the oppressed, the hungry in order to offer life and life abundant, progressive United Methodists believe that a church that is not actively in ministry with LGBT+ persons and fully inclusive is being unfaithful to the gospel.
Those who would find them in the traditionalist camp read these six scriptures, faithfully interpret them, reflect theologically, and believe that scripture is clear about the prohibition of homosexual acts.
While justice might be a key word to describe progressives, covenant might be a key term for traditionalists.
They believe that these passages, along with others, describe what personal holiness looks like within the Christian community and that if we interpret the meaning away from these scriptures, than all of our understandings of personal holiness might be compromised. God has created us in a particular way, man and woman were designed for one another, and only within the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman are sexual acts pleasing to God.
When we choose to follow Christ, traditionalists would argue, we reject the ways of this world and allow ourselves to be conformed instead to Christ. That is the covenant under which we now live.
Traditionalists believe are called, in community, to hold one another accountable to this covenant. That means there must be a clear, shared understandings of what is right and what is not. To be faithful to the gospel, one must call out sin and invite repentance and transformation. If we fail to do so, then we are allowing that person to remain on a path that might permanently separate them from God’s love.
So these are the camps in which we find ourselves today. Progressives and Traditionalists, who each love the church, love Jesus, and love scripture.
When we turn back to the Apostle Paul and his description of conflict within the early Christian community in Rome, he appears to have solid advice for us to rely upon today.
“One person considers some days to be more sacred than others, while another person considers all days to the be same. Each person must have their own convictions. Someone who thinks that a day is sacred, thinks that way for the Lord. Those who eat, eat for the Lord, because they thank God. And those who don’t eat, don’t eat for the Lord, and they thank the Lord too.”
To each their own, Paul appears to be saying.
These practices, these convictions, they are not essential to what it means to follow Jesus.
If you are celebrating particular holy days in the Lord’s name – great!
If you choose to refrain from participating in the Lord’s name – great!
Because you are doing it all in the name of Jesus.
Whether or not you keep kosher laws or are circumcised or whether you prefer pew chairs or pews – as long as you are focused on your Lord – that’s all that really matters.
Paul goes on to say that we should not judge one another for our various convictions. Each person will stand before the Lord in their own time. We are not to force our own convictions about practices upon one another, nor are we to be a stumbling block to another person’s faith by allowing our practices to interfere with those of others.
Within these progressive and traditionalist camps in the United Methodist Church today are those who take Paul’s words to heart. Tom Berlin uses sugar packets instead of vessels of water to demonstrate these various positions.
As you can see there are progressives and traditionalists represented here who have their own deeply held convictions about how we should relate to LGBT+ persons – justice and full inclusion or covenant faithfulness.
But there are those within each of these camps that understand people who have been wrestling with these questions arrive in different places. These folks also don’t believe that the answer to this particular question is essential to our faith.
Lambrecht and Berlin would refer to these folks as compatibilists.
Compatibilists are willing to remain in community with those who disagree with them. They know and understand that our very church is full of a diversity of perspectives on this topic, but that what unifies us as United Methodists – what IS essential is our understanding of grace, our focus on personal and social holiness, and the connection that allows us to be in ministry across this globe.
Compatibilists might best be described as those who firmly hold their own particular theological convictions, but also respect the theological convictions of others. As we live together within the church, what is important is that there is freedom of conviction and no one is forced to act against their own beliefs.
As long as you love God and love your neighbor and seek to live and die for the Lord, the non-essentials of our faith should not divide us.
There are those within each of the progressive and traditionalist camps, however, who would reject the idea that this is a non-essential of our faith.
They would argue that Paul is talking here are about practices like what we eat and wear – truly non-essential things. But values like justice and covenant are not something you can compromise.
Traditional non-compatibilists believe that our call to covenantal holiness requires us to maintain these standards across the church. They want the church to be faithful to what they believe are obvious prohibitions within scripture. We are not called to be blown to and fro by the winds of culture, but must hold firm to the tradition that has been passed down to us.
Progressive non-compatibilists believe that our call to justice for all people requires us to see anew who Jesus is standing with in the margins. They want the church to be faithful to what they believe are the obvious cries for inclusion within scripture. We are not called to a legalistic faith, but must allow the Holy Spirit to lead us and recognize the presence of God in LGBT+ persons.
Within the United Methodist Church today, this division has created our current conflict.
Progressives are dissatisfied with the current language within our Book of Discipline and by and believes that it harms our witness for Jesus Christ in the world today. They believe that they are being faithful to the gospel by disobeying the Book of Discipline in order to celebrate same-gender weddings and welcome LGBT+ folks into ministry of the church.
Those who are Traditional Non-Compatibilists see these actions and feel like the covenant we have made with one another has been broken. They feel personally harmed by this betrayal and some are leaving these churches as a result.
Traditionalists who are frustrated that the covenant has not been honored are seeking to maintain the discipline of the church by naming and formalizing consequences of these actions. We have a process for accountability within our Book of Discipline that begins with the filing of a complaint, and you may have heard in the past few years of such complaints being filed here in Iowa against pastors who have officiated same-gender weddings or who have publicly come out as queer.
Those who are Progressives see these actions and feel like it not only personally harms people who are LGBT+ but has also harmed their congregations as people have left their churches because we are not fully inclusive.
Within the United States, there are regional differences that are apparent. The Western Jurisdiction is more progressive than other areas and in 2016 consecrated Karen Oliveto as a bishop, a woman who is married to another woman.
Annual conferences across the North Central and Northeastern Jurisdictions have committed to ordaining clergy based on their fruit, not their sexual orientation.
Southern Jurisdictions and Annual Conferences throughout the connection are advocating for a church that maintains its faithfulness to scripture and traditional understandings of marriage.
And there are global factors.
The conversation we have had today is largely U.S. based, but the United Methodist Church is a global denomination. While assumptions should not be made about any particular area of the global church, it is thought that the majority of our African and Filipino brothers and sisters would describe themselves as traditionalists. In many of their own cultural realities, homosexuality is rejected and in some places even an illegal practice. Others, in parts of our connection like Western Europe, would align more with the progressives. The goal of the Commission on a Way Forward was this: To design a way for being church that maximizes the presence of a United Methodist witness in as many places in the world as possible, that allows for as much contextual differentiation as possible, and that balances an approach to different theological understandings of human sexuality with a desire for as much unity as possible.
Is the question of human sexuality an essential of our faith? Will our response divide the church?
Or is it a non-essential? Is it a place where we can respectfully disagree and create space for one another?
The plans that we will explore together next week will answer those questions differently. The impact of these plans on our particular congregation can only be known if we have a sense of where this church itself stands.
For that reason, I want to invite you each to take and fill out one of these yellow surveys. We will compile these anonymous responses in order to have a sense of the impact any of these plans might have on this church.
I’m going to give you a few minutes to do so right now. There are four simple questions to answer.
First, based on what we have described today, where would you place yourself on this spectrum of progressive/traditional and compatible/non-compatible?
Next, three questions about how you personally might respond if there were or were not changes to our Book of Discipline.
As a reminder, here is a general description of the Book of Discipline’s current language:
The Book of Discipline affirms that we should be in ministry with all persons and reject homophobia. It also states that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Marriage is defined as between one man and one woman. Self-avowed practicing homosexuals may not be ordained as clergy.
What I want to leave us with today is a phrase that John Wesley clung to in his own ministry – a phrase that exemplifies the spirit of our passage in Romans today:
In essentials, unity.
In non-essentials, liberty.
In all things love.
May God continue to lead us as hold fast to the essentials of our faith, respect differences in non-essentials, and may love been the source of all that we do.
Let’s stand together as we are able and affirm some of those essentials that form the core of our faith.
[1] Jeanette Good. Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4, p 65
[2] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/queer-youth-religion-suicide-study_us_5ad4f7b3e4b077c89ceb9774
A Way Forward? 25-cent words
Texts: Philippians 4:8-9, Matthew 22:34-40
This past year as I taught confirmation, one of our lessons focused on how we are all theologians.
I wrote that word up on the board and one of our students exclaimed – WOW! That’s a 25-cent word!
There was an old idiom that you shouldn’t use a 50-cent word when a 5-cent word will do.
But just because a word is complicated doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it.
So we unpacked it. We defined it. And suddenly, that 25-cent word wasn’t so scary anymore.
Today, we need to talk about some 25-cent words.
These are words are important and form the background of both the conflict within our denomination and in how we might move beyond this tension.
So… will you pray with me?
Compassionate God, all creation delights in the presence of your Word.
May the authority of your Spirit bring understanding into our confused minds, and truth into our troubled hearts, that we may praise and serve Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (from the Worship@North website. https://northchurchindy.wordpress.com/ )
We are going to start in the same place as our confirmands. Our first 25-cent word is… theologian.
I am a theologian.
I have a Master of Divinity from Vanderbilt University and I spent three and a half years studying divine things like scripture and ancient texts and history and the thoughts of other theologians.
But you know what?
You are a theologian, too.
You see, a theologian is simply anyone who reflects upon God’s action in the world today and as United Methodists we believe that every single one of us is called to this task.
Every generation must wrestle with our faith in a changing world.
The church needs to see problems and challenges like sexual abuse or global migration so we can provide a faithful response.
But, we also need to be able to figure out how to communicate the truth of our faith to a world that increasingly can’t understand us.
Theology helps us to do both.
Whether or not you knew it before worship today, you are a theologian.
I want you to claim that! Say out loud and proud: I am a theologian!
And as a theologian, your job is to answer a simple question: What can I say that is faithful to scripture as it has been passed down through tradition, and that makes sense in light of human experience and reason? (paraphrase of Book of Discipline p. 81)
As Paul told the Philippians, we are to focus our thoughts on what is excellent and true, holy and just. We are to practice what we have learned and received and heard from our mentors and teachers of the faith.
That is theology!
And as United Methodist theologians, you have four sources in discovering God at work in the world.
Scripture. Tradition. Experience. Reason.
These four sources make up our next 25-cent word: quadrilateral.
“[John] Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason.” (p. 82)
All four are important. All four are necessary. All four help us to see where God is working in the world.
We start with scripture.
We end with scripture.
Scripture is the absolute foundation of all of our theology… so as theologians, we had better be reading and pouring over scripture in our lives.
But… and… scripture is always being interpreted.
First, scripture is interpreted by other scripture.
You cannot take a single verse out of context but need to look at the fullness of the entire passage and story.
And, we come to see as we read the bible that there is an overarching story within the scripture itself… a story of creation and redemption, a story of mistakes and forgiveness, a story that ends in the restoration of all things.
In our gospel, religious leaders ask Jesus to interpret and prioritize scripture for them. His response is one that provides us guidance when we in turn interpret scripture today – how does this verse lead us to love God and love our neighbor? (Matthew 22:34-40)
Next, we have the witness of how people have interpreted that scripture through time. Tradition shows us the “consensus of faith” that has grown out of a particular community’s experience. (p. 85-86)
Not all contexts and communities are the same. The experience of Czech immigrants in the Midwest was very different than that of African slaves in the Deep South. Each community passed on the gospel and created practices of faith that show us how the scripture made sense in their lives. We also connect tradition with the theology of previous generations that have been passed down to us in creeds and writings.
Tradition shows us how communities have understood God, but we also each have or own unique experiences.
Who you are and what you have been through is always with you when you open up the Bible – your pain, joy, anger, gender, economic reality…
It is why you can read the same passage of scripture repeatedly over time and discover something new with each reading.
But Wesley also talked about how God continues to reveal through our experiences and the fruit that we are bearing in our lives. When he saw the call in the lives of women around him, he began to license them as preachers.
Our final source of theology is reason. As the Book of Proverbs reminds us, each person is called to “turn your ear toward wisdom, and stretch your mind toward understanding. Call out for insight, and cry aloud for understanding. ” (Proverbs 2:2-3)
We believe that God reveals truth in many places, not only in scripture, and that we should pursue such knowledge and truth with our whole selves. Science, philosophy, nature: these are all places that help us to gain understanding.
Where we find contradictions within scripture itself or between a passage and wisdom of the world, reason asks what greater truths a verse might be speaking or how to prioritize and discern which is truer.
Our Book of Discipline reminds us that
“United Methodists as a diverse people continue to strive for consensus in understanding the gospel… while exercising patience and forbearance with one another. Such patience stems neither from indifference toward truth nor from an indulgent tolerance of error but from an awareness that we know only in part and that none of us is able to search the mysteries of God except by the Spirit of God. We proceed with our theological task, trusting that the Spirit will grant us wisdom…” (Book of Discipline p. 89)
The simple truth which lies at the heart of our conflict today is that people of faith, United Methodists who care about the scriptures and who come from diverse backgrounds, cannot come to a place of consensus in how we approach matters of human sexuality and in particular how we understand homosexuality.
We might use the quadrilateral differently or prioritize some aspects more than others.
But I think part of the difficulty is that we don’t even have a common understanding of the question we are seeking to answer within the scriptures.
And that means a couple more 25-cent words:
First, homosexuality. This word was initially coined in the 1880s in German and made its way into English usage in the 1890s. The word itself simply refers to sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex. Some modern translations of scripture use this word, but it didn’t even exist at the time the King James Bible was translated.
Many who seek to answer the question of what we should do today start from this definition. Their concern is largely with the physical acts associated with any given sexual orientation. Many prohibitions in our Book of Discipline focus on this as well, using the phrase “self-avowed, practicing homosexual.” The question being raised by this group is largely about how we use our bodies and whether or not such use is good and holy.
Others focus on a more expansive understanding of the complexity of human sexuality, referring to a wider group of people through the term LGBTQ+.
Science and sociology have helped us to see in the last fifty years that our identity is complicated.
This graphic talks about four different aspects of our identity – all of which are placed on a spectrum. Our biological sex, how we identify our gender and how we express it, who we are attracted to… all of these factors play a role… which is why the terminology we use keeps expanding as well. There is a handout at the back that has this graphic as well as some common definitions within LGBTQ+ if you are interested. The question being raised by this group is also about how bodies, but tends to focus more on embodiment and identity as a whole person.
As a denomination, when we bring these questions to General Conference, we seem to have reached our limits of patience and forbearance with one another.
But as people of a local faith community, my prayer is that we can still remember with humility that now we see through a glass darkly and that we still might extend patience and forbearance towards one another as we explore a few scriptures together.
When we open the scriptures, there are six verses that our tradition has used to condemn homosexuality.
Genesis 19: Sodom & Gomorrah
Leviticus 18 & 20: Abomination
Romans 1: Exchanging Natural Relations for Unnatural
1 Corinthians 6 & 1 Timothy 1: “malakoi and arsenokoitai”
As United Methodist theologians, we start with scripture, and we end with scripture so we need to wrestle with these passages as background for our theology today.
Before they went to bed, the men of the city of Sodom—everyone from the youngest to the oldest—surrounded the house and called to Lot, “Where are the men who arrived tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may have sex with them.”
First – Genesis 19: 4-5, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Angels from God arrive in order to determine if there are any righteous people in the town. The men of the city knock on the door of the house they are staying and seek to force themselves upon the visitors.
However, this is a great place to start using scripture to interpret scripture. While later Christian tradition adopted sodomy as a term for sinful, non-procreative sex, within the scriptures itself, the sin of Sodom was not sexual in nature. In Ezekiel 16, the prophet names the sin of Sodom as being proud and not helping the poor and needy. This was a culture that relied upon hospitality – when guests arrived the duty of the community was to welcome them and provide for their needs. To violently force yourself upon these visitors, attacking them, raping them, was against every hospitality code of the time. This is a clear violation of the command to love your neighbor.
The question we wrestle with theologically is whether or not our experience of LGBT persons today is reflected in this text.
You must not have sexual intercourse with a man as you would with a woman; it is a detestable practice.
If a man has sexual intercourse with a man as he would with a woman, the two of them have done something detestable. They must be executed; their blood is on their own heads.
The next two scriptures come from the Holiness Code in the book of Leviticus (18:22, 20:13). In many translations, sex between two men is named as an abomination, or detestable. Both of these chapters are concerned with sexual practices that were forbidden to the people of God as they were entering the Promised Land. It is a rejection of practices both in the land of Egypt and practices that may have been common among others in the land of Canaan.
The Hebrew word that we have translated as abomination or detestible is probably not a fair translation of the word. “Toevah” is understood by many today to instead mean ritually unclean or culturally taboo. The Israelites are called to be holy and set-apart and to adopt cultural practices that are different from their neighbors. In the larger context of Leviticus, these include commands about food, clothing, bodily fluids, and how you treat the stranger among you.
Today, our tradition still considers many of the practices within these two chapters of Leviticus to be culturally taboo, but not all of them. And we have moved away from many of the other prohibitions within these texts that we consider to be culturally bound – like eating shellfish or the cutting of hair. And that’s because we hold a different understanding of what makes us unclean in the eyes of the Lord. Peter’s vision in Acts 10 shifts the conversation within the Christian faith and his encounter with the gentile Cornelius leads him to proclaim, “God has shown me that I should never call a person impure or unclean.” (Actus 10:28)
Theologically, we ask today what scripture, tradition, reason, and experience lead us to claim as taboo sexual acts, framed by our understanding of what forms us as a Christian community that loves God and our neighbor.
That’s why God abandoned them to degrading lust. Their females traded natural sexual relations for unnatural sexual relations. Also, in the same way, the males traded natural sexual relations with females, and burned with lust for each other. Males performed shameful actions with males, and they were paid back with the penalty they deserved for their mistake in their own bodies.
Our next scripture comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans. His argument here in the first chapter is that Gentiles and Jews alike are without excuse and full of sin. The Jews have been given the law and claim to follow it but don’t. The Gentiles don’t have the law… instead they should have seen God revealed through nature itself. Augustine and Aquinas and others have carried this concept through our tradition and our use of reason: we can know God through the world around us.
Here in this chapter, Paul argues that the Gentiles should have known God. However, they rejected God and turned instead to idols. As he describes cultic practices of worship, he claims that their idolatry led God to abandon them to their desires. As a consequence, natural sexual relations were exchanged for unnatural ones and these people were filled with jealousy, murder, fighting, deception, gossip, and disobedience to their parents. (Romans 1:29-31)
Theologically, the questions we wrestle with today start with asking what is natural. If one understands homosexuality to be a choice then it would lead you to think that such acts are unnatural. However, for others who believe that persons who are LGBT were created that way, it might be unnatural for them to act against how God has made them.
This is another place where we might ask where our experience shows fruit in the lives of LGBT persons. Paul’s argument here is that same-sex acts are the result of idolatry and cultic worship and these people are filled with other bad behaviors. What are the fruits we see in the lives of people we know who are LBGT? What are the fruits of people who are not LGBT? Do they love God? Do they love their neighbor?
Don’t you know that people who are unjust won’t inherit God’s kingdom? Don’t be deceived. Those who are sexually immoral, those who worship false gods, adulterers, both participants in same-sex intercourse,[a] thieves, the greedy, drunks, abusive people, and swindlers won’t inherit God’s kingdom.
We understand this: the Law isn’t established for a righteous person but for people who live without laws and without obeying any authority. They are the ungodly and the sinners. They are people who are not spiritual, and nothing is sacred to them. They kill their fathers and mothers, and murder others. They are people who are sexually unfaithful, and people who have intercourse with the same sex. They are kidnappers, liars, individuals who give false testimonies in court, and those who do anything else that is opposed to sound teaching.
The final pairing of scripture is from 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10. We group them together because they refer to the same two words – malakoi and arsenokoitai. These words have been translated in multiple ways through our history of bible translation.
Malakoi literally means soft and has been translated as effeminate, as the passive homosexual partner, or as a male prostitute.
Arsenokoitai is a word that appears only two times in all of Greek literature – right here in the Bible. It is a word that Paul appears to have made up from two other words: Men and Bed. How tradition understands this word has changed drastically over time. Some think it refers to the dominant homosexual partner. Others think it refers to pimps – men who sell sex. Others think it is connected with temple prostitution, or the practice of older men taking young men (soft men) as sexual partners within the culture of the time.
In the context of the litany of other acts included in this list however, perhaps the Message translation most accurately captures the spirit of this passage. “those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don’t qualify as citizens in God’s kingdom.”
The truth is, we have all done these things. But the grace of God is present in our lives and has redeemed us and so our call now is to honor God, creation, and our neighbors… and that includes honoring our bodies.
What can we say theologically about sex, sexuality, and our identity that rejects the way people use and abuse one another and helps all people to honor their bodies?
As I faithfully wrestle with a theological response to the presence and promise of LGBT persons in the life of the church, I am fully aware that I might end up coming to a different conclusion than you. We are all theologians after all, all tasked with using scripture, tradition, reason, and experience to weigh what we believe to be faithful responses in the world today.
The very conflict within our denomination is the result of this very tension and next week we’ll explore how people of faith have found themselves aligned with various positions today.
But my prayer, above all else, is that we would continue to lift up as our number one priority the love of God and the love of one another – and that includes those who don’t agree with us.
Our call as people of faith after all is to provide a welcome so vast and so radical that all might come to know and experience the saving grace of God lives. May it be so. Amen.