“Giving Life” based on Acts 9:36-43 and John 10:22-30

May 13, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Let’s
talk about messianic expectations for a minute, as in, what were the
expectations of the messiah for the ancient Jewish people? Also,
where did the whole idea come from? (Believe it or not, I think this
is going to come around to something relevant.)

The
expectation that God was going to set things right by working
with/through a messiah was an idea that emerged during the Babylonian
exile, probably after the royal line was intentionally extinguished
by the Babylonians. Until that point, there was an expectation that
the monarchial line of David was always going to sit on the throne in
Jerusalem, and when the monarchial line was extinguished, things got
confusing. (To be fair, I think that David and his descendants were
a more significant part of propagating that story than God was, but
for the people it was discombobulating anyway.)

Things
were all up in the air. The Promised Land was intimately correlated
with God’s covenant with the people, and they’d lost it. The story
of God giving the people their freedom was their primary narrative,
and they’d lost that too. Losing the monarchy was just another loss
in the midst of blow after blow to the people’s lives and faith.

It
isn’t clear where the story started, but it did. The story came to
be that God was going to restore the fortunes of ancient Israel
through the messiah. The expectation itself, though, wasn’t
consistent. Sometimes there was going to be a new king, a just king,
a good king, and he was going to lead the country into a new freedom
and dominance. Sometimes there was going to be a new military
leader, a general, who lead the people to win all the battles, and
restore their land (and often other people’s too). Sometimes it was
a new high priest, one able to lead the people to connect again with
their God, and restore worship in a new temple. Sometimes the messiah
was going to be a new prophet, who spoke with the power and truth of
the prophets of old, a new Moses and a new Elijah rolled into one,
whose capacity to speak the truth would bring down the power
structures and allow God’s new power structure to emerge.

And
often, the messiah was a combination of several of those things. But
in each case, the messiah restored the nation of ancient Israel
through either political, economic, or military might, and the rest
came into being too. God was going to work through the messiah, and
God was going to restore the fortunes of Israel through the messiah,
and it would all be OK again.

Since
it make the most sense to connect the goodness of the future God was
going to create with the goodness of the past where God was known to
have worked, most people assumed that the messiah would be a
descendant of David, of which there were many even though the king
and his children had died. This expectation is why Matthew and Luke
go through such pains to tell us that Jesus, like David, was born in
Nazareth and review his lineage.

When
we remember what the expectations for the messiah were, we can see a
few things more clearly: first why potential messiah candidates were
cropping up under the oppression of the Roman Empire – when people
were looking for God to save them again, and secondly why some of the
Jews of the day did NOT think that Jesus fit the bill. After all,
the fortunes of Ancient Israel were NOT reversed by Jesus, not
politically, nor economically, nor in military might. Quite the
opposite even, by the time the Gospels were written the second temple
had been destroyed, Jerusalem had been ravaged, and the masses had
been killed AGAIN in 70CE.

All
of that is back story to pick up the meaning in the lesson today from
the Gospel of John, where Jesus is asked if he is the Messiah. In
the Gospel, the Jewish authorities really annoyed that he won’t tell
them, the literal translation of “how long are you going to make us
wait” is “how long are you going to take away our life?”¹
However, this is the Gospel of John we’re dealing with, and that
means we should be looking for metaphor rather than historical fact.
John is using this story to teach his readers that Jesus IS the
messiah, and that it is better to be one of his sheep than not to be.

I
think the Gospel of John leaves the door open for other shepherds who
take care of their sheep too, a many flocks each with their own
shepherd approach, and I like that. I also love the image of Jesus
as a shepherd who has taken care of his sheep long enough that we
know his voice and trust him to lead us well, to good food, safe
pastures, and still waters. And that Jesus takes care of his sheep,
even protecting us from those who would seek to do us harm.

But,
I wonder if we are like the members of the Jewish establishment in
this story, asking who the messiah is. I wonder if we are still in
the messianic mindset. That is, I wonder if we are waiting for God
to act, and for God to act through someone else, to make things
better. Or perhaps I should say, I wonder WHEN we are in that
mindset, since I know we aren’t always there.

It
is sort of funny, since we are the inheritors of the tradition that
claims the messiah has already come, that we seem to continue to seek
a messiah! As far as I can figure out the stories of Jesus and of
resurrection, the narrative is that God was working with and through
Jesus in his life and then after Jesus died, that capacity he had to
transform the world was gifted to his followers, so that now we can
work together to continue his work. We can now show the world what
love looks like. We can now empower God’s beloveds. We can now be
sources of healing. We can now teach of a God of
never-ending-all-inclusive grace! What was once the work of one is
now the shared work of many.

We
aren’t supposed to be waiting for God, because we believe that God is
working with US, and sometimes waiting on US. We aren’t supposed to
be waiting for someone else to fix things anymore, because we’ve
learned that WE are supposed to be working with God in fixing things
for everyone.

Yet,
sometimes we still expect other people to do it, or maybe God to do.
And sometimes that’s OK – not everything is ours to do and trusting
others to also do their part is not only OK, it is excellent. But
waiting on a messiah, waiting on God to work though ONE person to fix
things, THAT isn’t our job.

The
transformation from being a follower of Christ to doing Christ’s work
is evident in the disciples in the book of Acts. In our story today,
Peter raises a woman from the dead, just like Jesus raised a girl in
Mark. In the Mark version, Jesus is said to speak in Aramaic, saying
little girl, arise, which is recorded as “Talitha, cum.” In
Acts, the grown woman is named Tabitha, and Peter says, “Tabitha,
get up!” The parallelisms are clear enough, which means the
differences are what make things interesting.

In
Mark, Jesus is directive, and he has witnesses, and he simply takes
her hand, says the words, and it happens. In Acts, Peter is quieter,
he does not have witnesses, but he is said to pray and seek direction
before he speaks. In Mark the girl’s value is mostly established
from the love her powerful father has for her. In Acts, the woman is
a disciple, a person who has devoted her life to care of the poor, a
beloved member of the community, whose worth seems to come from the
ways she has lived her faith. I really love the little detail that
the widows all showed Peter the clothing she’d made for them. Widows
were among the poorest members of society, and she’d cared for them
so well that what she’d made was worth bragging about. Her life
mattered to theirs.

It
seems clear to me that Peter is being presented as LIKE Jesus, but
not AS a new Jesus. Peter now has the connection to God that allows
him to see what others cannot, but he has to nurture that connection,
which we see when he prays before he acts. Peter is PART of the
inheritance of Jesus’ power and work, but he isn’t the whole thing
(Tabitha is part of it too). Peter is, then, like all of us. Able
to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, and WITH the rest of the
community able to continue his work, but none of us are supposed to
replace Jesus. We’re not asked to do it on our own. Our tradition
says we’ve already had a messiah, and thus we don’t have to.

Jesus
says, “little girl arise” and Peter says “Tabitha, get up”,
and I find myself wondering about how often we hear God asking us to
do the same. “Get up.” “Get moving.” “Get to work!”
I’m not sure how much of what we hear is actually God and how much is
our own inner critic, combined with the unrelenting expectations of
the world. When I look at the Bible holistically, there is a balance
between the “get ups” and the “sit down and rest a whiles.”
God who freed the people from slavery in Egypt used that slavery to
explain the need for Sabbath, for a full day of rest EVERY WEEK, in
order to fully establish the humanity of all. God is as worried
about rest as God is worried about “get up and do!” We, however,
are often much more worried about “get up and do” so we tend to
listen better to that one.

Or
at least I do. Sorry for all the times I project myself onto all of
you.

God
is seeking for us BALANCE: the capacity to make a contribution to
the world, and the space to savor the goodness of life, the time for
intimate relationships, and the joy of getting things done. God
gives us the gift of LIFE, and then guides us to living it in the
fullest. We may hear a lot of “get ups” but only because we
aren’t as tuned into the “rest a whiles.”

So,
I ask of all of us: can we remember we aren’t called to be the
messiah, even if we’re lucky enough to get to be part of continuing
his work? And can we listen as well the urging of God to rest as we
do to act? Can we receive the gifts of life, and savor them, even as
we seek to make sure everyone gets the gifts? Can we receive the
gifts of rest and the gifts of calls to action, and listen to them
both? I suppose we can at least try. Amen

1Gail
O’Day, New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX: John, Leander
E. Keck editorial board convener (Nashville: Abingdon Press,1995)
676.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Mary 12, 2019

Sermons

“Words to a Warring Church’

February 4, 2019February 4, 2019
by Sara Baron

based on 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 and Luke 4:16-30

Don’t get distracted by the pretty love poetry, First Corinthians was written to a church that was fighting within itself, and this passage is about that. The Jewish Annotated Bible points out, “This letter, written in the mid-50s, reveals the divisions facing the Pauline churches over such central concepts as the Holy Spirit (ch 2), marital and sexual norms (ch 5-7; 11), relation with the Gentile world (chs 6; 8), worship practices (ch 12), women’s roles (ch 14) and resurrection (ch 15).”1 Paul clarifies right from the get-go why he is writing, “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.” (1 Cor 1:10-11, NRSV)

The whole letter is written to deal with the disagreements – to offer advice on them and to remind the church HOW to disagree. 1 Corinthians 13 fits into the latter category, it is meant to instruct the church on what it means to follow Jesus in the midst of disagreement. It reflects the opposite of the described behavior of the members of the Corinthian church in the rest of the letter. They are said to be impatient, unkind, boastful and arrogant, boastful in wrongdoing, etc. All the things that love is NOT. “Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…” After all, love is a reflection of God’s nature. The word for love being used here is “agape” or unconditional love. The church often talks about this as the love that is God’s love for humans, and when we seek to live out our faith, we seek to bear God’s agape love into the world for all people.

Earlier in the letter, Paul worked with a common Corinthian saying, “All things are lawful”. He reflects, “‘All things are lawful’, but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful’, but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of others.” (10:23-24) Over and over again, Paul seeks to encourage the Corinthians to take care of each other, and use their power for the communal well-being.

Luke 4 contains another example of a faith community misbehaving. In this case it is said to be the synagogue in Nazareth, although historically speaking there are some reasons to be doubtful of the factuality of this story. Some of them are: we aren’t sure there was a synagogue in Nazareth; if there was, we don’t know that they would have been prosperous enough to have a scroll of Isaiah; and perhaps just as importantly, Nazareth isn’t built on a cliff.

This passage is almost certainly a creation of Luke, based off of a much shorter narrative in Mark that centers around the line, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” Its OK that it is a creation of Luke, it lets him show of his themes, which I tend to greatly support. Luke emphasizes God’s love for the foreigners and Gentiles, and Luke quotes Isaiah who reminds us that the Spirit is working to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. For Luke, this is Jesus’s mission statement. For us, this is a part of our Communion Liturgy. For those who aren’t remembering it, the “year of the Lord’s favor” refers to the practice of Jubilee, in which every 50 years all debts are forgiven AND all land reverts back to the family who owned it. This system was meant to prevent intergenerational poverty, and to ensure that people’s subsistence remained possible. It was, by the time of Jesus, common for people to be imprisoned because of debt (a way to blackmail family members into paying up), or for family members to be sold to pay off debts. To the people of Jesus time (and Luke’s), who hadn’t seen a Jubilee in perhaps a millennia (we aren’t entirely sure if it ever happened, but we think it may have happened in the time of the Judges), this was probably a bit incredible.

Believable or not for those who heard it, the Isaiah passage emphasizes God being on the side of the poor, vulnerable, and oppressed, and working towards their good, and Luke believes this work is embodied in Jesus.

Now, within the context of this story, it is entirely too easy to assume that the Jews in Nazareth were upset about the inclusion of the outsiders, and feeling like their “special” status was threatened, but in the Jewish Annotated New Testament I have been assured by Amy Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler that this is not at all the case. After all, those were Jewish stories, and the Jews had very good relationships with Gentiles. Instead, the presenting issue in this narrative is that Jesus refuses to do messianic stuff. Mark explains this as Jesus being UNABLE, but in Luke it sounds more like Jesus refuses. Initially the crowd is quite pleased with what he is saying, but if he is doing God’s work (as described in Isaiah), but not for them. This is what enrages them. They want the good work of God too! They want freedom, healing, liberation, and debt recovery. Why wouldn’t they! Jesus choice not to help them when he helps others is what Luke reports as enraging them.

Having done adequate work understanding the texts on their own merit, I believe we are now free to excavate them for meaning for us today. I believe most of you have heard that The United Methodist Church is a bit, shall we say, Corinthian? For the uninitiated into the infighting in The United Methodist Church, let me offer a few disclaimers: 1. The fights in the church at large are NOT reflected in this congregation. After two years of careful study and conversation, in 1996, this congregation voted to be affirming and celebration of God’s LGBTQIA+ children, and we hold FIRM in that position today. 2. The General Church has pretty much always been a big fight for power, money, and influence. This is a discouraging fact (I’d love it if the General Church were a spiritually centered experience in collaboration and sharing agape around the world). However, it is a fact. In part this is true because we have a democratic process – we neither have a leader at the top telling us what to do NOR have complete freedom for our own churches. Furthermore, we are super diverse, and that means we often have very different values, and ideas of where power, money, and influence should be used. It isn’t ALL bad.

Now that I’ve offered the disclaimers, this month the Global United Methodist Church is getting together in Saint Louis to have a big old fight. (February 23-26). Officially, the church will be discussing, “human sexuality.” Really, the church will be fighting over whether or not people who are LGBTQIA+ are beloved by God. (Yes.) More deeply, I believe the church is still fighting over who has control of money, power, and influence, and the fight has been put on the backs of LGBTQIA+ people when really it is about whether or not the old-school power brokers (most commonly older, whiter, richer, Southern US, conservative, men) can make other people do their bidding anymore. (Thanks be to God, no.)

In First Corinthians, Paul is VERY concerned about the WAYS the church treated each other in their disagreements. He seems more concerned about this than about the answers that they come to. They were told to build each other up. This is a super duper hard thing to remember coming into General Conference. I believe we are all called to see each other’s humanity, and to see each other as beloved by God, even our disagreement. I do NOT believe it is acceptable to see another member of the church as the ENEMY. I believe that the way we disagree is important, and Paul’s teaching is very important.

And I really, really wish that the other side would stop doing stuff to make that more difficult. 😉

However, I’m going to play fair right now. I’m going to start by telling you what our side (the side for inclusion of all of God’s people) does that infuriates the other side (the side that likely thinks of itself as for “purity”). First of all, we disobey. The conservatives have had the majority power in the church since 1972, and have used it to say that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching” and thus “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” cannot be ordained or appointed and UM clergy can’t preside at same sex weddings. Because we don’t believe that these rules have authority in the eyes of God, we’ve disobeyed them.

Furthermore, we’ve protested them. We’ve gone to General Conferences, and other meetings, and protested, and people have been uncomfortable with that. In 2000, we (I wasn’t there, this is the “we” of the inclusivity movement) even shut down General Conference. Our Bishop at the time – yours and mine – chose to be arrested with the protesters in solidarity, which was one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen.

Our refusal to obey oppressive authority, and our refusal to be quiet about it has been a problem for the other side, and is taken as unfair tactics. Now, clearly, I disagree, but I thought it would be nice to share their viewpoint first for once.

On our side, the complaints are a bit different. First of all, our primary issue, is with the church claiming that some of God’s beloveds aren’t God’s beloveds. That said, James Baldwin once said (and Jan Huston was nice enough to post on my FB this week to remind me) “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” Thus, I do not believe that both sides are equally valid when it comes to discussing the humanity and right to exist of LGBTQIA+ people in the church.

Then there are the current tactics on the side of exclusion. These include: wanting minimum penalties for doing same sex weddings, kicking out Annual Conferences that ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals2, minimizing the pension payments for clergy who are part of Annual Conferences that ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals3, AND deciding to leave and form a new denomination (the Wesleyan Covenant Association) WHILE intentionally bankrupting The United Methodist Church4

That is, they want to kick LGBTQIA+ people and their allies out of the church, impoverish retired clergy, and bankrupt the denomination.

And Paul says I’m supposed to be loving.

And I think he’s right.

I sort of wish I knew how to be like Jesus in the end of the gospel, just walking away while fists are pounding and violence is imminent, like in a cartoon.

However, I’m willing to settle for a bit less. I’d like to be blessed with the ability to keep on loving, and keep on seeing God’s light in those with whom I disagree NO MATTER HOW BADLY THEY BEHAVE. I keep on praying, and practicing love, in hopes that I will be able to do so.

This feels like a lesson far larger than General Conference or The United Methodist Church. But it also takes a second step. I want to know people are beloved by God, no matter how badly they behave, but I do NOT think that means I have to let them walk all over me, nor over God’s other beloveds. Walter Wink teaches that when Jesus says “turn the other cheek” he means “use subversive methods to require your opponent to respect you.”

I want to learn to turn the other cheek in love. I hope you want to too! May God help us all open our hearts and minds to the agape love and wisdom necessary to do so, now and always. Amen

1 The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 287.

2 See, the Traditional Plan and the Modified Traditional Plan in the ACDA: http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/gc2019-advance-edition-daily-christian-advocate

3 http://hackingchristianity.net/2019/01/confirmed-pensions-board-issues-traditionalist-plan-concerns-wespath-updates-faq.html

4https://snarkypastorrants.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-devil-in-details.html

Image is of the Love Your Neighbor Coalition logo.

Sermons

“Words to a Warring Church’ based on 1 Corinthians…

February 3, 2019February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Don’t get distracted by the pretty love poetry, First Corinthians was written to a church that was fighting within itself, and this passage is about that. The Jewish Annotated Bible points out, “This letter, written in the mid-50s, reveals the divisions facing the Pauline churches over such central concepts as the Holy Spirit (ch 2), marital and sexual norms (ch 5-7; 11), relation with the Gentile world (chs 6; 8), worship practices (ch 12), women’s roles (ch 14) and resurrection (ch 15).”¹ Paul clarifies right from the get-go why he is writing, “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.” (1 Cor 1:10-11, NRSV)

The whole letter is written to deal with the disagreements – to offer advice on them and to remind the church HOW to disagree. 1 Corinthians 13 fits into the latter category, it is meant to instruct the church on what it means to follow Jesus in the midst of disagreement. It reflects the opposite of the described behavior of the members of the Corinthian church in the rest of the letter. They are said to be impatient, unkind, boastful and arrogant, boastful in wrongdoing, etc. All the things that love is NOT. “Love is patient, love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…” After all, love is a reflection of God’s nature. The word for love being used here is “agape” or unconditional love. The church often talks about this as the love that is God’s love for humans, and when we seek to live out our faith, we seek to bear God’s agape love into the world for all people.

This passage is almost certainly a creation of Luke (who was not from Galilee), based off of a much shorter narrative in Mark that centers around the line, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” Its OK that it is a creation of Luke, it lets him show of his themes, which I tend to greatly support. Luke emphasizes God’s love for the foreigners and Gentiles, and Luke quotes Isaiah who reminds us that the Spirit is working to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. For Luke, this is Jesus’s mission statement. For us, this is a part of our Communion Liturgy. For those who aren’t remembering it, the “year of the Lord’s favor” refers to the practice of Jubilee, in which every 50 years all debts are forgiven AND all land reverts back to the family who owned it. This system was meant to prevent intergenerational poverty, and to ensure that people’s subsistence remained possible. It was, by the time of Jesus, common for people to be imprisoned because of debt (a way to blackmail family members into paying up), or for family members to be sold to pay off debts. To the people of Jesus time (and Luke’s), who hadn’t seen a Jubilee in perhaps a millennia (we aren’t entirely sure if it ever happened, but we think it may have happened in the time of the Judges), this was probably a bit incredible.

Now, within the context of this story, it is entirely too easy to assume that the Jews in Nazareth were upset about the inclusion of the outsiders, and feeling like their “special” status was threatened, but in the Jewish Annotated New Testament I have been assured by Amy Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler that this is not at all the case. After all, those were Jewish stories, and the Jews had very good relationships with Gentiles. Instead, the presenting issue in this narrative is that Jesus refuses to do messianic stuff. Mark explains this as Jesus being UNABLE, but in Luke it sounds more like Jesus refuses. Initially the crowd is quite pleased with what he is saying, but if he is doing God’s work (as described in Isaiah), but not for them. This is what enrages them. They want the good work of God too! They want freedom, healing, liberation, and debt recovery. Why wouldn’t they! Jesus choice not to help them when he helps others is what Luke reports as enraging them.

And I really, really wish that the other side would stop doing stuff to make that more difficult. 😉

Then there are the current tactics on the side of exclusion. These include: wanting minimum penalties for doing same sex weddings, kicking out Annual Conferences that ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals², minimizing the pension payments for clergy who are part of Annual Conferences that ordain self-avowed practicing homosexuals³, AND deciding to leave and form a new denomination (the Wesleyan Covenant Association) WHILE intentionally bankrupting The United Methodist Church⁴.

That is, they want to kick LGBTQIA+ people and their allies out of the church, impoverish retired clergy, and bankrupt the denomination.

And Paul says I’m supposed to be loving.

And I think he’s right.

I sort of wish I knew how to be like Jesus in the end of the gospel, just walking away while fists are pounding and violence is imminent, like in a cartoon.

I want to learn to turn the other cheek in love. I hope you want to too! May God help us all open our hearts and minds to the agape love and wisdom necessary to do so, now and always. Amen

1The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 287.

2See, the Traditional Plan and the Modified Traditional Plan in the ACDA: http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/gc2019-advance-edition-daily-christian-advocate

3 http://hackingchristianity.net/2019/01/confirmed-pensions-board-issues-traditionalist-plan-concerns-wespath-updates-faq.html

4 https://snarkypastorrants.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-devil-in-details.html

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

February 3, 2019

Sermons

“The One Who Began a Good Work” based on…

May 29, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

A week ago I returned from a 2 week trip to Portland Oregon, where I was a progressive organizer for the General Conference of The United Methodist Church. General Conference meets only every 4 years, and is a global gathering of delegates who have the power to change the church’s position on ANYTHING they want. I went with the “Love Your Neighbor Coalition” to help the church do less harm.¹

Things started getting really interesting for that work, 8 days before General Conference officially began. That was when 15 Clergy from the New York Annual Conference published an open letter in which they came out as LGBTQI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and/or Intersexed).² A week later, the day before General Conference began, 111 Clergy around the country joined their voices together in “A Love Letter to Our Church From Your LGBTQI Religious Leaders.”³ (So, they came out too.) That letter just about broke the Internet. The traffic actually broke the Reconciling Ministries Network’s web-page.

The following day, when General Conference started, a letter signed by “hundreds of moms” came out in support of the LGBTQI clergy.⁴ Two days after that, more than 500 LGBTQI Christian Leaders from other denominations signed a letter in solidarity with the UM Clergy who had come out.⁵ From the grandstands outside the plenary floor I looked through the list of names to see friends and colleagues from this area had signed it, and it felt like the Spirit had whispered hope and love right into our General Conference. Words of love came from a lot of directions. There were love letters from the UCC National Office⁶, the New England Quakers⁷, and the Episcopal of the Portland Diocese full of encouragement and hope.⁸

General Conference started on Tuesday, May 10^th. On Saturday there was a letter signed by more than 5000 UM laity declaring their support of LGBTQI clergy⁹, which now has more than 6200 signatures and counting. On Monday the 16^th, there was a letter signed by more than 2300 UM Allies in support of OUR LGBTQI colleagues.¹⁰ (Yes, “our.” It was long time before I got to sign anything.) Reading through the lists of signers of those letters was also a source of comfort and joy.

Finally, on the second Tuesday of General Conference, 16 days after the first public letter was released with 15 Clergy coming out, a response came from some of The United Methodist Bishops.¹¹ If you were wondering, two of your former Bishops signed it: Bishops Susan Morrison and Susan Hassinger. 29 Bishops signed in all. They wrote in response to the SECOND letter, the one from 111 LGBTQI clergy. Among the words they wrote were:

We write our letter now to say to these sacred children of God and members of our United Methodist family that we love them and have been blessed by the many spiritual gifts that God has given them and that they have shared with us. … While they could have left, day by day they choose to stay because of their love for the church that baptized, nurtured and called them to love God with all their heart, soul, and mind, and to love their neighbor as they love themselves. Even while marginalized and rejected by their mother church they love her back. … God have mercy upon us!

When shall we United Methodists have the courage of Peter to stand and say that nothing that God has made is unclean? When shall we believe that the love of God is truly for all? When shall we learn to live in faith and humility before our God of love?

We call The United Methodist Church to repentance for its lack of love for all God’s children, and for its arrogance in believing that we establish the boundaries of God’s love.

Now, the timing of the Bishop’s letter was quite interesting! It came out on Tuesday of the second week. The night before, news was intentionally leaked that the Bishops were looking at a plan for schism. On Tuesday morning they denied it in a speech to the whole body and then in a press conference. Soon thereafter a motion was made on the floor requesting that the Bishops come up with a plan to find a way forward for the denomination given our disagreement about whether or not ALL people are really God’s people. (The opposition likes to say that we discuss “human sexuality.”) The motion from the floor was a very helpful way to make things happen without the Bishops’ claiming it was their idea.

The following day the Bishops came back with their proposal. That was the day we, the progressives, were ready to shut everything down. I suspect that would have resulted in mass arrest. As we waited to hear the Bishop’s plan and the body’s response to it, I took note of how calm we all were. We, the progressives, were gathered in a clump ready to “break the bar” and shut down the General Conference. We were in rainbow stoles (some short, some long), some of us were in collars. But the Peace of Christ was with all of us. We were ready to do God’s work. We held our breaths, and instead of arrests a Commission got created.

This was the Bishop’s proposal – the creation of a special Commission.¹² The Commission is to be named by the Council of Bishops, and rather than acting on ANY of the petitions about LGBTQI exclusion, they were all referred to the Commission. The Commission is to come up with a plan to move forward. It is possible that they might rewrite large portions of the Book of Discipline, for the better. More likely the Commission will come back letting the denomination know that we are not of one mind, and we cannot continue to function as we’ve functioned. What I don’t know is if there suggestion will be: a schism, a restructuring, or both. We also don’t know that General Conference will take their suggestions. That happens a lot that General Conference sends an idea to a special group and then refuses their suggestions when they’re returned.

This was a step to the side, rather than forward or backward. When it happened, it felt like a victory, because we KNEW that if those petitions got to the floor, it would have been a bloodbath. It was also a victory because the denomination was pushed to a breaking point, but it isn’t worth trusting quite yet that the breaking point will lead to greater inclusion or safety for God’s people.

The breaking point came not just after a bunch of people signed a bunch of letters (although those helped). Rather it came after months, years, and decades of faithful resistance and ecclesial disobedience. The breaking point was created intentionally. It came because of a long term progressive strategy. The “Biblical Obedience” movement named by Bishop Talbert 4 years ago whereby he instructed us to preside over same-sex marriages in the “regular course of our pastoral duties” was also a part of it. Faithful witnesses at General Conferences and Annual Conferences were a part of it. There were many components. The strategy has been “to increase pressure and tension on the institutional United Methodist Church. The purpose has been to force it to look clearly at the harm and ugliness and evil that it commits against LGBTQI persons. The purpose of that has been to force the Church to look at itself, to confront the ugliness of what it has, what it has made itself, what it does, until it can no longer tolerate what it is and must decide to be something else.”¹³

Pushing the church to a breaking point and the creation of the special Commission was a success of this strategy. So was the conservative push for schism at this General Conference. Apparently, the most conservative wing of The United Methodist Church is SICK AND TIRED of people who refuse to obey unjust laws (*shrugs). They don’t want to be in a denomination with LGBTQI clergy, they don’t want to be in a denomination where clergy perform same-sex marriages, and they don’t want to be in denomination where laity as well as clergy are willing to protest for the rights of all of God’s children. They want to leave. They want to split the denomination so that they can exit. They want to take their marbles and go home, even though they have the votes to win on the floor. The most conservative 10-15% of the denomination want to leave.

Many of us think that the Commission will bring forward a plan for schism. Going into General Conference I stood firmly against schism. When the news had been leaked about the Bishop’s plan for schism I was both horrified and relieved. Eventually I found I was a bit excited.

As progressive organizers, General Conference was horrible. The majority of the delegates were conservative. The odds were stacked against us, and despite our best work, a lot went very badly. Of particular note was the resolution that passed which removed the UMC from the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Justice. There were also good petitions that did not pass, including: petitions to pull our retirement benefits out of the Palestinian occupation, petitions to pull our retirement benefits out of companies that profit from fossil fuels, petitions to end overly invasive medical forms for clergy, petitions to support “responsible parenthood”, and petitions to restructure the Church for equity.

As progressive organizers, terrible things almost happened, and we were able to help stop them. (Bad things happened, but we were usually able to stop the TERRIBLE things.) In one case we had a hand in stopping the creation of a $20,000,000 “slush fund.” Unfortunately, we were mostly unable to make good things happen. We WERE able to secure church’s support for the concerns of our racial/ethnic caucus partners, which was grand. We were able to maintain our stance as a pro-choice denomination. No horrible transphobic legislation got passed. Those are weak successes.

We did hard work, and we got very little for it. We lost, over and over and over again despite having done our work well. By the start of the second week, I was exhausted with fighting, and with losing. I am not interested in giving up on The United Methodist Church, but I’m also tired of being in a church that excludes God’s beloved people. The idea of spending the rest of my career working for this justice AND FAILING fills me with dread. Also, being in a denomination that has NO trust in each other is exhausting. At this point, as far as I’m concerned, if the most conservative faction wants to leave, and free the rest of us to be a healthy Body of Christ together, I have lost all interest in stopping them.

This is more than just about our denomination. It is the human condition. Sometimes things are too broken to be fixed. When there is no trust, there is not truly a shared Body. This is true of denominations and non-profits, of marriages and relationships, and even of friendships. Some things aren’t fixable. We are an Easter People, and we follow a God who can make a way out of no way. Sometimes though, the path of hope, love, and justice – that is the path of God – requires letting something die to make space for a different sort of life. Being an Easter people can mean letting God find the way forward to life, and letting go of defining how that that will happen. I don’t know yet if it is time for The United Methodist Church as it has been since 1968 to die, but I suspect it cannot live as it is.

Yet, for today I choose a scripture of gratitude. General Conference was not ONLY horrible. There were too many great people to reconnect with, to work with, and to get to know for it to be exclusively horrible. Being with the Love Your Neighbor Coalition meant spending a lot of time with amazing people who care about God’s justice and love. I am thankful to God every time I think of them, and I trust that the good work that has been done will not be lost but that God will find a way to complete it. I also trust that those who have been working on this progressive strategy for decades will not stop. It is the work that God has begun, and it isn’t stoppable.

As a whole, General Conference was about 20% as bad as I thought it would be. Where I expected to have NO hope at this point, I have some very hesitant considerations that maybe someday things might be OK. That’s a big change. 😉 I sort of hate it when the words of Paul ring true, he and I are still struggling with each other. Yet he puts words to where I am after this 2016 General Conference. These are my words for you, for those who play along at home, for my many partners in the Love Your Neighbor Coalition, and even for the church at large: “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best.” May it be so. Amen

1 http://lyncoalition.org/about/

2 http://www.rmnetwork.org/newrmn/call-to-declare-we-are/

3 http://www.rmnetwork.org/newrmn/calledout/

4 http://www.mindny.org/2016/05/more-than-1000-christian-moms-support-lgbtqi-clergy/

5 http://www.believeoutloud.com/latest/500-lgbtqi-christian-leaders-stand-solidarity-our-united-methodist-colleagues

6 http://www.ucc.org/open_letter_to_our_brothers_and_sisters_in_the_united_methodist_church_05142016

7 http://neym.org/sites/default/files/UMCepistle_5_2016_0.pdf

8 http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2016/05/17/13421849/STATEMENT-OF-SUPPORT-FOR-THE-UNITED-METHODIST-GENERAL-CONFERENCE.pdf

9 https://org.salsalabs.com/o/2507/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=19747

10 http://www.rmnetwork.org/newrmn/over-1500-united-methodist-clergy-pledge-their-support-of-lgbtq-colleagues/

11 http://westernjurisdictionumc.org/a-pastoral-response-to-a-love-letter-to-our-church-from-lgbtqi-religious-leaders/

12 http://www.pnwumc.org/news/an-offering-for-a-way-forward-umcgc/