A pastoral letter to the United Methodist Church:

My people are meeting with their people and all of those people are God’s people. The United Methodist Church’s General Conference is being held this week in Tampa, FL and lay and clergy delegates of many stripes and persuasions are engaging in “holy conferencing”– and unfortunately of a lot of realpolitiking too. The delegates were elected to represent United Methodists in each of the “Annual Conferences” (regions of the country and the world), with some of the delegates representing theological progressives and others representing theological conservatives, and, hopefully, some are representing those in the increasingly rare theological middle.

This is the 5^th General Conference that has met since I was ordained as a United Methodist pastor in 1996. I’ve spent the entirety of my young adult years hoping and yearning for the Church I love to truly be the most Christ-like and loving that it can be. At times it feels like I’ve been waiting in vain.

In 1972, the United Methodist Church imposed restrictive language in our Book of Discipline that asserts that “homosexuality is inconsistent with Christian teaching.” And the G.C. in 1984 inserted language that prohibits the ordination of people who’ve been called to ordained ministry by God who happen to be “self-avowed, practicing gays or lesbians,” and that prohibits ordained clergy from conducting gay or lesbian weddings.

I’m what’s known as a “straight ally” of the LGBTQI community. But I wasn’t always this way. I grew up in Minnesota with a fairly (but sadly) typical upbringing where my culture and society taught that homosexuality was “wrong” and/or “evil.” My peers reinforced this and I engaged in numerous games of “Smear the Queer,” told my share of gay jokes, and even engaged in some teasing and bullying of gays (or persons thought to be gay).

I eventually outgrew and shed that homophobia. This was due in part to coming to own and embrace my own sexuality; realizing that Jesus never spoke about it so it couldn’t be a primary concern of God’s; my increased awareness of Biblical scholarship which shows that the 6 verses in the Bible that have been said to “clearly oppose homosexuality” do not clearly do that at all. Yet, more than reading the insights of Bible scholars was the profound impact of actually getting to know actual living, breathing gays and lesbians. I met several homosexuals during my college years and they seemed, well, more like ordinary college students than not. And then after college I shared a house with several male housemates for a couple of years. Several of them happened to be gay. Actually sharing space and living life with them firmly showed me that they indeed are more like me than not  — with some of them being tidier than me and, to my amazement, some of them were even more likely than me to leave socks laying on the floor or forget to wash the dishes!

Then I went to seminary, was exposed to even more Biblical scholarship debunking the typical ways of understanding those “clobber verses,” and met even more gays and lesbians.

It seemed obvious that my generation (“GenX”) was increasingly tolerant, accepting, and even embracing of homosexuals. I was aware that most of many of my peers were leaving the Church because they felt that it was too exclusive, judgmental, and, well, mean. I, however, felt a profound sense that the UMC would eventually come to its senses and join the growing number of mainline denominations that were also shifting toward full inclusion of gays and lesbians. I sensed that “It’s not a matter of whether or not the UMC will become gay-friendly, but when.”

With that confidence in mind, I was ordained, appointed to my first church, and have pastored several churches by this point in my career. I’ve performed some 50 weddings for couples in love. All but two of those couples were couples that were living together before they married. I never feel a need to instruct them to not live together before I would agree to marry them. Instead, I did as we UM’s tend to do — err on the side of grace. We’d rather celebrate a couple’s love and offer an open door to the Church than to be legalistic and close the door on them. I’ve compared notes with numerous other UM pastors and their stats are nearly identical with mine – the vast majority of the couples that we perform wedding ceremonies for are living together. Over 1/3 of the couples who we UM pastors conduct weddings for involve at least one person who was married before, divorced, and is remarrying. Heck, many UM clergy have been divorced and remarried ourselves.

Here’s the deal. We’re hypocrites. We’re hypocrites if we act on the side of grace and unconditional love on behalf of straight people and yet make a point not to do that for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. The vast majority of our population is straight (or at least straight-leaning bisexuals) – with only 5-8% of the population being gay or lesbian.

You know what it’s called when the majority of the population allows the members of the majority to do something but then don’t allow a minority group to do it? It’s called scape-goating.

Scape-goating is disgusting. It’s an abomination and I am no longer having any part of it –– and neither should our Church. We should either become fundamentalists who don’t allow for divorce, remarriage, or allow couples to live together before we agree to marry them (at least we’d be consistent in our ridiculousness); or we should become a more full and beautiful part of the Body of Christ and repeal our antiquated, exclusive, judgmental, and hypocritical language which prohibits homosexuals from being ordained and prevents straight pastors from conducting gay weddings.

The other mainline Protestant denominations have now each repealed their formerly restrictive prohibitions and have become officially gay-friendly, reconciling, welcoming and affirming denominations. The Disciples of Christ, the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church USA, ELCA Lutherans, UCC United Church of Christ, and the American Baptist Convention each either officially allow for gay weddings and the ordination of gay pastors for the entire denomination –- or at least allow their member congregations to enact their own policies about those matters.

The United Methodist Church is the nation’s 2^nd largest Protestant denomination and we’re by far the largest mainline Protestant denomination. Those other brave mainline Churches have stepped forward in faith and have taken the measures needed to allow today’s people to hear the good news of the Gospel. It’s time for us to as well. Our children and our grandchildren are counting on us.

In Christian love,

Rev. Roger Wolsey

Director, Wesley Foundation, University of Colorado-Boulder

Author, “Kissing Fish: christianity for people who don’t like christianity”

For information about how to move forward, please visit the Reconciling Ministries Network.

In yo face Devil! Take that forces of evil!
Look whose laughing now! Ding Dong the witch is dead!
We fart in your general direction! Sike!

… Such has become the way that many of the world’s Christians have come to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection on Easter. We’ve allowed the ways of the world to infuse our beliefs and we end up fighting fire with fire. Employing the world’s ways against it.

Once our religion became the official religion of the Roman empire, followers of the non-violent Jesus (even Bill Maher concedes this much) started to assimilate imperial ways into our discipleship.

A blatant example of this is in our hymnody. I’m a United Methodist and I love the movement founded by John Wesley and his brother Charles—both of whom were excellent lyricists. It’s been said that for Methodists, “our hymnal is our 2nd Bible”  in that it conveys and informs our theology. Many of the hymns that the Wesley brothers wrote are now standards in perhaps the majority of Christian denominations—especially on Easter.

The problem is that Christians started incorporating the ways of empire into their expression of their faith. From the most ancient of days, from warring tribes to the Roman empire—and on through the British and American empires—dominating forces sang victory songs and held grand victory celebrations and parades. Celebrating their conquests and might—as well as mocking and taunting their defeated foes. Pax Romana! Hail Caesar! Rome Rules! Long Live Caesar! Down with the Huns! The Greeks are sissies! Rule Britannia! Christ the Lord is Risen Today!

As a trumpeter, Christ the Lord, is one of my all time favorite hymns. Indeed, in someways, “it wouldn’t be Easter without it.” It begins innocently enough,

Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia! Earth and heaven in chorus say, Alleluia! Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!

Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia!

But then it goes on…

Love’s redeeming work is done, Alleluia! Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia! Death in vain forbids him rise, Alleluia! Christ has opened paradise, Alleluia!

Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia! Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia! Once he died our souls to save, Alleluia! Where’s thy victory, boasting grave? Alleluia!

It (and numerous other Easter hymns) are essentially early versions of the songs that zealous sports fans sing to the opposing fans when their team wins, “Nah nah nah nah… nah nah nah nah… Hey hey hey, Goodbye!”

“Buddy you’re a boy make a big noise, playin’ in the street gonna be a big man some day; you got mud on your face, you’re a big disgrace
Kickin’ your can all over the place!  We will we will rock you!”

And, ironically, “Always look on the bright side of life…”

Now it makes sense that Jesus’ earliest followers would’ve felt incredible comfort, vindication and outrageous joy upon their realization that even the worst that the Roman powers that be could dish out wasn’t enough to defeat Jesus and the Kingdom of God that he sought to usher in. They experienced an empty tomb and a risen Christ, confirming the truths and teachings that Jesus taught and showing that unconditional, vulnerable love is indeed the way, the truth, and the life—including loving our enemies. This (and the infusion of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost) emboldened them to continue on, and spread, in spite of severe hardship and persecution.

Over our first 300 years, the early Christians were brutally, harshly and systemically oppressed. Many hundreds, if not thousands, of them were crucified, torn apart by lions, or lit up as human torches along the city streets. Then, in 313 AD, Constantine ended the persecutions, converted to Christianity, (it’s debatable how fully however), legalized it, and eventually, it became the official religion of the Empire. In time, and arguably in part due to the spread of Christianity, the Roman empire collapsed and… drumroll…one could say that God had the last word and reclaimed for Him/Herself the titles that the Caesars had been claiming for themselves—including “God,” “Son of God,” “Savior,” “Divine,” “Lord,” and, even “Prince of Peace.”

Hooah!

And yet, it is that human impulse to gloat in the defeat of our enemies that’s the problem. You see, it isn’t what Christians are called to do. Relishing in the defeat of others isn’t what Jesus did or would do.

I remember feeling these same feelings upon seeing how most of my fellow, mostly Christian Americans responded upon learning the news that Osama bin Laden had been captured and killed. Instead of simply feeling relief that the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks was no longer a threat to us, they collectively beat their chests and cried their primal “yawps!” of victory and celebrated his death—with many wanting to be the first to dance and/or piss on his remains.

Scholar Walter Wink contends that the world’s first meta-myth is “the myth of redemptive violence.” In a nutshell, it’s the notion that violence is what defeats evil and that killing bad guys is the right thing to do and it is violence that is what saves us.  It’s rooted in the Enuma Elish from ancient Babylon and it’s the basis of much of Western culture. Indeed, part of why Jesus was executed was because many of the Jews in Israel at that time didn’t see him fitting their exceptions for a kick-ass, Rambo-like knight in shining armor who would kick Roman butt and restore the Kingdom of Israel (though he was close enough as far as Rome was concerned).

Wink asserts that Jesus wanted to subvert that dominant myth of redemptive violence with a new myth of redemptive love, i.e., unconditional, radically inclusive, vulnerable love.

While many Christians (including, but not limited to, the Eastern Orthodox) celebrate Jesus’ resurrection as one where God proves that even the worst of the ways of the world cannot separate us from God’s love and can’t vanquish love. Might doesn’t make right, love does. Love wins—and the vulnerable, risky, seemingly foolish and naïve ways of Jesus, the way of the cross, are the real and best way to live.

And yet, the vast majority of Christians in the West celebrate Jesus’ execution. Heck Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ was a huge box office hit. It met people’s prurient need to see an innocent man’s ass kicked, lashed, stripped, whipped, and nailed to a cross in order to vicariously defeat the depths of their own perceived sin and wretchedness in order to save them. So rather than experiencing salvation through practicing Jesus’ nonviolent, radical, subversive, and counter-cultural ways, these Christians think that they’re saved by God dishing out “the wrath that is rightfully due to humanity” upon his son Jesus as our proxy, as our whipping boy, as our scapegoat. It’s no wonder that evangelical and fundamentalist Christians tend to not engage in mournful and somber Good Friday services—they relish and delight in Jesus’ crucifixion! In this logic, God was employing redemptive violence—and if it’s good enough for God, it’s good enough for us.

Hence, most evangelicals and fundamentalists (and due to their influence, most American Christians) are fans of capital punishment and are believers in Constantine’s notion of “just wars.”

One of the songs that I think has done the most to distort and corrupt our faith is the evangelical praise song “Our God is an awesome God.”

“In a playful, yet perhaps insightful, way let me suggest that the motto of what I’m broadly calling conservative Christianity is “God is awesome and He’s the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.” Worded another way: “Our God is an awesome God, He reigns from heaven above,” which is from a popular praise song. That sort of theological imagery is perhaps an unconscious reason why so many Christian conservatives supported President George W. Bush’s war of “shock and awe” with Iraq. Societies base their policies and actions upon the view of God that they embrace. A god described with the words, “When He rolls up His sleeves 
He ain’t just putting on the Ritz…There’s thunder in his footsteps and lightning in his fists… Our God is an awesome God”[1] is a god who’s prepared to kick some butt. People strive to emulate the god they adore and if the popular view of God is vengeful and violent, then the people of that society will naturally be vengeful and violent as well.”[2]

Steve Muhandro

Rather than love their enemies, they prefer to engage in the theological version of over-excited football players who spike the ball in the end-zone and gloat with dances and taunts.

I don’t deny the reality of the resurrection, and I certainly enjoy a great Easter celebration—and consider every Sunday throughout the year as a “mini-Easter”—heck, everyday for that matter. I’ve experienced resurrection power in my life and have witnessed it in the lives of others.

That said, I’m not willing to pretend. I’m not willing to pretend that Jesus’ resurrection completely defeated evil—a quick glance at a newspaper will disprove that. And, I’m not willing to pretend that just because I’m a believing Christian, that I no longer struggle with sin or backslide into times of despair, grief, addiction and self-sabotage.

Even though I believe that God’s love will ultimately win-out in the big picture, on a day to day basis, there is a lot of shit that still happens. There is brokenness all around us—and if we’re being honest— within us.

I think songwriter Leonard Cohen has it right that “Love is not a victory march… it is cold and broken hallelujah.”

I feel little motivation to gloat or mock anyone—including the devil (if I were to believe in such a being). Indeed, if anything, metaphorically, I feel sympathy for the devil.  I pity him. I love him. I see how I’m like him and I feel understanding and compassion. Jesus’ last words weren’t “F you!” Or, “I’ll be back!” They were “Father forgive them.”

Seems to me that it’s time to grow up and sing a new song. It’s time for us to sing songs that better match the teachings and ways of Jesus as well as better honor the reality of our on-going struggles to consciously choose to act in accordance to the resurrection or not to.

I nominate The Cave by Mumford & Sons and The Avett Brother’s Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise for our consideration.

I waited until after Easter to submit this blog—as I didn’t want to rain on any of our parades—at least not on the day of them. I realize that my voice is a dissenting and minority one and that I may be shouting to the wind. Future Easter celebrations aren’t likely to change very much, but then again, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus weren’t very likely either.

In Christ,

Roger Wolsey

Roger Wolsey is an ordained United Methodist pastor. He is the author of Kissing Fish: christianity for people who don’t like christianity. He blogs for Patheos, Huffington Post, and Elephant Journal and is an active member of The Christian Left Facebook page.

This post originally appeared at Elephant Journal and is reprinted with permission from the author.

A Progressive Easter Sermon

This world is a tough place to live.

And parts of it are really tough. Places like Antarctica with it’s frigid cold; the top of mountains with their thin air; desserts with their lack of water and vegetation; the oceans with their tidal waves, hurricanes, etc. – places like these are pretty inhospitable to humans.

But it’s not just these sorts of extreme places that are hard to live in. The regular parts of the world are tough too. We learn this as children. We start learn to walk and right away what happens? We trip and fall down on the sidewalk and skin our knees and bump our heads on rocks! We bang up against things and it hurts! Ouch!

Yet, God created this world and God said it was good when S/He created the oceans and the land, and all the rocks and creatures in it and God hopes we’ll love it and think it’s good too!

But what God didn’t create and what God doesn’t love is the ways that we tend to run our societies. God doesn’t love it that we’ve created a world where we live by the law of the jungle, where “might makes right,” where we compete and hoard, and where powers and domination systems place the overwhelming majority of humanity into abject poverty and misery.

The first major, massive scale instance of this kind of human-created system of power and might was the world’s first territorial empire, the Roman empire. Rome conquered many nations through the means of military, political, economic, and ideological exploitation and domination.

They imposed a Pax Romana – a “Roman peace” – which meant that there was peace unless a nation dared to resist them – and then they’d be brutally squashed back into submission.

When Octavian defeated Anthony and Cleopatra, he changed his name to “Augustus” and the Roman empire took things to an even higher level than ever before. The Romans had just gone through 20 years of civil war and Augustus ended it. He brought peace – 40 years of peace! The people responded, “Thank God! Praise Augustus! He must be Divine!”

And then the Roman “Emperor Cult” was born which was the heart and soul of the Roman Empire. It created a unifying ideology which asserted that Caesar was God, that he was Son of God, that he was the Prince of Peace, that he was Savior, Redeemer, and Lord! And Rome expected all of its subject nations to call him those things too.

Well, God had quite enough of that! So when the next Ceasar was in power, a certain Yeshua of Nazareth arrived on the scene. And this Yeshua, this Jesus, from a podunk town in a backwater province on the eastern fringe of the Roman Empire, had the gall to take on and defy that arrogant Roman ideology!

Some of this is a bit like the story line in the movie The Matrix. In The Matrix, humankind has been relegated to serving as cogs in a machine that they’re powerless to do anything about, as nourishment for a world run by machines. And yet there was a prophesy that a messiah would come along to liberate humanity from their oppressed state.

That savior came in the form of Neo, “the One”, Neo Anderson (meaning “Son of Man”). And it’s no accident that that’s the same title that Jesus used to refer to himself. But unlike Neo, Jesus’ way wasn’t about fighting back and becoming even better at wielding deadly martial arts and the ways of the world than anyone else.

Instead, the way that Jesus taught was that of out-right defiance and rejection of any powers that be, any powers or principalities that dared to usurp God’s power in God’s world!

Those false powers were the ones who really had the gall — the gall to create systems which put all of the property and farms into the hands of a few and oppressed the masses by turning them into tenant farmers or share croppers who ended up beholden to debt collectors; the gall to create a system where women had no voice or legal standing but were instead treated as the property of men; the gall to create a system where humans enslaved other humans; the gall to justify oppressing and exploiting the poor, and force young people to fight in wars of expansion; the gall to say worldly leaders and worldly powers are gods instead of God Him/Herself!

But Jesus’ way was a nonviolent way. He didn’t use the world’s ways against the world. He simply said that the worldly powers are impotent – they have no power, that the real power is with God and in the Kingdom of God!

And then Jesus demonstrated that power by reaching out to the people who society had rejected; and He invited people to repent and to change their way of thinking and living so that they could break free from ways which collaborated with the empire so that they could start living freely and abundantly in deep community and communion with one another – sharing all that they have and turning away from the domination system which sought to oppress them!

And then He went into the belly of the beast – right into the Temple in Jerusalem which had been collaborating with Roman dominance and said NO! He condemned the corrupted Temple system which had been blessing the unjust status quo and cooperating with the Roman Empire. He knocked over the tables in the courtyard and boldly confronted the powers and exposed them as frauds. He took back that house for God’s purposes – not Rome’s!

And then… the “empire struck back.” The domination system conspired against Him and they dished out the worst they could do – they had Him arrested, beaten, and executed. One thing the powers that be can’t tolerate is being rejected and so they rejected Him! They killed Him. As they say in communist China, “the nail that rises up gets hammered back down.” Take that! End of story. And with that, Jesus’ disciples (at least the men) hid away in fear.

But then, something extraordinary, something completely off the hook happened! God said, “Uh, No. That isn’t the end of the story.” And though He was indeed good and dead, God amazingly and graciously resurrected Jesus – back to life! Jesus of Nazareth who had been betrayed by one of his own, delivered up by the chief priests, and executed by Romans under Pontius Pilate, was alive again!

The guards who’d been posted at the tomb ran to tell the chief priests what had happened. Their lives were at stake for failing to prevent the tomb from being opened. To break the Roman seal that had been placed at the entrance to the tomb was against the emperor’s law and punishable by death. So Jesus’ resurrection was an act of insubordination, insurrection, and civil disobedience. God was breaking Roman law!

And then, in a way that I can’t fully explain, Jesus showed Himself to those disciples of His who had run away in fear, and when they saw Him and recognized the nail marks on His hands, they came out of hiding! Until they experienced the risen Christ, they viewed the world the way others did. The central reality of their lives had been the power of the system and their own powerlessness in it.

But when they saw Jesus risen and alive, they unlocked the doors, came out, and began turning the world upside down! At last, they were finally converted! They knew another reality that was bolder, truer, and stronger than the powers that had been paralyzing them with fear. Jesus had risen! And Jesus was Lord – not Caesar!

They saw that all that their rabbi had been teaching them about the Kingdom of God and how its ways are better than the world’s ways is true! And that no matter what, even if the worldly powers dish-out the worst they can, even if they end up getting killed too, that even death has lost its sting! Even death can’t stop the truth of God in God’s world!

They took to the streets and started preaching the Gospel of the grace and good news of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ!

Yes, the empire tried hard to stifle their efforts – and thousands of Christians ended up on crosses, lit up as human torches, or being eaten by lions or killed by gladiators in Roman coliseums. But the more they were persecuted, the more the movement spread. And it spread like wildfire! Until, eventually, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire, and the empire itself was dissolved!

Today, the living resurrected Christ stands before us. He knows us and He knows our fears. We’re afraid of economic hardship, we’re afraid of debt, we’re afraid of diminishing resources, and environmental destruction. We’re afraid of racial tensions and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. We’re afraid of the hurt between men and women, between people of different nations, and we’re afraid a state of endless war. We fear for ourselves and those we love.

Like those first disciples, we’re afraid of the power of the systems of the world with their armies, their courts, their prisons, and their threats. Like them, we fear our own powerlessness, weakness, and sense of inadequacy. We’re insecure, frightened by our feelings, and wary of trusting each another. We feel both the guilt of our sin and the vulnerability of our broken places. Above all, we fear pain, suffering, and death.

We too are hiding behind locked doors and are afraid to come out. Jesus knows our fear and wants us to know His resurrection. He says, “Go, tell my disciples that I have risen and that I’m going before them!” He tells us not to doubt but to believe!

Jesus lived and died to liberate us from our sins, our doubts, our fears, our false sense that we’re dependent and beholden to the worldly powers that be, and from the addictions we use to medicate and numb ourselves. God raised Him from the grave to show us His victory over them and to set us free from their power. And now, Jesus calls us to boldly pick up our crosses and follow Him! Yeah, that’s right! He wants us to follow Him into harm’s way! But He wants us to do so knowing that no matter what, God’ll make things right in the end!

So, what about us? What about you and me today? Do we still doubt that Jesus’ way of love, that His vulnerable “way of the cross” makes much sense in this modern, competitive, might-makes-right world? Do we think that kind of “suffering servanthood” can make a difference or transform our world of new empires and huge and powerful systems and institutions?

Well, those early disciples felt overwhelmed by the forces and powers that ruled their day, but they were converted! They had become people of the resurrection! They began living lives filled with the fruits of conversion. Friends, we too can know the power of Christ’s resurrection!

Like those first disciples, we need to come out of hiding and see the risen Lord! Seeing is believing, and believing is knowing that we must turn and follow the way of Jesus. The resurrection exposes bogus powers and restores us to right community and to who we really are! I’m not “Roger: a slave to the system!” I’m “Roger: free in Christ! Liberated to advocate for justice and to serve God’s people and meet their needs” – and nothing’s gonna stop me! And the same is true for you!

Every time we act upon Jesus’ lordship, every time we follow His teachings, every time we operate from a place of love, every time we put our faith into action, we’re demonstrating His victory! Every time we refuse to be controlled by a political or economic system; every time we deny the absolute authority of the state; every time we claim Christ’s freedom over our fear; tear down the walls of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and religion; love our enemies; stand with the poor; forgive those who’ve wronged us, or resist the violence of the nations by acting for peace, we’re demonstrating the victory of Christ in the world!

His victory is present wherever it is claimed and acted upon. Friends, let’s dedicate the rest of our lives to claiming and acting upon this victory! Jesus Christ is risen today! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.

-   This message was inspired by the resurrection stories in Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, The Powers that Be by Walter Wink, and The Last Week by Marcus Borg & John Dominic Crossan. A few paragraphs at the end are adapted from the last chapter of Jim Wallis’ The Call to Conversion.

Roger Wolsey is an ordained United Methodist pastor. He is the author of Kissing Fish: christianity for people who don’t like christianity. He blogs for Patheos, Huffington Post, and Elephant Journal and is an active member of The Christian Left Facebook page.