The Peripatetic Preacher Faces His Fractured Church (2)

I can hardly say that any of the dust has settled from the called General Conference session of the United Methodist Church; if anything, a veritable dust storm has been kicked up during the past week. When my wife, Diana, and I went to choir practice at our church, Westwood UMC in Los Angeles, last Thursday night, we quickly noticed that someone had placed black tape over the “United Methodist” part of our church’s full name. Furthermore, this same “meme” appeared in numerous other UM churches, as some places even covered the United Methodist part with rainbow tape, a rather nice touch, I thought. My wife suggested that the black tape at Westwood was like an armband, signaling deep mourning. That struck me as about right.

Yesterday, at church, I had been asked to lead two events. The first was in the worship service that we call “The Loft.” The pastor/leader of that gathering had asked me several weeks ago to facilitate a conversation on the book of Job, something I am always ready to do, having spent 50 years of my scholarly life on that book. However, the General Conference decision to pass a very restrictive plan for the future of the church, over against a plan that would have provided far more openness and freedom for those of us who have committed ourselves to ministry with all of God’s people, especially with our LGBTQIA siblings, precluded my intended discussion of Job. Like many churches in this part of the world, Westwood has been open to people of great diversity for many years, and the congregation in the Loft represents that great diversity in about every way one can name.

Worship in the Loft is quite relaxed in style, focusing primarily on dialogue among the assembly. All are given space to have their say, and yesterday, many of them did just that. I had to leave at 11:30 (they began at 10:00) to rush to my second role of the day, that as leader of our FollowUp, the adult educational offering each week. There I really was going to talk about Job, and I did with that group. The Loft conversation continued, I assume for some time, but I was deeply impressed by the thoughtful comments I heard, and by the varying views, seriously and lovingly expressed.

Those thoughts included: a kind of smoldering anger from several LGBTQIA folks who had quite rightly grown sick and tired of hearing from the national UM church that they are finally little more than third class church members, if that. Several asked, in different ways, just what was it about the Methodist church that made them better Christians, distinctive followers of Jesus? Did they need the Methodist church at all to be good Christians? After all, the Methodist church seemed quite overtly not to need or want them, so should they not return the favor?

And then there was the comment from a member who had spent a great part of her working life in Africa, and she was troubled by the ways that some of us in the room, myself included, were blaming the African delegates for voting against inclusion and thereby generalizing about Africans as somehow dreadfully ill-informed or dangerously conservative in their theologies. Were we not, she said, playing our colonial cards again, attempting to scold the ignorant others to be like us, we who are the enlightened and appropriately faithful ones? There was much truth there, I think, however much I did not want to hear of my white colonial power play. An African-American woman, quite new to the Methodist church, spoke of her own exclusion as woman and minority and wondered whether this exclusionary move did not perpetuate negative behaviors that she had seen in her own life all too often. It was a passionate discussion, yet not a rancorous one, and I hated to leave, for I still had and have much to learn. I may have been asked to lead, but I discovered in that group that I much more needed to be led and to listen.

Could that be where we are at this particularly critical moment, sensing a need to listen before we act? The issues around this question are hugely complex. Should we simply withdraw from the UMC and form something else that reflects our understanding of the Bible and theology? Should we stand in defiance of what the national church has apparently demanded of us, namely to cease our full inclusion of LGBTQIA siblings? Since there are faith communities that already are fully inclusive, the United Church of Christ, the Lutheran Church of America, the Presbyterian Church USA, the Episcopal Church of America, among others, why should we not swell their ranks with disaffected Methodists?

And what about the pensions of UM clergy (this is quite existential for my wife and me)? And what about the property, owned by each annual conference; do we just leave all that and start anew? These are real questions, I know, but they are hardly answerable right now. The Judicial Counsel of our church first must rule on the constitutionality of what the General Conference has passed, and already it is apparent that there are some problems with the “Traditional Plan,” so-called, as it seems to run afoul of the UM Discipline, the constitution of the church. Yet, even if the Judicial Counsel finds some difficulties in the Traditional Plan, and amends it in the light of the Discipline, that plan remains as the current blueprint of the church, and as a blueprint it has for many of us significant and egregious problems that no amount of unconstitutional shortcomings can hope to overcome. The basic problem is: it says that we may welcome LGBTQIA siblings to our churches and we may baptize and teach them. They can sing in our choirs and serve on our committees, but they may under no circumstances be married by our clergy in their sanctuaries, and they may not be ordained to serve in our churches. And that is plainly and simply not acceptable to those of us who love and worship the God of full acceptance and radical inclusion.

So, there we are. We are at an impasse, and just how we will be able to move off that impasse, through separation, or a new thing, or a combination of both, I simply do not know. I vow for now to listen, and listen hard. And I vow to state forcefully and clearly what my God has called and is calling me to state: the church is God’s church, and its doors are open to ALL, without exception, to any who would worship and serve in all the ways we have traditionally made available to those who are called, regardless of their race or gender or age or sexual orientation or identity. There can be no restrictions in God’s church, and I am dedicated to that vision as God continues to give me strength to proclaim it.

By the way, it turned out that even old Job had a good word for me while I was trying to elucidate his complexities for my FollowUp class. I have long believed that the authors of Job and II-Isaiah were in real dialogue with one another during the Babylonian exile of Israel. Isaiah made the sharp claim that the God of Israel was in control of all things, created both weal and woe as he put it, and that that God would brook no questions of divine power. Just live and act out of the certainty that God does all, said Isaiah. His potent claim about God obviously struck a chord with many since his rather small treatise has played an out-sized role in Christian theology and worship for two millennia. Job, on the other hand, was heartily sick of this view, having been bludgeoned with it for all of his religious life. And though he first believed that his exemplary behavior would ensure the good favor of God, after he lost it all, he turned to sharp and pointed questions of the universe and God, and had a very hard time shutting up! Not question God, Isaiah? Ridiculous! One must always question God, and God loves nothing better than a loud-mouth interlocutor, far better than God loves a pious namby-pamby defender of God who claims to know far more than can ever be known by any human being. This God cannot be reduced to a bumper-sticker slogan, but remains mysterious and gritty and odd and wonderful and loving all at once. Isaiah’s God plainly will not do.

I stand with Job. I will pursue my questioning and my listening and attempt thereby to discover the ways I should go in this mess my church finds itself in. Patient waiting will not do; active listening and sharp questions are my chosen way. I can only imagine where this will lead, but I fully intend to keep at it. I hope many of you will join me.

(images from Wikimedia Commons)