All Her Children

Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.

-Jesus of Nazareth, Luke 7:35

This is, I guess, for my United Methodist colleagues and friends, who may not be so united for very much longer.  I have watched what you folks have been going through over the past few days and I have great sympathy for what it feels like, because Presbyterians have been there fairly recently.  In fact, most of the duration of my 18 years of training and ordained ministry have had some sort of decision about our denominational stance regarding LGBTQI+ folk on the horizon or in the background.  That our denominations came to different conclusions is not surprising.  After all Arminians and Calvinists have a long history of unresolved differences.  Theologically speaking we have always been frenemies, because we're both reformed, but from different branches of the tree.  I will always enjoy referring to you as the "Baptists who could read," and you will always get a little glint in your eye whenever you ask me, "So what is the deal with predestination anyway?" I actually don't mind arguing about that, because I've got a secret: it's called universal salvation through Christ, and I stole it from Karl Barth, C.S. Lewis and George McDonald. I have also become much more comfortable with being labeled a heretic or an apostate than I was 15 years ago.

Once upon a time, I read Chesterton's Orthodoxy, as a sort of creed for conservative types, I liked his self-assured logic and witty slams on relativism and lazy liberalism.  I hearkened to highly rationalist forms of exegesis that tried to explain how the "clear moral instructions" contained in Scripture were supposed to push back our ability to love and accept folks who were different from us.  Then I started doing this thing called pastoral work, which involves actual people and their actual problems, but more importantly puts me in constant contact with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and trying to figure out how to present that "Good News," to hurting people around 50 different ways a year.  In the beginning I was always trying to pass a test, to be orthodox, to be intellectually sound, to be convincing and winsome; sometimes I was, sometimes I wasn't.

Then another thing happened, I started to encounter real suffering and evil.  I watched a drug addiction rip my brother out of our family and eventually off of this mortal coil.  I counseled a couple in an abusive relationship that ended in a triple homicide.  I served churches full of people who have all kinds of flaws.  I have been personally wounded by people who questioned my integrity because they disagree with me on various issues.  I have lost people that I dearly loved. I have been welcomed into sacred places and I have walked a very long way (not just on the Camino).

After only 15 years, I can no longer recognize that young man who wanted to be Chesterton sure of himself. I'm not that sure of much anymore, but I have come to some peace with the notion that homosexuality is not evil. Promiscuity and infidelity are; sexuality that defies the sacred bond of love between two people is, but given what I know about the actual face of evil, two women who have been together for thirty years finally getting married is not evil.  A gay man wearing a rainbow stole and being ordained to this vocation of ministry is not evil. 

Do we need to recognize our sin and repent? Absolutely, and it's important that we all learn to recognize those places where we sin.  But there isn't a whole lot of Jesus talking about how we need to judge others in the Bible, in fact, it's rather the opposite. I have come to believe that we sin more by condemning others instead of loving them.  That the crowd with the stones were the real sinners. I have come to see, in Jesus of Nazareth, a man who consistently took his place with the broken and hurting people of the world rather than with the "authorities," and the arbiters of right and wrong.

That said, I understand why the folks in the Methodist church did what they did recently.  They are a global church and thus were put in a place where they were either going to offend the LGBTQI+ community and those who affirm them, or they were going to offend the millions of folks from the parts of the world where an older and more conservative morality still carries a lot of weight. Honestly, I would not wish such a global communion to impose western standards on so many parts of the world that have already suffered much from our colonial impulses.

I see the pain and the frustration all around on my social media.  To those on the losing side, take heart, love will win this thing eventually, God is patient, even when we aren't.  To those on the "winning" side try not to be smarmy jerks, you're not as right as you think you are. Remember that God often, if not always, sides with the losers, the last and the least, be humble.

I know you didn't ask for this advice, and depending on where you are now, you may not be able to hear it very well.  I'm offering this up because I know how hurtful this particular moment feels, and how traumatic the aftermath of it is likely to be.  You are a part of this Body of Christ, just as I am, and as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12: "For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body..."  Whatever part of the body you happen to be, and whatever part I happen to be, I feel your pain.