Like an old, old man trying to walk to a gas station lugging his red gas can with him wishing he could remember exactly what it was like to never forget to fill up the dang car, we have staggered along till the end is coming.
I think we, the United Methodist Church's little guys, are nearing that tipping point. The clergy in the trenches of small churches who are being bludgeoned with yak, yak, yaking from all the folks on high who somehow are talking for everyone, though I didn't even know there was an election.
Very long, long story told quickly, we are headed toward what is our denomination's big deal General Conference in 2016. Make sure you get that. In 2016. We've just had Avenger's Age of Ultron on May 1 of 2015. They're filming the next Marvel installment due to be released in May 2016. And AFTER that comes the General Conference. Yet we are talking about it already.
And we will be talking about it all year. I won't. This is the last time, I promise. We'll talk about petitions and amendments and such for more than a year. Like the coming brouhaha of a presidential race, we will be showered and drenched and drowned with talk and talk and some more talk.
This week was frankly a big one on the ol' see-saw. A Gallup poll came out that showed that 60 percent of respondents believed that marriages between same-sex couples should be legally recognized, the largest in history, and the see-saw went up Then, a study which reportedly showed conversation with gay persons would change someone's mind about same-sex marriage was retracted after it was shown to have used false data and the see-saw went down. The girl scouts are allowing transgendered kids in and the boy scouts are allowing gay leaders and the see-saw is up and down and up and down and we're on a cultural precipice unlike any we've ever come across.
In my denomination, we are trying our best to come to grips with what we're going to do with the gay question. The latest shot fired cross the bow of the conservatives was fired by a body called the connectional table. The body approved proposed legislation to that 2016 event that would, among other things, allow clergy to perform gay marriage ceremonies and local conferences to ordain non-celibate homosexuals. The denomination's traditional Book of Discipline has historically said that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. The body proposes, in its way forward, that individual clergy and congregations will be able to decide whether they will perform or allow the performance of same gender weddings in their churches and allow annual conferences to decide whether or not to ordain self avowed practicing homosexuals.
So, on we go, teetering on the brink of schism. One little push and ...
I debated not writing about this because I'm just a very, very, very small cog in the big ol' UMC wheel, but even very, very, very small cogs must on occasions make noise in order to get the grease, as it were.
First, I can't fix this. I tried in my own little bitty way. I picked up my cross, er, keyboard and wrote about the need to be one body, to stay together no matter what. That the UMC was better together than apart. That splitting would be the worst of all the ideas. I still believe that. We disagree on a thousand different things, yet we are one body. Till we're not.
But I believe we're reaching, if we haven't already reached, the stage that neither side is going to budge. Those of us in the middle will have to make a decision we don't necessarily want to make one day soon. And the way we've lived in this denomination will change forever.
A guy I admire with whom I went through Cursillo with a few years back, the Rev. Brady Whitton, wrote a thoughtful blog this week that stated in part "I am one who believes we do not have to physically divide over the issue of homosexuality. I have dear friends, Brothers and Sisters in Christ, who I do not agree with on this issue. But we are united in our love for Jesus Christ, and a sense of common identity under the United Methodist banner. I served recently on a Kairos weekend with people who have different views that I do on the issue of homosexuality. The Holy Spirit used us in a powerful and transformative way! Now there are surely those -- on both sides -- who will decide not to live with a compromise and will leave the church. In my opinion we will be poorer without them, but they are free to make their choice."
I, too, have friends who disagree with me on a ton of things. I accept that as part and parcel of friendship. I don't believe I have to pick up my ball and go home when that happens.
I've spent the past year in New Orleans. We've had gay persons in our church during that period. I've become a good friend of one in that time, had coffee and discussed how gay persons, gay Christian persons, live their lives. He knows I grew up in a very conservative environment in rural Mississippi. He knows I don't know what to make of all this. He knows I struggle because I clearly, at least in my mind, read the scriptures and see problems with the question.
But He also knows I'm trying to figure out exactly how to be a pastor, a healer, an evangelist to persons whose shoes I can not possible walk in. I do know it's not my right to tell anyone who they can love. I do know it's not my business what goes on in anyone's bedroom. But he knows I hate, truly hate, the way all this is going for both sides of the argument. And he knows I'm really happy I got to know him.
He accepts me for the person I am, and he has reminded me that his own mother in a small Texas town can't go to her Baptist church because the persons in her town won't accept her because she has a gay son. He wants simply for me to accept and welcome some mom in my next church who wants to worship and to love her child at the same time. I hope I'm that guy. I hope I can help her. Heck, I hope she can help me to learn even more about love.
He knows all this, and we've talk scriptures and life and coffee and the United Methodist's stand on who he is and, and, and ...
It's not easy. It won't be in the future.
I can't wrap my mind and heart about what to do next. If there is a fence surrounding this question, I guess I'm straddling it. I know that. But ultimately if we're going to keep sinners out of our churches, none of us, including me the worst of all sinners as Paul wrote, will be allowed.
As a very, very, very small cog in a big honking UMC wheel, where billions of dollars are floating around and 90 million dollar churches are being built we are in a fight to be right which will run slam over all the little bitty folks in the next five years (for the fight in 2016 will bleed on into 2020).
This fight, on the surface, won't be won -- by anyone, not the right, not the left, and most assuredly not the middle, which will be beaten into submission some day by one side or the other. There are two luncheons at our own Louisiana Annual Conference this year for the two sides of the issue. Imagine that. With all the hurting folks in our state, all the poor, all the homeless, all the battered women, all the racist gathering for the coming storms, all the budget issues and health issues and on and on, we're having luncheons to talk about someone's sex life that is none of our business in the first place.
I was going to go to both, to listen to the rhetoric and see what I thought.
They scheduled them at the same time.
You must, MUST, be on one side or the other.
Here's my facts:
I'm still a conservative/moderate on a bunch of things and a liberal/moderate on others. I'm less conservative on some things and very contemporary in worship for example on others. It's been a long life and the winds of change have carved my face like cliffs in New Mexico.
But this I know:
Jesus said love our neighbor as ourself. He didn't much seem interested in what their background was. He just said love them.
But Jesus told the woman who the Pharisees wanted stoned to go and sin no more.
Somewhere in there is our answer. It's not a question of can we love everyone, it's about what is sin and what is not and what these scriptures really were meant to say.
Love and let Jesus judge seems to be the answer. But that's not in our Book of Discipline.
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