Last Thoughts for the Morning: How Do We Recognize the Voice of God?

Friends-- I promised several of you that I would try to have a good time while in St. Louis. As one of my coaches put it, All work and no play makes Tom a really dull boy. Got it. And this is only my second trip to St. Louis, ever, the first being when I was 10 or 11 and my sister Debs (quite a fine pianist back in the day) was doing some kind of piano something at Washington University. I remember we stayed in a hotel with a roof-top pool, but little else. The Arch may not have been completed when I was here before. So... I'm going out. Hope to tram to the top of the Arch. Hope for a tour of Busch Stadium. The Magnarini's tell me I have to go to The Hill for Italian food.

All that said… I have been studying and praying this morning, and wrote one more piece this morning. Do not miss the practical information I published earlier, but here is another entry, with several quotes by Rowan Williams from his 2017 book, Holy Living: The Christian tradition for today (Bloomsbury).

The quotes at the end are much better than anything I have to say about them, but I did try to suggest how certain lines are "speaking" to me, and may be God's voice if I can recognize it.

Peace of Christ and Pray for the General Conference.

+ + +

Betty, one of the wonderful senior members at the church I serve, always asks me the same question—whether in a Wednesday morning Bible study where is faithful to attend, or in the hallway before worship when she offers me a suggestion for an upcoming sermon, and sometimes at the Wednesday night dinner table, children running all-around in what we call “holy pandemonium.”

Betty says, “Tom, how do we know when God is speaking to us?”

              “Tom, I wish you would preach a sermon on how we can know when God is speaking to us.”

              “I would like to know how to recognize when God is speaking to us.”

              Occasionally I feel nonplussed. I mean, I think I have answered that question, multiple times, or tried to answer that question, in lessons and sermons and conversations. But if she is still asking chances are I have not answered her well enough to settle the matter. Then again, is that matter ever settled? For any of us?  

              How do we hear the voice of God, or recognize the voice of God, or trust that what we are hearing is the voice of God and not another, smaller, lesser voice. The voice of my own prejudice, for example, or the voice of my parents or teachers.

I find myself asking Betty’s question today, in view of the weekend, for myself and for the delegates—how will we know when God is speaking? If God is speaking? Perhaps you remember that terrifying warning from the prophet Amos 8: “’Behold, the days are coming,’ declares the Lord GOD, ‘when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. People will stagger from sea to sea and roam from north to east, seeking the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.’”

Maybe there is no voice, no word to hear. Some have suggested as much, that God may be done with us already.

I disagree. I believe that God is present and will speak a recreating word; I believe that Jesus is present, too, in all the ways he promised, and not least when there is conflict among brothers and sisters (the context of Matthew 18:15-20, which is often quoted, has to do with disagreements!); I believe the Spirit is brooding over this chaos to bring about order and arrangement and fruitfulness…

Still, how do WE know when God is speaking? Amidst all the noise that will crowd our ears these next days, will we be able to hear a small, still voice? Or is still and small the way God’s voice always comes?

              I can only answer for myself, and even then in with caution, self-doubt, a certain humble wariness. I think I recognize God speaking to me when I “hear” two or more different or separate “witnesses” or voices at the same time.

              Most recently, last night before retiring, I was reading Rowan William’s new book, Holy Living: The Christian Tradition for Today.  I have already mentioned that this book has a (for me) helpful chapter on issues of human sexuality and marriage and the ways the New Testament might not be answering the questions we want to ask of it…

              Anyway, last night I was reading further along in a chapter devoted to St. Teresa, a sixteenth century nun and spiritual genius. A couple of lines from the chapter just jumped-out at me. Williams writes:

              “Jesus’ accessibility to all is a constant theme, as is the wonder with which we should think about our inclusion in the family of Christ’s brothers and sisters.” –p. 126

              (Perhaps I am hearing that If I spend more time considering, with wonder, that I am by grace a member of Christ’s family, I will have less time to consider, with disdain, who I think is not.)

              “What Teresa envisages for her communities, male and female (she helped reform the Carmelite order—TRS), is a genuinely apostolic plainness. And she sees this as the most effective response we can make to a situation of deep crisis in the Christian world.” –126-127

              (Perhaps I am hearing, in this time of deep crisis in the Christian world—Roman Catholic scandals and enclaves; Southern Baptist #metoo revelations; special called General Conferences in the UMC—that the most effective response I can make is to maintain apostolic plainness: prayer, worship, study and holy fellowship. See Acts 2:42)

              “And if we are troubled by the conflicts and failures of the Church in our world, what we need to do is not to panic, or freeze in defensive and angry posturing, but to get on with the real work of opening a way for God’s transforming presence.” –p. 127, emphasis mine.

              (Perhaps what I heard was a reminder that what we are doing at Hawthorne Lane, as we can by God’s grace, is “opening a way for God’s transforming presence” in our own lives and the lives of others who come to us by God’s invitation. And yes, I was convicted by that text… though I don’t think I have been frozen or in a panic, or angry, I do think that I find myself not-quite-despairing about the witness of the Church in the world.)

              “…the calling to be with Jesus as selflessly as possible—in the knowledge that the degree to which we stay in his company is the degree to which we make the right kind of difference in the world.” --p. 129

              (I know I heard this: that as I have been talking about Christians and Hawthorne Laners being “uniquely loved and gathered, uniquely gifted and sent, to make a godly difference in the ungodly world,” Williams reminds me that the way to make that godly difference is to stay close to Jesus as selflessly as possible. But what a challenge, in that most of us want Jesus selfishly.)

              There was a time in Jesus’ ministry when a man stood up and said, “Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me!” (Luke 12:13ff). If one way to read General Conference is like that, another way to read it is as an unnamed quest for apostolic plainness—to get away from nonessentials and back to the basics that help us open a way for God’s transformation, in us and through us.

February 22, 2019





Blog #1 (No, really)

              I am calling this blog #1 because by the time you read it I will be registered (as an “observer”) and will have gotten the final schedule for the Conference. The basic schedule is here:

http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/general-conference-2019-schedule.

You will note that tomorrow is a day of prayer and preparation (including, I suspect, a fair amount of caucusing among the various supporters of the various plans). The actual business of the meeting starts Sunday morning with a twenty-minute opening worship service. Then, four hours in the morning, five in the afternoons, till “Final adjournment” on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. (I got a little shudder when I saw that terminology.)

This is kind of what it will look like… a shot by Mike Dubose from UN News Service.

 

The bishops will be up on a dias in rows in the front the floor area; a reminder, the bishops have no vote at all. Only the delegates, almost 1000 of them from around the world, will be the deciders.

If you are interested in the “Advance Edition of the Daily Christian Advocate,” which is 240 pages long but will give you the real stuff in terms of organization, rules, and the means by which the bishops will hope to keep the “conferencing holy,” as it were, you can download it here:

http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/gc2019-advance-edition-daily-christian-advocate.

              Once the conference starts, there will be live-streaming, of course, at:

http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/general-conference-2019-multimedia.

              Interestingly, there will be interviews with leaders, delegates, etc, available for watching both live and in archival form. Just hit the tab under the multimedia link.

After each day’s session a “Daily Christian Advocate,” will summarize in journalistic form the happenings of that day. You may find those links at

http://www.umc.org/topics/general-conference-2019-special-session.

              In fact, if you go to www.umc.org anytime over the next few days, and click on Special Session of the General Conference, you will find MUCH material to help you see what is happening. Or, he said cynically, not happening.

Friday, 11:09 a.m.

The Way I Am Reading

Friends--

This is the longer post I promised earlier this evening. I think it will be the last post anywhere near this length, and it may or may not interest you to know "how I am reading" what "is written in the Law." Or it may.

A couple of weeks ago I noted that the way Jesus responded to the lawyer, when the lawyer stood to  "test" him with a question regarding the Commandments--"What is written in the Law? How do you read?"--comprise two really different questions.  It is one thing to be able to quote chapter and verse; but when verses disagree, or when there is ambiguity and confusion as to how we might apply those verses, then the second question is crucial: HOW we read what is written there.

So, here it is. The best I can do right now to make sense of all that is written.

Pray for the General Conference.

I

              “What is written in the Law? How do you read?”

              Jesus asked that of a lawyer who came to interrogate and test him about the Greatest of the Commandments (Luke 10:25-37).

“What is written in the Law?” Jesus replied. “How do you read?”

Which are two really different questions, actually.

What is written in the law is one thing. But how we understand and apply what is written can make all the difference.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. And your neighbor as yourself,” the Lawyer said.

“Yes,” Jesus said. “You have answered rightly. Do that and you shall live.”

But the lawyer was confused at least as to who his neighbor might in fact be. While he quoted Leviticus 19:18, his reaction to the story of the Good Samaritan indicates he had chosen to ignore Leviticus 19:33-34. He read selectively, in other words—that is how he read.

As we ourselves too often do.

Which is why it is important to consider why we think the way we do…about anything. And for Christians, especially important now: how do we read “the Law”? How shall we read what is written?

Begin with the Great Commandment itself.

I think we all do want to do both things—to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind; to love our neighbors as ourselves. But as my friend Ashley says, We just have trouble discerning a way to do both, equally, at the same time.

To all appearances, those who love God (as evidenced by a more or less strict reading of the Bible) find themselves accused of mitigating or diminishing love of some of their neighbors, at least.

Conversely, those who spend their heart, soul, strength and mind in the name of neighbor-love (and all are neighbors), are often accused of disregarding the Bible, the faith once-delivered to the saints, the word of truth.

It is a dilemma. Such a dilemma that we might well ask ourselves if it is even possible to obey both commands simultaneously?

And that may be at the heart of what gets debated and decided in St. Louis.

Or, as Jesus asked the disciples, “What are you arguing about on the way?”

“We are arguing about the Great Commandment, Lord.”

 

 

II

There is a wonderful essay in the January 21, 2019, issue of The New Yorker, entitled “Choose Wisely.” Joshua Rothman is the author. The subtitle is this: “Do We Make the Big Decisions, or Do They Make Us?”

Which is another great question as we anticipate St. Louis.

Rothman notes that “one of the paradoxes of life” is that the big decisions, sometimes, occasion easy decisions; while the little decisions, oftentimes, do not. Couples may decide, for instance, whether to get married at all more easily than they can settle on where to eat dinner to celebrate their engagement.  

Likewise, it may be that some of our delegates in St. Louis have already made-up their minds on the “divorce,” but will agonize over the various “exit plans.”

              I hope not. Which is to say, I want to believe that people are still listening, still praying, truly agonizing over the big decision—and the other big questions that are looming before us.

But still it begs the question: how do we decide? About anything?

              It would be nice if it were simple.

              Just last night, one of my dearest friends pleaded with me to tell her the verses and books I am using right now to guide my own thinking about all that is before us. She would very much like there to be a rule, a single statement that puts it all to rest. Something she could point to and say, “There! That’s what I believe! That’s what the church practices.”

              “Ah, but there is!” some would say. There are laws against homosexual practice, at least, if not homosexual orientation, and the most clear-cut of them in the books of Moses. And even if we “unhitch” ourselves from the Old Testament (as Andy Stanley recently, infamously, perhaps heretically said), there are passages in the New Testament that can be read in much the same way: three Pauline texts: Romans 1:26-27; I Corinthians 6:9; I Timothy 1:9-10 (the last of which may not be from Paul’s own hand); and Jude 1:7.

Don’t these verses make it clear?

              And the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church… real clarity there, too. Only, no. Not exactly.

              All I will say is that, as to Scripture, Rowan Williams points out that the questions we are asking right now about human sexuality (and even “gay marriage”) are not necessarily the questions the NT is answering (see Holy Living: The Christian Tradition for today, pp. 81-89). Our insistence on reading what is written in those verses through “current” lenses is one of the “how we read” questions that we each need to carefully, prayerfully examine.

Further, how does one interpret the restrictive language in the above-mentioned texts alongside other authentically Pauline texts such as Galatians 3 and II Corinthians 5, where the “new creation” means we no longer regard anyone from a “human” or “previous” point of view? Grace qualified is grace nullified, or so it would seem to Paul.

In short, the matter at hand It is not just “what is written in the law?” (lots of different things), but “how do you read” those things.  

Likewise, it is precisely because of the ambiguity in the Discipline that there is confusion on what we United Methodists really stand for and why (“…all persons have sacred worth… but…”).

That very ambiguity is why some of our delegates want us to clamp-down, to tighten the restrictive language and make it less equivocal.

Only, others want us to open-up: drop the restrictive language altogether: if we are to err, let us err on the side of grace and love.  

And everybody, it seems, fears we are at an impasse.

III

Mr. Rothman’s article was really helpful to me in thinking about how we think about the decisions we make and why we decide what we decide, one way or the other.  

Every day, and always, we have to make decisions. Of course. Some of them we make in accord with the values we already possess. Psychologists call it “motivated reasoning,” where we begin with a foregone conclusion and build a case backwards, marshaling from the available evidence only those things that buttress our position (see, Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Vintage, 2013).

Decision theorists call it “Values-based decision making.” In sum, individually, or collectively, we decide to act in a way that extends and expresses my/our given, dearly-held values, many of them honed over generations. We work to restore what we feel is in disrepair, for the sake of what we already think or feel, or believe, about a situation or person or issue or group.

We have already decided how to decide, in other words. We say “Yes” to things that correspond or coincide with who, what we think we are; we say “No” to the things that do not fit.

              And maybe it is just that simple. Perhaps more moral decisions (in particular) need to be just that clear-cut: the law of the land (or the church), the same yesterday, today and forever.

But such decision-making can be limiting, too: if I am stuck in what I already believe or think, how can I grow?  If I am a priest or rabbi, a Sadducee or Pharisee, and determined to stay that way, how can I ever believe in Jesus? Well, many didn’t.

This week I found myself thinking about my friend Keith. One of the really good guys. Keith was a high school graduate and a UPS driver, who decided to start listening to opera as he drove—not because he liked opera. He didn’t. Not at first. Not at all.

But because he wanted to be the kind of person who appreciated opera.

So… “Aspiration-based decision making”: aspiring to more, or different, than we are, in order to grow. Which is to say, sometimes, the decisions we make don’t confirm our existing values, at all, but serve instead to reconfigure them. We “rewrite the equations,” Rothman says, by which we currently live our lives.

Mr. Rothman cites an example profounder than my friend Keith: the late Israeli philosopher Edna Ullman-Margalit, who marveled at the European Jews who moved to Israel after WW II—there to help found the new Israel. In their old life, she said, they may have been “browsing bookshops in Budapest.” But in their new life, they were working dry fields in the desert, in hopes for a life they could as yet only imagine. They aspired to a different, better life, for themselves and their posterity.

Old life. New life. Old Person, New Person.

You make a decision: say Yes or No: do something: not to reiterate yourself, or to show who you are already, but to reinvent yourself, to begin the journey to who you want to become.

In St. Louis, will we decide what we decide because this is who we have always been? Or will we aspire to make Jesus’ and Mr. Wesley’s church more of what we want it to become?

And not just what “we” want it to become—on either side that would be idolatrous and disastrous. Rather, will we decide in accord with what the Spirit wants the church to become?

IV

“It is the spirit that gives life.” Paul says in II Corinthians 3.

He writes, “Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 

Imagine! God has given us credentials, the authority and authorization to be ministers of a new covenant. Elsewhere Paul says that God has entrusted us with a ministry and a message of reconciliation (II Cor 5:18-19). That ministry and message, born of that Spirit, gives life beyond “the words chiseled in letters on stone tablets” (II Cor 3:7).

(As an aside, Jesus also gave the church the authority of “binding and loosing,” which we have used to good effect in view of slavery, for instance, and women clergy. I don’t understand why that piece of God’s Word, there in black and white, is absent from the discussion.)  

My pleading friend replied to what I sent her by saying that it was all very scary.

I reminded her Philippians 2, where Paul wrote, “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

I added that we might wish, in St. Louis and otherwise, that we could “do all things without murmuring and arguing, so that (we might) be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which (we) shine like stars in the world. It is by your holding fast to the word of life that I can boast on the day of Christ that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.

              Holding fast to the word of life… and some would say, “Well, of course! Read the Bible. It may be only a handful of verses, but it is right there in black and white.”

              But what is written may be less compelling than how we read it. And not being so selective may prove key.  

As evidenced by a different example. A different, “black and white,” question:

Are eunuchs allowed in the tabernacle or Temple? This is a matter of some importance in the OT, not unrelated to the fact that circumcision was the mark of the covenant.

Leviticus 21:18-20, Deuteronomy 21:18-20 say no. Absolutely not.

But Isaiah 56:1-8 says Absolutely, yes! And not only that, that they will be honored with a special place in the Temple. So, which is it? No, or Yes? Both are right there in black and white.

The Sadducees, in charge of the Temple, had no difficulty with the exclusion of eunuchs because they did not accept the authority of the prophets anyway. But Jesus did. And so do we.

And so the Spirit told Philip to “join the chariot” of the Ethiopian eunuch, who had gone up to Jerusalem to worship but had, one assumes, been excluded from the Temple (Acts 8). Philip, commissioned by the Spirit as a minister of the New Covenant, baptized him. Welcomed him into the Way.

I believe we have been given such inspiration and commission, too.

As Tom Long says, “how we read” is not just a matter of knowing the words of scripture, but in knowing the loving heart of the One who inspired scripture—most clearly evidenced in Jesus, who constantly drew circles, not lines, who broke down societal barriers and conventional wisdom in order to effect and proclaim the Kingdom of God.  

Who also criticized, relentlessly, the excluding practices of his day’s Sadducees (and Pharisees!), all the while welcoming-in the sinners and tax collectors.

And why did he do that? Excoriate the excluders and extend such a welcome?

Because the Spirit of the Lord was upon him… to preach Good News to the poor, to bind-up the broken-hearted, to set the prisoners free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. And recovery of sight to the blind.

 

              May we shine like lights in the darkness, and may our decisions reflect a real love of God, a real love of our neighbors, a sense of new covenant, and a real evidence of restored vision. 

Off I Go

              I am through security at the airport, which is always a trial by fire for me. I am not a nervous flyer, but neither am I a confident traveler. Just don’t fly frequently enough to be comfortable with the whole process.

              That said, a few thoughts as I prepare to depart for St. Louis.

              The first blogs I have posted have been longer than I expect the balance to be. Part of the reason for that is my desire to lay out some of the basic groundwork and issues before the United Methodist church. And in fact, later tonight I will post one more longish piece, which is my attempt to work-through and share my own thinking about the scriptures, especially, that are marshalled in the debate, one side to the other—and about “how I read them,” how I understand and apply them.

              Not that I am altogether clear in my own thinking. One of my hopes for St. Louis is that I can hear and learn more across the board—what frightens and inspires, what comforts and challenges, what people feel is at stake. But I am working-through it. Still thinking, still praying and struggling.

              I am clear that many people quit thinking too soon—decide too quickly, as Bill Gates said of Henry Ford, that they already know all they really need to know to make a decision. They may not struggle or pray at all.

For my part, I think we have to keep learning lest we be trapped in prior perceptions of reality. Reality is what it is, but perceptions of reality are another thing. In light of God’s reality, I pray that God will change minds and hearts in St. Louis, will lead us to become more and more the church that the Spirit wants us to become. Whatever that looks like.

              I shared that hope with a friend, recently, who replied that the notion of "What we think the Spirit wants the church to become" feels scary… I agree. But we are always struggling, or should be, to become what the Spirit wants us to become. That is what we do at Church Council or staff meeting: we try to make decisions for the current and future of the local church that reflect what Christ has called us to be. What else might it mean when Paul says, “work out your salvation in fear and trembling,” believing that “the One who began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the Day of Christ Jesus”?

Fear, trembling, scary… yep. But if fear causes us to bury our one talent in the ground…

So, I’m off. Look for the longer piece later, if you are interested.

+ + +

At a personal level, I am still pretty puny. Some of you know I have been sick this week. I took a couple of days off, which I almost never do. Midge called to check on me, afraid that I was being “consumed” by what is before the church. I don’t think I am, but I surely am attuned. Jacob, my son, says he wonders if my bum stomach is psychosomatic, and a metaphor for the next few gut-wrenching days. Perhaps.

The good news, it is close to swimsuit season and this week has helped get me shredded!

History, Not Prescience (I pray)

              It was odd, today, revisiting the Methodist Episcopal Church’s split over the issue of slavery.

              For the last few weeks I have been teaching the parents of our rather large Confirmation Class. They agreed to share the journey with their kids. While youth counselors and others have been teaching the confirmands, the parents have been meeting with me.

            
               Some were raised United Methodist. Some came from other traditions. One of the men, I recently baptized (at the same time I baptized his daughters), and another made a reaffirmation of his faith. Anyway, these are really good folk and I am proud they are so engaged.

               In previous sessions I have gone over some of the very basics: Our:

               Origins—“Dry” Anglicanism; Wesley’s at Oxford, in Savannah, on the boat, in Germany; the “Aldersgate Experience” (May 24, 1738); small groups

               Features—bible study and prayer, personal holiness and peer accountability, faith and good works (heart and hand)

               Theology/Doctrine:

What we share with others Christians: Triune God, Salvation in Jesus Christ, Scriptures and Sacraments, imago dei, Kingdom of God

What are our Distinctive Emphases: Aspects and functions of Grace; “responsible Grace” (faith and good works, mission and ministry, personal and social holiness.

              But it was so strange, today, to talk about American Methodist History, and to tell of the moral and spiritual failure of our Methodist ancestors. That is, to acknowledge again the sad fact that economics and prejudice took precedent over faith and its corollaries: hope and love.

              I will have more to say about this in subsequent posts—and about the sermon I preached today, taking a cue from Joshua Rothman’s essay in the January 21, 2019 of The New Yorker entitled, “Choose Wisely: Do We Make the Big Decisions, or Do They Make Us.” But for now, I include the class notes I used today as a reminder, and a primer for what is to come.

              These notes are not exhaustive, of course (I did all this in 45 minutes), but suggestive of the issues back in the day. Are they a harbinger?

(American) Methodist History:

(1744: First “Conference” in London: The Wesley’s, four ordained, four “lay brothers,” asking what shall we preach and how shall we preach it?

1776: Declaration of Independence (Wesley advises American Methodists to stay loyal)

1784: Methodist Episcopal Church formed at “Christmas Conference” and Lovely Lane Chapel in Baltimore

MEC is “anti-slavery” very early. Methodist missionaries encouraged slave-owners in the south to “manumit” their slaves, and many did. Baptist and Methodist preachers in the south encouraged better conditions for slaves based on white Christian’s “paternal responsibilities” for the slaves.

                           BUT: 1794: Cotton Gin—

                           South is desperate to make cotton profitable, and the gins required more labor. Working conditions deteriorated; slave uprisings.

The cotton economy prompted the south became more rigid pro-slavery, while Methodists in the North became more stridently abolitionist.

1832: James Osgood Andrew, a Methodist pastor in Oxford, GA (or Athens), is consecrated bishop. By 1842, he owns slaves.

Multiple theories as to how he acquired them: a) bought a young woman to  protect her from a less kind master, but let her work independently and keep her wages; or b) married a woman who, when she died, bequeathed him a slave left to her; c) subsequently married a widow whose first husband had been a slave owner… these are matters of continuing debate.

1840: Bishop Andrew was investigated by the MEC, but not charged.

1844: He was suspended from episcopal duty, which prompted “articles of separation” to be

              drawn-up.

1846: The Church splits (at least) three ways: MEC; MEC, South; Methodist Protestant Church (MPC), which is Wesleyan in theology but congregational in polity

1858: ME, South: 511K white members, 197K African American members, 11K Native American

Members; operating (106 schools and colleges)

James Osgood Andrew was founding Trustee of Central University, later renamed…  wait for it… Vanderbilt!

1866: Only 49K African-Americans remain

                           (AME, AME, Zion, CME; Wesleyans, Nazarenes, Salvation Army)

1939: Methodist Church (the three main groups reunite)

1968: The Methodist Church unites with the Evangelical United Brethren

The EUB were themselves a merger of the Evangelical Association/Church and the Church of the United Brethren in Christ (both ethnically German, theologically Wesleyan churches) to form The United Methodist Church (these two “source” traditions are represented by the two tongues of flame on the UM Logo)

2019: ?

Please pray for the delegates and the General Conference.

Pre-Amblings, Part 2: A Day with the Monks

February 15, 2019

I

              Today I had opportunity to pray with the monks at Belmont Abbey. Alleluia. Amen.

I am too sporadic in my attendance at the Abbey to call such prayer one of my spiritual disciplines; but I do make the pilgrimage when time and opportunity allow.

Praying with the monks is always balm to my soul. It was especially so today. And why?

I leave Thursday for St. Louis, for the special, called General Conference of the United Methodist Church related to human sexuality and, specifically, our denomination’s polity and practices related to the marriage and ordination of gay persons. I will observe first-hand the debate and actions of delegates who have been elected from all over the world and who represent widely divergent theological convictions, growing-out of conflicting interpretations of scripture, which are accompanied by fervently-held hopes and fears.

II

In a previous post (“Pre-Amblings,” February 5) I offered an overview of the four options before us: the Modified Traditional Plan, the One-Church Plan, the Connectional Conference Plan, and the Simple Plan. In a second post (“What Are the Collaterals,” February 12), I included a link to a chart that tries to anticipate the organizational/structural changes that would result from the passage of any one of the plans: “If this, then this.”

Today, though, as I headed south on I-85, I was not thinking in such administrative or objective terms. I was grieved in spirit: wondering what is to become of us United Methodists. I knew I needed the solace that prayer alone can offer, and not just “prayer,” but the specific kind of praying the monks do at Belmont Abbey.  I needed not just solace, either, but the wisdom and guidance that my soul desperately seeks.  

              Which is to say, anticipating, dreading, hoping, despairing, most of all seeking, I made a special effort to go pray with the monks—and also to “conference” with a few UM pastor-friends who I knew would be there.

III

We never know who will show up: our little group is in constant flux due to personal and even pastoral circumstance. Geography, too, plays a part, as when a pastor is moved. We may be more or less inconsistent, but the college is constant in its generous hospitality: we are regularly granted space in the Gallagher Building to meet and talk. Specifically, to discuss common, agreed-upon reading.

Before us today was a book with, for most of us, an unpromising title: On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius. In truth it was pretty dense stuff—essays by a Church Father named Gregory Nazianzus—but we noted a spectacular line in the introductory notes by Lionel Wickham which seemed to have special relevance for us this week.

Regarding a heretical group St. Gregory opposed, Wickham writes, “Their church, though, had, like all one-issue groups, only a (weak) hold on (continuing) existence. Founded on doctrinal purity it perished on it.” (p. 17).

I sat there thinking, if our church, strives for doctrinal purity, on one side or the other—if that is our only issue at this point—either “side” may well perish on it. And at this point we have only a “infirm hold on a perduring existence” (his actual verbage).  

It seems to me that those who can hold the middle (not simply for the sake of unity, but for the sake of love and charity) have a better chance, by God’s grace and enduring hospitality, to endure.  

IV

As usual, we started at 10:30. At 11:40, we abruptly adjourned to make our way over to the “Mary, Help of Christians” basilica (https://belmontabbeycollege.edu/about/belmont-abbey-monastery/basilica-mary-help-of-christians/)—which is the big church-like building you have probably seen from I-85. We walked down the long center aisle, climbed granite steps and passed the high altar, took places prepared for us in the split choir loft.

As is always the case, monks sat in seats on both sides of the loft. We were directed to the right. We entered quietly, took our seats quietly, sat quietly till prayer begins. All the monks, and some of the visitors, waited closed-eyed. I, though, pondered the great painted-glass windows that rise above the loft: portraits of St. Patrick, St. Boniface, St. Gregory and others, each with a hand raised in blessing.

The saints keep serene vigil over those who come to the basilica to pray.  

              A monk, opposite us, stood to sing the first line of the greeting: “O God, come to our aid.”

The rest of us stood and sang, “O Lord, make haste to help us.”

The monk sang, “Glory be to Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.”

We sang, “As it was in the beginning, is now and forever amen. Alleluia.”

We remained standing as the monk started singing an acapella hymn. Then we sat. Then we prayed. There was a reading from Isaiah. There was a benediction. We were out.

The service had lasted fifteen minutes.

V

Every part of the morning—the book study, the whole service, every part of the service—spoke to me today: spoke both the comfort and truth I needed to hear.

The Greeting: it is indeed my prayer for St. Louis. I do pray that God comes to our aid, that God will make haste to help us. That God will be glorified as we seek the divine will. That the “now and forever, Amen” will be sounded again among our delegates and observers. I also believe that however our group or situation changes and for whatever reason, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit will be with us all.

The Hymn: words I had never sang, set to a tune I didn’t know: but even that a comfort in its own way: that the praise continues, can carry me along, even when I am ill-equipped to help. I will not be able to lend my voice this next week, either, but I believe there are those who can, and will, and God will be praised.  

The Prayers of the monks are quite unlike the praying that many of us who grew up Protestant may even recognize as prayer. The monks’ prayers are not spontaneous—monks on either side take turns reading, slowly, the verses from three pre-selected Psalms. They are not personal: at least they are not private. Benedictines all over the world were praying the very same Psalms as we in Belmont, NC.

The monks prayers are not emotional, as if emotion demonstrates authenticity. There is almost no rise or fall in voice or emotion, beginning to end.

Now, there are long gaps of silence here and there—where the intent is for us to quieten our souls completely. But today I found myself inserting “personal” prayers into the silences: prayers for the delegates, the churches, the bishops, the pastors, the General Conference itself.

The words and the silences: whatever our concerns, spoken or unspoken, whatever we insert into the silences—the silences and intercessions are themselves bracketed by verses of scripture that are both ancient and powerfully immediate.

The Reading: today from Isaiah: the famous passage that Jesus uses as he begins his own ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind-up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed… and to announce the year of the Lord’s favor.”

May it be so! For today, there are so many in our church who feel broken-hearted and blind. So many who are captive and oppressed (and not just delegates!). What a comfort to hear, to believe, that soon and very soon there will be freedom on account of God’s anointing! That God will help us see and be healed! That we will know God’s favor!

How that will appear or be experienced, we do not know. But that very same word and hope and experience has sustained Jews and Christians for well over 2000 years. It will sustain us still.

+

The Basilica itself was a blessing.

Mary, Help of All Christians. As a United Methodist, I do not attribute it to Mary, but I do trust in the promise that there is help for all Christians on either side of conflict and even division. Remember: almost six hundred years ago, in Europe, the Roman Church split into Catholic and Protestant pieces. Five hundred years before that, the Church had split East and West. What we now call Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism are the living and vibrant offspring of cataclysmic schisms that not only did not kill the work of Jesus in the world, but, it could be argued, expanded Jesus’ work and ministry, and advanced the cause of the Gospel.   

(Full disclosure: I grew up Baptist. We were famous for church splits. And for the kind of growth that almost always resulted on the other side of it. Phyllis Tickle has noted the phenomena, too, in her The Great Emergence, that when churches move to jettison what is unnecessary, that makes them retain what is necessary, and that what emerges is more energetic and able to witness and grow.)

And Belmont Abbey’s Gallagher Room, too. As I sat there, with an Icon on one wall and a crucifix on another; I, a UM pastor and heir to the English Reformation, engaged in “holy conferencing” with other Ums, and knowing something of the violent history that has attended the Church’s (and churches’) history, I thrilled to anticipate and pray for the time when “today’s acrimony,” vitriolic as it may be, gives way to produce tomorrow’s repentance and forgiveness, to deeper cooperation and more generous hospitality. May God haste the day.

VI

At lunch, I ate with a delegate from our Conference, who is in favor of the Modified Traditional Plan (and one of the best guys I know). His father died on Tuesday, and he too felt the need to make the trip to pray at the Abbey: to be with his UM friends, and with the monks, at a place where constancy and serenity can indeed calm a frenzied, fractious spirits. Where buildings, and windows, and the long-unchanged patterns of prayer remind us that, Yes, things change.

There is life and death.

There are gatherings and partings. And there is one God—the same yesterday, today and forever.

              My friend said he expects it to get ugly. He thinks there will be protests and demonstrations, shouting and yelling—that security will have to be called and often, perhaps, as some of the observers and protesters will, he believes (and has seen) want to get arrested. As a sign of their “prophetic faithfulness,” I guess, their willingness to “suffer” for the cause.   

              I shook my head, thinking of what a poor witness to the unity and grace Jesus died to provide.

But I also found myself thinking about Father Abraham, and what he said to his nephew Lot when the “land” was not able to sustain them both: “If you go the right, I will go to the left. If you go to the left, I will go to the right.” They were kin, even though they no longer got along. And even after they parted company, they remained so—Father Abraham rescued his nephew in fact, from marauders.  

Likewise, my hope—and this phrasing is not original with me, though I cannot remember who said it—that God will grant to all of us a way to remain kin: “close enough to remember and recognize that we are on the same journey, but with enough administrative distance that we not vex each other’s spirit.”

Perhaps the way we take leave says as much to the world as the way we come together. As my friend said, “If your marriage is broken and there is no way to make it a Christian marriage, the best you can do is fashion a Christian divorce.”

              Pray for our General Conference.            

What Are the Collaterals?

Each of the four plans I summarized in my first blog have some foreseeable, and some unforeseeable consequences for congregations, clergy, bishops, Annual Conferences, Boards and Agencies. Call them "collaterals," not in the sense of "damage," necessarily, but certainly in the way of necessary changes in the way we have been organized and do business as a church. 

While it is impossible to anticipate all the implications of whatever plan is affirmed by the majority of delegates to General Conference--and while it will take years for all of the changes to take place--the chart you will find at this link comparing three of the plans is very helpful (our Conference Board of Ordained Ministry reviewed and discussed this chart at their February meeting, which Pastor Carrie attended):

https://www.wnccumc.org/files/websites/www/gc2019-comparison-three-plans-edited.pdf.


You will notice that the Simple Plan is not represented in the chart. The advocates of this position maintain, as I understand it, that there will be no necessary changes to any of the structures or agencies of the general church. Rather, the restrictive language in the Book of Discipline would be removed. As a consequence, Annual Conferences would examine and ordain clergy regardless of matters of sexuality and apart from consideration of such questions. In the case of gay marriage, congregations would discuss and discern whether or not such marriages would be held on church property, and pastors would determine for themselves whether or not to conduct such a service.

I hope you will take time to look over this chart. I find it quite helpful.