Moral Character of a Leader

I was having a conversation yesterday with a friend who referred to the these days in the United States of America as "Post-Truth America."   The statement made me stop and think.   And in thinking it grew ever more clear that indeed, my friend has a point.   When a candidate for President of the United States of America openly lies over and over again without so much as a journalistic retort or even a mild hiccup, something is wrong.   When a candidate for the office of the President of the United States openly attempts to discredit election results before the election takes place, we definitely find ourselves in a new and different time.    When a businessman who revels in shirking his civic duty of paying taxes runs for the office of President of the United States; when that same person cheats workers and gropes unwilling women we are indeed in a new time.  Post-Truth America?  The notion gives rise to some questions.

What are we to make of a media that is laser focused on an email kerfuffle of one candidate while

completely blind to  more than nine accusations of sexual harassment and sexual assault on the part of another?   What are we to think when the alleged un-trustworthiness of one candidate is lifted up again and again while the failure of another to pay taxes, to even pay workers is not seen worth the air time to mention it.    How do we respond when the FBI interferes in the election by illegally releasing vague information certain to put a thumb on the scales of this election?

I am reminded of the words of the Prophet Micah

"Your wealthy are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies with tongues of deceit in their mouths (Micah 6:12)."

The Prophet's words  remind us that evil things happen when good people remain silent.    So I urge you not to be quiet.  Speak up for what you know to be true.  As a people of faith we know the difference between right and wrong.   We really do.  And the difference does not hang in the balance of partisan political ideology.  It hangs in our vision, our clarity, moral acuity, and our faith.

We know truth from lies, and we know dear friends,  about evil lurking in high places.  We know about what Paul calls "The principalities and the powers (Eph. 6:10f)."      And friends, we know the difference between a demagogue liar and a principled leader.   We know the qualities that make for a just and compassionate leader.

So it is that I thought it might be a good idea for people of faith to be clear about what a true leader possesses in terms of character and moral rectitude.     And yes, I'll be bold enough to make a start.    I'm a good Bible reading Christian, and here's a little of what I have discovered.

These are some of the characteristics of a  leader of high moral character:

> Seeks Peace (Psalm 34:14) (Luke 6:35-36)

> Is slow to anger (Psalm 145:8)

> Is humble, and not arrogant. (1st Peter 5:1-7)

> Sensible and kind.  (Colossians 3:12)

> Willing to learn the ways of goodness.  (Isaiah 1:17)

> Puts the welfare of all people on the same plane.  (Galatians 3:28)

> Is able and willing to listen to all points of view.  (James 1:19-27)

> Surrounds him or herself with honest, truthful, conscientious counselors (Proverbs 12:15)

> Has the attitude of service and servanthood. (Matt 20:26)

I could go on for quite a while, but this is a beginning.  Maybe you would add a few in the comment section of this blog?   I'd like that.   The elements I listed are not exclusively Christian by any means, but they ARE a firm part of our tradition, and those who claim to follow Jesus should be thinking about this.

We need leaders of high moral character, not people who look us in the face and lie.

We need leaders who are committed to seeking peace, not leaders who wonder why we  have nuclear weapons if we can't use them.

We need leaders who understand grace and forgiveness, not leaders who stay up tweeting vitriol half the night.

We need leaders who have demonstrated service and servanthood throughout their lives, not leaders who dedicate themselves to the "art of the deal,"  no matter who gets hurt.

We need leaders who care about all the people in our nation and in our world, a leader who cares about a better tomorrow.

So, here is a voice from the faith community.

If you'd like to cut and paste these characteristics of a leader please do so.

If you'd like to add to them, by all means do so.

In the meantime, check out the list and ask yourself which person seeking the highest office in the land comes closest to meeting it's expectations?

Praying for our nation in this Post Truth American....

Liberating Ourselves from the Curse of Left and Right, and Claiming our Core in Christ...

I

Refusing the Lie

I have written and spoken often in the past few years about the destructive impact of our incessant need to line up on one side or the other of an unending line of issues.    In our white hot culture wars these often get defined by right or left, liberal or conservative, or Democrat or Republican.    

My stance in all this continues to be that such divisions are false and designed to divide, not unite people.   There really is no such thing as a true conservative or a true liberal.   Neither we nor life are quite that simple.    Many of us, myself included, are enamored of our current President and many of the things he has tried to do.   Indeed, I find myself wishing for a third term possibility.   However, we cannot be blind to the fact that this President has deported a record number of undocumented people; young children, women, sending them back to poverty and violence.    This President has also led the way in a new kind of warfare using pilotless drones that kill indiscriminately.    Are these liberal or conservative actions?   Personally I don't care about the ideological label.  To me, those things are simply wrong.    It is wrong to send defenseless people into danger whether by deportation or by pilotless drones.   This is wrong from a moral, Christian perspective that defies ideological isolation.  

But this isn't only about political figures on the national stage.  It's also about us.

By way of confession, I will tell you that I live in a pretty conservative theological location while landing in what many would call a liberal social location.   So what does this make me?   Liberal?   Conservative?   Moreover, I hold some outrageously liberal political views, as well as some very conservative social positions.    And what's worse is that I am known to change my positions from time to time when new information renders that appropriate!

The labels we so quickly stick upon ourselves and others do not serve us, particularly if we are Christians.    At our United Methodist General Conference this past summer I actually heard a colleague who ought to know better say, "We can't work with (name deleted) because he's a conservative!"    Really?    I understood this to say that I cannot speak or listen to a person with whom I disagree.     This is not only tragic, it's sinful.     We follow a pathway that strives to remove the boundaries and the divisions that we so readily rise up between us.    While some of us deride a certain presidential candidate for wanting to build a wall along the Mexican / US border, we should be mindful of the walls that we erect in our communities and in our lives.    "In Christ there is no Greek or Jew.... (Galatians 3:28),"  and  Indeed, Christ is our peace, and in him "the dividing walls of hostility have come down (Ephesians 2:14).

What many of us do is to take our hardened ideological perspective and wrap it in the liturgical clothing of religion.    Right wing Christians?   Seriously?   Progressive Christians?   Are you kidding?    There is no left or right in Christian community, no male or female, gay or straight, no more social boundaries designed to alienate.    We are one in Christ, and the difficult struggle of sitting down together to open the Word and to pray through our differences is our clear and sacred call.    One has to ask who it is that benefits while we battle across our ideological lines?    Certainly it is not the people who get wounded and killed in these struggles.

This binary social construct  that has held us captive for so long is designed to separate and disempower us.       Our work is to break this down and engage one another authenticall in faith.  Our call is to be in relationship those with whom we disagree, rather than isolate them and refuse to communicate.  Engagement and open connection with those who differ with us not only a good idea, it is one way that we can grow, expand and change.   It's possible, even probably that when we sit down in authentic community with those who don't see the world as we do that our perspectives and our understandings might change.  

So it is that it's long past time to refuse the lie of ideological rigidity and strive for the building of new communities of hope, power, and diversity.

II

Refusing the Lie Does Not Relieve Us of the Responsibility to Tell the Truth

As we extricate ourselves from the divisionistic ways of our secular culture we have to remember another call that comes to us in Christian community.    And that is the call to not remain silent in the face of evil.  While we work together to expand the table of community and to engage those of different perspectives, we are still recipients of the call to struggle for justice and to stand for what is good and true.    

As I mentioned above, my overall good opinion of President Obama does not relieve me of the responsibility for naming the dramatic rise in deportations and the continuance of what seems to be a permanent state of warfare in our nation.    Presidential candidates who brag about their participation in sexual violence cannot be greeted with our silence or inaction.  The fact that young African American men are being shot down in our streets cannot be ignored.    The reality that more than 15% of the children in our nation are hungry is not something we can simply not acknowledge.   

No.  It needs to be abundantly clear that the willingness to engage across the artificial boundaries erected by our culture is not to be confused with our responsibility to name evil and to stand against it while also naming the good and standing for that.

Is this difficult?   Yes.   Is it following the way of Jesus?   I believe it is.    

My hope is that we will live into a kind of grace that allows us to be willing to engage difference while also being clear about justice.    My prayer is that we will always keep Christ at the center, and not the shallow ideologies that our culture seeks to sell us.  My commitment is to continue to engage in the joyful struggle to build communities of faith live out the Way of Jesus.   

What we seek is what Dietrich Bohnhoeffer reffered to as "Costly Grace."

"Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”

Don't Curb Your Enthusiasm...

Friends,

I want to lift my voice today in support of enthusiasm. I know. Cynics and alleged realists among you are rolling their eyes. Enthusiasm? Really? Can you not see?  Well, yes. I CAN see. I see that, in fact, things are moving forward. In 1971 there were more than 1000 political bombings in the United States. in 2015? A few.  In spite of the heated rhetoric and outright lies coming out of the mouths of certain politicians,  crime is at an all time low in this country. And income, for the first time since the "Great Recession" is going up across the board.    Our commitment to healing our environment is expanding.   Forty years ago some rivers were so polluted in the United States that they were actually catching on fire.   That's no so today.   

In the Church, we are bringing in some excellent, powerful new clergy leaders. Alleluia! Our lay folk are claiming new hope and leadership as well and the proof is in the excellent teams we have leading the ministry we share in the District where I am privileged to serve as a Superintendent.   We are collaborating as a broad community in new and exciting ways!   We are planting new Churches and encouraging experimentation in new kinds of outreach and ministry.

Are there challenges? Absolutely. Do we have struggles, the song says, "within and without?" You bet we do.    But we will not over come them if we assume a negative end. We will not find the creativity and energy to embrace an unknown future if we imagine defeat before we step into the battle.     I know.   Some of us are kind of addicted to our cynical, allegedly cool sense of detachment.  Well, it's time to kick the negativity habit and go cold turkey on complaining and nay saying.    It's time, today, to reach for an unreasonable, crazy and joyful enthusiasm.

Remember, the victory is already ours in what happened for us all on the cross.   It's been done!   Our call is to live into that victory with enthusiasm, with joy and with child-like wonder.

So when you set your alarm for tomorrow's rising. Know that someone else has already risen and calls us forward in joy.

My hope and my challenge to us all is that we will reclaim a criticism that was once leveled at us in the Wesleyan movement. We were told we were too enthusiastic and people went around saying, "Beware those singing Methodists...."

So I ask, what piece of the victory will you claim in your day tomorrow? What hope will you share? What joy will you spread? What healing will you offer? And who will you cause to smile because of your humor, your openness and your....enthusiasm?

In a very real way we create the future by the way we embrace this moment.   So, let us be co-creators of a joyful and brilliant tomorrow as we embrace this moment with joyful....enthusiasm.

Just the Facts Ma'am, Just the Facts

"Just the facts Ma'am, Just the facts."   

To some who are old enough, these words from 

Jack Webb in the TV show "Dragnet" from the 1960s may bring a smile of recognition to your face.   The hard boiled cop of black and white tv fame wanted only to deal in what was true.  The facts.

Reflecting back on this leads me to want to think with you about "fact checking."

Over the past year or so there has been a clear and increasing need to check on the veracity of the candidates' statements.   That's right.  Unchallenged, bald-faced lies are coming to us from the mouths of those who would lead our nation, and we actually need people to research and tell us whether what we are hearing is true or not.   To be candid, this takes my breath away.  

Fact checking?  Really?    

Even as these words flow from my fingers to my computer screen I can hear the reaction coming. This is nothing new.  Well,  yes.  it is true that politicians have always exaggerated, engaged in hyperbole, and even lied.  There's no question about it.  The name of Richard Nixon comes readily to mind.  But the absolute  and ongoing need for "Fact Checking" during debates and in public statements in this political season reveals a brave new world where lying is the norm.  It puts on display a media that will not provide skilled journalists who will call politicians to account. And it illuminates the disintegration of a social covenant that has historically recognized that truth telling is something we claim as a shared value.

Today we strangely echo Pontius Pilate who leveled his gaze at Jesus and asked, "What is truth?"

For centuries, people and systems have conspired to blow smog and smoke over truth, claiming that all is relative and that there really no truth.   After all, it''s just a matter or perspective, right?   This ceaseless effort  to blur reality has made all manner of unspeakable evil possible.   

But friends, we do know the truth. 

We know the things that are good and true. 

We know the things that makes for peace. 

And in our heart of hearts we do know the difference between right and wrong.

We know it's wrong for people to perish in the hellish reality of ongoing permanent war around the world.  Moreover, we know that it is evil for people to profit from this slaughter.

We know it's wrong for millions to go hungry while the few wallow in unspeakable wealth.

We know it's wrong to victimize and objectify women and people of color.....to treat anyone as a commodity.

We know that is wrong for people to suffer and die because the cost of health care is beyond their reach.

We know it's right to strive for equity for all.

We know that it is right to make sure that all people are safe and well fed, housed and secure in good jobs.   We know that it's right to welcome all people into the embrace of authentic community.   And we know it's right to struggle against oppression and discrimination in any form.

Oh yes. We know, and no amount of shrill pandering to television ratings,  profits and greed can change what we know.

Let us come together around these things that are good and true. Let us build communities of hope. Let us work together for the dignity and respect owed to all people. And let us place justice and wonder at the forefront of our shared agenda.

And the next time Pilate looks in your direction and asks you, "what is truth?"    Tell him.

It's About Community....

What words could a white  post middle-aged baby boomer utter that would make a difference in the tumult of violence swirling ever maddeningly around us?   I don't know.   I'm kind of flying in the dark here.

I could say that it is incumbent upon white folks to step up and use the power their privilege provides to engage in the authentic struggle for justice for African Americans.  For all people of course....but let's be starkly candid here and acknowledge the continuing devastation of a people by slavery, ongoing entrenched racism and a culture that simply won't confess the horror and make amends.   If anyone has the power to bring about justice and doesn't use it, they are in league with the oppressor.   Indeed.  One could say that they are the oppressor.   And yep.  I'm sayin' that.    

I could say that it might be a good idea to peel back the layers of the onion and see what's going on under the blur of media fibs and Facebook ad-libs.   Someone or some entity is benefitting from the death and mayhem, from the division and  rancor.   Who is that?   What is the perceived benefit derived from the rending fabric of a society?  Is it the Koch Brothers and their stated objective to dismantle the "dominant paradigm?"   Is it the arms industry and their various lap dogs such as the NRA and countless lobbyists beyond?  Yep.  I'm sayin' that too.

I could also say that what we are reaping is, in some ways, the harvest of a deeply imbedded narcissism within our society.   Some people would have you think the original sin has something to do with sex or some other puritanical thing.  I disagree.  I think our primal sin  is the sin of individualism.   The idea that each person can and should do what they want regardless of the impact on others is insane.  Not only is it insane, it is suicidal.    And yet, our mercantile, materialistic culture drives us ever on to do for ourselves first.  To get what we want.   To surrender to the tyranny of our own desires regardless of the consequences.    It matters not what your faith or philosophy might be, we must come to grips with the fact that we are a communal species.    We exist among, with, and for one another.   The welfare of one person is intimately connected  to the welfare of all people.   This isn't just gooey feel good optimism, it's real.    There is an ecology of the human community that is constructed upon our interdependence, upon our need for one another.     And the answer to this is community.   Yep I'm sayin this.

We are wired to be in community.

Community is a place where there is a common and dynamic sense of mutual care and commitment.   Community is a place of safety.  Not always comfort....but certainly a place of safety.   Community is a place, not of radical independent freedom, but a location of mutual exploration and discovery.   Community is a place where everyone has enough.    Authentic community does not allow or support the inequity of some people wallowing in abundance while others suffer from hunger and homelessness.    And friends, authentic community is a place where all people - that's right - no exceptions...where all people are loved and accepted, not for who we wish them to be, but for who they are in their own right.
And yep.  I'm sayin' that too.

Our work is to be weavers.  

Each one of us has the capacity to join in the shared work of weaving a dense and lovely tapestry of human community and we need to be about it now.    Not later, not in our dreams, but now.    Together we can forge the joy and wonder of a community based on mutuality and hope.    On our own, we compete for evermore mountains of "stuff."   Together we can stand with the oppressed and work for healing.   Alone, we participate in the oppression.

And yep.....I am saying this as well.   But it's time to begin the weaving, to walk the walk, to be community together.

sr

Claiming Hope in a Dark Time

            I well remember a vivid debate about nonviolence around my dining room table some years ago.   It was robust and engaged and at one point, as coffee was being served at the end of the meal, my friend blurted out that “being a pacifist between wars is like being a vegetarian between meals!”     There were giggles all ‘round as the pie was cut and served, but there is a deep reality revealed by my Jesuit friend and frequent dinner guest.

            In the wake of the mass murders in Orlando and the accompanying drumbeat of terrorism and death on the anniversary of the killings at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, it is possible to lose our grip on hope.  The list of locations and murdered ones blurs the mind and numbs the heart, and if we are not attentive, our Christian hope could also be a victim.

            Hope is easy when times are good.   We are buoyed by its promise and pampered in its possibilities.   But friends, the times are not good.    Our sisters and brothers in the GLBTQ community were targeted and gunned down with cold, malignant efficiency.    What can possibly be said?    The leading cause of death for young African American men under age forty is gun shot wounds.   In California alone last year there were ten million applications for hand gun purchases.   More than 62% of our federal budget is committed to what has now become a state of permanent warfare for us.    The litany of horrors is painful and hard to hear.    Yet hear it, we must.  

            The time for numbness and denial is past.    The time for an assertive and powerful hope has come.    The time for inaction and futile shaking of the head is  past.    The day of a new hope has dawned.  As we reach  for this hope, we cannot slip into a naïve fantasy of flowers and peace signs.   This is not the flimsy hope of unthinking optimism.   It is, rather, the hope of God;  the hope that came to us from the agony of the cross.   This hope is wedded to the certain knowledge of the coming Resurrection.    This hope will sustain and propel us forward.    This hope is the unshakable conviction that life and love will prevail.

            So, in the throes of unspeakable grief and mounting anger let us not lose our grip on hope.    Let’s come together and reach for the hope that is ours in Christ Jesus.    And let our hope and faith spur us to powerful action for justice, healing and new life.    

            I am reminded of the old hymn by Edward Mote.  It has long been a favorite of mine and I offer some pieces of it here.

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus' blood and righteousness;

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

But wholly lean on Jesus' name.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;

All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness veils His lovely face,

I rest on His unchanging grace;

In every high and stormy gale

My anchor holds within the veil.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;

All other ground is sinking sand.

 His oath, His covenant, and blood

Support me in the whelming flood;

When every earthly prop gives way,

He then is all my Hope and Stay.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;

All other ground is sinking sand.

So let us live into this hope with our lives, our communities, our faith.   

SR  

Thank you to our Bishops

At the 2016 General Conference of the United Methodist Church in Portland, Oregon, the Bishops of the Church took a powerful and welcome step by calling a time-out on the Church’s incessant wrangling over a number of issues, the details of which will not be dwelt upon in this missive.    The Bishops called for, and the Conference agreed to accept the creation of a Commission which will meet over the next two years to discern, discuss and pray about the way forward for our world-wide Communion of United Methodists.

I support the Bishops in this call and am grateful to them for their courage as they stepped into the fray to call us back to ourselves.   My prayers go out to those who will sit on this Commission.  They are prayers that invite a Spirit of love and grace to flow in the coming conversations.  They are prayers for softened hearts and open minds.   They are prayers for healing, hope, and as Bishop Stanovsky lifted up in her sermon, for the courage to step out of the tomb of conflict and lean into the Resurrection.

Having offered thanksgiving to our leaders and prayers for the work ahead, there are some observations I would like to offer.  

It is my observation that the General Conference of the United Methodist Church is it’s own culture.   It is a thing that exists apart from the congregations of varying shapes, sizes and dimensions around the globe who bear the name United Methodist.    This is a group of people who come together every four years to make decisions for the United Methodist Church, many of whom have been delegates to this body for decades.   They know each other.  Some of them love each other.  They have experiences of and with one another, and  for many,  these experiences are not positive.    And like any culture, they develop habits and ways of being.   For this group, a key habit is to fall into patterns of adversarial wrangling, suspicion and surprising levels of political intrigue.    

It is a culture fueled by the fact that the Church stubbornly insists on mirroring secular culture  in it’s reliance upon “democratic” style legislation and Robert’s Rules of Order.  In such a rigid, rule dominated,  up/down, yes/no system there is little room for grace and even less for the movement of God’s Spirit.   So the primary activity becomes the management and manipulation of the system in pursuit of victories defined by world-view, ideology, culture, and theology.  In the face of this there is a felt yearning for the pursuit of what Wesley would call the “spreading of Scriptural holiness across the land.”

It is a culture also driven by the understandable fact that the people who get elected as delegates are frequently those who are most competent at managing this legislative and decision making process. Another way to put this would be to say that the system attracts what the system needs to maintain itself.   Moreover, many people seek to be delegates to General Conference are activists, who care passionately about the life of the Church from their particular perspective.  And in the grip of our inflexible process, people are apparently so passionate that they are willing to sail our ecclesial ship onto the shoals of schism.

So, again, I lift my voice in thanks to our Bishops who have grabbed the wheel and steered us, if only for a time, away from those shoals.   With the time-out called by our Episcopal leaders, it might just be possible to extricate our  United Methodist community from it’s addiction to aping secular culture in its structure, politics, and process.   With God’s grace, we just might choose to step onto the path of Holy Conversation and compassion, a way of humility and hope.

As we hit the pause button, it might be worth prayerfully considering the possibility that the majority of the United Methodist Church sitting in pews every Sunday may not want a schism.  Not only is it possible they do they not want a schism, it could be that they are apathetic about what the 864 people who comprise the General Conference are doing. 

The cliché that says, “All politics is local,” also applies to the Church.   We are, first and foremost a collection of local Christian communities who exist in a particular conext.  These communities come together for worship and praise, for a chance to find grounding in an increasingly crazy world, and for a way to be together in faith and love.   They also seek to share this wonderful Gospel love with a world that badly, badly needs it.    

I would suggest that it is unlikely that local congregations in the Congo, or Sweden, or Cuba or Ohio, or Russia, or Alaska or Alabama or California or anywhere spend a great deal of energy on what the General Conference does or does not do.   They have other things on their plates.  And as someone who served local congregations for nearly thirty years and in my work Superintending I will witness to this as my own experience.  

It is the ever dynamic power of Christian community struggling to be faithful in the moment that appropriately occupies our people.   Many of our congregations exist in the middle of horrible warfare and deprivation.     Others exist in the stress and decay of urban life.   Still others strive to find a way in a spiritually famished culture that identifies less and less with the voice of the Church.    Local Church ministry is challenging no matter where it happens, and the work of the General Conference is to focus upon the empowerment of every church in every context, rather than upon making  pronouncements in vain attempts to claim another foot of ideological ground.   

The work of the General Conference is to “make straight the highway,” and level the path so that the power of God’s incredible Spirit can flow to the people and the communities, not to the structures and the strictures of a thousand meaningless rules.

Though it may sound like it, this comes, not as a criticism of General Conference.  There is more than enough of that to go around.   No.  Instead, I lift my voice to call myself and each of us who bear the name, “United Methodist” to a new humility.   No matter how passionately I feel about certain things, and I do, the flux and flow of the Holy is not about what I want.    It is about God, and God’s calling to us as a people.   Can we surrender the “tyranny of our desires” and be open to God’s Spirit among us?    Can we step away from the seductive pull of our own opinions and open our minds to the mind of God?   Can we surrender the arrogance that leads us to think we and we alone understand God’s will and way?   Can we embrace the humility that was in Christ, who didn’t count himself equal with God, but in humility submitted himself to death, even death on a cross  (my paraphrase of Philippians)?  

I do not know what the future holds.   But I know that we have sinned together in our arrogance.  Let us repent and seek forgiveness of God and one another.    I cannot imagine how our ministry will unfold.    But I do hear a call to each one of us to seek God and God’s way, not our own.   And I most decidedly do sense the yearning of the Holy , bidding us to….

“….Lead a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace…(Ephesians 4:1-3)”

And one more time…..Thank you Bishops.   May God bless and keep you in the days and work ahead.

SR

Naming the Lie

          As I write this I am perched in the gallery at the General Conference of the United Methodist Church, where I have come to serve as a Reserve Delegate.    It is the last day of the Conference.    The days have been etched with the acid of acrimony as delegates have fought over a host of concerns.   Human Sexuality,  Climate Change, Health Care,  all of them very real and of serious import, and almost all of them are argued from “Progressive”  or “Conservative” perspectives.     As the Church tries to express itself, every petition and argument, whether it is theological, social or financial, is sliced with the blade of ideology between left and right.   The tension is high.   So high, in fact, that schism is a very real possibility.

            In the midst of the power maneuvers and political manipulation – and there is plenty of it from all corners – there is a pervasive and defining lie that hangs in the air like smog.   It is a lie that is so prevalent and all encompassing that most people are not even aware of it.     It’s a lie too, that infects our secular culture as well.

            And the lie is this.

            The binary labels of left or right, liberal or conservative are in themselves a fundamental lie.    To draw a line through the Body of Christ, or through our secular culture and to force people into one column or the other is fundamentally an act of violence.    These are artificial designations, and I would submit that they are designed to separate and alienate.     Divide the people into two oppositional, adversarial groups and get them arguing and fighting and they will never unite to create real change.  Divide and conquer, right?   Moreover, if we train people to  adopt a narrow world-view and tell them they should only relate to people with whom they agree, we have then created an easily controlled population, haven’t we?    This brings to mind an experience I had as a Pastor when I brought a book for an adult study class.  The class rejected the book because they didn’t agree with public positions the author had taken.   Mind you, they had never read the book, but they refused to even expose themselves to an idea that might be different from their ideological perspective.

            Think about this in terms of real life experience.    No one is completely liberal or completely conservative.    We are all far more complex than that.   Indeed, it’s a bit insulting to think that we could be so narrowly labeled and filed away.   The truth is that each person is a marvelously complicated jumble of feelings, emotions and experiences.    Our very Createdness defies any attempt to dump us into one of two camps so we can curse, judge and throw stones at one another.    Indeed, we believe that God Created us each as unique individuals, knowing us even before we entered our Mother’s womb (Jeremiah 1:5).    More than that, our human nature is to be dynamic and changing.  No one stays the same.   The things we thought and believed when were twenty years old are rarely the things we think and believe at age sixty.  

            For those of us in Christian community, reality is based, not upon stands, positions, or artificial categories,  but on relationships.   We are called together not because of ideological agreement but because of our common commitment to God’s love in Christ Jesus.   For us, the relationships we build in faith are deeper than the wounds we cause one another.   They are broader than the disagreements that we will inevitably have, and they are stronger than the pull of secular culture which always tries to define us and pull us down to it’s level (Romans 12:2 “The Message,” Eugene Peterson).     In Christian community we belong to one another to such an extent that we are described in Romans 12 as all part of one body in Christ, and all unique, all with different functions and roles to play.    More than that, we follow a Savior who takes down the “dividing walls of hostility, (Ephesians 2:14)” creating a new community of peace and harmony.

            Yet here in Portland, the United Methodist Church is infected with the virus of secular culture, using the power of “this world (Ephesians 6:12)” and jamming people into categories rather than relationships.    Arguing, positioning and posturing, not according to the beautiful relational power of The Gospel, but along the lines of ideology and the lust for control.

            It’s my firm conviction that if our Church does not name and renounce this lie of ideological categorization, we are doomed to be completely swallowed up by the culture around us.    So the call comes for each of us to lay down our closely held ideological positions.    We are not liberal or conservative, left or right, we are One in Christ Jesus.    Do not be taken in by a pre-set list of positions and policies.  Instead, sit with people who have a different point of view.   Build relationships with people who see the world through a different lens.    Root your relationships, your life, your work with Christ at the Center, not your ideology.

            If we can actually do this, we might have a shot at being Church rather than an outpost of a secular political party.  If we can do this we might find a way of claiming God’s firey, Pentecostal love as a global people.   If we can do this, we might be able to heal the hurt we’ve caused and bring life where there is only strife.   If we can do this we might be able to begin the transformation of the world we yearn for so powerfully in our mission statement as a denomination.

            And in all of it let us remember that it is God, and not we who do the judging.  Our job in Jesus Christ, is to love extravagantly and leave the judging to God.

SR