A Random Act of Resurrection

It's not quite Easter.

On Holy Saturday I am sitting at my desk at home praying, contemplating, imagining.   The pondering is almost overwhelming as I consider all the implications that tomorrow brings.   The defeat of death.   New life.  Newborn hope.  An opportunity to begin again.  As one who knows the story, it all awaits me, beckoning me to step forward out of tombs of my own making.

It occurs to me that we as United Methodists tend to live in tombs of our own making.    We dwell in the self-induced angst of the myth that says we are a dying Church.   We stumble in the graveyard of our ideological convictions, placing them above community, above relationships, above even the Gospel we claim to follow.    We wallow in the darkness of our own narrow preferences, unable to see a larger vision.   And friends, we remain in these tombs because in truth, we do not really believe...or more to the point...trust in this Resurrection thing.

We speak of it, of course.   We poke at it like medieval children provoking the bear tied to a pole in the public square.   God forbid it should get loose.   We accept it, more or less, as an arid and brittle article of doctrine.   We argue about it, write papers, preach sermons, and show up in our Churches on Easter morning  only to leave essentially unaffected by the power that surges just beyond our comprehension.

I know.  This sounds harsh.  But in the nearly thirty years I have served in this United Methodist community, I have observed this and feel compelled to name it.   We are not actually a Resurrection People.  If we were, both we and the world we inhabit would be much different.   The time has come, however, for this to change.   On this Easter let us receive the power of the Resurrection anew.
Let us claim the Resurrection, not as an article of religion, but as a way of life.

 I am reminded about the old Gospel tune with the lyrics that go like this.  "Everybody wants to go to heaven.  Nobody wants to die."    If we are honest, we do not wish to let go of our own egos and our hard won sense of self.  And yet the Gospel call is to "die to ourselves (Luke 9:23, Philippians 3:8, John 12:24, Romans 12:1-2)," and to live into new life in Christ.    It's time, today, for us to release all the "stuff" we are holding onto that keeps us from embracing the power of the Resurrection.   It's time, today, walk out of the "Church of what we want..."   and begin to build the Resurrection Community once again.

And sisters and brothers, the Good News is that this is actually happening!   The Resurrection of the Body of Christ is taking place even as my fingers dash across the keyboard of my computer.   I am here to witness today to the fact that a new day is emerging and revival is bursting forth.

I know that I will be in one of our Bridges District Churches tomorrow morning shouting, "Christ is Risen," and with his Body....the Church... too will rise.

Let me share just one story about such Resurrection power.

Elmhurst United Methodist Church in East Oakland could be said to be a dying Church.   It's in a tough neighborhood and it doesn't have very many members.   The building has seen better days and the means to repair the structure really are not there.   We could look at that, shake our heads and walk away.   Or we could step in and look a bit more closely.

The truth is that this is a mighty Church.   As a DS I strive to get into every one of my ninety-two Churches and visiting Elmhurst was part of this commitment.     I remember pulling into the parking lot and catching my breath as I surveyed the buildings.    But then I got out of the car and I met Jason Eckles.    We shook hands and exchanged the niceties one would expect.   And then I began to listen to his passion and his vision.

East Oakland is what we call a "food desert."    There are no grocery stores anywhere near this neighborhood.  There are few ways for residents to gain access to healthy food and it's not a situation that exists just in this neighborhood.  This is the case in many urban settings.   But Jason didn't just see things as they were in the moment.   He had a vision of how things could be different.   He has a vision of community reborn and people working together.

At the core of this vision is the creation of a community garden on the Church property.   This garden wouldn't just feed members of his Church.   This garden would be a place where the people of the community could come to work, to share and to receive the benefits of fresh food and fresh relationships.

At the risk of being a little too Wesleyan perhaps, I felt my heart strangely warmed as I listened to Jason share his vision with a light in his eyes.    Thirty minutes with this guy and I was hooked.   This Church wasn't dying!  God had called this Church to Resurrection Life right here in East Oakland.   So Jason and I spent the next couple of hours praying, sharing and dreaming.  

And together we came up with the idea of holding a "Random Act of Resurrection."    We put out the word to the whole Bridges District, inviting folks to come on the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend to "Labor together in the Vineyard"  to build enough raised beds for this garden to get off the ground.
Word went out through email, through the District Office, through Word of mouth and more.
We even asked them to bring their own tools and some supplies.

On that Saturday we had no idea really how many people would come.   But as we sipped our coffee we saw car after car after car pull into the driveway.

At the end of the day seventy people came, some from as far as 100 miles away, and build 23 raised beds for this new community garden.   It is a sight I will never forget.   African Americans, Latinos, Pacific Islanders, Chinese, Korean, Euro-Americans all coming together in laughter and community to be the Body of Christ, alive and full of power.

This kind of event is a Resurrection Act.   It is staring right into the face of what seems like death and leaning into life together.   It is real.  It is powerful.   And I am convicted that God is calling us to live out these Resurrection acts all over our District.   Be mindful, though.   This was a wonderful Church before we all arrived to build raised beds.   Pastor Carol Estes leads a wonderful community in this place.   Their worship is full of hope and wonder, and that choir?   Wow!    All we did was join the party as members of one Holy Spirit Community.

All this leads me to utter a call to all of us to commit random acts of Resurrection.   What's going on in your community?  In your Church?  In your life?   Where can you gaze into what seems like the face of death and dare to live out the Resurrection hope?    Remember on this Easter Sunday that the victory is already won for us in what has happened this day.   All we have to do is live into it with all our passion and joy.

Indeed on July 11th we will be doing this again at the Bayside Cambodian Fellowship in Alameda.   Plan to spend the day as we paint, repair and join our sisters and brothers in this New Church Start who have given their lives in hope!   Watch this blog and the Bridges District Facebook Page for details.

Friends,  In the hopes of spreading the Resurrection power we participated in at Elmhurst UMC, we have made this a centerpiece of our ministry in the Bridges District.   We are indeed a people of the Resurrection!  We are holding "Resurrection Conversations" throughout our area in an effort to shift our discourse from death to new life.  Instead of watching our communities decline like someone watches the air go out of a tire with a slow hiss, we want to insist on the Resurrection.    In our own spiritual practices, in our families and our relationships, and yes in our United Methodist Churches! So we are gathering to ask the questions that lead, not to death, but to life.  

Christ is Rien!
As of today, let cynicism die and let hope be born.   As of today let the negative energy that binds us fall away and give birth to an unreasonable optimism.   As of today,  let us embrace the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that is coming to each person and each church as we step together into revival, into the Resurrection Life.

Wishing you a blessed Easter, and looking forward to an ever growing number of Random Acts of Resurrection across the Bridges District!

DS Schuyler  

Atonement: I do not think it means what you think it means....

It's Good Friday.

This day picks us up and sets us squarely into the matrix of Christian understanding known as the "atonement."    Increasingly these days I hear people decrying atonement theology.   The claim is that atonement has to do with God killing (his) Son as a blood sacrifice to make up for our horrific and countless sins.    This is a mean, vengeful God.  This is not the God of love.    We want to put as much distance as possible between us and a God who would murder (his) own son, and that's exactly what we do.

I also hear a growing number of voices telling me and anyone who will listen that they don't like any mention of blood in their Christian story.  We like the nice Jesus who has the children on his lap and leads the gentle sheep into safe pastures.     So, away with all those songs about the blood of Christ.  Away with references to being "washed in the blood."    Moreover, let's not even have the Good Friday worship service.  Really?   I like the Resurrection pieces, but all that blood?  I don't think so.

Such images of gore and bloodshed offend sensibilities of contemporary people and set us on edge because it is about.....suffering.    Suffering is a non-starter.  It's not something we want to witness, ponder or consider.    Mind you, we willingly pay for it with our taxes and thus cause unspeakable suffering around the world, but please please don't put it in our religion.    And not only religion, but in any corner of our comfortless, numb lives.

This traditional or prevailing understanding of the atonement betrays a stunning misunderstanding of two things in our Christian tradition.  The first is the understanding of "The Trinity,"  and the second is our understanding of "sacrifice."

Let me begin with the much maligned and seldom understood notion of the Trinity.  The trinity is an ancient church understanding that names God is a unity of three "persons."   The Creator, the Word, and the Holy Spirit.   This understanding was born in the days of the early Church as people of faith began to grasp that Jesus was "Emmanuel," or God with us.   Simply put, it dawned on people to ask the question, "If Jesus is God among us, then who was minding the universal store when Jesus was here with us?"  Add to this the powerful scene in the Gospel of John where Jesus breathes the Spirit into the Disciples (John 20:23f) and poof, we have the recipe for the trinity.   One God, three entities or persons.

For more than two millennia we have had a hard time grasping this idea of One God in Three Persons.  But there it is.    God is One and self expressed in three entities.  And if we understand the unity of these three persons in One God then the whole notion of God killing (his) son kind of falls apart.     God didn't kill another person, God, in Christ, gave (him)self on the cross for us.  It was a willing act of self-giving love, not infanticide.

And this, friends, brings us to the notion of sacrifice.  

Sacrifice in our culture is seen as a bad thing.  Indeed, someone who sacrifices themselves for others is seen to have a psychological malady known as a "martyr complex or syndrome." This is so much the case that this complex has been codified in to the "Diagnostic and Stastical Manual (IV)" as a diagnosable illness.    In other words, someone who routinely sacrifices their needs to meet the needs of others has a personality disorder.

But the truth is that sacrifice is not a bad thing at all.   In fact, without others sacrificing for us, many of us would not even be alive today.   If parents didn't sacrifice for their children, if husbands, wives and partners did not sacrifice for one another, if soldiers did not sacrifice on the battlefield, if our heroes did not give their lives, the world would be a much different place.   From Jesus himself to Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr and beyond, sacrifices have brought, not evil, but good.  

Indeed, if a people are no longer willing to give of themselves for the greater good, then the whole culture is in danger of collapse.

Here we are, at the crux of the atonement.   Allow me to offer another view based on the forgoing.

The sacrifice made by Jesus was not murder, but in fact, was an act of self-giving love.    God didn't kill Jesus, God gave God's self for us. The typical wording here would be that this happened to save us from our sins.    But let's forget that language and go to the core of it all.

When we give ourselves for others, things change.  It's really that simple.

This is the atonement.
It is also at the core of contemporary nonviolent theory lived and written about by Tolstoy, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Daniel Berrigan.

When you pour out yourself for others, for something larger than yourself, things change.   You change.   The people for whom you give yourself change.   It is this transformational dynamic, rooted in self-giving love that sits at the center of Christian understanding, on this Good Friday it is something I challenge us all to ponder.

What happened on the cross is not some distant vaguely historic event that we are called to accept as a matter of doctrine.   It is, instead, a call to action.   God gave God's self for us and calls us to go and do likewise; to pour our lives out for the healing and hope of the world.     The cross and the pursuant resurrection of Jesus is a model for how we are to live.

Think of the new life that grew in so many places because of the willing sacrifice of Martin Luther King, Jr.   He poured himself out, and new life was the result.    Think of the millions of self-giving acts of love performed by parents, lovers, siblings and friends every day.   All these acts create a storm of grace, a current of new life, a table for us all to gather round in community and joy.

So there it is, having sat long in my heart, but unrehearsed here in the writing.

This Good Friday is not some religious dictate or savage act of violence.

It is, a loving God pouring God's self out for us and yearning for us to go and pour ourselves out in love for the world.

My utterances shared here come with prayers that we might all give ourselves for others so that healing, hope, and new life might spring up in our wake as we pass through this life.

SR

"Religious Communities are not the problem....they are actually part of the solution...."

It's the first day of the new year and I feel moved to respond to something that was posted in the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/22/you-give-religions-more-than-82-5-billion-a-year/).   

I'm a big fan of free speech.   But I think accuracy in reporting is something that we need to expect from our media outlets.

To say that this piece is misleading is an understatement.   With a large picture of Joel Osteen as a representative of pastors and churches the point is made that the people of the US subsidize churches through tax exemptions and other percs.   The image one takes away is that churches and clergy are rolling in tax payers dough and we darn well ought to start taxing them right away so they don't bleed us dry anymore.    

Friends, I have been a pastor for more than three decades and have known clergy and religious leaders across the nation. Trust me in this. It's not an occupation that one takes on for the money.    I have lived in one of those "parsonages" most of my life and it's often not a picnic as a whole community thinks your home is theirs.   Yes, there are some glaring exceptions that we can all note. Any group of professionals will have their "bad seeds." 

The truth, though, is that thousands of clergy people give themselves sacrificially, not having enough money for retirement or to send their kids to school. Thousands of clergy work 70 and 80 hours a week serving their communities in works like pastoral counseling, visiting the sick, prison ministry setting up neighborhood food pantries and more. Indeed, many have literally given their lives to great causes like the Civil Rights struggle (which was led by the religious community).     

To assume that the few dishonest clergy among (and it's true there are a few of those) us get to tag the many selfless and loving pastors out there is absurd.    Look around.     The most effective relief organization on the planet is religious.     The United Methodist Committee on Relief.   Look around. As our dysfunctional government shirks our mutual responsibility to care for the poor and vulnerable among us, it's the churches and religious communities that are picking up the slack. From homeless shelters to food pantries to child care organizations and immigration services, faith communities in this country are stepping up to the plate. 

And they are being led by clergy. 

I find it interesting to note that the corporations in this country get trillions of dollars of tax relief while shipping  their jobs and profits overseas and no one is falling on them the way they fall on the religious community.     The corporations have a vast and immoral impact on the politics and justice of our nation, but let's not focus on that.     Let's look at those nasty religious groups who get tax breaks to serve the community. 

If you are not religious or involved in a faith community, that's fine.   But this notion that the church (and other religious communities) are rolling in cash because of government tax breaks is both untrue and slanderous.    In my own Christian community of the United Methodist Church, we are involved right now in raising hundreds of millions of dollars to put an end to the world wide scourge of malaria.      We are building hospitals and schools, clinics and day care centers.   We are reaching out into our communities with counseling and legal assistance.   And, yes, we worship our God as well. 

The religious communities in our nation function on precious few resources, doing amazing and wonderful things that many others (including our corporations) refuse to do.

So please, I ask everyone to inform themselves before making comments that are both untrue and destructive.   No organization or group of people are perfect, and that is certainly true of us in the faith community.    

But from where I sit, the religious communities in this nation are part of the soloution....not part of the problem. 

Sending challenging grace, sacrificial love and forgiveness... SR

Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven....Nobody Wants to Die..

"Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the hearth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."  John 12:24

"Very truly I tell you, the one who believes (trusts) in me will also so the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these..."  John 14:12

Resurrection.   It's part of the landscape of Christian faith.   The walls of our reality are papered with it, and the air we breathe is saturated with it.     Indeed, the notion of Resurrection is pretty much central to who we are as a people of faith.   More than merely central, it makes up the theological core of Christianity.  

For some time now I have been meditating and preaching on Resurrection.  I've led some workshops around our District, and engaged our leaders in praying about it.    And candidly, as I have dwelt on the Resurrection I have become convinced that we neither understand nor embrace it very well.  

As we have done with much of Christian faith, we have reduced the idea of Resurrection to an article of religion.   It has taken its place in line with the list of things we must ascent to if we are to be admitted to "the club."   "Do you believe in the resurrection and the life?"   is a key question we get asked.    But I think this is the wrong question.   The word that we have translated into the English language word, "believe,"   is from the Greek word pistus which doesn't actually mean "believe,"  as we understand it.   A more accurate rendering of the word into English would be to ask if you "trust." For us, trusting is a far cry from believing.    

So the question isn't about believing in the Resurrection, but rather about trusting in it, not as some dusty historical event, but as a living reality that we choose as a community.    Do we trust in the Resurrection....and the life?   That's a much different question, isn't it?   In other words, are we willing to live our lives as though the Resurrection were real, not just at the end of our days, but in each moment we receive as a gift from God?

This "life" we refer to is a way of living that sees new life everywhere.   It is a worldview that does not end as the last breath leaves the body or as the seed falls to the ground.   We are both called to, and capable of bringing new life.   We are called to bring new life in our relationships, in our communities, and yes.....in our Churches.  Remember, Jesus said we would do greater things than him.

So the questions come.   Where is new life needed, and what are we willing to let go of to allow it to emerge?    More to the point is the question about our willingness to die to this world so that we can live to Christ (   It's like that old Gospel Song,  "Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die...."    There's uncomfortable truth here.   We like the idea of new life.    But we're too busy clinging to the old one to take hold of anything new.   We're too addicted to the ways of death to even turn to life.     I'm reminded of a time in my youth when I worked in Domestic Violence Shelter. I remember being horrified at the thought of people in violent settings who would stay in a place where they were in mortal danger because the world they didn't know was more terrifying than the one they knew.  

We in the Church are not unlike that.   We would rather die than risk new life.    Our ways of being Church in this culture no longer work.    This is not news to anyone.    But it would be news if we were willing to let the grain of wheat fall to the ground so a new and more bountiful harvest may take place.    It would be news if we could say the truth about our churches and our faith communities and make choices that would lead us to life rather than a slow and debilitating death.

But the clear, beautiful and startling truth is that we are not a people of death.   We ARE a people of the Resurrection, a community of new life and hope.    So the call is to trust in the Resurrection; to pour our lives, our energy and our gifts unstintingly into new expressions of joy and love.    Rather than clenching our fists in a death grip on we have left, let us release it all for the sake of the Gospel.   Rather than seeking for what once was, let us jump into the rivers of life that flow around us now.

So there are four questions each person, each community might prayerfully consider as we step into a new day.

1)   What's working?    In other words, what things in our lives and our faith communities are good, true and life giving?   Let's celebrate them.

2)   What's not working, but could with some careful attention and focus, recover so that it gives hope and promise once again?

3)   This is the hard one.   What, in our lives, and in our churches, just plain is not working anymore? Be clear.  Be honest.   This is the one where self-delusion creeps into the conversation.   Seriously.   Ask yourself.....What just plain isn't working anymore?

4)   What will you do to let go of that thing that no longer works so that you can pour your energy, your spirit, your talent and your resources into new life......into the Resurrection?


It's these four questions that we ask as we travel about these days.
And it's my fervent hope that we might abandon the creaking old "belief systems" where we ascent to certain propositions without ever doing anything, and reach together for new life.

What's that look like?   I don't know.     I guess that's where the trust thing begins.


Thanks for reading....
DS Schuyler

You Have to Love Yourself First....Then You Can Love Others?

        There is a lie that is spreading throughout the culture of our United Methodist Church.  Don't get me wrong.   This is not a malicious lie, nor is it intended to do harm.   This lie is not the product of angry or nasty people.  Nor is it repeated with malignant purpose.  But it is a lie nonetheless.   And despite benign intent, it is doing real and substantive harm.    Not only is this a lie, it is anti-Christian.   In recent weeks I've heard it from ministerial candidates, in children's sermons, in liturgy, and even in sermons in United Methodist pulpits.    It's said in reasonable psychotherapeutic tones with wan smiles and earnestly furrowed brows.   It's purred gently to upturned cherubic faces and launched in a hundred different venues, and it goes like this:

         "You cannot love others until you love yourself."   

         Now, I am a proponent of a healthy self esteem.  I think people should practice reasonable self-care.  But loving yourself first?  Putting yourself first?  Before others?   Really?   This notion flies in the face of foundational Christian understanding.   It is, and I use this word with some hesitancy, a heresy.

         The core story of Christian faith is that God gave God's self on the cross in Jesus Christ so that we might be redeemed.     The holy utterance here is that self-giving love redeems or saves.   It redeemed us from the cross and it continues to redeem as we pour ourselves out for others in self-giving love.  

         Jesus said that whoever tries to save their lives will lose that life, and whoever seeks to save their life will lose it..... (Matthew 10:39, 16:25; Luke 9:24).    He didn’t say, “take care of number one first!”    We are a people who are anchored in the notion of self-sacrifice, not self-love.  We follow a Master who was executed at age 33 to give himself for others.  He did not stop to love himself first.  He gave himself, and in the giving found glory.   We are to look to the interests of others before taking care of our own interests (Philippians 2:3).  We are called to present our bodies as "living sacrifices, pure and holy...." (Romans 12:1).    Nowhere in our sacred story are we called to love ourselves first as a pre-requisite to loving others.

         It’s my conviction that this notion of loving yourself first exposes the tip of the iceberg that is the incursion of narcissistic culture into the sacred life of Christian community.   It’s certainly up to each person and community to choose self care over care of others and I have no judgment about such choices.  But let us be clear that such a choice is not a choice to practice Christian faith.  

         Indeed, one of the deepest joys of Christian faith comes as we discover our true selves in the process of giving ourselves for others.    There is nothing quite like the dynamic of a community of people who are rooted in the notion that self-giving love redeems.  It is redemptive not only for the “other,” but for the one who is doing the giving as well.   An entire community of people who put others first is a community where everyone is beloved, where the abundance of God’s Spirit is released and realized.  It is, in short, the “Kin-dom of God.”

         So, let this brief tirade serve as a humble, if blunt call to turn from a culture of narcissism and reach into a life of self-giving love.    Let each of us not look to our own needs first, but to the needs of our sisters brothers (there he goes quoting scripture again) even if it’s at cost to us.  For in so doing we will find our true selves, and even life itself.

            And let those who would follow Jesus, deny themselves – not put themselves first – and pick up the cross and follow him.  

                                                                                    sr

A WORD ON INCLUSION IN THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH, AND A FEW MORE ON THE NATURE OF CHURCH...

As I sit down to write this,  email inbox, Facebook, and the internet are all abuzz with news that the United Methodist Church has “defrocked”  a pastor for performing a wedding for a gay couple.   More poignantly, this pastor performed the wedding ceremony of his son, who happened to be marrying someone else’s son.

            This is the latest in a growing number of incidents of disobedience  (or “biblical obedience,” as some call it) to the United Methodist Book of Discipline, which forbids our clergy to perform weddings of this nature, and also forbids having them take place on church property.  Moreover, in language that only a church committee could conjure, our Discipline lifts up the sacred worth of all people while simultaneously condemning homosexuality.

            In my new role as a Superintendent I am receiving a growing volume of queries about where I stand on this issue.    With each email I have burrowed a little deeper in prayer and wondering.    For me, this is a storm of clarity and conscience.   Anyone who knows me even a little knows full well my position and my work on this issue over thirty years of ministry.   But, for those who wonder if Superintendency changes someone’s heart let me be clear.

            The Church is wrong on this issue.   Cloaking homophobia in poor biblical scholarship and even worse concoctions of church law is simply wrong.   Moreover, demanding subservience to Church law above dictates of conscience and biblical understanding smacks of idolatry.   

            The preponderance of our Christian understanding of grace, which speaks to the unearned, abundant love of God for every person reveals the Church’s error in this.   Our understanding that all the walls between people have come down in the love of God in Jesus Christ reveal the Church’s error in this.    The call of our own Lord and Savior to liberate the oppressed reveals the Church’s error in this.   And, the simple practice of agape love reveals the Church’s error in this.   Even our local Church membership vows which have every United Methodist promising to struggle against evil and injustice in any form, reveal the Church’s error in this.

             Now that I have made my stance clear,  I need to add that this is not the only place where the United Methodist Church is wrong.   The Church is wrong on it’s mushy language about war.   The Church is wrong when it invests pension funds in military contractors and other corporate entities that ravish our environment and practice human slavery.     Indeed, the Church has been wrong often throughout it’s history.   On slavery, on the inclusion of women in ordination, on so many things the Church has stumbled and fallen.     And, friends, the hard truth is that when we get this issue sorted out we will continue to be wrong on a host of things.    

            When I served the local Church I would frequently invite people to participate in a rhythmic chant.  It went like this.   Feel the beat if you can. 

  

“The Church is a broken and sinful institution!

The Church is a broken and sinful institution!

The Church is a broken and sinful institution!”

I know.  It’s a strange thing to ask people to do.    But I led this seemingly silly chant because as a people we frequently get caught in the trap of thinking the church should be perfect.   And then we are surprised and upset when learn that it’s not.  The Church is not perfect.    It never will be close to perfect.  It will always be forming, reforming and reviving.  It will always be picking itself up from the dust of its errors and reaching to be a more faithful expression of God’s love in Jesus Christ.   Moreover, we are not perfect.   We, the Body of Christ, the people of God are an imperfect people in search of the perfect wonder of God. 

Of course, one cannot list the frailties and failings of our United Methodist Church without lifting up the wonder and power that emerge from our great Connection.   Divided though we may be, we continue to heal the sick and lift up the broken hearted.   Disgruntled and disagreeable we may be, but because of us the scourge of malaria will very likely be halted in it’s tracks.   While we argue over important issues, we continue to sponsor the most effective relief agency on the planet.   Our common work is spread around the world through the schools and colleges, hospitals and clinics we have built.   We also share the saving Word of God as we train pastors and lay people across the globe.   Friends, even in the heat of our present disagreement we are nothing short of amazing.

  My hope and my fervent prayer is that we will journey together with our eyes on the prize, knowing that we are not there yet, believing that the journey is worth it, and trusting that God is calling us forward to justice, hope, revival and renewal in Jesus’ name.

So there it is.   I believe the Church is wrong here.   I stand firm in my commitment to the United Methodist Church, and I will follow it’s rules as far and as long as conscience and biblical understanding allow.

Finally, I call all my sisters and brothers throughout our connection to get busy where you are and do your passionate best to be the Church of Jesus Christ in this time and this place.    Let us join hands and hearts as we build a faithful, powerful, healing place for all people in the name of Christ Jesus our Lord.

sr

Becoming a Movement Again? Really?

BECOMING A MOVEMENT AGAIN….Really?

I hear these words a lot  in relationship to our life as a United Methodist Church these days.   We want to  shed the skin of institutionalism and take on the character of a “movement.” 

That’s good.

We should do that.

But we should be clear about what it is that we are doing as we shift from an institutional life to a movement reality.

Movements are unpredictable.

Movements are matters of the heart.

Movements are…..dangerous.

A movement takes flight on the wings of passion.   Often the passion is ignited by injustice or some egregious wrong.  Sometimes the movement emerges out of inspiration.   In our case as a Church, the Wesleyan Movement  set ablaze by the power of the Holy Spirit, calling people to a consuming faith in God that was to be lived out in the healing of the sick, feeding of the hungry and the liberation of the oppressed (read Luke 4:14 – 19).    People were on fire in those days, giving all to “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”    In that outpouring of “scriptural holiness,”  faith communities, schools, hospitals and more were planted around the globe.   People poured out their whole lives, and some gave their lives to this movement.   Yes.   Movements are things to which people commit their whole lives, willing to risk it all for the sake of the movement.

Think of the movements in our recent history.

The Womens’ Movement.

The Civil Rights Movement.

The Peace Movement.

The Labor Morvement.

In all of these struggles people not only gave their lives but lost their lives.

People gave all to the movement to claim equal rights for women, and some died.   Tens of thousands gave all to the movement for racial justice.   Some died.

In the Peace Movement, people spent years in prison, some were exiled and yes, some died.   And in the struggle for child labor laws and an eight hour day people suffered under the clubs of anti-union goons….and some died.

If we United Methodists are serious about becoming a “movement” again then we need to think of this with clarity and focus.   Are we willing to give all to the call of Jesus Christ to go forth and heal the world?   Are we willing to pour our lives out in building communities of hope and justice?   Are we spiritually pulled, drawn into creating spaces of inclusion and new life where everyone is welcome?     At the end of the day, are we willing to give our lives….not to an institution but to a movement committed to this “way of life,” which we are called in The Great Commission (Matthew 28

So, I’m all for this movement thing.

But let’s not play.

Indeed, let’s just stop playing altogether and actually pour ourselves into being Church together.     It’s going to be dicey.  It’s going to be unpredictable.   It’s going to be….dangerous.   People will die.

But then we’re a people of the Resurrection, yes?

We’re a people who trust in God’s power for new life, yes?

We’re a people who follow Jesus wherever he bids us go, yes?

So let’s reclaim our power as a movement. 

Let’s go forth and spend our lives and sharing the love, grace

and healing that we know in Christ Jesus.