NEWS ITEM:  On March 10, 2014, a church trial will begin at the First United Methodist Church in Stamford, Connecticut.  On trial will be the Rev. Thomas Ogletree, an 80 year old retired United Methodist pastor and former Dean of the Yale Divinity School, whose offense was to officiate at the same-sex wedding of his gay son.  The UMC's Book of Discipline forbids the denomination's clergy from officiating at celebrations of same sex unions, declaring that homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching."  Ogletree is but the latest in a string of United Methodist clergy to face such trials which have, in the past, stripped the defendants of their ordination credentials for going against the Book of Discipline.  "Good News," a conservative group within the UMC, maintains that Ogletree's action is "injurious to the church."  On the other side is the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN) that seeks "full inclusion of all God's children regardless of
their sexual orientation or gender identity."


I suppose it's okay if we let them in the church doors, and since this is the church, I guess we have to let them become members.  But I don't like having to sit next to them.  I sure as heck don't want them teaching my kids in Sunday School.  No telling what sort of unnatural, deviant ideas they'll try to spread.  Talk about "incompatible with Christian teaching!"  I mean, have you ever heard such nonsense?  And they're all so predictably alike:  the claptrap espoused by one is immediately supported by all the others.  And they sound so pious:  always quoting Jesus in strange ways; making him into someone other than the Jesus I learned about as a kid. 

Some of them even sneak past the ordination examining committees and are in our pulpits!  No wonder we're in such trouble.  No wonder we're losing members.  Some of them are railing against the laws of the land, refusing to go along, wanting to change everything . . . even laws affecting the most private and personal relationships we have!  Don't even get me started on their marrying each other!  Their behavior is outrageous, disgusting.  Jesus never acted that way.

Back in 2009, our award-winning tagline was: "Open hearts. Open
minds. Open doors.  The people of the United Methodist Church."  
But now, because of them, people are saying that we're all a bunch of
hypocrites and leave the church on account of that. 

I'm telling you, these folks ought to be brought up on charges before a church trial.  They ought to be found guilty and expelled.  Then we'd have a church that we could be proud of:  a pure church . . . like Jesus wanted and on account of which he cleansed the temple.  We ought to do the same.  Let's just get rid of them!   Are you with me?
   
Sounds like an evangelical, right-wing screed, doesn't it?  Like something that a member of Good News might be given to say.  If your understanding of Christianity leans toward the Progressive end of the spectrum, as mine does, then you might say something like this:

"That's precisely the sort of thing that makes me so mad about those narrow-minded folks!  Every last thing I just read here is the sort of stuff I've heard them say.  Talk about hypocrites!"

If so, then "fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night." 

I have thought everything you just read.  I have had those thoughts, but not about members of the LGBT community.  I have had those thoughts regarding precisely those conservative members of my denomination who are clamoring for the punishment of United Methodist pastors for  performing same-sex blessings and marriages.

Some pastors, such as Thomas Ogletree, have followed their understanding of Jesus' teachings about inclusivity and justice.   They have decided not to be governed by a part of the Book of Discipline that is, unjustly and un-Scripturally, rejecting in word and tone. 

Those pastors have, instead, sought to live out the same Book of Discipline's injunction that the authority of Scripture should take precedence.  Or, as the RMN puts it:  "Ogletree has courageously looked beyond the dead letter of the law only to behold life-giving Spirit and has reminded us all that faith is much more a disposition of the heart than strict adherence to a set of rules."  To which I say, "Amen!"

So I'm in a spiritual dilemma:  I find myself caught between a passionate desire to proclaim the truth as I understand it, and the not-so-pretty desire to demonize and reject those with whom I so fiercely and fully disagree.  I'm sure it would be easier to be in a denomination without them.  That's not a righteous thought.  But it's one that slithers into my brain with alarming frequency, inviting me to take just a bite of that seductive fruit.  "Wafer-thin!"

Consider:  if these strident, rejecting conservatives weren't a part of us, those who are leaving the UMC because of The Book of Discipline's view regarding homosexuality, might find a reason to return.  Were these folks not in the church, I would not be concerned that a Sunday School teacher might fill my children's and grandchildren's heads with ideas that I find abhorrent and decidedly contrary to the spirit of the Christ.  Were they not in the pulpits, more sermons might actually do some good; Christian education might actually fit people for living their lives creatively; and there would be fewer instances of warring married couples wherein the husband hauls out the Bible to enforce his power over "the little woman," justifying his sexist (and thereby un-Christlike) behavior by quoting some words of St. Paul yanked free of their contexts, words about how the wife should "submit" to her husband.

I do frequently take a bite of that fruit.  I roll it around in my mouth.  I savor its sweetness.  So far, though, I have not swallowed it.  So far I have managed to spit it out   . . . sometimes at the very last moment.  What prevents me from swallowing it is nothing virtuous on my part.  It's just that there is something else stuck in my craw that prevents the swallowing.  It irritates.  I often wish it wasn't there.

I blame Jesus for it.  Really, I do.  It's all his fault.  Why did he have to have supper with Zaccheus, the tax collector who cheated on his own people while he collected their money to give to the Roman oppressors?  Why did he have to be so promiscuous in his love? 

"Really, rabbi, it's shameful . . . how you go hanging around with such riff raff!  You wouldn't find Moses doing that.  He wouldn't be curing
lepers . . . they're that way because they've sinned and God is unishing them . . . and even if he did, he wouldn't touch them!  Your mom and dad are right, Jesus:  you've lost your bearings. You should stop this nonsense and go home with your brothers and sisters.  They're waiting outside to take you home.  Have you no standards?  Have you no shame, Jesus?"

Apparently not.

And that's what sticks in my craw.  That's what prevents me from swallowing the bitter-sweet fruit of  rejecting those who are so rejecting.  It's because of Jesus' meddling in my life that I can't bring myself, finally, to endorse the notion that "extremism in the pursuit of rejecting those who reject is no vice."

But it is a vice.  Damn it.  So here I am, of necessity needing to love the unlovable.  (That seems like the right word, but is it arrogant and contemptuous of me to describe them so?) 

I need to say that this is a spiritual necessity for me:  not an institutional one.  When Jesus prayed that all his disciples might be one, it wasn't so that there could be an institutional church built upon that oneness.  Rather, it was so his disciples might transcend the dualistic, either/or, in-group/out-group religious mentality that fanatically and legalistically puts good people in the dock . . . and can escalate into flying planes into buildings. 

As for the institution of the UMC . . . just like each of us, it might have to die in order to live.  What a shame so many of its Bishops are choosing to save the institution by enforcing a legalistic notion of "oneness" rather than following the more difficult, ego-relinquishing, way of the cross toward a new institutional life that would be both more faithful and attractive.

In any case, the Spirit will find a way, a vehicle, an instrument . . . and it may or may not have a cross on its roof.

I'm an old, straight, white, suburban liberal descended from Irish and Swiss forebears.  I can and want to embrace LGBTs, people of color, a multitude of ethnicities, those from inner city and rural places, the young, the middle aged, and geezer-wheezers like me.  But it's confoundingly hard to want to embrace those folks who are so hell-bent on rejection in the name of Jesus. 

John Wesley taught that we could, in this life, go on to perfection, which didn't mean perfection as in never making mistakes.  He meant that we could, by God's grace, be made perfect in love and not wish to do harm.  I suppose I'm one of those half-baked Methodists.
 
I've had my heart strangely warmed (a la John Wesley's Aldersgate experience).  But it's not completely warmed.  My left ventricle . . . or perhaps it's the right one . . . is rather cool to the touch. Whether or not Wesley was right, I know I'm not yet there.  But I will try to stay open . . . respecting the thing that's stuck in my craw.

Practically, this means that I'll continue to passionately speak the truth as I understand it.  Loudly.  Frequently.  Clearly.  But I hope I will also be given the grace to listen . . . and just as passionately . . . to those who so frequently, loudly, and clearly espouse ideas I find destructive.  I hope I will be able to really hear them:   to listen past their words, beyond their own stridency, to become curious about their own struggles, their own insecurities, and how their beliefs serve to help them navigate through this always challenging world just as mine help me.

And then I hope that I can, with a gentle and lowered voice, offer them a better alternative.

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