Blatantly Disregarding the Gospel

Wedding of Rev. David Meredith and James Schlachter

Then Jesus said to those who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 8:31-32

The current edition of the online magazine of the ironically named “Good News” movement is headlined by an essay written by Good News Vice-President and United Methodist clergy person Thomas Lambrecht.

The article which is provocatively titled “Blatantly Disregarding Truth,” is about the case of the Rev. David Meredith.

Rev. Meredith is a pastor in the West Ohio annual conference who was charged with three violations of his clergy orders:

1. “Immorality including but not limited to, not being celibate in singleness or not faithful in a heterosexual marriage”

2. “Practices declared by The United Methodist Church to be incompatible with Christian teachings, including but not limited to: being a self-avowed practicing homosexual”

3. “Disobedience to the order and discipline of The United Methodist Church”

The committee responsible for investigating those offenses dismissed all but the third one and this, according to Rev. Lambrecht, is evidence of “the current crisis” in the United Methodist Church, which revolves around “a critical lack of accountability.”

“The committee has effectively ignored the Discipline,” says Lambrecht, “and decided to impose its own standard of morality, essentially declaring that there is nothing wrong with a clergyperson being in a same-sex marriage or being a self-avowed practicing homosexual.”

If that were really what they had done, then it would be a good thing.

Actually, what the West Ohio Conference has done is to go back to the understanding of church law that existed before the Judicial Council rewrote the Discipline to rule that a clergy person in a same sex marriage was therefore “a self-avowed practicing homosexual.”

(I pause now briefly because I cannot write that phrase about “self-avowed practicing” without feeling ashamed, embarrassed, and amused. It is hard to think of a more effective demonstration of the irrelevance of the church in the twenty-first century than a focus on rooting out “self-avowed practicing” homosexuals.)

Rev. Lambrecht calls the West Ohio decision an “egregious violation of the church’s law and accountability process.” And he offers the hope of the Good News movement that the decision might be overturned on appeal. This, he argues, “would lead to a restored process that demonstrates that the church is able to hold its clergy accountable.”

And then he concludes:

“If an appeal fails, this committee’s decision will demonstrate that our church is no longer governable. We will no longer be governed by laws, but by people who reserve the right to undermine or ignore requirements that they disagree with. Such an outcome would demonstrate our ever-deepening schism and could only reinforce the movement toward anarchy and the reliance on raw power in our church-values that hardly comport with being disciples of Jesus Christ, let alone leading to the (positive) transformation of the world.”

When Rev. Lambrecht writes about “Blatantly Disregarding Truth,” the truth to which he is referring is the Book of Discipline as it has been interpreted by the committees and councils and conferences that agree with Rev. Lambrecht.

Our Book of Discipline is a collection of resolutions and affirmations intended to guide our life together as a denomination, but it is not The Truth.

The truth of the Gospel is a higher calling. That is the truth by which we judge our faithfulness.

When Jesus told his disciples that they would know the truth and that the truth would set them free, I don’t think he was talking about chasing after LGBTQ folks and throwing them out of the ministry.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

Listening to Ted Williams

Ted Williams hits one of his 521 Home Runs.

Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.
Colossians 3:13-15

Ron Fairly had a fairly good Major League career. He played 21 seasons in the majors and then was a broadcaster for 27 more. His lifetime average was .266. He led the USC baseball team to a College World Series championship in 1958, and then helped the Los Angeles Dodgers win three World Series in 1959, 1963, and 1965. He was an All Star. He is also the answer to a baseball trivia question that will stump all but the most obsessed fans: Ron Fairly is the player who hit the most career home runs without ever hitting as many as twenty in a single season.

Fairly was good, but he wasn’t Ted Williams. Of course, no one was Ted Williams other than the man himself. But there is a vast gulf between Ron Fairly’s exceptional talents and the best hitter who ever played the game.

Years ago I heard a story about Fairly talking to Williams about hitting, and he told the Hall of Famer that there was a particular pitch, that he just couldn’t hit. Williams responded by asking him, “Then why do you swing at it?”

If you can’t hit it, Ted told him, then don’t swing at it.

In baseball and in life, that is good advice. 

It’s not perfect, of course, there are times when you have to swing even if your chances of getting a hit are not very good.

But in his twenty-one seasons, Ron Fairly struck out just 877 times.

As I contemplate our upcoming United Methodist General Conference, I find myself thinking about Ted’s advice.

I was reading “The Renewal Agenda for General Conference” proposed by the ironically named “Good News” movement, and I found myself feeling physically ill. It’s an agenda which is apparently aimed at making us more rigid than the Southern Baptists. And then it occurred to me that the “Good News” people probably feel the same way when they read about the agenda proposed by the Reconciling Ministries Network. 

This is a pitch we United Methodists just can’t seem to hit.

We can’t even agree on what sort of a pitch it is. One side calls it “the issue of homosexuality.” The other side talks about the exclusion of our LGBTQ sisters and brothers (although we are not really comfortable with the gender binary).

Both sides believe that they are very serious about biblical authority and each side believes that the other is profoundly and perversely wrong.

We can’t hit it. We need to stop swinging at it.

To my mind, that would mean two things.

First, those of us in favor of inclusion need to give up on changing that grotesquely offensive statement about “homosexual practice” being incompatible with Christian teaching. Maybe we can modify it slightly and maybe not, but we probably cannot eliminate it, and we just need to let it go. 

And second, those in favor of the continued exclusion of LGBTQ persons need to give up on the penalties for pastors and bishops who celebrate same sex marriages and appoint LGBTQ pastors. Just let it go. We don’t have penalties for any other comparable infractions.

My guess is that plenty of people on both sides of the issue would find this idea deeply offensive. But it would be better than where we are.

Let Us Not Talk Falsely Now: Good News and Bob Dylan

Then Jesus said to those who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 8:31-32

“’So let us not talk falsely now for the hour is getting late.’ That line was written by Bob Dylan in the late 60’s. But it is appropriate for The United Methodist Church in 2014. The hour is getting late. And it’s time to speak the truth.”

Those sentences comprise the opening paragraph for an editorial by Good News president Rob Renfroe. The Dylan quotation fits well with Renfroe’s appearance. With his (relatively) long hair and a beard, he looks like a refugee from the late 60’s. But appearances can be deceiving.

Good News describes itself as a reform movement. They say they are “a voice for repentance, an agent for reform, and a catalyst for change within the United Methodist Church. They say that they are Christ centered, faithful to the scriptures, and committed to the Kingdom. In fact, they are committed to a judgmental and legalistic interpretation of the scriptures that is at odds with the teachings of Jesus. They are, sadly, bad news. And they have been bad news for a long time.

The truth, according to Renfroe, is that unless our bishops act swiftly and decisively to punish the clergy who are defying church law and violating their ordination vows by performing “homosexual marriages,” our church will face schism.

Renfroe says that a bishop once told him that there was nothing that a bishop could do about pastors celebrating gay marriages. It was, the bishop claimed, an issue for the Board of Ministry and for a jury of the pastor’s peers. Renfroe then asked, “Bishop, if you were to discover that I was cheating on my wife and I told you I had no intention of stopping, would I be leading worship in my church next Sunday?” When the bishop said that he would remove such a pastor, Renfroe responded, “Then, Bishop, you can do something about pastors who perform gay marriages.”

Of course, that would be a very good point if cheating on one’s spouse had anything in common with officiating at a same sex wedding, other than the fact that both are forbidden by the Book of Discipline.

Our church is declining, Renfroe says, because “many of our people cannot abide to stay in a local church or an Annual Conference where the Gospel is not preached, the Bible is not respected, and the Book of Discipline is disregarded.”

This, too, would be an excellent point, except that we are talking about less than one tenth of one percent of what is in the Bible and the Book of Discipline and zero percent of what is in the Gospel. This assumes that we ignore the fact that there are legitimate arguments to be made over those small fractions, and one can make the case that the Gospel and the Bible taken as a whole are on the opposite side from the Discipline.

The issue is not that complicated. The basic problem is that the Book of Discipline is simply wrong. It is wrong in calling “the practice of homosexuality incompatible with Christian teaching,” wrong in prohibiting equal marriage, and wrong in calling for sanctions against clergy who perform such marriages. This should not be surprising. One of the reasons we amend the Discipline every four years is that we expect to have things that need to be changed. We expect it to be an evolving document.

The question is, what do we do in the meantime? What do we do in the time when we know that the Discipline is wrong, but before it is amended? The answer is that when the Discipline is in conflict with the Gospel, we obey the Gospel.

The truth is that the few passages condemning same sex relationships are no more valid for us today than the passages telling us that women should not speak in church, or those that assume it is alright to have slaves as long as we treat our slaves according to the rules.

For Good News and for Rob Renfroe it is all about following the rules and punishing those who stray. The times are not changing. Moreover, our task is to keep things from changing.

And he says all of this in the name of Bob Dylan. He starts the editorial with Dylan and he comes back to Dylan at the end. The Alpha and the Omega.

He concludes, “The hour is getting late. So, let us not talk falsely. The truth is our bishops can act. The truth is our church needs them to act. The truth is, if they do, there is hope for the UM Church. If they do not, we are standing at the beginning of the end. I pray such is not the case.”

For forty years Good News has been trying to claim Jesus as their own personal property. Now they want to steal Bob Dylan.

It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.
                It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleedin’