The Traditionalist Plan Was Designed to Do Harm, But It May Do Some Good

But Joseph said to them . . . “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.”
Genesis 50:20

We have been a Reconciling Congregation for five years. But until very recently we had never displayed a Rainbow Flag. We never discussed it. But we’re New Englanders and we have an innate resistance to making a display of our religious convictions. Its just how we're built.

That changed rather abruptly after the Special Session of General Conference 2019 concluded at the end of February and we heard with finality that the delegates had voted (by a narrow margin) that they hated their LGBTQIA siblings even more than they loved Jesus.

We decided that we needed to have a Rainbow Flag in front of the church. We thought it was important to differentiate ourselves from those folks at General Conference. We are United Methodists (and still mostly proud of it), but we are not those people.

We did not have a real flag, but Pastor Carol, always a woman of action, searched through the Sunday School closet and found a rainbow colored fabric we had used to make a “coat of many colors” for Joseph in a children’s musical a few years ago.

It was not a very good representation of a rainbow flag, but it did make me think about the juxtaposition of the flag with Joseph and his many colored coat. 

And Joseph’s words to his brothers.

Many years after they sold him into slavery in Egypt, and after he had risen from slavery into prominence in Egypt, his brothers came to him in a time of famine begging him for food. When they recognized him they expected brutal retribution, but he gave them forgiveness instead.

They intended to do harm and yet good came of it.

With the power and prominence he gained in Egypt, Joseph basically saved the world from famine.

I don’t believe that God “planned” the triumph of traditionalism at General Conference but I do believe that something good can come from it.

Two recent gatherings give me hope. 

On May 17-18 350 activists met at Lake Harriet UMC in Minneapolis. Calling themselves “Our Movement Forward,” they adopted a statement that serves as a preamble to a longer proclamation completed by organizers after the summit:

“We dream of a just and loving church — one that is relevant, growing, and ignited by the life-giving and world-changing power of the Holy Spirit,” the preamble says. “Our passion for justice is only surpassed by our hope in Christ Jesus. And as people of faith, we proclaim that the Good News of Jesus Christ is for all.”

Then on May 20-22 600 Progressives and Centrists met at the Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas for a gathering called “UMC Next.”

The group affirmed four core principles:

• To be passionate followers of Jesus Christ, committed to a Wesleyan vision of Christianity.
• To resist evil, injustice and oppression in all forms and toward all people and build a church which affirms the full participation of all ages, nations, races, classes, cultures, gender identities, sexual orientations and abilities.
• To reject the Traditional Plan approved at General Conference 2019 as inconsistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ and resist its implementation.
• To work to eliminate discriminatory language and the restrictions and penalties in the Book of Discipline regarding LGBTQ individuals.

The truth is that we should have gotten here sooner. Much sooner. And it should not have taken the debacle of General Conference to force the issue. But this is where we are. And in spite of the stony road that brought us to this point, there is hope for the future.

Rev. Dr. Adam Hamilton, Lead Pastor of the Church of the Resurrection and one of the conveners of UMC Next, echoed Joseph’s words to his brothers when he observed that this was one of the unintended benefits of the adoption of the Traditionalist Plan by the 2019 General Conference was that it pushed centrist churches to take action. Now, he said, the centrists are saying, “not anymore.” Those churches find themselves with no choice but to take a stand. And they are saying, “We’re not going to be quiet anymore. We’re a church for everyone.”

When asked what the UMC Next participants meant by their commitment to “reject the Traditional Plan” and “resist its implementation,” he said that some annual conferences will ordain LGBTQ persons as clergy, and that “thousands and thousands of churches will stand with LGBTQ people.”

And then he summarized that by saying, “We’re headed toward forming a church that my granddaughter will be proud to be a member of.”

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

Rebuking the Demons of a Faithless and Perverse Generation

On the next day, when Jesus and Peter and James and John came down from the mountain, a great crowd met them. Just then a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all were astounded at the greatness of God.
Luke 9:37-43

When they had come down from the mountain

Fifteen years ago on Transfiguration Sunday when I preached on this text, we had just gotten home from a Mission Trip with our Youth Group to the Rural Mission on John’s Island near Charleston, South Carolina.

John’s Island is a place of incredible natural beauty and yet it is also a place of devastating poverty. We had worshiped the previous Sunday with St. James United Methodist Church and it was wonderful, as it is every year. To sing James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” with a Black congregation was an incredibly moving experience. When they sang, 

“Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
felt in the days when hope unborn had died,”

I could not help thinking that the people in worship with me were, in fact, the great grandchildren of those who had been sold at the market in Charleston, just a few miles away.

I came to church on that Transfiguration Sunday emotionally exhausted from an experience that maybe gave just a glimmer of what the disciples experienced with Jesus. I think I felt some sense of what they felt when they came down the mountain.

Every great experience ends and we have to go back to life as it was. Whether it’s a retreat, or a summer camp, or a terrific vacation, or an anniversary celebration, or a graduation, or even a memorial service; eventually it ends. We go through those high moments of insight and inspiration and emotion, but eventually we have to come down. Peter wanted to make dwellings there, but you can’t stay on the mountain top. The experience ends, and you have to come down.

“Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child.”

When you come down, reentry is difficult. That’s what happens for Jesus and the disciples. They come down, and they find a crowd gathered. There’s a man whose son has a demon and he wants desperately to have that son healed. “My son,” he says, “my only child.” And he describes what happens to the boy: “It seizes him and mauls him and throws him to the ground, and sometimes he foams at the mouth.” Can you hear how deeply and desperately this man cares for his son?

You know what that’s like.

One of Jesus’ great gifts and one of his expectations of us is to care just as deeply as the father. To care just as deeply as the parents; not only for that child, but for all the other children across the whole human family. 

“You faithless and perverse generation!”

The desperate father; the disciples powerless to do anything; and Jesus says, “You faithless and perverse generation! How much longer must I put up with you?” Words that are eternally contemporary. I suspect that Jesus is just as frustrated with us as he was with them.

You come down from the mountain and the world is still crazy. There are still problems and still issues to address.

I checked my email when I got home from the Mission Trip and there was an invitation to a press conference on Tuesday morning for religious leaders supporting equal access to marriage; supporting Gay Marriage.

I read that and I said to myself, “I do not want to do this.” I walked into the kitchen, and I said to Elaine, “I’ve got a decision to make.” And I explained the situation. She said, “What’s the decision?” I said, “Well, I need to decide whether or not I’m going to go.” And she said, “Why would you not go?” “Because,” I said, “I don’t like to make people unhappy. It’s a controversial issue and it will make some people unhappy.”

“So,” she said, “You don’t want people to be uncomfortable.”

And then after a pause she said, “Some people have been uncomfortable their whole lives.”

I told the congregation why I had decided to go.

I said I knew it was controversial and I knew that some people saw this as a threat to marriage. But for me the threats to marriage were lack of commitment, lack of communication, and lack of trust. The fact that there were people of the same sex who want to make that commitment was something that we should celebrate. 

It was a good thing. For years the gay community has been criticized for promiscuity and yet there has been no avenue for a legal and sacred commitment. In an age when it is so hard to get anyone to make a commitment about anything, and at a time when commitment is in such short supply in the heterosexual community, I found it incredibly moving to see gay and lesbian couples lining up to promise their lives to each other.

I asked myself, “What would Jesus do?” And the question is answered as soon as it is asked. Jesus is always on the side of compassion.

Jesus says to the people, with great frustration, “you faithless and perverse generation!” 

Why is he frustrated? It’s not because they were good when he left and they’ve been bad while he was away, and now he has to correct them and get them back on track. The problem is not that they were good and now they are bad. The problem is that they are just the same now as when he left. 

The problem is that they have not changed. They have not grown. And over and over throughout the Bible, that is the problem. The people of Israel want to go back to Egypt because they are uncomfortable moving forward through the wilderness. Growth is always uncomfortable. But, like the people of Israel, we need to move forward.

The next step is always hard. And honestly, sometimes people just need time. Over time, we meet people, we experience things and we live through it.

I believe with all my heart and soul and mind and strength that the benediction I pronounce on Sunday morning is true, “that God loves us and accepts us just the way we are.” But I also believe just as deeply that God does not expect me to be in the same place today that I was yesterday. 

The purpose of God’s unconditional love and acceptance is to give us room to grow. We cannot take the risk of growth unless we know that love is there. That’s why it’s so important that children feel loved and accepted. We don’t want them to stay eighth graders forever. When they are three and four we may feel like we want them to be preschoolers forever, but we really don’t. And heaven knows we don’t want them to be teenagers forever. We want them to grow. And God wants us to grow.

The frustration Jesus has with this group of people is that they have not changed. They have not grown. And isn’t that the problem with the Traditionalism? The wilderness is hard and they want to go back to Egypt.

Jesus rebuked the demon, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father.

Jesus expresses his frustration and then he rebukes the demon. The language is hard for us. It seems very strange to speak of demons, but it’s a symbolic way of speaking about the evil in our lives. And it says something that we know is true: there are demons in our lives. Materialism, greed, the lust for power, and selfishness; those are all demons in our lives. Racism and xenophobia are demons. 

And homophobia is a demon. 

The demons seize us and convulse us and sometimes they even make us foam at the mouth. There are times, many times, when those demons must be rebuked. 

And all were astounded 

at the greatness of God.

When the demons are rebuked and we are healed it is astounding. It is testimony to the greatness of God.

In our United Methodist Church on this Transfiguration Sunday in 2019, we are not there yet. We are still mired in the demons of a perverse and foolish generation. We need to move forward. We need to rebuke the demons.


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

Traditional Christianity Is an Oxymoron

See, the former things have come to pass, 
and new things I now declare; 
before they spring forth, I tell you of them.
Isaiah 42:9

Traditional Christianity is an oxymoron.

I have said that many times. 

I keep hoping it will become a meme.

Jesus was a devout and observant Jew. But he was not a traditionalist. 

He was continually breaking new ground. He redefined the role of women and the definition of neighbor. He continually challenged his disciples to see the world and their neighbors in new ways. And he preached a message about the Kingdom of God that turned the world upside down.

And Paul made it clear that to be in Christ was to die to old ways and live into a new reality. “When anyone is in Christ,” he told the church in Corinth, “the old has passed away and there is a whole new world.” Everything is made new.

Of course it really begins long before Jesus and Paul. The prophets continually pressed forward in the face of the cultic tradition.  Rather than burnt offerings they demanded justice and mercy. The parables of Ruth and Jonah broke new ground, rejecting exclusionary doctrines in favor of  a new openness. Throughout the Hebrew Bible and through the Greek New Testament there is a continual push toward new insights and understandings. And the movement is always away from the past and into the future.

The genius of great Christian thinkers and theologians is that they were innovators. They looked at things in new ways. They developed new ideas and perspectives. That was true of Augustine, of Luther and Calvin, of Wesley, of Gladden, Rauschenbusch, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Tillich, and Niebuhr.

If John Wesley were with us today he wouldn’t be looking at eighteenth century solutions to our twenty-first century dilemma. He would be looking at how we can use what we know today to solve today’s problems.

And that brings us to the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.

Although it represents a significant advance in biblical and theological reflection, and provides a key insight into Wesley’s thought, the quadrilateral has been under attack by traditionalists ever since Albert Outler articulated it as a key Wesleyan methodology. 

Simply put, Wesley believed that sound biblical interpretation requires testing individual texts against the whole of the biblical witness, and then reasoning about that text, using the tradition of the church as well as every aspect of our experience. Similarly, ethical decision-making means more than searching the Bible for a text that will tell us what to do. It requires using the whole of the biblical witness, and then thinking it through in terms of the wisdom of the past and the experience of the present.

The traditionalist critique has reshaped the quadrilateral to make it clear that scripture is primary. In one rendering it is pictured as a pyramid, with Scripture in large letters at the top, and Reason, Tradition, and Experience below. In another image, Reason, Tradition, and Experience are pictured as overlapping circles within a larger circle labeled Scripture. 

Paul Wesley Chilcote, a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, writing for Good News magazine, begins his critique this way:

 “I will never forget a conversation I had one August afternoon in 1982 at Oxford University with Professor Albert Outler. We were talking about the many terms he had coined over the years. He said rather abruptly, ‘There is one phrase I wish I had never used: the 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral.' It has created the wrong image in the minds of so many people and, I am sure, will lead to all kinds of controversy.’”

Fortunately, Dr. Outler gave a much more complete and nuanced explanation of his “regret” in a 1985 essay in the Wesleyan Theological Journal.

"The term 'quadrilateral' does not occur in the Wesley corpus—and more than once, I have regretted having coined it for contemporary use, since it has been so widely misconstrued. But if we are to accept our responsibility for seeking intellecta for our faith, in any other fashion than a 'theological system' or, alternatively, a juridical statement of 'doctrinal standards,' then this method of a conjoint recourse to the fourfold guidelines of Scripture, tradition, reason and experience, may hold more promise for an evangelical and ecumenical future than we have realized as yet—by comparison, for example, with biblicism, or traditionalism, or, rationalism, or empiricism. It is far more valid than the reduction of Christian authority to the dyad of 'Scripture' and 'experience' (so common in Methodist ranks today). The 'quadrilateral' requires of a theologian no more than what he or she might reasonably be held accountable for: which is to say, a familiarity with Scripture that is both critical and faithful; plus, an acquaintance with the wisdom of the Christian past; plus, a taste for logical analysis as something more than a debater’s weapon; plus, a vital, inward faith that is upheld by the assurance of grace and its prospective triumphs, in this life."

At the time he gave us the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, Dr. Outler was the foremost Wesleyan scholar and theologian. And the Quadrilateral came to us in a time when Methodists believed deeply in theological pluralism and embraced Reason and Experience as the necessary companions of Scripture and Tradition. We were proud to say that in the United Methodist Church, “you don’t have to park your mind at the door when you come to worship.”

But the Quadrilateral does not rest on Dr. Outler’s imprimatur alone. 

Although Wesley himself never used the phrase it is easy to see the quadrilateral in his writing. Scripture, Reason, and Tradition were (and are) the foundational interpretive elements of the Anglican theology in which Wesley was nurtured, and even a cursory glance at his writing shows the importance of experience as a key element in his thought.

There may be many reasons why the traditionalists despise the Quadrilateral, but two of them are critical.

First, if we apply the Wesleyan Quadrilateral to questions of LGBTQ inclusion in the full life of the church, we come down on the side of inclusion. Both scientific reason and personal experience weigh in heavily for openness.

Second, in this dispute and in wider context, the traditionalists want to assert a more literal interpretation of Scripture, believing that this has conservative theological and political implications.

On this second point we can easily go back to Wesley himself to observe how he approached Scripture.

In a sermon “On Charity,” based on the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, he begins this way:

"We know, 'All Scripture is given by inspiration of God,' and is therefore true and right concerning all things. But we know, likewise, that there are some Scriptures which more immediately commend themselves to every man's conscience. In this rank we may place the passage before us; there are scarce any that object to it. On the contrary, the generality of men very readily appeal to it. Nothing is more common than to find even those who deny the authority of the Holy Scriptures, yet affirming, 'This is my religion; that which is described in the thirteenth chapter of the Corinthians.' Nay, even a Jew, Dr. Nunes, a Spanish physician, then settled at Savannah, in Georgia, used to say with great earnestness, 'That Paul of Tarsus was one of the finest writers I have ever read. I wish the thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians were wrote in letters of gold. And I wish every Jew were to carry it with him wherever he went.' He judged, (and herein he certainly judged right) that this single chapter contained the whole of true religion. It contains 'whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely: If there be any virtue, if there be any praise,' it is all contained in this."

Wesley did not believe, as many literalists do, that all Scripture is of equal value. And for Wesley, the importance of a passage is judged in part by reason and experience, even the reason and experience of non-Christians.

An even more telling example is found in his sermon on “Free Grace.” 

With a theological position firmly rooted in Reason and Experience, he declares that the “blasphemous” lie of Predestination is false and it does not matter to him how many passages of Scripture the Calvinists can cite. 

“No scripture can mean that God is not love, or that his mercy is not over all his works.”

Here is the full paragraph from “Free Grace:”

"This is the blasphemy clearly contained in the horrible decree of predestination! And here I fix my foot. On this I join issue with every assertor of it. You represent God as worse than the devil; more false, more cruel, more unjust. But you say you will prove it by scripture. Hold! What will you prove by Scripture that God is worse than the devil I cannot be. Whatever that Scripture proves, it never an prove this; whatever its true meaning be. This cannot be its true meaning. Do you ask, 'What is its true meaning then' If I say, 'I know not,' you have gained nothing; for there are many scriptures the true sense whereof neither you nor I shall know till death is swallowed up in victory. But this I know, better it were to say it had no sense, than to say it had such a sense as this. It cannot mean, whatever it mean besides, that the God of truth is a liar. Let it mean what it will it cannot mean that the Judge of all the world is unjust. No scripture can mean that God is not love, or that his mercy is not over all his works; that is, whatever it prove beside, no scripture can prove predestination."

For Wesley, Reason and Experience are not the end he seeks. They are the means. They are tools to be used in the understanding of scripture and of the world. But the fundamental theological affirmation on which everything rests, is grace. Wesleyan theology is always about grace.

In 1984, the bicentennial year of American Methodism, Martin E. Marty interviewed Dr. Outler for an article in The Christian Century:

Marty asked him what he has learned about how one translates the insights of Christian history and theology into a sermon for everyday people. The answer says a lot about Albert Outler and about Methodist theology:

“Three things. Somehow you have to be gracious. Then you have to show graciousness, and talk about it. It can be talked about. Finally, you call forth from people some sort of response to grace as unmerited favor, to the fact that our lives are gifted.” 
(Pounce: the mind triggers, “This really is a Methodist!”) 
"Life," Outler goes on, “is not merely fortune or luck, good or bad. When we preach, we tell people that God loves them -- and then we let them go.”

And then he concluded, “The preacher has to say, ‘I live by grace. You live by grace. We can therefore be thankful. We can love.”’ 




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