It Is Time to Move On

Lou Ann Sandstrom and Kathleen Kutschenreuter, at Foundry UMC

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
Mark 8:34-38

I am not ashamed of Jesus.

And I am certainly not ashamed of his teaching.

But I am sometimes ashamed of those who claim to follow him.

I participate in several social media groups where United Methodists and others share opinions and insights and discuss issues of faith and practice. Last week on one of those groups someone posted this question:

"Does anyone ever post anything about feeding the hungry, providing healthcare for the poor, and other things that Jesus told us about? It seems that most if not all posts are connected somehow to sexuality issues in the UMC. Much energy is being spent on this issue to the detriment of many other issues the church could address. I agree with the idea of removing the restrictions on clergy and members, but it is as if the orthodoxies are holding the entire church hostage with this issue. Perhaps it would be more fruitful to split."

That’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing because it is true. That is pretty much all we talk about. And it has to stop.

We need to move on.

We have spent too much time and energy on this. 

Unfortunately, we can’t move on until we have resolved this. And the resolution can only go one way. We need to stop the trials. We need to let conferences fulfill their responsibilities in determining the fitness of clergy to serve. We need to remove the discriminatory language in the Book of Discipline.

It’s embarrassing.

One thing that both sides ought to agree on is that this has been a public relations disaster for a very long time. 

Think about it.

In the twenty-first century two people celebrating their love for one another in marriage should not be news. We have marriage equality everywhere in the United State and in most of the civilized world. 

This should not be an issue.

For Christians of conscience, our first concern must be the harm done to LGBTQ persons, especially our youth. And our second concern should be the moral issue. The exclusion of LGBTQ people is just plain wrong.

But beyond all of that, it is hard to think of anything in recent history that has done more damage to Christian faith than the persecution of our LGBTQ siblings.

Among the early casualties in this conflict, is our witness to the nature of God. We cannot even imagine having this discussion in the presence of Paul Tillich or Reinhold Niebuhr, or any of the great twentieth century theologians. By reducing God to a rule giver, we have anthropomorphized the Ground of our Being, Being itself, into a grumpy old man in the sky who is petty and mean, judgmental, and superficial, more concerned with rules than with human beings. How absurd that looks from outside the church. 

This “god” we worship must have a very strange sense of priorities.

Of course, the anthropomorphism would be a problem all by itself. And there are plenty of “Christians” eager to embrace an anthropomorphic vision even without the issues around a rule giving “god,” but our current debate has given that vision a legitimacy within the church that it would not otherwise have had. And it has undermined our attempts to invite those outside the church into the spiritual journey.

A second early casualty is the Bible. In this argument the traditionalists have reduced the Bible to a rule book and led us to focus on some of the worst texts in the Bible, take them completely out of context, misrepresent them, and then give them a literal interpretation. If the goal is to invite folks to explore the biblical witness, does anyone really think that Leviticus is a good place to start?

The result of this misbegotten effort is not to legitimize the stigmatization of LGBTQ folks, but rather to de-legitimize the whole Bible. Because of this conflict there are folks outside of the church, and even some inside, whose only encounter with the biblical word is through those “clobber verses.”

By asking people to accept the literal interpretation of these scattered texts, we encouraged them to judge the whole Bible by the truth or falsehood they found there. The emphasis on the literal interpretation of those verses advanced the public perception that the only right way to read the Bible was to interpret it literally. Not surprisingly, many found the Bible to be untrustworthy. 

The final early casualty of our argument is the church itself. If those outside the church could not trust the Bible, then they also could not trust the church which had told them how these strange texts should be interpreted. 

The demographics tell an important story. 

According to the Pew Forum, in 2001 Americans opposed same sex marriage by more than twenty percentage points, 57% to 35%. In 2016 the numbers are almost exactly reversed. Supporters outnumber opponents 55% to 37%. White mainline Protestants basically mirror the national average, and United Methodists show a majority in support. But among younger Americans, Generation-X and Millennials, the support is even higher, with approximately 70% of Millennials supporting same sex marriage.

Demographically, our exclusion and oppression of LGBTQ people is a ticking time bomb.

Our experience of LGBTQ persons is changing and so are our attitudes. Eventually, even the traditionalists will come around. In the meantime, we continue to harm our LGBTQ friends and neighbors, and we continue to marginalize the church. 

If we want to have a credible voice in an increasingly secular world, we need to do what Christian ethics demands. Our present policies will soon render us irrelevant.

Jesus Was a Pharisee (Seriously. He Was)

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, 
"Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”
Luke 13:31

A few years ago at our New England United Methodist Annual Conference we were debating an issue related to how the church treats LGBTQ persons. One of my colleagues, arguing for inclusion, characterized those on the other side of the debate as “modern day Pharisees.” It was, I thought, an unfair comparison, and I quickly made my way to a microphone to respond.

“That’s unfair,” I said, when the presiding bishop called on me.

“It’s unfair to the Pharisees.”

There was a smattering of laughter, but I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was serious. I admit it was a snarky comment. And it was unkind. Not what Jesus would have said in that circumstance, although it seems possible he might have said something similar in one of his many discussions and disputations with disciples and others.

Like everyone else in my generation and like almost everyone who went to Sunday School and grew up in the church, I learned early on that the Pharisees were the bad guys. They were self-righteous and hypocritical, obsessed with observing the letter of the Law, yet utterly tone-deaf to its spirit. They were rich and powerful, and they colluded with the Romans in opposing and eventually killing Jesus. They were ritually clean, yet morally corrupt.

And I learned in seminary that they were the perfect foil for preaching. Every narrative needs a good villain, and the Pharisees were the perfect villains for almost any preaching topic. 

It was perfect, with the slight problem that it was wrong.

The Pharisees were reformers.

They had a three-fold belief that God was a loving father, who loved humanity so much that he gave us the Torah, the Law, so that everyone who followed the law would have eternal life (fellowship with God, now and forever).

Anyone who has even a passing familiarity with John 3:16 will see the parallelism of construction. And beyond the similarity of form, the substance of the first and third points is basically identical. Each speaks of God as a loving father and each points toward eternal life. The difference is in the way. The Pharisees believed that following Torah was the way: John’s Gospel sees the way as believing in Jesus as the Christ.

The three-fold belief of the Pharisees gives rise to the animating question of Matthew, Mark and Luke: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” If the way to fellowship with God now and forever is found in following Torah (the way), what does it mean to follow Torah? What specifically must I do? And the answer is the same in each of the three Gospels: love God and love your neighbor.

Every three years on the second Sunday in Lent, the Lectionary has us reading about how some Pharisees came to warn Jesus that Herod was after him. And after cycling through that text a couple of times I began to wonder. Why were the Pharisees warning Jesus? Weren’t they his enemies?

Two possibilities presented themselves in my mind. The first was mildly unsettling, given everything I had learned up until that point. What if the Pharisees and Jesus were not such bitter enemies?

There are many occasions where he judges them harshly. At one point he tells his followers to listen to what the Pharisees say, because “they sit on Moses’ seat,” but be careful not to imitate what they do. On the other hand, there are also instances in which they invite him to dine with them. Some are attracted to Jesus and believe that he is the Messiah, and the Book of Acts records occasions on which the Pharisees protect early Christians.

The second possibility was even more unsettling. What if Jesus himself was a Pharisee?

If you grew up, as I did, with the image of Pharisees as self-righteous hypocrites, it may be hard not to reject that idea out of hand. 

But think about it.

We know that it was Jesus’ custom to go to the Synagogue on the Sabbath, and we know that the Synagogue was a Pharisaic institution. Jesus and the disciples are in the Synagogue a lot.

We know that the Pharisees believed in the two-fold concept of the Law as written and oral. The written law was understood to be eternal, but the oral law had to be reinterpreted for each generation. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus first declares that he has not come “to abolish the law or the prophets.” On the contrary he says, “I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” Then he seems to contradict that by launching into a series of teachings in which he says first, “You have heard it said,” followed by a commandment, and then, “but I say to you,” followed by a new teaching. It only makes sense when we recognize that in the first statement he is reciting the written law, and in the second statement he is giving a new oral interpretation.

Finally, we know that Jesus was called rabbi. And we know that rabbinic Judaism grew out of the Pharisaic movement. As one of my rabbi friends said, “If he was a rabbi, then he was a Pharisee.”

The Pharisees gave birth to two great religions, Christianity and rabbinic Judaism, the only form of Judaism to emerge from the ancient world. They gave us the animating question for the synoptic gospels and the belief structure for the fourth gospel. They also gave us a model for Bible study and for the focus on scripture as part of the worship service.

Clearly, Jesus did have many arguments with the Pharisees as individuals or in groups. And he criticized the movement as a whole. But those disputes and disagreements should be understood as internal to the Pharisaic movement itself, just as Christians disagree with other Christians and sometimes criticize Christianity as a whole.

And Jesus was not the only Pharisee looking critically at the movement. His scathing criticism in Matthew 23 are mirrored almost exactly in a passage in the Talmud which records a description of seven different types of Pharisaic behavior, only the last of which is an example of the high standards of belief and practice to which they were called.

1. The “Shoulder Pharisee,” who wore his good deeds on his shoulder.
2. The “Wait a Little Pharisee,” who always put off doing good deeds until a later time.
3. The “Bruised Pharisee,” who shut his eyes to avoid seeing a woman and was bruised from stumbling and falling.
4. The “Humpbacked Pharisee,” bent double by false humility.
5. The “Ever Reckoning Pharisee,” who was always counting up his good deeds.
6. The “Fearful Pharisee,” always quaking in fear of God’s wrath.
7. And finally, the “God-loving Pharisee,” who lived with faith and charity, whose deeds matched his professed beliefs.

Whether or not one believes that Jesus was a Pharisee, how we view the Pharisees is very important for modern Christians. 

Apart from the basic idea that historical accuracy matters, a reassessment of our attitude toward the Pharisees is critical for two reasons.

First, when we can see more clearly the Jewish context of Jesus’ life and ministry, we can better understand his teachings. We can see him as a rabbi advocating for his people against an occupying empire, rather than as a religious iconoclast rebelling against religious traditionalists. His religious and political views both come into sharper focus when can see him in his Jewish context.

The second point is also of great practical importance. Many Christians do not understand that modern Judaism, across the spectrum from the Orthodox to Reform and even Reconstructionist, all have their roots in the Pharisaic movement. When Christians slander the Pharisees of Jesus’ time, they are also implicitly criticizing modern Judaism. This is oddly ironic, since both Christianity and modern Judaism share a common beginning in the Pharisaic movement. Although the irony may be amusing, the practical result is that the historic Christian slander of the Pharisees has contributed to anti-Semitism.

A more accurate historical appreciation of the Pharisees can give us a clearer understanding of Jesus’ life and ministry and open the way to a more helpful relationship between Christianity and Judaism.

The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
I Corinthians 13:1-3

John Wesley cited those familiar verses from Paul’s First Letter to the Church in Corinth as the text for his sermon, “On Charity.” In his opening paragraph, Wesley observed that although Christians believe that “All Scripture is inspired by God,” we also know that all texts are not equal. “There are some Scriptures which more immediately commend themselves to every man's [sic] conscience.” And he argues that this passage from First Corinthians is one of the finest texts in the Bible, one that commends itself universally to all persons, regardless of their faith traditions or lack thereof. Then, as he begins to explore the meaning of charity, as it is contained in Paul’s letter, he notes that “charity” is really not the correct translation of the Greek word, “agape,” which is better translated as “love.”

It is a great sermon, one in which Wesley builds on his own conviction that love of God and neighbor is central to Christian faith and that how we live is more important than what we claim to believe. It is one of the sermons that United Methodists claim as foundational to our understanding of Christian faith and doctrine (insofar as Methodists can be said to have doctrines at all).

I thought of Wesley’s sermon as I was reading Kurt Eichenwald’s long essay in the Christmas issue of Newsweek, “The Bible: So Misunderstood It’s a Sin,” and the firestorm of controversy that it set off. It struck me that Wesley’s nuanced view of Scripture and his awareness of the problems with translation were light years ahead of what Eichenwald seems to assume is the perspective of most Christians. And Wesley was not an obscure scholar. He was a popular preacher more than 250 years ago.

I found the Newsweek essay on line after a friend told me about the essay and about the response to it by the defenders of Christianity on the cable news programs. I assumed that I would find myself siding with Eichenwald against the TV theologians.

In a contest of whose position most misrepresented a faithful reading of Scripture, the cable news folks win that one going away. But the Newsweek essay only looks good by comparison to something much worse.

Eichenwald has his own point of view, which he makes clear in the first two paragraphs:

They wave their Bibles at passersby, screaming their condemnations of homosexuals. They fall on their knees, worshipping at the base of granite monuments to the Ten Commandments while demanding prayer in school. They appeal to God to save America from their political opponents, mostly Democrats. They gather in football stadiums by the thousands to pray for the country’s salvation.

They are God’s frauds, cafeteria Christians who pick and choose which Bible verses they heed with less care than they exercise in selecting side orders for lunch. They are joined by religious rationalizers—fundamentalists who, unable to find Scripture supporting their biases and beliefs, twist phrases and modify translations to prove they are honoring the Bible’s words.

There are many flaws in the Eichenwald analysis, but there are two that particularly stand out.

First, he speaks of Fundamentalist, biblical literalists, conservative Christians, and Evangelicals as if those were basically different names for the same group of people. He almost seems at times to assume that he is speaking about all Christians. And he does not distinguish Christians who are politically conservative from those who are theologically conservative.

Second, he criticizes the biblical literalists from the perspective of biblical literalism. He assumes (or appears to assume) that the biblical texts should be interpreted literally and the problem with those the literalists he criticizes is that they are inconsistent.

He says that the Bible “contradicts itself” by interweaving two different narratives of the stories of Noah and the creation. This, of course, is not new information. Scholars have talked about this since the middle of the nineteenth century. Every pastor trained at a major theological school in the past century is familiar with the different sources woven together in the biblical narrative.

Eichenwald misses the point. The reason that that biblical literalism is so problematic is that the Bible is not meant to be read that way. Jesus and Paul did not read the (Hebrew) Scriptures that way, and the writers of the Hebrew Bible did not read the previously written texts that way. It is not a book of history and science. It’s about ultimate meaning. As Marcus Borg points out, it’s not less than literal; it’s more than literal. The problem with literalism is not that it claims too much, but that it misses too much.

Biblical Literalism Isn't Biblical

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
II Timothy 3:14-17

Biblical scholars tell us that the letters labeled as having been written by the apostle Paul to his younger colleague Timothy were not written by Paul. And they were not written to the same Timothy we meet in Acts and in the letters authored by Paul. These letters were written later, by someone claiming Paul’s theological and spiritual legacy and addressing issues in the church from a Pauline perspective.

It is ironic that in these letters which Paul did not write and Timothy did not receive, some Christians find the proof text for the idea of biblical inerrancy: “All scripture is inspired by God.” If the letters had actually been written by Paul, the “scripture” referred to would have been the Hebrew Bible, since the New Testament had not yet been written.

Of course, if you believe in biblical inerrancy, then neither biblical scholarship nor historical context makes any difference.

In a recent editorial in “Good News” magazine, publisher and President Rob Renfroe argues that the current conflict over “the issue of homosexuality” is really a much deeper division rooted in our understanding of biblical authority. He writes:

“Those of us who embrace orthodoxy believe that the Bible is ‘God-breathed,’ fully inspired and authoritative in determining moral and spiritual truth. On the other hand, our progressive colleagues are becoming more open to publicly admit that at least parts of the Bible (the parts they disagree with) cannot be trusted to reveal the heart and mind of God and may be disregarded.”

Renfroe is right that the underlying conflict is really about how we understand the Bible. Those who believe in biblical literalism claim that they have a “higher” view of biblical authority. Those of us on the other side believe that view is not higher, but it is different. We believe our reading of scripture is more consistent with what we find in the Bible itself.

And almost everyone who reads the Bible believes that there are some passages that “cannot be trusted to reveal the heart and mind of God.” Rev. Renfroe does not oppose the ordination of women and apparently disregards these verses from Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth:

(As in all of the churches, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached?)
I Corinthians 14:34-36

The parentheses are found in many translations to reflect the view of most New Testament scholars that Paul did not write those verses. They were added later and contradict the radical egalitarianism Paul (like Jesus) envisions in the Kingdom of God.

Leviticus 20:13 is one of the passages cited by Renfroe and others as evidence that homosexuality should be condemned. But as Adam Hamilton has pointed out, even the literalists don’t take the whole passage literally. The verse reads, “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.” Renfroe and others believe it is an abomination, but they don’t believe that those who engage in such acts should be put to death.

Narrow appeals to literalism as the only authentic way to read the Bible are fundamentally at odds with the biblical witness and they reject one of the core concepts of Methodism. Our approach to biblical interpretation and to ethical decision making rests on what we have come to call the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral.” Ten years ago, shortly before his death at age 97, Dean Walter Muelder of Boston University School of Theology, one of the pioneers in the field of Christian Social Ethics, addressed his fellow retirees in the New England Conference on precisely this issue.

“We need to remind the whole church,” he said, “that Methodism has a fourfold basis for making authoritative positions, namely: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. It is the coherence of these explorations that is authoritative. No literal appeal to isolated scripture passages is sufficient. We have to understand the historical nature of Scripture as a whole and relate any passage to the Bible as a whole, to the evolving tradition both within the Biblical period, to historical Methodism, to the best scientific reasoning, and to a comprehensive awareness of evolving experience. This fourfold coherence is essential for maintaining authoritative doctrine and practice.”

Let me repeat my favorite sentence, “It is the coherence of these explorations that is authoritative.”

Anti-Semitism and the Gospel

The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the Sabbath.
But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.
John 5:15-18

I can still see Mr. Abbott, my high school principal, standing with his hands on his hips, glaring at me, demanding an explanation for something I had done or not done. “I want a reason,” he shouted, “Not an excuse!” And I can remember pausing as I thought to myself, “Actually, what you want is an excuse. I’ve got a reason, but you won’t think it’s an excuse.” Wisely, I did not try to correct him. I mumbled something and he threatened dire consequences if it happened again.

There are reasons for the anti-Semitism in the fourth Gospel, but they are not an excuse.

John frequently uses “the Jews” the same way that Matthew, Mark and Luke use “the Scribes and the Pharisees.” He is talking about the religious authorities who oppose Jesus. (We pause briefly to note first that the Scribes and the Pharisees are the same people. Second, the Pharisees were reformers. Third, that Jesus was almost certainly a Pharisee. And Fourth, that the Pharisaic reform movement gave birth to Christianity and rabbinic Judaism.) The reference to Pharisees as a synonym for self-righteous hypocrites is historically inaccurate and implicitly anti-Semitic.

John was writing at a time when the church and the synagogue were separating. Christianity began as a Jewish sect. The synoptic Gospels portray an internal conflict within the synagogue between the Pharisees and the followers of Jesus. John characterizes the conflict as one between the followers of Jesus and “the Jews” who remain loyal to Judaism. Of course, the followers of Jesus were also Jewish. It was a sibling rivalry.

As a potential source of anti-Semitism, the verses from the fifth chapter are far from the worst passage in John’s Gospel, but they are bad enough. John says that “the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him” for breaking the Sabbath and for blasphemy.

I was in college when I first met someone who had been called a “Christ killer,” by the (so called) “Christians” in his Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. I was appalled, but also perplexed.

The very simple version of atonement theology I grew up with said that Jesus had died for my sins. He had also died for the sins of the world. But the personal part was where we put the emphasis. The historical roles of Pilate, Herod, the Sanhedrin, and the crowds, were all incidental accidents. The only theologically valid answer to the question, “Who killed Jesus?” was, “I did.”

Over the years I have grown into a very different theological understanding. Jesus died because his absolute faithfulness collided with the sinful violence of the empire. He died because he proclaimed the Kingdom of God as a just and non-violent alternative to the Roman Empire and to every empire. The Romans didn’t crucify people for religious crimes.

Holy Week is always an appropriate time to reflect on the issues of anti-Semitism, and Christians should choose their texts wisely for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. The Passion story is John’s Gospel should not be used without careful explanation of its historical context. But on this particular Holy Week, those reflections take on a special urgency because of the killings this past weekend in a Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kansas, by a white supremacist.

As it turns out, the three people killed were all Christians. One Roman Catholic and two United Methodists. You can read more about this by clicking here.

The FBI keeps statistics on hate crimes. In his column in the New York Times, Frank Bruni wrote that in 2012 there were 6,573 incidents reported. Most of the hate crimes were racially motivated. About twenty percent were motivated by the supposed religion of the victim, approximately equal to the percentage motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation.

Within the category of hate crimes related to religion, I would have expected that the majority would have been perpetrated against Muslims, but that would be wrong. Anti-Semitism is still the big winner. Sixty-five percent of all religious hate crimes were directed against Jews. Eleven percent were aimed at Muslims.

In this Holy Week and Passover, we need to unite in opposition to all forms of hate crime. And we need to remember the things that bind us together.