Faithfulness and Obedience

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 

II Corinthians 5:17-20

In a blog with the very promising name of “Unsettled Christianity,” Scott Fritzsche argues that Christianity is not unsettled at all. It is settled once and for all. What is, is what must be. Doctrines and beliefs don’t change.

Of course, the history of Christian faith reveals that they have changed.

We ordain women. We have outlawed slavery. We have outlawed segregation. We oppose racism and sexism (at least that’s what we say). We don’t burn witches or heretics. Our previous exclusions, rejections, persecutions, and oppressions all claimed doctrinal and scriptural support. 

But as the great abolitionist hymn writer and poet, James Russell Lowell wrote:

New occasions teach new duties,
Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still and onward,
Who would keep abreast of truth.

Looking back, we know that all of those things were wrong and it seems clear to us now that we can draw a straight line from the biblical witness and the teachings of Jesus to our present understandings. We should have known all along that those things were wrong. But we didn’t. We thought and believed differently. In each instance, those who advocated for more justice and equality were met with the argument that in one way or another the particular injustice under attack was actually sanctioned by God.

Scott Fritzsche’s complaint is that those who support the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons within the United Methodist Church, particularly those who have officiated at same sex weddings, have been disobedient to the doctrines and policies of the church and that such disobedience is the result of unbelief. Because we are a connectional church, he asserts, all of us are affected by this.  

“What one does affects us all,” he writes. “What happens to one affects the other. When disobedience is allowed to occur, I am complicit with it, whether I like it or not.”

He goes on to argue that, “You in leadership, especially those who happen to be Bishops, have failed me greatly. The episcopal leadership of the church should be a sacred trust and a holy calling. You who are to safeguard the church have instead chosen to allow it to be torn asunder. You have allowed the disobedience to grow to such a level that it is now an epidemic in some regions.”

And I agree with him that the unfaithfulness is epidemic in some parts of the church. 

What we disagree about is the nature and source of that disobedience. Those who advocate a more inclusive church are not the ones being unfaithful. On the contrary, it is those who are opposing and obstructing the full inclusion of LGBTQ Christians within the United Methodist Church who are being unfaithful to the Gospel and to the teachings of Jesus.

Those who favor exclusion believe they are doing what is right. They do not intend to be unfaithful. We should not question their intentions, but good intentions are not enough.

Doctrines and policies come and go. In a few years, we will change our Book of Discipline to be more inclusive. I hope we will do it next spring at the 2016 General Conference in Portland, Oregon. Some think it will not happen before 2020 or 2024. But it will happen.

John Wesley and Martin Luther and John Calvin were criticized for violating the doctrines and policies of their time. They were each charged with disobedience. 

The Episcopalians, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the United Church of Christ, Reformed Judaism and Conservative Judaism have all become inclusive. They have all changed, and so will we. But change never happens unless some people move ahead. It may appear at first to be disobedience, but when we look back we will call it leadership. And we will call it faithfulness. 

Our faith is always growing and changing and evolving. Change is the only constant over more than three millennia of Judeo Christian history. As William James wrote a century ago, “We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.”  

That is an unsettling thought, but it is true.

The Sounds of Summer

Don Orsillo salutes the fans at Fenway Park for the last time, September 27, 2015

“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops."

Those words were written by A. Bartlett Giamatti in 1977, before he was President of Yale, or the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. He was a lifelong Red Sox fan and he died before seeing a season that ended in anything but heartbreak. 

Red Sox radio announcer Joe Castiglione read those words at the close of the last game of the season this past Sunday. Joe (those of us who have spent many summer evenings listening to him cannot help speaking as if he were one of the family) traditionally reads that passage at the close of every season. Joe is currently tied with the late (and very, very great) Ned Martin for the longest tenure among Red Sox broadcasters at 32 years.

And Joe will be back next year.

Baseball broadcasters tend to have long tenures. The Dodgers recently announced that Vin Scully will be back for his 67th season next spring. He was calling the games when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn. I remember listening to him calling World Series Games when they were still in the afternoon. “Pull up a chair,” he would say, “if you’re just joining us, we’ve got good one.” And then he would tell us what had happened while I was riding the bus home from school.

Scully is the best ever. The Babe Ruth of broadcasting. Ned Martin was never so well known, but I loved the way he could weave together Shakespeare and baseball. So Martin is my number two. But Joe is right up there. And I’m glad he will be back again.

On the television side, there is grief and despair in Red Sox Nation. Don Orsillo will not be back. He was unceremoniously dumped after fifteen years. Fans are irate, in part at least because it seems utterly bizarre that after a terrible season in which the team was often unwatchable, they seemed to think that the answer was to fire Don Orsillo. The team was not just bad. They didn’t just lose. They were often unwatchable. On the TV side, Orsillo and partner Jerry Remy did their best to give fans a reason to stay tuned. But there is only so much you can do when the team seemed unable to hit, or field, or pitch, or even remember how many outs there were.

Orsillo will be replaced by Joe Castiglione’s radio partner, Dave O’Brien. That is both good news and bad news. O'Brien is one of the best play by play guys in the country. But his talents for description and storytelling come through much better on the radio than on TV. His TV announcing on ESPN is excellent, but his radio announcing is even better.

And baseball is a game for radio. There are very few announcers who live up to the possibilities of baseball on the radio. Scully, Ned Martin, Jon Miller, Joe Castiglione, and Dave (again, he’s like family). The folks who filled in over the summer when Dave O’Brien was doing TV games for ESPN did not fill me with confidence.

Don Orsillo will be calling games for the San Diego Padres next summer, replacing the legendary Dick Enberg, who is retiring. It sounds like a dream job, unless you grew up in New England rooting for the Red Sox, and studied under Joe Castiglione at Northeastern (Joe teaches broadcasting in the off season) and interned at Fenway Park, and your dream job was announcing for the Red Sox.

It was a sad ending to the season. Joe and Dave have often seemed like brothers. If they are not friends, then they present a good facsimile of friendship. And Don was Joe’s protégé and star pupil. 

A few weeks ago, not long after the news came out that Don would not be back, the Red Sox were playing the Yankees at Fenway. Jerry and Don carried on as if nothing was wrong. They were, as always, themselves. Late in the game, with the Red Sox trailing 12-3, the action on the field was less than riveting, but that did not deter them. They were busy analyzing video of Orsillo shagging fly balls last spring at Jet Blue Park, the Red Sox stadium in Fort Myers, Florida. Orsillo was in left field, in front of the wall that copies the Green Monster at Fenway.

Richard Sandomir recounted the exchange in an article in the New York Times.

“That ball you caught up against the wall,” Remy asked with feigned seriousness, “was that hit or was that lobbed?”

“Oh, it was hit,” Orsillo said insistently. “Driven.”

It was classic. Dave will be good, maybe even great. But we will miss Don.

The Churches Could Fill Their Pews If Only

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might bless them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.  
Mark 10:13-16

The latest in a long list of blog posts and feature articles how the church could attract more millennials came to me this week from Christian Chiakulas, a writer and musician from Chicago, courtesy of the Huffington Post. The profound skepticism with which I approach such articles was not greatly altered by my reading it. 

The ambitious title proclaims, “Churches Could Fill Their Pews with Millenials If They Just Did This.” The answer is that we should tell people about the concrete demands of the gospel to make the world a better place and then actually get to work doing it. 

Of course. That’s true. Why didn’t I think of that?

The fact that the answer is basically a cliché does not mean we shouldn’t pay attention.

A century ago Walter Rauschenbusch wrote an impassioned plea to pastors and leaders to embrace the Social Gospel, to combat the poverty of cities and rural areas, to stand up against the exploitation of workers, support the rights of women, promote universal education, and join in building the Kingdom of God. If churches want to save souls, he argued, then they must also save bodies. 

Young people, he said, already understand this. They are already committed. And if the churches do not join with young people in this struggle, then they will lose a whole generation.
A great deal has changed in the past hundred years. Women can vote. Workers are protected. We have Social Security and Medicare. We have made great advances in combating racism and sexism. We protect people with disabilities and we treat mental illness with more humanity. We have made great progress.

And the churches can take credit for playing a major role in this transformation. In the Methodist Church we created a new liturgical season between Pentecost and Advent, called Kingdomtide and devoted to studying and celebrating the biblical foundation for building the Kingdom of God. This was never a unanimous effort. There were always individual churches, and sometimes whole denominations, on both sides of every major issue. But overall, there was a shared commitment to advancing equality and justice.

Unfortunately, today much of that commitment can only be described in the past tense, and in many ways, we are in the same place we were a century ago. 

Half a century ago, when the churches were at the height of their institutional power, one of the great leaders (I think it might have been Harold Bosley, but I cannot find the reference) said that in the future our greatest challenge will be keeping a vision of the Kingdom of God alive in the human heart. Today, when we have a widening gap between rich and poor, and a reluctance to do anything about it; when we are willing to cut food stamps rather than increase taxes, we seem to act as if Jesus was only kidding when he talked about economic justice. Our vision of the Kingdom of God is faded and distorted by self-interest.

Today Christians are better known for gay bashing than for social justice.

George Barna, a Christian Evangelical and social researcher, reported that among young people ages 16-29, the most common perception of Christianity was that it was “anti-homosexual.” This was true for 91 percent of those who identified themselves as non-Christian, and for 80 percent of those who called themselves Christian. This same age group is overwhelmingly accepting of gay people, and approximately two-thirds of them support gay marriage.

The anti-homosexual agenda is wrong. And it is self-defeating. It is pushing young people away.

This doesn’t just damage the individual churches or denominations that pursue an anti-gay agenda, it hurts all churches. When J.P. Morgan lost $2.8 billion in a misguided trading scheme, it wasn’t just J.P. Morgan whose stock went down the next day, bank stocks were down across the board. When people see a video of a pastor telling his congregation that they should smack a son who isn’t acting like a real man, or another pastor saying that gays and lesbians should be kept behind an electrified fence, it doesn’t just hurt those individual churches. 

No one who knows anything about the Gospel accounts would believe for a nano-second that either of those ideas would pass the Jesus test. We might not always know what Jesus would do, but we can be fairly sure of some things that he would never do. Unfortunately, for millions of people those pastors and their congregations are defining Christianity.

If we want to bring young people into the church, we first need to bring the church back to Jesus.

*This post borrows heavily from one written in May of 2012

Pope Francis and John Wesley

Pope Francis addressing a joint session of Congress 

"But although a difference in opinions or modes of worship may prevent an entire external union, yet need it prevent our union in affection? Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences. These remaining as they are, they may forward one another in love and in good works.”

John Wesley

I love Pope Francis.

He is humble and brilliant, simple and profound, prophetic and brave, and he does not seem to care how others may judge him. He is faithful to the Gospel in such open and obvious ways that one can never doubt his passion and commitment.

Insofar as a pope can reject the trappings of his office, he does. He seems to have little patience with pomp and circumstance. He has great respect for the office he holds, and he seems to care deeply about his responsibilities as a faith leader, but part of that responsibility involves the embrace of his own humanity as a common bond with others. 

I know we disagree about many things: abortion, same sex marriage, and the role of women in the church come immediately to mind. Those are not small disagreements. In part, I accept those differences because I just like him so much as a person and respect him so much as a Christian. But I also know that as important as those issues are, they are not at the center of the biblical witness on issues of social justice.

From the Torah to the Hebrew Prophets to the teachings of Jesus, and throughout the life of the early church, the major biblical emphasis is on economic justice. This is the big issue at the heart of how human society is organized and it is the key component of how we show our love for one another.

I think I also love Pope Francis because he reminds me of John Wesley.

The visible similarities are striking. Wesley, like Francis, lived very simply and did not embrace the trappings of his office. Wesley, like Francis, embraced the poor and marginalized. Wesley, like Francis, was well loved by the common people. It was said of John Wesley that when he died he was the best loved man in all of England. And Wesley, like Francis, drew enormous crowds wherever he went. In common parlance, Wesley was, as Francis is, a rock star.

And beyond the visible similarities, they share a common message. Wesley’s sermon on “The Danger of Riches” is a foreshadowing of Francis’ critique of capitalism. The corrosive effects of unchecked greed are harmful to the soul and harmful to the social fabric. They harm the rich as well as the poor.

In his address to Congress, Francis declared that politics cannot be the slave of economics and finance, but must be “an expression of our compelling need to live as one, in order to build as one the greatest common good: that of a community which sacrifices particular interests in order to share, in justice and peace, its goods, its interests, its social life.” He went on to say that he would not underestimate the difficulty of that endeavor, “but,” he said, “I encourage you in this effort.” Wesley did not make the connection between politics and economics as systematically as Pope Francis does, but he understood and advocated a connection between personal faith and social responsibility.

Wesley was outspoken in his criticism of ostentatious wealth and consumption, but he refused to be judgmental. Once at the dinner table a leader in the Methodist movement called Wesley’s attention to the obviously expensive rings worn by a woman dining with them. He asked pointedly, “Mr. Wesley, what do you think of that hand.” Ignoring the man’s intent, Wesley answered, “I think it is a very lovely hand.” In a similar way, when Pope Francis was asked about homosexuality, he answered, “Who am I to judge?”

In an essay on “The People Called Methodist,” Wesley declared as a first principle, “that orthodoxy, or right opinions, is, at best, but a very slender part of religion, if it can be allowed to be any part of it at all.” One guesses that Francis would never put that thought into writing, but one might also guess that he may well think it.

For Wesley as for Francis, the belief that “God is love,” is a core theological concept. Everything else flows from that central insight. It is simple and yet profound. As Wesley would say, it is something that everyone professes to believe, yet very few practice.

More Thoughts on Shaming (Two Rights Can Still Be Wrong)

Jesus said, “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly."
John 10:10b

In previous episodes:

Ginny Mikita, a Michigan attorney who was at that time a candidate for ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church, officiated  at the marriage of Rev. Benjamin Hutchison and his partner Monty. She did so using credentials obtained online through the Universal Life Church.

Three United Methodist clergypersons, from Texas, North Carolina and New Jersey, wrote to United Methodist leaders in West Michigan asking that Ms. Mikita be discontinued as a candidate for ministry and pointed out that by obtaining that online ordination she had “united with another denomination” and therefore should be discontinued as a member of the United Methodist Church. She was subsequently removed from candidacy and removed from membership.

In a strongly worded criticism, the Reconciling Ministries Network (an organization made up of United Methodists working for the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in the UMC) said that Ms. Mikita had been “excommunicated.”

In response, Dr. David F. Watson wrote a blog post in which he said that, “This kind of rhetoric has one goal: to shame. Its purpose is to shame the pastors and denominational leaders who were involved in this matter . . .”

And then I wrote a response to Dr. Watson in which I noted  the irony of calling the RMN rhetoric shaming. I said that “The movement to exclude LGBTQ people from full participation in the United Methodist Church is built on shaming. What could be more ‘shaming’ than telling a group of people that their lives are ‘incompatible with Christian teaching?’”

All of this led to an energetic exchange on a Facebook page called, “New Methodists,” in which a pastor from Illinois, wrote: 

“Please provide evidence that Ginny Mikita was actually excommunicated. Likewise, please submit evidence that the Book of Discipline ever says that anyone’s life is ‘incompatible with Christian teaching.’ I submit that both accusations are distortions of what was actually done and what the BOD actually says.”

My colleague from Illinois is right on both counts.

Ginny Mikita was not actually “excommunicated.” and the Book of Discipline does not actually say that the lives of LGBTQ persons are “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

I know, and I assume RMN knows, what excommunication means. Ginny Mikita is still welcome to attend worship in any United Methodist Church. She can still receive communion. She is not denied fellowship in any way. The RMN language was hyperbolic in order to make a point. Regardless of the ecclesiological technicalities, it feels like excommunication and to many United Methodists, it looks uncomfortably like something out of the middle ages.

Dr. Watson’s argument is that by requesting and accepting those online credentials, Ginny Mikita did “unite with another denomination” and thereby remove herself from membership in the UMC. That’s true. But we all know that the Universal Life Church is not a real denomination. And there are probably thousands of United Methodists who have obtained credentials online in order to officiate at a friend’s wedding. I know some of them, and you probably do, too.

The practical reality is that Ginny Mikita was removed from membership in the UMC as punishment for officiating at a same sex wedding. That is not changed by the technicalities.

Just for the record, I did not cite the Discipline as saying that LGBTQ lives are “incompatible with Christian teaching.” I attributed that to what I called, “the movement to exclude LGBTQ persons from full inclusion in the life of the United Methodist Church.” 

And I stand by that statement.

What the Discipline says is that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” So technically, you could be gay without acting on those feelings, and that would not be “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

Let’s think about that. 

What is “the practice of homosexuality?” 

I guess we can assume that means anything involving the genitals is off limits. But what else is included among these unacceptable practices? Are some kinds of touching okay and others not? What about hugging or holding hands? What about writing a love letter? What about looking into the eyes of your partner?

I would submit that this is pretty close to telling our sisters and brothers that their lives are incompatible with Christian teaching. And to use Dr. Watson’s language, it is shaming.

And we should be ashamed. 

The Irony of Our Shaming

“Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”
Matthew 7:1-5

When I read that passage as a teenager, it immediately became a favorite. I was amazed that Jesus could so accurately diagnose my parents’ major problem in relation to me: they had logs in their eyes. They were looking for the splinter in my eye while totally oblivious to the logs in their own eyes.

It took several years before I realized that Jesus was not talking to my parents; he was talking to me. Of course, once I understood it, the passage was not nearly as much fun.

I talked about that experience in a sermon one Sunday morning. On his way out of church, a man told me how much he loved the sermon and then turned to his daughter and said, “I just wish your mother could have been here to hear it.”

H. Richard Niebuhr said that the church is a community that is always engaged in the mutual removal of logs and splinters. He noted that there are always more Christians ready to do the removing than to have their splinters (or logs) extracted.

The Rev. Dr. David F. Watson wrote a blog post called, More Thoughts about Christian Discourse, in which he criticized the Reconciling Ministries Movement and others for criticizing three United Methodist Pastors from Texas, North Carolina, and New Jersey, who were themselves criticizing some other pastors in West Michigan, for celebrating a same sex marriage.

You can read about the history of this in previous blog posts, by clicking here and here. As you might guess, I am about to add to the many criticisms with a criticism of Dr. Watson’s thoughts on Christian public discourse.

His central criticism of the people who spoke out against exclusion and in favor of the full inclusion of LGBTQ people within the UMC is not about what they said, but about the way that they said it. He writes:

“This kind of rhetoric has one goal: to shame. Its purpose is to shame the pastors and denominational leaders who were involved in this matter . . .”

This is the point at which the irony is almost unbelievable. 

Over the centuries, many groups have been cruelly oppressed, but few groups have been more consistently "shamed" than gays and lesbians. The movement to exclude LGBTQ people from full participation in the United Methodist Church is built on shaming. What could be more “shaming” than telling a group of people that their lives are “incompatible with Christian teaching?”

If this were a Seinfeld episode, Jerry would be asking, “Do you even listen to yourself talk? Seriously. Have you listened to what you’ve been saying?”

Please: Kim Davis Is Not Rosa Parks

Attempting to block integration at the University of Alabama, Governor of Alabama George Wallace stands at the door of the Foster Auditorium while being confronted by United States Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach.

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:8

Yesterday I was driving south on the Maine Turnpike, listening to Margery Eagen and Jim Braude on Boston Public Radio, WGBH. I came into range of the program when they were inviting listeners to tell them, “What one issue would cause you to support or oppose a presidential candidate, and why?”

And the calls came in. One guy said that he wasn’t a one issue person but he was very concerned that there were people who knew nothing about guns, yet would support a candidate on the basis of his or her support for gun control. He thought that most people in favor of gun control had not owned a gun or fired a gun, and how could they possibly understand the issue.

And then.

A very well-spoken and seemingly intelligent man called in from Cambridge to say that he was supporting Mike Huckabee because of Huckabee’s support for Kim Davis, the Kentucky County Clerk who went to jail (she was released yesterday afternoon) for refusing to issue a marriage license to same sex couples. Davis, he said, was like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. He said that people did not understand civil disobedience. If they did, then even if they did not agree with her views on gay marriage, they would support her actions.

Oddly, my head did not explode. 

Kim Davis has been called the Rosa Parks of Religious Freedom.

No. And, no. 

Arguments by analogy can be helpful. Often we can understand something new by the comparison with something we already understand well. But analogies are inherently imperfect and inexact. That being said, Kim Davis is not to Religious Freedom as Rosa Parks was to Civil Rights.

A better analogy for Kim Davis’ refusal to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples would be George Wallace’s refusal to permit the integration of public all white schools and colleges in Alabama. Wallace was, as Davis is, a government official who refused to uphold the law.

Beyond that, it is hard to think of anyone who has done more harm to the Christian witness in recent months than Kim Davis. (I said, it’s hard, not impossible. And, yes, it’s a long list. There are other contenders.)

P.S.: On this date in 1963, Governor George Wallace was served with a federal injunction directing him to stop state police from barring black students from enrolling at white schools.