What is the Commission on a Way Forward and how did The United Methodist Church get here?
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1 Healthy Conversations session April 9, 2018 Pastor Chuck Wilson Over the past several months I have heard in the hallways of Matthews United Methodist questions about LGBTQ inclusion, The United Methodist Church and our Commission on a Way Forward. I will address below some of those questions and am thankful to Bishop Kenneth Carter for his help and input. What is the Commission on a Way Forward and how did The United Methodist Church get here? At the 2016 General Conference (the governing body for The United Methodist Church that traditionally meets every four years) we found ourselves in a stalemate you could even say we were hostile toward each other on the subject of LGBTQ identity and human sexuality in our global United Methodist Church. The General Conference approved, just barely, the formation of a special commission to find a way forward for The Church... as an alternative to simply voting up or down in the moment. That was in May of In the summer of 2016 the Commission was established, and three of our bishops were asked to moderate. The Commission finally became a group of 32 persons from all over the world the UMC being on four continents U.S., Europe, Asia, The Philippines and Africa). Thirty percent of our United Methodist members are from Africa, and so 30% of the people on the Commission are from Africa. It s composed of one-third lay persons, one-third clergy, one-third bishops. The reason there are Bishops on the Commission is that they will be responsible for implementation of whatever the General Conference chooses, so it was felt that we needed those three categories. The United Methodist Church lives in the tension of having the Book of Discipline that speaks of the incompatibility of the homosexual lifestyle with Christian teaching and all persons are of sacred worth. We also live in a church a global church with vastly different cultures. It s simply very difficult to do ministry in the same way in Monrovia, Liberia, San Francisco and Manila and we re in all those places. So how do you write a way of living for a global church? And so at General Conference it was felt that it would be better to do this process over a period of months rather than simply taking a vote that would occur in 15 or 20 minutes. Some people ask if this is just kicking the can down the road. The conviction was that for a subject that has this much complexity, and for the Scriptures that have this much richness and complexity, it simply merits our taking the time to do it. Once a vision for a way forward has been completed by the Commission, it will be offered to the bishops, who will then offer it to a called General Conference in February of There is to be a 200- day period where the vision will be public. It ll be a model, or models, of how The Church can function... maybe giving each other a little more space in our differences. We don t quite know what those models will look like but we have people on the Commission who are very visible in every part of The Church. They ve learned to trust each other. They don t want to harm each other. And they love The Church. They want to see God s Church here in the future. 1
2 What s the best way to keep up with the Commission on a Way Forward? There really are several ways. If you re familiar with navigating the internet, go to umc.org, then Who We Are, then Council of Bishops, then A Way Forward and you ll see all of the teaching documents, all of the You Tube, Facebook live videos, and press releases. That s a great way to get started. We also have a lot of things on our Matthews United Methodist website. Where do I see God leading us as a denomination and what is my honest assessment as to whether they ll be a schism or whether we ll be able to stay together. I realize there s great diversity of thought about this subject. Bishop Ken Carter says, Imagine a planet where in some countries this subject matter would be absolutely a non-issue. And then in some countries a person could be killed by law for this. We as United Methodists do ministry in all these kinds of places. So where do I think we re headed as a denomination? Let me read to you a sentence from the document that was developed in order to compose the Commission on a Way Forward. The Commission on a Way Forward will design a way for being church that maximizes the presence of the United Methodist Witness in as many places in the world as possible that allows for as much contextual differentiation as possible and that balances an approach to different theological understandings of human sexuality with a desire for as much unity as possible. As much mission as possible, as much context as possible, as much unity as possible. That s the hope for our denomination... that we re not going to become smaller and more like-minded but that we are going to be deeply rooted in the Bible that we re going to be deeply honoring of local context and that we re going to try to retain as much unity as possible. That is the tension in which the Commission is doing their work, and the tension in which we live. And as for schism Some people are already planning the division of The Church. They already have models for it. You can find them on social media. I can only say that there are many people who are working to maintain the unity of The Church. We do this because we re not a perfect denomination, but God does amazing things through us, in our local churches, in our connection. We do it because Jesus prays that we might be one in John 17. I don t believe the world needs another model of division. I m not naïve about this, but I am hopeful. I m personally doing all of this for people thirty years younger than me. I could just retire and draw my pension. Some of the loudest voices out there have already retired, and so they re ready to blow it up and have a schism. BUT I don t agree with let s just divide. There s something in me that says the next generations deserve to have a church that gives them the same opportunities to serve God to love their neighbor that I have. And do I think we will experience schism? I don t believe we will. Do I know that there are people planning for that? Yes I do. Some of them are my friends and I don t disparage them. I ll simply disagree with them on that point. What s the best way for us to witness to our faith when people are angry at opposing views or afraid of opposing views? I want to recommend that you get a copy of the book The Anatomy of Peace. This 2
3 book talks about having a heart at peace, and having a heart at war. We have a heart at peace when we do not see the other person as our adversary or our enemy or our threat or an object or a stereotype. When we have a heart at peace we see the other person as a person just like us, created in the image of God, and so we don t immediately think about how we re going to gain an advantage of them or how we re going to disregard them. We think about how we can build a relationship with them. How can we understand where they are coming from? That s empathy having a heart at peace. Having a heart at war is seeing the other person as an enemy or a threat or an adversary. When we have a heart at war the wall kind of builds up. That s the culture in which we live, sort of a heart at war where we re pitted against each other. I know that everyone does not have the same views about some aspects of human sexuality, but I believe we can share a heart at peace. Why do I believe that? One of my favorite passages of scripture is Romans 12:1 & 2: Do not be conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. And to be conformed to the world, it occurs to me that we have these opposing views that pit us against each other and drive us into these smaller tribes. The only tribe worthy of our being a part of is the whole tribe of people who worship the Lamb, and any other tribes are unworthy tribes. And yet I know, because I listen and talk to people, it seems as if people are always wanting to get us into smaller tribes even in The Church. Do we no longer believe that homosexuality is an abomination because we have relaxed our thinking on other parts of the Bible, like women speaking in church, etc.? This is a question about the interpretation of scripture. One of the ways we as Christians interpret scripture is by relating to other scripture. So how do I reconcile this verse in Leviticus? You might begin by laying that verse in Leviticus alongside Jesus Sermon on the Mount, which is Matthew 5 through 7. In Matthew 5 through 7 Jesus continually says, You have heard it said, but I say to you. Or You ve heard Moses say, but I say to you. Now when my wife Karen says, Chuck, you ve been helping out a lot around the house lately, but well, I need to pay attention to what s coming next --- that s the important thing. So when Jesus says continually in Matthew 5 through 7, You have heard it said, Jesus is reinterpreting the law, and that s what the Bible does. Jesus also says he comes to fulfill the law. So it s not that we disparage the Old Testament, it s not that we put it aside. We simply live in the tension of loving the Bible and loving people, and we should live in that tension. It s where God wants us to live. It s not that we just put aside Scripture and love people, because we can t really love people the way God wants us to love them without loving the scriptures. But we know from reading the scriptures that the scriptures always drive us to loving people. What is our position on ordaining practicing homosexuals in light of Romans 1:18 and following? If you want to understand Scripture in light of human sexuality, I want to encourage you to begin to read several places in the New Testament. One place would be the Book of Acts, especially Chapters 10 through 15, which is how the good news of Jesus broke out of a Jewish culture to a Gentile world. And it ends with the Jerusalem Council. 3
4 Another piece of Scripture to examine would be the book of Galatians, which is about the relationship between law and love, between freedom and our responsibility. And a third section would be the first five chapters of Romans. Now in Romans it describes several activities in their context that are not within the purpose of God, and then in Chapter 2 continues to talk about all the people of the world who sin --- the other groups that sin. So let s say we re in North Carolina. It would be a way of saying that those people in Georgia sin, those people in South Carolina sin, those people in Tennessee sin. Romans 3 gets to the point of saying but you, yourselves know the law and you sin. And then Romans 3:23 all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All. And then going on to Chapter 5, it talks about how God responds to our sin, and that is the grace we accept by faith and therefore have peace with God. So I would encourage a reading of several of those passages. As for me, the center is like the beams of the cross where the vertical meets the horizontal. And if you re struggling with this, if you re struggling with scripture and the people in your life, I can only say that may not be something God wants you to resolve. It may be that we live with this struggle the rest of our life. Someone says, Isn t it clear what the Bible says? And I would say that living by the Bible can be hard. A mentor of mine said a long time ago that law is easy, grace is hard. It s easy to be married to someone and to keep the law and be hateful. It can be hard --- to live by grace. How does the current human sexuality issue compare with other issues The United Methodist Church dealt with in history slavery, the role of women, segregation, the Civil Rights movement? Kendall Soulen who teaches at the Candler School of Theology says that there are a couple of frameworks that people often understand about human sexuality. One is the frame of orthodoxy and heresy. That is the understanding of scripture and how our behavior relates to what the scripture teaches. Another framework, he says, is the frame of liberation and oppression and that is the frame that speaks, as this question does, of historical events. You know, at one time we had a biblical rationale for slavery, at one time we had a biblical rationale for not having women in ministry. And so these persons would ask if this isn t the same thing. Now what Kendall Soulen says is that these are two very different frames and sometimes when you hear a person speaking, you ll just hear the frame they re coming from. Now Matthews United Methodist, I would guess, has hundreds of people who use each of those frames. How do we live together as a church when we have people who understand reality so differently? This is one of our great challenges. Is this a church dividing issue? I do not believe has to be. I made a promise that I would try to seek the unity of The Church. I knelt before a bishop and put my hand on a Bible and I said this is what I ll try to do with my life. And so that s important to me. In conclusion, I have four words for you - burden bearing and bridge building. These are four words that I hope from the deepest places of my heart describe me. Let me unpack them for you. 4
5 Burden Bearing: When the Apostle Paul was writing to the Church at Galatia, he was addressing a community that was in deep disunity. Paul had helped form the Galatians through his teachings, but they were straying from their foundational commitments. Sin, false teachers, and parochial motives and interests were creating polarization. His letter is an attempt to speak clarity into the conflict. Into this polarized environment, Paul instructs them to do something radical, something completely contrary to everything polarization promotes: They ought to carry one another s burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2) Paul s command shows no favoritism. His call is not to one group only, to those with power or without it, or even solely to the strong or the weak. Everyone together is part of a community as children of the same God, and therefore they ought to carry one another s burdens. I think that says for me that when it comes to the subject at hand, part of bearing one another s burdens is for me to not only ask myself about whether my position is correct but also raise to the surface the question of why my neighbor is not yet convinced. This is the quandary of burden bearing. You see, real lasting progress whatever the issue might be, depends on the inclusion of those who disagree with you in the pursuit of change. This is not a call for relativism or for subsuming your conscience in order to advocate for what you think is wrong. It is a call for each of us to resist groupthinking within our communities and to create cracks in our echo chambers. How can we ensure opinions, ones we do not even agree with perhaps, are on the table for consideration? We must carry one another s burdens. Bridge-building: I m not talking about building a bridge to the mushy middle. I m not talking about the lowest common denominator between opposing convictions. I think it takes more strength of character and more depth of faith to reconcile divided people than it does to stay in our gated compounds where everyone thinks the way we think and from which we can lob verbal cannon balls at people on the opposite side of the street. Reconciliation isn t easy, but it is precisely the task to which we are called. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. (2 Corinthians 5:18-19) I will fiercely protect the unity of Matthews United Methodist. Psalm 133:1 says, How good it is when the people of God dwell together in unity. 5
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