{"id":652,"date":"2013-01-27T11:00:02","date_gmt":"2013-01-27T16:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=652"},"modified":"2019-11-19T13:33:04","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T18:33:04","slug":"and-are-we-yet-alive-methodism-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2013\/01\/27\/and-are-we-yet-alive-methodism-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"And Are We Yet Alive? Methodism 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luke 4: 14-21<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the full service.<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the sermon only.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Preface<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Today we hear from a prophetic text, Luke 4, regarding Jesus and his home town community, and we hear it following a good week of good words about a modern prophet, a patriot preacher, Martin Luther King, our BU alumnus.\u00a0 As Ernest Freemont Tittle said, \u2018the preacher can find always something innocuous to talk about\u2019, but do not time and text require some prophetic word for us, from us today?\u00a0 If we are to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly, we shall then need to summon the courage to listen and speak with courage, and to do so regarding not only the endless circle of concern around us, but also the smaller circle of influence, the community in which we live.<\/p>\n

I will bear witness.\u00a0 Born a Methodist, ordained to the Methodist ministry, I will die a Methodist, a superannuated Methodist preacher. All the lastingly good things of my life have come as gifts of grace, in and through this very church.\u00a0 Name in baptism. Faith in confirmation. Community in Eucharist. Deepest friendship in marriage.\u00a0 Job in ordination.\u00a0 Daily pardon in prayer.\u00a0 Eternal hope in unction.\u00a0 I am a singing Methodist and will continue to greet life with an openhanded Methodist handshake.\u00a0\u00a0 And my grandaughter\u2019s\u00a0 mother, grandmother, two great grandmothers, and great great grandmother\u00a0 all married Methodist ministers.\u00a0 I love my church and I am part of a multi generational<\/i> investment in its preaching ministry!<\/p>\n

That is, I pray to speak as one who speaks for<\/i> my people, and so, I hope, has earned the right to speak to<\/i> my people.\u00a0 If you speak for people, then you can speak to people.\u00a0 God is for us, so God\u2019s word can speak to us.\u00a0\u00a0 I love the Methodist church.\u00a0 Any church though is human, very human.\u00a0 As Tillich wrote long ago, \u2018the church is always both a representation and a distortion of the divine\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 This past year has proven that again.<\/p>\n

Some background.\u00a0 Methodism lives on four levels, or through four forms of conference.\u00a0 (A conference, incidentally, is a time and place in which to confer with one another.)\u00a0 Each of the four has one discreet, specific task.\u00a0 Our general conference, 1000 global delegates gathered once every four years, is responsible to write and rewrite our Book of Discipline, our church law.\u00a0 The jurisdictional conferences, split up regionally across the country, meet every four years to elect general superintendents, our bishops whose job is to appoint clergy.\u00a0 The annual conference, a smaller gathering of representatives from hundreds of churches, in each jurisdiction, has the single job of recruiting and retaining ministers, and ordaining them every year.\u00a0 Our charge conference, our local church, is in the work of making disciples, people of faith who love and give in the spirit of Jesus.\u00a0\u00a0 Disciple, Minister, Bishop, Discipline:\u00a0 these are the products of our conferences.<\/p>\n

A. And Are We Yet Alive?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

One:\u00a0 Our general conference met in Tampa, in late April.\u00a0\u00a0 Rather than affirming the full humanity of gay people, and granting the 10% of children who are gay all the graces I have happily received (see above), the Conference wrote a Discipline that excludes them from marriage and ordination. We have learned the horrific habits in this country, of finding ways to fractionalize the marginalized.\u00a0 It has been heavy lifting over decades to affirm that all people are people, imbued with integrity by the grace of God\u2014former slaves, women, the poor, people of color, the stranger, the otherwise abled, all.\u00a0 Integers not fractions. <\/i>The US constitution before amendment accounted some as 3\/5 human.\u00a0 No wonder that great Boston abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, called the document, \u2018a compact with the devil and a covenant with hell\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 I wonder what he would say about our 2012 General Conference and Discipline?\u00a0 But I must ask, in reflective discernment:\u00a0 where did Tampa come from? Some of Tampa, our General Conference, came from the results of the other conferences, over many years.<\/p>\n

Two:\u00a0 Some of it came from our Jurisdictional conferences.\u00a0 In July, our jurisdictional conferences met in five cities across the country to elect general superintendents. \u00a0In some cases they were chosen on the basis of proven ability, leadership experience, measures of churches grown or people rescued or dollars raised or buildings constructed, ministers from strong churches and significant pulpits, who had shown the ability to speak well to large groups and to lead complex organizations.\u00a0\u00a0 But in some cases \u00a0\u00a0elections were based not on ability or proven strength, but on representation, to show a \u2018rainbow\u2019 of representative general superintendents, apart from preparation or capacity to do the job, and, ironically, even tragically, in consequence, whether or not their tenure will have any positive impact for underrepresented others.\u00a0 The gospel is about redemption, not representation.\u00a0\u00a0 Now I will continue to speak for, and so to, the inclusion of all at every level of church life–that is part of the redemptive work of the Spirit in the church.\u00a0 But in what other walk of life do we select significant leadership on a narrowly representative basis?\u00a0 Dentists?\u00a0 Pilots? Surgeons? And what good will it do to open up the church, especially for those most in need of such openness, if the church itself shrinks, ages, weakens and dies, for lack of building up?\u00a0 Our jurisdiction has off loaded 60% of its membership since my confirmation at age 13 in 1968.\u00a0 The chief reason for this is poor leadership, starting with the top.\u00a0\u00a0 It is not somehow God\u2019s will to shrink the church we love.\u00a0 That is a direct consequence of our poor leadership: \u00a0moribund preaching, mediocre pastoral care, and unimaginative congregational life.<\/p>\n

Three: Some came up from our annual conferences.\u00a0 My own annual conference, a new and unformed body across New York State, met in June.\u00a0\u00a0 Two overarching issues should have been engaged, because they affect dramatically the present and future quality of the clergy.\u00a0\u00a0 Other than my questions, posed in the few minutes still allowed at annual conference for conference, that is, for a time to confer, no one addressed them.\u00a0 The first is the proposal, supported, let it be starkly recalled, by every north eastern bishop, to eliminate the security of appointment, or guaranteed appointment,\u00a0 a modest form of tenure, for ordained clergy (who have 4 years of college, 3 years of seminary, 3 years of supervised work\u2014all before ordination;\u00a0 who earn a modest annual salary plus housing; who agree to move, potentially every year, at the direction or whim of the general superintendent and cabinet; who are responsible to raise apportionment dollars equivalent to 25% of their church budgets (even the Mafia is kinder in percentage pickup); and who will work, if they are to be effective, 60-80 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, for 40 years:\u00a0 and we cannot even tell them that they somehow, in whatever tiny rural parish or other, will at least be able to feed, house and care for their children?)\u00a0 The second is related.\u00a0\u00a0 Unwilling to invest in elders, the superintendents are driven to hire non-elders, people who are not trained, not educated, not ordained, not in covenant, not traveling elders.\u00a0 In our yet to be fully born conference, this means that 540 of 931 pulpits are occupied, occupied by good hearted people, but people who have not studied the Bible in depth, do not know the history or teaching of the church, have had no preparation in counseling, in sacramental understanding, in worship and preaching, in administration, in pastoral care.\u00a0\u00a0 It is one thing to have laity Sunday once a year.\u00a0 But every Sunday?\u00a0 Do you go to laity Wednesday when the emergency room lets people who would like to be doctors administer drugs, set bones, and use ct scanners?\u00a0 Do you go to laity Friday when people who would like to be bankers get to open and close the vault,\u00a0 establish accounts, and make investments of your savings?\u00a0\u00a0 How about housing?\u00a0 Do you sign up aspiring carpenters, who think they might have some talent in digging foundations and setting roof lines to build your house?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Is it OK with you if the principal of your daughter\u2019s junior high school never graduated from high school himself?\u00a0\u00a0 Granted: education alone is not enough.\u00a0 Heart and head we need together in the influential, delicate, personal, salvific work of pastoral care and preaching.\u00a0\u00a0 Not 540, but 40 non-elders is all we should accommodate.\u00a0\u00a0 Have the elders preach multiple times:\u00a0 better one good sermon preached 7 times, than 7 bad ones once each.\u00a0\u00a0 Our annual conference provides everything but the one thing needful\u2014a chance to confer.\u00a0 Our annual conference attends to everything except its job\u2014providing excellent clergy.<\/p>\n

Four:\u00a0 And some came too from our local charge conferences. I went for worship this summer to a beloved church.\u00a0 In 1995 this was a vibrant congregation, 230 in worship in 2 services, a 7 day full building, the second strongest salary in the conference, a warm formal worship service not unlike ours here at Marsh, and, most proudly, a fine parsonage.)\u00a0 What did we find that Sunday?\u00a0 We found a worship service that is hardly a worship service, at least to my mind, with 60 present, and learned that the church was in the process of selling the parsonage.\u00a0 They need the money and lack the vision to hold on to it.\u00a0 And worship? I grieve to ask:\u00a0 Is it worship when the minister roves the sanctuary (ceiling paint peeling, by the way) with a microphone, like Phil Donahue?\u00a0 Is it worship when beautiful four part hymn harmonies are ditched in favor of follow the bouncing ball screen pseudo music?\u00a0 Is it worship when the sermon is a potpourri of miscellania, unrelated to text, to setting, to mission, or to soul?\u00a0 Is it worship without a choir, without order, without reverence, without silence, without offering, without a sense of Presence?\u00a0 No, it has become a hodgepodge of vain attempts to be entertaining, which are not even entertaining.\u00a0 And enchantment?\u00a0 Gone.\u00a0 People do not need the church to be their Rotary Club, their neighborhood cookout, or their reality TV show.\u00a0 They need the word of God rightly preached, the sacraments duly administered, and service rendered to the poor.\u00a0 When this happens, Sunday by Sunday, then churches grow.\u00a0 You cannot preach without theology, and you cannot worship without preaching.\u00a0 In short the general conference in Tampa had wellsprings, of sorts, in jurisdictional, annual and charge conferences.<\/p>\n

B. Methodism 2013<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

So what are we in my beloved church to do in 2013?<\/p>\n

After Tampa, in May, I determined to spend six months in prayer, and visitation.\u00a0 By phone or in person I spoke with 31 trusted friends. I meditated on their counsel, and came to only four fairly meager conclusions. 1. We need steady ongoing conversation, conference among elders, in season and out. 2.\u00a0 We need to follow the money. 3. We need to focus on pastoral care for gay people.\u00a0 4. We need to focus on pastoral embrace for lay people.\u00a0 Many young elders are leaving the church.\u00a0 Many middle age elders want to split the church.\u00a0 Many older elders are using covert, hidden means to address the situation. I will not leave, split or dissemble.\u00a0 So that means finding another path.\u00a0 I will have to go deeper.\u00a0 Four thoughts.<\/p>\n

One: There is something in this journey that will call me out and down further into faith.\u00a0 The language of the psalms fills my heart.\u00a0\u00a0 I prayed and heard this:\u00a0 You will have to go down deeper.<\/p>\n

Two:\u00a0 One part of the path is in regard to our ministry, the other part, regards money.\u00a0 In a way, the first part is easier.\u00a0 That is, most churches over time can come close to doing what we do regularly here at Marsh Chapel:\u00a0 marry gay people, hire gay clergy, minister directly to the gay community, and speak frankly, as today, about the full humanity of gay sisters and brothers.\u00a0 The second part is harder, about money.\u00a0 We will need means to keep from sending money, by apportionment, to fund the dehumanization of gay people, whether in America or in Africa.\u00a0 Fortunately, our general funds are several, not single, and local church treasurers, at the direction of the lay vote in the charge conference, can send to some and not to others.\u00a0 This will take some careful planning. \u00a0My own investment will be to continue to lift my voice, to continue in eight words that form the future for my church: Gay people are people.\u00a0 Lay people are people.<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i>Three:\u00a0 Gay people are people, at least 5\/5 human, endowed by their creator, and ours with Life, liberty, happiness\u2014they deserve to enjoy these too, including ordination and marriage. Jesus<\/i> can teach us this if we will let him.\u00a0 Remember he said to consider the lilies of the field, and how much God loves even these slight floral creatures in God\u2019s garden.\u00a0\u00a0 Gay identity is creation, not fall, God\u2019s gift, not human sin, as is straight identity.\u00a0\u00a0 Love the Lord your God, and your neighbor as yourself.\u00a0 Try to imagine what it must be like to be a 9 year old, who knows he is in the sexual minority. Paul <\/i>can teach us this if we will listen to him.\u00a0 Paul?\u00a0 Yes, Paul.\u00a0 He places the pinnacle of the good news at Galatians 3:28:\u00a0 \u2018in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, no male and female\u2019.\u00a0 And no gay and straight.\u00a0\u00a0 The gospel is about redemption, not about tradition.\u00a0 Gospel finally and ever trumps tradition.\u00a0 Gay people have integrity, are beloved, by God\u2019s grace, just as you are and just as you do. John<\/i> can help us, if we will read what he says.\u00a0 He says there will be another advocate, even a spirit of truth, which will lead us, lead us out into further truth, which is not in that gospel, or, even, in the Bible.\u00a0 There is a self-correcting spirit of truth loose in the universe.\u00a0 Truth involves continuity with past teaching and also discontinuity through new insight, by the gift of the spirit of truth.\u00a0 Our failure regarding gay people is theological.\u00a0 Our doctrine of creation could use a recollection of Jesus.\u00a0 Our doctrine of redemption could use a re-reading of Galatians.\u00a0 Our doctrine of the Spirit could use the voice of John.\u00a0 Gay people are people: the Bible tells me so.\u00a0 This is not only an issue of justice, nor only an issue of clerical integrity, nor only an issue of theological truth.\u00a0 It is most profoundly an issue of pastoral care. <\/i> The physician has responsibilities to many institutions\u2014her practice, her board examinations, her hospital, and her community.\u00a0 But in the end, all these and others are eclipsed by the care for the patient, the health of the patient.\u00a0 The pastor also has many responsibilities to institutions, or conferences\u2014charge, annual, jurisdictional, and general.\u00a0 But in the end, all these are eclipsed by the requisite care for the parishioner, for the 8 and 9 year old children who are among the sexual minorities.\u00a0 Gay people are people.<\/p>\n

Four:\u00a0 Lay people are people.\u00a0 Beloved, it will do us no good only to open up the church.\u00a0 We also have responsibility to build up the church.\u00a0 The needs, longings, reports and voices of lay people count, matter, last, and have meaning.\u00a0\u00a0 The church exists for mission, as fire for burning.\u00a0 Fishing and planting, evangelism and stewardship\u2014these are the joy of faith.\u00a0 And the fun, too.\u00a0 Lay people deserve and desire enchanting worship.\u00a0 We have every reason to provide vibrant, warm, ordered, traditional worship.\u00a0 Sixty minutes of fire and love, every Sunday.\u00a0 We will want to draw on the deep well of tradition\u2014not traditionalism but tradition.\u00a0 Listen to the lay people.\u00a0 They have no need for bongo drums, shallow hymns, neglected liturgy, or bad music.\u00a0 They respond to excellence. They deserve it.\u00a0 Traditional worship is what we owe them.\u00a0 Likewise, lay people deserve loving, intelligent, devoted, competent pastoral ministry and preaching.\u00a0 We once knew that so deeply we needed no reminder.\u00a0 Traveling preachers, taking grace and freedom and love from post to post\u2014this is what we once did best.\u00a0 Please:\u00a0 no more lay pastors, local pastors, deacons than absolutely necessary.\u00a0 Give us excellent ministers, educated and ordained, the brightest and the best!\u00a0 And are some of these local pastors excellent?\u00a0 Excellent!\u00a0 Then educate them and ordain them.\u00a0 Put up or shut up.\u00a0\u00a0 And lay people deserve the best that money can provide, and the best exemplary teaching about money we can provide.\u00a0 If nothing else, our tradition provides stellar disciplines about giving.\u00a0 Our people need to be taught, by the example of the clergy, to tithe.\u00a0 Well led, they will and do well follow.\u00a0 Tradition in worship, Traveling elders in the pulpit, Tithing all day long\u2014I cannot begin to tell you how much difference these three currently neglected features of spiritual life make when they are practiced, and especially when they are practiced together!<\/p>\n

Coda<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Let us open up the Methodist church by living the gospel:\u00a0 Gay people are people.\u00a0 Let us build up the Methodist church by living the gospel:\u00a0 Lay people are people. I plan to slog ahead.\u00a0 I will find means to advocate for the disciplinary inclusion of all people, like the ministry we have here at Marsh.\u00a0 I will gather a group at some point for further conference.\u00a0 I will find ways to encourage the real leadership of the church to be identified and selected for leadership, just as we are doing here at Marsh.\u00a0 I will find words to convey my ongoing respect for the noble calling, the challenging adventure, that is, gospel ministry, in my annual conference, in the same fashion we do here at Marsh.\u00a0 And I will continue to grow the churches of the church, to live up to the Harry Denman evangelism award, and to appeal to all who have received seven helpings of faith, once in while to think of inviting a neighbor who has not had the first course of the religious meal, to come worship at Marsh.<\/p>\n

I take heart from voices I overheard this week.<\/p>\n

Walter Fluker:\u00a0 \u2018We need fresh water to swim in.\u2019<\/p>\n

Melvin Talbert (quoting Burke): \u2018All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing\u2019.<\/p>\n

Sonya Chang-Diaz:\u00a0 \u2018When you pray, move your feet.\u2019<\/p>\n

Deval Patrick:\u00a0 \u2018People may be of limited means, but of limitless possibilities\u2019.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Warren:\u00a0 \u2018When (the President) makes his solemn oath, I will make my own silent one in my heart\u2019.<\/p>\n

Barack Obama:\u00a0 \u2018Freedom is not just for the lucky, nor happiness for the few\u2026From Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall\u2026our journey is not complete\u2026we must act knowing that our work will be imperfect\u2019<\/p>\n

Rev. Luis Leon:\u00a0 \u2018Que Dios Os Bendiga\u2019<\/p>\n

So that one day, as was said of old, it may be said, \u2018Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing\u2019. (Luke 4: 21)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

~The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill, Dean of Marsh Chapel<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luke 4: 14-21 Click here to hear the full service. Click here to hear the sermon only.   Preface Today we hear from a prophetic text, Luke 4, regarding Jesus and his home town community, and we hear it following a good week of good words about a modern prophet, a patriot preacher, Martin Luther […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2484,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions\/2484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}