Paying Attention

For those who have been paying attention, past weeks have been difficult in the United Methodist Church with regards to same-sex marriage. One church trial of a pastor who officiated his son’s same-sex wedding has just finished up, with a guilty verdict and penalty of a 30-day suspension and the threat of losing his clergy credentials still looming.  Forty United Methodist clergy co-officiated a gay wedding together, presumably intending to overpower the trial process by their very number. Last Thursday, the Council of Bishops asked for two bishops to file a complaint against Bishop Melvin Talbert for performing a same-sex union last month. It appears that the United Methodist Church is careening towards the spectacle of putting an African-American bishop, who worked closely with MLK during the civil rights era, on trial for standing up for what he feels is today’s civil rights issue for the church. Other church trials are pending. No matter where you stand with regards to same-sex marriage, the future holds great pain for the church as we see our judicial process carried out in the public forum. The larger society will know us by what they read about us in the press, and it is not going to be the UMCOR response in the Philippines that will be getting the attention.

How are we pastors to respond? Most of my colleagues are in congregations similar to mine, which contains members from throughout the political and spiritual spectrum in the big tent that is United Methodism. Even to raise the question in a neutral manner can result in hurt and pain and loss.  In a different place, I once taught a class on the Social Principles. I had 2 families leave the church after the session on homosexuality; one family left because the UMC was too liberal with regards to sexual orientation, and the other family left because the UMC was too conservative. We never saw either family again.

We live in a day and age where it is difficult for us church people to be able to talk about these things.  By default, the UMC is trading conversation for trials. Trials, by their nature, preclude the possibility of sitting together and conversing. Instead, pleas will be entered, motions will be made, positions will be argued, and a verdict will be handed down. There will be winners and losers. News organizations, within and without the church, will broadcast the news, and people in living rooms around the world will pass their own verdicts on our church, based on the snippets that are reported to them. 

The trial process is not conversation.

In the meantime, in our churches and in our pews, a grandmother will find out that a beloved grandchild is gay.  A church member, after months of intentional relationship-building with a non-churched friend, will find new levels of distrust of her church from the person she is trying to reach. A lifelong Methodist who has stayed with his home church all of his life in spite of his sexual orientation will have to decide once more if it is worth it, if there is room for him in his childhood church.

In the meantime, in our churches and in our pews, an evangelist who wants to focus on winning souls to Christ will pray for an end to the distraction.  A political conservative who is weary from fighting the culture wars at the ballot box will find no rest for his soul in his church. A Biblical literalist will have to decide once more if it is worth it, if there is room for him in his childhood church.

In the meantime, one pastor looks out at her congregation, full of everyone named above, and wonders where to go from here. Is it possible, by the grace of God, to create conversation around such difficult topics?  Or is the very nature of the conversation too volatile to bring up? Is the risk too great?  Will more people leave because either we’re too liberal or we’re too conservative?  I began these thoughts with the words, “for those of you paying attention,” and I have to confess that I have been hoping that no one is paying attention. The risks seem so great, even to write an article such as this one.

But is our only hope as we muddle through this mess that no one actually notices? Surely there is a better way.

Here’s what I believe. I believe that there is room for us all in this church, both my congregation and the larger UMC. We may frustrate each other from time to time. We may not always understand one another.  Our passionate convictions may run counter to those of the person sitting beside us. Sometimes, we may all get on each other’s nerves. 

But when we’re at our best, we’re all in it together.  I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen gay church members working alongside adamantly straight (for lack of a better descriptor) church members, laughing and talking. I’ve seen people pray together in pairs, knowing that they voted in exactly the opposite ways the last time they were at the polls. I’ve seen a church surround a beloved former pastor with love when he lost not one, but two, gay sons to the scourge of AIDS.  I know these things are true. I have seen them with my own eyes.

Yes, there are big things we need to talk about. Change is happening so rapidly, and the size and the increasingly global scope of the UMC make it complicated for us to try to respond to- much less offer leadership in- these changes. I have my own ideas about how we are called to live out Christ’s love (if I were SupremeRulerForLifeOfAllThatISee), but all of my ideas start with the same thing:

We need to be able to talk to one another, to pray for one another, to learn to love one another. Until we can do those things better, our future on this issue will continue to be complicated and divisive.  Sadly, church trials are not likely to lead us in a healing direction.

In the meantime, all I know how to do is to pay attention.  I will pay attention to how I keep showing love to everyone that God sends my way. I’ll just keep paying attention and practicing love, and I'll hope others will join in too. And when the day comes that we come together and get it right, then I hope that the world will pay attention to all the good stuff that those crazy Christians are up to.

Cold breakfasts and missing shuttle buses

I ate breakfast this morning at one of those restaurants where you place your order at one end of the counter and pick it up at the other end of the counter. When we walked into the nearly-empty restaurant, we were greeted warmly. The order-taker was friendly and professional, handing us our drinks with a smile. Everything was going well up to that point.

And then we tried to acquire our food. No one appeared to be working in the food preparation area. I asked at the counter, and the friendly person assured me that our food was being prepared. After a few minutes, a person appeared and sullenly began to slice bread.  I couldn’t help but asking if it was our food.  No, someone else’s food. Another silent person appeared grumpily from the back and began working on something else.  We remained standing awkwardly at the counter until finally giving up and getting a seat.  After awhile, our names were called and we returned to the once-again deserted counter to pick up our rapidly-cooling food. It felt like our breakfast order had been a huge imposition on the food prep staff. My breakfast companion confided similar experiences at this restaurant at lunchtime.  We both wondered how a restaurant could have such friendly staff at the counter and cleaning up in the dining room, with such a different type of staff fixing the food. 

Similarly, at an airport parking lot, my husband and I have had the same experience a total of 3 times between us.  The man at the gate directs us to a specific row, and then the shuttle bus never shows up.  We each have had to walk from the far back corner of the lot to the front entrance to catch a bus. (I’m talking about you, The Parking Spot at MCI!)  The gate personnel are friendly, but the actual job of transporting passengers from their car to the terminal doesn’t get done.

Really, the most important thing for any business is making sure that the core task gets done well.  As churches, it can be easy for us to mistake friendliness with our core task of inviting people into a deeper experience of their faith and service to the world. Sometimes we get it right, and sometimes we miss it entirely. Sadly, when we as the church miss an opportunity, it doesn’t just mean someone eats a cold breakfast or has to walk a half mile toting luggage. It means that an opportunity to share God’s love in a meaningful way has wandered past us, perhaps never to come our way again. And that opportunity is too important to miss.