Fellowship (of Presbyterians et al.) in the Kingdom God

 Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.

 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Romans 12:9-21

Saturday night in worship at LNPC we gathered around this scripture and talked about times we had experienced these things in real life.  Mutual affection, weeping when someone weeps and rejoicing when they rejoice, extending hospitality to strangers or overcoming evil with good.  We shared a story, each of us, of just one time when we had been part of one of these things, and what it felt like.  And then we looked at a whole list of human needs/values that we all share, which also characterize life in the Kingdom of God, and we circled the ones we had experienced in that moment.  When human life functions as God designed it, and when the Church is truly being the Church, we participate in life-affirming interaction with one another. There is trust, joy, connection, integrity, mourning, compassion, clarity, contribution, and authenticity.  And we were designed by God to thrive in this way, to share in God’s purposes when we experience and contribute toward these things in the world, living into the wholeness we each need in our very core. 

This scripture text presents an impossibly beautiful picture of what life in the Kingdom of God is meant to be, what being the Body of Christ should look like – and it is easy to read it and feel paralyzed or despairing by the stark contrast with what most of us experience regularly.  

This week the Fellowship of Presbyterians gathered in Minneapolis – 2000 people grappling through how to be church in all its nuances with our various interpretation of scriptures or understanding of faith or desired practices as communities.  Twitter was going crazy with people from the outside, desperately seeking to get a sense of the discussion, or throwing in their own snarky judgments as the days unfolded.  And, as with any such gathering, there were some things said about (and at) the event that did not contribute to wholeness or reflect God’s intention for life in the Body of Christ.

But my week was centered around a side event, “Eats & Empathy,” that was designed to help anyone – regardless of nuances in theology, experience, interpretation, emotion, etc. – to stay grounded and present, open to God and one another in the midst of the discussion.  We practiced empathy – really seeking to see and hear one another, to understand the needs and values being expressed within the words that are spoken or the actions that are taken.  And we looked at our own needs and values, grieving those that may have been unmet in the experiences of the week - such as communication, connection, respect, mutuality or security - and celebrating the beauty of these God-given needs anyway.

On Friday, our second evening, we addressed “enemy images” – those labels we use that allow us to dismiss one another, most glaringly and prominently “Liberal” and “Conservative.”  Sitting there together, a whole eclectic bunch of us, with all the enemy images we bring to the table, across from and next to these very people we’ve categorized and dismissed, or others we’ve labeled and assumed to be just exactly like us, we found ourselves experiencing solidarity, hope, shared grief, community, inspiration, the sense of understanding and being understood. 

And we could acknowledge that within this debate our denomination has been waging for 25 years, some people are really in touch with the needs for inclusion and justice and others are really in touch with the needs for integrity and faithfulness. But in truth, we all share all of these needs, and the needs themselves do not conflict.  In God’s Kingdom there is integrity, inclusion, faithfulness and justice.  In God's Kingdom all people are made whole and God is glorified.  So no matter which needs any of us gathered there tend to hold more dear, we found ourselves able together to grieve the way we fall short of these things as the church.  And at the same time we were freed to celebrate together the beauty of what we are called to as the Body of Christ and the foretaste we glimpse of eternity when we experience them here and now.

On Saturday night, when our tiny rag tag group of Presbyterian Jesus followers in all our weakness and humanity left our church worship service, we were filled with hope.  Holding in front of us these ridiculously full charts of qualities of life in the Kingdom of God that we’re evidently regularly part of - often without realizing it – and feeling the significance of what we had shared the night before on behalf of the larger Church, we were profoundly aware that this is indeed the Body of Christ.  And that we are indeed individually members of one another.  And I, for one, am so very, very grateful to be part of such a holy and mighty undertaking.  Thanks be to God.


(For more on the Fellowship of Presbyterians, Romans 12, and being the Body of Christ, see last week's entry: Living Sacrifice)

Living Sacrifice

photo "holding hands together" from sethskim

Romans 12:1-8

On Friday I was driving down 35W, and on the 35^th street overpass a man was standing, looking down at the cars below, with a dog sitting beside him.  He was holding an enormous American flag in one hand, which was billowing in the wind, and with the other hand he was pressing a handmade sign against the fence, the words barely legible to the passing cars, it read, “Thank you Nick for your sacrifice. We will miss you forever.”  

Here was this person, demanding to be seen in his grief, seeking to honor someone who had died, I assume, in service to his country. And this man’s need to share it, to be seen and heard, was so great, and had so little outlet, that he had to silently shout it to strangers in their cars on their way to work. 

I couldn’t see the man’s face, but in the narrative I constructed, it was streaming with tears, defiant and proud and lonely tears, and, (just to make it all the more heart-breaking), I imagined that the dog beside him was this Nick’s dog and the two of them stood as a testimony to Nick’s sacrifice – that somehow by their actions he could be remembered and honored – even if just by the two of them in all the world.

Seeing that man and dog made me think about sacrifice, about this exhortation in our text today to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice to God.” We see sacrifice as giving up something, hurting us in some way for the sake of another.  The ultimate sacrifice you can give is your life, like Nick. It means you’re dead.  Gone.  The sacrifice, then, the exchange you made or thing you let go of, was everything that you could have been and never got to become.  The sacrifice was putting someone else’s battle, someone else’s agenda, someone else’s calling ahead of your own, or taking it on as your own in exchange for whatever you would have been without it.  Thank you for your sacrifice, you will be missed forever.

In Paul’s context, a sacrifice was dead as well. To bring a burnt offering, a sacrifice to God was a religious symbol, recognizing God’s sovereignty and your place as God’s subject; it was a way to worship and honor God.

So this language about being a living sacrifice, about your bodies, your lives, your whole beings, being a living sacrifice… it hardly even makes sense.  A living sacrifice is almost an oxymoron.  Nothing is put to death in this sacrifice, nothing is killed or made dead. Instead it remains vibrant, thriving, vital; the life lived becomes the sacrifice. 

Rather than giving up who you are; you fulfill it.  You let your every day, your imagination and actions, your creativity and fears and hopes and skills and relationships and encounters be the way of honoring God. 

In fact, this urging of Paul says we honor God most when each person lives fully who they were created to be, no less, in mutuality and connection with each other.  Everything you do, then, is part of this gift back to God, this thank you so much! lived out in each moment.  It’s not separate – the spiritual and the bodily, it’s one and the same.

You belong to God!, Paul has been saying for chapters and chapters up until this point – you belong to God and not to sin, you belong to grace and not to condemnation, you belong to freedom and to wholeness and not to slavery and brokenness, so live like it. This is your new natural state, you need to live your way into it.

And here’s how, he says, with your whole selves as an offering to God.  And this is absolutely and completely tied up in how we treat one another, in all of us together sharing in this thing – many bodies, one sacrifice, many members, one body, many gifts, one calling, many functions, one intention, serving the whole as we serve each other, and honoring God by doing so.  That is how we share in the purposes of God on earth.

Sitting here today, you probably cannot sense it in this moment, you probably have not seen the increasing build up, but our denomination is in a tenuous place, and this week some of that will come to a head. In congregations all over the country, this is the Sunday before, the Sunday of prayer and preparation, for this national Gathering put on by the Fellowship of Presbyterians here in Minneapolis.

This week the more conservative end of the one-dimensional spectrum we’ve created to judge and rank ourselves, this week those “conservatives” that are not so far over that they’ve given up completely on the rest of us, the ones just in from them, and then lots in the middle too, are gathering to talk about the future of their congregations, their presbyteries, their faith and how they practice it and whether it can still be practiced in the PCUSA, and if not, then what?

And the those on the more liberal side of this deceptive and perilous teeter-totter we’ve all frantically balanced ourselves upon, are either ignoring this large and emotional Gathering altogether, watching with concern and apprehension, or openly mocking and criticizing it. 

A few days ago someone whom I would consider a friend, or at the very least, a friendly colleague, wrote a scathing blogpost about the event, in which he, in essence, judged the motives of those attending as being about power and money, and finished with a “don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.” approach.  He was lauded for his words by some; and I wept when I read it.

 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to ….

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

If they go, (whoever “they” are), we who stay, (whoever “we” are), will lose valuable, integral parts of our body; we will not be able to function as we were meant to.  Where each person, and each congregation - in our limited awareness, and capacity, in our own little faith or great faith, in our gifts and our strengths, our weaknesses and blindspots - let our whole lives be part of this amazing thing we are called to, let our lives participate with God and each other.

Where will be prophets and the givers if we are separated?  What leaders and compassionates, which ministers and teachers will we lose?  And how will we carry on without these parts of our body?  What are we really saying, if any one of us thinks we can dismiss the other, or ourselves, from the body? We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.

These verses before us today are the first verses I really remember memorizing, (aside from John 3:16 and the other givens).  I was at summer camp, I must have been about ten, and we got points for different various activities, one of which was memorizing verses.  This one sounded so much like a sermon that I threw open the windows of our bunkroom, and shouted it down to passers-by until I had the whole thing perfected in the cadence of an old-timey preacher. 

Do not be conformed to this world!  I would roar out the window, jabbing my finger at the sky.  This doesn’t mean, like I thought it did when I was ten, not to swear or cheat or kiss boys or think bad thoughts or lose your temper.  It means not to let yourselves be dominated by the mentality that some are better than others, or that we are not utterly connected and dependent on one another.

This week is the 2-year anniversary of our move to embrace Sabbath more fully as a congregation.  I was asked to contribute some articles to a worship website on the meaning of Sabbath and how we practice it together, and as I wrote I found it fascinating to remember why we chose to do this, and to reflect on what it has given us. 

Sabbath breaks us out of the cycle of this world, the 24/7, non-stop, consumer-driven system that sees people as competition instead of companion, that sums up your full worth by your net worth, that isolates us as individuals instead of binds us as a body.  Sabbath demands that we stop and sense the grace given to us, and recognize the God who breathes life into it all.

Sabbath renews our minds and helps us resist the messages of this age.  It means, stop being solitary you in traffic, on the way to your own job and absorbed in your own life and look up at the man on the overpass – standing there in his grief and his need to be seen – and see him, and his friend who is gone, and your connection to them as human beings, and realize how grateful you are for your own connection to others, for places of belonging, for people who will grieve you when you are gone, and see your life for the living sacrifice it can be – the offering, the gift – to God and to the world, each and every day that you are living, and not only when you’re gone.

Sabbath rest means being reoriented, reminded, that God is God, and that you are part of the people of God, and that is how you are defined first and foremost –and in Christ you have a unique and particular role to play and others are blessed when you are fully you, living that role out alongside them being them and God being God.

All week long, with thoughts of Sabbath bumping around my brain, and watching the internet hubbub build up around the PCUSA, I was aware of the constant struggle not to be conformed to this world, and how even in the church, everywhere in fact, we are indeed opposing the forces that would throw us back into sin, that would lie to us about ourselves and our world and our God.  I was reminded that allowing ourselves to be renewed, body and mind, is a deeply spiritual and radically revolutionary act of resistance and honesty.

There is joy in all this too, by the way. Not like I preached it from the second floor bunkhouse window. Not all hellfire and brimstoney and preachy.  But worship, worship it becomes!  Full on, joyfilled worship, thank-you-God, worship, worship that says, yeah, things are bad, and they are hard, but still you are God and I am so thankful to be yours. 

Not worship as our world worships – worship of self and self-sufficiency, of wealth and fitness and independence and the sacrifice of death.  But worship to our creator and designer of life, who knit together this striking and intricate, eclectic body and knows how it all works together, worship that finds its rest and purpose and meaning in the one who sets us free and then holds us accountable to live in our freedom.

I urge you, therefore, it says, – wherefore?  Because from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever and ever amen! (vs. 11:36)  That kind of worship.

As we head into this week, I pray for the strength to keep seeing one another- as individuals, as members of one another, as a church and a denomination, as human beings, family and friends - to keep seeing each other and not leave one another stranded on the overpass in grief and isolation.

And I pray for the vision to recognize that this is God’s body, and not our personal property, and that each and every one of them – especially the ones I can’t relate to or don’t understand – are part of this body with me, and their purpose is necessarily different than my own, and I am not complete without them.  

And may my discomfort be a sacrifice of worship and widen my capacity to love,

and may my anxiety become a sacrifice of praise and expand hope in God’s design,

and may my apprehension or confusion become a sacrifice of surrender and deepen trust within me.  

And may I know the joy of belonging to God and each other, that each day, by imagination and action, our lives may sing out together in all their notes and harmony, into a living and holy sacrifice of praise, which is our spiritual worship.

Amen.

A note to my congregation...

Yesterday, at the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area meeting, the presbytery voted 206 to 56 to replace the wording of Amendment 10A in the Book of Order regarding ordination standards.  The change in wording was approved at the last General Assembly meeting, but required approval from a majority of of the 173 presbyteries in order to take effect.  Our presbytery was the 87th presbytery to vote for this change in wording, which means the change will go into effect July of this year.  The change in wording removes the wording "chastity in singleness and fidelity in marriage between a man and a woman" from our ordination standards - language that has been used to exclude those in same-gendered relationships from serving as deacons, elders and ministers of word and sacrament.  The new wording emphasizes the church's desire to "joyfully submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all areas of life" and maintains that it is the job of the ordaining bodies - individual presbyteries and sessions - to prayerfully discern each candidates suitability for ordination.  (To see the full wording, and more explanation, see the PCUSA website).

For some, this is the culmination of a life-long struggle, and the change brings joy and relief. They feel the affirmation and support of their denomination in their calling as leaders in the Body of Christ, or elation for those they love and respect whose calling is recognized and upheld by this change.  For others, this is a great sadness.  It goes against their understanding of scripture and they feel a loss of trust in their denomination and alienation from what they hold to be true.  All of these people - those celebrating today and those mourning - are our sisters and brothers in the Body of Christ, and I find myself in the discomfort of simultaneously celebrating with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn.  We all long for belonging, connection, support, integrity and wholeness.  For some, this change contributes to these things, and for others, this change takes away these very same things.  
It has been my privilege to know faithful followers of Jesus, whom I admire and respect, who come out with different understandings of what following Jesus means in many areas.  It is also a delicious frustration of our faith that God has not just handed us a list of bullet points that answer every question or universally explain how to do this messy thing of being human, loving God and living faithfully.  Instead we get God in flesh: a sweaty, hungry, complex human being, loving and healing, teaching and fully sharing our place.  And we get a scrapbook of faith: stories and pictures and poems and descriptions and messages and snapshots of God's constant faithfulness through generations of human beings wrestling in their own times and places with the same needs and struggles we have today.  Neither of these is very clean cut or easy to explain or grasp. (God seems to enjoy paradox and ambiguity).
This means that for as long as there have been and will be a Church, God, who is "above all and through all and in all" will embrace in God's abundant welcome different understandings, interpretations and applications of Scripture, but continue to weave and grow us together in "one body, one hope, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith and one baptism."  (as gorgeously expressed in Ephesians 4). We are reconciled to God and each other not by our own great faith or beliefs, but by the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus.  I was drawn to the PCUSA because here I found a denomination that wrestles through difficult issues together - that allows one another the freedom and support to come to differing interpretations, conclusions and expressions of faith in Jesus Christ, within a commitment to listen to the voices of the past and of those next to us.  
I believe that in this covenant life, rather than by one certain, airtight answer or another, God's Spirit most often works in the tension in between, the messy discerning, the challenge of different voices and experiences, the places of doubt where we need to meet God and not just talk about God.  And that for however "right" any of us may be, we are also just as "wrong", and we need one another on this journey of faith. Most importantly, I believe we are guided by the Holy Spirit, and that Christ is still present, with us and for us, and we meet Christ as we are with and for one another.  This is God's Church, and God's ministry that we participate in; it began way before us and will go on far after we are gone.  We seek to faithfully join in here and now.
So, as unsettled and uncomfortable as it may be, I pray for the courage to continue celebrating with those who celebrate and mourning with those who mourn.  I pray that our little congregation may have the openness to live in God's hospitality and continue to extend that mutual and authentic welcome to others - regardless of their beliefs.  And I pray for the compassion to continue seeing one another as human beings, beloved sisters and brothers, chosen by God and knit together into this one, messy but beautiful Body.  
I invite you to come - in your joy or your grief, and in everything else besides - and sit with us together in the discomfort of the unknown (where the Spirit loves to act!), as the denomination moves forward and we seek - as God's people have always done - to faithfully follow our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

"Reconciliation" by Bert Monterona

For more:  The Presbyterian Outlook has links to a number of extremely helpful explanations and resources related to this vote and its implications.  It also as an often-updated page with Several responses to this vote from various groups.