It was painful to watch the live stream on the internet Monday. I felt sick to my stomach as the 2019 General Conference of the United Methodist Church voted not only to continue policies banning same sex weddings and barring gay and lesbian clergy, but also to strengthen enforcement of those hurtful policies. I knew that my denomination was taking a step that would deeply wound so many people -- claiming all the while to be doing God's will and following God's word.
The United Methodist Church's discriminatory policies had their start back in 1972, yet this week's vote of the General Conference still seemed like a jarring contrast to the welcoming nature of the local congregations in which I had been raised and had come to love Christ. This sent me diving into my father's sermons in search of some glimpse of the Methodist spirit I recalled from childhood.
Around the same time that the UM Church first declared "the practice of homosexuality [to be] incompatible with Christian teaching," my father preached a sermon called "The Inclusive Church." It was aimed at issues of race rather than sexual orientation, but it spoke to me in light of the week's discouraging events in the United Methodist Church. Dad wrote:
"This is how it is within the Church of Jesus Christ: All men and women, distinct and different as individuals, without sacrificing any of that identity, are bonded together into one body where differences are appreciated and accepted as enhancements, not threats, and where all are made to share and work and live together by the presence of the Holy Spirit within and between them.
As we look at our diverse brothers and sisters in Christ, we must ask why are we together? Why are we concerned about making the church inclusive? It's not so that a minority can be given more worth and be brought up to some supposedly higher level of the majority. Nor is it for the majority to prove how open-minded and good they are. It is because we all have one Father who made each of us inherently worthwhile, so that in his sight no person is more or less important than another. And Jesus Christ came into the world to bring his salvation to all people. If we all share the same forgiving Father, why can't we all live in the same house as one family?
At the heart of the tough decision Paul and others made to include Gentiles in the early church's mission was the new commandment Jesus gave his disciples on the night of his betrayal: 'Love one another; even as I have loved you.' So long as it was possible to interpret that commandment in terms of their own small Jewish circle, the difficulties the disciples had with it were minimal. But once the 'one another' began to be enlarged to include all kinds of people, including many kinds the disciples had been brought up to avoid, there were some real decisions to be made.
How far did Jesus intend to go with his 'one another'? Thinking through his whole mission and message, the disciples could come to only one conclusion. No limits could be set. Love for one another had to include Greek and barbarian, male and female, slave and free, Roman and African, as well as their own kind.
After all, to his command to 'love one another,' Jesus had added a pretty strong qualifier: 'even as I have loved you.' The disciples knew only too well what that meant, for the love of Jesus never had been selective, never had been dependent on the qualities of the one to be loved - after all, Jesus had loved even them! And they also knew how he had loved them to the end, stopping at nothing, not even his cross. How could they take the love of someone like that and claim that it was meant for only this group or only for that class? How can we? God help us!"
There, at the end of that type-written line on the manuscript, Dad had added two hand-written words of hope to end his sermon: "God will!"
"The Inclusive Church"
Scripture: John 13:31-35
Preached at Grace United Methodist Church
Millersville, Pennsylvania
