that we might be one
THAT WE MIGHT BE ONE 06.01.14 John 17:1-11 Dean Feldmeyer CADE’S COVE REFORMATION Jean and I have been, for most of our married life, frequent visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains national park in Tennessee and North Carolina. So are lots of people. It’s the busiest, most visited national park in the U.S. And Cade’s Cove, the first settlement of white people in that area, is one of the most frequently visited parts of that busy park. It’s the place you go when you want to get away from the hustle and bustle and tourist environment of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. If you go on a weekday, especially in the morning, it won’t be very crowded and you can see the area much as it might have been from 1819 to 1937 when people actually lived and worked there. The park service farms some of the fields to make it look like it did back in the old days. Black bear and white tailed deer can still be seen frolicking about in the woods and fields. There are a couple dozen log homes that you can tour, a working grist mill where they still sell stone-ground cornmeal, and there are three churches. Wait a minute! Three churches? Yes, there were and are three churches in Cade’s Cove: A Missionary Baptist Church, a Primitive Baptist Church, and a Methodist Church. At the height of its life there were probably never more than about a hundred people living in that valley and they still needed three churches to keep everyone satisfied. One cannot help but wonder how well the people of those churches got along and if the life of the community in Cade’s Cove might not have been able to survive the Great Depression and thrive beond 1937 if there was one church instead of three. We Christians have always had trouble agreeing on what it means to be the church. We spend a lot of time bewailing the fact that so many people have rejected Christianity, but I wonder if at least part of the responsibility for that fact may not be our own. Why should non-Christians accept us when we can’t bring ourselves to accept each other? How badly, I wonder, have we compromised God’s gospel of love and grace and reconciliation by our unwillingness to extend that very gospel to other Christians and other churches? Our rationalizations usually run something like this: But, we do love and accept other Christians. Why, any time they want to leave their church and come to ours, we’ll be glad to have them. Any time they want to do what we do the way we do it and believe what we believe the way we believe it, we’ll welcome them with open arms. Kinda makes you wonder about that prayer that Jesus speaks at the end of this week’s gospel reading. He prays for God to protect his disciples. What does he want them to be protected from? Is it persecution? No. Is it heresy? No. Is it disease, famine, war, natural disaster? No. It’s division. He prays that his followers will not be divided, separated, estranged from each other. He prays that they will be on just as he is one with God, the Father. FRACTURED FROM THE BEGINNING It is unfortunate but, I suppose, inevitable, that, in this, the church has chosen to emulate and imitate the culture instead of offering an alternative. From the very beginning we have struggled for a unity that we have managed to achieve only rarely and imperfectly. Before the first gospel was written, just a handful of years after the first Easter, the early Christians were divided over what to do about the gentiles. At first, you will recall, all Christians were Jews. Christianity, which was called, simply, The Way, was a sect of Judaism and a relatively obscure, minority sect at that. But within a couple of years they found themselves having to deal with gentiles, non-Jews, who wanted to join The Way. The early church leaders, all Jews, were in disagreement about whether this should be allowed, and if they did allow it, how it should be done. Should gentiles be required to convert to Judaism before they became Christians? Should they be required to undergo the rite of circumcision? Should they have to keep all the kosher laws? Peter and Paul were the liberals who believed that gentiles should be welcomed into the early church without having to become Jews first. They said that the only circumcision one should have to undergo was circumcision of the heart.
The council in Jerusalem wasn’t so sure. Conservatives that they were, they really believed that you had to be a practicing and observant Jew to be a good Christian. In the end, they allowed that gentiles could become Christians without being Jews but that this exception would apply outside Israel only. Paul and Peter were allowed to welcome unconverted gentiles and pagans into the Christian church but they had to confine their missionary activities to Europe and Asia Minor. Just a couple of years after the first Easter and the church is already divided – Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians and, as long as this division was geographically defined, there was no real problem. But in 68 CE the Jews Rebellion against Rome changed everything. After an exciting start, the revolution failed miserably, crushed by the Romans, sending thousands of Jews – and among them, Jewish Christians – fleeing as refugees into Asia Minor. When they got there these Jewish Christians sought out the Christian church communities only to discover that they were made of almost entirely of gentiles who didn’t follow any of the Jewish practices and didn’t keep kosher. Arguments raged about who was doing it right and who wasn’t, about who were the real Christians and who weren’t. Many of Paul’s letters dealt with these arguments and most scholars agree with the Rev. Dr. Raymond Brown who wrote that the entire Gospel of John was written as a plea for unity in what he calls, “The Community of the Beloved Disciple,” the Christian church at Ephesus. Five hundred years later the church would find itself divided into five geographical patriarchies with headquarters in Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. By the end of the sixth century, only two would still be in existence, Rome and Constantinople, and we would see the first major schism into the church of Rome and what would become known as the Eastern Orthodox church. Another thousand years go by and, in the 1500’s the Church of Rome, plagued by corruption and political intrigue would explode in the Protestant Reformation under the leadership of Martin Luther. At about the same time other divisions would take place in Switzerland under John Calvin, in England under Henry VIII, in Scotland under John Knox and across Europe in the Anabaptist movement. Two hundred years later John Wesley, fed up with how the Church of England was being run by the rich, ruling class, would lead his small group of reform minded enthusiasts into a new church that would be called “Methodist” because of it strict rules of order and disciplined life style. Jesus prayed that his followers would be united, but division and separation as a form of protest or reform was irreversibly written into our Christian DNA. METHODIST DIVISION? Our own United Methodist Church has not been exempt from this history of schism and division. Originally, the Methodists were people who hoped to reform the Church of England. When they came to America they continued their reform efforts and found it easier to undertake reform where there was not a long history or tradition to fight against as there was in England. In 1784, shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War, as the Constitution of the United States was being written, John Wesley wrote to Francis Asbury that this new country needed a new church unfettered by its former ties to the old Church of England. On Christmas Day of that year in the city of Baltimore, the Methodist Episcopal Church was born. Just nine years later the first division occurred when James O’Kelly led a group of pastors out of the ME church to from the Christian Church where pastors were not required to serve where bishops sent them. This denomination would later be one of the constituent denominations to form the United Church of Christ. In 1816 Richard Allen, a freed slave who had been ordained by Francis Asbury, led African American worshippers out of a New York church where they were required to sit in the balcony across the street to a new church which would become the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Splits and schisms would continue to be our lot. In 1820 the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Zion would split from the ME church. In 1828 the Methodist Protestant Church would split from the ME church over the issue of lay representation at annual conference and the ordination of women; they were for it. In 1840 the Methodist Episcopal Church would vote in General Conference that the institution of slavery was contrary to God’s will and all ME clergy would be required to free any slaves that were under their control. All of the southern churches walked out to form the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In 1938 the ME Church, the ME South Church, and the Methodist Protestant churches would re-unite to form the Methodist Church but that would be too little, too late to reverse a trend that was already well established. Other splits would continue to occur. We Methodists have given birth to a whole slew of new churches which have broken away from our church. To name, just a few:
The Christian Methodist Church, The Free Methodist Church, The Primitive Methodist Church, The Wesleyan Methodist Church, the Wesleyan Church, The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, The Church of the Nazarene, (my personal favorite) The Fire Baptized Holiness Church, and The Pilgrim Holiness Church. As I said, our family tree has many branches. And now, it appears that we are on the verge of creating another. IS ANOTHER SPLIT COMING? Last month the “Christian Century” magazine, writing from the progressive point of view, published an article by associate editor Amy Frykholm entitled, “A Time to Split?” It was a fairly thorough examination of the current debate in the United Methodist Church over the issue of homosexuality and same gender marriage. She didn’t provide any answers but she did raise the question of whether it would ever be possible for United Methodists to reach a compromise position on this subject that would satisfy people on both sides of the debate. Now, this past week, a group of 80 United Methodist pastors and theologians who self-identify as conservative, have published a paper and a press release calling for a division. Speaking for the group, retired pastor, author and seminary president Maxie Dunnam says: “We can no longer talk about schism as something that might happen in the future. Schism has already taken place in our connection. There are conscience-bound persons who find it impossible to live in The United Methodist Church as we presently define ourselves in relation to human sexuality. Others could not live in The United Methodist Church if the present position of the church on human sexuality were changed. Forty years of wrestling with the issue is enough, and has proven the solidity of the belief systems of the two groups.” Others have pointed out that sexuality is only the “presenting issue.” The real issue, says Rev. Tom Harrison, pastor of the Asbury UMC in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is the role of biblical authority. Where do we place our emphasis? One group says the scripture and tradition are primary and stand alone, the other group says that scripture and tradition are always subject to interpretation through reason and experience. A third group are casting about, hopefully, to find a third position, a compromise that will allow both sides of the debate to live together peacefully. Such a thing might be possible in a congregational church where individual congregations accept the decisions of the denominational bodies as advisory but are left to their own counsel when it comes to application. We Methodists, however, are a connectional church. We are all bound by one rule, the Book of Discipline, which defines the rules for all pastors and churches within the denomination. Churches and pastors are not allowed to follow their consciences when they differ from that book. The Book of Discipline can be changed every four years by majority vote of the General Conference which is made up of elected delegates from all of the Annual Conferences and once that majority speaks it becomes the rule and law of the church. In other words, there is no room in our system for compromise or accommodation of minority opinions no matter how sincerely they are held. You either obey the Book of Discipline or you get out. And, for many who have followed this debate, on both sides of the aisle, it’s time for those who disagree with the Discipline on these issues to leave. Again, quoting Maxie Dunnam: “The energy of the Church that should have been spent on our mission has been focused on this debate. There is no viable ‘third way,’ or ‘compromise,’ so why not be Christian and civil, valuing each other, and work out a separation that will allow both groups to serve the Kingdom with the kind of commitment and passion essential for any powerful witness we wish to make.” WHERE DO YOU STAND? Inevitably, a discussion such as this leads to that fine point where someone says, “Well, where do you stand?” Where are you on this issue? What, if it comes to that, will you do? Well, I think that, by now, after thirteen years as your pastor, you all know where I stand on the issue of human sexuality. I believe that love is a thing to be celebrated and people ought to be able to marry, with the blessing of the church, the person they love regardless of their gender. It saddens me that our church does not allow me to place the blessing of the church, of you, as a congregation, or even my personal blessing upon such a union. But I took a vow to obey and I obey, however reluctantly. On the issue of the inerrancy of scripture, you know that I am not a fundamentalist or a literalist in any sense of the word. I believe that we all interpret scripture, some of us are just more open and honest about it than others. We on the progressive end of the continuum confess that our interpretation is filtered through experience and reason as God has given them to us and that, while our interpretations may be flawed, they are, nevertheless, faithful to the spirit and intent of the life and teaching of Jesus as we know them.
I believe that the true church of Jesus Christ is and ought to be “an inclusive community of faith, called to receive and spread the Good News of God’s love” to all people, “for the transformation of the world.” And that when we exclude people from God’s church we do so at our own souls’ peril. And I believe that if my beloved United Methodist Church, the church to which I have given my love, my faith and my service for my entire life, should decide to split over these issues, that such a split will come only after long and serious prayer and discussion. (We are the church, after all, and we never do anything quickly.) And, I believe that if we do undergo such a division, that it will be done in a way that strengthens rather than weakens our witness and mission to the world and that “we will agree on a plan of separation that will serve both traditionalists and progressives well.” But, until then, we will go on serving our community, our world, and each other with the love, grace, faith, hope and charity which God has given to us and to which we have been called. AMEN
The council in Jerusalem wasn’t so sure. Conservatives that they were, they really believed that you had to be a practicing and observant Jew to be a good Christian. In the end, they allowed that gentiles could become Christians without being Jews but that this exception would apply outside Israel only. Paul and Peter were allowed to welcome unconverted gentiles and pagans into the Christian church but they had to confine their missionary activities to Europe and Asia Minor. Just a couple of years after the first Easter and the church is already divided – Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians and, as long as this division was geographically defined, there was no real problem. But in 68 CE the Jews Rebellion against Rome changed everything. After an exciting start, the revolution failed miserably, crushed by the Romans, sending thousands of Jews – and among them, Jewish Christians – fleeing as refugees into Asia Minor. When they got there these Jewish Christians sought out the Christian church communities only to discover that they were made of almost entirely of gentiles who didn’t follow any of the Jewish practices and didn’t keep kosher. Arguments raged about who was doing it right and who wasn’t, about who were the real Christians and who weren’t. Many of Paul’s letters dealt with these arguments and most scholars agree with the Rev. Dr. Raymond Brown who wrote that the entire Gospel of John was written as a plea for unity in what he calls, “The Community of the Beloved Disciple,” the Christian church at Ephesus. Five hundred years later the church would find itself divided into five geographical patriarchies with headquarters in Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. By the end of the sixth century, only two would still be in existence, Rome and Constantinople, and we would see the first major schism into the church of Rome and what would become known as the Eastern Orthodox church. Another thousand years go by and, in the 1500’s the Church of Rome, plagued by corruption and political intrigue would explode in the Protestant Reformation under the leadership of Martin Luther. At about the same time other divisions would take place in Switzerland under John Calvin, in England under Henry VIII, in Scotland under John Knox and across Europe in the Anabaptist movement. Two hundred years later John Wesley, fed up with how the Church of England was being run by the rich, ruling class, would lead his small group of reform minded enthusiasts into a new church that would be called “Methodist” because of it strict rules of order and disciplined life style. Jesus prayed that his followers would be united, but division and separation as a form of protest or reform was irreversibly written into our Christian DNA. METHODIST DIVISION? Our own United Methodist Church has not been exempt from this history of schism and division. Originally, the Methodists were people who hoped to reform the Church of England. When they came to America they continued their reform efforts and found it easier to undertake reform where there was not a long history or tradition to fight against as there was in England. In 1784, shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War, as the Constitution of the United States was being written, John Wesley wrote to Francis Asbury that this new country needed a new church unfettered by its former ties to the old Church of England. On Christmas Day of that year in the city of Baltimore, the Methodist Episcopal Church was born. Just nine years later the first division occurred when James O’Kelly led a group of pastors out of the ME church to from the Christian Church where pastors were not required to serve where bishops sent them. This denomination would later be one of the constituent denominations to form the United Church of Christ. In 1816 Richard Allen, a freed slave who had been ordained by Francis Asbury, led African American worshippers out of a New York church where they were required to sit in the balcony across the street to a new church which would become the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Splits and schisms would continue to be our lot. In 1820 the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Zion would split from the ME church. In 1828 the Methodist Protestant Church would split from the ME church over the issue of lay representation at annual conference and the ordination of women; they were for it. In 1840 the Methodist Episcopal Church would vote in General Conference that the institution of slavery was contrary to God’s will and all ME clergy would be required to free any slaves that were under their control. All of the southern churches walked out to form the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In 1938 the ME Church, the ME South Church, and the Methodist Protestant churches would re-unite to form the Methodist Church but that would be too little, too late to reverse a trend that was already well established. Other splits would continue to occur. We Methodists have given birth to a whole slew of new churches which have broken away from our church. To name, just a few:
The Christian Methodist Church, The Free Methodist Church, The Primitive Methodist Church, The Wesleyan Methodist Church, the Wesleyan Church, The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, The Church of the Nazarene, (my personal favorite) The Fire Baptized Holiness Church, and The Pilgrim Holiness Church. As I said, our family tree has many branches. And now, it appears that we are on the verge of creating another. IS ANOTHER SPLIT COMING? Last month the “Christian Century” magazine, writing from the progressive point of view, published an article by associate editor Amy Frykholm entitled, “A Time to Split?” It was a fairly thorough examination of the current debate in the United Methodist Church over the issue of homosexuality and same gender marriage. She didn’t provide any answers but she did raise the question of whether it would ever be possible for United Methodists to reach a compromise position on this subject that would satisfy people on both sides of the debate. Now, this past week, a group of 80 United Methodist pastors and theologians who self-identify as conservative, have published a paper and a press release calling for a division. Speaking for the group, retired pastor, author and seminary president Maxie Dunnam says: “We can no longer talk about schism as something that might happen in the future. Schism has already taken place in our connection. There are conscience-bound persons who find it impossible to live in The United Methodist Church as we presently define ourselves in relation to human sexuality. Others could not live in The United Methodist Church if the present position of the church on human sexuality were changed. Forty years of wrestling with the issue is enough, and has proven the solidity of the belief systems of the two groups.” Others have pointed out that sexuality is only the “presenting issue.” The real issue, says Rev. Tom Harrison, pastor of the Asbury UMC in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is the role of biblical authority. Where do we place our emphasis? One group says the scripture and tradition are primary and stand alone, the other group says that scripture and tradition are always subject to interpretation through reason and experience. A third group are casting about, hopefully, to find a third position, a compromise that will allow both sides of the debate to live together peacefully. Such a thing might be possible in a congregational church where individual congregations accept the decisions of the denominational bodies as advisory but are left to their own counsel when it comes to application. We Methodists, however, are a connectional church. We are all bound by one rule, the Book of Discipline, which defines the rules for all pastors and churches within the denomination. Churches and pastors are not allowed to follow their consciences when they differ from that book. The Book of Discipline can be changed every four years by majority vote of the General Conference which is made up of elected delegates from all of the Annual Conferences and once that majority speaks it becomes the rule and law of the church. In other words, there is no room in our system for compromise or accommodation of minority opinions no matter how sincerely they are held. You either obey the Book of Discipline or you get out. And, for many who have followed this debate, on both sides of the aisle, it’s time for those who disagree with the Discipline on these issues to leave. Again, quoting Maxie Dunnam: “The energy of the Church that should have been spent on our mission has been focused on this debate. There is no viable ‘third way,’ or ‘compromise,’ so why not be Christian and civil, valuing each other, and work out a separation that will allow both groups to serve the Kingdom with the kind of commitment and passion essential for any powerful witness we wish to make.” WHERE DO YOU STAND? Inevitably, a discussion such as this leads to that fine point where someone says, “Well, where do you stand?” Where are you on this issue? What, if it comes to that, will you do? Well, I think that, by now, after thirteen years as your pastor, you all know where I stand on the issue of human sexuality. I believe that love is a thing to be celebrated and people ought to be able to marry, with the blessing of the church, the person they love regardless of their gender. It saddens me that our church does not allow me to place the blessing of the church, of you, as a congregation, or even my personal blessing upon such a union. But I took a vow to obey and I obey, however reluctantly. On the issue of the inerrancy of scripture, you know that I am not a fundamentalist or a literalist in any sense of the word. I believe that we all interpret scripture, some of us are just more open and honest about it than others. We on the progressive end of the continuum confess that our interpretation is filtered through experience and reason as God has given them to us and that, while our interpretations may be flawed, they are, nevertheless, faithful to the spirit and intent of the life and teaching of Jesus as we know them.
I believe that the true church of Jesus Christ is and ought to be “an inclusive community of faith, called to receive and spread the Good News of God’s love” to all people, “for the transformation of the world.” And that when we exclude people from God’s church we do so at our own souls’ peril. And I believe that if my beloved United Methodist Church, the church to which I have given my love, my faith and my service for my entire life, should decide to split over these issues, that such a split will come only after long and serious prayer and discussion. (We are the church, after all, and we never do anything quickly.) And, I believe that if we do undergo such a division, that it will be done in a way that strengthens rather than weakens our witness and mission to the world and that “we will agree on a plan of separation that will serve both traditionalists and progressives well.” But, until then, we will go on serving our community, our world, and each other with the love, grace, faith, hope and charity which God has given to us and to which we have been called. AMEN
