by Steve | Jul 13, 2021 | In the News
Mt Bethel United Methodist Church.
Statement by Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church
Regarding North Georgia Conference UMC Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson’s Move to Close Mt. Bethel UMC’s Doors and Seize its Assets
July 13, 2021
Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson of the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church continues to escalate a crisis of her own making at Cobb County’s Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church. Originally claiming she wanted to move Rev. Dr. Jody Ray, the church’s senior pastor, to a conference position dealing with racial reconciliation, she has since changed her story at least twice, in long, rambling, and defensive videos posted to the North Georgia Conference website.
Last night, Haupert-Johnson claimed, “exigent circumstances” exist at Mt. Bethel that threaten its vitality and mission, and therefore, she has moved to close the church and “transfer” all its assets to the conference “effective immediately.”
Unfortunately, it is Haupert-Johnson’s failure to competently engage in the United Methodist Church’s prescribed consultative process that threatens the vitality and mission of the North Georgia Conference’s largest congregation, both in terms of membership and average worship attendance.
Instead of following the course of action nearly all United Methodist bishops take regarding pastoral changes at large churches, Haupert-Johnson hastily initiated an ill-timed and an ill-considered move that not only jeopardizes great ministry and missions at Mt. Bethel but also the health and reputation of her entire annual conference.
She has failed to resolve quietly and amicably a crisis of her own making. Instead, she is now engaging attorneys to go to civil court to seize assets that the faithful people at Mt. Bethel have freely and joyfully given for sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ in word and deed: assets which will become property of Mt. Bethel once it completes a process for disaffiliating from the United Methodist Church, initiated in April 2021. The Bishop is purposely delaying that process.
While she claims she is acting out of “love for the church and its mission,” enlisting attorneys and the courts to seize assets is a strange way for a bishop to show her love for one of the healthiest churches in her conference.
The people of Mt. Bethel Church will do all in their power to resist the aggressive actions against their church, and they will do all they can to restore the reputational damage Haupert-Johnson is inflicting on many local United Methodist churches that simply want to do ministry without the drama of her intrusive and threatening actions.
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by Steve | Jul 13, 2021 | July/August 2021, Magazine, Magazine Articles
Krystl D. Gauld was one of the featured speakers at the 2021 Global Gathering of the Wesleyan Covenant Association.
By Krystl D. Gauld –
One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!”
Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked.
The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter” (Acts 10:3-5).
According to Google, “audacious” means showing a willingness to take surprisingly bold risks. Merriam-Webster deems it an adjective, describing a person as intrepidly daring, adventurous, recklessly bold, and contemptuous to laws and decorum. But Luke, the author of the book of Acts, shows us what it means to be audacious.
It begins with the humble yet bold question of a Gentile: “What do you want, Lord?” And it leads to a breakthrough response that ushers in the opportunity for Jews to freely proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to all people of every culture, faith, and demographic.
In Acts 10, we meet Cornelius. The Bible tells us that he was a devout, God-fearing man, as was everyone in his household; but his pious lifestyle wasn’t enough. All of the good deeds he found in his heart to do could not buy him forgiveness and eternal life. It could not beget his freedom in Christ or bring him a forged relationship between him and the Father. Still, by way of messenger, God visits Cornelius in his home and enters in.
Luke also tells a similar story about Jesus and the centurion. Like Cornelius, the man was also a Roman military leader. “Lord, don’t trouble yourself,” the unnamed centurion tells Jesus by way of messengers, “For I do not deserve to have you come under my roof” (Luke 7:6). He says this, even to Jesus, because he knew that Jews didn’t visit the homes of people from other races. What if all of your life you were taught – through tales and practices, traditions and past events – that there was a group of people, a race, or a nation that was better than you and everybody else?
It was no secret. People of other nations understood very well that Jews were God’s chosen people, his favorites. It was widely believed that the Lord was on their side and only their side. It was also believed that certain people – Gentile people – weren’t good enough.
This created an international divide between Jews and non-Jews. It was believed that there were deserving and undeserving groups of people. Us versus them. The chosen versus the inferior. The favored versus the unseen. Those considered clean versus those who were so dirty that there was no cure for their human condition. Yet, at this moment, an angel crosses an interracial threshold to visit this Gentile in his home and calls out to him, “Cornelius!”
God calls out a Gentile! To the Gentile and the unbeliever, God says, I know your name. I know exactly who you are. I know exactly where you are, and I want to come in.
With confidence, we can shout out to the world, “God knows your name. You are not a bother. You are our brothers and sisters. You are not an afterthought. You are on God’s mind.”
With God no one is unreachable. No one is too dirty. No one is unredeemable. God is calling out to those people. He is saying, They may be different, but they are not less than. They are still worthy enough and worth dying for.
God accepts anyone who fears him and wants to do what is right. For any non-believer, foreigner, or stranger willing to turn away from sin and towards Christ, our response should be, “Here I am, Lord, send me to them. You want them reconciled: I am going in.”
What is it that you want, Lord? Some translations describe this as a frightening experience. Yet, Cornelius pushes past his fear and musters the audacity to ask, “What do you want, sir?” An angel responds: “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God.” How meaningful it must’ve been for Cornelius to know that the God of the Jews was looking down on his gifts and his offerings.
The author makes it a point to tell us that Cornelius was a captain in the Italian regiment. He was a Roman. That means he was an enemy. Between the Jews and the Romans, there was a deep-rooted history of discord and animosity. By birth, Cornelius was a part of the group of people that had oppressed, mistreated, and persecuted Israel. About fifteen years prior, they participated in a hostile killing of the King of the Jews: our Jesus.
While Greeks, Romans, Jews, and several other people groups lived and mixed, it was only in a functional way. They were not friends. There was underlying hurt and ill sentiments among the nations. Yet, it’s almost as if God tells Cornelius, I see you, Gentile, seeking after me and you are going to find me. You let me in and now I am going to let you in.
God is still the redeemer, even of the Gentiles. The Son is still the man that enters neighborhoods to tell excluded women that he’s seen everything they’ve ever done. Jesus is still asking the lamest of folk, don’t you want to be healed? The Holy Spirit is still converting thousands, reaching the captives, and even our captors.
His spirit is still communicating the Father’s vision to his followers. It’s a vision not for ourselves to create a church that will solely separate us from those who want to compromise Scripture and the faith. But it is a vision that empowers us to “go with the gospel” into places where people who perceive themselves to be our enemies because they are still at odds with God.
We are to come out of our silos of safety and comfortability to permit access to our small groups and sanctuaries. We are to partake in fellowship with those who may have never been our friends before, those that are deviants, considered deplorable, disgusting, scary, and even dirty.
Our faith is about more than a group of people recognizing that God does not favor one nation, one race, or one group of people over another. It is so much bigger than Christ’s church cultivating the courage to love our contenders. It is about Jesus reminding us that he died for all – his friends and his enemies.
This is what the Lord tells Cornelius that he wants: “Send men to Joppa,” the angel says in verse 5, “to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter.”
Peter and Cornelius were on opposite sides of warring races. Still, God summons an audacity within Cornelius. He invites Peter, a Jewish person, to come into his home as if he were his next-door neighbor. This is culturally inappropriate, this is socially scandalous, this is even dangerous. However, this conversation reveals God’s vision for the church.
God is communicating his vision to Cornelius in a language that he would understand, the crossing over into territories, strategically beyond enemy lines, to extend kingdoms by evangelizing people.
God later speaks to Peter in a form that he would understand, hunger. Peter is up on a rooftop to pray. It was about noon, lunchtime, the next day. As Peter is praying, his stomach probably starts to rumble. For Peter, what looked to be a huge blanket contained a feast – an overwhelming presence of every kind of animal, reptile, and bird you could think of (Acts 10:11). God nudges a hungry Peter, to go, kill, and eat.
Yet, Peter objects. The Bible tells us that three times, Peter rejects what the Lord is offering. It was not aligned with tradition, and he was not going to cross that line. Peter did not realize it was God’s broadest and most vibrant vision for the church. He didn’t know that it wasn’t about food but it was about all kinds of people.
God is speaking to his church today in a language we understand: Renewal. Newness. A new and renewed Global Methodist Church. Even still, it is about evangelizing people. Every kind of person. Strategically and practically, that means we are going to have to cross our perceived enemy lines. God is revealing to us our future as a Global Methodist Church. He is showing what he wants. And it should stretch us. It should puzzle us. It should even scare us. It should make us want to say “no,” but through the providence, power, prompting, and pushing of God’s spirit, we can give birth to this new and radical disciple-making movement God has planned for us.
And this movement will not be about our way of life for people; it will be about a way to live everlasting for all people. It will be about the way, the truth, and the life, our Lord, who saves and redeems all people.
It won’t be about traditions and legalisms that create cultural divides and fortify enemy lines. It will be about how Jesus crossed those lines so that the dead could come alive. It will be about how when sin separated us from God, and lines were drawn between us and them, God took it upon himself to cross it: from heaven, Jesus crossed over into earth becoming fully man, while still divine, to carry the fault of our sin. We were at odds as sinners – doomed, dirty, due death, and destined for hell. And he was perfect, absolutely righteous.
He wanted to make things right with us. He carried an old rugged cross to the mount that he was willing to die on for us. He suffered for our transgressions so that truly, today, we can be with him in paradise. It will be a movement about Jesus; how he then went across the true enemy’s threshold into hell, snatching back the keys of death, damnation, and the grave. So that we could be set free from the slavery of our sin, so that we can be found blameless just as he is blameless, and so that we could be made well. It will be about how his resurrected life crossed out condemnation, crossed out a dire debt that we owed that we could never repay.
It crossed out the suffering and sin of those of us that have turned to him. And now we, too, can cross lines that will push back death in parts of the world where people are still hurting, sick, despondent, and in despair. For Jesus, he is our crossover king, our Passover lamb, and the undefeatable cure for our human condition.
Krystl D. Gauld is the Executive Director at Dignity Housing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. An advocate, student, and young adult leader in the church, she is currently working on a Doctor of Theology degree at Evangelical Seminary in Myerstown, Pennsylvania. The Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference has twice elected her to serve as a General Conference delegate. Newly married, Krystl lives with her husband Damian Gauld in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. This article is adapted from her address at the Wesleyan Covenant Association’s Global Gathering in April.
by Steve | Jul 6, 2021 | In the News, Perspective E-Newsletter
Wesley’s Chapel, Methodist headquarters London, England Photo courtesy of Creative Commons
By Thomas Lambrecht –
On Wednesday, the British Methodist Church became the largest denomination in Great Britain to endorse same-sex marriage. The overwhelming vote follows the acceptance of an initial report in 2019, God in Love Unites Us, followed by two years of discussion across the church’s 30 districts.
According to the BBC , “the Methodist Church is Britain’s fourth largest Christian denomination with about 164,000 members across more than 4,000 churches.” (British Methodism is a totally separate denomination from The United Methodist Church.) Methodists represent only about two tenths of one percent of the British population, whereas United Methodists in the U.S. represent about two percent of the population. In offering same-sex marriage services, Methodism aligns with other relatively small denominations in Britain, such as the Scottish Episcopal Church, the United Reformed Church, and the Quakers.
The two largest denominations, the Church of England (more than 16,000 churches) and the Roman Catholic Church (3,700 churches), do not accept same-sex marriage. Methodism will also be out of step with other British denominations, such as Baptist, Pentecostal, Orthodox, House Churches, and independent congregations.
The Church Times quotes the adopted resolution as saying, “The Conference consents in principle to the marriage of same-sex couples on Methodist premises throughout the Connexion and by Methodist ministers, probationers or members in so far as the law of the relevant jurisdiction permits or requires and subject to compliance with such further requirements, if any, as that law imposes.”
In order to accomplish this goal, the Methodists adopted a new definition of marriage: “The Methodist Church believes that marriage is given by God to be a particular channel of God’s grace, and that it is in accord with God’s purposes when a marriage is a life-long union in body, mind and spirit of two people who freely enter it. Within the Methodist Church, this is understood in two ways: that marriage can only be between a man and a woman; that marriage can be between any two people. The Methodist Church affirms both understandings and makes provision in its Standing Orders for them.”
BBC reports, “Church officials hope the dual definition will persuade conservative churches not to leave and protect ministers from discrimination claims if they refuse to marry gay couples.” The newly elected President of the Conference, the Rev. Sonia Hicks, said in response to the vote, “The debate today and our wider conversation has been conducted with grace and mutual respect. As we move forward together after this historic day for our Church, we must remember to continue to hold each other in prayer, and to support each other respecting our differences.”
The Rev. Sam McBratney, chair of the Dignity and Worth campaign (a pro-LGBTQ advocacy group in the Methodist Church), said, “We reassure those who do not support this move that we want to continue to work and worship with you in the Church we all love.”
Living with Contradiction
In order to live together and “work and worship” together in one continuing church, the British Methodist Church had to adopt an inherently contradictory policy. It now has two definitions of marriage that are simultaneously in effect. The result is that the Methodists have no coherent definition of marriage. It can mean whatever its members want it to mean.
This tactic in attempting to maintain some sort of unity is common across the world among denominations that are changing their standards on marriage. Most see it as an interim step to allow the “conservatives” to eventually change their minds, leave the church, or die off, until the church can unify around the more progressive marriage stance.
However, some traditionalists in Britain will be unable to live with the contradiction. The BBC reports Carolyn Lawrence, a former vice-president of the Methodist Conference, warned there was a “significant minority” of Methodists who were “planning on leaving or resigning their membership” as a result of the vote. “Today is a line in the sand for many people and seen as a significant departure from our doctrine.”
Methodist Evangelicals Together, a renewal organization within the British Methodist Church, advocates for “the original Wesleyan evangelical vision and the biblical and apostolic understanding of marriage as the life-long union of one man and one woman and the only appropriate context for sexual intimacy.” They report, “Sadly, several members, Local Preachers and Ministers, and even entire congregations, have already left the Methodist Church [in Britain] over the direction of travel it has so far adopted. If the proposals are ratified at Conference 2021, there are likely to be many more who will feel conscience-bound to leave.” There has even been some preliminary interest in traditionalist British Methodists possibly becoming part of the Global Methodist Church when it forms after adoption of the Protocol.
Slippery Slope
While the changing definition of marriage made the headlines, the British Methodist also overwhelmingly adopted a resolution “to recognise, accept, and celebrate the love and commitment of unmarried cohabiting couples.” This action is the natural outgrowth of rejecting the clear witness of Scripture regarding the God-given boundaries for human sexuality.
Once one sets aside scriptural teachings about marriage and sexuality and substitutes human reasoning and feelings, there is no limit on what can be found acceptable or even affirmed. Whatever seems right to people will become the governing standard. For example, there is no reason in principle why marriage could not be expanded to include more than two people under this approach.
GCFA Endorses Non-Binary Gender Identity
Meanwhile, in The United Methodist Church, the General Council on Finance and Administration has voted to expand the data collected on annual church membership reports. Where members are classified as either male or female, a third option will be added – “non-binary.” This third category will encompass those who do not identify as either male or female.
According to United Methodist News Service, the change affects only churches in the U.S., as the church does not collect local church statistics for churches outside the U.S. However, GCFA will also request U.S. annual conferences to report the number of non-binary clergy in their annual records.
“The board made the change after hearing from U.S. annual conference treasurers who have responsibility for collecting membership data from local churches,” reports UMNS. “We are having issues reporting people with pastors calling our office and saying: ‘What do I do here?’” said Christine Dodson, North Carolina Conference treasurer and the GCFA board’s vice president. “Quite frankly, I’ve had a pastor tell me, ‘I’m not going to force a person to choose one or the other when they have told me how they identify.’”
Only one board member spoke against the proposal. “I’m appreciative of the recognition of all God’s people, but I am also cautious that we are making a decision that appears to affect less than half our global constituency,” said the Rev. Steve Wood, who is also lead pastor of Mount Pisgah United Methodist Church in Johns Creek, Georgia. “I’m just wondering if we are creating more angst than we are creating benefits, so I have to speak against it.”
GCFA may have thought of this change as merely an administrative accommodation to make pastors’ job easier. However, by making this change, GCFA has implicitly endorsed a theology of gender that appears at odds with the simple and basic scriptural witness: “male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).
Admittedly, there is nothing in the Book of Discipline that speaks specifically to issues of gender identity. This topic is so new that it has not been adequately studied or addressed by the church. That is why it seems unwise for GCFA to make such an “administrative” change that represents a theological understanding that has not been thoroughly thought out.
The trajectory of the British Methodist Church and the easy acquiescence of GCFA to a progressive understanding of gender identity shows the potential direction a post-separation United Methodist Church is likely to take. The GCFA decision reflects how the regionalization of the church might work, with decisions made that apply to some parts of the church and not other parts. Those who are uncomfortable with such a direction, recognizing that it reflects a different understanding of scriptural authority and theology, will need to find a new home – hopefully in the Global Methodist Church (in formation).
by Steve | May 28, 2021 | In the News
Photos courtesy of Bob Kaylor.
By Bob Kaylor –
Driving through the countryside of the Normandy region of France feels a bit like entering the world of an animated Walt Disney film. The green fields, bushy hedgerows, lolling cows, and medieval-period stone houses, churches, and barns call to mind many stories that we learn as kids – stories that begin, “Once upon a time…”
A few years ago, I chose this area because the D-Day battlefields have been a place on my bucket list that I have always wanted to visit. We based ourselves in Sainte Mere Eglise, the tiny village where the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions landed in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944. An effigy of Private John Steele of the 101st and his shredded parachute still hangs from the church’s bell tower, commemorating where he landed on the roof that night.
During that early morning, this sleepy Norman village quickly became a maelstrom as paratroopers landed in the midst of stunned villagers and scrambling Germans who had been fighting a house fire. The town looks today much like it did in 1944, but with a few more cafes, ice cream shops, and memorabilia stores.
I had arranged an all-day private tour with a local guide, Monica Baan, a Dutch resident of Saint Mere Eglise, who was very knowledgeable and who spent a lot of time interviewing veterans of D-Day, most of whom are gone now. The stories I had read in a myriad of history books suddenly came to life as we walked through the town and then drove to places like Utah Beach, Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, and even to Brecourt Manor where Easy Company and Lt. Dick Winters of Band of Brothers fame fought their first engagement. It was stirring to visit those sites and be reminded of the immense task at hand that day for these soldiers, sailors, and airmen.
As someone with a passion for military history, I knew a lot about what took place, but Monica filled in some gaps with stories I had never heard. While driving through the Norman countryside, she stopped by a little church in the village of Angoville-au-Plain, a place so small that it’s barely noticeable in the midst of the bucolic backdrop of farms and fields. “I want to tell you a story you probably have never heard,” she said. We went through the side door of a small 11th century Catholic church into a quiet sanctuary where the story took place.
In the early morning hours of D-Day, thousands of U.S. paratroopers were scattered across Normandy and small crossroad villages like Angoville-au-Plain suddenly became hotly contested territory. As the wounded began to cry for help, two medics from the 101st, Robert Wright and Kenneth Moore, looked to set up an aid station and the village church seemed to be the best available option. They set about gathering the wounded from both sides into the church using a handcart and wheelbarrow they found, often exposing themselves to enemy fire in the process. They used the pews of the church as hospital beds and, incredibly, there are still several of those wooden benches in use that continue to show the stains of blood where those wounded were treated.
A hole in the roof, still stuffed with canvas, and a shattered tile on the floor are remnants of the intense fighting around the church where a mortar round entered the sacred space but failed to detonate. As the battle raged back and forth, American paratroopers were forced to retreat from the village and the medics faced a difficult decision. Their lieutenant wanted to withdraw them, but Wright and Moore insisted on staying to tend to the wounded, even if it meant their capture by the enemy.
Robert Wright described the scene in the church on the evening of D-Day: “By the evening we had 75 of them (wounded personnel and one local infant, in the church). Our own folk had come to tell us that they could not stay any longer. So we were left with the wounded. A German Officer soon arrived and asked if I could tend to his wounded too. We accepted. During the night, the churchyard was the scene of another battle. Two of our casualties died. But among those I could tend, none lost their lives. I tended all sorts of wounds, some were skin deep but others were more serious abdominal cases.”
The battle raged outside for three days, with the village changing hands several times. All the while, Wright and Moore kept tending the wounded from both sides. At one point, several Germans stormed through the door of the church but seeing that the medics were treating wounded from both sides they quietly left and marked the door with a Red Cross. In another instance, a German soldier came seeking treatment but Wright and Moore had established a rule that no weapons would be allowed in the church. They refused to treat the German until he added his weapon to the growing pile outside the church door. He would eventually do so and come under their care.
The windows of the church were all blown out and Wright was hit by a piece of the falling ceiling. He would receive a Purple Heart for it, but it was a medal he only grudgingly accepted. On June 8, a couple of days into the fighting, two Germans who had been in the bell tower of the church since before D-Day finally came down and surrendered to Wright and Moore, who immediately put them to work. The medics tended the wounded for 3 days straight with no break and no sleep, short on supplies and under constant fire, but they saved some 80 lives in the sanctuary of this little church. Many other lives would be birthed in the future families of those whom they saved. The pews that had been built for saving souls became the place where people broken by conflict and pain found salvation of their bodies as well.
As I listened to Monica spin out this true story, it occurred to me that Wright and Moore were doing the ultimate form of pastoral ministry in that holy place. They had been baptized by fire and ordained by duty to continue their work. They were priests officiating over a sacrament of broken bodies and shed blood. Their tireless work revealed a much deeper truth about what the church is about – a hospital for broken people, no matter their “side” or whether they are combatants or innocent civilians. These priestly medics seemed to understand this instinctively to the point at which even their enemies recognized the importance of the mission. They were being the church, not just using one for an aid station.
With this story echoing in my soul, I began to have a deeper awareness of the wounded people I saw around me. I noticed them walking around places like London and Paris, standing in doorways puffing a cigarette, or crammed into a pub looking for some solace or community. I saw it in the hollow eyes of business people walking quickly to a job they might have hated and in the immigrant trying to find his way in a strange new land. Casualties are stacking up in a culture where people have become commodities and pawns in a consumeristic war for their bodies and souls.
What sort of ministry will reach them? It will be the kind of ministry that will risk everything to save the people around us, no matter who they are. I loved the way one pastor put it in his welcome at one church I visited that summer: “If you’re our guest today, we want you to know that this is a place where it’s ok to not be ok. But our hope is that you don’t want to stay in that not-ok place. We love you enough to tell you the capital ‘T’ truth about Jesus Christ.” That’s a welcome for all – an invitation to add our weapons and conflicts to the pile outside and come inside to be made whole.
I spent the first part of my life and ministry as a soldier – a soldier bearing weapons of war and then the sword of the Word of God, which I have wielded in defense of the faith. Those are both honorable occupations, but standing in that little church in Normandy I felt a conviction that what the world needs the church to be right now is more of an aid station, and pastors to be more like medics. The cultural battles might continue to rage around us, but we have a job to do. It’s not to preserve a pristine institution, but to be the kind of place where blood stains on the pews remind us that our work is about saving lives, both bodies and souls.
Robert Wright would return to Normandy in 2002 for the dedication of a monument to what he and Moore did during those three days in June. He died in 2013 and is buried in the little cemetery outside that church in Angoville-au-Plain under a simple marker that reads “R.E.W.” He wanted his final resting place to be near this sanctuary of life that he and his friend created in the midst of horror and death.
I loved that this little church didn’t fix the holes, patch up the floor, or scrub down the pews after the war. The missing pieces of stone on the walls that were taken off by bullets and shrapnel haven’t been paved over. They did replace the windows, but with a tribute to these two medics who became saints. This holy place is now a monument to the kind of church God has called his church to be.
The Rev. Dr. Bob Kaylor is Lead Pastor of Tri-Lakes United Methodist Church in Monument, Colorado. He is a member of the Good News Board of Directors and a council member of the Wesleyan Covenant Association. He blogs at bobkaylor.com and is the co-host of the WCA podcast called Holy Conversations.
by Steve | May 28, 2021 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, May/June MJ 2021
Reverend Rob Renfroe
rrenfroe@goodnewsmag.org
By Reverend Rob Renfroe –
Just one week earlier the two men had come to Jerusalem. On what would later be called Palm Sunday, they entered the city with Jesus. Their hearts swelled as the crowds shouted his name and called him king.
They watched him enter the Temple as if he owned the place. He called the moneychangers thieves and with fire in his eyes and authority in his voice, he chased them out of his Father’s house with a whip.
For three days he taught in the Temple Courts. Huge crowds hung on his every word.The two men could see it – how Scripture would be fulfilled. The Messiah was here. The time was now. The day of deliverance had come.
But then everything went wrong. Thursday night he was arrested. Friday he was crucified. Saturday he was dead in a tomb. Sunday morning, devastated and confused, Cleopas and his friend left Jerusalem, walking along the road that led to a village called Emmaus.
As they walked, One they didn’t recognize joined them. “What are you talking about?” he asked.
Cleopas answered: “About Jesus of Nazareth, and how our chief priests and rulers had him condemned to death and crucified. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
Maybe you’ve been on an Emmaus Road of your own. You dared to believe in something almost too good to be true. For a moment, it seemed that your world was going to change. Life would get better. Everything would become right. You could see it and how it would happen.
But then Friday came. Your hopes died on a cross of despair and they were buried in a dark tomb.
You look back on your life and you find yourself saying, “But I had hoped for a marriage that was a blessing, not a battle.” “I had hoped to overcome the pain of my past.” “I had hoped for a life that was more than going to work, putting bread on the table, accumulating some stuff, watching the years go by, and wondering why my life never changes.” “I had hoped. God knows I had hoped for so much more.”
Emily Dickinson wrote: “Hope is the thing with feathers/ That perches in the soul/ And sings the tune without the words/ And never stops at all.”
But sometimes hope does stop singing, doesn’t it? What do you do then?
If you care about The United Methodist Church and are committed to a faithful future for the people called Methodist, you have probably found yourself thinking, “But I had hoped.”
After nearly fifty years of disagreeing about sexual ethics, I had hoped we would be done by now. But it hasn’t happened.
After some vocal centrist leaders made public statements at General Conference 2016 that it was impossible for us to live together and we needed to separate, I had hoped they would join with traditionalists and support a plan that would put an end to our fighting. But it didn’t happen. Instead, these same leaders got behind a proposal that could never pass and that belied their admission that we could not be one church.
At the special General Conference of 2019 when the majority once again affirmed the traditional position, I had hoped that vote would be the end of our disagreement. After all, that’s why the Conference had been called – once and for all to determine the church’s position and settle the matter. Either centrists and progressives would leave the church or accept the results of the vote. Instead, they took out full-page ads in newspapers across the country condemning traditionalists as hard-hearted, mean-spirited homophobes.
After a diverse group of leaders miraculously brought forth the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation, I had hoped General Conference would adopt the plan in 2020, and by now we would be well on our way to forming a new missional church that is Christ-centered and faithful to the Scriptures. But COVID made a physical meeting impossible, and the Commission on General Conference decided that a virtual meeting could not fairly and fully address the Protocol.
So here we are. Some of us personally, looking at our lives. All of us in terms of the church and its future. Here we are, walking down a road to Emmaus, saying to ourselves, “But I had hoped.”
What do you do when even hope is gone? You learn what Cleopas learned.
You learn that on Friday they can crucify your hopes. You learn that on Saturday your dreams can be buried in a cold, dark tomb. But on Sunday you learn no matter what has happened, Jesus Christ is Lord. You learn, wherever you are and however you feel, whether you know it or not, Jesus is walking with you. You learn that, in a way you didn’t see and couldn’t imagine, Jesus was working for your good all the time. You learn that he is the Lord over the past, the present, and the future. You learn that your job is not to understand the plan but to walk in faith and in faithfulness. He will rise. He will overcome. He will be with you. Walk that way. Live that way.
Why has a separation that is so obviously needed been delayed? Why is the future we have worked for, prayed for, and sacrificed for been so long in coming? As understandable as they are, these are the wrong questions to ask.
The question is always: What is Jesus doing and how can I join him? And the right response is always hope. As Emily Dickinson wrote, the right way forward is to sing the tune, even when we don’t have the words. Our eyes may be blinded for a moment, but Jesus is with us. He will make himself and his plans known. He will achieve his will. If a cross and a tomb couldn’t stop him, neither can a General Conference’s postponement.
Do not be discouraged. Do not give up. Jesus will have the last word. And that word will be good.
Rob Renfroe is a United Methodist clergyperson and the president and publisher of Good News.
