by Steve | Jul 15, 2021 | In the News, Uncategorized
Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church. Photo courtesy of Mt. Bethel.
By Thomas Lambrecht —
In a dramatic and unprecedented move, the North Georgia Annual Conference has initiated action to seize control of the assets of the largest congregation in the conference, Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church in Marietta, Georgia. The conference cited “exigent circumstances [that] have threatened the continued vitality and mission of Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church.”
This action comes as an escalation of a months-long conflict over Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson’s attempt to replace the lead pastor of Mt. Bethel, the Rev. Dr. Jody Ray. The bishop’s attempt to appoint the Rev. Dr. Steven Usry as the new lead pastor and move Ray to a conference staff position did not follow the Book of Discipline’s requirement for consultation with Ray or Mt. Bethel prior to making the move. The congregation’s leaders and Ray believed the move would be highly disruptive to the largest congregation in the annual conference that employs 300 staff, including a Christian day care, pre-school, and K-12 Christian Academy day school. This was especially true in light of Mt. Bethel’s stated intention, as a congregational member of the Wesleyan Covenant Association and host of the 2018 WCA Global Gathering, to separate from the UM Church and align with the new Global Methodist Church following the enactment of the Protocol in 2022. Therefore, they asked the bishop to reconsider her decision. Instead, the bishop filed charges against Ray, causing him to surrender his clergy credentials. Mt. Bethel then hired him as its “Lay Preacher and Senior Administrator.”
At the same time, Mt. Bethel filed a formal request for disaffiliation from the UM Church under the new process established by the 2019 General Conference. The bishop has refused to initiate the process of disaffiliation and imposed a unilateral condition on such disaffiliation that Mt. Bethel must be “in compliance with the Book of Discipline” before she would consider moving ahead with the process. There is no such requirement for “compliance” as a precondition for disaffiliation, either in the Book of Discipline or in the North Georgia Conference policies and procedures for disaffiliation.
Closing the Church
Under ¶ 2549 of the Book of Discipline, an annual conference can “recommend the closure of a local church, upon a finding that: a) The local church no longer serves the purpose for which it was organized or incorporated (¶¶ 201-204); or b) The local church property is no longer used, kept, or maintained by its membership as a place of divine worship of The United Methodist Church.” Clearly, Mt. Bethel continues to worship and serve as a United Methodist congregation, even during this dispute over the pastoral appointment. They do not fit the criteria that should trigger the closure of the church.
Further in ¶ 2549, “At any time between sessions of annual conference, if the presiding bishop, the majority of the district superintendents, and the appropriate district board of church location and building all consent, they may, in their sole discretion, declare that exigent circumstances exist that require immediate protection of the local church’s property, for the benefit of the denomination. In such case, title to all the real and personal, tangible and intangible property of the local church shall immediately vest in the annual conference board of trustees who may hold or dispose of such property in its sole discretion, subject to any standing rule of the annual conference.”
This latter provision gives the bishop, cabinet, and district board of church location and building authority to unilaterally close a local church that is no longer meeting, if “exigent circumstances” exist that would threaten the viability of the local church’s assets. For example, if the church’s congregation stopped meeting and ceased maintaining the building in good working order, the conference could step in to protect the integrity of the building. This provision was never intended to be used as “punishment” against a local church for disagreeing with the bishop. In addition, this provision is rarely used, mostly with small, dying churches. It has never to my knowledge been used to close a congregation of the size and vitality of Mt. Bethel. Even some progressive leaders are publicly aghast at what they see as an abuse of episcopal power.
“Exigent circumstances” means “requiring immediate action or aid; urgent; pressing.” There is nothing about the Mt. Bethel situation that requires immediate action. There is no evidence that any of the church’s assets are in jeopardy of being lost, damaged, or misappropriated. All the church wanted was to be left alone to continue its excellent and effective ministry in Cobb County until the passage of the Protocol enabled the church to realign with the Global Methodist Church.
The bishop does not really want to “close” Mt. Bethel. She wants the church’s ministry to continue, but under the direction of the annual conference trustees, rather than Mt. Bethel’s duly elected lay leaders. She is therefore perpetrating a legal fiction (the “closing” of Mt. Bethel) to justify her seizure of the church’s assets and usurping control of the congregation’s ministry.
As for the “exigent circumstances” the conference is relying upon to “close” the church and seize its assets, the bishop made a number of allegations about how the church is disobeying the Discipline. Mt. Bethel has refuted all of those allegations, including providing documentary evidence. The church even acknowledged its willingness to accept Usry as an appointed pastor to the church, while continuing to operate under the direction of the church’s duly elected lay leadership. The bishop and conference leaders failed to respond to the church’s reply, moving instead to seize the church assets. Those assets are worth in excess of $34 million, according to annual conference reports.
When it comes to “exigent circumstances,” Mt. Bethel has led the annual conference in many measures of healthy vital ministry in the last five years, including total membership, attendance, giving, missions, and others. If Mt. Bethel is in such bad shape that the conference needs to intervene, the bishop should just stipulate that the whole North Georgia Conference is in “exigent circumstances.”
Acting Out of Love?
Ironically, the bishop and conference say they are “acting out of love for the church and its mission.” Mt. Bethel’s statement in response points out, “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 statement continues, “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.”
Haupert-Johnson caused this crisis through her “hastily initiat[ing] 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,” the statement alleges. In response to her failure to follow the required consultation process, Mt. Bethel leaders filed two complaints against Haupert-Johnson that are currently in the process of adjudication through the church’s complaint process. Rather than wait for those complaints to be resolved, Haupert-Johnson has chosen to press forward with an escalation of the conflict, moving it into the secular legal realm.
In response to the bishop’s abuse of the ¶ 2549 process, the church has filed a third complaint against Haupert-Johnson. However, it is likely that this conflict will wind up in secular court before any complaints can be resolved, due to the bishop’s precipitous action to try to seize the church’s assets.
Not only did Haupert-Johnson cause this crisis, she did so contrary to the “truce” agreed to by most United Methodists in the aftermath of the Protocol’s release – a truce intended to last four months but now stretched out to 32 months by the time General Conference meets. As requested by the Protocol, there has been a moratorium on the filing of complaints for pastors performing same-sex weddings and ordained clergy who are partnered lesbians and gays. There was to be an equal moratorium on the closure of churches. Traditionalists have kept our part of the truce. We are waiting for Haupert-Johnson to do the same.
Haupert-Johnson’s actions over the past four months were taken within less than 18 months of the anticipated General Conference meeting to enact the Protocol and allow for “reconciliation and grace through separation.” It was entirely unforced and unnecessary. Is she now planning on also contesting the right of churches to vote to leave under the Protocol once it is passed?
A Way Out
There are ways out of this crisis. One would be for Haupert-Johnson and the annual conference to stand down and discontinue their actions to try to seize control of Mt. Bethel. She could allow Mt. Bethel to continue its vital ministry as it has been, awaiting the action of General Conference on the Protocol in 2022.
Another way out would be for the bishop and conference to respond to Mt. Bethel’s twice made offer to settle the conflict through a process of mediation. The church is willing to work toward a mutually agreeable resolution through mediation, rather than resort to the confrontational process of civil court proceedings. Thus far, the bishop and conference have failed to respond to the church’s offers of mediation.
The real question in all of this is whether Bishop Haupert-Johnson will proceed with a heart of peace or a heart of war. This language comes from the book The Anatomy of Peace, a book promoted by Haupert-Johnson. That book, and its advocacy for resolving conflict through a heart of peace, guided the work of the Commission on a Way Forward and has been touted by bishops as the way we should treat one another during this liminal time of waiting for the Protocol to be enacted.
A heart of war is evidenced by people who are unwilling to compromise, unwilling to meet and hear the other side’s views, those who demonize their opponents, those who use their power to intimidate and force their will on others, and those who seem incapable of thinking, “maybe I’m wrong and could learn something by listening to the other side.” The spirit of “reconciliation and grace” demonstrated in the Protocol was arrived at by people on all sides of the conflict with a heart of peace and a willingness to find an amicable way forward. The Protocol calls upon all United Methodists, and particularly those in leadership, to exercise that same spirit of reconciliation and grace.
A Washington Post article following the 2019 General Conference includes the following quote, “‘I think this is a spiritual exercise,’ said Haupert-Johnson, who favors a split into two denominations, saying she believes population demographics mean Americans will increasingly be under the thumb of African voters unless they split. ‘How do we go about this in a way that you know is of God, led by God? … How do we sense that the Holy Spirit is leading the church now? … If the Methodist church has to get leaner and nicer, I’m all for it. I’m tired of the meanness. I’m tired of the pettiness. I’m tired of the fighting to win at all costs.’” We wish the bishop would live up to her own words.
So far, throughout this conflict with Mt. Bethel, Haupert-Johnson has not displayed a heart of peace, but a heart of war. She has been bound to get her way at any cost, even at the cost of damaging the largest congregation for which she has been given a shepherd’s care. She has demonized the Mt. Bethel lay leadership and is using her power to try to force her will upon the church. She has been so determined to get her way that she has been willing to change her story several times in various public statements and videos as to the rationale for her actions. And she and the conference leadership are so determined to have their way they have disregarded all attempts by Mt. Bethel’s leaders to pursue a negotiated resolution to this conflict.
To the amazement and consternation of seasoned members of the annual conference, Haupert-Johnson’s unnecessary conflict with the lay leadership of Mt. Bethel is ensuring that this conflict winds up in civil court. While no court process can have a guaranteed outcome, Mt. Bethel has a strong case. The bishop has violated church process with regard to the initial appointment decision, as well as with her abuse of the Discipline in trying to seize the church’s assets. The church has a process for resolving such disagreements through complaints, which are in process now. Courts are historically reluctant to get in the middle of intra-church conflicts and may dictate that the status quo be preserved while the complaints are pending. In addition, Mt. Bethel has applied for disaffiliation through the church’s own process. The court could mandate that the church’s process be followed, allowing Mt. Bethel to disaffiliate and preserving the assets of the church until such process is completed. Even if the court decides to hear the case, given the backlog of cases caused by the pandemic, it could be years before the case even comes to trial.
This whole situation was caused by Haupert-Johnson herself. She precipitated this crisis through her initial, ill-considered appointment decision and through her stubborn refusal to compromise or engage in dialog. Now, she appears to be using the crisis she created as a pretext to try to take control of the largest congregation in her annual conference.
Time will tell whether the bishop and North Georgia Conference want to continue with a heart of war to coerce faithful congregations and damage vital ministry. For the sake of the church and the cause of Christ, a better way must be pursued.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and the vice president of Good News.
by Steve | Jul 13, 2021 | In the News, Uncategorized
In an extremely rare move, the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church has seized the assets of Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church in Marietta amid a fight over who should be its senior pastor.
The conference announced its stunning decision in a statement released Monday and said it was “acting out of love for the church and its mission” and to “preserve the legacy of the Mt. Bethel church and its longstanding history of mission and ministry.”
The conference’s board of trustees will assume management of the church. Mt. Bethel, located at 4385 Lower Roswell Road in Marietta, has one of the largest congregations in the conference.
Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson and the eight district superintendents “have unanimously determined that ‘exigent circumstances’ have threatened the continued vitality and mission of Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church,” according to the statement. “Given this determination, all assets of the local church have transferred immediately to the conference’s board of trustees of the North Georgia Conference.”
To read entire Atlanta Journal-Constitution story, click HERE.
by Steve | Apr 30, 2021 | Magazine Articles, Uncategorized
Mt. Bethel
By Rob Renfroe —
A number of our larger, most healthy churches have recently been told that their senior pastor is being moved to another appointment, without consultation with the pastor or the congregation. One is Mt. Bethel in the North Georgia Annual Conference. It’s one of the ten largest churches in the denomination. The others are in the Greater New Jersey and the California-Pacific Annual Conferences.
Thus, they are in different regions of the country. One, Mt. Bethel, is predominantly white. The other four, one in New Jersey and three in California, are Korean. What do they have in common? They are all strongly traditional in their beliefs. They are all under the authority of a centrist to progressive bishop.
Something else they have in common is that none of these churches appreciate how they have been treated in the removal of their senior pastor. All United Methodist pastors serve at the pleasure of their bishop. All United Methodists churches know their bishop has the right to appoint whoever he or she believes is best for their church. But every church and every pastor, unless there is some moral failure, expects to be treated with common courtesy and respect in the process.
Some have condemned Mt. Bethel’s unwillingness to receive a new pastor. The expected liberal critics have blasted the church for wanting to be treated differently than other churches because of its size. But these critics are missing the point. Neither the pastor nor the church’s SPRC were consulted before the appointment was announced as required in The Book of Discipline. And though larger churches are not special or above the rules because of their size, replacing their senior pastor in a way that screams, “I am the bishop and I know what’s best for you,” is not smart, respectful, or helpful to the person who is taking over the removed pastor’s position.
The senior pastor at the church I serve announced his retirement this January. The Woodlands United Methodist Church, just north of Houston, is also one of the denomination’s largest. The process of appointing his successor began three years ago. The bishop and our SPRC worked closely and amicably together with the same goals – finding the right person for the position and conducting the process in a way that guaranteed the new pastor would be well-received by the congregation and begin his or her ministry with the greatest chance of success. Replacing the pastor of a large church does not require three years. But to be effective and healthy for the church, the process – well, first it must be a process, not a pronouncement from on high – needs to be open and collaborative.
A church does not need to be the size of The Woodlands or Mt. Bethel to know when its lay leadership and its congregation are being disrespected. And it is wise to be aware that if you appoint someone to be the senior pastor of a church without proper consultation, you are likely doing harm to that congregation.
Why three different bishops would show such little regard for thriving churches and their ministries is indeed puzzling. The five churches involved have either stated or have given reason to believe they will leave the Post-Separation United Methodist Church when the Protocol for Reconciliation and Grace through Separation is passed. It is easy to believe, possibly wrongly, that these disruptive appointments are punitive in nature – a way of insuring that these churches will not leave as whole and as healthy as they might have.
It’s also natural to wonder if removing beloved senior pastors is a strategic play for financial gain. If a bishop can make things so difficult for a traditional church that it decides to leave before the Protocol is passed, it will need to pay a high financial price for disaffiliation. In the case of Mt. Bethel it could be several millions of dollars. It makes sense. If a church leaves after the Protocol, it takes its property and its assets without any payment to the Post-Separation UM Church.
So, what does a bishop have to lose if she or he so offends a traditional congregation that it decides to leave early? It was departing anyway. Why not fill dwindling annual conference coffers with a costly disaffiliation exit fee? In fact, it might be considered a shrewd play. Turn up the heat until the church feels it must depart – either leaving its buildings and property behind or paying dearly for the privilege of taking what it has sacrificed to build over the decades.
Another possibility is that a bishop, by disrespecting a congregation, could hope to run off all of its strongly traditional members. Make them so upset that they decide to leave and form a new church. Those remaining would have decided they could live with such a bishop and the UM denomination he or she represents. They would also retain the rights to the property. Perhaps those who stay would vote to remain in the post-separation UM Church, the denomination that bishop represents, and bring their buildings and their assets with them.
It’s hard to believe that any representative of Christ, particularly bishops of The United Methodist Church, would be cynical and Machiavellian enough to play these games. Especially one who told the Washington Post after the 2019 General Conference, “If the Methodist church has to get leaner and nicer, I’m all for it. I’m tired of the meanness. I’m tired of the pettiness. I’m tired of the fighting to win at all costs.”
And one would think that, in this time when we have all become aware of how Asian Americans are often the victims of prejudice and mistreatment, bishops would be sensitive to the optics of how they treat predominantly Asian congregations and clergy.
But three different Annual Conferences. Three different centrist to progressive bishops. Five different traditional churches. One has to wonder what’s behind it. And where it will go next.
Rob Renfroe is a United Methodist clergyperson and the president and publisher of Good News.
by Steve | Jul 1, 2019 | Uncategorized
By Kenneth Tanner
The hands that crafted humanity from the dust are the hands that grasp Mary’s finger as she looks on her infant God with awe.
The divine finger that etched the commandment concerning adultery into the stone on Sinai is the human finger that drew in the sand as the frenzied crowd picked up stones to slay the adulteress.
The hand that wrote on the palace wall that Belshazzar, the pagan king, had been weighed in the balance and found wanting is the hand that was nailed to the tree and bled for the failures and imbalances of every human tribe.
The fingers that set the moons and stars in the cosmos like a master jeweler, smear mud on the eyes of the blind so that they might once again behold the light of heaven.
And even as the cosmos is held in his hands – suspended on his charity, all things set in motion by his energies – his sacred hands are contained and constrained for nine months within the womb of the virgin.
The hands that deliver Israel from slavery in Egypt are the hands that offer the paschal cup that promises and will in time deliver the renewal of all things.
He opens his sovereign hands and feeds all the woodland, pasture, and desert creatures and his calloused carpenter’s hands take, and bless, and break the bread that grants life without end, the bread of Christ.
As the right hand of the Father Jesus touches lepers, dines with tax collectors, offers living water to the woman whose people are the enemy of his people, and washes the feet of his followers – cleansing everyone he meets, because the Son only ever does what he sees his Father doing – and is the risen, transfigured right hand that rests on the shoulder of John in the apostle’s great vision of the world that is coming to this world, and says to his beloved friend in a still small voice: “Don’t be afraid! I am the First and the Last. I am the living one. I died, but look – I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave.”
Kenneth Tanner is pastor of Church of the Holy Redeemer in Rochester Hills, Michigan. His writing has appeared in Books & Culture, The Huffington Post, Sojourners, National Review, and Christianity Today. This article appeared in the July/August 2019 issue of Good News. Artwork is a segment of Michelangelo’s “Hand of God: The Creation of Adam” found in the Sistine Chapel. Public Domain.
by Steve | May 29, 2019 | Uncategorized
Shepherd to the fringes: John “Bullfrog” Smith (1942-2019)
By Steve Beard
March/April 2019
“Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town’s garbage heap; at a crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek … at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where He died. And that is what He died for. And that is what He died about. That is where churchmen ought to be and what churchmen ought to be about.”– The Rev. George Macleod, Church of Scotland clergyman and one of the founders of the Iona Community (1895-1991).
More than 20 years ago, I was sitting across the table in a Chinese restaurant in Nicholasville, Kentucky, when John Smith recited Macleod’s sentiments with righteous authority and a piercing gaze to describe part of the inspiration of the calling on his life. At that time, Smith, a well-known media commentator and evangelist to those on the cultural fringe in Australia, was doing doctoral work in missiology at Asbury Theological Seminary.
As a well-scrubbed son of a Methodist minister and a brand new Bible school graduate in the late 1960s, Smith recalls driving past a “bunch of menacing-looking outlaw bikers parked by the side of the road. Oddly, I felt a surge of compassion for these guys who no one really wanted to know. I couldn’t see the local minister making much headway with people like that,” he wrote in his autobiography, On the Side of the Angels.
Smith began to pray that “God would raise up someone able to get alongside such outsiders and show them something of the love of Christ.” At that moment, he sensed the corresponding answer: “Why don’t you answer your own prayer.” Initially, he doubted the call – but eventually he became the president of God’s Squad Motorcycle Club and an authentic ambassador of Christ to the marginalized, rejected, and forsaken.
John Smith died on March 6, 2019, after a long battle with cancer. He was 76 years old. Hundreds of bikers were in attendance at Smith’s funeral in Ocean Grove, a coastal community in the southeast of Australia, to pay their respects – including those from the Hell’s Angels, Gypsy Jokers, Bandidos, Coffin Cheaters, and Immortals.
Sean Stillman, president of God’s Squad UK chapter and author of God’s Biker: Motorcycles and Misfits,described Smith at the funeral as an “academic, a pastor, a preacher, a prophetic voice, an irritant to a comfortable church, an advocate for justice, the poor, the marginalized, and the arts.” More significantly, Stillman said, was his role as husband to Glena, Smith’s wife, and father to his three children and 17 grandchildren.
With a gregarious personality and an encyclopedic knowledge of poetry, pop culture, ecology, philosophy, and theology, Smith garnered attention and stirred controversy through his Christian message, advocacy for social justice, and roaring motorcycles. His appeal was infectious. Currently, there are God’s Squad members in 16 nations around the globe.
Stillman reported on Smith’s ability to connect with men and women “whether it be in a smoky clubhouse bar, backstage at a rock ‘n roll gig, or in the corridors of political power, a chapel pulpit, a street corner talking to a complete stranger, sitting amid Indigenous communities, engaging in academic dialogue, or crying in the pouring rain at a graveside with a grieving family.”
Smith spoke at rock festivals, biker rallies, government hearings, secondary schools, and before the United Nations Human Rights Commission. But his real love was talking one on one with someone who felt alienated from God and the church.
“For Smithy, the road was the place of discipleship and mission, and like John Wesley, one of his mission inspirations, the world very much became his parish,” said Stillman. “It was where you worked out what it meant to be a follower of his hero, Jesus of Nazareth. The road would take you to the marginalized. He taught us that the Gospel still ought to be good news for the poor and uncomfortable news for the powerful.”
Smith was a tireless advocate for human rights and indigenous peoples. Aunty Jean Phillips, an Aboriginal Christian leader from Queensland, testified at the funeral to Smith’s friendship with the Aboriginal community and recalled his “real heart for justice.”
An email from U2 frontman Bono was even read at the funeral. “To John the Bible was an incendiary tract – not some handbook on religion,” wrote Bono. “It was not a sop for mankind’s fear of death – it was an epic poem about life. It spoke about culture, about politics, about justice.” U2 first became acquainted with Smith while touring through Australia in 1984 during the “Unforgettable Fire” tour.
Interestingly enough, the last time I saw John and his wife Glena was after a U2 concert many years ago in Chicago on Bono’s birthday during the Vertigo tour. John asked if my friend, Father Kenneth Tanner, and I could give them a lift across town after the show. They sat in the back and talked about loving the concert but being too tired to attend the after-gig birthday bash for Bono. We dutifully drove them up Lake Shore Drive to the Jesus People commune – silently wishing they had given us their passes to the after party.
Bono’s message at the funeral was spot-on: “When Bob Dylan sang ‘always on the other side of whatever side there was,’ he might have been singing about John, an outsider in an outsider community, an outlaw of a different kind preparing the way for the coming of a different kind of world, speaking truth to power.
“In our last meeting he spoke truth to me, gave me a hell of a hard time, thought I had gone soft and become too comfortable around the powerful. Thought I was living too well,” Bono recalled. “He was probably right. I still think about it.”
That was John Smith. He had the arched brow of an Old Testament prophet but the tenderness of Jesus welcoming the little children into his presence. He was pastoral and irritating. Not everyone can pull that off. It just seemed authentic with John Smith.
“For 35 years, I have been discovering that the world isn’t nearly as hostile to the gospel as I thought it would be. It is not nearly as frightening as we have been told it will be,” he wrote in the pages of Good News two decades ago. “Outside the walls of the church there are many people who want to be loved and would love to have a connection with someone that didn’t treat them like a prize to be won, but persons to be loved….
“I have spent most of my life rubbing shoulders with hippies, outlaw bikers, high school students, secular non-churched folk, artists, and just ordinary people,” Smith continued. “Sure, there are murderers and dangerous people out in the real world. But I have discovered that most people who look a bit scary are actually quite ordinary. At the same time, a lot of people who look very suave are actually very dangerous. The mafia doesn’t go around looking like hippies. They wear the best Italian suits. So if you are going to judge from appearances, you’ll fail from the start. As Jesus said, man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart.”
That was the heartbeat of his message to the church.
John Smith “remained passionate about the need for the message of Jesus to be faithfully proclaimed in the public sphere, but he also taught us that it should be something that should be lived,” concluded Stillman. “Putting it into practice was not an optional extra.”
Ride on, Brother John. Thanks for the arched brow and the grin. RIP.
by Steve | May 1, 2019 | Uncategorized
By Kenneth Tanner
I find it amusing, this great befuddlement that befalls some intelligent Christians when it comes to the definition of resurrection. On Holy Saturday the New York Times published an interview with the president of Union Theological Seminary in which she mentioned Christian “obsession” with the physicality of our Lord’s resurrection.
Count me among the obsessed.
There are so many witnesses in the New Testament but John’s testimony that Jesus Christ ate with his disciples, and his words to his disciples in Luke that “a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have,” takes the guess work out of it. This is someone who remains flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone “beyond” death, the grave, and hell.
Yes, the body of Jesus Christ walks through walls and vanishes and – before resurrection – walks on water. There is great mystery here, no doubt, but we are talking about embodied mystery.
One does not have to be a skeptic or a confused cleric – this is not only about a class of over thinkers – misunderstanding of the resurrection is ubiquitous among a wide variety of believing American Christians, who have a tendency to make a ghost of Jesus, who tend to think of Jesus as disembodied in eternity, a state many American Christians consider superior to embodiment.
Americans in general have a fundamental philosophical misapprehension of human nature that assumes we are mere ghosts in machines, spirits in a material prison. Whereas Christian anthropology trusts – insists – that our created earthiness is essential to our humanity, now and for eternity; that one does not have resurrection without a body, even if that body has a transfigured physics.
As Cyril of Alexandria reminds us, echoing Paul, if Jesus does not rise again in a body of flesh – not only for a moment but forever – then death is not defeated, neither is the sin that bound in the grave and in hell everyone who shares human nature.
Jesus Christ ascends in the flesh, transformed somehow, yes, but still bearing the scars of his torment on the body Mary gave him. This is what makes the Son’s ongoing intercession for humanity so intimate and real.
As a fellow human in eternity Jesus Christ is our mediator and advocate, made like his brothers and sisters in every way so that he might be One who rules and judges those whose existence he understands from the inside, because he lived our human story with us in the most vulnerable, authentic, and beautiful way.
In Jesus Christ, God has a mother and a betrayer. In Jesus Christ, God has scars and God has memories of meals and laughter with his friends, and cold nights huddled in cloaks against the desert air; he recalls storms at sea and a grinding emptiness in his guts, dried tears on his face, at the tomb of his friend. In Jesus Christ, God knows hunger and thirst and loneliness and pain. In Jesus Christ, God knows the human devastation of disease and poverty.
And the first Christians are clear about this: the one human nature we all share has been rescued from death by the death and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, not only for a moment but forever. This is not a small matter where different opinions and perspectives are allowed.
You can struggle with its enormity and not comprehend it (who does), and doubting is part of being human – the “ants in the pants” of faith, as Frederick Buechner reminds us – and talking about and debating the mystery of it all is part of having faith in community with other persons, but that resurrection – Christ’s and ours – involves cells and skin and eyes and tongues and hearts and lungs (“he breathed on them”) and empty tombs – because transfigured material bodies have somehow escaped them – is a settled matter for Christians.
Yes, it is spiritual and mysterious and beyond science and nature, yes, he hides the fullness of his resurrected glory from his disciples (who could yet bear it?), and, yes, the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ is an apt metaphor now for existence and nature and our personal struggles – yes, now death is the not the end of anything or anyone, resurrection is – but resurrection as a word has that “power” because death is defeated when this one human is raised bodily and brings all our bodies with him.
Kenneth Tanner is pastor of Church of the Holy Redeemer in Rochester Hills, Michigan. His writing has appeared in Books & Culture, The Huffington Post, Sojourners, National Review, and Christianity Today. This article appeared in the May/June 2019 issue of Good News. Artwork: Jesus and the two disciples On the Road to Emmaus, by Duccio, 1308–1311, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena. Public domain.
