Not in Some Heaven Lightyears Away: Revelation 21:1-6
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first
heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And
I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And
I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“See, the
home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them and be their God;
4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”
5 And the one who was
seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy
and true.” 6 Then he said to me, “It is done! I am
the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give
water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.” (NRSVUE)
You may have
noticed that The United Methodist Church is having a time of it lately. At the request of several members here, I am
taking this time to unpack some of what’s been happening with the rise of the
Global Methodist Church, the language of schism or separation, and how The
United Methodist Church will continue to fulfill the mission of making
disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. This is less a sermon on Revelation 21 than a
message on the state of the Church threaded through with Revelation 21. Fair warning.
The main topic
of disagreement among what has become the factions of the UMC is human
sexuality. I am not using this time to
lay out the theology of why being gay and being Christian are not in
opposition; there are plenty of books that do that incredibly well and I am
willing to point you to them if you are interested. This is about how we are responding to that
difference.
Human
sexuality is not the only reason for the divide, but it is the one with the
most force. Ideas about the purpose of
the Church, the nature of God, the objective of the crucifixion, and the role
of women in faith spaces are also part of the conversation about who and what
the Church is, but sexuality is a catalyst.
We are by no means the first denomination to hit this impasse; the
Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Lutherans have already done it. The Church of the Brethren and the Mennonite
Church are going through it with us.
Growing awareness and acceptance of LGBTQ people is pushing Christians
to reevaluate whether what we say we believe is really what God calls us to
hold dear.
It is not a
sudden thing, however. This conversation
began, at least in the UMC, when the 1972 General Conference gathered to
discuss an addition to our brand-new Social Principles as recommended by a
legislative committee. The recommended
language read, “We declare our acceptance of homosexuals as persons of sacred
worth and we welcome them into the fellowship of the church. Further, we insist that society ensure their
human and civil rights.”[1]
After a great
deal of debate, amendments, amendments to the amendments, fights, fears, and
worries about the possible splitting of the Church—yes, even back then when the
UMC was four years old—the voting body eventually passed the language that “We
insist that all persons are entitled to have their human and civil rights
ensured, though we do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider
this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.”[2]
And I heard a loud voice from the
throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. / He will dwell with
them; / they will be his peoples, / and God himself will be with them and be
their God; / he will wipe every tear from their eyes.”
John’s letter of revelation to the
churches scattered through the Roman Empire that urged the hope of a kingdom
ruled not by Caesar but by God is a fascinating frame for this conversation about
who the UMC is becoming. The Church, I
will say every day until I die, is not God, but we can hope for it to be of God. We get caught up in our own attempt to
understand just how it is that God will dwell with us—and who that “us” is. It is so very human to want to know who is in
and who is out so we can make sure we’re doing what is needed to be in. We get so focused on making sure we are in
the new heaven and the new earth that we stop seeing the one that exists right
now where God is already with us, where the Spirit dwells among us in the holy
Presence that came at Pentecost and has not left since. John was not telling the churches to get
their passports ready; he was pointing out that all earthly empires end,
eventually, and God will be there no matter what new fight arises.
In our
struggles in the UMC, we have been having variations of the same fight since
that 1972 conference. In 2012, two
pieces of legislation were brought to the assembly to say that we have
different ideas rather than that we blanket do not condone homosexuality. One was from Adam Hamilton—yes, the one whose
book the men’s club is reading. The amendment
“proposed a substitution…that sought to clarify that United Methodists disagree
on whether homosexual practice is contrary to the will of God and urged unity
over division and respect for co-existence.”[3] It did not pass; we could not even agree to
disagree.
In 2016, the
focus on the growing disconnect around sexuality was so intense that it was
keeping the assembly from doing any of the other work before it. The Council of Bishops declared that all
matters of sexuality would be shelved until a special called conference in
2019. At the 2019 conference,
impassioned pleas from all sides wondered if the UMC really could stick
together. The legislation from that
conference passed by narrow voting margins even more punitive language against
homosexuality, leading to most of the American annual conferences that year
either ignoring or very publicly denying the outcomes. Later uncoverings of vote tampering in
several African and American South conferences put the UMC in the international
news in a bad way, painting a picture of the Church as every bit as
manipulative as the American political system.
It became
clear that not all theologies would stay under the UMC name, so several ideas
for how to split were put forward for the 2020 General Conference. Then, COVID, so it was postponed to
2021. COVID wasn’t done and virtual
wasn’t possible for thousands of delegates, some living in places with spotty
internet access, so it was pushed to 2022.
COVID is still not done but also there were issues about traveling visas
for all the delegates from other countries coming here to the United
States. The Commission on the General
Conference decided to push it off again; General Conference is now scheduled
for the late summer of 2024. The
conservative factions decided they could not wait that long and announced that
they were leaving the denomination to form the Global Methodist Church. The GMC officially began on May 1, two weeks
ago.
And the one
who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”
Eugene Boring points out that “God
does not make ‘all new things,’ but ‘all things new.’”[4] No matter what name is on our letterhead or
our membership pins, we still stand on the shoulders of thousands of years of
Christian history and tradition. As
Methodists, we honor tradition as one of the main ways we are to interpret the
will of God, right alongside our own experience, the words of Scripture, and
our God-given reason. The Church has
changed and changed again, human institution that it is, and God works with
that. God keeps working with the reality
that we are figuring it out, we who do not have all of the knowledge about
everything, so God takes what we offer and makes it new, makes it work, makes
it holy.
All of that is
an extremely rough and quick overview of how we got here. But where is “here”?
It’s actually
not that much different than it was on April 30, honestly, at least not
yet. The UMC is, of course, an
organization—an organization established in North America, southeast Asia,
Europe, and Africa with some 12 million members.[5] That’s more than the entire population of Ohio.[6] It’s going to take time for anything that
sizable to make a shift.
There are also
some realities to consider about what that shift will be: the Global Methodist
Church is not a split of The United Methodist Church. The UMC has not split. There is nothing official happening here in
terms of membership reorganization; such things have to happen at the level of
annual conferences or the general conference.
The GMC is simply another denomination that exists in the plethora of
denominations, and any UMC congregation can vote to disaffiliate to join them
in the same way that they would for a Presbyterian or Baptist or Lutheran or
nondenominational change. That is an
important thing to hold: there is no
moment when UMC congregations will have to choose to stay. The choice is to leave; a congregation has to
formally ask to leave the denomination; no one is getting kicked out.
Once a
congregation votes to leave the UMC with a two-thirds majority at a formal
church conference presided over by the district superintendent—not led
by the pastor—then the question becomes one of property. All local churches hold their buildings in
trust for the denomination, an agreement that’s been in place since 1796. At the 2019 special conference, legislation
was passed for churches wishing to disaffiliate from the UMC specifically over matters
of human sexuality. When a church
leaves, they can retain their property after they pay 50% of the assessed value
of that property, a full year of mission shares beyond their disaffiliation
date, any unfunded pension liability for that year of their pastor, any unpaid
mission shares from the previous year, and any outstanding loans from the
conference. Any external debts must be
transferred to the congregation itself and be in the name of that new church;
any endowments given for the benefit of The United Methodist Church must be
returned to the donor or the donors’ heirs; and the church will no longer be
able to use the United Methodist name, logo, or IRS nonprofit status. The congregation will be responsible for
finding its own pastoral leadership and then paying for that leader out of
their own funds.[7]
Pastors can
leave the UMC to join the GMC, again in the same vein as we can leave to join
any other denomination, but as soon as we begin conversation with a new
denomination we forfeit our ordination in the UMC and all of the insurance,
housing, and pension benefits that come with it.
Also he
said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 Then
he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the
End. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of
life.”
This is
hard. This is hard stuff, this wrenching
apart from each other, because the Church was meant to be a unifying force. When we are brokenhearted, we want very much
to hear of a place where there is no pain, where God dwells with humankind and
freely gives water from a life-giving spring.
There is nothing wrong with that; God wants our joy, our healing, our
wholeness, and it is right and good that we should want the same. God offers community in the open invitation
of our restoration, but we as the Church need to allow ourselves the grace to
admit that the new heaven isn’t here yet.
This is where we are, we United Methodist, in this space of navigating
what it means to be faithful in the world, what it means to follow God when we
have very different ideas of where God is leading. It is why our communities of faith are so
important—here we come to learn, to ask questions, to deepen our connection to
the Spirit Who calls us to love, and love deeply.
I don’t know
how this will end up playing out. I don’t
know what our own Annual Conference will look like at the beginning of June, a
conference that has several motions about what relationship we will hold with
churches who decide to leave the Michigan conference of The United Methodist
Church. But I do know that God is the
Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the now and the ever-always. I believe in the presence and power of Christ
to continue the work of grace in the world even if all we as the Church do is
make it harder.
If you have
questions about this that you want to ask of me, you’re welcome to email me or
call the office. I can’t guarantee that
I have answers, but I will try my best to connect you to whomever does if I do
not. I encourage you to talk with
friends and to pray about where you stand on this because it does affect you,
even if not directly. Someone you know
is directly impacted by these conversations about value and welcome and we who are
called to the ministry of love need to be able to be with those who are hurting
with at least some awareness of what’s happening.
This is a long
conversation, already longer than my entire life, and it will not be solved
tomorrow. But God is in the midst of it,
dwelling among us, and in that we anchor ourselves. Thanks be to God for it.
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