What We Do Matters

NOTE: I am blogging more frequently during the 2024 General Conference, as I did in 2019. These are only my reflections, and in no way are they comprehensive. To keep up with happenings of the UMC General Conference, I invite you to stay connected HERE.

In 1986, my father, Kenneth Smith, was elected serve as the Lay Leader of the Central Texas Conference. He was elected to serve two years because our conference, for years, had ben out of step with the quadrennial cycle of the United Methodist Church. We were changing our Lay Leaders exactly between General Conferences, and there were limitations as to our effectiveness by doing so. My dad agreed that he would do well with the two year cycle.

Because of his visibility to the members of the annual conference, he was elected as the first lay member of our General Conference delegation in a year when the first elected lay person was the chairperson of the delegation. I had just been ordained as a (transitional) deacon, the year before my father’s election, and I was excited to join him as an observer/guest at the 1988 General Conference in St. Louise, MO.

That’s when I knew that General Conference matters. While there was much camaraderie with celebration, there was always this uneasy tension around the issue of human sexuality. Those who have heard my story about Mark, my best friend in high school, will know that it was during this time that I was on a journey toward greater understanding of homosexuality … later LGBTQ+ concerns.

The 1988 General Conference felt good in many ways that year, but I felt the hardness around excluding people. Then the last two weeks burst upon us and I can tell you that NO PREVIOUS GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH CAN COMPARE WITH THE POSTPONED 2020 GENERAL CONFERENCE HAPPENING IN 2024!

It was in the first regular session of the General Conference of the newly formed United Methodist Church in 1972 where the language was inserted into our Social Principles in the Book of Discipline: “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” That was the capstone upon which all of the other restrictive, harmful legislation was written quadrennium after quadrennium.

After 52 years of living through General Conferences where the knifes of separation and exclusion continued to cut deeper and deeper, this capstone statement has now been removed from our Social Principles, and the giant arch of heterosexism has fallen! The newly revised social principles were approved yesterday.

Not only did we remove that harmful capstone statement, we ADDED the following: “Within the church, we affirm marriage as a sacred, lifelong covenant that brings two people of faith, an adult man and woman of consenting age, or two adult persons of consenting age, into union with one another and into deeper relationship with God and the religious community.”

And as the General Conference continued to break down barriers and to build up fresh expressions for how a newly revised United Methodist Church will move forward, we have had other developments that shrink the distance between us.

Two significant steps had to do with the Order of Deacons and how we are called (even in our financial life) to seek justice.

Deacons are, in fact, ordained clergy who, from the birth of that separate order in the United Methodist Church in 1996, have been restricted from sacramental authority. The General Conference has seen how sacramental authority (consecrating the elements of holy communion and officiating baptisms) is essential to build up the church and our witness in the world. Our own Deacon, Pastor Jessica, will share her thoughts within the next 2-3 days on her blog linked HERE.

Addressing racism, sexism, colonialism and patriarchy. While I was unable to write down the specific motion to amend, a delegate rose to add to the report of our General Council on Finance and Administration that the United Methodist Church will fund ministries of justice that break down racism, sexism, colonialism, and patriarchy.. This moves us toward being a more justice-seeking denomination.

While the church is still grappling with the financial losses due to disaffiliations and unrest, the spirit of hope is alive, and the Holy Spirit is leading us as a denomination to a new day. It is a new day based, not on who we can exclude, but on how we draw the circle wide. It is a new day founded on the powerful love of God.

Today, in the last morning of worship for this General Conference, we heard a powerful message from Bishop Tracy Malone, who serves as resident bishop of the East Ohio Annual Conference, and then at the end of worship, the band started singing Love Train.

People around the world, join hands! Start a Love Train! A Love Train!

And as they sang this same refrain over and over, people held hands. Then they began dancing in place. Then they moved out into the aisles and … you guessed it … formed a love train.

What we do at Annual Conference matters, and when we do it well, the Love Train is formed. So I end with the invitation for you to witness the joy that was shared in that moment RIGHT HERE!

What we do as a church matters! You matter! All those who have been excluded and marginalized matter. And when everyone matters, the world will never be the same!

Praise and Lament

NOTE: I am blogging more frequently during the 2024 General Conference, as I did in 2019. These are only my reflections, and in no way are they comprehensive. To keep up with happenings of the UMC General Conference, I invite you to stay connected HERE.

Last evening, I paused to pray and celebrate all that had happened in the work of the General Conference yesterday. We have indeed become a more inclusive denomination, and a new day is indeed dawning. When I awoke this morning, however, I was experiencing something that felt like sadness. I suppose it could have been the storms that passed through the night or the gray morning awaiting me outside.

Ultimately, I realized it was something else.

One of the people who reached out to me via social media concerning yesterday’s blog post was a longtime friend of mine. The Reverend Karen Greenwaldt was appointed from 1981 to 2013 to the General Board of Discipleship (later known ad Discipleship Ministries) in Nashville, and she served the last 13 years as the General Secretary. She offered a celebratory comment to my post linking yesterday’s blog post. When I read it, my heart leapt with the joy and gratitude at my 40+ year relationship with Karen, but it also skipped a beat as I immediately thought about all the years we have lived in the storm.

Karen was one who worked tirelessly to create a denomination that discipled people without regard to the color of their skin, where they called home, who they were, or who they loved. She led with integrity and grace, and every year at Annual Conference, I could hardly wait to see and hug my friend who so boldly led one of our general agencies through some challenging times.

Additionally, Karen was the first women to be ordained a deacon and an elder in the Central Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church. In a day when churches still so often rejected female clergy leadership, Karen was a trailblazer. She served for years as our Director of the Conference Council on Ministry in our conference office. She is one who advanced the causes of female clergy leadership. She is one who fought to defeat the harmful language being consistently added to our Book of Discipline every time the General Conference met. She lived with the tension of being an executive leader in a denomination that did not always share her inclusive worldview. In her retirement, she has remained an advocate for change.

As I let the darkness of the morning settle in on me, I went deeper to that place of lament. As I thought of those, like Karen, who continued to build an inclusive church while swimming upstream against a strong current of exclusive fundamentalism.

I lament how the Church of Jesus Christ, through her history has spent a great deal of her energies (mostly under the leadership of white men from western cultures) marginalizing those who were not white, western males. I lament how we have attempted to silence the voices of women, LGBTQ+ persons, BIPOC persons, and people who have differing abilities.

For those who have worked to get us to this place … for those who have suffered and been harmed just for being who you are and who you love … for those who have stood in the gap at the risk of personal loss and great stress … for those who have advocated for justice even when denominational leadership asked you to stop … WE SEE YOU!

We hold within us both the lament of the ways you have suffered in the past and the celebration of the new day you have helped create!

As we move into the new reality that this General Conference is creating for us, I pause for this prayer:

Holy God who has walked with us in darkness: We come with the realization that the church itself has sinned and fallen short of your glory. We come with the realization that our actions and inactions, our words and our complicit silence have often been the source of harm, exclusion, and even death. We come with the realization that the time is now to open a new chapter of transformational love.
Hear us when we pray!
Loving God who provides pathways forward: We celebrate the new day that has dawned in the United Methodist Church. We celebrate the new vision as we climb ever higher to see over the mountaintop to the kin-dom of your radically inclusive love.
Guide us as we pray!
Surprising God, who dances with us in gratitude and celebration: We offer gratitude for the giants on whose shoulders we stand. We give praise as we watch walls of division crumble before our eyes. May we enjoin your dance even when we don’t know the steps. May we trust your Holy Spirit, through which we live and move and dance and have our being, to take the lead and teach us the dance of redeeming love.
Take our hands, O God, and lead us to the dance floor of your grace and love!
Amen.

A New Day Has Dawned

NOTE: I am blogging more frequently during the 2024 General Conference, as I did in 2019. These are only my reflections, and in no way are they comprehensive. To keep up with happenings of the UMC General Conference, I invite you to stay connected HERE.

Unity! That is the primary theme that has been spoken throughout the gathering of the delayed 2020 General Conference held in 2024. Last week, all work was completed in the legislative committees, and this week, the General Conference has been convened in plenary sessions (with all members of the General Conference voting on all matters).

It is often hard to follow with the strict use of Roberts Rules of Order, Consent Calendars, and stand alone Calendar Items, but what is happening is that the United Methodist Church is slowly, vote by vote, reclaiming our aspirational identity as the the church with “Open Hearts. Open Minds. Open Doors” (a previous slogan of the UMC).

We have taken the first big step toward regionalization. We have revised our Social Principles to take out the language that previously stated that homosexuality was incompatible with Christian teaching. We have taken strides to be the denomination that draws the circle wide. We are a denomination that is becoming the inclusive church we long to be.

In today’s Consent Calendars, we removed bans on the ordination of gay clergy or the consecration of gay bishops. We removed bans that would prohibit funding to causes that supported LGBTQ+ rights, and we categorically have restored to full fellowship those who had previously been marginalized by our church law.

Also buried in the legislation known as a Consent Calendar was legislation titled Petition 20717-HS-¶419.12-G. This altered language in our Book of Discipline around superintendency stating the following:

Add new subparagraphs after ¶ 419.12:
13. The superintendent shall not penalize any clergy for performing, or refraining from performing, a same-sex marriage service.
14. The superintendent shall neither require any local church to hold or prohibit a local church from holding a same-sex marriage service on property owned by a local church.

This part is big. Some may not be aware that, from the time marriage between same-gendered couples was made legal, our clergy have been prohibited from performing (or even blessing) those marriages. Additionally, our churches were forbidden from having those same marriages in their buildings. To do so would bring ecclesial charges, which for the clergy could have led to suspension or loss of credentials.

The time has come, my friends, when we are truly becoming an inclusive denomination. Gone are the days that I have to tell anyone that I cannot officiate their wedding because of who they love. Gone are the days when these same beautiful people would be turned away from having their weddings in a church. Gone are the days when we have to be discreet about outing our colleagues who had come out to us as gay. Gone are the days when we HARM OR MARGINALIZE ANYONE FOR BEING WHO THEY ARE OR LOVING WHO THEY LOVE!

Today is a new day in the United Methodist Church, and God has richly blessed us with a renewed sense of unity, revitalization, and a profound love that will change the world.

A New Day Has Dawned!

In the Right Place

NOTE: I am blogging more frequently during the 2024 General Conference, as I did in 2019. These are only my reflections, and in no way are they comprehensive. To keep up with happenings of the UMC General Conference, I invite you to stay connected HERE.

General Conference opened today with all the pomp and circumstance expected of a gathering such as this. Opening worship included the grand procession of the Council of Bishops, and the opening worship service reminded us that we belong to a global communion.

At the outset of the General Conference, we heard from Bishop Thomas Bickerton (whom I have had the chance to see in several Zoom calls seeking to hold the church together through the recent schism), and his words were firm.

Bishop Bickerton began by asking some pointed questions and then challenging those who would continue to attack the denomination:

“Are you committed to the revitalization of the United Methodist Church? Are you here to work for a culture marked by compassion, courage, and companionship?” He then continued, “If you can’t agree to that, what are you doing here anyway? Maybe, just maybe, you’re in the wrong place.”

He went directly at our detractors by saying, “Don’t you tell us that we don’t believe in Scripture. Don’t you tell us that we don’t believe in the doctrine of the church. And Lord have mercy, don’t tell us that we don’t believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

He then issued the challenge to those in gathered for the General Conference: “We have got to rebuild the church and we’ve got to do it together.”

Bishop Bickerton spoke aloud what so many of us have thought during the past several years concerning people whose sole aim is to destroy the denomination I have spent my life serving. His statement aimed at the detractors still rings in my ears: “”Maybe you are in the wrong place!”

But for those of us who are working to bring renewal to the church … those who are working to build a radically inclusive church that has a place at the table for every single person … for those who are working toward a church that takes a frontline role in seeking justice for those who have been harmed by the church whether through exclusion and hate or whether through colonial marginalization … WE ARE IN THE RIGHT PLACE!

My prayer is that the decisions being made by the delegates from all around the globe will seek this unique kind of unity … a unity that builds up where others seek only to tear down … a unity that respects diversity and invites people into holy conversations around our differences … a unity that demonstrates to the world that we ARE the body of the living Christ in all that we do.

We are in the right place for Christ to rebuild the church, and that is my hope for this General Conference. Thank you, Bishop Bickerton, for being in the right place at the right time!

At the Outset

NOTE: I am blogging more frequently during the 2024 General Conference, as I did in 2019. These are only my reflections, and in no way are they comprehensive. To keep up with happenings of the UMC General Conference, I invite you to stay connected HERE.

General Conference is hard. That is a reality we have faced throughout the decades … since almost the beginning of this new unified body known as the United Methodist Church. It has been hard because we have sought to be a global body where diversity is embraced even when that diversity means that we believe very different things … about human sexuality … about how to respond to injustice … about how we are organized to best suit a rapidly changing world.

In the midst of our struggles, there has been much pain … especially for our LGBTQ+ siblings and their allies. One of my colleagues describes how, through years of advocacy and attending multiple General Conference, it has felt like a physical kick in the gut each time the General Conference has moved from a statement of incompatibility to charges that can be brought against clergy and churches for officiating or allowing same-gender weddings. As the western culture has advanced in its understanding of human sexuality, the denomination has attempted to bring charges against LGBTQ+ persons who dared to believe they could be ordained as clergy or be consecrated as bishops.

At the same time, we have struggled with colonial attitudes towards our neighbors whose stances on these very same issues are much more conservative. In the struggle between those on both sides of the human sexuality debate in the US, both sides have often attempted to leverage African and Filipino voices and votes to help move the needle in the US, often with adverse consequences for our global communion.

Key to understanding our challenges is the fact that we are still organized as if we are a US-centric church, when our center is clearly shifting away from our county. In 1968, 92.5% of the voting delegates at the Uniting Conference held in Dallas were from the US, and until the 1980’s there would be no formal translation for non-English speaking conference delegates. Today the US has only a slim majority of votes in the General Conference with an explosion of growth specifically on the African continent.

United Methodists outside of the US belong to conferences situated in what are known as Central Conferences, which have the capability of modifying (within certain parameters) the mandates of the Book of Discipline to work within their cultural context. They can do this by vote of the Central Conference without influence by US (or other Central) conferences.

The same, however, is not true for churches or conferences in the US. We are governed by the Book of Discipline as it is written without the capability of modifying it for our own cultural context. So the whole General Conference decides how the US churches will function, so our non-US delegates do get to decide how we will function within the US while the same is not true of their own Central Conferences.

You see the problem here.

So perhaps the biggest item to be considered at this year’s General Conference is something called “regionalization.” Regionalization would create the US as a region and would then designate all Central Conferences as their own region. Each region would then have the opportunity to determine such things as standards for marriage and ordination based on cultural context. This would move us a step further beyond colonial attitudes and let those of us in the US be a more relevant church in our own context.

This legislation, however, is a huge step. Because this will be an amendment to the UMC Constitution, it requires both a 2/3rd vote by the General Conference AND a 2/3rd aggregate ratification by all of the annual conferences globally. Should this happen, this would signal a new day for the UMC.

So at the outset of the General Conference, we find ourselves again at the place of hope. Perhaps this will be the day that we will become the church that God would have us be. Perhaps we will be able to move beyond discussions around human sexuality then to face the mandate of Christ to transform the world into the realm of God we are created to be. Perhaps we will begin to address the myriad of other issues that plague human society.

My prayer on this eve of the convening of this General Conference is that God will be made known in the work of those elected to serve us.

Dr. Karoline Lewis is the Marbury E. Anderson Chair in Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, and she provided a commentary on the story of the resurrection as found in Luke’s Gospel. In her commentary, she writes concerning the reluctance of the disciples to believe the testimony of the women:

There is so much truth and honesty in this reaction. After all, the good news frequently seems too good to be true. If the tomb is empty, if Jesus has been raised from the dead, then life as we’ve known and expected it is no longer. The world has been turned upside down (Acts 17:6). And if the world has been turned upside down, how do we even know how to live?

I have quoted this in my sermon today, but as always, there is more to the story. When someone offers a cross reference, as she did with Acts 17:6, it sent me on the rabbit trail to see what that was about. Turns out, it wasn’t a rabbit trail, at all. It is a story we rarely read, yet it adds depth and meaning to the message of the resurrection.

In the story found in Acts 17, there is an uproar in Thessalonica in the Roman province known as Macedon. Paul and Silas journeyed there. Paul went on three separate sabbaths into the synagogue and “argued with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to rise from the dead and saying, “This is the Messiah, Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you.” (17.2-3)

We are then told that some of the members of the Jewish community, along with devout Greeks and “not a few of the leading women” became followers of Jesus. This angered the Jewish religious leadership there, and “with the help of some ruffians in the marketplaces they formed a mob and set the city in an uproar.” (17.5)

Their objective was to drag Paul and Silas to the assembly, but when they could not find them, they attacked the house of one of the followers, a man named Jason. We are told that “they dragged Jason and some brothers and sisters before the city authorities, shouting, “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has entertained them as guests. They are all acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus.” (17.6-7)

What that means is that the message of the crucified and risen Christ is not just some good news that we celebrate and then go casually about our daily lives.

The resurrection is always subversive.

The resurrection tends to undermine our conventional ways of thinking … our structures and systems that are structured in ways to maintain power for the privileged few … our churches that, by misuses of doctrine and creeds, have oppressed, harmed, and killed countless children of God through its own history … and our governments that, while claiming to be “of the people” fail to act on behalf of women, children, immigrants, non-white, citizens. This judges our failure to speak up for oppressed people caught in tragic wars around the globe our failure to speak up for our planet.

These are the things represented in the gospel narrative as the sin and death that defines so much of human living.

The Resurrection is …

the answer we seek. It is a new way of living that builds community … a community that crosses boundaries and challenges our very segregated Sunday morning experiences. This is what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called the Beloved Community. It is where we gather regardless of the color of our skin, our economic differences, the language we speak, or who we love!

It is here that we learn again that God ultimately wins and even death cannot stop the inbreaking reign of God! despite the horror stories and our fears at an uncertain future, we have a God who reminds us that our future is found in the unfolding story of resurrection.

We are then reminded yet again, that when the world has us in the grip of sin and death, our risen Christ comes to turn this world upside down. When it does, we fall straight into the arms of God!

Christ is risen!

Christ is Risen, Indeed!

Many have considered the death of Jesus to be at the hands of Jewish religious leaders. While the religious leaders were complicit, it was not the religious leaders who executed Jesus. It was a henchman of Rome. And while some consider Pontius Pilate to have been duped by the Jewish religious authorities, there is little evidence that he cared much about the Jewish leaders. It was they who were duped by Rome.

Pontius Pilate was only about maintaining peace and order (think Pax Romana), and anyone who threatened that peace and order … especially if it was from someone whom had been proclaimed a king … that person would be subject to the worst possible punishment, up to and including execution.

It wasn’t just Jesus that concerned them … it was the followers who believed that there was some hope for liberation that only God could provide. It was a movement. More to the point it was a populist movement of those who followed this one who stood with the marginalized and the weak and offered them pathways of justice and hope. The movement had become a huge threat to Rome.

Populism

For those who have studied populism, what I have learned from my own study of the subject is that populism can be used for good … to give voice to the people. The founding of our country was a populist movement.

This was something that was happening as the crowds following Jesus continued to grow.

However, the fervor that sometimes accompanies populism can easily be exploited by a person or group wishing to elevate themselves to power … sometimes to create an autocracy.

So it might be helpful to know that populism is what led to other expressions of government like communism and fascism. The rise of Adolph Hitler was not accidental. It was a populist movement, and Hitler began to quickly expand power and even co-opted the Christian church for his own benefit.

Then he took it a step further and made it a religious populist movement. The swastika … which was a twisted shape of a cross … was expected to be placed in every church. The sound of thousands shouting “Heil!” was reminiscent of the call to “Hail the King of Kings!”

The thousand-year Reich was equated with the 1,000 year reign of Christ taken from the book of Revelation in the Christian bible, and Hitler was identified as the anointed one who would usher in that reign. And anyone who threatened the power of the Chosen One was declared an enemy of the state, and was summarily executed.

I wonder if this is beginning to sound familiar. To me, it sounds a little like Rome … worse, sounds a little like us.

This week, news hit that former President Donald Trump, along with singer/songwriter Lee Greenwood, were selling the God Bless the USA Bible for $59.99. It includes the handwritten chorus of “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood, the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Pledge of Allegiance, along with the King James Version of the Bible.

I hope this is as concerning to you as it is to me. This is the hallmark of Christian Nationalism, and it is not materially different from what history tried to teach us in mid-20th century Germany. This is not something that any mainline denomination will endorse; however, it is somewhat appealing to at least some of the US population.

To read a satire about the God Bless the USA Bible, I invite you to read this entry from a United Methodist Deacon named Charlie Baber.

While the sale states that proceeds from this bible do not benefit Mr. Trump’s campaign, there is a disclaimer that his likeness and image are under paid license via an LLC directly linked to Mr. Trump.

Holy Week Then

The irony is that this comes out during Holy Week. So let’s turn back to what was happening with Jesus leading up to his crucifixion. We are told in synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) that immediately following his triumphal entry into Jerusalem (which we commemorate on Palm Sunday), Jesus went into the temple and turned over the tables of those who were money changers, and drove them out of the temple declaring, “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves.” (quoting the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah).

The money changers, according to some scholars, were not cheating by offering an unequal amount as Roman and other coins were converted to Jewish currency that was to be used for temple offerings. It was more pernicious than that. Most of the money came into the temple (no matter the currency), and it was used to provide high interest loans to the poor who were about to lose their land.

In this way, the Temple establishment joined forces with the Roman aristocracy in the exploitation of the poor. Jesus acted out, and it was this act that set Jesus squarely on a course that would place him in the court of the Roman governor who would finally order his execution.

Holy Week Now

As I was sinking into this Holy Week, the news of the bible that will be used to promote Christian Nationalism brought a deep darkness over me. I began to feel anger … fear … sadness that there are people who consider themselves Christian yet who are promoting this apostasy.

I wonder if Jesus would be kicking over tables about now. I wonder if it would get him killed as it did before.

So as we come to Good Friday, we have come to the place of execution. I see Jesus carrying the weight of having come face-to-face with empire and daring to speak the truth. I hear the nails being hammered one by one … in the marginalization of our LGBT+ siblings … in the marginalization and harm experienced by Black Americans … in the attempts to claim the bible for political gain … in the harm coming to our neighbors who seek safety and asylum yet who die at our borders … in the silence of Christians who will not confront injustice and harm perpetrated by both church and state.

The Darkness is Settling

And as the body of our Christ is placed in the grave, I feel nothing but darkness in this moment. Yet beyond the stone that covers the tomb, there seems to be a glimmer of light There is a whisper of hope that rises from the shroud covering our Christ.

In the face of empire … in the face of Christian Nationalism, Jesus walks with us to the place of death and bids us now to wait for the dawn.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

That’s the liturgical phrase we use today as we impose ashes on the heads of those who come commemorating this first day of Lent. Our church is joining other Methodists in our community (representing three separate Wesleyan denominations) for a combined evening service. While some clergy may modify this a bit, I tend to just stick to the script.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

It is that easy … and yet it is so hard.

I have a hard time saying it to small children whose entire lives are in front of them. “I know you don’t understand it now, but you will die one day.” Who says that to a child? It just seems cruel … even more so when the child is suffering from terminal illness or childhood trauma. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

I have a hard time saying it to people in the middle of their lives. It feels like I am trying to put the paddles on a healthy, beating heart. As a young parent, I was horrified at the thought that either of the parents of our children might die too soon. Yet we experienced that horrible reality that struck our family with the untimely death of our own son-in-law.

When a person in the middle of a vivacious life is struck by bad news or a hard diagnosis, I really hate looking at them and saying, “Yes, it is true. Life sometime ends way too soon for people. You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

My heart breaks when a person in advanced years … someone who knows that the vast majority of their lives are behind them … comes to receive the ashes, and I remind them that their time is closer than they would hope it to be.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Hopefully, you have continued reading to this point … because there is a truth that needs to be spoken here. This is where our human condition encounters the good news of our faith.

You see, it is in the dirt … in the dust or clay … that God creates.

The good news, you see, is that God is all about dirt. The song, Control, by Tenth Avenue North … a song we sometimes sing in our contemporary service … asks me to “take my hands off my life and the way I think it should go.”

When we let go of our lives and yield to the reality that we are finally made of dust and dust is where we return, then we find ourselves on a journey of descent. A journey the mystics tell us is the way of wisdom.

Genesis 2:7 reads, “So God fashioned an earth creature out of the clay of the earth, and blew into its nostrils the breath of life. And the earth creature became a living human being.” (adapted from The Inclusive Bible). We are people of dust, and when we forget from whence we came, that’s when life goes awry.

It is what it means to be human … to practice humility … to be born of the humus. You see, it is in the dirt … in the dust or clay … that God creates. When we have these ashes imposed on our head, my challenge to you is to invite God to take what is right there … just above your eyes and the very real you underneath those ashes … to again create … to create anew!

May this season be a journey of descent … to the core of who we are … and to the very real need we have for God to do a new thing in us!

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return!”

In this political season, we hear a great deal about agendas. There is the agenda of political candidates. There is the agenda of political parties. Within the church, there are agendas arising from those who wish to make the church more orthodox, and there are those who have their own agendas around issues of justice and mercy within the church.

This past weekend, I was driving through another city and I came across a church sign that said, “Advancing the Kingdom Agenda.” I tend to be a little judgmental, and glancing at other identifiers about this church, I scoffed and thought (almost out loud), “That’s all we need … another agenda.”

But then I got to thinking about agendas. Agendas are specific steps that lead to specific outcomes. They are often used as a list of things to be covered in meetings, but I am talking about the larger meaning of agenda … especially as it regards specific things the church “ought” to be doing.

Yes, I do believe that the agenda listed on the sign may well have been more aligned with the agenda of white Christian nationalism, which could not be further from my own agenda of justice and peace. But the sign was specific in that it talked about the “kingdom agenda.”

So I went deeper into a time of contemplation about what a kingdom agenda could be about.

It didn’t take me long to look back to the teachings of Jesus to discover what the ultimate Christ agenda is about. All of the synoptic gospels include a passage about religious leaders who are putting Jesus to the test … in essence, asking him about his agenda. And in each of these gospel accounts, Jesus gives the same answer: “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)

The kingdom agenda is love!

The kingdom agenda is love! It is not convenient love, and it isn’t love that just builds me up. It is that love that takes us to uncomfortable places … like when Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” This is where it gets hard to follow Jesus.

I ran across someone wearing a tee shirt that read:

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR
THY IMMIGRANT NEIGHBOR
THY BLACK NEIGHBOR
THY WHITE NEIGHBOR
THY BROWN NEIGHBOR
THY ATHEIST NEIGHBOR
THY MUSLIM NEIGHBOR
THY DEPRESSED NEIGHBOR
THY CONSERVATIVE NEIGHBOR
THY LGBTQIA NEIGHBOR
THY DISABLED NEIGHBOR
THY INDIGENOUS NEIGHBOR
THY JEWISH NEIGHBOR
THY PROGRESSIVE NEIGHBOR
THY INCARCERATED NEIGHBOR
THY HOMELESS NEIGHBOR
THY LATINX NEIGHBOR
THY ADDICTED NEIGHBOR
THY MILLENNIAL NEIGHBOR
THY _____________ NEIGHBOR

As I considered the language of agenda, it occurred to me that this was a real agenda. It is a call across the chasms of our time. As we sense ourselves moving farther and farther apart from one another, this agenda is the agenda that is intended to bring us back together … to the place where we can see and hear one another … to the place where we can demonstrate our own unique giftedness and personhood in a tapestry made richer by our diversity more than by our uniformity … to the place where we finally meet God in the face of the other.

So if this is the kingdom agenda to which our siblings worshiping in that church where I saw the sign are referring, then yes, let’s advance the kingdom agenda … the agenda of love.

Any other agenda just won’t do in the realm of God!

For several weeks, I have been contemplating the Lord’s Prayer. I have recited it almost daily, and I have explored the various ways it is worded by people who seek to bring out more of the broad, inclusive nature of this incredible prayer of the church.

For several weeks, I preached on the various parables of Matthew’s gospel where Jesus begins saying something like, “The kingdom of heaven is like …” or “The kingdom of God is like …” and then he tells about vineyard owners who level the playing field for all the workers, rulers who prepare wedding feasts and end up inviting people who would never have been accepted as guests, and ten young women who were supposed to bring the light into another wedding banquet.

During one of those sermons, I dug a little deeper into the Greek word for heaven, which is οὐρανός (ür-ænǒs). Contrary to how we often think, heaven is not another place separate and distinct from the world in which we live. The ancients use the word οὐρανός to talk about the firmament that is our sky. They thought of it as a great dome and that water came from above it. They thought of οὐρανός as the place that held all the stars … the known and the unknown universe.

So as opposed to being a separate place, heaven is that place that fully encompasses all that is … including the earth … including us. It is place where we are nestled and nourished … it is the place that is fully powered by a love more powerful than we can conceive. We are eternally at home here.

And the version of the Lord’s Prayer that has inspired me most is written by Parker Palmer, who is an activist, writer, educator and commentator on spiritual and religious life. He is a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers), and his insights are profound. It was posted on the Spirituality and Practice website, and it reads like this:

Heavenly Father, heavenly Mother,
Holy and blessed is your true name.
We pray for your reign of peace to come,
We pray that your good will be done,
Let heaven and earth become one.
Give us this day the bread we need,
Give it to those who have none.
Let forgiveness flow like a river between us,
From each one to each one.
Lead us to holy innocence
Beyond the evil of our days —
Come swiftly Mother, Father, come.
For yours is the power and the glory and the mercy:
Forever your name is All in One.

Let heaven and earth become one.

That’s the key here. It is this prayer of Jesus that eliminates our need for duality … for putting up walls between us … for drawing lines in the sand. This is what led the apostle Paul to say, “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) There is no “them” and “us.”

There is finally only us and all of us belong together and we belong to God.

So as I pray this prayer each day, I sense how God is calling us to that greater unity … that heaven and earth may become one …. and that God’s name may be All in One!