Tag Archives: Marriage Equality

Oh, UMC. A Lament.

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Last weekend I had the honor of serving as celebrant for the wedding of two recently graduated alumni.  I’ve known both the bride and groom for their entire undergraduate careers, and their wedding brought three reception tables’s worth of Wesley students and alumni to town.  After they were married at the church, we spent a gorgeous early summer evening, sun descending, shadows gathering, on a luscious winery estate lawn, sipping drinks and enjoying the company and the occasion.

Late into the evening, as shadows gave way to stars, and it couldn’t get any more delicious, Meredith* said, “Can I ask you a question?”

I was sitting next to my husband, flanked on one side by an alumna from last year and on the other side by Meredith, who just graduated in May and who will be coming back to grad school in a year.  It so happens both of these alumnae are gay.

Wesley students visiting the Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta, GA.

Wesley students visiting the Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta, GA.

Meredith said, “I know you can’t do a wedding for me and, obviously, it’s a ways off because I don’t have anyone in mind, but at this point, I don’t have another minister.  You know me best and you’re still my minister.  Even if you couldn’t be the one to marry me, would you do my pre-marital counseling?”

I have known Meredith her entire undergraduate career and, before that, her sister.  I am booked to be the officiant for her sister’s wedding next year (to yet another Wesley alumnus) and was about to meet with that couple for their first pre-marital meeting this week, which is partly why Meredith was asking.

She told me she’d spent two hours on the phone with her sister earlier in the week, talking about how excited she was to start planning for her wedding and marriage.  Meredith, who grew up in the church just like her sister, and who did the hard work of making space for a faith community during college (just like her sister), and who is determined to keep growing in her discipleship into her adult years and her future relationships, including marriage (just like her sister) – this beautiful young beloved child of God did not even ask me, her pastor, if I’d do her one-day wedding.  Even her question was trimmed down to size for compliance with our current UMC Discipline.  All she asked me is if, even though it may not be possible for me to be the celebrant at her wedding one day, could she please spend time with me preparing for it?  Meredith, whose discipleship and faith community has been as similar as possible to her own sister’s for their whole lives, and who learned well the Church’s own teaching about the importance of having a pastoral spiritual guide and a gathered community of faith for life’s passages, didn’t even ask me for what she really wants and needs.  And deserves.

It sickens me to say she learned those other lessons our Church is teaching, too – that not all of what we do and say is meant for her.  I feel sick to my stomach and teary just writing this.

Imagine how difficult it was for me on that beautiful night, in the midst of our beloved gathered community, to hear Meredith ask for such a small crumb from the children’s table (Matthew 15: 21-28; Mark 7: 24-30).

Now imagine how hard it was for her.

She made it easier on me than she should have.  Both she and the other alumna were kind and generous in the conversation we had, but that moment dampened the evening for me – not that she brought it up, but that she had to at all.

There is no amount of forethought and hypothesis that can predict what you’ll actually do, given the right situation.  Though this is still where I stand, I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep standing here.

Oh, UMC, don’t make me do this!  Don’t make me choose you over God’s own children.  Don’t make me choose the Gospel over you.

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*Meredith gave me permission to use her name and to write about this, and said, “I hope the UMC can get it together by the time I want to get married.”  Me, too.

Conference Conversation

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It’s easy to gripe about Annual Conference.  Too easy.  Uncomfortable seats, long drives, longer hours, the Bishop can’t see people standing up waiting to speak at the microphones, the drums are too loud, there aren’t enough drums….  I am not immune to the complaining.

I often imagine a wonderful retreat-like locale, where we could spread out in time and space and really be together.  I picture walking across a green campus to a dining hall for breakfast and I wonder how the tone of our annual gathering would change if we were “there” when we got there — no more driving in long snaking lines out to lunch and dinner, no more traipsing back to the hotel dead tired late at night then rushing to get a parking space in the morning.  If we held our Annual Conference at a place like Lake Junaluska, would we hold it differently?  Would it be less of a Christiany business meeting with pre-planned entertainment and stunts?  Would it be more spacious and leisurely and would we actually participate in the holy part of holy conferencing?

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So much better than a convention center. A girl can dream, right?

One of the most-anticipated parts of Annual Conference each year are the resolutions.  These are submitted in advance and are usually pleas for our church to make a statement about something like fracking or predatory lending.  They often anticipate an upcoming General Conference (the international United Methodist gathering every four years) and they are aimed at changing our polity or our church’s stance or statement on a particular issue.

As with much of the church, our corner of United Methodism is in constant conversation about sexuality issues.  One of this year’s resolutions was about same sex marriage, though we never talked about the resolution itself.  We spent the measly half hour allotted to discuss whether or not to discuss it right then or put it off for a year.

At the opening of Conference our Bishop announced a series of conversations that will be held during this next year, opportunities to delve prayerfully over time into issues around sexuality and the church.  When it came time for resolutions, someone made a motion to put off talking about the submitted same sex marriage resolution in favor of the prayerful conversation model being put forth by the Bishop.  That’s what we spent our half hour deciding and that’s what passed:  we will engage in conversations throughout the conference and throughout the year.

I’m not going to complain about that decision or about the way we handle resolutions generally.  I want to talk about conversation.

We have an opportunity to get to know one another better and to listen to the pain and promise in each other’s stories.  How do we prepare ourselves to listen well, faithfully, lovingly?  How do we listen when we don’t like what we are hearing?  How do we listen without immediately, simultaneously,  making ready our response?  When we are certain of the ethics and theology, how do we listen to contradictory views?  When we are in conversation with someone who is undecided, how to we engage with her as a person rather than another number to win to our side?

I don’t envy those who will organize and moderate these conversations.  It’s a tough job that deserves to be done well.  They are long overdue so people on all sides are raring to go, or at least to speak.  I wonder how the moderators will approach the process.  Are we trying to get one another to agree or to agree a little more?  Are we merely trying to “take the temperature” of this corner of United Methodism?  Will we report on the tenor of the conversations in order to assess where we are or are they meant as preamble to the one we put off and may have next year at Conference?  How will we encourage people to participate?  How will we facilitate deep, prayerful listening without shutting down passionate and pent up emotion?

I know where God has led me on these issues and where I hope our church will eventually go.  I don’t know how to get us there and I don’t have many answers for the questions I’m posing here.

I do have a few suggestions on how to proceed during this next year in Virginia:

Hold at least one conversation in every district of our conference.  It should be easy to get to a conversation nearby.  Allow and encourage folks to attend any/all that are convenient for them (not just the one(s) in their district).

Hold them on different days and in every month between now and our next Annual Conference.  Do not make assumptions about when people have time off or time to fit this in.  Again, if should be easy to make it to at least one conversation.  Hold them on Saturdays and weekdays.  Hold them during the day and in the early evening.

Require all members of Annual Conference (clergy and laity) to attend at least one conversation.  If we achieve an amazing conversational turnout (like half of all United Methodists in the Virginia Conference) but only half of those folks actually attend Annual Conference next June, we still aren’t having the same conversation.  If this is important enough to spend the year on, make it a requirement for attending Annual Conference as a member.

Publicize the conversations themselves (when and where) and some of what’s coming out of them.  Make it a media blitz and one of the communication strategies for our conference in the coming year so there is no excuse for being unaware of or uninvolved in this.  Use the email lists, conference website, Facebook, Twitter, e-Advocate, and The Advocate (to name a few) to consistently hold this up as something we are spending time on together.

Arrange the Bible study sessions of Annual Conference around this topic.  Our Book of Discipline makes it clear how we as United Methodists read scripture.  This doesn’t mean we will all understand every passage in the same way but it does rule out some lazy scholarship and incendiary off-base “readings.”  Help us, as a group, to read together in the context of this ongoing conversation.  Give the gathered body this grounding so that when someone veers off course, the Bishop or another moderator can gently guide them back with authority and in the context of an explicitly shared understanding of scripture.  At the very least, then we’d all be talking about the same thing when we talk about “what the Bible says.”

Pray.  Without prayerful and open hearts we won’t get anywhere.  We need more than our own experiences, theologies, and interpretations — no matter how faithful and hard won.  We need God’s Spirit to breathe in us and inspire the conversation.

Part of me dreads this conversation because I’ve been having it for more than 25 years now.  But I’m going to practice patience and listening and engage in it as well as I am able…Take a deep breath.  Listen.  Take part in the conversation.  May the Breath of God disrupt our usual conversations and inspire every moment.

 

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photo credit:  “Lake Junaluska,” © 2010 by justinknabb, CC BY-SA 2.0

Where I Stand

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A friend asked me recently, commenting on the news of United Methodist clergy celebrating weddings for same-sex couples, “Where do you stand?”  Specifically, she wanted to know what I would do if a same-sex couple came to me to celebrate their wedding.

It’s not a short answer.

Our church’s fights over sexuality are part of why it took me so long to be ordained.  If I’m honest, I was hearing God at least as far back as college but was still resisting the call even during seminary.  Besides a Jonah-like stubborn streak, the sexuality wars were part of my resistance.  Some of the people who inspired me most in ministry, who gave me a vision for what it could be like to serve in the church, are gay.  I watched as they switched gears into other careers and callings.  I went to seminary with some who would be much stronger clergy then I am, but who don’t have that option available, based on their God-given sexuality. 

logo for the Reconciling Ministries Network

For too long I thought accepting God’s call to ordained ministry meant accepting everything the United Methodist Church currently states in its Book of Discipline.  (Here’s the section called The Social Principles, where our positions on most cultural issues are found.  We currently do not ordain “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” nor are clergy permitted to officiate or churches permitted to host same-sex ceremonies.)  I knew I couldn’t do that with integrity and it held me back.  I didn’t exactly have to spend time in the belly of a whale, but through years of wrestling and running I came to understand it differently.  I realized I need to be able to articulate the church’s current positions but complete agreement on non-doctrinal matters was not part of the call.

During the Jonah years, during the long-awaited ordination process, and during my ministry I have not been quiet about my disagreement.  In my preaching, teaching, conversation, writing, witness and pastoral care, I have not been quiet.  But let me be crystal clear:  love is love; I fully support LGBTQ people, marriage equality, and ordination regardless of sexuality.  I think our church is wrong on this and I’m inspired by the rumblings and protests and what feels like more and more energy in the right direction.  I am rooting for change and I am trying to help enact it.

Last spring I signed An Altar for All.  I really wanted to sign the first option, that I would officiate at same-sex weddings.  After thought, prayer, and a long conversation with my husband, I signed the second option, which is “clergyperson supportive of others officiating same-sex ceremonies.” 

Of course I wanted to sign option one.  Of course I want to be able to say yes when students, alumni, and friends come to me asking to be married.  I want all of them to know they can come and I can say yes.

We’re not there yet.

The problem with taking a long time to answer God’s call to ordained ministry is I had plenty of time to get really clear on what I was answering.  The call is from God and my deepest allegiance is there, which is why I understand and support clergy who feel called to act in defiance of our current Book of Discipline (a document that is by its nature changeable, edited every four years at General Conference).  But for reasons I still don’t fully understand, God called me to ministry in the United Methodist Church and I believe God is still calling me to ministry in this church. 

When my husband and I discussed this and the dynamics of institutional change, he said, “Not everyone can be the point of the spear.”  Some are called to this.  Some are called to work more incrementally, from within the system as it currently exists.  I would love to be the point of the spear.  My ego wants that.  But being a Christian means God’s call takes precedence over the way I would write the story. 

I still hear God calling me to ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church.  And I believe God is working in the church and transforming individuals and the institution.  I hope the work goes quickly and I am trying to be part of that work – because I believe the church is better with me in it.  That’s not always a comfortable or ego-pleasing place to be, but it’s the place I feel called to be.

I don’t know what will happen in our church.  We seem to be gaining momentum, at least in the United States.  I don’t know if we’ll be tempted to split or if we’ll give in to that temptation.  Maybe, if we do, it won’t be temptation but yet another call.  I can’t tell from here.

All I can tell you is that, for now, I would have to say no to officiating at a same-sex ceremony.  Even as my heart would want to scream yes and even as I continue to work for change in the institution.  Even as it breaks my heart that we’re still here and still stuck.  Even as I would be unable to serve as a juror in a clergy trial because I’d never find someone “guilty” of officiating a same-sex wedding.  Even as it would be both a huge victory and a huge embarrassment to have the Commonwealth of Virginia “beat us to it.” 

But the end of the story is never where we think it is with God.  We worship a wily and confounding God who is surely stirring hearts and minds as She blows through this institution, messing with our ideas, allegiances, sacred cows, and callings.  So I keep attentive, keep listening, keep hopeful.  And I keep working for change, for justice.

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Photo credit:  Reconciling Ministries Network