The Redemption of All

[note: I preached this sermon on 12/31/2017 at Asbury First United Methodist Church in Rochester, NY. If you're the type who would rather read a sermon, the manuscript is below. If you're the type who would rather watch, the video is embedded below too. If you're the type who would rather listen, well here's the link to just the audio]

Luke 2:22-40

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”2

Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
    according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
    which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
    and for glory to your people Israel.”

And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.

————————————————————————————————————————

They call them Roses

But if you didn’t know that they were there, chances are you would miss them

            You’d think that they were a mistake

                       

                        Some paint fell off a truck

                                    Or some painter got careless or  something

photo credit: myself
Sarajevo, 2015

But if you kept looking and paid attention, you’d start to notice that these Roses—these Sarajevo Roses—are scattered throughout a war-torn city

            Red resin poured into scars in the concrete

                        Scars formed by mortar shells

Mortar shells that ripped holes in the concrete as they ripped families apart

These public works of art serve as memorials to lives lost to urban warfare—to the nearly 14,000 lives lost in the Siege of Sarajevo—their blood forever calling out to us from the ground

Something ugly transformed into something beautiful

It’s how a community has responded to and copes with tragedy and trauma

Rather than trying to hide the scars that reveal their communal loss and sacrifice, they turned them into signposts

Beacons that still—over twenty-five years after the start of the conflict—cast a light on the world’s brokenness and in so doing transform the ugly and profane into something sacred and beautiful

We need these Sarajevo Roses, because let’s be honest, if it were up to us, we’d rather cover up the cracks

            The cracks in the sidewalk

                        And the cracks in our lives

Deep down though, we know that no amount of concrete or drywall or rebuilding efforts will ever be able to fully fill those cracks

            To bring back the lives lost

But if we’re willing to keep our eyes open and pay attention, the cracks that betray the brokenness of our world can reveal to us a profound truth that can transform the ugliness of our broken world into something inexpressibly beautiful

We don’t need to look that long or that hard

            These cracks transcend space and time

Any given generation in any given location has its own cracks to contend with

Take Anna—the prophet Anna; we heard about her this morning—the daughter of Phanuel of the Tribe of Asher

The concrete of her life bore cracks and scars given to her by the brokenness of her world

Eighty-four years old and a widow living in a time and place where the death of a woman’s husband might as well be a death sentence. In a day and age when literally every aspect of a woman’s identity was connected to—inextricably tied to—her husband or father, the death of Anna’s husband meant the loss of whatever financial and social security she had

And prior to her marriage, it’s not like she had much of that to begin with anyways. See, we’re told that Anna was a daughter of the Tribe of Asher

Now, for those of us who aren’t scholars of the Jewish diaspora following the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests of the 700s and 500s BCE chances are that’s a piece of trivia that means absolutely nothing

But bear with me because it turns out that—as my seminary professors are ever so fond of saying—the biblical authors never wasted ink

            There’s no such thing as an insignificant detail in the biblical texts

So I did some digging and it turns out that the Tribe of Asher was one of the ten tribes of Israel considered to be forever lost after the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom 700 years before the events of our Gospel lesson this took place. In the interest of time, I’ll spare you the nitty gritty details of ancient Assyrian foreign policy—you’re welcome—but suffice to say that by the time Luke’s Gospel was written, the Tribe of Asher was widely known as one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

In short, it’s more likely than not that after the death of her husband Anna had absolutely no family to lean on

The only inheritance she probably ever received from her family was a knowledge of the world’s brokenness

            Anna was a widow who came from nothing

                        As far as society was concerned, Anna was nothing

It’s likely why she gravitated to the Temple and spent her days in prayer and in fasting

            It was the only place of security she had left

Anna knew about the ugliness of the world

But an encounter with the newborn Christ would transform that ugliness into something beautiful

Now, who can say for certain what it was exactly that Anna saw in this child that completely turned her world upside down

Who knows, maybe he was just especially good looking—a first century Palestinian Gerber Baby model if you will

            Probably not

But we know for certain that it wasn’t based on anything Jesus had done, because at this point in the story, Jesus hadn’t really done, well, anything

            He hadn’t walked on water or calmed any storms

                        He hadn’t restored sight to any blind persons

                                    He hadn’t told any sermons or delivered any parables

                                                And he sure hadn’t been resurrected from the dead

Beyond being born, which as I understand it was more of something Mary did anyways, Jesus hadn’t done anything

And yet, an encounter with this child—

This, in the words of great 21^st century theologian/fictional NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby, eight-pound, six-ounce newborn infant Jesus don’t even know a word yet—

Was enough to transform Anna’s entire outlook on her situation

            Something ugly

                        Transformed into something beautiful

At that moment she came, and she began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem

            The redemption of Jerusalem

Whatever it was that Anna saw in that eight-day old baby born to a peasant teenager out of wedlock and born into a broken and hurting world is ultimately irrelevant

            What matters is that she did see it

            She opened her eyes and paid attention

She didn’t see this child as the mistake any other person would see, but rather as the one who would bring about the redemption of Jerusalem

            The one who would bring about the redemption of all

Do you see? This is what an encounter with Christ does. It completely and totally changes our perspective on everything. It shifts the way we perceive the world around us.

Through Anna, we see a woman who bore the scars from a broken and ugly world and yet freely and eagerly left her last place of comfort—her last place of security—to go out and proclaim the good news that this child would bring

Her world was just as broken

            The baby Jesus didn’t bring her husband back or change her familial lineage

She’s still just as much a widow from a nothing family at the end of this story as she was at the beginning

Her encounter with Christ didn’t pave over the cracks in the concrete in her life that brought her a lifetime of suffering

            Instead, the baby Jesus gave her something far more powerful

                        A new outlook

                                    New vision

Anna’s encounter with the Christ child showed her that the cruelty and ugliness of the world with which she was so accustomed was not the way it had to be

The cruelty and ugliness of the world with which she was so accustomed was not the way it ought to be

                        Another way exists

                                    A better way

And I think that’s a message we could all stand to hear on this New Year’s Eve, because friends

            It’s certainly

                        Been

                                    A year

We’ve all come to this space for different reasons

Maybe some of us have had an encounter with Christ at some point in our lives and are trying to make sense of it

Or maybe we’re still searching for that encounter with Christ

Regardless of what brought us here this morning, we stand on the precipice of a new year and can’t help but reflect back on a year that has seen mass shootings, an ever-widening partisan chasm, devastating natural disasters that have left parts of our country under water and burnt others to the ground and that’s just what’s happened on the national level of our consciousness

I suspect there are plenty in here or listening on the radio or watching on the livestream who are bearing scars brought on by the ugliness of our world in personal ways that will never be broadcast on the nightly news

There are plenty of cracks in the concrete of our world calling out to us

Cracks that reveal the brokenness and ugliness of our world and ask us well what are you gonna do about it

And quite frankly, I don’t think that I can answer that question with any certainty

I don’t think anyone who stands in this pulpit—or any pulpit for that matter—can answer that question with any certainty

But the miracle and the scandal of Christmas is that we can do something about it

Christ came down to us—Emmanuel, God is with us

Christ comes down as one of us and meets us in the cracks of the world and shows us that absolutely no one and absolutely no thing is beyond redemption in the sight of God

Christmas shows us that at the center of all our grief and suffering

            In the center of our own very rose

                        We find Christ

                                    The lamb of God

                                                The Alpha and the Omega

                                                           

                                                            God—with—us

He comes to show us that no matter how ugly and broken our world may seem, an alternate reality is within our reach—can’t you just taste it?!

We can pave over the scars and try to hide the pain and suffering

            Or we can shine a light on it

                        Turning those scars into roses

            Roses that cry out it doesn’t have to be this way

This world, long thought to be lost, is not a mistake

            It’s worth redeeming

                        It’s worth saving

The beauty is there, we just have to open our eyes and pay attention.

The Costly Call

I had the pleasure to preach this sermon at my new ministry site, Asbury First United Methodist Church, on September 3, 2015.  I'm sharing the text and the audio of the sermon now, and as they become available, I'll post the video of the sermon as well as the video of the whole service (since the live stream was down) if those are more your style.

*UPDATE*
Video of the whole service is now available here (sermon begins around 31:30) for those who don't want to wait until the video of just the sermon is posted.

Exodus 3:7-15

Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”

But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:

This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.

Matthew 16:21-27
From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

Sermon Audio

Introduction
Old MacDonald had a farm.  And on that farm there happened to be just two animals.  One chicken.  And one pig.  

See, Old MacDonald had fallen on hard times.  You know, he used to be the best farmer in town.  He had so many animals—cows and sheep and ducks and geese and people would come from all over to see them!  Everyone loved him and they sang songs about him and ee-i-ee-i-oh and all that.  

But as the years passed and the times changed fewer and fewer people would come by to see Old MacDonald.  And before long, he had run out of money.  And so Old MacDonald did what any other farmer would do.  He took his cows and his sheep and his ducks and his geese to market to be sold and…well, you know.  And when all was said and done, all that he had left was one chicken and one pig.

But he loved that chicken and that pig.  He made sure that they had enough food to eat and water to drink and enough space to roam around and play.  He protected them from wolves and foxes and any other animals that tried to snatch them away.  And all in all, that chicken and that pig lived quite a happy life on that little, lonely farm.

And one day, the chicken and the pig were talking—as chickens and pigs are wont to do—and the chicken said [chicken noises]to which the pig…oh, I’m sorry.  I forget that not everyone is fluent in barnyard animal.  Let me try that again.

The chicken said “you know pig, Old MacDonald has done a really good job taking care of us”. 

“I know,” said the pig, “he feeds us and he gives us water and he chases away the foxes and wolves so we can play out in the sun”.

“Exactly!” said the chicken, “but have you noticed that he’s moving…a little slower these days?”

“You know, now that you mention it, I have,” said the pig.

“And not only that,” the chicken replied, “but I’ve also noticed that his house is starting to fall apart”.

“I know,” the pig said, “and he’s not going to be able to stay warm because winter is coming!”

“If only there was some way we could help him out and repay him for the kindness he’s shown us,” said the chicken.

The pig agreed, and so they started to think of ways they could help out Old MacDonald.  And they thought and they thought and they thought and they thought until finally—a ha!—the chicken said “I got it!  We can open a restaurant!”

“A restaurant?”

“A restaurant!”

“But we don’t know the first thing about the restaurant business.  What do you even call a restaurant run by a pig and a chicken?  What would we serve?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll keep it real simple.  We’ll call it Ham n’ Eggs, and that’s what we’ll serve!”

“Ham n’ Eggs?”

“Ham n’ Eggs!  It’s perfect!”

“I don’t know,” the pig responded hesitantly, “in order to make it work, it sounds like you’d only need to make a contribution, but I’d have to make a real commitment.”

In order to make it work, you’d only need to make a contribution, but I’d have to make a real commitment.

The Call to Discipleship
The call of Christian Discipleship is not a call to contribute a portion of our lives, but rather to commit the whole sum of our lives to following Jesus Christ.  Making a contribution is, when all is said and done, easy.  Making a contribution requires no real sacrifice.  There’s no risk in making a contribution.  After she lays an egg, the chicken is able to return to life as normal.

But making a commitment?  If you’re committed to something, you throw your whole being into it.  Commitment is costly.  Commitment radically and fundamentally transforms your life.  There’s no “back to normal” when we’re talking about commitment.  Following Christ is not a once-a-week, ten percent, part-time job, but rather the totality of a life lived fully for the sake of proclaiming his Gospel—for the sake of building his Kingdom here on earth.  To follow Christ is to commit to Christ.

And yet…

The fact of the matter is that in the midst of trials and tribulations

Ups and downs

Joys and celebrations and the mundane banality of life, it’s really easy to lose sight of that costly call.  

And I’ll be the first one to confess that I myself am just as guilty as the next person.  Rather than exposing myself to people who look, think, and act differently from me, I have a tendency to isolate myself into communities that allow me to feel safe and secure.  I would rather store up my treasures here on earth rather than live fully into the promise of God’s abundant life.  I allow comfort to drive me to complacency rather than using the freedom I have been given through Christ’s offering for all the world to offer myself as a living sacrifice for the sake of seeking justice and resisting evil.

But perhaps we can all take some comfort in the fact that this problem is not unique to our time or location, but has—as we see in our Gospel passage this morning—plagued the Church from its very institution.

The Gospel
And we all feel pretty comfortable saying that this is a weird story, right?  I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s not as weird as that time Jesus cursed a fig tree out of the blue, but it’s still pretty weird.  Jesus tells his disciples that he’s going to have to go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering and be killed by the religious elite—the same folks that up until that point in his ministry, Jesus and his band of merry men had been antagonizing and calling out.  So Peter pulls Jesus aside “hey hey hey, look you’re not going to die—there’s no way I’m going to let that happen”.

And given what had happened just before our story began, that response makes sense.  Just a few verses back—within the same chapter—Jesus told Peter that he was going to be the rock upon which he would build his Church.  Jesus gave Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven—that beautiful city of God—and assured him that not even the gates of hell would be able to prevail against it.

Things were finally looking up for our good friend, Peter.

All that work he had put in had finally paid off.  Leaving behind his family and business and traveling Lord only knows how many miles across the ancient near east by foot was finally worth it.  He got that promotion.  He was now Jesus’ right-hand man.

And so when Jesus started talking about how he was going to be killed, of course Peter’s response was going to be something along the lines of “hey J.C., don’t worry!  I got you’re back!  This venture that we’re now partners in is going to be successful”, but unfortunately for Peter, Jesus’ definition of success was very different from his.

Jesus’ definition of success is often different from ours.

In spite of all the work that Peter had already put into Jesus’ ministry, when he said “God forbid it, Lord!  This must never happen to you!”, he showed that all along, he was merely making contributions, but he wasn’t committed.

Jesus knew that in order to be successful in his mission—in order to reconcile all of humanity back to God—he would ultimately have to conquer death.  Jesus knew that he had to show us that death ultimately has no power over any single one of us.

And if Jesus was going to conquer death, he knew that he was first going to need to submit to it.  He was going to need to submit to the reality that death exists and is a part of life.  A reality that I know many of us in here and around the world are living today.  Jesus knew that the path to a new reality, a reality where death is powerless, meant embracing our current reality, a reality in which death seemingly holds all the power.  Death wasn’t going to have the final say, but the path to resurrection led straight through the cross.

Yet Peter missed the memo about resurrection.  All Peter heard was suffering and death.  And Peter knew that if Jesus chose that path, then he—by virtue of being a follower of Jesus—would also have to take that same path.  Even though he had shown that he was willing to give up everything to follow Jesus, he wasn’t quite ready to go that far.  He was willing to contribute, but he wasn’t willing to commit.

The Drive to Survive
And Jesus called him out on it.  Get behind me, Satan!  You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.  

And he’s right.

Peter had set his mind on human things.  Self-preservation is hard-wired into our very beings.  The laws of evolution dictate that we are programmed to do what we must to protect our lives and the lives of our offspring to ensure the survival of our species.  When ancient human beings were threatened by a predator—say a giant saber tooth tiger—their hormones would go into overdrive, and when it came time to make the decision to fight the predator or run away from it, their body was a veritable machine.  The survival of our species depended on it.

And that’s exactly what our species did.  We survived better than any other animal on this planet until we found ourselves at the top of the food chain.  But while you and I don’t have to worry about giant saber tooth tigers anymore, we still have that innate drive to survive.  And in the absence of a threat from another species, we focused all of our fear on our fellow humans, and as a result, we’ve been saddled with tribalism and racism and sexism and hyper nationalism and ableism and every other ism that that puts a barrier between us and our fellow humans.  Each and every one of those sins can be traced back to that primal, basic evolutionary drive to protect ourselves—to save our lives.  

And yet Jesus tells us that a life lived with the sole purpose of self-preservation is not a life lived fully.  All who seek to save their lives will lose it.  Because at the end of the day, we can’t outrun or outfight death.  One need only look at the world around us to see that and I know that we’ve all felt that at one time or another.  There’s plenty out there to be afraid of, but Christ calls us to fundamentally rethink how we respond to that fear.  Because when we let it govern the way we live our lives—when everything we do is done to stave off the fear of death—we prevent ourselves from living fully in harmony with all of humanity.  When we construct artificial walls to protect ourselves from hypothetical future suffering, we blind ourselves to the very real and present suffering that already exists all around us.

Christ calls us to commit to the work of breaking down those walls.  Christ calls us to make ourselves vulnerable because his power is made perfect in weakness.  Christ calls us to live fully for the sake of proclaiming his Gospel of peace and comfort to all who are afflicted, even if that means putting our lives on the line to do so.

The Old Testament
Now some of us might be sitting here thinking “Yes! Wonderful! Sign me up!” and if so, that’s great!

But if I’m being honest, I’m willing to bet that a good number us are also thinking “Woah woah woah, Ian, this is too much. This isn’t what I signed up for. I can’t do this” and if so, that’s also great!  Really.  It’s totally fine.  If that’s our response, we’re in good company.  You don’t need to look very hard in the scriptures to find case after case of a person whose first response to hearing God’s call is this is too much.  This isn’t what I signed up for.  I can’t do this.

Isaiah: I am a man of unclean lips living amongst a people of unclean lips.

Jeremiah: I can’t speak because I’m only a kid.

Ezekiel had to literally be possessed by God in order to speak God’s word.

And we all remember the story of Jonah, who actually literally ran away when he heard the call of God.

And in spite of all that he said in our passage this morning, even Jesus—the one Lord, the Son of God, the Only-Begotten before all ages, Light of Light, True God of True God, by whom all things were made, and whose Kingdom shall have no end—that Jesus, on the night that he was going to be betrayed and handed over to the authorities to be crucified fervently prayed Father let this cup pass from me.

But as we see in our Hebrew Bible passage this morning, no one did it quite like Moses.  It’s a story that I’m willing to bet is probably one of the first ten bible stories we all learned—the story of the burning bush.  But one of the things that I think we all have had a tendency to overlook is the back and forth that occurs between Moses and God later in the chapter and even into the next chapter.  Moses really didn’t want to answer God’s call.

He thought he wasn’t important enough—who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?

He didn’t think the Israelites would believe him—If I come to the Israelites and say to them “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you” and they ask me “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?

He didn’t think the Egyptians would believe him—But suppose they do not believe me or listen to me, but say “The Lord did not appear to you.”

He didn’t think he could speak well enough—I have never been eloquent…I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.

He didn’t think he was up to the task—please send someone else.

If you don’t feel like you’re up to the task of answering that costly call, you’re not alone, it’s ok.  It shows that you understand the gravity of what God is calling you to do, and if you understand the gravity and the full scope of what it means to sacrifice everything for the sake of building the Kingdom of God I don’t think there can be any other first response.  

But I can also say that it’s not going to be the last response, because like it or not, that call persists.  God doesn’t give up on us—that’s the crux of the whole bible.  And God will provide us with all that we need to actually live into that call. God doesn’t call the equipped, but rather God equips the called.  

That’s the refrain we see over and over again throughout the scriptures.  For every one of Moses’ protests, God responds I will be with you, you’re not going to be doing this alone.  

For every one of our protests, God responds I will be with you, you’re not going to be doing this alone.

Conclusion
And so in light of all of this, we’re left with a choice.  We can continue to live as we’ve lived since the dawn of human history—living into a mindset of self-preservation.  Or we can, by the grace of God, look death in the face and boldly say together, in one voice, not today.  We can let our fear of death drive us to separating ourselves from the suffering all around us.  Or we can recognize that God has shown us a vision of abundant life and we can work together to make that vision a reality for everyone throughout the whole world.  We can stand together as one and proudly proclaim death has been swallowed up in victory.  Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?  

The call of Christian Discipleship is a call to commit the whole sum of our lives to following Jesus Christ.  It’s going to take everything we have and it’s not always going to be easy.  In fact, more often than not, it’s going to be pretty hard.  And if we strive to do it all by ourselves, we run the very real risk of being gobbled up or burnt out by that call. But thanks be to God we’re not going to be doing it alone.  The beauty of being in community with one another is that we are all in this together. We’re all working towards realizing that common vision of a new reality together.  We have been given each other.  We are already so, so blessed, dear friends.  God’s divine power has already given us everything we need.  It’s now up to us to use those resources and tools we’ve been given completely and fully towards building the city of God.

And so, if you’ve been blessed with the gift of service, serve your oppressed neighbors until you can serve no more.

If you’ve been blessed with the gift of presence, stand in solidarity with your oppressed neighbors until you can stand no more.

If you’ve been blessed with the gift of care and compassion, care until you can care no more.

If you’ve been blessed with financial and material gifts, give until you can give no more.

If you’ve been blessed with the gift of prophecy, prophesy and preach truth to power until you can preach no more.

If you’ve been blessed with the gift of love, love until you can love no more and in doing so, we can break down those walls we’ve built up and replace them with one, beautiful city of God. 

It’s going to take sacrifice—a lot of sacrifice—but in light of everything God has already given us, what else can we do?

Reactions to Upper New York Annual Conference 2016

General Conference started one month ago today, and if you were following this blog throughout those two weeks, you may have noticed that it's been noticeably silent for the past few weeks.  To be honest, General Conference was a lot to process, and I promise that in the next few days/weeks I'll post some sort of reaction to all of it.

But that's not the intent of this post.  One week after returning from Portland, I left DC again for a visit home to New York so I could attend Upper New York's Annual Conference.  And while UNYAC 16 was certainly not as contentious as General Conference, that's not to say it did not have it's downsides.  Meeting in the immediate wake of Baltimore-Washington's clergy session's decision to not provisionally ordain one of my seminary classmates as a Deacon in spite of her being recommended for provisional status by BWC's Board of Ordained Ministry simply because she's married to a woman cast a dark shadow over my own experience at UNY's Annual Conference.  Although I did have a glimpse of hope when a Wesley alum member of UNY refused to be provisionally ordained at this session in solidarity with his classmate.  So I do find myself giving thanks for and standing in awe of the prophetic witnesses and ministries of T.C. Morrow and Pat Dupont. 

But in spite of what was happening at the Woodley Park Marriott in Washington, DC, the biggest issue at UNYAC16 was surprisingly not about the inclusion of LGBTQ persons in the United Methodist Church or reactions to General Conference.  There were no clergy who boldly came out during this session of the Upper New York Annual Conference, nor were there impassioned speeches from the floor pertaining to full equality in the UMC as we saw happen at other Annual Conference sessions this year.  No, the big issue at the 2016 Upper New York Annual Conference was the budget.  Specifically, the problem is that the Annual Conference is consistently only receiving something like 73% of its ministry shares on a yearly basis because only 63% of the local churches in the Annual Conference are paying their apportionments in full (think taxes for you non-Methodist folk, except there is no IRS in the UMC who will come after a church who doesn't pay its full apportionments with any more weight than a "gee guys, it would be really great if you would pay your ministry shares...please?").

To be fair, most of the 333 churches that make up the 37% who aren't paying their ministry shares in full are at least paying them in part, and they have valid reasons for not paying in full.  Times are hard after all, and those churches are really struggling to keep the lights on themselves.  However, that doesn't change the fact that there are real consequences to the Annual Conference not receiving 100% of its projected income year-to-year, and those consequences manifest themselves as crucial ministries getting cut mid-year because.  For example, in February of this year, it was announced that the University Chaplain position at Syracuse University (a historic Methodist university, and the largest, if not the only United Methodist-Affiliated University in the Upper New York Annual Conference) had been moved to contingent status in the budget and was therefore no longer going to be funded after the 2016 spring semester finished.  In essence, the Upper New York Annual Conference is no longer able to financially support full-time campus ministry.  

Those of you who know me well know that I was very active in American University's United Methodist campus ministry during my undergraduate experience.  Having access to a campus ministry on site, separate from any local church, and fully funded and staffed shaped and formed my time at AU—perhaps more than any other college experience I had did.  During the budget debates, there were a number of opportunities to give speeches in support of campus ministry, and I'm ashamed to say that I was never able to muster up the courage to speak on behalf of campus ministry from the floor.  And by the time I did muster up some courage and started waving a card to be recognized by the bishop, someone called the question, a parliamentary trick that ends debate and forces the body to vote on what's before them.  So I was unable to speak in support of campus ministry from the floor.  But if I had been recognized, I probably would have said something like this:

Thank you Bishop.  Ian Urriola.  Lay equalization member for the Genesee Valley District, member of Asbury First United Methodist Church.  

We've been talking a lot about the campus ministry at Syracuse University.  I spent my four years of college at a different historic United Methodist-Affiliated school in Washington, DC: American University.   American University falls within the boundaries of the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference, and those folks have had the wisdom to see to it that there is not only a United Methodist clergyperson serving as a University Chaplain but ALSO a full-time and fully-funded United Methodist clergyperson serving as the full-time United Methodist-Protestant chaplain on American University's Campus.  

Last month marked the 10 year anniversary of my confirmation as a full member of the United Methodist Church.  After being baptized as an infant and growing up at Asbury First, I formally joined the church in May 2006.  Furthermore, December 31st of this year will mark 9 years since my answering a call to ministry that God placed on my heart during my Mission of Peace to Cuba.  And thanks be to God, this past April the Genesee Valley District Committee on Ministry elected to certify me as a candidate for ordained ministry.  And yet, thanks to the power of the Holy Spirit, the only reason I am able to stand here today and give this speech is because of my experience with the American University United Methodist-Protestant Campus Ministry.

There were many times throughout my four years of college when I came close to abandoning my call to ordained ministry.  There were many times throughout my four years of college when I came close to leaving my own local church.  There were even many times throughout my four years of college when I came close to giving up on the institution of the United Methodist Church overall and leaving the denomination.  Most notably, the 2012 General Conference left me extremely disillusioned with this institution and I was ready to email my pastor and say "That's it.  Remove me from your roll.  Count me out.  I'm done."  Don't get me wrong, I still considered myself a Christian, but I just about had it with the United Methodist Church.  But the only thing that was able to stop me was the witness of the Campus Ministry at AU.  Through them, I was able to get a glimpse of how the Church universal ought to be acting: one community, united by love and the power of the Holy Spirit even though we weren't always of one mind (even on issues more pressing than whether Star Wars or Star Trek is the quintessential science fiction experience).  This fully funded campus ministry staffed by a full-time chaplain is the only reason I still call myself a United Methodist.

Autonomous campus ministries—that is, campus ministries that are not connected or tied to a local church—are essential to the life of our United Methodist Church.  During my four years at AU, I witnessed people come to Christ who would otherwise never darken the doors of a local church.  I've seen disciples be made and formed through worship, study, and acts of mercy and justice at this campus ministry.  And I've seen at least one person from every generation of this campus ministry's existence come to answer a call to ministry in some shape or form.  In my experience, full-time campus ministry lives into and fulfills the mission of the United Methodist Church to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world more effectively than campus ministry.

Today, those of us here in the Upper New York Annual Conference will elect to pass a budget in which campus ministry will be considered a contingent expense with our votes today and our dollars throughout the year and years to come.  And in light of that, I think we owe a deep debt of gratitude to the Baltimore Washington Conference for continually supporting a full-time United Methodist campus ministry on American University's campus as well as a deep debt of gratitude for those who have served as the University Chaplain at Syracuse University throughout the years.  After hearing the testimonies of others speaking in favor of campus ministry at Syracuse, I know that my experience at American is not an isolated one.  Campus ministry matters, full stop.

Something New

So in case you've been diligently following this blog during General Conference, you've probably noticed that I haven't posted over the past couple days.  And I'll be honest, that was because I really had nothing to say.  And not in the "oh, nothing's happening so there's nothing to report".  On the contrary, much has happened over the past couple of days.  It's just that it has felt as if the General Conference process has pretty much sucked out my spirit and I am left speechless and voiceless.  As proof of how bad it's gotten, spontaneous singing—something that has accompanied or forecasted that a protest or demonstration is going to occur—makes me now feel extremely anxious and jumpy.  And if you know me at all, you know how much I love singing, so the fact that this is now my reality is just a little problematic.

But something beautiful also happened over the past couple of days.  Yesterday morning, after rumors of the Council of Bishops(COB)¹were meeting the previous evening to discuss how to move forward with a schism in the UMC were being spread via social media outlets, Bishop Bruce Ough—Minnesota-Dakotas Episcopal Area bishop and president of the COB—reported that the Council had in fact been meeting to discuss how to remain united rather than moving toward schism. In his statement, he confessed that the Council itself was not of one mind on the matter of human sexuality, but that they do desire to remain a united United Methodist Church.  The Council also said that since the role of bishops is merely to preside over the General Conference and not speak or vote on any matters, that  they trust and hope the General Conference to come up with a creative solution as to how to move forward.

Later that day, amidst members of the Love Your Neighbor Coalition (LYNC), the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN), and the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA)² singing "Blessed Be the Tie That Binds" around the bar³ of the conference, a delegate moved that the General  Conference request the Council to come up with a more concrete recommendation on a way forward. After debate, this motion passed, which essentially means that the General Conference asked the Council to actively lead rather than merely preside.  As far as anyone can tell, this is an unprecedented move in not only United Methodist history, but Methodist history overall.

So the bishops met yesterday afternoon to figure out a more concrete way forward, and Bishop Ough came back this morning with a new statement that laid forward a new plan.  The Council's statement can be read in full here, but here are the key points:

1. The Bishops reaffirmed their desire for the church to move towards unity rather than schism.
2. The Bishops recommended deferring all petitions relating to human sexuality, many of which were on the calendar for today, to a yet-to-be-formed human sexuality commission.

Then, the presiding bishop had the plenary engage in an intentional 30 minute prayer and dialogue amongst themselves around the table, in what many say would have been very similar to what Rule 44⁴ would have looked like in practice had we adopted it.  And I have to say, it was one of the first times I could actually feel the Holy Spirit moving during plenary while at General Conference.  After that period of time, the work began and boy let me tell you that it was a whirlwind of a day.  Someone moved that we adopt his interpretation of the recommendation, someone moved to amend the motion by substitution so that the General Conference would ultimately work on human sexuality petitions this time, there was much debate, the substitution motion failed, and we broke for lunch, and then we returned and had some more debate, a powerful statement of unity was read by the young delegates, another amendment was considered, the amendment failed, and then we voted on the motion and the motion failed, then a bishop was accused of improper presiding procedure and using fingers to tell delegates how to vote and was asked to leave the presiding chair (also an unprecedented move as far as I can tell), that bishop stayed in the chair, someone else moved that we simply affirm and act on the Council's recommendation, and THAT motion passed by a razor-thin margin of 428-405.  If you weren't paying close attention, it would have been easy to be lost and not know what was going on.  But what you need to know is that the Council of Bishops' statement has been affirmed and will be acted on.

So what does this all mean?  Again, I'm not a General Conference expert by any means, and if I've learned one thing it's that things at General Conference can change very quickly, but here's how I understand it.  First, we will not be discussing any human sexuality positions this General Conference, but instead will be referring them to this commission to work on them and come back with a recommendation either at a special called General Conference session or at the 2020 General Conference.  I've heard some say that this is just kicking the can down the road again and we're not actually getting anything done.  However, I have to disagree with that assessment.  For one, not acting on these human sexuality petitions means that additional harm will not be done to our LGBTQI brothers and sisters.  If General Conference was going to debate and vote on these petitions this year, it's likely that our stance would become more restrictive against the LGBTQI community.  Not only that, but debate on these petitions would have meant that the whole world would have to hear speeches in favor of keeping our current language in the Book of Discipline, and that would only cause more unnecessary harm to the LGBTQI community.

Furthermore, I don't think that this isn't just kicking the can down the road.  There's an intentionality behind this action that hasn't existed in the past.  As I understand it, we are committing to have this conversation in a way that is healthy and will hopefully allow the Spirit to work with us.  Moving forward, I am not afraid.  If Christ has conquered death, then Christ can work with the United Methodist Church.

Over the past couple of days, I've questioned some deeply held convictions, questioned what it is about the United Methodist Church that's worth saving, and questioned why I even want to continue my ministry with the United Methodist Church—often over the course of one hour!  There have been many times over the past couple of days when it seemed as if our mutually incompatible interpretations of a handful of verses of scripture would inevitably lead us to schism.  And I'm not going to lie, maybe that's what's going to happen.  But I'm thankful that we are going to exhaust all of our options before we consider separation.  The United Methodist Church needs marriage counseling before we can consider parting ways, and General Conference is not marriage counseling.  Perhaps this new thing is.

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1 The United Methodist Council of Bishops is composed of all active and retired Bishops in the United Methodist Church.  In the UMC, bishops are elected to serve as spiritual and temporal leaders of the church and are assigned to serve an episcopal area, or Annual Conference, within the Jurisdiction they were elected in.  Bishops do not have voice or vote in the UMC on any legislative matters at any level of church governance.^↩
2 Three progressive United Methodist advocacy groups.^↩
3 That is, the boundary/barrier that marks off where the seated delegates sit and where observers sit.  Only voting delegates are allowed within the bar, and only those within the bar of the conference are allowed to speak and vote on any conference business^↩
4 A proposed rule for General Conference that would allow the General Conference to send a piece of legislation to be discussed amongst every delegate in small table conversations rather than sending it to a legislative committee.  Facilitators would be elected to lead this conversation and then create a report back to the General Conference based on what conversation occurred among the tables and recommend action on those petitions/resolutions.  After a lot of debate, the General Conference ultimately decided not to adopt that rule last week.  ^↩