provocations

I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I've been checking out some other sites. Maybe it's because my friend Deb got a hate phone call because she was quoted in the Dispatch as saying that some United Methodist Churches are safe places for GLBTQ folks to attend. She was told there was a special place in hell for her, and that was the nicest thing the anonymous person said. Grow some! Honestly. Maybe it's because there are 447 facebook friends nationwide of MFSA and 262 last count of EFWO, and lots more in the Confessing Movement and IRD, and on EFWO someone wrote about the aggressive liberal activists...let me know when that happens!

So the line that says something like, "Gay people can come here (to "our" church); this is where they need to be" (so we can straighten them out--pun intended) makes me even madder right now. Yeah. Come here so that we church folk can gawk, talk behind your back, malign folks who think you are a full person, and so that we can watch what you're doing and want to do and keep you from sharing your gifts and talents until you're "fixed." Where does Jesus say anything like that?! I know, I know: John 4--"go and sin no more." How come we don't see anything else of that story? Wouldn't you have expected some followup from Jesus, especially if it was so important? Some extended driving the point home? Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand!

Adam Hamilton has a great article on one of the UM wires today...actually on Relevant Magazine about his book coming out in August. http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/church/features/21997-when-christians-get-it-wrong Err on the side of love. What a concept. More than a trite, "I do love them, which is why I want them to fully repent." I can no more "force" another person to change their mind and turn around as I can force the moon to turn green. Where does God come in? Why do all of these folks think they need to be the junior Holy Spirit? Has God fallen down on the job? Is that what they think. Can God not handle this one?

Now, I realize I am so judgmental in this vent. I so wish I could follow the line of thought. I so wish I could understand how this is ANY different from the prohibition against women and people of color. Multiple disconnected passages of scripture were used for justification. In fact it's more like the prohibition against people of color, in fact, because there was a time when there was not a prohibition in the Discipline. But in 1972, we wrote one in. Women were given rights by addition. They finally gained their fully human status. For persons of color and for GLBTQ folks, we ignored them, and then we intentionally denied them.

"Help us accept each other as Christ accepted us. Teach us as sister, brother, each person to embrace. Be present, Lord, among us, and bring us to believe we are ourselves accepted and meant to love and live.
"Teach us, O Lord, your lessons, as in our daily life we struggle to be human and search for hope and faith. Teach us to care for people, for all, not just for some, to love them as we find them, or as they may become.
"Let your acceptance change us, so that we may be moved in living situations to do the truth in love, to practice your acceptance, until we know by heart the table of forgiveness and laughter's healing art.
"Lord, for today's encounters with all who are in need, who hunger for acceptance, for righteousness and bread, we need new eyes for seeing, new hands for holding on, renew us with your Spirit, Lord, free us, make us one!"
Help Us Accept Each Other, Fred Kaan, 1974. UMH 560.