Lord Jesus, Lead the Way

Funny—there is a kind of giddy hopefulness in the United Methodist Church now.

We’ve lost a third of our churches nationwide. Most of them are smaller churches, but some are very large.

But ah!—the freedom we feel! It’s like a great load has been lifted.

As Bishop Saenz put it, “We are no longer supporting homophobia in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Or as I have said, we are no longer promoting hate.

The vote at the General Conference was 93% in favor of removing the hateful language against gay people in our Book of Discipline.

It was placed there in 1972, a darker time, a time of greater ignorance about human sexuality.

Many churches are still trapped in that time. They push a gospel that excludes people for being who they are. And until recently, we United Methodists were in on that sin.

But God has delivered us. And we are reveling in the freedom to live for Jesus Christ.

You know, evil has an allure and it is the allure of power over others.

It leads to a perversion of Christianity.

Christians in Germany wanted power over the Jews.

White Christians in the South wanted power over black people.

Men want power over women—and in many churches, they still have it.

It is all wrong.

This lust for power over others who are different is a sin. And United Methodists have had a conversion experience.

Praise the Lord!

We are free now to love others as God loves us.

And we are ready as a church to go where God calls us.

Lord Jesus, lead the way.

The Great Miscalculation

Paul told the Corinthians, “We will not all die.”

He was saying that many of them would still be living when the Lord came again.

But everyone Paul was writing to died.

And so did Paul.

Paul was so certain Jesus was returning soon that he advised people not to marry (I Cor. 7:32+).

No reason to bother. Jesus was coming soon.

We are glad to say most Christians ignored him.

(Except the Shakers. They are all gone. There were no children to continue the faith.)

This was the great miscalculation of the early church—the idea that Jesus would soon return.

But instead of dropping an obviously faulty idea—the church hung on to it.

For 2,000 years!

And all that time, preachers have been telling people Jesus is coming soon.

For 2,000 years!!!

And this idea is based on another equally bad idea: that this world God has made is evil, cursed, hopelessly broken.

So God wants to shut it down. End it—as soon as possible.

But the first creation story tells us God looked at his creation and declared it “good.”

And in the Beatitudes, Jesus tells us we are all “blessed,” even with all the pain we may live with.

And God keeps sending us here—into his world.

It’s like the school all souls must go to. This world is where we have the freedom to grow in grace and understanding.

The world has a purpose.

The world serves God’s purpose.

Sorry, all you endtimers.

I don’t think God is calling it quits any time soon. Stop the nonsense.

The Lord has already come. He is with us now.

Free at Last! Free at Last!

Kerry was having a severe allergic reaction. She called her wife, then rushed toward the elevator to get to the hospital.

She died in the hallway.

She then found herself headed toward a white, limitless Light. A loving and gentle force drew her toward it. But her journey was interrupted.

She was stopped by her deceased grandparents. They were luminous and beautiful and she knew them immediately.

They wanted to tell her they were sorry. They now knew something they had not known in the world. Her family had caused her to live her life in fear.

Her family and her church had told her she was going to hell for being gay. She rejoiced that they now accepted her.

But her grandparents had some bad news for her. It was not her time.

Kerry wanted to stay in this abundant love. She wanted to get to the Light.

And she did.

There before God, “in deepest humility,” Kerry said, “I uttered seven words: ‘I’m gay, will you still love me?’”

God’s words to her changed everything: “You are my child. I love you, I love you, I love you. Go back and tell them.”

That’s what she has been doing, as have other gay people who have had near-death experiences.

Just this last week, the United Methodist Church at its General Conference got out of the hate business. We removed the anti-gay words placed in our Book of Discipline in 1972.

The chains that bound us have been broken. “Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Free to live the Gospel of God’s unconditional love for all people.

Let us rejoice!

They Know Not What They Do

I found it in a shop in a small Texas town.

It was a ceramic piece depicting a cross with an American flag. Hanging on the cross beam was a gun in a holster.

The motto: “My God, my gun, my country.”

“We sell a lot of those,” the shopkeeper said.

Does the maker of this piece know anything about Jesus? What about the shopkeeper selling it?

And what about those church people who support a man of vengeance for high office.

Do they know Jesus?

Can you be a Christian and ignore the heart of the gospel message?

And what is that core message? It is that God loves all of us all the time—no matter who we are or what we’ve done.

God loves even his enemies. That includes you and me from time to time.

And here’s the rest of that core message? We are to love like God loves.

We, too, are to love our enemies.

In Matthew 5:46, Jesus tells us to love those who do not love us.

Hurting people is out.

Vengeance is out.

So, what of those millions of church people who support a man of vengeance for high office?

Have they never heard the Word? Or have they heard it and rejected it?

I think they have never heard it—not from the pulpits in their churches.

This is where we need to remember what Jesus said from the cross:

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

I think many people who claim the name of Christ don’t know who they serve or what he stands for.

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No Bowls of Wrath

I remember an old Nichols and May routine from the 60s.

Mike Nichols played a man desperate to make a call on his one and only dime. Elaine May was the telephone operator.

He said to her, “Please don’t jiggle something with your elbow and make me lose my dime.”

She replied, “Sir, we don’t work with our elbows.”

I heard a preacher reading from Revelation the other day—the lines about God pouring bowls of wrath on humankind.

God doesn’t work with bowls of wrath.

I used to play the preacher game: Try to find something good to say about Revelation.

It’s in the Bible! It’s part of the canon!

Yes—and a theologically useless book. Tell it like it is. It’s a mess.

And it was not written by the author of the gospel and letters of John.

Unlike them, it is written in very poor Greek.

The worst thing about Revelation is that it contradicts the teaching of Jesus that we are to love our enemies for God loves his enemies.

In Revelation, God hates his enemies and treats them with unspeakable cruelty.

Like pouring bowls of wrath on them.

It has Jesus riding in on a white horse cutting off the heads of sinners.

We all know what Jesus does. He dies for sinners. All of us.

It is impossible to affirm the content of Revelation and also affirm what Jesus taught us about God.

The God we know in Christ is the only God there is. And God doesn’t work with bowls of wrath.

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