What Would I Do?

I have often wondered if a gay couple came to me to officiate at their wedding what I would do. Morally, I believe I should officiate. Yet, the teachings of my church have often been against this and I could loose my standing as a pastor. And I believe in being subject to the authority of my peers. It is a lose, lose situation, which I am in some ways glad I never had to decide. In other ways I wish I had forced to make the decision. I’m pretty certain which I would have chosen.

Thomas S. Ogletree is the United Methodist minister whose son asked him to officiate at his wedding to his gay partner. Olgetree was moved my his son’s request and performed the ceremony which he described as “one of the most significant ritual acts of my life as a pastor. I applaud him.

Ogletree, 79 is the retired dean of Yale Divinity School, a respected theologian and lives in New York State, which accepted same sex marriages. However, the United Methodist does not agree or allow their ministers to perform same sex marriages. Sure enough, some members of his conference filed a complaint, Randall C. Paige led the clergy complaint.

Paige and Olgetree met in January to work out differences but Olgetree refused to apologize or to say he would not perform such a marriage again. In spite of his age and it is unlikely such a request would be made his conscience moved him to his stance.

Now since 2011 1,000 United Methodist clergy have signed pledges saying they are willing to defy their churches ruling on this ban. Olgetree was among them and 869 laypersons in the denomination have also signed this pledge. This bishops of the church said they would uphold the ban.

I admire the courage of those who refute the church’s ban and express their willingness to change.

But I am also dismayed that this is even an issue. It is generally the conservatives who lead the way on such bans even though conservatives ideologically are those who believe in individual choices and as little governance as possible. They act just like conservatives in the political world who have an inheratant contradiction in their beliefs.

There are major issues facing the modern church dealing with the teachings of scripture in caring for the world and its critters. We must wrestle of how we are to follow in the footsteps of Jesus in steadfast faithfulness. But as it is with folk in all institutions and groups we tend to get all excited about the small stuff and lose focus of the most important things.

Here’s to you Thomas Ogletree! I believe you walk in the footsteps on the inclusive Christ accepting those who society often rejects.

Thelma and Louise Part Deux

Michele Bachmann has announced that she is not running for another term as the representative of the 6^th district of Minnesota saying it was because she believed in term limits (after five terms?) I’m sure that Jon Stewart and many of us will miss her.

But in my mind’s eye I see a great movie for the making, Thelma and Louise Part Deux staring Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin roaring across the country in a patriotically painted motor coach drinking tea at parties across the country.

Are you listening Hollywood? I think this has great potential. Two good looking women one of whom, Momma Grizzly can climb on top of the bus and see Russia with a stack of non magazines and the other on a bullhorn telling people: “The IRS is boing to be in charge of a huge national database on health care that will include Americans’ personal intimate, most close-to-the-vest-secrets,” and “The IRS is going to be in charge of our health care,” and “Scientists tell us we could have a cure in 10 years for Alzheimer’s were it not for overzealous regulators, excessive taxation and greedy litigators,” and “Of every three dollars in food stamps for the needy, seven dollars in salaries and pensions go to the bureaucrats who are supposed to be taking care of the poor,” and “After the debate we had last week, PolitiFact came out and said everything I said was true,” and “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that if he has a nuclear weapon he will use it to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. He will use it against the United States of America,” and “by 2015, we will be sending so much interest to China that we will be pay for the entire People’s Liberation Army,” and “Under Obama’s watch we hae expended 805 billion to liberate the people of Iraq, and more importantly 4,400 American lives,” and other works of fiction (read lies) she is so well known for uttering. (I think Michelle may have the record of “pants on fire” untruths on PolitiFact than any other, but that is not a proven bit.)

I think this might make Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure pale in comparison. There is money to be made here and I’m sure it will be.

Sometimes It Is Good to Be Uniformed, Sometimes Not

I read that Amanda Bynes has attacked Rihanna on Twitter. Now I don’t have a clue who either of these people are or how you do a Twitter attach, not do I understand if it is serious. I am uniformed. I don’t even tweet and I don’t want to tweet. Let Tweety Bird do that.

Now I do know that Iowa’s senator Church Grassley and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky among others are charging Obama with stacking the D.C. Court of Appeals. There are 11 members of that court and 3 seats are vacant so Obama has the responsibility of filling those positions. But Grassley, who voted to fill the open positions under Bush, now says that they don’t need that many judges and they should just stay at eight judges. That is a weird and illogical argument for stacking a court. If that is their argument, why wasn’t that true before when Bush appointed?

But my guess is more citizens know about Amanda Bynes and Rihanna than they do about the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which many belief is the second most important court in the country.

Now when folk holler, “Go big red!” which big red do they mean? Never mind, I don’t care. However, it may be reflective of how we treat the political process these days.

Seeing and Affirming the Gifts of Others

Jesus Preaches in His Home Town^[1]  Compare to Matthew 13: 53-58; Mark 6: 1-6a; Luke 4: 16-30; John 7: 15, 6:42, 4:44, 10: 39.

            Jesus went to his hometown, Nazareth. On the Jewish weekly holy day, Jesus went to the synagogue as he usually did on the Sabbath. He volunteered to be one of readers of scripture that day and was handed the book of Isaiah. He opened up the book, found what he was looking for, and this is what he read:

God's spirit has descended upon me,

And this is what God has told me to do:

to tell the poor good news,

to announce freedom for captives,

to proclaim clear sight for the blinded,

to liberate the oppressed,

and to declare now is the time God has chosen.

            With that said, he shut the book, gave it back to the one who had given it to him and sat down. Everybody's eyes were absolutely glued on Jesus. Then he spoke to them.

            "What I just read to you has come true this very day."

            After a brief shocked silence, the whole place was abuzz with talk about the amazing thing that Jesus had just said. But one refrain kept coming up, "Isn't this Joseph's kid?"

Jesus heard them, he said, "Some of you will no doubt tell me something like, 'Well, hot shot, show us. We've heard that you have performed miracles in other towns, do it here. Why not start with yourself?' The truth is, it's hard to impress the hometown folk, even a prophet is an ordinary fellow in his hometown.

            "Remember in Elijah's time there were a lot of widows. There has been a horrible drought that lasted three and half years and people were starving to death. Elijah, God's man, went to only one of those widows, one who lived in the town of Zarephath, near Sidon. And when the prophet Elisha was active, leprosy was widespread throughout Israel, but the only one he cured was Naaman, an Syrian."

            That did it. The people in the synagogue were absolutely enraged. They got up ready to throttle Jesus. The grabbed him and dragged him out of town and were going to toss him off a cliff. They were really angry. But somehow Jesus slipped through the crowd and got away.

-       - - - - -

Sometime ago I started to collect all the gospel stories and rewrite them as a modern witness to the life of Jesus, which is what the original gospel writers did. Even though I am not an eyewitness to these events I feel the same spirit that moved them moves me and the readers of such writing. I got about 2/3rds of the way through this project and quit; I’m not sure why.

I took a look at this passage and thought about in this age of instant communication and also our more isolation from each other. Our contacts with each other are not so intimate and lack empathy, or so it seems to me.

Perhaps this has always been true. I grew up in a town of about a thousand souls (bodies attached) and have served churches in towns very similar to it. I’ve often described such places as where everybody knows everybody else, not at all. This means that even when lives are so entwined in small towns we always seem to hold back our most intimate thoughts and feelings and don’t share them for a variety of reasons.

Also in small towns it is hard to perceive greatness in each other. We know each other too well, and we know each other’s shortcomings and a few skeletons and it limits our ideas of who they are. Jesus certainly found that to be true when he visited his hometown and made his outrageous claims. They thought, “Good grief, who does this guy think he is?”

It seems part of human nature to want to drag folk down to our own level and perhaps a bit below with the mistaken idea that that will make ourselves seem more important or better. In doing so we miss seeing greatness and the gifts of each other and fail to celebrate them.

We live in a society that has mastered the degrading of people. The media reports regularly the missteps, the foibles, and the misdeeds of people with too much enthusiasm. Political parties members love to demonize their opponents to justify their own uncaring attitudes and little gets done. Churches love to point of the shortcomings of other churches as though they had a monopoly on God’s truth.

None of this is very helpful and doesn’t not solve problems, it just make new ones and alienates us from each other all the more. So, we bully folk on the Internet and condemn those we disagree with and fail to see the good and the gifts in each other.

Jesus, though he would take on those who had such opinions in his day, primarily lifted up the common people he came into contact with. Those that society condemned he embraced. Those that felt alienated from others he included as members of his family. In his life he fulfilled what human potential can be and thus made the claims he did to his hometown neighbors.

Though rejected in his hometown he could only see his humble origins, today practically everyone in the world knows who he is and some of his teachings. It would be good for us to study his teachings more thoroughly, imitate his life more closely, and embrace each other as he has embraced us.