Multiplication Vs. Division

 

Multiplication vs. Division

 

Jeremiah 23:1-6

 

23:1 Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the LORD.

 

23:2 Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the LORD.

 

23:3 Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply.

 

23:4 I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall no longer fear or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the LORD.

 

23:5 The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

 

23:6 In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: "The LORD is our righteousness."

 

 

Jesus always said, “Greater things you shall do, because I go to the Father.” In most cases, I think he meant GOOD, greater things? Unfortunately, one of the things the church has learned to do WAY better than Jesus, is DIVIDE. Throughout the history of Christianity, we got REALLY GOOD at dividing, and usually because we couldn’t agree on things. Actually, it’s even stronger than that—we made finding ways to DISAGREE into an art form. It started with Judas, and has “matured” since then. Jesus promised that the “gates of hell” will not defeat the church, but it sure seems like human beings are doing pretty good job of ruining it. Maybe that’s what he meant?

 

Church history is a messy affair. Early on, the persecution of Christ-followers (later dubbed “Christians” at Antioch) by early religious leaders guarding their turf and by the emperors of Rome, was a thing. Christians were suffering and even being martyred, just for what they believed. Today, in spite of often declaring that they are being “persecuted,” most Christians—at least in this country—are “suffering” because of intolerance and/or doctrinal conflicts among themselves. The tide turned in the early church when these theological and doctrinal differences began to divide us, even to the point of attacking each other over them. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake over these kinds of differences, and even a major Reformer, John Calvin, was instrumental in having Michael Servetus, whom he declared a heretic, beheaded. It doesn’t take much to be declared a heretic by somebody, today, and while we haven’t been lopping off each other’s heads, at least literally, suffice it to say we certainly have not buried the hatchet. We have found it so much easier—and maybe more titillating?—to divide, rather than multiply.

 

The United Methodist Church has obviously just gone through a traumatic schism. Here’s how it happened:

 

·      Disagreements over a number of different doctrinal and biblical interpretations have been going on in Methodism for a long time. “Liberals” and “conservatives,” often declaring themselves “evangelicals” have been at it over all kinds of things, but in 1972, at United Methodism’s first “full” General Conference, conservatives managed to pass a doctrinal statement that “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teachings.” Thus began a systematic “wave” of tightening, conservative “rules” in the UMC against any “rights” that might be afforded to persons in the LGBTQ community.

 

·      Even though numerous statements like “all of God’s children are persons of sacred worth” also got voted in, the conservative sect of United Methodism succeeded in prohibiting any affirmation of LGBTQ persons (referred to in our Book of Discipline generally as “homosexuals”), including prohibiting their candidacy or ordination as pastors and any kind of official “blessing” of gay or lesbian couples, let alone allowing their marriages in the church or by any UMC pastor. These battle lines drawn between conservative and liberal forces in the church eventually fomented a heated and near-paralyzed 2016 General Conference wherein the voting delegates cried out to the bishops of the church to “lead us,” in short—“DO something!” A lot of money got spent on that General Conference, and very little got done, due to this standoff. 

 

·      The bishops labored to come up with something they dubbed “The Way Forward,” with three proposals to come before a specially-called General Conference to be held in 2019. The proposals basically represented conservative, moderate, and liberal positions on how to include (or exclude) members of the LGBTQ community, and offered various “compromises” that could have allowed the denomination to remain intact, but with allowances for our differences. At that special General Conference in 2019, the conservative voice, buoyed by a concerted effort to get conservative delegates elected across the denomination, and a strong lobbying effort among the churches African delegates, won the day. The “Traditional Plan” passed by just over 50 votes among the hundreds cast. As a ”bone” thrown to those not happy with this outcome, Paragraph 2553 was also passed by that Conference, which provided a way for those congregations disaffected by the vote—mostly the more liberal voices—to exit the denomination and keep their capital properties.

 

·      In a reaction to this new “Traditional Plan,” which really hammered on excluding the LGBTQ community from the UMC, many Annual Conferences, including some very conservative ones in the South, elected more liberal voices for the 2020 General Conference. Conservatives saw that they might lose in a subsequent vote at this Conference sat down at a table with moderate and liberal representatives and came up with something called “The Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation.” Were this “Protocol” to pass at the 2020 General Conference, a negotiated separation would occur in the UMC, with a conservative faction calling itself the Wesleyan Covenant Association leading a separation from the UMC, along with $25 million to start a new denomination. The protocol would amount to a kind of “controlled burn,” keeping the “fire” from destroying the denomination. We all know what happened to the 2020 General Conference, thanks to COVID-19.

 

·      When the pandemic postponed that General Conference, the members of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, announced they were going forward with starting a new, conservative denomination called “The Global Methodist Church.” In doing so, they violated the terms of the Protocol, and the liberal representatives withdrew their support of it, in protest. It was declared DOA, even before the pandemic later forced the further postponement of the 2020 General Conference.

 

·      Meanwhile, seeing that the 2020 General Conference may well be delayed until 2024 (it was), the Wesleyan Covenant Association and the principals of the new Global Methodist Church turned to Paragraph 2553, which they had pushed through as a “consolation prize” to any liberal churches that might want to leave the now more conservative UMC. Since the conservatives now realized that the jig was going to be up on this being a long-standing “reality,” they urged their affiliated congregations—and pastors—to use 2553 to negotiate their own exit. The problem was that 2553 gave Conference Trustees jurisdiction over just what “deal” would be struck for exiting churches to keep their properties, AND this process had a shelf life, expiring at the end of 2023 (remember, it was passed before there was a pandemic “interlude” to human life). 

 

·      Thinking the solution to guarding their doctrinal “purity” was in dividing, not multiplying, thousands of congregations—43% of them here in the Western PA Conference—exited the United Methodist Church, as well as a great number of pastors. This has left two struggling denominations, as well as a number of disaffiliated churches that have chosen to remain independent. 

 

Unfortunately, the disaffiliation process was riddled with much conniving and disinformation aimed at “scaring” churches into leaving the denomination. In our Conference, and I assume others, members of the Wesleyan Covenant Association distributed videos that threatened that cross-dressing, transvestite pastors would be proliferating in pulpits, and that in the future UMC, churches would be “forced” to host same-gender weddings, and pastors would be required to perform them. In some places, the appeal was “your church can regain full control of its finances if you disaffiliate,” which was not a condition of Paragraph 2553 at all. However, this “promise” had GREAT appeal to larger, wealthier churches, and those with large endowments and extensive property. Thanks to this “doctrine of the great divide,” as I mentioned earlier, we are left with two struggling churches, much angst still in the air, and “bad blood” in communities like Rochester, where disaffiliation divided cooperative charges and left the United Methodist remnant churches without pastoral leadership.

 

I share all of this because I have just begun to serve one of the churches left “orphaned” in its community, due to the disaffiliation of its yoked partner AND its pastor. The disaffiliation process required congregations whose Church Councils voted to consider disaffiliating, to hold a vote of a Church Conference to do so, and Paragraph 2553 required a two-thirds vote to approve leaving the UMC. Across our Annual Conference, and I assume the rest of the denomination where such votes were held, many churches either voted to disaffiliate or not to, by just a handful of votes, meaning that the vote effectively divided the church. If those wishing to disaffiliate lost the vote, many of them just left and went elsewhere, leaving a struggling remnant behind. This is what happened in my home church, and the large number of folk leaving went together to write a letter to the remaining members to announce their exit, rubbing it in, so to speak. How’s THAT for Christian behavior?

 

Unfortunately, we’ve gotten really good at dividing. The prophet Jeremiah, in today’s text, addresses the heinousness of this “dividing” act, decrying it as a cancer in Israel. He clearly believes he is “speaking for God” when he condemns this “scattering the flock” of God’s people, saying God will “attend” to the ones who have done this. How very sad. I’ll be honest: I’m still angry about those who chose to divide and “scatter” God’s people called Methodists, in the name of “biblical authority” or “doctrinal purity.” I can think of little as conceited as believing they have a corner on “the truth.” We are all in pursuit of a fulfillment of the Sermon on the Mount as preached by Jesus Christ, even as ancient Israel was hoping to BE the reality of a people blessed by God and living exemplary lives according to God’s law. Israel did not divide over faith-related or “doctrinal” issues. Fact is, even though we have different sects of Judaism in our day, when it comes to doctrines and “biblical authority,” they all share similar views, yet celebrate their differences, and still see each other as faithful Jews. Their differences are largely in customs, and cultures. Hear what I’m saying: Reform Jews—the most liberal of Jewish believers—still respect, love, and defend the Hasidic Jews, the most conservative. They all acknowledge each other’s faith, and see it as a true “expression” of Judaism. They believe each sect is glorifying Yahweh. They see their differences as MULTIPLYING the Jewish witness and EXPANDING their worship of God, not degenerating into “who’s RIGHT and who’s WRONG in their interpretive and biblical views. Why can’t Christians do this, too?

 

One of my good friends—now a retired Old Testament scholar and professor—once lamented to one of his seminary students who was promoting the disaffiliation process over “biblical authority,” thusly: “I want to be in the church with YOU, but you don’t want to be in the church with ME.” Why couldn’t we continue as a “big tent” faith, as Methodism has always been? Is this schism in the United Methodist Church just born of divisive leaders who made the decision that they “could not abide” the others who had differing views of things like historical/critical biblical interpretation and human sexuality? How is “I don’t want to be in a church where you believe the way you believe, which is different than what I believe” anything Jesus would have endorsed? This is the same Jesus who told the disciples who had heard there were “others” casting out demons and performing healings, and asked Jesus whether they should put a stop to it: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”  Jeremiah would not have abided what caused the schism in United Methodism, I’m pretty sure.

 

Jeremiah delivers the message that God’s will is that God’s people—the “sheep” in Jeremiah’s prophecy—be “fruitful and multiply.” And God, through the prophet, promises to help bring this to reality. Israel is called to “multiply” justice and righteousness: justice for all people, including “strangers in the land;” and righteousness “in the land,” meaning a form of “right living” that witnesses to the presence, power, and benevolence of God. God, in this vision, is a MULTIPLIER, not a DIVIDER. And if you don’t believe Jeremiah, look to all of the other Hebrew Bible prophets! You will get the same message. And if you STILL don’t see it, read the teachings and review the witness of Jesus Christ, the Son of God! Jesus was NOT a “divider,” but an “includer,” a multiplier, and a gatherer of the hurting, lost, and needy. I believe we are called to do likewise.

 

Friends, those of us in the “remnant” United Methodist Church have been handed a chance to retool our denomination into an inclusive, diverse, and “multiplying” community of faith! We can again pitch the “big tent,” in that more conservative persons who are not yet comfortable with full inclusion of LGBTQ persons are not being required to make an immediate change of beliefs, moderate individuals, who are in the majority and who generally want to welcome ALL into our churches, and more progressive believers who are excited about fully including LGBTQ persons in their churches, may all “live” under the same big tent. By removing the mandatory, excluding paragraphs of the UMC’s Book of Discipline, we have been given permission to open our doors, hearts, and minds, like our old slogan proclaims, and this “multiplying” permission is not exclusive to the LGBTQ community. It is not EASY to be an inclusive church, especially when it means passionately reaching out to all of the “least, the last, and the lost” among God’s people. As a middle-class-raised white senior citizen, I can attest to this. I’m way beyond my “comfort level” when reaching out to persons whose lifestyles and socio-economic sitz im leben is so different than mine, but this discomfort must not be a barrier to doing so. Surely, many of us “left” in the UMC must be willing to move beyond our comfort level, in these pursuits. The question we should always ask ourselves, especially when the question of LGBTQ inclusion is being debated, is: Will Jesus be more grieved by our INCLUDING (“multiplying”) our generation’s marginalized persons? Or more grieved if we EXCLUDE (“divide”) them from our affirmation and midst? 

 

Now that I am again serving a church, my congregation will hear a message of love, forgiveness, grace, and inclusion from me, and I will encourage them to be “prophetic” in their ministries of compassion and justice in the community they serve. Doing so will offer a “multiplying” witness to Jesus Christ, and I believe God will reward it by multiplying God’s blessing on the church, helping it receive healing from the trauma of schism and the dividing of its congregation. In short, I will do all within my ability, as led and fueled by the Holy Spirit, to see to it that the Faith Community United Methodist Church truly IS a Community of Faith! If the pastors and leaders of our remnant United Methodist Churches do likewise, I believe we WILL be a “fruitful and multiplying” people! Amen!