Friday, March 8, 2019
"SO WHAT'A YAH GUNNA DO?"
Dear All Of Us,
"So what'a yah gunna do?"
For forty years
The United Methodist Church
has fussed and fought
over same gender issues.
They just spent
well over $3,000,000
for a Special Session
of their General Conference
trying to find
" A Way Forward."
For all their time and money
they ended up
fighting and fracturing their
"Way Forward"
to split and separation.
So much - again yet -
for Christian unity.
Regionalized cultural values and
a preferred lens for reading scripture
posturing as Gospel
won the day and
lost the church.
Absolutizing the personal and
persuational trumped truth.
The Not At All
United Methodist Church
could not find a
Way Forward
together
so they are not.
They splintered.
Some staying for what was.
Some staying in
Sacred Resistance.
Some separating all together,
while others are beginning
to find new forms
of federation.
It's beyond disappointing.
It's scandalous.
"So what'a yah gunna do?"
The Methodists are
just the latest
poster people
for failed religion.
Check out the
sexual scandal
in the Roman church,
the splits in the Lutheran,
Presbyterian, UCC,
Episcopal and Baptist churches
over the last forty years.
They all are fighting for air
and self preservation
while society and planet
are in peril.
It's scandalous.
The Jews, Moslems,
Buddhists and Hindu's
have their own variations
on the themes of
discord, dissonance
and division.
It's scandalous.
"So what'a yah gunna do?"
It's perplexing and painful
because most of us got
our spiritual start
and still get a good bit
of soulful sustenance
from formal,
institutional religion.
Our very spiritual lives
are at issue here.
Where do we go?
What do we do?
First of all,
chill!!
From the get go
to right now,
most people
have quietly lived
a real, a genuine
and rooted spiritual life within,
and often in spite of,
formal, institutional religion.
Check out Italian Catholics.
They know what to take
and what to leave:
"What's the Pope know
about birth control?
How many kids
is he trying to feed?"
But they have those kids
baptized in the church!
Like them we must not let
church bureaucrats,
church votes or regulations
that cause harm and limits
slow, stop or exclude us
or anyone else.
Jesus never gave a call
to neat and tidy
theology or polity.
But he did give
an uncompromising call to
inclusion, acceptance, oneness.
Yes, those Italian Catholics
know what to take
and what to leave.
They have a pretty good take on
"So what'a yah gunna do?
So does Dianna Butler Bass.
She profiles the real situation
and history of Christianity.
As the cover blurb of her book,
A People's History of Christianity,
The Other Side of the Story,
puts it so well:
For too long, the history of
Christianity has been told
as the triumph of orthodox
doctrine imposed through power.
Now, historian Diana Butler Bass
sheds new light on
the surprising ways
that many Christians
have refused to conform
to a rigid church hierarchy
and sought to recapture
the radical implications
of Jesus's life and message."
That's the ticket and answer to
"So what'a yah gunna do?"
To get back to the Methodists.
May they truly find a genuine
Way Forward
by getting back to their founder,
John Wesley, and his simple,
clear call to personal
and social holiness.
Methodist or otherwise,
let's all be guided
by John Wesley's wisdom:
"In essentials we are one.
In all else we think and let think."
Even more, it's imperative that
God's Love and Unity
be real, actual and vigorous in us
and among us,
not a concept or doctrine
so much as an experience,
an actuality. - personal
and communal.
Jesus prayed for it.
The world waits for it.
"...that they may be one.
As you, Father, are in me
and I am in you,
may they also be in us,
so that the world may believe
that you have sent me.
The glory that you have given me
I have given them,
so that they may be one
as we are one,
I in them and you in me,
that they may become completely one,
so that the world may know
that you have sent me
and have loved them
even as you have loved me."
( John 17: 21-23 )
Current exclusions,
discriminations,
distancing and division
based on denying people
their unique, God given
makeup and identity,
utterly fail to witness
to a dreadfully needy world
God's Love and Call to Unity.
They are totally unjust.
They amount to apostacy.
They disqualify as Christian,
no matter how many hymns are sung
or how many scripture citations
cascade in conflicting harm,
or votes to exclude are cast at difference.
To exclude excludes the excluder.
As Ginger Gaines-Cirelli
(Foundry UMC, Washington, DC)
so clearly and courageously
says and leads, these are times for
SACRED RESISTANCE
to exclusion, discrimination, division.
As a truck driver friend of mine says
about church people excluding,
discriminating, trying to claim
the church for themselves
and their persuasions,
"Don't let the bastards
ware you down.
Tell'em to lighten up
and come have a good time
with all God's people
just like you and God are doin
because you and God
ain't goin nowhere
and they don't have to either."
As Jesus prays and the world waits,
these are times for rip roaring,
joyous inclusion and loving oneness,
freeing for personal and social wholeness
and it's going to require a health dose of
SACRED RESISTENCE.
"Ecce quam bonum…"
"Behold how good and pleasant it is when
kindred live together in unity!"
( Psalm 133:1 )
"So what'a yah gunna do?"
In the Unity of God's Love and Justice,
John Frank
*****
Please let me tell you how much
you all mean to me and to all of us
who gather here each week for
Soul Share and Support.
This is quite a little community.
*****
Here's a shout out to all of you
who have been introducing
friends and associates to
"frankly speaking."
You make a big
and good difference.
Thanks!!
****
Also, a great big welcome
to our newest participation
from Slovakia.
*****
Please take this as it is offered,
and that is in gratitude for blessings.
Over the weeks we now have
participation here in our gatherings
from sixty seven nations.
Thank God and thank you!
*****
"frankly speaking"
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*Past postings are available at
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