"That" Pentecost Passage

If you’re a regular Bible reader, the book’s contents have guided and helped you, so naturally the Bible can trigger memories in a similar way as postcards and photographs and music. The connection may be emotionally strong but purely personal, like the way Mendelssohn’s music always reminds me of Maryland and Schumann’s with Arizona.

Here are two verses that remind me of my grandma Crawford:

So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift (Matt. 5:23-24).
Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by then; for then you will have no reward from your Father  in heaven (Matt. 6:1).

Grandma could be stubborn and hard to please but she had a kind heart and took the initiative to do good things and to correct difficulties between her and someone else. Also: she never told this to anyone, I heard about it secondhand, which made her witness all the more effective.  

At the other side of the human spectrum, I find the Parable of the Vineyard (Matt. 20:1-16) and recall a relative on another branch of the family tree. I won’t name the relative, who led a less than exemplary life. The person, when dying and fearful, called upon a local pastor and was baptized. Does a deathbed conversion count? If we’ve been hurt by a person, we may not want much leniency for that person. But grace is unearned, God is generous, and God’s opinion of a despised person may be completely different. Those of us with good character and excellent reputation don’t deserve God’s grace any more than a person, like my relative, who repents in late desperation.

On a lighter note, I’ve a host of memories of kinfolk with whom I associate this verse in Colossians:

…when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead (2:12).

 My relatives, who belonged to a denomination that practiced only adult baptism-by-immersion, insisted that this text proves the necessity for immersion.  After all, when we’re buried, we’re not buried with a little dirt on our heads. We’re buried all the way under!

I disliked that argument but didn’t know why.  I was relieved when a Methodist pastor pointed out that the thief on the cross was not baptized by any means and yet was promised salvation. I read a little further in Colossians and read this:

Why do you submit to regulations, “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch”? All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings. These have indeed the appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence (2:20b-23).

While I wouldn’t call baptism a “human command,” the author worries (in this and the whole section 2:8-23) that we need to hold to Christ alone and not upon any rituals and practices, important as some of them may be. Fulfilling religious requirements is never as important as opening our hearts to God for God’s powers (Gal. 5:16-26, 6:14-15).

But my older relatives are long passed away. I’m not sure I could’ve argued doctrine with them anyway, for they were quite set in their views, and I’m not really a debater.

Some scriptures remind you of people you never met, but you connect with their lives in some way through a Bible passage. I never met a certain pastor, suffering from cancer, but a mutual friend mentioned that the pastor often turned to Psalm 30, with which I wasn’t familiar. Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?  The psalmist bargains with God! “Alive, I praise you … Heal me, and I can praise you all the more …” What a wonderfully human response—in a book that is God’s word to us.

Do you associate particular Bible books with churches and study groups to which you’ve belonged?  A class to which we belonged tackled Esther, Proverbs, and several other books.  I associate this class with the Corinthian letters because we studied them straight through and realized, together, that we’d had enough of Paul’s writing style for the time being, all those tangents and heart-on-his-sleeve defenses! 

Ecclesiastes reminds me of a particular church that I served, because I was called upon (at short notice) to teach the senior pastor’s morning study group. We had a nice time. Another enjoyable group that I taught met on certain evenings, following supper. One evening, a couple felt tense concerning the family meal, lasagna, which had turned out less satisfactorily than desired. We were studying the epistle of James, in the old RSV. I read a section aloud and came to 4:1:

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? 

Afflicted with Poe’s “imp of the perverse,” I said, without thinking, “Lasagna!” and everyone roared, including the couple. It was a “you had to be there” moment, but those moments shine in one’s memory.

In fact, I associate James with two or three Bible study groups. The epistle lingers in memory because, among its several incisive teachings, James cautions us about the power of words (James 3:1-12). The teaching is quite clear in Scripture: Jesus teaches the power of our words as barometers for our soul (Matt. 12:33-37), and Ephesians links truth and love, for our words are not true unless they are kind words that build people up (Eph. 4:15, 25-32). Many of us Christians, apparently, have lots of trouble with our big mouths!  I recall occasions when my churches friends and I sighed in self-awareness as we read these verses from James and knew, If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? (Ps. 130:3).

In the several churches I’ve served and/or attended, including our current church, this passage is a classic. It's a verse for this morning.  

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’ (Acts 2:5-13).

Why a “classic”? An essential scripture for Pentecost, it’s nevertheless quite difficult to read as Sunday scripture from the pulpit---unless you’ve rehearsed well. All those long names! Woe unto the liturgist who decided to “wing it” that week.

from Catholic Memes

The passage’s artificiality also inhibits good pulpit reading. People don’t talk like that, listing their nationalities, geographies, and ethnicities in unison. I’ve joked with several folks, in different churches, about hard this scripture is to present.

And so now the passage reminds me of folk who also heard the Gospel in our own language: Illinoisans and Virginians, residents of Missouri, and Arizona, and parts of Ohio once belonging to Connecticut, and visitors from other churches, and …The faith that you and I share, and all the memories and experiences of church in our respective lives, are built upon that day in Jerusalem and the Spirit's flames, when the church was born. 

  

Happy 200th, Richard Wagner

Wednesday, May 22nd is the 200th anniversary of the birth of composer Richard Wagner, whose music I associate with a lovely time in my life.

Immediately following my seminary program, I was pastor of three small churches for two years. The churches were located fifteen miles from the nearest village with a grocery store, about a half-hour from more substantial towns with hospitals and larger retail stores. “Why don’t you move to the country?” a visiting friend teased. I had a six-room parsonage to myself, with a pretty fence row, a silver-blue propane tank beneath which rabbits napped, a lawn large enough for two or three hours of push-mowing, tall shade trees which let through the light, and steep concrete steps where I could sit and look at my neighbor’s white-faced cattle, his pastures, and the larger of the three churches (and its great old tree). I heard birds call in the early morning and cows bawling late at night, and sometimes a coyote.

It was a lonely time, but I was busy with pastoral tasks. I found an enjoyable hobby: collecting classical recordings, especially opera. In Willa Cather’s story “The Wagner Matinee,” a farm lady is taken by her nephew to a Boston concert of Wagner’s music and, afterward and deeply moved, she couldn’t bear the thought of returning to her everyday rural life. I understood the feeling but since I had the benefit of recorded music, my rural life and my new passion for music enriched one another.

My best friend in seminary had been a church organist student who disliked Italian opera, like Verdi and Puccini and Rossini, but he loved English music, Mozart, and Wagner. He introduced me to these. Following his advice, I visited the record store in the corner of the local mall (http://www.deadmalls.com/malls/chapel_square_mall.html), where I purchased Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, conducted by Karajan, and Don Giovanni, conducted by Karl Böhm. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that Mozart interested me because my favorite theologian, Karl Barth, played Mozart every day; checking out Mozart for that reason seems like such a dumb-graduate-student thing to do.

My friend also introduced me to Wagner, beginning with the opening bars of Tristan und Isolde, turned up to Led Zeppelin level, where the themes of romantic passion and death are established in the unresolved dissonances of the music and the use of harmonic suspension. He went on to inform me about the innovativeness of this particular chord (difficult to assign to a particular key), and about Wagner’s advancements in tonality and chromaticism, and the way he used fragments of melody to depict psychological states and themes of an opera’s plot, so that whenever someone sings, the orchestra establishes more about them than the actual words sung. (If I remember correctly, it was my friend who identified motifs from Tannhäuser and Die Walküre in the cartoon “What’s Opera, Doc?”)

I found this all fascinating and wanted to discover more. Once graduated from seminary and established at my small churches, I read up on music and acquired several recordings. I browsed mall stores, record shops, and mail order brochures. I purchased Böhm’s recording of Le Nozze di Figaro but diverted from my friend's tastes when I found some Verdi in used LP stores and mail order outlets: Rigoletto (with Sutherland, Pavarotti, and Milnes), Toscanini’s Falstaff, and Otello with Jon Vickers. I also bought an old set of Ponchielli’s La Gioconda and Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle. At that time, I passed over a LP set of what later became a favorite: Puccini’s Turandot with Sutherland, Caballé, and Pavarotti. One day at the parsonage I had Marriage of Figaro turned up loud so I could listen as I raked leaves outside. The first act concluded with the aria “Non piu andrai, farfallone amoroso,” where Figaro sends the annoying Cherubino off to “victory and glory in war!’ Just then a long V of geese flew over, making their own victory sign.

I also found some classic Wagner. First I bought a 2-LP set of Wagner overtures and preludes, conducted by Bernstein, and an LP of orchestral selections from Der Ring des Nibelungen conducted by Klaus Tennstedt. It’s trite to say I was overwhelmed by the music, but I really was; one writer, Bryan Magee, commented that, as Wagner was a notoriously strong willed person, his music grasps you as if it, too, was “will in sound.”

Subsequently (and with some advice from my friend) I found used or discounted LP sets like Tristan und Isolde conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, Wagner’s Die Meistersinger conducted by Rudolf Kempe, Otto Klemperer’s recording of Der fliegende Holländer. In fact, I began collecting at least one recording of all of Wagner’s operas. I didn’t purchase the two early operas, Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot, but I did purchase the Sawallisch-conducted Rienzi. I found the Karajan Parsifal, the Solti Tannhäuser (Paris version), Kubelik Lohengrin, and the 1950 Furtwängler Ring, with its terrible sound quality but outstanding singers (Kirsten Flagstad, Set Svanholm, Ferdinand Franz).

By the end of my pastorate I’d also found recordings of the 1953 (but then newly released) Ring conducted by Clemens Krauss, now recognized as one of the greatest versions. But meanwhile I also collected the Solti Ring, one opera at a time. I wanted to purchase the big box set (shown here, acquired many years later on ebay) but I was purchasing these treasures on a budget. (A record store at a nearby shopping mall sent me a post card to let me know that the record I'd ordered, "Gollerdamdung," had arrived.) I liked to play entire operas over periods of days, although in my loneliness, I sometimes found Wagner emotionally draining.

I had favorite passages, for instance, the orchestral depiction of the bellows and flames of Siegfried’s forge, more self consciously dramatic in the Solti recording than others. Similarly, the orchestral conclusion of Götterdämmerung. There are other selections that remind me strongly of this special time in my life, like the “Pilgrim’s Chorus” from Tannhäuser.

Der Gnade Heil ist dem Büsser beschieden,

er geht einst ein in der Seligen Frieden!

Vor Höll’ und Tod ist ihm nicht bang,

drum preis’ ich Gott mein Lebelang.

Halleluja in Ewigkeit!
(The grace of salvation is granted to the penitent,
 who shall enter into the peace of heaven!
 Hell and death cannot frighten him,
 therefore will I praise God all the days of my life.
Halleluja for evermore!)

Also, the end of Die Walküre in the Krauss recording (with Hans Hotter as Wotan), Wotan’s heartache:

Denn einer nur freie die Braut,

der freier als ich, der Gott!  
(For only one shall win the bride, one freer than I, the God!)

….and his threatening authority, in the closing words:

Wer meines Speeres
 Spitze fürchtet,

durchschreite das Feuer nie!
(Whoever fears the tip of my spear shall never pass through the fire.)

I liked the Saturday broadcasts from the Met. These were my own "Wagner matinees." I liked Fr. Owen Lee’s commentaries and wondered if I might ever become so knowledgeable. (The answer is “no,” but I still enjoyed his insights!) Back then I had a reel-to-reel tape recorder and a receiver from which I recorded some operas like Parsifal. 

Parisfal was fascinating to listen to. I waited for the last chord of the prelude to resolve, but next comes Gurnemanz—

He! Ho! Waldhüter ihr,

Schlafhüter mitsammen,

so wacht doch mindest am Morgen.
(Hey! Ho! Forest guardians you, and sleeping guardians at that.  At least wake up with the morning.)

The prelude ends on a chord that does not resolve. Of course, I thought of my friend and his explanation of Wagner’s innovations in tonality. The desolate third-act prelude is, he told me, even more tonally innovative.

One year, the Met’s Saturday matinee broadcast was Tristan und Isolde—but it was Christmas Eve, and I couldn’t yet be with my family because I had to preach the next morning. I don’t know why I listened to the opera anyway, since I was already blue. It seems like Figaro or one of Donizetti’s comedies would’ve been a cheerier choice for Christmas Eve… but, as they say, nobody asked me about it beforehand.

I loved my work at the parish and the dear people. They were a big influence on the decision I made, later on, to devote my writing for the benefit of the laity, rather than academic audiences. But I disliked living alone, and I missed my seminary friends who, like me, had scattered around the country. Somehow a “journey” of musical discovery helped me deal with my loneliness. When I started dating an old friend in another town and then when we became engaged, the loneliness grew more deep and urgent, and so the music became more comforting and interesting.

But I also wanted to learn; learning for its own sake was important to me then and now. Discovering new (to me) kinds of music, broadening my taste so to speak, was important as I simultaneously learned to be a good pastor and caught up on reading delayed by the busyness of my seminary program. I might have waited a few years and purchased operas on CDs, recently introduced at that time, but I liked vinyl, and still do.

I still like to read about Wagner. Some time ago I found the book The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy by Bryan Magee; if I’d had this fascinating book at my little parish, I might’ve gotten nothing else done! He does an excellent job discussing Schopenhauer’s philosophy and showing how Wagner’s artistic development became influenced by his grateful discovery of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Magee also does a good job explaining (but not justifying) Wagner’s antisemitism, the appeal that Wagner had for the Nazi regime, and the difficult relationship between Wagner and Nietzsche.

This month’s Gramophone magazine (May 2013) has a good article about Wagner’s operas and roles. While Der fliegende Holländer had taken a step away from the grand opera tradition of Rienzi, Tannhäuser (the original Dresden version) had been a return to that tradition. On the other hand,  Tannhäuser himself is more close to Wagner’s own growing interest: the artist’s role in society. But neither Rienzi (a portrait of political ambition), nor Tannhäuser nor the next great male role, Lohengrin (a portrait of nearly divine assurance) are characters who come to good ends, commensurate with another interest of Wagner’s, flawed heroism (p. 27).

The author (Anrold Whittall) comments that among the great bass-baritone roles, there are similarities in performances between Alberich and Wotan: both characters, after all, can be devious and villainous. On the other hand, the two roles are scarcely interchangeable, because Wotan is also capable of tenderness that Alberich cannot show. Comparing Hans Sachs with either of these characters, the very complex Sachs would need to be closer to Wotan than to Alberich!

Whittall draws other interesting contracts among Wagner’s characters. While both Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung end with deeply moving soprano solos (Isolde and Brunnhilde, respectively), the more disturbing conclusion is that of Tristan und Isolde, partly because Brunnhilde's self-sacrifice leads immediately to Götterdämmerung's orchestral finale as Walhalla burns, while Isolde’s transfiguration---her dying words---are carried by sweet, light-filled music that contrasts with the four previous hours of torment and tragedy.

He comments that although seductiveness are aspects of the characters of both Brunnhilde and Isolde, it is a different kind of seductiveness than of Venus, Ortrud, and Kundry. But unlike Venus and Ortrud, and like Isolde (and also, one can add, like Amfortas), Kundry experiences her own transformation and release---even if Kundry’s music is not sweet like the “Liebestod.” One can also find parallels with Wotan and Kundry; as Wotan is deeply present in the Ring’s last opera even though his character never appears, so Kundry has a largely tacit but influential role in the last act of Parsifal (p. 29). One can add that the curse of recurring life, which find release in death, is a theme one can draw from Kundry back to the Dutchman.

An opera book I’ve enjoyed over the years is Wayne Koestenbaum’s The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, and Koestenbaum’s interesting connections of identity, desire, and music. An important aspect of my “quest” for music has always been the sense of place, one of my own strong sources of desire and identity. I’ve written about that sense in some of my other essays, but I should think about that more. Are there cognitive and neurological insights that link music, emotion, companionship, and the feeling of being at home? I don’t know, but I’ll try to find out–and so these thoughts are, in pale reflection of Wagner’s mastery, unresolved and developing.  But I know that the music I’ve mentioned here never fails to take me back to that time in my life when I lived in a little parsonage along the state highway, way out in the country, when so many good things in my life were just beginning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=146tTKSXu7s

Pentecost, Kindness and the Spirit

from http://umbrellahealth.wordpress.com

Whenever I teach world religions, I’m inspired by Buddhists’ emphasis upon kindness----and I wish kindness was emphasized more in Christian faith. After all, kindness and gentleness are esteemed in the New Testament as essential qualities (Romans 3:12, 2 Cor. 6:6, Gal. 5:22-23, 6:1, Eph. 2:7, 4:2, Col. 3:12, 1 Tim. 6:11, 2 Tim. 2:25, Titus 3:4, James 3:13, 1 Peter 3:16), and these are the qualities of God and Christ, too (Romans 11:22, 2 Cor. 10:1, Titus 3:4)! One of my favorite verses is 1 Corinthians 4:21, where Paul sarcastically says, “What would you prefer? Am I to come to you with a stick, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?”

When I say “emphasized,” I mean I wish it was preached more as an essential quality of a Christian. I wish it was esteemed more among church folk as a biblical, non-negotiable teaching, and I wish church leaders were chosen on this basis in addition to other talents they may have. We’ve all met (and some of us are) churchgoers who are blunt, my-way-or-the-highway, insensitive, scheming, full of advice instead of willing to listen, happy to catch others in mistakes, and so on---but meanwhile they have significant roles in the congregation and community. Paul writes in Philippians, “Let your gentleness be known to everyone” (4:5), but we don’t think enough about why that should be the case, and whether or not we ourselves are kind and gentle----and if we’re not kind and gentle, are other aspects of our Christian witness cheapened?

So it’s good to ask ourselves: Do we show display kindness and gentleness? How do we display them if our jobs are such that we can't always be kind?  Whatever are our political and social views, do we also express kindheartedness? Do we support people who are struggling (as opposed to telling them to “get over it”)? Do we gossip about people and feel good about it? Do we praise the Lord in some conversations, and in others repeat the mean-spirited rhetoric and opinions of certain media commentators?

Not that I’ve been uniformly kind and considerate over the years, far from it. But my own failures taught me that we often have only one chance to make an impression of kindness to people. I’ve met plenty of pastors and Christian teachers who failed miserably in being kind, and I’ve thought: What the hell are you thinking? Don’t you realize your words are going to linger in other people’s hearts? Don’t you realize this is the only impression you’ll have on those people? You may be able to tell that I’ve had my feelings hurt in this regard a few times, and have soul-searched myself, and that I’ve now taken this on as a strong reminder.

I’m working my way here toward Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was given to the church. The gift was understood as a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel 2:28-29, where God’s spirit would be poured out to all people; the gift also fulfilled Christ’s promise in Acts 1:8.

The spiritual gift of glossalalia, speaking in languages, was the first evidence of the Spirit in Acts chapter 2. But that gift quickly began to take precedence in people’s minds over other gifts---and this was a tendency Paul addressed, especially in 1 Corinthians. People at that church boasted in this ability, but Paul reminded them that there are many spiritual gifts, and he actually places tongues-speaking at the end of his list of gifts. He tried to get the Corinthians to be kinder, more loving people, not so status-conscious and elitist.

Today, Paul would address other issues in our contemporary congregations, but he would probably remind us of the same things as he did in Galatians 5:19-25: “Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.”

Any of us could recognize one or more “works of the flesh” in our lives, and as we grow in the Lord, we can also rejoice when we see degrees of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control being evidenced in our daily routine.

If we connect the Pentecost gift of the Spirit in Acts 2, with the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-26 (including the admonition to avoid envy, unhealthy competition, and conceit among ourselves).... and if we toss in 1 Corinthians 13:1-7 for good measure, then we have powerful reasons to say that Pentecost is a holiday about kindness and gentleness, patience and love and peace.

 ****

I found some old research I did for an issue of FaithLink a while ago. According to The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, the Greek word pentecoste means “fiftieth” and refers to the Jewish festival Shavu’ot (“weeks”), which follows the Passover by seven complete weeks. That holiday is described in, among other places, Exodus 23:14-17 and Deut. 16:16-17, and is referenced in 1 Cor. 16:8 and Acts 20:16. On the Christian calendar, Pentecost is the fiftieth day after the resurrection of Christ. Another name is “Whitsunday” because persons baptized on that day wore white.

Thomas Merton on Service

"Do not depend on the hope of results.... [S]tart more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. ... In the end... it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything....
       
"The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.
       
"The next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work and your witness.... That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God's love.
       
"The great thing after all is to live, not to pour out your life in the service of a myth: and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free of the domination of causes and just serve Christ's truth... [t]he real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see."
       
---Thomas Merton to James Forest, 2/21/66, quoted in Thomas Del Prete, Thomas Merton and the Education of the Whole Person (Religious Education Press, 1990).

Christ's Ascension

The Ascension of Christ
by Rembrandt 

"Today our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven; let our hearts ascend with him Listen to the words of the Apostle: If you have risen with Christ, set your hearts on the things that are above where Christ is, indeed at the right hand of God; seek the things that are above, not the things that are on earth. For just as he remained with us even after his ascension, so we too are already in heaven with him, even though what is promised us has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies.

"Christ is now exalted above the heavens, but he still suffers on earth all the pain that we, the members of his body, have to bear. He showed this when he cried out from above: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? and when he said: I was hugnry and you gave me food.

"
Why do we on earth not strive to find rest with him in heaven even now, through the faith, hope and love that unites us to him? While in heaven he is also with us; and we while on earth are with him. He is here with us by his divinity, his power and his love. We cannot be in heaven, as he is on earth, by divinity, but in him, we can be there by love.

"He did not leave heaven when he came down to us; nor did he withdraw from us when he went up again into heaven. The fact that he was in heaven even while he was on earth is borne out by his own statement: No one has ever ascended inot heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.

"These words are explained by our oneness with Christ, for he is our head and we are his body. No one ascended into heaven except Christ because we also are Christ: he is the Son of Man by his union with us, and we by our union with him are [children] of God. So the Apostle says: Just as the human body, which has many members, is a unity, because all the different members make one body, so is it also with Christ. He too has many members, but one body.

"Out of compassion for us he descended from heaven, and although he ascended alone, we also ascend, because we are in him by grace. Thus, no one but Christ descended and no one but Christ ascended; not because there is no distinction between the head and the body, but because the body as a unity cannot be separated from the head.”

St. Augustine, from The Liturgy of the Hours, II, Lenten and Easter Seasons (Catholic Book Publishing Inc., 1976), pp. 920-922.

Same-Sex Marriage and the UMC

Rev. Dr. Thomas W. Ogletree is a longtime professor of Christian theological ethics and former dean at the Drew Theological School and Yale Divinity School. (I attended YDS prior to his tenure.) Last October, in his capacity as a United Methodist minister, Ogletree officiated at the wedding of his son Thomas to Nicholas W. Haddad in Massachusetts. Ogletree will likely now face a church trial, after several conservative clergy filed a complaint with the bishop about his actions.

The United Methodist Book of Discipline disallows same-sex marriages, and in the past some clergy have been disciplined for performing ceremonies for such marriage. The last General Conference (the denomination’s law-setting body) failed by a sizable majority to change or modify the church’s position on homosexuality. As Sharon Otterman writes in the New York Times (May 5, 2013), “the issue is creating a deep rift with the church’s evangelical, conservative wing, which is being bolstered by the spread of the 12-million-member denomination internationally into Africa and Asia.”

Ogletree comments that two of his five children are gay and his daughter already married her partner in a non-Methodist ceremony in Massachusetts. His son asked him to officiate their ceremony. Ogletree commented, “I actually wasn’t thinking of this as an act of civil disobedience or church disobedience. I was thinking of it as a response to my son.” But he also stated that he considers the church law unjust (see his longer comments below).

Rev. Thomas A. Lambrecht, the vice-president of Good News, a traditionalist Methodist group, was quoted by the New York Times: “Reverend Ogletree is acting in a way that is injurious to the church, because it fosters confusion in the church about what we stand for. And it undermines the whole covenant of accountability that we share with each other as pastors.” Referring to the Book of Discipline language, Lambrecht stated, “We try to be nuanced about it...Although we disapprove of the practice of homosexuality, we believe that people who are gay or lesbian are loved and valued by God and worthy of the church’s ministry and welcome to participate in churches.” (All these quotes are from the same article by Otterman:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/nyregion/caught-in-methodisms-split-over-same-sex-marriage.html )

I admit that I used to find the Discipline language nuanced and open, too, but I found that language no longer acceptable after I knew gay persons and listened to their stories. As I would not consider my own heterosexuality a "practice," nor would a gay person consider his or her sexuality in that way. Being gay is who they are; it’s an identity, a gift from God, and not a “lifestyle choice” as some straight persons continue to describe it. And so why should gay persons feel loved and valued and welcomed when they’re not being characterized in a way recognizable to them?

It would not take a gay person long to find other statements that show even less of a welcoming stance, for instance, a statement from the Institute on Religion & Democracy’s United Methodist Action Director, John Lomperis: "United Methodist disagreements over homosexuality and other forms of extra-marital sex are driven by far more fundamental divisions, between United Methodists who accept a high view of biblical authority, are loyal to United Methodist doctrine, seek to submit all areas of our lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and play by the rules that are supposed to apply to everybody, and other, nominal United Methodists who openly reject our core doctrine, allow the winds of secular American culture to trump Scripture, and zealously embrace an 'any means necessary' ethos.”
http://www.earnedmedia.org/ird0509.htm Lomperis’ comments make no effort to be nuanced: if you’re not against homosexuality, you’re a pretty shallow Methodist and Christian, certainly not one who fully embraces Christ’s Lordship.

I so strongly dislike that kind of rhetoric. There are many of us straight persons who have indeed prayerfully looked at this issue, listened to gay persons’ testimonies and witnesses, and are now supporting gay persons in their journeys of life and faith. We have considered the biblical statements and also considered modern understandings of sexuality, the same as we interpret the Bible alongside modern understandings of women's roles, scientific theory, and so on. But this issue will continue to be a challenge because the biblical language about homosexuality is focused upon male behavior in those ancient cultures, rather than modern understandings of sexuality and identity.

Ogletree made a longer statement in the Washington Post. Here is a portion, but the whole statement is worth reading.  

“Networks of clergy in the denomination’s regional conferences have been pursuing more systematic approaches to challenge discriminatory rules against gay and lesbian persons. Among other things, participants in these networks have declared their resolve to officiate on an equal basis at all marriages in their congregations, whether between same-sex or heterosexual couples. This movement has now spread from coast to coast. It is noteworthy that the introduction to the United Methodist Book of Discipline reminds us about previous flaws and shortcomings in the denominations history, including the accommodation of racial segregation and the denial of ordination to women. It took persistent efforts to overcome these unjust practices, and such efforts generated serious conflicts within the church itself. We are now engaged in a similar struggle to end the denomination’s discrimination against LGBT people.

“As a white southerner growing up during the segregation era, I became intensely aware of the pervasive racism in our society. I recognized that I had to join emerging new movements to dismantle racial segregation or I would myself become morally complicit for injustices resident in those practices. ...My experiences in the Civil Rights movement have illumined my responses to what I perceive to be unjust disciplinary rules in the United Methodist Church, especially rules that denied my right to officiate at my own son’s wedding. As a heterosexual, married clergyman I have a unique opportunity and obligation to challenge the inequitable treatment of gay and lesbian persons, both in church practices and also in the wider society. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us in his 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail,' 'One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.' Marrying Tom and Nick was for me a profoundly personal and quintessentially pastoral act. I have been deeply moved by their exceptional bonds, and their strong commitment to a more just and inclusive society. It is high time for the United Methodist Church to honor such bonds and to take strong and diligent steps to overcome persisting prejudices.” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/05/08/why-i-disobeyed-the-united-methodist-churchs-unjust-teaching-on-same-sex-marriage/)

Our Unity with God and One Another

A piece I wrote about Ascension Day (and related topics) last year:
http://paulstroble.blogspot.com/2012/04/our-unity-with-god-and-one-another-part.html