#OrlandoUnited - Facing Limitations and Inadequacies

While reading a number of painful responses to the homophobic terrorist attack in Orlando Florida and reading about the victims, I find myself at a loss for words. I struggle to find words to address the pain and injustice and evil of this situation. I am not a member of the LGBT community and I live miles away from this tragic event which give me pause to ask if it is even appropriate to add my words to the conversation. So I stay quiet. In doing so St. Antony comes to mind:

‘He who sits alone and is quiet has escaped from three wars: hearing, speaking, seeing: but there is one thing against which he must continually fight: that is, his own heart.’

I have no connection to this event. I am disturbed and appalled by the actions taken by a sick man with an easily acquired arsenal of weapons. I do not know what to do. So I sit alone and remain quite. Not because I condone such violence or that I am not heartbroken, but to humbly admit that I do not know the way forward. I am confronted with my own limitations and inadequacies knowing that I still feel unequipped to be a man, husband, father, pastor for the world that we live in.

Lord in your mercy.

Holy Communion: An Example of what Not to Do

Often the Bible is seen as a collection of stories and teachings that give a model for how to live. In many cases this is very true, however the Bible is richer than just giving positive examples. The Bible is also full of negative examples. Put another way, there are stories in the Bible that teach us what NOT to do.

The story of Jesus instituting the Eucharist (Holy Communion) is perhaps one of the classic "do this" stories. In fact Jesus says, "do this in remembrance of me." Could it be that Communion is also rich enough to carry not only this prescription of Jesus but also a proscription? Is the sacrament of Communion not only showing us what to do but also forbidding something? If so, what could Communion be forbidding? 

When the bread is broken and the wine poured out in the liturgy of Communion could Jesus have been also saying, "Break bread and not bodies. Pour out wine and not blood." Could Jesus, in prescribing Holy Communion also be giving us the proscription against doing harm to our neighbors? 

Perhaps this proscription baked into the very essence of Communion is a reason for us to pause in awe and wonder as we come to feast with Christ. Perhaps it is a chance to repent of all the ways we have contributed to the harm of another person. How we desired for the breaking of a body or the spilling of blood in order for something to be "made right". It is an invitation to break bread instead and discover how table fellowship is the more excellent way of making things right. 

There is more to say on this subject matter, but let us consider all the ways the Bible is full of examples and negative examples. Let us consider the proscription in every prescription of the Bible so that we may discover a deeper way of the Spirit of God.

Double Victory in an Age of Winners and Losers

You may have read the following lines from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s' sermon delivered to the Detroit Council of Churches in 1961:

"I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up against our most bitter opponents and say: ”We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country and make it appear that we are not fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration, but we’ll still love you. But be assured that we’ll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory."

The double victory of the Portland Convention Center symbolized in the architecture.

While MLK was speaking to the cause of racial integration, his instructions of the power of non-violence resistance transcend any one issue. His desire for a double victory is noting less than transformation of the head and heart. It is a transformation of all parties involved and it is the path toward the Kingdom of God.

At the General Conference of the UMC in Portland, I saw the transformative power of the double victory give way to the idolatry of the single victory.

To help me I turn to former President Bill Clinton. 

In 2003, Bill Clinton said, “You know the difference in Democrats and Republicans? In every presidential election, Democrats want to fall in love. Republicans just fall in line.”

This now conventional wisdom is short hand for the phenomenon in American presidential politics that Republicans tend to choose candidates that are "next in line" and Democrats choose candidates that move their heart.* This dichotomy that President Clinton points out is a bit helpful to see that even in American presidential politics the double victory is difficult to come by and so it is abandoned for the sake of a single victory. We are in an age of winners and losers and the time it takes for a double victory leaves one side vulnerable to loosing.

At the General Conference of the UMC in Portland, the abandoning the double victory was on full display. One side was busy organizing protests in order to move hearts, while the other side was busy organizing hands to move votes. And we, as a denomination, are weaker all the more for it.

It is imperative that we as the church work for the double victory, otherwise decisions made will be only feeding the narrative that there are winners and losers. The body of Christ is animated when the heart and hands work together. To echo a great mystic of our tradition, the heart cannot say to the hand, "I have no need for you" and the hand cannot say to the heart, "You are of no use to me." 

The reason the General Conference is broken is not because of the bureaucratic nature of the system. It is rooted in the values of UMC members. We do not value the transformative power of the double victory as much as we value the shallow single victory. 

The single victory is dangerous because it means I get what I want while not having to consider the other side. The single victory leads to a decline of compassion. This is why I hope that we as a denomination do not split: if we split the double victory would be lost.

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*I understand that the 2016 Presidential election cycle challenges this wisdom in that Republicans are choosing someone they are falling in love with (Trump) while the Democrats are choosing the next in line (Hillary Clinton).