Will We Bear Witness to the Gospel or to Our Brokenness?

January 24, 2019

1:21 PM

Unity in Christ

The nation is perilously divided along political, racial, economic, gender, and cultural lines. Hatred, disrespect, and cruelty toward “the other” have become acceptable public behavior and a normalized political strategy.

Tribalism and ideological warfare threaten any sense of commonality and mock the ideal of “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Where is the church, particularly the denomination which has shaped my life–The United Methodist Church?

At the general church level, we are mirroring the divisions within the nation! Groups are quarreling over human sexuality and the interpretation of Scripture.

Local congregations and individual members are being pushed into ideological corners with secularly devised labels of “traditionalists” and “progressives.”

This isn’t the first time Methodists have mirrored national divisions. We divided over slavery and, thereby, the church became complicit in the violence of the Civil War.

Current arguments and rationalizations echo those advanced by preachers in 19th century. Once again the Bible is being used as a weapon of ideological warfare rather than as the authentic witness to God’s mighty acts of salvation, supremely in Jesus Christ.

Just at the time the nation and world need a model of unity amid differences, United Methodist leaders seek ways to separate; thereby, countering our “oneness in Jesus Christ” and weakening our witness to the Christian gospel.

Whatever rationalizations we may use to convince ourselves that we are defending truth and upholding morality, to the world a division will bear witness to our brokenness and hypocrisy.

Let us, instead, bear witness to the core gospel truth that God has already acted decisively in Jesus Christ to reconcile all things (Colossians 1:20). God has called the church to be instruments of reconciliation.

“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19 NRSV).

This isn’t about unity for unity’s sake! It’s unity as embodiment of witness to the gospel! God in Christ has already made us one! He has already broken down the dividing walls of hostility! That’s the gospel truth!

Failure to embody that good news in our life together as a denomination will mock the central message of the Christian Gospel: In Jesus Christ, God has broken down all dividing walls of hostility and claimed ALL as beloved sons and daughters!

The issue of homosexuality will not be resolved by legislation or denominational restructuring as proposed by any of the plans to be presented at the forthcoming called session of General Conference.

Resolution lies in living the oneness already existing in Jesus Christ by humbly struggling together to fully grasp God’s vision for the world and the church. “Traditionalists” and “progressives” need one another! A first step may be to do away with such simplistic labels and commit ourselves to God’s reign of compassion, justice, and hospitality.

It seems to me that the One Church Plan being proposed to the General Conference has the best chance of enabling United Methodists to pursue and live God’s vision for humanity expressed in Jesus’s prayer that “they might be one.”

Make no mistake about it: the world is watching! May our leaders bear witness to a unity that transcends uniformity, a unity God has already wrought in Jesus Christ.

Bishop Kenneth L. Carder

Retired United Methodist Bishop Kenneth L. Carder's most recent professional post was as Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Duke Divinity School. During his active episcopacy he served the Nashville, Tenn., and Mississippi Areas. He lives in Chapin, S.C., and serves as chaplain to the dementia and Alzheimer's care unit where his wife, Linda, resided.

Comments (3)

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How is there oneness in Jesus

When there is absolutely no agreement as to who Jesus was/is and how his life, death, resurrection and ascension impacts our lives? There are those that are not even sure Jesus physically rose from the dead and physically returned to God the Father and there are those that do. There are those that do not believe in the existence of God as the Holy Trinity and there are those that do. There are those that do not believe that one doctrine was handed to the church once and for all times and there are those that do.

John Wesley refused to live with the theological divisions present in the Fetter Lane Society and left to set up a separate society at the Foundry and that is when the Wesleyan Methodist movement was truly born. And just for the record the theological divisions Wesley refused to deal with were not near as deep as the ones currently dividing The American UMC. Wesley's understanding of the person of the truly catholic spirit does not require people to share a church with those they are not in agreement with. In fact Wesley's understanding of the person truly of the catholic spirit documents why some people have to agree to disagree at a distance. Unity in the absence of theological agreement is not unity.

betsy more than 7 years ago

Kicking the can

We disagree. Plain and simple, we disagree. We should be able to do that civilly without any fear. But over the past 47 years our ability to disagree amicably has been hijacked by persons and groups who have only one aim; the desire to redefine what is acceptable in the Church; specifically the UMC.

The one church plan seems to me that we are willing to go along and make virtually no definitive decision on the matter at hand. By kicking the proverbial can down the road we are inviting continuous contention and division. Let's decide the issue once and for all; one way or the other. Let's cap the drain of precious resources that are being wasted on the matter. Let's get off the fence; let's not be lukewarm. Yes or No. If we are afraid of how we are perceived by the world as we duke this out among ourselves then I believe we are misdirected in our thinking. We are just wrong in thinking that we will suffer a crippling blow that the world will shrink from our doors. The greater damage is being done as we constantly kick this can down the road for 4 more years. Jesus made decisions that were not popular so must we. Let's do it now, whatever it might be and let's stick to it. .

Rick more than 7 years ago

Broken.

We've had say a 200 year process of liberalizing. Personally, I feel like that was the right decision. The world has changed. But the conservatives in our denomination disagreed. They resisted. And the ones that are here today stuck with us. Obedient. Loving the people that they disagreed with obediently. I watched them struggle as we were the most liberal family in a conservative church. The church moved to my family, but I watched them struggle. But that church is still there and they've moved along way.

What am I supposed to tell those conservatives? That progressives don't have to follow the rules? That if you're friends with the bishops, then you can do what you want?

Even the tax collectors love those that love them. But why should the conservatives feel that they are getting reciprocation. They aren't. Progressives aren't living up to the ideals of even tax collectors. The conservatives are being told that the rules don't apply to some. The rules only apply to them and they need to pay their apportionment.

If we can't keep our promises to each other, then it may be a better idea to withdraw to individual conferences and struggle to keep our covenants with those closest to us. Then those entities can vote and decide on a way forward. Over time, those with the right answer will grow and prosper. Those of us with the wrong answer will need to change our ways. This has to be a better outcome than our current path.

Anonymous more than 7 years ago