How Do You Mend a Broken Heart?

September 26, 2016

3:20 PM

Photo Courtesy of Geoffrey Kruse-Safford

Holy Resurrection Church

Twelfth Night services at Holy Resurrection Serbian Orthodox Cathedral, Jan. 6, 2012.

It’s Sunday morning, 11:00, and I know I should be in church, worshiping. I’m not, however, and I haven’t in a few weeks.

I’d love to blame being down from all the recent losses. Except, of course, that should mean that I would be attending services with a vengeance. I could, were I trying to be oh-so-self-assured, claim that I have lost my faith. The truth is my faith has only deepened over the past year. I have found myself drawn deeper in to the mysteries and joys of grace. I am more grateful now than I have ever been that ours is a God first and foremost of love. I’ve never been more convicted that love means that this life, for all its toil and pain, is also filled with joy and laughter and light, and these are gifts from God to be celebrated each and every day.

The reason I’m not in church is far more prosaic. Probably, it’s also not sufficient for me to be keeping my distance.

This year, the United Methodist Church broke my heart. In a moment calling for courage strengthened by hope, we saw cowardice emboldened by fear. In a moment requiring defiant love, we saw servile exclusion. In a moment we should be celebrating the triumph of real grace, real love, real inclusion, we are instead seeing schism, the snail’s pace of “doing the same thing the same way” and wanting a different result, and little more than confusion.

The United Methodist Church has been my spiritual home all my life. Baptized, confirmed, educated, and married all within the walls of the United Methodist Church, it is the place that, when I went there, I knew I would be taken in. Now, however, I no longer feel I have a place within its proverbial and actual walls. I also feel that at my age, I’d be ill-suited to move to another denomination. Because of my family ties, that would also be more than a little awkward. So here I sit on a Sunday morning, feeling homeless and more than a little lost.

I have always had an ecumenical spirit. I see in other faith-expressions different facets and faces of what it is to be a Christian, and I celebrate them all. Even some with which I have serious problems. None of us have the entirety of the human experience of faith, individually or collectively. It would be a good thing, I suppose, to experience again the sense of deep time in an Orthodox service; perhaps taste and see within the sacramental structure of the Roman Catholic Church; hear the proclamation of the Word within the words at any of the various Reform-influenced churches, whether Presbyterian or the UCC. Perhaps sing with their founders gusto the hymns of the Lutherans. I could even venture into a charismatic church and see and feel and hear the power of the Holy Spirit moving within a people open to that limitless, creative power. I could do all these and I believe I might be filled for a bit.

Yet it is Wesley who speaks to me most clearly. It is from him that I have learned that “disciple” and “perfection” and “sanctification” are words of deep theological and existential import: Human life depends upon how we follow in the Spirit the example offered us by Christ. The depth and breadth of both the peril and possibility of the Christian life exist within the teachings of Wesley; we who are supposed to follow in his footsteps should know that ours is not a calling to timidity or fear. Except that is who we have become.

Overwhelmed by the demands of a vocal but shrinking minority attracted to a kind of facile enculturated “Christianity” or “religion” that demands moral purity rather than faithful obedience; that insists upon works rather than grace; that would rather divide the Lord’s garments yet again rather than rejoice at the empty tomb, the United Methodist Church no longer believes what it claims to believe. It no longer sees a world in need of holiness of heart and life. Instead, it sees a world in which the voice of the church is becoming ever softer and would rather rest within walls that were comfortable fifty years ago rather than challenge itself to leave all those walls behind and risk losing everything for the sake of the Gospel.

Within what is left of the United Methodist Church is only a cacophony of voices running around toppled Babel’s tower. We no longer even seek to understand one another. We no longer desire to live together in peace. I want no part of this ridiculous exercise in maintaining a facade of faithful obedience to our God of grace.

I’m just not sure what to do. So here I sit on a Sunday morning, feeling faithful but no longer welcome within the spiritual home that has nurtured me, and not yet ready to try out other spaces. The hurt, I think, is too fresh, too new.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford describes himself as "a middle-aged theologically educated clergy spouse, living in the Midwest." He blogs at No I Has Heard, from which this post is republished with the author's permission.

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You do not know your Methodist history

Early Methodism came into existence because John Wesley insisted on doctrinal purity. Doctrinal purity is what led him to leave the Fetter Lane Society and move to the Foundry. During his lifetime, he kept a close reign on what was taught at the Methodist societies under his supervision. But in another sense, Wesleyan doctrine was not so pure because he started with Reformation theology, and then stirred in what he viewed as the best of other faith traditions including Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox and the German piety movement! This melding of multiple faith traditions is what draws me to Wesley. Because Wesley's thoughts are spread out across a plethora of writings, including letters, it is the height of folly for anybody--other than those that have devoted their lives to understanding Wesley--to assume they have a correct take on Wesley and what he did. It is entirely possible that the different factions within the UMC are at odds with each other because each is working from an incomplete understanding of one piece of the whole pie Wesley assembled! The church is most definitely dead wrong when it comes to understanding Wesley's teaching re the catholic spirit; he never intended it to be used as justification for multiple theologies to be running rampant in one church. I have personally found the lack of doctrinal purity to be toxic. Like you, I am a good, loyal, lifetime Methodist/United Methodist. Ultimately all that got me was a muddled understanding of who God is and who I am. I finally became so broken, lost and confused I was forced to distance myself from church and that is when I finally discovered the existence of a triune God worth worshiping. And in good Wesleyan fashion, my teaching came from an interesting assortment of teachers who crisscrossed denominational lines, including Wesley. Interesting thing is, on the other end, I was grounded in a purely Wesleyan understanding of who God is and who I am in relation! The lack of doctrinal purity is what is killing the UMC! It is also entirely possible that the different faction are at odds with each other because they have and incomplete understanding of one piece of the whole doctrinal pie that Wesley assembled! The botched understanding of the catholic spirit is only the beginning of how the Methodist/United Methodist Church began losing its way over a century ago!

Betsy more than 8 years ago