The Sound of Sirens

As repairs continue on our flood-ravaged, mold-damaged home, we're living temporarily in a house that backs up to a main thoroughfare in the eastern Dallas suburb of Mesquite, Texas. Ironically, the house is directly across the boulevard from St. Stephen United Methodist Church, where our lives center. We can see our church from the back yard.

Hardly a Sunday service passes at St. Stephen without our worship being disrupted by the sound of sirens on the busy boulevard. Our church sits on the thoroughfare that offers the most direct route to the interstate highway branch, and we've come to realize that the fire station a few blocks west of us must be a designated first responder to accidents on the highway.

I suspect that most of us have become hardened to the sound of sirens on Sunday. Each time I hear a Sunday siren, I try to say a prayer for the responders and whatever they face, but often my attention lingers on our liturgy instead. That's not necessarily a bad thing; after all, I belong to an ecumenical monastic association, The Order of Saint Luke, which focuses on liturgical scholarship and practice.

Yet lately I've begun to wonder if all the violence and catastrophes of recent months might be sirens calling us Christians to wake up to our true calling in the world – to bind up wounds, to comfort the afflicted, to protect the vulnerable, and to put the welfare of others before ourselves. This wonderment resonates most strongly whenever I think of the formation of the United Methodist Council of Bishops' special commission on "A Way Forward."

Getting to that conclusion from a passing siren, for me, seems a logical progression. We can easily recite a litany of events that have physically and emotionally injured many of us since May, among them:

  • A vicious 2016 General Conference, where despite the bishops' efforts at reconciliation, the rancor between United Methodist political factions was palpable from opening worship;

Against the backdrop of these wide-ranging global events are the personal tragedies, the everyday struggles of people coping with raising children, caring for aging parents, dealing with catastrophic illness, grieving for dead friends and relatives, struggling for survival, wrestling with their own demons. These are often are the most overlooked sirens of all, and yet these are the ones that warn of the worst human damage, the source of pain that, when it isn't transformed, gets transmitted in ugly ways. I know this because I have seen it, and to my shame, sometimes I've committed it.

Now The United Methodist Church prepares to set up a committee of people whose stated task is to find ways to foster and maintain unity in a worldwide Christian denomination. While many if not most understand the commission's task to be resolving the UMC's stance on homosexual practice, "A Way Forward" also will be charged with looking at the global structure and organization of the church. The commission faces what until now has been an unresolvable challenge: How to reconcile disparate, even polarized, perspectives on the church's authority and moral teachings.

Over the summer, I've had the opportunity to sit with two groups of people who have discussed at length United Methodist policies on homosexual practice and what they mean for the church's future. Their responses have been painfully enlightening as "straws in the wind" of future United Methodist connections. A brief summary:

Some LGBTQI people and their allies, especially in light of the Orlando massacre, have expressed fear of persecution as sexual and/or political minorities in the UMC. Others have been defiant of United Methodist authority, claiming their legitimacy as children of God no matter what the church's stances. Still others believe they have the political power to sway church doctrine, given the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage in the United States. Yet others are terrified and angry that after 44 years, United Methodists are still fighting over whether to accept LGBTQI people's sexual orientation as a legitimate, godly creation. Finally, a growing segment of former United Methodists has given up on the institutional church entirely.

Piercing through this palaver are the sirens. The alarms testify that the world around us writhes in agony at the evil we do to one another. Speaking only for myself as a sinful-yet-forgiven baptized Christian witness, I believe the commission on "A Way Forward" will be an exercise in futility unless it rises above our fractiousness to a much broader vision. Rather than seek unity for the sake of institutional preservation, I would prefer the commission give us a more authentic mission, possibly along these lines: To proclaim God's love for all without exception, to give witness to God's grace through Jesus Christ's presence in our lives, and to show God's love in all we say and do, as Christ's followers.

Such a message isn't intended to build up an institution, to be sure. If anything, it's a call for us to lay down our political weapons and make peace with one another for the sake of a higher purpose. Whether we are equal to the challenge, which is precisely Jesus' challenge to love one another and our enemies, remains to be seen.

A journalist for more than 46 years and a certified spiritual director, Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor and Founder of United Methodist Insight.