Through Deep Waters

by

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; …"  – Isaiah 43:2a (NRSV*)

We're now into the eighth week of displacement since we arrived home from the 2016 General Conference in Portland, Ore., to find our home awash in water from a broken pipe that had been gushing since we'd left two weeks earlier. Finally this week, after lots of delays and mistakes, it appears that repairs will begin on our damaged home, but it will be months before our upended lives are restored. Even then, what came before is gone, and what will be has not yet emerged.

For me, our personal situation closely mirrors what's happening in two parallel "universes:" our American society overwhelmed by racism, and our United Methodist Church overwhelmed by theology and politics. Both have been washed out like houses caught in West Virginia's recent floods, and we're just now discovering how seriously we're damaged.

Many of us right now are flooded with anger, confusion, fear and a profound sense of grief and loss. Across America, we feel as if we're drowning in wave after wave of shooting deaths. Simultaneously in the church, we're trying to surf tidal waves of disruption. We've seen annual conferences pass resolutions of non-conformity, jurisdictional conferences respond with resolutions of condemnation, and finally, the election of a bishop in the Western Jurisdiction who by all other standards would be eminently qualified for her office except for one thing – she's married to another woman.

With all that's going on, we don't know which way to turn, for we hardly have a moment to catch our collective breath. Amid this torrent, I found a piece of wisdom to which I think we can cling.

Last week, while United Methodists were electing bishops, my husband John and I left our reporting duties for a morning to represent our congregation at a meeting to mobilize Dallas religious leaders to "do more than pray" about racism. The meeting took place one week after five officers were killed, seven wounded and two civilians shot by one man whose purpose was to kill white police.

Organizers of the Dallas meeting invited as main speaker Bishop Claude R. Alexander, senior pastor of The Park Church, a multi-campus Baptist congregation in Charlotte, NC. It turns out that, without much national notice, Charlotte community leaders have been working for 19 years to lessen racism and build community trust, Bishop Alexander said. He outlined Charlotte's model of anti-racism effort as Absorbing, Identifying, Understanding, Relating and Acting.

Bishop Alexander used the Book of Ezekiel to explain the Charlotte model. Ezekiel absorbs Israel's pain by sitting down with the people, identifying with their grief. This in turn enables him to "get a new vision of God" as he weeps with his people, Bishop Alexander explained. Ezekiel then understands their grief as legitimate, including all the unnamed feelings and the emotions that swirl together, such as anger and sadness. In Chapters 2 and 3, Ezekiel relates to both God and his people as God gives him a scroll to eat – a metaphor for the task of proclaiming a prophetic word.

However it isn't until Chapter 32 in the Valley of Dry Bones that Ezekiel actually gets the opportunity to "prophesy" – in Bishop Alexander's definition, "to bubble up with all that he's taken in." Unlike our natural impulse to "do something" to alleviate a crisis, action becomes the final step for both Ezekiel and in the Charlotte model. All that comes before action – absorbing, identifying, understanding, relating – represents the new flesh, the glue if you will, that will reinvigorate the dry bones so that they may live. In real life, said Bishop Alexander, American society needs this same kind of work, the work of transformation that is the church's vocation.

This model likewise seems to fit The United Methodist Church, from my perspective as a spiritual director. We've broken open; the cracks in our relationship have created space where God's Holy Spirit can begin to work our spiritual transformation.

From a practical standpoint, we United Methodists are at different stages of the Ezekiel journey. Parts of the church have done the hard work of absorbing, identifying, and understanding how it feels to be unwanted, as people of minority sexual orientations often do. These segments of the body of Christ related to those in pain through their reading of scripture informed by tradition, experience and reason, and came to a place where they could "bubble up" what they've learned through actions. The latest of these actions occurred last week at Jurisdictional Conferences; the next occur July 19 and 20 as the Council of Bishops executive committee meets in Chicago to begin work on "A Way Forward."

There's no doubt that those who resist and reject the actions taken are also in deep pain, and that pain is no less legitimate than that of those who've felt unwanted. It will be necessary for church leaders to do as Ezekiel did – to sit with the people and weep with them, to identify and understand their pain, and to relate to it in a new way, with God's guidance.

This new way won't be to enact new regulations from General Conference, or to demand adherence to a clergy covenant that has been broken. Those mechanisms have failed, for as Bishop Alexander pointed out, "requiring compliance with laws doesn't transform hearts." We need to "have hard conversations from a place of love," as Bishop Alexander described it. Such conversations ultimately occurred among those leaders with whom Bishop Warner Brown Jr. and Bishop Bruce Ough, leaders of the Council of Bishops, consulted in the months prior to the 2016 General Conference. Unfortunately, those first embraces didn't last through the take-no-prisoners politics of General Conference, and we have fallen back into our wounds.

Could the "Charlotte Model" save The United Methodist Church from breaking apart? Probably not, as there will be those on unbending extremes for whom any compromise, no matter how lovingly crafted, will be unacceptable. The key to the church's future will be whether United Methodists can agree on a unifying vision of God's realm and a corresponding set of shared values.

In any event, there is no doubt that we have seen the last of The United Methodist Church as it was. God is creating a new thing in our midst, and it is breaking forth even as we confer. Our task now is to look for God's presence in the midst of the forming. It can be hard to discern what God is doing, but as Bishop Alexander said of overcoming racism, we can be assured that God is still with us. Upon that assurance rests the firm foundation of our faith.

*New Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible, copyright 1989 by the Committee on Education of the National Council of Churches USA. Used by permission.

Cynthia B. Astle founded and serves as editor of United Methodist Insight.