Behold, All Things are Become New

What happens now?  This is a question that many United Methodists are asking in the wake of General Conference 2019.  There are dozens of websites, blogs, Facebook pages, and so forth if you want to read specifics or get a particular spin, and I see no reason to add my meager two cents worth to that collection.  My grief and sorrow and disappointment are beyond the power of words to describe.   Instead, I want to tell you a story.  It's a story about a gift and the exquisite timing of receiving that gift.

On Monday, when the eyes of everyone interested in General Conference were turned towards St. Louis, my husband drove to see his father, and while he was there, his dad gave him a wrapped package.  He had been to Haiti on a mission trip to Haiti where he met a man who handmade all sorts of things out of scrap metal, and he asked the man to make a cross and flame for me, knowing how much I love the United Methodist Church.  When Scott got home, he handed it to me as I stood in the kitchen weeping over the coverage of the Conference, and with trembling fingers I took it from him and put it on our counter.  It's still there, two days later, even though the Church it symbolizes is splintering into bits and pieces.  Thinking of my last blog post, I said, "It's beautiful.  What am I going to do with it now, though?  It turns out that the center could not hold.  I wasn't ready for this.  I really thought we might figure out some way to stay together.  I really wasn't ready for this."

Many years ago, Belton Joyner, a well-respected pastor who also served on the Cabinet as a DS and on Conference staff in our Annual Conference was asked to speak to a group of us about a moment when the Holy Spirit did something unexpected and the people responded.  He had been at a district meeting where the conversation was flying thick and fast over the question of civil rights and whether or not white United Methodist churches would open their doors to their African-American neighbors.  One after the other, people stood up at the microphone to protest, until finally, one very old man took his cane in hand and slowly walked forward.  Everyone leaned forward to listen because he was a very well-respected layperson in that district.  He looked at Belton and said, "I am not ready.  My church is not ready.  But God is ready."  And with that, he took his seat.  The entire tenor of the conversation and mood in the room changed.  Of course, that doesn't mean that it was smooth sailing from that point on, but this unlikely agent of change felt the Spirit lay something on his heart and knew that he had to act upon it.

And so, even though I still don't feel ready, perhaps the Spirit is ready for something new to come out of the old, something that may or may not be symbolized by that lovely cross and flame.   John Wesley's translation of 2 Corinthians 5: 17 reads: Therefore if any one be in Christ, there is a new creation: the old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.  To that, he added the commentary "Only the power that makes a world can make a Christian."  Maybe we might paraphrase that to say that only the power that makes a world can make a Church, and maybe recognizing and remembering that is the real gift received this week.  Whether the UMC sinks or swims, the work of Christ's kingdom will go on, and if we are truly in Christ, all things are indeed being made new.  May that power that makes the world and the Church be at work in and through all of us, even if we aren't ready.