Detours on God's Way Forward

On Wednesdays, I attend the noon Eucharist service at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church.  When I was first appointed to a church in Fayetteville almost 20 years ago, I wanted a place where I could worship from time to time without having to be one of the preachers or liturgists, and the time of their service fit neatly into my schedule.  Over the years, my attendance has waxed and waned, but for the past two years, I have been able to be there almost every week.

Because traffic is unpredictable and there always seems to be a train or two coming through downtown, I try to leave First Presbyterian around 25 minutes early, and today was no exception.  To my annoyance, every road I tried to take between where I was and where I wanted to be was either closed, under construction, or packed with a long line of cars because of all the detours.  I kept turning into street after street and having to do a U-turn because there was no way through.  Add to that the rainy weather and my innate dismay at arriving late anywhere, and you can just imagine my frustration and irritability.  I even said out loud to myself,  "You are really going to need Jesus by the time you get there!"

Not surprisingly, by the time I arrived, my nerves were frayed, and I blew into the sanctuary as if all the devils of hell were chasing me, only to discover that the rector wasn't even there yet.  As I sat and tried to catch my breath and collect my thoughts enough to compose myself for prayer, it occurred to me that this was a great metaphor for the way the spiritual life goes sometimes.  Things may be going along in one direction, and we think we have a clear sense of what comes next, only to be blown off course by road closures of one type or another.  Maybe the perfect job we always wanted turns out to be a bureaucratic nightmare. Perhaps we discover that someone we idolize has an all-too-unheroic side, or maybe we realize that we don't have all the answers and that all our best-laid plans may not line up with God's best hopes and dreams for us.  We run right smack into the detour zone and try as we might, we just can't seem to get where we intended to go, and frustration builds.

It also occurred to me that the current situation in the United Methodist Church is a bit like that.  Since 1972, the denomination has been roiled in discord over the role of our LGBT sisters and brothers in ministry, and every General Conference has seen an increase in anger and much less common ground, with the result that a special General Conference was called and will begin meeting on Saturday, February 23 to settle the issue once and for all.  No one knows what will happen when all the delegates gather, but there is a grim sense that this will mark the end of the Church, an outcome heartily desired by some and grievously unwanted by others.  It seems a foregone conclusion that whatever the decisions reached, we are witnessing the fall of what has been a place of nurture and spiritual growth for many but which has also been a place of pain and exclusion for many, as well.  The rector at Holy Trinity always offers worshipers an opportunity to receive anointing and a prayer for healing, so today, I asked him to pray for the United Methodist Church in this season of change and uncertainty.  He marked my forehead with the sign of the cross and prayed for us with these words (among others):  "Work through them, speak through them, and most of all, love through them."  "Most of all, love through them."  It was a very Wesleyan thing to say.

In his sermon "On Love," Wesley draws an intimate connection between love and true happiness, pointing out that ongoing thoughts of revenge and feelings of anger only serve to make us miserable, urging his listeners to cultivate gentleness and patience and love instead. The Holy Spirit, Wesley says, stands ready to renew our hearts and fill them with the love of God, leading us into present and eternal happiness.  Whatever else happens at General Conference, my deepest desire and hope is that love will abound and that even if separation ensues, we can move forward without vilifying each other and making each other and ourselves so bitterly unhappy.  Maybe GC 2019 will prove to be one of those detours that is actually leading us in God's way forward.  O Lord, may it be so!  O Lord, love through us!

First, without love nothing can so profit us as to make our lives happy. By happiness I mean, not a slight, trilling pleasure, that perhaps begins and ends in the same hour; but such a state of well-being as contents the soul, and gives it a steady, lasting satisfaction ...; and the more you depart from it, the pain is the greater .... The more the opposite tempers -- anger, fretfulness, revenge -- prevail, the more unhappy you are. You know it; you feel it; nor can the storm be allayed, or peace ever return to your soul, unless meekness, gentleness, patience, or, in one word, love, take possession of it. Does any man find in himself ill-will, malice, envy, or any other temper opposite to kindness? Then is misery there; and the stronger the temper, the more miserable he is. If the slothful man may be said to eat his own flesh, much more the malicious, or envious. His soul is the very type of hell; -- full of torment as well as wickedness. He hath already the worm that never dieth, and he is hastening to the fire that never can be quenched. Only as yet the great gulf is not fixed between him and heaven. As yet there is a Spirit ready to help his infirmities; who is still willing, if he stretch out his hands to heaven, and bewail his ignorance and misery, to purify his heart from vile affections, and to renew it in the love of God, and so lead him by present, up to eternal, happiness.