Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

" 'I Am' Sent Me to You," Bishop Eugene Robinson at Foundry UMC on March 24, 2019

Brought Through A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC March 10, 2019, First Sunday of Lent

Brought Through

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC March 10, 2019, First Sunday of Lent. “Traveling the Redemption Road” series.

Text: Deuteronomy 26:1-11

 

Where have you come from?  Where are you now?  And what have you come through to get there?

 

And as we begin this season of Lent, our focus is on the journey. We are traveling the redemption road, seeking to move from one place to another.  We’re all at different places along the way. We have a variety of challenges, broken places, regrets, and more from which we hope to be redeemed—which is to be released, set free. 

 

There are times when we may struggle to see how we will ever get free of the things that weigh us down and keep us stuck. It may be difficult to imagine a life free of guilt, free of destructive behaviors—or free of abuse and oppression that we experience from others. It will sometimes be hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel or to hold fast to the promise on the other side of the wilderness or the new life on the other side of the tomb.

 

This isn’t only true for us as individuals, but also for us as communities—our churches, cities, states, and nation have much from which we need to be redeemed. We have sinned and done great harm over the course of history.  Sometimes we have knowingly done hateful, exclusive things and sometimes even our good intentions have brought about suffering and death for others.

 

Lent is the time set apart in our faith tradition to focus on these painful truths—the brokenness of our own lives and the sins of the communities of which we are a part.  We don’t focus on guilt in order to wallow, but rather to get free, to do better, to move along the road toward redemption.  This season is also a time when we are reminded of our dependence upon God to help lead us there. //

 

Our text today from Deuteronomy is toward the end of what is written as Moses’ long farewell speech to the Israelites as he prepared for his death. It is a description of the worship ritual to bless the “first fruits” as a remembrance and thanksgiving for God’s faithfulness. Embedded in the ritual is the ancient core of our faith story:

 

“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” (Deut 26:5-9)

 

The core of our faith is that when we are lost, wandering, exiled, enslaved, afflicted, hungry, and in despair, God hears our cries and sets us free. God leads us through the wilderness. God wants to get us through the rough places and into a green pasture and beside a still water. God is about bringing life out of death. Of creating new life where we can only perceive decay.  And—don’t we know it?—God has brought you through. God will bring us through. //

 

One of the most important conversations happening right now in the midst of the horrific outcome of the United Methodist General Conference in St. Louis is around intersectional justice and inclusion.  I sense that this is a place that God is determined to lead us to and through.  It’s a messy conversation, but so deeply important as we turn toward the future in our congregation and denomination.  For some, there is concern that, in our denomination’s focus on LGBTQ persons’ inclusion or exclusion, other marginalized persons in our church and society are being silenced and their suffering ignored by the church.  Systemic racism and white supremacy, violence against immigrant populations, poverty, climate change, and devaluing the voices and leadership of our young people are getting named as places where the church is overwhelmingly silent.  Some local congregations and some of our United Methodist agencies focus a lot on these matters.  But some are pressing for more.

 

Generally, folk are so conditioned in “either-or” thinking that it’s difficult to hold the tension of “both-and.”  For example, we’re either engaging the struggle for LGBTQ equity or racial equity.  

 

Intersectionality theory highlights how either-or thinking sets us up to leave people out and even make them invisible. We who want to love as Jesus loves will at least try to figure out how to perceive, include, and honor all among us, those at the margins and those who live at the intersection of multiple margins; might we train ourselves to lift up the sibling who, for example, is black and trans and poor? As I read the Bible, my guess is that’s a person Jesus would see in a crowd when no one else was paying any attention.

 

There are moments when we need to focus on one part of the human family because of acute assault—that’s what drives our advocacy for LGBTQ inclusion in the church right now. It’s also what fuels our consistent focus on racial justice.  But if we’re not careful, we can trample the most vulnerable on our well-meaning quest. That’s the outcry from the margins in this moment of denominational crisis. If we’re going to try to do something for justice and inclusion, let’s really try to do justice.

 

Here at Foundry I am increasingly clear that part of the redemption road we need to travel includes moving toward a much greater understanding of intersectionality—the ways that power and privilege can functionally silence and “erase” partners in the struggle for justice (we’ll talk about that a bit in my upcoming class on Sacred Resistance). And I’m committed more than ever to a vision for Foundry that includes a robust effort to create beloved community—in the Howard Thurman mode. We are a both-and congregation and part of a Wesleyan spiritual tradition that is also both-and. In this moment of disruption in our denomination, I encourage us to move away from any temptation to either-or exclusions and journey toward the place where we acknowledge our struggle to perceive and honor the most vulnerable among us.  This is the time to let go of any tendency to compare sufferings or to think that if we’re oppressed, we don’t oppress others.  This is the time to take up the call to reflect in our membership the full range of beautiful diversity of our city.  This is the time to actively engage in work that presses each of us to confront whatever privilege we have and to be honest about the ways white supremacy, patriarchy, and other systemic oppression functions within our congregation even though we desire that it isn’t so. 

 

I encourage you to read books from our racial justice reading list, to engage in the conversations about LGBTQ inclusion, participate in the monthly Sacred Resistance studies and events, or join in the exciting vision emerging between Foundry, Asbury, and John Wesley AMEZ.

 

This work is so hard and getting free of our stuff is not easy.  We will likely wander in confusion and be held captive by old thinking again and again.  But we’re not on the journey alone.  The redemption road is frequented by a God who wants to take us to a place of freedom, a place of promise, a place where we keep moving but do so with a greater awareness of who’s on the journey all around us and who may need a helping hand to keep moving at various points along the way.

 

The exodus story is a journey story, a redemption story, an Easter story. It’s our story. Thanks be to God.

 

 

Brought Through

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC March 10, 2019, First Sunday of Lent. “Traveling the Redemption Road” series.

 

Text: Deuteronomy 26:1-11

 

Where have you come from?  Where are you now?  And what have you come through to get there?

 

And as we begin this season of Lent, our focus is on the journey. We are traveling the redemption road, seeking to move from one place to another.  We’re all at different places along the way. We have a variety of challenges, broken places, regrets, and more from which we hope to be redeemed—which is to be released, set free. 

 

There are times when we may struggle to see how we will ever get free of the things that weigh us down and keep us stuck. It may be difficult to imagine a life free of guilt, free of destructive behaviors—or free of abuse and oppression that we experience from others. It will sometimes be hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel or to hold fast to the promise on the other side of the wilderness or the new life on the other side of the tomb.

 

This isn’t only true for us as individuals, but also for us as communities—our churches, cities, states, and nation have much from which we need to be redeemed. We have sinned and done great harm over the course of history.  Sometimes we have knowingly done hateful, exclusive things and sometimes even our good intentions have brought about suffering and death for others.

 

Lent is the time set apart in our faith tradition to focus on these painful truths—the brokenness of our own lives and the sins of the communities of which we are a part.  We don’t focus on guilt in order to wallow, but rather to get free, to do better, to move along the road toward redemption.  This season is also a time when we are reminded of our dependence upon God to help lead us there. //

 

Our text today from Deuteronomy is toward the end of what is written as Moses’ long farewell speech to the Israelites as he prepared for his death. It is a description of the worship ritual to bless the “first fruits” as a remembrance and thanksgiving for God’s faithfulness. Embedded in the ritual is the ancient core of our faith story:

 

“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” (Deut 26:5-9)

 

The core of our faith is that when we are lost, wandering, exiled, enslaved, afflicted, hungry, and in despair, God hears our cries and sets us free. God leads us through the wilderness. God wants to get us through the rough places and into a green pasture and beside a still water. God is about bringing life out of death. Of creating new life where we can only perceive decay.  And—don’t we know it?—God has brought you through. God will bring us through. //

 

One of the most important conversations happening right now in the midst of the horrific outcome of the United Methodist General Conference in St. Louis is around intersectional justice and inclusion.  I sense that this is a place that God is determined to lead us to and through.  It’s a messy conversation, but so deeply important as we turn toward the future in our congregation and denomination.  For some, there is concern that, in our denomination’s focus on LGBTQ persons’ inclusion or exclusion, other marginalized persons in our church and society are being silenced and their suffering ignored by the church.  Systemic racism and white supremacy, violence against immigrant populations, poverty, climate change, and devaluing the voices and leadership of our young people are getting named as places where the church is overwhelmingly silent.  Some local congregations and some of our United Methodist agencies focus a lot on these matters.  But some are pressing for more.

 

Generally, folk are so conditioned in “either-or” thinking that it’s difficult to hold the tension of “both-and.”  For example, we’re either engaging the struggle for LGBTQ equity or racial equity.  

 

Intersectionality theory highlights how either-or thinking sets us up to leave people out and even make them invisible. We who want to love as Jesus loves will at least try to figure out how to perceive, include, and honor all among us, those at the margins and those who live at the intersection of multiple margins; might we train ourselves to lift up the sibling who, for example, is black and trans and poor? As I read the Bible, my guess is that’s a person Jesus would see in a crowd when no one else was paying any attention.

 

There are moments when we need to focus on one part of the human family because of acute assault—that’s what drives our advocacy for LGBTQ inclusion in the church right now. It’s also what fuels our consistent focus on racial justice.  But if we’re not careful, we can trample the most vulnerable on our well-meaning quest. That’s the outcry from the margins in this moment of denominational crisis. If we’re going to try to do something for justice and inclusion, let’s really try to do justice.

 

Here at Foundry I am increasingly clear that part of the redemption road we need to travel includes moving toward a much greater understanding of intersectionality—the ways that power and privilege can functionally silence and “erase” partners in the struggle for justice (we’ll talk about that a bit in my upcoming class on Sacred Resistance). And I’m committed more than ever to a vision for Foundry that includes a robust effort to create beloved community—in the Howard Thurman mode. We are a both-and congregation and part of a Wesleyan spiritual tradition that is also both-and. In this moment of disruption in our denomination, I encourage us to move away from any temptation to either-or exclusions and journey toward the place where we acknowledge our struggle to perceive and honor the most vulnerable among us.  This is the time to let go of any tendency to compare sufferings or to think that if we’re oppressed, we don’t oppress others.  This is the time to take up the call to reflect in our membership the full range of beautiful diversity of our city.  This is the time to actively engage in work that presses each of us to confront whatever privilege we have and to be honest about the ways white supremacy, patriarchy, and other systemic oppression functions within our congregation even though we desire that it isn’t so. 

 

I encourage you to read books from our racial justice reading list, to engage in the conversations about LGBTQ inclusion, participate in the monthly Sacred Resistance studies and events, or join in the exciting vision emerging between Foundry, Asbury, and John Wesley AMEZ.

 

This work is so hard and getting free of our stuff is not easy.  We will likely wander in confusion and be held captive by old thinking again and again.  But we’re not on the journey alone.  The redemption road is frequented by a God who wants to take us to a place of freedom, a place of promise, a place where we keep moving but do so with a greater awareness of who’s on the journey all around us and who may need a helping hand to keep moving at various points along the way.

 

The exodus story is a journey story, a redemption story, an Easter story. It’s our story. Thanks be to God.

 

 

Tested Minds, Searched Hearts A Sermon Preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC February 17, 2019

Tested Minds, Searched Hearts

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC February 17, 2019, the sixth Sunday after Epiphany. “This Is Us” series.

 Text: Jeremiah 17:5-10 

 

Jeremiah’s prophecy reveals that God will “test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.”

If God were to test your mind and search your heart today, what would God find?  Where are you putting your energy?  What or who gets your love and your trust? 

One of the most consistent messages throughout the Bible is that where you place your trust and devotion determines so much about your life.  And the unwavering call is to trust God above all else—not because God will get mad at us if we don’t, but because trusting God will set us free to live even in the most threatening circumstances.

We know from human experience that without trust, life is a small, fearful thing. Or, said positively, trust is what allows freedom, courage, and growth.

If I trust you, then I will be willing to go with you into something that would otherwise make me nervous.  If you trust me, you will believe me when I explain that the words I said weren’t meant in the way you heard them—and you’ll allow me to explain.  When a trusted teacher, boss, or coach is hard on you, pushing and expecting more and more of you, it is possible to believe they aren’t punishing you, but believing in you and encouraging you.  If I trust my doctor, my whole being will be more receptive to healing.  In these and so many other instances, trust is what makes it possible to step into new things, nerve-wracking things, challenging things. Trust frees us from the fear that would hold us back. Trust helps us be vulnerable and brave. Trust expands our horizons.

We also know from human experience that sometimes trust is difficult.  Our family histories and cultural experience may make it challenging to extend trust to anyone.  Our hearts get broken and betrayed in so many ways in this life, making us guarded and shy to share ourselves again.  From parents to politicians to pastors to partners, human beings are fallible and finite. We can really do numbers on each other…  And while it is one of the greatest gifts in human life to be able to trust our heart with another person, we know, if we’re paying attention, that there is no person—and certainly no thing—that can meet all our needs or sustain our whole life or keep from hurting us or letting us down at some point.

Jeremiah prophesies, “Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the LORD. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.”  Throughout the Bible, we hear God calling us to turn away from false Gods, calling us to stop putting our trust in things or in earthly leaders that will not give life.  Those who make themselves “lords” over others and who look to their own strength and wealth and power and control as the locus of their trust will find themselves, sooner or later, in a painful place. Jeremiah’s image is of a parched place, a “salt land” where nothing can grow, and the “shrub” in that place isn’t even able to see when something hopeful is on the horizon.

Jeremiah describes the alternative in this beautiful way: “Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”

The good news is that we’re not asked to trust God without evidence that God is trustworthy. Our Judeo-Christian family history has shown that God can be trusted. God receives the cries of God’s people and journeys with us from slavery into freedom.  God calls people from every walk of life and grants grace and power to participate in mighty acts of mending and saving.  God is gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love.  God has promised to never leave us nor forsake us and has shown us again and again—and supremely in Jesus—that the promise is kept. 

God knows what we need.  God longs for us to thrive, to be free from anxiety, and to bear fruit. And God alone is the one who can be trusted to lead us and feed us and ground us in the kind of perfect love that is life and health and peace.  It’s not that we cannot or should not trust one another, it’s that we cannot expect any human being to be God, to be able to perfectly love us, to see us in our fullness, to know our whole capacity, to hold us accountable and push us to grow, to give us everything we need to thrive, to never break our trust.

When we are able to put our trust in God’s love, mercy, and providence, we are free to risk trusting others, knowing that even when we get hurt, God will be there to hold us and wipe away our tears.  When we experience the trustworthy presence and love of God, we learn something of how we are called to be in relationship to others. We know we can’t be God for others, that we will fail and will hurt others…but God will give us grace to grow in integrity, patience, and courage, and care.  God will help us be the kind of persons with whom others will trust their hearts…

As [some of us enter covenant with this congregation today], as we move into this week’s General Conference—and any other challenge you may be facing in your life—the invitation is to let God test your mind and search your heart.  Let God show you—and help you release!—things that don’t deserve your attention and energy and trust.  Let God work within you to help you trust God’s love and providence more than anything else.  Let God help you trust God more than you distrust anyone else!

As we put our trust in God we’ll have no need to fear when heat comes, and we won’t need to be anxious in a moment of drought.  We don’t need to fear a vote or a distressing possible outcome.  We don’t need to be anxious about what others will do or say.  We don’t even need to fear suffering and death.  Because our trust is in a God whose love flows, a river of life in which we all are invited to play, from which we are all invited to drink, upon which we are all carried into a future life that is assured. Because our trust is in a God who holds us and loves us and guards us and goes before us, as a shield and encircle, we can be bold and brave and alive in love and compassion.  This trust gives us peace beyond all human understanding.  This trust sets us free.

 

 

 

Call and Response A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC February 10, 2019

Call and Response

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC February 10, 2019, the fifth Sunday after Epiphany. “This Is Us” series.

Text: Isaiah 6:1-13

 A long time ago, in a place called Judah, there was a King named Uzziah who reigned for 52 years. During and after good King Uzziah’s reign, Judah rebelled against God’s ways (Is 1:2).  Injustice, greed, hypocrisy, lies, arrogance, and power grabs were everywhere (Isaiah 1, 5).  Still, while Uzziah was alive there was relative stability—at least you knew what to expect.  But then Uzziah died.  That year must have felt like things were falling apart, like nothing made sense, leaving people in shock—like when airplanes fly into the World Trade Center or when a gunshot ends the life of a prophet or a president.

In the year that King Uzziah died—around 738 BCE—a guy named Isaiah went to worship…maybe because he was a regular attendee or maybe because when everything is hitting the fan sanctuaries tend to get full.  Whatever brought Isaiah to the temple, I wonder if, looking back on it, he ever wished he’d have skipped church that day…

Why?  Well, first of all, Isaiah experiences God’s glory and a flying choir whose “Holy, holy, holy” seemed to make the whole temple shake and fill with smoke. We might imagine this would make Isaiah bliss out or get his praise on.  Instead this vision elicits a searing awareness of Isaiah’s own lostness and unclean lips (another word for “hypocrisy”).  Isaiah comes face to face with his smallness and sin. That’s never fun.

And that un-fun awareness is met with the divine-vision-version of a common scene in movies, in which the villain of the piece plucks a burning coal from a fire with tongs and draws near the person’s face in a menacing way. In this instance, the coal is not meant to do harm, but to symbolize a purification from sin—it’s a sign of mercy!  Remember the refiner’s fire?  All I can say is, “ouch!”

And then, if all that weren’t enough, convicted and forgiven Isaiah (bless him, this was some day in church!) hears a question from God that likely haunts him for the rest of his days:  “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  This is like the template for bad church servant leader recruitment through the centuries:  God doesn’t provide a position description. There’s no term of service or goal clarity or outline of supportive relationships and feedback loops, no clarity around the budget for the ministry. 

 Even so, Isaiah—all purified up and ready to speak—blurts out “Here I am, send me!”

Only then does the picture start to emerge:  Isaiah is called to speak to the people of Judah in such a way that they will not open their hearts and minds and arms to God.  Instead, they will continue along their merry way—their way of denial, hypocrisy, greed, injustice, and self-destruction, hurtling toward ruin…

We see Isaiah start to wake up to what he’s signed up for as he asks, “How long, O Lord??”  And the answer comes: Until nothing but a tiny, holy seed of the nation is left…

Sometimes things have to get to a very bad place before we are ready or able to change, to turn toward a new way of life, to do things differently, to repent. [Hello, United Methodist Church!]

And Isaiah, before he even knew what he was doing, signed up to prophesy to a people seemingly intent on self-destruction…

Isaiah shows us so much of the prophetic call. //  That call begins with being humble enough to know our own sinfulness and weakness—and the systemic sin in which we swim (“among a people of unclean lips!”)—and to allow not only God’s light to reveal it but also God’s love and mercy to heal it.  Humility keeps a prophet from thinking she’s somehow better than “them” and always aware that “There, but for the grace of God go I…”  Isaiah also shows that the prophetic call is to keep reminding people of God’s love, God’s way of justice, God’s faithfulness, God’s desire for relationship—even when people can’t or won’t receive the message.  It’s to continue doing the hard and loving and just thing even when we find ourselves crying “How long, O Lord!” or—with Fannie Lou Hamer—“I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired!”

And as we continue our “This Is Us” series, I want us to claim and respond to our prophetic call as Foundry Church, starting from a place of humility.  We know we are far from having it all together as a community.  There are gaps and gaffes that happen here and there and now and again in all sorts of ways and places—at every level of our fellowship.  And, thanks be to God, as United Methodists, grace is a centerpiece of our theology and so we believe, by grace, we are  always “going on to perfection!”  We are humble enough to never claim that we are already there…even as we re-commit to do and be better today than we were yesterday.  We also call upon the power of Spirit not only to reveal our hypocrisy and sin but to heal it and to show us how to truly repent.

And while we know that we are always working our growing edges as a congregation, we also claim the power God gives us to speak and witness in prophetic ways.  Our strategy at Foundry is to focus on several key initiatives, realizing that focused resources can make larger impact.  We make long-term commitments, are determined to go deep in the work of effecting systemic change, and only put ourselves fully “out there” once we know what we are willing to risk and sacrifice for the sake of those with whom we stand. 

One of our long-term commitments is to stand in solidarity with our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer siblings and to provide leadership within the United Methodist Church in the fight for full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in the life and ministry of the church.  Foundry has long sought to create a welcoming and safe space for persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities through what we say, how we look, by adapting our physical spaces, and   through advocacy and public witness.  In 2010, Foundry made a deeply-discerned commitment to practice marriage equality in principled defiance of the restrictive rules found in the United Methodist Book of Discipline.  At Foundry, families representing a rainbow of configurations are truly and fully part of this family. And while we celebrate this as a gift, we also proclaim this as simply the way it should be everywhere.  But it’s not this way everywhere.

Currently, the only members of God’s family who are systematically, legislatively excluded from certain roles and blessings within the United Methodist Church are LGBTQ persons.  This is not to say that systemic racism doesn’t still plague our denomination at every level.  This is not to say that gender and culture and ability bias is not present within our congregations.  It is simply to say that since 1972 statements and rules within the Discipline have denied ordination and Christian marriage to our siblings who are LGBTQ.  Pastors are officially prohibited from performing same gender weddings and congregations from allowing these ceremonies in their buildings—under threat of trial.  And, regardless of gifts, graces, and clarity of God’s call, LGBTQ persons are excluded from Elders and Deacons Orders—they officially “shall not be” ordained. 

We all know that you can’t legislate morality—if we could, the United Methodist Church would be purged of racism, sexism, and lots of other things.  We have clear statements denouncing such prejudices and legislating inclusion and affirmation for every part of the human family…except LGBTQ family members.  We can’t legislate changed hearts and minds, but legislation—laws—provide protection and preserve dignity.  As a wise colleague and civil rights leader said to me as we talked about this yesterday, “Laws fix behaviors immediately, and attitudes eventually.  If a law changes, behavior changes.  If it’s illegal for me to deny you a seat on the bus, then when you get on the bus, I can’t keep you from sitting down.  If I don’t want to sit next to you, I can stand up.  The bus is going to keep on rolling and I may get tired; I may eventually realize that I’d rather sit back down, that sitting next to you doesn’t mean whatever I was taught.”[i]

One critical objective for Foundry over many years has been to remove the discriminatory language related to LGBTQ persons from the United Methodist Book of Discipline. Leading up to the 2012 General Conference, there was great hope this would finally be accomplished. What followed was one of the most bruising and discouraging General Conferences folks remember.  In 2016, things came to a head with the movement to exclude and deny exerting the full strength of its power…I—together with the more than 30 lay people from Foundry who were there—witnessed what felt like the church careening toward a very bad place.  And then, in what could only have been movement of Spirit, the body took a breath and voted to do something new. The Commission on a Way Forward was the result, a diverse group charged by the bishops to study and discern a way forward that allowed for as much contextuality in ministry as possible and as much unity as possible. And then came the special called General Conference that will begin in 13 days in St. Louis, Missouri.  I am one of six clergy delegates along with six lay delegates from the Baltimore-Washington Conference who will join a body of 865 elected delegates from the U.S., the Philippines, Europe, and Africa to vote on how we as a denomination will be in ministry with and for the LGBTQ members of our churches and of our local communities in the future.  Knowing this historic moment would occur this year, Foundry’s Management Board named our engagement with this work among our strategic priorities for 2019.  Today and next Sunday there are opportunities to learn more about General Conference, The Book of Discipline, and Foundry’s engagement in this work over many years. I encourage you to participate, to write your prayers on a prayer flag that will be taken by members of Foundry as a visual witness in St. Louis, and to pray…

What I want to say to all of you today is that our commitment to remove the discriminatory language and provisions from the Book of Discipline is strong as ever.  Along with this objective, I also believe that holding the denomination together as much as possible is also critical to our solidarity with LGBTQ family members; church unity is important not for the sake of “saving an institution,” but so that churches like Foundry can continue to be lifelines for United Methodist children, youth, and adults who may be members of churches that don’t fully embrace them or, worse, that actively reject them.  I am encouraged by the ways that faithful United Methodists are working together across what have been previously uncrossed boundaries to move us toward a more inclusive, grace-filled, and just Church, grounded in scripture and in our true Wesleyan theological heritage.  I am hopeful for what might be accomplished at the special General Conference at the end of this month. 

And I also want to say that no matter what happens in St. Louis, Foundry will still be Foundry. Our ministry will still embrace and support all people, we will continue to worship God with our whole being, to ground and guide our witness in challenging study, to care and pray for one another as one family in Christ; we will continue to speak love into places of hate, to practice inclusion even if bad church law demands exclusion, to risk our own security for sake of the oppressed, to give fearlessly to support those who are denied what they need to thrive.  We have been called to offer a prophetic word and witness to the world and we will continue to respond—humbly, peacefully, and in the power of God’s love.  No matter what.

How long?  Even to the point of nothing being left but a seed…and if that be the case, we will roll up our sleeves and till the soil, trusting God for the rest.

 

 

[i] Rev. Jesse Jackson