Our garden.
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Good morning friends. Can you believe we are in August?
We wake up in a world this morning where human life is increasingly degraded and devalued.
There is a struggle, and a need for an alternative.
It will make more sense if you are not in denial. And it will be more relevant if you are ready to move beyond rumination and rant to experimentation and action.
I find these small steps to be life-giving.
1. The Junaluska Peace Conference, last spring and next spring.
2. The Healing Centered Church and the training in trauma by Crossnore.
3.. The teaching and witness of the historic Black Church.
4. The non-violent witness in town centers and at courthouses against policies that are leading to hunger, violence and death. Repairers of the Breach are at the center of this work.
5. Leaning into relationships and expressing encouragement with immigrant populations around us, and the prayer vigil today near Wilson Creek in the Pisgah National Forest.
6. The celebration of 70 years of clergywomen in the United Methodist Church at our most recent annual conference, and the consecration of Nola Knouse last Sunday at Home Moravian Church, the first woman to serve as bishop in that church’s Southern Province.
7. Thirteen years of collaboration with Rethinking Conflict in Northern Ireland, and how the work is building, and the realism and courage of the people in that country. I am grateful for longtime partners like Dr. Gary Mason and Professor John Brewer and more recent voices like the young mayor of Belfast Rois-Marie Donnelly and Professor Richard English.
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More and more I am fascinated by the model of the Clapham Sect, a group of high church evangelicals in 19th century England who unapologetically worked for the abolition of the slave trade. One of them, William Wilberforce, had a relationship with John Wesley. After visiting the Wilberforce exhibit in Hull, England last May, Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson and I are writing a longer reflection about this.
These were the key aspects of their mission:
they were rooted in their faith
they did not go about it alone,
and they took the long view.
There is good work to do, and in fact many are already doing it. Many of you are doing it. Thank you. It is necessary work. We are called to do it together, to turn toward and not on each other. Be encouraged today.
Where do you see good work happening?
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I was saddened by the death of the Irish Musician Glen Hansard this week. Pam and I saw the play Once in the West End of London, and we loved the movie, and his music. Begin with “Falling Slowly” or “When Your Mind’s Made Up” or “Her Mercy” or “Song for Good Hope”.
I continue to grind the beans each morning. Today begins a new month with Give Us This Day, and this morning I read Psalm 121, one of my favorites.
Two bishop friends, Greg Palmer and Robert Schnase, came our way this week and we enjoyed meals together. We were on the Commission on a Way Forward together, and both have taught and preached in annual conferences I have served. Bishop Palmer is the executive secretary of the Council of Bishops, Bishop Schnase is president of Wespath, both in retirement. I also enjoyed an evening meeting with the Reconciling Ministries staff and their new executive leader, Andi Woodworth, and we shared a meal. The work of RMN is about life and not death.
With my friend Joe McGuire of Asheville. He has chaired the boards of both Givens Communities and Brevard College, and is a member of Central UMC in Asheville.
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I attended the Board of Trustees of Givens Communities, which includes Asheville, Charlotte and Black Mountain, care facilities and affordable communities. Afterward I visited with friends who are in residence there. I recorded a podcast with Adam Benson and Amie Stewart (“On Call”) which should be out there soon. Audrey Warren and I met with our editor about a book proposal on the future of churches located in the geographical centers of cities and towns. I am very hopeful about this and believe it will be helpful.
On Sunday I will preach at Simpson-Gillespie United Methodist Church in Charlotte, and then I will head to Myrtle Beach for the Convocation on the Rural Church, sponsored by the Duke Endowment.. On the way I will stop and spend the night at Mepkin Abbey in Monck’s Corner, where I will pray with the Benedictine monks and meet with my spiritual director.
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The questioning of Dr. Fauci this week before congress represents another low point in our democratic dysfunction. And it is an avoidance of reckoning with the Epstein Files and listening to the victims. The compromise of our public health during the pandemic led to unnecessary deaths. And all of this has been a reminder of what it meant to live and lead through COVID.
The extended pandemic revealed a serious flaw in the teaching of the church about what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. The plain teaching of the gospel is that we are here to love our neighbor, that we love our neighbor as an expression of our love for God, that the whole law (Torah) can be summarized in this way, that our love extends especially to the most vulnerable, that Jesus was a healer, that the cross was laying down one’s life for one’s friends, that we place the needs of others before our own, that we choose life rather than death, that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.
That the church in the United States could not say unambiguously that masks and vaccines were outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace revealed how far we had drifted from the core mission of discipleship in the way of Jesus, who was a teacher, healer and sacrificial servant. And that we could not listen to those who had made their life’s work to lead us to health and well-being revealed an anti-intellectualism in the church and in the culture. The consequences of this are being repeated now in more children being unvaccinated and in a compromised food supply.
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To wake up in a world where human life is increasingly degraded and devalued, we will need the strength to be mature, thinking adults. We may not be in the majority in any space. The Clapham Sect was not a majority, the early Methodists were not in the majority, the abolitionists were not a majority, the first disciples of Jesus were not a majority, the early church in the book of Acts was not a majority.
We will need to be in small groups, circles of trust, islands of sanity (Margaret Wheatley) where we can remind each other to be encouraged in our discipleship. It may feel odd or counter-cultural. If people criticize you, rejoice and be glad. Remember the beatitudes. Choose life. This is the way of Jesus.
Who is in your circle of trust?
Remember:
We are rooted in our faith.
We do not go about it alone.
We take the long view.
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Thanks for reading, sharing, subscribing and recommending. Mostly thanks for your friendship and connection.
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