Elders: LET GO OF THE ROPE! (or Hey, Church — GROW UP!)

Nurturing Elders and Others:
LET GO OF THE ROPE! (or Hey, Church — GROW UP!)
By the Rev. Paul Graves | Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Older adults may be the “perfect” group of people to push for peace! We don’t have to compete in our jobs, so we don’t have to protect our job security. We can step back from the normal “tug-of-war” contests in our families, our churches, our community, and even our world. We can say loud and proud: “Is this what is really most important to you?”

Of course, we still can hardly resist holding one part of the rope or another in those nasty tug-of-war efforts. We rarely pay attention when Jesus comes along to encourage us to “Love our enemies” (That’s another way of saying: “Drop the rope!”).

One of the primary signs of that brokenness is our faithless, destructive battle over homosexuality!
I contend that Older Adults have a great opportunity to “drop the rope” and call our church to grow up and into the faith we claim to have.

About three years ago, I mentioned a drop-the-rope insight of Dr. Bill Thomas in his book “What Are Old People For? How Elders Will Save the World”. He spoke clearly about one of the tasks of Elderhood: Peace-making. He wasn’t referring to any namby-pamby effort to avoid conflict.

He referred to the hard work of bringing a sense of “wholeness” to relationships in families, in society, and within elders themselves. At this point in our denomination’s history, we are far from whole. We are fractured, even broken.

One of the primary signs of that brokenness is our faithless, destructive battle over homosexuality! I contend that Older Adults have a great opportunity to “drop the rope” and call our church to grow up and into the faith we claim to have. So let me say this as clear as I can:

In 1972 (over 40 years ago!), General Conference first declared itself opposed to the practice of homosexuality as “incompatible with Christian teaching”. Factions since, from local churches to the floor of General Conference, have used this issue as a tug-of-war rope.

On both sides of the mud pit – with mostly condemning rhetoric – we have paraded our incomplete spiritual awareness in front of the world both within and beyond the church.

I think that the church trials — past, present and future — are a sign we have failed to substitute Law for Grace. Our individual and corporate egos are not ready to drop the rope in favor of ‘re-membering’ (putting back together) a mature Christian witness must be more than legal maneuvers and blind obedience to the UMC Discipline.

In early February, I was reading a section of Richard Rohr’s book “Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality”. He spoke of how Paul used Romans and Galatians to put a new spin on Jewish Law. (Remember, he was a law-abiding Pharisee before his conversion.)

Both of his books addressed the complex limitations of the Law. Rohr refers to Romans 3:20 and 7:7-13 to illustration this insight: “Laws can only give us information, and even helpful information, but they cannot give us transformation.” (p. 79). That single statement prompted me to write a question in my book.

We older adults must be willing to drop the rope ourselves so we can focus our attention on the “weightier matters” that the Faith (trust) God has in us calls us to attend to. Why do we let ourselves pick up a rope that draws us into a tug-of-war?

How does the fighting over homosexuality in today’s UMC contribute to the UMC Mission Statement to “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world”? They don’t!!

Somehow, while we still hang onto the tug-of-war rope to fight with each other, we’ve also made gay ordination, same-sex unions performed by our clergy, and who-knows-what-else related to homosexuality, into very distasteful, churchy red herrings.

When we can be courageous enough to drop the rope, we might see Jesus’ challenge to the Pharisees’ pride and its hypocritical result as our primary moral dilemma also: “You have neglected the weightier matters of the law – justice, mercy and good faith” in favor of temple tithes,” (Matt. 23:23).

We older adults must be willing to drop the rope ourselves so we can focus our attention on the “weightier matters” that the Faith (trust) God has in us calls us to attend to. Why do we let ourselves pick up a rope that draws us into a tug-of-war?

God calls us to be peace-makers. That means we must drop the rope!