Will they know we are Christians by our love?

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”
John 15:12, NIV

I don’t get it.

I try. I’ve talked, read, debated, prayed (a lot), and I still don’t get it.

How is love incompatible with Christian teaching?

To quote from our very own Book of Discipline (2008): “We affirm that all persons are individuals of sacred worth, created in the image of God. All persons need the ministry of the Church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship that enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self. The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.”

So let me get this straight. We affirm that everyone is created in the image of God, everyone needs the ministry of the Church, everyone is of sacred worth. Except those whose beliefs and lifestyles are ‘incompatible with Christian teaching.’

We welcome all who wish to partake to the Lord’s Holy Supper, but make specific exceptions when they want to actually be more than just communion-takers. Am I the only one who sees the hypocrisy present in our Book of Discipline? Everyone is important, everyone is sacred, but yet some just aren’t good enough to be United Methodists.

What do we mean when we say ‘incompatible with Christian teaching?’ What do we really mean? Have we really thought about what that phrase means on a practical, relational level? Personally, I think it gets used a lot as a cop-out, a way to dismiss a view/opinion/paradigm without really having to think about its consequences. Or, maybe it’s because it makes us uncomfortable or we just don’t like it.

We, as United Methodists, do plenty of things that are incompatible with Christian teaching. Harsh and cruel words toward a fellow child of God are incompatible with Christian teaching. The way we pollute our earth is incompatible with Christian teaching. Our apathy toward atrocities both right under our noses and far away is incompatible with Christian teaching. The way we turn a blind eye toward the poor, the outcast, the disenfranchised in our very own neighborhoods is incompatible with Christian teaching. We say that we are human (we are) and that we strive to move toward perfection (I hope we do), but to use these words to justify our inaction and our satisfaction with the comfortable status quo makes a mockery of our Wesleyan heritage, and worse, of the Christ we are called to serve.

This rant of mine is not about one particular group of people, and yet it is. We have politicized the word ‘inclusive’ to mean something very specific. “Inclusive” means ‘open to all.’ It’s one group of people, and it’s everyone. It’s those in our local churches and those around the world. Those who speak English as a native tongue and those who are more familiar with another beautiful language. Those who are young, and those who are old, and those who are in between. All of us.

How can we be an inclusive church, yet say that who a person is and who they love, is incompatible with Christian teaching? How can we open Christ’s communal table to all and yet reject some? How can we preach ‘open minds, open hearts, open doors’ and then slam those doors in the faces of those who have the courage to knock? We bemoan the fact that our church is dying, and yet spend our time drawing lines in the sand, separating those who are in from those who are out. This, to me, is incompatible with Christian teaching. It’s blatant hypocrisy. It is.

Now while I’m not clergy or a seminary student, I am a layperson who has studied the bible quite a bit. And from what I’ve read, Jesus is pretty mum on the subject of homosexuality, homosexual marriage, and monogamous same-sex relationships. The rest of the disciples didn’t say much either, although Paul had quite a bit to say about pedophilia, prostitution, and the bothersome obligations of marriage. And if we really want to get that literal about Leviticus and Deuteronomy, well, then we’re all in trouble. The Bible says a lot of things, folks, and we’re being pretty presumptuous if we think we have a lock on the entirety of Christian teaching.

In fact, Jesus spent much of his ministry in community with those who had lifestyles that, at the time, were considered ‘incompatible’ with the ‘right’ way of living of their day. The disciples spent plenty of their time with people very different from them as they spread the word of the risen Christ to people in far away lands. The new Christian churches struggled mightily with what it meant to be a Christian, a follower of Christ. Did all Christians have to be circumcised and celebrate Jewish traditions? What about clean/unclean foods? In the end, they decided that physical appearance and dietary preferences mattered less than the belief that Jesus Christ was the Son of God made flesh, who came to this earth as a baby and died for our sins.

I can imagine that if the early Christians had stuck to their comfortable beliefs, what they were used to, what was easy, none of us would be having the conversations at GC2012 that we’re having right now. Why? Because Christianity would not exist. Those early churches would have died out as nothing more than a fad of its time. It was in the willingness of the early Christians to continue to redefine what their priorities are, where there true path was, what their ultimate goal was—to spread the message of Christ to every single person they met and live out his call in word and deed every single day.

I urge us all, in this time of ‘connectionalism’ and ‘silos’, of lifting each other up in worship and cutting each other down in committee meetings, to reflect on the message of Christ. Look to the early Church for inspiration and guidance. Obviously, this is an issue that has been around for quite some time, and the decisions made a GC2012 certainly won’t be the final say. To be the inclusive church that we proclaim that we are, we must be in this together. Not just for each of our churches, but for our Church. I fear that if we forget this, soon we will be just another fad of our day.

“We are one in the spirit, we are one in the Lord
And we pray that our unity will one day be restored
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love
Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

Will they?

Photo Credit: Flickr user epSos.ed, Creative Commons.