Get Out Of Town, and Out of the Church

I remember my first "sermon". I was 12 years old in St. Joseph, MO and our youth group had decided to do a drama for Youth Sunday. The drama we wrote consisted of three mini-sermons on controversial topics followed by the complaints and comments of fictional congregation members. Then we were going to read the story of Jesus' first recorded public sermon from Luke 4:16-30. We, the young radicals, were going to make the older generation face their own hypocrisy in response to the Gospel. My mini-sermon was on the role of women in ministry. This was 1976 and I had heard that women could be ordained in the United Methodist Church, but I had never seen one in the flesh. The other two mini-sermons were on euthanasia and interfaith dialogue. While I assume that the congregation was kind to our idealistic youthfulness, I do know that I didn't preach again for another 25 years! Standing up in front of a congregation and announcing that you have a word from God can be a daunting experience.

Jesus' first sermon was a bit more dramatic than mine, ending with being run out of his hometown by an angry mob. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has annointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind., to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Luke 4: 18

Bless his heart! At first, his hometown friends and family were bursting with pride that he, their boy, had grown up to be such a fine public speaker and teacher. "Maybe he actually was annointed by God!", they might have wondered. Luke records that "They all spoke well of him and were amazed."

But then, Jesus had the audacity to compare himself to the prophets, Elijah and Elisha and to suggest that his words were not just for the Jews, but for the Gentiles, like Naaman the Leper, as well. This is the "good news" that Jesus was announcing - the release from oppression for all people, especially the marginalized and excluded. It was this news that the good people of Nazareth couldn't stomach, and that led them to run their hometown golden boy out of town.

And now, more than 40 years after my first social justice sermon, I am still despairing that Jesus' words are falling flat, even in the church that I love. This past week, the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church ruled that the consecration of the Rev. Karen Oliveto as a Bishop was in violation of UMC law due to being a "self-avowed practicing homosexual". She now faces the possibility of a trial by her peers and a potential stripping, not just of her episcopacy, but of her ordination, despite being chosen and annointed by her colleagues as an effective church leader.

Like many of my colleagues, I am flipping between being saddened and enraged by the Council's decision. Bishop Oliveto is exactly the kind of female clergyperson that my 12 year old self was longing to meet. I have no doubt that had I been surrounded by clergywomen like her, I would have entered into the ordained ministry much, much earlier than I did. Thanks to effective, compassionate and prophetic women like her, girls in the UMC today never have to doubt that they are welcome in the ministry. Or do they? Because, apparently, only straight, cis-gendered men and women can be representatives of God on earth. Because, apparently, Jesus only came to save the traditional, "good" Christians and not the outsiders, the oppressed and the marginalized.

How many talented, Spirit-filled and annointed men and women has this church lost because our governing boards want to know what goes on in their bedrooms? I personally know too many. One is too many. John Wesley's criteria for the ordination of clergy was do they "bear fruit?" Do they love God and can they speak of God's love and grace to their congregations and to the world? I am beginning to doubt whether any United Methodist clergy can truly speak of God's love and grace without hypocrisy, as so many of our brothers and sisters are, like Jesus, run out of their hometowns, rejected by the very people who nurtured them.

Bishop Oliveto's fate remains uncertain and the question of the ordination of LGBTQ persons remains unresolved, along with the issue of same-sex marriage in the church. To me, this is not what Jesus had in mind when he preached about letting the oppressed go free. And many people, lay and clergy, are wondering if we just need to join Jesus and our LGBTQ brothers and sisters as they are driven out of town and out of the United Methodist Church.