This week in Bible Study we were studying the letters of John and Jude that focus on some of the problems within the church. The issues were dissension, division, and desertion. The workbook for Disciples IV notes: “These letters have one clear intent --- to maintain the community’s central belief in Jesus Christ and loyalty, harmony, and faithfulness within the fellowship.” The apparent concerns were focused on Gnosticism and Docetism, and the writer warned against false teachers and those who would practice licentiousness. What was a theological debate within the early church has sometimes been used today to issue a cry for “unity” within the Methodist Church and to quench the cry for social justice. Some claim that those who have a different sexual orientation than the majority are fomenting dissension within the church and should be excluded. The church’s governing body has cited sexual behavior as perhaps the defining issue in determining acceptance into the church either for membership or leadership. You should not be baptized if you’re gay or lesbian unless you’re celibate, and you shouldn’t openly acknowledge your orientation or your partner. “Don’t ask; don’t tell” goes Methodist.

Unity is not the same thing as conformity. When we accept the divinity and the humanity of Jesus Christ and confess our sins, are baptized, and take the oath of church membership then we assume the rights and responsibilities of Christians. It doesn’t mean that we all think or look alike or are of the same economic or social class or even that we worship in the same manner. The Methodist Church has come to accept that gender is not a barrier to church leadership even though that was not the common practice for centuries in the church. A hundred years after the Civil War we’re still trying to reconcile the administrative separation of the races as well as the “separate but equal” philosophy that was abandoned in public education 50 years ago but still practiced in many Methodist churches.

The study guide posed four questions: What contributes to or threatens unity in the body? What is the place of the individual in the body? What is the responsibility of the individual to other members of the body? In what ways to you think of your church fellowship as family? The issue evolves around acceptance into the group, love in spite of differences, and willingness to work together rather debate the scriptures. But we always “want to be right.” We were informed that those who had an “agenda” or seem to have ego issues were intentionally excluded from leadership positions within our church and so “unity” was preserved.

The few places in the Bible where sexual orientation is implied indicates that while it may have been a major concern to the Jews because of their fear of national extinction, it was not so for Jesus or the early Christians. So why is it such a big issue in the Methodist Church today? Because people have quit lying about it and have openly acknowledged who they are and have challenged the church to mean what it says about accepting everyone.

Even in my own class I was chastised about the promiscuity of homosexuals and their known inability to procreate or to establish lasting relationships that are the basis of a family. I’ll have to say that I felt more welcome on Saturday in the home of a retired Lutheran pastor and his wife who became involved in the Reconciling Program at the Voices of Wilderness Conference and have offered hospitality to RUM-NC ever since. They acknowledged that their views on sexual orientation and how the church should deal with that issue have changed, and they have concluded that they choose to welcome all and exclude none either in their home or their church.

John Wesley was accused of heresy because he preached to the miners in the fields rather than from the pulpit (although he did both), but the real reason was that the working poor were socially unacceptable in the middle-class churches of 18th Century England. They were among the outcasts of their day. Homosexuals and lesbians are the outcasts of today. We don’t have the communists to hate anymore so we found a new group to pummel.

Unfortunately the whole issue has been framed in terms of a debate rather than a discussion of how to enrich our church through diversity rather than conformity and how to seek means to reach out to a class of people who has been largely forced out of the church because they are not welcome. It isn’t a question of who is “right” and who is “wrong.” It is a question of overcoming the accretions of 2,000 years of patriarchal traditions, cultural bias, and ignorance of the diversity of the human condition. If you would accept me regardless of the color of my skin, what business is it of yours what I do when I’m home in bed? But the headlines scream about public sex, prostitution, and promiscuity, and those are concerns regardless of sexual orientation. Using others solely to satisfy lust is not Christian and certainly negates Jesus’ admonition to love one another.

I go to General Conference with some trepidation that the debate will continue over where and when to use “may, should, must, shall” and whether the concern for outreach will be limited to ethnic minorities and not inclusive of social minorities. I fear that we are too bound to tradition to reach beyond the barriers to social change and to envision a more honest understanding and self-acceptance of ourselves and of others. We need the guidance of the enduring vision of the scriptures and the message that Jesus proclaimed to love one another even as he has loved us.