The media have played up the reaction of the GLBT community to the announcement that Rick Warren will give the invocation at Obama’s inauguration next week. Gene Robinson was interviewed yesterday in response to the announcement that he will give the invocation at the Lincoln Memorial Ceremonies. The cynics say that he was a political response to the pressure of the GLBT community. I say that this attitude of dividedness that our country has experienced the past eight years has hardened us so that we find it difficult to accept a person at his word that he wants to be inclusive and accepting of a broad range of people who disagree with each other. Obama’s cabinet appointments certainly have reflected that philosophy.

We’ve just completed the first half of the Disciples III Bible Study, which focused on the prophets as one of the major sections of the Hebrew Bible that we call the Old Testament. We had a really good discussion about Jonah in that we didn’t get hung up on whether or not he really lived in the belly of a whale as we were taught in Sunday School. That’s really not the lesson of Jonah. I would like to share a part of what our leader gave us:

The themes of the book of Jonah are:

• The sovereignty of God - God’s will happens, in spite of human failures.
• Mercy and Grace - God is compassionate to whomever he chooses.
• Responsibility - if God gives us a task, we are responsible to perform it.
• Servanthood - Jonah is the ultimate negative example of this.
• Repentance - Prophets spoke to encourage people to repent, not just speak judgment.
• Missions - God want us to reach out to people everywhere.

Just as Jonah thought that Nineveh was beyond the pale, the bastion of the enemy, and not deserving of God’s love, many in the church have interpreted the Bible to exclude people of different sexual orientation or gender identity. In the Methodist Church we’ve been engaged in a political struggle for the past 30 years of trying to find a way to make our church less exclusionary. Just as the early Christians struggled with the concept of whether or not to accept Gentiles, we have struggled with how to reconcile our American traditions and social mores with the theology that the church is open to all who profess a belief in Jesus Christ.

Oh, but the rub comes when we talk about the meaning of repentance. If these people who are different than the majority would only repent of their sinful ways, then they would be acceptable as church members. Well, if you want to get into biblical literalism, then divorced people are not acceptable into the church. Yes, we all have sinned and are separated from God, but why is sexual orientation the only sin that is singled out by the church as different than all others? Because in the history of the church sex has always been the most controversial issue. So we get sidetracked into discussions about behavior (overtly homosexual versus celibate) as if we became more “normal” by repressing our sexuality. Priests were allowed to marry until the 13th Century when one pope got the idea that marriage was sinful and so priests should be “married” to the church, and what a mess that created in ruined lives. Maybe he didn’t know how to interpret the writings of Paul either. Our Bible study group is going to tackle that this spring.

So how long is the Methodist Church going to struggle with this issue? Some people say the church may split because of the divisions over Biblical interpretations on this issue. Others want their opponents to capitulate or just go away. After all, didn’t we get along just fine for 200 years before these troublemakers brought up the issue? Well, if you call hypocrisy a successful means of getting along, perhaps so. But if you believe in honesty and self-fulfillment, then we’ve just been “living in the closet” too long. What good can come out of all this debate? The church from the beginning has struggled to understand the nature of God, his plan for human beings, and what are the essential requirements of becoming a Christian. We have an accretion of 2,000 years of myths and traditions to sort through, and even the 1st Century church had lots of different interpretations. It wasn’t as simple then as the “purity” of the early church is often portrayed.

So are we going to see the “Reconciling” Methodists and the “Concerned” Methodists tables next to each other at conference again this year? Probably. I think that it is unlikely that we shall see this issue resolved in our generation.