Is it too soon?
The
Reconciling Committee of the Board of Church and Society of the New
England Conference sponsors an annual essay contest for young people
ages 16-21. The winning essay is awarded a modest scholarship and is
invited to read the essay at a session of Annual Conference.
I want to celebrate that this year, the committee received two very good entries,
although we were not of one mind concerning the "winner". Our
disagreement was due primarily to concerns that many expressed over how
one of the essays would be received by the body. The arguments go
something like this:
It's too soon
for some of our supporters to hear something so forceful. This sounds
angry, and anger is divisive. We will lose support...
It is never too soon!
It is
never
too soon to tell the truth, to open our hearts to the grief of members
of the body of Christ, to demand that the whole body at least become
aware that others are suffering because we have failed to
be the church for all of God's children.
Sometimes the truth hurts...
and when voices are silenced, the truth tends to hurt some more than others.
What
a privilege many of us have to be able to decide when we will hear the
truth and experience the pain it represents! Queer people in churches
everywhere will tell you that as soon as the church harms them publicly
or they begin to voice their pain, people flock to them full of sorrow
and guilt. When this happens, queer people – the ones who are MOST hurt
by the exclusion of LGBTQ people in the United Methodist Church – end
up providing pastoral care to their allies, their pseudo allies, the
fence-sitters, and even the unrepentant persecutors of queer people.
Pain
is pain, and I do not wish to minimize the pain of any person, but is
it possible for non-queer people who experience grief over this almost
ritual abuse of queer people in the church find another way to express
their grief? Must queer people continue to serve the body as both
scapegoat and pastor?General Conference is over. The
policies of the church are settled for another four years. It is easy
to conclude that it's too late to
do anything now...
Is it too late?
Steven
Dry, a young man from the New England Conference who is finishing his
Freshman year at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia as I type this
post, wrote the "controversial" essay that I mentioned above. When you
read it, you may be surprised to know that he wrote it at least a month
before General Conference began. When I arrived at General Conference
on April 23rd, I emailed Steven to thank him for his powerful offering
to the New England Reconciling Committee (and as the incoming co-chair
of the committee for the next quadrennium, to apologize for our
collective fearfulness and continued willingness to play by the
unspoken rules of hollow civility that mistake the absence of conflict
for the well-being of the entire body).
I also asked Steven if I
could post his essay on the General Conference blog. He graciously
agreed to offer this powerful witness to a much larger audience than he
had in mind when he wrote the essay.
I was so busy with the work
of the Common Witness coalition at General Conference that I never
posted Steven's essay. When I got home, I wondered if it was too late.
It is never too late!
It is never too late to enter into the work of reconciliation in the church and the world.
The Spirit constantly calls us back to this work – calls us to begin
again – to rebuild the church from the ashes of its own making. The
essay that will be delivered at Annual Conference is an excellent essay
on the assigned topic: "My vision of a fully inclusive United Methodist
Church". The winning essay is also a blessing and a gift. It too will
create some space for a new beginning following a General Conference in
which some strides were made toward full inclusion, some positions were
held, and some ground was lost.
And
it is never too late for us to heed the call of one who has opened himself to us with an offering of grief and joy, regret and hope.
Now
a note for those who are always calling us back to strategy – who worry
that we will alienate somebody who isn't quite sure if queer people
should be accepted: Don't worry... I hear you. I have been
hearing you for many years now. While I appreciate your commitment to
follow the Spirit as you experience Her leading you, more often than I
would like to admit, I have heeded your counsel. You are not invisible
to me, and I do not disregard your convictions. You've argued that it's
too soon to
ask "ordinary people" to listen to an essay that unmasks the pain of so
many and calls the church to live up to its promises and potential.
Today I say to you that it is never too soon to take people's pain seriously - yours, mine, and others'.
Nor is it ever too late
to acknowledge publicly those who have been rendered invisible, who
have been hurt and excluded and ejected by the policies and practices
of this church and its people, who embody such compassion and joy and
grace that they have continued to minister to and love and serve the
rest of us anyway.
While the New England Annual
Conference will not hear him in 2008, maybe you could try to hear
Steven Dry by reading his essay. I encourage you to read it as it was
meant to be read: It is a verbal address, not a static piece of writing
on a page. It is a sermon and an offering of great love, deep pain, and
fervent hope.
Steven will be reading your comments. While we
have no other honor to offer him for this gift, it is never too soon –
or too late – to express our gratitude.
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