I
Peter 1:17-23
Garrison Keillor is retired now, but
his legacy lives on, not just in reruns of A
Prairie Home Companion but also in his writing, some of which circulates
endlessly on the internet. Among those
writings are his description of Methodists.
Mind you, he was raised as part of the Plymouth Brethren – a small,
fundamentalist group dating back to the late-nineteenth century – and spent a
lot of time on the radio pretending to be Lutheran although he is actually an Episcopalian,
with affinity to a group he calls, “The Church of the Sunday Brunch”. Anyway, this is what he says about
Methodists:
“We
make fun of Methodists for their blandness, their excessive calm, their fear of
giving offense, their lack of speed, and also for their secret fondness for
macaroni and cheese.
But
nobody sings like them. If you were to ask an audience in New York City, a
relatively Methodist-less place, to sing along on the chorus of ‘Michael Row
the Boat Ashore,’ they will look daggers at you as if you had asked them to
strip to their underwear. But if you do this among Methodists, they'd smile and
row that boat ashore and up on the beach! And down the road!
Many
Methodists are bred from childhood to sing in four-part harmony, a talent that
comes from sitting on the lap of someone singing alto or tenor or bass and
hearing the harmonic intervals by putting your little head against that
person's rib cage.
It's
natural for Methodists to sing in harmony. [Notice that here he slips, and goes
from third person into first.] We are
too modest to be soloists, too worldly to sing in unison. When you're singing
in the key of C and you slide into the A7th and D7th chords, all two hundred of
you, it's an emotionally fulfilling moment. By our joining in harmony, we
somehow promise that we will not forsake each other.
I
do believe this: People, these Methodists, who love to sing in four-part
harmony are the sort of people you can call up when you're in deep distress.
If
you're dying, they will comfort you.
If
you are lonely, they'll talk to you.
And
if you are hungry, they'll give you tuna salad.
Methodists
believe in prayer, but would practically die if asked to pray out loud.
Methodists
like to sing, except when confronted with a new hymn or a hymn with more than
four stanzas.
Methodists
believe their pastors will visit them in the hospital, even if they don't
notify them that they are there.
Methodists
usually follow the official liturgy and will feel it is their away of suffering
for their sins.
Methodists
believe in miracles and even expect miracles, especially during their
stewardship visitation programs or when passing the plate.
Methodists
think that the Bible forbids them from crossing the aisle while passing the
peace.
Methodists
drink coffee as if it were the Third Sacrament.
Methodists
feel guilty for not staying to clean up after their own wedding reception in
the Fellowship Hall.
Methodists
are willing to pay up to one dollar for a meal at the church.
Methodists
still serve Jell-O in the proper liturgical color of the season and think that
peas in a tuna casserole adds too much color.
Methodists
believe that it is OK to poke fun at themselves and never take themselves too
seriously.”[1]
Out of all of that, I’d most like to
think that the concern for the dying, the lonely, and the hungry is the part
that is most true – and the most true of any group of Christians, by whatever
secondary name they are known. It was
said of all who follow Jesus,
“Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised
him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on
God.” [I Peter 1:21]
And so,
“Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience
to the truth so that you have
genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from
the heart.” [I Peter 1:22]
That is why it grieves me, and so many, many others that
we have been caught up in the same kind of nastiness and wrangling that has
become part of life in the entire modern world.
(I almost said, “In these United States,” but it’s a worldwide problem
that’s playing out in other lands as well, and in all aspects of public and
private life.) Among us, it has taken
hold around issues of sexuality and become entangled with questions of how to
do things when folks in California and Uganda engage their local cultures under
one system that allows some autonomy but considers us all to be answerable to
one another as well as to God.
Christian love is not just something abstract, and it
doesn’t live in a vacuum. It gets put to
the test, and sometimes it passes and sometimes it fails. Right now, among United Methodists, it is
under some strain. This past week the
Judicial Council, essentially the Supreme Court of the denomination, heard
arguments from people in the South Central United States asking what to do when
people in the Western United States have elected a bishop that they consider to
be in violation of the Book of Discipline
that gives us our operating procedures.
Beyond that lie deeper disagreements about how to interpret the
scriptures, disagreements that have produced a situation where we say that all
people are “of sacred worth” but that some people (and here’s where the trouble
begins) should be left out of some (but not all) leadership roles because of
their orientation which some say is inborn and others say is not and some say
can be set aside and others say is totally a part of their being. We’ve been going round and round and round on
this for decades.
It’s clear we are not
going to reach agreement, which is how it ends up going to the Judicial
Council. No matter how that body rules,
someone will be deeply upset, and there will be further consequences, but don’t
ask me what they will be, because I have no idea. No one knows, including the people who were officially
assigned last year to find “A Way Forward”.
You’re going to hear about this stuff in the news
sometime, and it will be characterized as a big fight. Let me point out, however, that we have in
fact been going round and round and round about this for decades without giving
up on one another as hopeless infidels consigned to outer darkness, but as
Christians with a deep commitment to
“love one another deeply from
the heart.”
[I Peter 1:22]
One
of the most moving things I saw in the news articles last week and that I
guarantee you will not be published in the secular press that loves a fight was
a picture of the bishop whose election has brought things to a head and a
laywoman from Arkansas whose name is one of those on the request for a ruling
(essentially the papers asking why she hasn’t already been brought up on
charges), and the two are hugging one another, even smiling.
Tell me, do you think that would
happen in Washington? Do you see it
happening in Kiev or Damascus?
We are not about ourselves. We are about Jesus and his love. Christian sisters and brothers can and will
disagree about some very basic matters and not see one another as enemies. Even if they do, they are still under the
authority of Jesus, who said,
“Love
your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children
of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the
good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what
reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors
do the same? And if you greet only your
brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?” [Matthew 5:44-47]
Far
from being wishy-washy or conflict-avoidant, which is what Keillor is joking
about when he says,
“We
make fun of Methodists for their blandness, their excessive calm, their fear of
giving offense, their lack of speed, and also for their secret fondness for
macaroni and cheese,”
we
have actually had the guts to live with conflict rather than kick one another
out of the family or turn our backs and leave, even when we think the “other
side” (whichever it is) is missing something important. We realize that they may have something
important to say that we need to hear.
Unity isn’t something that comes
about by concentrating on ourselves, but by keeping as our central reality the
one experience we all hold in common, which is the reality of God acting
through Christ, not only in our lives but also in the lives of all who will
come to him, all of us sinners in need of grace, and all of us sinners
receiving it freely.
“You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways
inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ,
like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation
of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through him you have come to trust in
God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and
hope are set on God.” [I Peter 1:18-21]
[1]
The full commentary can be found at http://www.stevegedon.com/2008/04/09/methodists-by-garrison-keillor/
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