chappelltemple

I was only a teenager at the time, but growing up in Houston with a father in the news business, I felt a special connection to NASA from early on, even getting the chance to sit once or twice in the temporary broadcast booths that were constructed for the network anchors back when every launch was a media event.  And so, like millions around the world, I was totally transfixed on the black and white television images that miraculously came wafting into our living room on July 20, 1969, from more than a quarter million miles away.

What I didn’t know at the time, however, was what else happened on that Sunday five decades ago when Neil Armstrong became the first human being to ever walk on another world.  For even as he prepared for that historic “giant leap for mankind,” his companion, Buzz Aldrin, prepared for something else inside the Eagle, unpacking bread and wine from plastic containers and placing them on the abort guidance system computer.

Radioing back to earth, he invited everyone listening in “whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.”  And then, switching his radio off, Aldrin read privately from the Gospel of John before pouring the wine into a chalice, where in the lessened gravity of the moon the wine “curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup,” and he followed that by taking communion.  In short, as Aldrin later wrote in a Guideposts magazine article, “the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”

My friend Charles Anderson, who has served as a Methodist pastor to many in the NASA community over the years, has eloquently put it this way:  “How both poignant and appropriate, that the greatest technological achievement in human history carried within it the sacramental reminder of the greatest act of salvific love in all history–namely, the redeeming grace of Jesus Christ that binds the past to the present, and the heavens to the earth. The greatest distance that humans have ever traveled from our celestial home was still within reach of the promise and presence of the living God.”  Or as Charles goes on to add, “we can never ever journey to a place so far where God is not.”

And fifty years later, we’ve still never been able to do so, even with a Saturn V rocket behind us. Maybe that’s why when Jesus gave us the sacrament, He told us to remember Him in this way whenever we can. And wherever too, we might add.

I could have walked from Atlanta to Los Angeles by now, or to put it on a more global scale, almost halfway across Russia from east to west, or the same distance across Africa from north to south.  For today marks exactly one year since I began my streak of walking at least five miles a day, and more recently, seven or eight.

It’s been an interesting experiment, to be sure.  For a little like those postal carriers of old who let neither “snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” stay them from “their appointed rounds,” over the past twelve month, I’ve walked primarily outdoors, too, only substituting hotel or gym treadmills when necessary.  My faithful co-trekker for much of it has been my wife, but other times I’ve walked alone, giving me lots of chances to ponder and pray, an occupational hazard for any preacher who, given the time, will quite naturally come up with several points and maybe even a poem or so.

I’ve discovered anew, for instance, the power of habit.  For even though I never really intended to go for 365 days in a row, what began as much smaller goals– a week, a month, 50 days, 100 days–soon turned into more extensive ones.  And to be honest, the only thing that actually got me up and out there at six in the morning some days was simply the streak itself, and my obsessive-compulsive fear that if I broke it, I would never go this long again.

Likewise, I also figured out that the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu was right about the journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step, or as his famous proverb more correctly is translated, it begins “beneath one’s feet.”  For had anyone suggested to me last July that I would make a 4,418,130 step journey on foot, I would have simply laughed, forgetting that all great things do indeed start from humble beginnings.

Through it all, however, my fitness tracker has been absolutely unbending when it comes to resetting the count all over again every 24 hours at midnight.  For to keep the streak going, daily goals required daily responses, and try as I may, I could never figure out how to bank any extra miles from one day to the next.

And all of this would also seem to be true in the spiritual life.  For it is the holy habits we develop (such as prayer, scripture reading, and worship) that slowly but surely change the other facets of our lives as well. Similarly, every good work we might ask God to do in us always begins beneath our own feet, as we step out in faith to respond to His winsome call to “Follow Me.”

What’s more, that journey of discipleship is indeed a daily one, aptly expressed in the Hebrew word halak.  For though our salvation may have been secured in the past, it is always worked out in the present to those who are “being saved.” (1 Corinthians 1.18)  And in the end, it’s not just about imitation, but about intimacy with God as well.  For at numerous points in the Bible we are told that individuals such as Abraham and Enoch “walked with God,” hand-in-hand as friends with their Creator too.

Of course, someone might also point out that having expended an extra 316,667 calories over the last year that I should actually have lost ninety pounds.  But then that really wasn’t the point of it all.  For in the end, most journeys, including spiritual ones, are not really about what you lose, but about what you gain.

And as Year Two begins, I plan to be back out there again tomorrow morning.  After all, I still have to go at least another 1500 miles or so just to get home from California.

He attributed the phrase to Benjamin Disraeli, but you won’t actually find it in any of his works. But in speaking to the power of numbers to bolster an otherwise weak argument, Mark Twain was probably correct to say that there are three kinds of untruths:  “lies, damn lies, and statistics.” And in that sense, some of my colleagues are perhaps not exactly correct in suggesting that 76% of American Methodists are against the traditional understanding of human sexuality outlined in our Book of Discipline.

It’s true that three-quarters of the annual conferences across the United States voted for a majority progressive delegation to the upcoming General Conference in 2020, and likewise more than half passed resolutions in opposition to what is no longer the Traditional Plan but is now actually the reaffirmed law of the church. But that doesn’t really tell the full story.

The Texas Conference, for example, like many across the country, pretty much split the house, electing a largely progressive/centrist delegation on the clergy side, and a wholly traditionalist delegation on the lay side.  But though eight of the nine clergy chosen were on a progressive/centrist voting list (that’s 88% if you are keeping track), because everyone elected must receive at least fifty percent of the ballots plus one, it’s a little like the winner take all Electoral College.  For look at the numbers more carefully and you will find that the progressive majority was actually only about 53% or so, roughly the same percentages as in neighboring Louisiana as well.

In Florida, the progressive margins were slightly higher at around 57 percent but again, because of the system, the clergy delegation elected was 100% progressive, and there were similar results in South Carolina and Georgia.  In West Ohio, there was also a stronger preference for progressive clergy candidates, some 64%, but even there, the 35% traditional pastors were not represented in the 100% progressive delegation.  And in Indiana, the difference between progressive and traditional clergy was only forty to fifty (or 7%) out of the 700 votes that were cast.

On the other hand, I suspect that the progressive clergy in Western Pennsylvania will not really feel represented by the traditional delegation that dominated their elections, just as I know that my progressive friends in Texas felt left out when the traditionalists swept the vote here in prior cycles.  Even this time, the same would be true for progressive laity in places like Texas where, as noted above, the entire slate on that side of the house will reflect a traditional majority.

The point is that in a system involving multiple candidates for multiple positions each requiring a majority vote it’s simply not possible to draw conclusions as to the true mind of the whole church when it comes to controversial issues.  Likewise, suggesting that the delegates who were elected reflect the viewpoints of United Methodists in the pews is more than a little disingenuous when fully half of those who will vote next May in Minneapolis–clergy who tend to be far more progressive than laity–actually represent only 0.4% of those who comprise The United Methodist Church across the globe.  And don’t even get me started on what would appear to be a “cavalier” dismissal (to borrow a term from a colleague) of the forty plus percent of the church that lives in Africa.

In the end, it’s pretty clear thus that at least on the question of human sexuality that we United Methodists are far more closely divided than the delegate count might imply.  What is incumbent upon us a church thus is to find a way to honor those differences and create new communities of faith that can live side by side, though with enough separation to stop our long internecine warfare.  We can stay family if we like, but perhaps we’re better off calling ourselves “cousins in Christ” for the time being, rather than brothers and sisters trying to live together in the same contentious household.

Of course, there’s a 43.7% chance I could be entirely wrong about all of this.  But if so, I have no doubt but that someone will tell me so.  Of that, in fact, I’m 100% sure.

I can’t begin to imagine it. But for a twenty-five year young captain from Arkansas, today was one that forever changed his life.  For after having enlisting in the infantry, J.W.’s talents quickly propelled him to a leadership role.  He arrived thus in England in January 1944, becoming the unit commander and jumpmaster of his parachute company, the 501st Regiment of the famed 101st Airborne known as the “Screaming Eagles.”

It’s clear that he was well prepared thus for the spearhead mission he received some five months later. For the plan was to parachute behind enemy lines near the French town of Saint Côme-du-Mont, and then secure a bridge across the Douve River so that the Germans couldn’t blow it up before the Allies could use it.  But by the time that the pilot pushed the green jump light, the plane had already overshot the landing spot by ten kilometers.  “I saw the river pass by,” he said, “but there was nothing that I could do.”

In turn, J.W. and his men came down in an orchard occupied by enemy soldiers where in the midnight moonlight, two-thirds were shot before they could ever get out of their parachutes. And after playing cat and mouse for hours, J.W. himself was captured and became a prisoner of war.

His first task was to help load the wounded onto a German ambulance, but as he did so, he noticed that he could probably fit under the vehicle and so he quickly slipped down, held onto the frame with his hands and feet, and rode along for several miles before dropping off while the truck went slowly up a hill.  He then wandered around France for three weeks until being captured again, and accused of being a spy, had a noose fitted around his neck until a German commander intervened and he was taken instead to a camp, OFLAG 64 in Poland, becoming Prisoner 80792.

But J.W. was a tough one and managed to escape a second time, only to be recaptured when German soldiers wandered in to sleep in the same barn where he had hidden himself down in the hay.  He was smoked out and returned to camp.  Until finally, he escaped a third time, and wisely decided to head east through Poland and Russia, walking three months until he was finally able to board a British freighter and return to the Allied side.

After the war, he stayed in the Army, and fought as well in the Korean War where he was with the first American platoon to reach the Yalu River.  But like so many of that Greatest Generation, J.W. never thought of himself as a hero at all.  Remembering the thousands who died on that same day that he was captured, in fact, in his words, “the real hero was the plain old gutty doughboy that hit the beaches and climbed the cliffs.”

And that’s very true indeed. But on this seventh-fifth anniversary of the D-Day Invasion that changed the world, you couldn’t convince me that Lieutenant Colonel John Wesley Simmons, whom I was honored to call my father-in-law, wasn’t a hero as well.

Even if he never did make it to the right side of the Douve River.

To be sure, no one is ever really out, even if those on the other team somehow manage to catch the ball in flight, throw it back, and physically chase down and tag the hitter. For in Dream League baseball, it’s all about giving those with special needs– physical, mental, or developmental–the chance to simply experience America’s Pastime and feel the crack of the bat for themselves, even if someone else may be holding that bat with them.

“Angels in the outfield,” or the youth or adults who shadow the participants, not only run the bases, sometimes pushing wheelchairs or even picking up and carrying the players, but they stand–or sit in the grass– with them wherever they may be on the field, even when their partner may be seemingly oblivious to the game around them.

Likewise, rather like 1 Corinthians 13 suggests, in Dream League baseball, love keeps no record of wrongs, or strikes, or scores at all for that matter.  Each team bats until every player has had at least one chance to get on base.  And often, the adult who is pitching will come within just a few feet of the batter, gently toss the ball, and then, should the batter only get it a couple of inches from the base, they will use their own foot to subtly kick that hit further away.

Doubles are de rigueur, homeruns happen regularly, and everybody who makes it around the bases, whether they have actually touched them or not, hears the umpire cry “Safe!” when they arrive back home to the cheers of the crowd, sometimes passing the player in front of them to get there first.

Some might say, of course, that this is not baseball at all, that without all of the rules and regulations–and don’t even get me started on infield fly balls– you can’t really play the game.  But they would be absolutely wrong.  For this is actually baseball at its purest, played out by kids of all ages who are there simply for the chance to participate in a team sport and activity that does not leave them wanting.

A cynic could, of course, comment on the less than perfect skills and abilities of those players, saddled by situations that no doubt sideline them elsewhere in our physically conscious society.  But there is a perfection that is on display at every game, nonetheless, found not just in the differently abled bodies of the players who persevere against numerous odds, but in the care and kindness shown by all those present for everyone else. Indeed, one could even say that both players and their on-field angels perfectly embody what John Wesley called “going onto perfection,” as they are clearly being perfected in love in this life.

In a world obsessed with assessing others, consumed by comparison, all with an eye towards creating winners and losers in every endeavor, the Dream League is thus both an oasis and an example of the beloved community that can be found whenever we look to find God’s perfection in others, no matter what the world might say about them.

Out of all the things we do as a church, in fact, sponsoring a Dream League team is perhaps one of the best as those involved preach a far better sermon on Saturday mornings at the ball fields next door than I can ever do on Sundays in our sanctuary.  For the real dream in this league is that of a world in which those around us are valued for who they really are, that is, sacred and dearly loved children of God.

And if you can watch a game without wiping a tear from your eye, I hate to tell you, but you’ve got a greater disability than anyone else who may be there.

(Photo used by permission)

It’s now been two weeks since the General Conference and the twitterverse is still atwitter.  Moving beyond some of the hype and hyperbole, however, here’s what the Methodists actually did and did not say:

Methodists did not say that LGBTQI persons and their allies are not welcome in our churches, for they always have been and will continue to be. Across our global church, we count as treasured sisters and brothers those who are both gay and straight, as well as those from diverse cultures, backgrounds, and ethnicities, proclaiming that we are all equals at the foot of the Cross, in need of God’s redeeming love.

Methodists likewise did not say that LGBTQI persons are not dearly cherished children of God, for we wholeheartedly believe that all persons are made in the image of God and of sacred worth, deserving of respect and the protection of their civil rights.

Methodists did not try to tell anyone who they can love, or suggest that somehow their love may be less than that of others.  For the truth is, there is a shortage of love in this world and folks should be happy whenever and wherever it is found.

And Methodists did not suggest that LGBTQI members and their allies should simply leave the church if they can’t agree with the doctrines and policies of it.  The “gracious exit” provisions were intended not to throw anyone out, but to throw a lifeline to those from either side of the question whose conscience may not allow them to stay within the denomination.

They did not even proclaim that having a same-sex attraction is a barrier to ordination, for there have long been celibate gay pastors who chose to value ordination over self-expression.

What Methodists did say, however, was that after careful consideration of the biblical witness that they cannot affirm that the practice of homosexuality represents God’s ultimate will for His children, all the celebrations of it notwithstanding.

They did say that they will remain in continuity with the teachings of both the church through the ages and the vast majority of the church world-wide today, rejecting the accommodation to culture that has been made in many quarters of the American church over the past few decades.

They did proclaim that Methodism, once the most American of all churches, is now a truly global movement and that the voices from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and other places are equally valid to those of Americans. They accordingly rejected the colonialist attitudes of some progressives that we in the West know best and that those elsewhere need to simply “grow up,” as one prominent liberal leader has said.

They did affirm that marriage is an institution designed by God and that despite instances to the contrary in parts of the Bible, that the overall tenor of the whole scriptural witness is that it was intended to be a sacred covenant between one man and one woman.  Again, that is not to say that civil unions and domestic partnerships should not be allowed; it is simply to say that in the Methodist understanding, the word marriage itself has a particular meaning that cannot be changed. So Methodist clergy are not allowed by church law to conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies even in nations such as our own where they may be otherwise legal.

Likewise, they suggested that sexuality is a gift of God that is to be exercised only in such a heterosexual marriage.  For long ago the Ten Commandments reminded us that adultery–no matter what expression it may take, straight or gay– is not what God has intended for his children to practice.

And the General Conference agreed that ordination is not a civil right, but a holy rite, a bestowal of the church granted to those who are willing to meet all of the educational, personal, and social requirements that the church believes should be found in any woman or man before they stand before others to proclaim God’s Word.

In short, what the Methodists said in St. Louis was that they will continue to try to be the positive force for God in this world that for three centuries they have been, feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, digging water wells in some places, building Habitat homes in others, visiting those in prison, working for social justice, teaching both young and old, and offering God’s grace and redeeming love to all. They said that they will continue to struggle with how to be both faithful to God’s Witness and open to God’s Spirit.  No matter how difficult that task may be.

Just in case you’ve heard someone say that we said something else instead.

Nobody won this one. For though the One Church Plan was defeated and the Traditional Plan was adopted, the reality is that the Church itself had a terrible day here in St. Louis as the United Methodist General Conference concluded its special session.

It’s not just that we failed to enact the kind of amendments that were needed to make the Traditional Plan, as well as the Gracious Exit provisions, truly workable and meet church constitutional muster. It’s because the reason for that was the sheer duplicity and manipulative maneuverings of those who opposed the plan and were determined to eviscerate it if they couldn’t outright defeat it.

Every dirty political trick one might think of came out of the playbook today, from spurious amendments, non-stop points of order, emotionally charged addresses, pretending to speak for a motion while actually talking against it, gratuitous insults at evangelical leaders (and even some of the bishops whom they thought leaned in that direction), and perfectly timed speeches designed to fill up the three-minute limit and help “run out the clock.” And that doesn’t even count the loud and raucous demonstrations in the gallery and lobby that ended up with a double line of police sealing the arena and taking the delegates out a different way.

Indeed, those opposing the Traditional Plan and Gracious Exit provisions went so far as to accuse the African delegates of allowing their votes to be bought by promises of support from the evangelicals, demanding the ethics committee investigate that charge (in the three remaining hours of the conference) purely on the basis of “rumors” they had heard.

And the result was that though the media may report that United Methodists doubled down on our position on human sexuality, five days and three million dollars later, we’re actually just about the same place we were when we started the meeting. Only now those who were hoping for a change in the progressive direction have been wounded again and before we even adjourned, leaders in the Western Jurisdiction were given the platform to announce that they are going to continue to ignore our rules and defy our Discipline.

I put a lot of the blame on our bishops, for it was their decision to pull the Traditional Plan out of the mix being considered by the Way Forward Commission, only reluctantly agreeing to put it back in at the last moment at the insistence of the African episcopal leaders and a few others. For had the Traditional Plan, as well as the Gracious Exit provisions that the Commission originally envisioned, been given the same treatment and careful vetting by the Commission they would no doubt have emerged with far fewer, if any, constitutional hurdles.

Likewise, the much ballyhooed hype concerning the endorsement of the One Church Plan by 2/3rds of our bishops would perhaps have more meaning if the Council of Bishops was itself more representative. For when five bishops serve a region of less than 340,000 members, and bishops in Africa serve two to three times that many by themselves we obviously may have a bit of imbalance in that group.

In the end what makes me sad, however, is that while I still love the denomination I’ve tried to serve for four decades, I no longer have much confidence in The United Methodist Church and what is supposed to be our sacred connection. It’s a little like the character Doc Holladay says in the classic Western film Tombstone.  Confronted by an obvious lie and obfuscation on his part, Holladay simply shrugs and replies, “It appears that there is no end to my hypocrisy.”

And so it would appear for many within The United Methodist Church tonight as well.  To be certain, there is indeed some inherent hypocrisy in talking about one kind of sexual sin and not others.  But Methodists Behaving Badly by turning “holy conferencing” into a holy mess must surely count as such as well.