Council in Louisville

Council in Louisville

Acts 15:1-21

Sunday, June 17, 2001
Manhattan Presbyterian Church, El Paso, TX.

The Rev. Trina Zelle

Trina Zelle serves Manhattan Presbyterian Church, in El Paso, Texas and serves as Border Ministries Coordinator in Sunland Park, NM. She is currently the Secretary- Communicator of the Witherspoon Society.

To begin - let's start at the end, because no one's going to pay attention to what was done before that until we do. And let me start at that end point by tossing out to you a few sayings that have become part of our popular culture: "Children learn what they live." "You are a child of the universe, you have the right to be here." "I learned everything I need to know in kindergarten." Remember those phrases? I've got another one for you: It's not nearly as catchy but every bit as important: "Everything we need to function as a church community is still in our Book of Order." That's what we call the constitution of the Presbyterian Church, USA. "The Rules," you might say.

But to read our newspapers and listen to radio and TV reporters, you'd think otherwise. You'd think that our minister and elder commissioners to General Assembly - ordinary folks like you and me - voted two days ago to promote sexual license, nullify family values and take a wrecking ball to the institution of marriage. I'm sure that sermon is even being preached this morning in a number of Presbyterian churches.

I'm also sure that before my plane left Louisville yesterday afternoon - no, before the assembly broke for dinner Friday night - you'd already been slapped in the face by the first wave of reaction to this decision - from media and otherwise. "What were you Presbyterians thinking," a non-Presbyterian neighbor might have asked you. I am, of course, referring to the vote our General Assembly took Friday to abolish what has been called "Amendment B," "G-6.0106b" or the "fidelity and chastity" amendment.

That last title is an especially misleading one and doesn't give a clue as to why everyday Presbyterians - 60% of the commissioners to our General Assembly - voted to get rid of it. If its title reflected its nature with more accuracy, I believe you'd find their actions easier to understand. Because, brothers and sisters, G-6.0106b, Amendment B, Fidelity and Chastity, didn't so much affirm the very laudable notions of fidelity and chastity as it provided a hunting license to purge the church of what one segment of our denomination has decided are undesirables. And in the five years since its passage at the 1996 GA in Albuquerque, that's how it's been used. To go after the undesirables. In judicial case after judicial case. With many more in the wings.

Now, before we go any further I want us to stop and reflect for a moment. What makes someone an undesirable? At least in the context of church. Is it someone we don't like? Or someone Jesus wouldn't have liked? I mean, if we're really interested in what Jesus would do - as we evidently are based on the WWJD paraphernalia that's all over the place - doesn't that imply we intend to imitate him once we think we know what he would do? To the point of excluding the same people he did?

Well, there's a problem here. Whom did Jesus exclude? No one that I can think of, although he was pretty rough on hypocrites - especially the ones who flaunted their personal piety while taking financial advantage of the poor and vulnerable. It's not that Jesus had a soft spot for other kinds of sin; it's simply a matter of not giving them equal weight. Some issues just aren't as important as others. Jesus knew that and we need to figure it out too.

But what Amendment B did was to take an issue that is not even addressed in scripture - the validity of a committed relationship between gay adults - and gave it the centrality that only the person of Christ deserves. Because make no mistake about it, these are the folks that B targeted as "undesirable." Amendment B wasn't designed to flush out elders or clergy run amok - breaking their marriage vows or exploiting vulnerable persons. That kind of behavior was dealt with in the Book of Order years ago. The rules are still there and no one is suggesting that they be removed or amended. No, B was specifically designed to set up persons whose own life-long commitments have no venue for validation. The closest situation I can compare it to are those men and women out on the American frontier who found it necessary to live married lives before the actual ceremony, because the itinerant preacher only came around every few years. And when he did (it was always "he" back then), he usually ended up baptizing a few babies as well as tying the knot for their mom and dad.

Did this order of things make our great grandparents bad, or immoral people? Or the ministers who finally married them guilty of encouraging sinful behavior? I don't think so. They may not have put it in so many words, but what these folks did was recognize that ceremonies don't make something true, they recognize as true something that already exists. This applies to everything from baptism to confirmation to marriage to ordination. We should be so wise.

But evidently we aren't - or haven't been. Because what amendment B does is say to decent folks, "Your relationship is not legitimate, there is no way to legitimate it, therefore you are not fit to do anything in the church. After all, you're living in sin." Pretty slick. We'll make sure you can't do the thing that will put you in compliance with the requirements for ministry (that's what amendment O was about last year), and then we'll attack you for not being in compliance. I thought Joseph Heller already wrote Catch 22.

So what happened at the 213^th gathering of the Presbyterian Church's General Assembly is that the great middle of the church - folks like you if not me - said, "Enough." Enough. I may not understand this issue; I may not be comfortable with it; it's outside of my realm of experience, but it does not deserve the fury and attention that it's been receiving. We're not about sex, we're about the lordship of Jesus Christ and doing his ministry in the world. We need workers for the harvest. If some of those workers don't experience life the way I do, well that's God's business.

That's not what news reporters or some preachers want to pass on to you so you're not going to run into it very much. Actually, you're the ones who are going to have to pass it on to others. No, Presbyterians are still ag'in sin. We just have better things to do than spend money that should be going to feed the hungry and bring God's word to the desperate - on harassing other Christians. Christians that we need. Christians that are already grafted into the Body of Christ whether we recognize it or not. We're not about who's out. We're about who's in. Which is everybody. Didn't Jesus say, "Whoever is not against me, is for me."? The door is open to anyone who wants to come in and thank God for them. Thank God for all of you.

You can tell anyone who challenges you to talk to me. I'll point them in the direction of Jesus. Amen.