Hi Laura,
It is the start of General Conference! Woohoo?!
10 days from now, a lot might be changing. Or nothing could. And as much will or will not change at the denominational-level, today I am thinking more about what should change at the local level. This week, we are continuing to talk about holiness and the opportunity we have now to (re)define what “holy living” could mean for today.
One of our United Methodist beliefs I treasure most is our pursuit of BOTH personal AND social holiness. I think it is profoundly Good News and a characteristic of ours worth reclaiming.
First, let me begin by saying how much I love reading your letters! They evoke so many memories for me. Kate and I also attended Reconciliation UMC for awhile and were surprised by the same joys you discovered there. I couldn’t find whether they are still meeting today, perhaps you know? It’s hard to hold different voices, traditions, and languages together. Sometimes - most times? - tension breaks the bands holding them together. It is anything but easy to be a community of diverse people, one set apart from a culture - and denomination - that is pulling toward polarized directions. I confess that I am lamenting the ways our United Methodist Church has reflected cultural schisms rather than offering the world a different way. “Holiness” in the New Testament can literally mean “set apart.” I wish our churches behaved more holy, set apart and different from the ways of those who do not claim to follow The Way of Jesus.
I am also reminded, however, of the diversity that continues to exist in our United Methodist churches today. I mentioned a few weeks ago in a sermon that Sunday mornings - though still a long, long way from Martin Luther King’s dream - are probably the most diverse rooms our parishioners will be in all week, aside from, perhaps, our students. On any given Sunday, there are staunch Republicans and self-avowed practicing Democrats. There are folks who prefer red carpet to blue and even a few rabble-rousers who’d prefer wooden or concrete floors if given the chance. There are members 9-months old and others who are 97. Folks who are straight and others who are gay. We have life-long Methodists and those who don’t even know “Methodist” is in our name. We have retired CEOs, union workers, laborers, stay-at-home parents, lawyers who commute to downtown Chicago and others who work across the street at the high school.
I LOVE the diversity found in so many of our local United Methodist congregations. There’s a particular holiness still found in our weekly gatherings, united and brought together through Christ. Our denomination has been called a “Big Tent” Church, one in which a great diversity of people have found their spiritual home. While we, of course, have a long ways to go, we should not miss out on naming and celebrating the diversity that does exist among us now. This is something profoundly counter-cultural in our country.
For in our diversity, we embody one of the tenets of our tradition: social holiness, taking Jesus’ call to love our neighbors seriously.
John Wesley is often quoted for saying, “The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness.” And, holiness is social because God - the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - is social. You rightly named this arm of our tradition as “being with.” Sunday mornings are tremendous examples of “being with” our neighbors in fellowship and community. I am proud - in a most holy way of course - to continue to be part of a tradition full of “progressives” and “conservatives” and folks in between. Speaking of which, an interesting article was recently released of congregations in North Carolina who chose to remain United Methodist, discovering them to be “more politically and theologically diverse than those that left.”1
That isn’t easy to do. Sometimes the tension breaks. But, even with our foibles, efforts, and lack thereof, we give witness to the God who prays that we will be one, the same God who will gather every tribe, tongue, and nation together in Glory. And, if that’s what heaven is going to be like, then I celebrate any glimpse I get of it today.
The sentence before John Wesley’s famous social holiness statement is much less quoted, but perhaps more provoking: “Holy Solitaries is a phrase no more consistent with the Gospel than Holy Adulterers.” The Very Good Life God desires for every person to enjoy is one lived in community, not separate or apart or isolated from others. I believe Jesus deeply laments the fracturing of His Church and all those congregations who have gone “independent.” Not only is it un-Methodist (Methodists are connectional, after all), it is also unlike Jesus.
Any time churches work together. Any time there is a local interfaith group. Any time United Methodist congregations want to pitch-in for a potluck or combine choirs at Christmastime, I am all. for. it. And will do anything I can to widen the tables. That’s what we United Methodists do, we stick together…even when it’s hard and messy and painful. Because that’s what Jesus told us to do.
The other arm of holiness is the personal part. And, ho boy, is that one tough. Because it’s no longer about what someone else is or is not doing; it’s about what I am or am not doing.
The UMC Discipleship page offers a helpful definition of holiness as, “the practice of obeying Jesus’ commandments to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind [and strength], loving your neighbor as yourself, and loving one another (fellow members of your local congregation) as Christ loves.”2
Personal holiness is so convicting. Before I worry about the speck in another’s eye, Jesus tells me address the plank in my own. Before I throw stones at “sinners,” Jesus reminds me that I am one as well. And before I tout my own righteousness and faithfulness, Jesus says the Older Son is just as much a prodigal as the Younger, perhaps even further away from his father than the sibling who abandoned the family farm.
As much as I relish sitting on the saddle of my High Horse, I need to remember Jesus’ call to love both God and my neighbor. You can’t have one without the other.
Holiness reminds me to check my own motivations. It calls out my cynicism, challenges my insecurities, and confronts my hubris. It reminds me my first call - always and in every circumstance - is to love. Because that’s what Jesus did.
Ok, here’s my last part and it’s, again, from the UMC Discipleship Ministries:
In their striving after holiness the Methodist societies became channels of grace for the world. They pursued peace, the shalom of God, as they followed Christ in their world by feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, welcoming the strangers, caring for the sick, and visiting the prisoners.3
Personal and social holiness are inseparable. One leads into the other with a beautiful reciprocity that somehow transforms both the world and individuals like me.
Yes, holiness is a loaded word. And, yes, it carries a lot of baggage for a lot of people. I also know, however, the people called United Methodist - through our casseroles, Brunswick stews, and covered dishes - can show the world a new kind of holiness, one whose heart is love and whose hands work for justice.
Growing up, I used to sing a simple little song in youth group. It went like this:
Holiness, holiness is what I long for
Holiness is what I need
Holiness, holiness is what You want from me
So take my heart and form it
Take my mind, transform it
Take my will, conform it,
to Yours, to Yours, oh Lord
That was my prayer then and continues to be today - for myself, for our denomination, and for the ones we serve.
Thanks, Laura. I am grateful to be on this journey with you.
- Jared
https://divinity.duke.edu/news/congregations-hold-more-diverse#:~:text=Congregations%20that%20remained%20with%20the,Social%20Change%20Lab%20at%20Duke.
https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/blog/no-holiness-but-social-holiness
https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/blog/holiness-the-united-methodist-way