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St. Luke’s United Methodist Church
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| David, single, lonely, and not happy with his life, flees reality by watching
Pleasantville, a 1950s black and white soap opera, where everything is
just…pleasant. When David and his sister, Jennifer, get into a fight, they
suddenly find themselves in Pleasantville, as Bud and Mary Sue Parker. They are
completely assimilated, and therefore, black and white, with clothes a little
different and with new parents…pleasant ones.
However, the more the rules of pleasant-living are broken, the more colorful and stressful life gets in Pleasantville. In this scene, the men cannot understand all the changes. For the first time, rain is falling. The house is dark. Dinner is not on the table. What’s a man to do? What are we to say about these things? (MOVIE CLIP OF “PLEASANTVILLE”) It is “Love and Romance” weekend at the Renaissance Festival in Larkspur. Three weddings are celebrated. A mass renewal of vows occurs late in the afternoon. As I watch persons wander the mountainside sporting all manner of clerical costuming, I remember my friend, Alice. Alice is the first clergy woman appointed to the United Methodist Church in Fruita, Colorado, on the western slope. She is the first clergy woman ever to serve in Fruita. She meets the other clergy in town, finding out that they meet once a month for lunch. She enjoys the gatherings, visiting, sharing stories, planning for the ecumenical Thanksgiving service. In September, she arrives at the restaurant and can’t find her colleagues. She later learns that several of the men have emergencies. Somehow she does not get the word that the luncheon is cancelled. The next month, she arrives at the restaurant and seems to have missed the gathering a second time. Later that afternoon, the Assembly of God pastor comes to her office with an apology. The four other clergymen are moving the meeting and, purposefully, not informing her. They don’t want her to be associated with the Thanksgiving service. They think that she will contaminate the altar of the host church, if she participates. The Mayor of Pleasantville is correct. “Something is happening to our town. It’s a question of values. It’s a question of whether we want to hold on to those values that made this place great. A time has come to make a decision.” Today, I want to think about decision-making and the leadership of men and women. What are we to say about these things? For several weeks, we rehearse the biblical leadership of men and women. We begin at the beginning. We learn that two creation stories exist side by side in Genesis. The first affirms that God creates humankind, simultaneously, in God’s own image. “And it is very good!” The second story has God creating a woman for the man only after no other animal in creation is found to be a suitable companion. The woman turns to the serpent, leads her husband astray, and God is angry. We then note that Jesus, the Jewish rabbi, knows both stories. Jesus preaches that God has responded to people in a new way. “The time is fulfilled,” he proclaims, “and the kingdom of God is among you. Repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:15) Because of this message, he gathers a counter-cultural community, setting men and women free from the barriers of class, gender, and occupation. Then we imagine the year, 50. What if the disciples, James and Peter, following the death and resurrection of Jesus, call a gathering of the Christian missionary movement throughout the Mediterranean? These people, Hebrew and Greek, lead in the power of the Holy Spirit. Both men and women receive gifts and exercise leadership. House churches are founded throughout the region. In baptism, new converts are “clothed in Christ”. Paul writes to the new church in Galatia: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Then, last week, we read Ephesians and Timothy. These letters contain household codes on the submission of wives to their husbands, children to their parents, slaves to their masters. Between the stories of Jesus and the spirited house churches…and the assertion of the household codes, the world for the non-Roman shifts radically. Any religious group who does not honor Caesar as God is persecuted or exterminated. Therefore, in the last decades of the first century, writings emerge which urge Christians to live in peace with civil authority. They seek to order relationships in ways similar to the Roman households. The codes consist of three pairs of teaching addressing the relationship between wives and husbands, children and fathers, slaves and masters. In each case, the socially sub-ordinate first member of the pair is exhorted to obedience to the super-ordinate second. This obedience is based on the order of creation from the second story in Genesis. The new freedom in Christ is quickly fading. The discipleship of equals in the Jesus community is no more. What then shall we say about these things? It is a rhetorical question that Paul asks in his letter to the church at Rome. It is an appropriate question to pose after our sweep of the Bible. What do these readings mean for us? What choices do we make? Paul answers his question with a question, “If God is for us, who is against us?” Paul has written a letter to say that it is by God’s gift of faith that we are in covenant with God. We receive this gift by grace, by opening our hearts to its unconditional regard. The statement that “God is for us” is about as basic a way as can be conceived of summing up this good news. Therefore, “who is against us?” Clearly, he expects the answer, “Nobody!” But there are plenty of candidates lined up to be considered. His mission may cost his life, considering the opposition from Jerusalem and Rome. But Paul stands firm. There is one God, and if this God is on our side, then no force on earth or elsewhere can ultimately stand against us. What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? Nobody! I like to use the quadrilateral of scripture, tradition, experience, and reason to place the commitments of the faith in conversation with contemporary concerns. In so doing, we are able to discern how we might choose to live in new and changing circumstances. Whereas, Chris likes to use the image of a window to think about questions, I like the image of a wind chime. Scripture, for me, is the foundation, the primary criterion for the Christian life. But Scripture itself must be balanced by the counterweight of the chimes, all of which are tied directly into the biblical witness. None are independent of Scripture, or of the other norms with which each interacts. Each has its own tone, its own voice that needs to sound for music to be made. Moreover, the music of these chimes is not produced by their collision. Rather a clapper is suspended from the very center of the base, rooted as it were in the heart of the Scripture swinging back and forth among the chimes to strike the tones. This clapper is for me the community of faith, the church that is involved in dynamic ways with each of the modes of thinking. One final touch. The purpose of the wind chime is to make music. If there is no wind, the chimes stand stagnant, purposeless, and silent. But when the wind blows, when a dynamic force sets the wind chime in motion – then the music begins. The wind in this image is of course the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit that animates the whole. Perhaps the best aspect of this image is the fact that, true to our heritage, it all ends in song. Let’s test this images as a way of thinking about some contemporary issues. When Pope John Paul II dies, the media asks questions about the nature of the priesthood. I go directly to an apostolic letter of John Paul II in May 1994, on “Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone” . It says that the Church does not consider herself authorized to admit women to the priesthood. The sacred scriptures record that Jesus chooses his Apostles only from among men. The church is imitating Christ by maintaining this practice. Her teaching authority holds that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God’s plan. The Pope says that the church is not free, does not have the authority, to change this practice because it is rooted in the will of Christ. This conviction is preserved in the tradition. The priest’s role can be fulfilled only by a man because it is intrinsically connected with God’s begetting creativity. “Women can no more be priests than men can be mothers.” When I am in seminary, I am naively hopeful about the leadership of women. I go to school with a dozen Catholic nuns, who are getting their education, preparing for the day when women will be ordained as priests. One day, after an optimistic comment, Sister Sara takes my face in her hands to say, “Janet, this change will not happen in our lifetime. You and I simply do not have the right plumbing! Among the Catholic faithful, scripture and tradition are the tones of the conversation. When I use the quadrilateral to think about the faith, my desire is to build community. I want to set a table where the diversity of opinion is welcomed, where everyone may bring the traditions of their parents and the struggle of forming a unique voice. When community is broken, the quadrilateral fails. In high school, Susan falls in love with a young man of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormon Church. She is conflicted between her feelings and her understanding of the role of women in that tradition. Susan counsels with me. I encourage her to read the doctrine of the church. I invite her to seek no relationship that will thwart her potential. When she was baptized into the Mormon church, she does not invite me, knowing that I do not approve of her choice. What she does not know is that I am committed to standing with her, loving her, honoring her right to choose, no matter what. When Susan leaves the table, the table itself is diminished. Beloved, whether we agree, or agree to disagree, we belong together. “It’s a question of values. It’s a question of whether we want to hold on to those values that make this place great.” (Pleasantville) What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? Nobody! |