• “What will the majority think?”
• “What actions will the majority generate?”
• “Who will get hurt?”
For 30-plus years these matters have generated enormous pain throughout the church.
Some of us feel heartbroken to hear our church say to our gay and lesbian children and friends, “You can be a lover or a leader, but not both.” They fall in love with a significant other, and they feel called to serve God as an officer, yet our church tells them they can’t follow both paths. Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, we impose the celibacy requirement on them alone. So our hearts break as they walk away from our prejudiced church.
Others of us feel distressed as our church relentlessly tries to find ways to bless behaviors the Bible aims to redeem. We open our doors to gays and lesbians. But leaders have to subscribe to standards of belief and practice. God’s standard for human intimacy, as revealed in the Bible, is clear: a husband and a wife make a family. So our hearts break as those committed to the traditional family keep walking away from our liberalizing church.
Still others of us are caught in the middle. We hurt to see so much heartache cycling throughout our church. When we perceive that smug attitude of certitude, when we hear waves of accusations and counter-accusations, and when we observe manipulation of our polity, we feel ashamed. It hurts us to see our church mucking around in ecclesial mud. We know we can do better, but we don’t know how.
Enter the 218th General Assembly. Several hundred commissioners will encounter all this hurt and more. Overtures prepared by well-intended presbyteries to resolve the hurt cover the waterfront of options:
• eliminate the prohibitive, 1993 authoritative interpretations of the Constitution;
• delete or amend the Constitution’s fidelity-chastity requirement for ordination ratified in 1997;
• undo the limitation on scrupling by ordination candidates defined by the church’s highest court this past February;
• eliminate all scrupling by candidates;
• commission a study on the rights of same-sex partners, including, maybe, marriage.
Given that we are semper reformanda, ever to be reformed by the word of God and the Holy Spirit, the commissioners will struggle to hear that word amid the cacophony of political process.
Politically speaking, a majority will probably emerge that will either affirm the existing standards, will overturn them in some way, or find a mediating position. We need to hear more than any of those three answers.
If the answer is one that maintains the existing rules, we also need to hear how grace operates amid such rules. We often say, “Love the sinner; hate the sin,” but at least in the public’s eye, we seem to work harder at the hating part than at the loving part. Jesus’ relationship with people of questionable morals was so close and so constant that he was accused of being one of them. How many us in our day have faced such accusations on account of our care of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered persons? The gospels tell us that Jesus often rebuked Pharisees and scribes for their hypocrisy, but they record few scoldings of drunkards, prostitutes, and tax collectors. Yes, he did finally confront all sin, but he did so by dying for it. If we are to maintain the existing rules, we need to see a whole lot more of Jesus among us.
If the answer is one that would overturn the existing rules, we also need to see how grace operates amid that new set of rules. What about the grace-filled doctrines of sin, repentance, and holiness? Many of us who argue for blessing same-sex covenants don’t seem to draw the line right there. Do we also oppose multiple-lover relationships and teenage sexual experimentations? To be safe, sex needs not only to avoid the exchange of bodily fluids. It also needs to exchange rings: “forsaking all others” rings. Jesus died not only to forgive sinners but also to free them from their sin-bent living. If we are to change the rules, we need to hear the Jesus who rejoins “neither do I condemn you” with “go and sin no more.”
And, of course, if a mediating position emerges at the Assembly, will it simply be a compromise of convenience, or will it rise to the level of insight that would cause a strong majority of commissioners to declare, “We have heard the word of the Lord at the 218th GA?”
Then again, if and when a majority does emerge, what shall they do about it?
The commissioners will not want their efforts to backfire. When the 2000 GA proposed an explicit prohibition of same-sex unions, the presbyteries rejected it overwhelmingly. When the 2001 GA proposed allowing ordaining bodies to set their own ordination standards, the presbyteries overwhelmingly rejected that, too. The folks back home will need to hear the word of the Lord for themselves before they embrace any legislated initiative to come from the GA.
Also, any action that appears underhanded or slipped in a back door will unleash a backlash of recriminations against the integrity of the Assembly.
One thing this year’s commissioners can do is to teach. It sounds almost too obvious, but if there is a way forward for the church, hearts and minds need to be changed. Fifty-two Sundays a year, Reformed Christians do that by proclaiming the word of God. Our commissioners can report what they have learned not only in a single, perfunctory presentation to their presbyteries but also by visiting area churches and sharing and engaging in dialogue with them.
The commissioners to this GA will encounter our shared heartache and pain. All of us need to be in prayer for them that a clearer way forward would arise from their prayerful deliberations. May grace and wisdom guide the outcome.
— JHH
*At every point in this essay the term “commissioners” should be read as inclusive of the advisory delegates as well.
