Monday, December 4, 2000

There are among us an ever-increasing number of faithful people who believe that the United Methodist Church's position on human sexuality is one which holds gay and lesbian people captive to legalistic biblical interpretation and to moral high grounding.

Last May, at the United Methodist General Conference in Cleveland, witnesses stood on the floor of Conference and proclaimed release to these captives. But as they sang and cried and prayed, they became captives themselves. At the direction of the presiding bishop, they were arrested and imprisoned in the Cleveland jail for "disrupting a lawful meeting."

During a speech on the floor of General Conference, Karen Olivetto, former chair of the Reconciling Congregations Program Board of Directors, said, "I ask that we understand that people are willing to put their bodies on the line and risk arrest because the church has already put them under arrest. They are already in jails of inhospitality. We have jailed calls, we have jailed lives and we have jailed love."

That night, as I received a number of phone calls from friends who had been arrested, a song by a local folk artist kept going through my mind.

    "I think that God is sleeping
    Or the angels have resigned
    I'm sure there's no one keeping
    A peaceful, watchful eye.

    Are you listening are you knowing
    All the desperate, silent calls
    Of the ones who keep on hoping
    And that's the hardest thing of all.

    Is there no one left in heaven
    Making sure we won't forget
    What we learned from painful lessons
    And must not repeat again.

    I think that God is sleeping.
    I think that God is sleeping..." Ann Reed from her album, "Life Gets Real"

There are times when I am filled with such anguish and despair for this beloved church of ours. As I listened to the pain of my friends and saw pictures of their arrest, I wondered too if God is sleeping, if there is no one keeping a peaceful, watchful eye.

What a mess. What a chaotic, noxious, hopeless mess.

I've longed for Advent and the reminder that, even in spite of evidence to the contrary, God is not sleeping, but is giving birth to embodied, flesh-and-bone, compassion. In this season we know God is coming and God will sit with us in the midst of the woundedness and the mess. --AD

PRAYER:

"Blessed be the God of Israel, who comes to set us free, who visits and redeems us, and grants us liberty. The prophets spoke of mercy, of freedom and release; God shall fulfill the promise to bring our people peace." (United Methodist Hymnal #209)

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