(Isaiah 43: 16-21, Luke 24: 13-24)
There is a word used in the study of cultures. The word is “liminality.” It comes from the Latin word “limen,” which means “threshold.”[1] It refers to the disorientation that can happen in a religious ritual, when a person is in the midst of the transition between what and who they were before the ritual and what and who they will become after it is complete.
Liminality is being in the in-between—at the threshold between what is old and what is emerging—between what is before and what will come. It is indeed like being between sleep and wakefulness. You are beginning to see the hints of dawn, but you are still lost in the murkiness and uncertainty of the dream.
We are at this threshold place in our church and in our world. The world has become flat—technology and communication and changing patterns of global migration have brought dramatic changes to societies. Many are feeling disoriented by that change. And we know that disorientation can breed fear, and fear can sometimes bring out the worst in people. I imagine it like a great upheaval. Out of the heaving of our foundations, some of our worst instincts are rising up.
You know what I mean--violence, racism, tribalism, nationalism, antisemitism, and authoritarian regimes on the rise. In some parts of the world, a growing viciousness in national dialogue and a falling away of ethical norms. Why is this happening? Because when we are disoriented and afraid, we are vulnerable to the worst instincts from within and from without.
This reality of our current time represents a particular challenge for the Church. The Church must be an effective witness in the midst of this great upheaval, even as it faces its own challenges. And we know that the Church is challenged, because it is not just the world that is at a threshold. It is also the Church.
We are increasingly in a post-Christian era that is at once more secular and more religiously pluralistic. Christianity is no longer at the center. People are becoming less attached to institutions of all kinds, including the Church. The old structures are falling away.
And for us, as United Methodists, we stand at a particularly significant threshold in the life of our church. The date looms large in our heads. What will happen in St. Louis in February of 2019? What will we become? Will our connection hold?
We are at this threshold, and we are disoriented and afraid. Indeed, if the typical reaction to fear is flee or fight—ours I think is to freeze. Anticipating great change ahead, but not knowing the nature of that change, some of us are in a type of fear-induced paralysis. Maybe friends what can help us see our way through that fear are the affirmations of hope that we find in Scripture.
Your heard these words read earlier, from that well-known passage in Isaiah 43?
Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?[1]
These words were spoken to a people who were likewise at a threshold in their life as a community. They were in a time of exile. They had been driven from the land they held sacred. Their temple had been destroyed.
The prophet was preaching to a dispersed and despairing people who were caught between what had been and what was to come. And he sought to bring them a message of hope. “Forget the former things,” he said, “God is doing a new thing on Israel’s behalf.”
The God who had redeemed Israel--the faithful God who had led Israel out of slavery in Egypt— this God was doing a new thing. The God who had guided the Israelites through 40 years of wilderness—the God who had given them water from a rock and manna from heaven—this God of the Exodus, would do a new thing in the life of Israel of the exile. Isaiah was asking them to imagine that even in the passing away of former things, God was doing something new. Could they not perceive it?
Could it be friends that this perceiving—this seeing--is what God is calling us to do at this time in the life of our connection? Religious historian Diana Butler Bass posits in her book Christianity After Religion that what looks like the end of Christendom may be the beginning of another Great Awakening. This is what she writes,
“Awakenings begin when old systems break down, in ‘periods of cultural distortion and grave personal stress, when we lose faith in the legitimacy of our norms, the viability of our institutions and the authority of our leaders in church and state.’ A “critical disjunction” in how we perceive ourselves, God, and the world arises from the stress. The end of the old opens the way for the new.”[2]
In this place of disorientation and fear, where old systems have broken down and where we are questioning the legitimacy of our norms and the viability of our institutions—in this in-between place where Christendom, as we have known it, seems to be falling away, could it be that God might just be birthing something new?
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once talked of the new things God was doing. As many of you know, today is the 50th anniversary of his assassination. He was standing on a balcony of a hotel in Memphis, Tennessee on the evening of April 4, 1968. He was preparing to participate in a march with sanitation workers when he was struck down by an assassin’s bullet. We remember that day with sadness. I invite us also to remember his life and witness as inspiration.
King preached his last Sunday sermon just four days before his assassination. He preached on March 31, 1968-- on Passion Sunday--at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. In that sermon, King highlighted the many changes that were taking place in the world. Using a text from Revelations, King said, “Yes, we do live in a period where changes are taking place and there is still the voice crying through the vista of time saying, “Behold, I make all things new, former things are passed away.”[3]
What King saw God making new was a worldwide expression of beloved community. This is what he said. “First, we are challenged to develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one. The challenge that we face today is to make it one in terms of brotherhood….We must all learn to live together as brothers [and sisters]. Or we will all perish together as fools.”[4]
These are prophetic words. Especially in a time of backlash against the other—of fear of the other. Especially in a time of growing divisiveness and hate. These are prophetic words calling us to world community--to a beloved community that embraces the world.
Could it be friends of the CT, that even as we stand at this threshold—at this in-between place in the life of our denomination, not knowing what will come—could it be that God is doing a new thing in the church and we are being called to see it and to help our church to see it?
Could it be that we are being called newly to our purpose to discern and articulate a vision for a worldwide church—a worldwide church steeped in a Gospel of love—grounded in a theology of grace--a worldwide church that is true to our Wesleyan DNA—a DNA that calls us beyond ourselves—into streets and prisons, hospitals and schoolrooms--into the world that John Wesley called our parish.
This vision for a worldwide church is connected to our mission to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, because discipleship is lived out most authentically with our arms open to the world. Discipleship is expressed at its best when we are in ministry with partners around the world--not in paternalistic or colonial ways--but as equal partners, each bringing gifts and resources and wisdom to the living out of God’s call to be disciples. Our vision for a worldwide church is connected to our mission of making disciples and being disciples who bring hospitality and healing to the world—hospitality and healing that cannot and should not be dictated by borders.
Our vision for a worldwide church is expressed eloquently in paragraph 125 of our Book of Discipline—our worldwide covenant. This covenant envisions us,
“Integrally holding connectional unity and local freedom [seeking] to proclaim and embody the gospel in ways responsible to our specific cultural and social context while maintaining “a vital web of interactive relationships.”[5]
Friends, there is a tension that comes from the rubbing together of these values expressed in this covenant—the values of connectional unity and local freedom. This tension is potentially the spark that can ignite something new. We don’t have to choose between either/or. Something new can come out of the tension between both/and--between the uniqueness of our local context and the unity of our global connection.
This covenant and this vision tell us that, “For our connectionalism to become a living practice, we need to carry the worldwide nature of The United Methodist Church deep into the life and mission of our local congregations.[6]
Could it be friends, that we are being called to articulate a vision for what God intends The United Methodist Church to be, as a worldwide church, and to carry that vision into our local congregations—whether they be in Baton Rouge or Kinshasa, Copenhagen or Manilla.
Could it be that our task is to embrace the worldwide nature of our connection and to equip United Methodists to let our worldwide identity, and the possibilities that it entails, seep deep down into our denominational bones.
Throughout this meeting and through the rest of the quadrennium, we will be highlighting the overall purpose of the Connectional Table—to discern and articulate the vision, to be stewards of the mission, ministry and resources for a worldwide church. And we will talk about ways to frame our work in terms of vision for a worldwide church seeking to carry out God’s mission in the world.
Why are we doing this now in light of what might happen in 2019 or 2020? We are doing this out of a passionate conviction that as important as those General Conference sessions will be, after they are over, there will still be a United Methodist Church. We don’t know what it will look like, but we are sure that there will still be a United Methodist Church, and God will still be calling our church to mission in the world.
That means that no matter what happens in the rules committee at General Conference, God is still calling our church to be in ministry with poor communities that will be disproportionately impacted by the ravages of climate change. No matter what happens in the agenda committee at General Conference, God is still calling our church to address the killer diseases of poverty—whether those diseases be malaria in Africa or obesity in the United States.
No matter what happens in the legislative sessions or on the plenary floor of General Conference, God is still calling us to radical hospitality—to living out our discipleship by welcoming more people, younger people more diverse people—and yes, all people, no matter distinctions of race or ethnicity, immigration status or social class--no matter distinctions of ability or gender, gender identity or sexual orientation. No matter what happens in our internal struggles, God is still calling The United Methodist Church to be a place for grace and transformation and healing and radical love and truth and decency and ethical grounding for the world.
God is indeed doing a new thing. God intends to keep doing new things. Can we not perceive it? Are we so focused on ourselves that we cannot see the possibility of the new thing that God is doing? Maybe we are just like those disciples, described in our passage in Luke, who did not at first recognize the resurrected Christ. You heard that didn’t you? “Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him,”(Luke 24: 15b-16)
Those disciples were just like us. They were at a threshold, an in-between place—between what had been when their savior was alive and what would come after his death. They were disoriented and afraid--bereft at the loss of their savior—despairing at the loss of what they had expected life would be. And in their disorientation and despair and fear, they could not see the new thing God was doing—they could not initially see that they were walking along that road to Emmaus with the resurrected Christ in their midst.
In this Easter season—in this season of resurrection-- might we discern and see and vision what new things God might be doing in our midst? I want to end by sharing with you a poem. It is called “The Vision,” by Wendell Berry.
THE VISION[7]
By Wendell BerryIf we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow-growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it.
if we will make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth and heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live here,
their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides,
fields and gardens rich in the windows.
The river will run clear, as we will never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steps where greed and ignorance cut down the old forest,
an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground.
They will take nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting.
Memory, native to this valley, will spread over it like a grove,
and memory will grow into legend,
legend into song, song into sacrament.
The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling light.
This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility.
Its hardship is its possibility. The hard work is seeing the possibility—seeing the possibility of what God is doing new-- of the newness of resurrection-- of an unexpected breath of new life. The hard work is seeing the possibility that the resurrected Christ is walking in full sight among us.
The CT’s purpose—our very reason for being--is to do the hard work of seeing and then to call our denomination beyond fear and paralysis to see with us. The seeing is the hard work, because to see, we must lift our eyes from ourselves and be open to the vision of God and the needs of the world. To see we must lift our eyes from fear and despair and our own disorientation and be open to God’s vision of resurrection and hope.
Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
God is about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, can we not perceive it?
(Isa 43: 18-19)
[1] Isaiah 43: 18-19, NRSV
[2] Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, HarperCollins, New York: 2012, p. 29. She is quoting William McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings and Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, p. 2)
[3] Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” in A Testament of Hope: the Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., ed. James M. Washington, HarperCollins, New York: 1986, p. 269
[4] Ibid., 269
[5] The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church, ¶125, p. 95.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Wendell Berry, “The Vision,” in Clearing (New York: Harcourt, 1977.