Sermon 2019.06.23
The Whole Church Met
(Acts 15:1-2,6-19; Annual Conference reflection)

1. Coming home.  It has been a few weeks since I’ve had the privilege of speaking with you. Many of you know that I’ve been travelling since the end of May… and what an itinerary! …

	Boston – to see my daughter graduate from college
	Iceland – where I had a 13 hour layover and got to worship in Icelandic
	England – to meet an old friend for a 50th birthday celebration
	The edge of the Roman Empire – as we walked Hadrian’s Wall for 80 miles
	Iceland – where I had a really bad hamburger
	Boston – because my airlines couldn’t coordinate

… and finally Green Bay for the Wisconsin Annual Conference, the annual meeting of all the Methodist churches in Wisconsin for business, worship, celebration, and fellowship.

You might think that attending a three-day meeting while suffering from jet lag would be hard. But for me, Annual Conference is like coming home. I love to visit with my fellow pastors and friends. I get to see folks from churches I’ve served in the past. I got to see OUMC folks too – Jessica, Jan, and Sean all attended the conference as well. And most of my family was there – my wife Anna-Lisa was there as the clergy representative of La Crosse: Bridges UMC, my son Erick was a young adult rep from our North Central District, and my daughter Anna was a young adult rep from the South West District. 

2. Elephant to the front.  This was a particularly interesting Annual Conference. Ever since I’ve been a part of the United Methodist Church, we’ve been dancing around the topic of homosexuality. There’s been a tug-of-war at all levels in the church between those who prefer a traditional position limiting the role of LGBTQ people in the church, and those who advocate for full inclusion. This has been the elephant in the room for decades, and we’ve mostly danced around it – avoiding the topic, or ignoring it, or avoiding it.

No longer. At the special global United Methodist General Conference earlier this year, our church leaders tried to deal with the issue and instead made a mess of things. The decisions made by a bare 53% vote – to punish those who sought to be more inclusive – were more about power, politics, and money than about dialogue and discernment.  

That woke the elephant up and made it front and center. At Annual Conferences across the United States – the regional meetings of churches – the response has been overwhelmingly to repudiate the General Conference decision and seek a better way forward. Traditionalists supporting the punitive position have won less than 30% of the American seats at next year’s General Conference. 

Moreover, Annual Conferences are actively voting to resist the Traditional Plan. Annual Conferences are where the action takes place in The United Methodist Church – where pastors are ordained and appointed, and where money is collected and distributed to ministries. Our Wisconsin Annual Conference is like many others in voting to actively resist implementation of the Traditional Plan and petition for reconsideration.

3. Church meetings.  With passions running high, you might expect things to be pretty tense on the floor of the conference. Indeed, there were impassioned statements from both sides. But really, that’s nothing new. Years ago I read a little verse that a District Superintendent in the North Indiana conference had doodled during plenary session:

	There’s pits in all the cherries,
	there’s fuzz on all the peaches – 
	there’s never been a conference yet
	without some endless speeches.

I saw disagreement at Annual Conference. I heard of some angry confrontations in the hallways. But I also saw acts of reconciliation and love. I was part of holy conversations. We worshipped together. We prayed together. And we discerned together, seeking God’s guidance for the church. 

Human meetings are imperfect, because they are full of imperfect humans. But often we can see God at work. Our scripture reading from Acts 15 reminds us that the Church has always gathered to discern where the Holy Spirit is pushing us forward. God often leads the church in new and surprising directions.

4. The Council of Jerusalem.  The Council of Jerusalem described in Acts 15 took place around 50CE, or less than twenty years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Jewish followers of Jesus had been surprised to find that non-Jewish people, called Gentiles and traditionally considered outsiders by law and custom, were becoming Christians… but were not adopting the Jewish laws about circumcision and unclean foods.

What Acts report could just as well have been written about Annual Conference. Some folks stood up to complain, “We’ve never done it this way before. These folks don’t obey the old rules, and they’re sinners. They need to toe the line and conform, or be rejected.” These people were the pits in the cherries, fuzz on the peaches, endless speeches folks.

But others – Jesus’ lead disciple Simon Peter, the Apostle Paul, and Jesus’ younger brother James the head of the Jerusalem church – shared their witness that the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles. Despite the fact that these non-Jews didn’t fit the old rules, God was clearly working in their hearts and bearing fruit. They were becoming Jesus-lovers and leading changed, Christian lives of faith, service, hope, and love. Peter, Paul, and James saw the sweetness of the cherries and peaches, not the fuzz and pits.

5. Looking for the Spirit at work.  Like I said, church meetings are perilous, wondrous events. Imperfect humans can fret and fuss and focus on the negative. But the Holy Spirit can often bring a blessing of discernment and a recognition of the sweetness of the future with hope that God promises for all people.

Discernment is the difficult task. As Methodists and as Christians, we have several sources to help us discern God’s will. We hold up scripture – the Bible – as a primary source for God’s word. But we also look to church tradition to help guide our interpretation, and count on our reason to help us think things through, and value our experience to help us see when God is doing new things.

A key question John Wesley asked the early Methodists was, “Have they fruit?” Could they show that anyone had been touched by their ministry? Were there new believers, or had lives been changed, or was the world a better place?

That’s the same test of experience used by the Council of Jerusalem to accept the Gentile Christians. The Holy Spirit was clearly moving. Where many had seen only thorns and weeds and chaff, fit only for rejection, God had produced a bumper crop of sweet fruit. This prompted the early Christians to reevaluate scripture and tradition, and reason their way to a new understanding of God’s will.

Friends, the church is always a step behind Jesus in the world. We are always discerning afresh where the Holy Spirit is leading us… only to find that God has gotten there first. As we proceed in this season of discernment, let us do so with holy conferencing and conversation – loving each other through the pits and fuzz of our disagreements, and looking for the Holy Spirit to bless us with the sweetness of fruit, of new disciples of Jesus Christ, and a transformed world.

- Amen.