I attempted to listen to today’s emailed SDT with the emailed version. The title on diversity and the text do not match the “listen” link’s content. The listen link is a repeat of yesterday’s SDT….. I went to the SDT website and found the same thing. I’ve read today’s SDT on diversity…… twice. And reread yesterday’s text, as well.
Then it clicked…. this is intentional, perhaps not on the part of the SDT Farm team, but I believe it has a potent message from God, nonetheless. We are being tested to see if we truly listen to AND read SDT and understand AND are allowing it to have the impact God intends. How do I feel when what I hear and what I see do not line up together?
“What does this mean?
What shall we do?”
My heart aches for our church, the Body of believers in Christ …. that there is such division among us. As I came through 9 years of preparation for deacon ordination I saw the signs. I heard the clashing ideologies over Bible authority, Bible inerrancy, Bible accuracy. I saw the contempt differing groups had for one another. None of that dissuaded me. I knew what I was called to and I knew that I was being obedient to God and I actually believed God might just have a reason for allowing so many diverse opinions. I had witnessed conflict over church issues since joining The UMC in 1972 and assumed such differences were beneath people’s commitment to Christ Himself and God had a reason for allowing them and I didn’t have to agree with everyone, nor they with me. When in 2014 I personally experienced the disdain, abuse, and trauma of the leadership of a new liberal Board of Ordained Ministry for a traditionalist in my conference, in fact their treatment of several of us who actually believe and strive to live according to Scripture, I realized that while I was willing to “live and let live” in the big tent, others most assuredly were not. If one would not conform to the demands of the increasingly vocal and strident liberal view, there would be no room at the table. Sibling rivalry, jealousy, and self importance persist well beyond childhood for some, it seems. Yet, I persevered in pursuit of my call by God. I challenged the notion that my history of a mental health hospitalization 17 years earlier and their questions about medications I had been prescribed that were considered suspect. I challenged the notion that if I interpreted texts in a more traditional rather than historical-critical manner, my work was inferior. I challenged the notion that because I attended a traditional, non-approved UMC seminary instead of an elite approved seminary I was inadequate to teach those to whom I was called. And I believed with all my heart that God had a place for me as a deacon in His church. Even 3 years later when the liberal contingent of the UMC Board of Ordained Ministry succeeded finally in wresting from my grip my firm conviction that God had a place for me at the table that many had agreed was appropriate, I still knew in my heart that God was with me. What He revealed was that some in the church go only by what they themselves see, understand, and judge according to their own understanding. They do not listen to and understand the Holy Spirit, only their own, and they interpret the Word so that it confirms their own desires and understanding arising only out of their own experience and reason.
Christ said to His disciples, “Blessed are your eyes, for they see: AND your ears, for they hear.” One who is attuned to Christ sees and understands the Word and its application to a circumstance ( the letter of the law) AND additionally hears and understands the Spirit’s illumination and application of it (the spirit of the law). These two then, Word and Spirit, are the two witnesses one needs for discerning God’s will and the best way to proceed, physically seeing the Word AND hearing the Spirit…. not just hearing the Word, especially as interpreted by others. One must engage personally, hearing and seeing to know truth for the circumstance. Too many only listen for what they hear from God (or from those they have trusted to represent God) with their ears, and believe they are attuned through their experience of hearing the Spirit. But they have also ignored, disobeyed or rejected God’s written Word. In doing so, they allow the Deceiver to tell them what they would want God to say….. making God conform to their own desire. And God stands and waits in silence to see if one is discerning enough, imploring enough, desiring enough, patient enough in waiting, persistent enough to seek the dual witness…. The Father, Son, and Spirit are unity. They cannot be torn asunder. The Word AND the witness of the Spirit will not conflict. What is seen in the Word AND heard from and been illuminated by the Spirit, will be God’s will.
I believe the two witnesses, Word and Spirit. I have experienced the testing of hearing the Holy Spirit in my spirit and not immediately and obediently going to see it confirmed in the Word, just as the Bereans did. There is great danger in such neglect.
Read today’s text, then go back and read and listen to yesterday’s. Hearing, comprehending, knowing, understanding, and applying are greatly enhanced by seeing, as well as hearing any content. In a time when scrolls were only in the hands of the religious leaders, Christ came to be the Living Word for all humanity to see AND hear. Let those with eyes to see, see AND those with ears to hear, hear.
The two grieving, unbelieving disciples on the road to Emmaus heard the risen Christ’s exposition of the ancient Law and Prophets once again, as He’d been teaching for 3 years. What they had incredulously observed in Jerusalem, what they heard now repeated anew, and then with the opening of their eyes as He broke bread with them they saw the truth of who this Jesus, The Christ before them, was and they understood and they ran immediately to tell others.
The woman at the well heard about the inviting, refreshing living water Jesus offered and desired it. When she recognized the prophetic in him and connected it with the ancient texts she knew, she saw Him and believed Him for who He was, the Christ. We can hear the Spirit’s calling and desire it, but we must wait and test, and connect it to the Word. It is then, when the two authentic witnesses, Word and Spirit, are engaged with ears that hear and eyes that see the truth that the truth is known and may be acted upon.
This disconnect between today’s audio link and visual text may have only been for me. It may have been a totally unintended error. But the two lessons together and the truth of Christ’s manner of demonstrating the necessity of hearing AND seeing is applicable to all, I believe.
The lesson of Thomas is one we often disdain for his doubt, but Thomas more than any of the others was not content to merely hear of Christ’s resurrection. He insisted on seeing proof of it. Christ’s accommodation of Thomas and the witness of Thomas’s understanding of the truth when he both heard and saw, is instructive. The fact that all the first century apostles (the Twelve and all the others recorded and noted in Scripture) both heard and saw the truth of the Christ as the Word of God and bear witness to us by the Word and Spirit lived out in them should be sufficient in demonstrating to us what it means to hear AND see for ourselves. I’ve heard and seen enough of the hatefulness toward traditionalists like myself and heard and seen the disregard for an orthodox “high view” of Scripture to know I can no longer remain in The UMC. That was my take away in 2017, when my commissioning was withdrawn and deacon ordination declined for a second year by the BOOM and affirmed by the growing contingent of liberals in my conference who convinced good people, clergy and lay, to rely on their judgment to reject traditionalists that were too far beyond their agenda, people with whom I had labored for over two decades and whom I trusted, that I was too great a risk for membership in the club because of MY experiences of the Holy Spirit and MY passion for the Word and MY rejection of abortion and MY willingness to challenge the academic historical-critical questioning of everything I believe, and MY commitment to Christ over the institution, and MY experience of a harassing legalism at work.
This may be too much personal information for you all. But you need to know why so much of what many of us hear and see in The UMC’s leadership and actions just do not ring true as “gracious” or being God’s will… I am not in favor of years of litigation and battling ahead of us for the sake of things that are not eternal… brick and mortar and mammon. If we are going to trust the two witnesses, Word and Spirit, with our own two confirming witnesses of our hearing AND seeing both, and we are committed to worshipping in spirit and truth, and we believe Christ’s word that He came to witness to the Truth, then how can we continue among those who insist on trashing the Word of God, lived out and affirmed and furthered by Jesus Christ Himself? We are being called out by God, tested to see if we hear AND see the truth. It is time to trust God and go. The power structure of the institutional UMC and the influences upon it are not going to release their grip. Let it go and let us trust God.
P.S.
I have loved and respected my pastors’ commitment to Christ and the Word of God at LHUMC for 26 years and have done all I could to build the kingdom within it and beyond it in my community. I have earnestly sought to hang in with The UMC trusting this would all work out. If our church does not vote or move toward disaffiliation soon, I will have to leave. My husband and I had made decisions about giving a few years ago to express our non-support for the leadership of the UMC. My husband was ready to leave well before his death in Aug 2020 over the liberalization of doctrine and defiance of the Discipline by many. I wish now we had separated at the first clear indication of how this was going in 2016, then again in 2019, but the Protocol gave us hope for amicable separation. It is no longer the case. Now I will leave alone….
One last thought:
Flee from Sodom and Gomorrah as led by God’s messengers, don’t look back. Go to the hills. But Sarah looked back and was lost, becoming a pillar of salt, a warning to us that if we linger and yearn for what lies behind or even just remain to watch God’s judgment against unrighteousness, the usefulness of our own saltiness in the world will be as risk. Lot and his daughters chose a closer, easier route to safety in a nearby town and later had to flee again…. and things did not go well for them even then….. Disobedience to the urging of God when it is time to go has disastrous consequences. Shall we count the cost, delay and wait for the clear signal to all of the return of Christ, feeling ourselves and watching others subjected to the defiling works of unrighteousness all the while or run? And if run, where to? Listen to God. Read His Word. Trust His Spirit. He will show us the path of righteousness.