RMN Convocation Recap (Part 1)

By Leland Spencer

Greetings from beautiful Estes Park, Colorado. I'm thrilled to be at my second Reconciling Ministries Network Convocation. When I left the convocation in Nashville in 2007, I remarked that I had just had a glimpse at the church as it is truly called to be. I am happy to report that I can echo those sentiments again two years later. I think of the words of hymnist and poet Lesbia Scott:

They lived not only in ages past;
there are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus' will. (UMH, #712)

Indeed, I am surrounded by saints, and it's a good place to be. The opening worship was fantastic. Here are my notes with occasional parenthetical editorializing:

Sermon by Vincent Cervantes

• We can think of convocation as a family celebration of community and love where all are invited.
• According to Jesus, the kin(g)dom of God is like a party where everyone is invited, but in the parable, the guests are rude and offer excuses about why they can't come.
• Instead of sitting at home and sulking because of the guests' rejecting the invitation, the host extends the invitation to everyone, including the outcast, the outsiders, and "those incompatibles." (This last phrase especially resonated with the assembled crowd, and it was later included in the communion invitation as well. The co-optation of the "incompatible with Christian teaching" clause is a common trope in reconciling rhetoric, but Vincent made it a noun. This strategy is particularly effective in exemplifying and simultaneously critiquing the ways that Disciplinary language objectifies and dehumanizes the very people it otherwise describes as individuals of sacred worth. That's a lot of power for one carefully made word choice, and I hope it catches.)
• Even though the invitation goes to everyone, there are always some people making excuses and trying to keep others from the table.
• We need to make sure we aren't the ones closing the door or making excuses. The time is now to act; "send out those invitations!" (What a powerful, powerful way to open our time together!)

(Highly Homiletic) Episcopal Greeting from Bishop Elaine J.W. Stanovsky

Bishop Stanovsky greeted us by explaining that a colleague once told her the issue of sexuality and the church was not his issue. She responded by saying, "You don't get to pick your issues." The bishop reminded us that John Wesley founded the church in the age of empiricism and introduced the idea of experience as a tool for deciding questions of faith. Adding experience to scripture, tradition, and reason (already codified by Aquinas) resulted in what we now call the Wesley quadrilateral.  Empiricism asks us to read our own lives and recognize where God is at work. The bishop reminded us to think of the persons who have come before us in this movement, and she closed with these words: "God is in partnership with you, transforming the world!" (Amen, and amen! I am so thankful for a prophetic and unashamed bishop! May more like her make their voices heard!)