Reconciling Ministries Network

Lay Folks Laying the Foundations for Marriage Equality

by Peter L. DeGroote

After the DC Council approved marriage equality as a civil right in Washington the members of Foundry UMC began discussions that culminated in what was called a Summer of Great Discernment to determine the congregation’s views. While clergy in the UM Church decide on religious services, this wasn’t about clergy decision-making. This was a lay process, what, in hindsight, might be called a lay movement.

A resolution was prepared and discussed over the summer. On September 26 the Congregational Council set the resolution before a Church Conference held under the rules of the Book of Discipline and chaired by our District Superintendent. 377 lay members attended. The vote was 367 yes, 8 no, with 2 invalid votes.

The resolution began with the proclamation that as a community of faith we recognize God’s profound blessing of committed life partnerships, including same-gender couples.  Further, that celebrating those relationships is not only an important part of our church’s ministry but is also a witness to the joy of God’s love.

The resolution also makes a claim on the Church Constitution (Disciplinary para 341.6). The Constitution prohibits the structuring of any organizational unit so as to exclude any member or constituent body because of race, color, national origin, status or economic condition. Noting the incorporation of anti-lgbt provisions into the discipline over the recent past, the resolution asserts that the Constitutional prohibitions against exclusion based on status have been violated.

The resolution closes with two commitments. First: to work within the denomination to change the Book of Discipline so that it “may be consistent with the teachings of Jesus.” This commitment includes working for the respect and honor of same-gender marriages in the same way that all marriages are respected and honored.

The second commitment is to equally support and honor marriages licensed in the District of Columbia without regard to the couple’s gender. Accordingly, it offers and approves use of the church sanctuary for all marriages. Finally, while acknowledging clergy discretion over the conduct of services, the congregation pledged to support those clergy who conduct same gender services.

Word travels, of course. We've heard that some conference leaders were "blown away" by the numbers. How many DSs have ever conducted a church business meeting with 377 people voting and even more people in attendance? We've heard that some conference leaders are wondering how to stop or control a lay movement.

The Bishop did send a letter to all Pastors and lay members of the Annual Conference. On one hand he described the underlying conflict in the church; on the other he urged holy conversation.

What will this lay movement do next? My guess is that they will take the Bishop up on holy conversation—in a big way.

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To read the Marriage Equality Proposal, click here

To read the Special Edition of the Foundry Forge regarding the Vote and the Summer of Great Discernment, click here

To read the Congregational Council's response to Bishop John Schol's letter to the Conference, click here

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Peter is a second career pastor who has served in several churches in the Baltimore-Washington Conference. Prior to his ordination, he was a secondary-school teacher, a university lecturer in Government, an Associate in a government related professional association, CEO of a national financial institution. Peter was involved in Mid-Atlantic Affirmation, served on the National Council of Affirmation, and sat on the Board of the Reconciling Congregations Program, the predecessor name for RMN and has worked with BWARM (Baltimore-Washington Reconciling United Methodists).

Beyond the Hatred: First Love, First Loyalty

by Peter L. DeGroote

If any come to me and do not hate their own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—they cannot be my disciples.Luke:14;26 (SV).

1. About 50 pastors in a continuing education class were asked if they had ever preached on the above verse. Few hands went up. Nevertheless, Jesus appears to have said something very close to those words so we are obliged to look further.*    Two guidelines for biblical interpretation can help:

A. The first guideline: Variations in Jesus’ words from gospel to gospel often reflect the conditions in the communities out of which the various gospels came. 

• Many early Christian communities were racked with emotional turmoil over lost family relationships. Ancient peoples had no identity without family. Orphans often became beggars or bandits; some sold themselves into slavery in order to be part of a household, household often being a synonym for family.**

• Many early Christian converts were disowned by their families and persecuted by their communities. Some LGBT people have experienced similar rejection by family, friends, and congregation and we have struggled with the power or our emotional responses. 

• A harsh, even hateful reaction toward those who reject or persecute us is not uncommon, particularly when we have to go through the trauma of having to find new relationships and form new families. That is true for many LGBT folks, for many groups through history, and certainly for the early church.

B. The second guideline: Jesus' teachings are logically consistent, even if they challenge our understanding (or wishes). For this reason, use of the word "hate" raises a red flag.

• Recall Jesus’ prime directive, the rule of love . 

• Primary to the rule of love is the forgiveness of others. (Forgive us…as we forgive them…). Hatred forfeits forgiveness and contradicts the rule of love.

2, Any who have experienced rejection and persecution from families, friends, and congregations understand the emotional turmoil that can lead to the feelings of “hate” expressed in this verse. It is reasonable to conclude that this use of the word “hate” arises out of the emotional turmoil of broken relationships and subsequent persecution of those early community members. 

3. But something remains; a spiritual message at the heart of the verse. Where Old Testament prophets spoke of idolatry in the form of pagan religious images, Jesus spoke of idolatry in the form of human values and loyalties interfering with his Way of living in harmony with God and God’s creation. 

4. Today we are challenged by loyalties demanded by our employment, social class, neighborhood, political party, nation, and even our religious denomination or community. More often than not, these create divisions between people, even hatreds. (The daily news is sufficient evidence.) 

6. We are called to choose a Way of life that is often costly for our relationships, careers, and personal security. We can easily doubt that calling because living in harmony with God and God’s creation can seem unrealistic when many about us are doing otherwise. But we are called to learn to live in harmony even with those who would criticize, demean, and persecute us. That’s called reconciliation. It’s easier to write about than to do.   

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*   The saying appears in Luke and twice in Thomas (55 & 101. That suggests its source is in a lost collection of sayings that the authors of Mark, Matthew, and John were unaware of or chose not to use. However, there is a significant variation in Matthew (55:1): Those who love father and mother more than me are not worthy of me…  Perhaps Matthew’s authors knew the saying source but were also uncomfortable with the word “hate.” However, Matthew’s context is much different from Luke’s. 
There are, of course, other passages which call us to first loyalties but I find this one worth noting because so many LGBT folks can identify with the emotions involved.

**The ancient family could:
• Demand absolute loyalty and obedience in a patriarchal structure.
• Often aggressively competed with others as many businesses do today.
• Were often the source of hatred and violence directed toward other families in what we call clan warfare.

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Peter is a second career pastor who has served in several churches in the Baltimore-Washington Conference. Prior to his ordination, he was a secondary-school teacher, a university lecturer in Government, an Associate in a government related professional association, CEO of a national financial institution. Peter was involved in Mid-Atlantic Affirmation, served on the National Council of Affirmation, and sat on the Board of the Reconciling Congregations Program, the predecessor name for RMN and has worked with BWARM (Baltimore-Washington Reconciling United Methodists).

We Are What We Are

by Violet Fenn

Earlier this month, I learned that I have been accepted to Phillips Theological Seminary for the fall semester. I am very excited and a little nervous as the next chapter of my life begins. A few days after I got the wonderful news, I had a phone conversation with my brother. Since my gender transition began a little over two years ago, my family has made leaps and bounds in coming to terms with my journey. After talking to my brother, I was reminded that there is still more room for acceptance. When I told him that I had been accepted to seminary, he responded that he was surprised. When I asked why, he said, “because of what you are.”I didn’t have a response to this as I was taken aback. In retrospect, I could have told him, “I am what I am.” This has been response that I’ve used in the past when others have taken leave of their manners by asking inappropriate questions about my transition.

This response I borrow from a wonderful Broadway musical, “La Cage Aux Folles, which is playing on Broadway currently in its second revival. It’s the story of a gay couple, Georges and Albin, who own a nightclub where Albin is the headliner. He performs in drag as Za Za. Georges and Albin learn that their son, Jean-Michel is getting married to the daughter of a right-wing politician who has an agenda to close all the drag clubs in town. Jean-Michel’s fiancé and parents are coming for dinner and Georges realizes that Albin can’t be at dinner because the parents assume that Jean-Michel’s parents are a heterosexual couple. When Albin learns this, his feelings are hurt and in a show-stopping end to the musical’s first act, he sings the song “I Am What I Am.” In it, Albin sings that he can’t be anything other than what he is, a gay man. No one else has to like it, but he must be himself.

Whether a person is straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer, we can best be an example for God by being exactly how we were created. Anything less is denying ourselves and others the joy and peace that God wants all of us to experience. Anything less also denies us the opportunity to show that we are all children of God, loved by God, and accepted by God. Being ourselves is one powerful way to educate others and show them that the Church would be is a weaker body without the diversity that is so essential to its well-being. By being ourselves we invite others, as Albin sings, “to see things from a different angle.” If we do this, we make a big step towards diversity and acceptance in the Church.

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Violet Fenn is currently a United Methodist in exile due to a lack of reconciling congregations in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she lives and is attending a UCC church. She began her gender transition in 2008 and has been active working against bigotry and intolerance for many years. She is active in MOSAIC and the leader of its TransJustice working group. This fall, she is beginning the next chapter of her journey by attending Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa for a Master's in Divinity. Despite the bigotry and transphobia she has experienced at the hands of a UMC congregation, she believes that the Methodist Church will become open and affirming of everyone in the LGBTQ community.

The Fear of Church and Some Consequences

By Peter L. DeGroote

At yesterday’s BWARM* gathering a participant said the church is one of the most dangerous places an LBGT person can go. He was emphasizing the importance of clergy and leaders carving out a safe place of welcome in otherwise hostile congregational environments.

That was followed by stories pointing to another reality: Very often clergy are the source of the danger; that through sermons and attitudes clergy plant the seeds of rejection and hatred rather that a sense of honor and respect (love) for all creation.

Overall, the program produced a positive discussion of personal/family/church relations but stories from fear frequently popped up. We heard how growing up in the church had been an experience of fear; several heads nodded in agreement. We heard an outraged straight man tell of friends being beaten down by clergy and other church leaders. A seminary student, sitting next to his wife who was holding their newly born baby, worried about the influence of those churches in which they would have to raise their son—would they be reconciling congregations? What seeds would they sow? We heard a story of one man who had come to know gay and lesbian folks finding himself standing up in a church meeting to tell his pastor that his hateful speech about gay folks was a lie.

Afterward some of us old-timers reflected together. One, who has been a leader in reconciling activity for many years admitted that even now when he goes to church or a denominational gathering he has a set of defensive tools all shined up and ready to use. He is keenly aware that some resent his opinions, the fact that he has a voice in church and denominational affairs, and even his presence.

Another old-timer spoke of having to go elsewhere for spiritual strength and solace because he could no longer find those things in the church. His many years of fighting had resulted in his coming to see the church as just another social institution producing negative social values and, therefore, in need of change. He could fight those battles in any institution but remained in the church because that is where he learned to fight them; but his spiritual health comes from elsewhere.

When I got home I pondered where I stood in all of this. Being an old-timer myself, I share some of the feelings of those two old-timers described above. But I also feel something far more disconcerting. I have dealt with the fear, the rejection, the negative attitudes, and sometimes outright hatred as a pastor and preacher. That meant I had to face all of that in the context of biblical and theological understanding. In doing so I have come to realize the vacuity, self-centeredness, and institutional defensiveness that is at the center of so much of our practice, policy, and even our creedal declarations.

I am frequently reminded of the early churches recollection of Jesus’ attitude toward religious institutions: You religious leaders, you impostors! Damn you! You slam the door of Heaven’s domain in people’s faces. You yourselves don’t enter, and you block the way of those trying to enter. (Matthew 23:13with a slight modification to the translation by Funk, Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar.)

*BWARM=Baltimore Washington Area Reconciling United Methodists.

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Peter is a second career pastor who has served in several churches in the Baltimore-Washington Conference. Prior to his ordination, he was a secondary-school teacher, a university lecturer in Government, an Associate in a government related professional association, CEO of a national financial institution. Peter was involved in Mid-Atlantic Affirmation, served on the National Council of Affirmation, and sat on the Board of the Reconciling Congregations Program, the predecessor name for RMN and has worked with BWARM (Baltimore-Washington Reconciling United Methodists).

October 11, 2009: A Message for the Church

By Peter L. DeGroote

I didn’t need Time magazine to know that the National March for Equality on September 11, 2009 was a youth movement.

Time estimated 200,000 participants. A veteran of earlier gay rights marches, my estimate was a little higher. I also estimated that 80% of the people were under age 35. Of that total, roughly 80% were under 30. Of that total, roughly 50% were under 25. Whatever the exact numbers, young people were in an overwhelming majority.

The March demonstrated once again how communications technology has altered the task of organizing for political and social causes. There was a time when the young had to work their way into the structures of the established leadership organizations before coming into their own. That is no longer true.

To Illustrate: Originally the national organizations representing LGBT folks were less than enthusiastic about the March only to come around as it gained momentum. Also, it was reported that the cost for the March was one-fifth of the cost of the last big national gay rights march and that does not count the additional savings realized as a result of not involving the staffs and mailing lists of the national organizations. Unlike earlier generations, these young folks did not need the existing organizations to control of their program, increase their influence, and finance their movement. Instead, they employed the Internet and many of its social networking tools. 

The Message: The March for Equality on October 11, 2009 clearly demonstrated that those established institutions purporting to be leaders need to do some catching up if they are to be relevant to young folks.

This conclusion is not restricted to secular organizations. In most churches young people are already an overwhelming minority. Attitudes toward LGBT people differ as you go down the generations. Many straight young folks today have grown up with openly LGBT friends and are likely to say that “if you don’t want my friends you don’t want me.”

LGBT folks no longer stand alone and that influence has altered the agenda. The once rather timid call for inclusion has been transformed into a robust demand for the civil rights of all, including LGBT folks. The rights most demanded during the March were for service in the military, equal treatment under the law by way of hate crimes legislation, and same-sex marriage. (Interestingly, the Discipline of the UM Church does support the civil rights of all, including LGBT people.) 

The competitive disadvantage faced by most churches for the interest of young people is represented by the photo below from the website www.FaithInAmerica.com. During the march there were some banners of support from religious groups. However, it was difficult to look anywhere without seeing the posters you can see below calling to End the Harm from Religious-based Bigotry and Prejudice.

The use of the word “faith” is significant. This March for Equality was framed as a call to live out our faith in the proposition that all people are created equal. That principle is in complete harmony with the teachings of Jesus. Who in their right minds would suggest that the church should not support that principle? Unfortunately, young people are hearing too many church folks willing to do just that. 

The message for churches is the same: The March for Equality on October 11, 2009 clearly demonstrated that those established institutions purporting to be leaders need to do some catching up if they are to be relevant to young folks. 
 

Reconciling Tools: Prayer for Enemies

By Peter L. DeGroote

To you who are listening I say, love your enemies. If you love those who love you, what merit is there in that? After all, even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what merit is there is that? After all, even sinners do as much” (Gospel of Jesus 7:2-4)*

It is a bit troubling to discover that Jesus did not share the common view that God agrees with our opinion of others.  Instead, he invited us to pray about joining in God’s high expectations and hope for all humanity .

It remains a revolutionary idea. Our traditional social and political arrangements reflect tribal loyalties based on our instincts for self-preservation. They provide us with a safe “home base” to explore our world. Jesus called us to replace those tribal loyalties with a more universal loyalty that finds a “home base” in honoring and respecting (loving) all of God’s creation. (See Reconciliation and Love's Definition).  

Jesus’ call for this new loyalty offers a far more likely foundation for human self-preservation than the tribal loyalties we usually rely on. Unfortunately, both biblical tradition and history are full of examples that illustrate a broad unwillingness to respond to Jesus’ call. A few examples: Both Hebrew scripture and significant portions of the New Testament model hostility and even hatred toward enemies. When the church burned heretics it was identifying enemies while using fear to assure at least outward loyalty to its tribal ways. In 1961 Fidel Castro declared that continued loyalty to the Cuban revolution required an enemy. Contemporary political campaigns are often based on describing its opponents as enemies and targeting them with falsehoods and partial truths. Likewise, we can hear church leaders propagate an “us versus them” world view as a tool for creating loyalty to their group and personal leadership. Many LGBT people have experienced the negative consequences of that strategy.

The danger in being someone’s enemy is in returning the favor by accepting their enmity and labeling them as our own enemy. In a real world sense that dynamic is probably inescapable but the danger is in responding in kind. When that happens we give the enemy the power to define who we are and set the rules of our relationships. (More in a later posting.)

The instruction to pray for our enemies has often been understood as a prayer that somehow God would intervene in their values, world view, and behavior so that they would come to accept our perspectives and be more like us. The arrogance of that notion is the assumption that we have “the right way;” that we understand God’s views; or that we have the sole understanding of how creation is supposed to work—the implication being that all other views are wrong.

Over the years I have come to understand that praying for our enemies is less about them than it is about me. Jesus’ Prime Directive is to love or honor and respect all that God has created. To pray for an enemy is to seek insight and understanding sufficient to honor that person’s creation. (Perhaps meditation is a better contemporary word than prayer.)

Any increased insight or understanding does not compel me to agree with such a person, only that I come to understand.  Once understood, what do I do about it? Everyone will agree that it is a struggle. Likewise, we cannot focus only on understanding our enemy. We have biases, prejudices, and structures in our world view that have to be examined in relation to our own spiritual health and willingness to honor and respect others. Jesus’ teachings also include strategies to pursue those objectives.

Obviously, there is much more to live and talk out. This is not a solitary adventure. Your comments are welcome.

*The Gospel of Jesus. Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar. Santa Rosa, CA, Polebridge Press, 1999.

Why Stories Matter!

By Justin White

This semester I am taking a class on sexuality and the focus in the class is on homosexuality and the church. When we had our first class I was nervous about being in there. The issue is one that is so volatile and I wasn’t sure what people’s thought processes on the class were going to be and I went in not sure how the professors were going to approach the class. After the professors went over the syllabus and explained the class, one of the professors explained that all 40 or so of us in the room were going to “bring a person into the room” that we were thinking about at that moment. The rationale was that we are all in this class for a reason, and there had to be someone we were thinking of. In order to protect those in the class who identify as LGBTQ, and those who might be questioning their own sexuality, the story could be in third person (if someone was taking the class for themselves). However, Dean Wells really stressed that the person to bring into the room was someone who dealt with the issue of homosexuality that was not in the room. It was an amazing experience. Each person told a minute long story about someone they knew that was either lesbian, gay, affirming, non-affirming, yet was dealing with the issue, and all the stories were powerful. Some people wanted to bring someone into the room that reacted out of fear and hate to people who had come out to them. Some people wanted to bring into the room those they had shunned because of their sexual orientation. Others wanted to bring those into the room that had died of aids. Others wanted to bring into the room those who had been shunned and cast out of the church. It was a powerful 40 minutes.

In thinking about the whole sharing time, I am reminded of the young man I brought into the room. He is a friend of mine and I have seen him grow up. He has an amazing passion for God and is committed to his faith in a way that is rarely seen. Last year he “came out” to me after a pastor had spat out hate speech from a pulpit. The anguish, hurt, and pain in his eyes tore my heart apart. I literally could not sleep that night. The pain he shared with me was deep, but it was this pain that often times led him closer to Christ. Yes, it wasn’t always easy, and yes he’d questioned a lot of things, including his own life, but instead of running away from God, he ran into God’s loving arms, even when some in his Christian circle had told him that he could change or else he was in danger of going to Hell. So, I wanted to bring him into the room. I wanted him to know that there were faithful people who would love him and cherish him for who he is.

 

The other story that stuck out to me was that of one of my friends. In the midst of her tears, she told a story about her cousin. The earliest memory she had of him was at his funeral. He wasn’t someone that her family talked about that much. She had seen pictures of him growing up and asked her mom who he was and her mom told her that it was her cousin. It wasn’t until later in life that she was told that her cousin had died of aids. It wasn’t something the family talked about. At the end of her story she said, “I wish I would have known him, because I would have loved him.” This is my friend’s reflection on why she brought her cousin into the room. “I thought about the question and thought about who I could 'bring into the room.' Who was I there for? Sure there were a lot of people that had influenced my decision on the course. But it was when I realized that I was there for the person that I knew the least, knew less than my friends, less than my sisters, it was when I realized that it was for Ronnie, that I cried." 

 

She wasn’t the only person who was moved by tears in class. Many of us were. As we brought all of these people into the room, there was an overwhelming sense of the Holy Spirit. We were listening to people’s stories. We were listening to stories of joys and pains and insecurities and fears. We were listening to each other. The Triune God dwells in the midst of narrative. God dwells between each of us as we tell our stories. In class, I felt the incarnational God that radically dwells in the world as the stories were told. I knew that God was present. What if this is what we did in our churches? What if we actually took time to listen to each other? What if we truly listened to people’s stories before we got defensive? What if we invoked those into our rooms that are excluded? What if we invoked into our churches those that we exclude? What if we not only invoked them in stories, but actually allowed them to come into our churches to share their stories? Some are not ready to hear the stories of God’s beautiful children, but some are. I pray that we would become a people, a church, a community that took the time to listen to stories of not only LGBTQ persons, but to all those people that we exclude from our midst. I pray that we become a church that allows our radically incarnational God to manifest herself in our presence. If we did, the church would be different and our communities would be different. So, let us listen to each other’s stories. Let us listen to the stories of those who are excluded. Let us encounter the radically incarnational God that calls us to live lives that are radically incarnational in a broken and hurting world, and hopefully we will be transformed by her radical and abundant grace.

Reconciliation and the Prime Directive

By Peter L. DeGroote

When we lose sight of Jesus’ prime directive, we lose sight of reconciliation. The prime directive is to love God and others. Its goal is our reconciliation with others and with all of God’s creation.  (Loving others requires honoring and respecting the creation into which all of us have been placed).

The prime directive can be easily overlooked for two major reasons.

First, Jesus inextricably tied the love of God and others together; we can’t have one without the other. We cannot claim to love God if we do not love others. Further, to love others is to love God, even if we are not even thinking about God and--perhaps--even if we are unaware of the idea of God. 

• In contrast, we commonly claim God as a personal or group possession rather than the common Creator of all humanity, indeed, of all creation. Sometimes we go so far as to say that God is on our side as we do battle with the rest of God’s creation.

The second major reason we can easily overlook the prime directive is that our definition of love is so hopelessly jumbled that it can be used to describe emotional infatuation, a pious devotion to prayer, and much in between.

• In contrast, the very idea that love can mean honor and respect for God and God’s creation is regarded as an irrelevant, if not adolescent, idealism in the practical working of our world and its institutions.

Jesus’ teachings are not definitions but behavioral guides that set us on paths of discovery towards living in harmony with God and others. So often mistaken for something called a Kingdom of God, Jesus left us with a vision of a domain of God built into creation—a location for becoming who we are and are meant to be.

From our earliest primal memories we have sensed a great gap between us and other species. Early Genesis stories describe us as the culmination of God’s creation and/or beings that are given the gift of power over the earth and its other inhabitants. Today, science is steadily increasing our knowledge of how we are a part of the fabric of all life. Having emerged and evolved from other forms, we remain inextricably connected and dependent on other species and the physical structure we all share. We are also learning of the choices we face of either living in harmony with the rest of creation or damaging it, in some ways irreparably. 

In a time and place that knew nothing of our science, Jesus' prime directive refocused the Genesis lessons by asserting that we are meant to live in harmony with our Creator and all that God has created. In order to do that, he taught that we need to love, honor, and respect both God and all of God’s creation—the prime directive.

When we lose sight of Jesus’ prime directive we lose sight of reconciliation.

Preparing fot Retirement

By Peter L. DeGroote

During this past Easter season I was preaching and teaching about how Easter calls for an affirmatin of life and its promises. When speaking of being an Easter people I came to realize that I was also speaking of being a Reconciling people. During all of this I was also preparing for retirement on June 30. (June 7 is the my last day at the church.)    

I sung This is a Day of New Beginnings to myself while sorting through my “stuff,” preparing for a new and smaller home. Some folks look back, afraid to leave any of their “stuff” behind, seeming to think it will safely set the course of their future. 

I thought about that as I threw away the artificial Christmas tree. A gift from a former congregation, it had served me well but I will not have the space to store a great deal and I certainly do not need to erect an artificial tree for a week or so each year to recall those folks and the great experiences we had creating a new congregation.

Then I threw away my Christmas decorations. That took a little time but once the process started it began to flow. Those decorations were physical symbols of memories going back decades, in a couple of cases to my very early years. They reminded me of exotic trips, special events, and friends both living and dead. I had no sorrow. Instead, I was singing the first verse of the hymn: This is a day of new beginnings, time to remember and move on, time to believe what love is bringing, laying to rest the pain that’s gone.

There was little pain in those symbols and the memories they stood for can be recalled when I need them. But the memories do not need to so firmly anchored that they hold me back from experiencing what love is bringing--from discovering the promises that life still has to offer. Every phase of life seems to require a new approach to faith and a new focus of hope. The hymn’s second verse speaks of that:  For by the life and death of Jesus, God’s mighty Spirit, now as then, can make for us a world of difference, as faith and hope are born again.

The third verse is very close to the way I am thinking: Then let us, with the Spirit’s daring, step from the past and leave behind our disappointment, guilt, and grieving, seeking new paths, and sure to find. Learning to let go of disappointment, guilt, and grieving is important at any time, but the same can be said of our pride in all of those accomplishments we claim on our resumes. Each of these things can parlyze us in ways that expose us to infection by a deadly narcissism. Easter (Reconciling) people choose life, which means growth and change at all of life’s stages.  

Jesus’ Way is a seeking life, a journey of discovering who we are and who we are meant to be. It is an experimental life that teaches us how to define what love really means in our time and place. It is a confident life, trusting that God is active in God’s creation. It is a reconciling life that strives to live in harmony with God and all of God's creation. The last verse of the hymn puts it this way: Christ is alive, and goes before us to show and share what love can do. This is a day of new beginnings—our God is making all things new.

Postscript: The words of This is a Day of New Beginning were written by Brian Wren, the music by Carlton R. Young. It can be found in many hymnals.

A Woodcutter's Lesson

by Peter L. DeGroote

The primary focus of Jesus’ teachings was reconciliation. Reconciliation requires that we treat everyone as worthy. The following story is a poignant illustration. (See credit line below.)

From storyteller Lee Pennington: There was an old woodcutter named Jim. Everyone in their small town knew Jim. He was the ugliest fellow in town. There were those who avoided Jim solely because of his appearance. But Lee considered Jim a friend. Jim had taken young Lee under his wing and taught him how to find and cut the best wood in the forest.

One day Jim challenged Lee to go out into the forest and find two leaves from different types of trees that were the exact same shade of green. "Gather as many leaves as you can," Jim said. "If you can find any two from different trees that are the exact same shade of green, then I'll pay you $10.00."

Ten dollars was a fortune to a young boy back then, so Lee set about his task with vigor. He collected as many different leaves as he could find. But when he laid all the leaves before Jim, Lee realized that none of them were a perfect match. As he pondered the unique nature of each leaf, Lee understood that the same lesson could be applied to human beings too. At a young age, he learned to see the unique quality of every person he met.

This story came to me in a sermon emailed by a friend. I’m not sure how he came about it but I believe the acknowledgement goes to Jack Maguire, "The Power of Personal Storytelling," NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1998, p. 63-64.