Avoiding Discrimination in Same Sex Wedding facilitation

When the State of Ohio changed its position on gay marriage, because of the Supreme Court decision, I found myself looking for a port in the storm.  I am a Local Licensed Pastor (LLP) in the United Methodist Church (UMC), and as such I am authorized by the church to perform wedding ceremonies.  But since I have only been an LLP since September of 2014, I have intentionally held off on getting my State license to perform weddings in the State of Ohio, waiting instead to see how Ohio would vote on the Same Sex Marriage issue.

That was my mistake.

It occurs to me now that I was looking for shelter from the coming storm of Gay marriage.  (Yes, yes, I will explain what I mean in a paragraph or two.  Hold your horses.)  Rather than relying on the UMC, I was relying on the State of Ohio to protect me.  Why?  Because the United Methodist Church is largely NOT guided by the Bible, but rather by the Book of Discipline.  Certainly, the Bible is the primary source of the Christian faith, but the administration and governance of the UMC rests on the shoulders of the Book of Discipline.  And the Book of Discipline is far from immutable.  Every four years, delegates from the worldwide United Methodist Church meet at a designated location for ten days of vigorous debate over the provisions in the Book of Discipline at the General Conference (GC).  At every GC since 1978, a proposal has been made to remove the language from the Book of Discipline.  Paragraph 304.3 reads: “While persons set apart by the Church for ordained ministry are subject to all the frailties of the human condition and the pressures of society, they are required to maintain the highest standards of holy living in the world. The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Therefore self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be certified as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church.” (emphasis mine)

Since this language is changeable, and since efforts to change it have been made at every GC since 1978, and further since the events surrounding the strange case of Frank Schaeffer in and after 2012, I had lost faith in the UMC to retain that language. 

Now, let me interject something here: the Book of Discipline is the go-to source for this policy for the UMC because the Bible is eminently clear on the subject.  The underlined sentence above from paragraph 304.3 leans heavily on several passages in the Bible for its authority; among these are Leviticus 18:22, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and 1 Timothy 10.  But the Book of Discipline is not the Bible, and it is possible that the language of 304.3 could be altered or removed entirely. 

So I had placed my faith in the State of Ohio to protect me from the need to perform Same Sex Marriages.  Now, since I promised, let me deal with my reasoning for calling it a “coming storm.”  For some time now, the idea of hate speech legislation has been gathering support.  “Hate Speech” is an interesting animal, in that it punishes a person for their thoughts, rather than for their actions. Let me explain by way of a brief example.  Person A murders person B.  Just before the act of murder, person A says something mean to person B.  If both persons are of the same demographic (ethnically, religiously, sexually, economically, etc.) then the penalty for the murder is X. But if person B is of a different demographic, then it is up to the courts to determine the value of person B’s life.  If, say, person B is what the court considers an oppressed minority, the penalty for the murder will be X+Y.  If the mean thing Person A said before the act of murder draws attention to person B’s minority status, the penalty for the murder will be X+Y+Z. 

Now we couple hate speech laws with discrimination laws.  If person A is a baker, person A and person B are of the same demographic, and person A refuses to bake a cake for person B, person B may be upset and feel slighted, but have no legal recourse.  If Baker person A refuses to bake a cake for person B, and person B is a member of what a court might determine to be an oppressed minority, person B suddenly has legal recourse through anti-discrimination laws. 

One further point before progressing with the narrative: “Separate but Equal” laws.  During the Civil Rights movement, the courts tried “Separate but Equal” laws as a form of appeasement.  In the end, it was determined that “Separate but Equal” laws are merely another form of discrimination. 

 

Now, in my position as a Local Licensed Pastor (LLP) for the United Methodist Church (UMC) I am authorized by the denomination to perform weddings.  I have even had a training session on techniques for doing so.  If I were to refuse to perform a Same Sex Marriage ceremony, I could be guilty of discrimination based on sexual orientation.  If the couple in question decides that I am rejecting them based on religious grounds (Leviticus 18:22), I could be guilty of hate speech.  And if I refer them to my friend down the street at the non-UMC church who will gladly perform their wedding, I am engaging in a form of “Separate but Equal” discrimination. 

At the outset of this article, I stated that I had made a mistake in relying on the State of Ohio to protect me from the “storm” of crimes I would commit detailed in the previous paragraph.  That protection has been removed.  And it is my fear that in the next General Conference of the UMC, the remaining protections of the Book of Discipline (even if they are still legally binding) are going to change.  The overwhelming tide of change from the Federal Government and from the politically driven Church Court system removes my faith in any remaining protection from either of those two venues.

After consulting with a very good friend and mentor, I have come firmly to the following conclusion: I will never perform a state recognized marriage ceremony.  I will never be authorized by the State of Ohio (or any other state) to perform weddings.  Since the United States Federal Government has made marriage their province, even to the point of telling the church what constitutes a marriage, I want no part of it.  My mentor stated it well in a recent conversation: He said he is willing to (and has) performed wedding ceremonies which bind the participants in the eyes of the church but not the state.  He said he was contacted after doing so by a state representative who demanded he stop, and his reply was brilliant: “Who are you to tell me the meaning of the rituals I perform?” 

I am out of the state marriage game, and intend to stay so.  I have called my state courthouse and as of this moment, there is no provision for authorizing me to perform weddings without first getting my consent for that authorization.  This may well be the final frontier in the Separation of Church and State, and I’m calling on my fellow clergy to make this area of separation complete.

There's a dark side to all of this.

It is, after all, Suicidal Christianity.

I spent a long time learning to like the guy I am.
It was not easy.  I remember in Elementary School and Junior High how I suffered under the bullies who thought I was easy prey.   One guy used to find me in the lunch room and spit onto my sandwich.  Then he would laugh and laugh as he walked away.  Meanwhile, I'd just push my sandwich back into its bag and toss it back into my lunch sack, waiting for its final trip, uneaten, to the trash can on the way out of the cafeteria.

I always promised myself that if I ever met that guy in a dark alley somewhere, I'd beat the tar out of him.  Turns out, he grew up to be a local police deputy in the town where we both grew up.  It's been more than 25 years since he last spit into a sandwich of mine, but whenever I drive through that town, I'm always watching out for him.

But he wasn't even the only bully.  I had big ears and a funny shaped nose, and I cut my hair very short and that only accentuated my ears.

I was a Christian even then, so I didn't use profanity.  I didn't talk about girls in the locker room.  I went to church every Sunday.  I can remember being so proud of winning our Sunday School class' competition to memorize the names of all 66 books of the Bible in order.

Yep.  I was that guy.

Over time, I learned to stop caring about what other people thought.  I realized that I gave them  power over me when I cared about how they felt about me... I was letting them make me miserable, and that was exactly what they wanted.  Eventually, I figured out how to just NOT.  And High School was FUN after that.  When they couldn't hurt me, they moved on.  A couple of them actually became my friends, because they saw that I was a pretty decent guy.

So when I realize that the best, most important thing I can do is to kill that guy... to be the Suicidal Christian.... well, quite honestly, it hurt.

Yeah, I want Christ to be my Lord, and yeah, I want the Holy Spirit to dwell within me, and yeah, I'd love to be thought of as the bond-slave of the Father, but can't I still be me?

To some degree, yeah.  I can't ever stop being me, and sometimes... rarely... I'm a pretty OK guy.

The more my focus is on HIM, though, the more I really want to kill the guy I've been, and be crucified with Christ.

Because each day I see how wretched that guy is.

How sinful.

How depraved.

How hypocritical.

And I think "I can't do this.  If David lamented "How can a man find favor with God?" and David was "a man after [God's] own heart," what chance do I have?

None, of course.  That's why I have been crucified.  With Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.  Any life I continue to live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, even when I was wretched, sinful, depraved, and hypocritical.  Even then, He loved me, and not only that, but gave Himself for me.

Blessed be His Holy Name.

Lets talk for a moment about a central tenant of Galatians 2:20: Me.

 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Who am I?  If I live according to this verse, I am a dead person, crucified with Christ, and I no longer live.  Not sure how Paul could have been more clear here.  Any life which I continue to live in my body, I live only by faith in the Son of God.  

There's no other way I can do it.  

          I've tried to be good.  

                    I've tried to be obedient.  

                              I've tried to be stoic and stubborn and to stand my ground.  

And sometimes I'm a marble pillar in the middle of a roaring river, defiantly throwing aside all temptation and sin, living victoriously.  And other times, I find myself crumbled beneath the current, tiny pieces of stone swept along at the will of the river.  

Oh wretched man that I am!

I fail so often that I must come to no other conclusion than that I cannot live a life in the flesh by effort or exertion or extreme force of will.  I can only live that life by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.  

When dealing with the sin in my life, I am forced to conclude simply that I cannot deal with it.  This is not license to not fight it, but only permission to fail occasionally.  Because when Christ hung on the cross, every sin I would ever commit was yet future, but He went anyway.  Every sin I have left to commit in my life is already covered by the Son of God.  But if I am to be a good and faithful servant to Him, I am to do all within my power to obey His Holy Will.  A great friend of mine used to say "God is not a cosmic wet blanket, trying to put out your fun." The things He commands us to do or to not do are for our own good, because He is a loving Father to each of us.


So give it a shot.  Die to yourself.  Live by faith in the Son of God.  And realize that when you fail, He will be there to pick you up again.

Yesterday, I participated in a Pulpit Swap with my good friend Jeremy, the pastor of Thornville United Methodist Church.  Jeremy and I share a blog, which you can find here.  Jeremy came to my church and addressed my congregation, and I went to his.  It was an interesting experiment.  I had to step out of my comfort zone of my own church and address a large group of people I had never met before; it was a frightening task.

Before I went in, though, I prayed.  I prayed the Shema (Hear, oh Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is One).  I prayed "Blessed are You, LORD our God, King of the Universe."  And yes, I prayed "Dear Father, please help!"

But I went. I set aside my own fears, my own insecurities, my own doubts, and I preached the message I had prepared for them.  And it was wonderful!  They were a great congregation, the sermon went very well, it was fun to give, and it was very well received.  

Aren't I awesome?

Well, actually, no.  I'm not.  But God is.  When I went to the strange place to speak to the unknown people on the uncertain topic, I set aside all my own negativity and I focused on Christ, who is the author and perfector of my faith.  I set myself aside, and I let The Holy Spirit speak.  When we are willing to do that, wonderful things can happen.  He can use me... He can use you (yes, even you!) for His Holy purpose.

And all you have to do is to die.  Isn't that easy?  

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

I am always impressed when an academic says they DON'T know something.  I am always impressed when a leader of the church admits there is something they don't understand.  I have encountered secular professors who would literally make up a story on the spot and pass it off as fact before they admitted what they didn't know: once I made sport of a professor and asked the same question three times in six weeks, and got three different answers.

I said all that to say this:

I am glad that David Watson teaches at the seminary where I study.

Read this.  You'll be glad you did.

Three Days and Three Nights

Something to consider...

We say Jesus was crucified on Friday because the text says He died the day before the Sabbath.  

Mark15:42-43  

John19:31 

Luke23:54-56   

And we say that if all of these things happened the day before the Sabbath, or on the "day of preparation," then it must have been on a Friday.

And we say that Jesus came out of the tomb on a Sunday, because it was the day after the Sabbath.

Matthew28:1

Mark16:1-2  

John20:1

So when our kids read things like 

Matthew12:40  For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 

or 

John2:19  “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 

are we teaching them to mistrust the scriptures?

That is, for the sake of our "Good Friday, Resurrection Sunday" traditions, are we teaching them to doubt the Holy Scriptures?

Because, you see, those ideas don't line up.  You cannot... Cannot... get three days and three nights between Friday and Sunday, no matter how you slice it.  If you count partial days as whole, and ignore certain parts of the text, you can get three days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) but you cannot get three nights.  

Are we teaching our kids that Scripture doesn't mean what it says?

Are we setting them up for failure?

As with most things, the solution is simply to set aside our prejudices and actually READ the scriptures (I know, radical idea, right?)

But we must understand the context, and we must understand the time.

If I said "Well, I vote in every Presidential election, and the last time I voted for President of the United States I was 37 years old," you can make some inferences from that statement.  If you are an American, you know that we only vote for President once every four years, on the years that are evenly divisible by 4.  So we voted for President in 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012.  You can say "The last Presidential election was 2012, and A.J. was 37 years old then, so since this is 2015, he must be about 40 years old now."

Notice, I didn't tell you when the last election was, and I didn't tell you how old I am now.  You can gather that information from my sentence by putting it with other information you already know.

It is the same with the Scripture text.

the Gospel authors don't bother to tell us "The Sabbath was on the 7th day of the week," because that's common knowledge, even for some Americans today (the Hebrew word for Saturday is "Shabbat," which is where we get the term "Sabbath").

But what was equally common knowledge in the days of Christ was that, during certain Holy feasts, there could be more than one Sabbath.

Let’s compare two American holidays to see this:  Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Thanksgiving always falls on the fourth Thursday in November.  So the calendar date on which it falls is fluid, but it falls on a fixed day of the week… it is always on Thursday.  In 2015, it will be on November 26^th.  But in 2016, it will be on November 24^th.  Christmas, on the other hand, comes on December 25^th, every year. So in 2015, Christmas will be on a Friday, but in 2016, it will be on a Sunday.  

According to Exodus chapter 12, the Passover day falls on the 14^th day of the 1^st month.  It’s a fixed day on the calendar, rather than a fixed day of the week.  But the weekly Sabbath always falls on Saturday (Shabbat), which is a fixed day of the week, like Thanksgiving.

What we’re coming to understand is that during a High Holy Week, such as Passover, you can have multiple Sabbaths in a single week. 

Now lets suppose that the Passover Sabbath came on Thursday of that week.  That makes Wednesday the day of preparation, and it would mean that Jesus died on a Wednesday.  This breaks our Good Friday tradition to pieces, but let’s just try it on.

So Thursday is the Sabbath of the Passover.  Then there’s Friday, which is the normal, weekly day of preparation for the normal, weekly Sabbath.  Then there’s Saturday, the weekly Sabbath.  Then there’s Sunday, which is the first day of the week.  Here we have an interesting marker in scripture: John 20:1 says “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.”  Note that this is not making reference to Sabbaths or days of preparation, but rather to a fixed day of the week (the Hebrews did not have names of the days, like we do.  Their week was Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, and Shabbat.  So “the first day of the week” that John mentions is the day we would call Sunday.  So at least we get that part right in our traditions.

No, in our thought experiment with the Passover Sabbath on Thursday and the Weekly Sabbath on Saturday, how does this play out?

Jesus dies on Wednesday, at twilight.  Very late in the day.  So we won’t count Wednesday.  But we will count

Wednesday NIGHT           and               ThursDAY and
Thursday NIGHT               and               FriDAY and

Friday NIGHT                    and              SaturDAY.

Now John tells us (20:1) that Mary went to the tomb while it was still dark… before sunrise… and finds the stone rolled away.  So the resurrection happened sometime during the dark hours… during the night… after sundown on Saturday. Since it wasn’t a full night, we cannot count it.

But do you see what happens then?  The scripture lines up!  When Jesus says “Three days and three nights,” (Matt 12:40, John 2:19) He means it!

So with a better cultural context, we can show the scriptures to be reliable. 

Do yourselves and your children a favor.  Stop clinging to your traditions which nullify the Holy Scriptures.  Set aside your preconceived ideas and see what the Bible says.  Because it IS trustworthy.

If we teach our children that it is wrong at this point, and wrong at that point, eventually they will begin to judge it on their own, and decide that the pieces they don’t like are also wrong. 

And their eternal soul hangs in the balance.  The cost is just too great.



Crucifixion hurts.  Setting aside your traditions hurts.  But be crucified with Christ, and live your life for the Son, who loved you and gave Himself for you.

Normally here at Suicidal Christianity, I focus on the elimination of the desires and the pre-conceived notions we bring to the text which change our perspective on it.

Today is no different, but today I want to share with you a marvelous piece of work I found by 

David S. Jesse, "The Bow Tie Bible Guy."

David has written a wonderful blog explaining, simply and completely, a pet peeve of mine.  So take a moment and set aside your pre-concieved notions and give David a read.

You can find his blog HERE.

Remember... I am crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Jesus Christ now lives in me.

you're dead.  Set aside what you think and what you've heard, and see what the text actually says.  I know this may be painful for some.  Dying is never easy.