00:00:11.930 - 00:00:26.430

if I had known Cindy was going to do that , I would have brought my favorite bible cozy with me. Maybe I'll have time to tell you the story about it later, 10 years ago, I

00:00:26.430 - 00:00:45.530

was invited to join a task force that had a daunting assignment to find a faithful way through presbyterian conflicts about gay ordination and other divisive issues. Some resolution that would keep those with passionate convictions on various sides

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of the, on various sides in the same denominational fellowship. The challenge was magnified by the fact that most of us appointed to the group were known for our public advocacy of policies that other equally outspoken members

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of the group had publicly rejected. It seemed like a recipe for failure, something my family and friends helpfully pointed out to me as they congratulated me on my appointment and I must say that even as I

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gratefully accepted the offer, I feared they might be right. The full name of the committee was the theological Task Force on Peace, Unity and purity of the presbyterian church. A title that probably sounds pretentious

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to outsiders, but that has historical resonance for presbyterians . In 1920. For a commission with a similar name, progress was added to peace, unity and purity in that case was convened under what seemed like

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similarly hopeless conditions for a quarter century presbyterians had been fighting about five phrases. The inerrancy of scripture, the Virgin birth, the substitution ery atonement, the bodily resurrection. And there's some question about the fifth

00:02:15.960 - 00:02:30.660

one. Either the authenticity of jesus miracles or jesus physical return to the earth. Five short, doctrinal statements that had come to be known as the five fundamentals. Those who believe that these doctrines were the

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essence of scripture, tried to force all presbyterian ministers to subscribe to them. Power in the presbyterian General Assembly seesawed between those fundamentalists who wanted subscription and moderates who opposed their imposition as a condition of ordination.

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When the fundamentalists had more votes, there were heresy trials. By the mid 1920s, the moderates had had enough. Their leader, new york pastor, Henry, Sloane coffin told the conservative moderator of the

00:03:08.990 - 00:03:30.590

general Assembly, Charles Erdman of Princeton Seminary, that new york city presbytery, other presbyteries and many ministers were leaving the denomination. Erdman had conservative views but he had long admired the christian sincerity of coffin and

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some of his allies and he did not want to be separated from them. Hours before the planned walkout , he appointed the commission with the long name and convinced coffins party to delay any action until the group

00:03:46.830 - 00:04:03.790

reported to the assembly the next year. It did report, it did not rule on the validity of the five fundamentals though most of the members of the commission which was dominated by Erdmann style conservatives said that

00:04:03.790 - 00:04:20.590

they personally believed them but they also recognized them as interpretations of scripture, I think their term was theories , not a scripture itself, not as part of the confession of faith that had been adopted by the

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whole church. Therefore, the commission said the fundamentals however valid could not be imposed as a condition of ordination. This solution was warmly welcomed and widely accepted . With just a few exceptions, one was the

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fundamentalist leader, Clarence Macartney, who continued vehemently to oppose it just before the vote in the General Assembly on the Commission's report. Clarence McCartney's older brother made this speech. Okay, Mr moderator, Father's brethren

00:05:04.920 - 00:05:24.900

and brother. Clarence. Clarence is alright, friends . The only trouble is he isn't married. If that old bachelor would marry, he would have less time to worry over other people's theology. I've read

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this report from cover to cover. Not so much for what it says as the spirit that pervades it . I am completely for it. We were brought up together Clarence and I and our mother sang the

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same hymns to us, Rock of Ages. For me there is a fountain filled with blood for him . We didn't know what those words meant then, but it was the same Christianity we both professed.

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I know that if my mother could come back there would be room for him and room for me to say our prayers in the same words on her knee . At that old home of ours in Western pennsylvania

00:06:10.410 - 00:06:28.710

. I believe that there is room for him and for you and me to say our prayers in identical language in the presbyterian church. The report of the Commission on the peace, unity, purity and progress

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of the presbyterian church past moments later, with only a single dissenting vote. The name wasn't recorded historians are pretty sure it was Clarence Macartney. I don't think he ever got married either. The image of

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that general assembly full of presbyterians who had been hauling each other into court for decades, but who were now saying their prayers in identical language, became an inspiration for our modern day task force. So do

00:07:09.730 - 00:07:27.150

descriptions of reunions of presbyterian denominations whose members had been bitter enemies during various splits and systems, but who walked arm in arm and wept as the churches rejoined . We long to create such a moment for the

00:07:27.150 - 00:07:42.860

church today. And I think we did though on a much smaller scale than our predecessors. After five years of work together, during which we came to care about each other as persons and deeply respect each

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other as christians. We passed unanimously a report that offered both sides a way to hold on to their principles and convictions and also to each other. Neither party got total victory, but neither lost everything either

00:08:01.240 - 00:08:18.010

and more important. Each found the grace to give the other a gift, something they needed or wanted . The accommodations that you find in that report were not demanded by the side that they advantage they were

00:08:18.020 - 00:08:35.050

offered by the other side since none of us believed ourselves to be all that forbearing or generous by nature . We counted the outcome, the work of the Holy Spirit And we like the General Assembly of 1925

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, thanked God for it and then almost immediately our report was attacked from both ends of the spectrum. We had sold out. Justice said the left. No, we had betrayed the truth, said the

00:08:52.850 - 00:09:11.790

right. The report was approved in the general assembly , but by split vote and since then several dozen conservative congregations have left the denomination and we hear quite a few liberal church members have left to all of

00:09:11.790 - 00:09:28.670

them in order not to be contaminated by the report . Both sides have resumed their quest to defeat and demolish the other by legislation that gives them all the benefits and their opponents, all the penalties. The

00:09:28.670 - 00:09:46.580

same thing happened after the 1925 report was embraced so warmly and enthusiastically by the church, the moderates, I'm sad to say who had benefited from the commission's resolution, seized the advantage and ran their opponents out

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of the denomination and its seminaries. And after those reunion spectacles, some of you may have been part of the one in Atlanta in 1983. As I was members of the two former denominations, walking through

00:10:01.280 - 00:10:20.550

the streets of a city arm in arm before the ink on the newspaper stories was dry intern? S ng warfare broke out again in all these cases, heresy trials, punitive legislation and in every case new

00:10:20.550 - 00:10:41.040

breakaways and systems, why bother then why plow such effort into keeping denominations from coming apart or stitching them back together when they do, why not let contending christians retreat into the camps and club houses. Where

00:10:41.040 - 00:10:58.550

, as we noted yesterday, they we feel so much more at home. A group in my denomination is now proposing that we institutionalize our clubs, we make them into ecclesiastical structures by creating a new non

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geographic synod for those ministers and churches that in their own judgment, adhere to Biblical teaching, leaving the rest of the denomination presumably to those of us who do not the separation by party of opinion within the

00:11:16.670 - 00:11:33.870

denomination. Will the proposals argue free the time now spent in wrangling for ministry and mission, Those who believe that the other side is dangerously wrong in its faith or its practice will not be besmirched by the

00:11:33.870 - 00:11:56.430

decisions that the other makes within its own structures for the first time in decades, For the first time ever, the denomination will be at peace sounds good , doesn't it? Why not try it? Well

00:11:56.430 - 00:12:15.370

, here's one reason, it doesn't seem to be the will of God. Almost all of the ecclesial logical motifs in scripture, weigh heavily against dividing and dividing and subdividing again, that all may be one

00:12:15.370 - 00:12:28.410

, jesus prays as I and the father are one . He came to bring peace, proclaims the writer to the Ephesians so that those who were far off and those who are near can be built together spiritually

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into a dwelling place for God be of one mind in the Lord paul says to you O'DEA and scientific with me. Two contending women struggle together for the Gospel. If we want to fulfill the mandates and

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realize the promises of God for the church and the world, we cannot scripture strongly suggests do it without each other. But how how if we differ so deeply if we've drawn apart even within denominations into these

00:13:07.700 - 00:13:22.540

separate subcultural clots, how can we have each other ? Yesterday I followed the lead of Jonathan sacks in confessing the ways that religious groups function as divisive tribes . Today, I will take the next step with

00:13:22.540 - 00:13:39.710

him and look at the richness as he says, the dignity, the things of worth inherent in our differences in christian terms. I want to say this some of the time, maybe much of the time

00:13:39.020 - 00:13:56.340

. Theological affinity groups corrode the fabric of the church by their idolatrous practices, but precisely by being distinct and different from others. They are called to function in and through the church to build it up.

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Their very existence reflects a profound fact about creation which is the God intends unity but not uniformity. When human beings strike coins in a mint sacks, quotes an ancient jewish sage as saying each one comes out

00:14:16.900 - 00:14:39.420

the same God makes every person in the same image . God's image and each one comes out different gratitude for God's pleura form. Creation requires zack says a new respect for the particular, the local, the

00:14:39.420 - 00:15:00.110

unique. Let's try this morning to generate some of that respect for each other as a prelude to an even more important move, which is deepening our own faith by listening, really listening to the witness of

00:15:00.110 - 00:15:13.990

christians who are not like us. Our ability to do this sacks notes. Speaking of the challenge of religious pluralism has something to do with how well rooted we are in our own convictions. If one is

00:15:13.990 - 00:15:26.290

secure in one's home, one is more likely to be moved by the beauty of foreign places. He writes, those who are confident in their faith. I think this is the best line in sacks whole

00:15:26.290 - 00:15:45.520

book. Those who are confident in their faith are enlarged by the faith of others in faith. Then let's see what we can learn from the evangelicals, the liberals and from non aligned centrists. If we're

00:15:45.520 - 00:16:00.580

not part of those groups. And let's see what the whole church stands to gain by not giving up on the struggle to keep us all living and worshiping together. Time is short. So I'm going to

00:16:00.580 - 00:16:15.760

choose just one feature of each group. It's a way of starting not completing the list of gifts and graces, our various cell groups could contribute to the whole if they would. And instead of talking in

00:16:15.760 - 00:16:36.140

abstract terms, I'm going to illustrate each case with a story, let's start what to say about the strengths that evangelicals bring for the last three decades. I've studied evangelical churches and seminaries and I have found

00:16:36.150 - 00:16:49.350

a great deal to appreciate, even to love. It's hard for me to choose at this point, just one element of evangelical faith and practice that the whole church needs to enlarge its faith. I think

00:16:49.360 - 00:17:03.980

we have a lot to learn from our evangelical wing , but I'll think think I'll select the ones that um that I thought the liberals and moderates among you might least expect me to name. But then Cindy

00:17:03.980 - 00:17:23.360

did her introduction. So she kind of let the cat out of the bag. We need as mainline denominations to regain the evangelicals deep reverence for scripture. Yes, Evangelicals are prone to proof texting. Yes

00:17:23.460 - 00:17:41.190

, they are selectively literal in their interpretations. So it might be noted. Are we liberals? We all have small treasuries of verses that support our views and we wear them out with overuse when the bible

00:17:41.190 - 00:17:56.700

, ping pong is over. However, romans, one versus acts 10 versus romans, One versus acts 10 evangelicals, I think do the best job of mining the scriptures for words of life for judgment,

00:17:56.710 - 00:18:15.120

as well as comfort for correction along with celebration at the risk of sharing one of the things I became a presbyterian to avoid having to do the others, as some of you have heard me say, is

00:18:15.120 - 00:18:37.270

hugging. Mhm. I will tell you about a jarring experience I had of hearing the gospel in evangelical precincts. This was some years ago I was traveling to Pasadena to a conference for evangelical seminary professors scheduled

00:18:37.280 - 00:18:55.390

just before christmas, I've been invited by the organizer of this group. Richard Mao, the president of Fuller Seminary to speak about my impressions of that evangelical seminary in which I had been conducting a study for

00:18:55.390 - 00:19:12.930

three years. It's a very touchy matter telling a religious group how they look to an outsider. I wasn't at all sure that what I had prepared would serve. I used three valuable upgrade coupons to secure

00:19:12.930 - 00:19:30.230

a first class airplane seat in which I could concentrate on revising my remarks. As takeoff time neared, I was delighted to see that the seat next to me remained empty. I got out my papers was

00:19:30.230 - 00:19:48.060

about to spread them on the seat and then within just a few minutes with just a few minutes to go before take off, the seat was taken by a woman with a baby small enough to be carried

00:19:48.060 - 00:20:04.150

in her lap big enough to resist being restrained. I will make a long painful episode short. The baby batted my computer and grabbed my papers. When these things were denied him, he kicked and screamed

00:20:04.220 - 00:20:22.140

. Other passengers glared. I gave the flight attendant an imploring look. She took action. She banished the child and his mother who was embarrassed, furious with all of us and crying herself into an empty

00:20:22.140 - 00:20:41.410

row in coach. We all went happily back to work. They no doubt on topics related to mammon I to writing about evangelicals and God. I got to Pasadena. My talk perfected our meeting at Fuller

00:20:41.410 - 00:20:59.990

began as was our custom with Richard leading devotions and preaching. A little sermon. The focus was looped to the incarnation as he often does. Richard pointed up the text with the words of hymns. He

00:20:59.990 - 00:21:18.560

thinks of hymns as compacted theology. That's a nice notion. In this case it was martin Luther's away in a manger, a great him said dr Mao , but one line is just wrong little Lord jesus

00:21:18.570 - 00:21:37.230

, no crying, he makes no said Richard, not so. And he proceeded to weave together a tapestry of scriptures including obscure ones not often preached where I go to church because they're not in the election

00:21:37.230 - 00:21:57.610

eri that described jesus most human and especially most unhappy moments listen to the scriptures, Mao said over and over, he cried for us, he died for us. I was cut to the quick. My

00:21:57.610 - 00:22:15.370

presentation went fine but I felt terrible all weekend. I knew that the spirit had instructed Richard Mao to deliver that rebuke that judgment on my self importance and intolerance. Richard Mao and I disagree strenuously about many

00:22:15.370 - 00:22:36.150

things, but he an evangelical member of a tribe , often accused of spiritual izing everything had preached the humanity of jesus christ and not incidentally of that baby and his mother. On the plane to me a

00:22:36.150 - 00:22:52.600

liberal someone who's supposed to be good at humanism. He mined the scriptures to find what was necessary to restore my soul. Mao is an especially fine thinker and speaker, but I've been moved and convicted by

00:22:52.600 - 00:23:11.860

evangelical preachers of much less ability, including a remarkable number of students in evangelical seminary chapels and from time to time by a radio evangelist. Certainly I do not like or agree with everything I hear, but

00:23:11.860 - 00:23:32.630

there's a quality in evangelical sermons and bible lessons that is just too often missing in other sectors. The quality is relationship. Evangelicals expect the bible to do something to speak, a vital word for them and

00:23:32.630 - 00:23:48.080

except for certain verses on certain marker topics, they expect that it may not be the one they opened the bible hoping to hear James Forbes who is now a liberal leader but was raised in Pentecostal and still

00:23:48.080 - 00:24:10.400

preaches like one says this book is my minister, liberals and moderates who dominate the mainline churches need a double portion of our Evangelical Sisters and brothers expectant confidence in scripture. We need to experience how it's there

00:24:10.400 - 00:24:32.200

for us, how it is tending us in and out of season like a loving but unsentimental pastor, like a critical but caring friend, how about the big mushy middle group, what do they have that

00:24:32.200 - 00:24:47.110

? The rest of us need many activists at either end of the spectrum would say nothing moderates tend to be identified by what they aren't rather than by what they are, no strong opinions, no fixed commitments

00:24:47.320 - 00:25:04.550

, any potential issues or arguments safely buried beneath the calm surface But listen to this next story about one such church yet again, I'm going to have to share my kindergarten report card said Barbie does not like

00:25:04.560 - 00:25:21.720

to share and it's still true. This is painful for me, but it's necessary. Okay. One of my sisters does not fit the family mold. Unlike the rest of us. She doesn't have academic

00:25:21.720 - 00:25:37.910

tendencies. She recognized this as a child and declined to try for college for most of her life. She's been a waitress. She's not, however, given up on learning. She's a history buff,

00:25:37.920 - 00:25:52.980

a self taught student of current affairs. She spends most of her time reading original source materials where she can find them and writing about what she's read. She lives in a resort community where the tips are

00:25:52.980 - 00:26:08.580

good, so she's far away from other family members . Her work colleagues don't share her interests, lacking a formal education. She has no entree to a community of students and scholars that does. She's resilient

00:26:08.590 - 00:26:23.910

and self reliant. But she's often lonely. Several years ago, she came with me to a meeting of presbyterian leaders in a history laden southern city. She spent her time with the spouses of the meeting

00:26:23.910 - 00:26:40.910

participants. They did some sightseeing and then the spouses decided to shop except for one who, noting my sister's keen interest in and knowledge about the civil war and also the fact that she probably had very little

00:26:40.910 - 00:27:00.140

to shop with, asked her to find some monuments for them to visit together after the meeting. They corresponded. My sister was impressed by my colleague's wife's lively mind and moved by her kindness. My sister

00:27:00.140 - 00:27:14.420

, who had drifted away from her roman catholic roots , decided that if my colleague's wife was any measure presbyterian ism might have something to offer. 30 years exposure to her older sister. Never suggested that to

00:27:14.420 - 00:27:33.730

her. In any case, she began to attend the Presbyterian church in the resort community where she lives and works. It is the very picture of a middle church. It compromises on worship one service traditional

00:27:33.740 - 00:27:48.730

, one sort of contemporary. Neither civic nor church politics are discussed from the pulpit or in church programs . Among its members are doctors, nurses, lawyers , teachers, small business owners, bank vice presidents

00:27:48.730 - 00:28:03.380

. A lot of retired folk, not the very richest presbyterians, but none has a blue collar job like my sisters. Some of my academic colleagues wonder whether the upper middle class comforts of a church like

00:28:03.380 - 00:28:18.860

this, blunt the force of the gospel. Some of my church executive friends think that this kind of congregation, with its financial clout and aversion to anything disruptive is an obstacle to progress and change. And

00:28:18.860 - 00:28:37.420

yet this congregation embraced my sister from the first moment the staff and members, many of whom are her customers at the diner, welcomed her warmly when she decided to join. They scheduled an evening membership class

00:28:37.420 - 00:28:52.300

. Their first ever because she, unlike almost everyone else in the church, has to work on Saturdays . The teacher of the most popular adult class who often weaves local history into his lessons, commissions her

00:28:52.300 - 00:29:07.140

to find historical material for him, gives her public credit in class for her work after she recommended that some of her customers visit the church and they decided to join the senior pastor wrote to her thanking her

00:29:07.140 - 00:29:27.500

for being influential and steering them to the congregation. Never before she said to me, had anyone ever described her using that word, influential resort presbyterian church , I'll call, it offers more than niceness.

00:29:27.690 - 00:29:44.530

My sister is reading scripture for the first time, working her way through pilgrim's progress with the senior pastor and a small group of other bookish members despite an erratic and exhausting schedule at the restaurant where she works

00:29:44.530 - 00:30:03.870

. She finds time to volunteer in church programs. She's being stretched sometimes and disappointed in others by the preaching. She hears her worldview always loving and generous now coheres in a way it did not before.

00:30:04.450 - 00:30:23.950

She reports to me genuinely theological insights. She is , in other words, having a full blown experience of christian community. My sister's church is not an exception. Tom curry marvelous description of the first church

00:30:23.950 - 00:30:40.040

in which he served would have done just as well as an example here scores of students I've known in seminary have come back, come back and tell me about the congregations they now serve. They don't fit

00:30:40.040 - 00:30:52.320

the left and right categories we learned in school. They say, I'm not sure I know all the members politics. There's probably a wide range of opinions . They don't talk much about the hot issues.

00:30:52.760 - 00:31:07.500

It's an amazing group of folks though, including some very saintly people whose faith is stronger than mine and some real oddballs who don't fit in anywhere else but whom the church makes room for. What is this

00:31:07.500 - 00:31:23.080

quality that our graduates are pointing to? And that makes me choke up just a little when I think of a church that both accepts my sister and gives her the opportunity to contribute her unusual gifts. Something

00:31:23.090 - 00:31:41.500

that no other institution has ever done for her tolerance seems like the wrong word. It's too grudging in the middle, I think is a strength that comes from looking at everyday life as it is coming to

00:31:41.500 - 00:31:57.250

terms with its complexity and accepting without publicity or fanfare . The strangeness, that's part of most people's spiritual as well as social experience. I know there are limits. The middle is the middle and not the

00:31:57.250 - 00:32:10.330

whole church because it does not deal well with people who need to go public with their convictions and who need to push others to do the same. But you know, at some time, every believer,

00:32:10.340 - 00:32:29.150

even activists like me need a kind of quiet acceptance . No questions asked sometimes you need to go where everybody knows your name and that's just about all they know about you. We are all very mixed bags

00:32:29.610 - 00:32:45.050

. None of us is pure and perfect enough to advertise our whole inner life to the whole world and every one of us, even the most charismatic leader also needs a routine of everyday christian practices that bring

00:32:45.050 - 00:33:02.740

us closer to God and closer to each other. The much maligned middle of mainline protestantism provides these things . It offers simple hospitality, a measure of privacy and the patterned activities of community life. These are

00:33:02.750 - 00:33:23.210

ordinary but essential functions of the body that my sister and you and I need to be the church and what does the church need from my party, the so called left wing. I would not identify as

00:33:23.210 - 00:33:36.700

a liberal if I didn't think that many of our views and values would be good for the rest of you and for the church as a whole. But if I have to choose one feature of the liberal

00:33:36.700 - 00:33:52.250

subculture to contribute to the whole church, it would be a certain kind of inclusiveness. Let me hasten to say that liberals are not good at all kinds of inclusiveness, though sometimes we talk as if we

00:33:52.250 - 00:34:08.890

lead both church and society in diversity. As I noted yesterday, we are as intolerant of our ideological opponents as they are of us daniel Wilshire co author with me and others of the book comparing the Evangelical

00:34:08.890 - 00:34:36.280

seminary, we studied in the mainline seminary, perceptively noted that liberals generous openness to humanity does not always extend to actual people. Mhm About the same time , I heard a well known christian feminist speak about

00:34:36.280 - 00:34:52.600

her child who had gone to prison for a drug offense when he was released. Her congregation known for its radical social and political commitments, quietly urged her to keep him at a distance lest he exert a

00:34:52.600 - 00:35:07.370

negative influence on the Children and youth of that church . He ended up worshiping with a Pentecostal prayer group . Mom, she said, he told her these people call God Father and him and I know you

00:35:07.370 - 00:35:23.220

hate that, but at least they don't treat me like they might get some disease from hanging out with me. The left wing doesn't always make good on what it preaches. Liberals are however gifted at a

00:35:23.230 - 00:35:42.910

very important kind of inclusiveness, they are good at listening to those who are separated from the centers of power by large oppressive social and cultural forces and at translating what they hear into structural and institutional responses to

00:35:42.910 - 00:35:59.820

the evils that create that oppression rather than choose one or another of my friends to provide you with an example of this done well, let me delve into a bit of presbyterian history for a story about liberal

00:35:59.820 - 00:36:20.210

Protestants at their best Henry sloane coffin whose leadership of the presbyterian moderates. I mentioned earlier Was a young man in 1905 when he became pastor of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, a congregation of rich and powerful new

00:36:20.210 - 00:36:34.190

york families like his own, his only previous call had been to what we would now call a new church development. It was in the Bronx slums. It began worshiping in a fish store. It had

00:36:34.190 - 00:36:53.480

grown to considerable size under coffins leadership. That was his background. Ministering the underside. When he arrived at Madison Avenue coffin began systematically to visit the households associated with the church, calling on the servants as

00:36:53.480 - 00:37:09.530

well as the masters. He discovered from these calls that most of his members, maids and butlers attended mission chapels. That Madison Avenue had started in the poor neighborhoods at the edge of the parish boundaries of

00:37:09.540 - 00:37:30.580

the affluent mother church coffin ordered the mission chapels closed and he invited their members to worship at Madison Avenue Church itself. To make this possible. He insisted that the church abolished the system of pew rents that

00:37:30.580 - 00:37:45.670

required ministers required members to pay for a place to sit, the better the seat, the higher the price. His biographer says that he refused to look out from the pulpit on a congregation visibly graded as

00:37:45.670 - 00:38:07.880

to wealth and station these measures, caused consternation among Madison Avenue's well heeled parishioners, not only going to church with their servants families, but sitting next to them coffins. Next innovation was even more upsetting.

00:38:08.010 - 00:38:24.450

He instituted in the sunday service a novelty he had observed during a seminary year in Scotland, the Children's sermon roger, but you didn't know where it came from. I think Henry sunk often imported it,

00:38:27.660 - 00:38:40.590

his own parents made their disapproval clear, coffin stood firm and as he did, he kept his sense of humor in the matter. He wrote this about two elderly women who threatened to leave the church unless

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the Children's messages stopped. The problems of combining two ladies with such outlook and several 100 small Children with little or no religious background seemed insoluble. And as these two women could read their titles clear to their

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future mansions, it did not seem the church's urgent duty to please their taste and neglect the Children. They could really write in those days, couldn't they coffin? And progressive leaders like him had the capacity

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to listen to those on the underside and to hear what they were saying that they want not pity or condescension or improvement by those in power but rather dignity and equal standing in the body of christ and in

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society at large the air's two coffins liberal tradition throughout the last century and into this one have had that same terrorism. They are the ones who have listened and responded as successively women african americans, other racial

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and ethnic minorities and now gay and lesbian persons have proclaimed their faith in their own terms and refused to let their places in church and society be defined without their participation in that process. On the practical inclusiveness

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front. We liberals are as I've admitted far from perfect but we do a good job not only of speaking for those whose voices have been silenced but in our struggles for recognition for ordination for the persons in

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all of these groups, we do a good job of providing a bima a platform from which they can preach the gospel for the edification of the rest of us. I hope you see now, why I

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feel so strongly that we should not devolve are theologically diverse denominations into Kazi subsets where no one has to deal with those who think and act differently. Yes , life in the mainline churches today is wearing and

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wearying. It involves quite a lot of irritation and maybe some real suffering, but there is a reason for the difficulty and pain, jesus prayed like this in an agonizing time. What shall I say,

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Father spare me this hour. No, it is for this purpose that I came to this hour. It is for the purpose of building a truly faithful church, that God has placed the whole mixed lot

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of us in the same denominations, juditha Tory's congregations and seminaries, each of our theological coalitions, dangerous as they can be when they turn in on themselves , also brings facets of faithfulness together. We strengthen

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the church that christ came to build. I named only one feature per party, the dynamism of scripture from the evangelicals. The good order of christian practices from the middle advocacy for the dispossessed from the left

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, but the list could be much longer. I could give a lecture each on the building materials of vibrant church life. That left, right and center could contribute if they would to the up building of

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each other and the whole church. We need those different christians, friends. We need them to supply dimensions of faith. Our own team doesn't have insufficient measure. We need them as rabbis access to enlarge

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our faith. No way we should pull apart further into synod's presbyteries, diocese conferences or new denominations whose unity is easily one because all the members are like minded christ did not have to die to accomplish that

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. We could do that ourselves. His sacrifice was to give us in all our difference to each other for our own, for our churches and for the world's greater good. One last word. I deeply

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believe that those herculean efforts we make to find each other in reunion committees and commissions in task forces, in local groups that bring together people of diverse opinion . I've been part of one for six years.

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I believe that those efforts are worth it. No matter how quickly the fragile resolutions that we forge in them seem to come apart. My own local group has recently dissolved. I'm heartbroken, searching for an

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image to capture what it what felt like a holy moment, which was the moment when our present day task force voted unanimously for a plan that accommodated our opponents as much as ourselves. I came up with

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this. It was a kind of transfiguration, luminous but temporary. Not the consummation, but a glimpse of it. A foretaste as Barbara brown Taylor says , of the capital T transfiguration. It was a

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little bit of glory to get us through the night . It was a moment, just a moment of the church being truly itself, of being a provisional demonstration. As the Presbyterian Constitution puts it of what

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God intends for all humanity. That's why we need to keep trying. That's why we need to keep creating these moments. Even if they go away, we need that light. We need that glimpse of

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how it will someday be. I'm gonna close with a story. This one won't be a heavy one . I have told you enough of those. It's a story of another, of those provisional demonstrations.

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I have an unbreakable habit. Some of you have noticed it here of removing my shoes at every opportunity . During a meeting of that task force on which I served. We met at one point and we

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broke at one point into small groups. When the small group session had ended, I looked down and saw that only one of my shoes was still under the table around which we gathered. The only person

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who had left the room since the meeting concluded was mike loudon someone firmly entrenched on the conservative side of the church. A graduate of Gordon Conwell Seminary at the opposite end of the theological spectrum from Auburn Seminary

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where I hang out, my shoe reappeared prominently, placed on top of my bible at my seat in the main meeting room, much to the amusement of the reporters sitting right behind me, photographer from the

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presbyterian layman took a picture of it. Mike already in his seat, had an enigmatic smile on his face. I knew he'd taken my shoe And I consulted with one or 2 other task force members about

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how we might retaliate. Here's what we came up with on the chance that Mike, a very traditional guy, might not pack his own luggage. We managed to slip one of my shoes into his suitcase

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as he was leaving the meeting. Sure enough, within an hour of my arrival home, I got an email. Funny, very funny. It said Joyce was unpacking my suitcase and and suddenly she said

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in a strange voice, what's this? The story doesn't end there at the beginning of the next meeting as we shared joys and concerns, Mike told the story of the shoe. Our youngest member, an

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ardent feminist looked at him in horror. You mean , she said, your wife packed your suitcase? Sure, said Mike. She took a course in it at Gordon Conwell. This friends. It's freedom

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in christ to be our best selves with each other , to tease each other gently across all kinds of divides, including theological ones and to make fun of ourselves in one another's presence. This is what it

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will be like someday in the church he came to build and the world he came to save. We will not hurt or destroy in all God's Holy Mountain . Instead, we will heal and repair in our

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pluralistic societies, in the worldwide christian communion, in the mainline denominations, and even, please God in