Presbyterian Schismatic Behavior

I’m not worried!

We Presbyterians are behaving as we always have, rooted as we are in the Reformation: from time-to-time, someone gets a bee in her or his bonnet and strikes forth to “reform” the church, make it better, restore it, recover it, renew it and generally rescue it from spiritual miscreants and all the other usual suspects.

The latest flap over ordination is just one short chapter in a very long book.

I suppose a thoughtful reader of our story might well ask the question: Do we ever learn from our behavior?

Do we learn, for example, that whatever “reform” we’re after will be realized in a substantially reduced form, occasioning the need for further reform somewhere down the line?

Do we learn, for example, that the very things we now are fighting against are likely to be resolved, if not by the church, then by society, as was the case for emancipation and women’s ordination (though, for some, the issue of women’s ordination remains a debatable matter)?

Do we learn, for example, that evil is not external, but within - that what defiles us is not what we might eat, but rather what issues from the heart? Jesus offers this advice to temper both those who would identify “evil” as residing “out there” somewhere, either in food or in people and those who would claim an inner purity greater than someone else’s inner purity.

There is much to learn from our story, and most it is that we don’t learn much at all and are likely to repeat the story at least twice every century. Right now, we’re on target for a new Presbyterian group, and before this century draws to a close (I won’t be here to see it, and chances are, many of you reading this right now won’t be here either), we’ll likely see another group emerge, with the same hopes of restoring, renewing, recovering and reforming.

I’m grateful for the new ordination standards - for me and my house, it’s been a long 35-year struggle, and when it comes to marriage equality for LGBTQ persons and related matters, the struggle remains, even as the struggles of environmental degradation, corporate predation, and war remain.

I wish we could find better ways of witnessing to the world, but such doesn’t seem to be an option.

In the meantime, I hope we can maintain some lines of communication, with none of us committing “the unforgivable sin” - that of demonizing one another, attributing motives to the Beelzebub.

I’m not worried.

We will find our way, and the Kingdom of God will continue to emerge from within our ranks, mostly in spite of us, I suppose, though we often like to think that it’s emergence is because of us.

I’m not worried, but saddened that we Presbyterians learn so little from our story.

But I’m not worried about that either.

God prevails … God always does … and stones get rolled away, even as we show up with our spices, ready to finish the burial.