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A Reconciling Congregation of the United Methodist Church
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You are to be witnesses to it all

Ascension Day Homily
May 23, 2004
by Lindsay Thompson

Thank you for your kind invitation to join you today.

A number of you have mentioned you didn't recognize me from how you remember me at Karen's trial. Let me introduce myself as you will remember me (turns back to pews).

We have traveled far together over the last year. I have learned a lot about Methodists, chiefly of your remarkable hospitality to strangers like me, and that every Methodist minister in this conference is related to twelve to sixteen others.

When I told my law partner I was coming to Ellensburg to give a sermon, he said, "Can you do that? I thought preaching takes a different kind of license."

It is a singular honor to meet and talk with you today.

A student of history, I have been struck by its randomness. Events tear through places, and lives, like a tornado skipping from hilltop to hilltop, arising from nowhere, disappearing to points unknown.

I think of Wilmer McLean, a Virginia farmer. After a cannonball tore through his parlor in the first ballet of Bull Run, he swore to remove his family to a place of safety, of no military consequence, far from any target. Four years later, two great armies converged in the Virginia hill country. General Lee surrendered to General Grant- in Wilmer McLean's parlor at Appomattox Court House.

So history goes.

You in this congregation; Karen Dammann and her family; the participants in, and witnesses to, her trial- have all been swept up in the cresting wave of history, then left, after it has passed, left to sort out what it all meant, means, and may yet mean.

In that we have something in common with the dazed men and women at the end of Luke's Gospel. History has churned through their lives too, leaving things at once the same and yet completely changed. "They stood still," Luke says, "their faces full of sadness."

But as Jesus told the eleven, in Luke 24:48, "You are to be witnesses to it all," the good; the bad; the promise of joy.

And so you have been chosen to witness, through trial, verdict, and general conference. And you do again, today, when visitors from afar have come, trying to convert Ellensburg's churches into a stage for their unique brand of Scripture.

Fred Phelps says he along speaks the word of God, yet His message is punitive, not positive.

His God revels in the murder of innocents, and demands the summary execution of every gay person on the planet. He wants Phelps to erect monuments to the torture and killing of those of whom He disapproves.

It is easy to dismiss our visitors as a caricature, or a hate group. We aren't like them, after all.

I suggest, however, that there are those in the church whose views differ from the visitors on the sidewalk only by degree. As Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Indepedence, "let facts be submitted to a candid world."

Consider, for a moment, the virulent reaction of many to Karen's acquittal. Op-ed pieces, pastoral letters by dozens of bishops, lay commentaries- all denounced the verdict, the process, and this conference.

One of our trial witnesses, Rev. Gilbert Caldwell, felt moved to write an article wondering where most of Karen's supporters were.

Opponents have given free reign to their pens, and imaginations, because the trial transcript remains sealed despite Karen's request that it be as transparent as the trial itself. Made public, people can take it or leave it, but they will know the truth of what happened, the truth we who were there know. Until then, as Machiavelli wisely noted, "the absent are always wrong."

Consider, too, the events of general conference. Delegates attempted to legalize double jeopardy. The very ones who claimed Karen's trial court threw The Discipline out the window cheerfully did so themselves when it suited their purposes.

The Discipline tells us, "The Church shall have no right of appeal from an acquittal at trial." "Never mind that," some replied, "We're seeking a declaratory decision. That's different."

The Discipline says a petition for a declaratory decision must list the affected parties, who are entitled to notice and fifteen days to respond.

General Conference passed two declaratory decision requests in three days with no notice to Karen- even though both were aimed at her and one called her by name, and the Judicial Council decided them without any notice to Karen. They took one day on one decision and less than a day on the other.

Even some conservatives have faulted the win-at-any-cost tactics at general conference.

Conference and Council missed an opportunity to re-examine church policies. Instead, they reacted in anger and fear, taking the arguments that won Karen's cause at trial and declaring them all illegal, at once, completely, and forever. One bishop said he was shocked by the verdict. He added, "We thought we'd just have a trial, give her her due process, and convict her."

After this general conference, it looks like those people may well get their wish. The skids will be greased for the next gay or lesbian minister and we will have moved from church trial to show trial.

Or so some think. When Karen's trial began, everyone said any result but conviction was impossible. In the future, clergy and legal counsel will simply have to come up with new arguments and prevail all over again.

Finally, consider the reaction to the case within this conference. Trial court members report being upbraided, even shunned, by colleagues and congregants. A group of ministers has formed a group to hold the conference's feet to what they define as a proper adherence to church law.

A resolution will be considered at the Pacific Northwest annual conference calling for the resignation of the entire trial court, church counsel. Bishop Galvan, and nearly everyone else involved with the trial.

I am disappointed. Just because I am a Presbyterian doesn't mean I should be left out. I want to be banned, too. I want to stand by my friends and colleagues who showed the world true justice and faith at work.

I speak plainly, because I am an advocate: first, for my client, now for a congregation and denomination I have come to know and admire.

"You are to be witnesses to it all," Luke says. And so you will- to the things to come. History may shift to other venues, but the case for an inclusive church is yet to be won. There are battles to come, here and on fields afar. Please stand firm in your commitment to inclusion and justice. Yours is the way forward, one that celebrates dissent but declines to live in a reactionary past where the Bible was used to justify slavery, segregation, and the subjugation of women. Each time, Biblical authority for injustice gave way because Methodists of good heart fought for justice until they got it.

I believe your way will prevail. It must. Indeed, some commentators opposed to a truly inclusive church have called this year's general conference a turning point, a Gettysburg, the battle where they had their greatest chance, mobilized their greatest forces, and still could not prevail. We saw those who accused the trial court of fomenting schism, put schism up for a vote at conference's end.

I believe your way will prevail because eventually justice always does. As Winston Church told the House of Commons in World War II, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Or as Romans 5:2-5 has it,

... We are at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, who has given us access to that grace in which we now live; and we exult in the hope of the divine glory that is to be ours ... More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character gives us hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, which he has given to us.

You are, truly, to be witnesses to it all. Watch; think, and speak well. You are movers of history.

Thanks be to God.

 

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

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