{"id":6397,"date":"2014-02-21T11:57:39","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T19:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/?p=6397"},"modified":"2014-02-21T11:57:39","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T19:57:39","slug":"elders-let-go-of-the-rope-or-hey-church-grow-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/elders-let-go-of-the-rope-or-hey-church-grow-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Elders: LET GO OF THE ROPE! (or Hey, Church — GROW UP!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nurturing Elders and Others:<\/em>
\nLET GO OF THE ROPE! (or Hey, Church — GROW UP!)<\/strong>
\nBy the Rev. Paul Graves<\/em> | Photo courtesy of Wikipedia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Older adults may be the \u201cperfect\u201d group of people to push for peace! We don\u2019t have to compete in our jobs, so we don\u2019t have to protect our job security. We can step back from the normal \u201ctug-of-war\u201d contests in our families, our churches, our community, and even our world. We can say loud and proud: \u201cIs this what is really most important to you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, we still can hardly resist holding one part of the rope or another in those nasty tug-of-war efforts. We rarely pay attention when Jesus comes along to encourage us to \u201cLove our enemies\u201d (That\u2019s another way of saying: \u201cDrop the rope!\u201d).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One of the primary signs of that brokenness is our faithless, destructive battle over homosexuality!
\nI contend that Older Adults have a great opportunity to \u201cdrop the rope\u201d and call our church to grow up and into the faith we claim to have.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

About three years ago, I mentioned a drop-the-rope insight of Dr. Bill Thomas in his book \u201cWhat Are Old People For? How Elders Will Save the World\u201d. He spoke clearly about one of the tasks of Elderhood: Peace-making. He wasn\u2019t referring to any namby-pamby effort to avoid conflict.<\/p>\n

He referred to the hard work of bringing a sense of \u201cwholeness\u201d to relationships in families, in society, and within elders themselves. At this point in our denomination\u2019s history, we are far from whole. We are fractured, even broken.<\/p>\n

One of the primary signs of that brokenness is our faithless, destructive battle over homosexuality! I contend that Older Adults have a great opportunity to \u201cdrop the rope\u201d and call our church to grow up and into the faith we claim to have. So let me say this as clear as I can:<\/p>\n

In 1972 (over 40 years ago!), General Conference first declared itself opposed to the practice of homosexuality as \u201cincompatible with Christian teaching\u201d. Factions since, from local churches to the floor of General Conference, have used this issue as a tug-of-war rope.<\/p>\n

On both sides of the mud pit – with mostly condemning rhetoric – we have paraded our incomplete spiritual awareness in front of the world both within and beyond the church.<\/p>\n

I think that the church trials — past, present and future — are a sign we have failed to substitute Law for Grace. Our individual and corporate egos are not ready to drop the rope in favor of \u2018re-membering\u2019 (putting back together) a mature Christian witness must be more than legal maneuvers and blind obedience to the UMC Discipline.<\/p>\n

In early February, I was reading a section of Richard Rohr\u2019s book \u201cThings Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality\u201d. He spoke of how Paul used Romans and Galatians to put a new spin on Jewish Law. (Remember, he was a law-abiding Pharisee before his conversion.)<\/p>\n

Both of his books addressed the complex limitations of the Law. Rohr refers to Romans 3:20 and 7:7-13 to illustration this insight: \u201cLaws can only give us information, and even helpful information, but they cannot give us transformation.\u201d (p. 79). That single statement prompted me to write a question in my book.<\/p>\n

We older adults must be willing to drop the rope ourselves so we can focus our attention on the \u201cweightier matters\u201d that the Faith (trust) God has in us calls us to attend to. Why do we let ourselves pick up a rope that draws us into a tug-of-war?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

How does the fighting over homosexuality in today\u2019s UMC contribute to the UMC Mission Statement to \u201cmake disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world\u201d? They don\u2019t!!<\/p>\n

Somehow, while we still hang onto the tug-of-war rope to fight with each other, we\u2019ve also made gay ordination, same-sex unions performed by our clergy, and who-knows-what-else related to homosexuality, into very distasteful, churchy red herrings.<\/p>\n

When we can be courageous enough to drop the rope, we might see Jesus\u2019 challenge to the Pharisees\u2019 pride and its hypocritical result as our primary moral dilemma also: \u201cYou have neglected the weightier matters of the law \u2013 justice, mercy and good faith\u201d in favor of temple tithes,\u201d (Matt. 23:23).<\/p>\n

We older adults must be willing to drop the rope ourselves so we can focus our attention on the \u201cweightier matters\u201d that the Faith (trust) God has in us calls us to attend to. Why do we let ourselves pick up a rope that draws us into a tug-of-war?<\/p>\n

God calls us to be peace-makers. That means we must drop the rope!<\/p>\n

\n

The Rev. Paul Graves serves as the chair for the Conference Council on Older Adult Ministries for the PNWUMC.
\nThis article will be featured in Channels #71, March 2014 (COMING SOON!)<\/strong>.<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nurturing Elders and Others: LET GO OF THE ROPE! (or Hey, Church — GROW UP!) By the Rev. Paul Graves | Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Older adults may be the \u201cperfect\u201d group of people to push for peace! We don\u2019t have to compete in our jobs, so we don\u2019t have to protect our job security. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":6398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[111,6,142],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-channels","8":"category-conversation","9":"category-older-adult-ministries"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/INSIGHTS_Elders_Rope.jpg?fit=700%2C357&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-1Fb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6397"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6404,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6397\/revisions\/6404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}