When People Meet as Angels

I have a friend who sees the active hand of God in everything. Things always happen “in God’s time.” Because she’s looking for someone to share her life, she says, “God will send him when God is ready.” In general, she believes God has a plan, a kind of master script in which our lives play out.

I used to chuckle over this theology and call it God of Marionettes, as if we were all puppets worked on strings. At my church in Florida a publications person was fired for running an article in the newsletter about a 9/11 survivor who claimed to have prayed for God to save him, and believed he survived because at the last moment God reached out his mighty finger and pushed the plane upward to strike the building two floors higher. Apparently, God had no use for the people on that floor.

I once scoffed at this interventionist view of God. “We are God’s hands and feet,” I would say. “We are God’s toolbox.” I do still believe God needs and uses us to carry out divine will. And I can’t accept God picking winners and losers in sports contests or in terrorist attacks. But I now believe that if we keep our eyes open, and process what we see with our hearts more than our minds, we will see the force of God’s love moving constantly on the face of the earth.

Some spiritualists refer to the intersection of our needs with the force of God’s good will as synchronicity. You may have experienced it. You are hurting over some event in your life and have nowhere to turn. While shopping, you happen upon a long-lost friend who is particularly good at listening and sympathizing. After an hour over cups of coffee, you feel unburdened. Or, you are wishing you could do more to help the less fortunate, and you have this old dining room table cluttering your garage. The two things have nothing to do with each other until … along comes a poor, old woman in a wheelchair who lives in public housing and desperately needs a table. Ah, but have no way to get it to her until … along comes a man with a pickup truck who also is looking to do good in his life. Synchronicity or simple coincidence? God at work or simply God’s followers serving as God’s toolbox?

Earlier this week I wrote a column for this space discussing actions taken against gays and lesbians at the United Methodist General Conference in Fort Worth and how they failed to meet the criteria of Christ’s great commandment. I contrasted this with the reconciling church I attend in Chicago, where people of various sexual orientations, races, ethnicities and physical abilities, worship and serve together without ever stopping to ask if they should be disqualified as God’s hands and feet.

Soon after I posted the blog, I received a comment from a woman who had been in Fort Worth with her partner protesting the church’s actions and felt “heartbroken” by the results. She said I was “like Jesus” for speaking up for justice. Little did she know I’d been feeling doubt and discouragement over whether my work was bearing fruit. To me she was an angel, saying “yes, you are helping.”

Just when she needed to hear someone say God’s will for her is greater than any church body, I appeared. And when I needed someone to say keep it up my friend, you are helping to heal broken hearts, she appeared. Synchronicity? The hand of God? Or just two people trying to live out the great commandment? Maybe it’s a distinction without a difference.

Diversity Prospers Despite Hits from Fort Worth

The news from the United Methodist Church’s General Conference in Fort Worth was not good. The delegates had voted to retain language in the church’s constitutional Book of Discipline describing gay and lesbian people as out of step with Christ. Meanwhile, in my reconciling Methodist Church in Chicago, gay and lesbian people continued to share their love of God and bask in Jesus’ healing grace, undeterred by the bias in Texas.

In Fort Worth delegates used the word “integrity” to describe positions hurtful to Christians different from themselves and obviously inconsistent with Christ’s great commandment to love one another. In Chicago gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender Christians substituted faithful actions for statements about faith, obeyed Jesus and treated each other with love and kindness.

In Fort Worth heterosexual people firmly told homosexuals they are not welcome; in Chicago homosexual believers joyfully worship along with their straight brothers and sisters confident that all serve the same God.

In Fort Worth, the Methodist Church posted a slogan claiming, “Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors. ” In Chicago gay and lesbian disciples actually practice what the church preaches, opening their hearts, minds and doors to anyone and everyone.

In Fort Worth the church voted down a majority report which at least acknowledged that, “Faithful, thoughtful people who have grappled with this issue deeply disagree with one another; yet all seek a faithful witness,” and substituted minority language retaining statements in the Social Principles that the “United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” Meanwhile, in Chicago, having heard of the church’s actions, believers lifted their voices in praise and exchanged the peace with each other, confident that no human body is authorized to separate them from the love of God.

In Fort Worth delegates stood in their self-righteousness to mouth old clichés about gays and lesbians, with one describing them as “from the devil.” In Chicago, loving brothers and sisters basked in the righteousness of God’s healing grace, rolled up their sleeves and prepared to go on working to bring the message of Jesus and God’s unconditional love to all that need it.

As a straight man, I feel honored to worship in an atmosphere of loving diversity at Broadway United Methodist in Chicago. As for those in Fort Worth who seemed blind to the Spirit of Truth … it’s not mine to judge. Thankfully, we all serve a most forgiving God.