The 223rd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) will begin in a few days in St. Louis, MO. It will be nearly 4 years since the tragedy in Ferguson, MO, where Michael Brown was shot and killed and the subsequent response of frustration by the community to that tragic event. Voices for change and appeals for justice were echoed in the tears, the shouts, the anger and frustration of a community that has a history of racial tension. Pundits, quick to earn air time, played the cards that respective cable news sources desired them to play so that eyes would be captured, ears tingled, assumptions verified, platitudes made, money flowed, and a day where divisiveness rather than healing and reconciliation, won the day.
So, it will be in the city of St. Louis. It will be in this complex midwestern metropolitan community where the denomination will rest its discerning head for the coming week, to listen to the voices of those on every conceivable color of the denominational spectrum and to navigate the complexity of issues that affect the Church whom the Lord has entrusted the 400+ delegates to be stewards of. It will be an extraordinary opportunity for the witness of a diverse denomination, who has earned its stripes in the difficult journey of disagreement and the search for maintaining the unity of the body of Christ, to offer a means and a way to live out what a polarized world fails to offer: reconciliation.
There have been many questions as to the existential reality of the denomination. Recent figures for membership once again reaffirmed the reality that membership is declining. Yet, in spite of the appeals to modernist idealism which reinforces “bigger is better” and that success is solely attributed to exploding sanctuaries (If bloated waistlines are a measure of health then I am Mr. Universe) then the denomination will miss an important moment. If the fixation is for the denomination to “right the ship” of membership decline, we will have missed a profound reality set before the denomination and the country at large. The Lord has called the Church for this moment and in this place to raise up a titanic reality that once sunk in the depths of pundits, polarization, injustice, conceit, and taglines for cash. The denomination has a glorious witness to the reconciling work of Jesus Christ and the opportunity to show the country what the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated:
Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method…is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community…Yes , love-which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies-is the solution.
whenyoucantwalkonwater 