Voting for Amendment 10-A Today

I've prepared the following floor statement - don't know if I'll have the opportunity to speak, but if I do, this is what I'll read:

Sisters and Brothers, I voted for The Way Forward, not because I was happy with it, but because I trusted the Task Force that crafted it, and because I believed that it could give us some much-needed breathing room.

I will vote for Amendment 10-A for the same reason – it will give to all of us breathing room, though we have our preferences for the kind of air we breath.

We have a unique opportunity to show the world that we’re slightly different than the usual squabbling that characterizes so much of our contemporary discourse.

The world is not much interested in what any of us believe, but very interested in how we live. 

Our witness to the world is very much a matter of how we love one another. And to love only those who are in agreement with us hardly qualifies as love at all. Love suffers, because it suffers one another.

I don’t have all the answers, and none of us do. Though we’d all like to think otherwise. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus often keeps our eyes closed, and then, when the time is right, opens them up, and we see Jesus, but only for a moment. Then it’s up to us to leave the Table and run back to Jerusalem, as fast as our feet can carry us, to join hands with all the other disciples.

Today, we have a chance to break the logjam … clear the air … and return to the ordaining bodies the rights and responsibilities of ordination.

Will this solve all of our problems? Nothing ever does. But it will help us start moving again, however the Spirit should move us, and however moved we are, may it only be toward one another, with a greater respect for one another’s integrity, sense of mission, and how we do church.

With a final recognition, that we’re all in this together. While we may not see eye-to-eye, it’s Christ who links us together arm-in-arm.

I invite you to join with me in an affirmative vote for Amendment 10-A.

Proud to be Presbyterian

While at Zephyr Point (Lake Tahoe) for Week Two of interim training, several of the Lutheran pastors said, "Presbyterians do this better than anyone else."

My heart swelled with gratitude and pride. Yup, I'm glad to be a Presbyterian.

We do this interim training well, and we do lots of things well.

When Donna and I lived in Detroit and we'd visit our son in Chicago, and if we were there on a Sunday, we'd go to Fourth Presbyterian Church across the street from the John Hancock Center - a vital church pastored by John Buchanan, also editor of The Christian Century.

Our denomination has weathered many a storm since it's founding in the United States.

The first Presbytery was founded in 1709 in Philadelphia, and the first General Assembly was held in the same city, 1789. Our most recent Assembly, the 218th, was held in San Jose.

Through thick and thin, sick and sin, we've come a long way - with great missionaries, colleges and seminaries, hospitals and schools, here and around the world ... and thousands of congregations, just like Covenant, holding forth the Gospel, teaching children, providing fellowship and hope, engaged in community ministries, and lifting up the name of Jesus.

Sure, we have our work cut out for us these days. But I’m proud to be a Presbyterian

Our new Moderator, the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, a 39-year old San Franciscan, represents a new day dawning for all of us.

Let me ask each of you to pray regularly for the Presbyterian Church - say the name, and then the Name above every name, "Jesus my Lord."

Would you do that?

Thanks and God's Peace to all.

Pastor Tom

To the Presbyterian Layman

Dear Friends,

I'm in my 37th year of ministry within the PCUSA and feel a confidence and hope greater than I've known in 25 years.

But after reading the latest Layman (which I've read for years), I'm inclined to suggest that Jesus just isn't real for us and our faith but an exercise in delusion - because we can't love one another as He loves us; it seems we can only love our own kind, and even that, at times, appears to be a stretch.

Are we any different than the local condo association squabbling over someone's flowerpots on the front walk?

Some will cry out: But the issues are so important! It's more than flowerpots.

Granted, but the greatest issue is love ... is that not what Paul wrote to the troubled Corinthian community? A community divided by the spirit of one-upmanship?

Until we can walk arm-in-arm, our witness to Christ is compromised. Cling to our confessions, stand on our version of the truth, site passages and quote authors, but our lack of love for one another reveals the breakdown of our inner character and belies our claims of salvation. In an anxious nation, increasingly isolated and angry, our own example is anything but "salt of the earth" and "light of the world."

I know the matters that divide us are serious, but I wonder if our own pride of claiming the high moral ground intensifies and distorts the reality. What will any of us say when we stand before Jesus with these terrible scars on our soul? That I believed rightly in the propositions of faith? That I picked out the gnat in the tea and swallowed a camel called pride? That I sang the name of Jesus even as I scathingly denounced sisters and brothers who also claim His precious name?

If love is "the greatest of these," then we have some work ahead of us. Wasn't it our Lord who asked, "What value is there in loving those who love you?"

I know that Paul and Barnabas separated, but is that not attributable to sin? In spite of Paul’s brilliant faithfulness, was he not "chief of sinners" in his own words?

Well, not much more to be said ... I guess the Lord of the Church will sort it all out, but I think those who are willing to pick up their marbles and play in someone else's backyard will find, in time, the mud there is just as muddy.

The snake is never in the grass, but in our heart.

With joy and hope, because Jesus remains Lord.