Easter People, Let Us Sing!
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IN FOCUS Easter people, let us sing! By Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi Easter season, or Eastertide is the 50-day period starting at sunset These attacks on places of worship ought to impact how we on the eve of Easter and continuing until Pentecost, which is on think about safety in our places of worship, but they should June 9 this year. So we are right in the middle of a season where not negatively impact the worship that happens there. In fact, we rejoice and experience anew the fact that Christ is risen. perhaps our shouts of “He lives, He lives!” should be louder and During this season we remember our baptism and ponder and more intense to show our defiance of the forces of evil. It doesn’t celebrate what it means to be an Easter/Resurrection people. matter what the world may do, it does not change the fact that on We contemplate what it means to follow a Jesus who conquered the third day Jesus the Christ rose from the dead. He is Lord and death and the grave and lives. We examine our lives and attitudes Risen Savior! and discipleship journeys to ensure that we are living and acting as people who serve a risen savior who is in the world today. We When we stand against hate, particularly during a time when rehearse again and again “He lives, He lives! Christ Jesus lives hate crimes are on the rise, we are declaring, “He lives. He lives!” today.” When we hold our loved ones accountable for racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, or homophobic hate comments, we are declaring, There are spiritual forces of wickedness that cringe every time “He lives. He lives!” we sing that refrain. Those forces are invested in us living and When we reach out to the Jewish and Muslim communities, acting as if our God is dead. I must confess that on Easter Sunday uplifting our common Abrahamic roots, we are declaring, “He morning when I awoke to the news that hundreds of people in Sri lives. He lives!” Lanka who were worshiping on one of the most sacred days in the Christian year were blown up, I was overwhelmed with grief and it This Easter season I am reclaiming my identity as an Easter person. was hard for me to feel like an Easter person. I am going to raise my voice as loudly as I can with my words and my deeds declaring, “He is risen”. And during this season I implore I remembered the massacre at the mosque in Christchurch. I you ... thought of the murders at Tree of Life Synagogue. I recalled my visit to Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina following the massacre there. All of these thoughts Easter people, raise your voices, were going through my mind as I was getting ready to go to Easter sounds of heaven in earth should ring. Sunday morning service. All of these thoughts continued with me during this Easter season. Now the death of Lori Gilbert Kaye, Christ has brought us heaven's choices; shot by a gunman who entered Chabad of Poway as worshipers Heavenly music, let it ring. gathered to celebrate the last day of Passover, has invaded my Alleluia! Alleluia! meditation and prayer time. Easter people, let us sing. During my prayer and meditation, it occurred to me that if I let my dismay over these events negatively impact my relationship with "Easter People, Raise Your Voices" God, thus preventing me from realizing the full blessings God has William M. James for me during this Easter season, I will have let the spiritual forces The United Methodist Hymnal, No. 304 of wickedness be victorious. Judicial Council rulings examined By Bishop Cynthia Moore-Koikoi I am exceedingly grateful to the men and women who serve independently of the overall plan, the constitutional on the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church. This petitions in the plan would go forward. However, the seven group of nine laity and clergy persons who are elected by unconstitutional petitions (90033, 90034, 90035, 90037, the General Conference is charged with the responsibility of 90038, 90039, and 90040) and the second sentence of one determining if the actions of General, Jurisdictional, Central and other petition (90045) were ruled null and void. The eight Annual Conferences are constitutional. It also rules on whether constitutional petitions (90032, 90036, 90042, 90043, 90044, the actions of other official bodies of the denomination are 90046, 90047, and all except the second sentence of 90045) consistent with the Book of Discipline. will become effective in the United States on January 1, 2020 and one year after the end of the Special Called Session in late February 2020 in conferences outside the United States. The petitions that will be implemented have added to or clarified the complaint process. A complaint is a written document filed with the bishop of an area stating that a clergy or layperson in the United Methodist Church has violated the Book of Discipline. A complaint triggers a formal process which now can only be dismissed if there is no basis of law or fact for the complaint and the reasons for dismissal are shared with the complainant. If a complaint is filed, a bishop must first try to resolve the complaint through a just resolution. A just resolution identifies what harm was done by the violation of the Book of Discipline and what will be done to address that harm. Now just resolutions must identify all harms that have been done and how those harms will be addressed. In addition, now “every effort” must be made to have the complainant agree to the I am sure that when the current council members accepted just resolution. If a just resolution cannot be agreed upon, their nominations, many of them did not realize the intensity complaints can be sent to a church trial. If a trial court finds a of the legal, emotional, and spiritual work that would be before clergy person guilty of officiating at a same gender union, the them as we United Methodists expressed our differences in penalty for the first offense is a one-year unpaid suspension. For perspective on the role practicing homosexuals should play a second offense, there is termination of credentials. in the life of our beloved denomination. Regardless of your particular opinions about their rulings, I urge you in your The approved petitions also added some clarity to the personal and collective prayer time to thank God for them. For ordination process. One clarified that being “a self-avowed obvious reasons, their personal contact information is not shared practicing homosexual” now includes living in a same-sex widely, so I’m not encouraging you to email them, but if you ever marriage, domestic partnership, or civil union. Another states encounter members of the council in person, please thank them that bishops cannot consecrate “self-avowed” homosexuals for their service. as bishops or ordain candidates that the Board of Ordained Ministry determines to be “self avowed”. Petition 90036 On Friday, April 26, the Judicial Council released their rulings on removed “practicing” from the prohibition, so any self-avowed the legislation passed by the Special Called Session of General homosexual, whether practicing or not, cannot be ordained Conference. Because of the diversity of perspectives in Western or consecrated. However, the Committee on Correlation and Pennsylvania, the rulings have been received with joy by some Editorial Revision (CCER) met after the Special Called Session and with great pain by others. Some have mixed feelings. It is and corrected the inconsistencies in this petition with other my prayer that we will continue striving for perfection in love and paragraphs in the Book of Discipline. The committee added continue to grow in our understanding of and compassion for the disciplinary phrase “self-avowed practicing homosexual” the feelings of all of the members of our Western Pennsylvania to petition 90036. In addition, the Board of Ordained Ministry Conference family. must do a “full examination” of each candidate. The following is a summary of the rulings: The Judicial Council also modified its prior ruling on the disaffiliation plan previously known as Petition 90059. (By While about half of the petitions that made up the Traditional action of the General Conference, Petition 90059 is now referred Plan were found to be unconstitutional, the Judicial to as Petition 90066). In its new ruling, the council said, “We Council ruled that because each petition could each stand reluctantly declare amended Petition 90066 constitutional, 2 | May/June 2019 but stress at the same time that the General Conference As the Judicial Council alluded, the work of the General bears the responsibility to legislatively address the deficiency Conference with regard to the role of practicing homosexuals in identified...”. The result is that now, if a local church, as a matter the life of the church is not finished. And as many of you have of conscience, disagrees with the denomination’s stance on been reading online or hearing from various caucus groups, we homosexuality, it may disaffiliate from the denomination through will still be debating homosexuality at General Conference in a process that, among other things, requires the following three 2020. Groups on all sides began meeting almost immediately steps: after the Special Called Session. 1. The local church would have to, by a 2/3 margin, vote at a I continue to have hope that we will find more loving, church conference to disaffiliate. compassionate, humble, creative, wise, and Spirit-filled ways to engage in conversation about our perspectives, hopes, dreams, 2.