Psalm 1; Acts 1: 15-17, 21-26
Rev. Laura J. Collins
June 1, 2003
This past week, thousands of Presbyterians descended upon Denver, Colorado for an annual festival of parliamentary procedure known as the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). About 550 of those attending were elected delegates to the Assembly who voted on issues brought there from the grass-roots. The rest were national church staff or people who lobby for particular concerns in the church or people who just like to see the church in action at the national level. For many, it is kind of like a big family reunion - favorite uncles you haven't seen for a while and cousins you'd rather not see again for a while.
But for those of you who've never been -- and even for those of you who couldn't care less -- what is the General Assembly and what happens there?
GA, as it is known in short-hand, is two things. First, it is this annual meeting; second, it is the national staff of the church, who are headquartered in Louisville, KY, and work between the meetings to carry out the decisions made by the Assembly. The national staff do things like write curriculum, manage the Pension Fund for pastors, organize conferences on various topics of interest to the congregations and generally provide resources to the local church. They also oversee the work of U.S. Presbyterians working around the world in the fields of health, education, evangelism, relief and development.
The annual meeting is our church democracy in action. The Presbyterian Church (USA) is divided into 173 regions known as Presbyteries. Each Presbytery sends delegates to the national meeting who have been elected at the local level. There is always an exactly even number of clergy and lay people at the General Assembly. Clergy are never, ever allowed to outnumber lay people. It's not that you guys don't trust us preachers, it's just that ... well, you just want to be sure we never get too big for our britches or forget who pays our salaries!
So for eight days folks gather for worship, Bible study, prayers groups, and lots of paperwork. Piles of paper. Reams and reams of paper! Papers about the war in Iraq, the situation in Israel and Palestine, late-term abortions, gays and lesbians serving the church; about reaching out to youth and ministering to people in prison; papers about how seminaries should train ministers and about how ministers should train lay leaders; papers about how Presbyterians relate to other denominations and other faiths and papers about responding to the AIDS crisis in Africa. Policies and positions are presented in these papers, debated in detail in committees and then brought to the floor for further debate and finally a vote. The decisions that are made determine how our national staff will focus their energies for the coming year. And they also speak to Presbyterians in the pews.
They speak to Presbyterians in the pews, like you, but not for Presbyterians in the pews. That is to say, whatever decisions are made, you are free to disagree with them. You can even disagree vehemently with them and it in no way impacts your ability to be a faithful Presbyterian. The General Assembly does not attempt to think for us. Their decisions are not binding on the conscience of any individual Presbyterian -- they are neither infallible nor inerrant.
Why, then, should any of us care what happens at GA, anyway?
That's a fair enough question. And my response is because the General Assembly speaks to us. That is, the people who go to GA are generally people of deep faith in God and deep commitment to the church who are there because they really care about living out their faith. And we send them there to study these issues with care and with prayer and to develop a response. So when a paper comes out about, oh let's say, late-term abortions, as one did this year, there are Presbyterians who study the issue and study the Scriptures and present a thoughtful, heart-felt, faithful paper to a committee to consider.
This committee, also made up of faithful Presbyterians, listens to those who like the paper and to those who don't like the paper and they debate and pray among themselves and reach a decision. Then they take the paper to the whole assembly who listen again to all the sides and further question and debate and struggle and pray and finally a vote is taken and if the paper is approved, it becomes the most recent statement of where Presbyterians officially stand on late-term abortions. And because thoughtful people have given it so much time and energy and prayer, it behooves us to consider their decision in formulating our own personal positions. In case you're wondering, we are a pro-choice church.
If that all sounds a bit tedious, well, it is. You know the joke about how many Presbyterians it takes to change a light-bulb? We don't know yet -- a committee is still studying the issue. Or the one about how various denominations respond when someone yells, "There's a fire in the church!" The Presbyterians form a task-force to study the problem.
It's true. Democracy can be kind of slow and boring. Revolutions sounds so much more interesting, don't they? But we Presbyterians have opted for democracy.
And why did we do that? Because we believe that every person has access to God's Holy Spirit and so no one leader -- whether a pope or a bishop or a charismatic preacher -- can interpret the living of the faith for us.
But we also believe that all of us are sinners who fall short of a clear understanding of what God intends. Therefore, we are not rank individualists who can each make up our own minds about the faith, apart from everybody else. We believe that we all have access to the Holy Spirit, but that the Spirit speaks more clearly when two or three or 550 are gathered, because then we have others who can challenge our blind spots, widen our perspectives, deepen our understanding and help us to pray. So seeking the Spirit's guidance becomes a communal task instead of an individual one.
Some people find this a bit too binding. They would like to have complete freedom to make up their own minds on every topic under creation. And I can certainly relate to that. I've never met a topic on which I didn't have an opinion.
Still, I find it liberating to not have to bear the burden of figuring it all out myself. To trust that in community I may learn something I never knew or hear a side of the story I hadn't considered. To trust that the Spirit will speak to me through other people and that our shared prayers create a stronger thread than my prayers all alone.
Which brings us to the Scripture for today (finally!). The text in Acts tells a funny little story about choosing a replacement apostle for Judas. Peter and the others are convinced that the inner circle of apostles needs to continue to be twelve - like the twelve tribes of Israel - as twelve is considered a number of completeness in Hebrew numerology. So they set their criteria, narrow it down to two, and then they cast lots.
That is, they rolls stones with the names on them to see which one wins. Kind of like drawing straws. Short straw becomes the new apostle!
So here we have a Biblical model for group decision-making. Numerology gets them started and rolling the stones completes the project. Sound a little suspect?
What is key here is that they believed God would show them who God had already chosen. They believed that God had a plan and that they needed to get on board with it. And as we can read in the following chapters, they must have been right, because the church grows, people are healed, communities blossom, miracles occur.
God has a plan for us as well. So we can learn some things from today's text. First, the disciples used their minds to set reasonable criteria. God gives us good minds and expects us to use our reason. Second, they made the nominations together, trusting each other]s ability to discern spiritual gifts and not relying on any one person's discernment. Then, they gathered in prayer, trusting that God would speak to them.
Now, I like the fact that God speaks to them through a crap shoot, so to speak. The project starts out logically enough, but at some point, logic doesn't give us what we really need to know. There is an element of mystery, here. A trust that God can use even something as simple as a roll of dice to make things clear -- or as simple as a piece of bread and a sip of juice.
And finally, when they received an answer, they acted on it.
This seems to me a pretty good process for either church decisions or personal ones. God has a plan. We can use our minds to determine its parameters. We can call on each other to help us in discernment. We can pray together for God to give us a clear sense of direction and we can trust the mystery of receiving that direction. And when we get it, we can move forward, knowing God will go with us on our way.
In the coming weeks you'll hear more about the decisions coming out of this year's Assembly. As you hear about them, I invite you to consider not only the outcome, but the process. The mysterious working of God's spirit with a bunch of paper-laden Presbyterians. Really, casting lots is probably not much stranger, when you think about it.
God is speaking to us. Are we ready to draw our lots?
Webmaster : Brian C. Monsell