Could a UMC Bishop Speak like Constantinople’s Patriarch?

United Methodist bishops rarely speak outside the language of American hyper individualism and “rights.” In one typical example, a bishop, while acknowledging United Methodism’s policy that marriage is man and woman, still urged congregations to recognize legally married same sex couples. He noted that Jesus in the Gospels never specifically addressed same sex behavior.

During His earthly walk, Jesus also never advocated a “right” to marriage. Nor did He address any of the issues that the United Methodist Council of Bishops has addressed in its pastoral letters: immigration law, nuclear weapons, U.S. foreign and military policy, the environment. Of course, Jesus as Second Person of the Trinity and Lord of the cosmos, cares about every aspect of creation, including these issues. He also cares about natural marriage, which He does in fact affirm in the Gospels and throughout His word as the union of man and woman.

This United Methodist bishop cited heterosexual immorality, which high ranking Methodist clerics typically never discuss EXCEPT as a talking point for legitimizing same sex behavior. The inability of United Methodist officials even to acknowledge universal church teaching about marriage, family and chastity contrasts with this recent pronouncement in Philadelphia from Eastern Orthodoxy’s Patriarch of Constantinople.

Here’s one quote from Patriarch Bartholomew:

Our Lord, through His first miracle in Canaan, Galilee, blessed the holy sacrament of marriage, in which two persons of different sexes come together to unite into one body: and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is a profound one and I’m saying that it refers to Christ and the Church (Eph. 5: 31-33).

Through this union of the two persons male and female in Christ the family becomes a dwelling of Christ, from Whom every family in heaven and on earth is named (Eph. 3: 15-16); every family, i.e. every genealogical origin and presence on earth of which the family is the cell from Adam and Eve, through which life goes on, the earth is inherited, and the heavenly kingdom granted to the man who has been created in the image and likeness of God.

Human life is certainly a serious matter, a spiritual battle and a course toward a goal that is heaven.

This final point about Heaven is very important, isn’t it? But it is a topic rarely addressed by United Methodist bishops.

Here’s more elaboration from Bartholomew:

The institution of Marriage and the Orthodox Christian family is foremost a course of love, secondly a course of common spirit and common exercise, thirdly a course of creativity, common creativity and continuation of life, and, fourthly a common course toward heaven, toward the heavenly kingdom. It is a calling of God, it is a joining of diversity that leads to perfection, and, therefore, the spouses become also joint heirs of the grace of life (1 Peter 3, 7).

Taking into account the Patristic saying according to which nothing holds together life as the love between man and woman, the living together of people of the same sex as couples is not an accepted practice within the bosom of our Orthodox Church, which preserves undefiled the wholesomeness of the evangelical truth. It is irreconcilable with the commandments of God and contrary to the spirit of the Gospel. As deacons of the Church and her salvific work, we ought to keep always a clear and unambiguous stance on this subject that resurfaces constantly, because only where there is husband and wife and children and concord and people connected by the bonds of virtue there, in their midst, is Christ, says St. John Chrysostom (On Genesis, Homily 6, P.G. 54, 616).

And here’s more:

Mother Church who is always affectionate toward all her children accepts and calls everyone to salvation, the devout and the sinners, the healthy and the sick, the strong and the weak. Not only does she accept everyone but also gives everyone the opportunity at a moment of time to repent and be saved. The Church, regardless of the passing of so many centuries, condemns and reproaches sin and does not change her stance against it, as against something allegedly natural but only slightly different.

Finally, note Bartholomew’s call to faithfulness amid a “materialistic” culture:

We know, brothers, sisters and children, that you live in a materialistic society that is continually distancing itself from the Orthodox morals and traditions and not favoring the traditional life; a society where faith and devotion to the principles of our Orthodox tradition often seems or is deemed by some as something anachronistic and foreign to the demands of the modern social life. It is here where the responsibility of both the shepherd and the flock lies. You, our spiritual children in America, on free will and choice and after much toil you possess the treasure of the genuine apostolic faith and tradition, of the truth and genuineness in the Grace of the sacraments, the treasure of tradition and family, despite environmental and societal limitations, as pure as the Mother Church of Constantinople has preserved it throughout the centuries. Thus, by lifting the cross of life may you offer witness of the truth of Christ, from Whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

Lifting high the cross and teaching the truths of Christ on salvation, human nature, and morality are central to the calling of the universal church, no matter the cultural context and potential resistance.

Speaking for the universal church as opposed to just for a particular culture is the calling of all bishops, everywhere at all times, including United Methodists. There are United Methodist bishops who believe in the universal church, and who believe in the transcultural unchanging truths of the Gospel. But they are largely silent. Instead we hear mostly at best pro-forma citations of the United Methodist Discipline, and even then, grudgingly.

If you are a United Methodist bishop reading this blog, and you believe in the universal church and its transcultural teachings, would you consider delivering a sermon or publishing a column speaking as Patriarch Bartholomew has done? It will earn you some controversy, but it will also make you more interesting and relevant than most of what we hear from the official channels of our declining (in the U.S.) denomination.

United Methodist bishops who believe in the universal church, please speak!