An Editorial Opinion
by
Sylvia Dooling
_’Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the
king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together
again.”_
This nursery rhyme keeps running through my head as I think back on the
opening worship of the 213th General Assembly.
I was seated in the Assembly hall near the right side. As the service began,
we stood to sing the first anthem. A great parade of banners, each
representing one of our presbyteries, made its way down the center aisle. As
the procession reached the ‘chancel,” it divided half went to the right;
half went to the left. Each of the banner bearers then placed his/her banner
in a flag stand along the hall’s side walls.
But, the stands didn’t hold. Before long, the banners began to tumble to the
floor. Some fell like dominoes one taking out another, then another, then
another, and so on.
One set of plummeting banners eventually hit the table that held the bread
and wine of the communion. Chalices and patens were knocked to the floor.
The sound of shattering clay vessels, and the sight of splattering wine
seemed for a vivid moment to symbolize our brokenness as a church and, yes,
maybe even the judgment of God.
Some people quickly moved to sweep up the shards, and to mop the wet floor.
But the banners kept falling. All through worship, the banners wobbled and
dropped. Worshippers would get out of their seats and try to prop them up to
hold them steady in a vain effort to save the symbols of our organizational
and institutional structure as a church. But still they kept on falling,
while the ‘solemn assembly” continued without pause.
But my attention was focused on those falling banners; they held me
spellbound. Not the Scripture reading or the sermon; not the prayers or the
choral anthems just the chaos at the side of the hall. One banner after
another.
Many tried, but no one could fix the problem. Tape wouldn’t fix it. Tilting
them to find a better balance point wouldn’t fix it. And, it didn’t matter
who tried. There were folks from the renewal side of the church who tried to
fix it, and there were others from the ‘progressive” side of the church who
tried to fix it. But, no matter who tried to fix the problem, the banners
just kept falling.
The Assembly was just beginning. Other things would probably topple during
the week. So, as we sat there in worship, we knew that we were in for a wild
and dangerous ride.
And wild and dangerous it was. This, for example, was the Assembly that was
unwilling to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior of the world
the only mediator between God and humankind. But, this was also the Assembly
led by its moderator, Jack Rogers that regularly stood during the course of
business to recite daring and precious words from the creeds and confessions
of our church. And, this was the Assembly that having spoken the words of
those creeds, voted time and again to contradict the very words that they
had recited.
Like those banners along the wall, the assembly was in disarray falling,
tumbling to the ground with little regard to the One who had spilled his
blood for them and their salvation.
And, all the King’s horses and all the King’s men will not be able to put
the PC(USA) together again unless it acknowledges Jesus Christ as Lord of
all the world, and buttresses that confession with concrete actions taken in
obedience to Jesus Christ who is revealed to us in Holy Scripture.
But, here’s the good news. The General Assembly does not speak for the
church; its judgments, made by a simple majority of less than 600
commissioners, require the consent and validation of the presbyteries in
order to change the faith and life of our denomination. So there is still
time and opportunity to act. Pastors and elders in presbyteries have yet one
more opportunity to defeat this apostasy.
But, the choice is clear. We will either choose to stand firmly on the solid
foundation of Jesus Christ and the apostolic witness or like those unstable
banners along the side of the hall, we will fall, and knock one another down
in the confusion that follows.
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