GA opening worship
Risk-taking disciples help people see Jesus
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman, June 30, 2012
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Rainbow theme
The Rev. Dr. James C. Goodloe IV, executive director of the Foundation for Reformed Theology commented on the opening worship service in an email. He said:
“In opening worship for the assembly, dancing girls wore rainbow stoles and swirled rainbow ribbons. Some singers in the massed choir wore rainbow stoles. The communion table was covered with a rainbow cloth, and a large cross was draped in multiple rainbow cloths.
“It appears that, as the assembly prepares to vote later in the week on a proposed redefinition of marriage, the leadership has shown us where their sympathies lie.
“At least we know what we’re walking into.”
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — “Our first act of the [General] assembly is to worship God together and our final act of the assembly will be to worship God together,” said Cynthia Bolbach, in her sermon at the opening worship service of the 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). “It is in worship above all else that we come together as Christ called us to be.”
Bolbach, moderator of the 219th General Assembly began her sermon with humor, saying that “It’s just occurred to me how handy it might be to have this gavel right here next to me during the sermon. If I see a nodding of head out there, you’re going to hear the gavel.”
She spoke from a wheelchair, as she has been receiving chemotherapy treatments for cancer.
Bolbach said that several of the assembly’s worship services will be based on the Mark 2:1-12 story of the paralyzed man. “It’s not a long story,” she said. Four men bring a paralyzed man on a pallet to where Jesus was preaching, but they couldn’t get through the crowds, so the men took a radical step by taking him to the roof and cutting a hole through the roof so they could lower him to Jesus.
“By their actions, the paralyzed man sees Jesus Christ,” Bolbach said. She continued that she used this text two years ago when she was a candidate for moderator, and her focus was on the paralyzed man, who she saw as the PCUSA — with its uncertainty and fear.
Two years later, Bolbach said she has a different focus.
“I no longer believe the PCUSA is paralyzed,” she said, adding that in changing her prognosis of the PCUSA’s condition she has “not drunk the PCUSA Kool-aid and become a Pollyanna.”
“We don’t know what our structure and organization will look like 10 years from now, or five years from now. We are in a tremendous time of flux and change,” she said. “Flux and change surround us but we are not paralyzed. … We are seeking what God would have us do and be in this multicultural society we inhabit.”
Bolbach said that every presbytery she has visited has either made changes or is in the midst of making changes in the structure and organization.
In the two year she has been moderator, Bolbach said the PCUSA has experienced two huge changes: the adoption of the new Form of Govnerment, and the change in the denomination’s ordination standards.
“Both taking effect in the same year is an almost unprecedented change,” she said. “Everyone in the church has been learning how to live with these two changes. It hasn’t been easy, but we are doing it through talking together, living together, and talking about next steps together.”
“We have been living not with paralysis but with change. We are hard at work to create a denomination that works in the 21st century,” she said.
Bolbach did not mention the fact that scores of PCUSA congregations have left the denomination during her two-year tenure and hundreds more have declared their intention to seek alternative denominational affiliations.
Secondly, Bolbach said she now views the story not from the focus of the paralyzed man, but “from the unnamed persons who helped him.”
She noted that the Gospel does not describe them men has “friends,” it says “some men came.”
“What matters is not how the people are described but what they do,” said Bolbach. “They take a radical action — they punch a hole in a roof for goodness sake, … so that in the end someone will see Jesus and be healed.”
“At the heart of the Gospel is not structure or organization, or dare I say it even the Form of Government. At the heart of the Gospel — at the heart of a community of faith — are disciples. Disciples willing to take risks, to help others see Jesus,” she said.
With no risk taking disciples, she said, there is no church, and Bolbach said she has seen these kinds of disciples “at work in every nook and cranny in our church.”
“I’ve seen those disciples in people on both sides of the ordination debate,” she said, adding that “if we could stop ourselves from the habit of labeling each other, we would be better equipped to be disciples to help people see Jesus.”
Bolbach said that in her own illness, she has experienced support from disciples in all parts of the church — “from the Presbyterian Lay Committee to the More Light Presbyterians.”
“Most of them don’t know me personally. Many don’t agree with me,” she said, but they recognized her “paralysis” and they lifted her up onto the roof top and let her down so she could see Jesus. “And I am most grateful.”
“Right now in this time of worship, let’s not worry about process and structure,” she said.
Instead pray that “we could be given the faith that Jesus saw in those four disciples … Committing to being risk taking disciples is not easy, but it is what the Gospel compels us to do.”