discrimination is alive and kicking

 Discrimination is alive and kicking.

What Would Jesus Do?  WWJD

As an ordained Methodist Minister of some forty years now it is slightly amusing and irritating to find that in the year 2024, another denomination, for all the fine words spoken and written about the unity of the church, does not in effect acknowledge my ordination. At one level I want to be able to say “Am I bothered” after all I am not looking to get back onto the treadmill of services. But as we are without a vicar I felt I should at least offer to take an occasional service to help out. To avoid the inevitable clash over communion I suggested a non eucharist service.

It’s 2024 and still the Christian church manages to use church practices, doctrines etc to discriminate within denominations and against other denominations. I observe across the established church (Church of England)  that women are still discriminated against. Homophobia is alive and kicking even if its dressed up in theological gobble gook. And it can’t get its act together over safeguarding. Yet it get hung up on a Methodist minister celebrating communion.

Oh yes you may have served a diverse range of churches around the country, conducted thousands of services, taken funerals, weddings, school assemblies etc. You might have been a superintendent minister for much of your ministry with oversight or circuits large and small, with care of colleagues, training new ministers and much more. But when it comes to standing behind the altar, all that counts for nothing, because one church denomination does not recognise the ordination of another to celebrate an authentic eucharist.

Holy Communion should be a moment of unity, of coming together, of recalling that Jesus commanded us to break bread and share wine, yet it remains a stumbling block because only ‘a priest’ can celebrate (say the magic words). So even though I have been celebrating for forty plus years, that I have done so in an Anglican church, that in LEP’s (local ecumenical partnerships) where I would celebrate communion with Anglican members all be it a Methodist rite, none of this counts when it comes to a parish church. Did those Anglicans in my LEP not get the real deal, or at the parish church where I celebrated was it not real? 

So as we have by circumstances worshipped in an Anglican church for a couple of years, I am allowed to preach, but not to say the magic bit !!!
Surely to be allowed to preach is the more dangerous thing than blessing bread and wine, for who knows what I might say, what feathers I might ruffle, what doctrines I might undermine. Yet I can do that but I’m not allowed to bless bread and wine. 

Of course I do not understand myself to be a ‘priest’ as I come out of a tradition which does not believe we need priests. I don’t regard priests as being anything more than a title of leadership within certain denominations be it Anglican, Orthodox or Roman Catholic. What is certainly highlighted is that one denomination discriminates against another, in this instance Anglicans over Methodists, but then a Roman Catholic will not regard an Anglican Priest as totally legitimate. Is it any wonder the wider community does not get the church.  In the wider society discrimination is legally not allowed yet it is permitted within the church, and society, (partly by the fact the C of E is the established state church), makes a provision for it. So if your gay don’t plan to get married in the Anglican church any time soon, thank goodness my own tradition now allows it, just as it was ahead on women’s ordination. 

So  WWJD?
Jesus understood the place for rules and regulations, but when they inhibited the Spirit, prevented Love being expressed and excluded people, Jesus was more than content to break the rules. Jesus was a risk taker because Love is always about taking a risk. 

So for now I will smile and yes admit its irritating to experience discrimination, but oh that Maundy Thursday liturgy I wrote and led, well was it or was it not Communion? I think God knows.