Only look at your tools, your needle, your thimble, your beer barrel, your articles of trade, your scales, your measures, and you will find this saying written on them. You will not be able to look anywhere where it does not strike your eyes. None of the things with which you deal daily are too trifling to tell you this incessantly, if you are but willing to hear it; and there is no lack of such preaching, for you have as many preachers as there are transactions, commodities, tools and other implements in your house and estate, and they shout this to your face: “My dear, use me toward your neighbor as you would want him to act toward you with that which is his.”‘
– Martin Luther (1483-1546), writing on Christian Vocation
Like every other United Methodist clergyperson, I have been following with varied levels of interest/frustration/heartbreak the 2016 United Methodist General Conference in Portland. What follows is a meditation on one of our most controversial issues: the ordination of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex persons.
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