As the United Methodist Church goes through a season of change and renewal, it will be crucial for us to learn the right lessons from our past for the sake of our future together. My wife’s work as a therapist has taught me that in moments as significant as this, we quite often seek answers by focusing on practical, surface level observations. We assume those observations will tell us something meaningful about how people live and relate to others. And by doing so we learn the wrong lesson.

A common example – when a person leaves an abusive relationship, they will often seek the opposite kind of person in future relationships. The abuser never held a steady job – only date people with a 9-5 career. The abuser was an extrovert who loved to party – only date introverted homebodies. The abuser loved to play sports – only date intellectuals or artists. The problem is that none of the things people tend to look for have anything to do with someone’s potential to be in a healthy relationship. Actual red flags for abuse have nothing to do with almost any practical, concrete preference or personality trait you might put on a dating profile.

True red flags have to do with power and control dynamics like isolating from friends and family, monitoring communications, guilting and shaming behaviors, or extreme jealousy. What matters is the way each person relates to others rather than the individual traits of each person. In other words, are both people seeking things like intimacy, trust, and respect or will one person always shame, blame, or control the other? No surface measure of compatibility will tell us how anyone will treat the people in their lives.

The same kind of thing happens all the time – we look to the practical, concrete, surface level things when what truly matters are emotional and relational factors underneath the surface. One more example from my own life – I learned the exact wrong lesson regarding a favorite Christmas tradition growing up. For a long time I thought I was holding onto what I loved about the tradition by focusing on the practical, concrete, surface level logistics. But by doing so I missed what mattered entirely. 

For years, my immediate family would wake up Christmas morning to presents left by Santa. We’d eat stollen for breakfast, open the rest of the gifts, then load up the car and head to the grandparents’ house. Once my aunts’ families had also arrived, the family would sit in a circle and open presents – one at a time, youngest to oldest, taking turns until everyone had opened everything. That circle of gifts was the core part of the Christmas plan for many years. And I loved it. 

Eventually, most of the details changed when my generation went off to college and then added to the circle through marriage and then children. We even adjusted away from Christmas Day to fit schedules. But, we kept that gift circle going – youngest to oldest, one at a time, opening presents until the very last one. And I loved it.

For decades, I clung to that tradition tightly and pushed back against any thought that it might ever need to change. But there was a Christmas when I realized that I was holding on to the wrong thing. As we surpassed hour two of working our way around the gift circle, I saw a few things that I’d willfully blinded myself to in the past. Most obviously, the amount of time it took was way too long for anyone, especially the toddlers, to stay focused. There was also so much noise from talking and playing that no one could hear when it was their turn or carry on a conversation without shouting and making it worse. The number of gifts was never the same for each person, which made it awkward for those who had to shout “pass” round after round. And no matter how long we were there, I never really felt like I got the chance to actually catch up with anyone in my family because it was too loud or too many people or just too chaotic. I could feel that the tradition I’d been holding onto was now preventing the experience I actually wanted but couldn’t name. 

In reflection, I realized that what mattered was not sitting in a circle, opening gifts one at a time, from youngest to oldest, until every gift was open. What mattered was the sense of connectedness and assurance I always felt when my family gathered. I knew these were the people in the world I could count on to be there for me no matter what. No matter how many times I messed up, how many times I changed schools, how many friends came and went in my life… no matter what else changed – they are there any time I need to reach out.

It’s so easy to learn the wrong lesson when we focus on the practical, concrete, surface level thing. I was so afraid of losing the assurance of connection that I held tightly to the form of our tradition over the people that made it matter. Since that Christmas, I’ve worked hard to learn how to discern that difference in each area of my life. 

As we look forward to the future of the UMC, my hope is that we will find a way to look deeper than the practical, concrete, surface level ways we’ve always done things. If we don’t get beneath the surface, I fear that we’ll learn the wrong lesson and hold onto the form of our tradition over the God who brings it to life. 

It is not the style of worship, the architecture of the buildings, the weekly schedule, our statement of beliefs, or the rules we write down that will teach us again how to fulfill our part of God’s mission to love and transform the world. Focusing on these or other practical, concrete things would be like using a person’s job history to assess date-ability or assuming the heart of a family tradition is anything other than the people involved.

It is the presence and action of God’s grace that makes our life and belief possible in the first place. It is in coming to know and share the grace of God that our church becomes a community worthy of our lives. And it is my prayer that the central lesson of our past and the singular purpose of our future connection in the UMC will be learning to love one another in the grace first way we have been loved by God.