THE BEACH: Dianne and I spent several days at the beach last week. We had good walking and talking time. Not sure how many times we have been to the beach: before each other, growing up with family and chums; with each other, with and without various kids and dogs. Kids now grown and dogs in heaven, back at the beach, we hold hands with a lot of remembering and making of new memories.

The beach is a bi-focal place betwixt the human and divine, now and forever. Look to the human side…all sorts of structures: a few elaborate ones that suggest some people have more dollars than sense; structures that withstand the winds…until they don’t.

Look waterward, the waves come and go as they have for eons. The waters came long before we humans were…well, humans. Genesis describes the indescribable, how the mystery we call God created something out of the primeval chaotic soup.

Though we humans would and will repeatedly try to divide reality up between good and evil, aka, our side and the other side…the great breather-of-life-into-us declares it all basically good, very good. (Genesis 1.31) The bad stuff basically our failure to live up to the good God plants in us all.

THE BIBLE: Timothy is often quoted saying that all scripture is inspired by God, suitable for lives worth living and dying for. Better and more basically translated… God-breathed. (Spirit, breath, and wind are from the same words in the original languages).

The search for solid Biblical truth goes deeper than a shallow literalism that picks through the 31,102 verses of the Testaments to find one here or there to back up our opinion.

Jesus lived in a time of great crucifying contention over what the Bible says for the living of the now’s of life. The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 & 6) is punctuated with, ‘you’ve heard it was said, but now I say this about that…loving, forgiving, cherishing people.’ This was a sifting of the God breathed scripture for the wind of God’s presence and way in the new era… what Jesus called the kingdom.

Maybe for a scrappy argument it works, but for authentic Biblical living, it is not enough to say, ‘it’s in the Bible!’ One needs an interpretive key, a lens, a code, a compass. For followers of Jesus, his way of grace and truth of God’s love provide that key-lens-code.

Besides those 31,102 verses, there are 1,189 chapters. And there are some 613 laws/commands: 248 do’s; 365 don’ts. Very serious religious minded, gritted teeth people pushed Jesus to clarify what really matters ultimately for lives worth living and dying for.

Of all that was in his Bible, aka Law, Prophets, Psalms, and such, Jesus pretty much only quotes from 4 books. But the crème de la crème: Deuteronomy 6.5, love God with your all; and Leviticus with its numerous don’ts, he picked a do…love your neighbor/people (19.18). Jesus’ love is not sugary stuff. It is fierce and demanding, going way beyond plug in rules and verses. It is compassionate love for good and tough times.

THE METHODISTS: We divided over slavery and race in 1845. There was a unification of sorts in 1939, 94 years later. In fact, full merger between white and black Methodist organization did not happen until 1972. Now, 94 years after 1939, 47 years after 1972, our United Methodist General Conference meets next week to make decisions that may divide us again. This time based on sexuality matters.

For sure, two wonderful and disturbing dimensions of human life are our spirituality and our sexuality. The Hebrew Biblical word to ‘know’ can refer to ‘know’ God with spiritual intimacy and/or ‘know’ another person with physical intimacy.

In her recent book SHAMELESS, edgy pastor-theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber writes: “Sex can be procreative, a way for creating new life. It can be intimate, a way for love to be expressed between two partners. It can be revelatory, a way we discover ourselves and another. It can be boring, mind-blowing, or regrettable. It can be a beautiful aspect of human flourishing, and it can be a humiliating aspect of human degradation. It can be the safest place we can go or the most dangerous thing we can do. It can be obligation or joy. It can be deadly. It can be life.” (p. 125)

The Lord and we know none of us humans knows it all about our spirituality or our sexuality. That’s a big reason we are so edgy with each other and tough on ourselves. I pray that we Methodists can find a way to give space, place, and respect with a surprising unity greater than uniformity that will reveal itself in St. Louis and be lived out among us.

And the waves come in and the waves go out. Perhaps, it is a holy boldness, or a divine craziness, to believe that nothing in life or death can separate us from the love of God that washes over us in Jesus. (Romans 8.38) That love can transform the way we treat each other. EVEN... change the way we treat ourselves.