A Church Reforming

Grace and Peace to you from God our Creator and our Lord Jesus Christ.

In 1910, the Danish Lutheran Church (one of the many denominations that has merged to become the ELCA) felt led to support a mission church in Nigeria.  A farmer from Kenmare, ND heard about this and felt called to be a part of this.  He went to his congregation of Trinity Lutheran in Kenmare and talked about this.  Trinity ended up raising $2000 of the $5000 needed total seed money needed to start the Lutheran Church of Nigeria.  A few years ago, the presiding Bishop of the Lutheran Church of Nigeria came to the US and visited the small town of Kenmare.  While he was being shown around, he walked into a field and filled a container with dirt.  When people asked him what he was doing he simply replied, “I want to show my people the soil from which we were raised”.

It is important to know where we come from, the stories that shape us, the soil from which we were raised.  And that is partly what Reformation Sunday is about. It is the day in our church year when we all wear red, sing some of our best Lutheran hymns, and celebrate the series of events that happened 500 years ago that shaped us into who we are as a denomination today.  It is a powerful day of celebrating and remembering where we came from and who we are.  And this knowing of the stories that shaped us and knowing of the beliefs that ground us in our identity as ELCA Christians is critical to who we are so we can embrace who God is calling us to be. 

What I think we forget however, is that our identity is not simply a Church born out of the Reformation, we are called to be a church that is reforming.  Luther challenged the church authorities because he believed that along the way, they started to get off track.  He believed that the message and love of God was getting twisted up in church law and indulgences.  His writings and actions didn’t create a denomination overnight; his writings and actions set into motion a series of events that eventually led to the formation of a new church.  Beliefs continued to be shaped and changed throughout the years as scholars and theologians took Luther’s writings and expanded on them or challenged them.  Although there are many jokes about Lutherans and hating change, we forget that we were born from change and we evolved through change.  Who we are today as Lutherans and Christians is not same as the Christians in Luther’s time and not the same as in Jesus’ time.  We are different because the world we live in is different.  And so we must not be simply the Church of the Reformation, we must be the Church that IS reforming. 

 I wonder if our fear and hesitation toward change is a fear of losing who we are, losing our identity.  In a culture of action and busyness, we are defined by what we do.  If we change what we do, we change who we are. And in a chaotic world, we long for stability, for rootedness.  And so we fear change. 

But lucky for us, we can tell a different story.  We don’t have to fear change.  Because change doesn’t impact the core of who we are, or more accurately, whose we are.  In Jeremiah we are reminded who we are:  you shall be my people, and I shall be your God.  This is big enough that it bears repeating: you shall be my people and I shall be your God.  We are a people of God- that is our identity.  And so we can change, question, wrestle, and reform what we believe and how we look and act as a church, because that does not change whose we are. Quite the contrary- knowing whose we are, empowers us to change what we do and how we act as a church for the sake of the world.  For the sake of a world that needs to hear this message of belonging and love, for the sake of people who need to hear Jesus’ message of acceptance and grace in ways they can understand.

And yet, there is lamenting, a looking back with longing of who we were.  All around the country, as a Church we look back fondly of when pews were fuller, we had more youth, budgets weren’t stretched quite so thin, etc.  Often people talk about partnering with another congregation or ministry with a tone of failure; failure because they no longer have the resources to do it on their own. 

 Much like the Jewish people Jesus was talking with, we cling to who we were, and forget who we are.  In the gospel the Jews Jesus is talking to respond to him with a bit of shock- we are descendants of Abraham! We have never been slaves!  They conveniently forgot the minor detail of being slaves in Egypt, and slaves to the Romans.  But their identity was rooted in their past, rooted so deeply that they couldn’t see who else they might become.

In his words today, Jesus echoes the words in Jeremiah- continue in my word and you will be my disciples.  “You will know the truth”- that’s the part I think that gets them stuck.  They fear having to change, having to be different.  Because I think they know that if they continue to follow Jesus, they will be different.  Their identity as children of Abraham will be changed if they take on the identity of Jesus’s disciples.

And that’s where we have an advantage over the disciples.  Because we know that this God that called Abraham and his descendants, the same God that wrote the law upon our hearts and has claimed us as God’s own, is the same God speaking to the disciples and speaking to us in the Gospel.  It is not an either/or choice.  Our identity is people of God and followers of Jesus, and we know they are intricately connected, not 2 different things. 

And so remember who you are!  People of God, followers of Jesus- the Son makes you free and you are free indeed. Free to be a people and a church who is always reforming.  Looking around, it is easy to see we are in the middle of a Reformation.  I thinking we are becoming the church, becoming the people, God is calling us to be in our world today.

I see it in congregations like First English in Columbus, Ohio.  First was a dying inner-city congregation, staying open just long enough for a members’ son to get married, and then they would close their doors forever.  But God had other plans…and the faithful members were listening.  They looked around and saw hungry people in their neighborhood.  Trusting in the Holy Spirit and with mission support from the ELCA, they threw open their doors and began a breakfast worship, where people could be fed both physically and spiritually.  And now First Lutheran is a congregation full of  new life and mission and continuing to do God’s work in their neighborhood. 

I see this reformation in the 12 Social Statements adopted by our Church.  Did you know we had that many?  Have you read them?  We continue to face new challenges in our world and as people of faith we continue to respond to them.  These statements are rooted in our understanding of the Gospel and are created as new questions arise in our culture and our world- we are a church reforming.

And I see reformation in Ridgeway, Colorado, in the congregation of the United Church of the San Juans.  This congregation is a joint congregation of the ELCA, Presbyterian, United Methodist, and United Church of Christ.  Rooted in their identity as followers of Jesus, they worship and serve their community together for the sake of God’s mission.

And so it’s time to change the story we tell.  In Albuquerque, NM we have the congregation of Camino de Vida, a joint Lutheran/Episcopalian congregation.  Recently, they partnered with St. Paul Lutheran to jointly call a 2^nd pastor, who serves each congregation half-time.  They do this together knowing they can serve their community and do God’s mission better if they do it together.  There is no sense of failure that they don’t have the resources to do it on their own, quite the opposite.  They rejoice that together they are growing.  They are rooted in the belief that we are in this together, that we are the church and we are better together. 

It’s time to change the story we tell.
If we look around and see our pews less full than before, let’s not continue to struggle to answer the question of how we get more people in the door- let’s take the message of love and grace out of the door and to where people are at.  Let us invite them to the table by taking the table mobile.  In St. Paul, Minnesota there is a new ministry operating out of a food truck.  A free lunch is given no questions, and a Bible study is offered for those interested. 

But this changing of the story, the changing of how we do church today comes with risk.  There is risk because changing how we live out Jesus’ message in our world requires us to let go of some things.  In our gospel today, Jesus tells us that we must stop being slaves and then we will know freedom.  If we truly want to be a church that is reforming, committed to living out our faith in the 21^st century, what do we need to let go of?  What is holding us back from truly being free to boldly do the work that God is calling us to do?  Like the disciples, I think what holds us back is knowing that if we take this call seriously, we will be changed.  And so maybe I need to adjust what I said earlier- being a people of reformation won’t change whose we are, but it will probably change who we are.  We know that we can’t keep doing the same things over and over again and expect different results.  But we also can’t do new things and expect things to stay the same.  Because that’s not how Jesus works.  When Jesus entered the world, he did things differently and changed the world that he was a part of.  And he keeps doing that today, he comes to us in the Word and in the bread and the wine, inviting us to be different, inviting us to share his message anew, in however we need to so that people hear it, so that people experience love, grace, and freedom- so that people experience God- through us. 
That is what it means to be this Church of the Reformation in our world today.  We are not simply the Church born from the Reformation, we are the Church reforming, changing and reforming for the sake of sharing God’s story and doing God’s work in the world.
Amen.

Get in here! We've been waiting for you!

Okay, I admit that last week’s post was a bit more academic/historic than usual.  But the ambiguity or queerness of that text isn't apparent until you do some of that research.  And seeking out those meanings and putting in that work  is what part of what makes it so radically hospitable.  It’s the difference between welcoming someone when they walk into the church versus running out to greet them, shouting, “get in here, we've been waiting for you!”  So now it is your turn to do some to this work.  I leave you with a handful of passages that may be quite familiar to you.  But I invite you to read them through a lens of radical hospitality towards our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, and let me know what you find…

Psalm 139
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.  You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.  You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with  all my ways.

Hebrews 13:2
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without even knowing.

Galatians 3:28
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Jesus Christ.

John 20:2
So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “they have taken my lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

Titus 3: 4-7

But when the goodness and loving-kindness of God our Saviour appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Who is this guy?

A bit behind in posting this, but back on track after the holiday craziness!  Continuing from last post about "Queering the Bible".

In Acts 8, we read the story of Philip baptizing the Ethiopian Eunuch.   In this story, Philip meets the eunuch on the road to Jerusalem and proceeds to interpret the words from the Prophet Isaiah, and then  proclaims the good news of Jesus,  which leads the eunuch to be baptized.  And we are left with a wonderful story of evangelism and conversion.  But what we often miss, which would not be lost on first century communities, is the impact the character of the eunuch has on the story. 

During that time, the audience would have been familiar with two different types of eunuchs.  The first would have been a court eunuch, who would have been a servant or slave charged with guarding the royal harem.  These servants were usually men who were castrated as young boys.  This forced castration made them “safe” to be alone in the presence of women.  In addition, the timing of their castration (pre or post puberty), would have impacted both the physical and sexual characteristics of those castrated.  The second type of eunuch were men who may or may not have been castrated, but were celibate, sometimes for religious reasons. 

So which type was this eunuch?  We don’t know.   You couldn’t tell by looking at him, and it’s not like you could ask him if he was castrated.  But that is sort of the point, don’t you think?   This foreigner, this person who might be a slave or might be a high court official, whose physical and sexual characteristics may have been changed by castration- is by all definitions an “other”. This eunuch wasn’t a “normal guy”. He didn’t fit into the prescribed definition of male in that society, he could easily be considered queer.  And yet, from what we know, Philip doesn’t ask the eunuch to explain or define himself.  The eunuch is baptized, because he had heard the good news of Jesus.  That was all that mattered.  And this baptism of a eunuch marks a shift in the story.  If a eunuch is baptized, how can anyone be denied baptism?  As the story of Acts continues, we see this message of inclusion influence and expand the mission of the disciples- the message of Jesus is for everyone.  And it all starts with this unknown, ambiguous, queer eunuch.

Radical Biblical Hospitality

By now you have probably gathered that hospitality is sort of my thing.  As I confessed earlier, I tend to look for hospitality in everything.  And based on the title of this post “Radical Biblical Hospitality”, you are probably expecting me to share stories from the Bible that exemplify this idea of radical hospitality.  But while the Bible is full of lessons about hospitality, just reading those doesn’t necessarily lead us to be more hospitable.  What would it look like if we used the Bible as a tool for hospitality?  What if did hospitality with the stories in the Bible? 

Let me explain.  For those of us whose churches follow the lectionary, the text that we preach  on and study is chosen for us.  This means when we are presented with a text that is ambiguous, we often seek to “manage” or “deal with” these texts by picking them apart historically.  Which isn’t necessarily all bad, but what if instead of just dealing with ambiguous texts, let’s seek them out, as an act of radical hospitality.

I once heard from a member of the LGBTQ community that “for so long churches have told us that they hate us; so it’s important for those that don’t to tell us that they don’t”.  And usually those churches that don't accept them have used various biblical texts to support their views.  So let’s do the same.  Let’s read as much love into the Bible as we possibly can.  And it is these ambiguous texts that offer us a great place to start.  So I invite you to join me for the next few weeks as I look at “Queering the Bible as an Act of Radical Hospitality”.

The Radical Hospitality of Baptism

Confession 1:  As a self-proclaimed hospitalitarian, I look for (and usually find!), hospitality everywhere and in everything. 

Confession 2: It's about to get really Lutheran up in here...  

In Luther’s explanation of baptism in the Small Catechism he quotes from the book of Titus, chapter 3:  “By the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our Savior, that, being justified by His grace, we should be made heir according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3: 5-7). Who knew Titus was such a gem!  It clearly does not get the credit it deserves.  Anyway, this explanation of baptism is a beautiful articulation of Lutheran theology- renewal, grace, hope of eternal life.  But in those words, I also see the radical hospitality of God.  Through baptism we are welcomed anew both because of and in spite of who we are, surrounded “with abundance” the presence of the Holy Spirit, and given the hope of eternal life.  God lavishly pours out God’s love and grace- and in that, “we are marked with the cross of Christ forever”.  And for those of us who have ever had a guest over stay their welcome, we understand what how radically hospitable a “forever” invitation is!  But it doesn't stop there.  In the act of baptism, we as the community in Christ, following God’s example, offer hospitality to the newly baptized.  We stand and welcome them into the Body of Christ and recognize them as a fellow worker in the kingdom of God.  Not guest, but fellow member equal in love, grace and gift.  And then we slide over and make room for one more person at the table.

Hos-pi-tal-i-tar-i-an

After my initial post, I received a few questions about the title.  So let me back up a few steps.  The term is Hospitalitarian (Hos-pi-tal-i-tar-i-an).  It is a term somewhat commonly used in the restaurant and hospitality industries.  In fact, I first heard it used by my supervisor to describe all of us who work on staff at my catering company.  At first I thought the title was sort of ridiculous- we are service staff pouring drinks, setting tables, and bussing dirty dishes- stop trying to make it sound glamorous.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was true.  We aren’t just serving food, we are creating an experience.  If you have ever planned and hosted a party, you understand.  The placement of bar, the type of food, the way it is served, the music, the décor- all of it is planned to set a specific mood, to help the guest have the experience we are intending them to have. 

Often when talking about the importance of Christian hospitality, we quote from Hebrews:  “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angles without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2).    But what does that actually mean?  What does “showing hospitality” actually look like?  I did a quick Google search of “hospitality” and I stumbled upon a blog from a top restaurateur who distinguished the difference between service and hospitality in the restaurant business:   “Customer service entails getting the right food to the right person at the right time. Hospitality is the degree to which your customers feel that your staff is on their side” (Danny Meyer, read entire blog here). 

What a different experience that could create it we moved that concept beyond the restaurant.  How different would our conversations be if we entered them intentionally on the side of the other person?  How different would our churches look if we didn’t just give the courteous welcome to visitors, but were intentionally invested in their experience?  I think that is what hospitality is really about- not only creating an experience, but being intentionally invested in the people involved; treating each other as if we actually were angels…

owH

Acts 6

In the sixth chapter of Acts, it is brought to the attention of the disciples that some of their responsibilities are falling through the cracks-the widows are being neglected in daily distribution of food.    In order that they may focus on “prayer and the ministry of the word”, they set apart seven disciples to “wait on tables”.  This story is often referenced when discussing the roots of the Diaconate- which is convenient since I actually enjoy waiting on tables.  But it wasn’t until a few days ago that the depth and meaning of that story came to life for me.

It was Day 1 of the Theological Conference.  In my role as the Diaconal Ministry Intern at the Office of the Bishop, I had one week to help my supervisor move the entire conference from a flooded Estes Park to the suburbs of Denver.  With a little bit of luck and a LOT of help and generosity from a local congregation, it had come together and we were moving through the schedule of events.  As the event began, I found myself looking forward to meeting and connecting with pastors and other leaders from around our synod.  But while some were attending a pre-session gathering and others were trickling in to register, I was in the kitchen setting up for the Welcome Reception.   While they were meeting in their conferences, I was working with the caterer to prepare for dinner.  And as they headed into opening worship, I was working with the wonderful volunteers to clean-up from dinner. 

And then as I was pushing the cart filled with dirty coffee cups, the light bulb came.  It was less of an “ah ha”, and more of a “Holy sh*t” sort of impact- I was stopped in my tracks.  The words from the story in Acts 6 came rushing over me “let us set apart…whom we may appoint to this task”.  It was more than just making sure the coffee was full (though now I am a percolator expert!), it was about creating an experience for those who came to retreat, it was about developing relationships with those behind the scenes, and it was about the conversations with the volunteer who recognized the challenges of the Church, with the teenage girl who had a passion for ministry, and with the young man who was dreaming big.  It was about recognizing my call to something different- my call to Diaconal Ministry.