| A Time to Listen and to Pray |
August 17th through the 23rd I’ll be sitting in the Minneapolis Convention Center with over one thousand other voting members of Lutheran congregations at the 11th Church-Wide Assembly of the ELCA.
This event is held biannually in a host city and is attended by those who, like myself, have been nominated by our local conference and voted on at synod assemblies throughout the country. There are a number of important resolutions before the assembly this year – including full communion status with the United Methodist Church, funding of the church’s HIV and AIDS Strategy, the Lutheran Malaria Initiative and two Social Statements – one on justice for women and the other on the human sexuality study which has been before the church for many years.
I am torn in my thoughts about the vote on the latter social statement. It surprises me to say this. The statement itself covers a broad range of human relationships within the overall framework of social trust and healthy relationships – in society, church, marriage, family. It is a document we have read in the adult forum and is available for anyone who’d like to read it. The major sticking point of the statement, of course, is in the consideration of “publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships,” and in the ministry policies engaged in “finding ways to allow congregations that choose to do so” to recognize and support those relationships. This includes the church considering homosexually oriented persons for ordination.
It is my strongest belief of ministry and sense of call, that we are all and together the body of Christ in the world, that we come with our individual gifts and particular sins and offer them to God to be used, redeemed, re-created into the body of Christ – a body that is broken and yet made whole and strong by God’s grace shown in mercy and love. I believe that God uses our weakness in revealing God’s strength, uses our goodness to share God’s blessing. I believe that God suffers over human waywardness and cruelty and self-centeredness and that we are to show mercy even as we receive mercy.
I am a pastor because a difficult and divisive social statement was passed allowing women the rite of ordination. I believe the words we teach in confirmation and profess in ordination – that we are called, gathered, and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, that it is through Christ’s authority and by God’s grace that we enter into ministry of word and sacrament.
I say all of this as the reason behind my feelings that a person’s sexuality shouldn’t matter if they believe they are called to ministry and a congregation calls them to serve. I think that the standards of behavior and boundaries should be the same whatever ‘orientation’ an individual has. For that to be true within the church, however, committed relationships must be recognized in both heterosexual and homosexual couples. The divorce rate – not to mention cases of clergy sexual misconduct (most often heterosexual affairs) that remove offenders from the clergy roles – tend to prove that relationships are difficult and fraught with sin whatever our sexual orientation. I don’t understand how discrimination can be based on only one aspect of the complex issue of trust and accountability within human relationships. I have personal acquaintance with a young gay man – intelligent, compassionate, creative - who completed seminary with the hope that he would find a place and a way to serve the church he loves until the time comes when he can be ordained. I would never question his moral integrity or his calling to be a pastor.
On the other hand, I am aware, as my friend was, of the incredible irony of the church. In being an institution, a corporate body, the church has responsibility for and to the diversity of faith expressions of its many members and to the norm of faith and life expressed in the Word of God. Yet it discriminates for the sake of unity. It claims the authority of the Bible as God's Holy Word, yet recognizes that there are very different claims made from those same words. The consequences of this vote can, and likely will, shake the church whichever way the vote goes. What is justice for individuals may cause great harm for the church, and yet who is the church if not individuals. Can we, as “the church” find a way to uplift the gifts of all her sons and daughters, all as children of God, formed in God’s image and redeemed by Christ’s self-giving love?
I plan to do a lot of listening as the debate rolls through the room. I ask your prayers for this assembly, for the ‘extremists’ on both sides of the issue, for the life of the church, and for the Holy Spirit to have the last word. Take care in the intimacy of your relationships and cherish them.
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-- Pastor Linda, 8/1/2009
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