The Book of Deuteronomy is a
re-telling. It’s a re-write. It’s a re-boot of the stories found in Exodus
through Numbers.
It’s as if some un-named author asked the question, “If Moses was on that
mountain, looking down at the Kingdom created from the descendants of the
people he brought out of Egypt
and through the desert from slavery into freedom, what would Moses say to
us? How does he see God acting now?”
The book of Deuteronomy tells the story again, in a new place and at a new
time.
And I think today, on this day in which we celebrate the 25th
anniversary of the formation of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church
in America,
it’s worth telling our story again, in a new place, at a new time.
After all, the way we’ve been telling that story is all wrong.
For a wide variety of reasons we’ve fixated on the ELCA not being the ALC, the
LCA, or the AELC—the churches the ELCA comes out of. We’ve been mourning the
passing of these previous church bodies for the last 25 years—and so,
when we tell the story of the ELCA, we have this great unconscious propensity
to tell the story of what it’s not. It’s not the church of 25 years ago.
But, as someone who was never a member of any of those predecessor bodies let
me make it clear—we’re not 25 years ago. We’re here and now.
With that in mind, it’s worth going up the mountain with Moses so we can look
back down at ourselves and see what God is doing more clearly.
How God is making all things new.
How God is reconciling the world to Himself
through us.
Prayer
To get up there, on the Mountain with Moses—to see and hear the story of us
Always Being Made New,
of being Reconcilors.
To know what the ELCA looks like from the
Mountain Top,
we have to start with what Christ has done
for us.
You hear this time and time again,
as service begins/ at the font/ from the
pulpit/ in the creed/ at the table/ as we leave/ and as we live.
But in case you hear it wrongly, or too softly, or just can’t really believe it
to be true.
Let me tell it to you again.
Christ Jesus saves sinners, and has
saved you.
Through his life, death, and resurrection,
he has made peace between God and the world.
God does not count our trespasses against
us, but instead has made us right.
God reconciles the whole world to Himself
through Jesus Christ.
And in that,
insofar as we are in Christ,
we have been made new.
We’ve been drafted to be ambassadors
for the Kingdom
of God.
We’ve been made messengers to
spread this good new about Jesus to the ends of the earth.
All of us, who’ve heard this Good News,
have been ordained to the ministry of reconciliation!
Empowered by the Holy Spirit to re-unite
people to God and to one another.
And for these last 25 years, the ELCA has been engaged in the hard, but
righteous work, of making all things new.
We’ve been Ambassadors, Messengers, and Ministers.
For the last 25 years we’ve been a reconciling church.
I imagine Moses looking down the mountain and seeing a church that enters
into the places of deepest hurt and acts as little Christs there.
He looks down and sees El
Salvador, during the height of the civil war
there. He sees whole villages being massacred by both sides of the conflict.
And he sees Pastor Greggory Knepp and other
ELCA members going there, and living in the most vulnerable of villages,
because they know that the militias there would think twice before massacring
Americans.
Looking down, and seeing the Za’atri refugee camp in Jordon, where
thousands of refugees from the civil war in Syria gather. And seeing members of
the ELCA and members of our partner church, the Evangelical
Lutheran Church
of Jordon and the Holy Land, ministering
to those refugees. Mending our broken world, making all things new even
there.
He takes a panoramic view of the whole earth, and sees us, in these last 25
years, sending out 2,000 missionaries to over 100 countries.
He sees the webs of connection being formed
as each Synod of the ELCA partners with an International Lutheran
Church, so that we can be
ambassadors of Christ to one another, widening our understanding of what
it means to be Lutheran—to be faithful, in a new place, at a new
time.
He sees our efforts to fight global
poverty, hunger, and disease. He sees our investment of over 350 million
dollars toward the alleviation of hunger and poverty.
A little closer to home, he looks at the New Jersey Synod, and marvels. He
sees that we fight well above our weight class.
We make up 3% of the state’s population, but build more affordable housing than
almost any organization other than the state of New Jersey itself.
Our Synod partners with the Lutheran Church of Na-mib-ia and we sponsor and
host 14 annual reconciliation camps in Bosnia.
Moses sees our deacons and our advocates enter Immigration and Customs
Enforcement holding cells in Elizabeth and Newark and elsewhere—the
only organization that brings bibles in the native tongues of those held there
in.
I’d imagine Moses thinks to himself,
“Remember, you were sojourners in Egypt.”
I’m sure Moses looked and saw how Christ, using the ELCA, reconciles and makes
new families through our adoption programs and our re-settlement of
refugees.
He saw St. Stephen hosting Vietnamese
families back in the day, and churches in North Dakota
hosting Somali families, and the herculean effort of Lutheran Immigration and
Resettlement Services on behalf of the Hmong population transplanted to Minneapolis.
He’d hear of how we are reconciling the society in which we live through
critical and muscular wrestling with social issues—through statements and
actions—word and deed—involving race, poverty, peace, and economic life.
He’d see that when disaster cleaves our brothers and sisters from normalcy and
safety, we get busy.
From the floods in the Midwest to the
South Asian Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, we were there, and in the
midst of all that, Christ brought a new creation out of everything old that had
passed away.
From the mountain he would also hear the beautiful chorus of reconciliation
within the Church that we are bringing about, “that,” to quote the 17th
chapter of John “all may be one in Christ.”
He would listen to us leading a great and joyous ecumenical song between
Congregationalist, Methodist, Episcopal, Moravian, Presbyterian, and Reformed,
Christians.
He would likely note our historic agreement with the Roman Catholic Church
stating that the Reformation was both tragic and necessary.
He would be in awe of our being reconciled with the Mennonites, asking for, and
receiving, forgiveness from them for our historical persecution of them during
the Reformation.
From the mountaintop, brothers and sisters—we can see that this church
continues to be Ambassadors of reconciliation in the name of Christ Jesus.
Over there I can see the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in Myanmar—sometimes called Burma—being
birthed.
There, a gaggle of Lutheran Teens at the Church Wide Assembly noticed the
ELCA’s new fundraising budget didn’t include anything to help the disabled, or
work with young people—so they made their case and that good work will be
included too.
Also at that Assembly, a Sikh man who lived through the shooting by a white
supremacist at his temple in Oak Creek
Wisconsin, came and gave
greetings, saying of the ELCA, “Your words of support and encouragement came as
a shining light at a time when my community was recovering from the
numbness-of-senselessness.”
And over there, Lutheran Disaster Relief is getting a much needed boost. The
Red Cross, having seen its good work after Katrina—that we’re still in
New Orleans, putting things back together 8 years later, long after everyone
else has left—the Red Cross sees fit to give 2 million dollars of their
donations to us to continue our work recovering from Sandy—because they know
we’re the real deal.
Speaking of Sandy, over there, I see a woman named June in Hoboken, at St.
Matthew-Trinity Lutheran, finding socks and shoes for a man made homeless by
the Hurricane, and let me tell you, she not only finds those socks and shoes,
she kneels down and puts them on that man’s feet.
Talk about making all things new!
From the mountain, we can survey, with Moses, these 25 years, and see a church,
and a people,
set free by Christ,
reconciled to God,
doing the hard, but faithful and necessary
work
of reconciliation.
From the mountain we can tell our story,
and tell Christ’s story,
again.
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