Planet Earth Sunday

sermon on Genesis1; Psalm33; John1:1-5,9-14

It’s one way of talking about this enormous thing, to say that it is well ordered and in harmony, that each part has its place and time, that all of this is good and doing what it ought, that there is fullness and intention about creation.

With Genesis, we’ve been warped for around a century to think it’s primarily trying to convey a timeline of seven days, and that that’s the detail trying to assert itself over against some other as the Bible talked about this enormous thing of existence on planet Earth. But let’s hold as most important the harmonious order and blessedness as what Genesis is trying to help us comprehend of creation: It is good.

Another way of talking about it, of course, is a story where the planet was formed 4.5 billion years ago, consolidating out of interstellar dust of a solar nebula, taking shape with gravity and volcanoes and tectonics, gradually over eons and eras, epochs and ages. It comes out of an even more enormous story, three times as long, across the expansive scale of an expanding universe. It resolves that we may in the end not be unique or alone, but we are rare: one planet with breathable oxygen and liquid water, in a Goldilocks zone of neither too hot or cold. Is this one also, then, a story about good order coming out of former chaos? Maybe. At any rate, it is another way of trying to help us understand this enormous planet.

Sure, it’s a different way of talking about this enormous topic of trying to comprehend planet Earth. Actually much of any overlap between the two versions could almost be a surprise, other than that they’re both trying to understand it all. For one example, the word “planet” doesn’t even appear in the Bible, since at that time they thought all of this was fairly well established and didn’t know we could be wandering through a solar system and so on. But neither was their perspective entirely limited; in the language of the heavens and the earth, they were still trying to comprehend the enormity of everything, as much as they could understand.

On the other side, we may appreciate the greater knowledge of the scale of a globe in orbit and delineated fields of study, but that approach is still limited in scope or capability since the audacity to claim or label or attribute or value “good“ is not a scientific category or term, much less themes of blessing and God.

So in the beginning of this Season of Creation with planet Earth, there’s something about trying to wrap our minds around incomprehensible enormity. The Bible talks about the “ends of the Earth” as the term for what is incredibly distant and different, but still as if we could eventually get there if we knew the right direction to point our camel or if we trusted our boat. We now talk about the core and mantle, seismography, atmospheric and oceanic currents, as if we could go there or know where they were going. By one measure, 99% of species that have existed have gone extinct—over 5 billion. By another estimate, there are 1 trillion species existing right now, and we have identified .001% of them and hardly know where or how to look.

Explorations, vacations, and learning may enrich us, but what finally do we do with this Incomprehensible enormity? Well, one thing is to shrink the planet to our scale. I only partly mean the scale model of globes and maps, though those do help us understand. More, I mean that I personally comprehend the planet Earth better by driving north. I got to do that this week, where at about Black River Falls it feels more like my neck of the woods, eventually on to where my dad and I fitted together some pieces of the Earth to build our cabin. The opposite for me is driving south and at about the Illinois border I feel out of place, the flatness feeling featureless, not its own problem but for me making the Earth less comprehensible. The deepest in my soul is at about Shell Lake heading north, where trees get bigger and thicker and the clouds are somehow the right white puffiness, or when winter hits, all imprinted on my identity (or so my hunch goes) from my Spooner birthplace.

In spite of that knowable location to feel secure amid the incomprehensible enormity, I’m not ready to concede our mobile society suffers from rootlessness, that we’re just tumbling weeds across a vacant landscape, at risk without connection to place. We are still and always earthlings from the earth, adams from adamah, humans of the humus, still and always part of this creation, amid the web, inextricably linked, no matter how well we recognize or comprehend it.

Nor, clearly, am I trying to say people shouldn’t move, that migration is unacceptably against our nature or that people would be best to stay in the place or country where they were born.

Maybe the two enormous stories we’ve been considering actually commend immigration to us, that there are reasons and explanations for why not only people or birds or whales or monarchs move around the planet, but also those air and water currents and cycles, and on bigger scale erosion and deposition, forming and dissolving the very rocks and whole continents, and the spinning planet Earth itself. We can explain but not control this far-from-stationary existence.

The Genesis story, meanwhile, encourages us to understand that our stations and movements are for good, in service of life, as a part of the whole. It may seem to be described as more ordered and ruled and domineering in Genesis—that everything is in its place, there are prescribed times of night and day and season, that the moon shouldn’t shine at day and a penguin ought to be in the air as a bird and so is in the wrong place if it’s swimming. It was written by priests, guys who liked classifying and defining and knowing what’s what, like the scientist who tries to explain and categorize her research.

So it’s left to the rest of us to live in the overlaps, the gray areas, the reality of life that can’t be fully explained or ordered or comprehended, that doesn’t fit easy descriptions or precisely narrowed categories.

But rather than that just returning us to our own small corner of creation, that we do the best we can to make sense of our individual lives, identifying the place we like, where we feel we fit in, ignoring all the distinctions and complexities for others, rather than being relegated to such a weak resolution, as if that’s the best we can do or understand and that the enormity of the whole thing is too much, let’s turn to the even more enormous—to take the complex incomprehensible gray areas, the uncertainties of life, of more than we can possibly know, even the unclear distinctions of good and bad and what really is our place and infuse that with the presence of God. That’s really when we lose track of being able to explain.

Yet this is the trustworthy message of Scripture: the glory and presence of the Lord fills the earth, spreads across and through it all. We are never separated from God’s love, least of all when we feel most overcome and defeated, uncertain and lost. The point of talking about the “ends of the Earth” in the Bible is that even as far away and different and unknowable as that might be, it is not out of God’s reach. There is nowhere to go apart from God.

You can bet that if the Bible’s authors had known planets or galaxies or space travel or paleontology of dinosaurs facing an asteroid or quarks and neutrinos or even something so obviously part of creation as the band at a biergarten as Karen Schwarz pointed out, then those authors would’ve included those among the certainties of God’s blessing for goodness.

If they could have comprehended your life more clearly, directly because the promise seems so incomprehensible, they would have more clearly offered assurances of God’s blessing and goodness for you.

Instead that’s why you come for sermons, for this weekly updating, confronting the latest incomprehensible complexities and disorder of your life—or sometimes the predictable routines—the stuff you see as good and the stuff you struggle with as not good at all, your explorations and investigations, all met with the renewed reassured promise of God’s goodness and blessing not only at the center of a solar system or layered across a planet or in generic life cycles, but specifically for you and with you. God loves Illinois as much as the northwoods, junkyards as much as wild canyons, you as much as the saints of old, even if in different ways, as unfathomably incomprehensible as that might be.

And that is also the place of faith, receiving the incomprehensible, receiving this one who comes for enlightenment, to dwell with you. You know it in Jesus, the Word who became flesh and lived among us, and you know it as he now is present in this Word, becoming flesh and living again in you.

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mini mini sermon for midweek outdoor worship

on Deuteronomy 26:1-11

This feels like endings. August already. The last of these great gatherings. Extra middle schoolers with us, leading to thoughts of the end of summer break. Disgusting! It’s like the good stuff is done and gone.

But I have my huaraches on my feet tonight, a souvenir taking me back to a marketplace in a lake village of Guatemala, even as these shoes walk me ahead into the rest of regular life, a symbol of godly journeys changing us in ways that continue forward even when the trip is over and vacation is past.

Remember that for all the vibrancy and spiritual experience of the Exodus story, the whole point and goal was the ending, the arrival, the Promised Land. Home. Much more than Exodus (a road out), it’s about Eisodus—a road in.

God prepares and travels with us and opens our eyes to new sights and reorients, all for the point of getting home. God isn’t with you only in impressive vistas or excitements of exploring. And back to life is never just routine, but with vibrant stories to tell, with souvenirs from travels, and the best offering gift as the fruits of your life, still yourself but living in a changed renewed way, “and grace lead you home.”

sermon on the ELCA Social S

sermon on the ELCA Social Statement*
and Jeremiah 4:23-28; Romans 8:18-23; Psalm 96;

 

This Social Statement is a sixth as long as the one on education, but death penalty and racism are shorter. Still, this gets bonus points in my book because it’s got to address—by definition—Everything.

This isn’t a confineable topic, even compared to the not-so-narrow topics of how society relates to the half the population of one gender, or what to do about wars that take up billions of dollars of our federal budget. Not that those are piddly things and this is frying bigger fish. It’s that they’re all in the same barrel. By definition, creation means everything that’s not the Creator. So it includes fish and barrels and humans of whatever gender doing whatever we do to each other on this little planet amid the inconceivably vast universe and maybe multiverses. All of that in 12 pages of Social Statement.

Remarkable economy, if you ask me. I appreciate lots crammed into little space, though I can’t quite manage in this sermon the proportion of this Social Statement to the long ones, because it would be shorter than the mini mini sermons for midweek worship and I’d already be done. So I’d better get going.

I explicitly connect this to other Social Statements so we don’t wind up with a sense that this is something separate, that when we talk about creation we mean gardens and forests and giraffes and climate change, but don’t as clearly mean farmers and young girls who have to walk farther to haul water and national security and genetics and how we treat people in prisons. But this is all connected. I really appreciate this Social Statement for understanding that. When Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical came out in 2015, it made a splash for tying together ecological concerns and human rights. Well, the ELCA has known intersectional ecojustice for a quarter century at least, not only caring for animals or separating out human needs as if they’re extraterrestrial, somehow disconnected to life on this planet.

Though the MCC regularly recognizes such relatedness of God, neighbor, and creation, still I expect the Jeremiah reading felt uncomfortable and kind of bleak. But don’t think of it as God’s wrath to start. Instead observe consequences to misbehavior and living apart from God’s intentions: God wouldn’t be very loving if there were no repercussions for how we lived, no possible mournful result, and having license to mistreat others wouldn’t do well to fulfill God’s intentions, either. When we ignore God, farm fields do indeed dry up and wither. When we attend to God’s ways, life flourishes.

At the Capital biergarten Bible discussion on Wednesday, Kathy Henning said Jeremiah reminded her of the start of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking 1962 book. Here is an excerpt so you can hear what Kathy meant:

There was a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings, in the midst of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. Even in winter countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow.

Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. The doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients.

There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example where had they gone? It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.

No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.

Do you hear the resonance with Jeremiah? Rachel Carson wasn’t writing a spiritual fiction about punishment from God. She was describing the detrimental effects of our use of pesticides like DDT. Certainly we people of faith would say that God continues the creative work of songs and colors and life and so strongly disfavors the causes of mysterious maladies and sick children or dying chickens, the barrenness and blight that Jeremiah also pictured. The effects of our actions were harming God’s good creation. The Social Statement describes this as rebellion against God, which leads to experiencing “disrupted nature [as] a judgment on our unfaithfulness as stewards.”

But it doesn’t end bleak. Like the Social Statement, Rachel Carson moved from a description of destruction and lack of faith toward life restored, freed from the bondage to decay. Paralleling the glimmer of prophetic hope, where Jeremiah sees all has not been completely destroyed, the vision of Silent Spring fostered the turning of culture away from DDT, re-filling spring days in the countryside with song.

The book provoked a revolutionary environmental movement, eventually calling us into things like Earth Day, the Endangered Species Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Clean Air and Water Acts. We should remember, much of that was signed under a not-very-eager President Nixon under pressure.

Since then, other cries and other crises have arisen. When the Social Statement was written in 1993, the hole in the ozone was seen as a catastrophic problem. Yet a global agreement meant that what was eating away at our atmosphere to allow in harmful radiation would be banned and the air could begin to heal. God’s intention could be restored. Destruction was not the end.

Again, in 1993, global warming was seen on the same level as the ozone hole. We managed to address one problem with a global agreement, and needed another revolution on the scale of prohibiting chemical corporations to profit from DDT, but in climate change have chipped away at the edges. We read the—not bleak but urgent—words in our Confession that “action to counter degradation, especially within this decade, is essential,” but two and a half times that span has passed and we are still needing to compel ourselves and others to the essential action.

A revolution producing global agreement to preserve the life of vulnerable humans and prevent the extinction of thousands of species is certainly not easy. As with the other Social Statements, that’s recognized here. But our faith is never about simple solutions to small potatoes problems. This is always big stuff, life-and-death, enormous tragic wrongs countered with even more powerful love, destructive evils versus creative life, and all founded in our God who is “deeply, mysteriously, and unceasingly involved.”

Though facing similarly weighty and fretful ethical dilemmas as other Social Statements, this one may even more recognize despair, the sense that we can’t make a difference, that the crisis is too big, that the resolution is too far off.

Yet we are people of hope. The creation waits for us, groaning with eager longing. It is not only we who have faith, but the stones crying out, and dogs going into the kingdom of heaven, and valleys waiting to bloom and rejoice, and the trees to clap their hands, and everything in the seas with their coral reefs acidifying. They wait in hope, a glorious hope that may be unseen but will not disappoint.

And so we act. We act, Romans reminds us, even through suffering.

Now, I don’t know if Peter Bakken would say it was suffering to help write this social statement, but it certainly has helped bring important actions to birth. Rachel Carson faced loads of ostracism and even threats for her work. President Nixon probably had some of his own disgruntled suffering. For me, I can’t say that my biking to reduce fossil fuel use has been too much suffering this past week, with such pleasant summer days. It was no great struggle to be out with Kids in the Garden this week, and only slightly more to take an afternoon for a Wisconsin Interfaith Power & Light meeting. My decision not to eat much meat doesn’t feel fitting for a metaphor of labor pains. Neither is my suffering of choosing to act analogous with those who suffer from inaction, whose homes are inundated by hurricanes or wildfires, whose song goes silent as they are overrun by a greedy economy, whose bodies are poisoned to the confusion of doctors or veterinarians or biologists.

But I do trust my kinship with all of these, knowing their need from sound science, trusting our relationship through Christ our sibling, with compassion breathed into us anew by the life-giving Spirit that compels our concern and energizes our action, the creative possibilities that stretch in front of us, founded by and resulting in God’s goodness, our true and vital source and goal, our sure home. That is the end.

We heard in the Social Statement’s conclusion: “The prospect of doing too little too late leads many people to despair. But as people of faith, captives of hope, and vehicles of God’s promise, we face the crisis. We claim the promise.” Vehicles of promise. That sounds like the most environmentally-sensitive vehicle there could be. And I rejoice in being aboard with you.

excerpt for reading:
We testify to the hope that inspires and encourages us. We announce this hope to every people, and witness to the renewing work of the Spirit of God. We are to be a herald here and now to the new creation yet to come, a living model.
Our tradition offers many glimpses of hope triumphant over despair. In ancient Israel, as Jerusalem was under siege and people were on the verge of exile, Jeremiah purchased a plot of land. When Martin Luther was asked what he would do if the world were to end tomorrow, he reportedly answered, “I would plant an apple tree today.” When we face today’s crisis, we do not despair. We act.
Given the power of sin and evil in this world, as well as the complexity of environmental problems, we know we can find no “quick fix”—whether technological, economic, or spiritual. A sustainable environment requires a sustained effort from everyone. The prospect of doing too little too late leads many people to
despair. But as people of faith, captives of hope, and vehicles of God’s promise, we face the crisis. It is in hope of God’s promised fulfillment that we hear the call to justice; it is in hope that we take action.

excerpt for Confession & Forgiveness:
Fac[ing] decisions made difficult by human limitation and sin,
we act, not because we are certain of the outcome
but because we are confident of our salvation in Christ.

Not content to be made in the image of God,
we have rebelled and disrupted creation.
A disrupted nature is a judgment on our unfaithfulness as stewards.
Alienated from God and from creation,
we become captives to demonic powers and unjust institutions.
In our captivity, we treat the earth as a boundless warehouse
and allow the powerful to exploit its bounties to their own ends.
Our sin and captivity lie at the roots of the current crisis.
Meeting the needs of today’s generations for food, clothing, and shelter
requires a sound environment.
Action to counter degradation, especially within this decade,
is essential to the future of our children and our children’s children.
Time is very short.

Sin and captivity, manifest in threats to the environment, are not the last word.
By the cross and resurrection of + Jesus Christ,
God frees [you] from [your] sin and captivity,
and empowers [you] to be loving servants to creation.
Although we remain sinners, we are freed from our old captivity to sin.
We are now driven to God’s promise of blessings yet to come.
Captured by hope, we proclaim that the Spirit of God,
“the giver of life,” renews the face of the earth.
Captured by hope, we dream dreams and look forward to a new creation. Amen

 

excerpt for Creed:
The creeds, which guide our reading of Scripture,
proclaim God the Father of Jesus Christ as “maker of heaven and earth,”
Jesus Christ as the one “through [whom] all things were made,”
and the Holy Spirit as “the Lord, the giver of life.”

All creation, not just humankind, is viewed as “very good” in God’s eyes.
By faith we understand God to be deeply, mysteriously, and unceasingly
involved in what happens in all creation.
Central to our vision
of God’s profound involvement with the world is the Incarnation.
In Christ, the Word is made flesh,
with saving significance for an entire creation that longs for fulfillment.
The Word still comes to us in the waters of baptism,
and in, with, and under the bread and wine.
God consistently meets us where we live, through earthy matter.

We depend upon God,
who places us in a web of life with one another and with all creation.
In our time, science and technology can help us to discover
how to live according to God’s creative wisdom.
We look forward to a redemption that includes all creation. Amen

excerpt for prayers:
Creation must be given voice, present generations and those to come. We must listen to the people who fish the sea, harvest the forest, till the soil, and mine the earth, as well as to those who advance the conservation of the environment. We recognize obstacles of people lacking power [and] bombarded with manipulated information. We pray, therefore, that our church may be a place where differing groups can be brought together, tough issues considered, and a common good pursued.

We acknowledge interdependence with other creatures. Solidarity asks us to stand with the victims of fire, floods, earthquakes, storms, and other natural disasters. We recognize many ways we have broken ranks with creation in disenfranch[isement], degradation, and discrimination. We pray, therefore, for the humility and wisdom to stand with and for creation, and the fortitude to support advocates whose efforts are made at personal risk.

For all to have enough means that those with more than enough will have to change their patterns of acquisition and consumption. Sufficiency charges us to work with each other and the environment to meet needs without causing undue burdens elsewhere. We pray, therefore, for the strength to change our personal and public lives, to the end that there may be enough.

Neither economic growth that ignores environmental cost nor conservation of nature that ignores human cost is sustainable. Both will result in injustice. We know that a healthy economy can exist only within a healthy long-term sustainability of our planet. We pray, therefore, for the creativity and dedication to live more gently with the earth.

 

* http://elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Statements/Caring-for-Creation

Women & Justice: One in Christ

a sermon on the draft ELCA Social Statement*,  plus Genesis2; Galatians3:26-28,4:7; Proverbs3

With this draft social statement, more Bible study may be a helpful approach. How we hear from the Bible and how we warp it to our own perspectives has been a major factor in the injustices and dismissiveness for women and girls, but the Bible also has extremely strong resource for resolution.

I want to commend again the chance to read more of the statement. First, because this good strong biblical study and examination is in the document itself, so you’re not just hearing me reflect on our faith and gift from God.

But I also suggest reading it to offer your input. The ELCA will have been working on this project for nearly a decade by the time it comes to a vote at next summer’s Churchwide Assembly in Milwaukee. Some of you were part of the process in three study sessions we did last summer. Through September, you can submit comments on what you like or struggle with in the draft.

One other note on process: I want to pause and observe that I’m a male talking about the Women & Justice social statement. At first, I felt awkward about that, as if it doesn’t really relate to me. But of course, it relates intimately and deeply. In the end—just the reverse—I was sad we didn’t have more male participation in our studies and would be nervous if men were not talking about this, since it in some way would fail to own our place either with the problem or the solution.

Recognizing this is something that we all need to work on together, let’s approach it with the Genesis passage we heard. It probably sounded different than what you are used to hearing or how you usually think of this. This is one of those Bible stories that has come to define even our cultural perceptions; although, I’d be quick to say that it isn’t so much the Bible itself that has shaped—or warped—us, but a particular translation and interpretation.

See, as we heard it just now, it was a more authentic translation from the original Hebrew. This has wordplay throughout, so you get to learn some Hebrew. The first word to know is adamah. That means earth. The second Hebrew word you already know: adam. But you probably think that means, what? Actually it is more like “earthling.” God took earth and made an earthling. It’s not a proper name, “Adam,” and is not at all helpful to translate it as “man,” which disconnect the human from the humus, separates us from the land as our origin, and also can be applied to put men (meaning males) first, before all the rest.

Our problem is that since the King James Version at least, that male-centered application of this passage has dominated. The translators did their own picking and choosing to warp things that weren’t in the Hebrew. Right away they started putting in the word “man,” and eventually there gets to be a capital-A guy named Adam.

And after he’s done tilling up the land and categorizing the beasts, this Adam is on a hunt for a wife as a helper. She gets subordinated as being made from a small piece of her husband. That’s a big difference from how we heard it, not as how a man finds a wife, but as a human being the most fitting companions for each other. We might paraphrase the point of Genesis that while a dog may be man’s best friend, that pales next to general human relationships. As the draft statement phrases it, “God creates community and family, not a hierarchy based on… sex (what our bodies look like biologically) or gender (how people express themselves)” (13).

So there we have an enormously influential example of how patriarchal structure and sexist presuppositions have taken what was originally a gender-neutral passage about our connections to earth and the goodness of shared companionship with each other and instead twisted it into a domineering masculine blueprint which, by the end of the next chapter, blames females for all evil and brokenness. That’s abusive not only to women, but also to scripture itself.

The second part of our Bible study, has to recognize that there, of course, too many of parts of the Bible that are ugly to begin with, where it’s not the fault of later translators or misguided theologians but is bad from the get-go.

I’d like to hold these in two categories: problems with old culture, and problems still with our culture.** I was thinking about including a problematic Bible reading, but since I even got pushback last week on Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, I figured it was maybe going to be too much to ask somebody to read such hard words from the Bible.

There are too many of them, but an especially striking one mentioned in the draft is from 1^st Timothy. Brace yourselves. “Women should dress modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.” (2:9-15)

I agree that you should never have to hear from 1^st Timothy in worship. Yet this horrible stuff has had various influence in the church. It may not have affected whether you’re wearing gold today or how you did your hair, but may have contributed to the sense of being dressed in our “Sunday best.” Worse, in some denominations women aren’t allowed to teach Sunday School beyond 5^th grade, because then a woman would be teaching a so-called man. Passages like this are still used to say women can’t be pastors.

What may hit closest to home and be the most insidious is the end, that says women will be saved by childbirth, as long as your kids turn out okay. I know many of you already feel that judgmentalism much too strongly, without extra theological pressure, questioning how good of a mother you are, and how good of a person, and how good of a Christian. Yuck. Awful. Wrong.

I want you to understand that that passage should not speak to us here and now. It reflected standard Greco-Roman culture. It makes me even angrier that this wasn’t supposed to be Christian practice, even back then. This claims to be written by Paul, but is exactly the reverse of what Paul really believed and taught, as we’ll hear at the end. Instead, this was the dominant culture trying to subvert Paul and undermine Jesus and keep the women subordinate and submissive while reasserting the old cultural power of men, to displace the true teaching of the church.

So that’s a passage from the Bible bearing the marks of a former society, and is problematic mainly because it keeps trying to influence our sense of how things should be now.

There are also really hard Bible passages that portray ongoing problems, where it may only make things worse when we don’t hear them. I’m thinking first of some very disturbing stories about rape. We don’t read those, but they could remind us the Bible speaks of our human realities, even when they’re not pleasant. We may especially need to hear stuff like that to clarify what’s wrong in our faith’s perspective and yet that our tragedies don’t ultimately separate our stories from God’s. We have to notice, how we see our reality is closely tied to our perception of God, whether as bullying old guy on a cloud or with us in suffering and struggling for life.

In a similar way, this statement directly identifies problems and struggles—objectification, abuse, sexual assault, stereotypes, economic injustices, inadequate health care and the politicization of bodies, vocations from in the home to business leader or pastor, family roles and division of labor, immigration policies, human trafficking, jokes, media, legal processes, and so on. To these complex realities needing improvement, even though we don’t have quick, perfect, or easy solutions, the statement commends to us that the church’s role is to follow God in struggling against such problems and striving for justice and equity.

Finally, that points us to the clear and beneficial part of our Bible study. We’ve looked at where we’ve created the problem by adding sexist interpretations. We’ve looked at history of dominant cultures as persisting the problems. Now we arrive at some of the solution of scripture, including the good news Paul proclaimed: there is no longer male or female, for all are one in Christ, and all are heirs.

Again, to hear the richness of the biblical background, Paul was preaching this into and against that patriarchal culture where only males could receive an inheritance. He’s not saying that differences between us don’t matter. Rather, he insists that our differences don’t preclude us from the fullness of God’s blessing. Paul clearly identified the love of God for all, the relationship with Jesus as life-giving for all, the work of sharing this love and life as the responsibility of all, to change a sinful culture, bringing women to the same standing as men.

The statement faithfully identifies that we put more weight on passages like this than on the crap from 1^st Timothy (though the statement doesn’t quite label it that way). This is the sort of belief and attitude that we can hold to for the sake of our own life and wellbeing and also which is our resource to offer to the world, that our sense of God isn’t limiting but expansive and diverse, that we aren’t confined by rigid orders of what’s acceptable as our pre-ordained potential but instead have at our core an identity of belovedness, of connection, of equity and equality. Our belief is in fully honoring and supporting, celebrating and affirming each other and our own lives, and that becomes our practice to embody Jesus in value and grace and reconciliation and understanding and care. That is what the Holy Spirit is accomplishing and what God intends for all, for us, for you.

 

* http://elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Current-Social-Writing-Projects/Women-and-Justice/Draft

***  see especially statement pp30-32, 49-50

Bible readings:
At the time when Yahweh God made the heavens and the earth, there were no plants or grain growing on the earth, for Yahweh God had not yet sent rain to the earth, and there was no human being to cultivate the soil.

Then Yahweh God formed the earth creature from the dust of the earth and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life, and the earth creature became fully alive.

Yahweh God planted a garden to the east, in Eden—“Land of Pleasure”—and placed in it the earth creature that Yahweh God had made. And Yahweh God planted all sorts of trees in the garden—beautiful trees that produced delicious fruit.

Yahweh God took the earth creature and settled it in the garden of Eden to serve and protect it. Then Yahweh God said, “It is not good for the earth creature to be alone. I will make a fitting companion for it.” So from the soil Yahweh God formed all the various wild beasts and all the birds of the air and brought them to the earth creature to be named. The earth creature gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals.

But none of them proved to be a fitting companion. So Yahweh God made the earth creature fall into a deep sleep, and while it slept, God divided the earth creature in two, then closed up the flesh from its side. Yahweh God  then fashioned the two halves into male and female, and presented them to one another.

(from Genesis 2, translation Inclusive Bible, Phyllis Trible, et al.)
So you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. ²⁷And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have been made like him. ²⁸There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. For you are all Christians– you are one in Christ Jesus.
⁷Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child. And since you are God’s child, God has made you God’s own heir. (Galatians 3:26-28, 4:7, New Living Trans.)
social statement reading excerpt:
Patriarchy and sexism prevent all human beings from living into the abundant life for which God created them. In patriarchal systems, men are typically viewed as better than women and have more authority than women. Sexism promotes silencing, controlling, and devaluing women, girls, and gender non-conforming people. We believe that many individuals also experience intersecting burdens, according to their race, economic status, sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration status, or because of the language they speak.

We reject patriarchy and sexism as sinful because they deny the truth that all people are created equally in God’s image. Too often behaviors and decisions rooted in patriarchy and sexism cause overt harm, inequities, and degradations. Examples include gender-based violence, pay inequality, human trafficking, restricted access to health care, inadequate research on health issues affecting women, denial of educational opportunities, objectifying portrayals of women in media, and failure to support elderly women, mothers, and children. Patriarchal structures that reinforce and perpetuate rigid sex and gender expectations also harm men and boys, including gay and transgender men when they are forced to conform to narrow gender stereotypes.

In faith, this church is empowered to confess that Christianity is complicit in [these] sins. At the same time, we believe God is at work in [the church and] human community to bring forth new ways of living that challenge the harmful beliefs and effects of patriarchy and sexism. We recognize that significant progress has been made in society; however, cultural and religious beliefs, practices, policies, and laws continue to promote inequality and inequity and continue to degrade, lessen, and harm people. We believe that Christians, together with many other partners, are able to advance and support an equitable common good.
social statement Confession & Forgiveness excerpt:
Grounded in understanding of the Triune God,
we believe God’s intention for humanity is abundant life for all.

While we affirm that God’s intention is equity and fullness of life for everyone,
we confess that the sins of patriarchy and sexism disrupt God’s intention.
When we do not ensure the safety of women, girls, and others, then we sin.
[But] sin is not just individual acts.
Sin is also found and expressed in organizations and institutions.
It is a sin that women are not paid an equal wage for the same work
or must pay more for health care.
It is an injustice to women and girls to demand physical perfection
and to portray women and girls as sexual objects.
Sexism and patriarchy in church and society
prevent women and girls from affirming, celebrating, and expressing
their individuality as God’s good creatures.

As God’s people, forgiven in Jesus Christ,
we are at the same time liberated and sinful.
We are broken, and yet we are made new by grace through faith.
This good news is true even [while injustice remains].
Give thanks for God’s gracious promises to break the bonds of sin
and to empower our lives of hope to seek neighbor justice.
Rejoice that God is always at work to transform and inspire
new ways of living that lean more fully toward God’s intention.
And hear the summons to seek even fuller measures
of justice and equity for all. Amen
social statement Creed excerpt:
We believe God is the creator of all.
We are, therefore, one with humankind made in the image of God,
and one with the whole creation.

We believe God is the Word embodied in Jesus Christ
who unites us through baptism with all Christians
in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.
By his grace, we are liberated to serve God’s whole creation,
seeking peace and justice.

We believe that God the Holy Spirit is always at work,
transforming and inspiring new ways of living in this world
toward God’s promised, beloved, eternal community.

We believe all people are created equally in the image of God.
We affirm that God’s creation is wonderful in its variety.
We believe God creates humanity in diversity,
encompassing a wide variety of experiences, identities, and expressions,
including sex and gender.
Every individual is dependent upon God
and all share in the God-given vocation
to joyfully contribute their gifts to help all of creation flourish. Amen

 

mini mini sermon for midweek outdoor worship

Summer is traveling time, especially it seems at the MCC. Even if you’re not going far yourself, you’re still part of Boundary Waters and Guatemala and such.

When I’m getting ready for trips (or getting ready with sermon words), I take satisfaction in minimizing, compressing and packing into as little space as possible. That often means I have less than I’d want. I play a little game of seeing how far away from home I can get before realizing what I’ve forgotten.

For the canoe trip, I’ve kept a list year by year, of what I brought and of what I didn’t use. That’s seriously organized for me, since I usually just grab stuff on the last evening.

Such behavior can make me wonder if I forget to make space to pack God, if my readiness for a journey doesn’t include the garments of my faith, if I depart stripped of this identity.

So the comprehensive list in Exodus reminds us how we can be intentional in awareness of God traveling with us. And probably even when we’re unaware or poorly prepared, God’s still there.

 

(from Exodus 25, NLT, adapted)

The LORD said to Moses: “Tell the Israelites to make an Ark of acacia wood—a sacred chest 4 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 2 feet high. Cover it inside and outside with pure gold. Cast four rings of gold for it, and attach them to its four feet, two rings on each side. Make poles from acacia wood, and cover them with gold. These carrying poles must never be taken from the rings; they are to be left there permanently. When the Ark is finished, place inside it the stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant, which I will give to you.

“Then make the Ark’s cover out of pure gold. It must be 4 feet long and 2 feet wide. Then make two angels, and place them at the two ends of the cover. The angels will face each other, looking down on the atonement cover with their wings spread out above it. I will meet with you there and talk to you from above the cover between the gold angels that hover over the Ark of the Covenant. From there I will give you my commands for the people of Israel.”

 

 

For Peace in God’s World

a sermon on the ELCA Social Statement*, and Ephesians 2:13-19, Matthew 5:9,38-45; Psalm 85

It seems like the impetuses or causes to look at this Social Statement keep multiplying around us.

Just before I left for Guatemala, ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton issued a letter quoting this nearly-quarter century old yet still-relevant statement, in part saying:

Citizens need to give careful attention to how we in the United States perceive our national interest…Sin’s power often makes itself felt in arrogant and self-righteous views of national identity, and in narrow, short-term, and absolute views of national interest…

In a time…when an idolatrous allegiance to one’s own community endangers our oneness, we must voice with clarity the powerful vision…to engage differences, not to ignore or fear them. The hope for earthly peace challenges people to strengthen their own particular communities in ways that promote respect and appreciation for people in other communities, for all share a common humanity.

Bishop Eaton was using the social statement in reference against the Supreme Court decision to uphold President Trump’s ban on travel from certain Muslim-majority countries. This is an example of how church interacts with our nation.

That news was overshadowing news of another vital issue, as a couple weeks ago we were finding outrage about how children were being treated at our nation’s border. The social statement applies to that, as well, calling our society and us ourselves to better behavior in loving our neighbors.

That news, in turn, surprised me as we came out from seclusion of the Boundary Waters since we’d gone in on the eve of the summit with North Korea and expected to come out hearing all about it. But even deliberations on nuclear disarmament seem to be forgotten. And that news, again!, obscured the ignoring diplomacy in order to reignite dispute with Iran. Such impetuses, begging our attention to look at this social statement continue to explode so rapidly around us.

Still, I selected this among the set we would look at this summer before those particular headlines, and for much more fundamental reasons.

First, Peace is exactly formative of who and what we are when we gather here. In the traditional and ancient liturgy, we begin with it in repetition: In peace, in Peace! let us pray to the Lord. Kyrie, eleison. It comes up over and over through the liturgy, to the final words that dismiss us into the world and commission us to bear out what we have practiced while together: go in peace. Go in peace.

Perhaps most noticeably and extensively, it is at the heart of the service, the crux of our gathering when we share the peace of Christ with each other. I should talk about it more, because it is such a key moment of what we do here. It’s so much more than a brief howdy. It recognizes that it’s not how well we’re doing in relationship with each other, but that we’re related in Christ, who reconciles us. It is especially important for me with those with whom I’ve had difficulty. If that makes you concerned for if I come to offer you peace, know that I figure we need it most deeply yet again with our closest neighbors, like family members.

But sharing peace also is the moment to see that familiarity is not what binds us. Nobody is a stranger or outsider, since it is Christ’s peace that brings us together. We need to keep practicing that and living into it, week after week.

Having that feeling from worship—so intimate and so expansive and so hugely different from what the world feeds us in hatreds and differences—makes this practice true for me. That sense goes back to my deepest and earliest connection to Christianity. I don’t say connection to God, since that’s inseparable and was established before I was born and was confirmed in my baptism at 3½ months old. But in middle school, I came to see the peacemaking as unique and valuable, that the earliest Christians refused to take up the sword of empire, and yet were the ones who remained in danger to offer nursing care. This nonviolence is far braver than the cheap bravado of threats. So I was a Boy Scout leading the pledge of allegiance over the loudspeaker in my school, but with a dedication to citizenship apart from the patronizing patriotism of militarization.

I was in 6^th grade during the first Gulf War. Even though the social statement says we Lutherans support discernment about just wars, that war seemed wrong to me then. Later, I was on my internship when we protested by the thousands, then watched on TV Baghdad flashing horribly with shock and awe. It has continued ceaselessly for 15 years now. That’s a war longer than the whole time I’d been alive when I was coming to believe war is wrong.

This has remained at the core of my faith and was deepened in my understanding of the identity of Jesus. A friend and I started a seminary group called INViTE—Integrating Non-Violence into Theological Education. I wrote in my final seminary paper about how much more effective and cheaper (and, of course, faithful) it would be to take the ridiculous amounts we put into planes and missiles and nuclear devices—a project we name “national security” even though it is a spiral of escalating violence making us less safe—and invested instead in schools and hospitals and benefits for our foes, since what quicker way would there be to make enemies into friends?

To the ready claims that that’s naïve, the counter question is when sanctions and bombs and invasions actually achieve a truly positive result. And I would ask how in the world we could have faith in those destructive practices and still claim faith in the God of love we know in Jesus. We can’t fight terror without it becoming part of us. We can’t well make war while trusting in a God of peace. We can’t have ultimate loyalty to a flag and to God.

Even this morning, without weapons in our hands or camouflage on our backs, we are complicit. We’re complicit in sending others to do that work, often our young people who come home injured in body and mind. We’re complicit in funding with our taxes. We’re complicit in succumbing to idolatrous ideology. We’re captive to sin and cannot free ourselves, cannot liberate ourselves, are not independent.

We need the God of love and forgiveness, I realized throughout our time in Guatemala. I was proud that some of the MCC’s faithful observance of Independence Day was in a Spanish-speaking country whose poverty is in no small part because genocide came with our European ancestors, and violence supported our U.S. fruit corporations a century ago, and whose government was overthrown by our alleged “intelligence” agencies, with dictators and generals trained at our military schools for abuses of a 36-year civil war, ending only in 1996**. I need to cling to the loving, forgiving God of peace in Jesus because I was in Guatemala to help build a house for a poor family, but my country is—and so I am—complicit and responsible for them being poor to begin with.

I know that’s not a very pretty face on this. We often think of peace and quiet, serenity, peace with calm beauty, peace as a personal internal state. But like those early Christians, we realize this is a challenge requiring God’s promise and possibility for our dedication, our fortitude, our faith.

In Guatemala, I was reading words of Archbishop Oscar Romero from nearby El Salvador, assassinated by U.S.-backed soldiers while saying the Words of Institution in worship. One passage said, “Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent oppression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism.”*** In that spirit of inclusive energetic generosity, when Jesus instructs us not to resist evil violently, not to retaliate with the same vengeful destruction, he instead invites us into courageous nonviolent resistance that is powerfully creative in love.

If you’ve struggled with or wondered about Jesus’ words about being bullied, the background likely would help that a Roman soldier could force you to carry his pack one mile, but your first step into a second mile put him at risk for breaking the rules and so reversed who was in charge, taking the initiative away from the oppressor. Your cloak, an outer garment (Luke 6:29), might be a poor person’s last collateral, and if the rich demanded to sue for that debt, Jesus suggests leaving your tunic—essentially your underwear—as well and marching out of court buck naked in protest, shaming them in your nudity. Again, turning the other cheek is the opposite of submitting as a victim of violence. You could only be hit with the right hand (since the left was the toilet hand and could not be used for any sort of interaction). A backhand slap to the right cheek showed dominance, keeping an inferior in a lower place. But by turning a left cheek, you could only be struck by a fist, a denial of being humiliated and insisting on being treated as equals, which defiantly changed either the social structure or else the desire for the powerful to risk losing their upper hand. ****

We recognize similar creative courageous challenges confronting the rule of empire with bodies taking up a cross throughout history. This spirit of dignity and life and even humor in the face of what would take it all away is godly practice. Such is the reconciliation to break down dividing walls of hostility between humanity. Such is a “world about to turn.” Such is the desire to share grace and love abundantly, refusing to call others enemies or aliens, but to share the victory. Such is the peacemaking action of the children of God. Such is the enlivening of the kingdom of God. To me, this is Jesus, and I hope you’ll be part of it.

* http://elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Statements/Peace

** www.soaw.org/about-the-soawhinsec/soawhinsec-grads/notorious-grads/239-notorious-graduates-from-guatemala

*** The Violence of Love, p27

**** Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way, Walter Wink, ch.2

 

PRAYERS

In peace, in peace let us pray to the Lord.

 

Lord, have mercy. For the wellbeing of the church of God, we pray that in these gatherings and enlivened by the liturgy of your church, you would give us faith and courage to be your children, by your Holy Spirit to mold and equip us to live as peacemakers, to practice sharing together what you would have us become and being a sanctuary in time of desperation.

 

We realize that battlefields cannot be fruitful farm fields, that our killing corrupts not only humanity but causes destruction for your creation. Make us your creative agents who bring about life for all.

 

For the peace of the whole world, we pray for the good for Afghanistan and Iran, for Iraq and Syria, for Palestine and Israel, for the Koreas, for China, Guatemala and Mexico, for all refugees who flee from a bad life and hope for better, and most especially for our nation and for us as citizens here, that we can break down dividing walls and strive on behalf of all our neighbors and seek creative solutions to sustain wellbeing.

 

For our personal peace, for our relationships that require reconciliation, for the threats to our own dignity or the ways we are complicit in dehumanizing others, for all that would threaten us, including fear and irrational striving for security, for the peace of our souls—body, spirit, mind.

 

For peace at the last, not only that we would be able to go in peace from this weekly worship, but that you sustain us in the peace the world cannot give so we trust we are in your eternal embrace through this life and far beyond it.

Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust

a sermon on the ELCA human sexuality social statement* and Romans 13:9-10 and Psalm 139

 

As we begin, I expect two things.

First, I expect if you knew about the ELCA’s process of ethical discernment and social statements, it might be because of this on sexuality.

Second, I expect for Bible readings you probably didn’t expect that from Romans 13 (even though the chapter has recently suffered odd applications also from the Attorney General). You probably anticipated something else to go with this topic, since almost always sexuality is approached with Bible bullets and proof-texting.

Maybe third, though we consider ourselves open and affirming, I expect there’s some discomfort in this room to talk about sex. It’s in this preacher, if nothing else.

So, adopted by the 2009 Churchwide Assembly, this social statement famously passed the 2/3 threshold by one vote, and had a tornado go over the convention center at that moment. There’s also the notoriety that since then ELCA membership has gone down more than 10%, half a million people, a statistic often blamed on the decision by critics, as over 700 congregations have voted to leave the denomination.

I can tell you straight off that most of those people have never read this careful and care-filled theology, much less engaged in almost two decades of study and reflection before the vote. The headlines (and this was almost certainly the only social statement with headlines!) were about what the ELCA thinks about homosexuality. While the statement does include some of that, in grace-filled language—reminding us of the benefits of committed loving relationships, that all our bodies are created in the image of God, that we’re all responsible to love and to stop hate—yet it doesn’t go much farther than the sort of support a predecessor denomination was able to declare nearly 50 years ago in 1970.

Besides hesitancy on same-gendered relationships, it has little to say about gender expression and identity. Admittedly, our society as a whole has learned much on that since 2009. The statement is also meager on women and justice, but couldn’t have anticipated #MeToo movements about sexual abuse of power. Still, recognizing it “does not offer once-for-all answers to contemporary questions. Rather, [it says,] it seeks to tap the deep roots of Scripture and the Lutheran theological tradition…to discern what is responsible and faithful action in the midst of the complexity of daily life.”

That helps point us to a bigger purpose. Though there are social statements about a single issue (like abortion or the death penalty), and while this may have been prompted by a narrow question, the statement is certainly not only something like “what does God think about gays?”

In reality, I suspect a lot of the time that question gets asked because this topic makes us squirm and, for most of us, that’s a way to direct it away from our own daily life. We focus on somebody else’s behavior or identity not have to grapple with our own.

But of course the social statement won’t let us do that. It very nicely is about and for all of us. It’s intended for us who are in marriage, and us who are couples, and us who have been through some part of divorces or break-ups, and us going through puberty or changes or trying to figure out our bodies in whatever way, and us wondering who we are in relationships, and us who are single for various reasons, and us who are children, and us who are much older, and us who have been part of any kind of families. It’s for all of us, because all of us are human. Even though it gets lived out or practiced or not practiced in such a variety of ways, gender and sexuality is part of what it means to be human, to live together, to be created and formed by God, in each of our very, very, very different bodies, to be seen by God as very, very good.

That breadth of understanding may make the allegedly racy topic seem almost bland. Which shows we need to re-evaluate our expectations on sexuality. I was asked with concern this week about how graphic this would be and how I was going to keep it G-rated since there would be children present.

But we clearly know our children are nothing like secluded from this. The social statement laments that exposure, from media and marketing and all that culture throws at them, and at all of us. In one way, we attempt to address that concern with things like our Parish Protection Program. The statement commends the church in such safe-guarding concern for the vulnerable.

But it’s not only about putting up barriers or pretending we can ignore the world around us. It’s not only preventing the negative, but how do we encourage and practice the positive? If we don’t talk about sexuality in church, that leaves it to be defined by commercials, magazines, movies, books, peer pressures, clothing fads, political discourse, bullying and hate groups, pornography, and so on. So not talking about it at church only leaves out the loving voice of God.

In society that severely limits types of body that are called attractive, with brief beauty, we likely need to hear God say again, “It is good. You are good.” Amid a sense that anything about sex is secret and so shameful and somehow wrong, we need to be reminded it is not “intrinsically dirty and dangerous.” When so much is devalued, we re-assert the value. Since it has such power, we need to be reminded you don’t only “do it” because it feels good to you, but requires trust and love, that it has some of the most power for causing harm but also for sharing joy.

In this, I hope you’re already hearing this ELCA perspective is not only different from what our culture normally conveys about sexuality, but also not what we’d usually expect from religions. This is not typical categorical judgments and finger-wagging condemnations and threats. Here in church we don’t need to be shamed or excluded; we need to rejoice in what goes right and lament what doesn’t, in society, but even more in our own lives.

Again, this is a different religious voice because it is not only saying that whatever happens outside marriage is wrong or what happens inside marriage is right. It’s no sacrament, not something that makes you holier. Like all the rest of daily living, but in one of the most intensified ways, it is where God operates with concern for the sake of life. Where the social statement extensively accentuates marriage, it is because it offers “the highest social and legal support” for our relationships.

Some religions make sexuality only about procreation. Clearly children and families play an important role in the social statement and in our understanding, but to limit it to making babies is a crazy restriction. There’s plenty about touch and intimacy and connection that isn’t only about how we make more people on this planet, or about how we take care of the ones arriving on this planet, but already about relationship as couples, and about what happens in our individual bodies, and about how our bodies interact much more broadly in community.

For that, as a second-to-last point, I want to return to the surprising Bible reading. This social statement is framed by Jesus’ teaching to “love your neighbor as yourself,” a version of which we heard from Paul’s letter to the Romans. That may not sound much like sexuality. That’s partly because we tend to distance our neighbors: they are migrant children at our national border, clearly an example this week of why families are important (as if we needed a social statement to clarify that wrong). But even for that, I’d say those aren’t your neighbors Jesus is most concerned about this week.

Your closest and most important neighbors, I’m always striving to help you remember, are the ones who live in your house, in your family, your most regular connections, in your closest relationships. That’s where love is required and most challenging. That is why we’re looking at this statement, not because we need to answer a question about somebody else, but because we need to keep working on it ourselves. How, then, does our conduct or our attitude affect those who are the very nearest to us? How do they feel? How are they loved?

In a last point, in want to tie that loving to the word “consummate.” It’s one of the many euphemisms for sexual relations, but I’d say it’s a vital and correct one. It’s a word that means “be all with,” sharing all of who you are. It’s with some of that sense that we celebrate and share the importance of sexuality. To say it another way that I hope you continue to hear how I use this word, it’s about a communion of souls. See, in biblical usage a soul isn’t a little separate part of you, not the little divine eternal spark. The Bible’s words for soul are about the fullness of who you are as a person—your heart and emotions, your spirit and connection to God, and also your body. Your flesh is not separate from your soul; it is vitally connected. And sexuality is about sharing that soulful all-of-who you are.

So, with the social statement, we recognize it isn’t something trifling, not only about you feeling good or your personal gratifications. It should not or maybe even cannot be momentary, since it’s about the relatedness of all your emotions, about a commitment of being connected most deeply at the heart. That is why it is so high, so important, why it is consummating the soul-whole of who you are with another, being all-in. Far from some mere physical act, this is the whole category of the deepest way we express who God made us to be with each other.

This vulnerability also carries so much weight and hardness and sadness and potential for harm and abuse and struggle and even exploitation. It is weighty and can cause problems in our relationships and carries so much demand for personal discernment and work on it exactly because it is filled—you are filled—with the joy and delight of such God-given potential. And you are good.

A post-script: knowing each of you face it uniquely but this was a blanket message, I absolutely don’t want you to feel left out or that this made something worse, so as always I’m available if it would help to talk more.

 

An excerpt from the ELCA social statement on Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust.

God created human beings to be in relationship with each other. Sexuality especially involves the powers or capacities to form deep and lasting bonds, to give and receive pleasure, and to conceive and bear children.

Sexuality can be integral to the desire to commit oneself to life with another, to touch and be touched, and to love and be loved. Such powers are complex and ambiguous. They can be used well or badly. They can bring astonishing joy and delight. Such powers can serve God and serve the neighbor. They also can hurt self or hurt the neighbor. Sexuality finds expression at the extreme ends of human experience: in love, care, and security, or lust, cold indifference, and exploitation.

Sexuality consists of a rich and diverse combination of relational, emotional, and physical interactions and possibilities. Erotic desire, in the narrow sense, is only one component of the relational bonds that humans crave as sexual beings. Although some people may remain single, either intentionally or unintentionally, all people need and delight in companionship, and all are vulnerable to loneliness.

The need to share our lives with others is a profound good (Genesis 2:18). Reaching out in love and care is part of who we are. Even if we never have sexual intimacy, we all seek and respond to the bonds and needs of relationships.

Sexual love—the complex interplay of longing, erotic attraction, self-giving, and receiving defined by trust—is a wondrous gift. The longing for connection, however, also can render human beings susceptible to pain, isolation, and harm. The desire for sexual love, therefore, does not by itself constitute a moral justification    for sexual behavior. Giving and receiving love always involves mixed motives and limited understanding of individual and communal consequences.

The sharing of love and sexual intimacy within the mutuality of a mature and trusting relationship can be a rich source of romance, delight, creativity, imagination, restraint, desire, pleasure, safety, and deep contentment that provides the context for individuals, family, and the community to thrive.

 

 

Prayers of intercession:

God of communion, we are all united in you, together as the mystical body of your Son. Lead us to care for and recognize all these body parts in your church.

Your creation is good, very good. When we ignore the world around us or disparage body types, remind and renew in us the promise that you love this world, created us in your image, and were born into our flesh.

We pray for places of brokenness and hurt: for vulnerable children, for places where gender justice is desperately needed, in sex trafficking and abuse, for where people of various sexual orientations or gender identities suffer intense oppression, especially when these are part of religious life, and for the understanding we all need to pursue.

We pray also for our households and families, in celebration for when these good gifts of who we are can be consummated and foster life, but also for the places of brokenness and longing—for the lonely, for those hurting from divorce, for those hurting in relationships and looking for answers, for our bodies when they don’t behave how we want, for all the ways this can be a very personal and very difficult topic for us, be here now with your grace and love.

 

 

 

 

* http://elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Statements/Human-Sexuality