With the votes at the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly, a page in the denomination's history will turn. I was impressed by Presiding Bishop Hanson's comments earlier this week about the viewpoint that this week's decisions will result in decreasing membership and financial resources for mission. He said (and I paraphrase)....Here's the reality check.... decreased membership and financial resources have already occurred! This week's decisions do not mark the beginning of that!
Bishop Hanson is calling us to come together to the root of who we are as the people of God.
Remember the process you learned (at least I think it is still taught in elementary math classes) called: reduce to lowest common denominator. It went like this....
8/32, 4/16, 2/8, 1/4
Well, if you begin with whatever point of discussion that is on the table of faith discussion.... whether it is about immigration, feeding the poor, fighting AIDS or Malaria, or discussing human sexuality.... you can "reduce" all of it to the equalizing denominator that we are each created by God, Loved by God, and Brought into One by Baptism.
That fact doesn't minimize the many (and indeed significant) differences we experience. But that fact is the one that needs to be highlighted at all times, for it is in that fact...that in Baptism the Love and the Power of God is unleashed in our lives...that we KNOW we have received our orders. Even when we debate and discuss to the point where we know that we simply do not agree, we still can agree in our common roots as Baptised Children of God.
God doesn't seem to directly or lavishly bestow consensus or universal agreement... God simply claims each one of us....gathering us in and saying "Peace, be still.... You are mine!" And we must move onward and outward from there!
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