A character in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is asked how he became bankrupt. He answers, “Two ways…. Gradually and then suddenly.” This pandemic has revealed all kinds of fault lines and inequities that in the past have gradually and stealthily shaped our culture, and now with the coronavirus we suddenly see hard truths about our common life. The church has faced its own gradual and sudden plunge. We’ve faced a gradual decline, and now the pandemic suddenly forces issues about how to be church in this place and at this time that have cried out for attention for decades. All of which means this synod, its rostered leaders, its lay ministers, its congregations, and its pew-sitters face a time of massive and urgent change. There is no normal to go back to. There’s only the future that the Holy Spirit is leading us into without the pillars of cloud and fire we’d like.
In a time of change, two things become
the focus for us in the church. The first, of course, is the gospel of Jesus
Christ, and him crucified. As Paul says in Romans (1:16), it’s “the power of
God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” It’s the one thing that
constitutes the church and its mission. It’s the thing that everything else
points to, the reason for every worship service, program, project, and
decision. When we keep our eyes on the center, change is possible.
The other focus makes things more
difficult. Around the center lie all the gateways through which we’ve come to a
life of faith and that we associate with the gospel: Sunday school, soaring
music, Bible camp, Women of the ELCA, good coffee, or having every pew filled
for worship. Those beloved things are so strong in our emotions that sometimes
we confuse them with the central reason for our life together.
When things are changing, the familiar
entry-points shift, and new avenues for bringing people into the center are
called for. Being free enough to risk the new is a hard, hard task. In “Freedom
of a Christian” Martin Luther reminds us that it’s God’s Word that frees us.
It’s individual Christians, congregations, synods, and even denominations that
hold firm to Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever, who endure
change.
For a bishop to focus only on the
duties of being an administrator is to deal with peripheral matters. Those
things are important, and we’ll need to give serious time and energy to them
across this synod. But the bishop simply has to be the preacher, teacher, and
public proclaimer who holds up the center. As bishop I would value the gifts of
the synod staff, council, the deans, and people in congregations who have the
expertise, the creativity, and the faithfulness to tackle both the old and the
new entry-points. My job would be to help them make distinctions, decisions,
and even tentative steps, all within the context of a public witness to our
Lord’s saving grace for the godless, the sinful, the broken, those who’ve never
heard of it, and those who desperately need to hear it again.
All those gateways lie in the realm of the law, and we need them for our common safety, security, and order. But they don’t hold the possibility of changing hearts or bringing people to saving faith. Whether it’s Philip with the Ethiopian eunuch, Paul speaking to the Athenians on the Areopagus, Argula von Grumbach and her letters supporting the Reformation in 16th century Bavaria, John Lewis speaking faithful truth to power, or the pastor who will bring a final word at your grave, it’s proclamation that God uses to create new structures by forgiving sin and raising the dead. That’s what allows for change, both in our hearts and in the ways we live and work together.
I don’t know what my own congregation or the synod will look like six years from now, much less what the state of the ELCA and wider Christianity will be. Yet I do know that in that time I won’t give up as your preacher and provider of pastoral care. I will seek similar leaders to serve ministry sites. And I will continue to cling to the only hope I’ve ever truly had: that Jesus is my Lord and yours. You and I will, no doubt, fail miserably on occasion and, I hope, also prayerfully achieve some success, but the center holds nonetheless. Christ always has. He always will. Amen.
