Sermon for ELCA's 25th Anniversary
Sermon for ELCA 25th Anniversary Sunday
September 8, 2013
Michael Coffey
If you could sum up the good news of
God in Jesus Christ
in
one word, what word would you use?
Love? Forgiveness? Peace?
We’re
Lutherans, right, so we’re supposed to say,
justification by grace through faith,
but
that’s 5 words,
so
we’re automatically eliminated from the game.
If you read Paul’s letters,
he
only uses the word a few times,
but
it comes at extremely important points in his letters
and
seems to sum up all of what he wants to say
about God and Jesus and us:
reconciliation.
So if anyone is in
Christ, there is a new creation:
everything old has
passed away;
see, everything has
become new!
All this is from God,
who reconciled us to himself through Christ,
and has given us the
ministry of reconciliation;
that is, in Christ God
was reconciling the world to himself,
not counting their
trespasses against them,
and entrusting the message
of reconciliation to us.
So we are ambassadors
for Christ,
since God is making his
appeal through us;
we entreat you on
behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
In other famous parts of Paul’s
letters
we
hear him say how the human divisions between peoples,
race,
gender, class, nationality,
no
longer divide because those who are in Christ
are
one people, one body, reconciled to each other and God.
I looked up the word, reconciliation.
The
best definition I found was
the restoration of friendly relations.
That’s pretty good, and a pretty good
way
to talk about the good
news of God in Christ.
God is friend to us. We’re friendly
with God. Everything is OK.
And
because of that, we’re friendly with one another,
even
if we come from disparate backgrounds
and
don’t speak the same language.
It’s what Jesus was saying to his
disciples in John’s Gospel:
We’re
friends now. We’re reconciled to each
other and God.
And
nothing is greater than being called friends.
Love
one another like the friendship I have for you.
And
that is how you will experience the love of God:
in
the love of human friendship.
Our church body, the ELCA, was formed
25 years ago.
Who remembers what you were doing 25
years ago,
a
year before the Berlin wall fell?
I looked up 1988 on Wikipedia.
The
first event listed is the beginning of Perestoika,
the
economic restructuring of the Soviet Union.
The
second event they list? The formation of
the ELCA.
Well,
I guess that’s because they start with January 1st.
The
winter Olympics were in Calgary.
Indictments
were given for the Iran/Contra scandal.
The
Last Emperor swept the Academy Awards.
The
Soviets began withdrawing from Afghanistan.
Microsoft
released Windows 2.1.
The
great Yellowstone National Park fire burned 36% of the park land.
The
Savings and Loan scandal was at its height.
Lloyd
Bentson said to Dan Quayle: You’re no
Jack Kennedy.
George
H. W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis in the presidential election.
The
Iran/Iraq war ended with an estimated 1 million lives lost.
The
summer Olympics were in Seoul, South Korea.
Pan
Am flight 103 was blown up over Scotland by Lybia.
Vicars
Mike Mackey and John Conrad, our 22nd and 23rd interns,
served First English with Pastor
Karli.
It
was the year before First English became
a Reconciling in Christ congregation,
officially and openly welcoming
people
of all sexual orientations.
The
green book, the LBW, was only 10 years old.
It was a different world then,
although
some of the problems of today
seem strangely connected to
some of the problems then.
After years of study and conversation
three
Lutheran church bodies officially joined as one new church.
The
American Lutheran Church,
The
Lutheran Church in America,
and
the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches
became
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
I
recall the years leading up to the merger,
and
the conversation about what to call the new church.
I’m
not sure we picked the best name,
since
the word evangelical is often
confusing
and
we usually end up having to say
we’re not that kind of evangelical.
It was clear then and even more clear
now
that
this merger of three Lutheran church bodies
was
no easy accomplishment,
and
it took a lot of reconciliation.
High
church or low church, synodical or congregational,
focused
on evangelism or social justice,
East
coast German or Upper Midwest Scandanavian.
It
took a lot of reconciliation.
What I want to give thanks for today
as
we celebrate the ELCA’s 25 years
is
that the theme of reconciliation has carried on
as
a major theme in the ELCA.
We are a church body that has gone
out of its way
to
break open barriers that separate people
and
reconcile what has been divided.
We have led the formation of full
communion agreements
with
other church bodies, the Episcopal church,
the
Presbyterians, Methodists, UCC, Reformed, Moravians.
We helped lead an agreement with the
Roman Catholic church
that
Lutherans and Catholics now understand
justification
by grace through faith in a mutual way!
We are working to reconcile the
church as one.
We have worked to move the Lutheran
church beyond
the
Garrison Keillor stereotypes of Scandanavians
and
Germans and jello and lutefisk and niceness as the highest virtue.
We may still have a large majority of
English speaking white folks,
but
we are working to be a church for all peoples.
Our
new worship book is a witness to the beautiful diversity
that
we are and want to be.
We are working to reconcile humanity
as one.
We have given of ourselves in
countless ministries
where
tragedy and disaster strike,
and
the poor and hungry of the world cry out.
We are working to reconcile the
comfortable and the suffering,
the
wealthy and the poor.
We have come a long way in being a
church
where
peoples of all sexual orientations are welcome,
and
where women and men serve and lead together.
We just elected our first female
presiding bishop.
We are working to reconcile all
people in Christ.
If you look at the history of the
ELCA
and
many of our individual congregations,
you’ll
see that membership numbers have declined,
the
number of congregations has declined.
There are many factors at work in the
life of denominations
that
come from historical expressions of the church,
leading
to a decline in numbers.
If you look at our society today
you’ll
see a significant decline over the past 25 years
in
the number of people claiming any religious affiliation
and
a sad but understandable increase in the number of people
who
mistrust religious institutions.
I’m telling you this because I want
us to admit
that
the past 25 years are not an easy story of growth and success.
I’m telling you this because being a
church dedicated to the gospel
of
reconciling all things together in Christ
is
so great a mission and ministry
that
we should not let the hard part get in the way.
To be a part of God’s reconciling
work,
to
be as Paul says, ambassadors of reconciliation,
is
about as great a purpose and calling I can think of.
Our world is being torn apart
by
people who want to separate and divide
based
on fear and ignorance and selfishness and anger.
We
didn’t realize in 1988, one year after the movie Wall Street came out,
that
Gordon Gekko’s claim that greed is good
would
be taken so seriously.
But
now we are more deeply divided by greed and wealth
and
class than we have been in a long time.
I hope you join me in a sense of
gratitude
and
also a sense of urgency and importance
in
being part of a church tradition
that
knows the good news of God
is about reconciling us all together
not
dividing us by worshiping wealth and blaming the poor.
I hope you feel as I do
that
being a part of the ELCA,
imperfect
though it is,
is
a gift and a calling for 25 years to come
that
we can work together beyond FELC and ourselves
to
witness to good news.
The work is never done
but the fruits of
reconciliation are always flowering.
We are a church body dedicated to the
good news
that God’s grace is for
all people
that reconciliation
between people and God
is a done deal in Christ Jesus
to be celebrated and shared.
We are ambassadors of God’s
friendship
doing
God’s work with our hands,
speaking
words of mutual love,
living in friendship with
Jesus and one another
for God’s sake.
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