Bishop’s Thoughts on Public Witness

First, I joined fifty Lutherans in Washington D.C. last week for the “Gather at the Gate.” Pastor Emily Ebert and Desta Goehner from Holy Trinity, Thousand Oaks and I met our two senators, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff and staff, Rep. Julia Brownley from the Thousand Oaks area and the staff of Rep. Judy Chu. In all meetings, we thanked our elected officials for their support of SNAP, Medicaid and immigrants. But perhaps most importantly, we asked our officials how we can support their work – what did they need from us “on the ground.” They asked for us to support those who need to file new paperwork for Medi-caid, to help them navigate the system. They asked us to advocate for programs, including federally-funded ones, to their offices and in our communities. They basically asked us to be good neighbors, which is what we want to do, and to support their efforts to keep government running and finding ways forward to fund social programs. I was also struck by how much our leaders need to hear from us, and need our prayers. This was a powerful witness in society.

The second event I want to talk about is my work on the ELCA Sexuality Statement Reconsideration Task Force. This five-year task force is working to reconsider the “bound conscience” portion of our social statement on sexuality which was approved in 2009. For those of you who are not familiar with our social statements, they are theological documents which share the teachings and beliefs of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The 2009 social statement, ‘Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust’ led the way to ordination of LGBTQ person and gave a pathway for congregations to bless and celebrate same-gender couples. This task force has been updating gender and marriage language to reflect current practices and laws. But now, we face the challenge of addressing this church’s four different positions on human sexuality, which allows ELCA congregations to hold positions as diverse as believing gay and lesbian people are sinful, to celebrating and fully accepting LGBTQIA+ people in their full expression. While these different positions were articulated and sanctioned in 2009 in an effort to keep all types of ELCA Lutherans united in the church, we see today that these four positions may need to be reconsidered. You can imagine, people throughout the country are very committed to clarification, and, in many cases, hope their “position” will still be held as the teaching of this church.

But here is the good news I want to share with you: the sixteen people on this task force volunteered to be involved in difficult, vulnerable conversations. We expected to get our feelings hurt and our personhood questioned – both conservatives and progressives on this

issue knew they might be attacked. And yet, every effort has been made in the first two years of our time together to build relationship and trust and to live into a covenant on how we will work together. The two “sides,” if you will, have all but vanished, as we find ourselves committing to honesty, valuing each other and finding what we now call “a third way” forward. It has become one of the most profound spiritual experiences of our lives. We know the Holy Spirit is moving among us, we simply do not yet see the path the Spirit is leading us toward.

In this meeting we met with Jay Wittmeyer of the Lombard Mennonite Peace Institute, to learn about how each of us deals with conflict. We also met with three members of the task force who wrote the original social statement. They shared about their hopes and stategies at the time, and how they see the church’s needs differently today. The teaching was capped off by a great deal of time with Dr. Timothy Wengert, a highly respected Lutheran scholar, who crafted the original thinking on “bound conscience,” based on Luther’s writings. That was a lot of “head knowledge,” but the task force continues to grow in “heart and spiritual knowledge.” This feels exactly right to me. It’s counter cultural to those who think we need to just hunker down and do the rewrite. We realize we need to spend time discerning in the Spirit, building trust and love of each other, and then lead this church to new considerations of who we are and how we live together. I am being transformed by this work. My faith and trust in God grows each time this task force is together. Be of good cheer; God is with us, and with you.