Day Four

by Phil Soucy

Ok, I am not a great lover of windstorms, even when they are described as weak tornados by the weather service. "Weak tornado" is a bit like "jumbo shrimp," burdened by its own contradiction. And the lady who reported that she was holding on to a Stop sign to keep from being lifted off the ground by this "weak" tornado would probably have something to say to the weather service about the words it uses. Much like the lady when I was a kid who wrote to the weather service protesting that she had just shoveled three inches of "Fair and Partially Cloudy" off her front porch.

I was on a local radio show by phone this, the morning after the tornado, and the host of the talk show said that a minister had said that the tornado "was a gentle warning from God" to the ELCA. I said that the minister who would say that obviously had never been in a tornado: there was nothing "gentle" about a tornado. As for a message embedded in it, did he mention that the sun came out when the Social Statement passed? But, the reality was the two events were both just weather, dangerous in one case, welcome relief in the other, but just weather, though I understood the use of metaphor to make a point.

Today was decidedly and gratefully less exciting, though nonetheless important than yesterday. First off this morning the assembly discussed the proposed change to the ministry policies that would allow service by ministers in committed, same gender relationships. They first did that sharing their thoughts in small groups before rejoining into the full assembly for the second half to one-by-one at microphones give their reflections on the proposed changes. All as a Committee of the Whole - no parliamentary procedure.

We seemed no less divided on the ministry policies changes than we were by the Social Statement. But the vote on the Social Statement puts in sharp focus that alternating speakers, one for, one against, gives the impression that the house is evenly divided on the subject. Until the vote reveals where the house really is. The parliamentary consideration and vote on the changes to ministry policies will occur beginning tomorrow morning.

Later in the day, the Implementing Resolutions to the Social Statement were debated and ultimately passed, though not until after several motions were made and failed to substantially change the wording. You can find the Implementing Resolutions at the back of the Social Statement. According to the ELCA, the Implementing Resolutions "begin placing the policies and concerns of the statement, titled "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust," into all areas of the church's work."

These little reports might give the impression that it was sex, sex, sex, all day long. The truth is the church was conducting major business all day in all aspects of the life of the church. We should be grateful and uplift by that work.

We adopted the Full Communion Agreement with the United Methodist Church. We completed the Second Ballot in the election of the Vice President of the ELCA. By the end of the assembly a prodigious amount of work will have been accomplished. No one should imagine that being a voting member is a boondoggle, easy, or unrewarding.

Tomorrow comes out of the starting blocks all teeth and claws, as the Brits say. So I am going to get some refreshing rest so as to be ready for it.

Again, if you are able, you can view the proceedings of the assembly online at www.elca.org. Till tomorrow...

Altogether Different Oceans?

by David Weiss

Listening to the words spoken at the microphones about the Sexuality Statement and the Ministry Recommendations is a strange experience. The voices go back and forth from red mic to green mic, and it’s hard not to feel like we are already two churches, our deeply divided witness passing like two ships in the night.

But, no, even that analogy falls short. It seems more like we are boats in altogether different oceans.

Listening to our respective appeals to Scripture, tradition, and the Lutheran Confessions, it is hardly evident that those standing at the red and green mics are referring to the same documents. At one mic these foundational pieces of our heritage are deployed like a set of wagons circled against a hostile world. At the other they are lifted like a sextant, that trustworthy tool used by mariners to navigate with confidence in the absence of fixed points.

There seems to me to be two uncomfortable truths at the heart of this.

We in this church understand the place of our own experience in the life of faith in decidedly different ways. For some, experience is dismissed outright as utterly untrustworthy—especially in instances where it challenges the “reason” of the majority or the texts we hold sacred or confessional. From this perspective any appeal to experience is compelling evidence of a morally and rationally bankrupt position. To tender insight grounded in experience is to play right into the devil’s hands.

For others of us, experience—while by no means immune to critique—is regarded as potentially bearing profound and even sacred insight. It is acknowledged as one arena in which the Wind of the Spirit moves. It is an opening into which voices silenced by majorities can speak a word of truth, helping to interpret Scripture, to complete tradition, and to refine our reading of the Confessions.

The difficulty here is that these positions appear intrinsically polarizing. They are not different takes on the same picture. They are arguments about the nature of the eyes that see the picture.

The second truth is even less comfortable to name.

We have markedly different experiences of the God who has marked us in baptism. Although both camps seem hesitant to raise the stakes this high—at least not at the microphone—behind the differing positions we stake out explicitly, lie arguments unspoken that reach to the very character of God. What we read in Scripture, what we hear in (and silenced beneath) tradition, and what we carry with us of the Confessions is shaped by our experience of the God with whom we keep faith.

Now I need to be very clear, I am not suggesting at all that we are keeping faith with different Gods. I am saying that we are a people with profoundly different experiences of the God with whom we keep faith. And we have yet to be honest or compassionate about what that means for us as a church.

As Lutherans we speak of faith as relational trust. If we intend to be one church at the end of this week, perhaps the biggest task to which we will be called is this: to acknowledge that in this moment the way to keep faith with God is to live in relational trust with one another. To confess that this Ocean is both deeper and more mysterious than any group of us can fathom, and that every every voice on the boat has a witness to bear.

May it be so.