Skip to main content

Shipwreck at Low Tide

In what was either a display of delicate maneuvering,
or of delicate courage, the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America (the largest of the contentious Lutheran synods)
decided to allow congregations to hire gay or lesbian
clergy if they wanted to.  Only if they wanted to.

That courageous act incensed a fair number of Church members.
About ten congregations have voted to leave the ELCA.
There are certain to be more.  Lutherans hate to agree.

It is difficult to understand what the threat is to those
congregations, since they are not required to hire gay or lesbian
clergy.  Apparently, if some other Lutheran congregation
somewhere else does, it might rub off on you, or make
your teeth turn yellow, or maybe just cause you to think
about it a lot.  Anyway, if you leave the ELCA, you don't
have to send them any money, although it is hard to believe
that any of the dissidents are putting money first.  They might
have to, if the ELCA says the synod owns the church property.

All of that is trivial nonsense.  What is important is that
those idiots could be doing something useful with their time.
They might preach good news, or care for the sick and needy,
or maybe even write a couple of more slow hymns.  Instead,
they get their pants all humid thinking about how the world
is going to end now that some other congregation somewhere
else is going to hire a gay or lesbian pastor.  Ow, ow, ow!

I may be too harsh.  Perhaps I should applaud their willingness
to take a stand for something really important, for having
sifted through all the things a church might do, and focusing in
on something fundamental.  Do you recall the last time
a member congregation left the fold of the faithful because
some Lutheran pastor somewhere screwed around with
the church secretary?  Do you remember reading how many
churches left the synod because the Pastor over at St. George's
by the Safeway got arrested for drunk driving?  No, you don't.

You have to choose what is really important!
It is really important that the missionary position
be adhered to, and that one of the missionaries
be of the other sex--the other approved sex.

Some Lutheran synods will not even ordain women.
(I will not name a Roman Catholic Church that agrees.)

This silliness is an example of drawing a line in the sand.
It is really in the sand!  There is no enduring stone
foundation here.  This is getting sand in your pants.

When Martin Luther got his dander up, he did,
at least, nail the 95 theses to a good, solid, wooden
church door.  He didn't draw them on the beach
at low tide.  This is a low tide. 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Did you hear about the Norwegian who shipwrecked
somewhere in the deep blue sea, and drifted ashore
onto an uninhabited island?  It was three years before
he was found by another ship that sighted his signals.

"How have you done?" asked the First Mate. 

"I did OK," Olav said.  "There are berries and fruit
on the island, and I made a trap to catch fish,
and there is even driftwood to make buildings.
See!" he said, "I even have a tiny little church
which I named, 'Thank God Lutheran Church'."

"What is that over there?" the First Mate asked,
espying what looked like a tiny little chapel, too.

"Oh, that!" Olav snorted in derision.
"That's where I used to go to church!"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more