Theses Reflections… regarding the need for Inclusivity, Diversity, and the Reform within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America implicated by the Human Sexuality Study proposed to the 2009 Churchwide Assembly in August.

As God’s people, we have been allowed to be in relationship with God in Christ Jesus through our baptism into the name of the Triune God.

We are washed with water and called by name, marked with the Cross of Christ forever, and we become God’s people. This is what saves us, as those who are simultaneously saints and sinners, held redeemed solely through the claim of God in Christ.

This Baptismal Grace is something offered by God, received by faith, and as a covenant in Christ an irrevocable gift to the people who believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior.[1]

This Baptismal Grace is not something to be revoked by the church through moral statements or impositions of morality.  Such moral piety is shallow, thinking that the church might rescind the gift of God due to its attitudes in any given generation, circumstance or social statement position.

Baptism invites us into the life of Christ: this life is abundant and eternal, and is a life that transforms us: from death to life; the disunity of sin to the unity of community in Christ; and moves us from a life of self to death of self that Christ might be our life and light.

Christ has declared a new way of life, where there are no longer Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, male and female, but all are one in Christ. There are no outsiders—for all have been made insiders through the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ.  This inclusivity of insiders through Christ means that there are no longer black, or white, or brown, or red, or yellow; there are no longer Palestinian and Israeli, French and German, English and Italian, Buddhist and Hindu and Muslim and Roman Catholic and Jew and Lutheran and Universalist and Baptist; there are no longer rich and poor, or gay and straight, or heterosexual or homosexual, nor classes, nor voiceless, nor insignificant… but all are one in Christ Jesus.

Desmond Tutu said it well:  “The truth is that we need each other. We cannot survive and thrive without one another… a person is a person through other persons…set in a delicate network of interdependence with our fellow human beings and with the rest of God’s creation.[2]”

Our attitudes on diversity and inclusiveness as a church are not dependant upon either affirmative action “liberalism,” or some kind of “political correctness” doublespeak, or some present day secular relativism that negates previous attitudes. Our attitudes on diversity and inclusiveness as a church reach to the ministry of Jesus Christ, who used the pattern of “compassion, community and commitment” as the basis of evangelism and salvation. If previous attitudes are changed, these are changed by a reading of scripture, prayer, and insight given by the Holy Spirit alive within the church. Through this Jesus intentionally crossed the boundaries previously maintained by the law, so that grace might abound in those who could not fulfill the law, and to bring in the entire world to a relationship of grace in Christ.

Jesus’ pattern is to include, rather than to exclude. The Holy Spirit confirmed this in the inclusion of those in Cornelius’s Household (Acts 10), and in the gift of the Holy Spirit being present with the churches of Asia started by Paul (Acts 15). Rather than simple cultural “assimilation,” the church inclusively calls and welcomes those of different cultures, ethnics, orientations and attitudes to hear the gospel of welcome and grace, and to then be transformed by the Holy Spirit to live lives of faith and love. Love is the pattern of shalom and wholeness, rather than assimilation. Uniformity is given through faith in Christ, welcome in Christ, and life in Christ. The table of the Lord is always the table of the Lord, who welcomes friend and stranger alike in the call to eat, drink, forgive and believe.

The church finds its heart in service to the mission of the gospel, and service to the welcome of Christ for life, shalom, and renewal. When the church acts in ways that do not support the ministry of Christ, becoming oppressive with the world, it has need for reformation and repentance, just as individual Christians continually need to live a life of penance.

Assimilation to one set of expectations, so to create an artificial state of purity, is antithetical to the unity we experience in Christ. In the progression of the scriptures, “Purity” as known in the Holiness and Purity Codes of the Pentateuch is often corrected and superceded by the call of the prophets to “Justice.” Justice is often interpreted and superceded by the call of Christ to Compassion, which is the means to create community and prompt commitment.

“Assimilation and Domination” are the old Adam/Eve mechanisms to force artificial unity.  Even as Christ prayed “that we might all be one, even as Jesus and God are one,” this oneness was achievable only through the death and resurrection of Christ, not some moral adjustment or imposed new regulation of law.  The one law that is given in the New Testament which is truly new is that “We love one another as Christ has loved us.”

Unity in Christ is gift, not accomplishment. Unity is not unity when one group of individuals manipulate with calls for the “unity for the sake of the church” when said actions actually exclude, marginalize, and dehumanize others. Unity which is not received as gift is domination for the sake of some over against others.

Unity is unable to embrace exclusion, because these are incongruent concepts. Indeed, when unity is held up as the most important concept of all, over against the all for whom Christ died, we make unity an idol no different than the golden calf of Exodus, and we worship false Gods for the sake of seeming magnanimous. Such actions are idolatry, as well as fail to love ones neighbor as ones own self because bigotry is exalted as holiness.

Since Jesus came to seek and save the lost, and to eat and drink and live with publicans and sinners, why do we choose to cater to those who are Pharisaical among us, with the price being the exclusion of those very ones for whom Jesus showed particular care? Jesus did not seek for the exclusion of sinners, but instead was at odds with the Pharisees for misunderstanding the word of God and destroying the greater community of Abraham and Israel: do we by promoting purity and unity misunderstand the call to justice and compassion for the sake of Christ?

God detests the exclusion of others, and in Christ comes to draw all people unto God’s own self.  My neighbor includes those whom I do not like, do not trust, and do not wish to recognize—for the face of Christ is seen on the face of all who are made in the image of God.

It is one thing to be heterosexual, and another to be a heterosexist. The first is not a preference, but an orientation; the second is the attitude of forcing others to exhibit life and living in a manner that excludes the inner nature of a human, demanding unity and uniformity for the express purpose of repressing reality.

Heterosexuals and Homosexuals are both in need of grace, and stand simul justis et peccator—simultaneously saints and sinners, both needing Christ and claimed by Christ in Baptism.

Systems theory has given the perspective of the church, both in its congregational and greater constituency manifestations, as being systems which work toward survival and internal stability. Actions of justice, or of reconciliation, or of renewal, are hardest for church systems to embrace and address, since such conversations are often perceived as threatening the survival or stability of the system in place. The system becomes the dominant and pervasive attitude of its members, and becomes anxious when other influences and concerns are presented that might change the “status quo” of the system.

Each system has a sense of its inner workings, even if these inner workings are not discussed or detailed in an open manner. Often such inner workings become a quasi “spirituality” when addressed and revealed within church systems.

A quote from Walter Wink gives a perspective of dealing with the powers of the world as they affect the inner core and spirituality of institutions and therefore systems:  “The Powers That Be are not, then, simply people and their institutions, as I had first thought; they also include the spirituality at the core of those institutions and structures. If we want to change those systems, we have to address not only their outer forms, but their inner spirit as well.[3]”

I assert that to revoke or to deny passage of the whole Human Sexuality Document because we are in disagreement with certain sentences or sentiments detailed within the document treats the heart of Lutheran Theology and its voice within the Church catholic as being false rather than true. We should affirm what is worthy of affirmation.

One might amend anything—but to refuse to adopt the document because of a minimal number of lines, rather than attempt to amend the document—shows a depth of misunderstanding and recalcitrance.

I sense that the ELCA, and all of us as members of this institution, have a great deal of work to do within the various expressions of the church as we attempt to discuss and implement the Human Sexuality Document… but its passage has more to do with a Theology of the Cross than is normally declared.