Remember the poor!

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is in the midst of preparations for a new hymnal/worship book and has been publishing a variety of worship resources in preparation for this event (see http://www.renewingworship.org/). Both at the seminary and in my own parish we have been using these trial materials, and in general I am pleased and excited by these preliminary results.

In some liturgies the final admonition--"Go in peace. Serve the Lord"--has been replaced by "Go in peace. Remember the poor." I am struggling with that change, not so much because I have not found this to be a common locution in the biblical text since after all God's preferential option for the poor has been made abundantly clear by liberation theologians and others. My struggle also is not because I have any doubt that I and other ELCA members need that admonition frequently. I for one have not been generous enough in contributing to the poor, nor have I worked hard enough for the systematic change that would make poverty illegal (see Deut 15:4).

Rather, my struggle is with the fear that this admonition will become so routine that I and others will not hear it, the fear that this admonition may well strike the poor as patronizing, and the fear that congregations that do little or nothing to help the poor will not be prohibited from using these words.

Ironically, my struggles with this proposal probably indicate that it is a good one. But my fears remain.

The articles in this issue of Currents in any case deal with other concerns: what to do when a Lutheran church body is too small to survive; the healing of the bent woman in Luke's Gospel (not far from God's concern for the poor); the place of rhetoric in preaching; homosexuality, marriage, and the Bible; and a moving funeral sermon for Richard Swanson.

Klaas Zwanepol reflects on the history of the very small Lutheran Church in the Netherlands and its recent merger with that country's two largest Reformed churches. The confessional basis for this merger was found in the Leuenberg Agreement of 1973, but the merger was also necessitated by the inability of the Lutheran Church to maintain its various ministries because of a lack of resources. The Leuenberg Agreement, in turn, takes its cue from the Augsburg Confession that it is sufficient for the unity of the church that the gospel be preached in its purity and the sacraments rightly administered. The Leuenberg Agreement is not a new confession but a way of dealing with old confessions. Comprising only one percent of the new church, Dutch Lutherans have decided that the best way to keep the Lutheran tradition is by sharing it with others. Dutch Lutherans have a tremendous opportunity to spread their ideas and to learn from their partners.

Heidi Torgerson interprets the Lukan story of the healing of the bent woman to illustrate two Lukan themes: mercy is the basis for interpreting the law, and the lowly are raised and the mighty are brought down by God. For Jesus the law is valid only when understood through the lens of merciful action that serves the needs of the poor, the sick, and the infirm. Luke legitimates the reversals in the social order by connecting Jesus with the prophets of ancient Israel. The combination of evil spirit and infirm body in the bent woman creates a double marginalization that would have restricted her to the outer edges of the community. God's promise to Abraham can be fulfilled only through radical social upheaval in which the powerful are brought down and the lowly are lifted. According to Jesus, God's chief attribute is mercy, not holiness.

L. Roger Owens argues that only a christological construal of the sermon as speech will free homiletics from its captivity to rhetoric. The idea that sermons are to evoke in the hearers some latent religious feeling can be traced back to Schleiermacher, but it finds echoes in many manuals on preaching today. God's grace fits our human context because God has ordained the grace of the Eucharist to come as food and the grace of the proclaimed word to come as speech. Human communication reaches its apex and epitome in the sermon; the question is how ordinary human speaking can approximate the grace of the spoken Word of God. Bonhoeffer wrote that the primary responsibility of proclaiming Christ is not to give advice, arouse emotions, or stimulate the will, but its intention is to sustain us. In the proclaimed word, Jesus Christ in his humanity is his own rhetoric.

Todd Murken continues the discussion of homosexuality and the church from a more traditional position than many of the earlier articles on this subject in Currents. He argues that the "one flesh" aspect of marriage is permanent and that, even if the legal obligations of marriage are ended in divorce, the marriage itself is not ended. While recognizing that some laws in the Bible apply only to ancient Israel, he holds that the biblical legislation on homosexuality still applies, despite the fact that we do not know the reasons why homosexuality was forbidden in antiquity and despite the fact that a loving, committed monogamous homosexual relationship is nowhere discussed in the Bible. He builds his case on the widespread rejection of homosexuality around the world and across time, on the anatomical nature of the sexual organs, and on his reading of the Bible.

Stacie Fidlar was the preacher for the funeral of Richard Swanson, the chaplain emeritus of Augustana College, Rock Island, on March 15, 2005. "Swanie" effectively encouraged a generation of Augustana students to live soulful lives as servant leaders. She compares the walks Swanie often took with students to the fateful journey of Jesus to Emmaus, and she entrusts him back to the loving arms of his constant companion in his walk on this earth.

St. Paul provides some interesting help for my (our) struggles about remembering the poor. His account of the Jerusalem Council indicates that James, John, and Cephas would continue to work with the Jews, while Barnabas and he would go to the Gentiles. Then he adds: "They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do" (Gal 2:10).

Go in peace. Remember the poor. God, help our eagerness.

Ralph W. Klein, Editor