Spiritual Reflections: "About those Signs on Our Church Property – and More"

Midweek Message from Your Pastor, For Such a Time as This
Week of the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost 2020

Dear Friends in Christ:

If you’ve been to the church or driven by recently, you will have noticed signs on our church property: “Black Lives Matter” and “Hate has No Home Here.” The placement of these signs was the result of a vote by our elected leaders who serve as members of the Congregation Council. Not unexpectedly, these signs have stirred some controversy among some members, as well as some in our neighborhood community. There are those who support the placement of signs, and those who oppose our church making such visible statements.

But they are signs of the times. I cannot speak for the Council either as individual members or as a body, but my sense is that the intertwined crises of our days in our nation evoked significant energy to say something, to begin to address the concerns of our day.

I have written before that we live in apocalyptic-seeming times – especially when you consider the etymology of the word apocalypse, which has to do with uncovering, unveiling, revealing. The crises of the pandemic, of protests resulting from a long line of people of color dying at the hands of police officers, and of economic hardship of Great Depression proportions for many – these crises have in common that in each case, persons of color often suffer the most. This set of realities reveals that racism in many forms persists as a deep and abiding problem in our nation. It is time to confront racism head on and to seek racial justice in ways faithful to the gospel.

Indeed, the intertwined revelations of recent months account perhaps for the motivation for placing the signs on our church property. But signs can become a kind of mere lip service if that is all we do. Therefore, I want here to announce additional initiatives that I will be undertaking during this new program year with our Youth Minister, Amanda Lindamood. First off, Amanda and I will co-lead a book discussion series on Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US by ELCA Pastor Lenny Duncan. Pastor Duncan was among my students in a course I taught at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and after his ordination, Pastor Duncan served as a mission developer for a new church start in the Metropolitan New York Synod, where I was on the Bishop’s staff. Thus, I know Pastor Duncan well, and I know that he loves our church, even as he has very challenging things to say to our church.

A second initiative will be a Friday evening intergenerational film and discussion series on movies that will help us to begin more intentionally to address racism and engage in our formation as anti-racists. Both of these programmatic offerings will be undertaken via Zoom. Look for more particular announcements about these offerings in coming midweek communications.

These initiatives in our congregation are in keeping with matters of significant emphasis for both our Metropolitan DC Synod and Bishop Leila Ortiz and our churchwide organization under the leadership of Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton. But these undertakings are also among the several visions I have for pastoral ministry and mission at Resurrection Church, where I see our congregation as a gathering of God’s people which engages communally in moral discernment about social issues that honors the variety of viewpoints that are held by God’s people in the congregation. I also envision Resurrection as a congregation where such moral discernment would lead to seeking ways to advocate for social justice by proactively supporting movements and initiatives that promote God’s reign of peace, justice, and commonwealth. At our best, I envision us as a community undertaking conversation thoughtfully, respectfully, lovingly, but with forthright, courageous honesty along with the resolve to come to common cause for the sake of a broken world in need of healing and justice.

All of this begs the question about the extent to which the church is called upon to be involved in particular social and political issues and movements. There is a great deal of divided opinion about this both in our congregation and in our wider society. So, in some of my forthcoming Midweek Messages, I will also write about Lutheran understandings of and approaches to involvement in social issues that inevitably take us into the messiness of politics in a nation bitterly divided along partisan lines.

When it’s all said and done, though, my strong sense is that our church, locally, synodically, and nationally in our churchwide expression, cannot simply keep silent and stand on the sidelines when confronted with the multiple, inter-related crises that are plaguing all of us, but most particularly poor and marginalized persons of color.

God in Christ help us to be faithful in our initiatives to address matters of social concern and justice in the power of the Holy Spirit,

Pastor Jonathan Linman

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