Praying for Haiti

I haven't felt much like posting this week. Besides only sleeping a few hours every night, working on details of a Martin Luther King Day service on Monday, I've been thinking about that line from Casablanca, Rick telling Ilsa that, "the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

So, although I've been thinking about a lot of things (including whether or not I have a mission in my life), the earthquake in Haiti has been overwhelming.

The ELCA website has resources for worship and donating.

The wonderful website pretty good lutherans has links to several tributes to Seminarian Ben Larson, who was killed in Haiti this week.

I was particularly moved by these powerful words.

Someone else said to me yesterday at church that there was an earthquake of similar magnitude recently somewhere else. There, about 80 people died.

"It's not the earthquake that killed people," she said. "It's poverty."

O God, where hearts are fearful and constricted, grant courage and hope. Where anxiety is infections and widening, grant peace and reassurance. Where impossibilities close every door and window, grant imagination and resistance. Where distrust twists our thinking, grant healing and illuminaiton. Where spirits are daunted and weakened, grant soaring wings and strengthened dreams. All these things we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.
-Prayer for time of conflict, crisis, disaster, from ELW

O God, open our hearts to feel the earth quake from the oppression of poverty, and free our hearts and our hands to work to heal those things that deal death and suffering. Amen.

Unworthy Servant

A long while ago, at the time I was first wrestling with the thought of becoming a pastor, a friend of mine told me, "Well, even if you are a defective pastor {because of being a woman}, your ministry will still be good." My friend had grown up in the Missouri Synod, had made his way to the ALC (American Lutheran Church), and was slowly inching his way toward the idea that it might be kind of sort of okay for women to be pastors. He read the scripture in a certain way, and in that way of reading it was clear that women were not to teach or hold authority over men. But if I were to become a pastor, have no fear! My sacraments would still be good. The Donatists had declared that the sacraments of clergy who were sinful were ineffective. But the Donatists had been declared heretics. Hence, even if I sinned by becoming a pastor, I wouldn't be leading my flock astray.

You can't imagine how relieved I felt.

Ok, not really. It was an odd feeling, actually; I can't quite describe how I felt, hearing him talk about me in this way, this man who was my friend. I mean, I know I'm simul justus et peccator, both saint and sinner, but he seemed to be talking about me as defective in a different way than he was.

As a woman, I smart a little when I hear the conservatives rail about the "re-interpretation of Scripture" to allow for gay and lesbian clergy. I know that scripture has been re-interpreted to allow for me to be a pastor. And I know, some people say it's different: but it's not different in every way. If it is indeed wrong for a woman to preach or be in authority over a man, I am in unrepentant sin every day of my life (maybe not on my day off). If ELCA women clergy ever forget this perspective, now that women have been able to be ordained for almost 40 years, all you have to do is google women clergy, and you can find out the perspectives you have been missing. I hope you find it edifying.

I don't claim to have all the answers for the ELCA at this time; for some reason, I'm able to put myself in the shoes of other Christians who at some time or another (even right now) have been considered defective because of what they do or who they are. Like the Syro-phoenician woman, I'm even willing to claim the title: Okay, so I'm a dog. Throw me a few crumbs.