ELCA votes, no one notices. Yet.
The distance between fornication (of any kind) and sexuality is almost so vast as to be immeasurable. The ferocity of our doctrines are simply not reflected in the deep lacunae of our scriptures, despite efforts to make them so. The scriptures do repeatedly condemn all manner of actions. Time and again, and with an almost calculable glee, the bible in many iterations attacks and describes the wrack and wreckage of God's devastation and condemnations of abomination.
They are silent like the stilled storm, however, on the subject of the whole person who has a sexual identity. Identity in our texts is a much broader, deeper wellspring: people of God, chosen, called, redeemed, shibbolethed and circumcised, numberless like the stars. Old Adam and New Adam, killed by letter and made alive by spirit, dead and alive, sleeping and awake, first and last. Eschatologically entitled Son of Man. These are the threads of identity the scriptures spin, which we are summoned to weave.
We are graced with skilled hands to do so, and set to our painstaking work by a Spirit that demands-and creates a faith to receive-no less than total. faithful. action. to make incarnate the reality that there are no accidents, there is only a love that makes reality real which is itself determined to love the littlest and least, so determined that it would rather not exist than exist as anything but love for you. That work is so deliberate sometimes, and so many grow so impatient with our fumbling fingers.
Forgive our delays, brothers and sisters. We were staring into the void, and we forgot who we were.
They are silent like the stilled storm, however, on the subject of the whole person who has a sexual identity. Identity in our texts is a much broader, deeper wellspring: people of God, chosen, called, redeemed, shibbolethed and circumcised, numberless like the stars. Old Adam and New Adam, killed by letter and made alive by spirit, dead and alive, sleeping and awake, first and last. Eschatologically entitled Son of Man. These are the threads of identity the scriptures spin, which we are summoned to weave.
We are graced with skilled hands to do so, and set to our painstaking work by a Spirit that demands-and creates a faith to receive-no less than total. faithful. action. to make incarnate the reality that there are no accidents, there is only a love that makes reality real which is itself determined to love the littlest and least, so determined that it would rather not exist than exist as anything but love for you. That work is so deliberate sometimes, and so many grow so impatient with our fumbling fingers.
Forgive our delays, brothers and sisters. We were staring into the void, and we forgot who we were.