Speech (one of 8 speakers) given at the Interfaith Gathering of our Faith Communities at Temple Beth Shalom.
our friends for the placing of the mezuzah on the doorframe of her house. The prayers were spoken and then each of us took a turn with a hammer to gently attach the small container holding verses from the Torah. Afterward food was shared with conversation, stories, discussion, and the warmth of what a home should be, a place of welcome in a world which all too often moves in just the opposite direction. At the end of the meal, our hostess remarked, “Now this feels like home.”
Each spring on the Sunday nearest the Jewish festival of Tu B’Shevat, this congregation (Temple Beth Shalom) and my congregation (Christ Lutheran Church) gather at one place or the other, alternating years, and together plant a tree … plant a tree in friendship and understanding, with the hope that – like the growing tree –friendship and understanding will grow as well, not only between two congregations, but into our community, and into our nation, and into our world.
For many years now, our congregation and St. Bede’s Episcopal Church have worked together to provide a week-long summer Day Camp and Bible School, alternating years at each congregation’s site.
Every Monday morning, at St. John’s Methodist Church, a group of clergy meet to support each other, study the readings for the following Sunday together, and of course drink coffee (!) … 2 Methodists, 2 Presbyterians, 1 Episcopalian, and 1 Lutheran.
And on the 3rd Tuesday of the Month, a group of clergy representing Judaism, Islam, Universal-Unitarianism, Quakers and most of the other religious flavours in our city come together to eat, to share stories, and to work together as representatives of our faith communities … notably in the area of homelessness, and especially teen homelessness.
These stories, among so many others that we could relate, I tell to answer the question, “What is there in our Lutheran tradition, that enables us to make bridges toward, to be in community with, to foster not only tolerance … but more than that, true understanding and acceptance of other traditions, religions, congregations, faiths … and to seek true understanding and acceptance by others?”
And the answer lies in the self-awareness of believing and accepting that there is not just one path to the Holy One and not just one path from the Holy One, and that what we as Lutheran Christians are called to do, encouraged to do, expected to do is what Martin Luther in the 16th Century called “Faith active in love.” Taking what we have come to understand as our ‘faith’ and acting it out in the world … and that means to love God, love our neighbor, and make the world a better place. And do it!
Not just study about it (and we Lutherans are famous for our study not only of biblical texts, but just about everything else), not just talk about it (and we Lutherans love to talk) … but do it, make it happen, reach beyond ourselves to others who see the Eternal in another way and find in our mutual conversation, that very love of the Eternal which can only be expressed in that very love of each other … without condition.
It does not mean that we are perfect. IN fact in 1994, in this very synagogue, the document entitled the “Declaration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to the Jewish Community” was read aloud. This Declaration “which repudiates Luther's anti-Jewish writings [toward the end of his life], expresses deep regret for their historical consequences, and reclaims the desire to live in ‘love and respect for Jewish people.’”[1]
The last paragraph is worth hearing again,
Grieving the complicity of our own tradition within this history of hatred, moreover, we express our urgent desire to live out our faith in Jesus Christ with love and respect for the Jewish people. We recognize in anti-Semitism a contradiction and an affront to the Gospel, a violation of our hope and calling, and we pledge this church to oppose the deadly working of such bigotry, both within our own circles and in the society around us. Finally, we pray for the continued blessing of the Blessed One upon the increasing cooperation and understanding between Lutheran Christians and the Jewish community.[2]
This is at least part of the answer to that question that asks how we Lutherans can move to true understanding and acceptance of others and seek true understanding and acceptance by others … We find it, beyond the words, beyond the documents, beyond the study … we find it in the acting out of our faith in love … and that it makes sense, it makes love happen, only when it happens here, in our community, in our congregations; for, if it does not take place here, then all the words in the world cannot make it happen anywhere else.
On behalf of the church I love, and the loving congregation I serve, I claim again in this gathering, before friends and friends yet to be … I claim the promise that we as Lutherans will not only continue what we have begun, but we will seek even more than that, to begin other conversations, to seek new understandings, to find new neighbors and be accepted by them … by you and in this way, love God, love neighbor, and bring to the world what we say can only be the Realm of God.
The Rev. Benjamin Larzelere III,
Pastor, Christ Lutheran Church
Santa Fe, New Mexico
[1] Document follows in its entirety.
[2] Again, see Document following.
On April 18, 1994 the ELCA adopted the "Declaration," which repudiates Luther's anti-Jewish writings, expresses deep regret for their historical consequences, and reclaims the desire to live in "love and respect for Jewish people."
Declaration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to the Jewish Community
The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on April 18, 1994, adopted the following document as a statement on Lutheran-Jewish relations:
In the long history of Christianity there exists no more tragic development than the treatment accorded the Jewish people on the part of Christian believers. Very few Christian communities of faith were able to escape the contagion of anti-Judaism and its modern successor, anti-Semitism. Lutherans belonging to the Lutheran World Federation and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America feel a special burden in this regard because of certain elements in the legacy of the reformer Martin Luther and the catastrophes, including the Holocaust of the twentieth century, suffered by Jews in places where the Lutheran churches were strongly represented.
The Lutheran communion of faith is linked by name and heritage to the memory of Martin Luther, teacher and reformer. Honoring his name in our own, we recall his bold stand for truth, his earthy and sublime words of wisdom, and above all his witness to God's saving Word. Luther proclaimed a gospel for people as we really are, bidding us to trust a grace sufficient to reach our deepest shames and address the most tragic truths.
In the spirit of that truth-telling, we who bear his name and heritage must with pain acknowledge also Luther's anti-Judaic diatribes and the violent recommendations of his later writings against the Jews. As did many of Luther's own companions in the sixteenth century, we reject this violent invective, and yet more do we express our deep and abiding sorrow over its tragic effects on subsequent generations. In concert with the Lutheran World Federation, we particularly deplore the appropriation of Luther's words by modern anti-Semites for the teaching of hatred toward Judaism or toward the Jewish people in our day.
Grieving the complicity of our own tradition within this history of hatred, moreover, we express our urgent desire to live out our faith in Jesus Christ with love and respect for the Jewish people. We recognize in anti-Semitism a contradiction and an affront to the Gospel, a violation of our hope and calling, and we pledge this church to oppose the deadly working of such bigotry, both within our own circles and in the society around us. Finally, we pray for the continued blessing of the Blessed One upon the increasing cooperation and understanding between Lutheran Christians and the Jewish community.