My view
that at least 20 of our synods majored in minors by spending time and energy on resolutions opposed to bullying as their major accomplishment at their recent synod assemblies. Their resolutions might well have been to oppose sin and form committees to deal with it. May I suggest that all our leaders challenge us to become what our name proclaims— evangelical: committed to making dis- ciples, and Lutheran: proclaiming the gospel of salvation by grace alone. We seem to forget the primary mission of the church is “to make disciples of all
nations.” The Rev. Gerald Lundby Carol Stream, Ill.
Rest vs. policies Wayne Muller’s delightful paraphrase of our Lord, “I’m pretty good at this— I’ve been doing this a long time” (August, page 20), highlights faith and trust issues that are so difficult for this 22-year veteran of the clergy (and probably a few others) to face. Unfor- tunately, many synods in the ELCA legislate a six-day workweek with the underlying assumption that church work is the only work that those church workers engage in during the week and that the Sabbath is for cutting grass, taking care of items of business, buy- ing groceries, cleaning house and a host of other necessary tasks (and still being on call for emergencies). I hope synod staffs will take time to study and con-
sider Muller’s article. The Rev. Steve Qualben Fredericksburg, Texas
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By Albert R. Ahlstrom
United Nations Day Hammarskjöld: Remembrance, hope
O
Ahlstrom is a retired ELCA pastor living in Kingston, N.Y.
n Sept. 18 we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the tragic death of Dag Hammarskjöld, second gen- eral secretary of the U.N. A child of the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden and an experienced economist and diplomat, he was first elected in 1953, re-elected for five years in 1957, and killed in a plane crash in Northern Rho- desia (Zimbabwe) in 1961. This gives us a special occasion to note U.N. Day in our congregations’ prayers around Oct. 24. In fact, it is impor- tant to name the U.N. and General Secretary Ban Ki-moon in our prayers whenever we pray for our national and state leaders. A main resource for prayer and study is Hammarskjöld’s journal. It was discovered after his death and translated as Markings by W.H. Auden and Leif Sjogren (Alfred A. Knopf, 1965). Markings follows his career as a person of action and contemplation that followed the trajectory of the Cold War, decolonization, Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, and South African apartheid struggles. It offers prayerful and personal deliberations, without obvious reference to those emerging crises, which is why the journal continues to bring spiritual questions and refreshing insights in our time. It carries his “true profile” by sifting through a lifelong dialogue with theologians Meister Eckhart, St. John of the Cross, Thomas a’Kempis, Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Luther; with Swedish hymnody; and finally with Martin Buber, whose great work, I and Thou, Hammarskjöld was translating into Swedish when he died. Indeed his most crucial “negotiation” is with God, with Jesus as both model and suffering one, and with self in his vocation as international civil servant. In this vocation as a Christian, he uses an image from Odysseus: God as “Slinger,” in the sense that God sends us into “ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths untrodden, through perils unknown” (Prayer at Matins, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, page 317). The best and most wonderful thing that can happen to you in this life, is that you should be silent and let God work and speak. Long ago, you gripped me, Slinger. Now into the storm. Now toward your target.
Such contemplation occurs in a life of sacrifice in public service, experiencing sacrifice not in terms of being in mor- tal danger (although that counted in the end) but out of daily self-giving for others in the workplace, in the diplomatic mission, in administration, and in contending with political forces of immense destructive and hopeful potential. M
October 2011 49
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