Editor notes
By Daniel J. Lehmann Bishop shares
vision in video Worship, community theme
S
pring brings new life throughout our country as well as synod assemblies, where this year attendees will see a fresh take on the annual
video message of the ELCA’s presiding bishop. For many years the video featured three or so
mission stories highlighting the variety of faith-related activities undertaken by congregations, synods, the churchwide office, agencies and institutions. Presiding Bishop Elizabeth A. Eaton switched that this year. Titled “We are
church,” the message is one of her visions for the ELCA. It is one offered fre- quently in her column for The Lutheran (page 50) since she became presiding bishop in November 2013: What does it mean to be church? What is at the heart of worship? How is God at work in us? The seven-minute video (
http://bit.ly/We-are-church-2015) features her
and others talking about their faith in God and the community found in worship with others. She teases a group: “Actually talking about and naming this intimate relationship that we have with us in Christ is OK. ... For me, the sense is that church as we experience Christ in word and sacrament is the place where we find our home, where we find that we have been found … that we have been found by one who loves us and knows us completely. That’s who we are as church.” Another, Peter W. Marty, this magazine’s columnist (page 3), reinforces that.
He talks about a major health issue that confronted his wife two years ago and what church was for him during that time: “The body of Christ is where you share joys and sorrows. You don’t just share joys, you share sorrows. You share despair. When that happened (during his wife’s illness), oh it’s a beautiful thing. I felt that and I’m not the same because of it.” Moving on, there’s a troubling report
What does it mean to be church? What is at the
in the April issue of The Atlantic titled “Is it Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?” The author chronicles the increasing and widespread violence confronting Jews there, primarily by a small, margin- alized segment of Islamic immigrants. The writer says “the most persecuted Jew in Europe” is a rabbi from Malmo, Sweden, who has been the target of 150 anti-Semitic attacks during his 10 years there. Pogroms, ghettos, forced conversions and the Holocaust are the stuff of
European history. Martin Luther’s anti-Semitic writings were used in part to justify the latter. As Christians and heirs of Luther, it is our calling to love and be with our (yes, European) neighbors. The author’s chilling conclusion is that “there is no great future for Jews
in Europe. … But I am predisposed to think this because I am an American Jew—which is to say, a person who exists because his ancestors made a run for it when they could.”
4
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heart of worship? How is God at work in us?
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MICHAEL D. WATSON
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