WOMEN OF THE ELCA/BETH MCBRIDE
In the hands of Jesus, five loaves and two fish were “enough,” preached
Megan Torgerson during the closing worship. Even when you “feel paltry, insubstantial, the human equivalent of dried bread and stinky fish ... in
God, there is enough. You are enough,” said Torgerson, a pastor of Augustana Lutheran Church, West St. Paul, Minn.
WOMEN OF THE ELCA
it ticks God off for us to come to the Lord’s table, to be fed, forgiven, renewed and restored, and then to go out and ignore a hurting world ...,” she said. “When we come to the great thanksgiving table today, may we be renewed to respond as we go forth rejoicing.” ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson also asked the women to respond to a “1 percent challenge.” Reach out to people in your commu- nity who want to hear the good news, he said. If even 1 percent of people “responded to that living articulation of God’s grace in Christ, we’d be a church of 8 million people, not 4 mil- lion,” he added.
At an evening prayer service, Jane Redmont, author of When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life (Harper- Collins, 1999), reminded participants
of the strong, prophetic role God gave women—even in the Bible. As with Mary, mother of Jesus, and her rela- tive, Elizabeth, women are called to proclaim God’s revolutionary mes- sage, she said. That can take place in “kitchen conversations ... our workshops and offices ... our classrooms and our streets ... our bedrooms and boardrooms —all the places we don’t think of as places of revelation or revolution or both,” Redmont added.
‘Time to rise up’ “Sisters of the ELCA, it’s time to rise up,” shouted keynoter Leymah Gbowee, a Lutheran activist and peacemaker from Liberia. “God is calling us today to reclaim our space.” Her call to action brought nearly
Leymah Gbowee (left), a Liberian activist and peacemaker; Twila Schock, ELCA direc- tor for global mission sup- port; Christine Mangale, assis- tant to the direc- tor of the N.Y.- based Lutheran Office for World Community; and ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson respond to questions from Women of the ELCA Triennial Gathering participants.
2,000 participants to their feet in thunderous applause and shouts. “Faith without action is dead,” Gbowee added. So if you know some- one in a domestic violence situation, do something, she urged, adding, “If a child is on drugs… put some kick in his backside.”
So said the woman who led thou- sands of Liberian women in kick- ing out a corrupt regime, standing between warlords and armies, and ending the country’s bloody civil war. Their story is chronicled in the film Pray the Devil Back to Hell. After peace came in 2003, Gbowee said she and the other women contin- ued their “constructive interference. We were into everything … cases of corruption, rape … if someone just said something negative about women. “The God we serve is not a God of halfway [but] a God of wholeness.” In Liberia, Gbowee and others registered thousands of women to vote in an election that resulted in the country’s first female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. In the Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of the
September 2011 35
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