Bishop Eaton's letter on the SCOTUS marriage ruling

ELCA presiding bishop offers letter on Supreme Court marriage ruling

6/30/2015 4:00:00 PM

            CHICAGO (ELCA) – The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), offered a pastoral letter June 30 to the 3.8 million members of the denomination in response to the recent Supreme Court ruling that same-sex couples may now exercise the right to marry. The full text of the statement follows:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Grace and peace to you in the name of the crucified and risen Christ.

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its decision announcing the right of same-gender couples to have equal access to marriage. For many members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, this decision is a welcome sign of hope and a time for celebration. Other members of this church do not agree with the court's decision and remain deeply concerned because of their understanding of Scripture.

This decision affects each of us, some profoundly, and we are not of one mind. Let us continue to accompany one another with prayer, love and mutual respect as we reflect on this new reality and remember Paul's words in 1 Corinthians about the enduring power of God's love.

The ELCA social statement "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust" (2009) neither endorses nor forbids same-gender marriages and recognizes that we have differing understandings and convictions on this matter. In its decision, the court stated that "the First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths."

According to this church's social statement on human sexuality, all decisions about recognizing, supporting and holding publicly accountable same-gender relationships are entrusted to congregations.  Recognizing that the church is not of one mind on this subject, our 2009 actions provide that congregations and clergy should discern together whether to recognize such relationships and to what degree.

Pastors are to engage in conversation, discernment and partnership with the congregations who have called them prior to solemnizing or presiding over a same-gender marriage. On the other hand, no pastor is obligated to solemnize the marriage of any couple, same-gender or different-gender, whom the pastor cannot in good conscience marry.

As Lutheran Christians, we continue to be a church that engages in conversation and discernment in all aspects of our faith and life. Creating space for respectful conversation and dialogue continues to be an important part of our life together. A helpful resource for engaging in difficult conversations is "Talking Together as Christians about Tough Social Issues."

In addition, the ELCA Ministry to and with Same-Gender Couples and their Families Working Group remains in the process of completing its work. A report of the group's findings and possible recommendations will be presented to the ELCA Church Council at its November meeting.

We seek to see our differences as a gift to be celebrated as we live out that which unites us: the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ who leads us into mission and ministry in the world. In the midst of this change, we are first and foremost church – a church that proclaims the good news of Jesus Christ. May God bless, guide and strengthen you each day as you go in peace and serve the Lord.


The statement is available on the ELCA website at http://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/Letter_on_Supreme_Court_Decision.pdf,
the ELCA social statement "Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust" at http://www.elca.org/en/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Statements/Human-Sexuality?_ga=1.109044290.1780749877.1352499724
and "Talking Together as Christians about Tough Social Issues" at  http://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/Talking_Together_Social.pdf.

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About the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America:
The ELCA is one of the largest Christian denominations in the United States, with more than 3.8 million members in nearly 10,000 congregations across the 50 states and in the Caribbean region. Known as the church of "God's work. Our hands," the ELCA emphasizes the saving grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, unity among Christians and service in the world. The ELCA's roots are in the writings of the German church reformer, Martin Luther.
For information contact:
Melissa Ramirez Cooper
Associate director, ELCA Publications and Public Relations
773-380-2956 or Melissa.RamirezCooper@elca.org
ELCA News: www.ELCA.org/news
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Lutherans
Living Lutheran: www.livinglutheran.com

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Lutherans and Scripture

The following article was written by Pastor Mark Gravrock, the Montana Synod Coordinator for the Book of Faith Initiative. I hope it helps you understand how it is we approach the Bible and read it, individually and together. It's also available as a pdf file if you'd like to download it.

How's your reading of the Gospel of Luke going?

Lutherans and Scripture by Mark Gravrock

As Lutherans read the Bible, we read with some important basic convictions:

• We are convinced that Scripture is God’s living, active Word.
• We are convinced that Jesus is the center of God’s living, active Word.
• We are convinced that the Holy Spirit is at work, both in inspiring the Word in the first place, and in helping us to hear and interpret it in ways appropriate to our lives today.
• We are convinced that God was involved in Israel’s story and the church’s story, and continues to be involved in our story today.

Here are some aspects of how Lutherans read the Bible, based on those convictions:
( Much of what follows is based on Mark Allan Powell’s and Diane Jacobson’s chapters in Jacobson, Powell, and Olson, Opening the Book of Faith: Lutheran Insights for Bible Study (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2008). Other paragraphs are my own formulations.)

Divine and Human: God seems to love to use earthly vehicles for carrying and conveying God’s own power and grace: Jesus himself is fully human and fully God. The sacraments use ordinary water, bread, and wine as vehicles of grace. The Bible is like that, too – fully human and fully God’s word. As a collection of human writings, it bears the marks of time, place, and personality, and can be studied with the aid of any tools appropriate for literature. As God’s own word, it is faithful, reliable, and trustworthy, and calls for our reverence, our commitment, and our obedience.

The Right Word for the Right Time: God’s word is contextual. While God’s purposes and plans are eternal, God also knows which message to speak for each season. This is because God is in real relationship with us, and knows what word we need at any given time. For example, the book of Amos is almost all judgment, because that’s the message Israel needed to hear in his day. Later, however, when God’s people were captive in exile, judgment was not what they need to hear; instead, God’s word for them was "Comfort, comfort my people" (Isa 40).

Historical Reading: Because God is involved with real people in real historical moments, and always knows the right message to speak for each season, we care about history as we read. Place and time make a difference in the Bible.

Change and Movement in Scripture: Again, God’s purposes for us are eternal. But because God is working with flesh‐and‐blood people in our concrete settings, God knows how to lead us at each moment in history. For example, when God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Gen 22), the command may have felt horrible, but child sacrifice was not unusual in Abraham and Sarah’s culture. Later on, God makes it clear that human sacrifice is abhorrent, and God forbids it.

Change in God’s Law: By the same token, we can observe changes in God’s law as time goes on. Some examples: In Exod 21, male and female slaves are to be treated differently, but later Deut 15 insists that they be treated alike. In Deut 23.1 castrated men are banned from the worshipping assembly, but God reverses this in Isa 56.3‐5. In Mark 7.18‐20, Jesus cancels the food laws of Lev 11. Why are these changes important? They once again signal that God is in relationship with us, knows what his people are facing, and responds accordingly. That’s good news.

Jesus the Center: All scripture is inspired by God, and profitable for God’s purposes (2 Tim 3.16). At the same time, Lutherans believe that Scripture has a center: Jesus Christ. What Christ has done changes where we stand with God. For example, while Paul insists that the law is holy and good (Rom 7.12), he also announces that in Christ we are longer under the law (Gal 3.23 – 4.7, 5.16‐26).

Christ‐Centered Reading: "What Shows Forth Christ": In the Bible, all roads lead finally to Jesus. Because Lutherans see Christ as the center of Scripture, as we read any portion of the Bible we are listening for whatever reveals Christ, leads us to Christ, puts us in mind of Christ, or shows us our need of Christ.

Law and Gospel: Lutherans hear God’s voice in two modes throughout Scripture. Both modes are important. "Law" is God’s voice which accuses us, judges us, calls us to account, and makes us realized that we need a savior. "Gospel" is God’s voice that saves us, comforts us, forgives us, and declares steadfast love to us. We listen always for both voices as we read the Bible.

Devotional Reading: There are many different devotional approaches to Bible reading. What they have in common is the expectation that the Bible is God’s living, active word, and that the Holy Spirit encounters us in the text of Scripture as we approach in faith and trust. We read the Bible – both individually and together – expecting to hear the voices of law and gospel, and expecting to meet Jesus Christ.

The Plain Meaning of the Text: After centuries of elaborate and often fanciful interpretation of the Bible, Martin Luther came to insist that the basis for our interpretation is always "the plain meaning of the text." Passages are to be understood in the sense that would have seemed obvious to their original readers (p. 37). The plain meaning will usually depend on what kind of literature a given passage is: The "plain meaning" of biblical poetry will be different from the "plain meaning" of biblical history, and the "plain meaning" of a parable will be something different yet.

Literary Reading: Because the "plain meaning" of the text depends on what sort of literature each passage is, we learn about different kinds of literature in the Bible, and pay attention to the type of literature as we read and study.

A Community of Readers: Public Interpretation: Scripture does speak to us individually as we read and study it. The Holy Spirit uses the text of Scripture to address our individual lives. One problem, however, is that we are fallible people, and what we think we’re hearing in the Bible can easily be skewed. We need each other. We need the Holy Spirit operating in the whole Body of Christ to be sure that we are hearing God’s Word accurately. The personal, individual messages we find in the Bible ought finally to be in harmony with what the whole community of faith is hearing.

Scripture Interprets Scripture: We’ve seen throughout history how people can make the Bible say whatever they want: Just pick the right verses in isolation, and you can support just about any position. But Scripture is contextual, and one of its most important contexts is itself. That means that as we read Scripture we seek to read each verse in its own context, and in context of the flow of all of Scripture. In this way the crystal‐clear passages of Scripture will help us with the verses that are more difficult to understand, and we will come to understand each part of the Bible in the flow of God’s overall purposes.