Against my better judgment I took a brief stroll through a pan-Lutheran webring tonight. Most of the blogs listed are authored by persons in the denomination of my childhood, people who do a lot of inveighing against heretics (which include pretty much everyone else in Christendom), and who don't much like my own church body; who think that typing quotes around "Lutheran" in reference to us, or calling us the E*CA, are rhetorical acts of genius. One of the blogs is all about Lutherans and contraception -- the blogmeisters, unsurprisingly, are agin' it. (I can only imagine what they must think of a gay woman popping the ungodly Pills of Death for the perimenopausal comfort of her ever-fallow uterus; I may as well be strobing radioactive purple: "Abomination! Anathema! Stone her!" I mean, I'm probably worse than moldy walls, or a donkey doing the wild thang with a horse out in the back forty.)
It's days like this, after reading pages of this stuff, when I ask The CEO, with some urgency, "What's my motivation here?"
"I am," he answers.
"Oh. Right."
So, on the advice of The CEO, I am shaking the dust of these sundry and assorted blogs from my sandals. My pastor has an interesting take on Jesus' instruction to his disciples when they encounter the inhospitable and hostile; he suggests that what Jesus is describing is less an act of contempt than of simply giving up and commending the whole thing to God: "I can't deal with these people anymore, Lord -- you handle it. I'm outta here."
And so I am. Besides...I've got two Ordinary Time essays to write before midnight, or I'll turn into a pumpkin.
5 comments:
Mmmm. You know I feel ya here.
I was actually raised (by my parents? or my grandparents or other church members?) to understand that "Elk-ah" were not "real Lutherans".
Brother Martin certainly never intended to have a denomination named after himself. Heck, or to create a denomination. He died considering himself a Catholic (right?).
So the only claim to the term "Lutheran" is heritage and some tradition. I'm sure most of those "other lutherans" consider themselves to be German...even though....technically....they're about 1/64th.
Silly, silly people.
Glad to see we Presby's aren't the only ones up to their armpits in denominational hoo-ha.
Just kidding.
I live in a state very close to yours with a different flavor of "yous guys" on every block, so I get to observe from up close.
My sympathies
Yeah--when the Presby blog ring started up a few weeks ago, one fellow who had been invited declined saying that if we had been a ring of REAL Presbyterians, he'd be in--but since we weren't . . .
Nice.
Ever hear that joke of St. Peter giving a tour of Heaven.
"Over near that tree, there are the Presbyterians....near the pond there are the Episcopalians....now be very quiet as we go over the crest of this hill....down here in this valley....those are the Lutherans, shhh they think they're the only ones here"
Heard that one from my pastor...he was ordained LCMS and quickly jumped ship to LCA :)
Back to the dust on your shoes...
My understanding of the text from some studying way back when leads me to believe that although the shaking of the dust was not meant in a mean and nasty way- it wasn't shy either. Think of clapping chalkboard erasers together. Quiet, but to the point. A way of having the last word without actually saying anything.
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