More diversity talk. . .

In my boredom I often turn to journals and magazines that have grown old sitting in the pile by my desk.  So it was that I picked up an issue of Living Lutheran, the monthly journal of the ELCA.  Perhaps I need to be more discerning.  In any case, it did not fail to arouse my interest or my frustration.

One author proclaimed Pentecost (actually the Sundays after Pentecost?) a season of listening.  I knew where this was going but I was bored.  The miracle of Acts 2 is not the other tongues but the Gospel for all.  It was not diversity that is the emphasis but that everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved.  Yet this was not quite the focus of the article.  Instead the prophecy of Joel repeated in Acts was given as a challenge to Christians.  God speaks where He chooses and not where we think He should.  (Apologies for those who are offended by the male pronoun.)  The complaint here is that German is key to Lutheran theology and theologians but those of other languages and cultures, along with feminist and LGBTQIA+ are viewed with suspicion.  The author insists that the Spirit blows where the Spirit chooses and Lutherans need to pay attention.  Strangely, the season of listening does not mention listening to Scripture.  That might be the problem.

Yes, I understand the complaint that those from minoritized groups are all around us but the work of the Spirit in Pentecost is defined by the Lord in whose name the Spirit comes -- to bring to remembrance all that the Lord has said and to make the disciples bold witnesses from Judea into every corner of the world.  Listening to the voices of people in our culture and traditions for the Spirit's voice is never mentioned in Scripture.  Rather, what the Spirit is doing among us is primarily the Spirit working through the voice of the Word and the Sacraments.  Apart from these, the Spirit might be at work but in these the Spirit always works.  Equating the people of various ethnic and cultural diversity and the feminist and LBGTQIA+ with the promise of Joel is nothing less than idiocy.  But since when has the Church failed to be enticed by lunacy in whatever form it comes?

If this were a Lutheran publication it might ask if we can listen to God speaking what God has spoken instead of begging from God a new word that either contradicts what He has said and written or diverges from it.  By the way, Lutherans may have listened to Europe and those of European descent but if they were Lutheran they would not grant to these automatic authority or fidelity.  These are granted only to the Lutheran Confessions which insist they proclaim a timeless faith that spans every language and culture in the uncommon gift given to the common man wherever that common man is from, whatever language he speaks, or whatever culture he claims.  The promise of Pentecost is not many voices but one voice, not many Gospels but one Gospel, and not many cultures but the one transcendent culture of the faith.  What part of being in but not of the world has been missed?

Apparently the author and those of her perspective have missed something.  Lutheranism is dwindling in Europe and the Americas but it is flourishing in Africa.  Here is the testament of Pentecost not in fuzzy words on the page of a journal but in action.  The Word does not return to the Lord empty.  It may be spoken in every language to every culture but the fruits of this speaking is one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, and one Church.  The pivotal point here is not diversity but unity.  Maybe we have missed this in our Lutheran past but if this is the thinking of Lutherans today, we are still missing out on what Pentecost is.