As I write this afternoon, Kerry and I are preparing to leave for a weekend long retreat in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin hosted by Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries for rostered leaders in the Lutheran church who identify publicly as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or queer. This new professional network is called Proclaim, and it includes seminarians, clergy and rostered lay leaders from across the church.
In the gospel text for this Sunday, Jesus gives sight to a man born blind and comments on the blindness of the supposedly insightful leaders from the temple. The pool of water in which Jesus commands the man to bathe was called Siloam, which means “sent.”
When we teach our children as they gather at the font that “if we want to be closer to God, we have to get closer to each other,” this is what we mean – that to be baptized into each others’ lives means to be sent to encounter those whom we do not already know, who are not already like us, who experience the world in very different ways from our own.
As I gather by the waters of Lake Geneva this weekend, I’ll be considering how God is calling me, and us, and our church to leave the familiar places behind and to broaden our vision of what God is up to in the world. As you gather around the font again this Sunday, I know you’ll do the same. I’m excited to get back to you all, and to be enlightened by the stories we gather from the places to which we are each sent.
In Christ,
Pastor Erik
By Proclamation 