So, here we go again: Rally Sunday combined with Make a Difference Sunday and add in “God’s Work. Our Hands.” Sunday, just to make things even more interesting to start our new year, of sorts, of choir rehearsals, Bible studies, meetings, and multiple Sabbath worships. And such is the fuller calendar reality for many faith communities, whether those of our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) expression, or otherwise. What is also the reality of “God’s Work. Our Hands.” is that it is brought to life far more frequently than just the weekend after Labor Day for many of our siblings ELCA congregations.
Except, many ELCAers may not realize “God’s Work. Our Hands.” is the motto, tagline, slogan, in a sense, of our denomination. However, it was not decided to be so until 2007, nearly 20 years after our wider church was founded with the merging of the Lutheran alphabet soup-ish LCA, ALC, and AELC. Nevertheless, in response to recognizing a downward trend in ELCA individual membership and worship participation/attendance, there was this hope not that a re-branding would “save the church,” necessarily, but a hope for a further call to re-energize and remember our (authentically biblical) evangelical part of our identity: to share the Great News of Jesus’ unconditional love and grace and mercy inside and well beyond our church building walls.
Soon enough, that relatively young four-word re-focus, of sorts, was further magnified with “God’s Work. Our Hands.” Sunday in 2013, the 25th anniversary of our wider church. And although it reminds individuals and entire faith communities to not only preach and teach and study and verbally engage with the Great News, but to do whatever we can to physically build upon that with our grace-setting-us-free, mercy-sharing, and love-flowing-over, acts of service for the benefit of other children of God. Not only can such a celebration be a needed annual re-focus, but to recognize that, in this world, such visual ministry (with yellow shirts to help as well, of course) may even more wonderfully reel people into such Great News than the preaching or teaching alone.
In the end, through numerous years and decades and centuries of church structures drastically changing, and so much else about our worshiping and preaching and teaching and other church-doings not being quite the same; through it all, we are still thoroughly captivated by God’s Work: the Work done in Isaiah and Jeremiah and Amos to not overlook those often overlooked, the Work done in the son of a carpenter who would fulfill the law in a way never envisioned by the wisest of humanity, and would bring paradise to earth along the way; the Work done in denying Peters and bloodthirsty-turn-grace-proclaiming Pauls and countless saints who our saints in our lives depended on from generations before.
We’re captivated by the Work that’s still on-going inside sanctuaries and fellowship halls and homeless shelters and hospital bedsides and schools and…well, all over the holy earthly place. We’re so reeled in that we cannot help ourselves but getting our hands into the holy thick of it all: to help bring a bit more of a paradise of the truest form of grace and mercy and love, not just for our fellow ELCAers, but those we may never meet. Because God’s eternal Work is meant to reel in the world. And for the sacred honor to be a part of it, thanks be to God, indeed!
To view the YouTube invitation to “God’s Work. Our Hands.” Sunday,
from our Presiding Bishop Yehiel Curry, please click the link below: