Devotion - Tuesday, May 1

I want to apologize again for leaving you all last night.  Exam Week Dinners are often interrupted by another group of which I am a part.  I left you last night in order to participate in an end-of-the-year gathering for our Campus Ministers' Association members.

This was a particularly important gathering.  We gathered to say good-bye to four colleagues.  Changes will happen over the summer in the staffing of the Episcopal Ministry, the Unitarian Fellowship, and both staff persons at the Roman Catholic Parish.  As you say your good-byes to classmates, realize I am saying good-bye to my friends and peers.  It was important for me to be with them last night.  Even if it meant being away from you.

 

There is another reason why it was important to be with them, and it directly involves you.  When you finally complete your exams and load your car and drive away from Clemson, you will find yourself in need of a community of faith.  I will make sure to share with you the ELCA congregations in the places you are moving to, but in some instances there won't be one close by or the one that is there isn't as good a fit for you as would be the Presbyterian congregation or the Baptist Fellowship.  You will need to find a place where you can hear God's Word and where God can speak to you.

I value my involvement with the other Clemson Campus Ministers because it is a constant reminder that God is active among a wide variety of liturgical styles and theological formulations.  And, as your campus pastor, I want to be able to speak of how God is moving among the United Church of Christ or within the Methodist churches.  Doing so prepares the way for you to live your life as a Christian, regardless of whether you remain attached to a Lutheran ministry.

Desiderius Erasmus was a 16th Century philosopher.  In his day, the divisions between denominations were only beginning to emerge.  The issue which challenged the Church were divisions along emerging lines of nationality.  He wrote, "Why should an Englishman as an Englishman bear ill will to a Frenchman and not rather good will as a man to a man and a Christian to a Christian?  How can anything as frivolous as a name outweigh the ties of nature and bonds of Christianity?  The Rhine separates the French from the German but it cannot divide the Christian from the Christian."

The Church of Jesus Christ has become way too fractured.  How can we be the "city set upon the hill" if we are citizens divided among ourselves?

I will be back at dinner tonight.  I hope to see you there.  And I pray that last night's activities will have made me better prepared to assist you in finding a spiritual home in the villages and towns to which you are now moving.  God is active in the world;  God is active in many places;  find the place where that activity pulls you in and equips you to assist in the proclamation of our oneness in Christ Jesus.