The View from Bolton Street
Dear Parish Family,
This has been quite a week, and I confess, I’m tired. And yet—I feel good about what we were able to accomplish with teamwork in a couple of different respects this week, especially with our justice work planning on Monday. I’d also like to call out our awesome finance committee, wonderfully persistent and striving hard to draft a balanced budget (we’re close). I’ll talk more about both examples of terrific teamwork when we have our parish meeting on Sunday following the 10:30AM service.
For now, I want to call your attention to the Epistle reading for Sunday: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a. Paul tells the Christians at Corinth that though we are one body with Christ, we consist of many members. The members are all different. And yet… we were all made to drink of one Spirit [1 Cor. 12:13].
Now is a time I feel we must all stand strong against any attempts to divide us as church by messaging that we should all be exactly alike. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it [1 Cor.12:26]. We need all of the members of the Body of Christ within our church, and frankly, within our country. Science also tells us that the resiliency of ecosystems depends upon their diversity!
Your instincts, your Scripture and your church are all in alignment on this. The Body of Christ means all of us, all of our gifts, without regard to gender, race, religion, age, national origin, or any other characteristic that someone might exploit as a reason to sow disunity within the Body of Christ. All systems need diversity to be robust!
My experience of working together with various members of our church and staff to solve problems and keep the church moving along also confirms that the diversity of the gifts of the different people is essential to our health and our impact in Baltimore.
We have several civil servants and federal contractors among our members who received letters from their administrators this week, forbidding them from continuing any work with respect to diversity, equity and inclusion. As I am still on the list of NASA contractors, I received one of these letters, so I know how morally injurious just looking at such a letter is for a Jesus follower. And this is not all: protections against discrimination in the workplace for federal government contractors that have existed for 60 years were also rolled back this week!
Our community of faith must never forget that If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. This is a time if ever there was one to pay attention to each other in our community, to deal with external pressures that would seek to demoralize and divide us, and to double down on loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love one another the same way. That is how we will stay family during a time of trial.
In love and light,
Pan +
