Last Sunday, our pastor preached on Paul’s writing that in Christ there is no slave or free, Greek or Jew, male or female. We are all one in Christ. There is no need to add to the Gospel, he preached. It’s not Jesus Christ AND some other requirement. It’s just Jesus, and we must focus on Him who unites us and set aside the things that divide us. It’s not Jesus Christ AND no praying to saints, as one anti-Catholic acquaintance of the pastor had it. I reckon that it’s not Jesus Christ AND adult baptism only or Jesus Christ AND predestination or any such formulation.
I was pleasantly surprised when the pastor extended the reasoning of the sermon and the passage to homosexuality and related how the church had dealt with this divisive issue in the past. It’s not Jesus Christ AND you must hate the gays. I wasn’t sure that we would ever get to the point where the pastor could broach such a subject. There are a lot of staunch conservatives in the congregation, and I had assumed that this kind of preaching would be too politically dangerous for the pastor. It may turn out that I’m right. For all I know, we’re looking ahead to a shit storm (I’ve been out of town all week and wouldn’t have heard anything). I hope not. I hope that the pastor has the consistory in his camp and that would be dividers will fail.
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