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ELCA NEWS SERVICE
August 14, 2005 ELCA Hears Bible Study From 'Grace Matters' Host
CWA-45-05-JI  ORLANDO, Fla. (ELCA)--The Rev. Peter Marty, in his Aug. 13 Bible study for the 2005 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), focused on grace in Jesus Christ as the way to deal with fatigue, even for those burned out on religion.
The churchwide assembly, the chief legislative authority of the ELCA, is meeting here Aug. 8-14 at the World Center Marriott and Convention Center. About 2,300 people are participating, including 1,018 ELCA voting members. The theme for the biennial assembly is "Marked with the Cross of Christ Forever."
Marty, whose Bible study was the last of four at this assembly, is host of "Grace Matters," the ELCA's radio ministry, and pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church, a congregation of 3,000 members in Davenport, Iowa.
The biblical text on which he based his message was Matthew 11: 28-30, where Jesus invites "all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens [to] come to me."
"Are you tired ... worn out [or] burned out on religion?" Marty asked as a paraphrase of Jesus' invitation, "Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest."
"Jesus is admonishing all those who would follow him to get a fresh perspective on their life," Marty said in his remarks. "Rethink what it is you're after, what you're trying to achieve. Carry your burdens in a different way. For goodness sake, Jesus seems to say, learn the unforced rhythms of grace, where you can get away with me and I can help you recover your life."
Marty said that Jesus "seems to be as concerned with the weight of religion as anything else."
"As far as I can tell from Holy Scripture," he told the assembly, "God's chief interest has nothing to do with our being religious. Jesus wasn't big on religion at all. He railed against the rules and definitions that people seemed to cook up every time they felt compelled to invent more religion."
"Most religion, if you think about it, spells exhaustion," Marty said. "Why? Because it's so busy tightly prescribing conduct for other people. The harder you try to get it right, the more you seem to get it wrong. ... You can not force grace on anyone else any more than you can make an already holy experience even more meaningful."
Marty suggested that Jesus offers two ideas "for helping us get out from under the weight of religion."
"First, he offers himself," he said. "Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Jesus does not say, learn about me. He says, learn from me. Walk with me, work with me. He offers himself in the most generous way."
"Second, Jesus does not offer any of us an escape from some of the burdens and weariness that we face," Marty told the assembly. "He doesn't offer escape, he offers equipment. The relief that Jesus supplies is not a vacation. The refreshment that he promises is not a new pension plan. It's a yoke. It's a work instrument. It's not a reclining chair. It's a walking instrument. Jesus, I want to say, teaches best while on the move. ... We learn from Jesus while walking through our lives."
What Jesus offers as refreshment is "a new way to carry life, a new way to bear responsibility," Marty said. "It's a bring your burdens along and then follow kind of thing."
"So Jesus invites those who are weary and burned out from the weight of religion into a life of faith," he said. "Not religion, but faith."
"Well, the good news for each and every one of us, and for this dear church that we love so much, is that God sends us Jesus Christ--this One who who is lowly and gentle in heart," Marty said. "And God says, There, live like that. Learn from his gentleness. Keep company with him. Watch how he lives so freely and lightly. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace."
To illustrate what he meant by "the unforced rhythms of grace," Marty told of how the conductor Arturo Toscanini once got the musicians in an orchestra he was leading to understand the sense of grace he wanted to come through their performance of Debussy's "La Mer." The conductor took a silk handkerchief from his pocket, tossed it into the air, and as it gracefully descended, said, "There, play it like that," Marty said.
"If this church is going to live in God's amazing grace," Marty told voting members, "it's people like you and I that are going to have to take Jesus' words to heart when he says, You will find rest for your soul--literally, your psyche. He's speaking as the One who can give us a new way to carry life, a more hopeful way to recover life, and a delightful way to live life that's already meaningful without any ... forcing on our part."
Information about the ELCA Churchwide Assembly is at http://www.elca.org/assembly/05 on the Web.
For more information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or news@elca.org
http://www.elca.org/news
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