Contact Us Sitemap Disclaimer font-size:    

• Arrival
• Opening Eucharist
• President's Address
• General Secretary’s Report
• Treasurer’s Report
• Keynote Address & Responses
• Mennonite Action
• Youth & Women
• Climate Change | Public Hearing
• Elections
• Illegitimate Debt | Public Hearing
• HIV & AIDS | Public Hearing
• Evening Get-Together
• Message & Resolutions
• Closing Eucharist & Departure
• Ecumenical Greetings
• Exhibition Space
• Questions Worth Pondering
• Voices from the Region
• Communio Garden
• LWI Assembly News
• Videos
• Video Streaming from the Plenary

LWF President Rev. Mark S. Hanson gestures while preaching during the 20 July Eucharist worship service at the Stiftskirche, Stuttgart, Germany, which opened the LWF Eleventh Assembly, 20-27 July 2010. © LWF/Erick Coll

20.07.2010

No fleeing to ‘Private Enclaves,’ Says LWF President

Hanson Preaches at Assembly Opening Worship Service

 STUTTGART, Germany, 20 July 2010 (LWI) – Christians should not flee from the world into “private enclaves” seeking the “security of familiarity,” said Bishop Mark S. Hanson, president of The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) as the LWF began its Eleventh Assembly here on 20 July.

The theme of the Assembly is “Give Us Today Our Daily Bread,” and the event is hosted by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Württemberg, Germany.

Delivering his sermon at the Assembly opening eucharistic service in Stuttgart’s Stifftskirche, Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said that Jesus called followers into “one community.”

An estimated 1,000 people are attending the Assembly which concludes on 27 July. The participants include 418 delegates from the LWF’s 138 churches with full membership and two associate members in 79 countries around the world. Others taking part include representatives of LWF recognized congregations and council and national committees, ecumenical guests, interpreters and translators, co-opted and LWF staff, stewards, accredited media, and visitors.

The LWF president said that among the followers of Jesus “there would be no private dining, no separating and sending to satisfy one’s own hunger, no fearful fleeing one another that haunts so much of our lives today.”

As the disciples of Jesus gather today, said Hanson, no one should be “excluded on account of ritual impurity, gender, social class, HIV and AIDS, poverty or wealth, language or race.”

Citing a story in the biblical book of Ruth, where Naomi advises her daughters-in-law to “turn back” from accompanying her and return to the security of their homeland, the LWF president indicated that the command to “go back” to places of comfort should not be the message of the church today.

When crowds around Jesus got large, Bishop Hanson said, the disciples wanted to send them away, back to their homes, so that they could find food for themselves. Instead, the large crowd became a place where Jesus and the disciples provided food, bringing people into a fellowship gathered around Jesus and the meal – eventually the sacrament of Holy Communion – that he would provide.

Jesus was saying, Bishop Hanson declared, “Do not retreat to separated places that are impoverished by your fears, your resentments, your preoccupation with what you do not have, and your lack of faith in what God promises.”

The center of the LWF Assembly, the president concluded, is “Jesus Christ through Word and bread and wine bringing us into communion, into the life of one body.” (449 words)

Full text of Bishop Hanson’s sermon

• All the news