Pride and Prejudice

 A few years back, the people of First Lutheran Church studied scripture, held conversations, and prayed about whether or not we would be a welcoming place for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transexual, Queer, Questioning, Intersexed and other non-traditional identifying people into our congregation. We voted overwhelmingly "YES" to be a Reconciling In Christ congregation. It was a proud moment of saying yes to love and inclusion.

To show our support we purchased a rainbow flag to display outside our building (shown to the left). Three of those were stolen and we instituted a policy of placing the flag out in the morning and taking it in at night. When "anti-trans" bills started to be brought into state legislatures we decided to make a more inclusive statement with our flag. So, we purchased a new flag pole and mounting bracket along with a "Progress" flag which expands the rainbow flag to highlight trans and BIPOC people, as shown to the right.

Sometime over the weekend of February 26-28, this flag was torn down and stolen.

I tell this story as we move into our Lenten season to highlight the struggle we have in sharing the Love of Christ to all of God's children. Our communal sin of exclusion needs to be repented of and a life of inclusion be practiced sincerely. Sadly, there are people full of hate in our community that they feel it is okay to destroy personal property. But, we will not give up sharing God's love, even those who we might consider our enemies.

Our them for our Wednesday Lenten Vespers is Community. We will show movie clips that highlight the various ways we either defeat community or expand community. This will all be done on Zoom and not in person. Our hope is that we can grow our understanding of who we are in Bothell and how we can express God's love for all.

It is OK to have pride in our congregation and its work for a world of peace and love, even in the face of extreme prejudice.

Jesus says to us in John 8, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life … You judge by human standards; I judge no one."