When young people step off the bus, plane or van inNew Orleansnext summer, I want them to step into a community of the beloved that operates according to God’s economy of grace. I want them, and me, to experience a community wherein the rules of merit are broken, a moment in time when God is completely in charge for a while.

 In our culture we base almost everything on “achievement, performance, accomplishment, payment, exchange value, or worthiness of some sort.” * In God’s economy of grace we are released from the “internalized merit-badge system” that holds many of us hostage. Within that system, and “without grace, almost everything human declines and devolves into smallness, hurt, and blame.” Many of us try so hard to earn the merit badge ― consciously or unconsciously ― that we sacrifice the freedom and peace we are promised in Christ.

 I want young people, and the adults who accompany them, as well as myself, to be disoriented when they are inNew Orleans, disoriented by grace that “humiliates our attempts at private virtue” in an effort to gain the merit badge. I want us all to experience the peace Paul references in our theme passage (Ephesians 2:4-20), peace that knows no division between people, nations or faiths. In Christ, where all are one, (v. 14) we give up what Richard Rohr calls our “ego consciousness” and replace it with a “soul awareness.” Fr. Rohr says it is going from being “driven” (to perform, achieve, accomplish, please, earn, etc.) to being “drawn” into God’s heart.

 I would like to suggest that it is at the intersection of action and prayer (contemplation, reflection) where we are drawn into God’s heart and where transformation happens. That is why the Gathering program activity days, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, are wrapped with worship at the beginning of the day, and prayer/reflection at the end of the day. In worship we enter into the paschal mystery (the death and resurrection of Christ) as we join with the saints of every age, the body of Christ, around the Lord’s Table. We become the body of Christ after we eat the body of Christ and are sent out into the world to be Christ for others. But “Jesus did not call us to the poor and to the pain just to be helpful to them, although that is wonderful, too. Jesus called us there for fundamental solidarity with the real and from that, to the transformation of ourselves.” Each night, as groups gather for the Final 15, they will be reflecting on where God has met them in the day, and asking God to use those moments to draw them closer to God’s heart.

 I cannot predict when the Spirit will move in the hearts of young people at the Gathering, but I know chances are good that during times of prayer and reflection (i.e., contemplation) on the action of the day young people may glimpse the grace-shaped, life-altering path of Christian discipleship. Their witness upon returning to their congregations may not be one of celebratory victory for mission accomplished, but rather they may reflect a powerlessness that is evidence of God’s economy of grace.

 * All of the quotes in this blog come from “A Lever and a Place to Stand: The Contemplative Stance, The Active Prayer” by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico  www.cacradicalgrace.org

“So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”

(1 Thessalonians 2:8) This verse from the second lesson on Sunday, October 23, 2011, jumped out at me. Youth and adults who attended the 2009 ELCA Youth Gathering could have written that to the people ofNew Orleans.

Whether they know it or not, through their presence in New Orleans ELCA youth and adults are modeling a way of being in mission that defines our church. This form of mission is about relationship-building, about deep investment — emotionally, physically, mentally, financially and spiritually, and it is about self-emptying. This way of being in mission is called “accompaniment.” “The ELCA Global Mission unit defines accompaniment as walking together in solidarity that practices interdependence and mutuality. In this walk, gifts, resources and experiences are shared with mutual advice and admonition to deepen and expand our work within God’s mission.” (http://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Global-Mission/How-We-Work/Accompaniment.aspx)

Notice that it is God’s mission in which we participate and not our own. For example, immediately after Hurricane Katrina devastated theGulfCoast, disaster workers inMississippitold us they had to figure out what to do with hundreds of winter coats, hats and mittens that caring people sent. Really? What were people thinking sending winter gear to the Gulf? This expression of care, which I’m sure came from kind, good-intentioned people, became a health hazard (as rodents took up residence in the mountains of useless materials that piled up), and required the attention of disaster workers who were there to serve people who had lost everything. That is an example of humans responding out of their own need to help rather than offering what is most needed. God’s mission or my need? Americans, especially, do it all the time. We act as if theUnited Stateswere at the center of the earth’s orbit. We think the rest of the world should want to be like us, and we act accordingly.

If ELCA youth journey to New Orleans this summer, and then return to their home congregations with an understanding that it is God’s kingdom that is truly exceptional and God’s way that should be advanced, then they’ll be on the path of discipleship. The fruits of their discipleship will be identification with the poor and weak, the sick, those who are treated like outcasts and those called strangers. In Ephesians, the book from which our core text (Ephesians 2:14-20) is chosen, Paul says the church was to show that people — Jews/Gentiles — would get along because they love Jesus and are committed to the things the church is committed to. The confession that Jesus is Lord was one thing that held them together in community, their actions of feeding the poor, caring for widows and orphans, raising the dead, and serving all people were the living out of this confession.

I, for one, am really excited to welcome a generation of leaders in our church whose radical identification with “the other” becomes the Lutheran charism.