Why First Lutheran Chose To Host Miss Representation

 
The following statement was submitted by Dr. Brian Hooper, a First Lutheran member. You can view an interview with him at Conscious Nashville. 
 
The short answer is this: The Kingdom of God is not about another place (heaven) in another time zone (eternity). Rather, it is about all that God does to bring us back into relationship with the Divine, ourselves, and each other in ways that foster the fullest expression of our humanity and dignity.
Miss Representation speaks to the ways in which a very significant portion of our population are denigrated or denied. And we all suffer for it -- women and men. The objectification, patronization, and denial of women’s access to positions of power and decision making results in the impoverishment of politics, industry, education, science and culture in general.  It contributes to the dis-integration of humanity.
 
The document, The Church in Society: A Lutheran Perspective speaks to the Church’s call to foster the values of the Kingdom of God for all people: The witness of this church in society flows from its identity as a community that lives from and for the Gospel. Faith is active in love; love calls for justice in the relationship and structures of society. It is in grateful response to God’s grace in Jesus Christ that this church carries out its responsibility for the well-being of society and the environment. (pages 1 &2)
 
The message of Jesus’ action that took him to the cross, is that God has gotten into all that would separate us from God, ourselves, and each other. God does not run from our human experience, and from our own dis-integrating actions. Rather, God enters it, even to the extent of the crucifixion of the Holy One in human expression. This is the extent that God’s love goes to find us, meet us, and call us back to that three fold relationship with God, self, and others. And the resurrection is not a return to “life as usual,” to the “status quo.” No, resurrection is about God inviting us into a whole new realm. And that REALM is not about real estate, but RELATIONSHIP. Relationship is what “Kingdom of God” is all about. Heaven is but a mere extension of it. 
 
Lutheran folk, when we are truest to our tradition, are concerned to proclaim and foster that new and renewing RELATIONSHIP that God gives us as a pure gift. It is our hope that we can be part of the resurrection of consciousness to a new vision — a vision that acts responsibly and responsively to God’s love for all people. 
 
Brian Hooper, M.Div., Psy.D.
Clinical Pastoral Therapist
Member of First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Nashville