You're Invited

     Each month during the 2014-2015 school year, the Lutheran Episcopal Campus Ministry will celebrate, strive for and embody a word or phrase of the Christian faith. September's word is Invite. This is a great word, especially as UWW's newest students arrive to campus, eager to do and become something new. It is a privilege to invite students, new and old, to join us in Faith, Fellowship and Food (ah, yes, the first Spaghetti Meal is September 14th) and to welcome them into the Christian community on campus.

     Inviting others to partake in something we know to be special is an exciting thing. But with this privilege comes a responsibility to open our arms just a little bit wider. Thinking in every day examples, when you invite a guest to your home, is your work done? Do you expect to gain a friend without offering your home address, opening the front door and offering a refreshment? Probably not. When we invite others to Christ's table, we joyfully grow our community for that moment, but to truly show Christ's love, we also need to be genuinely hospitable.

     Whereas invitation can leave room for difference - the inviter and the invitee, the host and the guest - hospitality can erase difference by setting a standard of servanthood. I think about this important relationship (and important difference) this week as the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, along with leaders in other denominations, called for a nation-wide, interfaith response to racism. This call comes after members of an African Methodist Episcopal Church were shot and killed in June 2015 by a white racist during a Bible study (read the full letter from The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori here). Clergy from many faith communities took the call and talked with their congregations about racism in our culture today, a brave beginning step to what has been and will be a long conversation.

     The Presiding Bishop's invitation for people of faith to be open with one another about our experiences with racism allows us to invite one another into conversation. Invitation is contagious. When hospitality follows the invitation, when servanthood and a shared respect for one another are fostered, invitations grow into a lasting, positive community in Christ. It stops mattering who is host or guest, rich or poor, majority or minority and only matters how we can serve one another in Godly love.

     At LECM, we invite you to share all your stories and experiences with us. As Jesus invited us to his table and shared with us everlasting life, may we be inspired to live in fellowship with one another and invite each other into conversation every day.