If you feel alone sometimes or even much of the time, you are—as the phrase goes—“not alone.”

Despite the hyperconnectivity that technology offers today, even those of us who belong to vibrant communities in our schools, churches, workplaces, and neighborhoods can experience isolation, loneliness, and even despair. And our experiences of isolation are easily exacerbated by global waves of epidemics, natural disasters, and political division.

This good news is needed more than ever today: In the waters of baptism, Christ claims us and draws us into one body. In the community of Christ’s disciples, we are given an identity that says “you belong!” This identity overcomes all isolation and division.

In sharing with you more about our ABIDE practices—Luther Seminary’s distinctive approach to accountability, belonging, inclusion, diversity, and equity—I want to highlight how, as a community rooted in God’s unconditional love for all people, we strive to live into a deep sense of belonging that begins with baptism.

Baptism joins us to the living Christ and to each other. Through baptism, God washes away all conventional standards people use to measure or protect value and privilege. Without these conventional standards, we stand humbly before God.

Remembering the source of our belonging can be especially powerful in this season of elections and partisanship. “Words have power,” as Kathryn Schifferdecker, Elva B. Lovell Chair of Old Testament, says in her recent Working Preacher blog post on Isaiah 50. The question we must keep in mind, she reminds us, is whose power. Schifferdecker encourages us to “strive to sustain the weary with a word”—God’s word, that is, not our own.

The clarity we gain when we insist on asking “whose word?” will guide us well beyond seasons of turmoil and calm, war and peace. For Christians, the words we speak about God convey the power of Christ’s claim on us in our baptism. Though we tend to think of baptism as the beginning of a Christian’s journey with Christ, baptism is also God’s final word for us. In baptism, our old selves are put to death and we are given new life. We are sustained by this word and free to strive on behalf of our neighbors, to sustain them with God’s word.

We are not alone in our loneliness and isolation. In Christ’s body, we are not alone in our belonging, drawn into new life where we find our true identity.

Peace,
Robin Steinke
President