Members of North Dade Deanery congregations came together for an Epiphany Service at Church of the Resurrection, Biscayne Park, a parish which has shared its facilities for the past two years with the congregation of Christ Lutheran Church. One Sunday a month, and at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, the two congregations worship together, so Friday evening's joint service was not particularly unusual for the members of the two churches, or for Fr. Michael Gray, rector of Resurrection and Pastor Mahlon Clarke of Christ Lutheran.

The Epiphany Service was different, though, because it used the liturgy prepared for the Jan. 6 national celebration of the new relationship between the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Beginning with the words, "As the Magi were brought together to know the glory of God's presence among us as Jesus of Nazareth, so too have we been brought to this place to show forth his glory and to answer God's call that all may be one as Christ and the Father are one," Fr. Gray invited the congregation to the renewal of their Baptismal Covenant.

Pastor Mahlon Clarke blesses the Baptismal water, as Bishop Said, Lutheran Pastor David Mesenbring and Fr. Ronald Fox of St.Bernard de Clairvaux, North Miami Beach, prepare to renew their own Baptismal Vows.

    Preachers for the service were Episcopal Deacon Maria Jimenez-Mesenbring and her husband, Lutheran Pastor David Mesenbring, who together lead the maritime ministry Casa del Marino/Seafarers' House at Port Everglades. The Magi, Deacon Jimenez told the congregation, are representatives of the Gentile world "in all its racial diversity". Just as "people from all nations came in search of the Good News" at the Epiphany, people from all over the world come to Seafarers' House on the same search, and providing the Good News for these people is the "common mission" that she shares with her Lutheran husband.

    "I'm tempted just to say 'amen' and sit down," said Pastor Mesenbring after his wife had finished speaking, "but that wouldn't be very Lutheran!" Echoing his wife's words, he emphasized, "God comes for all."

    "If God comes to us," he continued, "is it not idolatrous for us to argue about our ways to God?"  He urged the congregation to affirm their own beliefs and traditions without denigrating the other and to "hunger after" the ways in which God speaks to others.

Deacon Maria Jimenez and her husband, Pastor David Mesenbring

    At the Eucharist, Bishop Suffragan John Said, as celebrant, prayed that "we might not only be witnesses to our ability to work together, but to be the Body of Christ in the world".

    Resurrection's rector, Fr. Michael Gray, telling the congregation of his own experience as an exchange student, living for a year with the family of a Lutheran pastor in Germany, said he had been since that time "part Lutheran". Smiling, he said of full-communion relationship between Episcopalians and Lutherans, "As my German 'father' would have said, 'endlich'--finally!"