“Look at the cross, Beloved,” the Reverend Doctor Jay Augustine encouraged the gathered folks who attended the opening keynote of the 2024 NC Synod Gathering. Look at the cross and see the intersection of salvific reconciliation (the vertical line) and the social reconciliation (the horizontal line) that the Christ has laid upon a humanity that continually seeks to divide rather than unite.

“Look at the cross.”

Dr. Augustine brought a powerful word to the NC Synod Gathering, and it was a word that he drew straight from the heart of Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: “We are more than conquerors.” (Romans 8:37)

We must be attentive to Martin Luther’s exhortation that Scripture has a “wax nose” and can be twisted any way it suits the twister, but this kind of verse presents a unique interpretive challenge. In the face of so many social issues alive today, and so much unrest both within the church and without, what does it mean to be “conquerors?”

In the midst of this challenge, Dr. Augustine reminds us of another disciple who intended to bridge the gap between what is and what should be: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Free at last,” Dr. Augustine prophesied to the gathered assembly, “thank God almighty we are free at last!”

Free to welcome those this world would rather other. This is especially prescient, the assembly was reminded, as the rise of white Christian Nationalism, deeply rooted in the othering of those on the margins, continues to get play in both our politics and our national discourse.

Speaking of politics, Dr. Augustine reminded the assembly of the simple truth that “politics don’t equal partisan.” We can speak truth to power without picking a contrived political side. Red and blue mean much less when we’re talking about the cross of Christ that covers a humanity seen in a rainbow of races and a prismatic pantheon of ethnicities.

The theme text for the Synod Gathering, Romans 8:37, encourages us to be honest about who we are: through the work of the Holy Spirit, the we of God’s abundant grace extends to cover the truth that so many of those labeled as them in the world are not only understood as God’s gracious Beloved but are in fact God’s most able prophets and teachers in a world where so many of the outsiders are kept out.

In Saint Paul’s use of the cross as a symbol of discourse he exemplifies the cross-pollination of both the divine grace known in salvation and the social empowerment seen when we take on the issues of today through the lens of Christ’s freedom.

If God is for us, then surely we are conquerors. Not in being right about anything, but about being grace-full in everything. And grace, as Paul (and Luther) reminds us, is not cheap. It requires our open hearts, our listening ears, our active protest, and our receptive souls that lean toward a God who invites us to consider the fact that freedom means loving our neighbor as ourselves, by God.

It requires us telling deep truths to deep power. Power that attempts to divide humanity. Power that attempts to other humanity.

Power that attempts to degrade the Divine We of God to an Us of partisanship.

We conquer this power through love.

And no, not just loving them. But by loving them enough to see that they are actually we, and God has unified us on a cross of infinite possibility.

Because we are, indeed, more than conquerors.

We are Beloveds sent to love.