SIMUL: The Journal of St. Paul Lutheran Seminary, Vol. 3, Issue 1 (Fall 2023)

Vol. 3, Issue 1

SIMUL

Fall 2023

Office of the Ministry

The Journal of St. Paul Lutheran Seminary

SIMUL

Volume 3, Issue 1, Fall 2023 Office of the Ministry EDITOR Rev. Dr. Dennis R. Di Mauro dennisdimauro@yahoo.com ADMINSTRATOR Rev. Jon Jensen jjensen@semlc.org Administrative Address: St. Paul Lutheran Seminary P.O. Box 251 Midland, GA 31820 ACADEMIC DEAN Rev. Julie Smith jjensen@semlc.org

SIMUL is the journal of St. Paul Lutheran Seminary.

Academics/Student Affairs Address: St. Paul Lutheran Seminary P.O. Box 112 Springfield, MN 56087

Cover Photo: “Martin Luther Preaching to the Faithful,” from the Altarpiece of the Church of Torslunde, Denmark (1561).

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Chair: Rev. Dr. Erwin Spruth Rev. Greg Brandvold Rev. Jon Jensen Rev. Dr. Mark Menacher Steve Paula Rev. Julie Smith Charles Hunsaker Rev. Dr. James Cavanah Rev. Jeff Teeples

Disclaimer:

The views expressed in the articles reflect the author(s) opinions and are not necessarily the views of the publisher and editor. SIMUL cannot guarantee and accepts no liability for any loss or damage of any kind caused by the errors and for the accuracy of claims made by the authors. All rights reserved and nothing can be partially or in whole be reprinted or reproduced without written consent from the editor.

TEACHING FACULTY Rev. Dr. Marney Fritts Rev. Dr. Dennis DiMauro Rev. Julie Smith Rev. Virgil Thompson Rev. Dr. Keith Less Rev. Brad Hales Rev. Dr. Erwin Spruth Rev. Steven King Rev. Dr. Orrey McFarland Rev. Horacio Castillo (Intl) Rev. Amanda Olson de Castillo (Intl) Rev. Dr. Roy Harrisville III Rev. Dr. Henry Corcoran Rev. Dr. Mark Menacher Rev. Randy Freund SIMUL | Page 2

SIMUL Volume 3, Issue 1, Fall 2023 Office of the Ministry

Table of

Contents Editor’s Note Rev. Dr. Dennis R. Di Mauro

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Office of the Ministry: Luther or Luder?

Rev. Dr. Mark Menacher

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Disordered? Beginning to Make Out What Makes a Call “Proper” Rev. Julie Smith

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The Ministry in Babylon and Rome Rev. Dr. Roy A. Harrisville, III

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The Church’s Ministry of Word and Sacrament Rev. Virgil Thompson

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Book Review - Martin Luther: The Man Who

Rediscovered God and Changed the World (Eric Metaxas) Rev. Dr. Dennis R. Di Mauro

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Editor’s Note Welcome to our ninth issue of SIMUL, the journal of St. Paul Lutheran Seminary. This edition includes a number of insightful articles concerning the Office of the Ministry. In this volume, Mark Menacher explores how Lutheran church This edition bodies have abandoned the ministerial freedom includes a which was restored by the Reformation. Julie number of Smith explains how ministry is truly “ordered” insightful when its number one priority is the unleashing of the Gospel upon the world for the sake of the articles salvation of souls. Roy Harrisville argues that the concerning answer to our shrinking churches isn’t more “bells the Office of and smells” or the elevation of the clergy, but the Ministry. rather promulgating the Word of God. And Virgil Thompson urges our pastors to simply get on with delivering the unconditional promise of Christ for sinners bound in sin, that they might live. Finally, I close out this issue with a review of Eric Metaxas’ Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the Word.

What’s Ahead?

Upcoming Issues - We are so excited about this coming year.

Our Winter 2024 issue will discuss “Our Other Neighbors,” including our Jewish brothers and sisters and our international students in India and Latin America. Our Spring 2024 issue will discuss our ministry to those suffering from mental illness,

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including Alzheimer’s disease, depression and PTSD.

Jewish Heritage Class – On Feb. 6th, 2024, we'll be starting a course entitled "Our Neighbors - of Jewish Heritage." The course will focus on the Jewish roots of our Christian faith and how we bring the Gospel to both Jews and Gentiles. The discussions will include: Jewish Apologetics, Jewish Culture and History, Giving Your Testimony, Modern Jewish History, Current Events, and Helping Lead Someone to Jesus. The course is $50 for an individual or $100 for a small group from one church. Payment can be submitted online at: https://semlc.org/support-stpaul-lutheran-seminary/ or to the address also found on that page. Classes are held on Zoom and recorded with links sent to your email following each session. So if someone needs to miss a class, it Is available for viewing at another time. Individual classes typically run for up to 2 hours. The only text required is the Bible. To register, simply email jjensen@semlc.org and ask to be included in the course.

On Feb. 6th, 2024, we'll be starting a course entitled "Our Neighbors of Jewish Heritage."

The course will focus on the Jewish roots of our Christian faith and bringing the Gospel to both Jews and Gentiles.

SPLS now offers the Th.D. – We are excited to announce that St. Paul Lutheran Seminary is partnering with Kairos University in Sioux Falls, SD to establish an accredited Doctorate in Theology (Th.D.). The Th.D. is a research degree, preparing candidates for deep theological reflection, discussion, writing, leadership in the

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church and service towards the community. The goal of the program is to develop leaders in the Lutheran church who are qualified to teach in institutions across the globe, to engage in theological and biblical research to further the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to respond with faithfulness to any calling within the church. Those who are accepted into and complete the program will receive all instruction from SPLS professors and will receive an accredited (ATS) degree from Kairos University.

The general area of study of the Th.D. program is in systematic theology. Specializations offered within the degree include, but are not limited to: Reformation studies, evangelical homiletics, and law and gospel dialectics. The sub-disciplines within the areas of specialization are dependent upon the interest of the student provided they have a qualified and approved mentor. Other general areas of study, such as biblical studies, will be forthcoming. For the full description of the program, go to https://semlc.org/academic-programs/ If you are interested in supporting our effort to produce faithful teachers of Christ’s church, contact Jon Jensen jjensen@semlc.org. All prospective student inquiries can be directed to Dr. Marney Fritts mfritts@semlc.org.

Giving - Please consider making a generous contribution to St. Paul Lutheran Seminary at: https://semlc.org/support-st-paul-lutheran-seminary/. I hope you enjoy this issue of SIMUL! If you have any questions about the journal or about St. Paul Lutheran Seminary, please shoot

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me an email at: dennisdimauro@yahoo.com Rev. Dr. Dennis Di Mauro is the pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Warrenton, VA. He teaches at St. Paul Lutheran Seminary and is the editor of SIMUL.

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OFFICE OF THE MINISTRY: LUTHER OR LUDER? Mark Menacher Surveying the denominational and non-denominational landscape of ecclesial organizations just in the United States, the phenomenon generally known as “clergy” is decidedly diverse. By nature (sinful and unclean), clergy types come in all sizes, shapes, colors, abilities, disabilities, talents, and nowadays sexual orientations. Depending upon tradition, disposition, and perhaps even indigestion, for which Martin Luther was reportedly known, those in the clerical estate can be known as chaplain, deacon, priest, bishop, auxiliary bishop, archbishop, pastor, lead pastor, associate pastor, parson, vicar, rector, minister, moderator, and district president, to name a few. Generally considered somehow to be elevated above congregational members through “ordination,” either from the perspective of the clergy or by congregational members or by both,1 such clerics (and “religious” leaders) might be addressed as The Reverend (Father and Mother), The Very Reverend, The Right Reverend (as opposed to the wrong reverend?), The Most Reverend, and even the non-reverend for those who look askance at such pomp and circumstance.

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The Roman Church The status, stature, legitimacy, and authority of clergy, and particularly the validity of their ordinations, is not merely an intra-congregational concern but is frequently church- and denominational-defining and correspondingly denominationaland church-dividing. For example, the Roman Church defines itself as having a pope who is claimed not only to be the successor of St. Peter but more importantly the vicar (representative) of Christ on earth. Furthermore, the Roman Church teaches that before his death Christ instituted the Roman Church’s priesthood when he celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples on Maundy Thursday. Thus, in the Roman Church a valid Eucharist as an element of salvation is dependent upon a valid ordination to the priesthood which is dependent both upon the succession of St. Peter in St. Peter the papacy and generally upon ordination to the priesthood at the hands of bishops in communion with the pope.2 Not surprisingly, with the clerical estate being churchdefining and thus church-dividing, those outside the Roman Church cannot “be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.”3 Maybe that explains why so many “Lutherans” are clamoring after the papacy.

Anglicans Similarly, though in slightly milder form, according to the 9

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Preface to the Ordinal in The Book of Common Prayer, Episcopalians (Anglicans) maintain that their threefold ordering of ministers as deacons, priests (presbyters), and bishops is not only divinely instituted but also that candidates for all three orders must be ordained by bishops in an historic succession, also known as the “historic episcopate.”4 Notably, this Preface is firmly anchored in the 1662 Act of In that Uniformity, and through this Act the English state process, and the bishops of the Church of England sought to eradicate all non-episcopalian forms of Christian about 2000 (or one-fifth) expression in England and Wales. In that process, of the clergy about 2000 (or one-fifth) of the clergy in the Church of England were ejected from ministerial in the Church office for refusing to submit to episcopal of England 5 ordination by 24 August 1662. In addition, many were ejected thousands were persecuted, jailed, and fined, and from many hundreds died from such treatment or were ministerial killed, all for the simple reason that they aspired office for not to be episcopalian. Still today, all Anglican refusing to churches are bound by the same intolerant submit to principles of this Preface through which Anglicans episcopal (Episcopalians) set themselves apart from non-episcopalian Christian traditions.6 ordination by Consequently, in order to become acceptable for 24 August full communion with the Episcopal Church, the 1662.

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) through the ecumenical agreement entitled Called to Common Mission (CCM) adopted such Anglican religious intolerance and has exercised it on its clergy since the adoption of CCM in

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1999.7 All this has taken place because similar to the Roman Church, Anglicans also hold that a valid ordination is necessary for a valid consecration of the eucharistic elements.

When the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued Dominus Iesus, on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church on September 5th, 2000, it created quite a stir, particularly among Anglicans.

According to DI §17, “Therefore, there exists a single Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him. ... On the other hand, the ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery, are not Churches in the proper sense; ...”8 This exclusion from being “church” necessarily included the churches of the Anglican Communion.

Hypocritically, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Reverend Dr. George Carey, was indignant that the Vatican should treat Anglican churches in the same way that the Anglicans have historically treated non-historic episcopallyordered churches. According to Carey, “Of course, the Church of England, and the world-wide Anglican Communion, does not for one moment accept that its orders of ministry and Eucharist are deficient in any way.”9 Despite Carey’s willingness to “recognise and celebrate ecumenical progress,” when churches and their ministries become “weaponized” against fellow Christians, one should not be surprised, as Jesus reminds, that “all who take the sword will perish by the sword’” (Mt. 26:52).10

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Creation of the LCMC and NALC The dynamic of ecclesial condescension is not confined to the Roman Church and the global communions of ecclesial communities “inferior” to it, which in turn, successively subject their fellow ecclesial communities to the same. On a much smaller scale and in modified form, it also exists in relation to two ecclesial entities pertinent to some of SIMUL’s readership, namely Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) and the North American Lutheran Church (NALC), both of which successively broke away from the ELCA in 2001 and 2010, respectively.

In very crude review, after the Concordat of Agreement between the ELCA and the Episcopal Church in the USA (ECUSA) failed to be ratified at the 1997 ELCA Churchwide Assembly and with a revised ELCA-ECUSA ecumenical accord entitled Called to Common Mission (CCM) on the horizon, the WordAlone Network (WAN) came into being initially as an email listserv movement with the intention of defeating CCM. When CCM was passed on 19 August at the 1999 ELCA Churchwide assembly, WAN set a variety of ecclesial-political strategies into motion either to overturn CCM or to wring concessions from the mandated episcopal succession and ordination of all ELCA bishops and pastors. At the March 2000 WAN convention in Phoenix, Arizona, the WAN board advanced the establishment of LCMC to use as a bargaining

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chip over against the ELCA to compel the ELCA to grant “exceptions” to CCM’s prescriptions. When WAN only obtained “exceptions” to the episcopal “ordinations” of pastors but not bishops at the 2001 ELCA Churchwide Assembly, LCMC was no longer strategically useful to WAN. Consequently, with all the Lutheran confessional cohesion, definition, and distinction with which one could endow a politically expedient ecclesial entity, the WAN board set LCMC adrift to serve chiefly as an escape hatch for congregations wanting to leave the ELCA with their property.

Having lost the battle against CCM, WAN lost its raison d'être. Fortunately, in its aspiration to be everything Episcopalian, the ELCA lost no time in following its new ecclesial masters down the path of ordinations of non-biblically sanctioned sexual orientations and relations. Soon, WAN was joined by “Solid Rock Lutherans” in a new and valiant effort to save the ELCA from its non-Lutheran dispositions. As the ELCA advanced its non-heterosexual agenda, in hot pursuit WAN, Solid Rock Lutherans, and others coalesced in 2005 into the Lutheran Coalition for Reform or “Lutheran CORE.” In curious contradiction, by forming Lutheran CORE both WAN antiCCMers and ELCA pro-CCMers found themselves in bed together united by homosexuality in the ministry, or at least by their common opposition to it. Not learning from the past, due to sharing much of WAN’s leadership, Lutheran CORE followed WAN’s failed strategy used to oppose CCM. When Lutheran CORE eventually lost the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly votes for inclusion of non-heterosexuality in the ELCA’s ordained ministry, Lutheran CORE, like WAN before it,

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launched its own ecclesial body. By August of 2010, the North American Lutheran Church (NALC) was born, complete with its own curious form of not-so-historic, tactile, episcopal succession.

Given their common provenance in the ELCA, their emergence directly or indirectly at the hand of the WordAlone Network (or at least former WAN functionaries), In other and their births from nearly identical ecclesial-political strategies (or machinations) over words, with against the ELCA, why have both LCMC and NALC respect to the been separately spawned within nine years of Lutheran each another, apart from the fact that the NALC Confessions, churches and clergy do not consider LCMC to which both “churchy” enough as an ecclesial entity to join? In LCMC and other words, with respect to the Lutheran NALC Confessions, to which both LCMC and NALC supposedly supposedly subscribe, is there any confessionally subscribe, is Lutheran reason for both organizations to exist as there any separate “churches”? If not, then why do they exist, and if so, why should anyone spend the time confessionally and effort composing an essay on the Lutheran Lutheran office of ministry primarily for that audience when reason for even at close proximity such entities do not share both the same understanding of the same Lutheran organizations confessions? to exist as Confessionally speaking, at first glance LCMC separate would seem to have the upper hand. WAN fought “churches”? its battles against the ELCA’s adoption of CCM by referencing Article VII of the Confessio Augustana

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(CA) that the church “is the assembly of all believers in which the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel” and that it “is enough (ist genug / satis est) for the true unity of the Christian churches that the gospel is hence preached harmoniously according to a pure understanding and the sacraments are administered in accordance with the divine word.”11 Furthermore, according to CA Article V (On the Office of Preaching / On Ecclesiastical Ministry) note 1, “Luther did not understand the office of preaching (Predigtamt) clerically.”12 Finally, the entirety of much cited Article X of the Formula of Concord clearly denounces the ELCA’s assertions that CCM’s required adoption of the ECUSA’s ordination structure and practices is an adiaphoron.13 On the basis of CA VIII, in contrast, it could be argued (against the existence and activities of Lutheran CORE) that “in this life many false Christians and hypocrites, even public sinners, remain among the pious, but that the sacraments remain nonetheless effective, although the [publicly non-heterosexual] priests through whom they are administered, are not pious.”14 That all said, are WAN and Lutheran CORE either predictive of or responsible for the confessional integrity of the ecclesial entities which they have produced? As “[t]oday LCMC consists of over 900 congregations in countries across the globe,”15 while the NALC boasts “uniting more than 142,500 Lutherans in more than 430 congregations across North America,”16 perhaps the numbers speak for themselves. If numbers, however, were indicative of Lutheran confessional integrity and identity, then in the USA the ELCA would still hold pole

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position. So, why do Lutherans have such diverse manifestations of the office of ministry, or phrased negatively, why do Lutherans individually and collectively seem so disinclined to let the Lutheran Confessions, particularly the Confessio Augustana, guide the practices of their churches’ offices of ministry?

The Lutheran Confessions CA V and associated Articles VII (On the Church), VIII (What is the church?), IX (On Baptism), X (On the Lord’s Supper), and XIV (On Church Order) could not be more simple, but they are perhaps too simple for sinners, for “all born naturally after Adam’s fall are conceived and born in sin; ...” (CA II).17 If sinners are justified by faith (CA IV), then “[t]o obtain such faith, God has instituted the office of preaching (Predigtamt), [has] given the gospel and sacraments, through which he as through means gives the Holy Spirit who effects the faith where and when he wills Luther’s Large in those so hearing the gospel ...” (CA V).18 Often ignored in discussions on the office of ministry are the Catechism (1529) rest of the Lutheran Confessions. For example, Luther in the Large Catechism reminds, Accordingly, we further believe that in Christendom we have the forgiveness of sin which happens through the holy sacraments and absolution and through all manner of comforting words of the whole gospel. Therefore, it is fitting at this point to discuss what one should preach 16

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concerning the sacraments and in summary the whole gospel and all offices of Christendom, for it is necessary that this take place unceasingly. For even though God’s grace is acquired through Christ, and through the Holy Spirit holiness is effected through God’s word in the unity of the Christian churches, we are nonetheless never without sin due to our flesh with which we are still encumbered. Therefore, everything in Christendom is so ordered that daily one there gets the pure forgiveness of sins through word and sign, to comfort and to uphold our conscience, as long as we live here.19 So, where in Christendom is everything “so ordered that daily one there gets the pure forgiveness of sins through word and sign”? Likewise, where in Christendom is it “enough (ist genug / satis est) for the true unity of the Christian churches that the gospel is hence preached harmoniously according to a pure understanding and the sacraments are administered in accordance with the divine word?” In comparison to the pure proclamation of the gospel in word and sacrament and to the true unity which Christ alone thereby creates in his own body, the church, what do humanly constituted ecclesial contrivances have to offer? For whose benefit are they created, especially when such contrivances prove “churchdividing” in so many ways? Everyone in the church knows the answer but too few acknowledge it.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1), and “God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good” (Gen. 1:3-4).

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“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’” (Gen. 1:26). “And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit.

You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so” (Gen 1:29-30), and it was more than enough. Then, the serpent, which “was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Serpent Tempting Adam and Eve Lord God had made,” said to humanity’s first parents in so many words, “Yes, but is all that bountiful creation of God’s word really enough?” (Gen. 3:1-13).

The Desire and Manifestation of Human Sin

The desire and manifestation of human sin to have a “Petrine succession” in the papacy or to demand an historicepiscopal succession with various “orders” of clerics or to divide the “laity” from the “clergy” or to have “pastor emeritus” status or so to order the church in any way “that daily one” does not “get there the pure forgiveness of sins through word and sign” proclaims that the gospel of Jesus Christ properly differentiated from the law is not enough.20 It is a manifestation of the indelible character of fleshly human sin with which everyone in the priesthood of all believers is still encumbered, perhaps especially those in the “office of ministry.” Luther writes,

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Into this holy, magnificent, joyous, gracious priesthood the sow of the devil, the pope, has fallen with his snout, which he not only defiles but wholly destroys and suppresses, and he has erected another, his own priesthood, cobbled together from all pagan priesthoods, as a stew of all abominations. First, he divides the priestly people of Christ into clerics and laity. The clerics he calls his pastorate (geistlichen), among whom he wants to be the highest priest and prince, which he alone thereby makes spiritual (geistlich) by shearing [tonsuring], smearing [anointing] their fingers with oil, and requiring them to wear long garments, and purports to imprint an indelible character on their souls, which is nothing other than the character of the Beast in Revelation 13... This institution one calls holy orders or holy ordination (heilige Weihung), one of the seven sacraments, much holier and better than baptism itself.21 In Luther’s view, following Paul, the ministry is not an estate, order, or dignity, but is an office or function which the word “ministry” itself denotes, “a ‘stewardship’ or ‘household,’ ‘ministry,’ ‘minister,’ ‘servant,’ ‘one serving the gospel,’ in which the fictitious notion of “indelible character” vanishes;22 if only the sinners occupying that office believed this to be true.

Unfortunately, most discussions on the Lutheran understanding of the “office of ministry,” including all that presented above, pertain to the What thereof rather than the Why. Because sinful humanity finds itself in bondage to sin, it is also held captive to an ontology of substances wherein “the 19

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church” and the “office of ministry” become given things,23 vaguely described in the Confessio Augustana, with which selfdesignated Lutherans deem themselves free to tinker. Such “Lutherans” are rightly called remodelers24 who in recent decades seem all too keen to retrofit the Lutheran understanding of church and its office of ministry with the predilections of discarded pagan priesthoods.

In the course If, however, Luther and his polemical writings of 1517-1518, “provide the true understanding and meaning of however, the CA” and if Luther developed clear Martin Luder understandings regarding the church and the began to office of ministry well before the CA was drafted, change the then what guided, or more correctly, what drove spelling of his Luther to do so? Here the question turns from What to Why. surname to

Luther to reflect the letter theta (θ = th) in the Greek word έλεύθερος (eleutheros) meaning “free.”

From Luder to Luther

The Augustinian friar and university professor, Martin Luder, was not inclined to tinker with the institution of the church, to remodel it, as was Jan Hus (AD 1369-1415). In the course of 1517-1518, however, Martin Luder began to change the spelling of his surname to Luther to reflect the letter theta (θ = th) in the Greek word έλεύθερος (eleutheros) meaning “free.”25 Due to regional dialect differences in Germany, this spelling change was not particularly remarkable, similar to the way that most Americans pronounce the word “water” as “wader.” This

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linguistic variance from Luder to Luther, however, reflected an existential and theological change of reality for Brother Martin which would alter the course of Christendom.

According to John’s gospel, the one who is “the way and the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6) taught that if “you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (ἐλευθερώσει = eleutherosei). ...

So if the Son sets you free (ἐλευθερώσῃ = eleutherose), you will be free (ἐλεύθεροι = eleutheroi) indeed” (Jn 8:31-32,36).26 By the truth of the gospel (Gal 2) and those truths congruent with the gospel, Luther was liberated in his conscience by Christ himself from the powers of the law, sin, death, the devil, and hell and reconciled to his heavenly Father to live in theological and spiritual freedom.27 Consequently, those who have been set free by the truth of the gospel are either implicitly or explicitly “Lutheran.”

For Luther, the Reformation did not entail tinkering or remodeling an entity called “the church” but instead necessitated engaging all sinful human reality on every front with the proclamation of God’s word, namely the gospel properly differentiated from the law. Liberated from the powers of sin, death, and the devil by the truth of the gospel, Luther readily and willingly came into conflict with everyone and everything which contradicted this truth, both in the ecclesial and secular realms. Because this truth was none other than Jesus Christ himself, Luther was driven to rebuild the church and its office of ministry solely to proclaim, in word and sacrament, the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ. Any- and everything which contradicted Christ alone and his gospel was

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not the church and did not belong to the church.

Unfortunately, in the course of time Lutherans seem to have lost faith in the liberating power of the truth of this gospel. In order to save their ever-new churches, the gospel and even Christ himself needed and still need to be augmented or enhanced. So, the remodeling began and continues. Consequently, it seems hard not to conclude that today most Lutheran ecclesial entities and their offices of ministry have fallen behind the Reformation28 and firmly into the hands of remodeling Luders with all the corresponding consequences.

Mark D. Menacher, PhD serves as pastor of St. Luke's Lutheran Church, in La Mesa, California.

Notes: 1 P. Drews comments in his introduction to Luther’s Ordinationsformular

(ordination agenda) that when the Lutheran Reformers began “ordaining” (calling and confirming) pastors regularly in 1535, without some sort of “ordination” ceremony some of those called to the pastoral office or their respective congregations, or both, harbored doubts about the legitimacy of the pastor to exercise the duties of his office; see D. Martin Luthers Werke - Kritische Gesammtausgabe (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883), 38:406 [hereafter as WA].

In notable contrast, the Lutheran Church in Württemberg first introduced ordination in 1855; see Georg Rietschel, Luther und die Ordination (Wittenberg: Verlag von R. Herrosé, 1889), 79.

2See Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd edition (Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 231-237, 337, 383-399.

3Ibid., 224.

4See “Preface to the Ordination Rites” in The Book of Common Prayer ...

According to the use of the Episcopal Church, (New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1979), 510, and therein the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral (1886/1888), 876-878.

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5David Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II, 2nd edition, Vol. 1 (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1956), 201–202.

6Generally, Episcopalians consider non-historic episcopally ordered churches, like the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) prior to its “episcopalianization” as required by Called to Common Mission (CCM), to be inferior to their own. According to Arthur Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury 1961-1974, Protestant churches without an historic episcopate are incomplete. “(1) With the lack of the historical structure, the sense of worship as the act of the one historic society has been lost. ... (2) With the defective sense of worship as the act of the historic society, there grows easily a false emphasis on the place of human feelings in worship and in religion generally. ... (3) With defect in life and worship there is defect in the presentation of truth. By its attempt to make a ‘nude’ appeal to Scripture, Protestantism has failed to find a centre of unity and authority in doctrine,” see Arthur Michael Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1936), 197– 200. Thus, without the “historic episcopate” non-historic episcopally ordered churches are considered in classic episcopalian thought to be defective and not fully part of the body of Christ.

7The English Parliament eventually came to the realization that enforced conformity to Episcopalianism was not civil. In 1689, it passed the Act of Toleration which ameliorated but did not repeal the 1662 Act of Uniformity or the penal laws used to enforce it. Thus, the 1689 Act of Toleration serves as an “act of admission” by the English Parliament that the 1662 Act of Uniformity was an act of religious intolerance; see John T. Wilkinson, 1662 – And After: Three Centuries of English Nonconformity (London: The Epworth Press, 1962), 98.

8See Joseph Card. Ratzinger, Prefect, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus, on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church at (last checked 14 November 2023): https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_c faith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html 9George Carey, “Statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury concerning the Roman Catholic Document ‘Dominus Iesus’” ACNS (Anglican Communion News Service) 05 September 2000 at (last checked 14 November 2023): https://www.anglicannews.org/news/2000/09/statement-by-the-archbishop-ofcanterbury-concerning-the-roman-catholic-document-dominus-iesus.aspx 10Unless otherwise stated, all Bible quotations are according to the English Standard Version (ESV).

11Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, 12th edition

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(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 61 (hereafter as BSLK). Unless otherwise stated, all translations are the author’s. Corresponding references are provided for The Book of Concord, translated and edited by Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 31 [hereafter as Tappert].

12BSLK, 58 = Tappert, 31.

13BSLK, 1053-1059 = Tappert, 610-616.

14BSLK, 62 = Tappert, 33.

15“LCMC History”: https://www.lcmc.net/history (last checked 14 November 2023).

16“History”: https://thenalc.org/history/ (last checked 14 November 2023).

17BSLK, 53 = Tappert, 29.

18BSLK, 58 = Tappert, 31.

19BSLK, 658.54 = Tappert, 417-418.54.

20Luther writes, “Understanding this subject, the discernment of law and gospel, is of the highest necessity for it contains the whole summary of Christian doctrine. Therefore, everyone should learn to discern the law from the gospel, not just in word but also in one's emotions and experience. In other words, one should distinguish well between the two in one's heart and conscience” (WA 40,1:209, 16-19 = LW 26:117). “Therefore, whoever knows well how to discern the gospel from the law should give thanks to God and know himself to be a theologian” (WA 40,1:207, 17-18 = LW 26:115).

21WA 8: 540, 5-20 = LW 36:201. For those latter-day Lutherans who have outgrown Luther, one should recall that according to the Formula of Concord, Luther is not only the foremost teacher (doctor) in the churches of the Augsburg Confession, but also his doctrinal and polemical writings provide the true understanding and meaning of the CA (BSLK, 983, 34; 984, 41 = Tappert, 575.34; 576.41), which Lutherans confess to be founded on God’s word (holy scripture) as a pure, Christian symbol (BSLK, 45.8; 830.4 = Tappert, 25.8; 502.4). As Luther states, “Whoever has crawled out of the water of baptism can boast, that he has been consecrated a priest, bishop, and pope, although not everyone is suited to exercise such an office” (WA 6:408,11-13 = LW 44:129).

22WA 12:190, 19-25 = LW 40:35.

23BSLK, 656.48 = Tappert, 416-417.48.

24The author is grateful to Pastor John Fahning for the simple but highly descriptive ecclesial, hermeneutical categories of remodeling and rebuilding when applied to so-called reform movements within the ELCA. 25See Bernd Moeller and Karl Stackmann, “Luder–Luther–Eleutherius:

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Erwägungen zu Luthers Namen,” in Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, I. Philologisch- Historische Klasse, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981).

26See WA 33:645-674 = LW 23:396-413.

27WA 40, 2:2,17-6,9 = LW 27:5-6 28See Gerhard Ebeling, Wort und Glaube IV - Theologie in den Gegensätzen des Lebens (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1995), 282.

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DISORDERED? BEGINNING TO SORT OUT WHAT MAKES A CALL “PROPER” Julie Smith “Concerning church government it is taught that no one should publicly teach, preach, or administer the sacraments without a proper [public] call.” AC XIV There are a growing number of churches whose pulpits are not currently occupied by someone with the type of credentials that have lately been the norm among Lutherans.

Preachers who do not have a Master of Divinity, or maybe have little theological education of any kind, have been asked by a congregation to assume the office of ministry. Perhaps it is for one weekend while their pastor is on vacation, or perhaps it is open-ended, while the church engages in a traditional call process. Perhaps it is an open-ended contract, for all intents and purposes functioning exactly like any other call the congregation has extended to a pastor.

As these “non-traditional” arrangements become increasingly common, all sorts of questions arise around how we understand call, ordination, and the office of ministry. From

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time to time, mixed up in all of this is a discussion about the priesthood of believers, though this notion is often misapplied.

Indeed, as our churches seek to faithfully carry out their missions in the face of challenging demographics, we find ourselves in a time of discernment. Where do we need to embrace the flexibility our Confessions allow? And yet where do we need to be unyielding in our expectations of Where do we those who would stand before a congregation and need to speak on behalf of the living God?

embrace the flexibility our The Congregational Landscape Confessions allow? And A quick perusal of the website of Lutheran yet where do Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) reveals we need to be that about 75 of the 800 U.S. churches are unyielding in currently searching for a pastor. At first blush, that our does not sound like a bad number. Fewer than 10% expectations of our congregations are in a search process. of those who Meanwhile, 132 pastors are listed as “available for would stand call.” With this apparent low demand and high before a supply, you would think that we should be able to congregation fill these pulpits! and speak on Unfortunately, like unemployment statistics behalf of the which do not include people who have stopped living God? looking for employment, the list of 75 available calls does not include the churches that have given up on the call process or have posted their available position in some other venue. Likewise, the “available for call” list is a bit of a catch-all that includes any LCMC pastor not currently serving in a call. Not all of them are actively looking for a parish call.

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Added to this much less rosy picture are the pastors serving LCMC congregations who have not yet completed the certification process. This is the case in about 10% of our churches. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the primary reason is that these pastors have not completed a Master of Divinity degree.

Adding our vacancies to our non-credentialed pastors means that perhaps as many as 20% of the congregations of LCMC are not currently being served by an installed pastor with the “traditional” credentials. And the number could even be higher since all LCMC congregational data is self-reported.

Now that’s the situation in one denomination, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it is typical of the Lutheran landscape in general. Congregations of all sizes, in all sorts of locations, and with all manner of staffing configurations, are finding that it is taking a long time to fill pastoral vacancies, and filling those vacancies often requires adjusting their expectations. Call committees start their process with a vision of the ideal candidate, but as discouragement sets in, they shift their expectations from “ideal” to “acceptable.” And all too often the final decision quickly moves from “acceptable” to “willing to come here.”

In my work I visit many of these congregations, both when they’re in the call process, and later on when they find themselves dealing with the consequences of a call process that resulted in a mismatch between the congregation and the pastor. It does not take much probing to hear their frustration – frustration with our denominations, with our pastors, and with our seminaries. But when I ask them, as has become my habit, if they have sent anyone to seminary recently, their eyes 28

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quickly shift to the floor.

Becoming a pastor is something you might suggest for someone else’s child, grandchild, or spouse. But it’s not something your own child, grandchild, or spouse should really consider. There remains a certain mystery and respect around the pastoral vocation, and people certainly want a pastor available when the power of darkness erupts in their lives in some way, but that vocation belongs to someone else, from somewhere else.

The long-

standing value placed on rigorous theological education, with classical roots, lived in community, does not readily give way to a more streamlined, proficiencybased education.

The Seminary Landscape

Seminaries have sought to respond to the changing demographics in the church which have resulted in fewer enrollments. Programs have become more flexible — many of them clearly designed for second-career students. Curricula that prioritize proficiency in ministry skills over academic disciplines have become, if not the standard, nonetheless, increasingly common.

Online offerings have proven to be an effective means of delivering theological education to those who simply don’t have the option of moving.

But making these adjustments has not been easy for seminaries. The long-standing value placed on rigorous theological education, with classical roots, lived in community, does not readily give way to a more streamlined, proficiency-based education. Seminaries have wrestled with decisions about language requirements,

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residential requirements, total credit hours, qualifications of instructors, and a host of other curricular matters. Taking seriously the Lutheran commitment to education, while also adapting to changes in the preparedness of incoming students, has proved challenging. The variety of options available to prospective students increases the temptation to further lower, or even eliminate, many academic requirements.

Alongside the traditional Master of Divinity degree, a variety of training programs has emerged, boiling down the heart of theological education to a smaller number of core courses.

These short programs make it possible to fill pulpits more quickly and are also well-suited for bivocational pastors who are carrying out a pastoral call alongside another vocation.

The Denominational Landscape With a growing number of pastoral vacancies and wide variety of theological education options, denominations have sought to keep up with their responsibility to provide some form of oversight over their clergy lists. The North American Lutheran Church’s candidacy program and LCMC’s certification process each attempt to provide a framework for assessing pastoral aptitude. Both church bodies also provide alternative mechanisms (other than the MDiv degree) by which a person can be trained to serve as a pastor in his/her local congregation.

As we have seen throughout the history of denominations, no process is foolproof. Individuals make it through the various systems and prove, often too late, that they are not

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adequately prepared or do not have the appropriate temperament to serve in parish ministry. The NALC’s process places a higher burden on the candidacy program, while LCMC’s places a higher burden on congregational call committees. Each mode has its strengths and weaknesses. The strengths are rarely noticed however, while the weaknesses are glaring anytime there is a failure in the system.

In both of these processes, the goal is to identify the correct set of criteria for assessing pastoral candidates. Some combination of education and character formation tends to be the key, with education, of course, more easily measured and therefore, often receiving the higher priority. There may be an assumption that seminaries themselves are weeding out candidates based on character issues that surface, an assumption that hearkens back to an older model between seminaries and the denominations they served. But with the North American Lutheran Seminary as the only official denominational seminary in either church body, it is unreasonable to assume that seminaries are taking on a sort of unofficial role in candidacy/certification.

Rugged Terrain As congregations, seminaries and training schools, and denominations operate within this constantly shifting landscape, we are brought back again and again to the commitments of our confessional documents. Article XIV of the

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Augsburg Confession insists on a “proper” call for preaching, teaching, and administering the sacraments. Sorting out what that means is neither easy nor new. It has been part of the work of Lutheran churches for five hundred years, and we haven’t always been especially good at it.

Almost since the beginning churches in the Reformation tradition have had difficulty establishing a solid, and perhaps we could say, appropriately high doctrine of ministry in the shadow of more Roman Catholic understandings of holy orders. Lutheranism in particular has vacillated between a low understanding of ministry in terms of purely functional operations, where ministry is necessary merely for the sake of “good order,” and ostensibly “higher” views supported by episcopal and Roman claims to ontological status. In the former case, ministry is a function assigned to one merely for the sake of order. The called and ordained minister tends to be looked on as a more or less dispensable “hired hand” of the congregation. In the latter, the called and ordained ministry acquires something of an ontological status necessary and “constitutive” for the church. The clergy are the “real” church, or at least church makers. The question from which discussion must start is whether it is possible to arrive at a view of ministry that avoids the pitfalls of these two alternatives.1 Gerhard Forde wrote those words more than thirty years 32

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ago. I wonder how he would assess the progress of the two church bodies served by St. Paul Lutheran Seminary. The next sentence probably answers that. “In the terms of this study, a major contributing factor to this constant vacillation is a failure to comprehend just what ministry is and what it is supposed to accomplish.”2 This is the heart of our problem. If we’re unclear about the office of ministry, we will never be clear about the proper qualifications for that office. If we’re unclear what Gerhard Forde pastors ought to be doing, we will not be able to assess whether they are prepared to do it.

But lo and behold, the Confessions have something to tell us on this matter! “To obtain such faith, God instituted the office of preaching, giving the gospel and the sacraments. Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith, where and when he wills, in those who hear the gospel” (AC V). The office of ministry is about delivering the Word that creates faith. It is not about being CEO of the local franchise of the denomination. It is not about pointing to oneself as the source of good order. It is not about being the most educated person in the room. It is not about being a functionary, necessary for certain proceedings to be legitimate. It is about faith. It is about election. It is about the salvation of souls.

For ministry to be “proper,” for it to be “ordered,” it must be ministry of the Gospel. It must have, at its center, a recognition that sinners are put right with God by faith alone through Christ alone. It must be driven, in all things, to share this wondrous Good News. It can never be focused on personal power. Nor can it be focused on congregational autonomy.

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What might an ordering of ministry that placed the Gospel at the center look like? What might a candidacy or certification process look like if, above all else, it was committed to sending out faithful witnesses to Christ? And what might it look like if it didn’t take those things as a given, but recognized that they must be fought for, relentlessly? What might a seminary curriculum look like if every single academic element were intentionally, explicitly serving the mission of the Gospel? Every systematic theology class, every history class, every Bible class, every educational outcome, every assignment, focused, not simply on demonstrating knowledge, but on developing the capacity to be a faithful and effective messenger.

There is not a pat answer to any of that. The ever-changing “secret sauce” recipe that results in “proper” ministry can’t be etched in stone. Nor is it easy to identify what qualifies a candidate for ministry. It is not so simple as, “these classes were passed,” or “this certificate was completed,” or “this essay answered all of our questions correctly.” And, even worse, it is dangerously irresponsible to assume that a person providing the necessary answers to a credentialing body is going to actually carry out the ministry of the Gospel once they are out there in the church.

For ministry to be proper it must be public and to be public means to be subject to scrutiny. Whether that scrutiny is by the local church council, by colleagues and neighbors, or by bishops and overseers, doesn’t finally matter. What matters is that any person who would be called into the office of ministry would accept that their work is subject to public scrutiny and would not invoke the authority of their office to avoid this

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scrutiny.

A disordered ministerial office is not one in which the preacher does not have the proper credentials. It is one in which the preacher is subject to no authority. It is not, automatically, disordered for a congregation to call a pastor who has not been approved by their denominational system. It is disordered if the one they have called fills her parishioners’ ears with something other than Christ. It is not disordered for a congregation to raise up from within their midst one who will tend to the pastoral office despite having no The church formal theological education. It is disordered to be has a calling dismissive of the value of continuing to be engaged in the world. in learning, no matter how many letters you do or We are do not have behind your name. It is not, witnesses to automatically, disordered for someone other than Christ Jesus. the ordained to preach and administer the That is our sacrament. It is disordered to interpret the main job. priesthood of all believers as meaning that Wherever we everyone serves in the public office of ministry as are not his/her vocation. faithfully The church has a calling in the world. We are tending to witnesses to Christ Jesus. That is our main job. that, our Wherever we are not faithfully tending to that, our ministry is ministry is disordered. We bring order to ministry disordered. by increasing our investment in one another. And that means increasing our investment in every form of theological education, from Sunday School to doctoral programs. It also happens when congregations know when their preacher is delivering the goods, and holding him accountable when he doesn’t, regardless of his credentials.

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I’d love to end this essay with a five-point plan for how to accomplish this, but that would obscure the truth about life in the church — about life in Christ in a world in the grip of sin. Everything in our world is working against faith, which means it is working against the church carrying out its mission. But if we keep the main thing ever before us, if we relentlessly refuse to get dragged into the ditches, if we can make our concerns about who is preaching take a back seat to our concerns about what is being preached, then we will start to develop the tools to navigate the landscape in which we find ourselves.

This will not be orderly in the “spreadsheets and checkboxes” sense of orderly. It will not be proper in the sense of “predictable and uniform.” What it will be is the radical freedom of the Gospel unleashed upon the world for the sake of the salvation of souls. But that’s often a messy business. And while our every instinct is to contain the mess with rules and systems, the Gospel isn’t interested in containing the mess.

Because through the proclamation of the Gospel, Christ Jesus actually cleans up messes, brings life out of death, and that’s what proper, ordered ministry is all about.

Rev. Julie A. Smith is Coordinator for Districts and Fellowship Groups the Lutheran Congregation in Mission for Christ (LCMC) and is co-founder of St. Paul Lutheran Seminary.

Notes: 1Gerhard Forde, Theology Is for Proclamation. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,

1990), 179.

2Ibid., 179.

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THE MINISTRY IN BABYLON AND ROME Roy A. Harrisville, III The Exile

“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:5-7).

When the Israelites went into exile into Babylon in 587 BC, they doubted whether they could be the people of the one true God in the city of their conquerors who worshipped false idols. Babylon was as paganized a city as one could imagine.

Temples to its gods and pagan carvings and bas-reliefs throughout the city declared in no uncertain terms that this was a city of common spirituality for that age. The Israelites were religious interlopers, idiosyncratic devotees to a singular God who seemed to the rest of the world morally rigid and spiritually confining. No doubt the children of the conquerors threw verbal invectives freely at their Jewish counterparts in 37

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the back alleys.

How was one to carry on with any proper devotion to the Lord in a place like that? What was a faithful person to do? Have kids - lots of them. Then they’ll have kids - lots of them.

First things first: Multiply! Just like the first commandment in Genesis 1, they were to increase. They were not to fade away like the ten lost tribes after the first national disaster in 722 BC. Having children would not only be a sign of strength, but of hope for the future. It would mean that the depressed and dejected ones who had seen their loved ones butchered, their land ruined, and then watched it all fade into the distance behind them as they were dragged to a foreign city, could still have hope for the future. Their faith in this idiosyncratic God could still live in a hostile land. Not only could it live, it could also thrive, grow, increase, and multiply. That was the first thing.

Babylonian Talmud Next, they were to seek the welfare of those who taunted them, spat on them, belittled them, and treated them like foreign scum. Because in serving the welfare of the conquering city, the Jews would find their own welfare. They would find that as they strove to better the neighborhood in which they lived, when they cared for their neighbors and their neighbors’ children, when they lived moral lives and became examples of healthy living to their neighbors, then their neighbors just might sit up and take notice and realize that far from bringing in a rabble of needy and sour losers, they had actually let in a powerful force for good that benefitted all.

In those 40 years of exile the synagogue system emerged, along with the Babylonian Talmud, and the realization that the 38

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God of their ancestors was not limited to the shores of the Mediterranean or the Jordan. The Jews were then allowed (by the conqueror of their conquerors) to go home. They had multiplied, they had preserved their religious heritage, and they had survived to carry on the word of a God who had manipulated history to keep them alive. They had sought the welfare of the foreign city and in doing so, found their own.

The Early Christians

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them” (Luke 6:27-31).1 When the early Christians first emerged in the Roman world, they were mostly the outcasts of society. Women, slaves, tradesmen, lower class folks who had little status in that status-conscious society flocked to a new faith that held out the promise of loving treatment and hope for all. At first, they were stoned to death, driven from their homes, laughed at and mocked much as their religious ancestors in Babylon must have been. They were hunted down, brought before the courts, and forced to sacrifice a pinch of incense to the genius of the emperor or suffer the consequences. Their own neighborhoods in which they had grown up and played with 39

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their childhood friends now became dark and foreboding places in which they had to sneak off in the night to assemble clandestinely at someone’s home to worship a God who had been executed by the state. In a Roman catacomb beneath the eternal city there was a piece of graffiti (now in a museum) depicting a Christian kneeling before a man with a donkey’s head who is being crucified. Below it the inscription read, “Alexander worships his god.”

It was not until the late second century and mid-third century during plagues that devastated the Roman world that the Romans began to witness the good that Christians did. The Christians saved babies that had been thrown on the garbage heaps, took them home and cared for them. When city dwellers fled the cities in batches to escape the plagues, the Christians stayed and ministered not only to their own but to their pagan neighbors. Yes, they died too. But they survived as well. They taught the Romans that charity does not extend merely to one’s family and locale, but could spread beyond the home to those one had never even seen. They refused to swap their wives with other men and led moral lives of decency and respect. To be sure, the Diocletian persecution at the beginning of the fourth century was a time of terror for the Church in which priests, Bibles, and churches were burned. But by that time the Christians had shown enough love and caring toward their neighbors that in a few short years afterward they would be declared a Diocletian legitimate religious fellowship by the new emperor. They too had sought the welfare of the cities in which they lived.

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Christians Today Christians today have much in common with Christians of the first century since we also now live in hostile neighborhoods in which we grew up. A long time ago we could expect our neighbors to respect the Church, its pastors, bishops, teachers, leaders, and its moral expectations. Now when people look at a clergy collar they have visions of pedophilia in their heads, or worse, pure apathy. A few still honor the institution, but most are abandoning it for an individualized spirituality that has no substance, no form, and no meaning - only one’s convenience and pleasure. Babylon is in our backyards. How is one to minister in this context?

Should we rail against this increasingly paganized culture of ours? Should we raise our voices in protest and insist that all our neighbors follow our lead? Shall we look down our noses at these naïve fools who think that they can build a healthy society on romantic emotionalism? We could cave into the pressures of society and “go with the flow” to preserve our own skins. Perhaps we could add more colors to the liturgical calendar, buy fancier chasubles, and add a lot more candles.

Those solutions appeal to some. They might even garner attention for a short time, but in the end, it is not liturgical formalism, religious bludgeoning, or cultural assimilation that will turn things around. The outward forms of religion are not our savior. Clothing does not make the minister. Arrogant insistence only breeds resistance and following the path of least resistance is a wide road that leads to death.

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Thousands of churches are closing their doors each year in this country. The younger generations are abandoning the Christian faith in droves. The COVID-19 pandemic was a disaster for any religious fellowship that met in person once a week. The sexual revolution, which is merely the re-emergence of ancient pagan sexuality, has caused the Church enormous agony and divided once healthy COVID-19 congregations and denominations. Thousands upon thousands who once attended worship services have simply vanished into thin air. Where once the pews were filled with young faces, now only grey hairs can be seen from the balcony.

Satan worshipping clubs are emerging now in our schools.

Followers of witchcraft and nature worship are growing…

Christians are going into exile in their own land.

We’ve been here before. This is nothing new. Christians did not enjoy the favor of the state in the first century. Quite the opposite. Society was very hostile. People spread rumors that we ate babies behind closed doors. Nero blamed the fire of Rome on Christians because nobody liked us. We were convenient scapegoats. All but one of the apostles met a cruel death. Martyrdom was common for the Church in those days and if trends continue it may be again.

Human history moves in cycles and the cultural pendulum swings back and forth. When once a mighty empire ruled a quadrant of the globe, now only ruins and murky memory remain. Babylon is no more. The imperium populi Romani is no more. Constantinople is no more. Indeed, both Judaism and Christianity have witnessed the rise and fall of empires,

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societies, and cultures: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Alexander the Great, Rome, the Sassanids, the Ottomans, the Spanish, French, German, and British empires have all come and gone.

Instead of the usual American mindset that is fixed on immediate convenience and gratification, the Church must think in terms of years, decades, and generations. Ours is an eternal faith that time cannot eliminate. Like the ancient Jews in Babylon, we must focus our attention on the long-term.

After all, it took a thousand years for Christianity to take hold among my ancestors in Scandinavia. Though St. Paul may have reached Rome by the end of his lifetime, it took many more lifetimes of constant Christian preaching, teaching, and martyrdom to see any spiritual change in northern Europe.

Even though the Church was declared a legal Roman religion during the reign of Constantine, and later became the favored religion under Theodosius, its penetration into the thickskulled Vikings took a lot more than a mere hierarchical pronouncement. It took faith, devotion, and sacrifice.

It still takes those qualities to establish and maintain a Church. It always has. It is when we lose faith in faith, lose faith in the Word, lose faith in a certain future that has already broken in upon us in the death and resurrection of Christ that we lose the Church. It will not be in the trappings of the Church, the fancy clothing and ceremony, the proper way to hold the processional cross and political statements of Church conventions that will sustain the fellowship of the faithful. All that appeals to some but does not feed them. It does not nourish them. Authoritarian formalism will not conquer a world for Christ, but faith, hope, and love can.

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None of the apostles were ordained. None were highly educated. None held status in society that The ministry commanded respect from their neighbors or even of the Church their own colleagues. St. Paul’s life as Saul the in this 21st Pharisee was a stunning success from the century standpoint of common sense and formal religion. context of But he considered that life to be worthless garbage war, hatred, in comparison to the suffering and constant danger drug to which he was subjected as a follower of Jesus. overdoses, The appeal of success theology, which is a shallow loneliness, version of the theology of glory, cannot stand up to sexual the hostility of society, neither can arguing about confusion, distance communion and whether God can move weekend through fiber-optic cable. shootings, st The ministry of the Church in this 21 century abortion-oncontext of war, hatred, drug overdoses, loneliness, demand, sexual confusion, weekend shootings, abortion-on- child slavery, demand, child slavery, pornography, and empty pornography, churches cannot be pursued through formalistic and empty concerns about when to snap the wafer at churches communion. But they can be pursued by cannot be proclaiming the forgiveness of sins and freedom of pursued Christ that the sacrament delivers. They can be through addressed by the announcement of an eternal love formalistic that no hate can destroy, not by political concerns statements or ceremonial genuflection. It is the about when substance of the gospel that is at stake, not its to snap the trappings and packaging. The ministry must be a wafer at ministry in substance, not form. communion.

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The battle for the true gospel is a constant one. St. Paul fought that battle countless times. The Corinthians twisted his words and went off the rails. The Galatians listened to different preachers and tried to smother the gospel with legalistic ketchup and mustard. Paul responded with a downto-earth theology that brought the Corinthians up short but gave them a marvelous vision of resurrection. He scolded those witless Galatians but gave them a picture of freedom the likes of which they had never dreamed. All of it was within the context of social ostracism, persecution, and death. Yet, in that awful context the Word of God came through slowly, painstakingly, inexorably to reshape hearts and minds directed not toward themselves but their neighbors, with a new sense of liberty that Thomas Jefferson never grasped.

The ancient Israelites survived in Babylon because they took the advice of their prophet and sought the welfare of the city in which they were captive. The ancient Christians survived with a bold faith in a scandalous God who gave them the courage to love their hateful neighbors and do good to those who slaughtered them. It was not institutional integrity or adherence to ceremony or an historic episcopate that changed the hearts of their oppressors. It was not stubborn religious arrogance. It was the presence of the Holy Spirit with deeds of love and mercy that made the kingdom of God break in upon the souls of their persecutors. It was the outlandish proclamation of a God so loving and kind as to give Himself in sacrifice. It was the teaching of a righteous mercy that was bestowed, given, granted, not earned.

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It is the Function that Counts, Not the Status The New Testament does not advocate for one single form of ministry. To claim that it does is to put it in a straitjacket that doesn’t fit. To be sure, leaders must emerge in every fellowship so that good order is maintained, and false teaching does not emerge among the members. But it is not the form or institution of the ministry that matters. It is ministry itself. That the Word and Sacraments are faithfully preached and administered with respect is the primary task of every minister who is called to that office. But it is not the office that matters.

It is not the status that counts. Let the ancient Romans adhere to such a system. It’s not for Christians. As St. Paul wrote, “the form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor 7:31).

When we think about the ministry, it is the If we attempt function that counts, not the status. The ministry to exalt the of reconciliation and redemption is what counts. ministry, it Moreover, it is the manner of that function that will be matters. To seek the welfare of the cities and humbled by towns in which we live we must discard “in-yourthe very ones face” evangelism or any other condescending who crave its practices. If we are to be a part of a resurgence of exaltation Christian faith in this country, we cannot lord it because they over our listeners and insist that they dance to our are finite tune. When we become authoritarians in our creatures who religious devotion, we become just another attempt a legalism among so very many. mistaken If we attempt to exalt the ministry, it will be guarantee of humbled by the very ones who crave its exaltation the infinite.

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because they are finite creatures who attempt a mistaken guarantee of the infinite. Ministers can guarantee nothing beyond speaking the Word. The reaction to that Word cannot and must not be in our hands. As ministers of the Word, we merely cast our bread upon the waters to see what will come back. What comes back is in God’s hands.

Too many ministers think of themselves as “gate keepers.”

They think they must protect the sacraments, protect the worship, protect the Word. But that is to confine the sacraments and worship, to confine the Word to human agency. The Word is not human, and its acceptance cannot be guaranteed through human effort. The office of the ministry is not for the purpose of ensuring the holiness of that Word or the holiness of worship or the holiness of anything. The office of the ministry exists to proclaim in down-to-earth and feeble words an amazingly divine Word that has the power of recreation. Miters and crosiers can neither deliver nor guarantee that.

It was the Word that created the Church. That Word was spoken by everyday speakers who had no standing in society, no respect, and no political or legal power whatsoever. Those times are returning, and we must change our thinking to meet them. As one nominal Christian president once remarked in a very troubled time, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present…We must disenthrall ourselves….”2 We must throw off the old memories of Christendom. We must relinquish the old longing for social standing. Only through the gift of humble and persistent faith, and the

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courage that comes with it to preach the Word in season and out, can we hope to continue the movement that Jesus started. But it won’t work with fancy clothes and collars. It won’t work with formalism. It will only work when we seek the welfare of the city and minister with Christ’s mercy to those who hate us.

Roy A. Harrisville III, PhD, is a retired NALC/LCMC pastor who has taught New Testament at several institutions and has published two books with a third coming out this year – The Faith of the New Testament: A Pauline Trajectory, Pickwick, 2023.

Notes: 1The ESV Study Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles,

2008). The ESV translation is used throughout this essay.

2Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, The Abraham Lincoln Association Springfield, Illinois. Vol. V, Roy P. Basler, editor. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 537.

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THE CHURCH’S MINISTRY OF WORD AND SACRAMENT Virgil Thompson Among Lutherans the question of the church’s ministry, surprisingly, at least to me, appears to never have gone away.

Not in five centuries. To the extent that I am familiar with the history of our tradition, the question of what constitutes the church’s ministry seems to have arisen in every generation since the sixteenth century. The present generation appears to be no exception. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising. As Roy Harrisville wrote in 1990, just after the merger of three Lutheran bodies in the United States (which two decades later fractured into at least four Lutheran bodies in the United States), “The question of ministry will not die because it is linked to events in which the Christian community believes it encounters God.”1 Still, while what fashions itself as Christian ministry in the local community may be all over the map—not to say in some places no longer on the map at all—and while historians may quibble over the linguistics of the Augsburg Confession, the original Lutheran confessors give, to my ear, clear voice to their view of what constitutes

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the church’s ministry. Sufficiently clear, and compelling, I can only ask, “Show me the dotted line.” I wish to add my name to the list of confessors.

In the year 1530 at the city of Augsburg, Lutherans were called before the emperor to answer how, when, and where, and to what end, they had encountered God, so as “Through the to justify wreaking such havoc in church, realm, Word and the and society. They took full opportunity to drop the sacraments as bomb of God’s justification of the ungodly apart through from any worthiness or merit of sinners, at all! We instruments believe, they confessed, that “human beings the Holy Spirit is given, who cannot be justified before God by their own powers, merits, or works. But they are justified as a effects faith where and gift on account of Christ through faith when they when it believe that they are received into grace and that their sins are forgiven.”2 Further, they did not fail to pleases God in those who include just exactly how they had come by this hear the faith. “Through the Word and the sacraments as gospel, that is through instruments the Holy Spirit is given, who to say, in effects faith where and when it pleases God in those who those who hear the gospel, that is to say, in those hear God, not who hear God, not on account of our own merits on account of 3 but on account of Christ.” I can’t imagine, nor do I our own wish to imagine, a more promising answer to the merits but on question of the church’s ministry in the present account of generation of faith or any generation. I can only Christ.” seek to imagine what the answer to the question

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of the church’s ministry looks and sounds like here and now. In this essay I hope to treat the question in two parts. In part one, I aim to show that the church’s ministry of word and sacrament is practically synonymous with the promise of God’s unmerited redemption of sinners still bound in sin. In part two, I aim to show what the proclamation of that promise looks and sounds like, or ought to look and sound like, in the present age.

Admittedly, readers may find some overlap between the two parts.

The ”Ad-ministers” First, I want to be clear with respect to whom God calls to execute his merciful, reconciling affection for the ungodly. The “ad-ministers” of God’s gracious redemption of sinners are nothing but sinners themselves. They have no leg to stand on before God, but the forgiveness of Christ. The divine strategy seems to be something like “it takes one to know one.”

Baptized into Christ and his saving promise, these “administers” come in two varieties. The first variety are the nonordained sinners who God authorizes by their baptism to take the good news of his “justification apart from any merit or worthiness of theirs at all,” to the sinners who happen to be their children, parents, brothers, sisters, and friends. The second variety are the sinners whom God has authorized by their baptism to take the good news of God’s “justification apart from law” to their children, parents, brothers, sisters, and

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friends; and whom the church has called, educated, qualified, and ordained to the public office of administering God’s promise by means of God’s word and sacraments. In other words, the promise that lies at the heart of the church’s ministry is God’s promise to liberate sinners from life as a do-it-yourself project in self-justification, that they may live free, by faith in God and by love in the neighbor. As is the case in the Augsburg Confession, so in this essay, the focus is on the shape, nature, and function of the public office of the ministry, those ordained by the church to administer Augsburg Confession God’s saving promise publicly.4 Ministry, the Means of Delivering God’s Gracious Promise to and for Sinners It is commonplace for Lutherans to speak about this ministry of the church as the ministry of word and sacrament. So far, so good. The church’s ministry of word and sacrament is the means by which God delivers the promise of his forgiveness and life, for where there is forgiveness there is life. As the first Lutherans (and Lutherans ever since) explained to the emperor and anyone else interested to know, “We cannot obtain forgiveness of sin and righteousness before God through our merit, work, or satisfactions, but that we receive forgiveness of sin and become righteous before God out of grace for Christ’s sake through faith.”5 The very next article of the confession

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nails to the church door where and when God delivers his saving promise for the sake of faith. “To obtain such faith God instituted the office of preaching, giving the gospel and the sacraments. Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith, where and when he will, in those who hear the gospel.”6 Whatever this ministry is to look like in the present age, it should be clear from all outward appearances that God is the active doer, and believers are the passive recipients.

As the means of delivering God’s promised forgiveness and life, word and sacrament function similar to the way in which a green traffic signal delivers the message, “permission to proceed, onward.” Word and sacrament are practically synonymous with the good news which they deliver. They mean what they say, and they say what they mean. As Luther explains in the Small Catechism, “Baptism is . . . water used according to God’s command and connected with God’s word…It brings about forgiveness of sins, redeems from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe it, as the words of and promise of God declare.” Similarly, of the Lord’s Supper, Luther explains, “The words ‘given for you’ and ‘shed for you for the forgiveness of sin’ show us that forgiveness of sin, life, and salvation are given to us in the sacrament through these words.”

With respect to what this looks like and sounds like in the life of the church today, the Catechism’s emphasis on “used according to God’s command and connected with God’s word,” is the critical piece in Luther’s explanation. And when it comes 53

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to the definition of “according to God’s command and connected with God’s word,” one need look no further than the Noah Webster of faith, which is to say, Saint Paul of Tarsus.

To the churches in Rome and to the churches of Christ in every place and time, Paul declares: the word that God wants proclaimed to sinners, apart from any worthiness or merit of theirs at all, is his gracious promise of life and salvation, here and now and forevermore! “But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed . . . the Paul declares: righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ the word that for all who believe. For there is no distinction, God wants since all have sinned . . . they are now justified by proclaimed to his grace as a gift” (3:21-24). sinners, apart The sin to which Paul refers here is the original from any sin, failing to trust God’s promise to give life and worthiness or merit of theirs salvation out of his “pure, fatherly and divine at all, is his goodness and mercy, without any merit or gracious worthiness of mine at all.” This promise lies at the promise of life heart of faith, as Luther explains the church’s and salvation, confession in each and every article of the Apostles’ Creed. Article one: God creates, sustains, here and now and and guards the human in life freely out of his forevermore! fatherly and divine goodness and mercy. Article two: God redeems sinners, lost and condemned, by giving himself in Christ to and for the very humanity that betrays unbelief and alienation from him. Article three: God freely grants faith through the Holy Spirit’s proclamation of Christ’s

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favor precisely to and for those who confess that “they cannot come to Christ or believe in him by their own reason, strength, or will.” And of course, the Holy Spirit works through the means of all-too-human preachers in the same way that God the Creator works through all-too-human parents to bring forth new creatures.

This news of God’s saving promise, apart from any worthiness or merit of the recipients, is the good news that God is determined to publish to and for sinners by means of the church’s ministry of word and sacrament. For sinners! Faith is neither the prerequisite nor the condition of receiving God’s saving promise. There are no qualifications to be met and no conditions to be kept. God’s promise to be the saving God of sinners comes apart from any merit or worthiness of the sinners at all. Proclamation of the promise via preaching, baptism, and Lord’s Supper is the means by which God, where and when it pleases him to do so, takes sinners away from their unbelief. And in the same breath he brings forth the new creature who trusts God to be God for them and not against them. In the Large Catechism, Luther explains the promise of God’s First Commandment—“I am the Lord, your God; you shall have no others. See to it that you let me alone be your God, and never search for another . . . Whatever good thing you lack, look to me for it and seek it from me, and whenever you suffer misfortune and distress crawl to me and cling to me.

I, I myself, will give you what you need and help you out of every danger.” Faith arises from and clings to this unconditional promise of God. 55

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The Ministry of Word and Sacrament Saint Paul in his letter to the Roman Christians not only articulates powerfully the saving promise of Christ, but also declares that getting the news out to sinners is the one mission to which God calls his church. In the letter he goes on to point out the obvious to the Roman Christians and to Christians of every age and place. If people are to hear God’s saving promise for the sake of believing and living in it, then someone must proclaim it to them. As Paul puts it, “But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? . . .

And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?

And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’” (Rom 10:14-15). To the Corinthians, Paul refers to those sent by God to deliver his saving promise as ambassadors. “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Timothy Wengert himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ” (2 Cor 5:17-20). I can’t imagine a better way to articulate what it means to be Christian. Timothy Wengert spells out the significance of this for the Christian’s

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ministry. In his book, The Augsburg Confession: Renewing Lutheran Faith and Practice, he writes that the church’s ministry consists of “continually witnessing to God’s grace for all people, we place our neighbors in God’s merciful hands, not in their own hands or (worse yet) [in] our judgmental hands.”7 The church’s ministry is to publicly deliver this divine service to and for believers. One sinner to another: “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly . . . God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us . . . Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life” (Rom 5:6-10). God’s unconditional promise—delivered with no ifs, ands, or buts, no prerequisites to be met, no conditions to be kept—is the believer’s comfort, consolation, hope and freedom to be. As Luther used to encourage his timid friends in faith as they take up God’s daily call to care for all creation, including the neighbor with whom it is shared, “Sin boldly and believe more boldly still in the saving promise of Christ’s forgiveness!”

In such faith, the Christian is free to take up God’s call to serve the neighbor in need. God does not reserve his call to serve the wellbeing of creation for Christians only. Regardless of a person’s faith or lack of faith, God requires all people to take up their places in life as the opportunity to serve the

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well-being of creation. As the story of our creation is told in Genesis, God puts the human in the garden “to till and keep it.”

Not that God intends that human life should be “all work and no play.” God adds that the human is created for the enjoyment of creation. “You may freely eat,” he declares to the first humans. But man is also created to care for creation. This applies to all humanity from youngest to oldest, male and female, whatever color, creed, or nationality.

Any work— Children, the world around, are to serve their from created purpose by respecting and loving their politician to parents along with others charged with their care. soldier to physician to Parents are to serve by caring for their children along with the neighborhood. Everyone is called to trash collector to teacher to serve the neighbor by speaking well of them, house father helping them to improve and protect their to CEO—by property and income, helping them in all of life’s needs, and by generally encouraging each other to which a person earns fulfill their responsibilities to one another. Any a living, work—from politician to soldier to physician to provides the trash collector to teacher to house father to CEO— opportunity by which a person earns a living, provides the to heed God’s opportunity to heed God’s call to serve the good of call to serve creation. In fact, regardless of one’s faith and the good of regardless of one’s inclination or willingness to creation. serve, God insists upon it. Like it or not, find fulfilment in it or not, have enthusiasm for it or not, the human being, by virtue of the Creator’s call is meant to serve the

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well-being of God’s creation.

The ministry or service to which God dedicates Christ’s church is the ministry of keeping people free to take up their vocational service of creation’s well-being. The church is to go public with the saving good news of Christ. It is to let out (ahead of time) God’s final judgment of the believer, to go public for anyone with ears to hear—in fact, to give people ears to hear—to administer by means of word and sacrament, God’s unconditional promise of forgiveness, reconciling sinners to God, neighbor, along with the rest of creation, for Jesus’ sake. The sin that God forgives is the sin of using life to justify the self, so that now sinners may freely serve the well-being of creation and the neighbor with whom it is shared.

In the Lutheran tradition this ministry is entrusted to individuals who are called, educated, certified, and ordained to deliver God’s unconditional promise of forgiveness and life, to speak God’s twofold word and administer God’s sacraments. In fact, as Lutherans declare in their confession, “no one should publicly teach, preach, or administer the sacraments without a proper [public] call.”8 Those original Lutheran confessors appreciated that “teaching, preaching, and administering the sacraments” for the sake of faith in God’s boundlessly merciful promise involves a “boots on the ground” acumen, learned from their predecessors, who can teach them to discern and administer, for the sake of faith, the distinction between God’s accusing demand and God’s saving promise.

In 1990, another time of considerable uncertainty among

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Lutherans with respect to the church’s ministry, Gerhard Forde wrote, clearly and compellingly, about the nature of ordination to the public office of the church’s ministry. The circumstances which give rise to the question today differ in some respects from the circumstances which prompted his essay. But, nonetheless, I continue to find his essay compelling and relevant to the present time, in which congregational and pastoral ministries are all over the map.9 In that Lutheran essay, Forde begins by observing that the theology “ambiguity and uncertainty in the office of saying begins, proceeds, and the gospel are rooted in the ambiguity and ends with a uncertainty about what in fact is be said and what twofold word, such saying involves and is to accomplish. What is the one with needed,” he goes on to say, “is to work out a view respect to of ministry consequent to and consistent with the God as the fundamental theological doctrines that gave birth saving God of to the Lutheran movement in the first place.”10 sinners, the Lutheran theology begins, proceeds, and other with ends with a twofold word, the one with respect to respect to the God as the saving God of sinners, the other with human as respect to the human as sinner who does not want sinner who God to be God but wants to be in the place of God. does not want As Paul declares, from beginning to end, these two God to be God theological facts underlie the biblical story from but wants to Genesis to Revelation: “there is no distinction: for be in the place of God. all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the

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redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:22-24).

This is the good news that informs Luther’s explanation of the church. It is to say, “I believe that I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts and kept me in the one true faith, just as he does for the whole Christian church on earth.”11 God is the doer of the saving deed, the sinners are the recipients of God’s saving deed in Christ. For starters, this fundamental truth of the gospel should be prominently in evidence in the church’s Sunday morning divine service. God is the doer. Believers are the recipients. The ordained minister is there, as the Lord’s authorized administrator, to deliver the goods. The ministers of the church are not there to advance private opinions or political agendas of whatever stripe. They are not there to talk endlessly about the prospect of God delivering salvation at some unknown time and place. They are to deliver it in word and sacrament, here and now! They are there to deliver Christ’s promise of forgiveness and life, for where there is forgiveness, there is life.

The point is simply to get on with it. To give the undeserved gift without condition. As Jesus, after he sent the self-righteous scurrying to the hills, gave God’s gift of unmerited forgiveness to the woman caught in adultery. “Is there no one to condemn you. Neither do I. Go and live.” As Paul gave the gift to the Roman sinners and to the sinners of every time and place, “At the right time God gave himself hook, line and sinker for

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the ungodly.”

The church seems to have grown so timid or uncertain about it. Listening to the church’s ministers, ordained and nonordained alike, I often have the impression, for example, that they feel compelled to protect the sacraments from sinners. To make certain, before delivering the goods, that the candidate for baptism has the proper desire and the ready Listening to resolve to properly appreciate the gift and the church’s produce the good works of love. But, of course, if that had been the terms of Christ’s public ministry, ministers, ordained and the church would have neither word nor non-ordained sacrament to bother with. It was on the night alike, I often when he was betrayed, that Jesus took the bread have the and the wine, and declared, “This is my body impression, given for you and my blood shed for you for for example, the forgiveness of sin.” God’s gracious redemption that they feel comes apart from any worthiness or merit of compelled to sinners. That must be gotten through to the protect the theological head and hardened heart of the sacraments church or there simply is no future for it or for from sinners. sinners.

The point is to let fly with unbounded confidence the promise of Christ for sinners. In the words of Luther’s Small Catechism, “in this church, day after day, God abundantly forgives all sins—mine and those of all believers.” The result of it was, and is, religion turned upside down, not harping on what sinners are to do for self, God, and neighbor—get faith

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and good works or else. But what God in Christ is doing for sinners here and now in the sounding of the absolution, free and clear, in the promise connected to the splashing water of the baptismal font, in that same promise given and poured out, in the bread and the wine of the Lord’s Supper. As Jesus—to the considerable consternation of the grumblers on the straight and narrow road to Jericho—declared to that great sinner, Zacchaeus: “There you are, you old rascal, up the creek without a paddle, no way back to God, burned all your bridges.

Well, I’ve been looking high and low for you. And now, at long last, I’ve found you. Today I must come to your house for I’ve been sent out to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to bring you home to God and neighbor.” And then to the assembled crowd, ever simul iustus et peccator, Jesus publicly declared, “Today, salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:1-10, paraphrase). So there it is, the good news to be cherished and believed, and delivered by way of the church’s ministry of word and sacrament, against every damned thing to the contrary, against sin, death, and the power of the devil.

If there is to be faith in the present day, then the church must learn to speak ad modum scripturae, “I declare you just for Jesus’ sake, go and live.” It must learn to administer the baptism and the Lord’s Supper in the name and Spirit of Christ.

Freely, in the promise of sweeping up sinners by faith in God’s forgiveness and life, for where there is forgiveness there

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is life. The point is for the church to get on with it. No ifs, and, or buts, no prerequisites to be met and no conditions to be kept, just deliver word and sacrament as the means of delivering sinners into the merciful promise of Christ for them, as Jesus declared to that theological fussbudget, Nicodemus, new creatures, born from above, born free, free to live by trust in God and his saving promise and by love in the neighbor in his or her need.

In an Advent sermon Luther got the sound of it in perfect pitch and the picture of it in dazzling glory: “That the gospel is preached and your King comes is not due to your power or merit, God must send it out of pure grace. Thus there is no greater wrath of God than where he withholds the gospel and nothing but sin, error, and darkness remain . . . ‘Behold, that is, your King comes,’ You do not seek him, he seeks you. You do not find him, he finds you. For the preachers come from him, not from you. The sermon comes from him, not from you.

Faith comes from him, not from you. And everything that faith works in you comes from him, not from you so that you see clearly where he does not come, there you remain on the outside, and that where the gospel is absent there is no God, but only sin and corruption, even though free will does, suffers, works, lives as it wants and pleases.”12 The point of the ministry is to get on with it. To deliver the unconditional promise of Christ for sinners bound in sin, that they may live, forgiven and free, by faith in God and by love in the neighbor.

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Rev. Virgil Thompson retired from Gonzaga University as a Senior Lecturer in biblical studies. In retirement he has continued to serve the church as Managing Editor of Lutheran Quarterly, Adjunct Professor at St. Paul Lutheran Seminary, and as author and lecturer. He and his wife Linda currently make their home on Lummi Island, across the bay from Bellingham, WA. Notes: 1Roy Harrisville, “Ministry in the New Testament,” in Called and Ordained:

Lutheran Perspectives on the Office of the Ministry, Todd Nichol and Marc Kolden, eds. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 3.

2The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert, eds. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 39, 41.

3Ibid., 41.

4Two articles of the Augsburg Confession, 14 and 28, develop in more detail the assertion of article 5, “To obtain such faith God instituted the office of preaching, giving the gospel and the sacraments. Through these as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith, where and when he wills.” See Book of Concord, eds., Kolb and Wengert, 40, see also 46-47 and 90-104.

5Ibid., 38, 40.

6Ibid., 40.

7Ibid., 61.

8Ibid., 46.

9Gerhard Forde, “The Ordained Ministry,” in Called and Ordained, eds., Nichol and Kolden, 117-118.

10Ibid., 118.

11Luther’s Small Catechism, 2.3, paraphrase.

12Quoted in Called and Ordained, eds., Nichol and Kolden, 133, from WA 10 I/2, 30, 13-28.

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BOOK REVIEWS Metaxas, Eric. Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World. New York: Penguin Books, 2017.

“Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders!” This famous proclamation, attributed to Luther at the Diet of Worms, is often translated, “Here I stand, I can do no other!” But that’s kind of an awkward wording in English, don’t you think?

Actually, I’ve often thought that it’s better translated as, “Here I Stand. I can’t do anything else!” I hope my high school German teacher would agree.

Because Luther found himself at a crossroads, didn’t he? On one side was the long-standing institutions of church and state, and the equally long-accepted corruption that came along with them. But on the other side was God’s Word. Which path should he follow? He had to make a decision, and his choice was to follow holy scripture. He simply couldn’t do anything else!

And if you think about it, this new translation changes the entire narrative of Worms. Gone is the defiant Luther, boldly challenging the princes of his day; replaced by an exasperated Luther, a reluctant hero stuck between a rock and a hard place – a simple Christian who humbly chose the word of God because he had no alternative.1 But what other possible misconceptions, or even myths have crept into the Luther saga? Well in this book, famed

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author and radio host, Eric Metaxas, uncovers quite a few and he spends much of the work debunking such misconceptions as: Luther’s impoverished upbringing, his abusive father who led young Luther to see God as vengeful, the lightning experience that drove him to become a monk, his trip to decadent Rome that led him to recognize the need for reform, his nailing of the 95 Theses on the Castle Church door, his time at the Wartburg castle where he threw an inkwell at the devil, and Katie Luther’s escape from the nunnery in a pickle barrel. All of these stories, in one way or another, are false according to Metaxas, and he is quite convincing in his reasoning.

Now sadly, one of the things you receive while earning a PhD is a large dose of intellectual snobbery. As such, I had decided years ago that I was not going to read this book. After all, Metaxas has no earned PhD – only three honorary degrees!

Seriously? But since I was constantly questioned about the book by laypeople within my church and without, what could I do? I decided to take the plunge―and boy am I glad I did!

Because Metaxas has produced a meticulously researched work with an eye for storytelling, and these tales bring the Reformation era to life. He also includes some beautiful artwork of the Reformation players themselves, as well as an example of the intricate woodcuts that were included in Luther’s’ works.

But since this issue is on the office of the ministry, we might ask what ministerial teaching can be learned from the Luther story? And perhaps the best lesson can be gleaned from

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Luther’s involuntary absence from Wittenberg – indeed it is a lesson for our time.

As you may already know, Luther, shortly after his “Hier Stehe Ich” moment, is branded an outlaw, meaning he could be arrested by anyone in the empire and sent to his death. So to save him, Luther’s prince devises a plan. He has his men kidnap Luther and whisk him off to safety in the secluded Wartburg Castle in Thuringia. And while he is hiding out, he leaves his pastoral duties to two of his most trusted assistants, Andreas Carlstadt and Gabriel Zwilling. But rather than carrying out Luther’s tempered reforms, they quickly instituted a series of radical changes that threw the little Saxon town into chaos. “Brother Andreas,” as Carlstadt now referred to himself, introduced a new service on Christmas day 1521 with so many changes that people Andreas Carlstadt wondered if they were even celebrating a valid mass. At the service, Carlstadt wore secular clothes instead of vestments, he shouted the words of institution instead of whispering them, and he let the laity partake of both the consecrated bread and the wine, instead of just the bread. Zwilling even took the reforms to the streets, participating in mob actions to destroy images in local churches. Both Carlstadt and Zwilling also welcomed three socalled “prophets,” who had recently been ejected from the city of Zwickau after being radicalized by a young Thomas Müntzer (a pastor who would later foment violence in the peasant revolts of 1524/25). These lay “prophets” claimed they received direct revelation from God himself, further agitating 68

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the religious climate of the city.

By March of 1522, Luther realized that he had to risk his life and return to Wittenberg to save the city from possible rioting.

But through diligent preaching and personal instruction, he was able to bring the situation under control. Indeed, Luther had a rare ability to quickly detect theological quackery. He rebuked Carlstadt and the “prophets,” who soon left town, and he managed to convince Zwilling of his errors, retaining him as a trusted colleague and friend.

The entire episode is a lesson in pastoring as relevant today as it was five hundred years ago. Indeed, Metaxas notes that “there is nothing quite like religious madness.”2 So how does a pastor make liturgical changes in a congregation? Luther’s answer? Slowly and carefully, obeying the law, keeping the peace, and respecting the “weak” (Romans 15). The pastor also needs to be on the watch for those he allows to become leaders in the church. The sad fact is that almost Metaxas no one these days wants to be a pastor. But in the notes that rare cases of those who do, the majority in this “there is category are ill-suited to the task, either nothing quite intellectually, emotionally, or in their ability to be servant leaders. like religious Metaxas also has a brilliant chapter on Luther’s madness.”

Tower experience, the moment he understood that the righteousness of God was not our own righteousness that had to attain God’s level of perfection, but rather the righteousness that God imputes to us through Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross. This revelation comes to Luther in the “cloaca,” the outhouse inside the tower of the monastery.

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Metaxas writes, “So it fit well with Luther’s thinking that if God were to bestow upon him―the unworthy sinner Luther— such a divine blessing, it must needs be done as he sat grunting in the “cloaca”…This was the ultimate antithesis to the gold and bejeweled splendor of papal Rome. There all was gilt, but here in Wittenberg it was all Scheisse.”3 If one’s parish members have the chops to traverse its 480 pages, this book might make an excellent adult study, especially if the small group leader can tie together some of the Reformation events with similar corruptions that commonly occur in our churches today.

Rev. Dr. Dennis Di Mauro is Pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church (NALC) in Warrenton, VA and he teaches at St. Paul Lutheran Seminary and the North American Lutheran Seminary at Trinity School for Ministry. He also serves as editor of SIMUL. Notes: 1Thanks must be given to my friend, the Rev. Dr. Phil Anderas, who helped me

draw out the implications of this new translation.

2Eric Metaxas, Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World (New York: Penguin Books, 2017), 319.

3Ibid., 97.

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Image Credits (Pages 1, 3) “Martin Luther Preaching to the Faithful,” (1561), from the Altarpiece of the Church of Torslunde, Denmark, Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Martin_Luther_Preaching_to_Faithful_%281 561%29.jpg (Page 9) “St. Peter,” statue on the square of St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome, Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/s/photos/st.peter (Page 12) Logos of Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ and the North American Lutheran Church, https://thenalc.org/gallery/the-nalc-foundation/ https://lcmc.net/ (Page 16) Luther’s Large Catechism (1529), Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther%27s_Large_Catechism (Page 18) “Adam and Eve” (1528), Lucas Cranach the Elder, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_and_Eve_(Cranach) (Page 31) Logo of the North American Lutheran Seminary, “Take Your First Step,” https://www.thenals.org/find-your-calling/take-the-first-step/ (Page 33) “Gerhard Forde,” “Post-liberal Theology, No; Post-liberal Lutheranism, Yes!” https://crossalone.us/?p=5374 (Page 39) “Babylonian Talmud,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud (Page 40) Emperor Diocletian, “Emperor Diocletian: The Genius Who Saved the Roman Empire” The Collector, https://www.thecollector.com/roman-emperordiocletian/ (Page 42) “COVID-19,” New Scientist, https://www.newscientist.com/definition/covid-19/ (Page 52) Augsburg Confession (1530), “Presentation of the Augsburg Confession,” https://ourredeemernewark.org/presentation-of-the-augsburg-confession

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(Page 56) “Timothy Wengert,” Georgetown University, Berkely Center, https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/people/timothy-j-wengert (Page 67) Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World,

by Eric Metaxas, https://www.amazon.com/Martin-Luther-RediscoveredChanged-World/dp/110198001X (Page 68) “Andreas Karlstadt,”Iglesia Rios de Vida, https://biografiascristianosprotestantes.blogspot.com/2011/04/andreaskarlstadt.html

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Into this holy, magnificent, joyous, gracious priesthood the sow of the devil, the pope, has fallen with his snout, which he not only defiles but wholly destroys and suppresses, and he has erected another, his own priesthood, cobbled together from all pagan priesthoods, as a stew of all abominations…The clerics he calls his pastorate (geistlichen), among whom he wants to be the highest priest and prince, which he alone thereby makes spiritual (geistlich) by shearing [tonsuring], smearing [anointing] their fingers with oil, and requiring them to wear long garments, and purports to imprint an indelible character on their souls, which is nothing other than the character of the Beast in Revelation 13. (Martin Luther)