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The Church's Ministry of Word and Sacrament
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 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 to justify wreaking such havoc in church, realm, and society. They took full opportunity to drop the bomb of God’s justification of the ungodly apart from any worthiness or merit of sinners, at all! We believe, they confessed, that “human beings cannot be justified before God by their own powers, merits, or works. But they are justified as a gift on account of Christ through faith when they believe that they are received into grace and that their sins are forgiven.”2 Further, they did not fail to include just exactly how they had come by this faith. “Through the Word and the sacraments as through instruments the Holy Spirit is given, who effects faith where and when it pleases God in those who hear the gospel, that is to say, in those who hear God, not on account of our own merits but on account of Christ.”3 I can’t imagine, nor do I wish to imagine, a more promising answer to the question of the church’s ministry in the present generation of faith or any generation. I can only seek to imagine what the answer to the question
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.
“Through the Word and the sacraments as through instruments the Holy Spirit is given, who effects faith where and when it pleases God in those who hear the gospel, that is to say, in those who hear God, not on account of our own merits but on account of Christ.”
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 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 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 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 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 righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned . . . they are now justified by his grace as a gift” (3:21-24).
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!
The sin to which Paul refers here is the original sin, failing to trust God’s promise to give life and salvation out of his “pure, fatherly and divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness of mine at all.” This promise lies at the heart of faith, as Luther explains the church’s confession in each and every article of the Apostles’ Creed. Article one: God creates, sustains, and guards the human in life freely out of his 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 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.
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 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 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 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. Children, the world around, are to serve their created purpose by respecting and loving their parents along with others charged with their care. Parents are to serve by caring for their children along with the neighborhood. Everyone is called to serve the neighbor by speaking well of them, helping them to improve and protect their property and income, helping them in all of life’s needs, and by generally encouraging each other to fulfill their responsibilities to one another. Any work from politician to soldier to physician to trash collector to teacher to house father to CEO— by which a person earns a living, provides the opportunity to heed God’s call to serve the good of creation. In fact, regardless of one’s faith and regardless of one’s inclination or willingness to 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 well-being of God’s creation.
Any work— from politician to soldier to physician to trash collector to teacher to house father to CEO—by which a person earns a living, provides the opportunity to heed God’s call to serve the good of 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 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 essay, Forde begins by observing that the “ambiguity and uncertainty in the office of saying the gospel are rooted in the ambiguity and uncertainty about what in fact is be said and what such saying involves and is to accomplish. What is needed,” he goes on to say, “is to work out a view of ministry consequent to and consistent with the fundamental theological doctrines that gave birth to the Lutheran movement in the first place.”10
Lutheran theology begins, proceeds, and ends with a twofold word, the one with respect to God as the saving God of sinners, the other with respect to the human as sinner who does not want God to be God but wants to be in the place of God. As Paul declares, from beginning to end, these two theological facts underlie the biblical story from Genesis to Revelation: “there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:22-24).
Lutheran theology begins, proceeds, and ends with a twofold word, the one with respect to God as the saving God of sinners, the other with respect to the human as sinner who does not want God to be God but wants to be in the place of God.
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 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 resolve to properly appreciate the gift and produce the good works of love. But, of course, if that had been the terms of Christ’s public ministry, the church would have neither word nor sacrament to bother with. It was on the night when he was betrayed, that Jesus took the bread and the wine, and declared, “This is my body given for you and my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sin.” God’s gracious redemption comes apart from any worthiness or merit of sinners. That must be gotten through to the theological head and hardened heart of the church or there simply is no future for it or for sinners.
Listening to the church’s ministers, ordained and non-ordained alike, I often have the impression, for example, that they feel compelled to protect the sacraments from 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 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 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.
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.
