Being Lutheran – Yes, It Matters
Several years ago I shared the following account of a local Lutheran woman, and thought it worthy of being shared again:
About six months after I began attending this church (a Presbyterian church in Gladstone, my note), a friend from MU (who is now my husband) moved to Kansas City, and we started dating. He was a confessional Lutheran, that is, he holds to all the doctrines of Holy Scriptures which are rightly exposited in the Lutheran confessions, and we enjoyed having long discussions about religion; I attended a contemporary service; he attended a church where the historic Christian liturgy had been preserved. You can imagine the conversations and conflicts of belief we had. No matter what the discussion, however, he would always go back to the same point: the faith of the Christian is in Christ and Him crucified. I knew this, of course, but he also insisted that this should be the message of every sermon, every service. I disagreed. What about all the other stories in the bible? What about Adam and Eve and the serpent in the Garden? What about Jacob’s ladder? Noah and the ark? Jonah and the fish? But what I did not understand was that these are not a series of disconnected stories. These are episodes of our salvation through Christ. Christ is everywhere in Scripture, as our Lord says, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me…”(John 5:39). Christ is the seed of Eve that crushes the serpent’s head. Christ is Jacob’s ladder, on which the angels ascend and descend. The flood that destroyed all but Noah and his family points us to the flood of baptism that drowns our sinful flesh and connects us with Christ. Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, sanctifying the grave for all believers. These truly are the Scriptures that testify about Him.
She also heard other Lutherans proclaim:
For example, they held that when Jesus said of the bread and wine of the Sacrament, “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” what He really meant was “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” and, furthermore, when he directs us to eat His Body and drink His Blood for the forgiveness of sins, He is saying that by partaking of the Sacrament, we actually receive the forgiveness of sins. I know, it all seems simple enough when you put it that way, but that is what is so profound about the Lutheran faith, that is, the Christian faith. As Lutherans, we do not try to make Scripture the slave to reason, rather, we trust in God’s Holy Word, and submit to His truth, even if we cannot understand it. After all, isn’t it presumptuous of us to think that we could comprehend every truth of our all-knowing, eternal God?
And that leads me to one of the elements of Lutheranism that stood out most for me: Lutherans have no problem answering a question with “I don’t know.” That honesty in interpreting the Scripture, instead of going astray by trying to answer questions for which Scripture provides no answer, was refreshing and very appealing to me. Still, when I was first exposed to Lutheranism, I resisted strongly. Ultimately, though, my resistance was too empty to withstand the force of the arguments. Every Lutheran confession, every belief, was supported by Scripture. Many of my beliefs were not. I was back again to questioning my faith; only this time, I wasn’t running away; through the work of the Holy Spirit I was now confronting my doubts and searching for the Truth.
This woman eventually went through adult instruction and joined one of our sister congregations. She then experienced the value of that historic, solid faith:
As many of you know, my daughter, Anneliese, was born and died on December 1 of last year. We found out that she had trisomy 13, a chromosome defect, last July. We were devastated. We asked the question – why us? I thought I was doing the right thing; I graduated with my degree, I got a job, I got married, and now I wanted to have children. I did everything in the right order. I couldn’t understand why my daughter had to die. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t have a healthy baby when all these Hollywood stars were having healthy babies without husbands. I felt that I qualified as a mother more than those people; yet God was taking away my baby. Why me?
If I had been a member of a theologically shallow church, I wonder what they could have told me. Would they say, God still loves you? I would ask, then why has He allowed my daughter to die? If God loves me so much, why did He take my baby away from me? Would they say, you have to move on; close one door and another door opens? Then I would say I cannot close the door on Anneliese; she is my daughter. How can I “move on”? These members might be sweet, nice, and caring, but what comfort could these people give me? Absolutely nothing. All of these are empty words. But when I go to my church, I don’t get these empty words, my friends don’t even have to say anything. The members of our congregation are caring and wonderful, but it is our shared confession of faith that truly comforts me. And because we have the Lutheran faith and tradition, we do not have to settle for empty words. I have the words of God, full of peace and comfort and forgiveness of my sins and the sins of my infant daughter.
These words tell me exactly why these things happen. Ever since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, we lost our connection to God, our connection to the world, and our connections among ourselves. It is that original sin that took away my daughter. That sin corrupted God’s good creation. But our God is a gracious God; He did not take away my daughter. He gave us Jesus Christ to die for our sins, so that we may live, so that my daughter may live. I don’t need empty words, because I am comforted by Christ’s blood. I am comforted by His words. I am comforted because my daughter’s grave is now only a resting place for her remains, while she awaits the resurrection.
June 25th marks the anniversary of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession, one of the foundational documents of the Evangelical or Lutheran Church. It is a time for Lutherans to remember the treasures that have been handed down to them: Christ-centered liturgy and hymnody; rightly divided Law and Gospel sermons; sacraments administered according to the Word of God; and confessional documents such as contained in the Book of Concord that help keep the pure teachings of Word of God in your church and protect you from the many voices of false teachers around you – false teachings that seek to rob you of your comfort in Christ. Sometimes lifelong can forget such gifts. Every now and them, it takes a little reminder from converts to Lutheranism, such as the woman above, or even your pastor, to help keep these treasures before you and encourage you in their use – to receive the comfort the sweet message of Christ gives you. God’s blessings be with you as you rejoice in and receive these gifts!
Pastor Reiser
