Hearers of God's Word, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Let us pray: We come to you seeking the truth, Lord. We wish to know the truth about what makes us one. We need to know what it means to be Yours, and how You can be glorified in us, Your Church, with all our sins, all our separations, all our pride and idolatry. Show us the truth of unity, Lord, under Your Word. Your Word is truth, O Lord. Lead us into the truth. Amen.
On October 31, 1999, representatives from the Vatican and from the Lutheran World Federation met in Augsburg, Germany to celebrate a momentous event. For the first time since the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation were going to formally apologize to one another and revoke the mutual condemnations that had existed between the two churches since the Diet of Augsburg, which took place in the same city nearly 500 years earlier. Since the day Martin Luther first began criticizing Roman Catholic theology and tradition, conversations between Catholics and Lutherans have been fraught with tension because of how often we had disagreed and how poorly we had done it. Since the end of the Roman Catholic Council of Trent in 1563, a mutual condemnation had existed between the two churches over the doctrine of justification.
Justification is how we theologians describe the state of being 'right' or 'justified' with God. For almost 500 years, the Lutheran Church and the Catholic church had condemned each other over how we believe we are justified. Lutherans insisted that justification occurs "by grace through faith, apart from the works of the law."[1] Roman Catholics insisted just as strongly that works play a part in justification. These and other differences led to a breaking of fellowship between Catholics and Protestants, a separation that continues to this day. But on October 31, 1999, representatives from the two churches gathered to sign a Joint Document on the Doctrine of Justification. With great fanfare and not a small amount of soul-searching, the document was signed, attesting that the mutual condemnations over justification were no longer in effect, that the disagreements which had separated these two churches were no longer quite so powerful, and certainly not so hurtful.
This week I was privileged to attend a meeting in Moorhead between Roman Catholics and members of the ELCA. This is not the first time this group has met, but it was the first time I was able to attend. We met to discuss a new document, The Church as "Koinonia" of Salvation. The document is the result of the tenth round of conversations between Lutherans and Roman Catholics in America, conversations that began in 1963 and will continue next year and into the future.
It was an interesting experience, being gathered into a room with people of a different church. Being Lutheran in Minnesota can lead to a little bit of tunnel vision, as many of you should know. Ecumenical discussions here in Barrett tend to be very short and decidedly one-sided. J When you're surrounded by so many people whose lives of faith are ordered in the same way as yours, you develop ecumenical blinders whether you want to or not. This kind of familiarity may not breed contempt, but it certainly breeds a narrow perspective that needs to be broadened every once in a while.
We began our discussion with a review of what Roman Catholic-Lutheran dialogues had accomplished over the past 43 years. That list of accomplishments is pretty impressive. In the last half of the 20th century, American Christians have moved from viewing each other with outright hatred to working together in many areas. As we've become more open to engaging each other, we've worked together on public policy, social justice, relief organizations, and many other forms of mutual ministry. The ELCA and the churches who came before her were part of that conversation, and I'm proud to be a representative of the most ecumenically-driven denomination in the United States.
As we discussed The Church as Koinonia of Salvation, we found much on which we agree. One sentence that stood out for many of us was this: "Lutherans and [Roman] Catholics each experience the church in a geographically local, face-to-face assembly where the word is preached and sacraments celebrated." That's something on which Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, and any other Christian can agree. (yes, John, even Baptists!)
But as our discussion drew to a close last Wednesday, we saw more examples of how far we have yet to go to truly be "one, holy, universal and apostolic church." The issue of Lutheran ordination raised its head because the Roman Catholic church traditionally describes Lutheran ordained ministry as having defectus ordinis, a "lack of order" due to the separation from bishops and the Pope during the Reformation. In an attempt to ease the condemnation against Lutheran pastors, one paragraph of The Church as Koinonia of Salvation reads "we recommend that defectus ordinis as applied to Lutheran ministries be translated as 'deficiency' rather than 'lack.'"
I don't know about you, but hearing that my church is only deficient rather than outright defective is being damned by faint praise. I do know that I suffer from an inferiority complex a rather common Lutheran ailment, I'm told. Hearing someone refer to my fellow pastors and bishops as 'deficient' just gets my hackles raised. This wasn't the only moment during our dialogue that I felt this way, either – but it was probably the worst.
Why am I telling you all of this? I'm telling you all of this because Jesus Christ, our Savior, prays for the unity of His Church – He prays that we may be one as He and His Father are one. I'm telling you this so that you might understand that our failings in ecumenism are not the failings of Jesus Christ Himself. I'm also telling you this because our ecumenical success stories aren't ours to claim, but evidence that the Holy Spirit is still at work in the Church. I'm telling you this so that you won't place your Christian hope in the work of pastors, bishops and popes, but rather in the love of God the Creator, the grace of Christ the Savior, and the power of the Holy Spirit to move the church where it needs to go.
In John 17, we have a picture of an intimate conversation between Jesus and His Father, a picture of prayer at its best. Just after this prayer, Jesus was betrayed, arrested, tortured and crucified, but He isn't praying for Himself any longer: He's praying for His friends. Jesus prays for His friends because He knows that once He is no longer physically present with them, being united in Christ will be much, much more difficult. Jesus knew that the church would begin with a betrayal: Judas handing Jesus over to be crucified. Jesus knew that the church would be broken almost from the beginning, because Jesus was present at the moment of creation, when the world was first broken by sin. Jesus knew that His friends would need help to keep going, that they would need to be guided and provoked by the Spirit to keep the faith. Knowing all of this, Jesus prayed that His friends, the earliest members of His church, would be united in the love that Jesus and His Father share with the Spirit. It is this unity, and no other unity, that holds the church together today, and it is this unity, and no other unity, that we pray for today.
While the 'official' dialogue in Moorhead last week may not have been as fruitful as I had hoped, I found that there were some things that genuinely made me feel like we were all part of one church. I was the only Lutheran at my table; I was joined by three priests and two members of a Roman Catholic church in Warren, MN. Over lunch and during some planned discussion time, we found common ground on many things: our frustrations with certain parts of our celebrity-worshiping culture, our gratefulness for the privilege of ministering to our friends and neighbors, the funny things that happen when you become part of a Christian community and live with sinful, broken, joyful saints who aren't perfect but are loved perfectly by our one God. We may not have been the great theologians who crafted The Church as "Koinonia" of Salvation, but we experienced koinonia by breaking bread together and sharing our hopes and fears in that short time together. We were unified by our great love for Jesus, not by our great accomplishments in the realm of ecumenism.
We have talked these last few weeks about the complete joy of abiding in Jesus' love, and notice that Jesus mentioned that complete joy again in verse 13 of today's reading. Jesus said, "I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in and among themselves." The joy for which Jesus prays doesn't come through parading through the streets of Augsburg, proclaiming to all the world that we Lutherans and Catholics don't hate each other anymore. The joy for which Jesus prays doesn't come through agreeing that bishops must be installed into the historic episcopate, and it doesn't come through refusing to be installed into the historic episcopate. The joy for which Jesus prays comes to the church by His Spirit, a gift we cannot earn and a reality that is already present, whether we like it or not.
When Jesus prayed that His friends might be one as He and the Father are one, He wasn't asking His friends to establish one church that would adopt every practice and every tradition together for the rest of eternity. Jesus was praying that His friends would love each other deeply, becoming united through bonds of love. Jesus was praying that His friends would serve the world that disagreed with them, becoming united through their dedication to selfless service in a world that would often be hostile to them. Jesus was praying that His friends would look at each other and see a sinner for whom Christ gave His life, becoming united through His salvation alone.
I don't think we will see a time in our lives when the Church of Christ is truly united in practice and tradition. I think the disagreements are too deep and too far-reaching to be healed by anything we can accomplish. But I also think that the Church is already truly united under its Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and I think that this is the only unity we truly need. We Lutherans believe that "it is enough for the true unity of the church to agree concerning the teaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments."[2] Where Jesus is preached as the good news of salvation, where Baptism and the Lord's Supper are proclaimed as the means of grace to a world broken by sin, we are already united, and it is the work of God, marvelous to our eyes and joyous to our hearts. This is truly unity in the Church of Christ: to gather with our brothers and sisters of every time and place to praise the One who makes us One. God be praised: we are One in Christ Jesus our Lord, now and forever. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment