Pastor Bill Cwirla posted this on one of his blogs the other day. I was involved in a discussion on another blog concerning this subject and it had been on my mind a great deal lately. The subject: Lutheran Insularity. In plain language, why do we seem so unfriendly, and never seem to interact much with other Christians? To be honest there is more than a little truth to these charges in some quarters. Some have compared us to the Ephesian Church in the Revelation (Rev.2:1-7), doctrinally pure, yet lacking in love and zeal. I will reproduce Pastor Cwirla’s comments in their entirety here:

I’ve been having a good, hard think lately about a lot of things. This is typical of summer for me, where I permit myself the luxury of not being bound to the tyranny of clocks and calendars and allow myself a healthy dose of daydreaming. I’ve been thinking about fruit lately, not only the peaches, plums, nectarines, strawberries, blueberries, and pluots (one of my favorites!) of summer, but also the delectable fruit of the Spirit that St. Paul describes in his letter to the Galatian churches: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-discipline. “By their fruit you will know them,” Jesus said of religious teachers, and this got me thinking.

I’m not thinking in terms of those static dogmatic categories of justification and sanctification, though these certainly are lurking in the background. Rather, I’m thinking about how things look. How we as Lutherans look. I’ve been surfing around the internet looking at what Lutherans are up to, what they are saying about each other, about their church bodies, about other Christians. I like to Google my name to see what others are saying about me. Others send me emails with links to what people are saying about Higher Things.

St. Paul sets the fruit of the Spirit in contrast with the works of the adamic flesh: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I wonder sometimes. I wonder if the way we act, especially under the “anonymity” of the internet, doesn’t reflect more of the sinner that we are in ourselves than the saint that we are in Christ? I’m not talking so much about the cussing and beer drinking that Lutherans are known for; I’m thinking along the lines of the latter part of Paul’s list – enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy. That list more or less describes the tone of some Lutheran lists.

Now I know well the usual Romans 7 dodge to all this. “The good I want to do, I don’t do, and the evil I don’t want to do, I do….wretched man that I am,” simul justus et peccator, and all that. Those aren’t an excuse but a harsh reality that drives us continually to repentance. The last time I checked, Paul doesn’t encourage us to indulge our sinful selves but to put to death the works of the flesh. Drown that inner brat in Baptism and don’t give him a blog so he can express himself. And God doesn’t describe the fruit of the Spirit as some unattainable goal to drive us to repentance, but as something we can eagerly look forward to, much like fruit in season. You expect it to be there.

The atheist philosopher Nietzsche once commented that he might take the Redeemer more seriously if His followers would look a bit more redeemed. I wonder if there might be people who would take the Lutheran confession of Christianity more seriously if Lutherans would show a bit of summer fruit.

We Lutherans live under a terrible burden of having to be right all the time. We value purity above all things – purity of doctrine, of practice, of hymnody, of programs, of purpose. Yet purity is never held out to the sinner-saint as an attainable goal. It’s a forensic-given in Christ, and utterly impossible in ourselves. If we claim to be “pure” in what we do, we will ever be on the defensive justifying ourselves against those who claim otherwise and constantly measuring ourselves against the next guy. Defensiveness tends to bring out the worst of our sinful selves. Defensiveness and fear open the door to the anger, strife, party spirit, and dissension that war against the fruit of the Spirit.

I believe that much of our Lutheran anxiety has to do with defensiveness and fear. We want to present our denarius back to the Master pure and undefiled. And so we don’t take risks, we play it safe, we hedge our bets, we hide behind the skirts of our institutions, we circle our wagons to ward off the challengers. We wrap our shiny denarius in a sock and tuck it safely in the back of a drawer. But the Master said, “Do business,” not “keep it pure.” We are fearful and defensive, not trusting the Word to do His work, not trusting that God justifies the unjustifiable and ungodly, acting as though Jesus needed us to defend Him. Poor Jesus. And in our fear and unbelief, we stunt the fruit the Spirit wants to produce in us for the benefit of others.

I worry about my fellow Lutheran pilgrims who have become so wrapped up in defending their “being Lutheran” that they have lost the sense of wonder and joy at being justified for Jesus’ sake. I wonder whether we haven’t become the Ephesian church of the Revelation, doctrinally pure yet loveless, able to spot a heretical Nicolaitan from a mile away, yet flagging in the love that once characterized life together. I grieve over young Lutherans who are already so narrow in their thinking, they cannot enjoy the fullness of the gifts God gives to His church, but scowl at a hymn not to their liking or a liturgical practice outside their narrow zone of comfort.

Look at that list again. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-discipline. Yes, I know, we can’t produce these things in ourselves; they are the fruit of the Spirit. I know that we don’t produce this fruit by trying harder, but I also know that we can get in the way of its production. If our doctrine of Baptism is correct and means anything, we have the Spirit, and therefore, can expect the Spirit’s fruit in due season, justified sinners though we are. This wonderful fruit of the Spirit is not for ourselves to admire but for others to pluck from our branches and enjoy and be refreshed and give glory to God.

And maybe, having been refreshed, they will want to hang out with us under Lutheran shade.

P.S. You can visit the blog in question at http://blog.higherthings.org/wcwirla/

By Pat K

Posted in General