LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 67

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THE DOCTRINAL ESSAY 67

and false teaching and mutual suspicion. “Is Christ
divided?” St. Paul had to exclaim when he heard
about their factions.

The Lutheran Church is the product of a movement
in the church of Europe four hundred and fifty years
ago which tried to rid it of some of its faults. Instead
a division developed which exists to the present day,
and hundreds of further divisions have occurred. We
still subscribe to the principles of that movement, the
Lutheran Reformation, expressed in a document called
the Augsburg Confession. That doesn’t mean that we
applaud division, for that Confession, subscribed to by
seven lay noblemen and two town councils, affirmed
that the true church is very much one, and in order
to maintain its unity it was necessary with one mind
to speak the Gospel purely and administrate the sacra-
ments the way Jesus gave them. In these days we
say it in this way: To have unity between churches
you have to use the edifying Word.

You see, there is really only one church. That is
wny we confess in our Creeds: I believe in the holy
Christian church, or as the church once said: the holy
catholic, the holy universal church. Wherever you find
Christians, you have the church then, you say? Well,
right, provided that the Christians are playing the role
and doing the work which our Lord assigned to them
and on which He founded the church, namely that they
bring to one another the Word of Christ, the act of
God forgiving their sins for the sake of the suffering
and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in order
to build each other’s faith and life. That means that
a few people in a Christian household, many of them
in a Sunday service, a thousand of them in one room
like this can very much be the church if and when
they are doing the great work of sharing the Word
that builds the church.

In our lesson a moment ago a man who sits in a
prison is writing to some Christians far away. He is
thanking them for a care package which they had sent
him. But he is thanking them for more than that,
namely for being partners with him in the work of
tne Gospel and demonstrating to each other and to
their world what Jesus Christ means to them and
does for them.

For what makes one church is not just that we
wear a button or have our name on the register of a
parish or even recite the same creed. But the church
is at work where Christian believers have accepted the
responsibility to carry the keys of the kingdom of
heaven and swing the doors wide for each other over
and over again; where they not merely believe in Jesus
Christ but where they exert Christ’s own love in mercy
and healing toward each other.

B

The edifying Word is like the oxygen that the body
of Christ, the holy Christian church in the given place,
breathes in order to live. A number of things have to
happen to the air we breathe. It has to be free of
pollution. It has to reach us so that we do not suffocate.

We have to breathe it when it reaches us, and if we
are in danger of stopping our breathing, somebody has
to do some good mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

The history of our Synod has been one of care for
the purity of the Gospel. We want that Word to be un-
polluted, our sacraments to be in accord with the
institution by Jesus Christ Himself. St. Paul prayed for
the Philippians that they might approve things that are
excellent, and he told the Thessalonians to test all
things and hold fast to that which is good. (1 Thess.
5:21)

We may have to remind ourselves, however, that
as long as oxygen stays in a tank labeled “approved”
or “tested” it does nobody any good. It has to be
brought to the bedside or the gymnasium and breathed
in long, strong gulps. Our Lord told us that we should
preach His Gospel according to the Scriptures (Luke
24:44) and proclaim it as witnesses, personally demon-
strating what it means to us.

The Gospel has to be brought to the next person.
Its purity is worth little without the partnership of dis-
tributing it, St. Paul would say; and when you are
in that partnership, even sitting in jail doesn’t cloud
your enthusiasm for the great task. We are pretty
good at the use of the mass media. But the man with
the key can’t just write somebody that he has it and
hope that the door will open. The sermons of my friend
Oswald Hoffmann are doing their work not simply as
people at a distance agree that he said some good
things but as they hear this man bring Jesus Christ
right into their own heart. Most of you laymen sitting
in this room feel that the preacher in the Missouri
Synod who speaks most helpfully to you is your own
parish pastor. For he has demonstrated in a dozen ways
a week that he knows you and is for you and wants
you to have the power of God through Jesus Christ
to take hold in your own life and that of your family.
The Word edifies as it reaches the next man all the
way, and the people of the church are responsible for
making it reach.

The Word that edifies has to be breathed. This is
doubtless why the Scriptures use the same word for
the Holy Spirit that they use for the air we breathe.
True, the Word that edifies, the power of God in the
redeeming blood of Jesus Christ, has to start the breath-
ing to begin with; we can’t do it by ourselves. But as
that Word keeps coming, it has to be breathed and not
merely identified. I've been on scores of plane flights
where the stewardess rehearses the procedure in case
the air pressure in the cabin fails. The climax of her
demonstration is: “Put the cup over your nose, and
breathe normally.” I have an idea that we sometimes
sit in our church services thinking about nothing, or
about everything else than what is going on, just be-
cause we are satisfied that we heard the story long ago
about the lifesaving breath — and we forget the moment
is now — now is the time to breathe in the Gospel of
God for the refreshing and sustaining of our own life.

The church is better than a planeful of passengers
watching a cup dangle in front of the stewardess.