LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 68

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68 THE DOCTRINAL ESSAY

We are in the business of practicing the breathing itself.
Don’t get bored when we sing the hymns or repeat the
psalms and the canticles of the service or hear the les-
sons or ponder the preaching. I still have to hear the
first plane passenger mutter, “Oxygen again! I’m get-
ting out of here. Can’t they think of something new?”
As a great teacher of the church once said: We have
the same old Gospel for brand-new needs. Let’s prac-
tice drinking it in. And as we do, we shall discover
that the problems of factionalism and disunity, of dis-
cord and grumpiness will find their match, and the
church will be able to do its work well. What makes
us one in this Synod is not just that we have one Presi-
dent or one 210 North Broadway. But it is that we
share the calling of bringing the one God, Father of us
all, one Lord and one Baptism of us all to bear upon
each other day by day.
Cc

Having said that, we are prepared to face the prob-
lem of unity with Christians of another name. For
what we are saying these mornings applies to our rela-
tion with all Christians. There is no Christian in the
world from whom I have the right to withhold the
edifying Word that I have in my heart and mind where
I see that person in need and have the chance to share
it with him. At this moment there is a group of Lu-
therans with a background of some generations ago
much like our own, identical in subscription to the
Augsburg Confession and all of the creeds of the
church. They are ready to say that they are in fellow-
ship with us. That’s the word that St. Paul uses about
the Philippians: “I’m thankful for your partnership in
the Gospel from the first day until now.”

Shouldn’t it be easy to do this? We normally worry
about the pollution of doctrine; here are people who
claim the same standards of purity that we do. When
did we discover that the way was open to this declara-
tion? Why not thank God that we can be partners in
the proclaiming of the Gospel?

Actually we have been at work on this for a long
time. The first convention of The Lutheran Church —
Missouri Synod that I attended as a pastor was in
St. Louis 31 years ago. Led by stalwarts of the faith
like Theodore Engelder and John H. C. Fritz and Wal-
ter A. Maier, our Synod declared that the doctrinal
basis for unity had been realized with the American
Lutheran Church, a component of the present Amer-
ican Lutheran Church. But shortly afterward mis-
givings about pollution of doctrine halted further prog-
ress to the present moment.

What can inhibit partnership in the Gospel, espe-
cially when the basic concern for the unpolluted Gospel
appears to be shared by both?

One thing is fear. Since we do not know all of the
members of The American Lutheran Church and its
pastors and teachers, we are afraid that there may be
some who do not have purity of conviction.

Could St. Paul be speaking to us too when he writes
to the Galatians concerning shortcomings that were of
a doctrinal and theological as well as practical nature:

“Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you
who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of
gentleness. Look to yourself lest you too be tempted.
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of
Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something when he
is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test
his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in
himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each man
will have to bear his own load... . Let us not grow
weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap
if we do not lose heart” (6:1-5, 9)?

A fear can steal over us at those words, for we have
so much to set right in our own churches and schools,
our own hearts and fellowship. Why don’t we, like the
scribes and Pharisees in the old story about Jesus and
the woman taken in adultery, slowly stand up and walk
out, beginning with the eldest, maybe me? The answer
is that we have the edifying Word, the forgiveness of
sins from God in Christ to apply to ourselves for our
shortcomings and for our pride, and we take it gladly
and humbly. That is what the church is: people apply-
ing the forgiveness of sins to one another. But how
can we withhold it from other Christians or refuse to
acknowledge the partnership in the Gospel in which
we already stand?

Another inhibitor for that full sense of partnership
is the fear of having been found wrong. Church fellow-
ship is not a problem alone of a few church leaders and
theological faculties and commissions and District offi-
cials affirming that there is sufficient unity between
two churches that they can be declared “in fellow-
ship.” Church unity is where the people are, down
in each neighborhood and countryside. The old divi-
sions have cut through families and friendship and have
left generations of silence in their trail. The edifying
Word works where there is partnership in the Gospel,
where people share in its distribution, beginning with
you and me.

Many a pastor and parish quails at the prospect
of reopening cases of church discipline that had sup-
posedly been settled long ago. When Jesus told His
disciples about the keys of forgiveness and said, “Where
two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in
the midst of them.” St. Peter caught the meaning, and
he said, ‘Lord, how often shall by brother sin against
me and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus
said to him, “I do not say to you seven times but
seventy times seven” (Matt. 18:18-22). It’s a wearying
prospect, this partnership in the Gospel, this business
of speaking the Gospel to melt the heart of the brother
over and over — and of listening to the Gospel to melt
our own.

Another inhibitor for the partnership in the Gospel
is the principle that the Gospel should be debated until
we agree what it is. This is an occupation that employs
the skill and satisfies the conscience of the theologian.
Let’s discuss differences a bit more; let’s dredge them
up if we can’t find them on the surface; let’s look for
them in the folk piety of the people, in the experiments
of theologians, in the poetry of versifiers, so that we