LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1973, Page 97

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98 ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE LCA

unity in Christ. May God keep us from enjoying our
struggles and our differences too much.

If we see that our very attempts to be true and good
may be spoiled by sin, we may all the more resound-
ingly affirm the emphasis of St.Paul, and of Luther,
on the doctrine of justification by grace through faith.
If our fellowship must in our humanity be a fellowship
in sin, it is by God’s grace a fellowship in salvation.
Not our works but the work of Christ reconciles us to
God and shapes us into a church. Saving faith and the
communion of saints comes not by our attainment but
by the Holy Spirit. Though it may come as a second
thought all too often for either one of us, justification by
faith must remain central to our proclamation of the
Gospel.

A fellowship grounded in God’s saving grace has
clear implications as clarified in the Scriptures and the
Lutheran Confessions. To mention just two of these
implications, I would note two ecclesiastical sins.

One implication of a fellowship of grace resists ec-
clesiastical idolatry. While it is easy to belittle efforts
to manifest the unity of the church through ecumenical
organizations of church union, it is wrong to exalt our
own church body as though God would never trans-
cend it.

We are too ready to conclude that everyone in the
church must be like ourselves. If we allow our own
human narrowness, rather than the Gospel, to dominate
in the church, we should look further at St. Paul’s
teaching. In the 12th chapter of First Corinthians, he
asks about the body if it were all an eye, or all an ear.
You and I know that such a body would be a freak.
By our human nature we are moved to make the body
of Christ into a freak.

Only by the Holy Spirit will the church include all
people regardless of race, nationality, political per-
suasion, earthly attainment, neuroses, or whatever hu-
man idiosyncracies. Only by the Holy Spirit do we
escape our tendency to commit idolatry by absolutizing
our own church.

A second implication resists ecclesiastical intro-
version. The Spirit does not send out the Gospel to
have humans build walls around it. Being justified and
reconciled to God frees us for the Spirit to work
through us not only in the church but also in the world.
The end of Christian activity is not worship or church
polity, not a monastic church, but service in daily life.

In line with the two implications, one to resist ec-
clesiastical idolatry and another to resist ecclesiastical
introversion, we are fortunate that God has added to our
fellowship of grace a fellowship of study and service.

Our two church bodies engage in this fellowship
most extensively in the Lutheran Council in the U.S. A.
The oldest form of our fellowship in service is em-
bodied in the Division of Service to Military Personnel.
That cooperation has increased recently. In campus
ministry, the American Lutheran Church and the Lu-
theran Church in America have had a complete fellow-

ship for a long time. The Missouri Synod has joined
partially during the last 4 years and I hope for more
in the future. In regional planning, the districts of the
Missouri Synod and of the American Lutheran Church
join with synods of the Lutheran Church in America in
consultation. In the Division of Theological Studies the
Missouri Synod has graciously agreed to discuss those
crucial issues which stand in the way of declaring altar
and pulpit fellowship with the Lutheran Church in
America. All three participating churches cooperate in
these theological studies and honor their commitment
to work for theological consensus.

There are several cooperative efforts outside the
council. In the Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship
we are making progress toward a hymnal and a service
book.

In Lutheran World Relief we reach out to the poor-
est of people on the earth and to the victims of disaster.

In the Consultation on Lutheran Unity we both have
followed the initiative of the ALC and seek new forms
of cooperation. The Canadian segments of our church
bodies are even ready to explore union negotiations.

I hope this fellowship in service and study will
grow. And I hope fervently it will grow ever more
certainly from our fellowship in the Gospel.

I have long respected the Missouri Synod for its in-
sistence that unity can only exist, as the Augsburg
Confession says, “where the Gospel is proclaimed in its
purity and the sacraments are administered in ac-
cordance with the Word of God.” As Ephesians 4:4 de-
clares, there is already “one body and one Spirit, .. .
one hope ..., one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one
God and Father of us all.”

But we have a problem because we have so much
trouble letting the Holy Spirit show that oneness
through us.

On the bus to Kennedy Airport when I was catching
the plane to come here, I sat next to a geologist who
told me his wife belonged to an LCA congregation in
Wisconsin. He was not a church member, he said, be-
cause the church was too disunited. More exactly he
said, “With all the church has going for it, if it cannot
pull together, what chance is there for anything else?”
“With all the church has going for it” — as though he
had heard of the Spirit, hope, Lord, faith, baptism,
God and Father.

We do have a great deal going for church unity. To
realize our unity, both of our church bodies and all
of us, need to listen to the apostle’s plea which precedes
the sentence on oneness: “J therefore, a prisoner of the
Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to
which you have been called, with a lowliness and
meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love,
eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond
of peace.” Then “They [people everywhere] will know
we [we Lutherans] are Christians by our love [a love
activated by faith].” “They will know we are Christians

by our love.”
Dr. Rosert J. MARSHALL