LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 349

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS 349

the cross to which Christ has called us—a life marked by giving
and receiving, by the inner reciprocities of love.

Christian Care in Church History

The church’s organization for Christian care is clearly witnessed
in a scene from the life of the early Church: the martyrdom of St.
Laurence at Rome in the third century. The Christian congregation
at Rome had appointed seven deacons, among whom Laurence was
chief. Hearing rumors that the church was receiving generous of-
ferings, the pagan prefect ordered Laurence, chief custodian of
these offerings, to produce “‘the treasures of the church.” Laurence
promised to have them gathered in three days, and when the prefect
arrived to confiscate the wealth, Laurence said, “Behold the trea-
sures of the church”—pointing to the poor, the sick, the widows
and orphans whom he had assembled and who were supported
from the offerings of the congregation. Enraged, the prefect ordered
Laurence’s execution.

The story is powerful, but the circumstances were not unusual.
Historian Paul Johnson has written that Christians in the first cen-
turies “ran a miniature welfare state in an empire which for the
most part lacked social services.”!° The early church was not a state
but a community within the state which carried out certain func-
tions of human care that today are often discharged by politically
established and supervised institutions."”

Their charity was not limited to fellow members of Christ’s
body. When the apostate Emperor Julian sought to revive pagan-
ism in the fourth century, he ordered the imperial clergy to organize
and administer charitable funds for relief of the poor, in imitation of
the Christians. “The impious Galileans,” he noted, “support not
only their own poor, but ours as well.””!*

This necessity of the church’s life did not go unnoticed at the
time of the Reformation. The Reformers often criticized the exten-
sive practice of begging and almsgiving that had grown up in pre-
vious centuries. But the other side of their criticism was a call for
more organized and communally structured ways of caring for the
poor. Not personal deeds of love alone, but structured works of care
were necessary.

Thus, commenting on the statement in Deuteronomy that no
beggar or starving person should be found in Israel, Luther writes:
“Now since God gave this commandment in the Old Testament,
how much more ought we Christians to be bound, not only to allow
no one to starve or beg, but beyond that also to . . . be prepared to
let everything go that anyone would take from us by force.” More-
over, he continues, Christians fail to extend their care as far as they
ought when they refuse “to extend this giving to enemies or oppo-
nents. It comes hard to our false nature to do good to them who
have done evil to us. But there is no getting around it, the com-
mandment has reference to all men, ‘Give to him who begs from
you.’”!?

Luther encouraged parishes (which at the time were communi-
ties both civil and religious in character) to establish a “common
chest” from which help could be given to those in need. The “Fra-
ternal Agreement on the Common Chest of the Entire Assembly at
Leisnig,”’ for which Luther offered advice and to which he added a
preface of his own, provided, for example, care to the aged and the
infirm. Luther writes:

Those individuals in our parish and assembly who are impover-
ished by force of circumstances and left without assistance by their
relatives, if they have any capable of helping, and those who are un-
able to work because of illness or old age and are so poor as to suf-
fer real need, shall receive each week on Sunday, and at other times
as occasion demands, maintenance and support from our common
chest through the ten directors. This is to be done out of Christian
love, to the honor and praise of God, so that their lives and health
may be preserved from further delerioration, enfeeblement, and
foreshortening through lack of shelter, clothing, nourishment, and
care, and so that no impoverished person in our assembly need ever
publicly cry out, lament, or beg for such items of daily necessity.

For this reason the ten directors shall constantly make diligent in-
quiry and investigation in order to have complete and reliable
knowledge of all those poor—as above—in the city and villages
within our entire parish, and they shall confer on this matter every
Sunday. The names of the poor whom they have discovered and de-
cided to help, together with the action taken, shall be legibly entered
in the minutes so that the resources of our common chest are dis-
tributed in orderly fashion.”

Nor was this the only care authorized. From this common chest
the directors were to provide for the support of the pastor, for
schools, for orphans (even for their schooling), for unemployed ar-
tisans, and (through loans and gifts) for newcomers to the parish.
That such an ambitious plan should have failed in the execution is
not surprising, but it gives some sense of the scope of the church’s
Christian care which the Reformers envisioned.

Care for Persons Both Within and Outside of the Church

As noted at the beginning of this study, the church as a social
institution has in a variety of ways organized to facilitate energetic
expression of Christian care. The examples from the New Testa-
ment show the church organizing to care for fellow members. The
instances cited from church history show the church organizing
both to care for fellow members and to care for persons outside the
church. These examples remind us of Gal. 6:10: “So then, as we
have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those
who are of the household of faith.” We are also again reminded of
James 1:27: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and
the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction,
and to keep oneself unstained from the wor]d.”

Some theologians within the LCMS recently published a col-
lection of essays titled A Cup of Cold Water: A Look at Biblical
Charity. It is noted in these essays that the New Testament rarely, if
ever, makes persons outside the community of faith the objects of
charitable work. In the essay “Considering Biblical Charity within
a Creedal Framework,” Charles Arand asks “whether or not the
church as a community of believers ought to help in relieving the
bodily needs and wants of those outside its membership, and if so,
to what extent?! The discussion in Dr. Arand’s essay helps us
with this question. He states, for example, “To say that social con-
cerns are not the mission of the church does not mean that the
church should take no interest in the needs of the wider society.
Nor does it mean that the church is forbidden or prevented from
doing something to alleviate those needs.””””

We recall here what is said above in the section on “Daily Work
of the Believers.” The First Article of the Apostles’ Creed teaches
us that God has called all to the tasks of their situations in the cre-
ated world. Christians will apply themselves to their tasks with the
active love that is born of faith. This is the primary way the church
cares for both the Christian and the non-Christian neighbor. We
have said that this is an indirect form of care, only because the as-
sembly of believers does not directly organize itself for the provi-
sion of such care.

In his essay Dr. Arand points out, however, that we experience
emergencies “when the orders and agencies of the First Article
have abdicated or abandoned their responsibility or where the es-
tablished orders have simply broken down or are non-existent.” Ex-
amples that he cites include “the case of large scale disasters like
typhoons, famines, and earthquakes or smaller scale crises where
the infrastructure has broken down such as in the inner city.” In the
face of such emergencies the church will often “step in to relieve
suffering and need.”**

This approach reminds the church not to overrule or minimize
the daily work of believers and yet to be alert to the inevitable
emergencies that confront us in a sinful world. A harder question is
“When does an emergency or crisis situation become a regular, on-
going feature of the church’s work?”

2001 Convention Workbook