LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2007, Page 98

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98

CONVENTION BIBLE STUDIES

The specific promoter of division in the LCMS is not, of
course, to ignore God in Christ, but rather to insist that my
particular interpretation of Scripture, our understanding
of doctrine, and especially our practice are the only ones
that God favors. Those of others, God must utterly disdain.
The examples are many:
Publications, Web sites, blogs, and e-mails that regularly
transgress the Eighth Commandment, thriving on the process
of sowing discord.
Putting the worst (not best) construction on words and actions of those “in another camp.” Even the remarkable synodical initiative—Ablaze!—has been faulted by ultra-critical
“purists” in our church. How very sad!
Lawsuits against the Synod and its leadership—incredibly,
the very same problem that Paul will condemn in chapter six of
his first Letter to Corinth, where he concludes, “To have lawsuits
at all with one another is a defeat for you” (v. 7). Bottom line:
Paul tells the Corinthians (and us): “Don’t go to law: this is sin!”
And that is quite apart from the other sin of draining Synod
resources for having gone to law in the first place!

III. The Remedy
In Paul’s day, it was to focus on Christ and heed His message of unity in a sectarian world, as witness His prayer in
the Upper Room that His followers “may all be brought to
complete unity” (John 17:23).

2007 Convention Proceedings

The result? At first the Corinthian congregation was
ticked off at Paul’s letter (as we know from 2 Corinthians),
but it finally listened to Paul, and a strong church was
established at Corinth. The Early Church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea, tells of a gifted second-century bishop of
Corinth, Dionysius, who had enormous prestige in the area
and wrote superb letters to bishops in Crete and the rest of
Greece. In one of them, he tells that another Dionysius, one
of two named converts after Paul’s Mars Hill address in
Acts 17, became the first bishop of Athens.
In our day, the remedy really is exactly the same: to focus
on Christ and heed His message of unity in our sectarian
church and world. Like Martin Luther King, “I have a
dream” for our beloved Synod: that we would leave this convention as if Jesus Himself had attended it, and told this
convention, “I understand your concerns about Communion,
church, ministry, worship, the roles women and men, and
your outreach to the world, but in the name of the sovereign
God who created the universe, get over your quarrels and
be about your Father’s business!!”; and that we would leave
Houston with a wondrous spirit of unity in which there were
no victors, no losers, but Christian brothers and sisters gloriously one in Christ, ablaze with the desire to pass on the
Good News to a world that needs it so badly.
Paul L. Maier
Second Vice-President
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod