Immanuel Lutheran Church - Benson

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Ephesians 4:1-3

So far, I’ve been keeping my blog clean of controversies.  I’ve made it my effort to try and post uplifting, grace-filled messages so that you, when you read this, may come away feeling God’s love for you.  This post will break the first goal, but hopefully still keep the second.

Tomorrow (Friday, August 21) the ELCA in our Churchwide Assembly will vote as to whether to allow homosexuals in relationships to be ordained ministers.  This has become a great controversy in our church, along with the controversy in the wider world about recognizing those same relationships.

And I, being a prisoner of God’s Word, both Law and Gospel, feel that the only controversial point of the whole discussion is why it has become a controversy.

I’m wondering about the nature of controversy.  Why do we allow disagreements, problems, dislikes to become controversies?  Is there any way to stop controversies?  Is there any way, in our present world, that a problem will not become a controversy?

According to www.dictionary.com, a controversy is a public dispute between groups with opposing views.  But what sets a controversy apart from a public debate, public discussion, or other form of settling opposing ideas?  I feel that it is the vehemence with which the dispute is carried out.  I mean, between any of our friends, there is likely to come about a dispute with opposing views (even over something as simple as what to eat for dinner).  But that dispute, whether public or private, is not carried out with utter disdain and dislike for the opposite side.  But in a controversy, both sides see the other as not just wrong, but even evil.

I think the other break between a debate and a controversy is that controversies seem to be drawn out.  Any other argument can be cleared up fairly easily and quickly.  But not a controversy.  These incessant, ongoing, angry arguments seem to always come back around in a never-ending spiral of hate.

It is with these two aspects of controversies that I, with a heavy heart, await the vote in the Churchwide Assembly tomorrow.  Not because I don’t want this resolved (and not that I don’t have my opinion about the way this should be resolved), but because we’ve allowed this to become a controversy.  We have decided that the only way to resolve this issue of our life together is with hate, anger, and threats of leaving.

And so, in my devotions this week, I came across this passage from Ephesians.  And I wonder, in this controversy, where is the humility?  Where is the gentleness?  Where is the patience?  What would it mean to bear one another in love if the other dislikes you for everything you are?  What does it mean for those (on both sides of the issue)who are threatening to leave the ELCA, when we are told to make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace?

Sure, we justify ourselves by declaring the bond broken if the vote doesn’t go our way, but that is just what it is: self-justification.  We self-justify ourselves by reminding us that it is God’s Law, and we must follow God’s Law, even though we all break God’s Law with our every action and every intention.  Have we cast ourselves into sin unwillingly and unknowingly, or did we jump in, eyes wide open?

I have become convinced through all of the controversies in the recent months that a controversy is the work of the devil, sent to us to distract us, given to anger us, to drive us to evil actions, evil intentions, and to break the power of the Gospel in our lives for the sake of the Law.

And here is our salvation.  Here is our hope.  It is not for the sake of the Law that we will be saved!  We can (and do) break every one of God’s Laws.  And yet, when God saw it was the right time, our God sent Jesus Christ into the world to save us from the power of the Law with the power of the Gospel - the good news that God’s Kingdom is breaking into this controversy-filled world, shattering our self-justification, making us God-justified.

Why should we turn our backs on the power of the Gospel for us, for our friends, for our enemies, for our world?  Do we distrust the Gospel so much that we would rather follow the Law?  Could anyone survive that?  Do we really think that the Law will save any one of us, heterosexual or homosexual?  Do we really think that the power of the Gospel is only for those heterosexual, as if sexual orientation is a limit on the work of the Spirit?

Of course not!  We are Lutherans, born and bred since the 16thCentury to know that God’s Grace is sent to us in Word and Sacrament, no matter who we are, no matter what Law or rule or law we have broken.  God’s Word does indeed come to us in Law and Gospel, but both carry us finally to God’s Grace.  This is the only thing that is real in this world - that God’s Grace is for all, regardless of nationality, gender, law-abider or law-breaker, homosexual or heterosexual.  If, in the end, Grace is not for all, then Grace is for none, for if in any way we must earn Grace, then it is not Grace, but Law, and we are all dead and forsaken.

But we are not forsaken.  We are gathered into the body of Jesus Christ through our baptism: one Body, one faith in one Lord.  That is who we are.  No more should we let controversies distract us from our mission in this world of gathering every person into this body of Christ that bears us up out of the depths of sin, death, and the power of the devil, and unites us with our Lord now and forever.

This is my prayer for you, and for all at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly: Forgive us, Lord, for allowing your Grace to become lost in our conflicts.  Bear with us in love, maintaining the unity of the Spirit in peace, humility, gentleness, and patience, whether we agree with what happens tomorrow or not.  Jesus Christ, you are our Lord whether we are right or wrong, so do not let us break the power of the Gospel for the sake of the Law.  Rather, let your Gospel ring out for all to hear!  Amen.

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.  And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Romans 5:1-5

You would probably think that, following all of Paul’s arguments that finally lead to his statement, “…we are justified by faith,” there would follow a lot of wonderful, flowery talk about how great this new justified life will be like.

After all, the justified sinner is brought into peace with God only through grace (the unearned love of God for all creation), given to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ!  How could life not be great?!  What could we possibly have to worry about?

Well, life definitely is not all rainbows and puppies.  Even as we stand in God’s grace, knowing our sins to be forgiven, seeing life as a blessed gift, and knowing that our salvation is both certain now and sure to come to fruition - despite all of this, there is still suffering, tribulations, trials, and torments.  And that’s just what we see in church!

Paul, knowing that the Christians in Rome are just like the Christians in Asia Minor where he had been preaching, assures them that suffering will happen.  But in a surprising turn, claims that suffering is something to boast about! 

What?! 

Seriously, what does that even mean?

I know when I’m suffering (think of a nasty head cold), I don’t feel much like boasting in it.  In fact, our usual reaction to suffering is make it go away.  We take medicines to make our aches and pains fade.  We make up with our loved ones when we fight.  No, usually, suffering just needs to be over and done.

But Paul teaches us here a little bit more about human nature.  We boast in our sufferings because suffering will produce endurance.  The more you deal with now, the more you will be able to suffer through later.  And then endurance will produce character - will make you an honorable person.  And then character will produce hope - the knowledge that the sufferings of today will in fact be done and over in the future.

I’ve always thought of this passage in terms of long-distance running.  No, I’ve never ran a marathon, but I used to run competitively in high school.  Running long-distance (especially for medals and awards) takes a lot of practice.  It takes sore knees, sore feet, tired arms, burning lungs.  In other words, suffering.  It is hard work to be a good runner (which, by the way, I never really was that good).  But, through all that suffering (that coach always used to call “practice”) eventually I found I could run longer distances, faster, easier.  Suffering had built up endurance.  As endurance builds, so does character.  In races, I saw plenty of people cheat or injure other runners, as ways to cut corners and win unfairly.  But character, the ability to see through the test with honor and respect, playing by the rules, always wins in the end.  And while character didn’t make me into the best runner, it made me into the type of runner who cheared for the winner, who cheared on the rest of my team, no matter my performance.  And as my character grew, so did my hope and desire to be a better runner, able to compete fairly and gain the respect of my team.

And so it is with the life of faith (I don’t feel bad about using a race as a metaphor for the Christian life, since Paul himself uses it!).  We are thrown into this life, and we must suffer through all the ups and downs that this wierd world will give us.  Some days are good, some days are bad, but through them all we suffer, building our endurance.  Eventually, our endurance has grown so that we can take all the bad the devil can throw at us, and still smile and ask, “Please, sir, may I have another?”  And this endurance makes our character one that other Christians will respect and admire and use for a model for their own lives - a living example of truly faithful living, knowing and trusting that we stand in the grace of God.  And then this character will build in us the hope to know that, when Jesus returns, we will see all the grace of God for all creation.

We will not be disappointed, even though we are enduring hardships now, because it is not up to us to make all the bad in this world go away.  That is God’s job!  It is our job to spread the good news that the bad in this world has already met its match in Jesus Christ, and upon his return will lose the fight.  

The love of God is the love we have for all people, Christian or not, that we show primarily through giving them the gift of the hope we have developed through our sufferings.  We are like Job, through all the sufferings of loss of family and children, through all the sufferings of listening to four friends who don’t know what they’re talking about, through being shown our place in the cosmos by a loving God, who finally know that, in the end, all things will be restored to us and more.  This is the hope we have, the hope that sustains us even in the ravages of the evil in this world, and this is the hope that we pass along to all those who need it.  This hope is only in Jesus Christ, who took away the power of sin, death, and the devil on the cross for us all!

Thanks be to God!