Monday 26 January 2009

This post was meant for last Friday...so we begin the week with more from Robert Bertram.

...the confessors in the Augsburg tradition were not confining their protest to what ecclesiastical authorities merely said or did not say, but also to the consequences in praxis of what they did, and of what their victims suffered them to do. If what they exacted from the church was the operational equivalent of saying, "Submission to our brand of authority is 'necessary for righteousness,' necessary for being truly acceptability in the church, or else," then regardless of these authorities' reassuring rhetoric, the practice in question was being "forcibly imposed on the church as necessary and as though its omission were wrong and sinful." Then "the door has been opened for idolatry, and ultimately the commandments of human beings will be put...not only on a par with God's commandments but even above them." And what the concordists here mean by "God's commandments" is the one gospel-and-sacraments, which is all the authority Christ ever gave the church for its wholeness, that being "enough" - satis. Anything more than that, once it becomes "necessary" for the church to be church, is less than the gospel or, as Paul said, is "another gospel" altogether, and needs to be exposed as such.

We must always be willing to look at how what we do is shaped by our words. When we make something more than the "one gospel-and sacraments" necessary for one to be a part of the gather of the body of Christ, we are not shaping our community around the likes of this Christ. We become a "Christ-Plus" church. This is not the church of the followers of Jesus. It becomes the church of conditions that is willing to step back from the gospel and set itself up around other concerns and issues that are fastened onto the body. Some might say that the "issue of GLBT" saints in the church is something that a group is trying to add onto the gospel. No...not at all. Rather, I would suggest that those who would define complete participation in the life of the church is one that precludes GLBT saints from this participation is something that steps away from the gospel and declares that the gospel is not enough. What we do with GLBT saints in the church is the same work that is done in any witch hunt or scapegoating. Rather than welcome without adding conditions...we too often spend too much of our time living within a conditional community. What often is said to this kind of unconditional gospel community is that it is one that has abandoned the law. Nonsense. We expect a gospel life from all who are pulled into the life of the gracious Lord of all.

Connection: What does it hurt us if our arms are open? Some say we look to soft. Others may say they are experiencing that grace upon grace that they have heard but only now see.

Shower us with your grace, O God, and when our hearts are open to your Reign, let no other word take control of our lives. Lead on O God Eternal. Amen.