A Speech to the ELCA Churchwide Assembly

16 August 1997--Philadelphia

by Timothy F. Lull

Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary

Berkeley, California

Bishop Anderson, Bishop Lazareth, Ecumenical Guests, and Sisters and Brothers in Christ Jesus:

Let me begin with a parable. Two churches went out into the public square to pray. One said, "We thank you Lord that we are not like any of these other churches. You have blessed us the correct interpretation of Scripture, the correct theology and practice of the sacraments, the glories of our confessions and the right approach to social and political questions. We have never bowed too low before bishops. We have never embraced the folly of congregationalism. For all of this, we are deeply thankful." The other said, "Lord, we have been blessed by you, but at times we have hidden our talents in the ground. We have sometimes thought too highly of ourselves and been too quick to disdain and dismiss others. On many questions where we pretend to be strong, we are in fact struggling; we are beggars, this is true. Though we always speak of the reformation, we ourselves need reforming. Lord, have mercy." I ask you, which of these churches went home justified?

I begin in this way with the clear conviction that both of these are us--a Lutheran church which is corporately saint and sinner at the same time. We are a confessional church, and that is a heritage that I love and spend my days teaching. It involves commitments and freedoms that were won with great struggle and are still worth fighting for. It involves care with details and sometime the willingness to seem picky or stubborn or self-important for the sake of important truths. That is one aspect of being a confessional church.

But there is another side which has too often been missing in our long Lutheran history--though it is at the heart of Reformation experience itself. A confessional church is also one which confesses its sins, that is it not God but in need of forgiveness. A confessional church--perhaps especially one to which rich gifts have been given--has a special responsibility to remember its own continuing need for grace, for hearing the word of God from the outside, for shaking and stirring and even reformation. So I approach these ecumenical decisions in a way precludes looking at others to see how well they measure up to the perfect standard--which is us.

In that context I am delighted to speak on behalf of the Formula of Agreement which is now before this assembly. I believe there are compelling and mutually reinforcing reasons to accept this proposal as a step toward a new relationship with near neighbors from whom we have been estranged, and toward whom we have been too often condescending, in our long Lutheran history. It is not a perfect proposal, and if had just been up to me alone, a lot of things might be different. But that's not the situation to which God calls us. Ecumenical dialogue is a team sport in which any success involves compromise, flexibility, and listening. I suppose we have to admit that these have not always been Lutheran strengths. But I think we are not yet too old to learn.

Now on to the reasons for approval:

a). First, this proposal is based on a fine and thorough set of theological dialogues and conversations that provide a persuasive basis for mutual recognition. They have built cumulatively, beginning with the surprise of Marburg Revisited in 1966 which sent happy shock waves through our churches by suggesting that the 16th century stalemate between Lutherans and Reformed need not be the last word. Invitation to Action deepened the argument and provided a crucial list of fundamental theological convictions held in common--one that now stands in the preface to the Formula. A Common Calling explored continuing differences on predestination and the presence of Christ in the supper and found--not total agreement--but sufficient commonality to propose a new relationship of "mutual affirmation and admonition." So at this assembly we receive the Formula of Agreement which syntheses the most important insights of all these dialogues and of the Leuenberg Agreement in Europe between Lutheran and Reformed churches and proposes full communion.

Who could ask for anything more? Some do, even at this assembly. Some suggest the Scriptural basis is not up to our standard. Some want a more detailed discussion of "bodily eating and drinking in the supper." Some want the Reformed to prove that they "really believe" what they say. Lutherans can go on and on of course, like the Energizer Bunny, but on behalf of our Reformed partners, it is now time to decide whether this is enough.

If the Formula is adopted, we will continue dialogue on these and other important matters on the far side of that action, and I hope to be able to participate on some level, for there is always more to discuss with profit. But it seems to me that we have asked these other churches to go back and do it over to accommodate us about as many times as Christian charity and common decency can demand. They would wonder, as I would, if this proposal was sent back, about whether we are in the end serious about an agreement at all.

b). Second, through these long years of getting acquainted, an imaginative proposal has emerged in A Common Calling that these two great churches would benefit from a relationship of "mutual affirmation and admonition". Full communion is really a m ore modest step than is sometimes presented, though a very important step indeed. It suggests that these churches have found enough agreement in the gospel and about the sacraments to share the supper openly, in mutual chastened respect for that mysterious presence of Christ that surpasses all of the best formulations on both sides. It proposes, even demands, ongoing theological conversation--but not of the self-justifying type that often ensues when the question is, "Can we prove that we are enough like you for you to recognize us?" And it commits us firmly to walk together into a future which none of us can see, a future driven by mutual help with the goal of a common life and mission that we can build together with God's blessing.

The Formula is a non-homogenizing proposal, and I think in that way it is something new and fresh and exciting. It anticipates and even celebrates the continuing of these separate churches each using their gifts to the glory of God. But it pledges us to build a new kind of conversation and partnership--the kind which can flourish on the far side of mutual acknowledgment of basic agreement.

c). Third, this proposal fits well with our current practice at the local and synodical level. In centering on mutually authorized sharing of the Supper it makes official and formal what has emerged as the local practice almost everywhere in our church. Few of us close our tables to these Christian neighbors. But our ratifying this full communion is the opportunity to celebrate that change and to connect such growing ties to missional cooperation wherever the churches can benefit from this step.

I do not see this Formula as some alien scheme being imposed from on high, but as a ratification and extension of what has bubbled up from local ecumenism. Yet the proposal makes no demand at the local level beyond this basic recognition and possibility for cooperation, because we all know that there is local variance among these three Reformed churches, as there is among us Lutherans. There is an open door to work closely with different partners in different localities, in different parts of this country. Where we can work closely, we will be free to do so in an officially authorized way. But synods and even local communities will have to shape for themselves many aspects of what full communion will mean for them--which I think is a very good thing.

d). The proposal includes the United Church of Christ, and that is a stretch for some Lutherans as I well understand. At first that's how it was for us on the dialogue team from 1988 to 1992. But as we moved beyond stereotypes to learn more about t hat church, its history, its able theologians, its rich theological traditions, and especially about the under-publicized but well established movements of renewal of Scriptural and reformed heritage, we began to change our minds.

It the end it is crucial for us that the other Reformed churches see the United Church of Christ as one of them and in fact, were willing to proceed in dialogue with us after the disappointments of our actions at the time of the merger only if all three churches were included. We knew that was the plan in 1988 when the last team was formed, in 1992 when the report was issued, and in many publications since. It is late in the day to be raising this inclusion as if it were a surprise development. I see nothing sinister in this, for these churches all work together closely in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

To be sure the United Church of Christ is not our twin, and on some matters does things quite differently than we do. But I do not find these Lutheran worries sufficient grounds to reject this well designed proposal in the hope that something more to our liking might be found on the far side of its defeat here--some rearrangement of the parties to this agreement at the point of a Lutheran gun.

For the truth is, brothers and sisters, that churches find their glue in various ways. Not all churches have found formal confessions from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the best way to pass on the faith with apostolic integrity. We've come to appreciate the genius, for example, in the Episcopal tradition's Book of Common Prayer.

The strong stress on local autonomy in the UCC is a point for further discussion. But we Lutherans might at least stop to notice that in it is an echo one of our own deepest Reformation traditions--the legitimate freedom of the local Christian community from abuse or neglect by a church hierarchy. As a Lutheran, I know that parts of our tradition came awfully close to this approach for a while, and traces of that history remain in some places today. But as most of us have come to see the UCC less stereotypically and more concretely, we have had to moderate simplistic dismissive judgments that still get asserted in these debates. Over against the UCC we Lutherans have sometimes exhibited both the pride that come from high self-esteem and the prejudice that comes from inaccurate and emotional information.

e). Fifth this proposal fits well with the emerging world pattern of agreements between Lutheran and Reformed and Union Churches. These agreements in Europe have roots in the common struggle of a tiny minority of German Christians--Lutheran and Reformed together--against Hitler. After the war they realized that they could not go back to the old polemics; they had been through far too decisive an experience to permit that. So Leuenberg and other agreements were formed--celebrating substantial but not complete understanding of traditional differences, opening the communion table to each other's members, but insisting on continuing dialogue, because secondary differences are still important.

As we look to our Lutheran future in the new century, I cannot see it in any other terms than as a mission church. But mission today is a great challenge, for the non-Christians in our society are mostly either former Christians with lots of scar tissue who are not easily won back to the church or representatives of the other great world religions--Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism who are more and more our near neighbors.

In such a world I do not expect Christian differences to collapse; it's too positive an experience being Lutheran or Presbyterian or Reformed or United Church of Christ, a Roman Catholic or an Episcopalian--these powerful and particular embodiments of the Christian faith. But I do think we ought to find a way to harvest something from this half-century in which we have been rediscovering how much we have in common, and how common are our current challenges. The adoption of the Formula of Agreement is one of the ways to do that.

I have spent most of my adult life as a Lutheran pastor and a professor, teaching especially about Luther and the Reformation and about our Confessions. I love these themes and consider them the best possible place to stand as a Christian at century's en d. So I'm going into that future with Luther and Melanchthon, with Schuetz and Bach, with Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer, with my own parents, and many others who form a powerful company of Lutheran witnesses to the gospel. But I should also like to travel with Calvin and Bucer, with Isaac Watts and Jonathan Edwards, with Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr, with those brave South African Reformed Christians I know well who were some of the strongest opponents of apartheid. I think their witness would compliment that of the saints we Lutherans most remember and whose examples of faith under fire give us such encouragement.

If I've learned one thing in my twenty-five years as pastor and teacher, it is that our Lutheran heritage is a gift, and not our possession. That is the case because our heritage is first and finally the gospel itself. When we have treasured its gif t character, then that gospel has really passed through us with remarkable power. We have been in awe that such mercies could be entrusted to us. But whenever we hoard this gift, when we turn it into something that belongs to us, when we use it as a weapon against others rather than a pastoral tool for struggling men and women, then something ugly happens. And it has happened all too often in these last five hundred years.

I said at the beginning that I think we are not all that God calls and intends us to be. I cannot imagine a worse possibility than another decade of fighting among ourselves about the details of what it means to be Lutheran. We have been given these treasures not to hide in the ground, but to take out into a world that still hears too little of grace, of Christ as gift, and of the real presence of the Lord in his supper. I think our decision here is largely a choice for or against mission and public witness. One road leads from Philadelphia to continued self-absorption and polemic; the other leads to risk and adventure, with fewer certainties, but with the possibilities of a larger conversation, and a renewed gospel witness for our spiritually hungry world.