Why I Am Still A Lutheran
This coming Sunday is Holy Trinity Sunday. In her book, Mind of the Maker, Dorothy L. Sayers, known for her mysteries, brings the mystery of the Trinity into focus. As the Athanasian Creed states, “We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance.”
Creeds are confessionals based on faith–apostolic faith defined as the original teachings and practices of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ and passed down through the generations.
The Book of Concord contains the Lutheran confession, not a museum item but an up-to-date apostolic statement of faith.
There has been a surge in non-denominational churches in these last years. In reaction to this surge Michael Gibney states that he longs to hear absolution spoken clearly that sinners “like myself” can be absolved. Too often sin is addressed but not resolved by grace.
When Jesus raised up those first disciples He did not give them license to invent churches. Churches were never meant to be platforms on which to perform one’s whims. The soul that hungers for grace will never be satisfied with what a culture has to offer.
All-to-often in non-denominational churches sin is preached in motivational ways, be more committed. The gospel becomes performance, and the goal is self-help. Don’t talk about tradition, not too much doctrine either; keep it simple. For a while hearers like the freedom of the casual.
But the human soul created by God craves its source. That is why I am a Lutheran, not because it is denominational but because it is confessional and bleeds for one’s soul. It claims the scars to prove it. What happens in the denominational shifts is that words lose their meanings. Words that once steadied our souls, Donavan Riley writes, “have been torn from their moorings and are setting us adrift.” Riley continues the attack. “They have been set adrift with no anchor and set afloat in the storms of self-invention.”
The soul longs to belong not through senseless chants or repetitions that are composed to make one feel good. A soul is not an algorithm waiting to be fixed, a political pawn to be made useful or a hashtag waiting for a response.
One’s soul has been knitted together by God who does not abandon what He creates. He restores. And the faith that restores the hungering soul is rooted in the confessions delivered to the saints down through the ages—sinners who have been forgiven by grace alone, nothing more nothing less. It is for that reason I am a Lutheran.
