Our Current Conflict Calls for Repentance

By David S. Luecke

 Is it time for all the parties in our LCMS conflict to confess our sins?  Yes, if we want to acknowledge that our basic problem really is spiritual, and we want to leave room for the Holy Spirit to turn us around. Yes, if we want to move this conflict beyond  the human level and relate as redeemed sinners united in Christ and serving his purposes,  not ours.

The previous issue of Jesus First presented selections from a sermon delivered by C.F.W. Walther in St. Louis to his church of German immigrants on the Annual Day of Repentance in 1870.

What To Confess

What did they need to confess and repent?  Going backwards in their faith and love to the neighbor, loss of zeal to win souls, decline in brotherly admonition, and prevalence of backbiting and evil speaking.

Where is the sin in our escalating conflict?  It is not in the pursuit of very different concepts of what our Synod should be and do in the future.  It is not in using sensible organizing to promote the cause each sees as very important.  It is not in debating the merits of a specific proposal or practice.  The sin is not in rationally assessing and warning of institutional dangers in a particular plan, as is done in this issue.

The sin is in what we are allowing this conflict to do to our relationships with each other.  It is in impugning motives, settling for half-truths, putting on the worst construction, backbiting, and using secrecy.

Begin Individually

The necessary place to start is with each of us individually.  And so I acknowledge that over the past five years I have too often seen the “other side” as opponents to be resisted and outsmarted rather than as brothers in the same faith and cause.  I have looked for opportunity to criticize actions or writings to make a point instead of putting the best construction on it.

I have learned there is one situation in Synod that makes me so angry I cannot talk about it without sinning.  So my repentance is to put the topic off limits.

Is it hard to repent?  You bet.  I know this first-hand from needing to publish a correction and apology in the February 2003 issue.  I made an accusation based on incomplete information.  When I probed farther and got the fuller picture, there was no alternative but to apologize and make the correction.

I think it is especially hard for pastors to repent.  We want to be seen as God’s representatives, and people rightfully hold us to a higher standard.  To humble ourselves in public is humiliating.

You as the reader may be thinking, “Too bad he was wrong.  But what I am doing is necessary and right.” 

Let No One Be Exempted  

We need to hear more from Walther.  “Oh, let us therefore today above all appear before the holy God as a fallen congregation in genuine contrition and repentance.  Let no one shove the blame on another, let no on exempt himself from the culprits; let every one come before God today as the guilty member of a congregation. Let us all as one person say to God: ‘Lord, we have sinned and done evil before You; we have wantonly despised Your grace; we have fallen.’”