Endorsement Essay Part 2

I’m currently a candidate for ordained ministry in the ELCA, and a seminary student. This is part 2 of my ELCA Candidacy Endorsement essay. Click here to read part 1.

Endorsement Essay Part 2

Prompt 2: Faithfulness to the Church’s Confession (2011-2013):

The heart of the Lutheran confessional witness is the Christian belief in the one, triune God who is the eternal Creator of all that is, and who loves the whole creation.

I believe in a God who loves God’s people so much that when we were separated from our Creator by our sin, God revealed Godself to us in the person of Jesus, God’s incarnation in the world, and chose to redeem us through Jesus’ death on the cross, a redemption confirmed by the resurrection event.

Our redemption is only through God’s grace. We are enabled to turn toward God in faith only through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. There is nothing we can do by our own power to earn God’s love or salvation. God loves us because we are God’s creation, not because of anything we do.

However, that does not mean we are to become complacent, ignoring the needs of the world around us. We are called to respond to God’s love and grace toward us by living our lives in service to God and our neighbors, not because we need to do so in order to obtain or keep God’s freely-given love, but out of our gratitude at what God has already done for us. We are freed from our bondage to sin and freed for service to God and neighbor.

The Lutheran emphasis that salvation is only by grace through faith helps to shape the role of the pastor as well. I’m not called to save anyone, or to bring God into a situation. God is already present in every situation.

I am called to help people recognize God’s presence in their lives and situations, and to reassure them that they are not alone. I am called to help people grow in faith and in their relationship with God, but God alone redeems and sanctifies.

I don’t believe that any person can fully understand God. God is infinite, and we are finite, so our understanding is inevitably limited. Our understanding comes through God’s word in the Bible, and God’s self-revelation in the person of Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate.

With the Lutheran Church in the ELCA Constitution, I “accept the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired Word of God and the authoritative source and norm of its proclamation, faith, and life…[and] the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds as true declarations of the faith of this church.” [1. ELCA Constitution, 2.03, 2.04.]

Through seminary classes such as Justification and Justice, and Systematic Theology, I have explored the creedal confessions of faith. I recognize that I can’t fully understand God, and, inevitably, believers will faithfully interpret parts of Scripture and tradition in contradictory ways.

Part of the Lutheran witness for me is being able to sometimes live in mystery, to recognize that there aren’t always clear answers to life situations and faith questions. One of my professors put it as “We’re called to be faithful, not always to be right.”

As a pastor in a denomination where many faithful people disagree on many issues, I believe it is essential to be able to meet people where they are, reassuring them that they are loved children of God no matter what. Blaming or making assumptions about people on either side of an issue is not helpful to authentic dialogue, understanding, or Christian unity.

I do believe there are standards for the Christian life clearly given by God. Right and wrong are real, and as a pastor, teaching how God desires God’s people to live and serve each other is also an important charge. But, I think a key part of being Lutheran for me is being able to accept that there are elements of mystery in faith, that I don’t need to understand everything, and that I’m not supposed to have all the answers.

Some of my CPE experiences this summer reinforced this for me. When I walked into a room where a family had just found out that their son would not wake up from his coma from a motorcycle accident, my role was to be pastorally present with them in their grief, not to provide answers to questions like “Why does God allow suffering?” I believe that God is faithful in being with us in suffering. God does not ever abandon us.

Faith is not having all the answers; faith is recognizing our own finite ineptitude and giving up control to God, letting God be God.

Endorsement Essay part 1 here. Part 3 here.