Co-missioners,
This is Burce, your editor, stepping out from behind the curtain to own what you’re about to read.
I cobbled this together on Easter Monday, a day that began with a double whammy of sorts.
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Icon of Resurrection of Jesus
From Wikimedia Commons
The first whammy was somebody’s Facebook re-post of a so-called Easter message by the current occupant of the Oval Office. To be offensively blunt: It read like something Satan would compose to spite the Risen Christ. The message dripped with the man’s usual bile cast in his usual cadences, those favored by the middle school bully who thinks it clever to slap mocking labels on people he doesn’t like. My eyes rolled as usual. And since this time Easter itself was being smeared, my skin crawled too. I wondered once again how any thoughtful baptized adult could have voted for this creature. Yet millions did. Not once, but twice.
I don’t understand this. I’ve all but given up on grasping for reasons that might explain it. I’m getting very, very weary of excuses for the man’s conduct. Responsible adults won’t permit such behavior to spoil a school playground. Why do they condone it in the Oval Office where it spoils a nation?
I’m pretty sure I’ve just grated badly on some people I like who might happen to read this. Ordinarily I’d make the friendly gesture of apologizing for that. This time I won’t. I’ve gotten weary of dishonesty too, beginning with my own dishonesty. Sometimes we bite our tongues too much.
This leaves me thanking God today for the One who appeared to his disciples on Easter night. This Christ of God’s—of ours—is on hand this very week to forgive what I’m more and more unwilling to forgive, shame on me. He’ll even go so far as to forgive me, judgmental creature that I am—that I cannot help but be. The Law requires us to judge each other, does it not? It does so even as Jesus tells us not to do this (Mt. 7:1). Now there is a contradiction that only a crucified and risen Christ is able to resolve.
Come, Holy Spirit. Cleanse the poisonous air we’re breathing these days. Bind your fractured people together. Make us new in Christ all over again!
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Pope Francis South Korea 2014
From Wikimedia commons
Came the day’s second whammy, and the greater by far. It arrived in the news that Pope Francis had died at 7:35 Italian time on Easter Monday morning. That’s when he “returned to the Father,” as the Vatican’s brief announcement so movingly put it.
The moment I heard this, I noticed how the tributes were starting to flow in my Facebook feed. One of the first I spotted came from the ELCA’s Bishop Eaton. She wrote movingly of Francis’s leadership in areas that are of central concern to the ELCA these days—concern for the poor, for climate change, for ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, and for people entangled in “complex social issues,” as she put it. She made particular mention of the pope’s generous dealings with Lutherans. I quote—
“We…recall with amazement [Francis’s] participation alongside the Lutheran World Federation in a joint ecumenical commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation on Oct. 31, 2016. I will never forget witnessing the procession of the pope and the general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation down the aisle in red stoles during the prayer service that day. We give thanks to God for this witness to our visible unity in Christ.”
Soon after reading this my eye caught a post by Crossings colleague and fellow board member, Pr. Robin Lütjohann, who lifted up another feature of Francis’s stunning ministry. “…How fitting is it,” he wrote, “that the Roman [pastor of pastors] died on Easter Monday? After all the Holy Week services were finally done, all the sheep were fed, the last word duly preached, sins forgiven and Christ proclaimed, he could finally rest. To die at this moment—all my fellow pastors can relate—is the ultimate way to go out and tells you how much of a shepherd Francis was.”
For my own part, I fell to thinking of Francis’s remarkable gifts as a down-to-earth theologian and teacher of the Church. This was the first thing I noticed about him when he was elected to the papal office in March 2013. He undertook immediately to write a manifesto of sorts—an “Apostolic Exhortation,” to use the Vatican’s official designation for it. It was published in November 2013 on Christ the King Sunday. Francis addressed it to “the bishops, clergy, consecrated persons, and the lay faithful”—to everybody in the Roman church, in other words. He then composed it in language that all the forementioned could easily grasp, beginning with the laity. His topic was “On the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World.” His first two words in official church Latin—hence the title of the document—were Evangelii Gaudium. This translates to five words in English: “The Joy of the Gospel.”
I ran across this document almost immediately after it was published. Did my Roman Catholic colleague down the street recommend it to me? Perhaps. In any case, I wrote about it much too briefly in the Thursday Theology post of December 12, 2013. See paragraphs three and four in particular. There you’ll find my story of a couple of hardcore Lutheran bible study groups exulting in their encounter with Francis’s opening paragraphs. “He sounds so Lutheran,” said they. Twelve years later I embellish their comment with a wry and wistful observation of my own. Francis sounds more Lutheran in that document than lots of Lutherans are managing to do in 2025.
I commend “The Joy of the Gospel” to your perusing this week. If you’re familiar with the Crossings six-step method for analyzing Scriptural texts and Christian lives, you’ll be struck, I think, by how often Francis both reflects and enriches the theological approach that Crossings takes. What stands out for me above all is the unwavering Christocentricity of what he writes and teaches. The Gospel is the news of God for us in Christ. It is in and through Christ that we can know and trust God’s love for us, a love not only modeled by Christ but effected by Christ. The Gospel is “radiant with the glory of Christ’s cross” through which it “constantly invites us to rejoice.” This joy in Christ is the very thing that prompts and drives those things that Christians are given to do. This includes those things held dear in ELCA circles that fall under the rubrics of social ministry or peace or justice. It includes evangelism which seems not to be held so dear in ELCA circles at the moment. But how could this be, asks Francis—if not directly, then by implication. How can people who are tasting the joy of the Gospel possibly keep it to themselves?
A few quotable quotes, plucked more or less random from hundreds of possibilities—
- “For if we have received the love which restores meaning to our lives, how can we fail to share that love with others?” (Paragraph 8 of 288)
- “The life of the Church should always reveal clearly that God takes the initiative, that “he has loved us first” (1 Jn 4:19) and that he alone “gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:7). This conviction enables us to maintain a spirit of joy in the midst of a task so demanding and challenging that it engages our entire life. God asks everything of us, yet at the same time he offers everything to us.” (Paragraph 12)
- “…The task of evangelization implies and demands the integral promotion of each human being. It is no longer possible to claim that religion should be restricted to the private sphere and that it exists only to prepare souls for heaven. We know that God wants his children to be happy in this world too, even though they are called to fulfilment in eternity, for he has created all things “for our enjoyment” (1 Tim 6:17), the enjoyment of everyone. It follows that Christian conversion demands reviewing especially those areas and aspects of life ‘related to the social order and the pursuit of the common good.’” (Paragraph 182)
And there is more. So much more.
I’m going to spend time with this myself in coming days with the prayer that Christ’s Spirit will use it to soften the hardness of heart I confessed to in my opening comments today.
As for now, I urge my fellow Lutherans to join me in thanking God this week for his servant Francis—our pastor too if we’ll dare in Christ to let him be exactly that.
“Rest eternal grant him, O Lord; and let light perpetual shine upon him.”
Peace and Joy,
Jerry Burce
1 comment
Thanks as always Jerry