Living Theology in the Metropolitan Chicago Synod
Volume 11, Number 1
Summer 2006
What is the Tie That Binds?
Editor’s
Introduction
The
image offered is the centrifuge. Or perhaps a pair of quietly emending knitting
needles, wielded by Madame LaFarge. Even as we sing “Blest Be the Tie That
Binds,” we are being pulled apart. Even as we look to the things that have held
us together in the past, we are being sliced apart. Yet, in the midst of the
pulling, the slicing, still we gather.
Once
again, our Synod has been blessed by a day of gathering for liturgical worship,
academic papers, and fine dining. Which is to say: once again, the Church of
St. Luke has offered the Festival of the Resurrection to us. The prayer offices
and the Eucharist of that day stand on their own, magnificently. The luncheon
and dinner would require a WTTW “Check, Please” review. I am not qualified to
provide that, although I believe that this parish’s “restaurant” could hold its
own on Channel 11.
My
task is simpler and more straightforward. I am to introduce the four papers
that were delivered on the Friday within the octave of Easter, April 21, 2006.
They were offered under the general question, “What Is the Tie That Binds?” The
title was an obvious echo of the old beloved hymn, but also an echo of the
anxiety many of us share in an age when it seems like there’s not much that
binds the Church together any more.
Each
of our four speakers offered a different thought about the tie that binds, yet
all are related as are the strands of a rope. No single strand holds against
the pulling to and fro of every contemporary wind, but a rope woven together
will hold. Hear, then, our writers:
Carl
Braaten, an Emeritus Professor at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago,
suggests that the indispensable tie is belief in the resurrection of Jesus.
Even justification, the doctrine on which the (Lutheran) Church stands or
falls, would be groundless without the Church’s belief in the resurrection.
Larry
Rast, Professor of Historical Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary at Ft.
Wayne, Indiana, offers a brief survey of American Lutheran Church history
focused on the centrality of liturgical worship. He suggests that the way we
express our shared convictions in worship constitutes the tie that binds.
Stephen
Warner, Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, offers
us a view from outside our guild. The sociologist reminds the theologians that
we face competition in the provision of meaning to our people. All of us are
spun around in social centrifuges as we struggle to remain faithful to our
Lutheran affiliation and to the catholic substance. What we have in common is
the liturgy.
Finally,
Edgar Krentz, Christ Seminary–Seminex Professor Emeritus of New Testament,
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, reminds us of the diversity and
division of the New Testament Church. Krentz challenges us to be aware of false
bases for unity. And he points finally to God’s act in Christ, the acceptance
of us that challenges us to accept one another. The tie that binds is what
happened when Christ accepted the cross for us, which we live out in accepting
the variety of those for whom Christ died.
From
all four perspectives come a centering on God’s act, raising Jesus from the
dead, and our act of returning praise and thanks to God in the liturgy. Could
these be the twin centripetal forces that bind us together in the face of all
that would tear us apart?
Frank
Senn’s column, “As I See It,” reminds us that we cannot take these binding
forces for granted. Even as the liturgy has bound English-speaking Lutherans
together in our country for over a century, the Psalter in the new proposed
book may slice us up in interesting ways.
Once
again, in this issue of Let’s Talk, we are called to reflect
quite seriously on what holds us together, on what we hold together, on the tie
that binds us together, even as we are whirled about in the centrifuge of our
lives.
Paul Bieber, Pastor, Christ the Mediator, Chicago