Living Theology inthe Metropolitan
Volume 9, Number 1
Spring 2004
The Vocation of the Laity
Over the centuries since the Reformation, Lutherans haveproudly laid claim to the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers and thatof Christian vocation. Luther, theydeclared, was the first Reformer to strike a blow at the medieval system ofreligion with its two classes of Christians. With justification by faith as his wrecking-ball, Luther, they assert,reduced to dust the two-story edifice of salvation-by-merit, placing allbelievers on the same level before God: equally forgiven, equally free, equallyempowered to serve their neighbors in the world...
The redeemed in Jesus Christ, having been called out of theworld, are at one and the same time called back into it to be its salt, leavenand light. As Christ became incarnate inorder to be the obedient servant of all even to his death on the cross, soChristians are called to be servants of all, bearing the cross within theirbounded existence in the situations, structures, and roles where they happen tobe. This means doing both the priestlywork of mediating Christ’s reconciling love and the non-redemptive work ofholding the world together through the offices or roles of spouse, parent,magistrate, worker, manager, as responsibly and competently as possible.
Lutheranism has often been alleged to have given divinesanction to a rigid social order and thereby to have acquiesced to injustice infavor of stability. Luther, like Paul,believing that the Parousia was imminent, did nothold out much hope for fundamental social change and was actually horrified bythe excesses of the utopian sectarians. But Luther did not hold a particular social order to be divinelysanctioned. The “orders” were
To Luther, the role model of Christian obedience withinbounded existence through one’s office or role is the Blessed Mother of ourLord. The Reverend Jesse Jackson, in hisaddress to the 1992 Democratic Convention, had it all wrong.
For Christian piety and theology, and certainly for Luther,it was God’s choice, not Mary’s, that was decisive.
I offer the following personal story of what I believe to bethe proper division of labor in the exercise of the calling that is ours inChrist.
During the Vietnam years it fell to me, as a bureaucraticofficial in the then Lutheran Church in America, to facilitate as best I couldthe sorting out of the ethical issues in relation both to U.S. policy and tothe problems of conscience facing young men of draft age.
I made then the acquaintance of one of the finest Christianlaymen I have ever known. He firstsought me out after having read something I had produced on war and Christianconscience. He was a career officialwith the U.S. Department of State who would shortly be sent to
My friend was an astute reader both of events and of humannature. He shared Reinhold
Through the
My own passionate opposition to the war policy was temperedand nuanced by my friend’s input. Icredit him with keeping me a Lutheran in more than name during that troublingtime.
About a year before the war’s end my friend came home and wasreassigned to the State Department unit on Anglo-American affairs.
During that period the
At about the same time, the Rev. Helmut Frenz,bishop of one of the Lutheran church bodies in
One sunny afternoon, my telephone rang at LCA headquartersin
That was all. Still inshock and disbelief, I called the individual charged with arranging
A year or so later my friend suddenly took sick anddied. At the funeral I was privileged tospeak some words of remembrance. Iorganized my thoughts about the three words that, for me, capture the essenceboth of the Christian’s calling in the world and of my dear friend’s life inChrist: salt, leaven, and light.