Blessed, forgiven, covered.
In a world of chaos, confusion, and fear these three words stand out as beacons for true peace.
Since the year two thousand it has been difficult to
identify peace within the Lutheran Church of Australia.
A lack of good-will has been allowed to fester, causing division that’s giving way to suspicion, treachery, and a promotion of personal agendas that’s only served to further division between God’s people.
We have struggled with division as a Lutheran Church in Australia since not long after the first Lutherans arrived here from Germany in the eighteen-thirties. Karvel and Fritzsche parted company in 1846, and with the arrival of others in following years, the Lutheran Church remained splintered in separate synods till 1966.
But even today still the threads of separation continue to simmer and cause suspicion.
It may or may not be due to faithfulness towards Karvel or Fritzsche, with the former ELCA or UELCA synods.
The separation may or may not be whether one should be or shouldn’t be immunised with the latest Covid vaccination.
It may or may not be whether you believe or disbelieve women should be ordained into the office of preaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments.
Whatever it is that causes your suspicion and ill will, though, we all must acknowledge that with suspicion, holy fellowship cannot truly exist. And no matter how much we work to put suspicion and ill will aside, things will only continue to get worse.
What will remove suspicion and ill-will from the Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand?
If we as church do not remain blessed, forgiven, and covered by God there is zero chance of unity in the Lutheran Church of Australia and there will never be any assurance of sincere good will amongst us as a fellowship of believers.
Any unity built on our love of the LCANZ, desire for unity’s sake, for the good name of the LCANZ, or for any other human ideology or love needs to fail! Indeed, it must fail, so the love of Jesus Christ can find us debased and rebase us in the loving forgiveness and faithfulness of Jesus Christ, where we can continue to receive the Holy Spirit and confess our sin before the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-hearing, and all-powerfully forgiving and faithful Almighty God our Father.
You and I together with every other human being struggles with trusting and fearing God. All of us for a myriad of reasons desires to replace this fear and trust in God with a knowledge of our own good and evil. In essence, when we do this, we replace a singular ultimate knowledge of good and evil, found only in God the Father, with a pantheon of ideas of what is good and what is evil.
All these goods and evils are the chaos, confusion, and
corruption in which we live. Today we
live in a society that sees the biblical goods God has given us as evils, and God’s
evils are now identified as good.
Five years ago, we as a country voted to legalise gay and lesbian marriage. Three fifths of the country voted yes but two fifths voted no. Five years on, the evolution of the love that has grown from the plebiscite is one of legalism and intolerance towards anyone raising and teaching children about an objective right and wrong in submission to an ultimate source of good and evil identified by God and his Word, and as God and his Word made flesh.
Our society will continue to crumble and disintegrate through chaos, confusion, and corruption without trust and fear in an Almighty Triune God. Individualistic desire and ideas of what is good, and evil, will continue to divide and conquer community.
This disintegration at the hands of chaos, confusion, and corruption is happening in the church too.
At our upcoming Synod the LCANZ have a number of proposals before us as church.
The debate on women’s ordination, safe place manipulation and its impact on congregational supply, the theological and pastoral training of ordained pastors in the LCANZ, the function of the pastorate, the function of the college of bishops, the function of the districts, the function of boards in the LCANZ, the function of our education and welfare sectors, all under the umbrella of our synodical function, together with discerning the function of the face to face administration of God’s word and sacraments, as opposed to an undifferentiating use of multimedia, is the multifaceted storm of dysfunction into which the LCANZ is sailing.
We have not been watching where we have been sailing, nor
have we kept before us the purpose for which we sail. We have been so focused on ourselves seeking
to control the ship, throw sinners overboard, and have failed to allow the
winds of the Holy Spirit to fill the sails and move us to those whom God wants
us to minister his forgiveness.
In fact, there has been a type of mutiny against our Lord’s Headship in the LCANZ through the confusion between the priesthood of all believes and those called and ordained to prepare the priesthood for ministry in the vocations in which God has placed each of us.
We have sought to wrangle the word of God from him and use it to our own advantage, we have sought to use it for our own desire and selfish love.
In the women’s ordination debate both sides have sought to use God’s word for their own gain. Both sides standing in authority over God’s word, rather than kneeling in submission to it.
The function of the LCANZ stands on the brink of dysfunction, church boards are usurping their authority, while those called to function with theological authority have not.
But this does not have to be the crisis it’s growing to be! We are a church that has stopped listening and watching.
The Holy Spirit is being grieved.
Jesus is still in the midst of his church. He is ready to be woken, to calm the storm, so we continue to be blessed, forgiven, and covered.
We all agree that we cannot come to agreement on what the scriptures say regarding the ordination of women.
We know that other denominations and Lutheran churches ordain women. We also know that God has spoken through our synodical process four time saying “no” to the ordination of women in the LCANZ. Only in the fulness of time will we understand this.
In synods at Tanunda in 2000, Toowoomba in 2006, Brisbane in 2015, and Sydney in 2018 delegates trusted God in the process of synod, prayed accordingly, voted, and God spoke through the result saying, “no”.
If we have not trusted God in the past, why should anyone trust him working through the forthcoming 2023 synod and beyond? Are we not opening the way for further chaos, confusion, and corruption? If we continue to go the way of subjective knowledge of good and evil, can we expect any type of functional unity in Jesus Christ to come from this? Only the worst kind of love will come to life from a pseudo unity or trust in God!
We can engage in emotionalism in questioning why God has said, “no”. But it does not dismiss the fact that God has said “no” in the process we trust in which he works.
When God says no in scripture, he calls us to listen. When he says something three times, yes or no, God is calling us to stop, turn, and follow him, listen to him, and trust him.
Four times God has spoken to us. He has been faithful to us through synod. God calls us to suffer under his righteousness just as Jesus did. For pastors, in the office in which he has called them as mediators, to suffer, as Jesus suffered. For all in the office of the priesthood of all believers to suffer as servants as Jesus did.
When we suffer or endure in what Christ has called us to, the Holy Spirit will enable peace within, as he leads us.
As the psalmist says in Psalm 32 we will be blessed or balanced or made level before God and be caused to be seen balanced and blessed before a chaotic world.
We will be affirmed in Christ’s forgiveness and led by the Holy Spirit in the mega work of confessing sin to God, and the confession before the world of God’s forgiveness of our sin. Nevertheless, we will suffer in doing so. But praise God, we will continue being covered by the forgiveness of Jesus Christ and holiness worked by God the Holy Spirit.
Be blessed, forgiven, and covered by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
Psalm 32 is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Jesus is your confessor before God the Father, he also instructs and counsels you with the Holy Spirit who proceeds from him and our Father in Heaven.
Just as Jesus listened to God the Father and bore our transgression for our forgiven and was covered and raised by the Spirit and the Father, we too are blessed, forgiven, and covered, when we remain in Jesus Christ, listening to the will of God our Father.
Jesus is in our midst, let’s join him in prayer, listening to God, asking him to forgive us and cover us in his blessed knowledge and holiness.
Psalm 32 (ESV)
A MASKIL OF DAVID.
Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my
groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah
I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah
Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you
at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach
him.
You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
which must be curbed with bit and bridle,
or it will not stay near you.
Many are the sorrows of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the
LORD.
Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice,
O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!
Pastor Heath Pukallus
January 2023
