Either we are catholic or we are not. . .

It is curious to me that those who tilt toward the evangelical side of things and those who are progressive share a common reservation about things Lutheran.  It is as if the Confessions are being taken too seriously by both.  Take it easy on those Confessions.  It is as if being Lutheran were somehow offensive.  Now if you would posit a Lutheranism that is distinctively Lutheran, then I would agree.  But it is precisely the misreading of the Confessions that allows for either false idea -- that being Lutheran matters most of all or being Lutheran matters nothing at all.  In our Confessions we begin with assertion that we are catholic in doctrine and practice and, if you can show where we are not, we will change.  Along with that is the assertion that being catholic in doctrine and practice means being deep in Scripture.  Both are connected and both are key to Lutheran identity.  Except now.

We have some who complain that sending a guy to seminary might result in him being too Lutheran for the congregation that sent him.  In other words, Lutheran is not that important but being a buddy of Jesus is.  The dilution of Lutheran identity or at least living on the fringes of that identity instead of square within its stream are the concerns of those who see Lutheran and catholic and Scriptural as being one in the same.  On the other hand, those who are comfortable on the fringes of liturgical and confessional Lutheran identity and practice insist that our job is to bring people to Jesus and not to make them Lutheran.  I would agree to a point except that the competition or mutually exclusive character of Lutheran and Christian represent a hill too far.  Either we are catholic or we are not.  It really is as simple as that.

For those who define their Lutheranism less by what we confess in our Book of Concord than by what they learned, knew, or experienced growing up, there is another problem.  The liturgy is for them less than a reflection of this catholicity and Scriptural confession and life than it is just something Lutherans do but as simply as possible and with as little attention possible drawn to the ceremonial and the external.  Growing up I found that Lutheranism in theory was held very high but there was no real concern about or desire to fix the gulf between what our Confessions say of our faith and worship and what we were really doing.  Our quarterly reception of the Sacrament, lack of mention of private confession, abundant use of preaching texts instead of the lectionary readings appointed, and an almost embarrassment at vestments betrayed a Lutheranism that had grown disconnected from its Confession -- if not in theory than at least in practice.

The Lutheranism I learned to know is not at all bothered by being called catholic by the masses of Protestants nor is it wary of living out its life in the richer expression of the liturgy.  It was not a matter of correcting the theory of what I had been taught but encouraging us to actually practice it in daily life.  The bulk of the liturgical movement among Lutherans has been less about tinkering with rites than it has been restoring those rites to the core and center of our life together.  In this way it has been an incremental movement toward being comfortable again with the idea of our Confessions -- we are the catholics Rome is not and the Protestants are not.  By catholic, we mean a thoroughly Biblical faith living out not in novelty but within the chain of those to whom the sacred deposit was first given and in whom it is now preserved.  Either we are catholic or we are not and, if we are not, then who are we at all?