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Dear Pastor,
Thank you for taking a few minutes to read these words I have written to you. I offer this as a brotherly discussion of matters of the heart. I might add that if you have picked up this letter because some well-meaning Christian has sort of “forced it on you,” please forgive them—and keep reading.
Before you get started on this little booklet, I ask you to keep a few things in mind:
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the most powerful and positive For Life message in the universe!
Addressing the Life Issues is the Responsibility of the Church and Her Pastors for they are spiritual and theological issues
The Church and her pastors have what it takes – the Gospel!
One more thing:
Lutherans For Life truly wants to help you!
Your servant For Life,
Jim Lamb
Don Berhow, a member of my first congregation, was quite a lay theologian. For example, he regularly studied from his own copy of Pieper’s Christian Dogmatics! Because of a stroke, Don eventually needed to live in a care center. His mind was still sharp, however, as was his humor. The chaplain at the center was Danish and I am German. Don loved to tell people that his spiritual life was in the hands of a Great Dane and a German Shepherd!
I visited Don just prior to going to St. Louis to receive my Doctor of Ministry degree. He expressed joy at my completion of that program, but said that when I returned he was not going to call me “Doctor Lamb.” “I’m going to give you a more honorable title—pastor.”
You have been called and given the honorable title “pastor,” shepherd—undershepherd of the Good Shepherd and overseer of the Good Shepherd’s sheep. The honorable calling can at the same time be joy-filled and frustrating, energizing and energy draining. A modern day Palestinian shepherd said he knew why God compares His people to sheep. “Sheep are stupid, they smell bad, and they bite!” (I would not recommend quoting this in a sermon!)
But God’s sheep also hurt and grow weary and get lost. They need a shepherd. When dealing with “the sheep of his hand” (Psalm 95:7), you deal with what I like to call “matters of the heart.” For the Hebrew, matters of the heart were things that affected the very soul. Idiomatically, joy can be expressed as a “leaping heart,” sorrow as “evil of the heart,” and guilt as being “struck by the heart.” But my favorite is Isaiah 40:1 where the prophet is called to “speak to the heart” of God’s people.
You, pastor, are called, not just to spew nice sounding words into the air, but to take “aim” in your preaching as Walther says (C.F.W. Walther. The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel. 99-100). He ends this lecture with these words, “May God help you in your future ministry not to become aimless prattlers.” Encouraging! Nevertheless, you are called to take aim with God’s Law and Gospel and preach it into people’s lives, into matters of the heart. What an honorable responsibility!
What a daunting task! With so many sheep and so many matters of the heart, no wonder pastors sometimes choose not to address them all, especially if they are controversial and divisive or politically charged—you know where I am going—like the life issues. I would like to visit with you about these matters of the heart, and I do so with deepest respect for your pastoral office and honoring Paul’s admonition to speak the truth in love. The truth I seek to share is this:
Despite their political, social, and moral “baggage,” the life issues at their core are theological issues. Thus, we not only should deal with them, we are compelled to deal with them. They are matters of the heart.
Here’s why.
Life Issues and Idolatry
We usually deal with abortion and other life issues under the Fifth Commandment and appropriately so. But it is too bad that is the only place they are mentioned in the catechism. Theologically they can be dealt with in many areas.
Under the First Commandment in the Large Catechism, Luther says, “Does your heart cling to something else from which it hopes to receive more good and help than from God, then you have an idol, another god” (Tappert, 368, 28). The members of your congregation live in a society that, with increasing frequency, points people to death as a source of “good and help.” Think about it. Society points the pregnant teen to death through abortion as a source of help and calls it “good.” Society points the chronically ill to the death of human embryos for help and calls it “good.” Society points the suffering and terminally ill to death through assisted suicide or euthanasia for help and calls it “good.” Day after day, society points your people to an “idol, another god.”
They need to hear from you that death is not their god or their savior or their friend. Scripture declares very clearly that death is their enemy. The Good News is that death is a defeated enemy, defeated by the Lord of Life and His suffering, death, and resurrection. Defeated by the One who will not forsake those for whom He won such a victory. He provides true “help and good” when the brokenness of sin brings difficulties into your people’s lives. You do not dabble in politics when you warn your people against abortion or embryonic stem cell research or assisted suicide. You warn them of a false god who would steal their faith. You point them to their true rescuer and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Life Issues and God’s Name
If I took my grandma’s antique plate passed down to us and purposely smash it to pieces, I not only destroy something of value, I insult the memory and name of grandma. Every human life is precious, but that is not what compels you as a pastor to speak up for and defend it. You are compelled by the fact that every human life is precious to God. He created every human life with His hands (Psalm 139:13). He stretched out His hands on the cross and suffered and died to purchase and win every human life (Hebrews 7:27). He desires to call every human life into an eternal relationship with Him and hold them by the hand (1 Timothy 2:4). When someone profanes life by devaluing it or discarding it, they profane the name of the Author, Redeemer, and Sanctifier of life.
When you speak up from your pulpit and defend life against the assaults of society, you are not preaching on “social issues.” You defend the holiness of God’s name as the Lord of Life. You point your people to the true source of human worth and value that transcends every human “quality of life” standard. Human value comes from what God does and not from what we can do or not do. His people need to hear that.
Life Issues and the Sound of Silence
You dated yourself if you just started humming the Simon and Garfunkel song! But since it’s in your head, the fourth verse reads, “‘Fools,’ said I, ‘You do not know Silence like a cancer grows.’” Some pastors avoid speaking out on life issues to avoid conflict or giving offense. You must realize that silence is not a position of neutrality. Silence speaks, for if we are silent, the world is more than happy to fill that void. It does so on behalf of Satan. “Did God actually say?” (Genesis 3:1) To the pregnant teen, “Did God actually say abortion is wrong? You never hear anything about it in church do you?” To the family dealing with grandma’s severe illness, “Did God actually say euthanasia is wrong? You never hear anything about it in church do you?”
Satan uses silence and the world to lead people to sin and then silence “like a cancer grows” and he uses it to turn on them. “Did God actually say you could be forgiven for what you have done? You caused the death of another human being. Don’t think you can turn to your Jesus for this one. You never hear anything about it in church do you?” If the pulpit is silent, then those who are crushed by this sin—and there are many in our pews who are—wonder whether they would be welcome if anyone knew what a horrible thing they had done.
Breaking the pulpit silence on the life issues is not moralizing. It engages Satan in battle and sends him fleeing through the power of the Word of Life. It gives your people guidance and strength and hope when facing him with their matters of the heart. Some may take offense, but the greater offense is having what your people need to hear and being silent. Speaking on these matters of the heart is more than being against something that is “out there.” It is being for people who are “in here.”
Sing The Sound of Silence if you like. But for the sake of Jesus Christ and His people, do not be that sound.
Life Issues and the Gospel
I saved the best and most important for last. At an LFL board meeting someone said, “We need to train our pastors to deal with the life issues.” Rarely one to disagree with a board member, I had to this time. I responded that pastors already have what it takes to address these issues—the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel is the most powerful and positive life-affirming message in the universe! This message is tailor made for issues of value and meaning, life and death, pain and suffering, grief and guilt.
Gospel Value
In fact, I believe when dealing with life issues from the pulpit, we make a mistake by only preaching about the Fifth Commandment. The Second Article is even more important because it grounds your people in the great value God’s actions in Christ place on human life. The incarnation of God takes place miraculously and microscopically in a fallopian tube. Our confessions rightly acknowledge this. “He was assumed into God when He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in His mother’s womb and His human nature was personally united with the Son of the Most High” (Formula of Concord, Eptiome VIII, 10. Tappert 488).
The holy Son of God takes our place from the very beginning. The holy zygote—one-celled human being—takes the place of the unholy zygote (Luke 1:31 and Psalm 51:5). Pieper writes, “For Scripture says … of the embryo in its mother’s womb that it is God the Lord” and then concludes, “Christ passed through all stages of our existence that He might fully remedy our unclean conception and birth” (Pieper’s Dogmatics Vl. II, 84). The presence of God in a womb at the moment of conception was part of the price of humanity’s redemption from the moment of conception. The journey to the cross did not start in a manger but in a fallopian tube. This gives inherent and inestimable value to every human being at every stage of development. This is not politics but incarnational theology.
Gospel Motivation
The Gospel provides the foundation for human value and also for the choices we make in relation to the life arena. The Holy Spirit gives this powerful promise to the blood-bought, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32) Choices need not be dictated by circumstances. They flow from trust in Him who did not spare His Son for us.
For example, we have a more powerful message for our young people than just, “Don’t do these things because they are bad.” We can say, “You don’t have to do these things because God is good and He has shown you His goodness and love in the cross of Jesus.” As temples of the Holy Spirit, our young people need to be encouraged that they can make good and God-pleasing choices. They can honor and glorify God with their bodies. All of us need to be reminded of this Gospel foundation as we face the many choices placed before us, including those in the life arena.
Gospel Healing
The message of God’s love demonstrated on the cross of Jesus and of sin’s forgiveness purchased there speaks to people in difficult life-related situations. It speaks to the pregnant teen, to people struggling with chronic disease, to those who have made wrong choices, to families standing around grandma’s nursing home bed. It speaks of God’s presence, His love, His forgiveness, His strength, and His healing. These are not just nice sounding words that require some emotional ascendancy in order to obtain. They are objective realities made so by the cross and the empty tomb. Pastors need to connect this to the life issues.
Gospel Hope
Pain and suffering are big issues in the life arena. Those favoring assisted suicide and euthanasia prey upon your people using these as bait. “What’s’ so wrong with ending your suffering and being with Jesus?” You need to protect your people from these assaults. Again, you already have what it takes to do so, the Gospel and the Theology of the Cross. You can point people not just to a God who knows about suffering because He’s God, but to a God who suffered! You point them to a God who in Christ promises to be present and at work in their suffering according to His good and gracious will. You point people to a God who has dealt with, once and for all, the root cause of suffering and promises—according to His timetable—the great “no more suffering” of eternal life.
Conclusion
Thank you for bearing with me! I pray my love and respect for what you do came through. I also pray that the urgency of addressing the life issues as a shepherd of Christ’s flock came through as well. These are matters of the heart that affect those sheep every day. And every day they hear plenty that would lead them astray from trusting in the God of the cross. But you have plenty to counter this—the all sufficient message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the most powerful and positive life affirming message in the universe, a message tailor made for matters of the heart.
I pray that God would give you courage, not to address political issues, but to address these matters of the heart as biblical and theological issues that have been politicized, and that you would do so with confidence and joy trusting in the Good Shepherd whom we all serve.