My favorite place to sit and think on the campus of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis is on a bench just inside the Walther Arch. The arch was famously boarded up fifty years ago today, with the word EXILED painted across it. February 19th, 1974 is a day many are remembering today, some perhaps even celebrating. The way the story of today has been told leads people to believe that as difficult as it was to fire faculty for breach of contract it was the right decision for the good of the church. Theologically there were substantial issues on the table with regard to the interpretation of the scriptures and the application of the gospel to the doctrine and life of the church. Those issues swelled and the personalities took over, before long the church body was at a cross roads, brother stopped caring for brother, faculty refused to teach, were fired for breach of contract, students followed the terminated faculty into an “exile.” Some are always quick to point out the books or processional cross that walked off the campus too or to remind hearers that after the demonstration on this day fifty years ago people came back to campus and had lunch. 

I wasn’t there. This event occurred a full eleven years before I was born. And the events leading up to it span decades before that. Timelines are always selective, they always tell a story, by any side of the debate, and we are left to sort through the history, to make sense of it, and yes, to move on in light of it. But, the fact remains that I wasn’t there. And yet, the specter of today has loomed over my church body ever since—I wasn’t there then, but I am now. 

If I am being honest I am sympathetic to the faculty and students who walked, not because I support their theological perspective but because I do believe they were treated unfairly. I am moved by the show of solidarity even if I do recognize that no side of this catastrophe has clean hands. One thing to realize is that every side has something it needs to confess, whether or not it will admit it. I know enough of the history, have read enough of the first hand accounts, interview transcripts, and heard enough personal anecdotes to know that there is plenty of blame to go around. 

I, however, wasn’t there. For some people this fact means I should keep my mouth shut. That I should be grateful for the stand for truth in the face of a threat to the church. And while I am grateful to those who contend for the truth, there is no such thing as a threat to the church. The tomb is empty after all. What there are, however, are threats to denominations, to livelihoods, to theological perspectives. 

I wasn’t there, but I am here. I am on this side of the boarded up Walther Arch, sympathetic to those who walked yet not throwing my hat in with them because I do not think theologically like them. I am not one to undercut the authority of the scriptures or to deny the third use of the law. I understand their arguments, their perspectives, even the theological positions that undergird them, but I do not share them. I am here, not there. 

It is because I am here that I lament today, because what happened fifty years ago was not a win. Rather than bear with one another in love we chose to sever fellowship. I wasn’t there, but I am here, and so it isn’t simply they who failed, it is we. I may not have built this house, but I live in it, and I am responsible for it. We are called to love one another. Love is no mere sentimentality, no simplistic pollyannish call to be nice and ignore problems. Love calls us to far more than that, it calls us to bear with those in the wrong and those who do wrong. It calls us to treat the neighbor we disagree with, the neighbor who harmed us, as one Christ died and rose again for, perhaps even in spite of their beliefs on the matter. Love does not delight in the severing of fellowship or believe that the ends justifies the means. It calls us outside of ourselves, to look beyond our fears or the things we perceive that threaten us to seek the good of the other. 

As a historian I am not ignorant of the facts that pertain to this day and episode in the life of my church body. I know the wrong that was being taught and I reject it, but I do not reject the brothers who espoused it. I can’t, not because I wasn’t there, but because I am not just some historian, analyzing at a distance. I belong to Christ and his church, which means there is a perpetual call upon me to love my neighbor, to love my brother, which means treating them with contempt is never on the table. No, we in the church are called to love. I wasn’t there, I am here, which means today I can love those I believe thought wrong and acted wrong, I can bear with those who walked and those who fired the faculty. And when I fail at this task, when I become simplistic, reductionistic, and caustic, I know that my true identity, security, and meaning do not lie in my abilitity to love or explicate sound theology but in the one whose tomb remains empty. I also wasn’t there that day, when Christ died or rose again, but that reality undergirds the whole of reality, not just for me but for the church specifically. And it is in light of, not in spite of that reality, that we can work toward fulfilling the call incumbent upon us, the call to love. 

Paul put it ever so clearly:

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Colossians 3:12–17