I once heard someone say they are a Lutheran of conviction. I didn’t know what they meant then but I know what I might mean if I were to say it now.
I would mean it in the way that Hermann Sasse once spoke about Lutheran identity.
“We are faithful to this church, not because it is the church of our Fathers, but because it is the church of the Gospel; not because it is the church of Luther, but because it is the church of Jesus Christ. If it became something else, if its teaching were something else than a correct exposition of the plain Word of God, it would no longer be our church. It is not the Lutheran liturgy that matters. The church can get along without it if it must. It is not the Symbolic Books that count. If it should ever be demonstrated that their exposition of the Gospel is false, that they contain essential errors, we would be the first ones to cast them into the fire, for our norma normans, the standard by which we judge doctrines, is the Bible alone. Nor is it the Evangelical Lutheran Church, as a separate church in Christendom, that matters. The moment it becomes anything else than the stand on which is put the lamp which alone is a light upon our path it becomes a sect and must disappear. We would not be Lutherans if we did not believe this!”1
I would mean it in the way that Martin Franzmann once penned a hymn to celebrate Reformation Day.
O God, O Lord of heav’n and earth
Thy living finger never wrote
That life should be an aimless mote,
A deathward drift from futile birth.
Thy Word meant life triumphant hurled
In splendor through Thy broken world.
Since light awoke and life began,
Thou hast desired Thy life for man.
Our fatal will to equal Thee,
Our rebel will wrought death and night.
We seized and used in prideful spite
Thy wondrous gift of liberty.
Where death had royal scope and room,
Until Thy servant, Prince of Peace,
Breached all its walls for our release.
Thou camest to our hall of death,
O Christ, to breathe our poisoned air,
To drink for us the dark despair
That strangled our reluctant breath.
How beautiful the feet that trod
The road that leads us back to God!
How beautiful the feet that ran
To bring the great good news to man!
O Spirit, who didst once restore
Thy Church that it might be again
The bringer of good news to men,
Breathe on Thy cloven Church once more,
That in these gray and latter days
There may be those whose life is praise,
Each life a high doxology
To Father, Son, and unto Thee.2
I would mean it in the way this prayer invites it.
“O God, our Shepherd, give to the church a new vision and a new charity, new wisdom and fresh understanding, the revival of her brightness and the renewal of her unity, that the eternal message of Thy Son, undefiled by the traditions of men, may be hailed as the good news of the new age; through Him who maketh all things new, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”3
Reformation Day is not Lutheran independence day, it is a day to remember the conviction Lutherans have always had at their core, the conviction that the church, the gospel, that our faith, are not ours to do with as we please, but gifts to be received.
an occasional theologian 