The other week I buried a woman. She was advanced in years, in her mid nineties, and her death did not come as a surprise or a shock. At the close of the service I spoke two stanzas of a hymn I learned sitting in the pews of Lent midweek worship services. There was a tradition, at least for a time long enough for me to remember being shaped by it, of closing our Lent midweek worship services with the hymn Abide With Me. Now, the Pastoral Care Companion I use for those kinds of services suggests it for good, right, and salutary reasons but I did not use it for any of those. I read those words because this woman and I were from the same congregation. We were both baptized and confirmed in a western suburb of Chicago. To be clear, she was baptized over fifty years before me and left the area well before I was even born. I did not meet her until about five years ago when I took the call to serve where I presently do south of Washington DC. I find relationships and connections like this to be, at the very least, beautiful. A pastor from St. John’s baptized her, and a pastor baptized at St. Johns buried her. God has a way of working that outstrips anything we might imagine.

This isn’t the only kind of story I could share even about the congregation I serve. I took the call not knowing that I was baptized at the same congregation as one of the members. I took the call not knowing that my childhood DCE’s cousin grew up in and still belongs to the parish. My vicarage congregation ended up having my wife’s foster grandparents as members. We showed up to a place we had never heard before for a year of service and ministry only to find baby pictures of my wife sitting on these people’s laps. These are three stories, three short stories connected to my life and they are not the only three. As I said, God has a way of working that outstrips anything we might image. 

At St. Johns, from teachers, pastors, youth leaders, and especially that at DCE now turned pastor, I learned that God’s working in this world should really be understood as God ushering his kingdom. God’s kingdom is not a place, it is his active rule and reign. We pray often for it to come, for God to work, but we do well to remember what we are praying for when we do. As Luther’s catechism continues to teach me:

Thy kingdom come.

What does this mean? The kingdom of God certainly comes by itself without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that it may come to us also.

How does God’s kingdom come? God’s kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity.

Things in my church body are not nearly as serene as some might suggest. Pastoral shortages, lack of trust and transparency, questions about the best means to form pastors, about who can or should lead particular elements of the worship service, about what the worship service should look like, are still live questions. To be clear, I think the questions matter. I think the answers matter. I think the way in which we ask and answer the questions matters too. Over the last few weeks I’ve seen the body of Christ do what it does in every generation, rip itself apart. I’ve seen hurt, mistrust, slander and I’ve participated in some of it privately—expressing my frustration over things with trusted people using language that does not put the best construction on them or what they are doing. As always, I am not free of the problem I see, if I want to know who is guilty I need only look in the mirror. 

Throughout all of this I have asked myself a rhetorical question: is this how the kingdom comes? Is this how God brings it to me, to others, is this how the Spirit is at work creating belief in His holy Word and are these the godly lives we are living in light of it? The answer is glaringly clear both in my case and in the case of the broader church body. We all believe we are right, that we have the best handle on the situation, that we have right questions and answers and only we have the solutions that will ensure the kingdom comes. But, that’s precisely the problem. The kingdom doesn’t come because of what we do, it just comes. It comes because God is at work in ways that outstrip what we might imagine. 

I am grateful to be part of a church body that cares about people and about doctrine and about institutions. I am grateful that we want to ask questions and give right answers. I am grateful that God is at work in ways that outstrip what I imagine this church body to be, in ways that outstrip what it could be. I know that God is at work, at work with people I agree with, with people I don’t agree with, with people I agree with partially. God is at work with people I like, people I dislike, and people I like half as well as I should and half as well as they deserve. God is at work throughout this church body in pastors and workers, in congregations and other institutions. 

One of my brother pastors shared a piece from the mid twentieth century I hadn’t read before by a pastor named Henry Reimann who wanted to offer some reflections on the liturgical renewal movement going on in the church at the time. Long before my generation, and hopefully long after it, people will continue to ask questions about worship and pastoral formation and all the other difficult points so as to offer answers faithful to our Lord and faithful to the work he is doing in our time. Reimann offered an answer, but not without a warning that i believe is just as relevant today as it was then. He writes: 

To be sure, our Synod needs groups that will courageously champion unpopular views, but we do not need, nor should we ever support, factionalism in any form. That is why I have personally always been rather suspicious of “movements,” “programs,” “campaigns.” It is so easy to let these stand in the way of building up the whole body. It is so easy for the group, any group, to work only for its own sake. It is so easy for the group to become narrowly defensive, to practically equate true Lutheranism with its own constituency, to criticize and judge merely because another pastor or congregation is not standing with us or agreeing with us. When I think of these things, I am not always sure that movements in the church, and also the liturgical movement which can raise up such a host of emotional reactions, are a good thing for the church.

It is easy for us to reduce the kingdom to our clan, to reduce the church to our comrades, to reduce the work that God does through us to the only work that God is doing. This is a danger, one I fear my church body is falling headlong into. 

I pray that God’s kingdom comes. I know that it does. I’m praying that it comes to me, that it comes through me, that he uses me to preach the word, administer the sacraments, and to encourage lives that reflect a God who always at work in and through people to usher in his rule and reign. That happens when people use the full depth of liturgical resources and when they don’t, when they encourage lay participation in the service and when they don’t, when they reach out to the world around them through care pantries and homeless shelters and comfort dog ministries and care ministries of all sorts and when they focus more on those shut ins and members.  The point is, the kingdom comes, the question is if we are getting in the way. God is at work in ways that outstrip whatever we might imagine. It is never a question of if the kingdom comes. The kingdom comes. But, we pray that it comes to us and through use.