From its inception nearly two centuries ago, my church body, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod was known to be a church body that, despite all the caricatures (negative or positive, rightly or wrongly attributed) was a church body that had been, to borrow from a father in the faith, grabbed by a book that would not let them go. I don’t mean the synodical handbook, as helpful as that book may be in organizing our synodical life together. I do not mean the Book of Concord, though we have unashamedly confessed and continue to confess unequivocally along with those who have gone before us in concert with that normed norm. I mean the book of books, I mean the scriptures, I mean the very Word of God. We have been, among everything else, a people shaped and formed, taught and instructed, created and animated by the inscripturated breath of God. We know that inspiration. We have defended it. We have heard it on every page. We have sought to understand and preach in accord with it. Whatever else may be said of us, that is who we were from the start. People grabbed by a book, people upon whom God breathed his creative, redemptive, and sanctifying breath.

I don’t want to suggest we’ve abandoned that identity, that we’ve replaced one book for another, but it seems that sometimes other books matter more in our relationships with one another than the one that grabbed us in the first place. I have many thoughts about so much going on in the life of my church body. Institutional and interpersonal disputes are handled according to a well ordered and outlined process down to the subparagraph, so right according the the letter of the law but questionable in terms of the spirit. Missives and declarations handed down in the hopes of clarification end up in furthering obfuscation and dissension. I’m not suggesting I have the answers, but I am trying to give voice to a reality felt by many fellow pastors and church workers and congregations. I know the feeling is mutual because I’ve talked with people, people who are hurting, people who have resigned, people who have been grossly misunderstood, people who, like me, like the synod, have been grabbed by a book, have been bathed in the breath of God that will not let them go.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is best known in our circles for the clear and concise expression of the gospel and life of a Christian in 2:8–10: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we may walk in them.” Indeed, it is hard to read Articles IV, V, VI of the AC without hearing the echoes of Paul. It is tough to consider the conditions of membership in the synod without thinking about the life we live in light of the God who gave his for us.

It is not, though, those verses I want to put before us, to grab us once more as a synod, as the church. Rather, I want us to listen once more to Paul in Ephesians 4:1–6: “I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”

Martin Franzmann offered some reflections on this section publicly in a few different places. I want to draw our attention to one that is not only less known but also harder to find. He wrote a series of devotions on the Holy Spirit and the work of the Spirit shortly before his death. One of those devotions focused squarely on 4:3, “making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

He starts out like this:

“They create a desolation, and they call it peace.” That was a Roman historian’s comment on the Roman method of pacifying and unifying the Roman Empire. One need not look very hard or very far to find parallels to which the historian’s sardonic comment applies. Our human attempts to produce unity and peace all too often purchase unity and peace at the cost of our humanity. Something of our human worth and dignity gets lost; something of what makes human beings precious and beautiful is thwarted or suppressed when we attempt to produce unity and peace. For we must, man being man, almost of necessity impose unity and legislate peace.

Franzmann was living in the midst of the time when the LCMS was contending for that book that first grabbed them among the other theological realities in crisis. His time and our time are not the same. Anyone who utters that right now is Seminex 2.0 understand neither this moment nor that one. That was its own moment. This is its own moment. We need to meet this moment and not another because this is the one given us by God. And yet, there are echoes, there are realities that match not just the Roman historian’s remark but also Franzmann’s diagnostic clarity. We purchase peace and unity at the cost of our humanity. We lose or obscure the worth and dignity of humanity, we discolor the preciousness and beauty of a person when we rule by fiat and legislative process, when we impose unity and legislate peace.

Franzmann continues:

“The unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” is another story. The Spirit does not impose unity and legislate peace; He creates them, and therefore, He need not annihilate in order to unite. The Spirit does not simply blank out those impulses of man which pose a threat to unity and peace; His creative breath transfigures them and makes of them what He who created them in man intended them to be—powers for unity and peace. Take those three fertile breeders of dissension and disunity: honor, bread, and sex. What happens when they are touched by the Breath of God?

How different are the workings of the Spirit to those in whom the Spirit has promised to work? Perhaps the world has a point when it sees hypocrites in the church. We know this, we confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean, that we are poor miserable sinners. And yet, the Spirit works. The Spirit does not impose unity and legislate peace, he does not annihilate in order to unite. His breath transfigures. His breath recreates. His breath unites and pacifies and sets to work those whom he transfigures, those whom he recreates.

The question Franzmann asks, “What happens when they are touched by the Breath of God?” is asked about honor, bread, and sex. You can consult the devotion for his remarks on bread and sex. I can tell you that you will find Franzmann confessing the faith once delivered to the saints concerning how bread and sex understood as gift given to humanity, a gift to be received and used rightly for the service of the other in light of the intent of the giver, pushes back against a world obsessed with rich and poor and what a man or woman lusts after. His discussion of honor, though, is worth reproducing in light of what I’m trying to share here.

After quoting that book that grabbed him and would not let him go—after quoting Psalm 8, “what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor,” he writes: 

It was God, the lover of variety, who gave to each man an honor peculiarly his own. God made and makes individuals. It was man who made of his honor a caricature of the Creator’s intent by declining the honor freely given him by God, who created him in His image, and seeking his own honor in striving to be God’s equal. Man corrupted individuality into individualism and made of the peaceful family of man that God intended into a collection of made and murderous competitors. But God restored man to honor. Now “we see Jesus,” the Man who by the grace of God tasted death for every man, “crowned with glory and honor.” Through Him God, still concerned about man’s honor, is “bringing many sons to glory.” The sun never shone upon a more highly individualized set of sons. We need not fight for individuality or in defense of it; we need not bristle at another’s individuality or in defense of it; we need not bristle at another’s individuality or try to make it look less glorious than our own. The fighting is over; the Spirit gives to each man individually as He wills, and He gives each for the good of all.

We don’t need to fight because the Spirit has breathed. We do not need to scrap and claw, to pressure and wield power, because the Spirit has willed, he has given each for the good of all. That does not mean we all will agree with the decisions of others. It does not mean that we will all like each other, get along with one another—the unity the Spirit creates is neither pollyannish or fascistic in tone. It is, though, real unity, unity wrought by the life, death, and resurrection of the one who united himself to humanity, who grabbed us by the flesh and refuses to let us go.

Still, Franzmann’s question is worth asking about us—what happens when we are touched by the breath of God? Among other things, we are put to work.

The Spirit creates peace and unity in the midst of the disunity of our world. It is not the least of His gifts therefore that He creates in man the will to peace and unity. Rather, He makes us eager to maintain the given unity, wiling to exert ourselves to tend and foster the exotic plant which grows so precariously on the soil which we have sowed with the thorns thistles of self-will and strife.

The book that has grabbed us and not let us go, the Spirit who has breathed upon us, has made us eager to maintain the unity, not on our terms, but on the terms on the one who established that unity in the first place. We do so not by quoting bylaws, not by forcing narrow interpretations of confessional texts, not by demanding that people bow to pressure campaigns, but by living in a manner worthy of that grabbing, worthy of that breath, worthy of that call. We maintain unity with meekness, with humility, with gentleness, with patience, by bearing with one another in love and by doing the very thing for one another what our Lord has first done for us—forgiving one another. Forgiveness is not dispensed on our terms. I am not called to assess whether someone has repented enough or not, I am called to forgive. Maybe I have my doubts, but it isn’t once, or seven times, it is seventy times seven that my Lord calls me to forgive. The Spirit breathed, the Spirit creates, the book has grabbed and will not let us go.

I, poor miserable sinner that I am, by nature sinful and unclean, who breaks the commandments daily, commit to being eager to do what the Spirit has created me to do, to an eager maintenance of the unity given. However I can do that, I’m willing to listen. That does not mean I will agree with you or anyone else who tells me how that unity must be maintained, it means that I will not abandon those I disagree with as I would not abandon those with whom I already have agreement. There is no divorce in the church of God. Removal from a roster is not equivalent to removal of a lampstand. The problem is not that legislate peace and impose unity, the problem is that we do those things because we have forgotten who breathes on us and creates and sustains those things. The problem is we have welcomed some gifts from the spirit in terms of the flesh and blood before us and have asked for the gift receipt for others. My prayer is that the book that first grabbed us, will not, in this moment, let us go.

All scriptural references are from the NRSVUE.

All Franzmann quotes are from: Martin Hans Franzmann, Alive with the Spirit (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1973), 58–60.