When Luther drafted his list of the marks of the church in On the Councils and the Churches, he included the obvious ones like the Word, Sacraments, and Prayer. But for some his final mark of the church is unexpected: suffering. He calls it the cross, but suffering is what he means. Those who follow Christ will get the same treatment he did. If the world does this to the wood when it's green, just think what'll happen when it's dry.
Indiana's recent so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) has put me to thinking about this mark of the church. Certainly Christ's upside down kingdom can be at odds with the world, and it's likely to be on the receiving end of some reprobation as worthless or dangerous. But when Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves and after the resurrection tells Peter to "Feed my sheep," it sets us up for another kind of suffering.
That's the suffering that comes when we call ourselves Christian but turn the faith into a moral code. We treat Jesus as Moses and become indignant that the world doesn't follow our morality to a tee. For Jesus calls us into vocations that will inevitably pull us out of our well-spun law-abiding cocoons into service to those who have no respect for our comfort, our spiritual pleasure, or our moral systems.
The truth is that, in our God-given vocations as baker, florist, professor, or parent, Jesus' fate becomes our own. In serving our vocations faithfully we find our crosses, and we'll wind up saying, "It kills me to do this." Honestly, as a dad I don't like changing dirty diapers or cleaning up vomit. As a professor I don't like picking up trash on my trek across campus to my next class. And yet I've been given these vocation where I'm face-to-face with a baby who has no respect for my 3:00 a.m. need for sleep, with students who drop straw wrappers and to-go cups, and with people who don't share my morality.
In Freedom of a Christian, Luther gives two reasons why we do good works. The first is because our neighbors need them. A splendid cake is a mighty good thing to have at my neighbor's wedding — just as having safe fellow commuters on the freeway is a good thing and a service I give my neighbor. The second reason to do good works is to restrain the old sinner in me who does not want to let go of my control, my security, or the morality I think will sustain them both. But the new inner person of faith in me, the one that is created by the gospel, insists on doing what I'd normally disdain in order to remain faithful.
To deny service to those I disagree with or whom I find morally reprehensible is to turn my back on the one for whom my own sin is anathema and yet who still treats me as a beloved child for Jesus' sake. In Christ God himself has gone against his own legal code and broken the living daylights out of the commandments in order to save me. In that light, to hew closely to my ethical standards may indeed be moral, but it sure isn't faithful. I imagine that if Jesus showed up today, he wouldn't tell a parable about the wheat and tares to call me on the carpet, but would instead hold a mirror to me with a story about a pious, indignant, and moral Indianapolis baker.
When the Son of Man comes to separate the sheep from the goats, I don't want it said of me that Jesus was in prison and I didn't visit, was naked and I didn't provide clothes, wanted a wedding catered and I did not bake the most glorious five-tiered cake possible. Although whether I'd include glitchy icing is another question entirely.
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