Calling a killer what he is

Following the Orlando terrorist attack, there's been plenty of social media and political hay made of whether we call the killer an "extremist Islamic terrorist" or an "extremist homophobic terrorist." In the midst of the conversation someone argued that we have to use the former label because it accurately represents who the attacker was and because we Lutherans (to use a phrase of Luther's) "call a thing what it is."

It's important to address things directly. But using Luther's words as a rationale is to bend his phrase to a purpose he didn't intend. Luther wasn't talking about truth-telling in regard to matters of the kingdom on the left. If we want language for that, it's better to take up the 8th commandment where testifying honestly is the focus. But Luther is after bigger fish (theological sturgeons, I think).

The language of calling a thing what it is comes from Thesis 21 of Luther's Heidelberg Disputation. He's referring to an earlier thesis in the disputation where he discounts the assertions that works ("doing what is in you to do" — especially doing the good work of participating in the church's sacramental life to gain merit) apply to salvation and that free will is anything other than a fiction..

So in Thesis 21 when he says "The 'theologian of glory' calls the bad good and the good bad," he means that they see good works as meritorious and the Cross is foolishness, They can't imagine that God could work in Christ's suffering or in ours. He continues that "the 'theologian of the cross' says what a thing is." This theologian regards Christ as having taken care of it all on Calvary. Then in Thesis 25 he shows himself to be a theologian of the cross: "The one who does much 'work' is not the righteous one, but the one who, without 'work,' has much faith in Christ."

So what Luther does with this language is to draw the distinction between what is Christ (the only one who saves) and what is Not-Christ (everything else in all of Creation including the best things we could think of, none of which can save). And it all comes down to who it is that receives your trust.

That's Luther for you. He takes me right to the brink of needing a preacher. He forces me to admit that none of my schemes that I think are going to secure my future (whether, in the current conversation, they come from either the Left or the Right, including eliminating a certain category of weapon or bomb the hell out of the Islamic State) has the power to do what God's will really is or provide any real, trustworthy safety.

So Luther moves in the direction of Romans 10 by delivering Christ in a way that creates new hearts and the new obedience that come with faith — and which engender the fruits of the spirit on the part of my enemies that are what I'm really after in dim vision of peace through vengeance. Thus, Luther tells us, "The law says: 'Do this!', and it never is done. Grace says: 'Believe in this one!', and forthwith everything is done."

If I truly want a change in my enemies, although they seek to use the Law of terror, threats, and murder to force me into their religious camp, for instance, the faithful response is not more of the same (the move of a theologian of glory) but a bestowal of the gospel (the calling of a theologian of the cross) that brings the barely imaginable future of the lion lying down with the lamb, toddlers playing safely near Florida alligators, and me and my neighbor being raised from the dead.

The Seventh Mark of the Church: The Suffering Moral Baker

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.