Gottesblog

It's a miserable, hot, drought-stricken summer here in the Midwest. On Monday I had some shut-in calls to make as well as some errands to run. These were to take me in different directions so I figured I could do the errands first and skip the clergy uniform, then head for home to get dressed for the shut-in calls.

Some thinking out loud for a paper I've been meaning to write for a long time and keep not getting around to. . . Between Law & Gospel, Church & Ministry, Justification & Sanctification, and Vocation it is hard to know what the most abused distinctively Lutheran theological contribution might be. Today I think it might be vocation.

It won't be lions in amphitheaters and certainly won't be incense and the genius Caesaris. It will be more like the Human Rights Commission of Canada pulling Mark Steyn in for thought crime. Or Australian pastors getting dragged to court for saying unnice things about Islam.

Old school Lutherans, that is. Like Chemnitz and Andrae who wrote Church Orders that mandated fixed liturgical forms, prayers, readings, vestments, times of service, etc. If you refused to follow the Church Order, then you were ousted from your parish. This is how Lutheranism worked at the time of the Reformation and in the generations afterward.