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Poor Stinking Bags of Worms: Concerning the Identity 'Lutheran'

  • Sam Melton
  • Nov 2, 2017
  • 4 min read

HDS Lutherans Noon Service

Sam Melton, MDiv ‘19

November 1, 2017

My time here as HDS has been marked by many identities, yet the Lutheran identity is one that has seemed to follow me since orientation. This has always perplexed me for a few reasons. Mostly, because this has never been an identity I have carried at any other point in my life. I converted in my teens, wandered around denominations for awhile, and when I did find myself in a Lutheran community, I was almost always referred to as the ‘bad Lutheran.’

So, while yes, my time at HDS has very much been marked by Lutheran identity, I have really spent much more time resisting that identity. In the midst of this resistance- this is how I actually ended up here at HDS- I intentionally decided against attending a traditional Lutheran seminary and resisted the idea of traditional congregational ministry as to provide myself with an escape route if I ever saw fit. For me HDS was my answer. It was a way for me to sit in the back of a lecture, closest to the exit door that would lead me straight away from the Lutheran faith while avoiding the small talk on the way out. And though I tried to leave a few times, it seemed that every other room I found myself entering would simply be another room with some different Lutherans in it. It became the thing that would not let me leave.

The more time I spend with Lutheran communities, the more I find that I was never actually attempting to escape Lutheranism itself, but I was trying to escape the truth of our history. How is it that I am able to claim such a deeply flawed tradition as my own? How is it that I can feel called to preach in a pulpit that this tradition has spent so much time making sure I didn't have a claim to? How do I sit down at a table that I have to pull my own chair up to? How is it that I can claim a tradition that prides itself on reform without recognizing the cost of that reform in the lives of the vulnerable and marginalized? Yet, here I am.

As Lutherans, we’ve spent so much time celebrating the 500th anniversary of the reformation, but so often forget the liberation that is found in the truth in our history. Our history reminds us that we are so deeply flawed, that we mess up and will mess up again, that we don’t always get it right, but the liberation comes in reminding us that we are the vehicles in which reform begins to take place and while yes, it will be messy, it allows us room to mess up and try again and thus is why we are always being made new.

I leave you today with a quote from Luther himself in his reminder to us that the Lutheran identity we claim so strongly, was never meant to be. For so many, the term Lutheran represent division, of theology, belief, and believers, and this is partially true, as the name ‘Lutheran’ was ascribed by opponents of Martin Luther in order to insult and discredit him. In response to be called ‘Lutheran’ I share with you a piece of writing penned by Martin Luther in 1522 in response to the title of ‘Lutherans’:

"I ask that my name be left silent and people not call themselves Lutheran, but rather Christians. Who is Luther? The doctrine is not mine. I have been crucified for no one. St. Paul in 1 Cor. 3:4-5 would not suffer that the Christians should call themselves of Paul or of Peter, but Christian. How should I, a poor stinking bag of worms, become so that the children of Christ are named with my unholy name? It should not be dear friends. Let us extinguish all fictitious names and be called Christians whose doctrine we have. The pope's men rightly have a fictitious name because they are not satisfied with the doctrine and name of Christ and want to be with the pope, who is their master. I have not been and will not be a master. Along with the church I have the one general teaching of Christ who alone is our master. Matt. 23:8."

I begin with this piece today for a few reasons. One of which is that I love this humble confession of Luther’s, even as a self-identified Lutheran, who clings to the identity perhaps a bit too closely, this very quote of Luther reads as a Confession, admitting that the singular thread that ties us to one another is our belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and not simply a denominational title and governing body that we claim. This humble statement allows us to be the confessional tradition that we aspire to be, as a confessing church that seeks to speak out against systems of oppression and power and continually reforming. ‘Lutheran’ ties us to our history and reminds us of the truth and liberation of owning up to that history.


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