What follows are simply some of my reflections. These are not tightly argued points, rather a collection of observations, reflections and personal conclusions. They may however draw others into pondering, reflecting and weighing up their own points of view. To God be the glory.
Growing up in the church, in country Queensland, my experience was that all pastors were men. That is still the common lived experience of members of the LCANZ today. We might know some women who are clergy, in the Anglican church for example, and we might even have heard one at an ecumenical service. However, within the LCANZ the experience is of male pastors only.
That limited experience can build the assumption that this is the way it should be, or indeed this is all that’s possible. In contrast, people with a broader experience of the church see things differently. Already before the 2000 Synod, many in the LCANZ thought there was no question that women could be ordained. They knew from experience that it was indeed possible for women to be pastors.
It’s said that a period of about twelve years constitutes living memory. If people have experienced something for twelve years or so, then they tend to assume that it’s always been like that and will always be like that. Changing those ingrained thoughts is difficult, even in the face of hard evidence and well reasoned argument. When we think of widely accepted and unchallenged belief we might think back to the assumption that all swans are white, until it was discovered that some are black. Unfortunately things in the church are more complicated than accepting that some swans are in fact black.
People in the church have a history and habit of assuming things must be the way they currently are, and of reading meaning into many things. This sort of popular piety can be useful. It can be used as a teaching tool. It can help to convey the faith. It seems to me that there is also a danger in that popular piety can solidify and become brittle. For example, assumptions are made that a certain piece of furniture, or clothing, or traditional action is necessary and unchangeable, otherwise something terrible will happen. For example, how untouchable is the date of our Christmas celebrations? We could, in fact, celebrate Christmas on a different date. We don’t do that because it would put us out of step with the rest of Christianity. Even so, it’s very likely that popular piety would make such a change impossible regardless of the reasons to change. I suspect that our thinking about certain practices, and our attachment to them, has become brittle. We have become bound. We resemble the woman who had been bent over by a disabling spirit. (Luke 13:11)
It’s common that change may be avoided because it can be confusing, frightening and destabilising for people with a secure and established situation. Some might think that if it isn’t broken, why fix it. I suspect not many of us would be using perfectly functional wood stoves and kerosene lamps. I remember stories of people from many decades ago being afraid of having electricity brought into their homes. Times change, and it may be that things are more broken than we are prepared to admit.
As a Lutheran, I treasure our Christian freedom. There is a great freedom in the Lutheran church. A great deal of what we agree to do is done for the sake of good order and the clear proclamation of the gospel. There are a whole host of ‘indifferent things’, which are neither commanded or forbidden, and we sometimes refer to these things by the Latin term adiaphora. We have no reason to fight about many things in the church, unless someone takes the freedom we have in the gospel and tries to bind it with a law. There is quite a difference between saying that ‘we have always done something a certain way’ on the one hand, and demanding and decreeing that something MUST be done a certain way on the other. Then our gospel freedom is threatened and we must fight. Lutherans are always reforming.
Our Christian freedom is important, and is to be helped rather than hindered by good order. For example “…, everything may be done in an orderly fashion in the churches without confusion, but in such a way that consciences are not burdened by thinking such things are necessary for salvation or that they sin when violating them without offense. Just as no one would say that a woman commits a sin by leaving the house with her head uncovered in an inoffensive way.”(Augsburg Confession XXVIII para 56.) … Worship on a Sunday is an example of our freedom. “For those who judge that the necessary observance of Sunday in place of the sabbath was instituted by the church’s authority are mistaken. Scripture, not the church, abrogated the sabbath. For after the revelation of the gospel all Mosaic ceremonies can be omitted.” (para 58, 59) We have freedom in what we eat and drink. “The apostles commanded abstention from blood, etc. Who keeps this command now? Those who do not keep it certainly do not sin, because the apostles did not wish to burden consciences through such bondage. They issued the prohibition for a time to avoid scandal. For the general intention of the gospel must be considered in connection with the decree.”(para 65, 66) Our Christian freedom is great and precious indeed.
I think this is very important when it comes to the question of ordination. What is core and what is free? Christ, his word and his gracious action is core. The trappings and arrangements we use are most certainly things we can organise freely.
I do understand that for a church the question of who may be ordained is not simply a matter of what we feel like. It’s not simply because advances in work, health, education and many other areas mean that women have the skills and abilities required to perform well in many areas that for centuries were restricted to males alone. I have become convinced that the ordained ministry is very much a question of practice and order in our church rather than something that is demanded or commanded by God. We have spent decades wrestling under the assumption that ordaining only men is a teaching of the church. It’s a common and familiar practice and, unsurprisingly, many have formed pious opinion to support this, drawing on various texts. Given that ordination, as we practise it in our church is not mentioned in the Bible, it’s hard to see how there can be binding biblical teaching for our practice. Most pastors of the church, even those opposed to ordaining women, know that the two favoured texts are insufficient to support a binding teaching of the church.
For many years I wondered why many other churches seemed to have a much easier journey with the question of who may be ordained. Then one day the reason dawned on me. We are one of the few churches who have written this prohibition(TA VI 11) in our church shaping documents. Without the Theses of Agreement, written to facilitate the union of two groups of Lutherans, we would have no written prohibition. This prohibition seems to state what was accepted to be true at the time, in terms of the practice of the church, rather than grounding a solid teaching of the church.
Instead of describing or teaching a form of ordained ministry as we know it, the Bible, recording our Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles, tends to describe and encourage the preaching of the good news about Christ. As Lutherans it is important for us that the good news may be clearly heard and sacraments received by people. The people and the structures involved in ensuring that can happen lie very much in the background. We value good order so that people hear the gospel and can trust the good news they hear. Unfortunately, undercurrents of fear mean that many people have trouble trusting anything they hear from the church.
I don’t feel any despair about this situation. This is God’s church. God is graciously at work. Gradually we will learn, as we have in the past, under the leading and guiding of the holy Spirit. It’s my conviction that eventually we will see that ordination is only a question of practice and certainly not a command. In contrast, ‘Love one another,’ and ‘Love your enemies,’ are commands. They are commands that we can only fulfil because God first loved us and Christ lives in us, both women and men. I look forward to a time of rejoicing at the wonderful things that Jesus does.(cf Luke 13:17) To God alone be the glory.
