Title: Fred Meuser Tells ELCA, God Will Build the Church
ELCA NEWS SERVICE

August 17, 1997

  FRED MEUSER TELLS ELCA,
  GOD WILL BUILD THE CHURCH
  97-CA-14-RF

     PHILADELPHIA (ELCA) -- "There are only two sure things in life.
  Death is one. Taxes are not the other," the Rev. Fred W. Meuser told
  members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's fifth biennial
  assembly, gathered for worship Aug. 17. "The other, in the words of
  Luther's Small Catechism, is: God's kingdom comes indeed without our
  prayer, but we pray that it may come among us also."
     As the ELCA prepared to consider historic proposals to move closer
  to the Episcopal, Reformed and Roman Catholic churches, Meuser,
  president emeritus of Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio,
  reminded voting members that the church's heritage and hope derive not
  from comfortable structures and human interpretations but from Jesus'
  promise to Peter in Matthew 16: "I will build my church."
     "You who were baptized as infants, raised in Christian homes,
  children of God from the cradle to this day in spite of having strayed
  onto some very slippery spiritual slopes   who did that?" he asked.
     "You who once were too sophisticated to believe, too proud to
  repent, too self-reliant to pray, to stingy to give, but how happily do
  them all, and are here   representing this whole church and   imagine!
-- making decisions about its future   who did that?  Who toppled each of
  us off the control panel of our lives and put Jesus Christ there?"
      Christ's promise is significant because it says that God's power
  sustains the church and that the church belongs to God, not to its human
  caretakers, Meuser said.
     "It's easy to forget what God promises to build: Not sanctuaries,
  not the American way of life, not American Christianity," Meuser said.
  "What God does promise is a saved people, a fellowship   no solitary
  Christians   a family of disciples for whom Jesus is the center of life
    A worldwide family of forgiven and forgiving sinners, bound together
  by the Word and water of baptism, by the Spirit, by the Body and Blood
  of the Supper, who cheer each other on, suffer together, worship
  together, care for the world together."
     The church, Meuser said, has walls of the "living stones" of its
  members, windows in Christians "through which God's love shines into
  someone else's life," and the "world of need, near and far," which is
  the altar upon which Christians lay their lives and gifts.
     The music of God's church, he said, is "the harmony that comes
  when people with differing gifts, differing convictions, differing
  traditions work together, pray, and cooperate in the cause of Christ."
  And doors? "No doors. No one kept out.  No one forced to stay in.
  Nothing locked up for internal use only. Everything meant to flow out as
  God's blessing into God's world."
     The signs of that outpouring of God's love are many, Meuser said.
  "Lives that were coming apart at the seams put back together.
  Relationships, gone to pot, restored and healed. Graspers turned into
  givers. Resenters into forgivers." Young people, such as ELCA youth
  gathered at New Orleans last month, "rejecting the question, 'How can we
  get in on the big bucks?' and asking instead, 'Teach me your ways, O
  Lord; show me your paths.'"
     Christ's promise, the basis of the heritage and hope which is the
  theme of the ELCA's gathering, comes to life "wherever the life-changing
  message of Christ the Savior is discussed, shared, celebrated Whenever
  it comes alive in witness and sacrament, song and prayer, and service to
  people in need. Then God does it!"
     "The saddest sight in the church is people who think God cannot or
  will not build that flock," Meuser said. "Alive, strong churches are
  those whose people count on the promise that 'I will build my church,'
  and give God their lives to use them in the process."
     "That church, God's Church, is not a little fearful remnant hiding
  from the big bad world, always bemoaning how bad things are, hanging on
  by their fingernails. Oh, no! That Church is a great company, from every
  land from times past and present and yet to come, with the mind of
  Christ in them and a Lord out in front of them who says, 'Follow me! I
  have overcome the world! I will build my church!"
     "That promise," Meuser said, "is our heritage and hope.  It's
  never been rescinded.  Not even now."  The assembly's theme is "Making
  Christ Known: Alive in Our Heritage and Hope."
     Meuser, who has published widely on Martin Luther and American
  Lutheran History, was professor of church history at Trinity before
  becoming president in 1971.  He was vice president of the former
  American Lutheran Church, one of the predecessor bodies of the ELCA, for
  six years.
     The theme of unity pervaded the service, which opened with
  Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson leading worshipers in renewal of
  their baptismal vows.  Ministers then used branches to sprinkle water
  from the baptismal font upon worshipers to remind them of their
  inclusion in the one, holy catholic and apostolic church.  Anderson then
  led the worshipers in a prayer that God "grant us the perfect peace that
  overcomes all doubt."
     The prayers of the people, offered by Dr. Addie J. Butler, a lay
  voting member from Philadelphia, included a petition that God "set in us
  respect for lives past, and set in us honor of generations yet to come."

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