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time, exclusively carried out by priests.573 Luther relegated this responsibility to parents who were lay Christians. As Luther was introducing the catechism to his congregants in Wittenberg, he admonished parents, saying that: “Every father of a family is a bishop in his house and the wife a bishopess. Therefore remember that your homes are to help us carry on the ministry as we do in the church.”574 In this case, Luther regards parents as bishops in the household who have to set aside time to instruct their children and all other members of their household on Christian faith, just as bishops/priests do in their dioceses/parishes. It is notable that men and women were both and equally entrusted with this task. The catechism entails the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Lord‟s Supper, Confession and Absolution, Morning and Evening Prayers, Grace at Table and Table of Duties.575 According to Luther, the foundational teachings in the catechism help to shape individuals into good citizens.576 Indeed, good citizens who fear God, respect others and are responsible in every aspect, form the greatest asset for any community.
Having highlighted these aspects of Luther‟s theologies, centering on Christian life and everyday affairs, it is evident that all Christians are seen as qualified to assist people living with and affected by the HIV and AIDS pandemic. The fact that the church is the body of Christ means that it must play its role by reaching out to the needy and assisting them with all their requirements in order to promote life and uphold their dignity. All the above discussions are associated with the mission of the church. This is the specific topic of the next section.
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the mission of God, and that the church is called on to participate in God‟s mission by words and actions.578 The LWF further notes that regardless of the sinful nature of human beings, God uses them to: “manifest the divine purposes of creation, justice and salvation, and display His [sic] unmerited grace and love among all people.”579 The church is involved in this missio Dei to bring the salvation and justice which reveal God‟s love and grace to all of creation. This implies that God‟s mission does not encompass only spiritual affairs but also the social and economic wellbeing of humanity. In other words, the missio Dei has to deal with the whole of the person. This resonates with Nurnberger, a Lutheran theologian, who maintains that the mission of the church is not confined to spiritual matters. The mission has to address the contemporary issues that are evident among God‟s people such as poverty, violence and illiteracy.580 In this regard, the proclamation of the word and acts of service has to go hand in hand.
Mission work is to take place locally and globally, as Jesus indicated to his disciples in Acts: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”
(1:8). Another Lutheran theologian Ishmael Noko, as well, asserts that the mission of the church is classified into the divisions “foreign” and “home,” and that the word mission describes “all the activities that the church is sent to do in the world which are to love, to heal, to preach, to liberate and to reconcile.”581 He emphasizes that missio Dei is not aimed only at people who do not belong to a church, but includes those within the church.
This is to say that any service or ministry carried out by the church to reach humanity, has a missionary dimension.
For instance, the involvement of the church, through various ministries, in responding to the challenges posed by HIV and AIDS, as discussed in the previous chapter is part of
578 LWF, LWF Documentation- Together in God’s Mission: An LWF Contribution to the Understanding of Mission, No. 26, (November 1988), p. 8. See also DMD Themes, “The Lutheran World Federation:
Department for Mission and Development,”
<http://www.lutheranworld.org/what_we_do/DMD/Themes/DMD-Mission.html> Accessed: 11/9/2009, p.
1.
579 LWF, LWF Documentation, p. 8.
580 Nurnberger, Martin Luther‟s message for us today, p. 149.
581 Noko, “Mission and Development,” in LWF Documentation, Stewardship, p. 9.
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God‟s mission to God‟s people. Those who are reached are members of the body of Christ. The massive impact of the pandemic does not only involve local churches, but also the church on a national and international level. Lutheran World Federation (LWF) as a global communion of Lutheran churches has established an HIV and AIDS Action Plan in 2002 to promote, to strengthen and to support the urgent response of member churches to HIV and AIDS.582 The plan was instituted because church members are infected and affected by the pandemic. In other words, “the church itself has HIV/AIDS.”583 The Action Plan states, “When one part of the body of Christ suffers, all of the body suffers.”584 It reflects the fact that when one person within a community is in crisis, it affects the entire community in many ways. Through time spent and resources exhausted in the caring for and the supporting of the infected and affected are aspects of the pandemic, which impact on individuals as well as communities. Compassion, Conversion and Care are three themes of the Action Plan that guides the churches in their response to HIV and AIDS.
The first theme reminds the church, that people living with HIV and AIDS are created in the image of God and that they are Christ-like persons in our midst; therefore the church has to be compassionate and address their suffering with unconditional love, acceptance and support.585 The next theme cautions and urges the church to consider PLWHA as useful resources who have something to offer to the community regardless of their condition.586 The Action Plan document states that people who are willing to speak openly about living with HIV make a tremendous contribution by inspiring the church and individuals to stop stigmatizing and excluding PLWHA, and to meet the challenges posed by the pandemic with courage. Hence, the church is called to repent and to embrace those whom they have neglected and ostracized by welcoming them, providing correct information to them and to the community at large, and by engaging in activities,
582 Frank Imhoff, “LWF Global Campaign against HIV/AIDS Launched,”
<http://www.wfn.org/2002/05/msg00042.html> Accessed: 11/10/2008, p. 1.
583 LWF, “Compassion, Conversion and Care: Responding as churches to the HIV/AIDS pandemic-An Action Plan of the Lutheran World Federation,”
<http://www.lutheranworld.org/LWF_Document/HIV/AIDS_Acton Plan.pdf >Accessed: 11/10/2008, p. 1.
584 LWF, “Compassion, Conversion, Care,” p. 1.
585 LWF, “Compassion, Conversion, Care,” p. 2.
586 LWF, “Compassion, Conversion, Care,” p. 3.
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promoting life-giving support for HIV positive people.587 The final theme reminds the church about its task to offer care for people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS and to speak the truth about the pandemic and its prevention.588 Each of the three themes demands that the church acts urgently and responsibly. The LWF response to HIV and AIDS was a reminder to its member churches, such as ELCT Northern Diocese, to participate fully in God‟s saving work (mission) within their locality, in the manner in which Luther responded to the bubonic plague of his time as will be discussed later.
Scherer refers to scholars such as Warneck and Plitt who criticize Martin Luther for his lack of interest in mission work abroad during the time of the Reformation.589 However, this charge has been attributed to a narrow understanding of mission as an activity, meant to take place in foreign lands or among non-Christians only. Although Plitt concurs with Warneck, he argues that Luther and his companions had the task to preach the gospel anew in Germany to counteract the “false doctrine” of the Roman Church.590 He further maintains that: “For Luther, mission was the essential task of the church in every age, but only a church itself grounded in the gospel could do mission.”591 Luther‟s stance concerning the obligation of the church to carry forth the missionary work until the return of Christ is clearly demonstrated, but he cautioned that mission is possible only if the church lays its foundation in the gospel. Luther‟s initiative to preach the gospel among his own people is parallel to Jesus‟ commission to his disciples that missionary work was to start in Jerusalem and from there spread to other parts of the world.
The LWF states clearly that all Christians are called through baptism to participate in God‟s mission.592 The mission of God is twofold: the proclamation of the gospel and deeds (actions of love and compassion). Of all the Reformers, only Luther introduced the
587 LWF, “Compassion, Conversion, Care,” p. 3.
588 LWF, “Compassion, Conversion, Care,” p. 3.
589 James A. Scherer,…that the Gospel may be sincerely preached throughout the world, LWF Report 11/12, 1982, p. 5. See also, Andrew Burgess, “Missions (Lutheran World Missions),” in Julius Bodensieck (ed), The Encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church, Vol. 11, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965, p. 1619. W.G.
Polack, Into All the World The Story of Lutheran Foreign Missions, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1930, p. 35.
590 Scherer,…that the gospel may be sincerely preached throughout the world, p. 6.
591 Scherer,…that the gospel may be sincerely preached throughout the world, p. 6.
592 LWF, LWF Documentation, No. 26, November 1988, p. 9
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doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, as discussed at length earlier. Although Luther insisted on the responsibility of each believer to be a messenger of the gospel, he regarded the ministry of the word and sacraments as the highest office in the church and one for which only males were appropriate candidates. Luther‟s exclusion of women from the ministry of the Word is contrary to the gospel and denies female members of the body of Christ to exercise their God given talents and fulfil their divine mission.593 This denial means that in missionary work, men and women cannot offer their service at equal levels because of their distinct genders. It also implies that in respect to charitable services and diakonia, the contribution of males is more valuable than that of women. I will develop this idea later in critical reflection on Luther‟s theology.
Although Ingemar Oberg indicates that Luther did not comment extensively on missionary work,594 he wrote a number of encouraging pastoral letters to his adherents in response to their plight or difficult situations they encountered such as sickness, famine, epidemics, persecution and death, which themselves can be considered as part of Luther‟s missionary work.595 Below I shall examine Luther‟s response to the bubonic plague and how it can be used to assess the current HIV and AIDS programmes of the Northern Diocese.
6.4 Luther’s response to the bubonic plague in relation to the HIV and AIDS