Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.2008, Page 38

in ways that accord with the gospel — the church is a participating assembly
bei welchen das Evangelium rein gepredigt und die heiligen Sakrament lauts
des Evangelii gereicht werden. This sentence sounds like Mark’s sense of
the authority of the gospel in the mouths of the leaders and the service of
baptism and cup and table in their hands. The Lutheran Confessions speak
a yes and no about ministry, without any intention to build an alternative
ministry, but with a call to the continuing reform of the ministry, not
unlike our metaphorical dome or not unlike Mark’s rulers who are not
rulers. Indeed, I think that the Markan proposal invites us again to see
the vigorous strength of the Lutheran proposal itself. That proposal, as my
colleague Timothy Wengert has recently and clearly demonstrated,7 is that
the true authority of Christian ministers is neither the authority of religious
tradition and observance nor the authority of personal or political power,
but only this: the very authority of God to proclaim and give away the
gospel of Jesus Christ for forgiveness and life.
The Markan proposal also accords with the traditional rite of ordination.
The rite includes actions that seem like the outright bestowal of authority
and office. Indeed, the laying on hands itself seems like an action of
imparting the office by contagion. But the rite also includes actions that
seem to be about waiting for God, openness to a transcendence larger than
our decision, invocation of the Spirit, singing the Veni Creator Spiritus.
And, as the laying on of hands is accompanied by prayer, the touch can
also seem simply like an indication of the one for whom we are begging:
“O God, make use of this one.” Both things are true: giving the office;
praying for its right use. Also in this rite, there is a dialectic about ministry
that can be illumined by setting it next to the Markan texts.
But the Markan proposal seems especially to correspond also to the need
of our late-modern times. It is right, this Gospel book seems to say, to be
suspicious of leadership and authority. It has often been used for tyranny,
for personal power, for division, and for despoiling the poor. But we will
fool ourselves to think we can do without leaders. They will rise up all
7 Timothy J. Wengert, Priesthood, Pastors, Bishops: Public Ministry for the Reformation and Today
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008).
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