Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.2008, Blaðsíða 41

the altar and keep watch that the church has open doors for going out as
well as for coming in, then is everything in Christian order and then is the
Lutheran Reformation complete.10
Perhaps, in our times, we would be a little less sure about “Christian
order” or about anything being “complete.” But there are those priests and
that bishop, with the cup and the baptism of James and John; rulers that are
not rulers. And there are those learned ones — who, in the present time,
include our educated and skilled pastors and priests — caring for the book
full of the very content of the altar and the door opened for gathering and
sending, not for excluding; scribes who are not scribes. And there with
them is that congregation. May this reform go on.
In the first days afier I ivas ordained, I came to the small toion of my
fiirst parish. On my first Sunday in that town, I learned that a man of the
congregation — call him Charlie — had sujfered a heart attack and was in
intensive care in a large hospital in a city some fifiy miles distant, with his
wife ofmore than fifty years — call her Helen — anxiously by his side. Afier
church, I took my Bible and my portable communion set, with the holy food of
this Sundays celebration, and drove those fifty miles. It was my first hospital
call as a pastor and I was more than a little nervous. But I will never forget
this: as I came into the room, Helen looked up and, seeing my collar, said, “O
Pastor, you’ve come. Thank Godl I am so grateful.” Of course, Helen did
not know me. But she was welcoming me, without any further ceremony or
introduction, into the very heart ofher life, the very center ofher grief. It was
astonishing to me. It was as ifmy call and ordination were being once again
enacted in small. She trusted that with me came the church I served and of
which she was part and the gospel I was to represent, the living word and the
astonishing bread and cup she and Charlie needed. It was an amazing trust,
one I have seen enacted again and again, in many situations ofneed. Ofcourse,
it was a trust that could be and has been powerfully misused. But they were
not looking for my opinion or my power, not even for my skill. They needed
10 ibid., 115-116. Translation from Gordon W. Lathrop and Timothy J. Wengert, Christian Assembly
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 50.
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