Does the Church Have a Future?

by Timothy Teuscher

Most of us are aware of the statistics concerning the decline of Christianity in our nation over the past number of years—something we see also in many congregations of Lutheran Church–Canada. Which begs the question: Is there a future for the church? Hermann Sasse, the great 20^th century confessional Lutheran theologian, gives us an answer in his essay “The Presence of Christ and the Future of the Church.” The excerpts below are as timely and relevant for us today as it when Sasse penned them more than eighty years ago—so I will turn the rest of my column over to him.

“Today much is said about the future of the Church, particularly the Lutheran Church. To both the fearful friends and the reveling opponents of the church we must hold up the biblical truth proven through so many centuries: that the future of the Church nowhere and never has lain in the hands of people. And therefore it certainly can neither be foreseen nor prophesied by people.”

“The existence of the Church is the most profound riddle of history. No one can explain it. No one can say how the Church finally continues to exist. [Some] have been convinced that the protection of the state is what makes the existence of the Church possible. But the Church first experienced its great flowering in the centuries in which it was not acknowledged (and even persecuted). To this day how the Church outlived the demise of the ancient world is a mystery of history. Nor could anyone have known that the apparent self-destruction of the church in the sixteenth century was not the end of the church, but its Reformation. The age of Rationalism around 1800, when the preaching of the Gospel was almost completely extinguished, demonstrated that it is not the faith, hope, and love of people which sustain the life of the Church. Even if today a ‘theology’ should come to rule which was similar to the estrangement from Christ and the despising of the Holy Scriptures like the teachings of Rationalism, this would not in and of itself mean the end of the Church. For the mystery of the Church is the real and essential presence of Jesus Christ in the world.”

“Whether or not the Church is present or not does not depend on the good or evil will of people, but only on [God’s] will. If He in His limitless mercy wills that His Gospel be preached also in the future among us, and that generations yet unborn should hear the saving message of the forgiveness of sins for the sake of Christ, then it will most certainly happen. No one knows how it happens. It may be that it will happen without the methods of modern ‘publicity’ and the technical means of the transmission of information. But there can be no doubt that the mandate shall be carried out: ‘Go forth and preach the Gospel to all creatures” (Mark 16:15). Therefore the Church will remain among us in the future so long as Christ remains with us. Its future is not determined by people, just as it cannot be foreseen by people. For the future of the Church is the future of Christ.”

Where the Supper is celebrated, there is the Church. When the Church is described as the body of Christ, it can only be understood on the basis of this Sacrament.

“How is it that this understanding of the Church, which depends not on people, but only upon Christ, has perished throughout broad stretches of our Evangelical Church? How is it that this truth, which Luther believed so firmly and which gave him so firm and peaceful a heart in the midst of all the struggles over the Church, has been forgotten? Because we have much too high a regard for our own thought and doing, our faith and our speaking, nothing comes of our nervous fastidiousness, our anxiety and grief over the future, and our self-inflicted pain and increasing pain brought on by ecclesiastical busyness.”

“We do not mean that the Word of God is in any way sluggish. Luther was not slothful, and neither were the apostles, though they knew that of themselves they could not have maintained the church. Quite the contrary! The experience and history of the Church teaches that in the Church there is the most fervent and blessed labour where people really understand that ‘With might of ours can naught be done, Soon were our loss effected’ (LSB 656:2). We do not see a foreboding sign in the fact that in the Church we work seriously and hard; but rather, in the fact that we do this work as though Jesus Christ were not really present in His Church. That is the secret disbelief which has more deeply and adversely affected the Lutheran Church than any external influences of paganism. The effects of that hidden unbelief are a hundred times worse and more dangerous than everything which (the world) has done to the Church or is prepared to do to it. Even our good congregations often no longer grasp the full seriousness and comfort of the real presence of the Lord. By and large we all act in our Church as though Jesus Christ were not really present, as though He were further removed from our time than in any other age in the history of the church.”

“What is the reason for this? We believe it is not a mistake to see a correspondence between the celebration of the Holy Supper on the one hand, and the belief in the real presence of Christ in the Church on the other hand. Since the celebration of the first Supper, the Church has been connected with the Supper in a very unique way. Where the Supper is celebrated, there is the Church. When the Church is described as the body of Christ, it can only be understood on the basis of this Sacrament. ‘The participation in the body of Christ’ (1 Corinthians 10:16) means at the same time the participation in the true  body of the Lord, who is given to us in the Supper, and also membership in the Church as the body of Christ.”

“Every celebration of the Supper ought remind us that Jesus Christ, in the time between His earthly days and the revelation of His glory at His return, is not distant from us, that He even now exercises His glory ‘hidden under the cross’ through the means of Word and Sacrament in His Church, that the present Christ is the greatest power and the most important fact of world history in our day. We should know this as we ponder the future of the Church. The presence of Christ is the life of the Church. The future of the Church is the future of the Lord.”

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Rev. Dr. Timothy Teuscher is President of Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC).

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