MaryBeth LaMont

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. This, as you may know, is a line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It implies names do not mean very much. To some degree that is true. Yet most who have ever expected a child often spend anguishing hours struggling with just the right name for their baby girl or boy.

Names do often mean a great deal. Some names are quite revelatory such as “Mary’s Beauty Salon.” By that name it is fairly obvious what happens in that place. Were it called, “Mary’s Place” it could be about many things in addition to or other than a beauty salon.

What about Christians? What’s in a name? Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, 7th Day Adventist, Unification Church, Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints…the list goes on. These names matter. There is great difference in many of these. Many would not even consider some Christian despite their claim or their name.

Christians first received the label “Christian”, the book of Acts tells us, in Antioch. It seems to have initially been a derogatory label like those used by teasing children on a school playground. Previously the movement that came to be called Christian called themselves “The Way”, again, according to Acts. Lutherans received their moniker in a similar fashion as they were most often called such first by their critics. Martin Luther did not like the name at all. He preferred simply to be called Christian. Some within the Protestant movements referred to themselves as Evangelicals.

So what about our name? We call our community University Lutheran Church and Lutheran Campus Ministry. Once I suggested we drop the Lutheran in campus ministry and simply called ourselves “University Campus Ministry.” I was almost run out of town.

Lutheranism is not the name of a church organization or institution. It is not even the label for a style of worship or a type of piety. We Lutherans are and have been all over the place on such things. Some could play cards and attend the theatre. Some could not. Some, including a group now in our own ELCA, refused to celebrate Christmas, Easter and observe Ash Wednesday and Holy Week, including Good Friday. Some had altars and pulpits, others had pulpits with only a small table beneath it for communion elements. Talk about different styles of worship and pieties!

Lutheranism is, at its core, the name of a body of faith. Its crowning attribute is not the sphere of polity or worship or even ethics. Our heart is in the sphere of religion and theology. Lutheranism is an understanding and expression of the Christian faith. We are, perhaps, the only main line Protestant “brand” who still adhere to and use our original body of doctrine, that is, our Lutheran Confessions, as collected and written in the “Book of Concord”. They include both the Large and Small Catechisms and the Augsburg Confession, among other writings. They are not to supplant scripture, but to put to common expression how a community with the name of Lutheran understands the basic tenets of Scripture and faith. In other words, they serve the Bible, which remains the rule and norm for faith. Many of my Protestant colleagues find this puzzling. They don’t understand how we find use for documents nearly 500 years old.

Ah, but one thing Lutheran doctrine is not is exclusive. That is, it does not proclaim we are the only or the truest of Christians. The Augsburg Confession is written in two parts: Part I is all about what we have in common with the Roman Church, to whom this document was presented. It is an ecumenical writing written and presented with the understanding we are all Christians, but we have some particular understandings and beliefs about some aspect of the faith.

One thing for certain: God is not Lutheran. God is not Christian, for that matter. God is God. The name Christian and its subtitle Lutheran are particular ways of understanding God in an attempt to live out the faith and the life God would have us live.

Names make a difference. With the names Christian and Lutheran those names do not bring with them privilege. Instead they identify a particular faith and a way of living that expresses that faith. We may or may not smell as sweet with different names, but we do have a somewhat unique picture of God using the names we have. We have the same mission of proclaiming the Good News of the Christ whose name Christians bear.