In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.
PHILIPPIANS 2:5
LUTHERAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA
EDITORIAL
Editor Lisa McIntosh
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Executive Editor Linda Macqueen
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The Lutheran informs the members of the LCANZ about the church’s teaching, life, mission and people, helping them to grow in faith and commitment to Jesus Christ. The Lutheran also provides a forum for a range of opinions, which do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editor or the policies of the Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand.
Resorting to staying connected
While relaxing at the Lomani Island Resort in Fiji recently, husband-andwife duo Andrew Waldhuter and Lyndall Walter took time out to look at the latest edition of The Lutheran via the convenience of the digital edition. Andrew and Lyndall are members of Trinity Lutheran Church Pasadena, in South Australia.
Send us a photograph featuring a recent copy of The Lutheran and it may appear on page 2 of a future issue and on our website at www.thelutheran.com.au
People like YOU bring love to life
Joanne Corney
St Mark’s Lutheran Church, Mt Gravatt Qld Chaplain for Lutheran Services in Queensland, who enjoys reading, gardening and exploring new artisan interests
Most treasured Bible text: 1 John 4:10
‘This is the kind of love – not that we once loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins.’
Mark Goessling
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Ringwood Vic
Finance manager who has served his congregation as treasurer and been a member there for 55 years
Most treasured Bible text: 1 Timothy 6:10a
‘For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.’
Nicolle Jachmann
Concordia Lutheran Church Loxton SA
CEO of Riverview Lutheran Rest Home Loxton SA, who enjoys spending time with family on the river
Most treasured Bible text: John 3:16
‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.’
Let the light of someone you know shine through their photo being featured in The Lutheran and LCA Facebook. With their permission, send us a good quality photo, their name and details (congregation, occupation and most treasured text) and your contact details.
While I was looking for quotes for our Coffee Break section in this edition, I was reminded of the ‘odd couple’ friendship between the late US Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia.
Ginsburg was a trailblazing pioneer for anti-discrimination law in the US legal system and became just the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court. She was a small-l liberal who was small in stature but often stood tall through her opinions and oratory against what she saw as injustice. But while Ginsburg could dissent with the best of them, she also championed civility and decency and said: ‘Fight for the things that you care about but do it in a way that will lead others to join you’ and ‘You can disagree without being disagreeable’.
She was also a close friend of Scalia, who, ideologically, was on the opposite end of the political spectrum. According to USA Today, the two shared a love of opera, went souvenir shopping together when they travelled and their families spent New Year's Eve together. The duo understood that there was more to a person than their politics and they developed respect, admiration and affection for one another over the years.
Sure, it may be easier to restrict our social connections to those who think the same way we do – about religion and faith, politics, sport or whatever. We might feel that can speak more freely, without worrying about offending someone. But if we exist entirely in an echo chamber, do we learn anything? How do we gain an understanding of why people hold a different view? How do we walk a mile in another person’s shoes? And how do we practise Jesus’ command to love our enemies and those we feel are our persecutors?
I’ve personally known the blessings of friendships with people who hold different views and beliefs. Some of my closest friends are not Christians and two are members of the ‘opposing’ political party to that which I previously worked for. I thank God for them. But I know that I can do much, much better at ‘disagreeing without being disagreeable’ and I pray that I can bear the fruits of God’s Spirit, such as peace, patience, gentleness, self-control – and love.
In this edition, we are blessed to share the wisdom of members of our Lutheran family on the question of how to love and respect people we disagree with. We also share many of our popular regular features and exciting news about the new Local Mission Fund.
God bless your reading,
PS – If you’ve been wondering why your copy of The Lutheran is later than usual, we've adjusted the publication dates leading up to the Convention of General Synod in October, as we want to keep you as up-to-date as possible before, during and after this important gathering. The October–November edition will be mailed in late October to include convention coverage. This edition is being posted in late June, and the August–September edition will be sent in late August.
How do I love someone I disagree with?
Disagreeing well
Treating others with respect
Will they know we are Christians by our love?
Support to make mission dreams a reality
What’s on your mission wish list?
An extraordinary day at the beach
Bringing the Bible to life Way Forward update
Synod call for volunteers
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following pages may contain images of people who have died. Our cover: iStock.com
BISHOP PAUL’S LETTER Because we bear your name
‘We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living’ (Romans 14:7–9).
Last year, I had the privilege of travelling with my wife Heidi to attend the Lutheran World Federation General Assembly in Krakow, Poland. We joined with sisters and brothers in Christ from Lutheran churches of many lands, sharing in our common purpose in the mission that our God has given us.
After the Krakow assembly, we spent a few days travelling to the areas in northwest Poland where Heidi’s Muller family ancestors had lived before they left in the 1840s with other Lutheran families to settle in South Australia with Pastor Fritzsche. The Muller’s ancestral town, which was also Pastor Fritzsche’s town, was originally known by its German name Tirschtiegel Today, in Polish, it is Trzciel. Heidi had hoped to explore the German cemetery in the town, to learn more about her family who had lived there for some 300 years before some migrated Down Under. Upon arriving in Trzciel, however, we found that this exploration was not possible as the cemetery had been totally destroyed.
REV PAUL SMITH Bishop, Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand
the cemetery forest in 2019 (pictured). The memorial was a crucifix of about two metres in height and had a large stone plaque at the base with inscriptions in Polish and German. The inscription was a declaration which acknowledged that we must faithfully remember all who have died in the Lord. The inscription was a call to the living, to make sure that we faithfully remember to honour God’s promises of hope in the resurrection of the dead and of the life of the world to come for all who are baptised into Christ.
WE SEE EACH OTHER WITH RENEWED EYES OF FAITH …
In 1945, when the Russian armies drove the Nazi war machine out of Poland, the remaining Polish Catholic residents in parts of the country were enraged over the suffering that had been caused to so many during the years of World War II. The German Lutherans had been driven out of towns like Tirschtiegel, the Lutheran church was razed to the ground and the cemetery demolished. Every gravestone was obliterated, with the huge cemetery area left to become an overgrown forest. It was a desolate thing to behold. That was except for a profound memorial that had been placed in
I read the inscriptions on the plaque and heard a call to Christians everywhere, including to those of us living on the far side of the earth. We are baptised into Christ, a grace-filled washing of water used together with God’s word. In our common baptism into Christ, each of us has been given life, salvation and the forgiveness of sin, made ‘righteous and heirs in the hope of eternal life’ as Luther explains in his Small Catechism. This promise of God makes us sisters and brothers in Christ, with all our struggles and uncertainties. We see each other with renewed eyes of faith, bringing mutual conversation and consolation to each other in the cause of the gospel. This faith-filled work of the baptised is what we do when we gather as delegates in the Convention of General Synod.
The plaque in the Trzciel cemetery forest, under the cross of Christ, was also a call to love one another as the Lord has loved us, with words from 1 John 4:14–16 inscribed both in Polish and German – which, in English, say: ‘God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.’
In Christ,
‘Help us receive each other, Lord, for you receive the least of us and come to us in them –because we bear your name.’
