St Anne's Lutheran Church

Gresham Street, London EC2V 7BX

Baptized, We Live - Chapter One: A Way Of Seeing 

History of St Anne's
 Music at St Anne's
How to join us
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Lutherans in London
 What do Lutherans believe?

Baptized, We Live

Introduction

A Way Of Seeing

Lutheran Liturgy

A Way Of Teaching

A Way Of Following

Bible References and Bibliography

 

 
The central visual symbol in almost every Lutheran worship room is the cross, the cruel instrument of torture and death which the Roman Empire reserved for rebellious slaves, violent criminals and threatening political subversives.

This symbol is central because we confess, "It is here, on the cross, that God meets us ."  Here God makes himself present... 

  • hidden in weakness
  • vulnerable
  • suffering
  • forsaken
  • dying

In the abyss of despair, in the deepest darkness God comes.  In the painful reality of our mortality, our ultimate loneliness, our weakness, God encounters us.  As we view the cross all of our human attempts to find him are exposed as illusions. We do not find God by...

  • proving his existence by the wonder of nature or the power of logic.
  • validating his presence by visible blessings.
  • having a prescribed religious experience.
  • earning divine love by our good works.
  • building glorious religious institutions.
  • reaching a high level of personal morality.
  • saving ourselves through status, wealth. knowledge, consumption, chemicals, positive thinking, correct religious doctrine, self help groups, health foods or exercise plans.
We do not find God.  God finds us - in our darkness, our pain, our emptiness, our loneliness, our weakness.

God meeting us in our darkness is based on Luther's theology of the cross which is discussed further in Chapter Four: A Way of Following.  This understanding does not deny God's presence in our joyful, happy moments.  Of course he's there.  He's everywhere!  Also, this understanding does not say we must be emotionally depressed to be found by God.  Rather, God meets us most profoundly at the pont of our deepest reality - our honest confrontation with weakness, pain, solitude and death.

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