My wife and I have had the blessed privilege of spending the past few weeks in Germany, celebrating our 40th Anniversary and visiting our son Frederick in Munich. We enjoyed and appreciated the opportunity to see some of the historic places connected to the Reformation, as well as little Neuendettelsau where Wilhelm Löhe lived and worked in the nineteenth century. Along with various castles and palaces in Bavaria and Berlin, we also visited any number of different churches in the course of our vacation, many of them predating the Reformation by centuries, and at least a few of which suffered significant damage during World War II.
The architecture and artistry of the churches we were able to see was magnificent, often breathtaking, and awe-inspiring (surely by design!). The engineering involved in the building of these churches is impressive, even by today’s standards, and one can hardly begin to comprehend the expense and sacrifice it must have required to craft such masterpieces from the ground up.
It would be easy to surmise that the motivation for such exquisite church buildings was wrapped up in the false theology of works-righteousness and notions of meriting favor with God. Even so, I would like to believe that there were also genuine motives of piety, faith, and love involved on the part of the parishioners, patrons, architects, and artists – even the pastors, priests, and princes – who contributed to the building and maintenance of these beautiful churches. Indeed, such faith and love are manifestly evident in some of the paintings of our Lord and His life and work for us.
Most of the churches we saw are Roman Catholic, and no amount of beauty can compensate for the heterodoxy of that confession. I hope and pray that the parishioners who are gathered in those places are preserved by the Word and Spirit of Christ even in the midst of error and falsehood, as surely as I pray for those who belong to heterodox churches of every kind throughout the world. Along similar lines, some of the churches we visited are part of the State Church in Germany, ostensibly “Lutheran” but compromised by unionism, liberalism, and other forms of heterodoxy. That fact saddened me especially as we visited All Saints and St. Mary’s in Wittenberg, as well as St. Anna’s in Augsburg. These churches are truly beautiful in many ways, and yet they lack the most essential beauty and adornment of the Lord’s Church, which is the orthodoxy of God’s Word in teaching and practice, the catechesis and confession of Christ in doctrine and doxology.
In his catechesis on the Third Commandment, Dr. Luther eloquently teaches that God’s Word and preaching sanctify the Holy Day (and every day) and the whole Christian Church on earth. By the same token, where the Word of God is missing, despised, or profaned, there faith, love, and the whole Church are endangered and suffer great loss. No amount of money or crowds of people, nor outward trappings of any kind, can sustain the Church apart from God’s Word.
Of all the churches LaRena and I were privileged to visit in Germany, the two we loved best – the most beautiful of all – were the smallest and simplest of any that we entered. They were not the best and most beautiful because they were smaller and simpler, that was merely incidental. Indeed, they were both lovingly crafted and reverently adorned with appropriate artistry. But their true beauty was found in their orthodox Lutheran preaching, teaching, confession, and practice. Profound thanks to the pastors and people of Trinity Lutheran Church, Munich, and St. Mary’s Lutheran Church, Berlin, congregations of the Selbständige Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche (SELK) with which The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod is in fellowship. Not only are my wife and I grateful for the opportunity we had to hear and receive the Holy Gospel with our brothers and sisters in Christ at these two congregations, but we are all the more grateful that our son has been welcomed and embraced by the dear people of Trinity in Munich, where he is able to receive the means of grace regularly throughout the year, even while so far away from home.
Above all else, it is the preaching and practice of the Word of God – in its truth and purity – that makes the Church on earth beautiful. Everything else necessarily flows from that orthodoxy, and nothing else can substitute for it. Never should we regard such orthodoxy as being detrimental to the ministry and mission of the Church! It is rather the very thing which sustains the entire Body of Christ in our present pilgrimage, as well as the truly most attractive thing about the Church – notwithstanding the hiddenness of that attractive beauty under the paradoxical Cross of her Lord.
The beauty of orthodoxy does not depend on architecture, artwork, or any outward adornments, because it derives solely and entirely from the Word of God. Nevertheless, piety responds to that beauty in faith and love by confessing the Word that is heard and received, not only with prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, but also with architecture, artwork, and other adornments, as means and opportunity afford. As I mentioned, both Trinity in Munich and St. Mary’s in Berlin adorn their beautiful orthodoxy with outward reverence and artistry, as well. God’s people are prompted to confess their faith and express their love with the best they have to offer, just as we find God’s people doing in the construction and furnishing of the Tabernacle and the Temple in the Old Testament (in accordance with the Word and promises of God).
These things call to mind a significant observation by Wilhelm Löhe, which I paraphrase here as best I can from memory: The Church is the Bride of Christ, adorned with the royal beauty of His Word and Holy Spirit, His righteousness and holiness; and she thus remains a true Queen, even when she is dressed in beggar’s rags under the Cross in this poor life of labor. Nevertheless, we do not deliberately dress her in rags! No, we use all the means at our disposal to adorn her as best we can, in order to confess and celebrate her royal dignity to the glory of her Bridegroom, who is Himself the most handsome of men (even when He is marred beyond recognition on the Cross!).