The time of the summer solstice is approaching. In Latvia, my homeland, it will be celebrated with bonfires, songs, dances and everything else that belongs to the solstice and to Jāņi. At the solstice, nature reaches its fullness and slowly begins to turn towards the other turning point, towards the winter solstice. The longest day and the shortest night in summer will turn until it reaches the longest night and the shortest day in winter. In the nature created by God there is balance, and our ancestors knew this well. This insight about balance seems to wither in many of the Christian souls of our nation when they think of the decision of the Synod of the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church (LELB) to deny women ordination to pastoral office. Every year, as the time of Jāņi approaches, I call my parents in Latvia and ask: “Where will you celebrate Jāņi? With relatives, friends, or alone?” Likewise they ask me what we will be doing. More often I answer that I do not know. Perhaps we will go with the family to the largest Latvian centre in North America, probably also outside Latvia, – Garezers. Sometimes we go, sometimes not. If I lived and were raising children in my homeland – I truly would not have the slightest doubt whether I would celebrate and how I would celebrate! We have celebrated at home, here in North America, and invited American friends to visit; I have taught them to weave Jāņi wreaths, for what kind of Jāņi is it without wreaths, without guests or visiting! Living outside Latvia, being a Latvian demands a forced effort. Living in a foreign culture, not to forget, for my own sake, who I am, and even more importantly – to teach my children where their mother has come from, who they are through me – a Latvian, a woman, a congregation’s pastor and dean of a region, a musician. My departure from Latvia took place on 16 June 1999, after several years of doubts and searching for an answer – is God truly calling me to be a shepherd of a congregation? And – how to serve in the church of my homeland, where ordination for ministry in a congregation was denied to me? Deep in my heart I knew that the calling was alive and true. I chose to remain in my homeland, which turned into a lesson in courage, pain, hope, endless questions and trust, because I spoke out openly about the role of women in the Latvian Lutheran church, about the ordination of women. Back then, at the end of the nineties, I very much did not want to leave my homeland and turned down two other offers to go to North America, before I went to Grand Rapids, in the state of Michigan, to visit a Latvian Lutheran congregation that was looking for a new pastor. The congregation later voted and elected me as their pastor. This vote of the congregation was for me the final confirmation and sign that God’s calling is truly real and not something I myself had invented. I first became aware of the calling to be a pastor while reading the story of Christ’s resurrection in the Bible. In those days, Jānis Vanags had already been LELB Archbishop for several years. When I began my studies at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Latvia, the Archbishop was still the late Kārlis Gailītis. I wanted to study my faith, this Jesus in whom I had begun to believe. I also knew that I wished to serve in the church, but – how? That was not yet clear to me then. Little by little I came to the realization that God was calling me to be a congregation’s pastor. Yet I had enough “impudence” to doubt this voice of God. I listened to what the highest leadership of the LELB said about the role of women in the church, because, as for a child raised in Soviet times – obedience to authority crept in very quickly. After all, many still remember today those times when obedience and fear of a higher authority were cultivated every day. Unquestioning obedience was part of the ideology of the USSR’s Russification and subjugation. It happened at every step, after all – in schools, workplaces, kindergartens – everywhere. Twenty years have passed, close to or half of my life, outside Latvia, outside the church I once knew. Half of my life spent away from my homeland, because I dared to say something that the LELB leadership did not agree with. I was well aware of the consequences of such a step, but otherwise I could not act then than to stand up for those women in Latvia whose voice had been taken away by Archbishop Jānis Vanags’ personal step and conviction that a woman cannot be an ordained congregation’s pastor. All this happened then without discussions, without dialogue, without listening to all the views and opinions – with a directive from above. After the LELB Synod’s decision at the beginning of June this year “against” women’s ministry in ordained office, in social media, in newspaper publications, and elsewhere, arguments have been heard invoking Holy Scripture or the Bible for or against. That is all well and good. I too listened to the words of the Bible, reading them, when they spoke to my heart many years ago – God entrusted to women the very first message of Christ’s resurrection. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary – the mother of James “and the others with them, who told this to the apostles”, how they “found the stone rolled away from the tomb” and “did not find the body of the Lord” (Gospel of Luke 24:2-3, 10b). Each Gospel describes Jesus’ resurrection differently, with its own details – even in that respect there is diversity and difference to be found in the Holy Scriptures! They are not monolithic. Yet I must say that all the arguments for or against the ordination of women, when we seek them in the Bible, can quickly lead those convinced of various views into endless discussions. They are necessary. They are essential, one cannot do without them. But in the Bible we will not find arguments “for” or “against” the ordination of women! For the Bible speaks to each person according to his faith! Perhaps according to the measure of a person’s faith? Read one and the same passage of Holy Scripture today, then after half a year, and then after a year, and then after ten years – it will speak to you differently and you will discover in those same words what you previously did not notice there! The living Word of God in the Bible never remains status quo! Likewise – members of various denominations can read and understand one and the same verse or scriptural passage in the Bible differently. It turns out that even Lutherans can each understand them in their own way, as we see not only in the decisions and actions of the LELB, but also in still other churches in the world that call themselves Lutheran.
We must rather answer the question – in what do Lutherans differ from Catholics or Baptists, or the Orthodox? Why do you, as a believer in Christ, go on Sunday precisely to a Lutheran church and belong precisely to a Lutheran congregation? In the Lutheran faith, unlike in the Catholic or other denominations, for me the ordination of a woman to pastoral office is like a symbol of that unity to which the Holy Spirit calls us. We find it substantiated and explained in the Augsburg Confession – the foundational document of Lutheranism. All the Lutheran denominations, including the LELB, agree with it and name it as one of their foundations. The reason for the emergence of the Augsburg Confession in 1530 was precisely the diversity of religious views that had been caused by the Reformation itself, with Martin Luther at the forefront!
In the LELB too there currently exists a diversity of views. It is not the case that the Synod adopted a decision and all the Lutherans who belong to the LELB think and act alike. That is not so! And it never has been! In the LELB there has always been a diversity of views, yet over the past twenty-three years it seems that only one part of the Lutherans is accepted, received, while the rest seem to be counted among those who do not have the “correct” faith. The Augsburg Confession, which lies at the foundation of the Lutheran church and faith, affirms the necessity of preaching the Gospel of Christ and of administering the sacraments. These two things indicate what the Church of Christ is. The Confession says nothing about other requirements – other than faith. The only requirement is to believe in Jesus Christ. The idea that a pastor must be masculine because Jesus was a man is found neither in the historical testimonies of the Lutheran church nor in the Bible itself. If we draw attention to one trait of Jesus’ personality, then we must also draw attention to the fact that he was a Jew, that he had brown eyes, long hair; how he dressed, what he ate, in what bed he slept; whether he had a pillow or a stone to put under his head, and so on. If we invoke the fact that the Son of God was a man, then we must also invoke the rest of his individual traits. Then indeed those who invoke certain passages of Holy Scripture against the ordination of women to pastoral office would have to be authentic and complete, not shying away from Jesus’ other particularities as well, taking into account his sex. But that does not happen – all the male pastors do not immediately go off to the synagogue to be circumcised, even though Jesus, after all, according to the Jewish religious tradition and law, was circumcised. Perhaps the rare few try to imitate the culinary customs of the ancient Jews, if they have an interest in spending time in the kitchen. No one wears a white tunic every day and all day long, as Jesus did, but some do wear black cassocks, which are more reminiscent of Catholic priests rather than Lutheran pastors. The argument that recently sounded in social media, that Martin Luther himself supposedly wrote that women should not be pastors, again does not withstand any criticism whatsoever. Then we would also have to take into account the other side of the coin: such views of Martin Luther as, for example, what Luther said about the Jews. They are a disgrace to all humanity, for Adolf Hitler used the arguments of the reformer Martin Luther to carry out the genocide of the Jews. What now? God has created everyone – both men and women. And, most importantly to remember in all discussions, reflections on this theme and others, is – we are all sinners before God and all are redeemed, and all are equally loved by God. Salvation in Christ is one and the same for all. And if so – then the Holy Spirit, which a person receives at baptism, becoming a child of God, does not separate us by sex, giving to one to hear God’s voice to ministry and not to another. That is up to God, and for people to intervene to say who has been able to hear God’s calling and who has not – seems arrogant and an interference in God’s own affairs. It is probably nothing new if the church as an institution struggles with new ideas, thoughts, scientific discoveries. Over the course of centuries it has always struggled so. Let us remember Galileo, who had to defend himself from the flames of the stake for his scientific discovery that the Earth revolves around the Sun. The Grand Inquisitor’s argument was that Galileo’s discovery does not accord with Holy Scripture! In 2016, Galileo’s discovery is for us a self-evident thing and we accept it without doubt and without thinking much about it. In Latvian society, where among our nation outstanding women have served as both president and prime minister, to deny women’s ministry in ordained office, proclaiming the Good News – the Gospel, and administering the means of God’s grace, namely the sacraments – is sad and sorrowful to experience. There are other examples – the first Latvian woman dentist obtained her diploma and began to practise in 1901! To invoke either the Bible as a basis “against” the ordination of women or Martin Luther himself, or anything else – means to go back to a culture where one sex dominated in schools, in music (women concert musicians and composers were not recognized until as late as the 18th century! Let alone orchestra conductors all over the world, who even today are a rarity), in medicine and dentistry, in science, in politics, in journalism, in art, in business, in literature, in architecture, and so on – for these were once solely the professions, callings and occupations of men, of one sex. The church must be a giver of the good news to all – including those who do not agree with the church itself. That is the highest commandment that Jesus gives – “that you love one another as I have loved you” (Gospel of John 15:12). And: “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” (Gospel of Luke 6:32a). Where else, if not in the church and congregation, can a person openly say, live and be without fear about who he/she is? God created the human being, every human being – out of His love. He loved and loves every person. Before God created the world, God already loved us even then. That is the task and the command of the Gospel – to love as God loves us. For God Himself is love. As children of God we cannot and must not do otherwise – than to continually strive to walk the path of love, until God Himself calls us to Himself, into His light and love – each in his own time. To continue the journey together with God in eternity. There a person will be measured by only one measure – how much he/she in this life and world has learned to love God, oneself and one’s fellow human being. “So now faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Letter to the Corinthians 13:13) In the meantime – I continue to preach the Gospel, the Good News, and to see to it that the means of God’s grace, which according to Lutheran teaching are baptism and Holy Communion – are given to everyone who seeks them with all their heart. Outside my homeland. Now and then I play the cello in an orchestra – it is my heart’s delight. I am also thinking that I should build a bread oven in my yard. And find the Cukuriņš apple tree, unknown in North America, to plant in my garden, but so far I have not yet succeeded. I am preparing for the summer solstice, teaching my children to bake pies and bread, to make Jāņi cheese, to sing Līgo songs, and I affirm that they and all people – have a God who loves them with such great love that it is hard to describe in words, but easier to affirm in deeds. That Christ has shown and testified this to us through Holy Scripture. Ilze Larsen, Pastor of the Grand Rapids congregation, dean of the Heartland region of the LELBA 16 June 2016