Radical Grace

In yesterday's post, I commented on some thoughts from a conference I'm attending right now, and today's post is more of the same.

The driving question for today's session asked whether Lutheran theology had any particular contributions to make to the mission of the Christian church. People floated a lot of ideas, everything from a decentralized power structure to a communal, non-individualist gospel (are either of these things particularly Lutheran?), but I continue to think that the most important contribution of Lutheran theology is the insistence on the radical and consistent priority of grace. Or, as Lutherans like to say, we try to get Law and Gospel and right. We want to tell people the good news of God's grace in Christ (gospel) and talk about "law" only insofar as it serves that purpose.

But I do wonder whether our churches are ready for the consequences of doing this. What if we really welcomed everyone with no preconditions? Would we be willing to build a community that considered Jesus to be the only non-negotiable. I wonder.