Dr. Eric W. Gritsch

2018-11-11  “Lutherfest” Zionkirche, Baltimore MD

“Gravitas, Grace and Good Humor” Luther’s Theology of the Cross and Vocation with a Tribute to Rev. Dr. Eric Gritsch

I want to thank the good people of Zion Church, the LutherFest Committee and Bonnie for this kind invitation.  I think what may have prompted it was an email exchange with Bonnie where I shared a homily I preached in the Easter Season 2016.  The Gospel for the day was Peter going fishing after Jesus’ crucifixion.  And then Peter’s surprise to meet Christ on the lakeshore by a charcoal fire, not unlike the charcoal fire in the courtyard of the High Priest when he denied Jesus three times.  Now the risen Lord was catching Peter all over again to preach and reach others with Good News.  The other text was the conversion of Saul, blinded by Christ and then led to a disciple named Ananias.   Here is an excerpt from the homily:

“I don’t know what is more amazing: that God chose a man like Saul to become the greatest apostle or that God moved a disciple named Ananias to put aside his fear, welcome a murderer and baptize him.  For Ananias to welcome Saul would be like Pope Francis welcoming El Chapo Guzman.  Saul is knocked down to hear Jesus say, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.”  He is struck blind, then led to Ananias and raised up to be God’s new creation.  For Ananias, what a risk, for Saul who became Paul it must have been like dying and rising.  But that’s how Easter happens, faith overcomes fear, God brings life out of death, God does it.   

My own life and vocation was influenced by a pastor named Eric Gritsch, born in Austria and raised as Hitler came to power.  His father, a Lutheran pastor, worked for the underground and when discovered, was sent to a camp and died there.   Eric was pressed into the Hitler Youth, became leader of a Werewolf pack of boys who did guerilla warfare.   Toward the end of the war, Eric and his boys were facing thousands of Russian soldiers on the Eastern Front.   He gave the order to desert.   He buried his Nazi uniform, found some peasant clothes and walked into the Russian lines.  He said, “I realized I could no longer give my life to the insanity of a man named Hitler.”   He went to Vienna after the war where he studied with Victor Frankl, a Jew who survived the Holocaust.  Like Ananias and Paul, the Jewish survivor and former Nazi told their stories to each other.  Frankl said to Gritsch, “You should become a Lutheran pastor.”     

When I read this story a few years ago in Eric’s book, “Boy from the Burgenland,” I was amazed.  Then I recalled seminary how Eric, when teaching the Reformation, told us how Luther was vulnerable, not just in the thunderstorm when he cried out “Help me St. Anne I will become a monk!”  But throughout his life Luther experienced spiritual struggles.   He gave us the German word - “Anfechtung,” - spiritual struggle, despair, and crisis.  And then I remember Eric saying to us, “When you follow your Anfechtung, there you will find Christ!”   I remember him saying it to us more than once, as if it were something we should remember.  

At the time I did not grasp it, but after reading that story I realized Eric was not just teaching us about Luther.  “Follow your Anfechtung and there you will find Christ!”   These were words that more than hinted of Eric’s own struggle and God’s grace.  Was it the gravity of life- Anfechtung- that brought Eric to that moment of truth in the Hitler youth, that led to an encounter with Victor Frankl, grace in a Jewish survivor, who planted the seed of Eric’s vocation?    Just as surely as it was Anfechtung that caused Luther to make his vow and led him to scripture where he found a gracious God and calling to lead a reformation.  No wonder Luther rediscovered God’s Good News in the midst of his own Anfechtung and struggle leaping off the pages of his Bible.

“Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

         Isaiah 40:30 (Eric’s Confirmation verse)

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.”     Galatians 2:19-20

 “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying the death of Christ so that the life of Jesus may be made visible.”                  2 Cor. 4:9-10 

Luther realized God hides in the events of history and life to get to us, in a thunderstorm and a vow.   It was at Heidelberg in 1518 with his Augustinian brothers that Luther declared, “One only deserves to be a theologian if one understands God in Christ revealed on the cross.”   Luther saw how God could hide and reveal Himself in a Jewish baby in a manger, a bath called baptism, a crucified God, a hitman named Saul sent to Ananias, a stranger on a lakeshore who met Peter.   So why not a Jewish holocaust survivor meeting Eric? 

We have a great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us.   Youthful zeal, human pride and enthusiasm may lead us right to those places where our own self-sufficiency or idolatry must be questioned.   Remember Luke Skywalker’s boast to Yodha in Star Wars, “Master Yohda I can do it, I will become a Jedhi, I am not afraid.”   Yodha responds, “You will be!!”   Spiritual struggles and Anfechtung will surely come to each of us in our own time.   Job, that famous sufferer in the Old Testament, reminds us, “Human beings are born to trouble as surely as the sparks fly upward.” (Job 5:7)   

So how has God gotten to each one of us in our moments of Anfechtung, gravitas and grace to turn us around?    The witness of scripture, the Gospel and the lives of the saints tells us that “even though the earth be removed and the mountains cast into the midst of the sea, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Ps. 46)  Luther even came to appreciate his bouts of Anfechtung.   In one of his Table Talks Luther said, “I didn’t learn my theology all at once.  I had to ponder over it ever more deeply and my spiritual trials were of help to me.  Our theology is certain, it snatches us away from ourselves and shows us Christ.”

          I am not sure who said it but someone defined EGO with the 3-Letter motto:  “Edging God Out.”  The men on Death Row that I accompanied were like so many prodigals, it was all about them, their needs, their wants, their Egos, until they were stopped.   Then, like the prodigal in the pig pen, they had to come home to themselves and the real work began.  

When we lose our capacity to be vulnerable and admit our struggles, we become dangerous.  To struggle, to be vulnerable is human.   Brene Brown reminds us in her recent work, “We are hard-wired for struggle.   We are also hard-wired for community.”   Where in the world is your struggle, your Anfechtung and where in the world is God leading you?  

All of this is so counter intuitive that only a sado-masochist would sign up for suffering.   But Luther does remind us that each and every one of us are enamored by what he called the Theology of Glory, what we Americans call success.   

In my present parish I followed a pastor who had been there nearly 20 years and was beloved.   I came in with moxy and pluck determined to grow and reform the parish.   Within four years the staff I inherited hated my guts, there was conflict all over the place and I was ready to leave the ministry and sell Amway products.  It took a wise counselor and a Family Systems therapy group to save my vocation.  I have now been there over 10 years, my Anfechtung was a blessing and we are not done yet.  

Eric used to play on the book title:  “I’m not okay and you’re not ok and that’s okay.”  In some of his best practical advice for seminarians and all Christians, he said, “Every Christian should have a father or mother confessor.”    And lest we think it is one great conversion moment, Eric reminds us in his book “Born Again-ism”, “The real question for Christians is not whether one has had that one, glorious, born-again experience, be it through Bible or Spirit, or both, but rather whether one is born again and again in the encounter with the gospel of Christ crucified, in the community where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name.”  

Perhaps it’s best to give Eric the last word from a Sermon he preached in 1978 at the Luther Colloquium Gettysburg Seminary, “We have never any difficulties seeing our cross: we just have difficulties picking it up.    I have learned to hate the pressure of God’s grace when he sends me a fight I don’t want or a kidney stone I have learned to hate.  But every time God pursues me, I hope to become stronger in my yielding power. 

Luther has taught me that grace requires only my works for the sake of living with others.  Since God loves me without my brownie points, I can concentrate on life on earth.    That is truly liberating.   I do not have to be a sour pietist who can no longer enjoy life.   I do not have to bury my head in shame when I have been defeated in what I thought was a holy cause.   All I need to worry about is whether I have used all of myself,  my strength and talent to do what I think I must do in my vocation.  When I fail, I can tell myself that I have not failed in my faith, but in my wit and imagination.   It is a relief to be stupid, rather than unfaithful.   

So let us celebrate what deserves to be celebrated: the grace of God pressing us into a service and vocation that liberates us from ourselves, from our idolatry and even death.”   

Isn’t that what we are here for, to celebrate our freedom in Christ, the grace of God that saves us and allows us to laugh at ourselves, to rejoice in God’s Good New?   It is what you good people of Zion do so well.  

It is well known that one of the antidotes that Luther used to combat Anfechtung was humor.   So let me end with a little humor and some wit from Brother Martin:

“Whenever one is assailed by doubt and melancholy, be in the company of friends, sing, dance and have a drink.   The devil can’t stand merriment.”

“When speaking of an opponent Martin said, “He is an excellent man, as skillful clever and versed in Holy Scripture as a cow in a walnut tree or a sow on a harp.”

“When Christ has the trumpet blown at the last day, everyone will pop up and be resurrected like flies who die in winter.” 

“Tomorrow I have to lecture on the drunkenness of Noah, so I should drink this evening to talk about that wickedness as one who knows by experience.”

“If God has no sense of humor, I don’t want to go to Heaven.”

And now these actual Answers from Children taking a Test on the Bible:             

ADAM AND EVE WERE CREATED FROM AN APPLE TREE. NOAH'S WIFE WAS JOAN OF ARK. 

LOTS WIFE WAS A PILLAR OF SALT DURING THE DAY, BUT A BALL OF FIRE DURING THE NIGHT.

THE JEWS WERE A PROUD PEOPLE AND THROUGHOUT HISTORY THEY HAD TROUBLE WITH UNSYMPATHETIC GENITALS.

THE EGYPTIANS WERE ALL DROWNED IN THE DESSERT. AFTERWARDS, MOSES WENT UP TO MOUNT CYANIDE TO GET THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.    

THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT IS THOU SHALT NOT ADMIT ADULTERY.

MOSES DIED BEFORE REACHING CANADA THEN JOSHUA LED THE HEBREWS IN THE BATTLEOF GERITOL.
 
JESUS WAS BORN BECAUSE MARY HAD AN IMMACULATE CONTRAPTION.
 
JESUS GAVE THE GOLDEN RULE, WHICH SAYS TO DO UNTO OTHERS BEFORE THEY DO ONE TO YOU. 
 
ST. PAUL CAVORTED TO CHRISTIANITY, HE PREACHED HOLY ACRIMONY, WHICH IS ANOTHER NAME FOR MARRAIGE.

CHRISTIANS HAVE ONLY ONE SPOUSE. THIS IS CALLED MONOTONY .

Eric was indeed a Doctor and a Scholar of Church History and Martin Luther, but before either of those a pastor.   So very many of us in seminary and beyond learned so much and valued Eric’s pastoral wit, wisdom and counsel.  

He taught the faith, preached the Gospel and provided pastoral care to my dad who went to Gettysburg Seminary and then he did the same for me.   We are all so very grateful for his friendship, his faith and Godly witness. 

Thanks be to God.     And may the Peace of God that passes all understanding keep our hearts and minds on Christ Jesus our Lord.  

Amen.

Presented on November 11, 2018 at the Zion Church of the City of Baltimore, Maryland during the celebration of Lutherfest by the Eric W. Gritsch Memorial fund.

Sources:         

Homily for the 3^rd Sunday of Easter, April 10, 2016 at Community Lutheran by Joseph Vought

“Boy from the Burgenland, from Hitler Youth to Seminary Professor” by Eric Gritsch

“Born Again-ism” by Eric Gritsch

“The Heidelberg Disputation” by Martin Luther

“Table Talk” by Martin Luther

“The Power of Vulnerability”  by Brene Brown

A native of Pennsylvania, Rev. Joseph Vought received a Masters of Divinity from The Lutheran Theological Seminary in 1983 after graduating from Gettysburg College. Ordained in 1983, Pastor Joe served Second English Lutheran, Baltimore, MD.  In 1987 he was called as Pastor of Our Saviour Lutheran, Richmond, VA where he developed ministries, built buildings and trained interns.  He ministered on Virginia’s “Death Row,” providing care to inmates before and during executions. In 1997 he was called as Senior Pastor of Muhlenberg Lutheran, Harrisonburg, VA. Membership grew and ministries were begun: an After-School Program for children, Mission work in West Virginia and a school in Rwanda.  Building projects were undertaken.  Pr. Joe represented Lutherans in Virginia to encourage denominational service and full communion partnerships.  He received a Doctor of Ministry Degree from Wesley Seminary. Called to Community in October, 2008.

He is married to Debra Swenson.   Together they enjoy exercise, movies, reading and traveling.  They have two grown children, Kristin and Jonathan.