The Chris Moeller Archives

The rules of expulsion

The Des Moines Register occasionally stumbles onto something that resonates. Wayne Lienen of Marengo, Iowa had his church membership revoked from Trinity Lutheran Church in nearby Conroy because he hadn't received "The Lord's Supper" in two years, and he was further notified that he would have to forfeit the plots he "leased" in the church cemetery, including the one next to his deceased first wife, who died in 1989. Lienen decided then to have his wife dug up, coffin and burial vault, and moved to a cemetery in Marengo. At least one of his daughters is convinced that the actual issue was Lienen's failure to make adequate financial contributions to the church.

This cuts close to the bone. I was baptized and raised in the faith of St. John's Lutheran Church in Newhall in neighboring Benton County. The Newhall church, like the one in Conroy, is affiliated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. In fact, my uncle served as the minister at that same Conroy church in the early 1980s. I'd be certain that I've attended service there if my adolescent memory served me better. Like Lienen, I also attended my church's parochial school through the eighth grade, went through catechism, and have very immediate family buried in the church's cemetery. Though I moved away from the area, I received the same letters in the mail each month, the Bible verses, and the requests for donations. The similarities end only with the fact that I don't already have a burial stone located in the church cemetery with all but my year of death engraved.

Obviously, we get just a partial picture here of this story, but what do you think, gang? Is the church returning to the doctrine of indulgences, the original bone of contention between Martin Luther and the Catholic Church, and a crucial spark for the entire Protestant Reformation? Or is "Godgirl64" correct in the Register's comment thread-- that the real issue is Lienen's relationship with the Lord? Shouldn't you have to be a member of "the club" to enjoy the privileges of the club, after all? Is it any of our business at all, and does it even matter where this woman's body is buried, from a spiritual standpoint?

The line of the night, though, is in the comment thread from "Primewonk" on Sunday night. "In retrospect," (s)he writes, "I grew up in the LCMS, maybe this gentleman just got tired of shaved ham sandwiches and lime jello with the little grated carrots."

I won't get caught in this type of mess myself, despite the general religious heresy and unctuous agnosticism of my adulthood. If my future executor(s) are reading this, I want my ashes spread across the field behind the Moeller family farm, but I don't want 'em spread until corn is selling at at least six dollars a bushel. I want my hair shaved off the corpse first and fashioned into a wig to be displayed at the Smithsonian Museum, and the Des Moines Art Museum gets my collection of erotic wood carvings. My brother can have anything he wants from the liquor cabinet-- that stinking drunk, but my kid sister gets the quartet of uncashed and fully-matured savings bonds.

posted by CM @ 9:32 PM