From LifeDate - Spring 2006.

Lutherans Join March for Life

Wet conditions from intermittent rain and a new parade route didn’t dampen the spirits of an estimated 100,000-plus people—including several dozen under the Lutherans For Life banner—who gathered for this year’s “March for Life,” January 23, in Washington, D.C.

Dennis Di Mauro, president of LFL’s Northern Virginia chapter, said the “spirits of the marchers were energized by the experience,” which included remarks via phone from President George W. Bush. 

Di Mauro said that the Lutheran contingency included people “with a range in age and backgrounds” from a number of states and the United Kingdom.

Each year, the march is held to mark the anniversary of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States.

“You believe, as I do,” Bush told the throng this year, “that every human life has value, that the strong have a duty to protect the weak, and that the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence apply to everyone, not just to those considered healthy or wanted or convenient.”

Ed Szeto, Director of Outreach for National Lutherans For Life, who was also at the march and rally, said, “It is important for Lutherans to participate and be witnesses along with other church bodies at the march. It serves as a wonderful witness to the entire nation of what we believe and how life is precious and valuable.”

LFL activities began with a worship service at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Alexandria, Virginia.

Immanuel’s pastor, Rev. Christopher Esget, in his homily for that service noted that green is the liturgical color for use on January 22, the day of the abortion-decision anniversary.

“But perhaps every January  22 . . .  we should strip the church of everything festive, and vest all in black, for a day of mourning,” he suggested. “We would have to toll the bells about 45,951,133 times to account for all the helpless, defenseless children slaughtered in America by the reprehensible evil that is abortion.”

Esget also suggested that the abortion-decision anniversary might be commemorated on the same day “we remember the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents, which recounts Herod’s cruelty in destroying the children of Bethlehem.”

“The slaughter of the holy innocents that continues in our day is not something that we can simply talk about, lamenting it among ourselves,” Esget said.

He reminded the worshipers that the Small Catechism explanation to the Fifth Commandment “calls us to help and befriend our neighbor in every bodily need.

“What bodily need could be greater than those condemned to die simply because they are deemed an inconvenience, a mere byproduct of lustful desire to be discarded like trash, rather than the human beings whom God has given life?”

Esget challenged the worshipers to remember that “many [abortion] proponents are misguided by false and misleading philosophies. In naming the crime of abortion as sin,” he said, “we recognize that we also are sinners. Even if we could end this heinous evil today, we would not put an end to sin. We would not make America righteous or godly. For none of us is righteous . . . Our only righteousness is the righteousness of Christ, freely given to us wretched sinners, freely marked on our foreheads with the cross, freely poured over our heads in Baptism, freely poured into our mouths with the wine that makes glad the heart of man, the wine of our Lord’s innocent blood.”

He also reminded those gathered that the Epistle for the day “should put us in the proper mind: ‘Do not be wise in your own eyes,’” he said, quoting St. Paul. “‘Repay no one evil for evil.’

“Our message is not one of first being against something, but of being for, being proponents of God’s love, grace, and peace,” Esget said.

“Come and receive His forgiveness, given freely to you,” he said. “Then go in peace, proclaiming by your words and demeanor the love of God.  For not by changing laws, but by changing hearts, will this great scourge be truly ended.”

Noting that this was the first time he had participated in the rally and march, Esget said, “I was not expecting to have such strong emotions. To see so many people supporting the gift of life and asking the government to protect all human beings, not only those we find convenient or useful—and doing so in a peaceful and loving way—was very moving. I wish that everyone, including our whole congregation, would have been there.”