Reason says. . .

A few months ago many of us were gathered in a church somewhere while a finger dusted with ash traced a cross on the foreheads of those who came forward.  The words were shocking enough for an adult to hear, Remember, O man, that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.  But there will be moms and dads bringing small children with curious faces and infants so seemingly innocent to get the same odd anointing.   In the cold reality of reason, this all seems to be an empty gesture for the children and babies carried up in loving arms.  Reason says these are innocents who have no guilt to carry, no shame to hide, and no sins to confess.  But that is the problem.  We were born into this sin that does not seem to be apparent on the smiling and joyful faces of children and babies.  They belong there because of what choice was made not by them but for them when, in Eden, we were all one in Adam.  If they do not belong there, then none of us do.

The same unthinkable reason that brought infants and small children to the rail for ashes is what brings them to baptismal water.  Need.  Whether that need is expressed in formal words and sentences or whether it is attested to by faithful parents who know what is on the faces of their children as well as what it means to be born into sin, need compels us.  No one can reason themselves into a baby being brought to water meant for sinners who have some guilt to confess, some shame to admit, and some sin to own.  Reason says the child is innocent until they reach some age of accountability, some awareness of right and wrong, some culpability of will and desire.  But infants and children are also born into a world of death, with a will compromised by the inclination to evil, and in their own helpless state to deliver themselves from all of this or even part of it.  

Reason tells us that the resurrection is the hope of those near death and not the baby in the arms of mom or the children carried by their dads.  After all, they have their own lives ahead, full lives with chapters waiting to be written.  That is the illusion.  Reason usually deals with black and white, the clear and the concrete.  In this case reason is wrong.  It clings to a dream while the reality is marked in death upon the flesh even of a child.  We all need what the promise of Easter offers.  We cannot predict when death will come and we dare not presume that the seemingly innocent faces of children are immune from it.  If we come to the empty tomb both out of need and of desire, the infants and children have the same need even as we wait to hear from their lips the words of desire and faith.   

I don't get it. . .

So it would seem that Christianity poses an existential threat to the world.  There is a growing backlash against the Church as if somehow the Church was vibrant and powerful enough to compel unwilling unbelievers to either abide by the tenets of Christianity or to convert.  At least that is how it reads.  Our society is replete with warnings about Christian nationalism, about a Christianity enforced by government and aided by law, or about the imposition of a willing faith upon unwilling people.  Except where is that happening?  Where is Christianity rising up to become the kind of social or political force that would cause liberals and progressives to issue warnings?  At least in the West?

It would seem that the Church is actually at its weakest today than ever before.  Christians do not seem to have played a pivotal role in the ruling which made abortion no longer a constitutionally protected right.  Christians seem to have lost the war against the diversity of sexual desires and gender identities which we perceive as normal.  Christians have watched as marriage has dropped in popularity and children virtually disappeared in the homes of most of us yet some are warning against the Church somehow taking away the freedoms so jealously afforded by the liberal and progressive forces in our land.  Indeed, the whole of the West seems to be on the same page in this.

But somehow those same liberal and progressive folk seem content with Islam.  According to the evidence and the state of affairs in the Middle East (though not alone), Islam appears to be the greater threat to the great American way of life but you would not know it.  Muslims have done a profound job of compelling or forcing the hand of those on the forefront of culture war yet liberal and progressive Christians have little to say in protest to this.  On the other hand, Christians are positively demonic in the eyes of the liberal West.  Who represents a greater threat to the status quo of the world?  Is it Islam with its militant repudiation of all the liberal and progressive values OR is it Christianity, which, by and large, has seemed to accommodate the secular values that it is supposed to reject?  The world has decided that Islam is a victim that needs to be protected from the big, bad Christian demon -- just like all the liberal and progressive values that Western culture holds dear.

Honestly, I wish that Christianity acted like the institutional threat it is generally seen to be by liberal and progressive Western culture.  Of course, there are pockets of threat but Christianity has hardly provided a uniform and solid front against the liberal and progressive secular culture.  Yes, I do believe that Christianity is an existential threat to the values and ideals held by secular progressivism and even the shallow and tepid Christian form of the same thing.  I just don't see how the world around us can judge us to be such a threat since so much of Christianity has capitulated to those values and positions.  That is my sadness.  I wish we were something to threaten the world with a real difference and not just a lukewarm version of ourselves.  Oddly enough, I guess, the stereotype of Christianity feared by the liberal and progressive West is actually worse than the reality.....

 

His wounds are our healing...

Remembering eleven years ago this sermon preached for Easter 2B, on Sunday, April 12, 2015

    Jesus dies and rises again and the best He can get from His disciples is them huddling behind locked dears with hearts closed off from joy by their fear!  Shouldn’t Jesus have expected more?  The locked doors did not stop Jesus but the fearful hearts – well, that’s another story.  The disciples were as afraid of believing in Jesus as they were fearful of the Jews.  Either way their lives were held captive by fear and doubt.  What would bring them peace?  What would comfort them?  What would restore their joy?  What would turn them to hope?
    No one would expect that the wounds of Jesus’ suffering and death could become the healing wounds of our grief and the comforting scars that would teach us hope.  No one but Jesus.  Into their turmoil, Jesus came and all He had to show them were the wounds in His hands and feet.  But it was enough.  And to fearful people, His wounds are still enough.
    Peace be with you. . . said Jesus.  Jesus spoke of peace to calm the real fears of people who have enemies, who face temptations, and who deal with the trials of daily live.  Jesus spoke of peace to bring forgiveness to the guilty consciences of sinners – even those sinners who betrayed Jesus and denied His resurrection from the dead.
    Jesus spoke of peace to turn the sorrows of the grieving into joy and to turn the sadness of their loss into the gladness of salvation.  All this Jesus spoke to them but still they were not ready to give up their fears or surrender their sorrows.
    The disciples who told Thomas they had seen the Lord had already seen His wounds and put their hands in them.  Now Jesus allows Thomas to do the same.  In the wounds of Jesus, Thomas’ doubts and fears melted away.  “My Lord and My God,” he cried.  And his heart finally knew rest, comfort, and peace.
    Jesus said, “Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed...”  Now you might think that was a rebuke to Thomas.  We might be angry if people did not believe us but Jesus is remarkably patient with doubters and the fearful.  Thomas’ refusal does not anger Jesus.  Our Lord does not turn Thomas away but draws Him into the wounds that impart His promised peace.
    You and I worry about being afraid, doubting, sadness, and about fear.  These things only have power over us if we hide them!  It is true.  We face many enemies in this world.  We endure many tests.  We suffer many trials.  But own doubts and fears do not anger Jesus.  But, like Thomas of old, until we surrender our fears, doubts, and turmoil to the wounds of Jesus, we are frozen by them.  But in them we are free.
    Just as Jesus invited Thomas to touch Him and know the full comfort of His presence and His peace, so do we come here today.  Bidden by Jesus to find healing in His wounds, the Spirit works to muster the courage to confess our doubts, to surrender our fears, and to give up our distress.
    What our eyes cannot see, God gives us faith to see.  Faith becomes the eyes that see when the ones in our head see only dead ends, fear, doubt, guilt, shame, and upset.  Through the clear vision of faith, we see Jesus and His promised peace calms our fears, eases our doubts, and invites our trust.
    We wonder what age we will look in heaven.  Like those pictures of people in their youth that accompany obituaries, we dream of glory without scars and wounds.  But Jesus scars and wounds are not His shame; they are His glory. In those wounds is our peace, our forgiveness, and our hope. Far from hiding them, Jesus shows off the marks of His suffering that we might know what His wounds have accomplished for us and for our salvation.  His wounds are not His shame but His power to address each of us with His peace.
    The waters of baptism flows to unlock hearts closed by fear. It is the Spirit’s work, working through the Word, to break through the locked doors of our fears and our closed hearts.  It is the Spirit who moves us to confront our fear and doubt.
 The Word breaks through and in the very place of our doubts and fears, the Spirit plants the peace of Christ.  Where we were once held captive by fear and doubt, eyes of faith see the wounds of Christ and enter into freedom and hope.
    It happened for the ten disciples who first met Jesus after Easter. It happened a week later for Thomas, too.  And it happens for us every Sunday we come to behold the wounds of Jesus that heal our broken lives, forgive our shameful sins, erase our guilt, ease our fears, and answer our doubts.  The wounds of Christ are not His shame but His glory. . . and OUR glory.  Easter does not make them go away but allows us to see those wounds as the means of our salvation and invites us to trust in them always.
    Easter’ hope is not that we forget what Jesus suffered but that we glory in the wounds that have bought us back from sin and death and overcome our fears with hope.  So that in the midst of the worst of life’s troubles and trials, we too might see Jesus with eyes of faith and joyfully proclaim: My Lord and My God.  Amen.  Christ is Risen.  He is Risen Indeed.  Alleluia! 

Birthright citizenship and Roman moral teaching. . .

So the USCCB (US Conference of Catholic Bishops) sent a friend of the court brief on the issue of  “birthright citizenship” -- a longstanding policy ended by a Trump executive order.  Their concern is  “whether the law will protect the human dignity of all God’s children.”  The oddly curious question here is whether or not birthright citizenship applies beyond the US and if it is reflection of Roman Catholic moral teaching overall.  And, if that is the case, why does it not apply to the Vatican?

Only a fool would suggest that there are not valid arguments on both sides but the USCCB has framed this in moral terms and that it evidence of the incoherence of their brief.  Birthright citizenship has flown from the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”  While it was meant to grant citizenship to freed slaves, it has been applied universally ever since -- other than the exceptions to the birthright-citizenship policy such as children born to foreign diplomat or born to members of an invading army.  But whether it was meant to be applied as universally as it has been, that is a debate.

The bishops insist that “children do nothing wrong by being born in the United States” but that does not necessarily lead to the claim that “depriving an innocent child of his citizenship based upon his parents’ immigration status would be an especially outrageous punishment.” Roman Catholic moral teaching has always allowed states the authority to set their own standards for citizenship.  According to their logic here, everyone has an inherent right to citizenship.  “Birthright citizenship,” say the bishops, “accords with the Church’s teachings concerning the State’s obligation to uphold and protect human dignity because it treats birth within a community as a sufficient and objective basis for political belonging.”  If this is the case, then what about other countries?  That is why this is either odd or incoherent.

We can argue the wisdom on both sides of this issue but to claim the moral high ground in favor of birthright citizenship is a bridge too far even for Roman Catholic bishops. 

The elephant in the room. . . .

Across the discussion of seminary vs online, non-LCMS vs official seminary, SMP vs "general" pastors, there is almost a mantra of talk about the shortage of pastors in congregations with 50 or less on Sunday morning.  It is as if the whole conversation is being driven by this one particular situation.  But is it?  According to the stats provided to us by the Synod, the vast majority of these small congregations are being served not by SMP clergy but by retired pastors who are serving part-time or pastors who have another income source who are also serving a small congregation on the side.  Indeed, the big dust up over rule changes to the SMP seems to imply that it is these smaller congregations who will be forced to go without a pastor because the requirements for the program are being changed.  Is that the case?

It would seem that much of the growth in the SMP and much of the impetus in the desire to find a go around for the Synodical seminaries residential path is to raise up local pastors within congregations which are not small and struggling but large enough to look for and fund additional part-time or full-time clergy for their own staff.  It has less to do with a concern for the small parish in the Dakotas or Montana that cannot find a retired pastor or another pastor living close enough to serve them part-time than it does a congregation with a couple of hundred in worship that wants to expand its own staff and is utilizing the SMP for that purpose.  While that was not the intended scope or place for the SMP program when it was sold to the Synod, it is nonetheless technically allowed by the rather broad bylaws and requirements of the program.  There has arisen a deep desire to have local clergy, formed locally and raised up and formed for a specific local setting and although this could include that small and isolated parish somewhere on the plains, it is more likely a suburban parish trying to grow its staff (and, I might add, on the cheap).  I get it and understand the desire but I do think we need to separate the need for pastors for these smaller congregations from the desire of these other parishes to have locally grown pastors serving them part-time or even full-time.

It would also be helpful to separate the training debate from the SMP program.  The SMP is about the establishment of a particular path for a particular need and the hubbub over online and non-Synodical seminary routes is less about that specific situation than it is about pastoral formation overall.  While there are things in common in both perspectives, there are also differences.  Those who advocate for the online option to be normative along side the residential seminary route and who believe that other seminaries besides the official ones should be allowed to train our clergy are talking about general pastors and how they are raised up and how they are formed -- not SMP.  It is helpful if we distinguish the smaller points of the debate while having this conversation in Synod.  

Lastly it is also true that the desire of some to simply regularize SMP with a stroke of a pen and remove all current restrictions on their placement, call, and arena of service have another issue which is related to the two above but not quite the same.  In their minds, these voices are insisting that if a pastor is ordained and conferred with the authority of the Word and Sacraments, there can be no further restriction upon him or any limitation of his jurisdiction.  That is another line of debate and one which we ought to have but it is not quite the same as online, non-LCMS seminary, SMP in small congregations, and localized pastoral formation.  In other words, we have a lot of conversations going on in the Synod and while some of them are related, they are not exactly the same.  From time to time we need to admit this and make the necessary distinctions.