Before fishers, fish. . .

Sermon for Epiphany 3B, preached on Sunday, January 25, 2015.

    How easy it is to jump to the call to be fishers of men – too easy – to begin with the fishing and forget that we were fish before we were fishers of men.  Before we were set apart for the work of the kingdom, we were the work of the kingdom.  We often assume that fishing for men is a matter of strategy, planning, and expertise.  We forget we were caught up on the net of Christ's Word and Sacraments.  We were the sought out of the Lord who made us His own before we were ever called to seek others out with His Word.  To forget this is to lose sight of who is at work in the fishing and how it works that God catches us up in the net of His grace.  More than this, it calms the fears of those who know not what to say to those who have not heard of Christ and what to do for those not yet of the Kingdom.
    Where are the fish?  Who of us does not know those without faith? Who do not get up and dress for church? Who are not found in worship on Sunday morning?  More than this, they are among our own households and kinfolk.  Think how God called you?  Was it through a stranger or was it through family and friends who surrounded you with the words of the Gospel and the witness of the cross every day?  God works through means and those means includes those who know Christ by faith.
    We also forget that the caught contribute nothing to the catching.  The fishers of men are not miracle workers but mere witnesses of the Gospel who speak of Jesus, so those who are caught are merely hearers through whom the Holy Spirit imparts faith.  The main thing in common for those caught and those catching is that it remains about Jesus.  It is God's work for us and God's work still when it happens through us.
    So what does it mean to be fishers of men?  It does not mean strategic planning or creative methodology.  It means we speak the Word of Christ where we are.  That seems a novelty in a world looking for success in how-to books that lay out the plan step by step but it is the actual way of God.  With those at home, those at work, and those in the neighborhoods where we live, we speak the Word of the Lord and God has promised to work.  Faith comes by hearing the Word of God and all God is asking of His people is that His Word be on our lips and visible in our lives.  Can we do that?  Can we not do that?
    We have come to believe that the net is something from us.  So we mistakenly assume that fishers of men have some special charisma or gift, know some special wisdom, or are special people.  Surely God cannot work through ordinary people!  Or can He?  And does He?  Pastors have no special gift other than a bit more learning about the Word of God. 
    Some folks around us may also excel in this area.  But God does not call those with a special knack; God equips those whom He calls.  He gives us His Word and His Word has the power of the Spirit in it – the guarantor who makes sure that this Word does what it says and delivers the results God designs.  Because this Word is our certainty and hope, we can believe that this Word will work with certainty and deliver the hope to those who have not heard it.
    The main thing in fishing for men is to remember that it is God's work and your main thing is to keep it His work.  For as surely as we begin to believe that we possess some special charisma or gift, have some special ability or skill, the fishing will become our domain instead of His.  The key to fishing is patience and trust.  Too often these are in short supply among pastors and the people of God.  We grow impatient and frustrated that God is not working according to our timetable or at our desired speed.  We want to control things, to direct them, to make them happen.  But the Spirit blows when and where it wills.  Or to put it another way, God moves in a mysterious way. 
    The key to fishing is not learning to think like the fish but patience and trust.  God has promised us that His Word will not return to Him empty handed but will accomplish His purpose.  Whether on Sunday morning as you look around a half empty church or Monday morning as you look around a broken family and life, our call remains the same. Trust in the Lord and be patient.  His Word is still working. . . in the parish and in us as people.
    Where the means of grace, the Word and the Sacraments are, God is still fishing.  Whether we hear that Word here on Sunday morning or speak it on Monday morning, God is the voice and the Spirit is the power.  And if we ever have trouble figuring it all out, we just need to look into the mirror.  Whom we see are fish, once lost, caught up in the net of grace, by the Spirit, and now sent forth in the world to be fishers of men.  Before we were fishers of men, we were fish.  The net that will capture the world for the kingdom is the same one that caught us – His Word and Sacraments.  It is enough for us to witness these means of grace with enthusiasm and joy, knowing that God is at work and will finish His new creation, and if our voices and examples have had any part in it, thanks be to God.
    Today we remember how St. Paul who hated Christians, persecuted the church, and even participated in the murder of those who confessed Jesus Christ became a Christian.  It was a dramatic journey to be sure but no longer and no different than the path that led us to faith through the preaching of the Gospel, the teaching of the faith, and the washing of water with the Word.  To the world living in darkness and the shadow of death, the witness of the Church is clear: "Repent and believe the Gospel."  We were once the pagans and heathen who knew nothing of God's grace and favor until that voice called to us.  Let us then with confidence address the world with the same call, trusting that God will work in it and through it as He promised and did for you and me.  "Repent and believe the Gospel."

A case for God?

So many Christians have surrendered the idea of a creation that in any way resembles the Genesis story that it seems foolishness to contend for God at all.  Our children are taught from early on that creation was merely a set of accidents that could likely have happened or still happen elsewhere and that evolution is the only reasonable explanation for what is.  Even Pope Francis appears to have consigned God to merely a prime mover in a movement that more or less conforms to the usual parameters of evolutionary theory.

So it was with interest I read an article one of my members slipped into my church mailbox.  Writing in the December 26, 2014, edition of The Wall Street Journal, Eric Metaxas suggests that it is science itself that making the case for God and intelligent design.  Whether this leads us closer to accepting the accounts of Genesis or not, it is a welcome perspective.

Metaxas recounts the 1996 Time magazine story asking if God is dead and a story the same year in which Carl Sagan indicated that the two criteria for a planet to support life were the right kind of star and a planet the right distance from that star.  With roughly an octillion planets, it would have seemed likely that a septillion of them just might be able to support life.  So the stage was set for us to look, listen, and wait.  More than 20 years have passed and what changed?  Well, for one thing, the number of factors necessary for life changed from 2 to more than 200 parameters.  In other words, the odds of finding another one are almost none and the very existence of earth and the life we find here illogical.

So who can account for it all?  Accident?  Random forces?  Or. . . more?  Now scientists are beginning to think that the parameters to support life happened not gradually but almost immediately after the proverbial "big bang".  Second, altar only one of the many values that must be fine tuned to explain what exists be even the tiniest of fractions (say, 1 in 1,00,000,000,000,000,000) and there would be no stars at all! 

Fred Hoyle, astronomer and coiner of the term "big bang",  is quoted as saying his atheism was greatly shaken at these developments.  Paul Davies, theoretical physicist, thinks that the appearance of design is overwhelming.  Oxford Professor John Lennox says that more we learn the more credible the existence of a Creator.

So it seems that life is not simply random at all but requires such a unique set of parameters that it is more reasonable to presume a creator than to assume it all happened randomly... Hmmmm. . . I am feeling a little smug right now. . . Are you?

It was read late but it was still appreciated. . .

Adriane Heins is a very talented woman and editor of The Lutheran Witness (and doing a bang up job!).  I only wish more Lutherans would cough up the paltry $14 a District subscription costs and enjoy the riches of that fine magazine every month!  [Speaking to those in my own parish, you still have time!!]

Adriane also has a fine blog and I had to repost something I finally read from that blog -- late, well after Christmas, but still greatly appreciated.  I know she puts in words the sentiments of many parishioners but it is awfully nice for a pastor to hear (or read) them -- especially after the busyness of a December filled with extra services, duties, sermons, and the sacrifice of a holy day spent with the parish instead of the family (like many folks expect).

thank you

December 22, 2014 / Adriane Heins

 

For spending more hours than normal each week writing extra sermons,
For braving the children’s pageant where little Elizabeth will inevitably set her dress on fire,
For sacrificing time with your family each Wednesday or Thursday night,
For preaching about the same things every Advent and Christmas even though those of us in the pew should remember it by now,
For leading Christmas caroling at the nursing home because the piano player forgot to show up,
For going to bed late because an elder needed to talk to you after the Christmas Eve service and for being up again early on Christmas morning to unlock the church doors,
For never being able to travel to your parents’  home during Advent or Christmas or even New Years’ Eve or Day,
For being consistently tired during the month of December,
For picking faithful hymns for these seasons of the Church Year, knowing that we will hum them throughout the week,
For listening to us struggle and cry and mourn during “the most wonderful time of the year,”
For helping us watch and wait for Jesus’ second coming with repentance and joy,
and for pointing us to Christ at every turn,

thank you, pastors.

Come and see. . .

Sermon for Epiphany 2B, preached on Sunday, January 18, 2015.

    We spend a lot of time telling people what is important to us, what we find funny, touching, entertaining, or meaningful. Our email boxes are filled with things passed on by others.  Half of the stuff we post on Facebook is this kind of stuff.  So when we talk of faith or invite people to Church we tend to talk in the same way – telling people what we have enjoyed about church, what touches us in church, or what has helped us.
    But not Philip.  Philip does not talk about what he liked about Jesus, how Jesus made him feel good, or how Jesus touched him.  Philip focused on the Word fulfilled in Him who kept the Law with all its demands and fulfilled the promise of the prophets.  Nathaniel was pretty blunt in saying he was not convinced (What good comes from Nazareth) but Philip did not argue with the skeptic.  He simply said, "Come and see for yourself. . . Him of whom the Law and prophets spoke...."
    That is what we often miss.  Religion is not an idea or a methodology or self-help wisdom or something to tweak our emotions.  We do not have faith in an idea but a Savior, the Son of God in flesh and blood.  There is no idea or feeling which can bear the heavy weight of the Law.  Certainly we cannot.  But Jesus can.  The Law lie in wait not for us to obey it but for Him who came to fulfill it.  There is the most radical of truths. 
    There is no idea which can live up to the blueprint laid out in the promise of the prophets.  Certainly we cannot.  But Jesus can.  The prophets' message was a script written for Him whom God would send to fulfill its every word and keep its every promise.  His life unfolded just as the prophets had said and this is our confidence, certainty, and assurance.  Christ the Word, keeps the Word.
    Jesus is a surprise.  Who comes from Nazareth?  Jesus is not what we expect and He may not even be close to what we want.  But how much of that matters.  Jesus is Him whom God has promised.  Before He was incarnate of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, the Word was fully promised – where He would be born, what He would do, and what it means for you and me. 
    Nathaniel was no harder nut to crack than the people we meet at work or on the street, or even more, the people in our families and among our friends.  But Philip does not argue or debate or testify to what Jesus meant to him.  No, he does some thing very different.  "Come and see for yourself. . . "
    Come and see. . . not a church or a program or an idea or something entertaining or meaningful.  No, come and meet the Savior enfleshed in Word and Sacrament for us.  He is the One who keeps the Law we cannot keep and fulfills every word and promise of the prophets.  Philip could not point to the miracles – they had not yet happened.  He could not point to the cross – he had no idea what Christ would do. Not even the resurrection.
    Philip did not introduce Nathaniel to his Jesus but to the one who kept the Law and fulfilled the prophets' promise.  He had not yet seen any miracles nor had he even heard Jesus speak of the cross that was to come and the resurrection from the dead was the farthest thing from Philip's mind.  So what did Philip have to talk about at all?  "Come and see Him of whom the Law and Prophets spoke."  In other words, if you read the Scriptures they will point you to Christ.
    You know we have lowered the bar, lowered expectations.  We speak of good ideas or of words that tug at our heartstrings or something that was fun or entertaining.  We think of pastors instead of Christ, of worship we like instead of worship that delivers Jesus to us, and of things that fit us instead of the Savior who fits us for heaven.  It is no wonder the world is not all that impressed with our witness.
    We have settled for an idea or a feeling instead of the flesh and blood of Jesus.  Who God offers us is much more than this. Christ is the commandments have waited for to keep them and  Christ is the Messiah the prophets waited for to fulfill their words.  In the end, the miracles, the cross, and even the resurrection did not help the disciples – they terrified them.  But they stuck with Jesus as the one and only who kept the Law and fulfilled the promise.  That is our witness today.  That is our witness to the world.  "Lord, where can we go?  You have the words of eternal life..."  To this flesh and blood Savior, we invite the world.  "Come and see...."  Amen.

Time to pack up and go. . .

In an odd couple of paragraphs in a January 2015 article in The Lutheran, authored by the President of Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, PA, we heard a story of what a bishop once asked of people as he installed their new pastor in their parish.  "When will the day come that you should urge your new pastor to leave and take another call?"

According to the author, the congregation was shocked at the question on such an occasion.  The bishop then answered his own question:  "You should ask her or him to leave when you realize you go home after worship every Sunday and find yourself in agreement with everything the pastor said in the sermon..."

For my part, I assume that nearly every pastor and every person in the pew hopes for such a day when there is true unity of faith and unanimity on the living out of that faith within the struggles and challenges of the world.  Apparently I was wrong. . .

According to the article, the point of the bishop's question was that the people should be continually stretched in new directions, that the point of the sermon is to not only to coax us to live outside our comfort zones but to thrive there.  I get the point.  But it worries me still.

The premise of the sermon is not to be prophetic, to ruffle feathers, to upset folks, but to preach faithfully God's Word, the whole counsel of the Law in all its accusatory sharpness and the Gospel in all its sweetness and comfort.  Yes, if we do this, it will unsettle both preacher and hearer for that is the way the Word works.  But this unsettling is not a matter of agreement or disagreement but the bite of the Word that calls the wayward to repentance, the sinner to confession, the complacent to witness and service, the suffering to patience and endurance, and the despairing to hope again.

Agreement and disagreement seems far too shallow a way of putting it.  In addition, it would seem today that people and pastors look for too many reasons to leave and not enough to stick it out for the long haul.  I hardly think that people should be appraised of the day when their pastor might be asked to leave -- ever -- but especially on the installation day.

Growth in faith and life in Christ is not a mere matter of agreement or disagreement but daily repentance and renewal -- which is unsettling enough.  Fresh perspectives are needed now and again but the freshness is hardly ever new and different but what do we believe, confess, and teach.  Indeed, the freshest perspective for the church, for the preacher, and for the hearer is always fidelity in a fast changing world.  I am amazed at how new faithfulness and orthodoxy is -- in confession as well as in practice.  If we endeavor to be faithful and orthodox in and out of the pulpit, the Lord will do the rest -- whether we agree with that or not. 

Proud of the LCMS. . .

In the wake of a very public situation in which a pastor and teacher of the Synod has repeatedly advocated positions in conflict with the public confession of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, there are those who might presume things will be pushed under a rug or the circumstances explained away in some face saving fashion.  Whether or not you agree or like him, our Synod is led by an individual who does not shrink from the truth or from the convictions of his church.  I am humbled by his frankness, honored by his steadfast stand for the truth, and comforted by his pastoral call to repentance.  Read him in his own words. . .

When a public teacher on the roster of Synod can without consequence publicly advocate the ordination of women (even participate vested in the installation of an ELCA clergy person), homosexuality, the errancy of the Bible, the historical-critical method, open communion, communion with the Reformed, evolution, and more, then the public confession of the Synod is meaningless. I am saying that if my Synod does not change its inability to call such a person to repentance and remove such a teacher where there is no repentance, then we are liars and our confession is meaningless. I do not want to belong to such a synod, much less lead it. I have no intention of walking away from my vocation. I shall rather use it and, by the grace of God, use all the energy I have to call this Synod to fidelity to correct this situation.

Matt Harrison

See why this matters?  Read this from Gene Veith. . .

Marquette is a Roman Catholic institution affiliated with the Jesuit order, one member of which is Pope Francis.  According to Catholic author Howard Kainz, Marquette has suspended and banned from campus a tenured professor for saying that arguments against gay marriage should be allowed to be discussed in class.   Meanwhile, a theology professor who advocates abortion and now considers himself an atheist keeps teaching, with no questions asked.

Too late now but maybe for next year???

Okay, Christmas is over.  Long over.  But as we reflect upon Christmases past, we often find ourselves lamenting how slowly it came and how quickly it was over, how stressful the holiday was and is, and how tired we are after trying to fit in everything (shopping, parties, gift giving, church, school programs, musical events, etc...).  I am just like you -- especially after a Christmas that suffered under the weight of several family deaths, illnesses, and scheduling nightmares.  But maybe that is not how it has to be. . .

I admit I am a wimp.  The best I am able to do is to slowly introduce Christmas decorations into the Church so that it all culminates with the creche at the very end of Advent.  I would like to do more but it is such a fight with the retail and non-religious culture of Christmas that I have come up with a compromise I am not happy with but one that I can live with.  I suspect most Lutheran pastors find themselves about where I am.  No, we do not sing Christmas carols during Advent.  Yes, we stretch out Christmas the full twelve days, culminating in a choral climax of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.  But we do put up more than just the "greens" before Christmas Eve.  Alas, how hard it is to fight the tide of Christmas that begins in August and ends Christmas morning.  I think I have blogged here before about how disappointing it is to me to see the real Christmas trees already lined up at the Dunbar State Park parking lot awaiting mulching for the park trails -- while driving to Christmas morning service!!!

I have wimped out (though not given over completely to the dark side like so many Christians, pastors, and churches) but I do know what we ought to be doing.  Mollie Ziegler Hemingway has more backbone than I do.  Her family's celebration of Christmas is what we all should be doing.  Her model is hard to argue with and, if I had more courage, it would be the one I hold out for my people and my parish.  You read her ideas and see if it is not persuasive!

Writing in the Federalist, Mollie says the more economical, stress free, and fulfilling celebration of Christmas is to buck the tide and celebrate TWELVE days like the song. 

We have two main competing visions for how to celebrate Christmas in America. The first, which we could call the retail model, is undoubtedly the most popular. And it has a lot going for it as the primary mover of Christmas celebrations in this country. Beginning as late as Black Friday (the shopping day the day after Thanksgiving) or as early as July or August, it culminates with Christmas Day and then abruptly stops. No more Christmas music. No more greetings of “Merry Christmas!” . . .

Now, I really think people should celebrate the 12 days of Christmas because it’s the liturgically proper and beneficial way to mark the season. It just makes sense to have a preparation time followed by a celebration appropriate to God taking on human flesh to save us.

Okay, Mollie, you have won me over in my heart and persuaded my mind as well.  Only one more thing, can you give me the courage to adopt this and the persuasive skills to sell it to my people?

Choking in the crunch. . .

Sermon for the Baptism of Our Lord, Sunday, preached on January 11, 2015.

    It was the biggest moment of his life, indeed, John's whole life came down to this one, big moment. . .  Jesus was there and waiting but John folded in the crunch.  He hesitated.  Overcome by it all he focuses on himself instead of Jesus.  "Not now. . . not me. . ."  But Jesus refused to be put off.  He prodded John on.  "It must be done for all righteousness." 
    So John baptized Jesus, the heavens opened, the Spirit descended, and the voice proclaimed, "You are my Son in whom I am well pleased..."  Baptism is also our big moment.  Jesus is there in the water.  He is ready.  Are we?  He is focused on us and our redemption. Who are we focused on?
    John's big moment was not about him at all – it was not about his worthiness or his willingness.  It was about Jesus, about His worthiness and His willingness to take up the destiny of the cross for which He was born.  Everything begins some where and Jesus' entrance to the cross begins with His entrance into the water.  He has come not for Himself – He has no sins to confess and needs no repentance.  He has come for us, to carry the full weight of our sins, to pay the full cost of their price, and to do so even if the only way was through the suffering and death of the cross.
    Look into the baptismal water and you see the cross.  Jesus' baptism shapes our understanding of Him and His mission and it shapes us and our redemption.  It is not a small moment but of pivotal importance as Jesus first public act to save us happens in His baptism in the Jordan and our first public act as the saved flows from our baptism into Christ.
    For just as His baptism was His public entrance into the cross shaped life, so is our baptism our public entrance into the cross shaped life.  St. Paul put it bluntly.  Do you not know that you were baptized into Christ's death and raised through His resurrection?  In order to focus on ourselves, we must focus on Him.  Before we can bring anything to Jesus, He brings us to the place where His redemption is given.  Before we can claim anything for ourselves, He claims us for Himself in baptism.
    We act as if baptism sets us free to be ourselves but it is just the opposite.  In baptism we are free to be Christ's own and to live under Him in His kingdom – as Luther put it in the catechism.  We are not for the display of our own righteousness but for the display of Christ's righteousness.  We are set free not to live our version of a good or happy life but to live as Christ's own, indeed, as little Christs in the world.  We are transformed from the lost into the found, from the guilty to the righteous, from the slave to the son, from the dead to the eternally alive.
    John choked at his big moment.  Don't we also?  We forget to keep our eyes upon Christ and look at ourselves with but one result – fear.  We hesitate at the altar when the full weight of marriage falls on us. . . we hesitate at the hospital when our child is first laid into our arms.  We hesitate at all those big moments in our lives because we see ourselves instead of Christ.  When we are fixed on ourselves, fear seizes us.  Yet in those fears, Christ is still there.  We are not our own nor are we on our own.  We have been bought with a price.  He has and still fulfills all righteousness for us.
    Christ leads us from the font to live out the new life born in us there. From the font we gain the new vocation as the children of God.  He who entered into the dirty stream of our sin and who embrace the full shame of our fallen humanity, now raises us up clean, to live new lives of obedience and faith, doing the good works of Him who has called us from darkness into His marvelous light.  This is not some theoretical idea but the true shape of real life.
    You are My beloved sons and daughters. . . Live not for yourself but for Me...  You are not alone... You have been bought with a price... You do not belong to yourself but to Me... Go and sin no more... this is what the voice of God speaks into our ears as we go down into the baptismal water and rise up new.  God did not give your life back to you, He has claimed it for Himself.
    So husbands, live this new life by serving your wives and children as Christ has served us. . .  And wives live this life by serving your husband and children by putting them ahead of yourself. . . Parents live this life by serving the children God has entrusted to their care and children live this life by honoring their parents as God's agents. . .  And all of us live this life by serving God through serving our neighbor and seeing in our neighbor the very face of Christ who saved us.
    God does not love us for what we can do for Him – Thanks be to God!  He loves us to redeem us from the prison of self, to save us from the impossible burden of living holy enough to satisfy His Law, and to impart to us a new life rich with the possibility of living as His own people.  He has given us this new life so that He might accomplish in us the full measure of His promise for a new and everlasting life.  This is what we meet in baptism.  We meet Christ.  And we live this new baptismal life by keeping our focus off ourselves and always on Christ.  Amen.

Forgotten words. . .

Every now and then one grows weary of agitating for the voice of the fathers, for the tradition once delivered to the saints, and for the witness of catholicity in our ever changing world.  The world cries "modernize" and the church growth gurus warn us to "change or die" and the pundits ridicule us "this is not your grandfather's church".  Many Lutherans have listened too closely to the naysayers and openly disdain the confession and liturgy of their fathers.  Some claim the Spirit is doing a "new thing" and others insist that relevance is the issue.  In any case, the role of the pastor has been cast in the evangelical direction.  He has become the chief vision caster, the agent of change, and the one to usher in the new paradigms that will save the church and redeem Christianity from obsolescence.

Never mind that Jesus complains that the Pharisees had departed from true tradition and substituted the commandments of men for the ancient and abiding truth of God's Word.  It was St. Paul warns against just this when he charges a young pastor to guard the sacred deposit and follow the pattern of sound words heard from him.  It was St. Paul again who insisted that that Thessalonians stand firm, do not depart from,  and hold to the tradition they were taught.

Never mind that the perspective of the Augustana was that the signatories had not departed from the catholic faith -- not in doctrine or practice -- but that the Romans had succumbed to innovation and novelty not taught in Scripture and not present in the clear witness of the fathers.

But Lutherans are not the only ones in danger of the temptation to the dark side of modernity, change, and adaptation.  Now some think that this is exactly what is happening with Francis and Rome.  Some are charging him with changing doctrine instead of preserving it.  I am no insider to Vatican thinking or gossip but it seems clear that the charge is not frivolous.

From Fr. Hunwicke:

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote: "After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything ... especially if he were acting on the mandate of an ecumenical council ... In fact, the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of faith ... The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition."
And this is what Vatican I had defined: "The Holy Spirit was not promised to Peter's successors so that by its revelation they might disclose new doctrine, but, so that, by its assistance, they might devoutly guard and faithfully set forth the revelation handed down through the Apostles, i.e. the deposit of Faith".

What Ratzinger said of the papacy and Vatican I is surely reflective of the charge every Lutheran pastor is given when he is installed into a new parish -- guard the faith and the flock over which the Holy Spirit has made you bishop...  In awe over business models and structures, we have forgotten that the primary role of the pastor is to guard the faith and the flock.  Instead we have endowed him with new responsibilities and burdens which are not only beyond the purview of the office he holds but unfitting for the ministry and the church.  

We have made him responsible for the earthly success of the church and judge him faithful not on the basis of the doctrine entrusted to the apostles nor on the pastoral care of the people through the means of grace but on whether or not statistics improve.  We have separated the priestly from the prophetic and charged him to be the agent of change either to modernize the church to better fit the changing world around us or to abandon the catholic faith if it conflicts with the new places and new things some think the Spirit is doing.  We have expected him to crystal ball into the future and cast forth a vision of where the church needs to be and what the church should look like in that future.  We have determined that his job is to meet the felt needs of the people, satisfy their wants and desires, and entertain them into blissful contentment with the moment.

Somewhere in this mess Lutherans and many others have forgotten the chief charge to the pastor to guard the faith and guard the faithful by preaching and teaching God's Word in season and out and administering the Sacraments as Christ intended and instituted.  Even Rome is not immune from the great temptations to hang the success of the church on her leaders or to see the leaders as the ones who must change the church according to the demands of the world (instead of the duty to Christ).

I know that there are those who are searching for a place where the grass is a shade greener-- and I have certainly looked in that regard -- but if Fr. Hunwicke is correct, Rome is infected at the highest level of its structure with someone who thinks changing practice is not changing doctrine and changing practice will save the future of the church.  As bad as this is on a congregational level, it is worse when it is on the highest level of any church's hierarchy.  Missouri has had its share of leaders who believed they were elected to be agents of change, that modernizing the church was its salvation, that making friends with culture was the key to growth, and that having a good time was the primary barometer of worship effectiveness.  Look where it has left us. . .  

As I have so often said, the road to heterodoxy is quick and easy but the road back to orthodoxy is long and difficult.  It is much easier to maintain faithfulness of doctrine and practice than it is to recover it.  Something worth pondering. 

I did not hear any Gospel. . .

Everyone once in a while a Lutheran pastor will be told by a parishioner that they ware just not being fed and they are now attending another church (in nearly every case a non-Lutheran church and in most cases one of the non-denominational kind).  It is generally met  by a Lutheran pastor with a serious case of angst and a serious review of old sermons to see what he is preaching.  There are few things that hit as hard as the judgment that your preaching is not "feeding" the people.

In the same vein, a Lutheran pastor will sometimes be told "I did not hear any Gospel" in that sermon.  This is met with an equally urgent case of self-doubt and the same kind of sermon review to see if there is merit to the complaint.  There are few things that make a Lutheran pastor feel as sick to his stomach as being told that Gospel was not heard in his sermons or that the Gospel does not predominate in his preaching.

There is another problem, however. That is the problem of identifying what the Gospel is.  We have come to define "gospel" in rather generic terms -- anything that makes me feel better.  So the gospel is love without strings, tolerance without judgment, forgiveness without repentance, heaven without hell, Easter without Good Friday, and a good man without the Godhead.  The trouble is that defining the gospel in this way means that the criteria for hearing gospel in preaching is whether or not I feel better.  We all want to feel better and it is tempting to believe that whatever makes us feel better is good.

The truth is that the Gospel (the real one of Christ crucified and the Scriptures which all point to Him) is scandalous to our sinful minds and hearts and offensive to the world apart from the faith.  It is not the law only that shocks and offends but the Gospel.  It is not logic or reason but the wisdom that comes not from within and the wisdom which must come down from above.  The Gospel is sweet but its sweetness has its own bite.  I do not mean the same bite as the Law but a far different bite -- the shock of the God who wears a diaper and nurses at the Virgin Mary's breast, who is our Rescuer but who must be rescued from Herod's wrath, who saves us by wearing the dirt of the sins we don't want to admit or allow into the light of day, and who does this by dying the death we deserved.

I am NOT saying the every judgment that the Gospel was not heard is a false one.  Preachers are human and need to be held accountable.  What I am saying is that the Gospel does not always make us feel good or even feel better.  The Gospel is the unsettling Word that man could not invent and God delivers by becoming flesh and blood.  The Gospel does not mean God has ditched His standards or now shrugs His shoulders over our sins.  The Gospel does not mean anything goes as far as our wants, desires, or behavior.  The Gospel does not mean there is a reason for everything that happens to us -- especially the bad ones.  The Gospel does not mean that everything works out like we want.  The Gospel does not mean that life is one happy thing after another.  The Gospel does not mean that we can look forward to a fairy tale happily ever after ending.  A good example is the Gospel for Holy Innocents.  It is the Gospel even though it is the painful and heart rending story of the Holy Innocents who bore witness to Christ by dying.  There is no happy ending here but the profound yet confusing mystery of the God whose ways are not our ways but whose ways redeem us from our sin, from our death, from our despair, and from ourselves....  Thanks be to God!

But it is just man made. . .

It happened again.  A complainer insisted that the liturgy is only man-made and therefore what was the big deal with using the liturgy when it is ever so much satisfying to worship in Evangelical churches.  In fact, the person did not say "Evangelical churches" but did mention a couple of local examples as well as a couple of TV choices.  Anyway the whole point of my anger and frustration is the issue of a "man-made" liturgy.

Okay, yeah.  The liturgy did not just drop out of heaven in exactly the form and words we have in our hymnal.  I will grant you that.  But it is not exactly man-made either.  It is largely Scripture, direct quotations and paraphrases.  And the pattern or order was not put together by an individual or even by a committee but over time from the earliest of Christian history.  The liturgy is not a creature of a particular language or culture (except the culture of Scripture itself).  The liturgy was not invented but drew from the worship life of God's people from Temple to synagogue to Upper Room.  It is the greatest of all fallacies to claim we have a German liturgy.  Sixty percent of the population of America can claim German ancestry but the liturgy is not one of them.  It is Latin and Greek and Hebrew.  But... I digress.

What my point is, slow and labored though it is in making, is that EVERY LITURGY or worship pattern or form can rightfully be smeared with the same terrible judgment -- it is just man-made.  Now comes the crux of it all.  MOST Evangelical and Protestant liturgy (what passes for an order of worship) is man-made on the spot or a week or two ahead by the worship ministry, the minister of worship arts, the music director, the preacher, the pastor. .. you name the person.  In fact it is often as old as a moment and as deep as the moment.  So what would rather use?  A worship form rooted in the Old Testament, New Testament, and the earliest of Christian history OR one that came out of the top of the head of the one or the committee responsible for worship in the moment?

In a recent discussion with someone involved with worship in an Evangelical congregation, I found out that there is a worship app which this person and the rest of the staff has on their smartphones and this is the "liturgy" used on Sunday morning.  Now this person is a sincere and pious believer and a hard worker.  It is not my point to demean this person.  My point is that this IS liturgy and it is man-made, so recent you can point to the people who made it up!  We can argue all day long about what is man-made and what is not but the issue ought to be from what source has it come and what is its pedigree?

Todd Wilken summed it up pretty well.  He wondered why David's momentary over exuberance with a naked dance has become normative for worship while centuries of liturgical tradition shaped by the worship of the Temple and the synagogue are forgotten or dismissed as "man-made".  Go figure. . . 

Liturgy of the Catechumens and Liturgy of the Faithful. . .

Over at the New Liturgical Movement Peter Kwasniewski has penned a thoughtful piece on the reasons why the older terminology (Liturgy of the Catecheumens and Liturgy of the Faithful) is better than the terminology employed post-Vatican II (Liturgy of the Word and Liturgy of the Eucharist).  I find myself agreeing with his conclusion but for vastly different reasons.  One of the bigger issues, however, is his estimation of why it is inadequate to call it the Liturgy of the Word.

The problem, then, with the phrase “Liturgy of the Word” is that the Word, as such, is fully and really present only in the Liturgy of the Eucharist, when the Word Himself is personally present in His divinity and glorified humanity. The sign of the difference is that, while we offer incense to the Gospel in honor of Him whose Gospel it is, it would be sinful for someone to bow down and adore the lectionary, placing his faith and trust in it, and loving it above all things, whereas it is precisely this adoration or latreia that must be given to most holy Eucharist; indeed, as Saint Augustine says (and Benedict XVI often quotes him to this effect), we would be guilty of sinning were we not to adore It.

A Protestant confusion is thus introduced and subtly fostered. According to the Catholic faith, “God’s Word” is chiefly and primarily in the Holy Eucharist because it is Jesus Christ, and only secondarily in the Sacred Scriptures that contain His teaching and bear witness to Him. Like all mere signs, Scripture will pass away in heaven, as the Book of Revelation teaches: “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Rev 21:22-23). Like all mere signs, it is only for the wayfarer. In Protestant churches, one often sees the Bible sitting up on the main altar, where the tabernacle ought to be, as though at the center of Christianity were a book, something written in lifeless letters on lifeless paper; such an architectural arrangement expresses the very essence of the Protestant heresy, where words replace the Word in His living and life-giving flesh and blood.

I guess  the point is I am in shock at how little the written Word means to him, if not to Roman Catholics in general, if he is representative.  As a Lutheran, we do not devalue the Word of God as the living voice of God speaking through the Scriptures in comparison to the Word who comes to us in bread and wine, His flesh and His blood.  Yes, it is true that some Lutherans devalue the Sacrament over the Word but this is a flawed and mistaken understanding both of Luther and the Confessions.  There is no legitimacy for such an erroneous reading of Lutheranism, no matter how popular or deeply held its viewpoint is.  At the same point in time, however, when Lutherans read "My Word shall not pass away though heaven and earth do..." we do not read Word as Christ distinguished from His Word in written form.  It is shocking to me to read the author say that the Eucharist is Jesus but the Scriptures only contain His teaching and bear witness to Him.  If this is, indeed, faithful Roman Catholic teaching, then the words I have read are freighted with a meaning different from the literal sense of the text.  In most cases, I read Roman Catholic liturgical theologians to have nothing but the highest regard for the Word of God that is the Scriptures.

In fact, I would boldly contradict the author who characterizes this as a Protestant viewpoint.  Most Protestants would heartily agree with him -- the Scriptures are not the Word of God but contain His Word, His teaching, and bear witness to Him.  In that regard we Lutherans stand outside Protestantism to say that the Word of God (Scripture) is not merely a witness but the living voice of God speaking to His people in the same way the voice of Christ once spoke to His disciples.  Scripture is God breathed, it is a performative Word, and, as Isaiah reminds us, accomplishes God's purpose without fail -- just as in creation the Word spoke and all things came into being (Francis acceptance of evolution aside).

For us as Lutherans, Christ is incarnate in His Word as in His meal -- here we have access to the grace in which we stand.  His Word with water is baptism and His Word with bread and wine is the Eucharist.  We Lutherans have endowed no priestly superpower to individuals but consistently place the power with Christ and within His Word.  Our working definition of sacrament is the earthly element married to Christ's Word as Christ Himself instituted, commanded, and promised, and through which He delivers what He promises, namely, forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.

Yet, though I thoroughly disagree with the author's characterization of the Word as mere witness to Christ, I do agree that the older terms are better for the designation of that portion of the liturgy which surrounds the Word and that portion which surrounds the Meal.  I do think, though I doubt it will ever become normative, that the terms Liturgy of the Catechumens and the Liturgy of the Faithful are more accurate descriptors of the natural division inherent within the Western liturgy and liturgical pattern which Lutherans share with Roman Catholics.

So, yes, it would be good to rename them. . . but not for the all the reasons offered in this article....  So now I suppose I have thoroughly confused you.

Pain and suffering award. . . .

From a December 29, blog post. . .

. . . , a federal jury awarded a former teacher in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend almost $2 million for what she claims was sex discrimination, the bulk of which was not for medical bills or lost wages, but for $1.75 million in “emotional and physical damages” she allegedly suffered.  And while the case looks narrow—was this female teacher fired when immoral male teachers were allowed to retain their jobs?—it involves a much bigger question: when can federal courts scrutinize the religious decisions of churches?

In 2008, Emily Herx, a junior high school language arts teacher at St. Vincent de Paul School in Fort Wayne, began IVF treatment. She notified her school principal about additional IVF treatment in 2010, and in April 2011 the church pastor met with Herx to inform her that IVF was morally wrong.

Because of her IVF treatment, Herx’s contract as a teacher was not renewed, and she sued the Diocese citing alleged violation of various federal laws. Some of her claims were dismissed by the court, but her sex discrimination claim went to a jury, which rendered a verdict last Friday finding the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend liable under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a federal law prohibiting discrimination in employment on the basis of sex. Herx had argued that, although she was terminated for undergoing IVF treatments, the Diocese allegedly continues to employ male teachers who had received vasectomies and other treatments that interfere with natural reproduction.

Read more here. . .

On the surface, at least, the decision seems to reject the leadership of the Supreme Court in the Hosanna-Tabor case but this is not exactly the same.  In any case, this will certainly test the waters again and undoubtedly end up in the same place.  What is interesting here is that all the damages were for emotional pain and suffering.  This is also a warning shot across the bows of churches and church agencies and organizations.  Men and women must be dealt with the same way when it comes to the violation of such things as moral clauses.  The churches cannot afford to pick and choose what to enforce and what to overlook when things violate church teaching.  Failure to do this will certainly render the churches liable for their inequality and for their complacency with respect to following their own rules.  Ultimately, the only real interest the courts have shown in religious cases is whether or not the churches followed their own rules and did they do so scrupulously.  We should not have to be reminded of this. . . but we have, whether we like it or not, and our future may depend upon our consistency.

Remembering a man and a conundrum. . .

Mario Cuomo was so familiar to me I would recognize his voice anywhere, anytime.  He was Governor of New York for most of the years I lived there (he served from 1983-1995 to be precise).  His voice was the perfect foil to his ability to turn a phrase.  He was an orator.  I loved listening to him speak -- I just hated to hear most of what he had to say.

He was an old fashioned liberal.  He was a Roman Catholic, albeit one who refused to listen to the conscience of his faith especially with respect to abortion.  He was a big government guy, a New Deal Democrat at a time when Blue Dog Democrats were in ascending in his party (think Clinton).  I am sure he had a soft spot for President Obama and his policies of governmental expansion.  Cuomo believed in a big safety net to cover all the possible needs of people and he engineered one of the highest tax systems to pay for it all.  Nothing new here, New York has been home to many big spenders from both parties.

I heard the clips from his speeches run on TV when his death was announced.  He was a master at the bully pulpit (unless you really listened to all he had to say).  Therein lies what I remember most about him -- the conundrum of a man who claimed to be pious and faithful to his church and yet find it impossible to listen to the voice of his faith when it came to governing (except, of course, when he could use faith to bolster his vision of big government and a big net to cushion the fall of those in need.

We moved to Long Island in 1978 and upstate (halfway between Westchester and Albany) in 1980.  We moved to Tennessee at the very end of 1992.  So for most of the time I lived there, Cuomo was in the news or made the news.  Yet he will always be remembered as perhaps not the first but arguably the most visible among the early Roman Catholics who refused to abide by the conscience of faith when it came to abortion.  He did not stand alone; many who followed his lead, including Nancy Pelosi, and they did not have to be Roman Catholic to ignore their church's teachings on abortion.  And that is how I will always remember him.  His forceful arguments that it is not feasible to be faithful -- at least not in politics and governing.

I wish that I could say that his thesis has been proven false but it hasn't.  Every Republican and Democratic candidate for local, state, or national office is being counseled to overlook their faith (if they have one) and adopt as their own platform a generic regret that abortion is necessary while insisting they will protect the right to kill infants in the womb.  In other words, if you are running for office, you are being told by nearly everyone that this is one battle you do not want to fight.  Yet this is exactly the battle that must be fought.

This issue has divided America like few others since 1973.  The national debate was cut short by a Supreme Court that used creative law to say what it wanted to say.  What was once simply about a surgical procedure has expanded into the use of drugs that act as abortifacients -- chemically aborting after conception.  What was once about a somewhat rare procedure has become a commonplace idea that there is no life worth acknowledging until birth and even then maybe not depending upon the child and the woman and her wishes.   What was once about a woman and her reproductive rights has become about the value of life and what lives are not worth living, worth keeping, and merit ending for the sake of the burden they cause to their families and to society in general.

Mario Cuomo was a powerful speaker but I only wish his voice had echoed the conscience of faith and spoken for the life of the unborn, the disabled, the elderly, and everyone else whom our society is not so sure has a life worth protecting.  He was passionate about civil rights but failed to see that the protection of the unborn is the most basic civil right of all -- especially for those whose journey from slavery to freedom has been so rocky and taken so long.  If more people had awakened to the genie that legalized abortion let out of the bottle, things might have been different.

Lutherans in Congress. . .

I have long lamented how few Lutherans there are among the elected representatives to our national assemblies.  This year there are a few more.  New Senators include Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska), and Cory Gardner (R-Colorado).  Among the others elected and re-elected, there are three other representatives who fail to give a more specific association other than Lutheran (Ryan Zinke (R-Montana), Brad Ashford (D-Nebraska), Donald Norcross (D-NJ), and Glenn Brothman (R-Wisconsin).  The totals increase the number of Lutherans in the halls of Congress from 23 to 27.

While it would be foolish and downright wrong to identify to identify the Republican Party as the one that best expresses Lutheran confessional identity, I am somewhat surprised that a few of the folks from the ELCA who campaigned on conservative credentials will go to Washington, DC, disagreeing with the public positions taken by the leadership of their church body on a number of different and significant issues.  Oh, well, what do I know...

Homeless Jesus finds a place. . .

While waiting for someone, I looked over the mail stack and opened up the pages of the January issue of The Lutheran.  On page 9 I found a large photo and a small story on fact that Ascension Lutheran Church in Paradise Valley, AZ, became the permanent home of a life-size bronze sculpture title "Homeless Jesus".

As far as I can tell from the picture, there is a figure on a park bench, lying down, covered up with a fabric wrap or blanket of some kind.  In fact there is little to suggest that it is Jesus under the wrap.  Maybe that is the intention -- calling on the Christian to see Christ in the homeless and those in need.  I am not sure.  It seems logical but little in art is logical.

Its purpose is to elicit "compassion, reflection, and unease among the onlookers."  There are currently four other statues in other cities.  According to the brief story, the statue has been the occasion of some controversy.  It has not bothered me nor has it inspired me -- my limited perspective is one more of confusion.

Art both conveys an image as well as helping to impress an image upon the one who views it.  I have no doubt that homelessness is a serious and compelling problem.  I have no doubt that thousands of Lutheran congregations are involved in efforts to address the issue of homelessness and, indeed, all those in need.  I certainly would never wish to diminish or discourage such efforts.  Yet, I am confused by this kind of art adopted by churches as signature works to give form to the Gospel.  It is socially relevant and visually encapsulates the need but does it adequately frame and communicate the Gospel?  It seems that we are so often tempted to define the Gospel for the faithful and the world when, in reality, God has defined the Gospel for the faithful and for the world.  That definition is Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  Our Lord defined this Gospel over and over again -- right up to the moment of His ascension -- telling how the Scriptures testify of Him and teach that the Son of Man must suffer, die, and rise again and that forgiveness of sins be proclaimed in His name to the end of the world and the end of the ages.

I certainly do not mean to diminish the intentions of the sculptor or the parish hosting it but I would respectfully suggest that there are more profound images of the Gospel, more faithful to what we believe, confess, and proclaim, than an unnamed figure asleep on a park bench.  Maybe it is just me.  If so, tell me.  But I find myself confused by this witness and somewhat saddened that this is the definition of the Gospel that is most prominent for any Lutheran parish. 

Yes, I know, the author is a devout Roman Catholic and a smaller version of his statue was given to and blessed by Pope Francis.  The most high-profile installation of Jesus the Homeless will be on a park bench alongside the “Via della Conciliazione”, the road which leads to St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.  Maybe it is just not my cup of tea, as they say.  In any case, Pope's blessing or not, it is not a image I think communicates the Gospel nearly as well as a crucifix.

What do rules have to do with the Gospel?

How often do we hear that rules are antithetical to the Gospel, that the nature of the Gospel means that every rule gives way to a higher principle, a gospel principle, of tolerance, acceptance, love?  How often do we have people juxtapose truth with love so that truth must bend in order to serve the higher goal of love?  How often do we hear people say that it is not the faith that needs to change but practices (liturgical, doctrinal, discipline, etc...) opened up to be more receptive, more welcoming, and more friendly?

I have had conversations with folks who insisted that the Gospel insists that there can be no rules about who may commune or who may not commune. . . that there should be no condemnation for cohabitation. . . that love requires all people of sincerity and good will to be accepted -- along with their lifestyles. The Gospel is not attached to the cross or suffering or even God's answer for sin.  It is, in this mindset, a lofty principle without any judgment whatsoever, without any real truth except tolerance, and without any real substance except feeling.  This is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ nor is it remotely related to the Gospel proclaimed in Scripture and testified in tradition.  There is no promise in this gospel nor is there any real hope.

Now I read where a Roman Catholic bishop in Belgium has take up the cause of this Gospel detached from Christ and His suffering and proclaimed the triumph of love that accepts without judgment and tolerates without condemnation any and all of good will.  You read for yourself:

“We have to look inside the church for a formal recognition of the relationality which is also present in many gay couples. As there are a variety of legal frameworks in society exists for partners must arrive recognition form a diversity in the church.”  Moreover, [Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp (not an official translation)] argues that a homosexual relationship as well the criteria of a religious marriage can satisfy.“The intrinsic values are more important to me than the institutional demand. The Christian ethic is based on lasting relationships where exclusivity, loyalty and care are central to each other.”

 Without agreeing with everything Rome says about marriage, it is still possible to see that Bishop Bonny is not advocating a simple change in practice but a wholesale and radical redefinition of what Rome has said marriage is.  Sadly, it seems this fellow may be in line to become the next primate of the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium.  If so, it will surely tell us as much about Francis as it does about Bishop Bonny!

Yet we as Lutherans face exactly the same tension.  To deny approval to anyone of sincerity and good will is antithetical to the Gospel, it is claimed.  Whether at the altar rail for communion or before the altar in marriage, love (gospel) requires us to suspend all judgement and allows only one thing -- the welcome of all who are sincere and of good will.  In essence this is exactly the position of the ELCA with respect to who may commune, who may marry, and who may become a pastor.

As good as this sounds, it is, in reality, the emptying of the Gospel of any of its power and the abandonment of any and all hope in the true and living God whom we know in Christ Jesus.  It represents not simply changes in practice but a transformation of what is believed and confessed, a severe disconnect with the Church that went before us, and a rebuke and rejection of our very Confessions.

We are told that if the music of Sunday morning or the strangeness of the liturgy or the manner of dress is a barrier to even one hearing the Gospel, this must be sacrificed immediately for the higher call of the Gospel.  The problem with this is that the word gospel is being used in a manner foreign to Scripture and tradition.  The music of Sunday morning in not for our feelings or reflective of our preference but a vehicle for the Word, a means of both teaching and confessing Christ.  Music in and of the liturgy has a creedal character.   The problem with this is that the liturgy is not simply an order that might be used but the Gospel.  The liturgy is Scripture said and sung.  To abandon the liturgy in favor of seeker or culturally sensitive forms is to tinker with what we believe, confess, and teach.  To treat the setting of God's people around Word and Sacrament as entertainment designed to satisfy the spectator or provide a venue for the leader to do his or her thing is to move worship from God and for God to one of many different things we do largely because we want to, it makes us feel better, or it allows us to shine before our peers.  Such is not simply a change in practice but a profound shift of belief and witness away from Scripture and tradition and in conflict with creed and confession.

At least we should be able to acknowledge this much.  The argument has never been about a change in a subtle practice.  It has always been about whether practice flows from confession, whether confession changes, and whether fidelity to Scripture and consistency with tradition allows us the freedom to make such changes.  It is not about whether the Church has a hang up with sex or some conflict between high brow and low brow practice but about Christ.  The truth is that the biggest impediment to the world is not the problem of cohabiting straights or homosexuals or music preference or casual style but Christ.  He is the stumbling block.  To transform the Gospel to make it winsome or acceptable to the masses inevitably leads to transforming the Gospel itself and the end result is a Christ-less Scripture, proclamation, and confession that saves no one at all.  It is not that the Gospel has rules we must obey but that to be faithful to Christ requires us to be faithful to His Word.  That is the rule with the biggest kick back.

How much is it worth to ya?

This repeated from First Things:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2013, median clergy income was 14 percent lower than the overall median income in the U.S. This is all the more striking when one considers that most professional clergy received years of specialized religious and theological graduate training after receiving their undergraduate degrees. Indeed, median clergy earnings are 24 percent lower than median earnings of people who hold undergraduate degrees, and 36 percent less than individuals who hold masters’ degrees.While Protestants appropriately wonder about extravagant lifestyles of some megachurch pastors and Catholics wonder about extravagant lifestyles of some bishops (an issue Pope Francis has addressed), the data indicate that most pastors in the U.S. receive a fairly modest level of support from their congregations.

My father often reminded me that something is only worth what somebody is willing to pay for it.  In other words, you may think your house or car or appliance is a gem but, unless someone agrees with you and is willing to shell out the cash to buy it from you, it may be common rock.  That said, it is true that we value things with a dollar sign.  We say, for example, that day care and elder care is important but the sad truth is that we pay minimum wage to many of the folks who work there taking care of our children and our parents and grandparents. In other words, what we say and what we do are not matching up.  We claim, for example, that lawyers are the bane of our litigious society but we will pay OUR lawyers hundreds of dollars an hour to make sure we come out on top.  Again, our words and our deeds do not match up.

The same can be said about clergy compensation.  The issue is seldom one of dollars and mostly one of how highly or how lowly we esteem the ministry of the pastor and the pastor himself.  I don't know of any pastor who heard the call of the Lord and thought it would make him rich.  But neither do I know of pastors who expected to live at the poverty level in order to fulfill the Lord's bidding.  So it is not a matter of living like the megachurch superstars and their plush mansions and it should not be a matter of living hand to mouth either.

I was blessed to have gone to college when any kid working a summer could mostly pay for a year of school.  I was also blessed to have gone to seminary when it was affordable.  Now many pastors are coming out of college and seminary with thousands upon thousands of school debt, married with children, and without much to keep them from going belly up except the next paycheck.  There is something wrong here.

It is shameful of any church body to finance the cost of seminary education on the backs of seminary students.  This is the church's responsibility.  We decide who gets a call and who does not and we should cover the largest portion of the cost of getting folks to that point.  It is shameful that we value the ministry of Word and Sacrament and our pastors so lowly that we do not seek better for them.  The whole point of financial security from the congregation is not to reward a pastor's entrepreneurial skills but to keep him from focusing his attention too much about how he will care for his family so that he can keep himself focused on doing the Lord's bidding.

I have been very blessed to have had caring and capable congregations who have never been stingy with me.  I cannot say I am the best pastor but I am able to say that I work long and hard for my parish and am available to them anytime.  It is regrettable that there stingy congregations who think they are somehow helping out their pastor by keeping him humble and fixated on the question "how will I pay my bills this month"?  Shame on you.  It is also regrettable that there are pastors who think they are owed "double honor" just for the office and the stole and who don't work as hard as they should.  Shame on you.  That said, neither of those cover the bulk of congregations or the majority of pastors.  We tend toward the middle and not the extremes.  My point in saying this is simple -- what we pay our pastors is not unrelated to how highly we value the ministry of Word and Sacrament and them as pastors.  This is the  rub.

Who is politicizing the communion rail?

From Catholic World News:

During an appearance on the television news show Face the Nation, Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago appeared to say that he would allow the reception of Holy Communion by pro-abortion politicians. However the archbishop's words left his message uncertain. 

Asked, “You haven't been particularly confrontational with politicians who disagree with you on issues like abortion, for instance. Do you think the Eucharist has become too politicized?”, he replied:

Well, I think that is important always to begin with an attitude of dialogue. It's important to listen to people and it's very hard to have dialogue because in order for someone to tell you why they think you are wrong, you have to sit in patience to allow that to happen. The community -- as I say, cannot be the place where those discussions are fought, but rather we have to look at how we're going to deal with the tough issues of the day in a constructive way and as adults who respect each other.

The prelate was then asked, “So, when you say we cannot politicize the Communion rail, you would give Communion to politicians, for instance, who support abortion rights?” He replied:

I would not use the Eucharist or as they call it the Communion rail as the place to have those discussions or way in which people would be either excluded from the life of the Church. The Eucharist is an opportunity of grace and conversion. It's also a time of forgiveness of sins. So my hope would be that that grace would be instrumental in bringing people to the truth.

My question:  Why are those who hold to church teaching accused of politicizing the communion rail?  Are not those who flaunt the teachings of their own churches more guilty of politicizing the rail?  It would seem to me that by your act of communing at an altar, you are publicly submitting to the teachings of the church whose sacraments are being offered.  It would seem to me that if you are opposed to those teachings and believe them to be wrong, you are not communing as a member of the faithful but making a political statement.

I further would challenge the good bishop about the statement of respecting each other.  Where is the respect for church teaching and tradition among those who have decided their church is wrong on abortion, gay marriage, etc...?  If there is to be respect, respect has to go both ways.  The church respects the rights of people to disagree but if they are in conscientious disagreement with such basic church teachings, is not the honorable thing to do to refrain from communing -- dare I say it, to leave for a church that embraces their point of view (Lord knows there are enough of them!).

So there you have it.  What is gained when people who have obvious disagreement with basic church teachings are determined to flaunt their opposition and show up at the rail?  There can be only one thing.  They are doing so not as the faithful in submission to the Word of God and confession of the faith but as political people making political statements to others.  No matter who does this, it demeans the Table of the Lord and is a great offense and scandal both to Christ, whose table it is, and to the faith and witness of the church to the world.

Living Document. . . Unchanging Word. . .

In United States constitutional interpretation, the idea that the Constitution is a living document (or loose constructionism) claims that the Constitution has a dynamic meaning, that it does not represent or say one thing but evolves.  It is, in this view somewhat of an animate being in the sense that it changes and the changes come not from formal amendment but from the idea that the document is read through the lens of the moment and that what it says is conditioned by what is happening in contemporary society.

You can trace this specific wording to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who wrote a hundred years ago: 'The provisions of the Constitution are not mathematical formulas....They are organic, living institutions.'"  In 1987, Justice Thurgood Marshall could expound on this idea that had become established opinion -- especially among academics and progressives.  It is still not without controversy and Justice William Rehnquist argued against it and, in our own day, Justice Antonin Scalia insists that only an idiot sees the Constitution as anything but a legal document that says what it says and does not say what it does not say .

You can argue it about these two opinions elsewhere.  My point here is to suggest that the idea that documents live or change is not new and it is not specific to constitutional law.  We have people who read the documents, creeds, confessions, and even the Scriptures of the Church in the same way.  They do not mean necessarily what they say but, as living documents, they change and evolve and say different things at different times to different situations.  Like Humpty Dumpty, we live in an age when words and their meanings are not set but change so that they mean what we want them to mean at the moment.  This is certainly the real problem in Biblical interpretation and it is a continuing problem for confessionalism among Lutherans.

The progressive side of all of this insists that the only way creeds, confessions, and Scripture is valid is if they change and evolve, if the words mean what we believe them to mean and not strictly what they do mean.  So, a group like the ELCA among Lutherans sees a principle in Scripture (the Gospel of love, acceptance, and tolerance) to be the lens through which all other words of Scripture are read.  In this way, it matters little if the Bible said something different than what we believe.  That is merely an example of how we read those passages through the lens of the Gospel so that they mean something different from what they once meant.  The most faithful you can be to the Scriptures is to follow this siren voice of the age, a voice they interpret to be the Spirit leading us beyond letter to spirit of the words in the Word.

The conservative side of all of this insists that no creed, confession, or even Scripture can have any meaning at all unless we take the words to mean the same thing for all people and throughout all times.  They would insist that there is nothing deader than the words of faith which must be constantly re-imagined against the backdrop of the moment and read through the lens of culture.  To be faithful is to preach the Word that endures forever, the full counsel of God's Word, that is yesterday, today, and forever the same.  The way we meet the moment and the way we faithfully address the culture of the day is through this unchanging Christ and His unchanging Word.  The most faithful you can be to the Scriptures is to ignore the siren voice of the age for the voice of the Spirit will always lead you back to the Word that endures forever and to the Scriptures that say the same thing at all times and to all people.

It would seem that the great divide between the progressives and the conservatives is one that is impossible to bridge.  One insists that to be faithful means ignoring what the words say and the other insists that the only faithfulness is to hold on to what the words say.  You could expand this polarity to the way we approach missions, liturgy, catechesis, music, etc...  In the end it means that the documents themselves are not the issue but the way we approach them.  For the society, the great gulf between a living document conditioned by what is going on around it and a legal document that says what it says and does not say what it does not say remains the political sticking point between and within both political parties.  For the Church, the great gulf between the Word that does not change and a faith that continually reappraises what the words of the Word mean has ended up being the major sticking point between denominations and within them.  Rome, Wittenberg, Geneva, and everything in between lives in tension to these view points.  In this way we continue to fight the age old battles over and over again and no one ends up satisfied.

It would seem to me that the Constitution works best not as a mechanism to enforce one point of view but as the locus of the aspirations of a people who hold certain things in common -- such as values, morality, work ethic, etc...  Once we no longer share a common identity, common values, a common morality, and a common work ethic, the document seems to us to be more imperfect.  The whole way the United States came into existence is because we the people held certain things to be self-evident and determined to govern ourselves without a king or legislature or judiciary to act as our focal point of unity.  Rather, this focal point of our unity was posited in what we shared in common and held to be self-evident.  The problems we have today proceed less from imperfections in our constitutional documents than from our lack of common identity, values,  morality, and work ethic.  Our struggle has been, from both sides, to transform our constitutional document into a mechanism to provide what we no longer share and it has not worked very well.

It is the same for creed and confession in the church.  These things work better to focus the aspirational desires of a people who wish to be God's people, to live under Him in His kingdom, and to be led by the living voice of His Word into the eternal future He has prepared for them by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Lacking this common identity, we pick apart the Scriptures, creed, and confession to suit our whims and spend our time continually redefining who God is, what He has said, and what it means instead of proceeding from this given.  Among Lutherans, for example, we no longer share a common aspiration to be the people of our confessions and so we either ignore them, reinterpret them, or attempt to use them as a tool to enforce what was born of common belief and teaching.  We spend our time more in proof texting how our opinion is legitimate than we do listening to the Concordia as a whole or aspiring to be what we confess.

Linear worship

A discussion with an Orthodox friend suggested that the great temptation of worship in the West is to be linear, that is, to be a straight line that starts at one precise point and ends at another equally precise point. In contrast, he suggested that Orthodox liturgy has a number of things going on at the same time and does not attempt either to get everyone to be on the same page at the same time or to begin at a clearly delineated point and to proceed to the end of the journey.  In his estimation of things, the West has a precise starting time and ending time and people are expected to follow along and to be together as things move from point A to point B.  In the East, he suggests that time is looser, that people do not sit and follow along word for word as if the liturgy were a map and that it is not at all antithetical to the liturgy for people to come and go and return at different points, within certain leeway, of course.

Then I read a discussion between Roman Catholics of the Latin Mass and the Novus Ordo and found them distinguishing the two rites in similar fashion.  The Latin Mass was described as a symphony in which different instruments play, different voices are heard, and melodies and counter melodies play at the same time.  So in the Latin Mass people are doing different things during the Mass -- some praying the rosary, some listening to the chant, some praying the prayers of the priest, and some meditating.  All, however, are doing the right thing since the Latin Mass is not linear (according to the point of view in this discussion).  In contrast, the Novus Order was a clear attempt to have a designated starting point and ending point, and to keep people together on the same page, literally on the same word, at the same time.  This was described as a more Protestant notion of worship that was somewhat alien to the thinking of the Latin Mass and to worship prior to the changes made in the wake of Vatican II.

I can understand much of what is being said by both discussions and yet I am not sure where Lutheran worship falls.  Clearly, the worship the Lutheran Reformers envisioned is much more linear than the worship they had known from Rome but it is not quite the distinctive linear worship of the Calvinists and later Protestants who turned the nave into a lecture hall and put all their eggs into the sermon basket.  The worship of Lutheran high orthodoxy is somewhat less linear than the worship I grew up with in the 1950s and early 1960s in which page numbers defined us and we literally memorized what was on the page.

The whole idea is somewhat intriguing to me.  I will have to mull this over a great deal more but initially I think that great damage has been done by structuring what happens on Sunday morning in such a literally linear fashion that the only way you benefit is to follow so that everyone is on the same page, the same word, and the same thought all the way through.  It has also contributed to the unfortunate idea that worship is an hour long activity, that we are captive to the clock both in start and stop.  Even where we do not have a clock in the nave or chancel, it is hard to shake that idea that worship begins at 8:15 and goes until 9:30 am.

I have known pastors whose services were broadcast on radio or TV in which these issues of timing were mandated and know how hard it is to quantify every aspect of Sunday morning to fit the rigid time constraints of the allotted hour.  Even those who do not broadcast find themselves under the gun when it comes to time and this is not a good thing.

The whole idea of worship as a journey with a definite starting point and ending point can easily be distorted into the idea that you are going somewhere, that you can define where you are going and that you will have something to show for it when you arrive.  This kind of tangible result has crippled the preaching of the Word and the character of worship and left us with a self-help idea of Sunday morning in which I can find useful resources to deal with the problems of home, work, and community (or else something and somebody -- the pastor -- has failed to "feed" me).

This is definitely something I will need to think more about. . . and I hope you will as well.