What is our strength?

The Vatican, cloaked in secrecy about its finances, has been in the news of late because of bad investments.  In fact, a trial in Italy has yielded hints as to how the financial house of Rome has been and is currently being run and it does not seem in order.  Cardinals and bishops are pointing fingers upstairs and it is not God who these fingers are pointing to.

On the other hand, Cardinal Pell has warned that while we do not know who is going to heaven or who is going to hell, we do know when the financial underpinnings of the Roman Catholic Church are headed toward bankruptcy.  Years of deficit spending have resulted in a weak financial condition and, it would seem, the Roman Church has not weathered the sex scandals without a financial penalty.

Lutherans might seem relieved because we have no such problems.  Or do we?  Though we have great resources put in place by wise planners (agencies like the Lutheran Church Extension Fund, the Lutheran Federal Credit Union, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Foundation, and the like), we are also tempted by the goal of a financially secure future for the Church.  

This is no different than the growing number of congregations whose annual income from tithes and offerings is regularly supplemented with income from trusts, bequests, and endowment funds.  All of these are well and good but the grave issue facing us is about where we look to the support of God's mission, what are the resources that give confidence to that mission, and what is the strength of the Church.

Money has always been the temptation but the world views the dealings of the Church with money with skepticism.  What we view as our strong and prudent resources, the world uses to confirm the lie that the Church is more interested in earthly kingdoms and power than it is the salvation of souls.  Grand buildings and big bank accounts are not the tools that God has given us.  They are not problems unless we make them to be but they cannot be counted upon to be our strength for the future and they should not be the goals of our present.  It is our piety that we offer the world and it is that piety that is our strength and foundation for what we do now and what we will do in the future.

By piety I do not mean our own machinations but the real meaning of piety -- faith that flows out of and back to God's Word and Sacraments.  Our piety is not what we do to show ourselves to God or man but what God has done that bears its promised good fruit in our lives.  It is our piety that is our strength and it is our lack of piety that will be our downfall.  We may go down with plenty of real assets and money in the back but our demise will surely come, less at the hands of the devil than our own failure to believe God's Word and order our lives around His means of grace.

The word piety comes from the Latin word pietas (noun), and our adjective pious from pius. To the Romans, pius was something weak or feminine but masculine and strong.  Another strong word which substitutes for piety is “devout” or “dutiful”—the very kind of devotion a soldier would have for his brothers in arms, his commander, and the nation for whom he fought. Such a soldier was pius if he was willing to step into the breach, to hold his ground, to stare the enemy in the face, and die for a cause greater than himself.  The virtue of a man was related to the pietas he held for the deities esteeemed by his city or state.  The poet Virgil used pietas as Aeneas’s common epithet in the Aeneid.  So when  Christian chivalry carried on this tradition among the knights or heralded guardians of their God and the monarchy, they also continued the tradition known as knightly piety—the virtue of those select men who were warriors for Christ and country.  Think here of the fabled Musketeers.

Piety is our strength and always has been.  It is from our piety -- our confidence in God's Word and promises and our devotion to the Sacraments whereby Christ comes to us and makes His home in us -- that we face the world around us and the enemies of God's Kingdom.  From this piety flows our passion, strength, and devotion toward the cause of Christ and the well-being of His Church.  We act in this piety with a sense of honor and duty, never ashamed of one’s faith, always ready to give answer to those who question and always with an informed faith and devotion to the Church, the womb of our faith that gave us our baptismal new birth. 

Yet it is piety that is the problem.  When Christians no longer practice regular and faithful church attendance -- when monthly becomes the norm -- we offer a weak witness to the world and we suffer from our neglect of the Lord's House, Word, and Table (Hebrews 10).  When Christians are passive before a government that declares the ministrations of that Word and Sacraments non-essential, we offer a weak witness to the world and we suffer ourselves the weakness of missing out on what the Lord offers, promises, and commands.  When Christians accept the rules of the public square that preclude a faithful witness to the Scriptures on what marriage is, what it means to be created male and female, and the fruit of intimacy born in the children that are His gift, we offer a weak witness to the world and we suffer as a people either embarrassed by or ashamed of our faith.  When Christians no longer practice the stewardship of self, time, goods, and money as the reflection of a grateful faith and their churches are forced to beg or provide other income streams for the regular support of God's work here and throughout the world, we offer a weak witness to the world and we suffer as a people as attracted by what we want, what our money can buy, and where we want to spend our time as we are the things of God.

Money is not our problem.  Buildings are not our problem.  Even hostile governments are not our problem.  What is our problem is our weak and vacillating piety -- treating the mighty things of God as a meme to illicit sentimental response and depriving our faith of the very means of grace that encourage, uplift, and comfort us with the fruits of Christ's work of salvation.  The sad reality is that the privatization of piety -- distinguishing that individual piety from the Church and what goes on there around the Word and Sacraments -- has left us with a private faith that is both content to live alone and excuse for doing what is easy and convenient over what is right.  Now more than ever, the power of a strong and vibrant piety is demanded.  Such a piety knows what we cannot do and what God has done, believes and trusts God's Word and promises above all else, and meets the Lord at least weekly where the Lord is -- in His Word preached, baptismal life renewed through absolution, and baptismal faith fed and nourished in His Holy Eucharist.  And one more thing.  Prayer.  

Pray as if work did not matter and work as if prayer did not matter.  The daily prayer lives of our people (and our pastors) suffers because either we are not sure that prayer matters or because we cannot force ourselves into the discipline of prayer.  And it shows.  Prayer is the reflection of our confidence that God hears and answers us, that His good and gracious will demonstrated in Christ's death and resurrection be trusted, and that our hearts and souls are filled as we empty ourselves before the Lord.