Internet lies and its truth. . .

It was sad to see how many people jumped on the bandwagon of contempt and outrage at the seemingly authentic story of the Vatican providing a prayer room or chapel for Muslims using the Vatican Library.  It is false.  There is no special space set aside for them in the Vatican Library or elsewhere in the Vatican, it would seem.  The reality is that Muslims were allowed to use a room for their prayers.  That ought to be a slight relief to those who thought that the Vatican was actually making a dedicated room for Muslims to pray.  Even then, some might object.  After all, does this not in some way legitimate the idea that the god of the Muslims has the same claim to legitimacy as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who became flesh in Jesus born of Mary by the Holy Spirit?  Or does it remove the evidence of this claim by putting them behind a closed door and away from eyes and ears of others?  I guess it depends upon your perspective.

The whole idea of accommodation seems to be one way.  Secular governments are accommodating Muslims by providing everything from foot washing places in public restrooms to the acceptance of traditional attire in schools and workplaces.  In nearly every case, religious toleration is aimed at allowing non-Christian religions the same respect, authenticity, and access as those folks think Christianity has enjoyed.  Whether that perception of religious deference toward Christianity is right or wrong, something good or something not so good, Christians ought to be sensitive toward anything that would make Jesus stand on equal footing with other gods.  Truth is not the child of personal preference but of real claims of truth and authenticity.  Whether you believe it or not, the resurrection of Christ from the dead is what gives to Christianity its claim to place and not the enthusiasm of its adherents.

The more we adopt the idea that all truths are personal and that no truth is really objectively true for all, the harder it is to speak Christ to the nations.  The more we depend upon feelings over facts, the harder it will be to claim any sort of exclusivity for the truth of Christ crucified and risen.  I am less concerned about Muslims being allowed a room in which to pray than I am allowing them a place next to Christianity as a religion of truth.  The internet is good at fueling false stories in order get folks riled up but it is also very good at leveling the playing field and making all facts equally true and every religion equally authentic.  That is worse than a carpeted room for some folks to pray out of sight of the rest of folks.  Yet this is exactly the problem.

We find it less difficult to surrender to the press of religious tolerance than to speak the distinctive doctrinal claims of Christianity and give faithful witness to the truth of Scripture.  I am not at all suggesting that we need to be rude or arrogant.  Quite the opposite.  But we must not shrink from giving evidence of the hope that is within us through the clear claims of the orthodox and catholic Christian faith based upon revelation, fact, and truth and not feelings.  Prayer rooms will not sink us but allowing the impression that truth is beholden to feelings certainly will.  While I am no fan of a room for Muslims to pray I am offended by the routine idea that both religions are pretty much the same no matter its name.  I must say it gives me hope for Rome that for once a pope declined to pray at a mosque and, for whatever reason, give credence to the idea that this is the same deity in different flavors.

Fawning for attention. . .

With relevance deemed the highest and more urgent goal of Christianity by liberal and progressive Christians here and everywhere, it is not uncommon for those in charge to fawn all over current causes, fads, or trends in the hopes of being perceived relevant by youth.  So it was that when Canterbury was busy announcing their new female, non-theologically trained, and inexperienced with respect to the parish archbishop, another controversy was ready to unfold.  Somebody somewhere decided that subway-style graffiti plastered over Canterbury Cathedral would be a good way of showing how cool that church is and how in tune they are to current trend and fashion.  Except that it backfired with even the US VP complaining of the desecration.  He was not alone.  While the graffiti were merely stickers and a temporary installation of trendy art made at the behest of a dean and chapter that had not exactly thought it through, there is little to ease the fears except that the cost of removal is less and requires much less effort.

The real problem here is that the Cathedral and its leadership has joined the chorus of folks who believe that the biggest crisis facing Christianity is whether young folks think they are relevant.  Imagine a world in which Christians fear being written off by the youth vote even more than they fear repercussions from ignoring or contracting the Scriptures and the nearly uniform Christian witness of morality and truth since the earliest days of Christianity.  That ought to be identified as the real problem.  We tend to care more about what people outside the Church might think of us and what we believe and confess than we care about what God thinks.  The damage of this mistaken loyalty has unfolded in countless ways and they all seem to be nearly impossible to reverse.

The Anglicans led Christianity as a whole into the silence about birth control that gave birth also to the silence about abortion.  That was nearly 100 years ago and now it is such a scandal to say today what nearly everyone believed then on both subjects that a goodly number of Christians have made this contemporary stand a litmus test of a new orthodoxy rooted in what is acceptable to the masses more than what is faithful to God's Word.  Where do you hear anyone today suggesting that we ought to rethink the tacit approval once given to birth control?  Yet the reality of the success of this effort lies less in what people think about these than the increasing numbers of nations and nationalities in which deaths outnumber births and children seem to be going out of style faster than yesterdays fashions. You do not need to talk about something in order to triumph.  The proof is in the drop in birth rates across the West (except in the most recent immigrant groups in those countries).

Fawning for the attention of youth and those who had already written off Christianity is largely responsible for the foolishness that passes for worship among those who have adopted a contemporary style and the discardable nature of Christian music by those who have ditched the hymnal for a pop sound and content turning Jesus into your BFF.  We gave up architecture that identified a church as a church in favor of bland buildings that remind you more of a shopping mall or warehouse than God's house.  The once distinctive sound of the pipe organ and liturgical choir has been replaced by music rated more for its beat and that ability to dance to it than what the lyrics say. Maybe it is about time that the Christian Church stopped fawning for the attention of those outside and paying a bit more attention to what God thinks.

The reality is that the language of sin and death, life and hope, virtue and evil will always be relevant -- not because we make it so but because each and every age and generation must come to terms with what it means to live and die.  Jesus knew the relevance of the Kingdom and did not waste His time or ours by pandering to those who might be His allies in the quest for legitimacy.  Neither should we waste our time in the vain pursuit of approval from those who do not even know the Gospel.  Their need is the same as ours.  We need redemption more than relevance, truth more than feelings, a death that kills death more than our peace with death, and a life stronger than the grave more than a better or happier one today.  But as we all know, it is easier to slap some fake graffiti on our walls than to breech the walls of the world with the triumph of Jesus' death and resurrection.  So that is what we do.  For this, we ought to be the first to hear the call to repentance and fall to our knees.

Small and smaller. . .

Here and elsewhere have been stories of the decline of the once large and powerful Episcopal Church.  On the one hand, the vacuous nature of its doctrine and confession have emptied its integrity as a church while its pews have been emptied for a variety of reasons -- including its deviation from its own history and identity.  There have been thoughts that break away groups from this and other denominations which have leaned so far left as to be a shell of their former selves might be able to replace the progressive face of their tradition.  One of those was the Anglican Church in North America.

Founded in 2009, that denomination has turned back the clock a bit but not as much as hoped.  It retains nearly every doctrinal aberration except the embrace of the various sexual attractions and gender identities which have captured the parent.  It is conservativish but not close to what it was hoped to be or what the Episcopal church was sixty or seventy years ago.  More than this, the ACNA is small.  With churches that span some 49 states as well as in Canada and Mexico, it barely counts 128,000 members across more than 1,000 congregations.  While it has a few big congregations, the majority are small as it is small.  Now it appears that there are other challenges to this little group.  Confronting allegations by clergy and parishioners against two of its top leaders, its own integrity lies in question.  Their archbishop is accused of sexual misconduct and another bishop allegedly abused his power by allowing men with troubled histories into his diocese of 19 congregations.  The small gets smaller.

Five years ago an ACNA bishop plead guilty to ecclesiastical charges of “sexual immorality” and “conduct giving just cause for scandal” for his use of pornography and was removed.  One year ago another was defrocked for sending more than 11,000 text messages to a married woman- among other things.  Also last year a current and former rector of a prominent congregation near Washington, DC, were punished for their mishandling of sexual allegations by a youth minister there.  Less than 25 years old as a denomination and it has already acquired a dizzying track record of leaders in moral lapses.  The small gets smaller.

At some point I had harbored hopes for this fledgling attempt to breathe new life into the dead shell of the Episcopal Church on the shores of the US.  Other conservative bodies were quick to open talks in the hopes that a more solid friendship and relationship might evolve.  Now I am sad to say that perhaps we should be distancing ourselves from this church body instead.  Am I being too harsh?  Perhaps but it is clear that either this communion lacks the will or desire to rise above and is content to live in another kind of muck -- a different muck but still in need of cleansing.  I wish it were not the case but it is.   

The most useless season of all. . .

The world must not know what to do with Advent -- especially now.  We live in the moment, in an age of instant everything delivered to your door, and reviews written almost before we get it.  We know nothing of delayed gratification.  Even our corporations will gladly shoot themselves in the foot to get a profit today while suffering for it tomorrow.  We do not delay much of what we want, much of what we want to say, and much of what we have to have.  Our biggest complaint about the instant internet is that it takes too long (along with it giving us what we do not want to hear).  We cannot event take the time to learn a language but depend upon Google to translate for us, online education to compress and compact the learning that might take years, and AI to save us the bother of research into the subject for which we wish to be seen as an expert.  Then comes this season that simply says, wait. 

While we are in love with immediacy the Church speaks of a God who takes literally forever from the promise first given to Adam and Eve until the day His Son is incarnate in the womb of the Virgin and bears the Child of Promise who will redeem a fallen world.  Then this Jesus who promises thief today says to His apostles wait and His apostles tell us to the same thing.  Is it no wonder that the Church is behind the times.  We proclaim a God who is perennially late to a people who are not sure anything is worth waiting for.  I wish it were only about a delay in decorating but the whole of the Christian faith is summarized by the Advent call to wait upon the Lord.  Indeed, it is the one thing we are told to do and the one promise God has given us that we do not want fulfilled -- wait upon the Lord.

This is not a problem about when to shop or when to put up your holiday decor.  This is a problem that goes to the core of Christian faith and life -- we wait upon the Lord.  If faith is anything, it is patient.  We are a long suffering people who suffer long primarily because the Lord insists that we wait.  We are not to jump the gun or to presume upon the Lord but wait.  To be sure, this is not the impatient waiting of a people sitting on uncomfortable chairs for a doctor's appointment that is now running more than an hour overdue.  It is instead the waiting of a mother for a child who does not seem in any hurry to depart the safety and care of his mother's womb.  We are waiting not for the unknown but for the fulfillment of the promise, not for a surprise but for the ending to the story published for the ages in His Word.  We are not a hopeless people wondering about the good or bad news but a hopeful people who actually believe that the good He has promised awaits us even though we do not have a date or a time.

Our aversion to waiting is epidemic -- even inside the community of the faithful.  We would rather have bad news now over the good news for which we must wait.  That is a part of Advent's unpopularity.   The ten bridal virgins knew what was coming but did not know when.  They all fell asleep but two in the despair of a people sure that if the promise did not come when they demanded it, it was a waist.  We will all fall asleep but better to sleep dreaming of what is to come than to remain awake and bitter because it has not come quickly enough.  We all need to hear that.  It is better to wait upon the Lord than to put your trust in earthly rulers, kingdoms, king makers, or timekeepers.  Waiting may be good, right, and salutary but it will never sell in the marketplace of what we want and when we want it.  Sadly, for too many Christians God has already been judged not worth the wait.  Then you know why our Lord says the delayed glory to come is beyond all expectation and anticipation.  In this, the preaching and message of Advent is not any different for those went out to the hilltop because He is surely coming soon and those who fear He is not coming at all.  The posture of faith is not the answer machine with something for every question but the patient expectation of the mother who know the child will come but is turned away and told not yet.

If there is any consolation it is that in our realized eschatology, we gather to wait around the Table where the future is already but not yet.  Touching us in our waiting is the God who comes to fill the moment with the promise that there is so much more we cannot conceive.  Eating this hope and drinking in this promise, the Advent sacrament is the Eucharist.  Whether foretaste or glimpse, God knows what we need and Advent turns us to that moment where time and eternity intersect for a brief yet pregnant moment.  And the faithful breathe it all in, taste and savor it, rejoicing to know that it is enough for a people who want it all but are given just enough to keep us wanting at all.

Let us pray. . .

A litany is generally defined as a long prayer with a of a series of petitions or bidding led by the deacon, priest, or cantor to which the people sing a fixed response,  The litanies known and used today have their roots in eastern liturgies of the early centuries of the church (for example, the Kyrie litany).  It became most widely used in the West in the Middle Ages when it was relatively common in private devotions and in the public liturgies of the Church.  Sometimes they were sung in processions and sometimes they were associated with times of famine and need, during times of planting and harvest, and in times of war or the threat of war. The invocation of a long list of saints was part of the Great Litany during the Middle Ages. 

Before the Council of Trent, some eighty or so different forms of the Litany in use in the Roman Church, 
but the Council trimmed back these litanies considerably. It was less a standardized text than a form.  Lutheran liturgical scholar Wilhelm Loehe described this: “There are especially three litanies that have found the widest spread and acceptance in the Roman Church: the Litany of the Sweet Name of Jesus, the Litany of the Mother of God of Loreto, and above all what is called the ‘Great Litany.’ For fairly obvious reasons, Luther and those after him focused only on the Great Litany but, again, it was not yet a standardized text as much as a form.  After falling into disuse in the early years of the Reformation, Luther revised and published the Litany in German and Latin in 1529 -- minus, of course, the invocation of saints, but with some few petitions.  For a long time the Lutheran Church retained the singing of the Litany in Latin.

The Litany was even included in some editions of the Small Catechism.  It testifies to the esteem in which the Great Litany was held -- second only to the Our Father among the prayers of the Church according to Luther.  As Lutherans began publishing their Latin liturgical books, the Litany was invariably included. The sixteenth and seventeenth century Lutheran liturgical books include and presume the Litany, recited responsively, with a response by choir and congregation following each petition and not by groups of petitions as is more common today.  In 1544, Thomas Cranmer’s English revision of the Great Litany introduced the grouping of several petitions together followed by one response and it is this version that is most commonly used when Lutherans pray the Litany today.

Rubrics tell us that the Litany may replace the prayers in the Daily Office (Matins, Vespers, Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer) or the General Prayer in the Divine Service or it may serve as an entrance rite in the Divine Service, replacing the Introit, Kyrie, and Hymn of Praise (although I do not recommend such a sweeping replacement).  In penitential seasons, it can serve as a mark of the special devotion of such a time of the Church Year or as a stand alone prayer rite.  

As we are now in the season of Advent, penitential though not quite as markedly somber as Lent, it is fitting for the Litany to be used more regularly both in corporate setting in the congregation and in the individual prayer lives of God's people (or together as a family in the home).

 The Litany

 

L O Lord,

C have mercy.

L O Christ,

C have mercy.

L O Lord,

C have mercy.

L O Christ,

C hear us.

L God the Father in heaven,

C have mercy.

L God the Son, Redeemer of the world,

C have mercy.

L God the Holy Spirit,

C have mercy.

L Be gracious to us.

C Spare us, good Lord.

L Be gracious to us.

C Help us, good Lord.

 

L From all sin, from all error, from all evil;

From the crafts and assaults of the devil; from sudden and evil death;

From pestilence and famine; from war and bloodshed; from sedition and from rebellion;

From lightning and tempest; from all calamity by fire and water; and from everlasting death:

C Good Lord, deliver us.

L By the mystery of Your holy incarnation; by Your holy nativity;

By Your baptism, fasting, and temptation; by Your agony and bloody sweat; by Your cross and passion; by Your precious death and burial;

By Your glorious resurrection and ascension; and by the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter:

C Help us, good Lord.

L In all time of our tribulation; in all time of our prosperity; in the hour of death; and in the day of judgment:

C Help us, good Lord.

L We poor sinners implore You

C to hear us, O Lord.

L To rule and govern Your holy Christian Church; to preserve all pastors and ministers of Your Church in the true knowledge and understanding of Your wholesome Word and to sustain them in holy living;

To put an end to all schisms and causes of offense; to bring into the way of truth all who have erred and are deceived;

To beat down Satan under our feet; to send faithful laborers into Your harvest; and to accompany Your Word with Your grace and Spirit:

C We implore You to hear us, good Lord.

L To raise those who fall and to strengthen those who stand; and to comfort and help the weakhearted and the distressed:

C We implore You to hear us, good Lord.

L To give to all peoples concord and peace; to preserve our land from discord and strife; to give our country Your protection in every time of need;

To direct and defend our [president/queen/king] and all in authority; to bless and protect our magistrates and all our people;

To watch over and help all who are in danger, necessity, and tribulation; to protect and guide all who travel;

To grant all women with child, and all mothers with infant children, increasing happiness in their blessings; to defend all orphans and widows and provide for them;

To strengthen and keep all sick persons and young children; to free those in bondage; and to have mercy on us all:

C We implore You to hear us, good Lord.

L To forgive our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers and to turn their hearts; to give and preserve for our use the kindly fruits of the earth; and graciously to hear our prayers:

C We implore You to hear us, good Lord.

L Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,

C we implore You to hear us.

 

L Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,

C have mercy.

L Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,

C have mercy.

L Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,

C grant us Your peace.

 

L O Christ,

C hear us.

L O Lord,

C have mercy.

L O Christ,

C have mercy.

L O Lord,

C have mercy. Amen.

 

All church politics is local. . .

More and more I have come to the belief that the axiom for politics is also true of church politics.  Everything is local.  Issues have a way of manifesting themselves less upon the larger context and more typically on the local.  Take, for example, the issue of worship style.  The point so often made is that worship style is a local choice and, since it is adiaphora, whatever works locally is or ought to be fine for the rest of the body.  I do not know of many advocates of contemporary Christian music and evangelical style worship who would insist that this is the only way it ought to be.  Liturgical types will say that.  The hand clappers won't.  You can stick with your hymnal if you want to but that won't work here.  The freedom sought is the freedom to choose what works locally even over liturgical and confessional identity.  That won't pass muster here.  Again, the point is that Lutherans, especially Missourians, ought to be free to do what works locally while holding officially to the doctrinal standard of our constitution and confessing the creeds (albeit seldom).  In order to meet people and win them over for Jesus, we need the freedom to do what works locally.  Or so it is said.  And done.

Another example is name.  A goodly number of larger contemporary worship and music style congregations have jettisoned the name Lutheran.  For that matter, so have Baptists, Presbyterians, and a host of others but they are not my concern.  My concern is Lutherans and particularly the Missouri ones.  So if local option says identifying as Lutheran is not going to make grade here, then we should be free to call ourselves what we want for the sake of our ministry and our success in that ministry.  Only an ogre would say "no" -- or so it would seem.  It is such a little thing.  Let them do what works for them.  Along with this is the congregational structure.  Some actually have called workers who serve at the discretion of the Senior Pastor.  He can hire and fire pretty much at will.  So let the call be worked out according to local need and want, right?  And if the administrative board is made up of employed people or is self-appointed and people have lost their franchise, well, if it works locally then what is so bad about that.  And if the folks in the pew and who finance the operation with their tithes and offerings have no voice or vote (except to leave) in their own congregation, well, as long as that works, right?  Local option.

This is also true of another issue.  The training of pastors.  One commentator  put it exactly that way.

 “The large churches do not want to send candidates to the residential program right now - and this is what nobody is saying, that the data is saying - they don’t want to send them to the residential seminary program because they don’t believe that the pastor they will get in the end is a pastor that will work for their ministry. And so the only option is [SMP] - and now that’s not an option.”

In other words, if seminary works to form pastors for you, well and good.  It is not working for us.  Therefore the Synod needs to bend to the needs and primacy of the local option.   Non-synodical seminary options, online formation, and local formation work for us.  That seems to be in large measure what this push for the legitimization of non-LCMS seminary formation programs is all about.  The seminary option is not working -- at least for us.  They cite statistics about the need for more pastors, the smaller size of seminary classes in the past decade or so, and the anecdotal evidence that those who you send to seminary come out, well, Lutheran worship style, doctrine, and practice and that is not what we want or need.  Add in there the complaints of those who are stuck in a parish (typically smaller) that does not offer the contemporary options they desire and a chorus of voices is raised up to insist that the way we are doing things is not salutary and exists out of a desire for a small minority to control the Synod.  Ouch.  Nobody wants that, now do they?!

SMP was really never about local option but was about local need.  The need was not the large congregations who want to raise up their own clones but the small, isolated, inner city, geographically remote, or ethnic congregation.  They probably could never afford a full-time guy or pay him well, anyway.  They certainly cannot afford benefits (ala health insurance).  But they deserve to be served, right?  So the idea put forward was to raise up a solid and solidly Lutheran guy from within that community -- somebody mature in years and experience -- and give them incremental training so that they could serve right there.  But then place became context and context became anything we wanted it to mean and so the unwritten rules that were used to explain the program were cast aside for new ways that the SMP guy might fill the gap, bump up the number of pastors as more and more retire, and help the large congregation fill the local need for someone who looks like them.  It was always a train wreck waiting to happen.

My point is this.  Is this really about doctrine or is it the increasingly loud and insistent idea that local option triumphs over the greater institutional need, theological integrity, unity and collegiality of clergy, and the trust that the people have as their pastor someone with the best training money could buy and we could provide.  Only an idiot would suggest that all that stuff in seminary is useless or unnecessary or superfluous.  So the idea that we give a guy 1/3 of what residential seminary guys get is not an equivalence but an exception.  Local option was not our goal but local need required an exception.  Now the exception is clamoring to become the norm.  And it is largely because we think we can do it better locally.  Not even as good but better.  All church politics is local.  Wait for the big pow wow in Phoenix.  

By the way, if you want my take on this.  I figure that if a guy goes to seminary and comes back different that is a good thing.  If he comes back more Lutheran, that is a better thing.  If he comes back prepared to serve wherever God desires him, that is another better thing.

So long Black Friday. . .

There actually was a time when you read the ads to see where to go when you got up at midnight or thereabouts on Black Friday.  No more ads.  Not in a newspaper anymore.  Instead, we have Black Fridays all throughout the year.  It is not a day on the liturgical calendar but it is surely more in tune with the pulse of American people than any day on that calendar.  For us it is not about shopping as much as it is the turnover of one calendar to another.

The Church Year comes to its close almost with a whimper. The last Sunday after Pentecost (or Christ the King or whatever it is called) is a small bump on the highway of our lives. Advent begins, unfortunately, at the end of a week and on the week end more marked by turkey, shopping, and football than thoughts of another year of grace.

The older I get, the more I notice this awkwardness. It is as if the great transition from one Church Year to another lost in the busy-ness of days filled with overeating, overindulging, and overspending. I worry about this loss and about the way we have forgotten this significant step in the passing of God's timing.

The end of one Church Year is out of synch with our secular calendar and with our own seasonal pulse as the world around us shifts into high gear toward Christmas. The start of a new Church Year is too often lost in the push toward Christmas music, Christmas decorations, Christmas presents, and Christmas parties. Advent is not simply time of preparation but time of waiting. And waiting is the discipline of Christian faith and life. We wait upon the Lord, we wait upon His wisdom and purpose, and we wait upon His time and timing.

That is what the end of one Church Year and the start of a new one should be teaching us. We do not direct the pulse of history toward its destiny, God does. We wait upon the Lord -- not as the regretful who lament what we cannot know or control but as the faithful who trust in His providence because we have seen the revelation of His grace and favor in Christ our Lord. We wait upon the Lord -- not as the frustrated who bide their time because someone was late for an appointment but as those place our time in His hands and wait the fulfillment of that which the clock can never measure. We wait for the Lord -- not as the idle who grow weary with nothing to do but as those who have been given a mission and purpose to proclaim the Savior with words that speak of His suffering and death and resurrection and actions that extend the care of His love to those around us.

Those who direct the liturgical calendar have tried to prop up the end of the Church Year by called it various names from Christ the King Sunday to the Sunday of the Fulfillment. It is not the name we need to prop up but the sense of time that the Church Year bestows upon those who follow it. Its rhythm and pulse, understandably foreign to our consumer culture and secular world, is the different drummer that Christian people march to. What we need is not some artificial elevation of one day or another but a sense of who we are and where we are headed -- which is exactly what the Church Year gives to us.

As we now begin another Year of Grace, we need to be careful lest the intrusion of the secular calendar and its celebrations steal away the spotlight from the liturgical calendar. We need to be careful about the endless string of emphases and theme Sundays that come from the head offices of all the Lutheran jurisdictions. We need to be careful about connecting one Sunday to the Sunday to come and to its Sunday past as links in the chain of a people who wait upon the Lord, who are busy during the wait with His purpose and mission, and who live each day trusting in Him whose promise is fulfilled in Christ, whose grace is sufficient for the day, and whose mercy is glimpsed even in sorrow and struggle, trial and tragedy. We wait upon the Lord.  That is St. Andrew's legacy -- come and see.  Though we do not like it, some of that coming and seeing involves time waiting for God to unfold His own calendar and purpose as He brings all things to their perfect consummation.  Even me.

Almighty Lord God, who hast by Thy grace this day permitted us to enter a new church year, we beseech Thee, grant unto Thy Church Thy Holy Spirit and the wisdom which cometh down from above, that Thy Word, as becometh it, may not be bound but have free course and be preached to the joy and edifying of Christ's holy people, that in steadfast faith we may serve Thee, and in the confession of Thy name abide unto the end; through Jesus Christ, Thy dear Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end.  Amen.

 

A Rockwell Thanksgiving

I grew up in a small town in Nebraska, surrounded by extended family and friends.  Nowhere is this idyllic image of small town America more powerful than during holidays like Thanksgiving.  Even though my family was small, two boys and my parents, we were a large group gathered around the table at every special event or holy day. Actually, until more recent history, that meant some of us were not at the table per se but at TV trays or holding plates on our laps sitting on the stairs.  But that is fodder for another post...

Whether or not we actually tried to mimic the famous Norman Rockwell painting of Thanksgiving Day in America, we did strive to reflect the values of that powerful image.  There was food in abundance reflecting the abundance of a rich and resourceful land -- the very reason for Thanksgiving was to give thanks for national blessings upon us as Americans.  There were people of all ages around the table reflecting the extended family gathered together in one place and the familial building block of American history, culture and life.  There were images of our prosperity but it was a humble image and reflected the values of humility and deference that were inherent to a Swedish-German town on the prairie (and to America as a whole -- at least a couple of generations ago.  There was the picture of politeness and nice manners as a family sat calm and patient waiting for the food to be served, the prayer to be prayed, and the pecking order of respect to be observed.  There was a sense of roles and responsibilities that made it clear we knew who we were and we were comfortable with who we were (women cooked and set the table and men worked and brought home the bacon -- not in a sexist sense but as people who learned from their past and grew into the roles and responsibilities defined more by servant roles than authority or dominion).

In conversations I heard about the folks who are eating out today (some by choice and not because of lack of family or friends who issued invitations).  I listened to those who eschewed the familiar turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie in favor of pork loin and a ton of other alternatives as they make the holiday their own.  I know about families divided by miles and intention for whom Thanksgiving is no reunion event.  Some of these are military families in my parish but many of them reflect the diaspora of our modern day world where distance is not only a reality but a choice made against the values of community and closeness that once defined us.  I thought about the many single who had no family even as I spoke to my middle son who lives out of state and who will not be at my table (though he will be with his grandparents and extended family).  I could go on...

My point is this.  Rockwell's American Thanksgiving is not just an image of the past, it is a past which many in America are intent upon rejecting (either formally or informally).  We have become a culture at war against who we were, whether we understand it this way or not.  I once thought that Rockwell's Thanksgiving remained the desire of people even though they had to live with limitations and the deficiencies of a circumstance in which parents and grandparents were not local and jobs and cultural mobility tended to isolate people.  I don't think so anymore.  I think for many Americans, our Thanksgiving traditions reflect a rejection of the Rockwell era.  Family is more and more me and the person I live with.  The kitchen is a beautiful and well equipped place where we heat up food made by others.  Family are folks you call a couple of times a year but not people you live with or even want to live near.  Marriage is struggling as much because we are not so sure we desire to be married as it is because of other factors. Roles are confused and conflicted as much because we refuse and reject the old patterns as it is because of necessity or circumstances.  Responsibilities are forced upon us but we bristle at the imposition of thinking about or serving others.

If Rockwell were painting today, would he paint a picture of people camped out for the bargains early Friday morning?  The interesting thing about this picture, is that we are shopping as much for ourselves as we are for others in those early morning bargain hunting expeditions on Black Friday.  I am concerned about this -- not so much concerned about those who find their Rockwell holiday impaired by circumstances beyond their control as I am those who no longer see the importance of the values of family, community, responsibility, and humility.  We are uncomfortable in our old skins and still not comfortable in the changing skin of the day but we are determined not to go back, never to go back.

It is no wonder that the Church is more and more out of step with our culture and the patterns of the world around us.  We continue to speak of family, community, responsibility, unity, and humility as these gifts and this pattern of new life flow from Christ -- but we are speaking to people who have embraced the values of me, individuality, diversity, difference, license, and aggressiveness.  We have come to like a culture of vulgarity, crudity, and self-interest and this not only mars the old portrait of Thanksgiving, it has created a very difficult barrier to speaking the Gospel in our world not convinced that there is anything wrong with the direction of life and culture.

I did not mean this to be such a downer... but thought I would share a few thoughts as my own family is separated by many miles and even by the demands upon those who live near as we try to live out the Rockwell Thanksgiving still. . .  

I'm hooked on phonics. . .

As anyone and everyone knows, Mississippi has long been at the bottom of every list of good things -- from jobs to income to education.  It has become so routine that nobody pays much attention to it.  Except Mississippi.  They have been paying attention.  But unlike others who throw money at the problem, Mississippi seems to have dug into the box of forgotten educational tool.  Not that long ago Mississippi was #49 out of 50 in 4th grade reading scores.  After rather quietly turning to phonics, that bottom of the lister moved up into the top ten.  Guess what?  Mississippi is now first in the nation for academic growth in grade 4 reading and math since 2011; first in the nation in reading and second in math among economically disadvantaged 4th graders; first in the nation in reading and second in math for Hispanic 4th graders; and third in the nation in reading and math among African American 4th graders.  They must be doing something right, huh.

As I have complained for a long time, we mandate nearly everything of our schools except teaching the core of reading, writing, and arithmetic.  So many of those social problems could be helped by returning our attention as a nation to those core subjects.  It really does matter to everything when kids learn to read, learn to write (which requires them to think and organize their thoughts and use grammar tools) and do math.  We can turn our schools into psychological laboratories to deal with everything from drugs to gender dysphoria but the best thing we can do is simply to teach them the core areas of reading, writing, and arithmetic.  

Phonics is not new.  In fact it is so old fashioned that they have come up with a new name for it so that people might forget it is an old idea.  A comprehensive scientific study has shown that this traditional way of teaching reading [phonics] actually works, while the newer approaches using “whole language” to memorize the shape of words does not work as well.  Children also learn that grammar and spelling matters and are graded on these as well and this reinforces their reading skills.  How ironic that we spend literally billions to invent new techniques but are so quick to reject the old patterns of learning that have served us well in the past!  After the switch to phonics, their kids actually could read a lot better than before.

In the states politically and culturally to the left of center, ideology seems to be the stickler.  Rather than admit what the poorer performing states have done to succeed, they seem wedded to any new idea and adverse to any old idea.  In the end, the leftward leaning states spend half or more per student as the average and more than that over what were once the lowest performing states but the money is not the solution.  In fact, it may be the problem.  Money has been used to foster the idea that technology will lead us out of this hole or that newer is better when it comes to curriculums and teaching methodologies and we have burdened teachers with the technology and new reading and math programs.  Instead, the success may well have been right there with us all the time -- resurrecting some of the methods used by teachers of our grandparents and parents.

It always amazes me that my parents actually learned Latin and had read long and profound novels and took the same classes whether they were bound for the farm or the university.  They wrote in cursive with fountain pens and they kept on learning, reading, and writing until they died.  We need to give our children the same opportunity to learn to read, write, and do arithmetic so that they begin and continue a lifelong learning pattern.  While this is always true for vocation and financial success, it is no less true for the Christian.  Education was championed by Luther not simply for its benefits in the Kingdom of the Left but for its fruits in the Kingdom of the Right.  In Church as well as State, a population that reads, comprehends, thinks, writes, and applies what is learned will enable the faith to flourish as well as good citizenship.  It is about time we learned this truth again. 

 

A pet peeve. . .

Not long ago I blogged about the resurgence of reading, writing, and arithmetic in Mississippi, long a state that had occupied the bottom rungs of the success list across America.  It was fueled by a return of phonics.  With the dusting off of this old pattern of teaching and learning has come a renewed emphasis upon spelling.  I am happy about this.  Spelling and grammar matter (and some of you are quick to point out to me errors in my own writing -- something for which I am grateful!).  That said, there is another pet peeve of mine and that goes with spelling.  Pronunciation.

More than 34 years ago when I showed up to this Southern city, a woman called the church office and I answered the phone.  I gave her the information she was seeking and then, a moment later, she called back.  "I just wanted to hear your accent again.  Could you say something?"  At that point I suggested that having been born and raised in the Midwest I did not have an accent as the people in the South clearly did.  I also reminded her that newscasters tended to come from the Midwest because they did not have a pronounced accent.   Accents are quaint and I love them but sometimes they get in the way of communication.  My wife once commented that she had to go to the most Southern nurse in her unit to translate what a good ole boy in the hospital had said.  Unfortunately, even that woman raised in the hills of Tennessee did not have a clue what the man was saying.  In this case, it was not simply the accent but laziness.  In college we had a kid who earned the nickname "Mushmouth" because no one could understand him.  He had a lazy tongue.

While this is a mere irritation when I hear a weatherman on TV say "tempachure" for temperature or hear everywhere the incessant addition of letters to some words (like "shtruggle" for struggle) or the omission of letters from other words (like "ax" for ask) or the emphasis on another s when there is not supposed to be one (like "Jesuseses" for Jesus'), it becomes a larger issue and a bigger problem when this is translated into other areas of communication.  It seems that we all have learned to have a lazy tongue.  We treat the language as if it were a private and personal concern.  We do not adhere to the rules of grammar or pronunciation.  We are lazy.  But this impreciseness has spilled over into a variety of areas.  We are lazy about more than the way we write or speak.  The presumption that these do not matter is contributing to the decline in our ability to enunciate the words and what we mean as well as maintain a clarity of language.  Nowhere is this more of a problem than in the Church.  In too many places gobbledygook has replaced the traditional vocabulary of doctrine and liturgy.  Words that mean little mean even less because they allow a width of meaning and a confusion to reign precisely where clarity and truth require more.

Okay.  Rant off. 

Killing us with copyright. . .

William Tyndale, a clergyman, distinguished Oxford scholar, was not exactly the first person to translate New Testament (NT) from Greek to English.  Instead of accolades, he was martyred. Tyndale strongly believed that everyone should be able to read the Bible even though universal education was not yet in place and so it was limited in that regard. His translation served both as a tool of this conviction but, perhaps, more importantly as a key resource eventually for 1611 King James Bible. 

The history of English Bible translations in reality spans a millennium, beginning with early translations in Old English, of mere portions or sections of the Bible.  This was already done by Aldhelm and the Venerable Bede in the 8th century.  This was mostly the Gospels and Psalms.  John Wycliffe translated the Bible from Latin into Middle English in the 14th century, helping to formalize the language as well as the Scripture for the common people who could read.  His work was not well received and opposition from the church and crown led to his excommunication.

Significant efforts continued with William Tyndale's translation in 1526, which laid the groundwork for later versions including the venerable King James Bible.  Miles Coverdale produced the first complete Bible in English, using Tyndale's work and translating additional Old Testament passages.  It was also called the Geneva Bible. The Bishops' Bible was an official English edition of the Bible produced under the authority of the established Church of England in 1568.  It was substantially revised in 1572, and the 1602 edition was prescribed as the base text for the King James Version that was completed in 1611. 

Of course, these were not all new works nor were they works in isolation but depended upon and built upon those who went before.  Of course, if this had happened today, copyright rules would have stifled such piggybacking and all over the pursuit of dollars.  In the end, the actual translators were often forgotten along the way but their work continued as the editions were revised and updated until the whole idea of copyright law stopped it all or extracted a cost for those who acknowledged their dependence upon those who went before them.  

I read of some controversy in the Roman Catholic Church over the copyright rules and the authorization of the bishops to promote and preserve certain versions for more exclusive use.  It shows up even more powerfully when you consider that this is literally a bribe extracted by publishers for weekly missalettes and for the appointed readings published in them.  Copyrights have been pursued and obtained by those publishers even though they changed little from the versions that went before them.  In one account, merely one word in a Psalm!  The scandal of the copyright and its impact upon the availability and usage of Bibles is not, however, an exclusively Roman problem.

Yes, I get it.  We are living in times when people steal material for their own profit.  Yes, I get it.  You want to keep people from tinkering with the text and corrupting the work of those who labored to make it possible.  But copyright laws will not prevent those with nefarious desires and designs upon the text.  What they will do is prevent the faithful from building on the work of those who went before.  In the end, the Church ought to be more concerned with getting the Word out than giving credit to those who translated it.  At least there you have my frustration of the day. 

What fuels the craving?

So Pope Leo actually stumbled upon a profound observation:  I think sometimes the, say, ‘abuse’ of the liturgy from what we call the Vatican II Mass, was not helpful for people who were looking for a deeper experience of prayer, of contact with the mystery of faith that they seemed to find in the celebration of the Tridentine Mass.

That is Leospeak for if the new Mass were celebrated reverently and rightly, there would be no hankering for the old Mass.  Perhaps he is right.  I would assume that the foolish and casual manner in which most Novus Ordo Masses are celebrated and even the perfunctory attention given to non-scandalous celebrations have fueled the desire for the old.  Yet I am not sure it would be quite that simple.  Stealing what people knew and replacing it with something radically different remains part of the issue.  Yet, as interested as I am, it is not my problem.

I do wonder, however, if that might not be applicable to the Lutheran situation.  While there was uniformity of rites among nearly all Lutherans in the 1940s and 1950s, these were not golden years for the liturgy.  While we followed the Common Service, we did not practice what we confessed.  The Eucharist was a once a quarter add on to the dry Mass that had become normal.  Pastors did not preach from the lectionary but from a cycle of preaching texts different from the appointed pericopes.  Private confession was never spoken of and practiced even less.  We prided ourselves in being liturgical in the same way a health nut gloats over his impossible bean burger but wants it to taste like real meat.  Pastors wore academic gowns or the black gown of the Reformed.  We sang Methodist hymns with gusto and stole the rhythm from Lutheran chorales until they sang like the Methodist ones.  Who knows if Lutheranism would have had a real liturgical renewal or needed one if we had approached preaching and leading the Divine Service like our confessional documents expected?

Perhaps the quest for contemporary worship and music was born more of the desire to worship in an interesting manner as much as a relevant one.  It just might be that we would not have looked with such longing on the Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Fundamentalists for our worship cues if we had been actually practicing what we preached.  I know that my interest in contemporary worship in college was fueled by the boredom with the lackluster celebrations of the Divine Service I grew up with -- long on formality but not quite confident that we wanted to be there doing what we were doing.  Naturally I looked at those who were genuinely excited to be in Church on Sunday morning as do most.  It was my experience with high church folks (what is what they were called then) that led me away from singing Amazing Grace to the melody of The House of the Rising Sun to chant and the Lutheran chorales that remain my favorites to this day.  I saw in these folks a reverence not of formality but of confidence that what we were doing was real and it was really delivering what it said.

Sadly, liturgical renewal betrayed us not with faulty forms as much as a fake idea of informality and what it meant to participate in the liturgy (we all get to be leaders).  Reverence and confidence in the liturgy to deliver what is being signed are the only way to satisfy our longing for relevance and reality, for honest food and a present feast upon the eternal miracle.  It is still appealing to me and, apparently to many folks far younger than my oldest vestments.  Smoke and mirrors will not satisfy but incense and mystery born of a conviction that God is here delivering His gifts and fitting us for eternity will satisfy and do it every week -- over and over again.  I am not looking for a deeper experience but I am expecting to receive what the words say and the means of grace promise.  Nothing more and nothing less -- except a presiding minister, choir, organist, and others who know this and want it, too.

There is sort of a cult rising up over Divine Service III.  In Rome it is the Latin Mass.  I do not get it.  It is not the rite that will rescue us from our desires to be happy clappy or casual or relevant.  While it is true we are our rites, this is true of the doctrine in them.  This is lex orandi lex credendi.  You cannot confess rightly what you worship wrongly.  And the other way around.  However, it is still possible to be formally correct yet without awareness of or confidence in the things that the liturgy says, does, and delivers.  Lackadaisical preaching and presiding will kill the grandest of liturgical acts.  It is reverence and the conviction that words matter, words deliver what they say, and the signs convey what they signify.  Where that happens, people will be fed and go home full to the brim of the foretaste of the eternal. 

 

Not simply semantics. . .

Whether you love it or hate it, the Specific Ministry Pastor Program of the LCMS is seen very differently by different folks within the LCMS.  It was probably bound to happen.  We see many things from different perspectives.  So this SMP program has been and is now seen through very different lenses across the Synod.

There are those who thought that the SMP Program was simply an alternative option for those who wanted to be a pastor in the Missouri Synod.  Alternate routes is a catch phrase today for the idea that pastors can be formed in various ways and there ought to be choices and options.  We have choices and options in just about everything.  If you can customize your home screen why can't you customize your route to ordination?  The idea here is that the guy who wants to be a pastor surveys the options and chooses the one that fits him and his circumstances.  The end result is the same, sight?  Ordination and the Pastoral Office.  How you get there is simply a choice.  

Many believe that this moves the formation of pastors closer to home, to the locale in which the pastor serves.  The lead up to the invention of the SMP Program certainly lent some credence to the idea that the SMP Pastor was about place -- the congregation or community in which he serves was the context.  Then language changed and context became a somewhat broader term than an ethnic community or geographical address.  Many took this as a sign that the SMP Program was an alternative route and an alternative way of forming a pastor.  Not only small and isolated congregations or inner city places long without a resident pastor saw hope in this but large congregations who wanted to raise up from within a guy to be their guy without having to lose him to seminary and vicarage for four years and possibly have him sent somewhere else or come back with a different kind of Lutheranism than he had before he was sent.  So the local became more than simply context but about the way we do things here which presupposed that this was either unique or special in some way that four years and a seminary education might just dilute or even erase.

On the other hand, there are those who thought that the SMP Program was never an option at all but a very specialized solution for a very specialized context.  The man did not choose the route but the Church sought out a man from within that context to be the pastor there and created a path in which that man would be able to continue to serve this community while going through the program.  Perhaps that was the rationale for ordaining even before the completion of the program.  In this program, the pastor, while having the full authority over the ministry of Word and Sacrament within that place, lacked some of the jurisdiction and authority of the general pastor (where he could serve, if he could serve beyond the parish and in district or synod, and the need for ongoing supervision gave the SMP restrictions the general did not have).

These believed that this replaced the disastrous licensed lay deacon idea hatched in 1989 in which non-ordained men were granted license to act as ordained.  They recognized that there were rural and urban and ethnic places that might never have Word and Sacrament either do to their isolated location or difficult circumstance or particular language and cultural needs.  The SMP was therefore an exception and not a route, a solution to a problem and not an open door to a new way to become a pastor.  To them the restrictions made sense because they did not conceive of circumstances in which the SMP would be placed where those restrictions would hinder his service.  They were shocked when large congregations began to use the SMP to add to their staff or when guys started looking at the SMP as a choir or option in the several options afforded him if he wanted to be a pastor.  Plus they were sadly not surprised with the usual voices complained about any restrictions and advocated for eliminating those restrictions from SMP guys.

In the midst of this, the LCMS began to talk as if there was a goal -- ordination -- but also many paths to that goal -- alternative routes.  We officialized the term so that it began to sound as if the four year seminary route was but one route, even if it was the so-called gold standard.  All of this has created conflict and confusion.  Perhaps it is high time to decide if the LCMS intended to create an alternative route or was creating a specialized solution to a particular problem.  Perhaps the time has come to stop arguing about what was intended or how it could be used and for the LCMS to stand up and say what it meant and how the SMP is to function -- both in terms of training and restrictions.  Perhaps it is high time for us to admit that our words left competing visions for this program and we all need to be on the same page.  Perhaps it is past time for us as a church body to take this in hand and look over everything:  what the curriculum needs to be, when ordination should take place, what restrictions should be placed upon the SMP (if any), how they are called  and where they can be called, and the age and experience of those who could be approved for this program.  I have my opinions as do many but we have had enough experience with this program to discover that it means too many different things to too many different people and this confusion must be clarified and resolved -- for the sake of the SMP guy, the places where he serves, the future of this program, and the well-being of the Synod.

Let me say one more thing.  If we are to figure this out, we will need to form a review forum in which the loudest voices can speak but other more reasoned and calmer heads decide and recommend what we need going forward and why.  We need to resolve this thing and not create a new reason for us to be less than united.  Yes, we need to hear from the seminaries which do the training and we need to hear from the places where their service has been salutary and where it has not and, I suppose, a DP or two but I would hope that this was headed by folks who will not take to a podcast or blog to undermine these goals.  For that reason, I am not a good candidate either.  So there you have some of my thoughts on figuring out the way through this fog. 

Training and maturity matter. . .

I am told that training to become a Navy SEAL begins with both officers and enlisted sailors, 18-29 years old US citizens in the U.S. Navy.  It takes a year of training and qualification.  There are six month blocks of training in units and task groups.  Another year or so.  To be an elite member of Seal Team Six takes another five years and requires at least two deployments.  Why so much  Because lives depend upon that training and lives matter.

Why do we think that we can or should minimize the training for pastors, substituting online for residential, and rush to get them out and into the pulpits and at the altars and fonts of our church?  Why do we find it so compelling that the urgency and difficulty of the times compels us to shorten the time of preparation and even lift the usual restrictions on new Christian men to get them ordained as soon as possible?  Why are we even talking about this?

Some will say that the press of circumstances and need is enough to make us set aside ancient restrictions and practice.  I fear it is something else.  I fear that we are being pushed to shorten and reduce requirements for the preparation and formation of pastors because we don't think that lives depend upon them or that these lives do not matter.  It is my fear that we think being a pastor is not a big deal, not a big job, and that not much hangs upon the one who is ordained to the office.  

I do not believe that stingy Germans are so attached to tradition that we would keep a costly path to ordination simply because that is the way we have always done it.  Yes, we are traditional.  No, we are not extravagant with funds.  If we thought that we could do it more cheaply, most Germans I know would.  So I do not buy the idea that we are wedded to residential seminaries or the rather rigorous path involving 3-4 years simply because we have always done it that way before.  I do believe that if pressed we would admit that a more demanding pattern of training our pastors is because lives matter and lives are hanging on these guys and what whey do in the Lord's name.  I fear, however, that being cheap may lead us where we should not go and end up devaluing not simply the training but also the ministry itself.

Could we do better?  Duh.  Of course we can and should.  We ought to be regularly reviewing curriculum and requirements and the whole process of pastoral formation.  We might make exception for those who come to us without a life of faith having grown up in the church but we dare not make the rule of it.  We might even add to the time and requirements of those whom we would send out in the Lord's name -- dare I say that we might even require continuing education of those who wear the mantle of this office?  Yes, we could and should do better but we must not do less than we are already doing.  It poses disaster for the church and those already called, gathered, enlightened, and being sanctified but especially for those not yet of the kingdom.   Need I say it?  Lives matter.  Too much hangs on what the pastor does.  We need to be careful and be rather judicious in deciding who is apt to teach and fit for the calling but we also need to put our money where our mouth is and train them up better and more profoundly.  Lives matter.

I am not a Navy Seal and would never want to be.  But I have been a pastor for 45 years.  It is our version of the special calling of the pastor.  Training is important.  Formation is not automatic or by accident.  The vocation and its duties are great.  Lives matter.  Don't skimp on it.  Unless we actually do believe that it is no big deal.  If that is, indeed, the case, then we have bigger problems than just a shortage of clergy.