An irrational fear, perhaps?

Perhaps Luther was so consumed by the almost exclusive character of the Roman Canon that he saw everything through that lens.  His reform of the canon was more to excise that canon, removing it as if it were a malignancy destroying the faith.  So it might have been but Luther's answer was to remove other parts not cancerous in and of themselves and to leave the patient, in this case the Mass, distorted and scarred by this surgery.  I do not mean at all to suggest that Luther was acting irrationally but in the throes of a conflict, actions intended to eliminate an abuse have become almost intolerable even in the communion that bears his name.

It is rather easy, of course, 500 years later to suggest that a more careful scalpel could or should have been applied.  Yet that is exactly what I am doing.  Surely we have some advantage from being five centuries removed from the events of the Reformation to reclaim what was lost without surrendering the whole of the evangelical cause.  The work behind the Common Service was not the work of reform or restoration but one rite, itself cut and pasted from various rites, in an effort to bring some order to the liturgical chaos among Lutherans of that day.  So we are not justified in expecting the Common Service to provide a counter to Luther's omission of the entire canon and his abrogation of the offertory.  This is not merely then about Luther but about Lutherans and what we do and why we do it.

It seems odd to call "Create in me..." an offertory.  It is not a proper as it was before and has literally nothing to do with an offering at all.  It has become something very different and Lutherans have been adept at using later justification for its transformation.  It is as if the congregation which has just heard a rip roaring sermon rushes then to stand up and say "Message received!"  I suppose that it is not so bad to do so but it hardly lives up to an "offertory."

Luther, oddly enough, would have treated the taking of an offering sort of like showing up for private confession -- it is a good thing to do but it is best if no one sees you doing it and it would be better if you forgot about it yourself on the way home.  Thankfully we have forgotten what Luther said in this regard.  The exigent financial urgencies of every congregation have made it easy to leave Luther behind.  We are more than glad to pick up the cash, checks, ACHs, credit card payments, or every other tangible form of money and do so every week -- even more often than some congregations offer the Sacrament!  We rise as the holy mammon is brought forward to God and consider it all good, right, and salutary.  So why do we have such an aversion to a real offertory, to bread and wine brought forward to the altar and to the formal setting of the table.  Irrational fear, anyone?

With our aversion to the sacramental side of the offertory, we are also adverse to praying Eucharistically.  We pray about everything except in thanksgiving for God's good creation and His ordering of all things, His provision for us still, and His mighty acts for our salvation -- the very context of the first Lord's Supper.  Maybe we learned this from Rome whose canon has and remains more like a Prayer of the Church than a real Eucharistic prayer -- some of which we see in the Eastern variety.  So our loss of a real offertory becomes an even larger deficit when placed in the context of an anaphora absent all but the essentials of the Verba Christi and Our Father.

Modern liturgical renewal tried to fix that.  In the Divine Services 1 and 2, we gather the offering, prepare the table, and sing Psalm 116 as an ordinary (not quite a proper but at least a real offertory).  Interestingly, the subject of offertory and Eucharistic prayer seem to be governed by more a consideration of how long they take than what they mean.  Now we should make an effort to restore the offertory as a proper, allowing even more of the Psalms to be woven into the liturgy, and perhaps give a liturgical choir something more to do.  I would love that.  It will not hurt the people to see the altar reverently prepared for the Sacrament and it can be done without any reintroduction of any adverse sacrificial emphasis.  Without these, we will invent ways that ultimately highlight the money part of it and do all the liturgical prep of the altar beforehand.

While we are at it, we might work on recalling what the rightful sacrifice of the Mass ought to be -- a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving from those who receive the fruits of the one all sufficient sacrifice here in this bread and cup.  Perhaps we could formalize this whole idea by turning the Roman Canon into the Prayer of the Church (it would not be that hard) and learning from the East how to actually pray Eucharistically with a hearty voice of praise and thanksgiving.  Well, a man can dream, can't he?

 

The Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist

Sermon preached on the Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, 28 August 2025, at Grace Lutheran Church, Clarksville, TN.

John has fulfilled His calling as a prophet and witness to the Lord Jesus.  His life in this world is complete and hidden with Christ.  The last of his duties are not unlike that of any pastor at the end of his ministry.  He has sent his disciples to ask if Jesus is the One so that they might know in whom is their hope.  Now Christ increase and John decreases.  It seems like an ignoble end for a mighty man of God.  Where we expect earthly glory, there is a shameful death at the behest of a corrupt girl and her conniving mother.  Anyone of us would be right to ask if this is all there is.  But there is more.

All around the account of John’s death is life.  Herod is confused.  Who is Jesus?  Is John not dead?  Could Jesus be John risen from the dead and come to torment him still?  The disciples of John are not confused.  They act in quiet and silence to place the body of the prophet in a tomb because they believe John in the resurrection.  But between these is a tawdry scene.

Herod did not know what to do with John.  Believing him to be a prophet sent from God, Herod knew the truth of his words.  He was cut to the quick by the warning John made that if Herod remained in sin without repentance, Herod’s soul was under God’s judgment.  He had arrested John not so much to punish him as to silence him.  We all prefer silence to verbal warnings about our sins.  That is why we want our pastors to be silent with the accusing voice of the Law and stick to the Gospel.  The best we can hope for, however, is not silence but a man of God with the courage of John to call us to repentance from our pet sins and our unsubdued desires.  Herod should have listened and heeded the prophet who spoke God’s Word to him.  We should too.  

The issue was sex and lust and immorality.  It has been since Eden and it remains our weakness.  We all know this.  Our oversexed world of pornography and perversion of God’s gift is all around us.  I wish it were only in the initials of those who practice the unrestrained pursuit of their desires but it lives here in me and in you, the good people of God who show up in Church on a Thursday or a Sunday. People are not marrying, children are not being born, and those who marry are divorcing, and children are being sexualized both as the victims of and those who seek out what is violent, unnatural to us as God’s creation, and degrading.  This inhabits the pews and not just the internet.  We think we are safe because we are here but each of us wears a target and the devil works against us all.

I rather like to watch Father Brown and although not every thing religious is kosher on that series, I am struck by how the good Father is concerned less about justice than the soul of the one who perpetuates the crimes.  While cops are rushing to find suspects and prosecute, Father Brown has the concern for the eternal soul of the one who is not repentant.  There is something there.

Herod did not listen but God did not write off Herod.  He sent John.  John was the voice to call Herod to repentance just as our pastors call each of us to repentance.  We are thankful for them because they tell us what none of us wants to hear but what we must hear if we are to be saved.  John warned Herod at great cost to himself.  He did not speak as one who hated Herod but as one who loved the Lord and therefore loved those whom God loved and for whom Christ would die.  That included Herod and all kinds of obvious sinners as well as you and me in our quiet and hidden sins we have so successfully kept from others.  But not from God.  God does not desire the death of any but that all come to the knowledge of His Son, are saved by His grace, and bear in their lives the fruits of repentance by the Spirit.  

Will you listen?  John is preaching to you from his prison, preaching to you from his darkened cell, preaching to you from his martyrdom and death.  His voice is spoken by those who you call pastor.  But you must also preach.  You are the one who preach to your spouses and children, to your family and friends, to your neighbors and leaders.  It will cost you something.  Maybe not the bars of a jail but the prison of unpopularity and rejection.  We preach not as the perfect who need no repentance but as those who have found a merciful God who welcomes our repentance so that He might lavish upon us forgiveness, life, and salvation.

While we are at it, we attend to those who suffer for the sake of the kingdom, for the sake of Jesus.  We salve their wounds, comfort their tears, bind up their broken  hearts, and encourage them.  Do not fear those who can kill body but not the soul.  God is with us.  He is not the pat on the back of the righteous but the key to open the doors of all our prisons and set us free – free from doubt, from fear, from anger, from bitterness, from shame, from guilt, and from disappointment.  Death isi the final enemy but its sting is already removed and can hurt us no more.  We confess the crucified and risen Lord Jesus.  We honor the body not as a dirty old trash can that has no value but as God’s creation.  We bury the dead but expect to see them again.  We know not when we die but we know that we shall live and death shall not claim us.

John knew this.  John’s disciples knew this.  Herod could have known this.  You know this.  Repent.  Believe in Jesus Christ.  Confess your sins and confess your faith in Him who died for sin and rose for sinners that they might be set free from death to live forever more.  Washed water, the table awaits you.  Here is the taste of eternity.  The repentant come to eat and live now and with John forever.  Amen. 

High school sweethearts. . .

In the old days of log cabin high schools, there was this thing called a high school sweetheart.  There were some in my high school class -- couples who dated all the way through high school and even college, married, had kids, and remained married until one of them died.  It did not happen often enough to be typical but it definitely was normal.  Perhaps no more.

Several websites that track such things are saying that only one out of every three teens today has even dated in high school and that most of those relationships lasted weeks or months rather than years.  Wow.  One of out every three.  It is no wonder that we are having trouble convincing folks to marry.  Dating and courtship rituals have gotten rather rusty along the way.  In 1990, seven out of every eight seniors had gone on a date.  That number has switched.  About 2% of all those dating in high school would qualify as high school sweethearts and, sadly, more than half of those do not make it to their tenth anniversary (ordinarily I would say wedding anniversary but in this age of long term cohabitation they may not have married at all).  Apparently half of those high schoolers have flirted with someone by social media but that has not always nor regularly led to in person relationships. Teens are spending more time learning about themselves, entertaining themselves, thinking about careers, and figuring out what they want out of life --- something that may not necessarily be a romantic relationship or marriage.

On the good side, teen pregnancy is down.  On the bad side, abortions of any kind for women older than teens is up.  Gone is the proverbial young teen girl who finds herself pregnant and the father is also a teenager not ready for marriage.  Instead, abortion customers are repeat customers and older -- those for whom marriage is not in the cards and certainly not motherhood.  Another surprising turn from the stereotype of old.  That is in part due to the lack of dating and romantic relationships among those teen girls.  Birth rates are down across the spectrum of ages but a pronounced decline among teen girls. 

Apparently we as a culture and a church are not modeling healthy marital relationships in a way that appeals to youth and would interest them in dating or in marriage.  The opposite may be true.  We may be giving them a poor example of love and marriage and one which the youth are turning down as not worth the trouble.  Strange.  For all the emphasis on happiness, it would seem that among those married and those who could be dating, happiness and fulfillment are not quite related to marriage and family.  Among those who saw marriage as the hallmark of maturity and adulthood, this is not an appeal to the younger crowd either.  The statistics tell us that among the religious, marriage is held in higher esteem but not necessarily radically higher and not enough to make Christians stand out from the rest of the culture.  That ought to make us sad.  It ought to encourage us to be more deliberate in the home and in the congregation as we support and encourage our youth to the courtship rituals designed to find a spouse and the shape of their lives within marriage and a family.  High school sweethearts are becoming folklore and mythology and this is a signal of some tough times ahead.   

Borderline heretical. . .

Peter Leithart had a rather elegant line in an article about religion in America.  Our churchy national soul weirdly inhabits a body of peculiar, borderline-heretical actual churches.  It says out loud what few people dare to admit.  Many of those churches on the landscape of our cities and towns are neither orthodox nor Biblical but live on the very fringes of the faith.  From non-denominational churches without creed or confession or doctrinal oversight to those denominations who have kept the structure but no longer seem to care about what is preached or taught, churches in America are filled with a thin veneer of Christianity and not a real and historic Christian faith and identity.  While it seems uncharitable to say this about our neighbors down the block, it must be said.

What passes for gospel in these borderline heretical churches is nothing that the gospel writers or the great preachers of the New Testament (like St. Paul) would recognize.  In fact, just the opposite, they might expect some rather blunt words from a guy like St. Paul about what they are passing off as Christian and the rest of us be given a warning about being unequally yoked with those of faulty confession and errant creed.  I am certainly not happy about this but the days when someone could presume that a congregation down the road was mostly orthodox at least on the matter of Christ and salvation are long gone.  

I once heard a podcast where it was said that Presbyterians were close to Lutherans, for example.  The problem here is that Presbyterians are not Presbyterian anymore -- not in any confessional sense.  Most of them have readily abandoned the things that once defined them.  In fact, in our own larger identity as Lutherans, we must live side by side those who seem to have forgotten that Lutherans wrote down what they believed, taught, and confessed or that these Confessions had normative definition for what Lutherans were supposed to believe and practice.  The odd thing is that among denominationals you never quite know what you are getting when you show up at a congregation that has a name and belongs to a certain jurisdiction.  That is also a problem for Rome.  Although the worship wars of Roman Catholics are the news, the preaching and teaching is also in conflict.  There are Roman Catholic parishes in which the official stances with respect to the role of women, LGBTQIA+, marriage, family planning, and sin routinely flaunt the official doctrine espoused in the Catholic Catechism.  So, it would seem, Lutherans and Presbyterians are not quite alone in this conundrum.

Those who leave for the non-denominational "churches" or those who welcome home their kids from the same are not simply leaving behind a name or a style of worship.  They are abandoning the faith of the Scriptures and the faithful deposit once delivered.  It is not a mere matter of giving up water that does something or bread that is body or the Word which is God speaking, they are leaving in the dust the very red thread that connects us with the saints of old and marks our fidelity down through the generations.  Rome is surely the fool for presuming that popes or bishops can suffice to keep this apostolic unity in tact but the rest of us are the fools for presuming that holding to the idea of a book called the Bible can do the same.  "We believe the Bible" was never sufficient but now it is even less a definition of the faith.  Lutherans knew this in the sixteenth century when we practically begged our Roman opponents to show us where we had departed from Scripture, apostolic custom, catholic doctrine and practice.  

In my own community, odd names have replaced old ones (named of saints or doctrines like the Trinity).  Life something or other or edgy names designed to say "we are not your grandfather's church" are being more obvious than once thought.  They are not your grandfather's church -- not in doctrine, teaching, preaching, or practice.  Entrepreneurial Christianity in America has succeeded in learning the wrong lessons and has become peculiarly comfortable giving up what those who went before held sacred in favor of a Christianity that is hardly Christian at all.  It would be easy to dismiss or to laugh about were it not that those in the comfortable padded seats with their designer coffees in their hands do not know that the gospel they are hearing is borderline heretical and has no power to answer the guilt of sin or raise the dead.  The sooner we admit this, the better.

Private judgment or conscience. . .

Luther famously said,  “Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason, my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience would be neither right nor safe. God help me. Here I stand, I can do no other.”  It was a profound moment.  Summoned to the Diet of Worms in 1521 A.D., he was not merely asked to recant his teaching and writings but commanded to and he knew what was at stake.  It was nothing less than his own life.

Scripture and plain reason were not here equated as equal authorities but Scripture as the lens through which reason sees the truth God has written.  So also conscience was not personal or private judgment but the conscience informed by the Scriptures, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and through reason transformed by the Spirit who enlightens mind and heart.  I only wish we remembered this about Luther rather than charging him with personal and private judgment that reigns over everything else -- something that has sort of become the Protestant way of things.  So, for example, you cannot appeal to conscience as if it were over Scripture -- how can it be wrong when it feels so right.  Lutherans have been all over the page with Luther's words about conscience and yet the Reformer was not exactly plowing new ground here.  Luther was attempting to stand in the long line of those who were being compelled to conform to something other than Scripture and clear reason.

Existentialism has certainly explored more fully the nature of individual existence and freedom.  It has highlighted the importance of authentic personal choice and authentic responsibility and living and this has taken Luther's words as support for the duty and responsibility of individuals to shape their own lives, to have ownership of their actions and to be in charge of their own decisions. No one in their right mind, however, would place Luther in the modern camp of supreme personal autonomy.  Luther was a child of this age in which there was no such political, moral, or existential ideal of such personal and individual autonomy.  Indeed, Luther by his actions sided with order and would readily agree with the Scriptural condemnation of every person doing what is right in his own eyes — the charge God laid against His people (Deuteronomy 12:8; Judges 17:6; 21:25).  Indeed, Luther would find no cause in common with those who opine today that few things are really black and white and that doctrinal issues, moral questions, and Christian principles are almost indistinguishable in a sea of gray.

While politicians love the idea of personal judgment and individual conscience apart from governing authority as a whole, Luther would not countenance it.  From Mario Cuomo at Notre Dame to Biden, Roman Catholics have appealed to conscience while refusing to let clear and consistent church teaching inform their governance, especially with respect to abortion but not only so.  In the UK a priest actually had the gall to refuse the Sacrament to a politician who voted for assisted suicide.  It seems that few recall the example of St Ambrose's excommunication of the Emperor Theodosius.   Truth to power has become a political thing and less a pastoral concern for the soul.  That is a sad statement but true no less.

Some today will cite the Roman Catholic Church's Catechism that would seem to insist that conscience must be followed even when it is in error.  Of course, such a statement does not stand outside of the Spirit's own formation of conscience through Word and reason -- as Luther certainly would insist.  Conscience is an internal witness not of the autonomous self or reason apart from the Spirit but as testament to both the the working of the Spirit and the voice of God's Word.  How quickly we forget that conscience cannot approve what God's Word has condemned no matter how well reasoned such approval or how deep the desire of the heart for it.  Where Roman Catholics would insert the Church and the pope, Lutherans well remember that John Henry Newman do not fail to insist that Scripture as the unchanging voice of God still speaking the truth that saves is the foundation for the Church and for those who would be called her leaders. In our time, the danger is less that people will listen to the pope as the true authoritative voice but that popes and church leaders will appeal themselves to something other than Scripture and thereby enshrine private judgment with a status neither Luther nor the Church has meant to give it.  You cannot appeal to conscience over Scripture or to reason apart from the inspiration of the Spirit and end up where Luther did before the Diet at Worms.  No matter how attractive, it will always end up with tyranny of feelings or individual autonomy over any moral or dogmatic truth and this cannot be claimed in the name of God.

How far apart. . .

In July of 2026 the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod will find its own way to Phoenix for its 2026 Convention.  The digs will already be warm (bad joke) since the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was there this year and has left not long ago.  I know few in the ELCA anymore and know even less of their rules or style of governance.  What I do know is that one look at the reviews of that Church Wide Assembly (a title I like but could not bring myself to use after this body has claimed it) makes it clear how far apart the LCMS and the ELCA have grown.

Growing up in the 1950s, I am not sure the Augustana congregation and the Missouri one were all that different.  Okay, the Lodge issue was one difference and, not to mention, their pastor got a new car far more often than ours did.  All in all they did not seem so far apart.  Who would have thought that 70 years later, they would not even be on speaking terms.  Which they are not.  Neither one bothers to send greetings to the other when they hold their national meetings.  It is probably best since we said they were not even Lutheran anymore and they said they would rather commune with a Methodist than us.  But this is not simply a feeling.  There are well documented reasons why we are so different.

First of all, though the Missouri folks complain about voting lists and such, it is pretty clear that there is some behind the scenes maneuvering going on in the ELCA since the election of their two highest ranking leaders (Presiding Bishop and Secretary) were in and of themselves a curiosity.  The one elected their Presiding Bishop was not on any preliminary lists even though he was a prominent name.  Also curious to me, an outsider, is how prominently sexual preference and race figured into it all.  What was even more curious is that neither of the two high ranking leaders actually came up from the ranks of parish pastor or even a traditional M.Div. seminary route.  Wow.  That is odd to a Missourian.  Then there was the business of campaigning.  Oh yes, it was not really campaigning but simply repeated opportunities to address the voters, answer questions, and look the part.  Again, for all our faults in Missouri, we do not have a highly visible horse race to elect our leaders.

Then there was the constant preoccupation with sexual desire, race, and social justice.  It is not that Missourians don't have positions on these things but we actually spend more time on the actual Gospel and the work of the Kingdom related to that Gospel.  Sure, you may not like what we say but we say it not because we have a position but because Scripture does and, predictably, we are traditional as is Scripture.  We may not like history but we seldom overrule the Word of God and we seem to make our peace with its history without trying to impose 2025 social values upon the Word of God as if the Lord had it wrong and could have benefited from a crystal ball to see how it would be today.  We not only believe that marriage is the historical and Biblical shape of God's order then, we believe it applies today and into the unknown tomorrow as well.  That makes us fear to even consider treading where the ELCA seems to delight in going.  That is a big difference.

Another difference is our confidence in the national judicatories.  LCMS folk delight in calling our headquarters a Purple Palace and belittling our national presence (both false but familiar).  It would seem that the ELCA has such confidence in their national presence that they no longer even care if the constitutional provisions of their church body are passed locally.  Oh, well, if they like it, I guess that is all that matters.  Nobody in the LCMS on any side of the LCMS would ever grant to the national level anything approaching the authority to make a constitutional amendment stick.  We tried something like that once with the restructuring of 2010 and it upset one Synod President and has been the bane of the guy who followed him.  Not a good thing.

One more difference is hurt feelings.  I heard a lot of talk about offenses and hurt feelings from people speaking to the floor.  Missouri must not care about feelings since we don't hear much about that and are not that moved by those who claim such hurt.  I guess we like facts and figures.  That may be good or bad but it remains a marked difference between the ELCA and Missouri.

Then there is the issue of the Filioque.  Missouri could not even bring itself to pass a needed update to the language of the Nicene Creed (one which was so minor and so non-controversial it should not even have been debated) in 2006.  We stuck with God of God instead of God from God and we remission instead of forgiveness, among other things.  Then, in one fell swoop, the ELCA seemed to disown the Filioque without much of a theological debate and proceeded to confess the creed without it later.  Missouri is loathe to change anything but the ELCA seems ready to change everything.  I guess I should have seen that coming in 2009.

In the end, Bishop Eaton who surprisingly toppled her predecessor was granted a relatively easy way out to retirement.  I have mixed feelings about her time.  She certainly did not slow the drift of the ELCA into the mainstream of cultural and societal change nor did she seem to offer much of a theological brake to the speed at which the ELCA was heading into its sex and social justice gospel.  She is probably tired of it all and just wants to be left alone.  I get it.  

Unfortunately, the ELCA seems to grab every headline along the way and pulls Missouri down with it.  The world is so confused that the idiots at Westboro Baptist Church picketed our youth at their national gathering this summer -- thinking, apparently, that they were picketing the ELCA.  It is a common error.  Missouri and the ELCA are further apart than ever and few seem to know that there is a difference.  Ouch.  I guess nobody mistakes the ELCA for Missouri but it gets on our last nerve when people presume we are them.  Such the saga of the ELCA and Missouri.  Once they were like 8th graders at a sock hop at opposite ends of the gym staring at each other.  They we tried dating and ended up marrying the sister of the Lutheran Church in America for a few years.  Now we are like divorced people who cannot stand to be in the same room with the ex.   I am not even sure we bother to formally fight anymore.  Ignoring each other seems to be so much more fun.

A few more thoughts. . .

There was significant push back a few months ago on my comparison of the way we approach germophobia, individual cups, and sin.   "It is the logical fallacy of false equivalence to compare "germs or sins" with "cup or cups", because it is not a sin to use an individual communion ciup [sic] during the Lord's Supper."   But of course I was not making an equivalence.  I was pointing out that we tend to treat things very differently and in this case comparing how we treat those whose fear of germs would lead them away from the chalice and how we treat those whose sins are culturally acceptable even if Scripturally immoral.  But since the push back sort of illustrates my point, let me try again.

In both the parishes I served, the chalice was not used prior to my coming.  In fact, one parish did not even own a chalice.  In both parishes it was a fight simply to offer the chalice as a choice.  For many weeks in both parishes, myself, my family, and few others communed with the chalice while nearly everyone else the common cup.  In both parishes at least one person rose up to insist that the purificator be displayed after the distribution so that people could see with their own eyes how unclean the chalice was and why it should not be allowed.  Germophobia was acceptable -- even more so in the wake of Covid -- and was a semi-official position in more than a few places.  I suspect the example is fairly common across Lutheranism.  My point was and remains this:  we find it tolerable to accept those who would reject the chalice out of fear of germs or personal distaste but we find it intolerable to point out sin.   

Yes, it is easy to point out the sins of others but cohabitation has become normal and it is seldom approached directly because everyone in the congregation has a son, daughter, grandchild, parent, or grandparent or some other family member who is currently cohabiting.  But they are still good people and we should not upset them because they are still going to church.  This is but one example.  Try removing from membership other family members who were once confirmed and remain on membership rolls but have not darkened the door to the church for decades.  Or try to raise up any one of a thousand other culturally acceptable sins and call the sinners to repentance and you will find how hard it is for us to acknowledge wrongs and hold people accountable for them.  The sad reality of multiple divorces for less than Biblical reasons or the norm of birth control for no other reason than the couple does not want to be bothered by a child are additional examples of sacred cows we dare not address.  But no one should ever question germophobia or personal distaste for the chalice.  The point here is not to make a moral equivalence (I did not nor did I mean to imply such) but to say how we are more comfortable dealing with germs than sins -- real sins and not imagined ones.

You may argue with me if you wish but the reality is that many congregations would find no problem in removing the chalice but would fire a pastor or leave if the individual cups were removed.  In many congregations the same pastor would be fired or the family leave if someone has the gall to condemn any one of the comfortable sins which have become culturally acceptable today.  This is the disparity that I was pointing out and if you got your feathers ruffled, so be it.  I stand by my words.  We find it easier to accommodate the fears of people than to deal with their sins.  No, I am not presuming I am without sin or any other pastor is perfect.  No clergy deal with sins from the vantage point of their personal righteousness but from the point of the Word of God.  For that matter, since individual cups did not even come about until a hundred years ago, I feel safe to say that our Lord has not sanctioned them nor our fears even though we have made them both normal.  The point remains.  How we deal with fears and sins sends a message we may not want to admit but it is hard to deny. 

Unrealistic expectations. . .

A recent Lutheran Forum journal and a number of online forums have signaled disappointment by some in the LCMS -- disappointment about the present and despair about the future. It was generally directed against the LCMS, Inc.  I get that.  Demographics are not our strong suit as Lutherans.  We are gray and white in a world which wants youth and diversity.  Certainly we are not the LCMS I knew as a child -- one where every 54 hours a new congregation was born.  Both of those I have served were born in that boom era (established in 1959).  Some of it is related to the retirement and deaths of some of the big names in Lutheranism (folks I grew up learning to admire and to whom I have paid attention).  

Gone are the likes of Pelikan and Marty, the Maiers, and a list of other national names that seemed to signal that the LCMS had come of age in the world.  Gone are the days when we dominated media (The Lutheran Hour).  Even after the seminaries have built and rebuilt following the Battle for the Bible, I am not sure either has earned the same deference and respect throughout the Synod and on both sides of the altar rail as there once was.  Headlines have dampened our appreciation for the colleges and universities we built as their fortunes have declined along with the numbers of church workers that were the reason for their being -- at least at one time.  So I understand some of the angst but I also fear that too much is placed on the national jurisdiction and it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy to be disappointed.

Are all the things we hope for the domain of the national LCMS identity?  Have we created unrealistic expectations?  I fear that we are too focused on solutions from a national level and have placed too much of our hope on national leaders and national programs.  It is not healthy for us on any level.  We need to step back and think about this.  Or we will simply set ourselves up for more disappointment and fuel the engine of our despair even more.  We need to take stock of a few things.

The mission of the LCMS in the US has always been driven by districts and circuits.  If there are problems in renewing declining congregations or failing to plant new ones, they are not the fault nor is the solution to be found on a national level.  Yes, we can put together great national programs but they do nothing unless we utilize them on the local level.  Renewal of congregations and the planting of new ones happens not in St. Louis but where there are local parishes and pastors working together with support, encouragement, and some funds helping from circuits and districts.  We are only as strong as the circuit (since districts are accumulations of circuits).  Local pastors coming together monthly for conversation, study, encouragement, support, and professional growth has always been the key to our vitality.  Build up the circuits and the mission will improve, the districts will be stronger, and the Synod will be stronger.

The recruitment of church workers is not the job of the seminary or the university -- it is certainly not the job of the Synod leadership.  If we will improve the numbers of young men and women for church work vocations, it will happen locally as pastor and people identify, seek out, encourage, and support youth to consider those callings.  Nobody in St. Louis should be burdened with the task that rightfully belongs to the parish pastor, parish leaders, and parishioners.  It is great that we have good folks helping nationally but they will only succeed if we succeed in the task of raising up men and women for those church work careers.  It will happen more fully when we as people pray for our pastors and church workers, pray for those considering church work vocations, speak highly of our church workers and of the calling, and put our money where our mouths are.  Complaint departments do little to encourage anyone to become a pastor or teacher or other church worker.

There is a cottage industry of people (pastors and lay) seeking information, answers, and help in learning about and living out the Christian life.  From conferences to podcasts, look at the abundance of resources available to us.  It is regional more than national and that is a good thing.  Where we once depended upon very few such endeavors, now every pastor and church worker has a full menu of choices and options.  This is a good thing.  I worked with those planning the 2023 LCMS Institute of Liturgy, Preaching, and Church Music and we cautiously hoped for 400.  We had more.  It would have been great if there had been 2000 but we were competing in a crowded field of intensive church work conferences.  That is not a bad thing.  It is great.  Maybe the days of a mega conference have waned but look at the things available in our own backyards.  It is amazing and all done without national leadership, national resources, and national money.  This is how it should be.

What the national Synod can do, it is doing.  Missions is flourishing in terms of money and people and this is why the Synod was created -- to foster the international missions.  Publishing is flourishing in terms of resources new and historic and this is why Synod was created -- to publish doctrinally solid resources for the churches.  We have smaller numbers in our headquarters but they are working very hard on our behalf and we should be grateful but we dare not place a burden on them that is not theirs to carry nor blame them for our own local failures.  Even Rome has learned that bishops can screw things up but it is the local parish that is the backbone of that church body.  A good pope helps but the rubber hits the road where the people gather around altar, pulpit, and font.  We always knew this but it became convenient to complain rather than to acknowledge what is ours to do locally.  

It is time we stop placing unrealistic expectations on a few national leaders and their support staff and took up the cause that belongs to us at a local level.  I say this as a person who has spent his whole life and career in two congregations and without apology have seen this as the highest calling and purpose.  I am neither exemplary nor a role model but simply a pastor who did his job as best he was able and, though not always nor easy, it bore fruit.  If we work this hard and are faithful locally and we do not grow, we have nothing to apologize for.  It is the Lord who gives growth.  But if we do not work hard and are not faithful on the local level, it is not the fault of national leaders or programs.

Thanksgiving. . .

On this day, the feast day of St. Bartholomew (aka Nathaniel), I was installed as Pastor of my first parish, Resurrection, Cairo, New York.  I had already been there a month and been preaching and presiding since their vacancy pastor had served some two years and was longing for relief.  I well remember nearly everything from that first month or so -- from the surprise of showing up at what would be our home as well as the parish where I would serve (without cell phones or much communication at all) to the tensions in the parish that dampened things on both sides of the rail.  But it was the beginning of something better than I could have ever imagined and I still think of Cairo as home in so many ways.

The congregation had suffered the unsurprising divisions of the Charismatic Movement that hit one side of the aisle but not the other.  Both sides thought their best hope for a pastor lie in calling from the Seminary though neither expected someone to show up looking so very different than they might have expected or desired.  It was hard -- hard on them and hard on us.  The first few years were exceptionally difficult and were made tolerable by a few families who adopted us into their homes and lives in ways that continue to amaze me and made us very grateful.  In the end, the success of those nearly 13 years had less to do with me and me knowing what I was doing than the Spirit, the Word, and the means of grace.  It actually needs to be said -- the Word and the Sacraments and the work of the Spirit actually do accomplish wonderful things.  I was privileged to be an agent and instrument through which that work was done.

In the end, these good folks made me a pastor.  The Seminary had educated me and the Church had consented to my ordination but they made me a pastor.  Initially I had thought I was destined for more than a mere parish pastor but they taught me that this was indeed the highest of callings and one I should be grateful and honored in which to serve.  It happened through preparing sermons, planning worship services, catechesis of young and old, baptism of children, burial of the dead, consoling the grieving, visiting the sick and housebound, and listening as well as speaking.  So on this 45th anniversary of that formal installation, I can only say thank you to the good people of Resurrection Lutheran Church, Cairo, New York, for making me into the pastor I am.  Thankfully, a good dose of forgiveness from me and to me have aided the whole process along the way to erase the sharp edges of that past and to fill in the valleys so that I can remember these good people with joy and thanksgiving before the Lord.  So many are now gone and their memories burn in my heart and mind and some are still there contending for the Lord with my daily prayers for their labors.  I have only served two parishes and both have been difficult blessings in which God surprised me with a future I had not expected and surrounded me with people to shape me into the pastor I have become (at least the good parts of me).

 

The power of a voice. . .

Many decades before he passed, I began calling my father nearly every day.  It was usually before 6 am and it typically caught him as he finished breakfast and was readying himself to head to his store for another day of work.  The conversations seldom lasted more than 5-10 minutes.  They were about usual things and rarely about anything earth shattering.  They were the words of a son talking to his dad and a dad talking to his son about nothing and everything.  They began when long distance was expensive and the congregation had a flat rate plan that allowed me to call and so I did from my own work day begun in my church office.  Later a cell phone replaced the desk phone but the voices remained the same, aging a bit over the years.  They were conversations filled with love and affection though hardly ever did either of us actually talk about how we felt about each other.  They remain precious memories but, more importantly, are the reason why I still hear the sound of his voice more than a decade after he died.

For all that technology offers to us today, it has stolen some things from us as well.  The screens replaced the handsets but, more importantly, the image of words on those screens has replaced the sound of voices.  We may continue to communicate but we do not talk.  Texting is fine when you need to but it does not and can never substitute for the sound of a voice.  We try as hard as we can to replace the nuance of tone and tenor in the human voice but emojis and fonts are a poor way to encapsulate emotion or give hint to a mood.  Worse than this is that when the person is gone, the texts do nothing to help us remember the sound of the voice that our ear ache to hear again.  They leave us with raw and basic words shared but nothing of the rich and nuanced conversation of people who speak with voices one to another.  I fear what some day the future will steal, the day when our limited speaking will be reduced even further.

Working from home deprives the workers from these conversations.  Zoom meetings are contrived and orchestrated more than real.  Emails and texts are effective to get information to another but they deprive us of the voices and sounds that convey the person.  I write here and just about everywhere as I speak.  As I write these words I am speaking them out loud -- first in my mind and often into the emptiness of my home study.  Words are made for voices and voices for words.  My grandchildren love to hear their grandmother and I read to them.  Stories from books come alive with the sound of the voice.  Sermons heard with the ear are very different from those read on screens.  Yet these conversations have proven to be fragile and rarer than ever before.  I hope that you will not settle for the alternatives but go the extra mile to engage others with the sound of your voice and to listen to the voices around you.  These are not intrusions to your solitude but the very means for family and community.  I hope and pray that we will resist the technology that replaces the sound of the voice with a screen filled with words or images.  Word are not simply my stock in trade but my delight.  If we learn anything of God, we know that they are His stock in trade as well.  The Word made flesh can certainly be read but it is meant to be heard.  Hearing God's voice, what can we say but "Amen." 

Sometimes it just doesn't work. . .

The tired and weary examples of words that have come to mean something new and different are manifold and need not be repeated here.  Suffice it to say that language is not an end but a means and when it is constantly in motion the thing is stripped of its value.  Some have tried to apply the changing nature of language to Scripture and the faith in the hopes of opening it up to those who do not know its voice.  The end result has not and will not be to expand but to contract, until what is known becomes doubt and what is fact becomes mere supposition.  In so doing, the faith ends up weak and uncertain, hardly a word worth our attention and certainly not a word that has the power to save.

Classical, that is orthodox, Christianity has not nor was it ever a passing phase.  The great lie of modernity is to suggest that somehow Nicea was an aberration and not the norm, that the overarching goal was not what does the Scripture say but what do we need or what can we sell.  In this 1700th year of the orthodox and catholic expression of the Trinity in Unity, we are given terms that mean something and their meaning is precisely to express and confess what it is that the Scriptures say.  Some have suggested that this is all rather passé, a passing phase that has come and gone and now we are in a new era and facing new challenges.  God must be redefined just as the faith, doctrine, and morality must undergo a freshening.  All of this is especially due to the change of language itself.

What has happened by those intent upon refreshing the face of Christianity is something far more than a facelift.  Catholic and orthodox Christianity has, to state it bluntly, simply been replaced by a brand new religion that, somewhat inconveniently for Christianity, borrows the terminology and vocabulary of orthodox and catholic Christianity but redefines them.  While this is certainly true of other aspects of the faith, it is precisely true of the Scriptures.  By raising doubt or expressing the fear of confusion over what the terms and vocabulary of Scriptures mean, the Scriptures themselves are sidelined and become merely one witness from one time and not the norming norm for all time.  Their power can be restrained by the simple evolution of language until no one can know really what something says or means at all.

I hate that the sex examples are the easiest to cite but the fact is that they are.  So Scripture cannot possibly mean what it says when it forbids homosexual behavior and since the terms are euphemisms for the explicit definition, it is quite possible that it does not mean at all what people have thought for a very long time.  Furthermore, since Scripture does not know as we do now the idea of a long term marital status between those of the same sex, it cannot possible be addressing what has been thought and must necessarily be condemning what is common to both homosexuality and heterosexuality -- rape, domination, and non-consensual sexual acts.  And there you have it.  The terms have changed, the meaning has changed, Scripture has changed, and Christianity has changed.

Sex examples are easiest but they are not unique.  Salvation is not about sin any longer but about the triumph of love.  The cross is not about the payment for sin's guilt and the bearing of our punishment out of His desire to save us but simply about love -- how far it goes in pursuit of those loved.  The old terms of atonement are gladly banished in favor of simple terms, even Biblical ones, that surround but were never seen to replace the juridical shape of our redemption.  Christ is victor (which He surely is) but not in addition to priest and victim.  No, He is victor to replace the outmoded and outdated concepts of sin and blood atonement which the Bible never meant to be dominant anyway.

The problem in all of this is that it just doesn't work.  Eventually it is obvious that this is no mere remodeling scheme but the wholesale transformation of Christianity.  The same vocabulary is used, the same language is spoken, but with different meaning, it says something completely different and Christianity becomes something alien and strange to what it was and is according to Scripture.  It ends up being a golden calf of a god that looks like and talks like the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob but is not the same God at all.  You can change the meaning of the terms and you must adjust to the changing shape of language itself but the goal is to preserve and conserve -- not to reinvent.  That is something modern Christianity seems to have forgotten.

The end result is that when people gather for the Divine Service but do not intend or expect to meet Christ in the bread of His body and the cup of His blood, it is not the same Mass at all.  When people hear the Gospel and look upon the cross as example of love instead of the place where full atonement was made and peace between God and man, it is not the same Gospel.  When people confess the words of the Nicene Creed but do not mean Virgin or birth, for example, then it is not the same God and not the same Christ.  There is salvation in Him and in no other -- no other name under heaven and on earth by which any will be saved.  Words may change in meaning naturally but the Gospel is eternal.  To use the evolution of language to reinvent Christianity is to rot it from the inside out and to surrender to the devil something he need not even work to accomplish. 

Try it. . . you'll like it

 

How odd it is. . .

Everyone with an ounce of intelligence knows that the chief purpose of episcopal leadership is to conserve the catholic doctrine and practice within a given area.  Bishops or their equivalents with a different name were not and should not now be elected on the basis of their proven leadership, innovation, financial skills, or even personal piety.  It is their faithfulness that commends them to consideration as the churches judge them competent to fulfill this most basic and solemn calling of preserving against heresy and passing down faithful the sacred deposit.  They are to be men of Scripture, deep in the Word of God more than in the ways of the world.  They are to be pastoral men whose experience and expertise have been honed in the natural interplay of pastor to his people.  It is not simply nor chiefly about age or credentials but about faithfulness.  When did we forget this? 

Rome has more bishops than anybody and they have forgotten this.  Even Leo XIV who was once in charge of sorting out men for dioceses seems to have fallen behind the ball in this.  He has passed upon people whose pastoral skills are abysmal, whose theological leanings are suspect, and whose agendas are corrupted with illusions of power and authority.  It is not about the Latin Mass but about the very essence of the role of the bishop and how he administers the office conferred upon him not as despot but as collegial member of a fraternity commonly dedicated to preservation, conservation, and the faithful transmission of that which was once delivered to the saints long ago and now is delivered to the saints today.

Bishops and those called by a different name but who have the same charge are in danger of killing the very churches they were placed there to enliven with the profound Word and Sacraments.  We saw heresy come into Anglicanism not through the back door but with a nice miter and cope, walking in solemn procession, leading that body into heresy over Scripture, the nature of Christ's saving work, the sex issues from birth control to same sex attraction to gender identity, and a host of other ills.  Methodists had their own hierarchical travesties of leadership and split from the top down with the leaders presiding over the shipwreck.  In the ELCA it was likewise episcopal leadership that spawned the blood loss of several mission members by those who insisted that sex liberation was more important than fidelity to Scripture and the catholic tradition.  This was something easily accomplished once the authority of Scripture had been diluted to merely one voice among many informing them of what they believe, teach, and confess. 

When episcopal leadership began to bestowed upon those who are cultivated for advancement, when it was corrupted by agendas over Scripture and the catholic tradition, and when it became distant from altar and pulpit and more at home in boardrooms and cocktail parties, the church was the loser.  When faithfulness to the unchanging Gospel and the Word of the Lord that endures forever gave way to innovation, experimentation, novelty, and business acumen in the candidates for the episcopacy, the churches began to lose their way.  When power took over the hearts of those who were meant to serve, they become like unbending rulers who dictated to the people rather than leading by example, speaking the truth in love for the sake of the Gospel and the souls of the faithful entrusted to their care.

How does anyone expect the faithful to have confidence in their leaders when you hear of such things as a lavender mafia or the promotion of cronies or the political compromise of people who will not stir things up (not even for the sake of the truth that endures forever)?  We are at a crisis stage more over who are our leaders than the corruption welling up from the pews.  It is time now more than ever before for the churches to remember that faithfulness in preserving, conserving, and passing on the Gospel, the Scriptures, the means of grace, and the heart of true charity that loves the sinner without glorifying the sin are the men we need in every jurisdiction.  Bishops are like ants.  Once you get them, they are hard to get rid of and though they do not seem like threats, they will corrupt everything in the household of God if given enough time.  We pray all the time for God to preserve us from the threats of the devil and the world, perhaps we need to pray even harder for Him to preserve us from unfaithful bishops and their kind.

In case you missed it. . .

In case you have not heard, there is little progress on a new Archbishop of Canterbury.  It seems there have been procedural hitches to the way you choose a new one (Lord knows, it is not by merit).  There are a number of hoops to go through in addition to boxes to be checked (socialists and sociologists are okay but sincere and orthodox Christians make everyone nervous).  It was once a plum job but now is seen as a terrible one.  Few whom you would want want to be considered.  So they have nothing new to report and it would seem like finding a new Archbishop of Canterbury could take as long as King Charles might end up reigning.  

The archbishop of Canterbury is profoundly significant but his authority profoundly lacking.  Although he leads the Church of England (CoE), sits on the seat of St. Augustine of Canterbury, the “Apostle to the English,” and speaks for global Anglicans, the sex problems have become a muddle.  The Anglicans from the Global South had little respect for Welby and are notoriously hard to please simply because they do not embrace the social, moral, and sexual liberation that has characterized the West.  The West insists that the candidate respect the distance they have made between them and any representative Biblical and orthodox understanding of marriage, gender, and sexual desire.  He will most certainly be a modernist of some type though it would not hurt if he were an evangelical wannabe who is okay wearing the historic vestments of the job.  He should be a person of some stature and reputation but not so much he will have offended anyone nor should he have occasion to do so down the road.  He might not be a man but probably will be since a woman or a man who thinks he is a woman or woman who thinks she is a man would probably be the last one to wear the title.  He works for the government, governs in the name of the Monarch, but has no real authority to do anything.  What he should not do is make everyone angry the way Welby did.  It would not hurt if he is a fence mender because there are enough bruised egos and hurt feelings across the globe to make that his full-time job.  He should know Jesus but not take Him too seriously and not be afraid to ditch what Jesus says in order to stay Archbishop.  Above all, he must look good in purple (and in both historic vestments and some new stuff that looks like it was last worn on Star Trek).  Got any ideas? 

“The Queen is inseparable from the Church of England. What about God? I think he’s what’s called ‘an optional extra’.”  Great line.  Another one.  "If you want to be a bishop, avoid pastoral work."  

Abrahamic faiths. . .

Those who study religion love to lump Judaism, Islam, and Christianity together under the heading of Abrahamic faiths.  I can see why.  Studying religion is like comparing recipes -- an exercise in trying to find parallels by comparison.  The only problem is that at least when you are comparing a recipe, you notice the differences.  Modern day religious scholars seem somewhat immune to the differences and prone to exaggerate the similarities.

Having served in a region of the country where it was more common to find multiple Jewish synagogues than other Missouri Synod Lutheran congregations, I have a deep appreciation for what Jews have suffered at the hands of others.  I have no wish to add to their suffering but I cannot avoid taking issue with the heading Abrahamic faith's especially with regard to Judaism and Christianity.  That said, it is incredible that Abraham has become in whom the faiths are connected and not the Lord whom Abraham believed.

Though there might be a human desire to lump Judaism, Islam, and Christianity under one umbrella, the Christian must pay attention to the many ways that Jesus refutes the whole idea.  According to the New Testament, there is only Abrahamic faith—Christianity.  Though Popes have made accommodations with the Jews and conservative Protestants have fostered relationships with Israel for their millenial pursuits, Jesus does not equivocate.  When the Jews claimed, “Abraham is our father!” (John 8:39), Jesus immediately denies this by insisting “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. (John 8:39-44) You can read further for an even stronger indictment of Jesus against the Jews who did not believe in Him.

Christians have danced around this for a very long time.  We think we are doing a favor by shying away from the words of Christ but we are doing no such thing.  Jesus is not a Jew hater or an anti-Semite for saying what He said.  He is affirming the truth that exists for all who would be saved.  There are not multiple paths to God but one.  Abraham's God is Jesus.  Jesus insists upon this over and over again.  One way, one truth, and one life.  He is that way, that truth, and that life.  There is no Father to be known except the one whom we know through Christ.  By presuming a special relationship continues to exist apart from the Messiah whom the Father has sent, we deny part of what Christ has claimed for Himself and in doing so we encourage a falsehood that will not save but can condemn.

This Jesus who is born of Mary by the Holy Spirit -- is He who He claims to be or is He not?  For a very long time I have wondered about the special relationship commonly claimed between Roman Catholics and Jews and between some Protestants and Jews.  How can we approach Jews as if the covenant relationship between God and them continues apart from Christ and be faithful to Christ and His own words?  Christians and Jews are not different sides of the same coin.  The Jew does not tell us who Jesus is but they do say who Jesus is not -- He is not Messiah.  It is clear from the Jewish point of view that Christians must worship a different God (Triune) than their God, that this God has a very different means of saving (grace by faith), and that while Christians claim the Old Testament Jews have no claim on the New Testament.  In the face of increasing violence toward Jews, it is always worth remembering that the distinction we are making here is theological and not cultural.  Before such unjust violence, the Christian must stand with the Jew but that does not erase the problems we have theologically.

The Reform Rabbi James Glazier addresses this point of the website of Reform Judaism: 

The essential difference between Jews and Christians is that Christians accept Jesus as messiah and personal savior. Jesus is not part of Jewish theology. Amongst Jews, Jesus is not considered a divine being. Therefore all holidays that have a connection to the life of Jesus are not part of Jewish life and/or practice (Christmas, Easter, Lent, Advent, Palm Sunday, etc.).

Judaism originates as a result of the covenantal relationship between God and Abraham. The Bible (Hebrew Bible which doesn't include New Testament for reasons stated previously) is our sacred literature. The relationship between the Jewish people and God is documented in the text. In the Bible, the history, culture, language, theology, and practices of the Jewish people are presented.

Jesus insists that Abraham rejoiced to see His day.  Jesus insists that Abraham's faith is fulfilled in Him.  Furthermore, Jesus insists that He is the key to the Scriptures -- from the Law to the Prophets to the Writings -- it is all about Him.  Jesus is not tangential to every text but its very purpose and each text is revealed in Christ just as Christ reveals each text.   On the road to Emmaus, the risen Jesus insists to the two disciples walking along the way that He is the subject of Scripture (here meaning Old Testament or Hebrew Bible and unfolds in those Scriptures all “things concerning himself in all the Scriptures,” beginning with “Moses and with all the prophets” (Luke 24:27).  To the eleven (minus Judas), Jesus says the exact same thing though in even more specific terms: “all things which are written about me in the Law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (24:44).  Jesus is not claiming the New Testament is about Him -- an obvious claim -- but that the entire Hebrew Bible prophesies of Him -- of His incarnation, obedient life, life-giving suffering, death defiant resurrection, and the glory of heaven opened to all believers in Him.

While some might like to lump together Judaism, Islam, and Christianity under the heading of Abrahamic faiths, it seems to me that this contributes more to misunderstanding than understanding.  I can well understand the unwillingness of Jews to accept Islam as an equal religion under the heading of Abrahamic faith, it is perfectly clear that any comfort in trying to find accommodation between Judaism and Christianity is equally offensive to both.  It is not that Christians have made this judgment but Christ has.  His insistence is that any Abrahamic faith recognizes that He is the Son of God in flesh and blood, the Christ (Messiah) long foretold, and the only name under heaven and on earth by which any who will be saved shall be saved.  Honestly, I do not know any other way to say it and be faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ and true to His Word.  Christianity and Judaism are incompatible but that does not mean that Christians and Jews must be at enmity with one another.  If anything, it ought to give a sense of urgency to the cause of proclaiming Christ to all people, starting from Jerusalem.  In Christ, the world finds not a rejection from God but an invitation.  He who was first sought out by the Magi looking for the birthplace of the King of the Jews and whose cross is adorned by the title King of the Jews wants to provide for everyone the grace to be saved.  You cannot go to the Manger or the Cross and not come face to face with this inclusive exclusive truth.  What makes sense to religious historians without a faith, makes no sense to Abraham and his faith.

 

Thank you. . . Auburn and Cupertino

This was my first experience teaching continuing education classes for Concordia Theological Seminary.  It was a first experience but an amazing one!  First of all, the arrangements made by LeeAnna Rondot from the Seminary were amazing and I was well taken care of.  Second, I cannot say enough about the Pastors at both sites.  It was a little taxing (5,000 miles of traveling) but I loved it!

In Auburn, Michigan, Pastor Schian was a wonderful host not only to Grace but also welcoming us to his home.  Thank you Pastor and Ruth!  Also, I enjoyed the help and support of their Cantor, Nathan Beethe, who is not only a wonderful parish musician but also a most gracious and helpful host!  Thanks to the pastors who preached for the services, to the congregation for their welcome and gracious care, and to those who attended for their interest and attention.  It was also great to renew a friendship of some 45 years at the class and visit Zehnder's and Bronners!  Thank you and God bless you all.

Only a few days later, I boarded a plane for Cupertino, California.  It was not my first time near San Francisco but my first time at Lutheran Church of Our Savior.  Thank you to Pastor Bestul for being such a gracious and welcoming host and to his family who put up with me in their home.  God bless you all and I could not have asked for kinder and more caring hosts!  Thank you to Pastor Debner for serving as co-host at LCOS and chauffer and for engaging me in such a great conversation that I was disappointed to arrive at the airport so quickly.  Thanks to them for their preaching and worship also and to their faithful organist for her leadership from the console.  Thanks also to the many who attended (pastors, vicars, and lay) for your kind attention and thoughtful participation.  

In the end it was a learning experience for me -- both in terms of the content of the material and the friendships made and renewed.  I cannot say enough for welcome and support I was given and pray [pun] that the class was fruitful, encouraging, and provided good reflection on the topic.  I have attended some of these in the past, hosted some in my parish, but this is my first experience on the other side.  I can only speak here of the Fort Wayne side of things but the array of classes is amazing and what a blessing to the Church to have this kind of program.  Next time around, why not survey the offerings from the school and sign up yourself!  Believe me, you will be refreshed and renewed by the experience. It has been amazing!

 

From one extreme to another . .

I blogged in August of 2024 how the Lutheran World Federation was making a gesture to the Orthodox by coming out (yes, pun intended), for the elimination the filioque from the Nicene Creed.  As many already know by this point, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America actually did just that by act of their Church Wide Assembly just weeks ago.  

Just in case you are scratching your head, this addition to the creed nearly 700 years after it was adopted became a major reason for the breach between the East and the West -- although it was never the only cause.  By the time Benedict VIII had added “and the Son” to the third article of the Nicene Creed and changed (some say clarified) the procession of the Holy Spirit, there were a host of issues leading to a division.  Of course, the Nicene Creed was ratified by one ecumenical council in 325 and changed slightly but adopted by another ecumenical council in 381.  That did not stop then Pope Benedict VIII from making a change in the wording of the creed nor did he ever consult with the East in making the change.  It could be said that this was less a theological act of clarification than it was a bald and bold assertion of his alleged universal jurisdiction in the whole Church -- something that the East had refused to acknowledge before and still do.  So it was that the “Great Schism” of 1054 occurred some five centuries before the Reformation and then dwarfing the Reformation in terms of the sheer numbers of people involved.

Okay, back to my point.  The chin scratching thing in this is the presumption of the LWF or the ELCA that this represents a significant change and perhaps the removal of a major impediment in their relations with the Orthodox.  That is simply laughable.  There is a greater chance that Rome will recognize the legitimacy of the Missouri Synod's confession, ministry, and sacraments than the East would do the same for the ELCA.  I could say the same about Missouri and the East cuddling up long before the ELCA got in the same county with the Orthodox.  Even though both of those are a stretch, it does point out the problem here.  You cannot be concerned with something like the procession of the Holy Spirit either from the Father or the Father and the Son and then get on the train to Hootersville by ignoring everything else and ordaining women, abandoning the male/female shape of marriage by God's design, embrace the fluidity of genders, proclaim a gospel of climate change and social justice, and such.  These will kill any hopes of an accommodation between the ELCA and the East long before you even get to the Creed.

And then there is the other problem.  Do you think that you can remove these three words from the memory of those who regularly still confess the Nicene Creed in the congregations of the ELCA?  Will there be creed police or a goon squad to hush the lips of those who dare to speak from memory what they have confessed over the years?  What about the books in the pews?  Will pages be ripped out or little stickers send out to blank out the words from the pages or bottles of White Out distributed from the national office in Chicago?  Who is going to explain this to the folks in the pews (especially since they did such a good job giving a reasoned explanation for the ordination of women or the sex change of the 2009 CWA?  Who is going to review all the publications which had been sent out and correct their mistake in the Creed or point to the change so that folks get it?

It is a cheap and easy gesture.  It looks good for the imagery of it all but it makes so little difference and it shows something terribly sad.  The ELCA has no "sacred cows" when it comes to the major doctrines of the Creed and owes no allegiance to the West there but has revealed that opening all roles to women, embracing all definitions of marriage, and welcoming every gender anyone can feel are so very much more important than a serious discussion of the Trinity.  It is as curious as liberals who cozy up to the Muslims who violate every tenet of their progressive worldview only to yell at conservative Christians for being misogynist or homophobic or pillagers of the earth.  Oh, yeah, that makes real sense.  Let me just say that this is a reminder that we need an honest realignment of Christianity with those who hold to the orthodox and catholic faith and sacramental life together and those who play with religion as if it were a tool of cultural change in another.  But we all know that will not happen anytime sooner than the Orthodox getting into bed with a willing ELCA.

If that is all you want. . .

More and more I am hearing the cracks of division in a church body that has always had some conflicts.  This time it is about the training of pastors and the use of alternative tracks outside the LCMS seminaries.  Of course, it could be done.  Should it be done?  That is another matter.  The same is true of the remains of the worship wars in a church body where some insist that people are making an idol out of worship or the liturgy and others are insisting that without the use of the hymnal you are not quite Lutheran.  Of course, you can have "worship" without the hymnal.  Should it be done?  That is another matter.  Yet behind these and other sources of dispute among us.  Under it all is a lingering question about what we want the "Synod" to be.  

Although Missouri does not talk about Synod as church, we have always operated in this way.  Without calling the Synod church, we retain to Synod rights and powers, chief among them the training and rostering of church workers and the supervision of doctrine and practice.  If that is not what church is and does, what is?  Again, I understand the Missouri peculiarity but the reality is that we have always maintained from the get go that this Synod, while not formally church, operates as church.  The aims and goals of the Synod as maintained in the Constitution certainly support this idea.

Some, however, have in the past and now even more so disagree.  Synod is not church at all but simply a collection of churches, mostly autonomous but cooperating for the sake of themselves even more than any corporate benefit.  For these people, the LCMS and its future are in the direction of a looser confederation of regions, districts, and congregations in which decisions and responsibilities are increasingly local.  In the ministry, for example, these would add to the residential seminaries a local authority to train, examine, and certify church workers, pastors especially.  Why not?  It could be done.  Should it be done?  That is the debate.

In the same way, there are those who talk almost incessantly about trusting the local pastors to decide what is good, right, and salutary for the local situation.  This applies to everything from liturgy or not to choice of the church's song and songbooks to who is admitted to the Sacrament.  We were formed to promote and to value a high degree of uniformity not as demand but as deference to our unity and identity and yet there has always been some degree of latitude in worship practices.  Now, however, that difference has become so pronounced that the reality is we have no fellowship between the evangelical style folks and the liturgical ones.  This means that if people from an evangelical style congregation moved to where there was only a liturgical LCMS one, they would probably not join but would find one whose worship practices were similar to the one from which they came.  And the reverse is also true.  This means that worship is not simply a practice but practices of worship have broken fellowship.  What kind of unity is there when something like this happens routinely?  Is our trust to be so deep that we ignore the broken nature of our relationships as people as well as clergy?

The reality is that there is already an option for those who prefer a loose confederation or association of congregations.  It is called the LCMC -- Lutheran Churches in Mission for Christ.  Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ is an association of Evangelical Lutheran congregations which describes itself as an affiliation of autonomous Lutheran churches and not a denomination.  The latitude and diversity that conflict with a church body or synod which has boundaries of its fellowship and the willing surrender of some diversity for the sake of unity is not a problem for an association which exists to support that autonomy.  In fact, it does not even prevent you from holding simultaneous membership in several such associations.  What it provides are services for the sake of the individual and autonomous members -- things like pensions and such.  A pension system and a health care option should not be the sole reason for belonging to the LCMS.  This is especially true when another option exists.

Let me be clear.  I am not asking anyone to leave.  What I am saying is that rather than convert the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod into something it is not and with it risk all sorts of greater conflict, division, and fractioning of the weakened Lutheran identity in the US, why not simply join a group that not only allows such diversity and autonomy but fosters it?  It is an honest question.  I want the Synod to be united and positively united in our common confession, identity, practice, and mission.  I would be so happy if the squabbles ended and we coalesced around who we say we are in the Augustana.  I get chills dreaming of the day when we were not fighting each other but laboring together in the greater cause of the Gospel in a world increasingly unfriendly to Christ crucified and risen.  I am not asking anyone to leave and would be sad if they did -- unless the only things keeping them are the services Missouri provides and the umbilical cords of history, pension, health care, and such.  The truth is that these are not sustainable reasons for belonging over the long haul.  The truth is that the Synod cannot become something it never was and does not see itself as without amputating much of what it is along the way until there is nothing left for anyone, much less for Christ.  The LCMS does not have to exist but it is pretty clear that it has long been the strongest as well as an often lonely voice for confessional Lutheranism here and throughout the world.  What is served by destroying the LCMS to make it into something different?  And, for those who think I am only addressing those to the left of me, I would suggest that remaking the LCMS into a purity cult will accomplish the same end.