Pandemic. . .

Reading headlines may be bad but sometimes reading the story underneath the headline is not good either.  So it was when a headline caught my eye only to read that the story was even worse.  What am I talking about?  The pandemic of depression that has hit America.  Those who measure the pulse and attitude of Americans have said that the percentage of U.S. adults currently reporting to have or are now being treated for depression is almost one out of five.  It is greater than 18% for both the year 2024 and for 2025 to date.  That is up about eight percentage points since the initial measurement in 2015 began to be taken.

If that is not bad, take a look at the faces behind that 18.3%.  We are talking about an estimated 47.8 million Americans suffering from depression -- that is 6 million more than the entire population of Canada!  Only someone with their head in the sand would say this is not an epidemic.  Indeed, most of the increase has occurred since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 so this pandemic is tied to the one before it.  Gallup is the firm with the statistics and their results for 2025 Feb. 18-26 and May 27-June 4, 2025, (11,288 U.S. adults) were to the questions:  “Has a doctor or nurse ever told you that you have depression?” and if yes, “Do you currently have or are you currently being treated for depression?”

If you know me, you know I am not a fan of governing by poll but this poll has revealed a serious health issue for Americans that cannot be wished away.  The ongoing Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index is working to take the pulse of Americans on a regular basis.  In this survey, the percentage of adults who report having been diagnosed with depression in their lifetime stands at 28.5% -- just about the record high of 29.0% measured in the first quarter of 2023.  We are not talking about folks who wake up on the wrong side of the bed but a medical diagnosis.  This is a pandemic and one of great consequence.  It is not a one time deal but an ongoing crisis.

This is highest among the poor and the young and lower among the older and financially secure.  The rates that should shock us:  the current depression rate of adults now aged 26-37 is 22.4%.  But the rate is growing, although at different rates, for all age groups.  But it is not simply depression.  There is a strong and unmistakable link between depression and loneliness -- one-third of those who had experienced loneliness were also currently suffering from depression.  It affects work, school, home life, marriage, family, and nearly every aspect of life.  Research has shown a significant link between loneliness and social media use -- especially among those who use social media for building or maintaining relationships, and in turn, can exacerbate unhealthy social comparisons or expose users to damaging psychological outcomes such as body image issues, bullying, or lifestyle envy that can be harmful to mental health.

Technology will not lead us out of this pandemic nor will we medicate ourselves out of this problem.  Remarkably, those who attend worship weekly or twice monthly show a dramatic decline both in the numbers of those suffering depression and those complaining of loneliness.  The peace that passes understanding may actually be a fruit of our life together around the Word and Sacraments of the Lord. 

Where are we going. . .

I read a while ago that the Church in Wales will be having a lesbian bishop -- a significant card to play in the diversity game.  At the same time, I also read where that church body has virtually nobody in the pews younger than 60 and will be dead in a generation.  The article pointed out the outcome of a non-dogmatic church body more concerned with cultural relevance than religious significance.  That said, it could be suggested that dogma remains the concern of the woke Christianity so entrenched with diversity, sexual freedom, social justice, climate change, flexible gender, and a host of other things.  It is simply that they are leading the doctrine to reflect their core values -- core values which are more sacred than anything else.

The real question is not whether or not to have doctrine but what leads.  Is the Church the follower led by the doctrines informed by Scripture and confessed through the ages as the standard of catholicity and orthodoxy OR is the Church the leader who shapes, changes, transforms, and defines doctrine according to another standard in its own wisdom and in the moment?   I do not find the liberal and progressive Christianity so concerning to be non-doctrinal.  It is hard-core doctrinal, wedded to the principles of modernity:  individualism, radical freedom, relevance, diversity, equity, and inclusions.  It is so hard core in this doctrine that it refuses to let Scripture or the faith once delivered to the saints stand in the way of this pursuit.  Lead where it may, this liberal and progressive Christianity must follow.  And so it does even to the emptying of the pews and the death of the very churches they serve.

In contrast, orthodox Christianity is not doctrinal for the sake of doctrine but precisely because it is Scriptural.  We believe in doctrines because Scripture reveals them and not because we are wedded to principles or positions.  Our opponents surely do not get this.  They must presume that if you do not ordain women you are misogynist or if you do not affirm same sex marriage you are homophobic or if you do not allow gender to be self-defined you are rigid.  Of course not.  We do not begin with presuppositions or sacred tenets which must be affirmed but follow where Scriptures lead, where the Word of God shines the light of its truth, and where the Spirit is at work calling, gathering, enlightening, sanctifying, and bringing to completion all of these in God's appointed time.  We are not doctrinal because we like rules or must adhere to set definitions of who God is and who we are and what God has done to free us from our own choice of sin and death.  No, we are doctrinal because we are Scriptural and Scripture leads us to doctrines that both inform us and confront us with His saving work.  Apart from Scripture, we are and cannot be doctrinal.  Ours is not a principle that defines us but a people of the Word who follow where that Word leads.

I fear that sometimes Rome is not simply misunderstanding of this in us Lutherans (in particular) and so tries to turn sola Scriptura into a simplistic principle rather than Scripture telling us about itself.  By inserting non-Scriptural sources into doctrine, Rome and modernity are parallel if not aimed the same direction.  Papal pronouncement or conciliar promulgation sound nice on paper but it is so easy to get the cart before the horse.  For example, did Nicea really define the Trinity or simply affirm what Scripture said?  Were Arius and his other versions of non-Trinitarian teachers wrong because the Church said so or because they were confessing an alien understanding of God not sourced and normed in the Word of God?  That is the issue.  We are doctrinal because Scripture is.  We are guided not by principle or perspective but by the voice of God speaking through His Word.  We cannot say more but we dare not say less.  For example, was Luther's problem with Transubstantiation really a rejection of the explanation of the Real Presence or was it the complaint that it went where Scripture did not go?  Along with such things as the prayers to the saints, purgatory, indulgences, papal primacy (and later infallibility), etc...

The most doctrinaire people of all are those who would impose upon both Scripture and God their own positions and sacred tenets which must be held even if it means letting go of what the Word of God says and the faithful of old have confessed.  Far from being doctrinaire, we are simply being people of the Word, following the Way, for in it is the only forgiveness, life, and salvation that can be known and trusted to everlasting life. 

Curious. . .

How odd it is that those who complained about toxic masculinity and other such problems with men are now fearful of Christian men who are worshiping regularly and working to express in their lives a more faithful and moral image than had been.  How odd it is, indeed.

🚨 NEW: Hillary Clinton WARNS against the rise of Christianity, says white Christian men are causing "such damage" to the United States

"The idea you could turn the clock back and try to recreate a world that never was, dominated by - let's say it! White men of a certain… pic.twitter.com/4WuEegZdRR

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 24, 2025

I am happy to report that among young men, Christianity has been staging somewhat of a comeback and that these same young men have been drawn even more to traditional worship and morality in search of a strong masculinity that complies with the Biblical model.  Whether you like it or not, and Ms Clinton does not, it should be preferable to the toxic masculinity that people of her politics have been complaining about for some time.  But, of course, the liberal and progressive wings of just about everything have long targeted any kind of masculinity as a threat to the goal of a world without marriage, without family, without children, and without men.  Perhaps I am too old or too curmudgeonly or maybe I am correct.

Did you ever know that you're my hero. . .

There was a day when Butler's Lives of the Saints and Foxe's Book of Martyrs was standard reading material.  Yes, it was a long ago and probably coincided more with a parochial school than not.  Yes, some of that material might have been a tad exaggerated and not all factual.  So what?  There was a day when the sanctoral cycle was observed in more depth and the lives of God's people of old more appreciated than we generally do today.  We knew then what we seem to have forgotten today.  Those names were not merely famous but actual heroes at a time when a kid's heroes began in in their home and led them into the Church.  Now, well, not so much.

Kids still need heroes and still have them but they are less likely to be family members and those within the pale of Christianity than the kind you meet on movie sets or whose voices are on your playlists or whose jersey's are your favorite numbers.  Most of those, however, are terrible heroes.  They have lived scandalous or self-indulgent lives and are chosen more for preference or awareness or success in financial terms than those who have struggled to live a holy, upright, and godly life.  That is just plain too bad.

I will admit that the first page of my heroes growing up were likely known better to me than the world.  My parents, grandparents, and other relatives represented an ideal world in which virtue and goodness counted more than a dollar sign or material success.  From that you could add a second page of well-known people in careers that exemplified risk and devotion to a cause greater than themselves -- from astronauts to service men to teachers.  They lived out a calling which expected a life for the sake of others more than for self.  Then there were some of the usual types of famous folk though even there goodness was more important than a fat wallet.  Some of those folks who impressed me most were responsible for my career choice as pastor and my wife's as nurse.  Thanks be to God!  They were well represented in our lives by virtues of our names -- chosen from the sound of family members, the virtuous, and saints (both Biblical and not).  While that did not result in my first name, it certainly did my middle name!

Nowadays names are chosen for popularity and because mom or dad likes them or to sound different (or spelled different) but not so much for the sake of attaching an heroic figure's example to the child in your arms.  That says something.  We do not look to the family or the church or the Bible for names that inspire.  Our kids are living witnesses to the things we value and that includes a name.  We want them to be happy and successful and to enjoy the good things life can offer even more than we want them to be good or holy or faithful.  They must have learned the lesson since faith is not a given even when it is passed on in a Christian household.  But saints contribute far more than a name.

Saints tell us of those who persevered in times of test, trouble, trial, and temptation.  We need to know their stories.  God does not reward those who have a righteousness of their own but He sent forth His Son to save and redeem the sinners and clothe them with an alien righteousness not their own.  That means that those kinds of religious heroes shine with the borrowed light of Christ and tell the story not of their own personal accomplishment but of God's creative and redemptive mercy.  They do not simply inspire us to be better but direct us to the mercy that is our rescue and to the virtue that we grow into by the Holy Spirit.  They are not stories of people who won big on the world stage but who endured because they knew their names were written in the Book of Life and this counted more than anything else to shape their person and personality.  

We all need heroes.  We need Biblical heroes and those across the span of the ages who wore their baptismal clothing well and did not wear the name of Jesus casually but intentionally.  If you want to help your children, tell them the Biblical stories of how God rescued people from their sin and restored them to Himself in mercy and kept them to everlasting life.  If you want to help your children, tell them the stories of the saints who won not by might or cunning but by holding to the faith once delivered to them no matter how the world saw them or treated them.  When the day comes, I hope to have the opportunity to tell those within my extended family, the Scriptures, and the saints of the Church whose witness was profound to me and encouraged my own perseverance in the faith.  I hope we all tell those stories to our children and grandchildren so that they will know who to tap on the shoulder of heaven and say well done, good and faithful servant and thanks for being my hero so I might be numbered with the saints.  The Holy Spirit works through means and sometimes the means is the flesh and blood of such men and women of faith.  Thanks be to God! 

The new reactionaries. . .

Many years ago I warned on this blog that those who adhered to the text and intent of creed, confession, liturgy, and piety were dangerous or considered so by many and, in particular, by many religious leaders.  There is no one who threatens more than the one who holds to the faith once delivered to the saints, to the unchanging doctrinal deposit of truth, and to the piety and morality that reflects the fullness of that truth.  That is a universal truth and it has been experienced within Lutheranism just as we have seen it in Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, and varies Protestant traditions as well.  

Reactionary was once a term reserved for the radical, for the progressive, and for the liberal who were determined to challenge the status quo and reform what was antiquated into something more modern.  No longer.  Now we live in a time in which the most “reactionary” among the churches are those who dare to adhere to the text, to contend for unchanging truth of God's Word, to identify with the yesterday, today, and forever shape of our doctrinal and moral heritage.  We all know this.

In politics, the path has been set toward the progressive and liberal agenda.  The mechanisms of government can be slowed but whether you call it an organized deep state or simple inertia, the movement toward modernism seems to move forward under Trumps and Bidens and everyone else.  It is the pace that changes.  We have seen that in culture. What took race and feminism centuries to accomplish, took same sex issues decades and the trans movement even less.  It is dizzying for the population and even when there are set backs, such as the overturn of Roe v Wade, the march continues.  A right is removed from constitutional guarantee and some states end the unrestricted access to abortion and yet the numbers are higher than before these legal doors were shut.  The Trumps of this world are uneven in their application of the Christian virtues and the Republican party has proven to be a less than reliable avenue for political protection of what was once normative in our land.  But this is not about politics.

Whether in Rome or Wittenberg or even Constantinople, there is a powerful force to be unbound from text and practice that came before and to turn confession and liturgy and ethics into an exploration rather than a position.  Our calling may not be to a path for victory as much as it is the test of survival for that which everyone seem to accept generations ago but is now considered suspect and reactionary.  If you want to live on the edge, try to affirm the genders as God created them (male and female) or bend the sexual desire of the sinful heart to the order of God in creating man for woman and woman for man or temper the growing disdain for the sacredness of life or advocate for the beauty and gift of children.  These are not traditional anymore but radical in a world increasingly at odds with its own definition of order and virtue.

Maybe Rod Dreher is correct.  We need to set our sights at maintaining the communities where God's people gather around the voice of His Word and His baptismal water and His holy Eucharist, preserving the faith once delivered and passing it on without editing or omitting what is neither convenient nor culturally acceptable in the moment.  Whether among those who look to Rome or those who look to another center of religious identity, the goal is preservation even before evangelization -- or there is no reason to evangelize at all.  We cannot bring people to Jesus and leave them in the desert and wilderness of our world where everything is question or a preference.  We must have viable and faithful places to connect them to Christ who lives among us not in our memory or our imagination but in the concrete of water and the Spirit, bread and wine, and a living voice.  If we are to have such communities, we must also be willing to risk unpopularity and even offense for when the Gospel is no longer a stumbling block it is no longer faithful.  

I have had the recent privilege to live among faithful LCMS folk in California and found them not simply welcoming and engaging but contending for the faith in a place so remarkably diverse and with a diluted Christian legacy.  It was exciting to talk to them and to enjoy our fellowship gathered around the topic of God's Word, will, and prayer.  They have different challenges than the folks I was with in Michigan and different circumstances in which to proclaim Christ crucified and risen than where I live in Tennessee and yet what we share in common is far greater than what distinguishes.  It is possible to maintain the faith among declining numbers in the pews and increasing secularization and the muddying of what is truth.  God bless these friends and coworkers in the Kingdom on either side of the rail and across the broad expanse of the country.  But let us not be fooled.  They are they new reactionaries battling for survival and so are we in the heartlands of America.  God bless them and God bless those who remain faithful to the faith of creed, confession, liturgy, piety, and life -- even against great enemies.  We will probably never "win" but we will endure.  He who endures to the end shall be saved.  I think I read that somewhere. 

Bishop and Pastor. . .

Some New York news from the Diocese of Syracuse is that their bishop, Bishop Douglas, will become the pastor of a three site parish in Baldwinsville, New York.  So St. Augustine Church, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church, and St. Mary of the Assumption Church will have a new pastor who is also the diocesan bishop. He is not serving alone but has a parochial vicar and a retired priest to assist him.   Bishop Lucia will continue to serve the nearly 200,000 Catholics who reside in the seven counties of the diocese as bishop while also working as a pastor. 

The reality is that the somewhat small diocese of Syracuse is a great deal larger than the districts of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and some ten times larger than a few of our districts.  We have been told over and over again how difficult or impossible it would be for our de facto bishops (District Presidents) to simultaneously serve as parish pastors.  Of course, we have different duties and it might be near impossible for them to serve as such without help.  But the point is that the one doing ecclesiastical supervision of doctrine and practice best serves by also doing what he supervises and practices regularly.  We had it in the past and a couple of places still do but it is worth looking at this whole thing again.  Do we wish our DPs to be administrators or pastors and how is this best expressed in the life of our church?

I do not have much today but I thought this was worth passing on.  If Rome can do it, perhaps we can do it as well.  The only question remaining is if we want to do it or have the stomach to do it.  In any case, it could not hurt to have our DPs closer to an altar and pulpit.  Obviously, I do not make the rules but this is one we ought to consider. Sadly, we have defined the office more by what they are not than by what they are.  In so doing, we have removed from their duties those things that effectively identify them as pastors.  The reality is that the shepherd's staff is the same from parish to diocese (district) and only the number of sheep might be different.  Is the bishop a stripped down pastor with more administrative duties or a beefed up pastor with the same?  That is the question.

Telling. . .

Now more than 25 years ago, I was on a plane heading to a Synodical meeting of some sort when a woman in the seat next to me asked if I would hold her baby while she went to the restroom.  I was wearing a clerical collar and we had spoken a few times during the flight but it was normal and natural.  Of course I would hold the baby.  By the time she had gotten back, the frustrated baby who was not liking air travel had grown tired and fell asleep in my arms.  The baby remained in my arms for the rest of the flight and mom got her baby, now awake, about the time we are deplaning.  It would probably never happen today.  First of all there are far less children  and so fewer flying.  A man wearing a clerical collar is suspect to some for history we all know only to well.  Finally, we live in a suspicious world in which no stranger is deemed trustworthy and certainly not trustworthy enough to be entrusted with a baby -- even a crying one.  It was normal to me.  I had held my own three children and held every baby and small child I had baptized and was always holding children in my parish.  But it is not normal today.  Not just for a pastor on a plane but for many adults.

You can get to middle age now without ever having held a baby.  Let me say that again.  It is possible today to get through half or more of your life and never having held a child in your arms.  There is a remarkable lack of experience around children that has become normal to these days but marks a distinct difference between us and those who went before us.  It reveals to us how our society has evolved once marriage and family are optional and even secondary to the individual life and pursuit of people.  Children are not normal anymore and so we are experiencing a deficit in our experience that is telling.  What do you do with a baby or a toddler?  Out of sight, out of mind, and out of our realm of experience.

Oddly enough I flew several long flights last month only to encounter in the waiting area six dogs, four of which made it onto the flight I was taking.  There were no babies, a couple of children perhaps 5 or 6 years old, and plenty of adults without a wedding ring who were traveling alone but no babies.  I did not realize how odd that was until I thought about it.  We had small dogs in carry on pet luggage but not a car seat to be seen at either the luggage check or the baggage storage section in the gateway.  Now I have nothing against dogs and have had them and loved them as well but have dogs in carriers become more common than an infant or small child in a full plane headed west?

The children we do have will surely notice the absence of a baby or a small child in circumstances like this.  It has become normal for an old guy like me to who looks for what is missing but for the child growing up today it will be the always normal perspective -- children and babies absent from their lives and their experiences.  A growing gulf in America are families with more children and those with none and the experience of those families is very different and so their perspective on life and marriage and family is also different.  Sadly, more of them will become adults who never held a baby in their arms.  Chances are by the time they become an adult without having held a child in their arms, they will probably also age into their twilight years without this experience.  A long time ago, those who had no children of their own either sought out or were encourage by the parents to hold the new baby.  Now, with our dramatically declining birth rate, they have no babies around them to hold.  If you think this does not matter, carry a baby or a small child into a congregation of gray haired adults and watch their eyes light up.  It makes you wonder if a future church without children and without people who had held a baby in their arms would welcome the child or see it as foreign to their experience.  Just something I thought about today from a memory of one experience on a plane and a more recent one....

A warning. . .

One of the dangers of Protestantism and also of Lutheranism (which I insist cannot be included in Protestantism, is the loss of clear external markers of catholicity in such things as the lectionary, the church year, and the liturgy.  Protestantism effectively accomplished this by making everything in worship center around the sermon.  Indeed, there is little beyond the sermon in early Protestantism with its suspicion of non-Biblical hymns and the transformation of Sacraments into ordinances of duty rather than means of grace and bestowers of God's gift.  Lutherans should not be so tempted -- theologically, at least -- but in practice have often followed on this path.

Growing up at a time when the lectionary was used in most Lutheran congregations, I also experienced the cycle of preaching texts which often, even regularly, replaced the readings appointed for the day.  It was standard operating practice and part of the fruit of liturgical renewal was to point us back to making the homily stand within the liturgy and lectionary and not apart from them.  There were Sundays in which the preaching text read at the start of the sermon was longer than the Gospel appointed for the day.  It was not hidden what was important.  Liturgy (and even the Sacrament of the Altar) were high in theory but folks came and stayed for the preaching, or so it was said.

In Missouri the sermon was so elevated from the liturgy that it had to carry the whole weight of the Law and the Gospel -- as if the order that preceeded it and followed it as well as the Sacrament bore no theological weight.  The reality is that the liturgy is almost pure Gospel and this enables the sermon to be free from some artificial fairness barometer to give Law and Gospel their due.  If you do not believe me, read Luther's own sermons.  He speaks the Law with an ease and clarity often lost to us today among those in the pulpit and those in the pew.  He knew instinctively (if not expressed doctrinally) that the sermon lived within the body of the liturgy where the Gospel was spoken and its gifts distributed without fail.  Oh, how I wish we remembered this today.

In practice, some congregations dimmed all the lights in the nave so that the spotlight could be on the preacher and the sermon.  Some inventive folk moved the sermon to the end so that they got the last word (instead of the liturgy).  Some forgot that elevated pulpits were not to give visual weight to the sermon but to amplify the sound before PA systems were in vogue and the preacher could whisper into a device for dramatic effect and still be heard.  No, all was not well before liturgical renewal even as all is not well after it.  One of the key weaknesses we struggle with in explanation and in piety is the relationship of the sermon to the liturgy and the relationship of the liturgy to the sermon.  It certainly does not help when people make up ideas about the placement of the creed prior to the sermon as the way of the people to tell the preacher what he is to say or the loss of any real offertory to the jump up to sing Create in me... as a prayer for God to put the words of the sermon to good effect in the hearers.  It amplifies the sermon but at the expense of the liturgy.  It is not a king of the hill competition but a fabric woven together from the first words of the liturgy through the lection to the sermon to the Sacrament.  The more we deny this, the worse the problems will be for us going forward.  It puts too much pressure and weight upon the preacher and forgets the riches of the Gospel that are said and sung in the liturgy in which the sermon has its rightful place.

Covid won't stop. . .

At this stage of the pandemic, when reason has prevailed over the extreme rules and requirements that were issued in the panic of disease, you might think that Covid would stop being the center of our attention.  Yes, I know it was bad and many, too many, died.  But the irrational laws and mandates imposed to bind our freedoms were a scandal and even more a shock how we swallowed the kool-aid in the face of fear.  It was a case of imbalance with the tilt definitely toward the panic.

In the aftermath of Covid, the state of New York required all public school teachers and staff to submit to vaccination or be terminated from their positions. The mandate incorporated religious exemptions for the typical suspects,, Christian Scientists, for example. Accommodation was even made for faiths whose leaders “publicly” opposed the shots. In this way the Seventh-day Adventists also got a quasi-institutional exemption.  However, for Lutherans or Roman Catholics, especially because of their conviction with regard to abortion and the used of fetal cells in the development or production of medicines and vaccines, there was no relief.  Why?  Because our leaders did not condemn the shots.  If you recall, our leaders along with most either tacitly approved or vocally and enthusiastically called for people to get the jab.  Pope Francis said it was a necessary “act of love.” Now the Supreme Court will now be asked to decide the constitutionality of New York's requirement. 

At our District Convention, a motion which called for the church (not even individuals) to repent of the mistakes and errors and sins committed during the pandemic failed.  It failed because no one wants to talk about that anymore and everyone believes it is better to leave sleeping dogs lie.  I am not sure whether the motion would have made any difference but I do know that we made many mistakes as a church body.  One of them was treating the decision to be vaccinated as a private matter without giving proper attention to the vaccine and its development and manufacture given our consistent protection of fetal life and the treatment of fetal remains.  The other was a confusion among our leaders on just about every level.  Most of them called us to live according to the laws and rules and regulations -- different in every state.  Rather than confront the muck and mire of federal panic and misinformation and the worse situation on the part of states, our leaders left us to handle it on our own as best we could while honoring the mandates the governments had put in place.  The result was everything from congregations shut down over months and months to communion through the mail or online to video worship that was considered an adequate replacement for being together in the Lord's House.  We were fools.  Everyone knows it.  

While I am happy to say that my parish never shut down and continued to hold services (even with police cars in the parking lot), some of those extreme voices are paying no political price for their excess.  Think here of Kentucky Governor Beshear who made an early tour to scout his presidential prospects for the next primary and national election cycle.  Are you kidding me?  This is the guy who screamed at people and threatened to have state troopers take down the car tag numbers in church parking lots if people dared to worship and ordered people to self-quarentine for two weeks if they drove over the state line.  Church leaders were also a messy confusion of responses with a few adamant against the mandates imposed but most telling us we just needed to go along to get along and pray.  

The religious groups given exemption are small and marginal and certainly not political —Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, Christian Scientists, Amish.  Why were they granted more leeway than others with more numbers and political pull?  The difference is that there was no such legitimacy accorded other religious groups because their leaders and their churches did not have a uniform or any real support for those who challenged the vaccine and other protocols.  So the reality is that Lutherans and Roman Catholics who did not go along with the government mandates and vaccines with respect to Covid were considered not very good Lutherans or Roman Catholics -- not quite true but true enough in the eyes of the government.  This is exactly the problem which needs to be fixed before the next pandemic or similar situation comes along in which individual rights and government overreach clash and church leaders give formal or tacit support for the government's side of things.  My point here is not to point fingers at individuals but to suggest that we could have done better and should have done better to offer support for those of us who did not go with the flow of mandates, social policies, and vaccines.  Maybe the Supreme Court will get it right before the churches do in this case.

Why stay?

After being born with the promise of uniting all Lutherans, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has give birth to two new Lutheran denomination (well, one is really an association).  Worse though is the fact that the numbers which have bled off the ELCA are not nearly accounted for in the fledgling bodies of the North American Lutheran Church or the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ.  So where did they go?  

Missouri is in no position to gloat, though we have given birth to new new church since the 1970s and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, we have likewise bled off numbers into other churches or, sadly, most into thin air.  They have left and gone nowhere.  The LCMS is facing its most serious threat in years -- even as the numbers continue not to look good.  This time it is from people attempting to organize an exodus with a college, online seminary (or seminaries), and a so-called missional structure.  It seems that it is not enough for any Lutheran body to be in decline, it has to be hastened by organized departures for all kinds of reasons.

Oddly enough, Luther did not depart from nor exit Rome on his own.  Though some would say his own words caused it all, Luther considered himself a member of the loyal opposition and did not leave Rome though Rome left him.  The papal bull excommunicating Luther was the thing that sort of sealed the deal for Luther in a way that the confessions, the movement, and even his marriage did not.  So why do people in the pews and pastors seem so interested in leaving their Lutheran roots now?  Could it be that the situations have become so bad within these Lutheran bodies that they literally cannot stand to remain or is it something different?

Roman Catholic theologians most identified with a liberal wing of that body have not exactly run for the door either.  In nearly every case, they remained until they were no longer welcome to remain.  Take Karl Rahner, for example, who had been on the fringe of Rome for ages but did not bolt even though some would have sighed with relief if he had.  In fact, it was not ever on his radar to leave.  There are other big names who likewise refused to leave even when they had scathing critiques of Rome and all her leaders.  They could not conceive of leaving to be on their own and they had not found another church which satisfied the claims more than Rome.  So they stayed.

For most Lutherans there is no such loyalty.  The pastor screws up or offends them in some way and they are gone.  The national structure does not live up to their desires and they are packed and have moved on.  The person who was their friend hurts their feelings and now they are out of here.  It does not quite matter which side of the altar rail you are on (except for pension purposes, perhaps).  We leave for no church at all or for another church and we don't look back.  Why are we so quick to be on our own or to leave [in most cases, a sacramental and confessional body for one without sacraments or a formal confession)?

The sad reality is that no matter what the teachings are, outside of Rome we live in a strange state which is neither ecclesial nor churchly.  Our faith and piety seem to treat the Church as an optional extra and even Lutherans are prone to the idea that me and Jesus against the world is better than me and other Christians with problems in our relationship.  Why is that? Why is the Church extraneous to our faith and life?  I wish I knew why we are so lackadaisical about church.  I wish I understood why worship attendance and adherence to stated doctrine and worship style seemed less churchly than individual.  But it is not helping anyone to make our life together such a distant priority or even an irrelevance to our individual lives of faith.  You better think twice about leaving for no place or for leaving as if churches were the next new wave of religious product.  Complaint is your right but do not depart angry.  Go to God's Word and not simply the parts that you think agree with you.  Make sure you are leaving for something more profound than preference and more significant than your feelings.  We live in a world absent of truth and empty of the compelling truth of a book that insists God wrote it and it is true not because you agree.  Don't fall into the trap of thinking that a church of one is better than a church of a million with disagreements.

The unspoken message of Vatican II. . .

Even for a Lutheran like me, there is much to be commended in the actual conciliar documents of Vatican II.  There is much with which I would disagree, as I suspect most Lutherans would.  The problem is that few are reading or even concerned about what actually was said in the documents of the Council.  It is a church gathering that has taken on its own life quite apart from the actual decrees of the Council or any of its official writings.  Instead of a small step for renewing a church which it seems John XXIII had in mind, the presumption of the Council has been and remains that the Roman Catholic Church must change or die.  Unlike even the actual words of Paul VI, this council has become a spirit or thematic emblem of those who, it seems, hated the Roman Church that was and were determined to remake it in such a way that it looked less like Scripture and tradition and more like the times. 

The folks in the pews found out what Vatican II was when they woke up one morning to a new Mass and the vernacular all over the place and a nightclub rhythm and blues combo set up to accompany it all.  They did not read anything but saw it, with a wince, as they realized they were not in Kansas anymore.  I feel for them.  Their church was stolen from them not by a huge assembly of bishops in Rome but by those who took this as an opportunity to renovate a church they did not like into something new and different.  They thought everyone felt like they did and many of them, Francis, for example, got angry that there were actually people who did not think a wholesale renovation was necessary and who clung to the older forms and shape of the church's life.

In one fell swoop a piety was dismantled, an identity transformed, architecture changed, music was like the radio, and all the things that were once holy became less so and some of things that were once unholy almost became such.  The only problem was when Paul VI actually held the line and reminded Roman Catholics that sex was after love and marriage and for procreation.  In the world of condoms and pills, this was a bridge too far.  Soon Rome became several churches -- the cruel caricature of itself created by its lapse of memory and liturgical discontinuity and doctrinal divergence and the shadow of itself as a steady, steadfast, and slow to change monolith.  The papacy grew in this church body since there was less liturgically and dogmatically to unite them and they had to rally around someone.  It soon too the form of the unassailable external virtue of John Paul II but after him all the cracks were exposed.  Benedict XVI had the eloquence and the integrity but Francis had the media image.  Now we are down to Leo XIV but still asking "will the real Rome please stand up?"

In the meantime we wait.  Will Rome look like Rainbow Fr. Martin or like capa magna Cardinal Burke?  Will the catechism continue to evolve what the churches believe or hold to the sacred deposit once given and passed down?  Will the liturgy wars continue or one side win or will a peace of Rome be convened?  Will Rome continue to look like a gussied up Protestantism on the way to irrelevance or will it be something with whom a Confessional Lutheran like me is actually interested in conversation?  Will Rome end up as the custodian of property and artistic treasures or will it become a means of calling sinners to repentance and those who were once no people into the people of God?

As I said in the beginning, not everything Vatican II actually said was bad.  Some of it was actually quite good.  The problem is that Rome is no more the Church of Vatican II than it is the Church of Vatican I.  It is a church on a voyage of discovery trying to figure out who it is.  If they are blessed and we are lucky, Leo will help them remember who they were so that they can begin to find out who they are.  If not, it was a distraction as the biggest "Protestant" Church in the world reinvents itself as a big tent without much of a central pole to hold it all up.  Can anyone in their right mind imagine Angelo Roncalli waking up and looking at Rome today and saying "This is exactly what I had in mind?"

At what cost?

As objective as statistics that do not lie even though they may not tell the whole truth, the signs of decay that surround mainline churches are unmistakable.  What is not always clear, however, is why these congregations and their denominational structures are so empty.  It is not because they are too conservative or because they have too narrowly defined themselves or the faith.  It is because they have abandoned creed and confession and the faith once delivered to the saints for an alien gospel not about Christ at all.  Without truth and the story of God's saving work in Christ, they have no mission either.  Those who do not speak Christ crucified and risen to the sinner marked for death have nothing much to say to the rest of the world.  So what do they talk about?  They talk about themselves and about sex.

At what cost have the liberal and progressive leaders taken over the mind and heart of their churches?  Well, take a look.  Most of them have bled out members until it is hard to find even a pulse left in them.  Most of them have turned the focus inward and pursued feelings over facts.  Most of them have left in the dust the Biblical stories of where and why all things were made and God's purpose for breathing into dust the breath of life.  Most of them have turned history into allegory or example and so have failed to see Christ in the prophets, people, and their Scriptures.  It is a sad story but what makes it even more pathetic is how this has effected missions.

While The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has closed its foreign mission agency, it is not nor can it ever be simply a matter of money.  It was and is a matter of will and desire.  What does a liberal mainline church have to say to those who have not heard?  Without Christ crucified and risen, there is nothing really left to say except to be an echo of what secular society and wisdom apart from Christ has to say.  That is, much to my regret, what the mainlines have done and why missions is getting such short shrift from them.  The progressive version of the Gospel is not simply aggressive toward such causes as white guilt, sexual freedom, gender fluidity, social justice, climate change, etc., it is hostile toward the real Gospel of Christ the incarnate Son of God who suffered and died to redeem sinners and rose so that they might accompany Him into everlasting life.  It might be one thing if such liberals added to the true Gospel but the fact that they hold the cross in such great contempt only betrays the emptiness of their cause.

The same could be said of seminaries in such churches.  Without a compelling truth in the form of the real and true Gospel of the cross, there is little need to uproot people and force them to move to a seminary campus in order to hear what they have already been hearing in the secular world.  A few online courses and some doctrinaire instruction on the sacred causes of the progressive left is about all that anyone would need to know what liberal Protestantism has to say.  Suffice it to say that liberal Lutherans find more of a home in these quarters than they do in anything that might approach or reflect the reality of the Confessions.  

All of this is being financed on the backs of the faithful generations who supported congregation and ministry when they thought both had a Gospel to tell.  Their largess of real estate, endowment, and contributions are now being reaped like the disciples passing a grain field.  They have taken asset upon asset to prop up the weakening foundations of their churches but we all know the day of reckoning may be temporarily postponed but it shall not be eliminated.  On that day such leaders and servants of their causes will face the eye of God whose scrutiny over their service and faithfulness will neither excuse nor ignore what they have done to empty the churches and leave the whole estate in poor repair.  Just as Israel found themselves on the losing side of God's favor for refusing to repent from their abuse of the promise given them to guard on behalf of all, so do the modern versions of a complacent church find themselves vulnerable before a God who will not shrug His shoulders to the unfaithfulness of those who had been entrusted with the sacred deposit.

Words are not violence. . .

We live in a world with an ego waiting to be bruised, a hurt waiting to be caused, and a feeling waiting to be offended.  It is a terrible thing to equate words with actions.  Words, as JK Rowling put it, are not violence nor dare they be used as a justification for violence in retaliation.  It has become a nearly impossible task to speak without someone getting hurt or offended and either running away or plotting revenge.  What ever happened to sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me?  

No, I am not suggesting that words do not matter.  In fact, they do.  I believe, after all, in a Savior who has been made know as the Word made flesh.  What I am speaking about is the constant equation of words you do not like to hear as words of violence or threat or terror or hate.  It ought to say something that some today hold us hostage to the pronouns we would use (words which do not belong to them as much as they do to language itself) and to the theft of our rights to uphold the fragile myth of those who think that they can be a woman or a man because they feel like or some other falsehood that parades as truth.  When we can no more define a male or a female with anything more concrete than a feeling or desire, we are long ago departed the time when words mattered.  Words matter because they speak truth and apart from truth they hold less weight and command less respect.

There is real violence in this world and every day we hear of it on our newscasts and have it reported across every form of media.  There are those who would insist that the violence they think they suffered in the form of words either justifies or makes understandable the violence that wounds or kills the bodies of those with whom they disagree.  Grow up.  Our world is growing ever more fragile because we allow the lies to stand and sweep the truth under the rug.  Words are not violence -- certainly not in the same way as the weapons raised to maim and kill and so leave a mark of hate to stand in the broken hearts of those who have lost loved ones and friends.  Violence is making us poorer as a people and those who believe that words carry the same freight as actions are making it impossible for us to ramp down the terrorism all around us.

The real effect of all of our walking on egg shells around the truth has made our society more susceptible to violence and more willing to explain it.  It was shocking to me when an ABC reporter was speaking in empathetic terms of the texts and emails between the man who murdered Charlie Kirk and the murderer's trans lover.  He was trying to get us to see the humanity in this man who did such an inhumane thing and it illustrates how the perpetrator of even the worst kind of violence -- premeditated murder -- can be framed in such a way where he is made a sympathetic figure.  Imagine that.  A gay or trans or otherwise confused young man who has gotten to the point where he cannot stand someone who does not agree or support his life has taken it upon himself to end that man's life.  This is not about Charlie Kirk or about the killers of school children or adults but about the outrage that has come to define and justify harming another person or taking their life.

Things will not improve by isolating ourselves or insulating ourselves from such conversations or debates.  In fact, by refusing to challenge the invention of right or identity with the truth, we have set up precisely the kind of environment in which violence will come and not in the form of words, either.  You cannot fix dysphoria by surgery or retaliatory violence.  The only was to fix it and the other ills across our land is a conversation in which truth is the arbiter of every debate.  Lying to self or others will never deliver the health and peace that those troubled in heart and mind say they seek.  Words matter because they are either truth or lies.  Word are not violence.  Once we begin to admit this, perhaps the clouds over us will begin to open up to light.

Young music attracts young people. . .

For a very long time that sentence was not only conventional wisdom but sacred wisdom.  It was the ground and foundation on which a whole industry of contemporary worship music was made.  It was the rationale for new publishers of congregational song and for the rise of now familiar but then new names in Christian music -- from the Joncas to the Haas to the Getty and everywhere in between.  It created powerful identities (think here of the music of Hillsong) and forged new paths when everyone thought there was nothing new left under the sun.  It brought guitars into places where pipe organs had reigned and it brought the praise band to churches which had been slow to adopt any song but Scripture.  We are doing it for the young people.

The problem is that there is no real definition of young music.  What ended up staying in churches is not really young in the sense of a cutting edge sound like the radio might define it.  The style of this young music was much older -- more like Peter, Paul, and Mary than the new stuff just hitting Apple playlists.  The thing that passes for young music in most congregations today is edging toward middle age and older and, guess what, those are the people who clamor for it.  What is often proclaimed as something tolerated for youth ministry is, in reality, what is demanded by those who want to be young again.  We all know this.  We allow ourselves a corporate memory lapse because the reality is that the mythology has deeper roots in our churches than we dare admit.

It was never the age of the music that attracted anyone.  Everyone's church attendance patterns were and are more rooted in family practice growing up than just about anything else.  Even those who come to the faith as adults were never attracted by the beat or how easy the music is to dance to -- the Word brings people in and the Word keeps them in.  People come and go in the pews for a lot of reasons but we are surely fooling ourselves if we think it is the kind of music that brings them in or keeps them out.  The Gospel is far too offensive to allow the music to be the issue -- unless, of course, the Gospel is stripped of its backbone and emptied of its content.  But that is not how the real Church operates.

I will admit that I have always found it strangest that liturgical churches seemed to jump on the young music bandwagon.  Changing the sound people hear in church is not the thing that brings them in the door or shows them the way out.  The content of the preaching and teaching is what offends and attracts at the same time.  What confounds people is when the soundtrack inside the church does not match the script.  That is what confuses those already in the pews as much as it confuses those not yet in them.  Mixed messages are never helpful.  Bait and switch is not simply dishonest but turns people away.   No, it is time that we all distanced ourselves from a truism that is not true at all -- that young music brings in a young crowd.  

Strange that old myths are so hard to kill.  There are still congregations with worship committees still trying to figure out how to use music as the attraction for the illusive Christian under the age of 25.  What fools we are.  What fools we must thing those under 25 are.  If you entice them in with a song, you can drive them away with another song.  Preaching and teaching and authentic liturgical worship that reflects this doctrine in practice is what brings people in and keeps them there.  The rest of it we do to target age groups or ethnicities is not only dishonest and alien to our faith, it is about as effective as selling Jesus as an accessory to designer coffee.  

AI for those with no real I

I suspect that we are not quite where the hype is on Artificial Intelligence.  My hunch is that AI can do somethings fairly well and fast but it does not really think or learn and it remains dependent upon those who can.  Granted, the numbers of those who can think and learn seems to be diminishing in these modern times, that is a problem of motivation more than it is capability.  At this point AI is lacking the capability to replace human thinkers.  It can certainly write computer code but could it ever have come up with the germ of an idea that resulted in the computer in the first place?  You already know what I think.

What AI certainly can do is make us more stupid.  As we learn to depend upon what passes for thinking from artificial brains, the weaker and less able our own working real brains will be.  We all know this is true.  Some of us don't care.  Some of it have given in to what we deem the inevitable.  Others of us eschew technology like the plague.  But some of us, who are fully conversant with the technology of the day, know that it will be a very long time before a computer brain thinks like a human one.  We only hope that humans don't give up their thinking brain before that day dawns or we will be in real trouble.

The problem is that we are a lazy people.  When we are offered the option of robots doing our work or artificial intelligence doing our thinking, we seem to jump at the chance without even considering the effect of this on us.  We seem to have developed an aversion to work and an addiction to pleasurable things (those do not have to be real and can be digital).  I have read that pornography offers AI generated explicit images and promises they are better than real people engaging in sexual acts.  Are you kidding me?  Next thing and we will develop machines like Star Trek had to provide the food for us and we will forget how to plant, tend, harvest, and cook.  Then what happens when the power is out?  But if it gives us something for nothing, we will follow the example of the 5,000 and rush to make AI our bread king (if Jesus won't be). 

Sadly, there are folks who are looking to AI for exactly the wrong things.  Some pastors are trying out sermons written by AI (hopefully vetted and rewritten before being delivered).  Some are looking to use AI in some way within catechesis.  Some are depending upon AI to help them write -- literally everything from a newsletter article to a religious book.  Preaching is in enough trouble already without preachers becoming even weaker in their craft and relying on computer generated sermons and studies.  But we are lazy people and undoubtedly some, even many, will rush to the easy way out without considering the cost.

The cost is not simply error or shallowness or vague generalities -- we humans are certainly capable of producing all of these.  The problem is that we will become slaves to the thinking of others and forget how to produce and therefore how to judge what is good, right, and salutary.  AI is a rabbit hole for people who are chasing dreams of easy lives without work and with instant gratification.  AI will produce it and people will consume it without even considering if it will help or hurt in the long haul.  In my mind, the surest way to become stupid is to depend upon machines to do the thinking for you, conveniently forgetting that the machines were created by us in the first place.  We marvel at their wisdom and ability to learn simple tasks or to survey mountains of data in a brief moment.  Why we will no longer need books to teach us or teachers to teach us.  No, indeed, we will have something we deserve.  We will have a mindless, soulless, heartless machine.  We will bless God for AI and follow it as if it were God but in so doing we will sacrifice our integrity, our personality, and our capacity to think until we finally confuse God with AI.  No, I refuse to praise something that has the potential to make us even more stupid than we have become on our own.  

One generation was rightly condemned for trying to make work into their deity.  Then the next tried to make leisure into their god.  Along with that, entertainment was treated as the almighty.  Now we seem strangely willing to trade our souls for some machine that we create to relieve us of the very thing that marks us as human -- our ability to think, to think morally, and to think creatively.   For what it is worth, I feel the same way about the decision of fhe NFL to replace the chains to measure first downs and go to a digital measurement.  Ugh Here is what measurements will now look like. Not gonna lie, I’m going to miss the chain gang. The issue is the ball placement not the measuring method:

A chosen race. . .

St. Peter famously calls the Church a peculiar people -- no one who know us would be surprised at that.  It is a kind way of describing the odd, rag tag, band of brothers (and sisters) who call God Father, Jesus Savior and brother, and the Spirit Holy.  We are nothing but peculiar and this is especially true to those outside the brotherhood.  But He does not stop there.  He also calls us a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. He is not quite ready to say we are all individually priests but a priestly people he insists we are.  He calls us a holy nation but it is a nation of sinners whose only claim to holiness is the alien righteousness of our Savior who clothes us in Himself in baptism.  He says we are a people for God's own possession which means we are not liberated from sin to be large and in charge but to live in obedience to Him who made us and saved us.  Our purpose is not to fulfill our own wills and desires but to proclaim the excellencies of Him who called us from the darkness of sin and death into His own light and life -- a marvelous thing to be sure.  

Then there is this.  He says we are a chosen race.  Christendom has struggled with that one.  We thought that it belonged to Israel and, while happy to be included in the wider opening of the Gospel, we are not sure what to make of it all.  Two chosen peoples?  A promised reneged?  A temporary identity?  Bring St. Paul into the mix and it only gets messier.  Paul seems to speak as it ethnicity no longer matters or it has been transcended by some new and different identity -- a catholic and universal one.  That is certainly appealing.  It fits the modern narrative.  It seems to explain the Council of Jerusalem and its solution to the conundrum of what to do with the older designation of Israel as the chosen.  The Jews were wrong.  Their claim to an ethnic identity essential to membership in the covenant community is the problem a guy like Paul was sent to fix, even if it seemed Peter was in his way for a time.  There is no more ethnicity, no more ethnic identity.  God claims and loves us all in His own way.  Gosh, it would also help the cause of those who say no more male and female (as the Galatians passage has it) means the old way of one chosen is replaced by the new diversity of everyone chosen.

 In Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites, Jason Staples may have identified another path.  Perhaps the inclusion of the Gentiles is not the wholesale replacement of one chosen people for another but an explanation of what chosen means.   Perhaps God was not turning His back on Israel at all but clarifying what it means to be His chosen.  Israel needs the Gentiles as much as the Gentiles need redemption.  Israel is not limited to a tribal identity at all but a fuller identity of faith and the faithful who live by faith.  Certainly the twelve tribes once identified as Israel had long ago been absorbed not in one tribe but in the ethnic and religious pluralities of the nations and leaders who had ruled over them in exile, in the dispersion, and in what had become more their home than Israel.  Israel had lost its character as Israel.  Sure it preserved its religious rituals but in the heart of Israel there lived no more the hope of David's son and David's Lord.  Could Israel have become gentilized and required a new birth to become who they were supposed to have been?  Israel had been scattered among the nations and even assumed into their culture and religious identities and need restoring to be saved by Abraham's son and Lord.   Staples wrote it like this: “Where Israel had become gentilized, now Gentiles were effectively being Israelitized, transformed from one ethnicity to another and integrated into the ethnic people of Israel.”

Staples insists that the Gentiles do not become Jews but both Jew and Gentile become the chosen people of God, the new ethnicity that is not ignored but fulfilled.  The Gentiles cannot remain Gentiles anymore than Israel can remain its shallow and empty self.  There is, then, a wideness in God's mercy that had been lost to Israel but is seen in the inclusion of Gentiles into the people of God's promise.  The ethnic community is not replaced with some vague universalism but the once chosen and promised people learn what it means to be sons and daughters of Abraham -- and they learn it from Gentiles!  Christ was not abandoning Israel but opening Israel's doors to become the nation God had intended all along.

Sadly, few Christians see their primary ethnic identity as that of being the people of God as St. Peter describes them.  Instead of a fulfillment of the promise, today we are more likely to see it all in individualistic terms and in the light of human freedom to fulfill our own desire and destiny.  We have forgotten the gift given to us that we should be called the sons and daughters of Abraham -- he who rejoiced to see the day of Christ.  The Gospel is still an ethnic Gospel but it transcends the ethnic divisions of this world.  We are adopted into Christ and into the family of Abraham and David.  We are not foster children who are cared for but adoptive sons and daughters with rights of identity and inheritance.  No, we may not share the lineage going backward but we share the lineage going forward.  In the end this makes it possible for us to acknowledge the miracle of what God has done, grafting us into the family of Abraham through Christ.  Israel has the learned what it meant to be the chosen, 

We are constantly trying to make God into one of us -- an American, for example -- when we fail to see that God has made us together into His chosen nation.  Such a citizenship is in heaven and because it is in heaven overflows to this life and this world.  It is not and never was a question of how the Jews related to God now that Christ has come but how in Christ we like the Jews are given a relationship and identity in Him.  The chosen nature of Israel's identity was always about Christ and in Christ and the chosen nature of the Gentile's ethnicity is about Christ and in Christ as well.  In this way we see Israel's history and its lessons as our own just as we are bound together in the new blood of Christ that cleanses us from all our sin and marks as belonging to Him.  This is the mystery long hidden through the ages -- the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Colossians 1:26-27.  And, Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith—Romans 1:25-26.

I do not know whether you know of Staples or like what he says but he presents a very interesting and compelling vision of the ethnicity God intends against the backdrop of what we conceive.  Israel learned that this unity and identity came from faith and the Gentiles learned that they have a unity and identity after all -- from faith.  One could not happen without the other.  So the Council of Jerusalem was not choosing one ethnic identity over another but realizing what that one ethnic identity was all along.  Something to think about.

Holy Cross Day Devotional Sermon 2

 Devotional Sermon for meetings the day before Holy Cross Day. 

The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  Where are the wise?  Is it in the learned and eloquent of this age?  Or is it in the foolishness of the cross?  Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

While the weakness of words and water and bread and wine are universally acknowledged, there is another weakness worth our attention as we prepare to celebrate Holy Cross Day.  That is the weakness of the Church, of a people washed clean in baptismal water and granted a new birth to a new life, only to surrender that life to self-denial and cross bearing.  Jesus insists that whoever would desire the kingdom and follow Him must do exactly that – deny self, take up Jesus’ cross, and follow Him.  Where we would raise up an army of mighty warriors, God calls a people to deny themselves, take up the cross of Jesus, and follow Him in a life of mercy giving, love showing, sin forgiving, and righteousness desiring.  Who could expect to win the world with such weakness?  Only God.

Jesus insists that what was spoken of about Moses whose staff of a bronze serpent brought healing to the dying would be true in spades with His cross.  He is the One upon whom you look with faith and are made whole again.  Not Jew or Gentile but the any and all whom God desires to be saved.  And we become part of this staff of wood that lifts up Christ before the world.  Our words and our works matter.  Our deeds cannot purchase our salvation but they love and serve and help our neighbor, especially those who do not know our Savior and all that He has accomplished by His cross.

Sadly Christians no longer stand out nor do they stand up in a world crying out for the wisdom of the cross.  We have become a tired and passive people, eventually echoing the voice of the age rather than speaking the voice of the ages.  We enjoy the world and its many comforts like everyone.  We insulate ourselves from disease and sacrifice with the best of the world.  We indulge ourselves in the forbidden pleasures of our pet sins no less than the world which calls them virtue.  I say this not simply of others but of myself and knowing my own weakness.

I do not want to deny myself.  I do not want to bear the cross of Jesus.  I want to be free to be happy and do what is right in my own eyes no more and no less than the world seeks to do.  I do not want to take on a burden which will detract from that happiness any more or any less than the world seeks to do.  In fact, I confuse what Jesus says and presume that the cross bearing meant for me has to do with bearing up with my wife or my family, having to serve my children or do the work that brings home the dime.  These are not our crosses.  Wife, children, family, and work – they are not the crosses we bear.  We bear the cross of Jesus.  We live out a cross shaped life.  We forgive as we have been forgiven.  We love as we have been loved.  We serve as we have been served.  Not because they win us anything but because we have been won by the cross.  We earn nothing but a word of commendation for all our good works and yet that is enough because Christ’s good work has won it all for us.

Christians have become about averages and normals.  We fit into the crowd and are not distinct from it.  We sin no more but no less than any other sinners.  It s a comfortable place to hide but the lukewarm will be spewed from His mouth on the day of judgment.  Is the Church failing because we are too different from the world or too much the same?  Not us, we say, not the LCMS.  Maybe exactly us.  We are the men in the mirror who reflect too much the world’s values and goals and too little do we look like Jesus or bear His cross.  This is meant not to drive us to shame or despair but to lift us out of our doldrums and listen again to the word of the cross.  

We are not the perishing.  We have nothing to lose.  We have gained everything by that cross.  Ours is not the time to play it safe or to be timid.  Now is the time to take Jesus at His word.  Lift high the cross in word and works and see whom He will draw unto Himself.  This is not a recipe for growth but it is a promise that our works are not in vain.  The preaching of the cross seems weak but it is the most powerful thing of all.  The living out of the cross in daily life seems worthless in a world of sin and senseless violence but it is powerful in witness and powerful in what it accomplishes.  Do not be fooled.   Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. 

Holy Cross Day Devotional Sermon 1

Devotional Sermon preached during a meeting over the days before Holy Cross Day.

Sunday is Holy Cross day, known as The Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the East and the Triumph of the Cross in Rome.  On this day we recall that Christ "was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world unto himself," and prays that "we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him."

The feast began with the dedication on Sept. 14, 335, of a complex of buildings built by the Emperor Constantine (c. 285-337) in Jerusalem on the sites of the crucifixion and Christ's tomb. This shrine included a large basilica and a circular church. Constantine's mother, Helena (c. 255- c. 330), personally supervised the construction amd it was said that a relic of the true cross was found during the excavation. Claims by the Church of Jerusalem to have the cross date from the mid-fourth century, and the pilgrim Egeria mentions a feast commemorating the discovery of the cross in Jerusalem in the late-fourth-century. This feast has also been associated with the exposition at Jerusalem of the cross by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (575-641). He recovered the relic from the Persians who took it from Jerusalem in 614 when they destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Church and Christians in general have always sought physical contact with the cross.  Whether relic or amulate, the goal has been to have some tangible connection with the profound mystery of Jesus’ sufferings and death for our salvation.  Surely the pursuit of a piece of wood was the fruit of such longing.  In our age there has been a different tendency.  Even among Lutherans we often distance ourselves from the physical in pursuit of the spiritual, something we consider truer and more godly than physical things.  One side wants to covet the physical evidence of Jesus and the other wants Jesus to live in the heart.  Both are wrong headed.

Jesus has given us the true relics of His cross in the means of grace.  We gather not around wood but around the Word which is His living voice speaking and accomplishing that which is spoken.  We gather not to adore a sign of what was but to receive its living fruits born of the womb of water and the Spirit granting us new life in baptism.  We gather not to honor something but the someone whom God appointed to take flesh in Virgin, be born to live the holy life we could not, die in offering for our sin, and rise to draw us with Him into the life that death cannot overcome.  The true fruit of this cross is not in a relic but in bread which is His body and wine which is His blood.  There He is lifted up still and there He draw us and all people to Himself to be saved.

The spiritualizing of piety and the internalizing of it is its own problem, the same as externalizing it in splinters of wood with an uncertain history.  We are not alone nor are individuals but the called, gathered, enlightened, and sanctified together, the body of Christ built of living stones into one grand temple by the Holy Spirit, and the Church is also a relic, if you will, of that cross.  The Church is the physical place where we touch the eternal – not by our own will or design or strength but through the means Christ has appointed.  These means are efficacious, they do what they say and bestow that of which they speak.  The Church is where these marks are to be found, where Christ is lifted up in the preaching of the cross and where the living fruits of His redeeming work are given and bestowed to those who come.

As we prepare to celebrate the Holy Cross, its exaltation and triumph are revealed where we gather, in the Word and Sacraments that deliver the fruits of His saving work and where we are clothed with His righteousness to live as the people of His cross, denying self, and taking up our cross to follow Him, now in this mortal life and in eternity. 

Tiresome, right?

No one in their right mind reads through Judges or Kings in the Old Testament for fun.  It is tedious, predictable, and boring.  It does not take long to get the gift of it.  You get the rhythm.  Israel does evil, God allows them to suffer defeat at the hands of an enemy or spend time oppressed by someone even worse.  They cry out for relief or the unjust ruler gets his due when he dies and is buried with the rest of His evil lot.  Things go better -- for a while.  Then the cycle starts all over again.  A judged or a prophet or a better king helps but it is a story that everyone knows.  Why does God bother telling us this long train of corruption, sin, betrayal, and denial?  Surely Jesus has come along to release us from the cycle of fall and restoration, sin and forgiveness, right?

I wish the story of Judges and Kings was an anomaly.  It is not.  It is the nature of all our lives in Christ.  While we would prefer to see our lives as a steady progression of holiness, it is instead a predictable, tiresome, and boring story of temptation, fall, repentance, and forgiveness.  And all of this happens to the Christian and not to those who on their way to becoming one.  We live in the rhythm of daily contrition and sorrow over our sin, repentance, forgiveness, and restoration.  Then it starts all over again.  It is not simply a side story of our Christian life but the main story.  God knows this but we have deluded ourselves into thinking that this business of forgiveness is an occasional thing, for, you know, emergencies.  The rest of the time we are doing pretty well in this life of obedience, holiness, and righteousness.  Except that we are not.

The preparation for worship is confession and absolution.  It is not something you need to get out of the way in order to get to the good stuff -- it is part of the good stuff.  The confessional was routine in history and it ought to be today.  We examine our lives and consciences and what do we find?  We find sin.  We find a predictable, tiresome, boring story of screw ups, weakness, sin, and death.  And that is all our story would be except that we have a God so gracious that He is merciful to those who are so predictably weak and sinful.  Nobody in their right mind would keep up with the sins of the sinner except the mystery of this God who sends His only Son to be our Savior at the cost of His own life and Redeemer to rescue ours.  He does this not simply once on a cross but applying that cross daily rescues us from ourselves and the weak and halfhearted efforts we put into resisting sin and learning holiness.

Then the worship itself is filled with forgiveness -- maybe not quite as obvious as the formal ego te absolvo of the confessional but still pretty blunt.  The word mercy is heard in the Kyrie, the Gloria in Excelsis, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei.  I mean it -- how many times do we sing or say those words to God?  Then in the Eucharist we hear it again -- given and shed for you for the forgiveness/remission of your sins.  Here we are telling God that we are past that and ready to move on to the deeper things of Christian life version 202 and He is putting us right back at the basics of 101 -- forgiveness.  It is not because God is stuck on it but because we constantly need it.  We are Israel.  Ours is the story of sin and God's the story of forgiveness and mercy.  This is the shape of Christian life.  This is not some perfunctory preliminary business to get out of the way before we get to the big stuff.  This is the big stuff.  

Honestly, if we really knew this, the lines would be long for private confession.  The fact that there is practically no waiting means we do not get this or how important it is or how our Christian lives never progress past it.  So for this reason God provides pastors to serve as the voices calling us back home, to confession and to absolution.  They are not perfect but need themselves what they are called to give to each of us in His name but that is their calling.  The sacrifice is not repeated but the fruits of that one all sufficient sacrifice are offered anew to you and me -- a people who constantly need to be rescued by grace, revived by mercy, and restored as the prodigals whom the Father loves more than anything.  Go to confession.  Go often.  It will become a profound blessing to your Christian life as it always was and will be.  God loves the sinner enough to send His Son to die for him, her, you, and me.  Does it ever get better than this?