Moral squint. . .

 

"If you could see facts straight on without that horrible moral quint...."  Those were memorable words from the inestimable movie A Man for All Seasons.  There are actually tons of good lines in this.  "He's been to play in the muck again," says Cardinal Wolsey as King Henry comes to confess his immorality with Anne Boleyn.  And then this from Thomas More.  "I think that when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their countries by a short route to chaos."  Ah, yes.  Good lines.  Not simply because they are well written -- because they are -- but because they are so true.  The great temptation is to see facts without moral constraint, to play in the muck and then come back to confession to wash your hands so that you are not constrained by guilt for the things you wished to do and did, and, finally, to separate the private man from the public one.  By all these we make ourselves and our faith shallow and weak and then wonder out loud why the world is such a mess.  Indeed.

I do not know which is better for the nation  A man without the presumption of faith and morality who indulges in the forbidden for his own purpose or the man with faith and morality who can justify the forbidden for the sake or urgency or expediency.  You tell me.  For the Church, it is certainly the latter.  We have had great faces of morality and integrity who have done great evils behind the scenes or simply refused to let their morality and faith interfere with their public duties.  Some of those are in Congress right now.  I think less so it is true of our current President.  We have also had those who seem to wear the muck without much hesitation for the job they believe needed to be done and whose judgment had no moral squint to it.  They were not better but for the sake of the faith, they did not take Jesus with them into the dirt.

I also do not know if a righteous man availeth much in the public square.  We in the Church would laud him but we would also criticize for it seems that righteousness has become less a moral position than a moving line in the sand.  We have become rather good at excusing and justifying our way out of the commands of the Lord and we strive for a host of other goods before we give ourselves to the cause of holiness.  I do not mean to remove myself from the shame of it all.  We are all complicit.  The gift of a clear conscience is not meant to leave us off the hook, so to speak, but to free us from the guilt so that the Spirit might work in us the good work of holiness, righteousness, and purity.  Slow it is, the pace of this progress, and too often hidden to us but it is apparent to God and often to those nearest and dearest to us.  The prayers of a righteous man availeth much except we pray for so many other causes and needs and wants besides purity of heart, righteousness which reflect Christ's own, and holiness which flows from God's own holiness to those who belong to Him.  And that is its own problem, now, isn't it?

Expedience wins many friends but faith and morality seem lonely.  It is not new.  It has always been that way.  We surrender ourselves to our guilty pleasures only to be washed up for dinner with forgiveness.  Thankfully, God does not condition such forgiveness upon such a track record of change but He does enable and expect that forgiveness lives within the transformed desires of the mind and heart to love what He loves and do what He does.  In the play, Wolsey was certainly the crafty one -- at least until it all came undone when even diplomacy and negotiation could not undo the evil Henry had done.  Thomas was the good man -- too dour for our taste and too righteous for our company but an honorable man who really was ready to be true even to death.  I am thankful I am no advisor to kings or presidents nor do I have official cause to give any the advice so readily upon my mind and tongue.  But I do know the great tension between the holy and the expedient and none has to be a shadow in the halls of power to know it and feel it in their lives.  It is a wretched tension but a good one which forces the simple to be difficult and the difficult to be simple.  Without it we would not need nor know God at all. 

Strange but true. . .

As we are now in the holy season of great decoration, I have noticed a rather peculiar phenomenon.  Where I live the Halloween decorations seem to have reached the heights of Christmas and perhaps eclipsed them.  House after house had towering skeletons or ghosts along with giant sized spiders and speakers that sent loud spooky laughter into the night.  These were not the domain of the well to do but on meager homes and yards even more.  They had been up for a long time prior to Halloween and after the trick or treat day was gone, some of those folks merely thrust a Santa next to the skeleton or put a baby in a manger before the ghostly figure or turned the scary troop into a marching band for Christmas.  Strange but true.

I do not know what to make of this all.  When did Halloween graduate from pranks and candy and dress up to a full fledged decoration day?  The motorized blow up craze surely helped but they are still pricey and hard to store.  When did it become normal to clutter your hard with homage to the devil or fake tombstones or spiders big enough to eat Manhattan?  Is it the same way where you live?  The weirder colors of Halloween lights somehow evolve into red and green or other more Christmassy colors but it is fairly obvious that the spooky stuff has taken prominence.  Do church goers also engage in this kind of dance with demons on All Hallows' Eve or is this a sign of the growing size of the nones or dechurched population?  I wish I knew what to think of it all.

I also find it amazing that there is a growing business of folks who will put up your decorations for you (and, I presume, take them down when the season is ended although I see a lot of them up year round).  Is the quest for self-expression so great that if you have no time, you will pay somebody to do it for you?  Have the decoration stores been so successful in touting their wares that if you don't put something up because you are too busy you feel obligated to have somebody do it for you?  I wish someone would explain to me how all of this came about.  It seems rather sudden.  One day there were a few oddballs who had a skeleton here or there and the next it was pandemonium.

Is this some sign of the darker side of things beginning to show itself in the light of day?  Are people owning up to feelings and thoughts they had before but did not feel able to express them?  Or is this merely the success of marketing and sales?  I well recall the time my younger son had a storm trooper costume and sat in a chair on our porch to give out the candy.  As soon as he moved, the kids screamed and ran away.  Some parents thought this was over the top.  Baby, they had not seen anything yet.  Perhaps the most troubling to me is that it has all become somehow oddly normal.  Wow.  What a world! 

The best way to start your day. . .

It probably does not matter much whether you are a morning person or awake into all hours of the night, a cup of coffee is in your cards.  In fact, coffee consumption is up (as if the ubiquitous presence of all those drive through coffee places had not already alerted you to this).  In the past twenty years, the number of American adults who enjoy a daily cup of joe has jumped 37 percent to the highest level in decades.  The daily drink of Americans is hardly a new invention but has its source to 850 AD, to the Arabian colony of Harar near present-day Ethiopia, where it seems the brew began.  It spread across to Mecca and through the Arabian continent but took its time to get to Europe.  Only in the 1600s did Europe really begin to notice the blackish brown beverage we would call coffee.  In the 17th century, the Roman Catholic Church condemned coffee as a “Muslim drink,” leading to a temporary ban on its consumption in some European countries -- until a pope tried it and liked it.

About the same time, coffee hit the Americas.  By 1689, there were coffee houses in Boston -- the precursors of Starbucks, Dutch Bros, etc. -- though with a more limited fare on the menu. Two out of every three adults in the US start the day with coffee -- Americans consume about 400 million cups of coffee per day!  It became so popular in the late 1770s that coffee replaced the daily rum ration for soldiers.  Ever since our armies have run on coffee just like the industry.  Nashville is home to one of the coffee dynasties -- the Maxwell House family brand.  Folgers is known far and wide.  At home the brand of choice seemed to be Butternut (is it even still around?).  At every meeting of pastors, there is always a very large pot brewing (followed later in the day with some other libation!).  In 1966, America got its first real coffee chain — Peet’s Coffee  — starting life as a small storefront in Berkeley, California.  There has been no looking back since.

I will admit to drinking a lot of coffee.  From a better blend in the pod machine to French press to a big drip machine to my nostalgic favorite -- Swedish egg coffee, there is not much I do not like about coffee -- except for those drinks that are coffee in name only but really caffeinated milk shakes or such.  I am not a fan.  No cream, no sugar, no flavors from a bottle — just hot and black and strong.  Alone or in a koffee klatch, every day begins with coffee.  It is the one unchangeable part of my breakfast.  I drink less now that I am retired but seldom less than two cups.  I do love tea but not first thing in the morning.  That prime place and time is reserved for a good cup of java.  Indeed, I find it hard to image anything without the start of coffee.  Staring into the deep brown steamy liquid seems to get my devotion started, my blog juices going, and whets my appetite for reading.  If it is morning when you are reading this, I hope you are enjoying a great cup of coffee today.

They are the same. . .

The premise behind everything from the style and substance can be different to those who advocate for a contemporary form of worship borrowed from evangelicalism more than the church catholic is that liturgy and ecclesiology are different.  One does not imply another and they can not only be distinguished but can be intentionally different.  That is an idea that is patently false.  Ecclesiology and liturgy are the same -- at least in the sense that to change the liturgy is to change ecclesiology and to change ecclesiology is to change liturgy.  It is a slightly different version of lex orandi, lex credendi.

Let me illustrate from Rome.  The liturgy of the Latin Mass (following from Trent) and the Mass in the wake of Vatican II are not the same and neither is the ecclesiology.  Rome is fighting about this now although it would seem that the Vatican II side has pretty much won and Pope Leo is not showing any sign that this is not true.  Some are trying to say that what was promulgated in the wake Vatican II is the same form, merely updated in language and style.  Everyone who has been to a Latin Mass knows this is not true.  The post Vatican II Mass is focused much more on the people side of the equation.  It is not simply that the priest faces the people but that the whole thing is focused more on the nave than it ever was in the Latin Mass.  The most glaring abuses of the new Mass are not abuses of the form so much as they are taking the whole idea of that new Mass and pushing it to the extreme.  

Reverence and the focus on God's work and the people's work to God has been replaced with the idea that the focus is horizontal more than vertical and the the relationship of the people to each other and the people's work in the liturgy are central in the new Mass.  What has changed is not merely liturgy but ecclesiology.  That new ecclesiology has been pushed to its limits in the idea of synodality (even though this was given the imprimatur of a pope who acted more like a dictator than nearly any other in modern memory).  Synodality deposits the authority in the process and conversation even more than in the creed and doctrine.  It invites people to invest these with their feelings and to change them as needs determine.  So in Rome the natural outcome of the new Mass is to begin talking about changes in marriage, morality, the role of women, etc...  These things are connected.

Okay, so lets talk about Lutherans.  Tinkering with the liturgy is often seen as a technical thing which does not have that much to do with the body of belief.  I think it is just the opposite.  The great divide which has resulted from and fostered even more the worship wars of old was not simply about doing things differently but doing different things in worship.  It is not merely about worship but the church -- it is about ecclesiology and the pastoral office and the sacraments and a host of things.  We end up arguing about whether this pop gospel song is good or if a Lutheran chorale is better but it is a debate at the fringes.  It is not about taste.  It is about what we believe, teach, and confess.  It is also greatly about how we see the church and what we believe the church is about.  It is the great divide between mission and confession except it is played out on Sunday morning.

My point here is not to definitively solve or define this but to challenge us to see that we are not simply talking about what we like to do on Sunday morning or what kind of music hits our souls.  Things have legs and consequences.  Contemporary worship is walking us into another kind of church and the consequences of ditching the historic ordo and abandoning the liturgical form which has accompanied our confession since the get go have consequences.  We are becoming a different church because we are using different forms of worship and because even where the historic form is retained the way we view it has evolved to the point where we no long bind liturgy and confession nor connect worship and ecclesiology together.  That is why our conversations are so difficult and so difficult to resolve.  We focus on one thing but are really talking about another. And, by the way, Christology is not far behind!

A quiet mind. . .

Compline's opening versicle bids the Lord grant us a quiet mind and peace at the last.  In one of the older prayers of the Church we ask God to grant grace to those who rule that we may lead quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty.  In one of the bidding prayers of the Church we pray that we may serve Him in peace and quietness.  In an evening prayer we beg the Lord to shelter us in the quiet hours of the night that those wearied by the changes and chances of this passing world may rest in His changeless peace.  In one of the prayers for good government we ask God to graciously regard those in authority over us that we may be governed quietly and peaceably.  We pray for the gift of a quiet sleep.  There is no shortage of collects in which we pray for godly peace and quietness, to serve Him in all godly quietness, and to serve Him with a quiet mind.  We pray in the collect for peace to live in peace and quietness.           

These are prayers to be released from anxiety, to be sure but not simply so.  Freedom from anxiety is not the absence of trouble but a heart which rests upon Him in whom such quietness is to be found.  To live with the peace of a clear conscience is to live within the grace of forgiveness and to forgive those who sin against you. The sacramental grace of absolution is not merely an external one but internally acquaints the heart with peace and quietness in a conscience troubled with sin and guilt and shamed by them as well.  One does not go to confession to fulfill some perfunctory ritual obligated to us but to enter into that precious state of peace and quietness which the world and the devil works to steal.  It is also the fruit of our participation in Christ's redeeming work, receiving the gift of His mercy in the Holy Eucharist.  As once we prayed in the embolism:   Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  It is quite literally a tossed in prayer summarizing all the petitions -- as common to the praying of the Our Father in the Latin Church as the doxology is to Protestantism. 

Peace and harmony and therefore quietness are in short supply today.  It shows in the statistics for depression and anxiety that have made these epidemic.  It is revealed in the way we close ourselves off from each other and from the world because we do not know how to deal with our discontent.  But this is an elegant grace and a generous gift to a people who live in a world of change -- dizzying change.  Some of it is by our own making and absolution promises us some peace for these.  Other of it is beyond our ken.  We are like the small boat upon the mighty waves.  We beg the Lord for some peace, for a place in the storms of our lives, and for quietness to catch up on it all before it all overwhelms us.  God help us in this.  The haunts of yesterday's sins and the quavering heart before temptation will surely steal from us every last ounce of our peace unless we rest in the Lord and in Him rest all that would taunt and trouble us.  It is not simply okay to pray for peace and quietness -- it is exactly this for which we pray at God's bidding and promise.  He will not turn away.                                 

Being the Church. . .

According to Pope Leo, being the Church means recognizing that truth is not possessed, but sought together, allowing ourselves to be guided by a restless heart in love with Love.  It sounds nice.  It certainly expresses the commonly held convictions of the day that the pursuit of truth is bigger and better than possession of it.  It reflects the sort of gobbledygook that has pervaded Rome since Francis.  It does not sound like the carefully nuanced words of Scripture or the confession of the faithful down through the ages.  Indeed, it begs the question.  Do we possess the Divine Revelation of God's Word or not or is that Word somehow either incomplete or insufficient for the day?  I guess Leo and folks like me will simply have to agree to disagree.  It is precisely this kind of talk that gets us all in trouble.

What good is a church made up of people seeking unless there is something to be sought and known?  That seems to be the issue.  Either we have the truth in God's Word and this is the ground of being for the Church or else we don't and are left with one big guesstimate.  So either the Church is a group of blind people feeling their way along or we are those whose eyes have been opened and on whom the light has shown.  It has to be one or the other.  For that matter, either the Spirit has been given to us merely as a companion on our common journey or the Spirit actually guides the Church into all truth.  I mean, really, we are two millennia away from Christ's death and resurrection and, according to Leo, we are still far from the truth.  Now, of course, we would all agree that we are not there yet in the sense of the perfect consummation of all things but as possessor of the truth, why else is there a Church?  The Scriptures?  The Spirit?  The Church has the illumination of Scripture and the Spirit along with the catholic witness down through the ages and possesses the fullness of the truth within the bounds of our human frailty.  

What is the Church the guardian of except the truth?  Indeed, while it fits with the modern idea of an evolving and changing truth in which the seeking is even more significant than the truth itself, it does not accord with the promise of Christ, the gift of the Spirit, and what the Scriptures claim of themselves.  Jesus did not claim to be a companion with us along the way but the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  He is not a means to an end but the end.  To know Him is to know the truth in all its fullness.  These words of Leo do not even accord with customary Roman teaching regarding the pontiff and the teaching magisterium of Rome.  So what is it?  Is this merely an unfortunate example of the kind of imprecise language used by the advocates of change or is it the sign that Leo has joined Francis, against Benedict and JPII and others in seeing the role of the faithful in discerning where God wants them to go instead of proclaiming what God has done in Christ on behalf of the whole world?  If it is the latter, then the Gospel is reduced to a mere marker along the journey or a principle for the path instead of the eternal Gospel of Revelation meant for the all people.  If that is the case, Leo and those who think like him will have transformed Rome into a fully contemporary Protestant church -- something for which Luther did not aim nor should he be blamed. 

 

 

Internet lies and its truth. . .

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

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

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

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

Fawning for attention. . .

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

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

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

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

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

Small and smaller. . .

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

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

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

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

The most useless season of all. . .

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

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

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

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

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

Let us pray. . .

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

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

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

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

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

 The Litany

 

L O Lord,

C have mercy.

L O Christ,

C have mercy.

L O Lord,

C have mercy.

L O Christ,

C hear us.

L God the Father in heaven,

C have mercy.

L God the Son, Redeemer of the world,

C have mercy.

L God the Holy Spirit,

C have mercy.

L Be gracious to us.

C Spare us, good Lord.

L Be gracious to us.

C Help us, good Lord.

 

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

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

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

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

C Good Lord, deliver us.

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

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

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

C Help us, good Lord.

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

C Help us, good Lord.

L We poor sinners implore You

C to hear us, O Lord.

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

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

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

C We implore You to hear us, good Lord.

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

C We implore You to hear us, good Lord.

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

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

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

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

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

C We implore You to hear us, good Lord.

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

C We implore You to hear us, good Lord.

L Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,

C we implore You to hear us.

 

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

C have mercy.

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

C have mercy.

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

C grant us Your peace.

 

L O Christ,

C hear us.

L O Lord,

C have mercy.

L O Christ,

C have mercy.

L O Lord,

C have mercy. Amen.

 

All church politics is local. . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So long Black Friday. . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

A Rockwell Thanksgiving

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

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

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

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

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

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

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