The real war against abortion. . .

For a long time many of us believed that the war against abortion was fought on the level of law and before an invention of a constitutional right.  Then came a change and the legal underpinning of the abortion cause was undone at the level of our highest court.  But nothing really changed.  The technology had marched quietly along and abortions were less the domain of medical procedure than they were a pill popped into the mouth and forgotten about.  We won the wrong war.  We should have been fighting for the hearts and minds of all Americans.  Instead, we were worried about nine in black robes.

Here we are celebrating another anniversary of some of our best legal minds getting it absolutely wrong while we have forgotten to instill and maintain a culture of life that beckons to the soul of an entire nation.  Abortion is not about a law.  Abortion is about the sanctity of life, the cheapening of that life by pills that mask the reality of death and about efforts underway to extend the same callous indifference to life's mystery to those already born.  Whether euthanasia or assisted suicide, the fight against abortion has lost the hearts and imagination of most folks.  It simply is not what people think and even Christians are no longer shamed by the mountain of death that has become normal.  That is our problem.  Abortion has become normal like taking a pill for a headache.  It has become so normal that the same legitimacy given to life has been sanctified in the culture of death.  From Illinois to New York, governors are proudly pushing the agenda of death to make it quick and easy to do for the living what pharmaceuticals have done for the child in the womb.

Sadly, I had no idea as a college age young man what it meant when abortion was rendered legal by the devious manipulation of law and in the name of what was a woman's right.  Only now am I realizing that the energy marshaled against that court decision should have been accompanied by a mass movement rekindling the fire of life against a cause of death.  Now we find ourselves at a time when hardly any Christians push back against what was never conceived of at the decision handed down on January 22, 1973.  Life is ours to do with as we please.  Or is it?  Are we the powerful who define what is life and what is not, what is life worth living and what is not, when it is okay to choose death over life and when that right became more profound that the mystery and dignity of life itself?  Or have we become the weak who stand for little more that expediency and who will gladly risk moral uprightness rather than stand against the wave of public opinion that has made all of this messy stuff normal?

I have no idea how much gun laws play into the mass violence that plagues our land but I am pretty sure that the cheapening of the value of life has done more than any trigger.  We are no longer offended by those who offend against the sacredness of life unless they offend our politics.  How odd it is to get all wound up about the cause of the immigrant but casually to dismiss the idea that you can play God with the life in the womb of the mother or with your life or the life of your loved one when it is judged no longer worth living!  Though some complain about the whole idea of a seamless garment when you deal with issues of life, we have to begin stitching together a cohesive connection between all of the life issues in such a way that it is more than political ideology or personal preference to choose what is okay and what is not.  The strange thing is that people are more excited about capital punishment which is rarely carried out than they are the pills that kill in the womb or make for a painless way to end your life.  The solution is not as simple as some suggest.  It is fought not before justices robed in black but in the hearts of every American.  Life is not a commodity for the unborn or the aged or the infirm or the people you vote against.  Until we begin connecting these dots, we may win before the law but watch as the culture of death steals the victory from the overall cause.  Some will immediately argue with me about how these causes are all connected but while we are battling it out over nuance the hearts and minds of young and old have already decided the outcome.  If you do not believe me, why have we lost the cause of marriage and children in city after city across America?

The Church cannot content herself to speak simply about how we stand before a righteous God and we must also address the cause of life, from its natural beginning to its natural end.  We must be uniformly offended by those who would take that life into their own hands and admit that pills are just as effective at killing as our guns.  Abortion depends upon everyone finding it unthinkable that anyone can take the life of another and call it normal.  This is not specifically Christian doctrine as much as it is the restoration of the cause of natural law and ordinary common sense to the senseless way we have come to see death as preferable to life. 

Was blind but now I see. . .

This Christian stuff is not easy and sometimes it really burns me when folks try to make it seem easy.  I especially detest that "let go and let God" saying.  We Christians struggle with what it is that we believe and confess.  It is never easy and never simple.  There is no such thing as the simple faith of Jesus and there is even less of no such thing in the simple faith in Jesus.  If it were simple or easy, we would not need a Holy Spirit to call, gather, enlighten, and sanctify us.  But we do.  We do because faith is not easy or simple.

Jesus repeatedly tells His disciples and us that we have not seen the Father.  Duh.  Just show us the Father, somebody once said.  We have not and do not see the Father.  Jesus does.  He has seen the Father.  He comes from the Father.  He is the embodiment of the Father's heart, His saving will and purpose.  Jesus does not tell us we need to see the Father or even that we can see the Father.  Seeing Jesus is enough.  For the disciples that was a little more straightforward.  After all, for three years they walked with Him, heard His voice, witnessed His miracles, touched Him, and saw Him die and then risen again.  No wonder they did not have to see the Father.  They saw Jesus and that was enough.

Or was it?  They had constant doubts.  When Jesus was talking or doing miracles or revealing the hidden Kingdom to them, they were somewhere else.  At least in their minds, anyway,  Sometimes they were even asleep.  Their doubts drove them to Jesus because they did not know where else to go.  Somebody once said that, I think.  Doubts in the face of a little boy's lunch multiplied while they carried the baskets of leftovers.  Doubts before those whose ills left the world with little more than sympathy.  Doubts before the unmistakable voice and presence of Jesus when they thought they had seen Him dead and buried.  In the end, the doubts kept pushing them back to where they were not sure they wanted to go -- to Jesus.  Peter put it best.  Where else can we go?  Lord know, Peter and the rest of them had tried to find somebody else.  Doubts can either gnaw away at what little faith is left until there is nothing (Judas) or they can push you into the arms of One who has seen the Father (the rest of the apostles).

Jesus never said it would be easy or simple.  In fact, He reminded them of their doubts and asked them if they were going to give up and just walk away.  In the end, they could not just walk away.  Only one had seen the Father, come down from heaven into flesh and blood, paid the debt for sin, died to kill death, and rise to raise up those who still had bodies to shed before they were made new and glorious.  Jesus asked them if they were offended because of Him.  He preached from the mound of the blessedness of those who were not offended by Him (whose doubts drove them into His arms and not away from Him).  And so we come.

When the Church got into the habit of making faith simple or easy and doctrine reasonable and flexible to fit the times and situations of the people, the pews emptied.  But when the full measure of what faith is and requires was laid before the people, they took up the cross and followed Him.  The easier and simpler we try to make faith and the easier and simpler we try to making following Him, the worse it will be for the Church.  It is in the desperate doubt that has surveyed every other option and found none that the broken are restored, raised up from despair and disappointment to follow Him.  It is in the hesitance before the call of God that saints are made from sinners and the strong forged from the weakest of stock.  Make worship easy and simple and fun, they said.  But they did not come and those who came did not bother to stay.  But hold up the mystery of the faith and invite the doubts to rest in the arms of the one and only who has seen the Father and, well, the Church lives. 

In praise of words. . .

There is no doubt that Google can translate so that something can be understood in its basic form or that AI can mimic poetic rhyme and turn words into content that can be comprehended and even appreciated.  But words remain the domain of the Word made flesh and of the people created by Him and endowed with His creative gift.  Words are the exclusive domain of humanity.  Whether in poetic form or story, novel or essay, comment or commentary, words are what distinguish us from the rest of God's creation and mark in us the sign of His image.  We are a wordy people created for words.  Some of them are profound and others vulgar but all of them the unique sphere of those who the Creator formed from the dust of the earth and made to reflect His glory and serve His purpose.

I fear, however, that words are beginning to fail us.  Our speech has become coarser and more vulgar.  We tend to resort to this kind of demeaning speech when the force of our ideas fail us or our skills with words become rusty and contrived.  It very well could be that we have become captive to the briefest spurt of words that fit a text or a tweet but have little room to explore the greater opportunities of the language as a whole.  It could be that we have substituted words on a screen for real conversation, authentic debate, and reasoned argument that we have forgotten how to talk.  Perhaps Charlie Kirk was so popular because he took the time to listen and to speak, delighting in the rich and vibrant forms of debate while the rest of the world simply spoke into an echo chamber or wrote off those who might or did disagree.  Politics has lost the sound of the mighty orator whose craft was once able to change minds and influence hearts.  The greats were remembered not simply for their wisdom but for their words.  Churchill once made a living and kept his sanity by producing two thousand words (and laying 200 bricks!) each day.  Now a school child cannot write cursive and looks in terror when an empty exam book is placed into his hands, expecting him to write cogently of his knowledge and to make his point.  What has happened to us?

Reagan was perhaps the last of those for whom words were a gift.  He was the great communicator because he had great writers, knew his words, and delivered them not as script but as the language of his heart.  Others after him have had good writers too but they were wooden in delivery and the words were strangers to them, almost like enemies which had to be battled and won.  Trump has some good writers but off the cuff he betrays how he uses words less to convince than to inflict damage.  In modern times we have been lacking in those whose voices on senate floors or in the house or even in an interview left us struck and rethinking what it was that we once believed.

Sermons were once the most formal speeches any person ever heard live and without filter.  Great preachers served us well with the Word of God in eloquent words and nuanced speech.  I know how many sermons I remember from days gone by and how few reach that mark today.  Yes, we have people who speak well and faithfully but in the pulpit they seem to wear their homilies as if they were ill-fitting clothes.  For the record, I do not consider myself a great preacher and dare not hold myself up as fine example.  I write a great deal -- almost every day -- but not very many of my words are what I would call memorable.  But I know it when I read it or when I hear it.  You do as well.

If there is a problem speaking the Gospel to people today it could very well be a problem with words that has created a crisis of communication among us.  Truth has become as weak as a passing thought in a moment.  Unleashed from its anchor in fact, everything has become about feelings and so little about anything stronger.  Even in the pulpits of America pastors speak with more conviction what they feel than the Christ they know and whose words they are there to preach.  It is no wonder that people do not find this Gospel as compelling.  God's Word has become an alien language and their ears no longer know how to listen to what is being preached and taught.  Too many of us go back home without being changed or transformed by the Word of God in the words of men.  An armor of sorts has left us impermeable and our lack of appreciation for the good book and its author have served to close our ears and hearts to God's entry.  It was always about words.  When words become strangers to us, God is distant.  To pray for the renewal of the Holy Spirit is to pray to be open to hearing the voice of God that transforms everything.  I hope and pray that this renewal lies in our future.  It will most certainly lead to repentance and faith in the hearts and minds of the hearers but it also has the power to rescue us from the bland and mundane that fits the minimum of who we are but fails to elevate us.  The renewal of words spoken, heard, and considered is key to the renewal of the Gospel among us but its fruits will also spill over into a better humanity of better people.  The silence and our uncomfortable relationship with words not only prevents us from being saved by that Word but leaves us with little that would distinguish us from the rest of God's good creation.  Pray that this too shall pass -- for the sake of our life with God and for the sake of everyday human life. 

Liturgical manifestations of a high Christology. . .

Lex orandi lex credendi addresses any number of errors that have crept into the liturgical practice of the , faith but which are not compatible with catholic and orthodox doctrine.  Likewise, what is confessed as catholic and orthodox doctrine must inform not only the content but the practice of the liturgy.  It would seem to me, then, that the confession of a high Christology as we have had it in the Nicene Creed is both expressed and maintained by the liturgical practice that comes before and follows after the Creed in the liturgy.  While I am not sure that evangelical Christianity is necessarily Arian in its Christology, it has focused almost exclusively upon the humanity of Christ and, if not leaning Arian, could well be Nestorian.

The question facing Arius was Jesus truly God in the flesh or a created being -- in other words, was Jesus God or not?  Arius denied the deity of the Son of God, holding that Jesus was also a created being, created by God as the first act of His divine creation and that therefore the nature of Christ was anomoios (“unlike”) that of God the Father. The Arians viewed Jesus is a finite created being with some divine attributes, but certainly not eternal and not divine in and of Himself.  Nestorians emphasize the disunity of the human and divine natures of Christ, that is, that Christ essentially exists as two persons sharing one body with His divine and human natures completely distinct and separate. 

A high Christology especially emphasizes the divine nature of Jesus Christ, focusing on his pre-existence and and his pre-incarnate role as God. In contrast, a low Christology focuses more on Jesus' humanity and His earthly experience in the flesh.  Expressed liturgically, a low Christology emphasizes Jesus in more personal terms -- without the formality and reverence marking in that relationship.  Worship flowing from a low Christology then focuses on the horizontal rather than the vertical -- on fellowship, folksiness and casualness.  A high Christology focuses upon the vertical and upon the reverence, awe, and solemnity afforded the most high God whom we meet in the face of Christ.

A high Christology then is reflected in a formal order or ordo, in the attitude of reverence, in vestments which set apart the clergy, and in the heavenly which is met here in this earthly moment.  A low Christology would eschew those things in favor of a more homey and simple approach.  While this is not an absolute rule without exception, it is a typical pattern.  The problem of Arianism today might well be more closely identified with those communities in which an aw shucks Jesus is just one of the guys.  Certainly John's Gospel would fall in to a high Christology side of things, along with St. Paul and his writings.  

When beginning Christology “from below,” one inevitably begins with those things that identify that "below" -- such as how in Matthew’s Gospel the Christ is a baby, born of Mary.  Later this Christology speaks of this man from Nazareth who was truly God Himself in the flesh. So in the genealogy that begins the Gospel there is a clear emphasis on Jesus’ human nature, rooted in the promise laid down and kept  through the generations since Abraham.  Jesus was born as every human child is born but from there the focus shifts to the divine nature of Christ and, with John tells the story of His saving work beginning with His baptism, temptation, and teaching.  This is a good example of Christology that begins from below, starting with the human nature of Jesus, and then manifest the divine.  It would seem that among some Christians today the divine is almost alien to the kerygma and it is solely the human that is both the focus and the forming principle for what happens in worship.

While it is certainly not automatic, a high Christology is generally reflective of liturgical worship in which reverence is a key component -- both in the East as well as in the West.  Indeed, the shape of worship in the Revelation of St. John expresses a very high Christology, not something foreign to what happens in worship on earth but the prefigurement of what is to come, the foretaste of the eternal, in which the focus is clearly on the Christ the Son of God.  How we worship begins with the Word incarnate among us and does not depart from that Word in flesh in our midst.  In this way there is no disconnect between what happens in the liturgy and the promise fulfilled in the heavenly sanctuary but a distinct and profound congruity.  It would seem to me that, again not automatic, a high Christology and a fuller liturgical celebration are more consistent just as a low Christology and a more earthy and folksy worship setting go hand in hand.   

 

I am not alone. . .

I grew up wondering where my Swedish mother and German father came up with the name Larry.  It was never short for anything -- not Lawrence or Lorenz or Lars.  It was always just Larry.  I used to joke that if I had a better name, I could have been somebody.  Then I realized even more how common was that name.

Driving in New Jersey I saw a sign for Larry Peters Motors -- alas I am a car salesman!   At least it would seem I owned the dealership.  A few years ago when we developed an affection for British TV, Grantchester caught our attention and sure enough even in 1950s England there was a cop name Larry Peters.  Then my wife was doing some ancestry stuff only to find that there are actually other people on my family tree named -- wait for it -- Larry Peters.  I am not at all unique.  There are many of us.

I suppose it was inevitable.  If they have to reuse Social Security numbers, it is highly likely that names will run out and have to be reused as well.  The parents who look into the eyes of their baby boy and decide that he looks like little Larry Peters probably did not think much of others who might be using that name.  I doubt my parents gave it a second thought.  In any case, my uniqueness long ago was forged in something more profound than a name on a birth certificate.  It was a baptismal certificate that gave my name its meaning and wrote it in the Book of Life.  That is our real uniqueness.  We belong to the Lord.

Larry Peters may carry some significance for those knew or know me but there is one who knows not simply my name but the number of hairs on my head and all the deepest darkest sins that I work so hard to hide.  He knows me not as someone impressive but as one who has been washed in His blood and raised up from death to live forever.  This is the name that matters.  In the annuals of history or in the results of a google search it might be heard to sort through the faces of those who share a name but are not the same.  Christ has no such problem.  He knows all His sheep and each of them by name -- complete with all their shameful history and still He loves them (and me!).  Thanks be to God!

Cemeteries often promise to remember those whose bodies have been laid to rest and tombstones pledge that those who are gone are not forgotten.  They are gone.  They are also forgotten.  Except by Him who was laid in a grave for the sake of everyone marked for death.  In a few weeks or so we will begin another cycle of Lent and Holy Week and Easter.  The greatest news of all is that when we know nothing for sure He cannot forget us.  Like Mary Magdalene whose pain and sorrow clouded her from recognizing our Lord or the sound of His voice, His call to her by name broke through the fog until it was the only thing that mattered.  

There was a time when I feared that no one would remember my name.  The day will soon come when they will not be able to figure out which one I am when an internet search for images of Larry Peters presents them with a full congregation of people claiming that name.  In that day I will join the ranks of those who are gone and forgotten by a world that stakes a great deal on a name but then forgets it at the drop of a hat.  No, it does not matter what moved my mom and dad to leave behind the many noble names of their Scandinavian and German heritage and settle on Larry.  Jesus knows me and He knows you, too.  In the end to know His name is to discover who you are.  I just hope we do not learn this lesson too late. 

 

 

Book Lust. . .

Before I retired, I did not worry about where to put my books.  I merely got rid of a chair or two and added another bookcase to my crowded office.  Now I have the same lust for books but less shelf space.  It has created in me a lust for that which I cannot have.  It used to be how much I could afford was that which governed the size of my library.  Now it is how much I can store.  This has left me with a profound lust that makes it hard to face my books.  I feel guilty when I lust for a volume I do not have room for but want more than I care to admit while looking at the books already on my shelf I have not yet read.  Woe for me.

I got a notice from a bookseller I have known for a long time and it gave hint to a clearance sale in process.  The truth is I could not help myself.  I looked at the pages of offering on their website and lusted after volumes I did not need and probably do not have time left in my life to read but I wanted them.  I wanted them with a powerful yearning that made it easy to forget the books I had which lay begging to be opened.  They were once the same.  I wanted them at one point the way I want the new volumes I have surveyed.  I valued them over those already on my shelves the way I how valued the new offerings over my old, worn, covers.  Wretched man that I am!

Who will save me from this body of sin and lust?  That is the problem.  I am not at all sure I want to be saved.  Unlike my children who have grown up and lead their own lives, books live quietly on my shelves waiting for my touch and for the scan of my eye.  They will not abandon me even when I have lusted for the new I do not have or the old I did not think I would find.  It might seem repentance is in order but I fear I would rather keep on lusting than give it all up.  It is sort of like the kid who loves the small gift he has received but wonders if that big box under the tree just might be his also.  Oh, well.  I could probably move a few things around and find space for a few more.  What do you think? 

False comparisons. . .

There are a thousand ways to look at the Reformation but not all of them are fair.  The one thing that seems to predominate today is what we compare the two major players but at different points in time.  On the one hand, we tend to see Rome less in view of what Luther saw and historians agree was the situation on the ground in the sixteenth century but more in terms of what we see in Rome today.  On the other hand, we tend to look at the Reformation exclusively in terms of the Reformers without looking much at what the heirs of that Reformation look like today.  It is a false comparison.  Luther did not weep when he visited Rome because of its beauty and inspiration.  He wept because the things everyone knew were on the fringes were there in the center on full display without any shame.

In the sixteenth century, Rome did not look much like it does today.  Even the errors are different.  We forget, for example, what Rome looked like after Trent and what it looked like before Trent.  Even speaking the "Hail Mary" was different --  the final segment, "Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen," was a response to Reformation critiques.  It did not become official until the 1568 Roman Breviary's release.  We Lutherans tend to look at how Luther dealt with the "Hail Mary" without even thinking that the phrase prone to most Reformation objections was not even a part of that prayer of popular devotion then.  Luther was much more Marian in his approach than we are but we do not get it because we see it all through the lens of today and not through the lens of what was Rome in the sixteeth century.  

We look at Rome and the post-Vatican II Mass and lectionary which holds much in common with our own and we wonder why Luther would speak of the Mass in such derogatory terms.  We do not even know the Roman Canon and many Roman Catholics are not even familiar with it due to the addition of other canons in the wake of the Vatican Council.  We do not get the significance of Luther's liturgical directions and we have forgotten that Luther was working to make an evangelical rubric to be used with the Latin Mass of the day when he came up with the Formula Missae.  It was never a stand alone rite but a set of directions on how to use the Roman Mass evangelically.  We don't get the problem or the solution because we do not even get what was going on in the sixteenth century.

We do not take seriously quite how bad things had gotten prior to the Reformation.  We snicker at the caricatures of Tetzel's wandering minstrel show selling indulgences because we do not see them as significant or even visible parts of Rome today.  We have dismissed much of the false doctrine that was being taught and we have ignored many of the practices that either reflected or gave rise to such false doctrine.  We shrug a shoulder at purgatory or the treasury of merits or a hundred other things that predominated in the hearts and minds of the faithful when the Gospel of forgiveness full and free by the sacrifice of Christ's blood once for all was largely unknown and unpreached.  We do not get the Reformation because we have chosen to ignore what was the shape of Christianity at the time of Luther and we look at Rome today and wonder how on earth could any sane man accuse the Pope of being the anti-Christ.  Well, duh.  Francis was a poor excuse for a pope but compare him to the Borgia pope and we see how it was.  Francis' statements seeming to leave a door open for the embrace of the LGBTQ agenda offend us but papal palaces were a cesspool of sex, vice, intrigue, and immorality.  Even other popes were scandalized by their predecessors yet we somehow are embarrassed or ashamed of the seeming vitriol of the complaints lodged by the voices of the Reformation.  

On the other side of things, we have watched a Lutheranism become lazy, ignorant, accommodating to the times, and embracing culture over cultus for so long that wonder what kind of crazy stuff Luther was spouting.  We have grown up and matured but in so doing we have also become a shadow of what we were.  No Lutherans today would march from Sweden to defend the faithful from Roman armies singing "Salvation Unto Us Has Come."  We can barely muster a full stanza of "Amazing Grace" before we run out of steam and voice.  Rome has been preserved by becoming less Roman and Lutheranism has been spoiled by becoming less Lutheran.  The populace today things of Lutherans as Methodists with a quirk of the liturgy or as slightly more formal evangelicals.  Even those in the pews cannot defend and are not sure they appreciate the liturgy, the sacraments, the sacramental Word, etc...  We are ashamed and embarrassed by Luther and others with him because he seems out of control and too strident for our comfort level.  We, on the other hand, are barely Lutheran because we have ceded too much control to popular opinion over the voice of God's unchanging Word and because we prefer to be comfortable over being faithful.  Rome was scared of Luther's Lutheranism.  Nobody is scared of Lutheranism today.  Is that a good thing?  On the other hand, Rome has conveniently forgotten what it was that made Luther and others rise up while we have also forgotten the same and become a shell of what we were then.

Two hundred years into the Reformation history, the Lutherans were profound enough to raise up a genius like Johann Sebastian Bach.  He was not alone but accompanied by many who went before and those who followed -- great musicians fueled in their craft not by great technical training but by a vibrant faith that was as excited as Luther was over the pure and eternal Gospel.  We struggle to raise up those kind of talented and motivated people today not because we are too Lutheran but because we are not all that Lutheran at all.  We compare the glory days of Lutheranism to the parochial setting in which we were confirmed or the glory of the 1950s when we were growing or the 1900s when the boats were bringing Germans to America like crazy.  Our shortsighted vision has made us ill at ease with Luther and with the treasure of the Gospel he sought to restore.  Almost three hundred years after Bach, concert halls reverberate with the music that once were the look and sound of Lutheranism.  Rome has patched up things to conveniently forget who it was while we Lutherans are scandalized by who we were.  So Rome finds the Reformation a terrible and tragic mistake while we find it largely incomprehensible within our generic Protestant identity.

Do we believe that the Reformation was needed?  Do we believe that the Reformation is still relevant?  Do we believe that Lutherans have a reason to exist?  Do we believe that our future lies with those who identity with Luther or those who find Luther an uncomfortable voice in our moderate age?  We seem to be acting like we have also decided that the Reformation was a mistake and not a tragic necessity or else we would be more vocal in confessing and more visible in living out our faith today.  If the ELCA and Missouri find themselves a shell of their former selves, the blame cannot be laid at Luther's feet.  He bequeathed to us a Scripture we can all read and raised up for us to hear and believe the eternal Gospel of Christ crucified and risen for us.  It is not his fault for us failing to read that Scripture or relativizing its voice or turning the Gospel into some form of therapeutic "I'll overlook what is wrong in you if you will overlook what is wrong with me" kind of self-help movement.  If people are not showing up at our doors, it could be because we think Rome was not so bad and our church is terrible.  We are our own party poopers.

But which congregations and what kind of pastors. . .

While it is thoroughly predictable since Lutherans love to argue and find it hard to turn a seeming doctrinal unity into a practical uniformity, there are enough opinions out there that in everything from worship style to seminary education, we ought to be listening more to congregations.  I agree.  But I am sure some of you will not agree with me as to which congregations should have our ear anymore than we are agreed as to what kind of pastors we need form for the church.  That is the core of the problem.

Those who insist that we need to listen to what is going on in congregations on Sunday morning are typically more the kind who value contemporary worship styles and music -- one that you will not find in an LCMS hymnal.  They eschew vestments and organs as much as they have moved on from the ordo and a recognizable shape of the liturgy (much less a common text).  They are the loudest voices among those who are telling us to pay more attention to the congregations.  Typically they feel oppressed, overlooked, and ignored by their Synod.  This is odd because they are generally larger in size and have more dollars.  They have actual staff members instead of volunteers dedicated to technology and its use in worship and church administration.  They go to best conferences practices to network with others who share their mind about Sunday morning.  They lament the small congregations which should either merge, close, or die and get it over with already.  You can hear it and see it all around you.  Talking heads in the prescribed uniforms of jeans and tees or polos and khakis have taken to the airwaves to insist that uniformity is bad and diversity is good and the diversity is where the future lies.

Those on the other side tend to go to conferences and do their thing without much media hype.  Sure they have loud mouths on their side as well and some of us already know who I mean.  But the other side is typically less vocal and quietly goes about doing what they do even if it is under the radar.  There are more of these congregations but these congregations worship (gotta use the jargon) few numbers of people on Sunday morning.  They are old-fashioned and proudly so -- without screens or online check-ins or questions texted to the preacher mid sermon and wear black under their vestments.  You know exactly what to expect when you go there -- the ordo (though often with a tad more ceremonial than the hymnal) and the hymns from the hymnal.  They want the Synod to listen to them just like the other groups thinks they should speak or the LCMS.  Hmmmmm.

The same is true for the issue of pastoral formation.  The large congregations think of themselves as potential seminaries with a little help from an online friend.  They think they know what kind of pastor they need and what kind of pastor they want and they don't want someone to go away to seminary and return years later with a different agenda.  They complain that the traddies already have both brick and mortar seminaries in the LCMS and they want the same -- they want an option for them.  But they also want more.  They believe that the reason for the LCMS decline is due not simply to the outdated worship practices of the other side but also to the outdated way we teach, train, form, and send out pastors.  They think that the Synod needs to listen to their kind of congregations and loosen up the rules and provide for a path so that they can get what they want.

Those on the other side are not even sure that all the guys coming out of seminary are formed enough and every recent seminary grad who defects to the other side is held up as an example of why things need to be tightened down even more -- not loosened up!  They think that the true blue Lutheran congregations are the only ones who ought to be heard.  They think that Synod has paid far too much attention to those who live in the liturgical and theological fringes of our church body.

So there you have it.  We all want to be heard about our opinions on worship and pastoral preparation, to name but two of the big issues before us.  We say we want congregations to weigh in.  The only problem is that we are divided as to which congregational voices ought to be heard and what kind of pastors will best serve us in the years to come.  Does that surprise you? 

Distinctions without separation. . .

I really do abhor the way the world and even those within the pale of Christianity have so easily made a separation between Christ and Christianity and Christianity and the Church. It is a distinction to be kept but without placing distance between them so that they appear insulated from and indifferent toward each other.  That is a problem we face from the world but that it arises from within Christian teachers and people is something hard to accept.

All the attention given to spiritual but not religious has been baptized into the idea that you know Christ without being Christian (creedal) and that Christianity has little to do with the Church or going to church.  I wonder how the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would feel about discounting the internal from the external, the man of faith from the Church where Christ is at work distributing still His gifts.  It strikes me as a kind of lukewarm Christianity that the Father abhors and we all know what Revelation says about the lukewarm.

How is it that you testify to Christ without speaking also of the Church?  How is it that you can speak of Christianity without speaking of the Church?  Scripture does not speak in this way.  The fathers do not speak in this way.  Why do we?  Why are we so reticent to speak of abiding in Christ as abiding in His Church, living by His Word preached and His Holy Sacraments administered?  What kind of Gnosticism speaks in this way?  Surely this is not the faith of the martyrs whose blood has been the seedbed of the Church's faithfulness for nearly two millenia!

How would you "bring" someone to Christ without also bringing them to the Church?  Tell me how it is that Christ lives among us in imagination or desire but without the tangible words of Scripture or the concrete elements of the Sacraments?  What kind of Christ are we bringing the nations to if we lead them to Jesus but not to the Church, His bride, for whom He died and who is washed clean in His blood?  Where there is no opportunity (desert island or stalag or gulag), Christ will not desecrate His name, Immanuel, by abandoning the faithful.  But where there is the community, gathered around the Word and Table of the Lord, Christ will not fail His promise by eschewing the Word preached or the Sacraments rightly administered according to His institution.

At some point we must stop doing theology by emergency.  Emergency baptisms or emergency situations are fun to postulate -- what is the minimum and how do you know for sure -- but who among us lives in the emergency?  Almost none, I would presume.  We live where the Church has been planted and we are given no freedom to disdain the promise of Christ kept within the gathering of the baptized to hear His voice and sup at His table.  We must stop this endless and foolhardy game of trying to figure out how little of the Church and the faith and the means of grace you can have while still being saved.  Who among the people of God who have gone without have done so by choice?  Who among the people of God who have been forced into such poverty have not returned to the joy and edification of Christ's holy house as soon as it was possible?

Lutherans are too smug in their assertion of the division between the invisible and visible Church.  This is not the language of life but the painful admission that the Church remains when you can no longer see her and that the numbers of the faithful are not the same as those who you can see or count in the snapshot of the moment.  We don't get any comfort from an invisible Church if we have one with the certain marks in our midst.  No, then our confidence must apply to the voice of the Word and the Sacraments of life and worship supplied by our Lord and through which His promise lives among us doing what He has said He will do.

Unfortunately, Lutherans are not alone in this smugness.  Everyone from evangelicals to Rome seems to speak and act as if our life together were optional and the Church can be kept in your mind and heart every bit as well as it is in your presence.  If this were not the case, we would not see the great gulf between the numbers of those who say they belong and those who are there on a Sunday morning.  If our jealous God is okay with once a month or so or even less at the high and holy days of Christmas and Easter, He has been tamed and rendered rather impotent in the process.  No, if you want to hear the voice of Christ, go to Church.  If you want to see His hands at work to kill and give life that death cannot steal, reach into the baptismal water.  If you want to know the measure of His grace, open your mouth and confess what lives in your heart and mind and see what the Lord does to you for such a confession.  If you want to eat tomorrow's bread, tasting in the moment the fullness of eternity, then open your mouth to receive the body and blood of our Lord,  Just don't point to the sky to the Jesus who is out there somewhere.  We do not need a God who is everywhere.  But we cannot live without a God who is somewhere.  We bow not as symbol to what is not there but as confession to who is among us.  The Immanuel who began in Matthew's Gospel with that name has kept it at the end.  He did not say He will be with us or will come if called but that He fulfills His Immanuel promise by the power of His Word and Sacraments.

Man centered worship does not have to look like a variety show with comedic monologue along with a few life tips and a teary eyed video to tug at our heartstrings.  It comes along just as well by saying that Church is optional, faith is solely individual, and Christianity is something other than its creed and confession formed from Scripture.  If Christ lives only in the heart or imagination then why bother with this Christmas thing at all?  And if He does live among the faithful through His Word and Sacraments, then what stupidity turns up its nose at being assembled at His call to receive Him who comes?   

Pray and work. . . work and pray. . .

So often to Christians the subject of prayer means stopping everything you are doing, kneeling dow, closing your eyes, clasping your hands together, and focusing solely upon God.  Of course, this often ends up being the recitation of a list of expectations (even demands) made of God and rather one sided.  This is certainly not the sense of prayer you find in the Old Testament nor in the New.  There were certainly such formal times of prayer in which all of the above were utilized but typically prayer was an activity that accompanied the work of one's life and did not begin when the business of life ceased.  

A while ago I searched for a slim little volume called The Practice of the Presence of God.  I had purchased it in college, perhaps at the suggestion of folks somewhat involved in the then charismatic movement.  Or maybe I got it from somebody else -- I cannot recall.  When I could not find it, I did the usual for me.  I picked up one for a buck or two at an online used book place only to then look at my bookshelf and find the original -- right where I looked for it earlier but did not find it.  That is, I suspect, one of the downsides of having moved a library which had spend 25 years in one space and now was weaned down and moved to a new space.  

The point of that story was when I opened it up, Brother Lawrence (whose original work was transcribed by another and then translated into English) appears to agree with me -- or, rather, I agreed with him since he beat me to it by a few centuries.  In the volume, the translator summarized Brother Lawrence approach as a “principal view was to teach men how to converse with God at the same Time they were employed in their ordinary business.”  Since Brother Lawrence worked in the kitchen, pray while peeling potatoes.  We need to hear that.  Our daily chores and the vocations of our lives do not pause for much and if prayer is to wait for a moment in which mind, heart, and hands are free from distraction, we will never pray.  But if we learn to pray through the course of our normal lives, prayer will not be as difficult as it often seems.  Key to this is the idea of blessing God for the manifold good things in our lives and for the basic things so often removed from our thinking when we sit down to pray.  Blessing God for these before beginning the inevitable laundry list of things we want Him to do for us is a salutary way of praying that will encourage a life of prayer and fill us with contentment and peace.  In our anxious world, we are always looking for ways to reduce the stress and relieve us of the worry that is far to prevalent.  How better to do this than to praise God for the small and simple and ordinary blessings of our lives?

It is not a small or insignificant thing to say "God is good" as life unfolds.  It is a solemn reminder especially during those occasions when we are not very solemn and chaos beckons us.  It is a good and salutary reminder to us to actually say out loud that God's good providence governs all things in heaven and on earth.  Scripture mentions this in a rather pithy way:  He makes all things work together for the good of those who love Him.  When we are not so sure He actually does love us and when things are careening out of control in our lives, it is good to say out loud what we struggle to say to ourselves.  While it is hard to let go of the bad news on the media and the constant spiral downward of a world that appears to be out of control, we need to learn to detach ourselves from concerns and anxieties over daily life and the only way to do this is to believe in God's goodness and to trust in His providence.  We do this because we have the cross -- the unmistakable sign of His love for us and the reminder that He has invested the priceless treasure of His only Son's suffering and death that we might be His own and live under Him.  Why would He now carelessly abandon those for whom Christ died and rose again?

This prayer is rather ordinary and may seem rather plain.  It is not but the context of it is the plain and ordinary exercise of our lives.  In practical terms, we are asked to maintain a constant “conversation” with God throughout our everyday lives.  On the one hand, we plead our need for His grace, our desire to know His love, and and our trust in His mercy.  Like Peter of old, we know we have nowhere else to go to obtain such grace, love, and mercy.  But in the midst of the day’s demands, there is great reward in learning the practice of such reminders. It also is helpful to know that daily tasks, as important as they are in this life, are not the sum and total of who we are. We belong to the Lord, we live together in constant community and death cannot end the relationship we have with one another through Christ.  So we do the best we can, we lay our achievements and our failures in His hands, we work not to secure our salvation but because our salvation has been secured for us and so we are free to turn to our neighbor and care for our neighbor's needs.  Those whom we love will die but those who die in the Lord are not lost to us at all.  The liturgy with its communion in Word and Meal is supreme but we are dismissed from that assembly and not from our daily communion with God.  The daily does not replace the gathering of God's people around His Word and Supper and that gathering before Him is not the only time we spend with Him and in His presence.  Both work together for the common goal of living under Him in His kingdom without end, now on earth and then in heaven.  Jeremy Taylor connected our work and prayer also -- do not work for that which you cannot pray and do not pray for that which you are not willing to work.   

For the sake of beauty. . .

As soon as I bring up this subject, people will bring up the Danish Modern model of simplicity and remind me that you do not have to have much of anything for worship.  What is not essential is not necessarily an adversary of the liturgy and the worship life of God's people.  The sad reality is that we have for too long erred on the side of simplicity which is really nothing more and nothing less than an Amish principle of architecture and liturgy.  We Lutherans seems to think that being plain people on Sunday morning honors the Lord more than the richness of art, music, architecture, and such.  Well, let me suggest that one way to renew the worship life of God's people is to do just the opposite -- to enhance the liturgy and its setting with excellence in art, music, architecture, and ceremony.  Yes, I would prefer that we put some bucks where our mouths are but it is not necessary to bankrupt the congregation for the sake of beauty.  There are other means.

Let us begin with reverence.  Reverence is not doing things in a fancy way but doing things with a view toward what it is that is being done.  Because we honor God's Word and Sacraments we will honor the setting of and the doing of this within the liturgy.  It is not for the sake of ceremony but for the sake of Christ that we do things deliberately, with a sense of decorum, and to keep the attention on Christ and not on the personality or preference of the people on either side of the altar rail.  Reverence costs nothing but your attention and your attention to rubrics which give direction and weight to what we are doing.

The second thing you can do is to stop with the constant directions from the chancel.  Give the people of God some credit and put the information in the bulletin and be consistent with things.  Why do you deviate from the norm of when to stand or sit or kneel?  The discipline and habit allows those worshiping to lose themselves in the liturgy.  The directions given from the chancel not only interrupt the flow but keep drawing people out of the liturgy and treat them as children -- as if they had no idea what they were doing.  Honor them as the adults most of them are and you do your part as pastors so that they can do their part as the people of God.

Keep announcements out of the liturgy.  Don't explain the prayer intentions during the liturgy or just before the Prayer of the Church.  Print them out and speak of them very briefly before the liturgy begins.  If you treat the silent moments as opportunities to be an MC or to do a monologue, the people will catch on and they will fill the quiet moments with their own comments and conversations.  Keep the time from the Introit to the Benediction and dismissal about the liturgy.

Don't treat different liturgical settings as if they were seasonal menu items at a diner.  Stick with a setting long enough so that it becomes second nature to the people.  My parish was, as I learned very soon, not a DS 3 parish.  The majority grew up with LW if they were Lutheran and did not use DS 3.  Okay, so use DS 3 during special times (heritage kind of times like around Reformation or the congregation's anniversary of founding) but stick to the words and music of one setting for the year.  If you change it, explain it and when you change it make sure it is not simply fruit basket upset.  This means keeping to one place for the creed, Offertory, and the Our Father and skipping the oddities of placement typical of the different settings in LSB.  It was a wrong idea to have different placements of the creed, Offertory, and Our Father and a foolish one.  I have already made known why an evangelical Eucharistic Prayer is not only possible but salutary.  Furthermore, stick to one -- And also with you or And with your spirit.  One of the things I dislike about LSB is the different words for the the response to the salutation but also the back and forth between thees/thous and you/yours.  It is strange to sing one and speak the other.  By the way, why do we have two different wordings for the absolution and benediction in the Divine Services?  Goofy.

Don't fill every moment with words or music.  Silence is okay.  It is better than okay.  It is good.  And, while I am at it, don't explain what is happening or going to happen or what just did happen.  The Divine Service is kind of like a mystery.  It is what it is and explaining everything obscures the focus from who we are there for -- for Christ.

Keep things clean and orderly.  Keep it painted and in good condition.  Get rid of yesterdays worn out felt banners.  When things are shot or no longer useful, fix them or ditch them.  Don't put up wordy stuff or cheap kitschy kind of religious junk.  Honor the style of the rest of the building or furnishings.  Replace them as needed with good stuff (there are plenty of used options).  Keep the focus on the altar, pulpit, and font.  Don't carry a water bottle around with you in the chancel.  Head out to the sacristy or vestry if you need a drink of water and we can all go an hour or so without taking a swig of coffee or water or soda.   Okay, I guess I have offended enough folks for one day.   You did not pay for heaven but that does not meant it came cheap and the same is true for the heaven on earth of the liturgy.

Heading backwards?

By nearly all accounts, most medieval folk were not only not literate, they were filled with superstition which encouraged their horrible oppression by their rulers and other authorities.  In the end, it was the printing press and the advent of inexpensive publishing that made a case for and encouraged the education of all the classes.  In the end, it was information, objective information, that changed the playing field and gave rise to an educated and large middle class.  While some might place the Church on the part of the oppressors, the Church also fostered and encouraged the education of everyone.  Luther himself was a champion of such.  

Oddly enough, we have plenty of educational institutions but compared to the other eras our people are remarkably illiterate.  Yes, they are able to read but choose not to.  They have traded the historic curriculum emphasizing logic, rhetoric, literature, history, languages, science, and math for studies in subjects invented every day to please a whining segment of the society.  They cannot read cursive, write little and when they do in text fashion rather than in long sentences formed by grammar, and they get just about all their information in minuscule little tidbits designed to appeal to emotion rather than fact or reason.

As a result, we live with superstition in the form conspiracy theories and an unhealthy fear that leads us to hide behind our screens and choose digital things over real and physical things -- including relationships.  We are easily oppressed by those who taunt us and appeal to our fears without having to prove the truth of what they say or its historicity.  The strange he said/she said that passes for fact and truth on the internet has made us as a people easy to manipulate -- witness how we succumbed to our fears in the pandemic and gave into things that later proved to be lies and deceptions.  Still, we have not learned much.  We are only one media hyped pseudo pandemic away from giving up all our liberty and common sense all over again.

We live in the tyranny and oppression not of leaders but of emotion.  We see everything through the lens of how it makes us feel and in this prison of our emotions and desires we presume that shouting at each other or unfriending each other on media passes for a real conversation or a debate.  Our fear of being contradicted or someone having the audacity to reject our truth has led us to live within the artificial fortress of those who are of like mind or feeling or fear as we are.  We are sure we never offend but we are also confident that nearly everyone and anything is offense to us if for no other reason than we don't like what they say.

We have moved backwards and become more like the illiterate people of the past who were oppressed and manipulated by nearly everything but truth and fact.  We are more like the uneducated and suspicious peasant class of centuries ago than we are the modern man free to think, speak, listen, and engage on the level of fact and truth.  Could this be the inevitable outcome of an education that does not teach and truth that is not founded on fact?  Could it be that we have turned our schools into social laboratories instead of institutions which not only teach but instill a real love of learning?  Can anyone really be called educated who does not read anything longer than a tweet or who hides behind the curtain of visual learning because he or she is too lazy to read or think?  Maybe we are headed for another dark age but if that is true, we are the culprits and have brought on ourselves the prison from what generations and history have worked to set us free.

Childhood or childishness. . .

Let me begin by saying that this is not strictly about dress.  I put this out there because there will always be somebody who moans when I bring up this subject and the rest of you tell me to shut up because, no matter what they wear, at least they are in church.  But this is not simply about the clothing.  It is about the meaning of what we wear.  Please do not tell me the lie that what we wear has no connection to who we are or think ourselves to be or how we see ourselves.  If it were simply about convenience and casual comfort, we would still be in diapers or pull-ups.  So spare me the sanctimonious comments and listen.

We live in an age in which youth is valued over age, childishness over maturity, and whim over discipline.  I am not the first or the wisest or the most common observer of the times to make this judgment.  It is something even those who radically disagree with me over just about everything would admit.  That said, our unwillingness to begin adulting and leave behind our childish ways is chronic.  It shows up in what we wear.   The readily is that too many adults act and dress as if childhood never ended. If you don't believe me, just listen to the conversations on social media, the popularity of the rude, crude, and semi-dangerous nature of our prank culture as evidenced on Tik Tok and such.  Look around you and not simply at Wal-Mart.  Pajamas, hoodies, worn out jeans, wrinkled khakis, sneakers, and way too many and way too inappropriate novelty tees have become standard dress — especially for men.  In other words, we as a culture no longer see the value in presenting ourselves as grown-ups. There was a time when people dressed to impress.  What you wore was meant to convey responsibility, discipline, solidity, adulthood, and self-respect. Today, comfort and irony carry the day and with it is our penchant for seeing ourselves, speaking like, acting as, and dressing like big children. 

The reality is that you cannot tell who is the teacher and who is the student in most high schools.  You have trouble finding out which person works at the retail environment you patronize and which are just consumers like you are.  The world laughs not at the people who are underdressed but at those who aver overdressed -- try showing up in a sport coat or shirt and tie for something supposedly business casual.  If I were only interested in condemning this practice, I would simply call us all slobs and let it go at that.  My interest here is in how this dress gives testament to our refusal to grow up at all.  There was a time when little girls dressed like their moms and little boys dressed like their dads -- complete with the formal wear they had witnessed in their parents.  Now it seems that moms dress up like their little girls and dads like their little boys because they refuse to grow up and be the adults they are supposed to be.  

We can travel with a back pack as luggage not because we have learned to travel light but because we wear the same thing everywhere.  Those who were in the generations before us wanted to look older, more mature, and as the accomplished individuals they sought to be.  So men of earlier generations dressed like adults because they wanted to be seen as grown-up and, even more, they wanted to BE grown up. The short pants of childhood gave way to the big boy clothes which signaled their transition from childhood into adulthood.   They polished their shoes, pressed their pants, tied their ties, put a handkerchief in their suit pocket, wore matching socks, etc...  They wore overcoats in rain or winter and galoshes on their shoes in bad weather.  Their fedora indicated they were serious, seriously mature, and wanted to be seen as such.  The clothes made the man and conveyed a sense of thoughtfulness, discipline, and responsibility.  When they packed up for a trip, they brought along these inconvenient markers because wherever they went they were projecting the same maturity of thought, speech, life, and work.  The same goes for women.

No more.  We have shrunk from responsibility like we have shrunk from in person interaction.  Give us work from home jobs where we don't every have to get up or grow up to show up in public.  Give us a way to be incognito and to hide away from responsibility as well as public view.  Let me put a radical thought out there.  If we started dressing up, maybe we would begin acting liked we look.  Adulthood is not a curse to be postponed but an outward sign of age, experience, maturity, and responsibility.  Perhaps we are not running to casual clothes at all but running away from duty and responsibility.  If it were only the clothing that would be one thing but along with it is sense of aspiration to be not the easy, self-indulgent, comfortable person but the responsible one.  We no longer want even to be God.  For that reason alone, we no longer dress up for anyone but me and we no longer need anything like religion to help us become anything more that what is easy and comfortable in the moment. 

 

Not exactly. . .

The latest NBC News poll shows two-thirds of registered voters down on the value proposition of a degree. A majority said degrees were worth the cost a dozen years ago.  While some would paint this as a sign that the degree does not translate into more money in the paycheck or that college costs have risen more quickly than inflation -- and both are true -- there is another angle.  I am not at all sure that Americans have given up on education.  What they have given up is the idea that going to college is either the best way to get an education or actually results in an education.  More than anything else, Americans have begun to lose confidence in their colleges and universities.  The dollars are just the tip of the iceberg as the cache has begun to wear off the shine of elite universities and expensive colleges.

Overall, it is good that Americans are coming to this conclusion.  I say "Americans" because it is not strictly a conservative or liberal conclusion but one that is largely shared across the political and economic spectrum.   In the poll, just 33% agree a four-year college degree is “worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime,” while 63% agree more with the concept that it’s “not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off.”  The cost has forced Americans to raise the basic question of the value of a typical college or university education.  In comparison to the cost, what is gained?  Since the baccalaureate education has become more vocation based and less liberal arts, the first place this is being felt is in the job market and the ability of these grads to turn their expensive degrees into a high income.  The next question must certainly go to what is being taught and how impractical these practical educations have become.  If they fail to provide a real education in the classic sense of that term and if they cannot translate this into a higher paycheck when entering the workforce, then what value are our colleges and universities to us overall?

There was a time when Americans overall agreed that a university education provided something of real value.  Yes, part of it was as practical as a living wage but the other part of it was the value of learning and the confidence that learning was happening in universities.  With the ideology of the typical faculty and curriculum diverging farther and farther from the moderate middle and with the rise of vocal criticism from the right, colleges and universities are hard pressed to justify not only the cost but the time invested.  This is not because there is no value to education but because agendas have shifted education from the core purpose and propaganda replaced facts.  Whether he realized it or not, a college graduate serving as a bartender said it well:  Jacob Kennedy, a 28-year-old server and bartender living in Detroit, said that while he believes “an educated populace is the most important thing for a country to have,” but, if people can’t use those degrees for vocational purpose or real benefit to themselves or their community over all, what is the value?

There hasn’t just been a decline in the cost-benefit analysis of a degree. Gallup polling also shows a marked decline in public confidence in higher education over the last decade, albeit with a slight increase over the last year.  This is a political problem. It’s also a real problem for higher education. Colleges and universities have lost that connection they’ve had with a large swath of the American people based on affordability and practicality.  Now, they are more universally seen as out of touch and not accessible to many Americans.  I wonder.  How does this affect our church colleges and universities?  How is this same loss of confidence working in the debate over the value of a residential seminary?  It could not be a coincidence but a reflection of the times in which we live.  That is something worth considering as we debate this topic in the church.  The same people complaining about a seminary education may be those who are raising this challenge with respect to a baccalaureate setting.

 

A Roman curiosity. . .

There was a time when I thought that if Francis were gone and someone more theologically orthodox and astute were named pope, well, things would improve.  If they are going to improve, the whole enterprise is taking too much time and seems to pay too much attention to continuity with Francis.  I fear that Leo is losing the moment.  While I do not have a horse in this race, I am certain that it benefits the whole of orthodox Christianity when we have a more Biblically focused, theologically consistent voice coming from Rome.  That said, you also must judge a man by his deeds as well.

Some of his appointments as bishops and cardinals are suspect.  They seem to fit the Francis mode more than BXVI or JPII.  I hope I am proven wrong.  In addition, he is taking too much time to replace people who need to go (can anyone say Tucho or Roche?).  Furthermore, he is giving mixed signals -- no, "Traditiones Custodes" will not be rescinded or abrogated but ask me and I will give you generous permission to say the Latin Mass.  No, some of the right wing priests who have been kept in limbo or even laicized will not be treated better but the left wing like Fr. Rainbow Martin will not be disciplined either.  He looks good in his vestments but then appoints the kind of bishops Frankie would have approved of while allowing Cardinal Burke to Latin it up in St. Peter's.  What does this mean?  Who knows?

He still talks the synodal way but what does he mean by it?  Bishop Martin speaks of the synodal way as well but acts like a petty dictator by dictating that altar rails have to go along with ad orientum posture at the altar and a host of other things.  Why?  Does Leo also believe that the biggest threat to Rome today is in the form of someone who kneels to receive Communion or likes reverence?  He insists that the Mass must be celebrated reverently and with due somberness and then says nothing about those who violate it all and make it a joke.  

I will admit that I pay attention to what is going in Rome.  Some Lutherans would think this foolish but the cause of truth and the pursuit of doctrine fully consistent with Scripture benefits from church leaders who know the score -- no matter where they reside.  Luther did not react to Rome because He had written off Rome and did not care but as a true believer who has honest contempt with those who are not true believers.  The most dangerous thing of all in any church is orthodoxy in doctrine and practice.  The most powerful force of all is indignation -- when those who have high expectations are disappointed.  Certainly that was Luther's case after visiting Rome and finding it not a city set on a hill but cesspool of immorality and expediency.  Those who smugly delight in Rome's foolishness or failings are themselves fools and doomed to failure.  I want to believe in the idea of Rome even if their practice is screwy.  I want to believe in the idea of Lutheranism even if our follow through is a mess.  The path of success suffers from all heresy, from all immorality, and from all flawed practice.  The answer to the wrong piety is not no piety at all.  So even if I am not planning to become Roman, I can see my way to hoping that Rome gets its house in order and Leo makes more than surface moves in that direction.  An honest Lutheran hopes that every jurisdiction will read the Scriptures and order its doctrine and life by that living Word.  None of us is benefited by the other's failures but all of us are helped by the truth of God's Word rightly proclaimed.  If Leo is not going to go there, the goal of a renewed and faithful Lutheranism will not be helped by it but it will be hurt. 

Thoughts on "right" . . .

As nearly everyone who has been alive knows, we live in the age of rights.  Rights are expected, demanded, and cherished as if they were the most important things of all.  The cause of a right has changed nearly everything from marriage to family to government to friendship.  Most of all, we seem to cherish the right to be insulated from those things we do not like and to insist upon the things that do.  Under it all is our insistence upon the most basic right of all -- the right to be happy.

I am not at all sure that a system built upon rights alone can endure.  In the press of the moment it may sound reasonable enough but it is not sustainable.  Rights claimed or earned or insisted upon cannot themselves protect or defend us against our enemies and they certainly have no power to provide the elusive happiness we so desire.  Indeed, as important as they can be, rights are a fragile foundation for community and relationships and even weaker support on which to build a whole society.  Chesterton put it well:   “To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”

Rights are often in conflict.  Speech is free except to cry out "Fire!" in a crowded theater when there is no fire.  We are constantly engaged in a battle of wits trying to figure out how to protect a right which insists that others can disagree with you in an offensive way -- with impunity!  Religious freedom insists that everyone has a right to their own beliefs but that often leaves it as if there is no such thing as religious truth -- only opinions without fact or truth.  How does Christianity want to live in a world in which the Word of God is but another word competing for the claim of belonging to a deity?  It is most difficult and even less satisfying to live as if those who worship a mushroom are the same as those who adore the Son of God in flesh.

Yes, rights are often very important but there is something even greater.  It is being right.  Righteousness.  To possess a right is well and good but to be right is more profound and more profoundly needed.  That is why religion remains important even as society wanders further and further away from Jesus Christ.  For His is a faith built less upon rights than the righteous One who alone is good and holy but who is good and holy not at all for Himself but for those who are not.  He is come not to claim something for Himself but to give Himself for those whom He has claimed -- sins and all.  Now there is the proof of Chesterton's pithy phrase.  He is right because He has forsaken His right to be equal to God and chosen to wear our flesh, suffer for our sin, and die our death.  We are righteous not as an accomplishment of ourselves but as those who wear His clothing of holiness to cover the naked bodies risen from baptismal water, shed of their sins and given a new name and a new identity.  What we claim can be all well and good but to know Him who is righteousness embodied is to have that which is far nobler and so much more significant.

It is curious that on this Epiphany we celebrate those who laid aside every weight of glory humanity could afford in order to kneel at the bed of a baby, led by a star to the unlikely place where they peered in and beheld the face of God.  He is righteousness.  For Him they gladly bent the knee in worship and brought out the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Such gifts were valuable less because they were precious but because they prefigured who He was and is, what He had come to do, and for whom He came.  Minus the weight of their gifts, they left gladly for the Child who was born of the Virgin by the Holy Spirit promised something so far beyond the value of these earthly treasures that they had to tell about it all.  They had found the One, the only One, who valued right more than rights and in so going gave to those who could not earn it and had done nothing to merit it the most precious verdict of all.  Righteous.  This God entered on donkey to claim the battle that would cost Him His life before He could claim the people and their worship.  How amazing to join them at the bed of the Christchild and yet how much more amazing to join them in the heavenly chorus.  In those anthems of the new Jerusalem, there will be no more talk of what we are owed but only what we have been given.

Like many things. . .

One of those at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence put it this way:  AI will make some people richer and most people poorer.  George Hinton has his pulse on it all and it is hard to dispute this assessment.  It is, of course, not simply about the money.  Sure, AI is mostly about the money but those who are made richer will have more than $$ to judge their wealth.  They will be on top of a trend that threatens or promises (you decide which) to radically reshape our way of life.  The poverty that most will suffer will not be confined to a lack of financial resources but the loss of work and its importance to life and the surrender of our soul to soulless machines.

It is nearly always our penchant to run fast into places where the wise are slow to go, to adopt things before we know if they are good or salutary, and to elevate the technology before we have decided how and what will judge its morality.  Think of the internet squandered into a purveyor of porn or social media that has turned us into very unsocial animals.  What AI has the power to do in the same terrible way is incrementally more dangerous.  Everyone with a brain knows this.  Few of those with brains have the courage to admit it publicly -- much less raise a call to slow things down.

The technology is not merely the problem.  It also lies with those producing it.  By every account, AI is able to learn but what will it learn and who will be its teacher?  By every account, AI is capable but what if that capability comes with a commensurate loss of our own intelligence or initiative or dedication?  Rome seems to be the one place beginning to address this.  Indeed, the voice of calm and caution will either come from the Church or it probably will not come at all.  That is a stark and scary thing to say but I fear it is the truth.

Hinton is worried about guardrails to keep the thing from careening off the cliff.  I am even more worried about a steering wheel and the foot on the gas and brake pedals.  If we are only worried about a guard rail, we are doomed.  We need voices to place what we are doing into the context of morality and goodness.  This is hard for science and for technology.  Both seem to prefer to experiment first and make rules later.  It is to this that Christianity should be poised to intervene and to help us form a sense of what is good and salutary and what is not before it is too late.  We have already learned that AI competes with truth and makes us suspicious about what is true and what parades as truth under AI hands.  We have already learned that our technology replicates not only what is good in us as people but also what is bad.

As Hinton himself put it, we are on a speeding train right now.  The problem is we are still laying the tracks at the same time.  As we call know, capitalism is the driving force behind this -- profits -- but capitalism has always been either weak or slow in the area of morality -- what is good, right, and just.  I do not say this to suggest that other economic systems are better than capitalism but only to remind us of the Achilles' heel of our constant quest for a newer, better, and more profitable future.  “We don’t know what is going to happen, we have no idea, and people who tell you what is going to happen are just being silly,” Hinton said. “We are at a point in history where something amazing is happening, and it may be amazingly good, and it may be amazingly bad. We can make guesses, but things aren’t going to stay like they are.” 

The moral voice of Scripture is needed now more than ever.  We cannot wait until that moment when we think we have it perfect.  Good is not the enemy of the perfect.  Before it gets ahead of the tracks, we must be prepared to begin to build a framework by which to judge the benefits and the curses of this new technology.  The last thing we need is to squander the promise of the internet in AI created porn or social media in AI created mythology and lies.  Wake up, the ethicists and moral theologians of the Church.  We need you now more than ever. 

Both sides now. . .

Lutherans loathe rules on piety.  That is our problem.  Not even encouraging Biblical and laudable custom has led to an absence of much of any piety at all.  Fasting even before the Sacrament is rarely spoken of and even more rarely practiced.  There are no rules about standing or kneeling, or sitting -- directions, yes, but always as common local custom which people are free to ignore.  In my own parish there are plenty who neither kneel nor stand and remain sitting most of the time.  People stand and kneel at the rail.  Some receive in the mouth and some in the hand.  We have no obligatory rubrics but directions without any real consequence for those who do not follow them.  Even the signs telling people that we should not bring food or drink into the sanctuary are routinely and regularly ignored by those with their giant Starbucks, Dutch Bros, or other coffee -- plus the water bottles glued to our hands.

You might think that this Lutheran aversion to rules about piety and behavior during the Mass was innately Lutheran -- what with adiaphora and such.  But our antinomianism with regards to the rubrics is not simply our Lutheranism showing through.  The micromanaging of the postures of the faithful during the Mass is far from traditional even in Rome. In the Latin Mass, there are few rubrics laid upon the faithful except reverence.  Reverence and local custom were the obligation.  Dictating the every move of the faithful was not.  Reverence is always good, right, and salutary but the making of endless rules over the postures of the faithful is a bridge too far.  They are not only unhealthy but vitiate against reverence in the Mass. It was not the Mass of the Ages that sought to control the faithful in this way but that began with the post-Vatican II changes.  Along with liturgical changes to text and form, there was the desire to enforce such freedom from what some felt was a stifling power of the past.  Of course, until the post-Vatican II changes, communion in the hand had largely become unknown to the faithful -- even Lutherans did not invent this return to what is supposed was an occasional practice of the ancient church.  

You must do this and you must do that are rubrical demands laid upon the one at the altar but the folks in the pew are largely free from such controlling rules.  We thought it was Lutheran.  It turns out it was actually catholic practice.  Now, do I like it when there is a chaos among the various postures of the faithful during the Mass?  No.  I do not.  But the pressure comes not from the demands of the clergy (certainly not from the bishop) but from the goal of reverence and the power of local custom.  There is nothing wrong with that.  When we introduced kneelers to a congregation unfamiliar with them and instinctively unwilling to restore them,  we did so by reminding them of the freedom of the faithful and that by not having them at all those opposed were actually dictating to the rest what they must do.  There is a good reminder in this.  Plus a little humor.  Sometimes us liturgical types lack a self-deprecating humor and take ourselves too seriously.  Apparently some Roman bishops and Lutherans opposed to such ceremonial actions are also without such humor as well.