The Lutheran Reformation was bad. . .

There was a time when enemies of the Lutheran Reformation would attack specific positions or doctrines or the solas.  That was enough to get people upset.  Nowadays, the easiest way to discredit the Lutheran Reformation is to blame it for every bad thing happening in our society today.  That is what one Notre Dame professor did.  According to Brad Gregory, when, on October 31, 1517, Martin Luther published his 95 Theses, he unleashed criticisms that not only resulted in a rejection of the pope’s authority and fractured Christianity as he knew it, he did worse.  Perhaps unintentionally, Luther is sort of single-handedly responsible for a world of greedy modern capitalism, polarizing politics and social instability. 

A centuries-long move toward secularization, the inability of citizens to agree on even the most basic norms important for shared political and social life, and unrestrained consumerism focusing on radical individuality and self-indulgence is Luther's legacy.  Not the bring light of the Gospel in a world accustomed to darkness and not a reform movement to address the rampant corruption everyone agrees was typical of both church and state, no, Luther was a mad capitalist who encouraged polarized politics, delighted in social instability, and a greedy and self-centered capitalism without a conscience.  My, he must have been a busy fellow.

Living some 500 years after Luther in a world facing AI concerns, our unsocial social media has become normal but the conversations Luther had are not.  So in this time of tech, Twitter, TikTok, and such, is Martin Luther worth talking about anymore?  If he is, does he merit any honest credit or simply blame?  Was the Reformation a tragic mistake or a tragic necessity?  We Lutherans will certainly beat our chests on October 31 but I am not sure we even want to talk seriously about the Reformation -- good and bad.

It might be easy to characterize the Reformation as a single event set into motion by one individual with a vendetta against the Pope.  It is another thing to actually understand this man and those who fought with him on behalf of real catholicity, honest doctrine, an efficacious and normative Word of God, and a church which had become a nightmare of abuses.  If you take the opportunity to look closer. Now is the time to get to know Luther, you would find not a freedom fighter or institutional rebel but a real man searching for a gracious God and a pastor who cared more for his people and the Church than himself and his own safety.  He took up the cause of the Gospel at a time when the Gospel was more presumed than preached or taught and when popes had institutionalized corruption within the central offices of Rome to a point never seen before.  

It is not simply Rome trying to demonize Luther but those whom Luther himself would condemn but who rode on his coattails to advocate for positions at odds with the catholic doctrine and practice Luther and the confessors of the Augsburg Confession formalized.  While some might say that Rome has been reformed and Luther would have stayed within a Roman Church now with a vernacular liturgy, bishops advocating for married priests, popes who talk to Lutherans and sign a common justification accord, and such.  Others think that the modern day rebels against creed, confessions, liturgy, and such would have a vigorous spokesman if Luther had lived today.  It might be fun to jump in and play the game but it will hardly help us understand the real Reformation.  

Luther lived on the edge with his words and criticisms but his practice and his legacy is largely a conservative one.  He was not the edgy sort of guy and the movement that bears his name was not the avant guarde kind of society of rebels that we think.  In fact, Luther would probably feel right at home in the small congregations people seem intent upon closing, making sure that the faithful heard the Word of God proclaimed in its truth and fullness and were richly served with the sacramental grace of Christ's institution.  He would not be willing to water down the confession to make it palatable for the modern ear and He would not sanction jettisoning the liturgy, hymn, and chant to make worship sound like their song playlist. 

If Luther matters today it is not because of a people who hold their breath at his every word but because of a people who hold their breath over the Word of God preached, taught, and lived out among them.  It is the honest reverence of a people who believe God's Word does what it says and delivers that of which it speaks where we find the true heirs of the Reformation.  Creativity, spontaneity, novelty, and invention in the name of saving the Church for Jesus would not appeal to Luther but saving the Church by remaining faithful to the Word of God and Sacraments of Christ would find him cheering us one wherever we might find ourselves.  The "one little Word" of his mighty hymn "A Mighty Fortress" is alive and well and this is both our legacy and our proclamation still.

 

When miracles become ordinary. . .

The truth is that we have unrealistic expectations of nearly everything in life.  Among them is the idea of certain things being special -- so special, in fact, that every time we experience them we tingle with excitement and are awestruck before them.  And then it all becomes ordinary.  We spend a goodly portion of our lives trying to rekindle the moment and the make uncommon what has become routine.  It is an endless but fruitless pursuit.  Everything special ages into the ordinary.  That is not bad.  It just is.  Life is not lived in the spectacular but in the routine, not on the occasional mountain tops but in the regular valleys.  In some way we all know this but reject it in favor of the pursuit of the raw and edgy feel of the first experience.

This is true of nature.  I grew up in a farming community in a distinctly rural atmosphere.  There is little that is more miraculous than the tilling of the soil, dropping in a seed, and then feeding the world.  When an uncle of mine passed away, the Lutheran pastor who did not know him at all suggested that my uncle had regularly dipped his hand into the soil, lifted his eyes to the heavens and praised God for the miracle.  He did not.  He regularly complained to God about too much rain or too little, costs too high and the price of corn too low, etc...  He had lived too long with the miracle a child sees when he puts a bean seed into a jar of soil and watches it split open and send forth a stalk to the sky and it was all rather, well, boring.  He was not a bad guy but it happens to all of us.  The miracle becomes ordinary.

When you first taste of a perfectly grilled steak or a lobster tail drawn in butter or bread fresh from the oven, it is a magical experience.  But if you eat these regularly, they become routine and ordinary.  It is not bad.  It is life.  Some of us spend our whole lives trying to escape the ordinary and live in the specialness of a moment forever new.  Marriages fall apart because love becomes routine and its not the first kiss or touch.  We reject the ordinary in favor of the constant pursuit of life on the edge.   Thrill seeking seems romantic at first but it is a heavy burden to place upon life and soon the pursuit overtakes the end result.  It is that way with addiction in general but it is also a specific addition to the pursuit of what was or what never was.  It is, like nearly every addiction, a destructive one.  It does not add but constantly subtracts from life.  Like the life lived behind the constant scrolling of the screen, the thing no longer matters as much as the pursuit of what might be or what is behind the next change.

This is also true with the things of God.  We want things to be constantly special.  We have prayerbooks because prayer becomes routine and without the prompting of a form set before us, we lose interest and grow bored with it all.  We have a liturgy because the routine grounds us against the constant church shopping for an experience we have not had before.  It is a necessary anchor for a people constantly shifted by wind and wave, chance and change.  We have the Word near us but a lectionary prompts us to live in it when we put it down as a boring novel or history text and appoints us with a cycle of texts in which to live, to know, and to guide us into the rest.  We have the baptismal font front and center as we enter the sanctuary so that we remember we are baptized when our infant or childhood baptism is not recalled or its significance acknowledged amid all the other things in life that claim our identity.  We have the Eucharist not as something very special but as the regular table and regular food of the people of God.  We come not because it gives us chills every time we approach the Sacrament but because we need its food whether we are hungry for it or need to be called to the feast.  God lives in the ordinary and not simply in the special, in the routine and regular of Word and Sacrament as well as in the moment when their miracle becomes impossible to ignore.

I grew up with a Lutheran Church which had forgotten itself and consigned the Eucharist to four times a year and then not all commune.  While some are shocked by this in an age of more regular Holy Communion, Roman Catholics had the Mass every Sunday but more as a spectator event than a participant by weekly Communion.  They even removed the chalice from the lay as something too special and meant only for those in orders.  But we were fools.  The special character of the Sacrament does not proceed from its occasional encounter but from its life among us as the routine and regular place where we eat the flesh once for all broken for us on the cross and drink the blood that cleanses us from all sin.  It is the foretaste of the eternal feast not because it is so special but to point us to what is coming when every thing around us would point us to other things not so routine.  The Lord never meant it to be special but routine and ordinary, as oft as you eat and drink...  

Oftentimes converts become worn down and disappointed because the enthusiasm of the first experiences in their churches do not last.  Disillusioned by the special become ordinary, they sometimes switch churches in search of the spectacular only to wear themselves out into disbelief.  But God lives in the ordinary and routine, in the boring and common.  In six days of labor and the day set apart for the Lord.  Work becomes routine and so does the Sabbath.  God's work is not to keep propping up the ego for the excitement we seek but to make it plain and obvious that God lives where we live.  When the miracle becomes ordinary, God is still there.  Amid valleys and shadows, disappointment and despair, defeat and loss, pain and suffering -- God is there with grace sufficient and life stronger than death and forgiveness greater than the sin.  Once we begin to recognize this, we relieve ourselves and our faith and our life from the impossible burden of maintaining the chills and tingles of the first even while we are experiencing the last. 

Great lines from an old classic. . .

Often what sticks with me even longer than a plot or a complete work are the great lines that seem to be bigger than the book itself.  This is true of many works but especially of the great works.  Dante is responsible for a couple of them I have written on paper and keep on my desk.

We would expect that Dante's Inferno would speak of dramatic sins but the reality is that dramatic sins are salacious but not always profound.  Adultery is a dramatic sin as is murder but it is ordinary in the way that both have been going on since the Fall and seem to be favorites of mankind.  The more profound sins are those of the lukewarm whom God will chew up and spit out, those neither hot nor cold who seem perfectly comfortable in and outside the Church.  They live in lives of moral ambiguity certain that there is no black and white but shades of grey that call the wise to be silent more than to cry out.  They tend to recede into the background of wherever they find themselves and offend no one -- not even God. 

These are those who are sheep no longer desiring the Shepherd, hearing His voice but not following, and living on the edges of the flock.  The Kingdom of God lives not simply in the dramatic moments but in the sphere of every small choice in which the Christian either manifests that he belongs to God or not.  There is, of course, the presumption that a sort of neutrality in which the soul yearns for and seeks another way without the messiness of witness might exist and this is what blinds the soul to the consequence of being comfortable neither of God nor against Him.  It is a quiet withdrawal which chokes off faith but does not quite make the sinner a dramatic force of evil.

Dante understood this and it is manifest throughout his work.  There, at the threshold of Hell, before he encounters the usual suspects of tyrants, murderers, traitors, and violent sinners who everyone knows and expects to populate the deeper realms of hell, he sees sees the souls of those who never truly chose God nor reject Him.  They simply live in ambiguity.  Their lives are, according to Dante, sanza ’nfamia e sanza lodo—“without infamy and without praise” (Inferno III, 36).  They are not alone on earth for Dante also connects them with the angels who were “neither rebellious nor faithful to God” (Inferno III, 38–39).  Perhaps they had conscience and moral strength enough to refuse great evils and yet they could not bring themselves to stand forth for good.  They live in silence rather than conviction, choosing safety and security here over truth, comfort and ease over martyrdom, personal pleasure over sacrifice, and self-preservation over faithfulness.

Why this scene is chilling in Dante is because he does not begin his sojourn through Hell with monsters and notorious evil whom everyone expects to be there but with those who insist upon belief but lack conviction, who insist upon good but live in the realm of the morally evasive. Their sin is not dramatic and would merit no mention in the tabloids that chronicle our evils but they are even more profound. They have refused the dignity and danger of choice, teaching us that neutrality is not innocence. It is as if they say, “I belong to Christ, but I will not stand with Him publicly.”  It is the realm of fear.

The Church and Christians have lived with this fear for too long and it has become usual and familiar.  The Church has become daring only insofar as this is the same edge on which lives public opinion and the direction of society.  The Church has become reluctant to call a sin a sin and lives too easily within the realm of silence for the things that the Word of God condemns.  It is not all nor everyone but it is the many who claim to be authentic and who insist that they love Jesus.  They love the idea of Jesus more than His reality and the false image of the Savior over the One who insists upon dying for sins because they cannot be forgiven any other way.  It is the quiet Christianity in which the witness is more to a conceptual love than the love revealed in suffering on the cross.  It is the silent Christianity which speaks of this idea of love while refusing to upset things by addressing the sins for which Love was born.  But Dante's witness is clear as is Revelation.  The lukewarm who live in vagaries and uncertainties and fear find the gnashing of teeth and not comfort at the day of judgment.  They have refused the cover of Christ's love in life and so it abandons them in death to reveal that their sins, not dramatic but profound, lack the cleansing of the blood because they refused to see them as sin.  

This is the affliction of modernism that brings rot to the institution of the Church.  Some are confused by righteousness to presume moral authority to judge in the place of Christ but this is no answer.  The refuge of the soul lies always in the Love that suffered and died, in the sin admitted and confessed, in the body laid in the tomb for the dead.  When this is no longer our message and we live in the convenient realm of simple do gooders who seek to improve today rather than proclaim God's tomorrow, we betray our calling as Christians and our identity as the Church.  At some point, the emptiness of what passes for Christianity will no longer be able to live in the shadows and must either stand close enough to Christ to be splattered with His blood or live in the clean clothing of the world that offers nothing of real hope.  Perhaps that day is coming soon.

 

Prayers hard to pray. . .

I will admit that too many of our table prayers have made their way into the formal or informal realm of prayer before Holy Communion.  Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest... is known and beloved to us all but it is not the sum or summit of the prayers we pray as we come to receive the body and blood of the Lord.  In fact, it is no wonder that we struggle with the idea that Holy Communion is not y'all come precisely because we do not believe that the Lord's flesh and blood can be taken for any but salutary effect.  St. Paul's words of caution in I Corinthians confuse and confound us so we explain them away.  Oddly enough, the Orthodox seem to have kept this concept although I do not know how wide spread.  Really, can you imagine any modern day Christian praying as such before receiving the Sacrament?  If you cannot, then our catechesis is not as good as we think it is.  We approach the Lord's table not with casual abandon but with awe, reverence, and a somberness that befits what we are receiving and how it can benefit us or harm us.

Take a look at the prayers below and think this over.  Can you drink of the cup of which I drink?  If this is Jesus' question to Sts James and John, then it should not be far from our minds as well.  The boundary of closed communion is not to separate us from God but to make sure we can come to Him in the right manner and receive His gift as blessing and not to our harm.  From the moment when sin corrupted our relationship with God and resulted in our expulsion from the Garden, God set up an angel at the gates to prevent us from entering in the wrong manner (and thus bring upon us an even worse destruction).  This boundary was a salutary one and not simply punitive.  1 Corinthians 11:17-34:

¹⁷ But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. ¹⁸ For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, ¹⁹ for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. ²⁰ When you come together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat. ²¹ For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. ²² What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.

²³ For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁵ In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

²⁷ Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸ Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. ²⁹ For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. ³⁰ That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. ³¹ But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. ³² But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

³³ So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another— ³⁴ if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home—so that when you come together it will not be for judgment. About the other things I will give directions when I come.

Prayers of Holy Communion:
I believe, Lord, and I confess, that You are truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, Who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first. Moreover, I believe that this is Your immaculate Body, and that this is Your precious Blood. Wherefore, I pray to You: have mercy on me, and forgive me my transgressions, those voluntary and involuntary, those in word, those in deed, those in knowledge and those in ignorance; and make me worthy to partake of Your immaculate Mysteries without condemnation, for the remission of sins and life everlasting. Amen.

Approaching for Holy Communion, read the following verses from Saint Symeon the Translator:
Behold, I approach for divine Communion;
Creator, burn me not as I partake;
For You are Fire, which burns the unworthy.
But, rather, cleanse me from every impurity.

Then the following Troparion:
Of Your Mystical Supper, Son of God, receive me today as a communicant; for I will not speak of the Mystery to Your enemies; nor will I give You a kiss, as did Judas, but like the thief I confess You: Remember me, Lord, when You come into Your Kingdom!

Then again the following verses:
Be awe-stricken, O man, beholding the deifying Blood;
For it is a lighted Coal that burns the unworthy.
The divine Body both deifies and nourishes me;
It deifies the spirit, and wondrously nourishes the mind.

And these Troparia:
You have smitten me with yearning, O Christ, and by Your divine zeal You have changed me; but burn away my sins with immaterial Fire, and make me worthy to be filled with delight in You; that, leaping for joy, O good One, I may magnify Your two comings.

Into the brilliant company of Your saints, how shall I the unworthy enter? For if I dare to enter into the bridal chamber, my garment betrays me, for it is not a wedding garment, and I shall be bound and cast out by the Angels; Lord, cleanse my soul of pollution, and save me, for You love mankind.

And the following Prayer:
Master, Who loves mankind, Lord Jesus Christ my God, do not let these Holy Things be to me for judgment because of my unworthiness, but rather may they be for the purification and sanctification of soul and body, and as a pledge of the life and Kingdom to come. For it is good for me to cleave to God, to put my hope of salvation in the Lord.

And again:
Of Your Mystical Supper, Son of God, receive me today as a communicant; for I will not speak of the Mystery to Your enemies; nor will I give You a kiss, as did Judas, but like the thief I confess You: Remember me, Lord, when You come into Your Kingdom! Remember me, Master, when You come into Your Kingdom! Remember me, Holy One, when You come into Your Kingdom! 

Of Saint Symeon Metafrastes (Saint Symeon the Translator)
You Who have willingly given me Your Flesh as food, Who are a burning fire to the unworthy, do not consume me. No, my Creator; rather penetrate into my members, all my joints, my organs, and my heart. Burn all my iniquities like thorns; cleanse my soul, make holy my thoughts, make firm my knees and my bones as well. Illumine my five senses and make vigilant my entire being with the fear of You.  Watch over me always; shield and protect me from every deed and word which corrupts the soul.  Cleanse me, purify me, and put me in order; adorn me, give me understanding, and illumine me.  Show me to be the dwelling of Your Spirit alone, and not the dwelling place of sin; so that when You enter into the home of Your communion, every evil doer and every passion will flee from me as from fire.

A lesson learned too well. . .

The language of healing has always been a part of the Christian faith.  It is there both in the telling of the stories of God's healing grace at work to remedy the human ills of disease but also in the overall description of God's salvific work.  We have always said God is a healing God, taking what is broken and making whole and taking what is diseased and granting health.  They are good and salutary (itself a healing word) terms and descriptions of what God has done.  But at some point, the words stole the message.

Therapeutic deism did not begin recently.  It goes back to the demand of the sick for God to fix what was wrong and to the demand of the hungry to be fed without earthly labor to provide the food.  We have always found a temptation to substitute the present for the eternal.  At some point, however, it become the dominant image of God and the dominant image of salvation.  We are no longer the guilty or shameful who are searching for cleansing or the sinners in search of redemption.  We have become the discontent in search of pleasure, the sad in search of happiness, the bored in search of excitement, the lonely in search of friendship, and, under it all, the spectator in search of entertainment.  The problem with this is that you do not need a Savior, a God incarnate, or a cross and empty tomb to provide these things.  These live not in eternity but in the present, in the moment, if you will.

Though it would be tempting to place this blame at the feet of the liberals, we are all to blame.  We have so eloquently described God as healer that the people no longer look for or need a God who redeems.  They are looking for a therapist to listen, for someone to approve and commend them as they are, and for anyone to show them how they might satisfy their longings rather than reorder them according to God's will and purpose.  Christianity’s dalliance with healing and therapy has become greater than the quest for redemption, for salvation, and for righteousness.  When Jesus sent forth His disciples to heal (therapeuete) the sick, we all took Him at His word and made it into a promise that would be fulfilled now.  All of our expanded analogies using healing to describe salvation have born the wrong fruit.  We want and expect God to do more for us today than for eternity.  We want to flourish in the here and now — body, soul, heart, and mind — and this is what have come to expect and demand from God.  To quote Captain Piccard, "make it so."  

We were encouraged along the way by things outside the faith to look to our thoughts, emotions, and desires to define what happiness looked and how to live well.  We learned from society that our stories were more important than real truth and experience was more reliable than facts.  We have told ourselves this over and over again until we were convinced that this was God speaking to us and so the cultural mythology of the moment overwhelmed the Scriptural expression of need and Savior, sin and redemption, hell and heaven.  The worst evil was that which inhibited or put value judgments on those thoughts, emotions, and desires.  The best good was that which allow those thoughts, emotions, and desires to flourish unhindered by challenge or what others think — much less God.  Authenticity was to the self and the self-authenticating self desired and accepted approval only and nothing less.

When even conservatives stopped speaking of sin or of the evils of sin and began accepting brokenness and pain and disappointment as primary, we became mere puppets of the culture and weak echoes of what everybody already knew and believed.  Who needs heaven when you can expect it or find it on earth and who needs a Savior when the worst sin is not living by your unfettered desires and wants?  We ended up trying to sell the need for God in ways that made sin a sideline and the world loved it.  That is why there are so few churches and preachers speaking about sin and death, forgiveness and life, in the same terms as Scripture and why the substitutionary atonement model of salvation became a pariah to the pulpit as well as to the modern mind.  Lets admit it.  We all joined on the moralistic therapeutic deism model in some way or another and now we have to dig ourselves out of it before nothing of the real Gospel remains.

A few numbers and a thank you. . .

Since beginning this little enterprise some 16+ years ago, the readership has constantly surprised me.  So far, since the blog began, some 17 million folks have tuned in, fewer in the beginning and it has grown.  Every day some 6,000-10,000 people get on the blog for one post or another, some 60,000-100,000 monthly, and a million or so annually.  Obviously, some days more than others and some posts are better than others.  Some tune in and never come back.  Most return with varying degrees of frequency.  I deliberately have not monetized this blog though I have had tempting offers.  It was never mean to bring in the cash.  I like writing the blog posts.  I enjoy reading and my head is filled with useless information and a few decent pastoral and meandering thoughts.  Thank you for reading.  If I offend or upset, I do apologize.  If I get you thinking, I am glad because something got me thinking.  If I repeat myself, well, I am getting old.  LOL.  Cut me some slack.  Do I have familiar themes -- you betcha.  Am I always right?  Well, I think I am at the time I wrote it but I do change my mind and I have no guarantee of infallibility -- think what I could have accomplished if I had!!!  I do not know how long I will keep this up or keep up the pace of posting but it is still going strong.  And so am I.  Thank you all.  When I run into you and you mention the blog, it encourages me -- even when you think I got it wrong!  I am humbled by your kindness -- like the guy I ran into in the Denver airport who said, Are you Pastoral Meanderings as if I were somebody important.  Thank you, really, from the bottom of my heart.  And God bless you all.  

The value of our rites. . .

Recently  I read of a church and the baptismal font in which a saint of some renown who live a very long time ago had been baptized.  It suddenly occurred to me that we know not only where this man was baptized but, through the church's rites, we also know with confidence he was baptized and the liturgy that was used.  We did not have to wonder if he was rightly baptized or what was confessed.  We know.  We have the rite, faithfully preserved, and most of our baptismal rites to this day are a modest evolution of the rite used for this man.  So going back 100 or 1000 years, we know what was said, done, and confessed because we know the rites.

As a pastor dealing with people who did not come from a liturgical tradition with rites, it was often difficult to know if someone had been rightly baptized or not.  I did more than a few conditional baptisms because the person did not have any idea if or how water was applied, if the baptism was in the name of the Triune God, or anything else.  Perhaps it was a river or a tub in the front of a congregation, the rite was ad libbed and where an explanation point should have been was a question mark.  God does not mean us to live in the what ifs but in the because.  That is the gift of our rites.

This is why it is so disconcerting when you watch a worship service and the pastor is making it up as he goes along -- the spiritual euphemism is being led by the Spirit.  He does not even half to say bad things.  Because his words live only in the moment, they struggle to become the eternal Word that Christ has spoken.  When rites are published with the doctrinal imprimatur of the church's official sanction, they live beyond the moment and outside the particular space of one guy before one set of people saying what may be in his heart.  I do not judge the motives but the end result is to deprive the people of the confidence which Christ means for them to have.  That is the gift of our rites.

When the penitent comes for absolution, you can dance around it in a thousand different ways that sound great but end up leaving the person without the comfort the rite itself provides.  I forgive you all your sins in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Ego te absolvo.  They are not magic but they are a lifeline for the people whose sins trouble their consciences and who hearts are weighed heavy with grief and shame.  There is a place to address the folks with words to console and yet their must be the clear absolution so that the chains of what they have thought, said, and done are cast off and they can go home free.  That is the gift of our rites.

Someone will surely tell me that God knows.  God knows what happened in the ad lib by a stream or at the altar or in the confessional.  He does.  Thanks be to God!  But it is not God who needs to hear it.  It is the child or adult who comes to baptismal water without name or eternity who needs to hear what the rites say.  We are our rites.  Our confidence is not in the rites but in what those rites preserve -- the clear Word and promise of God.  It is not God who needs to hear the magic words at the altar before the miracle bread and cup appear but we do.  We need to know what it is that we are receiving, what is gifted to us in this bread and cup.  We need to know the familiar refrain of the rites which tell us that this is Christ's body given for us and His blood shed for the forgiveness of our sins.  We are our rites.  Our confidence that this is the body and blood of Christ lies not in a perfect performance but in the Word of Christ preserved in the rite as the voice to still our troubled souls with hope and peace.  God knows the sins of the penitent (and impenitent, for that matter) but it is that broken soul who needs to hear the absolution in the clear and plain words that have absolved the penitent for millenia.  We are our rites.  Our confidence is not in the words as a spell to make the magic happen but the words of Christ which tell us His blood cleanses us from all our sin -- including those named just then.  

God does not judge the form or the heart but both, not as the unmerciful looking for cause but as the God who seeks to assure us that what He has promised is, indeed, ours in this water, bread, wine, and absolution.  This is what the rites preserve.  Only a fool would attach this to some unchanging incantation secretly passed down through the ages as if ordination is the passing of the secret handshake.  No, ordination is the same thing as I have spoken before.  In the words and the rite the Church says to those whom this man serves that you do not have to imagine or wonder or decide if his ministrations deliver what they promise and bestow what they sign.  The rites and this man's serve as a man under orders tell the people in the pew that this is the case.  The rites can change but incrementally, not some mighty shift that upsets everything and makes strange what was familiar but as the careful update of the timeless.  I am not bound to one of the rites only but when the rites have the imprimatur of the church's seal upon them, any one of the rites approved, it gives to those in the pew the assurance that there is more to it than feelings.  The value of our rites is too often treated as something casual and irrelevant when those rites are very important to the faith of those who come and to those who come looking for faith.  We are our rites.  We can be more but we should not be less. 

Mortal or sinful or both. . .

Although there is much in Orthodoxy which attracts me, I remain confounded by the refusal of Orthodoxy to speak of original sin except in terms in mortality.  Sometimes modern Orthodox tend to characterize the Western definition of original sin in almost comedic terms -- criminals living out their sentence here on earth before they suffer it eternally.  It does little to help with the understanding but it does make it clear to me that for the East original sin amounts to nothing more than the presence of death as a shadow over life.  It is that, of course, but is that all it is?  Our mortality is certainly one continuing consequence of the Fall but it is not the only one.  All the talk of sin in Scripture cannot be summarized as a problem of will on the part of the mortals or else Jesus is come merely to open the door to the grave and leave the stone of sin unturned.  I do not get it.

In Western theology, it is common to all theological traditions that human beings are born with “original sin,” which, in includes the curse of death and the inability to free ourselves from either death or the sin that caused it.  But that is not all.  This also means that we suffer from the continuing consequences of what our first parents did in Eden.  We share a communal guilt in addition to a personal one and this is not something we choose or suffer because of our sins we have thought, said, or done.  It is guilt inherited from Adam and Eve and the common malady of those born of woman.  Furthermore, we are born sinful and unclean, that is, we are born as sinners.  We are neither innocent nor are we good from the moment of our existence.  Every man born of woman needs to be redeemed and this is not simply the release from death.  The East does not speak in these terms.  I would suggest that it does not speak fully the language of Scripture which does speak in these terms as well as in others.  I would suggest that the original sin which speaks of our bondage to sin of which we cannot free ourselves includes death but is not merely that we are mortal and that this is not some novel invention of the West but the witness of the Scriptures and the testimony of the early Church as well.

Indeed, it seems to imply that Jesus came to liberate us from our bondage to death but our bondage to sin is something we can handle -- at least by the choice of virtue and asceticism.  That would place everyone of us back in Eden in the place of our first parents except for the shadow of mortality which is cast over us until Jesus lifts it from us and brings us into His own immortality.  How curious it is that we can handle the problem of sin but not death!  Indeed, modernity seems intent upon testing this notion.  We as people seem to be working very hard to be masters of death, making it also a choice.  Since we have already worked to eliminate sin as a category of our fallen lives, we moderns seem poised to neither to need saving nor to need a Savior at all.  While I would agree that we in the West can sound rather dismal in the way we speak of this mortal life lived in bondage to sin, the East seems too hopeful that a good choice can fix what sin has done to us.  I wish that were true but we all know it is not.   Original sin seems to be the one truth that requires no revelation.  Every newspaper account of our wrongs and every obituary speaks volumes of what sin is and what it has done to us.  

For Orthodoxy, original sin is ancestral sin, but while we suffer the consequences of Adam and Eve's sin, such as death and a tendency to sin, we do not inherit guilt for that sin.  It is no wonder that Augustine is no favorite of the East.  For the Orthodox “original sin” refers to the “first” sin of Adam and Eve.  While those born since bear the “consequences” of sin, the chief of which is death, there is also a weakness before sin.  In the West, humanity likewise bears the full “consequences” of the “original sin” of Adam and Eve, and this includes both the “guilt” of the sin of Adam and Eve and a condition which makes us more than merely weak to sin but captive to sin of which death is the universal sign of this.  In the East man is guilty only of his or her own sin but does suffer from the mantle of death which is passed to all humanity from Adam and Eve.  As Lutherans we insist that we are both mortal and sinful, wearing the guilt passed down to us from Adam and Eve and caught in sin so that we cannot free ourselves.  While this does something to the notion of man's nobility and dignity which some might find offensive, it also reflects a higher view of Christ and the accomplishment of His work on our behalf.  

What makes us a people. . .

Nations is the word that is usually used for something that hardly corresponds to what the word means in Scripture.  The nations are clans mostly, peoples linked by ancestry, culture, language, and religion.  By that we mean something very different from the thing that has borders and territory and a place on a map defined by somebody but probably not so much the folks within those borders.  Modern nations are a construct, an invention of some minds who thought this would end some of the conflicts and violence.  Boy, that has not exactly gone as planned.  The Middle East is but one example of borders gone wild with disparate peoples who have been forged into a country but the threads of that union are being constantly unraveled by the inherent divisions within.  How does anyone decide what is in the national interest of people who cannot agree on what that interest is?

Religion is not the simple thing in this equation either.  See how Muslims of different denominations within Islam war against their kin.  Christianity is no different with the history of Europe being also a history of religious wars, or at least wars fought in the name of religion if not religious in themselves.  We often forget how fragile the ties that bind us as nations and peoples and countries today.  It is to our peril.  The grant illusions of a global existence in which such minor inconveniences such as conflicting cultures, languages, religions, and values do not matter was always the weak link in the idea.  Now with America First and its counterparts throughout the world, the whole thing is being rethought.  Economics aside, there are few proponents of such idealism as the coexist crowd wants it except those who do not believe much of anything.  So what do we do?

One of the more obvious things it to recall how important a common faith is to define a nation of people.  While there are always disparities in class, wealth, race, and ethnicity, a common faith can overcome all of them to bind the people as one even with all that differentiates them within that common faith.  However, without a common faith, the unity is not simply more fragile but, in the majority of cases, it is impossible.  There are no nations that endure over the long haul without a common faith to unite the people and contribute to overcoming all that would divide them.  Without a common faith, the answer lies in some sort of oppressive regime -- whether totalitarian such as Germany was under Nazism or is in China OR authoritarian as now exists in many of the oil rich Middle East states.  Even then, Germany found a form of religion to be helpful and fostered it and even China has brought the Roman Catholics and Christians in house churches under the umbrella of the state.  This is also true of the authoritarian regimes where religion is fostered to assist in the overall state of governmental affairs even if there is some degree of religious pluralism within the society -- the so-called civil religion.  Rome knew this and even the Soviet Union knew this but somehow we have forgotten it.

The increasing problems of Scandinavia, Great Britain, France, and so many other parts of Europe exist in large measure not simply because of immigration and refugee resettlement but because this comes at a time when the religious fabric of these nations are in decline.  Without a common faith, a nation is hard to establish and hard to sustain.  With it, the dynamic changes radically.  Even in America we are facing the problem of who we are as a nation apart from the common Christian backgrounds, beliefs, and values that once were implicit in our identity.  How can a nation long exist without the structure of a common faith to encourage and support a common value system and identity as a people?  It appears to me that this is behind some of the struggles we are having today.  Diversity looks good on paper but does not translate into a workable political system without something strong and clear to unite the diverse.  Nations are made not by borders or laws but a common language, culture, and, most of all, a common faith. 

 

A calling or a life choice. . .

I have said on this blog many times how disappointed I am over the resistance of families to their child's choice of church work vocation.  While it is true overall, it is especially true of pastors.  Many second career men have said that they might have made the ministry their first calling but did not receive the support or encouragement from their families for this vocation.  That is a real tragedy.  Undoubtedly there are a number of reasons families and friends do not encourage this calling for church work but one of them is that we no longer value nor hold in highest esteem this vocation. 

Part of it means labeling the vocation to church work, particularly the pastoral office, merely a life choice or a career move.  Reducing the ministry to a life choice that is the same as choosing any other career reveals how deeply we have lost the understanding of the profound gift and blessing of the ministry.  Our lack of reverence for many professions is telling by the lack of those seeking them, especially the helping professions.  But here it reveals that we also lack reverence appreciation for both Christ and those who serve us in His name with His gifts.  It does not diminish any other calling to raise up the pastoral vocation to its rightful and noble place among them all.  

Instead of offering pale support or hostility to a young man who is considering becoming a pastor, we should be offering them our prayers and our encouragement.  This also holds true for the man who give up on their calling and end up in the limbo of candidacy or who resign altogether.  I am saddened every time I read of those who are no longer pastors, the list of resignations that dots the official notices.  None of us knows all the circumstances under which these have been given and some of them may need to resign but many of them have been chewed up, spit out, and despair of the struggles.  It should not be that way.  If the pastoral office is noble enough to expect sacrifices from those who enter it, then it is noble enough for us to offer our prayerful, vocal, and financial support.  Nobody becomes a pastor to make a killing.  

In the end, when we judge careers simply on the basis of what they provide for us, we miss not only the particular vocation of those who would be pastors but we forget that we are all called to a life of service, sacrifice, and giving -- denying self, taking up the cross, and following Him who had neither nest nor home to call His own.  Yes, pastors give up a lot to serve but the rest of the baptized are not to judge life simply on the basis of ease, pleasure, or personal satisfaction either.  If grace is sufficient for the pastor, it is sufficient for us all.  I fear that our life with plenty has blinded us to this need to depend upon Christ and His mercy.  The way of the cross is not the unique path of the pastor or any other church worker but our common life as the people of God by baptism and faith.  

What is Canada?

There was a time when Canada and the United States were so close together on values and purposes that it was inconceivable to find a space between them.  We had similar economies, churches, resources, histories, and goals.  Then it all seemed to fall apart.  While some Canadians insist that it has to do with Trump, the lines of division began long before anyone ever imagined a Trump presidency.  I am no expert and have no crystal ball but I do think that the differences were noticed more when Canadians themselves distinguished between the French and the English heritage, between Quebec and the West.  When Canadians began to normalize the odd balancing act between the two populations, there was a distinction with a difference.  Though perhaps not causal, the distinction did seem to highlight the difference in a way that had not quite been apparent previously.

Now it is as if there is a Canada with the same name but with an identity we in the US no longer know or recognize as kin.  One of the key elements of this difference is the change with respect to religion.  Canada seems to be so far left of the US when it comes to religion and Christianity in particular that it is a foreign land to us and one we no longer understand or appreciate.  Canada is the place where military chaplains no longer are free to even mention God or practice their faith freely without restraint -- the official restraint of governmental policy.  The Canadian Armed Forces issued within the month a new directive barring chaplains and other military personnel from mentioning God, Jesus, or other religion-specific language during mandatory public events.  They have effectively banished the name of God from the public square and there seems to be no big conflict over it.  That means that the population has become either secular or religiously indifferent to the whole thing.  Even more concerning.  I read once where Quebec was once among the most Roman Catholic regions of the world.  No more.  It is now a religious ghost town in which popular opinion regards the church as more problem than blessing and seems content with the efforts to marginalize Christianity.  No wonder the rest of Canada is also a religious wasteland.  Though the Western regions of Canada are not quite there yet, it is clear they are behind but heading toward the same goal.  

The second area of difference is the respect for life.  Canada has been on the forefront of protecting abortion as a right and medically assisted suicide the same kind of right.  Canada's reported rate of abortions is probably in line with its size -- roughly 10% of the US in both numbers -- but that represents only those places required to report abortions.  Now that roughly 80% of abortions occur outside hospitals with mandatory reporting requirements, who knows how many abortions there are.  On the other hand, the medically assisted deaths make up 5% of all deaths in Canada and are growing fast.  Since the MAID laws are now ten years old, it has become normal to call upon the medical community to provide a painless and easy way to end your life.  Euthanasia has skyrocketed, surpassing even MAID deaths to some 16,500 in 2024 and statistically one in twenty deaths in the nation.  The US is not only far behind but the unfettered voices of religion in the US have challenged the acceptance of chosen or forced death.  We look to our neighbors to the North and wonder who are these people we thought we knew.  

One such example of Canada's refusal to honor life lies within the case of an 83-year-old Christian great-grandmother, Brigitte Stegemann, who was living out her final chapters in an Ontario long-term care facility with untreatable Stage IV stomach cancer.  The woman was not unclear.  She said "no" -- she did not want to be euthanized.  Her family honored her wishes until her granddaughter, Brigette Kranendonk, who had power of attorney, was away and the gears of the medically assisted death machine sprung into action, putting pressure on the woman to request Medical Assistance in Dying.  Somehow, though no one seems to know how or who witnessed it, consent was secured. The granddaughter returned to discover the irreversible has already been done.  Now months later, she still hasn’t been allowed to see the supposed consent.  The power of death in Canada is greater than the concern for life.

I could list other areas of concern for Americans.  They include the governmental policies and powers used during the pandemic -- who can forget the truckers whose convoys triggered an invasion of their lives and pocketbooks for daring to challenge the then government?  Or, as I found out from working with an agency of our church body, the insistence of Canada that Canadian money or money made in Canada stay in Canada.  It turns out we are not quite following the same rules when it comes to being each other's primary trading partners.  There are other things.  My point is this, Trump has surely brought our concerns to light though not very effectually but he is hardly responsible for creating them.  In the end our cultures are proceeding along different paths and this means that perhaps the most religiously Christian country in the world is finding it hard to know how to deal with one that is becoming a more unashamedly anti-Christian nations.  Although I do not hear many folks talking about this, this is part of the problem and a bigger part of the problem than anyone seems willing to admit. 

An oddity in Rome. . .

Although its permission has not been uniformly or evenly granted, it has become regular enough so that it is no longer rare to have the chalice offered to Roman Catholic laity.  That said, the practice since roughly 1414 AD has been for laity not to receive from the chalice and more profoundly formulated in the Council of Trent a little more than one hundred years later.  It was only after Vatican II that this changed and it did not change universally.  Apparently some bishops are returning to a more restrictive practice and attempting to change what had become a more routine practice of offering reception of the precious blood to those other than clergy.  Some bishops are suggesting that the offering of the chalice to the laity should be reserved to more "special" occasions which, for some anyway, do not include Christmas or Easter.  It seems rather odd to me as a Lutheran and I suspect for many others as well.

The decision for this is and has always been at the discretion of the local bishop.  That is one oddity.  It means that across the invisible line from one diocese to another, very different practices may be operative.  Since Vatican II, communion in both kinds moved from an impossibility since Trent to pretty much the normal practice 400 years later.  Tradition is in the eye of the beholder and even though the first 1400 years or more did one thing, from the Council of Florence on was another practice.  So the tradition here is at best about 600 years old.  Another problem I have with Rome.  Tradition here is hardly different than someone in a Lutheran circle insisting that is not the way it was in great-grandpa's church.  This is really goofy.

What is even more goofy is the insistence that this is not "more" Jesus or "less" Jesus but that Jesus received in the bread is all the Jesus there is and so no more is needed.  Except that Jesus said differently.  If Jesus' words about this can be abrogated (Trent's words have not been overturned), then why can't they be ignored or altered for other things.  The reality is that this restriction of the laity from receiving the wine was not majority or universal in the Western church until the 1400s.  Plague (read Covid in modern terms) may have justified this emergency practice but what made it normative is exactly the problem.  It should be noted that Lutherans followed the Eastern practice which never withheld the chalice.  We followed Rome when Rome followed Jesus and we departed when Rome did not.  While some of the issues with Rome may seem rather sophisticated and not altogether practical, the restriction of the chalice from the laity is an every Sunday concrete issue.  Every Lutheran would agree, this is not about how much Jesus you get (as if a bigger host or larger sip would grant more grace) but whether the words of Jesus are normative and how that normative practice since the Upper Room are the definitive word on the issue.  Nobody should make normal practice of what happens in an emergency.

Do we get to depart from Jesus' clear words or not?  Rome seems to be saying that they do.  The rest of us should give pause to embracing this idea.  Furthermore, this treats Jesus' body and blood as something the Church must protect while this is exactly how our Lord has made Himself accessible to us.  Here, some Lutherans may sound a bit like those who, when speaking of who communes, sound like they are protecting Jesus.  Close communion protects not Jesus but those whose communion may harm them and not benefit them.  We are gatekeeping for Jesus but for the sake of those unprepared or unable to receive the body and blood of Jesus as blessing.  Jesus does not need us to protect Him from those for whom He has come but those who are unable to receive a worthy communion must be protected by Jesus.  The scandal of the Sacraments is that they are for sinners.  Rome seems to try to remove this offensive generosity and make Jesus blood less accessible for sinners than His body.  If that is not offensive, it is the strangest oddity.

 

Oddly offensive misstep. . .

In what has to be one of the most tone deaf and oddly offensive actions of the Church of England, Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi was given the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation.  It all happened on Friday — 11 September.  Who in their right mind scheduled this?  Whether or not he deserved it or not, it was an offensive misstep for a church body that prides itself on careful order.  He was recognized for his “outstanding work as an ambassador of interfaith harmony in Pakistan” and was described in the citation as a “prominent Muslim scholar and religious leader in Pakistan, known for his unwavering commitment to promoting religious tolerance and interfaith harmony”.   Then somebody actually looked at the guy.  After taking a deep dive into previous comments made by Imam Ashrafi Lambeth Palace had enough second thoughts to reconsider this award withdraw it.  They have so informed Imam Ashrafi that they are taking it back.

This a profound example of why churches should not presume to enter into the realm of political judgments or enter efforts to become authorities outside their sphere.  It all made the CofE and the Lady Mullally look foolish and amateurish in their efforts to promote something grand on the world stage.  It is also one more example why Americans look at the CofE and our friends across the pond with sadness.  At a time when this church body could have been leading the efforts to sink the assisted suicide bill, they were playing diplomatic chess.  Thankfully, while the CofE and its lady archbishop were messing things up, the Parliament actually got it right — at least for now.

The British Parliament voted against legalizing assisted suicide services for adults, successfully blocking a bill that was filibustered out of time before the April recess.The House of Commons voted 286-270 on the same day to deny the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which sought to “allow adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards and protections, to request and be provided with assistance to end their own life.”  The surprise was that the lower chamber had previously approved a near-identical bill in the last parliamentary session but came to their senses at the same time the CofE was losings its bearings.

Give it a rest. . .

As if we have nothing better to do, the predictable outlets for news and commentary in the LCMS have moved on from the immediate past presidential election and convention to set their sights three years down the road.  The so-called guardians of the Synod have decided that there must be an urgent and profound effort to redefine ourselves as a Synod and come up with a leader who will not look at our past but toward the future.  I think I read somewhere "sufficient to the day is its own troubles..."  Perhaps we have reinterpreted that verse.  Everywhere we will see people mining the Scriptures to find quotes to justify the further politicizing of our means of selecting leaders and governing ourselves.  How sad.  How tragic that we seem powerless to present something more than these crude Machiavellian attempts to plan plans and prosper God's work without all that much consulting Him.  I will admit to growing so very tired of it all.  The sensationalism, the hype, the drumbeat for change (even though we are divided about what changes need to come) is both wearing and distracting.

Good leaders and good governance are blessings and worth our labors to find and assist, not to mention our prayers.  That said, do we really think the Lord has given marching orders to the Church that begin with a constant litany of navel gazing?  The statistics the Lord promotes are remarkably out of step with the world or our own Christian thinking.  Leaving the 99 alone in pursuit of the one lost, finding the pear only to bury it again so that you can secure the field, engaging laborers at all hours of the day and then paying them an inequitable wage that is described as generosity...  I could go on but will not.  Nowhere in the Scriptures does the Lord talk about graphs or charts or polls or customer satisfaction surveys.  Instead, He describes the very Gospel we problem as a stone of offense, almost daring us to be embarrassed by Him and of Him.  I am not at all suggesting that we bury our heads in the sand but neither am I saying that social theory will lead us out of this mess.  In the end, growth happens locally and not nationally, not by grand movement but by solid preaching, teaching, sacramental administration, and pastoral care.  We certainly do not need more community organizers.  We do need faithful shepherds who will care for the flock over which Christ has made them bishop with the tools He supplies.

Sheep always wander.  They are always prey before their enemies, subject to fleecing by those who care nothing for the sheep, and viewed as chops and roasts by those who would harvest the flock rather than defend it.  There is nothing new here.  The Church is always in need of being reformed but never by novelty or creative departure from God's Word, work, will, and wisdom.  Shepherds do not make sheep.  Sheep make sheep.  Faith formation happens in the home before the Church building and the primary catechesis is always liturgical, within the Divine Service, before it can happen anywhere else.  The best coffee cannot attract what the Gospel repels.  It is the work of the Spirit to call, gather, enlighten, and sanctify.  We are instruments but not the power, used by not the users, shepherds under Christ.  Good heavens, I am not saying we have nothing to learn but navel gazing and surveys and polls will teach us nothing of the means by which the Church of Christ will grow and prosper.  We trust in Christ alone.  We live by His grace alone.  The Luthers of this world are not our saviors even when God does use individuals to call us again to the voice of His Word and the power of His Spirit.  A viable church in the eyes of the world will likely have sold its soul to the devil to gain that recognition.  We are always at war and not in the least with ourselves.  It would all be wearisome and worthless except the outcome has already been determined.  Jesus wins.  If you cannot see it now with your eyes, look with faith.  Is our penchant to try new things because God has forsaken us or because we have forsaken Him and His ways?  The kingdom ours remaineth.  That is the promise.  He proved Himself trustworthy by dying as He said He would and rising as He said He would.  What more do we need? If we never learned anything new but worked diligently to be the best we are at serving the people of God and those not yet of the Kingdom with the fruits of His redeeming love, we will have done enough.  If we don't we have done too little.

Demonizing the dead. . .

As I watch some within Rome raise their attacks against no friend of mine, Annabile Bugnini, secretary of the commission that worked on the reform of the Roman Rite following the Second Vatican Council, I find it curious how easy it is to demonize the dead and forget those who were complicit in the abuses.  Both critics and proponents of the changes made to the Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical practices of Rome acknowledge that Bugnini was the dominant figure in these changes.  He was not simply proponent but architect and, it seems, not even Paul VI actually knew what Bugnini had been up to until it was done.  But Bugnini was not the only member of the building committee of this flawed structure.  There were others.  There always are.  They are not always the ones who are complicit in the scheme but most of them are the silent whose objections were never raised or at least never pressed.  But they could have been.

As an outsider I have no skin in this blame game but I find it odd that some 2600 bishops who participated in Vatican II and whose documents represent a clearly different vision for the reform of the Mass were somehow forcibly silenced when what was done did not match what the Council had actually said.  Surely somebody would have admitted that the whole extravaganza in Rome was a waste if its dictates were to be ignored a couple of years later in favor of a radically different and brutal reform of the rites!  Did they?  There were some grumbles but for the most part Roman bishops fell in line.  The pope had spoken (even though he did not know what he was saying, apparently).  Done deal.  No looking back.  And now you know why the battle of the Mass is still being fought.

That said, this post is not so much about the reform of the Mass and other things liturgical.  It is to give one example of why I cannot be Roman Catholic.  It would often be nice to have a pope in a Lutheranism which seems powerless to prevent obvious foolishness and wrong but Rome has one and this does not seem to stop the abuses of the Mass so reformed.  Frankly, I would prefer a Roman Mass in which the offensive parts to me as a Lutheran were soto voce rather the loud clown car style abuses that no pope seems able to stop.  Yet when a pope in Rome was led down the garden path by a secretary of a commission, Rome seemed powerless to stop the disaster train.  If 2000 voices from the Council had stood up to Paul VI and said we were there at this Council and this is not what we voted upon! surely someone in Rome might have backed down or slowed the wholesale liturgical demolition of one form of the Mass.  But they did not.  Demonize the dead all you want but the dead were not alone.  Some could have spoken up and yet they chose to keep silent.  What else could some pope do and have people keep silent in response?  Well, look around you.  Bishops are doing all kinds of things to break with Roman theology and tradition and even the popes have said little or nothing to slow or stop this train. If for any other reason, I would find it hard to become Roman Catholic with such witless and spineless bishops.

I wish Lutheranism were better in this regard.  We are not.  While foolishness and stupidity continue to flood the internet with examples of the errors, our own equivalent of bishops wring their hands as if they can do nothing to slow or stop the idiocy.  But they could have and still can do something.  Demonize the dead but they are always complicit with the living in the problems we face.  It is never one man or even a commission of men that are the problem.  The dead cannot defend themselves but we know they did not act alone.  Sometimes the demons are right and the challenge proves that.  The rest of the time it proves that one man or even a commission cannot act in the name of the church over the wisdom of the rest of the church.  Benedict seems to have been a good man and a good pope but he left in part out of powerlessness to change what was wrong.  Francis was a terrible pope and I have no idea what kind of man he was but he played with things as if it was all a game and in the end everyone lost.  Leo may be better but so far he is a disappointment.  All of these prove the problem with Rome is not just theology but a structure in which one man can impose his will upon the rest and people either stand silent before him or get in line to follow where he is going.  That is another reason why I refuse to exchange the problems I know for the problems in Rome.  As many as have been complicit in with the problems in Lutheranism, we have not had 2600 bishops sit idly by while someone orchestrated a coup against something they had all agreed to in the end. 

What kind of Pope is Leo?

Many have insisted that Leo XIV will clean up the Francis messes left behind by a pope who is, by most accounts, one of the worst in modern times.  I suppose that is the hope but so far he has not impressed me with his words or actions.  Everyone knows of the way Francis seemed to delight in creating controversy and instituting controversial programs.  Among them was Amoris laetitia.  Cardinals submitted formal questions to Francis which he chose to ignore.  While seemingly addressing the pastoral care of families, it did far more than this.  Controversy arose almost immediately following the publication of Amoris laetitia specifically over Chapter 8 and whether Roman Catholic doctrine was changing with the easing of the  sacramental discipline concerning the access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist for divorced persons who have civilly remarried. So if this was a problem, who might Leo ask to sit down and talk about it all?  Well, the list of personal guests invited by the Pope to the meeting from October 7 to 14, progressive names in favor of the document but excludes all of those who criticized Francis’s exhortation.

So when these cardinals and bishops from around the world sat down with Leo XIV at the Vatican to discuss the family in light of Amoris laetitia, they were preaching to the choir.  Among the names of those attending at the Pope's invitation are names like Cupich, McElroy, Tobin, Cobo, Hollerich, Fernández, Tagle, David, and others who had a hand in setting the agenda of the previous pontificate on the veru questions the document addressed.  None of those who questioned it have been summoned.  While I do not have a stake in this, the glaring omission of any visible critics of the document seems to say a great deal about the Leo style and agenda when dealing with Francis' legacy.  

The document which sparked such intense debate seemed designed to allow more radical interpretations of its own words -- especially after the bishops of the Buenos Aires Pastoral Region interpreted it as allowing, following a process of accompanied pastoral discernment, access to the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist for some Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried “when a person judges that he or she would fall into a further fault by harming the children of the new union.”  Then in 2023, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith confirmed that this interpretation was the intent.  In my mind, this is one more instance when more talk seems to be code for keeping Francis legacy alive without really dealing with the objections.  I am sure that many more traditional Roman Catholics hope that this does not become the Leo way of dealing with things.   

 

Give good gifts. . .

Once I was given a very expensive leather bound floppy KJV Bible.  I had already completed three of the four years leading to my ordination.  I appreciated the sentiment but wondered if the givers had really thought about the gift.  Did I really make it nearly to ordination without having a copy of the Bible?  Or, is that what they thought?  Fortunately, some quiet diplomacy allowed me to return it and take the money to purchase a silver private communion set from Almy which still serves me to this day.  That led me thinking and asking other pastors about the gifts they were given. 

One mentioned how his whole seminary class was given an impressive study Bible from a well-meaning organization.  Another mentioned a fine leather bound copy of a book they had been required to purchase in the first year of seminary.  Another mentioned a cheap stole.  And the list of gifts neither requested nor needed went on and on and on.  I think you get my drift.  Seminarians need money for books and living expenses and the freedom to decide where to spend that money when given.  It may seem cold and thoughtless but I wonder if it is not the most warm and thoughtful gift you can give them. 

Then there is a pen and letter opener set that still sits on my desk.  It is wood and a nicer version of the usual fare but the life insurance fraternal that gave it to me thought it was more impressive than I thought.  I keep it more as a remembrance of those who thought this is what I needed than any useful purpose I might have for it.  It has joined the countless plaques given to note my (financial) support of this cause or that and the mountain of insulated jugs, mugs, and other coffee cups that I have accumulated over the years.  When it doubt, give the pastor a coffee mug or an insulated jug.  I am not trying to be mean or to disdain the obvious generosity of the giver but to suggest that other things might be better chosen to answer a real need or want on the part of the pastor.  Oddly enough, other than the candy and breath mints I snarfed from the vendors at the last Synod convention, the one thing I looked for most of all was a microfiber cloth to clean my glasses.  The rest of it was, well, not my style.  Oh yes, and do not forget the accumulation of logo adorned bags dutifully provided by vendors.  Who needs more bags?  Not me but I got at least three or four at the same convention.  I did appreciate the post-it notes, though.  Pens, not so much.  None of them were fountain pens (my choice) and I was not impressed by the soft tips used for the endless screens we are all on.  

I do appreciate the single malt scotch and gin and even the occasional rye.  Thanks to those who have braved the sea of labels to give me some liquor.  I do appreciate restaurant gift cards but some of them were to places I have never been and probably will never go.  I am still trying to figure out what to do with a $25 Uber Eats card.  Amazon cards and cash cards are always good -- not to mention Lowes or Home Depot.  I cherish the hymns commissioned from Steven Starke and set to music by Benjamin Culli.  Wow!  Those are amazing one of a kind sort of gifts.  But I am not sure I need anymore throw blankets or knickknacks.  I expect when I am gone my heirs will be fighting each other for one of those favored trinkets.  Well, maybe not.  Offer up your prayers for me.  I always covet such gifts.  Maybe I am alone in my perspective on gifts given to seminarians and pastors.  Or maybe not.  In any case, think a bit before you come up with a gift for your pastor and wrap it up in his name.   

How fragile is Rome?

I read a while ago that there are some 55 permitted places where the Latin Mass is being celebrated.  Imagine that.  There are Roman Catholic dioceses that are routinely closing more parishes than that.  Yet the mere existence of 55 or so parishes where the Latin Mass is being celebrated is apparently so dangerous that it is something which must be regulated from Rome, allowed under the most rigid of rules, and segregated away from the ordinary population of Roman Catholics overall.  Wow.  That makes the Latin Mass a ticking time bomb bigger than nearly everything else which is happening in Rome today.  More urgent and of greater threat than synodality, rogue bishops being ordained, China administering a Roman Catholic province according to its rules, the fading number of nuns and monks, priests in costume, dance and pop music used for sacred purpose, the declining numbers of those who believe the Eucharist is actually the body and blood of Christ, the diminishing numbers of children for baptism or confirmation, the scandal of priestly sexual abuse, the declining numbers of priests overall, the routine nature of merged parishes and closed churches, etc...  I could have added so many things to that number.  I am sure you could have added to that list as well.  The point is that Rome is so fragile, the worst of the problems it is facing are 55 permitted places where the Latin Mass is celebrated and the request for more.

The Vatican granted permission to a very small number of parishes to celebrate the traditional Mass-- just 55 parish churches across 33 dioceses last year-- according to the exemptions permitted by the Dicastery for Divine Worship to the restrictions outlined by Traditionis Custodes.  Yet look at the news.  Some bishops are sure that the very essence of Rome is threatened by such permissions and have attempted to restrict them further than had been.  Pope Francis repudiated Pope Benedict for his generous permission and clamped down on it like the whole of Roman Catholicism was at stake.  It does not matter which side of this issue you are on, Rome is weak and fragile if this kind of thing has become an existential threat to the largest formal community of Christians throughout the world.  And we think we have problems in the LCMS.  At least we are talking about doctrinal issues and about those who wish to jettison the forms of liturgical worship which have become the formal face of our Confessions on Sunday morning.  Rome is so fragile that those who want to restore a form of the Mass effectively the exclusive form used for 400+ years are a threat to its very existence.  Wow.  And I thought we had problems. No wonder Pope Leo seems to have no clue what to do about this despite advice being offered from every side.  Apparently if he gets this wrong, Rome will collapse.

The new religious. . .

Reading an old self-defined style of spiritual without being religious, the author suggested he was a believer without faith—a religious atheist.  At the time I read this I dismissed it.  Thinking on it again, I am not sure it is far from the truth.  The truth is that it is hard to eradicate religion and it is inherent in the persona of humanity overall and each person in particular.  We invent gods when we reject the God and even when we refuse to grant classic definition to any particular deity, we insist upon having some sort of god and some sort of religion.  It seems impossible to escape from religion or some form of god.  So we are left with believers who have no faith and atheists who are also religious.

Believers without faith are those who acknowledge the need for some kind of deity and some sort of supernatural.  They love this spiritual side of humanity and they insist that simply because they have rejected God does not mean they have also rejected some sort of religion to fill in the cracks of modern day life.  Indeed, they find the spiritual intriguing and interesting even if they refuse to grant a God the honor of their faith.  They believe in many things, some of them contradictory, and so they cannot admit to an organized religion but they insist upon being acknowledged as honestly and with heartfelt feeling upon being religious.  They like the idea of Scripture but refuse to grant to Scripture its ultimate authority and claim as the Word of God that endures forever.  They seek a bendable word which can be formed to fit the moment and the need.  They like the idea of a holy book of wisdom but are not sure it has all that much to do with salvation.  Salvation is less the redemption of the sinner than it is an accommodation to sin, at least the favorite and culturally acceptable sins of the day along with the ultimate command and goal to be true to yourself, wherever that might lead.

They are atheists, to be sure, but they do admit that religion can be important.  Symbolism and all.  Emotion and feeling.  Ritual and ceremony.  They all beg for a place without the inconvenient baggage of dogma and a God.  They admit that civil religion once filled the gap even as they also posit the old civil religion as too narrow to fit the diverse character of modern society and different people.  Global causes have eclipsed individual redemption but the person still matters if only because religion is only one person wide and one person deep.  It is sort of the same kind of attraction some have for a monarchy.  It is a good show and fills the bill for national ceremony and pride but don't take it too seriously.  It is just for show.  In the end the monarchs are as impotent and confused as the deities ascribed to modern folks who don't want to believe but who don't want to abandon religion entirely.

Honestly, I get the attraction.  The Church has disappointed us too many times and the holiest of men have acted entirely unholy in ways that make it hard to take religion seriously enough to grant it any real faith.  Which pope was it who in conversation with someone seeking to sack Rome and destroy the Church admitted that the clergy and popes had been trying to do that from the inside for years and failed so what makes this fellow think he can do it now?  If only the Church were not filled with sinners I might find some consolation for my suffering soul.  But it is.  So faith is as much as I can give it and the only thing I can offer.  My eyes are constantly drawn to the good which falls short and the evil which cannot be overcome so if I am to believe in God, religion is not enough.  Faith is required and faith in a real God who cannot be reasoned out or His mystery explained away.  He must be take with the paradoxes that our minds struggle to swallow.  Simil justus is a fairly small one compared to the Three in One and One in Three.  

I fall asleep every night wishing I had something more than faith to hold onto and every night I admit to God that it is faith alone by which I come to Him or kneel before Him.  The cross assures me that I can hope for mercy but it insists upon the paradox of the innocent for the guilty, the God/man who cannot die to expire His breath and be carried to a grave.  In the end I do not believe in a God but in the God who face I see in Jesus even with all the uncertain and unreasonable baggage that comes with it.  I wish religious atheism were enough or religion without faith but it is even more disappointing than a God who cannot be controlled, a wild God who refuses to be tamed by man but binds Himself to the blood that cleanses us from all sin.  I end up sympathetic to those who are the new religious without having a real God but I must pity them rather than joining them.  The God whom creeds confess and whose voice speaks through Scripture is not simply what I must settle for but the only God worth believing in.  Perhaps the answer to Christianity is not trying to add a little belief into the religion of atheism but challenging the spiritual to give up the semblance for a messy reality made clean only by the splash of baptismal water and the gift of the Holy Spirit.  In the end it is only faith, the great dare to trust in what you cannot see or control but also cannot live without.