Time. . . who needs it?

When God ordered creation with the gift of time, it was not like the time we measure today.  Sunrise and sunset defined everything.  It was simply about light and dark and not about seconds and minutes and hours.  Nobody cared about them because no one needed them.  Morning began with sunrise and the day ended when evening saw the sunset. Apart from that, we simply worked.  We defined the hours of daylight by what we did.  Some of it was for self and family in the ordinary chores of house and home and some of it was for others as well in fields and cattle.  Time was largely observed by when work began and when it ended.  There was no time-clock to punch, as it were; when it was light work began and when it became too dark to work, it stopped.  So did we.  The dark was rest.

Now the seconds and minutes and hours dominate us.  We are over scheduled and under rested because the light no longer matters.  We light the dark and dark the light but the ubiquitous screens live on in both and so we find it hard to rest our minds and our fingers.  The busyness continues whether for work or pleasure or aimless distraction.  There are fewer boundaries with the clocks ticking away and the phones reminding us about this or that.  The world has become one great alarm clock with its local version the most important use of that technological marvel, the smart phone.  It is smart but we are not.  We have surrendered nearly everything to clocks that rule our lives and to the time we measure in the smallest of increments.  Gone is the ordinary rhythm of light and dark, work and rest.  In its place is a constant on in which sleep is interrupted with tones that signal notifications of this or that or texts we absolutely must see.  Nothing waits and we wait for nothing.  We simply have to be plugged in.

It is kind of interesting to remember that the church bell that sounded the hours when no one had watches and none had even imagined a cell phone.  The church bell was not interested in making sure you were heading to your appointments but it was sounding out the hours of prayer -- less for the folks in the fields or markets or homes than for the monastics who were drawn together for prayer by those tolls.  The very word for "clock," I am told, has it’s origin is from a word meaning a “bell.” And so the bell sounded into the ordinary noise of the day to announce the times for prayer the monks and nuns would keep. Few needed or wanted to know the hours except those who prayed them.  Then it changed.  The church gave us the clock and we took it from the church until the bells no longer chime and if they do it is not to call us to prayer but to urge us on to the next task.

By my modest search, mechanical clocks powered by weights and gears first began to appear in the 13th and 14th centuries.  In cathedral towers, monasteries, and town squares these clocks were powered bells and some fancy enough to provide dancing mannequins decorated in local color. They were “clocks” because they were powered bells -- not so much telling time as announcing it.  The liturgical year was the accompanying calendar to these bells.  Both are pretty much lost to us and with them any sense of time as God's creation and domain.  It is about us though I wish it could be said that time improved in the bargain.  It did not.  It became more bane than blessing and has held us captive since the sun dial made telling time portable.  Oddly enough, one of the quirks of retirement is that I no longer wear a watch.  Indeed, I am forever forgetting what time it is because my appointments are few, my schedules are more open, and none of it is as urgent as it once was anyway.  In the beginning I thought this a problem.  Now I wonder if it is less problem than a return to a simpler age when everyone was like me.  Morning matters and evening but the day is less cluttered and the night left free for rest.

People are incredibly adaptable to change -- look at how we complain but then figure out how to live with the foolishness of daylight savings time!  There is a limit, however.  When time is not simply a day ordered by light and dark, it often becomes a prison of deadlines and demands.  Our bodies and our minds were created for a rhythm and the church once announced it with the call to prayer.  Now we can stay up late and rob ourselves of rest and confuse the pressing need for work with the ability to explore the internet and its games and useless knowledge without boundaries.  It is no wonder that vices exploit time and our ordering of time apart from God exposes us to their influence and temptation.  If there is a thing we ought to do it is to recover the sense of time ordered by light and darkness, day and night.  While that might mean giving up some of our precious screen time, it will surely reward us with more than rest and some real peace.  News was once a scheduled event but not it breaks in to unsettle us with what is local and what is too far away to imagine.  Has it helped us?  Has it contributed to the lesser evils of crime and violence?  I think you know the answer.  I also think you know why I long again for a time when the clock was the church's and the bell was our reminder of those who prayed as we should.  Here are some older words to a very familiar hymn:

1. Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home:

2. Under the shadow of your throne
Your saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is your arm alone,
And our defense is sure.

3. Before the hills in order stood
Or Earth received her frame,
From everlasting you are God,
To endless years the same.

4. A thousand ages in your sight
Are like an evening gone,
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.

5. Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the op’ning day.

6. Like flow’ry fields the nations stand,
Pleased with the morning light;
The flow’rs beneath the mower’s hand
Lie with’ring ere ’tis night.

7. Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guard while troubles last
And our eternal home.

 

Cultus vs ethical path vs cerebral belief. . .

The fact that we do not have definitive records from early Christianity does not seem to prevent those who want to draw conclusions from drawing the conclusions they favor.  I am thinking here of the myth of the simple faith of Jesus.  How many have been tempted to minimize both doctrinal truth and institutional worship as a late and unwelcome invention?  You do not need to be Roman or even among the seven sisters of Evangelical Christianity to hold to your sacred truth over fact.  Lutherans do it as well.  Most are drawn to the mythology of an early and pristine Christianity uncluttered by doctrine, liturgical form and test, and a sacramental understanding of things.  Instead they combine to preserve the falsehood that early Christians would be scandalized by what institutional Christianity has become and fear the devil won after all.  They would insist that the recovery of a simple, easy, non-cultic form of Christianity is the cause which will save us and that anything else is an imposition upon the first Christians and a distortion of any kind of church they would have known.

They have sold to us the lie that early Christians worshiped in their living rooms in a first century version of a Barcalounger while being engaged either by a cerebral version of the faith or exhorted to a certain moral shape of everyday life.  They have come to the conclusion that there were no altars in early Christianity but only tables -- the same ones that held lunch and afternoon tea -- and that any development of a religion of doctrinal tenets, liturgical worship, vestments, chant, and altars was a deformation rather than a formative maturation.  So their goal has been as much as possible to disdain the present in favor of such a pristine Christianity of potlucks, universalism, and love for everyone.  Their vision has exchanged the vertical for the horizontal and encouraged us to a noble simplicity over the excesses of later eras.

Are they correct?  It would seem that some on both sides of the theological spectrum want to agree with their history of it all.  The evangelicals were sure all along that nothing mattered except people being happy though they differed on how to make them happy (rigorous moral living or consent to the right set of doctrinal propositions.  Bronze age Lutherans somewhat embarrassed by their own liturgy and vestments seem as likely to concede that what God wants is right believing and that nothing else matters all that much (from sacraments to good works!).  Preaching, believing, and right acting are all that really matter and the rest is, well, adiaphora (falsely meaning nothing all that important).  They marvel at how the Church devolved into a cultic religion.  I do just the opposite.  I am amazed at how quickly Christians were able to leave behind their forced gatherings in homes for proper church buildings and all the accoutrements of worship.  Constantine must have been a very powerful man to be blamed for everything from invoking what is Scripture and what is not to the corruption of a simple faith into a complex one of creeds and truth statements.

The problem we have today is that some insist upon framing their lives as Christians and their association with the Church in the realm of volunteers who share a set of words on paper and who live the Amish paradise of a most unceremonial pattern of worship.  However, worship is not some little sideline for some in the faith but the place where we are nearest to God and actually receive His grace through means and glimpse the promise of the eternal to come.  Doctrine does not live in the realm of reasoned proposition or theoretical faith held mostly by the mind but is how we live out our faith together. Doctrine touches every aspect of Christian life.  That is the genius of lex orandi lex credendi.  The phrase gets this correlation between doctrinal integrity and liturgical unity, between conceptualizing God and meeting Him where He is to be found (means of grace).

Luther, the modern Roman Liturgical Movement, moralistic and therapeutic deism, and the goal of a noble simplicity all got it wrong if they insisted that heart and mind were where it happened over Word and Sacrament.  BoGiertz got it correct.  Mission and worship do not compete but are different sizes of the same coin.  Let's just be radical here.  If you think Jesus would be shocked and offended by vestments, pipe organs, choirs, chant, altar parments, crucifixes, bowing, kneeling, and the like, then you know a different Jesus than does the Scripture and the blessed who hear and believe.  You cannot read the passages on worship in the Old Testament and then jump to St. John the Divine's vision of Revelation and presume that in between God just wants us to gather around the kitchen table and much upon some symbolic food along with supper, think about Jesus and how we can follow Him, and keep the doctrine stupidly simple.  I am tired of those who have made Mid-Century Modern into a religious architectural style and entertainment into worship but I am also weary of having to defend to those who want it all but less of it that Christianity is cultus and not simply ethical path, that this faith is about a real taste and vision of eternity and not simply how to have your best life now.  We have surely screwed up a few things over time but recognizing the liturgical shape of worship and the Christian life is not one of them.  St. Matthew's Gospel begins and ends with Immanuel -- from the name given to the Child born of a Virgin to the promise of the Risen Savior.  This Immanuel takes shape, form, and flavor in the Holy Eucharist and within it unfolds the liturgical and ceremonial shape of how then we live.  Faith comes by hearing the Word but it does not live solely in the mind.  We behold Him not merely with the ear but with all the senses.

Not the gold standard. . .

When I was a teenager my father would sometimes complain of me that "I had a champagne taste on a beer budget..."  Surely I am not the only one who recalls that little phrase.  Its meaning is quite obvious.  You cannot afford what you want so you adjust your taste to what you can afford or need (vs want).  When you think about it, it is not bad advice.  In the purchase of cars, I routinely defer to what I need and can afford over what I desire.  In the purchase of clothing, I tend to the clearance rack.  If you cannot afford the best, you accept the best you can afford.  It works in so many things but it is a terrible way to look at the Church.

Of late, the discussion over residential seminary and the liturgy has used another phrase the gold standard.  While some may be old enough to recall when our nation was actually on the gold standard, its meaning as a shorthand phrase to describe that past is largely lost.  Instead, the gold standard has become, at least in common parlance, the champagne taste and it is countered by what is urgent or affordable in the present moment.  In both phrases, the idea is that no one disputes that the residential seminary is better or even best OR that the liturgy is better or even best.  The problem is that we cannot afford either one right now.  We are running a deficit of clergy, time is of the essence, pastors have families that need not be uprooted to go to seminary, online training has become normal, and local control and connection is preferred over a centralize control manifest in a seminary setting.  Yes, the complainers all agree that residential seminary is better but right now we need to adjust to a new norm.

In the same way, the liturgy is spoken of as the same kind of gold standard.  It would be great if we all had pipe organs and choirs and people who know the words and music of the liturgy and sang with gusto and it attracted those outside the Church but that is not the case now.  Even small parishes using the liturgy and hymnal insist they cannot afford the gold standard of organ (I should say organist) so they have to use something else - something that is affordable.  Large parishes insist that they cannot pack them in without a praise band and entertainment style worship and though they wish it were different it is not.  As per a previous column, the gold standard gets in the way of reaching people for Jesus.  I could go on and on but you get the point.

My perspective is quite different.  I do not think that residential seminary or the liturgy is the gold standard or the champagne we can no longer afford.  I think it is simply who we are as Lutherans.  We long ago and from the start lived within the realm of a residential seminary (Wittenberg), of academic curriculum and standards, and of an educated clergy.  We did so not to change what had been but as people adopting the status quo.  We did not invent the residential seminary but accepted what had been and used it ever since with a few minor variations.  This is neither something new or unique to us.  It is who we are and who the Church had been before us.  In the same way, the liturgy is not something we invented nor did we perfect it.  We adopted it and simply added a set is rubrics or directions for use with the existing missal (that is called the Formula Missae).  For that matter, we did not, at least in the beginning, even deviate from the Latin norm!  It was who we were and are (well, are to some of us).  The problem here is not looking at things beyond our reach or price range now.  No, indeed, the problem is that some of us are no longer want to be who we were.  

This has been framed wrongly.  I blame adiaphora and Lutheran refusal to make rules about such things (except bylaws which we love to use to try to solve doctrinal problems).  It is time to get over it.  We are not a group of autonomous and independent congregations who can do what they please with impunity.  We have agreed to be who we are.  The confessional standard is not simply for cerebral appreciation or theoretical unity.  It is how we live.  We hold these things not as ideals but as the norm and how we form pastors and do worship flows from this norm -- not from cultural situations or preferences but from what we believe, teach, and confess.  When we apply this gold standard or champagne idea to such things, we are in essence watering down our confession and admitting that we can operate outside that confession when the need demands.  

It is as if we are making what might be necessary in the emergency condition of the folks lost on a desert island to be the norm which establishes everything we do.  Of course we have and will always have emergencies but these do not define who we are or establish what faithful practice is.  They are always exceptions.  Sure, we can call anything and everything an emergency (like we did during Covid) and hasten the dilution of what we believe, teach, and confess into mere theory to be set aside whenever we think it has become a problem or we can admit that emergencies are rare and refuse to define the rule by these exceptions.  I would add beauty to the list along with residential seminary, the liturgy, hymn, chant, and song.  Beauty in the house of the Lord is not decoration but words, including the Divine Word, expressed in art, glass, carving, metalwork, and stone.  Warehouses suffice as an emergency substitute but once they become the norm, everything else becomes optional as well.  What is merely optional almost always becomes exceptional and not the norm at all.

Bottom line:  Residential seminaries and the liturgy are not gold standards or champagne tastes but merely the living out of who we say we are.  They are not set in stone but they change incrementally and not radically over time.  There is a hermeneutic of continuity going on here.  It is not fruit basket upset because the times are changing but the steady course of a ship which is aimed not at getting through this storm but arriving safely and faithfully at the home port.   

The start of it all. . .

Let me state for the record that I have no objection to scholars debating the authorship of Biblical books in which the author is not named within or attributed to someone in another Biblical book.  I suppose it is a n impossibility for the same to resist asking a similar question when the authorship is named or attributed.  It is, for my part, the least interesting of questions but, well, for those who live and breathe a mystery, have at it.  What I do object to is when the starting point of it the inquiry is to disregard or belittle what Scripture does say about authorship. 

If Scripture includes a reference to authorship or if the authorship has been attributed to someone in another Biblical book or if tradition has assigned authorship for good reason to someone, why must the debate begin by picking apart what Scripture says or using so-called science or archeology to insist why the Scriptures or tradition must be wrong.  What is there gained by immediately calling into question the veracity of Scripture or the primacy of tradition well established?  I can only presume that the whole enterprise is designed to raise questions about all of Scripture and not simply authorship.  Frankly, I have seldom been proven wrong in this assertion.

It is certainly one thing to begin with what Scripture clearly says about authorship or other things and to expound upon that using the clear passages of Scripture to illuminate the unclear.  It is quite another to use as your starting point that what Scripture clearly says must be wrong.  Yet that is how we got into trouble until now Scripture no longer has the confidence of many if not most commentators.  Indeed, I fear that the majority of those who encounter the Word of God begin with the presumption that it cannot be the Word of God but just might contain words of God.  Filled with the self-importance of that presumption, it goes one step further and insists that the job of the sophisticated scholar is to tell us which words belong to God and which do not. In this way, they save us poor foolish, superstitious, naive folks from being deluded by what the words actually say and mean.

Instead of paying attention to the remarkable consistency of teaching within the history of Christianity from the earliest days to the present, the scholar today uses every minor difference or fringe figure's dispute to say that there is no such thing as the catholic and apostolic faith at all -- at least nothing we can know for sure so far removed from the Biblical era.  Yet, the same scholars do not hesitate to presume upon Scripture what seems tenable, reasonable, logical, or acceptable in the present moment.  While this is not about same sex relationships, I will use this as an example.  The scholar begins by insisting that what is today (regularized same sex relationships in a nominally monogamous and legal setting) was never known in the Biblical era so therefore what the Scriptures say does not apply to such relationships.  In this way, it is impossible to argue against this.  It is implicit in the mind of the liberal or progressive that once you take what is condemned in Scripture (homosexual activity) and place it within the context of a relationship sanctioned by law and approved by the majority within a given culture, then Scripture has nothing to say about such homosexual behavior.  We could follow the same sort of logic about a thousand different things and end up the same place.  You cannot trust the Bible.

I once had a family interested in membership who insisted that they only believed the Bible and that creed or confession were not important.  So when I asked them if baptism saved or Christ's flesh and blood were really present in the Eucharist or that the pastor had the authority to forgive sins in Christ's name, they insisted the answer was "no."  If it says that, it cannot mean that and what it means must be different than what it says.  In response, I suggested to them that they had the marks of becoming a proud liberal.  They were deeply offended.  Why would I say that?  Because anytime you can begin to set aside what Scripture says because it offends your sensibilities or logic or conception of things, it is the start of questioning everything until little stands except the golden rule and a nice but irrelevant deity.

Over the years I have never met someone who took seriously what Scripture said until he began to believe nothing but I have met plenty of people who no longer took Scripture seriously and ended up believing nothing at all.  In other words, people who believed what Scripture said were less likely to abandon the Word of God but those who began to open the Bible with a question were highly likely to end up abandoning the Word of God.  The Bible cannot say that and if it does it cannot mean that -- this is a sure way to insist that Scripture must prove itself before they will believe any of it.  Sadly, this conversation too often starts with an assertion that we really do not know much at all about what Scripture says of itself and what we do know must be taken with a grain of salt.  

While we love to lump everyone into the fundamentalist camp if they pay attention to what Scripture says as the voice of God, the reality is that Lutherans do not fit the bill of a fundamentalist.  Indeed, the renewal of patrology or the commentary on Scripture as God's Word is a characteristically Lutheran contribution.  The idea that Scripture has some mystery to crack to behold some greater deeper truth (can anyone say Gnostic) seems to be a more Roman and progressive idea.  Rome says leave it to the pope or the bishops while the progressives insist we leave it to the experts.  In this way, despite what Benedict XVI warned of higher criticism, Rome seems captive to those who begin with skepticism while Lutherans begin with confidence.

The self-interpreting or transparent text . . .

Anyone who is Lutheran knows the word perspicuity.  Indeed, Lutherans have held to the clarity of Scripture, insisting that Scripture is clear, ever since Luther in On the Bondage of the Will.   It is one of those ideas that we know but are not at all sure what it means.  The contention of the Reformers’ Scripture is clear and its meaning self-evident or transparent is best seen as a claim against Rome's insistence that no one can read Scripture without the interpretive authority of the Church and its teaching magisterium to define what Scripture says.  For goodness' sake, this idea of the clarity of Scripture does not mean that Scripture is a simple or easy book to read.  In fact, everyone knows and believes that many things in Scripture are difficult to understand or else everyone would agree on what it says and means.  Our Lord Himself said that it is not given to everyone to understand the things of God, that the will of God is to reveal the truth to the small while hiding it from the great. While everyone knows that a knowledge of the original languages of Scripture is a help, the key does not come from knowing how to use the tools.  Scripture interprets Scripture works because the student of the Scriptures knows the book and approaches it by faith, knowing the Holy Spirit as guide.  But what this does not mean is that there is no need for the teaching authority of the Church.

Augustine famously said he would not have believed were it not for the authority of the Church.  He does not minimize the role of Scripture against the Church but understands the role of the Church to teach the Scriptures.  Protestantism has left us with a tyranny of individual interpreters who cannot be challenged, too many popes, if you will.  Sometimes Lutherans are tempted in that direction.  Just the Bible.  Even our own Confessions seem awkward to us.  What kind of authority do such creeds and confessions have?  Are we not Bible alone people?  It is as if this has influenced the idea that an educated clergy, especially one schooled in the Biblical languages and well taught in history and theology, is almost a problem rather than a blessing.  It just gets in the way, so to speak.  At least that is how some speak.  Online courses and a minimal sufficiency are not only all that is essential but all that needs be for the Church today.  In their push to let Scripture be alone, they have mistaken the idea that Lutherans do not believe that a churchly education is all that important against an urgent timeline and localization of belief and practice.  Is that who we are?  Does perspicuity or clarity mean that that the only skills or preparation the pastor brings to the table is administrative in nature or moral in shape?  Does this mean that all that talk of doctrine and faithful practice get in the way of a faithful clergy?  That is how it would seem if you listen to the current debate over online courses and non-synodical seminaries.  Give them the Bible and that is all that they need to serve the people today and the people in the pews know best what kind of pastor they want and need and how he should be trained. 

History says otherwise.  Henry Melchior Muhlenberg found doctrinal and liturgical chaos on the American frontier.  Not even a century later, CFW Walther complained that Lutherans in America did not know who they were, what they believed, or how they worshiped.  Even after the work of building seminaries and producing the Common Service, Graebner lamented the liturgical chaos in Lutheranism and suggested it was not simply about worship but also about what is believed.  The Church is not extraneous here but essential.  The teaching of the authority does not compete with Scripture but flows from Scripture as the Word is confessed and taught not as the opinion of one but as the catholic and apostolic faith, always and everyone believed and confessed.  Is our age now different?  Have we outgrown the need for the authority of the Church or a well trained clergy?  Our chaos today is in many respects the same as before.  We need the teaching authority of the Church not to replace Scripture but to unfold its truth against that which has been faithfully confessed and taught through the ages and we need an educated clergy who know the Word and who know both the challenges and the orthodox rudder that has maintained this truth through the stormy waters.

Luther was led to attack the Roman hermeneutic because it assumed an obscurity in Scripture which had to be penetrated by an allegorical or analogical interpretation by the magisterium of the external church.  At the same time Luther harshly attacked Rome for arrogating to itself alone the office of interpreting an obscure Scripture, he turns right about and attacks the radical reformers for indulging in private interpretation which ignores the general consensus of the church, the rules of good grammar, reason under the guidance of the Spirit, and the internal testimony of Scripture itself.  Either Scripture is clear or it is a dark book meant for the hallowed halls of the scholar but not for the ordinary Christian.  The clarity of Scripture must never be confused with simplicity or comprehensibility.  Luther would be most impatient with modern Lutherans who are preoccupied with a "simple" Gospel and who contend for a minimally trained clergy as a misuse of his words. For Luther the Gospel is the highest and most profound majesty. It is not simple. But it is clear and can be understood as to its meaning especially in matters of salvation.  What Scripture says is clear enough but what it means is the ministry of the Church and the clergy.  It means doctrine.  To fail to make the jump between what it says and what it means is the failure of Protestantism at the time of the Reformation and now in our world of vagaries and uncertainty.  We have the Word not to do with as we please but so that it might reveal to us the saving truth or doctrine by which we are saved and how we then live.  All dogmatics must be exegesis; and all exegesis must be systematic and dogmatic. In this way, our work, our confession, is exegesis. This is our confession of the clear Word of God."  What it means to be Lutheran is this disciplined approach to Scripture - both homiletically and
dogmatically.  This is why we have such high standards for an educated clergy and why we refuse to surrender the authority of the Church to the whim of the individual.

Second thoughts. . .

The media has not been kind to us in the LCMS.  I am not here speaking of its treatment of us as much as our treatment of it.  We have used the media in so many less than helpful ways and it has created a number of ill effects that do not bode well for the future.  Perhaps it is an appropriate moment to talk about it.

The media usage of the LCMS about the LCMS has been either to enlarge expectations and the reach of what Lutheranism can be and should be by extolling our good Confession OR it has been to diminish the reality of what Lutheranism is by exposing what is bad and making it known.  Some might see any difference.  I think there is a difference.

It is easy, after all, to expose what is bad or shameful among us.  We have no shortage of errors, scandals, and wrongs which rightfully shame us.  We are a church of sinners, after all.  One does not have to look very far to find good examples of such sin within the churches and clergy.  We are also well equipped to publish the record of our disappointments and embarrassments.  The subject of our outrage at those among us who live on the fringes of orthodoxy or morality or simple appropriateness is a fond one to take up and put pen to paper (or, in this case, words to a screen).  Some of it not only does not belong in public outrage but belongs in the more nuanced places where reason and due process live.  These things are not efficient but are slow and deliberate and prodding.  None of us is happy about this but it is probably better for all that the mechanisms of dealing formally with our discontent are not quick.  Part of that is because we seem to want to fix everything with bylaws and bylaws simply cannot fix much of what is wrong among us.  We crave decisive actors and actions except when someone is complaining about us.  I get it.

We are not so well equipped to utilize the resources of the internet for reasoned conversation or civil debate but even less so in praising what is good or convincing each other what is right and salutary.  There are some who do just that.  They are positive and build up more than they tear down.  From podcast to blog to talk show they lay before us in humble expectation the cause of Scripture, creed, confession, and truth.  I laud them for what they do and know that this is to good effect.  I cannot count how many have given my own congregation a try because they heard the Word proclaimed and of a church body in which this proclamation was normal and normative.  I only wish there were more who were intent upon using the various platforms available to convince rather then ratting out in public what they find wrong.  I may seem to do the same but it is not truly my intent to be a tell all site but rather to prod us even by our wrongs to do what is right.  I apologize when I do something else.

There is one thing the internet seems ill-quipped to do.  It is a terrible place for a real conversation, for the expression of nuance, for respect for process, and for the discipline that ought to be common but is about as uncommon as common sense.  The internet is good at putting us against each other and into camps of those who disagree and who refuse to be moved from where they stand.  There was a time when I regularly participated in a couple of such online forums but they ended up in stalemates over predictable arguments and it grew tiresome and tragic even to participate.  I am genuinely surprise when comments made on social media are not designed either to throw red meat to the hungry wolves or inflame the dragons among us.  It ought to be the other way around.  Moral outrage with its implicit self-righteousness should not be the norm but the exception.  Or at least I wish it were.

We are accountable to each other in this Synod and we are duty bound to observe the covenants of love that define our relationship but I am not at all sure it is good or helpful to turn us into spies who take to the web to tell all about the sins and failings of others.  I would not be ELCA if it were the final remnant of Lutheranism left but I really am saddened by what it has become.  It is a real tragedy and I cannot but grieve the loss of better predecessor bodies than what their merger became.  Likewise, I am saddened by what Anglicanism has become and what even the seven sisters of Protestantism became in view of what they were once.  I do not want a small but purer Missouri.  I want a growing Missouri which is growing because it is more and more faithful to Scripture, creed, and confession.  I do not want those whose potshots at our church body have sullied our reputation even more to shame us from being truthful and orthodox. Neither do I want us to become a caricature of our pompous selves as those outside us view the Synod and prove correct the stereotype of us as a people who love cutting down more than we can tolerate building up.  I hope the new year bring a little regret for how quick we are to shame each other in public as the first step we take when something is not as it should be.  I pray that in the New Year we will learn how to talk together in pursuit of the fuller orthodoxy and catholicity that is our prayer and not simply to boil things down to the minimum we can all agree upon.

Indeed, the whole point of moderated comments on this blog was to derail the side conversations that became nothing more than rude shouting matches.  This does not glorify God or extend the cause of Christ.  Yes, we must be blunt when wrongs are left without correction from those so charged with these duties yet we should not delight in being the first to publish how bad some of us are.  That is why I am hoping some of those who do that will take a pause from hitting the publish button.  We need have a higher purpose in all of this than delighting in the sins of others or we are Pharisees and Publicans all. 

An Unbroken History. . .

I read a while ago of a Lutheran's story of becoming Roman Catholic.  In it, she did not disparage her Lutheran past but found it lacking in many ways that Rome fulfilled.  Her story is not unlike many I know of people who love the doctrine of Lutheranism but who cannot seem to resist the mystique of Rome.  They sometimes bounce back and forth, yearning for a real sermon and catechetical teaching and finding it in the Church of the Augsburg Confession but then longing for a piety and devotional life (and ceremonial) that seems to be lacking in Wittenberg but is often overplayed in Rome.  They wear the scapular and medals and pray the discipline of the Rosary while their mind lives in the Lutheran Confessions and Luther's Catechism.  Some may find this odd.  I don't.  Some may complain about them and their seeming dissatisfaction but I don't.  Some may say they are not really Lutheran enough but I don't.  I am deeply sympathetic and find myself echoing some of their praises and laments of Lutheranism.

One such line that stuck out to me was that they were searching for a church with an unbroken history.  Rome seems the default in this.  After all, they have a line of popes and the choice real estate of the Vatican and all but this is where I think Lutherans fail.  We did not ever claim that the Church had ceased to exist in its Babylonian Captivity or in its exile from Scripture and the clear preaching of the Gospel.  Not at all.  But neither did we ever claim that we were a new church with new doctrine, new ceremonies, and a new ministry.  In fact, the claim of the Augustana that is the most bold is the very one we seem to shy away from today.  That claim is that we have not only NOT departed from catholic doctrine and practice but insist that we will change if it can be shown that we have.  This is the implicit claim not to be a catholic communion along side others but to be that catholic and apostolic Church that has such an unbroken history of faith, doctrine, teaching, exegesis, sacraments, piety, and worship.  If there is a distinct and uniform failing among all Lutherans today, it is our retreat from that claim and that identity.

Lutherans of all stripes seem to have accepted that they are a church with a date of founding that came fifteen centuries after Christ.  On the left, they have embraced the lie of our false ecumenism in which no one has all the truth, the most profound truth is diversity, and the only real unity is unity in diversity.  So they are content to live as step-sisters in a house without a Father and in which Christ is not Savior nor even really Brother but merely example of embodied love.  They look at the Church as if she were a mismatched set of paraments and vestments, more reflecting preference and identities of the people than the Christ or the Church established by His death and resurrection.  They commune anyone and everyone without even expecting baptism much less any real common creed or confession.  Their understanding of Church is a fragile negotiated peace in which everyone keeps their own distinctives so long as they do not contradict one another.  Of course, their most sacred tenets of faith insist upon the full embrace of the various sexual desires and gender identities -- even more than the two natures of Christ!  They do not care who has the unbroken history because they are the church of now, of a Scripture and doctrine unfolded in the present and not rooted in the past -- much less the preserved deposit once delivered.

Lest the right get too smug, they are equally as wedded to a beginning rooted in the sixteenth century and to a slightly less modern version of truth.  They have made peace with the idea that somehow the Church was left by God to live in error for nearly 1500 years before somebody came along to get it right.  Even those who appreciate the saints who went before whose words and witness accords with the claims of the Reformers do not use that much more than a footnote to the real things that matter because they were said or written by Luther or the great teachers of Lutheran orthodoxy.  They want to know not what is catholic or apostolic but what is Lutheran.  So they disdain ordination, for example, as mere apostolic custom -- as if that meant nothing much at all.  They live with high words but a practical worship life and piety built upon adiaphora in which the things that cannot be commanded are therefore unimportant.  They are too quick to caution against any outward piety and dismiss it all as if it meant nothing in order to focus on the intricacies of lectionary debates or the use of non-Lutheran hymns or third use of the Law as if these were the mighty questions of the time (not that these are neither interesting nor useful discussions).   No, it seems to me that the real vexing question for Lutherans today is if we are who our Confessions claim or not.  Under worship wars and communion hospitality and catechesis and preaching, this is the most urgent and profound question.

I will say upfront that I have no interest in belonging to any Church which claims a founding date later than the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I have no interest in departing from the unbroken history of such Church, her doctrine and her life.  I wish I could say that Rome was in better shape to claim this because it would be a simple matter of swimming the Tiber.  The reality is that Rome is has institutionalized the whole idea of invention whether by pope or council or bishop or the mere toleration of teaching and practice that contradicts historic claim.  It was, in Luther's idea, a church of novelty that was remarkably successful in making their novelties appear to be catholic -- from purgatory to a justification by grace through faith that still deposits meritorious work to the assent of the Christian to treasuries of merits (which surely would have been depleted by now!) to papal infallibility invented 23 years after the Missouri Synod organized to idiots appointed or tolerated as bishops but who obviously hate the faith and the people they serve.  Rome has the mystique but little more.  Its doctrine is an evolution of reason and human idea that has neither root in Scripture nor the catholic witness of the fathers.  Orthodoxy has much to its appeal but the reality is that its history ended nearly 1200 years ago and it seems content to live with the remnants of that past along with its many ethnic identities.  If Orthodoxy every got its act together, it could be more attractive but I am not Greek or Russian or Slavic and my mind and heart too Western to have anything more than a passing desire for the East.

The woman who let her Lutheranism for Rome seems happy but she lives with one of those idiot bishops who disdains history and tradition.  I could not.  But neither am I happy with any Lutheranism that refuses to live up to or abide by the claims of our Confessions.  For anyone with half a wit understands that the claims of those Confessions are to be that Church with an unbroken history.  Sadly, we no longer even really complain that Rome has co opted that.  Instead, too many of us sit idly by content to be Protestants with reason and culture to live above Scripture as long as it fits what we are thinking.  The reality is that to be that Church with an unbroken history is neither comfortable nor contentment.  It is the constant battle less against the agents outside than with the voice inside and the unending struggle to be faithful.  It is this I am looking for and I suspect I am not alone.  The miracle is that there are literally Lutherans in nearly every denomination -- they just don't know it.  They want what I want -- a Church informed and bounded by Scripture, living in unbroken history and continuity with her past, in the vibrant and profound moment of sacramental life gathered around the Word and Table of the Lord, with an external piety to set them apart and express what the mind knows and the heart believes, and sure that this is more important than any cause of relevance or success bestowed by the world.

The longing for home. . .

In what passes for art today, words on a canvas, plate, or mug often speaking in glowing terms of home and the yearning for order and place.  The so-called art remains popular even while it would seem that Americans have done nearly everything to distance their own lives from any sense of place, from the order of the past, and from an enduring home.  We are mobile and do not merely travel but move from place to place, house to house, and apartment to apartment.  We trade in jobs faster than we do vehicles.  We have invented desires and genders and mainstreamed them.  At the same time, we live more on screens and the reality of a digital world than the real world.  We love the idea of longevity but we ditch relationships and romances as fast as we replace our phones.  We are enamored of nostalgia and so the popularity of things like Downton Abbey but it is a conditional nostalgia -- conditioned upon including glimpses of the present in the mythology of our past and a non-judgmental view of our core values as a society.  

The longing for home will not be satisfied by technology or digital relations.  It is built in us by our Creator and yearns for the real reality of husband and wife, parent and child, extended family and abiding friendships.  It does not imagine home but builds it whether in house or apartment, establishing the blessing of place alongside the blessing of purpose.  The gift of Christianity is not simply the salvation of the individual but the restoration of this blessing in the shape of vocation.  The problem of the present is that we attempt to embrace the imagery without adopting the theology of creation, the order and purpose of our lives, and its shape in marriage, family, and home.  Art can express many things but the artsy words of pop art fail to deliver to us the things of which they speak.

My grandparents and parents never left home.  They flourished where they were planted.  They lived not for the pursuit of financial gain or the realization of great dreams but they sought to be stable financially in order to take care of those within their duty and to live as a contributing member of the community of church and community.  At my parents funerals, and those of my grandparents, family gathered from all kinds of places to join with the lifetime friends in the community to remember and give thanks that these were part of their home and their lives.  In that moment I longed to be part of them but part of me felt much like an outsider.  I had left home for college and then to seminary and the wisdom of the Church and the work of the Spirit planted me first on Long Island and then upstate New York and finally Tennessee --  a world away from the small town in which I was nourished.  Though I imagined myself one with them, my brother was more than me.  I made my home where I was and did not join my labors and love to the place where I had been born.

The playing of sexual desire and gender as if they were toys and the disconnect between our lives and their purpose and shape with the purpose and shape of those who went before us have left us confused and confounded as a people.  We long for the very thing we have rejected.  We want to be given order in the hope of receiving from it purpose and identity but when confronted with that order we reject it -- forgetting its cost in fueling our longing while keeping us from see that yearning fulfilled.  Retreating to our screens and the imaginary places we might belong, we keep alive the yearning while distancing ourselves even more from its fulfillment.  It is no wonder that depression is rampant among us nor should it surprise us that our melancholy estate finds its ultimate conclusion in the decision to end our lives when we so decide to end them.  The answer does not lie with the digital but with the real, with the surrender of our wills to the Divine Will expressed in the shape of creation, the blessing of redemption, and the purpose of life to glorify God above all things.

When the Church is silent on this part of our life -- the ordered life shaped by God's purpose and will -- we are depriving the people of God of the comfort of knowing their place within God's creation, their purpose grander than self-fulfillment, pleasure, entertainment, or happiness, and their supreme identity as a child of God.  When we go to Church, we find ourselves met by the waiting Father who welcomes us home and to an end for the longing and yearning that threatens to consume us.

The quest for emotional support. . .

How curious it is that reports are now telling us how AI (artificial intelligence) is being used as well as how it is trusted by those who use it.  There was a time when AI was being heralded as an advance in the minutiae of technology, science, law, etc., which employed terminology and patterns of thought not normally used in every day conversation.  It was a means of freeing the people from servitude and pawning off unpleasant or boring things to AI.  Then it became a means of souring the breadth of information available and distilling it into short and easy to understand answers about questions -- what is happening across the world and why things happen as they do.  Very quickly, however, AI has shifted to another area.  It is now seen by many as a means of emotional support -- a therapeutic role.

A study from the Collective Intelligence Project on Human-AI relationships surveyed a small but significant number of people from some 70 or more nations and concluded that "AI moved from task tool to emotional infrastructure.”  What people are outsourcing is not the mundane, boring, or tedious tasks of work or life but friendships and emotional support.  In fact, the survey found that folks tend to trust AI in this role (as with others) even more than they trust other people or the institutions of society and culture.  In their quest to find support for or help in personal issues and emotional needs, they increasingly and very quickly turned to AI.

There was a time in which churches provided the means to and access into community where personal relationships were formed and flourished and emotional needs could be met.  Could it be that the churches have lost this role precisely because they have adapted to and been replaced by the same cold and impersonal digital reality of the rest of the world?  Watching worship is clearly not the same as in person participation in worship services.  Watching preaching and teaching on a screen are not the same as sitting in the pews with others and listening to a preacher or teacher.  Hearing music through speakers is not the same as lending your voice to the congregation's song.  Praying along with a voice on a screen or in your earbuds is not the same as praying with one voice as a congregation (just try praying a common prayer out loud in a zoom meeting).  Receiving a spiritual communion while watching the altar and the pastor distribute the gifts of God to the people of God is not the same as kneeling, eating, and drinking those gifts in the Holy Eucharist.  Yet too many churches and pastors rely on these in place of the common assembly of God's baptized people around His Word and Table.  In this, the churches have shown themselves to be the same as and not distinct from the ways things work in the world.

People once valued hearing even the hard things they did not wish to hear but needed to hear.  In those days preaching did not tiptoe lightly over people's views but confronted them with His Word and truth.  The side reality of our digital world is that we are less likely to hear things we do not agree with or the unpleasant truth that can compel repentance and we tend to look for places to be affirmed in what we already believe and to be encouraged in what we already think.  AI is very good at sensing both what we believe and think and then addressing us passively without rocking the boat of our sacred thoughts or feelings.  Furthermore, AI finds it hard to speak in the unequivocal truth of God's Word but very easy to appeal to feelings and to address the emotional wants or needs we place above our want or need for objective truth.  AI takes enough of what we give to figure out what we want to hear.  It is no wonder that AI has become an essential tool in the desire for emotional support in many.  The question ought to be at what cost?

Our critique of AI needs to focus clearly on the cost of hearing our own thoughts or beliefs amplified in the echo chamber of AI and internet communities and resources that supply us more with what we want to hear than what we need to hear.  Indeed, there are some who have found that over the long term, AI does not deliver.  Look at the beginnings of a revolution among the young who have been coddled with the soft and easy life of living within the comfort of their own thoughts or opinions but who now are seeking out those churches which will call them to repentance, connect them with the transcendent, and compel them to change their sacred feelings and exchange their easy sins for a nobler life worthy of the higher power of God.  It may not quite be orthodoxy yet but it is headed in that direction.  A resurgence of orthodoxy means distinguishing the real Church from the fake ones whose soft seats and easy gospel has little to do with sin, death, a Savior who is God in flesh, and a life stronger than death.  I am not saying we should be blind to the emotional quests of those around us but we cannot deliver to them anything less than the real Gospel of Christ crucified and risen and of the new life in us arising from baptismal water.  The real emotional support for which we long is answered not by finding a safe place insulated against all the things we do not like or want but in the power of forgiveness, the robe of Christ's righteousness, and the work of the Spirit to bring this to bear in us through lives worthy of our calling as the people of God.  The emotional support AI can bring is a feel good moment that will end up leaving us mortally wounded.

 

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.