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.