Updating the wardrobe. . .

We all desire to change things up a bit every now and then.  That is not so bad.  Even liturgical change is not all wrong.  But like the person who has tired of the clothing in their closet, the problem us what shall we wear when we change things up.  In the past, liturgical change has historically been slow, plodding, and incremental.  There were few times of urgent or disconnected change when the linear progression did not show or the future lie in discontinuity with the past.  But sometimes it is hard to contain ourselves.

Hidden away in the changing room, we pull out the clothing of youthful indiscretion and adolescent naivete.  We put on the clothing never meant for us -- not for our age or our bodies.  We want to be young or at least to feel that way.  We want the willful desire to be unconstrained by what was to pursue what might be.  Every kid has felt the rush of enthusiasm and desire as they tried to make a break with their parents and their generation.  The clothing chosen in such a moment seldom lasts.  They were always a fad or trend that was great in the blink of an eye but terrible in the span of a decade or a generation.  Adolescence was never meant to be the goal but merely a momentary passage.  In our age in which the glory of youth is about the only glory left anymore, we have forgotten that.  The aged want to be kids and have the money and freedom to abandon responsibility and respectability to do just that.  So also the Church has been tempted and succumbed from time to time.

Liturgical renewal always had a sense of this same youthful desire for self-expression.  Vatican II and the Mass formed in its wake was in part a rebellion of youth against the staid traditionalism of their fathers.  It was also the same for us Lutherans.  We wanted something new and fresh and something what was all the rage.  What we did not realize is how badly some of what we wanted would age -- leaving us widowed in the generation to come.  So we indulged ourselves.  We shut off the pipe organs and made vestments to resemble Picasso's art and built buildings that resembled anything and everything but their purpose as a liturgical assembly.  Worse than this, we tried to make everything about the here and now -- forgetting that it is the eternal which is God's gift and not some heightened sense of self or a pregnant moment.  

In the past, the Church was able to move more slowly and did not get as caught up in the signs of the times but the advent of the copier, word processor, and internet allowed us to slip the surly bonds of taste in favor of the excess of self and the minute on the clock.  Because we did not want to be proven wrong, we burned our bridges to the past until they could not be used again.  Liberal Protestantism and Progressive Catholicism united to rewrite liturgy and morality and to raze any of the structures that might return us to our past.  For Rome it was the death of the Latin Mass that had to happen.  For Liberal Lutherans, it was the adoption of the sexual desires and genders of the moment.  For the Progressives of any stripe it was transforming the Gospel into a principle instead of a cross and turning the faith into a grand self-help and therapeutic endeavor designed for our happiness more than God's.  

We need church leaders who will visit us in our changing rooms and tell us what the clothing really looks like and, ever so important, what it looks like on us.  Then we need someone to fetch us some sensible duds from the racks we chose never to visit so that we will look good and respectable.  One day the sagging big legged pants will be ditched because they make us fall and we will come to our senses.  One day we will look in the mirror and realize that the vulgar saying on our t-shirt is not helping us to hide our beer bellies.  The Church that marries the spirit of the moment will be a widow in the next generation.  Grief is exhausting.  Maybe we will soon realize it.  By investing in the moment, we think we are looking smart but we are looking like slobs and fools.  Onslow always looked like a bum on Keeping Up Appearances and Richard always looked good.  Our sympathies seemed to lie with Onslow but when we laid in the coffin, we would hope to look like Mr. Bucket.  Perhaps the day will come again -- not soon enough for me -- when we will learn that we are not only not adolescents but should not try to be.  Then the Mass will be revered for its reverence instead of for its relevance and the restless soul within will find some peace.  At least I hope so. 

Sinners need not apply. . .

The pressures upon clergy are mighty these days.  Engaged with the success or failure of the congregations they serve and serving within the constraints of a world set on edge with fear of failing to us the right pronouns more than faithful preaching and teaching, pastors seem to invite a greater burden upon them today than ever before.  I am not saying that those who minister in Christ's name should have it easy but neither should it be made so difficult that they leave or none applies to become a pastor in the first place.  There was a time when known public sinners became notable pastors and bishops -- at least before the time when it was expected that those who serve need forgiveness less than anyone else.

Think here of mighty men of God who came into the office with scars and blemishes.  I am thinking of St. Augustine.  He was not shy about his indiscretions nor discreet about his sins.  His book, Confessions, outlines those very things that would today prevent him from being considered by any seminary -- much less denomination.  He admits to thievery so how would we trust him or those like him with the earthly treasures of the Church?  He readily confesses he went full throttle into pagan religions, trying out faiths like one might put on a suit coat to see if it fit -- how well would that look on an application or resume for one seeking to be a pastor in any church today?  He admits to dalliances with those to whom he was not married and even to have fathered a child from one of those affairs but even in our liberal culture we would wince at the prospect of his kind on our clergy rosters.  He was a disappointment to his family and earned every one of their prayers to God to fix his broken life.  Even a mom today would struggle to figure out how to support her son's desire to serve given the poor choices he had made before. What would we do with him today?

I will admit that I am not inclined to look more favorably on such as him than anyone else but I do wonder if we have become too focused on what disqualifies and not focused enough on forgiveness that gives the sinner another chance.  Perhaps we are responsible for our own declining numbers of those seeking to become a pastor since we seem adept at forgiving and then remembering their sins when it comes time to consider them for work in the Church.  Or, perhaps, there is something else at play here.  Could it be that this is also what has happened in a time when people resign, write a tell all book, and then come back as clergy of another denomination?  Could it be that we are hard because their are so many choices available to those who want to do their thing for Jesus and they do not have to repent, confess, and amend their sinful lives?  Could it be that the lack of repentance on the part of some has soured us on the grace of forgiveness?  I am not saying this is justified.  Lord knows how many times I come to the cross confessing the same, tired, old sins and God meets me there not with demands but with the blood of Jesus to wash my sins away.  But the grace of forgiveness -- especially for those who have held the high office of pastor and fallen -- is hard to show when it seems sinners want understanding more than they want forgiveness and offer justification for their sins more than contrition.

So I do not know where exactly I end up today.  On the one hand I would lament the loss of a guy like Augustine who today would be disqualified by not only his sinful past but his open admission of that past.  On the other hand, I am not sure which sinner is an Augustine and whose contrition and repentance are honest and forthright.  It almost makes me think that those who aspire to a position where they have to sort this out are suspect from the get go.  I wish I were but I am no Solomon.  I fear that among the ranks of DPs and Bishops there are not many with his wisdom and even fewer who lose sleep over it. 

Maybe they know something we don't...

Most pastors I know are curious types.  They want to know what they don't know.  Most of us have at one point in our lives or another presumed that there are secrets, hidden wisdom, and better ways to grow the Church than what we have been doing -- no matter what we have been doing.  There is a certain assumption that others might know something we don't and so we watch and listen in the hope of discovering their secrets or finding out their hidden wisdom, or developing our skills.  Then the Church will grow.

It happens when we are confronted by growth even in those kind of congregations we typically disagree with on just about everything.  So Lutherans turn up their noses at the theology of the evangelicals but we listen in almost reverent attention when they talk about how much they have grown.  We want to know how they are doing it so that we can do it too -- even if it might involve a little questionable theology.  After all, we are failures if we do not grow.  We all know that.

For most of us as Lutheran pastors, explosive growth is a thing of our dreams that will never happen.  Sure, we might bring in a dozen or more folks in a good year -- some of them even adult confirmands.  But for most of us, these numbers will never happen — even on a great year!  We hope and pray we do not decline and, if we do, we pray that contributions will go up even if the bodies in the pews remain the same.  It is not simply true for us Lutherans.  Most congregations have less than a hundred real members and typically the average is about 60-70 or so — despite what our membership numbers say.

We typically sell down the theology and would gladly sell out if it meant we could reverse the decline in our congregation, district, or Synod.  It is great to have theological integrity and all but it would be better to fill the empty spots on Sunday morning.  How many do you worship?  We have our price.  All of us.  For most of us, the price of growth has been to lose confidence that the Word will do what it says and that the Sacraments will deliver what they sign.  In other words, Sunday morning is the venue which is most open to change in order for us to get the perceived growth we want.  We will not change the creed or the confession but we will change the methodology and practice.  That is where much of the talk lies in Missouri — not in changing doctrine but loosening up practice in everything from the way we train up pastors to the way we worship and preach.

We are in the boat we are in not because Lutherans are dull or not very creative.  Well, we may be dull and we just might mimic others more than think for ourselves, but the reality is that the best ideas, in our minds, seem to be coming from those who are living on the edge of our reality more than the middle.  Ours is not a crisis of creativity but of confidence in God's Word to do what it says and His Sacraments to deliver what they sign.  Nobody would be abandoning the liturgy if we were growing and growing by big numbers.  But since we are not, the liturgy seems to be the first on the chopping block, so to speak.  We are idiots.  If our theology cannot even muster the power to inform and shape our liturgy and practice, how do we expect it to help us bring new people in?  Worship wars are the most natural things on earth precisely because they are bring the most obvious things into conflict — what we believe and how we worship.  As if the evangelicals and giant big box community churches figured out how to get it right.  Grow up, Missouri.  Stop letting us think the problem is a lack of creative, novel, and inventive means and admit this is a faith problem first and foremost.  All of this navel gazing is hardly helping anything.  To allow us to question what we should be confessing is literally to invite people to abandon who we are to become the illusive church the secular world really wants.  Maybe the inventive growth gurus really don't know anything at all or know less than we do?  You will not fill the gas tank by staring at the gas gauge.  Know who you are and let it be enough that who we are flows from Scripture and things may change.  Borrowing what is not us from people who do not even want to be us will empty the seats even faster.

Moral squint. . .

 

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

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

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

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

Strange but true. . .

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

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

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

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