They are the same. . .

The premise behind everything from the style and substance can be different to those who advocate for a contemporary form of worship borrowed from evangelicalism more than the church catholic is that liturgy and ecclesiology are different.  One does not imply another and they can not only be distinguished but can be intentionally different.  That is an idea that is patently false.  Ecclesiology and liturgy are the same -- at least in the sense that to change the liturgy is to change ecclesiology and to change ecclesiology is to change liturgy.  It is a slightly different version of lex orandi, lex credendi.

Let me illustrate from Rome.  The liturgy of the Latin Mass (following from Trent) and the Mass in the wake of Vatican II are not the same and neither is the ecclesiology.  Rome is fighting about this now although it would seem that the Vatican II side has pretty much won and Pope Leo is not showing any sign that this is not true.  Some are trying to say that what was promulgated in the wake Vatican II is the same form, merely updated in language and style.  Everyone who has been to a Latin Mass knows this is not true.  The post Vatican II Mass is focused much more on the people side of the equation.  It is not simply that the priest faces the people but that the whole thing is focused more on the nave than it ever was in the Latin Mass.  The most glaring abuses of the new Mass are not abuses of the form so much as they are taking the whole idea of that new Mass and pushing it to the extreme.  

Reverence and the focus on God's work and the people's work to God has been replaced with the idea that the focus is horizontal more than vertical and the the relationship of the people to each other and the people's work in the liturgy are central in the new Mass.  What has changed is not merely liturgy but ecclesiology.  That new ecclesiology has been pushed to its limits in the idea of synodality (even though this was given the imprimatur of a pope who acted more like a dictator than nearly any other in modern memory).  Synodality deposits the authority in the process and conversation even more than in the creed and doctrine.  It invites people to invest these with their feelings and to change them as needs determine.  So in Rome the natural outcome of the new Mass is to begin talking about changes in marriage, morality, the role of women, etc...  These things are connected.

Okay, so lets talk about Lutherans.  Tinkering with the liturgy is often seen as a technical thing which does not have that much to do with the body of belief.  I think it is just the opposite.  The great divide which has resulted from and fostered even more the worship wars of old was not simply about doing things differently but doing different things in worship.  It is not merely about worship but the church -- it is about ecclesiology and the pastoral office and the sacraments and a host of things.  We end up arguing about whether this pop gospel song is good or if a Lutheran chorale is better but it is a debate at the fringes.  It is not about taste.  It is about what we believe, teach, and confess.  It is also greatly about how we see the church and what we believe the church is about.  It is the great divide between mission and confession except it is played out on Sunday morning.

My point here is not to definitively solve or define this but to challenge us to see that we are not simply talking about what we like to do on Sunday morning or what kind of music hits our souls.  Things have legs and consequences.  Contemporary worship is walking us into another kind of church and the consequences of ditching the historic ordo and abandoning the liturgical form which has accompanied our confession since the get go have consequences.  We are becoming a different church because we are using different forms of worship and because even where the historic form is retained the way we view it has evolved to the point where we no long bind liturgy and confession nor connect worship and ecclesiology together.  That is why our conversations are so difficult and so difficult to resolve.  We focus on one thing but are really talking about another. And, by the way, Christology is not far behind!

A quiet mind. . .

Compline's opening versicle bids the Lord grant us a quiet mind and peace at the last.  In one of the older prayers of the Church we ask God to grant grace to those who rule that we may lead quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty.  In one of the bidding prayers of the Church we pray that we may serve Him in peace and quietness.  In an evening prayer we beg the Lord to shelter us in the quiet hours of the night that those wearied by the changes and chances of this passing world may rest in His changeless peace.  In one of the prayers for good government we ask God to graciously regard those in authority over us that we may be governed quietly and peaceably.  We pray for the gift of a quiet sleep.  There is no shortage of collects in which we pray for godly peace and quietness, to serve Him in all godly quietness, and to serve Him with a quiet mind.  We pray in the collect for peace to live in peace and quietness.           

These are prayers to be released from anxiety, to be sure but not simply so.  Freedom from anxiety is not the absence of trouble but a heart which rests upon Him in whom such quietness is to be found.  To live with the peace of a clear conscience is to live within the grace of forgiveness and to forgive those who sin against you. The sacramental grace of absolution is not merely an external one but internally acquaints the heart with peace and quietness in a conscience troubled with sin and guilt and shamed by them as well.  One does not go to confession to fulfill some perfunctory ritual obligated to us but to enter into that precious state of peace and quietness which the world and the devil works to steal.  It is also the fruit of our participation in Christ's redeeming work, receiving the gift of His mercy in the Holy Eucharist.  As once we prayed in the embolism:   Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  It is quite literally a tossed in prayer summarizing all the petitions -- as common to the praying of the Our Father in the Latin Church as the doxology is to Protestantism. 

Peace and harmony and therefore quietness are in short supply today.  It shows in the statistics for depression and anxiety that have made these epidemic.  It is revealed in the way we close ourselves off from each other and from the world because we do not know how to deal with our discontent.  But this is an elegant grace and a generous gift to a people who live in a world of change -- dizzying change.  Some of it is by our own making and absolution promises us some peace for these.  Other of it is beyond our ken.  We are like the small boat upon the mighty waves.  We beg the Lord for some peace, for a place in the storms of our lives, and for quietness to catch up on it all before it all overwhelms us.  God help us in this.  The haunts of yesterday's sins and the quavering heart before temptation will surely steal from us every last ounce of our peace unless we rest in the Lord and in Him rest all that would taunt and trouble us.  It is not simply okay to pray for peace and quietness -- it is exactly this for which we pray at God's bidding and promise.  He will not turn away.                                 

Being the Church. . .

According to Pope Leo, being the Church means recognizing that truth is not possessed, but sought together, allowing ourselves to be guided by a restless heart in love with Love.  It sounds nice.  It certainly expresses the commonly held convictions of the day that the pursuit of truth is bigger and better than possession of it.  It reflects the sort of gobbledygook that has pervaded Rome since Francis.  It does not sound like the carefully nuanced words of Scripture or the confession of the faithful down through the ages.  Indeed, it begs the question.  Do we possess the Divine Revelation of God's Word or not or is that Word somehow either incomplete or insufficient for the day?  I guess Leo and folks like me will simply have to agree to disagree.  It is precisely this kind of talk that gets us all in trouble.

What good is a church made up of people seeking unless there is something to be sought and known?  That seems to be the issue.  Either we have the truth in God's Word and this is the ground of being for the Church or else we don't and are left with one big guesstimate.  So either the Church is a group of blind people feeling their way along or we are those whose eyes have been opened and on whom the light has shown.  It has to be one or the other.  For that matter, either the Spirit has been given to us merely as a companion on our common journey or the Spirit actually guides the Church into all truth.  I mean, really, we are two millennia away from Christ's death and resurrection and, according to Leo, we are still far from the truth.  Now, of course, we would all agree that we are not there yet in the sense of the perfect consummation of all things but as possessor of the truth, why else is there a Church?  The Scriptures?  The Spirit?  The Church has the illumination of Scripture and the Spirit along with the catholic witness down through the ages and possesses the fullness of the truth within the bounds of our human frailty.  

What is the Church the guardian of except the truth?  Indeed, while it fits with the modern idea of an evolving and changing truth in which the seeking is even more significant than the truth itself, it does not accord with the promise of Christ, the gift of the Spirit, and what the Scriptures claim of themselves.  Jesus did not claim to be a companion with us along the way but the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  He is not a means to an end but the end.  To know Him is to know the truth in all its fullness.  These words of Leo do not even accord with customary Roman teaching regarding the pontiff and the teaching magisterium of Rome.  So what is it?  Is this merely an unfortunate example of the kind of imprecise language used by the advocates of change or is it the sign that Leo has joined Francis, against Benedict and JPII and others in seeing the role of the faithful in discerning where God wants them to go instead of proclaiming what God has done in Christ on behalf of the whole world?  If it is the latter, then the Gospel is reduced to a mere marker along the journey or a principle for the path instead of the eternal Gospel of Revelation meant for the all people.  If that is the case, Leo and those who think like him will have transformed Rome into a fully contemporary Protestant church -- something for which Luther did not aim nor should he be blamed. 

 

 

Internet lies and its truth. . .

It was sad to see how many people jumped on the bandwagon of contempt and outrage at the seemingly authentic story of the Vatican providing a prayer room or chapel for Muslims using the Vatican Library.  It is false.  There is no special space set aside for them in the Vatican Library or elsewhere in the Vatican, it would seem.  The reality is that Muslims were allowed to use a room for their prayers.  That ought to be a slight relief to those who thought that the Vatican was actually making a dedicated room for Muslims to pray.  Even then, some might object.  After all, does this not in some way legitimate the idea that the god of the Muslims has the same claim to legitimacy as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who became flesh in Jesus born of Mary by the Holy Spirit?  Or does it remove the evidence of this claim by putting them behind a closed door and away from eyes and ears of others?  I guess it depends upon your perspective.

The whole idea of accommodation seems to be one way.  Secular governments are accommodating Muslims by providing everything from foot washing places in public restrooms to the acceptance of traditional attire in schools and workplaces.  In nearly every case, religious toleration is aimed at allowing non-Christian religions the same respect, authenticity, and access as those folks think Christianity has enjoyed.  Whether that perception of religious deference toward Christianity is right or wrong, something good or something not so good, Christians ought to be sensitive toward anything that would make Jesus stand on equal footing with other gods.  Truth is not the child of personal preference but of real claims of truth and authenticity.  Whether you believe it or not, the resurrection of Christ from the dead is what gives to Christianity its claim to place and not the enthusiasm of its adherents.

The more we adopt the idea that all truths are personal and that no truth is really objectively true for all, the harder it is to speak Christ to the nations.  The more we depend upon feelings over facts, the harder it will be to claim any sort of exclusivity for the truth of Christ crucified and risen.  I am less concerned about Muslims being allowed a room in which to pray than I am allowing them a place next to Christianity as a religion of truth.  The internet is good at fueling false stories in order get folks riled up but it is also very good at leveling the playing field and making all facts equally true and every religion equally authentic.  That is worse than a carpeted room for some folks to pray out of sight of the rest of folks.  Yet this is exactly the problem.

We find it less difficult to surrender to the press of religious tolerance than to speak the distinctive doctrinal claims of Christianity and give faithful witness to the truth of Scripture.  I am not at all suggesting that we need to be rude or arrogant.  Quite the opposite.  But we must not shrink from giving evidence of the hope that is within us through the clear claims of the orthodox and catholic Christian faith based upon revelation, fact, and truth and not feelings.  Prayer rooms will not sink us but allowing the impression that truth is beholden to feelings certainly will.  While I am no fan of a room for Muslims to pray I am offended by the routine idea that both religions are pretty much the same no matter its name.  I must say it gives me hope for Rome that for once a pope declined to pray at a mosque and, for whatever reason, give credence to the idea that this is the same deity in different flavors.

Fawning for attention. . .

With relevance deemed the highest and more urgent goal of Christianity by liberal and progressive Christians here and everywhere, it is not uncommon for those in charge to fawn all over current causes, fads, or trends in the hopes of being perceived relevant by youth.  So it was that when Canterbury was busy announcing their new female, non-theologically trained, and inexperienced with respect to the parish archbishop, another controversy was ready to unfold.  Somebody somewhere decided that subway-style graffiti plastered over Canterbury Cathedral would be a good way of showing how cool that church is and how in tune they are to current trend and fashion.  Except that it backfired with even the US VP complaining of the desecration.  He was not alone.  While the graffiti were merely stickers and a temporary installation of trendy art made at the behest of a dean and chapter that had not exactly thought it through, there is little to ease the fears except that the cost of removal is less and requires much less effort.

The real problem here is that the Cathedral and its leadership has joined the chorus of folks who believe that the biggest crisis facing Christianity is whether young folks think they are relevant.  Imagine a world in which Christians fear being written off by the youth vote even more than they fear repercussions from ignoring or contracting the Scriptures and the nearly uniform Christian witness of morality and truth since the earliest days of Christianity.  That ought to be identified as the real problem.  We tend to care more about what people outside the Church might think of us and what we believe and confess than we care about what God thinks.  The damage of this mistaken loyalty has unfolded in countless ways and they all seem to be nearly impossible to reverse.

The Anglicans led Christianity as a whole into the silence about birth control that gave birth also to the silence about abortion.  That was nearly 100 years ago and now it is such a scandal to say today what nearly everyone believed then on both subjects that a goodly number of Christians have made this contemporary stand a litmus test of a new orthodoxy rooted in what is acceptable to the masses more than what is faithful to God's Word.  Where do you hear anyone today suggesting that we ought to rethink the tacit approval once given to birth control?  Yet the reality of the success of this effort lies less in what people think about these than the increasing numbers of nations and nationalities in which deaths outnumber births and children seem to be going out of style faster than yesterdays fashions. You do not need to talk about something in order to triumph.  The proof is in the drop in birth rates across the West (except in the most recent immigrant groups in those countries).

Fawning for the attention of youth and those who had already written off Christianity is largely responsible for the foolishness that passes for worship among those who have adopted a contemporary style and the discardable nature of Christian music by those who have ditched the hymnal for a pop sound and content turning Jesus into your BFF.  We gave up architecture that identified a church as a church in favor of bland buildings that remind you more of a shopping mall or warehouse than God's house.  The once distinctive sound of the pipe organ and liturgical choir has been replaced by music rated more for its beat and that ability to dance to it than what the lyrics say. Maybe it is about time that the Christian Church stopped fawning for the attention of those outside and paying a bit more attention to what God thinks.

The reality is that the language of sin and death, life and hope, virtue and evil will always be relevant -- not because we make it so but because each and every age and generation must come to terms with what it means to live and die.  Jesus knew the relevance of the Kingdom and did not waste His time or ours by pandering to those who might be His allies in the quest for legitimacy.  Neither should we waste our time in the vain pursuit of approval from those who do not even know the Gospel.  Their need is the same as ours.  We need redemption more than relevance, truth more than feelings, a death that kills death more than our peace with death, and a life stronger than the grave more than a better or happier one today.  But as we all know, it is easier to slap some fake graffiti on our walls than to breech the walls of the world with the triumph of Jesus' death and resurrection.  So that is what we do.  For this, we ought to be the first to hear the call to repentance and fall to our knees.