I am saving it for...

I confess.  I am somewhat of a hoarder.  I have thousands of old email messages on my computer.  I know that they need to be culled and most deleted but I am sure that as soon as I delete one of them, it will be the one I need.  I pack away wonderfully bound journals awaiting the touch of pen and ink to their pages and then I write on the free notepads imprinted with the various parachurch organizations that want me to support them today.  I know I am getting old and should just break down and write in the notebooks that I love but I am still hesitant.  I collect books.  Most of them are quite important and some valuable but some are books I never intend to read or read again.  I just cannot let go of them.  So I keep finding creative ways to pack my 10,000 (yeah, that's right) books into shelves that should hold about 8,000.

I do the same with clergy shirts and socks and black dress trousers (dontcha just love that word, trousers?), oh, yes, and black dress shoes.  I find them on sale and put them away because clergy shirts do not go out of style (at least in my style book) and neither does the obligatory outfit of black trousers, socks, and shoes.  So I have enough to get me by the next dozen years (unless I lose or gain weight or my feet grow or shrink).  I wear the old until they are worn out and then regret having to toss them in the trash and dig out a new one from my stash.

I save things for the day when I will need them.  Apparently I am not the only one.  Have you ever really watched those hoarding programs on reality TV?  Gosh, I am glad I am not like them (in desire if not degree). And my point is, you are wondering?  Well, yes, I have a point.

Apparently singles are saving themselves for marriage.  They are spending themselves freely in casual sex, cohabitation, and children outside of wedlock but they are saving marriage for the right person and the right moment.  It would seem that they have such a high view of marriage that they would not want to marry just anybody.  Lord knows that they could not marry someone with whom they were not compatible (sexually mostly).  So our youth and our seniors have gotten used to the idea that marriage is to good to rush into but sex, cohabitation, and kids are not so good that they must wait for the perfect marriage. 

Every now and then my wife comes down hard on me and I face the unpleasant task of throwing away or giving away the things in my closet that I never wear.  Then I must dig into the stash and replace the staples of clothing that have outworn their welcome with those new and fresh.  I guess that is one of the blessings of marriage -- someone to tell me what is trash that I continue to hoard and when it is time to let go.  That is not a bad thing.  Well, maybe it is time for us to challenge the common culture and suggest to folks around us that it is time to let go of their false nobility about marriage and their utilitarian view of relationships and family and bring out the new stuff that is, in essence, rather old.

It is time to say that instead of saving marriage for that special moment after sex, moving in, and a child, we need to focus our time on a relationship and a partner worthy of marriage.  First we need to find a spouse and then we need to explore the sexual gift that comes hidden in marriage and then we need to rejoice in the creative love that God has endowed in this physical love in the birth of children.  We need to stop saving ourselves for marriage and indulging in casual sex, shacking up, and a child before the biological clock ticks away past midnight and we need to start investing ourselves for marriage, FIRST, and then rejoicing in what follows.

Marriage must wait for the right spouse but we have long sexual histories and have lived with people we would never consider marrying...  Marriage must wait for the bank account to reach the magic number to fund the unrealistic dream we have been feeding since childhood (average cost of a wedding in the US hovers at $27,000 - yeah you heard me right).  Marriage must wait until career is settled and we get the wild oats out of our system so that we can commit to an equal partnership which is a barely cleaned up version of our old living together arrangement.  Notice, sex cannot wait nor can moving in together nor should we postpone children if that is what we want.  But marriage, well, that is just so special, it cannot be rushed.

If I save a clergy shirt or pair of black socks or pants (you have been waiting for me to ditch that word trousers, haven't you) or shoes, for some future day when the mood hits me, I have not hurt anyone (honest, dear, it does not hurt anyone).  But when I save marriage while indulging in every other aspect of my life together with the person ordinarily called my spouse, I hurt so many folks, not in the least, myself.  It is time to stop saving for marriage while spending fully our sexual freedom and choice.  It is time to return the focus and priority to marriage, sex, living together as husband and wife, and kids...  Our culture cannot stand much more of the current focus and our nation is awash in the problems of screwed up priorities... and I have not even mentioned God yet...

Urgency and Pride...

We have been deluged with arguments against the time it takes to form a Lutheran Pastor.  They seem united in their description of the current process of undergraduate study and four years of seminary (counting the vicarage or internship) as being unduly burdensome both in time and money.  More than this, it takes a man away from the very venue that cries out for him to come and serve the Lord.  Impatience is not a small argument against the current requirements for the ordinary path to ordination.

It strikes me as odd that there should be such an adamant push to shorten the time and lighten the academic load placed upon those who serve the Lord in His Church as Pastors.  Once, more years ago than I care to admit, I remember hearing how the Church had sought the brightest and best for the highest calling of all.  It made me uncomfortable.  I certainly did not count myself among the brightest and best of the those preparing for the path to ordination (even if I was loath to say just that in public).  But I found myself in company of bright and capable individuals all through junior college and senior college and into seminary.  Many of them were my teachers but most of them were, like me, men set on the path to ordination and the red stole.

I was told repeatedly that this calling was so noble and its purpose so important that it required a sifting of those who came until the Church was prepared to offer the office to the man.  Whether this was just talk or the intended effect, some 30 pre-sems who came to Winfield, Kansas, that fall of 1972, became less than a dozen eight years later when the Seminaries of the Church marched out the class of 1980.  I left behind many friends on the path to ordination (not a few with a much better intellect and holier heart than mine).  But, even in the shadow of the Synod split, we trusted that the Lord was at work in this (even in the strangeness of the placement process and the angst ridden moment of revelation of the place where we were called to serve). 

Now I find many in the Church insisting that there is a great urgency which requires us to shorten the time of preparation for ordination, a great benefit in keeping the candidates on site and not packed away to St. Louis or Fort Wayne, and a great need to discount the cost of this preparation (both to the individual and to the Church).  I don't agree.  It seems to me that if this is still a noble and important vocation, of the highest of callings, that we should precisely NOT be about finding shortcuts or seeking a cheap way out.  It is the height of arrogance and pride for those training to turn up their noses at the time, education, and cost of this trek to the red stole.  It is no less arrogant and prideful for those not seeking ordination to suggest that we have somehow set our standards unrealistically high and we need to dumb it all down -- all for some impatient urgency that thinks God not only will forgive our prejudice against preparation but actually approves of it.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that men should bear the burden of financial slavery to be a Pastor.  I believe it is the Church that should bear the great burden here and I lament that we as a Church have failed in our responsibility to the seminaries and the seminarians being formed for the ministry therein.  It is false and misleading dream to choose certain causes as more urgent and noble and therefore to invest the resources of the Church in other places before we care for those whom we have agreed to prepare for what should be, if it is not, a high and noble calling.

We would not seek out a physicians who have a short cut degree from the cut rate medical school.  We would not want a teacher unprepared for the subject matter to teach our children.  We expect a level of competence in every vocation -- without shame or embarrassment.  So why do we now seek a fast track to ordination with fewer requirements?  It is not because we value this vocation more -- it is because we value it less, because pride has entered in as we snub our noses at those who went through even longer journeys to the red stole in the past, and because we have less trust in God and have taken the agenda from His hands to presume an urgency that justifies theology lite.

I am ashamed of my Church for finding the funds to do nearly everything thought important except support the Seminaries at they should.  I lament the financial burden born by seminarians who make it through what is rightfully an arduous and difficult journey to ordination.  But I will not apologize for expecting the best trained, most fully equipped, most faithfully formed, and most carefully examined men to be the Pastors of the Church.

Roman Catholics have their Nun problem, we have our auxiliary offices problem...

“Citing ‘serious doctrinal problems’ found over the course of a four-year study of the umbrella-group representing the majority of the US' communities of nuns, the Holy See has announced a thoroughgoing shake-up of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), naming Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle as its delegate to conduct an overhaul of the group.”

In other words, the Roman Catholic Church has awakened to the fact that it was not just the habit and community that some of her women religious ditched after Vatican II.  Nuns have undoubtedly been a boon and blessing to the Roman Church for so many years but they have, of late, been prominent among those challenging the doctrine, practice, and authority of Rome.  Who can forget the specter of a nun lecturing the Pope?

While Rome has its own problem with the vocal dissent among many of the female religious, especially those who have assumed rather public and significant roles in health care positions, we Lutherans have our own problems.  We have for many years expanded the number of auxiliary offices to the Office of Pastor.  Teachers, DCEs, DCOs, and other offices have been added under the nomenclature of Ministers of Religion - Commissioned.  That is the official side of it all.  On the somewhat unofficial side,  meaning without Synod wide acceptance or definition, we have a plethora of District Deacons who receive various levels and depths of training in order to serve in assisting roles to Pastors, or, in too many cases, as Pastors without ordination for parishes they do not believe can support a full-time Pastor or are isolated from the ministry of a regular Pastor.

Rome found out that dissent does not have to be vocal in order to be destructive.  We Lutherans are only now realizing that the official confusion is not without its own consequences.  Unofficially, we don't have a clue what some of these are actually teaching but, at least we know that some of these teachings are definitely not Lutheran.  Rome has decided to stir the pot and face whatever unintended consequences they may find when the spotlight focuses on these women religious.  Lutherans are not sure we want to stir the pot (you know my favorite advice:  when you find a kettle of crazy, it is best not to stir it up).  Maybe it is time we did so... before it is too late.

This means considering what the Lutherans in Canada have done in assigning all non-Pastoral offices to the category of "deacon."  It has antiquity on its side and has Lutheran history behind it (recall Lohe).  I propose dropping the rather recently configured category of Ministers of Religion - Commissioned and replacing it with Diaconal Ministers.  This would include all the current categories but is not merely a name change.  In doing so, we should also prepare a core curriculum to make sure that these are fully prepared and equipped to be Lutheran deacons -- in addition to training and proficiency in the particular responsibilities of their various positions.

I would also propose that we ditch the District deacon programs to make a consistent Synod wide Deacon program, with consistent and realistic curriculum and training and evaluation.  This would also be accompanied by a uniform job description of what deacons may and should do and what they may not and should never do.  With this should come a realistic understanding of adequate pastoral supervision of diaconal ministers.  This would include appropriate liturgical roles and responsibilities as well as the traditional diaconal roles and responsibilities of teaching, mercy work, and service.

I actually have more hope that Rome will deal with its problems before we as Missouri Synod Lutherans put our house in order.  And that is not a little troubling to me.  Who will join me in calling upon our church body to clean up its act?

Great Expectations...

It is no secret that many are thinking what we have done in youth ministry has not born the desired fruit of adult faithfulness.  There is no shortage of critics of what has become a rather sad mixture of entertainment, fun, and baby sitting which substitutes for honest catechesis and faith development.  I have said the same thing perhaps a half dozen times on this blog.  So you should not be surprised when I find a quote that illustrates many of the very fears I have about what usually passes for youth ministry.

When we don't expect teens to rise to challenges, we don't teach them doctrine. However, this lack of confidence in teens has left us with an ignorant generation (or several) with regard to what the church actually believes. It is strange that we teach young people complex calculus and physics but don't think they can handle or will be interested in understanding the significance of the Trinity or atonement.  [You can read it all here...]


Now I will grant you that parents are largely to blame.  We have created a culture of fun in which boredom is the ultimate problem and the ultimate rebuke to what we do with our children.  We have become slaves to their pleasure and happiness instead of parents and mentors of good, virtuous, and faithful lives as Christians.  I am speaking here of Christian parents and teens and not simply to those outside the faith.  But let us explore the thought expressed above.

My kids and most of those pre-teens and teens in the Church are comfortable with highly technological tools.  They know more and know better than I how to deal with computer malfunctions, how to use social media effectively, how to traverse the complicated menu structures of I-Tunes and the various I-appliances they own... Yet when it comes to the faith, we discount their ability and turn the great topics of faith into dumbed down and trite little ditties that you sing with hand motions or fit into a three part outline in which all the parts rhyme or an acrostic in which the first letters form the name of the latest greatest movie (Hunger Games anyone)...

My kids (well beyond high school) took advanced placement courses and dealt with subjects that were not even in existence when I went to school.  I find that our faith conversations probe some of the deepest topics of the faith and they have remarkable insights that sometimes eclipse my own.  But why am I surprised?  They have gone to Sunday school, been catechized in the faith, regularly participate in the Eucharistic mystery, and attend adult Bible studies.  They are fully capable with the intellectual capacity not only to learn but to be fully conversant with the chief doctrines of the faith.

We should not sell our youth short.  It is not the goal of acolyte service that they have fun in church.  They are leaders in their part of the Divine Service and are called to shoulder significant responsibility.  It should not be the goal of Sunday school or catechism class or youth group to baby sit or entertain these youth.  They are facing adult size decisions every day and they live out the bulk of their lives in a faith unfriendly atmosphere of educational institutions.  They need to be equipped for these serious challenges and we do them a great disservice when we entertain them instead.

They have the capacity... do we have the willingness to teach them, to nurture their faith, and to equip them for the fullness of their lives in Christ?  It is not their problem.  It is ours.  We will be held accountable.

Satis est...

Satis est... it is enough.  We have struggled with the answer to the question of how much is enough for communion together in the congregation and for altar and pulpit fellowship as one church body to another.  It is a burden, to be sure, but not one we can afford to short circuit.  Open communion and an easy hurdle for altar and pulpit fellowship are certainly a whole lot easier to manage.  If the door is wide open, you don't need to pay attention to who comes in or who goes out.  Some, in frustration for knowing how to answer the satis est question (locally at the altar rail and over all in the church) have simply allowed for no exceptions at all.  But this is surely as great an abandonment of the pastoral office (and its discretion) as is the wide open door which allows and all without regard to confession or faith.

I wonder if someone like Augustine showed up at an LCMS altar if he would be communed?  Because the vocabulary and framework of the Real Presence was different from the one we use today, it might be easy to see why he would be denied.  At the same time, if an Arius showed up there are many Lutheran altars that would welcome him with open arms and without a second thought.  In both cases it is error and, perhaps, the same error -- seeing an easy and neat and clean answer to the question of what is enough.

In the past I have written that we ask this question not from the perspective of who may be denied but rather from the perspective of making sure that as many as may be included and receive without impediment the gifts and grace of the table of the Lord.  For the congregation we often treat this as a once for all decision.  As long as you are a member, you receive the privileges of membership -- and that includes the Lord's Table.  Barring extreme public sin, it is likely that most pass on their way to the altar rail with but a second thought.  While I am not at all suggesting that we should be suspicious, the personal examination of life and conscience is seldom advocated with the kind of seriousness it was once.  In the same way, the decline of private confession has left us distinctly hindered in this area of our stewardship of the Mystery, namely, that of making sure within all human frailty that those who commune receive without hindrance or impediment all the blessings of that communion which our Lord intends.

Most of what we do as Pastors is neither neat nor tidy.  It involves dealing with folks at their worst, with circumstances of error or abandonment of the Table of the Lord (if not down right despising of this Sacrament).  It involves some who could without much knowledge except that the Usher came to the pew and nodded and so they followed the line of those who went before.  Both circumstances can easily turn a Pastor cynical and callous toward those who commune.  It is enough...  that is what our Confessions speak of.  The content of that "enough" is not without dispute both in the past and in the current state of Lutheranism.  One thing is to be sure.  The Confessions did not intend for this to become a locked door only reluctantly opened.  Yet that is exactly how some practice this, well, discretionless duty.  Again -- the solution does not lie in no door at all.  It lies in pastoral care that seeks and works toward the inclusion of as many as possible and not to justify the exclusion of all  but the most familiar and faithful.

Speaking personally, I hate to say "no" even though "no" is exactly what must be said.  In the end, I plead for those who take seriously this stewardship of the Mystery.  Even when "no" is the answer that must be given, make sure that those who ask know that it is only with the greatest regret and the greatest concern for them and their lives in Christ that the answer must be "no."  And, one more thing, to make sure that the answer is not poured in concrete.  At the same time we must say "no" we must also give the prospective communicant the path through which they may fully participate in the body and blood (catechesis being the ordinary answer).

Once a relative not Lutheran sought out Lutheranism only to find that the path to communion and life within the Lutheran congregation would be 6 months or more of weekly instruction, several hours each week.  While this may be a desirable goal, it is not realistic to believe that any and every possible doctrine and issue must be covered prior to membership and full participation in the Table of the Lord.  When I meet with people, I prefer to speak of the introduction that takes place in formal catechism classes and of the need for on-going and life-long instruction in the Word of the Lord.  The completion of the first does not satisfy the latter.

Strangely, I encountered one congregation in which a lapsed Lutheran and a Lutheran from another fellowship was required to go through the entire catechism class that was required of someone with no previous instruction or history in the faith.  As if to show the compassion of this Pastor, he agreed to allow the Lutherans to commune privately once catechism began (but not on Sunday morning with the rest of the congregation).  In this regard the issue of communion was treated personally and privately in a manner which betrays the very nature of the Sacrament.  No admission for private reception should be different from what is required for full, public reception.  Again, the question we face is satis est.... it is enough.

I do not write to answer the question of what is enough as much as to encourage us not to take the easy path of all ":no" or all "yes" but to struggle as God desires with the conversation that, we hope and pray, will result in the celebration of our unity at the Table and lives with the painful regret and sorrow when such conversation will not allow that full goal to be realized...

Second thoughts on accepting baptism from other churches...

We have since the third century lived in somewhat uneasy conflict about accepting the baptism of those who come from non-sacramental churches but whose baptism was according to recognizable form (water, the Name of the Triune God).  We have taken this position since the conflict over the baptism of heretics.  The Roman Bishop Stephen laid chief stress on the objective nature of the sacrament, the virtue of which depended neither on the officiating priest, nor on the receiver, but solely on the institution of Christ. Hence he considered heretical baptism valid, provided only it was administered with intention to baptize and in the right form, to wit, in the name of the Trinity (or even of Christ alone).  Cyprian opposed this and insisted that outside the Church (in heretical groups) there was no salvation and no sacrament.  Period.

The doctrine of Cyprian was the more consistent from the hierarchical point of view; that of Stephen, from the sacramental. The former was more logical, the latter more practical and charitable. The one preserved the principle of the exclusiveness of the church; the other, that of the objective force of the sacrament, even to the borders of the opus operatum theory. Both were under the direction of the same churchly spirit, and the same hatred of heretics; but the Roman doctrine is after all a happy inconsistency of liberality.

The Council of Trent declares (Sessio Sept., March 3, 1547, canon 4): "If any one says that the baptism, which is even given by heretics in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, with the intention of doing what the church doth, is not true baptism: let him be anathema." The Greek church likewise forbids the repetition of baptism which has been performed in the name of the Holy Trinity, but requires trine immersion.

We have tended to be rather charitable in accepting the baptism of those who were baptized  according to proper form and in the right name but within a group that did not confess baptism properly.  I have always found this an uncomfortable thing.  In my heart I feel more comfortable with the consistency of Cyprian than I do with the charity of Stephen.  But my own church body has followed Rome in its charity and it is hard to go against, well, 1700 years of established tradition and practice.

Interestingly, we seem to have less qualms about saying that there is no sacrament when non-sacramental churches pull out the bread and wine (or Welch's) and say the proper words of Christ over the elements but intend no Real Presence, but only symbolic memorial meal.  Without intention it is no Sacrament.  Or so we have said.  Perhaps I am being rather quick and purposefully leaving out the nuance of our position here.  It may be more accurate to say we do not know for sure if Christ is present there but without faith in that presence located in the bread and wine, there is no way to grasp and receive and rejoice in the mystery of Christ's presence.  Nevertheless, we have treated baptism and the Eucharist rather differently.  We have consoled those baptized to comfort their distress and we have distressed those comfortable with their sign that does not convey any grace.  Perhaps we need more consistency here.... what do you think?

The shock! The horror! Will we ever recover???

Pr Christopher Hall, Pastor of Redeemer in Enid, OK, and one of the VPs of the Oklahoma District writes of his experience assisting in the distribution of the Eucharist at the District Convention... Having been there and seen exactly what he saw, I could not help but pass on his words... when we as Lutherans have stopped looking like and acting like Lutherans, we find the soft underbelly of our church exposed -- to the point where the usual means of distribution (the chalice) becomes a scandal...


At the Oklahoma District LCMS Convention last week I was privileged to be an assisting minister at the opening worship service. I read the Old Testament reading and assisted with communion distribution. We had three “stations” and used the “drive-by” style for the sake of time, numbers and logistics. Not my favorite way to give the gift of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, but that’s the way it was done.

I held the cup containing the precious blood of Jesus. There were no individual glasses, no “holy shot glasses.” Just the One Cup. As communicants approached me it was quite apparent that a few of the lay delegates there had never received out of a common cup before. Some were visibily shaking, a few looked horrified and didn’t know how to do it. One person in particular stood out, her face reflecting almost revulsion.
Revulsion to drink the blood of Christ? On the face of a Christian? That’s the horror.

Now, I get it that a few people like the individual cups. It’s easier to control, it’s more comfortable. “I do it myself!” we say when we’re two and we never stop saying it. “It’s easier to just do it myself,” Dad says, and that’s true. It’s awkward for someone to give you a drink without you taking the cup and drinking yourself. And our antiseptic-obsessed world despises spreading germs. I get that too.  I’m not one to just ban the jiggers or remove the individual cup or anything.

But I do teach my confirmands to receive out of the common cup. I remind them that Christ is feeding us and giving us drink. I remind them of the one cup our Lord passed.  I teach them that faith believes we will receive only good from the cup of the Lord, never disease or anything bad. I remind them that alcohol and gold or silver is a lethal combination for germs and scientific study backs it up.

And I remind them that drinking privately out of their own cup is a luxury they may not always have, like at conventions. So I tell them, and now tell you, drink out of the common cup for a few Sundays, so that you know what it is like. So that you will not have a look of horror and revulsion on your face when you approach the common cup for the first time at a convention. Drink out of that common cup at least a few times and trust what God says. It will build your faith. Then I tell the kids if they want to use the individual cups thereafter, they may. We have freedom and no one is saying its a sin or bad or somehow not the blood of Christ.

Must Orthodoxy Be Byzantine?

I have written a few times about the seeming inconsistency of a Western Rite Orthodoxy.  I must admit I find this a strange and mostly uncomfortable union of theology and piety.  But the larger question of whether Orthodoxy must be Byzantine goes well beyond the liturgical usage on Sunday morning.  It goes to the heart and core of what Orthodoxy is.  Is Orthodoxy so unchangeable Byzantine that the liturgical expression is inseparable from the theology?  Or, is Orthodoxy a theological perspective which can be render in various forms of piety?  I do not know the answer to this and better minds than mine have pondered on this.

Rome finds it easy to have a Western Rite (certainly overwhelmingly predominant) and an Eastern Rite because Rome is not primarily the Mass but the Papacy.  The Mass takes its form at the direction of the structures of the Church (namely the Pope and his congregations).  It may be adapted or shaped by the will of the Papacy  though its success certainly depends upon the extended will of the bishops and priests who implement the changes.  Since Rome is bound together by the Papacy, the form of the Mass, while essential, is not primary to its unity.

Orthodoxy, however, is different.  While Patriarchal in structure, Orthodoxy has a recognizable and definable liturgical tradition that has and continues to be primary in the unity of this communion.  Granted there is not one form of the liturgy but several that predominate in Orthodoxy, yet this liturgical tradition is shaped from an ethnic and cultural perspective that is at one in the same time parochial and universal.  It is something that we in the West have not been so nearly successful.  Our liturgical diversity has been a source of disunity while in Orthodoxy the liturgical diversity is within certain bounds and has not harmed its unity as a body.

If you are interested in this, you can read a better case for my point here.  The conclusion seems to be that while everyone would affirm that in theory Orthodoxy need not be Byzantine, in practice the Byzantine Rite is the universal expression of Orthodoxy, especially in the mission field where the rite and the theological tradition are inseparable.

Now for the Lutheran question.  Must Lutheranism be Western?  In other words, is Lutheranism so wedded to the Western Rite as a liturgical form and the Western tradition of theology (both in vocabulary and expression) that it is inherently uncomfortable with Byzantine theological perspective and liturgical expression?  Certainly, the Confessions quote approvingly from the Greek anaphora.  We know that there was an appeal to the Patriarch Jeremias from Wittenberg around the time of the Reformation.  We know that some Lutherans have swum the Bosporus and found a rather comfortable home in Orthodoxy (though we also know that some have attempted to be Orthodox but not Byzantine, keeping the Western Rite). 

I think it can be said that the early Lutherans did not much think of such a possibility.  The Confessions seem to presume (and, I would argue, expect) a liturgical identity of a reformed Mass, they do not necessarily preclude the possibility of an Eastern Rite.  Yet the great hymnic and devotional tradition of Lutheranism is decidedly Western, and, perhaps, unavoidably so.  I cannot answer my question but it might be one worth our consideration.  We have had our own history of trying to replicate the ethnic backgrounds of our own history upon the mission field.  I have a vivid memory of listening to the cassock and cotta robed smiling black faces of the children of St. Philip Lutheran Church in Chicago singing great Lutheran chorales in German.  On the other hand, our forbearers were quick to translate Luther's Catechism into the language of Native Americans in a way that startled Christians who had been here far longer than the Lutherans were.

No, the question is not just academic.  It is extremely practical.  Must Lutheran be Western in liturgical form and theological identity?

This Just In...

The Methodists have staved off departure from 2,000 years of Christian teaching on marriage to beat back the press of the GLBT agenda for full participation of GLBT in the ministry and the full acceptance of gay marriage... due largely to the resistance of the 40% of Methodists from outside the US (largely Africa) who, combined with those opposed here, stemmed the growing tide of the full acceptance and full participation in all levels of the church's life and ministry for GLBT members.  Some, in favor of the change, lament the influence of those outside the US and believe that it is less a matter of rejection of the GLBT agenda than it is not yet the time for this acceptance... that the time will come... well, we will see...

Are Young Millennials Less Religious or Simply Young?

Remember the study of millenials that I noted (with its cool graphic)?  Well, here is someone who suggests that all the talk of the sky falling misses one consistent point throughout the ages -- those 18-24 tend to be less religious, less orthodox, more liberal politically, and more tolerant (rebellious?) on social issues.  This has been a consistent throughout history...

Aren’t college-aged people in all generations less orthodox, less religious, and more politically liberal and idealistic than any other age group? Take, for example, the following comments from a 1973 article by Robert Wuthnow and Charles Glock in the Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion:

An accumulating mass of data suggests that organized religion is currently a significant object of commitment for only a minority of young people. Gallup polls conducted in 1970 and 1971, for example, reveal that only 28 percent of those age 21 to 29 have attended church during the previous week and that a striking 80 percent in this age category perceive religion as losing its influence in American life (Gallup Opinion Index, January 1970; February 1971). Among college students one national survey of seniors done in 1969 reported only 8 percent describing themselves as “very religious,” another survey in the same year found only one-third of students in “forerunner” colleges and one-half in “practical” colleges valuing “Living the good Christian life” or identifying with people of their religion, and a Harris poll of college students in 1965 showed only 34 percent expressing a “great deal” of confidence in “organized religion” in comparison with 75 percent who placed such confidence in the “scientific community” (Hadden, 1969; Fortune, 1969; Newsweek, 1965). And results from an unpublished study of Berkeley students conducted in 1971 found only 18 percent accepting a traditional image of God, 14 percent a traditional image of Christ, and only 9 percent a traditional view of life after death (Berkeley Beliefs Study, conducted by David Nasatir).

If not for the dates, one might easily mistake this description of college-aged religious defection for the assessment that is all too common of Millennials today. So far as I’m concerned, the data simply represents Winston Churchill’s famous dictum: “If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”

If you are into this sort of thing, you can follow the link above or read the perspective here...

You can take the individual out of the Lutheran Parsonage but not the Lutheran Parsonage out of the individual...

...It is hard to believe that the conditions under which one lived during one’s formative years leave no traces in one’s later life. In the event, one can take an individual out of a Lutheran parsonage—I doubt whether one can take the parsonage out of the individual. The powerful language of Luther’s German translation of the Bible and the powerful music of Lutheran hymnody must inevitably reverberate even in the consciousness of individuals whose ties with the Lutheran church have frayed. 

Peter Berger has written a fascinating perspective on the current German political leaders, both of whom grew up in a Lutheran parsonage.  He writes of the impact of that childhood and the fruit it bore in their lives and their take on the state and future of the German republic.  You can read it all here.

I have quoted what I consider to be a significant point from the article.  The words are not hollow but ring true with my own personal experience.  The tired old Proverb "train up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it" is here given its proper context and meaning.  The conditions under which we live our formative years are not without consequence in our later life.  For ill as well as good. 

Read this line again:  The powerful language of Luther’s German translation of the Bible and the powerful music of Lutheran hymnody must inevitably reverberate even in the consciousness of individuals whose ties with the Lutheran church have frayed.

This is exactly the point at which I have grave questions about those who abandon historic liturgy and hymnody.  When we replace the powerful words that are, essentially, sung Scripture, with contemporary worship and music, we leave our children without that benefit and blessing that will prove to be the solid foundation to which they can ever return when they wander (as so often they will).  When we raise our children without the catechism and its vivid language that expresses the Biblical faith, when we send them to Church on Sunday morning to a free for all of modern music that has a good beat and you can dance to it but does not deeply and fully communicate the evangelical and catholic faith, and when we leave them with a liturgy of the moment created for the here and now without being connected to the way Christians have believed and taught and worshiped since Christ, we hinder their future and give them little to return to when they wander but a forgotten feeling.

Orthodox Unity... and the issues preventing it

A reader sent me this and I confess that I did not get to it until now.  It is a marvel of good religious journalism on a subject almost no one outside of Orthodoxy mentions or even cares about.

As Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter today [the article was dated April 15], they have resurrected a movement toward unity in America, where they are divided into a hodgepodge of overlapping ethnic jurisdictions. On orders from patriarchs in Constantinople, Russia, Serbia and elsewhere, all Orthodox bishops in this country are working on a plan for one American Church.

The patriarchs say they want to approve such a plan at a yet-unscheduled Great and Holy Council of global Orthodoxy. The last such council was in A.D. 787. In 2010, 66 American bishops formed the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America, to devise the plan.

"This has great potential," said Bishop Melchisedek of the Diocese of Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania in the Orthodox Church in America.  "The canon law of the church allows for only one bishop of a city, but here in Pittsburgh we have four. It's a situation that can create unnecessary conflict. Now we have the potential for the church to speak with one voice."

The issues have created difficulty after difficulty in a church that loves jurisdictional order.  The Orthodox have had an anomaly here for some time -- both with formal divisions of structure and episcopal jurisdiction and the informal divisions created by overly robust ethnic and linguistic identities.  Not in the least of the problems is the different ways that different jurisdictions have treated the many converts (especially to the priesthood) that have characterized Orthodoxy in the last generation or so.

There are tensions between converts -- who have entered the priesthood in large numbers -- and ethnic Orthodox. There has been conflict in and between jurisdictions here. In 2010, the Antiochian diocesan bishops were demoted to auxiliaries stripped of most of their power. Thirty years after declaring the Orthodox Church in America self-governing, the Russian Orthodox Church began planting parishes in the United States and reunited with the formerly schismatic Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

Some believe that this is merely jurisdictional but there are differences that go beyond merely structural issues or the way the different groups related to one another.

"Right now people see all of these jurisdictional divisions and they get confused. They think that all of them are separate churches, like Protestant denominations, but they're not," he said. "The Orthodox see themselves as one church. They are one church in doctrine and worship and episcopacy. It's this administrative problem that needs to be solved." 

You can read all of Ann Rodgers fine article here.... I post it so that those who look longingly to the East may see some of the very real problems that underscore the fact that no Christian body is without its own issues... It is always a trade off when you leave behind one to pursue another... 

Trinity and Christian Orthodoxy... Is the first required for the second?

With the advent of a possible Mormon President, the question of whether or not Mormons are Christian has been popping up more than ever.  Some folks have sidestepped it.  Some folks have ignored it.  Some have faced it head on but come to different conclusions.

Rick Warren seems to be approaching it from another perspective entirely.  Warren seems to distinguish Christianity from orthodoxy (small "o").  In other words, he grants that Mormons are Christian -- as Christian as are the many ordinary Christians who either disavow the creeds or do not even talk in Trinitarian terminology.  Yes, they are Christian but their Christianity is not orthodox -- at least and especially in terms of its confession of God as one and three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

“The key sticking point for evangelicals and actually for many is the issue of the trinity,” Warren said. “That’s a historic doctrine of the church — that God is three in one. Not three Gods, one God in father, son and Holy Spirit. Mormonism denies that. That’s a sticking point for a lot of Catholic Christians, evangelical Christians, pentecostal Christians because they don’t believe that. Now, they’ll use the same terminology. But they don’t believe in the historic doctrine of the trinity. And people have tried to make it other issues, but that’s one of the fundamental differences.”

You can hear it all here. 

It really then comes down to a basic question:  Is the confession of the Trinity fundamental to Christian identity or is it related to the question of how orthodox or heterodox that Christian identity is?  So, following the opening supplied by Warren's answer, many have suggested that there are two different questions with two different answers.  Are Mormons Christian VS Is Mormon theology orthodox.  You can read some of that debate here.  I guess what sticks in my craw is where you draw the line.  Can you be Christian with an unorthodox understanding or confession of God? 

It may very well be true that there are plenty of Christians (and not just those in non-creedal churches) who couldn't make a Trinitarian Confession if their life depended upon it.  They may be Roman Catholic or Lutheran or from a hundred other traditions.  That does not make it right.  If we have failed to speak of the mystery of the Trinity in such way that this mystery is both our confession and our conviction, then we have failed to fully catechise these Christians.  We should not blame them but ourselves.  Nevertheless, the failure of catechesis is a very different thing than a confession which refuses to speak of God as Scripture, council, and creed have affirmed for nearly two millennium.  Orthodoxy is not a matter of the heart (which only God can see and judge) but of the words by which we acclaim Him Lord and God.  It may be a felicitous inconsistency that there are true Christians in churches which are heterodox or not even Christian in their confession but we dare not depend upon such anomalies.  In our speaking and in our writing, the goal is to confess the fullness of the mystery of the Trinity as much as human wisdom and words can confess it.

Evangelicals, especially those adverse to creeds and confessions, may not find this a problem but those who confess the Athanasian Creed must find this a most troubling problem, indeed.  This creed is unambiguous.  Whoever will be saved must confess the catholic faith and the catholic faith is this...  Period.

I am here... the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep...

Sermon for Easter 4B, Good Shepherd Sunday, preached on Sunday, April 29, 2012, and humbly offered to the Church through Concordia Pulpit Resources for 2012.

    Every child has cried out in fear of things that go bump in the night, of monsters under the bed, and of danger hidden in the shadows. For the child, comfort begins when a door opens into the darkened room and the familiar figure of mother or father enters in.  It is not what a parent says or does but simply that he or she is there.  This is what comforts the child.  This calms the troubled heart.  The promise of the parent is not that there is nothing to fear but that mom and dad are there to face the fears with the child.  There will be monsters under the bed, nightmares, and fears hiding in the shadows tomorrow night as well.  But mom or dad will be there then, as well.  Therein is the child’s comfort.
    Every adult has likewise borne the weight of his or her fears in loneliness – until someone comes to them.  Whether the solitary figure in a hospital room or a phone that does not ring or a doorbell that does not sound, all ages find themselves alone with their fears at some point or another.  This loneliness is a terrible captivity that begs for help and aches with anxiety for someone to come and the fear that no one will come.  We all seek comfort in the presence of others.
    Now the evils of the real world are darker than the childish fears of the night.  Our enemies are not made up but genuine.  But our comfort is not made up, either.  It is genuine.  Family and friends come to sit on the hospital bed and hold our hands in our afflictions.  Love comes with casserole in hand. We are not alone.  That is our comfort, the presence of those who sit with us, wait with us, bear with us, and love us.  This is our peace:  We are not alone.  And this is the comfort of God to us.  Thou are with me... says the Psalmist today.  I am the Good Shepherd, says Jesus in the Gospel.
    For Israel walking in the wilderness, the pillar of fire by night and the smoke by day were the sacraments of God's presence.  Having left all things familiar in Egypt, their comfort took the form of manna from God.  Not knowing the way, their comfort was the God who went before, guiding them to the completion of their journey and the fulfillment of their hope.
    You and I are no different.  We are pilgrims and strangers in a world that should feel like home.  Sin has turned the darkness into threat and filled us with fear.  There is no greater enemy than death and no greater fear than to lose our lives before we see our dreams, goals, and hopes realized.  If any thing about this life is certain, it is that death is near.
    We could seek comfort in packing as much as we can into the few days of even a long life.  But we will always be in a losing battle against those who want to steal our peace.  So we end up like scattered sheep who run wildly in pursuit an elusive dream, not even realizing how vulnerable we are until life comes crashing down upon us.
    It is into this that Jesus has come.  He is the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep.  He knows His own better than they know themselves.  He grants us His Spirit so that we may recognize the sound of His voice, know the comfort of His call, the safety of His presence, the grace that supplies all their need, the food that satisfies their hunger, the water that cleanses and gives them drink.  He is not good in comparison to bad, but the Good Shepherd who can deliver His promises to His flock.  He is the one who fulfills the promise of God to be with us always.
    In life and in death, we are not alone.  Threatened by evil and surrounded by our enemies, we are not alone.  Jesus is with us.  It cost Him nothing less than His holy life surrendered into our death upon the cross so  we might be found and restored.  He rose that the secret of this victory might no more be hidden but revealed to us and to the world.  We are not alone.  He is with us.  His goodness is that He will never leave us and He is greater than any enemy we have and the worst enemy we have.
    This is not some abstract imagery of poet or philosopher but the practical hope of children who still cry out in darkness looking for comfort and peace.  This is no promise of the huckster who says if you get it right and get right with God you will have all you want of health and wealth and happiness and pleasure.  This is no shallow Gospel that pats us on the back and says, "It will be okay."  This is honest and real life, honest and real fears, honest and real troubles – all met by the honest and real Savior who willingly gave up heaven for the reality of this mortal life and all its wounds and hurts.  This is the honest and real Savior who judged us worthy of His life offered into our death on the cross and declared us righteous and holy in the ultimate act of grace and mercy.  This is the honest and real Savior who rose from the dead and now whispers to us in the midst of all our fears, "I am with you."
    And so we come... to sit at the table He has appointed while our enemies stare with surprise into the God who has become the Shepherd of His people and their food.  And so we come... to have our soiled and wounded heads anointed with the oil of healing and gladness by the Good Shepherd who calls us each by name.  And so we come... to see our cup of blessing overflow with a generous grace it is embarrassing in its lavishness and richness.
    Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives for God is with us.  Our sin could not turn Him away and our death could not contain Him.  So we shall dwell in His House here for as long as time is given and forever in the place where time is counted no more.
    The great temptation is to separate Jesus from His gifts or grace, to separate Jesus from the means of His presence (the Word and Sacraments), or to separate Jesus from the good news of the Gospel.  What calms our fears is not the promise that troubles will fly away or enemies disappear.  What calms our fears and plants hope in our hearts is that the Good Shepherd is here and among us – amid the troubles of our lives, in the presence of our enemies, amid the disappointments, burdens, wounds, and problems of this mortal life.  He is here and where He is we find the grace that cleanses us from our sin, sustains us on the journey of this mortal life, carries us through all the uncertainties to come, keeps us in His protective care, and opens to us the door of life everlasting.  It is not that Jesus gives uw what we want, but that Jesus is here.  Period.  The Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep and takes it up again that He might give it to us.
    To the child who cries out in the night, nothing is more welcome than the comforting presence of mom or dad who comes to him.  It is not what they bring but that they are there.  In the same way, it is not what God gives to us that is our comfort but that He gives us Himself, He is here.  The Good Shepherd has made Himself everything for you – He is your pasture, water of rest, food, dwelling place, righteousness, goodness, and peace.  He gathers us lambs in His arms and carries us in His bosom, and leads us young and old, where hunger, thirst, death and fear are no more (Is 40:11).  His presence is His gift.  That is why the Word and Sacraments are so important.  They are the rod and staff that comforts us because they deliver His presence to us.
    I remember once when one of our kids was small and I awoke to the sound of crying.  I tried to comfort and go back to bed but it did not work.  So I sat on the end of the bed.  Perhaps fifteen minutes passed when a small voice filled the silence.  “Are you still there?”  That is the question that haunts us Christians.  Are you still there, God?  But the answer comes not from feelings or wishes.  No, the answer lies in the Good Shepherd stands among us today.  "I am here," and through Word and Sacrament fulfill the promise of His Words.  He is here to forgive, to restore, to comfort, to impart hope, to sustain with grace, and to lead us home to the Father.  Not in feelings or results to our prayers, but in the concrete presence of bread, wine, and water.  "Do not fear. I am here.  I am the Good Shepherd.  I know you and you know Me."  Not even death could keep Him from us.  And now we know why He is called Good.  He is the perfect fit for our need and the perfect answer to all our fears and needs.  Amen.  Amen.

The Inconsistency of Liberalism...

Google Paul Ryan and Catholic social teaching and you will come up with a boatload of hits.  He created a firestorm of controversy when he presumed (as a Roman Catholic) to suggest that his budget proposal was born of his own understanding of Catholic social teaching and believed it to be consistent with the Roman Catholic Church's stance on the same.  Howls went up from all across academia and liberals were pouncing upon the Representative for the audacity of his suggestion.  But that is not what this post is about...

This is about the inconsistency of liberalism -- especially with regard to social teaching.  Liberalism ever takes up the cause of the poor and the plight of those whom they believed to have been trampled over by big business or the free market enterprise.  Liberalism insists that it is the vital watchdog on a valueless capitalism that will surely steal from the poor and the needy their dignity as well as their rights.  Therefore, liberalism pleads for the expanded role of government on behalf of the poor and needy.  The solution for liberalism is always more money and more government.

Except when it comes to the unborn... Here is the great inconsistency or the glaring disconnect of the values within liberalism.  Whether secular or religious, liberals will do everything for the poor and oppressed already born but seems deaf to the plight of the unborn.  Liberals seem quick to rally to every pro-choice position and cause -- going much further than merely expecting free access to abortion, morning after pills, and contraception.  They insist that these be subsidized -- or better free!

When Susan B. Komen suggested withholding funds from Planned Parenthood because they might be better spent in other ways in the fight against breast cancer, liberals insisted this was heresy and about those terrible pro-life people who want to trample on the rights of women.  The Susan B. Komen Foundation was not entering the pro-life/pro-choice fray but simply making a decision about the best use of funds for the cause for which they were founded.  But they caved in the face of the moral outrage and indignation born of the liberal media and liberal social and religious groups.

Liberals have made sure that the GLBT cause is front and center on TV and in the media even though GLBT individuals represent significantly less than 10% of the population.  Every social teaching and religious value that does not bow to the altar of GLBT and feminism is suspect from the get go.  Nevermind that liberal means advanced, broad, broad-minded, enlightened, flexible, free, general, high-minded, humanistic, humanitarian, indulgent, intelligent, interested, latitudinarian, left, lenient, libertarian, loose, magnanimous, permissive, radical, rational, reasonable, receiving, receptive, reformist, tolerant, unbiased, unbigoted, unconventional, understanding, unorthodox, unprejudiced...  When it comes to narrow and immovable, the dictionary says "liberal attachment to abortion and contraception.

Funny.... the only poor and oppressed for whom liberals refuse to defend, support, or advocate are those not yet born.  It is the great inconsistency of liberalism that those who need its voice most of all hear nothing but silence from the great liberal enterprise of academia, media, and religion.  Liberals tend to be liberal about everything but the unborn.  Therein lies the fallacy...

I really don't know how I feel about Paul Ryan's budget but the cries of outrage from liberals inside and outside the Roman Catholic Church almost make me sympathetic to his proposal from the get go...

Role models and personal preference...

I recently had a "come to Jesus" talk with our acolytes.  Every now and then it is good to remind them of the serious nature of their role within the liturgy and of their need to take this responsibility seriously.  I mentioned to one of them about kneeling but this acolyte insisted kneeling was not a preference.  It is not about your personal preference when you are a servant/leader in the liturgy.  Your personal preference takes second place to being a role model -- modelling the fullness of the liturgical ceremony.  You will kneel.  To another it was about singing the hymns.  But some of the hymns we sing, this acolyte did not like.  Again, it is not about your likes or dislikes.  As a role model in the liturgy -- even as an acolyte -- your personal taste is second to modelling the full participation in the liturgy.  We have spoken in this way to others involved in the Divine Service.  Maybe other Pastors have had conversations like this with acolytes or assisting ministers, etc...

As I thought about it afterwards, I wondered if perhaps I was being hypocritical.  Should we expect this of an acolyte while allowing the Pastor free rein to apply his personal preference to his leadership of the liturgy?  I have often heard it said, "My personal preference is not to cross myself..." or "My personal preference is alb and stole..." or "My personal preference is chanting..." or "My personal preference is common cup..."  or "My personal preference is to preach without the constraint of a pulpit..." or "My personal preference is to elevate..."  The more I thought about it, the worse I felt.  We tell others who play assisting roles that personal preference is not the primary criterion for what is done or not done (especially with respect to ceremonial) but then we Pastors turn right around and express our own personal preferences in the way we lead worship.  Perhaps we need to be told to heed our own words.

In a perfect world, the Pastor and those who assist him in the Divine Service should cast aside preference or even comfort level and model the fullness of the church's ceremonial before the congregation.  Those in the pew will not learn about or learn to appreciate something they do not see modeled before them on a weekly basis.  We who serve in leadership roles in the Divine Service (servant leadership to be sure) should be careful about inadvertently expressing personal preference as the primary requisite for what the Church does in the Divine Service.

If there are notes to be chanted, we should chant.  If the sign of the cross is made in this place or that, we should make it.  If the full vesture of the Church is available to us, we should wear it.  If the chalice is available, it should be the model and primary method of distribution.  If we can kneel, we should kneel.  If hymns are appointed to be sung (except perhaps during the distribution), we should sing them... all stanzas.  If the rubrics require or allow a certain ceremonial as visual counterpart to what is happening in the liturgy and what is confessed therein, then we better have a pretty darn good reason why we are not following that rubric or doing the action that accompanies the words.  Personal preference does not cut it.

"What I like to do..." should not enter in.  Personal preference and taste are hidden or set aside in favor of the fullness of the Divine Service as is available.  This will certainly mean that the ceremonies of the liturgy will vary from place to place, from what is accessible or available and what is not, but the reason for the difference will not be "I like" or "I don't like."

Adiaphora does not mean that personal taste or preference is allowed to real.  Adiaphora does not mean do what feels good to you or what you like.  Adiaphora simply means that rules cannot be made binding upon the conscience which go beyond the Scripture.  Adiaphora does not displace the idea that my own personal preference is set aside for the sake of unity, order, identity, and expressing before the people of God the fullness of the Divine Service (as is accessible to us).  If there are differences in the ritual, it should be because of limitation of circumstance, availability, or resource and not simply because "I don't like it..."

Nothing does more harm to a congregation than when a Pastor comes who models the fuller ceremonial of the Divine Service and, when he leaves, his successor prefers to do something else.  The people are held captive to personal preference of the Pastor as if it were some prerogative of office denied to them as laity.  What you wear, what you do, and how you do it in the Divine Service should not be held prisoner to your preference or desire.  The people deserve more than this.  We cannot and should not legislate uniformity but at least the Pastors who lead the Divine Service should act with a higher goal than modeling their personally preferences to the people.  They are models (as are acolytes, assisting ministers, etc.).  You model the best and so that the teaching of your practice is consistent with your teaching in words.  As true as that is, it is even more true for the Divine Service and how we approach rubric, ceremony, ritual, and church usage.

Once our new (12 years old this year) building was completed, someone in the parish said, "Pastor, are you happy you got your new building?"  "My new building?" I replied.  "Well, isn't it what you wanted?" they asked.  "No, it was not my choice."  Larry Peters likes tall, long, narrow, dark, stone structures more than the wide, bright, and cheery structure we have.  After the architect listened to people in the parish, I worked with the firm to develop this into something that would serve the liturgy best but there is hardly anything in this building that is Larry Peters.  Oh, to be sure, there are things that a lot of people did not know were Lutheran (kneelers, as an example) but they are not there for Larry Peters.  Larry Peters would have knelt whether or not kneelers were in the pews.  This was an opportunity for the people in the pew to choose to kneel as well.  And no is making anyone kneel so that choice is theirs and not mine.  But it is my role and purpose to model the best and richest and fullest of the Lutheran identity in the Divine Service (or daily offices) whether or not these are my personal preference.  We do many things that are not my personal preference and we sing many hymns I do not like. 

Lutheran liturgical practice tends toward minimums.  This is most confusing.  We proclaim expansive grace that undoes sin, death, the devil, and even God's own justice and righteous wrath over sin. But then when it comes to Sunday mornings we tell ourselves over and over again that it matters not to God what we do or how we do it -- except that we enjoy it and are sincere.  If we do what we want on Sunday morning, then we will do it better and therefore God will be pleased.  Funny how easy it is to justify personal choice and minimalism.

We are so accustomed to like buttons that we have forgotten basic truth.  Personal preference or liking something is not the highest goal.  Even in some liturgical congregations, we tend to speak the same language as the market place with all its choices.  "We do what we want or like; don't keep us from doing what we want or like and we will not demand that you be like us."  But that misses the whole point of what the ceremonial of the Divine Service is about.  This is what we do.... who we are... When it comes to what we do on Sunday morning it is as simple as that -- or at least it should be.

Life after God...

"My name is Teresa," she begins. "I'm a pastor currently serving a Methodist church — at least up to this point" — the audience laughs — "and I am an atheist."

With those words Methodist clergyperson Teresa MacBain "came out" as an athiest to a convention of atheists -- sort of heroic according to some but a tragic and scandalous admission to others.  In the end, there is much to lament.  On one hand, we should lament and grieve over everyone who loses faith -- especially clergy.  It is sad that she has felt isolated and alone (though I wonder how much of this is due to her loss of faith and how much to the feeling of betrayal on the part of those who wonder when it happened and for how long she continued to stand before them lacking the very faith she supposedly preached).  It is sad that she is being treated as a hero when it is clear that for her, at least initially, and for her family, this is a loss that has had profound consequences.  It is sad that clergy often hide their wounds -- some out of necessity or they would lose their jobs and others out of fear of what others might think of them.  No wound heals because it is ignored or covered up or hidden away.  What might have happened if she had found encouragement from those around her -- we will never know.

"In reality," she says, "as I worked through them, I found that religion had so many holes in it, that I just progressed through stages where I couldn't believe it."

There is a sad statement.  A religion with so many holes in it that there was nothing left to stand on...  When faith is reduced to mere facts and when those facts are subjected to standards of veracity that are generally subjective, what is left?  For how long has the Christian Church felt the sting of those who insist it does not matter if you believe this or that, if this was factually true or that wasn't, if the Jesus we know today is not the same Jesus of history?  A couple of centuries of liberalism in which Scripture is left to be a book of truths without substance or factuality and reason and feeling stand above every truth, and we are left with an ordinary person who has nothing left to believe.  How many others have been led down this garden path (clergy or not)?

When it's pointed out that she hasn't said whether or not she misses God, MacBain pauses.  "No, no," she says. "I can't say that I do."

That single statement was by far the most tragic thing in the entire article. Perhaps she was never really a Christian -- I do not know and it is not mine to judge -- but that she misses little except the singing is perhaps the greatest tragedy of her lost faith.  I am reminded of the book Spiritual Envy in which the unbelieving author admitted that he once believed in God but lost his faith to skepticism and doubt.  His story is pretty typical.  “I wanted it to be true, “ he writes.  “I wanted to believe in God; I miss the comfort my faith provided; I wanted to believe but it wasn’t there anymore...”   To have believed and not... and then to miss nothing... well, that is just about the saddest thing of all...

One sure way to reduce abortions...

Two weeks ago, younger evangelical leaders gathered in Washington D.C. to reflect about the shape Christianity should take in the world. Q, the conference hosted by Gabe Lyons, is one of the more interesting spots in the evangelical landscape. Self-conscious in its cultural (which is to say, not political) orientation, conference attendees are an interesting cross-section of the evangelical world. Some might be emergent, others might be Reformed, but no one talks much about all that. It's concern about social issues, rather than distinctive theological ones, that attendees seem to gather around. 

In a breathtaking moment of unity, however, conference attendees affirmed that churches should advocate for contraceptives for the single people in their midst. After a panel discussion on the best ways to reduce abortions in the church (tacit answer: contraception), an instant poll put the question to attendees: "Do you believe churches should advocate contraception for their single twentysomethings?" The question is ambiguously worded (Advocate how? From the pulpit? Which twentysomethings? All of them?). But even so, 70 percent of respondents understood enough to say "yes."

Read it all here in the Christianity Today article...

In other words, we can fix this problem by feeding another.  Reduce abortions by reducing conceptions.  The only problem with that is that we still have the casual sex culture that creates this need for contraception and this has become a mountain we cannot overcome.  So we go around it and allow the mountain to stand.  To be sure, reducing abortions is not some noble goal but the urgent cause for Christians of all stripes and persuasions.  But that goal of reducing abortions will not be helped by the tacit approval of a hook up culture in which sex is seen as a God given right and a human drive that cannot be controlled. Until and unless we desire to address the root of this problem and its willingness to give in to desire and to find a way to take away the ordinary consequences of this desire, we will have simply traded one problem for another.  

The casual sex culture has created ripple effects in which our distorted view of (and our belief in our right to) pleasure has given birth to broken hearts, broken marriages, broken children, and broken lives. This is the seed of which abortion is one fruit but it is not the only fruit of this poisoned tree.

We gain nothing by providing the best contraceptives money can buy so that the need for abortion will be reduced.  In fact, some of those contraceptives are themselves abortifacients.  No, the answer for abortion is not more and better contraception.  It is the willingness to address the unrestrained power of desire within us -- and the name for that is sin.

Mission that flows from our Life Together...

Some complain that the congregations interested in things liturgical are often less missional (couldn't resist using that buzz word that my spell checker insists is wrong).  I am sure that this is true in some cases.  But I believe the case of overstated.  In fact, I would venture to say that most of the mission money sent on to Synod through District is sent in by congregations using the hymnal.  They generally do not speak the same dialect as those who know the current and ever changing lingo but they know the language of mission.  I think of my home congregation with a hundred or so communicants and whose mission budget has been at times 20% of their total income.  All the while they maintained this, they supported me in college and seminary with prayers, gifts, and money for school.  At ordination they presented me with vestments (paid for by their loving gifts and sewn by my loving wife and still used by me).  In the little congregation in which I grew up, where so many are interrelated, not a few have gone on to full time church vocations.  Not a few of those church workers of the past are buried in the cemetery just behind the church building.

Or I think of the congregation I serve now.  A recent report given required me to add up the figures and an unaudited total included:  $36,000 for District and Synod, $11,000 for the Siberian Lutheran Church (2011-2012), $16,850 for repairs to the Mwadui Lutheran School in the East of Lake Victoria Diocese of the Lutheran Church in Tanzania, $2,400 for the International Lutheran Health Partners and their work in Tanzania, $1,000 for the Lutheran mission feeding the children of Haiti, $ 1,000 for a Lutheran Pastor whose family suffered a tragedy, $400 for a local hunger program, $320 for Food for the Poor, $350 for Lutheran World Relief plus the hundreds of health kits and quilts, $800 for our own Food Pantry, $800 for the LWML mites (in addition to the ladies gifts), $1300 for a Lutheran Pastor's daughter with a health emergency, $1350 for the local Pastoral Counseling Center to provide 100 free hours of counsel to those who can least afford them, $3300 to the local church agency for cash assistance to those in need, and the list of missions goes on since I am adding up dollars and cents and not hours of service...  More than $61,000 in this growing annual total... for a congregation with a total income of $510,000 in offerings (with the preschool and a couple of other income sources excluded).

I do not write this to toot our horn but to expose the soft underbelly of the presumption that mission and liturgy are a choice, an either/or.  Not here.  I would venture to say that the vast majority of mission dollars come from congregations who do the service pretty much by the book (by choice) and who believe that mission and liturgy (liturgy and spiritual awakening, to quote Bo Giertz) should and always will go together...

Shock and awe...

Take one high school journalism convention... take one outrageous and bullying bigot in favor of the latest liberal baloney... take an assembly of young people with a common interest in journalism divided by someone whose only interest is to shock and divide... take some courageous students who know enough to leave when they have had enough... take one who supposedly stands for freedom to ridicule their free choice not to listen... and what do you have?  Well, watch it all below...  Be careful because the BS meter may go off the charts... but the source of it is not Scripture...

For a news report of the whole event read here.

If you want to hear what he termed an apology for offending the "pansies" who walked out, read here (not much of an apology and just as offensive as the video).

Peter the hypocrite?

There seems to be no one who does know the story of Peter who, flushed with conviction, insisted he would not deny the Christ though all others might, and then meet the same Peter at the burn barrel where he was recognized only to deny even knowing Jesus.  It is nothing new.  This impulsive Peter goes constantly from bold confession to rebuke for presumption.  Now, following the Easter absolution of Peter in the command of the angel to "go and tell Peter," we find the fisherman with characteristic boldness.  The same impulsive and rash fisherman who denied his Master three times on the eve of the Crucifixion then preaches against those who denied the Lord and crucified Him.

Could it be that Peter forgot that dark night of betrayal and the feeling of those burning tears of regret flowing down his cheeks after the cock crowed (cf. Jn 18:25-27)?  Could it be that Peter, who had recognized and proclaimed before the other disciples that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, and then crumbled in the face of evil and adversity, would hypocritically point his accusing finger at others who also denied Him?

It is unbelievably remarkable how we hear Peter, just a few weeks after all this takes place, preaching to the people, “You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you.” In the Easter 3 reading from Acts of the Apostles, Peter twice refers to the people’s denial and desired destruction of Jesus, and exhorts them to look anew at the face of the Holy One: “Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away.”

But that is precisely the point.  Peter was exactly in their shoes and Peter received the grace of forgiveness to recover his heart from guilt and shame and denial.  Peter speaks not as one who has forgotten but as one who can never forget that denial.  It gives him cause to speak to those who continue in captivity to their own denial, betrayal, and rejection.  That is the Gospel.  The sick who has been healed speaks to the wounded of the healing that is in Christ.  The sinner who has been forgiven speaks to the sinners of the forgiveness that is in Christ.  The dying who sees the long, dark shadow of death speaks to the dying of the life that is in Christ.

Pastors do not preach as those who have grown out of sin and now speak from the moral high ground of holiness.  They speak as fellow sinners standing before the cross seeking the mercy of His promise to other sinners to come and stand with them before the mercy seat.  Pastors do not presume to speak as people who have long ago cast aside their doubts and fears.  No, they speak as those whose fears and doubts have only been met in Christ and bid others so afflicted to trust in the saving wounds and triumphant resurrection of Jesus.

Christians do not witness from the vantage point of their success but from the scars of their own failures.  We do not presume to be any different from those who do not know Christ... except that we do know Christ and the power of His death to forgive sin and the power of His life to overcome death.

The memory of our failure forgiven and our fallen natures restored is not something we want to escape.  It is precisely this which we want to remember for it is the cause of our joy.  Perhaps those who struggle with Luther's simil justus et peccator can see it so powerfully played out in these post-Easter words of the apostle Peter.  His vivid memory of his own denial and his joyful confidence in Christ's redemption has moved him to speak to those likewise afflicted.  Surely this is the witness which Jesus commends us to give -- the joyous story of the sinner forgiven, the fallen restored, the dying given new life.  It is this which is central in the proclamation of the resurrection -- not a simple or mere historical fact that it is but life that death cannot overcome which calls to the dying, the deniers, the stained, and the wounded.  We have hope and that hope is Christ alone.

A plea for names...

I think I have written before of how in Europe (Germany, at least) the name is not considered the possession of the person or the family but of the community.  It is the name by which we are known and we make ourselves known.  Therefore, they have restricted the modern day penchant for originality in requiring that the name be a recognized first and middle name. 

Germans are used to being regulated in many areas of daily life that Americans might find rather repressive. Want to name your baby? Better pick a name that the local Standesamt (office of vital statistics) agrees with. If they don't agree to register the name you picked, you have to appeal the decision. By German law, a child's name has to meet two conditions: (1) it must reflect the sex of the child, and (2) it must not endanger the “well-being of the child.”

I wish that we had such consideration here.  The strangeness of some names and the strange spellings of even common names have contributed to make it hard to be known.  I cannot tell you how many times I have had to make couples repeat the name or spelling for baptismal information.  In the midst of it all, I have often wanted to ask aloud the question in the back of my mind, "Why?"

I would plea with those so tempted, "don't do it."  Give your child a real name that will encourage them to be known.  The uniqueness of the name contributes nothing to the uniqueness of the individual and may well handicap the child throughout life.  I well recall the student teacher who reported to me that she encountered a girl in her middle school class whose name was Vagina (that is, VaGeena, in pronunciation).  Come on.  Just grow up.  Read through the Scriptures.  Choose a sturdy name from the saints.  Honor your family by a name which has some personal history to it.  Remember that bad choices in names are sure causes for being bullied. So just give up the urge to be creative and saddle your child with a name that will make them wish you had thought better of it...