Known but unknown. . .

Sermon for Lent 4B

John 3:16 is perhaps the most well known verse in the Bible and yet we seldom pay much attention to its context or read its words in the way intended.  We read them out of our need to know God loves us but, even more than that, God loves us more than others, more now than ever, and more with each passing day.  It is the romance of love and not the character of the love John 3:16 speaks of.

Luther called this the gospel in miniature or gospel in a nutshell.  That it is and if it is the gospel in miniature then it is about the cross.  Whether or not you are Nicodemus of long ago, you hear in these words the clear voice of that gospel.  For this is not about the quantity of love God has for you but the description of that love.  You were not saved because tyouy deserved it or were worth it or because your works earned you God's notice or His favor.  You were loved with the sacrificial love of the Father fulfilled in His willing Son who gave Himself up for you on the cross.  You were lost, soiled and stained with sin, marked with death, and unable to do anything about it but lament it.  And Christ won you back even by His death on the cross.

For God so loved the world. . .  the key here is the very small word "so".  It is not so in the sense of much.  Like we might say "so" expensive or difficult.  Can God love you more? Can God love you less?  We assume that this little word descibes how much God loves us but God's love does not come in bits and pieces or dribs and drabs.  God loves.  This little word "so" is HOW God loves us.  God's love is always cross shaped.  It was in the first gospel of Genesis 3:15.  It was in the gospel the prophets spoke from generation to generation.  It was in the gospel near when John the Baptist baptized Jesus and named Him the "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world..."  It was in the words and miracles of Jesus that prefigured the cross and framed it.

For God loved and the shaped of this love is the cross.  Could He have done less?  Was there ever another cup for Him to drink or another baptism for Him to be baptized?  That is the moment we see when Jesus prays for any other way but knows that there is only one way, one expression of God's great love -- the cross.

That whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life...   There is in this love no appeal to intellect, no request for understanding or consent, no appeal to spirituality or self-serving glory.  No, this is the call to raw and unadulterated trust.  That is the scandal of the cross.  It repels us for its brutality and yet hidden in the horror is the love beyond all telling.  We encounter this love not by reasoning our way to faith or by being convinced of its wisdom.  Its wisdom is always a scandal and always an offense.  No, God must act or this love will always be beyond our grasp.

God so loved that when this cross shaped love was a scandal to us, He made a way for faith.  He sent forth His Spirit, attached Him to the Word, water, bread and wine of His means of grace.  If you will remember, baptism was the subject of His visit to Nicodemus and the context in which we hear John 3:16.  God's love is cross shaped and comes to us where He has planted His cross -- in the waters of baptism.  You could say that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son and then gave us the water of baptism which unfolds us into that cross shaped love, attaches us to His death and resurrection, and imparts to us the Spirit to engender trust within us in this cross shaped love.

This love is no mere sentiment or feeling.  It is as concrete and real as the bronze serpent Moses raised and its effect is as concrete and real as the healing that resulted from those who looked to the bronze serpent trusting that what God said would be done.  Jesus' cross saves.  It cleanses and redeems, saves and rescues, kills and gives life -- no symbolism here but only that which is most true and real.

Everyone knows John 3:16.  Even those who do not believe probably know it.  But the miracle that gives us this Gospel in minieature says salvation by grace through faith imparted through the means of grace.  Maybe you have never heard of Nicodemus or of Moses, but the truth is that it was always God's plan to raise Jesus up on the cross and it was Jesus love and joy for us that enabled Him to endure the pain and bear the cross for us.  And this cross our Lord has planted in the water of baptism that delivers to us God' s healing, redeeming, and saving grace.

How an this be? We do not need to explain the mystery to own it.  Faith trusts it and the Spirit opens our fearful hearts to rejoice in its gift and blessing for unworthy sinners like you and me.

Youth Ministry. . .

The next time you think of rock style music and casual Christianity and think this is youth ministry, come back here and watch again. . . and again. . . and again.

Entrepreneurial Christianity

"L'Angleterre est une nation de boutiquiers."   —Napoleon I    ("England is a nation of shopkeepers.")

Although the description was often seen as a disparaging one, Napoleon claimed that it was not intended to be so, but was merely a statement of the obvious fact that British power, unlike that of its main continental rivals, derived from commerce and not from the extent of its lands nor its population.

What was once true of England, is not much true anymore.  For a time America stole the moniker and it was our the single most powerful contribution to history.  Now we have traded making things and selling things into a consumer economy in which our shopkeepers are now service providers and ideas have replaced widgits or gadgets.

Except when it comes to religion. . .  There we retained our expertise at turning religion into a business, the Gospel into a product, churches into stores,  and pastors into shopkeepers.  We are still king of this entrepreneurial Christianity.


Entrepreneurial Christianity. . . it is often spoken of as a good thing -- even by some within my own denomination.  In reality it means that we have exchanged the goal of faithfulness for success and stolen the responsibility for the Kingdom of God away from God and made it our business - literally.  Whether we describe pastors as shopkeepers or sacramental entrepreneurs, the shape of the pastoral ministry has been profoundly impacted.  Even among those who hold to orthodox Lutheran theology, it is nearly impossible to divorce this practical reality from the expectation of who the pastor is and what he is charged to do.

We have built huge mall style complexes to service our clientele and our membership (really attendance) has become a revolving door of people coming and going.  So enamored with new and different are we that longevity in the pew or pulpit is not viewed without suspicion.  We don't want predictable (what we once termed reliable) but we do want the innovative.  We are drawn to programs like fish to water because that is something we do and something we can do.  It is too much to kask us simply to speak the Gospel and live its light at home, on the job, in our leisure.  On Sunday morning we expect more than last week even if it was good and salutary.  Like your favorite restaurant that changes the menu and ditches what you loved last week, Sunday morning has become the venue for the creative reinvention of who we are and what feels good.  We expect to be surprised by something new and feel we did not get our money's worth if we didn't get it.  So we shop for another church like we would new clothes -- all the while knowing that we have no more attachment to the Gospel than we did to yesterday's duds.

What might have been good for England, is no good for Christianity.  What once characterized America as a business nation whose business was business, is not healthy for the Church.  We need to give up our penchant for entrepreneurship in the realm of Christian faith and life and learn to be content with the means of grace and the Lord who retains ownership of His Church even if He has promised to work through our own voices in witness and our hands in service.

I once read all the mail sent to my church promising rich rewards it we changed this or did that or bought into a new program or spent more time visioning.  It was my weakness and vice -- the soft underbelly of every pastor who wants his church to grow and is tired of waiting upon God to grow it through the means of grace.  But I am less enamored of these promises than I once was.  I hope it is a good thing.  If I pass on my congregation to the one who follows me with as little of Larry Peters in it as I am able, I figure that is the best thing.  If what endures is the faithful confession and the confessional character of what goes on Sunday mornings, God will do the rest.  Really, He will.  If I teach people to trust the Word and Spirit of God more than me, I am doing what I have been called to do.  Really.

Take the faith seriously. . . Take the church seriously. . . Take the pastoral work seriously. . . Don't take yourself that seriously.  You can be replaced.  God cannot.  Your work is forgettable (happily so) but the Gospel is forever.  That is enough.  That is what I need to tell myself over and over again.  Maybe you do as well. . .

Innovative. . . probably not. . .

Few people have accused Lutherans of being innovative or creative.  We are borrowers -- that is our vice.  We borrow from churches that are innovative and creative.  We borrow things but do not create or innovate much.  We are a dull and bland people -- who else would like plain boiled potatoes and boiled lutefisk (both white) on a white plate, with white tablecloth, and white napkins, while drinking a glass of milk.  We are too staid to think for ourselves so we allow others to think for us.  When we think they have come up with a good idea, we reach over and borrow it.  Never mind that they have long since given up on that idea and gone onto something different or that it may conflict with our deeply held beliefs and confessional standards.  We borrow the rejects of others, usually when they have become the tired old ideas nobody else is excited about.  We are a church constantly suspect of our own confessions and tradition, a church in awe of the creative and innovative spirit of others, and a church too often willing to exchange our own integrity for the prospect of something that might work better or fast than God's way.

I read something where Hillsong (Google that church) sees itself as a church that is constantly innovative.  It is never treading the same ground twice.  From music to mission to ministry they are a changing.  Some of that change involves departing from the faith once delivered to the saints but it is, I guess, a small price to pay for being ever new, ever fresh, ever creative, ever innovative, and ever re-inventing itself.  Most Lutherans don't want to do the heaving lifting of creative thought.  We are repristinators who have a snapshot in time as our model and think that things were probably much better then than now.  But we do have a soft spot for looking over the fence and seeing if the grass might be a little greener and we are not above borrowing a few ideas or so if we think if might make us a bit more successful at building our corner of God's kingdom.  And therein lies the conflict within Lutheranism -- the repristinators wish they had been born in another time (the one they consider the golden age of Lutheranism) and the borrowers are forever exchanging Lutheran doctrine, identity, and practice for whatever is new to them.

We Lutherans think that a beer (doesn't even half to be a good beer) and a brat (doesn't have to be good either) is pretty close to heaven.  We stay in on Saturday nights.  We go to bed early so we don't arrive late to church on Sunday (late meaning less than 30 minutes before the start of the service).  We sit in the same spot and wear the customary church clothes.  We go home to eat one of the five typical Sunday recipes.  We read the paper and pass out on the couch while the TV is on.  And then we go to work to build up ourselves for the upcoming weekend excitement again.

Some of us Lutherans are embarrassed by our lack of creativity.  Some of us Lutherans worry that our lack of innovation will kill this thing called Lutheranism.  Some of us are shamed by our willingness to use the same words for worship Sunday after Sunday without inventing something new and different.  Some of us are scandalized by the idea that the Word of the Lord, the confession of our faith, the shape of the Divine Service, and the piety that calls us simply to love our neighbor by speaking and living the Gospel to him or her is what God asks of us. 

Nope we are not very visionary.  Brothers, we are treading where we have always trod.  But. . . if we are being faithful, that is enough.  God did give us the responsibility and the power to win the world on our terms.  Nope, He made it perfectly clear that faithfulness is how we will be judged.  We get no extra credit for inventing new ways for God to work (outside of the Word and Sacraments) or for inventing new ways to worship (apart from the pattern of the sound words that we inherited in which the Word of the Lord is central). 

The Church is a mess.  The world is a mess.  Lutheranism is a mess.  But it is God's mess to sort out and straighten.  Our job is faithfulness.  We hold each other accountable for faithfulness (that is the most basic reason for our Synod anyhow, and to do together what is more than any of us can do alone).  We must practice self-control in our rush to trade faithfulness for worldly success or relevance.  We must reign in our wanton efforts to substitute our priorities, our ideas, our preferences, and our whims for the yesterday, today, and forever Word of the Lord.  Guess what people, the Church has always been one generation from extinction but the Lord is not bothered by this.  Why are we?  If we are faithful at home and on the job and in church, God has promised to do the rest.  His Spirit accompanies the Word and makes it fruitful.  His grace is where salvation is located.  His cross and empty tomb are the means by which hope is born. 

After being reminded of some poignant words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I repeat them here for you.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When his deal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.  

Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by His call, by his forgiveness, and His promise.  We do not complain of what God does not give us; rather, we thank God for what He does give us daily. And, is not what has been given us enough?

When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.

Life Together, Harper and Row, 1954, pages 27-29.

Reclaiming Lutheran from legacy to identity. . .

Bad things happen when we are preoccupied.  That is exactly what happened in Lutheran higher education.  Our church body became preoccupied with things like the Battle for the Bible in the 1960s and 1970s, with harsh financial realities (from the 1970s to the present), with doctrinal disunity and practical chaos (from the 1970s to the present), with restructuring the Synodical ship (since the 1970s)...  The list could go on.  You get the drift.  Bad things happen when we are preoccupied with other things.

Among the Lutheran colleges and universities, what happened would fill a large book so we can't but touch on a few points here:

• The system was undone and the schools that fed the seminaries and provided church work students became primarily colleges for laity with a tentative religious connection and their mission changed. . .
• The costs of Lutheran colleges and universities mirrored the general explosive rise found among other private schools and even public institutions -- effectively pricing them out of the reach of much of the middle class especially when compared to the bargain prices of state sponsored schools. . .
• The Synod assumed responsibility for a huge debt common to all LCMS colleges and universities and stopped being an effective means of support for the annual cost of their operation. . .
• The Lutheran colleges and universities embarked on a necessary but very expensive capital projects program, even moving entire campuses from one location to another. . .
• The faculties became more diverse religiously and politically and the distinctive character of Lutheran institutions and the unique Lutheran identity was tested to its very limits. . .
• The focus of the administration of these schools shifted from institutional excellence and Lutheran integrity to fund raising (an essential task that eventually sucked all the air out of the boardrooms where their administration and regents met). . . 
• The Lutheran colleges and universities developed their own constituencies and their connection to their church bodies that established and owned the campuses was weakened substantially. . .
• The course work on the typical Lutheran college or university had little to distinguish it from many other institutions in which political liberalism, progressive social advocacy, and a skepticism of religion and faith predominated. . . 

Among these Lutheran institutions, the colleges and universities of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod fared much better in retaining Lutheran identity than did the relatively independent schools of the ELCA.  However, without a prominent mission to serve the larger church by providing training for church worker students and without the chapel being more than a symbolic center of the faith, our institutions also suffered a sort of drift away from Lutheran connection and Lutheran identity.  Unlike the ELCA, the LCMS was determined to do something about this.

Read here for one of the first steps in the quest to reclaim and renew Lutheran identity in the universities of the LCMS.  It is a hopeful beginning to what will surely take a generation or more of renewed determination and patient effort. But it is a beginning.  Thanks be to God for the willingness of both the university presidents, the President of the Concordia University System, and the Synod to make this first public statement of commitment toward the larger goal of reclaiming these schools for the church.  Some will quibble that it is too little or too late but I am encouraged.  While I am sad that Bronxville, a school close to my heart, was not yet ready to sign on, I am convinced that this will be even better for the schools in the long run than it is for the church.  Lutheran is not a liability.  It is an asset -- even on the campus of an institution of higher learning.  Unless I am mistaken, it is on a university campus where Luther began.

What offends YOU?

Sermon preached for Lent 3B, on Sunday, March 8, 2015.

    So what makes you angry?  People get angry over many things.  We get angry when people disrespect us, disagree with us, who cut in line, who cut us off in traffic... You name it.  We are easily wounded and angered by personal insult or personal slight.  Listen to the tone of our voices and the string of vulgarities that we erupt from our lips.
    Most of our anger is protective of ourselves, our feelings, and our loved ones.  But what offends Jesus?  Jesus seems to care little about the personal slights or irritants that offend us.  What offends Jesus is when the Word of God is silenced, when the things of God are made trivial or casual, and when the Gospel is turned into Law.  How does that compare with what bothers YOU?
    Jesus is not just angry.  He is indignant.  We saw His zeal for the House of God when leaders exploited it for their own purpose and ignored why God gave sacred space.  Churches that do everything but worship God, churches that are businesses instead of places of prayer and worship, and people who use church for their own ends and purposes.  When we forget the purpose for which God comes to our Sunday space, that offends God.  Does it make us angry as well?
    When the child, the stranger, or the sinner is turned away, that offends Jesus.  When God's people hoard the message of salvation or remain unchanged by its voice of welcome, love, and forgiveness.  This is what bothers Jesus.  When the cross is rejected or replaced with something that cheapens Christ's sacrifice for our sin, this is what offends Jesus.  Are we also offended by these things?
    God's anger is not some temper tantrum.  God's anger is a wounded heart over those whom He seeks to save and redeem who refuse His gracious favor or treat the message of salvation casually as if there were nothing special in the love that saved us by dying on a cross.  We spend too much time angry over personal insults or hurts but we lack zeal for the Lord's house, for the Lord's Word, and for the Lord's saving purpose.  That is what we see in Jesus – zeal not for some geography but for the place where God’s deliverance is proclaimed to the lost and dying.
    Scripture says "be angry but sin not..."  In other words, God does not excuse our anger because people really did offend or hurt us.  No, the call of faith is to learn to be offended by what offends God.  In other words, do we hate sin.  Do sin and evil offend us?  Do we despise the weakness of our flesh and the evil that comes from our hearts to our heads and mouths?  Does sin offend us enough to desire righteousness?  To seek forgiveness?  This is the fire in the heart of Jesus.  This is His zeal for you and me, the lost who deserved to be lost, condemned, and suffer.
    Are we angry enough over our sin that it moves us to repent of our sins and to hide in the refuge of God's forgiving love?  We are angry over many things but do we look into the mirror of our hearts and are offended at our guilt, at the shame of our sins?  To anger and sin not is to be moved to repentance by our anger of our own sin before we point out the sins of others.
    Are we offended by the way the poor are treated or have we become immune to their need?  The poor you will always have with you, Jesus reminded us. But have we grown so comfortable with the needy that we no longer love them as Christ loved us in our need or serve them as Christ served us?
    I have never read the book Fifty Shades of Grey or seen the movie but I have read enough about it to wonder why something so salacious and so dark can capture the imagination of so many? Even Christians!  How can we glorify such things like this while at the same time claiming to know what love is and to value this love highly?  Where is our zeal for righteousness?
    We presume we are important enough that we deserve to be treated better and maybe we do.  But we cannot afford to save our anger for personal insult or offense and have no room to care if God's Word is preached accurately, whether sin is hated and righteousness loved, whether the poor, the needy, and the children are loved as God has loved us? 
    Where is our conscience?  Faith calls us to a higher way of life – not to better morality but to a higher way of live in which we wear the cross and live our lives under it.  We are called to love what is good and right and true and to reject what is evil and wrong.  It calls us to protect life from conception to death, to protect those least able to protect themselves, to love the poor... It calls us to be offended by that which distorts or silences the Gospel and keeps the sinner from knowing God's hope and gift.
    Jesus' anger is a righteous anger – it is not directed against those who insult or slight Him but for the sake of those for whom He died.  To those who crucified Him, Jesus spoke words of forgiveness but to those who had so screwed up the Word of God that they did not see Jesus in it, our Lord had nothing but contempt.  The call of the Gospel is this – to love what God loves and to be offended by what offends God.  God reserves His hate for sins, not people.  We love sins and hate people.  What did we miss?  What did we get wrong?
    People thought Jesus was a little crazy to take God's house and sin and the poor so seriously.  Maybe we do, too.  And that is the problem.  We love the Gospel that protects, forgives, and loves us, but we are not so sure about the rest of those for whom Christ died.  This is a call to righteous anger of faith.  Amen.

Wise words from our presiding pastor. . .

Dearest Brothers in the Office:
I greet you in the name of Jesus, our constant hope and consolation in the ministry.

I’ve been re-reading Martin Brecht’s great three-volume biography of Luther.* Luther’s life was full of joy, love for the Scriptures, friendship and great conviviality. But it was also filled with disappointment. Near the end of his life, he described himself as “old, cold, lame and one-eyed.” He was so miffed at his own congregation in Wittenberg that the summer before he died, he resolved to leave town for good. He wrote Katie on July 28, 1545:

I would like to arrange matters in such a way that I do not have to return to Wittenberg. My heart has become cold, so that I do not like to be there any longer. I wish you would sell the garden and field, house and all. . . . It would be best for you to move to Zölsdorf as long as I am still living and able to help you to improve the little property with my salary . . . I would rather eat the bread of a beggar than torture and upset my poor old age and final days with the filth at Wittenberg, which destroys my hard and faithful work. You might inform Doctor Pomer and Master Philip of this (if you wish) . . . (AE 50:278, 280–81).

Katie did inform them, and the Elector sent Melanchthon out with a reconnaissance party to retrieve the old man, promising to make some improvement in the city. Luther was indeed a grumpy old man by this time, but his frustrations with the congregations in Wittenberg were hardly limited to his old age. There was, of course, the uproar early on, while he was hiding in the Wartburg after his great “Here I stand” speech at Worms. (During this week of Invocavit, you might check out the first of Luther’s “Invocavit Sermons” for a clinic on preaching to people in the pew, especially on preaching “love,” i.e., “third use of the Law!” See AE 51:70–75.) And already from 1526-27 and the time of the plague in Wittenberg, Luther frequently expressed his great frustrations with the city parish, both in sermons and private correspondence. The Gospel did not have the effect among the people that he had hoped, and it bothered him greatly at times. Of course, as he readily admitted, his old sinful flesh only exacerbated the matter.

And so it is with us. One cannot paint the whole Missouri Synod ministerium with one broad brush, to be sure. There are many brothers experiencing excellent times in their lives of service at this moment, and abundantly so. There are also many experiencing the cross in their office, and intensely so. It is, in many respects, like the opening line of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . .” It is a great moment in that, while post-modernity has demolished the purely rationalistic and empiricist opposition to metaphysical realities, leaving the door wide open for us to make the case for Jesus, yet the flood of “spirituality” and individualistic fantasy has pulled the populace away from the Church. Sadly, that includes a great many of our own. I don’t need to rehearse here the demographic challenges that we, and all of Western Christianity, face. You know this challenge very directly and deal with it daily.

Brothers, there is consolation, even for ministers of the Gospel. “What God institutes and commands cannot be an empty thing. It must be a most precious thing, even though it looked like it had less value than a straw” (LC IV 8). Luther’s comment applies to us pastors. “Therefore, every Christian has enough in Baptism to learn and to do all his life. For he has always enough to do by believing firmly what Baptism promises and brings: victory over death and the devil (Rom. 6:3–6), forgiveness of sin (Acts 2:38), God’s grace (Titus 3:5–6), the entire Christ, and the Holy Spirit with His gifts (1 Cor. 6:11). In short, Baptism is so far beyond us that if timid nature could realize this, it might well doubt whether it could be true” (LC IV 41). Before you were called and ordained, all that is given in Baptism was yours. And it remains yours, even in times when your “timid nature” might not feel it or realize it.

And there is an even greater consolation precisely in your eternal election to salvation, which was made manifest in your Baptism. You know full well, pastor, all of those “in Him,” “in Christ,” “in the Beloved,” statements in Ephesians 1. “In Him you also, when you heard the Word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:13). “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which He lavished upon us . . . making know to us the mystery of His will ...” (Eph. 1:7f.). You are baptized, pastor. That rock won’t move, come what may.

Moreover, you have not chosen your vocation by yourself. Sure, God gave you a desire to study for the ministry (1 Tim. 3:1); you were encouraged along the way by God’s people. Faithful teachers encouraged you. But it was the church, which finally put you into an office, or Amt (auf Deutsch). “St. Paul tells Timothy and Titus to entrust the ministry to faithful and able men (2 Tim. 2:2; 3:2; Titus 1:9)” (Chemnitz, Enchiridion, 28**). The church recognized your gifts, and God’s people in a specific location called you with a “special and legitimate” call. You were prepared, called and ordained to this ministry; you didn’t just start “gassing off” on your own (Rom. 10:15; Jer. 23:21; Heb. 5:4).

It is certainly true that all Christians are spiritual priests and enjoy the full privileges of this priesthood. As Chemnitz wrote, “. . . all Christians have a general call to proclaim the Gospel of God (Rom. 10:9); to speak the Word of God among themselves (Eph. 5:19); to admonish each other form the Word of God; to reprove (Eph. 5:11; Matt. 19:15) and to comfort (1 Thess. 4:18). And family heads are enjoined to do this with the special command that they give their households the instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). But the public ministry of the Word and of the Sacraments in the Church is not entrusted to all Christians in general, as we have already shown (1 Cor. 12:28; Eph. 4:12). For a special or particular call is required for this (Rom. 10:15)” (Chemnitz, Enchiridion, 29).

I’ve always loved being a pastor. There is something amazing about being invited into peoples’ lives at their very best times and very worst times, and often in the lives of the very same people! But much more than that, we come into the lives of people with Jesus. It’s all about Jesus. It’s all about Jesus for those who already know Him, and it’s all about Jesus for those who don’t. And as Dr. Walther so concisely and wonderfully stated in Thesis III of The Church and the Office of the Ministry, “The preaching office is not an optional office but one whose establishment has been commanded to the Church and to which the Church is properly bound till the end of time” (Church and Office, 181;*** Walther’s proof text for this is Matt. 28:19–20). The office is not finally about power or even authority in the sense that we usually think of. Jesus, after all, exercised His authority (exousia) by sacrificing Himself (Phil. 2). Thus, as Walther states (Thesis IV), “The preaching office [Predigtamt] is not a special state in opposition to or holier than that of ordinary Christians, as was the Levitical priesthood; rather it is an office of service [Amt des Dienstes].” And we pastors are called to serve up Jesus. “We preach Christ crucified,” or we should not speak at all, frankly. We bring the love of Jesus to the hurting, the weak, the sick, the destitute, the lonely, the aged, the young and everyone in between. And we do so because the Lord mandates that there be pastors after His own heart who do so.

Chemnitz notes several reasons why a pastor must have a legitimate call, and these points provide consolation for us today. It is not merely a matter of human arrangement or good order, he says.

1. “God himself deals with us in the church through the ministry as through the ordinary means and instrument. For it is He Himself that speaks, exhorts, absolves, baptizes, etc., in the ministry and through the ministry” (Luke 1:70; Heb. 1:1; John 1:23; 2 Cor. 2:10, 17; 5:20; 13:3). So, states Chemnitz, we have clear proofs that God wants to use pastors as “His ordinary means and instrument.” If God is so minded, will he not hear your prayers pastor? Does he not care for you, too?
2. “Very many and necessary gifts are required for the ministry (2 Cor. 2:16). But one who has been brought to the ministry by a legitimate call can apply the divine promises to himself, ask God for faithfulness in them, and expect both, the gifts that are necessary for him rightly to administer the ministry (1 Tim. 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6; 2 Cor. 3:5–6) and governance and protection in the office entrusted to him (Is. 49:2; 51:16).”
3. “The chief thing of the ministry is that God wants to be present in it with His Spirit, grace and gifts and to work effectively through it. But Paul says in Romans 10:15: ‘How shall they who are not sent preach’ (namely in such a way that faith is engendered by hearing)? But God wants to give increase to the planting and watering of those who have been legitimately called to the ministry and set forth doctrine without guile and faithfully administer whatever belongs to the ministry (1 Cor. 3:6; 15:58), that both they themselves and others might be saved (1 Tim. 4:16).”
4. “The assurance of a divine call stirs up minsters of the Word, that each one, in his station, in the fear of God, performs his functions with greater diligence, faith and eagerness, without weariness. And he does not let himself be drawn or frightened away from his office by fear of any peril or of persecution, since he is sure that he is called by God and that the office has been divinely entrusted to him.”
5. “Finally, on this basis the hearers are stirred up to true reverence and obedience toward the ministry, namely since they are taught from the Word of God that God, present through this means, wants to deal with us in the church and work effectively among us” (Chemnitz, Enchiridion 29–30).

Dear Brothers in the office, we have a sacred vocation of service. We serve. Because we bear Christ’s own office, an office our Confessions say is derived from Christ and the apostles, we can expect among the joys and great blessings, thorns, trials, crosses and difficulties. Some of these are brought upon us by the weaknesses of those whom we serve. But the office is an office designed only to serve sinners! This is the way of Christ. Some difficulties, often more than we might like to admit, we bring upon ourselves through our own weaknesses and sinfulness. And I think, especially in my own life, of my sins of discontentment and anxiety. Yet we know, in repentance, that even our own failings are worked for good by our merciful heavenly Father!


I covet your prayers, even as I pledge you mine. I plan to write these letters from time to time to encourage you, not to burden you.

In Christ,

Matt Harrison
Invocavit 2015

*Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, trans. by James L. Schaaf, 3 vols. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1985–93).
**Martin Chemnitz, Ministry, Word, and Sacraments: An Enchiridion, trans. Luther Poellot (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1981).
*** C. F. W. Walther, The Church and the Office of the Ministry, trans. Matthew C. Harrison (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2012).

All quiet on the western front. . . not

President Linneman of the Northwest District LCMS, the ecclesiastical supervisor of the individual whose positions caused charges to be filed against him, has issued a letter on the case and its publicity.  You can read it all here.  I do not mean to suggest that Pres. Linneman has anything less than the noblest of motives in writing yet his words will not silence the debate.

The letter references the Facebook and LCMS blog posts of President Harrison lamenting the outcome of the doctrinal supervision and procedures that did not discipline the individual for the teaching and which, in essence, found that the individual's teaching was compliant with the published doctrinal statements and doctrinal confession of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  The letter references the helpful letter of the Council of Presidents indicating that these individuals do take seriously their role as ecclesiastical supervisors and desire to uphold the faithful teaching and confession of the LCMS.  The letter references the many letters and even a District Resolution which have come in response to the case.  Finally, the letter references the need to act charitably and with love in all of this, to adhere to the procedures of Matthew 18, and to be careful about public comments which may be made without knowledge of the facts and without love and charity.

All of this is well, true, and good. The Council of Presidents cautions members of the Synod to exercise care in their evaluation and analysis of matters of ecclesiastical supervision. This is a salutary statement and worthy of some careful thought on the part of those moved to comment -- me included.

But another statement causes me concern. When our Synod was formed, it was founded on the notion that influence would be our commodity rather than authority. While some Christian churches have a hierarchical structure where individual people are given authority, that is not the case in the LCMS. Congregations are the basic unit of authority, and leaders in the church are called upon to stand upon the Word of God and use their voice for influencing one another through conversation and dialogue. This dialogue is healthy for the church and allows each of us to prayerfully consider God’s Word and respond to it faithfully. As we engage in these conversations, careful listening and thoughtful responses are essential for the health of the church and the ministry we share.

Is this true?  Is influence the only thing we have to use to respond to challenges to the faith publicly confessed in the Concordia and reaffirmed in doctrinal resolutions of Synod?  If the statement is true, then what kind of ecclesiastical supervision can take place?  When it comes to clear and public dissension from the clear and public teaching of Synod (not new teaching but the reaffirmation of long held theological statements), is the only thing option open to us conversation and dialogue?  Quite apart from the individual case that has sparked so much discussion, the whole issue of ecclesiastical supervision has been raised and it is clear that many of us are not on the same page.  

Our Synod has in the past acted with authority to challenge dissent to the clear and public confession of our church and even to remove duly elected individuals from office.  Our church has spoken to condemn conflicting positions through convention resolution and the official publications of our Synod.  This was not simply about conversation and dialogue but about the public condemnation of teachings that depart from our Confessions and the public statements of our church body and the rebuke of those who refuse to end their dissent and conform their public teaching and practice to the public teaching and practice of the church they represent. 

I would remind us that it is not merely a matter of a couple of pastors disagreeing -- the disagreements spoken of here are not personal but a provocative and public challenges to the very confessional standard of our Synod and its fuller witness in the life of the church.  Ecclesiastical supervision is not about getting people to play together nicely but about guarding the sacred deposit of doctrine passed down from the apostles.  Yes, we must speak lovingly and without harm but such love does not mitigate the supervision of doctrine and practice among us -- just the opposite -- such doctrinal supervision IS love at work in the best sense of the word.

This does not mean we shouldn’t talk about matters such as this one. It does mean that we should do so charitably and with concern for one another – especially those with whom we disagree. We are called to reflect the love of Jesus to each other and to a world that is in need of His love. We are at our best when we make this the priority. I continue to pray for God’s wisdom and His guidance as we seek to negotiate these stormy water s together. Let it be said of us, “See how they love one another.”

I urge all who care for the LCMS to pray for this issue, to pray for those who dissent from Synod's public confession and teaching, to pray for doctrinal harmony and concordia among us, to pray for those who must discharge the role of ecclesiastical supervisors, and to pray that our church body stands steadfast and speaks the truth in love without fear.  If we do any less, there is no love among us.  When we would choose love for the person over love for the truth faithfully confessed and practiced, we have not chosen love at all.  

No one has to be a member of Synod (congregation or clergy).  It is a choice.  Part of that choice is the willingness to teach and practice in conformity with what our Synod has and still confesses and teaches.  Part of that choice is the willingness to be held accountable to those who supervise our doctrine and practice.  Part of that choice is to end public dissent when the Church has rejected such dissent and to remain in good standing only by faithfully confessing, teaching, preaching, and practicing in conformity with our church's confession and resolutions delineating and applying that confession.  And part of that choice is to be subject to the authority of the Church if and when we refuse the counsel of the church and choose our dissent over our life together under a common confession and as part of a common witness to the truth.

Not good advice. . .

In the same effort to clean off the top of my desk that produced another odd piece from The Lutheran, I encountered this advice from a January 2010 advice column featured therein.  The question was a familiar one.  My family hasn't been to church in many years, but we are starting to come back. During worship, my two teenagers take communion.  They've been baptized but never had an official first communion class.  Are they breaking the rules?

The Lutheran Mom who advises began by welcoming them back.  Nice touch.  But things went down hill from there.  There is no better way to celebrating your family's return to church than by sharing the bread and wine of communion within a community of faith.  Oops.  In other words, sure, y'all come.  Its all good.  It don't matter.  No big deal.  But it is.

Apparently the teens had not been instructed in any way -- not a first communion class nor catechism.  So did they had a clue what they were taking?  The liturgy informs but were these teens coming as believers desiring the gifts of God or were they following everyone else getting up and heading to the altar?  Wouldn't it be better to advise the parent to talk to them first (before communing at all) about what the Sacrament is (got a catechism anybody), what the teens understood on their own, and where they might connect back into the larger issue of catechesis (either youth catechism class or new member class)? 

The answer talked about no blanket rule about how old or how educated the communicant must be to receive the Sacrament in the ELCA.  That is accurate.  There are infants being communed regularly in the ELCA and there are parishes in which confirmation is the expected precursor to admittance to the Table of the Lord.  There is the suggestion about talking to the pastor about it.  This is all well and good but it all sits within a context that suggests no big deal about communion.  I especially noted that they were welcomed back by sharing the bread and wine and not once in the answer was there a reference to the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus in, with, and under that bread and cup.

Again, the issue here is what this official journal is teaching both about what is happening in ELCA congregations and what should be happening.  It is wonderful that a lapsed family is back but no one is taking this serious enough to suggest that the two teens are in fact unchurched.  If we love them enough to welcome them back, can't we love them enough to talk about receiving the Body and Blood of Christ with faith so that they benefit from this Holy Communion as God intended and Scripture expects?  The advice given was not bad but it was wholly inadequate.  Worse, it shrugged off this important issue as if it were merely a matter of a few words from mom or dad or the pastor.  Lutherans confess that to receive the Sacrament for your benefit requires faith and specifically faith in the words "given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins."  Our confessions insist that worthy communicants are those who have been examined and absolved.  We do these teens a disservice by failing to honor them with the full measure both of what is given by God and what receives His gifts.

It is sort of like telling the sexually active teen that it is time to talk about the birds and the bees.  Too little, too late.  Yes, have the conversation and better late than never but the conversation should have been had a long time before.  Parents who will be admitting their children to the Sacrament (as the advice column suggests) need to be equipped with the tools to prepare those children or else the whole thing becomes somewhat trivial and meaningless. 

Banilla. . .

When our kids were small, their favorite ice cream was "banilla."  They had not acquired a sophisticated palate.  Although it could have been almost any flavor of the sweet and cold concoction, "banilla" was basic, good, and left few surprises.  They all have other favorites now -- still an affection for vanilla but it hardly ever is without toppings, especially chocolate -- to add to the familiar, if somewhat bland, old reliable. I am sure that what I wrote is not much different than what you found as a child or as a parent with small children.  We all have our "favorite flavors." 

It should come as no surprise to you that the same analogy has been used with worship.  If your congregation's worship was an ice cream flavor, what would it?  If you could design your favorite flavor of ice cream, what would it be?  If you have multiple services, what distinct flavors do you offer at each worship opportunity?  What toppings do you add to jazz up the same old "banilla" of the liturgy off the page?  What special things do you add for the special occasions of Christmas, Easter, etc?  Could it be that your problem as a parish is that you are a rocky road next to a vanilla community (or the other way around)?

You get the drift.  The fallacy in all of this is not that we don't have favorite flavors of the liturgy (growing up my old standby is page 15 TLH) but that this is somehow important.  Flavors and tastes and personal preferences are the rage in nearly everything we buy or do in this world but when it comes to worship, it is not all that important.  When I asked one of my kinds what kind of ice cream was the favorite, the child responded that it is less important than we have ice cream.  Maybe that is where we ought to begin.

I have eaten frozen yogurt and it is nice enough but it is not ice cream.  I have eaten gelato and it is good but

it is not ice cream.  I have eaten smoothies and they are fine but that it is not ice cream.  Worship has become a confusing array of choices and the problem is that it is not all equal.  God does not command that worship be fun or entertaining or inspirational or even instructional.  What He commands is that the Gospel be proclaimed in all its truth and purity (that means at bare minimum distinguishing the Gospel from the Law) and that the sacraments be administered as Christ instituted them.  Apart from the Word of the Lord read and preached and the sacraments of water and bread and wine, there is no worship.  It does not matter if we like it or enjoy it or are moved by it -- God has pledged Himself to the means of grace.  They not only have to be there but front and center, source and summit.

Second, whether the liturgy is simple or elaborate is not the domain of taste or preference but of resources.  When there are no instruments to support congregational song, there may be less singing or chanting in the Divine Service.  Where there is no choir, the liturgical leadership of a choir (especially for Introit, Psalm, Gradual, Offertory, etc...) may be replaced with the spoken voice and some parts even omitted.  Where there are no people to assist in the liturgy, acolytes, assisting ministers, lectors, communion assistants, etc... may be absent and the pastor do it all.  Where there is no silver chalice, a glass one may do.  Where there is no building, permanent altar, pulpit, font, etc..., then the church may make do with what is there (think the chaplain on the battlefield).  These are not choices or preferences or even matters of taste but of availability.  Where these are available, one will expect to find them.  This is not because of choice, preference, or taste but because we do not withhold what is available simply because we may not fully appreciate them.

Our best for His glory.  That is the principle of Sunday morning.  We Lutherans have no minimalist theology nor do we content ourselves with bare essentials.  Read through the commands of the Lord in Leviticus or look at the plans God required of the Temple that would be constructed in His name.  Do you find there a God of minimalism?  Does this schizophrenic God now defer to your personal taste to say whatever floats YOUR boat on Sunday morning is good to go with Him?  Does Christ deserve less than the mystery of the hidden altar where the blood of the sacrifice was once offered before it was once for all offered on Calvary?  When did David's spontaneous dance before the Lord become normative for Christian worship and the carefully laid pattern of temple, priest, and sacrament become optional?:

There may be differences between cathedral and country parish but these are due not to preference but to access.  Both places and both parishes offer God nothing less than their best for His glory -- in response to His best offered to us in Christ, once on Calvary and the fruits of Calvary offered regularly in the Word and at the Table of the Lord.  There is something terribly wrong when we come to Church on Sunday morning and ask for the flavor that appeals to us but care little of what is faithful to God's design and faithfully delivers His promises and faithfully responds with our best for His glory. 

One final rant, reverence is an essential ingredient to all ice cream worship.  Reverence is not wooden and stiff formality but external respect that flows from internal faith.  Last I checked there were no casual Sundays in Scripture in which we came when we felt like it, wore what felt comfortable, did what we wanted, and went home when we got tired or bored with it all.  If I am wrong, show me. 

None of the pagans ever accused the early Christians of being casual about their God or their faith or their worship.  In fact, the early Christians closed the doors and did not allow those outside the household of faith for the most intimate expression of God's communion with us -- the Sacramental Meal.  Now we have so abused this great mystery of God's presence and gracious gift that we routinely tell everyone to come no matter what they believe or who they are or even if they have not been baptized.

Sure, you love "banilla" and good for you.  Sure, you love page 15 TLH (or 158 LSB), and good for you.  Sure, you love jeans and that faded old Budweiser tee shirt and good for you.  Sure, you love country music or soft rock and good for you.  None of this has anything to do with what should happen on Sunday morning.  There what matters is what God has given, where God has promised to be, and all our best for His glory in response.  Far from resenting it when it seems worship is too fancy, we ought to be offended when it appears we are doing anything less that our best in response to His best for us.  But that would be the real surprise...

If on Sunday morning Lutheran people came to church and asked where is the choir?  where is the organ?  where is the chanting?  where are the acolytes?  where are the vestments and paraments?  where is the crucifix, altar, and pulpit?  where is the incense?  The real shocker would be if they insisted not only on these and more -- not because they liked it all or because they gave it in memory of Grandma Hoopindinger but because they were humbled by God's offering of His best and were shamed that we did received His best in Christ did so little in response.  Now that would be the day when Lutheran people said we should do more!!

Applesauce communion. . .

The February 2012 The Lutheran, publication of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, included a strange piece by Janelle Hooper.  She is identified as the pastor of St. Martin Lutheran Church in Sugarland, Texas.  It is a story of a visit to a parishioner's ailing mom in a nursing home.  She was warned by the daughter that the mom was "ornery" and might refuse the visit.  She thought it would not be the first time she brought the body and blood of Jesus to share with someone who did not want it.

She was also warned that the woman had difficulty swallowing and would she crush up the host into applesauce to make it easier for the woman to swallow.  In a strange paragraph that began with Luther's instruction on our inability to understand how Christ becomes present in the bread and wine, she moved on to Lutheran communion instruction and ended it all with "And if called upon to do so, we add a little applesauce to the bread."  It made it sound as if this was Luther's advice and regular Lutheran practice.

When the woman was not able to continue, the author left the consecrated host crushed into the applesauce for her to finish at snack time.  She had never before left the host for someone to snack on later but her gut said it was OK.  Her end conclusion was how important it was to make communion as welcoming and accessible as possible without losing the core of what we believe... extending God's hospitality as far as humanly possible even if it means sometimes mixing Jesus' body with applesauce.

Now I know why I did not toss out this article and why I buried it in the clutter of my desk.  I have no doubt that LCMS Lutherans are guilty of the same sentimental bologna, but I can tell you one big difference.  In the LCMS we would not herald this practice in our official denominational journal as good pastoral care.  And this is exactly the problem with the ELCA -- not just that it is all over the page but that it trumpets such diversity and practice as a good thing.

Let me just say that nothing trivializes the sacred gift of the Lord's body and blood than foolish, sentimentalism like this.  No good pastoral practice leaves the host as snack for later.  If a person has trouble swallowing, break off part of the host, place it in the cup, and then commune the person with the spoon.  That is what I was taught by Pastor Charles Evanson.  That is good pastoral practice and extends the hospitality of the Lord faithfully and not frivolously.  But if somebody does something like this, at least do not publish it as a feature piece in your denominational journal to offer others the idea that a body of Christ and applesauce snack time are just what Jesus had in mind when he took bread, gave thanks, and distributed it to His disciples, saying, "This is My body..."

God save us from sentimentality and poor judgment parading as good pastoral practice!

The good, the bad, and the ugly. . .

The Good. . .

There are states with respectable numbers with regard to church attendance. It is always a good thing when say 40% church attendance happens.  I am fortunate to live in one of them, Tennessee, and am surrounded by others.

We should cite these as relevant statistics in the arguments of whether or not Americans are a religious people and whether or not faith is vibrant and vital in this land.

We should not be content with these statistics or let them define for us whether or not the work of the kingdom is done.  God does not watch statistics but has called us to proclaim the Gospel to every corner, to call the world to faith in Christ, to repentance of their sins, and to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Him.  That does not stop because of good stats and it does not become more urgent because of bad stats -- it is what the Church does because of who she is.  Period.




The Bad. . .

There are places where religious adherence and where faith is less vital than in other places.  Sadly, these are the very places where faith brought our forefathers to this nation, where the halls of government and the leaders of our country are located, and where many of the esteemed institutions of learning are found.  None of this is good.

It is a sad state of affairs when the oldest of the colonies have become places where the faith and the faithful are the least vigorous -- thinking that one of the basic measurements of vitality is actual church attendance and not simply the numbers of names on a membership roll.

It is also a dangerous thing when the institutions of higher education, schools that receive disproportionate respect and esteem, are located in pockets the least friendly to the faith and the least tolerant of the faithful.





The Ugly. . .

The ugly is this -- the Gallup organization does not differentiate between orthodox Christianity or sectarian and distorted or false expressions of Christianity.  So the numbers for Utah, for example, are highly affected by Mormon church attendance though Mormons reject Nicene Trinitarian doctrinal formulation and the Christology of Chalcedon which would be basic for any Christian orthodoxy.

The ugly is also this -- the reporting of church attendance is highly subjective and requires the people being surveyed to remember for themselves and to recall accurately how often they attend.  I fear here that too many people have a faulty recollection that favors a higher church attendance than is true simply because people tend to think this way.  So, good or bad, the actual numbers may not be even as high as was reported here. . .

And we wonder where Biblical illteracy comes from . . .

So you compare 1908 with 2014 Minnesota reading lists for 7th and 8th grade students in public schools.

If you need some help, read Annie Holmquist's comparison here and here is another contribution by the same author.  Perhaps the most glaring fact from the comparison is not just how much shorter the modern list is but how recent the works are which are required reading.  Only four are more than 20 years old.  We are enamored with our modern age in so many different ways but who would have thought that public education would not only tolerate but encourage this narrow view of culture, society, history, and literature.

The thematic material is also narrowly modern as opposed to the 1908 reading list which gives the reader everything from ancient Greece to the modern world.  While I am no expert on this, she also documents that the reading levels have diminished so that, in effect, we are asking our children to read at a lower reading level than in 1908.

We might only add that reading the Bible even as literature is missing from modern day schools and the Biblical illiteracy that we often complain about is endemic not only for the education that takes place in churches but also the familiarity that came once from the literature (quoting Scripture) and the Bible itself within the public school setting.

Non-practicing Christian? Lutheran?

"There is no such thing as a nonpracticing vegetarian.”  I encountered the quote several times and I don't have a clue to its origins but it is a real gem.  We have slowly given up on the idea that faith and its practice are fully intertwined.  It has allowed us the strange and unchecked conclusion that what you believe and how you practice -- or even if you practice -- that faith are unrelated.  Lets just explore for a moment how that works out. . .  Okay, indulge me in this one!

I am a vegetarian.  But I love a grilled Nebraska rib eye when it is perfectly seasoned and done to a perfect pinkish red cool center.  Well, for that matter I also love bacon (who doesn't) and pork chops and veal and chicken and hamburger and kielbasa and bratwurst and hot dogs and bologna and. . .  but that does not mean I am not a good vegetarian!!  I believe vegetables are the best food for you and it would all be better if everyone of us was a vegetarian like I am.  I eat meat, well, nearly as much as I eat vegetables, but that does not detract from the faith of my heart that vegetables are king.  I love broccoli, asparagus, brussels sprouts, and cabbage.  I love carrots cooked and raw and onion and celery and rutabaga and turnip and parsnip and snow peas.  I don't eat them all that often because my plate is full of roast beef, ham, pork loin, lamb, and such but that in no way diminishes my love for, my appreciation of, and my devotion to veggies.

You may not think that I am not a good vegetarian but who are you to judge?  You vegans are all narrow minded, judgmental, hypocritical, and holier than thou types.  Just because you actually eat your vegetables and do not eat meat, you think you are better than me.  Well, you are not.  I am just as good a vegetarian as you are -- in my heart.  By the way, it is people like you that give vegetarians a bad name.  We suffer because of the likes of you vegan zealots and your organized vegetarianism.  Nothing good comes from organized veganism.  It matters more what you believe in your heart than what you put in your mouth.  I resent all you holy priests of veganism who condemn me because I am not like you.  Well, I am glad I am not like you and my spiritual vegetarianism is pure and sincere.

So don't you go telling me that I have to actually eat vegetables in order to be a vegetarian.  It is part of the great hypocrisy of you vegans that you are more interested in organizing vegetarians than believing in the heart and sincerely the truth that vegetables are king.  Okay, so occasionally I actually go to the meetings and mumble the vegan credo -- I do that for nostalgia sake and not because I think this is what the great artichoke wants me to do.  And I hate it when on Veggieday you wear your carrots on your foreheads.  Just because I have no outward sign of my inward faith does not mean I am not as holy or good as you.  I am.  Even better, actually.  So keep your holy tofu and edamame.  I am munching down on some sausages right now and that does not make me any less of a vegetarian than you.

Just sayin. . . 

Cleaning up what is messy. . .

It occurs to me that much of liturgical renewal is in reality an attempt to clean up what we have received.  Even Luther did this, most clearly in his reform of the baptismal rite.  What each generation had added had become, in the mind of many, cumbersome and unwieldy.  So what we needed was mass stripped of some of its accretions and a streamlined church year that was more orderly.  And that is what we got.

The fruits of liturgical renewal in post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism and the Lutheran counterparts have left us with a liturgy that some claim to be older but which is, in many respects, cleaner and more orderly.  In most parishes, the fuller use of the pericopes has been abandoned and we have bare minimums.  Many congregations have taken it upon themselves to economize on the liturgical excess and strip it even barer so that what might be appropriate for a weekday service is normative for the Divine Service on Sundays.  We trim the readings, we cut back on the liturgy, we shorten, and we sing only a few stanzas of the many those nasty Lutheran hymns usually sport.

In the liturgical year we have attempted to clean it all up and make it sensible.  And the three year lectionary is certainly more sensible than the one year was.  Gone are the gesimas that left us wondering what season we were in and we have placed such things as the Transfiguration in a strategic place for a people ready to head down the mountain and begin Lent.  It is not that I find it all evil or wrong.  What is misguided is that by cleaning up what is messy in the church year (or the liturgy) we are also attempting to clean up our messy God and make Him more orderly, predictable, and logical (at least to the human mind).

Like the proverbial cloth coat sported by the wives of Republican presidents, we have gone with utility and frugality in place of the festive or elaborate. We splurge for certain things, mostly for ourselves, but not for God.  Like the disciples of old, we fear extravagance as unseemly for spiritual things.  Pastors who wear vestments are called showy while the simple uniform of khaki's and a polo are more down to earth.  Pastors who wear clerical collars are characterized as distant and too inflated with their own sense of self-important while a pastor in jeans and a tee shirt is unpretentious.  A pop melody and a refrain chanted repeatedly are judged more accessible to people and more typical of our tastes than chant or rhythmic chorale.  Yes, we are good at deciding what is too much when simpler is better for everything of God (but hardly anything of ourselves).

More and more I think we should have left it all messy -- a church year with Latin names for Sundays that no one can pronounce and with feasts and festivals that defy logic and order in the grand scheme of things... a liturgy with too much rather than too little, too long rather than short and concise.  Nope, I am not sure that the fruits of liturgical renewal have been born as we hoped.  Sure, we commune more often and more pastors are wearing full Eucharistic vestments but our piety and our mindset still have not changed. We are too ready to short shrift God while making sure that if it is something we want, nothing is too much.  And that still sounds like sin to me. . .

The cost of discipleship. . .

Sermon for Lent II B, preached on Sunday, March 1, 2015.

    It seems pretty darn arrogant for Peter to tell Jesus He was wrong.  The Kingdom of God ain't gonna come by betrayal, suffering, cross, and death.  It might have been Peter attempting to protect Jesus but it was more than foolish.  It was satanic and earned Peter a swift rebuke from Jesus.  Could it be that there is the same bit of Satan in us that Jesus must also cast aside?
    No, I don't mean we want to prevent Jesus from suffering and dying on our behalf.  I am talking about the rest of what Jesus said.  "If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me... and lose his life for My sake and for the sake of the Gospel..."  We are not as concerned with what happens to Jesus as we are what happens to us.  Jesus can go and do what He must but the way of the cross, suffering, self-denial, and service is not my plan.
    "If any would come after Me, let him deny himself..."  These are the hard words of the Gospel.  It is great to receive but it is not so great when receiving comes with consequences.  Here Jesus calls us to self-denial – to deny that we are large and in charge of our lives, that we can handle everything that happens to us all by ourselves, that we are basically good and slip up only now and again.  Self-denial does not begin with giving up little things we like, it means surrendering our independence because all it has earned us is death and despair.
    The call of Christ is to surrender what matters to most of us – our very selves, our lives, and our happiness.  You cannot have it all – not God and mammon, not your way and His way. Don't blame me, this is Jesus talking.  You cannot love your self, and seek the things that appeal to your happiness and pleasure and be a follower of Christ.  It is not Christ AND what I want but Christ alone.  So precious is the Gospel as a treasure that we give up every other treasure for it.  Even our very selves.
    You have no glory.  Sin has stolen every glory you were created to enjoy and the devil has left you alone in your sin, alone in your guilt and shame, powerless to do what is good and right, and impotent before the enemy death.  No, the only glory we can hope to have is the glory Jesus gives us, the glory He gave to us in our baptism, and the glory we grasped by faith.
    If any would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me...   But what cross must we take up?  Though we usually think of problems in life or problem people in our lives, these are not our crosses.  No matter how hard your spouse is to live with or your job is to work or your finances to balance, these are not your crosses.  The cross is not your choosing nor is it a consequence of living in a sinful and fallen world.  The cross is the shape of Jesus' own cross lived out in the domain of your own daily life and work.
    Love is your cross.  Loving your spouse, children, neighbor, stranger, and even enemy as Christ loved you – even to death upon the cross.  You do not manufacture this love but mirror or reflect it.  What Christ has done for you in love, you do in love toward others.
    What cross?  Love.  Love that sacrifices is the only real love there is.  Marriages and families do not fail because people run out of passion for each other; we run out of passion all the time.  They fail because we get to a point where we refuse to give up any more for that man or woman or  parent or child.  Love fails when we no longer pay the price of loving.  Jesus loved us to death on a cross. Like that old Meatloaf song, "I will do anything for love but I won't do that."  When we can identify the "that" we will not do, love dies.  Christ's love does not fail because it has no ending point.  He loved us to the end; He loved us more than life itself.
    Take up what cross?  Love is not a temporary or even momentary choice.  The love which we receive from Christ is that love that loves until all things are complete.  Love that does not give up on Christ or reject God when things don't go as we desire.  That is the cross we bear – we live by faith and not by sight, trusting in what we cannot see and may never see until Christ returns to finish it all.  We don’t get to prove faith; all we can do is trust it.
    There is enough Satan in us to resist this kind of self-denial so that is it only by the power of the Holy Spirit we believe in Jesus Christ or come to Him, only by the power of the Holy Spirit, that let go of what the world insists is important to hold on by faith to that which is eternally important.
    The athlete will pay this cost of self-denial in order to obtain the glory of winning but not forever.  Christ has paid this cost for you and for me.  We love not for the reward but because He first loved us.  His unrelenting love on the cross is our strength, our patience, our hope, our endurance, our comfort, our peace, and our satisfaction.  This is the cross shaped life of faith into which we were baptized and in which, by the power of the Spirit, we walk every day, one day at a time, toward the heavenly goal.  Amen.

A conversation expanded. . .

Now the dreaded fear of the chalice has raised the specter of disease or just plain ickyness. And what shall we do? The typical response is to make the distribution conform to our fears. The entrepreneurs have beat us to the punch by providing hermetically sealed bits of cracker and Welches guaranteed untouched by human hand or mouth. Maybe then we will feel secure.  Or will we?

Sadly, our fears are too often bigger than our trust in the Jesus.  Nothing demonstrates this more that the fear of the chalice.  Strangely enough, however, it is the hand into which too many of us receive the host that ought to be of greater concern.  Science has shown us how irrational our fears of the chalice are.  Yet we are never too smart when it comes to fear.  This is but one small way in which we demonstrate our greater fear of our Lord, His will, His works, and His ways.  We may renounce Satan's but we are not fully ready to trust the Lord's.  So we trust our instincts and intellect over God's Word, we force God to forever prove Himself and render faith immune from risk, and seek a faith which is not only neat and tidy but safe.  Such a faith is no faith at all. 

We continue to sanitize the practices of the Lord to fit the sacred cows of our modern day perspective.  We have cleaned up God's loose ends to make Christianity intellectually palatable.  We have cleaned up Calvary to render the cross and sufferings of Christ PG.  We have isolated perspectives that conflict with our contemporary views to the constraints of the age (from abortion to birth control to homosexuality to cohabitation to divorce).  We have a homogenized and pasteurized brand of Christianity which hardly is recognizable in comparison with the Christianity of Scripture and the early church.  We have either tacitly or openly made Jesus but one voice among many who bring us to spiritual fulfillment and the vocabulary of sin, repentance, forgiveness, and faith have become strangers to the voice of the Church in preaching to the faithful or in witness to the world. And we have left God to conform His Word and will to our broken lives and our incapacitating fears. Is it no wonder that the world has little interest in such a bland and impotent Christianity?


Sometimes we act as children who cry out to God over and over again that there is a boogeyman under our bed.  In the end, it seems nothing the Lord does will answer our fears.  Or, could it be that we don't want them answered?  In any case, we refuse to be consoled because we refuse to trust.  There will always be boogeymen under our beds.  There will always be something to fear.  Perhaps that is the safest thing of all -- to keep crying to God to come to our aid without really trust in His mercy or His grace at all.  No one can be safer than when he expects to be disappointed.

Faith, if it is anything at all, is trust -- child-like trust.  It is a risk to be sure.  It is not safe.  It is not clean.  It is not easy.  It is not comfortable.  It is not reasonable.  Faith that trusts in God will seem as wild as God seems -- especially to a people who want Him tame, predictable, and easy.  You cannot look at the cross and find the God whom we know in Christ to be any of those things.  Yet He is trustworthy.  For our fears, this will have to do because God will do no more.  The cross is it.  Everything else seems positively frivolous in comparison to it.  So the cross bids us come. . . believe. . . trust. . . seeing Christ's end is seeing our end and seeing Christ's resurrection is seeing our own resurrection -- especially when our eyes are captivated by our fears.  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.

Catholic Liturgy. . .

I have been attending mass with more frequency of late, no longer as a tourist, so to speak. Since I am coming from the outside to the inside, I figure I have a right to ask a few things I hardly ever asked as a tourist.

My questions have nothing to do with the great issues roiling in the Church, but with worship. Oh, not liturgics. I know the outline of the mass very well; it is essentially the same used by Lutherans. Better put, Lutheran liturgy is, when employed properly, a Catholic liturgy, except for a few hiccups here and there. 

So Russ Saltzman, lately of Lutheranism and now a Roman Catholic, opines upon the frustrations of a convert with a new (old) church.  You can read him here. . .  One thing he wrote struck me -- Lutheran liturgy, when employed properly, is a catholic liturgy. . .  His complaints about Roman Catholics singing, or to be more accurate, lack of singing, are to be expected.  No one every accused a Roman Catholic parish of raising the roof in song (or chant).  It might irritate me, if I were to swim the Tiber, but it would be surely expected and no surprise.  The mighty singing tradition of Lutherans, and most of their Lutheran chorales, are absent in the average Roman Catholic parish.

His point is well taken.  The Lutheran liturgy, when employed properly, IS a catholic liturgy.  There is no denial of this in our Confessions nor did the Lutherans feel especially uneasy about this until more modern times. When we are Lutheran on Sunday morning, it is a catholic liturgy that is the prayed form of the truth we confess.  But the alternative is just as important.  When the Roman Catholic mass is done poorly, it is just as bad as what you often find in a less than stellar Lutheran setting.  And it is done as poorly in the average Roman parish more often than not.  I look at the Roman parishes around me and they sing evangelical style Haugen songs, if they sing at all.  The chant tradition and the use of the full propers is largely absent from any Roman Catholic parish around me (even the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Nashville where the guitar reigns supreme as done the sound of contemporary Christian music).  Many of the people do not ever open their mouths to speak the liturgical responses or do anything at all except receive Holy Communion.  In and out as quickly as possible is the norm here (can anyone point me where it is not the norm for Roman Catholic parishes).  Maybe if you live in Manhattan (the city in New York not in Kansas) you might find enough choices to find one where the mass is observed piously, reverently, with strong participation from the pews, and where the preaching is grand, but that is not what you find in a typical Roman Catholic parish.

There are those who say that Lutheranism in theory is better than the practice.  Yup, you got that right.  But it is also my experience that the same is true of Roman parishes.  The theory is better than the reality of Sunday morning (or late Saturday afternoon).  But the preaching is typically far worse than you find in the average Lutheran parish (and I do not say this to showcase Lutherans as well above average -- except in Lake Wobegon, for sure).  There are surely those who will disagree with me, but they do not have a Tennessee address and I bet most of them looked long and hard to find a Roman parish which had the best of both worlds.  So why not look as hard for Lutherans who employ it properly?

I suppose if someone wants to jump ship, the theory is enough to make you do it... but the Sunday morning experience will have to sustain you.  In that regard, I will gladly take the average hymnal using Lutheran parish, where the liturgy may not be high church but it is done reverently and where the people participate with voices in song and responses more than a mumble.  The theory may be enough to get you to jump but the Sunday morning experience is what will keep you afloat.  I don't know what Saltzman is finding but if he lived here I think it would not take long to long for some of what he left behind.

The problem with moral progress. . .

We want to believe that things are getting better.  It is often more than we can bear to admit that at best things are the same and at worst they are in decline.  We are ever hopeful that the Christian life will become easier, that doubts will disappear from believing, that we will be able to look back and see the moral improvement in our character and lives, and that are becoming more righteous and holy.  There is nothing wrong with this hope but there is something terribly wrong when we pin our faith to it.  We want to believe that we getting better -- day by day in some small way -- and this is too often what we use to prove that the Bible is true, that Jesus is real, that we are Christians, and that God is good.  It is a terrible trap and leaves us without refuge when the truth of sins, lies, enemies, doubts, and fears can no longer be masked.

I don't know about you  but I see little moral progress in my life.  My heart knows the pain of sins so familiar to me that they are like family and of the strangeness of holiness -- even though my mind knows this is what I should desire.  My life bears the marks of my failures and my failings in ways I cannot hide or ignore.  There are preachers and churches who presume such moral improvement and I wish I saw it but I don't.  Sin is my addiction and I am like an alcoholic but one drink away from losing sobriety.  This is why daily repentance is so important.  I know who I was, God knows who I will be, and every day He must convince me of who I am -- forgiven, born anew, raised from death to life by the merits and mercies of Jesus Christ alone.

Christianity is not a luxury for me.  It is a necessity.  My shame would drive me completely to despair were it not for the value God has placed upon my life.  I look in the mirror and my conscience tells me I am worthless.  I look into the water of the baptismal font and God declares me worth the priceless blood of Christ shed to cleanse me from my sin.  I look at the world and I feel defeated already.  I look at the cross and I see the victory that no one and nothing can steal from me.  I am undone except for Christ.

Hope for me is not some imagined progress toward holiness but the God who should be but is not put off by my sin, who became sin for me, that I might wear His righteousness as my new clothing.  I am not saying that there is not moral improvement or progress but only God sees and knows it.  And that is how it must be.  We would so quickly abandon the scandal of the cross in exchange for a feeble good work we want to trumpet before those around us and show off to God.  So it must be that while God can look and not see the darkness of my heart, I must see it so that I do not depart from Jesus Christ.  On the cross He has extended His arms in suffering to carry my wounds and on the wounds of His back He bears the full weight of my disobedience.  Jesus does not add something to my life -- He IS my life.

Some are comforted by the fact that they love Jesus.  I wish I loved Him.  Truth be told my heart is fickle and shallow.  I know I love myself but the Spirit has to teach me to love Jesus.  Like the sons of Zebedee I can hear the words of the cross and then ask God to make me happy and give me what I want -- and fail to see any disconnect between them.  Jesus tells me the truth always -- even when I would be content with the lies I want to hear.  So I come on Sunday morning -- not to beat my chest and tell the folks to do like I do because I have gotten the hang of it all.  No, I come on Sunday morning to pray, "God, have mercy upon me, a sinner."  And the Lord lifts my eyes from me to Him, from sins to the cross, from death to life, and from the joy of the moment to the everlasting joy of the resurrection to eternal life.  Lamb of God, I come.... I come... Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on me... grant me Your peace.