Urgent and not. . .

It occurs to me that one of the distinct problems of sin is our difficulty with time.  No, I am not suggesting that our (read that my) inability to be on time is sin's greater problem for me.  What I am suggesting is that sin has colored how we see things and given us a false view to them and therefore to their urgency.

Not too long ago Jesus lamented that the crowd that had been fed was more interested in bread than in the Word of the Lord.  Yes, they were certainly shallow.  But is that not the real problem created by sin?  We instinctively value the things of the moment higher than the things of eternity and we give into the things of the moment only to create an eternal problem.

They were hungry -- perhaps even hangry!  Hunger burned in their bellies and when Jesus satisfied that hunger, that was all they wanted from Him.  Jesus feared that He would be cast as a bread king until the only thing He could offer to people was what they wanted.  So entered the lauded discourses on the Bread of Life.  Nobody is at their best when the desire in an empty stomach is the only thing they hear.  The Lord does not give in to satisfy the moment before satisfying the soul -- well, at least not always.  In fact He warns over and over again against such a preoccupation.  What good is it if we give our lives for the treasure that fades or molds or turns sour?  Indeed!

The same is true of sexual desire.  It appears to be the single thing that informs everything about us these days.  Who we desire, what we desire from them, and how we feel about those desires dominates every other gauge of our character or our identity.   We have become like the animals who are driven not by something ordered or orderly but instinct alone.  Far be it from us to deny such desires and not give into our sexual drives or feelings -- why, that would be positively subhuman.  Or would it?  Is it not our ability to judge and control and defer our desires what marks us as human, created in the image of God, and distinct from the animals and the rest of God's good creation?  

Our desires are urgent and not simply evil.  We have to satisfy that hunger burning in our bellies.  We have to satisfy our horniness or want for sexual pleasure.  No matter what.  No matter how.  We have all walked around the house looking for the perfect snack or food to answer the desire within.  We have normalized sexual desire to make it available to us through pornography so that it is actually easier to conjure up from the internet an erotic image than it is to find a hot dog and some stale chips to satisfy our hunger.  No wonder we are screwed up.

All those prosperity preachers who tell us to give into desire and that is what God wants us to do are putting lipstick on the pig of sin.  Sin is precisely our inability to reign in the desires inside of us or order them rightly or delay them until an appropriate time.  No matter whether those desires are the swift retort of words to slap down an opponent or the quest for the perfect snack or the want of orgasm, giving into the present desire is always the mark of sin.  Our passion is our undoing while Jesus' passion in suffering is our redemption.  He denied Himself all the way to death on the cross and for us and our salvation set aside instinct for the sake of redemption.  Did He do all of this only so that we could give into our desires without shame or guilt or regret?  Is that the value of the cross?

What is most urgent is that which appears to be the thing you never have to take seriously -- the matters of salvation.  God in His mercy has accomplished all things for our salvation so that we might first of all order ourselves and our desires rightly lest sin gain the upper hand.  We belong to the Lord.  God grant us so to use and pass through the things temporal that we lose not the things eternal.  Pray it and pray it over and over and over again.....

Pathetic conversation. . .

For some reason, we think it is always better to be in dialogue than not.  That is decidedly true of the ecumenical conversations.  There was a time when serious minded people had serious minded conversations.  I think back to the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogues which began with such earnestness and gave birth to some very weighty tomes.  They did not end as well as they began although that might be due to the changes that took place within Lutheranism and in Rome by the final volumes of essays produced.  Certainly the justification statement by the two involved some creative interpretation of past statements as well as current negotiated agreement in order for either to claim a certain amount of satisfaction in place of integrity.  Missouri's own robust participation in the beginning gave way to a mere spectator perspective willing to throw potshots at the final statements.  As right as those criticisms might have been, the fact that they came from the peanut gallery and not from full fledged dialogue partners seems to mitigate the value of it all (well, in my mind, at least).  Now, as I reported earlier, the Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue has produced some kind of agreement on the filioque.  It is a curious agreement but that is not the only odd thing about it.  It was also minus Missouri and made with the Lutheran Federation partners who can agree on sexuality more than their own confessional documents.  What value is this?

While I can always fault Missouri for preferring the nosebleed seats to a real seat at the table, it is precisely Missouri and her International Lutheran Council friends who ought to be the ones Rome and Constantinople seek out for conversation.  At least we mean what we say and are serious about being Lutheran.  How can you represent Lutheranism to any other tradition unless you are serious about it?  The ELCA and its host of ecumenical friends in America (not Lutheran) and its international allies in the Lutheran World Federation are the least serious ecumenical partners the folks from the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople could be talking to but they aren't and we aren't interested either.  I can only wish for the day when we would put the brightest and best of us around a table and tell them to have at it over what divides us.  For it is only by true to who we are that we can approach one another with any degree of integrity in pursuit of understanding and possible rapprochement.  It will not solve anything if Lutherans come embarrassed by their Lutheranism or Roman Catholics or Orthodox are equally ill at ease by their past and present theological perspective.  We will not gain anything by being bad representatives of our theology or confession and if we do achieve agreement it is worthless.

What good does it do for Rome to find some commonality with the LWF crowd when the elephant in the room is the ordination of women, the embrace of same-sex marriage, and the adoption of the gender alphabet soup?  What value is it if we put at a table people who do not like or want to believe the Word of God and who insist that the Word as we have it cannot convey the true Jesus of history.  What will Orthodoxy get from a Lutheran crowd that may just set aside the filioque but at the same time sets aside every faithful doctrine that conflicts with the current reason, experience, or worldview of modernity?  Jiminy Cricket, it is cool and all but it is the fakest coolness there is and it turns putrid the longer you look at it and the deeper you dig into it.  Come on, people!  If there is any value in dialogue or any hope in a theological conversation, could we agree that the only folks allowed at the table are those who believe in their own tradition?

Kindergarten rules. . .

I was listening on the radio and there was a report of some phone call of supporters of Kamala Harris.  It was about white privilege and women of white privilege and how they can support her candidacy.  In the beginning of this conference call or zoom meeting -- whatever it was -- a voice came on to issue the rules of this conversation.  There were the obligatory warnings about distancing yourself from your white privilege and other such things.  What struck me, however, was the call of the rule maker for the participants to put on their listening ears and to pay more attention to hearing than to speaking, thus giving women of color a larger part of the conversation.

Listening ears. . .   It reminded me a while back of an ELCA female pastor who warned that the feminization of the clergy would eventually result in "the pastoral office speaking with the moral authority of kindergarten teachers."  Yes, sometimes we do need to hear in plain and easy to understand words the questions, answers, and rules of a polite society in times not so polite.  That said, her words were initially lost to me until I heard again the conversation mentioned above.  

While there may be some who think that this is exactly what we need today in our world of conflict, suspicion, and violence, the problem is not listening ears.  The problem lies much deeper.  There is a rather strange arrogance in the presumption that the problems of our unjust world lie in the unwillingness of the privileged to hear out the oppressed and to give them space.  It is a further extension of the kind of victimization culture that has come to define us and people in general today.  We are not responsible for ourselves but are all victims in one way or another to the unfortunates who went before us (including our own parents).  How sad it is that have come to think that the problems of America are the result of people who refuse to hear instead of an honest disagreement over what is good and right and beneficial for the state of things in our land!  If we disagree over basic values and in particular over moral values, that is not a matter which will be solved by listening.  Either one is right and the other wrong or there is no resolution.  Competing values cannot exist side by side within one community without there being conflict.  The world is not a kindergarten classroom where problems are solved by distraction or diversion or sitting in a corner or a nap.  We are not a conflicted society because we are not listening.  We have stopped listening because we are not speaking the same language.

The role of religion and faith was once a key factor in the common bond of a people who were from everywhere but who were united into one community.  The values that once united us were not all that religion specific -- life, family, work, etc...  Even when we did not practice it, we believed that life was sacred and cherished it.  Even when we failed at it, we valued marriage as the noble goal and estate of life and the family as the central structure upon which any society could or should be built.  Even when we struggled for equal access to jobs and the marketplace, we believed in that marketplace and in the dream of a home, a job, and a means of providing for your family and helping your neighbors.  As imperfect as we were at these goals, the values were held in common. It is the disintegration of these values that has become our undoing.  We no longer value life but have treated it as a commodity at best or a burden at worst.  We no longer value marriage and family but have elevated the individual over all other estates.  We no longer value work but leisure and entertainment and pleasure above all things and tolerate work as a means to pay for what we really value.  Listening ears cannot repair what now lies broken nor can hearing each other out replace the common values and truths that once united us.

Whether you believe the doctrines of Christianity or not or believed them all the same or not, America expected faith to influence values and the common values of life, marriage, family, home, and work to be the bonds that bound us diverse peoples into one nation.  No, it is not the job of the Church to restore these to America as a nation but as a Church we would lie to our people if we denied how faith expected and supported these causes of life, marriage, family, home, work, and personal responsibility.  As the Christian faith has been co-opted into something that leaves people to do what seems right in their own eyes and in the moment, we have less and less to offer people and a nation in search of real unity.  Traditional Christianity was never an easy partner with the culture but it now seems we have little choice but to war with the voices of those who insist that life is a relative value, marriage is what we define it to be, family is not as important as the individual, home is a state of mind and not real, work has to be enjoyed to be worth anything, and personal responsibility is less important than acknowledging how we are victims of someone or something.  In the end, the Olympic controversy puts on display how distant culture is from the Christian roots that once grounded our life together in the West.  Our cultural decline is revealed not by the way the West has rejected Christianity but by the way the West has repudiated the values that once united us all as a people and replaced it with a false concept of diversity, equity, injustice, and access that can do little more than accuse and offers the pathetic solution of listening voices as what we need to repair what is broken.

A more discerning checkbook. . .

Our commitment to education in America remains strong -- so strong, in fact, that last year, institutions of higher learning raked in nearly $60 billion in donations from alumni and those with a heart for education.  The real question, however, is what are those dollars and stock donations supporting?

Of that $60 billion, how much of it is Lutheran money or Roman Catholic or any other chunk of the pie?  Who knows?  I expect that a goodly number of those dollars and shares are Lutheran and Roman Catholic.  But why are Lutherans and Roman Catholics giving so much money to higher education?  Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT are the list leaders with in excess of $200 billion in their endowment funds and counting.  On the public list, two Texas, a Michigan, California, and Virginia schools have about $120 billion and counting.  Do they need your dollars or stock certificates?  Christians should be in the business of supporting schools that align with their faith and values.  If that were to happen, I would hope that this would mean faithful Christian schools that reflect the values of the churches that sponsor them would benefit from more of the financial largess.  Need I say more?  I guess I do.

If you are Lutheran or Roman Catholic and an alum of a school that does not mirror your faith and values, why not reconsider your support of those schools and help the schools that do reflect your faith and values?  In fact, you might actually consider shifting your support from colleges and universities entirely to support the K-8 or K-12 Lutheran schools, classical schools, or traditional Roman Catholic schools.  Yes, I am addressing not only Lutherans but also Roman Catholics.  Put your money where your faith is.  There are laudable alternatives to a secular school but they need your help to make it available and accessible to the greater numbers of students.  Give them YOUR help.

There are only 50 million school-aged children in the nation right now.  The struggle to give them options closer to the values of their homes, families, and churches is a mighty one but it will be a lost cause unless we can come up with the funds to enable our children to make the faithful choice.  Maybe it it completely unrealistic to envision this type of sudden shift in financial support to K-12 education or to suggest that donors stop the familiar pattern of supporting their alma mater and begin supporting with a discerning eye those schools that continue to uphold the orthodox Christian faith.  That is exactly my challenge.  Don't write out the check you have been writing for some time to support your alma mater in their fall appeal.  Give that money where it can do good and where you will not have to live in fear of what your bucks are supporting.  

Work is not a curse. . .

My father was a good example of someone who believed that man was created for work.  He worked six days a week from teenage years until a month before he died (when cancer left him unable to work).  Today he is at best an anachronism and at worst an example of all that was wrong with people.  We do not live for work today.  We live for ourselves.

We have plans and dreams.  We seek happiness and fulfillment.  We want experiences and memories.  We see incomes more as a right than reward and we expect a great deal from government that other generations before us did not.  We have come to believe it is our right to work a modest portion of our lives (30 years or so) and then to enjoy the rest of our lives in pursuit of what makes us happy.  We have come to expect that even at work we should be allowed to shop online, play games, live on social media, and the like.

As an individual, I am in the middle of it all.  I have learned too well from my father that work is good and this is what we were created for.  But I am drawn by the prevailing trends of modernity to also seek happiness.  That is the place of my generation.  I could say that I am uniquely suited then to objectively critique both sides.  But that would be a lie.  I am as mired as anyone in my context.

As a pastor, I complain about direction of things and people.  I fear what will happen when monthly church attendance becomes the norm for most of our members instead of only part of them.  I fear for the future when people will no longer believe it is good or right to sacrifice much of your time or energy or money for causes other than self and self-interest.  So many see me as a curmudgeon complaining about the present and future while glorying in a false image of the past.

But that is not what I am trying to do.  I would rather us see work again as a gift from God and not simply as a means to a paycheck or a duty.  I would rather us rediscover the sense of vocation in which work has a noble place and our work is a noble calling.  I would rather relieve work of some of the burden we have placed upon it -- as if work time were playtime with a financial reward attached.

I look around me and wonder what we will do when labor is left to the immigrants or migrants because we neither want to work that hard or do the distasteful things that must be done.  I wonder what will happen to us when technology makes it easier to produce things, service things, and even care for our bodies with machines instead of people.  I wonder what will happen to us when our social interactions become completely digital as we work at home, shop from home, and entertain ourselves at home.

Which all reminds me that retirement is an idea that is inherently a contradiction.  Do we retire from the work of the relationships and supporting the people in our care?  Does the husband retire from being husband or wife from wife or do we continue the work to which we committed ourselves when we were joined in marriage?  Do we retire from parenting (or grandparenting)?  Do we retire from serving our neighbor?  Do we retire from the work of worship, together in God's house and in our individual devotional lives?  It is at best an exchange of domains -- a focus on one gives way to the focus on another with renewed effort and with the blessing of additional time.  But the foolish idea that retirement is the day when you become a child again without noble labor and only leisure is a lie and a poison.  We were created for work.  Some work continues until we breathe our last.  Some may be given to others.  But all we do is to the Lord.

Labor Day is a small reminder that work is good.  It is not a god nor was it meant to be but it is not a bad thing.  Six days you shall labor. . . said the Lord.  This was not the curse.  The work that we were created for became a curse when we resented the God who made us and had to compete in a world replete with injustice and forces against us.  Christ did not come to relieve us of work but to restore a right relationship and to the work we were always to do. . . and to deliver us to a perfect rest not confined to a day.  Oh, well, I have given you enough to think about for this Labor Day.

From safe, legal, and rare to good. . ..

In March of this year VP Kamala Harris, now the Democratic candidate for President, visited an abortion clinic and the press recorded it was “the first time a sitting US president or vice president [had visited] an abortion provider.”  It was in Minnesota, perhaps the first state to enshrine abortion rights following the Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court -- oh yes, and also the home of Gov. Tim Walz now the running mate of Harris.  Later the state eliminated all health and safety protections for women, removed the 24-hour waiting period, permitted taxpayer funding of abortion, and repealed the state’s protection of children born alive after failed abortions.  Walz signed both abortion bills.  Whatever else they might have in common, it is clear that both Harris and Walz are on the same page with respect to abortion.

In the annals of history then President Clinton had introduced the idea that abortions should be safe, legal, and rare.  That was 1992.  Sixteen years later it became the phrase used by his wife, then presidential contender Hillary Clinton, in her 2008 bid for the top spot.  Now sixteen years later nobody seems to care if abortions are safe -- safety is a lesser concern than access.  Furthermore, the battle to make them legal seems to have fueled everything from state constitutional amendments to a desire by now President Biden to reshape the Supreme Court in the wake of Dobbs and a few other decisions.  Finally, the whole world seems to have forgotten entirely the whole idea that abortions should be rare.  In fact, in the wake of the Dobbs decision removing this right from the federal arena and shifting it back to the states, the actual number of abortions has gone up -- not down -- even though 14 states now ban it, 3 have a ban after 6 weeks, and 2 ban after 12 weeks.  

Now the Republican Party has practically removed abortion from its party platform and has moved from the most pro-life party to one silent on the issue -- except, of course, for the affirmation that states should decide.  Trump himself has left us hanging on the issue of abortion as he seems not to know his own mind on the issue.   Furthermore, the states that have no restrictions on abortion are not necessarily the saltwater or liberal bastions one might presume for some with a libertarian streak have decided to say nothing on the issue and leave it up to the individual (such as in Alaska).

Clearly the pro-life cause was not simply about changing a right.  Neither can it be satisfied with changing a law.  If we are to affect the rate of abortion we must change the minds of people about the very nature of life itself, where it comes from, and what duty is ours to preserve and protect it.  For the abortion issue is but one front on an overall war against the sacred character of life and a move to let people decide in general and as individuals its value, when it begins, and when it should end.  This is the realm not of the state or the federal government but of the Church.  There are significant voices within the American churches who insist that on this moral issue there must be no ambiguity and yet the reality is that in the pews there is exactly that -- ambiguity.  Apparently, we like the principle but find it hard to apply.  The churches opposed to abortion outnumber those in favor and yet we have not simply failed to make our case at the ballot box, we have failed miserably in the pews.  Our people are listening to our rhetoric but they hearts lie elsewhere -- especially those under the age of 30.  

We have watched as the once solid political and religious pro-life alliance has faded and become silent.  We have watched as the one party that seemed solidly in our camp has decided not to say much in the hopes of gaining the halls of power by this silence.  We have watched as the courts unhitched the right from the federal arena only to have it championed successfully by states.  We have watched as politicians seem to have paid little political price for their pro-abortion stance or their silence on the issue while anti-abortion folks struggle.  What that ought to tell us is this -- don't put your eggs in one basket.  Even more profound is the sobering thought that the cause of life begins not at the statehouse or Capitol but in the pews in front of the preacher and in the classrooms where the faith is taught.  Politics, government, and law cannot change the heart but the Word of the Lord is able to convict, convince, and convert by the power of the Holy Spirit.  We have our work cut out for us.

What church looks like. . .

I saw a story about the Roman Catholic National Eucharistic Congress held in the US, apparently the first in many decades.  It brought together many thousands of people from all over the country in a stadium style setting to celebrate their faith in the sacrament of the Eucharist.  Regardless of what you think of Rome or this gathering, I would direct your attention to the backdrop for their celebration of the Mass.  The images projected were cathedral style images, perhaps even photos of actual gothic cathedrals or large sanctuaries -- I do not know.  In other words, when they wanted the setting to look like church, they drew upon the most traditional images possible to make the stadium style venue look like church.

There have been decades of architects and liturgical consultants who have said that the perfect image of for the celebration of the Eucharist is a living room.  You can trace the development of this idea across the years beginning I think in the 1950s.  The landscape is decidedly horizontal.  The result is sad and unappealing except to artsy snobs who think they know best for all of us.  This image reminds us that when people think of church, they do not think of concrete slabs or low ceilings or wooden benches or simplistic furniture.  They think just the opposite.

Some years ago the Lifeway division of the Southern Baptists surveyed those who were not Christians and those who were not inside the Church and they all agreed that they thought churches should look like churches and not like shopping malls or living rooms or the atrium of a skyscraper or a stadium or a convention center or anything else.  It is high time that we disavow the unfortunate pattern of the 1950s and thereafter and return to making churches look like churches.  It is what the people inside the Church want and it appears to be what those not of the household of God desire.  It is honest in a way that modern architecture with its hard and unadorned horizontal lines is not.  To tell you the truth, I am over it.  We should not allow architects to experiment upon churches as if this was their canvas to paint.  The buildings of the Church have a distinct purpose and identity that must be front and center.  No, I am not saying everything has to look like a gothic cathedral or an English country parish or a Romanesque structure but it does need to look like a church and it must be suited for what happens in there.  Some years ago I wrote of the striking but unfortunate structure once called the Crystal Cathedral that a Roman Catholic diocese adapted into their cathedral.  It was a real estate bargain but cost a hunk of change to result in a building that still does not reflect well what takes place inside.  That should be first and foremost in the minds of any building committee -- not simply what does it look like but how does it work for its purpose?  It is not a matter of what you like but what fits what happens in worship.  Maybe some churches could get by with lecture halls but not a sacramental church.  Maybe some churches could get by with a living room but not one where the focus is on preaching and the Sacrament of Christ's body and blood.  No, we need to give the snobs fair notice that they will not experiment on our dollar in creating forms that do not serve their purpose well.

The blessing of the long pastorate. . .

When I went out from Seminary the average tenure of the new pastor in his first call was 22 months.  I increased the average staying for nearly 13 years in my first call.  The reality is that I would have gladly stayed but it did appear to me that the Lord was calling me somewhere else.  That said, 13 years afforded me the opportunity to confirm those I baptized and to marry those I confirmed.  It gave me the opportunity to watch as young adults entered into middle age and the aged entered into glory.  Many of those wonderful folks are still there in that parish though many of them have departed this life in faith to rest from their labors.  We had our children there and it was home for a very significant part of our life.

When I accepted the call to Tennessee I did not know what the future would behold.  I often said that I did not think I had more than two moves in me and it proved to be true.  I moved once to New York and once to Tennessee and here I will finish out my years.  Though 13 years is a long time, 32 is a very long time.  I would not trade it for anything.  After three decades in the same parish, I can say that the folks in the pews are not my friends but my family.  As I took our new Associate Pastor to visit shut ins with me, I realized how true this is.  I was helping them reach back into their memories and tell their stories because their stories had become my story.  It made me think how hard it will be for this pastoral relationship to change.

I was told by a pastor once that you do not begin real ministry among your people until after your seventh year in that parish.  Maybe that is just one man's opinion but I have learned to see the wisdom of it.  It takes years before you are preaching to people as their shepherd.  Sure, officially you are their pastor or shepherd from the get go but in the beginning the face of one sheep looks like another.  After a while you begin to know the differences and your sermons reflect that knowledge.  Many times people have walked out the door and greeted me by saying I must have had a crystal ball into their life because I was preaching directly to them that Sunday.  Well, I was.  It was not quite planned on my part but that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and the long pastorate.  You preach to people you know, whose lives you know, and it shows.  Stay in the parish and learn to know those to whom you are preaching.

Some may think I have stayed too long.  I will admit that it is not easy to follow a fellow who has been there 30 years or more.  Sometimes people treat the long pastorate as a problem to be solved.  Baloney.  If you are threatened by a long tenured pastor, there is a problem and it is not with the long tenured pastor.  Grow up and learn from him.  Treat that man as you would your father.  As long as my dad was alive I constantly asked his advice.  I did not always take it but I asked him and I listened to him no matter what.  That long tenured pastor could be your greatest helper if you pay a little attention to him and ask him about things.  You do not have to take his side or follow his advice but you would be a fool not to ask it or consider it.

I know I have made mistakes.  So do the people I have served.  They are Christian people.  They have forgiven me and I have forgiven them.  It is the way of Christ -- ask for forgiveness and forgive.  No pastor is perfect.  The mark, however, of a mature relationship is that you work through errors and hurts.  The longer you are in a family, the more you know the faults and failings of each family member but the more you also know the power of love and forgiveness to sustain that love.  Pastors who have been in the same place a very long time know something of forgiveness and of asking for it.

As a young pastor I was sure I knew just about everything.  As an old one I am more sure about what I do not know.  If you move too often you never learn that about yourself.  Staying in one place a long time means you have learned to change your mind, negotiate, compromise (about non-doctrinal things), and give in.  In the beginning of your pastoral ministry you are ready to die on every hill but after a while you learn that not ever hill is worth dying on.  I would like to think that I have learned a bit about this. 

For everything that could be cited as a negative about a long pastorate, I will counter with something that is positive and more significant.  The people in the pews know that -- even the folks who do not like you very much.  They know the value of a steady presence over the long haul.  Remember that the pastoral ministry and the parish are more like the tortoise than the hare -- it is an endurance race and not a sprint to the finish line.  The long pastorate certainly helps people see this and experience it and appreciate it.  It also helps to remind folks that we are not competing for anything but working toward the same goal.  Stick around the parish long enough to stop looking for a better place and to begin making where you are at that better place.  I know that people pay attention to me and trust my judgment because they know I could have left many times but believed always that it was the Lord's will that I remain where I was.  The best pastors I know have been in the same place a generation or more.  A long tenure will not automatically make you a better pastor but it will not hurt that cause either.

So to my younger peers I say stick around a while and see what God will show you and see what you might be able to do.  Time is on your side.  There is no perfect congregation or perfect pastor but a long tenured pastor always has an edge on one who has been a lot of places for a short time. Don't look for a better place but work together to make where you are better.  It is always a win and your family will appreciate it as well.

Andy Stanley's vision. . .

Andy Stanley, son of the famous Southern Baptist pastor and past president Charles Stanley, has always had an uneasy relationship with his dad but it is clear that it was also an uneasy relationship with his dad's church.  Nowhere is that more telling than the way Andy Stanley has approached the great divide between New Testament Christianity and the cultural appropriation of same sex marriage and the gender identity business.  According to one author, Stanley has decided that it is better to accommodate the culture on this issue than it is to confront it.  He was not shy in saying he would encourage any gay couples in his congregation to commit to each other and could envision himself presiding at such a "wedding" -- especially if it was for a family member.  Celibacy would be unfair, according to Stanley.  "I know I shouldn’t let experience dictate my theology, but I have. Maybe I’m wrong,"said Stanley.

As uncomfortable as that makes some, it does expose the soft underbelly of entrepreneurial Evangelicalism -- something Stanley seems to be very good at.  In the greater Atlanta area, some 31,000 folks attend one of the Stanley franchises and his influence has extended across America in print, as mentor, and as influencer over megachurches and pastors everywhere.  While the battle lines have been drawn over these issues for some time, it is clear that Evangelicalism is less a confession of faith or truth than it is a practical approach to being church and becoming a big one at that.  Stanley has clearly decided that it is impossible to maintain Biblical integrity with the church growth mentality for which he has become famous.  It is, in his mind, better to find a way to accommodate the culture than risk shrinking as you stand in opposition to that culture.

You will recall that Saddleback and Rick Warren, two famous icons of Evangelicalism, decided that the Southern Baptist Convention was wrong on the issue of women's ordination and chose to go with the change rather than the tradition.  Those chosen to replace Warren as the faces of Saddleback have a history of a somewhat muddled position on these issues of sexual desire and gender identity.  It can be said with some certainty that Saddleback is moving and its theological direction looks very much like what you see with North Point and Stanley.  In fact, there is a somewhat hidden organization designed to aid and assist such changes across the Evangelical landscape.  Pastors in Process is a somewhat confidential program to train pastors to more stealthily “move the conversation on LGBTQ inclusion forward in [their] congregation[s].”  Ambiguity and the back door are the preferred means of effecting change in churches.  Clearly that is the pattern here.  Without a denominational structure, order, and confession, Evangelicals are more prone to this kind of devolution of doctrine than other churches -- though even these can be ignored in favor of heresy.  This is one more reason why Lutherans should not be watching or learning from Evangelicals -- unless the goal is to end up like one!

Curious. . .

Over in Rome a conservative Archbishop Vigano got in trouble for not supporting Francis, the most congenial of all the popes, and has been excommunicated for being unsupportive and treasonous. Curiously, those charges do not equally apply to those who have flaunted Rome on its teaching of the sacred character of life, the traditional family, birth control, and the role of women without suffering any recrimination.  I guess you have to be traditional in order to be noticed and conservative to be a threat.  We should not be surprised at this.  It happens all the time in a host of Christian denominations.

The Episcopal Church could not bring itself to excommunicate someone who denied cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith (like John Shelby Spong) but it easily brought down a local bishop in Albany who refused to accede to the whole woke agenda there.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is powerless to silence their teachers who substitute their sexual views for religious truth but they will not allow anyone to disagree with those views and remain in their communion.  The Methodist Church is splitting up because they have grown tired of losing to the conservatives in their votes to amend their church's faith to accord with all the alphabet soup characters of desire and identity but refused to take any action for someone who denies the essential truths of the Biblical faith.  I could repeat the same thing and substitute other denominations with the same outcome.  Even in Missouri, we have rules about how far conservatives can go but seem to wink and nod our way out of condemning those in our midst who have moved left in their thinking and believing. Curiously, all seem agreed that the bigger threat is the conservative one and a little bit of woke won't kill you.

I get it.  Conservatives are the party that rains on every parade while liberals will gladly cooperate with any form of liberalism or progressivism.  The funny thing is that what conservatives cannot get churches to do in support of the Biblical faith, the liberals and progressives can find a way to weaken it.  It is like we are all agreed that the greater threat comes from the right rather than the left, from those who believe the creed as opposed to those who merely say it, and from those expect a hermeneutic of continuity when it comes to what we believe, teach, and confess.  Curious, indeed!

There is little that I know about Archbishop Vigano except that he was once a spokesman for the pope with respect to the US but began to change when the mess over the Vatican sex scandals was erupting.  He complained that this pope did nothing to rein in his favorite princes and still they have not been held fully accountable (or excommunicated).  But apparently Francis has had enough from this guy and has taken the criticisms personally, judged them to be a threat, and acted to remove him.  Oddly enough, some of the most famous of the sex scandal figures from Rome have yet to be even threatened with the punishment meted out on Vigano with due haste.  I could not tell you if Vigano is a good guy or bad guy or reformed bag guy in all of this but what I can tell you is that Rome's biggest problems do not come from the right but from the left and the fruits of this left leaning bureaucracy so quick to tamp down opposition.  Rome and nearly every other Christian group has this to ponder.  Err on the left and you may incur a few smart aleck remarks but err on the right and you will be in the cross hairs of your church -- no matter which that might be.  Until we fix this, we will always be drifting toward the abyss of faithlessness more than we are careening into the pit of theological or liturgical rigor.  And that might explain a few thing.

Just a little. . .

The problems facing us as Christian are seldom the grand descent into hell in one fell swoop but we get there just as effectively a little at a time.  We play with sin as if it were a naughty thing instead of an evil one.  We treat the devil as child's play and forget his sophistication and intuitive knowledge of our weaknesses and failings.  We do not need repentance as much as a fair hearing for understanding of our faults and circumstances.

We say all that time that we are good people, we come from good people, and we live with good people.  It is a code word for saying we are surely not the evil people or the sinners who have no right to stand before a righteous God.  We are just a little in need of redemption and forgiveness because we are just little sinners who need understanding more than we need redemption.  But that is the problem.

Even good conservative Christians are just a little woke, just a little more comfortable with our sins than we should be, and just a little more understanding of the sins countenanced by society than we ought.  We like being a bit more tolerant than judgmental and a bit more accepting than we should with our own favorite sins and those countenanced by the society around us.  We think it is not a problem because we really do believe the traditional Christian things even though we do find it hard to practice.  

We love the traditional hymnody in Church but we also love the gospel sound tracks of contemporary Chrisitian music.  It is not a big problem for us to live in the two different worlds of orthodox Lutherans and the Christian rock stars of the moment.  We can hold up the idea of weekly Eucharist just as long as we don't have to commune that often.  We can talk about private confession but we don't have to do it.  We can laud solid and doctrinal hymnody but sing the playlist from the non-denominational church down the street.  We can reduce liturgy to an idea that allows us to jettison, replace, or paraphrase the Divine Service into what we want it to be.  We can have a ministry but leave it vague enough so that we really do not need a formal clergy except for a good order and appearance.  We can talk about fellowship but still reduce faith to an individual, personal, and private relationship with Jesus.  And, we can still proudly call ourselves Lutheran.  We are either just a little Lutheran or we are Lutheran with just a little other stuff thrown in.  A little woke, a little evangelical, a little Protestant.   At some point we will have to decide how much of these other things we can be and still be Lutheran.  Or, perhaps not.  We can drift along as we have for a while.

It is the same in politics.  We can claim to be conservative while carving out little niches of woke, liberal, or progressive positions within our cause -- especially the ones that impinge upon us directly or upon our family members.  We cannot abide being out of step with the world and politically that has meant that the old labels that once defined us -- like theological terms such as confessional -- have become more catch words than actual descriptions of what we stand for.  The damage done by just a little in politics, theology, marriage, and family reap their rewards in the end when we can no longer define ourselves except by saying we are not quite as or as bad as or as extreme as our opponents. 

Removing the link. . .

We have fairly effectively removed the link between motherhood and womanhood, fatherhood and manhood.  It began a very long time ago.  The birth control pill was the reason but the nail in the coffin that killed our association of sex with love and love with children and femaleness with motherhood and maleness with fatherhood.  It has become positively neanderthal to connect what we have so effectively made separate and distinct.  No one, even those who tend to a traditional understanding of marriage and family, seem quite willing to surrender the latitude such a distinction has provided for those married to define themselves and their relationship without necessarily even considering children and their roles as mom and dad.

While it is certainly easy to trace the history of this along with the injustice proclaimed of women who must carry and raise the child while men get off lightly with just the sex, it was never quite that simple.  The end result of this has been the devastation of very structure of the relationship between man–woman and, indeed, the very definition and identity of each.  The individual autonomy which is provided when conceiving and raising a child can be banished from life or simply consigned to one of many and a less than salutary option has not proved to be a beneficial as thought.  Women who wish children are released from the choice of marriage to pursue a sanitized version of conception with the forms of reproductive technology already available to them and men are afforded the same option (though one less chosen, to be sure).  It is not that we do not need children or want them, we seem not to need or want the relationship that provided the context for children -- at least until modern times.

Is that all children are?  Are they merely a choice for some or are they inherent to the shape of marriage and family?  It is harder and harder for anyone to say that children are not merely one choice among many choices and certainly not essential to the life of the individual or a couple.  We have not merely released both men and women from the burden of also seeing themselves as fathers and mothers but have laid bare the very foundation of parenthood and raised questions about its value or necessity at all.  If we could, we just might find a way to justify and laud purchasing children as products through retail outlets, allowing the buyer to design tailor made children the way we would customize a car for delivery.  Then the cycle might be finally complete as we bypass parenting to make a consumer choice for or against a child.

The lessons of the sociology and psychology applied to parenthood have been learned so well that Christians routinely have fewer children than secular folk or the nones.  We go our secular world one better and insist that the only real link between being male and a father or female and a mother was an invented one and certainly not the intention of God in creation.  In so doing, we have shows just how far from the world of Scripture our lives have fallen.  What is most concerning is that this does not seem to be viewed as a problem among many Christian folks much less those outside the faith.  It has become the effective normal for those who claim to be Christians as much as for those who do not.  The autonomous self does not quickly surrender its autonomy for any cause -- religious or otherwise.

Valpo is officially dead. . .

Announced a month or so ago, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN, has officially discontinued the theology major and minor.  Of course, there will be something in some way religious offered in the curriculum but who knows what this might look like or how it would be taught or who will teach it.  The final remaining philosophy faculty member will be terminated by the end of the next academic year.  The grand dream of a Lutheran university has been set aside and its once esteemed Christ College is barely a blip on the campus anymore.  What Valpo was, it no longer is.  It went the way of all flesh by diluting its identity slowly until there was nothing left.  At that point the leaders of this school tried to save it by making it into something different than it was or was ever intended to be.  Will it succeed?  It is highly unlikely that Valpo will have enough distinctives to merit a second look from prospective students or find a reason for spending big bucks when the same thing is available at state schools much more reasonably priced, 

If the school had any integrity whatsoever, it would sell off the Chapel that is the most prominent building on campus.  But it does not have any integrity.  The whole idea that you could be generically Lutheran did not endear itself to the Missourians who had once considered the school its own and it did not appeal to the ELCA people who seem to care little about the values that marked its legacy.  Now, with a Roman Catholic at the helm, the school has jettisoned many if not all of the things that once marked the reason to go there.  I am sad about it but not surprised.  Why bother with Valpo or any other churchly school unless it is true to its churchly identity?  

There was a time when Valpo had a certain cache to it.  It was not simply unique but profound.  With world class Lutherans in the executive offices and at the Chapel and on the faculty, the school seemed to have something to offer and something worth paying for for your undergraduate education.  Now it would seem that anything Lutheran is long gone and anything Christian is just about gone.  It is a shell of its former self.  I well recall seeing the chapel for the first time and hearing OP Kretzmann preach.  Old friends and acquaintances said the first mass there (Kenneth Korby) or served as dean of chapel and theology faculty (Norman Nagel).  The Liturgical Institute drew tons of pastors, seminarians, and parish musicians.  That is now as gone as they are.  The Lord will resurrect these men of God and give them new and glorious flesh to wear for all eternity.  I do not believe the Lord will raise Valpo from its moribund state and that is probably just as it should be.  They don't want to be what they were so they will have to find something better or the last one out the door will turn off the lights to this Lutheran dream.  

UPDATE

Valpo has apparently broken ground for their new Rafi Interfaith Center.  Valpo President Padilla joined U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan (D) and the fellow paying the bill.  The donor's daughter, a VU grad, led a Muslim prayer to kick off the event. Apparently the donor owns the land and is paying for the building, so Valpo is really just putting their name on it and incorporating into their programming.  Again, so much for Christ College....

The greater cause. . .

The decisions of a couple of churches (two of them Lutheran) to ordain women now some 54 years ago and counting were not the thoughtful choices that they were portrayed to be.  For one, illicit ordinations of women had preceded the official decision and had created a two tier ministry that was untenable.  In addition, the embrace of the ordination of women did not proceed after a period of great theological reflection nor was it cognizant of the break that this decision would make with Rome, Constantinople, and the consistent catholic practice down through the ages.  It was a judgment upon this past -- that the early Church succumbed to the pressure of the then culture against women -- and it was an intention to right what was considered a wrong.  It was not an issue of Scripture or tradition or ecumenical relationship but of justice for women as seen through the eyes of 20th century Christianity.

The same principle was at work in accepting same sex marriage, homosexuality, the plethora of genders, and a host of other things.  Nearly everyone with a brain acknowledges that some if not all of these modern day sacred truths conflicts with Scripture and the explicit word of Scripture.  Nearly everyone with a brain acknowledges that these sacred tenets of modernity conflicts with the consistent catholic tradition from the earliest of days.  Nearly everyone with a brain knows that neither Rome nor Orthodoxy is likely to change its teaching any day soon.  So justice for those who were deemed to be wrongly oppressed or suppressed has become the single rationale for why these churches made the decisions they have made.  Solidarity with these causes and the transformation of the Gospel from sin and forgiveness, death and life, into a cause for righting the presumed wrongs of the past has left these churches with more than folks with alphabet and pronoun issues related to sex and gender.  It has shifted the focus of these churches completely away from the axis of the cross, the suffering, the death, and the resurrection of the God-man Jesus Christ in order to rescue and redeem humanity from their terrible choice in Eden.  Instead, the focus has been to embrace Eden's fall as progress.

Eden represents the dismissal of God's voice and the rejection of His order in favor of an appeal to desire.  That is the curse sin left in humanity (one that led to death).  But it is precisely Eden and its surrender to desire that is behind the lauding of sexual desire as the most important desire and gender choice as that which defines people most of all.  Contemporary Christianity has not simply rejected Scripture and the catholic tradition in favor of its own presumed cause of justice, it has embraced Eden as the goal.  Sure, there is complaint over how desire has been lived out and the persecution of some desires while others are honored but by and large truth and identity have been sacrificed for the sake of desire that is but one person wide and one person deep.

The world has made a judgment.  The contemporary Christians have agreed.  Eden is not the problem but how Eden was lived out.  Feeling is more true than fact.  Desire is our ultimate identity.  Sin has nothing to do with the commandments or will of God but the denial of desire.  Justice has become redemption and the only redemption worth having has been justice for the moment.  Tell me where I am wrong.

Vouchers and the law. . .

A federal judge has ruled that Maine did not violate the U.S. constitutional rights of religious schools by requiring them to abide by the state’s antidiscrimination law and therefore to admit lgbtq students as a consequence and condition to receiving taxpayer-funded tuition assistance (AKA vouchers).  At the same time, the judge acknowledged that this will inevitably head up to a higher court for the final say.  U.S. District Judge John Woodcock Jr. found no inherent constitutional violation with the requirement that private and religious schools accepting vouchers from the state must also abide by the Maine Human Rights Act.  In his own words, “The plaintiffs are free to practice their religion, including the teaching of their religion as they see fit, but cannot require the state to subsidize their religious teachings if they conflict with state antidiscrimination law.”  As soon as he ruled, a notice of appeal to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston was filed.  His 75 page decision reflects the legal tension because of the the collision between a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Maine cannot discrimination against religious schools in providing tuition assistance and a state law requiring that schools participating in the tuition program must abide by the Maine Human Rights Act, which includes protections for LGBTQ students and faculty. 

So what does this mean?  Any entanglement with federal or state funds is bound to bring with it the assumption of some liability to or requirement for compliance with rules and laws that contradict the religious freedom of the church or church/school to exercise freely its independence from such rules or laws.  In other words, it is a fool's errand to believe that vouchers are free money or that accepting such funds will not entail you in the web of state rules and laws (or federal) designed to enforce its own position over and against religious freedom.  Though this will play out in the courts and perhaps even the schools will prevail, it is a signal that this is but one battle in the ongoing war.  We who insist upon freedom to exercise the tenets of our religion should not be surprised when Uncle Sam and his state sponsored children decide that money buys them influence over us.  Just a heads up...

Lutherans and Images. . .

This is by no means at attempt at a complete review of the complicated relationship between Luther, Lutherans, and images (and art in general).  Early on Luther was ambivalent, seeming to prefer less rather than more.  The rise of enemies of the Reformation from the side of the enthusiasts and the Radical Reformers seemed to have changed his mind.  By this time Luther was convinced of the value of these things in setting the Lutherans apart from their more extreme counterparts in Geneva and other parts.  Curiously, everywhere Lutherans were challenged by such folks over the role of art, the use of images, the wearing of vestments, and the ceremonial of the Divine Service, the Lutherans seemed to be more adamant about the value of these and their usefulness.  I would suggest you read Bridget Heal or Ernst Zeedon or Bodo Nishan or Siegfried Mueller or Thomas Kaufmann for the particulars.  Suffice it to say, the typical pattern was for Lutherans to warm up to these things the more they were attacked for their use by the more radical folks in Protestantism.

Therein lies my own point.  When pressed by those who said that such things were unnecessary or a distraction or contrary to Scripture, the Lutherans did not just argue from a theoretical point but actually increased their use as if to say they were important after all.  What a difference between the Lutherans of more recent history and this time in Lutheranism.  When Lutherans got to the USA they became more and more concerned about the practices that had once seemed rather normal.  Along with art (especially the crucifix), vestments, music (especially chanting), and the ceremonies of the Divine Service, the Lutherans felt conspicuous.  They had hoped to be rather normal on the American scene and so some of them began to mirror the hesitance of the more elaborate they encountered among the Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and the like.  Less became more and more was, well, not good.  This was certainly part of the desire for the Common Service and some liturgical unity.  Lutheran identity was in danger of being lost.  Indeed, one of the complaints about Lutheran hymnals is that they were full of anything but Lutheran hymns.  That antagonism to art and beauty, the fuller ceremonial, vestments, and such was institutionalized in Lutheranism and we began to invent reasons for having an empty cross or acting like our Protestant counterparts on Sunday morning.  When challenged, they diluted their tradition instead of affirming it.  This is significantly different form the response of their ancestors a hundred years before.

C. F. W. Walther complained that the churches in America looked like lecture halls and rose to defend the Missouri Synod's use of vestments or chanting or a crucifix.  The fact that he had to defend Missouri against the less is more attitude of the American Lutherans who were here when the Saxons arrived tells a great deal about the state of things in the US.  Even more strange is how quickly Missourians forgot Walter's defense and his hymnal and borrowed freely from the American churches discomfort with things liturgical and with Lutheran art and music.  By the time of the 1950s we had learned to build church buildings devoid of art and had decided that a crucifix actually was a witness to the resurrection.  Gone were the statues, crucifixes, chanting, and liturgical practices of old.  Stained glass became modern and without much in the way of subject or usefulness in teaching the faith.  Big blocks of color replaced the images that once told the story of the Gospel.  

The more modern response to challenge or the discomfort of the surrounding culture with form, beauty, ritual, and music was to give up and remodel our way out of our own past.  Where we once found these things useful to mark the difference between us and the radical elements of Protestantism, we were now embarrassed by our own past enough to join them in the critique.  Instead of standing up for and warming up to images and ceremony we distanced ourselves from our own past and tried to be more like our critics.  How odd! Yet this is what has informed the church experience of some in our pews and pulpits who continue to think the Lutheran response should be to jettison these things instead of affirm their usefulness and make them more prominent.  Thankfully at least one of our seminaries seems to have learned this lesson and is encouraging the fuller rather then leaner approach to art, beauty, ceremony, ritual, music, and images.  What people today are calling new is actually something old and something we once found a bulwark against the confusion of the masses of Lutherans with the generic Protestants.  Those who dabble in contemporary or seeker worship borrowed from Evangelicalism seem to be acting upon the inherent suspicion of these traditions with the art and beauty, forms and ceremonies, that Lutherans learned are pretty important to who we are.

An embassy in an alien land. . .

The ridiculous business of the Olympics and its crude image (whether intended to be the Last Supper in drag or stupidly mimicking that image by accident) reminds us that we are living in an age in which offending or being tone deaf to Christians is the only offense left.  No one would have dared to cast Mohammad or Islam in this way but Christians are fair game, I guess.  It is one more way in which we Christians are reminded of the cause of Christ in a world unfriendly to Him or His cause and therefore unfriendly to us.

This might make us want to take arms and fight back.  It might make us think that we need to fight back in order to claim territory and people and a culture for Jesus.  While that might certainly be the temptation, nowhere does Christ call us to do battle for Him in this way.  We are to fight the good fight of faith but the locus of that battle lies within us and not in some me'n'Jesus sort of shoot out at the OK corral.  No, we should not simply take it but neither should we respond in kind.  We are not called by God to fight for square footage or for political power or state sponsored favor.

Nowhere is this more true than how we see the Church in the world.  The best analogy I can think of is that of an embassy.  An embassy is literally the sovereign space of one nation within the territory of another.  Embassies are not sacred -- they are violated by our enemies from time to time.  This is a solemn reminder of the kind of enemies we have.  They do not play fair nor do they play by the rules.  That said, from our perspective that is exactly what the Church is.  She is the kingdom of God but in an alien and foreign land.  Where the Church is, gathered around the Name of Jesus, the Word of God, and the Holy Sacraments, there is God, God's kingdom, and God's territory -- even when it is in an unfriendly nation or world.  Churches are embassies of Christ for the sake of the Kingdom and they are places of refuge and safety not because their buildings are strong but because their Lord is.  

We must come and go from this embassy.  Our work is in the world but we are not of the world.  We cannot afford to allow ourselves to get caught up in a fight over land or power.  Our cause is faithfulness to Christ.  We meet every  Lord's Day, the day of His resurrection, to gather around His Word and Sacraments, in part to be reminded that we do not belong to the world.  We belong to the Lord are our citizenship is in His kingdom.  We have our commonwealth with Christ.  As tempting as it is to use such offensive things as what we saw in France at the Olympics, our call is not to war with the world over power or space but to be faithful to the Gospel that alone saves.  Embassies are not military outposts but territory of one nation in another for the sake of the citizens who live there but who belong somewhere else.  That is how it is for you and me.

We will never win the nation for Jesus but we are called to speak the Gospel to the far reaches of the earth knowing that where the Word of Christ is spoken an outpost of the Kingdom is placed there.  I find some comfort in this.  We are not on our own nor are we expected to for God what is His to accomplish.  Our calling is to be faithful.  And, by the way, that means we need to be in the embassy of the Lord often enough so that we know it as our true home and a little bit of heaven planted by God in the midst of this world and its troubles, fights, and evil.  That may not seem like much but it is more than enough for you and me.  Trust in the Lord and not in earthly rulers or kingdoms.  That is what the Psalmists said.  How hard it is to believe sometimes that we should not fight for every square inch of territory we can claim for the Lord but we are not here to mark a claim for land or property but for those for whom Christ died.

The fruits of a skeptical mind. . .

I was reminded not long ago that some 36 years ago the then Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith addressed the modern world with its so-called religious scholars and the Biblical scholars within Christendom.  It was titled “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today.”  The voice came from Joseph Ratzinger later to become Pope Benedict XVI and he was, in many ways, laying out a needed course correction to those who had for several centuries used what has been called the “historical-critical” method of biblical interpretation. Note that this was about 15 years after this whole thing blew up within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

Rarely have methodologies caused the kind of confusion among scholars and among the laity as this method of Biblical interpretation.  It was born of the distinction between the “The Jesus of History” and “The Christ of Faith” and began to sow seeds of doubt about the Scriptures and about what we could ever really know about Jesus Christ.  The first thing to be dispensed with was the inerrancy of Scripture -- something that had been nearly universal among both Roman Catholic and Protestants but was not summarily dismissed as naive and even dangerous.  Under the guise of clarifying what Scripture said and we could know, the veracity or legitimacy of passages within the canon and their meaning was attacked not simply by the skeptics outside but those within.  

By this time Rome had normalized the historical-critical method and it had long before dominated the universities and seminaries of Protestantism.  Though Christendom had been relatively united around the familiar words of St. Augustine, now the teachers took odds with him.  St. Augustine said, “For understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that you may understand; since, "except you believe, you shall not understand (as in Isaiah chapter 7: verse 9)".(Tractate 29).  All of this drew from the words of our Lord, “unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 18:3).  Reason had become the master and Scripture merely the tool in its hand.

Now Rome openly mocks those who cling to the truthfulness of God's Word and Protestantism laughs at those who suggest the Scripture is without error.  The fruits of this skepticism have set us adrift from our moorings in the Word of God, the faithful catholic tradition, and the moral tradition born of this Word and tradition.  By their fruits we shall know them.  The fruits of the undoing of our confidence in God's Word have led us down the garden path of sin, wickedness, doubt, and fear.  Nothing is clear or without skepticism and doubt.  The Scriptures have become a book of thoughts which must be given legitimacy and authority by our own reason, acceptance, and experience.  What then Cardinal Ratzinger was critiquing is a genie out of the bottle.  It was profound but already too late for Rome and for most of Protestantism.  The little Missouri Synod has become the one and only group to turn back the advance of modernism and there are still some in our midst who believe that you can used the methodology without losing your integrity.  Without confidence in the truthfulness of the Scriptures, every person sits upon the throne of reason to decide what God said and what He meant by it.  This is not only attacks the Scripture but violates the very catholicity of the Church.

Bread and body, truth and lies. . .

Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15B, preached on Sunday, August 18, 2024.

It is remarkable that our Lord kept up this conversation as long as He did.  He said it plainly enough.  “I am the bread of life.”  The Jews even understood what He was saying and questioned it.  “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?!”  Even His own disciples said to Him that this was too hard and who can listen to what Jesus was saying.  But this was no intellectual discussion.  It was and is the most practical thing of all.  It is about truth and lies.

If Jesus is wrong about His flesh in this Eucharistic bread, He is wrong about everything else.  But if He is right about everything else, then He must also be right about this Eucharistic bread and wine being His body and blood.  We think that this is a small thing and that churches and people should be able to overlook differences about how they understand what Jesus has said.  Our Lord, however, did not speak in riddles.  He speaks plainly and bluntly enough.  My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.  Whoever feeds on Me will live forever because they are receiving my flesh and blood given for the life of the world.

We want to believe that there is a common core of Christian that is all we need to agree on and we can disagree about baptismal regeneration or about confession and absolution or about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  We want to think that when folks come either without understanding or even rejecting the Real Presence, that should be no barrier to kneeling together at the altar.  We want to believe that doctrine is portable – things are what you think they are and they are not what don’t think they are.  This is the stuff of falsehood and half truths and lies.  If there is anything we learn from Revelation it is that the lukewarm and those tepid about the truths of God find no friend in Jesus.

Some are already offended by these words.  That is how it was then.  Jesus actually asked His disciples:  “Are you offended at this?”  Of course they were.  Of course we are.  We live in a world of fairy tales and happy endings but Jesus lives in the real world of sin and its curse of death.  He has not come for symbols.  He has come for real food and real drink, for real bread that feeds eternal life and real blood that cleanses us from all our sin.  He has come not for a core of Christian truth but for the whole truth.  He has come not so that we might understand or accept Him or the truth of the cross and empty tomb but so that we might believe it.  At some point in time you begin to realize that you believe not because it all makes sense but because there is no other truth that saves; everything else is lies.
That is what we confess as we stand to see the Gospel book raised up and the Gospel proclaimed.  This is the word of eternal life.  This is the truth that saves.  This is what we confess as we come to this altar.  This bread is Christ’s body and this cup is His blood.  This is what we confess to the world – we have believed and come to know that Jesus is the Holy One of God in whom there is salvation and there is salvation in no other.

We have been taught to believe that the real danger to the faith is in those who reject this Gospel.  We have been conditioned to believe that the enemies of the faith are the real threat to us and to the Church of God.  But there is a greater danger and more profound threat.  That is from those who say it is not about truth or lies but about versions of the truth and versions of the faith and no one of them is better or worse than they other.  This is the real threat to Christianity.  Faith will not die because enemies overpower it but because we are underwhelmed by it.  As soon as we begin to think that no church has the whole truth and every church has some truth, we betray Christ and His Word.  As soon as we allow that everyone is a little right and no one is all wrong, we disarm the Gospel and it is no longer about truth but about opinion.

When Bible study became about what we think about this Word and not about what it says, we made the Gospel mere opinion.  When we made preaching about how well the preacher captures and keeps our attention, we made the Gospel into entertainment.  When we made worship about what makes us feel good, we made ourselves the center and judge of everything.  Jesus is clear.  It is about truth and lies – not about versions or opinions but truth and lies.  When it becomes about something else, it becomes about nothing at all.

All around us churches have sacrificed the Word of the Lord and the truth of God that saves to the what will sell in the marketplace of ideas or what will appeal to the desires of people.  All around us churches have surrendered the truth that endures forever to the truth that is defined by the individual alone.  All around us churches have replaced the call to repentance with the demand that God affirm what we think or feel.  We as people sit and listen to it all and wonder what could be so bad about letting people think what they want or feel good about themselves or do what they desire.  We have abandoned the idea that Jesus is truth, that His Word is truth, and that it is only the truth that saves.  Until it sounds positively narrow minded and judgmental for any Church to insist this alone is the faith.

My friends, the disciples admitted what we are afraid to say out loud.  Jesus’ words are hard.  Jesus’ truth conflicts with the desires of our hearts and the reason of our minds.  But they have also taught us to confront these things and bring them to the Lord.  His Words are spirit and life.  He alone has the truth to rescue us from the threatening peril of our sins and bring us out of the shadow of death to everlasting life.  Simon Peter said out loud what we struggle to admit.  It is not about which faith appeals to us but which faith has the power to save us.

“Who else can we go to, Jesus?  You have the words of eternal life.”  This is not about which truth fits us or makes us feel better but which truth is true and which is a lie, which truth forgives, redeems, and saves, and which lies condemn, which truth can only be approached by faith and which lies are manufactured by our minds and fueled with our own sinful desires.  Here you have it.  Jesus is the living Bread comes down from heaven.  If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.  His bread is not an idea to inhabit our minds but His flesh which is real food and His blood which is real drink.  There are no versions of Christianity or versions of this truth.  There is only truth and lies.  This is hard and offensive and shocking but this is also the word and promise of Jesus.  Let not the objections of your mind or the desires of your heart steal away from you the truth that saves, the truth preached to you, and the truth you feast upon in this Holy Eucharist.  It is not about what food you want or how much you want it.  It is about which food feeds you everlasting life.  That is Christ alone.  Amen

Elitism. . . vs Populism. . .

Over the course years many things have been framed within the context of elitism (or high culture) and populism (or pop culture).  When I was a brand new pastor I was told by one of my members that the people in the pew could not understand my sermons because I used words they did not know.  When I inquired about which words, one example was the word purview.  I thanked the person who told me this and worked to make sure my sermons did not include words outside an ordinary vocabulary but all the while I acknowledged in those sermons that our faith had its own vocabulary which could not be avoided.  It was and is the language of Scripture.  While the temptation is to cite this as an example of an elitist perspective versus a populist one, I do not think the comparison is quite fair.  I was gently reminded that most of the folks in the pews then did not have a college degree and were blue collar.  As conscious as I was to consider this while writing my sermons, I did not shy away from the vocabulary of Scripture.

In a different place I was told that the hymns in the hymnal were elitist or too high brow for ordinary people.  I was encouraged to bring in the song lists from evangelical congregations which was more populist.  This was a critique masquerading as a statement about culture when it was in reality a statement of preference.  In that location the playlists of the local Christian radio stations was decidedly pop Gospel or contemporary Christian music and the few hymns that made the airwaves were generic staples common to Baptist and Methodist hymnals of the day.  This person was trying to say the hymns in our hymnal represented a high brow culture with complicated rhythms, scale, and melodic lines.  This really was not true (the hymnal was The Lutheran Hymnal and it has never been accused of being elitist).  People were not singing because the music was too difficult but simply because their taste ran to the kind of music they heard on the generic Christian radio station.  As we all know, there is nothing quite as complicated as the rhythms, scale, and melodic lines of contemporary music.

Still again I was told that the liturgy was high brow, elitist, and represented something alien and foreign to the culture, experience, and comfort levels of the folks in the pew.  Again, preference was masquerading as a critique about the form and words of the Divine Service.  In this case, the person wanted a worship service that represented the simple faith of Jesus.  I am not at all sure what the simple of faith of Jesus is or if it exists outside of the imagination of some people.  Jesus was never accused of being simple but His own disciples found His sayings hard, too hard for them.  Peter admitted that they followed Jesus not because they found Him simple and direct but because there was life in no one else.  The Divine Service is not representative of a high culture or elitist perspective -- not the words or the music.  In fact, it is much more populist than Gregorian Chant.  It is not that hard to say, sing, or understand but preference sometimes works to frame something in a false context.  Calling the Divine Service high culture is exactly that -- placing the blame on accessibility rather than on preference.

Interestingly, Bach was accused not of being a musical elitist but of being a populist.  His fame was drawn more from his skill at the organ than from his compositional skills.  Bach's appeal was wide as people were drawn into the musical life of the Church by his ability at the organ bench and his ability to use rather basic tools to churn out an amazing repertoire of church music.  Today some warn that the people are not into Bach nor do they appreciate his kind of high brow music.  Really?  In both congregations I have served the folks in the pews were enthralled with the musical witness of God's Word and the keyboard compositions of Bach.  As a child I heard Virgil Fox play Bach's Gig Fugue on old Black Beauty and watched as the people who had filled the auditorium literally stomped their feet to the rhythm of this magnificent piece of music.  We have no need to fear our past nor to manifest our liturgical identity nor to teach out people to sing the great and grand Lutheran chorales.  This is not high brow music nor is it elitist neither is it quite populist.  It is simply wonderful, exciting, and eloquent in its service to the Word.  In art and in music, as well as in preaching and liturgy, elitism is a charge often leveled against truth by those who do not like what it says or sounds like or is.