A curious dispute. . .

Sometimes I find what is being argued and how it is being argued among some in Rome as rather tedious and arcane.  So it is that apparently there is a war against kneeling and has been for some time.  It is being said that progressives prefer standing and traditionalists prefer kneeling.  It is a matter of theology for some of those arguing -- although it is at least practical theology.  Lutherans do not pay much attention to the kneeling debates in Rome.  That is in part because the vast majority of Lutherans do not kneel ever (except for a few moments at the rail when receiving the Sacrament) and relatively few Lutheran naves have kneelers in the pews.  We do not kneel because we do not like it and because it is inconvenient and because some say they cannot and therefore would be conspicuous if everyone else knelt.  At least those are some of our arguments.

Everyone would agree that kneeling is not convenient or comfortable.  For those reasons alone we do not want to kneel.  Kneeling is inconvenient for all and uncomfortable for the aged and those with bad knees (just about everyone these days).  Lord, knows God would not want us to do something inconvenient or uncomfortable so therefore God has deemed kneeling unnecessary or irrelevant as well.  That is the way some Lutherans think.  Sure, we might make an exception at the rail but even then kneeling is not required of those who cannot or do not wish to kneel.  That would not be Lutheran.  And we could say the same about bowing and genuflecting.  Not convenient, not comfortable, and, to the latter especially, too much like Rome for a Lutheran's good.

Nevermind that the word kneel is found all over Scripture.  It must be symbolic and not prescriptive.  And so is bowing.  But there are a lot of words in Scripture that we do not pay all that much attention to -- especially if they refer to something we do not like to do or something we find uncomfortable.  Even when we sing words like kneel and bow (as in the Venite, Psalm 95) we read them symbolically.  Lord, knows you would not want to ask people to kneel when the hymn or Psalm talks about kneeling (or bowing!).  In fact, we could say the same about singing.  God did not really mean O come let us sing unto the Lord.  That is a turn of a phrase.  Speaking is better than singing and it is faster so that the service might actually end a couple of moments sooner -- always a good thing!

Okay, my tongue in cheek point is this.  Words should not be not taken to be symbolic unless they are meant to be taken that way.  It is highly doubtful that in our more enlightened society today we have come to a more enlightened understanding of Scripture to decide all of these are symbolic.  It just may be that we are meant to be inconvenienced and uncomfortable.  That may be the point, after all.  Let’s be honest here.  If God asked us to do something we wanted to do or was easy, we would jump at the chance.  The reality is that we are far removed from the ancient traditions and postures of the Church when it comes to such things as kneeling and bowing and genuflecting.  We now live at a time when even the venerable pews of old are being exchanged for more comfortable seating.  In fact, kneelers have gone by the wayside precisely because comfort is more important than just about anything else.  Unlike Moses, we have no holy ground to worry about.  Churches are more like living rooms than temples and we even have screens to avoid holding a book or a piece of paper.  Give us easy over complicated and convenience over trouble and comfort over effort any day of the week.  Maybe that is the real problem we ought to be dealing with!

Bad news in Lutherland. . .

Okay.  The Reformation has come and gone.  You may still hear the faint echo of the brass announcing A Mighty Fortress or one of other battle hymns of the Reformation.  But it is time to get back to reality.  Things are not going well for Christianity in Germany -- not for Lutherans or for Roman Catholics.  

The fall in membership of these two largest Christian institutions in Germany is leaving those churches little choice except to sell or demolish hundreds of buildings.  The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reports 603 Roman Catholic and 444 worship places of the Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD, the main Protestant Church) have been “deconsecrated”and no longer be used for worship services.  For the Protestants, this has meant either selling or demolishing the buildings.  It is estimataed that in 9 years, “every fourth or fifth church [building] will no longer be used for its original purpose”, says architecture professor Stefanie Lieb. She calculates that this could mean up to 10,000 churches would be silent on Sunday morning.  They are already pretty much empty.

The reason is not surprising given is the constant fall in the membership of the two churches.  Year end figures from 2023 show that the Roman Catholic Church in Germany lost 628,000 members, and the Protestant EKD, 593,000.  This includes the intentional exit of members (to avoid church tax) but also includes deaths and the drop in baptisms.  The reason they are closing now is the high cost of maintaining these old and expensive structures -- estimated to cost the Roman Catholic Church in Bavaria alone some 100 million euros annually.

Sure, this is not about preserving the buildings.  It is up to the German people to determine which structures are culturally and historically significant and to fund them.  But no one seems to be noticing how the numbers of Christians in Germany keeps circling the drain.  What good is it to preserve a building if there is no concern for the salvation of the people who would worship and pray in those buildings?  In any case, Germany is home to some of the most liberal and progressive versions of the Protestant side as well as the Roman Catholic side.  Perhaps this ought to tell us something about the Christianity lite version most commonly known in Germany.  It is not working.

You are looking at the wrong signs. . .

Sermon for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (B) preached on Sunday, November 17, 2024.

Living here you soon discover that somewhere a deer carcass is cooking as you see the vultures flying overhead waiting for dinner to be ready.  Perhaps that is how we have come to view the end times.  We look at the broken and tattered remnants of humanity, our failed institutions, the brutality of war and violence, and the balance of nature seemingly out of whack and presume the worst.  That is how it was for the disciples.  They wanted to know what the end was going to look like or, more accurately, how bad is it going to get.  We are not so different.  We look at the pace of change, the flourishing of evil, and the growing uncertainty over the future and we want to know if this is the beginning of the end and how much worse it will be down the road.  So our judgment of the times and our question to God is the same – how bad will it get?

It would be easy enough to preach a simple sermon of warning to you now but that is not what you need to hear.  Furthermore, it is not what Jesus said.  Yes, there will be worse times to come as the world seems to spin out of control toward destruction but that is not the main point.  It may not be the beginning of the end, but I can tell you clearly it is most certainly the end of the beginning.  We are not in the period of Christian infancy when hopes were high as the faith seemed to spread over all the earth.  We are in the achy adulthood of the faith and have learned the lessons of disappointment, disillusionment, and fear.  But even then, we are not without hope.  He who endures to the end shall be saved.

Before we jump more directly to the shape of our hope, let me dismiss the false use of Jesus’ words to shift the burden of judgment away from God and onto us.  When Jesus says the Gospel must first be preached to all nations, He is most certainly not conditioning the timing of God on what we do or fail to do.  The coming of Christ has not been delayed because we did not preach the Gospel more ambitiously or to every corner of this globe.  Jesus is not issuing a command to us here but revealing the promise.  The Gospel is for every sinner and no one is beyond reach of that Gospel by the working of the Spirit.  What we do with what we hear, well, that is on us.  But the Word is not kept impotent in a cage because of what we do or have not done.  So do not go there and forget what Jesus said.

These are the last days.  They have been since Christ rose from the dead, since the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and since the apostles led the Church in the great missionary enterprise that turned a sect into a worldwide kingdom of faith.  The signs are all there.  No, not the wars and rumors of wars or terrorism or sexual immorality or abortion or child abuse or false prophets or threats against the Church.  These are not new.  No, what I am speaking to you about today are the signs of hope and promise that we too easily forget.  The same Daniel who stood in the lion’s den recorded the promise.  You shall be delivered – everyone whose names are written in the book of life.  The dead shall be raised.  Life shall triumph. The wise in faith shall shine like stars in the dark night of the soul.  This is what Jesus is referring to when He promises “those who endure shall be saved.”

None of us needs a preacher in the pulpit or a prophet speaking “Thus saith the Lord” to know the world is going to hell in a handbasket.  The warnings are all around us and obvious.  But the hope is not.  Hope is what must be preached when all we see is destruction and death, evil and indulgence.  The day of the Lord is coming and to those who are baptized into Christ, whose names are written in the book of life in the ink of Christ’s blood, who have been called to faith by the Word preached, who have been absolved and restored from their weakness and sin, and who have been fed and nourished upon the heavenly food of Christ’s flesh and blood – this is GOOD NEWS.  We do not have anything to fear.  Our sins have been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb and our bodies endowed with the promise of the resurrection to life everlasting.

The day of the Lord will come and it will surprise us.  It will shock those who are unprepared, who live outside the banner of faith, and who have been too busy sinning to repent.  But it will be the glorious surprise to the faithful who long for an end to the fight, who are weary from all the battles, who wear the scars of their warfare, who know only too well their weakness.  Christ’s victory will not be ours because it is already ours.  Christ is risen from the dead not for Him but for you and me.  He lives not for Himself but for us.  He has covered us with His righteousness so that we will be found worthy.  He has planted His kingdom here in time so that we may be transferred to eternity.  He comes among us still as our Good Shepherd, our Great Redeemer, our Brother in love, who will guard us as His most treasured possession even as we guard our faith in Him as our most treasured possession.

For now we are tested by school shootings and violence that intrudes into every place that is supposed to be safe.  For now we are tested by the world that seems unstoppable while we seem impotent.  
For now we fight – not to be saved but to remain as the saved of the Lord, enduring in the hope into which we have been planted in baptismal water and fed in the Holy Eucharist.  Contrary to those who think the days are needlessly prolonged, He has promised they will be cut short because He loves us and He does not want any to be lost and all to be saved.  

He knows our names.  This is our comfort.  He calls us by name.  This is our courage.  He wrote our names in the book of life.  This is our confidence.  We call Him Lord because He has taught us to call Him Savior.  Instead of looking at the signs of the times that stir up fear, we need to look to the promises that give us hope in which we stand.  The world is not getting better and it is getting worse at a frightening pace.  But husbands and wives still love each other and cherish their days together, plan and rejoice for a family of children who will know and call God Father as they do and go to bed at night with a clear conscience through forgiveness and hope that whatever the morning brings, we will still belong to the Lord and His promises will prevail.

The world is not ours to fix and our hopes are not planted upon an improving tomorrow.  Where the dead are, the vultures will gather.  Well, guess what.  Where death is, God is already there.  Death has not the final word for your lives or mine.  So when we see the evil, hear the rumors of war, lament the immorality that passes for goodness, and see how casually life is treated, do not give into despair and repent of your fears.  Look to the signs of hope Christ has planted among us.  The Word and Sacraments.  And pray: Maranatha!  Come, Lord Jesus.

In the holy name of Jesus.  Amen.

The democratization of the Church. . .

As one who lives within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, I probably have no right to speak about this.  After all, we have institutionalized the democratic experiment of America and enshrined it all in a sacred voters assembly that can literally do what it pleases.  Of course, there are supposed to be boundaries on what is put up for a vote but that hardly stops us.  We tend to vote on things we should not and remain paralyzed by the things we should be voting upon.  It is not unlike the problems America finds in the political sphere.  While I am not quite saying the Church is hierarchical, neither is it a democracy.  More than this, giving people more opportunities to express themselves (or vote) will not repair what is wrong with our sacred institutions today.

Rome should send someone to a Synod or District convention or to a typical Voters Meeting and they may just back away from all their synodal talk -- which is really a cover for not only giving more people a voice but also giving that voice some teeth with a vote.  Levels of input, discussion, and consideration are worthless without the sense that at some point there will also be a vote.  It only disappoints expectations and embitters people to be asked what they think only to have it patently ignored.  So there is some duty to the creation of a structure in which people are asked to participate.  That said, it is also wise to remember Richard John Neuhaus' quip that the first words heard upon entering hell would be, “Break down into small groups, discuss, and then report back to the plenary.”

I fear that meetings will be the death of us and hell will be all the votes we took which we should not have and all that urgencies we ignored because we could not decide what to say or do.  I looked at my calendar and there are endless meetings and even meetings to prepare for meetings or meetings after meetings as well as meetings about meetings.  Is this really the way of the Kingdom?  Is this what God intended for His Church?  The other anonymous quip is the rewording of John 3:16 -- for God so loved the world that He did not send a committee.  The great temptation is that meetings end up be self-referential in a Church that is supposed to look to Christ and His Word.  The great fallacy is that the meetings are ways to invigorate the moribund Church when the reality is that meetings tend to focus more on the past than the future.  Worst, however, is the confusion of our meetings with God's work -- particularly the diminishing of the real work of God through the means of grace and the elevating of our own work of thinking, discussing, and judging.

Meetings are the bane of just about every pastor's existence.  Sometimes the essential, they are often the most extravagant waste of our time.  Part of that shows up in the way we end every meeting by setting a date and time for the next one.  Oh that God would disappoint all our agendas and show up to bring all things to completion before the next meeting!  Good luck to you, Rome, on your current infatuation with meetings and votes.  If anything comes of this, it will probably be nostalgia for the days of a benevolent monarch and pope.

Young men heading to church. . .

According to reports among those who chart such things, young men are heading to churches in greater numbers than young women.  While that ought to be something to celebrate, some are not so sure.  After all, they are heading to churches which have charted a course different from the one embarked upon by liberal and progressive Christians.  You can read all about it in this new Ryan Burge study: “The Religion of America's Young Adults — And how the gender gap could be the story going forward.”  Some of the points are listed below:

    … For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious. 

    “We’ve never seen it before,” Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, said of the flip.

    Among Generation Z Christians, this dynamic is playing out in a stark way: The men are staying in church, while the women are leaving at a remarkable clip.

    Church membership has been dropping in the United States for years. But within Gen Z, almost 40 percent of women now describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, compared with 34 percent of men, according to a survey last year of more than 5,000 Americans by the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute.

    In every other age group, men were more likely to be unaffiliated. That tracks with research that has shown that women have been consistently more religious than men, a finding so reliable that some scholars have characterized it as something like a universal human truth.

   They place a higher value on traditional family life. Childless young men are likelier than childless young women to say they want to become parents someday, by a margin of 12 percentage points, according to a survey last year by Pew.

    The men and women of Gen Z are also on divergent trajectories in almost every facet of their lives, including education, sexuality and spirituality.

It does seem clear that these young men are searching for the very things society has largely rejected or marginalized -- traditional gender roles, marriage, children, transcendence, meaning, and purpose that goes beyond the sanctioned political and cultural values of the moment.  They are hungry for the very things that modern culture has deemed unnecessary or irrelevant to life and happiness.  Also significant is that they want to be men.  

Before we rush to celebrate the good news, we would do well to consider this carefully.  This is not about being conservative but about living out the values inherent in Scripture.  This is about authority posited in the Word of God that endures forever.  This is about order and the shame of society, rooted in marriage and expressed in family and children.  This is about leadership and not dominion, leadership shaped by the Scriptures and our Lord's own words and model of serving and loving.  This is about not simply holding onto the values of the past but expressing them positively and effectively in the present.  This is about a Scriptural identity rooted in baptism and not an ideology.  This is about the life of those whom God has mercifully called His own and gathered unto Himself as His Church.  If this is true, we dare not offer them something less than the catholic and apostolic faith, rooted in the Scripture, reflected in tradition, and manifest where God gathers His people in His name around His Word and Sacraments.  By the way, this is an observable truth in my own parish.  Here every week more single young fellows are in the congregation than single young women.  They are enamored by the call and challenge of what it means to live as Christ's own in the difficult world in which we find ourselves.  They are looking for a challenge and this is what we give them and all of God's people -- take up your cross, deny yourself, and follow Jesus!

Baptizing nations. . .

When Jesus spoke the words "Go and make disciples of all nations," He was speaking to a time in which that very word nations meant something different than it does today.  Nations at the time of Jesus were seen not primarily as borders, governments, constitutions, and such but peoples.  In the Old Testament, the term had a decidedly negative connotation.  Nations represented goyim and about half of those citations had a negative context.  This was a body of people and not quite what we think of today in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, or identity.  Most importantly, these were people who were not believes in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  In the New Testament the word ethnos has a similar mixed impression with half negative contexts, half positive, and half neutral.  In the same way, this word does not immediately connect with borders or governments the way we think of nations today.

The call of Christ to make disciples was not a call to build an earthly kingdom nor did it mean that nations would be converted as later happened when monarchs converted and the population of a given nation or state wholesale converted as well.  It was by and large the call to preach, teach, and baptize those who were not historically part of the chosen and therefore an acknowledgement that God was in Christ reconciling all people unto Himself.  Now we have muddied the waters, making the Great Commission almost into a march to conquer territory.  I am not at all sure that this is helpful.  Nations as states or governments or even societies cannot be converted.  The Gospel is spoken into the ear and then to the heart and mind and not into the ballot box or legislative or political work of a nation.  People can be converted and societies and nations are the consequence of people being converted -- not the other way around.

All of that said, Christians are meant to be a leaven in their place -- home, neighborhood, community, and nation.  Our light is to be set up high so that it shines beyond the small domain of ourselves or even our families.  In this way churches are always political without being in politics.  We cannot escape the world around us identifying our position with certain political parties or candidates.  We should work to make these nuances careful and clear but it is a risk of being public and in the public square.  This is a risk we must take or else we will be invisible and this is certainly not Christ's will for His Church.  The nation is not meant by God to be a secular state if that means that Christians and Christianity is silent and invisible within that state.  We may not be a theocracy but there is little value beyond self for a faith that lives so deeply inside the Christian it does not show.  The Church, however, is not trying to win the soul of a nation by acts of government or the courts.  Neither do we compete in the marketplace of ideas as if Christianity were simply one set of truths or values against others of equal worth.  We are to be voices of the Gospel, speaking Christ through His Word and it is through this speaking and hearing that the Spirit works to bring forth faith. When we take this seriously, it is clear what happens. The nations of the West and indeed all places where Christianity flourished were transformed by the values of this Gospel as the people of God lived them out.  Where Christianity has died or been oppressed, it has had an equally profound although less salutary effect.  What changed was not the power of Christians as a voting class but as a people who lived true to their faith the words of the Lord that endure forever.  So, if we are not seeing that today is it simply because the government is less friendly to us or could it be that our lights are dim?