The sacrament of health. . .

I happened to listen to a conversation with kids and their parents over the issue of micro plastics and other bio agents in everything from food sources and packaging to water to utensils.  It was something I had not expected to hear.  The late teens and early twenty somethings wanted to make sure that mom and dad were getting rid of the plastic ware and changing the way they shopped and packaged items because the kids did not want to put these "bio hazards" into their bodies.  So in addition to getting rid of plastic straws and disposable plastic plates, cups, and such, they were objecting to plastic cutting boards and such.  I get it.  This is the generation which has lived with the warnings from the gurus of the health care industry and the global causes to clean up our messes.  It has hit home.  I guess we are back to using glass and other more permanent and "safe" resources.  Honestly, I would rather use brown paper bags in the supermarket over plastic bags any day of the week.  I recycle, too.  But there is a dimension to all of this that troubles me.

Are we approaching the idea that health has become a replacement for religious sacraments?  Is the new priest of the modern day life the physician in a lab coat and the new temple the institutions providing resources for physical and mental health?  I don't know but sometimes it is beginning to sound that way.  The problem as I see it is that the desire to protect our bodies can override the call to protect our souls.  Are we developing a cult of the body?  We already look at the body as a canvas for self-expression in everything from tattoos to piercings so how much further is it to focus on the body in other ways?  Owning the body and ascribing to the body a higher value than other aspects of our daily lives both contribute to the idea that the one who can relieve pain and suffering is the priest of flesh.

While it would seem natural to believe that death would be an enemy of those who encourage a cult of the body, a higher value than postponing death is controlling it so that it comes when it is desired.  This would explain the odd way that suicide, medically assisted suicide, and euthanasia are not adversaries of those who are devoted to the cult of the body but instruments to be used along with the tools of healing designed to relieve pain, eliminate suffering, and express themselves as a canvas of the body.  Our pursuit of pleasure and entertainment accords well with the idea that the body is one more arena in which we express ourselves and our truths.  This would then connect the idea that gender is a construct of the mind more than something defined by DNA or reproductive organs to the sacramental status given to the body and those who attend to it.  It would also explain why so long after COVID there are still folks wearing masks in public, keeping their distance from others and crowds, and living out their lives within the refuge of their homes (where they work and where the things they need or want are delivered to their door).

It is almost a religious devotion given to the practices of painting and piercing the body and pursuing what is defined as healthy lives.  Our struggle to find rest from the things that trouble us as well as rest for our bodies is one more aspect of the way we invest a spiritual character to the physical care of our bodies.  It also explains the esteem we give to therapeutic definitions of those who care for us and the ease with which Christianity has transformed from dealing with the weight of eternity to finding a way for us to be happy and at peace with ourselves today.  It is not that Christians do not care for the body or esteem it a gift of God's grace and a mark of His wisdom and power, we simply refuse to assign an ultimate value to the body or an exclusive focus upon the body as the definition of who we are and what defines our lives.  Our appearance, our unfettered pursuit of pleasure and entertainment, and our esteem given to the practitioners of health can be used as the ultimate distractions from the Gospel of sin and forgiveness through the merits and mercies of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  Jesus did not come to repair our bodies but to replace what cannot endure to eternity with the new and glorious flesh like His which can endure forever.  He did not some to focus on our happiness and contentment in the moment but to build within us a profound desire for what the eye cannot see and the person cannot know except by faith.  

A repost. . .

From the Concordia Academic Blog.  To good not to be reposted.  Also, another reason for buying the Hymnal Companion volumes for Lutheran Service Book.

3 Hymns for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels—September 29

The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels is celebrated on September 29 of each year. Lutheran Service Book (LSB)contains hymns that fit wonderfully with many of the feasts and festivals, yet you might not know the history about why they were chosen to represent these days. Read about three hymns chosen in LSB for this feast day and the breathtaking history that ties them to St. Michael and All Angels.

Stars of the morning, so gloriously bright (LSB 520)

John Mason Neale (1818–66), in his Hymns of the Eastern Church (1862), called his “Stars of the morning, gloriously bright” (the original first line omitted the word “so”) “a Cento from the Canon of the ‘Bodiless Ones’ ” assigned to “Tuesday in the Week of the Fourth Tone.” A cento is a selection of stanzas from a longer original. A canon in Eastern Orthodox use is a long hymn of around sixty verses divided into eight or nine odes, and the “bodiless ones” are angels. The “week of the fourth tone” refers to the practice in Orthodox churches of singing Matins and Vespers using different liturgical formulas, or tones, each week. 

About the Text

There are four different canons titled “of the bodiless ones” in the Orthodox liturgical books, all assigned to Matins, with the fourth such canon assigned to November 8, the commemoration of the archangels Michael and Gabriel and the rest of the bodiless powers. There is also another canon about Michael at Matins on September 6, the “commemoration of the wonder that took place at Colossae through the archangel Michael,” although it is not specifically designated a canon “of the bodiless ones.” Neale’s hymn, though, is a translation of none of these: the most that can be said is that it draws upon some ideas present in the Greek texts.

For example, the Greek texts all emphasize the brightness of Michael and the other angels, as in stanza 1 of LSB, although the angels are never called stars (as in the first line of the English hymn) except once in a passing reference to Satan as the fallen Morning Star. Instead, they are called mirrors that reflect the brilliance of God. The angels are also depicted in the Greek as singing the thrice-holy hymn, the Trisagion, to God, as in stanza 1, line 4 of LSB. The idea in LSB stanza 2, line 4 that angels help human beings is also implied in the Greek, if not stated directly; the Greek texts also list various ranks of angels—cherubim, seraphim, thrones, dominations, virtues, powers, and so on—as does Neale in his original third stanza, which is omitted from LSB. Neale’s original fourth stanza, also omitted from LSB, cites the work of Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel; the Greek verses mention Michael and Gabriel, but not Raphael. These, then, are the similarities between the Greek canons and Neale’s hymn.

It is notable, though, how much in Neale’s hymn is missing from the Greek texts. The ideas about angels as ministers of God in LSB stanza 2 are present only obliquely, if at all, except for the image in line 4 of angels as helpers of humans, which the Greek does contain. The striking image in stanza 3 of the angels shouting for joy at creation is entirely absent from the Greek, as are the plea for angels to continue to assist us and the thought that one day we and the angels together will worship God, both in stanza 4. So of the four stanzas in LSB, only stanza 1 is fully reflected in the Greek, with only minimal correspondences in the other stanzas. The two stanzas omitted from LSB fare only slightly better.

Christ, the Lord of hosts, unshaken (LSB 521)

Peter Prange (b. 1972) wrote this hymn in the fall of 1999. While preparing for the observance of St. Michael and All Angels at the parish in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was pastor, Prange was not satisfied with the existing hymns for this occasion in the Church Year. He explains, “I could find no existing hymn that properly surveyed the scriptural truths of this important festival (not even a mention of St. Michael!), so I decided to write one myself.” The hymn was originally sung to the tune SIEH, HIER BIN ICH (LSB 353).

About the Text

Like all minor festivals, St. Michael and All Angels is properly and ultimately about Christ. Therefore, this hymn begins by telling not the story of Michael the archangel, but rather the story of Christ, who conquered sin, death, and the devil. The phrase “slams them in their steely cage” (stanza 1) is a vivid description.

Stanza 2 refers to the biblical account of war in heaven, with Michael and the hosts of heaven battling Satan. “Cast him earthbound with his angels” is mentioned in the alternate Gospel for the day, as Jesus says, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). The hymn also describes Satan in terms such as “serpent” (stanzas 2–3), “beast” (stanza 2), “tyrant” (stanza 5), and “foe” (stanza 6).

Stanza 3 travels back to Eden and Genesis 3. The twisting of God’s command began when the serpent asked, “Did God actually say?” (Genesis 3:1). God’s cursing of Satan is also the proclamation of the first Gospel to the world (Genesis 3:15).

Stanza 4 begins, “Jesus came, this word fulfilling.” What word is that? It is God’s word of promise, which concludes stanza 3: “You’ll lie crushed beneath His [Jesus’] feet!” The trampling of Satan occurred at Calvary, with Jesus’ feet nailed to the cross. He “bore the brunt of our temptation” both “on the wretched tree” and earlier, when He was tempted in the wilderness for forty days: He strove with Satan, and He won.

The lightning imagery from Luke 10 appears again in stanza 5. The judgment of Satan bears mentioning. Jesus regularly refers to the devil as “the ruler of this world” in the Gospel of John. 

We finally hear about the present work of angels in the last stanza. The description of “angel legions” mirrors Jesus’ words in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:53). It is also an interesting term, as the satanic demons gave their name as Legion (Mark 5:9). The description of Satan’s “fiery grave” reflects Revelation 20:10.

Lord God, to Thee we give all praise (LSB 522)

Luther, his most valued partner in reform, Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), and their students paid relatively little attention to angels, perhaps as a reaction against medieval veneration of angels as mediators with their own power to direct events on earth. Nonetheless, angels were a living part of the Wittenberg theologians’ faith. In this hymn, Melanchthon expressed his confidence that God, who created the angel hosts, also marshals them for the conflict with Satan that besets individual believers, the Church, and society. 

About the Text 

God receives the praise in this hymn, not the angels, whom God created. However, the hymn extols God’s protection afforded by these angelic beings who, assembled in the light of their Creator’s throne, are listening to His Word, reflecting the typical Wittenberg focus on God speaking to His creatures. Melanchthon describes the angels’ watchfulness, calling attention to the fact that they, like God, never slumber nor sleep (Psalm 121:4) so that they can be waging constant battle against the enemies of God’s people.

Melanchthon’s deep convictions concerning the eschatological battle between God’s truth and Satan’s deception provide the focus of the hymn, as Melanchthon uses biblical images of the ancient dragon (Revelation 12) and the roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8) to dramatize the real threat to believers from Satan and his forces. This hymn takes particular note of the devil’s striving to divide the Church of Christ, a special concern of the Wittenberg reformers about 1540. 

Melanchthon’s confidence in God’s providing protection for His faithful is highlighted in stanza 7: the angel troop stands guard and thwarts the devil’s plans against us.

At the end of this rehearsal of God’s use of the angels to watch over and defend His people, Melanchthon returns to praising God, joining the human voices of those singing the hymn with the songs of gratitude and praise sung by the angels.

Sixteenth-century Lutheran church orders often retained St. Michael and All Angels (September 29) as a day of observance in the congregation, so Melanchthon may have had this festival in mind as he wrote this hymn. The day assumed a broader significance because it was chosen as the day for special thanksgiving for the harvest in Evangelical lands, replacing the Assumption of Mary (August 15), which had served as thanksgiving day in the late medieval ecclesiastical calendar. However, it is just as likely that this hymn simply reflects the piety of the Wittenberg reformers, who had confidence that God, who provides all for His people, had commissioned the angels as just one means by which His protection extends to the saints each day.

 

But we love those sins!

Though I have never seen where he said it, I have been told that St. Augustine did indeed say:  "People reject the Church because She speaks against the sins they love."   He should know.  He had many favorite sins along the expanse of his life before coming to faith.  He lived for many years in pursuit of pleasure, pride, and worldly desires.  He spoke these words as someone who had been infatuated with his sins until the rest he sought remained elusive and was rediscovered repentance.  He did not say this because it was a theory of his.  He got it.  Sin is addictive.  It captures the heart and transforms desire.  He hated calling his favorite behaviors sins and the whole idea of giving up those sins he loved.  He was speaking from his own painful experience. 

The Church does not tiptoe around our favorite sins (well, the Church should not be doing that).  Truth should not change to match our desires.  No, the Church is there to call us to repentance, to holiness, and to be free from those sins.  Lets be honest.  The call to repentance is uncomfortable just as repentance itself is uncomfortable.  God does not want us to remain as we are but is seeking to change us for our good and not for arbitrary or controlling purposes.  Jesus is “the light has come into the world, [but] the world loved darkness rather than light” (John 3:19).  We think people are rejecting our worldview or the specific truths of creation, fall, redemption, etc., but they might be rejecting the calling to live differently, according to different values, and for a different goal and purpose.  God is not trying to end the party but is providing the best wine at the end and more of it than we ever expected.  

Whoever has made peace with a cherished sin will naturally see the Church, the call to repentance, and worship centered upon the Word and Sacraments as adversaries.  That is Augustine's point.  As such, it is also good to remember that the Church is not the one condemning sin but the Word of God.  The Scriptures call us to repentance, to admit our love and addiction to our favorite sins, and to a new life lived in response to a different voice than that of desire.  So when people reject the liturgy or preaching or catechesis, we think it is about a liturgical or preaching or teaching problem when in reality it is about sin.  Maybe it was always about sin?  Maybe sin and forgiveness are not antiquated ideas in our modern era.  Maybe it is the same issue as Eden.

How many folks are needed to sustain a congregation?

In our age of declining congregational size, one of the most practical questions is how many people do you need to pay for a pastor, a building, and minimal programs to keep the doors open?  I often hear the number of 100 as a minimum to cover everything from pastor's compensation and benefits, building costs and utilities, a few other part-time folks, insurance, internet, and a minimal program of educational, social, and mercy work.  Note that this does not include the costs of a mortgage or loan repayment and that this might also include income from other than the offering plate (endowment, bequests, etc.).  I suspect that this is probably not far from the bottom number but it occurs to me that this might be setting the bar rather low on the stewardship end of things.

Comparing the situation with state churches, there are certainly might collected but this money is usually for mission support, support for those in need, and other charitable work.  Otherwise, the government (or, rather, the tax dollar from the populace) is the primary source of income for the church and covering the costs of clergy, building, and essential programs.  To be sure, this funding with tax money is from the willing and the unwilling.  There are automatically-collected "tithes" from those who agree to pay but there is money from other taxes collected for property assets considered to belong to the state first and the congregation second.  This remains the case even though the landscape has changed and the formerly religious lands have become, in reality, highly-secularized European nations today, including everything from with the Church of England, Scandinavian Lutheran state churches, and German churches (whose “church-tax” is given to state registered religions to which the people belong (from Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Union, other state-registered religions, including Judaism).  The German tax is 8% to a person’s income tax bill.  There are religions and churches which have chosen not to participate in this, including Muslims, Buddhists, Orthodox, free Lutherans, and other religious groups.  Individual Germans can opt out of the church tax but that means publicly renouncing their religion and forsaking the privileges of church membership as they may be.  It must be a significant cost greater than the money since about half of eligible taxpayers are still willing to pay it.

American statistics tell us that the typical Christian gives something around 2-2.5% of their income as their discounted "tithe" and this is probably responsible for that 100 person minimum number.  So, my question is, how many people would we need to sustain a congregation if these same people contributed what the German church tax collected or four times the present average?  I suspect that this would radically change the viability numbers and enable a much smaller group to still have all the accoutrements of church -- perhaps closer to the actual average size of 50 or less.  Anecdotally, I heard one person in one of our saltwater districts say that 50 folks would be a mid-size parish in that district and compare this to the average for the Missouri Synod a few decades ago which had one pastor serving nearly 200 folks.  Times have changed.  But for all the crocodile tears about the gray clouds on our future with a rather consistent decline in size over many decades, why are we settling for 2-3% of income as the benchmark instead of trying to at least match what a government collects in our fatherland, Germany?

Those who know me will know that I defend my Boomer generation to younger pastors and remind them that we are still in church and supporting financially the work of the congregation in greater proportion than our numbers.  That is great.  But what will happen after the Boomers are spending all their money on nursing homes or they are gone?  Those in the pews need to step up.  If the Church is to continue, it will only happen because we support the Church with our time, skills, prayers, and dollars.  If we do that, we will find that smaller congregations will survive and perhaps even flourish without spending all their attention to finding the $$ to pay the pastor and fix the building.  It is wonderful when a former generation provides generous gifts to sustain things long after they have joined the church triumphant but it cannot and dare not replace raising our expectation of ourselves and providing the support to keep even small congregations viable.   

We are all looking for the Church. . .

Honestly, there is no end of frustration to the Missourian peculiarity about calling the Synod "Church."  It is maddening that we seem intent upon trying to invent an idea of "Church" that is somehow distant from what, to everyone else, is simply Church.  However, it is equally frustrating and maddening to look for the big Church to solve all the problems and do everything.  Of course, the Church is always larger than what you see gathered on Sunday morning but it is never less.  In other words, what you see on Sunday morning is not a miniature version of the Church but the full thing.  Yes, there is more but the more is not more in the sense of the local being somehow deficient or lacking something.  It is the more of all those Sunday gatherings together.  

Where this is most frustrating and maddening is how everything is expected of or gets judged on the basis of the big footprint.  So in Rome it is as if there is only the Pope and the Vatican or, for us Missourians, there is only St. Louis and our elected SP.  Of course these are important but they are not everything.  I finally have had to give up on the illusion that I will find that perfect jurisdiction on the larger scale.  You will not find it in Rome or in Constantinople or in St. Louis or anywhere else.  But you do see it more nearly and clearly in the Sunday morning gathering.  This is not congregationalism but the essential truth of catholicity.  While we seem to stretch catholicity in search of the biggest expression of its wholeness, we end up disdaining the local expression of it.  You see that catholicity in the marks of the Church, the Word and the Sacraments and the ministry/priesthood.  That is where most of us meet Church and not on the seemingly grander scale of a basilica or cathedral or a bishop's throne.  Yes, the large version is important and wonderful but it does not replace nor make the local expression of the Church any less important or wonderful.

I have come to see that it is not about some GIRM or bishop or rule making body enforcing that which defines us but the local expression striving to be all that we confess.  That is my problem.  So often and too often the local group has lost sight of its own catholicity, willing to trade it all off for better numbers or treating the Church as if she were a social group or program instead of the Body of Christ.  The worship problem in Rome and in Missouri is not about enforcing more rules but about local expressions of the Church having lost their identity and reaching vainly into business or social models in search of an identity to replace what they have lost.  People and pastors who do stupid stuff on Sunday morning are not trying to be the Church but trying to win friends and influence people or meet people on the therapeutic level they have come to presume is the authentic version of the Church.  How foolish we are!  We are willing to trade the God who tabernacles among us in the Word that delivers what it says and the Sacraments that bestow what they sign for relevance or entertainment or feelings.  That is not a problem of rules or rule enforcers but of a people who have lost sight of who God is and who they are.  It is a problem of leaders who are wolves in sheeps' clothing, betraying the promise of eternity for a moment in the spotlight.  It is not that the sights have been set too high but too low and, in the end, having lost what is eternal for what is only momentary.

The solution will not come from Rome or St. Louis or some other address.  Everyone seems to be looking for the main office to fix things but they won't and they can't.  Catholicity on the larger level exists only because it is there on the local level.  I once despaired that one parish at a time was not efficient or effective enough but I have learned that it is the only way.  The only honest measure of the Church is Sunday morning where the shepherd serves the sheep with the gifts of the Good Shepherd.  Remember when the Army had as its slogan Be All that You Can Be?  Perhaps our slogan for the Church ought to say Be Who You Are.  The main office can never be the refuge that the local assembly of those whom the Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies is and always will be.  It is nice if you can find it but the real catholicity that matters is always local.  I wonder if this is not what the Augustana was trying to say in different words and what Missouri has struggled to say with its own confused expression of Church.  It is not that the congregation is the only Church or any real form of congregationalism but the local gathering with all of its tangible concreteness, formed by Christ for Christ, and possessing the fullness of the Church but not alone.

Yes, I am probably rambling but that is the meanderings of today.