Judgment. . .

I read a critique of Protestantism (in which the author would also surely criticize Lutheranism) as a blind alley of judgment which makes it impossible to know who is correct.  

After visiting churches, reading books, talking with pastors, praying, and studying Scripture, I realized that every proposed solution eventually brought me back to the same place. I had to decide which interpretation of Scripture made the most sense, determine which doctrines counted as essential, judge which pastor had interpreted Scripture correctly, and evaluate which scholar presented the strongest case. In the end, every road led back to my own judgment. . . Yet that was the very problem I set out to solve.

I get it.  Protestantism offers a dizzying array of choices and answers and perspectives.  Indeed, how can you know which is right and which is wrong.  It is a judgment.  Now, to be sure, Lutheranism is not exactly the same thing as the myriad of options under the banner of Protestantism.  We have a written confession and claims of catholicity that appeal to Scripture and to the church fathers.  But that is for another post.  In this case, the author is contrasting Rome and Protestantism.  It is presumed that he is saying the choice of Protestantism is left to individual judgment and the choice of Rome is not.  That, however, is a false statement.

The choice of church, Rome or Protestantism or Lutheranism, is always a judgment call.  It is not that any of them offers a way to bypass judgment on the claims made by any of them.  No, the problem is not to find a church which does not require you to come to some conclusion or judgment.  The problem remains by which criteria you judge.  Is it reason or Scripture or catholicity or the implicit authority claimed over years or a teaching magisterium or an office (pope)?  I would suggest that Rome loves to press the issue of authority as if it were a way to bypass judgment when the real issue facing any serious Christian is which church stands with Christ and the Scriptures.  It is not antiquity alone or tradition or office (papacy) but Scripture.  

The person was hoping for some sort of objective judgment to relieve him of the need to judge the claims along side the authority (Scripture).  There is not.  Not in Rome, not in Protestantism, and not in Lutheranism.  You cannot skip over the judgment but you had better judge according to the right criteria.  Rome forgets this.  But Lutheranism here is in a different position than Protestantism.  We have a book, a written confession, that does not equivocate.  Looking for a church?  Dig deep into Scripture and into the claims of all churches.  Lutheranism looks good  It is not that hard to look good in comparison to the many versions of Protestantism but Lutheranism looks good compared to Rome as well.   

 

Death of the family ties. . .

The old joke is that if you have only one child, you are not a real parent.  After all, you always know which kid did it.  It is only when you have to stare into the faces of multiple kids, each of which is denying responsibility, that you earn your parent badge.  Yeah, I know.  It is only a joke.  But there is something to it.  Family ties are not simply parent to child and child to parent but sibling to sibling.  As the number of single child families increases and the number of families with multiple children decreases, the shape of those family ties is inevitably different.  

Europe is already well ahead of us.  Half of all families have only one child.  Here in the US it is still about a fifth of all families with but one child.  By choice.  This is not happening among parents who would like to have more children but cannot but is largely driven by a conscious choice to have one and only one child.  That means no siblings for those children.  The family dynamic is radically different with but one child and the child growing up without a brother or sister knows parent and home life in a very different way than one who lives with siblings.

There was a time when two or three children was considered a small family.  In those days children had no expectation of private bedrooms or bathrooms.  Life was shared in sometimes complicated ways that became normal and even routine.  One bathroom for six or eight people was not exceptional but typical.  Toys were shared.  Chores were shared.  Life was shared.  All that has changed.  We call them improvements.  Bedrooms that are no more only for sleeping but have become refuges for the silent and individual life with the screen.  Homes that have enough spaces to avoid bumping into others.  Meals that are short order or fend for yourself kinds of experiences rather than the whole family around a single table with a single menu.  It is different even for families with more than one child but it is radically different for the single child.  

Churches were filled with families that took up entire pews -- no matter how long the seat.  They filled the churches with the sounds of children and Sunday school rooms with boys and girls and VBS classrooms with hot, sweaty kids waiting for the recreation times.  Photos of the confirmation classes were two or three deep with the washed and earnest faces of youth -- girls in white dresses and boys in their first real man suit jackets.  Part of the reason the churches are less full is the smaller size of the families there.  Even with two children, there is plenty of room in the pews for more than a single family.  We see it in the schools of our communities but it is a pivotal factor in the congregation as well.

Could it be that not having siblings has taught us not to get along or, rather, left us without the memory or tools or skills of how to get along with those we do not like or with whom we do not agree?  Could our lack of tolerance and our desire to insulate ourselves from those who have a different view than we do be attributed to the loss of that memory of growing up and figuring out how to make it work in a home with limited bedrooms and probably a single bathroom and shared toys?  Could it be that our quickness to resort to violence is, in part, our inability to figure out how to deal with conflict or disagreement and our limited tolerance of those who dare to challenge us?  I have no data but I suspect that as the family changes, society changes and many of those are not for the better.  Churches are finding the same short tempers and we are more apt to find folks packing up their things and leaving than investing themselves into communities where there is a chance they might be offended.  It spreads to all our institutions.  Even the old civic groups and youth organizations of old are suffering.  We want our thing and we are much less willing to suffer with those who do not want our thing.  No, the death of family ties brings with us unintended consequences all around.

The Church of England's idea of prayer. . .

The Church of England released an official prayer for the 2026 World Cup with the intention of bringing the nations together and celebrating the game.  The only problem, they forgot what it means to pray and who they were supposed to be praying to.  Among other things.  Even the vicars a curates of the Church of England mocked the prayer mercilessly on social media.  An example of it:  “The Church of England insists on making a mockery of itself and of prayer.”  According to the Church of England’s chair of the liturgical commission: “Prayers shared in Church of England digital communications are prepared by theologically trained staff and are subject to a process of internal review and sign-off."  That is probably enough said but I cannot hold my tongue.

We think that the Church of England is its once vaunted institutions and reverent liturgies but behind it all there seems to be nothing there -- a complete emptiness of depth, faith, and understanding of the Christian faith.  If that is not enough to tell you about the slow but increasingly speedy death of this church body, nothing will convince you. 

 

 

Mary's Day. . .

Thomas Troeger, noted hymnwriter, can turn a phrase.  One of my favorites of his is "borrowed light."  It comes from a hymn published in a collections of hymns also with the title "Borrowed Light."   A professor of Christian communication at Yale Divinity school, he was a well known preacher, poet, and musician.  By ordination, he was Presbyterian Church (1970) and then the Episcopal Church (1999). Troerger wrote some 22 books in the areas of preaching, poetry, hymnody, and worship.  He died in 2022.

Ostensibly written about John, the words might well ascribe to Blessed Mary, Virgin Mother of our Lord.  She shines with His borrowed light and not ashamedly but proudly so.  In art as well as in literature, her figure and face seem always to include the child Jesus.  In some renditions, Jesus is more like a miniature man than a child but the two are usually together.  She is a sign, always pointing to Christ, and from the very first moment of the announcement by the archangel.  "Let it be to me as the Lord has spoken."  Without claim for honor but the honor the Lord Himself has given, she consents to become the Mother of God.  All generations will call her blessed not because of her holiness but for her faith, for her consent, for her humility that asked for nothing but accepting the will of the Father no matter its cost.

Christ's Light reflected in blessed Mary is her glory and the glory of all the saints.  It is in this vein that the Lutheran Confessions commend the saints to us.  Charles Porterfield Krauth notes that the doctrinal sections of the AC begin with God and end with the saints -- a most appropriate perspective.  The Confessions call upon Christians to honor the saints by telling their stories (the history of the saints) so that we may follow the example of their faith and of their good works, as appropriate to our baptismal calling.  the joy of the saints' company is not that they invite us to focus on them. Rather, the very mark of the saints is that they invite us to focus with them upon the Lamb who redeemed them with His own blood, sanctified them in the waters of Baptism, and made them shining witnesses to the glory of His resurrection. They are not dead. They live in Him. Their spirits join us (and we them) in the Divine Liturgy (Hebrews 12!) and we sing a united song with angels, archangels, and with all the company of heaven. "Holy, holy, holy!"   

Today is the falling asleep of Mary, her dormition, and a feast day worthy of some reflection. Mary is for us more than saint but truly our Mother. She is the first of those who pondered in her heart all that the Lord had said to her through the angel and all that God had done. She was there for Jesus' first miracle, at the cross, and in the Upper Room she waited with the disciples for the gift of the Spirit. She received one of the seven last words from the cross. No, we ignore her to our peril for she can teach us much of Jesus, her Son and Savior.

She teaches us humility in her song of praise (The Magnificat). She teaches us absolute trust in the Father's will (Let it be to me according to His Word...). She teaches us to love Jesus and to worship Him who comes to us in flesh and blood as the Son of the Most High God. She teaches us faith, willing to be wounded for His sake and yet never as concerned about her own wounds as His.  She can teach us much if we are willing to read, to listen, to pray, and to learn... But it all begins by speaking her name. If Jesus can honor her as He does and if the Church can call her first of the saints and believers in Jesus, then can we not honor her whom the Lord honored with the gift of His one and only Son?  It is our first step in shining with the borrowed light that comes from Jesus to honor those whom He has honored, who have shone with the brightness of His shining.  A blessed Mary's Day to you all.

Thank God it's Friday. . .

  

The fabulous line from the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey was marvelously funny but for the Americans, at least, it was a legitimate question.  The episode was early on in the series but the weekend had not yet come to the States.  We all know that our weeks have seven days and we all give thanks to God for that seven day gift of time but the whole idea of a weekend -- two days off of work -- was an invention of the 1920s which did not even become routine until 1938.  What is a weekend, indeed!

The workweek ran six days, Monday through Saturday, and almost no employer, even many Jewish-owned factories, gave workers Saturday off. A Jewish immigrant who refused to work on Shabbat was often fired by Monday.  Or so says Yosef Bitton, writing in The Tablet.  While everyone had Sunday off complete with blue laws, nobody -- not even Jews -- had Saturday off.  Even Jews figured out a way to comply with the laws.  In 1885, the Reform rabbinical conference in Pittsburgh declared that observance need not be confined to the Seventh Day, and some congregations began holding services on Sunday morning instead.  Except for the Orthodox.  They saw the Shabbat not as a day off or merely the day of rest or worship but that on which all of Jewish life hinged.  Ditch the Shabbat and what would be left?

Enter Rabbis Abraham Pereira Mendes and Bernard Drachman.  Though they proved unsuccessful at providing Jewish exception for the Shabbat, they did win with the idea that everyone could have two days off.  Labor unions, industrial reformers, and changing theories of productivity all contributed to the invention of a weekend. Indeed, the whole thing worked in part because it was the right time -- for a shorter workweek, for the rise of leisure not simply for the leisure class, and for religious freedom.  We can thank the Jews for the weekend -- among other things.  Henry Ford adopted the 5-day work week, with Saturday and Sunday off, in 1926.  In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act mandated a 40-hour work week, which had the effect of legalizing the weekend and making it all normal.

All that said, how has it worked out?  Any religious usage of the weekend has long ago been cast aside along with the old blue laws in favor of more, well, leisure.  And that has worked against worship attendance, formal religious education, and the family in the home.  Probably has not helped us with the idea of any real rest either.  We seem to work harder at our fun than we do at work where we expect the job to also be, you guessed it, fun.   Having grow up in rural America with its agricultural economy, the whole idea of any formal weekend had to allow for chores and occasional and emergency duties -- especially during the busy seasons of planting and harvest.  But we at least had the expectation of it and the yearning for two days off.

What concerns me most is how we have blurred the distinctions between work and leisure.  Working at home in your pjs has made the distinction between work and play very hard to navigate.  Furthermore, we have pushed the envelope to the point where we do everything at home -- from play to sleep to work to shop to eat to watch movies, etc...  Is there any limit to what we will eventually do at home?  Do we even need the weekend anymore?   Do congregations capitulate to this offering services to fit around people's schedules or do we reorder our days according to God's rhythm?  Is it already too late to lay claim on the weekend for anything more than me?  Lots of questions.  Not too many answers.