Promoting beauty or creating conflict. . .

Most of what we do in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod as far as media is concerned (official and unofficial) seems to revolve around more parochial concerns than more generally toward those outside the faith.  Yes, I know that there are plenty whose appeal is beyond the LCMS and plenty of those who have both kinds of conflict.  What I am more concerned about is that we often create as much conflict as we report and muddy the waters as much as we clarify them.  In so doing, we miss the more important use of the media available to us and that is to speak of the sheer beauty and grace of who we are, what we confess, and how we live (both liturgically and vocationally).  That is a missed opportunity.

Think, for example, of the last round of the presidential voting in the LCMS and of the media that has either officially or unofficially promoted a position or a candidate in that election.  What do those outside the faith hear and see in this kind of content?  It may be thoroughly relevant to the issue at hand for us inside the LCMS but is it going to help them to know us or Christ through us?  That is probably not the case.  The best use of media is not to air our grievances but to promote our position.  I know that you can do both at the same time but too much of what we do (maybe me included) is stirring the pot more than offering the world a taste of the goodness we offer.

I have heard others speak about this in particular with respect to Rome.  Roman Catholics have a great deal of positive media presence.  It is remarkable how easily they speak with deference and honor to their church, of the beauty and power of the liturgy, of the nearness of God's presence in the Mass, of the ordinary prayers common to most (the Rosary included), and of their unapologetic devotion to the practice of confession.  They seem to do this not because such things are the domain of Rome and its discipline but because they truly appreciate the beauty of their church and its life that encompasses their being and their identity as people.  Of course, as a Lutheran I cannot and do not always agree with the things they laud but I cannot help their admiration for they way they speak and of the positive nature of their witness.  These seemed to abide even through the tumultuous years of Francis.  I wish we knew how to be so positive in our display of our faith to the world.

One of the people who seems to do that so easily and powerfully is Pastor Will Weedon.  I have long promoted his visits with someone interested in Lutheranism and how positive that conversation was.  It remains, in my estimation, a high point of our social media presence -- even though it was done by someone outside our circle.  I have attached the videos here below for you to review if you have not seem them before or to watch again if you have.  This is how we need to speak to the world -- of the beauty of our confession, of our life together around the Word and Table of the Lord, of the catechism as prayerbook as well as explanation of the faith, and of our good works done not to impress anyone but because of Christ's good work to us upon the cross.  We can and should address the problems among us but we dare not forget to speak even more of this beauty and the profound character of God's life among us through the means of grace.  Beauty is not our enemy or even optional but intrinsic to our confession and our liturgical life.  In art and music, architecture and hymn, ceremony and rite, beauty is our ally and a medium for our message.  Why not online?

 

 

A conservative. . .

According to the dictionary,  conservative is an adjective meaning favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change or traditional or restrained or moderate; cautious.  The root of it all is that word conserve.  The problem is what to conserve.  The temptation is to pick one moment in history as either the starting point of the decline or the final moment of sanity.  But when?  When is that pristine moment which is the pure moment unspoiled by the advance of modernity or the corruption of values?  I know that conservatives would pick different dates just as I presume that liberals would be hard-pressed to agree on one date that defines their movement or their perspective.  For them it would seem the moment is still coming while for the conservative it remains somewhere in the past.

That is the problem in liturgical scholarship.  Some presume that the goal of liturgical scholarship is to find that pristine liturgy, that perfect and simple root without the flowering of modernity which has become like a treasure hunt except that none of our maps actually agree.  Ancient history is not the arena in which we hunt for the perfect moment but the revelation one truth in a thousand different ways along a linear path.  There are better moments and worse moments but that which endures are the grounding principles that endure through changes.  The problem of the liturgical scholars who were behind much of what changed in the post-Vatican II Mass is that they were looking for a perfect moment in history, a simple and yet profound glimpse through history to the unspoiled liturgy.  Most liturgical folks in other churches joined in the search assuming that there was such a pristine liturgy to be found.  In the end it was merely an excuse for burdening the rest of us with the liturgical preferences of the few.  Conservative liturgical scholarship disagreed with the date chosen.  Is that all conservatism is?  Is it a calendar matter?  One group choose 75 AD and another 600 AD and another 1563?  Who is the true conservative?

That same problem happens in Lutheranism.  Some chose 1941 as the date that governs everything good, right, and salutary and others choose 1888 and still others some other date when the kirchenordnung was unspoiled.  Others presume that a modern form (1978 or 2006 or later) is a better preservation of the ancient form than any other.  Is that all conservatism is -- the choice of a different date than the liberal or progressive?  Or, is there a body of things that go with and perhaps govern that choice of date?  A conservative is not a reactionary but neither is he opposed to everything modern.  It is a matter of principle.  The principles govern the conservative.  He is not like the liberal who things all things new are better but neither is he a curmudgeon who insists that everything old was perfect.  Instead the conservative sifts the history letting principle define goodness and not a snapshot of a moment in time.

I lived with an outhouse and do not wish to exchange my master bath for a rickety wooden building over a hole in the ground.  No conservative does.  But a conservative uses principles to suggest that those with male reproductive organs belong in the same bathroom no matter what gender the person feels at the moment.  What governs is not a date in time but a principle that goes well beyond the level of plumbing that has been installed in the room. 

A preface for every occasion. . .

Lutherans have a dearth of proper prefaces within the Canon of the Mass.  We too quickly defer to a seasonal generic set of words, not bad but clearly missing those prefaces which would be appointed for particular days.  Let me give an example.

In the Roman sanctoral calendar there is a day for St. Elijah, the Prophet.  Now, of course, we do not have such a day on our Lutheran calendar but the comparison is not about which days made it and which did not (or which became merely commemorations).  It is about the riches of propers which are tuned to the day.  The Roman proper preface for St. Elijah is:

Right indeed it is and just, proper and for our welfare, that we should always and everywhere give thanks to you, holy Lord, almighty Father, eternal God; and that we should triumphantly praise, bless, and proclaim you on this solemn feast of blessed Elijah, your Prophet and our father: who, at your word, arose like fire, closed the sky, raised the dead, smote the tyrants, killed the impious, and laid the foundations of the monastic life; who, fed with bread and drink by the ministry of an angel, walked in the strength of that food as far as the holy mountain; who was carried off in a whirlwind of fire, to return as a herald of the second coming of Jesus Christ our Lord; through whom your majesty is praised by the Angels and the Archangels, by the Cherubim too and the Seraphim, who lift up their endless hymn, day by day, with one voice singing: 

Don't you just love how the preface itself is filled with the primary details of the life of Elijah in a poetic way which invites us to know him of whom the day is set apart to remember?  I do.  I miss the abundance of propers in our Lutheran orders and wish we had utilized more rather than less.  Less is more is not a good principle in just about anything, much less rites and texts.  Though our Lutheran inclination is to tend toward simpler rather than elaborate, I wish we had expanded rather than reduced such examples of liturgical riches. 

Making messes. . .

I will pick on Pope Francis because he is not here to argue with me.  I suspect, however, he would not argue.  He saw as his mission and purpose to make messes for the Lord.  In places and times when the need was for clarity, he was obtuse.  In places and times when the need was for bring people together, he seemed to delight in actually creating conflict.  In places and times when the need was for patience and deliberation, he seemed to act upon whim or impulse.  In places and times when the need was for holding to the faith once delivered, he seemed to press the edge of change and innovation in a way that actually undermined the tradition and dismissed it.  

Pope Francis actually left his successor many messes.  Some of them were people (Victor Fernández).  Some of them were moto proprios (Traditionis custodes or Fiducia Supplicans}.  Some of them were initiatives (governance of Rome or synodality).  I could go on.  I do not need to.  You get it.  He stirred the pot and then looked offended when somebody caught him with the spoon.  There are those in every organization and in the Church who like to do what Francis did -- make messes.  While it is easy to blame those who make the mess, that does nothing to clean it up.  Cleaning up is, after all, the goal.  It would be good if you were steward of the Church on any level that you leave to your successors not messes but things as clean and orderly as possible.  That is good on the parish level and it is good on every other level as well.

We find that in Lutheranism as well.  Rome is not the only one who has a few mess makers.  Our own LCMS seems to have enough folks who like to render obtuse what is clear, to focus uncertainty what is certain, and to simply irritate folks for the sake of watching how it all plays out.  I have no problem with conflict when it concerns that for which we dare not compromise or waver but I am deeply suspicious of salacious headlines and threats that masquerade as concerns.  Sometimes we need to call out those who simply delight in making messes and watching what happens.  It is simply not helpful when we spend the majority of our time trying to clean up the messes others have left to us.  It is wearisome to constantly be putting out fires or throwing oil on troubled waters.  We should all be working to prevent messes and where they exist to clean them up and to making sure that if we must create a mess it is for essential purpose and need.

I speak this largely to those entrusted with offices in the churches but I also commend this to those who hold no office except that of baptized child of God.  We live in an age in which the internet allows us to make known to the world things which could be handled with some discretion.  Hitting post is a delightful way to get rid of our frustration but at what cost?  I know that there are times when we cannot help but make a mess in the process of cleaning it up and yet too often it is in the judgment of some that it is more fun to explode things than to build them up.  That is my concern today.  It does not matter at what level you are or what job you hold, be faithful and work for and not simply against the Church by making a mess where there does not need to be one.  Plus, my mother's wisdom for those who used her kitchen applies -- if you make a mess, clean it up!   

Extending Eden to the wild world. . .

You learn new things all the time.  One of the things I learned a few months ago has to do with Eden, with the command of God to Adam and Eve, and how that is connected to our vocation as children of God.  When sin entered the world and Adam and Eve were forced to leave the Eden that God had created for them, it was not simply a consequence of their sin but a purpose and mission given to them,  To be fruitful and multiply was the call to participate within God's own creative activity.  It is not the burden which so much of the modern world complains about but the gift of a partnership with the God who alone is Lord of life and who generated all that is from nothing.  We are given the opportunity to work with Him, not in spite of Him or without Him but with Him, learning to delight in His will and purpose and His abundant goodness which undergirds the whole of creation.

There was, however, also the command to exercise dominion over the earth in the Lord's name.  This was not because God could not but an invitation to work with God.  It was gift and blessing for God to call us to work in Him to do what He has given us to do.  The world was no longer Eden but a wild place which needed to be tamed, if you will, and domesticated [another word which comes from dominion].  So by exercising dominion, Adam and Eve [and that includes Christians to this day] extend God's order into the wildness of the world, taming it not by raw power but by the proclamation of the Gospel of forgiveness and life stronger than death.  It is a profound gift and blessing for us to do this.  Part of the way we do this is to be fruitful and multiply.  Children are a gift, blessing, and heritage from the Lord.  By having those children and catechizing them into the knowledge of God and encouraging their faith by bringing them to the font and teaching them the Gospel, we are domesticating the world to be a domus or house of the Lord instead of the wild place resistant to and antagonist to God's gracious will and purpose.

To say that the Gospel is somehow new or connected to the New Testament alone is foolish.  God's goodness is not an idea but flesh and blood in Christ.  We do not honor His goodness simply with cerebral activity but also by the ordering of our lives together as husband to wife and wife to husband, parent to child and child to parent.  The wildness of the world should be something fairly obvious to us today and the radical nature of the traditional call to marriage and children and family should also be obvious to us.  This is not about forcing through legality or command but by the application of the love that forgives, restores, and sustains the people of God in their life together just as they have received this grace from God Himself.  Marriage has become a radical thing in our world today.  Having a child or many children is a scandal in a world which lives for self alone in the pursuit of pleasure/entertainment alone.  Fidelity in marriage and faithfulness even in sacrifice for the sake of spouse and child are not burdens we must bear but the glad burdens of love from the love we have learned in God and His merciful goodness toward us.

We are, by God's grace, extending Eden into the wild world around us.  By this, God is giving order to the chaos and meeting death with the power of the resurrection.  It is not simply coincidence that these connect in this way but, again, by His order and design.  This is our vocation as the people of God who have been given new life in baptismal water, called by the Spirit to faith and life in the new identity we have as the people of God, led by the Good Shepherd's voice in His Word, and fed and nourished at His table.  This is not simply for us only but for the sake of the world as well.  There is witness simply to going to Church, valuing and practicing the power of forgiveness, living not as a faint echo of the world's own righteousness but as a people planted within the wilderness as God's domus or house.  The Church is an outpost of this house of God in the wilderness, the instrument of God's kingdom in bringing those who were not into that house.

 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. (Eph 5:15-17)