The Rush to Complaint. . .

The sad and terrible situation in our church with a District President standing charged with the production of child pornography and, Lord knows, whatever else not yet revealed has created the occasion for commentators to complain about the failures of ecclesiastical supervision or the processes set up by our bylaws.  I am under no illusions.  Undoubtedly there were things which our leaders and our ordinary procedures for discipline could have done better.  Nobody but a fool would say this was anyone's finest hour.  That said, it does not rise to the level of incompetence alleged by some nor does it mean that rather slow and deliberate procedures for dealing with such situations should be sped up when the will of the people desires it.  

Lets think about this a moment.  Our leadership is given no crystal ball nor do they possess a secret insight into the secrets of men.  In this case a district of lay and clergy elected the man now charged.  He worked with more than 40 others among his peers, the presidium of Synod, and other officers.  He worked with boards, commissions, and service organizations allied with the Synod.  What some claim to have seen in hindsight was not apparent going forward.  If for no other reason than liability, had there been something to see I am confident all the lawyers would have warned us going forward.  I suspect he went through a number of background checks without anything being flagged.  My point is not to come to the aid of this accused man nor to insist that our leaders did everything right.  It is simply a request that those who rush to complain and lay this at the doorstep of those leaders are venting their emotions more than dealing with rational facts.  As understandable as this is, it is not helpful and the public display of this kind of complaint feeds the mouth of the devil and all the other naysayers against the Church.  No one is helping by using social media as a bully pulpit to display their outrage or to vent their complaints.  Whether you like and support our leaders or not, no one was giving cover to this kind of behavior or sin.  

I know a bit about bylaws, perhaps more than most but certain less than some.  Bylaws are simply the rules we have chosen to live by.  No bylaw can solve a theological problem nor can any bylaw do ecclesiastical supervision.  The bylaws we have are not perfect but they are the rules we have chosen -- for good or for ill.  I have every confidence that they can and should and will be changed or adapted because of what has happened.  We learn more from mistakes than we do successes.  All of that said, one complaint that is particularly vexing to me is the suggestion that the processes we have work too slow and therefore protect the guilty.  Yes, they do work slowly in comparison to those who want to snap their fingers and have something go away.  But if you are the accused in any matter, you will appreciate that we have both rules and a rather deliberate procedure that takes a little time to unfold.  The rush to judgment, like the rush to complain, is not fitting to the work of the Kingdom.  We do not have courts, prosecutors, investigators, and judges.  Maybe we should have but we don't and it is foolish to act like we do when clearly we have a different structure in our bylaws.  We have other pastors doing ecclesiastical supervision (along with all the other things they do) trying to be fair as well as to be just.  As long as they work with integrity, a little slowness should not be an issue.  Remember that when you change the rules to make them work better for you, they will also be used by someone else who may not agree with you.  Rules or bylaws need to be a little out of step with public opinion and the quest for instantaneous judgment.  Matthew 18 has a few steps that mean to be played out over time and not in the blink of an eye. 

Finally, remember that the rules in the Church are designed not simply to dump someone who has become a liability but also to bring them to repentance.  I chafe under that like everyone else who wishes that the wheels of justice worked in the church and worked more quickly.  But that is not how things work.  Every one of us is a sinner and no one can sit in judgment like the righteous man except the One who is righteous, Jesus Christ.  Our call to warn the wicked is not designed to preserve the Church from sinful men but to call every one of them (and us) to daily repentance.  When that call is unheeded, we are not given the option of casting the sinner aside and forgetting about them.  No, instead we are called to preach the Word of God in an effort to bring them to repentance, restore their faith, and secure from them the faithful confession of Christ their Savior.  Nobody has a right to an office in the Church and repentance and restoration does not mean that the sinner returns to their same calling.  We all know that.  Sometimes, however, we seem a great deal like Noah who was motivated to run more by the prospect of the people repenting and then having to deal with them than he was the people hardening their hearts unto eternal condemnation.  As a pastor, I have had the uncomfortable situation of a public sinner who repents and asks forgiveness and restoration when all of us would rather he would go away so that we were not bothered by him anymore.  None of us have that luxury.  Our goal is not to clean up a mess so that nobody sees it anymore but to confront the sinner with God's judgment and His mercy.  This is its own kind of messiness that the world will never understand or appreciate.

So what should we do?  Lets rally around in prayer for all in this situation -- from the victims to the prosecutor to the judge in the court to the perpetrator of such a crime.  Most of all, let us pray for the Church and for the wisdom and discernment to keep things like this from happening as much as can be done and for those whose faith is shaken by the offense and for the Word of the Lord to bear fruit in the lives of all involved, bringing repentance where there is none and forgiveness where there is repentance.  In any case, the cause is hot helped by trying to act as judge and jury in social media anymore than it is helped by the false presumption that you would have acted more wisely in this than all the others in our church body have done.  Everyone of us thinks we are right in our speaking or we would not speak but not every one of us is correct in that thought.  And that is all I am going to say.  

Look where?

A while ago a report was issued on the condition of the LCMS.  It was nothing new but with the opinions were facts born of statistics and comparisons year over year through the last couple of decades.  In the report was the question of whether the LCMS was going to accept the orderly extinction which the facts and figures had charted or whether there was a plan to begin fixing what is wrong.

After some days of thoughts on and off about the report, it occurs to me that we are all looking for a plan and some sort of planner to tell us what to do and then to inspire us to do it.  It would be nice.  It would be good if it all came printed in the mail in full color or downloadable from some website or presented in visual form for all of us visual learners.  It would be nice but it is not going to happen.  Renewal seldom happens from the top down.  This is no different.

What the statistics tell us is that the problem and the solution lies not in some office in a headquarters or from the latest book off the presses or even from the halls of academia.   Both the challenges and whatever response we have to those challenges are squarely on the parish level.  The decline overall is born of a decline in the parishes of our Synod.  Quite bluntly, we have fewer people coming to worship than we have had since our earliest of days.  The number of congregations is declining but at a very slow rate and one that looks bigger because the number of mission starts is also very low.  Though the last two decades have seen the total number of folks in worship on an average Sunday drop to half of what it was, the actual number of altars and pulpits has not dropped as precipitously (2.8%).  In fact, the numbers of active clergy on the roster is a bit higher than a generation ago (2%).  No, the problem is that we are no longer a culture of church going folks as the ratio from those baptized members to attendance is now only 3 out of 10.

The fact that we are not alone or that we are doing better than some should not be consolation to us.  We have to admit that the loss is being felt first of all on the ground level with the congregation and any renewal will begin on the ground level with the congregation.  Furthermore, we will need to face the hard fact that innovation and creativity are not the answers anymore than doing what we have been doing wrong over the past 20 years or so will help us reverse the trend.  Books and programs and experts are not the means to reversing this decline.  We all know that but none of us wants to believe it.  Neither will we reverse the decline by finding convenient suspects to round up and accuse.  It is a fool's errand for Rome to blame all their problems on Vatican II and it is a fool's errand for us to blame all our problems on any one thing or any one group (not even the Boomers so many love to hate).   

Our problem is that we simply have forgotten how to be the Church.  We have engaged in so many different activities over the years that we have either been distracted from or lost confidence in the one way the Church grows -- the means of grace.  Luther's explanation to the Third Article of the Apostles' Creed has become a shibboleth of orthodoxy but we may just have forgotten to actually believe what we insist upon saying.  Worship has become merely one of many programs within the congregation and the style of worship has become the battleground.  We have made worship into a toy that little children are fighting over in the sandbox instead of the awe filled moment of Christ's epiphany to us and His gift to us of the food of everlasting life.  We argue over sins as if any one of us were righteous and we confess more the vague generalities or systematic sins that do not accuse us instead of praying for mercy before the Lord who is rightfully offended by what we have said, thought, and done.  We entertain people to death and then insist to them than unless they are leading something or taking part of the service, they are not really participating.  We have more Bibles than any one but do not read them and plenty of great religious books that sit unopened.  

The reality is that many of our congregations have forgotten why they are there in the first place and the Lord's visitation has been bumped down the list while relevance and feel good emotions top it.  Covid is hardly to blame but the mere fact that it happened and we acquiesced to the reality that the liquor store is more important than our gathering on the Lord's day in His house only sealed the deal.  We have lost more than people in the pews; we have lost our reason for existence.  Without a renewal that is built upon this positive and powerful affirmation of who we are as the people of God and what we do gathered around His Word, water, and table.  We do not have to draw people to this unless what we are doing is no longer this glimpse of heavenly glory and this taste of the food of immortality.  As long as worship is merely optional, it will become occasional and as long as it is occasional it will become irrelevant.  There is no apology or embarrassment for this statement of fact.  Renewal begins on Sunday morning.  Is this a radical thought?  It should not be and if it is then all the programs and technology on earth will not save us.  We will have condemned ourselves.

Living Lutheran. . .

I had set it aside but then picked it up.  The Living Lutheran is back in print, albeit down to four issues a year, and the Winter issue is telling.  While never actually conceived of nor implemented as a doctrinal journal to teach the faith or even confess it in words, it remains the official periodical of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  So what does that mean exactly and what is it all about?

I took the liberty of surveying the magazine to find 11 authors (3 of them even male) but instead of putting before you the names of the various articles, what you have below are the words in large print drawn out from the prose.  Here is the gist of what the ELCA has become, at least by its own definition and according to its on publication.  The banner on the front cover proclaims that these are stories of God's people living their faith.  Just inside that cover the reader is told of the ELCA we are a church that values and encourages diverse voices and lively dialogue in our faith and life.  Living Lutheran is an opportunity for church members to express individual perspectives, and does not necessarily reflect official positions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Now that is interesting -- an official journal that does not necessarily reflect what the church that publishes it officially holds.

Early on we are told "Our loving Lord laughs often and joyously and invites us to do so as well."  Good to know.  I am not sure if the Lord is laughing at the same things we are or if the Lord is weeping over the things at which we snicker.  But that would involve seriously mining through what the Church believes and confesses and that is not quite what this journal is all about.  So as long as everyone is smiling or laughing it would seem all is well.  Then follows the introduction to the newly elected and installed presiding bishop and secretary.  I presume there is a bit more gravity given to this but perhaps not.  Then a piece about Charlie Brown's Christmas and one on putting the putz (decoration?) into Christmas.

As if on cue, the magazine insists "God did not lead them through familiarity or tradition but through wonder and curiosity."  The Magi, that is.  Outsiders with nothing more than an innate curiosity and a sense of openness to find God where you never expected Him (should I have said her?).  Oddly enough, the next pages describe "The Pig Project has distributed more than 3,500 pounds of meat."  In Iowa, pigs are big business so a food ministry distributing pork is probably to be expected.  In the same story it is proudly announced that the author finds it "counter to the narrative that the church is dying, to see congregations adapting and changing."  But it is dying.  Not because I said it but because the statistics chronicle the decline of a denomination that is close to half of its original size in 1988.  Presumably no one wants to admit that and not on the pages of the denomination's only print journal.

In an article on Ash Wednesday, there is great mention of how we are all broken and a listing of many sins (even systemic and corporate sins) but no sins against the sexual morality of the Bible.  Oh well, God forgives them all and as long as we name our pain, we are good to go, it would seem.  Not sure if it qualifies as corporate or systemic sin but there is an obligatory article on "The impacts of the federal spending law -- along with an ad for their own credit union, I might add.  There is the expected article which speaks of "A reflection on the multicultural young adult event" which should be every event in the ELCA.  Don't forget the National Day of Racial Healing to Center Storytelling."  It may seem a bit odd that a church body nearly 99% white would have so prominent a mention here but that is the shape of the gospel proclaimed in the ELCA -- yes, Jesus did something for us on the cross but what about how bad things are now and what should we be doing to fix what Jesus apparently did not.  Can you hear the snark in my voice?

In the end, we can be comforted by the final words.  "God made you quirky and loves you a whole lot."  That about sums up the New Testament, now doesn't it?  I have no doubt about the sincerity of the writers or even the goodness of some of their causes.  What I simply do not get is how the primary publication of the ELCA can somehow fail to describe what this Gospel is or confess it clearly along with such glowing descriptions of the way some are living out their faith.  My point is simply this.  Without defining the faith that you are living out, the work you fails the definition of Lutheran.  Unless you think the Reformation was about diversity, social ministry, and good works to take the place of Christ's good work on the cross.  I am sorry I am such a downer today but it is very difficult to take the smiles seriously given the doctrinal failings of a church created from a proud past with a hopeful future.  

Time. . . who needs it?

When God ordered creation with the gift of time, it was not like the time we measure today.  Sunrise and sunset defined everything.  It was simply about light and dark and not about seconds and minutes and hours.  Nobody cared about them because no one needed them.  Morning began with sunrise and the day ended when evening saw the sunset. Apart from that, we simply worked.  We defined the hours of daylight by what we did.  Some of it was for self and family in the ordinary chores of house and home and some of it was for others as well in fields and cattle.  Time was largely observed by when work began and when it ended.  There was no time-clock to punch, as it were; when it was light work began and when it became too dark to work, it stopped.  So did we.  The dark was rest.

Now the seconds and minutes and hours dominate us.  We are over scheduled and under rested because the light no longer matters.  We light the dark and dark the light but the ubiquitous screens live on in both and so we find it hard to rest our minds and our fingers.  The busyness continues whether for work or pleasure or aimless distraction.  There are fewer boundaries with the clocks ticking away and the phones reminding us about this or that.  The world has become one great alarm clock with its local version the most important use of that technological marvel, the smart phone.  It is smart but we are not.  We have surrendered nearly everything to clocks that rule our lives and to the time we measure in the smallest of increments.  Gone is the ordinary rhythm of light and dark, work and rest.  In its place is a constant on in which sleep is interrupted with tones that signal notifications of this or that or texts we absolutely must see.  Nothing waits and we wait for nothing.  We simply have to be plugged in.

It is kind of interesting to remember that the church bell that sounded the hours when no one had watches and none had even imagined a cell phone.  The church bell was not interested in making sure you were heading to your appointments but it was sounding out the hours of prayer -- less for the folks in the fields or markets or homes than for the monastics who were drawn together for prayer by those tolls.  The very word for "clock," I am told, has it’s origin is from a word meaning a “bell.” And so the bell sounded into the ordinary noise of the day to announce the times for prayer the monks and nuns would keep. Few needed or wanted to know the hours except those who prayed them.  Then it changed.  The church gave us the clock and we took it from the church until the bells no longer chime and if they do it is not to call us to prayer but to urge us on to the next task.

By my modest search, mechanical clocks powered by weights and gears first began to appear in the 13th and 14th centuries.  In cathedral towers, monasteries, and town squares these clocks were powered bells and some fancy enough to provide dancing mannequins decorated in local color. They were “clocks” because they were powered bells -- not so much telling time as announcing it.  The liturgical year was the accompanying calendar to these bells.  Both are pretty much lost to us and with them any sense of time as God's creation and domain.  It is about us though I wish it could be said that time improved in the bargain.  It did not.  It became more bane than blessing and has held us captive since the sun dial made telling time portable.  Oddly enough, one of the quirks of retirement is that I no longer wear a watch.  Indeed, I am forever forgetting what time it is because my appointments are few, my schedules are more open, and none of it is as urgent as it once was anyway.  In the beginning I thought this a problem.  Now I wonder if it is less problem than a return to a simpler age when everyone was like me.  Morning matters and evening but the day is less cluttered and the night left free for rest.

People are incredibly adaptable to change -- look at how we complain but then figure out how to live with the foolishness of daylight savings time!  There is a limit, however.  When time is not simply a day ordered by light and dark, it often becomes a prison of deadlines and demands.  Our bodies and our minds were created for a rhythm and the church once announced it with the call to prayer.  Now we can stay up late and rob ourselves of rest and confuse the pressing need for work with the ability to explore the internet and its games and useless knowledge without boundaries.  It is no wonder that vices exploit time and our ordering of time apart from God exposes us to their influence and temptation.  If there is a thing we ought to do it is to recover the sense of time ordered by light and darkness, day and night.  While that might mean giving up some of our precious screen time, it will surely reward us with more than rest and some real peace.  News was once a scheduled event but not it breaks in to unsettle us with what is local and what is too far away to imagine.  Has it helped us?  Has it contributed to the lesser evils of crime and violence?  I think you know the answer.  I also think you know why I long again for a time when the clock was the church's and the bell was our reminder of those who prayed as we should.  Here are some older words to a very familiar hymn:

1. Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home:

2. Under the shadow of your throne
Your saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is your arm alone,
And our defense is sure.

3. Before the hills in order stood
Or Earth received her frame,
From everlasting you are God,
To endless years the same.

4. A thousand ages in your sight
Are like an evening gone,
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.

5. Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the op’ning day.

6. Like flow’ry fields the nations stand,
Pleased with the morning light;
The flow’rs beneath the mower’s hand
Lie with’ring ere ’tis night.

7. Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guard while troubles last
And our eternal home.

 

Cultus vs ethical path vs cerebral belief. . .

The fact that we do not have definitive records from early Christianity does not seem to prevent those who want to draw conclusions from drawing the conclusions they favor.  I am thinking here of the myth of the simple faith of Jesus.  How many have been tempted to minimize both doctrinal truth and institutional worship as a late and unwelcome invention?  You do not need to be Roman or even among the seven sisters of Evangelical Christianity to hold to your sacred truth over fact.  Lutherans do it as well.  Most are drawn to the mythology of an early and pristine Christianity uncluttered by doctrine, liturgical form and test, and a sacramental understanding of things.  Instead they combine to preserve the falsehood that early Christians would be scandalized by what institutional Christianity has become and fear the devil won after all.  They would insist that the recovery of a simple, easy, non-cultic form of Christianity is the cause which will save us and that anything else is an imposition upon the first Christians and a distortion of any kind of church they would have known.

They have sold to us the lie that early Christians worshiped in their living rooms in a first century version of a Barcalounger while being engaged either by a cerebral version of the faith or exhorted to a certain moral shape of everyday life.  They have come to the conclusion that there were no altars in early Christianity but only tables -- the same ones that held lunch and afternoon tea -- and that any development of a religion of doctrinal tenets, liturgical worship, vestments, chant, and altars was a deformation rather than a formative maturation.  So their goal has been as much as possible to disdain the present in favor of such a pristine Christianity of potlucks, universalism, and love for everyone.  Their vision has exchanged the vertical for the horizontal and encouraged us to a noble simplicity over the excesses of later eras.

Are they correct?  It would seem that some on both sides of the theological spectrum want to agree with their history of it all.  The evangelicals were sure all along that nothing mattered except people being happy though they differed on how to make them happy (rigorous moral living or consent to the right set of doctrinal propositions.  Bronze age Lutherans somewhat embarrassed by their own liturgy and vestments seem as likely to concede that what God wants is right believing and that nothing else matters all that much (from sacraments to good works!).  Preaching, believing, and right acting are all that really matter and the rest is, well, adiaphora (falsely meaning nothing all that important).  They marvel at how the Church devolved into a cultic religion.  I do just the opposite.  I am amazed at how quickly Christians were able to leave behind their forced gatherings in homes for proper church buildings and all the accoutrements of worship.  Constantine must have been a very powerful man to be blamed for everything from invoking what is Scripture and what is not to the corruption of a simple faith into a complex one of creeds and truth statements.

The problem we have today is that some insist upon framing their lives as Christians and their association with the Church in the realm of volunteers who share a set of words on paper and who live the Amish paradise of a most unceremonial pattern of worship.  However, worship is not some little sideline for some in the faith but the place where we are nearest to God and actually receive His grace through means and glimpse the promise of the eternal to come.  Doctrine does not live in the realm of reasoned proposition or theoretical faith held mostly by the mind but is how we live out our faith together. Doctrine touches every aspect of Christian life.  That is the genius of lex orandi lex credendi.  The phrase gets this correlation between doctrinal integrity and liturgical unity, between conceptualizing God and meeting Him where He is to be found (means of grace).

Luther, the modern Roman Liturgical Movement, moralistic and therapeutic deism, and the goal of a noble simplicity all got it wrong if they insisted that heart and mind were where it happened over Word and Sacrament.  BoGiertz got it correct.  Mission and worship do not compete but are different sizes of the same coin.  Let's just be radical here.  If you think Jesus would be shocked and offended by vestments, pipe organs, choirs, chant, altar parments, crucifixes, bowing, kneeling, and the like, then you know a different Jesus than does the Scripture and the blessed who hear and believe.  You cannot read the passages on worship in the Old Testament and then jump to St. John the Divine's vision of Revelation and presume that in between God just wants us to gather around the kitchen table and much upon some symbolic food along with supper, think about Jesus and how we can follow Him, and keep the doctrine stupidly simple.  I am tired of those who have made Mid-Century Modern into a religious architectural style and entertainment into worship but I am also weary of having to defend to those who want it all but less of it that Christianity is cultus and not simply ethical path, that this faith is about a real taste and vision of eternity and not simply how to have your best life now.  We have surely screwed up a few things over time but recognizing the liturgical shape of worship and the Christian life is not one of them.  St. Matthew's Gospel begins and ends with Immanuel -- from the name given to the Child born of a Virgin to the promise of the Risen Savior.  This Immanuel takes shape, form, and flavor in the Holy Eucharist and within it unfolds the liturgical and ceremonial shape of how then we live.  Faith comes by hearing the Word but it does not live solely in the mind.  We behold Him not merely with the ear but with all the senses.