One more time. . .

In my first call there were those who told me that I prayed like my prayers came from a book.  I thought it was a compliment.  It was not.  Real prayer came from the heart.  Who can argue with that?  Of course, real prayer comes from the heart.  Is there a conflict between coming from the heart and coming from the book?

Of all the things Rome should have been embarrassed about in the wake of post-Vatican II changes to the Mass, the Prayer of the Faithful ended up being the saddest.  You may not account for what people will do to undo the integrity of what is put out there but this was designed for exactly that purpose.  At the local level people form their own intercessions and pray them on Sunday morning.  But that was the problem.  

I would not call it an exaggeration to say that the result has been terrible.  In the end, it was hard for the thinking and listening faithful to add their Amen to them -- not because they could not hear or understand them but precisely because they could not forget what they had heard and how sad it was against the promise of what could have been and should have been.  From the trite, banal, and sugar coated petitions that appealed only to sentiment to the political and social propaganda masquerading as prayer to the petitions designed not to offend people but surely offended God, it was a disaster.  It still is.  

Lutherans are not far behind.  We have traded the careful, eloquent, and rich words of the old General Prayer for words that belong in the announcements rather than a petition directed to the Lord of all.  We listen to find out news rather than to hear what is being prayed so that we can add our Amen to the petitions.  It would be a tragedy if it were not a travesty.  At some point, those in the LCMS headquarters decided that something of substance and with words that not only pray but teach us to pray should be offered.  Thus the Synod's offering sent by email as starting point for some and the quick and easy end run for others.

Alas, the genie is out of the bottle.  We could but won't go back to the General Prayer of the past.  But we could and should go back to learning how to craft faithful and eloquent intercessions befitting the Church and useful for teaching the faithful to pray.  I long for the days when people considered this one of the most important times of the liturgy.  Sadly, it is too often a placeholder in the Divine Service today.  The presider has not give due time to consideration of and composition of the Prayer of the Faithful and so the people are dulled into a sense that it all does not matter that much.   

We Lutherans do not have a GIRM -- General Instruction in the Roman Missal.  What it says, however, is not unhelpful to us as well. 

In the Prayer of the Faithful, the people respond in a certain way to the word of God which they have welcomed in faith and, exercising the office of their baptismal priesthood, offer prayers to God for the salvation of all. It is fitting that such a prayer be included, as a rule, in Masses celebrated with a congregation, so that petitions will be offered for the holy Church, for civil authorities, for those weighed down by various needs, for all men and women, and for the salvation of the whole world. As a rule, the series of intentions is to be

1.  For the needs of the Church;

2. For public authorities and the salvation of the whole world;

3. For those burdened by any kind of difficulty;

4. For the local community.

Nevertheless, in a particular celebration, such as Confirmation, Marriage, or a Funeral, the series of intentions may reflect more closely the particular occasion.

It is for the priest celebrant to direct this prayer from the chair. He himself begins it with a brief introduction, by which he invites the faithful to pray, and likewise he concludes it with a prayer. The intentions announced should be sober, be composed freely but prudently, and be succinct, and they should express the prayer of the entire community (GIRM 69-71). 

Maybe we Lutherans ought to look in our own worship books for good examples of such a Prayer of the Faithful.  I would commend you to reflect upon the examples on page 265 or 249 of Lutheran Service Book.  While you can surely do better than either of these examples, please do not do worse.  My own pet peeve is names.  We can use the Christian first name and that is enough -- even for the President and surely for the sick.  And don't forget to allow some silence for the faithful to name in their hearts those whose names were not read or did not get listed in the worship folder.  Also, it would be good to teach folks the value of silence before the final petition invites their Amen.  We all have our own prayers to add, don't we?  While everyone is so fully accustomed to the form, Lord, in Your mercy/hear our prayer, I actually do prefer the other form (ektene) in which we ask the faithful let us pray to the Lord and they respond Lord, have mercy.  It is a pretty traditional form, don't you think?  So if I have pressed a nerve, so be it.  Let's do a better job with the Prayer of the Faithful.  Oh yes, this is definitely the job of the pastor.  It is not that others cannot do it but that this is one of the most important parts of his vocation.

Not ever. . .

An alert reader pointed me to this.  The University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center General Social Survey (NORC-GSS) is, as it claims for itself, the longest-running, most respected social survey produced by that University.  Who am I to argue?  If that is the case, then its most recent survey about women and children is even more shocking.  It put into a graphic the alarming state of affairs for American women.  Indeed, although it does show how political ideology affects the desire of a woman to become a mother, there is little to give hope even to the conservative or traditional woman or mom.  I hope it is flawed and its statistics in error but I fear neither is the case.

I am sure you do not need me to read the graph for you.  In case you do not get my point, let me say it bluntly.  We might expect that liberal thinking women might not wish to have a child ever (if they have not had one by age 35) but did you see that conservative thinking women were not far behind in 2010 and even now a third or more of them agree.  No child.  Never.  So much for the future.  They have already decided, 75%+ of those on the left with just under 40% on the right.  We have all drunk the kool-aid.

No wonder children are a hard sell today.  So many have already decided either they are a bother too much to bear or not important enough to be bothered with at all.  Europe has led the way in this and so have some of the Asian cultures (China by governmental policy) but America has learned this terrible lesson and taken it to heart.  Not ever.  Gulp.

Those who know me know that I am not one of the those men who think that a woman ought to be barefoot, pregnant, and standing either in front of the stove or washing machine their whole lives but wow.  Has it become so radical to suggest that children are a blessing from the Lord, that children are normal for marriage, and that motherhood is the higher calling?  Have we surrendered that position to those who insist on reproductive rights at the cost of the child, who proclaim self-fulfillment over sacrifice, and who insist that marriage and children are optional?  My question is not why liberals think this way but how can one who calls themselves conservative also think this way?  I hope and pray that the numbers who do hold this opinion and call themselves conservative are dropping but I also fully realize that their numbers will not drop by the rest of us keeping silent on this point.  So consider this one of my initial volleys in the war of words that will certainly follow.   

 

What does it mean to translate?

My wife spent time in Germany as an honors language scholar and the German I learned was for reading and not quite for speaking.  So when we would encounter Germans in New York City who were speaking in their native tongue, I would eagerly ask what they were saying.  Sometimes she would answer with the gist of it all and sometimes she would say that it was such an idiom that it could not be translated into English.  That would inevitably lead to my frustration as she laughed at their jokes or smiled bemused by their comments while I was left in the dark.

That is the problem with translation.  While we would like it to be rather mechanical and somewhat easy, it is not.  It is not possible to mechanically translate the words as they are on the page without occasionally and perhaps even often ending up with something that either does not make sense or does not have the sense of the original.  Literal translations are editorial every bit as much as dynamic translations simply because they require the reader to do what the translator did not.  So somebody must make an editorial decision about how to render the words from their original into the language you want them to be and that somebody is either the reader trying to make sense of a literal hodgepodge of word "translated" without communicating the idea or sense of what is there or the translator.  One of you will be doing that work so which one is better equipped?  The reader or the translator.  This is not only a matter of fidelity to the text but the work of rendering one language into another out of one culture and into another.

Translation is not a mechanical process; it is an art form.   It is often surprising to people that old and familiar sayings in English have heir source in Scripture.  That is often because the translator has rendered the words literally without communicating the idea.  Look up the phrase by the skin of my teeth.  It is from the Scriptures.  Job 19:20, to be exact.  One version says My flesh is corrupt under my skin, and my bones are held in my teeth.  That is misses the point.  Another says My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.  Google translator can render the words in English but it so often struggles to convey the text and idea in sensible English.

I must confess that I am in awe of the work of a good translator.  Note the singular there.  I am sad to report that too often translations are committee efforts and the committee actually votes on the one they like or chooses the one that they can all live with while the soul of the words is sometimes muted or made bland in an effort to be clearly understood.  While no one in their right mind would every say that Scripture is not clear or that it does not clearly communicate all that we need to be saved, that statement does not mean that we have no need for translators or that their work is ordinary.  Translation is also an art because it not only requires of the translator that they know two languages well -- the Biblical text and English.  That might be a common assumption but it is not a fact.  Not all translators know English well enough to aid their translations.  So let me express my appreciation to the good work of good translators.  They are doing a difficult job and one that requires an aptitude, skill, and knack -- over and above the knowledge of what the words mean.  This is surely why some translations endure and why some do not.

Is that really so?

It is common for people to say that the most important thing about a church is not contained simply in statistics.  Of course!  Faithfulness cannot always be distilled down to numbers.  But does that mean numbers don't matter?  Is it possible that the Church can do everything else right in doctrine, witness, outreach, worship, and service and still not grow?  Or, even worse, decline?  Sure it is.  But does that mean that decline is normal or normative for the Church?  I don't think so.

Before going further, let me simply say that hoping, praying, and working for the growth of the Church does not mean you are willing to do whatever is necessary to make it grow.  That is the lie of evangelicalism in which nearly everything is up for grabs in the quest to pack the pews.  Indeed, the mega church side of this seems to suggest that those things that you must hold is smaller than those things you can discard for the sake of growth.  I am not saying this.  I am not at all suggesting that fidelity to the Scriptures, doctrine and creed, worship and piety, and service to others are less important than reaching out.  Indeed, what is the purpose of reaching out (except numbers) if you are not reaching out with the faithful Gospel of Christ crucified and risen?

What I am asking is not what you are willing to give up in order to get more folks in the pews.  What I am asking is whether or not we have become so accustomed to the decline of Christianity (or at least orthodox Christianity) that we suppose that this has become the new normal for us?  Has it?  Have we give into the idea that growth is either not possible or not normal anymore?  Does Jesus not care if His Church grows or declines?  Do we?

I am not at all holding myself up as an example.  The Lord has granted success despite my many failings, to be sure.  But He has granted success.  My first parish was in a local that long ago had seen its better days.  The main drag was pretty empty and in disrepair.  The industry that once fueled the economy was in tatters and there was nothing to replace it.  The congregation was also in rough shape -- afflicted by division over doctrine and practice, accustomed to disappointment, not sure that Lutheran was a positive word or negative one, and suffering from a building in disrepair and an empty checkbook.  I was convinced that the reason so many pastors showed up at my installation was to see the guy who was foolish enough to accept the call (which I did and was though it was my first placement out of seminary).  By the end of nearly 13 years there, doctrine and practice was solidly Lutheran, the congregation was united, the building was in better shape, and the numbers were up (attendance and membership).

In contrast, my second and last call came to a city on the move but a congregation which was not moving at all.  Divided, overcome with disappointment, short of people and funds, with a building debt and in disrepair, and known as a congregation which was for people who were not from here, the congregation was barely keeping the doors open.  Somehow we became one of the most liturgical congregations in Synod, built and paid for an impressive building and a huge pipe organ, and became well known in the community.  Even more surprising, we grew by 250% and continue to see new people walk through the doors each week.  Again, I am not at all lauding my example or gifts.  What I am suggesting is that faithfulness in preaching, teaching, and worship along with a warm welcome bear fruits.  Are we surprised?  We should not be.  Sometimes the dynamics around us leave us with little except decline (like my home congregation in a rural area where the numbers of people and especially those under 65 continues to decline significantly every year!).  But that does not mean that we should become so comfortable with decline that we no longer expect to grow.  I fear that we as a church body have become resigned to the fact that we can do our best but will not seem much happen.  My own experience is that this is not the case and I am confident we are but one of hundreds of examples of congregations and pastors whose faithfulness brings new people into the pews every week.

So what am I saying?  Expect the Lord to grow His Church.  Even when you do not see it and labor faithfully through the years, expect the Lord to grow His Church.  Pray for it.  Do not trade off faithfulness in doctrine or fidelity to God's Word or liturgical worship for the promise of bodies in the pews.  Expect that faithfulness in doctrine, fidelity to God's Word, and faithful catholic worship (like our Confessions expect) will result in growth.  We should not be consoled by the years when our decline is less than in other years or less than we predicted.  We should only be consoled by trusting that He is Lord of the Church when we are doing everything we can in faithfulness to the Lord's Word and will and growth does not come.  But we should not get used to it.  It may be safer to expect less and be surprised by more but that is not the way of the Lord.  Trust does not mean resignation to the things that disappoint us.  Trust means hoping against hope, when nothing gives a sign of that which is to come, that the Lord will grow His Church. 

The first job of liberalism. . .

Some might think that liberalism promotes error.  It could and does, at least in some cases, but it does its worst by promoting uncertainty and trading clarity for ambiguity.  Indeed, that is all liberalism really has to do to set adrift the bark of Christ's holy Church and undermine the foundations of Christian doctrine and faith.  The first job of liberalism is to ask the questions designed to create doubt about the fundamental moorings of Christian faith in Scripture and tradition.  

Nobody has to say that Scripture is wrong.  All the liberal has to ask is if Scripture is fully believable on every point or that there might be another interpretation or another perspective equally valid to the one that has been believed and taught since the beginning of Christianity.  Are all the miracles of Christ factual and historically true or might they simply be stories to make a point?  Nobody is really saying that the miracles are not true -- God forbid -- but that they do not have to be true to do what they were designed to do.  Nobody needs to say that they were fabricated but simply illustrations of the principles that matter and always matter more than truthfulness.  This is the real danger of God's Word in the hands of liberals.  The Bart Ehrmans of this world simply raise questions about whether what has always been believed is the only way to take God's Word or interpret the events of the Biblical narrative.  That is enough.

Nobody has to say that doctrine has been wrong all these years and that the creeds are not reliable.  No, indeed.  All that needs to be said is that what is being preserved and proclaimed are not events or facts or history but principles of love, well illustrated and symbolized by the words of these affirmations.  The creed is not wrong but neither are the words to be taken at face value.  The Virgin Birth is a prime example.  It is proclaimed not because it is literally true but because it preserves the mythology of Christ's appearance out of nowhere and His unique status as the Son of God.  You can say it on Sunday morning without being bound to it as facts or history or truth.  What is being preserved is the idea of it all and not the specific words and their literal meaning.  It would certainly be wrong to dispense with them but there is no need to do so if you simply view them as symbolic words and not as words tied to actual facts or events.

Nobody has to say that it was wrong all these years to affirm that God made them male and female or that marriage and family as traditionally defined are normative in the eyes of God.  No, indeed.  You simply suggest that what we have today was not known in ancient times and therefore could not have been condemned or affirmed.  You blame it on the institutional sin that is the convenient scapegoat of nearly everything bad and refer to the enlightened state of things today in which women, gays, lesbians, trans, and the whole plethora of the alphabet used to define the diversity of sexual desire and gender were repressed by the patriarchal and hypocritical institutions propped up by sin in in the past.  But no more.  No, we have moved beyond these simplistic and tainted positions to see things that were never seen or granted legitimacy in the past.  Jesus would surely not have said anything against what we are affirming today because His Gospel is generally a liberation to feel and be who you feel you are or want to be.  Right?

The liberal Trojan Horse is to let the past stand and simply to move on.  It happens in religion, in history, in sociology, in psychology, and nearly everywhere else.  The danger is not that what was believed will be contradicted but that it will be written off as simply naive or out of date or one of many interpretations.  The liberal will use the same vocabulary but redefine the words.  In the end the damage will have been done without directly disagreeing with anything.  Sure, some liberals have the courage or the integrity to admit that things are changing but most are content to let things evolve gradually as the past and its witness is moved aside and the possibilities of the present and future stand as legitimate and authoritative in their own right.  Ambiguity will end up doing all the work that open contradiction and dispute cannot safely do.