The roots of liberalism. . .

Though you would not know it today, the very word liberal has its roots in liberty.  It was, at least in the beginning, a word used to describe those who loved freedom.  It originated from the Latin word liber, which means "free."  It began to include ideas of generosity, selflessness, and a person of magnanimous character.  Of course, the word “liberal” has evolved into many different meanings, many of which are decidedly not liberal at all. In political and social theory, “liberalism” did not necessarily mean progressive but was also rooted in the ideals of freedom, rights, and democracy.  In this way, it is quite correct to speak of the American constitutional idea as liberal and embodying the highest institutional attachment to freedom or liberty, to the enshrinement of rights meant to protect the minority from the dictatorship of the majority, and authority which is conferred by democratic vote.  It also contained the idea of laws and a society free from prejudice -- although the implications of that are still being worked out.  As recently as the 1800s, this meant holding to the essentials of individual freedoms over the collective will but at some point it also began to include the idea of government action to compel what was considered to be freedom when that collective will demurred.  Social action began to enter its heyday in the 1960s as this idea was structured into laws over racism, feminism, and poverty.

At some point, however, this took a turn from which we have not yet seen correction.  Liberal has come to mean those who insist upon the minority surrendering its rights for the common good.  It has come to mean the liberty of government to strip away once sacred rights in pursuit of a particular vision of what society and common life looks like.  The once profound tenets of liberty have been willingly surrendered by the masses in pursuit of safety, equality of once unpopular ideas which have now taken root, and in the effecting of a progressive state unhinged by those things which were once considered to be its foundations.  It is not simply that liberal has come to mean those who now trade their principles for the sake of their political or social ideology but those who have become enemies in combat against what were once considered allies of a generous freedom.  Most notably, religion and, in particular, Christian religion has suffered this fate.  There is no prejudice allowed today except that prejudice against ideas once common but now forbidden and that includes most of the moral character of Christian faith and life, rooting in marriage and family.  Antagonism against Christianity and against its ethical and social support for everything from justice to children has become the singular mark of liberalism today.

In other words, liberalism has become decidedly illiberal.  Individual rights and freedoms no longer are sacred or worth preservation and liberals enthusiastically supported the artificial restriction of many of those rights and freedoms during the pandemic.  That single event has had lasting and profound consequences for the individual rights and freedoms of the individual and of religion in America.  We should have seen this coming.  After all, the abortion controversy would have presumed that the liberal path was to protect and defend those with the least status or ability to defend themselves -- the unborn.  But that is not what happened.  Liberal meant not simply allowing but championing the murder of the unborn at the whim and desire of the woman.  Liberal took the same tack with homosexuality.  It did not simply advocate for the extension of rights accorded to heterosexuals to the gay but the wholesale redefinition of marriage away from children and family.  The problem today is not that marriage was redefined but it was effectively stripped from the foundation of family in which selfless love and life was offered for the sake of the spouse and the children everyone expected to be born to that family.  That is not what marriage means today and it is revealed by the appallingly high rate of abortion and the shockingly low birth rate.  The liberal position has come at the expense of love that costs you something and children so that the highest value attached to liberty is the freedom NOT to marry or to end it when you want and NOT to have children even it that means killing the unborn in the womb.

Theologically, liberals are not simply advocating for the freedom of interpretation of traditional Christian values and ideals but is at odds with the Scriptures, creed, and confession.  It has grown to the point where it seems the liberal task to prove how what once was believed, taught, and confessed was in error and cannot possibly be held by a reasoned and educated mind today.  While this is certainly true with Christian teachings that have historically conflicted with modern social ideas of sexual desire, gender identity, marriage, abortion, and such, it is not only about these.  It is a modern idea to presume that the Old Testament is filled with myth and legend, that its stories are incredible and therefore not factual, and that its transmission down through the ages corrupted and distorted the text to the point where no one can really know the truth behind it.  The Scriptures which were once a common anchor for both Roman Catholics and Protestants have become a deep, dark, imagined book in which nearly everything is suspect except the principles of love and self-fulfillment.  Liberalism is a threat against any regular orthodoxy of who Christ was and is and what He accomplished.  It is not simply that some disagree with orthodox Christian doctrine but they insist that it is untenable to hold what was once considered sacred.  Even more so, they seem determined to fence off what was once orthodox and catholic until it is forgotten or erased from memory.  There is no liberty left in such liberalism and it has taken on its sole mission to render traditional and orthodox Christian truth and proclamation offensive.

The problem of compromise and dialogue is made impossible since the liberal has only one goal -- to make what was once held impossible or untenable to be held anymore.  You actually see this working out in Rome when the Latin Mass folks insist upon the right to continue what was once the norm for ove3r 400 years while the liberals (Cupich) insist that no one has the right to anything except the post-Vatican II Mass (as done by those who have stripped it of all its traditional practices).  You also see in in Lutherans who have dismantled the institutions of marriage and family and have rejected the liturgy in an ill-advised separation between so-called style and substance in worship.  The liberal would have refused such animosity while preserving the freedom to disagree but, in religion as in politics, modern day liberals refuse to grant such freedom to those who continue to hold to what was once normative for all.  In this way, again, liberals have proven themselves most illiberal.

What the eye beholds. . .

For many liturgical Christians, and in particular Roman Catholics, the experience of going to church on Sunday morning is made more difficult with buildings which are unfriendly to the liturgy.  We all know this and even though some of those were built in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the people are forced to inhabit structures which do not fit the purpose of worship.  I am purposely ignoring evangelicals and wannabe evangelicals who do not even have a concept of liturgy or church architecture and who delight in providing a warehouse setting for worship in which the stage, the band, and the talking head are all that matters.  What is at odds with the liturgy is an architectural focus on people more than God.  While you might assume that this has only to do with a lack of vertical dimension, it is also true of the kind of art or the lack of it in those structures.  They have the feel of larger personal space more than the formal space of the Word and the Sacraments.  They seem like public spaces in conference centers or other public gatherings in which the whole thing is designed around the desire to schmooze rather than to hear the voice of God's Word or receive His gifts.  They are pedestrian, devoid of art, ornament, symbolsm, and any sense of the holy.  Many of them are downright ugly on top of it -- with brutalist forms and materials that are cold and aloof.  It is no wonder that the liturgy suffers when the regular environment in which it lives is so at odds with its purpose.

While some might insist that the liturgy can function anyway, and that is true, we are not talking about the exception but about the regular place where the people of God gather.  Of course, the liturgy can take place in the barest or ugliest of places but why should it have to?  Why should it be forced to take on the role of making the obviously secular setting a home for the holy ground on which God meets His people with His grace and gifts?  But what it exactly what we have done.  We have forced the liturgy to fight against the surroundings in order to do its job.  While this is obviously about the adornment or lack thereof, it is also about the space itself.  So often modern buildings are reluctant to surrender any space to the chancel and so that whole focus of the liturgy in those spaces is compacted within a setting that refuses to make the movement inherent in the liturgy possible or to accommodate the Divine Service.  I grew up in one such church building that had a chancel smaller than most master bathrooms.  It did not allow for kneeling or for more than a few to commune at a time and the furniture in it had to be moved simply to allow the distribution to take place.  The furnishings were fine but they were crammed into a space smaller than the church kitchen.

Some of you might think that this is merely about preference or taste or even nostalgia for another time.  This may have a very small part in this, I do not deny, but the major problem here is not the longing for another era or the desire to build a gothic cathedral.  It is simply this.  Will/does the space hinder the liturgy and support what happens there or does it work against it?   For those who complain that this is merely about aesthetics, how do you explain a God who goes to such great pains to tell the Israelites what the Temple should look like -- right down to the vestments of the priests -- but thinks that less is more for the New Testament?  Did God get a lobotomy?  Or maybe we have misread a great many things.  At stake is not mere style or taste but theology.  The space itself has a relationship to what takes place within that space.  A ballroom may be a great ballroom and a terrible space for worship.  The same is true of a bar or tire shop or grocery store.  They are built to accommodate their purpose.  Why do we think that churches should not be built or remodeled to support what happens therein?  Why should church buildings not accommodate their purpose and support what takes place within them?  It is clear that people outside the faith expect Christians churches to look like, well, Christian churches.  Is there a reason those inside the Church think otherwise? 

I am not saying that every bad building must be torn down but we ought to evaluate the space and decide how to make it accommodate its purpose.  Some may be remodeled rather easily and inexpensively in order to do just that.  Others will need bigger budgets and dreams.  A few may not be salvageable.  In any case, what the eye beholds reflects what the mind conceives.  That is what is at stake in the subject of church architecture.   

Listening is the new preaching. . .

We all know that preaching is not as popular as it once was.  The voices of those who have predicted the demise of preaching are many and they are working to make sure their prophecy comes true.  For many, preaching is being replaced by the ear -- listening not to the Word of God but to the mind of the world expressed in the voices of the many.  We hear so many different calls from those outside but also from those inside the Church that we need to preach less and listen more.  If that is the case, preaching is no longer relevant.  It is true.  The vocabulary of proclamation and the dogmatic basis for that proclamation  has shifted and it is being replaced by listening groups in which the people get a say so in what the faith is and how it is lived out. 

Historically, the Church proclaimed because it was given a message to proclaim.  It was not about politics or even exclusively about works of mercy but the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and the salvation that this redemptive work has accomplished.  It was less about the need of the great unity and equality of all before the merciful act of Christ in suffering and dying for our sins than the vocation of those whom He has redeemed and the eternal future He has prepared for those who love Him.  It was not about the freedom of the individual but about the new obedience that is a reflection of this new life lived not in pursuit of self but Christ.  It was not about the indulgence of self but about sacrifice, taking up the cross and following Christ.  It was not about our opinions but the submission of thought and mind and will to voice of Christ revealed in His Word.  It was not about creating a better world in this moment but about living faithfully the today He has given us so that we may found worthy of eternity.  It was not about pleasure or self-fulfillment or happiness but about life and death.  

The reality is that we seem intent upon listening for something new as if the Spirit will contradict what He has revealed in Christ or betray what the Scriptures have said.  The mood of the present is to focus on the horizontal, on what people are thinking and saying instead of what God has said once for all eternity.  So long as this prevails, preaching will be in trouble and preachers will mount the pulpit embarrassed or uncertain of the very things that are our life together and our mandate to the world.  No one will be converted by a listening Church but the Lord has promised that hearing comes by the Word preached and taught.  That is our future and our only future.

No one can resist temptation... but Jesus

The sermon for the First Sunday in Lent, Series A, preached on Sunday, February 22, 2026.

On this first Sunday in Lent when we read of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness; our first thought is that this is an instructional account designed to teach us how to be strong and resist temptation.  Just as no one can escape temptation, neither can we resist temptation.  No one, that is, except Jesus.  For Jesus this temptation was no nail biter and the outcome was known and certain before the temptation happened.  It could be that Jesus was in no danger of failing because He is the Son of God.  Not being the Son of God in the same way Jesus is, I would hesitate to dismiss this.  But there is certainly something more.

Jesus knew who He was and is; He knew the will of the Father in the same way.  There was no daylight between Jesus and the Father.  Jesus says so.  “The Father and I are one.”  Jesus was not teaching us the secret to resisting temptation so that we could learn it and stand up to the devil.  We will never be strong enough to resist temptation.  But Jesus always is.  The strength of Jesus is knowing who He is, who the Father is, and the Scriptures.  Our weakness is forgetting who we are, who the Father is, and God’s Word.

In reality there are not many temptations but only one.  It is not that we are tempted by the devil by many things but there is only one temptation.  It is at its root the First Commandment.  It is a battle over identity.  The devil, the world, and our sinful nature seek to distance us from knowing the Father in heaven, from knowing who we are as the children of God, and from the Word of God.  All temptation and all sin begins with idolatry.  It is a matter of the will. We see ourselves as separate from God and we see God trying to steal from us what we have claimed for ourselves and we speak with our own voice instead of the voice of God’s Word.  That is why Jesus is strong and we are weak.

We are always putting our will first instead of God and His gracious will, always trusting in ourselves and our wisdom instead of surrendering to Him and His wisdom, and always trusting more our thoughts and feelings than what God has said. So the devil comes at Jesus with three challenges to who Jesus is, who the Father is, and what God’s Word says.  Jesus does not give into temptation because He knows who He is and who the Father is and what God’s Word says.  He answers temptation not by throwing words back at the devil but by confessing in those words who He is, who the Father is, and His own submission to God’s Word.
This encounter in the wilderness is not a shouting match of Bible passages but Jesus insisting to the devil that He knows who He is, who the Father is, and what God’s Word really says.  In the face of this, the devil cannot win.  He cannot match this divine and eternal truth because he is the master of lies and deception and Jesus speaks only truth.

“If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”  Here the question is not about hunger and the power of Jesus to turn stones into the bread that would satisfy His hunger but If You are the Son of God.  It might sound like this temptation is about hunger and doing whatever you can to satisfy that hunger but it is in those first words the devil is tempting Jesus.  Does Jesus know who He is or not?  Jesus insists He does know who He is.  He does not need to satisfy His every whim or desire in order to be at peace with Himself and within Himself.  The suffering of His body will not shake Jesus loose from His confidence in who He is and who the Father is.  On the other hand, we question God for every ache or pain.

“If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you,’ and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.’ ” Here the question is not simply who God is and what He has promised but again, If You are the Son of God.  Does Jesus know and trust the will of the Father or not.  That is the question here.  Jesus’ answer shows He does know the Father, He knows the will of the Father, and He has absolute trust in that will.  He does not need to test the Father to know what the Father will do.  On the other hand, we are always asking God for signs and testing His mercy.

“All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”  By these words the devil is asking Jesus again if He knows who He is and who the Father is and what the Word of God says.  Jesus insists that He does know.  Short cuts offer Jesus no cover for sin.  The devil can promise Jesus anonymity and hide Jesus’ sin but Jesus refuses any cover or any easy way out of the cross and suffering and death.  If the Father really loved you, Jesus, He would not want you to suffer or die or go without anything.  Does that sound familiar?  But Jesus knows the love of the Father without doubt and He knows that suffering, self-denial, and even death cannot thwart the Father’s will and purpose.  Jesus insists He will be true to the Father even though this faithfulness will most certainly lead to pain and even death.  The devil leaves Jesus.  Jesus gives the devil no weakness to exploit and alone, the Father sends the angels to comfort and to minister to Him. 

Arguing with the devil or our own flesh is worse than futile, it is disaster. Once in Eden, Adam and Eve tried to resist the devil by arguing with him or reasoning with him.  It was fatal.  You cannot argue with the devil.  You cannot argue with your own weakness of flesh and desire.  Jesus does not argue with the devil but asserts God’s Word from a heart of faith that has full and complete confidence in that Word.  He is reminding Himself who He is and who the Father is and that the Word of God is not His enemy but His strength and power.  That is what Adam and Eve forgot in the Garden of Eden and what you and I forget before temptation.

The devil tries to get Jesus to think about Himself and His wants or needs. Eat, for Pete’s sake.  Jesus does not deny His hunger or even consider what He could do to satisfy it.  He asserts the words of Moses that the real hunger that kills is not bread for the body but the bread of life that proceeds from the mouth of the Father.  Jesus does not quote Scripture to make the devil shut up but to speak comfort to His own heart and strength to His own soul.

It is the same with the next temptation. The devil tries to get Jesus to take the promises of God out of context and use them as a premise for sin but Jesus will not.  Don’t tempt the Lord or constantly beg Him for signs of His goodness or proof of His love.  Jesus does not even argue with the devil over whether or not the devil can give Jesus the world and all its glory.  He simply asserts that worship belongs to God alone and He refuses to claim equality with God a thing to be grasped and is content with who He is and knowing the Father and living in confidence of the Father’s Word and will.

The Word of God is not primarily a weapon to use to battle Satan but it is comfort and assurance for the tempted.  This is what we forget.  The appeal of temptation is always to things of this life and to the desire to be happy, satisfied, respected, and to get what you want.  It does not matter if it is gluttony that eats as if there is no tomorrow or pornography that prefers imaginary sex over real relationship or lies which hide your weakness and glorify your abilities.  It does not matter if you are in Eden holding conversation with a serpent or making up numbers on your income tax form or taking credit for what you did not do.  The appeal is always to the now – while the Word of God points us to eternity.  The weakness is about over estimating who we are and forgetting to stand on God’s Word and will alone.  Defeat is trading our words for God’s Word and trying to argue our way out.  That is why Jesus did not fall and we fall over and over again.

We are weak because we are like the willful child who insists God would not want us to be unhappy or to suffer any want or need or to not listen the voice of our own feelings.  We are strong when we know who we are, the children whom God has rescued through His Son and redeemed at the cost of His own suffering and death and when we are confident of the Father’s love for us and do not rely on signs or proofs apart from the cross and when we know God’s Word well enough that we can address that Word to all our hurts, sorrows, pains, and wants.  And when that happens, the devil will leave us alone too and the angels will minister to us with the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation until we want for nothing more.  Amen. 

Flirtting with Jesus. . .

It was Voddie Bauckam who coined the statement:  “The modern church is producing passionate people with empty heads who love the Jesus they don’t know very well.”  If you do not know him (RIP), take a gander at Issues, Etc. or do the radical thing and Google him.  A Reformed Baptist who died too young, he was critical of critical race theory and fought for a larger Christian worldview.  He did not mince words.  His statement quoted above is brutally honest.  Americans profess a passion for a Jesus they simply do not know very well at all.  It is less a love story than flirtation.  It points to the problem of a Christianity without any doctrinal foundation in the Scriptures.

For a good long time we have been told by the experts that all this doctrinal talk is turning people off of Jesus -- the ones who claim belief and those new to Christianity.  Too much doctrinal talk will be the death of mission and will kill the Church in the long run.  At least that is what they said.  To one degree or another every denomination has had similar voices proclaim a similar sentiment and it has led to a profound rejection of doctrinal truth in favor of feelings, passion for, and admiration of Jesus.  I am not sure you can call it faith when they do not know who Jesus is or what Jesus came to accomplish.  I am not sure you can call it faith when Jesus becomes the proof text for every political and social cause that Scripture itself warns against.  But that is where things are.

For Lutherans who have insisted it is enough (satis est) for unity, there is the great temptation to reduce enough into as little as possible and so to dispense with the doctrinal certainty, moral consensus, and Biblical norm that has always accompanied orthodox Christianity.  The rationale is simple -- numbers.  How many more people can we claim by minimizing what needs to be known or believed in order to be Christian.  We can disagree about so many things and still supposedly claim to be united in faith and love for the Lord.  The problem is that you cannot know the Lord you are supposed to be in love with and reject the doctrinal witness of Scripture and the consensus of faith and creed that represents a clear line of demarcation of what is Christian and what is not.  I only wish that we knew this today.

The erosion of the doctrinal and Scriptural knowledge of our beliefs and the reason for the doctrines we confess has left Christianity weak and vulnerable.  Even the word has become meaningless -- what does Christian even mean anymore?  Even historical and dogmatic definitions that once defined denominations have been diluted by the diversity that either ignores or redefines the creedal and doctrinal confessions that once defined them and identified them to each other and to the world.  Passion for what people imagine to be Christianity or even Lutheranism does not replace knowledge and information.  If Lutherans have been accused of being without passion or emotion, at least historically we have been clear about what it is we believe, teach, and confess and how what we believe, teach, and confess is rooted in Scripture and normed by it.  However, many Lutheran groups and individuals have long ago set aside this doctrinal consensus for cultural relevance and popularity.  So it would seem that not just those on the lunatic fringe of Christianity have replaced informed belief with flirtation and passion.  There are many who would insist that Jesus is more attractive minus all the doctrinal baggage but who is Jesus without the Scriptures and the eternal truths He revealed?  He is not a man but merely an idea -- perhaps an idea who might inspire but not a Savior who can redeem.

Until He comes...

1 Corinthians 11:26:  For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.  Those words are not simply doctrinal but liturgical.  As often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.  Not that many words later, we proclaim His death by eating and drinking what He offers, His flesh for the life of the world and His blood to cleanse us from all our sin.  This is the anamnesis or remembrance He has commanded us to make of what was, once for all, but it is also the foretaste of that eternal feast to come.

Strange, though, that there is no mention here of the resurrection.  Strange especially because so many treat the cross as if it were merely a bus stop along the way to the greater glory of the resurrection.  How many empty crosses have been justified by this faulty idea that the resurrection speaks more loudly than the suffering?  The cross and its redemptive suffering are not a mere momentary diversion from the greater goal and glory of the resurrection.  At least not according to St. Paul.

So why the cross until He comes and not the resurrection?  At least in part, it is because the suffering is where we live right now.  We experience death and suffering and pain.  It is part of our normal everyday lives.  No one escapes such in their mortal lives.  We experience death and suffering and pain but we believe in the resurrection.  None of us have yet had our flesh and blood raised from death never to die again -- none but Jesus.  For now we must deal with suffering.  Everyone of us must come to terms with suffering and with death.  We can choose to make a fragile peace with it or we can live in the death of the One who has killed it for us until we pass with Him to our own joyful resurrection.  So a theology of suffering is and must always be the theology for today.  There is no such thing as a blessed life without a blessed death.  It is His death that makes blessed the graves of the dead and vindicates their hope.  But that is not a finished fact -- an accomplished one, to be sure, but not yet completed or consummated for us.

We have the suffering and death as an accomplished fact but the resurrection is promise and pledge.  The sign of our resurrection is Jesus' resurrection.  He is raised never to die again but not yet has it been fulfilled in us.  So it is the death we proclaim.  The sign of the promise and our communion on the fruits of that death are in the same meal, the Holy Eucharist.  This is not what we want.  We want the victory and a victory which will make us escape and never to think of suffering and death again.  It is our weakness and our temptation -- no less than the very temptation Jesus suffered at the hand of the devil.  Bow down and you can have it all without suffering or death.  Our Lord refused such an empty promise and so must we.

We live in an age of suffering.  Our world pours money into the hands of those who can postpone it as long as possible and worships the promise of a painless end.  This is not a world, however, in which the postponement is anymore than a moment or the promise of an easy death any more than a mask worn by the angel of death.  In our world where justice is rendered seldom and in which Christians have a target on them simply by virtue of their Christianity, death and suffering are our lot.  The world tempts us with temporary distractions but only the Gospel of the Crucified One has any real hope or a future to offer those whose mortal lives end in ashes and dust.  Until then, our path is not the pursuit of victory but the path of endurance.  He who endures to the end, shall be saved.

We think we need victories.  That is the great temptation of the political church trying to establish the kingdom of God by vote or law but such a church is no church.  The Church is built upon the foundation of the Innocent who suffered for the guilty and the Lord of life who surrenders to death to rescue those who live in its shadow.  We need the cross where suffering is fully and finally redeemed and where sin is fully and finally answered.  This is why we proclaim His death until He comes.

It would seem that but a few Christians have remembered this.  Instead of a cross and a death and suffering for sin, these Christians live in glorified pleasure palaces in which the distraction is entertainment and the sacramental goal is happiness.  The true Christian gathers not around the whims of want and desire but where the sacrament born of suffering offers true consolation and hope to the sufferer.  There in the bread and wine that is His flesh and blood, we are fed with healing for this body of sin in which we live through forgiveness and it is here that we taste the fulfillment of the hope of those who went before and the promise of heaven and eternity.  So, yes, it is His death we proclaim until He comes.  Only in His death do we have an answer for our sufferings, for our sin, and for the death that waits for all who wear this flesh and blood.  The One whose death could hold Him has hope for those whom death still claims.  We experience this every day but we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.