Something to think about. . .

Brahms was famously German, a composer and pianist of the Romantic period, and a master of blending Classical form with Romantic expressivity.  What is less well known or appreciated is that Brahms was Lutheran -- one of many Lutherans across the span of musical ages and genres.  So when you look at a sacred work by Brahms, you have a glimpse into his theology, if you will.  Perhaps the most profound insight is expressed in his German Requiem, a work that is a radical departure from the traditional requiem form but instantly traditional in its Biblical expression.  One of the parts of that Requiem that I have always enjoyed is part IV, How Lovely Is Thy Dwellingplace."

The Requiem was Brahm's longest work and the first to bring him international renown.  The name A German Requiem signals that it is a departure from the traditional requiem form of the Mass.  This was not written for the dead but to bring comfort and solace and hope to the living.  All who suffer with death and loss are given something in this work.   He chose and coordinated quotations from the Old and New Testaments (as well as from the Apocrypha) in place of original texts.  The work had not yet come to form in the mind of Brahms when he was confronted with the death of his own mother without having the opportunity to visit before her passing.  His grief and depression following her loss stayed with him for a very long time.  Perhaps Brahms was addressing his own pain first of all.
       
Over the next two years, the Requiem took shape and in December 1867, the first three movements were performed in Vienna.  It was not finished but it was now clearer in Brahms' mind.  In the following year, a full performance of the Requiem was given on Good Friday at the Bremen Cathedral.  His father was among the attendees and witnessed a resounding success that instantly made the 35-year-old composer one of the most prominent musical figures in Germany.  It did not take long before people heard it over and over again in Germany, London, Paris, etc., everyone acclaiming it as a masterwork.
       
The fourth movement in the Requiem (“How lovely is Thy dwelling place”) is perhaps the sweetest and most stunning choral work of the piece and of the whole catalog of Brahms' music.  It is my own personal favorite and the favorite of many.  It is slow as it unfolds with the soprano voice singing the melody in a text both direct and personal. 

How lovely is thy dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
For my soul, it longeth, yea fainteth, for the courts of the Lord :
my soul and body crieth out, yea for the living God.
Blest are they, that dwell within Thy house : they praise Thy name evermore.  Psalm 84 vv. 1, 2, 4.

While this is a work not simply about art and architecture, it is not about an imagined place or one that exists only in memory.  The beauty and loveliness of the Lord's dwelling place has a physical presence and within the brick, stone, steel, wood, and glass lives the people of God, gathered around the Word and Table of the Lord.  I wonder if people entering in some of the brutal, crude, and bare structures that claim to be God's House would be moved as was the Psalmist and Brahms to laud its loveliness or beauty today?  I seriously doubt it.  Whether it is ugly or simply predictably pedestrian in its shape or form, we have over time given less and less thought to the role of beauty in worship.  Some have gone so far as to suggest that the beautiful images within and the noble forms of the buildings themselves compete or even work against what happens in the mystery of worship within the House of God.  What fools we are!  We have turned God's beauty or loveliness into something not for the eye but for the mind.  This cerebral Christianity which provides a rather neutral surrounding for the liturgy is a modern invention and seems entirely out of step with Scripture or history.  There’s something to be said for this perspective. Beauty attracts and invites. Ugliness repels. It is as true of religion as it is of modern art which fails to invite and embrace in its stark statement of what is base or unrecognizable in the human experience.  Churches ought to be held to a higher standard.  If anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

By example let me simply point to the many older structures which are stripped of their status as the principal cathedral or church only to be replaced by what is bland, blunt, and ugly.  I think of the old St. Louis Cathedral or the difference between the old Los Angeles Cathedral and its replacement or the many Lutheran parishes in which the sanctuary was replaced with a warehouse style worship center.  It is no wonder the people have trouble seeing the beauty when the surroundings work so effectively against what the Psalmist and Brahms expected of God's House.  It is, after all, what we ought to expect as well.  Beauty and holiness and loveliness in service to the Gospel is good, right, and salutary.  I only hope that we wake up one day to remember that. 

 

Behavior or belief or belonging. . .

Jesus describes the way to heaven as a narrow way and we might admit that it is the cause of man to turn it into a broad boulevard.  We all know that.  The narrow way seems to imply sacrifice.  It is surely about what is believed and how it is lived.  Sincerity is no substitute for orthodox belief and confession.  It does not help to believe in error more passionately than one can muster for truth.  It is likewise a presumption that the narrow way suggests giving up what you want or like (such as sin).  The narrow way constrains belief but it also constrains behavior.  You cannot live one way and believe something completely different.  Of course.  Lex orandi, lex credendi.  But there is an aspect of the narrow way that we too often do not talk about.

The narrow way is the Church.  Faith is not some privately held conviction that lives in the individual but the public identification with the Church.  It is belonging.  You may get the believing right and even the living may not be too bad but the question sure to come up is why you chose not to belong.  I am not here speaking simply of a name on a membership roster but of a presence at the Lord's House on the Lord's Day.  Where were you when the Spirit gathered the faithful, when the Word was preached in its truth and purity, and when the Holy Supper of our Lord was prepared for your communion?  We think that the onus for the narrow way is either right doctrine or right morality or some combination of the two but it is surely more.   It is the right gathering with the saints washed clean by baptism to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and feast at the Table of the Lord.  If it is not the latter, it cannot be the former.

We Lutherans do not speak much about this.  There is not merely a choice -- claiming to believe and walk in Christ while choosing not be there in the Lord's House on the Lord's Day.  There is something wrong with it.  It is a sin not to be in the Lord's House on the Lord's Day without reason of mobility, work, or illness that prevents it.  The Church is not given as some added little extra for those who want it while the strong and the mighty simply believe and try hard to be holy.  The Church is the narrow way and implies the rightly held belief and the striving to live holy, upright, and godly lives.  The narrow way is not mental assent to a series of truth propositions and an attempt to live a moral life.  Covid has only hastened the normalization of the false idea that God wants you to believe rightly and live as the godly  but does not care if you actually belong formally or attend the worship services of His House.  We were always susceptible to the idea that God's big concern was sincerity and living morally upright lives and this was the extent of the narrow way but the pandemic distanced worship even more from the path we assume God wants us to traverse.

I will say it.  If the Church is not your Mother, Christ is not your brother and God is not your Father.  It is a great tragedy of our times that the Church is reduced to a symbolic role and not an earthly necessity for the heavenly goal.  I wish I knew where we got this.  We might be able to blame Protestantism on the idea that the Church is simply a bonus and the essential is right believing and right living.  Even then I cannot imagine even Protestantism to get a warm and fuzzy from any faith that does not drive a person into the presence of God to receive His gifts.  Sadly, the reality is that it appeals to our sinful natures that we can imagine ourselves into heaven or work our way into God's good side without living in need of worship and of the gifts He gives us there.

God intends for us to be in worship, gathered by the Spirit around the Word and Sacraments.  To be able without real hindrance and to simply choose not to is not just plain wrong; it is a sin.  How shallow are we or God to believe that all those people whose names adorn our membership rolls are sick or working or honestly prevented from being together in the Lord's House on the Lord's Day?  Yet we must face the reality that it has become normal to disassociate faith from behavior and both from being in worship.  All the surveys insist that the new normal for active Christians is closer to once a month, 12 times a year, than it is once a week or 52 times a year.  Part of the decline in attendance numbers suffered by orthodox churches is the growing acceptance that this kind of less is more.  There is something inherently wrong with that kind of normal that has been invading the minds and hearts of the faithful and tacitly accepted by the Church.  We are struggling not simply because there are fewer people who call themselves Christian but also because fewer of those who do actually show up on Sunday morning. 

Warning... more pope watching

As I have said, without a horse in this race it is mere curiosity for me but I cannot help it.  Amid the hopes that Leo would be more like Benedict, the initial signs are iffy.  Apart from everything else, you judge presidents by who they surround themselves with and who they appoint.  The same could be said of the pope.  This is what is concerning.  He has readily accepted the pro forma resignation of conservative bishops and archbishops (Dolan and Aquila as examples) and as of yet has not accepted earlier resignations of notable (notorious?) liberals (Cupich is enough said).  His appointments remain to be seen but in bishops as in the Vatican, there is no distinct or noticeable shift from the kind of men Francis appointed.  In fact, rather than choosing his own team, Pope Leo confirmed thirty of the thirty-one dicastery members chosen by Pope Francis.  The only one he did not confirm was beyond the age of eligibility or she would probably have been confirmed as well.  Finally, his slowness to replace the Curia leaders of dicasteries and other offices had left those who were allies of Francis with their positions of power and influence (think here Fernandez and Roche).  What do you make of all of this?

At best, he seems to be sending mixed signals with the visual of vestments and the restoration of some traditions that Francis ignored or abrogated standing next to the stroke of the pen on who he makes leaders of the Roman Catholic Church.  At worst, the visual is merely a smokescreen for the substantive choice to be an extension of Francis' disastrous papacy.  He has revived the consultation and council of the cardinals at what would seem to be a pace of twice a year but most of those cardinals were appointed by Francis and owe him their red hat if not their theological, liturgical, and philosophical allegiance.  For those who look around our own households of faith with fear and trembling, all of this leaves a question mark where Rome needs at least a period or even an exclamation mark.  It could be worse for us.  We could have the same kind of vacillating signals from our own leadership in the LCMS.  While there are always potshots taken at leaders from the galleries, we have less to wring our hands over than Rome does right now and it is just the beginning of what might be a generation or so of leadership from the guy in white.  If I were Roman Catholic, I would be worried.

Leo seems to ignore some of the most radical things liberals say.  Think here about Cardinal Cupich who ought to be minding the Chicago shop but seems hellbent upon making his stamp extend well beyond the Windy City.  He had the gall to say that the Latin Mass a spectacle that must be suppressed.  Imagine somebody in the LCMS saying the same thing about Divine Service 3?  Granted our DS3 has had less than a hundred and fifty years of usage but it has been deemed venerable and has never been put out to pasture.  Cupich wants to turn the Church's back on something that served Rome for over 400 years and to say it is so bad it cannot be allowed any longer.  No matter what you think about the Latin Mass, this has the net effect of disowning your own history.  We Lutherans are a bit like Rome.  We seldom admit our mistakes and add cars on the train of our traditions that seem sometimes to weigh down the engine of our churches.  Rome does that in spades.  But not Cupich.  It was bad then and it is bad now and it must be gotten rid of for the health of Rome.  Gosh.  You might think somebody in the Vatican might have made a phone call to tell Cupich to deal with the faithful who are his charge and to leave this kind of thing to those to whom jurisdiction is given.  This is but one example of something that seems, without Leo demurring, to cast gasoline on the fires burning in Rome.  Why does Leo not say or do something for the sake of the Roman Catholic Church?

I guess what I am saying is this.  If people inside or outside of Rome (like me) were expecting this pope to repair what damage has been done over the last decade or so, they will have to wait longer. Leo is not doing much to suggest that his vision for Rome is all that much different than Francis' -- except in style. 

You ole fuddy-duddy. . .

For most of my life I have instinctively associated orthodoxy and order with boring.  In my college and seminary years, I looked at a parade of District Presidents wearing loud sports jackets and ties or leisure suits and thought I wanted to be anything but them.  It was no wonder I had sympathy for John Tietjen because he looked the part in clericals and black suit.  When my own vicarage and placement services took place, I was relieved that I was going where the DP was sporting a beard and clerical collar in a conservative dark grey three piece suit.  Visuals do not always tell you everything but they do tell you something and it is hard to jettison the impression first given by what you see.  

It might be for this reason that I hardly enter a Wal-Mart anymore.  The infamous People of Wal-Mart web pages showing how ill-dressed or undressed shoppers are says it all.  Or fly somewhere and see how people dress for air travel -- when I fly I dress up and not down!  The same could be said for a concert in which the ticket price alone might imply something a more formal rather than casual.  Just last month my wife and I had to change our path in a store because they young man ahead of us (not in a Wal-Mart) was wearing sleep pants, a bathrobe, and slippers.  Really?  I guess I have become the fuddy-duddy that I rebelled against in youth.  I feel the same way when I find pastors who wear what might be comfortable or easy to put on (from the chair where you dumped it yesterday) but I find it hard to take them seriously in their calling.  If they show up on Sunday morning with vestments of khakis or board shorts or t-shirt or polo, I am immediately put off.  It seems to me that they are rebelling against their vocation in some childish and culturally relevant way that is both arrogant and rude.  

I fear that this kind of thing affects a great deal in the Church.  Our theology is not exciting but boring.  Our morality flaunts duty more than liberty or indulgence.  We are in a very unfavorable position against the world.  The world offers us sexy, cool, vital, vibrant, indulgent, forward-looking, be what you are, and, most of all, have fun in everything.  In comparison the Church seems rather dull, bland, boring, and very uncool.  They say that if you are not a liberal when you are young and a conservative when you mature, you are simply an idiot or a fool.  Maybe youth instinctively rebels against the tradition and traditional theology, morality, and liturgy.  I don't know.  But I do know that in choosing the fun over everything else, the world has not chosen well or anything worth having.  

Youth left me with many things and regrets are also among the memories.  I hope it is true for many.  My sixth grade teacher told me most of all in life to be true to myself.  Which self?  The selfish, rebellious, lustful, fool who does not care about consequences or the mature self that lives in bondage to them or the Christian self who has learned to delight in the will and Word and order of the Lord?  The real radical is not the one who indulges in a Rumspringa vision of life that cares for nothing except the moment and puts off the serious for a time to be announced later.  No, the real radical is the mature self, formed and shaped by the Spirit of God, to become in time the person who has been given eternity.  I am encouraged that some of those coming out of their youthful rebellion are awakening to this truth and showing up in conservative, orthodox, and traditional parishes offering orthodox and traditional liturgy.  It is my hope that this is where the future is headed and not simply a momentary trend.

We might hasten this a bit if we got out of our system the idea that youth ministry should be fun to counter the boring and bland stuff that happens in worship and Bible study.  We might initiate this kind of maturity by refusing the idea that worship is a stage, that the people in the chancel are actors, that the script is made up, and that the goal is entertainment.  We might encourage a more real future by offering our kids a more real present in which the symbols and ceremonies come not from preference or for the sake of the experience but because the presence of God is as real as God, the truth is not subject to individual decision or definition, and the purpose of God is to set us from from the fake freedom that corrupts and kills.  The most radical thing in our world is not going with the flow of culture or fad but resisting the current because God has entered our time to rescue us from our sins, restore our lives in holiness, and direct us to the eternal future which we taste now in the mystery of bread and wine.  Looking back, I can thank a few profs along the way who taught me this radical idea.  

The Claim of Catholicity. . .

For as long as I can remember, the most comfortable view of the Reformation from those who claim to be its heirs seems to claim the most radical perspective for the events and figures of the 16th century.  It is as if the only way we could come to terms with it all is to presume that Luther and his contemporaries were just itching to cast off every constraint of tradition, orthodoxy, and catholicity in favor of an extreme Biblicism that does not care about history or even the apostles.  I understand the insistence that the Church had suffered much before the Reformation and that this movement was finding its way out of the fog.  What Lutherans are comfortable with today, however, is not an accurate or faithful description of the attitude of those actually fought for that Reformation.

The narrative I got was that it was all about and, almost exclusively so, concerning justification.  Nowhere in my education or training was I appraised of the idea that the Reformation was about catholicity.  That idea came unofficially from teachers and mentors outside the classroom.  At the heart of the Reformation, however, is not simply or solely the issue of justification but even more so the question of whose claim to catholicity was genuine.  Justification was part of this and not unrelated to it.  This is certainly the contention of the Augsburg Confession (Conclusion of Part One).  Catholicity was and remains the main cause of the Reformation.  If their concern for justification was Biblical, it must be catholic.  If it is catholic, it must be Biblical.  That is the perspective of the Lutheran reformers.

Over the course of a few decades or so there has been an explosion of authors and works on just this topic -- the Reformation as a conflict over who deserved to be called catholic.  Some are well known tomes from the best seller lists of a few years ago -- from the likes of Steven Ozment, Scott Henrix, and Diarmaid MacCulloch.  Others are renewed interest in other authors and works from the likes of Heiko Oberman, Martin Brecht, and, before that, Jaroslav Pelikan.  Gone is the hero worship style of biography once practiced within and outside of Lutheranism and in its place are serious reviews of the claim of catholicity.  The problem is that I am not so sure that those who call themselves Lutheran are as comfortable with this renewed interest in catholicity.  Too many Lutherans are too comfortable with the idea that Lutherans are radicals with the intent upon wholesale renovation of the Church.  Despite Luther's over the top rhetoric, his practice was somewhat more careful and conservative.

So the problem before us as Lutherans is which form of Lutheranism is authentic -- the one that loves to live on the radical fringe of Christianity and embrace the excesses of culture or the one that tolerates things liturgical but prefers an Amish style spirituality or the one that fully intends to be catholic in doctrine and practice.  The ELCA along with European Lutherans seem to have laid serious claim to the liberal fringe.  The evangelical style Lutherans who disdain liturgy, ceremony, and sacramental piety seem to live in various Lutheran denominations -- my own included.  The catholic style Lutherans are often characterized as loving worship more than the Gospel itself but they maintain the tie between doctrine and practice.  I wish I could say that this has been resolved but it is still being fought out.  The out and out worship wars might have been tamed down a bit but the battleground remains.  The choice of some Lutherans to engage the culture on matters of sexual desire, gender identity, marriage, family, children, climate, etc., is not yet finished as they continue to follow where the culture wars lead.  The whole idea of simple is better than anything too elaborate continues to be held as a balance against those who they feel have gone too far.  At some point, however, we will have to decide which Reformation is not only the real one but the one of which we claim to be heirs.