Shepherding sheep. . .

Often we refuse to admit the obvious.  The obvious is that all of us will die.  As shepherds of the flock of God, we are shepherding the sheep to their death.  None of us wants to think about his but all of us should think about this.  Yes, as Christians, death is not the ultimate end but it is not avoidable.  We will all die even though we will pass through death to life everlasting.  Those who shepherd the flock of God must shepherd them to death so that they may pass through it.  As a pastor who has shepherded the people of God through tears of death and preached them the resurrection, I confess it is easier to talk about the life than it is about the death. 

Every shepherd has the unpleasant and unenviable task of warning the people of God that they will die.  Ashes to ashes and dust to dust is not mere metaphor.  Death will come.  It will come for the young, the middle-aged, and the elderly.  It will come for those who welcome an end to suffering and to those who have a whole future they are planning.  It will come for those who are prepared for it and for those who have their lives stolen when they least expect it.  Death will come and steal away every soul including the people of God so the faithful shepherd will help his sheep prepare for that day whether they can see it coming or have no thought of its arrival. What we are talking about is not simple honesty about the inevitability of death but how to meet death.

We are so shy about talking of death.  At times I have asked the dying point blank if they are ready to die -- while their families shuddered at the thought of mentioning the unmentionable.  But no pastor is faithful who refuses to speak death's name or prepare the people of God to meet it.  Indeed, the whole goal of our pastoral work is to prepare our people so that they may die well, a good death not defined by a lack of pain or death waiting until we are ready for it but by the faith to endure this last sting before receiving the victory.  The goal of the pastor is to help the people of God lay the foundation in life for the reality of death. 

We think that the job of religion is to help us live a good life but none of that has any meaning unless we are prepared for death.  We think that faith helps make life better and I suppose it does in some ways but the chief end of faith is to prepare us for death and to be found worthy of eternal life in Christ.  This is why the Christian faith is such a novelty to some.  They have forgotten about death or chosen to ignore it and they concentrate instead on the present moment as if that was all there was or needed to be.  The Bible tells us to "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account” (Hebrews 13:17).

Lent is a whole season seemingly devoted to the subject of death.  It treats death within the context of repentance, within the arena of confession and absolution, and within the framework of the Word and Sacraments.  Those who live only within the confines of the world and this moment are never really ready to die no matter what they might say.  Death is most comforting to them when it offers nothing except an end to what they desire to have ended.  But the heavenly-minded and those headed to the life that death cannot overcome are prepared for death.  In sorrow, they have joy.  In pain, they have comfort.  In loss, they have hope.  Christ gives to us all that we need to meet death and He brings us through the valley of the shadow and raises us up on eagle's wings to rise to meet the dawn of the eternal day.  Those who are “faithful unto death… [Christ] will give the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10).   Death is the ship on which we must sail if we are to brought to the shore of everlasting life.  But Christ is at the helm, the only One who has made this journey and the only One who can lead us through it.  This is the center of Lent -- every bit as much as sin and the atonement of the cross.  For those who live in Christ by baptism and faith, death is merely the boat that brings us to everlasting life.  And once the boat is full and all those who live in Christ have been brought safely to the shore, the boat will be destroyed so that there is no connection anymore between what was and what is.

The more the shepherd can help the sheep find this confidence and joy in Jesus, the more they will be prepared to follow Him in life through death to everlasting life.  This is why the feast is a foretaste, the glimpse and promise of the fullness of what is to come.  Preach this.  Teach this.  Help the people sing of this in their hymns and pray this in their prayers.  It is for this you have been set apart. 

Not the end all. . .

One of the most significant problems with the historical critical methodology is that it seems intent upon robbing the Scriptures of anything that might approach a harmony of teaching and doctrine.  If anything, it insists that there can be no such thing, that even within books of Scripture there is conflict, division, and contradiction -- much less within the whole canon.  It is tiresome, to be sure, but over and over again the historical critical methodology unravels as much of Scripture as is possible in pursuit of something hidden or something behind the text that always is more important than what the text itself says.

Over the course of time, most Biblical scholars have adopted some form of it in their work and it is obligatory for exegetes to pay some sort of homage to the method even if they do diverge from it in one place or another.  This has certainly been true of Protestants and even of a great many Lutherans but it is no less true of Rome.  The traditional high view of inspiration and inerrancy that was once associated with Roman words in the past is nowhere to be found among those who advocate for the historical-critical method.  In fact, it seems the prerequisite of those who use the method to dismiss the traditional way the Church has approached Scripture and, oddly enough, seems to hold it against the Biblical scholars of the past who did not use the methodology that had never even been invented when they were alive.

The stance of most modern scholars is that the historical-critical method is the end-all-be-all of Biblical exegesis and that an educated exegete cannot possibly do any credible work without it.  I wish that the hubris of such scholars could be exposed but we are not there yet.  Even in schools of conservative Bible scholars there is the need to first address the historical critical method and its principles and conclusions before providing a different conclusion.  How sad is that!  Because the other side seems to have no need to deal with traditional Biblical exegesis except to debunk it as a pro forma start to any academic paper or book.

It is hard to say you hold Scripture in high regard when it seems like the job of the historical critical method is to insulate the Bible from the realm of ordinary faith in its words, history, and truth.  The need for some scholars have to preserve the historical-critical method from the infection of orthodox Christian belief reveals the fact that this methodology is hardly useful to the preacher or teacher of the Church except to reject traditional and orthodox Christian teaching.  The arrogance of those who presume that no one can know Scripture as they do and that they will not condescend to the realm of ordinary Christians reading the Scriptures and believing their words is hard to overestimate.  It is as if the literal words and the presumption that the Bible has a unified message is the realm of those little people who must cling to their myths and legends while the real scholars chuckle over such incredible ignorance about what the Bible really says and really means. 

It is for this reason that it is hard to justify spending any real money on commentaries.  Most of them have little to nothing to offer the preacher and nothing that a few orthodox Christian commentators cannot provide.  The text is no longer the object but what lies behind it.  The preacher cannot afford the luxury of dealing with what might be in the face of what is actually said.  Okay.  I will admit that this is a common theme with me.  All it seems to take is reading another article from a higher critic to set me off.  But I feel better now even if you don't.

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.