When the unchangeable Word needs to be changed. . .

Yvette Flunder, the Senior Pastor of the City of Refuge UCC over in Oakland and the Presiding Bishop of The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, has said out loud what many others only say privately.  The unchangeable and unchanging Word of God needs changing.  When she talked to the folks at the Center for Public Theology & Public Policy, she was telling a liberal, progressive, and militant crowd exactly what they wanted to hear and, surprisingly, many other so called Christians probably agree.

"I’m about to say something a bit naughty, a bit dangerous, actually. I reckon we’re due for a Third Testament. Why? Because the Bible, as it stands, has become a bit of a nightmare, hasn’t it?

You’ve got bits in there like, ‘Slaves, do what your masters tell you like you’re doing it for the Big Man upstairs.’ It’s right there in the ink! Or, ‘Ladies, put a sock in it during church, and if you’ve got a question, wait ’til you get home to ask your husband.’

Now, look at me—I’m a believer! I’m all in! I wake up, I’m chatting with the Divine, the Divine is chatting back, we’re having a lovely time. But I am absolutely fed up to the back teeth with the way these ancient scripts paint God as some sort of vitriolic, narrow-minded headmaster.

People wag their fingers and say, ‘But Yvette, it’s in the Book!’ And I say, fine, let’s rip the page out then! And they gasp, ‘You can’t do that, it’s the Word of God!’ And I say, no, darling. It’s words about God. There’s a massive difference, isn’t there? Is it the literal Word of the Infinite Creator? No. It’s just not.”

The problem is that the old ways of trying to undo what Scripture says are not keeping up with the advance of liberal propaganda and so the only solution left is to do just that -- rip pages out of the old Bible that you object to an write in a new section promoting what you affirm.  This is not simply a rejection of the Scriptures but of the whole idea of Biblical revelation and of the central premise of those Scriptures, namely that it speaks with the unchanging and unchangeable voice of God.

God's Word has become merely a suggestion to us instead of the definitive Word and it has become more and more an unwelcome and rejected suggestion.  While this is surely true of morality and ethics, it is no less true of the story of the Scriptures that is Christ promised, incarnate, suffering, dying, rising, ascending, and coming again.  I wish I could say that this was an isolated opinion from someone on the political as well as religious left.  The truth is that this is the way many Christians of all stripes treat the Scriptures.  God gets a say but it is not the definitive one and when it does not accord with our own values and intentions, then it is His say that ends up changing and not ours.  Christianity overall but especially liberal and progressive Christianity has become a ship without an anchor, adrift upon the seas of change in which the wind in the sails is not God's work for our redemption but our own happiness, satisfaction, pleasure, and self-identity.

There was a time when the optimum question in Bible study is What do you think it says or means?  Now that question has been transformed into the real question that foments doubt and discord -- Do you agree with what it says or means?  There is no truth without our consent and there is no authoritative voice from God except the one whose voice fulfills our purpose and lives in submission to our own wills and desires.  This is no novelty invented by the 21st century but merely the current version of the question raised in Eden:  is that what God really said [meant]? 

Diluting the miracle. . .

So I was catching up on some old news and read where Pope Leo XIV in Cameroon put his own spin on the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves says: “The multiplication of the loaves and the fish happened while sharing, that is the miracle. There is bread for everyone if it is given to everyone.”  Okay.  So that is the deal.  Jesus was making an object lesson by the miraculous multiplication of loaves and fish.  It was not a miracle so much as a teaching moment meant to inspire us to share what we have with those who have not.  I get it.  It makes it so much easier to deal with miracles in this way and so much less messier.  It does not even need to be a real fact or true to serve as an object lesson in this way and it might even make it better if it was not true -- lest undue attention be given to the work of the divine and take away from our work -- God's but our hands, after all.

Sigh.  It is as if that is what liberals do -- they turn miracles into object lessons far removed from fact and truth and turn it into a great big picnic lunch in which they a good time was had by all and everyone contributed something.   While that may be the rationale for a potluck, it hardly befits the narrative in Scripture.  That is great modern and humanistic thought but it is not quite what the Bible tells us nor does it fairly befit the miracle of Jesus.  It was not that Jesus or the disciples shared anything but that the mighty and everlasting God in flesh has power to multiply the little into more than enough -- complete with one basket of leftovers for every doubting Thomas among them.  If only Jesus had put more emphasis upon the work of the disciples in sharing this bread and fish!  That would have made it clear that the miracle is not in what was made present and distributed but in the distribution and how the folks were inspired to do likewise.

Which is a perfect segue into another miracle made more about the sharing than the gift.  That is the Holy Eucharist.  The emphasis upon the sharing instead of what is received makes the meal less Jesus' own and more ours -- which is exactly what we want.  It also makes it convenient to share with anyone and everyone despite what they believe, teach, and confess (or even if they are baptized!).  This is exactly the modern emphasis.  It is not in what is given, shed, broken, and distributed but the act of sharing that makes this eating special.  In this way it does not matter all that much what is received.  Instead, the real miracle is in the sharing.  This is exactly the pathetic and limp Eucharistic theology of indiscriminate fellowship built upon our want to minimize differences and doctrine and emphasize the act of personal interaction -- fellowship -- as if this was the primary gift of the meal and not the forgiveness of sins Jesus talked about in the Words of Institution.

While it saddens me to hear a pope go down that road, it does not surprise me.  Rome has been thoroughly in bed with modernism for a very long time and this is especially true of its hermeneutics.  The details that encourage us to see things as fact and truth are minimized in favor of sentiment and a synergistic call to do likewise -- as if the goal of our Savior was to awaken within us our own divine spark to be godly instead of save us from our sins and from the power of death.  How disappointing and yet utterly predictable!  Leo is showing his colors and he is more on the side of Francis and his Biblical liberalism than Benedict and his warnings about historical criticism and the separation of fact and truth from the narrative of Scripture.  As someone once told me so long ago, if you cannot contribute something of substance, keep silent.  Pope Leo, are you listening? 

Say the black and do the red. . .

One of the most troubling aspects of contemporary Christian worship that is too abundant even within liturgical churches is that you cannot make a distinction between announcements and the ordo.  It all flows into one because there is commentary on everything.  Liturgical directions that tell people what they are going to do before they do it are not exclusive to contemporary Christian formats but they are intrinsic to the kind of free flowing liturgy which is basically a conversation of leader and people (whether that is the pastor or the music leader and people).  I detest it.  I do not even like it when we tell people to sit or stand or kneel.  Unless they have no direction in hymnal or worship folder and it is absolutely required, the presiders do best when they shut up and let the people do their part without prompting.  Nearly all of the time they already know what they are to do.  Let them.

Those who practice contemporary Christian music and worship delight in the lack of clear markers to define liturgy and announcements (which vary between information and inspiration).  Indeed, so often in these congregations the announcements work like the opening act of an entertainment venue to warm up the crowd before the main act shows up.  I might be relieved if that main act was Jesus but too often it is simply the worship leader du jour who enters like the mighty sage with all the answers to tell the people what they should do.  Preaching is less preaching in this context than it is a longer version of the kind of informational and inspirational announcements which begin the worship time and are hardly distinguished from the rest of it that follows the first words and songs.

I was talking with members of a group which spent a goodly amount of time opening for the big names on the concert tours.  Interestingly, they said they had to walk a fine line between overshadowing the main attraction so that the crowd was disappointed when they took the stage and disappointing the crowd so that they lost interest in the whole thing.  It would be helpful if worship leaders heeded the same advice.  Do not make yourself so big that Jesus is no wanted or welcomed and don't make yourself so boring that people are not watching or waiting for the main event.  If they did at least this, it might be helpful.  Instead it seems that too many of these leaders know how to keep the attention on themselves and on the things the people do without allowing any of the attention to be given to Jesus and His gifts.  

One more disappointment is how they keep making everything in worship special -- from the music that entertains the people to the events that they are promoting to the latest kitschy trinket they are promoting.  Everything is special at these churches but the one thing that is supposed to be the most special becomes ordinary -- so ordinary that no special order, vestments, or devotion is attached to the Christ who gives us His flesh in bread and His blood in wine.  Okay, there you have my rant for the week.  I am not sure where you attended or what you experienced this Sunday morning but I hope and pray the markers that signaled the beginning of the Divine Service were clear as well as the gifts of God in Word and Sacrament the center of it all. 

If you bothered with the video, the liturgy as such began about 17 minutes in and the sermon at about 32 minutes in.  For what it is worth, the sermon seemed to be more about goats (greatest of all time) in various categories than about Jesus and what He has done.   

The Lavender Cardinals. . .

There was a time when I watched 60 Minutes -- if only to listen to Andy Rooney and his take on things.  But it became increasingly hart to watch a show that was so predictably left of center and a mouthpiece of the Demoractic Party.  So it was out of curiosity I tuned into to the Sunday when the program gave voice to the liberal voices of those wearing red, indeed the only actively serving Roman Catholic cardinals in the US.  Cardinals Cupich, Tobin and McElroy appeared as the voice of Rome and the spokesmen for Pope Leo XIV but on a platform which has been a reliable adversary of Trump and the right (not necessarily the same) on 60 Minutes.  In reality these have been reliable supporters of Pope Francis and of the political left appearing on a reliable and leftward leaning program.  Indeed, it has been said by some that these three represent not the future of Rome but its past and the lavender shade of that past.

You could say much about these three lavender cardinals and their words on 60 Minutes but one of the things you must say is that they have been particularly vulnerable to the temptation to confuse and confound political and social positions and movements with the Gospel of Christ crucified and risen.  On immigration in particular but also on the normalization of the role of divorced and LGBTQ within the Roman Catholic Church and uniformly support increasing the role of women if not the ordination of women to the diaconate and priesthood.  They were certainly in sync with Francis but there is not yet enough proof to show that they are in sync with Leo.  What they are, however, is a group fighting to keep control of the microphone and camera in the publicity war that is raging within Rome over what this communion will believe, teach, and confess.

There was a time, not that long ago, when Rome was a reliable voice in the cause of pro-life issues and for the sanctity of marriage.  It was the same Rome that catechetically referred to homosexual behavior as disordered.  I am not at all sure that this Rome continues to exist or have preeminence among the myriad of theologies that comprise this communion over time and certainly today.  If we think that there are fights going on within Protestantism and Lutheranism and Anglicanism over the soul of these churches, there is a fight going on within Rome over which church Rome will be -- one that is within the dogmatic, moral, and liturgical continuity with its own past and one that seeks to break with that past (and with the claim of tradition that Rome has historically made).  Which Rome is the real Rome is given visual imagery as you look at these aging faces trying to hold onto control of the agenda and its content even as this distances Rome from its earlier doctrinal, moral, and liturgical identity.  But before any of us attempts at any smug reply, let us remember that we face the same problem -- a church in love with the moment but increasingly suspicious and intolerant of its own identity and confession.  Who will win?  Don't count the lavender cardinals out yet. 

 

Must our leaders be Christian. . .

I will admit something that I am not proud to say.  When someone who I am employing or obtaining services from announces to me that they are Christian, the hair on the back of my neck goes up.  When we were building the last addition on to the church I served for 32 years, several subs assured our building committee that because they were Christians and we were a church, they would do us a great job.  Every one of those either never showed up to complete their work or were fired for cause.  A very long time ago I got a pep talk on tithing from a Christian trying to sell me a washer and dryer.  He insisted that it was good business to tithe since God multiplied what you gave and sent it back to you.  He said he had the pay stubs to prove it.  Yeah.  So when a politician announces that they are Christian and will hold to Biblical values and bring the integrity of faith to their office, I generally take it with a grain of salt.  Perhaps I have become too jaded.  Indeed, the quiet Christians tend to surprise me and the loud ones tend to disappoint me.  That is exactly the problem when some Christians look for a Christian on the ballot --  as if that were the sole criterion we were to use to choose who would lead our nation, state, city, etc...

It was with interest, therefore, that I read the introduction to Christopher Chen’s recent Evil Empire?   He insists that the New Testament weighs in on the hidden Christians who appear in the New Testament as soldiers and Roman officials.  Chen reports that throughout the patristic period Christians held major and minor posts in the Roman government -- well before Constantine!  His point is that the government is not necessarily the evil empire that some Christians insist.  In fact, Christians have long been hidden in the most surprising places -- from communist or secular China back to perhaps the eighth century.  Not exactly the beast marked with the sign of the anti-Christ.  It is not simple but complicated.  That is true surely for the secular democracies of the West, the socialist economies of the same, the communist nations which have become institutional dictatorships, and so many others -- but it is also true for our American democracy.

We have people who gut Christianity's doctrinal center to proclaim a gospel of love and acceptance that fits better with liberal social mores and then parade that faith before the nation on the left.  We have people who proof text their campaigns with great slogans betrayed by moral lapses on the right.  There is no one single word to look for to find the great combination of faith and virtue in our politicians.  That is certainly true of President Trump.  While his words often embarrass or disappoint me, his actions are easier for me to support overall.  It is the problem not simply of the flaws or failings of our leaders but also the alternatives.  I wish I had a simple answer for this dilemma.  I don't.  Hidden in our government on every level are good people.  Plastered on the front pages of our media are the sins of our enemies.  Somewhere in the middle stands an American and a Lutheran Christian like me who struggles to sort my way through the maze of options and alternatives on the ballots from local to national.  Too often they are not the people I would have nominated.  But the government, though accountable to God and all its leaders also, is not quite a tool through which God is doing the work the Church does.  At best it preserves enough distance so that the Church and Christians are free to do what is good and right and salutary.  At worst, it conspires with the enemies of the faith to promote what contradicts Scripture, creed, and confession.  Sometimes, the best we can hope for is for those who lead us and our laws to simply leave us alone.  Well, and one more thing, to hope that those hidden Christians working in the halls of government on every level will help to prevent what we fear and promote what is our hope and confidence -- all while drawing as little attention to themselves as possible.