Mary's Day. . .

Thomas Troeger, noted hymnwriter, can turn a phrase.  One of my favorites of his is "borrowed light."  It comes from a hymn published in a collections of hymns also with the title "Borrowed Light."   A professor of Christian communication at Yale Divinity school, he was a well known preacher, poet, and musician.  By ordination, he was Presbyterian Church (1970) and then the Episcopal Church (1999). Troerger wrote some 22 books in the areas of preaching, poetry, hymnody, and worship.  He died in 2022.

Ostensibly written about John, the words might well ascribe to Blessed Mary, Virgin Mother of our Lord.  She shines with His borrowed light and not ashamedly but proudly so.  In art as well as in literature, her figure and face seem always to include the child Jesus.  In some renditions, Jesus is more like a miniature man than a child but the two are usually together.  She is a sign, always pointing to Christ, and from the very first moment of the announcement by the archangel.  "Let it be to me as the Lord has spoken."  Without claim for honor but the honor the Lord Himself has given, she consents to become the Mother of God.  All generations will call her blessed not because of her holiness but for her faith, for her consent, for her humility that asked for nothing but accepting the will of the Father no matter its cost.

Christ's Light reflected in blessed Mary is her glory and the glory of all the saints.  It is in this vein that the Lutheran Confessions commend the saints to us.  Charles Porterfield Krauth notes that the doctrinal sections of the AC begin with God and end with the saints -- a most appropriate perspective.  The Confessions call upon Christians to honor the saints by telling their stories (the history of the saints) so that we may follow the example of their faith and of their good works, as appropriate to our baptismal calling.  the joy of the saints' company is not that they invite us to focus on them. Rather, the very mark of the saints is that they invite us to focus with them upon the Lamb who redeemed them with His own blood, sanctified them in the waters of Baptism, and made them shining witnesses to the glory of His resurrection. They are not dead. They live in Him. Their spirits join us (and we them) in the Divine Liturgy (Hebrews 12!) and we sing a united song with angels, archangels, and with all the company of heaven. "Holy, holy, holy!"   

Today is the falling asleep of Mary, her dormition, and a feast day worthy of some reflection. Mary is for us more than saint but truly our Mother. She is the first of those who pondered in her heart all that the Lord had said to her through the angel and all that God had done. She was there for Jesus' first miracle, at the cross, and in the Upper Room she waited with the disciples for the gift of the Spirit. She received one of the seven last words from the cross. No, we ignore her to our peril for she can teach us much of Jesus, her Son and Savior.

She teaches us humility in her song of praise (The Magnificat). She teaches us absolute trust in the Father's will (Let it be to me according to His Word...). She teaches us to love Jesus and to worship Him who comes to us in flesh and blood as the Son of the Most High God. She teaches us faith, willing to be wounded for His sake and yet never as concerned about her own wounds as His.  She can teach us much if we are willing to read, to listen, to pray, and to learn... But it all begins by speaking her name. If Jesus can honor her as He does and if the Church can call her first of the saints and believers in Jesus, then can we not honor her whom the Lord honored with the gift of His one and only Son?  It is our first step in shining with the borrowed light that comes from Jesus to honor those whom He has honored, who have shone with the brightness of His shining.  A blessed Mary's Day to you all.

Thank God it's Friday. . .

  

The fabulous line from the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey was marvelously funny but for the Americans, at least, it was a legitimate question.  The episode was early on in the series but the weekend had not yet come to the States.  We all know that our weeks have seven days and we all give thanks to God for that seven day gift of time but the whole idea of a weekend -- two days off of work -- was an invention of the 1920s which did not even become routine until 1938.  What is a weekend, indeed!

The workweek ran six days, Monday through Saturday, and almost no employer, even many Jewish-owned factories, gave workers Saturday off. A Jewish immigrant who refused to work on Shabbat was often fired by Monday.  Or so says Yosef Bitton, writing in The Tablet.  While everyone had Sunday off complete with blue laws, nobody -- not even Jews -- had Saturday off.  Even Jews figured out a way to comply with the laws.  In 1885, the Reform rabbinical conference in Pittsburgh declared that observance need not be confined to the Seventh Day, and some congregations began holding services on Sunday morning instead.  Except for the Orthodox.  They saw the Shabbat not as a day off or merely the day of rest or worship but that on which all of Jewish life hinged.  Ditch the Shabbat and what would be left?

Enter Rabbis Abraham Pereira Mendes and Bernard Drachman.  Though they proved unsuccessful at providing Jewish exception for the Shabbat, they did win with the idea that everyone could have two days off.  Labor unions, industrial reformers, and changing theories of productivity all contributed to the invention of a weekend. Indeed, the whole thing worked in part because it was the right time -- for a shorter workweek, for the rise of leisure not simply for the leisure class, and for religious freedom.  We can thank the Jews for the weekend -- among other things.  Henry Ford adopted the 5-day work week, with Saturday and Sunday off, in 1926.  In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act mandated a 40-hour work week, which had the effect of legalizing the weekend and making it all normal.

All that said, how has it worked out?  Any religious usage of the weekend has long ago been cast aside along with the old blue laws in favor of more, well, leisure.  And that has worked against worship attendance, formal religious education, and the family in the home.  Probably has not helped us with the idea of any real rest either.  We seem to work harder at our fun than we do at work where we expect the job to also be, you guessed it, fun.   Having grow up in rural America with its agricultural economy, the whole idea of any formal weekend had to allow for chores and occasional and emergency duties -- especially during the busy seasons of planting and harvest.  But we at least had the expectation of it and the yearning for two days off.

What concerns me most is how we have blurred the distinctions between work and leisure.  Working at home in your pjs has made the distinction between work and play very hard to navigate.  Furthermore, we have pushed the envelope to the point where we do everything at home -- from play to sleep to work to shop to eat to watch movies, etc...  Is there any limit to what we will eventually do at home?  Do we even need the weekend anymore?   Do congregations capitulate to this offering services to fit around people's schedules or do we reorder our days according to God's rhythm?  Is it already too late to lay claim on the weekend for anything more than me?  Lots of questions.  Not too many answers.

Nice try. . .

Somebody sent me a link to a Roman Catholic talk show listing the top ten WORST songs used at Mass.  It took me a while to get around to give it a listen but I could hardly stand it but they were right on target but...  They blamed the Lutherans!  Really?  Everything gets dumped on the Lutherans from those in Rome complain about.  In this case the usual suspects were rounded up (Haugen, Haas, and Schutte).  While it is true that Marty Haugen grew up Lutheran, no Lutheran would employ him but Rome did.  All his music is published by GIA, a Roman Catholic firm.  And, as if that were not enough, he is a member of the United Church of Christ.  Nice try blaming the Lutherans for bad Roman Catholic folk music!  If anything, we borrowed from Rome -- not the other way around.

Even when the content is not completely terrible, the style is folksy, casual, and so 1970s that it makes youth laugh and those of us with a conscience wince.  I agree.  This kind of music got into the souls of some in the 1970s through the 1990s but don't blame the Lutherans.  Yes, they are rather insipid songs that seem to get inside your head and refuse to let go of you,  They are the musical version of the terrible glued felt banners of the same period. They are saccharine and sweet and appeal to sentiment more than than to the voice of God speaking through His Word.  But don't blame the Lutherans.  Rome did it to themselves and is still doing it in many places.  You know their names.  Companions on a Journey, Gather Us In, Sing a New Song, We Remember, Here I Am, etc...  Thankfully you will not find them in most Lutheran hymnals but in Roman Catholic missalettes and hymnals you will find them regularly.  They do not fit within the solemnity of the Lord's Word speaking and His meal set in our presence.  While I am not in favor of most of these in any context, it is difficult to complain about words drawn almost word for word from Scripture (On Eagle's Wings).  Nevertheless, it is hard to figure out how to take words from Scripture and set them in such a way that the music detracts from them instead of supporting them as a helper (as Luther says).

 

  

Is it comforting. . .

I read somewhere that Cardinal Cupich, one of my favorites as you know 😝, has suggested that all those who have committed suicide have been saved.  Nice of him to intervene with God's judgment well before the day when all is revealed.  And I read where others have also expressed their own sentiments in this regard -- though perhaps not quite as definitively.  For example, Bishop Barron thinks we should not be too quick to give up on those who have taken their own lives.  He has written that "Pope John Paul II insisted that the Church has never made a definitive statement regarding whether any particular person is in hell. And Pope Benedict said that we should suspend judgment in regard to Judas, committing him to the mercy and justice of God.  But again, wouldn't his suicide guarantee that he has gone to eternal perdition?"

As you probably already know, I am all for suspending judgment of the individual and leaving that to God -- not that we have a choice for it is His alone to judge and we bring nothing for or against it to the judgment seat.  In the end, any who will be saved shall be saved by Christ alone and not by their own merits or lack thereof.  Repentance is not the spark of goodness that causes us to love God and opens the door to forgiveness.  While we were yet sinners and enemies of God, the Lord died for us and for all manner of men.  But is it really comfort to venture past the mercy of God and then try to say something about the state of those who have taken their own lives?  If it is not our place to judge, surely it is neither our place to make a statement about what God's mercy has or has not done.

Let me say that I have buried many suicides in my ministry.  Though I might be wrong, I think most of them were running from something else than to death.  That is probably always the case.  It is certainly a different thing for a Christian to lose his way and fall into temptation and, in an irrational act with respect to the rest of his life, to take his life at that moment.  But we live in perilous times when the world is clamoring for an assisted suicide that offers a painless way to go for those who desire and who wish this honored every bit as much as the choice to live under painful circumstance and amid suffering.  Now is not the time to begin pontificating about the suicides being saved.  Commend them, all of them, to the mercy of God in Christ.  If that mercy is enough for our hope and confidence, it will be enough to carry us through the grief and sorrow over the loss of those whom we love who have ended their lives by suicide.  But do not try and overcompensate by suggesting all this fanciful stuff about Judas and every other suicide being saved.  

Perhaps we will be surprised by some of those who are saved (as well as those who are not). I am fairly confident, however, that instead of surprise we will enter into perfect joy, consummation, and bliss where such questions and answers about how this one or that can be saved shall no longer bother us at all.  If we are not bothered in heaven by the lack of certain experiences here on earth or unmet desires for this earthly joy or that, why would we be bothered by the thought that wow, didn't you take your own life and here you are in the company of the saints?  

Judas' end was written into Scripture not as testament to God's mercy but as a warning against despair.  After all, Peter also betrayed Jesus and got not even a penny for it (well, he thought he was saving his own life) but on the day of Jesus' resurrection it was to Peter the first news was directed.  That was an absolution of sorts.  Judas did not get that because there was, at least from our perspective, no moment of regret for his despair or hope in the mercy of God.  That is the warning.  Not that suicides will burn forever but that despairing of God's mercy will certainly lead you to do something bad.  God's forgiveness is bigger than every sin we offer Him.  But let us at least offer Him the sin -- offering Him our doubts, fears, worries, concerns, and struggles.  He will answer them.  That is the lesson of Judas and attempting to speak for God about Judas' eternal outcome will mask that important lesson.  Let us offer real hope and that real hope is in the shape of cross and marked with mercy.  That is all the hope we need.   

Professionalization and pastors. . .

It was said of the seminary graduates of my day that a first call lasted about 22 months.  I do not know if this was statistically correct or merely anecdotal.  It probably does not matter.  In the end I stayed a very long time in comparison to that mark -- nearly 13 years!  Indeed, I probably would still be there if a few things in the community surrounding the congregation had gone differently.  In the end, it was not the people who drove us away and, despite a rocky start, they were the hardest part of leaving to take my second call where I stayed for 32 years.  I always said I had only a couple of moves in me and experience proved that prediction to be fairly accurate. 

I will say, however, that even though pastors seem to be staying longer, very long tenures in the same place are not always seem as healthy by denominational officials and some within the congregations themselves.  Without exact numbers, I would not venture to give an average tenure or an average number of moves in any pastor's household today.  What I will say is that along with the culture, other things have changed which affect how long a pastor stays in one place.  Not all of these are good, right, or salutary for the Church (or for congregations and their pastors).

I read recently where, of the 221 who graduated from Yale College (when it was a divinity school too) between the years of 1745 and 1775 and went into the ministry, 71 percent remained in the church to which they were first called until their deaths. On the other hand, only 4 percent held four or more pastorates.  Without Lutheran seminaries in the US to compare this to, I will have to assume that the numbers would hold for us as well.  But not today.  One pastor's obituary I read in my own denomination's journal included no less than 9 congregations over his nearly 40 years of service.  There are probably those who have been in more.  We seem to be at a point where we affirm longer pastorates as good but are not sure either the pastors or the congregations want this to happen.  Let me suggest one reason.

Though many will dispute me, the problem can be laid in part on the rise of the professional clergyman. It has to do with uniformity in seminary and degree programs (which is not all bad) but it also has to do with the professionalization of the ministry.  The increasing professionalization of the pastor's vocation has directly paralleled his impermanence in the parish.  Could it be that professionalization might shoulder part of the blame for shorter pastoral tenures and for the expectation of them?  By the way, the same thing has happened to the lawyer and doctor in town as well.  They have seen their own vocation professionalized to the point where relationship is less than expertise in their field.  That might touch on some of the pastoral tenure problem (unless you think shorter tenures are a good thing for pastors or for congregations).

It was once thought that any pastor could be the pastor of any congregation.  Now the skill sets of pastors are honed toward more specific circumstances and those skill sets become as much of a driving force about where and how long a pastor is called along with some rather new factors (real estate and the wife's job among them).  Along with this, the tenure of the predecessor has become a powerful factor in the decision of the pastor to accept a call and how long he stays.  I will say without a doubt that many congregations and pastors now view a long pastorate (32 years?!) as problem for their future and for finding another pastor.  Pastoral longevity is now a complaint rather than a blessing -- at least in the minds of some.  After all, when pastors stay too long and become entrenched in the minds and lives of their people, it is hard for some to find room for the new guy and the old ways become so entrenched that they are just as difficult to change.

That is part of the problem.  We are enamored with change.  We think that change or die is a legitimate slogan for the churches today and a pastor who sticks around too long can be an impediment to the kind of change that we think we need.  But this is part of the very problem.  Change has become so rapid and the status quo so brief all around us that churches have bought into the false idea that this love of change is sustainable over the long haul.  We all know that it is not.  People need a break and they need stability -- in people like pastors, doctors, and lawyers just like in other aspects of their lives.  Professionals have a need to make changes to justify who they are and why they are here but such changes can often create their own difficulties for a congregation.  Furthermore, there is a big difference between needed change due to dysfunction or error and change that is less urgently warranted.  

Pastoral searches are not easy on congregations and they are certainly not easy on pastors and their families either.  Having gone through countless interviews over the years and having served as a Circuit Visitor assisting congregations in their calling process, I can vouch for how unsettling this can be in the life of a congregation already struggling.  Corporate headhunting has replaced the calling process and it has created its own problem both for the calling and keeping of a pastor.  It is often seen simply as a job and the process of getting or getting rid of a pastor as just another management change.  If we are honest we know that this is not the case.  Pastors are more like the head of a family than a corporate CEO but as long as we push the professionalization of this vocation and treat it as a corporate office, that is exactly what it will become.  So those are my random thoughts for today.  Chew them up and see what they taste like in your experience.