Too successful?

This past summer was hard on Europe.  Temperatures were high and the people miserable in an area in which air conditioning was not typical for most homes.  You certainly about it in the news.  It was actually worse than most of us probably imagined.  Of course, climate change was blamed.  It was all man's fault for polluting and disturbing the pristine balance of nature.  Everyone had come to believe that unless we figured out a way to clean up our act, the world was doomed.  Who thought it could have been otherwise?

Now even those who are on the climate change bandwagon are coming to a very interesting conclusion.  

“From 1980, Europe warmed around 1C more than the average of extratropical areas of the Northern Hemisphere, and around 1.5C more than the global average. . . . Most of this excess warming over Europe can be linked to the reduction of particle emissions,” Pedro Roldán‐Gómez, an associate researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, told The Telegraph.

The reduction in air pollution has caused an increase in temperatures that is particularly pronounced at the poles. When the temperature difference between the poles and the equator shrinks, the jet stream grows stagnant, which results in weather systems, like the recent hot spells in Europe, persisting for longer periods.

Europe has warmed at twice the rate of the rest of the world since the 1980s, resulting in deadly heat waves that environmental activists and politicians have attributed to carbon emissions. But according to the study, the opposite is true: Much of the increase in temperature can be attributed to Europe’s recent success in reducing the amount of airborne particulate matter, since such pollution acts as a sunshade. 

In other words, the problems evident in Europe's heat wave were also of man's doing but not because he was being irresponsible and raping the good earth of God's creation but because they were trying to repair the wrongs done by those before.  Cleaning up the problem results in its own set of circumstances that become a new problem for us to deal with.  My point here is not to argue for or against climate change but to point out how deeply the problems of our world are established by sin and how it is impossible for us to fix our own problems.  We cannot save but need a Savior who can.  Only the God who created all things can come to our aid and repair what we have ruined.

While it might seem the responsible thing to pick up after our own mess and it is surely the right thing for us to do, that does not mean that we can repair the wrong and restore what we have broken.  It is a good and helpful thing for a parent to call a child to account for making a mess and for calling that child to pick up the mess and make right what he has made wrong even when the parent knows the child cannot possibly do it all on his or her own.  God watches us even when we are trying to do what is right and yet He understands what we do not.  We cannot fix it or make the mess go away.  That is how deeply sin is embedded into the fabric of creation and why it groans not for us as responsible adult people to take notice of and responsibility for what we  have screwed up but for the One to come who alone can answer this longing with real new birth and an everlasting creation.  Right here in climate change and the ecological work of those intending to repair the wrong is evidence that we need a God to do for us what we cannot do -- a God to fix the Fall and repair what sin has done not simply to the soul of man but to the whole of the world God made.

We want a king. . .

Much has been said about how George Washington could have become King George I of the United States but turned back both the honor and the responsibility.  Perhaps the evolution of the office in the years since the could have been King George might be explained in the desire to make a king out of whoever in habits that office.  The imperial presidency is really just a catchall term for the election of a monarch -- albeit one with limited terms of office since FDR.   Perhaps we are simply a people in search of a monarch to rule us the way we want to be ruled.  I get it.  Democracy is a messy business and, even if you cannot necessarily find a better alternative, that does not mean it is any less messy.  Congress says they want to be a power and force to be reckoned with but the people's house is a group of folks concentrating on the next election right after they have won the previous one and the Senate is a series of little fiefdoms with potentates who only reluctantly agree on anything.  A king would be nice.  Somebody to demand what we want from and somebody to blame when it all goes South.

Israel wanted a king and was not happy that God had saddled them with something less than what they thought they deserved and everyone else had.  We all know how that turned out.  Can anyone really recite the list of those kings no one wants to remember?  In Scripture it ends up being something like so and so went and did what was evil in God's sight and then slept with the fishes ancestors who had done the same.  Boring and disappointing all at once.  It surely did not keep them from claiming the Roman imposed version of a monarch as their own even though they hated the thought of it all.  There is something about a king, after all.  I guess that it is in our blood to want someone whom we think has the power to change everything and someone to blame for not changing it the way we want it.  Give them cake became give them a king and make them regret it.  The king or president ceased to be merely the highest authority within the structure of the social order to become instead the very embodiment of the sovereign State.

Rome has certainly evolved the papacy into a kingly sort of office.  Papolatry had its roots far earlier than Vatican I but it has not been abandoned even as the mythology of democracy has also evolved.   We may find the worship of the pope to be a thing baffling, strange and contradictory, but it is perfectly reasonable why Rome wants to turn the pope into a king.  "Whatever the pope says because the pope says it.”  It does not seem to matter who the pope is.  It does not even matter when he contradicts other popes or even himself -- walking back one day what he say the day before. The papacy has become the ultra institution of Rome and nothing else seems to matter -- unless you are on the opposite side of the pope when suddenly you agree with all the critics.  Rome does not want a pope but a ruling monarch both to blame and to sit in the place of God with wisdom and an all knowing soul -- eve without a guarantee he will always be right.

Lutherans are not far behind.  Missouri is perhaps the most democratic of the governance forms of American Lutheranism yet we want a benevolent monarch as much as the next guy.   Whether in clericals or a shirt and tie,  expect our Synod President to move on a dime in pursuit of what we want and to be slow as molasses to stop what we wish continued.  We blame him for everything that is wrong in Synod without acknowledging his role in making things right.  We get a little testy when we think he has gone too far as well as when we believe he has not gone far enough.  In short, we also want a king.  We want a benevolent monarch who is nearly always right when we agree and willing to take back what we do not like or agree with.  We expect him to honor the good institutions and correct the ones not so good, to know who to appoint where and who to can when they have done wrong but to do it in a proper pastoral way -- a humble monarch at least.  We want a king whom we can predict and control and who looks good on camera as he benignly goes about our business.  Like the Garden of Eden, we say we want freedom but blame King God I when things happen as He said they would but we were not listening.  It is probably no different in any church which cares about things like doctrine and practice.  We do not want a president or even a bishop but would like a king who acts decisively when we think it necessary and patiently when the spy glass is on us.  Ride on King Jesus and those who minister in His name -- at least so far as He is riding where we want Him to go.  It seldom seems that we are ready for any kind of cross bearing or suffering but we are perfectly willing to be the cause os some of that. 

A choice between synagogue and temple?

Often Roman Catholics insist that Protestants do not really know what worship is.  They complain that the Temple is missing from Protestant worship, that there is no sacrifice, and that there is no sacrament.  I suppose there is truth in all of this.  Protestants have chosen the synagogue as their model - not the Temple.   Indeed, Protestant worship seems to be thoroughly indebted to the model of Jewish synagogues: “To this day Protestant worship is indebted to [synagogues’] emphasis on prayer, Scripture reading, teaching, lay involvement, and elder rule” (as one Baptist put it).  Honestly, there are plenty similarities between what is typically found in most Protestant churches on Sunday morning and what would ordinarily be found in a first-century synagogue (example Luke 4:16-21; Acts 13:15,27). 

Jesus was found in the synagogue regularly.  You cannot accuse Him of ignoring what happened in the synagogue and He accepted the scroll to read from Isaiah and then to preach the text in one of those synagogues.  It would be a false presumption that Jesus did not consider what happened in the synagogue important or well connected to the piety and worship lives of Jews and those who would come after Him.  Catechesis, the likes of which you would have found in the synagogue, continued in the early church and down to the present day.  The synagogue was clearly that place where religious instruction took place and the ordinary place for what we would call preaching.  We have this on record; Jesus gave the Bread of Life discourse “in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum” (John 6:59).  Undoubtedly, it was also a place where people prayed but the House of Prayer which Jesus cleansed was not the synagogue but the Temple.  Only an idiot would suggest no one prayed in the synagogue but what happens today in the synagogue has been altered by the fact that there is no Temple to be a House of Prayer anymore - at least since its destruction in 70AD.  Indeed, Jesus not only visited the synagogue but commanded His disciples to do the same, following His own example: “[going] about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity” (Matt. 9:35).  Indeed, the criticism Jesus has of public prayer in the warning given in the Sermon on the Mount was not directed to the prayers of the Temple particularly but in the public places of the synagogue and street corner - where people were watching but God was not paying attention since it was clear it was not directed to Him.   No, Jesus was clearly in the habit of attending synagogue weekly (Luke 4:16)

Rome knows this and has cultured the Mass into the worship of the Temple.  Yes, it is spoken of as sacrament but it is primarily sacrifice.  The sacrifice of the Mass was, after all, a key point in the Reformation.  But Rome seems to have forgotten the synagogue.  Preaching has not quite been a strong point in Rome and, if you check modern Roman Catholic blogs and such, preaching is still a touchy subject.  Nearly everyone admits that preaching is weak and often moralistic in a typical Roman Catholic Mass.  Sure, there are exceptions, but just as Protestants have chosen to model the synagogue, Rome has chosen the altar and the sacrifice they insist is the most important thing happening in the Lord's House -- even more important than actually receiving communion!  If Protestants have gotten it wrong, I would suggest Rome has as well.  By their singular focus on the holy sacrifice of the Mass, they have attempted to rebuild the Temple in the sanctuaries of Roman churches and continued the sacrifice at the altar - though unbloody - with the people praying during the Mass as if they had no real part in it except to pray.  So instead of receiving the sacrament during the Mass, communion happened outside the Mass or while the Mass was going on and the people were there to pray the Rosary.  Praying and being near where the sacrifice of the Mass was offered is enough.  Though that opinion is not universal, it is probably typical in Rome.

But there need not be a choice.  In Lutheranism, the Divine Service preserves both the synagogue and the Temple.  It is the place of preaching and instruction and catechesis in a high understanding of the reading of Scripture and its explanation and application in a sermon which has an equally high place.  But the prayers are not peripheral nor even individual.  Prayer is the language of worship that permeates the Divine Service and culminates in the prayerful proclamation of the Verba Christi and the Our Father.  The Temple is there not to recreate the sacrifices of old or the one, all-sufficient sacrifice of Calvary but to distribute its fruits in the flesh and blood of Christ given to us to eat and drink in faith in remembrance of Him for the forgiveness of our sins.  It is the Temple fulfilled and transformed so that in His name and by His own Word we worship in Spirit and in truth, eating the drinking the foretaste of the eternal feast right here and right now.  In response to God's goodness, grace, and mercy, we offer Him the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving not simply in a few ritual words but in lives offered as living sacrifices.  It is all there in the Divine Service and in the high place given to preaching AND the sacrament that is the hallmark of Lutheran worship theology and practice.

Walther saw this when he got to America and complained about lecture halls that had replaced the sanctuaries in which Word and Meal were the center piece of the gathering of God's people and the marks of the Church which identified God's House to the world.  When Lutherans forget this and their own Confessions and end up sounding like Protestants, we betray our identity and our claim to be the catholic and apostolic church, keeping the faith in pure doctrine and right practice against those who would divide it up or choose sides (like Protestants and Rome).  When Walther insisted that we chant, wear vestments, use candles, have altars, etc..., he was marrying together what God had always meant to be together and which Protestants had forsaken along with Rome for merely half of the whole.  Worship is not a choice between them but the embrace of the fullness of both.  I will admit that Lutherans themselves forgot this for a time when they kept the Eucharist in theory but reduced it to a rare practice (growing up for me that meant four times a year!).  This is the bronze age error which the liturgical movement among Lutherans has challenged and the Eucharistic revival is evidence of recalling who we were and are.  At the same time, it should not come at the cost of faithful preaching.  We own both -- the tradition of the synagogue in the liturgy of the Word and the tradition of the Temple fulfilled in the Upper Room in the liturgy of the Meal.  To have one without the other is to misunderstand what worship is and what God not simply calls it to be but has provided it to be.  The Word will not return to Him empty but will accomplish His purpose and Christ will never fail to be there given and shed for us in the Holy Supper - a presence not limited to those who believe it but to all who commune and hence the centrality of faithful discipline of the Table (close(d) communion). 

"Old" Catholics. . .

The first time I stumbled across the name Old Catholic Church, I did not know what to make of it.  Eventually I discovered that this was a specific thing, or several things, as it were.  Apparently, there was significant push back in Germany after Vatican I.   They were not alone in questioning the dogma of infallibility that was the hallmark of that council but saw it as the worst kind of innovation and contrary to the faith of the Catholic Church.  Eventually, they would join together forming the “Old Catholic” churches in a number of countries, including Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.  The following year they conferenced, even inviting some Protestants to be observers.  The Vatican responded with a Decree of the Inquisition in September of 1871, insisting the Old Catholics were No Catholics but this group enjoyed some state support in areas where they operated.  Excommunicated and without a Roman bishop to join them, they consecrated their own.  Like the SSPX of today, this was a step too far and Pius IX rejected them for denying his own infallibility and the Church’s indefectibility.  The Polish National Catholic Church came to North America in 1897 and the movement picked up the Church of Utrecht, which had broken with Rome over papal authority in the a couple of hundred years before.  There are now some quarter of a million claimed in the US and the insist that they are the real Catholics and Rome lost its way.  Things have not gone well for the Old Catholics, some ordaining women, some practicing open communion, and some breaking away over these and other issues.

Odd, in a sense, because Lutherans probably have had a decent claim to the term Old Catholics as much as these groups.  Interesting enough, our issue with Rome was only partly due to the papacy -- especially since the infallibility doctrine was to wait more than three hundred years to define.  The claim, however, was the same.  Rome had innovated and the Lutherans were attempting to preserve the ancient faith true to the Scriptures.  The councils had conflicted with each other and even contradicted each other.  The popes had erred.  Moral problems abounded and some related to the discipline of celibacy forced upon those who would be priests.  The problem was not simply language but a break down of catechesis which fostered errors and superstition that masqueraded as piety.  The Mass had become less gift to the Church and means to the faithful to receive the flesh and blood that forgave and cleansed the sins of the faithful than its own form of solemn entertainment, watched without really being part of it.  Luther was bold and his language colorful and his cause encouraged by the advent of the printing press but the Confessions of Lutherans were more churchly and nuanced, especially the Augustana and the Apology.  Luther shone best in his preaching and his catechisms as well as his exegetical work.  But in the end, Lutherans have been their own worst enemies.

Much of Lutheranism has become a sham of progressivism which long ago forsook the Scriptures as the one eternal truth to judge all truths and molded the Confessions into principles which could be used to justify the embrace of modernity.  Divisions were healed and then created anew, trying to sort out the authentic voice of the Augsburg Confession.  Some forgot that liturgical identity and confessional vitality were two sides of the same coin and sought to make doctrine distinct from and unrelated to the things of worship.  Some made their peace with Rome over justification and chose words which both could claim instead of something more clear and specific with integrity over the real causes of the Reformation.  Some, like Missouri, continue to lay claim to being the real voice of the Lutheran movement against the wannabes who find more in common with Methodists and Presbyterians than the LCMS.  Meanwhile, Rome seems to have institutionalized the papacy so well that even an oddball like Francis must be affirmed and his seemingly more careful successor is left to dance around the former's errors rather than simply admit them.  Old Catholics were right to suggest that the papal centrism of Vatican I was the problem as revealed by the way the Paul VI could bypass what Vatican II said to invent a new Mass nobody liked except those who were uncomfortable in their Roman shoes.  Now we have a pope who has to choose German bishops preapproved by those who contradict Roman teaching, submit to the secular rule of the Chinese government to get bishops there, and put up with the lavender mafia still clamoring for a new morality as jarring as was the new Mass nearly sixty years ago.  Sad to say that little Missouri may still be the best candidate for the claim Old Catholic and other Lutherans and Rome seem to be edging toward becoming no Catholic at all.  It is, after all, the reason why so many remain within Missouri's sometimes uncomfortable borders.  I guess it applies to me, as well.  I am not ready to trade one set of problems I know for the ones I am only beginning to discover.  Anglicanism wanted to be the via media but Lutherans wanted, and real Lutherans still want, to hold to the catholic doctrine and practice that is the mark of the faithful communion.  

Technology makes sin safe. . .

There was a time when the choice to have a child was the default and it was the exception to choose otherwise.  Of course, we all know that this has been reversed.  The default has become not to have children and the exception to have children.  While this is surely due to the values which have changed and the desire on the part of people, it is not solely due to these.  Key to this is access to cheap, reliable, readily available, and relatively safe means to accomplish this birth control and rid the mother of a child she does not want.  We should not minimize the effect of the technology upon everything.  

There are countless examples of technology serving to influence and even define the boundaries of right and wrong and the limits of acceptable behavior.  Indeed, that is one of the unintended consequences of technology -- it sometimes establishes norms even without the discussion or even consent of people.  That is especially true of matters of sex and gender.  If it were more difficult to prevent pregnancy or that imposed a difficult burden upon the couple or it was costly to obtain, birth control would surely be less prevalent than it is today.  If it were more difficult to end a pregnancy and there was no pill available to cast the unwanted child from the womb, the numbers of abortions would be smaller.  Technology has decided this for us and most folks follow along like mindless sheep to the slaughter.

What I fear is that technology is leading us to go too quickly where we have not even decided to go.  I can well recall when the mantra of those opposed to abortion chanted safe, legal, and rare.  We do not seem to be that concerned about the last part of that slogan.  Indeed, we seem not to even care how many children are killed in the womb so long as it is cheap, reliable, readily available, and relatively safe to end the life of the unborn.  When technology gets ahead of our reasonable deliberation on such things, we tend to end up where we had not planned to go.  When, in 1930, the Anglican Communion opened the door to birth control, who would have foreseen that within one hundred years marriage would become a more optional choice for people and children even less optional?  Who could have foreseen that whole sections of the civilized world would literally be in population decline as the birth rate declined to a rate in which we are not even replacing ourselves but shrinking?

The wisdom of St. Paul ought to prevail.  Things possible are not necessarily beneficial.  As I have spoken of before, the sexual revolution left our primary institutions in shatters with home and family trying desperately to keep up but lacking behind.  Liberty became its own end and was no longer tied to the desire to live freely responsible and upright lives.  We learned simply to live and to live primarily for ourselves.  Maybe it is time to reconsider the regularity of birth control and the normalcy of abortion.  Maybe now is the time for the Church to teach the faithful and those on the fringes of the church's life that what became normal to us (non-married and largely childless lives for those who are married).  Maybe it is time to admit that we were not ourselves and spoke in haste, enamored as we were with the setting as well as the numbers of those who inhabit that setting.  Will we continue to simply follow the judgment of the moment in deciding what is good, right, and salutary, or will we learn to speak to our family the values that undergird the fabric of our lives?

In one sense I might be saying that technology can tell us something is right and, even though it is wrong, it remains an enticement to us simply because we like being told what we want is right.  That is certainly the problem inherent with the problem of marriage and children becoming optional while sexual relations outside of marriage with the normal expectation of preventing a pregnancy and the assurance that if it was not prevented, it could be easily, cheaply, and safely eliminated.  Technology can make us think that sin, at least sexual sins, are normal and safe.  That is Satan's lie in Eden repeated again and again and again.