A Long Overdue Collect Study. . .

The Collect for the Fourth Sunday in Advent is similar to two other Advent Collects and yet distinct.  In this and in none other of the Sunday Collects are there three imperatives. On this last Sunday before the feast of the Nativity, the Church raises the stakes of the prayers lest we miss the fullness of the grace of our Lord's incarnation and therefore miss out on the grace of His coming again in power and glory. First, the Collect repeats the call begun on the First Sunday in Advent.  Excita or rouse or stir up Your power, O Lord, and come.  The object of this excita is magnified by the urgency of the prayer.  Hasten to aid us with Your great power and might or it will be too late and we will be lost.

In the purpose clause of the Collect (even without the ut) is the reason for this call.  For it is only by our Lord's first Advent that we can are sustained by His second Advent and prepared for His third Advent.  Indeed, it is by His coming in flesh that He now comes to us through the means of grace and, particularly, by this Eucharist, and it is this Word and Sacrament by which we are sustained and made fit for His coming at the end of the days in power and glory.  Again, it clear that what has the power to prevent us from receiving Him when He comes again is not a spiritual matter of the heart's own preparation or lack there of but our sins.  Our sins can impede the work of God and in particular His coming again in power and glory to receive us unto Himself.  That which causes us to stumble or trip us up are precisely those sins.  Grace is what answers our urgent need (quod nostra peccata praepediunt).  Note here the parallel.  God runs to our aid while in our running we are tripped up and stumble.  This is how much we need His aid and succour (succurre).  We pray the Lord to accelero or accelerate (hasten) to come to our aid. 

Indulgentia means forgiveness.   This is precisely what the long-awaited Savior is coming to save us from: our sins and the damnation they deserve. So, we appeal to His pardon (or “indulgence”) and His mercy (or “propitiation”).

The Gelasian sacramentary (#1121) has this, addressed to the Son, in the first of its propers for Advent. The Gregorian sacramentary (#805) addresses it to the Father and places it for a Sunday after a winter ember vigil. The Gallican Bobbio Missal (#38) has it as a second prayer in the first Mass for Advent. The Sarum Missal has it for Advent 4. The Sarum Missal had four collects beginning with "Excita" (stir up) on Sundays before Christmas (Sunday next before Advent, Advent 1, 2, and 4).  Cranmer kept it for Advent 4, adding "among us" and "through the satisfaccion of thy sonne our Lord":

Excita, quaesumus, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni: et magna nobis virtute succurre; ut, per auxilium gratiae tuae, quod nostra peccata praepediunt, indulgentia tuae propitiationis acceleret.

Praepedio means “to entangle the feet or other parts of the body; to shackle, bind, fetter”, and thus “to hinder, obstruct, impede”.   Something that is “before” (prae) the “foot” (pes) causes you to stumble.  In the Lewis & Short Dictionary this prae-pes also means “swift of flight, nimble, fleet, quick, rapid”.  To the Latin ear, prae-ped hears this interesting tension of opposing concepts. During Advent the Collects have all kinds of movement -- rushing swiftly to a goal: venio (“come”), suc-curro from curro, (“run”), accelero.

Although somewhat wooden and not as poetic as Cranmer, we might translate the Collect:

Raise up Thy power, O Lord, we beseech Thee, and come: and hasten to aid us with Thy great might, so that, through the help of Thy grace, what our sins are hindering, the indulgence of Thy merciful favor may make swift [to aid or resolve].

So we prayed on December 22:

Stir up Your power, O Lord, and come and help us by Your might, that the sins which weigh us down may be quickly lifted by Your grace and mercy; for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

This is the stuff that fills my mind.  Awesome!
 

One dogma but many dogmatics. . .

Missouri has struggled over the years with an official dogmatics text.  Walther had his own standard work, Johann Wilhelm Baier’s Compendium Theologiae Positivae which he used as the basic dogmatics to prepare pastors for the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  In fact, CFW Walther edited Baier’s Compendium and annotated it with excerpts from Luther and orthodox Lutheran theologians.  It did not last, of course.  Eventually Franz Pieper's three volumes (in English, anyway) became the standard and lasted for generations.  As John Stephenson reminds us, nobody in Missouri ever sets out to displace the old works but merely to supplement the text in use.  Eventually, the supplement becomes the standard.  So it was that Missouri decided at some point that Pieper needed a supplement.  After a few starts and stops, two different paths emerged.  One was a couple of volumes of essays with somewhat an official stamp on it that began under Robert Preus and ended up being Ralph Bohlmann's project.  In the end, it has almost been forgotten or rendered somewhat irrelevant.  It may become more used than what it has but it was late in coming and largely unwelcome when it arrived.  Preus took it upon himself to produce his own version of a dogmatics and called it the Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics Series.  These were not essays but real books -- though somewhat shorter than some might have expected.  In the end, no single series or collection has come to replace Pieper though nearly everyone thinks he could use some help.  Some have found it an affront to Pieper to even think of adding to what he offered while others honor the name without perusing the pages of the actual work all that much (especially in seminary!).  

Curiously, Lutheran history is rather replete with dogmatics volumes -- at least from its earlier period.  These were not short volumes or mere essays collected but long and tedious and somber tomes.  Every university had its own dogmatician and every dogmatician worth his salt had his own dogmatics.  We found a way to live with various dogmatics and differing ways of expressing a pretty united faith.  Now, we fear putting any official label on any dogmatics except the old ones that need supplements and are honored in principle if not in actual usage.  So we are back at where we began.  We have all kinds of books used in seminary and by pastors as doctrinal texts and even more essays.  What we are afraid of doing is owning up to this diversity.  Pieper has become the icon of our Synod and we honor the icon even though we look at others a bit more fondly and as somewhat more useful.  How odd we are!  In our early years we produced more dogmatics than most pastors could even find time to read and they were long and heavy works.  Now we seem to do dogmatic theology more by anecdote than by text.

I must admit that Lutherans are seldom at home in systematics and prefer to be Biblical theologians rather than dogmaticians but it is an image not quite supported by fact.  In reality, we are dogmaticians and have  had, at least in the past, a rather great affection for producing dogmatic texts -- until more recent times.  The trend is toward more practical works like Lutheranism 101 and its siblings.  It seems that we do not quite have the same stomach for heavy theological works or by the big names of the past (going all the way back to Gerhard and Chemnitz).  I wonder why?  In the end, we will need to figure this one out.  Walther's old offering is seldom read no matter how well it is esteemed (though translations coming out now may change that a bit).  Pieper is like your grandmother's china -- valued on the shelf but seldom used for a meal.  The enterprise begun in 1983 that took some 34 years to complete was received with not much more than a yawn.  The Confessional series is well esteemed but still incomplete and a little uneven (as might be expected).  Gerhard is being translated but he has a lot yet to go.  Everyone from Chemnitz to Krauth and Schmid have their place.  The end result of this little meandering thought it that we have a lot and still little that stands out and stands up to fill in the places of the mighty efforts of old.

Vocation to worship. . .

Worship is often presumed to be an act of the conscious reason, mostly for the mind and only secondarily for the rest of the body.  How odd it is that we think this way.  All creation worships God not by reasoned conclusion or even by experiencing God's Word but simply doing what they were created to do.  So from the birds of the air to every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth to the creatures of the watery deep to the plants, they worship God not by reason but simply by being who they are as God created them to be.  If we would learn anything from them, what we ought to learn is to be who God has created us to be and redeemed us to be.  It is not simply a matter of words, though words are always a part of who we are, but it is also a matter of vocation.

When we reject the divinely ordered pattern of creation as male and female, husband and wife, mother and father to children, we are refusing to worship God as God has made us to be.  It is one thing when a person longs to be married and the right person or time does not come along or a couple longs for a child who does not come to them.  We cannot fault them for the longing that is left unfulfilled.  In their want, they still can acknowledge that these gifts come from God even though they are not realized in them.  We can also lament that this is what sin has done -- it has robbed us of the opportunity to fulfill God's order and left us subject to the broken nature of things since the Fall in Eden.

As much as we acknowledge that sometimes through no fault of our own, we are left without the opportunity to fulfill the vocation God intended for us in creation, we should not dismiss this vocation as of no importance.  It is precisely by living within the vocation of God's design that we worship Him and not simply by the meditation of the mind or the devotion of the heart or the sound of our voices.  The point of vocation is not to find our place in the world but to live out within the places in which we live the lives God intended.  Sin can certainly affect these lives and our ability to live within them in peace and joy but even in this God has provided forgiveness as the key grace to make love like His own.

The birds of the air or the fish of the sea or the animals of the land along with all the plants have been created by God and worship Him by living out their lives within the order God has made.  We sometimes dismiss this as nothing all that important.  In truth it is at least as important as conscious worship of mind and heart and the worship of mind and heart do not replace the worship of vocation but complement this worship that flows from fulfilling our vocation.  Sin has made this elusive and even caused us to dismiss God's order as something less or less noble than the worship of a mind to comprehend God and His ways or the heart to rejoice in them.  I fear we have forgotten this.  Even Christians succumb to the temptation to believe that there is a more noble way to live out our lives as God's people than to live as husband to wife or wife to husband, father to child or mother to child, or child to our parents.  This seem rather mundane to the imagined loftiness of a contemplative life, for example.  But they are not mundane at all.  In fact, it is to our poverty that our sin conspires to dismiss the shape of God's order and our place within that order as something of little consequence.  We must stop doing this.

A few days ago I wrote of how our children got the idea that parenthood was a terrible burden to be avoided.  When I wrote those words, I was also thinking of the other part of that.  By so labeling marriage as a patriarchal or antiquated shape of our lives together and by so dismissing parenthood as something that constrains who we are instead of fulfilling who we are, we have shown the ultimate hubris.  The rejection of God's order is the refusal to worship Him who made us and who redeemed us by His grace so that we might fulfill our places within His order.  Fulfilling our vocations is part of our worship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Do we need a John or a Joseph?

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, preached on Thursday, December 19, 2024 (one year series).

John the Baptist is a character necessary to the plot of Christmas but not someone we want or like.  To us and to the Jews of Jerusalem, John was a spoiler who had come to ruin the party.  Things were going fine and nobody asked for John to be there or to open his mouth and upset their happiness with a call to repentance.  No, John the Baptist is like the dad who comes home in a foul mood to spoil our mood with all his talk of sin and death, repentance and faith, morality and truth.

We do not want John either.  We want a happy Christmas in which we open presents filled with things we want and we watch others open gifts we bought that were exactly what they wanted.  Christmas is ruined with all this talk of sin, of preachers who meddle in our business by destroying the carefully crafted myths of the season, and of church that never fits in with our holiday plans.  There is no fun in a father figure who makes you clean up your life by owning up to the wrongs you have said and done or urging us to live lives different from the world around us.  Leave us alone, John.  We have it under control. Or do we?

Look around you.  Are things under control?  John may not be a welcome voice for a people headed to a fairy tale Christmas but he is the voice we need to hear.  He is still warning those who live together outside of marriage that it is wrong – just like he did to Herod.  He is still calling those who want to make a nice memory to own up to their sin and make way for the Lord who comes to save them.  He is still speaking truth to power and calling the dirty to wash in the water of God’s mercy so they might be clean – even if they would rather be a little dirty.

No one wants John to come and ruin our Christmas but we have no Christmas without him.  John opens his mouth to speak not because he is some self-righteous prig but because he is trying to prepare us for the day when there will be no more forgiveness for sin and no more time to repent.  That is why we need to listen to him – as unpleasant and as grating as his voice is.

John is like Joseph.  They must be in this story of Christmas but we do not want them there.  Joseph doubted Mary and was ready to either put her away quietly or publicly announce the sin he accused her of and risk her death – all to preserve the image of his own righteousness.  God sent Joseph because Mary needed him – not to supply some DNA for her baby but to protect her from the threats she would face as the mother of our Lord and to provide a father for His very own Son.

The John the Baptists who preach what we do not want to here and the father figures who protect us from all that we think we can handle are the necessary spoilers for Christmas.  There would be no Christmas without them.  We love the story of a young mother whose Son is the underdog who battles our enemies for us but we do not know what to do with a prophet who warns us to repent and a Joseph who protects Mary to the place where there is no room and who wakes them all out of a sound sleep to sneak away into Egypt rather than spill the blood of the Messiah before its time.

We live amid a broken image of a family in which men do not need women and women do not need men and neither needs children.  We live amid a broken world where the job of religion is to tell us we are all good to do instead of warning us to repent.  We live with the broken dreams of a life negotiated so that we never have to suffer and never have to sacrifice for anyone or any cause.  No wonder people like John the Baptist and Joseph are so unwelcome at Christmas.  They ruin our well cultivated myths and lies that mask our destruction and keep us from hearing the voices of those who want us to be saved.

Let me be blunt.  The good memories of those who suffer in hell will do nothing to comfort them and will only increase their misery and the best memories of those who delight in heaven will be left behind for that which is even better.  But we need to hear the preaching Johns of this world and we need the fathers willing to protect, provide, sacrifice, and suffer for the sake of their families.  They say the truth hurts and maybe it does but it does not inflict the pain of a life forever captive to death’s prison or alone in your misery.  If we knew what we think we did, we would wish for more like John and more like Joseph who are strong enough to be faithful in a world of temptation and lies.

John is dead and he will be raised again but on the last day and that is too late for us.  So we need preachers who will speak the inconvenient truth in love even at Christmas.  We need those who will be voices of John in their homes, for the sake of their children and families.  We need spoilers who will ruin the myth of Christmas with its most profound reality– God IS come to be your Savior.  We need those who will protect the little lives carried in their mother’s wombs even at the cost of their own hopes and dreams and happiness.  We need those who will not only speak of God’s will but demonstrate that will with the forgiveness that is full, free, and for those who deserve not a bit of it.  We need John and Joseph.  We need YOU to be John and YOU to be Joseph in your homes and neighborhoods.  In the end these do not ruin Christmas or spoil a memory but make it possible for us to welcome Him who comes in the Name of the Lord.

Christmas is not ruined by honest preaching that calls us to repent or by strong fathers who love their families enough to bring them to that place where this preaching takes place.  Christmas is ruined by people who think today is more important than eternity, that you have to get your own way in order to be happy, that you have to hide behind a mask in order to get along, or that you have to act like you are good to go in yourself and do not need anyone’s help.  Jesus has not come to give prizes to the perfect family.  Every family is dysfunctional.  Every family is a mess.  Every one of us is weak in the face of temptation.  Everything that is not of God in this world is evil.  But the Baby born in the manger has come for just that – for people who need help, for sinners who love evil more than good, for families which are a mess, and for those who wear a mask in public to cry at home alone.

Make your way straight to the Lord, without delay or detour.  The Christ was born for you and He has been pleased to live and die for your sins.  For every call to repentance, there is the promise of forgiveness.  For everyone who admits they are vulnerable and need each other, there is comfort.  Jesus is under no illusions about who we are or what we need.  Christmas is not about memories or presents but about the Savior who came to us as one of us that He might take away our sins and the sins of the whole world.  Amen.

The drumbeat of death. . .

I listened to Elon Musk (not my favorite person) but one thing he said is spot on.  He indicated that from his view the educational system and even the family has done a great job beating it into our children, particularly girls, that if you get pregnant your life is over.  It is surely true that with respect to premarital sex the uniform witness of nearly everyone has been to do whatever is possible to prevent pregnancy and to expand the difficulties of such a pregnancy for everyone.  Could it be that we learned too well?  The birth control that was for particular situations has become universal and normal to make conception exceptional and rare.  But what was perhaps reasoned advice to the teenager has become the normal way a generation or more has come to see pregnancy in every case.  It is not simply life changing but steals your life away from you.  You do not get a career, you do not get advancement in your profession, you do not get happiness -- instead you get chained to a prison cell called parenthood.  No wonder we see pregnancy as a disease to be prevented and abortion as the sacrament of this religion of unwanted children.

I was a pastor during the time when much of youth ministry seemed focused upon this.  We had countless "Bible studies" and pep talks in an attempt to prevent our teens from becoming sexually active or taking drugs.  Kids got so tired of the predictable message they stopped listening.  But what they did hear and what has stuck with them is the Christian version of the idea that if you get pregnant, your life is over.  Girls especially heard this and took this to heart but boys did as well.  Parenthood was a trap and not a joy.  I wonder what they thought this said about them and how their parents viewed them.  Did they also begin to think that their own moms and dads had dreaded the announcement that it was a boy or it was a girl?  Even if they did not apply this to their own conception and birth, they certainly applied it to their own want or desire to be a parent.  We are now reaping the poisoned fruits of our own failure to speak clearly and authentically.  No, motherhood is not a prison and, no, parenthood is not an unspeakable burden, and, no, children are not a curse upon your hopes and dreams and happiness.  Children are a blessing from the Lord.

Curiously, we seem to have lost the battle to prevent premarital (or extramarital sex).  Christian teens and Christian adults seem to be as tempted by and succumb to temptation nearly as often as those outside the faith.  But we have all rallied around the holy grail of contraception and abortion so well that even Christians are not sure that abortion is wrong or always wrong.  What we are sure of is this.  Don't get pregnant or, if you do, wait until you have everything else out of your life that you desired.  Surely this is part of the issue with IVF -- the age at which women are having their first pregnancy keeps advancing and is nearly at that point when most women in the past were having their last pregnancy.  That is the most profound lesson of all our talk against premarital sex and are warning to our girls and boys that a pregnancy would ruin their lives and we learned that lesson too well.  We have turned sex into pleasure without the bother of a child and the laboratory into the place where we get a child when we finally decide we might want one.  Gone is the joyful affirmation that children are a blessing from the Lord.

The threat against premarital sex is not that it might result in a child.  No, the threat against premarital sex is that it is wrong, it works again a good and positive marital relationship down the road, and it delivers on all that is corrupt about sex and pleasure without any of the blessing.  Stop telling your daughters that if they get pregnant they will ruin their lives.  Start telling them that children are a blessing from the Lord to a husband and wife who promised their lives to each other till death parts them.  We are not asking youth to wait for sex because a child could ruin their lives but to wait as a child waits in anticipation of something that is good and for a time when that good is appropriate.  Pregnancy is not a disease nor is being a mother (or a father) a terrible fate.  These are the most wonderful things in their own time.  It is not our job to manage sex the way we would manage a disorder or diagnosis.  It is our job to rejoice in the Lord who has gifted us with marriage and gifted marriage with the heritage and promise of children.

Living and learning. . .

I heard it said by someone not impressed with the plethora of theological conferences and the few liturgical and musical conferences hosted around the Missouri Synod that it was preaching to the choir.  I suppose it is possible to get that idea.  Each conference has its own confederates who have rallied around a cause.  To some extent these conferences are designed for those already in the know- the professionals.  That said, there are a host of them not simply accepting the ordinary folk from the pew but creating themes and seeking speakers who will appeal not simply to the professional class but to those in the pew.

The criticism seemed to be laid especially at the feet of those who promote confessional Lutheran theology as opposed to missional (whatever that term has come to mean) and those who promote liturgical worship as opposed to evangelical style (again, not a precise term).  Perhaps that is true on some level but all conferences are organized around a central principle with an appeal to a certain audience.  I guess the question here is whether these conferences have practical appeal or whether they are not simply a reunion for folks with the time, money, and interest to get together.  Perhaps there is a little truth to the old friends character of these but that has always been the culture of the Missouri Synod.

My point is that what once constituted an academic or professional topic has become decidedly practice because we live in a world of wars.  We have morality wars that are not simply about whether things are good or beneficial but right or wrong.  We have sexuality wars that are not simply condemnations of those things that conflict with Scripture but provide a way for Christians to respond to what is going on out there and to find a way through the challenges laid at their feet and the feet of their children and grandchildren.  We have truth wars not simply about which truth is true but whether there is anything that can be labeled truth beyond the individual or the moment.  We have education wars that are not about how best to educate but what will be taught and where that education takes place (public school, home school, private school).  We have life wars not simply about abortion or reproductive technology but about existential questions of life, its origin, its beginning, its end, and its value.  We have worship wars not simply about style but about whether there is a liturgical identity that reflects our confession or not and how uniform or diverse this practical application should be on Sunday morning.  I could go on but I think you get the point.

Many if not all the conferences in our church body, official and unofficial, are about how we find our way through these wars, about providing not simply information but fellowship for a people increasingly embattled  and weary of the many struggles.  Perhaps the most important thing that happens in these conferences is that relationships too often defined simply by digital connections become personal.  I know that is the case for me.  The time I spend at circuit winkel or conferences is time well spent as we engage, challenge, and support each other as pastors and in our parishes.  The time we spend in church is much the same.  We reconnect, engage, challenge, and support each other in the Christian life of living and learning.  Even when we cannot be there in person, there is a benefit to the many videos made available.  If you are like me, you are not only listening to the speaking but scanning the room for the faces of those you know.  All in all, I think this is justification itself for the 2-4 days spent at a conference.  There are some pricey ones but most are rather reasonable.  The cost is worth it and the benefits accrue for the wider church as well as those who actually attend.

The place of the Creed in the Divine Service. . .

In addition to the obvious change of the canon of the Divine Service, the placement of the creed is the next more significant change between the rites of Divine Service I & II and III.  Some have attempted to make its location a confessional issue but this goes well beyond the issue of right and wrong and attempts to make preference into law.  

The creed resulted from controversy and the need of the Church to address the challenge to orthodoxy.  What came out of several Councils as a statement of dogma, over time became a fixed part of the Ordo Missae.  It did not happen overnight nor did happen everywhere at the same time.  Sometime by the 11th century, the practice of praying  the Profession of Faith became the universal practice of the West.  It location within the Ordo was as a bridge, as it were, between the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The suggestion is made that the Creed was placed here because it was at this point the Rite of Baptism would be celebrated.  Interestingly enough, this accords well with the name of the first part of the Mass as the "Mass of the Catechumens."  Indeed, the more ancient practice was that the unbaptized would leave the church after the Creed (the confession of the faith) and before the "Mass of the "Faithful" began leading to the communion by the faithful.  Indeed, some of suggested that this is also the reason for the first person confession of the words of the Creed in conflict with the original wording of the Council in plural (I believe vs We believe).

From the time of Trent on, the place of the homily or sermon was immediately following the Gospel and just before the Offertory.  The intercessions now universally known as the Prayer of the Faithful were largely included within the Canon or Eucharistic Prayer.  For Lutherans the placement has either been immediately after the Gospel or after the sermon and just before the Prayer of the Church.  Some try to make this into a confessional point as if to say one is Lutheran and the other is not.  The reality is that there may be different preferences but that the meaning of the placement is quite common despite the different locations.

By being recited after the appointed readings, the Gospel in particular, the Creed may form a response or echo from the faithful to what the voice of God has said through the readings of the prophets and apostles and the Gospels.  It is, as it were, a distillation of the many words of the Biblical narrative into a summary response from the mouths of the faithful.  We literally say "This I believe..."  In its place before the Offertory, the Creed then functions as a bridge, if you will, between the Word and the Sacrament.  While there was a time when the catechumens would depart and only those who could receive remained for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the Creed was also part of their catechesis and not strictly a door closed to them. When the Mass of the Faithful began at the Offertory, the catechumens were dismissed from the congregation. 

While there is no strictly right or wrong nature to the question of the placement of the Creed, I think the movement between two positions can be confusing to a congregation that alternates between the DS I/II and DS III position and it has always been my practice to make that position the same no matter which rite was in use (though we never alternated on a weekly, monthly, or seasonal basis but preferred to keep one rite in use long enough until it became usual to the congregation).  Pick one location or pattern and use it in every Divine Service rite that is chosen.  Because the more ancient and consistent practice has been the location of the Creed after the homily or sermon, this is the choice I have made.

The real thought police. . .

Oddly enough, it is those who claim to be tolerant who are the most invasive when it comes to controlling the mind and the heart.  The persistent charge against those who hold to the sacredness of life (whether as a religious tenet or simply as a moral truth) are the ones trying to get into a woman's body in order to exert control over her body -- stealing from her the autonomy of her very person.  I suppose that if you have no view of life that holds it special or worth preserving in any significant way, that might seem to be the case.  After all, those who oppose any restrictions on the prevention of the death of the child in the womb are the same people who insist upon every individual having the full right and means to end their life painlessly when they so choose.  So it is pretty obvious that there is no real moral principle at work except radical autonomy that includes the right to take a life (in the womb or your own) as inviolate.  In reality those who are prolife do not want to control the woman but they also do not want the woman to have control over the life in her womb either.  That is the key difference.  They want the life to be allowed to live (or die) without that choice being made for the child and the same privilege to be extended to all living.  Natural beginning to its natural end.  That is the slogan.  The prolife do not want to be in the womb or anywhere else in the woman.  They want the life in the womb to be respected as life -- with its own DNA, body, organs, mind, and life!

That is not how it is for those on the other side.  They do not want anyone to be allowed to think differently about this life or to even pray silently anywhere near where the life in the womb will be taken.  Evidence that in the strange case in Great Britain of a man being arrested for having the nerve to pray privately and quietly within range of an abortion clinic.  The man was arrested in November of 2022 and the conversation with the arresting officer was captured on film and went like this:

Police: “We just wanted to come over and say hello, but also just to inquire as to your activities for today.”

Adam: “Well, I’m praying.”

Police: “In terms of that, can I ask what is the nature of your prayer today?”

In other words, the government has passed laws and sent out police to enforce those laws not to prevent some sort of loud protest movement or some obvious stance that opposed the law but to prevent the simple act of praying privately.  The government wants to control the mind.  Tell me that is not more extreme than anything proposed by those who support life?  The government as much as admitted it:

We know legal restrictions on Christian beliefs exist in other countries around the world in order to protect the dominant religion, for example, through blasphemy, apostasy, and anti-conversion laws. But in recent years the West has adopted its own secular versions of these laws, protecting the dominant secular ideologies of our day.

While everyone admits that the government has certain rights to interfere with the public expression of the individual, the lines of that limitation have moved increasingly away from the public nature to the private thoughts of the individual.  These, too, it would seem are within reach of the government's right to restrict and punish.  Those who are worried about the extent of the government's ability to control the individual should look no further than this case to see what happens when nothing is private and everything is subject to the government for control, restriction, and punishment.

Summer is coming!

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent (one year series), preached on December 12, 2024. 

The world all around us is sure that we are headed toward winter – both in season and the global winter of climate change.  We hear the drumbeat of those who warn of fossil fuel that damages the environment, of green policies that preserve a world decaying too fast, of inequities which must be rectified, of injustices which must be made right, of rights that must be preserved, and of opportunities that must be acted upon now or never.  We hear it; we live it; but we dare not be deceived by it.

Jesus also warns.  But His warning is not to observe the signs and seasons because winter is at hand.  No, here Jesus is warning of the signs of summer.  Not of a time of death but a time of life.  The fig tree betrays not the warning of death but the promise of life.  Christ is this life and the Word of the Lord and the prophets who speak that word are calling the world to notice that the only and the real life is come.  We wait for summer.  We endure the winter.  So this is a call to live in joyful anticipation of what is coming.

Christians are prone to despair and some even to indulge in sensual pursuits because they live with anxiety and in despair.  But our hope was never for a repair for this world or an extension of a brief and passing moment.  Our hope lies in the life of the world to come where sin, death, and despair are no more and never more.  This is why He calls us to let go of the fear that causes us to faint and to cast off the news of earthly distress at home here and across the world.  There will be wars and rumors of wars but do not be dismayed.  Raise your heads because what is coming is your redemption.

I fear that too many of us have already surrendered to the voices of despair.  We are caught up in a world which is expiring and forget that we are not.  We live too much by the litany of bad news we hear all around us and not enough by the good news we hear right here and right now.  It should be different.  It needs to be different.  We are people of hope because Christ has come and our message to the world is hope.  It is not the end that we are dreading but the beginning we hope for.

Talk of Christ’s return in glory is not a conversation of fear to those who know of Christ as Savior.  Jesus is not trying to scare us into the Kingdom.  But He is warning us against forgetting our hope or becoming complacent in faith as the world around us is gripped in bad news, wars, rumors of wars, injustice, inequities, and all the weirdnesses of the society in which we live.  

Jesus knows us.  Our hearts will most assuredly be weighed down and we will find ourselves drawn to all kinds of ungodliness in our despair until we so lose our connection to Christ that His coming will not be the day we have been waiting for but the surprise day of dread we do not welcome at all.  We will become like those who do not know the comfort of Christ’s death and resurrection nor His presence among us in His Word that endures forever and in His Sacraments of life and worship.  Then we will be lost at precisely the moment when Christ comes to carry us home.

So what is the remedy?  A safe place in which we can live without challenge or trial or trouble?  Where would that be?  Since sin lives in our hearts, where do we go to escape it?  No, the remedy lies in being awake to God’s mercies at all times, to be so strong in the Lord that we are not weak before temptation and fear, and to stand now in Christ so that we may stand before Him when He comes in His glory.

The summer of God’s love and redemption are coming, when life is fully apparent to us and death is no more.  Look at the signs not in the times but in the sign of the cross.  If Christ is for us, who can be against us?  Do not cower in fear of what might be but stand firm in what God has done and in who you are by baptism and faith.  The Kingdom of God is near you.  As near as the baptismal water that gave you second birth, as near as the Word that addresses you with the voice of your Good Shepherd, as near as the absolution that tears down every sin before it becomes the wall of your prison, and as near as the bread and wine that feed Christ’s body and blood into us and with it forgiveness and life everlasting.

This is not the winter of your discontent.  This is springtime of hope which flowers from the tree of the cross and empty tomb.  It is the promise of a future where there was once only a past.  It is the gift of a strong life that death cannot destroy.  You belong to the Lord and to His abundant life.  Yes, the powers of the earth will be shaken and the things that seemed so certain will give way to the new creation of God that can never be destroyed.  But it is the promise of summer, of warmth without death’s coldness, of flowers instead of sins, of new growth instead of old death.  This is also Advent, indeed, the most important part of Advent.  So, long for this future and delight yourselves in what God has delivered you into.  Long for that tomorrow not as a day of dread but as the long anticipated and expected day of the Lord for your salvation.  There is no death of winter in your future; only the summer of life now by God’s promise and forever in His presence.

Which are legitimate...

I remember speaking with a husband thinking of leaving his wife.  He was probably talking to me because if I gave permission for him to do what he wanted, it would make it right and he would not have to suffer any guilt.  Or maybe he was in a crisis of indecision.  Who knows?  The man did not.  He did not know much about anything.  In the beginning this was the woman he did not think he could live without.  His love for her consumed him and became the premise for ignoring the advice of his family to wait a bit before settling down or friends who did not like this woman.  He simply had to have her and so he tested family and friendship by marrying her.  Now, he sat in my office wondering if he had ever really loved her at all.  After two children and a dozen or more years of life together, he was not sure if he loved her, if he ever loved her, or if he could continue in this marriage.

We all create a false self or identity.  It arises from the myriad of experiences, memories, decisions, opinions, feelings, habits, and desires that form one part of our lives.  We have moments of greater self-awareness when we stand in front of a mirror and realize we have aged or when physical limitations tell us we cannot do these things anymore or when we pass through the rather arbitrary stages of an adult life.  Most of the time we are okay.  The false image of ourselves is a shadow and not the reality that governs our every day.  Sometimes we fall victim to that false self.  And with it comes all sorts and kinds of anxiety, fear, doubt, worry, uncertainty, and panic.  In those moments we face the great temptation to take the invention of ourselves and make it the reality. We literally re-invent ourselves and revise the story of our lives to match what we wanted or expected or desired.  In the end, it is the choice of a moment over everything else and a moment which is more tenuous than reality even if it may not be as disappointing as the reality of our lives and self.

In the strange reality of this modern world, self and identity have become oddly separate from our physical bodies.  The body has even, perhaps, become an enemy to the self or identity we have in the mind.  The rise and legitimization of the transgender phenomenon has left us in doubt about the very things the body once gave to us as certainty.  There is no truth to our identity or self except the one we decide and that decision is less permanent than momentary.  This is who we think we are now.  This fits in very well with the changing image of ourselves we choose or we feel chosen for us by those around us.  In matters more than gender we are constantly saying about ourselves "That is not who I am" or even about others near and dear to us "I don't know who you are anymore." What was meant to be a given or a certainty has become a guess or a feeling or a treasure map with some resolution at the end if we can just figure out all the clues.

For the Christian this “identity” is not meant to be self-determined but given in Christ.  It is not connected with what we now think of as our self or our identity as it is connected with the fact of our baptism and the new birth and identity bestowed upon us there.  The pattern of daily repentance from our sin and rejoicing in the mercy of God that gave us birth by water and the Word is also our daily reconnection to what is lasting from what is captive to the moment.  Scripture insists upon this.  We are not who we were, we have been born anew from above, we are His new creation and the old has passed away, we have died and risen in Christ to be the new people He has declared us to be. The world offers us a constant process of determination according to the way we feel in the moment or the summation of the past as the primary loci for our identity as people.  Self-improvement is the sacrament of this worldly identity as we constantly rediscover and perfect this image or identity.  But Christ offers us the freedom to leave behind both the constant need to decide who we are and the judgment placed upon us by others, our past, and our own prison of the moment.  The old has died and the new has been born not of perishable or changeable seed but eternal. 

In the end, the Christian life is not one of learning who we are or how we are to behave but who Christ says we are.  We learn this by putting the old self to death over and over and over again.  It is not progress which we look for but the daily cycle that must happen until we finally die and the old is no more -- only the new remains.  Our Christian lives are not living to discover what is hidden to us or what the moment says or the past has judged but daily putting the old self to death through confession and absolution so that the new person created in Christ Jesus might arise to do the good things that Christ has set us free to do.  Only by this new identity and reality are we finally and fully set free from the prison of our false self or identity that breeds confusion and fear.  

The man who was not sure if he loved or ever loved his wife and if he wanted to leave his wife and family was caught in this prison of the false self, searching for an identity that would finally be satisfying to him.  What he forgot was that he chose to be husband and father.  What he forgot is that the only identity that is satisfying is that which we have in Christ by baptism and faith and the vocations that we live out on the basis of that baptismal new birth.  He was not led to certainty by any of his musings but only uncertainty and doubt and despair.  These are not the fruits of our true selves and the new identities born in us by baptism.  We know this by something more profound than how we feel or think in the moment.  We know this by God's Word and promise -- the only sure things in a world unsure of just about everything.

The emphAsis on the wrong SyllAble..

When I was a young pastor with much to learn and too much hubris, an experienced pastor took me aside and told me this advice that was given him when he was my age.  He said, A homegoing pastor makes for a churchgoing people.  For a time I took it to heart.  There were mixed results.  Too often the people I visited thought I was there for money and pulled out the checkbook as soon as I arrived.  That was one way to end the conversation.  Some folks thought I was the harbinger of bad news and thought that someone had failed to tell them they were dying (sooner than expected) and so they sent the pastor.  Others thought it was for coffee talk and not spiritual talk and kept moving the conversation back to the light and polite banter of a kaffee klatch.  Only a few understood why I was there.  But I kept up with it -- at least until the times changed.

I began to recognize that people were using their homes differently.  This became profoundly evident in the past decade or so -- especially in the wake of the pandemic.  The home is no longer a place where you bring people to visit or eat or both.  It has become more like a refuge away from people and job and the messiness and busyiness of life.  People are not quick to welcome a visit from the pastor because it means cleaning up the house and ordering their stuff to present an image and they do not have time or the desire to do that.  So now I meet most people in my office at church or at a coffee place or for breakfast or lunch.  It works.  It is a different form of a living room or dining room but it does the job.  The nice thing about it is that we all know the time is limited and so we generally get down to business faster.

It is not that I have given up on the old saying.  Pastors need to be in the lives of their people and familiar faces and voices to the people they serve.  But the emphasis should be on the other side -- not the work of the pastor bringing the church, as it were, to the home but the work of the people bringing their homes (and families, more precisely) to church.  A churchgoing people makes for a stronger home and congregation.  We ought to be encouraging the churchgoing part more than the homegoing part of the pastor.  If you say you believe and belong, then you need to be where the people of God gather.  It should not be an occasional or special activity but the ordinary routine of your week and your life.  We go to church on Sunday morning.  That is simply who we are.

Why is it we need to beg or cajole or argue with or threaten the people of God to go to church?  It is the wrong pathology.  Absence does not make the heart grow fonder.  Worshiping less frequently and receiving the Sacrament less often do not make your time in worship or the Sacrament more special but just the opposite.  These things become alien and foreign parts of your lives and the things easiest to disappear from that life when it gets too busy or too stressful or too easy.  So if you are reading this, let me encourage you.  Don't wait for a visit from the pastor or a phone call or an email.  Get yourself where you belong!  Be in the Lord's House on the Lord's Day around the Lord's Word and the Lord's Table.  Worship is not the special activity for an occasion but the regular and routine of the lives of the people of God.  Just in case you did not know, Christmas is coming and it should not be the first time you made it into God's House.  Come in Advent to start up the new habit.  If you wait until Christmas, let that be the start of a new weekly habit.

Kissing the book. . .

Some have asked me why I kiss the Gospel after the reading of the Gospel.  Let me give a little background.  We do not technically have a Gospel book but have a gold plated ornamented cover for the lectionary (each year for the three year series is place in the metal cover in its time and we also have one for the one year lectionary).  This itself is somewhat unusual in the LCMS but it should not be.  If we say we esteem God's Word as we think we do, nothing could be more fitting than to adorn that book with a noble cover befitting the Word of God.  For what it is worth, I am not a fan of printing out the readings and reading them from the printed page (or even from a binder).  The Word is not temporary but weighty and nothing speaks to this more profoundly than an ornamented book cover. 

When I finish the reading, I say The Word of the Lord!  While the hymnal says This is the Word of the Lord, I have always found it unnecessary to make this sentence or to make it as though you are trying to convince someone that it indeed is the Word of the Lord.  So from the time of my ordination and on I have simply said The Word of the Lord!  And the people respond:  Thanks be to God!  I am always lifting up this lectionary book with its ornamented cover.  The imagery here says that I am reading God's Word off the page -- not doing a dramatic reading or reading information but serving as the voice for God to speak His Word to His people.

When I finish the Gospel reading, I do as has been done for many centuries.  I lean forward and kiss the page of the Gospel read.  It is a simple gesture yet one that is not insignificant.  The point of this is to reference back to the crosses over my forehead, mouth, and heart along with the simple prayer that this Word of the Lord be upon my mind, upon my lips, and in my heart.  Perhaps it is related all the way back to Scripture itself and its warning to the clergy not to speak God's Word to save others only to not be saved yourself by believing the Word of the Lord.  In any case, the ceremony at the end is related to that which begins the reading of the Gospel.  Historically, at a Solemn High Mass, after the deacon reads the Gospel and when he completes the reading of the Gospel, the subdeacon takes the Gospel book to the priest.  Remember he has stopped by the priest to receive a blessing before reading it and now returns to the priest.  At that time, the priest kisses it and pray quietly: Per evangelica dicta deleantur nostra delicta. At a Missa cantata.  At a Low Mass, the priest himself reads the Gospel and then takes the Missal (or Gospel book) in his hands and kisses it, saying the same prayer.

What is that prayer?   Per evangelica dicta deleantur nostra delicta.  Which is rendered in English:  May our sins be blotted away by the reading of this Gospel.  My Latin is rusty but I think that is pretty close.  In any case, it is rather profound thing to say and it says something decidedly Lutheran.  Not only faith is connected with the hearing of the Word of God but also absolution.  It is a tacit and awesome admission that the Word of God is a sacramental Word.  It does not simply talk about absolving sins but absolves them in the speaking and hearing of that God.  The Word is, then, a means of grace.  The short prayer is a simple acknowledgement of its sacramental role and function.  It is the pastor's voice but Jesus speaking.  Thanks be to God!  And now you know the rest of the story...

A false idea. . .

There is, among some, the idea that the Church must always be reviewing matters long settled by creed, confession, or council.  Certainly this is the idea that is floating around the liberals in Rome.  No matter what a pope or council has said, they want to relitigate the matter of female deacons, the ordination of women, the stance toward gays, etc...  There is hardly a cause that is not under review even though it was long ago decided by Scripture and tradition.  Rome is not alone in suffering this, however.

We are always doing it as Lutherans as well.  The whole matter of close(d) communion has been argued ad nauseum not because the Scriptures have changed or the historic practice of the Church changed but only because we do not like the answer.  Therefore, we the right to reopen closed questions because what we want is not what was said.

The desire to open long settled matters of faith and practice is not fueled by mistakes in the past or even the failure to read Scripture rightly but solely by a dubious understanding of Gospel and freedom that is largely antinomian.  It is much like a child who insists you cannot make me when the parent says it is time to brush your teeth or go to bed.  The Gospel is not license to review and conclude differently on everything we do not like from Scripture or the faithful tradition handed down to us by our fathers in the faith.  The Gospel is not a principle which allows us to reject or override specific passages of Scripture which say something clearly (whether for or against).  Yet it is precisely this false idea that keeps showing up on discussion forums and chat groups with the presumption that unless you have the right to relitigate what was decided in the past, you are not open to the Spirit.  Hogwash.

There is another thing that keeps popping up.  That is the idea that the Church needs to be a listening Church and that we are doing far too much talking and not enough listening to the people.  The problem here is that we are also not listening to Scripture nor are we paying attention to the living tradition of the dead that was passed down to us.  The only thing this call to listen seems to be about is listening to those who do not like or are offended by or who reject what was settled by Scripture, creed, and confession.  The only listening the progressives want is the listening to those who already reject Scripture and its message in Christ and who believe that reason and prevailing popular opinion should carry at least as much weight as God's voice.  But that is precisely what got us in the mess we are in today.  We have been listening to anyone and everything except Scripture and the voice of God has become the voice of a stranger to a people who value their opinions more than God's Word.

It is maddening.  As soon as you repeat a passage of Scripture or a line from the creed or an article from our confession, somebody will ask if it really means what we have always thought it meant.  In other words, maybe we know better today than those who came before us.  Well of course we think we know better.  That is the hubris of our time.  We always know better than those who came before us and that includes God.  It is the difference between wanting Jesus to walk with us or we walking behind Jesus.  Honestly, it drives me crazy.  It is for this reason there is little meaningful conversation with liberal Protestants or progressive Lutherans or synodal Roman Catholics.  They only want the Scriptures and whose who stand upon God's Word to listen to them -- not the other way around.

There was a time when I tried setting a time to listen to the pulse of the parish.  We had a series of listening posts in which small groups of a dozen or two people would sit and discuss their answers to a series of questions I had raised.  Thank God I knew at least enough not to include doctrine as a subject up for grabs.  Mostly it was about such things as what we needed for staff, what programs were thought to be needed or beneficial to our people, and what we could do to improve our congregation, its governance, and our effectiveness in doing God's bidding in this place.  In the end, the only voices that wanted to speak were those who advocated change.  At the end of it all, a number of folks said to me privately that they were happy with how things were and that most of the congregation was on that same page and not to reinvent the wheel.  Wow, were they right!

God has not given us this faith as raw material to make into something useful or His Word as a starting point for our own conclusions.  God has placed in our hands this faith and the means of grace as a sacred deposit to be preserved and passed on faithfully.  Listening to Him is the posture of the Church then, today, and in the future.  It is the only way we will be successful before Him -- no matter the judgment of the world.  Think what we might have done with all the energy, time, and money directed toward listening to one another if we had used it all to hear and believe and keep what God has said.

I voted. . .

If you look at how voting works, it is rather remarkable that we have any outstanding presidents elected over the years.  Certainly, the great are the exception and mediocre the rule, with some equally exceptions on the bad side.  What is also curious is that the presidents who were popular in their day have seen their glory fade over time and others, held largely in contempt during their terms of office, have seen their luster restored.  Although we might disagree over which presidents were good or bad or middling and which improved or declined in the rear view mirror, I think this is a safe conclusion.

Turn to popes and you see the same thing.  It is rather exceptional that great popes resulted from the voting behind closed doors.  In the same way, mediocre popes have been the rule.  At least do not harm, right?  Caretakers who are faithful are sometimes better than those whose boldness proved wrongheaded.  It is also curious that over time the esteem in which we hold some popes has changed.  Some have been seen as better in retrospect than they were while pope and others who were popular have been seen as less than good.  Again, we might disagree about which list to place their names, but we all have lists.

Could it be the same for parish pastors?  After all, we vote on them, too.  Sure, it is not quite the same as the vote taken for a president or governor or senator or the like but neither is it quite like the vote taken for a pope but it is a vote.  Sometimes the pastors who were seen as wonderful going in have proven not so wonderful leaving and those who were not so highly thought of while they served have had their reputation improve over time.  In fact, the issue is not simply with the pastors or popes or presidents but with how we judge.  

Our judgment is somewhat flawed or at least skewed.  Worse, our judgment is too quick -- especially today.  The media have already decided who is a good president and who is not so good even before they do anything.  We have joined the chorus of those quick to place our opinion out there on who is good and who is bad.  We are an impatient lot.  Even more than this, we love to judge.  Our judgment is precisely the problem.  We judge God as we do those whom we might elect.  We are always looking at God and wondering what He has done for us lately -- just like the politicians who come calling.  It does not matter to us what he did then, we want to know what he is doing for us now.

One thing I have learned.  Faithfulness is not always rewarded with earthly esteem.  One of my mentors and a pastor whom I have had the deepest respect for over the years faced a couple of angry mobs at voters meetings trying to get rid of him.  He continued to serve the parish and them faithfully even in the face of such opposition.  Perhaps he outlasted his critics.  Both parishes I have served were not quick to warm to me.  In fact I thought perhaps I had made a mistake in accepting one call and in not taking a call sooner from the first place.  In the end, both congregations were filled with people who deeply appreciated my ministry even as I learned to love them as parishioners but both came after a longer tenure and at a time when people might have been more willing to wait and see.  I was as guilty of judging them as they were of me.

Another thing I have learned is not to let one snapshot in time define an era.  Judgments are too often made on the basis of one moment or one issue or one decision.  But what seems right or wrong in a moment often looks different over time.  God is filled with this surprise.  We are ever judging Him in the same way -- too little, too late -- until in hindsight things look different.  Perhaps we should learn to rein in our judgment of Him and of those who serve and lead us.  I do not mean that we should ignore wrong but that no one who serves a nation or a church needs to have a scorecard list his points up or down based upon one moment, one decision, or one stand.  Not even God.

Building the bionic baby. . .

Infertility is heart breaking.  I know.  There are people whom I love dearly whose hearts are daily laid low by the want of a child that will not be fulfilled.  Infertility plagues our society, with around 19 percent of couples struggling to conceive. I do not know why or what is causing the increase of this painful and hurtful reality.  I only know that it is there and increasing.

Politicians are jumping on the bandwagon for IVF as if they have the answer to these tears.  How sad it is to play with the emotions of people already so wounded!  How cruel!  With an overall live birth success rate of only 23 percent for couples, IVF is not the universal answer and it will still leave the vast majority with the devastating pain of loss and hopelessness no matter who is paying for the high cost of each treatment.  Furthermore, for each "successful" IVF birth, there are many deaths of those aborted in the womb to maintain the viability of one or left to languish in the freezer aisle of the IVF superstore.

It is cruel and unusual punishment to banter about the talk of rights to IVF and of the obligation of insurers or tax payers or both to sustain these rights when 76% of the time there is no baby as a result of our best IVF technology.  The old dark days of children in orphanages and homes for unwed mothers offered more real substantive hope to the infertile than IVF can offer today.  Of course, the reality of abortion has pretty much eliminated the need for such places today.  Unwanted or unplanned children are disposed of as yesterday's garbage.  Effective and inexpensive birth control options have reduced unwanted or unplanned pregnancies to a much smaller "problem" than in previous generations.  The second cruel and unusual punishment is the achievement of the ideal of sex without love, children, commitment, or responsibility.  IVF has become the backup plan for those for whom birth control has worked only too well and postponed the possibility of children until infertility is a much more common problem.  It is a vicious circle that our technology has offered us and one without much sympathy for the broken hearts and buckets of tears shed for those who want a child but are not able to conceive.

We think the promise of the future is that we have the technology and we can make it happen.  In reality the promise of the future may be more and greater disappointment as we discover that our manifold options are not always salutary or without consequence and a down side big enough to disappoint us all.  I do not understand why politicians promise the moon to people who have already lived through enough heartache but science is not the answer to the panacea of problems infertile couples suffer.  Playing God as a part may leave us feeling high and mighty but it will do little to offer real comfort and consolation to those for whom God is their only hope.  If you or someone you know is suffering from infertility, God bless you and keep you through the disappointment and tears.  God knows the rest of society has pretty much let you down.  It is for this reason as much as any that the Church needs to be the voice of reason and the conscience of an indulgent society so easy to write checks it cannot cash and to leave the infertile with sorrows and little peace.

New deadly sins?

Of course, we already have a pretty storied list of old deadly sins, the seven sisters of sin, but it appears that there are more or different deadly sins to be reckoned with in Rome. At a press conference at the Holy See Press Office September 16, 2024, Cardinal Mario Grech, General Rapporteur for the Synod, outlined the events surrounding the October Synodal Assembly. The whole thing began, appropriately enough, with a call to repentance and a testament to the suffering sin has caused.  The new list of sins certainly fits with the times.  Although it is decidedly Roman, it could just as easily have been published by the judicatories of just about any denomination.  The new list of sins is:

• Sin against peace
• Sin against creation, against indigenous populations, against migrants
• Sin of abuse
• Sin against women, family, youth
• Sin of using doctrine as stones to be hurled
• Sin against poverty
• Sin against synodality / lack of listening, communion, and participation of all.

Somewhere surely you could find the Sin against people or clericalism.  It has surely been on the pope's mind of late. Maybe there could be subset to include the sins against the alphabet soup of sexual desire and gender?  In any case, the list of sins accords more with culture and politics than which Scripture.  As is usual, there are often causes in search of texts to support them.  This is no different.

In the end, such a list would in essence cripple any moves to evangelize others or distinguish Biblical roles assigned to male and female or prohibit the ordination of women or enforce doctrinal unity and integrity.  In fact that might just be the point.  These are not sins in the sense of a person meditating upon the Ten Commandments and finding the sin in his or her own heart as much as these are the global sins of the many against the few (never mind that in the developed West such views are rapidly approaching the majority!).  These are conveniently vague enough to allow just about anything to fit under each sin and thereby allow those in charge to add to these sins as new problems are found with those who refuse to step in line with the advancing army of flawed opinions and failed truths.

In the end, Protestants on the progressive end of Christianity may well join with the Woke in Rome to set up a list of sins designed less to encourage the repentance of the individual than to control the political and social movement of the world by those who think they know better.  If that is the case, you do not need to find warrant in God's Word for what you say.  At least these sins will not get in the way of your Christmas list or party plans.

Making a space liturgical and beautiful. . .

As I have often said here and in other places, we are battling a recent legacy of a less is more as a principle for architecture and liturgical design.  The ideal for much of our recent past is plain form with minimal adornment.  The focus of the design is on the people more than the God who is the object of the worship that takes place there.  Further, worship itself was largely seen in didactic terms with preaching or what passes for preaching being the center of it all.  Even when there has been theological and liturgical renewal to refresh the former ideas with the best of the past, we are too often stuck with buildings from that era that do very little to aid and assist the liturgical worship that is now taking place within those structures.

I ran across an example of a Roman Catholic parish which had purchased a building built by and formerly used by an Assembly of God congregation.  I am not sure that there are many greater contrasts than what happens in a Mass and what happens in an Assembly of God service.  In this case, the congregation did not rebuild the building but acclimated this structure to accomplish its new purpose and it did so on a limited budget and yet very effectively.  You can look at the before and after photos.

The original structure was minimally impacted with a crucifix, altar, and tabernacle but it is clear that these were added and they looked very temporary.  I do not fault them for trying but it is clear that the principles of the Assembly of God worship predominated over the Mass.  However, the after photo shows that the building has been transformed without major structural change.  It is now clearly a chancel designed to house the liturgical worship that takes place there.  It is remarkable how this was done so effectively and yet economically.  I commend those who led this change.

The tones in the original structure are bland and very one dimensional.  The space, though tall, seems flat and the focus of the space is very close to the ground.  It is easy to see a pulpit in place of the altar in the photo.  The need here was to frame what was the central focus and function of the space and to raise the attention of the eye heavenward.  The photo shows how an earth tone (read that dirty) carpeted flooring not only anchors the space but pulls the focus downward and unites the altar area with the nave as if there were not distinctions of space or function.  The wood is warm but the wood is not allowed to be a full part of this; it is an afterthought and tangential to the overall picture.

The after photo shows not only how the altar has been framed by a reredos and the crucifix emphasized but suddenly the wood becomes a full partner in this design.  The agency of this change is the floor.  The dull and dirty look of the previous flooring has given way to a floor which is not simply better but a part of the design and functions to draw the eye right up to the altar and even higher to the crucifix and higher.  The rail is not simply a marker of the division of the two spaces but a liturgical element in the design.  Another small change is the switch from a colonial brass chandelier to lights more typical to a traditional and liturgical space.  Yet this is the key, the space, while traditional, is thoroughly modern in the best sense of that term.  I am very impressed.  I have posted other examples of such a transformation (including Lutheran ones!)  Hopefully, there will be many more examples to which I might turn your attention.  By the way, if you have examples, send me the photos and stories!

Mainly utility. . .

Although there are always honest and honorable concerns to do with way things are done, the casual approach to them is its own position and is not without consequences.  I am weary of the many warnings there are about formalism and ceremonies which could detract from the thing itself and focus instead upon how we do them or receive them.  There is an abundance of warning against Pharisaism and hypocrisy that those of us who honor reverence must endure.  Seldom is the cost of a casual and laid back way of dealing with the mysteries of God admitted.  All that said, there is some vindication for those who believe reverence is in keeping with faith.

A survey meant to find out if Roman Catholic erosion of belief in the Real Presence is, well, real, found a number of comments that not only mirrored what the other surveys bemoaned.  This survey offered respondents to suggest why reverence and doctrinal disunity with respect to the Sacrament seems to be so high today and what might be done about it:

1) Encouraging the practice of receiving the Eucharist on the tongue while kneeling;
2) Catechizing the faithful;
3) Promoting greater reverence for the Eucharist;
3) Eliminating the use of Extraordinary Ministers;
4) Withholding the Eucharist from public sinners; and
5) Increasing Eucharistic events such as Adoration and Benedictions.

Perhaps the Lutherans who are serious about their Lutheranism should listen in a bit.  Imagine that.  The more mundane the means of receiving the Eucharist, the less serious people take it.  When utility becomes the primary concern, doctrine automatically becomes secondary or lower down on the list of priorities.  I would love to imagine the protests from those who think using the prefab little coffee creamer style of elements is peachy keen or those who think that tossing the remains of those things into the garbage on the way out is just fine.  Surely sitting in your unholy bluejeans with holes and a slogan adorned T-shirt in the chancel or in the pew will not diminish the awe of God's presence now will it.  Can you really believe that the constant mention of grape juice in the center of the individual cup trays would harm how the Sacrament as a whole is viewed?

Catechizing the faithful should never go out of style nor should adequate preparation for receiving the Eucharist be discouraged.  It may not make us worthy but it helps the worthy by faith to receive faithfully God's gift.  The organization of several posses of lay folk to do what the clergy ought to be doing will not make it seem less solemn or diminish the mystery now would it?  How about actually encouraging people who believe differently or whose public witness is in conflict with our confession and offends our fellowship to NOT commune?  Would it be too unfriendly to tell people to wait until they have been catechized or unless they keep the faith to stay in the pew?  By all means, do not offend anyone but God.

As a Lutheran I am not suggesting that we have Adoration of the Host outside the Mass or Benediction services.  Who would?  But the reverent adoration within the Mass ought to be encouraged and demonstrated at the altar or people will get the idea we do not believe anything is really happening at the altar or that anything there is worth the trouble.  Sure, somebody might be offended because that is not how they did things where they grew up or they don't like ceremony or they want their Lutheran congregation to look more like the big box denominational site down the road, but this is who we are as Lutherans (at least according to our Confessions).  I would suggest that where we are now in the chaos of worship styles and sacramental practices has been informed by the casual way we wear the name and live it out in the liturgy.  Treat the Sacrament like fast food and act like you are eating in the car will come back to haunt you. And it has!

More than a saint for moms...

As best we think, Monica was born in Thagaste, now known as Souk Ahras, in what we call Algeria, North Africa. She was most likely a Berber, an indigenous tribe in North Africa prior to the arrival of the Arabs. Thagaste, part of the Roman Empire, accepted Christianity which had been legalized just twenty years before Monica was born. She was raised in a Christian home, became quite devout in her practice of the faith, but was part of a minority at the time. She married Patricius (Patrick), a pagan with a temper not unlike his mother's and an immoral lifestyle. They had three children: sons Augustine and Navigius and a daughter whose name is unknown.

Monica’s marriage and home life were not at all easy. It appears that she may have had a bit of an alcohol problem earlier in life. Her husband was not easy to live with but she earned a rather grudging respect for her piety and devotion to prayer.  That did not lead to his approval of the baptism of their children. Augustine might have been baptized when he became ill as a child, but his recovery no longer seemed to his father to present a need of it. The Scriptures say that the prayer of the righteous (faithful) avails much.  So it was for Monica.  Patricius’ and his mother converted and both were baptized about 370 AD but he died one year later.

Augustine was sixteen when his father died. He had been well schooled locally but the next year went to Carthage to study rhetoric. The heart of Carthage was Greek culture and there Augustine pursued his thirst for learning but he also had other interests.  He was living with a woman and they had a child out of wedlock. It was in Carthage, Augustine was introduced to the teachings of Mani who claimed to be the final prophet in a line of prophets including Buddha, Zoroaster, and Jesus. Mani emphasized the conflict between the co-eternal principles of light and darkness. Light was good; darkness was evil. For him, the material world was a union of light and darkness, good and evil, and the noble pursuit was to release the light trapped within the darkness. Augustine became a Manichaean but his mother was not keen on this.  She prayed earnestly for him.

Augustine decided to go to Rome, open a school of Rhetoric, and seek out his place in the world now at age 31. His siblings had already converted and been baptized.  Monica decided to go with Augustine who had gone to Milan. She prayed fervently for him and Augustine's interest in learning led him into circles that included Bishop Ambrose. At age thirty-three, Augustine converted to Christianity and was baptized by the good Bishop.  He decided to return home but Monica fell ill and died just outside of Rome.

In his book, Confessions, Saint Augustine shares his mother's story, particularly her tears and prayers for him.  It is a testament to the influence of mother's (and fathers) upon the spiritual lives of their children and particularly to the power of prayer.  Every parent needs to read the story of Monica and her relentless prayers for her children's conversion, baptism, and faith.  Without Monica, one could hardly imagine a Saint Augustine -- or perhaps even a Luther!