Silence. . .

Our presumption is that when the Church is silent, devoid of conversation or laughter or movement, it is empty.  I admit that I once thought such foolishness.  I had been taken in by those who insist that our life together be manifest in the vibrant give and take of people speaking out loud and loudly of all things.  We all seem to have taken it to heart.  Churches have become rather noisy places.  You hear the sound of texts and outrageous rings of our cell phones.  Organists play louder to let people know it is time to shut up and people speak more loudly as if to compete with the organ.  In either case, there is little room for silence.

When the Church is silent, it is not because it is cold or empty but because there is going on within that silence the ministry of prayer.  Could it be that we are uncomfortable with silence precisely because we are ill at ease with prayer?  Our lives are noisy because we are not sure what to do with silence.  When we get home we turn on music or the TV so that there is the sound of something.  We wear our earbuds all the time because silence has become almost unbearable to us.  We listen to podcasts as background noise and it could be old episodes of Andy Griffith or our favorite Christian commentator but it is noise to fill the silence that feels odd to us. Could it be that reading has become less popular in part because it involves silence -- words that live not upon our lips but in our minds?  I guess we would all prefer noise to the sound of silence.

Perhaps we will never recover an ease with silence again.  Noise has so firmly been entrenched in our minds and lives that we need it.  When I go to my hometown in Nebraska, I am struck by how silent it is compared to the small city where I live.  There are no sirens or speakers pumping out what passes for music or motorcycles tearing up the boulevards.  There is the sound of the wind or rain or nothing really at all.  At first it seems weird but then it feels exactly right.  I have to learn to be comfortable with silence again.  Once I learn that, the noise is ever more obvious.  As a boy growing up my dad would take advantage of the silence in the morning hours before everyone awoke.  He sat in his chair with Bible, Portals of Prayer, catechism, and Book of Concord open and he prayed.  Sometimes I got up early to sit on the steps and watch him.  It seemed so serene and profound.  It was.  It is.

As I grow older I hope to recapture the sense of silence.  I will trade an office filled with banter and keyboards and conversations for the quiet of a house and its ordinary rhythms.  Some of them involve words and some do not.  Some involve sounds and some do not.  It will be a welcome reunion with the peace of silence which is not empty at all.  When that happens, I hope also to learn again to pray without ceasing, to pray the words of Scripture and catechism, to pray the hymns and the Divine Service, and to pray from prayerbook and breviary.  When I find my peace with silence and discover again that it is not empty but full of the sound of God, then I will also learn again the joy of the Psalmist:

“And I shall go in unto the altar of God.”
“To God, who gives joy to my youth.”

The potential for light. . .

So far, end of life issues have been more muddy than clear and more laced with sentiment than values or principles.  That said, there is potential for us to look at matters of death and come forth with a more positive view of life.  I did not quite say I had hope for this to take place but there is the possibility that looking at death may actually lead us to a more fruitful and godly view of life.  By the way, I am not at all saying that this is the time for the dying to have a more introspective assessment of their own lives but an actual and honest appraisal of life by those who are left to deal with the death.

Thus far that has not been the case.  Instead, we have put more of the focus on controlling the symptoms, that is dealing with discomfort, pain, and anxiety.  And, thus far, that has been largely a medication approach to it all -- giving enough morphine to relieve the family as well as the dying of too much upset and pain.  I am not a fan of this overall and have argued with the more aggressive approach of some involved in hospice to medicate the dying into death.  Unless pain is the complaint, the medicine has become a mask for something else.  The something else is the passive and sometimes more overt desire to hasten death as opposed to providing a palliative care that makes the dying (and the family) more comfortable.

I well recall how it went when my wife and I went to see her step-mother who was near the end of her life.  This was a woman full of life and a quaint innocence that we both thoroughly enjoyed (though at times we found it confounding).  She refused to go quietly into death.  Her raised arms and enthusiastic voice indicated that she was not going to sleep her way into death -- at least not yet.  Instead, she talked almost incessantly and spoke time after time of the stories that were her life and ours with her.  It was exhilarating for us standing around her.  Instead of the awkward silence of those who watched the hours pass while gazing on the sleep of those making their way into death, this was a loud and raucous conversation about anything and everything that had touched her life.  I loved it.

Of course, I know that this is not and will not be the universal circumstance of loved ones and families but it could be more frequent and more common.  We do not need to tip toe around the dying.  We do not need to walk on egg shells around death.  We need to talk about it and we need it to make us begin the talking.  While the dying may not be able to walk or sit up or even eat, most of them can and will talk if given the chance.  My greatest regrets in the time I have spent with the dying was succumbing to the silence and presuming that it was better to whisper than to speak aloud.  Now I am loud -- too loud for some.  I call the dying by name and gently but firmly inquire if they are ready to die.  I invite them to address the Lord and their families with the things on their hearts and minds while they are able.  I urge the family to do the same.

It is in this way that death can set us free to deal with urgent things instead of packing them away or medicating them away while awaiting the final breath.  If we do this, we may just learn something about living by the way we approach the dying.  It cannot hurt.  The way we hide the dying away and medicate them into silence and ignore the elephant in the room has not made us better people nor has it improved the way we deal with the messiness of death.  So why not try talking about it.  Talking with the dead about dying?!  We used to pray regularly for a good death or a blessed one.  I fear that we have forgotten how important this is.  It is by learning to recognize a blessed or good death that we begin to appreciate anew the gift of life.  Living cannot tell you much about dying but dying can certainly tell you a great deal about living. 

Raising up pastors. . .

Roman Catholics have gone to having "vocation directors" to assist in the consideration by men and formation of those men as priests.  I am not sure how successful that has been.  Though nearly every diocese has one of those thingies, the seminaries of most dioceses are pretty empty.  We have not quite gone to that in the Missouri Synod but we are headed there.  Our seminaries employ "admission counselors" to aid and support those considering the pastoral vocation.  Again, look at the declining enrollment and you can quickly figure out this is not the solution either.

It was once said in Rome that good priests inspired young men to become priests.  We said the same thing.  Good pastors inspire young men to become pastors.  So does that mean we are short of good pastors since we seem to be struggling to recruit young men to be pastors?  I am not ready to go there -- yet.  But I do think that there is something else that is missing.  You do not recruit young men to be pastors by inviting them for coffee but it probably does not hurt.  What is hurting is that we have come to a point where we are not sure that pastors should be strong men.  No one wants to be recruited to a job that is offered to those who cannot do anything else nor do they desire a vocation where it does not require or compel them to be anything but themselves.  Yet this seems to be precisely the problem.

In our congregation we seem to value the flexible over those with conviction and the get along pastors over those who would die on a hill for an important cause.  It would be like training a fighting force to win a stalemate at best or to lose without shame.  I fear that we are not sure as a church body that we want strong pastors and so we do not encourage young men to a strong career but rather to a weak one.  Who wants that?  When I began my pre-seminary education at St. John's in Winfield, KS, I was not sure I was smart enough or strong enough or gifted enough to be a pastor.  All around me there were young men who were better than I was at Greek or speaking or in their piety.  I persevered because of the strong encouragement of professors such as Dr. Edward F. Peters or Dr. H. Andrew Harnack.  I kept at it because all around me were men of conviction and I wanted to be one.

Sadly, we are afraid of people of conviction today and so we offer to young men not a strong vocation but a weak one.  It is not simply feminization that has afflicted the Church but the promotion of toleration, compromise, popularity, preference, and desire over doctrine and truth and conviction.  We are hampered in our recruitment of young men for the office because we have made this office into something less than strong.  It is not about accessibility or approachability but about conviction.  I well remember the advice I got -- don't become a pastor because it is something you can do; become a pastor because you it is something you must do.

I read an article which suggested that there was a time in history when celibacy was considered less of an impediment to recruiting than the office itself.  In other words, celibacy was not the liability but the priesthood was.  Now it is certainly the other way around.  The priesthood is the goal and celibacy is the impediment some see to that goal.  To put this in Lutheran terms, do we value the life we seek more than the vocation or are we willing to sacrifice the life we want (in worldly terms) for the holy calling of pastor (the calling is holy even if we as pastors are not!).  Perhaps it is true that we have not held up the sacrifice as the very magnet to the calling.  If that is the case, it is no wonder that we are struggling.  Men value a challenge.  Give them one.  The pastoral office is not for the many but for the few, for those who must be pastors and not for those who might.  As the sainted Dr. Korby once said, "God ordains men; be one!"

Masons and Christians. . .

Where I grew up, the old saw was that the Missouri Synod church outside of town did not approve of Masons but the Augustana Synod LCA congregation in town not only accepted Masons but approved of them.  Oddly enough, Masons were not only a Missouri Synod issue.  In 1983, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger upheld the Roman Catholic concern.  This future Pope Benedict XVI said bluntly that “the Church’s negative judgment in regard to Masonic association remains unchanged since their principles have always been considered irreconcilable with the doctrine of the Church.”   Therefore, “membership in them remains forbidden. The faithful who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion.”  Forty years later under Pope Francis, this “irreconcilability” was reaffirmed as the numbers of Roman Catholics joining the Masonic order seems to have increased.  At the same time, the president of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, Bishop Antonio Staglianò, has reiterated the incompatibility of Roman Catholics belonging to the Masons days after participating in an event organized by the Italian Grand Orient lodge in Milan.  And, a cardinal taking part in a “historic” closed-door meeting on Friday between the heads of Italy’s Freemasonic lodges and senior Roman Catholic Church leaders has called for a “permanent” dialogue to be opened with the secretive organization, despite masonry being long condemned by the Church.

Some snicker at the whole idea of the Masons being a threat to Christianity.  Others vilify the Masonic Lodge as being the worst of threats.  The truth lies in the middle.  It is neither benign nor does it approach the internal problems of doctrine and confession that are existential threats to the faith.  That said, it does appear that still an issue for conservative Lutherans and for Rome.  Freemasonry seems most popular in the British Isles and in other countries originally within the British empire but it seems to have a significant number in Italy as well. Estimates of the worldwide membership of Freemasonry in the early 21st century ranged from about two million to more than six million but, as a secret society, it does not publish its membership roll.  The ideology of brotherhood and its traditional focus on gaining knowledge,  knowing history, and civic improvement come with a commitment to help the brotherhood individually for the sake of all. The Masons share the idea that their brotherhood is not for the moment but for all eternity.  The concern for the Church is that the Masonic tie is deeper and more profound than belonging to Christ through the Church.  If for this reason only, the Masonic order remain under suspicion by serious Christianity and the judgment of the Missouri Synod and Rome stands -- it is incompatible with Christian faith.  No matter how much some protest this judgment, the reality is that these two visions of the world and of God are irreconcilable and for the Christian, the Christian faith is our highest allegiance and our doctrine the fruit not of reason but of divine revelation.  

Curious how things like this continue to pop up....

The cost of compromise. . .

Everyone loves compromise.  If you can move something stalled along even an inch you have made progress, right?  Except that the compromises promoted in the cause of solving the abortion conflict are Trojan horses.  One of them is the so-called 15 week ban.  Abortion is banned after 15 weeks (lest you have forgotten that is nearly four months of a typical nine month pregnancy).  There is a problem here.  The compromise sounds tempting until you realize that 96% of abortions happen before 15 weeks!  In other words, you have given up everything to gain almost nothing.

So, adjust the number of weeks, right?  Why not simply ban abortion after 6 weeks (a month and a half of the pregnancy and well after it is obvious that the woman is pregnant).  The problem with this is that  44.8% of all abortions happen before the 6 weeks are up.  In other words, we are still allowing more than half of the babies in the womb to be killed at whim.  The issue is not about moving the line but whether or not we believe that the life in the womb of worthy of our protection?

It would be similar to saying you disapprove of murder if more than four people are killed but you might find your way around tolerating the murder of one or two people.  Either murder is wrong or it is not.  Either abortion is the taking of an innocent life or it is not.  How can you find a moderate position on an extreme issue?  It is like being on a diet that cuts down the number of desserts you have after every meal from 10 to 9 or from 10 to 5.  Are you going to lose weight?  Of course not!  But neither will you have to change your life all that much.  The right to life debate is not about how many children we can afford to kill or how many elderly or how many disabled, it is about the core value of life itself.  At some point we will need to recognize that this value is not won at the ballot box or at the court level but in the essential values that unite us as a nation.  Sadly, in that battle, we have not yet won any significant victory.

 

Only the tolerant are tolerated. . .

For a very long time it has been presumed and taught that only the wise and the strong are able to change their minds and their thinking.  Indeed, in order to be wise and strong you must be able to place what you believe and hold into the background and engage those things that challenge or conflict with what you believe and hold.  Weak people are ideological and foolish people hold to such things as Christian faith.  The goal of life ought to be how to tolerate every opinion and judgment and preference as equal, equally moral, and equally respectable -- except the intolerant ones, of course.

The reality is that this is the fallacy of nihilism.  The absence of conviction is not strength or wisdom but just the opposite.  The insistence that words and acts be freed from morality and conviction does nothing good but creates an unhealthy and unstable world -- just the kind we are living in today.  Our society and world are not in danger from people who believe too much but those who believe nothing except what they feel or desire or experience.  Even these are not the overriding principles that define a person and their character but limited to a moment and without a lasting impact over the life or thought of the person.  This is the reason that politicians seem to shift positions constantly and why the public seems not to care about these flip flops or detours.  This is the reason why religions which are popular are those seemingly divorced from their convictions from their holy books or great teachers.  Moderate religion is all in vogue precisely because it mirrors the same flexibility and detached truth that is in favor with culture, education, and society as a whole.  It is all good.  Except that it isn't.

The elevation of tolerance to the primary virtue over fact, truth, and belief has left us floating on a sea of change with nary a rudder around us to direct where we are headed or how we will get there.  We awaken every morning to discover anew where we are.  In this world, the one thing needful is not what you believe or confess nor is it tied to virtue but ends up being respect for diversity and individuality above all.  The society is at work creating an uninhibited culture of individuality in which the very same individuals are devoid of conviction -- except diversity and tolerance and equal weight to all opinions (except those deemed intolerant).  When Christian duty and submission to accepted morality began to die out, the very fabric of our unity and our responsibility also began to wane.

People have come to desire more than all other things their own choice -- without judgment or challenge.  In such a world, a common life is hard to establish and community difficult to instill.  Even more difficult is responsibility to family or neighbor.  Think how easily we began to believe the lie that it is more important for husband and wife to be happy than to be dad or mom to their children.  This thinking has surely pervaded the educational establishment in America and it has flooded the home and family as well.  We owe no one anything except to be true to ourselves.  It sounds so noble but it is childish and selfish.  The situation is exacerbated by the decay of religious knowledge and education of the people and by the promotion of a most illiberal education in which facts and truth matter little.  Sadly, even science has been hogtied and roped into service to the ideal of a valueless world in which true to self is the greatest freedom.  The old science of test and result that leads to truth has given way to truth that defines how to test and what result to achieve.

In the end, this is the worst form of intolerance because it masks what is true freedom and tars and feathers this ideal with the most shameful of condemnation only to leave us without cause or means to communicate with integrity or debate what is good or evil or improve what is wrong.  The biggest lie of all is that we need to understand ourselves and the world around us and accept what we find in that world and in that unrestrained self.  Everyone does what is right in their own eyes has as its worst outcome that there is no evil, no boundary to rein in our unfettered desire, and no ability to reflect upon words or actions and their value for the whole as well as the me.

So many internet oddities. . .

So I read something on social media brought to me by a member where a Lutheran has said he repents of his good works.  Given that a few weeks ago we heard James insist that faith without works is dead and issue the challenge:  you show me your faith and I will show you my works, it is almost comical how we can raise up straw men and then end up saying something foolish and confusing.  No one but a fool would suggest that our good works are perfect in and of themselves or that they contribute anything to our salvation but Lutherans have always been on the side of good works that always accompany a living faith.  In fact, we cooperate with the Spirit in these good works.  So I guess if you help the homeless person or mow your neighbor's law when they are ill you should go right home and repent of those works to the Lord and beg His forgiveness.  But that is not all there is.

There are also those who insist that the love that is the fulfilling of the Law is a different love than the love born of the Gospel.  Hmmm.  I guess we need to add more words or definitions to nuance a difference that does not seem to be there in the text.  Oh, well, it would not be the first time we massaged a different meaning into the Scriptures.  In the end it only confuses and muddies up the waters.  One love is the love the Law expects and demands and the other is the love that Christ gives.  Because it is of the Law, that love is not nearly as good or as wonderful as the love that Christ gives.  It makes love one another as I have loved you into something radically different from the love one another as you love yourself.  Is it that love that is different?  Or, is it the heart that loves which is different?

There are also those who insist that the Gospel love not simply surpasses but negates the love that fulfills the Law -- sort of an end run around the commandments.  In this argument, Jesus is not merely fulfilling the Law but replacing it with a new Law -- the law of love.  This law is perfect freedom not because it changes the desires of the heart but because it releases the heart from having to change.  Jesus is the Savior not from immorality defined by the Law but so that you can indulge in it without guilt or shame.  Whata guy!

Perhaps chief among these is the whole idea "Jesus would not want me to..."   You fill in the blank.  Jesus would not want me to suffer, to deny myself, to give up what I enjoy, to sacrifice my desires, to endure threat for the sake of the faith, etc...  The only problem is that Jesus is recorded as having said that this is exactly what lies before us if we follow Him and this is His call to those who would be His disciples.  Take up the cross (suffer), deny yourself, be concerned with others before yourself, the desires of your heart are evil and must be transformed, you will be persecuted, threatened, and even martyred for His name...  All of these things sound so appealing to us and we are taken in by them because we know what we want better than we know God's Word.

So read Scripture.  Get a good and solid study Bible to help you.  Join a Bible study group at your church (hopefully with a pastor teaching it).  Connect with some of the great podcasts available (from Issues, Etc., to The Word of the Lord Endures Forever).  Do not get your theology from social media.  Caveat emptor.

 

The only growing faith. . .

The shape of Western Europe with its deep history and legacy of faith is eroding away both in practice and in reality.  The once vibrant Christian origins of Europe have been replaced by a society in which Islam is the only growing faith and the rest are in decline.  It is a sobering reality.  We see it everywhere.  In Scandinavia the religious fervor of the past has been replaced by a passion for environment, sexual liberation, and a sustainable lifestyle.  This is what God and redemption have come to mean where Lutherans were once a profound, singing, and practicing and near universal majority.  In Europe, the Luther lands with their sites so important to Reformation history have become tourist ghettos in which the population loves to market the past but has no real or living faith to be nurtured by the Word and Table of the Lord.  Roman Catholics are equally absent from worship and polls tell the same story of a faith at least diluted if not practically absent from daily life.  Indeed, the story of the fire at Notre Dame and its rebuilding treat this as a tragedy to a historical landmark more than one for a community of faith gathered under its roof.  This says it all.  As many have said, there is no room for God in Europe except to be a footnote to its history.

That Islam is the only growing faith is not simply due to immigration but to the decline in the birth rate. Of course, it is also due to the alarming rate that Christians seem to be pushing faith into the realm of feeling over fact and distancing doctrine from spirituality.  The once overflowing worship spaces have become excess real estate or historical monuments or mere community space to house everything from painting classes to yoga.  As we watch the buildings become largely secular spaces, we are also seeing societies and individual lives move much more into the realm of the secular over the religion of their fathers (whether Lutheran or Roman Catholic).  Where prayers were once offered, spaces now function as museums or art displays.  Where people once knelt in solemn joy receiving the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus, people now dance or listen to music.  Where preaching once spoke God's Word into the hearts of the hearers, now poetry is read or a self help class meets.  Of course, the special spaces will be preserved but not for worship.  Worship is the occasional activity of even those buildings deemed culturally significant.  The form remains but the heart is empty.  Christianity is not growing but declining and rapidly.  Islam grows where the fertile soil of society once welcomed the Scriptures and where people once cared enough about doctrine to even fight over it.  No more.

We can content ourselves to think that God is purifying His Church and weeding His garden to get rid of those less than true believers.  If that is what floats your boat, I guess it is consolation enough for now.  But not for me.  I am not content to see the Church merely survive.  I pray you are unwilling to settle for that as well.  We may not control society on the grand scale but we can preserve the faith in our hearts, preserve the faith in the home, preserve the truth by teaching our children and speaking it back and forth to each other.  We may not be able to affect the great society content to see children as burden or ornaments but we can be fruitful and multiply in our own families and train up our children in the way they should go.  We may not be able to influence the taste of culture for art that is not vulgar or music that has no melodic value but we can sing the sturdy hymns of old and teach our children to sing them as well.  In short, Islam is growing because that faith lives in the home as well as in the mosque.  Perhaps we need to learn the lesson.  The Church will not save the Christian religion without the home beating with the same heart of faith.  We can afford to lose the real estate but we cannot afford to lose the home.  That is Europe's problem and it will become ours unless we mark Christ as the center of our homes as well as our churches. 

Where God cannot be, He is

Every now and then you encounter from the pews as well as the world the familiar complaint about God and the presence of suffering.  How can God allow it?  Tolerate it?  Where is God when suffering takes place?  Like the disciples of old, it is our nature to presume that suffering bespeaks and absent God and an absence of God and His grace.  When they asked Jesus "who sinned" at the encounter of the man born blind, it was tacit admission that God could not have been in the mix of things.  If God had been, there would be no blindness and if God was, it was surely to assigned judgment.  This is our default position since the Fall in Eden.  God cannot be where pain lives or suffering exists -- except in judgment as the One who inflicts pain and suffering as punishment for sin.

The cross is the shock of a God who is not merely present in suffering as a spectator but who comes for suffering.  God is in the pain of the whip and the nails and even to the final breath exhaled in surrender to death.  God is not merely there as victim, though surely as victim, but as the One for whom this pain and this suffering were planned before the foundation of the world.  He is the God whose mercy is not revealed in the absence of pain and suffering but there in the midst of it all.  His work is not to condemn and to assign punishment of pain and suffering but to use the pain and suffering to extend His mercy and grace.  This He most surely does in Christ, in His righteous life, in His suffering to end suffering, and in His life-giving death. Where we presume God cannot be, there He is and there He is doing the redemptive work that delivers us from sin and judgment, from pain and suffering, to righteousness and everlasting life.

We constantly ponder why a good and powerful God allows suffering, pain, and evil?  Is He impotent to eliminate it for us?  Does He not wish to forego this for us?  Is He complicit in it?  Does He send it?  For us the great temptation is to presume our God is a detached God, an aloof God, who watches us while looking down from heaven but who either cannot or wills to do nothing to help us.  God's surprise is that He comes for suffering, enters into our pain, takes the evil of our sins upon Himself, and bears the full weight of that sin and death for us that we might be redeemed.  He thirsts that our thirst might be quenched.  He fasts in hunger so that our hunger might be satisfied.  He lives to die that by dying in baptismal water we might live.  God enters into suffering not as an experiment to see what it is but to end its reign over us.  Isaiah tells us.  His wounds are our healing and His sacrifice is our gain.  

We are so fixed upon the question of why this suffering comes to us and why we as Christians face such pain that perhaps we miss how God has come to suffer with us and, more importantly for us, and by this suffering redeems us from the condemnation of suffering and pain.  He is present with us not as an antidote to what we endure but that these sufferings might have a redemptive and sanctifying purpose even in us.  We do not suffer aimless pain but in Christ all sufferings have their end, find their meaning, and have purpose.  Where we think God cannot be, there He is. 

Thoughts on a milestone. . .

In 1974 I was a student in my junior year of college worried about what was happening to the church body in which I had hoped to serve.  A convention had exposed deep conflict and division.  The premier seminary of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod was a shell of its former self after an exile took students and faculty away.  There was a cloud over everything.  There were enough personality conflicts to fill a stadium and enough bold speeches to fill it with more hot air than anything else.  People were angry, confused, bitter, and suspicious and in the midst of it all I was going to have to choose a seminary.

Underneath the surface were simmering issues that had been kicked like a can down the road and a theological debate that had been hinted at in the past but never fully engaged.  The Synod had grown exponentially during the 1940s-1960s, turning it from a largely Midwestern and rural church body into one increasingly urban and suburban.  The impact of the social movements, racial tumults, a looming presidential crisis, and youth rebellions within the nation had not quite crept into the mainstream of Missouri but they were there.  The slow awakening of a sleepy little church onto a world stage was bringing with it issues and challenges that were only now being realized.  The theological arena across Europe was moving away from an inerrant Scripture and toward a more skeptical view of Bible facts and history.  The Gospel was fast becoming a principle applied to injustice and missions in ways that went beyond the proclamation of the cross and empty tomb.  Some of this was threatening and some was welcome and some was suspect and some was condemned outright.  But not everyone could agree on what was good and what was bad.

Like the Reformation before it, this conflict was over authority and over the authoritative Scripture.  It was the modern challenge of idea that lives outside of fact, the fruit of a Jesus of history largely unknown and the Christ of Scripture somewhat suspect.  It was a battle for the soul of a church body.  Somehow or other I and those like me entering seminary, had to choose sides.  Choose wrongly and it might mean that everything you had prepared for would disappear and even if you chose rightly it would mean the church body in which you served would be deeply affected and somewhat crippled following the outcome.  It did not matter what choice you made, it would cost you friends.  Nobody I knew was outside the fray.  Everyone I knew was stressed to the hilt.  No matter what side you were on, it was a most painful of moments.  

About two hundred of the LCMS’s six thousand congregations left with the 90% of the St. Louis faculty and many of them ended up forming the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.  Others tried for years to live in the never never land between the AELC and the LCMS.  Still others, both parishes and pastors, simply retreated from anything larger than the local needs and concerns of the parish.  Our loss was not simply in those who departed but the climate of the church body that was left.  In the midst of this, the Charismatic Movement was rising up.  The liturgical movement was preparing for new worship forms and hymnals.  Photocopiers were making it possible to depart from anything officially printed.  I wish I could say that we had a happily ever after ending.  We did not.  The battle was won but only that battle.  More battles were to come if we had the stomach for them.

In the end, we did not.  We won the Battle of the Bible and became one of the very few denominations to turn back a liberal tide but we also lost some battles.  Worship became more and more influenced by Evangelicalism and less and less by official hymnals.  Congregations learned how to live under the radar and to practice what they wanted in everything from open communion to catechetical instruction.  We ended up being united in principle over the Scriptures but we continue to be divided over everything from the role of women to liturgical ceremonies to communion practice.  In fact, we are a shell of our former self in size, have closed some of our colleges, struggle to recruit men and women for church work vocations, and struggle to find money to pay for Synod's corporate budget.  Our Synod remains one identity in convention and another in local practice.  Nearly everyone now sees the Synod as a confederation of Districts and congregations rather than the way our life together is codified in our governing documents.  And we act like that as well.  

Of course it was worth it.  No matter the cost, it was worth it to stand for Scripture, for the facts of the faith that inform our doctrine and practice.  But we learned a lesson few of us wanted to learn.  There is no peacetime for the Church Militant.  We are always engaged in one conflict or another.  The gift of our digital age is that the pace of everything moves faster than it did in 1974 and in 1874 and in 474 but you never win the war and must always fight the battle for faithfulness.  The battle lines change but not the cause.  We preserve the faith and must resist the temptation to improve it or adapt it.  We proclaim the Gospel but do not use it as a principle or a core value.  We are always in the crosshairs of a world which has little stomach for a yesterday, today, and forever the same Gospel.  That is why we must have the stomach for it and for the battles that must be fought until Christ comes again in His glory.  Lest we think this is peculiar to us, just look across the landscape of Christianity.  Even Rome finds itself exactly where we were and are.  There is no safe haven or refuge from the constant battles to be faithful.  This much I have learned.

The New Mission Movement. . .

From churches to mission societies there was a profound movement to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the continent of Africa in the last three centuries or so.  It was greatly successful having planted a vibrant Christian mission that became solid indigenous communities of faith.  It was so successful that Africa has now become the largest concentration of practicing Christians.  Lutherans are looking less like their Northern European ancestors and more and more like the churches where the Gospel was planted.  It is not true for Lutherans only.  Roman Catholics, Methodists, and a host of other groups have witnessed the great shift from America and Europe to Africa as the place where conversions continue to grow and church numbers explode.  Now it appears that Americans and Europeans are not quite finished in their mission work but it has little to do with Scripture or the faith and everything to do with the values of modernity.

Unfortunately, what is now being exported is an attempt to undo what African Christians have learned only too well -- the Biblical doctrinal and moral truths that the present age have diverged from in pursuit of  sexual liberation and a gender fluidity.  While you might think that this is only what the most liberal of Western churches are doing, it should not surprise us that even elements within a more conservative tradition are heading down this path.  From Kenya to Cameroon, Ghana to Tanzania, Western aid workers, government officials, tourists, and progressive denominations are advancing understandings of sexuality and the human person that are in conflict with the orthodox and catholic faith and incompatible with African cultural values.  But, hey, what is there to stop them?  The tools of this evangelization of a corrupt and unBiblical sexual ethic and gender identity are money as well as words.  Follow the money trail and you will see how the liberal and progressive Christians are using their bank accounts in an attempt to lure African Christians into following their lead.

From the lure of tourist dollars to the mountain of money that comes from NGOs and governmental agencies, Africa is being pressured into accepting and adopting what has become normal in the West.  Where this is focused is often upon the youth -- minds ripe for the seeds of an evil missionary impetus designed to change the future if they cannot change the present.  What has happened in Europe and in America only proves that it only takes a generation to effect a sea change in sexual morality.  The Methodists in America got tired of their African counterparts interfering and slowing down the move of their progressive sexual ethic and so they enacted a great divorce globally as well as locally.  Others work through ecumenical endeavors such as the World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation to put strings on the flow of money into African churches.  Still others, provide for the distribution of things to promote what is largely still illegal or immoral in Africa -- such as sexual lubricants designed in particular for homosexual behavior.  Perhaps the worst offender, however, is technology.  The internet has become the primary tool by which the West hopes to normalize in Africa what is abnormal there but all the rage in the West -- internet porn is a vehicle of the change of values!  I could say more but I think you get the picture.

For Africa to resist, it will not simply require their own personal fortitude but the help and cooperation of those in the West who have now bowed down to the gods of pleasure without cost or moral judgment.  This is a time for the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and for faithful folk in other churches to extend their support so that Africa does not fall.  We ought to be both grateful for and inspired by the resistance currently shown against this onslaught of change by the Western missionaries for evil.  But we dare not leave these courageous brothers and sisters in Christ alone in their witness.

Suffering from sin. . .

It often seems simplistic and naive to say the suffering flows from sin but the reality is that sin is not simply about doing wrong but also suffering for it.  Sin is not simply a theological problem but a life problem.  Our sinful thoughts, words, and deeds come back to haunt us with suffering and pain that is real. Our sinful natures have so screwed up our thinking that we presume if the commandments went away we would happy in the pursuit of what we want unfettered by guilt or shame.  It is not that way at all.  What the commandments forbid is not some theoretical evil out there but the stuff that hurts and harms us in this mortal life as well as eternally.  

How odd it is that we think that God is out to steal away our happiness with our freedom.  How strange it is that we presume that rules against adultery or theft or defamation or jealousy or disrespect are the problem and not the things themselves.  We suffer for our sins not because God is zapping us from on high but because the sins themselves cause earthly problems and have dire consequences for this life and its happiness.  How is happy to worry about the faithfulness of our spouse or to poison our relationships with our parents or to be known as a person of lies and slander or to be consumed with desire for what is not ours?  The suffering is not caused by the denial of these desires but the desires themselves.  They ruin our relationships and steal from us our reputations and make us fearful of others.  Sin is the cause of suffering and not imagined suffering but real pain, sorrow, and trouble.

St. Gregory the Great wrote of the three stages of temptation:  suggestion, delight, and consent. Scripture speaks of this in James 1:  But each one is tempted when by his own evil desires he is lured away and enticed. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights...  Look at the temptation and fall of Eve.  Lucifer offers a mere suggestion to Eve, that if she ate the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, she would not die but would become like God, knowing right from wrong.  It seems like such a little thing compared to the grand evils of our modern age.  Just a little and rather subtle suggestion becomes the source of so much suffering.  We do the same thing all the time.  We assume God has either lied to us or kept things from us, that we can become gods by ignoring or disobeying the one true God, and that knowing right and wrong will lead us to choosing right from wrong.  In the end, Eve not only ignored what she had known from God but began to despise it and to be dissatisfied with what God had given and told her.  In the end, instead of running away from Adam, she shared her suffering with him and brought him down with her.  That is also what sin does.  Our suffering is not only ours but it belongs to those whom we love.  

Goodness and virtue are not constricting but freeing.  Sin refuses to allow us to see that and so we view everything except our desires with suspicion and doubt and fear.  The path to freedom is not through surrendering to desire but through living self-controlled, upright, and godly lives as those born again of water and the Spirit.  This is St. Paul's appeal to us.  What is good, right, true, godly, and righteous is not the end to our happiness but its beginning.  But, as Luther once observed, the old adam is a good swimmer and even though we are looking away from Satan he is always looking at us.  So we fight the good fight, contending not for a personal righteousness which will minimize our need of Christ but to live as the people of God we are in Christ.  This is our freedom and apart from Christ there is only bondage.

The shape of things to come. . .

By the time I entered my teenage years nearly 85% of all those in America between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four were, or had been, married. As I headed out of my teenage years the marriage rate fell by some sixty percent. Fast forward and approximately one-third of Gen Zs today are on track never to marry (that does not quite account for those who cohabit temporarily or even over longer terms).  Not surprisingly, the birthrate also fell to its lowest point -- down to 1.62 births per fertile female or not enough to replace the parents.  So the US, with every other developed nation except Israel, is facing the very real threat of demographic decline.  Clearly this is not simply about abortion or birth control.  It is about the increasingly hostile view of marriage and family by our culture and society.  It is hostile simply by virtue of the fact that it is optional and non-essential to the way we see ourselves and our lives today.

I wonder if all our years fighting against a poorly argued Supreme Court invention in 1973 has left us blind to the onslaught of change that has moved marriage and family from its front and center place to the fringes of our lives.  I wonder if we thought that overturning a SCOTUS decision would be all that needed to be done to make a course correction.  I wonder if we are up to the major task of restoring what has been lost and in particular restoring the need for and blessing of marriage and family.  If all we want are children, IVF and our great reproductive technology can do the deed but if we want to repair what is broken among us we will need boys to become men and girls to become women and both to want and desire a lifelong union in marriage and to have and raise their children within the home as gift and blessing.

Although I wish it were not so, churches are not necessarily aligned in this goal.  Most churches have either formally or tacitly accepted the reality of birth control that makes children the exception and sex mainly for pleasure.  Most churches have either formally or tacitly accepted the reality that marriage is but one of the choices available to people and not even the first or best choice.  Most churches have either formally or tacitly accepted the reality that children are optional to marriage (or to individuals) and that fewer is better than many.  If you do not believe me, look at how they talk about marriage or family or children.  Since the 1930s there has been a sea change among conservative Protestants as well as the mainstream of evangelicals in America and it has not left Rome immune from this influence either.  Rome has official doctrine that insists against birth control and for children but in practice those in the pews have largely overlooked or ignored what Rome has said and prefers to do what they think is right for them.  Even in Missouri we had our own dalliance with birth control as the wise steward approach to the issue of children and we even had our own moment toying with the idea that abortion may not be so bad either.  We have recovered an official stance but it has not necessarily affected or directed how our youth see these things.  Our soft underbelly is that the world has proven at least as influential and probably more than our doctrine upon the views and desires of our youth.

Marriage, traditional marriage of one man and one woman in lifelong union, has become the radical choice and not the normal one.  Children and more than 1 or 2 have become radical choices and not the normal one.  If you want to be a radical in America today, hold to the idea that marriage is one man and one woman in life long fidelity, that love is sacrificial, that birth control is not the norm but children are.  That is the most radical thing in an America in which we are increasingly unfriendly to marriage, family, and children.  If you don't believe me, try going into a restaurant in America with you six children and see the looks people give you.  One look says it all.  By the way, you just might get the same look when you walk into a church in America and plant the same size family in the pew.

Prophetic or foolish?

 

In the official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, there is a comment and a sort of warning regarding the election for US President.  While not entirely unprecedented, it represents the kind of intrusion into politics that both voters and candidates resent.  Worse, it comes at a time when Rome itself is in theological and moral disarray so it cannot speak from some high place but as a church in the midst of the same kind of turmoil and conflict as politics in America.  What is truly odd is that it represents a tacit endorsement of Harris (and Biden) even though they hold positions in direct conflict with Roman Catholic teaching.  But since when has that stopped anyone?

With Trump, this forced polarization would continue, transforming it into the domination of one America over the other. With Harris, there would be attempts to reduce it, as Biden did. The latter’s failure, however, explains the fact that there is not much room to recover a form of unity both at the political level and in the social and cultural self-perception of the country...

It is a unique election because it is quite clear that, if Trump wins, his political project would be an authoritarian remake of the State and the expulsion of the other part of the United States from the federal and state governments, as already done with the Supreme Court. It would be an unprecedented twisting of democracy.

As some of my readers recall, I am not favorably inclined by any of the current candidates but I am much more comfortable with the actual record of Trump as President over his rhetoric than I am the actual record and rhetoric of the Biden/Harris tenure.  Nobody votes for Trump because of his personality and hopefully no one would vote for Harris because of hers.  Neither should people vote by the directive of a Roman Catholic newspaper half a world a way.  The voters have a duty to know first hand what the candidates stand for, promote, intend, and promise.  Sadly, there is nary a mention in the article about the terrible state of abortion politics in America.  Here Trump and Vance seem to have waffled and there is no political party platform that stands strong on the cause of life from beginning to end.

It just goes to show you that politicians make bad theologians and theologians make bad politicians.  I wish that were not the case but it is. 

Reaping the fruits of youth ministry. . .

I grew up in the generation in which youth group at church was pretty tame and pretty lame.  We went roller skating once in a blue moon and had a Bible study every now and then and that was about it.  When my generation had kids, we thought their should be something more.  But what?  So we invented more ways to entertain our youth all in the name of Christ.  The fruits of youth ministry have not been so good.  We entertained them to death -- literally sacrificing their eternity for the sake of the moment.  What we should have been doing was doubling down on catechesis.  The problem is that we did not really know what catechesis was.  Yes, I learned the Catechism -- 1943 edition -- as memory work but was not quite taught the catechism.  When something approaching learning the catechism did happen, it was head centered, meant to impart knowledge but not quite strengthen faith.  There was little to tell me why we worshiped the way we did or that the sacramental life of the Church was the font and source of my own life in Christ (new life and piety).  Now we have congregations with children's church to make church fun and large scale youth events with a heavy dose of fun and so much more.  Has it helped keep our kids in Church or in the faith?

The real youth ministry is not what happens at the church but in the home.  Real youth ministry is kids watching their parents pray, love, forgive, be attentive to and participate in worship, and place a high priority on what happens in worship.  This is the first line of faith strengthening and this is the hill to die on -- not the fun stuff designed to perpetuate the lie that worship is fun, church is fun, and the Christian life is about fun.  Real youth ministry happens when the husband is the spiritual head of the home and when he displays in his own life what it means to love sacrificially.  Real youth ministry happens when the wife reciprocates this love and loves sacrificially.  Real youth ministry happens when parents bring their children to worship and Sunday school and sit with them in the pew and ask them what they learned in Sunday school.  Real youth ministry is when parents do the catechism homework and memory work with their children and who honor God's man in the church as someone worthy of their prayers and their respect.

No, I am not against having fun.  I am not even against the ever present screens.  But the Christian life is not about what makes us happy.  It is about what makes us holy.  And the nature of our life together is not around digital things but the means of grace that bestow what it is they sign.  It is high time that we focus the resources of the churches and of the home on the things that will make a difference.  I recall a meme which says something to the effect that few of our children will make their living as sports superstars or actors or singers but every one of our children will sin and die.  So what should be the most important  thing in our lives?  That which conveys Christ's forgiveness and that which conveys His life -- the Word and the Sacraments. 

Change of address. . .

You know it is bad when they sell their prime real estate in search of smaller and cheaper digs.  So the Lutheran Church in Australia has sold a valuable piece of property owned ostensibly since 1922.  They obviously will reap some wonderful capital gains but what does it say for that church body?  Fifty million AUS and about $33 or so American is no small change but, outside of finding another location, the LCA has announced plans to use proceeds from the sale to support its mission and ministry.  Convenient since the LCA is splitting so I wonder if this is community property in the great divorce -- what do you think?  The Australian Lutheran College doesn't need the space -- it has changed from the full-time model with students living on campus, in the years when it was known as Luther seminary, to a “distributed” education mode.  Apparently only 10 of its 58 students lived on campus so it was not a mass relocation.  

Don't get me wrong.  I am not opposed to selling space no longer needed since Christianity is downsizing everywhere.  Even Rome is doing that.  Still and all, there is something amiss when any church is awash in money but short on people.  It is never a good thing.  The money will not last and it will not solve the people problem.  What it will do is kick the can down the road so that you can delay dealing with the big problems because you have money to fix the small ones.  Some congregations with rich endowment funds have every amenity their facilities might need and they keep them in grand state but there are no people to drag in dirt on Sunday mornings or mess up the rooms throughout the week.  Money problems are easy enough to fix -- especially when you have valuable real estate to dispense of and willing buyers with cash.  The structural problems of Christianity are not so easy to deal with.

The ELCA recently said an amicable goodbye to its largest congregation.  The church with some 10K members in Iowa has left the building over bylaw issues -- at least that is what they claim.  The Synod of the ELCA to which it belonged is relieved though now down 10K members as well and the congregation had not seen itself walking in step with the ELCA for many years.  The split was happy enough and everyone is now free to go their own way without becoming a pain in the side of the other.  But is that a good thing?  Rancor over personality and other superficial issues is one thing but to leave over doctrine and then to smile as you head out the door seems to trivialize the leaving.  Missouri seems not to have that problem.  Our people are noisy complainers even while staying.  But it would be nice if someone leaving a church body over matters of faith would admit that they are leaving because they disagree over fundamental issues.  Except that most folks who left the ELCA would have been happy merely to roll back the clock and accept the ELCA with all of its faults and failings but the ones prior to 2009.  It seems that this might be what Australian Lutherans are shooting for as well.  We will leave but on good terms with all.  Hmmm.  Didn't Jesus suggest that dusting off your shoes at the door was the way you leave rejection of the Biblical and catholic faith?  But that seems so uncivilized.  No, we need to smile our differences away or smile while we part ways but smile all the time.  I am not quite sure what that smile buys us but we just may end up smiling at each other as one side or another walks down the broad boulevard to permanent destruction.  A change of address that is permanent may be the unintended consequences of disagreeing over doctrine, faith, and practice.  Now I know I will accused of being bitter and narrow minded and judgmental but somehow or another I could not imagine Jesus and the Pharisees working it out in this way.  Maybe we should go out with a little noise.  What do you think?

Another good Weedon tidbit. . .

 

 

It is worth your time. . . Thanks, old friend, for your good words!

 

Saving the church, losing religion. . .

Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco was one of the many places of worship I visited in choir tours in college.  It was and is an impressive structure.  Built in 1912, it is a grand space but, like many grand church spaces, it is not so packed with people.  Even as a cathedral it is not overflowing with members or attenders.  Until more recently.

Though fewer people joined the congregation or were showing up for worship, Grace did what other largely urban sites have done.  They began programs to bring people in.  The problem is that hardly any of those programs had much to do with Christianity.  The centerpiece of their programs is Grace Arts, a conglomeration of varies kinds of classes, artsy stuff, and musical events whose formal membership dwarfs that actual number of religious members.  So you can go to Grace and find everything from light shows and trapeze artists to drag queens and carnivals.  The rich and the famous are showing up along with so many others to do yoga in the main sanctuary and to enjoy musical events called sound baths, in which you enjoy candlelit musical events while snuggled into your sleeping bag.  With the other music you can enjoy tribute concerts to Sting, Queen, Taylor Swift, etc.  

Along with the ordinary trappings of Christianity, there are all sorts of other things going on under the stained glass windows, beneath the gothic architecture, and within the rich acoustical environment -- things that attract the spiritual but not religious and those who find church normally a turn off.  So you get a sense of community, a focus on joy, some kind of spirituality, and inner peace minus the heavy baggage of religious content of any kind.  They may be saving the building but killing the church -- or, to put it another way, saving the church while losing their religion.  Is that a cost too high to bear or is the price tag of keeping the doors open?

The folks at Grace Cathedral are not the only ones trying to sort the line between killing the religion while saving the church.  You see it everywhere.  Churches have become one stop shopping centers for nearly everything people might want to enrich their lives and they can enjoy it without someone trying to give witness to Jesus.  There are weight rooms and exercise centers, self-help schools and day care, entertainment and motivational centers, the offer of all kinds of new age or old school Eastern forms of meditation and spiritual care without the pesky problem of talking about Jesus.  Is it worth it to save the real estate while killing what that real estate was for?  You tell me.  In our search for income streams and support for maintenance projects, we just might have forgotten why we put in those pews and what it was that was supposed to happen therein.  But will Jesus be happy we kept the building going at the cost of the very integrity of the faith?  Maybe we should secure our money tables to the floor just in case.

Selling off parts of an identity. . .

 

Though it is not alone (Fisk University has tried various ways to sell or lease its own valuable art collection), Valparaiso has now successfully argued in an Indiana court that paintings donated to the university as part of an art museum on campus can be sold.  According to the judgment, the works are not "conservative" (Georgia O'Keeffe is a modernist and Childe Hassam is an impressionist).  Another painting, by Frederic Church, was not constrained by the donor in this way.  

Valpo has done the obligatory public hang wringing all the whole drooling at the idea of getting its hands on $20 million in cash to fund a cash strapped campus in need of maintenance and renovations.  In the end, the legacy will purchase some paint, new bathrooms, and air conditioning for one dorm.  Unanswered in all of this is the question of whether there will be any students to live in that dorm now that the soul of Valpo has also been sold.

Under the terms of the 1953 gift from Percy Sloan, donated in honor of his father, artist Junius R. Sloan, the university was constrained from selling or profiting from the art except to acquire more paintings or conserve the ones it has.  The gift included hundreds of paintings.  The school added to that collection from funds from the museum two landscapes: "Rust Red Hills" painted by Georgia O'Keeffe in 1930, and "The Silver Veil and the Golden Gate" created by Childe Hassam in 1914.  The third painting, 1849's "Mountain Landscape" by Frederic E. Church, was donated by Sloan and not included in the conservative argument.  Sloan's gift included money also and the stipulation that any artwork the school bought with the gifted funds had to be "of the general character known as conservative and of any period of American Art."  All of this hinged upon the meaning of that term.

In any case, Valparaiso placed the paintings in a storage facility last September and temporarily closed the museum in June.  The museum's director, nearly 100 years old, and a pro bono attorney have been fighting this move but have given up.  

So why does this matter?  Well, if you are a donor, pay attention.  The universities are in the market of finding loopholes to donations in order to release the funds to be spent where they desire even if that conflicts with the donor's wishes.  It can be said with some confidence that the Valpo donor had no intention of funding dorm renovations.  Second, the dire state of the university is all around us.  Wittenburg University has shut down all of its music programs while at the same time announcing new construction to house its growing sports program.  Schools are ready to sell anything and everything to fund them through another semester, another year.  But the real issue here is the sale of its core identity.

Valpo is a shell of its former identity.  I suspect that many would say the same thing about some or all of the Concordias operated by Missouri.  The mission that was the impetus for their formation has changed and some wonder if it remains in line with the mission of the Synod.  How much are people willing to sell to save the school?  What if that which is sold is the school's core identity?  What if you sacrifice the school's values in order to preserve the institution?  I fear that the money is a bigger issue than these questions and this may be why the world of church operated or affiliated educational institutions are in such a state.  Even mighty Notre Dame lives with its Roman Catholic identity more as legacy than forming principle for who that school is and what it does.  Is this all there is left?  I hope not.  But at the rate things are going, it may be too late to rescue these institutions from themselves.

Right to be happy. . .

The right to happiness is not merely an American one but has become the universal right acknowledged by all and demanded by all.  Long before it was enshrined in the founding documents of our American republic, we were moving from survival itself as the basic goal to a certain quality of life.  Even though I am not sure that the forming fathers of our democracy were really speaking of the same thing we mean when we say the right to the pursuit of happiness, that is how we all understand it now.  We should be free to do what we want.

That right to happiness has affected many things.  It has certainly formed a leg of support for the situation ethics in which the act is without essential morality except in the moment.  It has also affected how we see a host of other things -- from marriage to divorce to children to retirement.  We believe in the right to happiness and we believe we have a right to exercise it.  While this impacts many things, it has come to be a profound actor on how we judge divorce and remarriage. 

There was a time in which the universal understanding of divorce was that it precluded another marriage -- you go one shot at a happy marriage and if that evaded you, you did not get another.  At some point in time, we began to distinguish between guilty parties and innocent parties in the breakup of a marriage.  It did not take long before we decided that the innocent party deserved another chance at happiness and so could remarry.  Then it did not take long before we decided that even the guilty party deserved another chance at happiness and were okay to remarry -- so long as they admitted their responsibility and promised never to do it again.

Before you get angry with me about the legitimacy of specific instances, lets just take a moment to review how we got to the point today where so many of our folks in the pews have had multiple marriages and even the clergy have had multiple marriages.  We decided that every moral principle is conditioned by the right to happiness.  That right has become the right that trumps every other right.  We tell our children that they have a right to be happy even if that right means they don't want to marry but might cohabit and they don't want to have children.  We tell our children going through rough patches in marriage that they have a right to be happy even if that happiness hurts others -- like their children.  We tell everyone who has another sexual attraction or gender identity that their happiness is more important than anything else and then radically alter the nature of marriage to suit all who might want some kind of it.  Can you see where this is headed?  Do we want our children to be good or happy?  Does God want us to be holy or happy?  Do we want to be holy or happy?  Happiness is a cancer of an idea that changes the landscape of everything.  Do we realize how much making happiness the highest goal affects everything else?  Haven't we enshrined in every aspect of life the very issue that was created in Eden that caused this mess?

Boys to men. . .

No, this is not about boy bands from the past.  It is rather about the way that boys are raised to become men or, as we have found today, not raised to manhood.  I am not being sexist when I say that women struggle to turn boys to men.  They do well enough raising boys but they are missing the central ingredient -- example.  Boys learn best how to be men from men, by example -- that is what women cannot provide.  Obviously, men and women are different and the differences are not framed in good or bad as typically we frame things but as differences inherent to them and for the benefit of both.

I recall a meme showing a mom trying to teach her young boys to stand and use the toilet or urinal.  She holds a water bottle to imitate the way a man goes but it is forced and humorous -- as memes are meant to be.  The absence of fathers in so many homes is noteworthy for the lack of example to teach boys to become men.  This is not about how to use a urinal but rather how to love, lead, suffer, sacrifice, forgive, pray, and serve -- among other things.  These things come from men to boys so that those boys might become men.  Without example, the typical outcome is for boys to grow up in to boys.  But to remain boys is something women neither need nor want.

Competition and challenge may not be the prime ways that girls learn to become women but that is exactly how boys learn to become men.  Whether of physical or mental or of the will, boys learn from men to become men by competing and by being challenged.  Watching what to do, the boys either compete against each other or against themselves.  I can do that!  It is the cry of success learned from competition and defeat as much as by example and victory.  Through these the boy leaves the comfort of self and the things of self in order to venture into the unknown.  It works for physical feats like climbing trees or zip lining or bungee jumping but it also works for the selfless roles of husband, father, and civic leader.

Where manhood is valued and taught, family and community flourish.  What it also affects is faith.  St. Paul uses largely masculine examples for the growth and maturity in the faith:  fight the good fight of faith, walk worthy, be disciplined, be self-controlled, train for righteousness, suffering produces endurance and endurance hope, etc...  While they have appeal beyond men, St. Paul is directly appealing to men to become men.  This is the need of the marriage, the family, the community, but also the Church.  The sad reality is that when women step up, men step back.  That is not a good thing on any level.  Though some complain about it, different roles and different areas of serving is not sexism at all -- rather it is the acknowledgement of the obvious.  I wish that we had more common sense today but it seem we are willing to dispense with common wisdom in order to embrace extraordinary foolishness.  That is also true for the Church as well as for every other arena.  If we feminize the Church or even do something much less by de-emphasizing godly manhood, we will end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy and the Church will become almost exclusively for women and children.  Where manhood is valued and taught, family, community AND church flourish.

Angels, pastors, marriage, and church. . .

It is the mark of children that they confuse wants with needs.  They want candy or a toy or whatever and so they address their parents or grandparents by insisting this is what they need.  Apparently, we have not grown up much.  We are still confusing wants and needs.  It has gotten us into countless troubles not in the least with our finances.  But the Lord is not confused.  He know what WE need and He knows what He wants or wills for us to answer those needs.

God does not need angels.  He is not dependent upon them for anything.  That is clear from Scripture.  When the children of Israel were feeling the clutches of Pharaoh and Egypt’s mighty army, God did not send a legion of angels.  He acted entirely alone to lure the troops into His trap and end the threat against the people of His promise.  God does not need angels.  But He wills to use them.

When some of the heavenly host led in open rebellion against God and His rule, the Lord sent His angels against them, led by the general of the angels, Michael.  The Lord could have acted on His own but willed to work through angels to banish from His heaven those who rebelled against Him.  

God does not need angels.  He does not depend upon them to be the mouthpieces of His Word.  God thunders the heavens or speaks through the still small voice and His Word is revealed to us.  He does not need the ministrations of angels but He wills to use them.  When Abraham and Sarah first heard the promise of a son in their old age, it was through the voice of an angel.  When Blessed Mary found favor in the Lord’s sight, the angel Gabriel spoke the Word into her womb and Christ tabernacled within her.  When the Savior’s first cries filled the silence of the Bethlehem night, angels responded with the song:  Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth.  When Jesus was left weak and weary after fasting 40 days and tempted by the devil, angels ministered to Him.  When St. John the Divine was given the grand revelation of heaven’s glory, angels were sent by God to deliver this picture to him.  God does not need angels but He wills to use them.

God does not need angels.  He does not need their worship.  Though the Scriptures insist that this is the greatest duty and delight of the angels, God does not need this worship.  He is not weak and does not require constant affirmation.  He is not vain and does not expect to have His ego stroked.  But it is God’s will that angels worship Him on earth and in heaven.  And so they do.  And it is His will that we worship Him.  And so we do.

St. John records in Revelation how myriads and myriads and thousands of thousands of angels worshiped the Lord saying with a loud voice:  “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.”  Jesus says Himself that on the day when He comes in His glory to bring to completion all things, the angels shall fill the sky giving terror to unbelievers and relief to the saints.  God does not need angels but He wills to use them.

God does not need a pastor.  If you were stuck on the desert island all by yourself, your faith could survive without the benefit of a pastor.  But God wills to work through pastors.  What God could do is not as important as what God has done and promised to do.  He has promised to work through men to address His people with His Word, to wash them in baptismal water, to absolve them of their sins, and to set apart bread and wine to be the flesh and blood of Christ and distribute it to the faithful.  It is stupid and senseless to daydream about what God might do.  You have been given the concrete of what He has done in Christ, what He wills to do, and how He wills to do it.  God does not need a pastor but you do and so He has willed to establish the office of the holy ministry which I have exercised among you for nearly 32 years and for over 44 years since my ordination.

God does not need marriage.  He made all things from nothing and man from the dust of the earth and woman from his rib.  But God has willed to order His creation through a man who leaves His father and mother and cleaves to his wife.  God does not need a wife but I did.  He gave me a wife not to cook or clean or do laundry but to complete me and through our life together to bring children into this world.  The first revelation of adult manhood is that I am alone and that I need who God has willed to complete me in the woman whom He makes my wife.  God does not need marriage but He wills that the family and its center be His merciful love.

God does not need a congregation.  He could have drawn people to Himself directly and individually without the messiness of a church and opinions and conflicts and votes.  God does not need a church but you do.  He willed that you come to Him through the fellowship of the redeemed, through the common life of our baptism, through the preaching that takes place here, through the absolution that is pronounced upon all the penitent, and through the common meal of His uncommon flesh and blood in bread and wine.  God does not need the Church but it is His will to have it and He knows that you need it.
God does not need you.  He does not need what you have whether that be money or talents or skills or wisdom or power.  The Lord does not save you because He wants or needs something from you.  It does not matter how brave or smart or experienced or rich you are, God is the only one who is self-sufficient.  But it is His joy to love you, to save you, to have you join Him in His work, to fight the good fight of faith where you are, and to live in peace and unity by the Spirit.

The Lord’s good and gracious will delivers to us what He does not need but we do:
•    angels to encamp around His people, to guard them in all their ways, and to minister to them so that they may be kept to everlasting life...
•    pastor to serve God’s people with the gifts of God through the means of grace and to shepherd them away from the wolves of false doctrine...
•    congregations where the family of God is bound together in the blood of Christ to forgive each other and bear one another’s burdens...
•    marriage and family where Christ opens the heart of husband and wife and their fruitful love multiplies and fills the earth...

In case you did not get the point, God does not need anything.  He did not have to create but in love sought a people to love.  God does not need us but we need Him and His gracious favor and will.  So from His gracious love He has supplied us with angels and pastors, congregations and families, and with the power of His forgiving love to keep us in His faith and fear to everlasting life.  The angels and all the rest of creation do not need to be told this but you do.  You need to know why the Lord has made you, surrounded you with His love and favor, forgiven you by the blood of His Son, put a pastor before you to serve you with His gifts, brought you into the Church to live out your life of faith, and ordered your life as husband, wife, father, mother, and children in the home.  God does not need these but we do and now it is our grace and privilege to praise Him, angels, archangels, all the company of heaven, the faithful gathered in our midst, all creatures and every created thing.  In the holy Name of Jesus.  Amen.