What is tradition?

Not only the spoils belong to the victor.  With the spoils comes the opportunity to rewrite history to favor
the victor.  We have always known that was the case in secular history, especially in the history of the nations.  Now, it appears, there are those who are trying to claim the same privilege for religion as well.

Not so terribly long ago there were those who suggested that the Jesus of history and the Christ of the Scriptures could be framed in this same sense.  We cannot know the Jesus of history but only the Christ who is defined and proclaimed by the victorious among the various parties, versions of history, and theological perspectives.  The convenient target then was Constantine who apparently had so much power he was the one to define Christianity for the ages (at least until modernity began to question the official version of things).  Constantine kept some books out of Scripture and made sure some were included.  Constantine defined the dogma that would be enshrined in the Nicene Creed.  Of course, how we are smart enough to know this and to challenge the historical record and tradition.  Now we can begin to piece together what later generations had done to change who Jesus was and is and what the Gospel was and is.

It started with Scripture itself.  Three Isaiahs were later lumped together into one.  The Gospel were derived from a source now unknown but then known to all the Gospel writers.  You get my drift.  The point is to say that what we have today is in reality a doctored text defined by those who won the doctrine wars of the past.  It soon became the mantra of those ostensibly engaged in bringing Christianity into the modern age but guilty of more than this.  There arose the idea that it was not only possible but the duty of the present to undo what had been done to stifle the challenges and challengers of what we now call Christianity.  The liturgy as we know it was preceded by a common, simple, and primitive form that we should all now return to.  It was the foible of some within the modern liturgical movement to decry the elaborate and complicated received form and put together something they thought might better reflect the pristine and unpolluted form of Christian's earliest ages.  It was not enough to make incremental changes but wholesale change was required.

While some claim that Lutherans suffered the same as Rome in this misguided pursuit of a liturgical ancestor, what ended up in Lutheran hymnals was less the radical shift Rome endured and a more careful remodeling of the past.  All the Divine Services in LSB show this connection in every place except the canon of the mass.  There the bare Verba were given a context in the prayers of thanksgiving that did not Romanize this part of the mass as much as it reflected an evangelical Eucharistic prayer.  Sure, one can argue about the actual words chosen for the new translations of the ordinary or the choices to retain the creedal forms going back to the 1941 hymnal but in reality there is less divergence between the older tradition and what we have now.  I am sure, however, that some will disagree.  It is fairly easy to see that the forms are similar, however.

Rome did something far different.  Rome did not merely translate the Latin into the vernacular but made a wholesale change in the form of the mass.  Yes, the Latin was gone but so were many of the distinctives the Roman mass had known through the ages -- at least as afar back as Trent.  The end result was not a deliberate evolution but a radical disconnect that was not even envisioned in the conciliar documents of Vatican II. That rupture has contributed not only to the rise of voices who wish to retain the Tridentine Mass but to those who want to be free of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal to do what they please.  While Lutherans always had some variation, the demise of the Tridentine Mass made sure that Roman had one liturgical identity which, in the aftermath of Vatican II, became many identities.  Look at how the Roman Mass is being celebrated and you see a remarkable diversity not simply of style but also texts and music in a church that once celebrated with a clear uniformity the mysteries of God.  Apparently the battle over who controls what happens on Sunday morning is focused now less on those who go beyond Vatican II than on those who retain what was before.

In other words, tradition has come to mean whatever the future says it means.  This is not only true for Rome but for Lutherans.  Our confessions are seen as less prescriptive than as merely descriptive of what was happening at the time and the great intention of Lutheranism was always a great diversity.  This is said because we have such diversity now and so those who enjoy it and wish to be free to depart from the liturgical forms and ceremonies of the past trumpet diversity as a confessional hallmark of adiaphora. The reality, of course, is that the claim of our first Confession is that we do not depart from but are rigorous in keeping what is catholic in form and in practice, that liturgical uniformity while not required is still advantageous and beneficial, and that the goal is to retain rather than replace or omit.  Now we are hearing from some that the current hymnal is not merely a minimum but also a maximum in terms of the form and its ceremonial and that even this is too much to expect from those who claim our confession.  Rome is letting the extreme voices behind the liturgical transformation that was imposed upon the parishes and priests in the aftermath of Vatican II now exclude what was considered by Rome to be sacred and faithful.  Lutheranism is letting the same kind of extreme voices insist that there can be no return to a more catholic identity in worship or in practice because of a strange and hidden new confessional principle that less is more.  In response I would say this to both.  The modern forms resulting from the liturgical changes of the late 1960s through the 1970s can be used and should be used in a manner consistent with our tradition and not to depart from it.  Tradition does have a meaning and a form and you do not need to be a rocket scientist to recognize that.  Along with everything else lost in the last 50-60 years, we seem to have also lost a great deal of common sense.

Plan on attending. . .

Those scheduled to present include:

• Mary Eberstadt, Panula Chair in Christian Culture at the Catholic Information Center and Senior Research Fellow at the Faith & Reason Institute
• Paul Kengor, Editor of The American Spectator and Professor of Political Science at Grove City College
• Gene Veith, Jr., Professor of Literature Emeritus at Patrick Henry College and former culture editor of World Magazine
• Donna Harrison, Scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute and former Chief Executive Officer of the American Association of Pro-Life OB-GYNs
• Hans Fiene, Pastor at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church and creator of the "Lutheran Satire" channel
• Sean Daenzer, Worship Director for the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
• Christian Preus, Pastor at Mount Hope Lutheran Church and Board Chairman at Luther Classical College
• Noah Hahn, Instructor of Philosophy at Fordham University 

 Register now! www.ascensionmadison.com/henkel 

It is not given to us. . .

The skepticism that too many approach the Scriptures and the orthodox Christian faith seems to arise more than anything from our want or perhaps our need to have things make sense to us.  Yes, in part, this is also driven by ideology and certainly affected by the ideology of the times in which truth is personal and temporary and defined by the judgment and declaration of the individual but it is more than this.  Perhaps other ages also had their problems and were also affected by the want to have God make sense to us and to understand Him but it is the driving force in so much today.

The truth is that many things that make perfect sense to us are also wrong.  Error is often the most reasonable of alternatives as we confront and attempt to make sense of the things before us and in us.  This is no less true for the things of God.  Reasoned religion is suspect because it not only has its source in us but is left to us to decide its truth or relevance.  Religion that is revealed to us is not given to us to understand or comprehend but to believe.  Could it be that the problem of our age (and perhaps those before us) is just that -- the problem of faith?

Ours is an age in which we question the most basic of the things that have been accepted and lauded by those before us -- from gender to desire to marriage to family to truth itself.  We want to know why about everything and reject the answers that conflict with our presuppositions.  While some would say that is exactly what is wrong with orthodox and Biblical Christianity, it is the other way around.  We begin as catholic Christians first with God's revelation and not with the Church's judgment over that revelation.  Of course, the Church proclaims and defends and even unpacks this revelation for the time but she is not given to know the mind of God except where God has disclosed His mind and she is not given to go past what God has said to bind the consciences of men.  Christianity is a religion of revelation in which reason must be the servant of the Word of God.

Who can know the mind of God or comprehend His ways?  God who makes all things perfect and then allows the freedom to reject His order and Himself...  God who posits a plan through the ages that unfolds painstakingly slow over the millenia until it ends with the Son of God in human flesh and blood...  God who saves not the worthy or those who might become worthy if they had the chance but sinners and enemies who must be granted even the Spirit to know and give amen to this grace... God who acts through means such as the Word passed down through the ages speaking with the voice of people or water that is the womb of new birth and everlasting life or absolution that erases what God cannot forget by the power of Christ's blood or bread and wine that taste of eternity in the flesh of Christ for the life of the world and His blood that cleanses us from sin... God who saves at every age and stage of life and gives to each the same but complete blessing of redemption and everlasting life...  God who is come to not to judge those who deserve only judgment but to save through His mercy...  God who raises the dead with bodies that seem like but not exactly like the bodies that are planted in the grave...  God who acts in time but is not subject to it and for whom every day is the present...  God who heals and relieves and even extends the lives of some but not others, who calls the death the enemy and yet allows a merciful death when suffering is great, and who blesses all but not equally with the gifts and graces of this mortal life...  I could go on and on.  The point is this.  It is not given to us to understand God but to believe in Him.

Faith is what we struggle with and it is faith that we lack.  We want a reasonable God who reasons with us but we have a God whose greatest mystery and blessing is His grace and mercy.  He is incomprehensible not simply because He is God and we are not.  It is rather because He acts like no one and nothing else on earth.  He refuses to be put in a box, to be predictable (except for His mercy), or to be controlled and yet this is surely behind our want and desire to understand Him and comprehend Him.  We have nothing to judge Him with except His own Word, His mighty acts of old by which He delivered His people, and His promises of the future that belongs to us precisely because He declares it to be so.  This was the mark of Abraham, of Moses, of Elijah, of John the Forerunner, and of the blessed apostles -- not their personal righteousness but faith credited to them as righteousness.  Let it so among us.  It is not given to us to understand God but to believe in Him and to walk in His ways.

 

A practical reason for gratitude. . .

"And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." (Colossians 3:17)  

Most of us have learned from our moms the polite custom of saying "thank you."  Maybe it was not always heartfelt but it was offered to every gift and kindness -- now what do you say?  They seem like lessons in futility but they were important.  Gratitude does not come naturally.  It is a learned thing.  It can also be unlearned.

I fear that we have unlearned what it means to be grateful.  We once had a better idea of what we were grateful for as a nation, as families, and as Christians.  Perhaps this is where we have failed.  We no longer seem to be sure or certain or even care about the rich and abundant blessings we have received.  Instead, we seem to be consumed with the things that are wrong.  We style ourselves as victims and are proud of such a label.  It does not matter why we think we have been wronged, to be wronged is our badge of honor.  We do not trust or value the esteemed institutions that have surrounded our lives and so we nitpick and find fault with them just as we do people.  Nothing is right and everything seems to be wrong.

Patriotism has become bigotry and we no longer seem aware of or grateful for the manifold blessings that we enjoy daily and richly.  Living near an army post I have learned to be grateful that there are still those who out of love for country offer themselves to service in the protection of liberty and the defense of our land.  But there seem to be more and more people who disdain this land and our freedom and our liberty.  We have become a nation of whiners and complainers who overlook anything that is good in our to point out what might be bad.  Where is our gratitude?

We were raised in homes by parents, surrounded by family, and supported along the journey of this life but as a people we seem suspicious of marriage and family more than attracted.  We fear the cost of loving and we are hesitant to pay the cost of putting anyone ahead of ourselves.  What are we willing to give up for the sake of another?  Is that not what is behind the increasing numbers of people who think marriage out of date and family out of style?  Even the casual way we treat life from its natural beginning to its natural end signals the fact that we are no longer grateful or live in awe of its sacred gift.  Where is our gratitude?

We are conscious of every slight, every snub, and every offense and we want the right not only to be offended but to obtain damages.  Our courts are filled with cases of people who want money more than justice.  Our unsocial media is filled with folks who think that they can raise themselves up by tearing down others.  We have lost more than our charity or manners, we have forgotten how to be grateful and so we end up angry.  We are angry in school, at home, at work, on the highway, and even in our leisure.  Where is our gratitude?

Churches are not immune from this.  I wish I had a dime for every time the ritual shaking of hands at the door was accompanied by a complaint -- the kids were too noisy, the organ too loud, the choir off key, the sermon too dull, the service too long, the building too hot or cold, the pews too hard, the floors too dirty, the coffee too weak or strong, the people too rude....  it goes on and on.  Here we are in the presence of the Most High God who made all things and in His holiness stooped down to become incarnate so that He might save the bunch of whining, complaining, ungrateful sinners that we are.  But all we seem to know how to do is to find fault with something or other or someone or other.  Where is our gratitude?

Teach your children well how to be grateful.  They were not born with gratitude.  The world will not instill this virtue.  It is up to you at home.  Without gratitude, God is merely the complaint box for all that we find wrong and are unwilling to accept responsibility for.  With gratitude, God is not only good but life is better, too.  Think about that.  And consider this your momma reminding you again, now what do you say?

A lost joy. . .

The advent of the come as you are culture has certainly made it easier but has it improved anything?  Go to any funeral or wedding or any other major event and you see that folks have taken this idea to heart.  Shorts, khakis, t-shirts with advertising, jeans with holes, and worn polos are the rule of the day.  Gone is the day when you might expect a suit or sport coat or dress.  Even when men wear a sport coat it is likely worn without a collar shirt or tie and probably over jeans.  Women wear comfortable clothing as well and the dresses of the day are more often than not casual and not formal.  Kids are likewise dressed or play more than formality.  We all feel better about it, right?

You see, that is the problem.  All our informality has not exactly increased our joy.  In fact it may have done the opposite.  Dressing down (even to the point of sleepwear that now functions as out and about clothing) brings with it the inevitable reduction of expectation and joy in the event itself.  Certainly there is a loss of solemn even when it is not sad but noble.  The fact that we hunger for such things can be seen in the way we gleefully watch as the English royals put on their best and historic duds for the occasion and the way we watch to see what Hollywood royalty are wearing on the red carpet.  But somehow we have distanced ourselves from all of this.  I fear it has cost us.

I grew up in a lower middle class home.  My parents never had much in the way of money but their lives were rich.  They dressed well.  So did my brother and I.  We had matching overcoats, hats, and suits so that we looked like little adult men on Sunday morning and for the great and festive gatherings of family and life.  Girls had their own version of dress up which was not put on but a reflection of the values attached to the occasion and not simply an attempt to look good.  Everyone wore their best to church, weddings, and funerals.  Everyone acted their best, too.

In most churches, at most weddings, and at most funerals anymore you would not know that these were either solemn or festive occasions.  We look like we always look and nothing from our dress or demeanor signals anything different.  Our decorum leaves much to be desired.  We seem unable to shut up or observe silence even during prayer.  We carry our ever present water bottles or coffee cups and we never seem to know how to turn off the ringers of our electronic devices.  Our comfort and our connection to the world is more important than what is going on before our eyes.  That is the problem.

When we give out the white baptismal napkin it is quaint but not relevant.  We do not dress up for much of anything anymore and so it does not make much sense to us that God has deigned to cover us with the perfect white robe of Christ's righteousness.  At the other end of it all, the pall over the casket seems more like a table cloth than a reflection of the completion of God's work begun in us in our baptism as the dead now wait in Christ for the new bodies of the resurrection.  The paraments on the altar and pulpit and lectern are, well, quaint but largely misunderstood.  The vestments worn by the pastor are seen as attention getting and strange vesture rather than a reflection of anything belonging to Christ.  With our loss has come a lack of joy and awe, reverence and wonder.  It is all too plain and ordinary and so are we and therefore so must God also be.  There we have it wrong for sure.

Does there have to be an explanation or a reason for reverence, respect, awe, or wonder?  I hope not.  These are not utilitarian but special.  If the time comes when we rediscover this idea and begin to appreciate what it means to be dressed up for the occasion rather than dressed down for comfort, then we just might learn what it means to stand on the holy ground of God's presence or the holy fear of a sinful people whom God invites to stand before Him.  Then we just might also recover the joy that once accompanied on the inside the attention given to the outside.  But it may take a very long time to get this back and perhaps way longer than I have.

Sheep without a shepherd. . .

Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 11B, preached on Sunday, July 21, 2024.

The feeding of the 5,000 is introduced with this context:  “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while, says Jesus.”  The disciples had just returned from the sorrowful task of burying the body of John the Baptist.  They were emotionally and physically exhausted.  Jesus invites them to find some rest and join Him in a place off the beaten path.  Everyone of us has known the same burden of a busy life filled with sorrow and pain.  We just want a moment away, a moment for ourselves, to recover and recoup from it all.  Jesus knows our hearts just as He knew what was resting so heavy upon the hearts of His disciples.

It does not always work.  In fact, it seldom works.  We plan vacations and then we find ourselves stressed by the prospect of getting away.  We plan for days off and the jobs of house and homes will not be set aside even for a day.  We plan a quiet night only to have it stolen by trouble and trial.  It did not work for the disciples either.  The troubles and burdens and needs follow us.  They followed Jesus and His disciples.  There was no rest, only people and more people and more people, aimlessly looking for meaning and purpose and answers.  Like sheep without a shepherd, the Scripture says.  But there Shepherd was there.

If you try to reduce this pericope to a story with a moral at the end, you will miss it all.  Jesus is not trying to get you to do something – not even share your lunch with those in need.  Jesus is telling you what He does and will do for YOU.  Jesus does not send us or our problems away.  He does not ask others to do what He has come to do.  The problems are not about money – too much or too little.  They are not about convenience or inconvenience.  They are not about time to fix ourselves.  It is all about Jesus and what He has come to do.

Jesus says that man does not live by bread alone but by the bread of God’s Word.  That does not mean that Jesus does not provide bread for the body even as He provides the bread of His Word and the bread of His flesh in the Holy Communion.  For the Lord it is not a choice between satisfying the needs of the body or the soul.  He is Lord of the whole person.  He has come with gifts sufficient for the body and for everlasting life.  He is the God who provides it all not because we are worthy but because we are hungry, not because we are holy but because we are sinners, not because we know what we need but because He knows what we need and provides it all.  
We live in a civilized world complete with our education and our jobs and our incomes and our investments and our health care industry and we presume that God is for emergencies – for the moments when all of these other things fail us.  But everything is an emergency.  That is what sin has done.  Life is not safe or secure but risky and dangerous and the risk and danger are not simply unhappiness but death.  

Like the people in the desolate place with Jesus so long ago, we too often fail to recognize how weak and fragile we and our lives our.  We have no refuge or rest except in the Lord.  From Him and to Him are all things – whether we realize it or not.  Our lives depend upon the Lord from the cells that unite to become a child in our mother’s womb to the every breath we take to the hunger that lives in our bellies and the hunger that lives in our souls.  We are all the lost and alone, sheep without a shepherd.  We comfort ourselves with our things and presume our accomplishments will provide what we need but instead we are fooled by our things and our image of self-sufficiency.  These are not our comfort but a false and misleading dream.

It might be understandable to those who have never known God’s comfort or the food of His Word or His care for our bodies and lives.  But it is terrible when we who presume to know the Father through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit ignore the truth.  When we presume our sufficiency without God’s help or turn the Lord into a God for emergencies, we give into the idols that would destroy us and choose the convenient lies over the truth that saves.  When we begin to believe that God’s mercy and grace are deserved or earned or needed only for the rare moments of a crisis, we no longer live by His mercy and become strangers to His love.

We are the starving for lack of what the Lord’s grace and mercy provide. We are not in need of money to buy our own bread or medicine to extend our lives.  We need a Shepherd who has come for His sheep, a Shepherd who feeds the body and the soul.  The Lord is not telling us what we can or should do for ourselves or for others.  He is telling us what He has come to do for us, in the days when we appear to be in charge and in the days when we are lost and alone with nowhere else to turn.  The Lord has come not simply for sins but for sinners, not for our souls and eternal life but for this life and for all the needs of these bodies.  He has come so that we might find true and everlasting rest – not a respite for the moment but the rest of everlasting life that becomes our comfort in trial and our hope in death.
Mark says that they all ate and were satisfied.  And there were a dozen baskets of leftovers for the dozen disciples to carry home.  Ours is not a God of essentials but of mercy more than sufficient for all our needs.  He gives us food for this body and the Word of God to guide us through the gauntlet of this mortal life.  He gives us eternal food in His Word and Sacrament to sustain His new creation to everlasting life.  He is our Good Shepherd, come for a lost and vulnerable sheep, but it does not mean anything as long we presume He is there for emergencies and the rest we can handle ourselves.

The reality is that people do not attend worship regularly simply because their lives are distracted or their schedules are busy.  They have come to believe worship is not urgent and the things of God’s house not the most important things of life.  They pray in emergencies but as a people who are strangers from God’s mercy and love.  They are never quite at home within God’s House because their hearts are elsewhere.  They do not get anything out of the service because their minds remain on themselves.  Is this YOU?  Is this ME?  Don’t be comforted by a nice story and try to go home and be better about sharing or more diligent in prayer.  Your comfort is in this.  God knows your needs – all of them – and has sent His Son to fill you with the good things of His mercy and grace.  And by faith you learn that this is really all you need and the only thing you can count on...   Amen.

Rounding up the usual suspects. . .

A few months ago there was an interview online with former LCMS President Jerry Kieschnick with the inclusion of 12 reasons why he believes the LCMS is in decline.  In summary they were:

1. The Demographics are against us.
   
2. The failure of the Church to impact the lives of people.
3. The Romanization of the clergy.
4. The centralization of power in the Synod.
5. The sinful and prideful worship practice -- worshiping worship.
6. The failure to recognize the Body of Christ.
   
7. The failure to honor the priesthood of all believers.
   
8. The failure to utilize the priesthood of all believers.
9. The reticence and reluctance to recognize and utilize the service of women.
10. The restrictive policy of sacramental hospitality (closed communion).
11. The failure to believe there is a place called hell.
12. The fact that we seem to have forgotten our mission.

As you might have guessed, these are mostly the typical complaints of a certain perspective in Synod and they have been the usual suspects for the decline of our church body for the last fifty years.  The problem is that these are not quite objective nor are they reflective of anything more than anecdotal evidence rather than facts and figures.  Some of those who were irritated by such comments might have responded from their own perspective decrying the opposite side of the usual suspects.  We could have a very fine war of ideas based upon our own anecdotal evidence.  The result is that we are ever more divided but still not quite over facts or figures or objective evidence but perceptions.

The LCMS is in decline not because we are losing people faster than other churches -- the truth is that we are better than most at member retention.  The LCMS is a bit better than average at reaching new people.  The LCMS offers more child and adult catechesis than many other churches.  What we are battling is basic -- catechesis in the home as well as in the church, focusing on the centrality of the family, having more rather than less children, having the Church be the center of our lives and our friendships, being in the Word, and being willing to serve.  None of these are really new although it could be said that the roots of the declining size of the family actually go back fifty years rather than fifteen.  What I think is most striking is the fact that the more we as LCMS congregations, Christians, families, and individuals mirror the culture around us, the more we will decline and the less urgency there will be attached to our message and our identity as a church.  While it is easy to blame the usual suspects, parishes like my own disprove the stereotype.  One last thing, the character of the church ought to manifest also in the welcome that we offer the stranger -- offering them not the promise that anybody off the street will feel at home but that we will help and support them embracing the radical difference living within the life of Christ's body as His baptized children receiving His gifts through the means of grace.  Now that does make a big difference.

Bad boomers. . .

I guess I take it personally -- being a Boomer and all.  But the reality is that I neither embrace nor embody all that my generation was or is.  Every generation is a mixed bag.  Yes, we can take some cues from trends and we ought to pay attention when a generation has bad habits.  That said, it is patently unfair to blame all the problems of the moment on one generation or to label another generation the savior from the mistakes, faults, and errors of another.

Boomers seem to be convenient targets for those who look upon the sad state of affairs in Christianity and, in particular, Lutheranism, today.  I get that.  We all want an easy blame just as much as we want easy answers.  As mixed a bag as the Boomer generation is, it is neither capable nor responsible for everything that is wrong with us today.  In fact, were it not for some of those Boomers, the Millenials and those who follow would not have much of a church left.  Furthermore, the generation financing Christianity is largely the Boomers and they will continue to support the work of the Kingdom even after their deaths through a legacy of generosity that some generations would do well to learn and emulate.  In fact, some of those who the most strident in their criticism of the Boomer generation as a whole can look to their own Boomer parents with gratitude for raising them in the faith, teaching them the value of doctrine, and preserving a liturgical legacy through another couple of decades (even when it was not as popular or as accepted as it is today).

So maybe it is time for us to lay off the stereotyping of one generation as bad and another as good and pay attention to the nuances within.  I will allow no criticism toward my generation to cast its shadow over my legacy as a pastor of some 44 years and no one just beginning their pastoral vocation should live under the shadow of the generation to which they belong.  We are each accountable for our own choices, decisions, and actions.  None of us has been left a perfect legacy and all of us are a work in progress by the power of the Spirit.  It is not whether we reflect our stereotype or not but if we are faithful that matters.  We ought to be calling one another to this faithfulness -- across the generations!

Boomers are not quite homogeneous but are sort of like America -- a stew of differences with some good and some not so good.  What used to matter is that we were all part of the stew -- bound together in something bigger than ourselves.  Our age has certainly challenged the value of the group and seems to raise up the individual over everything other value -- including marriage, family, and church.  None of us are swimming with the current nor should we be.  If there was a perception that culture was friendlier to the faith at some point, it could easily be shown that it was a shallow affection that would disappear as soon as culture found the faith to challenge its interests or compete with its aims.  The 1950s in America were no better in this than the 2020s.  What has changed is culture.  Culture no longer gives the same priority or attaches the same value to what was heralded 70 years ago.  

Is it the fault of the Boomers?  Some like to think so.  I would suggest that every age and generation swings like a pendulum back and forth for and against the favored sins and errors of the past just as it does the virtues and promises of those previous generations.  What is shockingly clear, however, is that despite political labels and movements and religious labels and movements, the direction is toward the secular and a godless society in which less binds us together and more divides us.  Over the broad expanse of history there is a deterioration rather than progress in the ideals of personal responsibility, shared morality, the value of life, marriage, family, and home.  It is to this we ought to pay most attention.  Every faithful Christian and every faithful Lutheran is swimming against the current of the times and, as Mark put it, making headway painfully and slowly.  Let us give thanks where faithfulness is lived out and call to repentance where it isn't.  This is the common character of our lives that passes through every generation.  We can do nothing about the paste except learn from it and we can nothing for the future but to preserve the faith in the present.  God will do all the rest -- forgiving our sins and forging ahead with the pledge that hell shall not prevail.

All sorts of reasons. . .

In one sense everyone is right.  We are in decline because we are not marrying, not having babies, not getting any younger, and not reaching out as we might or we should.  All of these are true.  But think what a different church we would be if everyone counted on our membership rolls were in worship on Sunday morning!  The reality is that we are a third of the church we claim to be because two-thirds of our folks are not in worship on Sunday morning.  That is the hidden dynamic behind our decline every bit as much as the other factors.

It is true for us confessional Lutherans but it is no less true for the not so confessional kind and for Protestants in general and Rome in particular.  The reality is that our numbers on paper do not look nearly as bad as our numbers on Sunday morning.  That is the deep dark secret that has grown even more significant.  What church might we be if this were not the case?  What would our church look like if nearly all the folks we count on membership rolls were there on Sunday morning?  This has to haunt the local congregation and it ought to haunt those up the food chain in our governance structures.  We are failing in part because we cannot count on our people to be where the Lord is giving out His gifts every week.

If you are reading this, I know I am preaching to the choir.  I apologize for that.  But I would ask you whether or not there is the stated expectation in your congregation that God's people belong in God's House around His Word and Table every week?  Even though this is an expectation, I fear it is an unstated one or one that is out there in theory with every excuse and justification accepted why most cannot come.  If the parable of the wedding guests tells us anything it is blunt in its rejection of those excuses and justifications for why the Lord's invitation is so often and so routinely rejected.

Though few seem willing to say it, let us be blunt.  It is a sin to miss worship for any reason than a serious illness or required work duty.  Even when out of town, there is nearly always a congregation of your own communion close enough for you to attend.  Let us be honest.  We do not say this and even when we do we say it with a wink and a nod.   How sad it is that we have gotten to the point where this is no longer seen as a real problem.  Compared the numbers counted as members with the average number of folks in worship on Sunday morning and you will see it is no joke.  Part of our decline is the simple fact that over the years we learned that presence was optional and then it became almost exceptional.  As time goes on and the new normal for regular church attendance becomes once monthly, we will find that the vitality of our congregations and our church body will suffer even more.  Do not delay.  It is time to begin talking about this and addressing it head on.  Worship is the key factor to all our vitality and no congregation can expect any future without a profound emphasis upon the weekly gathering of God's people around His Word and Table. 

Adopting a creed or a liturgy as fad. . .

Apparently four Southern Baptist theologians and pastors have decided enough is enough and are asking messengers to this year’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting to adopt the Nicene Creed as part of the denomination’s official faith statement.  Baptists, however, have prided themselves on being “not a creedal people.” A historic declaration taught in Baptist seminaries for centuries is that Baptists “have no creed but the Bible.”  Their rationale?

• “The Nicene Creed authoritatively articulates the primary doctrines of the Christian faith from the Christian Scriptures.”
• “For nearly two millennia Christians have universally used the Creed for both teaching and worship.”
• “The Creed is a robust and indisputable summary of orthodox Christian belief in the two most central and indispensable dogmas of the universal Christian faith: God the Trinity and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The things that is missing is their intention to be fully orthodox, catholic, and apostolic in doctrine and faith.  Sure, it would be a good thing for the Baptists to adopt the Nicene Creed if they meant what it says but this creed does not stand in isolation from the liturgical and catechetical life of the Church from her earliest days.  To embrace the Nicene Creed but stand outside this liturgical and catechetical tradition is to adopt an idea which is still a stranger to worship and life.  That is not good.

A few years ago there was a move on the part of non-liturgical churches to adopt liturgical forms because they felt like people were interested in them and they were interested in those people.  It sounds noble and good but it is no different than Baptists and the Nicene Creed.  The form or symbol does not stand alone outside its liturgical, confessional, and catechetical tradition and life.  The churches interested in liturgical forms and creeds should also be interested in the whole package.  Without this, it is as if they are willing to put different clothes on the same bodies and welcome the stranger who is looking not for a new visual but the whole package.

I think it would be great if Baptists were so inclined to begin to reassess their low view of the Sacraments, their rejection of baptismal regeneration, their refusal to affirm the Real Presence, and their non-liturgical worship along with the acceptance of the Nicene Creed.  Without that, I do not attach as much significance to their interest in the creed as some.  For what it is worth, the Baptists still leave autonomy to the local congregation and while they might affirm the idea of a creed, it would be very hard to change the culture that has worked against Baptists being anything more than an association of folks with some important things in common.

How much is too much?

As a child growing up, my mother set the table for the family meals and often we ate on fine china in the dining room.  She served the food in bowls and did not put the pots on the table.  We did not eat off disposable paper or plastic tableware.  She was not unusual.  It was how everyone did it.  Perhaps those days are long gone for many families and fast food or take out served on paper or plastic has become the norm.  I do not know.  I still eat on stoneware and china.  My wife was raised the same way.  How we eat now is at least in part a reflection of that but it is also our expectation that less is not more -- that more is more.

Even though paper and plastic disposable tableware has become normal fare for some, perhaps even out of necessity though largely because values have changed, it is not a choice for the moment.  It will also inform and shape what happens in the lives of those children who learned that fine dining comes in a bag and is put on plastic or paper that will be discarded along with the leftovers.  What we do is not simply about the moment but about the future.  What we do not only sets precedent but expectation of what should be as well as being a reflection of what is.

There are those who would insist that a congregation like the one I serve is too liturgical, has too much ceremony, has too many images, stained glass, painting, statues, etc.  It is literally too much for them.  Some would even try to suggest that it should be scaled back for the sake of other goals -- accessibility is usually mentioned as if people are being kept from Jesus because we have too much ritual and art.  There are a few who might suggest that this is not Lutheran but is Roman Catholic (when have they last visited a Roman Mass to see what happens there and the context of it all?).  Now, Lutherans are not quick to make rules about what folks in the pew must do.  It is free.  If you want to cross yourself, do.  If not, don't.  Some kneel, some don't.  The list could go on and on.  But I wonder if the question ought to be turned around.  How much is too much?

The Lord is lavish and extravagant in His mercy -- too lavish and extravagant for most of us.  We would find a religion in which the deserving get more a reasonable alternative to the mercy that offers the same to every laborer in the vineyard.  But the Lord refuses to let this restrict His generosity.  In fact, He pointedly asks why we would begrudge Him that generosity when we have received exactly what He has promised.  So why do some begrudge us the generosity of a liturgical life richly provided for with music, ceremony, ritual, and building?  Is not the Lord worth it all -- of course, knowing full well that nothing we do is worthy of Him no matter how noble but it is His grace to receive all things we do through Christ who completes them just as He completes us?  How much is too much?  Where do you draw the line?  We are always trying to place limits on the Lord and it is no different for those who would say what you do on Sunday morning is too much or, typically, too catholic.  But that is the point.  How best to use our freedom?  To do less or to do more?

It seems to me that we are replete with places and churches where they are content that less is more in creed and confession as well as liturgy.  Why use our precious freedom to herald the cause of simplicity?  All across Christendom there is the unabashed move to strips words of meaning and doctrine of its truth to make anything and everything subject to the tyranny of the individual and his or her own preference.  Why would we want to add our voices to theirs?  The cause of beauty in service to worship, of the arts in service to God, and ceremony which actually gives form to what is really believed, taught, and confessed is too great to be squandered on a sea of minimalism.  Plus, the danger is that having married the spirit of this individualistic age in which preference rules over all, we will most certainly be left a widow in the next generation.  Worse, we will have children who do not know their mother!

We are all growed up now. . .

It is not uncommon for those on the liberal and progressive side of Christianity, and in particular Lutheranism, to claim that they have not departed from the faith as it was once confessed.  So when that is challenged by something that conflicts with the new solas of sexual desire and gender identity, for example, this point is made:

1. The Biblical writers and probably most folk back then thought that way. It was their culture, their experience.
2. We no longer think that way. Our faith, guided by the Holy Spirit and our experience, have taught us otherwise. 

I am thankful for their clarification.  So, according to them, yes, the Bible is filled with things we no longer believe but that does not affect our acceptance of Scripture and even our affirmation of its truthfulness (at least in some matters) and, yes, they now believe otherwise but it is not because they have departed from Scripture.  No indeed, it is because they are guided by the Spirit to go beyond Scripture and affirm what the other leg of revelation stands upon (experience).  It is all perfectly rational and logical.  But it is Christian?

The importance of the sola Scriptura of the Reformation era lie not simply in the affirmation of what Scripture is but also what reason and experience are not -- namely, the arenas of God's revelation that stand equal to or perhaps even above Scripture itself.  Culture and experience, according to those left of center on the Biblical spectrum, must be sifted out from God's Word and probably includes just about anything and everything except Jesus Himself, the love that saved us (though perhaps not by dying to pay the cost of sin), and freedom (to fulfill in yourself the full potential God has planted in you).  Now that sounds exactly like Luther, right?  Or the early church fathers, too, right?  Well, perhaps not.  But that is a convenient fact we overlook in our pursuit of a Christianity which reflects us at least as much as it reflects God.  In this faith, God is not the only writer of revelation but we join Him in that task, under the guidance of the Spirit, to go beyond what Scripture says or perhaps even conflict with God's Word.  While this is certainly liberalism, this is also the problem and complaint of the Reformation against Rome.  In this Rome and liberal Protestantism and progressive Lutheranism are allies.  What Scripture says is good enough but it must be sifted by the enlightened and educated within the church (or pope), and it must be squared with reason and experience.  So perhaps Rome has won and the Reformation lost this battle if there is an alliance between the liberals outside and those in Rome.  All the more reason for the heirs of the catholic reformation now called Lutheran to contend for the faith.
 

 

Don't lose your head. . .

Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 10B, preached on Sunday, July 14, 2024.

In the account of the beheading of St. John the Baptist, it was Herod who lost his head and John who kept his.  That might seem to be an odd thing to say but it is the truth nonetheless.  Herod is confused about everything and afraid.  He does not seem to get who Jesus is and who He is not.  Is Jesus Elijah or a prophet or John the Baptist back from the dead?  It seems that Herod does not even consider that Jesus is the Messiah, the promised Savior who is God’s Son in flesh and blood.

Herod is afraid.  He is afraid of what John the Baptist has to say about Herod’s own immoral life but he is just as afraid of shutting John up since he knows that John is a prophet sent from God and a man of God.  So what would he do with John?  He locked him up and let John sit it out in prison while Herod tried to figure a way out.

Herod is weak.  While he stews and frets about what to do with John, his own unlawful wife had it figured out and conned Herod into her plan through the use of an erotic dance performed by her daughter and Herod’s own step-daughter.  So Herod is not only a weak leader but a weak man who can be manipulated by  unseemly desires.  

Herod is a fool.  Herod threw himself a birthday party extravaganza and thought the people invited came because they liked him.  The reality is that they came because he was a man who held an office with power, even if he did not know how to use it.  And when his stepdaughter had ignited the fires of his desire with her dance, Herod was foolish enough to promise her whatever she wanted up to half his kingdom – and he made the pledge in front of everyone!  

Herod is also stupid.  He played right into the hand of his unlawful wife and when she figured out a way to silence John the Baptist, she also figured out how to lay the blame upon Herod and not herself.  Faced with the prospect of either killing a prophet of God and a holy man or showing himself to go back on his word, Herod chose to put John to death.  

John kept his head through all of this.  When he was locked up, he sent his disciples to Jesus so they would know Jesus was the One who was to come and not look for another. Even from the prison cell John pointed to Jesus the Lamb of God.  His hope is rested upon Christ and he lives not in fear.
While in prison, he did not take back his words or deny the Lord – even to save his life.  He was a prophet, alright, and he stood by the Word of the Lord even knowing it would cost him his life.  He was faithful unto death and so he received the crown of everlasting righteousness.

John kept his head in everything.  He knew his place.  Jesus must increase and I must decrease.  That is the voice of a man who knows who he is and who knows the promise of God that will not fail him.  Even though this decrease meant martyrdom, John trusted in the Lord and that faith was counted to him as righteousness – just as it had been for Abraham before him.

John kept his head in all of this.  He was not a superman but a man of faith.  He trusted in the Lord when trust was all he had and no way out.  He trusted in the Lord when trust meant eternal life over this life.  When Herod died, He was left  forgotten except by the annals of God’s Word which alone remembers his name.  When John died, his remains were placed in a tomb so that from it he might await his own resurrection from the dead to the new and glorious flesh that no one would ever be able to kill again.

We have two models here.  One is a model of immorality, weakness, fear, and foolishness.  The other is a model of faithfulness, trusting in the Lord when it is not easy and at the risk of your own safety and security.  In these two models are choices for you and for me.  The sad reality is that too many of us end up looking much like Herod.  We believe the lies we tell about ourselves, we hide the sins we commit, we resist the call to repentance, we let our desires lead us where we know we should not go, and we are strangers to God’s House and His Word.  The times in which we live call for Christians to be like faithful John than fearful Herod.

Christian nationalism is not the answer.  As Lutherans we do not see the Kingdom of God with national borders or flags and we do not elect the kingdom of God in the ballotbox.  Luther’s two kingdoms at least reminds us that God will judge both the government and the Church but they have very different callings and purposes in the world.  Christian nationalism falls short.  Suffer as we might the threats and persecutions of our leaders, we are not working to bring heaven on earth but to make sure earthly sinners are raised in Christ to new and everlasting lives by the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the body.  The kingdom of God will not come by violence nor will it come through the power of hate. 

Of course, we can all use a better class of leaders and we should pray those we have hear and heed the voice of God on our behalf and for the sake of all people.  But our call is to be like John and not to succumb to the foolishness, weakness, and stupidity of the Herods of this world.  We are to be faithful when it hurts to be faithful.  We are to be people of God’s Word who know who Jesus is and who confess the name of the Lord without fear.  We are to be so confident of the promise of the resurrection, of the new and glorious body that can never die, and of eternal life that we are willing to suffer all even death rather than give in or give up on this Gospel and this Church (which is the promise confirmands and new members make and we all made!).

This morning Whit was baptized into the Kingdom of God and given new birth through the womb of this font.  His life is in Christ, now the earthly life of we see and the life of the world to come we know by faith.  With us he has been given a new heart and a new head, Christ our Lord.  With us he has been given a new life and a new home, with Christ forevermore on high.

I don’t know whether this is a starker and clearer contrast between faith and fear, life with God and life in the world, living by desire or by the truth that endures forever, than the contrast between Herod and John.  John was beheaded but he kept his head in trial and trouble.  Herod lost his head and his memory lives on as an example of what not to do and who not to be.  Yes, you are suffering.  But Christ has you in His hand and will reach into the darkness of death to raise you to eternal life with Him.  Because Jesus lives, John lives and you live and I live.  And that, my friends, is the only thing that matters. 

A mighty week with glad thanksgiving. . .

I spent July 8-12 this year in Seward, Nebraska, on the wonderful campus of Concordia University, with some of the most wonderful folks I know.  The occasion was the LCMS Institute on Liturgy, Preaching, and Church Music.  Held off its regular schedule by the pandemic, the whole thing came back with a mighty bang around the Psalms -- Songs of Deliverance.  Under the very capable leadership of the Rev. Sean Daenzer, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod’s director of Worship and IC chaplain, hundreds of parish pastors, church workers, parish musicians, university students, singers, seminarians, and others gathered for one of the richest experiences of worship, education, inspiration, and dedication our Synod has ever provided.  As one who has attended more than several and been on the planning of the last three, this was by far the most profound.  I cannot express my appreciation more deeply to everyone who participated except to say you should have been there!  It was one of the most significant events of my life and I am so very grateful to have been a very small part of it all.  While the list of those who were involved in the planning and execution of this great week is too long to print, I do want to single out the crew out of the LCMS office.  Pr. Daenzer, Dcs. Cara Patton, and Katie Rickords for their mighty work.  Kudos go to everyone who worked with them (including the very impressive printing of book, service orders, programs, etc., by the LCMS Department of Communications).  While you are still able, check out the record of these wonderful events on the LCMS Facebook page.  A particular shout out to my own friend and Cantor, Dr. Jonathan Rudy, who served as organist for the final Divine Service as well as arranger and presenter.  I would be remiss for failing to laud the wonderful hospitality of Concordia University and St. John's Lutheran Church in Seward.  It was more than a success -- it was all life-changing!  The Institute program is here.

My point here is not simply to say the thank yous to those who worked so hard to make this all come to pass (including singing and saying all 150 Psalms!!!) but to rouse the wider audience so that the next event (in three years) may be even bigger and better (as hard as the better part is for me to imagine).  We all have conferences around us and many are wonderful and practical and stimulating but this is a unique blending of those three foci of our life together around the Word and Sacraments -- liturgy, preaching, and church music!  From these flow out and return all we are and do as the Church.  Worship with its form and content in the liturgy and preaching and with its expression in the song of the faithful is not one of the many programs of the Church but her core, center, and beating heart.  Indeed, nothing we are or do that is worthy has its source outside of this and nothing we are or do has an earthly end outside of this.  We need to have mountain top events like this to provide inspiration and encourage for the work that goes on in the valleys and we need to provide mountain top events for the faithful within the congregation to enable and support the baptismal work of God's people in the home and in the world.  This is exactly the kind of week that should be on every church worker's agenda because its focus is precisely upon the faith received, lived, and witnessed beginning from the first strains of the preservice music on Sunday morning to the sending forth of the benediction and the echos of the postlude fade from our ears.  It is practical in the most important sense of that word and because of this it is also inspirational.

Our Lord speaks and we listen. His Word bestows what it says. Faith that is born from what is heard acknowledges the gifts received with eager thankfulness and praise. Music is drawn into this thankfulness and praise, enlarging and elevating the adoration of our gracious giver God. Saying back to him what he has said to us, we repeat what is most true and sure. Most true and sure is his name, which he put on us with the water of our Baptism. We are his. This we acknowledge at the beginning of the Divine Service. Where his name is, there is he. Before him we acknowledge that we are sinners, and we plead for forgiveness. His forgiveness is given us, and we, freed and forgiven, acclaim him as our great and gracious God as we apply to ourselves the words he has used to make himself known to us. The rhythm of our worship is from him to us, and then from us back to him. He gives his gifts, and together we receive and extol them. We build one another up as we speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Our Lord gives us his body to eat and his blood to drink. Finally his blessing moves us out into our calling, where his gifts have their fruition. How best to do this we may learn from his Word and from the way his Word has prompted his worship through the centuries. We are heirs of an astonishingly rich tradition. Each generation receives from those who went before and, in making that tradition of the Divine Service its own, adds what best may serve in its own day – the living heritage and something new.

 – Lutheran Worship (1982) Introduction by Dr. Norman Nagel

There is another reason why this conference was so successful and why it is so important to be on your radar for the coming future.  This included a host of new names and faces among the preachers, presenters, players, and planners as the cause is raised up by the next generation.  We were privileged to hear from and to receive from many newer to the stage of talent within the Missouri Synod and it showcased the wide and deep back bench we have among those whose gifts, talents, abilities, and dedication were put to work so effectively.  We need to be encouraged by the many young faces right down to the children's choir and altar servers and up to the staff at the IC and including the names and faces of those whose work figured so prominently this year.  We are not remembering a past without also giving cause to hope for the future and this is another reason why this event was so impressive.  God bless you all no matter what side of the altar rail you serve.  

Finally, let me say this.  The Divine Services, the Matins, Morning Prayer, Psalm Festival, Vespers, Evening Prayer, and Compline offices, and the singing were enough of a reason for any to go and find themselves filled with renewed hope and enthusiasm.  How wonderful it is to be in the House of the Lord surrounded by the voices of the faithful lifted in praise of Him who died and rose again!  My goodness, I cannot tell you how many times I felt lifted up and strengthened by the mighty music of the organ, choir, instrumentalist, bell ringer, and congregation.  Even without all the sessions, the worship is enough.  And that is how it ought to be in our churches.  The privilege of being named by God as His own in baptism, nurtured in the faith by the living voice of His Word, restored from our sin by His absolution, and fed and nourished upon the Body and Blood of His Son is our highest gift and blessing.  Our response is pale in comparison to His generosity of love and grace but it is not nothing.  Strive for our best for His glory on every level of what we do but especially within the context of the Divine Service.  Ultimately that is the first and best and last lesson gleaned from a glorious week with glorious fellow members of Christ's body the Church in Seward, Nebraska.  Don't miss it next time!

The move to uncertainty. . .

Whether you like it or not, the characterization of the orthodox and catholic faith over the ages was certainty and clarity.  While there were moments of confusion, the remarkable scope and progress of Christianity was built upon a profound certainty about the world, the Creator, the reason for evil, the location of death's source, morality, and the objective nature of truth.  In creed and confession, the Church laid before the world this clear and confident vision of the reality we encounter around us and in us.  More than this, it was shaped by the overwhelming mystery of God's love manifest in His Trinitarian identity, the reason for our own existence in His image and by His design, and the redemption of the world through His Son in flesh and blood.  As modernity began to be established from the Enlightenment through Humanism and into the so-called scientific age, the world has been left with less and less certainty and clarity.  In the place of these there is only confusion.

When in modernity we assign error to some parts of God's Word (or at least its possibility), we are left with the confusion of which parts of God's Word are in error and which are not.  When evolution became the defining rationale for why everything and each of us exist, it left us without a plan or purpose and life became random, spontaneous, and unpredictable.  When life itself was no longer sacred, we lost our own sense of value and identity and any protection afforded us.  Everything became tenuous and tentative -- even desire and gender.  Our culture of victims left us without justice, without punishment for the evil doer and therefore the corresponding honor and value assigned to virtue.  Our society seems to love this ambiguity because it leaves a gaping whole where order once stood and it has been replaced with power.  Now everything has to do with power and those who wield it and those who bestow it.  

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why many of those younger are in search of Church that does not look like a social organization or religious club but one that actually expects and builds upon transcendence and constancy as the marks of authenticity along with the traditional marks of the Church.  In any case, the progress toward uncertainty is untenable and ultimately destructive of everything it claims to order and preserve.  By removing morality and order and replacing it with the judgment of the moment and normality with exception, we are left where we are now -- in a crisis mode of division and contempt that has no possibility of reconciliation -- nor does it seem to want this.  In place of these structures, power and control are all that remain.  So that is where we are at now -- fighting over who is in power and who controls the structure.  While this is obviously true of the world and government and society, it is no less true of what remains of religious structures as well.  Everything cannot be true or there is no truth and everyone's opinion cannot be held in the same esteem or there is only error.  If life has value only because we assign it then we can reassign that value at any time and for any cause.  If truth is defined by the individual and lives within the boards those individuals assign to it, it forsakes the very essence of what it means to be truth.  If marriage and family have no definition or order to them but are constantly being remade and remodeled to suit the times, they are not institutions but merely the tools of the powerful used to remodel society until the only thing that matters is power.

Open the hymnal.  Read the catechism.  Listen to the Scriptures.  These are words of certainty and clarity from which our whole social order and our values come and are reflected.  But unless we are willing to identity and hold to these changeless values and orders, we have nothing of substance or hopeful for the world.  It is for this reason that Church cannot marry the spirit of the age or she will be a widow in the next generation.  Or worse, she will be a chameleon who changes everything to reflect whatever opinion or thought she is sitting upon at the moment.  If that is the case, better a widow then a promiscuous Church which insists it is all good.  When that happens nothing is good -- not even God.  This might just explain why those raised nearest these changes are suffering such anxiety, depression, and PTSD.

Giants in the moment. . .

So guess what -- I am still behind in my reading!  I just found out that Jürgen Moltmann passed away last month.  He was 98.  He, along with Wolfhart Pannenberg, were giants in the moment when I was in my final years of college.  Although I think I gave to the Seminary the last volumes I had by these authors, I cannot imagine people reading them now except to explore a footnote in history.  Their great promise gave way to a largely forgotten contribution to theology and that is probably best.  Although he was ostensibly from a Lutheran perspective, Moltmann had long ago decided that Luther was mostly in the way of what he wanted to explore and believe.  Unfortunately, that could also be said of Scripture.  It was also in the way of his theological expression.  Moltmann was not driven either by the witness of Scripture or its theological framework but by the concerns of and context of the moment.  

I wish I could recall why we had to read Moltmann and Pannenberg.  It is probably because they were the newest and most orthodox of the radical voices that were pervading Christian thought in the early 1970s.  That is probably not saying all that much.  After all, the concerns for the oppressed and the so-called injustices of capitalism have become the fodder for many books but long ago the Marxist structure of a version of Christianity has fallen out of fashion.  Yes, the whole communist and socialist promise has revealed its darker side and most have been replaced by some form of democratic socialism or capitalism or dictatorship.  It makes it hard to build your theology on the moment when you wake up one day to find out that the world has moved on and you were left with yesterdays construct.  Oh, well.  At least you sold a lot of books and generated a fair amount of heat but not much light.  Maybe Wiki will mention that in his listing there.  

What I find so strange is that were it not for a couple of Seminary professors, I do not think I would have found out about other Christian teachers whose lives were not lived out in fifteen minutes of fame but in a growing esteem that has not faded and most likely will not.  Here I am speaking about the Early Church Fathers and those who are claimed by Roman and Evangelical alike.  Yes, there are such theologians!  Their witness is not meant for the museum of history but for the engagement of God's people with His mystery evidenced in Scripture and the goal of proclaiming that mystery so that any might be saved.  Yes, that was Moltmann's complaint about Luther -- he was too concerned about the individual's salvation to be much use to a profound and modern theologian.  Curiously, Luther has not gone out of style but I am afraid Moltmann and Pannenberg certaintly have.  Maybe Moltmann and others who participated wittingly or unwittingly in liberation theology have themselves been liberated from our notice of those who were giants only in a moment.  If that is the case, I hope and pray that it will give us more time to listen to the great fathers in the faith whose voices and vision seems to become ever more profound as the clock ticks.

In the end, Patristics should have replaced the engagement with the moderns in my college years.  Ultimately it did with a few voices -- including someone who actually was at university with the likes of Edgar J. Goodspeed!  That is where my attention ended up going and rightly so.  For all the Moltmanns and Pannenbergs of this world, their contributions are fairly small and their impact almost negligent in comparison to the Greek and Latin Fathers both prior to and after Nicea.  If you want my vote and I suspect the vote of folks like Heino Kadai and C. George Fry and William Weinrich, you will find your way to an earlier era in which unpacking the faith was more important than departing from it.  If you, you will head to the Ante and Post Nicene fathers along with those of that generation.  I know that is more where I end up and more often.  If you do grow up you soon realize that your job is not to explain God or define Him but merely to proclaim what He has done through His Son.  When that happens, you learn also that building something up is always better than tearing it down.

A Bible just for you. . .

I suppose you can blame it all about the time when secular publishers began to notice how much money there was to be made in the religious book selling industry -- particularly in the selling of Bibles.  About that time the number of versions available exploded -- within a generation going from basically the KJV and RSV to versions that were specific to specific needs and tastes.  I am not yet talking about the plethora of study Bibles but the idea of tailoring a Bible to a context.  The next thing you knew there were Bibles for specific age groups, marital status, reading levels, and such.  You had everything from a Bible for teenage boys to one for alcoholics in recovery and everything in between.  It did not take long for the computer and smartphones to launch their own version of the modern day app complete with everything from a targeted reading pattern to a verse a day.  All you need to do is to google a subject and put Bible verse in with the search to see how these resources are adapted to you, to your interest, and to you wants -- in many ways no different than targeted advertising.

All of this raises a question.  Should a version of the Bible be tailored to me or should I be shaped by the Word of God?  In fact, some are now beginning to wonder if the use of Scripture memes and apps has not skewed the way we hear and read and know God's Word.  I think they are on to something.  We have come to expect that Scripture will be adjusted to fit us instead of us adjusting to what God's Word says.  That is not only true for liberals but also for those who might be considered and who might consider themselves conservatives.  Increasingly we know the Scriptures in snippets and not even verses or sections of verses.  We know just enough to be dangerous.  That is a problem worth a good discussion.  

We do not need a Bible just for me.  We need to hear objectively the whole counsel of God's Word.  We do not need someone to edit out God's Word so that it fits a targeted audience.  Sinners are the targeted audience for Scripture and God wills that all would be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.  I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the way we hear only parts of Scripture and then mostly the parts we want to hear and not the whole counsel of God's Word.  Even in the way we edit the readings to be sensitive to things going on in culture is offensive to me.  We try to minimize things that might offend when the whole message of God's Word is offensive -- we are sinners marked for death in need of a Savior because we cannot save ourselves.  You have to get to that before you can acknowledge the goodness of the Father's love in sending His Son to be our Savior.  How long before we edit out sin and death until the message of Jesus is merely inspirational and not salvific?  Oh, wait, we are already there.

If you hear Law and Gospel, sin and forgiveness, death and resurrection, you should be thankful.  Not even most Christians hear that on Sunday morning so it stands to reason they do not seek it out from God's Word either.  Be thankful that we hold to the faith once delivered to the saints and do not try to re-invent or edit away the sharp edges of God's Word.  For it is in these that His love is most marvelously displayed. 

The difference between what must be and should be. . .

Orthodox and confessional Lutheranism has a choice.  That choice is between what we absolutely must have and what we should have.  This is a question that relates on so many levels.

Orthodox and confessional Lutheranism does not absolutely require great church buildings, mighty pipe organs, wonderful choirs, vestments, pews, stained glass, paraments, etc...  Of course, in times of necessity and want, Lutheran churches have survived without these things.  But the choice is misplaced if it is between what we must have and what is essential versus what best represents us and what we ought to have.  Minimalism has long been the bane of Lutheranism and has resulted in the false idea that we only need what is essential and the rest is mere adiaphora (falsely defined as personal taste).  Lutherans are not positioned to minimalism in anything.  Luther did not put together the hymn service of the Deutsche Messe because he thought this was optimal but where necessity lived without the blessing of the fuller liturgy and ceremonial.  In this Luther was not breaking ground but merely following the practice of the Christian Church through the ages.  In his own day, the rural and smaller parishes knew the low mass as normative -- not a sung mass with servers but a spoken mass with minimal assistants.  It is still more typical in Roman Catholic parishes that the mass is observed without deacon, subdeacon, and choir.  In fact, Luther was raising the bar a bit by providing a sung alternative which enabled even the smallest parish with the least resources to have a sung mass (Divine Service).

Orthodox and confessional Lutheranism does not absolutely require an educated clergy, steeped in the knowledge of the church fathers, equipped with Biblical languages, and trained up with all the tools of the office.  Certainly the men Wilhelm Loehe sent out and some of the so-called practical pastors of the old Ft. Wayne seminary were less well equipped than the graduates we send forth today.  Yet this was never seen as optimal but necessary for a specific need and time.  It did not take long to bolster the educational resources of the often derogatory term practical seminary until it became virtually the same as the other seminary.  When the Synod set forth the Specific Ministry Pastor program, it was in response to a need (and an attempt to order what had been an odd conglomeration of paths and programs).  Synod was clear that this was not to be the ordinary route to ordination but the extraordinary one and for those specific needs and purposes identified by the Synod.  Now there are voices suggesting that the internet can replace the knowledge of basic Greek (and Hebrew).  Perhaps there are adequate tools available but without the man knowing how to use those tools, he remains the servant of the technology and its maters and not even their equal.  Nevertheless, Lutheran Churches have never in their history suggested that what might be necessary for the moment should become the norm for preparing men to be pastors.  In fact, it could be said that it is not simply the classroom that forms the man for the office but the chapel and the life of the gathered community around the Word and Sacraments.  How can you do this online?

Frankly, what is killing us as a church and the church at large is the idea that minimalism can suffice for every need.  We do not need a minimalistic orthodoxy but a full and generous orthodoxy that knows and can effectively teach and give witness to the faith so that those assembled every week can teach and give witness to the faith in their homes and work places.  Mission congregations always begin in rented spaces with just enough to mark the sacred space where God bestows His gifts to His gathered people.  But no mission parish ever stays there.  It does not take long before they rightfully long for and begin to provide those external and visible markers of the faith they confess.  It is our nature to strive for fullness.  That is not something we ought to complain about or work against but foster.  This fullness does not work against the overall mission but aids and supports the external work of witness from the firm foundation of reverent liturgy, vibrant congregational song, Biblical preaching, and confessional and passionate catechetical teaching.  Our church is not dying because we are too Lutheran but precisely because we are not Lutheran enough.  Some folks need to be reminded of this from time to time.

The power of the status quo. . .

The reality is that most Americans think they are conservatives and I am sure that this also applies to Lutherans.  The problem here is that the thing we are trying to conserve most of all is the status quo -- what we know best.  That has long been the problem.

Conservatives left the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America but they did not want to go too far back in time -- only back far enough to keep the ELCA prior to the Church Wide Assembling sex decisions of 2009.  So, the ordination is off the table and many of the social and ecumenical perspectives of the ELCA were incorporated into the bodies that departed official ELCA.  What they wanted to conserve most was the church body they had known until it become one they thought had gone too far.  The same is true of the Methodists departing from the United Methodist Church and the Anglicans who left from the Episcopal Church.  These folks are conservatives but relative conservatives -- they will continue to affirm and hold onto their status quo prior to the things they found objectionable.  Sadly, for most it has to do with the sex issues of preference/same sex marriage and gender identity.  Biblical authority, traditional family, Judeo-Christian morality, and objective truth, along with the ordination of women, are too much to tackle.  

The same is true of the liturgical renewal movement.  Most folks have decided that the Lutheranism they grew up with is probably the most authentic face for Lutherans.  Here, you might draw the line differently in different denominations but for the ELCA folk the Lutheran Book of Worship is the line in the sand.  For the LCMS folk, it was The Lutheran Hymnal and now is (at least part of) Lutheran Service Book.  Ceremonial?  Yes, but not too ceremonial (read that catholic).  Liturgical?  Yes, but not because we really like that stuff -- it is just who we are.  Vestments?  Yes, but not the fancy ones that look to, well, catholic.  The conservatives who preserve catholic doctrine and practice have become radicals in just about every denomination.  Even Roman Catholics in general and the Pope see the Novus Ordo (post-Vatican II form) to be the bedrock of their identity and the Latin Mass to be, well, too conservative.

Curiously, conservatism has been reference not at what was and now should be but more what we did yesterday that we should continue.  Even on social issues, we want to be conservative but not too conservative -- think here the great public relations blow up over Alabama granting the rights of personhood to frozen embryos.   It is an odd position.  What is really being said is that we want to slow down change.  If that is the case, that is certainly not what it means to be a conservative.  Though it may well be exactly what people want -- a slower pace of change to get more accustomed to them and to go back to the time before these issues so deeply divided us (think here abortion, same sex marriage, and the trans business).  Could it be that this is also how we see the Scriptures?  True and essential when it comes to matters directly relating to our salvation and flexible enough to allow disagreement on other things?  Yes, in other words, the Bible is God's Word but just not all of it.  We get to decide which parts are, of course!

Republicans want to turn the clock back a little but not dismantle the whole government.  Lutherans want to keep things close to how they used to be but that used to be is referenced in their memory and not in Lutheran orthodoxy or the Reformation.  What an odd kind of conservatism!