What church looks like. . .

I saw a story about the Roman Catholic National Eucharistic Congress held in the US, apparently the first in many decades.  It brought together many thousands of people from all over the country in a stadium style setting to celebrate their faith in the sacrament of the Eucharist.  Regardless of what you think of Rome or this gathering, I would direct your attention to the backdrop for their celebration of the Mass.  The images projected were cathedral style images, perhaps even photos of actual gothic cathedrals or large sanctuaries -- I do not know.  In other words, when they wanted the setting to look like church, they drew upon the most traditional images possible to make the stadium style venue look like church.

There have been decades of architects and liturgical consultants who have said that the perfect image of for the celebration of the Eucharist is a living room.  You can trace the development of this idea across the years beginning I think in the 1950s.  The landscape is decidedly horizontal.  The result is sad and unappealing except to artsy snobs who think they know best for all of us.  This image reminds us that when people think of church, they do not think of concrete slabs or low ceilings or wooden benches or simplistic furniture.  They think just the opposite.

Some years ago the Lifeway division of the Southern Baptists surveyed those who were not Christians and those who were not inside the Church and they all agreed that they thought churches should look like churches and not like shopping malls or living rooms or the atrium of a skyscraper or a stadium or a convention center or anything else.  It is high time that we disavow the unfortunate pattern of the 1950s and thereafter and return to making churches look like churches.  It is what the people inside the Church want and it appears to be what those not of the household of God desire.  It is honest in a way that modern architecture with its hard and unadorned horizontal lines is not.  To tell you the truth, I am over it.  We should not allow architects to experiment upon churches as if this was their canvas to paint.  The buildings of the Church have a distinct purpose and identity that must be front and center.  No, I am not saying everything has to look like a gothic cathedral or an English country parish or a Romanesque structure but it does need to look like a church and it must be suited for what happens in there.  Some years ago I wrote of the striking but unfortunate structure once called the Crystal Cathedral that a Roman Catholic diocese adapted into their cathedral.  It was a real estate bargain but cost a hunk of change to result in a building that still does not reflect well what takes place inside.  That should be first and foremost in the minds of any building committee -- not simply what does it look like but how does it work for its purpose?  It is not a matter of what you like but what fits what happens in worship.  Maybe some churches could get by with lecture halls but not a sacramental church.  Maybe some churches could get by with a living room but not one where the focus is on preaching and the Sacrament of Christ's body and blood.  No, we need to give the snobs fair notice that they will not experiment on our dollar in creating forms that do not serve their purpose well.

The blessing of the long pastorate. . .

When I went out from Seminary the average tenure of the new pastor in his first call was 22 months.  I increased the average staying for nearly 13 years in my first call.  The reality is that I would have gladly stayed but it did appear to me that the Lord was calling me somewhere else.  That said, 13 years afforded me the opportunity to confirm those I baptized and to marry those I confirmed.  It gave me the opportunity to watch as young adults entered into middle age and the aged entered into glory.  Many of those wonderful folks are still there in that parish though many of them have departed this life in faith to rest from their labors.  We had our children there and it was home for a very significant part of our life.

When I accepted the call to Tennessee I did not know what the future would behold.  I often said that I did not think I had more than two moves in me and it proved to be true.  I moved once to New York and once to Tennessee and here I will finish out my years.  Though 13 years is a long time, 32 is a very long time.  I would not trade it for anything.  After three decades in the same parish, I can say that the folks in the pews are not my friends but my family.  As I took our new Associate Pastor to visit shut ins with me, I realized how true this is.  I was helping them reach back into their memories and tell their stories because their stories had become my story.  It made me think how hard it will be for this pastoral relationship to change.

I was told by a pastor once that you do not begin real ministry among your people until after your seventh year in that parish.  Maybe that is just one man's opinion but I have learned to see the wisdom of it.  It takes years before you are preaching to people as their shepherd.  Sure, officially you are their pastor or shepherd from the get go but in the beginning the face of one sheep looks like another.  After a while you begin to know the differences and your sermons reflect that knowledge.  Many times people have walked out the door and greeted me by saying I must have had a crystal ball into their life because I was preaching directly to them that Sunday.  Well, I was.  It was not quite planned on my part but that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and the long pastorate.  You preach to people you know, whose lives you know, and it shows.  Stay in the parish and learn to know those to whom you are preaching.

Some may think I have stayed too long.  I will admit that it is not easy to follow a fellow who has been there 30 years or more.  Sometimes people treat the long pastorate as a problem to be solved.  Baloney.  If you are threatened by a long tenured pastor, there is a problem and it is not with the long tenured pastor.  Grow up and learn from him.  Treat that man as you would your father.  As long as my dad was alive I constantly asked his advice.  I did not always take it but I asked him and I listened to him no matter what.  That long tenured pastor could be your greatest helper if you pay a little attention to him and ask him about things.  You do not have to take his side or follow his advice but you would be a fool not to ask it or consider it.

I know I have made mistakes.  So do the people I have served.  They are Christian people.  They have forgiven me and I have forgiven them.  It is the way of Christ -- ask for forgiveness and forgive.  No pastor is perfect.  The mark, however, of a mature relationship is that you work through errors and hurts.  The longer you are in a family, the more you know the faults and failings of each family member but the more you also know the power of love and forgiveness to sustain that love.  Pastors who have been in the same place a very long time know something of forgiveness and of asking for it.

As a young pastor I was sure I knew just about everything.  As an old one I am more sure about what I do not know.  If you move too often you never learn that about yourself.  Staying in one place a long time means you have learned to change your mind, negotiate, compromise (about non-doctrinal things), and give in.  In the beginning of your pastoral ministry you are ready to die on every hill but after a while you learn that not ever hill is worth dying on.  I would like to think that I have learned a bit about this. 

For everything that could be cited as a negative about a long pastorate, I will counter with something that is positive and more significant.  The people in the pews know that -- even the folks who do not like you very much.  They know the value of a steady presence over the long haul.  Remember that the pastoral ministry and the parish are more like the tortoise than the hare -- it is an endurance race and not a sprint to the finish line.  The long pastorate certainly helps people see this and experience it and appreciate it.  It also helps to remind folks that we are not competing for anything but working toward the same goal.  Stick around the parish long enough to stop looking for a better place and to begin making where you are at that better place.  I know that people pay attention to me and trust my judgment because they know I could have left many times but believed always that it was the Lord's will that I remain where I was.  The best pastors I know have been in the same place a generation or more.  A long tenure will not automatically make you a better pastor but it will not hurt that cause either.

So to my younger peers I say stick around a while and see what God will show you and see what you might be able to do.  Time is on your side.  There is no perfect congregation or perfect pastor but a long tenured pastor always has an edge on one who has been a lot of places for a short time. Don't look for a better place but work together to make where you are better.  It is always a win and your family will appreciate it as well.

Andy Stanley's vision. . .

Andy Stanley, son of the famous Southern Baptist pastor and past president Charles Stanley, has always had an uneasy relationship with his dad but it is clear that it was also an uneasy relationship with his dad's church.  Nowhere is that more telling than the way Andy Stanley has approached the great divide between New Testament Christianity and the cultural appropriation of same sex marriage and the gender identity business.  According to one author, Stanley has decided that it is better to accommodate the culture on this issue than it is to confront it.  He was not shy in saying he would encourage any gay couples in his congregation to commit to each other and could envision himself presiding at such a "wedding" -- especially if it was for a family member.  Celibacy would be unfair, according to Stanley.  "I know I shouldn’t let experience dictate my theology, but I have. Maybe I’m wrong,"said Stanley.

As uncomfortable as that makes some, it does expose the soft underbelly of entrepreneurial Evangelicalism -- something Stanley seems to be very good at.  In the greater Atlanta area, some 31,000 folks attend one of the Stanley franchises and his influence has extended across America in print, as mentor, and as influencer over megachurches and pastors everywhere.  While the battle lines have been drawn over these issues for some time, it is clear that Evangelicalism is less a confession of faith or truth than it is a practical approach to being church and becoming a big one at that.  Stanley has clearly decided that it is impossible to maintain Biblical integrity with the church growth mentality for which he has become famous.  It is, in his mind, better to find a way to accommodate the culture than risk shrinking as you stand in opposition to that culture.

You will recall that Saddleback and Rick Warren, two famous icons of Evangelicalism, decided that the Southern Baptist Convention was wrong on the issue of women's ordination and chose to go with the change rather than the tradition.  Those chosen to replace Warren as the faces of Saddleback have a history of a somewhat muddled position on these issues of sexual desire and gender identity.  It can be said with some certainty that Saddleback is moving and its theological direction looks very much like what you see with North Point and Stanley.  In fact, there is a somewhat hidden organization designed to aid and assist such changes across the Evangelical landscape.  Pastors in Process is a somewhat confidential program to train pastors to more stealthily “move the conversation on LGBTQ inclusion forward in [their] congregation[s].”  Ambiguity and the back door are the preferred means of effecting change in churches.  Clearly that is the pattern here.  Without a denominational structure, order, and confession, Evangelicals are more prone to this kind of devolution of doctrine than other churches -- though even these can be ignored in favor of heresy.  This is one more reason why Lutherans should not be watching or learning from Evangelicals -- unless the goal is to end up like one!

Curious. . .

Over in Rome a conservative Archbishop Vigano got in trouble for not supporting Francis, the most congenial of all the popes, and has been excommunicated for being unsupportive and treasonous. Curiously, those charges do not equally apply to those who have flaunted Rome on its teaching of the sacred character of life, the traditional family, birth control, and the role of women without suffering any recrimination.  I guess you have to be traditional in order to be noticed and conservative to be a threat.  We should not be surprised at this.  It happens all the time in a host of Christian denominations.

The Episcopal Church could not bring itself to excommunicate someone who denied cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith (like John Shelby Spong) but it easily brought down a local bishop in Albany who refused to accede to the whole woke agenda there.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is powerless to silence their teachers who substitute their sexual views for religious truth but they will not allow anyone to disagree with those views and remain in their communion.  The Methodist Church is splitting up because they have grown tired of losing to the conservatives in their votes to amend their church's faith to accord with all the alphabet soup characters of desire and identity but refused to take any action for someone who denies the essential truths of the Biblical faith.  I could repeat the same thing and substitute other denominations with the same outcome.  Even in Missouri, we have rules about how far conservatives can go but seem to wink and nod our way out of condemning those in our midst who have moved left in their thinking and believing. Curiously, all seem agreed that the bigger threat is the conservative one and a little bit of woke won't kill you.

I get it.  Conservatives are the party that rains on every parade while liberals will gladly cooperate with any form of liberalism or progressivism.  The funny thing is that what conservatives cannot get churches to do in support of the Biblical faith, the liberals and progressives can find a way to weaken it.  It is like we are all agreed that the greater threat comes from the right rather than the left, from those who believe the creed as opposed to those who merely say it, and from those expect a hermeneutic of continuity when it comes to what we believe, teach, and confess.  Curious, indeed!

There is little that I know about Archbishop Vigano except that he was once a spokesman for the pope with respect to the US but began to change when the mess over the Vatican sex scandals was erupting.  He complained that this pope did nothing to rein in his favorite princes and still they have not been held fully accountable (or excommunicated).  But apparently Francis has had enough from this guy and has taken the criticisms personally, judged them to be a threat, and acted to remove him.  Oddly enough, some of the most famous of the sex scandal figures from Rome have yet to be even threatened with the punishment meted out on Vigano with due haste.  I could not tell you if Vigano is a good guy or bad guy or reformed bag guy in all of this but what I can tell you is that Rome's biggest problems do not come from the right but from the left and the fruits of this left leaning bureaucracy so quick to tamp down opposition.  Rome and nearly every other Christian group has this to ponder.  Err on the left and you may incur a few smart aleck remarks but err on the right and you will be in the cross hairs of your church -- no matter which that might be.  Until we fix this, we will always be drifting toward the abyss of faithlessness more than we are careening into the pit of theological or liturgical rigor.  And that might explain a few thing.

Just a little. . .

The problems facing us as Christian are seldom the grand descent into hell in one fell swoop but we get there just as effectively a little at a time.  We play with sin as if it were a naughty thing instead of an evil one.  We treat the devil as child's play and forget his sophistication and intuitive knowledge of our weaknesses and failings.  We do not need repentance as much as a fair hearing for understanding of our faults and circumstances.

We say all that time that we are good people, we come from good people, and we live with good people.  It is a code word for saying we are surely not the evil people or the sinners who have no right to stand before a righteous God.  We are just a little in need of redemption and forgiveness because we are just little sinners who need understanding more than we need redemption.  But that is the problem.

Even good conservative Christians are just a little woke, just a little more comfortable with our sins than we should be, and just a little more understanding of the sins countenanced by society than we ought.  We like being a bit more tolerant than judgmental and a bit more accepting than we should with our own favorite sins and those countenanced by the society around us.  We think it is not a problem because we really do believe the traditional Christian things even though we do find it hard to practice.  

We love the traditional hymnody in Church but we also love the gospel sound tracks of contemporary Chrisitian music.  It is not a big problem for us to live in the two different worlds of orthodox Lutherans and the Christian rock stars of the moment.  We can hold up the idea of weekly Eucharist just as long as we don't have to commune that often.  We can talk about private confession but we don't have to do it.  We can laud solid and doctrinal hymnody but sing the playlist from the non-denominational church down the street.  We can reduce liturgy to an idea that allows us to jettison, replace, or paraphrase the Divine Service into what we want it to be.  We can have a ministry but leave it vague enough so that we really do not need a formal clergy except for a good order and appearance.  We can talk about fellowship but still reduce faith to an individual, personal, and private relationship with Jesus.  And, we can still proudly call ourselves Lutheran.  We are either just a little Lutheran or we are Lutheran with just a little other stuff thrown in.  A little woke, a little evangelical, a little Protestant.   At some point we will have to decide how much of these other things we can be and still be Lutheran.  Or, perhaps not.  We can drift along as we have for a while.

It is the same in politics.  We can claim to be conservative while carving out little niches of woke, liberal, or progressive positions within our cause -- especially the ones that impinge upon us directly or upon our family members.  We cannot abide being out of step with the world and politically that has meant that the old labels that once defined us -- like theological terms such as confessional -- have become more catch words than actual descriptions of what we stand for.  The damage done by just a little in politics, theology, marriage, and family reap their rewards in the end when we can no longer define ourselves except by saying we are not quite as or as bad as or as extreme as our opponents. 

Removing the link. . .

We have fairly effectively removed the link between motherhood and womanhood, fatherhood and manhood.  It began a very long time ago.  The birth control pill was the reason but the nail in the coffin that killed our association of sex with love and love with children and femaleness with motherhood and maleness with fatherhood.  It has become positively neanderthal to connect what we have so effectively made separate and distinct.  No one, even those who tend to a traditional understanding of marriage and family, seem quite willing to surrender the latitude such a distinction has provided for those married to define themselves and their relationship without necessarily even considering children and their roles as mom and dad.

While it is certainly easy to trace the history of this along with the injustice proclaimed of women who must carry and raise the child while men get off lightly with just the sex, it was never quite that simple.  The end result of this has been the devastation of very structure of the relationship between man–woman and, indeed, the very definition and identity of each.  The individual autonomy which is provided when conceiving and raising a child can be banished from life or simply consigned to one of many and a less than salutary option has not proved to be a beneficial as thought.  Women who wish children are released from the choice of marriage to pursue a sanitized version of conception with the forms of reproductive technology already available to them and men are afforded the same option (though one less chosen, to be sure).  It is not that we do not need children or want them, we seem not to need or want the relationship that provided the context for children -- at least until modern times.

Is that all children are?  Are they merely a choice for some or are they inherent to the shape of marriage and family?  It is harder and harder for anyone to say that children are not merely one choice among many choices and certainly not essential to the life of the individual or a couple.  We have not merely released both men and women from the burden of also seeing themselves as fathers and mothers but have laid bare the very foundation of parenthood and raised questions about its value or necessity at all.  If we could, we just might find a way to justify and laud purchasing children as products through retail outlets, allowing the buyer to design tailor made children the way we would customize a car for delivery.  Then the cycle might be finally complete as we bypass parenting to make a consumer choice for or against a child.

The lessons of the sociology and psychology applied to parenthood have been learned so well that Christians routinely have fewer children than secular folk or the nones.  We go our secular world one better and insist that the only real link between being male and a father or female and a mother was an invented one and certainly not the intention of God in creation.  In so doing, we have shows just how far from the world of Scripture our lives have fallen.  What is most concerning is that this does not seem to be viewed as a problem among many Christian folks much less those outside the faith.  It has become the effective normal for those who claim to be Christians as much as for those who do not.  The autonomous self does not quickly surrender its autonomy for any cause -- religious or otherwise.

Valpo is officially dead. . .

Announced a month or so ago, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN, has officially discontinued the theology major and minor.  Of course, there will be something in some way religious offered in the curriculum but who knows what this might look like or how it would be taught or who will teach it.  The final remaining philosophy faculty member will be terminated by the end of the next academic year.  The grand dream of a Lutheran university has been set aside and its once esteemed Christ College is barely a blip on the campus anymore.  What Valpo was, it no longer is.  It went the way of all flesh by diluting its identity slowly until there was nothing left.  At that point the leaders of this school tried to save it by making it into something different than it was or was ever intended to be.  Will it succeed?  It is highly unlikely that Valpo will have enough distinctives to merit a second look from prospective students or find a reason for spending big bucks when the same thing is available at state schools much more reasonably priced, 

If the school had any integrity whatsoever, it would sell off the Chapel that is the most prominent building on campus.  But it does not have any integrity.  The whole idea that you could be generically Lutheran did not endear itself to the Missourians who had once considered the school its own and it did not appeal to the ELCA people who seem to care little about the values that marked its legacy.  Now, with a Roman Catholic at the helm, the school has jettisoned many if not all of the things that once marked the reason to go there.  I am sad about it but not surprised.  Why bother with Valpo or any other churchly school unless it is true to its churchly identity?  

There was a time when Valpo had a certain cache to it.  It was not simply unique but profound.  With world class Lutherans in the executive offices and at the Chapel and on the faculty, the school seemed to have something to offer and something worth paying for for your undergraduate education.  Now it would seem that anything Lutheran is long gone and anything Christian is just about gone.  It is a shell of its former self.  I well recall seeing the chapel for the first time and hearing OP Kretzmann preach.  Old friends and acquaintances said the first mass there (Kenneth Korby) or served as dean of chapel and theology faculty (Norman Nagel).  The Liturgical Institute drew tons of pastors, seminarians, and parish musicians.  That is now as gone as they are.  The Lord will resurrect these men of God and give them new and glorious flesh to wear for all eternity.  I do not believe the Lord will raise Valpo from its moribund state and that is probably just as it should be.  They don't want to be what they were so they will have to find something better or the last one out the door will turn off the lights to this Lutheran dream.  

UPDATE

Valpo has apparently broken ground for their new Rafi Interfaith Center.  Valpo President Padilla joined U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan (D) and the fellow paying the bill.  The donor's daughter, a VU grad, led a Muslim prayer to kick off the event. Apparently the donor owns the land and is paying for the building, so Valpo is really just putting their name on it and incorporating into their programming.  Again, so much for Christ College....

The greater cause. . .

The decisions of a couple of churches (two of them Lutheran) to ordain women now some 54 years ago and counting were not the thoughtful choices that they were portrayed to be.  For one, illicit ordinations of women had preceded the official decision and had created a two tier ministry that was untenable.  In addition, the embrace of the ordination of women did not proceed after a period of great theological reflection nor was it cognizant of the break that this decision would make with Rome, Constantinople, and the consistent catholic practice down through the ages.  It was a judgment upon this past -- that the early Church succumbed to the pressure of the then culture against women -- and it was an intention to right what was considered a wrong.  It was not an issue of Scripture or tradition or ecumenical relationship but of justice for women as seen through the eyes of 20th century Christianity.

The same principle was at work in accepting same sex marriage, homosexuality, the plethora of genders, and a host of other things.  Nearly everyone with a brain acknowledges that some if not all of these modern day sacred truths conflicts with Scripture and the explicit word of Scripture.  Nearly everyone with a brain acknowledges that these sacred tenets of modernity conflicts with the consistent catholic tradition from the earliest of days.  Nearly everyone with a brain knows that neither Rome nor Orthodoxy is likely to change its teaching any day soon.  So justice for those who were deemed to be wrongly oppressed or suppressed has become the single rationale for why these churches made the decisions they have made.  Solidarity with these causes and the transformation of the Gospel from sin and forgiveness, death and life, into a cause for righting the presumed wrongs of the past has left these churches with more than folks with alphabet and pronoun issues related to sex and gender.  It has shifted the focus of these churches completely away from the axis of the cross, the suffering, the death, and the resurrection of the God-man Jesus Christ in order to rescue and redeem humanity from their terrible choice in Eden.  Instead, the focus has been to embrace Eden's fall as progress.

Eden represents the dismissal of God's voice and the rejection of His order in favor of an appeal to desire.  That is the curse sin left in humanity (one that led to death).  But it is precisely Eden and its surrender to desire that is behind the lauding of sexual desire as the most important desire and gender choice as that which defines people most of all.  Contemporary Christianity has not simply rejected Scripture and the catholic tradition in favor of its own presumed cause of justice, it has embraced Eden as the goal.  Sure, there is complaint over how desire has been lived out and the persecution of some desires while others are honored but by and large truth and identity have been sacrificed for the sake of desire that is but one person wide and one person deep.

The world has made a judgment.  The contemporary Christians have agreed.  Eden is not the problem but how Eden was lived out.  Feeling is more true than fact.  Desire is our ultimate identity.  Sin has nothing to do with the commandments or will of God but the denial of desire.  Justice has become redemption and the only redemption worth having has been justice for the moment.  Tell me where I am wrong.

Vouchers and the law. . .

A federal judge has ruled that Maine did not violate the U.S. constitutional rights of religious schools by requiring them to abide by the state’s antidiscrimination law and therefore to admit lgbtq students as a consequence and condition to receiving taxpayer-funded tuition assistance (AKA vouchers).  At the same time, the judge acknowledged that this will inevitably head up to a higher court for the final say.  U.S. District Judge John Woodcock Jr. found no inherent constitutional violation with the requirement that private and religious schools accepting vouchers from the state must also abide by the Maine Human Rights Act.  In his own words, “The plaintiffs are free to practice their religion, including the teaching of their religion as they see fit, but cannot require the state to subsidize their religious teachings if they conflict with state antidiscrimination law.”  As soon as he ruled, a notice of appeal to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston was filed.  His 75 page decision reflects the legal tension because of the the collision between a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Maine cannot discrimination against religious schools in providing tuition assistance and a state law requiring that schools participating in the tuition program must abide by the Maine Human Rights Act, which includes protections for LGBTQ students and faculty. 

So what does this mean?  Any entanglement with federal or state funds is bound to bring with it the assumption of some liability to or requirement for compliance with rules and laws that contradict the religious freedom of the church or church/school to exercise freely its independence from such rules or laws.  In other words, it is a fool's errand to believe that vouchers are free money or that accepting such funds will not entail you in the web of state rules and laws (or federal) designed to enforce its own position over and against religious freedom.  Though this will play out in the courts and perhaps even the schools will prevail, it is a signal that this is but one battle in the ongoing war.  We who insist upon freedom to exercise the tenets of our religion should not be surprised when Uncle Sam and his state sponsored children decide that money buys them influence over us.  Just a heads up...

Lutherans and Images. . .

This is by no means at attempt at a complete review of the complicated relationship between Luther, Lutherans, and images (and art in general).  Early on Luther was ambivalent, seeming to prefer less rather than more.  The rise of enemies of the Reformation from the side of the enthusiasts and the Radical Reformers seemed to have changed his mind.  By this time Luther was convinced of the value of these things in setting the Lutherans apart from their more extreme counterparts in Geneva and other parts.  Curiously, everywhere Lutherans were challenged by such folks over the role of art, the use of images, the wearing of vestments, and the ceremonial of the Divine Service, the Lutherans seemed to be more adamant about the value of these and their usefulness.  I would suggest you read Bridget Heal or Ernst Zeedon or Bodo Nishan or Siegfried Mueller or Thomas Kaufmann for the particulars.  Suffice it to say, the typical pattern was for Lutherans to warm up to these things the more they were attacked for their use by the more radical folks in Protestantism.

Therein lies my own point.  When pressed by those who said that such things were unnecessary or a distraction or contrary to Scripture, the Lutherans did not just argue from a theoretical point but actually increased their use as if to say they were important after all.  What a difference between the Lutherans of more recent history and this time in Lutheranism.  When Lutherans got to the USA they became more and more concerned about the practices that had once seemed rather normal.  Along with art (especially the crucifix), vestments, music (especially chanting), and the ceremonies of the Divine Service, the Lutherans felt conspicuous.  They had hoped to be rather normal on the American scene and so some of them began to mirror the hesitance of the more elaborate they encountered among the Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and the like.  Less became more and more was, well, not good.  This was certainly part of the desire for the Common Service and some liturgical unity.  Lutheran identity was in danger of being lost.  Indeed, one of the complaints about Lutheran hymnals is that they were full of anything but Lutheran hymns.  That antagonism to art and beauty, the fuller ceremonial, vestments, and such was institutionalized in Lutheranism and we began to invent reasons for having an empty cross or acting like our Protestant counterparts on Sunday morning.  When challenged, they diluted their tradition instead of affirming it.  This is significantly different form the response of their ancestors a hundred years before.

C. F. W. Walther complained that the churches in America looked like lecture halls and rose to defend the Missouri Synod's use of vestments or chanting or a crucifix.  The fact that he had to defend Missouri against the less is more attitude of the American Lutherans who were here when the Saxons arrived tells a great deal about the state of things in the US.  Even more strange is how quickly Missourians forgot Walter's defense and his hymnal and borrowed freely from the American churches discomfort with things liturgical and with Lutheran art and music.  By the time of the 1950s we had learned to build church buildings devoid of art and had decided that a crucifix actually was a witness to the resurrection.  Gone were the statues, crucifixes, chanting, and liturgical practices of old.  Stained glass became modern and without much in the way of subject or usefulness in teaching the faith.  Big blocks of color replaced the images that once told the story of the Gospel.  

The more modern response to challenge or the discomfort of the surrounding culture with form, beauty, ritual, and music was to give up and remodel our way out of our own past.  Where we once found these things useful to mark the difference between us and the radical elements of Protestantism, we were now embarrassed by our own past enough to join them in the critique.  Instead of standing up for and warming up to images and ceremony we distanced ourselves from our own past and tried to be more like our critics.  How odd! Yet this is what has informed the church experience of some in our pews and pulpits who continue to think the Lutheran response should be to jettison these things instead of affirm their usefulness and make them more prominent.  Thankfully at least one of our seminaries seems to have learned this lesson and is encouraging the fuller rather then leaner approach to art, beauty, ceremony, ritual, music, and images.  What people today are calling new is actually something old and something we once found a bulwark against the confusion of the masses of Lutherans with the generic Protestants.  Those who dabble in contemporary or seeker worship borrowed from Evangelicalism seem to be acting upon the inherent suspicion of these traditions with the art and beauty, forms and ceremonies, that Lutherans learned are pretty important to who we are.

An embassy in an alien land. . .

The ridiculous business of the Olympics and its crude image (whether intended to be the Last Supper in drag or stupidly mimicking that image by accident) reminds us that we are living in an age in which offending or being tone deaf to Christians is the only offense left.  No one would have dared to cast Mohammad or Islam in this way but Christians are fair game, I guess.  It is one more way in which we Christians are reminded of the cause of Christ in a world unfriendly to Him or His cause and therefore unfriendly to us.

This might make us want to take arms and fight back.  It might make us think that we need to fight back in order to claim territory and people and a culture for Jesus.  While that might certainly be the temptation, nowhere does Christ call us to do battle for Him in this way.  We are to fight the good fight of faith but the locus of that battle lies within us and not in some me'n'Jesus sort of shoot out at the OK corral.  No, we should not simply take it but neither should we respond in kind.  We are not called by God to fight for square footage or for political power or state sponsored favor.

Nowhere is this more true than how we see the Church in the world.  The best analogy I can think of is that of an embassy.  An embassy is literally the sovereign space of one nation within the territory of another.  Embassies are not sacred -- they are violated by our enemies from time to time.  This is a solemn reminder of the kind of enemies we have.  They do not play fair nor do they play by the rules.  That said, from our perspective that is exactly what the Church is.  She is the kingdom of God but in an alien and foreign land.  Where the Church is, gathered around the Name of Jesus, the Word of God, and the Holy Sacraments, there is God, God's kingdom, and God's territory -- even when it is in an unfriendly nation or world.  Churches are embassies of Christ for the sake of the Kingdom and they are places of refuge and safety not because their buildings are strong but because their Lord is.  

We must come and go from this embassy.  Our work is in the world but we are not of the world.  We cannot afford to allow ourselves to get caught up in a fight over land or power.  Our cause is faithfulness to Christ.  We meet every  Lord's Day, the day of His resurrection, to gather around His Word and Sacraments, in part to be reminded that we do not belong to the world.  We belong to the Lord are our citizenship is in His kingdom.  We have our commonwealth with Christ.  As tempting as it is to use such offensive things as what we saw in France at the Olympics, our call is not to war with the world over power or space but to be faithful to the Gospel that alone saves.  Embassies are not military outposts but territory of one nation in another for the sake of the citizens who live there but who belong somewhere else.  That is how it is for you and me.

We will never win the nation for Jesus but we are called to speak the Gospel to the far reaches of the earth knowing that where the Word of Christ is spoken an outpost of the Kingdom is placed there.  I find some comfort in this.  We are not on our own nor are we expected to for God what is His to accomplish.  Our calling is to be faithful.  And, by the way, that means we need to be in the embassy of the Lord often enough so that we know it as our true home and a little bit of heaven planted by God in the midst of this world and its troubles, fights, and evil.  That may not seem like much but it is more than enough for you and me.  Trust in the Lord and not in earthly rulers or kingdoms.  That is what the Psalmists said.  How hard it is to believe sometimes that we should not fight for every square inch of territory we can claim for the Lord but we are not here to mark a claim for land or property but for those for whom Christ died.

The fruits of a skeptical mind. . .

I was reminded not long ago that some 36 years ago the then Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith addressed the modern world with its so-called religious scholars and the Biblical scholars within Christendom.  It was titled “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today.”  The voice came from Joseph Ratzinger later to become Pope Benedict XVI and he was, in many ways, laying out a needed course correction to those who had for several centuries used what has been called the “historical-critical” method of biblical interpretation. Note that this was about 15 years after this whole thing blew up within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

Rarely have methodologies caused the kind of confusion among scholars and among the laity as this method of Biblical interpretation.  It was born of the distinction between the “The Jesus of History” and “The Christ of Faith” and began to sow seeds of doubt about the Scriptures and about what we could ever really know about Jesus Christ.  The first thing to be dispensed with was the inerrancy of Scripture -- something that had been nearly universal among both Roman Catholic and Protestants but was not summarily dismissed as naive and even dangerous.  Under the guise of clarifying what Scripture said and we could know, the veracity or legitimacy of passages within the canon and their meaning was attacked not simply by the skeptics outside but those within.  

By this time Rome had normalized the historical-critical method and it had long before dominated the universities and seminaries of Protestantism.  Though Christendom had been relatively united around the familiar words of St. Augustine, now the teachers took odds with him.  St. Augustine said, “For understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that you may understand; since, "except you believe, you shall not understand (as in Isaiah chapter 7: verse 9)".(Tractate 29).  All of this drew from the words of our Lord, “unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 18:3).  Reason had become the master and Scripture merely the tool in its hand.

Now Rome openly mocks those who cling to the truthfulness of God's Word and Protestantism laughs at those who suggest the Scripture is without error.  The fruits of this skepticism have set us adrift from our moorings in the Word of God, the faithful catholic tradition, and the moral tradition born of this Word and tradition.  By their fruits we shall know them.  The fruits of the undoing of our confidence in God's Word have led us down the garden path of sin, wickedness, doubt, and fear.  Nothing is clear or without skepticism and doubt.  The Scriptures have become a book of thoughts which must be given legitimacy and authority by our own reason, acceptance, and experience.  What then Cardinal Ratzinger was critiquing is a genie out of the bottle.  It was profound but already too late for Rome and for most of Protestantism.  The little Missouri Synod has become the one and only group to turn back the advance of modernism and there are still some in our midst who believe that you can used the methodology without losing your integrity.  Without confidence in the truthfulness of the Scriptures, every person sits upon the throne of reason to decide what God said and what He meant by it.  This is not only attacks the Scripture but violates the very catholicity of the Church.

Bread and body, truth and lies. . .

Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15B, preached on Sunday, August 18, 2024.

It is remarkable that our Lord kept up this conversation as long as He did.  He said it plainly enough.  “I am the bread of life.”  The Jews even understood what He was saying and questioned it.  “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?!”  Even His own disciples said to Him that this was too hard and who can listen to what Jesus was saying.  But this was no intellectual discussion.  It was and is the most practical thing of all.  It is about truth and lies.

If Jesus is wrong about His flesh in this Eucharistic bread, He is wrong about everything else.  But if He is right about everything else, then He must also be right about this Eucharistic bread and wine being His body and blood.  We think that this is a small thing and that churches and people should be able to overlook differences about how they understand what Jesus has said.  Our Lord, however, did not speak in riddles.  He speaks plainly and bluntly enough.  My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.  Whoever feeds on Me will live forever because they are receiving my flesh and blood given for the life of the world.

We want to believe that there is a common core of Christian that is all we need to agree on and we can disagree about baptismal regeneration or about confession and absolution or about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  We want to think that when folks come either without understanding or even rejecting the Real Presence, that should be no barrier to kneeling together at the altar.  We want to believe that doctrine is portable – things are what you think they are and they are not what don’t think they are.  This is the stuff of falsehood and half truths and lies.  If there is anything we learn from Revelation it is that the lukewarm and those tepid about the truths of God find no friend in Jesus.

Some are already offended by these words.  That is how it was then.  Jesus actually asked His disciples:  “Are you offended at this?”  Of course they were.  Of course we are.  We live in a world of fairy tales and happy endings but Jesus lives in the real world of sin and its curse of death.  He has not come for symbols.  He has come for real food and real drink, for real bread that feeds eternal life and real blood that cleanses us from all our sin.  He has come not for a core of Christian truth but for the whole truth.  He has come not so that we might understand or accept Him or the truth of the cross and empty tomb but so that we might believe it.  At some point in time you begin to realize that you believe not because it all makes sense but because there is no other truth that saves; everything else is lies.
That is what we confess as we stand to see the Gospel book raised up and the Gospel proclaimed.  This is the word of eternal life.  This is the truth that saves.  This is what we confess as we come to this altar.  This bread is Christ’s body and this cup is His blood.  This is what we confess to the world – we have believed and come to know that Jesus is the Holy One of God in whom there is salvation and there is salvation in no other.

We have been taught to believe that the real danger to the faith is in those who reject this Gospel.  We have been conditioned to believe that the enemies of the faith are the real threat to us and to the Church of God.  But there is a greater danger and more profound threat.  That is from those who say it is not about truth or lies but about versions of the truth and versions of the faith and no one of them is better or worse than they other.  This is the real threat to Christianity.  Faith will not die because enemies overpower it but because we are underwhelmed by it.  As soon as we begin to think that no church has the whole truth and every church has some truth, we betray Christ and His Word.  As soon as we allow that everyone is a little right and no one is all wrong, we disarm the Gospel and it is no longer about truth but about opinion.

When Bible study became about what we think about this Word and not about what it says, we made the Gospel mere opinion.  When we made preaching about how well the preacher captures and keeps our attention, we made the Gospel into entertainment.  When we made worship about what makes us feel good, we made ourselves the center and judge of everything.  Jesus is clear.  It is about truth and lies – not about versions or opinions but truth and lies.  When it becomes about something else, it becomes about nothing at all.

All around us churches have sacrificed the Word of the Lord and the truth of God that saves to the what will sell in the marketplace of ideas or what will appeal to the desires of people.  All around us churches have surrendered the truth that endures forever to the truth that is defined by the individual alone.  All around us churches have replaced the call to repentance with the demand that God affirm what we think or feel.  We as people sit and listen to it all and wonder what could be so bad about letting people think what they want or feel good about themselves or do what they desire.  We have abandoned the idea that Jesus is truth, that His Word is truth, and that it is only the truth that saves.  Until it sounds positively narrow minded and judgmental for any Church to insist this alone is the faith.

My friends, the disciples admitted what we are afraid to say out loud.  Jesus’ words are hard.  Jesus’ truth conflicts with the desires of our hearts and the reason of our minds.  But they have also taught us to confront these things and bring them to the Lord.  His Words are spirit and life.  He alone has the truth to rescue us from the threatening peril of our sins and bring us out of the shadow of death to everlasting life.  Simon Peter said out loud what we struggle to admit.  It is not about which faith appeals to us but which faith has the power to save us.

“Who else can we go to, Jesus?  You have the words of eternal life.”  This is not about which truth fits us or makes us feel better but which truth is true and which is a lie, which truth forgives, redeems, and saves, and which lies condemn, which truth can only be approached by faith and which lies are manufactured by our minds and fueled with our own sinful desires.  Here you have it.  Jesus is the living Bread comes down from heaven.  If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.  His bread is not an idea to inhabit our minds but His flesh which is real food and His blood which is real drink.  There are no versions of Christianity or versions of this truth.  There is only truth and lies.  This is hard and offensive and shocking but this is also the word and promise of Jesus.  Let not the objections of your mind or the desires of your heart steal away from you the truth that saves, the truth preached to you, and the truth you feast upon in this Holy Eucharist.  It is not about what food you want or how much you want it.  It is about which food feeds you everlasting life.  That is Christ alone.  Amen

Elitism. . . vs Populism. . .

Over the course years many things have been framed within the context of elitism (or high culture) and populism (or pop culture).  When I was a brand new pastor I was told by one of my members that the people in the pew could not understand my sermons because I used words they did not know.  When I inquired about which words, one example was the word purview.  I thanked the person who told me this and worked to make sure my sermons did not include words outside an ordinary vocabulary but all the while I acknowledged in those sermons that our faith had its own vocabulary which could not be avoided.  It was and is the language of Scripture.  While the temptation is to cite this as an example of an elitist perspective versus a populist one, I do not think the comparison is quite fair.  I was gently reminded that most of the folks in the pews then did not have a college degree and were blue collar.  As conscious as I was to consider this while writing my sermons, I did not shy away from the vocabulary of Scripture.

In a different place I was told that the hymns in the hymnal were elitist or too high brow for ordinary people.  I was encouraged to bring in the song lists from evangelical congregations which was more populist.  This was a critique masquerading as a statement about culture when it was in reality a statement of preference.  In that location the playlists of the local Christian radio stations was decidedly pop Gospel or contemporary Christian music and the few hymns that made the airwaves were generic staples common to Baptist and Methodist hymnals of the day.  This person was trying to say the hymns in our hymnal represented a high brow culture with complicated rhythms, scale, and melodic lines.  This really was not true (the hymnal was The Lutheran Hymnal and it has never been accused of being elitist).  People were not singing because the music was too difficult but simply because their taste ran to the kind of music they heard on the generic Christian radio station.  As we all know, there is nothing quite as complicated as the rhythms, scale, and melodic lines of contemporary music.

Still again I was told that the liturgy was high brow, elitist, and represented something alien and foreign to the culture, experience, and comfort levels of the folks in the pew.  Again, preference was masquerading as a critique about the form and words of the Divine Service.  In this case, the person wanted a worship service that represented the simple faith of Jesus.  I am not at all sure what the simple of faith of Jesus is or if it exists outside of the imagination of some people.  Jesus was never accused of being simple but His own disciples found His sayings hard, too hard for them.  Peter admitted that they followed Jesus not because they found Him simple and direct but because there was life in no one else.  The Divine Service is not representative of a high culture or elitist perspective -- not the words or the music.  In fact, it is much more populist than Gregorian Chant.  It is not that hard to say, sing, or understand but preference sometimes works to frame something in a false context.  Calling the Divine Service high culture is exactly that -- placing the blame on accessibility rather than on preference.

Interestingly, Bach was accused not of being a musical elitist but of being a populist.  His fame was drawn more from his skill at the organ than from his compositional skills.  Bach's appeal was wide as people were drawn into the musical life of the Church by his ability at the organ bench and his ability to use rather basic tools to churn out an amazing repertoire of church music.  Today some warn that the people are not into Bach nor do they appreciate his kind of high brow music.  Really?  In both congregations I have served the folks in the pews were enthralled with the musical witness of God's Word and the keyboard compositions of Bach.  As a child I heard Virgil Fox play Bach's Gig Fugue on old Black Beauty and watched as the people who had filled the auditorium literally stomped their feet to the rhythm of this magnificent piece of music.  We have no need to fear our past nor to manifest our liturgical identity nor to teach out people to sing the great and grand Lutheran chorales.  This is not high brow music nor is it elitist neither is it quite populist.  It is simply wonderful, exciting, and eloquent in its service to the Word.  In art and in music, as well as in preaching and liturgy, elitism is a charge often leveled against truth by those who do not like what it says or sounds like or is.

The lectionary is a tool. . .

Within the battles over the lectionary (historic or three year) one point often gets lost.  The lectionary is a tool.  It is only as useful as the one who preaches from it.  I am by no means an authority on any lectionary but neither am I convinced that one or the other will make or break anything.  It is all in how it is used.

Growing in the era of preaching texts, nearly every Lutheran pastor I knew did not preach from any of the appointed readings from the so-called historic lectionary then in almost universal use.  Instead there was a cycle of preaching texts that was generally used as the basis for the sermon.  So every Sunday we would hear a set of readings appointed by the lectionary but then hear a sermon based on none of them.  This is a perfect example of how the lectionary as a tool was of little use to the congregation.  In the same way, there was a time when sermon series based on something other than the appointed readings for the day was common practice.  Again, the people either heard Scriptures which would never be addressed by the sermon of the day or perhaps did not hear them at all.  Under these circumstances the lectionary was a tool without any useful purpose. 

As a pastor who has preached 2-3 sermons per week for some 44 years, I have grown to appreciate the use of the lectionary and have become even more suspect of preaching from other texts or sermon series.  There is a value in the people hearing the Scriptures and having had a chance for them to soak in a bit before the sermon addresses them to the people of God.  I used the historic for many years (exclusively) and then the three year lectionary (exclusively) for many years and have had the practice of preaching on the three year on Sundays and the one year on Thursday for many years.  I am sold on lectionary preaching but I am not sure which lectionary is as important as using one and sticking with it.

I will say that one aspect of a lectionary which is not all that important to me is its ecumenical significance.  The truth is that the three year lectionary is not quite in common and we do not use the Revised Common Lectionary in the LCMS.  That said, the churches using that lectionary in common are already well divided by their doctrine and practice so that even if the same readings are used, they are generally preached very differently.

What is important to me and, I would suggest, to the folks in the pews is the careful choice of hymnody to connect what is heard in the Scriptures appointed for the day and what is sung.  If you are using the lectionary, your job is not simply to preach from it but to know the hymnody of the Church faithfully enough so that you hear the readings in the hymn stanzas of the hymnal and pick hymns that connect well with what is heard.  Do not depend upon hymn selection guides or lists of hymns someone has suggested for the day.  Know the readings and know the hymnal and spend time connecting the two.  Your people will be better off for it and your preaching will be more effective.  These things are tools and in order for them to do their job, they have been used by someone skilled in their use.  When that happens the readings and hymnody and the sermon are woven together into one fabric and it is marvelous.  So preacher, pay attention to the lectionary and pay attention to the hymnal as you prepare your sermon.

Competence vs Dependence

I did not grow up with technology.  Technology grew up with me.  I grew up before a dial phone and in the days of the proverbial party line.  I grew up when the news was first from paper and radio.  I grew up when devices meant to make your life better were exclusively mechanical.  I grew up with the first TV being brought into the home and watched a couple of hours at night as a multi-generational family watched and listened to exactly the same content.  That said, I enjoyed the first personal computer (the IBM PC) before it was even on sale to the general public (we had people who worked for IBM).  I juggled two floppy floppy discs to provide program and memory for word processing (a brand new term).  I have a smart phone and tablet, a laptop and a desktop, and stream movies into my home.  I listen to podcasts, blog, and get my news from a host of sources -- none of which is a newspaper and only one of which is a TV.  I shop online and our bills are paid online.  There is not a Luddite in our household.

The great technological divide was once conceived as between those who are conversant with technology and those who are not.  For a time that might have sufficed.  Now I am not sure this definition is worthwhile any longer.  Instead, it is a divide between those who are servants of their screens and those who are not.  Notice, that I did not say those who were servants and those who were masters.  Indeed, those who are servants of the screens are much more masters and exploiters of technology than I am.  The difference here is no longer competence but dependence.  There are increasing numbers of people among us who cannot live without and who cannot put down for a moment the ever present screens that have come to define us and our lives.

We have all watched in restaurants as the folks eating together are occupied individually on their screens, taking full advantage of the complimentary WiFi supplied by their hosts.  It is a study in contrasts as they are together at the same table but divided not only by the food they ordered but by their occupation with the screens they cannot put down.  How many church services or solemn events are interrupted by the sound of texts being received, outlandish ringtones announcing a call, or the sound of social media memes and reels which they forgot to silence?  We cannot let go of our ever present need to be in contract with someone or something.  Not even God can command our attention and these devices have become a danger to us as we try to drive and do other dangerous things with half our attention and eyes on the screens.

There is another element to this.  We cannot put down our screens not simply because we don't want to put them down but also because we cannot function without their aid.  The apps on our phones monitor our health, record our transactions, connect us to our friends, calculate figures, and stream entertainment to us.  What would we do without them -- literally?  Could it be that as they become more intelligent, we become less so?  Could it be that we no longer know how to do what the generations before did almost instinctively?  Have these screens actually aided in the education of our young or have they become an excuse for failing to learn or memorize what prior generations did with ease?  Could we find our favorite Bible passage without Google search or sing the lyrics of our favorite hymn without a screen telling us the words?  

I do not need my screens and sometimes I find them an enemy to my health, peace, and well-being.  It bothers many of my friends and family but I turn them off or silence and forget them all the time.  I would urge you to do the same.  Life will not get worse without them but just may improve not only your mental and emotional health but also your joy.  Imagine a week without checking to see what people said about you on social media or said about people you know on social media.  Imagine becoming so immersed in a book that you lose track of time.  Imagine your whole family exchanging their individual playlists to listen to the same song and artist.  Imagine sitting through an entire worship service without hearing the sound of something on a screen.  I resist becoming the slave of a technology that is supposed to serve you.  You should, too! 

 

Trotting out the same old failed ideas. . .

A while ago I complained that the same old suspects were identified by some and by some of a certain generation in particular, as the reasons for our decline in numbers as a church body.  Today let me complain about the same old failed ideas that are being promoted as ways for us to begin to grow again.

1- Non-Denominational Churches are Experiencing Growth.  The reality is that the non-denominational churches are not growing from converts but from dissatisfied Christians who shop around from what is new and trendy.  Studies have proven that this growth is not real growth but a mere reshuffling of people from one church to another....

2- Need to focus on felt needs over doctrine.  Felt needs are a moving target but the real needs have not changed since Eden -- how to deal with sin, how to find a purpose in life, and how to answer the reality of death.  Felt needs are the shifting sands of the moment and part of the purpose of the Church is to reveal what is real in the face of what is imagined or desired.

3- Pastors need to be pietistic/evangelical.   Pietistic and evangelical are general code words for flexible and willing to sacrifice what is believed for the sake of making belief easier.  This presumes that the goal is to win over the heart and mind of people with either a war of ideas or of good feelings when the reality is that no comes to God except the Spirit call him and the Spirit calls through the voice of the Word.

4- Church autonomy is a must.  Does anyone know what this means?  Autonomy in what areas?  Our church body is not hierarchical in the sense that leadership from on high dictates how a congregation governs itself or how it spends its money or builds/cares for its property.  We do not do this.  What binds us is our confession of faith and our desire to be united as possible in the practice of that faith and in the shape of worship.

5- We must be humble.  We are already so humble that we would rather offend God than people, work to make the Church and her worship as palatable as possible to the social mores and values of the moment, and as comfortable as possible to people (looking more like shopping malls or entertainment venues than real churches).  You do not need to be proud to bear the authority of God's Word -- our boast is not in ourselves or what we have done but in Christ alone.

6- We need to allow the freedom to implement American Evangelical Worship.   American Evangelical Worship is code for whatever people want and whatever works to fill the seats (and the offering plates).  As the days unfold, it is more clear now than ever before that Evangelicalism is devoid of doctrinal integrity and, while it may be late to the party, is willing to adjust to fit the cultural and societal patterns of accepted truth, morality, and behavior.  To adopt such worship forms is to abandon our confession and faith.  We cannot say we believe the same and look radically different on Sunday morning.

7- We must elevate the role of the laity in the church.   This presumes that the divinely appointed role for laity is in the church and forgets that the most important venue for laity is in the home, the workplace, and the neighborhood.  The laity go where pastors would never be allowed to go and to give witness to the hope within them where clergy would never be allowed to speak.  While there is certainly a place for laity in the governance of the church, it is foolish to overlook the most profound role and place for their service.  The fact that marriage, family, home, and the public square are suffering so is a fairly obvious example of how we have neglected this arena of service.

8- Laity must be more involved in church service.  This idea presumes that unless you are doing something in a visible and leadership way, you are not doing anything.  How strange!  Are the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving from our lips, the prayers of the faithful, the attention of heart and mind, and the tithes and offerings we bring nothing important or valued by the Lord?  Giving people little jobs to make them feel important is demeaning and, worse, rejects the godly duties of the faith to pray, praise, and give thanks to the Lord -- which is why the pastors serve the people with God's gifts so that they may do these joyfully.

9- We need to elevate and enhance the role of women in the life of the church.  We have got to stop pandering to the causes of gender or age.  Youth ministry and women's ministry sound good on the surface but the reality is that we are all the body of Christ by baptism and our service to God and to our neighbor is defined by God and ordered by His Word.  We ought to be inclusive here rather than separating out people from the whole as if their needs are different from any other people's needs.  We are here for the same gifts -- forgiveness of sin, strengthening of our faith, eternal life, and salvation.

10- We need to be more open on communion.   It is the height of arrogance to presume that the ancient and catholic practice of closed communion, manifested in Scripture and out of love for those communing, should be set aside for the sake of friendliness.  I would rather be excluded because of concern for my soul than be welcomed without regard to what I thought I was receiving.  But love can always be misunderstood.  Should love then be set aside for something less?  Closed communion is and never was about who cannot commune but about those who can receive for the benefit.

11- Hell should keep us sober and alert about the urgency of the church.  Fear of hell saves no one.  We are not saved from a fate we fear but for a future God has prepared.  The threat of hell is the law and it cannot inform the heart to believe the Gospel anymore than it should drive what we do.  Now, to be sure, there are many Christians today who speak of hell as if no one will end up there.  They do so not in faithfulness to Scripture but merely as an expression of their own desire.  We can no more ignore the reality of hell nor warn people of it than we can assume that such a warning will regenerate their heart.

12- We must keep ‘missions’ as the church’s primary focus; we must look out, not in.  Looking at the statistics, we are two-thirds smaller on Sunday morning than in our membership rosters.  Perhaps we should not pit out against in or the other way around but do both.  Our strength and life as a church body expects that the people of God will be present where God has made Himself accessible at least every week.  Have we been as diligent as we ought in reminding our people that this is God's expectation and not simply our goal?  At the same time, it is inherent to our lives as Christians that we display the hope within us by word and deed so that we always giving witness to Jesus Christ.  This encourages those in but it addresses those outside with the very Gospel by which they can be saved.  A church going people will be a people concerned for those not yet of the Kingdom.  Those concerned for the folks outside the Kingdom will manifest this concern by their own presence within the assembly of the faithful on Sunday morning.  Is there a choice here?

Live in the moment. . .

Listening to some voice from pop culture, I heard the person give advice to children.  "Live in the moment."  It is the worst advice ever given.  It is precisely living in the moment that gets us into trouble.  The moment tells us to forget our principles and act deceptively.  The moment encourages us to set aside our values for what feels good.  The moment entices us with what we know is wrong but choose to believe will not hurt us or be found out.  The moment breaks down trust and destroys affection.  It is exactly the moment in which we should not live.  We need to have a thorough knowledge of our past and we need to have a solid promise of the future or the moment will become the worst prison we could ever know.  Do not ever tell children to live in the moment -- or adults!!

Living in the moment is the reason why husbands and wives betray their spouse for the inkling of desire.  Living in the moment is the reason why honorable people do dishonorable things in business and in life.  Living in the moment is the reason why children reject parental words for the sake of personal want.  Living in the moment is the reason why drugs entrap us and steal away the future we would hope for.  Living in the moment is the reason why we spend money on things we do not need and cannot pay for the things we do.  Living in the moment is the reason why pornography is the primary resource of our great internet technology.  Living in the moment is the reason why the send button or post button allows us to judge and hate and condemn with impunity (over email and social media).  Living in the moment allows us to consume the world and ignore the things of God without thought for accountability or judgment.  The list could go on and on.  You get my drift.  We are in the position we are in because we think only of the moment and live only in it without thought for what went before or what will follow.  Scripture puts living in the moment in different words -- everyone thinks, says, and does what is right in their own eyes.  Which, in case you missed it, was not a good thing and is still not a good thing.

Why anyone would say to kids (or adults) to live in the moment is beyond me.  It is the same foolishness as trust your feelings.  We come up with these pious platitudes which turn out not to be pious at all and instead diminish us individual people and as a society.  The mark of Scriptural maturity and the reign of the Gospel over us is not living in the moment but self-denial, sacrifice, and service to others.  But no one would tell kids to do that.  It does not have the same hollow ring of relevance that living in the moment does.  And there you have it -- the mark of sin is that we choose us over others, the moment over eternity, and the gods we manufacture over the One God revealed to us by His own saving will and purpose.  But what do I know. . . How has living in the moment ever built up our dignity or the nobility of human life or improved the lot of the needy or promoted the cause of virtue or made the world a better place?  Even by these worldly needs and standards living in the moment is poor advice.  How much worse is it when we would dare to put such trivial sentiment in the mouth of our Lord to make holy our self-indulgence?

If they like us, they will come. . .

Before anything else I must admit that I grew up in a nice community in which niceness was cultivated.  It was a small town in which everyone was your neighbor, the polite thing to do was the right thing to do, the right thing to do was the polite thing, and we found a way to get along.  Now those theses were tested from time to time by folks who did not play nice in the sandbox and by the political and religious tenets around which we were gathered, but it was a nice place to grow up and is still a pretty decent small town.

The problem is that some have decided that niceness is the key to growing a church.  We just need to be nicer and folks will throng to our doors and fill our empty pews.  Aren't we nice already?  Apparently not.  We need to be nicer and niceness means not judging, being willing to surrender doctrine for success, and fitting in to the world around us.  We should not talk about the things that might divide us and concentrate on talking about the things that unite us.  If they like us, they will come.  Right?

We are in the midst of turmoil not simply because we do not cultivate niceness (and we don't) but because there are fewer and fewer things that unite us.  We were once on the same page with the bulk of our values even though we were still fairly diverse.  Now we cannot agree on what is right or wrong or even what a woman is or is not (or man) -- so how can we agree on other things if we cannot even find basic things in common?  That is the fallacy in the idea that the Church must become more like the world in order to succeed.  Which world?

We are more divided than ever before on the basic meaning of life and the important things that support this life.  We have become more thin skinned than ever before and take offense where none was meant simply because we can.  We actually enjoy being victims because it gives us cover to respond in kind.  If this is true within the social and political realms of our lives, it is also true within the religious spheres of our lives.  Besides this, we insist that no one can tell us we are wrong about anything and if they do that means they hate us.  Hmmmm.  How would Jesus fair in such a world?  Imagine telling a mind your own business kind of woman that she has had many husbands and the man she is now living with is not her husband?  What kind of Jesus would say tell a woman of a different ethnic group or religion she was a dog?  What kind of Jesus would tell a rich and successful lawyer to sell everything and then come back to talk about God?   Oops.  Jesus was not being very nice.

The Church does not grow because we are nice people and because we smile a lot and do not judge.  The Church grows because the Holy Spirit works through the Word of the Lord to call her into being, gather her from the ends of the earth, enlighten her to everlasting life, and sanctify her to become more like God.  It is the Spirit's work.  Nobody says that this justifies us being rude or unwelcoming or hard to get along with.  Nobody.  But the Church does not grow because people like us or we are nice to them.  The truth raises up the faithful, endures the days of trouble, and saves to everlasting life.

I think we should be nice.  I do not think our victim culture or our willingness to hit post or send before thinking about it are good things.  I do not think that the Church should be unfriendly.  But I also do not think that the Church lives or dies because her people are not nice.  Niceness is not a mark of the Church -- faithfulness is.  So if you are reading this, God does not countenance you being a jerk but neither did the Lord ever say that the Church will grow if you are nicer.  Be faithful and the niceness will come.  Listen to the Law.  It cannot save you but it does reveal to you the way life should be.  Don't make a program out of being nice as if it will substitute for the other things we should be doing to evangelize.  You cannot program niceness.  It is the fruit of the Spirit's work -- an overall term for the many fruits of the Spirit.  Part of being nice means being of the truth.  Part of being nice means speaking the truth in love.  Part of being nice means speaking the truth in love because God is truth.  But the Lord grows His Church not where we are nice or polite but where His Word is preached in its truth and fullness and the Sacraments of Christ administered in accordance with His command.  We should not need to be told to be nice but it won't hurt to remind us to be nice even if it will not buy us the kingdom or result in a bigger Church.  Nice sometimes means speaking forthrightly the hard truth that you wish you did not have to say.

Offered life but prefer bread. . .

Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 14B, preached on Sunday, August 11, 2024.

John chapter six is truly worthy of at least three Sundays.  It begins with the feeding of the five thousand and unfolds into a profound discourse on Jesus, on the miracle manna provided in the wilderness, on the living bread come down from heaven which is Christ’s flesh for the life of the world.  Through it all Jesus is offering the people of God what they do not seem to want and failing to give them what they desire.  And so there is a lot of grumbling going on.

If Jesus can manufacture food out of nearly nothing, why are we working so hard to put bread on our tables?  If God can do this, why doesn’t God just do it and take away the burden on us to provide for ourselves?  It is the same failing of Eve in the Garden of Eden and it has been our failing ever since.  We are sure we do not need Jesus as much as we need other things – bread, bread with dollar signs, health, rich experiences, an emergency pull cord, and a thousand other things that seem so urgent in the moment.  To us it often seems like God is giving us what we do not want and withholding what we do want.

So there is a lot of grumbling going on...  There was a lot of grumbling going on when Jesus fed them food for the belly and then was nowhere to be found when they were hungry again.  There was a lot of grumbling going on by those who said Jesus words were nonsensical and could not possibly mean His flesh is bread.  There is a whole lot of grumbling going on still to this day by people who think doctrine gets in the way and we should have the right to our own opinions about God and the things of God.  There is a whole lot of grumbling going on when we heed the Lord’s Word and insist that those who commune actually share the same faith.  There is a whole lot of grumbling going on by those who think a taste of bread and a sip of wine is hardly an answer to our need or to our prayers.

Jesus is blunt.  The bread you spend so much money on and work so hard to fill your bellies with cannot prevent your death.  Not even the miracle bread given to the Israelites in the wilderness could stave off the weakness of old age, the infirmity of illness, and the threat of death.  They ate and they died.  And so will you.  As good as the food and things of this mortal life are, they cannot provide you with what you need even though they seem to be pretty good at satisfying your desire.  Jesus does not promise to make your life better or you happier or to bring you success or make things easier.  What He does promise is this.  If you eat of the bread of His flesh, you will live forever.

Therein lies the rub.  We are happy enough to get eternal life as long as it comes at the end of a rich, happy, and rewarding life now.  But if we had to trade, most of us would rather be happy and satisfied today than pin our hopes on the eternal life to come.  This is the grumble.  We want other things more than we want what Jesus gives and we want what Jesus gives less than other things.

It is the reason that throughout the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod about 30% of those who claim to belong show up on Sunday morning.  It is the reason that here at Grace half our people and our pews are empty every week.  It is the reason why we love to be forgiven but hate to forgive.  It is the reason why we think the little sins we do are not that big of a problem and the big sins others do are shameful.  It is the reason why we always have money for what we want but find it hard to give to the Lord what He is due.  It is the reason why church is boring and our phones occupy our every minute.  It is the reason why a big church like Grace struggles to find people to give their time and energy to serve as officers over years and to volunteer for an hour.  It is the reason why we know everything about our favorite actors, singers, or sports figures but very little about the big names in Scripture.  You know it and I know it and Jesus knows it.

The miracle here is that our Lord is patient and kind, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  Where another god would have packed up his mercy and found himself a people who would pay attention to it, our Lord keeps serving up the fruits of His redeeming work in the Word preached and the Eucharistic bread and wine eaten and drunk week after week after week.  The miracle here is that He gave once and that He still gives us His flesh in this bread to fill us with life now and eternal life to come.  The miracle is that He is not stingy with His grace but lavish to a fault with what He gives to us – even though we do not value it as we should.  Our Lord forgives the same tired old sins we confess week after week after week.  He stands like the waiting father with arms open every Sunday to welcome us prodigal sons and daughters home, set this feast in our presence, and put back on us the perfect robes of His righteousness that we have soiled over and over again.

As spouses and parents we are always placing limits on our love.  Only the Lord loves without limit, giving to the unworthy and the undeserving the most precious gifts He can give – His flesh for our life and His blood to cleanse us from all our sins.  We live with an embarrassment of riches from our Lord here every week.

We are called by the Spirit, gathered by the Spirit, enlightened and sanctified by the same Spirit.  The Father has elected us to salvation and the Father sent forth the Spirit to bring the elect into His presence, here around the Word and Table of the Lord, and there in eternity.  Our Lord will not leave us to bandaided bodies that cannot hide their frailty but will bestow upon us new and glorious bodies just like His when He raises us up on the last day.  There will be no pharmacies or urgent care centers where He will bring us and we will leave behind here on earth all our memories of sin and its death, of pain and its sorrow, of despair and its fear.  He will swallow up death forever.  And everyone who looks in faith upon the Son will have this eternal life – not because they are good or worthy but solely because God will give us what we do not want and do not think we need and will work in our hearts to transform our desire so that we can be satisfied in Christ.

This is the mercy of God and His steadfast love for you.  Do not grumble about what you think is wrong with your life or your family or your church.  Marvel at the goodness of the Lord who continues to offer you what you fail to value as you should.  If you are hungry and thirsty, He will give you the food and drink of eternity.  This food satisfies not because of how much we eat or drink but because of what we eat and drink.  Taste and see that the Lord is good!  Blessed are those who take refuge in Him.  Amen.