Death is the end. . .

Progressive Christianity is not simply an error or a divergence from what was and has always been believed, it is suicide.  Progressive Christianity will always result in a move away from the Scriptures, from truth and fact, and from a normative faith to one normed by the individual.  Progressive Christianity seems to find nothing sacred or immune from change or alteration.  It invites no standard more than the individual and no time more than the moment.  Because of this, it can offer nothing of substance and certainly nothing of permanence.  From the house built upon the rock that is Christ, progressive Christianity has constructed a house that sits on sand, for now, and soon will sit on nothing at all.  Because of this, it is a suicidal movement that, in the end, will always result in the repudiation of what God has said for all and for all time in favor of what someone thinks or feels or thinks or feels he has experienced in the moment.  In fact, the ease at which Protestantism has chosen to live upon the moving foundation of the moment and the autonomous individual is another signal that it is not a serious theological movement at all but whimsical and nonsensical. 

Underneath progressive Christianity is a rejection of nearly everything Scripture says.  Progressive Christianity insists that Scripture speaks with symbolic language of creation.  While that might not seem so bad to some, what it does is undercut the whole purpose of the creation account.  God made all things as they are.  Evolution steals the fearfully and wonderfully made and leaves us with an accident of nature or mutation without design or purpose but random and without any intrinsic value or worth.  Progressive  Christianity guts the miracles and leaves them as mere fables with morals designed to tell you what you must do and nothing about what God has done.  In so doing, God cannot be made more than the myth or legend that produced these stories and, if He exists at all, has a sole purpose of making you better or making the world a better place.  Progressive Christianity defines life without sin and declares death to be natural -- an essential part of the circle of life.  Then death has the victory and the life that continues either lives in the memory of those who recall the dead or in some vague, spiritual existence in which real means imagined.  Progressive Christianity finds its purpose in ridding the sins of old from bothering the freedom of people to do what they want (so long as it is currently sanctioned) and consensual.  In this view, sex is for pleasure and life is for pleasure.  Progressive Christianity finds man alien to creation and therefore pursues the reduction of man's footprint on the earth through everything from birth control to abortion to ecology.  It is suicide with a religious veneer.

Traditional and orthodox Christianity is not battling for its own survival but for the survival of man and so far we do not seem to be doing all that well in this war.  Our children have come to agree with Progressive Christianity and culture that marriage of confining, family is not worth the trouble, children (if you want them) are toys, our marriages seem to fail at a rate similar to the unchurched, and our choices seem to mirror the values and choices of those who claim no faith.  We are not vying for turf here but for the most important and noble truths Scripture can convey.  Are we the crown of God's creation as people and did the Lord actually move time and eternity to send forth His Son in the womb of the Virgin to suffer and die to redeem us from sin and death?  If this is not true, what is?  Progressive Christianity is willing to kill the faith to save it -- literally.  It is time for us to admit and warn about the stakes of life today.  We are not looking toward a better tomorrow defined by the unfettered pursuit of pleasure and a life insulated from sacrifice but a life of service in the service of the One who served us even to death on a cross.  We are not looking for a better heaven and earth but a new one in which sin and death have no place anymore.  We are not looking for freedom from responsibility or duty or work but for the freedom which will help us accept responsibility, pursue the godly vocations for which we were created, and for work that puts others and their needs (spouse, family, neighbor) above our own as Christ has already done for us.

You will find in Progressive Christianity a narrower vocabulary in which sin has become injustice and death rescued by pharma and technology and life defined by our passion less any constraint or limit.  The end result of this is death.  Progressive Christianity does not need saving because it has no sins, does not need redemption because it has made its peace with death, and does not need a heaven because they are determined to find a way to have your best life now.  Progressive Christianity is self-destructive as a movement and even more as a reason for the hope you have.  Do not listen politely or meet in dialog or speak in the same terms as Progressive Christianity.  This movement is not looking for something you need but for a hit on the dopamine and a rush of good feelings that will turn your eyes from is what really wrong.  Death is the self-appointed end for Progressive Christianity.

Does God want religious harmony?

God must feel real good when we sit down at a table to play nice about religious diversity.  I may be a fool but I find it hard to identify any positive fruit if interreligious dialog.  Sure, our conversations with others who claim to be Christian, to esteem Scripture, and to confess the Gospel might be worthwhile -- not to promote understanding but primarily to call each other to account.  When you sit down with others, you probably better begin by having a realistic and historical view of who you are and what you believe.  But when you sit down with other religions without a common Word of God or history or values or identity, what is to be gained?

For example, do we really need to understand Islam better?  Will mutual understanding really calm down the tinderbox of Palestine?  Will Lutherans or Roman Catholics actually find some sort of common ground with Muslim faith and practice?  Maybe we could agree on climate change but will we ever agree on who God is and is not?  Do you think there is any way to such a common answer to the burning question of who God is?  Yeah, I thought so.  Neither do I.

Is God glorified knowing that people are trying to play nice in the sandbox of this mortal life but who do not bat an eye to defame and desecrate the Word of the Lord that endures forever in order to do so.  What have we gotten wrong about Islam, for example?  Is this somehow a deep and dark religion that has been falsely characterized over the years and its informative texts and leaders secret to us?  Does Islam really misunderstand Christianity because there are hidden things of the orthodox and catholic faith which are not in Scripture or creed or confession?  Is there the expectation that Christianity and Islam can coexist and respect each other's own exclusive paths to salvation as just as much true as their own?

I have volumes in my library that address Islam as well as its primary text.  I also have volumes in my library which tell me how to respond to Islam.  There are also copies in the parish library.  Perhaps Islam has their own similar books.  So what do we talk about in dialog which we cannot know from such written treatments of each other's faiths?  After such a dialog will Christianity disown the exclusive statements of Christ that no one comes to the Father except through Him?  Will Islam reject its own exclusive statements.  

Although I have focused on Islam,  you could substitute any other religion and ask the same sort of questions of those who believe a Christian/Buddhist dialog could be fruitful or a Christian/Sikh conversation or, well, you name a religion and fill in the blank.  The sad reality is that it is more likely that such dialogs will result in misunderstanding of their own faiths as well as the faith's of their dialog partners precisely because they are seeking common ground where none can possibly exist.  I am not saying that we should be open and hostile enemies toward one another but neither do I believe that our cause or the cause of humanity is furthered by presuming that the world will be better if we all just dilute our convictions enough to make a joke of what we say we will believe.  I shudder every time a Pope meets with the leader or leaders of another world religion.  Inevitably he will end up misrepresenting Christianity or misunderstanding the religion he hopes to accommodate.  But we are all at fault here.  No table is big enough for us to come let us reason together if such reasoning requires us to abandon what we believe.  Christianity invites such scrutiny from skeptics and opponents because we believe the Word of the Lord will bring faith from the hearer much to our own surprise and even chagrin.  But if we are apologizing for Jesus or His Word, we have no business sitting down with anyone and saying we would like to talk about how we are able to promote respect and toleration.  As I write this we have just celebrated the Exaltation or Triumph of the Holy Cross -- or did we not mean it?

Lutherans are not Protestants. . .

Lutherans have always found themselves the odd man out at the table of religious traditions.  We seem to be Protestants but we are not.  We claim to be Catholics but we aren't Roman.  Nowhere it this more true than when it comes to our approach to authority.  It sounds like Lutherans are right there with every other Protestant in putting authority in reason.  Unless we can be shown by Scripture, we will not believe it.  It almost sounds like Luther but it is not Luther.  Luther was bound by the Word that had authority over his conscience and not because of it.  Luther did not place Scripture into the realm of personal interpretation (though, to be sure, sometimes he sounded that way).  Luther believed in authority -- an authority bigger than him and bigger than the moment.  I sometimes wonder if we as Lutherans have forgotten that.  Luther was not a Protestant -- at least not in the way that term has been used since the first days of the Great Reformation.  Luther was a creedal theologian and one whose whole purpose was not to vitiate the authority of the Church but to correct that authority by placing it upon the firm foundation of Scripture.  The Reformation was and remains about authority and where it resides.

Even some Lutherans have come to sound pretty Protestant.  They submit to no man or institution, to no creed or confession, and only to a Scripture through the lens of their own reason.  They insist that they are happily free from these constraints as long as they stay true to the Word of God.  In the end, creed and confession, man and institution must submit to their understanding of Scripture and to their interpretation of it.  In this construct, nothing can be accepted from the past without being re-proved by the Word of God.  It is an exhausting proposition.  Every time you open the Bible you have to prove or disprove something and at the top of the mountain is reason.  It is not the end of the papacy but the making of every Christian a pope.  It ends up being a religious version of the autonomous self.  But is that Lutheran?  Or, is it even Christian?

Rome makes an attractive alternative to those who have tired of proving or disproving everything every time they open the Bible.  Rome has chosen which authority is above Scripture so that there is only one authority to interpret the Bible.  They say it is the Church but it is those with agency within the Church to do that (teaching magisterium or papacy).  If the church has the authority to infallibly interpret Scripture, then individual authority is not what is operative.  The problem is that this authority does not mean the same to all those who claim to be Catholic -- Rome puts it in one place, Constantinople puts it in another, and Lutherans put it somewhere else.  For Rome this problem lies with the fact that the teaching magisterium and popes have disagreed and erred and been inconsistent and even contradictory.  For Constantinople this problem lies with the fact that councils have contracted and erred and disagreed.  For Lutherans is that we sometimes are not even ready to admit that there is a church larger than a congregation and so we default to some sort of individual reason that is top of the heap.  

My Roman friends tell me that in order to disprove Roman Catholicism, you do not start with the Bible. Roman Catholics understand this as mere private interpretation and point to their historical claims.  The authority lies in the church -- whatever that means.  The problem for a Lutheran is that Rome has been all over the place and there is no clear and consistent teaching -- especially in the more modern times.  The teaching of Rome does not need Biblical authority nor does it invite it.  The other problem is exactly that history.  Who in their right mind believes that the early Church is the same as medieval Roman Catholicism or the same as Rome after Trent or the same as Rome after Vatican I or II.  In fact, Rome is debating this very point.  Is the Mass of Trent the same as the Mass of Vatican II?  This is evidence of the fact that the problem cannot be solved by shifting the authority from one autonomous individual to an autonomous institution.  What we call Roman Catholicism is defined most clearly by the Council of Trent and yet it is that very Council of Trent that Romans are insisting has been replaced by another Council that, on both sides of the divide, represents a different doctrine or teaching.

Lutherans often sound and act like Protestants but we are not.  We are Catholics not of the Roman kind.  We esteem our institutions highly but we do not endow them with autonomy or authority any more than we place one individual over truth.  We believe that there is an identifiable Catholic and Apostolic confession that has not wavered from the ages, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets by the voice of God's Word, and is not alterable by voice or vote.  Are there challenges to this by some, sure.  There will always be.  We will always seek to find an authority in our conscience or reason or in an individual or group of teachers because that is controllable.  If we defer to the sacred deposit once delivered to the saints, the faith will be confessed without being controlled or altered and this is what we say to the world.  It is the mark of true catholicity and we would welcome popes and teachers and individuals of any kind to join us in this faithful confession once and always the same.

What does anything mean?

For the Christian, words matter.  God spoke and all things came to be -- the Word is creative.  Christ is that Word through which anything that exists was called into being.  Christ is the Word made flesh in a moment in time.  He speaks through the voice of His Word.  The Bible is the written Word of God.  It does not take much to get it.  Words matter because God works through His Word.  Without that Word, faith is not possible since faith comes by hearing the Word of God.  The Spirit works through means -- the means of the Word, Scripture.  I could go on but it is pretty basic stuff.  So when we confront a world in which words do not matter, when truth is subjective, and when nothing is more than one person wide or deep and even then subject more to feeling or experience over truth, we are bound to have problems.

How we judge truth and how we see words is affected not simply by the Scriptures or religion but by the world in which we live.  You do not have to be a conservative to note how we treat words.  From the newspeak in which words take on a different meaning and context than they originally and universally meant to the doublespeak in which words are intentionally freighted with a different meaning than they would literally convey, we find ourselves at a great disadvantage politically, socially, morally, and religiously.  Yes, the Church is sometimes to blame for this confusion but even more has been the incorporation of the way the world around us communicates into the framework of religion and faith.

Add to this is the way those who control the message have the ability to change the historical record. To the victor belong the spoils and so important to that is the ability to write the history in such way that it favors them.  We have all known this but there have always been those whose recollection has challenged a false historical narrative.  The difference is that some have invented history and written it back into the past as if it really did take place.  The invention of history is not simply the altered facts but the slant on those facts.  For example, CBS recorded the announcement that Candidate Harris wanted to remove the tax on tips with glee and to the accolades of those in the hospitality industry.  However, a few months ago the same media was suspect of the cost to the treasury when Candidate Trump said he would do the same.  So we alter things by the spin we place on them as much as by the change of the actual record or fact itself.  The isolated incidence of same sex relationships in ancient cultures has become normative and justification for the radical shift that such same sex marriage was and is for our time.  All of this rewrites history or changes the slant on it to favor a presupposition instead of merely reporting the fact.

The unknown today is the new reality of artificial intelligence and what it could do to the established historical record and to the slant placed upon that history by those looking back.  What could AI do in service to those who wish to cleanse the past from the things that the present deems as its sins or alter our perception of that record?  I do not have a clue how this might further erode any idea of or appreciate for the constant of fact and truth.

Back where I began, let us think for a moment on how this suspicion of history or denial of the objectivity of truth bears on those who hear God's Word.  The Spirit is not simply working against the heart hardened by sin to disbelieve God over preference and experience and reason but is battling the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth or that if there is that objective truth does not matter.  For this reason we speak the Gospel not simply to an unbelieving world but to a world that does not believe in truth any longer.  So how do you think that affects the people who hear Jesus say "I am the way, the truth, and the life?"

Close to power. . .

Apparently I had missed that Lutherans were across the hall from power once.  VP Hubert Horatio Humphrey was a Lutheran.  And then he was not.  He became Methodist.  So we have had Lutheran Supreme Court justices and Attorneys General but now we could have a Lutheran VP who has not left for another church - Tim Walz.  The only problem is that his version of Lutheran is somewhat less than, well, Lutheran.  What do I mean by that?  If Lutheran means holding to the Scriptures as the infallible Word of God, then Walz belongs to a body that hedges its bets on that point.  If Lutheran means holding to the Evangelical Lutheran Confessions as normative over reason and culture, then Walz belongs to a body that believes that the Confessions are more historical document than confessional standard which informs and norms the present.  If Lutheran means being the catholics that our Augsburg Confession claims we are, then Walz belongs to a body that is more at home in liberal Protestantism than with what had been believed, taught, and confessed through the ages.

Walz, born in West Point, NE, and raised Roman Catholic, began teaching in Nebraska where he also met his Lutheran wife, Gwen. From Minnesota, she attended a slightly less prominent legacy Lutheran school, Gustavus Adolphus, than St. Olaf.  After Nebraska, they ended up in Mankato, MN, at the Mankato HS where was a coach and faculty advisor for the school’s first gay-straight alliance. From that time on, Walz did not merely follow the ELCA in its pursuit of the alphabet of sexual attractions and genders, he embraced and led the way to expanding upon it as Governor of Minnesota.

Now Lutherans are no different than other faiths.  We like to parade our politicians out in front just like Roman Catholics and everyone else does.  The problem is that too often we are more comfortable with the politicians than we are with the profundities of our own faith.  Look at Biden.  He claims to be a good Roman Catholic.  Some think he is but only if being a good Roman Catholic means refuting and working against the historic and set doctrinal positions of the Roman Catholic Church.  Who knows what Biden believes in his heart of hearts or Walz for that matter.  In fact, we are not to know what is in the heart -- that is the domain of the Lord.  But it is surely reasonable and, I might add, Scriptural, to believe that the thoughts and words and deeds are not opposed to each other but reflect a certain uniformity within the boundaries of our own human inconsistency.

So my long lingering journey to a point is this.  Be wary of trumpeting the politicians who might belong to your church.  They could be good and faithful folk who believe and confess exactly what their churches do.  They could also be good and faithful folk who believe and confess exactly what their churches do but who believe that they should not impose their personal convictions on others.  They could also be good and well intentioned folk who believe and confess along the lines of what their churches do but who believe governing and believing are two different realms with few bridges between them.  They could also believe that they are good and faithful folk whose duty it is to conform the faith of Scripture and the ages to their own preference and that this is the mark of faithfulness to disagree and diverge from the confession of the church where they think the church is wrong.  In any case, while it is nice to claim a politician as close to the halls of power as one can get, it does little for that church in pursuit of the mission anointed by God and can, in fact, do some harm.

Tim Walz may be a great guy but he probably is not the kind of Lutheran he ought to be or he would not belong to a church which is content living on the cutting edge of Lutheranism and going beyond that edge for the sake of culture, society, modern values, individuality, diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and access.  So whether we think he is a good guy or not, let us not list his Lutheranism as one of the reasons why he is.  In fact, I would be happiest of we judged our politicians on the basis of their public stands and records and not on anything else.  If you have read my blog you know that I am not a diehard Republican or a Trumper but I do appreciate that some of his governing was much better than his words and the Republicans have generally stood more solidly on the issues of life, culture, gender, and such.  I would happily support Walz or Biden or Harris if that were also the case.  My conundrum is that while the left has gone lefter the right has also headed left.  Because of that, there is a bigger issue than if they are Lutheran or Roman Catholic.

Not enough. . .

Remember this?

"The Impossible Dream (The Quest)"

To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe,
To bear with unbearable sorrow,
To run where the brave dare not go.

To right the unrightable wrong,
To love pure and chaste from afar,
To try when your arms are too weary,
To reach the unreachable star.

This is my quest,
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless,
No matter how far.

To fight for the right
Without question or pause,
To be willing to march
Into hell for a heavenly cause.

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will be peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest.

And the world will be better for this,
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage.
To fight the unbeatable foe.
To reach the unreachable star. 

 

Apparently we are not up to such impossible quests today.  In particular, we are not up to loving purely or with a chaste love.  We think as a culture and even as Christians it is an unfair and too great a burden to deny your desires -- especially sexual ones.  Then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger answered that question of self-denial of desire pretty well way back in 1986.  I am not sure we have the stomach to hear it again now almost forty years later.

What, then, are homosexual persons to do who seek to follow the Lord? Fundamentally, they are called to enact the will of God in their life by joining whatever sufferings and difficulties they experience in virtue of their condition to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross. That Cross, for the believer, is a fruitful sacrifice since from that death come life and redemption. While any call to carry the cross or to understand a Christian’s suffering in this way will predictably be met with bitter ridicule by some, it should be remembered that this is the way to eternal life for all who follow Christ.

It is, in effect, none other than the teaching of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians when he says that the Spirit produces in the lives of the faithful “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control” (5:22) and further (v. 24), “You cannot belong to Christ unless you crucify all self-indulgent passions and desires.”

It is easily misunderstood, however, if it is merely seen as a pointless effort at self-denial. The Cross is a denial of self, but in service to the will of God himself who makes life come from death and empowers those who trust in him to practice virtue in place of vice.

To celebrate the Paschal Mystery, it is necessary to let that Mystery become imprinted in the fabric of daily life. To refuse to sacrifice one’s own will in obedience to the will of the Lord is effectively to prevent salvation. Just as the Cross was central to the expression of God’s redemptive love for us in Jesus, so the conformity of the self-denial of homosexual men and women with the sacrifice of the Lord will constitute for them a source of self-giving which will save them from a way of life which constantly threatens to destroy them.

Christians who are homosexual are called, as all of us are, to a chaste life. (Emphasis Added)  As they dedicate their lives to understanding the nature of God’s personal call to them, they will be able to celebrate the Sacrament of Penance more faithfully and receive the Lord’s grace so freely offered there in order to convert their lives more fully to his Way.

 

 – from Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons (1986)

It is not just the same sex attracted who are called to chastity.  We are ALL called to lead a chaste life.  How odd it is then that we really do not expect this of ourselves even though we expect it of those whose sins we disavow?  A chaste life is lived out within the Biblical order, according to God's design, within the fabric of forgiveness, and in repentance always.  It is not and never was that some folks get to be exempt from God's call while others have to give up everything.  We are all under the same call to live holy, upright, and godly lives where we are.  No matter what our desires.  No matter what our vulnerabilities.  No matter what our inclinations.  No one is singled out for more or less of a life of self-denial but we are all called to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus. It does not help that we have made divorce normal, that we shrug our shoulders at sex (as long as it is consensual), that we live in a culture of pornography and perversion, and that we have our own pet rankings of sin from worst to not so bad.  We are being converted to God's way and not the other way around.  Lest we forget this, every now and then when a question is raised about others, it finds its way back to us and where we live. 

 

Presence, Touch, & Words. . .

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18B, preached on Sunday, September 8, 2024.

The ministry of our Lord is a ministry of presence, of touch, and of words.  He is where He needs to be and He touches even the untouchable with the grace of life.  Eventually it becomes the charge laid against Him – He is too chummy with sinners.  He knows us by name and knows our secrets and loves us still.  He calls us by name and we hear, recognize, and follow Him.  That ministry of presence is also what the pastoral office is about.  You are where your people need you to be and you offer them the personal touch of a name and hands joined in prayer in recognition of God’s presence and His high touch ministry.

The world does not get this.  The world knows power, raw power, and does not understand or appreciate a God who is present with His people and who works not primarily through demonstrations of power but of acts of mercy.  God shows His character through His presence with those who suffer, His touch upon their hearts, and His grace to forgive their sins and lift up in hope their sagging spirits.  Earthly kings send men to die in battles to preserve their reign but the King whom we know as Jesus dies in our place and manifests His reign from the throne of a cross, a baptismal font, and an altar.

Today the Lord’s mercy is manifest in two things that we too often take for granted.  The ability to hear is seldom valued until hearing fades or is gone and the ability to speak is considered routine until our voices are lost to us.  We know how important our eyes are but we do not always appreciate how important our ears and our voices are.  Yet in this miracle of Jesus it is exactly with the ears that do not hear and the mouths that do not speak that our Lord manifests the fullness of His mercy, grace, and compassion.  

Imagine for a moment never being able to hear the sound of your children or your parents, never hearing the bird’s song or the sound of waves breaking upon the shore or the crack of thunder or the sound of a symphony.  Imagine never being able to open your mouth and speak of your love and affection to your family or to call out in warning to someone in danger or be able to tell others what lives deep in your heart or the forefront of your mind.  Words are the key.  Words that we hear, words that we speak, and words through which we communicate with others are so drawn from our isolation and loneliness into fellowship and family.  Words are essential to who we are as people, to who we were created to be, and to a quality of life God intended for us to know and enjoy.

So Jesus meets a man who cannot hear and who cannot speak.  This man is not only isolated from those whom he loves and from the whole of society, he is isolated from God, from the fellowship of God’s House, from the voice of the Good Shepherd speaking to him, and from the song of praise that erupts from the joy of God’s presence.  Jesus has not come to make the man’s life easier or more convenient but to restore the man to the life God intended for him.

Words are key to worship.  Words are key to knowing the Lord and responding to the Lord’s grace and mercy.  God speaks and we say back to Him what He has said and in that we discover who we are and who He is.  More than this, we are drawn into a familial relationship in which words are not optional or incidental but essential and pivotal to what it means to know the Lord and belong to Him.  Jesus was not simply fixing the man’s ears or tongue but restoring the man into the fellowship of God’s people.  

This is what our Lord does for you.  Your ears may hear but what you hear is the sound of anger and dispute, of sensuality and lust, of pride and unbelief.  You hear everything but the one thing you need to hear.  That is what sin has done.  It has left us deaf to the sound of God’s voice and unable to address the Lord as our heavenly Father.  Instead of being fully conversant with God, we know vulgarity and pornography, hate and contempt, arrogance and selfishness.  We are on a first name basis with every sin but unless the Lord opens our ears and our tongues we neither know Him nor can respond to His goodness, mercy, and compassion.

The ear Jesus touched and the tongue He loosed were not about giving the man hearing and a voice but the chance to hear God’s voice and to respond with the song of praise that rises up from faith.  Ours is a God of words, the Word made flesh, who speaks creation into being and who becomes incarnate so that we may hear of His steadfast love and mercy.  Jesus was not simply letting the man hear his wife’s voice or address his children but to know the Lord and to be able to say amen to worship and praise of the gathered people of God.

What a shame that we not only take for granted the gift of hearing and speaking but that we waste it on words that do not matter.  God’s Word does that of which it speaks.  By His Word we are addressed with Christ’s forgiveness and set free from the bondage of our sins.  By His Word we are called by name in the waters of baptism so that we might be His own and live under Him in His kingdom.
By His Word He addresses our sins with a power greater than sin and we are forgiven.  By His Word He speaks and bread becomes His body to feed us eternal life and wine becomes His blood cleansing us from all our sin.  By His Word He will call forth the dead from their sleep and raise them to everlasting life.  This is why we need to hear and why our ears are given to us to hear God’s Word.

Worship is words.  We are gathered by the Spirit, invoking God’s presence we assemble where He has promised to be.  We pray together and give our Amen to the prayers and petitions of God’s people.  We offer praise and thanksgiving with words that God Himself has given us.  Worship is not about the meditation of the heart or the thoughts that fill the mind but about the voice of God calling us to be His own and the Spirit working through that Word and the song of praise that erupts from within us because God has spoken love to His in His Son.

You are the man in the Gospel for today.  God has opened your ears to hear His voice.  God has loosed your tongue to speak in worship and in witness all that He has said and done.  God sends you forth with His Word upon your lips so that you can speak Jesus in your homes, at your workplace, and where you live.  God has given you ears to hear His voice and a voice to proclaim His Word.  You were made for this.  Sin shut down your ears so that you heard everything but God’s Word and sin filled your voice with the impure and empty words that mean nothing.  But now you hear the Lord, delight in His saving work, and are sent forth as His witnesses to speak His Word to others.  This is why you were created.  Not to pursue your own will but the will of Him who made you and redeemed you.  Thanks be to God!

An odd state of affairs. . .

I am struck by how we do not see the strangeness of leaving the recruitment of church workers to the colleges, universities, and seminaries of the Church.  It is a convenient presumption entirely because it leaves off the hook those who ought to be the primary agents of recruitment simply because of how closely they are located to the lives of our young people.  Certainly, it is well and good that the educational institutions of Synod do what they can, however, we have assigned to them a different role and purpose, namely, to train and form church workers -- from pastors to teachers to DCEs to DCOs to DPMs to deaconesses and so on.  Let me be so bold as to day that it is also not simply the pastor's job to recruit them either.  Although the pastor has great influence over them and great potential simply by way of example and should encourage young men and women to consider church work careers, the real recruiters and the ones who often work against that recruitment are the people in the pews -- especially family members!  I talked about this on KFUO a while ago.

The recruitment of church workers begins with parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, godparents, friends, and church family.  If those closest to our youth people do not raise to them the possibility of becoming a pastor or church worker or encourage their interest in a church vocation or support them financially toward such a goal, whatever the pastor or college or university or seminary does will face a brick wall.  Now more than 20 years ago a retired pastor came to be our assistant pastor.  He was a second career guy who would have been a first career pastor but he did not get the encouragement or financial support from his family and friends and church family.  On the other side of the coin, I had not even thought about becoming a pastor but my family, church family, and pastors insisted that I give this prayerful consideration.  My home congregation gave this encouragement a concrete form in the money that supported me financially through St. John's Winfield to the Senior College through the Seminary in Ft. Wayne.  And all of this happened in the midst of one of the worst times in our Synod's history -- the split!  Yes, I did enjoy the support of my pastor and I has recruited by a college but the key support was from parents, extended family, and the folks I knew in the pews of my home congregation.  And the fruit it bore has endured 44 years.

The key here is this:  What message are we sending to our young people?  Do we esteem church work as a most noble vocation or do we caution our young people about the drawbacks and burdens of that work?  Do we honor our pastors with respect and respect what they do among us or do we treat them as our servants or speak disparagingly of them to others?  Do we provide the kind of financial compensation they deserve or one we think will not cost us too much?  Do we give them enough so that they are free to devote themselves to the work of the kingdom and not making ends meet?  How do we speak of the Church or school?  Our people are hearing from their parents and family and friends and even church family that church work is hard, does not pay well, and will leave you in the crosshairs of their critics.  How do you suppose that translates in their hearts to a fair consideration of a church work vocation?

Why is this such a big concern?  Our Synod cannot survive with only second career pastors and church workers.  They are absolutely wonderful gifts from God but their time of service is always shorter than a first career church worker.  Furthermore, we are approaching that time when the boom classes of my era are hitting retirement or physical incapacity.  We are facing a black hole of need and we are simply not raising up enough pastors, teachers, deaconesses and all the other offices appointed for service in our church to meet the challenge of those retiring, leaving, or dying.  What may be today an inconvenience as congregations wait longer and try harder to fill vacancies will become tomorrow's disaster.  This is not about what is easiest for us today but what will best serve those who come after us -- including our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Set Apart to Serve is a great program but it is not a solution.  Its best work is to alert YOU to the ways that YOU directly affect those who may or may not be considering church work vocations in your family or in your church family.  Support this program not to benefit your pastor or teacher or whatever but because it will directly affect YOU.  Look at the youth sitting in your pews, recruit them for church work vocations, support them when they show interest in these vocations, encourage them with your prayers and financial support, and do it not for their sake but for the sake of yourself and those in your family down the road.

Ethics is a lost art. . .

As a Lutheran I am both proud and blessed to count the noted ethicist Gilbert Meilaender  as one of us.  While ethics has never been my particular forte, I have deeply appreciated the wisdom and approach of Dr. Meilaender.  His contributions to First Things were always my first look upon receiving that journal.  His distinguished career at UVA, Oberlin, and Valpo is something to admire (back when Valpo was an institution of character).  I also know the name of Robert Benne.  I have read some of this work but am not nearly as familiar with him as I am Meilaender.  Unfortunately, I am unable to name another Lutheran ethicist or really any others worth reading.  That is a problem.

We are entering an era in which ethical choices and decisions of great magnitude are facing Christians of all stripes regularly.  The world around us has left us with vexing issues of value and worth for us as people.  We have technological abilities that have far exceeded our consideration of their goodness or benefit over the long haul.  The very nature of our identities as male and female have become questions rather than answers.  Life has become cheap and easy and reproductive technology has allowed us to fully separate children from marriage, sex from love, and procreation from sex.  The approaching specter of artificial intelligence is a threat as well as possible blessing but who knows how to thread the needle of what is right and good from what is wrong and destructive.  We have shown how we can take something like the internet and turn it into a forum of hate and division.  How do we sort through all of these issues?  I wish I could say we have time but we do not.  The days of thoughtful consideration have long ago given way to an urgent need to figure out what is good, right, true, and beautiful and what is not.  While this is certainly true whether or not you are a Christian, it is of paramount importance to Christians.  Where is our faith in the midst of all of these choices and challenges?

Every day our people are facing decisions that come with ethical considerations that surpass a simple answer.  What about end of life issues?  How much treatment must or should be done for diseases that will prove fatal?  What about stem cell research, testing, and medical experimentation?  We already learned that what once defined something as a vaccine has been redefined in the wake of COVID and the supposed COVID vaccines (which do not prevent anything).  More and more of these kinds of vaccines are being promoted and with less testing and certainty about side effects.  Can we trust our doctors?  How much diagnosing and prescribing can be done online?  What about the cost of all these new meds advertised on TV?  Hardly any of this has much to do with sex or gender and yet our people are begging for help sorting out what to believe and what to do.

We need more people the caliber of Gilbert Meilaender.  We need strong and confident voices to help our people sort out the way through all of these questions now and the new ones which are sure to come.  None of this is optional and most all of it goes to the heart and core of what it means to be human, what is the meaning and purpose of life itself, and what diminishes that life and ennobles that life.  Ethics in college was a class I had to take but hated.  Ethics in Seminary was there only in bits and pieces.  I regret now that we did not have the benefit of a good ethicist and the value of a solid Christian ethical foundation when I was in college and Seminary long ago.  Without Gilbert Meilaender I would be lost knowing whose voice is reliable in a world filled with voices insisting they know the way through.  For the Christian, ethics is not just a discipline but the very application of the Law and the Gospel to these profound and urgent questions of everyday life. 

What does unity mean?

For a very long time now the forces of progressivism and liberalism have sought to steal doctrine from the unity of the Church and replace with a big tent approach.  These forces are also at work in Rome trying to do the same thing.  One Cardinal actually said “when we speak of unity, of communion, we are not referring to unity of thought.”  What an odd statement!  Are the words of the Creeds merely suggestions or symbolic language?  Has Rome accepted the fact that there are different theologies at work within its big tent and decided to accept that?

In what seem see as either tragedy or comedy, the Battle for the Bible in the Missouri Synod was not really about everyone accepting what the theologians and Bible scholars at the St. Louis Seminary had come to embrace, it was about toleration.  The cause then was the same as it is now.  Lutheranism ought to be a big tent in which we hold some things in common but always defer to local option.  Goodness knows that has defined us with respect to worship and catechesis.  We are literally everyone doing what we deem to be right in our own eyes.  As long as we retain the confessional article in our constitutions, the rest of it does not seem to matter.  Before we point our finger at Rome and snicker, we must admit that the same has befallen us.  Unity means nearly anything and everything but not doctrinal agreement.  

All over the place Christianity is redefining what it means to agree.  More often than not it has come to mean agreeing to disagree but also agreeing that the disagreement does not matter.  How else can you explain the ecumenical connections with the ELCA and nearly everyone but the next largest Lutheran church body in America?  My fear is that we are holding out against the ELCA but caving in to the local forces who define what is believed, taught, and confessed in the congregation, how and what worship takes place, and who is admitted to the Lord's Table.  We did fight the Battle for the Bible and a little more than 100K of our people left in protest to end up somewhere in the ELCA (or its spin offs).  But did we lose the war?  When unity means anything and everything except doctrine, that is exactly what we have done.  We have lost the war.  Maybe we did not lose it on the convention level or in official teaching, we I fear we have lost it where it counts in the minds and hearts of the people in the pews.

What would St. Paul say to this?  His harsh words exposing the false doctrinal unity within the Corinthian congregation would not be softened in his rebuke of us.  If we continue to define pastoral training in terms of minimums instead of fullness, we will effectively localize even the ministry to the point where no one knows or cares what they really believe.  Pastoral formation is at its core indoctrination (yes, I know that is a bad word in the minds of some).  We form the pastoral heart and mind by enduing in them the doctrine of the faith so that their voices may confess in and outside of the congregation the unchanging faith.  Rome seems to have forgotten that you reap what you sow.  Have we forgotten it as well?

Big business. . . at what cost?

Nearly everything that was once charity has become big business.  Let me give you a couple of examples.  In a report, Roman Catholic charities have received $800 Million from the federal government to transport and care for illegal immigrants.  Trans promoters say that each conversion costs $150K and multiply that by a million or more and you come up with an industry that is bigger than the entire film industry.  I once dealt with real people handling my insurance claims but now have layer upon layer of administration between me and the actual payment of my bills -- layers that were there only recently and supposedly save money.  Watch TV or look on your screens to find drug industry ads galore -- because there is big money in selling drugs, at least the new ones! 

I am not against business.  My father and his father before him were businessmen.  Their small businesses were not simply good for them but good for the communities in which they lived and the people around them.  What does concern me is how some things that were not the domains of business in the past have become almost the exclusive sphere of business now.  Charities have become, for some a small part but in others the majority of their work, businesses competing for the grants or governmental funds that pay the bills.  They do not provide the services themselves but many have become general contractors who take the money as NGOs and then find local small contractors to actually provide those services.  They are still called charities but this is a far cry from the time in which church organizations raised their own funds from the generosity of church members and provided the services themselves.  So does that mean that they are essentially different than they once were?

The WheatRidge, Bethesda, Lutheran World Relief, and so many other big names from the past are not providing directly what they once did but have become funneling agencies who find and support local groups to provide those services.  In the process, they have also become advocacy organizations for the general cause -- pleading for the needs before governments and legislatures.  Again, I am not saying all of this is bad or evil or anything of the sort.  But it is very different than what those organizations were created to do and how they once did it.  Furthermore, they are more and more distant from the churches that were once not only their constituency but they fund base.  So what does that mean?  Again, I do not have all the answers but I am concerned that we do not seem to be raising questions.  These parachurch organizations may do good for people in need but are they really connected to the churches that once formed them or engaged in the work the churches once formed them to do or have they left behind this past to honor it as legacy rather than agency?

The medical establishment still has the legacy names -- Lutheran, Methodist, St. Thomas, etc... but they are in the same boat.  They are non-profits run to make money for their causes and it has become very big business.  Add to this the fact that in many communities hospitals are franchises or part of a chain of profitmaking endeavors.  They serve, yes, but in order to make money.  I deal with some of them all the time and it is very hard to distinguish the difference between a non-profit and a corporate hospital or medical services model.  You have probably had the same experience.  Has it improved health care or made for more access for those in need?  I have already written before of how the promotion of the newest and latest drugs on print and social media and TV have transformed how we see prescriptions and what we expect from them.  To what extent has this side of the business shaped or influenced the provider side?  Are we asking those questions and do we want to know?

Now we come to those with gender dysphoria.  They already suffer from a much higher than normal incidence of depression, suicide, and loneliness.  As if that were not enough, they have been noticed by big business but is that a good thing?

“The Gender Industrial Complex” has suggested that this is big business and a new market niche for al already crowded medical industrial complex.  Look at the numbers and the issues:

• While the total cost of transitioning varies widely by individual, lifelong use of cross-sex hormones could cost up to $300,000 or more per person, while a full surgical transition could cost more than $150,000.
• The potential health effects of undergoing transition are numerous, including increased risk of cancer, nerve damage, chronic pain, sexual dysfunction, mental health issues, and the need for additional surgeries.
• A number of transgender surgery providers, including Cedars Sinai, the Regents of the University of Michigan, the Mount Sinai Health System, and several others, were each estimated to bring in over $100 million in revenue in 2022 from these practices.
• Pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and AbbVie lead the way in hormone production, with 2022 revenues of $74 million and $51 million, respectively, from those products.
• Total revenues for transgender drugs and surgeries in 2023 were estimated to surpass $4.4 billion. And by 2030, the market is expected to grow beyond $7.8 billion.

Transitioning to a different gender is not just a matter of a few visits to a doctor or a few injections.  It’s a lifelong process of regular medication and a long series of surgical procedures -- all of it comes with a price tag and a potential to make some big money. 

So there you have a few of my questions.  Is the business model the best to deal with charities and medicine?  Is the business model able to keep in check the need for income and the best interest of the patient?  What about church charities that have become non-governmental organizations, funneling the taxpayer funds to a cause but not quite able to say anything about the faith while doing it?  All of this leaves me frustrated and not a little angry.

 

Urgent and not. . .

It occurs to me that one of the distinct problems of sin is our difficulty with time.  No, I am not suggesting that our (read that my) inability to be on time is sin's greater problem for me.  What I am suggesting is that sin has colored how we see things and given us a false view to them and therefore to their urgency.

Not too long ago Jesus lamented that the crowd that had been fed was more interested in bread than in the Word of the Lord.  Yes, they were certainly shallow.  But is that not the real problem created by sin?  We instinctively value the things of the moment higher than the things of eternity and we give into the things of the moment only to create an eternal problem.

They were hungry -- perhaps even hangry!  Hunger burned in their bellies and when Jesus satisfied that hunger, that was all they wanted from Him.  Jesus feared that He would be cast as a bread king until the only thing He could offer to people was what they wanted.  So entered the lauded discourses on the Bread of Life.  Nobody is at their best when the desire in an empty stomach is the only thing they hear.  The Lord does not give in to satisfy the moment before satisfying the soul -- well, at least not always.  In fact He warns over and over again against such a preoccupation.  What good is it if we give our lives for the treasure that fades or molds or turns sour?  Indeed!

The same is true of sexual desire.  It appears to be the single thing that informs everything about us these days.  Who we desire, what we desire from them, and how we feel about those desires dominates every other gauge of our character or our identity.   We have become like the animals who are driven not by something ordered or orderly but instinct alone.  Far be it from us to deny such desires and not give into our sexual drives or feelings -- why, that would be positively subhuman.  Or would it?  Is it not our ability to judge and control and defer our desires what marks us as human, created in the image of God, and distinct from the animals and the rest of God's good creation?  

Our desires are urgent and not simply evil.  We have to satisfy that hunger burning in our bellies.  We have to satisfy our horniness or want for sexual pleasure.  No matter what.  No matter how.  We have all walked around the house looking for the perfect snack or food to answer the desire within.  We have normalized sexual desire to make it available to us through pornography so that it is actually easier to conjure up from the internet an erotic image than it is to find a hot dog and some stale chips to satisfy our hunger.  No wonder we are screwed up.

All those prosperity preachers who tell us to give into desire and that is what God wants us to do are putting lipstick on the pig of sin.  Sin is precisely our inability to reign in the desires inside of us or order them rightly or delay them until an appropriate time.  No matter whether those desires are the swift retort of words to slap down an opponent or the quest for the perfect snack or the want of orgasm, giving into the present desire is always the mark of sin.  Our passion is our undoing while Jesus' passion in suffering is our redemption.  He denied Himself all the way to death on the cross and for us and our salvation set aside instinct for the sake of redemption.  Did He do all of this only so that we could give into our desires without shame or guilt or regret?  Is that the value of the cross?

What is most urgent is that which appears to be the thing you never have to take seriously -- the matters of salvation.  God in His mercy has accomplished all things for our salvation so that we might first of all order ourselves and our desires rightly lest sin gain the upper hand.  We belong to the Lord.  God grant us so to use and pass through the things temporal that we lose not the things eternal.  Pray it and pray it over and over and over again.....

Pathetic conversation. . .

For some reason, we think it is always better to be in dialogue than not.  That is decidedly true of the ecumenical conversations.  There was a time when serious minded people had serious minded conversations.  I think back to the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogues which began with such earnestness and gave birth to some very weighty tomes.  They did not end as well as they began although that might be due to the changes that took place within Lutheranism and in Rome by the final volumes of essays produced.  Certainly the justification statement by the two involved some creative interpretation of past statements as well as current negotiated agreement in order for either to claim a certain amount of satisfaction in place of integrity.  Missouri's own robust participation in the beginning gave way to a mere spectator perspective willing to throw potshots at the final statements.  As right as those criticisms might have been, the fact that they came from the peanut gallery and not from full fledged dialogue partners seems to mitigate the value of it all (well, in my mind, at least).  Now, as I reported earlier, the Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue has produced some kind of agreement on the filioque.  It is a curious agreement but that is not the only odd thing about it.  It was also minus Missouri and made with the Lutheran Federation partners who can agree on sexuality more than their own confessional documents.  What value is this?

While I can always fault Missouri for preferring the nosebleed seats to a real seat at the table, it is precisely Missouri and her International Lutheran Council friends who ought to be the ones Rome and Constantinople seek out for conversation.  At least we mean what we say and are serious about being Lutheran.  How can you represent Lutheranism to any other tradition unless you are serious about it?  The ELCA and its host of ecumenical friends in America (not Lutheran) and its international allies in the Lutheran World Federation are the least serious ecumenical partners the folks from the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople could be talking to but they aren't and we aren't interested either.  I can only wish for the day when we would put the brightest and best of us around a table and tell them to have at it over what divides us.  For it is only by true to who we are that we can approach one another with any degree of integrity in pursuit of understanding and possible rapprochement.  It will not solve anything if Lutherans come embarrassed by their Lutheranism or Roman Catholics or Orthodox are equally ill at ease by their past and present theological perspective.  We will not gain anything by being bad representatives of our theology or confession and if we do achieve agreement it is worthless.

What good does it do for Rome to find some commonality with the LWF crowd when the elephant in the room is the ordination of women, the embrace of same-sex marriage, and the adoption of the gender alphabet soup?  What value is it if we put at a table people who do not like or want to believe the Word of God and who insist that the Word as we have it cannot convey the true Jesus of history.  What will Orthodoxy get from a Lutheran crowd that may just set aside the filioque but at the same time sets aside every faithful doctrine that conflicts with the current reason, experience, or worldview of modernity?  Jiminy Cricket, it is cool and all but it is the fakest coolness there is and it turns putrid the longer you look at it and the deeper you dig into it.  Come on, people!  If there is any value in dialogue or any hope in a theological conversation, could we agree that the only folks allowed at the table are those who believe in their own tradition?

Kindergarten rules. . .

I was listening on the radio and there was a report of some phone call of supporters of Kamala Harris.  It was about white privilege and women of white privilege and how they can support her candidacy.  In the beginning of this conference call or zoom meeting -- whatever it was -- a voice came on to issue the rules of this conversation.  There were the obligatory warnings about distancing yourself from your white privilege and other such things.  What struck me, however, was the call of the rule maker for the participants to put on their listening ears and to pay more attention to hearing than to speaking, thus giving women of color a larger part of the conversation.

Listening ears. . .   It reminded me a while back of an ELCA female pastor who warned that the feminization of the clergy would eventually result in "the pastoral office speaking with the moral authority of kindergarten teachers."  Yes, sometimes we do need to hear in plain and easy to understand words the questions, answers, and rules of a polite society in times not so polite.  That said, her words were initially lost to me until I heard again the conversation mentioned above.  

While there may be some who think that this is exactly what we need today in our world of conflict, suspicion, and violence, the problem is not listening ears.  The problem lies much deeper.  There is a rather strange arrogance in the presumption that the problems of our unjust world lie in the unwillingness of the privileged to hear out the oppressed and to give them space.  It is a further extension of the kind of victimization culture that has come to define us and people in general today.  We are not responsible for ourselves but are all victims in one way or another to the unfortunates who went before us (including our own parents).  How sad it is that have come to think that the problems of America are the result of people who refuse to hear instead of an honest disagreement over what is good and right and beneficial for the state of things in our land!  If we disagree over basic values and in particular over moral values, that is not a matter which will be solved by listening.  Either one is right and the other wrong or there is no resolution.  Competing values cannot exist side by side within one community without there being conflict.  The world is not a kindergarten classroom where problems are solved by distraction or diversion or sitting in a corner or a nap.  We are not a conflicted society because we are not listening.  We have stopped listening because we are not speaking the same language.

The role of religion and faith was once a key factor in the common bond of a people who were from everywhere but who were united into one community.  The values that once united us were not all that religion specific -- life, family, work, etc...  Even when we did not practice it, we believed that life was sacred and cherished it.  Even when we failed at it, we valued marriage as the noble goal and estate of life and the family as the central structure upon which any society could or should be built.  Even when we struggled for equal access to jobs and the marketplace, we believed in that marketplace and in the dream of a home, a job, and a means of providing for your family and helping your neighbors.  As imperfect as we were at these goals, the values were held in common. It is the disintegration of these values that has become our undoing.  We no longer value life but have treated it as a commodity at best or a burden at worst.  We no longer value marriage and family but have elevated the individual over all other estates.  We no longer value work but leisure and entertainment and pleasure above all things and tolerate work as a means to pay for what we really value.  Listening ears cannot repair what now lies broken nor can hearing each other out replace the common values and truths that once united us.

Whether you believe the doctrines of Christianity or not or believed them all the same or not, America expected faith to influence values and the common values of life, marriage, family, home, and work to be the bonds that bound us diverse peoples into one nation.  No, it is not the job of the Church to restore these to America as a nation but as a Church we would lie to our people if we denied how faith expected and supported these causes of life, marriage, family, home, work, and personal responsibility.  As the Christian faith has been co-opted into something that leaves people to do what seems right in their own eyes and in the moment, we have less and less to offer people and a nation in search of real unity.  Traditional Christianity was never an easy partner with the culture but it now seems we have little choice but to war with the voices of those who insist that life is a relative value, marriage is what we define it to be, family is not as important as the individual, home is a state of mind and not real, work has to be enjoyed to be worth anything, and personal responsibility is less important than acknowledging how we are victims of someone or something.  In the end, the Olympic controversy puts on display how distant culture is from the Christian roots that once grounded our life together in the West.  Our cultural decline is revealed not by the way the West has rejected Christianity but by the way the West has repudiated the values that once united us all as a people and replaced it with a false concept of diversity, equity, injustice, and access that can do little more than accuse and offers the pathetic solution of listening voices as what we need to repair what is broken.

A more discerning checkbook. . .

Our commitment to education in America remains strong -- so strong, in fact, that last year, institutions of higher learning raked in nearly $60 billion in donations from alumni and those with a heart for education.  The real question, however, is what are those dollars and stock donations supporting?

Of that $60 billion, how much of it is Lutheran money or Roman Catholic or any other chunk of the pie?  Who knows?  I expect that a goodly number of those dollars and shares are Lutheran and Roman Catholic.  But why are Lutherans and Roman Catholics giving so much money to higher education?  Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and MIT are the list leaders with in excess of $200 billion in their endowment funds and counting.  On the public list, two Texas, a Michigan, California, and Virginia schools have about $120 billion and counting.  Do they need your dollars or stock certificates?  Christians should be in the business of supporting schools that align with their faith and values.  If that were to happen, I would hope that this would mean faithful Christian schools that reflect the values of the churches that sponsor them would benefit from more of the financial largess.  Need I say more?  I guess I do.

If you are Lutheran or Roman Catholic and an alum of a school that does not mirror your faith and values, why not reconsider your support of those schools and help the schools that do reflect your faith and values?  In fact, you might actually consider shifting your support from colleges and universities entirely to support the K-8 or K-12 Lutheran schools, classical schools, or traditional Roman Catholic schools.  Yes, I am addressing not only Lutherans but also Roman Catholics.  Put your money where your faith is.  There are laudable alternatives to a secular school but they need your help to make it available and accessible to the greater numbers of students.  Give them YOUR help.

There are only 50 million school-aged children in the nation right now.  The struggle to give them options closer to the values of their homes, families, and churches is a mighty one but it will be a lost cause unless we can come up with the funds to enable our children to make the faithful choice.  Maybe it it completely unrealistic to envision this type of sudden shift in financial support to K-12 education or to suggest that donors stop the familiar pattern of supporting their alma mater and begin supporting with a discerning eye those schools that continue to uphold the orthodox Christian faith.  That is exactly my challenge.  Don't write out the check you have been writing for some time to support your alma mater in their fall appeal.  Give that money where it can do good and where you will not have to live in fear of what your bucks are supporting.  

Work is not a curse. . .

My father was a good example of someone who believed that man was created for work.  He worked six days a week from teenage years until a month before he died (when cancer left him unable to work).  Today he is at best an anachronism and at worst an example of all that was wrong with people.  We do not live for work today.  We live for ourselves.

We have plans and dreams.  We seek happiness and fulfillment.  We want experiences and memories.  We see incomes more as a right than reward and we expect a great deal from government that other generations before us did not.  We have come to believe it is our right to work a modest portion of our lives (30 years or so) and then to enjoy the rest of our lives in pursuit of what makes us happy.  We have come to expect that even at work we should be allowed to shop online, play games, live on social media, and the like.

As an individual, I am in the middle of it all.  I have learned too well from my father that work is good and this is what we were created for.  But I am drawn by the prevailing trends of modernity to also seek happiness.  That is the place of my generation.  I could say that I am uniquely suited then to objectively critique both sides.  But that would be a lie.  I am as mired as anyone in my context.

As a pastor, I complain about direction of things and people.  I fear what will happen when monthly church attendance becomes the norm for most of our members instead of only part of them.  I fear for the future when people will no longer believe it is good or right to sacrifice much of your time or energy or money for causes other than self and self-interest.  So many see me as a curmudgeon complaining about the present and future while glorying in a false image of the past.

But that is not what I am trying to do.  I would rather us see work again as a gift from God and not simply as a means to a paycheck or a duty.  I would rather us rediscover the sense of vocation in which work has a noble place and our work is a noble calling.  I would rather relieve work of some of the burden we have placed upon it -- as if work time were playtime with a financial reward attached.

I look around me and wonder what we will do when labor is left to the immigrants or migrants because we neither want to work that hard or do the distasteful things that must be done.  I wonder what will happen to us when technology makes it easier to produce things, service things, and even care for our bodies with machines instead of people.  I wonder what will happen to us when our social interactions become completely digital as we work at home, shop from home, and entertain ourselves at home.

Which all reminds me that retirement is an idea that is inherently a contradiction.  Do we retire from the work of the relationships and supporting the people in our care?  Does the husband retire from being husband or wife from wife or do we continue the work to which we committed ourselves when we were joined in marriage?  Do we retire from parenting (or grandparenting)?  Do we retire from serving our neighbor?  Do we retire from the work of worship, together in God's house and in our individual devotional lives?  It is at best an exchange of domains -- a focus on one gives way to the focus on another with renewed effort and with the blessing of additional time.  But the foolish idea that retirement is the day when you become a child again without noble labor and only leisure is a lie and a poison.  We were created for work.  Some work continues until we breathe our last.  Some may be given to others.  But all we do is to the Lord.

Labor Day is a small reminder that work is good.  It is not a god nor was it meant to be but it is not a bad thing.  Six days you shall labor. . . said the Lord.  This was not the curse.  The work that we were created for became a curse when we resented the God who made us and had to compete in a world replete with injustice and forces against us.  Christ did not come to relieve us of work but to restore a right relationship and to the work we were always to do. . . and to deliver us to a perfect rest not confined to a day.  Oh, well, I have given you enough to think about for this Labor Day.

From safe, legal, and rare to good. . ..

In March of this year VP Kamala Harris, now the Democratic candidate for President, visited an abortion clinic and the press recorded it was “the first time a sitting US president or vice president [had visited] an abortion provider.”  It was in Minnesota, perhaps the first state to enshrine abortion rights following the Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court -- oh yes, and also the home of Gov. Tim Walz now the running mate of Harris.  Later the state eliminated all health and safety protections for women, removed the 24-hour waiting period, permitted taxpayer funding of abortion, and repealed the state’s protection of children born alive after failed abortions.  Walz signed both abortion bills.  Whatever else they might have in common, it is clear that both Harris and Walz are on the same page with respect to abortion.

In the annals of history then President Clinton had introduced the idea that abortions should be safe, legal, and rare.  That was 1992.  Sixteen years later it became the phrase used by his wife, then presidential contender Hillary Clinton, in her 2008 bid for the top spot.  Now sixteen years later nobody seems to care if abortions are safe -- safety is a lesser concern than access.  Furthermore, the battle to make them legal seems to have fueled everything from state constitutional amendments to a desire by now President Biden to reshape the Supreme Court in the wake of Dobbs and a few other decisions.  Finally, the whole world seems to have forgotten entirely the whole idea that abortions should be rare.  In fact, in the wake of the Dobbs decision removing this right from the federal arena and shifting it back to the states, the actual number of abortions has gone up -- not down -- even though 14 states now ban it, 3 have a ban after 6 weeks, and 2 ban after 12 weeks.  

Now the Republican Party has practically removed abortion from its party platform and has moved from the most pro-life party to one silent on the issue -- except, of course, for the affirmation that states should decide.  Trump himself has left us hanging on the issue of abortion as he seems not to know his own mind on the issue.   Furthermore, the states that have no restrictions on abortion are not necessarily the saltwater or liberal bastions one might presume for some with a libertarian streak have decided to say nothing on the issue and leave it up to the individual (such as in Alaska).

Clearly the pro-life cause was not simply about changing a right.  Neither can it be satisfied with changing a law.  If we are to affect the rate of abortion we must change the minds of people about the very nature of life itself, where it comes from, and what duty is ours to preserve and protect it.  For the abortion issue is but one front on an overall war against the sacred character of life and a move to let people decide in general and as individuals its value, when it begins, and when it should end.  This is the realm not of the state or the federal government but of the Church.  There are significant voices within the American churches who insist that on this moral issue there must be no ambiguity and yet the reality is that in the pews there is exactly that -- ambiguity.  Apparently, we like the principle but find it hard to apply.  The churches opposed to abortion outnumber those in favor and yet we have not simply failed to make our case at the ballot box, we have failed miserably in the pews.  Our people are listening to our rhetoric but they hearts lie elsewhere -- especially those under the age of 30.  

We have watched as the once solid political and religious pro-life alliance has faded and become silent.  We have watched as the one party that seemed solidly in our camp has decided not to say much in the hopes of gaining the halls of power by this silence.  We have watched as the courts unhitched the right from the federal arena only to have it championed successfully by states.  We have watched as politicians seem to have paid little political price for their pro-abortion stance or their silence on the issue while anti-abortion folks struggle.  What that ought to tell us is this -- don't put your eggs in one basket.  Even more profound is the sobering thought that the cause of life begins not at the statehouse or Capitol but in the pews in front of the preacher and in the classrooms where the faith is taught.  Politics, government, and law cannot change the heart but the Word of the Lord is able to convict, convince, and convert by the power of the Holy Spirit.  We have our work cut out for us.