The fool says in his heart there is no God...

I had to laugh because there was nothing else to do.  The commenter insisted that God must lie since He said of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that if you eat you will die.  Of course, the commenter said that Adam and Eve did not die but continued to live and to live long.  Therefore, God must have lied.  You may respond as I initially did that they did certainly die -- not in the moment of their eating but at the time God appointed.  Perhaps there is another answer.

Could it be that they did not die at that moment precisely because God is merciful?  Those who read Genesis 3 do not fail to miss the promise of the one born of woman who will crush the serpent's head though he suffers the bruise of his own heel.  By this we affirm with the early fathers that Jesus did, indeed, began His redemptive work already in the garden of Eden and, literally, just moments after the Fall.  The curse of death will not be overcome until He who overcame it fulfills His saving work.  Therefore, the all-holy God expresses His mercy by countering the curse with the promise. God did not immediately destroy Adam and Eve though they had defied His commands.  They did not immediately suffer the full penalty of the curse they had brought on themselves solely because God had already determined that His mercy would be extended and prevail against the curse.  But not yet.  Even Eve seemed to understand it this way when she proclaimed of her first born Son "God has gotten me the Man!"  The Man is the one of whom God spoke in Genesis 3:15.  

Only God can lay aside His judgment for the sake of His mercy.  We cannot demand it of Him nor can we earn its blessing or merit His favor.  But He can and does have mercy, laying aside the curse for now because of the promise to come.  The word of that promise becomes the message of the patriarchs and prophets as they.  God does not lie.  The commenter was wrong.  The Lord did not misspeak nor did He sacrifice His creation for want of a moment of justice.  His mercy triumphed.  What seems to us like a God who knows not what He wants to do is in reality the God who knows exactly what He must do in order to rescue and redeem His lost jewels.  What kind of fool is upset that God has chosen mercy for an eternity over a moment of justice?  Only one who remains the skeptic of God to make relative what God has set in certainty.  How hard do we try to trip God up in His words when it is the clear word of mercy that He is delivering through His Son, the promise given in Eden to answer the claim of death upon us!  Indeed, the fool says in his heart there is no God and proceeds to prove his own cleverness over the Word of the Lord that endures forever.  In an amazing display of ignorance, the wisdom of man is shown for the sham it is and the foolishness of God wiser than us all.

Putting face to a uniform. . .

I am not sure how I feel about this Armistice Day being transformed into Veterans' Day.  It is not that I have something against all veterans but only that sometimes when we enlarge a day of remembrance it means that we lose touch with the specific people we are remembering.  Everyone becomes nobody in particular.  

Living in a city with such a huge presence of active duty, former military, and retired military has left me with many faces to put to this day and a depth of appreciation for the many who have defended our nation, fought to protect our liberty, and gone the world over in the cause of American interests.  The numbers of those dead and wounded over the years is too great a number for me to imagine.  On Sunday morning I see the faces of many young men and women who are there in their civies but whose normal clothing are uniforms.  

We have chaplains and enlisted and officers.  They do all kinds of jobs in the military. They include mechanics, helicopter pilots, special forces, paratroopers, clerks, medics, and all kinds of folk.  They are tall and short, men and women, from cities and rural areas, but all display a remarkable sense of duty that makes me feel safe and secure.  More than this, it makes me feel a deep and abiding sense of gratitude toward those who have served and now serve.

Today when I think of those who have served us, I think of someone not a lot of folk remember.  His name was Phil Secker.  He was an academic with a doctorate and much scholarly research but he had many sides to him.  Though actively opposed to the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s, he was intent upon supporting the troops who fought there. From 1967 to 1971, he was on active duty as an Army chaplain and volunteered for deployment to Vietnam.  While there, TIME magazine found him and found it odd to oppose a war but support troops; Phil didn't.  He received the Bronze Star for meritorious achievement in ground operations against hostile forces for serving in Saigon during all of 1969 among other medals and served as a chaplain in the Army Reserves until retiring in 1997 as a full colonel.  Phil and I knew each other in person when I served in the Atlantic District and maintained an email correspondence over his stewardship of the literary legacy of Arthur Carl Piepkorn, another noted military chaplain from our church body.  He died a month or so ago.  His family deserves the thanks of a grateful nation and I was richer for knowing Chaplain Secker.

As we observe Veterans Day (formerly Armistice Day and known as Remembrance Day for our Commonwealth friends), we lament that promise of the war to end all wars has not been kept.  Instead we find ourselves in conflict after conflict with even more breaking out across the globe.  Some are nearer to our homes and some are so far away we can barely pronounce the geographic names.  In the midst of it all are those men and women who have borne and continue to bear the lion's share of the burden of liberty's defense.  But don't just say a prayer of thanks, tell a veteran or active duty soldier "Thank you."

The worship laboratory. . .

If you are old enough, you can recall when Coke nearly killed itself by changing the old recipe.  New Coke was born to a people who wanted the classic taste of old.  It was a marketing nightmare.  To have a successful product and then turn that product into a lab experiment is to risk the financial viability of the whole company on a whim.  Business has learned to be careful.  Small things matter.  Remember when Bud Light shot itself in its foot by forgetting who it was and who drank it?  Well, the same is true of Christianity on Sunday morning.

Sunday morning has become a worship laboratory.  We all know this.  I am not saying this only with respect to the Evangelicals who have rejected the liturgy and its historic form but even of those who appreciate the liturgy and also among those whose liturgy is highly regulated by central authority.  You can blame the liturgical movement, Vatican II, or the advent of local publishing technology that can reproduce copy fit for a hymnal.  It does not matter who is to blame.  What does matter is that from Rome to Wittenberg, the liturgy has become one grand experiment that not only is an affront to God but a scandal to the people in the pews.

In some liturgical churches, nobody knows what they will find when they arrive on Sunday morning.  It may be a priest riding his bicycle around the chancel or spooky looking set of giant heads walking in procession.  It could be a clown service or a polka mass.  It could be an ancient text or words that were composed within hours of the gathering.  It could be a hymnal in hand or images on a screen.  It could be balloons on a string or champagne in the cup of Christ.  It could be a priest dancing or singing a contemporary ballad or a diva singing a love song to Jesus.  Who knows?  Whether Lutheran or Roman Catholic, we have turned the liturgy into a divine experiment as if it were a toy given to us to play with.  In the end we have betrayed our faithlessness to those assembled in solemn awe and to the world as if to say nothing really matters to me.  What a joke!

Church architecture has become the same kind of laboratory in which someone who does not understand what is happening in worship plays with shapes and materials to provide a space which serves nothing of its intended purpose and costs the faithful more than dollars.  Church music has become the same odd curiosity in which Jesus spins us round or we spin Him in a display of ignorance and foolishness that makes light of sin and even more of the cost Jesus bore to end its reign of death.  Church vestments have become no different that the blank canvases on which some play with shapes, textures, and colors only to betray the very purpose of the vestments themselves.  We are experimenting ourselves to death with the holy things of God.  

God has not given us the means of grace to play with but to observe with due solemnity because through these He does His bidding -- His Word that does that of which it speaks, His water that is no mere symbol but the means to accomplish what it signs, His food that feeds us not symbolic food but real flesh and real blood for the forgiveness of real sins.  Children seem to have better sense than adults in knowing what is sacred and holy -- too sacred and too holy than to toy with it.  A little child shall lead them.  We not only mock the things of God but God Himself and in the end we make ourselves fools because of how little the things of God matter to us.  I wish I could say better but I am tired of our constant need to express ourselves and then cover up our selfishness and foolishness by saying it is being done in the name of God.  When we make the liturgy into a toy, we are no more pious than the builders who built a tower of arrogance which God had to destroy.  If the Church is going through a time of cleansing, it may well be for the same reason God confounded the languages of those who would touch His feet with their accomplishments.  Don't play with worship and if you do be prepared to suffer the judgment of the God who really does care what we dare in His name.

To be judged. . .

It is always a curious thing when someone complains that they did not go to church to be judged.  But that is precisely why we go to church, isn't it?  What else does St. Peter mean?  For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?  (1 Peter 4:17).  We are judged in the Church so that we may be absolved and restored from our sin.  Without this judgment, we are left to await the final judgment when there will be no opportunity for repentance and no possibility of restoration -- only the final condemnation of what it means to be judged outside of Christ.

I wish we could get it through our heads that this judgment is a good thing.  Sure, no one likes to be reminded of their sin but God reminds of our sin not so that this sin may condemn us but so that we may confess it, plead the blood of Christ, and be forgiven.  This is exactly what John 3:17 says.  He did not send His Son into the world as the new lawgiver to condemn us even more or even to allow the old law to keep us captive to death.  He sent His Son into the world so that we might be saved.  That is exactly what happens every Sunday and in times of private confession when sinners gather before a holy God only to hear the unthinkable from the only One who is righteous -- I forgive you.  It is surely this that Jesus had in mind when gathered with His disciples on Easter evening He said exactly this -- whatsoever sins you forgive in My name are forgiven.  This peculiar power is not odd in the sense of being rare or unusual but because it represents the surprise of mercy to a people who expect justice (even when delusion presumes that justice is in our favor!).

There is no place where judgment is waived but there is a place where mercy answers judgment.  That is the blessing of God and it is why we are so bold as to confess.  He has promised to have mercy.  Is this not what John is saying?  If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:8-9)  It is a false Gospel to say that God has set aside His judgment and merely shrugs His shoulders at our sin or ignores it completely.  That is no Gospel at all.  The true Gospel is the despite our sin and God's judgment against that sin, there is an answer in the blood of Christ that cleanses us from all our sin.

If you want to go to a church where you are immune from judgment, you can certainly do so.  But that church has nothing to do with Jesus Christ.  It is precisely this kind of delusional thinking and this type of distortion that robs the Gospel of its power and steals from us the only comfort and hope we can have.  So let us be honest here.  We confess our sin because we know God to be more than just and it is this mercy that answers the judgment against us.  Thanks be to God!  I want to go where what I know is true from reason and from my own guilt and shame find an answer.  I want to come under the judgment of God for my sin now in the day of salvation so that I might also come under the banner of the blood of Christ. 

Niche Marketing. . .

Terry Mattingly called it niche-market journalism.  It is an apt and sad description of what has happened to the news media.  Reporters seem to be driven less by the objective facts than by an appeal to what the management has considered their market.  It is not quite that they are propagandists but they definitely are influenced by the market in how they view and what they report of the news -- something true of both right and left. We listen only to those who agree with us and then we wonder why we are so divided.  We are also content to live within the bubble of like-minded folk more than we want to engage others.  The rhetoric of our public conversation is design to confront and not convert.  So it is no wonder that we do the same thing in the realm of religion and faith.

The conversations of religion have become rather narrow and they seem to be headed toward an even more narrow audience and appeal.  In Lutheranism, for example, the forums that truly engage all flavors of Lutherans have become angry shouting matches between those who hold their line no matter what.  In the meantime, those forums that cater to a perspective seem to be doing fine.  Even in matters of faith, we would rather listen to those who agree with us than to risk learning from others.  I admit that this is true of me although I would also admit that I lurk on many forums whose theological perspective is vastly different from my faith.  I do so to learn but also find myself sharpening my faith by working through the challenges of those who disagree.  That said, I am more likely to be found in the less toxic conversations where the argument is won by Scripture and tradition than on those where he who shouts more or loudest is judged the victor.

This is true even of such things as our taste in religious music.  We listen to the playlist of the contemporary Christian music stations as the soundtrack of our daily lives even when we have a very different musical offering inside the Church on Sunday morning.  It is no wonder that we seem to have more interest in and more loyalty to what fits our taste than we do the sturdy hymns old and new that speak doctrine.  It points out the problem of trying to live with feet in two worlds.  It is hard enough to live in the world but not of it but to have the tension of faith pulled from very different ends of the spectrum is even more difficult.  So I have found that those who tend to listen to contemporary Christian music in their ear pods during the week will eventually find their way to a place that sounds like that on Sunday morning.

How well is this niche marketing serving the faith?  Probably no better than it serves us as a society and nation.  We engage people who sound like us but fail to engage those who have not heard or have not yet believed the Gospel.  While it is probably more of a challenge for a pastor who serves a congregation to regularly engage those outside the faith, those in the pew do it all the time -- out of necessity.  At work, at leisure, shopping, and in our entertainment venues we are always around people  who do not share our faith.  As that public square becomes increasingly hostile to the sound of religion and faith (at least that which stands for Scripture and within the catholic tradition), we find the opportunities to speak the faith even more limited.  With cell phones that go to voicemail and email that goes to trash or spam folders and ring doorbells that allow us to watch who is there without opening the door, the niche marketing becomes our only source of information and the faithless become even more insulated from the Gospel while the faithful become more secure in their little refuges away from the world.  It is not a good thing.

Of course, Protestants have pushed this to the limits.  Bible studies and small groups are situated for the narrowest of criteria.  I knew of one young woman who was let out of her Baptist small groups because she had gotten married and the group was for singles only.  There is the Protestant churches are children's church for certain ages and worship services that are offered especially to those with children or those without, to those of one generation or those of another, eschewing the idea that one size fits all.  Marketing has become a way to appeal except through the Gospel itself.  This is not a good thing. The Gospel is precisely for the mass market -- for those of every age, ethnicity, marital status, economic status, and every other thing used to divide.  We are sinners one and all to be saved by Him whose blood cleanses sin.  Or is there some other kind of church?

The reduction no one is paying attention to...

More tens of millions of pounds are to be pumped into efforts to drastically reduce the Church of England’s carbon emissions over the next six years, the first impact report on its net-zero programm says.  The report summarises progress on the General Synod’s ambition to achieve net zero by 2030, which was set in 2020 (News, 12 February 2020). The Synod approved a “route map” to this goal two years later (News, 15 July 2022).  In real terms, the target is to decrease the Church’s emissions — mainly from its buildings — by 90 per cent against the current baseline: 415,000 tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent (415,000T CO2e). The remaining ten per cent is to be offset by carbon-cancelling schemes, such as tree-planting and installing solar panels.

What would make me laugh if it were not so sad is that the Church of England seems to be more concerned about shrinking its carbon imprint than it is with the shrinking numbers of the faithful in its pews.  But that is entirely understandable.  They may be able to do something about the carbon imprint but they seem powerless to turn about the ship of faith.  In fact, turning around the ship of faith would require returning to doctrinal positions the Church of England seems to have rejected fully and finally.  The Church of England is not failing for lack of zeal for the environment but for lack of interest in and belief in the Scriptures as the Word of God and the Gospel of Christ's death and resurrection.  The Church of England is not failing for being behind in the sexual desire and gender identity programs undertaken but because they have nothing really to say about Christ's death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins and to restore us to the life that death cannot overcome.

The soul of the Church of England is in trouble -- not its carbon imprint.  I say this as a friend to what the Church of England once was.  We Lutherans have certainly debt to Bishop Cranmer and we have a love for the wonderful tradition of choral music within the Church of England.  We love the ceremony and the seriousness devoted to symbols, ceremonies, and rituals.  We are sad that the history and legacy of this church body has become lost in cloud of various schemes to be relevant in every way except the way God intends for His Church to be relevant to the world and daily life.  We are sad that the eloquent collects and prayers and hymns of the Church of England are sung without must trust in what they say.  We are sad that the ceremonies and external piety of the Church of England has become detached from any appreciation for and confidence in the words or faith behind those ceremonies, symbols, and rituals.

Archbishop Welby will go down in history as the cleric who oversaw the decline of this church body even within Anglicanism.  Of course, to be faith, he had some help along the way but his stewardship of the office has been marked by more missteps, errors, and failures than most.  What a wonderful legacy!  He saved the buildings while killing the Church.  I wish he were unique.  He is not.  Too many have a great passion for climate change, social progress, the morality of the moment, and catching up with society but have no passion for the saving of souls through the means of grace.  Evangelization and the liturgy are not enemies except in those who view the saving of the environment more urgent than preaching the Word and administering the sacraments by which any people shall be saved.

 

Social work in the political sphere. . .

Before anyone gets angry, this is not a tirade against social work or social workers.  What it is, however, is the careful distinction between who the pastor is and what he has been called to do with the social work done by social workers.  The sad reality is that too many people have succumbed to the temptation to see their pastors and the most important work of those pastors as social work and the equally sad reality is that too many pastors have succumbed to the temptation to see themselves and their work as social work.  It is an offense to the noble labor of social work and social workers and it is an offense to the Gospel which has a particular work and venue for those who would be shepherds under the Good Shepherd.

Social work is a particular discipline and profession whose focus is meeting the basic needs of individuals, families, groups, communities, and even society as a whole in order to enhance both the individual and the collective well-being of people.  It is as varied as dealing with mental health issues or finding support for those discharged from the hospital to assisting the hungry and homeless in basic needs.  It is a worthy profession to be sure.  Although I am less inclined to approve of those who have translated this work largely into advocacy, I have every respect and support for those who labor on the front lines of need in a world in which those needy often are hidden and powerless.  As important as this is, however, it is not what pastors are called to do or to be.

I can see why pastors are tempted.  Pastors often do not see or do not immediately see the fruits of their work in preaching and administering the sacraments but they want to.  We all do.  Yet the nature of this ministry is the bringing of the gifts of God to the people and not registering progress.  Of course every pastor pays attention to attendance and offerings but not as the gauges of success.  Rather, every steward, including the steward of the mysteries, must account for those within his care.  It is therefore this stewardship that marks who is there and who is not on Sunday morning and how well the work of the kingdom is funded by the people of the kingdom.  That said, the real determination of success and effectiveness today has shifted away even from these statistics and onto the unsteady ground of consumer satisfaction.  We want to be effective; we want to see the evidence of our effectiveness.  We want to be loved; we want to have evidence of being loved.  We want to make people and things better for people; we want to enjoy the evidence of this improvement in the happiness and satisfaction of the people we serve.  All of this is understandable and even rational.  It is just not Biblical.

When I say that social work is not the pastor's calling, I am not diminishing the need for or the value of social work.  Instead, I am advocating for the work that only the has been called to do -- the ministry of the Gospel through the means of grace.  If you tilt the scale toward social work, you automatically reduce the attention given to the work of the ministry through the means of grace.  We cannot do everything but there are things we must do or we fail in our calling.  Hidden under that calling is an inherent trust that God is at work through this ministry and that God is working the fruits He desires and that God is working for eternity in the things we do in this moment.  The shift to social work is a sign of our lack of confidence that God is at work through the means of grace and that this work is the primary work of our calling.  We can affirm people into a good mood in the moment only to prevent them from the voice that calls them to faith, washes them clean, forgives their sins, and feeds them to everlasting life.  While this is our great temptation, it cannot be one to which we surrender or the work of the kingdom done through the means of grace will suffer.

Finally, social work has become largely political instead of personal.  It is about making a big splash in what you do and not about the individual families or people in need.  It is about what fits the political will and agenda of groups vying for power and not about serving the neighbor in need.  That is why churches have become increasingly political.  When pastors become social workers and that social work becomes more political than personal, the work of the kingdom suffers.  The pastoral work is personal.  The pastor preaches to people he lives with and knows and not to generic Christians.  The baptismal water does not merely unite the baptized to an individual identity with Christ but incorporates the person into the family of God the Church.  The absolution is not simply about one person feeling forgiven but empowering the forgiven to forgive others.  The Eucharist is not about a meal for the person or the moment but the Church gathered on earth in anticipation of the grand reunion in heaven.  It is not about claiming or fighting for or holding onto territory OR about improving the quality of life for those on our sacred ground.

Truth as a construct. . .

Epistemology is that part of philosophy which is concerned with forms of truth.  Epistemology asks: “how do we know that something is true?” In essence, what is truth?  When I was in college, epistemology generally was organized around four ‘classical’ or ‘common’ theories of truth.  Nobody thinks a philosphy class is practical and by nature we presume that this is the domain of academicians and not ordinary folk.  This is not quite the case since it is precisely truth that is at stake in the modern controversies that affect our political, social, and religious lives.

If you wanted a summary of the four theories of truth, it might look like this.

• The correspondence theory of truth — that whatever corresponds to observable reality is true.
• The coherence theory of truth —  that claims are true if they follow logically and coherently from a set of axioms (or intermediate propositions).
• The consensus theory of truth — that what is true is what everyone agrees to be true.
• The pragmatic theory of truth — that what is true is what is useful to you, or beneficial for you.

In modern thinking, truth is not something that exists apart from our judgment or agreement.  In fact, truth is a construct.  Truth is really what we make up for ourselves to explain things around us.  Truth is therefore not universal at all but subjective and personal.  Truth is what I say it is.

When truth is subjective to the individual or when it depends upon the agreement of people, truth is no longer foundational but marginal.  Truth changes and everything else changes.  Everything else changes and truth changes.  We all say this during the pandemic.  What some labeled misinformation turned out to be truth and what was promoted as truth and science turned out to be misinformation.  Science attempts to live largely within the first to theories of truth while politics and society live within the latter two theories.  So where does religion live?

Christianity does not claim to be a truth but insists it is the truth -- the objective truth that does not change no matter if people do not believe it or society as a whole does not hold to it.  The problem is that we live in a culture in which this kind of objective truth no longer exists and the only truths that do are the ones we all agree upon or the ones we find individually helpful.  Because truth is a construct, there is no absolute truth at all and certainly no religious absolute truths -- no matter what Scripture says.  All of this has become possible and even largely accepted by many Christians because we have presumed a difference and distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of the Bible.  When this became somewhat normal or usual, the ability to know something definitively was lost.  

As a culture we are suffering the fact that we no longer are bound by any truth -- not a religious truth nor a scientific truth.  We have not truth left but the ones we agree to hold and the ones individuals may find beneficial (but only subjectively and if they tolerate conflicting truths others find beneficial).  The roots of our political conflict as well as the fruits of the decline of Christianity as the truth lie in the fact that there is no objective truth anymore and we cannot solve any problems as long as truth itself depends upon acceptance by a larger group or what the individual finds privately beneficial.  In the end, the political disagreements are less about policy than about truth and the religious disagreement between orthodox Christianity and what passes for Christianity today is less about doctrines than about the nature of truth itself.

 

The Culture of Rights. . .

One of the most profound signs of sin's presence in the heart of a child is how quickly the child learns that word mine.  It is probably not learned but always there, waiting to reveal itself as soon as the first occasion comes along when something the child wants and has claimed is taken by another.  On the other hand, the whole idea of sharing and especially of sacrificing your wants for the sake of another must be taught.  It is not natural at all.

I have often said that adults are extra large sized children.  It is not far off from the truth.  We have not outgrown our childish desires nor have we erased the want from our hearts that still says mine to the things we want.  One extension of that childish selfishness is all the talk of rights -- rights that predominate every discussion of politics, society, commerce, and even religion.  In fact, the whole conversation of rights has stifled so many other conversations so much more profound, necessary, and beneficial to us as a people and a nation.  Sadly, it does not seem to be diminishing at all.

The perspective of my right automatically sets the individual against the wider community as competitors and even enemies.  The privilege of individualism has become radical and the nature of personal autonomy has become victimhood in search of someone to blame and someone from whom to extract damages.  How tragic that we seem paralyzed by this insistence of rights that belong to or are owe to or damages deserved by those who rights were infringed upon!  I am not at all saying we should be immune from the infringement of abuse upon the powerless or justify oppression.  What I am saying is that this has become the only way we talk about our life together and even our faith.  No society and no religion can be sustained when the conversation is premised upon what is my right.  It is the poison that divides and distorts and will destroy that society and that church.

The order of God's redemption is characterized by the sacrifice of right.  Jesus who has the authority of God lays aside what is His right to become the servant of all.  The fruits of His redemptive work are displayed in a people who take up not their right but the cross, denying themselves and following Him in love, service, and sacrifice.  They do this not because it adds to or accomplishes their own salvation and therefore benefits them personally but solely because Christ did this for them.  Love one another as I have loved you. The whole nature of religion is not to demand but to rejoice in what is given to us as the unworthy and undeserving who nonetheless have received grace upon grace.  Yet the Church has learned the bad example of this childish selfishness and now we automatically think of rights in nearly every decision.  Rights predominate the rationale for who should be ordained, who should be married, who should have or not have children, and even the most sacred character of life itself.  Jesus is remarkably silent upon the idea of rights and yet we in the Church seem powerless to listen to Him instead of the culture around us.

Our national government and even more local expressions of governing authority are increasingly being used to act as the arbiters of what should belong to whom, not simply redistributing wealth but assigning privilege based not on merit or common good but the claim of the individual.  The government spends more of its income in wealth redistribution than almost any other developed nation and yet the lie of the privileged class that pays no taxes and receives all the benefits continues simply because fact cannot undo the idea of a right that is owed.  Again, I am not at all saying that the poor should be overlooked or the cause of those oppressed ignored but that the politics of and a government based upon class distinction or warfare cannot be sustained and will destroy itself.

I suspect that the culture of violence in our land is fueled more by this idea of what is owed to the individual than even by the plethora of guns around us.  It is the idea of right that makes us suspicious of one another and has turned our lives into the pursuit of safety behind the fortress of what is owed to us.  As soon as “rights” replace responsibility in the conversation of a culture and society, we are left with a competition to the death over who gets what.  The fight for survival is always brutal and this is what our lives have become -- hard, unwavering, and unrelenting in their pursuit of what we think is our right -- based on sex, gender, ethnicity, and immigration status.  This is not the republic that was founded in America but a chaos of moral uncertainty and the surrender of reason to desire.  Liberty is what generations died for and not the freedom to do as we please no matter how we couch our present state of affairs into the eloquent language of our founding documents.   Liberty means to be free from oppressive restrictions or control imposed by [especially governmental] authority upon our way of life, behavior, or political views.  Freedom is the right and therefore power to think, speak, and do what I want no matter how others think, speak, or act.  The only constraint on freedom used to be how it affected others (can't yell fire in a crowded theater).  Now the direction of our culture and therefore our government has also placed restrictions on those who oppose that direction -- a selective freedom.

Sadly, the Church has learned this kind of vocabulary and has begun to apply it in ways that will ultimately overshadow the very Gospel itself.  Just as the culture of rights will be our undoing as a nation and society, so it will be the end of the Church.  What Satan cannot do to us, we will ultimately do to ourselves.

Dying to live. . .

We seem to remember too well the part about those who have died in Christ rising in Him but we have skipped over too easily the part about dying.  Our preoccupation with how we live in defining us as saints is not simply tragedy but a destructive omission.  The saints are those who have died in Christ.  This baptismal language is meant to remind us not what we ought to do but what has been done to us and for us when we drowned in the baptismal flood.  The saints are those who died.  There is no life apart from that which is born of our connection to Christ's death.  But this dying in baptism has profound consequences for who we are and how we live.  

Live free or die is a great slogan for a state in the time of the American Revolution but it has become for us the idea that living means the freedom to live as you please and do as you please without even the Law able to question or constrain or guide your choices.  How odd this is!  Jesus insists that the shape of our baptismal life is not life but death -- denying yourself, taking up your cross, and following Him and not your own ways or will.  This is the great mystery.  He was born to die and we are born again also to die.  This has become the forgotten fact of a Christianity in pursuit of pleasure, self-expression, and self-interest.  

The saints are those who died in Christ and who continue to die every day.   "For Your sake we are being put to death all day long," says St. Paul in Romans.  And to the Corinthians:  "For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh."  Then there is the letter to the Galatians:  "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me."  I could go on.  Self-denial is not an option but the way we live out our baptismal new life.  It is marked by dying over and over again.  Even marriage is thus defined -- husbands who die for the wives and children daily and wives and children who learn from him also to die to self.

It seems that we talk too much today about our freedom and not enough about the self-control that reigns in what we think, speak, or do.  It is not about sex but about everything.  I used to have a joke that said everyone has a right to MY opinion.  I laughed when I read it but self-expression has become something bigger than it was intended to be without any constraint of goodness or morality.  Social media is corrupted by unrestrained self-expression.  No, the government is not equipped to be the power over this but we ought to be a power to ourselves -- especially Christians!  I love how one of my favorite hymns sings keep me from saying words that later need recalling.  It is a little death.  Stifling the need to speak.  The saints are those whose lives are marked by many little deaths precisely because they have died in Christ and live in Him.  I only wish we talked about this more.

An All Souls thought. . .

On what was once known as All Souls' Day, it might be worth a moment to reflect a bit on the nature of the cause of life and the collateral damage that raises questions about how we use our technology.  Even Donald Trump has jumped on the bandwagon in support of IVF.  He says he intends to make it free for all who want to use it.  I know it could be a campaign promise he does not intend to keep but I will take him at his word.  We already know that Kamala Harris is onboard for any additional spending for any purpose except restricting abortion in any way so I think I am safe in presuming she will match his rhetoric here as she has done on the issue of taxing tips.  My question is how beneficial this is -- indeed, how beneficial it all is.  In other words, at what cost is each life through IVF?  From the sons of Bethlehem whom Herod slew to these martyrs who suffer because we also have allowed no value to life, the crosses of our cemeteries represent only one small glimpse of the many who have died because we esteemed the dream and our ability more than the thing itself -- life is precious!

For all the talk about the promise of reproductive technology, the soft underbelly of the success is that for every child conceived, many more are aborted.  Whether they are aborted immediately in favor of those deemed more viable, shipped off to the freezer to be forgotten or lost, or aborted in the womb after implantation because the client desires only one baby, the end result of each "success" is death many times over.  The marketers have done a great job of focusing on the dream of a baby and hidden the dark secret of the collateral damage to provide that one life.  This is, after all, not an accidental cost but an essential one, one well known before the first steps of the procedures are begun.  It is costly in dollars and it preys on the vulnerable who have tried everything to conceive naturally and are unable as well as those who treat the child as a purchase and a plaything owed to them.  There is little in the process or the many stages of the procedures to detail to the people involved what will actually happen to the fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses that are not used, needed, or wanted.  They are, as it were, byproducts of IVF and nothing more than medical waste.  Is this what we have become as a society, nation, and people?  Have we become so callous to the cost of our "dream" that we will allow any cost to the sanctity of life in order to achieve that "dream"?

On All Souls' Day we do not only celebrate the faithful without name and of great number who have lived and died rather anonymously in the Lord (except to Him, of course).  No, we also celebrate the great mystery that is God's gift of life -- from the breath breathed into the dust in the hand of God in creation to the breath of life still breathed into the fertilized egg so that everything that child will be is already there from the first moment of that child's existence as a mere fertilized egg.  Life is not a puzzle to be unraveled nor is it a problem to be solved.  It is a mystery and a gift to which each of us are called to preserve, protect, nurture, and nourish to this mortal life and to everlasting life through our Lord Jesus Christ.  

Alexander Schmemann speaks of this:  “Every entrance of a new human being into the world and life is a miracle of miracles, a miracle that explodes all routine, for it marks the start of something unending, the start of a unique, unrepeatable human life, the beginning of a new person. And with each birth the world is itself in some sense created anew and given as a gift to this new human being to be his life, his path, his creation.”

I fear that what is missing most is precisely this sense of wonder, the awe before the miracle, the reverence before the mystery, and the faithful stewardship that cares for what God continues to give even to His fallen creation.  While Christianity certainly heightens this sense of wonder, awe, reverence, and care, no particular religion is required to look at the nature of life and conclude that this life is not a plaything or a problem but a gift, heritage, and blessing.  Until we learn this, we will have foolish talk from left and right that seems intent upon being the highest bidder in a high stakes game of chance with the very thing we cannot afford to take chances with!  

Its getting more and more personal. . .

All Saints' Day has always been somewhat emotional.  Even when the names read off and the bell tolled for strangers it is a poignant moment.  Now that I have been at this place more than 31 years, it is even more touching.  The names read off each year are not the names of strangers but friends and family within the Body of Christ.  I knew them, laughed with them, cried with them, and buried them.  I look at their families still in the pews and remember where they all sat week after week.  With each passing year, I know now more profoundly the meaning of the Psalmist's words, Precious in the Lord's sight is the death of His saints...  It is also made even more significant now that I am the oldest generation of my family and have laid to rest grandparents, parents, in-laws, aunts, and uncles.  The Lord is telling us that we are not just names to Him nor were those whom we loved and with whom we shared the faith.  God knows us all better than we know ourselves and He is moved by the sorrow of death so much that He sent His only-begotten Son to restore us to Him and to the life death cannot overcome.

I fear we spend too little time remembering the saints, giving thanks to God for His mercies toward them, encouraged by the witness of their faith in suffering, and urged on to finish the race so that we may be with them in eternity.  Thanks be to God that He was not content to merely remember their lives and celebrate this memory.  Thanks be to God that He was not content to make His peace with death but took on our enemy as His so that we might be free.  Death is a solemn moment even for the Christian who knows that death is not the end.  It is the gate or door through which we pass with Christ to our own joyful resurrection but death always leaves sorrow, pain, and emptiness in its wake.  For this reason St. Paul urges us not to grieve like those ignorant of the hope within us but recognizes that we still grieve.  Indeed, unresolved grief is one of the most enduring and torturous disorders we suffer in this mortal life.

All Saints' Day is with us once a year but it is glimpsed in every Divine Service.  When we get to the Sanctus, we do not stand there alone to sing.  We are bidden by the Proper Preface every week to join with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven.  Hidden in that moment is the promise of what will come when on that day the Father has appointed Christ will come not as baby to a manger but as he victorious Lord to judge the earth and to receive unto Himself all who have died.  He will reach into the dust of the earth, raise up the dead in Christ to new and glorious flesh and with the judgment well done, good and faithful servant He will receive us into everlasting life.  Easter is surely the celebration of this promise but no less All Saints' Day.

There comes the day when you realize that there are more days behind you than before you.  No day in this mortal life is certain but as age brings you closer to the end that waits for all people, the moment we have to remember, give thanks, be encouraged, and be consoled by those who have departed this life in faith is a precious one.  Happy All Saints!