Seek first. . .

Note that this was the post meant for yesterday, Ash Wednesday, but inadvertently set for March 6.  I trust it may still be of interest.

We have a great many trees in our yard.  We bought this house 32 years ago because, in addition to other things, it had a large tree in the front yard.  We planted many others and they have grown into a small forest of trees though the original maple was taken down in a storm some years ago.  It was rotten in the center and, although it appeared perfectly fine on the outside, had become weak and brittle do to disease.  We have had winds the past days and before and will after today.  After the winds have quieted, I am in the yard picking up sticks.  Most of them are dead branches, some even fairly large, which the wind has broken from the tree.  It is a nuisance but not bad thing for the tree.  It helps by removing the dead limbs that could harm the tree and impede its good growth.

Lent comes along like a sudden storm.  It is predictable -- clearly there on the church calendar -- but it is also a surprise.  We are easily caught up in the things of this life and miss the mortal weakness hidden therein.  On the outside, our lives may seem well enough and we may even had made some sort of uneasy peace with death but Lent comes along to challenge that ceasefire and upset our apple carts.  Ash Wednesday is the start of that sudden storm.  It reeks of hypocrisy, sin, and death.  The color is black like the ash.  Its message seems doom and gloom.  Why would anyone want to go to church on Ash Wednesday?

“Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.”   Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!  We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. And the end of the chapter from which the Gospel of the day is drawn:  Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

The condemnation is obvious.  The Gospel is often missed or, worse, reduced to some perfunctory formula:  you have been bad, God is good, try not to be so bad anymore.  If that is all this day or Lent as a season is, it is probably better to skip church and to skip the season.  That is certainly not all there is here.  The righteousness of heaven is not a striving to be better -- not that this is a bad thing or that I should ever suggest we might do otherwise as Christians.  The currency of God is His mercy that forgives our sin without any worth or merit or cause on our part.  This is righteousness.  God's righteousness is not that we are off the hook now or for a while or that our pitiful efforts are good enough to win Him over.  No, indeed.  God's righteousness is to sweep like a wind and clear our death away.  We are not off the hook.  We are the recipients of a mercy so valuable a treasure that the pain of its work in cleansing us from sin has been born by Him who had no sin.  Imagine that.

Ash Wednesday, Lent, and the sacrament of absolution are like that sudden storm -- upsetting everything that seems normal to establish a new normal.  It is not something we are even sure we want since the old sins of our lives are like our most familiar and cherished friends.  But He gives to us what we do not even know we need -- a cleansing in which all that is dead in us and even death itself is taken away.  Our sins fall like the branches of my yard and God gathers them all up to burn in the holy fire of Christ's atoning love on the cross until there is nothing left but that which God has made new.  This rhythm comes every year -- much more often than the old jubilee years of the Old Testament.  The jubilee of God in Christ cancels sin's debt and restores us to our rightful owner.  This is the righteousness of heaven.  To seek first this righteousness is to live in the grace of forgiveness and to cherish as our greatest treasure the mercy that has cancelled our sin and ended the tyranny of death.  It is not a call to work harder to justify ourselves but the call to see and be transformed by the work of God to save us.  The sticks are gone and the tree restored to grow and bear the good fruit that lasts.  Thanks be to God!  Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.  Of course He is and because He is we are made new.

Can you communicate?

Over the years I have oft lamented the loss of cursive and the inability of younger generations to communicate through writing.  Yes, I know, this is the digital age but it amazes me that many cannot read cursive (and have trouble reading the ordinary printing which substitutes for cursive).  Worse, however, is their inability to write without technology (other than a pen or pencil) to come to their aid.  Indeed, aside from doodling and marking in the blanks, I am not quite sure what people use a pen or pencil for anymore.

I have often said that the best class I had in high school was typing.  They were old manual typewriters (though we did have one electric in the classroom) and we were graded on speed and accuracy.  To get an "A" (which I did) you had to type better than 70 words a minute and do it accurately.  My kids did not have Typing 101.  Instead they had "keyboarding" -- whatever that means.  One of them is fairly proficient typing though by no means as fast or as accurate as my wife and I are.  The other two type the way one would on a small screen (phone or tablet).  According to one estimate, less than 5% of students still take a keyboarding class and, well, no one takes typing.

The sad reality is that for many, if not most, younger folks, they can communicate only through the lingo of the text message or by dictating to Siri or Cortana or Google Assistant or whatever version of a Siri style dictation tool there is on their phone or tablet.  If they cannot speak into a microphone to get their words on a page, they are at a severe disadvantage.  Nevermind AI or ChatGPT or other versions of it, if you cannot master the keyboard to be fast and accurate, you have a disability when it comes to communicating.  It is no wonder that they have lost their ability to read complex sentences or digest detailed and long paragraphs but it is also no surprise that they cannot write long, complex, or detailed sentences and paragraphs and are left to sound like a text message when they do write.

News at the end of January reported US fourth- and eighth-grade students are struggling with reading comprehension with last year’s nationwide testing showing the worst results in over two decades. Average reading scores deteriorated among students who took the Congressionally-mandated assessment in 2024, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.  About one third of eight graders’ reading scores were below the assessment’s basic level, the largest sub-standard result in the history of the assessment. Among fourth graders, roughly 40% scored below the basic threshold, the largest portion since 2002. More than 235,000 fourth graders and 230,000 eighth graders across thousands of public and private schools throughout the country were administered the NAEP assessment from which representative samples are drawn. The assessment reports results in three levels of achievement: advanced, proficient and basic.  This is not a failure to excel but a failure even to achieve basic competance.

The mark of civilization lies most profoundly in the realm of our ability to communicate with each other and the hallmark of this in the past was the ability to read and write.  Could it be that we are living in a less eloquent generation in part because some of us are becoming less and less proficient in the language skills and ordinary tools of communication that once were the benchmark of erudition, education, and intelligence?  Of course, it does not need to be said but with a religion of the Word of God, this has serious and dire consequences for a faith that hears the voice of God as both a written and oral Word.  For my part, the keyboard and a fountain pen are not only my tools in trade but a delightful way to spend my time.

Private property. . .

One of the most unfortunate changes over time is in how we Christians view the Scriptures, the Bible, the Word of God.  As I have written before, many more conservative leaning churches see the Scriptures as a book of facts, rules, and information.  The Scriptures are seldom described as they would describe themselves -- the living voice of God addressing His people and the means through which God acts for us and for our salvation.  Scriptures can be inerrant and infallible, apparently, without being efficacious.  This is one area in which confessional Lutherans find themselves parting ways with those who might seem to be our allies.  What good is there in preserving a Bible without error if it is not also the efficacious voice of God doing what that Word says in its speaking?

On the other hand, liberal and progressive Christians would limit Scripture's truthfulness and therefore its relevance simply to salvific matters and even then cannot seem to agree on how much of that Word is actually necessary to be believed in order to be saved.  Certainly, for example, the creeds are too much to believe and many of their words must be cast to the side in the pursuit of that which is truly necessary (think here of born of a Virgin).  Furthermore, the doctrinal lines keep shifting in this camp of Christians and the lines are in a state of flux with regard to even such universal statements of the Scriptures regarding marriage, gender, sexual desire, and children. 

Part of the reason why the Scriptures seem so easily manipulated is that the Word of God has become largely a private Word or, at least, that Word is private property.  It belongs to the individual reading it and not to the Church and even less to those who went before us.  It is not only private property but its message is private, personal, and individual.  We can, it would seem, agree to disagree and still remain somehow connected within the loose framework of what God has said and done.  All of this, however, would be shocking to the early Church.  Without individual copies and generally presumed reading skills, the Word of God was not the domain of the individual Christian but heard and in hearing it believed within the larger sphere of the Church.  It was even more then a voice and a Word preached or spoken than it could ever be today with the Word of God seen as words printed on paper.  In this way the Scriptures are by nature a liturgical book and have a sacramental character.  Unlike how the Word of God is seen today as both informational and propositional, the early Christians and the liturgical Churches understand this book to be a living voice which accomplishes that of which it speaks.  You can see this even in the traditional ceremonies attached to how we deal with the Word of God.  We honor not a books with words on paper but the Word that is God's voice speaking.  It was not until late in history that the Scriptures became a public and private book, owned and read and therefore interpreted by the reader.

What has not changed. . .

Although retirement is a tricky word that is sometimes used to mean you don't have to do anything, the reality is that your vocations continue and retirement has little bearing on them.  For example, I have and will remain brother to my brother and retirement does not affect that except, perhaps, to give me more time and opportunity to exercise that vocation more fully.  I am and will remain husband to my wife and, although we see more of each other throughout the day, the vocation remains the same and retirement has little bearing upon it.  I am and will remain father to my three children and retirement does not change that -- although it might give me more opportunity to live it out with them.  I am and will remain grandfather to my two grandchildren and retirement is, at least in their eyes, a bonus since my accessibility will be greater for them both.  I am and will remain friend, neighbor, citizen, etc... and these callings are not much affected by whether you remain working or are retired.  Most of all, my calling as a child of God, flowing out of my baptism, is not in any way lessened or negated by the term retirement.

We frame too much of our lives in terms of what we want to do and too little in terms of what we are given to do.  A vocation is a calling and as such it conveys a sense of duty.  You are not a child or brother or spouse or parent or grandparent when you feel like it but always until you or they die.  I know that there are those who say you get to be a grandparent.  It is cute but too cloaked in sentiment to be useful.  A vocation is not what you get to do but what you are given to do.  It is a duty and it does involve a cost and it does require a sacrifice.  You are that sacrifice.  Your time, interests, priorities, and such take a back seat to those whom you serve in Christ's name in your various vocations.  In one sense, the only thing you are really giving up is the paycheck (hopefully replaced by pension, investment, and Social Security).  The stereotype is me time but the reality is something very different.  I know I have not yet become a man of leisure.  I do not expect that I ever will.  This has nothing to do with means but everything to do with relationship.

The hair stands up on my neck every time somebody delights in telling me that retirement means I will be busier than ever before.  We are not talking about busyness.  Vocation is not layer upon layer of busy work but begins and ultimately ends with relationships that remain until death -- yours or theirs.  I am no longer a son to my father and my mother because my parents have died.  That vocation ended.  Vocation is not filling up an appointment book but living in covenanted relationship with others -- again, a relationship which does not live in the realm of how you feel about it but duty, service, and calling.  I picked up the vocation of grandparent even before losing them and ending my vocation as a son.  Yes, I understand that this means you have additional obligations laid upon you.  This is not, however, like a calendar filling up  with things you want to do but never could before.  It is, in fact, about duty and calling that is sorted out before the coveted self-indulgence that too often passes for retirement.  The working of beating down the attitude of "me first" (a term born of Eden's fall rather than God's creation) continues in retirement just as it did when you were receiving a paycheck for your labor.  How disappointing it is when we presume that retirement allows us the childish pursuit of self unconstrained by duty, love, service to, and a calling for others.  The great regret of the heaven born in baptism is not that I did not get to do all I wanted to do when I was "alive" but that I did not even begin to see how my life was serving God and my neighbor in need until it is pointed out by Jesus -- having done it to the least of these My brothers, you did it to Me.  Perhaps we spend much to little time on the Table of Duties and too much of it trying to fence in a life behind the wall of the commandments. 

One thing clear. . .

In the smoke and fog of the mount of Transfiguration, there was only one thing that was clear.  Jesus.  The Gospels say as much.  When the voice was silent and Mose and Elijah faded from view, they saw no one save Jesus only.  That is a profound statement and one too often overlooked.  I have long wondered about this account.  How is it that the disciples who ascended with Jesus actually knew it was Moses and Elijah?  Had they carried the photos of this famous patriarch and prophet in their wallets as they made their way to the top with Jesus?  Had the identifying introductions simply been left out of the recorded text?  And what of Moses and Elijah?  What did they have to say to those who came up with Jesus so many generations after them?  Apparently, only one thing.  This is Jesus.  He fulfills the Law and the Prophets.  The voice said the rest, Listen to Him.

If the liturgy is our ascent with Jesus to the mountaintop, if Moses and Elijah are the prototypes of the Law/Gospel distinctions, and if it is as smokey and foggy at the altar as it was in the cloud that enveloped them then, the message is the same.  Look to Jesus.  He is the only thing clear.  In fact, that is exactly what is happening.  Apart from the smoke of incense and the fog of being on the unfamiliar and holy ground of God's presence, worship is but a lecture hall or an entertainment venue designed to elevate us alone.  A very long time ago, C. F. W. Walther complained the America had replaced the sanctuary with a lecture hall in an appeal solely to the mind.  Perhaps some of that remains, but instead of a lecture hall, American Christianity seems to have pursued instead a Chuck e Cheese kind of substitute which is solely there to entertain and feed us with unlimited pizza and tokens to play the game of life.

In many respects, that is exactly what Transfiguration reveals.  Far more than merely remembering an event in the past, it casts its own mantle over what happens with every Divine Service.  Here is Christ in our midst, the prompting of the Father to listen to His Son's voice speaking through the Word, the fulfillment of the Law and consummation of all the prophets long for, and, best of all, it is ours to know by faith and to eat and drink.  Herein lies the mercy of God forgiving our sins through the blood of Christ and herein lies the foretaste of the eternal in the communion of His flesh and blood.  The smokey clouds of incense are not cast aside but within them the mystery is revealed to be known by faith.  Here is God's Son for you.  In this way, every Sunday and every Mass is an example of the Transfiguration of our Lord and the revelation of His glory posited among us in the means of grace.  

If we were smart, we would echo St. Peter's misunderstood plea to stay and camp on high.  Though too many preachers have drummed it into our minds that St. Peter blurted out foolishness, it just might be that this is the profound wisdom of faith.  But we do echo St. Peter's words.  In the wonderful hymn, Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face to Face, there is the same regret when the it is over and we all head down the mountain and back into the valley.  Do you see it?

Too soon we rise; the vessels disappear;
    The feast, though not the love, is past and gone;
The bread and wine remove, but Thou art here;
    Nearer than ever; still my shield and sun.

People are capable of error. . .

In many discussions regarding the changes to teaching to provide Christian support for same sex marriage, sex apart from marriage, marriage intentionally without children, birth control, change in the view of the death penalty, etc., the point is often made that people are capable of error.  Indeed, they are.  Individuals have not guarantee that they have it right and no mechanism to prevent them from falling into error, even egregious error.  Then the example cited is often the Reformation and Luther.  The Church had fallen into error, even egregious error, and Luther came along to lead the Church to new understandings.  Rome usually says that Luther was the innovator -- of such things as sola Scriptura, for example.  So we end up with the typical progressive view of things in which there are no guarantees, in which Scripture is not quite finished and God is still speaking new and even contradictory things, and that there is no real guide or rule except the individual reading Scripture for himself or herself.  Everything is an open question and nothing is settled doctrine.  In effect, there is no catholic tradition.  Period.

I cannot speak for Protestants in this matter, but that is clearly NOT the perspective of the Augsburg Confession.  While Luther and other Lutherans might have railed against Rome, it was a two way battle.  Rome was interested in preserving the status quo and Luther was interested in a theological debate.  In the end, both ended up disappointed.  Rome has become liberal Protestant in many ways and Lutherans overall have listened less to Scripture and the fathers and more and more to the tenor of the times.  We all know this is true.  But just as it is not Roman to embrace all sorts of settled things as open questions (as example, the ordination of women), neither it is Lutheran to presume that sola Scriptura means everyone alone with his or her Bible can decide what God said and what He means.  The Augsburg Confession not only presumes the catholic tradition but affirms it and insists that if this Confession and its confessors can be seen to have departed from catholic doctrine and practice, they will change to conform to it.

The question is what kind of Church do you want?  Do you want a Church in which nothing is settled and the most we can receive from those who went before is a best guess for their own time what God said and what He meant OR do you affirm that there is this thing as a tradition of faithful belief in and confession of what the Scriptures say, have always said, and will always say?  That seems to me to be the issue for today.  So either the Scriptures and the catholic tradition that has surrounded that Word of God and flowed from it are correct for their time, our time, and for the future times or else everything is up for grabs.  Either this is reflective of the sex and marriage issues and the ordination of women, to cite just two examples, or else it cannot be reflective of such matters as if we can know that we are forgiven and that God has prepared a place and life for us that death cannot end.  You cannot pick and choose and say one part of this is divinely true and the other up for interpretation and change -- even conflict with the written Word of God.  Until we figure this one out, much of Christianity is in for a slow and increasingly faster departure from any truth whatsoever.  In the end we will insist that our read on God is correct and that no one can challenge that take on what is momentary, what is eternal, what is true for all, and what is true just for me.  Without some regard for the catholic tradition, there is no anchor and God's Word itself is adrift on the sea of personal opinion and cultural norm.  Everyone will have done what is right in their own eyes and God will be reduced to a mere spectator.  I am pretty sure this is not Roman and I am most confident it is not the faith of the Augsburg Confession.

The devaluation of value. . .

Oftentimes we say that values are changing.  I suppose you can still say that.  However, the result of philosophical and religious change in Western culture has been less about the changed values than it has the erosion of values altogether.  This devaluation of value has affected nearly every aspect of our lives and certainly all our institutions.  Even more importantly than the fading value of values is the suspicion of values that has arisen.  

Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to life.  When we begin by devaluing the value of the life in the womb, it leads automatically to the devaluation of life outside the womb.  The babies who survived abortion can be left to die and the aged and infirm can be put out of their misery and anyone who deems life not worth living can arrange for a painless exit.  Do you think that they are not connected?

I well recall when Gilbert Meilander wrote "I Want to Be a Burden to My Children."  He immediately pointed out the fallacy of those who insist that options need to remain open so that you can choose not to be a burden to your children (or community or society as a whole).   Living wills, advance directives, and durable powers of attorney are all different ways of trying to take the family out of the loop when a decision has to be rendered.  It is like the dying are giving permission to the living to let them die.

Every single one of us has been or will end up being a “burden” on others.  The young are dependent upon the care, protection, and provision of their parents.  The ill are equally dependent upon the kindness and care of family or strangers.  The aged are highly likely to need some form of care or supervision as the years pile up (and they do as we are graying as a society).  I sat in an ER for a while a couple of months ago and listened to an aged daughter who was bringing her even more aged father in for treatment.  The future of our lives always seem to look like care-giving.  But it this bad?  We certainly resist it (from youth to old age) and we insist that you are not the boss of me.  But is it really a bad thing to be dependent upon others?  Is that not the definition of humanity? 

A nation's laws reflect its values and its values are reflected in its laws.  More and more we seem not to have placed much stake on life.  We are deathly afraid of suffering, to be sure, but I am not convinced that has arisen to a value.  We are stridently individualistic but again the question remains is this a value.  Some of these things are not so much formed values as they are the result of an absence of values -- like life and family and community.  Odd that someone would wait around for the government to approve medically assisted suicide (pain free, of course) but summarily dismiss the wishes of the family to have the loved one with them longer.  Is the avoidance of suffering our prime directive?  How far could you go with such a value?

All of this flies square in the face of the suffering God whose suffering redeems humanity.   To say that this is not Christian is not enough.  It is positively anti-Christian.  Life is a primary Christian value -- God who created and sustains all life, including those with disability or limitation.  Life is the universal Christian value -- God who comes in flesh in order that the God who cannot die might suffer and die for those who can be rescued and redeemed only by His self-offering.  Is there a Jesus who has not come to suffer?

The individual goal of control over life is not quite Christian either or Jesus would not have us turn the other cheek.  No, we have got to absent from our minds the whole screwy idea of what daddy would have wanted us to do?  Daddy's wishes are a profound influence over funeral practices but not salutary ones.  They are even worse on issues of life.  The same with the horrible question of whether or not their life is worth living.  How do you answer that question without values?  Meilander had it right.  How can we value the life the person now has?  That should be the value inherent in all of our values and if we get this wrong, the rest do not matter all that much.  And if this value does not apply to all lives, it applies to none.

A universal commandment. . .

It’s pretty hard to find a real faith tradition that doesn’t disparage sexual relations with someone to whom you are not married.  Judaism to Christianity, Islam to Buddhism, Sikhism to Taoism, they all say pretty much the same thing when it comes to adultery.  Don't do it.  So much for the religious.  I guess the spiritual kind of folk have joined with those who have no spirit to heavily influence modern thinking on the matter which goes directly against the prohibition.  Maybe it is the fruit of all that free love and sex from the 1960s.  Modern thinking is remarkably less set against adultery (all things in moderation?) than the religions of old or the population overall for a very long time.  But this just might be changing.   The end result of sexual liberation in the 1970s declined a bit as people began to think adultery is always or almost always wrong and now approval seems to be growing a bit.  The data suggests that those who once thought adultery always wrong are now thinking more almost always or sometimes wrong.  It is, in fact, a 10% drop just since 2010 among those who back off from always to almost always or sometimes.

The question asked since 1973:  “What is your opinion about a married person having sexual relations with someone other than the marriage partner--is it always wrong, almost always wrong, wrong only sometimes, or not wrong at all?”

The answers?

Oddly, evangelicals and Black Protestants are more likely even than mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics to say it is always wrong but even there the same groups have eroding views of adultery always being wrong.  How did this happen?  When all the major religions of the world are united in their disapproval of adultery, how did it end up that adultery became almost respectable?  Could it be that the fruits of the spiritual but not religious and the nones is not simply in theory but in practice?  Could it be that the universal prohibition has waned precisely as religion has waned over all as an influence over values and views?  Twice as many nones find nothing wrong with adultery as other religious adherents.  So, yes, the fading religious complexion of America does have an impact on something more than bodies in the pews.  Again, age is not quite the prominent indicator of views as you might think.  Young and old, those under 40 and those over 40, have very similar views on this subject.  Yes, we know that views change and even Boomers are more conservative in age than they were in youth.  That said, it would seem we have a problem.  The trust issue between partners (remember when we called them spouses) is one of those or the continued separation of sex from love (and sex and love from marriage and children) is hard to address. 

The dividing line of Christianity. . .

Though some have tried to make the great divide in Christendom about Scripture and such things as its inerrancy and infallibility, I struggle to know how that works.  How is it possible for a group that has a high view of Scripture to have a low view of the means of grace?  What good is an inerrancy that rejects baptismal regeneration or Christ's real presence in the Eucharist?  Within the groups that purport to hold to a high view of Scripture, there are also those who hold that God is still speaking and the Word of God is not limited to or even normed by the written Word.  So it does make me uncomfortable that in my own church body there are those who think we have something more in common with those who have such a high view of Scripture but a low view of the Sacraments.  Do we?  How?

I think that the great dividing line in Christendom is between sacramental churches (and therefore liturgical ones) and those who are not sacramental.  No, this is certainly not a guarantee that a sacramental church will not succumb to liberalism or fail to live up to its stated confessions but it does mean that we speak the same language even if we end up in different places.  The ELCA and Missouri have little in common other than the name Lutheran and yet we speak the same language.  Missouri and the Southern Baptists may appear to have something in common but we really do not speak the same language at all.  This is especially true of Scripture.  We believe that Scripture is itself sacramental -- it speaks and in its speaking things happen.  Hearts are warmed to faith and sins are forgiven and water bubbles with life and bread and wine actually become the flesh and blood of Jesus.  This sacramental reality flows naturally from the Scriptures as living voice.  We say this not to confine God to something alien to Him but precisely because this is how God has said He works.

Liberal sacramental churches may have forsaken their roots but they retain the language of the Scriptures and the way God works in and through that living Word.  Though it might seem that conservative Lutherans might share something with conservative Baptists, the reality is that they do not speak the language of Scripture at all.  The truth they seek to preserve is a testament or record to factual events of the past and is not a living voice that works through the Word.  How can we say we have more in common with conservative Protestants than sacramental churches?  The sinner's prayer and baptismal regeneration do not complement each other but work against each other.  One group preserves the historicity of Scripture and its unconditional truth but then ignores what that Word says to invent a means of grace called the sinner's prayer.  Where in Scripture or in the history of Christendom prior to the Reformation any sense in which God requires a decision from us or uses such a prayer in order to come to us and make His home in us?  What ever happened to faith comes by hearing the Word of God?

Of course, we Lutherans have problems with Rome.  I am not saying that because Rome (or any other communion) is sacramental or liturgical we give them a pass on the things they confess that conflict with God's Word.  But we speak the same language.  A high view of Scripture does not lead to a high view of the sacraments but a high view of the sacraments forces a church to deal with the Scriptures in a way that most all Protestant churches do not and cannot.  They are preserving a fossil -- a record book of facts and events.  We are hearkening to the living voice of our Good Shepherd still speaking to us by His Word.  

Thankfully there is a great felicitous inconsistency.  Individual Baptists actually believe the Scriptures even when it conflicts with their confession and individual Roman Catholics actually believe the Scriptures even when it conflicts with theirs.  That said, I long for the day when the great divide in Christendom will change.  In this great realignment, people will move toward the poles of greatest consistency.  On the one side are sacramental churches who have Scripture and the history of the faith on their side.  On the other side are the non-sacramental churches who have insist upon an inerrant Word but do not allow that Word to speak.  If the patterns of the present continue, younger Christians will not countenance a church that says and does different things.  It is one thing to move from a liberal sacramental communion to a more conservative one (call it catholic and orthodox).  It is something else to move from being non-sacramental to suddenly confessing baptismal regeneration, the Real Presence, and a God who works through means -- including a sacramental Word.  I wish I could say there is a good chance that we will find movement on the Protestant front closer to our Lutheran Confessions but I think the real movement will actually come as those in liberal sacramental churches begin to discover how untenable that is.  

Of course, I have been wrong before.  I thought maybe after the 2009 sex decisions in a body like the ELCA that an exodus of people would end up in Missouri.  Instead the ELCA birthed two very small denominations which tried to be like the ELCA prior to 2009 and those infamous sex votes.  In the end, they did not want go very far from home even if they see the inconsistency of their position.  I have been equally as wrong with those Baptists who actually believed closer to Lutheran but kept going back to their Baptist Church because they had a higher value on things other than the implications of what Scripture actually said.  So maybe it does not matter because a grand realignment of Christianity is not in the cards.  At least not in the foreseeable future.  God willing, I am wrong, and we will find the renewal of the faith led by those who hear the voice of God speaking and follow Him even where they first said they would not go.  If that happens, it won't matter all that much anymore and Christianity will end up with faith that matters and the people will go where the catholic faith of the Scriptures lives.  At that point, it will matter less what name they wear than the fact that they believe not only what God says but believe that God is working sacramentally through that Word.

What should education be about?

England is cutting costs on the backs of state school pupils whose GCSE Latin will no longer be funded.  Remember, this is for poorer schools and not the elite schools of the upper class.  It may be an unpopular but unstoppable decision.  School leaders, scholars and authors are urging the Department for Education to offer a reprieve to the Latin excellence program and thus enable hundreds of students to complete their GCSE courses though this would only delay the end of it and not change the outcome.  The DfE announced shortly before Christmas that it would end funding in February for the program supporting Latin lessons for more than 8,000 pupils at 40 non-selective state schools.  Schools, also in a funding crisis, will either have to come up with the money or let go Latin teachers.

I only wish that we had a targeted program in the US for Latin in the poorer schools across our nation.  I only wish that languages, art, music, and dramatic arts were not also the victims every time it looks like a budget needs to be cut or funds are running short.  I have no idea what it is like in England but in America the schools are shouldered with all sorts of programs unrelated to their core purpose of education and designed to address difficulties presumed in the home life, family, or social aspect of the student's life.  We seem as a nation to find funding for all sorts of things related to gender and sexual desire and especially for athletics but when it comes to something that truly enriches a whole life, music and the various arts are much more relevant.  As countless memes have said, it is highly unlikely many of our kids will make a living from sports and most of them will watch their teams from the comfort of a couch with a favorite beverage and snack in hand.  Music is a lifelong gift.  We sing in worship, we play in community orchestras and churches, we play for our own enjoyment and benefit, and we play because this has proven to be an effective and useful activity for the preservation of memory.

While I lament the decision of any government to stop funding music and the arts, I lament even further that we think education in technology is all that is necessary for people in life.  It is ridiculous to assume that the only purpose of education is to get a job -- especially when it seems that job may change and the career change half a dozen or more times along the way.  We don't need to teach our children how to use a screen.  We need to teach them what is not on the screen.  We need to make sure that our schools are educating the imagination and not merely providing tools for the almighty paycheck.  We need to reinvigorate those things that elevate and ennoble us as a nation and a people and a culture.  That starts with music and the arts. Only a fool would believe that one day we will wake up to an educational landscape made up significantly or more of classical schools.  But the schools we do have would profit from a renewal that included Latin, music, art, the dramatic arts, and a host of other things we seem hesitant to fund.

It's not about you. . .

Having read a few excerpts of the Pope Francis autobiography (when did Popes start writing more about themselves than anything else?), I am even less impressed.  From what others have said, this new book is not all that new and simply rehashes what he has said or interview with others he has given.  There are a few insights.  Hope, The Autobiography, gives much of the same confused and contradictory glimpse into this pope as the previous books by him or about him.  He is not an intellect though he presumes himself to know more or better than everyone else.  He is not a kind person to work for though he would argue with that point (and some of those who have worked for him would argue back).  He is not a person who tolerates disagreement or a difference of opinion though he would surely insist that he is the most tolerant pope every to sit on the papal throne.  He is not learned though he thinks he is and one mark of his lack of learning is his willingness to paint those who hold traditional views as mentally unstable.  He is not a simple man though he refuses the ordinary things that have accompanied the popes who went before him and this shows his arrogance in putting personal choice above office.  He is not very pastoral and has hardly ventured outside the Vatican though he is bishop of Rome though he would insist he is above all things a pastoral pope.  He is not synodal or collegial but authoritarian in his exercise of the office though he would surely beg to differ.  What is there to make of him?  He is this, rather complex, inconsistent, head strung, and ruthless while trying to appear very compassionate and easy going.  In this he is not unlike many liberal and progressive leaders on other stages.

Surely he knows on some level that the office he holds is not about him.  You would hope so, anyway.  But in this he typifies all that is wrong in culture and society as well as in religion.  He continues to make it about him despite his words to the contrary.  From what I have read, his funeral will be different as well.  Isn't it just like him to snub tradition (whether good or bad) because he does not like it!  He has insisted that there will be “no catafalque, no ceremony for the closure of the casket, nor the deposition of the cypress casket into a second of lead and a third of oak.”  Okay.  No arrogance there, now is there.  But that is my point.  This pope acts much like the times.  He presumes that it is about him.  Perhaps he is not that much different than evangelical media personalities who call themselves pastor or modern clergy overall who will give the office they bear some of themselves but insist upon keeping the rest for themselves alone -- in pursuit of that life/work balance that somehow they have reconciled with vocation.  I don't get it.  I don't like it.  Not in Rome or in Wittenberg or wherever it shows up.  It is not about you whether you are creating a cult of personality around yourself or working to make the pastoral office merely a job.  Grow up.  Get over it.

Some months after we moved into the new educational wing, administrative area, and sanctuary at my parish in 2001, a member came up to me and said "well, are you happy with your new church?"  How odd!  It was "my" church?  Funny, when we were trying to make decisions my voice was merely one among many and my role was more the facilitator who tried to make sure that it was a building project that fit the congregation and reflected their concerns.  My response, by the way, was that if they knew me, they would know that "my" new church would have looked very different than the one we constructed.  Mine would have been colder and darker, lots of wood paneling and carving, tall windows, and a giant crucifix designed to make me look smaller.  Don't get me wrong.  It is very nice.  But it is not a mirror of my taste in churches.  I like stone and dark wood and tall ceilings.  But, as Pope Francis should already know and every other pastor as well, it is not and was not about me.  If only clergy were as concerned with making it about Christ as they were about pursuing their own desires.  It is a common problem, probably less common among conservative churches than liberal ones, but common enough.  It is no wonder that folks only take Pope Francis seriously because he can make the rules.  It is no wonder that folks struggle to take other clergy seriously.  It is not about you.  That also includes the folks in the pews. 

We don't sing hymns or preach on the basis of polls or opinion or favorites.  We don't believe doctrine because it has received majority approval.  We don't teach what most people think is in the Bible.  That is perhaps the Lutheran genius.  We have written confessions.  Of course, you can see how far that went when folks decided not to pay attention to them -- like the decisions of the ELCA and its predecessor bodies going back 50 or 60 years.  We don't vote on things like who communes or how often the Sacrament is offered or how long the sermon should be or even chalice or individual cup.  Pastoral decisions are not less orthodox but made first of all away from the realm of personal taste or preference.  We model a fuller piety but make no rules that everyone has to cross themselves or the like.  We preach faithfully the whole counsel of God and not what fits the mood of the people.  We serve not to build monuments to ourselves but to carefully steward the mysteries of God among His people in the time we serve them.  It is not about me or you.  To his shame, the current autobiography of the Pope and the previous written offerings about him share this common character flaw.  He does think it is about him.  

Screens work against community. . .

I am more and more convinced that churches should be technology free zones.  It is neither helpful nor faithful to make churches into the religious versions of the digital platforms that already dominate our lives.  The screens that we put up in the chancel and the apps we think so helpful to the faith only do two things.  One is that they blur the lines between the church and the world.  The other is that they assist in the individualization of things that works against the community (koinonia) inherent to the Gospel.  Both of these ills are increasingly troublesome for the churches.

We have already learned that screens are not an aid to education but actually a hindrance.  We thought we were preparing people better by using the tools of entertainment but it turns out the screens are a diversion and a distraction from the educational task.  Even careful and judicial use of them is not advancing the cause of reading, writing, and arithmetic but becoming competition for the core tasks that once dominated the educational sphere.  Why would churches follow this dead end path in their own approach to worship, catechesis, and the sanctified life?  The reality is that nearly everyone is unable to balance screens with anything else and the tools become the master and the mind and heart the servant of that master.  

Take down those dang screens that distract away from altar, pulpit, and font, from hearing the Word read and preached, and from the fellowship of the table lived out before, during, and after the actual communion on Christ's flesh and blood.  Stop trying to sell devotional life as an app.  The first step to a fruitful devotional life is to get your face off a screen not glued to one.  Stop turning the church's song into a mere soundtrack for the video which is chosen and reflective of each individual's preference.  Give up the illusion that some people are visual learners and train up the mind to hear and meditate upon the Word of God.  It is not the Word that must accommodate the person but the person who grows in knowledge, appreciation, and trust in that Word.  Faith comes by hearing.  This was not a statement conditioned upon the lack of technology when it was written by St. Paul but the universal conclusion of how God has operated from the beginning and to the end of all things.

In addition to the problem of screens for the person, there is the role the screens play working against community.  With our ear buds in and our eyes on our screens (large and small) we are increasingly isolated in life and the church should not cater to this.  Look around you.  Homes are fortresses to keep people away where once they were places where we welcomed others, broke bread together, built community through conversation, and enjoyed our lives together in entertainment that engaged us together (like card games and board games).  The reality is that this happens less and less among all ages.  It also happens less and less in the church.  The jokes have made pot lucks and game nights and other such things into a mere joke.  We have ignored that the food was not the focus but the eating together around long tables which made us sit with people we would not have chosen and engage one another in conversation about who we are, our lives in the family, and our lives together as God's people.  Instead of community, we have collections of individuals living in the bubble of their own worlds and screens -- even in church.

Some have labeled our time as the anti-social century.  One might add that the church has also become at least neutral to the cause of community and sometimes also its enemy.  Our penchant for finding a church that fits us has made the Gospel itself malleable and adjustable so that we hear what we want and then we hear it how we want to hear it.  The pews is an increasing anachronism to a people who do not need to be present for worship but can do it just fine at home in front of a screen.  Even communion has betrayed its own name and turned into a person in front of a screen with something that resembles bread and wine (or juice) in a hermetically sealed container.  We meet Jesus in our jammies instead dressing up and we meet Jesus more and more alone instead of together and then we wonder why the church is viewed as irrelevant or why we are not making headway in our purpose and mission.  

Community cannot be defined digitally.  It cannot be created digitally.  It begs what is in short supply today -- face to face identity.  In person has become the option that vitiates against the fellowship that the lonely long for and the fearful need.  No, technology ought to be suspect by those who deal with a reality that is personal, a God in flesh, and a God in flesh who works through means.  It does not get more real than this.  People gathered together around the Word and Table of the Lord.  Our use of technology has become a liability and not a blessing in the pursuit of a people called by God to be His own in baptism and nurtured by His Word, fed at His table, to love and forgive one another in Christ's name.  It is time to wake up and smell the roses.  Technology is not our savior and may be our demon.

Young men interested in the Holy Ministry. . .

If you are interested in becoming a Pastor in the LCMS, this might be for YOU!

The Maier Conference—From the 2nd-4th of May, Zion will host a theological conference geared towards young men confirmed in the church who want to learn more about a vocation in the Holy Ministry. Presenters include Rev. Dr. Adam Koontz (Brief History of Power), Rev. Matthew Wiedtfelt (Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN), and Rev. Reed Shoaff (Luther Classical College), among others.  Along with the presentations, we will also have Matins and Vespers services, meals, Barbecue, softball games, and other events.

 Visit HERE for more information and registration.