Double Jeopardy

Even as we struggle to slow the decline and even to reverse it, we must admit that the Christian character of the West is already mostly lost.  Where there is a vibrant church and Christian witness, this decline has been slower but it has been more than made up by rapid de-churching of our culture.  There was a time in which Christianity was a known quantity even to those who did not affirm the cardinal tenets of the faith.  There was a time in which Biblical literacy was preserved not only by religious catechesis but by the affirmation of a literature and culture in which passages and the content of the Scriptures was woven into the fabric of all things.  It is no longer the case.

The sad truth is that  even the most basic elements of Christianity have slipped away from those who confess the faith and even from those who claim to still believe it.  Certainly from the culture and in a wider sense, from the Church herself, we have found ourselves knowing less God's Word and therefore being less able to differentiate truth from error, heresy from orthodoxy.  I was recently reminded of this in when it was pointed out to me how a 2023 episode of the popular quiz show “Jeopardy” found three contestants who were unable to complete the phrase Our Father who art in Heaven, _______ be Thy Name.  They simply did not know how the Our Father began.  It was not that long ago that anyone and everyone would have known that without a moment's hesitation and when the culture itself had a more than cursory knowledge of the Bible and the sacred texts of Christianity (creed and 23rd Psalm, to name a few). 

Pastors and denominational leaders often forget how distant the sacred texts of Christianity are to the world around us and how much this has affected those within.  There was a time when I could presumed that the unchurched had been baptized as a child and went to Sunday school and at some point simply stopped attending.  Now we live in an age when people have been raised from childhood to adulthood without the church and the faith even mentioned (except, perhaps, in a negative way).  Where this might be understandable outside the faithful, those who profess the faith also seem less interested in things like Scripture and creed and confession and more interested in other things -- from climate change to the hot button sex issues of the day to a sentimental spirituality nourished more by YouTube videos homily or catechesis.  

Over the last decade or so, half the people joining the parish I served for 32 years were coming not from another church but from nothing at all.  They presumed that they had a working knowledge of Christianity from meme or social media but the reality is that they knew very little of what was true and real about Christian doctrine and practice.  It is not simply that they knew Christianity by stereotype but that they knew a shallow and distorted stereotype shaped not simply by a faulty stereotype but one completely unrelated to Scripture, creed, confession, and history.  Please note here that I am not complaining about the people but about the way our educational system and culture have dealt with Christian faith and teaching.  In most cases, the people were victims, having depended upon sources without knowing if those sources were accurate or not.  As AI evolves and becomes more predominant, this will only magnify the number and consequence of their errors in stating what is true, accurate, and real.

In the end, this places the burden squarely upon the parents, the home, and the congregation to be faithful and accurate in their public teaching and confession.  Furthermore, this is a solemn reminder that we cannot depend on others to do what the Church and her people have been called to do.  Even if you codify the commandments of God into the laws of the nation it will not make Christ known.  Though we might have become complacent presuming that the aims of the world and the Church might be parallel, surely we dare not depend upon this any longer.  If we do, we will place in double jeopardy the treasure of the only Gospel that provides hope and freedom to sinners captive to death.

Interesting. . .

Late to Holy Week and too late to post I caught that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops was concerned that the words of Scripture might be misunderstood and decided that a clarification of God's Word needed to be made lest anyone mistake what they read and heard.

In the relevant part of a “liturgical note” that the USCCB mandated to be inserted into the missalettes that are used in the pews of Roman Catholic churches was this warning not to read in any “antisemitism” into the reading of the Passion according to Saint John the Evangelist on Good Friday:

“The passion narratives are proclaimed in full so that all see vividly the love of Christ for each person. In light of this, the crimes during the Passion of Christ cannot be attributed, in either preaching or catechesis, indiscriminately to all Jews of that time, nor to Jews today. The Jewish people should not be referred to as though rejected or cursed, as if this view followed from Scripture. The Church ever keeps in mind that Jesus, his mother Mary, and the apostles all were Jewish. As the Church has always held, Christ freely suffered his passion and death because of the sins of all, that all might be saved.” (The USCCB’s Good Friday pastoral note.)

I think I am fully aware that nearly any part of Scripture can be misread or misunderstood but I also rather leery of any attempts on the part of churches to explain what God really meant by His own words.  It would seem to me that this is the most blatant form of saying that we know better than the Scriptures what God meant and therefore what He should have said.  While every Christian worth his salt already probably feels that way about every word of Scripture that impinges upon his favorite sin, we also know what God is His own interpreter.  So I would hope that we take leave of this habit of trying to explain what God really meant when it too often means denying what He did say.  That, in my own experience, has been the undoing of the Church more than it has helped anyone better know what God could have, should have, and would have said if He had only known as much as we know now.

 

An update. . .

Just in case you might have presumed I am hard to live with (which I do not deny), I can say this.  We have been married now 47 years today and we are still going strong.  To be sure, it is due more to the fact that my wife is forgiving than I am noble in my vocation as husband.  I think we all would agree with that but it is important to be said.  Love does not mean never having to say you are sorry any more than love means you do not have to forgive.  It is quite the opposite.  The one to whom your confession is more urgently needed is precisely your spouse and the one who needs forgiving most of all is that spouse.  Forgiveness is not some small little thing thrown in to the whole deal but that thing on which love depends and which love makes possible.

On Sunday mornings, we make confession as the bride of Christ to Him who has sacrificed everything for us.  It is a general confession and, as you know if you read my pages, not really a substitute for private confession, but there is something to be said for it.  We admit not only that we have sinned in what we have done and not done right but that love is built upon this thing called forgiveness.  Love does not mean never having to say your are sorry to God any more than God's forgiveness is a trivial little detail in the manifold cornucopia of gifts and graces He has provided.  The little give clue to this everything.

Just as we begin with confession and absolution, so do we hear the Gospel of Christ and Him crucified for our sins.  We pray because His blood has cleared the way for us to pray and to pray confidently (without forgiveness there is no real assurance to prayer at all).  We feast upon the foretaste of the eternal and are reminded by Christ's own words that this is given and shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins.  We confess the creed not as some sterile collection of words but as a people who have been loved laud Him who loved us even to the end.  The benediction is not some promise of everything working out just the way we want it as much as it is God sending us out the door as He bade farewell to the woman caught in adultery -- Go and sin no more.  This is no appeal to law or condemnation or punishment as motivation to strive for the narrow way but the acknowledgment of blessed Peter who admits there is nowhere else to go.  We have seen love and it looked like the cross and now it beckons us to renounce the easy and sinful ways of our lives because He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

Love requires forgiveness but does not presume it.  This is what we learn in church that we learn to practice at home between husband and wife who will surely fail each other and the lofty vows they once made.  This love manifests itself in forgiving not because it is deserved or earned or even because it knows the sin will never happen again.  No, this love manifests itself in forgiveness because this is what we have learned of God's love for us and this is the beating heart of love between husband and wife and, in particular, between this man and the wife whose faithfulness is most profound and beautiful in the way she continues to love him and forgive him.  God bless marriage.  God bless the married.  God teach husband and wife the way of forgiveness for this is the true path of love.

Casual day at work?

In our decidedly casual world in which sleep clothes pass for shopping at Walmart and dress down days at work have become the norm rather than the exception, who should be surprised at what unfolds next?  In schools it is often hard to tell teachers from students by their dress.  Scrubs have become a type of clothing not exclusive to those who wear them for work.  White lab coats no longer grace physicians or scientists as khakis and polos rule the day.  Clergy dress like the worst dressed person attending worship services.  I could go on but I think you get my drift and my issue.  There is an accompanying loss of dignity and seriousness which accompanies the casual look.  If I dress casually that gives folks permission to take me casually.  For some professions and jobs it might be easy to distinguish at work from at play.  For clergy in particular it is harder to draw the line.  Pastors are always on call and in public always identified by their calling even when they are "off duty."

I do not mean to pick on the dead but this video of the Pope in casual dress -- not even an old cassock and some comfortable shoes but some kind of poncho over black pants and a white shirt of some kind -- is telling.  He was making a visit to a church in Rome which was undergoing renovation.  It was not simply the Pope.  His entourage was similarly dressed in non-church clothing -- albeit still with shirts and ties and an occasional jacket.  Perhaps it was a spontaneous outing and I should be understanding because he was just hospitalized for 38 days and is still, by the look, not healthy.  That said, it helps neither a Pope or people outside the faith to be uncomfortable with the uniform of office.  Click here for one of the papabile singing John Lennon's Imagine. Pretty dignified, huh. (Apparently the link was removed by YouTube).  How can anyone take seriously what we believe and confess clergy dress down without trying to be incognito?  This Pope came expecting to be recognized and he was.  So this was not some quiet, spur of the moment, in clandestine outing.  There he was the Pope of the Casual, wanting us to know he was still there and still in charge but looking ridiculous.  Even a suit and tie would have looked better than some strange blanket thing over his shoulders.  But that is the point.  Dress like you do not want to be taken seriously and you won't.  I am quite positive I have no influence over any Pope or perhaps any clergy, but if you are reading this, I suggest you take a look in the mirror before you head out for the day (especially a work day) and ask yourself if you dress like someone who expects to be taken seriously.  While this is especially true of pastors, it is also true of most of us.  While some might find this nitpicky, this is an especially important question when those who have an office are not comfortable in the skin of that office.  You can wear what you want in your own quarters, but in public wear the uniform of your office.  Please.

 

What does life mean?

Last month, amid the preparations for Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter, a U.S. tech company indicated it was on the verge of bringing back the dire wolf from extinction. Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences introduced the world to three genetically engineered white haired wolf pups created with the help of ancient DNA obtained from fossilized remains of the long extinct animals. Dire wolves went extinct some 13,000 years ago and their skeletal remains have been found in both North and South America but many people know of them from George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" fantasy which was the basis for HBO's TV series "Game of Thrones."

So a genetic tech company believes it has the wherewithal to bring the dire wolf back from extinction. I guess this is hardly new in a world where gene editing has been announcing all sorts of miracles for a long time. It was eerily reminiscent of the 1993 Jurassic Park movies which had the same kind of answer to a question no one was asking. I wish this was simply about resurrecting extinct species.  Instead it is about the God complex of modern humanity and the advances in technology that have granted us this power over life and death.  In the end, it would seem that we are as a culture so caught up in the possibility that the question of limits on our powers and the morality or wisdom of what we do has not been raised with enough seriousness to slow the progress.  Do not make the mistake of thinking this is simply about resurrecting old species.  In a real and profound way it is about what it means to be human and if being human means anything significant at all.

The tech community along with those invested in everything from gender identity to IVF all view the human limitations we know as challenges to overcome rather than boundaries to accept.  They resist any limitations upon the freedom for man to define himself and invent himself and the world around him according to whatever choices the moment deems prudent.  What is concerning is that the world is listening and enjoys the whole idea that we can do this and seems unconcerned about the consequences upon us as people and our society for the unrestrained use of such power to do whatever we choose.  The tech industry is not content to dabble in entertainment and screens or even medical devices on behalf of those who have lost limbs or are blind.  No, any limitation on us has become a challenge and problem to be solved without any real consideration to what this will do to us as a society and as people.  Our ability for eugenics and the technological manipulation of humanity has exceeded our moral compass.  We are in love with the idea of what we can do more than we fear what such choices might do to us as a people and this is a large problem.

In 1943, C. S. Lewis wrote a critique of the penchant of man to ignore the questions of values in a book with a very catchy title:  The Abolition of Man.  But the abolition of man can come in many forms.  Lewis foresaw a not-so distant future in which the values and morals of the majority would be controlled by a small group who exercised their understanding of psychology in order to rule over others but whose own morality was guided not by principle or value but whim.  The surrender both of rational reflection and moral consideration would end up dehumanizing the world and the Abolition of Man will have been completed.  Of course, it is obvious when we see a world which is more in love with the idea of making a baby in the lab than it is protecting the life in the womb but this is only part of it.  The separation of gender from gene and body has created another avenue in which whim triumphs over truth.  But it could be that Lewis is right to foresee a time in which our technology will lead us where we should not go.  An island out of control may not be a big problem in our minds today anymore than a couple of cuddly wolf pups seem a threat but it is entirely possible that the fascination with what we could do will be an even greater threat to who we are and who we should be as people.  

Every Sunday morning we go to church not simply to find forgiveness for our many sins or an answer to death that has passed to all people.  No, we go also to be reminded who we are as people, where our lives come from, and to remember the story of what happened when we refused to respect limits.  The delusion of freedom became a curse that has dogged our lives.  Now in the shadow of Good Friday and Easter, we are asked again to look away from our own natures and to the Lord who has the answers and whose Spirit leads us to ask the right questions. 

Still open. . .

 

I have been asked to teach a continuing ed course in August in two locations.  The information is listed below.  Take a gander and if you are interested, sign up and join us.  It is not only for pastors but also for lay folks as well.

August 4–6, 2025 in Auburn, MI &

August, 12-14 in Cupertino, CA 

The Rev. Larry A. Peters is a native of Nebraska and graduated from St. John’s College, Winfield, Kansas, Concordia Senior College, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne (1980). He vicared on Long Island and served his first call in Cairo, New York, before moving to Clarksville, Tennessee, where he has served Grace Lutheran Church as senior pastor for thirty-two years. He is now pastor emeritus of Grace. In 2017 Concordia Theological Seminary recognized him as alumnus of the year. He has served as a circuit visitor in the Atlantic and Mid-South districts, is currently chairman of the Synod’s Commission on Constitutional Matters, sits on the Synod’s Commission on Handbook, and is also secretary of the Mid-South district. He has also served on the planning committees for the Synod’s Institute for Liturgy, Preaching, and Church Music for the last ten years. Pastor Peters has published many periodical articles and served as a contributor to a number of CPH volumes. He is the author of the popular blog, Pastoral Meanderings. Pastor Peters has been married to his wife, Amy, for more than forty-six years, and they have three adult children and two grandchildren. He is currently trying to figure out what retirement means.  

At All Times and in All Places: All God's People Pray 

More words about prayer can be found in the Scriptures than about most other topics, and yet God’s people struggle with what it means to pray. This course will examine the practice of prayer among God’s Old Testament people, through the time of Christ, through the history of Christianity, and down to the present day. What is prayer? What does it mean to pray? How do we pray? How did the people of God order their prayer lives before us? What is the difference between and what is the connection with the individhttps://witness.lcms.org/the-magazine/ual prayer lives of God’s people and the common prayers of God’s people together? What does God’s Word teach us about prayer? This course will help participants learn and appreciate the lessons of the past on the practice and discipline of prayer both as individuals and as a people gathered together for worship and prayer. All of us are both amateurs and professionals when it comes to praying, and this course is both for those who lead and teach God’s people to pray and for the people of God in their discipline of prayer throughout the circumstances and places of life.  

Location:    Grace Lutheran Church 303 Ruth St. Auburn, MI 48611 To download the registration form, click here.  

Lutheran Church of Our Savior 5825 Bollinger Rd. Cupertino, CA 95014  To download the registration form, click here.

Coordinators:  Rev. Aaron T. Schian Email: aaronschian@yahoo.com Phone: (607) 972-5792  & Rev. John Bestul Phone: 408.252.0345 Email: pastorjbestul@lcos.org 

Schedule Class begins the first day at 12:00 p.m. and concludes at 12:00 p.m. the final day.

Not privileged. . .

When Washington state Gov. Mike Ferguson signed a controversial bill into law last week making reporting of child abuse mandatory, it went one step further than ever before.  Now, "mandatory" leaves no room for clergy and the seal of the confessional.  The state has required reporting of child abuse leaving no exemptions even for information disclosed during private confession. Confessions had been considered privileged and therefore exempt from the requirement and still are nearly everywhere else.  Confession, like attorney client privilege, has always been carved out an exception to such reporting requirements.  Now that exception has been closed.  Though this is certainly an issue for Roman Catholic clergy, it is no less an issue for Lutherans.  We have always observed and honored the seal of the confessional and the governments reach has always stopped at this point -- deeming it as encroaching up the separation of church and state.  One of the consequences of the breaching of the wall is not simply the influence of religion upon government but government upon religion.  This will undoubtedly be overturned by the Supreme Court of the nation as a violation of the constitutional restriction against laws that infringe upon religious freedom but the signal is pretty clear.  In a world in which there is no respect left for religion, there will be no popular support of the rights of religious against the backdrop of the heinous crimes of child abuse.  In this case, no one wins.  While some may point to the $5,000 fine for not abiding by this intrusion, the money is the smaller issue here.

Some years ago the local county jail instituted video visits -- even for lawyers meeting their incarcerated clients.  I was asked by a member to come to the jail and was given a small closet and a screen but I quickly surmised that this was in no way going to be a visit in which any confidence could be guaranteed.  I warned the member upfront of this and suggested that others might be listening.  After the visit, I waited to be let out and could hear lawyers in their closets talking with clients and knew that walls had ears -- even if they were intended to be soundproof.  It effectively prevent much of any meaningful conversation and pastoral care.  Later I asked other lawyers and clergy about their experience and they shrugged their shoulders.  "It is what it is," they said.  The guarantees of our liberty are only as solid as the ways in which that liberty is exercised or prevented.  In this case, it did not amount to much.

Surely we all get it.  We live in an age in which Dateline and Snapped teach us that things are not what they seem and of cop and courtroom dramas in which the guilty too often are able to beat the system.  Then we watch the news of egregious crimes committed on video for the world to see but the media carefully calling the guilty the "accused" -- as if we could unsee what we saw.  The world begs for justice in a system that will render a verdict after too many years have passed that probably will not have much to do with actual guilt or innocence, and a punishment assigned that will be set aside because jails and prisons are crowded and the enlightened have decided that everyone deserves another chance.  So we are gravely tempted to forego the provisions which provide a small modicum of privacy and privilege to such seemingly irrelevant things as religion.  But in our haste we find ourselves in grave peril.  The world which no longer has respect for privacy for religious purpose will no longer respect any privacy and in that world religion will suffer but so will freedom.  I am a nobody with a relatively transparent life but it still makes me uneasy to think that my life is an open book for anyone with a screen.  If we are not ready to honor the confidentiality of the confessional, we should not complain when all the details of our lives are published in social media and sourced for scammers who are working to profit at our expense.  

Washington's governor and legislature may be well-intentioned but they are wrong.  The sooner we realize that such protections are not infringements upon our freedom but the pure exercise of liberty the sooner we may get some semblance of order back for us and all our institutions.  Governments are not our masters but our servants.

Less to miss. . .

I recently read an article about how those most orthodox in their Christian faith are the least likely to depart the Church and those least orthodox in their Christian faith are the most likely to leave.  Some probably hailed this as a great insight.  It is to be expected.  Those who do not hold to the creedal and doctrinal formulations of the faith and, in particular, to the truthfulness and factual character of the Scriptures, have less to leave and therefore less to miss.

If you already have doubts about or rejected Scripture as God's Word and infallible in what it says (not only in matters of salvation), there is less to miss by jettisoning the Scriptures and the Church called into being by that Word.  If you already have rejected the voice of God speaking through His Word ordering all things into being and keeping them, there is less to miss by taking the off ramp from religion and its theocentric shape of all things.  If you have already departed from the morality flowing from God's Word and His creative and redemptive work, you have also pretty much given up on the idea of sin and evil in favor of some vacillating standard and so there is less to miss.  If you have already supplemented with or given the primary nod to culture and popular opinion as a standard for truth against God's revelation, there is less to miss by giving it all up in favor of what feels good in the moment.  If you have already come to the conclusion that your life is mostly accident and primarily about what you do or do not do in the present, it is easier to give up on God's will and purpose and any thoughts about eternity and therefore there is less to miss by leaving it all behind.  I could go on and on and on but I think you get the drift.

Of course those least catechized and those whose faith is less in accord with the creedal and doctrinal formulations of Christian orthodoxy are more likely to leave.  They hold to less and it is easier for them to give up that as well.  For all the talk about the nones and the declining numbers of Christians, the painful and yet honest truth is that the orthodox Christians (no matter the tradition) are always the least likely to depart the pew and the most likely to stay.  It is the obvious truth which we do not seem to want to admit.  Christians who hold to the faith once delivered to the saints and who practice that faith with regular (dare I say weekly?) attendance are hardly likely to depart.  The ones we lose are always the ones whom we do not quite have now and the future merely reveals how little we had them in the beginning.

Let me dispel a myth, however.  We will always have the cultural Christians who come on Christmas and Easter and weddings and funerals and such.  They may be distant from the actual believing part of it all (though whom I to judge) but at least they recognize the value of holding on to the dream.  I suspect there is more hope of these becoming more orthodox and devout than there is any real hope of those who have to swallow hard when they hear the Christian faith as it has always been confessed.  They have no dream left to hold onto and their anchor within the pale is always in danger of slipping.  It will not take much for them to slip out the back or even perhaps to throw a public fit about the narrowness of the orthodox faith in the face of a wider world of opinion and truth.  They hold to less and have less to miss.

Childlike clarity. . .

Age and experience are supposed to impart wisdom.  Sometimes they also bestow a cloud or fog around things that should be clear.  I see it in myself.  I heard it in others.  It is hard to miss and even harder to overcome.  The child sees life through a rather uncluttered lens but the adult has all sorts of caveats that fill the landscape of life.  Even more, they make it often hard to see virtue and evil, good and bad, right and wrong.  Instead of clarity and fine lines, there are degrees of muddiness and gray that undermine the whole idea of right and wrong.

One of the places where it happens most clearly is confession.  When a child comes to private confession, they know what they have said and thought and done and they know one thing more.  They know it is wrong.  They do not like it.  Who does?  But they know the elephant in the room and they do not ignore it.  Sometimes a youth at confession ends up with swelling emotion and tears as they say out loud what has tormented him or her for too long.  Perhaps a careless word was said to a beloved parent -- I hate you; I wish you were dead.  Unlike adults who can minimize the power of words, these words live in their minds and hearts and they hear them over and over again with every glimpse of the parent.  Like a dam giving way to the flood, confession allows this to all come out unvarnished and without nuance of explanation or justification.

The adult is often more likely to rationalize the context and to say why it was said and to make sure that the father confessor knows they did not mean it.  But of course they did.  Everyone means the words that come spilling out of our mouths but later need recalling.  We meant it in the moment even though we may live with a lifetime of regret for having actually said it.  But the adult tends to soften the evil of the words and the intent and to smooth the rough edges of the sin.  Because of this, it is harder for the adult to leave confession having felt the full release of the absolution for as much as you make relative the sin, you also end up making relative the forgiveness.  If you are honest, you have heard it in yourself.  I have.

There is another aspect to this.  The child almost always confesses concrete sins.  They sins they have said, thought, or done.  The child does not have the advantage of living with intentions and lives more comfortably in the realm of words, thoughts, and deeds.  The adult lives easily in the arena of intentions and the confessions of adults are more about the things they could or should have done but did not instead of the concrete of the things they said, thought, or did that were evil.  In this way, evil itself is distanced from the everyday life of the adult in a way that it is not for the child.

Something to think about when you go to private confession.  Try not to explain your sins to the pastor hearing your confession or to God.  Simply confess them.  Confess them as concrete realities and not what might have been done that was not.  Believe you me, this is the key to walking away with a clear conscience and it is for this that know Christ and Him crucified.  He takes our sin away not by diminishing its wrong or giving it a context to be understood but with His blood that cleanses us and makes us clean.  Thanks be to God!

The Pope for agnostics. . .

I have heard it said and written many times that Pope Francis is held in high esteem by non-Roman and even non-attending self-proclaimed Christians because he gives a kindly human face to their own problems with the Scriptures, doctrine, and truth.  Certainly this must be so.  After all, this is the man who refuses to judge, who goes the second mile to talk to those on the fringes of the faith while calling believers in the traditional faith rigid and uncaring, and who expresses his own doubts so openly.  Who living on the fringes of the faith would not feel welcomed by someone who seems to have his own struggles with the words of Jesus and the doctrines proclaimed in Scripture?  He is a Pope for Doubters and Progressives but the real test is whether he is bringing them back into the sphere of the truth that endures forever or merely making them feel better about their own rejection and uncertainties.  He has given the liberal wing of his church permission to depart even further from the faith but he has yet to show any evidence that his laissez-faire attitude toward doctrine has welcomed anyone back to the pews.

My own suspicion is that he is not bringing many back into the fold but is certainly helping those who insist upon living on the fringes of doctrine and life feel better about their tenuous position on the edge.  While some will say that is good, unless the olive branch brings them closer to the faith flowing out of Scripture and confessed in the creed, it remains a rather empty gesture. Without a bridge designed to bring those who struggle to accept and confess the faith into a fuller life within the communion of faith, it is a bridge too far.  While I am not at all suggesting that the faithful should be callous or cold in their treatment of those on the fringes, the whole enterprise of evangelization is to bring people into the full embrace of Christ and not to confirm them in their doubts or approve of their own rejection of the core of Christian faith and life.

This Pope is not quite the figure of a Fulton Sheen.  Where you like or dislike the Archbishop, he went to where the people were and challenged them to come where Christ is.  That is the goal of apologetics.  It is not to defend a weak and fragile faith but to reveal the strength and power of Christ and Him crucified to those who fear trusting Him or anyone.  We engage the doubter not so that he might be confirmed in his doubts but so that they may be answered by the Word of the Lord that endures forever.  Yes, the Lord woos and wins us over, persuades us (as the KJV put it in Romans 8), but He does so not with a weak of fragile truth.  Christ engages us with a truth so strong that it is without comparison and with a love that is not mere words but arms outstretched in suffering for us and for the whole world.  

Our Lord does not join the sinner in his sin in order that he might feel less guilty or convicted by that sin.  He offers to those living in shame and in the shadow of death forgiveness and life.  He does not leave sin to the darkness but calls it out to the light where forgiveness can overpower it.  He does not join the doubter in his doubts or the smug in his prideful rejection of God's Word but confronts them with truth so strong it can save not only one soul but a whole world.  He does not live an immoral life so that those who do might feel better about their words and actions but addresses the immoral with more than a word of judgment in the mercy that rescues and redeems.  He does not tell the sinful woman that she is okay but sends her forth in mercy and calls her to "go and sin no more."   It is precisely this that is missing in Pope Francis' words to those on the edge of Christianity.  There can and should be more.  Rome already knows more in the stunning witness of a John Paul II against the cheapening of life, marriage, sex, and family.  And there it is.  While Francis is out bringing roses and chocolates to those who reject the core of Christian faith and life, his other hand is gutting what is left of John Paul II's legacy of life and virtue.  While no one wishes another to die, perhaps it is true that Francis' passing would relieve the faithful of a leader who has taken them in the wrong direction.  Unless, however, he is replaced with someone better, it is merely the change of watch on a ship already sinking.

Survey says. . .

By now you probably have read of the controversy about Pew research that finds LCMS people are more liberal, accepting, and supporting than their church body of such things as open communion and abortion and homosexuality and the transgender thing and have more doubts about the historicity, inerrancy, and exclusivity of Scripture and its claims to Christ alone.  That is what headlines reported.  As I have written before, Lyman Stone has drawn other conclusions.  You can read them here.   My point is to compare my time as Senior Pastor of Grace, Clarksville, TN, with some of his summary conclusions below.

•  About 3% of LCMS members are converts from outside of Christianity, 8% from other non Lutheran Christian backgrounds, and 20% from other Lutheran or similar denominations.  In my experience, Grace has had a much higher number of converts -- often as much as 1/2 of those joining in a given year -- who are from non-Lutheran or no church backgrounds.  This is significant because we tended to bring in 50-75 new members each year.

•  “Confessional” churches receive more converts than “Missional” churches, and “Traditional”  churches receive more converts than “Contemporary” services. Smaller LCMS churches in rural  areas or small towns receive higher rates of converts than large urban or suburban congregations. Younger converts to the LCMS are also much likelier to be women than lifelong LCMS members of  the same age.  This is exactly true of my time at Grace.  People were drawn to liturgical worship in which we believed what forms, ceremonies, and rites said, to reverence as a central judge of what happens in worship, to Biblical preaching which focuses upon what God has said and how it applies to Christians in their life, and music which also speaks the Word of God in song (especially the traditional core of Christian and Lutheran hymnody).

•  Conversion into the LCMS is most commonly associated with individuals finding a welcoming community which provides a sense of connection to history, and/or converts arrive via a romantic  connection to an LCMS member. About 1/3 of converts into the LCMS experienced romantic  attachments as a key element of their conversion, and an additional 1/3 were largely motivated by a  search for community. A conviction that prior beliefs were wrong was only the primary influence on  about 1 in 5 converts.  This also applies, though to varying degree.  A welcoming community is certainly key to the return of those who visit (and we had a lot of first time visitors).  It is also true that this welcome needs to be both formal (greeters, etc.) and informal (genuine hospitality from the folks in the pew).  A spouse can be a catalyst though not always as first thought.  Yes, we had plenty of Lutheran spouses bringing their non-Lutheran spouses to church but we also had people with different religious backgrounds looking for something different than either.

•  More liturgical churches, and churches that respondents identify as “Confessional and Traditional,”  not only receive more converts, but are experiencing less severe declines in attendance and  membership, and may have younger membership profiles.  I certainly realize that there are parts of the country where the population is dwindling and there are fewer people to address with the Gospel because of that migration.  I am also conscious of the fact that in any given area the number of Christians as a percentage of the population is in decline and the number of those attending any church also declining.  Our average age has been young, the number of children has been high, and the attendance has increased steadily over 30 years bringing this from a small congregation (75 or so in worship to one with 325 in worship).  While there is no predictor of the future, I do not think that we have done things out of the reach of many congregations nor do I think that our situation is so unique that it could not be reflective of growth in other places.  

The reality is that we presume that in order to grow you need to ditch the liturgy, switch to a contemporary Christian song list, abandon liturgical and ceremonial worship for a casual style, and build a building that does not look like a church (complete with a pastor who does not act like one).  Well, Stone has proven that all these assumptions are wrong.  That does not mean you can switch to these things and you will grow -- these must be formally the identity and belief of the people and pastor and not simply a different style chosen to fill the pews with what seems to be working in the moment.  You need to do what you do well -- to the best of your ability.  This means pastors, musicians, and folks in the pew.  The days of whatever happens in worship, catechesis, and fellowship are over.  If you say it is important, people expect you to take it seriously -- especially what we confess and how we live out that confession.

 

Ontological questions. . .

While some of the differences within the Missouri Synod are often framed as nuanced practices within the framework of adiaphora, there is another way to view these.  The divergent views of how we do things are ultimately ontological -- born of very different views of who the Missouri Synod is and not simply how we might do things.

Take the business of seminaries and routes to ordination.  While no one in their right mind would presume that Scripture has put in place the system we have today, that system has been the way we as the Missouri Synod have done things pretty much from the beginning.  It is not simply about who trains our pastors but who certifies them for service to the Synod.  While it might seem that the near monopoly our seminaries have might be worth breaking up, the real question here is who certifies the graduates of other programs and other schools and attests to their fitness and training to serve as clergy?  In the ELCA this is not the role of the seminary at all but has been delegated to local candidacy committees on a Synod (meaning District in our terminology) level.  Each Synod has its own criteria and makes its own decisions about who will be ordained (except, of course, for the regular pattern of ordaining outside this as was done with women and LGBTQ+ even before the ELCA had acted to approve these).  In other words, this is reflective of the ELCA's self understanding as a confederation of largely autonomous geographical units and that these decide on a local level who is ordained reveals the depth of this independence.  Missouri, whether rightly or wrongly, is not made up of autonomous or even independent districts that constitute the national jurisdiction.  In Missouri, the Synod defines the Districts and not the other way around.  Districts are simply Synod in that particular place (okay, the non-geographical districts sort of break some of the rules here).  Missouri has reserved not to the Districts but to the Synod the role of training and certifying for ordination those who will serve us as pastors.  Missouri has done so through the Seminary.  Synod makes those decisions and not Districts or other non-synodical seminaries or training routes.  Again, whether you think this is good or not, this is not a choice that can be changed without also changing the self-understanding of who we are as the Missouri Synod.  

BTW here are two statements from the leaders of the LCMS seminaries on such alternate routes, especially those which completely bypass official channels.

Or look at the business of worship.  Some have insisted the congregation is perfectly free to decide which hymnals and liturgies and agendas (the other rites) it will use.  Some have even gone so far as to suggest that perhaps Districts can establish their own criteria for and publish their own "hymnals."  Again, this is not a simple question of what can be done but what should be done.  The Synod has said it makes these decisions on a larger scale than the congregation or the District and asks the congregations as condition of membership to use only doctrinally pure hymnals, liturgies, and agendas.  For lack of better way of putting it, to forego freedom in order to pursue more unity as a hallmark of their identity within the Synod.  In other words, we have united around a higher value than liberty and locale and we call that value unity of doctrine and practice.  To delegate that solely to the congregation would transform Missouri from a congregational church body into a congregationalist one -- sort of like the Southern Baptist Convention in which there is no real national church identity or structure but a cooperative association in which the congregation is fully independent to decide for itself such things as what will be believed and how it will be practiced.   As we have seen recently, it takes a lot to get disciplined in the SBC and there is great latitude practiced (even more than some would like!).  For the District to assume the role of Synod in sanctioning or publishing its own worship books or establishing its own worship practices is for such a District to take what the Synod has assigned to itself alone.  Again, it is for the sake of all that some restrict some of their liberty to abide not only by a common confession but also to practice that confession more closely in sync with their fellow congregations across the nation and not simply within a geographical portion of the land.  I am not arguing here that this is good or bad or right or wrong but only to suggest that a big change here is also a big change in the self-understanding of who we are together as the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

Finally, if, indeed, we as a Synod decide that such changes in who we are and how we live and work together are the way to do, it has to happen on the level of how decisions are made by the Synod and not by individual congregations or even Districts deciding on their own.  Before you rush to conclusions here remember that I am simply talking about how some of these changes will result in a radically different idea of who the Synod is and not simply a change of a few practices.  So when we discuss these things, we need to be upfront in what we are discussing.  These changes are not about issues on the fringe but essential issues that will transform who we are and how we live and work together.  Another way of putting this is that these are constitutional and bylaw issues but the impact is the same. 

Waiting in the wings. . .

This from down under:

 

As Pastor Maria Rudolph becomes a Servant of The Word, Bishop Paul Smith encouraged us all to listen to her, as it is The Word of the Lord that Maria will share with all: "Listen to Him! A clear command from the Bible... where we should be encouraged that when we listen to her, we listen to HIM."

 

And from Maria:

"There have been so many people who have gone before us, and it gave so much joy to sing the Liturgy, today... why we are here is always an amalgamation of things that have happened because we have been blessed along the way. We are blessed to have more servants in The Word. It's overwhelming... My prayer is that when you engage with this ordination, any ordination in this church, that you see Jesus.... hear the words of Jesus... receive Jesus..."

 

Maria then encouraged us all to look at our neighbours, and to see the face of Jesus in them, and bless them - the same way Maria encouraged us to see all in the world. Pastor Maria, you are a beloved Child of God. God bless you!

 

The live link from Pastor Maria Rudolph's ordination will be available for viewing after the event. It can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/live/hwLhYDKKFqo?si=zbS1y2utabzy_Yrm

 

Maria Rudolph will be installed as Associate Pastor of St John's Lutheran Church Perth on Good Shepherd Sunday, 2pm Sunday 11 May 2025. Everyone is welcome.

Just in case you did not know it, the decision to ordain women was made only a few months ago, October 15, 2024, to be exact.  They did not have to wait for a woman to enter seminary and complete the required route to ordination.  She was already waiting in the wings for the decision which would allow those in LCANZ to make it all official.  In the bottom photo you can see her smirk and with it the smirk of all those who so smugly decided that it was better to break up a church body and depart from Scripture and the catholic practice of Christianity than it was to hold the line.  Doctrines always die on the minefield of expediency. 

 

How long the memory. . .

As someone well into the seventh decade of his life, I know the problems you encounter with memory.  I am forever wondering why I entered this room or that, where I put down my pen, what I was going to say, and what word I was looking for.  You could say I forgot and that would be true but the other side of forgetfulness is that I remember more clearly things that I thought I had long forgotten -- things from the earlier years of my life that have now become cherished memories.  I am, however, under no illusions about how long I will be remembered.  No, I have spent too much time in flea markets looked at the once cherished photos and frames that might have been heirlooms and not are simply the faces of the forgotten sold as halfway decent junk.

How long the memory is a pretty good question.  I fear the memory of all of us is diminishing, helped into oblivion by the short news cycle and the digital images which quickly give way to the next best thing to come along.  We have not simply agreed with Ford who said history is bunk.  No, we have done him one better.  We have run from the past to see everything through the lens of the present.  It is a fairly simplistic view of life.  Cause and effect and then forgetting it all when the next curious thing presents itself.  Our memories are short, too short, and it is becoming a serious issue.  We are so content living in the moment that we no longer miss the past nor feel bound to remember it accurately at all.  It has become so much easier for us to live in the invented history we imagine or to give up the whole idea of history.  I wonder when we will awaken to the fact that leaving the past behind is the first step to making the future worse rather than better.

We look at our lives less in terms of what happened in those lives than if we are happy about the life we lived.  I suppose it could be asked but I am not sure it matters.  When my kids were small, when life was busy and filled with demands, and we had not much money and a thousand claims to every moment, we hoped things would get better. Now I find myself spending more and more of the day trying to recapture what have now become my best memories of that family and of my life as husband and dad within that family.  Surprise, surprise, I find myself asking not only what God was doing in my life but also thinking a great deal more about how what happened in my yesterdays impacted the man who I am today.  Little things become big in comparison and big things sometimes become small.  Bucket lists are a tacit admission that we did not do what we wanted and no matter what we did do, it was not enough.  I am more enamored with the list of things done than those which await doing.  Perhaps I am lazy.  Perhaps I have learned that all is not how it first appears.

I have discovered that the people I thought were old when I was a kid were probably younger than I am today.  I have discovered that memories can be made out of little things as well as major events.  I have discovered that what I long for more than money or power is to hear the voice of my parents and grandparents one more time.  I have discovered from some of these ponderings that I am building a memory in others even as the same is built in me.  It makes more sense to me now that the thief on the cross begged simply to be remembered when the Lord came into His kingdom.  It also makes more sense to me that the worst of curses is to have you erased from all memories -- most especially from the Lord's own.

The myth of education. . .

I cannot speak for all time since my own experience is limited and my expertise is easily challenged so I shall only address the present as I have observed it.  There is education and then there is the myth of education.  My presumption is that the myth is a modern day phenomenon, especially given that access to educational institutions by the general populace is relatively recent in the grand survey of human history..  That does not mean to suggest that those who did not matriculate from institutions were not educated but that the myth that passes for education today is largely perpetuated by those same institutions.

There is today a bias toward the individual.  Whereas learning was once a process of diminishing the individual and his or her taste or preference or ideas in favor of that which is more established as fact, the reality is that those attending and those teaching tend to respect the individual "truth" of the student far more than institutions or other paths to education did in the past.  Education in both the formal and more casual sense of the term has come not to revolve around established fact or truth but around the individual person and their perception, preference, and identity.  Education has become a path more of self-discovery than of acquaintance with events, facts, and interpretations.  In fact, the job of educational institutions is to respect the quirks of the individual and provide a safe space for that individualism to exist without the challenge of inconvenient truths or facts.  The campuses of institutions once dedicated to challenging the opinions of the individual have now created spaces immune from such challenge when the student finds it all too threatening.

Along with the tilt toward the individual, there is also a corresponding loss of confidence in the facts that were once incontrovertible.  History, for example, is no longer a set of events and explanations but has been turned on end.  The modern values attached to diversity, inclusion, and equity have been read into the past and changed what we once knew with confidence to rewrite that history and to introduce question marks where periods once stood.  We are less interested in what happened than postulating why, less concerned with facts than interpretation, and much more willing to judge and interpret the past through the lens of modern values.  Columbus the heroic figure gave way to Columbus the interloper who began a history of atrocity and abuse of the now heroic indigenous tribes of the Americas.  As some tore down his statues, others remade him into the first of a long history of slavery that has now marked American history.  It is not that Columbus has been re-evaluated but that he has come under judgment by the court of modernity to be a heel rather than hero.  Again, the point here is not to defend him as hero but to see how the man and his accomplishments have been laid against another standard and how those values can diminish what he did or who he was in his own time.

What passes for education today readily substitutes the untried things of the present for those which generations before have lauded as worthy and noble.  Think here of literature.  Thirty years ago I noticed that the summer reading lists for my own kids included modern books published within the past few years but none of the "classics" that I had read in school and my parents before me.  In other words, the rejection of the past against the judgment of the present had rendered these works not only less significant but tainted and spoiled.  The summer reading that was once dominated by what were universally considered "great authors" and their "great works" were replaced by books churned out to fit the then modern themes of feminism, sexual liberation, depression, and drugs.  I read those books with my kids and found them painful to read, not only because the themes were so filled with despair and desperate people but because the writing was so poor.  There was little appeal to morality, right or wrong, or virtue against evil but plenty of justification for feelings, desires, and views that called into question what other times had concluded.  Most notably was a complete lack of religion.  One book on how a family dealt with death was absent of any mention of religion as a way of understanding of it or healing from its pain.  The penchant for the present has led to the unqualified rejection of what in the past had been the hallmarks of achievement.  While this is certainly truth for literature, it is no less true for other subjects as well. 

This all is true in the way science is treated as that which is most true of all -- except, of course, when it conflicts with other values.  Science as a discipline has always questioned the conclusions and insisted that they must be repeatable in order to be established and provable even against changing standards of evaluation.  Now science is spoken of as a conclusion and not a process of discovery that is adaptable to changing conclusions.  Evolution is judged incontrovertible yet the science that conflicts with multiple genders or the idea that a person chooses that gender is dismissed.  One science fits with the idea that life is random and spontaneous and the other science does not fit with the idea that gender is fluid.  Science is left to be the bastard child of the acceptable values of the day and the phrase follow the science has become a joke.

So education has become a myth.  It is not learning but indoctrination in a way far more perverse and dark than religion could ever have been accused of imparting.  The campuses of higher education have nearly all succumbed to this delusion and many schools with a religious history are not far behind.  Worse is that the high school has become infected and the federal purse strings have ensured that it remains so.  Now we are seeing just how far and how fast the elementary schools can be swept up into the myth of what passes for education.  The Church and her people would be wise to remember that it is better to be fools for Christ's sake than just fools.

Well, I watched it. . .

Though I have heard decidedly mixed reviews about the movie The Conclave, it was free and my wife and I had time so we watched it.  It was a most disappointing and troubling move.  No, the cast was great and the movie both well acted and well shot.  What was disappointing was that it was a political movie with a theme from the secular world that will be our undoing if we heed its advice.

Throughout the movie was the implicit lie that the Church (not just Rome) must be reformed and that this reform would of necessity move it further away from confidence in its dogma, further away from its own past, history, and tradition, and further away the primary concern with the salvation of man.  It began with the sermon suggesting that doubts are good, doubts are healthy, and doubting leaders are good leaders.  It moved to an absolute from one of the prime liberal papabile that people must know where he stands about morality and the role of women (more for the latter than the former).  It moves through a scandalous characterization of church leaders as guilty of bribery, simony, hate, crass power grabbing, and lies -- oh, so many lies.  It ends with the greatest lie of all -- a dead pope who manipulates the conclave, a doubting dean who is his dupe, and a new pope who is what, a woman, trans, whatever.  Honestly, if the Church follows this path of reform it will renew the Church into the progress of death!

It unfolds that the worst of all are those who believe the words of Scripture about homosexual behavior and who wish to connect the present to the past.  The movie is quick to label the former hypocrites and the conservatives lunatics.  There is that great and telling line from the cardinal who wonders what he is supposed to go back and tell his people when they have elected a pope who decries homosexual behavior.  In other words, the church in this movie is so far from God and His Word that they cannot even imagine having to defend what God has said (and not a particular cardinal).  The end is particularly troubling.  The burning of the papal ballots seals the lie and then the bad actors who were the princes are redeemed by being deceived.  

And today it all begins in earnest in Rome.  Of course, there will be different opinions about the man and the direction that should be taken but it would not hurt if the papal electors watched the move and came up with another end than the deathward drift from futile birth that has characterized liberal progress.  How can we be at home with our grandchildren if we are not at home with our fathers?  Rome cannot abide more doubt and uncertainty from the top and we would all benefit from someone who speaks with clarity rather than confusion.  No, we don't need some dark horse from Kabul or a political insider but the world hopes and prays that the one elected can restore some integrity to what is believed and taught.

We can't do that. . .

Living in the Bible belt, if you can still call it that, the numbering of the Ten Commandments is different from Rome or Wittenberg.  There is a part of the explanation of the first three commandments on who to worship that ends up being its own commandment.  "You shall not make any graven images." (Hebrew: לֹא-תַעֲשֶׂה לְךָ פֶסֶל, וְכָל-תְּמוּנָה, Exodus 20:6).  This is part of the fuller explanation of the command not to worship idols but Baptists and others have made it it's own separate law.  So what does this mean?  Is God somehow against art?  Is God jealous of His image or the image of His creation?  Or, is this what it claims to be -- part of the prohibition against having and worshiping any other gods?

I will admit that it is a strange business.  God violated His own rules then by commanding images for the Temple.  It was these that got the Temple looted and sacked by others.  Nobody was interested in the scrolls or the incense but the golden images that adorned the walls of the Temple were tempting to anyone in search of a quick buck against what had become a toothless nation.  Lets not even begin to talk about the ark of the covenant with its golden cherubim and wings covering the mercy seat. Then there is the business of the bronze serpent.  This was certainly a graven image that appears to directly contradict the command not to make any graven images except that this was an image commanded by God and to which a promise had been attached.  Perhaps this is the better example.  The command was never about making no sacred art but about those images which became idols and stole the worship of God away from Him and attached it to something else. It was always about worshiping an image not simply as a depiction of God but in place of Him.  The commandment explains this.  “You shall not bow down to them or serve them.” (Deuteronomy 5:7)

Lutherans seem to have gotten sucked into this even though our history clearly says different.  Of course, we are against the worship of any one or any thing or any practice or any idea that replaces what is due to God alone.  But neither are we iconoclasts who refuse the use of art that gives form to the Word of God.  In fact, we love art that speaks the Word of God.  The crucifix is a perfect example.  It is never an attempt to realistically portray what Jesus looked like but to give form to the words that speak of His suffering and death for you and for me -- all out of His perfect love for us sinners.  There is probably no more Lutheran a Lutheran than Franz Pieper and yet he reminds us that a crucifix is not simply permitted but can be a means of grace:  the Gospel is such a means of grace in every form in which it reams men, whether it be preached or printed or expressed as formal absolution or pictured in symbols or types or pondered in the heart... (Vol. 3 of Christian Dogmatics, p. 106). Pieper, of course, does not venture far from Luther:  by a crucifix or some picture... Luther often recalls that in the Papacy many, when in the throes of death, were reminded of Christ's substitutionary satisfaction by means of a crucifix held before their eyes and thus died a blessed death. 

Of course, the oddity is that no one thinks of this commandment as a command when purchasing a nativity set or buying the holiest of statues with Santa kneeling at the manger of the baby Jesus.  We are selective in our application of the command but often end up missing what is commanded.  Idolatry.   Not art or image but idols.  In our age, we seem to have made our peace with most images but have made an idol out of our own.  We must be comfortable, enjoy it, and find it meaningful before we will worship anything but most especially the Triune God.  In so doing, we have violated the commandment with nary a form or shape to show for it.  Oh, well.

Marketing the Gospel and the Church. . .

While perusing some journals and magazines in the stack, I happened across an article by a liturgical pastor on "Marketing Principles" to promote new growth.  The journal was at one time rather staid and stuffy but apparently has expanded its horizons.  In fact, the article was an unabashed promotion of business marking for liturgical churches and gave a personal testimony of how it had been used to fill the pews in one spot.  The premise was that churches had not adjusted to the changing times (some of them the fruit of the pandemic and others the result of culture shifts).  Bottom line is that people have fallen out of the habit of attending on Sunday, have shorter attention spans, and are focused on other things instead (like kids and sports and stuff).  The key statement is this:  Churches are simply a 19th century habit suddenly confronted by a 21st century post-pandemic world...

The suggestions were many.  First was the idea of scrubbing the liturgy to shorten, streamline, and make it move.  Permissive rubrics were the first appeal. In other words, may has come to mean omit.  Two abbreviated readings suffice for the lectionary instead of three.  The choir anthem stays (interesting since it is entirely a may rubric) but hymns are down to one (with fewer stanzas sung).  The Psalm stays but it is used during some down time (like the distribution).  Readers are on site to start reading right away (without a solemn walk up, reverence to the altar, and any dawdling.  Acolytes have also had it drummed into them.  Efficiency is the byword.  Everyone cheers when they get done in 55 minutes (even with 300+ communing).  Their contemporary service struggled because, believe it or not, contemporary Christian songs are often quite a bit longer than a hymn!  Problem was solved with the switch to Morning Prayer with communion on the side from the reserved.  Preaching is limited to about 8 minutes.  QR codes and online giving methods have also streamlined the liturgy.  Prepared and wrapped foods have kept the coffee hour without a delay or those irritating delays getting a sausage biscuit.  Sounds great, right?

I am sure it does sound good to people and, if it makes people the mystery to 55 minutes and get rid of the liturgy as if it were a speed bump on the road to success?  And what exactly does success look like?  Get them in and through and done and out the door as fast as possible does not seem to correlate with previous ideals of success or faithfulness.  So, who is wrong?  Should we be doing this?  Is the liturgy like a seven course dinner you can pare down to fast food?  Is the Word of God worth a few extra minutes or not?  What are we telling people by paring down the service to make it as efficient as possible?  I am not sure that Jesus ever addresses efficiency as a criteria for the Church or the Gospel.  If He had, He might have created a more effective governance system and something more efficient than Word and Sacrament.  If Jesus is not concerned by inefficiency, should we be?  Does heaven rejoice over even one sinner who repents or when the liturgy can be said in 55 minutes or less?

The point here is not to dump on this pastor and this parish trying to appeal to people who find worship and church unappealing.  No, the point is rather to ask ourselves why we think we have outgrown the whole idea of liturgy and why we would judge an hour and twenty minutes or son a royal waste of time?  It a more streamlined liturgy and shorter sermon the answer to the problem or are we the problem?  Have we become the problem because we no longer value or esteem the things of God as highly as we do our screens or our leisure time or our sleep?  Maybe the answer is to give up in person worship and simply pump out a good digital platform for folks to view in the pjs and when they choose?  If God does not like it, at least the people will.

What makes a community of faith?

Many delight in describing the Church as a community of faith.  It is not wrong.  In fact, that is exactly what the Church is -- a community of faith.  It has become popular to insist that within that community there needs also to be diversity.  Diversity has, in fact, become the byword of our age as a necessary ingredient to nearly everything -- from school to congregation to business to government.  Diversity has, for all practical purposes, become the most important ingredient within the community of faith that is the Church -- just as it has for the other arenas listed above.  It would be good, however, to begin with what it is that makes a community of faith a community.

The first aspect of a community of faith is that they have a shared faith or belief.  For lack of a better way of putting it, they confess a common creed.  A community requires some level of commonality in order to be a community.  People are not a community because they say they are.  The roots of community run deep -- as deep as the core beliefs by which they understand who they are and why they are.  For the Church, it is impossible to be a community when the most basic and foundational criteria of their existence are in doubt or in conflict.  The Church is not a community of seekers but confessors.  We are not gathered by our common questions but our common answers.  In order for this to happen, the Church must be a community united around what they believe about the Scriptures.  It is not enough to confess that the Word of God is in the Scriptures unless you also agree which words in the Word are God's and which are not.  Lutherans, like Roman Catholics and other conservative faiths, have traditionally confessed without reservation that all of Scripture is God's Word.  Of course, all that has changed of late.  In Lutheranism as well as across Rome and Protestantism, there has been a dilution of this statement and it has become one of the most serious challenges to the community of the Church.  Either we are united in faith around God's Word or we have no common creed and therefore nothing to bind us together more than our fickle wills.

The second aspect of a community of faith is that we have a common history.  This does not mean that we have all experienced the same history or that we experienced all the history.  What it does mean is that we claim this history as our own.  Christianity has a creed -- everyone knows that.  We also have God's story -- that is the Bible.  But we also have the history of God's people in the unbroken succession of those who have believed and confessed Christ crucified and risen.  Lutherans, for example, have acknowledged this from the get go.  We confess a catholic and apostolic faith and we own the history.  We have a story older than we are but it is our story just the same.  The early church is our story and down through every age and epoch of history we stand with those who went before.  If your history begins with you, with a specific date in history in which some constitutional documents were proclaimed, that is a problem.  In fact, that is pretty much the definition of a sect -- it begins everything with itself and is self-referential in the worst of ways.  No self-respecting Lutheran can begin history with 1483 or 1517 or 1540 or 1580.  We do not live in the imagination of our own definition but stand with those who went before us.  Chesterton is pretty clear about this and every Lutheran worth his salt will stand on this hill.  We do not simply live in the moment nor do we live for the future but we live upon the shoulders of the giants of the faith who went before us and confessed with us the mystery of the Trinity.

The third aspect of a community of faith is that we have a piety or practice.  We are not all doing our own thing but we have an order, rite, ceremony, usage, and ritual life that is also in common with those who went before and those who are and we pass it down to those who are to come.  One of the most abhorrent abuses of adiaphora is the idea that if it is not required, it is not important and can be left to taste as if liberty were a higher value than order.  We don't make rules about everything because we should not have to.  We ought to know how to live together in charity - those learning with those who have already learned.  We ought to desire the unity of order that manifests to those inside and outside who we are.  Community has manners and etiquette and personal liberty submits to these protocols not as chains that bind but yielding in love for the sake of the many (including a vote from the democracy of the dead).  So we have a common life together which transcends the value of personal taste or freedom.  We order our life together in an ordo or pattern older than we are.  We order our time in a calendar which proclaims the story of Christ and teaches us His Word as a common pulse or rhythm to our common life (which, by the way, includes a lectionary).  We order our lives within this community of faith according to a common set of values anchored not in the vote of the majority but the revelation of God and in sync with His will and purpose. 

Community is always diverse as the uncommon threads of our individual histories is woven into the common fabric of who we are as the people of God.  Community cannot be born from a diversity which values individual truths, stories, and habitus over the common creed, history, and practice of the Church.  It simply will not be a community anymore but merely a gathering of individuals in the same place at the same time.  Unfortunately, that is what some people desire the Church to be -- a people with nothing much in common except their desire to be together.  We have already applied that definition to family and look where that has gotten us.  No, family and community have an identity which is bigger than any one of us or there is no family or community at all.  Calling yourself a community does not make it so.