Reasonable and calm but still wrong. . .

Occasionally someone will ask me if the progressives and liberals are raging lunatics.  Sometimes it may seem so but the reality is just the opposite.  Most of them are cordial and reasoned (though some of the fringe are, well, lunatics).  Take the Lutheran Church in Australia and New Zealand and their decision to skip the rules, skip history, skip Lutheran doctrine 101, and skip the fragile unity of their own church body in order to pursue the ordination of women (something they have been trying to do for years but failed according to the rules even though a majority were for it).

If you listen to  Pastor Paul Smith, Bishop, Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand, answering the usual questions, you do not hear the voice of someone who seems strange or odd or scary.  He is perfectly calm in his explanation of what was being done, why it was being done, and how the church was going to live and thrive because of what was done.  It is the kind of calm that suggests that there is no reasonable person who could possibly disagree with him on this matter and no one of good heart and sound mind who would object.  Anyway, according to Smith, we are all going to get along and this is all going to be wonderful -- diversity is the byword of a vibrant and alive Christianity, you know.

You can listen to the series of videos here.  They are generally short, a couple of minutes, and nicely done.  The problem is not that he is not nice or that the decisions made are not reasonable in the light of social understanding in the 21st century.  No, the problem is that this is wrong.  It does not accord with Scripture.  It does not accord with the Lutheran Confessions.  It does not accord with history.  It does not accord with catholic doctrine or practice.  More than making things better, it has already spun off one more Lutheran group of those who object to this departure from all things Biblical and catholic.

If it is a choice between nice and reasonable and in accord with the thinking of most folks (especially those outside the Church) and Christ and His Word that does not change and endures forever, which side should a Lutheran be on?  I do not doubt that those in favor of this radical departure from the Scriptures and our Lutheran heritage of faith and practice are nice people and reasonable and probably fun to be with over a glass of Lutheran beverage.  But the sad reality is that this group has chosen to be on the wrong side if God's Word, Lutheran doctrine, and Lutheran practice.  

My point is simply this. If you wish a reasoned Christianity which might be inspired by Scripture but which actually accords with social and cultural thought across religious and secular realms, this is your path.  Diversity over truth, flexibility over orthodoxy, mind over Scripture, and a smile to fix every problem.  We can all get along and look good in the eyes of a culture which does not care a whit what Jesus says, what the Church has said and done, and how it will affect the unity of a particular communion. Pastor Smith is nice.  Those who disagree with him are not so nice.  Well, then, perhaps God is not so nice either -- at least as we would reason it all in the same brains that exchanged a perfect Eden for an earthly fight for daily life until death wins.  Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  By the way, you might just want to pray for the LCANZ and also for those good folk who have decided it is better to be on the side of Jesus than the world --  Lutheran Mission Austraila.  They, by their own words, committed to continuing 'to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints' (Jude 3).

 

The liturgical is not gone but fulfilled. . .

In a very insightful essay over at First Things, Peter Leithart has written eloquently about how the Epistle to the Hebrews is misinterpreted by most of Protestantism and even some Lutherans and Roman Catholics.  I would urge a wider reading of his words.  His point is that the contrast in Hebrews is not between the temporal or earthly and the eternal and heavenly but about that which symbolized and prefigured what Christ has fulfilled and is present now.  It is a good read.

These words should remind us that our institutional forms and ritual habits are neither holdovers from the ceremonial order of the old covenant nor are they empty gestures no longer needed or godly in the new covenant.  Indeed, they have been fulfilled.  What were once merely forms and habits are now filled with Christ.  This is a vibrant liturgy not because the people are with it or into it or it has all the bells and whistles but because Christ is there, the One who fulfilled all that went before and who gives to the present the taste of the eternal which is coming.  Listen to his words:

Once upon a time, Israel offered sacrificial worship at a sanctuary through the ministrations of priests, but Jesus opened the door to a post-religious world sans sacrifice, sans sanctuary, sans priest, sans everything. That’s a misreading. Augustine captures the actual thrust of the letter when he characterizes the transition as one from shadow to reality, symbol to truth. Christian liturgical practice is still sacrificial and priestly, but through Jesus we have access to the real, original, heavenly things. What Israel did in twilight, the church does in the full light of day. The new doesn’t inaugurate an a-liturgical form of life and worship, but radically rearranges liturgy itself.

That is the point we so often either take for granted and thus relegate to the realm of the theoretical or we miss entirely.  Through Christ we do have access to the eternal and that access does not come to us by escaping or eschewing the earthly forms of the means of grace but directly through them.  It is as if we have become the woman caught in her sin who distracts the conversation to the idea of which mountain.  Jesus does not denigrate the mountains that where they worshiped but insisted that it was not a choice between those hills in the past but the revelation of what was here now in Christ -- the heavenly brought to earth to bring us to our home on high and fulfill all the promises of yesterday.

It is clear that most of what passes for worship is an almost gleeful abandonment of anything that would resemble the past in favor of an individualist and emotional piety in which worship is almost irrelevant and the earthly replaced entirely.  This surely ends up being either an other worldly spirituality in which nothing of today has meaning or it ends up with a present day spirituality in which today is the only things that has meaning.  God must be shedding tears.  He has fulfilled all that was promised and filled the present with Christ so that we may glimpse the future and be kept unto the consummation of all things and here we are clapping our hands, stomping our feet, and propelling ourselves into an emotional high or arguing ourselves into heaven as if all the work of Christ depended upon a yea or a nay from us.  Lutherans have, as I have often said, the fullness of it all in the efficacious Word AND Sacraments, catholic doctrine, liturgy, and practice, and the vibrant fruit of God's work in the present through the doctrine of vocation.  What a shame we do not value and live out what we have.  In this, we are not unlike that woman arguing with Jesus at the well while He is giving us what is beyond our wildest hopes and dreams in the mystery of His grace that saves us now for eternity. 

Sounds reasonable to me. . .

Though not all freely admit it, liberal or progressive Christianity does not start with the Biblical text.  In fact, theology for this group begins with how it sounds.  If it sounds reasonable and accords with their worldview and fits with what is acceptable at this time, it simply must be true.  True no matter what God's Word actually says.  Indeed, the Word of God is like raw earth to be mined for the gems that are valued today rather than approached as the truth forever.  In this respect, like the person in search of a final pure product, you have to work through a lot of ore or raw material first.  Scripture is, for the liberal and progressive, the raw ore that is not in and of itself valuable but what it may be processed into does have value.

In this respect, liberal or progressive theology is myopic.  It sees only what it wants to see and it can only see through the lens of what sounds reasonable and right now.  It does not intend to be the way, the truth, and the life forever but what is good now and what works now.  Indeed, this is the greatest failing of liberal and progressive Christianity.  It is tied to the moment and not to the past or the future.  It is wedded to the worldview now and cannot escape this temporal prison.  On the other hand, catholic Christianity is by nature conservative.  It does value what was received from the past and it is concerned about what is passed on to the future and the criterion for this is always outside the self of reason and understanding but in the Word and works of God.

It is unreasonable to think of sin as arbitrary wrongs that are not adjusted or minimized by circumstances or the changing mood or judgments of the times.  It is unreasonable to think of sin as sin without mitigating circumstances to make some of those sins less egregious than the same sin in other contexts.  It is unreasonable to think that anyone might have to deny themselves and their desires and become new and different people in the process.  It is unreasonable to think that worship should reflect the values of God and not appeal to the sense of the times or the desires of those in the pews.  It is unreasonable to think that all life has the same intrinsic value and no life should be ended for the sake of the person or another.  It is unreasonable to meet God in the splash of water, the voice of His Word, the taste of bread and wine.  In all of these, it is completely unreasonable except for the fact that God has reasoned it all this way in His heart and out of love for us.  If we are to endure, we need an anchor more secure than what seems reasonable or right in the moment.  We need nothing less than the Word of God that endures forever and for a Church built upon this solid foundation.  We do not need to make the Church relevant for the promise of life to a people marked with death has its own relevance in every age and generation.

Why would we dwell upon what we think God would want when we have the record of His voice still speaking through His Word?  Why would we make the test of truth reason or popularity or acceptance by the judgment of the present moment?  There is so much more and it beckons us to get past what seems reasonable or comfortable to meet God where He has planted His promise in time to bring us to eternity.  Why would we dwell upon what works for us now if it has no power to work for us the blessing of everlasting life?  Indeed.  A good thing to hear on a day dedicated to deception.