As Valpo Turns. . .

There was a time when all Lutheran colleges wished they were Valpo.  Begun as a Methodist school in 1859, the city raised $11,000 to bring it there. Opened in the fall of 1859 with 75 students, it was one of the first coeducational colleges in the nation.  Though money problems led to the closing of the school in 1871, it re-opened two years later as  the Northern Indiana Normal School and Business Institute.  After more money problems, the university almost sold to the Ku Klux Klan, but the deal was stopped and in July 1925, the Lutheran University Association, affiliated with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, took over ownership of the school. The association wanted to create an academic institution not controlled by any church denomination even though it was strongly associated with the LCMS until the past fifty years or so. 

In 1940, O. P. Kretzmann became president of the university and remade the school into what it was.  Its glory days during his 28 years in office saw the school purchase 90 acres  near US Highway 30, build the iconic chapel which remains one of the largest in America, and increase the enrollment to more than 40,000.  Since his death, the school has slowly been moving away from the LCMS and its vaunted honor code and history of excellence.  Now, without a president, the school has fallen on hard times.  There are half the students there were and no more money.  They have sold off assets (in the midst of great controversy) in order to renovate dorms and make campus improvements.  Now the Valparaiso City Council has approved the school's issuance of up to $117 million in general obligation bonds for some campus renovations and to refinance university debt.

It would seem that nobody wants to be Valpo anymore.  Adrift from its roots and legacy under Kretzmann, the school has had trouble attracting students, keeping faculty, and sustaining its once core academic programs.  In essence, it is a school trying to figure out who they are and why anyone would pay a premium price to go there. In 2021, Valparaiso retired the "Crusaders" nickname because of the "negative connotation and violence associated with the Crusader imagery" and adopted Beacons as its new identity.  It no longer shines much light but is looking to find a little to guide it out of its myriad of problems.  There are Concordias in the LCMS larger than Valpo and on better footing.  Their last President was Roman Catholic in affliation and on one has mistaken Valpo for a Lutheran school for a very long time.  How sad.  Valparaiso University's bond rating was dropped by Moody's down two notches to a junk rating.  It was one more slap in the face of a once vaunted reputation and identity that has collapsed.  Diversity takes its toll on another educational institution.  When there is nothing left to sell and nobody left willing to lend money to them, the junk status of the school will match its bond rating.

How odd. . .

It seems that the question of what to do with Genesis and its account of creation is a never ending question.  Or, perhaps, its answer is not what the questioners will accept and so the work of debunking what God has said continues.  On the one hand what God has said is attacked as myth -- except that nothing in Genesis suggests that it is telling us anything except fact and history.  Add to that the fact that myth is not a genre of the Old Testament people of God.  Add to the fact that no one in the New Testament, including Jesus, treats the Biblical account of creation as anything but fact and history.  The other hand is to attack the text.  God is not responsible for what was written -- only men working within their own limited, uneducated, unscientific, and unsophisticated understanding of things.  Of course, this begs the question of what in the Bible actually does represent God's Word and what is only the word of man.  If reason and science are the criteria for what is God's and what is merely the postulations of men at the time, then surely the resurrection would have to go.  It has never happened before or since so it must be myth or falsehood, right?  If that is the case, then by Paul's own words we are a pitiful people.

Oddly enough, I recently read a liberal Bible scholar complain about those who pressed him on the historicity of Genesis "why do you think God cannot use myth?"  God can do anything, supposedly, even using myth to express truth (except that the truth is devoid of fact or history).  What is even more odd is the whole idea that God has the power to express timeless truth in myth, legend, and fabrication but He does not have the power to create all things from nothing.  Or so it seems.  God is so big that He cannot be limited by the simple categories of fact and fiction but He is not so big that He can speak all that is into being.  Go figure.

Either you refuse to believe Genesis because you have more faith in the postulations of modern science than you do Scripture or you refuse to believe Genesis because you do not believe Scripture is God's Word (but perhaps only contains snippets of it).  In either case, it is clear that you have approached the Scriptures with a doubting mind and heart.  Now the reality is that modernity is in love with doubt.  We are suspicious of those who have no doubts or who have rested their doubts upon the Scriptures and are satisfied.  We are enamored with those who doubt, whose empiricism requires a level of provable truth that removes all risk from believing.  Thomas is the patron saint of the doubters and the hero who alone is true to himself.  The rest of those who believe are duped or fools.  Consider the recent movie The Concave and the appeal of doubts as part of the necessary character of the man whom they would proclaim Pope.  Or look at the death of Francis and his legacy of doubts and challenges to what the faith has always confessed about such things as gender, marriage, children, abortion, homosexual acts, etc...  Francis is a hero to our times because he is not a true blue believer but always found room for doubts (who am I to judge).  In the world today, the best Christian is the one who doubts what the Bible says, the doctrine the faithful have confessed, the morality that has guided holiness of life and speech, and the Gospel of Christ crucified for sinners.  We call these people saints and scholars today but in reality they are little more than doubters who find more confidence in the best guesses of the time for what is and who believe the Gospel is little more than an idea that lives in our imagination rather than in history.  How odd!

He ascended into heaven. . .

There was a day when this was a day -- an occasion for us to pause what we are doing and come together in the Lord's House on the fortieth day after Easter.  Now it is liable to be celebrated at a more convenient time on the following Sunday or perhaps not at all.  Strange it is how the Ascension of Our Lord has become merely a phrase in the creed and virtually disappeared from the important feasts of the Church's life and our worship.

Early Christians regarded the Feast of the Ascension as one of the major feasts of the Christian calendar.  It was up there with Easter and even ahead of Christmas. It was the culminations of the festal calendar of  those festivals celebrating the events of Christ’s life.  The ancient Christians celebrated the feast in part by walking -- what we call processing -- outside as Jesus did when He was taken up from the sight of His disciples.  Processions imitated Jesus’ journey with the disciples to the Mount of Olives remembering how He had opened the Scriptures to them and filled them with joy.  Their celebrated of the Feast of the Ascension was marked with great joy and not loss or disappointment or even uncertainty (Luke 24:52). Joy is not so much the character of Christians today.  In fact, it is probably one of the reasons why we do not celebrate His departure to the right hand of the Father with the joy that the disciples once felt as they returned to Jerusalem. 

Ascension proclaims that Jesus, who left heaven and came to earth incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, has completed all things appointed to Him and returns to heavenly glory as the victor.  He ascends to the Father with you and me still urgent in His heart and pleads for those for whom He died and rose again.  His presence is no more the visible presence of flesh and blood as a man walking among us but the flesh and blood of the Lord who now presides at and gives Himself to us in the Holy Eucharist.  The visible presence of the Lord on earth has paused, but He does not cease to be with His earthly people in His flesh and blood sharing with them His divine life and we will once again at the time He has appointed see Him face to face.  Now, He rules over all things, sitting at the right hand of the Father on high, from which He came to us on earth.  He is no spirit unbound from body but the incarnate Christ who forevermore lives in human flesh and blood even as He ascends to reign at God’s right hand.  He said He was going to prepare a place for us and so He has gone until that day when He will return in glory having put all our enemies, last of all death, under His feet.

He rules by bestowing the Spirit whom the Father sends in His name upon His disciples -- even you and me.  In the Pentecost miracle, His Spirit unleashed His witnesses to tell what He has done and by this same Spirit He still sends forth pastors to proclaim this eternal Gospel to the ends of the earth, bestowing upon those for whom He died and rose the gifts He won.  This is a feast for those outside the realm of His Church even as it is for those within as the forgiveness of sins is announced in His name across the world to every tribe and nation.  With that absolution and restoration comes the promise that we will ascend over every sin, death and even hell itself, that our death is not the end of us or a release from our bodily prison but our rest until a new flesh and blood are bestowed upon us so that we might enter into the new heavens and earth He prepares.

Once the Ascension was a mighty feast commanding an octave at least or even more so a mini season of Ascensiontide, from the fortieth day after His resurrection until the fiftieth when the Spirit is given.  Now, sadly, it is not even a real day.  The noble hymns of the Ascension are given lip service and the Paschal Candle just suddenly appears by the font as if it had been in the wrong place before.  Our liturgical gestures are lost without that moment when His ascension is read, the candle is extinguished, and the focus placed now upon the means of grace as the vehicles of His presence among us.  As Norman Nagel once said, if Jesus is everywhere then He is nowhere at all.  We do not live in some spiritual world where you just might bump into God but in the concrete world where God has promised to be where He has attached Himself.  Our Lord lives among us in the Word and Sacraments.  We apprehend Christ not by sight but by faith, trusting in His promises but most of all in His promise to be with us always even to the end of the age.

FREEDOM. . .

Who can forget the scene in the movie Braveheart when William Wallace (Mel Gibson) cries out "They can take our lives but they'll never take our FREEDOM!"  In tormented voice, he ends the movie with the same word, "Freedom!"  It was an iconic moment in 1995 and remains so.  It has been romanticized and revoiced into the 21st century ethos of gender choice, sexual desire, and ever other life defining decision that we want to make or insist upon making for ourselves.  But, alas, freedom is not the real mark of humanity or the most noble expression of our humanity.  There are others.  The quality of mercy is one.  What separates humans from animals is the choice to have mercy, forgiving, forgetting, restoring, and renewing ourselves and our lives together by refusing to take full advantage of freedom.  Self-denial is another.  The most profound freedom does not demand but willingly sacrifices of self for the sake of another -- be that other familiar or stranger.  The cost of love is often that very freedom.

There is another character to our humanity that is self-defining.  That is our refusal to live in the moment.  Yes, you heard me right.  The refusal to live so fully in the moment that we ignore all who came before and live oblivious to those who would follow us.  GK Chesterton said it "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.."   Jaroslav Pelikan put it this way:  "Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., had this to say:  "Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response."  And then W. Somerset Maugham, "Tradition is a guide and not a jailer."

Your definition of yourself is hardly the bedrock of our humanity but our ability to remember, to recall, to honor that memory, to learn from it, and to pass it on.  That is humanity -- except where we have lost so much of our humanity that we no longer know who we are at all.  Dorothy Day accurately diagnoses the ills of modernity:  "Tradition! We scarcely know the word anymore. We are afraid to be either proud of our ancestors or ashamed of them. We scorn nobility in name and in fact. We cling to a bourgeois mediocrity which would make it appear we are all Americans, made in the image and likeness of George Washington."  None of us can go back but that does not mean we cannot look back into what was in order to better know today and prepare for the future.  The call to tradition is not to be custodians of ashes and cold coals but to tend to the very flame and fire that will warm our present and enlighten our future.

 

What we draw from our past is not the useless information that so dominates our present.  No, what we draw from the past is an appreciation for that information and framework in which to interpret and apply the facts and figures that can be reduced to mere numbers so that they speak in words.  In the same way, Christianity is nothing apart from the past but it is not a simple record of what was.  Its tense always speaks of that which has not only continuing significance but power to mark what is to come.  We confess the faith that is not a testimony of what was but of what is and what is to come because of what was.  If God is the One who was, who is, and who is to come, only the tradition of this God can possibly hope to open a door by which we can enter the future and carry with us the living legacy of those who went before us.  So we add our voices to those who went before, confessing the creed in ancient words that have present and future impact and praying with the saints to the God who is not encumbered by the crass division of past, present, and future.  

 

We are at our best as people when we live within that living tradition passed on to us to be passed down through us.  The voices that scream "Freedom!" are shrill and unpleasant because they would abandon the wisdom of our fathers for the foolish whims of the present or the untested plans of tomorrow.  Indeed, the only anchor in our human is tradition -- the living tradition of Christ and those who live in Him and therefore with Him forevermore.  The Gospel of Christianity is not the gift to define yourself without knowledge or credit to those who went before you and without regard for those who will come after, but to be defined by the ever-living Gospel of Christ and Him crucified.  In this Christianity there is no such thing as instant catechesis or quick holiness or spontaneous prayer.  For some this is a bad thing but for the wise this is the most comforting thing of all.  

God said it this way:  "Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work." (2Th 2:15-17)  "Those who leave the tradition of truth do not escape into something which we call Freedom. They only escape into something else, which we call Fashion." as Chesterton put it. 

The Bible does not say that. . .

For as long as Scripture has been there have been those who lived on its edges rather than deep in its words.  We have suffered mightily those who insist that absent an explicit word on this or that, the Scriptures could or should be taken differently than has been understood.  It is wearisome enough when this comes from those who are refusing the implication inherent in the Word but it is downright foolish when it comes from those who insist that they are only trying to let Scripture speak.

Take, for example, the oddity of a Christianity Today column which purports to say that the Bible never actually says that Jesus was nailed to the cross.  You can read for yourself:

The Bible doesn’t describe Jesus being nailed to a cross.

Telling the story of Christ’s death, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John simply say that Roman soldiers crucified him. They don’t say how. Each of the Gospels include specific detail about the soldiers’ method of dividing Jesus’ clothes—a lottery—but none describe the way the soldiers put him on the cross. There are no nails mentioned in any of the four accounts of Christ’s death.

How odd it is when doubts about the traditional understanding of anything in Scripture comes from sources which ordinarily could be counted upon to respect the conservative reading of the text.  You might expect anything and everything from the media or from the known suspects of a skeptical reading of the Bible but not from someone who teaches at an "evangelical" seminary.  

Jeffrey P. Arroyo García, an evangelical Bible scholar who teaches at Gordon College, thinks maybe there weren’t any nails.

“The word used there, stauroo, just means ‘to hang on a cross,’” García told Christianity Today. “But it doesn’t give the method of how they hang, right? Maybe the reticence is telling.”

In an effort to justify the lack of mention of the nails, someone who claims to be a Bible scholar seems to have forgotten that Thomas did not ask to see rope burns but the marks of the nail.  It is exactly this kind of omission that is too often the reason for getting it wrong about a lot of things.  Baptismal regeneration is not mentioned once but so strongly implied in many texts that it is foolish to argue against it.  The Real Presence of Christ's real flesh and blood in the real food of bread and wine is so implicit in everything that Scripture records and says of the Holy Eucharist that it is more telling about the deniers than it is what they deny here.  The creation of male and female and its constant weaving of this order throughout the Scriptures is so strong that it reveals a certain blindness to suggest that many genders does not conflict with what God has said.  The push toward the single life, divorce, same sex marriage, or an intentionally childless union searches in vain for Scriptural support and ignores the way marriage, children, and family are spoken of in Scripture.  The coexistence of evolution with the Biblical text has many defenders but it ignores how Jesus speaks of the creation and especially of Adam and Eve.  Rome condemning justification by grace through faith is another one of those can't see the forest for the trees kind of things that insists if something is not said explicitly it cannot be presumed (even when it is actually said pretty well in the Biblical text!).

I could go on.  It is mystifying how we insist upon Scripture being explicit in its reference before we will acknowledge what is so implicit in it.  Like Jesus being crucified with ropes instead of nails.  Wow.  Thankfully the author acknowledged this in a later version but it is the strangest thing that it happened in the first place.

 

In memoriam. . .

As we celebrate Memorial Day weekend, there will be congregations all over the US who will carry in the flag, have an honor guard, sing patriotic songs, and hear patriotic messages.  I suppose it could be worse but it does bother me that when we think of patriotism we think of hijacking Gospel for the sake of being good citizens.  Being good citizens is something good and if we do it right, we do not have to hide or skip the Gospel.

In times of threat when it seems the Gospel is being constrained and in moments of persecution when the Gospel is being threatened by restrictions and by those who label it hate speech, we do not need patriotic displays on Sunday morning to prove we are good citizens.  We need good citizenship Monday through Saturday.

On this day when we are mindful of our soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice, it seems very little indeed for us to strive to be model citizens in respecting the rule of law, seeking to obey the laws (except where they conflict with Scripture), and praying for our nation and our leaders.  Good citizenship is not waving the flag on Sunday morning but living up to that flag Monday through Saturday.  This should be a no-brainer for Christians.  St. Paul has laid out some of the things we should be about when the Church was under threat and Christianity itself was not a legal religion.  Those of us who live where we are free to be Christian ought to use every opportunity this liberty provides to show forth what is good, right, beautiful, and honorable before the nation.

Praying for our leaders, praying for our nation, and praying for the fruitful exercise of liberty's gift is one of the hallmarks of our Christian identity.  Living to serve our neighbor in love is not an optional or occasional activity for Christian people -- it is our life.  Perhaps now more than ever, good citizenship is needed from those in the pew.  We will be misunderstood and we will be threatened by those who try to dilute or deny the truth of the cross and empty tomb . . . BUT we fight on various levels and not always with the mouth or the pen.  In fact, though God does not need any of our good works, our neighbor does and those good works may be some of the profound means by which we manifest the true nature of Christ and His Kingdom.

Growing up, this was a very important holiday.  I am still moved by Memorial Day, by the stark numbers of those long ago and only yesterday who paid the ultimate price to defend my freedom and protect my nation.  I am moved by the many ways in which we keep alive this cost of freedom and honor those who died to protect the American way of life.  I am moved by the memory of veterans making the slow walk to the casket of my father-in-law and saluting their brother in death.  I am moved by flag of my own father's service to his country and the veterans who honored him in death.  But the best way for the Christian to honor the sacrifices of those who died is not to turn the church into a patriotic hall of fame.  No, it is to compel us with the Word of God to be the good citizens we ought to be -- from the neighborhoods in which we live to the states that mark our greater borders.  Christians, be good citizens and the attacks of our enemies on Christianity will not stick.  We have more than a message of "no" to all that is wrong; we also have the good works of Him who called us from darkness into His marvelous light.

For better or worse. . .

There are a few things that define your life.  Your parents and family growing up.  Your spouse.  Your children.  For a pastor, another thing that defines you is your calling as a pastor.  I always knew this on some level but am finding it even more clear now in retirement.  David Petersen has wisely said that congregations can get over pastors (be they good or bad) but pastors seldom get over congregations.  I have been away from my vicarage now some 46 years but it is as fresh in my mind as yesterday.  I can see the faces of those who were friend and not so much friend and they have become a deep part of my life even though we were only there one year.  Long Island lives in me and St. John's in Sayville even though most of the folks I remember are now long departed this mortal life and with the Lord.

If that is true of a vicarage year, it is even more true of my first call.  When my name was read off on call day, I heard the words but did not know what they meant.  I had no idea where Cairo, New York, was.  This was before cell phones and internet and it was so small a village that it was not on most maps.  We had such limited contact before driving through the town looking for the house that would be our home and the church that would be my life.  I can still remember the minutes slowly unfold as I took it all in.  I suspect my wife feels the same way.  We had our children there and it has remained home in a way very different from everywhere else we lived.  It grew into us.  The area and the people became part of us.  I still tear up remembering Shirley Selzner and Pauline Moscato and Bob and Betty Knapp, and, most of all, Mary Schellhorn (just to name a few).  They are all gone but they live in my memories just as they live before the Lord.  

The 32 years I spent as Senior Pastor of Grace in Clarksville, Tennessee, are the longest tenure of my life -- longer than I spent with my parents in the homes in which I grew up.  For good or ill, the years live in me and have defined me so that my biggest struggle in retirement is trying to figure out who I am if I am not the Pastor of this congregation.  Though it has been official only since January 19, it feels more like an extended vacation and I will be back at work tomorrow.  You know what they say about tomorrow -- it is the day that never comes.  So many of the folks who welcomed us 32 years ago are no longer with us but await us on another shore.  Those who were my age or younger are trying to figure out retirement like me.  Those whom I baptized and confirmed are married and working on the mystery called parenthood.  My grandchildren are about the ages of my two youngest when we moved here.  It all lives on in my mind and heart even though the faces on Sunday morning have changed.

I realize it is not the same for the congregations.  I know Sayville through their now Pastor Brian Noak and the parish has moved on even though it is frozen in time in my memory.  My successor in Cairo has served there only a few years less than I served in Clarksville and most of those who remember me are retired or tired or resting in the arms of their Lord.  The parish that lives in my memory is not quite the same one that lives on there now.  Though it is too soon to say this of Clarksville, I know it will be true.  A generation or two will unfold who never knew me as their pastor but everyone of those 32 years is preserved in my heart and mind and will not depart from me until I depart.  I suspect someone will read this and say how sad.  I guess it is in some ways but it is also the march of time that waits for no man.  Time like and ever rolling stream moves on, wearing down the stones and carrying its life to its end so that the future is different from the past.  I am grateful that Sayville, Cairo, and Clarksville continue to live in me even though I know these congregations have or will get over me.  Until the memories fade away, I rejoice amid the days -- for better or worse.  They are precious to me now even more than then.

Consequences. . .

There are always those who insist that they do not believe this or that but they are still Christians and still Lutherans (or whatever).  You have heard them.  I have heard them.  But is it true?  Can you deny this or that in Scripture or reject this doctrine or that and still be the Christian you claim to be?  Note, I am not saying that you are saved or not saved -- this not being my domain at all but God's.  Instead, the point I am making is that there are always consequences for those departing from the body of what is believed or the statement of Scripture.  Often these consequences appear to be small but, in reality, are not only much more profound but lead to living outside the pale of your tradition.

It may not seem like a big thing to reject the language of Genesis 1-2 as history and accept them a poetic mythology.  Who are you going to offend, Adam?  But there are consequences.  Jesus speaks of Adam as a real, historical person.  So by rejecting the language of Genesis as history, the consequence is that you have inadvertently called into question the veracity of Jesus. Or maybe you would explain this away as if Jesus were merely speaking within the accepted framework of belief for the time without actually accepting for Himself.  Jesus is, then, condescending to our limited realm of knowledge and understanding.  The consequence for this is that you then presume that Jesus either lies or at least shades the truth and knows better but is not above lying to us and about what Scripture says.  Tell me that does not have real consequences when it comes to who Jesus is and His trustworthiness.

It may not seem like a big thing to reject most if not all miracles as exaggerated speech or the realm of ignorant folk against the backdrop of our own erudition and education.  Those who do so consistently suggest that the teaching part of the miracle remains the same whether it happened or not.  The consequence here is who knows where to draw the line between that which did occur and that which was merely exaggerated speech reflective of the times.  Take that one step further and it becomes the question of whether Jesus rose bodily on the third day or if His bones are still somewhere in a cave in Palestine.  The consequences are large.  Jesus said He would rise again on the third day and the Church said He did and proclaimed this message to the world.  Was Jesus lying or fibbing or His disciples or the Church right down to the present day?  The consequences are large because it calls into the question anything Jesus ever claimed or said and anything the disciples or the Church has preached.  How much is true and which parts and what does that say about the integrity of Scripture, of Jesus, and of the Church?

You can fill in the blank here with so much that sophisticated folk find too impossible to believe and you can follow the consequences out and they will always lead to a denial of Jesus' own credibility.  Theology and doctrines are not interchangeable parts that can be changed or adjusted or removed without affecting the whole.  Our faith is like a fabric of doctrine and truth woven together into one and it cannot and will not survive those who pull at the threads for whatever reason.  It is not the same faith without Adam and Eve as historical figures and their fall an historical fact.  It is not the same faith without Jesus believing this and commending it to us to be believed.  It is not the same faith by dismissing miracles and especially dismissing the miracle of Jesus' own resurrection.  It is not the same faith by suggesting that marriage is open to reinterpretation or that what has been regarded as disorder or sin can now be mainstreamed.  Pull at the strings and the whole ball of yarn is undone.   

Paint by number. . .

My wife and I have an ongoing joke about the many paint by number versions of DaVinci's Last Supper that we see around flea markets.  They are hardly noble impersonators of the original but mediocre copies with as much of the imposter's ideas as the master's original intent.  It is, in some awful respects, what we have done to the liturgy.  Something that has been formed over time has become what Josef Cardinal Ratzinger called  “a do-it-yourself patchwork” of liturgical things that betray the very liturgy itself.  Sadly, we Lutherans have contributed much to this.  In the many volumes of 16th century Kirchenordnung we have a record of individualized liturgies -- except that they were for many parishes within a particular jurisdiction.  That seems rather mild in comparison to the advent of the photo copier with word processing which has allowed every parish pastor to become a liturgical expert and every parish an arena for liturgical experimentation.  

Although it is undertaken with a view toward improvement, it is not usually so.  I am not even convinced there is as much a desire to improve as there is to adapt and make personal something which is far more personal without adaptation.  In the end, however, the result is what Marva Dawn described as the "dumbing down" of the liturgy and the substitution and satisfaction for the mediocre in the face of what could and should be more.  In adapting and innovating we generally end up trivializing what ought to be held as sacred and noble and making quirky what ought to be standard.  

Although this is something that Lutherans are loathe to admit, we have taken the adiaphora about which laws should not be made and turned it into anything goes.  Rome, on the other hand, has laws about everything in the liturgy and yet it too finds it impossible to prevent aberration and anything goes from happening there as well.  Indeed, Rome seems intent upon forbidding the Latin Mass which allows little or no adaptation and yet turns a blind eye to the post-Vatican II Mass when it is adapted to the point of almost being unrecognizable!  As if to mimic the abuses in Rome, some Lutherans get more upset about adding back into the liturgy historical rites or words than they do the wholesale neglect of the form itself among some Lutherans who are evangelical wannabes.  Now to be sure, it is one thing to change music while respecting the words but it is quite another to look at the parts of the traditional order as if they were options on a menu.  One from column A and one from column B does not allow for any real integrity of rites but even this is not nearly as bad as surfing the internet to see what others are doing and cutting and pasting it into your own local rite.  I give as one example those who would move the sermon (and possibly Scripture readings for the day) to the front of the liturgy because they want it to hit home to the people first or moving it to the end for the same reason or those who would add the Words of Institution to Matins (or any other rite) to provide another version of a kind of Divine Service.

The liturgy is not some paint by number kit where you can adapt the colors to your own color pallete.  Indeed, the liturgy is not there for your own self-expression.  If anything, we ought to lose ourselves in the liturgy, confronted as we are with such riches of God's grace and favor and surrounded by the richest treasures of His Word and Sacraments.  Note that I am NOT here saying that we should reduce the liturgy to a minimalism by which we could all abide.  Just the opposite.  I believe that the hymnal or missal represents the minimal by which we are identified but that those elements of rite which have served us so faithfully over the years but which, for whatever reason, were not included in the book can and should be added.  This does not destroy the integrity of what is there but acknowledges that the hymnal or missal is not the exhaustive collection of all that could or should be included within the rite nor does it represent the entire consensus over time.  We need to paint within the lines while acknowledging that the lines may be more or less detailed as a nod to the resources available -- deacon or not, choir or not, etc...

 

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.