You ole fuddy-duddy. . .

For most of my life I have instinctively associated orthodoxy and order with boring.  In my college and seminary years, I looked at a parade of District Presidents wearing loud sports jackets and ties or leisure suits and thought I wanted to be anything but them.  It was no wonder I had sympathy for John Tietjen because he looked the part in clericals and black suit.  When my own vicarage and placement services took place, I was relieved that I was going where the DP was sporting a beard and clerical collar in a conservative dark grey three piece suit.  Visuals do not always tell you everything but they do tell you something and it is hard to jettison the impression first given by what you see.  

It might be for this reason that I hardly enter a Wal-Mart anymore.  The infamous People of Wal-Mart web pages showing how ill-dressed or undressed shoppers are says it all.  Or fly somewhere and see how people dress for air travel -- when I fly I dress up and not down!  The same could be said for a concert in which the ticket price alone might imply something a more formal rather than casual.  Just last month my wife and I had to change our path in a store because they young man ahead of us (not in a Wal-Mart) was wearing sleep pants, a bathrobe, and slippers.  Really?  I guess I have become the fuddy-duddy that I rebelled against in youth.  I feel the same way when I find pastors who wear what might be comfortable or easy to put on (from the chair where you dumped it yesterday) but I find it hard to take them seriously in their calling.  If they show up on Sunday morning with vestments of khakis or board shorts or t-shirt or polo, I am immediately put off.  It seems to me that they are rebelling against their vocation in some childish and culturally relevant way that is both arrogant and rude.  

I fear that this kind of thing affects a great deal in the Church.  Our theology is not exciting but boring.  Our morality flaunts duty more than liberty or indulgence.  We are in a very unfavorable position against the world.  The world offers us sexy, cool, vital, vibrant, indulgent, forward-looking, be what you are, and, most of all, have fun in everything.  In comparison the Church seems rather dull, bland, boring, and very uncool.  They say that if you are not a liberal when you are young and a conservative when you mature, you are simply an idiot or a fool.  Maybe youth instinctively rebels against the tradition and traditional theology, morality, and liturgy.  I don't know.  But I do know that in choosing the fun over everything else, the world has not chosen well or anything worth having.  

Youth left me with many things and regrets are also among the memories.  I hope it is true for many.  My sixth grade teacher told me most of all in life to be true to myself.  Which self?  The selfish, rebellious, lustful, fool who does not care about consequences or the mature self that lives in bondage to them or the Christian self who has learned to delight in the will and Word and order of the Lord?  The real radical is not the one who indulges in a Rumspringa vision of life that cares for nothing except the moment and puts off the serious for a time to be announced later.  No, the real radical is the mature self, formed and shaped by the Spirit of God, to become in time the person who has been given eternity.  I am encouraged that some of those coming out of their youthful rebellion are awakening to this truth and showing up in conservative, orthodox, and traditional parishes offering orthodox and traditional liturgy.  It is my hope that this is where the future is headed and not simply a momentary trend.

We might hasten this a bit if we got out of our system the idea that youth ministry should be fun to counter the boring and bland stuff that happens in worship and Bible study.  We might initiate this kind of maturity by refusing the idea that worship is a stage, that the people in the chancel are actors, that the script is made up, and that the goal is entertainment.  We might encourage a more real future by offering our kids a more real present in which the symbols and ceremonies come not from preference or for the sake of the experience but because the presence of God is as real as God, the truth is not subject to individual decision or definition, and the purpose of God is to set us from from the fake freedom that corrupts and kills.  The most radical thing in our world is not going with the flow of culture or fad but resisting the current because God has entered our time to rescue us from our sins, restore our lives in holiness, and direct us to the eternal future which we taste now in the mystery of bread and wine.  Looking back, I can thank a few profs along the way who taught me this radical idea.  

The Claim of Catholicity. . .

For as long as I can remember, the most comfortable view of the Reformation from those who claim to be its heirs seems to claim the most radical perspective for the events and figures of the 16th century.  It is as if the only way we could come to terms with it all is to presume that Luther and his contemporaries were just itching to cast off every constraint of tradition, orthodoxy, and catholicity in favor of an extreme Biblicism that does not care about history or even the apostles.  I understand the insistence that the Church had suffered much before the Reformation and that this movement was finding its way out of the fog.  What Lutherans are comfortable with today, however, is not an accurate or faithful description of the attitude of those actually fought for that Reformation.

The narrative I got was that it was all about and, almost exclusively so, concerning justification.  Nowhere in my education or training was I appraised of the idea that the Reformation was about catholicity.  That idea came unofficially from teachers and mentors outside the classroom.  At the heart of the Reformation, however, is not simply or solely the issue of justification but even more so the question of whose claim to catholicity was genuine.  Justification was part of this and not unrelated to it.  This is certainly the contention of the Augsburg Confession (Conclusion of Part One).  Catholicity was and remains the main cause of the Reformation.  If their concern for justification was Biblical, it must be catholic.  If it is catholic, it must be Biblical.  That is the perspective of the Lutheran reformers.

Over the course of a few decades or so there has been an explosion of authors and works on just this topic -- the Reformation as a conflict over who deserved to be called catholic.  Some are well known tomes from the best seller lists of a few years ago -- from the likes of Steven Ozment, Scott Henrix, and Diarmaid MacCulloch.  Others are renewed interest in other authors and works from the likes of Heiko Oberman, Martin Brecht, and, before that, Jaroslav Pelikan.  Gone is the hero worship style of biography once practiced within and outside of Lutheranism and in its place are serious reviews of the claim of catholicity.  The problem is that I am not so sure that those who call themselves Lutheran are as comfortable with this renewed interest in catholicity.  Too many Lutherans are too comfortable with the idea that Lutherans are radicals with the intent upon wholesale renovation of the Church.  Despite Luther's over the top rhetoric, his practice was somewhat more careful and conservative.

So the problem before us as Lutherans is which form of Lutheranism is authentic -- the one that loves to live on the radical fringe of Christianity and embrace the excesses of culture or the one that tolerates things liturgical but prefers an Amish style spirituality or the one that fully intends to be catholic in doctrine and practice.  The ELCA along with European Lutherans seem to have laid serious claim to the liberal fringe.  The evangelical style Lutherans who disdain liturgy, ceremony, and sacramental piety seem to live in various Lutheran denominations -- my own included.  The catholic style Lutherans are often characterized as loving worship more than the Gospel itself but they maintain the tie between doctrine and practice.  I wish I could say that this has been resolved but it is still being fought out.  The out and out worship wars might have been tamed down a bit but the battleground remains.  The choice of some Lutherans to engage the culture on matters of sexual desire, gender identity, marriage, family, children, climate, etc., is not yet finished as they continue to follow where the culture wars lead.  The whole idea of simple is better than anything too elaborate continues to be held as a balance against those who they feel have gone too far.  At some point, however, we will have to decide which Reformation is not only the real one but the one of which we claim to be heirs.  

Whatever happened to Sweden?

When the electorate of Brandenburg was torn apart by a quarrel between the Lutherans and Roman Catholics, King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus came to their aid.  He launched an invasion of northern Germany and Pomerania in June 1630, marking the Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years' War. He  consolidated the Lutheran position in the north and turned the tide when the Lutherans were losing to the Holy Roman Empire and its Roman Catholic allies.  His army marched to victory singing the great Lutheran chorales.  What happened to that Swedish Lutheran Church?

Today, the Church of Sweden is a Lutheran joke.  It was perhaps the first to ordain women and its clergy are now between 50-60% female.  It was a largely secular agency of the government for too long and while the buildings were preserved, the faith decayed.  It was overcome with political ideology.  An example of this was revealed when Sweden’s biggest morning paper, DN, in May 2025, published an interview with one female priest who admitted that she wasn’t really that interested in Jesus but originally went to church and communion to meet other lesbian girls. In 2013, a female archbishop was elected primarily on the basis that she was a woman, would be the first female archbishop, and this was a witness against a patriarchal and misogynistic history and culture that preceded her. 

The buildings have been preserved but at the cost of the faith.  Such was the cost of the deal between church and state in which the state had power over what was believed and how it was practiced.  I am half Swedish and it is with great sadness that I acknowledge the loss of this history and identity for what was once a vibrant Christian stronghold.  Lord knows that the population of the Mid-West states of the US was filled with Swedes who brought their faith with them to America.  Apparently, they did not leave much of it back for those who stayed at home.  Now Sweden is a rapidly aging country with an ever increasing Muslim immigrant population that is radically changing the shape of the nation and its culture.  In fact, it is hard to call the Sweden of today Lutheran in any real sense of the word. 

A number of years ago my home town celebrated an anniversary which focused on their Swedish past.  When a number of Swedish dancers were brought in as part of that celebration, my mother invited them to her home to feast upon the treasured foods of their Swedish past.  From pickled herring to lutefisk to Lingonberries, and so much more, she cooked and served them what she grew up eating.  They were not impressed and called the meal "museum food," part of their past but not what they wanted now.  Perhaps that is also the state of affairs in the Lutheran Church of Sweden today.  It is a museum church, preserving a semblance of their history and past but without the faith and confidence in Scripture or the Augsburg Confession today.  It is sad to me and perhaps a poignant reminder of where everyone of us will end up unless we resist the temptation to surrender doctrine to political ideology.  Gustavus Adolphus must be turning over in his grave.

Stupidly true. . .

You may have heard about the dust up at Notre Dame over the appointment of a professor who is an avowed pro-abortion and who makes the ludicrous claim that abortion is an example of white supremacy.  She would be laughable if it were not for the fact that this university which seeks to be the world's premier Roman Catholic school has hired her and given her a comfortable place and a platform to offend the very idea of that university being Roman Catholic.  Notre Dame is now hearing some loud push back from pro-life Roman Catholics on their faculty and among the student body because of this decision to appoint vocal abortion advocate Susan Ostermann to lead the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies at the Keough School of International Affairs. On the faculty, two scholars — Professors Robert Gimello and Diane Desierto — have resigned from the Liu Institute in recent days over Ostermann’s appointment.  Former Notre Dame President Father John Jenkins rebuked her pro-abortion views in 2022. According to Notre Dame, however, “Those who serve in leadership positions at Notre Dame do so with the clear understanding that their decision-making as leaders must be guided by and consistent with the University’s Catholic mission. Notre Dame’s commitment to upholding the inherent dignity of the human person and the sanctity of life at every stage is unwavering.”

For weeks, University of Notre Dame leaders publicly insisted that the appointment of a pro-abortion-rights professor to head the Asian studies institute was final -- until it wasn't.  Apparently enough of a backlash arose to prevent the Jan. 8 appointment from being completed.  Which goes to show you that what is lacking in the hallowed halls of academia is not in the outrage of those whom they depend upon for moral and financial support.  What is telling, however, is that all of this would have gone ahead and a visible compromise with the schools doctrinal identity as a Roman Catholic institution would have been the acceptable cost they were willing to pay to play with the big boys in the secular land of university enchantment.  The question for all religious schools is why do they bother playing this dangerous game?

The US courts have assured religious schools that they can refuse to employ teachers whose views conflict with the religious teachings of their church.  For whatever reason, some churches think that they must hire those whose view conflict with their teachings but how stupidly true is this.   “I have long worked with scholars who hold diverse views on a multitude of issues, and I welcome the opportunity to continue doing so. While I hold my own convictions on complex social and legal issues, I want to be clear: my role as Liu Director is to support the diverse research of our scholars and students, not to advance a personal political agenda,” Ostermann said.  Yeah, right.  She will not bend in her advocacy of her pro-abortion position which belittles Rome's anti-abortion position as an example of patriarchal white supremacy and she will debate her point of view with those who disagree with her and Notre Dame will pay her to do so.  Again, how stupidly true is this story -- an example of how religious universities falsely presume they must operate.  Sadly, it is but one more instance of how doctrinal fidelity is sacrificed at the altar of diversity.  While I wish I could say this was a Roman Catholic problem, it is not.  We have our own problems in that regard.  In any case, the idea continues to exist that to be credible in our academic world, you must allow faculty to hold a wide range of viewpoints because this is the cost of high-quality academics and research.  The truth is that although you cannot control what your students might hold or espouse, you certainly can control who is teaching and what is being taught at a Christian school.

 

Worship in the garden. . .

I can imagine that the first worship of God which took place in Eden was perhaps the recitation of the warnings and promises associated with the garden, in particular about the tree of life.  By rehearsing the words of God, Adam and Eve were worshiping the almighty.  Of course, such worship did not prevent the entrance of sin and its rebellion against the Word of God.  We all know that.  But the worship of God was from the beginning the remembrance of His Word and the telling out loud of that Word.

When sin changed all of that, I can also imagine that the worship after the Fall was similarly the recitation of the promise of God, in particular the promise of the One who was to come who would have His heal bruised but who would crush the serpent's head.  There was no Temple of the Tree of Life where this took place that but that does not mean that the worship which they had known was entirely forgotten.  The words of warning and promise were replaced by the words of promise that the son of the woman would become their redeemer.

Later, after the giving of the Law, Israel gathered still around the Word of the Lord.  The words of the Law were repeated ritually in the same way the warning issued in the Garden was repeated while still in Eden.  And, of course, after the fulfillment of that promise in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, the words of the Lord continues to be repeated in worship, telling again the story of Him who died and rose never to die again.  It is something to ponder.

Of course, Norman Nagel already knew that long before I ever did and it came from him.  Saying back to God what He has first said to us we repeat what is most certain and true and this is the shape of worship. Still.  Worship is not telling God what we think or feel but repeating back to Him what He has said, words which are borne from faith in His Word.  In this way we own the promises and so demonstrate that we are His and do not belong to the world but to Him.

The form of the Mass is really an outline of words of God set in paraphrase or literally from the Scriptures in speech or song.  The Divine Service is and should be almost completely made up of God's Word in our mouths, saying back to Him what He has first said to us.  That is not to say this is the sole content of worship but it always was and always will be the primary content of worship (this side of glory, anyway).  By the way, that also includes the visible Word of the Sacraments.  They are not reenactments of anything but the anamnesis or remembrance which He has commanded in which His Word is attached to baptismal water, bread, and wine.  These are not dramas or play acting but doing what the Word tells us to do and so are just like repeating what He has said.  God is glorified.  Even better, we are served with His grace and gifts.  Thanks be to God!

An eternal today. . .

There are always questions to pastors about what kind of body or what will the body look like after the resurrection.  I cannot tell you how many people have very specific thoughts about which moment of their present lives and bodies they wish to be eternal.  We are a very picky people.  It seems that the resurrection is for many of us merely the undoing of death so that the present moment continues without end.  That may sound good but it is not.  God does not merely stop the body from dying and thus preserve it as it is forever.  It would be a good miracle, I guess, but it is less than the miracle God has prepared for those who love Him.

All of this remind me of a particular passage within the Eastern version of St. Thomas (at least in esteem, anyway), Maximus.  Maximus the Confessor (c. 580 – 13 August 662), was a Christian monk, theologian, and scholar who, in his early life, was a civil servant and an aide to the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius. He gave it all up to enter the monastic life.  Maximus had studied philosophy, particularly, the Platonic dialogues, the works of Aristotle, and numerous later Platonic commentators on Aristotle and Plato.  At this point in time you are glazing over and so am I.  Though Maximus is venerated in both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, he was eventually persecuted for his Christological positions and, as punishment, his tongue and right hand were mutilated.  Now that was in the day when heretics suffered consequences other than a best selling book!

So I am getting distracted a bit.  Anyway, Maximus was asked by a bishop to respond to the some monks who claimed that, after the resurrection, the glorified bodies of the saints will be similar to our present bodies, just not subject to death.  They said:

In the resurrection, bodies will once again be sustained in their life by phlegm and blood, by yellow and black bile, by drawing breath and physical food. Thus, through the resurrection, nothing foreign to or beyond this present life will appear except the inability of the bodies to die again.

That was probably too much information for most but you get the idea.  Life goes on and on and on just like it is today except that death is no more.  Maximus thought the monks had set the bar entirely too low, settling for a snapshot of this life with the annoyance of death but with everything else associated with this moral existence as enough.  That was shocking to Maximus.  

They thus espouse an everlasting death and an endless corruption. For if death is the corruption of those things constitutive of bodies; and if the body is being forever corrupted in its very constitution by the influx of various nourishments along with the flux of its exhalation, all due to the natural antipathy of the interior humors by which it is also constituted—then they are assuming that, after the resurrection, the body is forever sustained by means of those same constitutive elements, thereby proclaiming that death is preserved in unbroken perpetuity. We ought instead to believe that the body is raised in its essence and form, yet is incorruptible and immortal and, as the Apostle says, “spiritual” instead of “psychical,” insofar as the body’s invariable, constitutive property suffers no corruption at all. For God knows how to dignify the body itself, transforming it into an impassible body. 

They were not paying attention to St. Paul.  As the Apostle Paul teaches, in the resurrection human beings will be raised with incorruptible spiritual bodies in the general resurrection (1 Cor 15:35-56).  Now, to be fair, nobody gets what this all means exactly.  We are not given a preview of how this actually works out but enough to say it is not going to be an endless today with all else being equal.  Yet, like the monks of old to whom Maximus contended, we too often are ready to settle for just that.  We want nothing more than the best moment of this life preserved forever.  If that is all we want, we have sorely underestimated the Lord.  Worse, we have overestimated the best moment of this life.  I have a feeling that Joel Osteen with his best life now would have liked these monks.  Not so much Maximus, however.  

You do not get to choose soul or body for both are constitutive parts of the human being.  Even when death dissolves this union, the person is not simply left with a soul but looks forward to a new and glorious body like unto Christ's own.  Our salvation is neither the liberation of the person from the physical nor the simple elimination of death from the physical but a new and glorious body in which body the soul is joined forever.  The Kingdom is populated not simply by souls, but by embodied persons.  Now I will admit that I find many of the Eastern church fathers somewhat obtuse and hard to follow.  Maximus is no exception.  I write this only to show that there is no new error and that Maximus could be addressing those today who hope from God little more than a preserved moment in time rather the promise of all things made new. 

 

Remnants. . .

Hymns are not what they once were.  They have succumbed to the modern day penchant to shorten and make bland what was once long and rich in language and poetry.  Take a look at just about any modern hymnal and you will find the longer hymns of yesteryear edited down to a few stanzas and the symbolism stripped away in favor of non-specific language designed not to offend.  It is sad but it is more than simple tragedy.  We have forgotten a tradition and we have proven ourselves too weak to preserve what was passed down to us.  The reality is that most of our hymns are really mere fragments of what were originally very long and often complex compositions.  It was a different time, to be sure, but we forget that even these long and complicated hymns were put to memory and sung in the home and throughout the day as worked.  In our effort to reduce these to 3-5 stanzas, we also have lost the desire and, perhaps, the ability to sing even one stanza of our favorite hymns.

The fact is that many excellent hymns are only fragments from lengthy compositions which have taken on a life apart from the context in which they were created.  The enormous length of a great many hymns is beyond our comprehension today and certainly outside the realm of our desire either to learn or to sing.  I am not at all suggesting that we must treat every hymn text as if it were Scripture and take it as is.  What I am asking, however, is that we learn which stanzas were kept and which disregarded and which were combined into what is an effectively new composition.  It is my conviction that some of the best has been lost and some of the most profound hymnody rendered inaccessible to us today.  Can you imagine doing the same kind of thing to the Psalms?  What would the great Psalms sound like if we had edited them for length and for content?  I dare say that they would no longer be called the prayerbook or hymnbook of the Bible.

As a Lutheran, I mean to say that some of the most sacramental imagery has been lost to us as we parsed the words we received to fit the modern ear and as we translated hymns from one language and era to another.  In particular, baptismal imagery and the symbolic language that would refer to the Sacrament of the Altar have been eroded by well-meaning but destructive translations and summaries.  While I am grateful to Catherine Winkworth for her monumental work of rendering Lutheran chorales into English and thus preserving them for my use today, her own theological presuppositions have surely worked out of many of her translations some of the richest sacramental and symbolic language inherent in the original.  We must do better.  I am in awe of the work of Matthew Carver in translating with a good sense of poetry and a command of the languages.  He reminds us that we are not and should not be beholden to the well-meaning efforts of those in the past whose work may have intentionally or accidentally overlooked such sacramental nuances in the original text.  This also would enhance the riches of those great hymnwriters of the past who have bequeathed to us many more texts and compositions than are now contained in any one hymnal.

Finally, there is a good cause for resurrecting the idea of memorizing hymn texts both for children and adults.  I well recall visiting an elderly blind woman in what was then called Lutheran Home in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  I was a seminary student attached as an ordained deacon to Redeemer Lutheran in that city.  Truth to be told, I had no real idea what I could do for her but she told me simply to read to her the hymns from The Lutheran Hymnal (the only hymnal in our church at the time).  What I noticed is that this woman in her late 80s was mouthing in silence all the words to the many stanzas of the hymns I was reading to her.  She did not want simply to hear them but wanted to hear a voice speak them with her as she moved her lips and thus formed a small congregation of two.  Sadly, most of us today cannot even get through one stanza much less the 20 or more stanzas to some of the best of the hymns passed down to us.  Where would we be today if the same circumstance applied to us?  I fear we would be hearing the words as if for the first time and thus be deprived of this witness living in our hearts and minds.

The roots of liberalism. . .

Though you would not know it today, the very word liberal has its roots in liberty.  It was, at least in the beginning, a word used to describe those who loved freedom.  It originated from the Latin word liber, which means "free."  It began to include ideas of generosity, selflessness, and a person of magnanimous character.  Of course, the word “liberal” has evolved into many different meanings, many of which are decidedly not liberal at all. In political and social theory, “liberalism” did not necessarily mean progressive but was also rooted in the ideals of freedom, rights, and democracy.  In this way, it is quite correct to speak of the American constitutional idea as liberal and embodying the highest institutional attachment to freedom or liberty, to the enshrinement of rights meant to protect the minority from the dictatorship of the majority, and authority which is conferred by democratic vote.  It also contained the idea of laws and a society free from prejudice -- although the implications of that are still being worked out.  As recently as the 1800s, this meant holding to the essentials of individual freedoms over the collective will but at some point it also began to include the idea of government action to compel what was considered to be freedom when that collective will demurred.  Social action began to enter its heyday in the 1960s as this idea was structured into laws over racism, feminism, and poverty.

At some point, however, this took a turn from which we have not yet seen correction.  Liberal has come to mean those who insist upon the minority surrendering its rights for the common good.  It has come to mean the liberty of government to strip away once sacred rights in pursuit of a particular vision of what society and common life looks like.  The once profound tenets of liberty have been willingly surrendered by the masses in pursuit of safety, equality of once unpopular ideas which have now taken root, and in the effecting of a progressive state unhinged by those things which were once considered to be its foundations.  It is not simply that liberal has come to mean those who now trade their principles for the sake of their political or social ideology but those who have become enemies in combat against what were once considered allies of a generous freedom.  Most notably, religion and, in particular, Christian religion has suffered this fate.  There is no prejudice allowed today except that prejudice against ideas once common but now forbidden and that includes most of the moral character of Christian faith and life, rooting in marriage and family.  Antagonism against Christianity and against its ethical and social support for everything from justice to children has become the singular mark of liberalism today.

In other words, liberalism has become decidedly illiberal.  Individual rights and freedoms no longer are sacred or worth preservation and liberals enthusiastically supported the artificial restriction of many of those rights and freedoms during the pandemic.  That single event has had lasting and profound consequences for the individual rights and freedoms of the individual and of religion in America.  We should have seen this coming.  After all, the abortion controversy would have presumed that the liberal path was to protect and defend those with the least status or ability to defend themselves -- the unborn.  But that is not what happened.  Liberal meant not simply allowing but championing the murder of the unborn at the whim and desire of the woman.  Liberal took the same tack with homosexuality.  It did not simply advocate for the extension of rights accorded to heterosexuals to the gay but the wholesale redefinition of marriage away from children and family.  The problem today is not that marriage was redefined but it was effectively stripped from the foundation of family in which selfless love and life was offered for the sake of the spouse and the children everyone expected to be born to that family.  That is not what marriage means today and it is revealed by the appallingly high rate of abortion and the shockingly low birth rate.  The liberal position has come at the expense of love that costs you something and children so that the highest value attached to liberty is the freedom NOT to marry or to end it when you want and NOT to have children even it that means killing the unborn in the womb.

Theologically, liberals are not simply advocating for the freedom of interpretation of traditional Christian values and ideals but is at odds with the Scriptures, creed, and confession.  It has grown to the point where it seems the liberal task to prove how what once was believed, taught, and confessed was in error and cannot possibly be held by a reasoned and educated mind today.  While this is certainly true with Christian teachings that have historically conflicted with modern social ideas of sexual desire, gender identity, marriage, abortion, and such, it is not only about these.  It is a modern idea to presume that the Old Testament is filled with myth and legend, that its stories are incredible and therefore not factual, and that its transmission down through the ages corrupted and distorted the text to the point where no one can really know the truth behind it.  The Scriptures which were once a common anchor for both Roman Catholics and Protestants have become a deep, dark, imagined book in which nearly everything is suspect except the principles of love and self-fulfillment.  Liberalism is a threat against any regular orthodoxy of who Christ was and is and what He accomplished.  It is not simply that some disagree with orthodox Christian doctrine but they insist that it is untenable to hold what was once considered sacred.  Even more so, they seem determined to fence off what was once orthodox and catholic until it is forgotten or erased from memory.  There is no liberty left in such liberalism and it has taken on its sole mission to render traditional and orthodox Christian truth and proclamation offensive.

The problem of compromise and dialogue is made impossible since the liberal has only one goal -- to make what was once held impossible or untenable to be held anymore.  You actually see this working out in Rome when the Latin Mass folks insist upon the right to continue what was once the norm for ove3r 400 years while the liberals (Cupich) insist that no one has the right to anything except the post-Vatican II Mass (as done by those who have stripped it of all its traditional practices).  You also see in in Lutherans who have dismantled the institutions of marriage and family and have rejected the liturgy in an ill-advised separation between so-called style and substance in worship.  The liberal would have refused such animosity while preserving the freedom to disagree but, in religion as in politics, modern day liberals refuse to grant such freedom to those who continue to hold to what was once normative for all.  In this way, again, liberals have proven themselves most illiberal.

What the eye beholds. . .

For many liturgical Christians, and in particular Roman Catholics, the experience of going to church on Sunday morning is made more difficult with buildings which are unfriendly to the liturgy.  We all know this and even though some of those were built in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the people are forced to inhabit structures which do not fit the purpose of worship.  I am purposely ignoring evangelicals and wannabe evangelicals who do not even have a concept of liturgy or church architecture and who delight in providing a warehouse setting for worship in which the stage, the band, and the talking head are all that matters.  What is at odds with the liturgy is an architectural focus on people more than God.  While you might assume that this has only to do with a lack of vertical dimension, it is also true of the kind of art or the lack of it in those structures.  They have the feel of larger personal space more than the formal space of the Word and the Sacraments.  They seem like public spaces in conference centers or other public gatherings in which the whole thing is designed around the desire to schmooze rather than to hear the voice of God's Word or receive His gifts.  They are pedestrian, devoid of art, ornament, symbolsm, and any sense of the holy.  Many of them are downright ugly on top of it -- with brutalist forms and materials that are cold and aloof.  It is no wonder that the liturgy suffers when the regular environment in which it lives is so at odds with its purpose.

While some might insist that the liturgy can function anyway, and that is true, we are not talking about the exception but about the regular place where the people of God gather.  Of course, the liturgy can take place in the barest or ugliest of places but why should it have to?  Why should it be forced to take on the role of making the obviously secular setting a home for the holy ground on which God meets His people with His grace and gifts?  But what it exactly what we have done.  We have forced the liturgy to fight against the surroundings in order to do its job.  While this is obviously about the adornment or lack thereof, it is also about the space itself.  So often modern buildings are reluctant to surrender any space to the chancel and so that whole focus of the liturgy in those spaces is compacted within a setting that refuses to make the movement inherent in the liturgy possible or to accommodate the Divine Service.  I grew up in one such church building that had a chancel smaller than most master bathrooms.  It did not allow for kneeling or for more than a few to commune at a time and the furniture in it had to be moved simply to allow the distribution to take place.  The furnishings were fine but they were crammed into a space smaller than the church kitchen.

Some of you might think that this is merely about preference or taste or even nostalgia for another time.  This may have a very small part in this, I do not deny, but the major problem here is not the longing for another era or the desire to build a gothic cathedral.  It is simply this.  Will/does the space hinder the liturgy and support what happens there or does it work against it?   For those who complain that this is merely about aesthetics, how do you explain a God who goes to such great pains to tell the Israelites what the Temple should look like -- right down to the vestments of the priests -- but thinks that less is more for the New Testament?  Did God get a lobotomy?  Or maybe we have misread a great many things.  At stake is not mere style or taste but theology.  The space itself has a relationship to what takes place within that space.  A ballroom may be a great ballroom and a terrible space for worship.  The same is true of a bar or tire shop or grocery store.  They are built to accommodate their purpose.  Why do we think that churches should not be built or remodeled to support what happens therein?  Why should church buildings not accommodate their purpose and support what takes place within them?  It is clear that people outside the faith expect Christians churches to look like, well, Christian churches.  Is there a reason those inside the Church think otherwise? 

I am not saying that every bad building must be torn down but we ought to evaluate the space and decide how to make it accommodate its purpose.  Some may be remodeled rather easily and inexpensively in order to do just that.  Others will need bigger budgets and dreams.  A few may not be salvageable.  In any case, what the eye beholds reflects what the mind conceives.  That is what is at stake in the subject of church architecture.   

Listening is the new preaching. . .

We all know that preaching is not as popular as it once was.  The voices of those who have predicted the demise of preaching are many and they are working to make sure their prophecy comes true.  For many, preaching is being replaced by the ear -- listening not to the Word of God but to the mind of the world expressed in the voices of the many.  We hear so many different calls from those outside but also from those inside the Church that we need to preach less and listen more.  If that is the case, preaching is no longer relevant.  It is true.  The vocabulary of proclamation and the dogmatic basis for that proclamation  has shifted and it is being replaced by listening groups in which the people get a say so in what the faith is and how it is lived out. 

Historically, the Church proclaimed because it was given a message to proclaim.  It was not about politics or even exclusively about works of mercy but the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and the salvation that this redemptive work has accomplished.  It was less about the need of the great unity and equality of all before the merciful act of Christ in suffering and dying for our sins than the vocation of those whom He has redeemed and the eternal future He has prepared for those who love Him.  It was not about the freedom of the individual but about the new obedience that is a reflection of this new life lived not in pursuit of self but Christ.  It was not about the indulgence of self but about sacrifice, taking up the cross and following Christ.  It was not about our opinions but the submission of thought and mind and will to voice of Christ revealed in His Word.  It was not about creating a better world in this moment but about living faithfully the today He has given us so that we may found worthy of eternity.  It was not about pleasure or self-fulfillment or happiness but about life and death.  

The reality is that we seem intent upon listening for something new as if the Spirit will contradict what He has revealed in Christ or betray what the Scriptures have said.  The mood of the present is to focus on the horizontal, on what people are thinking and saying instead of what God has said once for all eternity.  So long as this prevails, preaching will be in trouble and preachers will mount the pulpit embarrassed or uncertain of the very things that are our life together and our mandate to the world.  No one will be converted by a listening Church but the Lord has promised that hearing comes by the Word preached and taught.  That is our future and our only future.

No one can resist temptation... but Jesus

The sermon for the First Sunday in Lent, Series A, preached on Sunday, February 22, 2026.

On this first Sunday in Lent when we read of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness; our first thought is that this is an instructional account designed to teach us how to be strong and resist temptation.  Just as no one can escape temptation, neither can we resist temptation.  No one, that is, except Jesus.  For Jesus this temptation was no nail biter and the outcome was known and certain before the temptation happened.  It could be that Jesus was in no danger of failing because He is the Son of God.  Not being the Son of God in the same way Jesus is, I would hesitate to dismiss this.  But there is certainly something more.

Jesus knew who He was and is; He knew the will of the Father in the same way.  There was no daylight between Jesus and the Father.  Jesus says so.  “The Father and I are one.”  Jesus was not teaching us the secret to resisting temptation so that we could learn it and stand up to the devil.  We will never be strong enough to resist temptation.  But Jesus always is.  The strength of Jesus is knowing who He is, who the Father is, and the Scriptures.  Our weakness is forgetting who we are, who the Father is, and God’s Word.

In reality there are not many temptations but only one.  It is not that we are tempted by the devil by many things but there is only one temptation.  It is at its root the First Commandment.  It is a battle over identity.  The devil, the world, and our sinful nature seek to distance us from knowing the Father in heaven, from knowing who we are as the children of God, and from the Word of God.  All temptation and all sin begins with idolatry.  It is a matter of the will. We see ourselves as separate from God and we see God trying to steal from us what we have claimed for ourselves and we speak with our own voice instead of the voice of God’s Word.  That is why Jesus is strong and we are weak.

We are always putting our will first instead of God and His gracious will, always trusting in ourselves and our wisdom instead of surrendering to Him and His wisdom, and always trusting more our thoughts and feelings than what God has said. So the devil comes at Jesus with three challenges to who Jesus is, who the Father is, and what God’s Word says.  Jesus does not give into temptation because He knows who He is and who the Father is and what God’s Word says.  He answers temptation not by throwing words back at the devil but by confessing in those words who He is, who the Father is, and His own submission to God’s Word.
This encounter in the wilderness is not a shouting match of Bible passages but Jesus insisting to the devil that He knows who He is, who the Father is, and what God’s Word really says.  In the face of this, the devil cannot win.  He cannot match this divine and eternal truth because he is the master of lies and deception and Jesus speaks only truth.

“If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”  Here the question is not about hunger and the power of Jesus to turn stones into the bread that would satisfy His hunger but If You are the Son of God.  It might sound like this temptation is about hunger and doing whatever you can to satisfy that hunger but it is in those first words the devil is tempting Jesus.  Does Jesus know who He is or not?  Jesus insists He does know who He is.  He does not need to satisfy His every whim or desire in order to be at peace with Himself and within Himself.  The suffering of His body will not shake Jesus loose from His confidence in who He is and who the Father is.  On the other hand, we question God for every ache or pain.

“If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you,’ and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.’ ” Here the question is not simply who God is and what He has promised but again, If You are the Son of God.  Does Jesus know and trust the will of the Father or not.  That is the question here.  Jesus’ answer shows He does know the Father, He knows the will of the Father, and He has absolute trust in that will.  He does not need to test the Father to know what the Father will do.  On the other hand, we are always asking God for signs and testing His mercy.

“All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”  By these words the devil is asking Jesus again if He knows who He is and who the Father is and what the Word of God says.  Jesus insists that He does know.  Short cuts offer Jesus no cover for sin.  The devil can promise Jesus anonymity and hide Jesus’ sin but Jesus refuses any cover or any easy way out of the cross and suffering and death.  If the Father really loved you, Jesus, He would not want you to suffer or die or go without anything.  Does that sound familiar?  But Jesus knows the love of the Father without doubt and He knows that suffering, self-denial, and even death cannot thwart the Father’s will and purpose.  Jesus insists He will be true to the Father even though this faithfulness will most certainly lead to pain and even death.  The devil leaves Jesus.  Jesus gives the devil no weakness to exploit and alone, the Father sends the angels to comfort and to minister to Him. 

Arguing with the devil or our own flesh is worse than futile, it is disaster. Once in Eden, Adam and Eve tried to resist the devil by arguing with him or reasoning with him.  It was fatal.  You cannot argue with the devil.  You cannot argue with your own weakness of flesh and desire.  Jesus does not argue with the devil but asserts God’s Word from a heart of faith that has full and complete confidence in that Word.  He is reminding Himself who He is and who the Father is and that the Word of God is not His enemy but His strength and power.  That is what Adam and Eve forgot in the Garden of Eden and what you and I forget before temptation.

The devil tries to get Jesus to think about Himself and His wants or needs. Eat, for Pete’s sake.  Jesus does not deny His hunger or even consider what He could do to satisfy it.  He asserts the words of Moses that the real hunger that kills is not bread for the body but the bread of life that proceeds from the mouth of the Father.  Jesus does not quote Scripture to make the devil shut up but to speak comfort to His own heart and strength to His own soul.

It is the same with the next temptation. The devil tries to get Jesus to take the promises of God out of context and use them as a premise for sin but Jesus will not.  Don’t tempt the Lord or constantly beg Him for signs of His goodness or proof of His love.  Jesus does not even argue with the devil over whether or not the devil can give Jesus the world and all its glory.  He simply asserts that worship belongs to God alone and He refuses to claim equality with God a thing to be grasped and is content with who He is and knowing the Father and living in confidence of the Father’s Word and will.

The Word of God is not primarily a weapon to use to battle Satan but it is comfort and assurance for the tempted.  This is what we forget.  The appeal of temptation is always to things of this life and to the desire to be happy, satisfied, respected, and to get what you want.  It does not matter if it is gluttony that eats as if there is no tomorrow or pornography that prefers imaginary sex over real relationship or lies which hide your weakness and glorify your abilities.  It does not matter if you are in Eden holding conversation with a serpent or making up numbers on your income tax form or taking credit for what you did not do.  The appeal is always to the now – while the Word of God points us to eternity.  The weakness is about over estimating who we are and forgetting to stand on God’s Word and will alone.  Defeat is trading our words for God’s Word and trying to argue our way out.  That is why Jesus did not fall and we fall over and over again.

We are weak because we are like the willful child who insists God would not want us to be unhappy or to suffer any want or need or to not listen the voice of our own feelings.  We are strong when we know who we are, the children whom God has rescued through His Son and redeemed at the cost of His own suffering and death and when we are confident of the Father’s love for us and do not rely on signs or proofs apart from the cross and when we know God’s Word well enough that we can address that Word to all our hurts, sorrows, pains, and wants.  And when that happens, the devil will leave us alone too and the angels will minister to us with the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation until we want for nothing more.  Amen. 

Flirtting with Jesus. . .

It was Voddie Bauckam who coined the statement:  “The modern church is producing passionate people with empty heads who love the Jesus they don’t know very well.”  If you do not know him (RIP), take a gander at Issues, Etc. or do the radical thing and Google him.  A Reformed Baptist who died too young, he was critical of critical race theory and fought for a larger Christian worldview.  He did not mince words.  His statement quoted above is brutally honest.  Americans profess a passion for a Jesus they simply do not know very well at all.  It is less a love story than flirtation.  It points to the problem of a Christianity without any doctrinal foundation in the Scriptures.

For a good long time we have been told by the experts that all this doctrinal talk is turning people off of Jesus -- the ones who claim belief and those new to Christianity.  Too much doctrinal talk will be the death of mission and will kill the Church in the long run.  At least that is what they said.  To one degree or another every denomination has had similar voices proclaim a similar sentiment and it has led to a profound rejection of doctrinal truth in favor of feelings, passion for, and admiration of Jesus.  I am not sure you can call it faith when they do not know who Jesus is or what Jesus came to accomplish.  I am not sure you can call it faith when Jesus becomes the proof text for every political and social cause that Scripture itself warns against.  But that is where things are.

For Lutherans who have insisted it is enough (satis est) for unity, there is the great temptation to reduce enough into as little as possible and so to dispense with the doctrinal certainty, moral consensus, and Biblical norm that has always accompanied orthodox Christianity.  The rationale is simple -- numbers.  How many more people can we claim by minimizing what needs to be known or believed in order to be Christian.  We can disagree about so many things and still supposedly claim to be united in faith and love for the Lord.  The problem is that you cannot know the Lord you are supposed to be in love with and reject the doctrinal witness of Scripture and the consensus of faith and creed that represents a clear line of demarcation of what is Christian and what is not.  I only wish that we knew this today.

The erosion of the doctrinal and Scriptural knowledge of our beliefs and the reason for the doctrines we confess has left Christianity weak and vulnerable.  Even the word has become meaningless -- what does Christian even mean anymore?  Even historical and dogmatic definitions that once defined denominations have been diluted by the diversity that either ignores or redefines the creedal and doctrinal confessions that once defined them and identified them to each other and to the world.  Passion for what people imagine to be Christianity or even Lutheranism does not replace knowledge and information.  If Lutherans have been accused of being without passion or emotion, at least historically we have been clear about what it is we believe, teach, and confess and how what we believe, teach, and confess is rooted in Scripture and normed by it.  However, many Lutheran groups and individuals have long ago set aside this doctrinal consensus for cultural relevance and popularity.  So it would seem that not just those on the lunatic fringe of Christianity have replaced informed belief with flirtation and passion.  There are many who would insist that Jesus is more attractive minus all the doctrinal baggage but who is Jesus without the Scriptures and the eternal truths He revealed?  He is not a man but merely an idea -- perhaps an idea who might inspire but not a Savior who can redeem.

Until He comes...

1 Corinthians 11:26:  For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.  Those words are not simply doctrinal but liturgical.  As often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.  Not that many words later, we proclaim His death by eating and drinking what He offers, His flesh for the life of the world and His blood to cleanse us from all our sin.  This is the anamnesis or remembrance He has commanded us to make of what was, once for all, but it is also the foretaste of that eternal feast to come.

Strange, though, that there is no mention here of the resurrection.  Strange especially because so many treat the cross as if it were merely a bus stop along the way to the greater glory of the resurrection.  How many empty crosses have been justified by this faulty idea that the resurrection speaks more loudly than the suffering?  The cross and its redemptive suffering are not a mere momentary diversion from the greater goal and glory of the resurrection.  At least not according to St. Paul.

So why the cross until He comes and not the resurrection?  At least in part, it is because the suffering is where we live right now.  We experience death and suffering and pain.  It is part of our normal everyday lives.  No one escapes such in their mortal lives.  We experience death and suffering and pain but we believe in the resurrection.  None of us have yet had our flesh and blood raised from death never to die again -- none but Jesus.  For now we must deal with suffering.  Everyone of us must come to terms with suffering and with death.  We can choose to make a fragile peace with it or we can live in the death of the One who has killed it for us until we pass with Him to our own joyful resurrection.  So a theology of suffering is and must always be the theology for today.  There is no such thing as a blessed life without a blessed death.  It is His death that makes blessed the graves of the dead and vindicates their hope.  But that is not a finished fact -- an accomplished one, to be sure, but not yet completed or consummated for us.

We have the suffering and death as an accomplished fact but the resurrection is promise and pledge.  The sign of our resurrection is Jesus' resurrection.  He is raised never to die again but not yet has it been fulfilled in us.  So it is the death we proclaim.  The sign of the promise and our communion on the fruits of that death are in the same meal, the Holy Eucharist.  This is not what we want.  We want the victory and a victory which will make us escape and never to think of suffering and death again.  It is our weakness and our temptation -- no less than the very temptation Jesus suffered at the hand of the devil.  Bow down and you can have it all without suffering or death.  Our Lord refused such an empty promise and so must we.

We live in an age of suffering.  Our world pours money into the hands of those who can postpone it as long as possible and worships the promise of a painless end.  This is not a world, however, in which the postponement is anymore than a moment or the promise of an easy death any more than a mask worn by the angel of death.  In our world where justice is rendered seldom and in which Christians have a target on them simply by virtue of their Christianity, death and suffering are our lot.  The world tempts us with temporary distractions but only the Gospel of the Crucified One has any real hope or a future to offer those whose mortal lives end in ashes and dust.  Until then, our path is not the pursuit of victory but the path of endurance.  He who endures to the end, shall be saved.

We think we need victories.  That is the great temptation of the political church trying to establish the kingdom of God by vote or law but such a church is no church.  The Church is built upon the foundation of the Innocent who suffered for the guilty and the Lord of life who surrenders to death to rescue those who live in its shadow.  We need the cross where suffering is fully and finally redeemed and where sin is fully and finally answered.  This is why we proclaim His death until He comes.

It would seem that but a few Christians have remembered this.  Instead of a cross and a death and suffering for sin, these Christians live in glorified pleasure palaces in which the distraction is entertainment and the sacramental goal is happiness.  The true Christian gathers not around the whims of want and desire but where the sacrament born of suffering offers true consolation and hope to the sufferer.  There in the bread and wine that is His flesh and blood, we are fed with healing for this body of sin in which we live through forgiveness and it is here that we taste the fulfillment of the hope of those who went before and the promise of heaven and eternity.  So, yes, it is His death we proclaim until He comes.  Only in His death do we have an answer for our sufferings, for our sin, and for the death that waits for all who wear this flesh and blood.  The One whose death could hold Him has hope for those whom death still claims.  We experience this every day but we believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. 

 

 

 

Acceptance declining?

There have been polls and other data to suggest that support for gay people across America is on the downward trend, that it might have peaked 5-6 years ago and is now less than what it was then.  I do not know about this.  The New York Times had an article that said this on January 19, 2026, so it must be true:

In the two decades before 2020, visibility, recognition and legal inclusion of gays and lesbians progressed in lock step — larger and more prominent Pride parades, rainbow-lit landmarks, federal legalization of same-sex marriage. That progress translated into something remarkable: Americans’ bias against gay people declined faster than any other bias ever tracked in social surveys. 

The NYT says that in just four years, anti-gay bias rose by around 10 percent -- in particular among the youngest American adults — those under 25.  This is particularly concerning for those in the LGBTQ+ community, I would suspect.  There is much ink being spent on the reasons for this decline in acceptance and support and many ideas offered as to its cause but I am not sure that the decline is all that much of a decline or what that decline means.

If there is such a decline, perhaps the reasons are included in the paragraph quoted above:  large and  prominent Pride parades, rainbow-lit landmarks, and federal legalization of same-sex marriage.  The presumption that to be gay means to embrace the fullness of the LGBTQ+ culture with its over the top flaunting not simply of the desire for someone other than the opposite sex but of a stereotype of what gayness looks like is itself a problem.  If you read this blog you know where I stand and I am not going to turn this into another blog post to restate what I have already said.  However, I know of and have a few friends with some of gay people who refuse to live out the excesses of scantily clad people wearing rainbows and indulging in sexual acts in public parades, all the rainbow political stuff that attempts to define what it means to be gay, and the desire to change vaunted social institutions and remake them in an LGBTQ+ image.  They themselves are rejecting the very stereotypical images of what it means to be gay.  In fact, most of them just want to be left alone and live their lives with the same measure of privacy most straight folks enjoy.

The reality is that what is being rejected is probably not so much the freedom for people to do as they please in the privacy of their own homes but the public persona of what some have imposed on the gay community.  I do not think that anyone should take much stock in the suggestion of a decline of support for that kind of freedom or privacy but I do think people have had enough of the drag queen culture and the in your face kind of life.  That was bound to cause a backlash.  The other thing is that the rapid pro-gay bias was its own problem.  In the end it did not seem like that campaign was really about equal rights as much as it was about the political and cultural stereotype of what it means to be out and proud gay.  The world is moving too fast for most of us -- even liberals!  The gains in acceptance and support were not enough for those who insisted upon tying this to the trans culture and those with so-called non-binary genders.  People have not had a break in this push for social change that has happened at a dizzying speed and most folks just want a chance to catch their breath.  

So before anyone gets the idea that the pendulum has swung on this issue, it would be premature to celebrate.  The gay community has the media in their hip pocket and has the educational elite in the other.  That is not going to change.  Acceptance may be conditioned a bit due to the excesses of those who lived on the liberal and progressive fringe of things but it will take a great deal for American culture and society to return to the public face of the values of the 1950s.  I do not believe that is going to happen anytime soon.  That said, I am grateful for a slight pause in the whole idea that your sexual desire or your felt gender is the most important part of anyone's identity.

The institutionalization of novelty. . .

The joke used to be how many Lutherans does it take to change a light bulb.  The answer, of course, was none because Lutherans did not change.  I used to tell that joke -- 50-60 years ago!  That is certainly not the case today.  Everything has changed and is still changing among Lutherans today.  It is not simply about worship.  Novelty has become institutionalized among Lutherans (but not only Lutherans!).  We think and desire creativity more than ever before.  It is killing us as a "brand" and even the Lutherans are hard-pressed to define what it means to be Lutheran anymore.

Worship is certainly the obvious arena in which this is true.  There is a certain segment of Lutherans on both sides of the worship wars who keep their ears tuned to what is happening and who are constantly re-imagining what it means to be Lutheran on Sunday morning.  While the obvious suspects are those who live outside the liturgy of the hymnals and invent their own style and content, they are not alone.  Just as one set of progressive Lutherans constantly are trying to copy or even get a page ahead of everyone else when it comes to contemporary Christian music or the preaching style that appeals to the masses, there is another set of traditionals who constantly argue over what it means to be really confessional when it comes to worship.

When it comes to catechesis, the situation is exactly the same.  Many Lutherans have no idea what it means to be Lutheran because they got Lutheranism 101 LITE or because they got the version of Lutheranism which reflected a particular spot in time or pastoral preference.  Hardly any catechesis (youth or adult) includes an honest historical survey of where we have come and yet they expect those new to Lutheranism to be equipped to judge where we are going anyway.  It is the institutionalization of novelty to presume a creative invention of Lutheranism without the prejudice of history will serve to hold us together in the future.  The doctrinal fluidity of Lutherans from the liberals on one side to the confessionals on the other to evangelicals on another have left us with a triangle of problems and an ever confused idea of what it actually means to be Lutheran.

Doctrine is part of this problem as well.  Some look at the Scriptures as a mere guide to belief and not the source and norm of that belief and some look at the Lutheran Confessions with the same freedom which refused to be bound by anything except the moment.  We do not even agree on the basic meaning of the words in the Creeds of the Church so how on earth can we be expected to have a doctrinal consensus.  Absent such a doctrinal consensus, Lutherans across the world have also had a moral diversity that is not simply the betrayal of our own history but the destruction of our identity.  We have Lutherans who actually think the Gospel has more to do with liberated sexual desire or gender identity or care of the planet than the cross.  Just wait until the next cause of the day comes along.  Novelty seems to win out over faithfulness and historical integrity and there is no sign it will stop winning in the near future.

I think this is actually what is behind the conflicts in Rome as well.  Vatican II became not simply a council for Roman Catholics but the defining moment in what it means to be one.  Nevermind the 400 years of the Tridentine Mass or Roman Catholic teaching on the family and marriage, Vatican II seems to have institutionalized novelty and made faithfulness secondary to creativity.  The divide between Benedict XVI and Francis reveal this dispute and Leo now seems unsure of whether he wants to restore the course or opt for change or muddle through trying to do both.  It is clear that in many parishes of Rome, Sunday morning reveals more of a penchant for novelty than for clinging to the markers that once gave folks a pretty clear idea of what and where Rome was and where it is going.

I consider myself an evangelical catholic who began life as a bronze aged Missourian but the truth is that I am not sure where people would place me today.  The conversation reveals that we are all over the place when it comes to Lutheran identity and that can change as quickly as you talk to someone new and different.  Lutherans have changed and changed with such a rapid pace that it has left all our institutions and our identity confused.  We once had a name for Lutheran institutions of mercy but now we do not even own or operate Lutheran hospitals or orphanages and our mercy footprint has come to look more like an NGO than a church oriented proposition.  We are all confused.  That is what unchecked diversity and the institutionalization of novelty does.  It leave us confused and so confused the people outside our churches do not know who we are or what to expect from us anymore.  Their own historical illiteracy has made the Reformation less a movement than an idea or footnote.  How will we ever extricate ourselves from the mess we have made pushing freedom and invention as the primary values of everything while faithfulness and continuity languish way behind? 

At least one gets it. . .

Picking up on some article links I had not gotten to yet, there is this from Sian Leah Beilock, president of Darmouth.  While it is not earth shattering, it is a great surprise to see someone on the inside of exclusive universities admit it:

Families across the U.S. are questioning whether a four-year degree is worth it. Student debt has soared. Recent graduates are struggling in a rapidly changing job market. Colleges can also be too ideological: On many campuses, students are exposed to a limited range of perspectives, signaling to them what rather than how to think. 

This is a good opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal January 25, 2026.  Suffice it to say, she acknowledges what many critics have been saying for a very long time.  She admits that the whole  university system in the US has been tainted and this has caused them to lose the trust of the people -- from the students to the parents sending them to college.  To her credit, she does propose a few relatively  commonsense solutions, including addressing the affordability factor, making the tremendous investment worth while not simply in jobs but in the product it provides, and making the university culture less political and less captive to one political ideology.  Perhaps her most important idea is not radical except in the mouth of a president of an exclusive university:  "emphasize equal opportunity, not equal outcomes."  If this last one were to happen, it would restore a tested and proven American principal against a corrupt and impossible Woke ideology.  We will see.

Dartmouth and others (even Yale) are working to replace student loans with a combination of scholarships, grants and work-study options in our financial-aid packages -- hoping to make free tuition available for families earning $175-200,000 or less.  Well that should not be hard.  Most of those cushy universities are sitting on billions of investments.  Maybe it is time to take some of that money and put it to work for good.  Universities have taken sides in the culture wars and used their influence to press their side upon faculty and students alike.  It would be a welcome sign of hope if a level playing field were created for the place where learning is supposed to be free and open.  Hopefully the equal opportunity vs equal outcomes debate will end such things as grade inflation and the artificial success achieved not by merit but by class.  It could be the start of reform for education or it could be the signal of the end of this president's career.  What will happen?

If we’re willing to reform ourselves—to listen, change and recommit to our core mission—we can again be a trusted engine of the American dream, scientific breakthroughs and the global economy. 

The sad reality is that student loan debt financed the Woke agenda and the liberal and progressive bent that our university system has taken.  These schools did not finance their leftward leaning ride upon the money of big donors or their well-invested endowments but upon the backs of students who thought that going to college would result in an education and a better chance in the job market.  They got neither.  For this betrayal to be repaired, it will take less talk and more action.  At least that is my opinion. 

What is word art?

One of the things that confounds and confuses me is the popularity of word art today.  You know what I mean.  Everything from paintings to dishes to coffee mugs to throw pillows is a blank canvas with some word on it.  The words are seldom profound.  A wreath that says simply welcome.  A mug that says coffee.  Sometimes the words are puns.  Sometimes they are jokes.  Sometimes they are merely vulgar words passing for humor.  Why?  Why do we call that art?  Why do people pay money for such things?

For my part I am convinced that beauty is in short supply and that it does not help things to presume that throwing a couple of words on fabric or ceramic or pottery or wood constitutes art.  This seems to have replaced sofa sized paintings sold out of the backs of trucks as the style of the day.  I did not like the sofa size paintings and this does not seem to be an improvement.  Is that what we have become?  Words to replace real art?

I am not at all suggesting that good writing is not art but I would not consider most of the junk sold with words on it good writing.  I am not saying that eloquence or craft should not be fostered when it comes to good writing (even sermons!).  What I am saying is that throwing a word on something is not eloquence or crafty.  It is cheap and easy and trendy, to be sure, but not art.  Or do you think I am wrong?

The truth is I am over it.  Don't get me any more coffee mugs with a word or two on it.  Don't buy me a throw pillow adorned with a word or two on it.  Don't expect me to go gaga over your painting which is a beige canvas with some word on it -- in a fancy script that is both playful and fun.  Hey, wait a minute. I thought folks could not read cursive anymore?  So why are they using that cursive font on that word art?

Church banners in particular are far too wordy and do not employ symbolism enough.  Even some paraments on altars and pulpits are simply words on fabric.  The Church has enough words what with the readings from Scripture, sermons, prayers, hymns, and liturgy.  Is it too much to ask that we cultivate the power of the symbol and set it in a context of beauty?  I fear that plastering a Bible passage or a Biblical word (Alleluia, for example) on something meant to be used in a church building is considered the height of creativity and faithfulness.  Is that all there is to it?  Should this be called Christian art?  Do our people suffer from a shortage of words that needs to be answered by stitching words on fabric or gluing them to felt?

Okay.  It is a pet peeve of mine and not a mighty meandering thought.  But some days I wake up and wonder why has this taken the world by storm.  You should have the same questions.  Are you also one who thinks that the world will be a better place when they stop making dishes and paintings and pillows with a word or two on them?  Of course, when they stop producing them it will not diminish the over abundance that exists but they will shift from stores and homes to flea markets.  Some of them already have.  I don't want to see them there either.  This is one trend I hope will pass away into an early grave and not simply because I don't like it but because it is trite and banal in a world that screams for real beauty.  If we cannot convince the merchandise buyers at the home stores, at least we do not have to copy this unfortunate trend in the Church.