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.

 

A book about my family. . .

While out and about at flea markets, book stores, and antique shops, I happened upon a volume whose title could very well be a book about my family history.  It is probably for another to judge but the abnormal part seems rather true -- at least in comparison to things as they are today.

I grew up in a home with a dad and a mom who were married to each other for nearly 65 years.  They were rather simple folk by the standards today.  They went to church every Sunday, taught their two sons to pray along with a host of other things (from cooking to plumbing), and were productive members of the small town in which they had grown up and lived their whole lives.  Yup, pretty abnormal.  They were not fancy people and their accomplishments were largely limited to the arenas of church, home, and community.  Though they loom large in my own memory, I would be forced to admit that they are largely forgotten now.  The store that belonged to my father from 1958 through 2015 is now closed.  The building is occupied by a glorified junk dealer and I cannot even recall how much of the inventory was left from the remains of dad's store.  Mom's work with the girl scouts, women's club, and a host of other worthy endeavors is as forgotten as those groups.  The town and its people have moved on.  It hurts me more than I imagined it every would hurt them.  They did not live their lives for legacy but as people of faith living out in the present moment a life they strove to make worthy of their calling in Christ.  My brother and I are probably their only estate of value to them.  Yes, they had things but the things were not as important to them as me and my brother.  They loved their daughter-in-law and were happy at the home she made for me and for our family.  They loved their grandchildren and the mountains of photos from my family was evidence of how they cherished these babies who grew up into adults.  It used to be a pretty normal life but I wonder how normal it is today.

I write this not out of nostalgia nor because I want to condemn the way things have become.  It is more out of sadness that I admit what was the norm for me and my wife and the homes in which we grew up is now not so normal anymore.  The world today has lost something precious and in its place has come something less than what was lost.  I am sad because I grew up without a real care in the world.  We played and worked and walked and rode bikes as if there was nothing to fear anywhere.  It was a life without a rigorous schedule, without drop offs and pick ups from day care, and without adult worries to interfere with childhood.  Sure, we had drills about hiding under our desks in case of nuclear attack but we did not worry about it -- much less think about the absurdity of a school desk keep us safe from the mushroom cloud and all of its destruction.  We just did it.  We did not worry about our parents divorcing -- I literally cannot recall that ever happening in my small town while I grew up there.  We did not worry about figuring out our gender or what fueled our sexual desire.  We were kids and most of us went through high school as carefree virgins who expected to find a wife or husband and have a family but did not brood on it.  How unlike today with kids who carry around adult sized burdens on their shoulders and who have had the new normal steal away their childhood and its attempt at innocence!

I knew my great-grandpa, grand-parents on both sides, aunts and uncles, cousins and an extended family that numbered in the hundreds.  We went to reunions and ate meals at each other's homes.  We hauled out the giant tins of Schwanns ice cream for dessert and ate pickled herring along with chips and dip before sitting down to roasted meat, mashed potatoes, gravy, and vegetables.  Though we were not rich, we did not worry if the food would be on the table.  We did sometimes worry that it might be some food we did not especially like but we ate what was there.  Everybody did.  We wore hand me down clothes along with the outfits and shoes purchase once a year -- big enough to grow into as long as we did not wear them out.  We had a TV that had a couple of channels on it and we watched it with glee but parents always controlled what we watched and when.  That big screen was a nice addition to our lives but it did not replace playing with other kids or doing chores or all the other things.  I guess growing up without a screen dominated life was better than anyone today could imagine.  Like most folks, we could not wait to grow up but when we grew up we realized how special such a childhood was in a small town, with a loving family, and enough if not more all around.  Sadly, as normal as it seemed then, it is not now and I am not sure anyone misses those easy, slow, carefree days.  They should.  We all should miss them enough to work to make our modern day lives a bit more like the old ones.

We have settled into a new normal in which families break up and homes are divided and children are optional and marriage is not necessary.  We have accepted the new normal of a world in which you never really feel safe or secure (not even in your own home) and in which you balance dangers with desires when you plan things.  We have become accustomed to a world in which the screens are our best friends and personal contact is secondary to the digital realities of our daily lives.  We expect people not to go to church and we expect to fill our time with other pursuits.  We are over scheduled and even lonelier than ever.  I could be angry about how things have turned out but instead I am sad.  I am sad for my grandchildren and for the kids I see at church.  I am sad at how easily and quickly the new normal has made my childhood abnormal.  In this we have forgotten some of the things that matter most and kept hold on things that do not matter much at all.  I know I cannot change the world but I pray for it and for the future ahead of most of us.  Anger may not bring things back but if we ever get to the point where we want to try something different, the abnormal past might not look so bad to us.  The day may come when antique stores or old book shops or flea markets may hold more than a memory but a sense of hope, restoring what was lost for the sake of joy.

 

By their fruits you shall know them. . .

In one of the more curious details about the early days of Leo's papacy, one can note that while he looks the part, he has consistently used the power of appointment to continue the legacy of Frank the First and the progressive agenda.  While I have no doubt that Leo will not become the atheological voice of his predecessor, he has surely become an extension of the same man's penchant for naming people left of center to all kinds of important posts.  For example, in addition to the bishops, Pope Leo XIV appointed 19 new consultants to the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue -- nominations consistent with those made under Pope Francis.  Two examples are Emilce Cuda, who is also secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, who seems hesitant to speak against abortion and the other Mónica Santamarina, a leading figure in the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations (WUCWO) who enjoys complaining about clericalism and too few women in seminaries and church leadership.

What makes this even more incredible is that before becoming Pope, Leo was head of the dicastery which nominated and investigated candidates for the episcopacy across the Roman world.  He, as much as anyone, should have known what kind of men he was appointing as bishops.  The fact that so many of those whom he has appointed seem to tilt left can only be indicative of his own desire to lean in that direction.  If that is the case, then Rome has some big problems down the road -- far bigger than the question of restoring the ability to say the Latin Mass freely.  I know that he has not had much time in the saddle, so to speak, but he has had enough time for us to judge the direction in which he is heading and that does not look good for Rome or for orthodox and traditional Christianity down the road.

It has often been said that a President of US serves at most 8 years but those whom he appoints to the judiciary extend well beyond that limit.  That is certainly the case for bishops also.  Yes, Leo is a great deal younger than Frank was but Frank's imprint upon Rome has been multiplied by the many he appointed as cardinals (especially cardinal electors) and bishops.  The fact that Leo has had multiple opportunities to slow down or reverse course on the direction Frank the First began only signals that he himself is moving in that direction.  While I wish that were not so, I know many Roman Catholics who believe it is exactly the case.

While I have no dog in this hunt, it does mean that those who would have enjoyed some support from Rome will now have to admit that Rome is not going to be a reliable partner for orthodox Christian teaching on marriage, sexual desire, gender identity, and a host of other issues perhaps more important but less attention getting.  It means that groups like the LCMS are increasingly more and more isolated.  The Christian left is a machine and it works very well to scoop up whole denominations, seminaries, universities, and churchly institutions to agree with the progressive agenda.  Plus, that leftward leaning group has learned to be patient and to consolidate gains when the pace of change slows.  Perhaps that is what Leo is doing in Rome.  In any case, if we know the true man by his fruits, they do not look good so far into this papacy.  Not quite a year is not a long time but unless Leo changes course on some things it is enough to say that Leo is more Frank's guy than Benedict's. 

The Kingdom of God has come near. . .

Eve after nearly 50 years in the pulpit, I admit that I am no expert on preaching but I do have some experience doing it and listening to it.  On the whole, most preachers make a good effort.  On the average, preaching is not all that compelling to listen to or to read.  It is to my great sadness that I say this.  To those who would charge me with arrogance in this judgment, I do not mean to suggest that my own preaching is absent of the same problems as others.  But it does seem as if we have on the whole forgotten what it means to preach.

I would echo S. M. Hutchens in the current Touchstone:  "I must add now, near the end of my life, after listening for decades to bad preaching from numerous pulpits, that Evangelicals have no corner on this market. Each denomination seems infected by its native strain of bad preaching —the Anglicans by preciousness, the Lutherans by formula, the Catholics by laziness and biblical illiteracy, the Baptists by great volume to no great end."  While not mean to categorize all, it does represent the tendencies among the denominations which contribute to the decline of the craft and the failure of its outcome.

If the folks in the pew dismiss what they hear or change preachers like they change channels or peruse the reels and memes of the internet, it could be that preachers no longer seem to be authoritative in their preaching, carrying this weight and fulfilling its duty as they should.  Nobody goes to church to hear some opinion from the guy in the pulpit.  They go as I do now to hear the kingdom of God proclaimed.  What seems common especially among us today is the proclamation that the kingdom of God has come near.  Instead, it is as if that kingdom were something we obtained by achievement, merit, or following a map.  The preachers today often seem to begin with what they do not know instead of what they do, what is the core of their conviction and what bears the authority of the One who is the Word made flesh.

We Lutherans love to debate Law and Gospel in preaching as if our job were merely to rightly distinguish them and then make sure that we spend more words on the Gospel than the Law.  Somewhere in this the text goes missing from the sermon.  Somewhere in this we presume that the Word of God is a tool to be used well but not, as it were, the efficacious voice of the Good Shepherd speaking to His flock so they might hear His voice, recognize it, and follow.  Following is often the thing missing in sermons.  Indeed, where are we to go and whom are we to follow?  There often seems to be great faithfulness in speaking at least one well-worn version of the atonement but not so much any application or compelling direction for us to take home and apply Monday through Saturday.

Of other denominations I cannot speak.  I have only marginal association with what passes for preaching in nearly every denomination but of the online sermons of the notable folk I have a bit more acquaintance.  That said, it saddens me that Charles Stanley still preaches on after death for this seems to admit that good preachers are not common today.  It positively sickens me to call what Joel Osteen says a sermon and that also includes many who, like him, seem at home in anything but Scripture.  So I can only assume that some of what I find disappointing in my own tradition also applies there.  But you discern it and understand that mileage may vary.

I only wish that sermons proclaimed the nearness of the kingdom of God, the presence of the Savior who died and rose again, and the power of Him who chooses mercy over all things.  Nearly every text of the Gospel reading for any given Sunday is abundant in opportunities to proclaim this present God whose kingdom is near to us in Word and Sacrament, and whose call for us to follow is compelling.  If there is another complaint, maybe it is that there seems to be less joy for now and less hope for tomorrow in what is proclaimed.  That is disappointing because joy ought to accompany faith and hope is the mark of faith living in us.  I cannot guarantee that folks who hear me preach will go home feeling better but I have striven to make sure that they encounter the God of joy and hope -- a joy and hope so profound it compels us to live new, upright, and godly lives even though they cannot and will not purchase salvation.  At least that is my desire.  

If you cannot say it with many points, then you ought to at least say it with one or two strong points that will bear home the text appointment within that context of God's abiding presence, the triumph of His mercy, the character of joy, and the mark of hope.  If I can say one thing more, let it be that the preacher's delivery actually display his own confidence in his conviction.  It is a sad thing to hear a good sermon spoken in a voice that appears to be indifferent to what is proclaimed.  Lastly, I will say this.  Before you begin writing a sermon, any sermon, you had better be well acquainted with good preachers and read their sermons.  Speaking sermons helps to make you better but it is secondary to reading and hearing good sermons from the voices and pens of others.  

There are many sins in the pulpit but I should not end this little rant without saying that the sin of being dull is a particularly vexing one.  It might be that most sermons do not excite the hearer enough for them to contemplate any action against the preacher but to admit that this is the case is also sad.  When one can read a passage from literature or a story from the news with more urgency than the Word of God and its preached application, we are all in trouble.  I realize I have rambled but that is how my meandering thoughts worked today.

Happy Valentine's Day anyone?

Myth and legend have never kept us from having fun or making money and are often the occasion for doing both.  So the question of who is this Valentine we call saint may be of significance for a blogwriter somewhere but probably not for those who rushed to the florist, candy shop, and card store to say something eloquently sentimental to our significant other.  Wow, did you notice how that term significant other seemed to steal all the heart out of Valentine's Day?  Oh, well, I have been know to rain on every parade at one time or another. 

The saint we celebrate on Valentine’s Day, the Saint Valentine of Rome, is but one of a dozen or more individuals named Valentine in the annals of Christendom.  The name derives from “Valentinus”—from the Latin word for worthy, strong or powerful.  It was a popular name through the eighth century and several martyrs from the 2nd - 8th centuries bore that name. The official Roman Catholic roster of saints lists a dozen or so Valetines including St. Valentine Berrio-Ochoa, a Spaniard of the Dominican order who was a bishop in Vietnam until his beheading in 1861. He was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988 (so obviously the day is not named after him). History records a Pope Valentine who served a mere 40 days around 827 AD (so most likely it was not him either).  A flower-adorned skull of St. Valentine is on display in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome. It came from an excavation of a catacomb near Rome in the 1800s.  This led to bits and pieces of those remains being distributed throughout Europe and the UK.

The day was not observed until the fourteenth century.  Medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer seems to invented the day in his work “Parliament of Foules.”  The poem references to February 14 as the day birds (and humans) come together to find a mate. Chaucer wrote, “For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day / Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.” This is probably the start of the day, though not of the saint.  St. Valentine is thought to have been a real person who died around 270 AD but that is not without some controversy.  In 496 by Pope Gelasius I described the martyr and his acts as “being known only to God.” Later accounts (from the 1400s) identify him as a temple priest beheaded near Rome by the emperor Claudius II, allegedly for assisting Christian couples to marry.  Or he could have been Bishop of Terni, also martyred by Claudius II on the outskirts of Rome.  You can see why they are thought to have been the same person.  The confusion, however, led Rome to banish him from the calendar in 1969 even though he remains on the list of officially recognized saints.

Anyway, it took the shift from agape to eros to put this day on our calendars and turn it into a booming commercial success, at least for the florists, chocolatiers, and jewelers.  Alas, no one seems to care about the faith of the saint anymore.  The only thing that is on the minds of most folks is love -- the kind that arouses rather than inspires.  So perhaps it is better no Valentine lays claim to the day or what it turned into and we cannot accurately assess its origin either.  And you may have thought that Christmas was stolen from the Church!  The images of chubby little cherubs and arrows shot through the heart have little value as symbols of the faith but they have done remarkably well to turn an obscure day into one that is forgotten at your own peril.  Happy St. Valentine's Day.

 

Not for women and children any longer. . .

There is great surprise to the fact that religion, specifically orthodox Christianity, is undergoing a revival among those who had, at one point, decided that religion had to be jettisoned in order to achieve a more educated and enlightened estate.  Religion was associated with those who were backwards, uneducated, superstitious, rural, and weak.  It was natural, at that time, to suggest that women, children, and the aged were the most likely to need any sort of religion.  That is now changing.

An argument could be made that even among those who saw themselves as too smart or too well-educated to need religion did not abandon religion but simply switched from the God of traditional religions to the gods of technology, education, pleasure, science, and progress.  Of course, they would demur.  That does not make this suggestion wrong but it simply affirms the fact that those who worked hard to rid themselves of religion were not going to quickly admit that they had merely switched allegiance and were still dependent upon some form of deity.

Across Europe as well as in the US, there is a resurgence of religion and, particularly, orthodox Christianity, among the young, males, and even the educated.  It could be said that even among the most secular of Western nations and societies, there is the surprising renewal of faith among a people who had long thought to have been post-Christian.  There is hope, at least, that the light has not completely been extinguished.  Young people and especially young men are showing up more and more in congregations of conservative, orthodox, Christian congregations.  This is not an anecdotal reality but something which has been documented in poll and survey.

What does this mean?  That is, after all, the Lutheran question.  While I would like to admit that it is due to the vibrant and profound Christian witness proceeding from the Church and the effect of the witness of the Christian life among the people of God, there is another cause.  All the hope and euphoria once associated with science, technology, and progress have been dashed of late as well.  The struggles of life in Covid and afterwards cannot be minimized.  The loneliness that our digital connections has fed more than satisfied is another factor.  The uncertainty of the cost versus benefit of AI (artificial intelligence) must not be written off.  The demise of the global world and of a world marketplace to satisfy and improve the lot of all people is no longer universally held.  Education has become a niche market with degrees that do not translate into jobs or richer lives and this has contributed to the desire for something more than what universities offer of the human dream.  

We may not have contributed to the demise of the things that were once a solid wall keeping religion out of the public square but we can surely capitalize on the desire for something more than what progress failed to fulfill.  If that is the case, we will need to be better catechized and offer the world a compelling reality and not simply an idea.  Christian communities along with the Christian witness are needed.  Nobody is making headway into once secular haunts of the world by presenting a watered down version of Christianity or the God who lives only in an idea.  The world is looking not simply for the transcendent but also for the means to connect with the transcendent.  It is looking for Biblical preaching, music that serves the Word, and sacramental worship in which the mystery of God is heralded more than explained away.  The world is looking for not simply a private faith but a worldview that defines and determines how a person fits into the world.  It is not looking for an echo chamber for the latest idea or trend but for the faith of the ages, the truth that endures forever, and the worship service that transcends time and reality with the Divine.  The world will not be convinced by Sunday Christians who leave their faith at the door when they make their way back home anymore than it will be challenged by a digital reality that lives only on the screens.  It will not be transformed by threat or compelled by fear but will be given pause by the power of love that speaks the truth and attempts to live by it in thought, word, and deed.  I wish I could say that we Christians have given the world such a profound witness that we are being given a second look but I am fairly certain that it is the breakdown of the world and its vaunted institutions that has caused them to give Christianity a second look.  Let us not disappoint them.

Child abuse. . .

I read a while back that a fairly prominent Roman Catholic recently argued in the Irish Times against a new label for an old abuse -- those baptized as infant baptisms.  She is not exactly the silent type and this former president of Ireland and canon lawyer, Mary McAleese, has chosen to use her bully pulpit to challenge the practice of infant baptism -- not on theological grounds but as an abuse against children.  She declared infant baptism to be “a long-standing, systemic and overlooked severe restriction on children’s rights with regard to religion.” Hmmm.  Amid all the things that threaten children today, infant baptism is one that needs to be called out.  Really? 

Who worries about infant baptism -- besides those who fear that the practice without the catechesis is dangerous?  Apparently those who can ignore all the other threats and abuses children suffer in our modern age but have infant baptism stuck in their craw.  Amazing how so-called Christians can invent more societal sin and guilt.  Would that infant baptism had such a profound meaning that those who were given new the new birth of water and the Spirit had to grapple with the meaning of it all the rest of their lives.  That is not the case.  Of all things that could be made forgettable, infant baptism must surely top the list.  Every day the numbers of those baptized as infant shrinks by the false assumption that religion is a matter of choice more than Godly act and declaration.  Every day the numbers of children shrink as declining birth rates and sky high rates of abortion diminish the potential for infant baptism even to be practiced.  Every day the world erupts in violence somewhere.  Every day new forms of perversion are invented to turn a gift of God into a curse and a bane.  Every day old diseases once thought eradicated come back and new diseases loom over the lives of the children who are born.  Every day a world that has little moral compass left finds new ways to exploit children for sexual purpose.  But apparently the worst of them all is infant baptism.

It won't be long before someone like her begins to challenge the idea of life itself, suggesting that the worst abuse of children is to allow them to be born at all.  That is how far our world has been shifted off its axis and how deeply skewed the values that once heralded children as a blessing form the Lord and those whom we cared for in the sacred trust given to us from God Himself.  But that is the outcome of where things are headed.  It seems like some think we should apologize to children for allowing them to be conceived and, having been conceived, allowing them to be born at all.  In the last month we observed Life Sunday with its solemn remembrance of the legalization of child murder.  It is clear that more than abortion, the whole value assigned to life and the character of the stewardship of life given to parents is under assault today.  

It would seem, according to Ms. McAleese and those of her opinion, that it is any kind of abuse to pass onto your children any of your ideas, morals, beliefs, etc.  For if baptism is under assault, then by what right does anyone teach their children anything at home or in church?  Indeed, it would seem that only those in the elite of education have any right to teach our children or promote anything to the mind and heart of the child.  If that is the case, that is much more dangerous than a cranky Irish lady complaining about her own baptism some 7 1/2 decades ago.  If this is where we are as a culture, then God save us from the almighties who inhabit the halls of academia because their ideas have proven more inherently dangerous than the promise of forgiveness and new life born of water and the Word could ever be.  How sad it is that someone can actually write about the abuse of infant baptism without even mentioning how routinely we put to death the infants in the womb -- making that seem normal while infant baptism the exception.  Really, you cannot make this stuff up.

The problem of music in the liturgy. . .

It is certainly not true that we were all of one mind when it came to music -- at least until contemporary Christian music came along.  The music in the liturgy has always been rather controversial and subject to debate.  Occasionally we remember this but most of the time we conveniently forget it.  Why this matters is that it is good to know the history as we approach new styles or forms of music that some want to include in what happens on Sunday morning.  This does not mean to say that there is no such distinction between sacred and secular but only that the line between the two has been redrawn over time.

The first issue was voice or instrument.  For the earliest period of Christianity, voice was the only instrument for the music of the Divine Service.  There was no question or doubt here.  Indeed, the witness of the early church fathers here is almost unanimous against the use of instruments in worship and it looks very different than what we typically expect today.  The voice was the only instrument of praise and voices were raised in chant.  

Instrumental music was associated with Judaism.  In the effort to maintain a clear distinction between Judaism and Christianity, instrumental music was omitted from the early liturgy without much discussion.  Indeed, the presence of instrumental music in the Temple was seen less as belonging than concession to the sensuality of the people -- at least according to the Christian view of things.  There was a firm conviction that what the Old Testament (particularly the Psalms) said about the use of instrumental music in worship had no bearing on Christian worship.  Also present in the early church fathers was an attention to unity which was best reflected in unified singing -- monophonic music better expressed this unity in the ancient Christian mind, it would seem.

Whether we like to admit or not, the early fathers were much more puritanical and Amish when it comes to the role of music in worship than Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and even Protestants in general.  I suspect they would be shocked to find polyphonic music, instruments, harmonies, hymns, and organs that have become par for the course for most Christians today.  Part of this was the constant association of instrumental music with sensuality, emotion, and secular (dare I say sinful) arenas.  They sought a higher and spiritual but also primarily word dominated idea of worship.  Augustine himself reflects the conflict within him over both associations with the secular part of his earlier life with its sensuality and the desire to serve God on a higher plane.  That expression finds it ultimate definition in Thomas Aquinas who insists that worship employ only voice for God's sake and for ours.  Obviously, something changed along the way.

What was largely absent in the early Church and tolerated only in limited ways in places later gave way to the embrace of music with any harmony was altogether excluded by the Late Middle Ages.  The mind of the Church began to change with the Edict of Constantine (321 AD) as the Church came out of hiding into a more public presence and into a more public space.  The very possibility of gathering together in large, cavernous spaces had an impact on the singing and the song.  Embellishment of the melody and the skill of the singer made the chant more elaborate and drew more attention to the music and to the text but in a different way.  Choirs or scholas were formed to enhance this musical form but also to keep it distinct from the congregational song.  Gregorian chant became more complicated and there was more movement in the melody and even a hint of harmony.  Along with this, music began to become more mathematical.  After harmony went from two-part, to three-part, and then to four and more parts, it was not a big step to introduce polyphony.  With this was a constant concern against the loss of the text due to the elaboration of the musical form.

There was even a move during the Council of Trent to ban polyphony altogether.  This was surely in sync with the Protestants who were suspicious of Luther and his embrace of music in service to the Word and his own personal advancement of congregational song.   Renaissance polyphony was controversial within Rome and Protestantism together.  By the time you get to the Baroque period and Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, Gabrieli, Schubert, Scarlatti, and many others, the connection between math and music is much more obvious. You can see this most of all in the fugue -- the form mastered most of all by Bach but not unique to him.  Both Lutherans and Roman Catholics were not unconcerned about the principle use of music as a handmaiden  to the Word and sought to preserve the intelligibility of the text.  In this they had much in common with some Protestants who insisted that the words of the music must be directly from the Scriptures alone (though some allowed paraphrase).  

Although debate continues and will always continue over the suitability of newer forms of music and whether or not they are they can be employed within the sacred use of the Divine Service, these are not new.  The judgment against forms unsuitable to the sacred setting of the Mass or so tied to their secular identity that such a context cannot be erased in order for it to be rehabilitated for sacred use will also remain.  The key to that judgment will not simply be the sound or cultural popularity of such forms but the intelligibility of the text and whether such forms reverse the role and dominate the Word rather than serve that Word.  The problems with contemporary Christian music and usage within the setting of the Mass or Divine Service cannot be argued simply on the basis of association or origin but must be dealt with on the level of the Word and its proclamation.  That said, it is not being unfair or narrow minded to suggest that some forms have such association with the sensual or with pagan contexts that their usage within the sacred setting of worship cannot and will not overcome to provide for their inclusion the way harmony and polyphony have been incorporated into orthodox Christian worship.  

Obviously, everything I have written is true in the West but may not be reflective of the developments within the East and Orthodoxy there.  I have not even written of the fact that the Tridentine Mass has little place or appreciation for congregational hymns of any kind while the post-Vatican II Mass of Rome seems much more friendly to the form.

Misconceptions. . .

While I am not a fan of the Roman Catholic practice of naming the Sundays after Epiphany and Pentecost Ordinary Time, they have certainly gained a bad rap for this by the misconceptions that accompany this nomenclature.  Ordinary has come to mean simple, common, usual, and, inevitably, unimportant.  It seems we are captive to one view of that term and in our poverty of language have forgotten other nuanced meanings of it.  When the word “ordinary” is applied to Sundays in the Church Year, it does not refer to its typical meaning illustrated above but refers to another root of the words that has come to mean simple, common, usual, unremarkable, plain, or unimportant.  It hearkens back to the the English term “ordinal” -- a word that refers to the position of one thing in a series of things.  It is when we call something the first or second among a whole series of things.  It can refer to importance but it can also refer simply to time.  One comes before another and one comes after another.  The term Ordinary Time refers to those Sundays which are distinguished only or primarily by their sequence following one or another major Sundays.  These Sundays have a common color -- green.  It is the color of these ordinal Sundays even though the feast day which they follow has another color (white for Epiphany and red for Pentecost).  Even when we called them after Trinity, we observed the color green instead of the Trinity color of white.  After Trinity or Pentecost is a small change, indeed, for a practice which is the same.

Of course, someone will insist but what about the Sundays of a Season -- the First Sunday of Advent or in Lent or of Easter?  They also follow an ordinal pattern in their naming.  Yes, they do.  But they are Sundays in or of a season and not the ordinal Sundays after an event: The First Sunday after Epiphany or after Pentecost.  So there is no slight meant toward Sundays in Ordinary Time nor is this meant in any way to indicate that they are, well, ordinary.  Indeed, any Sunday is never ordinary and every Sunday, as the day of our Lord's resurrection or a sort of mini-Easter, is special in that regard.  Can any one of us regard our time in the presence of our merciful God to receive His gifts of Word and Sacrament distributed to us quite apart from our merit or worthy regard such a day as ordinary?  No, I did not think so.

There is another aspect to this that perhaps is also worth our attention.  While we regard such time spent together around the Word and Table of the Lord as special, there is also the sense to that gathering that it is ordinary, that is, the common way that God comes to us, through means.  It was common when I was growing up to have the Sacrament only four times a year and there was great counsel from the solemn voices of that day that to have it more often would somehow tarnish its special character and render it common.  Odd how that never applied to hearing God's Word read and preached or praying the Our Father!!  Our Lord never intended for His Supper to become something special in the sense of something reserved for special occasions.  No, indeed, for He commends His testament to the Church with the common to do this often in His remembrance -- as the very means of His remembrance.  So the Sunday of the Church Year may be referred as an ordinal Sunday of a season (after Epiphany or Pentecost) but it is observed in the ordinary way -- gathering together to hear His Word and receive His body and blood and to respond with prayer and praise.  

The weeks of the Sundays outside the Festival half of the Church Year are ordinal and yet they are observed in the same way we observe the Festival Sundays, including feast days.  While there may be attendant changes to the liturgy for some days (such as the omission of the hymn of praise in Advent or Lent), we gather in the same way for the same gifts.  These are never common in one sense and yet it is out common duty and delight in another sense to be there in the Lord's House, on the Lord's Day, around the Lord's Word and the Lord's Table as the people who have been washed by the Lord's water.  Thanks be to God! 

Everyone hopes to be a prophet. . .

Is there a more satisfying thing to say than I told you so?  If you can find it, please tell me about it.  We all want to be a prophet who can foresee the future than remind people we were right in what we saw.  It saddens me that this is about all we invest in that word "prophet" but sin still lives in us.  The other side of that word is that the speaker is speaking for and forth in the name of another.  The prophet does not own the words of his prophecy as much as he passes it on.  Unfortunately, that seems to be missed among us.

It would seem that there are a lot of prophets who would love to tell us what we have done wrong as a church body and make us wallow in our shame for failing to heed their counsel.  People are telling us all the time about the need to change and get with the times or die.  I fear that some of those folks would love to proven right in their prediction even if it came at the cost of our church body and all our institutions.  There are those on one side who like to be a thorn in the side of those who conserve the faith with all of its institutions and traditions.  Stay in the fight and try to change Missouri, they say.  Of course they do.  They would rather be proven correct in their prophecy than hold fast the unchangeable truth of God.  And there are those on the other side who seem to take delight in a circle of orthodoxy that grows ever smaller and with it a church body!  Purity at all costs is their mantra.  Of course it is.  Unfortunately, the litmus tests of orthodoxy grow as the disdain for error increases.  Love means never having to say you are sorry.  Ouch.

Could it be that we do not want to wait for God's justice or be patient as God unfolds His will and purpose?  Could it be that we would rather take into our own hands what God has kept to Himself?  I wonder.  I am not at all suggesting that truth should be compromised or that error ignored but there seems to be little sadness over the inevitable conflicts and divisions being pressed upon us.  I am saddened by the way we inform upon our brothers and sisters rather than address them directly.  The internet is filled with outrage that is also rather prideful, I fear.  But better for us to be proven right than to try in patience and with discernment speak the truth in love.  At least that is how it seems.

Perhaps we have lost our patience and neither wish to wait nor wish to bring people around.  Or perhaps we just prefer to tell the whole, awful truth than work toward cleaning up the mess.  We have our conferences of like-minded people and we live in the echo chamber of our own minds and meanwhile we are failing at the one duty and responsibility God has given to us -- to speak His truth in love.  I am certainly not suggesting that we end all the conferences or podcasts or blogs (never!) but that we also take time to listen.  Instead, we tend to raise our voices complaining about the closed ears of others while forgetting how hard it is for us to listen.  No, some of these differences will not be resolved and it may require us to become smaller to find a more generous unity.  Still, we ought to at least regret out loud the cost of such fracture and division.  Even when we pray for unity it is generally on our own terms even before it is on the basis of what God has said.

I will confess my own sinful joy to sometimes be proven right -- yet the reality is that living to say I told you so will not benefit the Kingdom or manifest the love that is not optional along with fidelity to the Word that is yesterday, today, and forever the same.  The prophets who took joy at the failings of those to whom they were sent did not fare so well, did they?  If the people heard the Word of the Lord and repented, it would rob us of our joy and delight in saying I told you so.  Maybe Jonah could tell us something of that.  Again, before you think I am advocating for more wiggle room in doctrine and practice, I am not.  I merely want us to speak together without a smug pride that hopes to be proven right more than we hope to see reconciliation and unity.   

Our unrestrained embrace of technology. . .

Only a fool would insist that all technology is bad or that it has had a unhealthy influence upon us and our society.  Like anything and everything, technology must be judged on its merits.  That might even be a universal statement except that the merits are precisely that which is in dispute.  What are the good things and what are the not so good things that technology has provided us?  I suspect that we might have great disagreement over the lists written of that which has been salutary and that which has not. 

Christians have also been divided in their embrace of technology.  Some believe that technology is indifferent, it is what you make it.  Some insist that technology has brought nothing but good and mark the success of their churches over their full use of all that technology affords.  Some are not so sure the good outweighs the bad and others are absolutely sure that the fruits of our digital world, social media, and screen absorbed lives is downright evil.  It depends on the day where I fall in this but I am more suspect than excited over what technology and our unrestrained use of it have wrought on us as individuals and as a people together.  With respect to the Church, I am more than suspect but fear that our unwitting acceptance and embrace have worked against our very purpose and life,

Some would complain that we cannot stand outside modernity and its technological world of invention.  We cannot be Amish, they might say with a snicker.  While it might seem that the Amish simply reject all technology, their relationship with technology is more nuanced.  It would not be fair to say that they have chosen one era and planted their flag there.  The Amish are not governed primarily by their rejection of all the things we routinely take for granted but but their Ordnung, the set of unwritten rules guiding their  daily life and not without its local flavor. That is why you see some variance among the Amish about how much technology to use and how deeply they set their foot into modern life.  When it comes to medicine, for example, the Amish may not subscribe to health insurance but they do not disdain doctors or hospitals or modern therapeutic medicine.  Sometimes they avail themselves of the kind of transportation they refuse to own and operate.  When deciding on new technology and its application to their life, the Amish communities are less concerned with the technology itself than how it affects the life of the family, the shape of their community, individualism, and their lives of faith.  Technology is judged by these criteria and, if it is found wanting, it can have more to do with the effects of technology on their lives than the specific technology or devices themselves. 

Sadly, the overall Christian community does not seem to give much consideration to the effects of technology upon people or churches or the values promoted by the Scriptures.  It would seem that we are too busy scrambling to get ahead of each other in adopting and adapting to the changing landscape technology provides.  Think, for example, how quickly we settled into screens and digital worship as a fitting substitute for in person worship.  Covid may have hastened the embrace or even appeared to have necessitated it but we were clearly headed in that direction long before the first person in the US showed symptoms.  I wish that we spent more time actually evaluating the salutary or not so salutary effects of technology on our lives as people, our faith, and the church and its work.  I wish that we gave more consideration to what our rapidly changing technology is doing to us as people than how we might employ it to serve our mission.  Technology is not neutral and it has ramifications well beyond what we can predict.  If anyone is concerned about the morality of our embrace of technology and the digital world, it ought to be the Church and the Scriptures should say something about the good or bad which is the fruit of it all.

Have screens and our culture of screens helped or hurt us as a community in Christ or as individuals within that community?  More than placing a warning label on something, we need to give our people sound counsel so that they can implement technology in their lives in ways that will not compete with or undercut the faith and the work of the Kingdom.  It is one thing to sit on the sidelights and complain that this is not the way it used to be.  It is a far different thing to weigh through the issues and help people decide how much and how far technology should go -- this is true of the Christian faith but it is no less true of the fellowship and community outside the Church.  A sinful people need to admit that as much as something might be used for good, it will by those sinful people surely be used for bad purposes. Artificial intelligence is without doubt a powerful tool for productivity; its benefit to humanity as a whole may not be helpful at all.  In any case, this benefit to humanity should not be treated as a secondary concern. Do we really think that the internet, social media, the ever present screen, and now AI have had no influence upon the loneliness, isolation, division, burnout, and dopamine addiction suffered by our people in greater numbers than ever before?  I am hearing some churches voice some concerns but not enough of us and not urgently enough to keep up with the rapid change of our digital world.  That is sad and our failure as the Church to address this.  Why is it we can talk about nearly every subject known to man as experts but when it comes to giving a critical look at technology we are largely silent?

Anchors for the soul. . .

In a recent conversation I explored with a few other pastors the heightened attention given to little traditions, especially at the Christmas season.  Some complain about this, about the often rigid expectations of those who show up in church on Christmas after being largely absent throughout the rest of the year.  Others find the whole thing somewhat of a nuisance.  I will admit to being among those who was irritated by the local traditions of a congregation when I, their educated pastor, knew better how to celebrate the Incarnation of our Lord.  Once I moved the candlelight from its coveted position at the end of the Christmas Eve service during the singing of Silent Night (at least one stanza in German) to the proper place during the reading of the Gospel.  People were solemn on their way out the door and one man told me I had ruined Christmas for him.  Of course, I had plenty of arguments why I had not and why his children and grand-children who did not bother to show up at home ruined Christmas and not me.  But I missed what he was saying.  I learned through the years to pay attention.

Everyone needs anchors for their faith and lives and in this time of nearly constant and fast change, those anchors are even more important. While this is certainly true of individuals and families, the reality is that culture endures when it is anchored to the timeless things that transcend such change.  It does not take all that much to figure this out.  The pace of change and the extent of change have left us not only wearied but vulnerable and even more depressed and set up for disappointment than usual.  It is no wonder that what you do at Christmas takes on greater significance and puts even more pressure on people, families,, and the church this time of year.

As one who never ever celebrated Christmas with my family or my in-laws after ordination, I get it.  My wife and I hoped for the Christmases we knew growing up and neither of us got even a part of it.  Our first Christmas together was spent on Long Island in a cold rain with the worship services of the congregation getting my primary attention and everything else was hard to suffer.  I get it.  It is about the Lord and His incarnation.  Duh.  But it is also about the traditions, ceremonies, and rituals that we learned as children and expected to know our whole lives and pass on to our children.  When we moved upstate New York and then to Tennessee, these things became even more important and added a great deal of stress to us and our families.  Sadly, my wife probably knew this and knows this more than I.  She was always the one who made the best of eve and morning spent at the congregation with time for family and Christmas at home squeezed in as best it could.  God bless her.  If my children have any traditions carried through from our home to theirs, it is because of her.

When your children become adults and move across country and marry, they have their own pulls to distract and disappoint.  It is no wonder then that the congregation and the rituals and traditions of our churches carry such weight and are so fragile.  We are fragile.  Torn up by our roots and moved across the world, a part of us longs for the cultural and familial anchors of yesterday.  I get it.  You should, too.  Instead of rebelling against these anchors or fighting them or even wasting our time trying to change them, we ought to respect them and use them to nurture the lives and families so listlessly bounced around in search of something more permanent.  

It is, after all, a part of the search for Sabbath rest that was hardwired in us when we were first created and it lives in us still with the same urgency and longing.  We desire to be rooted and planted but life continuously uproots us and plants us anew.  To survive we carry with us the traditions, ceremonies, and rituals of our past.  Even in church.  Otherwise, we would have long ago given up the old wording of the Our Father for something new.  We do not because we cannot.  These things are too precious to us.  So, if you are a pastor, cut the people some slack.  If you are people who have been disappointed at home or in church this past Christmas, let it go but not before telling those around you why these roots and anchors are so important.  Sometimes we do not even realize this in the midst of our broken or bruised hearts but until we do, healing cannot begin.  Hold on.  Jesus said that the one who endures shall be saved.  To endure we need to hold on -- to our anchors in God's Word and in our lives together and in the gathering of the people of God.  Hold on, my friends, because the promised rest will come. 

The value of books. . .

I have few books of great worth monetarily but many whose value is beyond the coin invested in paper, ink, and binding.  In fact, it embarrasses me how cheap great books are in paperback reprint or the worn pages of an old volume for sale by a used bookseller.  There are countless times I think I have rescued old books from the dust and dampness of storage in places where they await either interest or destruction.  Sometimes I imagine myself as their savior, shelling out the dollars to make sure that mold or mildew does not take over from our own neglect.  I would have myself to be a valiant soul in pursuit of such wisdom and the vigilant steward to preserve them.  I am wrong.

We collect books in libraries great and small thinking that we are preserving them.  In reality, they are preserving us.  They keep alive in us the wisdom of our fathers and grant to us light to pass own into the darkness of an unknown future.  They rescue our humanity from utilitarian ideals in which less is more, beauty is optional, and a small vocabulary suffices.  They breath wind into our sails and chart our courses to places we will never visit in person but have been there through the windows provided by authors of long ago and yesterday.  They move us along when distraction, disappointment, and disillusionment would leave us frozen in our fears or bitterness.  They coax from us emotions kept lock up deep inside and fill our dry eyes with tears when none have flowed for too long.  They guard us from the tyranny of our feelings by reminding us of godly wisdom and truth built upon fact and truth.  We think we are doing the books a great service by keeping them but they keep us from the worst inside of us and often, though not often enough, urge from us the good we did not know we could.

I write this as one who lives in a faith formed by the Word acting through the Spirit -- an embodied Word which lives on pages because it lived in flesh, died in suffering, and rose never to die again.  I write this as one who lives in a faith in which this Word engages not simply the corners of my mind but the concrete of water that has become my second womb giving me new life and in bread and wine that tastes of heaven and of Christ's flesh and blood unseen but there for faith to discern.  I write this as one whose life has been spent in the vocation of words not for pleasure or enjoyment but as sermon, catechesis, and the care of the soul.  Not every book is worth the time to read and not every read rewards the investment you have made in it but so many times we do not know the value until the words jump off the page and into us.  So it is with the Divine Word.  We embrace the Scriptures not to find hidden knowledge or wisdom but because the Spirit has moved us to open its pages with the promise that in it the Good Shepherd speaks.  The liturgical words of worship are profound not because they are literary but because they connect us to the Divine, to the mystery of Him who is made flesh for us and our salvation and to serve us with gifts we could not earn or merit.

We do not waste our money on libraries but invest in them for our sake, for the sake of those who have gone before, for the sake of those to time, and for the sake of Him who comes to us as the Word made flesh.  Movies are remade with new actors and new scripts over and over again.  The story is often different and the faces are not the only things changed.  Books are reprinted but with the same words, the same stories, and the same power.  AI cannot replicate this.  Like a monkey mimics the things of a man yet is not a man, so AI gives but a small echo of what God has placed in us and is dependent upon us to teach it to be our shadows.  I was so wrong to think that I am the rescuer of books for the truth is they rescue me -- the stacks of those not yet read, the dusty jackets of those consulted but never really consumed, and the familiar whose words have been read so often they live inside of me.  It should be of no surprise that when printing came to the West, the Scriptures would be the book the technology would serve.  It is no secret now that Bibles continue to dominate book sales.  I take some comfort in that.  I also enjoy that there are books waiting for me and that some of them will never get read before I close my eyes in death.  Someone else will pick up where I left off as I meet the Word made flesh, crucified and risen, face to face.

Preserve us from our screens. . .

Living in the digital world of today, the phone has become something more than a mere means of communication.  It is so much more essential than our computers, pens, and paper.  Computer programs are not more and in their place is the vocabulary of apps -- the language of the small screen has won out after all.  In a very short period of time, the small screen has come to dominate our lives in ways that even our desktops and laptops and tablets do not.  Let me illustrate.

Having just survived my first Medicare supplement open enrollment period and played roulette with our lives, I can say this with confidence.  I have even more apps on my phone than ever before.  Each of my physicians and health providers have their portals and their apps and some have already gone through several versions of the ubiquitous apps.  The insurers all have their apps.  The pharmacies and the drug plans have theirs as well.  Bills are texted to me to be paid by link and with it I gain access to my test results and prescriptions as well.  It would seem that my whole life depends upon apps, portals, and, of course, the Apple wallet -- even more than the people themselves.

I am no Luddite.  I know the shape of the world will never return to the past (unless that pulse bomb is employed to render the digital world impotent).  Yesterdays ways are even more than ancient.  Artificial intelligence is the present and the future -- at least that is what everyone says.  I shudder to think how much AI runs commerce, information, and health.  I have every confidence that there is some provision for an AI review of my doctor's diagnosis, orders, and treatment plan.  The entity that has no soul will define whether and how my patient care will proceed and yours also.

While some have every confidence in the tools of our technology, I do not.  I know that my time is surely closer to the end rather than the beginning or even middle of my life so it matters more to those younger than me than to me.  My fear is not that my health care will suffer or cost me more than I want to pay.  Both of these are already happening.  My fear is that for the sake of the screen we are willing to surrender our very humanity, to ignore the pointing of our moral compass to machines, and the choice to let them all do the thinking for us.  In such a world, the soul is not of great value and runs way behind health, healing and the cost of it all.  The reality is that it is in these matters first of all that we either reveal our souls or betray them.  No machine can have sympathy or empathy.  The way we deal with matters of health, life, and death is not an unimportant sign of our humanity,  The way we care for one another will not earn us salvation but it is a pretty good indicator of what and who lives within us and whose works we are about.

We have by and large already surrendered the caring ministries of the church to profit making enterprises or to the non-profits who live as NGOs on the government dime.  The churchly institutions of old are but a memory rather than vibrant institutions of faith.  We are good at names but bad at health care institutions that reflect the soul of the Church.  Oh, we continue rally around good causes to fight against abortion and the cultural whims that have yielded the sacred definitions of sexual desire and gender identity to the whims of culture and feelings.  Some have merely acquiesced to those cultural norms and set aside Biblical teaching.  Though our meager food pantries and such seem powerless to help, their existence is a reminder that these vestiges of caring were born of love and caring that were once a hallmark of our Christian identity and the mark of our service to the Lord of love.  It is, therefore, our place as the Church to raise our voices against that which may work in business but fails in humanity.  Even if only the faithful are listening, we must not fail to be a conscience of faith and a witness to truth in a world which is willing to give up its soul for a reel or a meme or an algorithm to do its work for them.  The screens have no souls but they have the power to steal ours. 

The Rush to Complaint. . .

The sad and terrible situation in our church with a District President standing charged with the production of child pornography and, Lord knows, whatever else not yet revealed has created the occasion for commentators to complain about the failures of ecclesiastical supervision or the processes set up by our bylaws.  I am under no illusions.  Undoubtedly there were things which our leaders and our ordinary procedures for discipline could have done better.  Nobody but a fool would say this was anyone's finest hour.  That said, it does not rise to the level of incompetence alleged by some nor does it mean that rather slow and deliberate procedures for dealing with such situations should be sped up when the will of the people desires it.  

Lets think about this a moment.  Our leadership is given no crystal ball nor do they possess a secret insight into the secrets of men.  In this case a district of lay and clergy elected the man now charged.  He worked with more than 40 others among his peers, the presidium of Synod, and other officers.  He worked with boards, commissions, and service organizations allied with the Synod.  What some claim to have seen in hindsight was not apparent going forward.  If for no other reason than liability, had there been something to see I am confident all the lawyers would have warned us going forward.  I suspect he went through a number of background checks without anything being flagged.  My point is not to come to the aid of this accused man nor to insist that our leaders did everything right.  It is simply a request that those who rush to complain and lay this at the doorstep of those leaders are venting their emotions more than dealing with rational facts.  As understandable as this is, it is not helpful and the public display of this kind of complaint feeds the mouth of the devil and all the other naysayers against the Church.  No one is helping by using social media as a bully pulpit to display their outrage or to vent their complaints.  Whether you like and support our leaders or not, no one was giving cover to this kind of behavior or sin.  

I know a bit about bylaws, perhaps more than most but certainly less than some.  Bylaws are simply the rules we have chosen to live by.  No bylaw can solve a theological problem nor can any bylaw do ecclesiastical supervision.  The bylaws we have are not perfect but they are the rules we have chosen -- for good or for ill.  I have every confidence that they can and should and will be changed or adapted because of what has happened.  We learn more from mistakes than we do successes.  All of that said, one complaint that is particularly vexing to me is the suggestion that the processes we have work too slow and therefore protect the guilty.  Yes, they do work slowly in comparison to those who want to snap their fingers and have something go away.  But if you are the accused in any matter, you will appreciate that we have both rules and a rather deliberate procedure that takes a little time to unfold.  The rush to judgment, like the rush to complain, is not fitting to the work of the Kingdom.  We do not have courts, prosecutors, investigators, and judges.  Maybe we should have but we don't and it is foolish to act like we do when clearly we have a different structure in our bylaws.  We have other pastors doing ecclesiastical supervision (along with all the other things they do) trying to be fair as well as to be just.  As long as they work with integrity, a little slowness should not be an issue.  Remember that when you change the rules to make them work better for you, they will also be used by someone else who may not agree with you.  Rules or bylaws need to be a little out of step with public opinion and the quest for instantaneous judgment.  Matthew 18 has a few steps that mean to be played out over time and not in the blink of an eye. 

Finally, remember that the rules in the Church are designed not simply to dump someone who has become a liability but also to bring them to repentance.  I chafe under that like everyone else who wishes that the wheels of justice worked in the church and worked more quickly.  But that is not how things work.  Every one of us is a sinner and no one can sit in judgment like the righteous man except the One who is righteous, Jesus Christ.  Our call to warn the wicked is not designed to preserve the Church from sinful men but to call every one of them (and us) to daily repentance.  When that call is unheeded, we are not given the option of casting the sinner aside and forgetting about them.  No, instead we are called to preach the Word of God in an effort to bring them to repentance, restore their faith, and secure from them the faithful confession of Christ their Savior.  Nobody has a right to an office in the Church and repentance and restoration does not mean that the sinner returns to their same calling.  We all know that.  Sometimes, however, we seem a great deal like Noah who was motivated to run more by the prospect of the people repenting and then having to deal with them than he was the people hardening their hearts unto eternal condemnation.  As a pastor, I have had the uncomfortable situation of a public sinner who repents and asks forgiveness and restoration when all of us would rather he would go away so that we were not bothered by him anymore.  None of us have that luxury.  Our goal is not to clean up a mess so that nobody sees it anymore but to confront the sinner with God's judgment and His mercy.  This is its own kind of messiness that the world will never understand or appreciate.

So what should we do?  Lets rally around in prayer for all in this situation -- from the victims to the prosecutor to the judge in the court to the perpetrator of such a crime.  Most of all, let us pray for the Church and for the wisdom and discernment to keep things like this from happening as much as can be done and for those whose faith is shaken by the offense and for the Word of the Lord to bear fruit in the lives of all involved, bringing repentance where there is none and forgiveness where there is repentance.  In any case, the cause is hot helped by trying to act as judge and jury in social media anymore than it is helped by the false presumption that you would have acted more wisely in this than all the others in our church body have done.  Everyone of us thinks we are right in our speaking or we would not speak but not every one of us is correct in that thought.  And that is all I am going to say.