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.

 

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.