The sacrament of health. . .

I happened to listen to a conversation with kids and their parents over the issue of micro plastics and other bio agents in everything from food sources and packaging to water to utensils.  It was something I had not expected to hear.  The late teens and early twenty somethings wanted to make sure that mom and dad were getting rid of the plastic ware and changing the way they shopped and packaged items because the kids did not want to put these "bio hazards" into their bodies.  So in addition to getting rid of plastic straws and disposable plastic plates, cups, and such, they were objecting to plastic cutting boards and such.  I get it.  This is the generation which has lived with the warnings from the gurus of the health care industry and the global causes to clean up our messes.  It has hit home.  I guess we are back to using glass and other more permanent and "safe" resources.  Honestly, I would rather use brown paper bags in the supermarket over plastic bags any day of the week.  I recycle, too.  But there is a dimension to all of this that troubles me.

Are we approaching the idea that health has become a replacement for religious sacraments?  Is the new priest of the modern day life the physician in a lab coat and the new temple the institutions providing resources for physical and mental health?  I don't know but sometimes it is beginning to sound that way.  The problem as I see it is that the desire to protect our bodies can override the call to protect our souls.  Are we developing a cult of the body?  We already look at the body as a canvas for self-expression in everything from tattoos to piercings so how much further is it to focus on the body in other ways?  Owning the body and ascribing to the body a higher value than other aspects of our daily lives both contribute to the idea that the one who can relieve pain and suffering is the priest of flesh.

While it would seem natural to believe that death would be an enemy of those who encourage a cult of the body, a higher value than postponing death is controlling it so that it comes when it is desired.  This would explain the odd way that suicide, medically assisted suicide, and euthanasia are not adversaries of those who are devoted to the cult of the body but instruments to be used along with the tools of healing designed to relieve pain, eliminate suffering, and express themselves as a canvas of the body.  Our pursuit of pleasure and entertainment accords well with the idea that the body is one more arena in which we express ourselves and our truths.  This would then connect the idea that gender is a construct of the mind more than something defined by DNA or reproductive organs to the sacramental status given to the body and those who attend to it.  It would also explain why so long after COVID there are still folks wearing masks in public, keeping their distance from others and crowds, and living out their lives within the refuge of their homes (where they work and where the things they need or want are delivered to their door).

It is almost a religious devotion given to the practices of painting and piercing the body and pursuing what is defined as healthy lives.  Our struggle to find rest from the things that trouble us as well as rest for our bodies is one more aspect of the way we invest a spiritual character to the physical care of our bodies.  It also explains the esteem we give to therapeutic definitions of those who care for us and the ease with which Christianity has transformed from dealing with the weight of eternity to finding a way for us to be happy and at peace with ourselves today.  It is not that Christians do not care for the body or esteem it a gift of God's grace and a mark of His wisdom and power, we simply refuse to assign an ultimate value to the body or an exclusive focus upon the body as the definition of who we are and what defines our lives.  Our appearance, our unfettered pursuit of pleasure and entertainment, and our esteem given to the practitioners of health can be used as the ultimate distractions from the Gospel of sin and forgiveness through the merits and mercies of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  Jesus did not come to repair our bodies but to replace what cannot endure to eternity with the new and glorious flesh like His which can endure forever.  He did not some to focus on our happiness and contentment in the moment but to build within us a profound desire for what the eye cannot see and the person cannot know except by faith.  

A repost. . .

From the Concordia Academic Blog.  To good not to be reposted.  Also, another reason for buying the Hymnal Companion volumes for Lutheran Service Book.

3 Hymns for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels—September 29

The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels is celebrated on September 29 of each year. Lutheran Service Book (LSB)contains hymns that fit wonderfully with many of the feasts and festivals, yet you might not know the history about why they were chosen to represent these days. Read about three hymns chosen in LSB for this feast day and the breathtaking history that ties them to St. Michael and All Angels.

Stars of the morning, so gloriously bright (LSB 520)

John Mason Neale (1818–66), in his Hymns of the Eastern Church (1862), called his “Stars of the morning, gloriously bright” (the original first line omitted the word “so”) “a Cento from the Canon of the ‘Bodiless Ones’ ” assigned to “Tuesday in the Week of the Fourth Tone.” A cento is a selection of stanzas from a longer original. A canon in Eastern Orthodox use is a long hymn of around sixty verses divided into eight or nine odes, and the “bodiless ones” are angels. The “week of the fourth tone” refers to the practice in Orthodox churches of singing Matins and Vespers using different liturgical formulas, or tones, each week. 

About the Text

There are four different canons titled “of the bodiless ones” in the Orthodox liturgical books, all assigned to Matins, with the fourth such canon assigned to November 8, the commemoration of the archangels Michael and Gabriel and the rest of the bodiless powers. There is also another canon about Michael at Matins on September 6, the “commemoration of the wonder that took place at Colossae through the archangel Michael,” although it is not specifically designated a canon “of the bodiless ones.” Neale’s hymn, though, is a translation of none of these: the most that can be said is that it draws upon some ideas present in the Greek texts.

For example, the Greek texts all emphasize the brightness of Michael and the other angels, as in stanza 1 of LSB, although the angels are never called stars (as in the first line of the English hymn) except once in a passing reference to Satan as the fallen Morning Star. Instead, they are called mirrors that reflect the brilliance of God. The angels are also depicted in the Greek as singing the thrice-holy hymn, the Trisagion, to God, as in stanza 1, line 4 of LSB. The idea in LSB stanza 2, line 4 that angels help human beings is also implied in the Greek, if not stated directly; the Greek texts also list various ranks of angels—cherubim, seraphim, thrones, dominations, virtues, powers, and so on—as does Neale in his original third stanza, which is omitted from LSB. Neale’s original fourth stanza, also omitted from LSB, cites the work of Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel; the Greek verses mention Michael and Gabriel, but not Raphael. These, then, are the similarities between the Greek canons and Neale’s hymn.

It is notable, though, how much in Neale’s hymn is missing from the Greek texts. The ideas about angels as ministers of God in LSB stanza 2 are present only obliquely, if at all, except for the image in line 4 of angels as helpers of humans, which the Greek does contain. The striking image in stanza 3 of the angels shouting for joy at creation is entirely absent from the Greek, as are the plea for angels to continue to assist us and the thought that one day we and the angels together will worship God, both in stanza 4. So of the four stanzas in LSB, only stanza 1 is fully reflected in the Greek, with only minimal correspondences in the other stanzas. The two stanzas omitted from LSB fare only slightly better.

Christ, the Lord of hosts, unshaken (LSB 521)

Peter Prange (b. 1972) wrote this hymn in the fall of 1999. While preparing for the observance of St. Michael and All Angels at the parish in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was pastor, Prange was not satisfied with the existing hymns for this occasion in the Church Year. He explains, “I could find no existing hymn that properly surveyed the scriptural truths of this important festival (not even a mention of St. Michael!), so I decided to write one myself.” The hymn was originally sung to the tune SIEH, HIER BIN ICH (LSB 353).

About the Text

Like all minor festivals, St. Michael and All Angels is properly and ultimately about Christ. Therefore, this hymn begins by telling not the story of Michael the archangel, but rather the story of Christ, who conquered sin, death, and the devil. The phrase “slams them in their steely cage” (stanza 1) is a vivid description.

Stanza 2 refers to the biblical account of war in heaven, with Michael and the hosts of heaven battling Satan. “Cast him earthbound with his angels” is mentioned in the alternate Gospel for the day, as Jesus says, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). The hymn also describes Satan in terms such as “serpent” (stanzas 2–3), “beast” (stanza 2), “tyrant” (stanza 5), and “foe” (stanza 6).

Stanza 3 travels back to Eden and Genesis 3. The twisting of God’s command began when the serpent asked, “Did God actually say?” (Genesis 3:1). God’s cursing of Satan is also the proclamation of the first Gospel to the world (Genesis 3:15).

Stanza 4 begins, “Jesus came, this word fulfilling.” What word is that? It is God’s word of promise, which concludes stanza 3: “You’ll lie crushed beneath His [Jesus’] feet!” The trampling of Satan occurred at Calvary, with Jesus’ feet nailed to the cross. He “bore the brunt of our temptation” both “on the wretched tree” and earlier, when He was tempted in the wilderness for forty days: He strove with Satan, and He won.

The lightning imagery from Luke 10 appears again in stanza 5. The judgment of Satan bears mentioning. Jesus regularly refers to the devil as “the ruler of this world” in the Gospel of John. 

We finally hear about the present work of angels in the last stanza. The description of “angel legions” mirrors Jesus’ words in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:53). It is also an interesting term, as the satanic demons gave their name as Legion (Mark 5:9). The description of Satan’s “fiery grave” reflects Revelation 20:10.

Lord God, to Thee we give all praise (LSB 522)

Luther, his most valued partner in reform, Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), and their students paid relatively little attention to angels, perhaps as a reaction against medieval veneration of angels as mediators with their own power to direct events on earth. Nonetheless, angels were a living part of the Wittenberg theologians’ faith. In this hymn, Melanchthon expressed his confidence that God, who created the angel hosts, also marshals them for the conflict with Satan that besets individual believers, the Church, and society. 

About the Text 

God receives the praise in this hymn, not the angels, whom God created. However, the hymn extols God’s protection afforded by these angelic beings who, assembled in the light of their Creator’s throne, are listening to His Word, reflecting the typical Wittenberg focus on God speaking to His creatures. Melanchthon describes the angels’ watchfulness, calling attention to the fact that they, like God, never slumber nor sleep (Psalm 121:4) so that they can be waging constant battle against the enemies of God’s people.

Melanchthon’s deep convictions concerning the eschatological battle between God’s truth and Satan’s deception provide the focus of the hymn, as Melanchthon uses biblical images of the ancient dragon (Revelation 12) and the roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8) to dramatize the real threat to believers from Satan and his forces. This hymn takes particular note of the devil’s striving to divide the Church of Christ, a special concern of the Wittenberg reformers about 1540. 

Melanchthon’s confidence in God’s providing protection for His faithful is highlighted in stanza 7: the angel troop stands guard and thwarts the devil’s plans against us.

At the end of this rehearsal of God’s use of the angels to watch over and defend His people, Melanchthon returns to praising God, joining the human voices of those singing the hymn with the songs of gratitude and praise sung by the angels.

Sixteenth-century Lutheran church orders often retained St. Michael and All Angels (September 29) as a day of observance in the congregation, so Melanchthon may have had this festival in mind as he wrote this hymn. The day assumed a broader significance because it was chosen as the day for special thanksgiving for the harvest in Evangelical lands, replacing the Assumption of Mary (August 15), which had served as thanksgiving day in the late medieval ecclesiastical calendar. However, it is just as likely that this hymn simply reflects the piety of the Wittenberg reformers, who had confidence that God, who provides all for His people, had commissioned the angels as just one means by which His protection extends to the saints each day.

 

But we love those sins!

Though I have never seen where he said it, I have been told that St. Augustine did indeed say:  "People reject the Church because She speaks against the sins they love."   He should know.  He had many favorite sins along the expanse of his life before coming to faith.  He lived for many years in pursuit of pleasure, pride, and worldly desires.  He spoke these words as someone who had been infatuated with his sins until the rest he sought remained elusive and was rediscovered repentance.  He did not say this because it was a theory of his.  He got it.  Sin is addictive.  It captures the heart and transforms desire.  He hated calling his favorite behaviors sins and the whole idea of giving up those sins he loved.  He was speaking from his own painful experience. 

The Church does not tiptoe around our favorite sins (well, the Church should not be doing that).  Truth should not change to match our desires.  No, the Church is there to call us to repentance, to holiness, and to be free from those sins.  Lets be honest.  The call to repentance is uncomfortable just as repentance itself is uncomfortable.  God does not want us to remain as we are but is seeking to change us for our good and not for arbitrary or controlling purposes.  Jesus is “the light has come into the world, [but] the world loved darkness rather than light” (John 3:19).  We think people are rejecting our worldview or the specific truths of creation, fall, redemption, etc., but they might be rejecting the calling to live differently, according to different values, and for a different goal and purpose.  God is not trying to end the party but is providing the best wine at the end and more of it than we ever expected.  

Whoever has made peace with a cherished sin will naturally see the Church, the call to repentance, and worship centered upon the Word and Sacraments as adversaries.  That is Augustine's point.  As such, it is also good to remember that the Church is not the one condemning sin but the Word of God.  The Scriptures call us to repentance, to admit our love and addiction to our favorite sins, and to a new life lived in response to a different voice than that of desire.  So when people reject the liturgy or preaching or catechesis, we think it is about a liturgical or preaching or teaching problem when in reality it is about sin.  Maybe it was always about sin?  Maybe sin and forgiveness are not antiquated ideas in our modern era.  Maybe it is the same issue as Eden.

How many folks are needed to sustain a congregation?

In our age of declining congregational size, one of the most practical questions is how many people do you need to pay for a pastor, a building, and minimal programs to keep the doors open?  I often hear the number of 100 as a minimum to cover everything from pastor's compensation and benefits, building costs and utilities, a few other part-time folks, insurance, internet, and a minimal program of educational, social, and mercy work.  Note that this does not include the costs of a mortgage or loan repayment and that this might also include income from other than the offering plate (endowment, bequests, etc.).  I suspect that this is probably not far from the bottom number but it occurs to me that this might be setting the bar rather low on the stewardship end of things.

Comparing the situation with state churches, there are certainly might collected but this money is usually for mission support, support for those in need, and other charitable work.  Otherwise, the government (or, rather, the tax dollar from the populace) is the primary source of income for the church and covering the costs of clergy, building, and essential programs.  To be sure, this funding with tax money is from the willing and the unwilling.  There are automatically-collected "tithes" from those who agree to pay but there is money from other taxes collected for property assets considered to belong to the state first and the congregation second.  This remains the case even though the landscape has changed and the formerly religious lands have become, in reality, highly-secularized European nations today, including everything from with the Church of England, Scandinavian Lutheran state churches, and German churches (whose “church-tax” is given to state registered religions to which the people belong (from Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Union, other state-registered religions, including Judaism).  The German tax is 8% to a person’s income tax bill.  There are religions and churches which have chosen not to participate in this, including Muslims, Buddhists, Orthodox, free Lutherans, and other religious groups.  Individual Germans can opt out of the church tax but that means publicly renouncing their religion and forsaking the privileges of church membership as they may be.  It must be a significant cost greater than the money since about half of eligible taxpayers are still willing to pay it.

American statistics tell us that the typical Christian gives something around 2-2.5% of their income as their discounted "tithe" and this is probably responsible for that 100 person minimum number.  So, my question is, how many people would we need to sustain a congregation if these same people contributed what the German church tax collected or four times the present average?  I suspect that this would radically change the viability numbers and enable a much smaller group to still have all the accoutrements of church -- perhaps closer to the actual average size of 50 or less.  Anecdotally, I heard one person in one of our saltwater districts say that 50 folks would be a mid-size parish in that district and compare this to the average for the Missouri Synod a few decades ago which had one pastor serving nearly 200 folks.  Times have changed.  But for all the crocodile tears about the gray clouds on our future with a rather consistent decline in size over many decades, why are we settling for 2-3% of income as the benchmark instead of trying to at least match what a government collects in our fatherland, Germany?

Those who know me will know that I defend my Boomer generation to younger pastors and remind them that we are still in church and supporting financially the work of the congregation in greater proportion than our numbers.  That is great.  But what will happen after the Boomers are spending all their money on nursing homes or they are gone?  Those in the pews need to step up.  If the Church is to continue, it will only happen because we support the Church with our time, skills, prayers, and dollars.  If we do that, we will find that smaller congregations will survive and perhaps even flourish without spending all their attention to finding the $$ to pay the pastor and fix the building.  It is wonderful when a former generation provides generous gifts to sustain things long after they have joined the church triumphant but it cannot and dare not replace raising our expectation of ourselves and providing the support to keep even small congregations viable.   

We are all looking for the Church. . .

Honestly, there is no end of frustration to the Missourian peculiarity about calling the Synod "Church."  It is maddening that we seem intent upon trying to invent an idea of "Church" that is somehow distant from what, to everyone else, is simply Church.  However, it is equally frustrating and maddening to look for the big Church to solve all the problems and do everything.  Of course, the Church is always larger than what you see gathered on Sunday morning but it is never less.  In other words, what you see on Sunday morning is not a miniature version of the Church but the full thing.  Yes, there is more but the more is not more in the sense of the local being somehow deficient or lacking something.  It is the more of all those Sunday gatherings together.  

Where this is most frustrating and maddening is how everything is expected of or gets judged on the basis of the big footprint.  So in Rome it is as if there is only the Pope and the Vatican or, for us Missourians, there is only St. Louis and our elected SP.  Of course these are important but they are not everything.  I finally have had to give up on the illusion that I will find that perfect jurisdiction on the larger scale.  You will not find it in Rome or in Constantinople or in St. Louis or anywhere else.  But you do see it more nearly and clearly in the Sunday morning gathering.  This is not congregationalism but the essential truth of catholicity.  While we seem to stretch catholicity in search of the biggest expression of its wholeness, we end up disdaining the local expression of it.  You see that catholicity in the marks of the Church, the Word and the Sacraments and the ministry/priesthood.  That is where most of us meet Church and not on the seemingly grander scale of a basilica or cathedral or a bishop's throne.  Yes, the large version is important and wonderful but it does not replace nor make the local expression of the Church any less important or wonderful.

I have come to see that it is not about some GIRM or bishop or rule making body enforcing that which defines us but the local expression striving to be all that we confess.  That is my problem.  So often and too often the local group has lost sight of its own catholicity, willing to trade it all off for better numbers or treating the Church as if she were a social group or program instead of the Body of Christ.  The worship problem in Rome and in Missouri is not about enforcing more rules but about local expressions of the Church having lost their identity and reaching vainly into business or social models in search of an identity to replace what they have lost.  People and pastors who do stupid stuff on Sunday morning are not trying to be the Church but trying to win friends and influence people or meet people on the therapeutic level they have come to presume is the authentic version of the Church.  How foolish we are!  We are willing to trade the God who tabernacles among us in the Word that delivers what it says and the Sacraments that bestow what they sign for relevance or entertainment or feelings.  That is not a problem of rules or rule enforcers but of a people who have lost sight of who God is and who they are.  It is a problem of leaders who are wolves in sheeps' clothing, betraying the promise of eternity for a moment in the spotlight.  It is not that the sights have been set too high but too low and, in the end, having lost what is eternal for what is only momentary.

The solution will not come from Rome or St. Louis or some other address.  Everyone seems to be looking for the main office to fix things but they won't and they can't.  Catholicity on the larger level exists only because it is there on the local level.  I once despaired that one parish at a time was not efficient or effective enough but I have learned that it is the only way.  The only honest measure of the Church is Sunday morning where the shepherd serves the sheep with the gifts of the Good Shepherd.  Remember when the Army had as its slogan Be All that You Can Be?  Perhaps our slogan for the Church ought to say Be Who You Are.  The main office can never be the refuge that the local assembly of those whom the Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies is and always will be.  It is nice if you can find it but the real catholicity that matters is always local.  I wonder if this is not what the Augustana was trying to say in different words and what Missouri has struggled to say with its own confused expression of Church.  It is not that the congregation is the only Church or any real form of congregationalism but the local gathering with all of its tangible concreteness, formed by Christ for Christ, and possessing the fullness of the Church but not alone.

Yes, I am probably rambling but that is the meanderings of today. 

Worth a listen. . .

From a classmate and an old friend.  Wise words worth a listen.

 

In search of a sacrament. . .

I have often thought that there is no such thing as a non-sacramental Christian church.  The issue is not whether or not to have sacraments but which sacraments.  Either they are the sacraments which warrant the sanction and promise of Christ or they will be something else -- something invented or a designated hitter, so to speak, which fills the current ideology.

Prayer has long been the sacrament of choice for those who disdain the ones the Lord has offered.  It comes with the command of Christ and His promise to hear and answer so it must be good, right?  The problem is that when you turn prayer into a sacrament, it comes with the inherent pledge of Christ to do what the one praying has requested.  If the form is right, others are enlisted to pray for the same thing, and the name of Christ is attached, well, then, there is the sacrament.  Except that prayer has never enjoyed the designation of sacrament, though sacramental it might seem.  Nevermind that the history is not there, the desire is.  It was especially true of the Charismatics and perhaps of the Pentecostals.  In my first parish there was a huge divide when the prayers of the faithful for the healing of a child were supposed to result in the child recovering but the child died of the cancer.  How could God renege on His promise -- especially when it had the support of many united in praying for the same thing?  The prayer of the righteous availeth much but not necessarily the answer sought.  That makes it hard to really offer up prayer as a substitute sacrament.  Meditation may be like prayer but it is somewhat different.  Christians have flirted with this kind of thing for a long time and tried to position such inner contemplation into a sacramental wannabe but it has not yet convinced many -- except the spiritual but not religious who will settle for even a flawed sacrament if it fills their bill.

Prophecy was also a favorite of the Charismatics (and Pentecostals).  Speaking in tongues, sure, but it did not have the cache of a prophet telling us what God was going to do.  There is much talk of it in the NT but also with that conversation comes many warnings, not in the least from St. Paul.  Then there is the problem of prophesies that do not happen.  Ah, what to do with those who attempt to speak in the Lord's name but the Lord seems not to hear them or honor their words?  Hard to make a sacrament out of much disappointment.  Of course, that has never stopped us from venturing beyond the word of Scripture.  Still and all, prophets and prophesies are a disappointing substitute if you cannot be sure what is said is either from the Lord or reliable -- at least until after the fact.  Even Rome has its own flirtation with little girls who hear voices from God or have visions.  Many in Rome are beginning to question some of the age old devotion given to those prophets and their special words from Jesus or Mary.

Some have suggested that worship, specifically contemporary Christian music designed to motivate by emotion, as a sacramental substitute.  It probably is being used to set the mood and even more.  Jesus wants to raise us up but CCM is intent upon raising up Jesus, flowery language about honor and glory replacing the cues of Scripture or the songs that rehearse Christian faith and life amid suffering awaiting the resurrection and eternal life to come.  Mood songs do have powerful effect and that is why the music industry is so successful.  Whether you can translate that into a ballad that effects the means of grace is something entirely different.  Mood music with a beat you can dance to has always had its appeal but what my folks danced to on Saturday night was never thought to have a place on Sunday morning until folks began to assign to worship music the same kinds of duties and responsibilities that everything from Rap to Rock to Ravel's Bolero can do for the imagination.  The only problem here is that God has not asked to imagine Him but provided the actual means for His saving presence among us.  Too bad, though, because mood music is a tempting substitute.

What warms the heart is not always a fit replacement for the Word and Sacraments of Christ.  Try as we might, they do not come with the promise of God to deliver the fruits of His redeeming work through these means.  It is for this reason that Lutherans highly esteem marriage but find it not really sacramental in that definition.  Ordination and penance (absolution) have a pretty decent claim to the designation but not so much confirmation (especially the Western form of it which has no real correspondence in the East).  Unction is a fine practice but lacks the dominical word which gives the means its promise and power.  Good, yes, and salutary but not quite meet or right.  No, the best answer is to stick with the ones God gives and to trust them.  We Lutherans remind Christians all the time that the Word is not simply a written record or history but the living voice of the Good Shepherd.  In that respect, it is the granddaddy of all sacraments. 

A tragedy within another one. . .

According to the dictionary, a tragedy is not simply something terrible but a very sad event or situation, especially one involving death or suffering.  Those on every side should agree that when Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children–5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan– and then attempted suicide by jumping out a window– is a tragedy.  The fact that she did not die but lived only to be left paralyzed is perhaps less so.  

We all know about her defense.  She answered the charges against her with the defense of postpartum depression and psychosis. I cannot dismiss such a thing.  If you have been a pastor long, you have undoubtedly ministered to a family in that same boat.  Too many woman have suffered this to one degree or another.  The fact that a great number of women sympathized with her, supported her on social media, and expressed their concern publicly only attests to the fact that postpartum depression is not talked about enough or taken seriously enough.  What remains, however, is that her children suffered because of her diagnosis and her husband and extended family were left with multiplied grief for all that took place.  Of course, in hindsight family and medical personnel might have done things differently.  But her children are still dead while she lives.  Her grief has been compounded by the realization of what she did.  Whether that is enough for her to suffer is not quite the issue in her trial.  In the end, this trial ended with a mistrial–all of the jurors but one wishing to acquit her.  

According to the same dictionary, the word acquit means to decide officially in a law court that someone is not guilty of a particular crime.  It is a curious word.  Everyone admits she is guilty.  The issue is not whether she is guilty but whether or not she is culpable for the crime.  She is clearly at fault but were there circumstances which mitigate against the raw judgment of guilt which should be taken into account. Apparently one juror spoke out in public of the holdout, “He had the hardest time getting over the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.”  Here is the second tragedy.  Apparently the other eleven jurors could get over that fact that she had actually and viciously murdered her children.  Some lamented that the law required a unanimous verdict.  It is as if the attention has shifted away from Lindsay Clancy and onto the judicial system and this particular jury.  That is the tragedy.  That we can "get over" the brutal death of these children but cannot get over how many outside the courtroom and all but one of the jurors could is a tragedy of great proportions.  I find it hard to see how the feelings for abortion have not contributed to this state of affairs in which the killing of children is a lesser tragedy than holding the one who killed them to account for her actions.  As if that were not enough, the news has it that another mother has killed her two-year-old son and she particularly tied this to the crime and the trial of Lindsay Clancy, saying she was “inspired” by Clancy.  How is it that we have come to the point where the judicial status of the one responsible for the crimes has become a greater tragedy than the deaths of her children which she caused?  Could it be that this is a tacit admission that some lives are wroth more than others?  Who gets to decide?  Which lives should have value and which should not or should have a lesser value?  But is that not exactly what we have done with abortion?

Yes, the whole situation with Lindsay Clancy is a tragedy but hidden within that tragedy is another one.  We are already at the point of picking and choosing which lives matter and which do not.  Of course, this is not the first time this has happened.  The fact that it continues indicates that we have learned nothing from our errors.  And that is perhaps the tragedy that encompasses all the rest. 

 

Making it all seem normal. . .

If you would have told me fifty years ago that I would have encountered members of my parish or circle of friends who had employed or were considering the use of a surrogate (or becoming a surrogate mother) I would have laughed in your face.  On the surface of it all, it was absurd.  Neither the technology nor the possibility had entered the mainstream.  Well, they have now.  As a pastor I have counseled and consoled families struggling with infertility who think that surrogacy is not only reasonable but moral and a good solution for those longing for a child they cannot conceive without the help of technology and a rented womb.  Now I have not only known but been assured by those carrying a child for a sibling or child unable to conceive that they are not only doing the right thing but the noble thing, the good thing, and the moral and loving thing to borrow out their womb for another family.  While in some cases this is simply the borrowing of the womb, in other cases it is loaning out considerably more -- namely eggs or sperm or both.  This issue will not go away and will become even more normal as technology advances and the Church fails to address it publicly.

Let me say for the record that I am not unsympathetic to the plight of the childless longing to have a child.  It has touched my family and we have suffered the pain not only of the longing but of the choice not to afford the extraordinary and extraordinarily costly and immoral consequences of IVF and surrogacy.  It is a subject close to home.  That is what makes this even more difficult.  The heart yearns to provide hope and a possibility to those whose desire for a child has not been fulfilled.  The reality of the adoption situation has also changed and it is not as simple as deciding to adopt.  The abundance of choices to prevent pregnancy and the availability of the morning after pill have done a remarkable job of reducing the numbers of infants and small children who might be adopted.  Not every family is able to support a child with deep emotional problems or disabilities or physical ills -- though I remain deeply moved by and impressed by those who are able.  The adoption situation today with its open process often means that economic factors prevent others from competing as prospective adoptive parents and the chances offered to the birth parents to change their mind are not without their own impact on the adoption option.  Further, the government has done a good job of taking the Church out of the whole process (unless they play by the government's rules) and this has also changed the lay of the land for adoption and those who might consider it.  So please do not say that I am insensitive or uncaring toward those who find surrogacy and IVF to be their best choice.  I am.  But no matter how compassionate one might be, a wrong is still a wrong and both surrogacy and IVF are wrong.

I think it is pretty clear where Rome stands on this and it is certainly abundantly clear where the LCMS stands on the same matters but I am not at all sure how well or how effectively either communicates these stands or the reasons why.  Protestants as a whole are divide on these issues or simply silent -- leaving the individual consciences to make the determination of what is moral, good, and right.  I think it is true that this may well become our own moment's Roe v. Wade issue and that we are at the beginning of what might become an equally long process of discernment, information, and education on the topics of IVF and surrogacy.  Roughly one in six adults now faces infertility, and congregants are hungry for guidance and the numbers will only increase.  Across the board, studies have found that pastors want and need additional resources to equip them to address these issues and fear they are without the ability to make a difference in the minds of their people on these issues.  It is also clear that the silence of the churches has been interpreted by many within the Church that there is no moral stand on IVF or surrogacy except to proceed with caution and to act with their own judgment.

Surrogacy and IVF are but a few of the major issues facing our people and the Church.  We will need to to equip pastors and church leaders, to offers solid theological resources on a range of topics: beginning and end of life, AI, IVF, surrogacy, egg and sperm donation, embryo adoption, contraception, and genetic testing.  For too long we have acted in the Church as if this was not happening in our own backyards or that such things were not common nor a threat.  We cannot afford such foolishness any longer.  The challenges have caught us unprepared and behind the times to catechize our people within these issues but we dare not bury our heads in the sand and waste more time.  Yesterday was too late but we will have lost tomorrow unless we take advantage of today.  The market driven aspects of surrogacy and IVF are exploding as those who wish to be single parents and same sex parents desire children.  No, we cannot afford to wait to talk about these things openly and from the vantage point of Scripture and the morality informed by God and not by our own feelings or whims.

Mimicking the Mimic

It should come as no surprise that the teachers also learn from the students, the parents from their children.  What might come as a shock is that AI, the great absorber of our intelligence, knowledge, and facts, has reversed the role and become the teacher.  It may not have been by design but it is surely effective nonetheless.  As AI is incorporated more and more into the educational process, it will teach the students just as much as the formal instructors in the classrooms.  Those who depend upon AI both to teach and to learn will begin to think, sound, and judge things the way AI thinks, sounds, and judges.  It is inevitable.  The problem is that AI does not quite discern between the best and what is simply well represented among the thought and opinions of humanity and it has a remarkable tendency to flatter the very things that should not be flattered.  What will that do to us?  Think of the possibilities.

The more we normalize the use of AI in the educational process, the more our students will begin not simply to depend upon the tools of artificial intelligence but will begin to think and sound like what they are using.  We all know that.  Every student mimics the peculiarities of their favorite teacher.  Speech patterns as well as the vocabulary are all part of what the willing student absorbs from the teacher.  It happens in the secular realm and it happens in the Church.  There was a time in our Synod, for example, when pastors wanted to sound like the most popular preachers of radio -- in our case Walter A. Maier or Oswald Hoffmann.  We learn from our teachers.  But when our teacher is not a teacher but an algorithm and a set of memory banks designed to learn from and mimic us, that becomes a serious problem for the world around us and for the Church.  When we depend upon secondary sources instead of our knowledge of primary sources, we become the witting victims of their own flaws and failings.  AI distills facts and reduces things complex into simple and often reasonable conclusions -- the only problem is that they are not always even close to being correct.  Yet without a knowledge of those primary sources, we become captive to the thing designed to learn from us.  It is a circle not of knowledge but of repeated falsehoods, half-truths, and lies.  Worse, we become powerless to challenge the narrative -- without the tools or information to challenge it.

There may be useful places for AI to integrate into the world around us but I am more and more suspicious of those places simply because I fear we will learn only what our AI teacher offers to us and become stupid in the process.  Every now and then I visit social media only to encounter a meme or a reel which is polished, visually intriguing, and interesting but at the same time blatantly false.  I grew up in the automobile era when fins, wide whitewalls, gas guzzling V-8s, and chrome dominated the marketplace and fueled our ideas.  I cannot tell you how many times a composite image and story about that period pops up with mislabeled visuals or missing facts or false claims.  On top of it I something post angrily about the error and end up commenting on something which has not a thread of human intelligence behind it.  So much for me and mine!  Yet this is not simply an irritant but a destructive force to our world, society as a whole, and the Church in particular.  It will inevitably lower the bar for what constitutes knowledge, understanding, and comprehension.  As long as we are intent upon integrating AI into the classrooms of America, we will contribute to the overall inability to distinguish truth from error, reality from imagination, and fact from fiction.  While this may not seem an urgent problem, the state of affairs in America is already suffering from a lack of consensus on what facts are, what the truth is, and what the moral truths are guide how we use them.  Do we think that somehow AI will help us fix this problem?

I might add that both in the school and in the Church, diversity and the perspectives of others cannot be allowed to overrule the facts (or the truth of God's Word) without both ending up about as solid as the lily pad on a pond that appears to be solid but is merely floating on the surface. 

Things collecty. . .

The collect appointed for us to pray on Trinity 5 (and also on Proper 7C) is one of the good ones with some history, some interesting detail, and well-crafted wording.  I love the collects.  Really, they are compact, rich, deep, and profound within the span of but a few lines of more poetry than real prose.  They are gems.  

Deus, qui diligéntibus te bona invisibília præparásti: infúnde córdibus nostris tui amóris afféctum; ut te in ómnibus et super ómnia diligéntes, promissiónes tuas, quæ omne desidérium súperant, consequámur.

I might put it into English with a fairly free translation:  O God, because You have prepared for those who love You such good things of which the eye cannot see: pour into our hearts such great affections of love, that, loving You in all things and above all things, we may obtain Your promises, which surpass our every desire.

Rome has an official translation:  O God, who have prepared for those who love you good things which no eye can see, fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of your love, so that, loving you in all things and above all things, we may attain your promises, which surpass every human desire.

Divinium Officium has this translation:  O God, You Who have prepared good things as yet unseen for those who love You, pour a burning love into our hearts, so that we, loving You in and above all things, may obtain Your promises which surpass all desire.

Lutheran Service Book has it:  O God, You have prepared for those who love You good things that surpass all understanding. Pour into our hearts such love toward You that we, loving You above all things, may obtain Your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. 

Cranmer is the inspiration for the Lutheran Service Book and Book of Common Prayer versions.  It is hard to imagine that he did not look to inspired by Scripture in his task as translator of the ancient Latin Collects.  Think of 1 Corinthians 2:9

But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—

as well as Isaiah 64:4,

From of old no one has heard
or perceived by the ear,
no eye has seen a God besides you,
who acts for those who wait for him.

It comes to us from the 8th century Gelasian Sacramentary, and is found in the 1962 Missale Romanum, now used for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time.   This prayer does not short us on vocabulary but has several different words to express both love and longing: diligo, amor, affectus as well as the related cor, desiderium, promissio.  What a shame that English affords us less in our choice of words to befit us in our translation task!  Looking at a decent Latin dictionary, we find affectus meaning “a state of body, and especially of mind produced in one by some influence, affection, mood: love, desire, fondness, good will, compassion, sympathy.”  The same dictionary renders diligo “to value or esteem highly, to love”.  We capture a hint of it in the English “diligent”.   Love is worth nothing less than all.  Again, the dictionary tells us that desiderium means “a longing, ardent desire or wish, properly for something once possessed; grief, regret for the absence or loss of any thing [or person].”  It does not take a dictionary to remind us that cor is, of course, about the “heart” and promissio “promise”.  Consequor can mean, among other things, to “pursue, go after, attend, to follow” -- even “to copy, obey”. 

We have here so many little tracks to follow in this collect.  They seem to circle and then return (the things the eye cannot see or invisible things) is picked up at the end with the promises which we know not by sight but by faith.  Everything which God has prepared for us is already and not possessed or even fully comprehended or experienced now and therefore is known as only it can be known -- by faith.  Faith, hope, and love abide, not as competing or even different essences but connected well.  Love is the greatest but this great love we both receive and respond with is born of faith, faith that lives in hopefulness of the God who has kept and will always keep His promises.  

A convenient construct. . .

Those who delight in muddying the waters of gender put distance between the person and their reproductive organs, between the feelings of the person and their DNA, and between the emotions and the body.  The real person cannot be explained or confined to the sexual organ or their DNA or even the body as a whole.  It is bigger.  It must define everything.  So it must redefine the body to match what the self has decided in conflict with the body, the DNA, and their reproductive organs.  The surgeon's scalpel is used to reshape the flesh to meet the expectation of the feelings and create an identity the body has failed to manifest.  It is creative -- I'll grant you that.  But it is a foolish pursuit without anything real at the end of it all.  

While reading the NALC (ELCA split off over 2008 sexuality decisions of that denomination) 10 page study document on the ordination of women, I noted this quote.  "As William G. Witt argues in Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination, ordination is not an icon of Christ’s male body but of His humanity. Ministers represent Christ not by biological similarity but by sharing in the human nature the Word assumed."  In other words, they are doing the same but to Jesus.  His maleness is less important than his humanity.  That He was incarnate in a male body is almost irrelevant to the whole thing.  He was born human -- except that human without male or female pretty hard to identity!  This quote is used to justify again the practice of ordaining women which the NALC may study but not change.  Yet in distancing Jesus maleness from His humanity, they are doing exactly the same thing the gender fluid crowd is doing.  In the end, they also destroy their own raison d'etre.   For if the maleness of Christ is of no consequence to those whom the Church ordains over and against women, it cannot be applied to any of the LGBTQ+ folks the NALC wishes to exclude.  

There are many convenient constructs invented to bypass both the word and practice of Scripture and the Church (a surprisingly consistent norm right down to the modern era!) and to make optional what the Church understood through the ages to be unchanging and binding.  In the case of the NALC, it reveals what those who left the ELCA are loathe to admit.  The only thing they did not like about the ELCA was its embrace of same sex relationships, marriage, and opening the ministry to all of them.  It was a departure by degree rather than conviction.  It is like those who went they have a flat tire complain about how nicely the trip was going until they weren't so nice.  You do not want a new car but simply the way things were before the tire went flat.  I get that.  We all wish that we could preserve a moment but that is hardly a reason to begin a new church body -- especially when that new body is in fellowship with the one you just let and retains everything except the 2008 pronouncements on same sex marriage and clergy.  

That is the problem with the NALC and other conservative groups which have left their original building in pursuit of a better one.  The sacred tenets of women's ordination are lines drawn in the sand.  It is not about ordination but a dot in time from which they will ground their identity and confession but not without shutting down debate any further.  In short, they have a gay problem -- even more so than Missouri because they are willing to embrace everything but homosexual marriage and clergy (along with their subsequent gender rainbow).  Missouri has no gay problem because it does not speak of those who are prevented from being ordained but those who are permitted.  They adhere not to post 2008 criteria but to the same criteria which the Church has observed since the beginning -- the Scriptural one of men only, husband of one wife, able to manage well his household, of good repute, having the requisite gifts/skills necessary, and being theologically orthodox.  It is also because they define the Gospel in part as the exclusion of older barriers which they have not transcended and not simply in terms of Christ's death and resurrection once for all for the forgiveness of sins and the bestowal of life everlasting.  Sometimes, it would seem, the Gospel demands you to deviate from the previously held understanding of Scripture and the witness of the catholic tradition flowing from the Scriptures.  But, of course, if you do that for one group and not for another, it is pretty clear that this all started not with the intent to reclaim what Scripture has taught and the Church affirmed but from an artificial line drawn in the sand.  It was and remains a gay issue.

 

You cannot buy your way out of it. . .

In a culture and economy accustomed to buying our way out of every problem -- from education to elder care, some are proposing a financial solution to the problem of population implosion.  The problem is that having children simply costs too much and proves to be a burden which expects too much of those of childbearing age.  Therefore, the solution is to ease the cost and make it even financially profitable to have the children you are not having because you cannot afford to have them.  Governments around the world are openly exploring ways to encourage people to have more children in the hopes of reversing what has been a decline in birth rates for more than a decade.  It is, as they would put it, an investment in the future, preventing an aging population without enough working-age people to support the cost of caring for the elderly.  Some countries, such as Hungary, Poland and France, have already implemented financial incentives to do the same, including everything from income tax exemptions to universal child benefits to family allowances or a combination of these.  Add to this list those nations in the process or considering the same kind of financial incentives:  Italy, Estonia, Russia, Turkey, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, and, yes, even the US.  Will it work?

The reality is that cost is measured in a variety of ways.  Indeed, a high percentage of women from Gen Z and millennial cohorts (the fertile generation) believe motherhood will negatively impact their careers and cost them in ways that money cannot fix. This tension is not simply about money or even economic opportunity.  It is about identity.  Many women -- young and old -- no longer believe that motherhood is a significant part of their identity or even their aspiration.  Many believe motherhood negatively impacts a women’s well-being, self-esteem, and life satisfaction.  Add to this all the talk that encourages uncertainty and anxiety about climate change and political futures, you end up with things dollars cannot fix and an institutional bias now for women of childbearing age to choose fewer children, one child, or no children at all.  The low esteem given to marriage and family has put into place a dynamic that will be hard to buy our way out of and will instead require rebuilding the value and noble character to marriage and family that a Christian community might be well-positioned to advance.  Except that too many Christians and churches have already succumbed to the propaganda against marriage and family and incorporated into their teachings and life the legitimacy for rejecting marriage and family as essential to the person and the society as a whole.

No, we can offer financial incentives but until we change the way we view the institutions of marriage and family, we will be pitting dollars against other self-interests.  The Scriptures remind us that children are a blessing from God and that is the problem.  We no longer view them as blessings or gifts and we have taken over the making of children from God and assigned it to personal desire and the lab.  In such a mechanical view of life, the loss of any burning desire beyond self becomes harder and harder to justify.  So, in a sense, sin has done its worst and we as a society have cooperated in our own undoing.  The situation does not cry out for money into a bank account but for real and honest repentance. 

 

 

Waiting for a voice. . .

The world seems intent upon governing by poll.  Business seems to hang upon every survey it can invent both those who are its consumers and those who are not.  Morality tries to find consensus of opinion but ends up tolerating nearly everything.  Even the Church believes that the world will respond if we offer them our ears and listen to their point of view and preference.  What fools we are.  Do we really believe that everything hinges upon listening to those not yet of the Kingdom or are we so desperate that we simply ape what the world around us is doing in the hope that it might make us relevant again?

The world is not waiting for yet another group to promise to listen to its concerns and people are not withholding their faith because they feel they have not been heard by the Church.  There are too many who already hang on their every word or whim.  The world is awaiting a voice.  The world is looking for a Church built with conviction upon what God has said and bold enough to present this truth without apology or embarrassment.  The world is not withholding their attention or their faith because they have not been heard but because the Church has too often failed to speak with courage and confidence the Word of God that endures forever..

The world and people are filled with uncertainty.  They do not know where to turn.  They live in a world which seems devoid of real meaning and purpose.  They put on identities like a change of clothing only to cast them off disappointed because they do not fit.  They cannot trust their bodies or their emotions and yet are told to turn inside themselves for answers, meaning, and purpose.  They are connected digitally but ache with longing for a personal connection and are captive in prisons of loneliness.  They have watched marriage turn from the norm into an exception, children from blessing to burden, and the family broken by divorce, infidelity, and individuality.  They have traded real intimacy for pornography and an idealized sexuality which is both perverted and false.  They have been told the artificial intelligence is smarter then than people and the only hope for the future.  They have trusted technology and been disappointed by the failed promises of newer, better, faster, and more entertaining screens.  They have become consumers of information as well as material things but no longer find satisfaction in what they have.  Death has become normal and yet they fear death and long to know that there is something which lasts beyond the grave.  In the end, life has become fragile and transient and anticlimactic in a world of so many broken promises.  Then the Church comes along to say "we hear you" and expects that to make the difference.

The world is not looking for a God with big ears but one with a strong voice to cut through all the disappointment and overcome all the disillusionment that seems to define our every day.  The world is waiting for a Church which will stand up and sound forth with truth that endures forever and the powerful voice that speaks and something actually happens.  Why else would a liberal world be so attentive to an Islamic voice which conflicts so profoundly with the values the world esteems so highly?  The world is hungry to hear someone who speaks something other than a weak and faint echo of their own words and choices.  This is our opportunity.  We have the voice of God in His Word, not some static voice from the past but the living voice that speaks forgiveness, life, and salvation into the emptiness and noise of our world.  We worry more about being winsome than welcome, friendly than faithful, and offending rather than calling to repentance.  It is no wonder that our pews are empty and our churches passed by in pursuit of other things to give meaning and purpose to life.  But it does not have to be this way.

The world might be happy if someone could make their load lighter or give some direction in time of uncertainty but it would find redemption and rebirth in the promise of the God incarnate who came down from heaven to confront our sin when we would not and to offer Himself in a sacrifice we could neither supply nor afford.  His path of salvation led Him through death to life everlasting and will lead those who hear His voice to walk with Him the path of everlasting life.  But we need to stop acting as if God has called us to make the worst of things in this moment a little better and start manifesting the eternal Kingdom amid the pain and suffering of this life.  This cannot happen by borrowing the voice of the world or proving to be a faint echo of what everyone else is saying.  This can only happen when we rediscover the voice of Him who speaks and the sheep hear, recognize, and follow.  Only then will we have something of substance to offer a world in need, listening for the sound of its Master's voice.

Whether you call this the synodal way or you vote yourself into a position of authority over the Word of God does not matter.  What does matter is that the world is not waiting for us to put on our listening ears or a God who is attentive to the sound of our own opinions, but to speak forth the powerful Word, giving absolution to the guilty, life to the dead, and hope to the hearer.  A listening Church is silent -- silent when the Lord has called us to address the world with His Word of life.

The problem with "churchly" NGOs. . .

 

So, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is in reality simply a non-governmental agency of the US government.  No matter if you think they do good work with the money or not, the false impression given is that they are a religious agency, one which furthers the aims of the Roman Catholic Church in the US.  That is not the case.  The money they administer is done within the parameters of the granting agency and therefore cannot be used for religious purpose but only for a secular one.  It is high time that we cease and desist in calling such organizations churchly and admit that they are but a fancied up name for any other group the US government gets to do its work.  If you are going to do the government's work, then at least be honest and remove the name USCCB from the title of the group and label it appropriately.

Lest any Lutherans here be smug, I could say the same for the the work of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Resettlement Service or even Lutheran World Relief -- both of which might do good  work on the government's dime but are hardly worth labeling as Lutheran.  If it is Lutheran, then it ought to be supported by Lutherans.  At least the LIRRS has rebadged itself to Global Refuge Connect.  Lutheran roots, yup.  Lutheran history, yup.  Lutheran identity, no more.  Lets all have a little more honesty in packaging.  FWIW, this does not apply to the LCMS World Relief and Human Care work done by the LCMS which is done separately and with Lutheran money.  Please send your offerings there with confidence that they are a churchly agency doing churchly work.  But the formerly Lutheran agencies conceived at a time when Lutheran work was cooperative and more Lutheran are but a shell of their former selves.  We all know it.  Let's simply admit it.  Whether or not they do good work on the government's dime, they are not Lutheran agencies doing Lutheran work.  Once you accept the government's money, all religious character to the work ceases and you become, for all intents and purposes, a government employer employing government employees on the government's dime.  So if these NGOs do a better and more efficient job of that work, fine.  Just don't hide behind the Lutheran name and make us forget that it is not Lutherans doing mercy work.

Things are that bad. . .

When things are really bad, small improvements become monumental occasions.  So it is that I read in the diocese of Charlotte that large numbers of men had been ordained this year.  Unpack those statistics and you find that they went from 7 to 6 and then this year to 10.  Percentage increases are more impressive than actual numbers.  Remember if you had 1 and increased your numbers by 100% that is still just 2.  This is not quite a revolution.  It is an increase worth nothing but with a more sobered nuance.  Rome is still in trouble.  Contrast this with the dioceses that are wholesale closing down churches because they have no priests and have less people than ever before.  Not so good.  Which brings me to my point.

Headlines love to herald dramatic numbers -- either positive or negative.  The issue here is not the current numbers but the trend overall and the reality is that things are pretty bad in Rome, along with much of Christianity.  So bad that even slight increases can cause us to celebrate.  We should not be watching the numbers like some sort of stock market ticker but concentrating on what is happening in the pews.  The health of any church is not defined by its leadership or even its clergy but by the numbers and faithfulness of those in the pews.  They are not unrelated, to be sure, but they are not the same.  Rome could have a wonderful pope and still be tanking in the pews.  We Lutherans could have great national leaders and still be closing the doors on too many small congregations.  The investment in the renewal of the Church is made not by buying leaders but by nurturing the parish where people gather around the Word and Table of the Lord.  That is the barometer to which we ought to be paying attention.

There are all sorts of things going against us -- demographics, location of churches, a powerful secular society, the decrease in marriage and birth rates, etc...  All of these are addressed not by national programs but by the work that happens with pastor and people in the parish.  Can you imagine a national campaign for more babies to be born?  How would that look?  Can you imagine a local congregation in which the families there are encouraged and supported and live as role models to those not yet married?  We know what that looks like.  For all the good talk from national leaders -- and there has been much good talk -- the reality is that success in the Church trickles up from the individual parish to the union of many parishes.  The barometer of our success has always been the health of the congregation, the relationship between faithful pastor and faithful people, and the witness to the faith that is given on the local level.

It is great to be supported by national leaders and national programs but sometimes we confuse those with the place where the real work is to be found.  Rome can have great bishops and lousy congregations.  Missouri Lutherans can have great national leaders and crumby parishes.  Our investment needs to be on the ground and in the local congregation.  That is where the future of the Church lies.  We are filled with voices insisting to know how to merge congregations or close them or decentralize seminaries or put them online or to offer dozens of ideas about everything else.  The talking heads on social media distract us from the real issue.  We need vibrant communities of faith in which the focus is on the Word preached and the Supper distributed to baptized people who understand they have a vocation to live out in home and at work.  The boom of our past did not happen because our leaders knew what to say or what to do but because their was great confidence in our Lutheran confessions, great conviction in the abiding and eternal truth of the Scriptures of which those confessions testify, and great commitment to their local community where this faith was lived out, catechized, nurtured, and accountable.  We have plenty of great print resources and online resources but what we seem to be struggling with today is the focus on the local congregation, on the sense of beauty that is manifest with the people of God gathered around the Table of the Lord and their pastor distributing God's gifts of Word and Sacrament every week.  Where this happens, fruits will abound.  When it does not, no national program or leader can save us. 

The cost of deferring to others. . .

For a very long time now and evolving only slowly over that time the family began to defer more and more to others.  This is especially true of education as the family receded while the role of the state and its institutions of public education took over raising our children.  While there were times in history when this was an easier and symbiotic partnership, it has increasingly become a more challenging relationship.  

For the family side of things, it has not all been sunshine and roses.  The rise of the single parent family has presenting a significant challenge to the publish school teacher and classroom, enrolling children who now come without the requisite background and preparation the home once offered.  The growing dysfunction within nearly all the homes and the loss of a multi-generational context have left the school to try and parent and socialize as well as teach.  The loss of any real moral consensus in America has left the educational endeavor without a direction and without a clear foundation on which to build.  The pressure upon schools to serve as incubators of current societal and educational thinking has left less time for for more core educational pursuits and changed the way schools are evaluated.  The view of the school by the community from treasure to drag or financial burden has moved to the many new homes without children or grandchildren and introduced new stress points to the whole task.  The rise of vocational education in which success is viewed neither as knowledge nor the ability to think but readiness for the job market has also produced cracks in the once impenetrable wall of primary and secondary education.

For that matter, the educational industry in America has grown increasingly distant from those who have the children and those who tax dollars pay the freight.  The rift is more than mere competition but suspicion and distrust of those institutions once proudly among the most revered in America.  This has created resentment and antagonism between the teaching enterprise and those who are taught -- along with their family constituents.  The educational industry has always skewed more left of center everywhere but this is pronounced at the university level and in urban settings.  The rights of the child in the classroom are championed over and against the rights of parents, family, and home.  All of this is  happening amid a growing number of alternatives and choices in the marketplace of options -- including home schooling.  While religious schools are not yet dead, they are no longer as vibrant or secure as the home schooling option increases even though religion is hardly the sole or even more important reason for families to make this choice for their children.  Classical schools hold a promise that is attracting people from all economic classes and from every social background.  For that matter, home schooled kids have shown their stuff and proven to be exceptionally prepared and profoundly successful.  All of this raises the question of whether dollars thrown at the problem will solve anything and might the cheapest option (in real dollars) be better than the expensive one.

Another aspect of this deference of family to school reveals the struggle of the home to present to their children a cohesive worldview, solid moral values which can endure over a lifetime, religious foundation to keep the kids in the faith, and a perspective on the world which, though challenged in teen age years is usually found again as those kids marry and have their own children.  The Church has also been complicit in this.  Sunday school was an American invention for the sake of those children whose parents were not in the Church and yet it has become a population nearly exclusively for those whose parents do.  In the same way, catechetical instruction was done in the home and examination at the Church but now that is largely the domain of the professionals.  How is this working?  Sadly, even worse than the success of the public school over against the home based educational programs.  Yet in the Church we continue to be tempted to mirror in our own schools the modern trends and ideas of the public school and to promote diversity as a sacred truth to accompany the Gospel itself.  We in the Church have learned to be both suspicious and unsure about the value of religious instruction over all and especially that which is done in the congregation by a professional teacher of doctrine.  All of this has accompanied the increased statistics of those lost to the faith in early childhood or immediately post-confirmation.  We say we are not competing with the home and family but it sure sounds like we are saying that professionals know better than parents.  If that is not what we want to say, then it might be time to change our stock speech.  Maybe we need to help the family and home more than compete with them or push them out of the equation.  Home schooling may prove to be the way to do both and versions of home school with co-ops or other partnered endeavors with the Church may be even more important going forward than actual brick and mortar religious schools.

The point is this.  There is a cost to deferring to others what is the rightful domain of the family and the home.  It is high time we recognized this and admitted it.

Tradeoffs in time. . .

Oddly enough, those Lutherans pushing for more ceremony in the liturgy have been joined by those pushing for less in searching out the past to find examples to prove their points.  The problem is that those looking for more have the long view of history behind them and the solid words of confessional integrity to support them.  Those pushing for less have a skewed version of nostalgia on their side.  For my part, I lived through both.  I was a child growing up in the 1950s and 1960s when TLH was king and I was a pastor when WS 1969, ILCW, LBW, LW, HS 98, and LSB came along to coax Missouri into a more authentic liturgical identity on Sunday morning.  There were tradeoffs along the way and these are some of them as I see them.

Yes, until talk of a pan-Lutheran hymnal and service book became official, Lutherans looked very much alike on Sunday morning -- no matter their choice of left or right on the doctrinal spectrum.  They followed the same order with slight musical variation and there was little of the now vaunted diversity among Lutherans across the nation.  We simply opened the book and followed it.  For those who openly disdain the book and for the myriad of variations within it now, it can be tempting to long again for the days when we were all Lutheran people of the book (be it TLH or even SBH).  But there were also things not so rosy in that picture of our past.

 LCMS communing statistics first appear in 1930 and report an average communion of 2.10 times a year per member. At that time, most congregations offered Communion four to six times a year. In 1950, 1970 and 1990, LCMS members communed on average 3.22, 5.91 and 8.44 times per year. Through these decades, most congregations increased offering the full Divine Service to at least twice a month.  (From a LW Article in 2021)

For all the uniformity in rite and the general reverence which accompanied the execution of those rites, we were people of the Word but not so much of the Table.  When I grew up, it was common enough to be normal for Lutherans to go without the Sacrament in rite all but 4 Sundays a year and then either to depart the pew prior to the Eucharistic liturgy or to sit in the pew rather than commune.  For those who want to remember this period fondly, it is also worth remembering that we were ceremonially low, the black gown prevailed, sacramental piety was almost non-existent, nobody even talked about private confession, and the most uniform principle of liturgical ideal and practice was whatever was not Catholic.  Coincidentally, that also turned out to be non-catholic and against our own confession.  That is a fact conveniently forgotten.  Even in the hymn section of the book, the people were probably more comfortable with generic hymnody than either the Lutheran chorale or the offerings of the pre-Reformation variety.  It would be hard to even distinguish a Sunday in Lent from one in Easter except for the note in the bulletin or the hymn slide announcing the day on the hymnboard.  But there was uniformity and the person behind the rail and those on the other side did not treat worship as a casual or indifferent thing.

The lost opportunity of the liturgical movement was not the rites that could have been or should have been or should not have been.  No, the lost opportunity of the liturgical movement was the failure to marry a high sacramental practice, manifest uniformity of look and feel throughout the congregations, an appreciation for the ceremonies which could not be commanded to an existing reverence, a commitment to the hymnal, and high view of the Word.  That was the loss I lament.  Not a book or a setting of the Divine Service but the loss of how this might have been real renewal.  Sure, we did increase both the number of times the Sacrament is offered and how often folks commune.  That is good, right, and salutary.  But somehow we managed to do so while devaluing the shape of the rite and its words at the same time.  Sure, we have more pastors in albs and chasubles than I would have ever imagined half a decade ago but at the same time we seem to have lost the idea of what the ordained pastor is and does along with a confusion of what complementary role the laity play in this thing called worship.  Sure, we have more people now in the same book than when the liturgical experimentation began but we have turned from the book to the screen even where liturgy is still king.  Worst of all, we have somehow labeled all the stuff of worship from the rites and music of the absolution to the liturgy of the Word to the the liturgy of the Sacrament adiaphora.  Astonishingly, we have somehow said that Scripture is silent about what ought to happen in worship or how it might happen.  We somehow cannot even find it within ourselves to bind us to the confessional norm of every Lord's Day receiving the flesh and blood of Christ and then conveniently forgot to fight back when the government said liquor stores were essential but the gathering of Glod's people around His Word and Supper was not.  All of this confusion and tom foolery has left us very similar to where we were before the liturgical movement took hold -- arguing the basics again.  This time the basics are the ordo of the Divine Service, reverence, and the value of uniformity.  Really?

We traded one set of problems for another and in so doing admit that we remain more driven by minimums than by fullness, by settling for rather than striving for, and by utility over beauty.  If we had better learned the lessons of Covid, we might just have kept it all but put it on the screen rather than in person.  It is not simply our mess, Rome is suffering as well.  Canterbury also.  It is hard to find a real Calvinist anymore and it is hardly more of a memory the fundamentalism of the past against the evangelical gold standard of worship that seems to prevail where once the tent revival was king.  My point is that we cannot waste our time picking and choosing a moment in time which looks better to our sensibilities than another without failing again in the opportunity to hold to a high understanding of the Word and a similarly high understanding of the Sacrament.  We should never be bound by minimums except to rein in the erring but should all be working for the much more that belongs to our rich theological and liturgical history and heritage.