Offline. . .

As I have oft said, online is a misnomer -- at least when it comes to worship.  Online is really offline.  I would not presume to say it is entirely without value but the reality is that worship is not meant to be mediated.  Screen or whatever other mechanism that replaces being together around the Lord's Word and the Lord's Table vitiates what it means to worship.  You can watch it and appreciate it in some way but you cannot participate nor can you receive the gifts of God via the screen.  While it is certainly true that we tend to live our lives in isolation from one another, that cannot apply to worship.  It is possible to sit at table in a restaurant at the same time while each of the diners is occupied by their screens and it is possible for the diners to take their food into different rooms to eat.  Yet even if they are watching the same thing on their screens or eating the same food, they are not participating.  There is no koinonia in the Word, the body, or the blood of the Lord.

I write this as one whose parish does have services online -- not live but recorded.  The point of this is not to replace or even compete with in person worship but to offer a witness to the larger community of who we are as a congregation and to provide those without any access to be in person something of value, though not a replacement.  The screen has value for some things but it is of limited value and it cannot replace what the in person gathering of God's people -- nor would I want to proclaim the Gospel to those on screens whom I do not know and cannot see!  In fact, I would suggest that watching a sermon online is not quite hearing the Word preached.  Not of no value but not the same as sitting before the preacher and having the preacher stand before you.

Recently I heard of marriages that took place with a pastor in one place and the couple in another.  Is this legal?  I have no idea.  But this is not what it means to gather or invite God's blessing upon a couple's life together as they stand before the Lord in His house.  I understand that sometimes meetings must take place via screens and that sometimes via conference calls information must be distributed but as one who has sat through more than my share of them, it does not replace meeting together.  There is no personal dynamic via the screen.  It may be an emergency fallback for limited value but it cannot replace what it means to be together in the same place -- not for worship and not even for meetings.

When our children were distant from grandparents or from us and we took advantage of Skype to do more than converse over the phone, it was a wonderful gift and blessing.  But only a fool would suggest that it replaced the in person hugs, smiles, frowns, and conversation.  It was a step up over watching a movie or hearing a voice but it did not in our hearts replace the longing to be together.  It should not for the people of God.  That there are people who have become satisfied with online or congregations who presume to provide pastoral care for their people online is both a sad state and an indictment against what has come to pass for membership within the body of Christ in a particular place and pastoral care.  No one should boast in this and we should all repent of it -- from the people who are content with this as their church to the churches who are content to call this faithfulness to the pastors who do not challenge these practices.  Online is not online at all when it comes to our life together;  online is offline.

A culture of shoppers. . .

We are a culture of shoppers.  We are a people who love choice.  We assume that the exercise of choice in the culture of shopping that defines us is a matter of our wills.  The reality is that most of our shopping and most of our choices are not so much willed or even chosen after reflection but impulsive and made in the moment.  Even the drug makers have learned this and bypassed the physicians who prescribe and made their advertising pitch directly to the consumer.  Sitting in the restaurant we look around at what others are eating and often insist that we want what they are having.  Choice and decision are the marks that we use to define what it means to be free.  

Once the culture of shopping and choice gave birth to self-service supermarkets.  We graduated from the general store wherein the shopkeeper put together the box of our goods from the list we supplied to the Piggly Wiggly where we walked down the broad aisles and picked off the choices from the shelves.  Soon the catalog sources became the anchors in malls and then strip malls.  Even medicine has provided physicians (or PAs) on line to handle ordinary things and we shop for a diagnosis and treatment at our convenience -- visiting the doctors only when we must.  Then Covid hastened our move from in person choices and shopping in stores to online purchases or shoppers who packed our orders and put them in our SUVs.  But the principle remained the same.  Shopping is our culture and choice our God.

So it is no wonder that the same principles that govern our retail habits would eventually govern our religion habits.  Covid is not quite to blame but it surely hastened the pace of this evolution.  Turn it on and survey the providers and choose one.  If it turns out to be different from what you expected, there are always more choices.  Shopping is as much fun as the eventual option you settle upon.  The style is at least as important as the substance.  Religion becomes less a matter of belonging and participating than watching.  Community was not personal as much as it meant people watching the same thing on their own screens.

The difficulty we face today lies in religion which cannot be satisfied by screens, sacraments which cannot be bestowed digitally, and community which cannot be fulfilled by distance but a people who have decided that they will remain shoppers, wedded to choice, and the online platforms are their preferred media.  While this is true for those who claim to be Christian, it is also true of those who were once active Christians and those who never were.  Add to this the presumption on the part of these religious consumers that they know what Christianity is and they are not looking to have their minds changed.  It is a combination of what is the substance of the faith and how it is received that combine to confuse and confound those outside and inside the Church today. 

There is still time. . .

There’s still time to join us for the 2024 LCMS worship institute July 9–12 at Concordia University, Nebraska.     MAY 14, 2024 LCMS.org   Registration closes on Friday for 2024 Institute on Liturgy, Preaching and Church Music July 9–12, 2024   •   Seward, Neb. Registration closes on Friday for the 2024 Institute on Liturgy, Preaching and Church Music set for July 9–12, 2024, at Concordia University, Nebraska (CUNE), in Seward, Neb. The Institute, which is being presented by LCMS Worship, returns under the theme of “Songs of Deliverance: Psalms in the Great Congregation.” With the Psalter as its focal point, this conference will feature fresh and perennial topics on music, leadership, preaching, pastoral care, art and spiritual growth in Lutheran worship. Participants will be able to choose from a variety of instructive and interactive sessions addressing practical topics of interest to musicians, pastors, teachers, interested laypersons and many others. We’ll also take up a challenge together: pray all 150 psalms. Registration is open through May 17 at the adult attendee rate of $400. Two-day, one-day, and full-time student registrant options are also available. More information, including how to register, is available at lcms.org/2024-worship-institute.     Learn more and register         Home   •   Privacy Policy   •   Email Preferences   The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod 1333 S. Kirkwood Road St. Louis, MO 63122 lcms.org help@lcms.org 888-843-5267 Email is an important way that we communicate with our member church workers and congregations. Please update your communication preferences to ensure you receive updates and information. If you have questions about this email or need assistance, please contact the LCMS Church Information Center at 888-THE LCMS (843-5267) or help@lcms.org. View this message in your web browser

 

Ascension sermon. . . one of them

I had forgotten to post the Ascension Sermon (this one from the morning service) and was reminded.  Here is the earlier sermon (different from the evening one).  I pray it will be a blessing to you.

Sermon for the Ascension of Our Lord, preached on Thursday, May 9, 2024, at the morning service. 

God is gone up with a shout!  The Lord with the sound of the trumpet!  God IS the king of all the earth and sits upon His throne of holiness.  So says Psalm 47.  Far be it from an escape, the Ascension of our Lord is a sort of enthronement.  No, the Lord does not need us to make Him king.  We do not make Him Lord nor do we establish His reign in us or in the world.  God does all these things without our help but we pray that we may behold this wonder and believe it.  So the Holy Spirit establishes Christ to reign over our hearts and minds and we acknowledge this with the “amen” of faith.  

We are not give the command to tame the nations and turn them into God’s Kingdom.  God reigns over unbelievers as well as believers but those without faith neither know that reign nor enjoy its blessing.  For Islam the job of the faithful is to be warriors on earth and command the infidel upon the pain of death to confess Allah as god.  It was and always will be a militant faith with an agenda for earthly rule and rulers to compel the reign of Christ.

That is not the way of Christ, the only legitimate and authentic God.  He comes not by might or force but as the incarnate God in our own flesh and blood.  He comes not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him.  His kingdom is in the world but not of it.  It is where Christ is in the Word and the Holy Sacraments so His kingdom is not strictly spiritual but as concrete as the splash of water, the voice of His Word, the taste of bread and wine.  But His kingdom is not OF nor is it FROM the world.  He does not win the kingdom as a monarch who marshals his forces to battle but as the lonely soldier who gives Himself to death that we might have life.

Ascension Day is a liturgical day, a day in which the reign of Christ as King and Lord is acknowledged by His disciples then and now.  The Ascension of our Lord is the triumph of the humility which laid aside what was His right in order to take up the burden of our sin.  The Ascension of our Lord is the triumph of death that pays once for all the cost of sin.  The Ascension of our Lord is the triumph of life that the grave cannot contain.  Jesus ascends as King but He is not a different person than He is as Savior.  And that is why we are here.  We are participate as the people for whom He is crowned King and among whom He reigns through His Word and Sacraments.

Ascension Day is the triumph of the humanity of Christ in accomplishing all that the Father gave Him to do and with His humanity all of us are raised up to be with Him.  For us, it is now by faith.  For Dave Williams it is in His nearer presence on high.  For all who believe in Christ and who have loved His appearing, it will be face to face, on the holy ground of God’s presence, forevermore.

He goes to prepare a place for us.  He does not ascend to bask in the glory of His accomplishment for His work continues in us and through us until that day when time itself will end.  He goes to prepare a place for us so that we may be eternally with Him and He with us.  In that sense, the means of grace are transitional.  But that is exactly how the Scriptures describe them.  The Word of the Lord is forever but it is mediated to us through preaching and teaching only until we stand before the Word made flesh to hear from His own lips His voice.  What the water of baptism accomplishes is eternal but here it is mediated through water, received by faith, and lived out within the tension of sins confessed, absolution granted, and the baptized sinner restored.  The Table of the Lord is without end yet here it is known not in its fullness but in the foretaste – the taste of bread which is His flesh and the cup which is His blood – until He comes to usher in the full meal.  This is Jesus preparing us a place.

It is not about cleaning rooms or dusting off furniture or make beds with fresh linens.  It is about His work not up there but down here – through Word and Sacrament.  Here Jesus is doing His preparation for us, in us, and through us.  That is why we gather today.  It is not to remember an absent Jesus who has gone onto to bigger and better things but to celebrate the Lord who remains with His people, bringing forth in them the fruits of His atoning work, through the Word, the water of Holy Baptism, the voice of absolution, and the Holy Communion of His body and blood.

We call Jesus King not by shouting it out to the world or among ourselves but by kneeling to confess our sins, by remembering the gift of baptismal new life, by listening to His Word preached and taught, and by eating and drinking His flesh and blood.  Every Sunday and Thursday we gather to meet the King where He has promised to be, not the Savior who dies over and over again, but the dead whose death is our forgiveness and whose life is our hope.  We meet the King with heads bowed in prayer, confident that our merciful High Priest hears and answers those prayers.  We meet the King in grace and mercy, restored and kept to His coming.

Jew, Gentile, Gay, Straight. . .

Roman Catholic and Jesuit moral theologian James F. Keenan was quoted as saying: I do not think that the present anxiety about recognizing the 'gay' [Roman] Catholic is unlike the first-century anxiety regarding the Gentiles becoming Christians.  Thus you find the state of moral and Biblical theology among those sometimes regarded as an elite of theologians in Rome.  Jesus sees the problem of multiple sexual orientations and gender identities as the unfolding of the same wall that once kept Gentiles from among the faithful.  Hmmmm, anyone see anything slightly off in this colorization of Jesus and the contemporary situation?

But that is the problem, isn't it.  The liberal and progressive position presumes that all you need is time and the once forbidden things of yesterday will become the new normal for today and tomorrow.  The problem is that they are largely correct.  The sins of the fathers become the virtues of their sons and daughters (and every other gender), it would seem.  Once you begin with that, it is a short hike to God blessing the sin and vindicating the sinner by placing the blame on the narrow minded judgmental folk who refuse to go where God is leading.

The state of affairs in Rome has deteriorated rapidly under Pope Francis.  In his own Harper-Collins autobiography soon to be released, Pope Francis says this:

"It is right that these people who are living the gift of love can have legal coverage like everyone else. Jesus often went out to meet people who lived on the margins, and that's what the Church should do today with people from the LGBTQ+ community, who within the Church are often marginalized: make them feel at home, especially those who have received baptism and are in effect part of God's people. And those who have not received baptism and wish to receive it, or those who wish to be godparents, please let them be welcomed."

Rome offers many things appealing to Lutherans stuck between a rock and a hard place -- the liberal Lutherans for whom the faith is barely more than an excuse and justification for cultural liberalism and progressivism and the conservative forms that too often degenerate into a congregationalistic church which grows smaller by the day.  What Rome does not offer is a refuge against the strides and progress of cultural and moral liberalism.  Indeed, it would seem that Rome finds itself incapable of saying anything remotely close to what Jesus has to say about LGBTQ+ and its culture of desire or the fluid gender identity defined simply by feelings.  If for this reason alone, Rome offers us even less than what we struggle with in the problems of our own communion.

The other Lord's Prayer. . .

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter (B), the Sunday after the Ascension, preached on Sunday, May 12, 2024.

When you mention the Lord’s Prayer everyone in Christendom knows exactly what you are talking about.  Even many who have never been Christian and certainly those who have fallen away know the Lord’s Prayer.  It is a common heritage even deeper than the creeds though with a little trifle over words like debts or sins or trespasses.  We call it the Lord’s Prayer but it is not really His.  He gives the prayer to us.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it the Christian’s prayer.  In some liturgies that is how it is introduced.  As the Lord has taught us, we are bold to pray...  Even in our liturgy this prayer is introduced with its own prayer:  Lord, remember us in Your kingdom and teach us to pray...

Today we heard part of another Lord’s Prayer.  It is not at all as universally known or appreciated as the Our Father.  But it is no less the Lord’s Prayer.  The exegete calls this the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus.  What we heard is but a snippet of the entire 17th chapter of John in which our Lord prays alone in the Garden before He is betrayed to His voluntary sufferings, dies, and rises again.  Jesus prayed for Himself in that Garden – that if possible the cup pass from Him but nevertheless the Lord’s will be done.  But this farewell prayer is not only about Jesus or what is to come in the next hours or day.  It is mostly about you and me.

This is a prayer of intercession.  He pleads to the Father not for Himself but for those whom the Father gave Him out of the world – those who belong to Him and have kept the Word of the Lord by faith.  Jesus conspicuously does not pray for the world but for the ones the Father has given Him –  for God’s baptized people of faith.  Jesus prays because He will no longer be in the world as they are and yet their well-being remains His burning concern.  Jesus has lost only one – Judas – whose heart was overcome by the devil and who, in despair, would choose death over repentance.  Jesus prays for us so that His joy may be full.

Jesus prays for our unity of faith.  The Church needs this prayer because we have used all kinds of things to divide us.  While division over doctrine is regrettable, it is necessary to preserve the truth.  Division over other things is a scandal.  Jesus knows that both divisions will come – the necessary division in order to maintain the truth and the sinful divisions caused by pride, preference, personality, and place.  So He prays that we will be united – not as negotiators bring disputing parties together but as a people joined in the Word, sanctified by that Word, and living in that Word.

Jesus does not pray that God remove us from the world.  This is no prayer for a safe and easy escape but for the courage, strength, conviction, and endurance to live within the tension of being in the world but of Christ, being in Christ while resisting the impulse to live as one belonging to the world and all its values.  Jesus prays because it is not simply against flesh and blood but principalities and powers that we battle.  Satan may be defeated but he will go down fighting to steal us from our Lord and from the future Christ has appointed.

He prays that we be sanctified in the truth.  There is some history here.  Jesus says He is the truth.  Pilate asked Him what is truth.  Our Lord insists that truth is not in the mind of the beholder nor subject to personal interpretation.  Truth is not yours or mine – it just is as Christ is whether you believe in Him or not.  He does not change.  The Jesus who is yesterday, today, and forever the same speaks a word that is eternal.  Its message is not adjusted for the times nor is its truth changed to fit the preferences of people or a culture.  What Jesus prays to the Father, the Spirit brings forth as our confession of faith and our witness to the world.  God’s Word is truth.

The doctrinal controversies of the past and present are not simply about doctrines but about the Word of God.  The Christian world has come to believe that the Scriptures are only partly God’s Word and partly man’s.  When they speak of salvation, the are true, infallible, and without error.  When they speak of other things, who knows?  We do not contend for doctrines but ultimately every doctrinal controversy is about Scripture.  Is it God’s Word?  Is it without error?  Is it dependable in every age and time?  Is it the Word that does what it says and saves us?  No Lutheran would risk dividing Christianity over anything less than the truth of God’s Word but neither would a Lutheran fail to insist that God’s Word is what God says it is and it does what God says it does.

The Lord has consecrated His life and purpose to you and me.  He has become flesh and blood for you and me, lived the holy and righteous life for you and me, suffered and died upon the cross for you and me, rises and lives never to die again for you and me.  This is the message of the Scriptures which in our ears becomes faith by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Christ has consecrated Himself for us in life, in death, and in the resurrection from the dead.  Now He prays that we may be so consecrated in this truth as well.  Most translations use sanctify – the word that means to make holy – and the word consecrate interchangeably.

So what does it mean to be sanctified or made holy or consecrated to the Lord?  How sad it is that we tend always to rush to behavior.  God wants us to be good.  Well, sure He does.  But that is not what these terms mean here.  God could have accomplished good behavior with the force of the law and the threat of punishment but God’s purpose is to change your heart.  To be made holy is to be made pure – with pure thoughts, pure words, and pure actions.  Pure means good but it also means honest, genuine, authentic, and without deceit.  Our Lord seeks to undo the hypocrisy of good works which have no heart behind them and hearts which cannot muster themselves to do the good they think.  To be pure is to be of one heart, one mind, and one will – Christ’s heart of forgiveness, Christ’s mind in His Word, and Christ’s will for salvation.

You have heard Christ consecrate Himself to you and to the purpose of bringing you at last into His everlasting presence on high, wearing the new and glorious flesh He wears, and living no more with sin or suffering or disease or death.  So what is it that you will consecrate yourself to?  Though we talk in highfalutin words it is not so dense.  Be here in the Lord’s House every Sunday.  Be in the Word of God together in the Church and at home.  Pray not only for yourselves but for others as our Lord intercedes for you.  Serve without counting the cost and forgive without counting the cost.  There is one more thing.  As Christ’s consecration to you has brought Him joy, so does your consecration to Him bear the fruit of holy joy in you – joy without fear or anxiety or bitterness or envy to put a damper on things.  It is not why we are sanctified but joy is the fruit of His sanctifying work.  Part of that joy is the gift of a clear conscience through absolution.  Part of it is our absolute confidence in the Lord’s unwavering love and will for our salvation.  Amen.

No room for vices. . .

The cultivation of virtues is not an end in and of itself.  We are not pursuing a righteousness which no longer needs the righteousness of Christ.  We are not seeking to be self-sufficient before the throne of the Almighty.  There is a practical reason for the extra devotions of Lent and the encouragement to reading the Word, more worship services, increased prayer, and alms giving.  The cultivation of virtue leaves less room for vices.

I wish we would recover such a clear and blunt rationale for these good works and devotions that usually accompany Lent.  In the end, it is just the other way around.  We tend to struggle to find room in our busy lives for anything godly at all.  With regular church attendance now meaning once or twice a month and the choice as substitute the online versions that are more easily fit between the appointments and duties and interests of our lives, anything that might approach devotion, Bible reading, corporate worship, catechesis, prayer, and good works must compete to find either the time or the energy left to pursue such Christian virtues.  God is under the gun to find room on our calendars and in our hearts.  Lent draws attention to this and calls upon us to make the world schedule the appointment and give priority to the things of God.

The reality is that we run out of energy for the good and godly things that belong to faith simply because the rest of the activities of our lives (not all vices and most simply secular and ordinary) steal away all whatever oomph we have left.  Truth be told we cannot tear ourselves away from our screens or stay awake long enough to pray much less to develop the Christian virtues under the Spirit to displace some of the room given to routine stuff and the places where temptations lie.

So if you are not already, give priority to the things of God this Lent.  There is still time.  There are still vices to resist and leave behind in pursuit of that which is true and good, godly and beautiful, noble and worthy.  Just a few quick thoughts this morning. . . 

Fasting and feasting. . .

I have a doctor who routinely fasts for health purposes.  I know of people who fast for mental health purposes (meditation).  I know of Christians who fast both seasonally (like during Lent) and who fast during times of devotion and prayer during other times.  Fasting is a good and salutary practice.  Lutherans who are essentially adverse to anything approaching a rule must be reminded from time to time that Jesus did not say if you fast but when and therefore presumes fasting is part of our prayer life and disciplined life of faith.  I could spend pages of digital ink on the subject of fasting but there is another aspect to this.  Fasting from the ordinary food of mortal life only emphasizes the feasting upon the food of everlasting life.

The contrast of fasting is not between a full plate of your favorite vittles and and empty plate without them.  It is between the emptiness of the food of this mortal life, good as it is from God the giver, and the fullness of the food of everlasting life -- also a good gift from God the giver.  Nobody is called to fast without the feast.  Sure, there may be times in our lives when circumstance or geography prevents us from receiving the Eucharist regularly and we may still fast during those times as part of the obedience of faith, the clear contrast here is not between the food that makes our mouths water and none but the food of this life (as wonderful or ordinary as it might be) and the food of everlasting life (the foretaste of the eternal in the bread which is Christ's flesh and the cup of His blood).

I fear we have lost this connection.  The bookends of this life are not fasting and feasting from food at our tables at home but the fasting and feasting between the food that we must eat to live another day and that food that feeds us to eternal life.  The food that satisfies is not simply the food that meets our appetites in the moment but that provides the food that alone satisfies our hunger and quenches our thirst.  This is clearly a contrast between the earthly and the heavenly.  It is not about food being good or bad.  The food of this life that feeds our bodies is good and a gift from God.  It is not bad because it cannot do what it was never made to do.  The good of everlasting life is good and a gift from God.  It is good because it does what it promises to do.  Both are good.  Fasting only helps us sort out the line between them and gives us perspective.

Fasting never says that we must abstain from the Eucharist when we fast from earthly food for our bodies.  Indeed, this is the great mystery.  While we abstain from earthly food for our bodies, we are fed the heavenly food for body and soul.  Unlike those who wait until evening hours to eat, we feast upon the Body and Blood of our Lord when it is offered and our fasting is itself a preparation for the feasting upon this Eucharistic food.  It is not symbolic eating and drinking but real.  The food is not for the imagination but for body and soul.  It is real food for real hunger in real people.  Fasting serves to highlight the gift of the Eucharist, acknowledging what the ordinary food for the body can do and what the extraordinary food which is Christ's flesh and blood do for us body and soul.  Maybe if we emphasized the connection, the self-denial would not have to be justified by medical benefit nor would it seem like we have given up everything.  Perhaps this might explain why, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus cautions against a fasting which looks sad.  Our fast is not from His feast and therefore we rejoice and are glad even in the times of self-denial.

Growing up we did not eat breakfast on Sunday.  It was a fasting enforced not by rubric or rule but by hunger for the Lord's Body and Blood.  It was, I learned, a way of acknowledging that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord and that the food which satisfies our every hunger was nothing less than Christ's flesh and blood in the Eucharist.