Managing the Church to death. . .

One of the common complaints of government and industry is the decidedly think middle layer of managers that seems bent upon preventing helpful directive from making it from the head on down and in preventing vital information moving back up.  I have spoken, for example, of the meeting culture that seems to have pretty much died at my parish but which is evidently still very much alive at the District and Synod levels of the Church.  While at my own parish I struggle to get a meeting called, an issue discussed, and a decision rendered even on urgent practical matters, it seems we spend our lives talking away about how best to manage the Church. 

For a long time I have complained about this reticence against meetings and structural issues in my parish but I am becoming either accustomed to it or have grown to see the wisdom of it.  We tend to spend less time than any group I know managing and organizing.  I guess for those who sniff against organized religion I can in good conscience offer them a chance to embrace the disorganized religion that is Grace Lutheran Church.  We spend most of our time and energy not on managing but on doing and the doing begins with a rich liturgical and musical expression of the Divine Service.  Anything and everything else flows from this and, if we are doing it right, back into it.

There was a time when I was more enamored of managerial stuff.  I bought some of the books and listened to some of the gurus of church management (from the Abdons of old and the Merkens to more modern stuff I have grown to decry on this forum).  It seems we are more in love with managing the Church than being the Church.  We cast our visions like pearls before swine and wonder why people are not impressed or motivated by our goal statements and our proposed methodologies.  We restructure the structures until no one really remembers who was supposed to do what so it all seems to fall back upon the Pastor in some way or another (Pastor either as clean up crew or CEO depending upon your perspective).  We study to study and evaluate to evaluate everything from the internal of the congregation to the felt needs and wants of the folks outside the Church.

We manage the Church to death.  We look more sideways than forward.  For some of us that means looking at what other churches or others outside the Church (business) are doing to be more effective, consumer oriented, and adept at changing to meet the rapidly changing times.  For others of us that means having an interest in and a desire to critique what others are doing while failing to do what we are called to do (some of you might put me here).  I grow weary of it all.

Instead of trying to institutionalize every possible response to every possible issue or event, why not simply be the Church.  On that SET I spoke about on a previous post, I remember the first question asked what is the job of the Church.  My answer was spectacularly unhelpful (according to some who read my SET).  The job of the Church is to be the Church.  We are not a social service agency, a counseling center, a gym, a community center, or any of the things we seem to try so hard to be.  We are the Church.  We do not have to be anything more than we are -- that which Christ has declared us to be and equipped us to be through the means of grace.

I do not mean to impugn the motives of those who love to listen to the heartbeat of the world and plot strategies to respond or those who listen to what is going on around us to see if some are doing better than others.  I do not mean to suggest that these folks have impure motives.  I just believe that much of our energy and interest here is misplaced.  McDonalds and Wal-Mart cannot help us learn how to be the Church or do the work of the Kingdom.  This is not rocket science.  We have the answers we need in the living voice of Scripture and the Sacraments that deliver what Christ has accomplished to the people of His promise.  What we need is not all that hard to decipher.  We need passionate, faithful, vibrant preaching.  We need thoughtful, well planned, and authentic liturgy.  We need a focus off ourselves and on to Christ.  We need to be the Church. 

As to our success or, rather, effectiveness, well, that is up to the Lord of the Church to decide.  If we are being faithful in doing what He has called us to do and being the Church of Christ, I can hardly see how God will fault us since He has declared over and over again that He will bring it to pass and make it return with the fruit He desires. 

We have gotten lost and part of the dead end is our love affair with management.  We listen so well to the hoof beats of change in culture and our world that we cannot even hear the sound of the Lord's voice.  When finally we do hear Him, we feel the need to bolster Scripture with the latest and greatest sociology or psychology or methodology as if the message of the Bible were mere theory for which the practice was left up to us to determine and define.

The Church does not need to be managed.  The Church does not need more managers.  We need more faithful preachers and hearers, teachers and doers, presiders and people in the pews -- actually listening, believing, and doing what Christ has called us to do.  This is not the whisper of a breeze so hard to feel or decide which direction it comes from.  God blows loud and strong in the same direction as it has always blown -- from sin to forgiveness, from pride to repentance, from death to life through the means of grace.  It is no less urgent in our age than it was in generations past.  We do not need more managers for the Kingdom of God.  We need to be the Church.  Period. 

Rigid wretch than I am

"When a theologian is asked to yield and make concessions in order that peace may at last be established in the Church, but refuses to do so even in a single point of doctrine, such an action looks to human reason like intolerable stubbornness, yea, like downright malice. That is the reason why such theologians are loved and praised by so few men during their lifetime. Most men rather revile them as disturbers of the peace, yea, as destroyers of the kingdom of God. They are regarded as men worthy of contempt. But in the end it becomes manifest that this very determined, inexorable tenacity in clinging to the pure teaching of the divine Word by no means tears down the Church; on the contrary, it is just this which, in the midst of greatest dissension, builds up the Church and ultimately brings about genuine peace."    C. F. W. Walther

I thought of this quote at the very moment I was reviewing the PIF (Pastor's Information Form" and SET (Self-Evaluation Tool).  In particular, I note the section on theological and liturgical stance.  In the liturgical attitude section you can choose between rigid (oh, bad, very bad) and flexible (good, always good).  It also offers you a chance to mark Traditional (what, page 15?), High Liturgical (suggests here chanting, additional vestments like a cope? or formal attire like a clerical collar?) or Contemporary (write your own and do your own thing).  In the theological section you place yourself on a continuum which goes from 5 (hard core conservative) to 1 (flexible and willing to adjust to others).

I wonder how a C. F. W. Walther might fill that out..... Hmmmmm.

Just in case you think any Pastor might just lie about himself to look good on paper (how who would do that), the Elders of your congregation get a shot at defining you and your DP (perhaps influenced by the Circuit Counselor) also gets to second guess your answers.  Of course all of this is completely Scriptural ("do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought").

Just thinkin.... and you know how dangerous that can be.

BTW I put these thoughts away and then re-thought them after pulling out the mysterious envelope I got at the District Pastoral Conference....  So I decided to pass it all on to you, my BFFs.

The Lord who comes before and after the preacher. . .

Rightly we might put it this way:  the Lord must go before and after the preacher as well as in between.  He goes before as the One who frames what the Gospel is and then fulfills its promise, who compels the proclamation beginning from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, who is the very Word proclaimed, and who comes behind so that the Word proclaimed does what it says and brings forth faith in the hearer..

Growing up the preacher in my home congregation began every sermon with this prayer from John 17.  “Sanctify them through thy truth:  thy word is truth.  As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.  And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.”  I must say that I did not get it then.  It seemed like a highfalutin prayer for an ordinary endeavor like a sermon -- and a sermon that seemed more about the power and passion of the preacher than anything else.  I, like most kids, found sermons tedious, long, and rather dull.  It was not until college that the full import of the sermon as the preached Word of God began to sink in.  Once it began to sink it, I payed more attention to the sermon and attempted to spend less time critiquing the vehicle itself and more attention to where the sermon was taking me.

As a preacher myself, I begin every sermon with a two-fold prayer.  On the one hand I pray for me and for the words I will say -- that they will be faithful and that I will not get in the way of their purpose.  On the other hand, I pray for the hearers and that the Lord will send forth His Spirit to prepare them to hear and take to heart the Word of the Lord.  

The passage of many years and the preaching of many sermons has taught me to be less taken with the vocabulary, eloquence, presence, and power of the preacher and more attentive to the power of the Word.  The sermon is less mine and more His -- but so are the hearers.  I have come to appreciate how hard it is to hear the Word of the Lord when our hearts and minds are so filled with the cares and comforts, distractions and distress, laughter and pleasure of self and the world around us.  I have also come to count less on me and more upon the Lord who has promised to work through His Word rightly spoken and faithfully preached (within the twin poles of Law and Gospel and clear in what distinguishes them and which gives life).

The faithful preacher must avoid an exaggerated sense of self and his own responsibility. For it often seems to the preacher that too much rests on him, on his eloquence, on his ability, and and on his formulation of the words that proclaim the Word. While it is true that every preacher must work to hone his skills and to give to the hearer the best he has to offer, it also remains true that Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain (Ps 127:1).  The Lord not only builds the house but moves the hearer into that house and, by the power of the Spirit, leads the hearer to the blessed fruit of hearing -- faith.

While it is surely true that the Lord comes behind to clean up the mess we preachers sometimes make, it is more true to understand that just as Jesus gives us what to say, so He works that what is said accomplishes His purpose.  I wish that we were more comfortable with silence so that the sermon could be left to hang in the quiet of several moments before we rush on to respond with the creed.  I have not yet found silence workable and it is something which we both yearn for and then fear when it happens.  Yet it is exactly silence what is needed after the sermon.  Before rushing to fill the empty moment with something different and to shift directions, if ever so slightly, it would be good if we could pause a bit and let it all sink in.  Perhaps you might advise me, brothers, on how best to do this.

The Lord does not delegate and disappear.  He commands and compels while remaining within the Church through whom the preacher is sent.  That is what we too often forget.  Sermons are important not because the pulpit sits high or the tradition of preachers is great.  Sermons are important because faith comes by hearing and the hearing it comes by is the Word of God.  Both preacher and hearer benefit when the focus of this unique styles of discourse remains from Him, through Him, and to Him.

The war to end all wars...

Sermon preached for Pentecost 25, Proper 28B, on Sunday, November 11, 2012.

   Today is St. Martin’s Day – not the Martin you are thinking about but the saint for whom Luther was named.  Martin of Tours was a soldier saint who left one war for another, the proclamation of the Gospel.  For most of us, however, today is Veterans Day or, as it began, Armistice Day, or if you are in the British Commonwealth, Remembrance Day.  It was the end of World War I and the remembrance of its 20 Million dead that gave this day its birth.  Author H. G. Wells wrote urging the cause of that first world war coining the phrase "the war to end all wars."  But it wasn't.  The shift from Armistice Day to Veterans Day came in 1954 when another war to end all wars claimed 60 Million dead, 1/3 combatants.  And the wars go on.
    Nothing we do is once and for all time.  Nothing we do is done once but effective for all people.  Neither war is once for all nor is peace.  To our cry for peace and an end to war, only God can give answer.  To the weariness over parents burying sons and daughters and families burying husbands and wives, dads and moms, we can make no promises.  All we can is pledge to work for real and just peace and an end to armed conflict.  If we want an end to war, there must be blood strong enough to bleed for all — the living and the dead.  If we want peace, there must be a life good enough to die for all and strong enough to live forever.
    Every war claims to be fought to end war but it does not and it cannot.  Wars between people cannot be eradicated because these wars stem from the war within us.  What we fight on the battlefields of this world is but a shadow and expression of the war begun in Eden and still fought against God.  This war is against our own souls and identities as the children of God.  This war cannot be mediated or peace negotiated until sin is rendered powerless and its death is disarmed by the Lord of life.  This war turns brothers and neighbors into enemies, creates conflict that divides and conquers, alienates and condemns, and brings eternal death.  Sin has wrecked a terrible price from us and upon us.
    War on the battlefield and the guerrilla war of terrorism ends as only war can – with death and with destruction.  It is no different for us in whom the war of sin against our Creator and the war of death against His life wages.  The end is always the same.  Destruction and death, eternal death.  No more and no less.
    But we gather here today to acknowledge the one battle that lives up to the promise  “once for all.” It is the only battle fought to end all battles and the war waged to end all wars.  Christ fought this war to quiet our souls and deliver to us the perfect peace that had so eluded us since the sad days of Eden and our rebellion.  This is what Hebrews speaks about in chapter 9.  He has appear once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of His very self.  Just as man dies once and then faces judgment, so Christ was offered once for all to bear the sins of the many and to save those who trust in Him as Lord and Judge of those whom He has saved.
    Christ fought once to end for all sin's war.  In the fulness of time God sent forth His Son wearing our flesh and blood.  He became as one of us, though without sin He was not immune to death.  His death is what has ended death.  He came as one of us that He might die in our place the fearful death and render its destruction impotent by His resurrection.  He died only once but it was the death of the one holy and righteous man, the Son of God, and so it had the power that no death before Him or after Him could have.  He paid our debt.  He ended our captivity to death.  He stopped the cycle of war.
    Unlike all other deaths, His death has healing power.  His death brought forth life.  In the midst of His suffering and death was the birth of life so strong that death could not contain it and so big it enlivens all the dead and dying.  A world captive to death and disappointed by the broken promises of peace looks for the one who can keep the promise – to Christ given for the life of the world, the life that death cannot end, cannot steal, cannot overcome.  That is the miracle of Calvary – not that one man died which is of little importance – but that man who died paid for death so that all who look to that death might live in perfect peace forevermore.
    He saves those who wait for Him – a euphemism for trust.  When Scripture speaks of waiting it is not like the waiting of the impatient in the drive up line at the bank or the frustrated in the doctor’s office tired of reading outdated magazines.  Waiting means trusting.  He saves all those who trust in Him.  From the innocent child whose life was taken before it barely began to the guilty who squandered its every opportunity to the aged whose minds have grown dim and bodies fragile.  He saves all with the death powerful enough to pay death off and He saves all with the life stronger than death ever was.
    On Veterans Day we come acknowledging that wars still beget wars and peace is a barren woman with no children to follow her.  Except in Christ.  In Christ is the death that kills death and the life that never ends.  His sacrificial payment was made not for Him, but for us.  His suffering has bore the unlikely fruit of peace for those who trust in Him.  His offering still pleads  on behalf of all, its blood price of freedom bestows peace for you and for me and all who will receive Him.
    Dear friends, of wars there is no end, as Scripture says, until Christ.  He is the end of war and the dawn of hope to a people wearying of trusting any one and any thing.  On this Veterans Day offer our gratitude to those who died and will still die to protect us and to give us a fragile peace.  We come lamenting the personal death we carry within us and the impersonal death that claims the guilty and the innocent on battle field after battle field.  Where is our peace?  It lies not in leaders negotiating or the might of man.  It is in Christ alone.  Where is our hope?  It lies not in princes or earthly kingdoms.  It is in Christ alone.  Where is death's match?  It lies not human accomplishment.  It is in Christ alone.  Where is the war to end all wars?  It lies not in the battlefields of the past nor the conflicts of the future.  It is in the Christ alone.  He lived to die and  died that we might live.  Once for all.  Nothing added or needed.  His death completes the war sin’s rebellion began.  This is the peace that will not disappoint us.  This is the peace we yearn to know.  This is the peace strong enough to carry our burden and bring us finally home to the place where death is unknown.  God give us this peace in Christ.  Amen.

Who votes for the Church?

We have just spent more than enough time preparing for an election in our country and will be hearing from the pundits for many months to come as to the meaning of the ballots cast.  Chesterton once wrote that democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.  Now there is a happy choice.  But I would turn the attention from the secular to the sacred.  Who votes for the Church?  We live in a nation in which democracy has been enshrined in ecclesiastical structures as well as political.  A good question that might be asked as my own church body prepares for a national convention is about the lay people who will cast votes on matters of doctrine (lets not fool ourselves, we do end up voting on doctrine!), structure, and practice in our church body.

Pastor William Hartfelder, Jr., wrote a piece in the November Forum Letter that speaks well to this.  About the end of his piece he recounts the shock and awe of non-Lutherans who found out that no criteria existed for lay delegates except that they be duly elected.  One voice in the conversation as bluntly:  What were the criteria used by which these lay members were selected to make such important decisions?  The sad truth for ELCA church wide assemblies and Missouri conventions is that there is no criteria for lay folks except that the rules were followed in electing them to go.  Though, to be sure, for the ELCA gender, color, and sexual orientation may be criteria informally applied and for Missouri it may come down to those who are willing to go (because so many of our best people wish to have nothing to do with the process).

It is an embarrassment to churches that we make decisions based upon a vote held every few years by people who have no real training or preparation for the momentous choices that are made.  The LCMS recension of the Augsburg Convention at Witchita in 1989 is case in point.  The ELCA CWA decisions on gay and lesbian clergy and marriage is an egregious example of what goes on when people vote their own conscience instead of voting the mind of the Church (based upon Scripture, Confession, and tradition).  I am NOT saying that lay should not vote (if we are voting) but that more care and attention needs to be given to which lay vote and to make sure that those elected have the wisdom and theological weight to make informed votes.

While a national criteria might be a source of political manipulation, those who locally vote on who will represent them need to take more than the willing and to elect delegates who have the wisdom, faith, and stature to vote more than an individual conscience on these weighty matters.  Furthermore, if we are to give needed ballast to these national referendums on church faith and policy and practice, we must make sure that those making the decisions have been well prepared for the votes they must make (given our constitutional structure and the rules of the by-laws).  I am not speaking politically but catechetically.  The information I am referring to is not an election list published by one group or another but serious and deep catechetical training in what Lutherans believe, confess, and teach.

I am not casting personal aspersions upon any individual delegates but from my own experience I know how hard it is to find anyone to go to a national or district convention and how little attention gets paid to their qualifications, integrity, and catechetical preparation.  As one who was elected to represent my circuit to the 2013 Synod Convention, I take this sacred trust very seriously.  We act not on the basis of popular poll or personal conscience but the mind of the Church already expressed through Scripture, Confession, and tradition.  We dare not substitute any other criteria for our decisions or look to any other agenda than preserving the faith, proclaiming the faith, and passing on the faith.

Much of the silliness of conventions lies in the fact that we feel the need to entertain our delegates or distract them (thinking the work of the kingdom done here either too boring or detailed to keep them focused).  We need to expect more from the delegates (clergy and lay).  We need to take far more care in electing them and hold them accountable.  They do not represent us and they do not represent themselves.  They represent the Church on our behalf.  Anything less and this becomes a political endeavor not all that different from what just happened in the years leading up to and including November 6.

As the judicial world turns...

From Melissa Steffan and Gleanings a Christianity Today blog:

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has declined to dictate whom a church can "consider a lay liturgical minister under canon law," dropping its previous three-fold test.

In its first case to address the ministerial exception doctrine in light of the Supreme Court's Hosanna-Tabor ruling, the court held that plaintiff Philip Cannata, a music director, was a "minister" for purposes of the ministerial exception doctrine. The ruling affirmed a lower court's ruling to dismiss Cannata's claim for violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Cannata had argued that he had no ministerial training and was not ordained—and thus could not be considered a minister.

However, the court stated, "Cannata’s lack of formal training in Catholic doctrine is immaterial; this is because the ministerial exception does not apply only to those who are ordained." 
ECFA, citing a new report by Holland and Knight, explains how the court dropped its previous three-fold test:

Before Hosanna-Tabor, the Fifth Circuit articulated a three-factor test for determining when an employee qualifies as a minister within the meaning of the doctrine. It said the court must consider whether: (1) employment decisions regarding the position at issue are made largely on religious criteria; (2) the plaintiff was qualified and authorized to perform the ceremonies of the church; and, most importantly, (3) the employee engaged in activities traditionally considered ecclesiastical or religious, including attending to the religious needs of the faithful. But the court determined that the effect of Hosanna-Tabor was either to invalidate or modify the three-part test for two reasons: (1) Hosanna-Tabor requires a totality-of-the-circumstances analysis, rather than "rigid formula" or bright-line test; and (2) courts may not weight one factor (such as the third) over another.

CT has reported on the ministerial exception doctrine, and covered the Hosanna-Tabor case as it made its way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in January to strengthen the doctrine.

Veterans Day Thoughts...

Living in a city with such a huge presence of active duty, former military, and retired military has left me with renewed awe and appreciation for those who have defended our nation, fought to protect our liberty, and gone the world over in the cause of American interests.  The numbers of those dead and wounded over the years is too great a number for me to imagine.  On Sunday morning I see the faces of so many young and middle aged folks who may be there in civilian clothing but who are always "on duty."  We have had colonels and the lowest of the enlisted ranks, helicopter pilots and mechanics, paratroopers and chaplains, special forces and regular army.  They are tall and short, men and women, from cities and rural areas, but they share in common a remarkable sense of duty that makes me feel safe and secure.  More than this, it makes me feel a deep and abiding sense of gratitude toward those who have served and now serve.

As we approach Veterans Day (formerly Armistice Day and Remembrance Day for our Commonwealth friends), we lament that promise of the war to end all wars has not been kept.  Instead we find ourselves in conflict after conflict.  Some are nearer to our homes and some are so far away we can barely pronounce the geographic names.  In the midst of it all are those young men and women who have borne the lion's share of the burden of liberty's defense.  But don't just say a prayer of thanks, tell a veteran or active duty soldier "Thank you."

Happy Birthday, Martin!

There are many who claim, more who do not understand him, many more who don't know who he is, some who believe it would have been better for Christianity if he had not been born, and others who believe him to be a Savior.  Somewhere in all of this is the truth -- a great deal more humble but no less profound.  It has been said the more words have been written about Luther than just about any other individual person.  It is certainly true that many of those words are not worth a whole lot.  Luther himself did not think so highly of many of his own writings.  But where would we be without him?

Try watching The Borgias on Showtime or Borgia: Faith and Fear series.  When Luther was born in 1483, this is what was going on in the papacy and this was the state of the church.  Given that these series are salacious by design and some of the story undoubtedly manufactured, history is not too kind about this period in Christianity.  A little Luther was not much in the face of such a state of affairs but he proved to more than a force to be reckoned with.  All in all I think even Rome thinks the issues Luther raised were legitimate and the state of the church scandalous.  Where would be now without him or those like him who called for reform and renewal built upon the Word of God?  I cannot bear to think it...  So here's to you Martin! 

The diminishing sense of community...

We have spoken many times about the problems of establishing or finding community.  The church has become a very important venue for community struggles to fill the void and, as many complain, the church has not been as successful as many have hoped -- both those inside and those searching from the outside.  It is worth our time to consider the things that are pulling against community.

1. Family is stressed and scattered, pulled in various and diverse directions.  Who sits down to dinner together?  How often is this an occasion and how seldom is this a part of the family's routine?  If community is grounded upon the family and the breakdown of the family has created a weak foundation for a sense of community and belonging, then everything that follows the family will necessarily be weaker.

2. Courtship and marriage have been replaced by a hook up culture, by social media, and co-habitation. The common complaint among the single is where can you go to meet somebody?  Face to face venues have given way to social media as the place to meet, court, and even date -- Facebook friends become lovers become potential spouses. Though the places we can connect are many, the nature of these avenues of socialization make it harder for real connections.  Have you paid attention to the online meeting/dating services advertising on TV, radio, the internet, and in your email inbox?

3. When we do connect, we connect with people who have a past.  This may be the garden variety promiscuity or “hooking up” which has replaced courtship but it means that such pasts often create impediments to that intimacy that is desired.  Or, the past may be more sinister.  Many complain that people are not who they claim to be and that serious problems are easily masked by the superficial nature of our contacts. We connect with our pasts but we do not admit to them nor do we include our family so instead we are left with merely the wounds.

4. Some 40% of women today have never been married; of women age twenty-five to forty the number is closer to 60%. When they do marry, it is much later in life than in prior times.Most couples who do finally get married, postpone that now until the early to mid thirties. And smaller numbers of those who finally do get married struggle to stay married. Of all women married today, only 36% of them are in their first marriage. What this means is that marriage is rarer, later, and less successful than ever before.

5. Smaller families – it goes without saying, with marriage being in such crisis that birthrates have declined.  The family as community is a much smaller community than before and it offers less opportunities for socialization and community than ever before.  Significant numbers of children social primarily with adults and so their socialization is skewed gy this.  In effect they skip part of their socialization and jump to the mature world of adulthood deprived of a real childhood.

6. Most people no longer value or attend community organizations and their meetings.  Neighbors seldom interact with their neighbors and blocks and apartment buildings are filled with people who are strangers to one another. Church attendance is certainly not the only form of community meeting that has experienced an decline in attendance.

7. Displaced from family and the support systems in place where families live more local to each other, we find ourselves on our own.  Our geographical mobility has enriched our experiences but left us lonely and isolated.  Few people live and die in the community they grew up in, or work for the same company the whole of their career, but are more constantly on the move from job to job and place to place.

8. The decline in the number of secure institutions that anchor our community has taken its toll. Think how many schools a child may attend during his elementary and high school years or the myriad of sports and music options that steal away the playtime in which children and youth would learn community and socialize together.  In addition, look around the community to see how many volunteer youth agencies are suffering both a lack of leaders and youth (scouting, is but one example).

9. Increasing numbers of Christians do not attend their neighborhood parish. We travel to our churches of choice and every Sunday pass by other congregations of the same denomination so that distance limits our connections to the church as community. We may be present on Sunday but not during the week. Those who do attend regularly, go to more specialized parishes featuring particular “mixes” of people, perspectives, ideologies, worship identities, ethnic factors, etc., so that they are often less diverse than ever before.

The pressure upon the Church is great and the desire for community may compete with the specific mission of sharing the Gospel.  That is not to say that community is a fruit of the Word proclaimed and the Sacraments administered -- it is -- but fostering community may take a higher priority and more significant role in the life and ministry of the church than is realized even by the church's leaders and members.  No one doubts that the need is great but the pressure to substitute community building for faithful proclamation of the Gospel is a very real danger.

A New Archbishop of Canterbury... so what?!?

Justin Welby, the Bishop of Durham, has accepted the post of Archbishop of Canterbury.  Who is Justin Welby?  He is a former oil executive, educated at Eton and Cambridge, a novice bishop, former Dean of Liverpool, evangelical style Anglican, more traditional than radical, interested in what the Bible says, but a supporter of both women's ordination and contemporary worship forms.  But, of course, these things are somewhat relative since Anglicans are hardly Bible thumpers and they are so divided as to have elastic holding in the the communion with all its theological and practical diversity.  What will  he do?  Who knows?  Will it make a difference for a once noble tradition that seems bent on self-destruction?  Probably not but he could buy the church a bit more time.  He has managerial experience and knows the world from the vantage point of business and this certainly will help a communion accustomed to academics or clerics who worked themselves up the ladder of leadership.  Oh, well, interesting... but not all that relevant, at least to me...

The laws we pass. . .

At the end of September, California passed a law making it illegal for licensed therapists to counsel minors away from same-sex attraction. It is designed to prohibit therapies that seek to change the sexual orientation of the patient -- never mind that the patient, a minor, may not be sure what his or her sexual orientation is at this stage of their lives.  Therapists are not only prevented from the more radical and controversial “conversation therapies;” they are also barred from helping patients reduce feelings of same-sex attraction at all.  While the law does not apply to clergy, but it does apply to all forms of licensed mental health workers, including social workers and counselors. There is no exemption for therapists for religious conviction nor is there any room for dissent.

In Alabama and Wyoming, voters approved measures to amend their state constitution to prohibit people from being compelled to participate in Obamacare.  Arkansas and Oregon voted down more liberal marijuana laws.

In Colorado and Washington measures to amend the state constitution to legalize and regulate the production, possession and distribution of marijuana for people age 21 and older passed.  Medical marijuana was approved in Massachusetts.

Maine repealed a previous state law banning same-sex marriage and Maryland passed laws allowing same sex marriage.

Minnesota became the first state to reject a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage though it is still illegal by statute.

Massachusetts narrowly defeated a law legalizing physician assisted suicide.

Among other things, the trend is clearly set toward laws that legalize marriage rules formerly changed by judicial process and the liberalization of laws on marijuana use. Even where more restrictive laws were upheld, the margins were not very high.  Another go around and they will probably fall.

I will leave it to others to comment further but the undercurrent of this election reflects a changed electorate and changed values -- ones that are more and more in conflict with orthodox Christianity.

The longing for a simpler life...

There is that wonderful line in the movie RED in which Helen Mirren says to a wounded Bruce Willis character:  "That is why I love you.  You are a romantic.  You are all hard on the outside but inside you are gooey..."  That is sort of the way we are.  We live our modern lives with a certain hardness.  We moan and complain all the time about how busy we are, about the economy and our lack of money, about technology and keeping up with it (and paying for it), about how hard things have become, how cynical we and our culture have become, etc...  We are hard on the outside and inside we all just want to be Amish -- not the ones on reality TV who are kids rushing to escape what they think is the prison of simple life but the adult Amish who know what they have lost and what they have gained by their wariness of modern life and its things.  We are romantic on the inside for an Amish style of life (whether or not that image is real or simply imginary).

We long for a simple life of honest work largely with our muscles and not our minds.  We dream after a life in which our things do not possess us.  We lust for a life when family could play a board game or sit reading together or get all excited over some popcorn.  We look at the packaged food we eat wondering what is really in that stuff and wish we cooked and ate like our great-grandparents with food that was not primarily styrofoam, cardboard, and clear plastic wrap.  We have a romance for the day when you walked more and drove less (a boon given the gas prices and the cost of cars).  We daydream of a time when our kids could head out the door in the morning and come home for meals and we did not live in fear for their mortal lives.  We wonder if there will ever be a day when friends were face to face over appetizers and drinks and a long leisurely meal instead of a clicked button on Facebook.

We are all hard on the outside and carry a thick crust of disappointment, cynicism, distrust, and reluctant addiction to the the things of modern life.  But inside we all just want to be Amish.  Well, we want to be Amish in theory.  But the reality of it all is that we have made our peace and our pact with the devil of harried modern life and we are not about to trade our brand new I-Phone for hitching up the buggy to talk to a friend.  We work hard to pay the freight of modern day life and we wish both husband and wife did not have to work but if not working means giving up some of our hated toys, we are not ready to ditch our things just yet.

It is I think the classic dilemma of sin.  For that is the perfect way to define our romance for righteousness but our insatiable hunger and thirst for the secular, the vulgar, and the personal.  We think we want to be holy but when the path of holiness lays before it, we seem to long more for the comfortable misery of sin and its death.  Redemption is not merely about behavior but about the heart, about desire, about living in reality what is merely a romantic notion -- life with God in Christ.  Perhaps this is why we indulge ourselves so in the guilty pleasures of worship which is more entertainment than Divine Service, with music that is more about personal taste and a good beat than the Words of eternal life, with Church that is the place to go because it is fun more than it is the place to encounter the Living Christ in the means of grace.  Perhaps this is why we say we want objective truth but at the same point in time we don't want to be bound by it or live captive to us -- we want our curious, distracted, odd notions right along side our supposed orthodoxy.

We are romantics who secretly love the reality of today more than we adore the image of a simpler tomorrow.  It is true about faith as well as life.  That is why the battle is so hard -- both the Church's battle to bring the kingdom near to us and our own battle to live in that kingdom versus the comfortable misery of our current kingdom of sin and its death.

A few election thoughts...

President Obama received the necessary votes for another term.  Whether or not this is a victory will be fleshed out later.  What dismays me most is the polarized nature of the process and the result.  Instead of a campaign of ideas, we ended up with a mud slinging contest and the bulk of it came from the man who offered us hope and change we could believe in (four years ago, anyway).  Whatever the future will be, we are left with a nation and a people severely divided as to the agenda and the priorities facing us.  Men and women of good will seem to be in ever short supply when it comes to the national stage.  It would seem that both Republican leaders and the President and his crew could benefit from a bit more humility and a great deal more repentance.  For the worst outcome of this election just might be the mind and mood of the voter.  It is one thing to run a campaign like campaigns before and to lose.  It is another to insist that you are different, better, and above the partisan fray and then prove you are the same.  The end result here is not a political win or loss but the disillusionment of a great many who had hoped for more from the people who made them promises.

I have never been an Obama fan but neither have I been a Romney fan.  I voted not as a true believer but as a person making a choice between two very different visions for America.  For good or for ill, I voted and will vote again.  I fear that one outcome of this nation is that we will settle for big campaigns of small ideas, elections won by tearing down the opponent rather than raising up a positive agenda, and candidates who are better at beating up each other than forging a national consensus.  On purpose I borrowed those words from then candidate Obama who spoke them four years ago.  If there is one thing I would require of any winner of an election it is that they would be forced to listen to the high ideals they espoused in the beginning and then be forced to repent of the low blows they ended up slinging -- no matter what party they come from.

A new Coptic Pope. . .

Here is the announcement of the election of the successor to beloved Coptic Pope Shenouda III... note the selection process (noted a while back on this blog). . .

On November 4, 2012, H.E. Metropolitan Pachomius and the Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church celebrated the Divine Liturgy at St. Mark Cathedral in Al Abbassiya, Cairo, Egypt and conducted the ancient apostolic tradition of the Altar Lot to choose the 118th Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria.

The names of the three candidates — H.G. Bishop Roufail, H.G. Bishop Tawadrous, and Hegumen Fr. Raphael Ava Mina — were placed in a beautiful glass vase prior to the Divine Liturgy in a manner that ensured transparency and fairness. The vase was sealed with wax as the honorable fathers celebrated the Divine Liturgy.

At the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy, a young boy named Bishoy was chosen by a lot to pick one name from the vase while blindfolded. Metropolitan Pachomius carefully unfolded the chosen name after much prayer and openly displayed the name — HIS GRACE BISHOP TAWADROUS — before all to see. The faithful erupted into euphoric cheers and joy.

Bishop Pakhomious then congratulated the Coptic Orthodox Church and formally announced the 118th pope of Alexandria as Pope Tawadros II. The name Tawadrous is an Arabicized version of the Greek “Theodoros,” which means “gift from God.”

May the Lord preserve his life and bless his service to the Church for many years.

Good Guys Wear Black

I wish I had come up with this name for my blog.  Someone else did and it is dead on. We seem to have replaced not only a theology and worship practice but a wardrobe as well.  So in place of the usual black clerical shirt and dark suit or cassock, we have polos and khakis, jeans and an untucked long sleeve shirt with the sleeves rolled up and unbuttoned three or four buttons down the front, messy hair purposefully arranged as such, the so-called faux hawk, and, of course, the obligatory five o'clock shadow of whiskers (a beard not yet come or on its way out, I cannot tell for sure).

In the midst of all of this, I was at an event where a young girl insisted upon sitting next to me for the meal -- she wanted to be near the Pastor, the man in black.  All I am saying is that you cannot go wrong with basic black and small hint of white at the collar or the all white ring I wear.  It simply shouts "church, faith, faithfulness..." 

Lord, I want to be in their number... when the saints go marching in...

Sermon preached for All Saints, Observed, on Sunday, November 4, 2012.

    Two big weeks – last week Reformation!  Today All Saints!  Change and decay all around I see says the old hymn Abide with Me.  Change and decay which can only be reformed and renewed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Last week it was about a church that needed to be made new and Luther and those who raised up the Gospel to accomplish just that. 
    Today it is not about the Church but her members  – about the saints great and anonymous who went before us and who bequeathed to us this living legacy of faith and hope and about you and me.  But this day is not simply an acknowledgment of a past; it is the focus forward on that which is to come.  We are not who we were.  We are saints by God's declaration and Jesus' blood in the waters of baptism.  We live right now sustained in hope by the means of grace.  We are focused forward on the future prepared for us.
    Today begins with the last line of the last hymn we sang just last week.  In A Mighty Fortress, we sang the Kingdom ours remaineth.  The kingdom IS ours.  We are not waiting for it.  It has already come to us.  Jesus brought the Kingdom to us by His birth in human flesh and blood.  He delivered this Kingdom to us by His suffering and death.  This Kingdom is here because Christ is here.  He is no feeling in our gut or idea in our minds.  He is here in the means of grace, the Word and Sacraments.  We do not imagine Him but meet Him in the reality of the splash of water, the voice of the Word, the sound of absolution, and the taste of bread and wine.  Here is Christ.  Here is the Truth that endures forever.  Here is where God shows Himself to us and delivers to us His grace.  We don't want for it; it is already here!
    If Christ is here, His body is here – the Church.  Christ is not some floating head but the head of the body which is His Church.  The Church is not some imagined place but the concrete place where God is in the midst of His people in the Word and Sacraments.  Here He calls us to be His own and live under Him in the Church.  The Church, the body of Christ, is where Christ the head is and He is where His Word is preached and His sacraments administered faithfully.
    Once a non-Lutheran spouse complained to me that Lutherans worshiped forms and not the Christ.  I told her she was absolutely right.  “I knew it,” she said.  But the form IS Christ.  He is not some ethereal spirit but the concrete Christ of the means of grace.  We worship the Christ who is right there in the water that cleanses us inside and out, in the living voice of the Gospel that speaks and our sins our forgiven, and in the bread and wine that feeds us His own body and blood.  The problem is for those who worship an absent Christ located only in feelings and ideas. We worship a present Lord, Emmanuel, God with us in the means of grace.
    The Kingdom is ours and it is here right now because Christ is here in the means of grace that deliver up to us His Kingdom.  But not all of it is seen.  We see those who, like us, are flesh and blood. But there are also the saints who have gone before us.  They are here but are unseen by these earthly eyes, discerned only by faith.  Though hidden, they are one with us in praise to God when, in the liturgy, we sing “Therefore with angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven we laud and magnify Thy holy name, evermore praising Thee and singing...”  Until that day when the barrier between heaven and earth comes down for good, we are closest to the saints who have gone before us through the liturgy.
    The kingdom is all the baptized children of God – both the living and the dead, those who  labor like us under the constraints of this flesh and the taunts of this world and the devil and those whose labors are complete, who have finished their course in faith and now rest from their labors.  We walk among them.  They are the giants who have left to us the big footprints of a people made mighty in Christ, forgiven of their sins, who lived without fear of death, and who died confident of Christ's life in them.
    We walk with the giants – but by God's grace we are equal sharers with them in all that Christ has done.  We share an equal inheritance with them of the riches of God's grace but we are becoming giants whom others will look to with thanksgiving to God and in whose footsteps they will follow as we have followed those who went before us, and all of us follow Christ.
    We are a people on the move.  We cannot afford to be wearied by the despair, disease, and death of this world neither can we afford to become too comfortable with the joys of the present day.  Our troubles cannot steal from us all that Christ has given and our joys cannot match up to what He has prepared for us.  So we keep on the march, in step toward the great future God has prepared for us.  In New Orleans the jazz tradition has the mourners are accompanied by the old song "When the saints go marching in."  That song begins:  We are traveling in the footsteps Of those who've gone before But we'll all be reunited On a new and sunlit shore...Oh when the saints go marching in, Lord, I want to be in that number... So today we come to pray, “Oh, I want to be in that number.”  It is the urgent call of the saints praying God to prevent both the heights of today’s glory and the depths of its sorrows from stealing away our focus and our attention to the heavenly glory yet to come.
    We are not content with only today.  We are marching toward a certain future Christ has prepared for us.  We will not be content until we reach that immortal land of promise.  We do not walk on our own.  The Kingdom of God is with us in the Word and the Sacraments.  Christ is here and His presence gives us courage and comfort.  But we are marked for greater things.  We wait for the culmination of what He began.  As we journey in faith, we eat, we drink, we confess, we are forgiven, we are loved, we love, we are served with Christ's gifts and we serve one another in His name.  This is no aimless trek but the march of the saints to God's promised goal.
    There is more to come for us and for the kingdom begun in us in baptism.  There is more than mind can comprehend.  We are marching toward Zion.  The saints from yesterday and yesteryear, those long gone and the recently departed, those living among us and those who have gone before, we are the saints of God.  Some are marching by faith – the saints in whose steps we march.  Some are marching by faith – walking in the way toward a dimly seen but glorious eternal tomorrow.  That is what All Saints Day is about.  What can we say to all this but, "Lord, I want to be in their number!  Keep me, Lord.  Keep me going, Lord.  Keep me focused, Lord." 

What do you hate about "pastoring"?

In a blog post entitled "Ten Things Pastors Hate About Pastoring" Orthodox priest Fr. John Peck has passed on some of the top issues as identified by an unlikely compatriot -- Dr. Thom Rainer, President and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources (the Southern Baptist publishing arm).  I reprint it here to pass it on for your review and comment.

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By Thom S. Rainer

Some of these things are universal among pastors. Some, like funerals, are nuanced by the Orthodox experience, but I (Fr. John) say, if you’re not talking about the Resurrection at every funeral anyway, you don’t understand the difference between the purpose of the wake and the purpose of the funeral. Dr. Thom Rainer is president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The expectations of a pastor are endless. Many members expect them to be omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. But different pastors are wired differently. One pastor may get great fulfillment out of counseling, while another dreads every minute of it.

So I did an informal and unscientific survey of pastors. I asked them a simple question: “What do you like least about being a pastor?” The question was opened-ended and they could give more than one response.
I learned two things from this survey. First, pastors can have strong opinions about what they don’t like. Second, pastors are really different. The responses were wide-ranged and often in opposition to each other.
So here are the top ten things pastors don’t like about pastoring. I’ve listed them in reverse order. I then follow each dislike with a comment from a representative pastor.

10. Dealing with budgets and finance.

“I have a pastor friend who has a finance major. He was in business before he went to seminary and he loves working with numbers. Not me. I get nauseas at the thought of working on the church budget.”

9. Weddings.

“Emotions are usually high at weddings. Some people are difficult to handle. Plus the rehearsal, ceremony, and reception take away my whole weekend. I wish we could pass a law that no weddings can take place during college football season.”

8. Announcements in the worship service.

“This past Sunday I was asked to announce that one of the older Sunday school classes was having a garage sale to raise money to repair the pipe organ. Their hearts were right, but I had to talk about a garage sale and a pipe organ right before I preached.”

7. Persistent critics.

“You have to deal with critics if you are a pastor. I just struggle with those who are always on me about something. They never let up. It can be demoralizing.”

6. Anonymous critics.

“I shouldn’t even let anonymous critics bother me. If they don’t have the courage to use their name, I have no reason to dwell on it. But, I’ve got to admit, it really bugs me. I find myself wondering throughout the day who it might be.”

5. Counseling.

“I really envy those pastors who are counselors. They get energized by listening to people at their points of need and hurt. I have to admit that my mind wanders and I watch the clock. I don’t think I really help anybody when I counsel.”

4. Treating spouses like they are paid staff members.

“I really hurt for my wife because we have one church member that expects her to put in the same amount of hours at church as I do. My wife is taking care of our three preschool children at home, but she feels guilty every time the church member talks to her.”

3. Supporters who don’t support pastors publicly.

“One guy was ripping into me at our last business meeting. But he didn’t bother me as much as my so-called supporters who remained silent the whole time. They’ve told me that they are behind me, but they weren’t there for me when I needed them the most.”

2. Funerals of non-Christians.

“I’ve been a pastor for nearly thirty years, and I still struggle when I’m asked to do the funeral of someone who never professed Christ. Most of the time my funeral message is directed at the family, and how God will comfort them. It’s still not easy.”

1. Business meetings.

“Let me know if you come across a pastor that actually likes church business meetings. I want to find the secret to his moments of delusion.”

What do you think of this list? What would you add?

An affection for gargoyles...

Gargoyles... I have many.  Mostly cheap.  Some resin replications of some notable ones.  A very few castings of historic ones.  I do not know why.  I despise clowns but have a great affection for gargoyles.

If you want to read something of gargoyles, I suggest Matthew Alderman, an architect of some note now with the historic firm Cram and Ferguson (designers of the some of the most beautiful and inspiring church structures around).  Just read.  I hope you will like gargoyles, too.

The Devil in the Details:  The Return of the Gargoyle.   Note the one in the photo; Le Stryge, the gargoyle on watch atop Notre Dame.

The moral justification for having children...

Gilbert Meilaender is a true treasure of our Lutheran Church, a teacher of wisdom and truth, and an artful voice addressing the world with the faithful apologetic or defense of the Gospel.  If you do not know him, you need to.  If you have not read him, you are missing out.  I have grown to love and delight in this man and his great cause of faithfulness and his Christ-centered moral and ethical voice in the muddle between evil and virtue.  He has been one of the few bright lights in my otherwise cloudy view of Valparaiso University.  The Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair of Christian Ethics, Meilaender has written also for the distinguished journal of religion and politics, First Things.

Now, Meilaender has written well in The New Atlantis about the blessing of children.  You can read it online here.  It is well worth your efforts. To whet your appetite, I have included two beginning paragraphs from his article.  Note that Meilaender is addressing the commonly held belief that bringing into existence “a new and vulnerable human being ... whose future may be at risk” always requires moral justification.  None of us would deny that the West is having fewer children and is facing some moral confusion on why to bring children into the world and whether children are a blessing or not.  The good author here addresses this confusion head on in an article well worth your reading.

In both the Morning and Evening Prayer services in The Book of Common Prayer there is a prayer, used for centuries, called simply “A General Thanksgiving.” “We bless thee,” it says in part, “for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life.... And, we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful....”

This conviction that it is a blessing to be alive and that life is a good for which we should be thankful was not, however, made without an accompanying sense of life’s dangers and difficulties — not least among them the dangers women faced in order to transmit the blessing of life. The same Book of Common Prayer contained a rite of thanksgiving for women who had given birth (a rite known as “the Churching of Women”), in which the new mother, together with the congregation, offered to God “humble thanks for that thou hast been graciously pleased to preserve, through the great pain and peril of child-birth, this woman, thy servant, who desireth now to offer her praises and thanksgivings unto thee.”

All Saints Observed

 

 

Religion? None

One of the great challenges of pollsters, social commentators, and those who gauge the religious health of the nation is what to do with those who say "None" to the question of religion.  On the one hand, it is tempting to believe that no religion also means no belief in God.  That would be mistaken.  One in five Americans is likely to identify as no religion but that does not necessarily mean that they do not believe in God, are not spiritual, or that their values or political affiliation is radically different from those who identity with a faith.

The beliefs of the unaffiliated aren’t easy to characterize, as the Pew poll shows. The nones are far less likely to attend worship services or to say religion is important in their lives. But 68 percent say they believe in God or a universal spirit, one-fifth say they pray every day and 5 percent report attending weekly services of some kind.

You can read more of this in the Washington Post online.  Suffice it to say, this group is at the same time both much alike and much different from the generic Christian public.  They tend to believe in some sort of God and yet they do not identity with any church or congregation.  They pray but they do not worship with others very often.  They value spiritual things but they do not like dogmatic positions or the mixing of church and state.  Despite their nickname, the “nones” are far from godless.  Eight of ten American identify with a specific religious group but the "nones" seem united in the fact that none of the existing churches have been found very attractive to them or to their idea of "faith."

At best it is the result of a face away from affiliating at all and at worst this phenomenon is but one but stop away from avowed atheism.  Time will tell.  Interestingly, most of those reporting are very hesitant to sell American Christianity short or too quickly sound the death knell for religion in America.  The number of Protestants is dipping -- could that be because in some of those Protestant denominations no religion and their religion is roughly the same?  The commentators are quick to suggest that the problem is the religious right and it is always in fashion to lay blame in that direction.  I wonder if it is not equally due to the lack of much religious fervor or flavor among more and more of the liberal wing of Protestantism.  The more you can believe anything the less you need to believe something at all.  In any case I would suggest that the more faithful response is not through the media aimed at the larger landscape but one or more individuals at a time as the faith is shared and piety demonstrated.  I tend to believe the future of religion in America lies less with those who rinse distinctives out of religion and more with those who are authentic and passionate for what they believe and who they are.  But that is just me...

Control.... or the illusion of control

One of the remarkable changes of modern life is the dazzling array of choices before us.  We are able to tailor more things to our individual taste than any time in history (so far).  We adjust all the preferences on our computers to fit our own personal desires. We have our own list of favorites on our computers.  We have our own personal address books and stylistic set ups for email.  We have preferences and choices for our Facebook pages.  We download rings and ring back tones to personalize our cell phones.  We shop online with preferences and choices already picked out for us (the benefit of a computer that scans our past choices to best predict our future ones from Amazon to Ebay).  We have more car choices than every before and within those brands we specify models, trim levels, and individual options as well.  From techno toys to TV, we have more choice than ever before.  Having recently acquired a Netflix account, I see movie and TV series after movie and TV series all because I ticked off this preference or that.  All of this is simple evidence of our desire to exercise complete control over as much of our lives as possible.  We desire to live out of the box but it seems that our intensive effort to exert control only ends up boxing us in more and more based upon our preferences and our past choices.

As we work to control the content of "my life," we also further isolate us from the very groups that contribute to our sense of identity and contribute to the sense of belonging that is so important to our security and our comfort zones.  It is no accident that people are lonely while having a seemingly endless supply of ways to connect and communicate (above, beyond, or instead of the face to face dialog that is more rarely chosen because it remains less predictable).

After first being enamored of these manifold choices, I am becoming more and more wary of them and what they are doing to us -- and, more importantly, to our children!  While not faulting the technology itself, the way we use it to exercise seeming control over our lives can also be tacit evidence of the curvatus in se character of original sin.  It is also descriptive of how sin works to reject which we desire most of all -- community and fellowship.

Maybe you have seen the commercial for whatever online dating service where the guy meets the gal for the first "get to know you" date and spends the whole time texting and talking on his phone.  Perhaps that should be the symbol of what we have done to our technology and how we have used this technology in less than salutary ways.  The guy cannot let go of any and every diversion because of the fear that doing so might cede control to someone else.  So he goes on a date because he feels lonely only to end up giving the girl a distant second to that dad-blamed cell phone and its choices (text, photo, email, internet, ect.).

It is the illusion of control, the delightful lie that we are in charge or in control, that tempts us most of all.  Even if we cannot actually be in control, we so delight in the illusion and enjoy the manipulation of every resource available to us -- until the constant personalization of things and the pursuit of choices ends up  overwhelming us and leaving us dry and empty.

One of the most helpful thing God does is to reveal how our constant pursuit of control, our ever present urge to define and detail all the choices before us. is the most cruel bondage of all.  Strip away the layers of technology and our incessant need to personalize everything in our lives and you find a sinner captive to his or her fears and impotent to do anything but acquiesce.  It is to this that Christ was incarnate and for this that He has come -- to set the captive free.  May God help us confront this addiction to choice and release it finally and fully from its cruel taskmaster or we will never find any sense of contentment, peace, or joy!

Is it just a communication problem...

At a pastoral conference, one of the presenters played a video (I wish someone could point me to the source) in which we saw and heard a young woman, perhaps, atypical of the average LCMS church goer.  She began with these words:  We use the same words but we do not speak the same language...

Immediately, I began to marvel at that sentence.  It is an apt description of what has happened to us since the Fall.  We use the same words as God uses but we do not speak the same language.  Therefore, our communication is hindered by words that do not communicate.  Until, of course, the Word made flesh.  He is, as Hebrews reminds us, the full and final Word and this Word is gracious and merciful. In many and various ways God spoke, but now He has spoken through His Son.  The complete and definitive Word of the Lord.  The Word that endures forever, though all other things pass away.

As I moved from that imagery, I thought of the difference between the perspective of faith and the point of view of unbelief.  The words are still there but without faith, the Word (Christ) remains unheard in those words.  Here you cannot but think of Paul and Romans:  Faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word of God.  We are not deaf in the sense of we hear no words but we are deaf in that the words we hear remain just words until the Spirit engenders faith to hear Christ, the Word made flesh.

By this time, the video had moved on and it was apparent my daydreams were heading in a completely different direction that this young woman.  She was contrasting her identity, her life, her experiences, and her perspective from the "usual" perspective of churched people.  She pleaded for the church (especially the preacher) to get to know her and to find out about her so that the church (and read that the preacher) can speak to her in her heart language so that she can hear and understand.

What began about preaching soon turned into a challenge about catechesis, the jargon of Christianity (read that Scripture's vocabulary), worship, and music.  In other words, if the church (and this was pointed toward preachers and preaching) is to be successful in speaking to a woman like this, we have to learn her language, communicate in that language of her heart, and go to meet her where she is at.

As the video continued, it was clear to me that this was less a call to speak her language than it was the ultimate conclusion of our self-centered culture.  It is all about me.  You cannot speak to me until you learn to speak like me.  We live in an age in which personal preference and the way we see ourselves have become the pivotal aspect of our identity and self-expression.  In the individualized culture of the day, it would make the preacher's task nearly impossible.  If we are to take this woman seriously, we have a Tower of Babel on Sunday morning and people who speak so many different languages that it is impossible to speak to them all or even a majority of them in the sermon or liturgy.

But, going back to my first thoughts, is this not the whole point of Christ?  Is this not the whole point of Pentecost -- the undoing of language's divisions and the separations of culture so that one common tongue and one bridge calls to the diverse and scattered humanity?  Christ is that Word who speaks to all; He is accompanied by the Spirit teaching and imparting faith to hear and believe.

I was reminded also of a quote from Karl Barth (the theologian and not the LCMS District President) who said something about the church speaking the language of everyman in witness and the queer language of Scripture in worship.  It makes little sense for our witness to use words and language largely unintelligible to the hearer.  We do not speak in a different language than Scripture but we speak the message of Scripture in clear and understandable language.  Yet worship is a different story.  Worship is not an outreach event but the assembly of those already called, washed in the water of Baptism, and set apart as the people of God to whom Jesus gives the very gift of His flesh for food and His blood for drink.  That is not to say that the Word cannot or does not engender faith in the hear right there in worship -- but that is not the primary purpose of  worship.

Perhaps this video has hit upon one of the big issues that underlies the worship wars -- one group insists that the primary purpose and goal of Sunday morning is witness and the other sees it as the domain of the Lord and His gifts (the Divine Service3).  It may not be quite that simple but we do speak of worship from different poles.  If witness to the unchurched for conversion is the primary purpose of Sunday morning, worship does not, technically, take place.  For worship can only take place among those who have heard the Word of the Lord and, by the Spirit's grace, believed in Him whom God has sent to be our Savior.  Among the witness crowd, this kind of Divine Service may not be completely absent but is the private gathering that generally takes place sometime other than on Sunday morning.

Even if the Divine Service uses the form and content of the historic liturgy, obviously out of step with modern culture, that does not mean witness is absent.  In fact, we confess the witness of what happens among the baptized as God speaks, feeds, and bestows His gifts.  What do we say?  As often as we of eat this bread and drink of this cup we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.  The witness may not speak in language that the world readily understands but that does NOT mean that this worship is ineffective.  We also believe, confess, and teach that God's Word never returns to Him empty but accomplishes His purpose in sending it.  We may not see its fruits or results but that does not mean it is fruitless or effectual.  Faith trusts not what we see with our eyes but the promise of the Word.

And who said district pastoral conferences are not fruitful?!  Why, even wheen we may disagree with every premise of the presenter, he may help us understand even more clearly the truth by forcing us to wrestle with what it is that we believe, confess, and teach.  And that, my friends, is a good thing.  Why it even reminds me of one more passage -- God makes all things work together for the good of those whom He calls -- a passage which surely includes in God's working not merely the good and faithful things but even misstep, mistake, and error.  After all, was it not error that created the occasion for the wonderfully clear summary of Christian truth we call the Nicene Creed?

Swedish Songs for All Saints...

Growing up half Swede and half German, I learned the special music of both -- especially the hymns that you sought out for the most difficult moments such as a funeral.  I'm in my Svenska mood now so I present you with a few staples from a childhood of funerals as we remember the hope of the saints that is our hope as well.  These give a slightly different flavor to our All Saints observance -- less triumphal and more touching but with the same consolation in Christ's own resurrection that we too might be raised!

This Swedish folk hymn was written by Lina Sandell-Berg and it is coupled to the familiar melody that has always accompanied its beautiful words.  I cannot tell you how many times we gathered as a close knit community in the Nebraska hills to choke back tears and to bury sainted loved ones.  It is still a personal favorite.

This perhaps the most oft used funeral hymn of the old Augustana Synod congregations.  Written by noted Swedish Pastor Laurentius Laurentii Laurinus for his wife's funeral in 1620, it was revised two centuries later and, of all things, has ended up wedded to a Norwegian folk melody.  If you grew up among Swedes you would note the irony here.  In any case its words speak well of the home that is ours in Christ for this All Saints Day.

If you knew only one Swedish hymn, it would be this one.  If you, like me, grew up around Swedes, this is the one hymn you know in Swedish.  Written by the leading hymn writer of the pietist movement in Sweden, Lina Sandell Berg, it is one hymn of comfort, hope, safety, and refuge that still sounds in my ear in the voice of my beloved Grandmother Elvera Monson.  I think it but hear her sing it and I cannot sing it but long for the blest reunion which All Saints prefigures, the culmination of all that Christ has prepared and the end that brings eternity to those whom He loves and who have loved His appearing.

Blessed All Saints!

Looking for an artisan?

You can check here for examples ofThe Liturgical Work of Igor Derevyanyy.  It is amazing!  This photo alone is so rich and powerful that it boggles the mind.  Though I have never seen his work in person, I can only imagine what it must be like to worship in such a rich atmosphere of liturgical art!  Wow!

How does God work?

From Peter J. Leithart

Evangelicals gladly assent to Jean Daniélou’s claim that the mission of the church “continues the mighty works, the mirabilia Dei, recorded in the two Testaments” and agree that “God still accomplishes his mighty works, in the conversion and sanctification of souls.”

Few Evangelicals, though, would make sense of his further claim that “The working of God’s power among us is through the sacraments.”

My words:

That is indeed the crux of problem -- where does God work?  For Rome and Wittenberg and, less clearly, Constantinople, God works through the means of grace.  While we certainly differ in the numeration of the sacraments, we are all agreed upon the primacy of baptism and the Eucharist.  We also say that the Word is sacramental -- perhaps its sacramental character seen most deeply in penance or confession.  There the Word does exactly what it promises and the sin if forgiven.  Period.  Again, we differ in many respects but are fairly united in our confession that God works through means and the means through which God works are the Word and the Sacraments.

This remains the great shibboleth of Protestantism and why Lutheranism cannot today be said to be Protestant.  Protestants refuse to attach God's work to the places where God has attached Himself. 

Leithart again:

It will be a sign of extraordinary progress when Evangelicals are awestruck at ordinary water and confess with [Lutherans and Roman] Catholics (and St. Paul!), “All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”

My words:

For a group that insists upon a naked Scripture as the locus of all doctrinal truth, it is remarkable how Protestants seem deaf to the voice of Scripture in its manifold statements insisting that God works through these means of grace.  Perhaps the most clear reference is I Peter 3:21:  Baptism now saves you.  Until Evangelicals and Protestants can confess that truth without hesitation or cringing, we Lutherans will remain distant from them.  If for this reason alone, it would be well for us Lutherans to be a bit more charitable toward Rome and a little less cozy toward Geneva and its many sibling cities.