Lutheran Church of Australia - Website against the Ordination of Women

I am happy to say that Pastors in the Lutheran Church of Australia opposed to the ordination of women are not sitting idly by.  Yes, it was a set back to the cause when the Rev. John Henderson (proponent of the ordination of women) was elected Bishop.  It was not unexpected that those supportive of this change would find means to advance their cause.  The Rev. James Winderlich was called and has accepted the call to be Principal of the Australian Lutheran College, a vantage point to further agitate for the ordination of women.  But those opposed are not simply wringing their hands.  They have put together an impressive web site to gather information and organize toward the impending battle soon to come.

You can visit that website here.

You can find the most extensive website of information on the ordination of women here.

There are some "big guns" involved in this struggle -- Dr. John Kleinig and Dr. Gregory Lockwood to name but two -- but this will be a major battle.  The April 2013 General Pastors’ Conference and Convention has placed women’s ordination on the LCA’s agenda during this synodical term.  Prior to this, the LCA’s Commission on Theology and Interchurch relations (CTICR) voted in 2000 that Scripture does not prohibit the ordination of women.  The parameters of this issue are not simply located in the ordination of women but in the approach to Scripture, the value and weight of unbroken tradition, and the way the LCA relates to other Lutheran bodies throughout the world.  Pray for our brothers and sisters down under.  Visit the web site.  Encourage them in this struggle to overturn modernism and its relativistic approach to Scripture and tradition.

Pastoring by blessing

I read something of interest from the blog of a colleague (Pastor Christopher Hall) about a time of blessing offered to people in the congregation.  As you might expect when you set up times for private confession, bring some reading material because the folks may not be breaking down the door to get there -- not for confession and, it seems, not even for a blessing.

...my associate and I take turns sitting by ourselves in an empty sanctuary, blessings stacked up, ready to be given out. General blessings like the one above or specific blessings for this or that situation or circumstance–it doesn’t matter. They’re loaded and ready to roar.

It struck a nerve and I remembered reading something of this a while ago.  It turns out it was more like five years ago.  The article appeared in the Australian Lutheran Theological Journal 43/1, 2009, and the author was none other than Dr. John Kleinig (whom I have mentioned more than few times on this blog).

He astutely pointed out the lack of attention done over the issue of blessing as part and parcel of the pastoral task.  His point about blessing mirrors the issue with private confession -- if the Pastor does not value it, neither will the people.  Yet the framework of blessing is all around us.  The standard greeting of Pastor and people is one of blessing:  The Lord be with you.  No Lutheran would get up to leave until the benediction is given (the blessing that says you can go home and God will be with you).  The church is abuzz with issues of blessing (animals brought to church for a blessing day, same sex couples blessed, house blessings, and the more regular blessing of those who come to the rail but do not commune).

Kleinig rightfully distinguishes blessing from approval -- God blesses us even when He does not approve us what we are doing.  Blessing does not connote approval or even acceptance but bestows gifts upon the receiver.  Central to those gifts is the very presence of God with us, the gracious presence of the God who forgives, redeems, restores, and guides.

Throughout the Old Testament God authorizes the blessing of His people by those whom He has called into His service.  Numbers 6, the classic text of the benediction most Lutherans are familiar with, commands the prophets to bless the people with these specific words. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.“So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”  Frame that with the last minutes of Jesus with His disciples before His ascension in which  He lifted up His hands and blessed them. 

I have often complained that the usual greeting for Christians is good morning (or other time) instead of the more Biblical "The Lord be with you."  Strange that the decline in our understanding of blessing has come while we Lutherans have given up the greeting before the sermon and the votum afterwards.  Perhaps the two are unrelated but I tend to think that we talk less about the things that mean less and more about the things that mean more.  The language of blessing is throughout the Divine Service though we notice it less because our attention has moved to other things.  

Perhaps the ultimate blessing comes from the very name of the Trinity that marked us in our baptism, that we acknowledge in the invocation that begins Sunday morning.  The very name of God is a blessing and that He gives us this name to wear is the greatest of all blessings to a people who deserve nothing of His gracious notice and intervention.  

People have come to think that the Church is always asking things from us -- things we do not want to give, like time and money -- when the reality is that the Church is the agent of blessing imparting to the world the saving name of God in witness and to the people of God the riches of His promised grace through Word and Sacrament.  Maybe we have come to think of ourselves as entitled to it all or perhaps we think we no longer need God's blessing but the reality of it is that blessing is integral to the Gospel, to the worship of God, and to the ministry of those who serve us with His good gifts.  Good things come from God whether we see or acknowledge them or not.  Yet as good as the gifts are, they become blessings only when faith moves our cold hearts to gratitude and then to witness as we pass along what was given to us.  Think of the ten lepers healed and the blessing that came only to one of them.  We come as beggars and we leave wearing the new clothes of the kingdom, guests of God's richest grace, with an honored place set for us.  When we get this part right, so many other things fall into place.

Sex Week at the University of Tennessee

Plans to promote safe sex at the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus through a series of lectures, games and classes have sparked debate in the state legislature for the second year running. . .   You can read or listen to the rest of the reporting here. . .  In the news are efforts by state lawmakers to punish the University of Tennessee at Knoxville for putting this together (second year for the "sex week").  This has gone on all over the nation for years but in Tennessee it is a new thing.

Let's talk about sex... say the billboards promoting the "Sex Week" from March 2-7.  But that is the point.  The topic is hardly hidden or forbidden -- especially on a college campus.  It is not a clandestine conversation anywhere in America.  In print and movies, on the internet and in public, sex is flaunted all over the place.  If the students and their leaders want to be really radical, why not a week in which all talk about sex, all hook ups, all experimentation, all pornography, etc... are replaced by silence (or if you want to be really radical, by complete abstinence).

It is the ultimate foolishness to say that talk about sex is somehow prevented or in the closet.  That is the problem.  Nothing is in the closet anymore.  Sex is all over the media, all over the public conversation, and all over the internet.  Are we healthier because of it?  Is the incidence of sexually transmitted disease in free fall decline?  Is the use of abortion as birth control disappearing?  Is there any disorder or perversion that is not being talked about openly and publicly?  We all know the answer to these questions.

Sex week on campus is about as radical as booze week or pot week or missing class week -- it is old news.  Why do we act as if sex were somehow a forbidden topic -- especially on a public university campus?  Why do gays need liberating or college students need to talk more about sex?  Both of these topics are front and center from the news programs on TV to the movies watched on the big screen to the tweets that have hashtags to the internet with its predominance of pornographic images.

This is more than offensive, it is stupid.  There is nothing less radical than sex week on a university campus.  Now if you want to be radical, why not have the opposite -- abstinence week?!  Now that would  be something to talk about.  As offensive as much of this stuff is, it is ridiculous when we act as if more talk about sex is the necessary counterpoint to the college culture.  Really, who are we fooling here!

Thoughts on the 99. . .

Whenever the story of the shepherd leaving the 99 to after the lone wanderer was read, my whole attention was given not to the vagabond who got lost but the flock that the shepherd left behind in order to seek the lost.  Nearly every sermon I have ever heard on this text focuses on the single lost sheep and I suppose there is not much in the text to direct a whole sermon on the 99 but that is not enough reason to forget them.

Michael Hannon, a Roman Catholic layman preparing to enter religious life, has a piece in First Things (online) on the new evangelization focus of his church.  It is an interesting read.  He admits to some hesitance about the focus and, I would guess, views the story of the one lost sheep much as I have.  He wonders about those left behind.

One paragraph stuck out to me:  In the same vein, it seems to me that we are doing far better at apologetics right now than at catechesis. Strikingly, our catechists these days often just use apologetics tracts as their textbooks for catechism class, giving the faithful mere leftovers of what was actually prepared for others who do not yet share our faith. His point being that there might not be so many lost sheep if the catechesis is better and that the romance of apologetics sometimes captures the mind and heart of the church better than the cause of those still there.  I resonate to that.  I myself can count on several hands the numbers of books assigned or published by my own church body on how to reclaim the lost but lament that there are fewer works written on keeping those who remain within the fold.

Sometimes our Bible studies and catechetical classes end up being the same things recycled from new member classes or apologetics books instead of the solid stuff that equips the faithful with the tools they need to live out their baptismal vocation as God's own children.  Lutherans in their Confessions speak glowingly of private confession, for example, but there is little in print to tell a prospective Pastor how to reacquaint the people of God with this faithful practice and about as much telling the faithful what benefit to their faith and piety such faithful practice might offer them.  Lutherans in their Confessions speak eloquently of the means of grace and the riches of God's blessing given to the baptized in their regular communion but there is a dearth of material that speaks to them on how the Eucharist might be the center of their devotional lives as Christians.   These are but two areas to show that we are too focused upon the one and not paying attention to the ninety-nine who may be bled away from the flock along with the one unless we pay attention.

Again, the words of Hannon:  From my admittedly limited vantage point, the gravest dangers for us seem to be not legalism but antinomianism, not intellectualism but sentimentalism, not scrupulosity but laxity, not despair but presumption, not all-out retreat but all-out assimilation, not pharisaic ritualism but anti-liturgical iconoclasm, not missionary timidity but evangelical over-hastiness, not self-referentialism but self-forgetfulness (and not the good kind), not stifling uniformity but disjointed miscellany, not clericalism but, for lack of a better word, laicism.  While he directs his comments to Roman Catholics, Lutherans ought to listen up.  He speaks to us and to the circumstances within our own communion.

Lutherans are often the first to be surprised about what Lutherans believe, confess, and teach.  Sometimes they are scandalized by their own confessional witness.  For too many generations we have presumed that a cursory look at the Small Catechism (with emphasis more on memorization than true catechesis - though I am not one to disdain memorization) is sufficient for life within the Church.  For this reason, too many Lutherans think of themselves as Methodist/Baptist/Evangelical/Fundamentalists with a liturgy than as the evangelical catholics of our Concordia.  Times are a'changin.  CPH has stepped up the production of good materials to counter this.  But we are still very much in danger of losing our people because they do not even know their faith.

Yes, Lutherans are bleeding members -- far too many and for too easily.  We should rightfully be concerned about this.  But unless we want to spend our time perennially seeking the lost who have dropped out and wandered away, we must also be concerned for the rest of the flock who have not yet taken off.  They will unless we are faithful in catechesis and preparing them to live out their baptismal vocation of worship, witness, prayer, and service.  They will soon their lost brother or sister unless we give them solid food and teach them the faith and how to live that faith out, having the means of grace as the source and summit of their Christian lives.

Surprisingly, we will end up bleeding off some of those who, when they find out what Lutherans believe, confess, and teach, will depart because they never were nor intended to be Lutheran.  While I lament this and grieve for the lost treasure of grace that may depart them upon leaving, this cannot stand in the way of raising up a people who rejoice in their Lutheranism, whose lives are fully nurtured and fed upon the rich pasture and still quiet waters of the meal He has set among our enemies, and who have this piety at home as well as in worship on Sunday morning.  That said, we will be stronger as a church body because our people are stronger in their faith and conviction as Lutheran Christians.

Temptation is about trust. . .

Sermon for Lent 1A, preaching on Sunday, March 9, 2014.

    In Dostoevsky's classic work The Brothers Karamozov, the grand inquisitor asks, "You did not know that when man rejects miracles, he rejects God, too?"  The great weakness from the beginning was not simple disobedience but the substitution of another word for the Word of the Lord, our works for the works of God.  From the beginning of man's rebellion in the Garden of Eden, we have lived the illusion that we can pick and choose from God's Word what we choose to believe and what we choose to reject.  The miracles were always easy targets for the skeptical mind.  Rejecting the Word and works of God, we reduced religion to mere morality and a self-improvement program.
    Dostoevsky's inquisitor continues that miracles are so essential to mankind that if we reject the miracles of God we must replace them with miracles of our own manufacture.  Over time that has always been our weakness.  When we rejected the word and works of God, we ended up replacing them with words and works of our own in the guise of spirituality but with the result that we were distanced from God and caught in the dead end of death.
    So Satan came to Jesus to see if the temptations that worked so well on us would undo Him.  They were all cloaked in the sound of truth but if He accepted them He would have rejected truth and rejected the Father who sent Him.  We did not see it until it was too late but Jesus saw it clearly.
    From the beginning of creation we second guessed God's Word.  You can hear it in the conversation with Satan in the Garden of Eden.  Did God really say?  Did God really mean?  We may be tempted to think doubt is a modern idea to second guess God but it is as old as time.
    Then we were arrogant to think our believing made it true.  In the end, placing ourselves above the Word of the Lord is the ultimate denial of truth – the replacement of a temporary truth for the truth that endures forever.  We end up with a god and a truth no bigger, no more powerful, and no more resilient than we are.
    Finally, we confused faith with understanding.  If we understand it, if it seems reasonable to us, then we call it faith.  That has never been what faith was or is.  A God we can understand and with whom we can reason is no God at all.  The end result of trying to understand or reason God and His ways is nothing but death and fear.  The corrupt tree produces the ultimate corrupt fruit.  Rejecting God and His Word, we are left with only the lies we tell ourselves and a life which is nothing more than a prolonged death.  We did not see this in Eden but Jesus did.
    Jesus trusts the Word of the Father.  It is His strength in weakness and the Light to unmask Satan’s lies.  When Satan offers Jesus the opportunity to satisfy Himself and His desires with a little bread, Jesus sees it for what it is.  It is the lie that would trade in the bread of life for a morsel that cannot prolong a moment.  Jesus will not manipulate the Word of the Lord to satisfy His wants or needs.  He trusts the Word of the Father.
    When Satan asks Jesus to exploit that trust, to put the Word of the Father to the test, it seems so very reasonable.  God said He would protect you.  You can trust the Lord.  Use that trust.  This is exactly the kind of reasoning the devil used in Eden.  But Jesus refuses to follow the logic.  Faith is not reason and it is not understanding.  It is trust.  The Father is true to His Word and His faithfulness needs no testing.  God and His Word are the most sure and certain things of all.  Faith meets God here.  So Jesus refuses to test the Father, to expect or demand a sign from Him. 
    To those outside, faith seems like a crutch for the weak or an easy way out for those with no sense of adventure or independence.  Oh, how I wish it were true.  The easy way is always a dead end.  Satan offers an easy way.  No suffering.  No struggle. No pain.  No death.  Just a quiet little transaction with the devil and Jesus can avoid it all.  It is no different than the way we want.  A life without suffering, struggle, or pain.  But Jesus sees that the easy way out is a dead end.  So Jesus will do the will of Him who sent us – knowing that the path of redemption for you and me will lead Him through suffering and death.
    We build roadblocks to faith all the time.  We cherry pick the Word of God and believe only the things we like to be true.  We replace His Word with our own pious sayings and we deny His miracles in order to laud our own accomplishments.  We choose the path of least resistence and run from suffering, sacrifice, and struggle.  And then we call this faith.  This is not faith.
    In place of the cross, we taut our own works.  In place of trusting the Lord, we trust ourselves.  But not Jesus.  Jesus stands for us and in our place sees through the lies to hold on to the truth and rejects the so-called easy way.  We come here today not to find some magic pill to an easier life.  We come here to see through Jesus eyes the truth that endures forever, to trust with Him the God whose promises never fail, and to walk with Jesus the way of the cross.  We come today because Christ denied the devil his victory and chose the path of suffering that redeems and death that gives life.  We come to walk with Him the hard walk of faith, trusting not in ourselves, not in our words, and not in our deeds.  We come to meet Him at the cross where our redemption was won and to take up the cross and follow Him.  We come to rejoice because amid all the lies the devil still tells, the Word of the Lord shines with the light of truth.     
    We are tempted to believe that temptation is about power or money or sex or some other thing.  It is always about faith, about trusting the Word of the Lord.  This is what Jesus shows us in His temptation.  Temptation is always about faith even when we are tempted by other things. Is God trustworthy?  Can we depend on Him and His promises?  Is His Word enough?  Faith is not neat, clean or tidy and it is certainly not the easy way out.  It is not a path without struggle or sorrow.  But this is the walk that leads to life everlasting.  Jesus forged the path through temptation.  He did so in order to carry for us the heavy burden.  Now He bids us trust, believe, and walk in Him.  Amen.

Snapshot or movie. . . the weakness of leading by polling

Polls are wonderful at gauging the feelings or thought of a moment.  They are like a snapshot.  They capture nothing of the past and nothing of the future but give you an image of one brief moment in time.  But that is all they do.  They give us a snapshot of what people are thinking or feeling at a given moment but no roots or context for that image nor any indication of how the future might look.  Some polls are taken regularly in an effort to string the data together like and collage of snapshots.  Again, that gives you a static image of a moment, even many moments, but nothing more.

Movies on the other hand have a beginning, a middle, and an ending.  They give you more than a one sided image of one moment but a sense of perspective.  They are more like a panorama of past, present, and even a hint of future as the conclusion moves off screen to follow the plane established by the track from yesterday through today.  I am not saying movies are perfect but they give a much fuller picture than snapshots.

Some would insist that polls be given weight and significance in determining what it is the Church believes, confesses, and teaches, and how this is practiced in worship and piety.  There is no shortage of polls on all the controversial subjects and many of them are decidedly against the mind of the Church.  But they are mere snapshots in time, subject to change depending upon the circumstances and media influence, and not reliable nor even predictable.  Furthermore, they present us with no uniform understanding or perception but a range of feelings and opinions.  Polls tell the Church little except to show us where we have failed in the work of catechesis.  They cannot direct the Church because the Church is captive to the Word and Spirit of the Lord.  God's voice is the decisive voice whether or not it is popular or supported in the minds and hearts of the people.  The Church's role and purpose is not to present God with our choices but for God to present us with His own self-revelation that gives life to the dying, forgiveness to the sinner, freedom to the captive, and grace to the unworthy in Jesus Christ.

Frankly I am very tired of constant polling.  From the perspective of politics, the constant polls have not led to unity or decisive action but to a fractured and broken politic and a gridlock in the halls of government.  I cannot see how anyone would want this to be what rules and governs the life of the Church.  Yet we continue to poll and discuss the results as if somewhere there is some hidden answer to all the problems faced by Christianity, Christians, and the Church.  Why do we subject ourselves to such opportunities for angst?

We cannot do much about the media and its insistence upon using polls to challenge established church teaching from Scripture but we need not feed into such incessant curiosity that only distracts us and detracts from the Word of the Lord which endures forever.

If you must survey people and take polls, make sure that the instruments do not create even more problems by allowing people to presume that they are voting on what is good, right, true, and the faithful practice of this in the Church.  Second, make sure that you use the information for what it can and should do to inform us and not as a barometer of our success or as a compass to chart the direction for our future.

The Church teaches like a movie, presenting us with the beginning, tracing the development of God's plan and purpose throughout history, and leading us to the future He alone can reveal to us and for us.  When we become transfixed by a moment in time and lose this sense of perspective from where we have come and where we have been, we are crippled by the lack of faith and its assurance that seen or unseen God is at work even now working His will to bring to completion all things in Christ.  We better not forget it. . . or exchange this noble panorama for the one sided snapshot of but one brief moment in time.

Beware of nice old men who talk about new kinds of worship. . .

The image of the liturgiologist has often been one of curious but benign oddity.  Indeed, among the Lutherans those interested in worship were generally seen as odd fellows at best.  Most of the time, however, they were also seen as people who posed little real threat to the church.  They were the nice old men whose interest lie in the peculiar arena of things indifferent (the Lutheran obsession with adiaphora).  So if they wanted to wear a surplice over their black gown (not realizing it was not a Geneva gown but really a cassock), they were snickered at by the true Lutherans but no one got all that excited.  It would never really catch on.  Then stoles and then albs and finally full eucharistic vestments.  The problem by then is that nearly everyone had exchanged Geneva's academic gown but a cassock, surplice, and stole.  The odd had become the normal.  Wait a few years and the same thing happened again -- alb and stole replacing the old fashioned cassock and surplice.  Interesting that the only people I know who still wear the white over the black ARE liturgical folk who know the difference between a choir office, daily office, and the Divine Service and dress accordingly.

In the same way also there were those who once thought the idea of a more frequent Eucharist to be an odd idea, promoted by the affected, but, nevertheless, one that would never catch on.  But it did.  My own home parish which had only quarterly the Order of Morning Worship with Communion went to monthly, twice monthly, and now even more frequently.  If it happens on the prairies of Nebraska, it happens everywhere.  It there a Lutheran congregation that retains a quarterly Communion?  I seriously doubt it.  What was once an odd idea promoted by nice old men who had an affectation for things ceremonial has become the norm or near norm in our church body.

I could go on but I will simply pick it up with my own story.  When I was in college, only liberal Bible doubting Lutherans were interested in worship.  So I felt it was my only choice to head to the newly formed Seminex and meet the folks who had opened a radical new door of liturgy and eucharistic piety to me.  Then I encountered some folks at Concordia Theological Seminary who had somehow mysteriously combined a high view of Scripture with a high view of the liturgy and ended up there.  We were then by no means a majority of the campus -- Springfield having only recently and under duress exchanged their address from a bastion of black gowns to the more alb adorned area of Northern Indiana.  But the nice old men with their curious and odd interest in things liturgical have ended up reshaping the face of the Church.

Rome had its nice old men who ended up undoing its own liturgical identity and, in a few years, turning the face of the church gathered for the Mass completely upside down. Who would have thought it from Paul VI and his crew?  Unlike the liturgiologists of Vatican II, those within Missouri combined a high view of Scripture with a high view of liturgy -- so high, in fact, that they refused, for the most part, the efforts of Rome to unhook the past from the present.  So, in Missouri at least, the Common Service remains a significant and potent force on Seminary campus and in parish alike.  The changes of the modern liturgical movement have not swept aside our liturgical connection to the past -- at least not in the wholesale manner that the Roman example did.

What no one could have foreseen in the 1960s and 1970s is that there would be a rise of those within decidedly liturgical traditions who have completely abandoned liturgical worship.  This is not merely a question of contemporary sounding music but of a radical redefinition of what happens on a Sunday morning.  Lutherans never saw it coming and if they did worry a bit, they did not expect the numbers to be so high.  Guess who the culprits were?  Nice old men who insisted that evangelism take place in worship, that those outside the church be as comfortable and at home on Sunday morning as those raised in the faith, and that modern music was merely a style change and not one of substance.  The radicals who promoted liturgical worship in my early years are now considered the raging conservatives.  Wow.

My point is this.  Be wary of nice old men talking about what's new in worship.  They may seem curious and benign, odd in their interest but hardly threatening, yet their interest in things worship has not been without significant effect in the churches.  From Rome to Wittenberg, we thought them nothing to worry about and we are still attempting to recover from their work.  Some began a disconnect with all that had come before in a vain attempt to remake the gathering of the baptized into something new, different, relevant, culture friendly.  For Lutherans these nice old men almost led us down the path of a ceremonial liturgy sung by ministers who believed almost none of the content (Anglicanism's end).  We won the battle for the Bible, so to speak, but lost it again when those fighting for inerrancy allied themselves with fundamentalists and evangelicals who they thought were headed in the same direction.  Now the nice old men strumming their guitars and singing yesterday's folk music have left us with a great divide between those who look like the Lutherans they claim to be on Sunday morning and those who look like Geneva or Saddleback or Lakewood or Willow Creek.  Now we find ourselves in the place of attempting to recover a liturgical identity which we thought was impenetrable but which disappeared in little more than a generation or two.

It happened without a vote in convention but quietly and quickly until some of us Lutherans feel strangers to our own liturgical identity. But the restoration will not happen quietly or quickly.  And probably not by the hands of nice old men either.  The new graduates are fighting the battles in parishes throughout the Missouri Synod to recapture what drifted away from us -- a uniform and common liturgical life shaped by the Divine Service.  That, my friends, is a good thing.

Does Lutheranism contribute to happiness?

According to Gallup's well being stats, the states with the highest concentration of Lutherans in America just happen to be the top four states Gallup scored on the well-being index.

Hmmmm.

In other words, being Lutheran bears the fruit of contentment in the soul, life, and faith of the person.  At least I would like to think so...

What do you think?

Living in a religious state. . .

Read here about how religious is the population of the state in which you live.  Just a little north of Mississippi, we here in Tennessee are only slightly behind the folks to our south in religiosity.  I am not sure what all this ranking means.  You will have to interpret it for yourself.  I have no wisdom here.  Only the suggestion that such information may be helpful for a trivia game or to impress someone with one more rather meaningless statistic.

This map is, I believe, from The Atlantic.  It was emailed to me by a helpful reader of this blog.

The states are pretty predictable.  I think we all knew the coasts were less religious than the heartland and that the south was the most religious of all.  How this affects a host of other things is another thing altogether.  In Tennessee it does NOT mean that divorce rates are low but it does mean that you are more likely to find public prayer and public displays of the Ten Commandments.  It does NOT mean that the religious have a social conscience that means poverty is low, schools are safe, and teenage pregnancy is low.  It does mean that some churches have programs to support the hungry and homeless but not enough, that parents are just as suspicious of the aims of many educational programs and tax support for schools is lower here, and it does mean that though condoms are readily available, they have not prevented either disease or pregnancy among teens.  All it really means is that more folks here are in church on a given Sunday morning than in other places.  To be sure, it still means that half the folks where I live are not in church on a Sunday morning so there is room for churches to grow, to be sure.  The rest of this will be left to others to explain...

Lenten Greetings from Pres. Harrison

Read it and weep. . .

About 1990 the way Americans view homosexuality began to change.  Prior to this point, it was pretty intertwined with their view of extra-marital sex -- largely negative with 75% or more in agreement that it is always wrong.  From 1990 on the view of extramarital sex remained fairly consistent but the numbers of folks believing homosexual sex was always wrong dropped significantly until about 2007-2008 it dropped below 50%.

Such is the view of the Gallup organization as it solicits and reports the views of Americans on religion, morality, and a host of other topics.  What do we make of this?  You can draw your own conclusions.  For my part, the media has certainly had a hand in the changing perceptions of homosexual sex.  The change in the view began about the same time that gays became featured characters on well written comedies such as Will and Grace, among others.  While extramarital sex has been the stuff of soap operas and themes of countless movies and plots from countless TV shows, it was never able to be portrayed in the same positive light that the media has had success with for gays and lesbians.  The effect of the media campaign to mainstream gays and lesbians has not been without effect.  That said, it is not the media whose mind has changed.  The people in ordinary living rooms across America not only laughed at the jokes but began consciously to change their views on homosexual sex.  The media could not impose on us what we as American were not willing to be complicit in.  We changed.  Funny thing is that extramarital sex is much more majority than the small percentage of those who self-identify as gays or lesbians.  So even though I credit the media for the packaging, the Americans in their living rooms and around their kitchen tables had to buy the package.  That is clearly part of what has happened.

Thrivent Financial for Anyone with Money

Thrivent Financial released its new logo Monday, dropping “for Lutherans” as the tradition-bound organization undergoes a seismic shift to open membership to all Christians.

The updated logo also simplifies what was a twisting heart-shaped symbol to more clearly depict a red heart with a cross in it. The new tagline: “Connecting faith & finances for good.”

“Updating our brand to make Christians feel welcome while honoring our past and the Lutheran families we have served for more than a century was something we gave a lot of thought to,” Thrivent’s vice president of membership marketing, Marie Uhrich, said in a news release.  (From the Star Tribute)

So apparently the official name cannot change (for Lutherans is something they are stuck with for now) but the old logo is not the only thing to change.  Where values thrive has been replaced simply Connecting Faith and Finances for Good.  Hmmmm.  It is generic, to be sure.  It is designed to offend no one except someone who perhaps takes faith seriously enough to believe in the protection of life at all stages, especially the unborn, which, in case Thrivent has forgotten it, comprises the overwhelming majority of Christians.  Perhaps they are targeting only liberal Christians who believe that abortion is a good thing or at least nothing bad enough to get all upset about...

I wonder if the folks in Appleton and Minneapolis really believe that they are honoring those who first put together a fraternal benefit society for Lutherans (then mostly for life insurance)... The lies we tell ourselves are the most dangerous.

Keeping Anglicans safe from superstition. . .

There is a blog called The Low Churchman's Guide to the Solemn High Mass which details the ceremonies of the liturgy (probably more akin to Anglican history and piety than other).  It is descriptive of these ceremonies and, with a twist, details the usual objections to ritual and tradition.  It is a tongue in cheek advocate of this rich ceremonial of the liturgy which addresses the complaints of those who find such things objectionable.  Really, it is worth a look...

There are not a few Lutherans whose objections to the catholic shape of Lutheran liturgy has become problematic.  To them as to the low church Anglicans (low church and high church being common but not particularly Lutheran terms) we are told:   we wish our readers a tastefully restrained.[Sunday morning] free of prolix ritual and ostentatious ceremonial.

Fittingly enough, the first post in this blog was about incense.  Where else would you begin a conversation about objectionable and unnecessary ceremonies and rituals of the liturgy?  It is the briefest of paragraphs that begins what is expounded upon among the manifold complaints of the low churchman -- nearly monthly throughout 2013 and 2014.

About the only complaint I have is the inclusion of gin in the list.  Gin remains one of my favorite liquors and English gin is the standard of the world.  From the gin martini to the gin and tonic, the array of offerings is unduly tarnished by this association with a certain style of churchmanship.  The encouragement to water should be balanced by the wise rejoinder that water is for washing and gin for drinking.

Anyway, have fun with it.  If you agree with what is posted there, you probably are not going to feel much at home at Grace Lutheran Church.  We are offensively high church (though I despise that terminology).  No incense on Sunday morning and no maniples (have you checked the cost of these) but a full sung liturgy complete with kneeling, a genuflection or two or three, and the Lutheran Confession's admonition that such ceremonies and church usages have been judiciously kept by Lutherans so that the outward form of the Mass among us is virtually indistinguishable from our opponents.  So love to hate me if you cannot love me.

Symptoms or cause. . .

Sermon for Ash Wednesday, preached on March 5, 2014.

    There are many who are enamored by the idea of a free will – that we are free to choose evil or good and that redemption equips us to choose good more than evil and more often.  But free will is not something attractive to me.  In fact, free will is a terrible lie.  It may be awful to admit that we are held in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves but how much worse it would be if we found ourselves only a choice or a decision away from holiness, righteousness, and purity.  Then we would be condemned not by the sin of Adam and our own sins.  We would be condemned by the what ifs or if onlys of a people who might have succeeded if only they had tried at little harder.
    Scripture is clear.  Corrupt trees produce corrupt fruit.  We are not occasional sinners who once and a while indulge in the forbidden fruit. No, we are completely incapable of holiness or obedience or righteousness.  We are sinners.  We are sinful by nature.  We got this sin automatically by birth, the continuing legacy that befalls the sons of Adam and Eve.   Read Luther’s On the Bondage of the Will.
    Now you can either work on individual sins that we think enable us to make a little  headway toward righteousness or you can dump the whole idea of self-help and come to the Lord through repentance.  Tonight is not about slightly missing the mark or trying a little harder.  It is about sinners dead in trespasses and sins who by faith claim as their own the merciful gift of righteousness in Christ.  Our only freedom is the freedom to sin and die.  If there is any other possibility, it is not from us but from God.  That is why we come here tonight; there is no health in us, nothing worth fixing.  Our freedom became a prison when we learned sin's language.  Now it is the only tongue we speak.  And it has left us dead in trespasses and sin.
    The Pharisees of old and the world around us seems content to focus on the symptoms of sins.  Focus on the behavior, fix the obvious wrongs.  The religious leaders of the day and still today are gravely tempted to give more rules to keep so that maybe a few more might be kept.  What they forgot is that one small sin makes the sinner guilty of them all.  Others thought that if you cannot fix what is wrong, you can at least give the sinners something to do to distract them from their plight.  This is what the Law has become to us – the tempting lie that we are but a choice or a decision away from righteousness or the terrible distraction of making this life a little better since we cannot do anything about eternity.  This is the rotten fruit of free will.
    Thanks be to God that He refuses to treat sin’s symptoms, to fix the outside appearance of the sinner.  God insists upon addressing the cause.  God will not dismiss our sins – not even the little ones we deem insignificant.  God insists upon addressing them even if we will not.  He  brings out every hidden sin from its shadows and into His unrelenting light.  He sweeps away all our excuses and justifications and protests.  Not because He is mean, but because He loves us more than we love ourselves.
    Sin always brings forth death.  Even small sins we think do not matter always end in death.  Sin brings death.  So God insists upon addressing sin’s cause as well as its rotten fruit of death.  A change of behavior will not help.  We need nothing less than a Savior who can pay its terrible price, rescue the dead with the life stronger than death, and give new and clean hearts to sinners.  This is why we are here tonight.  This is what Christ has done.  For you, for me, and for the whole world.
    A drunk can stop drinking but his poisoned liver will still kill him.  A fornicator can stop fornicating but he is still not a virgin pure.  Words that should not have been said cannot be unsaid.  No, friends, we do not need a behavioral change.  We need a radical new birth.  We need a death to pay death's price, a holiness to cover up all our evil, a righteousness to cover the dirt inside and out, and a forgiveness with enough power to pay for Adam's sin and ours.  We need a new heart and a new life – born of the Spirit and not of flesh.
    We are not here tonight to make a vow or to pledge to do better.  We are here to lay before the Lord not only our sins but the false hopes and dreams that a decision here or that would have made things different.  We cannot undo sin's damage.  We cannot release ourselves from its captivity.  But Christ can.  And He has.
    He was broken that we might be made whole.  He was marked by our guilt so that we might be free.  He was sentenced to our death so that we might live.  He was born into our flesh that we might be born again into His divine life.  What is wrong with us is greater than a choice or a decision.  We are sinful to the core.  We need nothing less than a new heart and a new life.   Tonight we come praying, create in me a clean heart, O God.  Tonight we are invited to trust that the Lord has done just that.  He abounds in steadfast love and calls us to return, to reclaim by faith the promises He gave to us in our baptism, and to renew the new life He has bestowed by His Word and Sacraments.  We are invited because with the Lord is mercy strong enough to love us as the sinners we are and grace enough so we are made new in Christ.  We have this treasure in earthen vessels, to be sure, but the promise that endures forever is the Word of the cross – not our own choices, decisions, thoughts, words, or deeds.  This is why we are here.
    Now one last thing.  Too often we lay our sins before the cross and then sneak back to reclaim them as we leave His house.  Maybe we like those sinful ways too much, maybe we do not believe there is enough grace to forgive what we have thought, said, or done, or maybe we find the old ruts of sin’s path too hard to shake.  But do not take back the sin and death Christ has claimed; do not reclaim what Christ was incarnate, suffered, died and rose to take from you.  Leave this sin and all hopes of repairing its damage in your life behind and put your trust only in Him for new, eternal life.  Otherwise all the talk of sin we can muster will still leave us where we began and His death for us will gain us nothing at all.  Amen.

More Pastoral Meanderings. . .this one published by the Sem.

This is to let you know the latest issue of For the Life of the World is now available at the link below:

www.ctsfw.edu/ForTheLifeOfTheWorld/March2014

   Issue Highlights:

• "Good Lent!"
  By Larry A. Peters (who is this guy????)
• "Sing His Bleeding Love: Hymns and Church Music for Lent and Easter"
  By Kevin J. Hildebrand
• "Easter: Life Overcoming Death"
  By Gifford A. Grobien

Where is the shock?

So you have undoubtedly heard the news from the red carpet.  Matthew McConaughey, who lost some 40 pounds to star in (and persuade reluctant financiers to back) the AIDS drama “Dallas Buyers Club,” won the Oscar for best actor.  Now you might think that a rather gritty story of a man with AIDS and his struggle to bring non-FDA approved drugs into the US to treat AIDS might be shocking enough.  Or, perhaps, the fact that the Best Supporting Actor nod went to Jared Leto for playing a transgendered character.  Apparently this story and its cast of characters is not shocking at all to Hollyweird.  But have an Oscar winner wax on about his need for God, his faith, his father who taught him to be a man and cheering him on from heaven's vantage point, his mom teaching him to respect himself so that he could respect others, his personal pursuit of a better version of himself, etc... and Hollyweird does not know what to say.  Some laughed hoping it was a joke.  A few lone voices cheered.  The rest of Hollyweird sat in stunned silence, fearing that such talk was a symptom of mental illness at best or deranged religiosity at worst.  The headlines still do not know what to say.

My only point (not being a McConaughey fan) is that the movies coming out of Hollyweird are eminently explainable given the complete shock and lack of appreciation for any expression of Christian faith on the part of those writing, producing, directing, and starring in them.  I will bet that not a few of them (especially the ones who refuse any form of censorship) were secretly hoping that someone upstairs would turn off the audio on Mr. McConaughey.  There is little speech less free than the voice of Christian faith in the American public square and it is less welcome and less tolerated each day.

Sin and Sinners. . .

“Those who refuse to absolve the sinner end up absolving the sin.”  What a great line!  I believe the author is Nicolás Gómez Dávila (at least that is what I wrote down).  The point of it is that when we stop talking about sin, stop holding folks accountable for their sins, stop calling folks to repentance, the end result is the sin is no longer sinful, the wrong has been made into a right (or at least a tolerable wrong).  This is what has gone on for some time. Finding the call to repentance and confession distasteful, we have left to the moral vacuum the power to define what is wrong.  Our fallen heart and the culture around us is woe to call anything that we do wrong or sinful and so the sin becomes the norm.

Equally true is that when we refuse to absolve because we find the sin too egregious or the wrong beyond redemption or we find the repentance shallow, the sin becomes the norm for the sinner.  Redemption that is limited to only those sins on the approved list of forgivable wrongs is no redemption at all.  That is why the only unforgivable sin Scripture allows is the very rejection of faith, the sin against the Holy Spirit, final impenitence—dying in a state of unrepentance.  This is clearly the understanding of the early Church (in particular Augustine).  The unpardonable sin is unpardonable because the very nature of the sin is such that the person who commits it persistently rejects and blasphemes the saving operation of the Holy Ghost through the Means of Grace whereby he could otherwise be brought to true repentance and faith. Thus the sinner who refuses grace keeps forgiveness from himself forever.

What draws the sinner to God is not simply guilt but guilt that believes that there is forgiveness there for the sin and the sinner.  On Ash Wednesday we hear the solemn warning that sins are not without consequences but at the very same time we are bidden to come back to the Lord because He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.  The sins we come confessing are not new sins we have not previously tried (not many of them, at least).  Most of them are the same tired old sins we confess to the Lord over and over again.  It would be reasonable and thoroughly just of God to draw a line in the sand and say "no more."  No more will He forgive these sins that we have so frequently confessed and just as often promised not to do again.  But the miracle of His grace is that He does not turn us away.  His grace and mercy are without equal. 

So when we ask Him how often we must forgive our brother who sins against us, He does not give us a different standard than the one He uses with us.  As often as he sins and begs forgiveness.  It is shockingly generous and seems foolishness to ears so quick to judge, to enlarge the sins of others, to minimize our own sins, to forgive only the worthy, to absolve only those we deem genuinely repentant...  What bids us come to Ash Wednesday is not the fear of failing to acknowledge our sinfulness but the remarkable promise of grace for the sinner who comes confessing the same tired old sins -- over and over again. . .

Yes, we too easily give up on the hard task of fending off temptation.  Yes, we too quickly grow tired of the discipline of saying "no" to the very things our sinful hearts ache to say "yes" to.  Yes, we have great intentions and poor follow through.  There is every reason to say no more, not now, already too much has been forgiven without evidence of much change of heart and life...  But God does not turn us away as He should.  He not only welcomes us but bids us come.  Return to the Lord.  We gladly wear the ashes for they are marked in the sign of the cross, the cross which has the power to give forgiveness and life even to ashes and dirt.

Somewhere I read a great line about the dirt that Jesus spat on to apply to the eyes of the blind man.  We are that dirt.  We come in need of His spit.  It sounds positively awful doesn't it.  Choose then what you prefer.  A sanitized blindness and death that ignores the consequences or dirt with His spit that opens eyes and bestows life?  We sinners cannot be choosy.  There is salvation in one place only -- in Christ alone.  Confession and forgiveness are not neat and tidy.  They are messy and dirty.  But even in dirt grace triumphs.  Even in ashes, there is life and hope.  Thanks be to God!

Simple Imposition of Ashes Apart from the Divine Service

Invocation
P    In the Name of the Father and of the Son +  and of the Holy Spirit.
C    Amen.

Scripture & Address
Joel 2:12-19  [ESV] 

12“Yet even now,” declares the Lord,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
13and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
Return to the Lord, your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
and he relents over disaster.
14Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain offering and a drink offering
for the Lord your God?

15Blow the trumpet in Zion;
consecrate a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
16gather the people.
Consecrate the congregation;
assemble the elders;
gather the children,
even nursing infants.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her chamber.

17Between the vestibule and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep
and say, “Spare your people, O Lord,
and make not your heritage a reproach,
a byword among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’”

18Then the Lord became jealous for his land
and had pity on his people.
19The Lord answered and said to his people,
“Behold, I am sending to you
grain, wine, and oil,
and you will be satisfied;
and I will no more make you
a reproach among the nations.

P    Dear brothers and sisters of our Lord Jesus Christ, on this day the Church begins a holy season of prayerful and penitential reflection. Our attention is especially directed to the holy sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus Christ.   From ancient times the season of Lent has been kept as a time of special devotion, self-denial, and humble repentance born of a faithful heart that dwells confidently on His Word and draws from it life and hope.  Let us pray our dear Father in heaven, for the sake of His beloved Son and in the power of His Holy Spirit, might richly bless this Lententide for us so that we may come to Easter with glad hearts and keep the feast in sincerity and truth.

Litany for Ash Wednesday
                               
P    O Lord,
C    have mercy.
P    O Christ,
C    have mercy.
P    O Lord,
C    have mercy.
P    O Christ,
C    hear us.
P    God the Father in heaven,
C    have mercy.
P    God the Son, Redeemer of the world,
C    have mercy.
P    God the Holy Spirit,
C    have mercy.
P    Be gracious to us.
C    Spare us, good Lord.
P    Be gracious to us.
C    Help us, good Lord.
P    By the mystery of Your holy incarnation; by Your holy nativity; by Your baptism, fasting, and temptation; by Your agony and bloody sweat; by Your cross and passion; by Your precious death and burial; by Your glorious resurrection and ascension; and by the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter:
C    Help us, good Lord.
P    In all time of our tribulation; in all time of our prosperity; in the hour of death; and in the day of judgment:
C    Help us, good Lord.
P    We poor sinners implore You
C    to hear us, O Lord.
P    To prosper the teaching of Your Word; to bless our prayer and meditation; to strengthen and preserve us in the true faith; and to give heart to our sorrow and strength to our repentance:
C    We implore You to hear us, good Lord.
P    To draw all to Yourself; to bless those who are instructed in the faith; to watch over and console the poor, the sick, the distressed, the lonely, the forsaken, the abandoned, and all who stand in need of our prayer; to give abundant blessing to all works of mercy; and have mercy on us all:
C    We implore You to hear us, good Lord.
P    To turn our hearts to You; to turn the hearts of our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers; and graciously to hear our prayers:
C    We implore You to hear us, good Lord.
P    Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,
C    we implore You to hear us.

P    Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,
C    have mercy.
P    Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,
C    have mercy.
P    Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,
C    grant us Your peace.

P    O Christ,
C    hear us.
P    O Lord,
C    have mercy.
P    O Christ,
C    have mercy.
P    O Lord,
C    have mercy. Amen.

Imposition of Ashes
A    Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Collect

P    O God, you desire not the death of sinners, but rather that they turn from their wickedness and live. We implore You to have compassion on the frailty of our mortal nature, for we acknowledge that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Mercifully pardon our sins that we may obtain the promises You have laid up for those who are repentant; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
C    Amen.

Change and decay. . .

Sermon for Transfiguration A, preached on Sunday, March 2, 2014.

    In the wonderful movie Trip to Bountiful Geraldine Page offers us a heroine who wants to go home once more before she dies.  But there is no home to go to.  Things are never as they look and they never stay the same.  You can never go home.  The home of your memories is replaced by ever changing reality of this moment.  So at class reunions we find the handsome athletes of our memory are old and fat like the cheerleaders.  Time is a trickster.  All of a sudden you wake up and find you are not the person you were.  Change and decay all around -- that is how we sing of it in Abide with Me.
    Jesus’ transfiguration is the surprise of a glory hidden in flesh and blood.  His unchanging glory is not alien to His humility but is right there in that humility -- amid the change and decay of a world out of step with its Creator.  According to the witnesses, Jesus’ face shown like the sun.  This was not some new or different glory but His unchanging glory hidden in His humility, in His flesh and blood. 
    Beside Him stood Moses and Elijah – not as some equal giants standing together as gods like Olympus but to point to Jesus whose glory is greater than all – not the radiance of a face but the glory of love come to save us sinners from our guilt, shame and death.  His glory revealed here to His disciples is revealed for all the world on the cross where love dies for us.  Not different glory but the same.  The glory of love that saves.
    From nowhere comes the voice: “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.  Listen to Him.” Eyes see what is seen; faith sees what is unseen.  Christ the fulfillment of the long promised Savior who keep’s the Law of Moses and fulfills all the prophetic Word.  Ears hear what can be heard; faith hears and trust this as the living voice of God.  But He does not address His fallen world to condemn or judge it but with love and redemption.  This is Jesus’ glory then. . .  And now.  The love that seeks and saves sinners.
    Jesus glory is His humility.  “Veiled in flesh the godhead see,” we sang on Christmas Eve.  Now the veil is lifted, here for a moment on this mountain and then again on the mountain of Calvary in the cross.  Twin peaks of Jesus’ glory are Transfiguration and Calvary.  The glory of the One who kept the Law perfectly and who fulfilled all the prophetic Word is the very same glory revealed in the suffering that redeems us sinners and gives life to the dying.  We glimpse in different way the same glory.
    Jesus’ glory bridges the change and decay that bind us.  We cannot go home.  We cannot go back.  Not to yesterday and not to Eden.  The path lies forward, not backward, and Jesus is that path.  He embraces the change and decay of our mortal lives even to death on the cross so that we have a new future of life and salvation by His blood.  Jesus does not turn back the clock but moves it forward to the salvation planned for us before time began.
    Tadpoles do not become frogs.  The frog is hidden in the tadpole all along.  It seems a strange analogy but Jesus is no different on the cross than in the glory of His transfiguration.  He is the same.  He is the glory of the Father and our glory.  Though hidden in flesh and suffering, Jesus is God’s Son and Savior.
    There is a part of us that believes that the answer to life lies in the past.  If only we could go home again.  If only we could return to a pristine moment when life was easier, purer, simpler, kinder.  Faith has become for some a hopeful means to find the way back.  Even the disciples wanted to stay on the mountain, setting up camp to avoid the harsh realities of life.  But there is no glory for us there.  Jesus says no; you cannot stay.  The glory does not lie in the recovery of the past or sustaining the refuge of a moment.  The glory is ahead.
    Jesus must go down the mountain.  The disciples must go down the mountain.  We must go down the mountain.  But the glory goes with us.  Because Jesus is that glory, the embodiment of the love of the Father for us.  Jesus showed the glory of this love in the suffering and death that gives life to the world.  The disciples saw the greater glory of His promise in the Gospel they proclaimed to forgive the sinner and give life to the dying.  We share in this greater glory, the Word of the Lord spoken through us to those still captive to change and decay.
    Our temptation is to confuse this glory with a better, easier life.  But God’s glory is hidden in our weakness and sinfulness.  Christ is not aloof from the struggles of this mortal life.  His glory is hidden right here because He is with us.  Lo, I am with you always.  The reality is that life we have with Christ is hidden in a world of change and decay, confusion and conflict, suffering and struggle.  It is hidden in the flesh and blood of sinners who have died with Christ in baptism and who live in Him the new life from this vantage point now and in heaven eternally.
    The form of this life is passing away and only the glory of God will remain.  It is not a place or a thing to hold but Jesus Christ Himself.  The gift of God given to us in our own flesh and blood to save us.  The future God has prepared for us in Him.
    In that movie, Geraldine Page’s character finds the glory of the past gone.  The prison of her life lived for the past is left behind and she drives off with her son and daughter-in-law to embrace the tomorrow God has prepared.  The disciples thought the moment on the mountain was the greatest glory they would ever see.  Only later would they realize it was but a prelude of the greater glory of the cross and resurrection.  You and I are also tempted to think that glory is incompatible with suffering, struggle, and service.   Where Christ is, there is the glory of God.  Hidden in the sufferings and struggles of faith and life, Christ stands with us, that we might endure and be kept holy and blameless at the day of judgement.  Assured of this glory, we go down the mountain, to live our baptismal lives in service to God and to our neighbor. . . until all is transfigured into the eternal lives of Christ's promise in heaven forevermore.  Amen.

Scars. . .

I have a few scars, not unlike most other folks, but hardly significant ones.  I have a scar on my face where I had an encounter with a boat dock as a child.  It has been covered up by the beard I have worn since 1972.  I have an odd spot on an ankle where my foot and a bike wheel had an messy encounter nearly 50 years ago.  I have the usual scar of folks my generation where a childhood vaccination has left a permanent reminder of my encounter with a certain needle.  I have a few others that I will not mention but I have no surgical scars nor do I have any marks from any unplanned meetings with a knife blade or bullet like some I know.

Those are the easy scars.  The hard ones you cannot see.  They are the memories I wish to forget but continue to remember year in and year out.  Most of them are the scars of one kind of defeat or another.  I spoke when I should have remained silent or I was silent when I should have spoken.  In any case, these scars are both personal and professional, that is, some merely to or from me as a person and others to or from me as a Pastor.  There are people I should have visited but did not for whatever reason and then could not ever.  There are arguments that should not have taken place and that lead to words that should not have been spoken.  And there are arguments that should have happened but I wimped out and walked away with my tail between my legs.

The hard scars of life are often unseen by those who look at us.  But that does not mean they are not there.  People often presume that Pastors and their families lead charmed lives, that we never have personal or family problems like other folks do.  How wrong they are!  I do not know a Pastor and his family that do not bear the burdens of the Pastoral Office in some form of scar tissue or another.  I also know of too many Pastors and their families who suffered in silence rather than allow their wounds to show before the people in the pews.  Whether they should have or not, they feared exposing themselves and their failures to the folks who either chose or wanted to believe that Pastors are nearly perfect.

The hardest scars are not the angry words and unfair criticisms directed to either me or my family.  The hardest scars I wear are the countless times I have let down myself and those whom I care about.  When my no ended up yes and my yes ended up no and I was wounded even more than those who said "That's okay, Pastor.... That's okay, dear... That's okay, Dad..."

Forgive and forget... right?  It is easier said than done.  The forgiving part comes only with the aid of the Holy Spirit.  Here God has blessed me with an easier time of this than most.  I have not found it as difficult as some to forgive but the forgetting, well, that has always been hard.  I seem genetically designed to forgive others and to struggle to forgive myself.  I can forget what people have said and done to wound me but I cannot forget what I have said and done to wound others. That is one the great eye-opening perspectives of Sunday morning -- each week I look into the faces of people I have failed and who have forgiven me as has the Lord.  Remembering those sins is not the rekindling of my guilt but the voice of the Spirit telling me where I should not go.

After Easter Jesus shows His scars to Thomas.  Put you hand here and your finger there... He insists.  I wonder if these scars are things we are meant to carry.  Forgiveness is good and great and the richest of treasures from the grace of God in Christ but remembering the wrongs we have thought, said, and done can also be helpful.  This kind of scar is not meant to be hidden.  Our defeats help us understand our weakness and therefore God's strength.  Our failures magnify not only our guilt but also the grace of God.  Our memories are meant not to make us wallow in self-pity or guilt but to help us when we find ourselves in the same places again (as inevitably we will, creatures of habit as we are).

Some hope that Christ is not only the source of forgiveness and healing but a plastic surgeon who removes not only our sins and their guilt but the memory of the wrongs we have thought, said, and done.  I have learned that our Lord is no plastic surgeon.  To the woman caught in adultery our Lord offers no condemnation (greater than what she has borne to that point) but with the absolution comes the call to sin no more (not some generic call to be holy, I believe, but the specific call to recall what led her to that point, to remember what happened when grace came to her rescue, and to let that memory point her to the great divergent paths between desires and holiness, wants and goodness, lies and truth, life and death.

I hope you do not get me wrong here.  I am not at all suggesting that we sinners take back our sins from the cross, that we wallow in self-pity and guilt, or that we should be driven by the tortured memory of past wrongs.  No, not at all.  What I am saying is that the path to right always begin with the choice of the wrong.  Remembering our sins (not the sins of others against us) is not diminishing our Lord's forgiveness but magnifying that forgiveness.  It is a teaching moment of the Holy Spirit.  We all have scars.  Most of them unseen and unknown to the folks around us.  Forgiveness is the gift beyond our ability to purchase or earn but remembering the forgiven wrong can also be a gift and blessing of the Spirit.  It is the "go and sin no more" part of the Lord's Word that sometimes we want to shake off but should not.  Grace does not make us naive or forgetful but wise unto salvation.

Remember, O man, that thou art dust and unto dust shalt thou return. . .

On the problems of Lutheran preaching. . .

Anthony Sacramone has hit on a nerve again:

I think one of the reasons Lutherans are not as widely known for their preaching as are the Reformed and Arminians is that they’re constantly preaching conversion to the converted.

For my part, I would have phrased it slightly differently -- preaching justification to the justified -- but the gist of it all is common to us both.  You can read the rest of his post yourself but I want to focus upon this point only.  Everyone sermon needs to preach justification by grace through faith but not only nor even primarily justification.  Let me say it again.  While it is certainly true that we need to hear how God has, without any merit or worth on our part, justified us through the blood of Jesus on the cross, this should not and cannot be the every Sunday sermon we hear, only slightly differentiated, week after week.  That is not preaching the whole counsel of God's Word and it represents a misreading of where the people are at who sit in the pews Sunday after Sunday.

Weedon is right that we ought not neglect the terrified conscience but neither should we neglect to terrify the consciences of those who feel no thorn of guilt or shame for their sins and neither should we neglect preaching sanctification for those who know the comfort of God's gift of salvation and seek, by the prompting and aid of the Spirit, to do amend their sinful lives.  In other words, Weedon is right and Sacramone is right.  Weedon is not saying that we should preach justification to the justified week after week without end.  Amen.  Don't believe me?  Read the old sermons he has posted on his blog (aptly named Weedon's Blog).  Sacramone is not saying that we have grown up and beyond the message of justification and can now focus on the higher things of Christian living.  Listen to him.

What both lament is that Lutheran preaching has become a one track mind.  When I was in seminary, the sermons we wrote were great Biblically but terrible personally.  We were preaching to nobodies, to virtual pew sitters of our own creation.  When I got into the parish, I began quickly to realize that the folks in the pew were not the same as the imaginary pew sitters of my seminary years.  Neither is any parish made up of a homogenized contingent of Lutheran Christians, at the same point in their spiritual lives or facing the same circumstances in those Christian lives.  The key here is to know your people.

Lutheranism began when preaching was moralistic and legalistic.  It simply compelled the folks to be good by their fear of the consequences of being bad.  Lutheranism was the trigger for a rebirth of preaching in part because we remembered that the job of the sermon was to preach faithfully the Word of God, rightly distinguishing the Law and the Gospel, and to engage the people where they are at.

Furthermore, Lutheranism is, if anything, conscious of the baptized and their new vocation.  Preaching serves to direct, encourage, and, if necessary, correct the baptized so that they may live out the new life which is their gift in baptism.  Lutheran preaching is vocational.  We are who we are by the grace of God but we are not yet who will shall become by the grace of God.  The whole antinomian debate fits in here as well.  The preaching of good works is not the preaching of works that will please God but the preaching of good works that flow from the new life which is ours in baptism and which we live out by grace through faith. Lutheran preaching directs us, the baptized, to the life worthy of our calling.  Though we will most certainly fail and will need the rescue of God's grace to restore us, Lutheran preaching should direct us to the noble task of our high calling.  This is no different than what it is we pray for as we confess our sins:  Forgive us, renew us, and lead us,, so that we may delight in Your will and walk in Your ways to the glory of Your holy name.  Unless these are mere words and lofty intention, the sermon will direct us to that good and gracious will and how we, as the baptized living in the strength and power of God's grace, walk in His ways to the glory of His holy name.

Go to church!

A very long time ago while I was serving between Albany and NYC, the funeral home a town away sent us calendars to distribute to our members.  They were small calendars on a piece of cardboard designed to sit on your desk or counter or table.  There was a picture of Jesus (the generic Sunday school style art), the name of the funeral home in small letters and, in large gold letters under this, GO TO CHURCH.  That is it.  Just GO TO CHURCH.

At the time I found it kind of unnerving.  It was, it seemed, the purest form of law and not, what I considered, the best motivation for what was itself a good goal.  Over the years I admit to having become rather soft on such things and wish today there was a funeral home calendar to distribute that had such a simple and strong message.  The funeral home calendars we get today are photo calendars that motivate by sentiment and hardly even mention the church (even though they insist that you can get a very nice celebration of life at so and so funeral home, inc.).

Go to church.  Not a bad message.  We live at a time when it seems so self-serving to tell folks just to go to church.  It seems so insensitive when folks have so many Sunday options and other activities that conflict with worship.  It seems so strident and hard to say that everyone should just go to church.  Today we would say "Try Church -- you'll like it, enjoy it, and have a good time."  It would be a lie but a less "offensive" lie than the blunt truth of "Go to Church."

When I entered the ministry, it was the tail end of the era when folks said "a home going pastor makes for church going people."  What a sea change has taken place there.  Our people do not use their homes as places for meeting or entertainment like they once did.  Homes have become private refuges.  Few folks under the age of 70 want me to visit or stop by or come for coffee.  They will meet me for breakfast or come to the church to see me but the day when clergy we welcome anytime have come and gone.  In place of home visits, some have suggested that clergy ought to be on Facebook or other social media -- essentially doing electronically what they once did in person.

Lutherans historically never bought into the idea of home going Pastors.  Sure, we bellied up to the general Protestant idea for a while but our Germanic roots focused upon church going.  Look at any schedule of services from the era of J. S. Bach and you see that worship was never a 59 1/2 minute proposition then.  Worship services went on for a couple of hours (longer if there were many communicants).  Consider the amount of music alone (in a typical Bach era Divine Service) and you see that the church was the center of the Christian life of the people.  With the remnants of the liturgy of the hours and catechetical services and sermons (in place of classes), Lutheran Pastors and and Lutheran people had lives centered in the church.  period.

Go to Church.  Now there is a Lutheran aphorism worth repeating.  We need to talk about this more.  Worship is not meant to be an occasional activity.  The Christian life is not shaped by the paternal visits of the clergy checking up on folks or bringing the church to the home; it is the other way around.  Sure the sick and shut-ins need this visitation but the rest of the people receive their primary pastoral care at the church and in the Divine Service.  Unless we get back to this, we will be left to figure out what gimmicks will work this week to get people to deign us with their presence -- only to figure the whole equation out anew when this wears off.  Our people should not be argued or cajoled or bribed into church attendance.  If it is not enough that we meet Christ where He has promised to be (in His House around His Word and Table), then maybe we need to re-catechize the folks because it did not take the first time.

BTW those cutsie expressions that say Don't go to church, BE the church are only distractions. Being the church and going to church are not in opposition.  You cannot be the church and not go to church.  In vain do you look for such distinctions in Scripture.  The Word of the Lord is blunt.  Do not neglect the meeting together [around Word and Sacrament] as some do... 

Go to Church.  Yes, it sounds legalistic but we go not to satisfy some requirement or to impress God, the Pastor, or the rest of God's people.  We go because Christ is there, serving us with His gifts, allowing us the privilege of returning to Him the sacrifice of praise, thanksgiving, self, service, and offering.  We go because that is the nature of Christian faith and life -- it is centered in our life together around the means of grace.  Anything less and there is something wrong which needs to be addressed.  But we have too often failed to speak and act with such clarity about the Divine Service and the Spirit's calling, gathering, sanctifying, and edifying work in that Divine Service.  We should not be hesitant to say it.  Go to Church!

It causes offense. . .

Lest the reader think that Lutherans are alone in their uneasiness about their identity, I read several stories of Roman Catholic priests who minimized clear Roman teaching and whose practices played fast and loose with their tradition.  The people writing were lay folks who found such practice shocking.  I had the experience once in which a phone caller indicated he was Baptist, Southern Baptist to be precise, and wondered if I might know if there was any old fashioned Baptists left in Clarksville -- ones without praise bands, screens, easy listening music and with fire and brimstone sermons and old gospel songs.  His complaint was that the Southern Baptist congregations he had visited looked and sounded too much like Joel Osteen lookalikes and he wanted a real Baptist church.  I am sure that other stories of other denominations might also be found.

In the end we get the same old explanation for the reasons for such departures.  People are offended by doctrine, by faithful practice, and by faithful confession.  That is to say, the only Roman Catholics that people can abide are bad Roman Catholics, the only good Lutherans are the ones who don't hold to or practice in keeping with their confession, the only good Baptists are those who appear to be non-denominational, etc...  I keep hearing that people are offended when you speak truth, act faithfully, and practice consistently with your confession.

For Lutherans this means worship must be cleansed of any ceremonies or practices that might say catholic to the one in the pew.  It also means that private confession is okay to bring up in an historic sense but don't talk about it for folks today.  It also means that we must practice open communion to anyone who wants to come.  It also means that we must allow the folks in the pew to be spectators -- entertaining them with the music and words they prefer to hear.  People will be offended if we are truly Lutheran.

The point is made to the Pastor leaving seminary that change should be slow and the unLutheran things that he might find should be overlooked until he has put in his time with the people.  If you try to restore Lutheran identity and practice, the folks wouldn't understand and it would cause scandal.  Now, to be sure, no one is talking about kicking in the door and holding the congregation hostage.  But in general what is meant is that  the Pastor needs to be patient and wait for the right moment -- and the hope and expectation is that the right moment will never come.  The advice given is not that Lutheran doctrine and practice should be introduced slowly and taught carefully to lay the groundwork for this but that offensive stuff should not be talked about at all (weekly Eucharist, private confession, hymnody consistent with our doctrine, close(d) communion, etc...).

I believe the greater offense is when we refuse to be who we are, when folks come to a Lutheran church and find anything and everything there but Lutheran confessional and liturgical identity, and when we dumb down the faith to that which folks find least objectionable.  For the hundredth time, Lutherans are not losing ground because they are too Lutheran but because we are pathetic runner ups to the evangelical identity and worship that is alien to our confession and to our liturgical heritage.  We have for too many years found our doctrinal identity and liturgical practice our weakness and our flaw instead of our strength and our asset,  No one wants to join a church that is embarrassed or ashamed of itself.  Who wants to be a part of a church that has lost confidence in who that church is, what that church believes, and how that confession takes shape on Sunday morning.  I don't and I venture to say that few folks are attracted to such a self-conscious faith.

Unfortunately, we have gotten so accustomed to being who we are not that who we are is actually threatening to the average Lutheran folk in the pew.  For a generation or more, the newer clergy coming out of seminary have begun to find such tension between Lutheranism the theory and Lutheranism the church  untenable.  That is a good thing.  They are not always tactful or wise and often impatient about the progress.  They sometimes naively choose to fight every battle instead of choosing well what needs to be fought and when.  They are often strident and a few abrasive in their pursuit of Lutheranism true to its confession.  But... they have awoken the Missouri Synod to the issues and we are right now in the midst of a serious theological debate about what it means to be Lutheran and practice Lutheranism.  That is a good thing. 

Some Lutherans have found contentment in the slow death of mainline Protestantism.  Some Lutherans have looked too longingly at evangelicalism to save us.  Some Lutherans have given up and found refuge in other traditions (and more have thought about it than any of us can imagine).  It is about time some Lutherans have decided to try being Lutheran before we given up on Lutheranism.  If we die, let it be because we were true to our confession and not because we wimped out in fear that somebody already or not yet Lutheran might not like us.