Rethinking some things about hymnody. . .

One of the great fruits of the introduction of the 3 year lectionary has been the flourishing of new hymns written to accompany the lectionary texts not previously heard on Sunday morning.  I remain encouraged and enthused by the many and profound texts and tunes that were given birth by the inclusion of so many new pericopes in the Divine Service.  We can and should be grateful for this new birth of hymnody.  Sure, there are those who complain that not all new texts are sturdy nor will all endure.  This is surely true and yet it is not always apparent which texts and tunes survive and which fall away.  Some of these lesser children of the lectionary have endured way past their prime (at least in my estimation) and others have fallen into obscurity before they were given a real chance.  Oh, well.

Though I have lived in tension with regards to the 3 year lectionary vs the historic or one year system of readings appointed for the Sundays, one of the magnets that continually drives me back to the 3 year is that rich flourish of hymnody that has accompanied the move from a one year to a three year system of repeated readings.  That said, I do note that there has been a cost and a high one.

Part of that cost has been the almost universal idea that hymns are primarily, if not universally, appointed to fit the lectionary.  This idea is so pervasive that many of those planning the hymns to be sung find it hard to justify the appointed Hymns of the Day precisely because they do not see the direct textual connection with the readings appointed for that day.  It is true that some of them, many of them, perhaps, are thematic more than textual with regard to the appointed pericopes of the day.  While it is good that we weave together hymns using the readings themselves to draw everything together into a fabric, it is also true that many of the good, even great, hymns of old simply do not relate to a specific text and have fallen into lessor use or out of the realm of the familiar within most congregations.

Lutheran hymnals since the move to English have always struggled with what to do with the hymns of their heritage.  Many of them were non-liturgical (not tied into the lectionary or particularly to a season of the church year) and some of them were a little to directed toward us than we feel comfortable in our God directed idea of Gottesdienst.  Survey after survey of use has shown that our people tend to like and sing more American and English hymns than the Lutheran hymns of our heritage -- almost to the point that we have become strangers to the hymnody that flourished in the post-Reformation period.

The great hymnwriters of old, like Paul Gerhardt, are often unknown to Lutherans today and their hymns (complete with many more stanzas that folks tend to want to sing) are also strangers to our people and to what we sing on Sunday morning.  The hymns we have included have generally been cut and pasted to reduce 12 stanzas to 5 and 20 stanzas to 7 -- thus eliminating some of the hymn's developmental logic and witness.

The absence of a family altar where the family sing hymns in the home, the lack of hymns such as these in use for Sunday school openings, and the virtual absence of the daily offices from parish life have conspired to remove from us part of our best heritage of hymnody and devotion. 

Why the demise of these great Lutheran hymns?  Probably the experts have decided that there is not much use for such hymns.  Probably because of their length, the folks in the pew do not miss them.  Probably because they have not been translated or translated well.  Probably because we think more globally than domestically (and Lutheranism is here profoundly domestic, as Gracia Grindal has noted). 

What can we do about it?  We can re-introduce our people to their heritage.  Matthew Carver has certainly done a bang up job of translating hymns not previously accessible in English (with all their wonderful peculiarities and many stanzas).  Some hymn writers are becoming more attentive to the need to translate and recast these songs of our past.  The gift of desktop publishing has placed all of their efforts within our reach.  So let us try to reacquaint our people with these strongly vocational, manward oriented, and richly ornamented songs of the faith that are both theologically faithful and rich while also profoundly poetic.  In any case, I am reminded that these sturdy hymns of old deserve a wider usage and will try to keep that in mind as I plan the hymn calendar for my own parish.

The devotion of the devout. . .

Tim Kaine, the Democratic vice presidential nominee played weekend prophet and theologian when he told activists in the Human Rights Campaign that the Roman Catholic Church will eventually change its teachings against same-sex marriage.  He is surely following the lead of Joe Biden, the current Vice-President, who presided at a same-sex wedding (after receiving special dispensation not from the Roman Catholic Church of which he claims to be a devout member but from the Washington, D.C., government).  Kaine is a devout Roman Catholic as well as a U.S. senator from Virginia and a former governor of that state. 

"I think it's going to change because my church also teaches me about a creator who, in the first chapter of Genesis, surveyed the entire world, including mankind, and said, 'It is very good,'" Kaine said. He then recalled Pope Francis' remark that "who am I to judge?" in reference to gay priests.

"I want to add: Who am I to challenge God for the beautiful diversity of the human family? I think we're supposed to celebrate it, not challenge it," Kaine said.

The shock here is not that Biden or Kaine have come out in support of same sex marriage and have used their good offices to support it.  The shock here is that both are self-described and media lauded as devout.  Devout must not mean totally committed to a cause or belief.  The meaning must have changed.  For now it must surely mean claiming to be good Roman Catholics while breaking with the church over major doctrines.  Lest we be smug, we have many devout Lutherans as well -- folks who routinely defy and denigrate the public doctrine of the very church they claim to hold membership.

I had thought that devout had synonyms like devoted, committed, loyal, faithful, staunch, genuine, firm, steadfast, unwavering, sincere, wholehearted, keen, enthusiastic, zealous, passionate, ardent, fervent, etc...  I guess I was otherwise occupied when the word changed and became a synonym of disloyal, faithless, false, fickle, inconstant, perfidious, recreant, traitorous, treacherous, unfaithful, untrue, etc...

We have no shortage of such devout folks in a whole variety of churches and I suspect that the very same devotion they show to the doctrines of the churches, they also show to Scripture itself.  It has become fashionable to show patriotism by criticizing your country, remaining seated during the national anthem, or behaving badly while representing America in some official capacity.  It has also become fashionable to speak and act at odds with what your church believes, confesses, and teaches -- as if you were aloof from and too smart for all that faith stuff.

Yes, I am being sarcastic.  I am being sarcastic because I don't know what else to make of those who believe that piety is best shown by challenging what your church believes and confesses.  If that is your belief, then do your church a favor and change to another church that mirrors what it is you do believe.  No one gains when their public witness for the church of their choice is one of doubt, rejection, or disbelief.  Now, if it is true that your church believes something contrary to Scripture and its catholic doctrine and practice, then you may be permitted to disagree to call your church to reform and renewal.  Luther learned that there are limits even to this.  But if you are rejecting what your church believes and teaches because it is politically unpopular or out of step with culture or in conflict with political correctness or appears to be narrow or judgmental by those with whom your church may disagree, well then just do your church a favor and either be quiet and smile a lot or quietly leave for a church that does not want to be faithful.  Lord knows there are enough of them!

The ELCA is a great home for those who want a Lutheranism that stands out and against what Lutherans historically believed, taught, and confessed -- especially about same sex marriage!  There are plenty of church homes that would be happy to welcome Tim and Joe and all the other Roman Catholics who presume to know better than Scripture and tradition what is right and what is wrong with regard to GLBTQ agenda.  Get to know one and find a friend.  But don't stand up in public and denigrate what your church confesses and act in stark contrast to clear church teaching and then claim to be devout or allow others to say you are devout.  It makes a mockery of your church, you, and the very word itself.

UPDATE. . . .

Gretta Vosper, the United Church of Canada minister who did not believe in God, was given a standing ovation by her congregation after her first Sunday service since being a United Church report branded her self-described atheism as grounds she was “not suitable” to carry on. So I was surprised by the United Church's decision to remove but not by the response of the congregation where her atheism has been front and center for a long time.  Another form of a devout adherent who sees no contradiction between rejection of what a church believes and being called a fine, upstanding member...

The Word of the ESV endureth forever. . .

Beginning in the summer of 2016, the text of the ESV Bible will remain unchanged in all future editions printed and published by Crossway—in much the same way that the King James Version (KJV) has remained unchanged ever since the final KJV text was established almost 250 years ago (in 1769). So the word has come down from Crossway and with it a list of those 29 verses and 52 words being changed.  The text of the ESV will no longer be updated but will remain as is following this update.  Read it all here. . .

I must admit to being rather surprisingly relieved by this.  No, I do not consider the ESV the perfect translation (not even the KJV merits this judgment) but as a pastor I have tired of the constant meddling with the text to the point where it is not enough to know the version but the edition of that version.  It is a pesky problem when Bible studies bog down on minor translation differences (although the major ones can be useful studies in and of themselves).  I am happy that we will eventually have an ESV without the changes that have turned the NIV into something different than it was first envisioned.

Updates are helpful sometimes but continuity is also very helpful.  It is, after all, not the Word of the Lord that has changed but how convention has decided to render that word into a language other than the original that has changed.  Of course language changes, evolves, and transitions and we will have to deal with some of that with an ESV that ignores those changes.  But the truth is that we have not suffered so greatly and the KJV has remained essentially unchanged and ever popular despite the fact that editorial committees have not updated its text.

In the beginning I was enamored of all the changes.  I have a dozen or more versions on my bookshelves (everything from The Cotton Patch Version to the New Jerusalem) and I thought it was the cat's meow.  But at that stage of my life I saw the Bible as a fluid word subject to change -- if not in text then in meaning.  Instruction and maturity have taught the error of my youthful ways.  Fascination with change is its own weakness, especially when it comes to Scripture.

I recall most passages in some form of the KJV/RSV that were the two most predominant versions of my youth and I learned the Catechism in the same way (1943 copyright).  The constant juggling of words is important more for the restraint of past exuberance over change than the deficiencies of the older texts.  In most cases, we are restoring rather than revising, going back rather than breaking new ground (both with catechism and with Bible translation and updates).  The years have taught me that what I thought was cool as a youth are at odds with the way we learn and our ability to meet together at the same texts even though we are separated by generations of time.

Having only recently upgraded to an IPhone SE, it is disconcerting to think that the 7 is already out.  I am more than happy to have some problems fixed but after a while the constant need to upgrade to new technology makes the devices only more expensive and more trouble.  These are, after all, only means and not ends.  So it is good that we distance Scripture, catechism, and even liturgical change from the way commerce views the introduction of a product new and different but predictably more pricey than what it replaces.  Incremental changes in the church are best and I for one laud the folks at Crossway for saying this is the text for today and for all the foreseeable future.

UPDATE:  The Text will be open to update after all, though seldom and minimally, it is hoped.  It turned out the world was not as ready to accept a constant text for Biblical and liturgical usage and Crossway changed its mind.  That said, I kept what I initially wrote.

Here is what Crossway has to say:  “The means to that goal, we now see, is not to establish a permanent text but rather to allow for ongoing periodic updating of the text to reflect the realities of biblical scholarship such as textual discoveries or changes in English over time,” stated Dennis. “These kinds of updates will be minimal and infrequent, but fidelity to Scripture requires that we remain open in principle to such changes.”

Where 2, 3, or 16 are gathered. . .

THE final parish meeting of the Holy Trinity Church, in the centre of Bath, took place on a rainy day in February 2011. Anglo-Catholic congregations had worshipped here, under the hammer-beam roof and monuments to heroes of Napoleonic wars, for nigh on two centuries. Now a £40,000 ($52,000) bill for electrical repairs had succeeded where a German bomb had failed: the church was to close and it was time to wind up its affairs. Formalities concluded, parishioners filed in for a final mass. “Forgive us as we confess our negative feelings and fears for the future,” ran a closing message on the website. Today the building is listed for sale on the Church of England website, offers invited.

So begins an article in The Economist on the demise of Christianity in Britain.  As if this were merely anecdotal, the story is fraught with disappointing statistics.   In 2009, showed Britons without religion slightly outnumbered those saying they’re Christians (now increased to 49 percent vs. 43 percent). And since 2004 baptisms are down 12%, church marriages down 19%, and funerals down 29%. Nowadays a quarter of Sunday services are attended by 16 or fewer worshipers.

In 1979,  5.4 million Britons attended church.  That dropped by a million in 10 years and then to 3.7 million in 1998.  Fast forward and in 2020 it is anticipated that fewer than 2.3 million will be in church on any given Sunday.  Now it is certainly true that in a few places the church in Britain is thriving but in most parts of the country it is dying.  Gallup found in polling that The UK was pretty much at the bottom of the religious fervor of some 65 nations surveyed.  Though woven into the fabric of life in Elizabeth's realm, Christianity is becoming merely a memory, an aspect of heritage that seems to have little impact or influence on the character of British life on the whole.

So what does this matter?  First of all, Europe has been a fairly reliable barometer of the direction of things in the US.   That is not to say that everything that happens in Europe happens here but, without taking pains to avoid it, it is a trend that we will encounter in America sooner rather than later.  In addition, the relative poor health of Christian faith and life in the so-called developed world only further distances us from the mission fields that we once planted -- areas where Christianity is not only living but growing.  Finally, it is testament to the legacy of civil religion in which doctrine takes second place and a spiritualized version of moral progress takes over the preaching.  We would do well to take note of that last point.  Christianity in America cannot survive as a civil religion rich in spirituality but devoid of actual doctrines nor can it survive as a voice for the moral improvement of man and society apart from the center of the creed -- the God who has revealed Himself in flesh in His Son and paid the cost of our redemption so that we may be forgiven and restored to Him who created us.

The example of the British is also poignant in the fact that just as ceremony cannot be separated from actual doctrine, neither can doctrine live apart from the worship life wherein that doctrine is confronted, confessed, and carried forth in daily life.  We have witnessed first hand evangelicals who have abandoned all catholic ceremony and ritual and with it the very tenets of the orthodox Christian faith and in Britain we have witnessed the ceremony and ritual carefully preserved and eloquently executed but completely empty of its meaning.  Neither can be a refuge for faithfulness and both are key, along with orthodox catechesis, or the faith in lands once well known as Christian will be a memory in a few generations.

Debunking a myth

The common myth, fed certainly by the 24 hour news cycle and the need to keep us tuned into the media, is that violence, war, and terror are more today than every before.  It is a common perception but it is a myth.  Violence around the world is actually on the decline when viewed over the expanse of time. The truth is that there are less wars and less people dying in wars than there have been in long, long time.  It certainly does not mesh with conventional wisdom or with the media's constant hawking of threats but it is true.

Everyone from Glenn Beck on one side to Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker agree, the world has become incredibly peaceful.  It just may be that today we are in the most peaceable era in the existence of all mankind.  According to Parker, "The rate of documented direct deaths from political violence (war, terrorism, genocide and militias) in the past decade is an unprecedented few hundredths of a percentage point."

Of course, the rate of violence declines but the increase in population means that there are still many people dying.  Consider that prior to 187o, there were just 50 or so independent countries and today that number has nearly quadrupled.  So there is more "friction" between the nations but fewer real wars.  Even then, the friction is not translating into armed conflicts.  Those who plot such statistics define a war as having casualties of 1,000 or more.  Sure, the armed conflicts in the Middle East has picked up a bit in the past 5-10 years, after a period of decline, but that said, the news may just give us a false picture of how dangerous the world really is.

I write this not because I think we should all breathe a sigh of relief but because too many of us have become addicted to the news, defined by our fears, and our lives shaped by threat.  I have had many people come to me who were on the verge of being crippled by their fears and have told them to start by stopping watching the news.  The news is a business and its use of technology has brought every skirmish into our own living rooms and bedrooms to the point where we live in fear of an amplified threat that is overstated and, on the other hand, we live somewhat immune to the real threats that ought to occupy our attention.

The physical threats are easier to identify but the spiritual threats are much more hidden and yet also much more real.  In our obsession with physical wars and violence, we may have grown somewhat complacent to the other side of the equation.  The loss of personal responsibility, the acceptance of a diagnosis instead of personal accountability for behavior, the victimization of our culture, the growing intolerance of those who disagree with us, and the lack of a commonly held fabric of values and history to bind our diversity together into one nation and one culture... these are just a few of the things that threaten our America every bit as much as the enemies who have their fingers on a trigger.

The peacemaking of Scripture does not paper over such real threats nor does it allow us the comfort of choosing which ills to address and which to overlook.  Now more than any other time, our culture is in need of an anchor in truth and a moral compass and Christians are uniquely poised to offer both (without falling into the trap of merely being naysayers to everything).  We need to explain and not just defend the truth of God's Word and the moral foundation built upon it.  We need to offer the real peace of God's abiding presence and abundant mercy to those who see only danger and threat in the world around them.  We also need to call us all to personal accountability and personal responsibility for the choices we make and the actions we take. 

The media have not only done a great job of creating an atmosphere of fear that has distorted the reality of wars, violence, and threat.  It has also done a great job or marginalizing Christianity against the real danger to our common values and personal accountability that were once the hallmarks of our American culture and life.

Do your duty. . .

Sermon preached for Pentecost 20, Proper 22C, on Sunday, October 2, 2016.

Have you ever had one of those horrible moments when someone asked if you noticed but you were not sure what you were supposed to notice?  In our great need for affirmation, we act like little children who must tell anyone who will hear what we did.  Over and over again we tell the battle stories of our lives, the misery of our work, the problems we have at home, and on and on.  But the truth is most of this is ordinary stuff.  We want someone to notice, to listen, to understand, and to affirm us but most of these are the daily duties of our mortal lives for which we are ought expect no special commendation.  Jesus said in the Gospel for today:  “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.”

So what is our duty?  What are the things for which we ought expect no special commendation?  Jesus tells us.  Do not tempt others to sin.  Shape your lives so that they do not invite others to do the wrongs you have done.  Speak so that those around you will not will not be drawn away from the Lord.  This is not simply our duty to the Lord but to our neighbors, to those around us.  Our first duty of love is not to tempt those around us to sin.

And with this is the call not to ignore the sins of others that will lead them astray.  In other words, when we sit silent before the wrongs of those around us we only confirm them in their sin and lead them to unbelief.  The duty of love requires us that we not fail to rebuke the sins of those around us lest our failure to speak encourage them to condemnation.  There is no live and let live in the kingdom of God.  Love compels us -- not superior righteousness or moral superiority but love.  Love called us to repentance and love calls our brothers and sisters back to the way that is Christ.

Just as we are not to tempt others to sin nor stand silently by as they follow the path of sin to their destruction, neither can we fail to forgive those who repents.  Not because they deserve it but because God has forgiven us unworthy sinners, we forgive those around us.  Even if they sin against us the same sin seven times a day, when they come to us and by their repentance ask to be forgiven, we forgive as Christ has us.  Forgiveness is not a reward for those who have reformed their lives but the means by which the sinner is reborn in grace.  Love forgives.  As we have been forgiven in Christ.

Our duty is not to tempt, not to contribute to the sinfulness of those around us, and not to fail to forgive them.  But love does not stop there.  The duty of love is to serve those around us – our family, our neighbor, our employer, and those in need.  Love does not choose whether or not to serve but love serves as Christ has served us in love.  His love is our motivation.  Not the worthiness of those around us, not whether or not the needs comes at a convenient time, not if we want to serve those around us, but as Christ has loved and redeemed us, so do we love and serve those around us.

Of course the weight of all this duty of love seems too much.  Like the disciples of old, we cry how can we possibly do all that is asked of us?  If we are going to do all this, then we will need more faith. “Increase our faith” we cry.  The burden of love is too much for us.  The temptation to us is to run from love for its duty seems too great and we fear we will never obtain the faith we need to satisfy love’s duty to our neighbor.  Faith does not wait until stronger to act nor does it wait for a better moment.

Jesus insists we do not need more faith but to use the faith we have.  Our duty to our neighbor cannot wait for us to grow enough faith to make this love easy.  No, indeed.  Even if we have the faith of a mustard seed, we have enough faith to live our lives in faithful response to God and in faithful love and service to our neighbor.

There is a part of us that believes if we have the right explanation or instruction, we will figure it out.  There is also a part of us that cries for a miracle to confirm that this is what we are to do and that we can do it.  Uprooted trees and miraculous signs are great but we don’t need them to ease the way.  The way is not sight.  It is faith. What we need to exercise our faith and confidence in Christ, to live out what we proclaim. 

Then there is the final shibboleth.  Will it make a difference and will anybody notice? If loving our family, neighbor, employer, and the poor will not make a difference we can see with our eyes and really improve their lot, what is it worth?  Why bother?  If nobody notices and I receive no credit for what I do, why bother?  These are the ways we work to justify our lack of love for our neighbor and our failure to warn the sinner of the consequences of his ways.  But these are not the words of faith.  These are the words of unbelief.

Every day we know God’s mercies new – not because we deserve them but because it is God’s nature to love even the unworthy and undeserving.  We come together today before the cross where we meet the ultimate love for the sinner.  Here we see that Jesus is not asking anything from us that He has not already done for us.  We love because He first loved us.  Our love is not noteworthy because it is love in response to the love that saved us through the cross, bearing the full weight of our sin in His suffering, and dying that we might live.

Living our lives in response to that love means asking for no special notice or reward for what we do but living toward our neighbor as Christ has lived for us.  Of course this is hard.  It goes against our sinful natures that want to live only for self.  It goes against the world which pleads to be noticed, affirmed, and rewarded.  Though we live in a world conditioned by sin to act because of reward, you and I were reborn in baptism to live different lives, new lives, lives shaped by Christ’s life for us.

Today Brooklyn joined us in God’s kingdom through the waters of baptism.  She was planted in the Kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit lives in her just as you and I have been planted in God’s Kingdom and the Spirit lives in us.  The way of this Kingdom means being in the world but not of the world.  You and I live apart from the world not in physical place but in the kind of lives we live.  The way of this life and the way of the Kingdom of God is faith – faith that move us to do what is love’s duty as Christ has loved us.

The way of the Kingdom of God is not self-serving nor it is for personal gain or glory. The way of this Kingdom is faith.  As Christ has lived a holy life, so do we strive for holiness lest we tempt others to sin.  As Christ called us out from the way of sin and its death, so do we call those around us to repentance.  As Christ has forgiven us and still forgives us, so do we in Christ forgive.  As He has provided for us for this life and for eternity, so do we take up the cause of those in need.

You are not a victim.  You earned the curse sin has caused you.  You are not a victim. Christ has loved you in spite of that sin.  He went to your cross, to wear your suffering, and to die your death.  He has called you to faith so that you might live in this hope, rejoice in this mercy, and be transformed by the power of His love.  You are bit a victim.  You are most of all the privileged who have received the mercy of God.  You know the privilege of God’s grace and what it means to be called the baptized children of God.  The world claims victimhood; your claim is grace.

So do what is your calling and your duty.  Do not tempt others to sin by your sins.  Live holy lives as much as you are able and if you fail let it not be because you did not try.  Go to church.  Raise your children in this faith.  Serve the Lord through the ministries of this church.  Support this church with your tithes and offerings.  Forgive those who hurt you as Christ has forgiven you.  Use now the faith God has already supplied you and do not wait for perfect faith or perfect timing to live out your baptismal new life. 

And at the end of the day, we struggle not to whine because this holy calling did not change the world or because we did not enjoy our service or because nobody noticed what we did or recognized us for our efforts.  Faith acknowledges our debt to grace, rejoices in the love that has saved us, and claims the duty of that love in our relationships here on earth.  We are all unworthy servants.  Even when we do our best for the Lord, we are only doing our duty.

But do not forget this.  What the world never notices, the Lord sees.  What the world does not credit, the Lord knows and has promised everlasting reward.  Let this be enough.  God has given us the kingdom.  Amen.

Square pegs in round holes. . .

Preaching has been described in many ways.  Some suggest preaching is to the unconverted and is a call to faith.  Others insist it is for the Christian and is to nurture an existing faith.  Some would focus preaching on changing behavior.  Others would instruct the mind hoping that the heart and life will follow along.  Some believe it is the preacher's job to inspire.  Others see the preacher's task to call the people to repentance.  And I could go on.  Of course, there are those who believe it is a little bit of everything but then it usually is not much of anything.

Perhaps the kind of preaching that offends me most is the sermon that answers all the questions with a Bible passage, vignette, or moralism.  I confess I grow very tired of those who tear out pages from the Bible and paste them against the questions that inevitably rise from the hearts of the faithful living in a world less than friendly to their faith.  It is just as tiring as those who abandon any pretense of the faith or of Scripture and have turned the sermon into a motivational speech designed to help people help themselves.

The answers of the Scriptures do not fit the questions posed by the world (at least apart from the Spirit's work opening the heart to faith and the mind to understand the mercy of God).  I am not saying that the Scriptures do not answer the real questions of man's need but that the natural man does not understand his plight nor does he recognize the voice of God in His Word or the answers of that Word.  To the world, the Scriptures are square pegs that do not fit in the round holes of the self-described wants and needs of people apart from the prompting of the Spirit.

For all intents and purposes, the internet is a better deity for the natural man than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The internet seems endless and yet easily accessible.  It is both expansive and personal (in a manner of speaking).  Its answers are entirely relevant and if you dispute them it will offer different answers to suit you.  It is the source of a virtual world that competes with the other world around you and becomes your refuge and retreat when you cannot stomach the other reality.  The internet preserves us and our images -- thus offering a suitable substitute for eternal life to a people who have made something of a peace with death.  It dispenses with the unsavory idea of guilt or shame and allows us to indulge our desires without inhibitions in relative anonymity.  It creates a virtual sphere of friends and family that make it easy to live apart from and to dispense with the more messy face to face of real relationships.  It is the round peg for our round hole -- the ultimate magnification of self and preference across the face of the universe.

The preaching of the Church does not attempt to shove the square pegs of the Scriptures into the round holes of the world's interests or concerns but proclaims an other worldly kingdom that has dawned here but opens something that is in but not of this world.  In the face of this new reality, the old questions are no longer either urgent or relevant and new questions lead us deeper into the mystery of God and His merciful acts.  Preaching the Kingdom means preaching the new reality which is defined not simply by what we see with our eyes but what we know by faith.  The people in the pews are not kept by inspirational stories designed to help them achieve their own dreams any more than they are kept by pat answers that explain away all that is around them.  What keeps them is the transcendent kingdom ushered in by the immanent God who wears our flesh, suffers in our place, dies our death, and rises to give us life brand new.

Because of this the world will always find faithful preaching somewhat irrelevant or irrational.  Its questions are round holes while God is speaking in square pegs.  Only faith can open the ears to hear and the mind to begin to comprehend the mystery of God and our place in all of this.  Preaching confronts us with the new reality born in us by baptism.  Preaching does not make sense of the world or answer all its questions but delivers the new reality manifest in Christ Jesus.  In the face of this, the old questions will either be rewritten or completely abandoned.  This preaching does not make it easier to understand or deal with the world around us but gives us a perspective in which to frame both the joys of this world and its sorrows.

The problem is that too much preaching tries to answer the questions the Scriptures do not answer or reduces the Gospel to mere motivational encouragement that justifies and legitimizes the natural desires of the heart. Either way it is a square peg in a round hole that satisfies no one.  Look at the question that come to Jesus and His answers.  Should not the preaching of this present day parallel the way Jesus directed the hearer beyond self and the moment into the kingdom born of His own death and resurrection?  If you want answers, the internet is your god.  Don't squeeze God into openings into which He cannot fit.  Preach the kingdom.  Preach Christ crucified.  The Spirit will awaken faith in the hearer and create the questions that will lead the hearer to the one and only answer -- Jesus Christ.

A Wedge Issue. . .

One of the most common pursuits of modern Bible scholars is to pit one author against another -- as if the Scriptures were a patchwork quilt of different authors with different messages and with different estimations of God.  So we are often told that Paul does not sound much like Jesus but James does sound more like Jesus.  In particular, the Pauline descriptions of justification are seen as purely a Pauline perspective.  On another forum one such "scholar" said: "justification" is a concept that comes from Paul much more than from Jesus.

Intrinsic to this point of view is the judgment that Scripture does not have one message but many and the many different points of view represent best guesses from which the scholar can learn bits and pieces but nothing even approaching one message from the two Testaments.  According to these scholars, the Scriptures are a deep, dark book that us only the barest glimpse of God and a book so hard to understand that only the scholar and correctly discern its content.

The primary difference on Scripture between conservatives and liberals lies precisely on this issue.  Conservatives believe the Scriptures are clear and the message plain -- Jesus Christ.  As I often tell my new members' classes, the Bible has one message -- Jesus Christ -- and there is a unity between Old and New Testament and among the various authors.  On that same forum, another contributed put it this way:  since it comes from Paul, it comes from Jesus. While this seems to be simplistic and naive, it is just the opposite.  It is the deep and profound perspective of faith and the consistent understanding of the faithful over the ages.

According to the scholars trying to make Matthew say the same thing as Paul or John is doing a disservice to the Scriptures and to each author's own perspective on things.  I would disput this and insist that the opposite is the case.  Trying to pit Jesus against Paul and Matthew against John and so on does a grave disservice to the Scriptures and to Christ who is the key to those Scriptures.  While every conservative commentator worth his salt pays attention to the distinctives we see in the various individual authors, no one worthy his salt attempts to divide the Scriptures or turn the various authors into enemies competing with each other over their own perspective of who God is and what He has done.  In fact, this perspective leads to the inescapable conclusion that God cannot really be known at all and that the only authentic approach to God or to His Word is that of many blind men trying to discern who the elephant is and what he is like from their own little viewpoint.  The end result of this is that there is no doctrine or truth that trumps any other and every viewpoint and individual judgement is equally defective (except, of course, those of the scholars who alone are able to transcend their limitations).

Who is facing whom?

Earlier this summer Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, caused a stir by suggesting that the Church return to the practice of priest and people facing the same direction during the Liturgy of the Sacrament, a change the liturgical scholars describe as ad orientem.  Cardinal Sarah proposed that this change begin on the First Sunday of Advent this year.

The posture of priest and people facing the same direction in the prayer of the Canon of the Mass was introduced post Vatican II.  This versus populum position has become a big deal among those who insist on liturgical reform and those who decry the innovations of the post-Vatican II liturgical renewal.  I would suggest that the postures are somewhat misnamed.

Since the liturgy is not about us, there is no such orientation as facing the people.  It does not matter which direction the priest or the people are facing, the orientation of both priest and people is to the Lord.  Yes, I do understand the significance of the ad orientem and versus populum.  But priest and people facing the same direction or facing toward each other has marginal difference since the priest does not ever perform for the sake of a people who act as spectators.  Such is the first fallacy of ad orientem and versus populum.  The whole liturgy is toward the Lord who delights in serving us with His gifts. 


The one big improvement that ad orientem might address is the problem of pastor or priest who has the mistaken idea that he is performing.  There is a continuing problem of the priest-pastor-celebrant who imposes his own personality on the liturgy.  Now that kind of personality will do the same thing whether he is facing the people or both are facing the same direction.  Yet the posture of ad orientem might discourage it a bit and for that reason we ought to give it every consideration.

The problem of performing priests/pastors and people who come to watch or be entertained is a problem not simply a matter of changing posture but of  preaching and catechesis.  This will not change by a simple reordering of who stands where but requires liturgical catechesis as well as catechesis in the faith.  If God's people are going to understand the liturgy as an act of worship that equips us for God's service, then they need faithful instruction and training.  For Lutherans this means not simply teaching them the Scriptures but teaching them the liturgy that forms the source and summit of our piety.

Part or that catechesis means confronting and deconstructing the nonsense and fallacies too many people bring to the Divine Service -- people who have no instruction to counter what they presume.   If there is a change and a pastor or priest changes from versus populum to ad orientem, that does not mean “the priest is turning his back to the people” any more that he is facing the people when he stands behind the altar. 

What is wrong with this picture?

The photo was taken at a Valpo Liturgical Conference.  Once these liturgical institutes commanded great attention.  I fear that they are mostly forgettable, having become the domain exclusively of the ELCA and their social agenda.  The majority of clergy presiding were women (even though other photos show the majority of attenders were men).  We can lament this.  But there is more to this and the leftward drift of a liturgical conference that once boasted folks like Kenneth Korby speaking on such Lutheran topics as private confession.  Look at the photo.  The Valpo Chapel of the Resurrection was built to seat something like 3500 -- for the daily chapel and festival services of a university in northwestern Indiana intent upon being Lutheran.  Apparently the attendance has fallen off to the point where there is no need to use most of the chapel or its fine organ resources.  Instead, a small chapel has been created in the midst of the great assembly.

The altar is in the center with folks facing each other in order to face it.  It is a small altar and small pulpit in the shadow of the grand cross, mighty altar, and elevated pulpit where giants once spoke to the assembled college community (thinking here of O. P. Kretzmann).  What is left is a modern chapel adorned with the faces of the people as the primary liturgical art.  I know that there are some who will laud the decision to make a chapel within the nave of this large and imposing structure and it is certainly more intimate.  But what it does do is testify to just how small the Lutheran presence in chapel and worship has become to a large and diverse Lutheran university and its student population.  That is my point.  The artistic design of the chapel is secondary to the fact that this chapel lives in the shadows of a history and identity that once was an imposing identity upon the whole campus but it is certainly not one today.  This is a picture of the problems most Lutheran colleges and universities face.  What does it mean to be a Lutheran collegiate institution?

Chapel is not alone in answer to this question of identity but it was once a place where the unmistakable locus of the university's soul rested.  It is easy to pick at Valpo since it has formally distanced itself from its past and its once unofficially close association with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  It is easy to raise questions when ELCA colleges and universities claim a Lutheran legacy more than a Lutheran identity.  It is not so easy when it is a question facing the wholly owned Lutheran schools that make up the Concordia University System.  But it is no less urgent.  We are good at words.  We need to be better at the reality of what life on an LCMS campus is like.  Faith is not to be merely tolerated or even given a nod on these campuses but permeated throughout the classroom, dorm, and chapel.  This is a work in progress and I am thankfully for those administrations which face this question head on every day.  It is not enough to survive but if we are to survive, it ought to be as Lutheran institutions of higher education -- without apology.  Much less and we are little different than our secular counterparts except we charge more and have a small chapel available for those who want it.  Pray for our schools, folks!

Is being moderate the same as being lukewarm?

Lutherans are of all people those who value moderation.  We do not like extremists.  We believe that most all things are good in moderation and most all things are bad in excess -- including religion.  Garrison Keillor has made a career about poking fun at moderate Lutherans and the high value they attach to be unexceptional.  As with much humor, there is usually some truth underneath it all.  This is the stuff that is not so funny.

I come from the generation that promoted moderation to its fullest degree.  Work but do not work too much.  That is bad.  This was a cut against my parents whose generation worked too much (at least that is what we thought).  Enjoy life in moderation.  Drink but don't drink too much.  Drink but don't waste too much money on expensive beer and liquor.  Moderately priced booze is just fine.   Drive a middle class car but don't spend too much money on a vehicle or your clothes.  Go to church but not too much and do not appear to enjoy it.  Treat the faith moderately.  Be interested but certainly do not be extreme in matters of doctrine and faith and practice.  That is always bad.  The worship service should not go on too long; neither the sermon.  Bible study is fine but if there is something good on TV, well, we all understand.  A little sex and vulgar language is okay but not too much.  That is bad.  A few children are good.  Too many children and that is not so good.  Live moderately and make a moderate carbon print upon the environment.  Recycle?  Yes.  Live off the grid.  No.  Moderation.  We visit churches in search of the one that fits us -- not too much nor too little but just right.  And then we attend moderately lest anyone get the idea that somehow or another we are radical.

Lutherans were born to take a prudent, cautious, middle-of-the-road approach to contested or divisive issues.  We really don't get why people could be against us since we are so moderate in our approach to people. The media do not like immoderate people who take immoderate positions on issues of religious and moral significance.  In fact, the media believes that the best Muslims are those who are too Muslim and the best Roman Catholics are those who are not too Roman Catholic.  Lutherans, too.  Moderation means thinking for yourself, picking and choose from the smorgasbord of doctrine, faith, and practice.  Lock step is bad.  A little independence and distance is good.  Especially for religion. Compromise is good and if you have to negotiate away some of your beliefs or principles in order to appear united, well, that is also good.

I must admit that my kids are not moderate at all.  My kids have a uniform disdain for contemporary worship, touchy feely stuff that substitutes for doctrine and truth, and happy clappy songs that take the place of real hymns.  I am not so sure how we did it, but we raised immoderate children who have little time for half-baked politics, religion, and interest.  I guess I failed as a Lutheran.  Moderation is not the sacred value for my children that it is for most folks of my own generation.

The reality is that moderation is a malicious myth.  We don't need moderates and God doesn't need them either.  We don't need Christians or Lutherans in name only, who feed only moderately from the grand buffet of doctrine and truth.  We don't need people who think for themselves enough to distance them from Scripture and that which has always been believed, taught, and confessed.  We don't need a moderation which seeks to be less than fully the new person Christ has raised us to be out of the waters of baptism.  Moderate subordinate their faith and morality to our secular culture and feel free to dissent from the words of Jesus and the creeds of Christendom and still be good Christians, good Lutherans.  We don't need moderates who make your own morality apart from Christ and who are pro-life for themselves but leave everything else up to the individual conscience or the will of the majority or the courts to decide.  Nope, lets face it.  Being moderate is a lot like being lukewarm and unless I remember wrongly God is going to chew up and spit out the lukewarm moderates who run neither hot nor cold about anything -- even the cross.  Moderates are immoderate when it comes to the one thing that remains when heaven and earth pass away and that alone ought to make us suspicious of something we once thought was our cardinal virtue.

How politically incorrect. . .

Comedians Jim and Jeannie Gaffigan announced on Monday they are ending The Jim Gaffigan Show after two seasons. On his Facebook page, Jim Gaffigan explained that he and his wife felt the show took too much time away from their “most important project” — their five children. . . .

The couple has expressed their faith publicly numerous times, most recently at The Catholic University of America’s 2016 Commencement. During their commencement speech, Jeannie and Jim discussed what it was that made them successful.

“Neither of us could’ve had these accomplishments by ourselves,” said Jim. Jeannie added, “We needed each other, we needed our family, we needed our friends and we needed God.”

We live in an age in which children are like distractions from our higher pursuits.  We have children and then assign day care or extended family to "raise" them.  We have children because we want them like toys or trophies and turn to reproductive technology to deliver them to us when we find it convenient to have them.  We have children as the just fruits of the equality of every gender identity and life choice and not as the fruit of a long, enduring, and faithful marriage between a man and a woman.  We have children as private decisions and choices and not because they are intrinsic to marriage itself or the society to which we belong.

Jim Gaffigan has violated the cardinal rule of modernity.  He has elevated children higher than career or compensation and had the nerve to describe them as the most important project of he and his wife, Jeannie.  More than this, he cloaked it all in the fabric of faith and of the God whom they needed and before whom they and their children live.  The world around us can stomach the idea of vocation in terms of career but it bristles at the idea of marriage between a man and woman being the most central vocation of the husband and wife and their vocation together as parents to their children.  Worse than making children and marriage an equivalent to career, the Gaffigans have raised their home and family above the sacred markers of success and meaning with which we value our lives as modern people.

On another forum, the idea that marriage and singleness (as a choice and not as charism) were not equivalents and equals both in status and morality was attacked as the rudest and most primitive of attacks on the freedom of choice.  What a world we have come to in which we must defend marriage and then defend the priority of marriage over singleness.  Is it permissible not to marry?  According to Luther, it is not a matter of what is permissible but what is good and what is better.  If you have the supernatural gift and grace not just to be celibate but to be chaste in thought, word and deed then singleness is good. It is not good to choose singleness as a means of avoiding marriage (but not avoiding sex) in order to free up your time and resources for your self.  The gift of celibacy is to enable you better to serve the world and the Lord unencumbered by familial duties that can and should come first. This is not a legitimate choice for the Christian to free you up for a life of career, travel, pleasure, things, and self-fulfillment.  Marriage is always better than singleness (apart from the gift of singleness and its accompaniment of chastity and purity without burning with desire).  Read Luther on the 4th Commandment writing in the Large Catechism.  Read St. Paul.

We push college on our children as a better choice.  In fact, most Americans today view higher education as a sacred value.  Luther said marriage and children should be this sacred value. We value higher education because we are sure it is a means to self-improvement, to higher earnings, to better jobs (meaning those without menial labor), and because we think it will make us more productive and help us achieve more success.  We drill this into our children even at a young age.  We understand when marriage is deferred for the sake of education and we even understand when personal goals of earthly success, accomplishment, and education substitute for marriage and family.  Luther certainly valued education but he constantly pushed us to a higher value and would insist that replacing marriage with singleness and family with education or career success and self-interest indicates our priorities are way out of whack.   Dare we say it -- sinful???

Clearly this is a subject for some considered debate and discussion.  What happened to make marriage merely one of many lifestyle choices and family a decision second or third in priority to pursuit of those other things one wants or desires?  How did it end up that this became the normal in our thinking and marriage the exception?  What happened to remove this whole issue from the realm of what is good and what is better, what is faithful and what is true for the Christian captive to God's Word?

On the way. . .

Declaration on the Way: Church, Ministry and Eucharist , is a declaration of the consensus achieved by Lutherans and Catholics on the topics of church, ministry and Eucharist as the result of ecumenical dialogue between the two communions since 1965. It is a consensus “on the way” (in via), because dialogue has not yet resolved all the church-dividing differences on these topics. Nevertheless, at this time of important benchmarks in the relationship between Lutherans and Catholics, including both the anniversary of 50 years of dialogue in 2015 and also the 500th commemoration of the Reformation in 2017, it is good to review the path traveled together and to enumerate the many points of agreement between Lutherans and Catholics on these subjects. This review can help both communities to affirm the agreements they have reached together. More importantly, it can encourage them to look for the next steps toward Christian unity.

Lutherans and Roman Catholics in the USA have been in conversation for more than 50 years.  It has been a fruitful conversation.  Lutherans have learned something of themselves and perhaps the same could be said of Roman Catholics.  Certainly we have learned things of each other that are part of the fruitful conversation we have had for these many years.  That conversation has been interrupted by and shaped by Lutheran divisions (from its sanction in LCUSA to its de-evolution to a two sided conversation with one side of Lutheranism).  Actions by some Lutherans have further complicated this conversation (particularly the decisions to ordain women and to adopt the GLBTQ agenda with respect to marriage and qualifications for ordination).  Just as these have reshaped the relationships between Lutherans and distanced those churches from each other, so have these had an impact upon the conversation with Rome.

That there is value in these conversations is without dispute.  That these conversations will result in some form of official fellowship or even unity is a hope among some but hardly a reality.  We are as nice as we can be when we sit down and talk but the conversations have suffered from language that was not as precise as it could be and with agreement in peripheral areas while the substantive issues that separate us remain the elephants in the room.  We have not made as much progress there as we might and it does not appear that we will soon resolve the mountain of divisions that keep us distant from the hope and dream of one ministry and one communion.

Officially,

By demonstrating how far Lutherans and Catholics have come together on three crucial topics, the Declaration indicates much ground that need not be retraced again, and it offers these Agreements to the churches to be received into their common life.  In this way it helps inspire continuing work toward the visible Christian unity, which is Christ’s prayer.

Unofficially, there is ground that will of necessity need to be retraced.  The church bodies are not the same as the ones who initially agreed to these dialogs.  They have taken positions at odds with what they said they believed when those dialogs were first published.  The world has changed.  We can build on the conversations but some of those conversations will need to be had again and again, if we take seriously a positive unity of full doctrinal agreement and common confession.

But therein lies the rub.  In viewing the picture of the presiding bishop of the ELCA, a woman, and the Roman Catholic bishop, a man, you get the visual image of the great disconnect between the forgers of this declaration.  When conversations began this picture would not have been possible.  Rome is nowhere close to affirming a female diaconate much less priesthood and episcopacy.  The ELCA has long since settled this in its own mind and moved on to the full legitimization of all gender identities within the clergy family of that body.  And this is the tip of the iceberg.

It is a good thing to talk but a better thing to talk substantively and to hold yourselves accountable to what you say.  When that happens, these may move from being conversations into real steps on the way to something more.  For now, I am afraid, it is more photo op for a big anniversary with each party going back to do business as usual.  That will not lead us very far on the way to anything.

Who will beg?

Sermon for Pentecost 19, Proper 21C, preached on Sunday, September 25, 2016.

Dontcha just love it when the rich get it in the end?!  What a royal pleasure it is when their money cannot buy their way out of trouble, their powerful friends cannot rescue them, and they fall from their high place to a dull thud on the ground!  Do I hear an “Amen!”  Of course you love it.  We all do.  How many movies have used this as their premise in addition to the stories of real life?  We all love this kind of retribution and justice to right a wrong but that is not what this parable is about.  The difference between Lazarus and the rich man without a name is not the amount of riches but the riches they trusted.  It is not the promise of justice that Jesus teaches here but of mercy.

The difference between Lazarus and the unnamed rich man appears to be their treasure.  Sure, one has a fat wallet.  But the other one has a greater treasure.  Moses and the prophets have provided a hope for Lazarus and his victory in death.  They both had eyes but those eyes saw things very differently.  One saw what he wanted to see – a life of ease, of pleasure, of satisfaction, and of happiness.  The other saw through poverty and scabs and the companionship of dogs to a hope beyond his vision.  They both had hearts but the heart of one longed only for today and was satisfied with the joys of the day.  Lazarus longed for a tomorrow beyond the present day’s sorrows, pains, and disappointments.  In his heart, he longed for what this world could not provide – perfect peace, contentment, and rest.

We look at these characters too shallowly – seeing only what is externally different between them when they were very different but in ways you have to look deeply at in order to appreciate.  There are poor who are as lost as the rich man without a name and there are rich who know the limits of their earthly treasures and who hear the voice of Moses and prophets.  It is not simply the riches that distinguish them but their faith or their lack of faith in wealth and in poverty.  Though we might want this to be a simple story about a rich man who got his downfall and the underdog poor man who won, it is about the triumph of faith and the trust in God’s mercy.  That is where it hits you and me – not the divide of riches but of faith, not for the cause of justice but of mercy.



We don't like to think of ourselves as beggars even before God and yet this is exactly what Lazarus teaches us.  High or low, rich or poor, great or anonymous, we are beggars before the mercy of God and if we refuse to be beggars and claim some privilege or merit in ourselves, we receive nothing from God but the justice we think we want.

Luther’s death showed the character of this faith.  He was ailing and had probably suffered a heart attack or two prior to this.  Yet he had been asked to come and settle a dispute tween the Mansfield counts.  So he set off on his last trip, heading to Eisleben on January 17, 1546.  He worked to resolve the dispute and he extracted from the royals a promise to support a school for boys and girls.  He ended his time with them by preaching on Matthew 11:25-30 - “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

In the middle of the sermon, he overcome with weakness, apologized, quickly ended it.  He went to bed.  He was watched by friends but his condition did not seem to worsen.    The papers were signed and again Luther took to the bed.  Count Albrecht brought in his personal physician and Luther felt better.  At 1 am he awoke and called out: “Oh, hear Lord God!  My pain is so great.  I am certain I will remain here in Eisleben where I was born and baptized.”  Friends and co-workers tried to console him and Luther kept repeated John 3:16.  Dr. Jonas asked Luther if he was ready to die in the doctrine he taught.  “Ja.” was the simple reply and he died of a massive heart attack.  In cleaning his room and going through his pockets, they found the last words Luther had written: “We are beggars.  This is true.”  

Luther the great heroic figure of the Reformation dies as a beggar before the mercy of God.  Like Lazarus, he was content to beg God's mercy rather than claim privilege or merit.  

Here was have no abiding city.  Whether are rich and your life easy or in wretched poverty of spirit or life, it does not matter.  Here is not our eternity.  Neither for good or for ill.  Heaven is our home.  There is only one treasure and one riches that can buy the kingdom and it does not come from your pocket.  These are the riches of another who pays for your salvation in full with His suffering, blood, and death.  Christ must purchase the kingdom or rich and poor will be forever on the outside.  Only Christ and Christ for all, for those the world calls good or bad, rich or poor, once He paid for all.

Your abiding treasure is not in the now but in this eternity Christ has won for you.  Your hope lies not in a better or easier or fairer today but in the paradise prepared for you by Him who went before to prepare your way.  Salvation is by grace through faith and not of works or wealth or accomplishment or achievement or piety or moral perfection.  Before the Lord we are not rich or poor.  As Luther wrote before he died, we are all beggars.  This is true.

Lazarus was not too proud to beg.  Are you?  This is the perspective of faith.  Faith never forgets that we are not the entitled but the beggars who have no right to the mercy of the Lord but who beg for God to give us what He has promised and provided.  Faith begs the Lord to do for us what He has promised  – to deliver us both from the joys of this world that do not last and the trials of this world that seem never to end.  What distinguished Lazarus from the rich man not named was not the earthly treasures but the heavenly one.

This is what Mary sang of in the Magnificat.  You have sung those words, too.  Of Him who has scattered the proud in the imagination of their minds and put down the mighty from their thrones and sent the rich empty away only to exalt the lowly, fill the hungry with good things, remember the low estate of His servants with eternal mercy. The riches that leave us empty are those which distract us from Christ’s treasure, teach us to trust in ourselves, and tempt us to believe that we can have our best life now and get all that we desire.  In contrast to this is the beggar who comes in faith with nothing to offer God at all and whose only hope is Christ alone. 

The truth is we want this story to be about the justice of God in cutting down the rich and haughty and giving the poor a break.  But this story is not about that at all.  It is not about justice but about mercy, not about the rich but God’s riches that save the lost and forgive the sinner and raise up the dead.  We are the beggars whom come pleading the mercy of God alone.  We are those whose only promise is the compassion of a God who does not deal with us justly but in mercy.  We are those who come not for a happy life but an eternal home in which both life’s joys and its sorrows fade from our memory in the face of unimaginable joy.

The rich man has no name but the beggar God cannot forget.  He calls him by name. That is the message of mercy, the story of hope for the hopeless.  The living turn out to be forever dead and the dead who live forever.  Because of this, St. Peter can say once you were nobody but now you belong to Christs.  Mary rejoices in being a beggar who claims God’s mercy alone.  Luther died in this blessed hope.  Today we pray that we may all beggars who have been made eternally rich by the mercy of God, forgiving our sins and bestowing upon us the life which shall not disappoint us.  Amen.

Teaching the faith. . . on Sunday morning. . .

The soft underbelly of modern Christianity and current Lutheranism is the lack of teaching.  You can call it catechesis or Bible study or whatever you want, but the reality is that our people recognize less and less the allusions and references to the great people of faith in Scripture and the mighty stories of God's redemptive work.  While this is true for Scripture, it is also true for the liturgy.  Absent such teaching about the liturgy to understand, recognize, and reference the events and Scriptures alluded to in the grammar and vocabulary of the Divine Service words and the prayers, the people are either left to their own explanations or miss out on the references entirely.  Where the guided “spiritual” interpretations of the liturgy are missing, the faithful in the pews will develop their own, subjective, interpretation of the liturgy, infusing their own spiritual needs with what may (or may not) be conveyed in the texts themselves and/or placing it all in the context of what seems reasonable or logical.

Having spent a month discussing in the Sunday Bible class the vestments, vessels, ceremonies, and celebrations of the liturgy, feast, festival, and season, I know how many struggle to find meaning to what they see routinely on Sunday morning and what they read and pray and sing in the liturgy.  And this is in a place where we have multiple opportunities to deliberately explain and place into context what happens in the Divine Service!  What happens in those places where worship is barely touched upon in youth catechesis, adult information classes, or thereafter?  It is no wonder that our people do not get why we Lutherans have some strange attachment to the hymnal or why that hymnal can be ditched when it does not seem to be relevant or effective for the folks on Sunday morning.  We have developed a Lutheranism in theory which has no particular face on Sundays and therefore inadvertently told our people that Lutheranism is about what you believe and not how you worship.

The people are generally hungry, full of questions, and desire to know the "why" of what we do as Lutheran people in the Lutheran service of Word and Sacrament.  By failing to deliver to them the background to the Sunday morning story, they are left to develop on their own explanation, understanding, context, and meaning.  This too often relegates the Divine Service to the very realm of feeling, felt needs, and spiritual relevance that the concrete symbols and sacramental means of Word and Table are there to combat.

Some years ago, a generation after the introduction of LBW and LW, a Lutheran pastor whom I had grown to know and respect said that he understood the hymn of praise to vary depending upon whether or not the service included Holy Communion or was the old dry mass.  In other words, sing This Is the Feast if there is a feast and Glory to God in the Highest if there isn't.  While this is certainly a small thing it is but the tip of the iceberg in mistaken understandings of what the liturgy is and what it means.  If this happens among the clergy, how much more does it happen among lay folks who have been failed by the pastors and have not been catechized into the liturgy, the liturgical year, and sacramental piety of Lutheran Christians?

Teaching the liturgy is eminently practical -- teaching people what they will use every Sunday morning and equipping them to teach their children and the stranger who shows up with them in the pew.  I am not at all suggesting that we fail to teach the Catechism or minimize Bible study but that in addition to these we add an annual review of some basic liturgical theology, a run through the Divine Service, a review of why vestments and rituals, and the Church Year.  We know what has happened by our failure to catechize folks into the liturgy.  We may be pleasantly surprised by what happens when we begin to do just that!

SCOTUS to decide Trinity vs Pauley (Missouri). . .

The issue is whether the exclusion of churches from an otherwise neutral and secular aid program violates the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses when the state has no valid Establishment Clause concern.  Read the SCOTUS Blog here.

Trinity Lutheran Church applied for Missouri's Scrap Tire Grant Program so that it could provide a safer playground for children who attend its daycare and for neighborhood children who use the playground after hours--a purely secular matter. But the state denied Trinity's application solely because it is a church. The Eighth Circuit affirmed that denial by equating a grant to resurface Trinity's playground using scrap tire material with funding the devotional training of clergy. The Eighth Circuit's decision was not faithful to this Court's ruling in Locke v. Davey, 540 U.S. 712 (2004), and deepened an existing circuit conflict. Three lower courts--two courts of appeals and one state supreme court--interpret Locke as justifying the exclusion of religion from a neutral aid program where no valid Establishment Clause concern exists. In contrast, two courts of appeals remain faithful to Locke and the unique historical concerns on which it relied.

According to the court filings, the Missouri DNR had ranked the Trinity proposal as fifth best out of 44 applications. The state rejected the application solely because the applicant is a church. That creates the kind of clean factual record that the Supreme Court likes.

This is from Missouri's brief opposing Supreme Court review:  "Although on other criteria Trinity Lutheran ranked high among the 44 applicants, the Department declined to award a grant to Trinity Lutheran because the grant would have been 'money ... taken from the public treasury ... in aid of [a] church.'"   In other words, the application was denied solely because the applicant was a church.

The Court took this case in part because there was a split in the circuit court rulings -- different appellate courts ruled differently to apply the standard. It could just be that the Court took this case to overturn the ruling below.

One more thing is worth noting.  Although Missouri is defending its law, the state may not be adverse to losing this case. The state will receive needed clarity regarding the law in either case. Further, the fact that the state told the congregation that it was being excluded for no reason other than its being a church is significant and made it easy for the church to bring a clean constitutional challenge. The state could have clouded its decision and refrained from admitting that the denial was due to the fact that the applicant was a church and that the state was so frank in its admission indicates perhaps the state is open to an interpretation of the law more friendly to churches.

Collecting books is not hoarding. . .

"Let books be your dining table, 
And you shall be full of delights. 
Let them be your mattress,
And you shall sleep restful nights" (St. Ephraim the Syrian).

There was a time when books were a treasure, something almost sacred and too valuable to be treated casually.  They were hand tooled in calligraphy and art, hand stitched, and elaborately bound with covers of finest leather. Today books are cheap and easy -- Wal-Mart sells and Amazon and you can easily find old and out of print books for next to nothing on the Internet.  Every year hundreds of books are published devoted to all topics and interests.  This is also true of the Church.  We have print on demand technology to aid the publishing house in keeping old titles still in print.  We have publishing houses (I think here of Concordia Publishing House) who do a bang up job of providing the good, the old, and the new to the Church.  You can find all things Christian between the covers of paper or book board --  theology, exegesis, liturgy, history, iconography, art, architecture, music, hymnals, catechisms, etc...  Additionally, hundreds of books are published each year simply because we can translate what was never before available in English.

Some of these are published by scholarly presses in conjunction with dissertations submitted and approved.  Others are published by popular book publishers.  Still others provided by those publishers who serve the discretion and pleasure of a particular denomination.  Some are the products of the so-called vanity presses who do not really promote the vain but more often what is not necessarily commercially viable for other concerns.

If I have a little extra money, I eat.  Otherwise I buy books.  Many books do not a hoarder make; instead a collector of words and pages preserves the past while investigation the future on behalf of those who have little time or inclination to do either.  So do not condemn me for my books.  Neither ask me to give up any of them.  I have retrieved them from yard sales, garbage cans, broken shelves, businesses going out of business, book sellers and internet sources of new and old.  If I read it in a book, I can probably find it again without too much trouble.  If I read it on a screen, good luck in me finding it again.  No, there is just something about holding a book in your hand, turning the page, smelling the pages, and putting it back on the shelf when you are finished.

Yes... I fancy books and fountain pens and lots of stuff on my walls.  But I am not a hoarder.

Born or Made. . . Perhaps there is an answer

A fairly definitive word to date has been issued specifically on the question of whether GLBTQ people are born this way or made this way (choice or environment).  It is about 140 pages long and yet worth your consideration.

Is gender identity (if we use this term at all) a matter of biology that is already fixed in the person by birth or is it a matter of decision or choice that can be affected by environment, upbringing, or individual decision?  Lady Gaga says she was made that way and this point of view has challenged the assumptions of many who would suggest that the myriad of identities could be assigned a hierarchy or value (good or not good).  Born must mean God had something to do with it, right?  I am not one who believes that this has much impact upon whether GLBTQ is morally the equivalent of the male/female marriage.  But.  But there are those whose whole perspective changes if they believe GLBTQ folk are born that way.  So when a study challenges the idea that GLBTQ folks are born that way, it does affect how many judge the moral value assigned to these relationships.

Some prominent scholars at Johns Hopkins University released a new in depth study that argues that there is not sufficient evidence to support the conclusion that lesbian, gay, or transgender people are born with this sexual orientation or gender identity.

Lawrence Mayer, a co-author of the report, told The Christian Post, "There are probably some people that identify as heterosexual that then later on identified as homosexual, so it goes both ways. The importance there is the fluidity and flexibility that these things change in time."  In other words, it is a disposition that is affected by external factors and individual choice and not simply the natural and inborn desire or identity that cannot be influenced or changed. This has profound significance for both those who believe that natural is normal and for those who believe that desire cannot be changed. 

Of course, the authors of this study are taking a position of grave risk to their credibility and stature in the academic community -- a community which is decidedly not neutral or easily influenced by fact in this subject.  Yet it is a sign of hope that we can and ought to reconsider what has become, in short time, an incontrovertible yet unsubstantiated fact for many.  For too long Christians who do not accept GLBTQ behavior as normal or moral have been accused of not being open to reality.  Now we might see whether the other side is open to a dose of reality.

The end of beige Catholicism. . .

Msgr. Charles Pope has hit it out of the ballpark with this one. . . 

There is a growing consternation among some Catholics that the Church, at least in her leadership, is living in the past. It seems there is no awareness that we are at war and that Catholics need to be summoned to sobriety, increasing separation from the wider culture, courageous witness and increasing martyrdom.

It is long past dark in our culture, but in most parishes and dioceses it is business as usual and there is anything but the sober alarm that is really necessary in times like these.

Scripture says, Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle (Psalm 144:1). Preparing people for war — a moral and spiritual war, not a shooting war — should include a clear setting forth of the errors of our time, and a clear and loving application of the truth to error and light to darkness.

But there is little such training evident in Catholic circles today where, in the average parish, there exists a sort of shy and quiet atmosphere — a fear of addressing “controversial” issues lest someone be offended, or the parish be perceived as “unwelcoming.”

But, if there ever was a time to wear soft garments, it is not now.

The Church of the 1970s-1990s was surely well described as the era of “beige Catholicism” (a term coined by Bishop Robert Barron, and not by way of flattery either). Those of us who lived through that era, especially in the 1970s, remember it as a time when many parish signs beckoned people to “come and experience our welcoming and warm Catholic community.” Our most evident desire was to fit in and be thought of as “normal.” Yes, Catholics were just like everyone else; and we had been working very hard to do that, at least since the early 1960s when John F. Kennedy was elected. Catholics had finally “made it” into the mainstream; we had been accepted by the culture.

Church architecture and interiors became minimalist and non-descript. Music and language in the liturgy became folksy. Marian processions, Corpus Christi processions, many things of distinctive and colorful Catholicism all but disappeared. Even our crucifixes disappeared, to be replaced by floating “resurrection Jesus” images. The emphasis was on blending in, speaking to things that made people feel comfortable, and affirming rather than challenging. If there was to be any challenge at all it would be on “safe” exhortations such as not abusing the environment or polluting, not judging or being intolerant, and so forth.

Again, if there ever was a time to wear soft garments, it is not now. It is zero-dark-thirty in our post-Christian culture. And while we may wish to blame any number of factors for the collapse, we cannot exclude ourselves. We who are supposed to be the light of the world, with Christ shining in us, have preferred to hide our light under a basket and lay low. The ruins of our families and culture are testimony to the triumph of error and the suppression of the truth.

But what Msgr. Pope has said about Roman Catholics is surely true about Lutherans as well.  We have lived in the era of a generic Christianity, a beige faith, that is bland and inoffensive but weak and shallow.  Lutherans have been as guilty of this as Roman Catholics -- treating the faith minimally instead of maximally.  We have attempted to save Lutheranism by killing it and making it as indistinct and pale as it can be -- a Lutheranism which knows little of its own Confessions and is embarrassed by what it does know. . . a Lutheranism which is ashamed of its own identity on Sunday morning and is content to wear a mask that distorts its face to the very people seeking truth, authenticity, and integrity. . . and a Lutheranism that tries to convince by offering nothing to challenge or offend and therefore is unfaithful to the Scriptures it claims to own.

Christianity will not survive by blending in or erasing anything that some might find offensive and why would God be pleased with a church that survives without its soul or heart.  Jesus wondered if there would be faith on earth when He comes again and the people asked Him if the number of those who would be saved would be few.  We seem intent upon making sure that He does not find faith on earth and that the numbers to be saved are few and we do so not by failing to teach but by teaching and passing off as Christian what are lies and half-truths.  We seem bound and determined to succeed by fostering a diversity which betrays any distinctive Lutheran identity and by promoting a faith that listens more to the pulse of the people than it does to the voice of the Good Shepherd.

From St. Peter to Constantine there were 33 Popes. Thirty of them were martyred and two died in exile. Countless clergy and lay people too were martyred. It is hard to imagine the Church in the decadent West being willing to suffer so. Surely our brethren in many less affluent parts of the world are dying in large numbers. But I wonder: After all these years of “comfort Catholicism”, would the average American parishioner or clergyman be willing or able to endure such loss?

I hear complaints from people in the pews who say that their pastors are too rigid, too insistent upon knowing and believing the faith, too stuck in the hymnal, and too focused on doctrine.  God bless them if they get such a pastor.  We have tried an ambiguous Christianity in place of a vibrant Lutheran identity and all that has done is bled off members since 1970.  If your Lutheran pastor are too rigid, too doctrinal, and too liturgical, you should be thankful for such a pastor who will not dilute the faith until it is unrecognizable nor smooth the rough edges of the faith until no one finds anything objectionable except Jesus.  We have gotten so accustomed to such a broad and bland faith that doctrine frightens us, the liturgy is strange to us, and a steadfast pastor is naive or hard or both.

I do not want to frighten anyone but, folks, the writing is on the wall.  Our culture has drawn lines in the sand and dared us to cross them.  Our government is promoting a diversity which has not tolerance for truth that will not be compromised and doctrine that will not be adjusted to fit the times.  We may not shed blood but we will certainly pay the cost of faithfulness in other ways.  What scares me most is not the cost of discipleship amid a world so unfriendly to Christ and the Scriptures but a church that will trade away faithfulness for comfort, ease, and compromise.  The creed will soon be much more than a mere confession of faith; it will soon become the hill on which we will sacrifice some of our affluence and complacency or the mound that marks the grave of a church that gave up Christ to be an inoffensive Christian.  What will is be?  You and I will answer in ways more profound than words.  Pray that we may be faithful!

Father Z Needs to Do Some Research

Father Z, noted Roman Catholic blogger and advocate for reverent worship and the Latin Mass, keep knocking Luther for things that Luther did not say or mean or even imply. 

Luther (failed priest and heretic) didn’t, in fact, write that every man is his own priest, but that phrase summarizes both his view and that of most of the writers of the National Schismatic Reporter (aka Fishwrap) and probably also the LCWR.  His radical view of the priesthood of all believers effectively reduces ordained priesthood to a role that community gives to him to do various things.  This is what modernists such as Edward Schillebeeckx wrote, which infected a generation of seminary profs and, hence, priests and, subsequently, people in the pews.

He got it right that Luther did not, in fact, write that every man is his own priest.  But Father Z got it entirely wrong when he said that phrase summarizes his view and he has radically reduced the priesthood to its functions and derived from the royal priesthood.  Anybody with a mind can read Luther and find that this is not the case.  But it is hard to blame Fr. Z since even some Lutherans have got it wrong (WELS has a functional view of the office - holding that the functions are divinely mandated but not the office itself).

Read the Augustana and tell me where there is a functional understanding of the Divine Office?  Luther's opinions are not binding upon Lutherans but our Confessions are.  In fact, the Roman Catholics were not all that concerned about what Lutherans had to say about the pastoral office because they believed there were differences of nuance but not substance when it came to the pastoral office.  Perhaps that was naive but the Lutherans had a high view of the office (at least until they suffered the encroaches of pietism and rationalism).