If Jesus were alive. . .

Although it is only sentiment, even sentiment can be an accurate gauge of how we see ourselves and truth.  I cannot tell you how many times I have heard someone say If Jesus were alive today. . .  Perhaps I should not read too much into the expression.  Sometimes we use language imprecisely but too often how we put our words is a more honest indicator of what we truly believe than just about anything else.  So it just might be that we really don't believe that Jesus is alive. Or, if He is, His being alive is not making much difference to us or for us.

The reality is so much of what constitutes faith and church does not really depend upon a living Jesus -- only a dead one.  I have written about it before.  How a question poised by Fleming Rutledge has haunted me about preaching.  She wondered presciently whether it mattered to most preaching today if Jesus were raised from the dead or lived.  I spent the next weeks looking at my own preaching to see if what she wondered was true of me as well.  Every pastor should have these moments of frankness in which we look at ourselves and what we say to God's people with brutal honesty.  

We live at a time in which so much of orthodox Christianity has been surrendered to the doubter or sacrificed to make the faith more palatable to the skeptic.  We hardly notice what has been lost except when some true blue believer shows up to raise a stir.  That is the thing.  There is no one more dangerous than a real believer -- one who actually trusts the words of Jesus and asks us to trust them as well.  The world loves and the Church finds easier the one who is willing to adjust the truth and live and let live. Bishops and District Presidents have learned that the one who can move the boundaries of truth easier to live with than one who holds to the faith with sincerity and conviction.  So it is easier to preach a Gospel that does not require Jesus to be raised or living -- a mere moral hero who urges us to be better people.  Easier that proclaiming sin that is so wretched and we so powerless that God had to give up His only Son.  Easier than admitting that Christ died for us apart from any worth or value in us.  Easier that confessing that faith compels us to live worthy of Christ, as a people who have been raised from the death of sin to life in Christ.  Easier than believing in a God who has forged a future for a people who had only a past.  

Because He lives.  That is the confession of Scripture and the cause of saints.  Because He lives is what calls us out from ourselves and what comes easy to the hard and noble path of righteousness.  Because He lives He can rescue those who fall and restore those broken upon the rocks of temptation.  Because He lives He can answer the siren call of death with hope and life that death cannot steal.  There should be no place for any Christian to say If Jesus were alive... and every cause to proclaim Because He lives.

An Unworthy Ode. . .

I read on Facebook An Ode to Postmodern Catholic Apologists.  It is not difficult to know the author's sentiments as they have been well expressed, although what is written is sad and mistaken.  But you be the judge.

Enough on Tolkien and Lewis,

Enough images from the Renaissance,
Enough Tridentine nostalgia,
Enough neo-Neo-Scholasticism,
And pious Romanticism.
I do not trust an ethos of retrieval.
We need new forms, brothers and sisters,
New ways to show how culture is made ever new,
From the most authentic of sources.
How me how the Church is relevant in the present,
Not what is significant about the past.
Show me how Christ breathes life
Into the wheel of the year
And the works of human hands,
How his beauty inheres the universe,
How wisdom fills all space
And how the Spirit dissolves time
Through the kairotic disruption of the now.
Let all else die.
For we live by the resurrection. 

 

I will admit that the writing is well-done but what it says is, well, trivial and foolish, unworthy of the talent of the writer.  As tired as he might be of those who listen to the faithful voices of the past, the rest of us are tired of the infatuation with the moment that has literally driven the faithful from their refuge of faith and hope and turned an unbelieving world against even curiosity about the faith.  Look at Rome and those who cry out for a relevant Church instead of reverent one.  Have they filled the empty pews or only contributed to the migration away from those pews?  What about those in other church bodies?  Have the voices who cry out for an accommodation with culture, with the views of those who have turned their back upon the faith, and for all things to be made new helped any church to grow?

There is little use of polls that tell us of what our people do not believe -- except to call to repentance those who were charged with their catechesis!  There is little benefit to critics who tires of the faithfulness of those who went before because they are full of themselves.  There will be no renewal which eschews the wisdom of the fathers and there will be no revitalization from an appetite only for things new. And there will be no future for a Church which abhors her grandparents.  What do you make of words, no matter how well written, that challenge the yesterday, today, and forever Jesus or who think God to have the same ADD that their author does?  I am tired of such fancy and wonder why the authors appear to be so threatened by those who value the witness of tradition.

 

On this Holy Cross Day, now is not the time to retreat from the legacy of the saints but to embrace it and to pray that their faithfulness would be our inspiration to face the challenges of the day and the promise of the future with the same hope and steadfastness that marked those who went before.

 

Lord, help my unbelief. . .

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, preached on Sunday, September 12, 2021.

    It did not take long for the Kingdom of God to become a spectacle.  A desperate man, his nerves shot and heart broken by the plight of his demon possessed son practically demands the disciples of Jesus fix what is wrong.  He did not come to them with faith but with a demand that they must do something.  When they could not do what he wanted, the argument ensued.  It was a distraction to Jesus and so He comes up to find out what is going on.  The man’s demeanor changes.  He seems calmer and more reasoned as he tells his sorrowful story.

    Jesus responds with lament.  The generation is faithless and Jesus is wearied by the unbelief all around Him.  But Jesus has time for the man, time for his son, and time to confront the demons.  Jesus exploits the moment to teach the Kingdom. “All things are possible for the one who believes.”  Suddenly the man is convicted by the voice of God in his midst.  He confesses his faith in Jesus but he also confesses more.  He confesses the weakness of that novice faith.  “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”  Never one to ignore faith, even faith from an unlikely source, Jesus rebukes the unclean spirit and gives the boy back to his father.  The healing of the boy did not go unnoticed.  Not only the man and the spectators saw but also Jesus’ disciples.

    It worth noticing that Mark places this before and after Jesus clear prophecy of His betrayal, suffering, death, and resurrection.  The Lord has come exactly for this and His suffering and death upon the cross is the place where the devil and the evil that has all creation under its veil will meet their match.  We think of this whole story more of a curiosity than anything else.  We live an enlightened world in which the devil and evil are not real.  Oh, to be sure, there are injustices and illnesses and bad people but we have explanations for them and solutions.  We lived through some of them last year in a pandemic, in protests over past prejudices, and in elections that are supposed to raise up leaders with answers.  We do not live in a world of demons and devils.  Or, do we, post 9-11? 

    Luther believed in the old evil foe.  He sang about him in A Mighty Fortress. Do we believe it?  That evil is real.  The devil is real.  Demons are real.  They afflict the sons of Adam and Eve still.  Whether in the obvious or hidden behind our scientific world of cause and effect, the devil still works among us to render us mute, to steal away the voice of faith, and to harden our hearts against the mercy and power of God to save us.  He owns the hearts of the terrorist and violent.
The devil plies us with the lies we love to hear, the falsehoods that inflate our self-esteem and make us think we are too sophisticated to be take in by superstition.

    Moms and dads still act in desperation for their children who have forsaken the faith, given up the values of the kingdom, and live as children of darkness and not of the light.  Children are still wounded by wrongs and held captive by death.  But just as we still live with the reality of evil and the works of the devil, Jesus still lives to impart to us the power of His redeeming work.  He has come to expose the demons, to confront them with His power, to answer their threat with the safety of His presence, and to deliver us from the tempting power of their lies.

    We are not sure what to do with it.  Like the dad who pleaded for the life of his son, we want to believe.  But fearful hearts resist faith and worry if Jesus is enough, if the Word of God can be trusted, if the cross has power to answer all that troubles us.  Lord, I believe, we cry every Sunday.  Lord, I believe, we sing as we add our voices to those of old.  Lord, I believe, we confess in the creed.  Lord, I believe, we pray.  Lord, I believe, we come to eat and drink at the Table of the Lord.  All of this is well and good but if this is all we say, it is not enough.

    With the confession must also come the prayer.  “Lord, help my unbelief.”  None of us are finished creations.  Every Sunday we hear, “May He who began this good work in you bring it to completion on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  But just as God is at work in us by baptism and faith bringing to fruit all that the Holy Spirit began in us by baptism and faith, so the devil is at work against us, working to undo that which the Lord began.  We dare not think so highly of ourselves for if we do, we shall not stand.  We shall fall.  We shall become the victims of the devil’s lies and surrender our faith at the altar of our pride.  That is why we come here, back here, week, after week, after week, after week.

    In your baptism a war began within you.  You were raised up from that baptismal water a new person at odds with the old one who went down into that water.  The old Adam is a good swimmer.  The old nature is like ruts in the road that beckon us back to the ways of unbelief and sin.  The world now notices us not simply as people but as enemies – because we belong to Christ.  Yes, you fear, love, and trust in Christ but this faith is at odds the sin’s instinct, with the temptation of the world, and with the powers of the devil.  A war rages inside of you and you cannot win unless you remain in Christ through the means of grace.

    The old habits, addictions, idolatries, and lusts haunt us and tempt us and these are the tools through which the devil works to mute our faith.  But Christ calls you His own and calls you out of the darkness and into His light.  He holds you and calls you to hold to Him.  Daily we live out this new and foreign life as a baptized child of God under the cross.  Daily we confess what we believe and daily we confess the unbelief the still lives in us.  That is how the devil grows weak and we grow strong.

    “Why could we not cast it out?” the disciples cried.  They had seen the Word of the Lord as a formula to be used to achieve the results they desired.  But the Word of God is not some magical spell.  It is the Word to be believed, to be prayed, to be lived.  You do not live in Christ by going to church but you certainly cannot live in Christ without going to church.  It is not where we go but who is here and what Christ does here that instills faith and nourishes it.  So that we may grow ever stronger in the face of challenge and grow up in righteousness and holiness we come here where faith is confessed and unbelief is likewise confessed, where we abide in Christ and Christ abides in us. 

Jesus does not call us to an idea but to a life in Him and before Him, through the means of grace, praying and guarding the faith in us.  That is how the devil is kept at bay, doubts overcome, fears subside, sins released, and lives raised to life everlasting.  Do not be deceived.  The battle is great but the Lord is on your side.  His power will prevail.  So abide in Him and He will abide in you and YOU will prevail.  Amen.

The ruling class of religion. . .

Listening to the coverage of the recent Southern Baptist Convention is really rather humorous.  An already clearly conservative denomination was in a bit of a tussle with more conservative forces within that group.  The end result was that the more conservative candidate lost and a slightly less conservative won.  It was an unexpected loss for those who had been trying to shore up the SBC's seeming ventures into a more moderate or less conservative stance.  Even in the SBC, the more conservatives are the outsiders.  But that is how it has been for a very long time.

In nearly every denomination, the ruling class moves in a less conservative direction -- even if that is marked in degrees.  In nearly every church body you can name, the forces more in the middle are in control.  That is certainly true for Rome.  Pope Francis is less conservative than Pope Benedict -- everyone knows this.  But he is not quite the liberal or progressive that the synodal forces in Germany are and he is not likely to ordain women or open the door to LGBTQQIP2SAA forces.  He is a slightly left of center centrist.  The muddy middle as some would put it.  As vocal as the conservatives in the Roman Catholic Church are, they are in the minority and nowhere near the halls of power.  

It is true for Missouri as well.  Though some love to paint Pres. Harrison as a right winger, he stands largely within the vast center of Missouri.  Conservatives have influence but they do not have a lock on power.  No matter Herman Otten or United Lists, Missouri's ruling class (especially considering the District Presidents) is slightly right of center but still rather in the broad center of our denomination and its history.  It is a truism for most denominations and it is certainly true for the Missouri Synod.  Missouri's leadership is very conservative in comparison to the ELCA but looking at Missouri's history that would not be a fair description.

In the ELCA, the ruling class is decidedly left wing.  It is not mainstream or middle of the road or even slightly left of center.  In the ELCA conservatives are persona non grata and they have no voice or vote anywhere.  Take, as example, the ELCA Presiding Bishop's post about the SCOTUS ruling in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia:

​As children of God, we give thanks for all of the LGBTQIA+ people who experience God's calling to the holy work of parenting. In particular response to the June 17 Supreme Court ruling on Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, the ELCA stands with our LGBTQIA+ siblings in Christ and reaffirms our commitment to equal protection, opportunities and responsibilities under the law (Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust, p. 33).

Children and youth in the child welfare system are among the most vulnerable members of our society, and a disproportionate number of young people in the child welfare system are LGBTQIA+ and in need of compassionate and supportive homes. Our concern as disciples of Christ is for their best interests. This includes recognizing and affirming the vocation of LGBTQIA+ people as parents and foster parents.

Each of us can respond through ongoing education and action in support of LGBTQIA+ people, including those who are called to provide loving care for children, and through compassionate care for our most vulnerable children and youth.

There is nowhere where the ruling class of any Christian church body lies in the hands of very conservative people.  It is a matter of degree and moves from moderate to the left wing but where is there any place where conservatives constitute the ruling class of leadership?  Yet the media and the perception is that the main enemy of Christianity is the crazed and blood thirsty mob of conservatives out to win at all costs.  Where is that the case?  There are nominal forays into leadership by conservatives but the ruling class of the Christian religion is securely in the hands of those from slightly right of center to fully on the left fringe.  The media simply cannot see this and treats every conservative voice as a threat, the voice of the devil.  Look at the way outspoken conservative voices are treated in comparison with outspoken liberal voices.  Yet the reality is that the more conservative forces within Christianity tend to account for more conversions, a higher attendance rate, and a more resilient membership.  However, the media and the ruling class of most denominations view conservative voices with deep suspicion and tend to label them as dangerous to the health and future of the faith.

The best catechesis. . .

I have come to believe that the Divine Service with its rich experience of Scripture in the propers, the rhythm of the ordinary, and hymnoday is the best catechesis.  Quite frankly, I am tired of new members classes in which we try to touch all the bases, cover everything, and end up rushing through because there is so much to cover -- only to skip or give short shrift to the Divine Service and the shape of Christian worship in which their lives will grow and nourish until death!  It was an Orthodox friend who said that the liturgy is the best teacher and he is exactly right.  I only wish we paid more attention to this and directed our new people to the Divine Service as the place where faith is formed and shaped.  Instead we presume that if we cover the six chief parts in some fashion or another, we have done all that needs be done.  It is no wonder that our people are leaving the churches -- they think they have captured the faith in summary and that what happens on Sunday morning is only frosting on their individual faith cake.  If we had done a better job of catechizing them in the liturgy, perhaps they would find it harder to leave the altar, font, and pulpit and replace it with a praise team, praise band, contemporary feel good music, and a sermon on how God wants you to be happy.

At some point I realized that as important as the catechism is, and it IS important, what nurtures and nourishes my faith is the Divine Service -- the complete experience of the preparation in confession and absolution to the Service of the Word and its exposure to the great events of God's mighty deliverance to the Service of the Eucharist and its bestowal of Christ's body and blood to my unworthy and undeserving self.  There simply is no replacement for the weekly participation in the Divine Service -- and with it, I must add, the great hymns of the faith (especially Lutheran chorales!).  It is not that I am against new member classes and their tradition focus on the six chief parts, it is that this class is but a bare introduction to the life of the faithful gathered around the Word and Table of the Lord every week.  

In conversations with the faithful, I think folks have a general grip on what the faith is -- they confess the creed every week!  But if you ask them about the Divine Service, it is often as question they cannot answer.  We do it because we are Lutheran but we do not know what the Divine Service is or why we have preserved it and are so devoted to it.  They have not been taught the rubrics and so they do not attach the meaning to what is happening -- that to which the ceremonies point and make visible.  They may like the Divine Service or they may not but they assume that this is about the sum of it all -- whether you like it or find it meaningful or not.  The reality of what it means to hear God speaking His efficacious Word or meet the Lord where He is both host and food is missing.

Scripture ties it all together for us: 

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:42)

For years I have wondered how good Lutheran folk could leave the Divine Service and become Baptists or Methodists or non-denominationals.  It can only happen because they do not know what they are leaving behind to become part of a church without any semblance of a sacramental life.  Leaving the vibrant sacramental reality of Word and Meal can only happen because unbelief sets in.  I am convinced it is impossible to exchange this wondrous mystery for a Joel Osteen happy hour or a Protestant lecture on how to set goals and achieve them.  Maybe I am wrong, I often am, but I am more and more convinced that the failure of our catechesis is not in the information we are conveying but in the failure to give a compelling presentation of what is happening every Sunday in the Divine Service.

The other part of this is hymnody.  Rome does not care about hymns (or it would have long ago replaced the shallow and trendy stuff of Joncas, Haugen, and Haas for something a great deal more substantial).  Protestants are too busy trying to combine politically correct lyrics with feel good sentiment to bother with real hymns of faith.  We Lutherans are left.  We were there in the beginning, so it figures we would be there this late in the game.  We may not be the only ones writing Lutheran hymns but we understand how hymns teach us the faith and nurture that faith in the worst of times.  As a deacon at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Ft. Wayne, I recall visiting a blind elderly woman in the then Ft. Wayne Lutheran Home.  All she wanted from me was to read hymns stanzas.  After a while I began to see that she was moving her lips.  I was reading hymn stanzas she had committed to memory.  Now, in the twilight of her life with fading eyes and a fragile body, these hymns of her childhood came back to comfort, sustain, encourage, and console her -- literally she was singing herself into heaven!

If we teach adequately the six chief parts and introduce them to the wondrous mystery of the Divine Service and the rich voice of the sturdy hymns of the faith, we have grasped hold not only of their heart and mind but their soul.

Lord Jesus Christ, You have prepared
    This feast for our salvation;
It is Your body and Your blood,
    And at Your invitation
As weary souls, with sin oppressed,
We come to You for needed rest,
    For comfort, and for pardon.
    
Although You did to heav’n ascend,

    Where angel hosts are dwelling,
And in Your presence they behold
    Your glory, all excelling,
And though Your people shall not see
Your glory and Your majesty
    Till dawns the judgment morning,
    
Yet, Savior, You are not confined
    To any habitation;
But You are present even now
    Here with Your congregation.
Firm as a rock this truth shall stand,
Unmoved by any daring hand
    Or subtle craft and cunning.

We eat this bread and drink this cup,
    Your precious Word believing
That Your true body and Your blood
    Our lips are here receiving.
This Word remains forever true;
All things are possible with You,
    For You are Lord Almighty.
    
Though reason cannot understand,
    Yet faith this truth embraces:
Your body, Lord, is even now
    At once in many places.
I leave to You how this can be;
Your Word alone suffices me;
    I trust its truth unfailing.
  
Lord, I believe what You have said;
    Help me when doubts assail me.
Remember that I am but dust,
    And let my faith not fail me.
Your supper in this vale of tears
Refreshes me and stills my fears
    And is my priceless treasure.
    
Grant that we worthily receive
    Your supper, Lord, our Savior,
And, truly grieving for our sins,
    May prove by our behavior
That we are thankful for Your grace
And day by day may run our race,
    In holiness increasing.
    
For Your consoling supper, Lord,
    Be praised throughout all ages!
Preserve it, for in ev’ry place
    The world against it rages.
Grant that this sacrament may be
A blessèd comfort unto me
    When living and when dying.

AI and the Quest for Human Intelligence. . .

So I read where Europe is worried about the race for artificial intelligence.  Personally, I believe we ought to be more worried about the lack of human intelligence (not the spy kind) but it seems I am in a minority. It seems that the West is alarmed by a new artificial intelligence model developed by Chinese researchers that is performing far beyond expectations -- indeed, going heretofore untold feats with image creation and natural language processing.  Are we falling behind? 

The AI model developed by the Chinese has been dubbed Wu Dao 2.0 and it is said to be able to understand everything people say, recognize images, and draw its own fairly realistic pictures based on descriptions given. It is erudite enough to also be able to write essays and poems in traditional Chinese.  If that is the case, it may not simply be leaving the US and Europe behind but may well supplant human intelligence.  Remember, we live in a time in which our students are so fragile that they need safe places on campuses when ideas or thoughts they find offensive or foreign to them cause them to overload their circuits and shut down.  Wu Dao 2.0's creators say it's 10 times more powerful than its closest rival GPT-3, developed by the U.S. firm OpenAI -- of course, people have been know to boast about their own intelligence much less the intelligence they have created.

Sadly, the fruits of our technology have not always done good by us.  For all the potential of the internet, much of it is wasted on pornography.  For all the potential of social media, look at what passes for conversation, erudition, and intellect among the posts and the chatter underneath.  For all the potential of artificial intelligence, it comes at a time when we are foolish enough in human intelligence to deduce that sexual constructs are artificial, gender does not necessarily have anything to do with biology, and we can improve our present by rewriting our past.  If we use artificial intelligence to lead us further down these rabbit holes, there is little likelihood that we will have gained anything.  Except perhaps to make ourselves even more lazy, self-centered, and stupid than we are now.  I read recently where somebody bought an imaginary piece of art -- not even up to a digital image -- for $15K.  So if we make AI a model of our own foolishness, it will not live up to its promise either.

What is the end goal of this?  What are we looking to create?  We already have replaced the dignity of work with robots that manufacture our goods and technological mazes that pass for customer support.  How will these get improve or our lives by AI?  My greatest fear is the dumbing down of our culture and our educational enterprise in pursuit of a docile population more easily manipulated and controlled by those who are already working to narrow our liberty and squeeze our freedom.  Worst of all is when we allow the artificial side to rob us of the dignity of our own thoughtful consideration of right, wrong, blessing, and bane.  Science is generally good and the fruits of technology and our curiosity have improved many aspects of our society but they have not been good to us or for us when we surrender the values and the oversight of these things either to the machines themselves or to the few who operate them.  We surely don't want the Chinese to win this race but neither do we want to win at all costs either.  There has got to be some sort of middle ground between the surrender of our humanity to machines and being Luddites who see anything new as a threat.

 

Where are all the people?

If you are a Lutheran like me, you sometimes wonder where are all the people?  After all, Lutheranism has managed to retain its catholicity of doctrine and practice and keep its familiar confession and worship identity better than just about any other group outside of Rome.  It is serious about theology, deliberate in its focus on the work of the Kingdom, and offers a profound and vibrant understanding of the means of grace.  So where are all the people who should be attracted by these things?

On the one hand, you can blame the lunatic fringes of Lutheranism.  There are those who are, for all intents and purposes, fundamentalists who have a strong confession of the Word of God but who treat that Word less as a living voice than a book of facts, rules, and information.  They are like fancy Baptists who have a peculiar way of worship.  On the other hand, there are Lutherans who are, for all intents and purposes, Unitarians who use the Nicene Creed.  They like the form but struggle with the content and so they are as comfortable in the clothing of the historic liturgy as they are the embrace of modern oddities of sexual identity and gender constructs.  It is as if there are no other Lutherans -- at least that is how it appears.

The reality is that most Lutheran congregations are pretty conservative on Sunday mornings.  Yes, there may be more Lutherans who attend the fewer congregations who are not so, well, Lutheran on Sunday morning but most Lutherans follow the book, sing hymns from the book, and, while not exactly high church, are not exactly evangelicals either.  I have struggled in my mind to figure out the great disconnect between Lutheranism the ideal and Lutheranism the reality, between those who are Lutheran because that is who they are and those who should be Lutheran because it is, in my view, the best catholic and evangelical option out there.  The fear I have is that too many dismiss Lutheranism as a stopover and not a destination.  When they awaken to the emptiness of what passes as mainline or even evangelical Christianity, they decide not to stop until they hit land -- crossing the Tiber or the Bosporous to find a lasting home (not without problems but a bit more permanent on the outside than the rest of the choices).

It reminded me of something I read not long ago.  “To the shame of our damaged Protestantism, popery remains, in some essential respects, more faithful to God’s truth than its rival.” This was the judgment of the great Presbyterian divine -- now mostly forgotten -- a Southern Presbyterian theologian, Confederate army chaplain, and virulent anti-Catholic by the name of Robert Lewis Dabney.  He was more anti-Catholic than just about anyone else but he grudgingly admitted that in comparison to what is there, Roman Catholicism looks better than most choices.  He said this 150 years ago.  If it was true then, it is even more true today: “When they tire of the banality of modern evangelicalism, North Americans will become the ripest of prey for Romish ritualism.”  Again:  “Rome proposes herself as the stable advocate of obedience, order, and permanent authority throughout the ages.” 

Lutheranism, at least the kind practiced in America today, is not sure what it wants to be.  And that is the problem.  What we say in our Confessions has become something that gets lip service but not exactly wholehearted agreement and certainly not unashamed practice.  Rome is not any better but they do have antiquity.  We could have antiquity as well but it is hard to claim catholicity and apostolicity when you have Pastor Friendly sitting in a polo behind a plexiglass podium behind a plexiglass enclosed drum set behind screens in front of designer coffee sniffing comfy chair people tapping their feet to the rhythm of the beat.  Rome claims an antiquity it does not deserve and we refuse an antiquity which is the epitome of our confessional logic.  Go figure.

I understand the frustration of our old Presbyterian Chaplain who was on the wrong side of the War between the States and slavery and probably a few other things.  He looked around and saw both what was Rome's weakness and yet its attraction.  Looking around these many decades later, he was probably on to something.  Part of me keeps hoping for a Lutheranism that is happy being who it is.  Part of me fears that after liberalism and relativism and entertainmentism have taken their toll, there may not be much of Lutheranism left to echo the confessional claim to catholicity in doctrine and practice.  But I plug away at it.  Hoping against hope, as they say, that Lutherans will wake up one day and say, "Geez, we need to be who we say we are."  If that day does come, Rome may be in real trouble.  If it does not come, Rome will probably be there to pick up the slack -- even given the screwiness of Francis and those who think like him.  I just wish we would give them a real run for their money and act like the people who once refused to cower before an emperor or a pope.  Until then, it is hard to tell people this is what a Lutheran really is without adding an asterisk and it is hard to say that Lutheranism looks like us on Sunday morning without a caveat.  

 

For the Lord is good. . .

Although we Christians tend to busy ourselves with proving all sorts of things to a skeptical world -- from creation's Biblical timeline to God incarnate in the Virgin to the atonement to life after death -- all of these are corollaries of the thing hardest to believe -- the Lord is good.  Only faith can take that statement at face value and believe it in spite of all around us that begs to differ.

I have had people who wanted to believe six days but who found evolution far too compelling and logical.  It was always curious to me how hard it is to believe that God made all things as He has said but somehow easier to believe that God entered the womb of a Virgin to save and redeem sinners from sin and death by the blood of this Son of God.  But that is sort of like arguing over what food you find most distasteful.  What offends us most of all is the goodness of the Lord our God.  That is what sin stole from us -- not simply the ability to know God but to know the goodness of the Lord.  That is what only faith can restore to us mortals until heaven reveals this goodness once and forevermore.

In Mark 10:18, Jesus connects the dots for us.  The goodness of the Lord is the very definition of God and to apply this goodness to Jesus is to confess that He is God.  "And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone." From prophets to the Psalmist, the central affirmation of God is that He is good.  The call of the Psalmist makes this pointed -- "O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good and His mercy endures forever."  Goodness and mercy are intertwined -- different sides of the same thing.  This is who God and no other.  Goodness and forgiveness.  Goodness and kindness.  Goodness and provision (food, shelter, etc.).  Goodness and patience.  Goodness and hope.  Worship acknowledges first and foremost the goodness of the Lord.

We think that the central and basic thrust of faith is to believe in what God does but it is really about who God is.  The most central and radical concept of Scriptures is that God is good.  Scripture repeatedly connects this goodness to mercy, generosity, compassion, love, and redemption.  It was goodness that was the judgment of His creation and it was goodness that became His creation's redemption.  The Bible repeatedly presents us with the goodness of the Lord and it is this that is the first and most basic affirmation of faith, under the guidance of the Spirit.

In Christian life we affirm this goodness in spite of what happens to us.  When tragedy or disaster strikes, we say the Lord is good.  When trouble befalls us and life is threatened, we say the Lord is good.  When death claims us, we say the Lord is good.  We are not simply muttering a perfunctory statement but affirming our trust in this goodness -- goodness we do not now see or know but goodness that is our hope and our salvation.

This is what the Gospel shows us -- the goodness of the Lord who gives to the unworthy and undeserving what is His most precious treasure and raising us from sin and its death bestowing upon us what none of us dare dream.  This is the goodness of the Lord that is our confession before the world and this is the goodness that is our hope and foundation for every change and chance of life.

Don't be quiet. . .

Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18B, preached on Sunday, September 5, 2021, by the Rev. Daniel M. Ulrich.

    There’s an odd thing in our Gospel reading today.  It seems like Jesus doesn’t want to be known.  First, Jesus entered a house and didn’t want anyone to know.  But of course, His name and the news of His miracles had spread, so He couldn’t be hidden.  Then later on, when people brought to Him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, Jesus took him aside, privately.  He healed Him away from the crowd so they couldn’t see.  Why did He do this?  Why didn’t Jesus want everyone to know about His miracle?
    This secrecy is odd and confusing.  It doesn’t make sense.  Jesus should want people to know who He is, and He should want them to know about His miracles because His miracles point to Him being the Messiah.  After Jesus’ first miracle, when He turned water into wine, John tells us that after that miracle His disciples believed in Him.  When Nicodemus the Pharisee came to Jesus at night, he said that he knew Jesus was a teacher from God because no one could do the signs He did unless God was with him.  And Jesus Himself even pointed to His miracles as proof of who He is.  When John the Baptist was in prison and sent messengers to Jesus asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” Jesus told the messengers to “Go and tell John what you have seen and hear: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, [and] the poor have good news preached to them” (Lk 7:20, 22).  These miracles reveal who Jesus is.
    But today, we hear Jesus telling the healed men and others to be quiet.  Don’t tell anyone.  “Yes, your ears have just been opened to hear the sounds of the world for the first time, and yes, your tongue has just been loosed so you can talk clearly, but don’t go talking about this.”  It’s so odd for Jesus to say this, but He did, and there’s a reason for that.  Jesus didn’t come to just do miracles.  He’s no Miracle Max for higher.  His purpose isn’t to temporarily heal and make alive...and to be sure, that’s what Jesus’ miracles were, they were temporary.
    His first miracle, turning water into wine; he did that in response to the wine at the wedding running out.  But guess what?  The water He turned into wine also ran out.  Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000, they ate till their bellies were full, but the next day they were hungry again.  Jesus quieted storms on the sea, but more storms came.  The people Jesus healed got sick again.  Even Lazarus, whom He raised from the dead, he died again.  These temporary miracles, no matter how important and good and gracious they were, they weren’t the main point.  Jesus told the man not to tell because that’s all people would want from Him, just temporary miracles; after all, isn’t that what we want? 
If we heard about a miracle man in town, wouldn’t we go see Him?  Wouldn’t we want him to fix all our problems, heal all our diseases, and soothe all our pains?  But that’s not who Jesus is.  He isn’t a Miracle Max.  He’s the Messiah.
   He’s the promised Savior, God’s Chosen One, God Incarnate who saves you not temporarily, but eternally.  Christ didn’t come to heal you right now from all your physical pains, but to heal you from the pain of sin and eternal death.  He came to shed His blood on the cross so that you might be washed and cleansed from your sin.  He came to die and rise so that you too would rise from the grave and stand before your Lord face to face.  That’s why Christ came.  That’s what His miracles point to: to that complete and everlasting healing of His cross and resurrection.  And that’s why Jesus told the man to keep quiet, so people would come to Him seeking not just temporary healing, but the true healing and salvation that He alone gives.
    But of course, the man and others couldn’t keep quiet, could they?  They just had to tell.  The more Jesus told them to be quiet, the more they shouted it.  The man had to share his good news.  He was unable to talk for so long, and now he was never going to stop talking about Jesus.  He wanted to tell everyone about the One who healed him. 
    I often wonder how we should view the healed man’s and other’s actions here.  On the one hand, we understand why they couldn’t keep quiet.  But on the other hand, they were disobeying Jesus.  So was this “evangelism” a sin?  The very fact that Jesus told them to not say anything and they did means they were disobeying the Lord.  They were sinning.  They were acting contrary to God’s will. 
At that specific time, and for a specific purpose, Jesus said to be quiet.  But that time is over.  Christ finished the work of salvation.  He declared it from the cross.  And He’s given His followers the task of telling others.  So don’t be quiet.  
   Jesus says, “Go and tell.  Tell your family, your children, your friends.  In your vocations, share the good news of what I have done.  Proclaim my cross and resurrection for them.  Share my love in deeds and words.  Speak my forgiveness for the sins of the world.”  Jesus tells us to tell, but we often act like the healed man, doing the exact opposite of what Jesus says.  He spoke when he was supposed to keep quiet.  We keep quiet when we’re supposed to speak.  And when we do speak, we often just speak about sins and we keep quiet about God’s forgiveness.
   We’re quick to point out what’s wrong and condemn that which goes against God’s word, and to be sure, this isn’t bad thing.  We do need to recognize sin and speak out against it.  It’s right for us to look at our lives and the world around us through the lens of God’s Word.  But we just can’t leave it there.  We can’t just point out sin and leave it at that because pointing doesn’t take sin away.  We need to proclaim Christ who overcomes sins.  We need to share the cross of Jesus with others so they can hear the healing and life-giving word of Jesus’ forgiveness.  
   Now that Christ has finished His work of salvation we get to proclaim Him and the cross to everyone.  We get to do exactly what the healed man did, but we get to do it with God’s blessing.  We get to joyously tell everyone about the forgiveness and everlasting life we have in Christ, and we get to tell them that He has died and risen for them too!  We love to share good news and there’s no good news better than this Good News.  
   Jesus didn’t come just to perform earthly miracles.  Temporary healings weren’t the point.  Salvation is His purpose.  Victory over sin and death is His goal.  And these He accomplished with His death and resurrection.  With the promise of salvation, we open our mouths.  We can’t keep quiet.  We sing His praises.  We don’t just talk about sin, we proclaim the answer to it: Jesus and His forgiveness.  In His name...Amen.
 

The desire to know. . .

Science can be a great friend, an uncertain ally, or a powerful enemy -- all at the same time.  We want to believe that science is neutral, that pure science is devoid of the clash of values or ideologies that have marked nearly every other aspect of life.  We want to believe it.  But we dare not.  At the heart of science is the desire to know and that desire is fraught with potential problems unless that desire to know is reined in by values.

The classic Biblical example of this is, of course, the Tower of Babel.  The hubris of man, believing that destiny and possibility were within grasp of the moment, led to a presumption that forced God's hand.  The fruits of this desire to know and control all things (except desire) led to the flood.  Even then the lesson was not learned and confusion of languages divided humanity to put limits for this pride of purpose and accomplishment.

Perhaps we will never know for sure but many have posited that the Corona Virus was itself the poisoned fruit of the this desire to know, predict, and control everything.  It was not simply that this virus was studied but that the pursuit of knowledge led to some tinkering with the virus in order to see how it might work.  This "gain of function" research seeks to make deadly infections more deadly, more infectious, and more powerful.  While there is much that might be learned, at what cost do we learn it?  Even the Obama administration put a moratorium on government funding of this kind of research.  Of course, we all know that there are ways to make money go where it was never intended.  In 2012, Dr. Anthony Fauci defended this kind of research and even conceded the possibility that an outbreak could occur -- all the while insisting that the benefits outweighed the risks.  Now about some 4 million have died globally and 600,000 here in the US (according to the CDC).  Was what we learned worth what it cost us?  That, of course, does not account for the antecedent costs to economies, our mental health, and our society as a whole.

It may seem that Christianity can often be a drag on the promise of science.  In reality, science cannot be allowed to live in the illusion of neutrality or the pure pursuit of knowledge.  Science needs values to fence in what could be done but should not.  How many other things over the years are the results of science gone bad?  Of people tinkering with the hope of improving only to find they have made matters worse?  Of promises made that turned out to be messes that had to be cleaned up?  We have had many mini-towers of Babel and found ourselves with many small floods that were caused simply by our own hubris and the seemingly innocent desire to know (along with the more nefarious desire to control).  This is especially true when it comes to life -- the use of fetal tissue and cells for possibly beneficial research ends up justifying and excusing abortion, for example.  The possibility of giving a life to an infertile couple comes at the cost of frozen embryos and aborted embryos killed to ensure that one will be in a stronger position to survive.  We can do it all -- should we?

We want science to speak with one voice, a purely neutral voice devoid of ideology, a voice that we can trust.  In reality, all science is conjecture that is tested to see if the outcomes can prove the hypothesis to be fact.  It means that we must wait until such outcomes can be seen and judged over time.  But it may also mean that we must not allow the quest for such knowledge to lead us where we dare not go.  Science has become America's new God and technology our new religion.  In the end, they may fail us in ways that will prove too costly for us to bear -- unless, of course, we are willing to put constraints on the pursuit of knowledge with the unchanging values of life, truth, and conscience.  Which is what the Church has attempted to do all along -- perhaps not perfectly but often as the lone voice of caution in a world moving very quickly and an impatient populace seeking a deity to replace the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

If only God knew. . .

In the face of commandments carved in stone and a new morality espoused to walk in Christ in newness of life, the Church finds itself in a usual place -- out of step with people and relegated to the sidelines by those who do not like what they hear from God.  Indeed, it is not new but it has moved beyond the ordinary realms of personal desire into heretofore uncharted waters of desire and gender identity that no one would have dreamed a century ago.  But that is where we are.  To those whose desires or identities are not countenanced by God, the Lord of heaven and earth is neither benevolent or compassionate.  He is, instead, insensitive, inhospitable, hurtful, coldly abstract.  

The Lord is insensitive because if He only knew how deeply we desire what He has forbidden or reject the criteria by which we have rendered male or female, He would surely have changed what He said.  But that is the point.  He DID know.  He knew from the beginning of that first sin the depths of our hearts and the desires therein waiting to bubble over and cast its death over all that He had made.  He knew from the beginning the consequences and, oddly enough, so did Adam and Eve when they could no longer look upon each other without the pangs of guilt and shame to overwhelm them.

The Lord is inhospitable because He does not simply welcome us as we are but changes us.  Instead of acknowledging and supporting and encouraging the truth we claim for ourselves and the desires unbound, the Lord has the nerve to ask us to take off our shoes in repentance, to allow Him to wash our feet and make us clean in baptism, and to give us a new heart in which is written His Law and in which the Spirit creates new love and desire for Him and for His will.  We do not want a God who asks us to change or who would have the nerve to change us.  We want affirmation and not reformation and so the welcome of God is to us a hollow word.  If He really wanted us, He would take us as we are and that is that.

The Lord is hurtful because He has the nerve to deem certain behaviors and desires as wrong and then to enshrine those wrongs in a code of law.  When the Lord calls the desire of our hearts wrong, it hurts.  And more than we desire redemption, we desire to avoid hurt.  Like the medical community which has deemed pain a greater ill than disease, so do we cry out in our pain for relief more than healing.  On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is your pain?  That is what we want from God.  We want Him to know how bad we are hurting and to take the hurt away.  We do not want the medicine of immortality unless it will provide immediate relief to our suffering.  If Christ's sufferings do not take away ours, then we are not sure we want any of it.  

The Lord is coldly abstract in our personal and individual world because He does not adapt His Word and truth to the dictates of the individual conscience (which is less conscience than it is preference).  We all want a God who is like us, who approves of what we approve and who disregards the things we do not like.  We all want a God who shares our prejudice, our point of view, our presuppositions, and our personality.  In this, we have not changed much from Israel which was hobbling together a god of their own manufacture and who mirrored their own desires while Moses was up on the holy ground of the mountain of God's presence receiving truth that transcends time and people.

I have heard it said so often.  If only God knew what I was going through. . . what I wanted. . . what I have suffered. . . what I had hoped for. . .   But that is the point.  God does know.  But God does not place His stamp of approval on all of these.  Rather, the Lord looks beyond the moment.  He is the God of providence who works all things for our eternal good.  That is why faith is not formed by reason or by understanding but by the Spirit who teaches us to believe what is alien to our sinful consciences and hearts.  Thanks be to God.  God knows us but God knows a higher good to which He aspires for us -- and for which He has withheld nothing -- not even His only Son.  Thanks be to God!

The the blessing of work. . .

The way we view life has changed.  Work has become something we tolerate until we no longer have to.  Americans were once known as a people for whom work was what defined us.  Perhaps that was not the best either but I am not sure that they way we look at work today is good either.  Unless you are born to wealth, work is inevitable.  Yes, there are safety nets for those who cannot or cannot find work but for the rest of us labor is a very big part of life.

It was not that long ago that there was nothing like retirement.  Yes, the labor of life changed as physical and intellectual limitations of age affected what work people did and how people worked.  But there was no idea that work was foreign or alien or an imposition upon life -- something that could be scheduled away at a certain age so that a person could do what they wanted.  As I remember my grandfathers, I think of men who would have gladly traded the opportunity to pursue their pleasures for more days on the farm or in the store where they worked.  As I watched my father pass away, I knew that the few short weeks that prevented him from going to work were the worst moments he had to endure and I was thankful that they were brief.  But my grandmothers and mother did not cease their labor.  Laundry, cooking, cleaning, and the usual things that formed part of their life of labor did not end because they hit 65.  Even for women who have worked outside the home, when one venue of their labor ends it does not mean that they no longer labor.  Why is it we presume that labor should end?

God created us for labor.  In the beginning it was a labor of love.  Sin changed all of that and the labor of love became a burden.  Men were warned how the world would no longer produce food without work but they would have to till the soil and battle the elements to deliver for their families.  Women were warned that their desire for children would come at a cost to them, great sacrifice, and great pain.  When man was booted from Eden, he entered a world in which work was hard -- whether you were the hunter or the farmer.  We have lived with the burden of this labor ever since.  Yet labor itself was never an option.  It was the shape of our lives from the very moment of our creation.  Even before the creation of Eve, God gave to Adam a job to behold all that God had made and name His creation.  It is foolish to presume that work and life are enemies.

On this Labor Day, we find a nation in which things have changed.  Where once it was typical for employers to have the upper hand and even to view employees as liabilities in their pursuit of profit, now we find a labor market in which the worker appears to have the upper hand.  Wages have had to increase because the numbers of workers is in short supply.  Add to this a benefit created during the pandemic in which unemployment was bolstered to provide more money than had ever been given before, the labor market is still trying to figure out how it works.  Not to mention the numbers of businesses, especially small businesses, that failed during the pandemic and the workers who ended up still working but working from home and we have even more change to disrupt the labor market.  Not in the least is how we have changed our view of work.  Work now is expected to provide more than money to support our lives.  It is supposed to make us happy.  Even more confusion in the marketplace.

In the end what I can say is this.  We should not disdain the gift of labor and the opportunity to work.  Work is a blessing and to forget this is to impose a great burden upon all of us who do not have the choice and must supply labor for the support of ourselves and those in our care.  Today at least, we ought to give thanks to God for employment, for work, for the privilege and blessing of labor.  We ought to pray for those who are underemployed -- who seek a better job, for those unemployed -- who seek a job, for those about to be employed -- starting their first job, and for those who have given up searching for work -- for whatever reason.  Work is good, a gift from God, a vital path to adult responsibility, and a blessing in which we not only provide for ourselves and those in our care, but serve God and serve our neighbor.  Happy Labor Day!

Really homey . . .

 

This is Newman Hall - Holy Spirit Parish in Berkeley, CA, and it epitomizes the brutality, ugliness, and unfriendliness of modern architecture.  For the life of me I cannot understand why people assume that such an environment is appropriate for the liturgy.  This is not a matter of taste or preference but of the appropriate setting for the glimpse of heaven and the foretaste of the eternal feast that God gives to us as we enter upon the holy ground of His presence.  He bids us come, not to the hardness of the world in which we live, but into the blessed joy and the heavenly image of what He has prepared for us.  For now we do not know this face to face but in the liturgy and in the liturgical setting for that Divine Service we glimpse this eternal and heavenly glory.  So do not dismiss this as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, this is not about what we esteem to be beautiful but about the glory of God.  Revelation puts that into images that we can imagine -- gold and precious stones that become the floors and walkways of God's people.  Unless you think that heaven is a sanitized version of Alcatraz, this is a scandal and an offense to God and His people.  Sad to wonder how much money was spent on such a travesty.

The Rood Screen and Holy Space. . .

Architectural cues to our past also tell us something of what people thought and expected.  From the grand lines of the great cathedrals we get the impression not of man's greatness but of his smallness before the Lord Most High.  Our church buildings, in contrast, emphasize the horizontal much more than vertical.  Also clear in the pattern of the older churches, both large and small, was the distinction of space, as if the space is marked with clear reference to the holy space and deference to the holy things of God.  People are present there not by some right or demand but always by God's gracious invitation and at the bidding of the Lord.  It is privilege and blessing to which the people of God enter step by step toward the holiest of the holies at the high altar.  In contrast today, there is less chancel and more a sense of the altar in the very center of the people, if not geographically at least in terms of viewing. 

All of this would be merely curiosity were it not for how the style of our architecture is also reflective of our own views of ourselves and the world in which we live -- as well as God.  From a twenty-first century perspective, the purpose of the rood screen is to hide what happens at the high altar and to distance the people from what takes place there.  But to the medieval world and earlier, this was to the people a sense of order and space -- the way of approach to the presence of God -- and a reflection of the privilege of viewing the very sacred space where God and His gifts are made accessible to us.   Of course, we treat those things much more casually than did the people of that era.  I am not at all this is progress.  To confuse the sacred and the divine, to treat as ordinary the things of God and extraordinary the things of this life is a distortion of the whole of the Scriptural witness.  What we have lost with the disregard of holy ground, reverence, and awe has been replaced with virtual reality -- screens that make everything less than transparent but mundane and technology that has not so much served the Gospel as distracted from it. 

Even with respect to heaven and hell, we have blurred the distinctions and even reasoned our way out of hell altogether.  It is not uncommon even for Christians to joke about whether they just might be more familiar with what goes on in hell than comfortable with the holiness of heaven.  Even such a joke betrays the fact that we no longer fear or see the torment of the judged as something terrible and, in comparison, no longer long for or view the things of heaven as the consummation of all that we are and hope for by God's grace and design.  The distinctions once preserved not simply a real and awful punishment which ought to be feared but the purity and blessedness of the heavenly hope made possible by Christ's suffering and death for sin and His mighty resurrection.  Perhaps this shows up in our modern day funeral practices and the message of hope which we find more tangibly in the memories of the past than in the hope of the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

Anyway, here is a little video on the rood screen -- something which was largely removed long before even the modern liturgical movement.  With it, our view of God and ourselves was changing and, after the Renaissance and humanist movements, we began to look at ourselves more than God when we came together on the Lord's Day in the Lord's House.  It could not help but affect the buildings we remodeled and the new structures erected.  The changes were not sudden but they have appeared to be sudden -- especially because the pace at which we ditched the older views and style and replaced them with horizontal structures to fit our theology has finally caught up with us.  Hopefully, we will realize that we might have lost more than an architectural perspective.

JC2033

So apparently there are those who are gearing up for some big extravaganza to celebrate the second millenium since Jesus' resurrection.  Yes, I know, there is not quite a consensus on the date 33 AD but why let a little detail like that spoil plans for a party -- a huge party, according to reports.  This is not quite a birthday and more like an anniversary but the point is not cake and candles and party hats.  Or is it?

The organizers have been careful to distance themselves from any association of this with rapture or Christ's coming in power and glory:  "in no way whatsoever are we associating this jubilee with" the Second Coming of Christ.  It appears unity and love are the twin foci.  Planners are suggesting that "every disciple of Christ" on earth participate in collective witness to show "we love each other in the Holy Spirit!"  That's nice.  Of course, it is the spiritual unity that is being talked about here and not theological.  That might be rather ambitious for 12 years of planning to resolve 2,000 years of conflict and division.

The desire is for more "tangible demonstrations of God's love" -- more tangible that we see today in the fracture of Christianity not simply along denominational lines but of orthodox Christianity against modernist Christianity.  Everything will be celebrative -- "joyful, artistic and creative" and not limited to or primarily in churches but in "stadiums, squares, parks, mountains, fields, beaches, homes and on the Internet!"  I am not sure they needed to add on the internet.  

Everybody loves a party, that's why we invited you...  I can only imagine. . .  You can imagine, too. . .
     ... the greatest celebration in all of history: 2000 years since Christ's resurrection!
     ... the worldwide body of believers gathering in all regions of the Earth!
     ... the Church demonstrating tangible love and sincere unity to the world!
     ... the dawn of resurrection Sunday 2033, when light breaks forth a new day!

It will be interesting to see who signs on and who does not and if the whole thing fizzles before the big day.  It points out how much we are invested in celebration rather than suffering, in making a big splash instead of humble faithfulness, and in overlooking real doctrinal differences for the sake of an appearance of unity.  But this is not new and it is not unique to the JC2033 organizers.  It is the nature of man.  Nobody wanted to build the ark but everyone wanted in when it began to rain.  Nobody wants real and honest dialogue about the things that divide us but we all love to jump on the bandwagon of unity.  And so it goes. . . stay tuned for more.

The lies we tell ourselves. . .

Perhaps there is no lie more egregious than the lie of autonomy.  From Eden on we have told and retold the lie to ourselves but there were always things that made that lie difficult to believe.  Until now.  Technology has aided and abetted the lie of personal autonomy and independence in ways that our ancestors could not have imagined.  They have led us to the place where reality is what we make it to be, truth is what we declare it to be, and life is what we decide it is.  Even worse, we are who we say we are.

From Rousseau (“Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains”) to Friedrich Nietzsche (the triumph of the desire for power and control) to Sigmund Freud (sex was not what you do but who you are), we have elevated individualism, happiness, and independence above all else.  The isolation that accompanies this identity is blunted by the fact that social media can mask our loneliness with the illusion of friendship, fellowship, and togetherness without the mess of doing it in real life.  Not only are we personally autonomous individuals in reality but also virtually.

Think how this lie is responsible for such things as:

• a woman's right to choose covering the brutal choice of death to the child in the womb or 
• the strangeness of a gender which is felt somewhere else than in the body or 
• the idea that the shape of marriage and family lie under the control of individual desires and 
• the only thing society can do is to celebrate the diversity but never question it.  

How foolish and easily manipulated we are!  We humans were, are, and always will be characterized by dependence upon others. In the earliest stages of our lives, as babies and children, we are utterly and hopelessly dependent upon others.  The family is not so much a choice as a necessity.  Even as we grow and appear to become less dependent, it is only a slightly lesser degree of dependence that becomes painfully obvious as we reach old age only to find ourselves utterly and hopelessly dependent once again.  Is there any point in our lives when we are ever the free-standing autonomous creatures of Rousseau’s or in control of anything or not dominated by desire?  It is in our bodies that this dependence is most obvious and most denied.  We tell ourselves that physical connections are optional and not essential and yet how can we define ourselves except against others?  Surely this is one of the great foibles of woke culture and the critical race theory.  There must always be those against whom we not only define ourselves and cast the blame for the things we do not like in us. 

God did not create us to be autonomous individuals, to live isolated lives in our own self-interest, to define relationships legally because we felt them strange, to morality shaped by feelings and consent more than truth, or to a world in which freedom means most of all to live without obligation or duty to anyone else.  These were the pernicious lies of the serpent who whispers them still in a vain effort to deny the Lord His own.  But they have become our lies.  We have owned them not only in government and law but in society and relationship.  The great suspicion against marriage and family is that these might impinge upon me being me -- so we must either redefine them so I can be me and do I as will without restraint or ditch the entire institution.  The great challenge to abortion is the idea that the person made his or her choice at the act of intercourse and not later when faced with the consequences of sexual desire.  The great divide in our culture lies with a goal of individualism with the degree of autonomy we desire (some of it surrendered for the sake of security against things and people we do not wish to deal with) and the responsibility of others to make it possible (government, rich, privileged).

Jesus has not come to forgive our sins only.  That would be too easy for Him and for us.  He has come to redeem us from the power of sin, to implant in us new and contrite hearts built upon the foundation of truth, and to restore the brokenness in us and in our relationships with God and each other.  But we live in a world which resists forgiveness because it refuses to acknowledge sin -- except the sins against our autonomous selves, our woke culture, and our insistence upon self-definition and self-determination.  For those who have sinned against these, there can be no forgiveness and no redemption at all -- whether they acted foolishly as youth or deliberately as an adult.

The true freedom we desire is the liberty born of the Spirit -- bringing faith where there was none, hope where despair reigned, love where fear ruled, and the obedience of faith were chaos threatened.  This is what the fruits of the Spirit are.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  (Gal. 5:22-23)  Our goal is not to live free and without a care but holy, godly, and upright lives of faith and faithfulness.  For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to everyone. It instructs us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live sensible, upright, and godly lives in the present age, as we await the blessed hope and glorious appearance of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. He gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. (Titus 2:11-14)

God has His work cut out for Him.  We have done a great job of constructing a system of lies on which to build the illusion of our autonomous, individualized, and self-defined lives.  We have used technology well in the prop up and support these values.  We have harnessed the media as our witting or unwitting accomplices in the game of deception we play with ourselves.  And we have hoodwinked pastors and churches to espouse this in place of the Word that endures forever.  But the Spirit is surely up to it.  God looked out on a lost cause before His Son entered the Virgin's womb and still He relentlessly pursued our redemption.  He will not now abandon His creation and the people for whom Christ shed His precious blood.  It may not be easy to see how God can intervene in the terrible chaos we have created but we see with eyes of faith and not those in our head.  We live not by sight but by faith, holding in our hearts the promise He has sealed in the blood of Jesus and meeting together in the light of His Word preached and His Sacraments administered.  There is our mighty fortress, our secure refuge, and from it we not only await the future He has prepared but we announce it to the world with law to convict and Gospel to console.  Thanks be to God!

Why we can't live and let live. . .

On another forum was a plea from a pastor weary of all the conflicts and divisions within Lutheranism.  He begged to figure out a way to get along, to determine whether disagreements were worth disagreeing about, and whether those disagreements were in and of themselves divisive.  I feel for him.  No one but a callous and hardhearted brute can look on the fractured state of Christianity, Lutheranism included, and not ache for more unity of faith and practice.  But at the same time, such sentiment can never be allowed to draw our attention away from the needful and real disputes that go to the heart and core of what we believe, teach, and confess.  

Do I think God is hurt and the mission of the Church suffers from the many divisions among Christians (and Lutherans within Christendom)?  Sure.  But God is hurt far more and the mission of the Church suffers more from fake unity born of minimalism and compromise that inherently involves denial of truth and the betrayal of the faith.  Diversity of doctrine does not preclude unity for those who have no abiding and eternal truth.  It is only a problem for those who take God's Word seriously.  The end result of such papered unity is a weak and fragile church -- one incapable of anything except toleration, acceptance, and agreement.

When error is admitted into the Church, it will be found that the stages of its progress are always three. It begins with toleration. Its friends say to the majority: You need not be afraid of us; we are few, and weak; only let us alone; we shall not disturb the faith of others. The Church has her standards of doctrine; of course we shall never interfere with them; we only ask for ourselves to be spared interference with our private opinions. Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error are two balancing forces. The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We agree to differ, and favoring of the truth, because it is truth, is partisanship. What the friends of truth and error hold in common is fundamental. Anything on which they differ is ipso facto non-essential. Anybody who makes account of such a thing is a disturber of the peace of the Church. Truth and error are two co-ordinate powers, and the great secret of church-statesmanship is to preserve the balance between them.

From this point of view error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy. Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated, and that only for a time. Error claims a preference for its judgments on all disputed points. It puts men into positions, not as at first in spite of their departures from the Church's faith but in consequence of it. Their recommendation is that they repudiate the faith, and position is given them to teach others to repudiate it, and making them skillful in combating it.

Charles Porterfield Krauth in The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology (1913)

 

Krauth is contemporary even though he was born nearly 200 years ago!  He was one of the primal confessionalists at the time that Missouri was being formed.  The tensions between the Missourians and the liberal and progressive Lutherans of the General Council and General Synod have continued to the present day.  There was a time in the 1960s and early 1970s when some hoped for a realignment of Lutheranism but many factors prevented it and Krauth would not recognize the modern day heirs of his church body.  Missouri has been slower to the mark than other Lutherans but we have struggled as well.  When the LCMS then declared that the ELCA was no longer Lutheran, it was not a proud statement of triumph but the voice of one struggling Lutheran body to another Lutheran body which had, for all intents and purposes, forsaken what it means to be Lutheran.  The great temptation was and is to ignore the differences because we are all shrinking in size, vitality, and influence.  But this is a time in which we must mark divisions for the very sake of the survival of the Church of the Augsburg Confession.  

Relativism, critical race theory, cultural change, the emergence of a new and more powerful secularism, the confusion created by the issues of gender identity and the triumph of sexual desire -- all of these and more threaten more than just our unity but our very existence.  Under it all is a growing willingness to hide, ignore, or rewrite the words of Scripture so that it is nearer to the pulse of our culture and society today but the fruit of it all is hope without substance and truth without transcendence.  Unless we mark such error, we forsake our very claim to the Reformer's legacy and surrender the truth that endures forever for the imaginary unity of the moment.  We cannot simply live and let live.  We cannot enjoy or be smug about the divisions that must exist for the sake of the Gospel but neither can we allow error a foothold.  This is not simply for our sake but also for the sake of those deceived by such error.

Protestantism has become an empty shell of its former self and largely because no one bothers with doctrine enough to acknowledge the divisions among us.  Anglicanism is, outside of Africa, largely dying -- dying to some of the best liturgy, vestments, and music but still dying -- because there is no move toward doctrinal integrity.  Rome is a religion kept united not by a common faith but a common pope and different claims to a common tradition.  Lutheranism, as Krauth argued, had doctrinal integrity only so long as a quia subscription to the Confessions was given.  As we all know, the Confessions are increasingly being treated as merely historical documents without much power to inform or delineate the faith for us today.  The point is simple.  We have given error a foothold and it has taken over.

Fed or fed up?

One thing I really despise is how we have become accustomed to speaking about worship as being fed.  I grew up on the farm and I am not at all sure that the symbolic connection between cattle being called to the feedbunk and the farmer filling the trough with corn or hay is the image we ought to have when thinking about Holy Communion.  Neither am I convinced that a family meal around a table with people passing the food and conversing or filling up as fast as possible before heading out on their own ways are good images of Holy Communion either.  I am fed up with the term fed.

By this terminology, it is obvious that far too many folks people have come to think of what happens in worship in purely egocentric terms -- it is about me, what I like, what I want, and what I think I get. So they speak of their time in worship as “being fed.” What they mean by this may vary but it usually means that they enjoyed a bang up job at the pulpit with the preacher entertaining them and giving them something to think about or uplifting for their dreary day.  They give such worship the highest compliment -- it was meaningful or relevant.  Maybe they appreciated the beat of the music or the skill of the musicians or just maybe they really got into it with their ever present cup of Starbucks or bottled vitamin water as they watched things happen on the stage.  But seldom do we use these terms to suggest that we have been in the presence of the Most High God and that this God has deigned to bestow upon us forgiveness we did not deserve and to nourish our bodies and souls on the heavenly food of His Son's body and blood and that this holy ground was the vantage point for the eternity prepared for us but only glimpsed until we are brought to everlasting life.  Oh, yeah, that, too.

It is out duty and delight to show up on Sunday.  I really do not understand why anyone would have a problem with the idea that worship is our obligatory duty?!  But, of course, it not only duty.  It is  delight.  To worship God, to give Him the thanks and adoration He is due simply for being God, the almighty and eternal God who made, sustains, and directs all things and before whom all must give account.  Worship is obedience and it is the obedience not simply to command but the obedience of faith.  We do not simply owe God praise, gratitude and adoration but we need what He offers and what He has promised to bestow where He has placed that promise.  Yes, the Lord is the source of every blessing, grace, and mercy new every morning.  But more than this, God has accomplished our salvation for us and paid for it with the most precious blood of His Son, and, for this, we not only owe Him our duty of worship and our faith obligation of obedience but we depend upon Him for the grace in which we stand. What did Jesus command when He said “Do this is remembrance of me?”   

We think of worship as feeding time when we can get what we want, what will uplift us, what will satisfy us, and what will be meaningful and relevant to our daily lives.  But we have set our sighs too low.  God gives us so much more.  He does not merely feed us what we want or prefer but feeds us eternity in the body and blood of Christ, clothes us for everlasting life in the righteousness placed upon us in our baptism, forgives us by the voice of absolution so that no sin may stand between us, and addresses us as His own people with the living voice of His Word.  Which might all be missed except that in all of these the Spirit is at work bringing us to faith, to the remembrance of the things He has done, transforming our minds to know Him in His Word, and transforming our hearts to that we might desire the things He has offered and be equipped to live as His own, under Him, in His Kingdom now and forevermore.

Our Lord's teaching was as hard and offensive to those who saw Him with their eyes as it is for those who know Him by faith.  Many who came to Jesus departed because His teaching was too hard (they were not being fed!).  Even His own did not stay with Him because they understood all things.  They knew, as hard as Jesus' teaching was, they had little alternative.  Every Sunday we are being asked anew, Do you also want to leave me? (Jn 6:67)  Every Sunday we lay aside the egocentric desires and wants to address Him who gives us what we need and then works so that we may learn to want what He gives:  “The Body of Christ given for you... the Blood of Christ shed for you.” Receiving this awesome mystery filled with grace upon grace beyond our comprehension, we respond with the Amen of faith and say with St. Peter, “Lord, to whom [else] shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68).

The reality of what is there is too great for us to comprehend in total.  We glimpse it by faith, seeing it in small bites.  We do not judge it -- how offensive is it to God for us to turn up our noses at what He offers because we don't like it or want it!  God lays out the table that bestows not only forgiveness for now but the foretaste of the eternal and we would depart disappointed because we were not fed?  Really?  The response of faith is more "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief."  Only something of such transcendent reality can cause us harm as well as blessing -- a harm greater than our dismissal of God's offering as not enough but an actual condemnation and judgment against us from only repentance can rescue us.   

Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face to Face
    
Here, O my Lord, I see Thee face to face;
    Here would I touch and handle things unseen;
Here grasp with firmer hand the_eternal grace,
    And all my weariness upon Thee lean.
    
Here would I feed upon the bread of God,
    Here drink with Thee the royal wine of heav’n;
Here would I lay aside each earthly load,
    Here taste afresh the calm of sin forgiv’n.
    
This is the hour of banquet and of song;
    This is the heav’nly table spread for me;
Here let me feast and, feasting, still prolong
    The brief bright hour of fellowship with Thee.
    
I have no help but Thine; nor do I need
    Another arm but Thine to lean upon.
It is enough, my Lord, enough indeed;
    My strength is in Thy might, Thy might alone.
    
Mine is the sin, but Thine the righteousness;
    Mine is the guilt, but Thine the cleansing blood;
Here is my robe, my refuge, and my peace:
    Thy blood, Thy righteousness, O Lord my God.
    
Too soon we rise; the vessels disappear;
    The feast, though not the love, is past and gone;
The bread and wine remove, but Thou art here;
    Nearer than ever; still my shield and sun.
    
Feast after feast thus comes and passes by,
    Yet, passing, points to that glad feast above,
Giving sweet foretaste of the festal joy,
    The Lamb’s great marriage feast of bliss and love.