How much is too much?

As a child growing up, my mother set the table for the family meals and often we ate on fine china in the dining room.  She served the food in bowls and did not put the pots on the table.  We did not eat off disposable paper or plastic tableware.  She was not unusual.  It was how everyone did it.  Perhaps those days are long gone for many families and fast food or take out served on paper or plastic has become the norm.  I do not know.  I still eat on stoneware and china.  My wife was raised the same way.  How we eat now is at least in part a reflection of that but it is also our expectation that less is not more -- that more is more.

Even though paper and plastic disposable tableware has become normal fare for some, perhaps even out of necessity though largely because values have changed, it is not a choice for the moment.  It will also inform and shape what happens in the lives of those children who learned that fine dining comes in a bag and is put on plastic or paper that will be discarded along with the leftovers.  What we do is not simply about the moment but about the future.  What we do not only sets precedent but expectation of what should be as well as being a reflection of what is.

There are those who would insist that a congregation like the one I serve is too liturgical, has too much ceremony, has too many images, stained glass, painting, statues, etc.  It is literally too much for them.  Some would even try to suggest that it should be scaled back for the sake of other goals -- accessibility is usually mentioned as if people are being kept from Jesus because we have too much ritual and art.  There are a few who might suggest that this is not Lutheran but is Roman Catholic (when have they last visited a Roman Mass to see what happens there and the context of it all?).  Now, Lutherans are not quick to make rules about what folks in the pew must do.  It is free.  If you want to cross yourself, do.  If not, don't.  Some kneel, some don't.  The list could go on and on.  But I wonder if the question ought to be turned around.  How much is too much?

The Lord is lavish and extravagant in His mercy -- too lavish and extravagant for most of us.  We would find a religion in which the deserving get more a reasonable alternative to the mercy that offers the same to every laborer in the vineyard.  But the Lord refuses to let this restrict His generosity.  In fact, He pointedly asks why we would begrudge Him that generosity when we have received exactly what He has promised.  So why do some begrudge us the generosity of a liturgical life richly provided for with music, ceremony, ritual, and building?  Is not the Lord worth it all -- of course, knowing full well that nothing we do is worthy of Him no matter how noble but it is His grace to receive all things we do through Christ who completes them just as He completes us?  How much is too much?  Where do you draw the line?  We are always trying to place limits on the Lord and it is no different for those who would say what you do on Sunday morning is too much or, typically, too catholic.  But that is the point.  How best to use our freedom?  To do less or to do more?

It seems to me that we are replete with places and churches where they are content that less is more in creed and confession as well as liturgy.  Why use our precious freedom to herald the cause of simplicity?  All across Christendom there is the unabashed move to strips words of meaning and doctrine of its truth to make anything and everything subject to the tyranny of the individual and his or her own preference.  Why would we want to add our voices to theirs?  The cause of beauty in service to worship, of the arts in service to God, and ceremony which actually gives form to what is really believed, taught, and confessed is too great to be squandered on a sea of minimalism.  Plus, the danger is that having married the spirit of this individualistic age in which preference rules over all, we will most certainly be left a widow in the next generation.  Worse, we will have children who do not know their mother!

We are all growed up now. . .

It is not uncommon for those on the liberal and progressive side of Christianity, and in particular Lutheranism, to claim that they have not departed from the faith as it was once confessed.  So when that is challenged by something that conflicts with the new solas of sexual desire and gender identity, for example, this point is made:

1. The Biblical writers and probably most folk back then thought that way. It was their culture, their experience.
2. We no longer think that way. Our faith, guided by the Holy Spirit and our experience, have taught us otherwise. 

I am thankful for their clarification.  So, according to them, yes, the Bible is filled with things we no longer believe but that does not affect our acceptance of Scripture and even our affirmation of its truthfulness (at least in some matters) and, yes, they now believe otherwise but it is not because they have departed from Scripture.  No indeed, it is because they are guided by the Spirit to go beyond Scripture and affirm what the other leg of revelation stands upon (experience).  It is all perfectly rational and logical.  But it is Christian?

The importance of the sola Scriptura of the Reformation era lie not simply in the affirmation of what Scripture is but also what reason and experience are not -- namely, the arenas of God's revelation that stand equal to or perhaps even above Scripture itself.  Culture and experience, according to those left of center on the Biblical spectrum, must be sifted out from God's Word and probably includes just about anything and everything except Jesus Himself, the love that saved us (though perhaps not by dying to pay the cost of sin), and freedom (to fulfill in yourself the full potential God has planted in you).  Now that sounds exactly like Luther, right?  Or the early church fathers, too, right?  Well, perhaps not.  But that is a convenient fact we overlook in our pursuit of a Christianity which reflects us at least as much as it reflects God.  In this faith, God is not the only writer of revelation but we join Him in that task, under the guidance of the Spirit, to go beyond what Scripture says or perhaps even conflict with God's Word.  While this is certainly liberalism, this is also the problem and complaint of the Reformation against Rome.  In this Rome and liberal Protestantism and progressive Lutheranism are allies.  What Scripture says is good enough but it must be sifted by the enlightened and educated within the church (or pope), and it must be squared with reason and experience.  So perhaps Rome has won and the Reformation lost this battle if there is an alliance between the liberals outside and those in Rome.  All the more reason for the heirs of the catholic reformation now called Lutheran to contend for the faith.
 

 

Don't lose your head. . .

Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 10B, preached on Sunday, July 14, 2024.

In the account of the beheading of St. John the Baptist, it was Herod who lost his head and John who kept his.  That might seem to be an odd thing to say but it is the truth nonetheless.  Herod is confused about everything and afraid.  He does not seem to get who Jesus is and who He is not.  Is Jesus Elijah or a prophet or John the Baptist back from the dead?  It seems that Herod does not even consider that Jesus is the Messiah, the promised Savior who is God’s Son in flesh and blood.

Herod is afraid.  He is afraid of what John the Baptist has to say about Herod’s own immoral life but he is just as afraid of shutting John up since he knows that John is a prophet sent from God and a man of God.  So what would he do with John?  He locked him up and let John sit it out in prison while Herod tried to figure a way out.

Herod is weak.  While he stews and frets about what to do with John, his own unlawful wife had it figured out and conned Herod into her plan through the use of an erotic dance performed by her daughter and Herod’s own step-daughter.  So Herod is not only a weak leader but a weak man who can be manipulated by  unseemly desires.  

Herod is a fool.  Herod threw himself a birthday party extravaganza and thought the people invited came because they liked him.  The reality is that they came because he was a man who held an office with power, even if he did not know how to use it.  And when his stepdaughter had ignited the fires of his desire with her dance, Herod was foolish enough to promise her whatever she wanted up to half his kingdom – and he made the pledge in front of everyone!  

Herod is also stupid.  He played right into the hand of his unlawful wife and when she figured out a way to silence John the Baptist, she also figured out how to lay the blame upon Herod and not herself.  Faced with the prospect of either killing a prophet of God and a holy man or showing himself to go back on his word, Herod chose to put John to death.  

John kept his head through all of this.  When he was locked up, he sent his disciples to Jesus so they would know Jesus was the One who was to come and not look for another. Even from the prison cell John pointed to Jesus the Lamb of God.  His hope is rested upon Christ and he lives not in fear.
While in prison, he did not take back his words or deny the Lord – even to save his life.  He was a prophet, alright, and he stood by the Word of the Lord even knowing it would cost him his life.  He was faithful unto death and so he received the crown of everlasting righteousness.

John kept his head in everything.  He knew his place.  Jesus must increase and I must decrease.  That is the voice of a man who knows who he is and who knows the promise of God that will not fail him.  Even though this decrease meant martyrdom, John trusted in the Lord and that faith was counted to him as righteousness – just as it had been for Abraham before him.

John kept his head in all of this.  He was not a superman but a man of faith.  He trusted in the Lord when trust was all he had and no way out.  He trusted in the Lord when trust meant eternal life over this life.  When Herod died, He was left  forgotten except by the annals of God’s Word which alone remembers his name.  When John died, his remains were placed in a tomb so that from it he might await his own resurrection from the dead to the new and glorious flesh that no one would ever be able to kill again.

We have two models here.  One is a model of immorality, weakness, fear, and foolishness.  The other is a model of faithfulness, trusting in the Lord when it is not easy and at the risk of your own safety and security.  In these two models are choices for you and for me.  The sad reality is that too many of us end up looking much like Herod.  We believe the lies we tell about ourselves, we hide the sins we commit, we resist the call to repentance, we let our desires lead us where we know we should not go, and we are strangers to God’s House and His Word.  The times in which we live call for Christians to be like faithful John than fearful Herod.

Christian nationalism is not the answer.  As Lutherans we do not see the Kingdom of God with national borders or flags and we do not elect the kingdom of God in the ballotbox.  Luther’s two kingdoms at least reminds us that God will judge both the government and the Church but they have very different callings and purposes in the world.  Christian nationalism falls short.  Suffer as we might the threats and persecutions of our leaders, we are not working to bring heaven on earth but to make sure earthly sinners are raised in Christ to new and everlasting lives by the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the body.  The kingdom of God will not come by violence nor will it come through the power of hate. 

Of course, we can all use a better class of leaders and we should pray those we have hear and heed the voice of God on our behalf and for the sake of all people.  But our call is to be like John and not to succumb to the foolishness, weakness, and stupidity of the Herods of this world.  We are to be faithful when it hurts to be faithful.  We are to be people of God’s Word who know who Jesus is and who confess the name of the Lord without fear.  We are to be so confident of the promise of the resurrection, of the new and glorious body that can never die, and of eternal life that we are willing to suffer all even death rather than give in or give up on this Gospel and this Church (which is the promise confirmands and new members make and we all made!).

This morning Whit was baptized into the Kingdom of God and given new birth through the womb of this font.  His life is in Christ, now the earthly life of we see and the life of the world to come we know by faith.  With us he has been given a new heart and a new head, Christ our Lord.  With us he has been given a new life and a new home, with Christ forevermore on high.

I don’t know whether this is a starker and clearer contrast between faith and fear, life with God and life in the world, living by desire or by the truth that endures forever, than the contrast between Herod and John.  John was beheaded but he kept his head in trial and trouble.  Herod lost his head and his memory lives on as an example of what not to do and who not to be.  Yes, you are suffering.  But Christ has you in His hand and will reach into the darkness of death to raise you to eternal life with Him.  Because Jesus lives, John lives and you live and I live.  And that, my friends, is the only thing that matters. 

A mighty week with glad thanksgiving. . .

I spent July 8-12 this year in Seward, Nebraska, on the wonderful campus of Concordia University, with some of the most wonderful folks I know.  The occasion was the LCMS Institute on Liturgy, Preaching, and Church Music.  Held off its regular schedule by the pandemic, the whole thing came back with a mighty bang around the Psalms -- Songs of Deliverance.  Under the very capable leadership of the Rev. Sean Daenzer, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod’s director of Worship and IC chaplain, hundreds of parish pastors, church workers, parish musicians, university students, singers, seminarians, and others gathered for one of the richest experiences of worship, education, inspiration, and dedication our Synod has ever provided.  As one who has attended more than several and been on the planning of the last three, this was by far the most profound.  I cannot express my appreciation more deeply to everyone who participated except to say you should have been there!  It was one of the most significant events of my life and I am so very grateful to have been a very small part of it all.  While the list of those who were involved in the planning and execution of this great week is too long to print, I do want to single out the crew out of the LCMS office.  Pr. Daenzer, Dcs. Cara Patton, and Katie Rickords for their mighty work.  Kudos go to everyone who worked with them (including the very impressive printing of book, service orders, programs, etc., by the LCMS Department of Communications).  While you are still able, check out the record of these wonderful events on the LCMS Facebook page.  A particular shout out to my own friend and Cantor, Dr. Jonathan Rudy, who served as organist for the final Divine Service as well as arranger and presenter.  I would be remiss for failing to laud the wonderful hospitality of Concordia University and St. John's Lutheran Church in Seward.  It was more than a success -- it was all life-changing!  The Institute program is here.

My point here is not simply to say the thank yous to those who worked so hard to make this all come to pass (including singing and saying all 150 Psalms!!!) but to rouse the wider audience so that the next event (in three years) may be even bigger and better (as hard as the better part is for me to imagine).  We all have conferences around us and many are wonderful and practical and stimulating but this is a unique blending of those three foci of our life together around the Word and Sacraments -- liturgy, preaching, and church music!  From these flow out and return all we are and do as the Church.  Worship with its form and content in the liturgy and preaching and with its expression in the song of the faithful is not one of the many programs of the Church but her core, center, and beating heart.  Indeed, nothing we are or do that is worthy has its source outside of this and nothing we are or do has an earthly end outside of this.  We need to have mountain top events like this to provide inspiration and encourage for the work that goes on in the valleys and we need to provide mountain top events for the faithful within the congregation to enable and support the baptismal work of God's people in the home and in the world.  This is exactly the kind of week that should be on every church worker's agenda because its focus is precisely upon the faith received, lived, and witnessed beginning from the first strains of the preservice music on Sunday morning to the sending forth of the benediction and the echos of the postlude fade from our ears.  It is practical in the most important sense of that word and because of this it is also inspirational.

Our Lord speaks and we listen. His Word bestows what it says. Faith that is born from what is heard acknowledges the gifts received with eager thankfulness and praise. Music is drawn into this thankfulness and praise, enlarging and elevating the adoration of our gracious giver God. Saying back to him what he has said to us, we repeat what is most true and sure. Most true and sure is his name, which he put on us with the water of our Baptism. We are his. This we acknowledge at the beginning of the Divine Service. Where his name is, there is he. Before him we acknowledge that we are sinners, and we plead for forgiveness. His forgiveness is given us, and we, freed and forgiven, acclaim him as our great and gracious God as we apply to ourselves the words he has used to make himself known to us. The rhythm of our worship is from him to us, and then from us back to him. He gives his gifts, and together we receive and extol them. We build one another up as we speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Our Lord gives us his body to eat and his blood to drink. Finally his blessing moves us out into our calling, where his gifts have their fruition. How best to do this we may learn from his Word and from the way his Word has prompted his worship through the centuries. We are heirs of an astonishingly rich tradition. Each generation receives from those who went before and, in making that tradition of the Divine Service its own, adds what best may serve in its own day – the living heritage and something new.

 – Lutheran Worship (1982) Introduction by Dr. Norman Nagel

There is another reason why this conference was so successful and why it is so important to be on your radar for the coming future.  This included a host of new names and faces among the preachers, presenters, players, and planners as the cause is raised up by the next generation.  We were privileged to hear from and to receive from many newer to the stage of talent within the Missouri Synod and it showcased the wide and deep back bench we have among those whose gifts, talents, abilities, and dedication were put to work so effectively.  We need to be encouraged by the many young faces right down to the children's choir and altar servers and up to the staff at the IC and including the names and faces of those whose work figured so prominently this year.  We are not remembering a past without also giving cause to hope for the future and this is another reason why this event was so impressive.  God bless you all no matter what side of the altar rail you serve.  

Finally, let me say this.  The Divine Services, the Matins, Morning Prayer, Psalm Festival, Vespers, Evening Prayer, and Compline offices, and the singing were enough of a reason for any to go and find themselves filled with renewed hope and enthusiasm.  How wonderful it is to be in the House of the Lord surrounded by the voices of the faithful lifted in praise of Him who died and rose again!  My goodness, I cannot tell you how many times I felt lifted up and strengthened by the mighty music of the organ, choir, instrumentalist, bell ringer, and congregation.  Even without all the sessions, the worship is enough.  And that is how it ought to be in our churches.  The privilege of being named by God as His own in baptism, nurtured in the faith by the living voice of His Word, restored from our sin by His absolution, and fed and nourished upon the Body and Blood of His Son is our highest gift and blessing.  Our response is pale in comparison to His generosity of love and grace but it is not nothing.  Strive for our best for His glory on every level of what we do but especially within the context of the Divine Service.  Ultimately that is the first and best and last lesson gleaned from a glorious week with glorious fellow members of Christ's body the Church in Seward, Nebraska.  Don't miss it next time!

The move to uncertainty. . .

Whether you like it or not, the characterization of the orthodox and catholic faith over the ages was certainty and clarity.  While there were moments of confusion, the remarkable scope and progress of Christianity was built upon a profound certainty about the world, the Creator, the reason for evil, the location of death's source, morality, and the objective nature of truth.  In creed and confession, the Church laid before the world this clear and confident vision of the reality we encounter around us and in us.  More than this, it was shaped by the overwhelming mystery of God's love manifest in His Trinitarian identity, the reason for our own existence in His image and by His design, and the redemption of the world through His Son in flesh and blood.  As modernity began to be established from the Enlightenment through Humanism and into the so-called scientific age, the world has been left with less and less certainty and clarity.  In the place of these there is only confusion.

When in modernity we assign error to some parts of God's Word (or at least its possibility), we are left with the confusion of which parts of God's Word are in error and which are not.  When evolution became the defining rationale for why everything and each of us exist, it left us without a plan or purpose and life became random, spontaneous, and unpredictable.  When life itself was no longer sacred, we lost our own sense of value and identity and any protection afforded us.  Everything became tenuous and tentative -- even desire and gender.  Our culture of victims left us without justice, without punishment for the evil doer and therefore the corresponding honor and value assigned to virtue.  Our society seems to love this ambiguity because it leaves a gaping whole where order once stood and it has been replaced with power.  Now everything has to do with power and those who wield it and those who bestow it.  

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why many of those younger are in search of Church that does not look like a social organization or religious club but one that actually expects and builds upon transcendence and constancy as the marks of authenticity along with the traditional marks of the Church.  In any case, the progress toward uncertainty is untenable and ultimately destructive of everything it claims to order and preserve.  By removing morality and order and replacing it with the judgment of the moment and normality with exception, we are left where we are now -- in a crisis mode of division and contempt that has no possibility of reconciliation -- nor does it seem to want this.  In place of these structures, power and control are all that remain.  So that is where we are at now -- fighting over who is in power and who controls the structure.  While this is obviously true of the world and government and society, it is no less true of what remains of religious structures as well.  Everything cannot be true or there is no truth and everyone's opinion cannot be held in the same esteem or there is only error.  If life has value only because we assign it then we can reassign that value at any time and for any cause.  If truth is defined by the individual and lives within the boards those individuals assign to it, it forsakes the very essence of what it means to be truth.  If marriage and family have no definition or order to them but are constantly being remade and remodeled to suit the times, they are not institutions but merely the tools of the powerful used to remodel society until the only thing that matters is power.

Open the hymnal.  Read the catechism.  Listen to the Scriptures.  These are words of certainty and clarity from which our whole social order and our values come and are reflected.  But unless we are willing to identity and hold to these changeless values and orders, we have nothing of substance or hopeful for the world.  It is for this reason that Church cannot marry the spirit of the age or she will be a widow in the next generation.  Or worse, she will be a chameleon who changes everything to reflect whatever opinion or thought she is sitting upon at the moment.  If that is the case, better a widow then a promiscuous Church which insists it is all good.  When that happens nothing is good -- not even God.  This might just explain why those raised nearest these changes are suffering such anxiety, depression, and PTSD.

Giants in the moment. . .

So guess what -- I am still behind in my reading!  I just found out that Jürgen Moltmann passed away last month.  He was 98.  He, along with Wolfhart Pannenberg, were giants in the moment when I was in my final years of college.  Although I think I gave to the Seminary the last volumes I had by these authors, I cannot imagine people reading them now except to explore a footnote in history.  Their great promise gave way to a largely forgotten contribution to theology and that is probably best.  Although he was ostensibly from a Lutheran perspective, Moltmann had long ago decided that Luther was mostly in the way of what he wanted to explore and believe.  Unfortunately, that could also be said of Scripture.  It was also in the way of his theological expression.  Moltmann was not driven either by the witness of Scripture or its theological framework but by the concerns of and context of the moment.  

I wish I could recall why we had to read Moltmann and Pannenberg.  It is probably because they were the newest and most orthodox of the radical voices that were pervading Christian thought in the early 1970s.  That is probably not saying all that much.  After all, the concerns for the oppressed and the so-called injustices of capitalism have become the fodder for many books but long ago the Marxist structure of a version of Christianity has fallen out of fashion.  Yes, the whole communist and socialist promise has revealed its darker side and most have been replaced by some form of democratic socialism or capitalism or dictatorship.  It makes it hard to build your theology on the moment when you wake up one day to find out that the world has moved on and you were left with yesterdays construct.  Oh, well.  At least you sold a lot of books and generated a fair amount of heat but not much light.  Maybe Wiki will mention that in his listing there.  

What I find so strange is that were it not for a couple of Seminary professors, I do not think I would have found out about other Christian teachers whose lives were not lived out in fifteen minutes of fame but in a growing esteem that has not faded and most likely will not.  Here I am speaking about the Early Church Fathers and those who are claimed by Roman and Evangelical alike.  Yes, there are such theologians!  Their witness is not meant for the museum of history but for the engagement of God's people with His mystery evidenced in Scripture and the goal of proclaiming that mystery so that any might be saved.  Yes, that was Moltmann's complaint about Luther -- he was too concerned about the individual's salvation to be much use to a profound and modern theologian.  Curiously, Luther has not gone out of style but I am afraid Moltmann and Pannenberg certaintly have.  Maybe Moltmann and others who participated wittingly or unwittingly in liberation theology have themselves been liberated from our notice of those who were giants only in a moment.  If that is the case, I hope and pray that it will give us more time to listen to the great fathers in the faith whose voices and vision seems to become ever more profound as the clock ticks.

In the end, Patristics should have replaced the engagement with the moderns in my college years.  Ultimately it did with a few voices -- including someone who actually was at university with the likes of Edgar J. Goodspeed!  That is where my attention ended up going and rightly so.  For all the Moltmanns and Pannenbergs of this world, their contributions are fairly small and their impact almost negligent in comparison to the Greek and Latin Fathers both prior to and after Nicea.  If you want my vote and I suspect the vote of folks like Heino Kadai and C. George Fry and William Weinrich, you will find your way to an earlier era in which unpacking the faith was more important than departing from it.  If you, you will head to the Ante and Post Nicene fathers along with those of that generation.  I know that is more where I end up and more often.  If you do grow up you soon realize that your job is not to explain God or define Him but merely to proclaim what He has done through His Son.  When that happens, you learn also that building something up is always better than tearing it down.

A Bible just for you. . .

I suppose you can blame it all about the time when secular publishers began to notice how much money there was to be made in the religious book selling industry -- particularly in the selling of Bibles.  About that time the number of versions available exploded -- within a generation going from basically the KJV and RSV to versions that were specific to specific needs and tastes.  I am not yet talking about the plethora of study Bibles but the idea of tailoring a Bible to a context.  The next thing you knew there were Bibles for specific age groups, marital status, reading levels, and such.  You had everything from a Bible for teenage boys to one for alcoholics in recovery and everything in between.  It did not take long for the computer and smartphones to launch their own version of the modern day app complete with everything from a targeted reading pattern to a verse a day.  All you need to do is to google a subject and put Bible verse in with the search to see how these resources are adapted to you, to your interest, and to you wants -- in many ways no different than targeted advertising.

All of this raises a question.  Should a version of the Bible be tailored to me or should I be shaped by the Word of God?  In fact, some are now beginning to wonder if the use of Scripture memes and apps has not skewed the way we hear and read and know God's Word.  I think they are on to something.  We have come to expect that Scripture will be adjusted to fit us instead of us adjusting to what God's Word says.  That is not only true for liberals but also for those who might be considered and who might consider themselves conservatives.  Increasingly we know the Scriptures in snippets and not even verses or sections of verses.  We know just enough to be dangerous.  That is a problem worth a good discussion.  

We do not need a Bible just for me.  We need to hear objectively the whole counsel of God's Word.  We do not need someone to edit out God's Word so that it fits a targeted audience.  Sinners are the targeted audience for Scripture and God wills that all would be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.  I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the way we hear only parts of Scripture and then mostly the parts we want to hear and not the whole counsel of God's Word.  Even in the way we edit the readings to be sensitive to things going on in culture is offensive to me.  We try to minimize things that might offend when the whole message of God's Word is offensive -- we are sinners marked for death in need of a Savior because we cannot save ourselves.  You have to get to that before you can acknowledge the goodness of the Father's love in sending His Son to be our Savior.  How long before we edit out sin and death until the message of Jesus is merely inspirational and not salvific?  Oh, wait, we are already there.

If you hear Law and Gospel, sin and forgiveness, death and resurrection, you should be thankful.  Not even most Christians hear that on Sunday morning so it stands to reason they do not seek it out from God's Word either.  Be thankful that we hold to the faith once delivered to the saints and do not try to re-invent or edit away the sharp edges of God's Word.  For it is in these that His love is most marvelously displayed. 

The difference between what must be and should be. . .

Orthodox and confessional Lutheranism has a choice.  That choice is between what we absolutely must have and what we should have.  This is a question that relates on so many levels.

Orthodox and confessional Lutheranism does not absolutely require great church buildings, mighty pipe organs, wonderful choirs, vestments, pews, stained glass, paraments, etc...  Of course, in times of necessity and want, Lutheran churches have survived without these things.  But the choice is misplaced if it is between what we must have and what is essential versus what best represents us and what we ought to have.  Minimalism has long been the bane of Lutheranism and has resulted in the false idea that we only need what is essential and the rest is mere adiaphora (falsely defined as personal taste).  Lutherans are not positioned to minimalism in anything.  Luther did not put together the hymn service of the Deutsche Messe because he thought this was optimal but where necessity lived without the blessing of the fuller liturgy and ceremonial.  In this Luther was not breaking ground but merely following the practice of the Christian Church through the ages.  In his own day, the rural and smaller parishes knew the low mass as normative -- not a sung mass with servers but a spoken mass with minimal assistants.  It is still more typical in Roman Catholic parishes that the mass is observed without deacon, subdeacon, and choir.  In fact, Luther was raising the bar a bit by providing a sung alternative which enabled even the smallest parish with the least resources to have a sung mass (Divine Service).

Orthodox and confessional Lutheranism does not absolutely require an educated clergy, steeped in the knowledge of the church fathers, equipped with Biblical languages, and trained up with all the tools of the office.  Certainly the men Wilhelm Loehe sent out and some of the so-called practical pastors of the old Ft. Wayne seminary were less well equipped than the graduates we send forth today.  Yet this was never seen as optimal but necessary for a specific need and time.  It did not take long to bolster the educational resources of the often derogatory term practical seminary until it became virtually the same as the other seminary.  When the Synod set forth the Specific Ministry Pastor program, it was in response to a need (and an attempt to order what had been an odd conglomeration of paths and programs).  Synod was clear that this was not to be the ordinary route to ordination but the extraordinary one and for those specific needs and purposes identified by the Synod.  Now there are voices suggesting that the internet can replace the knowledge of basic Greek (and Hebrew).  Perhaps there are adequate tools available but without the man knowing how to use those tools, he remains the servant of the technology and its maters and not even their equal.  Nevertheless, Lutheran Churches have never in their history suggested that what might be necessary for the moment should become the norm for preparing men to be pastors.  In fact, it could be said that it is not simply the classroom that forms the man for the office but the chapel and the life of the gathered community around the Word and Sacraments.  How can you do this online?

Frankly, what is killing us as a church and the church at large is the idea that minimalism can suffice for every need.  We do not need a minimalistic orthodoxy but a full and generous orthodoxy that knows and can effectively teach and give witness to the faith so that those assembled every week can teach and give witness to the faith in their homes and work places.  Mission congregations always begin in rented spaces with just enough to mark the sacred space where God bestows His gifts to His gathered people.  But no mission parish ever stays there.  It does not take long before they rightfully long for and begin to provide those external and visible markers of the faith they confess.  It is our nature to strive for fullness.  That is not something we ought to complain about or work against but foster.  This fullness does not work against the overall mission but aids and supports the external work of witness from the firm foundation of reverent liturgy, vibrant congregational song, Biblical preaching, and confessional and passionate catechetical teaching.  Our church is not dying because we are too Lutheran but precisely because we are not Lutheran enough.  Some folks need to be reminded of this from time to time.

The power of the status quo. . .

The reality is that most Americans think they are conservatives and I am sure that this also applies to Lutherans.  The problem here is that the thing we are trying to conserve most of all is the status quo -- what we know best.  That has long been the problem.

Conservatives left the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America but they did not want to go too far back in time -- only back far enough to keep the ELCA prior to the Church Wide Assembling sex decisions of 2009.  So, the ordination is off the table and many of the social and ecumenical perspectives of the ELCA were incorporated into the bodies that departed official ELCA.  What they wanted to conserve most was the church body they had known until it become one they thought had gone too far.  The same is true of the Methodists departing from the United Methodist Church and the Anglicans who left from the Episcopal Church.  These folks are conservatives but relative conservatives -- they will continue to affirm and hold onto their status quo prior to the things they found objectionable.  Sadly, for most it has to do with the sex issues of preference/same sex marriage and gender identity.  Biblical authority, traditional family, Judeo-Christian morality, and objective truth, along with the ordination of women, are too much to tackle.  

The same is true of the liturgical renewal movement.  Most folks have decided that the Lutheranism they grew up with is probably the most authentic face for Lutherans.  Here, you might draw the line differently in different denominations but for the ELCA folk the Lutheran Book of Worship is the line in the sand.  For the LCMS folk, it was The Lutheran Hymnal and now is (at least part of) Lutheran Service Book.  Ceremonial?  Yes, but not too ceremonial (read that catholic).  Liturgical?  Yes, but not because we really like that stuff -- it is just who we are.  Vestments?  Yes, but not the fancy ones that look to, well, catholic.  The conservatives who preserve catholic doctrine and practice have become radicals in just about every denomination.  Even Roman Catholics in general and the Pope see the Novus Ordo (post-Vatican II form) to be the bedrock of their identity and the Latin Mass to be, well, too conservative.

Curiously, conservatism has been reference not at what was and now should be but more what we did yesterday that we should continue.  Even on social issues, we want to be conservative but not too conservative -- think here the great public relations blow up over Alabama granting the rights of personhood to frozen embryos.   It is an odd position.  What is really being said is that we want to slow down change.  If that is the case, that is certainly not what it means to be a conservative.  Though it may well be exactly what people want -- a slower pace of change to get more accustomed to them and to go back to the time before these issues so deeply divided us (think here abortion, same sex marriage, and the trans business).  Could it be that this is also how we see the Scriptures?  True and essential when it comes to matters directly relating to our salvation and flexible enough to allow disagreement on other things?  Yes, in other words, the Bible is God's Word but just not all of it.  We get to decide which parts are, of course!

Republicans want to turn the clock back a little but not dismantle the whole government.  Lutherans want to keep things close to how they used to be but that used to be is referenced in their memory and not in Lutheran orthodoxy or the Reformation.  What an odd kind of conservatism!

The sky IS falling. . .

Abortion and birth control may have ripples far beyond the mere morality of what we think and do.  It appears that the birth rates once slightly bolstered post-Covid have now fallen even lower than expected.  Indeed, the sky IS falling.  The world is facing a significant demographic milestone as soon the global fertility rate will drop below the point needed to keep population constant. It has already happened in some countries and may soon have its impact felt everywhere.  Then the issue will not be what is good or right but who will fund retirements and pay for health care and staff the businesses and factories and provide essential services. 

Fertility is falling almost everywhere -- certainly for women in higher income brackets and with more education but now it is being felt also across all levels of income, education and labor-force participation.  Far from being a mere election issue or a morality issue, this will have huge implications for how people live, how economies grow and function, and even the stature of the world’s superpowers.  

What happened among high-income nations in the 1970s is now happening in developing countries, too. India has surpassed China as the most populous country (just last year) but its own fertility is now below replacement.  The sky IS falling according to academic experts -- “The demographic winter is coming,” said Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania.  

Why?  It is predictable and should have been but not in the traditional places such as state-level differences in parental abortion notification laws, unemployment rates, Medicaid availability, housing costs, religion, child-care costs and student debt.  This reflects a broader shift.  Certainly raising children is more expensive than before but parents’ preferences and perceived constraints have contributed even more to the change.  This is the triumph of the autonomous self where the quality of life is judged by career, leisure, relationships outside the home, and the cost of technology.  Though mothers and fathers, especially the more highly educated, spend more time with their children than in the past, that time is increasingly not spread over more children but focused on fewer -- even one. 

As the birthrates fall, nations and cities will experience depopulation, closed schools, stagnant or declining property values, and fewer people entering and staying in the workforce.  With that will come ith consequences ranging from closed schools to stagnant property values. Less selective colleges will increased costs of pensions and healthcare for growing ranks of the gray haired.  In the end, we may find ourselves rethinking the value of children not because we want them but because we need them.

I wish I could say that we Lutherans did not fall into the usual pattern but my fear is that we do -- we

reflect more the values and direction of the world around us than we do the Word of God.  That is the problem.  It is not only abortion which has become normal.  Birth control has become normal.  The idea that children are to be planned has become normal.  The size of the family capped at 2-3 children has become normal.  Not having any children (by choice) has become normal.  Odd that we complain that there are no children in church anymore but then adopt the ways and values of the world when it comes to having children, when to have them, and how many to have.  When Jesus says we are in the world but not of it, He is talking about just such things as this.

How sad it is that what the Word of God cannot convince us to, we will accept from the scientists who are insisting the sky is falling because the numbers of children are falling and population decline is inevitable (already felt in many places!).  But that is about where it is.  At some point we will decide that we must sacrifice a bit of our money, time, control, and quality of life to have enough children to make sure the factories still turn out goods, the retirement income still flows, and the world still looks kind of life it did when we were growing up.  It may be the right conclusion but it will be for all the wrong reasons.  "Be fruitful and multiply" was not an option or choice given to us but God's first great commission.  "Children are a blessing from the Lord" is not a theoretical statement but a practical judgment. 

 

A little venture now a teenager. . .

I began this little blog fifteen years ago today.  It started with these words:

I remember someone telling me once that thinking is a dangerous occupation. Perhaps. I find myself thinking a lot. While driving down the road, after reading a few lines from a book or a blog, while waiting in a phone que. Some of those thoughts are best forgotten. Some of them worth remembering. A few of them worth sharing. So I am going to take a few moments to share some of my random thoughts in a meandering conversation. It is my prayerful hope that they will spur on your own reflective thinking. Don't expect something profound. Occasionally I hope to say something worth remembering. If the regular duties of a Parish Pastor are urgent, you may not hear much from me. But I will try to give it a few minutes a week. Anyway, here it goes!

It is grown into a hobby all the while blogging has gone into decline.  Some 6.5 Million folks have visited this site (at least with a formal counter).  I have no idea how many pass long or repost what I have written here but I suspect it would surprise me.   A few have remained through it all and many others have come and gone.  I am not sure why it all kept going.  Perhaps I just have a lot to say or at least I think I do.  There have been a few minor changes in design and I have had to moderate comments after a few folks got nasty with their words.  It has been a rather satisfying endeavor and I am sure if you read everything you would find that I have changed my mind about some things, doubled down on other things, and forgotten what I said or thought about still other things.  

I am grateful if you are reading this.  If we have never met, I consider you friendly if not a friend.  If we have it may well have been because of this little venture.  I never thought this thing would last this long but it may last a little longer.  I am still reading and thinking and we all know how dangerous that can be.  My library has been thinned out and most of it is at home now.  As I have said so often, I love what I do and do what I love -- wouldn't it be grand if we all were in that boat!  God bless you friends and join me in giving thanks to God for the gift of words.  Where would we be without them?

What to do with death. . .

There was a time -- about the time our family was little -- when it was considered bad child rearing to mention death.  The nighttime prayer I knew as a child was altered to remove any possibility that if I went to sleep I might not arise.  If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take became Guide me, Jesus, through the night, wake me with the morning light.  There were other iterations of that prayer that likewise sanitized the bedtime prayer of any hint of the dreaded "d" word.  It was not only in the bedtime prayers that death was banished from children, funerals suddenly became adult gatherings and children were largely absent and shielded from the death of even parents and grandparents.  It was all an attempt to keep the shadow of death from eclipsing the sun of our happiness.

At some point in time, death was transformed.  It became natural.  It also become something other than death.  In the great circle of life, death was not the end or an end but merely a passing onto a better state.  The causes of climate change, preservation, and ecology combined to paint death as the emptying of the jar so that the spirit of the person might fly free.  The death scene devastated audiences, both kids and adults alike, but the film was an enormous hit -- in part because the death became not a death but a kind of victory.   The circular flow of life and death and how "everything you see exists together in a delicate balance," kept the death from being, well, death.  Mufasa was still there in the spiritual world and he rejoined his son for a victory lap at the end -- smiling because all was well.  It was not quite a resurrection and not quite a death either.  It appealed to Christians struggling to figure out what death was for them in light of Christ and it appealed to the spiritual but not religious who just wanted happiness and everything resolved in the end.

Now we have entered another phase.  Death is now a choice.  If you hurt too much or despair for your future or face a diagnosis you cannot live with, death is there in a painless form with a medical stamp of approval and the understanding of a world sure that sometimes life is worse than death.  Imagine that.  Living is worse than dying!  And living is not worth living if you cannot have what you want, be who you want to be, or enjoy what you want to enjoy.  So our medical establishment has stepped up to the plate.  The same drugs that could not guarantee a painless death for the person on death row have become the staple of those who want to peacefully end their lives.  It seems that many do not even care if there is anything after death so long as they get to be in control of their dying as well as their living.  Perhaps the prayer will change again.  Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; if life becomes too much for me, just let me die peacefully.  Death is now welcomed by those who think life is not worth the living.

In the end, the resurrection of our Lord and the resurrection of the body and the dead seem not such a big deal.  At least for those who found the whole idea of a tomb without body or bones too much to swallow.  In any case, the lynch pin of the Christian faith has always been that life is real, death is real, Jesus really lived and really died, but He rose never to die again and with a glorious flesh no longer subject to death or any of its temporal ills that might lead to death.  The Pharisees and Sadducees argued over whether there was a resurrection at all and maybe we have ended up right back there.  The scandal of the cross and empty tomb were always to be the places where faith lived or died.  We have finally gotten back there again.

On this day. . .

On this day some 44 years ago, I was set apart as Pastor and conferred the authority of the office.  It took place on what seemed like the hottest day of that year before a wilting congregation in the building where I was baptized, confirmed, and my faith nurtured by the Word and Table of the Lord.  It was not a fancy occasion with a few pastors, a District President, and God's people in prayer.  But it was an auspicious occasion because of the work given to the Pastor to do.  I have thought out loud about that day before on these pages and will not duplicate it all here.  Suffice it to say it was a long time ago and just yesterday at the same time.  I suspect many will understand what I mean.  Yet it has been my joy and privilege to serve the people of God these many years and now to welcome one more to the fellowship.   

Now, on this day, in Normal, Illinois, another man will be ordained as Pastor of the Church and upon him will be conferred the authority of the office which he will exercise when he is installed as the Associate Pastor of Grace Lutheran Church.  He will serve with me (for a time at least) and it will be my privilege both to welcome and to support his learning and growing into the duties, responsibilities, and identity of the office of Pastor.  Though 44 years will separate us in time, the authority of the office remains the same.  Whether old or young or somewhere in between, Pastors have the same authority conferred upon them by the Church.  They may be as green as they come (I certainly was) or have a wealth of life experience preceding their ordination but it does not matter.  Pastors are called and set apart to preach the Word of God in all its truth and purity and to administer the Holy Sacraments according to Christ's own institution.  They pledge fealty to the Lutheran symbols and promise faithfulness before God and the congregation.  They are surrounded by others who share the Pastoral Office and who stand in solidarity with them.  They exercise the duties and responsibilities of the office not as dictators but neither are they hirelings.  They serve in partnership with the people of God, each doing their own part in the overall work God has given us to do and in the places where God has appointed.

So today I welcome an associate and coworker as well as another who shares the office who becomes part of the band of brothers we call Pastors.  God bless you, Jim!

How quaint. . .

It is remarkable to me how easily we modern people tend to fall into the trap of believing that those who went before us were either hopelessly ignorant or naive enough to believe things that we, today, would deem unbelievable.  You could start with the Biblical account of the Creation and head to the mighty miracles of the Old Testament like the parting of the Red Sea so the people of God could pass through on their journey to the Promised Land (while still pursued by then Egyptian army).  Or you could head into the New Testament and go through the Virgin Birth or the miracles of Jesus or even which words Jesus really spoke.  And then you could find your way down the path of such things as the ever-virginity of Christ.  While some things might seem more profound and essential than the cause of Blessed Mary's perpetual virginity, we fall victims to the same hubris along the way.  We know better.

How odd it is that we can so easily dismiss the sacrament of ordination as mere apostolic custom!  How strange it is that we can replace confidence in God's Word with confidence in the scientific postulations of man!  How weird that we marvel at the miracles of our own technology while at the same time trying to look for a way to bring the miracles of God in the Old Testament and His miracles in Christ down to something explainable!  How foolish we are to reject what every Christian teacher believed right down through the ages including Luther and Calvin and those who followed them at least until the early 1800s!  Is it really that we know better or we just think that given the state of culture, life, and the norms of ordinary belief we can no more hold the things once believed as tenable?

The problem with Christianity today is not that we believe too much but too little.  We are even out of step with the Reformers and nearly every Christian teaching from the time of the apostles until the last couple of centuries and it does not bother us.  In fact, we seem to take great comfort with the fact that we are so smart, so well educated, and so proficient with science and technology that we tell people all the time that no one believes this stuff anymore.  The problem is this.  It does have consequences.  It renders our confession of the creeds of Christendom suspect and empty.  It means that we know better than Jesus who spoke of Adam as a real person and Moses and the parting of the Red Sea as real truth -- something we seem to enjoy insisting even though it places us over the Son of the Most High.  It means that we are more thoroughly conversant with the cultural and societal beliefs today than we are the Biblical context or consistent confession.  It also means that we are more distant from our forefathers in the faith than we should be and do not seem to find it the least bit disconcerting that they and their words have become more history that creed or confession fit for the present day.

Some think that we are foolish to argue over such things as the historicity of Adam and Eve or the saving events of the Old Testament or the miracles of Jesus or the ever-virginity of Blessed Mary.  If that was all we are debating then perhaps the charge might be apropos but it does not take much digging to discover that what we are really talking about is whether or not we put our reason over God's Word and our understanding over the faithful who went before us.  When you put it like that, it is not arguing over minutiae but over the truthfulness and reliability of the Scriptures and their teachers down through the ages.  Put it that way and I would rather fall on the side of the faithful who went before me and look foolish in the eyes of some today than to wise in the moment and foolish before the God who is yesterday, today, and forever the same.

Edenic Bliss. . .

Though Augustine famously insisted there was no rest for his soul until it rested in the Lord, the pursuit of the restless soul outside of God seems inevitably to repair the broken world and restore Eden.  The souls of modernity chafe under limitations, insecurity, risky commitment, and happiness.  Eden beckons not as a return to pristine humanity but as refuge for the strife and struggle of this mortal life.  The soul of the modern man rests not quite in God but in an image of a godly world shaped by the human imagination to restore what was lost to us in Eden.  The problem, of course, is that this is not achievable!

There was a time in which America was seen as the shining city set on a hill.  We truly believed the propaganda that we had evolved the government and society into the best balance of freedom and order ever known and that it served as a magnet for humanity living under the oppression of want, dictatorship, or repression.  The Ugly American was as much about this arrogance as it was anything else.  At some point Americans seem to have given up on the exportation of our democratic experiment and turned inward.

The tumultuous years of the 1960s and 1970s left us in the midst of a revolution against the very thing we once thought was our glory.  It began a conflict between those who were shamed or embarrassed by the American dream and those who still promoted it as the end all of world conflict, injustice, inequity, and success.  Now, looking back over half a century, we see another view.  Those who have come to hate America.  They are looking to dismantle America in pursuit of their own version of diversity, equity, justice, and access.  The goal has moved from the safety and security of a home, a family, and an income to self-expression and to a rigid tolerance in which everyone is allowed to think and feel what they desire except those who disagree.

It is the same pursuit of rest and the same idyllic but false image of Eden that fuels the fire under the college discontent and the stance on behalf of those oppressed by the mighty forces of democracy.  The marchers are not in pursuit of a family and home and occupation but radical self-expression which seems to have little use for or regard for marriage and family or things in general (technology being the main exception).  It is a restlessness that is the same as the past but for different reasons and in pursuit of a different end.  Yet without God it is as flawed and failed as those movements before.

At least the movements in the past paid lip service to religion and in particular to Christianity.  That did little to focus the Gospel and a great deal to confuse it.  Now the march of progress has performed a friendly takeover of Christianity to remake the Gospel away from sin and redemption to the woke agendas that are behind every secular educational institution and the motive behind the use of freedom in government and the judiciary.  Orthodox Christianity has no place in the minds or hearts of those who restlessly march in pursuit of their version of Eden restored.

In the end, Augustine might have reminded us all that it is not the world that needs rest or rescuing but people who live in the valley of the shadow with the shackles of our sin impossible for us to remove.  I pray for America and for the kind of life my children and grandchildren will enjoy here but I have little interest in rescuing a nation from itself, or this version of itself.  Instead, my prayer is for those who hear the Word of God and believe it.  Their souls will find rest the world and our nation cannot offer.  But I will labor on for the cause of freedom and for the responsible use of that freedom and for the defense of that freedom that has enabled me to enjoy a better life.  

As we light our firecrackers and burn our burgers this Fourth of July, it might do us a bit of good to remember that the soul's rest lies in Christ but the good of this nation is always made better by a people who know what sin is, know their own sin, and know the answer to sin in the blood of Christ that cleanses us from all sin.  Christians should disavow themselves of kingdom building in the name of God but we should never fail to do good where we can and with what we have been given.  Thanks be to God when a nation and its governance allows us to do just that.

The Spirit doing a new thing. . .

Among some it is avant garde to suggest that anything and everything old (read that Old Testament) is being replaced by something new by the Holy Spirit.  It is, after all, the Spirit who teaches old men to dream new dreams and young men to see visions of what might be.  Or so you might be led to believe.  In reality, the old things that some point to as being the nasty patriarchal stuff of the Old Testament are in reality not what they claim and the new things of the Spirit are not quite what they think as well.

Your interpretation of the pages of Holy Writ is wrong, narrow-minded, bound by patriarchal culture from the 1st through 19th centuries. If the early church had been so closed to the Spirit's work, we wouldn't have had Samaritan believers or a eunuch believing or Gentile believers. The OT tradition spoke against all those. The Spirit did not. 

Really?  The whole promise of the Old Testament was not to Jews only but to the nations, tribes, and clans and families outside Israel.  Indeed, there is nothing new about  the Samaritans or the Ethiopian eunuch believing or Gentiles being received into the company of the faithful.  This was not something new but God's age-old plan corrupted by a Jewish exclusivism and restored in Christ.  

The Spirit doing a new things is really doing something not so new at all but currently not in vogue.  For example, the Spirit brings to mind all that Jesus taught (which itself was all that the Father had made known to Him).  The Spirit does not really complete or contradict the Old Testament or the New.  The Spirit is the one who opens the Scriptures so that we may know and see and believe.  The wider net of the Gospel was never exclusive to Jews but from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth.  

Quite honestly, I am sick and tired of aging folk from my generation trying to insist that the Church has suffered under the weight of nineteen centuries of patriarchalism, misogyny, homophobia, etc...  The Church has suffered more the weight of liberals who insist upon boring us with their imagined ideas that have no support in Scripture or tradition but which are paraded out as testament to what the Spirit is doing among us -- the new stuff.  There is nothing so stuffy as a liberal who has sucked all the air out of the room with words that mean nothing and opinions that contradict Scripture.  The Church must suffer the boring epithets of those outside the kingdom who presume to tell us what we ought to believe and those who have co-opted the kingdom from God and His Word and the living tradition of the faithful but we dare not allow them to go unchallenged.  The new thing the Spirit is sent to do is plant faith into the dead earth of our sinful hearts through the means of grace.  If He does that, He has done enough for us all.

How important is it?

Well, the Methodists have gone and done it.  The United Methodists in the US have decided that it is worth dividing their church and for the sake of giving approval to homosexuality and homosexual clergy.  This issue was the hill on which a church died.  Imagine that.  Not for the sake of the divinity of Christ or His humanity or for the sake of justification or for the cause of Scripture -- they were willing to kill a church for the sake of the alphabet soup of sexual desire and gender identity.  So they effectively eliminated the opposition -- diluting the votes of the conservatives by denying the Africans the right to vote on what happened in America and turning their backs on conservatives in their own denomination.  

Of course, it began with the ordination of women.  No, I am not saying we should blame the ordination of women for all this craziness.  What is to blame is this.  Once a church body has learned to ignore or silence Scripture and ignore or overrule the catholic tradition, everything is possible.  It will not be long before in the name of the Gospel they disengage sex from marriage and insist that Jesus died so that everyone can do what is right in their own eyes.  By the way, that little Biblical phrase was never a positive one to describe virtue but the mark of sure apostasy and sin.  

The cause was a “radically inclusive” church for everyone – especially its LGBTQIA+ members -- but with no room for those who disagree with them on these issues -- including other Methodists.  Think how far they have come.  In 1972, the UMC declared homosexuality was “incompatible with Christian teaching” and later banned “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from becoming ordained.  In did not take long before the United Methodist Church began a civil war over sex issues that has lasted decades. When the United Methodist Church’s governing body opened a temporary window for congregations to petition to leave over the issue in 2019, who could have predicted that four years later, according to church records, more than 7,600 churches voted to disaffiliate.  The divorce proceedings were ON. The once United Methodists are, like many progressive and liberal Christian churches, bleeding off members and congregations while unhesitatingly pursuing the cause of LGBTQIA+ inclusivity.  So, even if Jesus decided it was wrong, the UMC is not sure it matters.  They have forged their path and redefined the faith to fit what they insist have to be the positions of their church body on these issues.  They are sad for the pain and suffering caused the LGBTQIA+ folks but not for the damage done to their church body.  The nation’s largest Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal and Lutheran denominations have all now removed barriers to LGBTQIA+ participation in the pulpit, at the altar, and in the pews but all of this has come amid long-term declines in membership and influence.  How important are the sex issues to liberal Christianity?  Ask your local Methodist....

 

I touched you, Lord.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 8B, preached on Sunday, June 30, 2024.

What could the two stories in the Gospel for today have in common?  On the one hand we have a synagogue ruler with some stature and authority who comes to Jesus to plead for his daughter who is sick unto death.  On the other hand, there is the woman who has suffered a twelve year menstrual flow that has rendered her an outcast from the life of God’s people and left her weak and in despair.  Jairus at least could go to Jesus and plead his case but this woman was left with a chance to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment.  Both were praying for healing, for an end to their burden, and for life to be restored.  But beyond this, their was something distinct and profound about their faith and this is what binds them together.

I suspect we have more instinctive sympathy for Jairus.  After all, he was not pleading for himself but for his daughter.  She was twelve and had her whole life ahead of her.  She is the picture of innocence and we feel for her cause more than the woman.  The woman was suffering but she was not dying.  She had lost much but she was still able to get around.  Her cause was not for another but for herself.  I suspect we would look at her the way we look at a bag lady on the street – yes, it is sad but she just needs to try harder.

We are hard people.  We judge people harshly.  We have in our own minds the great difference between real needs and false ones, between the true needy and those who just need to work a little harder to deal with their problems.  Oddly enough, Jesus does not distinguish them nor does He rank one need higher than another.  In one respect, since the woman with the flow of blood interrupted Jesus conversation with Jairus it might seem like He is more sympathetic to the woman.  The reality is this.  Mercy does not look at the worthiness of the person who asks for mercy.  No, indeed, the mercy of Jesus is rich, extravagant, lavish, and generous to a fault.  It is a mercy that is almost scandalous in its kindness.

What Jesus was looking for in both Jairus and the woman with the flow of blood is faith.  What mercy looks for is not worthiness but faith – faith that trusts in the power of that mercy.  In fact, Jesus commends the faith of both and uses this moment to encourage not only His disciples but you and me to such a faith.  Both of these are taking the biggest risk of all – trusting in Jesus.  Jairus was a synagogue leader who had to risk his stature in the synagogue to trust in Jesus to deliver for his daughter what only the Messiah can deliver – perfect healing!

Now curiously, the woman with the flow of blood does not appear to have faith. She might appear to us to be rather superstitious – after all she reached out to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment.  Did she believe His clothing was magical?  Did she believe that the Lord was so filled with power that merely sneaking a touch would deliver her from all that the physicians of the day could not?

There is a teaching moment here.  Jesus might appear to be surprised by the power that seems to have escaped His garment and His body but Jesus is not a victim here.  Jesus has come for this woman, for the sick and afflicted and those marked with the death of sin.  He has come to restore the lost and seat again the estranged at His table.  So Jesus calls out the woman in order to call out her faith, both for her sake and for the sake of the disciples and even for you and me.  Jesus makes a big deal of this so that this woman will own her faith.  When she does, Jesus sends her forth telling her that her faith has made her whole again.  Yes, she was cleansed of the affliction that had troubled her for twelve years but also she was restored to be part of the fellowship of God’s house again.  Her fractured life was made whole.

There was another teaching moment.  Jairus’ cause had been post-poned long enough so that his daughter had died.  In fact, the servants from his house not only gave him the worst news of all, “Your daughter is dead,” but also told him to give it up, go home, and leave Jesus alone.  I suspect we would have said the same.  “Hey, fellow, yeah, I know it is bad, but nothing more can be done so give it up and leave Jesus alone.”  We are always saying the same thing.  What can the Church do about broken marriages or kids who turn out bad or people who lose their goods to storm or bankruptcy, or any of the thousand other terrible things people suffer?  What can we do?  What can faith do?  What can God do?

Jesus hears them and interrupts them.  Do NOT fear.  Only believe!  Then Jesus left behind all those who thought nothing more could be done, took with Him Peter, James, and John, and entered Jairus’ house.  The place was filled with tears and cries of sorrow – a commotion too loud and crazy for anyone to calm. Then Jesus did the unthinkable.  He banished the mourners and took the grieving mother and father to the body of the daughter and raised her from the dead.  To the voices of those who said to leave it alone and get on with their lives and the laughter of those who insisted Jesus could not do anything, our Lord tested their faith.  They followed Him to the body and saw their daughter raised from death to life.

Twelve years of life wasted away by disease and twelve years of life lost to the power of death.  My friends, to the world faith is foolishness.  Even your own sinful flesh is often telling you to give up, God either cannot or will not do anything, and simply to get on with your life.  These are the tests of faith.  The power of God is not in magical garments or in worthy causes but in faith.  Those who believe in the Lord are counted righteous, raised from sin’s death to everlasting life, and kept to the day of Christ’s coming.

Nowhere is your faith more tested than in worship.  Pastors are not supermen.  They have not magical answers or magical cloths to hold onto.  They have no crystal balls to divine what God has hidden.  Their power is their words, preaching God’s Word.  Their power is in water administered with the promise of God in baptism.  Their power is in the voice of absolution that makes happen in heaven what now happens on earth.  Their power is in bread offered to you as Christ’s flesh for the life of the world and His blood that cleanses you from all your sin.  It is all received with laughter and disdain as if this were mere foolishness or superstition.  This is YOUR test of faith.  Will you reach out to these means of grace to touch Jesus?  Will you let the world tell you your cause is too late or your need too great or will you trust Jesus?

Every crisis of our lives is a crisis of faith.  Whom will we trust?  Jesus offers us the only Word that can deliver what it promises, the only water that gives new and everlasting life, the only voice that speaks and sins fall away, and the only bread and wine that feed us with heavenly food.  Here is Jesus every Sunday, calling you to faith, and inviting you to reach out from the comfort of your disappointment, cynicism, and doubt.  “Who touched Me?”  And every Sunday we approach His throne of grace in fear and trembling and say, “Lord, it is I.  I am the one who touched You.  Give me salvation.”  In the holy Name of Jesus.  Amen

A rite of passage. . .

At some point in the life of a youth, the typical pattern of rebellion requires you to disown your father.  He who was once your everything is not suspect, hopelessly outdated, and perhaps even irrelevant.  For the youth this happens just long enough until you find yourself echoing what your father said -- sadly, sometime after he has passed away.  It is the wisdom of youth that your father once knew everything until he knew somethings until he new a few things until he knew nothing.  Then, at some point, you awaken to a renewed appreciation for your father and may even come to believe he did know almost everything.

This is not without its pattern in faith as well as life.  It seems that those of a certain generation grew up with great confidence in the faith of their fathers until they didn't.  They began to be suspect of the great minds and voices of the generations who went before -- even of Scripture.  It got to the point where the heroes of their youth became the boogeymen of their middle age.  Tragically, some have not progressed beyond their childhood rebellion against the faith and the house of their fathers.  That seems to be a common affliction for boomers and perhaps we are not alone.  I will admit, however, that the older I get the more appreciative I am of the great fathers of the faith -- both the Lutheran ones and those who were long before Luther.

The obligatory rite of passage which casts suspicion and rejects those who went before has given rise to all sorts of rebellions that have become normal in the minds of many.  The rejection of marriage and its Biblical order gave birth to a feminism in which male and female meant little as labels and the only measure of equality was the freedom to be the other.  The rejection of sex as a gift to the married and for procreation gave birth to intimacy which was more or less only for personal pleasure with even love being optional.  The rejection of the shape of creation as male and female gave birth to a fluid gender as secure as the feeling of the moment and without a real definition to know what either of those genders actually means.  The rejection of the true diversity of the God who became flesh in order to make one people from many nations, tribes, races, and ethnicities became the fake diversity in which only the rejection of the traditional is allowed and which seems to be still all about sex.  I could go on.  You get my drift.

What is most distressing, however, is that our growing familiarity with Scripture has led this youthful rebellion to reject the voice of God's Word or qualify it through the reason and/or experience of the interpreter.  We are not merely rejecting something but God Himself.  As soon as we treat the Scriptures as less than God's Word, we render mute the voice of God to address us with His timeless Word.  As soon as we take a position hostile to the claims of the faithful of the past about that Word, we build a wall between those who went before and ourselves.  As soon as we approach the Scriptures with a skepticism we would not dare to use against science or the prevailing fake science of the day, we turn God's Word into a battlefield in which His voice is lost in the clamor for control of the landscape.

How odd it is that some come to the faith with the enthusiasm of a true believer because they have been lied to or disappointed by the relevant truth that anchors no one only to end up sitting in the pews with a people who have long ago gotten over the faith and tamed the mighty God!  I find myself at odds with my own feel good generation so full of itself when it comes to truth.  It is not that I did not go through the rebellious period as a rite of passage, I did go through it and left it behind me.  Once I spoken and acted and thought like a child.  No more.  Those whose youthful rebellion against tradition and Scripture continues are caught in the loop of their own ignorance, presuming that their childhood and youthful fancy is the truest thing of all.  Hopefully, they will realize at some point that they have foolishly extended a youthful rite of passage and turned it into the cardinal virtue of their identity.