AI for those with no real I

I suspect that we are not quite where the hype is on Artificial Intelligence.  My hunch is that AI can do somethings fairly well and fast but it does not really think or learn and it remains dependent upon those who can.  Granted, the numbers of those who can think and learn seems to be diminishing in these modern times, that is a problem of motivation more than it is capability.  At this point AI is lacking the capability to replace human thinkers.  It can certainly write computer code but could it ever have come up with the germ of an idea that resulted in the computer in the first place?  You already know what I think.

What AI certainly can do is make us more stupid.  As we learn to depend upon what passes for thinking from artificial brains, the weaker and less able our own working real brains will be.  We all know this is true.  Some of us don't care.  Some of it have given in to what we deem the inevitable.  Others of us eschew technology like the plague.  But some of us, who are fully conversant with the technology of the day, know that it will be a very long time before a computer brain thinks like a human one.  We only hope that humans don't give up their thinking brain before that day dawns or we will be in real trouble.

The problem is that we are a lazy people.  When we are offered the option of robots doing our work or artificial intelligence doing our thinking, we seem to jump at the chance without even considering the effect of this on us.  We seem to have developed an aversion to work and an addiction to pleasurable things (those do not have to be real and can be digital).  I have read that pornography offers AI generated explicit images and promises they are better than real people engaging in sexual acts.  Are you kidding me?  Next thing and we will develop machines like Star Trek had to provide the food for us and we will forget how to plant, tend, harvest, and cook.  Then what happens when the power is out?  But if it gives us something for nothing, we will follow the example of the 5,000 and rush to make AI our bread king (if Jesus won't be). 

Sadly, there are folks who are looking to AI for exactly the wrong things.  Some pastors are trying out sermons written by AI (hopefully vetted and rewritten before being delivered).  Some are looking to use AI in some way within catechesis.  Some are depending upon AI to help them write -- literally everything from a newsletter article to a religious book.  Preaching is in enough trouble already without preachers becoming even weaker in their craft and relying on computer generated sermons and studies.  But we are lazy people and undoubtedly some, even many, will rush to the easy way out without considering the cost.

The cost is not simply error or shallowness or vague generalities -- we humans are certainly capable of producing all of these.  The problem is that we will become slaves to the thinking of others and forget how to produce and therefore how to judge what is good, right, and salutary.  AI is a rabbit hole for people who are chasing dreams of easy lives without work and with instant gratification.  AI will produce it and people will consume it without even considering if it will help or hurt in the long haul.  In my mind, the surest way to become stupid is to depend upon machines to do the thinking for you, conveniently forgetting that the machines were created by us in the first place.  We marvel at their wisdom and ability to learn simple tasks or to survey mountains of data in a brief moment.  Why we will no longer need books to teach us or teachers to teach us.  No, indeed, we will have something we deserve.  We will have a mindless, soulless, heartless machine.  We will bless God for AI and follow it as if it were God but in so doing we will sacrifice our integrity, our personality, and our capacity to think until we finally confuse God with AI.  No, I refuse to praise something that has the potential to make us even more stupid than we have become on our own.  

One generation was rightly condemned for trying to make work into their deity.  Then the next tried to make leisure into their god.  Along with that, entertainment was treated as the almighty.  Now we seem strangely willing to trade our souls for some machine that we create to relieve us of the very thing that marks us as human -- our ability to think, to think morally, and to think creatively.   For what it is worth, I feel the same way about the decision of fhe NFL to replace the chains to measure first downs and go to a digital measurement.  Ugh Here is what measurements will now look like. Not gonna lie, I’m going to miss the chain gang. The issue is the ball placement not the measuring method:

A chosen race. . .

St. Peter famously calls the Church a peculiar people -- no one who know us would be surprised at that.  It is a kind way of describing the odd, rag tag, band of brothers (and sisters) who call God Father, Jesus Savior and brother, and the Spirit Holy.  We are nothing but peculiar and this is especially true to those outside the brotherhood.  But He does not stop there.  He also calls us a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. He is not quite ready to say we are all individually priests but a priestly people he insists we are.  He calls us a holy nation but it is a nation of sinners whose only claim to holiness is the alien righteousness of our Savior who clothes us in Himself in baptism.  He says we are a people for God's own possession which means we are not liberated from sin to be large and in charge but to live in obedience to Him who made us and saved us.  Our purpose is not to fulfill our own wills and desires but to proclaim the excellencies of Him who called us from the darkness of sin and death into His own light and life -- a marvelous thing to be sure.  

Then there is this.  He says we are a chosen race.  Christendom has struggled with that one.  We thought that it belonged to Israel and, while happy to be included in the wider opening of the Gospel, we are not sure what to make of it all.  Two chosen peoples?  A promised reneged?  A temporary identity?  Bring St. Paul into the mix and it only gets messier.  Paul seems to speak as it ethnicity no longer matters or it has been transcended by some new and different identity -- a catholic and universal one.  That is certainly appealing.  It fits the modern narrative.  It seems to explain the Council of Jerusalem and its solution to the conundrum of what to do with the older designation of Israel as the chosen.  The Jews were wrong.  Their claim to an ethnic identity essential to membership in the covenant community is the problem a guy like Paul was sent to fix, even if it seemed Peter was in his way for a time.  There is no more ethnicity, no more ethnic identity.  God claims and loves us all in His own way.  Gosh, it would also help the cause of those who say no more male and female (as the Galatians passage has it) means the old way of one chosen is replaced by the new diversity of everyone chosen.

 In Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites, Jason Staples may have identified another path.  Perhaps the inclusion of the Gentiles is not the wholesale replacement of one chosen people for another but an explanation of what chosen means.   Perhaps God was not turning His back on Israel at all but clarifying what it means to be His chosen.  Israel needs the Gentiles as much as the Gentiles need redemption.  Israel is not limited to a tribal identity at all but a fuller identity of faith and the faithful who live by faith.  Certainly the twelve tribes once identified as Israel had long ago been absorbed not in one tribe but in the ethnic and religious pluralities of the nations and leaders who had ruled over them in exile, in the dispersion, and in what had become more their home than Israel.  Israel had lost its character as Israel.  Sure it preserved its religious rituals but in the heart of Israel there lived no more the hope of David's son and David's Lord.  Could Israel have become gentilized and required a new birth to become who they were supposed to have been?  Israel had been scattered among the nations and even assumed into their culture and religious identities and need restoring to be saved by Abraham's son and Lord.   Staples wrote it like this: “Where Israel had become gentilized, now Gentiles were effectively being Israelitized, transformed from one ethnicity to another and integrated into the ethnic people of Israel.”

Staples insists that the Gentiles do not become Jews but both Jew and Gentile become the chosen people of God, the new ethnicity that is not ignored but fulfilled.  The Gentiles cannot remain Gentiles anymore than Israel can remain its shallow and empty self.  There is, then, a wideness in God's mercy that had been lost to Israel but is seen in the inclusion of Gentiles into the people of God's promise.  The ethnic community is not replaced with some vague universalism but the once chosen and promised people learn what it means to be sons and daughters of Abraham -- and they learn it from Gentiles!  Christ was not abandoning Israel but opening Israel's doors to become the nation God had intended all along.

Sadly, few Christians see their primary ethnic identity as that of being the people of God as St. Peter describes them.  Instead of a fulfillment of the promise, today we are more likely to see it all in individualistic terms and in the light of human freedom to fulfill our own desire and destiny.  We have forgotten the gift given to us that we should be called the sons and daughters of Abraham -- he who rejoiced to see the day of Christ.  The Gospel is still an ethnic Gospel but it transcends the ethnic divisions of this world.  We are adopted into Christ and into the family of Abraham and David.  We are not foster children who are cared for but adoptive sons and daughters with rights of identity and inheritance.  No, we may not share the lineage going backward but we share the lineage going forward.  In the end this makes it possible for us to acknowledge the miracle of what God has done, grafting us into the family of Abraham through Christ.  Israel has the learned what it meant to be the chosen, 

We are constantly trying to make God into one of us -- an American, for example -- when we fail to see that God has made us together into His chosen nation.  Such a citizenship is in heaven and because it is in heaven overflows to this life and this world.  It is not and never was a question of how the Jews related to God now that Christ has come but how in Christ we like the Jews are given a relationship and identity in Him.  The chosen nature of Israel's identity was always about Christ and in Christ and the chosen nature of the Gentile's ethnicity is about Christ and in Christ as well.  In this way we see Israel's history and its lessons as our own just as we are bound together in the new blood of Christ that cleanses us from all our sin and marks as belonging to Him.  This is the mystery long hidden through the ages -- the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Colossians 1:26-27.  And, Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith—Romans 1:25-26.

I do not know whether you know of Staples or like what he says but he presents a very interesting and compelling vision of the ethnicity God intends against the backdrop of what we conceive.  Israel learned that this unity and identity came from faith and the Gentiles learned that they have a unity and identity after all -- from faith.  One could not happen without the other.  So the Council of Jerusalem was not choosing one ethnic identity over another but realizing what that one ethnic identity was all along.  Something to think about.

Holy Cross Day Devotional Sermon 2

 Devotional Sermon for meetings the day before Holy Cross Day. 

The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  Where are the wise?  Is it in the learned and eloquent of this age?  Or is it in the foolishness of the cross?  Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

While the weakness of words and water and bread and wine are universally acknowledged, there is another weakness worth our attention as we prepare to celebrate Holy Cross Day.  That is the weakness of the Church, of a people washed clean in baptismal water and granted a new birth to a new life, only to surrender that life to self-denial and cross bearing.  Jesus insists that whoever would desire the kingdom and follow Him must do exactly that – deny self, take up Jesus’ cross, and follow Him.  Where we would raise up an army of mighty warriors, God calls a people to deny themselves, take up the cross of Jesus, and follow Him in a life of mercy giving, love showing, sin forgiving, and righteousness desiring.  Who could expect to win the world with such weakness?  Only God.

Jesus insists that what was spoken of about Moses whose staff of a bronze serpent brought healing to the dying would be true in spades with His cross.  He is the One upon whom you look with faith and are made whole again.  Not Jew or Gentile but the any and all whom God desires to be saved.  And we become part of this staff of wood that lifts up Christ before the world.  Our words and our works matter.  Our deeds cannot purchase our salvation but they love and serve and help our neighbor, especially those who do not know our Savior and all that He has accomplished by His cross.

Sadly Christians no longer stand out nor do they stand up in a world crying out for the wisdom of the cross.  We have become a tired and passive people, eventually echoing the voice of the age rather than speaking the voice of the ages.  We enjoy the world and its many comforts like everyone.  We insulate ourselves from disease and sacrifice with the best of the world.  We indulge ourselves in the forbidden pleasures of our pet sins no less than the world which calls them virtue.  I say this not simply of others but of myself and knowing my own weakness.

I do not want to deny myself.  I do not want to bear the cross of Jesus.  I want to be free to be happy and do what is right in my own eyes no more and no less than the world seeks to do.  I do not want to take on a burden which will detract from that happiness any more or any less than the world seeks to do.  In fact, I confuse what Jesus says and presume that the cross bearing meant for me has to do with bearing up with my wife or my family, having to serve my children or do the work that brings home the dime.  These are not our crosses.  Wife, children, family, and work – they are not the crosses we bear.  We bear the cross of Jesus.  We live out a cross shaped life.  We forgive as we have been forgiven.  We love as we have been loved.  We serve as we have been served.  Not because they win us anything but because we have been won by the cross.  We earn nothing but a word of commendation for all our good works and yet that is enough because Christ’s good work has won it all for us.

Christians have become about averages and normals.  We fit into the crowd and are not distinct from it.  We sin no more but no less than any other sinners.  It s a comfortable place to hide but the lukewarm will be spewed from His mouth on the day of judgment.  Is the Church failing because we are too different from the world or too much the same?  Not us, we say, not the LCMS.  Maybe exactly us.  We are the men in the mirror who reflect too much the world’s values and goals and too little do we look like Jesus or bear His cross.  This is meant not to drive us to shame or despair but to lift us out of our doldrums and listen again to the word of the cross.  

We are not the perishing.  We have nothing to lose.  We have gained everything by that cross.  Ours is not the time to play it safe or to be timid.  Now is the time to take Jesus at His word.  Lift high the cross in word and works and see whom He will draw unto Himself.  This is not a recipe for growth but it is a promise that our works are not in vain.  The preaching of the cross seems weak but it is the most powerful thing of all.  The living out of the cross in daily life seems worthless in a world of sin and senseless violence but it is powerful in witness and powerful in what it accomplishes.  Do not be fooled.   Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. 

Holy Cross Day Devotional Sermon 1

Devotional Sermon preached during a meeting over the days before Holy Cross Day.

Sunday is Holy Cross day, known as The Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the East and the Triumph of the Cross in Rome.  On this day we recall that Christ "was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world unto himself," and prays that "we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him."

The feast began with the dedication on Sept. 14, 335, of a complex of buildings built by the Emperor Constantine (c. 285-337) in Jerusalem on the sites of the crucifixion and Christ's tomb. This shrine included a large basilica and a circular church. Constantine's mother, Helena (c. 255- c. 330), personally supervised the construction amd it was said that a relic of the true cross was found during the excavation. Claims by the Church of Jerusalem to have the cross date from the mid-fourth century, and the pilgrim Egeria mentions a feast commemorating the discovery of the cross in Jerusalem in the late-fourth-century. This feast has also been associated with the exposition at Jerusalem of the cross by the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (575-641). He recovered the relic from the Persians who took it from Jerusalem in 614 when they destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Church and Christians in general have always sought physical contact with the cross.  Whether relic or amulate, the goal has been to have some tangible connection with the profound mystery of Jesus’ sufferings and death for our salvation.  Surely the pursuit of a piece of wood was the fruit of such longing.  In our age there has been a different tendency.  Even among Lutherans we often distance ourselves from the physical in pursuit of the spiritual, something we consider truer and more godly than physical things.  One side wants to covet the physical evidence of Jesus and the other wants Jesus to live in the heart.  Both are wrong headed.

Jesus has given us the true relics of His cross in the means of grace.  We gather not around wood but around the Word which is His living voice speaking and accomplishing that which is spoken.  We gather not to adore a sign of what was but to receive its living fruits born of the womb of water and the Spirit granting us new life in baptism.  We gather not to honor something but the someone whom God appointed to take flesh in Virgin, be born to live the holy life we could not, die in offering for our sin, and rise to draw us with Him into the life that death cannot overcome.  The true fruit of this cross is not in a relic but in bread which is His body and wine which is His blood.  There He is lifted up still and there He draw us and all people to Himself to be saved.

The spiritualizing of piety and the internalizing of it is its own problem, the same as externalizing it in splinters of wood with an uncertain history.  We are not alone nor are individuals but the called, gathered, enlightened, and sanctified together, the body of Christ built of living stones into one grand temple by the Holy Spirit, and the Church is also a relic, if you will, of that cross.  The Church is the physical place where we touch the eternal – not by our own will or design or strength but through the means Christ has appointed.  These means are efficacious, they do what they say and bestow that of which they speak.  The Church is where these marks are to be found, where Christ is lifted up in the preaching of the cross and where the living fruits of His redeeming work are given and bestowed to those who come.

As we prepare to celebrate the Holy Cross, its exaltation and triumph are revealed where we gather, in the Word and Sacraments that deliver the fruits of His saving work and where we are clothed with His righteousness to live as the people of His cross, denying self, and taking up our cross to follow Him, now in this mortal life and in eternity. 

Tiresome, right?

No one in their right mind reads through Judges or Kings in the Old Testament for fun.  It is tedious, predictable, and boring.  It does not take long to get the gift of it.  You get the rhythm.  Israel does evil, God allows them to suffer defeat at the hands of an enemy or spend time oppressed by someone even worse.  They cry out for relief or the unjust ruler gets his due when he dies and is buried with the rest of His evil lot.  Things go better -- for a while.  Then the cycle starts all over again.  A judged or a prophet or a better king helps but it is a story that everyone knows.  Why does God bother telling us this long train of corruption, sin, betrayal, and denial?  Surely Jesus has come along to release us from the cycle of fall and restoration, sin and forgiveness, right?

I wish the story of Judges and Kings was an anomaly.  It is not.  It is the nature of all our lives in Christ.  While we would prefer to see our lives as a steady progression of holiness, it is instead a predictable, tiresome, and boring story of temptation, fall, repentance, and forgiveness.  And all of this happens to the Christian and not to those who on their way to becoming one.  We live in the rhythm of daily contrition and sorrow over our sin, repentance, forgiveness, and restoration.  Then it starts all over again.  It is not simply a side story of our Christian life but the main story.  God knows this but we have deluded ourselves into thinking that this business of forgiveness is an occasional thing, for, you know, emergencies.  The rest of the time we are doing pretty well in this life of obedience, holiness, and righteousness.  Except that we are not.

The preparation for worship is confession and absolution.  It is not something you need to get out of the way in order to get to the good stuff -- it is part of the good stuff.  The confessional was routine in history and it ought to be today.  We examine our lives and consciences and what do we find?  We find sin.  We find a predictable, tiresome, boring story of screw ups, weakness, sin, and death.  And that is all our story would be except that we have a God so gracious that He is merciful to those who are so predictably weak and sinful.  Nobody in their right mind would keep up with the sins of the sinner except the mystery of this God who sends His only Son to be our Savior at the cost of His own life and Redeemer to rescue ours.  He does this not simply once on a cross but applying that cross daily rescues us from ourselves and the weak and halfhearted efforts we put into resisting sin and learning holiness.

Then the worship itself is filled with forgiveness -- maybe not quite as obvious as the formal ego te absolvo of the confessional but still pretty blunt.  The word mercy is heard in the Kyrie, the Gloria in Excelsis, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei.  I mean it -- how many times do we sing or say those words to God?  Then in the Eucharist we hear it again -- given and shed for you for the forgiveness/remission of your sins.  Here we are telling God that we are past that and ready to move on to the deeper things of Christian life version 202 and He is putting us right back at the basics of 101 -- forgiveness.  It is not because God is stuck on it but because we constantly need it.  We are Israel.  Ours is the story of sin and God's the story of forgiveness and mercy.  This is the shape of Christian life.  This is not some perfunctory preliminary business to get out of the way before we get to the big stuff.  This is the big stuff.  

Honestly, if we really knew this, the lines would be long for private confession.  The fact that there is practically no waiting means we do not get this or how important it is or how our Christian lives never progress past it.  So for this reason God provides pastors to serve as the voices calling us back home, to confession and to absolution.  They are not perfect but need themselves what they are called to give to each of us in His name but that is their calling.  The sacrifice is not repeated but the fruits of that one all sufficient sacrifice are offered anew to you and me -- a people who constantly need to be rescued by grace, revived by mercy, and restored as the prodigals whom the Father loves more than anything.  Go to confession.  Go often.  It will become a profound blessing to your Christian life as it always was and will be.  God loves the sinner enough to send His Son to die for him, her, you, and me.  Does it ever get better than this?

Distract or prevent. . .

The invasive nature of the screens in our lives has been labeled a distraction from the interpersonal and face to face relationships once nearly universal in society.  While that is certainly true and the statistics report the decline in the amount of time we actually spend in the company of another, there may be something more at work here.  Screens may not simply be a distraction but may actually prevent us from either desiring or experiencing the direct socialization across the age spans of most people.  Remember that even if the screen is not the dominant force it is in other generations, those for whom it is merely an occasional distraction also must live with those for whom it is a constant activity.  So, for example, those for whom a phone call or personal visit would be normative live and work with those for whom at text suffices and for whom the screen is a constant activity.

The fruits of all of this are seen not only in the distance experienced across American society but also in the rise of loneliness and the painful isolation of people from each other.  The younger the age bracket, the more significant the loss of these face to face interactions and the more profound the experience of such loneliness and isolation.  I posted before of how this affects dating and courtship but it is not only felt in romantic relationships.  More and more people are reporting fewer and fewer real friendships and their circle of acquaintances that involves face to face contact is similarly reducing -- not simply due to the screen but prevented by those screens.

Virtual relationships are becoming the norm and in person relationships -- from romance to friendship -- are becoming the exception.  Again, as I mentioned above, this may not have its source in older age groups not typically so wedded to the screen but those in those generations still suffer from an increase of loneliness and isolation due to the screen replacing the way the younger people in their lives communicate and interact.  For the youth, this is reflected in the increase of virtual communication after school in place of the in person time spent together.  For the aged, this is reflected in the dominance of the screen for everything from medical visits to regular communication from their children and grandchildren and the shift to online sources of supply instead of the social character of shopping in stores.  Across the spectrum of ages and generations, the trajectory toward the virtual in place of the personal only increases with each passing year.  While the pandemic may have accelerated this shift or caused some of it, the direction of our social relationships was already headed this way long before anyone ever heard of Covid.

The screens have also had an influence over church, particularly in worship.  The Church is the gathered people of God, sharing a common baptismal identity, confessing their sins and being absolved, addressed by the voice of God in His Word, hearing together the sermon which applies that Word, and keeling together at the rail to receive the body and blood of Christ in His Holy Sacrament.  Corporate worship is by nature a social activity.  Unless you think of the people in the pews as inhabiting their own personal space (like the now passe phone booth), everything -- from the pronouns to the liturgy to the hymnody to the communion -- is not accidentally but intentionally social.  When the screen at home replaces the place in the pew among the gathered in one place, it does not simply affect the person at home but the whole church.  When the Church dares to presume that something online is a fitting or even adequate substitute for the common gathering of God's people around His Word and Table, we betray what worship is and allow those who opt for the screen the false comfort and idea that it is all the same, equal, and equally salutary.

Another arena in which our common life is lost when we no longer come together is the life of prayer.  Today the prayer life of God's people is almost solely seen in individual terms.  While we are forced to remember that we pray Our Father even when we are alone, it becomes almost an irrelevant remembrance when our prayers are solely about our selves and our wants or needs.  The Prayer of the Church, like the Collect of the Day, are not simply built upon the foundation of an assembly but direct the assembly to their common concerns when we can be consumed by our individual ones.  Sadly, the request for prayers on social media has replaced the prayer list of the congregation in which we were given names to be included in the intercessions of the faithful at home as well as in God's House.  The reduction of the services of God's House to the Divine Service has left us without a memory of or a need for the prayer services of the various hours.  There was a time when God's people knew not only the Divine Service by heart but also Matins and Vespers -- because, of course, they prayed them together and often. 

I for one am disappointed at the ease at which some churches, even sacramental ones, have rushed to embrace technology and to use the screen to replace or even supplement what happens in person.  For one thing it smacks of desperation.  For another, it means we did not fully understand or appreciate what was happening even before there were such screens.  In this case, the virtual has only revealed how shallow we treated going to church and what happened there.  If those of us in the clergy had done a better job of catechesis, fewer folks in the pews would have accepted the digital in place of the real as the new norm of their lives as the people of God.  I wish I could say that this is merely a problem in worship but it also affects so many other areas of our life together.  Gone are the days when you would expect more than a smattering of the whole at teaching activities or potluck meals or work days or fellowship activities.  While certainly not the reason for our being, the secondary benefits of our life together are both the fruits of our common life in worship and a reinforcement of that common life around altar, font, and altar.  Surely no one expects a digital connection to replace any of these but, sadly, too many have found in them an acceptable substitute.

Take down the ubiquitous screens mounted up front to compete with the attention of the altar or pulpit (or even stained glass and crucifix) and return the attention of the people to liturgy, hymnal, and those around them.  Such screens might be tolerable if they merely distracted us but when they compete for the things that should have our attention, they prevent what is meant to be.  The books in the pews are not there for decorative purposes but so that we might sing from them together as one.  The appointments of the chancel and nave are not merely for show but as the things that point us to what God is doing among us and our response to His gifts.  Even the offering, now more likely digital thanks to technology, is a common act whereby the plate comes to each and all give as they have been blessed for the common work of church and mission.  These are just some of the things we have done that hastened the loneliness and isolation even within the Church among those who need to be together as well as need to hear the Word and receive the Supper.

Choosing makes our choices. . .

For too long the old debate over freedom to choose good or evil has missed part of the point.  The choice of evil brings with along its own set of new choices that end up confirming the evil until it becomes the only choice left.  There is something more at work here than simple culpability for a choice we have made, our guilt or innocence, and our judgment before God over that choice.  Our moral choices leave us with another set of moral choices, limited to more good or more evil.  In this way, we are not only the choices we make but the choices we make shape the options before us down the road.  The fatal flaw of Eden was not to gain the knowledge  of good and evil but to be set upon a path of evil so that we end up choosing evil only.  We are shaped by our choices and our choices shape our future and its choices.

It is not that sin becomes easier, which it does, but that the sins we choose present us with a more narrow set of choices down the road.  This does not mean to suggest at all that we are neutral or without sin until we choose to sin but that the sins we choose predict the sinful choices we face down the road in life.  The old expression is you are what you eat and, well, that is exactly what sin does.  It makes us what we choose until the only choices left to us are defined by those first choices.  When once we find ourselves at ease with sin and evil, it eventually leaves us without a thought about making those same choices again until we no longer see things in terms of evil and good but in the context of what we know and have chosen previously against what we do not know.  Good becomes the stranger to even the Christian caught up in besetting sin and evil becomes that which is most familiar and even friendly to us.

To the sinner by nature, virtue is always the stranger but when vice becomes that which we know best, we end up in bondage to the choices of vice alone.  The lie and deception which we have come to call normal is that only certain thoughts, words, and deeds dwell in the realm of morality and the rest are amoral.  The truth is that every thought, word, and deed is the domain of morality.  By our decisions we are always revealing who we are -- the thoughts we choose to entertain, the words we choose to speak, and the actions we choose to take.  This is radical but not new and it goes back to Gregory of Nyssa.  Whereas the age is always telling us to become comfortable with who we are, how we think, what we say, and what we do,  the Scriptures and the work of the Spirit is leading us on a path of recreation, making ever new by daily contrition and repentance the person created in Christ Jesus for good works.  While the age is telling us to become comfortable with all that we are in the moment, God is at work in us fitting us for His Kingdom and forming us for holiness that reflects and has its source in His own goodness and mercy and purity.  The world has no higher purpose for us than becoming ourselves, even if that is our worst selves, but God is making us into His own, the new that will not become complete until the end of the age or our own end in death.  Then what was begun in us is revealed not simply for the rest to see but so that we can see ourselves -- something we struggle to do in this mortal life but will see plainly in the life to come.

This is why what we do matters, why forgiveness is not for big sins but for every sin, and why the remembrance of our baptism is not the observance of an anniversary or birthday but the daily path to progress toward the future already planned out for us before the foundation of the world.  Choosing ends up making our choices.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, the choices for good teach us to desire and become comfortable in the realm of virtue and goodness.  By the power of the evil one, the choices for evil teach us to desire sin and become comfortable in the realm of evil and corruption.  No one is saying that our actions earn God's favor but living in God's favor defines our actions.  No one is saying that we contribute to our salvation but living as the saved reveals that we are children of God.  Our neighbor needs to see this, to be sure, but so do we.

What do we expect from leaders?

Perhaps there was a time when religious leaders were presumed to be men of faith.  That time has passed, at least for Seven Sisters who were the mainstream of American churches. The denominations which comprised mainline Protestantism were the United Methodist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church, American Baptist Churches, United Church of Christ, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).  Until the mid-to-late twentieth century, the vast majority of Protestants in America belonged to one of the Seven Sisters of Mainline Protestantism.  That term is no longer used in the same way today.  It refers instead to an historic designation and the seven are in various states of decline and disrepair today.  We are not talking about problems here and there but the wholesale loss of members, influence, and, at least among their leaders, faith.

According to the National Survey of Religious Leaders this year, the clergy of what remains of the seven sisters are much more likely to have doubts about the existence of God, the veracity of Scripture, Jesus' bodily resurrection, the existence of heaven, the historicity of Adam and Eve, and a host of other benchmarks of Christian orthodoxy.  This doubt, skepticism, and denial stands in stark contrast to the beliefs of evangelicals, fundamentalists, and Roman Catholics.  Furthermore, these same clergy who are unsure about core Christian beliefs have also admitted not praying regularly, accepting cultural changes (especially in the area of sexuality and gender), to embrace the changing views of marriage and family expressed in society around them, to promote the end of life for people who suffer, and to see abortion in a positive light.  In short, clergy from these mainline churches have led the way in their denominations toward the uncertainty and even rejection of those things that once defined them as Christian.

Though many Americans were raised in these churches, they have left in droves leaving each of the seven a shell of their former selves.  They do not attract new people, lose the people they had, and are graying faster than any other churches in America.  The United Methodists divided and on top of that have lost a third of their members since 2000.  American Baptists have lost more than a quarter of their members, the Episcopal Church a third, the ELCA and UCC four out of ten, Presbyterians half, and the Christian Church 60%.  While there are many reasons for these losses, the distance between pew and pulpit in terms of what is believed, taught, and confessed is a prominent explanation for the exodus away from those groups that once defined Protestantism in America.

The least we should be able to expect of our clergy is that they are guardians of the faith once delivered to the saints and agents of preservation of the voice of the Word and the hope within us.  While some expect the clergy to be prophetic voices of change to lead the churches where they have not gone before, the effects of this distance between the people in the pew and the pulpits across Protestantism, in particular in the mainline denominations, has been to gut the faith and empty the congregations.  What is even more peculiar is that on the whole the clergy in the mainline churches in decline are paid more than the average for the rest of Christianity in America (mega churches excluded).  So the folks in those congregations which have watched so many leave and so few enter is to pay their clergy even more -- perhaps a reward for the doubts, skepticism, and denials of those same pastors.  It is indeed a strange day for Christianity in America.  

I wish this were merely about sex and gender problems but these reflect decay and corruption in the core of those who are supposed to be leaders and guardians of the faith in these denominations.  I wish this were merely about worship styles but this goes to the basic foundations of the faith itself.  I wish this were merely about translation and interpretation differences but this has at its heart doubts about the God and the creed that have been settled doctrines since the earliest of days.  I wish this were merely about the common challenges of churches facing the challenges of the culture, the world, and detractors outside but this is closer to home and in the studies and parsonages of those called to lead the church from within.  No one should be gloating at this turn of events for every parish and every pastor face the same challenges to maintain the faith once delivered and it is too easy for either to lose their way.  It is a warning call to the clergy and a call to be watchful of those whom the Spirit has placed among them as shepherds and leaders. 

Liturgical professionalism. . .

We are always warned about a little bit of knowledge making one dangerous.  Could it be that the opposite is also true?  Could it be that there is also danger when a particular subject becomes the domain of the professional alone?  I have long experienced the inability of some medical professionals to speak in terminology that enables understanding.  Even prescriptions are sometimes written in medical code that does not immediately lend itself to knowledge on the part of the person who takes the medicine.  So what good is professionalism in the cause of medicine if the people are not well served by their medical professionals?  The same is true of any other profession or occupation.  The same is true also of theology a and of worship.

Yes, we thank God for the professionals who labor to know in depth what most of us must know only in part.  Yes, we thank God for those whose academic careers provide rich fruits to be applied in the parish and in the lives of our parishioners.  But.  Yes, there is always a but.  But, when such becomes solely the domain of the professional, there is great danger to both the academic hall and the local nave. Then Cardinal Ratzinger once put it like this: “popular piety is the soil without which the liturgy cannot thrive,” and so rightly noted that distance or disdain for that piety can cause manifold abuse in the church.  In a more poetic way, Martin Franzmann said about theology that it must also be doxology -- it must sing -- noting exactly the same connection between popular piety and the profession.

On the one hand, the folks in the pew have left the business of worship to the professional and seem to enjoy being more spectators than participants in the liturgy.  They do not know but even more importantly often do not seem curious or interested in why things are done as they are, the rhythm of worship, the cycle of the church year, and the pattern of prayer.  They show up and expect to go home with something they can use in their daily lives -- the practical test of liturgy and sermon.  Worship is not about getting a choice little tidbit that you can apply at work or home.  It is our encounter with the Lord of heaven who visits us with grace beyond our imagination and delivers to us the fruits of Christ's redeeming work and the power of the Spirit that we might become holy as He is holy.  It is this entrance into the mystery that is the liturgy.  Relevance and practicality are individual concerns that seem to predominate but in so doing the majestic opening of heaven on earth is less in interest or desire.  That is a problem.  Could it be that we as liturgists and catechists have exacerbated this problem?

On the other hand, pastors treat Sunday morning and its liturgy as a warm up for their sermon and spend more time preparing what they are going to preach than how to lead God's people in worship and prayer.  The pastors have relegated the liturgy to the professionals and simply open the book and do what is there without paying much attention to it.  Or, worse, they lack their own understanding of the liturgical shape of worship and look at it all as a menu from which they pick and choose what they like, what they think the people will like, what will sell, and what will not.  In the end, the radical effect of this choice is to become aliturgical -- to make worship a program and succumb to the failing of entertaining God's people instead of delivering to them His gifts and drawing then into God's holiness.  All the knowledge in the world is useless unless it leads you into God's fullness as St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Camaraderie. . .

The online dictionary says the word (whose spelling can be one of two ways) means:  

1. Goodwill and lighthearted rapport between or among friends; comradeship.
2. Comradeship and loyalty.
3. Close friendship in a group of friends or teammates.

Part of the task of pastoral formation is to encourage camaraderie among the clergy.  It is not the chief goal or aim of such formation but it is an essential one, nonetheless.  Yet how do you do it?  One idea used by St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver is this.  Former vice rector Fr. John Nepil, formator, professor, and (allegedly) moral compass, organized a 2024 ski trip that included a charming little ritual involving daggers, fake blood, and secret society LARPing.  Apparently, Fr. Nepil issued a heartfelt apology for being misunderstood -- of course, he did not mean it to come off the way it appeared.  But the question remains.  How do you develop a real and genuine sense of camaraderie among priests or pastors?

Just in case you have endured, as I have, the playful icebreakers used at the start of some meetings or in place of introductions, camaraderie among the clergy is not established by keeping balloons in the air or passing around an apple under the chin or playing charades or other common activity.  It is formed by our common life around the Word of God and in prayer.  Sadly, we lack this camaraderie largely because other activities have stolen our time and attention and replaced our time together in worship and prayer with trivial things that cannot deliver what our common life together around the Word and Sacraments do.

I cannot tell you how disappointing it is when pastors decide to skip the opening devotions or worship scheduled at the beginning of everything from convention to conference to winkel but show up for the main draw of the speaker or controversial topic.  Our time together in God's Word and prayer is not some precursor to the real reason we gather -- it is the real reason.  By the way, I can tell you that you see the same thing when folks will skip the Sunday worship but show up for fellowship, potluck, congregational meeting or other event that follows the Divine Service.  In effect, we are saying either these things are not important or real enough in their own right and something else is more important or more real.

Almost fifty years ago, I spent a week at Three Rivers Priory in Michigan on a spiritual retreat between college and seminary.  We did not have much opportunity for casual conversation but there were so many opportunities for worship together that I had not quite expected.  From the early morning hours before sunrise to the late afternoon hours when I was too tired to do much more than show up, I learned the power of formation for those gathered around the Word and Table of the Lord.  For this reason, the center of any seminary campus is not the campus center or commons area but the chapel.  This is not only the beating heart of the seminary but the place where we are formed together for our common life and work as the pastors for God's people.  Camaraderie is formed here on knees bent, hands folded, voices raised, and attention given to the voice of God speaking through His Word and our response in worship and prayer.  This kind of fellowship of worship and prayer accomplishes what scheduled activities and play time do not. 

 

 

Contributing to dysphoria?

In what amounts to overkill, a Roman Catholic priest said, "Gender confusion is exacerbated by confusion in gender roles. Girls serving at the altar with boys contributes to this problem."  Now I am sure that there are some, perhaps even many, in Missouri who would wholeheartedly agree.  By tolerating female acolytes we are allowing or even promoting gender confusion.  Maybe there was a day when that statement could have been made without crossing your fingers behind your back but not now.

Even Rome no longer has officially recognized minor clerical offices like they once did.  Lutherans never did.  The tie between acolyte and altar server and ordination is relatively weak.  Not that this is a good thing but the folks in the pews do not see this service as growing up to be a priest or a pastor.  If they did, there would surely have been a jump in the number of vocations to the priesthood or parish ministry.  Alas, there are not.  The folks making this important tie between the roles are largely clergy talking to other clergy and they have forgotten to tell the folks in the pews.

Worse than confusing the poor kids, we have done greater damage by suggesting that this service is not important and does not matter.  Some see it as a duty of youth and others as a burden of catechism years and others as something to get them out of the family pew and satisfy the parents.  But the parents do not see this as leading anywhere and the kids do not either.  That is our problem and it is obvious. 

The decline in the numbers of church workers has been significant but it now borders on a crisis which cannot be averted.  We are not simply suffering a drop of numbers bit in esteem and value of church work vocations and, in particular, for pastors.  It takes at least 8 years from high school graduations to produce a new vocation yet most are agreed nothing is heralding a dramatic turn around.  Furthermore, the length of service for second career fellows works against this option from becoming the sole solution to the dilemma (though I do not mean to discourage or devalue such later in life decisions).   We have for too long set the example for both boys and girls that such service leads nowhere.  Limiting such service to males only will not itself do anything but cut the numbers of altar servers.

As I have said before and will not stop saying, the crisis began when we no longer believed and so no more treated this vocation to the office of the holy ministry as noble and essential and valuable.  We have become preoccupied with large congregations in which the relationship between the clergy and everyone else is more distant.  We have seen the numbers of mid-size congregations decline (and the space between small and large grow even larger).  We have also seen the numbers of small congregations increase while also seeing the numbers of those small congregations that actually have their own pastor drop.  Let me say this.  For a very long time, at least in Lutheranism, smaller congregations have contributed more full-time church workers than the large ones.  My own small home church barely ever broke a hundred communicants and yet has sent many pastors and commission church workers into the LCMS.  I know a few large parishes that have raised up none.  I know of many clergy who cannot say that they have ever baptized or confirmed or communed as a child or youth anyone who has entered the full-time service of the Lord.  Sadly, I know of many who were turned off by their pastors from even the consideration of such service.

Don't be a fool.  Having females serve at the altar is not contributing to gender confusion anymore than anyone sitting in the pew is confused over whether I am the pastor (in vestments, chanting, serving, and preaching) or a layperson making an announcement or reading a lesson or even assisting in the distribution is the pastor.  Our people are not stupid.  They are not, however, as certain as they once were that the pastoral office is noble, honorable, essential, and valuable.  Perhaps pastors contribute some to this decline in esteem and perhaps the culture has too much influence and perhaps parents are not as supportive as they once were in this regard.  But it is overkill to presume that a girl acolyte contributes much to either gender confusion or to the decline in numbers of new pastors.  There are bigger reasons for this than a girl carrying a torch or cross or picking up the offering plates.

Idolatry. . .

It seems to have gained public voice through the former President of the LCMS who saw a problem in Missouri of those who worshiped worship.  It has been a hidden complaint, although not that well hidden, from many who believe that worship, liturgy, ceremonies, and ritual are becoming idols in our church body.  Usually it comes from those who have embraced a more evangelical style on Sunday mornings and who raise up the cause of reaching those who have not been reached as a higher value than conforming to tradition or even confession on Sunday morning.  If Luther suggested that something must be dared in the Name of Christ when addressing worship and hymnody, then today the new Luthers among us seem to be saying something must be dared in the name of Christ to innovate and reach the lost.

No one in their right mind would dispute the charge that worship and its related forms and ceremonies can become idols.  One has only to look at the history of Israel to see how the external replaced the internal.  Israel adhered more closely to the ceremonial laws of worship than to the prophetic calls to repentance.  Duh.  That is not news.  But the fix does not come in jettisoning the external for the sake of the internal.  If that were the case, then the spiritual but not religious would be the faithful and the rest of us mere hypocrites.  Or, perhaps, that is what some in the churches really think.  Jesus by practice does not abandon the worship of the Temple or the services of the synagogue.  Instead, these were His custom, as Scripture says, and that which He learned from childhood.  He certainly spends some time cleansing the Temple and fulfilling the voice of the Word in the synagogue and He also does not fail to call the people to repentance and faith.  At the very same time, He addresses those outside the pale and heralds faith He has not seen in Israel.  It is for Jesus a both, not a choice between.

Growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, I was sure there was some hidden (Gnostic) knowledge imparted to pastors for they seemed to stand in the same places and do the same things week after week no matter who that pastor was.  We were formally liturgical but I would not say that the liturgy was the heart of the faith or the faithful.  It was just what Lutherans did.  Along with Holy Communion four times a year or eventually monthly, these lived on the fringes of our piety and lives in Christ.  I do not blame these pastors but if ever there was a time when the liturgy might become an idol it was when we kept the form but did not understand, appreciate, or pay much attention to its words.  Even the sermon texts were not drawn from the liturgy or church year but from a cycle of preaching texts.  Sermons mattered for piety but the keeping of the liturgy was the Lutheran law we were meant to keep.  At least that is how it seemed.  Maybe I am being too harsh.  Perhaps those who complain about the idolizing of the liturgy and worship are being too harsh.

We do not need some sort of police to watch how we are worshiping and write out tickets when we are veering away from the rites and forms that belong to catholic identity.  We do not need such police to question our motives when we use those rites and forms.  We do not need innovators to find out what works or what people want but should pay attention to what God wants and what gifts He has bestowed.  We do need prophets to accompany the liturgy with the call to repentance, to a real and lively faith, and to good works.  This is what Word and Liturgy are joined together to accomplish.  The liturgy is mostly Gospel -- the telling of what God has done for us and our salvation.  It is extravagantly and lavishly overflowing with grace and mercy.  The sermon will always sound like the Law to us in part because it calls us to live worthy of what God has done and to reflect in our thoughts, words, and deeds the righteousness of Christ placed upon us in our baptism.  The funny thing is that for all the talk about Law and Gospel in preaching, Luther and the classic Lutherans did not at all shy away from this call to repentance, to live holy, upright and godly lives, and to the works of love which glorify God and help our neighbor even if they do not add to Christ's work that saves us.

Anything can become an idol.  Even the worship forms of typical American Protestantism or the seeker or entertainment services of evangelical style churches.  But if we spend all our time trying to figure out what might become or has become an idol, we will not have any time left to practice the Mass of the ages and to preach the unchanging Word of the Lord.  If we are diligent in doing these, idolatry will be the least of our problems.  If we don't, we need more than an error pointed out to us; we need to be called to repentance, confession and absolution.

 

The demoniac. . .

A blog reader sent this link to me and I was put on this video by Archbishop Fulton Sheen speaking on the account of the Garasene demoniac -- an account we heard in the 3 year series just weeks ago.  Undoubtedly, we have all heard many sermons on this text as it appears in the synoptic Gospels but I found Sheen's presentation somewhat different from most of the sermons I have heard or preached on the subject.

 

What Sheen does that is to interesting to me is how he summarizes the effects of the demon upon the man and upon the world as a whole.   There are three characteristics of the demoniac:

1. Love of Nudity – For a long time this man had not worn clothes.  Here the connection is not simply to the man or his nakedness (nudity is not itself evil or wrong) but to his refusal to be modest, to act with concern for those around him.  The modern day applications here are abundant.  We live in immodest times, to be sure, when sensuality is rampant and nudity is flaunted in everything from the media to parades to comedic monologues.  Is this not evidence of the demonic and its power at work among us?
2. Violence – … though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains. The Mark account has more vivid detail: For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him.  No matter what side of the gun debate you are on, only a fool would suggest that we do not live in a time of heightened violence.  From road rage to abuse to video games to media to schools, violence is so routine that it does not even capture the headlines for very long.  It is irrational violence, not out of a cause but simply to be violent.  Is this not evidence of the demonic and its power at work among us?
3. Division (split personalities, disjointed minds, contentiousness against others and society as a whole) – … many demons had gone into him. Again in Mark, the demoniac replies, My name is Legion, for we are many (Mk 5:9). Is he one or many -- there is conflict even within the man.  All of the versions say that the demoniac lived a life devoid of community -- apart from others and solitary.  We live in a world with constant division -- not simply in the realm of politics but everywhere.  From churches to Facebook, we stir up such conflict and refuse to tolerate disagreement.  We have become such a conflicted society that basic functions of the community are made even more difficult -- from governing to education to family gatherings to church.  Is this not evidence of the demonic and its power at work among us?

I am not saying that this is definitive but it is certainly an application which is both credible and timely for the conditions we find ourselves in at home, in the community and nation, and in the world.  Surely this is not simply an coincidence but the evidence of just what Sheen (and others) have suggested.  At a time when Christians seem to downplay the whole idea of the devil and demons and organized evil and hell, the world rapidly deteriorating from its moral foundations and Christian influence is less than it was.  While Christians are not perfect, Christianity has surely been a leavening agent in the world over the last two millenium.  Though some have chosen to foist violence in the name of Christianity, the reality is that the violence was not really Christian at all but a corruption.  At other times, Christian responses were singled out for condemnation while the instigators got off.  Christianity has been an agent on behalf of the unborn, the child, the wife, the woman in society, marriage, family, the plight of the poor and oppressed, and so many other positive ways so the decline of Christianity is sure to allow the rise of much of what Christianity countered.  Surely the devil knows this better than we do. 

    
    

Performance. . .

When people are watching, we sometimes are more conscious of what we are doing than when only God is.  That is certainly how it works with morality.  We use all sorts of means to hide our immoral thoughts and actions and keep up a good face in public for our righteousness but that seems to have little effect upon us in private.  Consider, for example, the idea of anonymous porn and its appeal versus having to login with an identity and admit to what you are watching.  

I read a while ago a Roman complaint that celebrating facing the people put the celebrant in performance mode while facing the altar did not.  Perhaps.  It certainly could.  From my experience, however, there is another point that could be made.  Because people are watching our ceremony and piety could be better than if only God was.  Now I am not at all equating the example of private porn above with the presiding at the altar here, but merely providing a radical example of how the fact that people are watching influences what we do.

If people are watching during the consecration, it could be an influence for a more pious and reverential posture and piety on the part of the one celebrating.  For my part, having almost always had a free standing altar where I have served, I do not pay attention to the people who are watching, do not look at them, and have a small crucifix facing me to remind where I need to focus.  That said, it is not possible to get away with anything when the congregation is watching -- not an irreverent act or forgetting something or even a spill.  While this could certainly lead to a performance mode on the part of the celebrant, it could also force a man to clean up sloppy practice and to act with more integrity because the people are watching.  I only wish we were as concerned with only God watching as we are others but we all know that this is true.  

For what it is worth, I am not defending or posturing for either ad orientem or versus populum.  I am not sure it matters all that much.  What does matter is the reverence that befits the faith.  It might be that knowing people are watching us will force us to do a better job of displaying that reverence that proceeds from faith.  How we handle the holy things of God is not incidental but very important.  Why would we be more careless with the things of God than our favorite possessions or grandma's china or a piece of art?  Indeed.  I will say this.  If versus populum forces us to be better celebrants, that is a good outcome in the end.  If knowing no one but God is watching allows us to be careless or thoughtless, then we have a bigger problem than reverence.

Ecumenical or not

I recently encountered a statement comparing the Council of Nicaea, whose 1700th anniversary we just celebrated, and the Second Vatican Council, which was described as the last of the twenty-one councils recognised as ecumenical, which finally ended 8 December 1965.  For what it is worth, no one but a fool would class Vatican II in the same league as Nicea.  Oops.  I guess I just called Paul VI a fool.  After all Pope Paul VI stated that “the Second Vatican Council is no less authoritative, indeed in some respects it is even more important, than the Council of Nicaea” (cf. La Doc. Catholique, 58 (1976) p. 34).  Really?  I don't think so.  But what really sounded the alarm was the statement that it was the last of the twenty-one councils recognised as ecumenical.  Well, there.  

Who recognises Vatican II as an ecumenical council?  Would it be the Protestants who were there in figurehead roles as observers or not there at all?  Would it be the Lutherans who supplied official observers but were really spectators?  Would it be the Orthodox who also watched and listened from the cheap seats?  This is the hubris of Rome.  Call a Roman Catholic meeting of 2600 of its own bishops and invite a few outsiders to sit and watch and then you call it an ecumenical council of the status of, say, Nicea?!  Well, that is hubris.  It is as if the author of that statement was taunting every non-Roman Christian and saying, we are the Church and you are not.  Oh, wait, that is what they are saying.

On the whole, Vatican II was much better in real content than in the post-conciliar things which were promulgated in its name.  Even saying that does not vitiate against the reality that Vatican II was more like a regional council than an ecumenical one.  Oddly enough, many Roman Catholics would love to forget that John XXIII had the idea in the first place and wake up, like Bobby Ewing in Dallas, and find out it was all a dream.  Except it wasn't a dream and might possible have been a nightmare.  I am not trying to say that the Council was all bad.  But it was certainly not ecumenical and neither was it the equivalent of Nicea.

Rome sees everything through its own insular glasses -- including the definition of ecumenical.  Because Rome says that the Council is an ecumenical one, they have made it so.  I just don't know who outside of Rome and some in Rome who would agree.  I live in a denomination which many love to call insular but so far as I can see we have never claimed that one of our synodical conventions (synodol no but synodical yes) is an ecumenical council.   Rome is as Rome does but it might be this that keeps the Orthodox at a distance and Lutherans like me from taking their claims more seriously.  

By the way, eBay has a ring from Vatican II listed for sale for about $500.  Would somebody buy it for me so that I can claim to have been there?  It would be the ecumenical thing to do.

Too brand specific. . .

By now the Cracker Barrel dust up is old news but not without its own issues.  It would seem that those in charge thought that Uncle Hershel and the whole restaurant had become too brand specific.  In essence, they thought that markets had done too good a job in carving out the Cracker Barrel brand and was preventing it from appealing to others and growing.  The answer was to erase some of the distinctiveness of the brand and make it more generic, more like the other guys, and more modern.  The end result was that there were some who thought that had already been tried to no success -- letting go of old menu favorites or making them seasonal as well as adding liquor to the menu.  But the question remains.  Is there such a thing as being too brand specific?

What Cracker Barrel found out was that there is a fine line between tinkering with things and alienating their consumer base.  There was no progress in rebranding into one more nameless and faceless bland restaurant.  Who wants to eat there?  Those who never walked through the door still won't and those who had were thinking they weren't anymore and those who like the aura but did not eat there often were also disillusioned.  The more modern vibe to appeal to a newer and younger demographic became a sure way to drop stock price and tick off those who pay the bills.  Cracker Barrel will have to eat some crow in order to survive and will probably never shake off the idea that the big wigs in the boardroom do not have an inkling of an understanding who the down-home cooking, front-porch rocking chairs, and nostalgic Americana phenomenon really is.  No news in that, is there.

There are those in religion who have wondered the same thing.  Is Rome too brand specific?  That might have been on the minds of some in the post-Vatican II days when everything was being made new.  It might have been on the mind of Francis in his upsy-daisy tenure at the helm of the ship called Rome.  In either case the same result applied.  Those outside were not attracted to Rome lite or Mass lite and those inside wondered why they were there and those who never attended but thought themselves Roman had another reason not to attend.  We have all seen where that ended up.  The Latin Mass crowd became the whipping boy for all that had been bungled in the rebranding of Rome -- despite a couple of attempts from JPII and BXVI to regain control of the narrative and walk back the excesses.  Now Leo has a mess.

Lest we Lutherans get to smug, we are in the same boat.  Some blame the liturgical movement for everything bad but, in many respects, the fruits of that movement in Lutheranism have not be bad at all.  More frequent communion, restoring our own old ceremonies and rituals, pulling some vestments out of the forgotten closet, renewing private confession, restoration of the Psalm and Old Testament to the Sunday lections, flourishing of new hymn writers and hymns, and a host of other things are the not so bad fruits of our own liturgical movement.  Sadly, however, the danger did not come from things too Roman or catholic but the other flavors of Lutheranism.  We were becoming more brand specific in distinguishing Lutheranism from a slightly more liturgical flavor of Protestantism but then things got complicated.

On the one hand, some began to complain that we were too brand specific and people were not being brought to Jesus because our Lutheranism had gotten in the way.  They opted for less liturgical worship, more contemporary Christian music, a pop culture uniform instead of vestments, and a warehouse or stadium style of church building.  It did not bring in the numbers of new folk but shuffled the deck with people hopping from one new thing to another.  In the end, it muddied the idea of Lutheranism until nobody knew what to expect on Sunday morning.  There was no brand.  There was only an imagined ideal of belief that manifested itself very differently on the ground.  Like Cracker Barrel, when we lost the accoutrements of liturgy, hymnody, sacraments, vestments, and piety, we found ourselves angering those who paid the bills and still offering little or nothing to those who had never darkened our door before.  The worship wars were never between degrees of ceremony but always between those who thought that Lutheranism had a face on Sunday morning and those who thought it did not matter as long as the seats were full.  The church of Johann Sebastian Bach ended up with an image of an aging praise band singing yesterdays hits off key.  Talk about messing up a brand!

On the other hand, some began to complain that we were too brand specific because our Lutheran doctrine had gotten in the way.  They opted to be more friendly toward culture -- even if that meant distancing yourself from God and His Word.  They may peace with the sexual revolution, embraced all sexual desires, blessed every imagined gender, tolerated and then promoted abortion and birth control, took up the cause of social justice, and warned against climate change.  The problem was they forgot the cross in all of this and Jesus became a logo for their newly adopted social posture instead of a Savior who died for sin to raise sinners to heaven.  They kept the worship forms and words but did not believe what they symbolized or said.  So they talked about a Virgin birth they did not believe happened and stopped talking about Adam and Eve at all.  They talked about systemic sin but not personal sin.  They set the communion table for Methodists and Presbyterians and all sorts of others who did not agree on what was being served there and they pushed out those who did.  They muddied the Lutheran brand doctrinally while keeping the liturgical look of it all.  They kept the menu but changed what the food tasted like.  It was disastrous as well.  These liberal leaning Lutherans bled off members until they were a shell of their former size and joined those who danced with the evangelicals on Sunday morning while presuming they still bled red in what they believed and all Lutheran churches were diminished in size, identity, and meaning.  The rocking chairs were still on the front porch but the merch inside was woke and people did not know what to think -- especially with those who said they kept the merch but replaced the rocking chairs with modern lawn furniture.  Nobody know what to think.

Brand specific Lutheranism was our strength -- or so TIME magazine thought in 1958.  We did, too.  But not now.  We are therefore in a position of trying to recover the brand while getting all the franchisees on board so that we can present ourselves to the world again.  That is not as easy as we imagined.  It is not going well or fast.  In the meantime, we aged, stopped marrying, had no kids, and found that this life was good without Jesus in the mix.  In other words, we began to act less like Lutherans and more like the people around us who did not go to church.  The work is still going on but brand recovery is not easy.  Just ask the folks at Cracker Barrel. 

As Finland turns. . .

In a case that seems to go on and on and on, the Finnish parliamentarian who publicly shared her Christian views on marriage by quoting Scripture has entered its next, and hopefully final, chapter.  Seven years of ongoing persecution of Päivi Räsänen might finally come to a close when the case will be heard by the country’s Supreme Court in October of this year.

Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen will have her case heard by the highest court in Finland after two lower courts acquitted her of the charges of “hate speech.”  Räsänen, a devout Lutheran, is well known to the Missouri Synod and politically well connected.  She had served Finland’s interior minister and has been a parliamentarian since 1995 and is currently a Member of Parliament. 

Tweeting Bible verses and speaking in a public debate from a Christian perspective have become "hate speech" in Europe today and it shows how intolerant the tolerant really are.  Though Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola, who published the pamphlet in 2004, and Räsänen have been acquitted twice, the secular woke world has continued to appeal the case all the way up to Finland's Supreme Court.

You missed it. . .

Once again I attended the Henkel Conference at Ascension Lutheran Church in Madison, TN.  I was once again blown away by the talent and thought provoking speakers and how relevant their words to the changing landscape of America.  Kudos to Pastor Greg Bauch for heading this conference up and for the many whose support enables it to continue.  This year was absolutly amazing!  I witnessed the courage and expertise of people in a variety of areas confronting me with facts to help me make sense of the changing world around me.  In particular, I was blown away by Mrs. Katie Coblentz, Chad Jackson, and Dr. Peter McCullough.  That and the stellar preaching and worship made this a conference worth your every moment of attention.  Thank you, Pr. Bauch.

The whole schedule looked like this:

• Andrew Walker, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), and Managing Editor of WORLD Opinions
  
• Peter McCullough, MD, internist, cardiologist, and epidemiologist, who manages common infectious diseases as well as the cardiovascular complications of both the viral infection and the injuries developing after the COVID-19 vaccine
  
• Chad O. Jackson, a Dallas-based entrepreneur and researcher who starred in the Uncle Tom films and makes the case for moral Christian ethics, family values, independence and intentional citizenship
• Joy Pullmann, Executive Editor of The Federalist and an 18-year education and politics reporter, as well as cofounder of a Christian classical school and author of classical curricula
• Nathanael Blake, Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC)
  
• Katie Coblentz, Christian wife
  
• Jeffrey Hemmer, Pastor at Bethany Lutheran Church
  
• Willie Grills, Pastor at Zion Lutheran Church and co-host of A Word Fitly Spoken and A Brief History of Power

Stay tuned because the presentations from this conference will soon join the previous conferences because of the nimble fingers and technical skills of Gene Wilken at the Flaneur Record.  As good as that is, it is not worth skipping the chance to be there.  Look for another installment in August of 2026.   Thank you to ALL who made this possible.

Life is not only work but it is not without it. . .

I read not long ago the prediction that by 2030 (less than five years away), 80% of all working will be without jobs because of AI.  It is an exuberant prediction and will surely fail -- though perhaps less so in the presumption of what AI will do than in the timing of it.  Imagine that, we will all live the life of leisure that is the goal and hope for us all.  Or, will we?  What will it do for us when work is stolen from us?

God created man for work.  It seems odd that this needs to be said.  But we must.  Work has become a bad word or a word to describe what you put up with to get what you really want.  Until sin distorted the gift of work and added its cost to what must be done to provide food and shelter, this labor was only a gift.  Today is a day to remember that even with sin's stain upon our labor, it is still a gift.  If you do not believe this, ask the many who are searching for gainful employment, those who are underemployed and just want to work, those who were retired against their will or due to injury, and those who have given up searching for a job.  Ask the 80% after they have had five years or so to contemplate what it means to live without work.

As you take your leisure today (unless you are one of those for whom this not a holiday), stop to thank God for your job, for the vocation that you live out in the work you have chosen because of skill, aptitude, or training, and for the fruits of that labor.  God is behind it all.  And it is a precious thing.  Work is a gift not simply when it is rewarding or fun or we like it.  Work is a gift because we were not created for leisure.  God made us to take care of His creation and to have dominion over it, to use it to provide for those in our care.  There is something wrong when we run from this purpose or find it demeaning.  Remember the words of poet James Russell: No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him.

I do know that there are unpleasant jobs.  Work is not glamorous.  My dad was a plumber and worked like a dog to provide for his family.  He put in long hours and endured distasteful duties for the goal of doing his best for God and his best for his family and his best for his neighbor.  On my way through college and seminary I had a few unpleasant jobs.  I was thankful for the work and for the money it provided to help me pay for school.  The jobs and my employers taught me a great deal.  Although at the time I was not sure the labor was good, I am more than grateful for the jobs when they came.  As a pastor I looked out on people who struggled with their jobs, to find good jobs that will provide for their families, or to find better jobs.

And let us not forget those who labor without a paycheck -- to the moms and dads whose vocation is parenthood and whose calling is seldom appreciated outside the home.  This is work, too.  And it is godly and good.  Though the world may not herald such labor or value it without financial compensation to commend it, God knows and the church dare not forget the work that it takes to turn a place into a home.  Remember how Archbishop Fulton Sheen put the dignity of work:  Let those who think their work has no value recognize that by fulfilling their insignificant tasks out of love for God, those tasks assume supernatural worth. The aged who bear the taunts of the young, the sick crucified to their beds, the street cleaner and the garbage collector, the chorus girl who never had a line, the unemployed carpenter – all these will be enthroned above dictators, presidents, kings, and Cardinals if a greater love of God inspires their humbler tasks than inspires those who play nobler roles with less love.

On this day let us not forget to give thanks for the opportunity to work and for the fruits of those labors.  Only then let us enjoy the time off (if we have it).  Even God took a rest on the seventh day after all His splendid work of creation! Just as the rejection of work is a rejection of who God created us to be, so rejection of His rest places ourselves above God and turns labor into a competing idol for God's attention and worship.  Work was not meant to be without cost, not something we love doing so much that we cannot cease its labors for any purpose.  No, even work as good and godly as it is must yield its activity before the Lord and so that we might enter into His rest, now in hope and one day face to face.