Are We Better Off

When I instruct new members, I always speak of the drift of Lutherans from a myriad of separate groups divided by language, culture, location, and history into several larger groups (well, basically three or so, the ELCA, LCMS, and WELS).  Of course that is changing now due to the splits off the ELCA and I may have to do some adjusting.  Usually, people are surprised and pleased by the movement from many into several -- evidence of the ecumenical spirit and intensity of Lutheran efforts at reunion, reconciliation, and reorientation.  I usually let it go buy without much comment but lately I am wondering...  Are we better off because of all the mergers and reconfigurations that moved us from many smaller Lutheran church bodies into fewer and larger ones?

Missouri is the anomaly in this since the growth of the LCMS did not come from mergers or wholesale absorptions of existing bodies.  Missouri's growth came from planting congregations and growing them (at least until the late 1960s when the growth slowed, stopped, and then leaks started appearing).

My point is this.  Smaller church bodies, like smaller congregations, are much more adept at keeping track of their people, their programs, and their identity than larger ones.  When I look back to the turn of the twentieth century, Clifford Nelson notes no less than 20-25 different Lutheran church bodies in America.  Sure, many of them were loosely aligned in the General Synod, General Council, or Synodical Conference, but they were fully independent bodies with their own colleges, seminaries, missionaries, publishing arms, etc...  Now we are down to a very few larger bodies and a dozen or so very small bodies (my favorite is named ELF and an elf it is with but a couple of congregations).

Now I do not have access to attendance data from this earlier period in Lutheran history in America and I am not even sure that such information is even available.  My hunch is that in each of these smaller bodies the percentage of those attending the Divine Service (or "dry mass" as was more popular) was substantially higher than the percentage of members in the current bodies.  We speak of the ELCA with 4+ million members but only a relatively small percentage of them are in church on any given Sunday morning -- a million maybe.  Missouri does not fare much differently with something like 800,000 of our 2.4 million counted members actually in worship.

When most of these church bodies established colleges, they did so in order to help prepare people for the work of the kingdom.  The colleges were missions of the church bodies and kept close to the churches both in terms of student recruitment and financial support.  Now most Lutheran colleges are Lutheran in name only and their Lutheranism, like their ethnic background, is a heritage element and not part of their core identity.  The vast majority of students at these Lutheran colleges are not Lutheran and most of them no longer have "church worker" preparation programs.  Those that still do have only a small, small percentage of the student body enrolled in these majors or concentrations.

I could go on but I think it might be worth considering if we are really all that much better off for merging and uniting the many smaller Lutheran bodies into larger ones.  This has surely hastened the path toward a more liberal Lutheran identity in America, it has distanced the national offices further and further from the local parish, and, in many cases, led to great conflicts between the churches on a national level and the parochial one.  Who would disagree that the national scene offers us a distinctly different Lutheran identity today than a hundred years ago -- whether you would argue this was good or bad?  In addition, we have and continue to lose, misplace, or forget about thousands upon thousands every year (just look at the statistical reports published annually by nearly all of these bodies).  Sure there were theological controversies and conflicts but at least people took theology seriously.

So I am not so sure that the move of the Lutheran family from many, smaller, more ethnic and isolated church bodies into larger ones has borne much good fruit...  Makes you wonder about the whole ecumenical mission of one church with one headquarters and one mailing address...

The God who Hates

No one but the most liberal believer would suggest that God does not hate.  He hates sin.  (To be sure we might venture some disagreements about what constitutes the sin He hates but we all generally agree He hates some sin.)  He hates evil.  He hates death.  He hates what has stolen His creation from Him.  He hates those who are complicit in this rebellion and its agents of corruption.  Lutheran talk of grace does not deny that God hates... but the real question here is whether this hate of evil is the highest of God's attributes or whether this hate has been overcome by His mercy.

Clearly many Muslims see a God only as a God who hates.  He hates the infidel.  He hates immorality.  This God who hates is worshiped with hate -- hate directed to those outside, to the transgressors who do wrong.  The highest revelation of this God is in His justice and the highest calling of mankind is to manifest this justice (hard and brutal though it be).  So the adulterer is stoned, the thief has his hand chopped off, and the seeker of heaven straps a bomb to his body to reduce the number of infidels in the world.

But there are also a fair number of Christians who delight in the hating God.  Think of those Baptists from Kansas who picket the funerals of service men and women with their placards about the God who hates America because He hates the gays.  Strict Calvinists see this hating God in the predestination of some to eternal destruction seemingly without explanation or cause.  It is God's way.  He hates some and loves others.  There are certainly fewer strict Calvinists in this day and age -- at least fewer than there were -- but the question of evil and a world so filled with evil stirs Christians to demand justice from God and for Him to follow through on His hate and dispatch the evil summarily and quickly.

Some have tried to bridge the divide between the God who hates and the God who loves by directing the hate to the sin but the love to the sinner.  It is a well intentioned argument but not entirely faithful to the Scripture.  Take a read at the Psalms and see if the prayer is not that God will vindicate the righteous at the expense of the evil, turn the full force of His wrath upon them, and allow them no mercy.

What then are we to do?  The God who hates is also the God who loves -- but not as some out of control schizophrenic God who one day is all nicey nice and the other day pops off the handle at a moment's notice.  No, the point for us is whether God's hate of the sin, the sinner, and the encourager of sin is what predominates or whether it is God's love that visits the wrath upon His own Son, who credits the guilty with His righteousness, who forgives the clearly unworthy and undeserving, and saves those who have no right to expect such beneficial treatment.

Why is it we have to have just one -- the hating God and a people who beg on His justice toward those whom they believe deserve it (never themselves) or the loving God who shrugs His shoulders at sin and figures it's not such a big deal anyway?  The God who hates sin and evil, sinners and wrong, is the same God who loves even sinners and forgives their wrongs by hanging it upon the One who alone is innocent.  This is a messy statement that begs to be cleaned up with reason and explanation but it cannot be.  It is messy and confusing apart from faith and even in faith we trust in what we cannot see or understand and only in what He has promised and accomplished already in Christ.

The cross is the ultimate symbol of this paradox -- the God who hates sin and evil enough to punish it with the full force of His wrath but the God who loves us sinners so much that the One who suffers is the innocent flesh and blood of His one and only Son.  Law and Gospel are not some neat little way of explaining the unexplainable but the faithful witness to Scripture.  We dare not demand His justice if we hope for His mercy and we dare not confuse His mercy with a lack of concern for the wrong.  It is a tension, to be sure, but the tension in which we see God for who He is, through what He has done, and the creative tension in which mercy works.  The Church's proclamation dare not slight either but must also make sure that we state unequivocally and clear that mercy is His final Word in Christ... at least until the day of salvation comes to its close and the day of judgment precludes any change of heart from His people or His verdict.  We come on Sunday morning to hear of this God whose every ounce of being demands that He condemn and punish and whose unlimited grace and mercy bore the burden of our salvation that we might stand before Him forgiven in Christ, covered with the righteousness of Christ, and fully and finally free in Christ.

Reformation Creep...

One of the disturbing aspects of being in a church body formed from the Great Reformation is the recognition that there is a certain creep in that church body -- a creep away from the Church of the Augsburg Confession and toward the radical reformers that Luther ran out of town.  Both in vocabulary and piety, we are definitely more in the corner of the Reformed than the Lutheran -- I mean this in the sense of every day conversation, the Christian music our people listen to on radio, the kind of Bible study leaders so popular with others and with us... We have become very comfortable in a Reformed world of fundamentalism, evangelicalism, mega-church Christianity, and even pentecostalism.  Too comfortable.  The "sound track" of our piety is not a Lutheran sound track -- it does not flow from the means of grace (Word and Sacrament) but from the realm of feeling, direct Spirit guidance and assurance, and it is individualistic (not community oriented).

Now we say that we have separated this "style" from our Lutheran substance and identity but, even if I grant this, for how long?  For how long can you piety and your vocabulary be formed by and rooted in another language before it becomes your mother tongue and your Lutheran identity and orthodoxy becomes the foreign language to you?

Clearly the work of the Reformation is an ongoing reform that continually pulls the Church back to Christ -- not the Christ of imagination and feeling.. nor of reason and intellect... but the Christ of the incarnation whose presence is fully rooted in His Word, His water, His Table, and His voice of absolution.

Would Luther recognize the Church that bears his name today (his name, whether for good or ill)?  It is a struggle for which we must ever draw from the sources to retain our identity and confession anew... so ad fontes... to the sources... not just in October and the month of Reformation remembrance but all the year through... reading the catechism, reading the Confessions, talking and discussing until this identity is reclaimed and "comfortable" to this generation and then teach it anew to the next...

The Small Church

I have participated in a number of discussions about what to do with the growing number of small congregations in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.  Unable to afford the fair compensation and benefits of a full-time Pastor, this number grows every year.  Once it was said that a congregation with 50 in worship could afford the cost of a full-time Pastor without this compensation consuming nearly all its resources.  Then it was 75 in worship.  Now even 100 in worship can be difficult -- especially in areas of the country where the cost of housing remains high.  All of these are realistic issues facing our Church.  But there are some things that go beyond numbers of folks in worship.

While it is true that a small congregation may also be a small church, it is not automatically true.  What do I mean?  A "small" church is one whose mission is self-serving, a parish which exists to provide for the needs of the members, and a congregation with an unspoken goal of making sure that the building and a Pastor are there to bury the last person remaining, turn out the lights, and lock the doors.  Such a small church does not need to be small in numbers.  I have sat in the congregation in larger churches where no one spoke to me, no one noticed me, and no one paid any attention to anything but themselves.  Small churches use traditional worship and the hymnal but can also be found with praise bands and clapping hands.  Small churches consume the bulk of their attention and resources to fulfill the felt needs of their own people and feel no guilt or pang of conscience that their ministry is so, well, curvatus in se.

I think that numbers may be something we must consider but those numbers may not be the primary criterion of determining which congregation has a future and which does not.  Geography is important (remember the first rule of real estate -- location, location, location).  Facility has something to do with it all (not so much size but visibility and the impression the building gives to those who drive by).  The biggie here is attitude.  Cold and selfish congregations come in all shapes and sizes.  There is not a place in the country where Christians are over saturated or Lutherans have no possibility of growth and a mission beyond themselves.  There are some places where Lutheran identity is confused with congregations who are LINO (Lutheran in name only) or NELINO (not even Lutheran in name only).  This should be seen as an area of mission and an opportunity but too often it is not exploited.  Cast theology and doctrine aside, but marketing savvy only says don't do or sell or look like everyone around you.  Lutherans offering a pale imitation of what the local mega non-denominational church can provide are missing a market opportunity (speaking only here of business acumen and not of theology).

Small churches are those congregations interested in themselves... let me speak of "mission trips" here... I am not in favor of them.  How is it in the interest of the mission field to bring 20-40 folks from the USA on expensive airlines to consume precious few good housing places and perform basic manual labor at a cost of hundreds of dollars an hour so they can fly home and tell everyone what a difference they made for the Lord?  Who benefits most of all?  Most mission trips are pricey entertainment for the folks on the trip -- a different sort of Holy Land tour.  If those folks took the money raised and spent on that trip and sent it to the mission partner church, think what they might be able to do with it?  For 20-40 folks going to Haiti or Kenya, the bill is something like $40-100,000.  For the work done there (through Lutheran World Relief or our partner church) that money would multiply a hundred times more than the cost of folks flying half a world away to do unskilled labor (painting, cleaning up, etc).  Note here I am NOT talking about those who go to the mission field and teach or perform specialized tasks for a month, six, or a year -- different story entirely!!  The mission trip has become high cost spiritual entertainment in a world where people are looking to entertain their "spirits" the same way they do their bodies -- self-indulgence -- and this is a "small church" mindset in which our interests are more important than the mission as a whole.

Aside from the previous paragraph, my point is this -- small congregations are not necessarily "small churches" and large congregations can be "small churches."  Lets make sure that we keep this in mind as we seek a way to deal with the growing numbers of congregations unable to afford a full-time Pastor...

Ambivalence - Silent Goes the Night

The best headline was on the Touchstone Magazine blog:  "Silent Night goes silent" but I am also fond of my own tweak on a line to summarize the Court decision to allow a school district to ban the words and melody to "Silent Night" from its official school functions.  It seems this is near the end of the a six year battle to effectively remove every religious connection from any winter holiday (Hanukkah as well as Christmas).  Of course the people in favor cite diversity and the need for the school to be perfectly neutral in all of this.  And, predictably, the opponents lament the near complete removal of religion from the schools.

I, personally, have to admit some ambivalence here.  I am not so sure what I think.  On one hand I am instinctively angry when government or schools try to act as if the winter break they all observe around Dec. 25 has nothing to do with Christmas.  It is stupid and the vapid acts of political correctness are doing a pretty good job of dumbing down our institutions and our people. 

On the other hand, I was not happy when some courts ruled that a creche or manger scene had no religious significance but was a cultural symbol and therefore it could be put up by a government agency or public school.  Surely every Christian is offended when the nation's highest court says that one of the most sacred symbols of our faith (the manger) is devoid of religious meaning and significance.  If that is what it means to most people, take the darn thing down because it means a whole lot more than a cultural symbol.

So I am not sure what to think about "Silent Night" being removed from the musical events of a public school.  On the one hand, I think it is ludicrous to believe that we can or should sanitize the school from every mention or acknowledgment of any religion.  So we can sing about big fat benevolent grandpas in red suits, riding on a sleigh, pulled by mythological animals (flying reindeer)... or about snowmen who come to life when a special hat is placed on their heads... but we cannot sing about the actual reason for the holy day.  Sigh....

Yet the more I think about it, I don't want people singing "Silent Night" who refuse to acknowledge whose birth the carol sings about... I don't want people putting up a creche because it means the same as an elf and a fat man... I don't want a Christmas in which Christ is part of a mythology in the pantheon of made up characters and stories that crowd up the holiday...

So... what am I to do?  Fight to have "Silent Night" sung by people who don't know or care what it means or have a creche put up by those who believe it is as generic as tinsel?  But... do I roll over and let the train of diversity, sensitivity, and political correctness strip away the truth in favor of lie told because it is not as offensive as the truth?  Mmmmmmm.  A lot to ponder here...  I hear the groans of creation aching in expectation for the return of Jesus... or maybe that is just me...

Who Says They Don't Get It...

I over heard some conversation by one of our youth attempting to explain the Gospel.  He put it this way.  You see it's like your computer.  Everything works fine at first.  Then a virus hits you and nothing works right.  It's slow.  You get error messages.  So you  kill it with an anti-virus and it is fixed but it is not like it was.  It won't be perfect until you reformat the hard drive.  God made everything and it worked.  Then the Satan virus infected us.  It was our fault because we clicked "yes" when the pop-up appeared.  But we could not fix it.  Jesus is the anti-virus who God sent to clean it up.  But we won't be perfect until we are reformated in the resurrection...

Okay, so I cleaned it up the terms a bit.  But, honestly, that is how one teen explained Scripture's story to another.  Not bad... Not bad at all... So maybe it is not universal and you hafta be a little bit of a geek or techno nerd to appreciate the metaphor.  But the point of it all is, when you have a Biblically illiterate culture, you have to do what you can to get the Word out... even when that means framing the Scriptural story in a modern setting.  I, for one, thought the youth did a pretty fair job...

Now it somebody like this kid that speak to his peer in words that are faithful and understandable, we all should be able to find a way to speak the Gospel to those around us.  It is not our story but His that needs to be told but the telling of the story can be done in many ways... this kid showed us just one...

Poetry and Prose

Living for many years in New York State and also the somewhat separate but connected part known as Long Island, I learned many things of politics, religion, and culture.  Pretty big education for a Nebraska boy who grew up in a town of 700 or so!  For some of those years the Governor of that state was a pretty able politician (whether you agreed with him or not) by the name of Mario Cuomo (not the junior currently running for Governor but his dad).  I hardly ever agreed with him but often appreciated his ability to turn a phrase and found him a compelling public speaker.

Cuomo once said that politicians "campaign in poetry and govern in prose."  There is much to commend that phrase and it is packed with wisdom and truth.  It points out the difference between articulating something and actually making it work.  There are many who can do one thing or the other but fewer who can do both.  Obama was fairly adept at creating a vision and selling that vision to the American people during the campaign but has proven less skilled at making his vision actually work.  But then he is only midway through his term.  Maybe things will change... but then people seldom do.

It seems that many who are trying to help transform dying churches have something in common with Cuomo's pithy saying.  They are saying, in essence, that Pastors may be good at the poetry of worship and preaching but they need to learn the prose of church administration and leadership -- how to make it work.  I have read through things from Church Growth people (at the holy mountain of Fuller Seminary) and other incarnations (Paul Borden, Terry Tiemann, et. al.) and it seems that this is very much the issue for them.  They complain that Pastors are not very effective leaders, that they are not very effective administrators, and that they are not very effective managers.

Now this should not surprise you.  I grant the truth to much of this.  I had no courses in this in college or seminary and have never claimed to be good at the other stuff that fills a Pastor's days (as well as the Pastor stuff of his call).  Most Pastors are not very good at being the CEOs or the COOs of a congregation.  I'll admit it.  I am not very effective at running my checkbook.  So I am not arguing his premise.  In fact, I am granting this premise.  What I am arguing is that the Pastor should not be the CEO, COO, parish administrator, or business manager of the congregation.  The job of the Pastor is poetry and not prose.  Period.

The job of the Pastor is to articulate the faith and to do so not as an encyclopedia imparting information but as one who sees the vision and speaks the vision to the people (the vision here not being an idea of how to market the faith effectively but, well, Christ...).  By Cuomo's definition this is the poetry side of the equation.  As a Pastor for more than 30 years, I have learned some things about parish administration (usually through the school of hard knocks) but I am most comfortable leading God's people in worship, speaking God's Word to the pulpit, absolving sinners from their sins, presiding at funerals, teaching the catechism, and working to keep our attention on Christ and not on the distraction of the moment (see the HVAC post below).

I have repeatedly been invited to join the PLI training program.  I honestly don't know much about it.  But I know that I don't want to learn how to be a better administrator.  Probably some of the folks in the congregation I serve would like that.  I honestly think most would not.  But I do want to be a better presider, a better teacher of God's Word, a better preacher of that Word, a better catechist, etc...  So, even if PLI were free (which it is not), I am not interested in it...  It is in the poetry I feel most at home (again, using Cuomo's distinction) and not in prose.

But I do not have to tell you that...  if you are reading this, you know that I am no academic, I do not have organized thoughts but pastoral meandering ones.  I am not the kind of guy who writes a book.  I am the kind of guy who reads a whole book and comes away with a couple of good, no, make that great, phrases or sentences that speak...  I am not a great preacher but I am a passionate one.  I am not a persnickety presider (sometimes I do not know what to do with my hands) but I am a dedicated one who feels at home at the altar and prie dieux.  I have a personality but feel more at home behind the vestments which direct the attention to the office and not the man (which is why I wear a collar every day).  So, leave the prose to others... I am content with the poetry of this calling... And, it is my ventured opinion, that the Church needs more poets from the Seminaries than we need those who speak prose...

Be There or Be Square...

Self-interest OR Faith

Sermon Preached for Pentecost 20, Proper 23C, on Sunday, October 10, 2010.

    Listen to the radio, read a blog, or watch TV and you find that Americans are tied of politicians who confuse their own self-interest with the good of our country.  Maybe some will no longer have that problem after November. On the other hand, folks are not so sure about Wall Street or corporate America, either.  There once was a time when the chairman of General Motors said "What's good for General Motors, is good for America."  You don't hear much talk like that anymore.
    Speaking personally, however, it is a bit more difficult.  How does a husband and father separate his interests from what is good for the whole family?  Or a wife and mother separate her interests from what is good for the family?  We speak of family in broad terms but it is lived out in the specifics where husband, wife, parent and child distinguish between self-interest and the good of the family.
    The same is true in matters of faith.  Although the familiar story of Ruth and Naomi is often read at weddings, it is not about marriage but about faith and the choice between what seems the obvious self-interest of the person and the call of faith.  Ruth was caught between what was in her self-interest and the call of God. Her dilemma is our dilemma.  We daily must distinguish between what any reasonable person would say is in our interest and the call of faith, trusting in God and walking the way of the cross.  Today we explore this as we look at Ruth and Naomi.
    Ruth was a fairly young woman who had lost her husband.  Her self-interest was not so different from how we would define our own self-interest.  She wanted family – a husband, children, a home, and a future.  Don't we all want that?  This self-interest was not something bad or evil but the very pattern God has built into us – the desire for one to love, for one who will love us, for children and family, a home today and a future with the person we love.  It is common to all of us, isn't it?
    Ruth wanted to live with who shared her values and ideals, a common culture and community, a people like her in every way.  This desire for community is common to us all, is it not?  We want a place, a place to belong, where people know us and we know them, where we share common values and live together in a community of caring.
    Ruth hoped for a future.  She had hopes and dreams and desires for a future – a simple future of children and grand-children, of family gatherings and a place where everyone called home.  Ruth is not so different from us, is she?  But that is not what she got.  She married a man not from her country or faith.  She learned from him and his mother, the God of Israel, the God of mercy and grace.  Then her husband died and she was left childless.  What to do?  She could have returned to her kin, to her old way of life, and to her former religion.  Or she could return with her mother-in-law to a foreign land and live as a child of God.
    Ruth's faith was rooted not in reason or understanding or her self-interest.  Her faith was in the promise of the God of Israel and for this faith she left behind a family, a homeland, the potential of another marriage and family, and the pursuit of a normal life – in order to go with Naomi to the land of Israel, trusting in the God of Israel.  Her eloquent words were directed not romantically to a husband or dutifully to her mother-in-law, but to God.  Where you go, I go... where you live, I live... Your people shall be my people... Your future shall be my future...
    It is almost like, "Not my will but Thy will be done..."  It is as if she is saying she has no home but where God is, no family except the family of faith within the family of God the Church, no future except the future that rests in God, and no tomorrow but the one He has created.  Now that is a pretty deep faith.  Ruth has chosen to deny her self-interest and to trust in God alone.
    The path of faith is not a mix of our wills and God's will, what we think is in our interest and what God thinks.  We do not negotiate an agreement with God in which we give and He gives, we get and He gets.  The path of faith is alien to our reason and foreign to the way the world defines life.  It is as strange to our ears as Ruth's desire to cling to Naomi and trust in God –  when everything inside of her is saying, "Go home, find your own path of life, build a future for yourself..."
    The path of faith is generally unreasonable and seems foolish.  The path of faith is usually contrary to the way the world works or to the way the world thinks.  The path of faith is trust in God, not works; trust in the Lord not what we control; trust in Christ and not our righteousness. We cannot explain faith to the world – only the Spirit can teach faith – but we can witness  this faith to the world.  We can demonstrate to the world faith in Him whose grace has won salvation for us.  Faith lays down reason and self-interest and looks to the cross where we are raised up with forgiveness, clothed with new life, given the gift of salvation, and granted the grace of eternal life.  This is the path of faith – Jesus Christ and Him only.  You can never trust Christ too much or yourself too little.
    Ruth stands as a powerful example of faith in a story in which God is barely mentioned.  Yet it is God who called Ruth to be His own, joined her to His family and people, and bestowed upon her the future He prepared for those whom He loves.  It is God who gave her heart the gift of faith so that self-interest and reason would not rule her.
    It is no different than what we saw in the Gospel lesson for today.  Ten lepers received healing from Jesus.  Nine saw their self interest in reclaiming the life they thought they had lost due to the terrible disease that had afflicted them.  Nine saw God’s gift to be the freedom to seek their own way again. But one saw something more.  By the power of the Spirit, one healed leper resisted that self-interest in order to return to Jesus, to bow before Him in worship, and to see His future in Jesus only.  This is the path of faith, the path the Spirit calls us to follow.  When the future is unknown and when our nature says to seek your way to get what you want, the Spirit calls us to faith in Christ alone.  God grant it.  Amen.

Not the Middle Ground

I grew up hearing Lutheranism described as the middle ground between two extremes -- the works oriented sacramental nature of the Roman Catholic Church and the decision oriented Word nature of the Protestant churches.  I must admit I initially found it appealing.  Moderation seems to be a particularly Lutheran virtue, after all, and nobody likes extremists -- especially religious ones.  Further it seemed to be reasonable since Lutherans were Word AND Sacrament Christians while it seemed pretty clear to me that Roman Catholics were mainly sacramental and the Protestants Word oriented. 

I confess that as a young Pastor I used this analogy to describe Lutherans to folks who wondered who we were.  Once they attended, it seemed reasonable to them, also.  They saw in the liturgy and vestments a distinctly catholic faith in practice but they noted the strong homily, the Sunday school structure, and adult Bible classes and found that Lutherans were also very much Word centered Christians (like they noticed in Protestant churches).  But I do not use this analogy any longer.  I know that it is not only patently false but ultimately destructive for the Church of the Augsburg Confession.

We are not a church in the middle ground, picking a few things from Rome and a few things from Geneva.  It may work in politics that you campaign from one side in primary and in the general move to the middle, but that is not how it works for Lutherans.  We do not speak sacramentally when we are around those who understand it (Rome and Constantinople) and then speak in the general parlance of decision theology and the Word around the folks from Geneva or Edinburgh or Wheaton.  We are not a split or a merger of two different personalities.  We are not Two Face, the nemesis of Batman.  We are one Church.

This is why it is so important for us to reclaim the word "catholic."  When we confess in the creed "one, holy, catholic and apostolic church," we are not speaking of the things of dreams but of this very communion.  We are not the whole of it but the fullness of it dwells right here where we gather in the Name of Christ, at the bidding of Christ, through the Word of Christ, to be fed by the body and blood of Christ.  We are not a little of this and a little of that but that one, holy, catholic and apostolic church in this place.  Anything less and we are but a sect, unworthy to exist at all.  To strive to be anything less is to betray Jesus Christ and deny Him as much as Peter did.  To expect anything less is to settle for something inauthentic and ultimately false.

It seems to me that the Lutheran Confessions do not claim to be a version of Christianity nor a segment of a many formed and varied church.  No, they claim to be the Church, to possess the marks of the Church, to have the authority of the Church, and to be the identity of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church and nothing less.  We do not claim we possess this alone or that salvation is among us and among no other.  We are not embarrassed by the felicitous inconsistency of Lutherans dwelling in churches not called Lutheran -- we delight in this.  We are not a common denominator of ecumenical endeavor but the confession of the truth that has the power to bind and unite in the way that negotiation and compromise can never achieve.

If there is anything that saddens me more about Lutherans and the communions so named, it is when we act as if we are borrowers from others, without a clear, confessional identity and practice.  It is this that causes us to look across the lawn and borrow from what we think is greener grass.  The greater enemy of Lutherans are not those from whom we borrow or to whom we look with longing.  Our greater enemy is that we have forgotten who we are, lost confidence in who we are, and even become embarrassed about who we are. 

If who we are is not the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church -- then leave this rotting hulk of a ship and find a better boat.  But if we are who we claim to be in our confessions, then let us sail as the noble ship we claim to be, raising up Jesus Christ and Him crucified, living out what have become the cliches of Word and Sacrament or means of grace because we believe in them and because Christ is the voice of His Word, the Savior whom we meet in the water, the power who absolves through the Pastor's voice, and the flesh and wine hidden in and consumed with the bread and wine of His Table.  We are not middle ground for those who are uncomfortable on the edges.  We are not a more Word oriented Roman Catholicism or a more sacramental Protestantism.  We are the Church of Jesus Christ and nothing less.  It is not pride to say this but the humble profession of truth -- not for our glory but the glory of Christ, the work of His kingdom, and the life of the world.

A Cross Between a Socialite and a Socialist

HT to Joe Carter at First Things.  He is right.  It is an old clip and since it has been around for so long, many have not seen it... but do not laugh too hard.  Hidden in the humor is something eminently regrettable in the sorry truth behind it all...

Click on THIS to have it pop up for you to watch... just a minute or two but precious from the BBC and Yes, Prime Minister...

A Gospel with a Toothless Grin

Let me admit this first off.  At one point in time I liked Tony Campolo.  I watched a couple of his videos and found him a compelling speaker.  I thought that he was a person of substance with whom the conversation of faith might yield rich rewards.  He was speaking, I thought, of the need for love and mercy to accompany right believing -- this at a time when it seemed to me that those who pressed for right believing were not very compassionate.  I saw him become one of the counselors to a President and move ever further to the left - not simply calling on the Church to show mercy but redefining that mercy until it sounded as if it were an ad for the Democratic Party.  Now he has gone even further...

It is statements like this from Campolo that got me thinking:  "I think that Christianity has two emphases. One is a social emphasis to impart the values of the kingdom of God in society - to relieve the sufferings of the poor, to stand up for the oppressed, to be a voice for those who have no voice. The other emphasis is to bring people into a personal, transforming relationship with Christ... Fundamentalism has emphasized the latter, mainline churches have emphasized the former. We cannot neglect one for the other."

Now Campolo has lost any sense of the balance that once seemed to be part of his position.  Elsewhere in scripture, we recognize that Jesus made a special effort to extend the invitation for inclusion in His Kingdom to the maimed, the blind, and the halt.  According to the laws of the Torah and Talmud, such persons were to be excluded from the Temple, and were considered “unclean.”  Yet Jesus makes a special effort to extend His invitation and love to these marginalized persons.  Yes, this is true enough.  But where it leads Campolo is well beyond the purview of Jesus's words, actions, or intent.

In our own day and age, the Evangelical community has marginalized our gay and lesbian and transsexual brothers and sisters.  It doesn’t take much imagination to conclude that the Jesus who was always reaching out to the marginalized would be making a special effort in our contemporary society to express His love and to extend His invitation for fellowship to our modern day brothers and sisters who are estranged from our churches.  To reach out to the LGBT communities and join them in their cry for justice, and to champion their efforts for inclusion in our churches, is to simply imitate Christ. Being  followers of Jesus requires this.

But Jesus requires this... “To reach out to the LGBT communities and join them in their cry for justice, and to champion their efforts for inclusion in our churches,” Campolo writes,” is to simply imitate Christ.” 

Such is the path of a Gospel which is not about the cross but about inclusion, not about salvation but about acceptance, not about forgiveness but about justice, not about repentance but "come as you are"  -- it is this path that has become the poison pill of the ELCA and of other Protestant denominations.  When the Gospel is no longer what Jesus defines, then it becomes the advocacy of things completely foreign to the Jesus who said "Go and sin no more."  In the end, this Gospel is largely irrelevant for where this is no sin, there is no need of a Savior and where salvation is not the goal then the glorification of this life (and its excesses and vices) will replace virtue in every sense of the term.  When this kind of Jesus smiles, it is a toothless grin.  Why on earth would someone want to join a church whose agenda is the same as an agency of the government?  At least the government agency is funded and does not have to beg at the door for money. 

It is of great sadness that much of Evangelicalism is headed down this path forged by the mainline Protestant denominations.  It should be rallying call to Lutherans to avoid this path and proclaim the truth in love, as St. Paul counsels, and show forth the love of Christ in the authentic acts of mercy that make His Word visible.  Yes, Jesus did reach out to the marginalized.  But not to bring them into the mainstream.  He reached out to them to bring them into His Kingdom.  In such a church as Campolo envisions, Jesus is not incarnate but spirit, a spirit for a time such as this, unleashed from any captivity to Scripture, morality, or objective truth.  Some may think that gay marriage is dangerous to Christianity.  Campolo's way of thinking is far more dangerous.  It leaves us with a hand from God that is empty of anything except acceptance of who we are, as we are.  Just as I am, Lord, let me be and let Your love still shine on me. Take away my shame and set me free, so I can live as me, guilt free. 

A Poll of Youth

At the 2010 National Youth Gathering of the LCMS a poll was taken of youth and adults present -- a large sampling of more than 10% of the 24,000 who attended.  Some interesting results, although polls are not entirely reliable since how questions are phrased has as much as anything to do with the answers received.  Add to that the problem of teens responding to everything from rather personal questions to issues framed with words like always or never (which kids tend to dislike), and you end up with a picture both good and bad of where our youth stand...

• 80 percent of the youth who took part in the Lutheran Youth Fellowship Youth Poll at this summer's National LCMS Youth Gathering have either an "excellent or good relationship with their parents," according to the poll results.  Nearly 78 percent live with both natural parents, 18 percentage points higher than the national average.
• 77.5 percent attend public high school which compares to 61 percent in 2007.  Almost 10 percent attend a Lutheran high school and another 5.4 percent attend a private or parochial high school.  There also was a slight increase in those who are being home-schooled: 2.4 percent compared with 1.5 percent in 2007.
• 74.3 percent) of the young people identify themselves as active or very active in their congregation.
• 42 percent have little or no personal Bible study, a figure largely unchanged during the past 30 years of the poll.   About 5 percent said they did more than two hours per week and 43.6 percent said 15-60 minutes per week.
• 53 percent took the moral position that premarital sex is always wrong, down from 58.4 percent in 2007 and from 63.3 percent in 2004; but up from 47.5 percent in 1992 and 43.6 percent in 1986.   
• 67.3 percent claimed to never have engaged in sexual intercourse.   
• 59.7 percent said homosexuality is always wrong, down from 65.8 percent in 2007 and 70 percent in 2004. 
• 53.2 percent said marriage is for one man and one woman, compared to 57 percent in 2007 and 70.5 percent in 2004. 
• 88.9 percent indicated they don't smoke and 90.4 percent said that they never use drugs. The youth who said they never drink alcohol rose from 44.6 percent in 2007 to 65.8 percent, although 19.8 percent said they have been drunk at least once in the past 12 months.  
• 72.9 percent of youth say abortion is always wrong, and 38 percent say they favor the death penalty.  30.5 percent of youth think global warming is an issue to be taken seriously, down from 42.8 percent in 2007 when the question was first asked.  
• 31.2 percent of Gathering youth came from congregations that only offer traditional worship, 3.8 percent came from churches offering only "contemporary" worship, 50.9 percent from churches offering both traditional and contemporary services and 8.4 percent offering blended services.
• 15.8 percent of all youth said they prefer a variety in worship; 28.9 percent prefer contemporary; 33.1 percent prefer a mixture of old and new "not necessarily from a hymnal"; and 22.2 percent indicated they prefer traditional, liturgical worship.  Male youth (28.4 percent) expressed the strongest support for traditional, liturgical worship.  
• 70.7 percent of youth have been on a Servant Event or mission trip.  
• 6.4 percent of youth are planning to go into a church career, while 26.7 percent said they would consider a church career but had made no career choice. Another 27.2 percent said they had never really thought about it.  

Areas of significant concern:

• 19.5 indicated they think all religions are pretty much alike and 54.1 percent think all Christians should be able to worship together.  
• 45.2 percent of poll participants said that they agree with the LCMS position on women's ordination, with 22.8 percent calling for more study, and 12.2 percent supporting women's ordination.

So I guess we need to do some more work, eh?  On the whole some numbers were very comforting and others not so.  Some were predictable if not desirable but others were surprising.  All in all it shows us areas where the congregations and their Pastors need to do a better job with catechesis...

On the Pirate Radio...

A chat about "lead us not into temptation"... with Todd Wilken, Bruce Keseman, and yours truly... if you are so inclined, you can listen to the audio... HERE...

always fun, this time a couple of techno glitches intervened but, we go it done...

If you do not regularly listen, now is the time to start... listen live or listen to the on demand audio of past shows... 

The Curse of Property

Once, while a Pastor in NY State, the congregation I served was disallowed a property tax exemption for property we owned  but was not strictly used for worship (i. e. we did not have a worship service on that site).  Some complained loudly about the terrible old imposing government.  I have always found property to be a mixed blessing and felt the law was the law...

I am reminded again of the "mixed blessing" property is... this week another HVAC unit died (burned through the heat exchanger -- 11 year old unit, 5 year warranty on the heat exchanger).  It will cost us about $10,000 to replace -- the entire annual maintenance budget on our facility.  Got to get it done because it is in the preschool area and the dear little ones will be cold if we do not do something... Is there a silver lining?  I am not so sure... you remember the old Tom Hanks movie, "The Money Pit," don't you?  How much of our attention and dollars are consumed by the necessary evil of buildings and property...

Oh, and another one... repeated bad service led us to switch to Charter Phone (internet based) saving us about $600 per year -- only to find out that it will cost us $700 for a link to the fire alarm system since internet phone service does not satisfy the legal requirement for our fire alarm connection... oh, well...

I could go on... but I won't... even Pastors cost the church money, dontcha know!  And I am sure that there are some in my flock who look at me and think, "Mixed blessing!"

October is a busy month...

The more I think, the more confused I get...

First I get this email:

Every October, pastor appreciation month, thousands of churches throughout the United States and other countries find special ways to honor and express gratitude for pastors...If you are actively involved with a church, undoubtedly you have a pastor, maybe some former pastors who are now retired, and other pastoral staff members. Many ministers will rejoice and be glad if you remember to express your appreciation to them in some way or in many ways. St. Paul wrote, “And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers . . .” (Ephesians 4:11-12). 

Then I find out:

October is GLBT History Month,  a month-long annual observance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history, and the history of the gay rights and related civil rights movements. It is observed during October in the United States, to include National Coming Out Day on October 11.  First observed in 1994, Presidents Clinton and Obama have declared June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Pride Month, separate from this GLBT history month.

Am I the only one confused?  For some it might not make a great deal of difference but for most churches the two represent a distinct gulf and distinction.  Well, the thought was nice, anyway...

I Remember It Well...

It happens quite often that folks in the congregation will bring to me a large framed or rolled up item, printed on heavy paper, in full color. They unwrap the paper to show me the frame or slowly and carefully unroll the item.  Its edges may be soiled or worn and sometimes there are tears in the paper itself.  But they treat these as family treasures to be handled with love, with care, and with respect... because they are important.  What am I talking about?  The old baptismal, confirmation, and marriage certificates, of course.

I am sure you know the ones I mean.  They are beautiful, sacred, and a testament to the piety and faith of those who presented them and those who kept them down through the ages.  These certificates gave an idea of the value of these sacraments and rites in the lives of the people.  It is not just the certificates we may have lost, but the value of these sacraments and rites in the lives of people, the piety that treasures these certificates because it treasures these sacraments and rites, and the beauty seen in these sacraments and rites.

You can still find these certificates.  CPH has them and you can find them other places as well.  I particularly admire those from Agnus Dei Printing.  Although the certificates themselves are beautiful, going back to an heirloom or vintage style certificate is not my point.  We do not hold the sacraments and rites themselves in the high regard that befits them.  It would be nice to recover certificates that are more than just pre-printed forms to be filled in and forgotten.  It is far more important that we recover the esteem and wonder of the sacraments and rites of the Church themselves.

Baptisms are often hastily arranged and quickly done because folks are busy, things are going on in the Church, and we just don't have time to prepare the family or candidate or give the rite itself its due.  It is no wonder then that the folks themselves file away the baptism like they pack away the certificate -- both lie forgotten instead of central to the identity and life of the candidate baptized and his or her family.

Marriages have become the domain of bridezillas and their moms who are looking for a picture perfect event instead of the sacred promises made before the Lord and within His Church -- the conferral of the ancient gift and estate upon this man and this woman.  In other cases, people call the Church on 3 pm on Thursday to be married at 6 pm on Friday and the rite is simply a legalization of a living arrangement that has gone on for a long time, a means of regularizing the state of the man and woman who are soon to become parents, or, in a military town, something planned to fit a scheduled deployment.  I am not condemning the couple but the way marriage has come to be seen -- a utilitarian arrangement in which a man and woman (or whomever) choose to regularize their life together to satisfy legal requirements and obtain certain benefits.

Confirmation has gone through the mill -- from the semi-military style classes of memorization and a little explanation of my own youth to the touchy feely domain of a relationship with Jesus.  Somewhere in it all, we have forgotten that we kept confirmation and the catechetical study that precedes it in order to prepare the individual for his or her life within the Church -- not the end of anything but the passage into a state of more responsibility among those have also been baptized and made public confession of their faith (the members of the congregation).

I could go on... but it is sad that the great esteem once accorded to the certificates of old and was borne of a sacramental piety and churchly perspective on life itself have been lost to us or we are losing even now...  Recovering this sacramental perspective on life is not as easy as purchasing these heirloom style certificates.  We have more work to be done, for sure...

A Toothless Lion... Really, Rather Harmless

It would seem that the predominant evangelistic perspective of modern Christianity (even among Lutherans) is the idea that the Gospel and the Church are really nothing to be afraid of -- rather benign, really.  We speak the Gospel in terms that it will "add" to the richness of your daily life but not as if its lack will detract from that life.  We speak of worship as nothing threatening but fun and funny.  We speak of the Church as plain old folks just like you -- we are really nobody different except that we believe in something.  We speak of the clergy as ordinary people -- not especially holy or religious and they only represent themselves; why, they wear polo shirts and khakis...

Were I not already Christian, I cannot say that I would be attracted by such a characterization of a Gospel which helps a bit but does not hurt to be without... or worship which is merely a reflection (generally a poor reflection) of the same stuff I listen to on radio or cd and watch on TV.... or a church made up of people who believe in something but nothing so specific that I cannot feel fully at home in their midst even without faith... or a clergy so ordinary that they less inspire than reflect my own mundane existence...

Who is attracted by such a toothless lion, really, rather harmless?  Is not the Word of God a two edged sword?  Does the Gospel not bestow upon us what we have lost -- what keeps us from being fully human and our lives being whole and complete?  Does not the Church offer the only hope and light a hopeless people living in darkness can ever find?  Do the clergy not represent themselves with all their foibles and failings but the very God enfleshed?  Now, don't get me wrong.  We should not be MORE offensive than the Gospel is but neither should we be LESS offensive than the Gospel is...

When people enter the house of God during the Divine Service, should they not be confronted with something completely other?  Do we as Christians not expect God to be in His Word and at His Table, doing what He has promised?  Is this not the awesome mystery which the Church confesses even though we do not fully comprehend its fullness?  If this is missing, can we say we are faithful to this Gospel or faithfully communicating God's message to the world around us?

It is the greatest sadness that we pawn off the Church (and therefore Christ) as a toothless lion who can really do no harm but which is really kind of nice once you get used to it...  It is to our poverty that we offer the world only a pale imitation of what they already have instead of the radical difference of the Incarnate God who has borne the fullness of our sin and all its grief in order to place upon us the easy yoke of grace and mercy... It is our weakness that we would rather be seen as ordinary than the extra-ordinary among whom God is present and faith apprehends and responds to this presence in the means of grace...

Perhaps our problem is that we no longer really believe the lion has any teeth or the faith that gives us so much also leaves us empty without it... Perhaps we need to read the Chronicles of Narnia once again for surely the real Aslan of too many Christians and their churches has become a figurehead -- nice to look at if you want to but really rather harmless...

The Wrong Story...

Whose story is it?  Some mistakenly assume the story belongs to the teller.  It is our story (either as a denomination or an individual).  This is a grave error that has caused many problems for the Kingdom of God.  When we make the story OURS, the very next step is to make the story about US.  When we stray from the truth, it becomes nothing more than a fairy tale to entertain us and not the Word that transforms us, that kills and gives life, that judges and forgives, that renews and restores.

 I recently did some sermon writing for another publication.  I was asked to provide sermon illustrations along with a complete manuscript for the assigned dates.  Since I have been a Lutheran Pastor for more than 30 years, I thought this might be an easier task than it ended up being.  Preaching is the universal task of the Church and of her preachers but it is also a personal task.  The Gospel does not change.  The Scripture does not change.  The Cross does not change.  We preach a changeless Christ to a changing world -- yet the preacher does so through the perspective of his own experience.  The story is Christ's and Christ is the story but in telling His story, in speaking Christ, I do so through the lens of my personality and experience.

I found it very difficult to write illustrations that were not borne of my own personal experience.  Such an illustration would not have been helpful to those who wanted to use "my" sermon.  These illustrations were my experience and for them to claim these stories as their own would be to lie and deceive -- even for the noblest purpose.  It was not so difficult to write the sermons since the story is Christ's own story and Christ is the story but the telling of it is a distinctly personal perspective and experience.

Truth be told, I steal stories from others.  It is not that I make these stories my own -- I do not claim that they are about me or include me or that I witnessed them.  But a good story belongs not just to those who experienced it.  Once, I told one of these stories to someone who "owned" the story.  He did not reveal this fact to me until I finished.  At the end, he asked me where I had heard it.  I relayed the background and connection.  He then informed me that the story was about him.  I began to sweat.  Had I betrayed the truthfulness of this story.  I honestly did not know since it was "oral" tradition and there was no textbook to check it out.  He laughed and told me that I had, in fact, told the story well, just as it happened, and, he suggested, better than he told it...  Of course, I told the story as Larry Peters and not as this person (about whom the story was told) but the story was genuine and its facts were kept straight (no doubt due to the person from whom I heard it who was also a part of this story).

The Gospel is a good story.  It does not simply belong to those who experienced it.  It belongs to the whole world.  It is a story begging to be told.  But its good effect depends upon telling the story well, just as it happened, without distorting it, changing the facts, or inserting yourself into it (so as to make it about you).

The sermon is one arena in which we walk the fine line of telling Christ's story, telling through our own words, personality, and experiences -- yet faithfully -- without inserting ourselves into the story, detracting from Christ or uprooting the story from its historical event and factual character.  At the same, we are not drones who mouth the same words in such way that they are foreign to us, as if we presume to speak an alien tongue by memorizing a set of sounds.  The same it true of each individual Christian's witness to the world -- it walks the line between spouting a set hermetically sealed propositions or facts on one hand and the other failing of making the story ours so that we are its center and it is really about us.

There are sermons that are disappointingly predictable.  Week after week we hear them.  You were bad.  God is good.  God forgave your sin in Christ so that you could go to heaven.  Amen.  No matter how interesting you might make it, this is not what preaching is about -- telling the same story every week by rehearsing a set of facts or truth propositions.  There are sermons that are truly exciting and surprising.  Week after week we hear them.  But the cross and Christ play such a small part in these compelling stories that they are no longer the Gospel -- these are stories about us in which we are have the major parts and we direct what it says and how it ends.  Both the decision orienting preaching of some and the fix up your life to make you happier preaching of others falls into this same trap of displacing Christ from His own story.  In the end both are the wrong stories.

I speak not as an expert in this but as a student who every week must face 300 folks and ask myself if I told Christ's story so that the story is Christ -- yes through the person of Larry Peters but not in such a way that I have hijacked the story to make it about me or told it in such a sanitary way that its facts and truth have not touched me first.

Both in the formal proclamation of the pulpit and in the informal witness of the Christian, God has given us a marvelous opportunity to tell the story of Christ where Christ is the story and yet to do it within the framework of our own personalities, experiences, vocabularies, and illustrations... just like He did when He gave us His Word -- not as a mechanical conveyor of a sterile truth but the story told by a real life person, with all the weaknesses and strengths of that individual.  For this opportunity, we need be thankful, need work to be faithful, and need to make sure that we are not telling the wrong story or telling it so that the teller is the star and not the Christ whose story it is and who is the story.

Pagan Notions of Death

While perusing some blogs I came across a point made about the pagan notions of God and how they affect the practical theology of the individual believer as well as the Church.  In this particular instance the author was addressing the invocation of saints (where I am not going today) but his point is well taken about the impact of pagan notions of death upon the faithful.

For the world death is the cessation of life.  I cannot tell you how many times people tell me of relatives and friends who "died" and then came back to "life" -- as if God made a mistake about their "time" and had to correct the problem.  We have all heard reports or read stories of bright lights and shadowed images for those who have gone through some sort of resuscitation.  The problem is that when Scripture speaks of death it has less to do with a stopped heart than a gulf or separation from Him who is the Creator and Source of Life.  The trouble with Christians is that we have distanced God from our definition of death to the point where the funeral and heaven are more about celebrating or prolonging what we have now than anything else.

A Christian world view does not see death in strictly medical terms.  A Christian world view is not preoccupied by this mortal life or its continuation.  Christians see death as separation from God, in particular as separation from Christ, whose incarnation inaugurates the fulfillment of the promise that death will not be allowed to triumph over God's people.  Those whose mortal bodies have ceased to function are, more often than not, described in Scripture as "asleep."  When the New Testament uses the term dead, the phrase "in Christ" is often appended.  Here we have the contrast clearly put in place.  And it fits.  The definition of death as the cessation of this mortal life is for the Christian "sleep" from which we shall awaken.  The death that is separation from Christ is death from which no one can awaken.  The mission of the Church is impart the life of Christ to all people through the means of grace, baptism, through which the Spirit works and the result of this work is faith and a life of good works.

The problem is this.  We Christians do not hold a very Christian world view.  We have become so infected with the view of those outside the Church that the perspective of the Scriptures seems, well, alien to us and to our lives.  We have accepted that idea that life is good and full without Christ -- that Christ is but a little added extra on top of the goodness of this mortal life.  We do not mourn our own distance from God and we do not lament the distance of those in the world around us from the grace of Christ.  In our secular world view, it is the Word that seems strangely distant from our everyday lives and in contrast to the way we see life and the way we understand death.  It is not that we need to explain Scripture so that it fits the modern conceptions of life and death (which are so consistent with ancient pagan ideas) but that we need to abandon this pagan world view (ancient or modern).

In baptism we are joined with Christ.  We have life because we are joined with Christ in baptism.  He in whom life has triumphed has reclaimed us from death and brought us from death to life -- a life which no one and nothing can steal from us.  It is ours because of God's promise and His faithfulness to His Word and promise.  This is the arena in which we are to life our lives and this is the perspective that is to shape us as people.  To be people of faith is to apprehend by the power of the Spirit what it means to be joined to Christ, to live in Christ, receiving the fruit of His saving work and being reborn by this saving work to become new and transformed individuals.

There is something to this...  We have adopted so many pagan notions of death that the funeral seems foreign to us but the wake seems natural.  Christians do not have celebrations of life for the departed but funerals in which we confront what death is with Him who has bridged its gap and retrieved us from the emptiness of life apart from Christ and the hopelessness of death apart from Christ.  We do not glory in the life of those who have fallen asleep but in the God whose rescue means that just as we carry in this mortal body the death of Christ, so we carry in us the life of Christ, rejoicing in our own joyful resurrection with Christ to everlasting life.  For surely this is exactly what the great cloud of witnesses gives testament to and what their joy is -- we have been joined with Christ so that whether we life or die, we are Christ's.

We need to let our Christian faith be the world view that shapes us and not the pagan notions the world counts as real and true...