Confessional or Constitutional

Is there a difference between a confessional church and a constitutional one?

That was a question raised innocently enough yet with profound consequences.  We Lutherans, in particular the LCMS, like to call ourselves confessional.  It means something more than we have confessions.  It means that these confessions actually speak to the life of the church, define who we are, and shape our practice.  Yet at the very same time we acknowledge the church as an institutional identity, incorporated, holding assets, and being governed by the rules adopted by and for this body.

Whether we like to admit it or not, the institutional life of the Church, Inc., may not be exactly the same as or, perhaps, in concert with the identity and aims of the church confessing.  I do not have example in mind here but am thinking of the large book that just came in the mail called the Handbook 2013 of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and how easy it is to govern our life by legalities and rules instead of by the Word of the Lord.  I am not even suggesting that we dispense with constitutions and by-laws or even the standard operating procedures that translate the rules into consistent processes.  What I am suggesting is that there are time when rules must give way to what it is that we Confess, when we must deal with issues and problems and challenges less on the basis of our institutional identities and more on the basis of our confessional identity.

When we disagree about doctrine and practice, such disagreement is not simply about violating institutional rules but about forsaking what it is that we believe, confess, and teach.  When we are tempted to use by-law and convention resolution as the real power of the body assembled, someone would do well to remind us that the power is the Word, that doctrine is not established by majority vote, not even two-thirds majority, and that the diversity of our practices cannot betray what it is we say is the very catholic and apostolic faith handed down by the saints before us.

I write these words having gotten back our parish constitution from the District Committee that reviewed our little rule book.  I write these words as I look back on a triennium of restructuring in our national church structure.  Rules are good.  But that which defines us is our confession.  Rules are necessary.  But we dare not imply that faithfully abiding by our commonly held rules is a legitimate substitute for faithful believing, confessing, and teaching.  We are a confessional church that uses a constitution and by-laws to help us be  that confessional church body.  Unless we get this right we are merely modern day Pharisees who delight more in the intricacies of our holy by-laws than the evangelists who speak the Word of the Lord that endures forever.

Canon law is not necessarily a bad thing and it is good to have canon lawyers who can read and apply the rules we have adopted for our life together but theology dare not be sacrificed on the altar of expediency.  Neither can we forget that what marks and shapes us as Lutherans are the Confessions to which we bind congregations as the condition of joining and to which our Pastors pledge to preach and teach in conformity at their ordination.

Just a few thoughts as I make my way through February. . .

Remembering both sides of the coin. . .

Just as we have often reminded that the Holy Spirit works through the means of grace, so it is good for us to be reminded that the Holy Spirit always works in these means of grace.  In other words, not only do we know where to look for the Spirit (Word and Sacrament) but that we can have confidence that the Spirit is always at work in the means of grace (Word and Sacrament) -- whether we see the results or not.

We Lutherans are good at reminding those who appear to have swallowed the Holy Spirit feathers and all that God in His infinite wisdom and mercy has, for our benefit, attached Himself to means (Word and Sacrament).  These are the places where God has bound Himself for our benefit that we might approach the Word and Sacraments with confidence.

What we Lutherans are not so good at is remembering that the Spirit is not occasionally attached to means but always works through the Word, the water of Baptism, the Voice of the Absolution, and the bread and wine of the Holy Supper.  We have developed a sort of angst about this and borrowed heavily upon the church growth, organization, and evangelism methods of evangelicalism precisely because we have forgotten how the Spirit works.  Without confidence in the Word and Sacraments, we are gravely tempted to bolster the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments with something other.  Whether decision theology that rests our confidence in our own efforts or gimmicks designed to do what we fear the means of grace may not, we have subtly but noticeably been far too silent about the promise of the Spirit working through those means of grace.  This is especially true when we do not see the growth in numbers that we expect.

It is precisely when we do not see the results as we might expect them that we as Lutheran Christians need to rekindle our confidence that God IS at work here, as He pleases, for His goals and purposes.  Perhaps in another age and time it was easier to believe that God was at work in the Word and Sacraments -- if only because they were producing observable and measurable results.  Now that we find ourselves pressed by the crowded marketplace of non-denominational Christianity, bracketed by the empty shells of the once powerful mainline churches, we have given into our own anxiety and fear.  But God is not at work because or where we see Him.  God is at work because He has promised to work through the efficacious Word and Sacraments.  Whether we see results or can measure them is of little consequence.  IF we are being faithful in proclaiming the whole counsel of His Word (Law and Gospel) rightly and purely and administering His Sacraments according to His intention, the purpose of God will be fulfilled and what He has sent forth will not return to Him empty handed.

I lament the fact that we are not as faithful as we ought to be in the common sense issues related to welcoming the stranger into the House of the Lord but I lament even further that we seem to have lost confidence that God is there at all.  We have too quickly given up and sought to take over the enterprise of the Spirit, marketing the Gospel as if it were a product and treating the folks in the pews and those not yet there as consumers who must be mollified and cajoled into the Kingdom of God.  The pews are not empty because we have too much confidence in the Lord to keep His promises but because we have too little. What compels people to pay attention to the means of grace if we no longer are sure they are enough to do what God has promised?

Liturgy, Creed, Church Year, etc... the cure for what ails you...

You would have to have lived your life under a rock not to have heard of the scandal that took down evangelical giant Ted Haggard and left his congregation, New Life in Colorado Springs, devastated.  What you may not have heard about is that the congregation is being reborn and its rebirth from the ashes of its former self is taking shape by the restoration of classic Christianity and catholic form.  In other words, those who have worked to rebuild New Life have turned to the liturgy, every-Sunday communion, the church year, the Nicene Creed, and old fashioned pastoral care.  And it is working.

Read about it here and also here.

I will let others chronicle the rise from the ashes of their defeat.  What I want to know is why it is that some Lutherans (LCMS, ELCA, and WELS) still seem to think that their future lies with the kind of generic, non-denominational, non-liturgical, contemporary music, entertainment worship style of Sunday morning which went down the Ted Haggard at New Life?  Why is it that we Lutherans are still drinking the kool-aid of evangelicalism at odds with our confessional heart and identity while they are drinking from the living springs of liturgical, creedal, and catholic Christianity?  Now, I am not ready to grant that a liturgical New Life Church is the same as a regular old Lutheran, Word and Sacrament, confessional congregation.  But they may very well be closer (in appearance, anyway) than some of the Lutherans (of various acronyms) who have fallen out of love with the Lutheranism of our confessional presumption and practice and in love with the latest and greatest of evangelicalism.

The sad truth is that we Lutherans are our own worst enemies.  We disdain what we have for those that others are already abandoning.  We were still singing the Peter, Paul, and Mary kind of "contemporary" Christian music while the rest of that kind of Christianity had moved on.  We were still trying to entertain people with a religious variety show with a moral to the story while that kind of Christianity was beginning to rediscover the liturgy.  We were still trying to shed our image of a liturgical and catholic Christianity while the evangelical community was thinking about trying to become it.  Maybe if we wait a generation or two, we Lutherans might rediscover the liturgy?

Now those attracted to the evangelicals wearing a liturgical mask are discerning enough to figure out of the liturgy is real or just for show.  It is clear that the young have had enough of an empty, casual, and entertaining Christianity but it remains to be seen if we are confident enough about who we are to offer them form and substance.  We could be.  We should be.

Role of Pastoral Formation on Orthodoxy

The seminary side of Lutheranism is undergoing some remodeling.  The ELCA with its formerly eight different seminaries is collapsing under its own financial weight and even the mighty Luther Seminary has experienced economic troubles serious enough to threaten its survival.  Some will live on as houses of study within sympathetic universities.  Some will merge (as did a couple at the start of the ELCA).  Some will disappear entirely.  Oddly enough, the ELCA has always had a significant number of folks who eschewed the official route to study at the Harvards, Yales, Princetons, etc., of the world.  This may increase for those who want a degree with a little cachet and who can afford it.  A good question might be how has a clergy taught by non-Lutherans affected the Lutheranism of the ELCA?

The NALC is just beginning to set up its theological training structure and it appears that this path will look less like the traditional sems of old and more like the houses of study with a big dose of online education.  Who knows how this far flung enterprise will be governed or how well it will produce faithful clergy to serve the new church born of ELCA's hemorrhage of 2009. 

Missouri's struggles center around those who believe residential seminary education is a luxury we can no longer afford and one that no longer adequately reflects the realities of modern life and culture.  Against this backdrop there are those who insist that residential seminary education must be more than just the favored path, it must be the regular path for all but the exception.  Given Missouri's structure of having the seminary faculty both educate and certify candidates for call and ordination in the church, it will be interesting to see how this can be farmed out and fulfilled when as many as 40% of all clergy in training are not residing on the seminary campus (roughly the situation at our flagship seminary in St. Louis).

My point here is to raise another issue.  What role does pastoral formation have on the character and faithfulness of a confessional church?  How do the evolving shapes of clergy education impact the confessional character of a church body?  Whether by design or accident, the two have been largely coterminous for Missouri -- pastoral formation and orthodoxy.  Sure, we had a bump along the way in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but we did not substantially change the process when we changed the players in the unpleasantness of that epoch in our history.  How will the move to deployed seminary sites and the loss of a common experience and culture at the seminaries of our church body affect the future orthodoxy and confessional character of the LCMS?  I do not know.  No one really does.  But I am fearful that our less is more approach to the education of our pastors will not be without potential and probable disastrous effect.

We will need to take greater pains that we have in the past to prevent a distinct disjuncture between the LCMS of our past and the LCMS of our future.  Benedict XVI often spoke of a hermeneutic of continuity with the Roman Church.  In part, the seminary culture and education was the means to such a hermeneutic of continuity within Missouri for many years.  While certainly not the only means to such confessional integrity in a changing world, it would be unwise to discount the role of a shared educational experience on sustaining what so many other church bodies have lost -- confessional integrity.

At a time when cost and technology are suggesting that there are cheaper ways to do seminary education that might be just as good, it will be a challenge to maintain the residential seminary route as the regular route and to prevent the alternative routes from overwhelming the system.  It is no secret that some District Presidents are anxious to extend their episcopal authority and wrest some of the thunder over who is and who is not a credible candidatus reverendi ministerii.  The alternative routes (especially SMP) put more of the ball into the DP's court than has ever been in the past.  Perhaps this is because they want some input or perhaps it is because they do not like the product being supplied by residential seminary education -- in any case, power acquired is seldom surrendered without a fight.  What will it mean when DPs take on a larger role in the training leg of the path to ordination and roster status?  I only wish I knew.

Once the LCMS closed Concordia Senior College and transformed the feeder system of junior college with a theological rationale for a structural problem and we lost more than a school.  Now we are on the verge of radically transforming the way we train and certify men for the pastoral ministry and we need to be careful that the driving factors of cost and culture do not cause us to throw out the baby with the bath water.  The process of pastoral formation has great impact upon and consequence for maintaining the confessional identity and theological orthodoxy that is the hallmark of our history and modern day persona.  Lets be careful here, folks.  Tinkering with the way we educate and certify men for the pastoral office is also tinkering with the subtle but effective way we have been able to maintain a more collegial ministerium and a more confessional identity.

But if that is really true...

It happened that the chalice caught in the distribution and spilled at the rail.  When I saw it, I got down on my knees and cleansed the floor with the purificator.  It held up the distribution and those at the rail watched as I cleansed the floor -- some with wide eyes, some with horror at the spill, and others wondering what was the big deal...  Later a person who had been at the rail asked me about it.  I explained it and mentioned the story of Luther who hacked out part of the chancel because of a spill.  And then came the shock.  "You mean it really is the blood of Christ?"  But of course.  "But if that is really true, then..."

Ahh... But if...  That is exactly the point.  Much of our practice at worship is like it is not really true but merely a sign and symbol of an absent reality.  I do not fault the person because I know that part of the problem is the generation and the lack of real catechesis on the Eucharist and the Real Presence.  But it was amazing to see the transformation in the face of the person as they began to unfold in their mind "if is really true, then..."

• "If it is really the body and blood of Christ, why do some Lutherans NOT have the Sacrament weekly?"
• "If it is really the body and blood of Christ, how can we come and go from the rail as if nothing had happened there?"
• "If it is really the body and blood of Christ, why don't we treat the elements with more respect and act more seriously about communing?"
• "If it is really the body and blood of Christ, why would you NOT commune every time it is offered?"

I love it when it begins to sink in and the reality of it all almost overwhelms the mind and heart...  If is it really the body and blood of Jesus...  And that is the whole point.  It is whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we believe it or not, and whether we receive it or not.  When the reality of the Real Presence hits home, suddenly close(d) communion makes sense, preparation before communing makes sense, the sanctus bell makes sense, the elevation makes sense, the care given to the distribution makes sense, and the reverential care of the reliquae (what remains at the end of the distribution) is important...

But if...  I only wish we took all of the faith seriously.  Either it is true and all of it or none of it and it is not worth believing.  That is the whole point.  We cannot piecemeal away the truth or pick and choose the things of God and His revelation as if they were options, we come on bended knee confessing, praying, hearing, responding, adoring, receiving, and departing with nothing less than God in our midst, speaking through the voice of the Pastor, and feeding us the heavenly meal that prefigures what is to come even as it bestows the promised gifts of Calvary.

How might we Lutherans be different if we believed and acted as if it were really true... which it is.

Salt and light people. . .

Sermon preached for Epiphany 5A, on Sunday, February 9, 2014.

    We commonly talk of folks as being the salt of the earth people – plain, decent people, reliable, dependable.  But that is not the way the Lord uses salt in the Gospel today.  To be salt is not simply to be plain old decent folk.  It is to be distinctive, to stand out, and to be noticed for the Christ who lives in you.
    Often Lutherans complain that worship and faith are too, well, elaborate, too complex.  Would we not be more successful if we had simpler worship, plainer services, and a simple faith behind it all?  Some think confessions, creeds, liturgy and hymns get in the way of an easier, simpler faith and an easier, simpler Jesus.  A basic salt and light faith that might be more appealing to the masses, more friendly to folks not accustomed to distinctively Christian things.
    Somehow this always ends up in an attempt to boil down faith to its fewest essentials.   "What is the least I need to believe or to do to be saved?"  The problem with this all is that Jesus is not simple, His call no cheap moralistic demand to be good or at least be better people, and the mystery of the faith, as St. Paul put it, exceeds what eye has seen, heart imagined, and mind conceived.  It is so complicated only faith gets it.  The salt and light Gospel for today is nothing less than the call to faith, to distinctive faith that stands out and does not worry about blending in.
    Jesus says, "You are the salt of the earth."  It is the kind of thing lost to a people on low sodium diets who have learned to see salt at some thing bad or something cheap.  The salt of Jesus’ day was precious and the more potent the more valuable.  Salt here is the potent seasoning that changes flavor, that preserves, cures, and prevents decay.  It is not cheap but highly valuable and worthy.  Salt that cannot season or preserve is worthless to anyone.
    Note that Jesus is not saying you might be salt if you tried hard or you could be salt if you wanted to be.   Jesus says this is who we are by God’s grace.  You are salt.  God has made you this salt.  He has declared you salt.  You do not make yourselves salty with good behavior points or sacrificial generosity or works of righteousness.  This is who you are in Christ.  This is what happens in baptism and Spirit given faith.  This is the call to be who you are.
    With this is implicit the warning not to lose what God has given you.  There are warnings to the preacher not to preach another Gospel than this Gospel of what Christ has done and there are warnings to the hearer to refrain from itching ears that exchange what seasons and saves for what is worthless.  Lose the distinctive of Christ and Him crucified and your saltiness is gone.
    Jesus says "You are light."  Not the cheap and easy light you hit the switch for but the precious light of a world captive to darkness and light.  You are light in Christ who lives in you by baptism and faith.  You are light – the bold and powerful light that chases away the shadows of guilt, shame, despair and death.  Christ shines in you and through you.  Again, this is not an option given to us if we want but a declaration of what God has done in you by baptism and faith.
    This is not the light of human effort, organization, or plan but Christ who lives in you.  You are light.  You are not the source of this light.  Christ is. You shine with the borrowed light of Christ.  You are mirrors of Christ's bright and pure light.  Implicit here is the warning not to lose it or exchange it for the darkness of lies and death.
    We need to be salt and light Christians.  This is not a new program we need to adopt or some skill we need to learn.  This is who we are because Christ has made us to be salt and light.  The point of these words is to be who you are, the people God has declared you to be, who Jesus died that you might be, who Jesus rose that you might be, and in whom the Spirit has worked His miracle of faith and trust.
    This is not a back to basics call.  This is not about boiling things down to their simplest and most basic content.  This is about God at work in you.  He who died that you might live, now lives in you and works through you.  You do not make this happen – it is all Jesus – but you can get in the way.  You can exchange what God in His grace has done for the empty promises of sin, death, the devil, the world, and your own sinful self.  The call of the Gospel is not to become somebody different than who you are but to be who you are – a child of God by baptism and faith.  It requires the grace of the Holy Spirit at work in you to hear His voice speaking in the Word, to rejoice in the new life born in you by baptism, to receive for your good and blessing the wonderful food of Christ’s flesh and blood in the bread which is His body and the cup of His blood.
    There is nothing simple about this.  It is majestic and awesome, amazing and surprising.  It is God at work in us and through us by baptism and faith.  You are already His agents and instruments.  You are already filled with the potent seasoning of the Gospel, with the powerful preservatives of grace and mercy, and with the light that overcomes death's darkness.  Salt and light are not programs to help us become what we might be but the declaration from God who we are.  You are not in this alone.  The Holy Spirit is the power to enable you to apprehend what God has done, whom He has made you to be, and how then to live this new life.
    God needs salt and light people.  Not people to figure out what to do or be but to be who you are.  We do not need to make the Gospel more palatable but to let it be as distinctive as it is.  We do not need to simplify anything but to proclaim the full mystery of who God is and what He has done for us and our salvation.  The Spirit will work through this distinctive Gospel life and proclamation.  But we dare not dumb down or make more ordinary this extraordinary Word and faith.
    If the Church is in crisis, it is not because hymns are hard to sing or creeds hard to understand or services too ceremonial or faith too complicated.  If we are in crisis today it is because we are no longer distinctive people in Christ, people who stand out for the sake of the Gospel and shine with Christ’s light and season with His healing and preserving grace.
    This is not a call from God to shape up our behavior but to shine with the borrowed light of Christ and to season with salt our every conversation and work so that Jesus is center and God is glorified.  This is a call to faith, to extraordinary faith that stands out and does not blend in.  What God has done for us in Christ, what Christ has done in us in baptism, and what Christ has promised to do through us before the world, this is what makes us salty and empowers our light.  This is no call to be somebody else but the call to be who you are in Christ.  God make us this salt and light, for His purpose and for His glory.  Amen.

Are men are obsolete. . .

That is the title of an article in TIME by Hanna Rosin.  Read it for yourself. 

Or read this extended article on Underacheiving Boys and the Masks Men Wear.

Or just Google something on the topic of the decline of men.  There are plenty of hits.

What does it mean?  Many authors have taken up the same lament.  Men are no longer necessary to women, to procreation, to society...  Men have used this marginalization as an excuse for remaining boys and adolescent boys at that...  Masculinity has been reshaped by feminism so that men have become soft and weak...  Male only areas are falling while female only areas are rising...  This has also led to a crisis of fatherhood with perhaps a majority of children raised without a father figure...

I am amazed that in the Church there are those who continue cry out against the discrimination against women in those traditions that hold to the apostolic order and Scriptural presumption and do not ordain women.  Look around.  Women are hardly in danger.  The workplace is full of them.  Universities are full of them.  Churches are disproportionately female in the pews on Sunday morning and in Bible studies and service programs during the week.  We live in an age of the decline of the male and the whole of society as well as the family and the Church are suffering because we lack strong men, strong male role models, and strong roles for men in the media.  We have not only feminized the church but we have feminized Jesus and worship as well.

I believe that we are nearly in a crisis situation.  We have forsaken all complementary roles for some vacuous and illusive unisex dream in which men and women are the same.  We live in a world in which differences between the sexes are minimized.  We live at a time when men as men is not seen as something positive but as something negative. We have defined gender equality to mean that men need to be more like women and women need to be strong men.  It is not only a crisis of men but a crisis of fatherhood.

Am I speaking for effect?  Of course.  But unless we awaken to this now, we will destroy another generation with our false values and role models that are not only anti-nature but anti-God.  The truth is that women do not benefit from weak or adolescent men -- unless you consider it a benefit that woman now have roughly the same incidence of heart disease and stress related disorders as men.  Without the complementarity of distinctly male and female identities, the home, the community, and the church is left broken and wounded.

In some cultures the decline has become epidemic.  In Black American families, good male role models are in short supply, the vast majority of homes are led by single women, and a shocking percentage of men are incarcerated, missing, or dead.  But this is not a problem for the few -- the problem belongs to all aspects of the American culture.  At one point in America, virtually every child was given the gift of a married mother and father. Today, 40 percent of all Americans, 50 percent of Hispanics, and 70 percent of African Americans are born to single moms—and the consequences for those children are quite serious.

The West, in particular the United States (with the third highest divorce rate in the world) has been undergoing a crisis of manhood and fatherhood for decades, a crisis which appears to be deepening and the consequences of which we have only really begun to suffer.  We cannot afford to be smug about this or dismiss the disastrous effects of a weak and damaged masculinity upon our families, communities, and churches.  Women gain nothing from all the so-called advances of feminism if they are left alone to bear the full burdens of the workplace, home, community, and church. 

From Precious Moments Christianity to High Church Religion. . .

For Bart Gingerich, a fellow with the Institute on Religion and Democracy and a student at Reformed Episcopal Seminary, becoming Anglican was an intellectual journey steeped in the thought of ancient church fathers. He spent the first 15 years of his life in the United Methodist Church, where he felt he was taught a “Precious Moments” version of Christianity: watered down, polite, and unreal. His family joined a nondenominational evangelical church when Gingerich was 16. Some of the youth he met were serious about their faith, but others were apathetic, and many ended up leaving the church later on.

In the American Conservative, author Gracy Olmstead argues that Millenials are fed up with the Christianity Lite or "Precious Moments" Christianity of sentiment over truth and feeling over liturgy. That is true enough, to a point.  It is not simply liturgy that wins them over but doctrinal truth, unchanged and unchanging, which is expressed on Sunday morning in the ancient and catholic liturgy of the Church that is making Millenials take notice.  Whether the Western Catholic form and content or the Eastern Orthodox faith and liturgy, Millenials are searching for truth that is true for all and forever and for worship which not only mentions this truth but conveys its grace in the reality of sacramental forms (water, bread, and wine).

“If you ask me why kids are going high church, I’d say it’s because the single greatest threat to our generation and to young people nowadays is the deprivation of meaning in our lives,” Cone says. “In the liturgical space, everything becomes meaningful. In the offering up of the bread and wine, we see the offering up of the wheat and grain and fruits of the earth, and God gives them back in a sanctified form. … We’re so thirsty for meaning that goes deeper, that can speak to our entire lives, hearts, and wallets, that we’re really thirsty to be attached to the earth and to each other and to God. The liturgy is a historical way in which that happens.”

The sad truth ix that folks from my generation have let our preoccupation with self and feelings turn faith and worship into the certainty you cannot know for certain except in how you feel and what you want.  Our truth is only one person wide and one person deep.  Our worship services are shaped by the extensions of our preferences and desires with the assumption that if we like them, God will, too.  Our children and grandchildren cannot abide the kind of "Precious Moments" Christianity long on sentiment and entertainment and short on objective truth and reality.

The desire from the Millenials is not for form without substance but for substance which has a form and churches dare not confuse this as one more program or methodology to fill the pews.  Lutherans should be well poised to capitalize upon the changing landscape but we are not.  The folks my age are still trying to turn our garage rock groups into praise bands and afraid of ceremony and ritual as if these were the undoing of religion.  We long for a simple religion which is casual and flexible instead of the mystery of the Holy Trinity and of the Incarnation.  Where Lutherans are healthiest, Lutherans are really Lutherans and not Protestants with a twist.  Where Lutherans are Lutheran, young people are attracted.  Where Lutherans are Lutheran in faith and worship, there is a vibrant church with something to offer a people no longer content with casual, come as you are Christianity Lite.

The millennial generation is seeking a holistic, honest, yet mysterious truth that their current churches cannot provide. Where they search will have large implications for the future of Christianity. Protestant churches that want to preserve their youth membership may have to develop a greater openness toward the treasures of the past. One thing seems certain: this “sacramental yearning” will not go away.

Ordering the Order. . .

Former LCMS President Gerald Kieschnick wrote in his blog a year ago or so (yeah, I am that far behind):

During my days in office I had hoped to be able to visit with the pope, primarily to enlist his assistance in persuading the Christian Church to establish a fixed Sunday of the year for Easter, the first Sunday in April.

I must admit that it is a strange thing to be lamented -- he and the Pope never got to talk about changing the date of Easter!  Who would have thought this was high on the list of the things that a Lutheran leader and the Pope might discuss in their search for commonality and perhaps even unity!  That said, the whole idea of moving Easter is, while practically desirable, seriously destructive to the order inherent in the Church Year (yes, there is an order to the Church Year).

I guess for some it is just inconvenient that the beginning of Advent does not coincide with the first Sunday in December or that Epiphany is not always on a Sunday but January 6 or Easter falls early, late, or in between... etc...  Some would even suggest that the dating of the sanctoral cycle of the church calendar is arbitrary but the truth is just the opposite. The dates of the Church Year are in no way random. They have deep historical roots, theological order, and significance. The Church Year is not simply an attempt to order time but becomes a teaching tool designed to reinforce the doctrinal teachings of the Church as well as cover a body of knowledge from Scripture.

The most obvious order in the Church Year is found in the dating of the Ascension.  It falls forty days after Easter with clear deference to salvation history. Forty is the time of waiting from the Old Testament to the New. You can move the Ascension to a Sunday but it obscures this tie and further distorts the date of Pentecost (fifty days after Easter).

Epiphany is the Twelfth Day celebration, the end of the Christmas Season and the bridge to the fuller season also named Epiphany.  Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany are a common cycle.  To reorder the calendar to move Epiphany to a specific Sunday is to disconnect the Church Year even further from its own history and to lose the ancient idea of Christmas as a twelve day season and not merely an Eve and Day.

Reformation and All Saints suffer the same problem -- they fall on a date instead of a Sunday.  Perhaps both are overshadowed by the Halloween but how do you correct that without turning both days into a season instead of a feast day?  Sadly, for all intents and purposes this has already been done to the point that people no longer understand where All Hallow's Eve came from because Reformation has become the last Sunday in October and All Saints the first Sunday in November.  Would that it were not necessary to transfer days but sometimes it is a must.  At least let this be acknowledged as a break from the orderly order of the Church Year and not an attempt to organize ourselves to death.



Truth to be told, Advent might better begin in September in order to mirror the secular calendar but the Church purposefully gives the end of the season of ordinary time (Sundays after Pentecost) its proper due with its focus upon the end times and judgment.  The keepers of the calendar have already almost obliterated this focus with the introduction of Christ the King Sunday and the three year lectionary's experimentation with themes and pericopes.  Even so, the connection between the end times, Christ's return in judgment, and the harvest is still kept within the Church's calendar.

Yes, it would be easier to keep the calendar if some of these dates were set relative to a specific Sunday of the month but doing so would make the church's calendar more arbitrary and less orderly with respect to content.  The three year lectionary, for all its good purpose, has resulted in more confusion over the Church Year and a greater distance between the Church Year and the ordinary calender of the person or family.  No, it might be nice and all but it is not worth the trouble and confusion to the calendar as a whole.

The problem is that we not only seek to order the Church Year to better fit our organizational sense, we have already done so by eliminating nearly service opportunity outside of Sunday -- instead of scheduling more, we actually hold fewer services than previous generations.  It is no wonder people think of the Church Year as some mystery.  We have cut and pasted our Church Year nearly into oblivion -- it is largely a disorderly order even to those who would like to observe it.  This is not good and this is no time to be thinking about shuffling the calendar around again.

How personal do you want to get?

I will admit something probably uncharacteristic of a typical Lutheran -- I cringe just about every time I hear somebody speak of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  It is one of those key words used within the evangelical and fundamentalist community and it has surely crept into the Lutheran conversation as well.  I heard one Lutheran Pastor suggest that the purpose of catechism was not to teach doctrine but to build a personal relationship with Jesus in each of the catechumens.  I thought I was going to explode.

Those who generally speak of a personal relationship with Jesus are speaking of a personal relationship which is anything but personal in the Biblical sense.  They have in mind the feelings of the heart but the Scriptures nowhere encourage the idea of an emotional connection to Jesus.  Don't get me wrong here -- I am all for passion for Christ, the Gospel, and the holy life of the baptized.  However, our lives as Christians are based not on fire of an emotion or even the strength of our personal commitment.  They are built upon the means of grace wherein Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, comes to us in the most personal of ways -- through the Sacraments!

Those who seem to use the term personal relationship most are those who refuse the most personal of means through which Christ comes to us, makes His home with us, delivers to us the fruits of His saving death and resurrection, and imparts to us His Spirit.  In other words, the voices typically calling us to have a personal relationship with Jesus leave us empty of the very means by which Christ has made Himself most personally accessible to us.

I wish Lutherans would stop using that phrase.  We have adopted the evangelical vocabulary and with it we have unwittingly (or perhaps deliberately by some) turned our people form the most personal of means by which Christ comes to us to abide with us and we in Him and substitutes instead the uncertain foundation of feeling, desire, and commitment.  Our relationship with Christ is with an incarnate Christ and not with the idea of Jesus.  Our relationship with Christ is built not by our will and desire (though the Spirit is certainly at work transforming the mind and teaching us to love, delight in, and follow Christ's good and gracious will).  It seems to me the most unrealistic and fragile relationship if it is based merely upon the feeling of the moment or the strength of the will in that moment to live up to the feeling.  Marriage involves a public commitment which holds husband and wife accountable precisely for those moments when the feelings are fragile and we are most apt to ditch the relationship.  Our lives in Christ require the same objective and concrete source and means to sustain us when our hearts are empty and our lives a mess.

In addition, this personal relationship with Jesus often gives the impression that the Church is optional or at least secondary to this primary personal relationship.  In other words, it is me and Jesus first and me and other people with Jesus second.  The Church becomes an optional and voluntary association of those who desire it but not essential to me and my faith relationship with Jesus.  This bears no resemblance at all to the Church of the New Testament in which the means of grace are the source and summit of our Christian lives, flowing from and back to the Divine Service.  Why would Hebrews scold those who have neglected the ekklesia (gathering around the Word and Sacrament) to live out their Christian lives on their own if such communion in the community were optional?

How personal do you want your relationship with Jesus to be?  It can get no more personal than to be marked with the cross and join the ranks of the old Israel and the new, those baptized in the Red Sea and those baptized in the water commanded by Christ.  It can get no more personal than the water with the Word that kills the old life of sin in you and raises you up to the new life in Christ.  It can get no more personal than connecting you to the suffering and death of Christ so that His righteousness becomes the new clothing of your new life.  It can get no more personal than the Word which delivers upon His promise so that the sinner hears in the absolution the very voice of Christ removing the stains of sin and restoring the fallen to their place as God's holy child.  It can get no more personal than to be given a place at the Table of Christ -- a place we do not deserve and of which we are always unworthy.  It can get no more personal than to eat the flesh of Christ in the bread of His promise and to drink the blood of Christ in the cup of His promise (not some symbol or sign but the very and true flesh and blood of Jesus).  It can get no more personal than to be adopted into a family by baptism and to live in that family in the bonds of love, forgiving as we have been forgiven and serving as we have served.  It can get no more personal than to be set apart as the holy ones of Christ who bear His Word and mercy to the world in love for neighbor and stranger.

It is a false and unScriptural dichotomy to pit personal against sacramental.  In fact, the only personal that there can be in our relationship with Jesus is because our Lord lives in His Word and Sacraments to do what He has promised, to deliver what He has won, to nourish what He has given life...  Really, we Lutherans have got to stop borrowing terminology from others and direct our lives and our outreach to the present Jesus, the Emmanuel who keeps His promise still, and to the place Christ makes Himself known so that we might know Him by faith and walk in His ways to His glory forevermore.

Am I the only one who feels uncomfortable with the term personal relationship with Jesus in the way it is used by nearly everyone using it?

Values Neutral. . .

Thrivent Financial For Lutherans has again entered the news.  Some of you may recall when Thrivent's support of Planned Parenthood was exposed.  Then Thrivent decided to put everything on hold while it reviewed its policies.  This effectively shut down funding for pro-life and pan-Lutheran organizations who had received this funding for many years.  This is effectively a million dollar annual decision for Thrivent and it is NOT their money but the money of their members!

Now Thrivent has reviewed is policies and decided to be values neutral.  What this means is that Thrivent has no moral position, no moral position, with respect to the pro-life movement.  It is not supposed to support pro-choice OR pro-life organizations.  For some of us this is the revelation of what we always suspected -- Thrivent was always about money and is only about money.  It is a fraternal only to avoid paying taxes on its income and its requirement to return what it earns as its members determine.  Since it used to be Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, Lutheran organizations and ministries had priority.  Now it is clear that jettisoning the For Lutherans in the name of the company also means abandoning its moral compass.  Nothing is more consistent with the original values laid down by its predecessor organizations than the cause for life -- for children, adults, aged, and, especially, the unborn.  That, my dear friends, is no more...

 The logo of Thrivent once prominently featured the phrase Where Values Thrive -- appropriately that motto is fading away along with the values themselves.

__________________________________________  
 

Thrivent makes changes to outreach programs; united by a common purpose

In December, you received a special news announcement that we took action on Thrivent Choice® issues and temporarily suspended all pro-choice and pro-life organizations from the program.

After a comprehensive, organization-wide review, changes are being made to our outreach programs, including Thrivent Choice, Care Abounds in Communities®, Thrivent Communities, Thrivent Action Teams, Thrivent Financial Foundation, in addition to employee giving programs. These changes are designed to better reflect our identity as a membership organization of Christians united in a common purpose to be wise with money and live generously.

At Thrivent, we believe all we have is a gift from God, and that generosity is an expression of faith. Thrivent’s outreach will support a variety of organizations, including Christian congregations and schools, that strengthen our communities and reflect the shared values of our members. The focus of this outreach may change from time-to-time to reflect the priorities of our dynamic organization and membership.

As a membership organization of Christians, we work with many different members who hold a variety of — and at times divergent — views and beliefs. To respect these differences, we are putting in place a new neutrality policy to guide decisions for outreach funding. This means, Thrivent’s outreach will not support a small number of organizations and issues that distract, or have the potential to distract, from the common purpose of Thrivent and its membership.

What does this mean for chapter leaders?

·       We encourage all chapter leaders to read the policy.

·       Be aware Thrivent will begin implementing the new neutrality policy effective immediately, and program changes will be implemented over time. This means you’ll be receiving more information, as it becomes available, on how to implement program changes to Care Abounds in Communities, Thrivent Action Teams and Thrivent Choice.

·       Start to incorporate the policy into your decision making process when approving recipient organizations for funding.

Thank you for all you do to help Thrivent members unite around our common purpose to be wise with money and live generously.

Questions
Please contact a representative from the Member Connection Center at 800-THRIVENT (800-847-4836) and say "fraternal" or send an email to fraternal@thrivent.com. For faster service, have your member ID or contract number available.

Thrivent Financial Neutrality Policy

Thrivent Financial is a membership organization of Christians and works with many different members who hold a variety of – and at times divergent – views and beliefs. It respects the differences of its members and does not independently or on behalf of its members, advisors or employees provide outreach funding or support to organizations and issues that distract, or have the potential to distract, from its common purpose, which is to guide its members and society to be wise with money and live generously. 

Under this policy, certain organizations are not eligible to receive outreach support or funding. This includes, but is not limited to, organizations with a primary purpose of providing services for or advocating positions either supporting or opposing certain social, politically partisan, or health and human services causes and issues, such as abortion, sexual orientation, or guns. Decisions regarding the application of this policy and the eligibility of specific organizations to receive outreach funding or support are made at the sole discretion of Thrivent's management team and are subject to change.

ATTENTION ALL THRIVENT MEMBERS AND LUTHERANS:

Sign the petition by clicking on the link....

 

Domesticating God by the words we use in worship. . .

It has been our temptation since Eden.  We domesticate God.  We fit Him into our minds, our hearts, and our lives.  We tame Him so He is no longer wild but predictable.  We unpack His mystery by substituting familiar words for the Mystery that is His being.  We take worship and turn it on its ear so that we are both the objects (entertainment) and the highest order is personal preference.  It is certainly nothing new but it has been perfected in our time more than it was in others.

It is a tension within the faith -- the desire to communicate clearly and the pursuit of language which is eloquent and lofty and not simple.  Nowhere is this more in tension than in the liturgy.  When Vatican II came along it unleashed (unwittingly) some of the most trite, trivial, and banal language for worship that the world had ever heard.  The great collects of old were dismantled, their language dumbed down, and their eloquent phrase replaced by the most uninteresting an pedestrian speech.  It was positively jarring to the ear to a culture accustomed to Latin, which, whether or not you understood it, conveyed a serious and awe-full sound to the untrained ear.  The great musical tradition of the Latin Mass was single handedly replaced by folk music accompanied by a strumming guitar.  But it is not merely the sound that got changed but the text itself.  Lutherans were not far behind.

An example of the thoroughness of our penchant for simple and straightforward prose is the shift from the poetic imagery of the Proper Preface for Lent to a hollow and ordinary vocabulary in the name of being understood:


Who on the tree of the cross didst give salvation unto mankind that, whence death arose, thence Life might arise again; and that he who by a tree once overcame might likewise by a tree be overcome...  Became
who accomplished the salvation of mankind by the tree of the cross that, where death arose, there life also might rise again and that the serpent who overcame by the tree of the garden might likewise by the tree of the cross be overcome.

Have you noticed that simplicity required more words, not less, than the concise language of the poet which it replaced?

Our passion for understanding has slowly but surely dismantled the mist and mystery to leave God exposed and vulnerable to the simple, the mundane, and the domestic.  Now this is far different than God's use of the simple element to become the sacramental agent and instrument of His grace.  God chose the ordinary (water, bread, wine, etc...) to be sure but it did not remain ordinary.  His grace transformed the element into the majestic means of grace in the same way His incarnation took flesh into our Lord's divinity (to quote the Athanasian Creed:  not by the conversion of the divinity into flesh, but by the assumption of the humanity into God).

I firmly believe that language can do much good and much harm to the enterprise of the Gospel and nowhere is this more clearly felt than when we dumb down the texts of worship and end up dumbing down the God whom we worship at the same time.  Such is the difficult legacy of the modern liturgical movement.  An economy of language requires us not to explain but confess the Mystery.  Would that we had time to think this through before the books were published and a couple of generations raised up to know God and worship Him in language which is more simple than it is faithful.  The same could be said for translations of Scripture.  While there might be a place for a version of the Bible set to a third grade reading level, it is definitely not the Divine Service nor the worship setting for the people of God. 

The churches that are the modern heirs of the liturgical movement are even now realizing what it cost us to modernize worship in this way and are almost universally at work attempting to recapture some of the eloquence that was lost -- Rome with the new translation of the Mass is but one serious example.  It almost makes you long for the sound of Latin again!

Well, that's different...

The UN Committee on the Rights of a Child has issued a scathing critique of the Roman Catholic Church's handling of priests who had sex with minors.  Big surprise there.  A little late, maybe, but hardly a shock.  The big stories here are old and the record shows that the Roman Catholic Church has clearly gotten the message.  Benedict XVI was responsible for a huge number of cases that removed offending priests (though no one gives him much credit at all).

But that is not the big story. . .

The big story is that a committee charged with protecting the rights of children goes on in the conclusions of its report to castigate the Roman Catholic Church for its condemnation of abortion, birth control, and homosexuality, AND insists that the RCC promote gender equality and stop teaching that adolescents should not have sex.

Huh?!?!?  How is the first condemnation of the RCC dealing with priests having sex with minors consistent with the final recommendations that the RCC change its teaching?  How is the promotion of abortion consistent with a committee charged with protecting children?  How does unlimited access to free birth control benefit children?  How does the adoption of the GLBT agenda (with its consequent allowance for sexual relationships between any and all who desire them) benefit children?  How does encouraging gender equality benefit children?  How does the encouragement to adolescents to have active sex lives benefit children?

Without defending at all the terrible offense and scandal of priests abusing their offices and engaging in any kind of sexual behavior with minors, how is this much different from the millions upon millions of unborn routinely aborted each year by people who feel children are an imposition, burden, or undesirable aspect of their lives?  How is the scandal of the RCC any different from the encouragement of children to act upon their sexual desires without constraint and without consideration of the emotional, spiritual, and physical consequences?

Such is the black hole of liberalism that loves to criticize someone who disagrees with them and point out their foibles and failings but at the same time is blind to the abusive and tragic consequences of its own moral emptiness...  Nothing new here but the same old lies and deception by those who consider themselves protectors of children.  Shocking!

The culture of church. . .

I had someone ask me about the decoration in an Orthodox church -- idolatry or simply excessive ornamentation?  In the course of the conversation, it appears that we often forget how our perspective has shifted from the visual arts of the church to words.  We forget that prior to the 1800s education was spotty and you could not depend upon people in the pew being literate (and before that even sometimes the clergy).  Church buildings were of necessity visible words teaching and reinforcing the faith as much through what was seen as what was heard.  Lutherans were not at all uncomfortable with this and expanded the arts particularly on the side of liturgical music and congregational song.

At some point this changed (at least for Lutherans and then particularly in America).  Lutheran church buildings were externally and internally indistinguishable from Roman Catholic buildings for a very long time in America as they still are in much of Europe.  That changed, however, and buildings which looked the same on the outside began to look different on the inside -- especially in the amount of ornamentation.  For most of Lutheran history the crucifix remained and paraments but the walls became somewhat plain -- even stark.  Where I grew up the Lutheran church building had a Thorvaldsen statue of Christ and a crucifix on the ornate wooden carved altar.  In the center of the altar, just below where the superfrontal fell (parament for the uninitiated), the altar had an elaborately carved lamb on a book with seven seals.  Look around the rest of the building, however, and the walls were completely blank and we also had no stained glass.

At some point in the 1930s when architecture began to introduce the stark appearance of the structure without ornamentation, this plain approach became more common.  It ended up being the norm in 1950s and 1960s (before the whole architectural thing exploded in the 1970s into strange shapes often unfriendly to the liturgy and singing).  In essence the vast majority of Lutherans grew up thinking that less is more, that words means images are not only unnecessary but a hindrance to the faith.  Lutherans (probably like their Protestant cousins) developed a hostility to images.

Growing up homes often mirrored this stark approach to ornamentation.  Except for family photos, it was not common for me to see artwork in people's homes in the 1950s and 1960s.  Now my daughter works at a home decor store which makes its living selling ornamentation to people no longer content with blank walls.  For whatever reason, art and beauty in the church are still greeted with some suspicion even though we have long ago overcome our aversion to art and ornamentation at home.

The culture of the church is not only for the ear but for the eye (I would include smell here but I would lose half my readers by bringing up incense -- oops!).  We do ourselves no favors by abandoning richly textured fabric, the flow of form, and visual images in the sanctuary.  It is not better left to the imagination.  As people we are as visual as ever yet our church buildings look like warehouses.  This is not helping us out.  Sadly, we have left ourselves so impoverished of original art, artists, and artisans that we resort to giant TV screens and temporary images instead.  We have also decided to build on the cheap with art being the first thing to go when we begin running out of money for construction.

Check out images from Our Savior in Houston -- a congregation where 10% of the construction budget (or more) was used for art in service to the Word.

Preaching for. . . ?

What is the goal of preaching?  It is a straight forward enough question.  I am afraid the answers are all over the page -- even from those within the same Christian tradition.  Lutherans have traditionally spoken of preaching as a sacramental act.  The goal of preaching is to preach the whole counsel of God's Word because that Word is itself a means of grace, dare I say the chief means of grace.  So if the Word of God is preached faithfully, carefully distinguishing the Law and Gospel (that which demands from that which imparts), then the Word will accomplish its purpose (Isaiah 55).

The hope is, of course, that this will result in the transformation of the lives of the hearers but this is the fruit rather than the goal of faithful preaching.  The confidence is, to be sure, that God's saving will and gracious purpose will be fulfilled in His own time when His Word is faithfully proclaimed -- even though we fail to see with our eyes any difference in the external lives of the hearers.

For those who do not believe the Word has the power to do what is says, preaching has a much more basic and fundamental task -- to change the hearer.  In this respect, preaching (largely evangelical preaching) is much akin to motivational speaking -- except that the topic and the character of the proclamation is different.  I suspect, however, that many in the pews and those outside churches might have a more difficult time distinguishing motivational speaking from such evangelical preaching.

Rick Warren, here cited not as a spokesman for evangelical Christianity but more as a prominent example, has characterized the goal of preaching strictly as transformational.  You can read his whole article here.  Let me quote a couple of paragraphs from that article.  First:

If God's objective for every believer is to transform us into total Christlikeness, then the objective of preaching is to motivate people to develop Christlike convictions (to think like Jesus), Christlike character (to feel like Jesus), and Christlike conduct (to act like Jesus). Every other objective of preaching is secondary. At the end of the sermon, if people aren't being transformed in how they think, feel, and act, I've missed the mark as a preacher.

It is clear that Warren believes the preacher's job is to develop the mindset of Christ, the heart of Christ, and the life of Christ in the hearer.  That is a tall order, indeed.  While I am confident that Warren would admit that God is at work in this process, it is also clear that Warren places the burden of this task upon the preacher.  The whole measure of the proclamation can be effectively gauged and evaluated then by the visible and demonstrable transformation of the lives of the hearers.  I am not at all sure that Jesus would survive the cut since the result of many of His sermons was that people neither understood nor accepted what they had heard and even His most intimate disciples found His preaching hard and difficult.

Second:

To put it another way, the ultimate goal of preaching is not information. In fact, giving people a greater knowledge of the Bible can cause pride to develop in our hearers rather than humility if that information isn't translated into obedience. And the goal if preaching is not merely instruction either. Preaching certainly includes instruction, but there is more to preaching that mere behavior modification. The goal of well-rounded preaching is transformation and obedience.

I would heartily agree that the object of the sermon is not to inform (at least in the sense of imparting knowledge).  The sermon is not a Bible study nor is it a class lecture.  But it seems that Warren and many of his kind fail to believe that God is at work right there in the Word.  The Word is a tool in the hand of the preacher instead of the preacher a tool for the Word.  Warren also insists that he is not speaking simply of behavior modification but certainly this is a very important component of the transformation for obedience that is the goal of his well-rounded sermon.

Finally:

Pastors, we are in the business of producing repentance. And repentance is more than being sorry, it's more than confessing sin, and it's more than changing some bad habits. Repentance involves a total change of our thinking to be in agreement with God, which affects our emotions and moves us to act in obedience.

Who would disagree with the fact that preaching produces repentance?  What is at issue here is whether this repentance and change of heart that results in obedience is simply the response of the hearer to good motivational and transformational preaching or the working of God through the Word by the power of the Spirit?  As Lutheran Christians we would insist that the fruit of preaching is exactly this -- repentance -- but this repentance is not a decision, choice, or even deduction on the part of the hearer but the Spirit a work through the Word as means of grace.  Faithful preaching of the Word of the Lord always results in repentance and this repentance leads to the fruits of repentance in the life of the hearer -- this is true.  What is at odds here seems to be whether this is the motivational goal of the sermon and the guiding principle of the preacher in preparing and delivering that sermon OR whether the faithful proclamation and explication of the Word of the Lord, carefully distinguishing Law and Gospel and preaching both fully, will result in this.

Lutherans (but not just Lutherans) are so very tempted to believe that the Word is one of the tools in the toolbox of the preacher instead of seeing the preacher as a tool of the Word.  This is not merely a difference of emphasis.  It is, in the end, a different Word that is being proclaimed for different purpose.  Much as we might admire such an effective personality as Mr. Warren, Lutherans dare not forsake our understanding of the efficacious Word in order to learn how to preach for results.  To do so is to forsake our right to the name and to the Confessions that define who we are.

Women Pastors... Stories of Women Who Left the LCMS

I really do not know how I stumbled onto the link.  It was not by design.  Curiosity got the better of me and I read a few of the stories.  I was expecting a certain kind of story and, for the most part, I was not disappointed.  I read three stories and they were very much alike (not in the person of the author but in the way they treated their time in the LCMS).  Inevitably, the villain was the LCMS, a church caught in a 1950s time warp, two-faced, deceitful, arrogant, rude, and manipulative.  In contrast, their move to the ELCA led them to find open minded folks who were more than tolerant, they were accepting.  They opened doors that the LCMS had closed.

You can visit the site for yourself and see if my characterization is on target.  In the interest of full disclosure, I realized I had known two of the Pastors described unfavorably in two of the stories.  I did take the characterizations personally and would challenge the accuracy of their description in these stories.  On the other hand, it was remarkable how I saw that my own pastoral practice would be judged similarly.  Example:  One complained that their mean old LCMS Pastor did not grant them a transfer to a non-LCMS, even non-Lutheran congregation.  It is LCMS standard practice not to transfer but simply to release those who join a congregation with whom we are not in formal fellowship.  That is my practice.  Shockingly, the Pastors of the LCMS (which does NOT ordain women) disparaged these women from pursuing theological training designed to lead to ordination.  I would do the same thing.  So what did these women expect?  Would they assume that an LCMS Pastor would promote the ordination of women and encourage them to pursue ordination knowing that the LCMS was not close to even considering the issue much less approving it?  What kind of two faced Pastor would I be if I actually encouraged a woman to pursue what I knew was not possible within the LCMS?

I could go on but I won't.  My point is this.  If the LCMS and its clergy affirm their own stated position, they are being bigoted, presumptive, arrogant, and rude.  That seems to be the standard line in the stories.  In other words, the only good LCMS Pastor is one who is at odds with his own denomination's stated doctrine and practice.

I know many folks in the ELCA, many of them are clergy, some of them are female clergy in the ELCA.  I know going in that this is not only an issue of tolerance but of full and enthusiastic acceptance.  I would be surprised to find ELCA people who do not fully support the ordination of women.  I would find it odd that an ELCA person (clergy or lay) would be at odds with their own denomination's stated doctrine and practice.  I would consider the person not a good member of their church body to be at odds with something so central as teachings of church and ministry. Who would want as their Pastor someone who is purposefully at odds with their own denomination's stated doctrine and practice?  If an ELCA clergy or lay person cannot with full conscience affirm their own church's stance, I would expect they would find a place more compatible.  If an LCMS clergy or lay person cannot with full conscience affirm their own church's stance, I would expect they would find a place more compatible.  Maybe not right away but at some point.

The common thread in these stories is shock and surprise that the clergy of a church body would actually believe, confess, and teach in accord with that church body's stated doctrine and practice.  How shocking is this, really?  Is this not the assumption -- fair and honorable -- that one would make of any clergy or congregation -- that they are in accord with their denomination's stated doctrine and practice?  I am not talking about little things here but major areas of doctrine and significant aspects of the practice that defines our walking together.

In other words, in order to be open to the Spirit, faithful to the Lord, and true to myself, I would need to believe and live in conflict with my chosen church body.  How tenable is that?  Most of the stuff I read in these stories I can dismiss without a thought but I cannot get over the idea that the only good Lutheran is one who believes and practices at odds with their Lutheran jurisdiction.  What a sorry state we are in when such is the inevitable conclusion we must make!

Lent to the Lord

Sermon for the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Presentation of Our Lord, preached on Sunday, February 2, 2014.

    There isn't a one of who has not loaned something to someone that never came back.  We make fun of borrowing a kleenex or piece of gum - we know they won't be returned.  This is no joke today.  In the first lesson we heard about Hannah who had waited a very long time and prayed mightily for a child.  Her many prayers were answered with a son, Samuel.  It might seem like she had it all now but this very same son whom the Lord had given, she lent back to Him for His saving purpose.
    Hannah foreshadows Blessed Mary who likewise loans her son to the Lord for His saving purpose.  However, the greater image here is the God who lent His Son to us, the Son who was incarnate of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, to be our Savior and Redeemer.  This was a loan which not redeemed; our Lord continues and remains to all eternity the Savior of His people and the Redeemer who purchased back the people lost to sin and death.
    Hannah came to the House of the Lord at Shiloh.  Her husband had already come and gone but she waited until her son was weaned.  Then she went, the same woman who had once stood before the Lord begging for this child, now packs him up to lend him to the Lord for as long as he lived.  Her sacrificial offering was not the child whom the Lord had given but the desires of her own heart and the surrender to His will.  She came with the gratitude of faith, trusting the Lord's will.
    It is a story of faith that makes us pale before her.  It is not simply that she gives up her child but she gives up her life and future for the higher purpose of God's good and gracious will.  We live in a world where we are taught never to surrender our wants or desires – not even to God.  Indeed we manipulate our prayer conversations with God to try and convince Him to give us what we want.  But inherent in faith is trust in God's good and gracious will.  This is Hannah's example, the shadow of Mary's greater sacrifice, but both point to Jesus’ sacrifice for us.
    Today is the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Presentation of our Lord.  The Law of God required that a mother stay at home with her child, ceremonially unclean for forty days after birth.  Today we might call it bonding time but the Lord insisted that the child was the mother's sole focus until she would come to the temple to give thanks for the child the Lord gave her and for His own grace preserving her from the perils of childbirth.  This is what Mary did.
    In addition, she brought her son.  In one sense, God was restoring the ark of His presence to His people since the rebuilt temple after its destruction in 587 BC put back everything except the ark of the covenant, which had disappeared.  Jesus is the one who restores God’s presence in the temple.Jesus had been circumcised on the eighth day and was already part of the covenant people of God.  But on this day He was presented to the Lord His Father, the first born, holy to God.  This was not about child sacrifice; the normal practice was for the father of the child to redeem or buy back the child with a payment to the priest of the temple.  But not Samuel.  Anc certainly not Jesus. Jesus is not bought back.  In the ultimate twist, we are bought back.  We are redeemed by Him who gives as payment His own blood for His people captive to sin and death.
    Nehemiah describes how this obligation to bring to the house of the Lord the first born son.  It was normal.  Everyone in Judaism knew this.  So no attention was drawn to Mary and Joseph and Jesus on this day.  It was so routine as to be invisible.  What no one saw that day was that this was no family presenting their child to the Lord but the Lord lending His Son to us to be our Savior – the sacrificial offering is the Son who as a man would suffer and die on the altar of the cross.  He comes to a grateful people and from a thankful mother who pondered all this in her heart of faith, trusting in the Lord when everything before said impossible.
    It might have gone forgotten and remained invisible but for an old man who asked to hold the child.  In the revelation of the Spirit, Simeon sees what is hidden in this infant flesh and breaks out into song, singing the future of this Son who the Father has lent to redeem His people. He will be set for the fall and rising of many.  Simeon turned this ordinary moment into an extraordinary moment of revelation.
    Lord, now You let Your servant go in peace (not go back home but to DIE) according to Your Word for my own eyes have seen Your salvation,, prepared in the presence of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel.  Jesus is still lent to us as our Savior and we still echo the words of old Simeon.  We have seen our salvation and it is the face of Jesus. His light shines in our darkness and His darkness has not overcome it.  Our only glory is the glory of Him who died that we might live and who lives that we might not die.
    Lest we think this was an anomaly Simeon was not alone.  Anna was there too, an ancient woman who had lived alone her whole life, whose whole life was the Lord.  She waited week after week for the sign of the Lord that He would now redeem Jerusalem.  Mary was purified and Jesus presented as a simple act of keeping the Law only to have this moment disclosed as God fulfilling the ancient promise and coming to save His people.
    In a real sense, every Sunday is like this.  God continues to lend to us His Son.  He lends to us His righteousness because we have none.  He lends to us His life because we are dying.  He lends to us His hope because we live in despair.  And it might all seem rather ordinary except that in the liturgy we sing with Simeon what God has revealed.  We are not giving God anything but He is giving us everything.
    There is little in the Divine Service that is really Lutheran except this addition of the Nunc Dimittis as our post-communion song.  How easy it is for us to be blind to what God does in our midst!  We think of the liturgy as the same old thing and we shrug our shoulders at the Eucharist but Simeon's song confronts us with the miracle and mystery of His presence hidden in bread and wine.  There is nothing ordinary about our Lord who comes to us, the Son of God whom the Father has lent to us to be our Savior and Redeemer.
    So after our communion when our hearts burn and our minds are opened in this breaking of the bread, we break out into Simeon’s song.  We see with his eyes of faith what God is doing in our midst.  What more can we do but sing with Simeon:  "Lord, I am ready to die, for my own eyes have seen my salvation..."   We have met the Lord here, Him whom the Father has lent to us as our Savior and Lord.  We have the taste of eternity is on our tongue, we smell in this bread and cup the scent of heaven in our noses and we hear in our ears the voice of glory.  Just like the anonymous routines of old were broken by Jesus entering the temple so long ago, the Spirit breaks into our ordinary with the extraordinary means of grace.  What more can we say but “Lord, I am ready for death, ready for life, ready for all things in Christ, who has redeemed me a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won me with His holy and precious body and blood...” In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Denying Death Any Dignity. . .

So far this year my family and I have dealt with the serious illness of one parent and the decision that full-time nursing care can no longer be avoided.  It is never a pleasant duty to dwell on the things that are not as you hope or desire but neither can it be avoided.  While I am a firm advocate of making the move to institutional care a final choice instead of a first one, there are times when no amount of family care can supply what a loved one needs.  As one who visits those of my parish within the nursing homes of my community, I can attest to both the reality of the need and the desire to postpone this choice as long as possible.

In addition we have prayed for one to be removed from life support and therefore the extraordinary mechanical means of sustaining life to his body.  It is never a pleasant duty for a family to get to that point where such a choice must needs be made.  Yet the alternative is not a salutary option, either.  My wife the nurse has many thoughts about those who refuse to end any medical treatment to the elderly who must rely upon mechanical means to sustain life to their bodies but who are no longer awake or mentally alert to what goes on around them.

While there is a constant pursuit of life for those who refuse to relinquish it, this is just as much an indignity as those who would hasten to steal away what death has not yet claimed.   In a culture that prolongs life and denies death by just about any means necessary (chemical, surgical, and pharmaceutical), we find ourselves surrendering any dignity of death instead of preserving life.  Previous ages, without the medical technology to sustain the bodily functions without sustaining life, learned better than we how to afford death some measure of dignity that seems to have escaped us today.

On the one hand I have been part of the struggle against those who would literally over medicate with painkillers those not in pain but clearly at the end of their lives.  Some would define hospice as more the hastening of death than the gentle care of the dying.  There is no dignity in smothering life with the medicines supposedly designed to relieve suffering but with the side effect of ending that life.  As a Pastor I have been blessed to see families resist this overuse of painkillers and to allow a small measure of suffering that offers also the benefit of being alert and aware of the family presence and the opportunity to live out the last moments of life instead of merely waiting for death.

On the other hand I have also attempted to minister to those who refused death, who denied its inevitability, and who insisted that another treatment, drug, or option be tried -- even when the patient was comatose.  In one case I recall a man in his 90s whose life came to a tortuous end because the family insisted that everything be done and refused every entreaty from pastoral or medical sources to provide palliative care only.  There is no dignity in hastening death but neither is there any dignity in increasing the suffering of the dying by attempting to prevent their death at all costs.

Our modern technology and our youth oriented culture have made death more difficult for us as a people -- even Christian folks.  In the end, we have left ourselves devoid of any dignity at the end of life -- either by our quickness to discard life as a burden too great for the living to bear or by our refusal to believe that all men living are but mortal.  I would never suggest that previous eras were better at medicine but sometimes I wonder if they were not better at matters of life and death.  They knew suffering in life and they knew the suffering of death.  It is not that they were resigned to it but neither were they consumed by it or the fear of suffering (as we seem to be today).  They understood better than we that medicine is best when it does no harm (neither the harm of death hastened nor of the harm of life uncharitably sustained only because we can).

Perhaps this is one reason why we have surrendered so much dignity to the circus ring of the funeral home and its celebration of life.  There is one thing that those who wish to hasten death and those who wish to preserve life at all costs can agree upon -- pain is the worst thing of all.  So it is no wonder that we would continue our refusal of death by focusing instead upon life and consoling ourselves that quality is better than quantity or that we did everything we could to keep mom or dad alive.  Surrounded by the familiar of sports memorabilia or symbols of our hobbies and favorites, the job of the funeral home and clergy is to keep up the mask by focusing on that which distracts us from actually confronting and considering death.

We would do well to talk more about death and suffering and not wait until the subjects can no longer be avoided.  A life insulated from such honest conversation is a weak and fragile life -- nothing like the lives we have in Christ where we are made strong enough to confront death and to rejoice in the life that Christ has given and death cannot overcome.

Just a few rambling thoughts near the start of a new year. . . that will probably look much like the old one. . . at least when it comes to the subject of life and death. . .