Relationship or Religion. . .

It happened once too often and now you must be subject to my rant against those who insist upon contrasting relationship (good) with religion (bad).

• Jesus did not come to start a religion but to have a relationship with you.  
• Christianity isn't a religion but a relationship with Jesus.  
• Jesus is my savior [or insert favorite other word) not my religion.  
• God hates religion but would love a relationship with you.
• Being a Christian does not mean being religious but having a relationship with Jesus.
• Christ does not offer redemption to the religious but to those who want a relationship with Him.
• I am not religious but I have a relationship with Jesus.
• Jesus is all about relationship and not about religion.
• I gave up a religion in order to have a relationship with God... et al...

Let me say it up front.  You have a relationship with Jesus whether you want to or not.  It may be a bad relationship (the one framed by sin in which you stand in need of redemption and under the destiny of mortal and everlasting death) or a good one (baptized, believing, regular in worship and prayer, and active in witness and service).  The point is that you do not have to want Jesus to be in a relationship with Him.  You already are and on judgment day you will discover that relationship -- though it will not necessarily turn out good for you.

Jesus does not want to simply have a relationship with you.   We banter about this term relationship like it is the end all.  On Facebook we proudly announce that we are "in a relationship."  Jesus does not want to be in a relationship with you that you can turn on and turn off like you do friendships and romances (or hook ups).

What is so wrong about saying religion?  We are by nature religious people (even religious about being against religion).  We invent religions to take the place of the true religion.  We borrow from religion in search of a personal deity and an individual religion that fits just us.  Why not admit that there are true religions and false ones and Jesus is the author of the one and only TRUE religion?

Jesus is not content with a mere relationship.  He wants us to know, believe, and confess doctrine -- the doctrine of the Scriptures that does not change and is once forever.  Religion is about doctrine and truth and no relationship substitutes for knowing the truth and confessing the doctrine of the Scriptures.  Jesus did not come to establish individual relationships but to establish His Church, His body, of which we are member members or parts.  Scripture does not describe us individually as priests but as a royal priesthood.  Faith is neither invented by the individual or defined by the individual.  We enter into the faith and become numbered among the faithful by baptism.  This baptism does not inaugurate a relationship but kills the old sinful man, dead in trespasses and sin already, and raises us up a new person in Christ Jesus, created for good works.

Sometimes I think I will scream the next time somebody writes or says "I am not religious but I do have a relationship with Jesus."  Really?  Jesus did not become incarnate, suffer, die, and on the third day rise so that you too might have a good relationship.  You were dead in trespasses and sin, claimed for the grave, without hope or the possibility of anything better until God the Father sent forth His Son born of the Virgin by the power of the Spirit to cover us with His righteousness, die in our place on the cross, and rise to bestow upon us new and everlasting life beyond our imagination.  He gives us these gifts through means of grace that transcend thought and desire and present us with grace and mercy in concrete and unmistakable forms.  Now you live in Him by grace through faith that must be fed and nourished in the weekly gathering on the Lord's day, in the Lord's house, around the Word and Table of the Lord.  If that is not religion, I don't know what is!

So bear me the pious platitudes about religion being bad and relationship being good.  It is a smokescreen of words that dissipates into the air as fast as smoke and leaves nothing behind except the momentary scent of what once was.  That ain't enough for me.  I need real truth, real doctrine, real living water, real absolution, real body and real blood in and with the bread and wine.  I don't need a relationship.  I need a Savior and a Lord who will count me as His own unworthy though I am and will address me through His Word and feed me with His own flesh and blood or I will surely be lost forevermore.  Christianity is not only religion but good religion and the only one in which the words deliver what they speak.  Anybody can claim a relationship with anybody but I want a religion in which Christ has claimed me from death and marked me for everlasting life by the power of His blood that cleanses me from all sin.

BTW I am not in a relationship.  I am married. 

My favorite part. . .

We use Evening Prayer from LSB regularly (with incense, usually too much for most folks).  In listening to a new family encounter sung Evening Prayer for the first time, I was struck by what part both husband and wife agreed was their favorite.  It was not the incense (yeah, I knew that was coming).  It was not the chanted Psalms.  It was not the Thanksgiving for Light.  It was not the Magnificat (which is my favorite hymn, thanks to Blessed Mary).  It was not the litany of prayers chanted into the shadows of the night.

We have a tradition of ending Evening Prayer with the traditional Compline antiphon before and after the Nunc Dimittis.

Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleepingthat awake we may watch with Christ and asleep we may rest in peace.

 

That antiphon fits well with the hymn paraphrase penned by James Quinn, S. J. and set to the wonderful tune Land of Rest in LSB 937.  I usually intone the antiphon (LSB p. 258) and then we sing Lord, Bid Your Servant God in Peace together as the lights are extinguished by the acolyte and the lights slowly come down until in the shadows I repeat the antiphon.

 

Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleepingthat awake we may watch with Christ and asleep we may rest in peace.

 

This was and is their favorite part -- for which she wishes we did Evening Prayer every night so that with Word and Prayer we might all devote our day and night to the Lord and then depart to our homes and beds with the antiphon prayer echoing in our ears.  There is something wonderful about ending the day and beginning the night of rest with the Nunc Dimittis but I do admit the antiphon is a marvelous bookend to the words of Simeon.  It is old enough that I have not come across any attestation but that is so often true of the best words -- they endure and no one can recall where they first came from!.

Watch thou, O Lord,
with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight,
and give thine angels charge over those who sleep.
Tend thy sick ones, Lord Christ.
Rest thy weary ones.
Bless thy dying ones.
Soothe thy suffering ones.
Pity thine afflicted ones.
Shield thy joyous ones.
And all, for thy love's sake.
Amen. 

[at about 15:30. . . ]

 

A new church called New Church. . .

I have mentioned the FiveTwo enterprise, with its roots in LCMS Texas congregations and official sanction by several LCMS districts, including and especially the Texas District.  It was the source of the sacramental entrepreneurs thrust for defining Lutherans and Lutheran mission endeavors.  It is certainly missional (according to those who use that term) and on the cutting edge of things (meaning skirting the fringes).

The claim is that the theology is the same but the practices borrow from the best (meaning effective) practices of other churches, business methodologies, and social constructs.  They are entrepreneurs -- they keep the faith and take what works to package up and deliver that faith.  At least that is their claim.

"In our culture today, very few un-churched people are looking for a church service. They are, however, longing for a place to feel cared for, and a place where they can care for others. When they meet Jesus there, it all makes sense."  So says one of the leaders of a FiveTwo mission planting efforts within the Michigan District.

Perhaps the best known and most clearly articulated vision of this strategy is New Church -- a mission in Katy, Texas, under the leadership of Frank Hart.  Watch the videos below.  According to those who go there, New Church is a big tent revival with an edge, has music that sings like a prayer, offers Jesus' words as He really would have said them, and does not feel like church.  (The last part is certainly true both in terms of the intent of New Church and the result).  It is pretty new (launched in March of 2016). 

According to Hart, they meet on a Saturday night for worship, food, drink, and fellowship, their sound track is rock music, and they emply a heavily sarcastic style of humor.  He believes that the music in worship should be indigenous to the culture and theirs is clearly classic rock.  The church is a placed where you can hear what you may not have heard before, say what you dared not say before, and where they really mean come as you are.  Their goal is for you to walk in and feel at home and to provide a place where you can become more and more what God wants you to be (the real path of freedom).

Their tag line is this: 

Your home is your first place,
your work is your second.
Your THIRD PLACE
is where you meet your friends
and find your true identity.
NewChurch might be your THIRD PLACE.

Finally, he insists that they are not some mamby pamby churchy church like all the rest of the churches around and they are not for everyone (well, not for those who like mamby pamby churchy church).  

I would suspect he has a congregation like mine in mind with this and probably most of the congregations of the LCMS would come close to his definition of churchy church with which he wants nothing to do.   I would also suspect that he views this enterprise as real and authentic in a way that most LCMS congregations are not.  And I would suspect that most LCMS congregations would view his enterprise as not very Lutheran.  That said, it is clear that the division in Synod between so-called missionals and maintenance folks is not over which music is sung but what kind of church we intend to be.  Lutheran is but subset of beliefs for this new church and the culture is the driving force in what this church looks like and does.  This is the real tension in our church body -- can Lutheran be merely a subset of beliefs or is it the identity that Sunday morning expresses?

Relief and freedom. . .

One of the consequences of contemporary worship, with its focus more on the people than on the Lord and on entertainment rather than the unfolding mystery of God's merciful presence, is the pressure to perform.  Praise bands rehearse because they know all eyes will be on them and all ears listening for their performance.  Pastors feel the pressure to rise to the occasion and preach relevant, pithy, inspirational, uplifting, and entertaining sermons.  Churches feel the pressure to package a spiritual experience that is to the liking of the consumer so that the consumer will return and patronize the church again, tell all his or her friends about the experience, and post positive feedback.  Okay, so I am exaggerating a bit but not all that much.

The gift of the liturgy to those who serve in it (presiding, preaching, assisting, leading song and chant, and from the organ bench) is that the liturgy works hard to mask what the individuals bring to the whole thing and to incorporate it all into a seamless fabric into which Christ and the mystery of His presence in the means of grace are interwoven.  There is less pressure to perform because it is the liturgy that is front and center and the core of the liturgy is Christ who invites us to worship, cleanses us from our sin so that we may worship, shapes our worship by providing the twin poles of Word and Sacrament, works in the liturgy by the power of the Spirit (again through Word and Sacrament), and then is the very gift that the faithful receive in the ear and upon the lips.

Surely we have incorporated some of this into the liturgical movement -- thinking that the goal of it all is to improve upon the liturgy and make it better either by returning it to a pristine moment (early church) or making it a vehicle of social change (so it is a voice of social justice, among other things).  But in the end the liturgical movement was not about recovery of what was lost as if that was what is most important but recovery of the liturgy as the form and a liturgical piety as the receiver of the gifts at the heart and center of the form.  The liturgical movement goes astray when it becomes about where to hold the hands or what liturgy (page number) to use.  Then performance enters it all as a legitimate element of worship.  No, the liturgical movement was best when it was about Christ the giver and the gift and the means through which the giver and the gift come to us.  In this Christ remains front and center always.

Relief from the constant pressure to perform is a gift of the liturgy to all those who play some part in leading it and to the people in the pews themselves.  Christ is the performer (who suffers no angst about improvement or ratings like we would).  He is the performer who is at work doing what He has promised and delivering His promise to His baptized people.  Those who practice contemporary worship presume that the liturgical folks are those constrained by rule or rubric but in reality they are those who are free and the inventors who create the worship and message of the moment are the ones most constrained and in bondage -- captive ultimately to the approval of the people who vote by their attendance, their money, and their satisfaction (ratings).  If the pastor is faithful preaching the Word, clearly distinguishing the Law and the Gospel, and presiding at the Table of the Lord according to rite and rubric, then he is set free from all fear and from the captivity of results.  For the Lord will make sure that His Word does His bidding and returns Him the fruits He desires.

Yes, I do work to make sure that presiding and preaching are done faithfully.  I practice so that I do not appear to be a stranger to the liturgy or unfamiliar with the words of the sermon.  Every pastor ought to do this.  But a servant of the liturgy and of the Word is the most liberated individual in church and is relieved of the fears and pressure to perform, to perform better, and to perform more than last week or last month.  Christ is the drama in the liturgy -- not the wonderment of what the creator of new, improved, and different worship products will have in store for me today.  Get this rite right and then we will all find the freedom and joy of this ministry.  Get it wrong and we will sweat the details as if it all depended upon us (which, if we jettison the liturgy and our confidence in the efficacy of the Word, it will).

Highly Elastic?!

"The Hebrew Bible, when read in its original language, offers a highly elastic view of gender.”  That, it seems, is the judgment of one rabbi teaching not in synagogue or schule but on the pages of the New York Times.  His point is that those who read the Old Testament in the Hebrew find a view of gender that bends and the biggest gender bender is Yahweh.  This "a dual-gendered deity," according to Rabbi Sameth, is testified to in the very name of God.

The four-Hebrew-letter name of God, which scholars refer to as the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, was probably not pronounced “Jehovah” or “Yahweh,” as some have guessed. The Israelite priests would have read the letters in reverse as Hu/Hi—in other words, the hidden name of God was Hebrew for “He/She.”

From all accounts, Biblical scholarship understands “Yahweh” as from the third-person singular of the verb “to be” (hayah), whether a qal imperfect (“he is” or “he will be”) or the causative hiphil imperfect (“he causes to come into being, he creates”).  Scripture supports this in several passages -- from the interpretation given in Exod 3:14 (“Say to the sons of Israel, ‘ehyeh [‘I am’ or ‘I will be’ (who I am/will be)] sent me to you”) to the use of shortened forms of Yahweh at the end (“Yah” or “Yahu”) or beginning (“Yeho” or “Yo”) of Hebrew names to the spelling “Yabe” known to the Samaritans to transliterations “Yao,” “Ya-ou-e,” and “Ya-ou-ai” as they appear in some Greek texts, the idea of a dual gendered deity is an invention. There appears to be no historical evidence to support Sameth’s rather creative but novel interpretation.  (Thanks to Robert A. J. Gagnon for the work on this)

It is one more example of someone's own ideology -- in this case a sexually slanted ideology, shaping the interpretation of Scripture and finding support for this reading where there is clearly none.  This is the common complaint against modern exegesis. While conservatives are often accused of allowing ideology to influence what the text says or means, it is precisely those who enter the Scriptures with a chip on their shoulders who seek to find what is new or novel but just happens to support the modern social construct and then to insist that this is what Scripture meant all along!

Faith does not read into Scripture what you want it to say.  This is the gravest of all the lies foisted upon Scripture and placed into the mouth of God.  The vantage point of faith is the hear the Word and listen from the posture of faith and believe what God says.  We are captive to the Word and the Word is not captive to us.  Invention is the mother of all disasters when it comes to the Word and the principle of catholicity needs to be applied liberally in the face of those who change the meaning of the words as often as they change shirts.  Scripture is not highly elastic but clear, consistent, and constant.  The Word of the Lord endures forever.  With all due respect to Rabbi Sameth.

Another goody. . .

“Who is going to save our Church? Do not look to the priests. Do not look to the bishops. It’s up to you, the laity, to remind our priests to be priests and our bishops to be bishops.”  -- Abp Fulton Sheen

Sheen is full of good quotes and pithy sayings.  This is another one that is spot on.  We presume that those who lead us will know what to do and will have the courage to do it.  That is not always the case.  It is even more true in the Church.  Leadership is a wonderful gift but it comes often with the weakness of desiring to be liked, loved, and respected.  This weakness can cripple the leader who does not want to say what people do not what to hear and who does not want to lead people where they do not want to go.  In our culture of polls, surveys, and opinion groups we are very good at identifying what some, perhaps many, of our people want.  We are, as this election cycle points out, not so good at raising up honorable, honest, and courageous leaders with integrity.  What is true for the political realm, is also true in the Church.

It is up to the folks in the pew to remind their pastors on Sunday morning to be pastors (and throughout the week).  It is so tempting to trade in the old shepherd's cloak for some voodoo stone that you can use to cast for vision and borrow the latest marketing or business gimmick to grow the Church.  Pastors get this stuff in the mail to the point where even the faithful ones wonder if there might not be something to it all.  If they are going to resist these temptations, the folks in the pews need to remind their pastors to be pastors, to do what the undershepherds of Christ are called to do, and to pray for them always to remember to be pastors.

You in the pews are the ones best equipped to dull the shine on the newest fad of leadership or motivational theory and remind your pastor to preach the Word faithfully -- in season and out. . . to administer the Sacraments faithfully to all the people. . . to catechize the faithful over and over and over again because their are many who lie in God's name. . . to admonish the erring not from a position of moral superiority but because the Word of God demands it. . . to visit the sick, the home bound, and the lapsed so that they too may hear the Word of the Lord.  If you encourage your pastor to do these things, then he will not lose heart or be distracted by the glitter of things that are all glam and no substance.

In the same way the faithful are best equipped to remind those who lead the larger geographical groupings of our churches to be no less than good pastors.  Our DPs or Bishops have become administrators and fire departments -- they follow procedure and rush to put out fires and then have little time to teach and lead.  They are not in the parishes often enough to know what is going on there and they do not know the pastors under their supervision as they function as pastors but only outside of Sunday morning.  I do not blame them.  They are under the same illusions that tempt us all -- especially that policy manuals will lead us into the Kingdom of God.  But they work best and fulfill their callings truly when they are no less than pastors in their care for the flocks they supervise.  Peace making is a great thing but it accomplishes no peace to paper over serious divide and unfaithfulness of doctrine and practice.  We need not a balance but an earnest desire and strong passion for both -- not one at the expense of the other.  Pray for your DP and for the Synod President as well.  They are only as good as the encouragement they receive to be faithful and the prayers that support their work.

Sheen had it just right.  Those who exercise the pastoral care of God's people locally and those who oversee it over a geographical area are not capable of being shepherds unless we want them to shepherd and unless we follow their faithful leadership.  May the Lord grant us faithful pastors and bishops but even more may the Lord grant us faithfulness among the baptized who will settle for nothing less!

On Deacons and Deaconesses

The subject of deacons and deaconesses is one that interests both Roman Catholics and Missouri Synod Lutherans.  On the one hand Rome has convened another commission to take a look at the subject (there have been many such commissions since the 1600s at least).  On the other hand Missouri completed regularizing what many, including myself, had described as the Wichita Recession of the Augsburg Confession in 1989.  In Missouri we have fairly effectively and with great unanimity dealt with the issues of lay deacons fulfilling irregularly the regular ministry of Word and Sacrament.  What remains to be thought through and resolved for us are the status of other lay deacons -- male and female -- licensed to perform certain ministerial tasks (that vary by district both in requirements to prepare one for such service and in the parameters of that service).

For Rome this is complicated. The International Theological Commission (ITC), an advisory body to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, spent ten years studying the topic and published its report in Le Diaconat: Evolution et Perspectives, (only an unofficial English translation is available on the Vatican website or from Hillenbrand Books.)  The new commission has a less wide topic but perhaps greater pressure and expectations upon it to open things up to women.  On the one hand, the question has to deal with the issue of whether or not deaconesses in the early Church, both from the evidence of the rites of institution and their functions, were exactly the same or the equivalent of the male deacons.  The ITC has pretty much concluded that they “were not purely and simply equivalent to the deacons.”



Second, this new commission has to deal with the diaconal office as it has now become -- one part of the whole office of the Bishop, just as the priestly office contains one part of the episcopal office of the whole.  So, within their concern is also  “the unity of the sacrament of Holy Orders, in the clear distinction between the ministries of Bishops and Priests on the one hand and the Diaconal ministry on the other” (as the ITC idenfified).  Tradition.  We have post-early church distinguished the deacon from his service and placed the office within the larger veil of the episcopal unity from which the priestly office itself derives.  So if the deaconess is the same as the deacon, that, by default, affects the office from which the deacon derives and Rome has a real conundrum on its hands.

Lutherans have a different problem.  Lutherans have insisted that there are not three offices but one -- the office of Word and Sacrament which we call the pastoral office.  We have acted like Rome in chunking off some of the functions of this office and assigning these functions to other offices (teacher, DCE, DCO, etc...) but in theology we have insisted that there are not three offices but one.  So in effect Lutheran Pastors retain the full office like Roman Catholic Bishops to whom they are more the equivalent than simply the Priest.  And we have insisted that Bishops or those who are invested with oversight (District Presidents) do not possess an office distinct from the pastoral office but merely have certain functions assigned to them that have not been assigned to others.

We claim the office is not simply the accumulation of all the functions (unless perhaps you are Wisconsin Lutheran), but we have rather acted as if this were the case.  Though we claim this is a new problem (lay deacons, who they are and what they do), we have in our past routinely divvied up the office as if it were some kind of pie that could be cut into piece and placed on different plates for different people.  In Wichita we insisted that the regular preaching of the Word and administration of the Sacraments could not be simply stripped from the pastoral office and assigned to others without ordination but we still have not decided what deacons are and how they are to function. 

We also have deaconesses which are a recognized commissioned office in the church but not simply female deacons and we have not yet figured out how these relate together or if they relate at all.  Rome has its problems and we have ours -- lay deacons (male and female) and deaconesses.  We need to sort out all of this as well but for us it is not quite so simple.  For we have commissioned ministers of religion (an IRS inspired term and not a confessional one) that pretty much permanently have been carved out of the pastoral office and assigned certain roles.

The ELCA wants to look like the classical three fold structure (bishop, priest, and deacon) and seems to be working toward fitting Lutheranism into that model -- with some success since churches that have claimed apostolic succession have entered full altar and pulpit fellowship with the ELCA which is tantamount to giving their orders their full stamp of approval.  What that means and what it is worth are debatable.  Missouri wants to speak about the uniform character of the office of pastor but then make exceptions to our theology in practice.  For my part I believe it will be easier for the ELCA to clean up its mess than for Missouri to come clean and think and act as one.  And I fear that Rome will suffer the most since expectations have been built up that most certainly cannot be met by those who want to see a priest in a chasuble in the Vatican.

Goal or process. . .

Perhaps the greatest division between the so-called missional pastors and church leaders and the confessional ones is personality; it has to do with whether they look at the outcome or the process.  The goal oriented missional leaders have an outcome in mind.  They look to achieve some level of measurable success in what they do.  These folks tend to see the Church as a project and the ministry as a task.  They often articulate their goals in clear, objective, and measurable ways.  The process oriented confessional folks seem to have the process itself as their goal.  They are less concerned with measurable or objective indicators of success and tend to define success in terms of faithfulness in the tasks -- tasks which are not the means but the goal itself (Word and Sacrament).

Missional folks look at the Kingdom of God as a problem or challenge placed in their laps.  Their task is to grow the Kingdom, to bring people to faith, to express more fully the diversity of the world in the Church, to build up the numbers, to do what it takes to make a difference.  As a result they are less ideological, less doctrinaire, and less oriented toward keeping what was passed on.  They are, however, very interested in being creative, in doing what works, and inventing new things as a sign of vitality.  It is not that they do not believe doctrine is important but that it's importance lies not in its unchanging truth but in its power to create an outcome -- i. e. make a Christian.

Confessional folks see the Kingdom of God as a given -- it was there before they arrived and it will be there after they leave but by God's design and promise.  It is their task not to grow it but to faithfully deliver the means of grace by which the Kingdom grows.  Statistics or outcomes are less significant in their view than the faithfulness to the Word and Sacraments.  Keeping faith with those who came before is just as important as passing on the unchanging sacred deposit whole and undefiled to those who come after them.  It is not that they don't want the Church to grow but that they believe the growth of the Church happens in a variety of ways not all of which are specific or measurable.

Missional folks are definitely better leaders but confessional folks are better pastors.  Missional folks want to empower others to provide pastoral care and to do the mission defining, vision casting, future predicting stuff that leaders do.  Confessional folks want to do the pastoral care and leave the mission to the means of grace.  They don't really want to be known as leaders but they do like being called  faithful pastors. 

I will admit to being drawn to both.  I have goals for my parish.  I have things I want to see happen.  But I find it hard to lead because I spend most of my time on pastoral care things.  In the end, this is not a distraction to me but the real thing that endures.  My lasting work is not in seeing what is not and helping people get there but in delivering the Word and Sacraments to God's people.  My real goal is not growing the Church but faithfully delivering the means of grace that grow the Christian and grow the Church -- God's work, not mine.

In the end, I have discovered that being a pastor is a lot like caring for a house and a family.  You do the same things over and over and over again.  How many sermons do you preach!  How many services do you lead!  How many classes do you teach!  How many visits do you make!  It is like my mother and the mind boggling number of times she has done laundry, cooked meals, cleaned the house, and everything else that is continually done to keep the household functioning over her life.  Although I am tempted to point to a completed project and say "this is what I did," the real thing I do is not an outcome I can point to or a goal I can fulfill but the means of grace delivered to the people of God over and over and over again.

If you can be happy doing this, you will be a good pastor.  If you long in your soul for goals to work for and success to measure, the pastoral ministry is probably not your thing.  God never relinquishes the power to us but insists upon using His power through our work, words, and actions.  But it always remains His to do.  Though I am instinctively a project person, I have learned that the process is itself a goal, my goal and purpose.  And I have learned to be content in that in a way that would have surprised the me who first set foot in a parish and was called Pastor.

What is this thing called freedom of religion?

Without meaning to pick on Hillary Clinton, her words in an op ed piece in Utah only illustrate how the freedom of religion is being bantered about today and how many of us are coming to understand this right.

Clinton wrote:  As Americans, we hold fast to the belief that everyone has the right to worship however he or she sees fit.  The fact is that the freedom of religion is not a freedom merely to worship as one sees fit or even to believe as one sees fit (as if thoughts could be constrained) but to practice the faith according to the tenets of that faith without constraint or abridgement of rights.  This freedom is not limited to the worship facility or to the mind but protects the belief lived out in the public square and the right to speak from the vantage point of faith to the issues facing our nation and our culture.

Clinton wrote:  We stood up for these oppressed communities because Americans know that democracy ceases to exist when a leader or ruling faction can impose a particular faith on everyone else.  The freedom of religion is not merely the freedom from the imposition of one faith over another but it also the freedom to protect the right of the religious against the imposition of laws and constraining the free exercise of that religion.  The government has done more in the last 5-6 years to constrain religious freedom and to impose laws upon the religious than ever before in its history.  One glaring example is the insistence that only churches can be except from the abortion and birth control mandates of Obamacare.  Not religious institutions or agencies or colleges or universities and certainly not the individual religious themselves but ONLY churches.  If that does not limit the freedom of religion, then what does?  Remember the freedom of religion was not enshrined for the protection of church structures alone but for the rights of the individual to believe, worship, pray, and practice the faith without constraint from the government and without the government choosing one religion as "official" against another.

The end result of such a dangerous redefinition of religious freedom is that it allows the majority or the government to silence the public speech and actions of the religious and to be an enemy of religion as long as it appears to be an equal enemy of all religions.  This was not the intent nor is it the manner in which our forefathers enshrined a religious freedom previously unknown and without guarantee to a people.  This is what we are concerned about.  Religious freedom is more than merely about what we think in our minds, pray in our hearts, or do behind the closed doors of our churches.  Somebody needs to remind all our politicians about this and perhaps we as a nation need some schooling in religious liberty as well.

Sunday morning does need protection but so does Monday through Saturday.  Otherwise we have the cruelest imposition against religion of all -- one that suggests you can believe however you want but it has no place influencing how you act or what you say outside of church.

The choosing God. . .

When I went to junior college (an antiquated term that only emphasizes how old I am), there were more than thirty pre-sem students in my classes -- learning Greek and German with the classic liberal arts curriculum.  I did not originally plan to become a pastor and instead had the idea I might be a doctor -- an old fashioned kind of family doctor or general practitioner in a small town.  Then the campus pastor for St. John's came and preached at a parish anniversary (he was a son of my congregation and his father, a pastor there for twenty-six years, was buried in our cemetery).  When I got to Winfield, pre-sem seemed to be the program and I signed on the dotted line.  It did not take long for me to discover I was not the brightest bulb in the room but one of the dimmer.  I was surrounded by gifted and talented people whose learning, erudition, and single-handed desire to be a pastor embarrassed and shamed me.  But many of those fine candidates for the ministry left within the two years and more after the senior college and only a quarter or so of those who began graduated from seminary and were placed into congregations, ordained and made pastors.

It is, of course, a terrible injustice.  Perhaps the best Greek student I knew ended up a farmer in Kansas.  And the best thinker I knew ended up in the foreign service as a diplomat.  And the most talented guy in our class ended up spending much of his life in a wistful pursuit of an end never found.  Some of the most ordinary men in our class are the ones who now are called Pastor by their people.  It is patently unfair and wrong.  I should have dropped out and done something else.  They were far more capable and pious than I was or am.  But the mystery of the Lord's will is that He called me -- not because I was the smartest or the most pious but for His own wisdom, will, and purpose.

Comparing qualifications and abilities ends with Christ’s words to His own apostles, “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (Jn 15:16).  Those who are called into the Lord's service are not chosen by God for His purpose -- they are not better people but those whom He has chosen.  There is no justice or injustice in who the Lord calls.  There is no fairness or lack of fairness in His will and purpose.  The ministry is not won through having the right skill set or by the most impressive resume or a spectacular interview. We can all be agreed that there are indeed many men and women with pastoral capacities exceeding those whom the Lord has called. As I learned from my experience, even those who go through seminary are not guaranteed place as a right owed them. God does not reveal why he chooses some rather than others to serve the Christian people as priests and ministers.  It is His Church and His will and purpose.

The greatest in the Kingdom are not the ministers but those to whom the ministry is directed -- the  saints washed in baptism for whom Christ died and in whom Christ lives.  The path to the ministry is not ours to define but to discern, not ours to change but one of the means through which we are changed, and not ours to dispense but whom the Lord calls.  We are not given the right to innovate a new ministry or to invent new prerequisites of those who serve, or to apply earthly conceptions of justice and fairness as if this were something earned or owed.  It is the Lord's grace and we discern His bidding and that is enough.  The Church is merely the steward of Christ's office and seeks with prayer and wisdom to discern His will in those whom they call to fulfill that office.

I am certainly not whom I would have chosen.  I know that others were better students, better thinkers, and more erudite and eloquent but the ministry is not a prize.  It is a gift.  It is for the candidate to discern the Lord's bidding for himself and for the Church to discern that calling for the whole and then to prepare, examine, call, and ordain.  It is not a business decision and it is not a an equal opportunity employment program.  “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (Jn 15:16).   Call committees would do well to consider this when calling a pastor, pastors would do well to remember this also, and those who were not called should remember this, too. 

The injustice of biology. . .

Erin and Marianne Krupa, a lesbian couple struggling to get pregnant due to infertility, are suing the State of New Jersey in an attempt to force their insurer to cover the cost of fertility treatments -- something that the insurer will not do until they have tried for two years to conceive naturally. 

Where do I begin?  This lesbian couple is not infertile.  They are incapable of having a child.  The only hope they have is the expensive and uncertain path our advances in reproductive technology and in vitro fertilization offer.  But alas!  This technology is not cheap.  Somebody has to pay.  So they claim that they are being treated differently than a heterosexual couple and that New Jersey must direct their insurer to pay for all that is necessary for them to have a child -- out of justice and fairness.  But that is the point.  It is patently unfair.  The heterosexual couple covered by the same insurer has to prove than natural conception is impossible (2 years) before the unnatural means afforded by advances in reproductive technology are covered (all or in part).  For the same sex couple no such natural conception is ever possible.  The same sex couple is by nature infertile and incapable of having a child without the intervention of man and medicine.

Dr. William Ziegler, the medical director of the Reproductive Science Center of New Jersey, said the issue of insurance coverage had long weighed on the field of fertility treatment.  “I’m not sure if there was a lot of thought given to the implications of what this would cause and how many New Jerseyans it would exclude,” Dr. Ziegler said of the mandate. “It’s a double standard. It discriminates against same-sex couples because they don’t have the biological equipment to have a baby the way a heterosexual couple does.”

Ah, there is the rub.  It is unfair and the rule discriminates because they don't have the biological equipment to have a baby in the natural way.  But who discriminates?  Nature!  God!  No, nature can be subverted and God wants us all to be happy loving who and what we love and doing what we want when we want it.  So it has to be the fault of rules, man-made rules that have made this happy couple so unhappy.

We are so very comfortable as victims.  We are so very happy to blame others when we cannot get what we want, when and how we want it.  And of course the ultimate evil in all of this are those Christians who have no sympathy or empathy for the couple.  We have learned so subvert the ways of God and the natural law so well that it is patently unfair that a same sex couple does not have the biological equipment to produce the child they desire.  But wait, technology is ever changing and maybe there is hope that someday we will not be victims of our "gender" or confined to the consequences of "nature."  When technology like this arrives, there will be true justice and God will be glorified.  Or not.

Repent.  Believe the Gospel.  It is not so hard to understand why the question was raised:  When the Lord returns will He find faith on earth?  Centuries from now, when those who survive will attempt to write the history of how the most advanced nation on earth completely lost its mind and fell apart, they may be drawn to the prophet who decried what God and nature had done to create this grave injustice and how technology set us free from ourselves to pursue desire unhindered.  Or maybe not.  In any case, we will all give account before God's throne of judgment not only for our sins but also for our stupidity and our arrogance. 

Read, mark and inwardly digest. . .

It is not uncommon to find instances in which Scripture is said to eaten.  I think immediately to Ezekiel.

It was then I saw a hand stretched out to me, in which was a written scroll which he unrolled before me. It was covered with writing front and back, and written on it was:  Lamentation and wailing and woe! He said to me: Son of man, eat what is before you; eat this scroll, then go, speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth and he gave me the scroll to eat. … I ate it, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth (Ezekiel 2:10-3:3).

And he said to me, “Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.” Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey.  (Ezekiel 3:3) 

Or Jeremiah.

Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts. (Jeremiah 15:16)

Or Psalm 119:72, 97, 101-103, & 111 or Job 23:12 or Revelation 10:9-10. . .

Scripture is not meant to live outside of us as something unfamiliar or foreign to our nature and mind.  No, indeed, the Word of God is meant to live within us.  God enters us through His Word and makes His dwelling place within us and in this way His Word lives in us by faith.  Baptism does not compete with this but seals us to Christ's death and resurrection so that the old has passed and the new has been born wearing Christ's righteousness and recognizing the voice of Christ in His Word.  We arise from the font to desire the voice of our Good Shepherd and by the power of the Holy Spirit His Word makes its home in us.

As a child growing up we ate hot grains for breakfast in the winter.  Oatmeal, Farina, Cream of Wheat, Malt-O-Meal. . .  My mother insisted that we needed food to stick to our ribs as we went out to walk to school or play in the cold and snow or do our chores.  She was right.  Christians need the food of God's Word to stick to their ribs so that they carry it with them.  We read Scripture not like we read for knowledge but as the hungry desiring the food of life, as the sheep desire to know and hear the voice of their Good Shepherd, and as the people of God who desire to be like Him in holiness of life and speech.

The sad truth is that the Word is not internal to many Christians, many Lutherans.  We have itching ears and desire the new and different more than the forever and familiar.  We are enamored of novelty and sentiment and get more exited over what somebody found meaningful on Facebook or Pinterest.  We are weak and easily led astray because the Word is not inside us but on the fringes of our minds, hearts, and lives.  We are easily swept away by the winds of change, by culture that seeks to inform the faith instead of the other way around, and by other authorities that compete with the Word of God.

Faith comes by hearing and it stays by hearing -- hearing not only what is outside of you but the Word of God that the Lord has planted within you.  Planted and rooted in you, this faith grows and sustains, endures and remains, and commends us when Christ returns in His glory.

The ancient collect gets it just right.  It is our prayer as the Scriptures are read in the Divine Service and at the Daily Office.  It is our joy as we pray them at home and in our devotional lives.  It is our duty as we teach them to our children.  It is our responsibility as we speak them to those who have fallen away from the faith.  It is our privilege to speak them in witness to those who have not heard.  But it all begins with me -- with the Word of God stuck to my ribs, inhabiting my mind, and informing the desires of my heart.  Won't you join me in praying this collect daily?

BLESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The cost of being Jesus' disciple...

Sermon for Pentecost 16, Proper 18C, preached on Sunday, September 4, 2016, by the Rev. Daniel Ulrich at Grace Lutheran Church, Clarksville, TN.

          Something that our modern Bibles have that isn’t in the original manuscripts of Scripture are headings.  When you open your Bible you see God’s Word divided into sections with headings or titles.  These headings can be very useful.  They can give us a quick summary of what that section is about and they can be helpful in finding certain verses we’re looking for.  But these headings can also influence us as we read God’s Word, they can color our understanding of it.

When you open your Bibles to Luke 14:25-35, our Gospel for today, you’re likely to see the heading “The Cost of Discipleship” or “The Cost of Being a Disciple.”  When we read this we automatically begin to think in terms of the market place.  When you go to the store, everything has a cost and you must pay that cost before you can take the merchandise home.  So we think similarly that there is a cost we must pay first in order to become Jesus’ disciple.  It’s with this imagery, with this thinking that we hear Jesus say, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not bear his own cross and comes after me cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26-27). 

There’s no denying it, Jesus’ words are hard.  We have a hard time understanding them; they’re difficult for us.  We want to be disciples of our Savior, we want to follow after Him, but we can’t imagine hating our family, we can’t imagine giving up everything, including our lives.   So, we ask ourselves, “Can we pay the cost of discipleship?” 

            No, we can’t.  We can’t hate our families.  This goes against everything we’re taught and we believe in.  Family comes first, blood is thicker than water.  We love our families and we can’t imagine hating them.  Sure, at times we dislike one another.  Husbands and wives argue, parents get tired of their children and children get tired of their parents.  Siblings get on each others nerves, sometimes on purpose.  There are even times when in the heat of an argument we’ll say “I hate you,” but to think about actually hating our family, disdaining them so much that we don’t care if they live or die...well we can’t do that, and we can’t understand why Jesus would say we have to. 

            On our own, we can’t carry our cross.  Our cross is our struggle against anything and everything that would lead us away from Jesus, and I do mean anything.  Our cross could be physical ailment; cancer, heart issues, deafness or blindness.  The list could go on, and Satan is skilled at using these things to get us to question God, to question His goodness and mercy.  Our cross could be persecution for the faith.  Everyday there’s pressure from the world around us to hide our faith, to not live by it.  It’s a daily struggle to stay firm in our faith when we’re attacked for it. 

            And we certainly can’t leave our possessions behind either.  We can’t imagine a life without stuff, especially the stuff we actually need to survive; houses, clothing, food, money for bills.  Giving up that stuff would mean giving up our lives, and we can’t do that. 

            We can’t pay the cost...and that’s the point.  Jesus’ words here aren’t calling us to make some “commitment,” “surrender,” or a “decision” for Him.  He’s not talking about what we, in our own strength, can do, but what we can’t do.  We can’t pay the cost, that is, we can’t make ourselves Jesus’ disciples.  That’s the work of God.  Christ paid that price. 

            Jesus paid the cost.  God makes us disciples of our Savior.  He makes us part of His family.  As a disciple, you’re not just a follower, you’re part of God’s family, an adopted son or daughter through the waters of baptism.  As a child of God, your desire is to live according to your Father’s will, to trust in His only begotten Son; and Jesus said that those who do “the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother”  (Mk 3:35).  We’re brothers and sisters of Christ Jesus, and we’re brothers and sisters in Christ, and in this family of God love and forgiveness prevail.  We show forth our Father’s love to one another, we forgive each other, and this extends outward, to our individual families, and to those not part of God’s family. 

            Jesus paid the cost.  He carried His cross to overcome ours.  With His cross, with Jesus innocent suffering and death, He overcame our sin and death.  Jesus’ blood was the sacrifice that paid the price, the cost of our sin.  He suffered what we owe, and because of that, your Heavenly Father forgives you.  He cancels your debt.  Now when He looks at you, He sees the righteousness of His only-begotten Son, and He credits this righteousness to you, promising you the full inheritance of everlasting life in heaven.  And with this promise, with the help of the Holy Spirit, God strengthens us to carry our cross as we look forward to the life to come, the life that isn’t tainted with physical ailments, persecution, disaster, and death, that life that isn’t filled struggles that try to pull us away from our Savior. 

            Jesus isn’t telling us what we must do first before we can be His disciple.  He’s not telling us what we must pay in order to be considered worthy to follow after Him.  There’s absolutely no cost we can pay in order to earn discipleship, but there is a cost that comes with being a disciple of our Savior, and we need to be aware of this.

This cost is clinging to Jesus alone, with the help of the Holy Spirit.  The cost of being a disciple of our Savior is to hold fast to Him, putting Him first, above everything else, and that’s what Jesus is telling us here.  That’s the purpose of Jesus’ hard words.  He’s telling us that we must be prepared to give up ourselves, to renounce all that we have (Lk 14:33).  Being a disciple of Jesus has it’s cost, and Jesus is calling us to consider this cost, just as the builder considers the cost of the tower and the king considers the cost of the war (Lk 14:28-32).  Being a disciple of our Savior means that we cling to Him above all else.  With the help of the Holy Spirit we do this.  But this means, that we must let go of other things, things that would get in the way of our faith, things that would shift our attention and worship away from Christ. 

These things include our families.  We can turn our families into gods, putting them above God our Father, above Jesus our Savior, and this is what Jesus is talking about when He says we must hate our families.  He’s not saying that we must have disdain for them, for this goes against His command to love.  But what He is saying is that we must abandon them as far as our spiritual resources are concerned.  We must give them up when they get in the way of our faith in Christ.  This is a difficult thing to do.  This is a hard cross to bear, and that’s why God sends His Spirit to us, to help us with this, to help us carry this cross. 

Jesus’ words in Luke 14:25-35 aren’t telling us what we can and must first do to become His disciples.  Instead He’s telling us what we can’t do.  He’s telling us that we need to consider this and all realize that we fall short on our own.  Therefore we hear Jesus’ words and we come to Him.  We come to Him and cling to Him alone in faith, because He’s the one who paid the cost of discipleship for us.  He made us part of God’s family, He carried His cross and died on it for our forgiveness and life, and He’s won for us the inheritance of salvation.  In Jesus name...Amen.