Much ado about something. . .

There has been a dust up in the Synod, not official, but a discussion over the issue of the role of the Law in the life of the Christian.  Some probably sigh and wonder if we are narrowing the narrow gate even more in our pursuit of a purity cult but this is not at all like that.  It is a good discussion on a particularly relevant topic.

On the one hand there are those who minimize the so-called Third Use of the Law (look up the Formula of Concord Article VI here for those who wonder what this means).  It is all grace and all good.  And then there are those who speak for the Third Use and insist that the good works we do are guided by the Law (which, as some say, always accuses -- but does not only accuse).  It is a good discussion because on the one hand nobody wants anybody to think that works count toward salvation.  Only Christ and His merits are responsible.  But on the other hand we come face to face with the teaching of St. Paul who repeatedly exhorts God's people to good works and the preaching of Luther which mirrors St. Paul.  On the other hand, Lutheran preachers today are generally not so keen on such a bold call to good works and exhorts the people to godly living (walking worthy of their calling).

I will not attempt to rehash or even summarize the whole debate here but I will say that it is a good debate to have.  Iron sharpens iron (at least so the Scriptures say).  If we are to be discussing things, this is a profound and serious issue to talk about and one that should not be ignored.  It cannot be a choice between the preaching of justification by grace through faith and good works. It must be both. As Luther put it in his 1535 Galatians commentary, “Therefore it is as necessary that faithful preachers urge good works as that they urge the doctrine of faith.” Again he wrote “This is why faithful preachers must exert themselves as much in urging a love that is unfeigned or in urging truly good works as in teaching true faith.”

My point is this.  Preaching the Third Use of the Law does require care but it is not so difficult as to give the preacher the option of ignoring it.  In fact, failing to preach the Third Use is itself failing to preach the whole counsel of God.  Yet who wants to do this?  Nobody that I know.  We would all rather end every sermon at the restatement of what Christ has done for you and presume that the Spirit will fill in the gaps and move the Christian to fight the flesh and to desire what is good, right, true, and virtuous.  Yet, therein lies the problem.  It seems, at least superficially, to take away from the Gospel to urge God's people to good works.  Perhaps more importantly, it steps on toes.

The Formula of Concord says:

Therefore, in this life, because of the desires of the flesh, the faithful, elect, reborn children of God need not only the law’s daily instruction and admonition, its warning and threatening. Often they also need its punishments, so that they may be incited by them and follow God’s Spirit, as it is written, ‘It is good for me that I was humbled, so that I might learn your statutes’ [Ps. 119:71]. And again, ‘I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified’ [1 Cor. 9:17]. And again, ‘If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, you are illegitimate and not his children’ [Heb. 12:8].

How then shall we live?  It is a joyful affirmation that God has in Christ accomplished all things for us and our salvation and yet the question lingers -- so, how then does the Christian live in response to God's grace and baptismal gift?  That is what this debate is all about.  How then shall we live out the baptismal grace and gift we have been given in Christ Jesus?  And that is every bit as much of the preacher's task as proclaiming that the wages of sin is death and the free gift of God in Christ is everlasting life.

I must admit that the beginning of my preaching career I found it easier to skirt the issue than face it.  Yet, I found, as probably most of my hearers did, that the proclamation of this Gospel alone was not urging me toward or defining for me the shape of the Christian life that follows from God's saving gift.  I confess that I need to hear the urging of the Law and need to be encouraged to good works.  I need to be encouraged to struggle against sin and fight against the dominion of the devil, the world, and my own sinful self.  I am not who I was but neither am I yet who I shall be.  And right now there is a battle going on within me -- not the easy battle between me and the world but the more personal and difficult battle within me, between the dying old man who refuses to leave without a fight and the new person created in Christ Jesus for good works.  I am certainly no better at this than St. Paul:  So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. (Romans 7:21-23 ESV)

This is NOT a question of the Gospel being inadequate but rather how God works to accomplish His will and purpose. It is rather about using the full language of Scripture to confront our sins and call us to repentance. It is about using the full language of Scripture to exhort, encourage, and instruct the forgiven sinner to live the new life given him in his baptism, reflected in new obedience and good works. For the Lutheran preacher, we use both ways of addressing the Christian because both ways are addressed by the Holy Spirit in God's Word.

This topic is not theoretical in the least but profoundly practical and urgent. Brothers, if we cannot discuss this, we cannot discuss anything. So I suggest we discuss this. At our winkels, at district pastoral conferences, and informally. The more the better. Searching the Scriptures and reading again our own Confessions. And I am confident we will be better off for it.

Living water. . .

Sermon for Lent 3A, preached by the Rev. Daniel M. Ulrich on Sunday, March 19, 2017.

What do you need to survive? Luther says we need: “food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, and the like.” If you’d ask a teenager, they may add a cell phone to this list. We need many things to survive; we need food, clothing, shelter, and relationships, but there’s one thing that’s foundational to life. It’s so basic that if we don’t have it we’d quickly die...and that’s water.

We need water to survive. If we don’t get it, if we don’t drink enough of it, we become dehydrated and die. This great need for water is seen in our readings today.

The Israelites needed water. They were in the desert, walking in the heat of the sun, on their way to the Promised Land, and they made camp at Rephidim. Most of the time you camp where there’s water that you can drink, but there wasn’t any water there. God had led His people to a place that had no drinking water.

Quickly the people grew thirsty and agitated. They complained and quarreled against Moses and God. They came to Moses demanding him to give them water, but what was he supposed to do, there wasn’t any water to give. The people grumbled saying, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” (Ex 17:3). The people complained and wished they were back in Egypt. They would’ve rather been slaves in Egypt than thirsty in the desert. They were so upset with Moses that they were even ready to stone him, to kill him.

So Moses cried out to the LORD, asking what he should do; and the Lord told him. Moses was to take his staff, go before the elders of the people of Israel and strike the rock at Horeb. God told Moses to go and hit a rock with stick, and when he did, water flowed from that rock. God provided the thing that His people needed, just as He said He would.

The people of Israel were upset, they accused God of abandoning them in the desert, even though all of God’s actions showed otherwise. God mightily freed them from slavery in Egypt, leading them to safety across the Red Sea on dry ground, and He promised to take care of them on their journey to the Promised Land, and He kept that promise. Just two chapters before this, He made bitter water sweet so the people could drink it. And then in the next chapter, God gave the people bread from heaven, manna to eat when they had no food. Did the Israelites forget these might acts? Probably not. Even though they saw God’s miraculous care for them, they still grumbled against Him when they were thirsty because that’s what we do.

We grumble against God when we don’t get what we need, or when we don’t get what we think we need. “It’s not fair that I have to battle cancer. God should give me a miraculous healing because I’ve lived a life full of good works.” “I’m a faithful Christian who goes to church every Sunday, I shouldn’t have to deal with marital problems.” “I shouldn’t have to struggle with finances, to pay the bills and keep a full pantry because I believe in Christ for salvation.”

We think we deserve a care free, struggle free life. We want an easy life, a prosperous one. We want God to give us the things we want, the things that we think will give us an easy, struggle free, enjoyable life. Our desire is for God to give us the immediate things of this earthly life rather than the eternal things of everlasting life. Our minds are focused on this life. This is what we think about the most. This is what the woman at the well was concerned with.

Jesus was in a town of Samaria, and tired from His travels, He sat down near a well about the sixth hour, noon by our clocks. There He met a woman who came to the well to draw water, because she needed water. Jesus spoke to her, asking for a drink. The woman was surprised because Jews didn’t interact with Samaritans. She asked Jesus why He spoke to her. Jesus’ response was somewhat strange. He said, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink;’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (Jn 4:10). Hearing this, the woman was confused. How was Jesus going to give her water when He had no way to get water from the well, and what was this living water any ways? Jesus continued, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4:13-14).

Hearing this the woman wanted the water that Jesus spoke of because she was thinking about the water she needed for her earthly life. How great would it be to never be thirsty again, to never need water again? But this isn’t the water Christ was speaking of.

The water we need for this earthly life, the H2O required to keep our bodies going doesn’t give us everlasting life. Even if we drank 8 glasses of it a day, at some point we’ll still die because of our sin. What we need is a water that washes away our sin. We need water from a well of salvation that’s deeper than our sin. We need the water that always flows from the rock of salvation. We need the living water of Christ and faith in Him.


You’ve heard me say before that all of the Bible is about Jesus. It’s all about Him, it all points to His saving sacrifice on the cross, and today’s readings are no different.

Jesus is the well of salvation, He’s the rock that was struck. He was struck on the cross at the sixth hour, at the very same time He told the Samaritan woman about the living water that He gives. At noon, our Lord was led away to Golgotha, and on that hill He was crucified, He died for the ungodly, for us, while we were still sinners, while we still complain and grumble against God, just as the Israelites did. Christ Jesus died for you so that you might be forgiven, cleansed with the blood and the water that flowed from His body.

When the Roman soldier pierced Christ’s side with a spear, blood and water flowed. The water flows into the font where you’re baptized into the Triune name, where your sins are washed away, where you are connected to Christ in His death and resurrection, where the Holy Spirit gives you faith, faith that trusts and holds on to Jesus for salvation. Christ’s blood flows into the cup of His Holy Supper, where you eat and drink your Savior’s body and blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of your sins, where you received that forgiveness, and where God strengthens and nourishes the gift of faith He’s given you.

In these Sacraments, and in the Word of God read and preached, you receive the Holy Spirit and the faith He creates. You receive the spring of living water that gathers and pools and wells up inside of you, and you receive everlasting life, a life that will continue even though you die.

You’re justified by faith and you’ve been given peace in Christ Jesus. Through Him you’ve been granted God’s grace and in faith you live in that grace, rejoicing in the hope of God’s glory, in the glory of His mercy and everlasting life. Because of this confident hope in that everlasting life you also can rejoice in your sufferings, in the struggles of this life. When you’re battling cancer, when there’s strife in your relationships, when the bills are greater than your bank balance, in faith, you can still rejoice because your Savior has given you what you need: the living water of everlasting life. And absolutely nothing can take that gift away from you.

We need water to live. Without it, we’d die. But the water of this earth can’t give us everlasting life, because it isn’t living water. Only Christ gives this water. This is the water that flowed from His side, this is the water of Baptism. With this water you won’t die. With this living water you have everlasting life. In Jesus name...Amen.

What of the Christian (Lutheran) University?

We live in harrowing times in which the very fabric of our past is being torn asunder by change.  Consider how we Lutherans came here and established colleges to train up church workers (then pastors and teachers) to serve the parishes and schools of our church.  We bought into the idea that this mission was not big enough and turned church work programs into miniscule minorities within a vast and diverse student body and academic programs.  It worked for as long as their were enough children being born and eventually heading to college and for as long as we could do this affordably.  Then we faced the crunch of expanding cost, a shrinking demographic, and an even smaller core of church work students.  What shall we do?  The temptation has been to mirror and mimic the state schools and the well-heeled private ones.  That has proven more difficult than we thought.  In the end we struggle to make the chapel a real center and home for the school and not merely a symbolic one.  We struggle to find the funds to keep up with the rising costs and the infrastructure improvements required by aging campuses and more discerning students shopping for their best alternative.  We struggle to maintain our identity as Lutheran (perhaps even Christian) universities as church work students continue to diminish and the number of Lutherans on campus with them.

Note -- I am NOT indicting any one Lutheran university or suggesting that we simply fold our hand and get out of the college business.  I am NOT blaming any one person or suggesting that this is a lost cause.  I am raising honest questions.

Let us just say that for the sake of the church and the world, a Lutheran university should be obviously Lutheran, that a Christian university should be obviously Christian.  Let us just say that this is NOT primarily represented by the complexion of the students but of the faculty and of the manner in which that university offers its various programs of study.  Let us just say for the sake of the church and the world, this Lutheran university should be different from other universities and not a wannabe or follower of the lead of "successful" state and private schools without a Lutheran identity.  Let us just say for the sake of the church and the world that a Lutheran university ought to offer a real diversity to the student -- one reflected not simply or even primarily in the flavors found in the faculty or students or how current its degree and study programs are but one that offers a distinctly Christian and Lutheran perspective against the world, the move of culture, and the trend of academia.  Let us just say that for the sake of the church and the world, such a Lutheran university might not offer the breadth of other schools or even desire to offer such but rather be more narrow in perspective and more nuanced in their catalog of degrees and programs.  Let us just say that for the sake of the church and the world, such a Lutheran university ought to be more backward thinking in terms of the weight given to truth and value and value far less novelty, newness, and trend in education (thinking here of the classics and objective truth over the foment of change that makes one wonder if there is truth anymore).  Let us just say that for the sake of the church and the world, such a Lutheran university (if one might survive in the landscape of what passes for university education today -- and I think it would) ought to present a witness that is unequivocal and unchanging in the midst of an increasingly skeptical academic world.  Let us just say that for the sake of the church and the world, such a Lutheran university would insist that the school lead and not the loudest students on campus, valuing order highly and promoting respect for the institutions, thinkers, teachers, and wisdom of the past that has stood the test of time.  Let us just say that for the sake of the church and the world, Scripture will not simply be consigned to mottoes or legacy statements of a school's heritage or chapel times, but integrated into the curriculum so that the students grows in awe and wonder of God's great creation as well as appreciation for His saving acts in Christ.

Okay. . . shoot me down.

The stupid and the ugly. . .

I watched a PBS program on 10 homes that shaped America and, sure enough, at least some of them were so ugly and bare that I had to wince.  Who could find the warmth of a home in a building that screamed cold, bare, and, well, ugly?  The joke was on architect Philip Johnson apparently had laughed outright at the declining fortune of Frank Lloyd Wright -- at least until Falling Water.  Johnson had thought that Americans had left behind ornament and style for concrete, glass, and steel in great slabs of nothingness.  Form follows function -- right?  American churches certainly thought so.  They bought into the utilitarian style of bland, stark, modern architecture and gladly left behind the Steamboat Gothic churches of their past and the stone spires they thought would become mere relics of a forgotten era.  And look what it has done to us and for us!

In the midst of all of this, I read an article by Anthony Esolen (always a good read) -- something similar he had written on before in Out of the Ashes.  It was a profound indictment of the exchange of art and beauty for functionality (when did that become a word, anyway).  If you have a WSJ subscription, you can read it here.  If not, you may have to be content with a few quotes below.

On the choices made by churches in the 1960s with regard to liturgy, hymnody, art, music, and architecture:

The great iconoclasm of the 1960s buried much of Christianity’s best art and music.
I have seen, in Catholic churches, minimalist Stations of the Cross that hardly can be recognized as depictions of the Passion. I have seen crosses that look as if a modernist Jesus were flying with wings outspread, like a theological pterodactyl. I have seen the Eucharist relegated to what looks like a broom closet. I have seen a baptismal font that bubbles. I have seen beautifully tiled floors, with intricate cruciform patterns, covered over with plush red carpet.

I have heard for decades effeminate “hymns” with the structure and melody of off-Broadway show tunes. I have read hymn texts altered so as to obliterate references to God with the personal pronoun “He.” This music would not be acceptable for a jingle to sell jelly doughnuts on television.

I have seen and heard enough. We must get rid of everything ugly and stupid from our churches, most of it visited upon them since the great iconoclasm of the 1960s. What’s needed is genuine art that stirs the imagination and pleases the eye, that entices the soul with beauty before a single word of a sermon is uttered.

Let me use an analogy. I am involved in the restoration of an old home that for more than 100 years served as the rectory of a Catholic parish in Nova Scotia. One of the first things we did was to tear out carpeting that had gotten dingy and moldy. Beneath lay plywood and linoleum. And underneath that?

We found in most of the rooms oak and maple floors, with three-inch-wide strips laid in handsome patterns, squares enclosing diagonals, and a large diamond set in the center of the original parlor. The craftsmanship was impressive, the execution precise. Other floors had large planks of seasoned hemlock, which absorbs moisture from the air and grows tougher from it. The hemlock is as old as the home’s foundation.

This kind of plywood covers beauty everywhere in today’s churches. You are not only walking on it. You are looking at plywood on the walls, hearing plywood from the pulpit, and singing plywood instead of hymns.

The first thing we can do to return beauty to our churches is to swallow chronological snobbery and find out what our ancestors, even those who could not read or write, achieved. I am speaking about more than the fine craftsmanship of well-turned balusters and newels, though we should desire that too. […]

Today, the word of God is proclaimed in translations that have all the charm and wonder of a corporate memorandum. Must ordinary people be fed the drab and insipid? The politically correct—another thing thrust upon people by their ecclesiastical betters—is always ugly. Get rid of it, period, no excuses, no exceptions. What Christ hath spoken well, let man not paraphrase. Let grace in the word be one humble way in which we show our desire and our gratitude for the grace of God.

Esolen is spot on.  Some churches have become glorified TV studios to promote the promoter whose empire of print and influence uses worship as a director might use a sound stage.  Other churches have sacrificed beauty on the altar of cheap -- solidly echoing their vote for Judas when Jesus was anointed with expensive oil and the apostle lamented that it was wasted on Jesus and could have been used for something useful.  Other churches have chosen creature comforts over every aesthetic goal and created large living rooms with comfortable seating, drink holders, and lines of sight to make sure nobody misses anything of the show.  Other churches have turned worship itself into an entertainment mecca in which every activity can be found to scratch the itch of people and the building showcases the best talent to fit everyone's taste.  I could go on.  You know it.  I wish I didn't.

The end result has been a lost of the sacred, a God who is buddy more than Majesty, a church which appeals to the fragility of feelings, whims, and desires, a Biblical illiteracy which virtually insures there is no heresy anymore, and a people who have been dumbed down by the dumb stuff that passes for the things of God.  We have become a stupid and ugly and vapid Christianity presuming to know better than God what is worship, better than God what is true, and better than God what is the church's mission.  The devil has had his way with us simply by allowing us to pursue unabated the deity of our feelings and the god of our desires.  He did not need to do much more.  In the end it is Christianity which must wear the stain of our ugly, stupid, and vapid ideas and ideals.  God does not need to rescue us from the Tempter but from ourselves.

Reformation Preaching. . . a few thoughts. . .

I have been thinking, always a dangerous thing, about Timothy George's article on preaching in the Reformation and how it was transformed and yet not a novelty introduced by the reformers.  He began his article (on both the First Things and Gospel Coalition websites):

The preaching of the gospel as a sacramental event is at the heart of Reformation theology. Preaching is also at the heart of Reformation faith—preaching as an indispensable means of grace and a sure sign of the true church. Where is the church? According to Article VII of the Augsburg Confession (1530), the church is that place where the Word is purely preached and the sacraments are duly administered. The Second Helvetic Confession (1566) went even further when it declared that “the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.”

Of course, preaching—unlike the printing press—was not a new invention of the Reformation era. Far from it. Think of Augustine and Chrysostom in the early church, Bernard of Clairvaux, John Hus, and the many mendicant friars who fanned out across Europe in the Middle Ages.

St. Francis preached the gospel to a Muslim sultan, and Savonarola declared God’s judgment on the sinful leaders of Florence. Bernardino of Siena, the great Franciscan herald, preached to throngs in the 15th century, calling on his listeners to repent, confess their sins, and go to Mass. The Protestant reformers knew this tradition and built on it, but they also transformed it in two important respects.

Central Act of Worship

First, they made the sermon the centerpiece of the church’s regular worship. Prior to the Reformation, the sermon was mostly an ad hoc event reserved for special occasions or seasons of the liturgical cycle, especially Christmas and Eastertide. Most sermons were preached in town squares or open fields. The reformers brought the sermon back inside the church and gave it an honored place in the public worship of the gathered community. The central role of preaching in Protestant worship can be seen in the way pulpits were raised to a higher elevation as families gathered with their children to hear the Word proclaimed.

Second, the reformers introduced a new theology of preaching. They were concerned that the Bible take deep root in the lives of the people. The Word of God was meant not only to be read, studied, translated, memorized, and meditated on; it was also to be embodied in the life and worship of the church. What might be called the practicing of the Bible—its embodiment—was most clearly expressed in the ministry of preaching. Martin Luther believed that a call to the preaching office was a sacred trust and shouldn’t be used for selfish purposes. “Christ did not establish the ministry of proclamation to provide us with money, property, popularity, honor, or friendship,” he said.

Much of what George offers us is good and challenging but I wonder if he does not find more commonality between the radical reformers and Luther -- at least more than I am comfortable with?  The great leaders of the Reformation were preachers and the Reformation preached its way into the hearts and lives of the hearers (as well as sang its way there, at least for Lutherans).  They did not introduce something new to worship but exploited the great treasure of God's Word as something not inapproachable for the common man but indispensable to him.  For the radical reformers (Zwingli, Calvin, and Bullinger -- as named by George), preaching was worship.  Without the mass, without any real sacramental presence or sacramental theology that located Christ where His Word says He is, preaching became the one and only means of grace and the sacraments ordinances with varying degrees of satisfying grace from participation in them.

Yet George does not note clearly the difference between Luther and these other reformers.  For Luther the sermon was not THE centerpiece of the church's regular worship.  The sermon did not compete with or displace the real presence of Christ -- His body in bread and His blood in wine.  The mass was not disposed of as so much garbage but reformed and renewed -- so carefully that early pew sitters could not easily identify the difference between a Roman mass and a Lutheran one.  The identification of the Sacrament of the Altar as pure Gospel with the chanting of the Words of Institution on the same tone as the Gospel was chanted is but one evidence that Luther did not make the liturgy the setting for the sermon as did the other reformers.

Secondly, as much as Luther was concerned that the Bible take root in the lives of the people, preaching was not a Bible study and the goal of preaching was not simply knowledge.  It was for Luther catechesis -- it was both source and consistent identity with the instruction in the home through the Small Catechism and the Table of Duties and of the home through the Large Catechism.  Luther did not dispense with the Catechism as the essential teaching form in the home and preached the six chief parts often -- with the texts of the liturgical year in the lectionary -- to root and shape the faith of the hearers in the church and not apart from it.  The marks of the church were marks that were seen in the context of Sunday morning and not as theoretical characteristics.  While the other reformers may have also had this interest, none approached Luther in marrying the preaching with the Divine Service to the catechetical instruction of the household and within the household and the Word of God that permeated both.

George ends by saying "The sermon is similar in one respect to the role of the eucharist in medieval Catholic theology."  Well, yes and no.  The sermon did not replace the Eucharist nor did it compete with the Eucharist but lived along side of and together fed and nourished the people of God and sustain them to eternal life and the marriage supper of the Lamb in His kingdom that has no end.

My point?  Just as I am not comfortable papering over the differences between Rome and Wittenberg for the sake of a party, neither am I comfortable failing to distinguish the very real differences between Wittenberg and Geneva for the sake of an anniversary celebration.

Will the real Catholics please stand up?

The Lutheran contention has always been that the churches of the Augsburg Confession were holding to the true and catholic and apostolic faith (and practice) and that Rome was deviating from the catholic norm of doctrine and practice.  Rome laughed in the 16th century and Lutherans laugh today -- so very comfortable with their now thoroughly embedded Protestant identity.  However, the issues then and the issues today are not so different -- for Rome and for Lutheranism.

• Can the Scriptures be trusted?
• Is the ordinary grammatical sense of God's Word what it means (or does it require special discernment, special office, or special Spirit to know what it says)
• Does doctrine change or is it constant, always the same?
• Is truth objective or relative, universal or subjective?
• Where is the authority deposited (Scripture, Scripture and Tradition, Papal Authority, Episcopal consensus, Conciliar judgement)?
• What is the norming norm that defines the faith?

According to an interview, the superior general of the Society of Jesus has said that all Church doctrine must be subject to discernment.  Speaking with a Swiss interviewer, Father Arturo Sosa Abascal said that even the words of Jesus must be weighed in their “historical context” -- taking into account the influence and practice of the culture in which Jesus lived and the human limitations of the writers of the Gospels. 

Since the communion of the divorced and divorced and remarried has been an issued raised by Jesuit and Pope, Francis, the journalist naturally pressed Sosa on the implications for these questions. When questioned specifically about Christ’s condemnation of adultery, Father Sosa said that “there would have to be a lot of reflection on what Jesus really said.” His own words:

At that time, no one had a recorder to take down his words. What is known is that the words of Jesus must be contextualized, they are expressed in a language, in a specific setting, they are addressed to someone in particular.

Father Sosa was quick to insist that this was not a questioning of Jesus' words but a desire to  examine further “the word of Jesus as we have interpreted it”  and to see if what we thought He said was really what Jesus meant.  This new process of discernment would be guided by the Holy Spirit.  So the natural end was where such a path might take you -- for example, could it lead to a conclusion at odds with Catholic doctrine?  To this, the Jesuit superior replied: “That is so, because doctrine does not replace discernment, nor does it [replace the] Holy Spirit.”

Discernment is a code word for doctrine evolving and changing -- not, of course, with the times as culture might influence but rather "within the Church" and under the teaching magisterium of the Church, sanctioned by the Pope, and guided by the Spirit.  In old fashioned liberal terms, this means that the Spirit could lead the Church past what Scripture says (sort of what the ELCA admitted when it made the sweeping changes in sexuality, marriage, and standards of ordination in 2009).  In this respect the Reformation, with its quest for authority and catholicity not dependent upon reason or personality, is still very relevant.  Indeed, the Reformation is still being played out.  This time it is in response to culture changes in morals and values that some believe require the Church to find a path around the hard sayings of Jesus simply to survive.

Do you wonder why I am a Lutheran?  Do you understand why it is even more important that Lutherans be the Lutherans our Confessions say we are [instead of the mainline Protestants, evangelical wannabes, and other deviations from the confessional and catholic norm that continue to tempt us]?

The death of romance. . .

Lutheran Pastor Hans Fiene has a probing article in The Federalist on how Millenials differ from other generations when it comes to marriage, family, and, well, sex.  In the article, Fiene speaks of how sexual desire becomes the impetus for marriage and family.  It is how God uses this desire that is the key.  Desire unfolds into love and love creates family and through it all the man learns to be the responsible husband and father that society needs and God desires.

Generally speaking, when a man pursues a woman, he begins by pursuing sex. To be clear, when I say this, I don’t mean that all men are Lotharios whose intent in approaching a woman is always to seduce her by the end of the evening. Rather, I mean that the biological desire to procreate is what first compels a man to pursue a woman, regardless of when he believes that procreative act should take place.

For example, the reason a Christian man asks out a cute young woman in his college Bible study group is because he’s pursuing sex, even if his intention is to not to have sex until they would be married. He sees an attractive woman. He experiences the desire to do what his body was designed for—to unite sexually with hers and to create life. And so he approaches her as the first step to fulfilling this biological need.

As men pursue women, however, they come to develop a more robust appreciation of what women have to offer them beyond physical beauty and sexual gratification. They become more exposed to the various feminine virtues—things like kindness, compassion, selflessness, loyalty, tenderness. And the more decent men encounter “the imperishable beauty of a quiet and gentle spirit,” as St Peter calls it, the more they come to value this inner beauty over raw sexuality.

Likewise, the more that decent women see men valuing their feminine virtues, the more they cultivate them and the more they seek the corresponding masculine virtues, such as bravery and self-sacrifice. We begin the mating dance by following our animalistic urges. But, during the tango, we become human as we discover what it means to love and serve and belong to each other.

It is a very interesting way of approaching the topic and well worth your consideration.  The death of romance is less about movie scenes repeated in real life than it is the loss of dating and courtship and its fruit of love, marriage, and family.  As another author pointed out, people today don't have romances or loves but have relationships instead.  And these relationships suffer because they have become contractual relationships designed for each party to get what they want.  Fiene is saying that what the man and woman wants becomes the impetus to lead them to something more -- something they may not have known or realized until desire led them to this point.  Many other authors have pointed out that this is exactly the problem for some, perhaps many, today.  Their desire is satisfied with something less than satisfactory before it ever leads them to romance, to love, to marriage, to children, and to the nobler and virtuous life God intends.

According to Lutheran theologian Daniel M. Bell Jr., there may still be some measure of biblical residue remaining to signal that relationships and singleness shaped by self-interest and self-love are not exactly all that there is. But, this biblical residue is not enough to lead to mature and self-giving "relationships" like husband, wife, parent, and child.  What has happened is that we have learned to “view others in terms of how they can serve our self-interested projects.” Other people then “become commodities themselves— mere bodies to be exploited and consumed, and then discarded”:

As a consequence, marriages are viewed as (short-term) contracts subject to a cost/benefit analysis, children become consumer goods or accessories, family bonds are weakened and our bodies are treated like so many raw materials to be mined and exploited for manufacture and pleasure. Those individuals rendered worthless as producers and commodities by obsolescence—the old and infirm—are discarded (warehoused or euthanized) and the nonproductive poor (the homeless, the unemployed, the irresponsible, the incompetent) are viewed as a threat.

Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote that in current American experience, true to Bell’s words, marriage often resembles a real estate transaction. Two autonomous individuals enter into a limited liability partnership that can easily be dissolved. Children serve as the various shared properties. And in such a world, an unplanned, unwanted unborn child is clearly the most annoying kind of drain on the emotional profits.

The great paradox of Christian faith is that the importance and value of the individual is affirmed -- no matter how weak or disabled or unable to produce or contribute that life may be.  This is the heart and core of the prolife movement. God has created us and made us who we are (fearfully and wonderfully made).  God loves each of us without limit -- not with silver or gold, as Luther says, but with the most priceless of currencies -- the blood of Christ shed upon the cross. But this Christian faith refuses to leave us as individuals.  We are bound into the body of Christ, the Church, and joined into a network of mutual obligation with others -- even those outside the Church, the family of the baptized -- the neighbor.  God has made us not for ourselves but for others and this begins with the simple and basic desire that becomes the noble and sturdy shape of love, marriage, and family.  Desire is used by God to build the unit that is family and this family is enlarged by our vocation to our neighbor to create community -- both inside the Church and from the Church to the larger community.  So, when we screw up desire, we prevent it from leading us to the nobler fruit and larger virtue that is love, marriage, family, and community.  The loss of romance is not merely the loss of romance at all but equation of a relational contract with love and marriage and family and the equation of self-interest for self-less service as equals and of equal value for society as a whole and the Church in particular.  What began as self-interest become something radically different. . . except, of course, where it remained merely self-interest and became little more than desire that could be fulfilled in various ways -- all of which excluded the selfless love that gives birth to marriage and creates family. 

A technological or theological Reformation. . .

Erasmus, never known for humility, once boasted of his influence by comparing himself with an obscure country preacher whose sermons were heard by only a few people in one or two churches while his books were read in every country in the world.  Though we might consider his pride and boast unbecoming, Erasmus was not far from the truth.  A.G. Dickens once famously quipped that Luther's doctrine was not Justification by Grace Alone but  'Justification by Print Alone.'  Though it would surely be unfair to suggest that the Reformation was a product of its technology, no one in their right mind would deny the benefit of the printing press to the success of Luther (and those who came after him).

Luther certainly depended upon the printing technology of the day, cutting edge as it was, and yet it may be said that perhaps only 5-10% of the German speaking people actually could read.  The nearer benefit of the printing press to the cause of the Reformation was not universal access but portability.  Without email, texting, or the social media, Luther was able to extend the reach of his words and no one was more concerned about this than the Pope.  What this offers to us is not only an appreciation of how the Reformation grew but the great record that has been passed down to us.  It seems Luther could not cough without someone recording it and publishing it as something profound or heretical.

As we make our way through the Reformation Anniversary (though some have wondered if perhaps the real date of to be commemorated is not so much the shot across the bow -- the 95 Theses -- but the more considered position of the Reformers in the Augsburg Confession), the printing press will loom large in our remembrance.  For though the number of the literate may have been small, it seems that those who could read did read -- aloud -- and extended the reach of Luther well beyond the educated of the day.  Luther not only knew about this but seems to have counted upon it.  He was an earthy man whose words seems to have been designed for the ears of an earthy people.  It was not that Luther could not write as a Latin scholar but that he chose to write, speak, and preach in the more ordinary context of the common man.  Luther's translation of Scripture into German marked the merger of this erudition and familiarity with the language of the people.  Luther’s German New Testament literally became the first bestseller in the world, appearing in forty-three distinct editions between 1522 and 1525 with some one hundred thousand copies issued.

Of course, over time, it was not only the translation and dissemination of the Bible, but the mass printing and usage of hymnals, catechisms, prayer books, study Bibles, commentaries, and martyr stories that would transform Christian theology and spirituality.  Not all of this has born good fruit.  Though the Reformers challenged the the medieval Catholic Church and its unrelenting grip over Scripture and doctrine, the outcome was not uniformity or unity.  It was said that even a simple layperson, armed with Scripture, was equipped to match pope and council.  However boldly asserted this doctrine of the primacy of Scripture, the outcome was division as had never been seen before.  As some have noted, Protestantism did not do away with the papacy but made everyone a pope to decide what Scripture said, what it meant, and what doctrine it confessed that must be believed.  That said, I do not know anyone on any side who wants to go back in time and erase the printing press from the record of achievements. 

While there was certainly disagreement among the many Reformers on many matters, they overwhelmingly believed that they represented the ongoing Catholic tradition and not sectarian schismatics.  Indeed, the Augsburg Confession insists that the Lutherans were the legitimate bearers of that Catholic tradition of doctrine and life.  Their sense of continuity with the church that went before, especially of the early church, and their attention to the wider orthodoxy of the early
church and Eastern Christendom led them to read the Bible in concert with the Catholic exegetical tradition of the church.  These Reformers, led by Luther, not only showed a deep familiarity with the preceding exegetical tradition, they used it respectfully and critically in their own exposition of the sacred text. Unlike today, sola Scriptura was not nuda Scriptura but Scripture as the source and norm and Scripture within the context of the faith and the faithful who went before.  In this way, the Scriptures were understood as the church's book and not primarily the possession or domain of the individual or his or her reason.  In one sense, the publishing goal of the Lutheran Reformers was less to promote what was new or novel than it was to show their abiding fellowship with the church that went before and the catholicity of their confessions against the Roman position.

Are there too many books today?  Perhaps.  Who gets to decide?  Were there too many books in Luther's day?  Not in the minds of the Lutheran Reformers.  Yet again, who gets to decide?  The technology that fueled the theological reformation was itself revolutionary and, while Luther and the other Reformers took the lead, Rome was not above using the new found ability to distribute information for its own cause.  No one, not even Gutenberg, could have predicted the flourishing of the industry and its scope.  Even so, perhaps one of the cautions both of those who wrote and produced the works of the 16th Century Reformation would be that not everything that has been printed, should have been printed.  I cannot argue with that point even though I wonder, "who gets to decide?"  That, from a guy who regularly posts his unrefined meanderings for a world to read. . . or not.

A life of regret. . .

Regrets, I've had a few. . . so goes the song.  Who cannot empathize with regret?  The conscience is the keeper of the painful memory not only of sin but of regret.  Life is messy.  Despite our want to clean up life and make for a neat and tidy existence, sin keeps rearing its ugly head and turning our carefully ordered lives into a mess of wrong, contradiction, and regret.  But thanks be to God He is there even in our mess -- the God of mercy whose Son is incarnate to live among us as one of us (without sin but hardly without painful appreciation of our sin and its regret).

No life has been lived more publicly and with more public regret that Norma McCorvey -- although you know here by the name Jane Roe as of Roe v. Wade.  Her story was messy and complicated and filled with more than her share of regrets. She became part of the American moral debate over life, a woman and her control over her body, and abortion.  Her case before the Supreme Court settled law but not the great divide that has continued through every succeeding year since her cause began the move to legalize abortion and create a legal precedence for privacy.  What remained more hidden was the deep sorrow, soul searching change of heart, regret and very public shame that accompanied this woman -- now to her death.

In her own words, she told some of the story. . .



The full story can be read elsewhere (the false charge of rape that began the cause to legalize abortion, the part of her life in which she actually worked in abortion clinics, her time as lesbian, her conversion and public baptism, and her later entrance into the Roman Catholic Church.  It is a story, to be sure.  Some accused religion of hijacking the poster child for legal abortion.  She insisted that  her contact with the mothers and children of families involved in the anti-abortion protests had at least equal weight in her change of heart.  She wrote two chapters of her story, one in 1994 and then of her change of mind in 1997 ("Won by Love"). 

Regrets would consume us without forgiveness.  At the end of such a tortured and public life, it is hard to blame her for the outcome of Roe v. Wade.  After all, states were already making abortion legal before her famous case.  She did not decide for a nation but our jurists did.  Yet her life chronicles the messy and complicated kinds of things that cannot be explained or resolved apart from the God who forgives our sins.   McCorvey died at an assisted living center in Katy, Texas, on February 18, barely a month after the Pro-Life movement marched to reassert the sacred character of life and its abuse at the hands of a nation and culture that treats life as disposable and dispensable.  She will always be a footnote in history.  In the arms of a merciful God, we pray she will be more than that.  In the meantime, we will continue to fight in a debate that shows no signs of ending though it has for Norma McCorvey.

Curiosity is not faith. . .

Sermon preached for Lent 2A, on Sunday, March 12, 2017.

Nicodemus was a modern man.  He had no idea if Jesus were the Messiah but he was curious about Jesus.  He did not know much of the Kingdom that Jesus was about, but he was curious.  He was not ready to risk anything and so he came to the Lord under the cover of darkness, but he was curious.  Maybe he was Lutheran as well.  “What does this mean?”  We get Nicodemus because he is one of us.  We are curious, too.  We have all kinds of questions about the Bible.  Who did Adam’s sons and Noah’s grandsons marry? Just how did creation come to be in 7 days?  What kind of kid was Jesus growing up?  We are curious, too.  But curiosity is not faith.

Faith is not curiosity.  Faith is trust.  The truth is we do not have to find Christ interesting or engaging in order to believe in Him.  Believing in Jesus is not answering all our curious questions. Faith is about answers but not the ones that appeal to our reason or our senses. To believe in Jesus is not to unpack the mystery or crack the miracles.  In fact, it is just the opposite. Faith means believing what our eyes do not see, our minds do not comprehend, and we find completely unreasonable.  Faith does not make sense of things nor does it render God comprehendible.  Faith trusts where reason ends, where curiosity is left unfulfilled, and where wonder is left unanswered.  Nicodemus was not sure he was ready to risk faith; are you?

Nicodemus began by looking for a way to crack the Bible as if it were written in code.  The law appealed to him just as it appeals to us because it seems so very sensible.  You get what you deserve.  Do bad and you will be punished; do good and you will be rewarded.  Screw up and you have to fix it. But Jesus did not come to bolster the old law but to fulfill it, not to give us a new one but to transform us.  He came as the Messiah who fulfills the old covenant and establishes a new one by His blood.  This covenant we meet on the ground of faith.

Faith trusts the Word of the Lord.  So it is not about how you are born anew but where this birth is given, not about when it fits your interest or schedule but now, when this new birth is offered, by water and the Word.  Faith is not curiosity but trust that meets God where God has chosen to be found.  Faith trusts the Word of Christ.  It is not about where the Spirit is but trusting that where the Word and Sacraments are, the Spirit is at work for you and in you, bringing you the gifts and promise embedded in water, the Word, and bread and wine.

Faith trusts the Word of Christ.  Faith is not about understanding God so that you can predict Him or work Him for your own ends or control Him so that He does what you want.  Faith believes what our minds will never understand and what our reason finds scandalous and offensive.  What does Jesus say?  Blessed are those who are not offended by Me.  Nicodemus was curious but he was not ready to risk everything on something he did not get.  “How can this be?”  He was not yet ready to receive the testimony of Jesus.

The shock is not that Nicodemus was embarrassed by his curiosity so that he came to Jesus under the cover of darkness, or that he wanted to understand Jesus before believing in Him.  No, the shock is that Jesus has time for Nicodemus at all, that Jesus did not write him off – or us.  We seek a reasonable faith that we can understand but the Gospel meets us on the plain of faith – it is a mystery not to be unpacked but simply to be believed.  The Spirit leads us to see and believe what remain a conundrum to eyes and reason.

Jesus is in the water.  Life is in the water.  The Spirit is in the water.  The Kingdom of God is in the water.  By water and the Word, Jesus is in me and I am in Him.  In the water I died and now a new person was born from that death to rise up in Christ and live not the same old life but a new life, a deathless life, a holy life, a life of good works the Law could not make us do but Christ does in us and through us.

For God so loved the world. . . for God so loved YOU. . . This is not some truth proposition framed for our minds to digest but where the wise of this world must lay aside their wisdom, the curious make the big jump into the unknown of faith, the sinner finds forgiveness, and the dead are given new and everlasting life.  It happens not because we get it but because He has gotten us, by His blood, claimed in baptism, formed us to faith by the Spirit, and made us confident in what we cannot see.

Luther put it this way:  “If I now seek the forgiveness of sin, I do not run to the cross, for I will not find it given there. Nor must I remember the sufferings of Christ, for I will not find forgiveness there either. But I will find in the sacrament or gospel the word which distributes, presents, offers, and gives to me that forgiveness which is won on the cross. . .”  It is not water only or mere human words or simple bread and wine.  These are the means of grace.

Where the Spirit works, He leads you to the place where forgiveness is given, where new life is imparted, where there is food for the journey, where death comes to an end, and where hope lives eternal.  That is where the Word is placed in water, where the Word enters our ears and our sins fall away, and where the Word meets bread that is Christ’s body and wine that is His blood.

For God so loved the world. . . how could God love a world so far from Him and far from the life He created us for and how wicked and evil?  Who cares how!  We are not saved by a curiosity satisfied by a reasonable explanation but by the Christ who suffers and dies for our sins and is raised for our eternal life. And where this Christ is, there is the Spirit, there is forgiveness, life, and salvation.  The Spirit is constantly pointing our hearts and minds to Christ – not in a memory or an imagination but the Christ hidden in water, present in bread and wine, and who speaks through the voice of the Pastor forgiving our sins.

Do not marvel at how this happens, says Jesus.  Believe it.  Those who are born of the Spirit are not the curious seeking explanation but the sinners seeking forgiveness, not the wise seeking more wisdom but the wicked seeking righteousness, not the holy seeking holiness but the unclean who seek to be washed clean inside and out.  Risk it all.  Believe.  And believing, live the new life He has given.

And to all who believe. . . He gives power to become the children of God. This is how radical the Kingdom of God is.  We meet it not in lofty explanations but in the promise hidden in water, Word, bread and wine, and trusted by faith.  The curious will find Jesus wanting but the sinner will find Him all that they need and more than they desire.  Come, believe and live.  Amen.

How believable is the Bible?

Plausibility is often cited as a hitch against taking the Scriptures at face value.  The Bible is just not believable and its facts are not verifiable.  Without begging the whole question of how much in life IS plausible, believable, and verifiable, we tend to impose upon the Scriptures a stricter standard than we set for most other things we judge as truth.  But some claims of Scripture do seem to stand out in the minds of some.

Creation, ex nihilo, in 6 days of labor and 1 resting day to appreciate all that was made, is typical fodder for those who question Scripture.  How can this be?  Strangely, alternative explanations that claim science are just as impossible to verify and just as implausible.  Evolution strains not so much under the weight of Scripture's alternative history but under the burden of so many things that must be assumed in order to accept it.  The whole theory is not one theory but many best guesses placed under the overall umbrella of evolution -- from the big bang to the little sparks that eventually gave birth to the way things are (supposedly).  But the problem here is not so much conflicting facts as it is where you are willing to place the question marks.  No explanation satisfies nor does any explanation make it past the believability test without some things that must be taken simply by faith.  It is less a matter of one plausible truth for one implausible as it is whether or not you are willing to trust the question marks to God or to the varying degrees of science and scientists who have judged one true and one not.

Another is the history of Scripture itself.  How believable is that history?  For my early ministry there were several great questions that the critics loved to place before the timeline of the Bible and its list of names and dates and places.  What about those Hittites?  What about that guy named Pontius Pilate?  There are many of those old questions answered not so much by Scripture as by archeology.  Sifting the record of history deposited in the ground has proven a witness in favor of Scripture and its history more than against it.

Another is the ages of the patriarchs.  How is it that some purportedly live to 900 years plus and then the lifetimes diminish until David can say seventy or eighty in the Psalms?

• Adam – 930
• Seth – 912
• Enosh – 905
• Jared – 962
• Methuselah – 969
• Noah – 950
• Shem – 600
• Eber – 464
• Abraham – 175
• Moses – 120
• David – 70

I have heard Christians bend over backwards to explain these -- from years that were measured in different spans than modernity to the fact that the number of years is symbolic and not accurate.  And then there are the challenges from the skeptical outsiders who insist that the Scriptures cannot be taken at face value -- it is just not believable that people lived so long and we have better medicine now than they did and still we have nothing to compare so it must be false.  I think you can finish the arguments.  Yet the fact is that the easiest way to deal with the implausibility is to trust the Word of the Lord and let the witness of the Scriptures stand.

It is worth noting that the longer ages come prior to the flood and that after the flood ages decline rather rapidly until we find in David a lifespan similar to what we consider normal today.  It is also worth nothing that in Scripture death is not natural in the sense that we were created to die but death is itself a consequence of disobedience (if you eat of the tree you will surely die).  They died spiritual immediately but the physical reign of death was slow and painful.  It turned out that the rules of the Garden were not imposed upon man to constrain him but to protect him.  Imagine that!  St. Paul certainly picks this up in assigning death as the just and fair wages of sin.  Death has passed to all because of sin.  There is no escape of death and death does not correspond to wickedness (the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper -- at least in this mortal life).

The truth is that we do not have a clue why some lived to such ancient ages and why, with all our medical technology and wisdom of health we have only marginally increased the ordinary span of life.  So, where do you place the question mark?  Some insist that the Scriptures are simply not plausible, believable, and, therefore, true.  I prefer to place the question marks with our own limited knowledge and understanding of God and His mysterious ways and simply to let the record of the Scriptures stand.  God certainly does not need me to defend Him or explain Him and His truth can well withstand the questions and doubts of skeptics.  Rather than try to explain this away, our best apologetic is to stand with Scripture.  God has promised to be merciful and to be faithful but He has never promised to be comprehensible.  For that matter, who wants a God you can completely understand and what kind of faith risks nothing in trust of what your mind cannot comprehend or your experience prove?