A few thoughts on worship wars. . .

Much ink and much of that digital has been spilled in the worship wars over the years.  Whether you are talking about Rome and its Vetus vs Novus Ordo war or the battle for reverence against those who have tried to turn the mass into an amusement park or you are talking about Lutherans who deviate from the hymnal to omit the liturgy or restore elements not preserved in the hymnal, the battle wages on.  Most of Protestantism has already declared a peace -- allowing anyone and everyone to do what seems right in their own eyes without official sanction or complaint. For them it was always about style and never even presumed to be about substance.  

We are still tethered to the old horse cart of what people want and what will be more effective at reaching a dechurched populace and that may never go away.  But for the Lutherans, anyway, it is primarily not a battle about taste at all or culture or preference.  It is increasingly and perhaps was always about doctrine.  I am more and more convinced that you cannot maintain the confessional orthodoxy of faith while practicing something that is alien to that orthodoxy.  It is not that we are churches with different hymnals and liturgies but, in reality, different faiths -- and here I am speaking within denominations and not between them.

More than forty years of service as a pastor have left me with the conclusion that worship is merely the arena in which our differences our exposed and not the real differences themselves.  I grew up as a bronzie in Missouri and there was little talk about baptism, the Sacrament of the Altar was about as invisible in piety as it was in practice (four times a year), and the hymnal preserved a practice that was followed but without any real understanding or interest in why.  My argument with the identity of The Lutheran Hymnal and the period that produced it as some great epoch within Lutheran history and identity is not about the ceremonies that were or were not included but the fact that this practice preserved a Lutheranism that was and is at odds with our very Confessions.  While there was discussion of the inerrancy of Scripture, there was no talk at all about Scripture as a means of grace, the efficacious Word that delivers what it says and does what it promises.  It was a book preserving a record and not a life-giving Word that delivered faith to the individual and preserved the faith of a church.  

My argument against contemporary Christian music and evangelical style worship is not an aesthetic which I reject but an alien and foreign doctrine that can no more reflect or embody the confessional Lutheran identity than it can preserve it.  Let us at least be honest.  Those who have abandoned the liturgy or omitted so much of it that it can hardly be recognized anymore are doing so not out of adiaphora or different stylistic preference but precisely because they confess a different truth and believe a different faith.  Their seeker services or the substitution of events with appeal to the masses instead of a liturgy borne of the Lutheran identity or catholic tradition is exactly the rejection of what that confesses and not simply its practices.  Such congregations have not simply abandoned the name Lutheran but the Lutheran faith as well.  For the life of me I do not know why they want to stay officially Lutheran anymore than I can figure out why official Lutherans would want them to stay.  Can we at least be honest enough to admit the obvious?  Worship wars in early Lutheranism as well as in modern day Lutheranism were and are fought not over taste but over truth.

Those swimming the Tiber or the Bosporus are not exchanging an aesthetic but rejecting one faith in favor of another.  It always troubles me when a Lutheran says that his conversion to Rome or Orthodoxy allows him to be the Lutheran he always was.  No, it does not.  The Roman Mass became an object of Lutheran reform not for an objectionable aesthetic but for doctrine that was unfaithful to Scripture.  I am not sure that Rome has ever wanted to or even tried to reconcile what Luther challenged on the basis of Scripture.  It was always an appeal to Roman authority, specifically that of council and pope.  Can we be honest enough to admit that when you head to Rome or Constantinople you are doing so because you believe differently?  Let us at least cast off the presumption that one can believe like a Lutheran and be a Roman priest or an Orthodox one or the other way around.  These are not worship wars -- although the worship wars may be the triggers; they are doctrinal disputes.  What does Scripture say?

My contention for the fuller ceremonial of the Divine Service and for NOT allowing the hymnal to be both the minimal expression of what must at least be as well as the sine qua non of Lutheran liturgical practice is not for or against an aesthetic.  It is doctrinal.  How can we say this is what we believe, teach, and confess as truth and then practice the minimum of the ceremonial that reflects that dogma?  How can we preserve the fullness of doctrine while living it out within a series of minimalisms that are excused by a word that we use all the time without really understanding it -- adiaphora?  If we cannot elevate or use the sacring bell or incense or historic vestments or chant or cross ourselves or kneel or genuflect, then is it merely a dispute over taste or are there elements of doctrine and truth that are also in dispute?  If we should not do these things, is that not also a rejection of the reasons for these ceremonies?

Worship wars are probably not what we are fighting at all.  We are battling for the faith -- the faith delivered to and by the saints and the piety that lives with that confession.  I believe it is high time to admit that there are doctrinal connections to our controversies over style.  Some greater than others -- to be sure but still more about what the truth is and how we live it out than what we like or find meaningful.

The call seeks the man. . .

From the beginning let me admit that I am not fully enamored with Missouri's understanding of the call of the pastor.  It seems to me that it is prone to problems -- not in the least of which is the idea on the part of the congregation that it is a euphemism for hiring and firing.  Considering the way resignation has been urged upon a pastor in a congregation which has undergone some conflict, I fear we do not have much respect for the idea of a call.  But I have expressed these misgivings in other blog posts.  It does provide a backdrop for something else I have some meandering thoughts about.

The two calls I have taken were both from congregations I did not even know existed prior to the call.  One was through the seminary and the system of first placements that operates in our Synod.  The DPs and Seminary Placement Officers come together to parse out the calls and the men and make assignments.  The old joke was that if you said you wanted to go to Alaska they would send you to Puerto Rico and if you wanted the an urban setting you would end up in South Dakota and if you wanted a small town you would end up in Queens.  You get my drift.  I had already asked to be within three hours of New York City for vicarage and bingo it happened.  So I played it safe and asked to be somewhere between my wife's family in Indiana and my own family in Nebraska.  Yup.  You guessed it.  I ended up halfway between Albany and New York City in the southern Catskills.  The other call I took was the surprise that came from Clarksville, TN.  I immediately thought to say it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and me to say no.  Instead, I went to visit.  Little in the congregation interested me but the setting did.  A growing city with many amenities for my wife and children and the possibility of helping a moribund congregation grow as well offered possibilities but left me unconvinced.  In the end, it was the fact that the parish I had been serving for nearly 13 years was as stable, solid, and secure as it had ever been and, if I was to leave without causing them harm, this was the time.  So right place and right time let me to accept that call.  Curious though, they did not know anything about me before they called me.  They were calling a name on a piece of paper with the recommendation of district presidents to encourage them.

Sadly, that is not quite how calls generally happen today.  Our technology has led us to a different and not better path.  We rely less on the Church and her agencies and leaders and more on what we find out on Facebook or who knows who or a hundred other venues to try and find a parish we might like to serve or to find an pastor to serve it.  I do understand why.  With all the variations on the general theme of Lutheran pastor, people are nervous -- perhaps justifiably so.  But what seems to be missing is the whole idea that this is the realm of the Spirit, that there is not simply a right place but a right time, and that we are not shopping at a pastor store or a parish market to find something we like.  There seem to be more variables at work here than the Spirit and I am not at all sure it is a good thing.

Let me explain.  As Circuit Visitor I found it more and more common for pastors to be less than mobile -- not because they were attached to a congregation but because they are attached to an area.  They have attachments to places and circumstances that mean that they are functionally not open to calls except to the narrowest of locations.  Their circumstances are tied to a region or state or even more narrowly to a city and they have spouses whose work or families with situations that mean they are looking pretty narrowly to a specific place.  Maybe I am jealous.  I never got a call in 42 years that would have placed me nearer to my family or my wife's family.  It never came.  But I worry about the idea that pastors wake up one morning and decide it is time to move or that they have conditioned their service on living in closer proximity to family or that they can only serve the Lord where their wife can find a job transfer.  These kinds of things are new to the process and complicate and already complicated process.

I was taught that the call seeks the man and not the man the call.  Is it becoming something different?  I thought that every pastor and every congregation could be the right person and the right place if the time was right.  Now I sense that we no longer believe that.  I fear that we think less in these terms.  I wonder if pastors are thinking about where they want to go instead of where God wants them and congregations are thinking of getting the person they want instead of the man God wants for them.  Sure, I know that there are times when pastors have to move and when congregations and pastors are at odds.  But has this become acceptable?  Are we convinced that a call is the best fix for a place which the pastor finds challenging and the people do not seem receptive to him?  Whatever happened to reconciliation?  I wonder if time is not the problem -- because it is faster for a pastor to leave than to come to terms with the issues at play, time is not spent where it could be -- repairing the distance.  

As you probably already know, I am an advocate for a longer tenure for pastors.  It was said to me that you barely get to know the congregation in three years and do not make a big impact on that congregation until seven or ten years have passed.  God knows I would have left my first parish and this parish if the calls had come.  They did not.  When they did come, it was not the right time.  Except for this one to Tennessee.  So I stayed and believe it was the right thing.  I cannot say it was perfect for my family or for me and it certainly was not good for my extended family but it was the right thing.  So here are my two cents.  Stay longer.  Make it the best place you can make it.  You will end up burying some of your friends but also some of your enemies.  Stay a while.  If people know you are planning to stay, they will find a way to live with you and you them.  Do not look for a call.  Do not look for a region or state or locale in which to live.  If it comes, it comes.  If it does not, it was not meant to be.  Worry less about that than about doing your best for His glory where you are.  Believe it or not, it took me over 40 years to learn to say that.

Whither Rome. . .

Though the changes that came in the wake of Vatican II certainly reshaped the Roman Catholic Church, there is another movement happening right now that may reshape Rome even more.  Vatican II presumed that papal leadership meant something and, though Paul VI promoted changes never authorized or even really discussed by Vatican II, the Roman Church got in line with the new mass.  It was clear from Humane Vitae that Paul VI thought the faith was not changing, only forms -- even if those forms had been with Rome and defined Rome for more than 400 years.  Ever since there has been a battle within Rome against the forces who believed the faith was changing and the new mass was merely the outward example of those inward and doctrinal changes.

It took a while.  John Paul II worked against these forces and then Benedict XVI but in Francis the First was finally a champion who would marshal the full forces of papal authority to finish what the reformers thought they had begun.  The friendliness to the gay and lesbian community, the rejection of the Latin Mass door opened by BXVI, the invention of synodality, the appointment of bishops and cardinals, and the very personality and style of this pope have all conspired to create a new history of Vatican II in which the faith must change.  It is too late for some of those champions of modernity who have passed before the judgment seat of Christ and will give account for their own roles and stewardship of office but not for those who are still agitating.  What will Rome look like in the wake of it all?  Who knows?

The death of Rembert Weakland might have been a relief for those who found offense by his lifestyle, his positions, his arrogance, and his unfaithfulness -- thinking wrongly that his like had come and gone.  He was a scandal then and now and it is without conscience that Rome was able to promote and give voice to someone like him.  His own sexual predilections and his refusal to deal with sexual abuse all resonated for his rise to leadership and not against -- symbolic of all that is wrong in Rome.  He is gone but the positions he has agitated for remain.

Francis has pretty much gutted the Pontifical Academy for Life and it is ready to reverse Humane Vitae as soon as it is able.  Roman Catholic politicians face no real recrimination for thumbing their nose (or middle finger) at the doctrinal positions of their own proclaimed faith.  Whole areas of the Roman Church known to be in serious decline are insisting upon radical change that would make the faith less distinct within the muddy waters of modern thought, and the seminaries are pretty much empty -- meaning that the aged liberals will continue to influence parish, people, and church.  The Rome that we once knew is not the Rome we are seeing unfold.  As the once more somber voices are diluted by the voices of those Francis has promoted and they are moved increasingly to the edges of that church, the future lies in the hands of those who believe that Vatican II was unfinished and now the content of what is believed must accompany how it is practiced.

Personally, I find this disconcerting for a number of reasons.  Lutheranism is already in disarray.  The Anglicans are on the verge of a divorce across the world.  Evangelicalism has sold its soul to the entrepreneurial devil.  Sentimentalism, the individual judgment of what is true, meaningful, and beneficial have already deprived Christianity of any earthly unity around Scripture and creed.  As a Lutheran of the Missouri stripe I do not at all welcome the weakening of an important force that could contend for the faith once delivered.  It means those who are orthodox will stand increasingly alone in a sea of Christianity that has abandoned the voice of Scripture, turned the creed into mere words without truth, and ignored their own history except as legacy (largely to be rejected).  It is not a good day for us.  We know that God will make sure that 7,000 remain who have not bowed to Baal but that does not quite comfort those who know what the Church might have been and who now look with sadness on what she has become.  It is as if God is quickening the times and sifting the souls of the faithful.  While there is much work left to be done here, it does sometimes leave one longing with St. Paul for the heavenly goal sooner rather than later.  

I lament that my generation will bequeath a lesser bequest of the faith to those who follow.  I am saddened at what could have been and what we did and did not do to make it possible.  God does not require our efforts but that should not excuse us from offering body and soul to the cause of Christ.  I write this not to discourage but to warn, not to despair but to offer the somber reality of what we face, and not to give up but to encourage even more the work of God among us and through us.  The lukewarm fare worse than the cold in Revelation's vision and there is too much lukewarm in Christianity in general and in the churches in particular.  Rome is bigger than we are but you know what they say:  the bigger they are, the harder they fall.  No one should rejoice in this.  There is no room for smugness or arrogance.  Repentance and faith are the only answer.

Should we have national church gatherings...

Though there are abundant reasons why national church gatherings (for any church body) could be a good thing, there are also abundant reasons why national church gatherings may not be such a good idea.  In my experience, the typical pattern is for national church gatherings to become occasions to depart from the historic faith.  The impetus for such departure hardly ever comes from a ground swell of support among the congregations and the people who call them home.  But national leaders and national gatherings cannot resist the temptation to tinker with the faith.  While that is not always the outcome, it has been more common lately.

The ELCA famously went to their 2009 Churchwide Assembly still technically holding onto traditional beliefs about sex, gender, and marriage.  They came back having departed from even the appearance of holding to what had been believed and confessed.  They split off, largely over sexual issues, and have been in radical decline ever since.  Now another Churchwide Assembly has take a bite out of the conscience clause that allowed those who disagreed to remain in that church body.  I have heard more than one ELCA person say that it would have been better if they had not gathered in 2009 to formalize what some on the edges of the ELCA had been doing.  

In 1970 the United Methodists gathered for their General Conference and endorsed abortion rights after a 20-minute debate.  This accompanied a shift from Biblical faith to revolutionary ideas, even promoting Marxism, and the famous campaign about open doors and open minds.  That has now ended up with a divorce on the horizon and it is now simply figuring out how to divvy up the assets before the once United Methodists become the divided ones.  Their history at their General Conference has been largely stymied in its pursuit of modernity only by a few conservatives and particularly by those Methodists from the former mission fields.  When enough conservatives have departed, you can bet it will not take the liberals even five minutes at General Conference to overturn the church’s traditional sex teachings in print as well as in practice.

The Episcopal Church with its two house system might seem to slow down heresy but it has not been all that effective.  It may have postponed some of the more radical stances from becoming official but it has not slowed or stopped the movement toward modernism within that denomination.  In fact, the acts of their national gatherings have often been a source of both amusement for those outside the church body and irritation for those inside.  A diocese or two has left the national body and they have spent much of the last several decades fighting not over truth but property.  The votes to allow diversity often become votes not to tolerate dissent from the sacred cows of progressivism that become the church's new teaching and orthodoxy.

Even in Missouri, where conventions tend to toe the line of official teaching, we are not immune from aberrations.  In 1989 we departed from historic faith and practice to sanction non-ordained presiding at the altar and preaching.  Yes, it had spotty practice unofficially but here was our own church body officially rescinding part of the Augsburg Confession -- and we insisted all the time we never vote on doctrine!  There are other items in our history and you can go back a lot further than the 1970s and the battle for the Bible to find examples of where the national reflection of our church's identity met and voted for something that really had no support or interest from the folks in the pews.  Sometimes these are benign and other times they are nefarious.  

It makes you wonder sometimes if these national gatherings are worth the time, expense, and energy we put into them when the result just may jettison the orthodox Christian faith from a church body's teaching and practice.  Would it be better to have weird congregations and people on the fringes of the church body who we can all reject without having to muster enough votes and risk institutionalizing the heresy?  That is also part of the problem.  We have no solid and consistent discipline when it comes to those who depart from the faith.  

One of Methodism’s premier theologians at their flagship seminary was tried for heresy in 1904 for denying the orthodox faith.  A jury of bishops acquitted him and there have been no other trials since.   The history of the Episcopal bishops named Pike and Spong and now Love have shown that the only trials that work are those that fight against what had been believed and taught and is no longer.  Even in Missouri we tend to fight more about by-laws than theological issues -- perhaps it is easier to muster the votes to procedurally arrive at an outcome you cannot achieve by deliberation of dogma.  In any case, it makes me wonder if we should meet so often or ever -- since the track record is decidedly on the side of those who use such gatherings to compromise the truth rather than confess it.

Time for a new confession?

No matter how you view Arthur Carl Piepkorn, you have to take him seriously.  Hardly anyone in modern times has so thoroughly known the Lutheran Confessions.  According to ACP, Lutheranism is not a particular way of organizing the church.  It is not a particular way of organizing theology.  Lutheranism is rather a confessional position.  Against those who sought a new or revised system of confessions, Piepkorn saw no such need and certainly no urgency.  Instead, he would say that one could neither change the Confessions nor add to the Confessions and still be a Lutheran pastor.  The only option, if one become convinced that the Confessions were wrong, was to cease being a Lutheran.  

The truth is that we all find things in the Lutheran Confessions that we would have written differently -- in part because our age is different from the age in which those words were penned and presented.  We would add into those Confessions issues that are currently on the forefront of our conflicts and controversies in the hope that, like the Formula, the issues might be settled.  We would take away those things we do not personally like -- even if we grudgingly acknowledge that they are true.  I am no different.  But the Lutheran Confessions are not a living document.  They attest to the faith confessed not simply then but always -- though along with that are some polemics that, while true, might be more timely appropriate to another age.  They are not Scripture though we confess that they properly attest to and are reflective of what God's Word says.  We esteem them highly because they accord with Scripture and every Lutheran pastor or commissioned minister confesses this at least at ordination or commissioning and installations.

I was once enamored by the idea of writing a new confession to be added to the Book of Concord.  It was a foolish idea in a foolish period of my education.  Since then I have thought better of the idea and put it to rest in my own mind.  We in Missouri sort of tried that with the Brief Statement.  We might have tried it again with A Statement but remembered the problems with the Brief Statement and wisely reconsidered.  But some still wish for and want to put pen to paper again in the hopes of writing a confession that ties up all the loose ends in the Book of Concord and, perhaps, in Scripture itself.  That should not happen.  Ours is not a problem with not enough words but not enough faith.

Some suggest that a new confession is the ultimate fruit of a church always reforming.  Ecclesia semper reformanda est (Latin for "the church must always be reformed") was first greatly popularized by Karl Barth in 1947.  He claims the phrase came from St. Augustine. In reality, it is less about the re-examination of what the church has always taught than it is the opportunity to reconsider it.  In fact, more often than not it is the penchant of certain Reformed Protestant theologians and those church bodies in which they have influence to say the church must continually re-examine precisely to raise questions about the past and what was believed and confessed and taught and to depart from it.  In its narrower understanding, every church must re-examine its current faith and practice in order to maintain its purity of doctrine and practice.  This is not navel gazing but the reflection of what we say and do in light of Scripture and the creeds and confessions of our churches.  If the church always being reformed meant this, we might not need to talk so much about a new confessional document.  Just sayin....

A slice of the good life. . .

It should be rather obvious that the life of a leper would not be called the good life by anyone.  Called unclean and shuffled away from family and friends, the pain was not only physical.  Yet like us, these ten lepers were hoping for a slice of the good life – the life we dream about and plan for.  Like you and me, they were trying to find a way to get to the good life.  Instead, life had thrown them a terrible curve ball and now they wandered from place to place in search of a hand out from someone not so afraid of catching what they had who would give them something to ease their pain.

We were not so much different lepers not long ago.  In the midst of the pandemic, we were a people who were bitter than our old good life had been stolen from us, were trying to find some compassion along with toilet paper and canned goods, and were met by people afraid of catching from us what we were afraid of catching from then.  But we had it good enough so that our internet still worked, Uber Eats still delivered, Wal-Mart brought everything out to the car, Amazon put it on our doorstep, and the government sent us checks so we could pay for it all.  Now that some if not all of it is over, we are still in search of the good life we had.    

Most folks would say that the good life is not the Church.  The day is long over when the Church was the place where people went for answers.  Most Christians today go to Church for some humor, a little inspiration, a few practical helps for life, and to meet friends.  I suspect that we are no different than those lepers in this regard.  When Jesus met the ten and told them to “go show yourselves to the priests,” they were as disappointed as you would be if in the midst of your illness, pain, and discontent somebody asked you if you had gone to Church.  It was the priests who had confirmed their unclean condition which left them isolated from life, community, friends, and family.  Why would they go back there to find an answer to their grief and pain?

No, traditionally people think of the Church as the one trying to take away the good life.  Just when society lightens up about things, the Church is there to throw cold water on the party.  Who wants to hear it?  Love your neighbor, be honest, respect marriage, do not given into desire, be careful with your words, do not harm anyone ever, and do not give into envy.  Yup, that is going to make you feel better – all those “no’s” to the things we want permission to do whenever we please.  Why would going to Church help when it is the Church that calls out sin and calls the sinner to repentance?

Where is the good life?  Jesus answers the question for the lepers and for you.  Go to the priest.  In other words, the good life begins and ends with the House of God.  Yes, you heard me right.  We have so screwed this up that we think of the Church as an impediment to the good life – working against our happiness instead of for it.  But that lie is what Satan whispered into the ears of nine lepers long ago and you and me today.  For nearly all of us, the Church is not the beginning or end of anything.  It is a rest stop on our busy highway of life, a momentary diversion to distract us from other problems, a duty to perform, and perhaps a competitor for the few free hours of our days and nights.  It is the job of the pastor to come up with a good reason for going to Church because we all have plenty of good reasons for not going.  So the burden of proof is for God to show us why we ought to give up our precious time or attention for anything to do with Church.

It is no wonder that the Church loses kids when the parents have communicated well to their children that Church is the enemy of your happiness – not an ally and certainly not a means.  But that is the devil talking.  Jesus says, “Go, show yourself to the priest.”  In other words, the Church is where happiness begins.  Wait, did I just say that?!  Of course, I did.  Church and the faith cannot add anything to your secular lives – they are not optional ingredients to an otherwise good life.  Just the opposite.  There is no such thing as the good life as long as sin reigns and death comes through sin and in between is disease, divorce, despair, and death.  Those outside the Kingdom have no good life at all and the most miserable person in the Church has it better than any of those who do not know Christ or His House.  All of this is because of the forgiveness of sins, the bestowal of life stronger than death, and the salvation of the lost to a heavenly promise of reunion and glory.

Even Jesus seems surprised when a Samaritan came back to express this truth.  The Jewish lepers had surely seen they were being healed as they walked to the priest but they now were people who has places to go and people to see.  They had no time for Jesus because they thought that their good life had just begun.  But the real good life begins kneeling at the feet of Jesus, offering Him thanks and praise to Him for giving us what we do not deserve and withholding from us what we do.  Jesus asked, “Where are the nine?”  The Samaritan did not know.  Perhaps they looked at themselves and ran back to their old pre-pandemic lives because that was all that mattered – getting back a semblance of their lost past.  What the Samaritan did know is that Jesus did it – He healed them with forgiving grace and they would never be the same again.

My friends, that is where you are.  You are a sinful leper for whom the world cares nothing.  Apart from Christ your life is an empty path leading you away from the only thing that matters. But the Lord intervened and revealed Himself as Savior.  In baptismal water He washed you clean.  Through the voice of His Word He called you to renounce the devil, the world, and the flesh and to walk in His light forever.  At the table of the Lord He feeds you heavenly food because your end goal is not a better today but an eternal tomorrow.  Death has no claim on you and neither will your memories pull you back to every guilty word or sinful act.  You belong to Christ the healer.  

Jesus is not the means to the good life – He IS the good life – the way, the truth, and the life and no one gets out of this hell whole of a life lived in a shadow of death EXCEPT by way of Jesus.  The nine lepers figured that Jesus was merely a tool to get what you want.  The Samaritan alone got it right – there is nothing that does not begin at the feet of Jesus, rejoicing in His mercy, living by faith the new life only He can give.  Jesus does not whisper the secret to the good life into willing ears but loudly proclaims Himself that good life -- the Way, the Truth, and the Life!

Don’t be foolish.  Don’t try to use the faith or the Church to get what you want.  Either you want what Jesus wants and trust Him by faith or it is all a ruse, a sham, a hypocrisy, and a scam.  Don’t turn up your nose at the Church it does not fit your bill.  Here where Jesus has promised to be, doing what He said He would do, bestowing what only He can give – all through the Word and Sacraments.  Go show yourselves to the priests.  Pretty good advice.  Christ is here.  All His gifts are here.  You are here.  What more could we want?  Or have?  

No, my friends, Jesus is not the one who directs you to the good life.  He is your good life.  Trust in Him, rejoice in Him, follow Him.  The good life waits for you in Jesus.  Though today we have our doubts and anxieties, the day will come when that will be clear as day and the only thing that matters.  Jesus is your good life.  The Samaritan leper got it just right and kneeling before the Lord Jesus in grateful praise, his good life began and so it does for us.  In the holy name of Jesus.  Amen.

The Genderbread Person. . .

Although we typically believe that the worst of the things we hear about will not happen in our own back yards, they do and we would rather live in our denial than to admit the painful truth.  That is especially the case with the state of affairs with gender identity.  We want to believe that our children are safe from the onslaught of adult ideas that would create confusion or questions about their gender or force them to make a choice while still children.  But what we want to believe and what is happening are two very different things.

One of the tools being used to help children make a gender choice is something called the Genderbread Person.

Even this tool to help the child chart the course through identity, attraction, biological sex, and expression is not quite enough.  Perhaps there is still too much masculinity in the gingerbread, um, I mean, genderbread person.  So take a look at another tool used to aid the child in his or her denial of the obvious and pursuit of an answer determined not by something given but by something chosen.

These tools are not simply promoted by the trans community but are being adopted by schools where the curriculum now includes not only reading, writing, and arithmetic but also gender identity.  Biological sex now becomes sex assigned at birth as if it were something imposed upon the child by nefarious forces designed to imprison a child.  The forces promoting gender fluidity and a choice to be made by the youngest of children are then presumed to be the great warriors of freedom who are working to liberate the children from the tyranny of DNA, chromosomes, reproductive organs, genitalia, and such.  The real body is not what you see but the chosen truth.  The ultimate lie is that the identity chosen is real -- in the end, it is not that a man identifies as a woman or a woman identifies as a man but they are real women and men.  And the last lie is worse than the first.

Whither the good life. . .

Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 23C, preached on October 9, 2022.

It should be rather obvious that the life of a leper would not be called the good life by anyone.  Called unclean and shuffled away from family and friends, the pain was not only physical.  Yet like us, these ten lepers were hoping for a slice of the good life – the life we dream about and plan for.  Like you and me, they were trying to find a way to get to the good life.  Instead, life had thrown them a terrible curve ball and now they wandered from place to place in search of a hand out from someone not so afraid of catching what they had who would give them something to ease their pain.

We were not so much different lepers not long ago.  In the midst of the pandemic, we were a people who were bitter than our old good life had been stolen from us, were trying to find some compassion along with toilet paper and canned goods, and were met by people afraid of catching from us what we were afraid of catching from then.  But we had it good enough so that our internet still worked, Uber Eats still delivered, Wal-Mart brought everything out to the car, Amazon put it on our doorstep, and the government sent us checks so we could pay for it all.  Now that some if not all of it is over, we are still in search of the good life we had.    

Most folks would say that the good life is not the Church.  The day is long over when the Church was the place where people went for answers.  Most Christians today go to Church for some humor, a little inspiration, a few practical helps for life, and to meet friends.  I suspect that we are no different than those lepers in this regard.  When Jesus met the ten and told them to “go show yourselves to the priests,” they were as disappointed as you would be if in the midst of your illness, pain, and discontent somebody asked you if you had gone to Church.  

No, traditionally people think of the Church as the one trying to take away the good life.  Just when society lightens up about things, the Church is there to throw cold water on the party.  Who wants to hear it?  Love your neighbor, be honest, respect marriage, do not given into desire, be careful with your words, do not harm anyone ever, and do not give into envy.  Yup, that is going to make you feel better – all those “no’s” to the things we want permission to do whenever we please.  

Where is the good life?  Jesus answers the question for the lepers and for you.  Go to the priest.  In other words, the good life begins and ends with the House of God.
Yes, you heard me right.  We have so screwed this up that we think of the Church as an impediment to the good life – working against our happiness instead of for it.  But that lie is what Satan whispered into the ears of nine lepers long ago and you and me today.  For nearly all of us, the Church is not the beginning or end of anything.  It is a rest stop on our busy highway of life, a momentary diversion to distract us from other problems, a duty to perform, and perhaps a competitor for the few free hours of our days and nights.  It is the job of the pastor to come up with a good reason for going to Church because we all have plenty of good reasons for not going.  So the burden of proof is for God to show us why we ought to give up our precious time or attention for anything to do with Church.

It is no wonder that the Church loses kids when the parents have communicated well to their children that Church is the enemy of your happiness – not an ally and certainly not a means.  But that is the devil talking.  Jesus says, “Go, show yourself to the priest.”  In other words, the Church is where happiness begins.  Wait, did I just say that?!  Of course, I did.  Church and the faith cannot add anything to your secular lives – they are not optional ingredients to an otherwise good life.  Just the opposite.  There is no such thing as the good life as long as sin reigns and death comes through sin and in between is disease, divorce, despair, and death.  Those outside the Kingdom have no good life at all and the most miserable person in the Church has it better than any of those who do not know Christ or His House.

Even Jesus seems surprised when a Samaritan came back to express this truth.  The Jewish lepers had surely seen they were being healed as they walked to the priest but they now were people who has places to go and people to see.  They had no time for Jesus because they thought that their good life had just begun.  But the real good life begins kneeling at the feet of Jesus, offering Him thanks and praise to Him for giving us what we do not deserve and withholding from us what we do.  Jesus asked, “Where are the nine?”  The Samaritan did not know.  Perhaps they looked at themselves and ran back to their old pre-pandemic lives because that was all that mattered – getting back a semblance of their lost past.  What the Samaritan did know is that Jesus did it – He healed them with forgiving grace and they would never be the same again.

My friends, that is where you are.  You are a sinful leper for whom the world cares nothing.  Apart from Christ your life is an empty path leading you away from the only thing that matters. But the Lord intervened and revealed Himself as Savior.  

In baptismal water He washed you clean.  Through the voice of His Word He called you to renounce the devil, the world, and the flesh and to walk in His light forever.  At the table of the Lord He feeds you heavenly food because your end goal is not a better today but an eternal tomorrow.  Death has no claim on us and neither will our memories pull us back to every guilty word or sinful act.  We belong to Christ the healer.  

Jesus is not the means to the good life – He IS the good life – the way, the truth, and the life and no one gets out of this hell whole of a life lived in a shadow of death EXCEPT by way of Jesus.  The nine lepers figured that Jesus was merely a tool to get what you want.  The Samaritan alone got it right – there is nothing that does not begin at the feet of Jesus, rejoicing in His mercy, living by faith the new life only He can give.

Don’t be foolish.  Don’t try to use the faith or the Church to get what you want.  Either you want what Jesus wants and trust Him by faith or it is all a ruse, a sham, a hypocrisy, and a scam.  Don’t turn up your nose at the Church it does not fit your bill.  Here where Jesus has promised to be, doing what He said He would do, bestowing what only He can give – all through the Word and Sacraments.  Go show yourselves to the priests.  Pretty good advice.  Christ is here.  All His gifts are here.  You are here.  What more could we want?  Or have?  

No, my friends, Jesus is not the one who directs you to the good life.  He is your good life.  Trust in Him, rejoice in Him, follow Him.  The good life waits for you in Jesus.  Though today we have our doubts and anxieties, the day will come when that will be clear as day and the only thing that matters.  Jesus is your good life.  In the holy name of Jesus.  Amen.

Appropriate diversity. . .

In our pursuit of unity, liturgical unity has been both an aid and an exception.  On the one hand, the common ordo or pattern of the liturgy has generally been set and in place almost universally since early Christianity.  The actual words and nuances of difference in order and ceremony were present without dispute or real complaint until the time of the Reformation.  In the West, the Church had no one set form or words for the liturgy but had a variety of rites, differing more in detail than in substance.  These included the Roman, the Ambrosian, the Dominican, the Sarum, and also some other lesser known rites.  Across Western Europe, these were practiced concurrently.  They were clearly interrelated but exhibited some differences that had developed according to region or jurisdiction or time.

In the backdrop of a crisis and in the wake of the chaos of the Reformation, Pope Pius V (on the throne 1566 to 1572) led the Council of Trent and what is commonly known as the Counter-Reformation.  One of the most important goals and achievements was the standardization of the Roman Rite within the Latin Church.   What is called today the Latin Mass became the primary liturgy of the Roman Church and throughout the West other rites began to decline in usage. Though Pius V allowed for the continued use of liturgies over 200 years old, the practical result of Trent was that the Roman Rite became the exclusive and sole rite of the Roman Church -- lasting until the aftermath of Vatican II and the liturgical changes put in place by Paul VI in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Although there are some today who would insist that the Latin Mass and the Novus Ordo or reformed rite after Vatican II bear little in common, it is impossible not to see how they are interrelated.  It was not quite organic development that produced the New Mass but its kinship to the Latin Mass is unmistakable.   

Among Lutherans the diversity has actually been more profound.  It is not quite by desire but by the structure of Lutheranism that such diversity of rites ended up around locale and jurisdiction in Germany and throughout the Lutheran lands in the Reformation and post-Reformation era.  While many of these rites are also clearly interrelated, there were also distinct differences created not really by preference but by circumstance, by doctrinal issue, and by cultural and political pressures upon the Lutherans.  The Lutherans maintained that this did not destroy unity but admitted that it did not aid in the unity of the Church and that uniformity was still the shape of our doctrinal unity and a goal to be prized for our practice and piety.  As time went on, it became easier to speak of a Lutheran liturgical identity in contrast to the catholic liturgical identity of Augustana.  It also became readily apparent that while innovations might come later, the loss of liturgical forms and ceremonies would create a constant need for a reform that was primarily a recovery.  The Common Service of 1888 was such a reform that marked the restoration of what had been lost, at least here in America.

The reality remains that for Lutherans the forms are not quite distinct and different as much as they are interrelated and connected.  That is, until the borrowing of evangelical forms created a seeming legitimacy for the abandonment of what hymnals had preserved at least in a minimal sense as our liturgical identity.  Adiaphora was never meant to be the rule but the exception and our Synod's constitution listed as one of the reasons for its founding to preserve this liturgical unity.  But now we find ourselves with many liturgical expressions on Sunday mornings in the LCMS and with many non-liturgical expressions and it has become not only legitimate but normative.  On one hand, those who follow the ordo (no matter which setting of the Divine Service they follow) may argue over ceremonies and vestments and chanting but they have always had more in common than those who do their own thing on Sunday morning.  Rome has gone through its own struggle with appropriate diversity and we in the LCMS and among Lutherans in general struggle even to get a common ordo or form, much less words for all our congregations.  

How much diversity is appropriate?  You will no doubt get different opinions in answer to that question.  Rome has the mechanism to enforce liturgical uniformity but that has not quite worked.  Like the Lutherans who cannot convince those on the evangelical fringes of Lutheran practice to rein in their improvisation and order their freedom, Rome seems more willing to tolerate the sins of the left than the right.  How much diversity remains an unanswered question for both -- sort of like the proverbial court definition of pornography.  I know it when I see it.  For me, I would be happy if we were all in the hymnal even though I believe this is a minimal expectation and not a fuller one.  I would be ecstatic if we were all in the hymnal and were willing to support the fuller ceremonial as clearly and strongly as many support the lesser ceremonial.  But I find that some continue to insist that those who depart from the book and those who add back in ceremonies once deemed Lutheran liturgical practice are guilty of the same sin.  Perhaps that is also a reason why we cannot agree upon what constitutes appropriate liturgical diversity.

 

The path we are on. . .

As a church body with unpopular stands for life, for marriage, for gender, and a host of other hot button issues today, there are those who think that the repeated warnings from voices like mine are overkill.  It will never come to that.  At least that is what those folks say who are fearful of becoming visible enemies of the culture and society.  But it is the path we are on.

First the unpopular stand and those who espouse it are given a false caricature of their position and this becomes the label that marks them.  It is a stereotype or even a straw man that is characterized but that ends up being the way the group is known.  You know it as well as I do.  From the comedians who make fun of Christians as neurotic or guilt ridden or prudes to the media that pictures Christians in this way so often that it becomes the image.  Add to that the other typical characterizations of Christians as misogynistic, homophobic, racist, angry, bitter, controlling, Islamophobic, intolerant, and, well, the list goes on, and you end up with the idea that Christianity is a prison of ideas and behavior that shackles a person and restrains the freedom that the liberal and progressives are there to protect.  If you can laugh at a Christian or make a caricature of a Christian that sticks, you do not have to even rebuke or rebut their ideas.

After you have done an effective job of stereotyping Christians, you move to the next step.  You hold them responsible for every ill society has known.  You vilify the Christians for the crimes of a few -- whether it is clergy sex abuse or the homes for unwed mothers or schools for the needy or homes for the elderly or orphanages.  Suddenly Christians are singly responsible for every hate crime, sexual perversion, and abuse that has ever been known to man -- it is endemic and structural and cannot be redeemed.  It can only be condemned.  Christianity has become the intolerable faith while other faiths, like Islam, that have a well documented and repressive past and present get a pass.  Christianity is guilty.  Christianity must not be tolerated anymore.  Remove any mention of God from public square and make anyone's association with the Church a political and economic liability.  Everyone else is free to pass out their rainbow flags and condoms and fliers and to have sanctioned groups but those related to Christianity are no longer allowed (unless, of course, they believe and act and teach differently than orthodox Christianity!.

If that does not work, you simply make it impossible for the Christians and their churches to do what they have always done.  The law becomes a weapon against the institutions that have traditionally been the mark of Christian charity unless they renounce their doctrines and practices and disassociate themselves from their respective religious jurisdictions.  We have already seen the handiwork of those who try to remove every Christian symbol from the public square from the creches of Christmas to the crosses on tombstones to the regulations that would require Christian charitable organizations to ignore their creeds and confessions in how they do their work.  The courts have so far revealed an uneven record on the success of criminalizing Christian faith and practice -- standing up for some of the most egregious attempts to marginalize Christianity but passively allowing other things to pass.  Even the IRS has become a tool in the box of weapons that might or could or will be used to threaten Churches into silence.  Sadly, too many churches are more afraid of losing their tax exempt status than they are compromising their faith.

If that doesn't work, you can always persecute the Christians and their churches.  We saw that in Finland when a Lutheran was put on trial for publishing what the Bible says.  It does not need to be legal to be effective.  Why else would churches be targeted for everything from graffiti to demonstrations that attempt to interrupt church services to singling out Christians for the Scriptures that condemn the modern day views of sexuality, marriage, and gender?  Persecution may enjoy the benefit of laws that excuse it or it may be clandestine but those who say it cannot happen here are deluding themselves.  It can and it will.  It is a matter of time.  Even Jesus insisted that Christianity cannot be friends with the world and will suffer the same fate He suffered.  While Christians have been pretty good at forgetting what they choose, the words of Scripture remain and are read in various lectionaries.  

My point is not to say this will happen or it will happen soon but to say it cannot happen is to ignore history.  You can begin with what happened in the book of Acts.  Neither am I suggesting that we use political tools to counter this. Yes, we should appeal to the law and to the rights guaranteed to us but this is not about voting in Christian politicians or passing Christian laws or making a Christian nation out of the USA.  What it is about is warning Christians and encouraging them to be faithful under trials, to be steadfast and immovable in Christ, and to be unflagging in hope and they testify to the Gospel in word and deed.  Jesus does not tell us to engage in political maneuvering to gain the hand over our opponents but to pray for our leaders and for ourselves that we may endure to the end and be saved.  Scripture is clear in telling us that God will not abandon us and that we should not fear those who can kill only the body and not the soul.  The Word of the Lord is also clear in telling us that the battles we lose today will not end the victory of Christ for eternity.  He has won; His saving work is done.  It cannot be undone.  But everyone of us will find it harder rather than easier to endure, to maintain the faith, to continue the witness, and to endure to the end.  It requires of us more faith, not less; more hope, not less; and more love, not less.  The way is narrow, the path is not easy, but His burden is light and His yoke is easy and we are right now obtaining the outcome of our faith, the salvation of our souls.  Watch, learn, and be strong, people of God.

Curious. . .

It occurred to me, though probably to many others as well, that the fight on the part of some for reproductive rights is, in reality, a battle for the right to be unproductive, not to reproduce, and to kill the child that is already in the womb as the fruit of a, well, reproductive act.  So, to follow the logic, it is not a cause for reproductive rights (as if anyone were forbidding them from reproducing) but a cause to prevent such.  So much for the logic behind our terminology.  It appears that the problem here is that people want to engage in the reproductive act but they do not want to have to face any consequences -- at least none more difficult than the embarrassment of facing the partner after the act is done (short of sneaking out the door with underwear and shoes in hand).

So also those who claim to be pro-choice are, in fact, decidedly against anyone's choice but their own, patently ignoring that they already made such a choice when deciding whether or not to engage in a, well, reproductive act.  There is a choice that was made long before the need or want for a day after pill or some other means to abort the child already conceived.  Now, some of you might think I am being callous toward those who are victims -- victims of rape or incest.  The reality, agreed by all but hardly mentioned by those who are pro-choice, is that very few abortions are the done by those who are victims of rape or incest -- 1% due to rape and 1/2% due to incest.  98.5% are due to choice -- after a choice had already been made but was now regretted, perhaps solely because it was neither safe nor loving.  But that is not my problem or the problem of the nation as a whole.  We do not exist to give second chances to those who made a choice and then thought better of it --- precisely when that second chance for a choice comes at the cost of the life of another.

So much damage is done by the attempt to relieve those who have made a choice of the consequences of that choice.  Abortion and no-fault divorce are but two of them.  Consequences are what informs and shapes the decisions we make.  It is precisely what happened in Eden.  We ignore the consequences of our choices in order to focus on some presumed benefit -- only to find that the presumed benefit was not without its own cost.  Wisdom is the fruit of the consideration of our choices and the consequences inherent within those choices.  To relieve us of a consideration of those consequences, to offer us an out, is to deprive us of the very wisdom that God provides through those choices.  Without the consequences, we are left prisoners of our desires and held captive by our whims.  This is surely what we want but it is the most unhealthy thing that could happen to us -- a people tainted by a choice first made by those who refused to consider the consequences.  Such are the lies behind the desire for reproductive rights that have nothing to do with reproduction and everything to do with preventing it or killing what has been born of the reproductive act or of a cause that is labeled pro-choice when it is really pro-do over -- give me a chance to redo what I did by eliminating not the act but its consequence.  Such is the mark of how far we have fallen and how easy it is for us to justify just about anything to get what we want.

 

Not Static But Living. . .

The Church has always struggled with those who believe that nothing can change and those who believe everything can change.  It was part of the conundrum faced when such terms as homoousias was used in the creed or the refinement of how we define Christ's incarnation resulted in the term Theotokos.  But it is not quite the same struggle we face today where the presumption is that the faith grows in the same way a child grows up to look, sound, and act differently than when he was a youth.  Change is certainly inevitable as doctrines are questioned, debated, and sharpened as iron against iron but this is not the change of substance but of the way that substance is confessed.  

In 2017, Pope Francis stated that the deposit of faith is not “something static.”  We all know what he meant by that.  This was, after all, the same Pope who summarily restricted a form of the Mass in use for more than four centuries by suggesting that a new form had developed to replace the old and that the two could not live side by side.  In his case, the Pope was treating the form like the content -- if it lives, it must change and that change means it will be different than it was before.  The new does not merely supplant but replaces what went before.  It rightfully made people nervous -- the prospect that a non-static faith means one subject to change not simply in its confession but in its content.

Francis, like many, has misunderstood what it means not to be static.  The deposit of faith is certainly not static but the reason for this is that it is alive -- not because it is subject to the changes of culture or definition.  This is, in one sense, at the heart of the Reformation.  Is the faith subject to edit by council or magisterium or papacy or is it something that lives as the creation of God, subject to His direction?  It is the quest for that which is the true authority in the Church.  Those opposed to council, magisterium, and papacy point to Scripture -- the Word of the Lord that endures forever (by its own claim!).  Often this is dismissed as a naive Biblicism and characterized by a false understanding of sola Scriptura.  At the heart of the claim for Scripture alone is not that it is alone or that it is ripped from its context or from the beating heart of the faith believed and confessed.  No, the claim for Scripture alone is the pursuit of an absolute in the context of constant change.  It is not static because the deposit of faith lives and it lives not because we make alive but because it is the domain of the Spirit, the means through which the Spirit is at work, and because, at heart, it is the living voice of the Lord still speaking the one and eternal Gospel.

Not static does not automatically subject to change or change on its own.  It means alive with the power and purpose of God, doing what He has promised as He wills it.  We meet it not on the level of intellectual understanding or an equal reason but always by faith.  Hebrews is clear as it recounts the generations of those who encountered the promise of God and received its fulfillment not with eyes to see or minds to understand but by faith to trust.  Hebrews 11:1-12:3  Francis is as guilty as those on the other side who view Scripture as something to be harnessed to a cause or used to an end instead of believed and confessed as the means through which God is now at work in His Church, among the faithful, and there in the world.  Perhaps the Protestants have forgotten this but the Lutherans should not.  

We confess the Word that is not simply eternal but efficacious -- the power to do what it says and deliver what it promises to those who believe it (with faith itself the prompting and creation of the Spirit).  This was Luther's intent in the explanation of the Third Article of the Apostles' Creed -- the Spirit who calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies.  No static Word can do this and no deposit of faith that is merely a record of the past has the power to act in this way.  Only the living Word that once spoke and now speaks still the Word that changes not in its content but changes those who hear it.  It is not static but living and it lives to breathe life into the hearer and all of this is met upon the ground of faith as the Spirit wills and works in fulfillment of the Father's sending and the Son's direction and promise.

Those who view Scripture as a book of facts to be protected against modernity are in the same place as those who view Scripture as a book of changing truth.  In contrast to this, the Church confesses that Scripture is the Word of the Lord that is forever, the living voice of God addressing us with the words of salvation, and the living means through which we apprehend that voice and believe it by the Spirit.  In this way Scripture lives not for itself but for us, for all who are saved, and for the cause of a world loved by God and redeemed in Christ.  Faith is not our conviction that Scripture is true but that it does what it says and delivers what it promises.  In this respect, the Word is always liturgical -- it is a Word that acts and in acting, saves, and in saving, makes new.  Perhaps the problem with both sides in this debate is that they have pulled Scripture from its liturgical context and placed it within the domain of the individual -- who determines its truth and defines its action for himself as if the Word and the deposit of faith had nothing to say or do on its own.  When that happens, it always ends up as a dead Word that is fragile and must be protected instead of a strong and life-giving Word that acts according to God's own will and purpose OR a Word that lives only to reflect what we say it means and therefore ends up just as fragile and weak because we are constantly redefining it.  Neither of these bear any resemblance to the way the Word of God and the deposit of faith are spoken of in Scripture.  We guard it not by burying it or hiding it or by preserving it but precisely by believing it, hearing it, and confessing it before the world.  That is how the Word of God lives and the deposit of faith lives.

The only extremists. . .

Apparently the only people the government is concerned about, has labeled subversive, and are surveilling are conservative groups.  What kind of people are they?  Parents concerned about what is being taught in their children's schools and people who are concerned about constitutional rights being restricted or more narrowly defined or political folks who espouse views that diverge from the main stream of liberalism and progressivism or religious groups whose doctrine and practice conflicts with modern day thinking and values.  As it stands now, they are the only ones the government is concerned about as extreme.  In other words, those who insist that gender has nothing to do with genes and DNA and biology are not at all extreme.  Those who insist that sexual identity and sexual justice are the most central causes in which the battle for freedom is being fought.  Those who believe that man (excuse me, people) is an intruder and interloper on the pristine ground of nature. Those who believe that racism is not only endemic but inherent in every white person (of privilege).  None of those folks are extreme.  They are normal but those who would question or oppose them, well, that is another story.

The Church needs to beware.  These issues and causes will and are now being applied against religious organizations which refuse to parrot the liberal line.  Not quite an attack on the churches directly, this is an attack on parachurch organizations, agencies, and schools operating by churches.  It will not be long before we may have no church but to reject the government's dime if it comes with government interference into a realm supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  To be sure, this is a concern which only a generation or two ago would have been unthinkable but now is ordinary and even routine.  How we respond as Christian people and their churches will have great impact on the shape of and the pace toward a future in which divergence from the party line of liberalism will no longer be tolerated.  Our Christian response is not to develop a Christian nation but to exert our every resource to make sure that government control, revision, and censorship of religious freedoms does not make it impossible to preach and teach the Word of God faithfully.

Every generation of youth raised to acknowledge and cooperate with these liberal and progressive views will mean it will be harder and harder for orthodox Christianity to live in the public square and outside the purview of government censorship or restriction.   This is why it is so important that Christians develop and mantain a Christian worldview shaped by Scripture and its facts and truth instead of individual opinion or preference and the whims of sentiment and feeling.  But as so many have observed, each year is a beachhead for the assault on religious liberty and time to note the advance of the irreligious upon the family and the individual.  According to the wisdom of the age, extremism exists only on the right, only among conservatives, and only among those who have the gall to challenge the status quo as decided by the liberal and progressive forces of education and religion in America.

While we are at it. . .

Lutherans love to quibble about things.  For example, we love to disparage the idea of a consecration moment in time but perhaps Luther is more comfortable with this than we are.  His point is surely less about a moment than about the union of the Word to the element.  It is a sacramental moment. That said, Luther is more than specific in identifying the sacramental moment of the Sacramental Union.  Again, let me defer to good friend Will Weedon -- again!

As soon as…

William Weedon  June 30, 2022

The Formula of Concord famously says in regards to the Holy Supper: Therefore, the proper meaning and sense of the oft-mentioned Augsburg Confession can and should be derived from no other source more properly and correctly than from the doctrinal and polemical writings of Dr. Luther FC SD VII.41 Concordia, and this immediately before treating of the consecration of the Supper. The Augsburg Confession, of course, asserts “Our churches teach that the body and blood of Christ are truly present and distributed to those who eat the Lord’s Supper. [2] They reject those who teach otherwise.” AC X Concordia

Certainly to be held quite highly among Luther’s polemics on the Supper is his famous 1526 The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics (AE 36:329ff.) In this work, Dr. Luther makes a most interesting statement:

For as soon as Christ says: “This is my body,” his body is present through the Word and the power of the Holy Spirit. If the Word is not there, it is mere bread; but as soon as the words are added they bring with them that of which they speak. (AE 36:341)

As soon as…as soon as. Said not once, but twice! The Words of Jesus assuredly bring with them that of which they speak and they do so by virtue of being His own words and so crackling with the power of the Holy Spirit (here you might glimpse a point of intersection between the East and the West!).

Dr. Luther’s conviction, and with him that of the Lutheran Church, is that the Words of Christ accomplish exactly what they say. He certainly knew (as the Formula freely confesses) that it is not the speaking of the pastor per se that effects any of this; the miracle (for it IS a miracle as the analogy with the Incarnation itself shows; see the original context of the passage cited) is rather to be solely attributed to the almighty power of the Words of our Lord Jesus Christ, words He spoke at the first institution of His Supper and that the servants of the Church have repeated faithfully ever since, words alive with the Holy Spirit, words that go on bringing with them exactly what they say. Christ’s body and Christ’s blood. Given for you. Shed for you. For the forgiveness of your sins.

These are, after all, the words of Him who long before said: “Let there be…” “…and there was…”

Your only certain future. . .

Though the future seems more uncertain today than it ever has, it has always been uncertain.  Whether you were a child of the 1950s hiding under your school desk as protection from nuclear attack or a fidgeting in line for a job interview, what we knew well was that we did not know the future.  But that was only partly true.  We do know the future.  The only future we need to know, we already know only too well.  The only certain future is that you will die.  You do not know where or when or how but everyone knows that those born will die.  They always have and always will.

What is curious, however, is that this certain future does not seem to be all that consequential today.  Though we know we will all die, death itself is certain, the fact that we will die seems rather distant from the concerns of many, perhaps even most folks.  That is except during the Covid.  Covid brought death closer than it has been for a very long time.  Too close for most of us.  But the awareness of our mortality seems to be fading again in the pursuit of a return to an old normal in which death is not quite the major factor it once was.

We are regularly reminded of death, albeit in subtle ways.  The call to prepare for retirement is an admission of life coming to an end, the offers of estate planners remind us that we will have to surrender our goods to others, the planning for bucket lists is itself a tacit warning that life will end.  The reality, however, is that most of modern life is so fixated on the present moment that we do not give all that much attention to dying.  We are too busy squeezing as much out of this life as we possibly can.

How odd it is, then, that the only faith which speaks with certainty of the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting fails to speak this message with clarity or conviction and the appeal of this message is more narrow than it ever was?  Are we so enamored with the potential of technology that solves all our problems that we no longer consider the need for God?  Are we so content with the present moment that we find death less of an enemy than a compassionate friend who spares us the part of our lives we don't want to live?  Go to any funeral today -- whether Christian or not -- and listen to the focus on the life well lived with nary a mention of another life at least its equal if not its superior.  The churches do not seem to preach it because it does not seem to fit with what people want or expect.  Yet death is our common and only future -- young, old, gay, straight, trans, homeless, landed gentry, politician, businessman and every other label on us and our lives.

Christianity ought to be flourishing because it has the only answer to death and that answer lies not in an imagined life or a virtual one but a real one in which all that afflicts this mortal life ends and all the joys that we know only in part are full.  Read 1 Corinthians 15.  Could it be that we are content to eat, drink, and be merry, and die tomorrow?  How sad that God has the more we could never even imagine and we are ready to settle for the less that we know now.  Think about that for a while...

  

Woes hard to hear. . .

Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 22C, preached on Sunday, October 2, 2022.

Up to this point, the only woe that St. Luke records is reserved for the Pharisees, to those who rejected Him, and to those who refuse to repent.  Here Jesus turns His voice against His own disciples.  It is no wonder that His disciples are shocked. Like you and me, they thought they were the good guys.  They had left everything behind to follow Jesus.  Jesus is warning them.  He expects a great deal from them and the temptations before them will be great.  But they cannot succumb.  

Woe to those who create stumbling blocks to the faith, who preach something less than Jesus Christ crucified and risen and who preach more than this Gospel.  Although you may not like it, you are among those little ones Jesus speaks about.  They are not simply young in years but the catechumens who are learning the faith from the disciples.  The preacher who stands in the pulpit and the teacher in the Sunday School classroom are held to account by our Lord.  It is His Word that they must speak and the whole counsel of that Word – not favorite passages or easy words that will not offend.  Every pastor knows the burden of this ministry.  Woe to those who refuse to take it seriously and endanger those in their care by failing to preach and teach the only truth that will set you free.

Woe to those who refuse to forgive those who repent.  If your brother sins, rebuke him and if he repents forgive him.  How hard is that to screw up?  But we do it all the time.  We ask for more than repentance.  We place conditions upon forgiveness and focus more on the sin than the sinner.  Jesus is warning His disciples and all who minister in His name that forgiveness is the greatest gift of God.  If we get this wrong, there is nothing that we will get right.

Again, Jesus is concerned about the little ones, the catechumens learning the faith. They will be tempted and they will fall but the Church is to be there for them.  Their brothers and sisters in Christ call them to account not to gloat over their sins but so that they may be restored by repentance and forgiveness.  This forgiveness is without limit.  If your brother sins against you seven times a day, and he says, “I repent,” you forgive him.  Mercy is the constant of the kingdom of God.  The heart and core of mercy is forgiveness.  Woe to those who refuse to give mercy’s gift.  Woe to those who lack faith.  As the disciples listened to Jesus, they were over whelmed.  We all are.  “Lord, if we are to do all these things, we need more faith.”

Whether the disciples had faith is not the issue.  Of course they did not yet know all that they would know. That kind of faith will not come until they witnessed Jesus risen from the dead and received the power of the Spirit from on high.  But Jesus is not looking for a perfect faith, only one that is willing to be instructed by His Word and one that will act upon what is believed.  The disciples had already been sent out to preach in Jesus’ name, perform miracles, and do the bidding of God.  They forgot how wildly successful they were.  Now Jesus was calling the mustard seed to sprout and for them to exercise the faith they had with the promise that the Lord will keep His Word and accomplish His purpose.  Isaiah 55 is a promise.  God’s Word will not return to Him empty.  Faith trusts that promise.

Woe to those who think themselves worthy of a reward.  If Jesus came not to be served but to serve, why would we think that we deserved something for doing what is our duty in faith?  Every aspect of this woe is related to a pastor.  The pastor plows, working the field to bring to harvest the planting of the Lord.  The pastor shepherds the sheep who belong to the Lord.  And the pastor serves the table of the Lord distributing the Lord’s own body and blood to His people.  The pastor is the slave doing His duty, only doing what God has called Him to do.

It might seem that the Gospel today is not for you but for me and other pastors.  While these woes were first directed to the apostles and to those who serve as their heirs, the calling is for everyone of us and the woes apply to us all.  Faith dare not live so deep down in your heart that it does not show in your life.  You have a calling.  Teach your children well and make sure that you raise them in the Gospel.  It is the cross that you teach and baptism that connects us to the cross and from those baptismal waters we rise to new and everlasting life.  Make that the heart of your home and teach all within your household this Gospel.

Make sure that you do not just talk about love but practice it.  As you have been forgiven, forgive.  If you are going to pray those words in the Our Father, then work with all your might to make sure you live them out.  For the true mark of the Church of Jesus Christ is not personal holiness but mercy, the mercy of God who sent His only Son that all who believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  Do not put conditions upon forgiveness and do not put limits on it.  For God forgave you while you were yet His enemy and still forgives you every day without limit.  His mercy is not in short supply so that it must be rationed but the more we manifest that mercy the more we know it for ourselves.
And whatever you do – whether in your baptismal vocation to the Lord and those in your care or at the Church, do not do it for earthly recognition or gain.  For whatever you do, you have only done your duty.  We are so gravely tempted to believe that in the Church we must recognize what people do and draw attention to it so that people know they are appreciated.  A little bit of this goes along way.  Before long, it is the recognition that counts and not the doing what God has called us to do.  None us should be indifferent to the good work of others for the sake of the Kingdom but neither earthly recognition nor heavenly gain is why we do it.

And there you have it.  The woes.  Woe to those add to the Gospel or take something away from it.  Woe to those who refuse to forgive the repentant or who place limits on how often they will forgive.  Woe to those who wait for a bigger faith when the faith they have is sufficient to do what God wills.  And woe to those who serve for recognition or reward, who think they deserve something – instead of from a grateful heart for all that God has given you.  These words may begin with the man who stands in this pulpit but these words flow directly to you in the pews, to your life within your household and in the world around you.

Jesus warns you not because He hates you.  He warns you because He loves you and because He has manifested His love for others through you.  The Church is His body.  He is the head but you are His members and the instruments through which He does His bidding at home and in the world.  What a treasure of grace we have been given!  And what a privilege we have to serve in response to His gift. The grace of God gives more than we deserve and the mercy of God relieves us of all that we do deserve – can it get any better than this?  

Moving Christ to the margins. . .

Though it is hardly a secret that the Episcopal Church has shed nearly every hint of Christian orthodoxy over the years, it never fails to amaze me at how far this communion will go to push Christ to the margins in favor of the latest and greatest social and cultural craze.  Now the wisdom of the Episcopalians has determined that transgenders at every age are to be rescued from the prison of the alien bodies by the gift of surgery, puberty blockers, and hormones.

Resolution D066, passed by the 80th General Convention, is titled “Addressing restrictions on access to gender affirming care.” The House of Bishops has concurred with the resolution.

It calls for the Episcopal Church to “advocate for access to gender affirming care in all forms (social, medical, or any other) and at all ages.” It goes on to say that advocating for sex change operations is “part of our Baptismal call to respect the dignity of every human being.”

The resolution specifically “affirms that all Episcopalians should be able to partake in gender affirming care with no restriction on movement, autonomy, or timing.” The Episcopal Church also opposes laws that prohibit people, including children, from being medically assisted in their attempts to change their sex.

What the Episcopal Church refers to as “gender affirming care” includes medical interventions such as the use of puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy, as well as surgeries that permanently damage fully functioning body parts, or that seek to change one’s face shape.

The farce of it all is that this position claims to be rooted in a baptismal dignity that respects every human being.  What fools some Christians have become!  They find a position, justify it in some way with a Scripture passage or lofty sounding theological jargon, and then proceed to call this the Gospel with never a mention of Christ's death or resurrection or the true baptismal identity of neither male nor female belonging not to the will of the person but to the declaration of God, who has purchased and won the baptized with the precious blood of Jesus shed and His sufferings endured even to death.

My point is simply this.  Wake up those in the pews of such liberal churches.  Wake up and see what is being put in place of Christ and His atoning work that saves.  Wake up and see how Christ is being moved to the margins and the fanciful whims of modern sentiment and woke truth is placed upon the throne to be worshiped in place of the Lord.  Wake up and abandon the pews without regret and find yourself a church where Christ is the center, where the Gospel speaks of the Crucified and Risen Savior who has saved us by His grace, where the Word of Scripture is true and truth that saves, where the Spirit works through the means of grace, where worship is reverent and dignified, and where the Gospel endures even amid the assaults of the devil, the world, and the sinful self.  Check out a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod congregation -- but do your homework and find out something about the parish you plan to visit.  Yes, we have some crazies in our own tradition but at least our national jurisdiction holds the faith and holds the line against this becoming normalized as it has in the Episcopal Church.

Did we mean what we said. . .

There are some Lutherans who believe the Augustana is the fringe and the later confessions the core and center of Lutheranism.  I am not one of them.  I believe that the confession made at Augsburg was not an anomaly but the truth of what we believe, teach, and confess.  Yes, some of the confessions that came after had more vitriol than the Augustana -- understandably so in the aftermath of all that had happened on both sides of the Reformation.  But they must be read through the lens of what we confessed in Augsburg and not the other way around.  Yes, things did change and the whole landscape of what was begun by Luther and his cohort ended up far different than they could have known or predicted when Melanchthon put pen to paper.  But either we meant what we said at Augsburg or Lutherans were lying and deceiving their counterparts in the papal party.  If you vote for Lutherans not meaning what they said, then that says a great deal about us as Lutherans.  Could we be disillusioned by how the events unfolded and the actions taken?  Sure.  Could we be bitter and angry and even resentful of the later developments?  You betcha.  But I simply do not buy the argument that Melanchthon pulled a fast one on Luther and wrote a compromising version of the Reformation's claims that Luther and the others had already abandoned.  Furthermore, I think those who pit the Augustana against the later confessions or who weight those higher than the first confession are signalling something more than just an historical argument but coming down on the side of Lutheranism as it ended up as an institution.  

That is where things are now in Lutheranism.  Are we the Augustana voices contending for the evangelical catholic faith or are we the institutionalized Protestants who are either embarrassed by or who long ago rejected that evangelical catholicity?  There are those who try to norm Lutheran identity and practice with the majority -- which cities and jurisdictions did this or that in the pursuit of some sort of consensus.  Democracy and majority are not the gauge of truth -- we all ought to know that pretty well by now.  Yes, there were patterns that developed and some practices continued and some did not but there was no uniform rationale for which were retained long after the Reformation and which were not.  The history of Lutheran doctrine and practice has been typical of that of all Christianity -- loss and restoration, decline and renewal.  The Common Service was not the epitome of Lutheran liturgical practice but it was one profound and highly significant renewal of what had been either lost or not practiced faithfully.  To place that Common Service and the hymnals that published it as the pristine and unmarred example of Lutheran liturgical identity is to miss the point entirely.  Even that restoration did not fuel the renewal of a Eucharistic and baptismal piety that is unmistakable in the core writings of the Lutheran Confessions and, indeed, of Luther himself.

I believe it is not only important but helpful to know our past but to know our past is to see how less than salutary influences have deprived us of what our Augustana understood and how it has been a process of reclamation and renewal of that very catholic doctrine and practice.  It is not a matter of one side winning or another losing but of the constant state of reformation that goes on as we know what we confess and judge how we practice that confession in the most faithful manner.  Doctrinal and liturgical minimalism were never the hallmarks of our Lutheran identity although the whole idea of adiaphora has been used to justify less as the more we were fighting for all along.  When and if Lutheranism grows up out of its rebellion against its own confession and the practice consistent with that confession, we will have something to offer to the Romans who find their communion more papal sectarianism than the full catholic expression of the faith and we will have something to offer those Protestants of various stripes who face up to the vacuity within their historic and modern structures that fail even to preserve the form much less the substance of creedal and Biblical Christianity.  But until Lutheranism grows up to embrace what we first confessed, we will continue to be also rans among those looking for a faithful home for a vibrant, orthodox, and authentic Christian faith.  Until then, we better hope that our congregations and institutional strength is enough to help us persevere to that day when we are ready to be who we said we are at Augsburg.