Pure means sound. . .

The Lutheran use of the word pure with respect to doctrine is often confusing to people and gives the wrong impression.  This is largely due to the fact that Lutherans themselves have given purity a connotation and example beyond what the word means.  We have, and here I am speaking of conservative, confessional Lutherans, made purity into the sole pursuit of doctrine.  We have invented sieves to run doctrine through to weed out what is impure.  This is not quite what purity means.  The goal here is not to render doctrine like oil, pressing it and straining it until it is pure, extra virgin doctrine.  The goal here is to preserve sound doctrine.  Doctrine is surely refined as challenge and heresy demand.  That is certainly what happened at Nicea.  But it was not refined from raw material into something different.  It was held against the Scriptures to make sure what was confessed was sound and if it was sound then it was also healthy.  Unsound doctrine is inherently unhealthy and will corrupt, spoil, and make rancid what God has said and done for our salvation.

Nicea gathered the bishops not to preserve purity but to make sure that every challenge and heresy had been placed against the rule and canon of what God said.  The bishops did not vote on what they thought but for what God had said.  They knew that even small deviations from the Scriptures would provide an entrance point for heresy that could not be allowed or the health of the whole Church would suffer and her ability to address the world with Christ and the power of His life would be compromised.  This was not about purity but about health, not simply about soundness but the soundness upon which truth lives and flourishes to accomplish its purpose and the unsoundness upon which it surely does not life.  

From St. Vincent of Lerins reminds us that what we believe and how we worship are inseparably connected.  I have for a long time loved the way the sainted Martin Franzmann put it -- theology must sing!  Indeed, it must, or it is not right thinking.  The theology must be sound, built upon the firm foundation of God's Word, or it cannot inspire or inform prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.  We guard doctrine not because we have been given job to refine it but unless it is sound, it is not healthy and if it is not healthy it cannot aid us in our purpose of glorifying God above all things.  Those who take pot shots at the preoccupation with doctrinal purity assume that it is about straining away impurities to preserve doctrine as if we were conservators of something to be admired.  The reality is much more ordinary.  We are guardians of truth so that the Church's song may continue, so that praise of God may abound, so that the lost and dead may be found and raised, and so that the health and healing of God may preserve us.

Not long ago my wife and I spent many hours at the St. Louis art museum.  It was a marvelous day and I highly encourage you to visit.  What is remarkable to me is how accessible such wonderful treasures are.  They are not hidden behind glass nor locked up in a vault.  They are there to move your eyes, minds, and hearts with beauty.  Surely we cannot say anything less of doctrine!  Churches are not museums preserving the doctrinal content behind thick glass cases or locked up in vaults.  We are there with the beauty of God's eternal and saving truth for the world to know and believe.  Doctrine must be sound (pure, if you will) because only when it is sound is it healthy and only when it is healthy does it heal the sin sick unto death with the medicine of Christ's saving work, raising them and us to life that death cannot overcome. 

Killing me softly. . .

Who does not love the sultry voice of Roberta Flack singing that iconic song Killing Me Softly with His Song?  I love it.  My personal favorite is the line, He sang as if he knew me.  It was not quite real.  So it is for those who view the Scriptures through an academic lens, as if its point were to mine the words to discover the individuals whose pen put them down, the cultural milieu in which they were written, and the way the first hearers understood it.  Of course, as interesting as that might be, it does not preach.  It does not really help.  It is as if we are looking at two different Scriptures -- the one that has God speaking and the one in which it is merely words on a page.  They speak of God's Word as if they know it but they don't -- they know only the Bible as book, words, curiosity, and detail.  They have focused so much on the text and what is behind it, they no longer hear Christ's voice speaking.

It is not that I am not interested, it is interesting.  The point is not that it does not capture the imagination but that it cannot address the heart.  For so long none of us can remember its beginning, we have been captivated by what some have called the “academic Bible” and have become a stranger to the “scriptural Bible.”  Commentaries seem to love the intricate details of the text but too often ignore what is said.  This modern view of the text with its preoccupation with textual criticism and theories of origin has treated the Scriptures like a corpse and attempted a postmortem to a book which we claim is alive and speaks life to us.  The invention of critical methodology has ended up killing the Scriptures, turning its life into an idea and the primary focus on where that idea came from and who it came from.  In early Christianity there was a reverence to the Scriptures not as a book off limits but because it was alive, still addressing the Church and the world with the words of life.  

There are those who open the pages of the Bible with questions and these questions are not directed to the Scriptures themselves but to what is not there.  It is a modern form of Gnosticism in which the Bible becomes a puzzle to disassembled in order to see how it goes together or how it might go together differently than what we have.  The people of God are not the focus of this kind of academic pursuit.  Everyone knows that when the people of God gather around the Bible, they come together to hear its voice, the voice of the Good Shepherd, still calling, gathering, enlightening, and sanctifying a people to be the Lords.  They respond with a single voice in common confession of this God, what He has said and what He now gives in the means of grace that are the Word and Sacraments.  The job of the Church is not to untangle a knot of words but to address us with the Word of God and in so doing to teach us how to read the Word.  The Church does this through catechesis, to be sure, but primarily through liturgy and preaching.  Here the people of God discover that this book is their book, not to do with as they please, but as the Word written for them. This Word lives in them and through them, ordering them and their lives and mirroring it to the world around them.  One of the benefits of reading the early fathers is to learn again the joy, focus, and application of Scripture as this living voice of God and not some problem to be solved or mystery to be made ordinary.  

Lutherans were, not surprisingly, the ones to coin the term Patrology, because they held up this sacramental Word, efficacious in its voice to accomplish in us what it says.  I wish I could say we still as a whole believed and practiced this.  We must reclaim the Bible for the Church from the academics which are killing us softly, enticing us with the idea of a story that ends up masking the voice of Scripture, and distracting us from what it says.  We need to get away from the idea of a synthetic or plastic Scripture and remember again what it is like to hear the voice of the living God speak in love to His people.  When this begins to happen again, we will find not only our preaching reinvigorated but our life refreshed as God means for it to be whenever we gather around His Word.  Without this, we will become a people who sing as if we knew Him when know only our own intellect, curiosity, and interest.

Too good. . .

At a Bible study so long ago I cannot even remember when, a voice objected to the characterization of the world as evil.  Indeed, it came as we had just completed singing from The Lutheran Hymnal the John Mason Neale text:

The world is very evil,
The times are waxing late:
Be sober and keep vigil,
The Judge is at the gate:
The Judge that comes in mercy,
The Judge that comes with might,
To terminate the evil,
To diadem the right. 

It is a solemn warning and a sober call not to be deceived as the world comes to its end.  That hymn was written into English by Neale in the 1800s from a text by Bernard of Morlas writing in the twelfth century.  For the modern mind, the hymn is hopelessly wrong since that times are not waxing late but the days continue to trudge on toward their appointed end and we have weathered many calls through the ages that Jesus is coming soon.

In his book, Orthodoxy, (written even later in 1908), GK Chesterton wrote about the world.  He suggests that at least to the modern eye and ear and heart, the world is not evil at all.  It is good -- not decent but filled with good things that few of us want to abandon -- not now or even in the face of the end.

“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”

I will let slip his parenthesis about the shattering of Christianity at the Reformation.  Indeed, he is correct.  The modern world is far too good, filled with good things that are also too good.  It is like a sweet treat that is too sweet and later unleashes its fury upon us in rolls of fat.  The good things are borderline good and can easily become evil.  That is the problem with progress.  It often betrays a problem we did not see as learn to live with it.  The virtues are turned but so are the vices.  Let loose from restraint, the vices corrupt us not simply by our consent to them but by no longer clearly being vices in and of themselves.  Once we are no longer sure what is vice and virtue, it is enough to corrupt us for our judgment is compromised even as our hearts and desires.

What afflicts us is desire unleashed from restraint but even more uncertain about virtue or vice at all.  We presume we are in Eden again discovering all things new.  The sexual oddities of the present are surely part of this discovery but there is nothing new in them.  The first sign of sin's destruction was the corruption of sexual desire.  But the problems are not simply sexual.  We cannot define woman or man in a culture where this is merely the property of desire.  We cannot define marriage when it is ripped from the fabric of the fruitful love that begets.  We cannot define life when death is merely another choice and we cannot define death when life is so easily surrendered to desire.  When children become an unwanted  distraction from our self-fulfillment or a drag on our pursuit of happiness, we have nothing invested in the future and are fully free to wreck destruction upon everything from nature to humanity.  It is a cruel joke that freedom has become the license to pursue stupidity.  Indeed, sin has made us stupid -- so stupid that we mistake virtue for vice and vice for virtue and pursue them with equal vigor.

Chesterton is surely correct in judging the times and humanity solely on the basis of pity.  The charity of the present is not really mercy at all.  To sit by and allow a person to cut off his organs for the imagined gender of his feelings is no charity.  To allow the child to be ripped from the womb with a chemical death sentence is hardly charity.  To live on the screen while insulated from both the joys as well as costs of commitment is no charity at all.  And these are but a few of the false charities that modernity lauds without paying any attention to the price of such imagined largess.  Christ is not come to impose artificial boundaries upon us in the hopes that we will figure out the means to holiness but to raise those dead in trespasses and sins, blind to the difference between goodness and evil, hopelessly lost in the forest of desire with self-control, and cleanse those who do not even know they are dirty with the washing of regeneration and the clothing of righteousness.  Christ is not some sort of brakes to apply when things get out of control but the control that is freedom.  Not in the least of His gifts is the Spirit who restores our sight and teaches us what is evil and what is good and then works in our hearts to choose goodness and abandon sin.  It will surely not be perfect this side of glory but it is headed in the right direction.  With it comes the absolution that rescues us from the fall and restores us to battle again the evil within amid the evil without. 

Cursive to the rescue. . .

As I have posted before, the advent of AI and the difficulty of those teaching in schools to identify the work students did not do has created a crisis of sorts.  It is, however, a crisis that could be averted by the return to the ancient (translate that in my day) blue book of blank sheets of paper with lines awaiting the train of thought from the writer.  It would be an elegant solution to the problem had the schools not at some point decided to forego teaching cursive.  Even if you wanted to return to the blue books and to the handwritten essays and answers of yesteryear, it would be a monumental effort on the part of a school population that knows only how to print and teachers who have rusty skills trying to figure out the scrawl that passes for cursive.  

The truth is that AI answers is the least of our problems.  What is much bigger is the challenge to thinking.  We live in a Google age in which people do not think but simply surf, do not think critically but presume anything and everything on the internet has the same value, and do not think inventively but follow the crowd even more than in previous days.  AI and screens are partly responsible for the fact that if presented with a blank page, modern students would not know how to write on those pages and probably not know what to write.

Cursive represents a time when we valued thought, thoughtfulness, and practiced thought.  Now we value time and ease -- do it fast and do it as easily as possible.  While it may be efficient, it is hardly effective.  The great gulf between students are the few who know what they are thinking and why they think it and those who simply mirror the thinking of the moment and have no clue why they should agree or disagree.  Schools are partly responsible for this and classical schools are partly an answer to the current situation.  While it might be felt on the collegiate level, it begins far earlier.  The roots of the modern day problem were planted in screens as baby sitters, entertainment over finding your own solution to boredom, and schools weighed down with the need to correct the social ills all the while reducing the content and what is needed to master the content for matriculation to the next grade or graduation.

I continue to be amazed by the fact that nearly all our students will end up elementary, high school, and college with a very limited list of actual books they have read.  A synopsis is not the same and neither is the abridged version enough.  They may well know their games and the characters therein but Shakespeare and the great authors down through history are strangers to them.  They do not know original sources but only what others have said about them or the equivalent of a sound bite version of their literary contributions.  

It has got to start somewhere so I vote to begin the revolution with cursive.  Let's teach the old Palmer Method that I learned.  Let's put up the posters that display the upper and lower case forms of cursive.  Let's ask our kids to write again and ask them to read more and read the whole content of the books, stories, essays, and poetry that once defined literacy.  It is not enough to know how to type in a few words into a search engine.  We are in desperate need of creative thinking, thoughtful reflection, and critical judgment. 

Who refuses to kneel. . .

In the Old Testament both standing and kneeling are postures of prayer.  You can find examples of kneeling in prayer in Job (Job 1:20), Daniel praying three times per day on his knees (Dan 6:10). Psalm 95:6 speaks of kneeling, “O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD, our maker.”  In Isaiah, it is God who says to the prophet, “To me every knee shall bow” (Isa 45:23).

On the other hand, standing at prayer is spoken of in the Psalms (Ps 134:1; 135:2), in Chronicles when Jehoshaphat prayed all of Judah stood (2 Chr 20:13), and in other places where standing in prayer is mentioned (1 Sam 1:26; Tob 8:4).

We know that Solomon knelt before the altar of the Lord at the dedication of the Temple and then stood to bless the people (1 Kgs 8:54-55).  Nehemiah speaks of the people rising as the Torah is read and then kneeling to confess their sins (Neh 9:3-5). 

In the New Testament there are also references to both kneeling and standing.  The Gospel of Matthew uses προσκυνέω, to describe kneeling or prostrating oneself.  The Magi knelt in worship before the Christchild.  The Syrophonecian woman knelt before Jesus (15:25).  Christ himself knelt in prayer during his agony in the garden (Luke 22:41). The Acts of the Apostles describes Stephen Protomartyr as kneeling at prayer during his stoning (Acts 7:60), and the apostles kneeling in prayer (Acts 9:40; 30:36).  St. Paul speaks of bended knee to the Ephesians (3:14) and, of course, to the Philippians he asserts that “at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (2:10).

Hypocrites stand in prayer (Matt 6:5) but then Jesus instructs his own disciples how to pray standing (Mark 11:25).  In the consummation, the faithful stand before God (Luke 21:28; Rev 7:9).  Yet it is true that from the earliest of times, kneeling and standing are both accepted postures of prayer -- even apart from the obvious connection between penitence and kneeling (or prostration). 

It did not take long before these postures took on symbolic meaning.  St. Basil saw kneeling a symbol of the sinfulness of this life but standing upright as attesting to Christ’s resurrection.  When Canon 20 of Nicea said to stand during Easter for prayer, some also included the cessation of the fast (also from Easter to Pentecost).  But by the thirteenth century, kneeling was not so strongly associated with penitence as it was piety.  Kneeling had become the customary posture of adoration by that time.  By the time of the Reformation, Canon 20 had been largely forgotten.  Luther’s sacramental theology led him to support genuflection in the liturgy.  Even the East today does not quite see Canon 20 as a doctrine but discipline and understands kneeling to be tolerated.  Today postures are not quite so easily identified with specific meaning.  Men once stood out of respect for women and now most folks seem to think that sitting is no disrespect.  But there is one who does not kneel.  That is the devil.  The posture of kneeling during the Confession is actually quite different from the posture of kneeling during the consecration though few pay any attention to it. The devil does and he refuses to do either -- to confess his sin in penitence or to adore the Christ whose flesh and blood are given to us for the forgiveness of those sins.

So what should we do?  Lutherans are actually loathe to make rules requiring anyone to do either.  For what it is worth, kneeling during the general confession is not quite within the liturgy and there is quite a history of kneeling during the Our Father.  Maybe that is not the problem.  Maybe sitting is -- the ultimate posture of passivity.  Could it be that our sitting is so that God might entertain us?  Perhaps there is a problem after all.  In any case, the devil's example is the worst to follow.  We ought at least to do not what he does.  So there it is.  Refusing to kneel may be our problem -- not because we have bad knees but because we have bad hearts.  The spiritual problem is bigger than the posture problem is.  Always.

Worship wars. . .

There are worship wars going on in most places where orthodox Christians are still fighting.  This certainly includes Rome and the Missouri Synod and, to a lesser extent, those places where there are still battles being fought (among some Anglicans, for example).  The reality is that though the fight is happening on the grounds of worship and what happens there, the fight is not really about worship at all.  It is a battle for the heart and soul of the faith.  

Rome has made it clear that this is not about worship preferences but about what is believed and confessed.  The recriminations against those who attend the Latin Mass, for example, or those who are still putting in altar rails is not about Latin or the Mass.  It is about what the Roman Catholic faith is and what it will be.  On one side you have those who believe you can dance with chickens or do the chicken dance in church and those who hold not simply to the sacredness of the space but of what God is doing among those gathered in His name.  It is not about architecture or music but about what is believed and confessed.  It may be fought in the chancel but it is not simply about that space and what happens there.  Worship and faith are connected.  Faith and worship are connected.  Once these battles stop, there will also be an end to battles over what is believed and taught.

Among Lutherans it is equally about what is believed, taught, and confessed.  Those who want to add guitars are not interested in stringed instruments but in the kind of church where truth and morality are adjustable and where Scripture is not the final word on either.  It is not about vestments or none or liturgy or none or ceremony or none.  It is about the transformation of the faith into something informed and judged by man instead of the gift of God.  It is a good thing that there are still battles going on.  After all, the ELCA no longer battles because the words have been emptied of meaning and the actions in worship no longer reflect the mystical reality of God among us distributing His gifts.  If we are still having worship wars, it means that the battle is being waged against a relativized and vanilla faith that has lost is saltiness.

Some people are tired of these worship wars.  In my experience, when the battles stop, mischief begins and peace means acquiescence to whatever people want or is in fashion at the moment.  I hope we continue to have the stamina to do battle for the sake of the liturgy, yes, but even more for what that liturgy says and means.  When it is finally done, either heaven's gates will be sealed and the faithful no longer troubled by these distractions OR the opposition to the modernist ideal will have surrendered and given up.  So do not wish for peace unless you are sure that Christ is at the door and ushering in the new heavens and the new earth.  Until that happens, we must be vigilant to maintain the integrity of what happens in worship and what is confessed before the world.  This is, after all, why we call it the Church Militant. 

Paint it beige. . .

Back in the day when we were shopping for a new house, the builders preferred beige.  Everything was beige.  In our house, the walls were beige, the carpeting was beige, the vinyl flooring was beige, and the tile was beige.  It was a perfectly neutral color designed to offend no one.  Of course, it did not impress anyone either.  None of it is beige any longer -- except for the tile I have not yet replaced.   The house is awash with color.  People probably don't like it but my wife and I do.  That is all that matters.  Of course, it is dated.  Every house is dated.  Just as soon as you put up a barn door or paint a wall or replace the backsplash, trends have moved on and the one you just worked so hard to install is passe.  But at least it is not beige.  Fast forward to the present and beige seems to be replaced with gray.  Everything inside and outside is gray -- unless it is grey.  Laminate flooring, walls, tile, cabinets, counters, etc... It is all gray or grey (for the life of me I do not know the difference but I am pretty sure HGTV will tell me).   It is another perfect color for people without any personality who wish neither to impress nor offend anyone.

Often, religion seems to fancy such colors.  Beige or gray or tan or grey... the name does not matter.  What matters is it neither offends nor impresses.  So the preaching is practiced but empty and sure neither to offend nor impress.  It lives up to its nondescript standards.  The music is like elevator muzak, intended to fade into the background and not inhibit the folks inside from doing or saying what they want.  The liturgy is there but bland and low enough so that it neither excites nor bores -- it just is.  There ceremonies are sufficiently inconspicuous and therefore the least that can be done becomes the most that should be done.  The building looks like every public building but not like a church lest anyone get the idea that it was one.  The pastor dresses, talks, and looks like he represents the current casual generation and would fit in on business casual days just as easily as he fits the arena of worship and prayer.  Religion has, for the most part, become the vague, bland, beige style of belief and practice sure to not ruffle any feathers.  Oddly enough, the worst offenders are those who claim to be contemporary but are hopelessly stuck in music and style back in the 1980s.  Piety and practice, along with doctrine and dogma, should not be too spicy or it will surely inhibit the growth and success of the religious endeavor, right?

That is the problem.  We have been doing bland religion and beige worship and gray belief for so long that we now consider milk a spice.  Where has it gotten us?  Look around.  The gray of the worship and belief is right in style with the gray hair of those in the pews.  We offend no one so we impress no one.  I long for the days when our church body was a real flavor.  I ache for the days when some folks went to worship in one of our congregations and said "no, that is definitely not for me."  I wait not so patiently for the days when we return to standing for truth and worshiping in spirit and in truth.  Truth is always offensive.  It is not which truth offends but real truth always offends someone and generally nearly everyone.  When St. Peter said "Lord, where else can we go?  Your the only show in town that has life now and eternally," the poor man was not exactly making a bold confession.  He was admitting that Jesus was too spicy for him and for his world and probably always would be but there was no alternative.  Jesus or death.  Jesus or sin.  Jesus or hell.

I wish we would stop worrying about what people think and began to worry about what Jesus thinks.  Would Jesus preach vague self-help sermons because people would not be turned away?  Would Jesus offer bread that was mere bread because people want to eat more than they want to be saved?  Would Jesus stop talking about sin because it might imply people are sinners in need of a Savior?  Would Jesus stop attending the temple because people might be offended by the sacrifice of animals or the synagogue because the same people might not accept the truth of what was being taught?  When people started leaving because faith was too hard and doctrine too difficult, Jesus did not change but turned to His disciples who had been with Him from the beginning and ask if they were going to abandon the way of life too.  Before you jump to conclusions and presume I just like to offend, that is not my point.  I am a fairly easy guy to get along with except when it comes to vanilla Christianity in a world desperately in need of a real flavor.  We do not offend to be offensive but neither are we beige in the hopes of gathering those who really like the absence of color (or truth, for that matter).  The Athanasian Creed got it so painfully correct.  Whoever would be saved must...  The Gospel does not require you to do much of anything except to not be offended by it.  Jesus is a stumbling stone.  If the Church is not, we might not be the Church Jesus established at the cost of His own blood.

45 and counting. . .

45 years ago today. . . on the hottest day in July on a Nebraska prairie in a rural Lutheran church, a pastor was made. . .  Most of the men in that picture are long gone to be with the Lord. . . some of us are still here. . . the good work is completed by God's grace and whatever was built upon the firm foundation of Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone, remains.

 

How does this help?

The abundance of armchair quarterbacks for nearly anything and everything is hardly new.  Yet, in most cases, the armchair quarterbacks are passionate precisely because they are cheering on and routing for their team -- in good times and in bad.  They comment because it is their goal to see the team win and follow that victory right to the end.  How odd it is, then, that Christianity has an abundance not simply of amateur theologians who think they know better but a whole slew of academics who likewise seem to insist that they are in a better position to discern truth from error than even those who walked and talked with Jesus!  Indeed, the oddity is more than a curiosity but a paradox.  How can you keep the faith while working so hard to dismantle the foundation on which the faith is built?  Here I am speaking particularly of the commemtators and textual critics who cannot keep themselves from inserting doubt about the texts we have, the possible sources of those texts which are not as claimed, and the nefarious goals of those who they are sure have messed with the text to distort what is real and true.

Elaine Pagels (remember her) is out with another book Miracles and Wonders which purports to answer the question of who Jesus was (note the past tense here for someone she is sure is no longer alive).  Imagine my surprise when her answer is we may never know.  Of course, the reason we may never know is that Pagels does not grant much credibility or truth to the Scriptures which claim to have been written by those who knew Jesus best and who insist He is still alive.  Read this snippet from Amazon trying to sell you the book:

The book reads like a historical mystery, with each chapter addressing a fascinating question and answering it based on the gospels Jesus's followers left behind. Why is Jesus said to have had a virgin birth? Why do we say he rose from the dead? Did his miracles really happen and what did they mean?

The story Pagels tells is thrilling and tense. Not just does Jesus comes to life but his desperate, hunted followers do as well. We realize that some of the most compelling details of Jesus's life are the explanations his disciples created to paper over inconvenient facts. So Jesus wasn't illegitimate, his mother conceived by God; Jesus's body wasn't humiliatingly left to rot and tossed into a common grave—no, he rose from the dead and was seen whole by his followers; Jesus isn't a failed messiah, his kingdom is a metaphor: he lives in us. These necessary fabrications were the very details and promises that electrified their listeners and helped his followers' numbers grow.

In Miracles and Wonder, Pagels does more than solve a historical mystery. She sheds light on Jesus's enduring power to inspire and attract.

She insists that inconvenient facts papered over the well-meaning by lying disciples are the problem to knowing Jesus.  Surely  the problem is just the opposite.  An 80 something year old woman who has spent a career doubting every word of Scripture and casting aspersions on the integrity of the authors of the New Testament makes Jesus into a novelty but a sham as well.  She well represents others who have likewise spent their lives trying to impugn the Bible, cast doubt upon its facts, and then insist that none of it really matters to who Jesus was or why people are still interested in Him.  Like I said, how can you claim to keep the faith when you dismantle the very foundation on which that faith is built?  Do us all a favor.  Don't buy the book and add to her income.  Don't be a part of her scam. 

Be a patriot and a Christian but know the difference. . .

I consider myself a patriotic American.  I am jealous about the good name and noble virtue of American exceptionalism in the world.  I am humbled by the faithful folk who have stood guard against our enemies and whose blood was shed on battlefields far and near for the sake of this nation.  I am in awe of this thing called freedom which we value so highly.   I still shudder when the guns of a military salute go off and tears well up in my eyes at the funerals of veterans when a soldier gets down on one knee and presents the flag to the bereaved on behalf of a grateful nation.  But there is no American flag inside the church nor should there be.  The confusion of national loyalty and religious fervor is dangerous to both.

It is at terrible error to presume God's loyalty to a people or a land and to interweave faith and patriotism.  The resulting fabric will not be faithful to either cause when we assume that God is one of us (Americans or any other nation and people) and ours the only righteous land and citizenry in the world.  This fabric is not sturdy enough to weave the two together and it will surely tear unless we are wise.  We do not do our nation or our faith any good by beating our chests and proclaiming God in our hip pocket.

If you are a patriotic American, pray for the our President, the members of Congress, your Governor, state legislature, judges, magistrates, mayors, and all levels of civil servants both elected and appointed.  Do not pray for those you like or those with whom you agree but for all manner of men.  Pray for wisdom to overflow for all, for your own faithfulness as citizen as well as theirs as leaders, for those who battle to defend us and those who send them into battle, for those who keep the peace and those who are called to live in peace.  We cannot afford to be without people of truth and integrity, who love justice, who act mercifully, and who carry the solemn mantle of public service humbly.  It helps no cause to constantly belittle and speak ill of our leaders and it will certainly guarantee that we get precisely the kind of leaders we deserve for speaking against them with such vitriol.  How will we ever convince those of good repute and noble character to run and serve the public good with all our bitterness and contempt of politics?

If you are a patriotic American, then render unto Caesar the things that are his as your civil, patriotic, and solemn duty.  Don't cheat on your income taxes and call it the great national sport.  Don't sit at home while others cast their ballots for people, initiatives, and referendums.  Don't be a silent minority or majority but engage the issues, causes, and conversations of the public square, guided by principle and faith as well.  Don't refuse to speak circumspectly or to act virtuously but show forth good citizenship as best you can until and unless to do so would violate God's law.

If you are patriotic American, then teach your children our history -- the good and the bad -- and urge them to give nothing less than their best for the cause of liberty, the rule of good law, and the common good.  Teach your children the sacrifices of those who went before them on lonely beachhead, in jungle heat, on thunderous wave, and cloudy sky to protect, preserve, and defend our freedom.  Teach your children not to squander this legacy of liberty in the pursuit of selfish endeavor or to justify lustful desire but to pursue it with honor, integrity, and virtue.  Teach your children to honor the flag without confusing flag and cross and thereby diminishing both.  Teach your children how the government works and prepare them for their own time when they must pass the torch to their own sons and daughters.

If you are a patriotic American, cheer on the defense of the defenseless, the protection of the vulnerable, the cause of the unborn, the aged, and the infirm, and challenge oppression, hatred, and bigotry in all its forms.  Honor life as precious gift and not as the prerogative of  rich, the powerful, or those who intimidate.  Refuse to allow life to be valued by the almighty dollar, the parade of accomplishments, or how productive one can be.  Protect rights without dismantling morality or diminishing virtue or surrendering right to wrong, goodness to evil.  Be honored that more want to come and enjoy the precious liberty we so easily take for granted.  The rule and respect of law should be demanded of both citizen and those who want to be but unjust laws serve no good for no people.  We are a nation of immigrants, this is true, but of immigrants who have shared a common vision of liberty, a common commitment to shared values (of morality, family, and work), and a willingness to live together in peace (even when we disagree).  The freedom we have allows us not the right to be me at any cost but the right to use our freedom for noble purpose and for the cause of virtue or else people will have died for a country of selfish brats.  Our liberty allows us to speak without fear of a police state but it presumes that we will not waste this freedom on self-indulgent postings sometimes mistaken for social media.  I do not think that our nation's first soldiers fought and died for the cause of a meme.

Why do we think freedom simply means everyone has a right to my opinion?  Why do we speak without the need to listen?  Why is it so easy for us to believe the world revolves around me?  Why do we cover our political opinions with religious sounding words and act like our faith needs might to make a difference?  Why are we more comfortable with an American flag than a crucifix in our worship spaces?  We taint both kingdoms by elevating patriotism over faith just as we do the same by presuming God has called us to build earthly kingdoms instead of announcing the heavenly one.  People of good will and common sense have the power to help on the political front but their cause is aided best when we pray on their behalf and do not muddy the waters by presuming Jesus wears either a national identity or a denominational label.  God is not an American but live your life and profess your faith so that your patriotism will not diminish your faith and your faith will ennoble your vocation and life as citizen.  In this way, both will be honored.  I know that there will be those who might take offense at what I have written but a patriot is more than someone who waves the flag a couple of times a year.  

It is not too late. . .

It is not too late.  Sign up now for one of the premier Lutheran events in the South and a game changer for interested in and devoted to Christian theology and cultural engagement.  While this is a deep and profound review from both theology and sociology, it is not for pastors only and would be especially useful for lay folk and those involved in home schooling.  I would even recommend this for your teens as they prepare to move on into higher education -- preparing them with the tools they need to meet and answer the challenges provided them in nearly every university or college setting.  

It is conveniently located just outside of Nashville, TN, has a broad schedule and array of speakers, and is just the thing to spur your thinking as you meet the issues before us as Christians in an increasingly unChstian culture.

The arrangements are well-planned and the worship is also very engaging.  I recommend this from personal experience. 

For information and registration, click here to Henkel/Ascension, Madison, TN. 

Why start with worship. . .

The story of a new bishop in Charlotte is a predictable story of someone new rushing to make changes to worship.  In this case it is Rome and the direction is away from things sacred and undue reverence.  Particularly, this involves restricting the Latin Mass and its availability to a former Presbyterian building yet to be remodeled and to ritual acts within the Vatican II era Mass.  This guy wants fiddleback chasubles and altar crucifixes gone -- along with kneeling and too much reverence to the cleansing of the sacred vessels.  Needless to say, he has caused a stir even though he has been there only a year.  In Rome they told him to slow down and now that his former superior is Pope, that caution has a little more weight to it.

It is not uncommon for pastors or bishops to make changes.  God knows I did.  But there is certainly a way to make changes and a reason for making changes that sometimes gets lost in this.  In my case, my first parish did not have a Lutheran hymnal in the pews.  That was in the old days of TLH as the sole LCMS hymnal.  I did move them back into the book but did so with constant catechesis in sermons and studies.  In part this was so that they did not get the idea that worship was experimental or that it was a matter of the current pastor's preference.  The focus was decidedly on Lutheran identity and practice, just as the Augustana frames it in catholic doctrine and usage (or practice).  The introduction of LW was necessitated by the poor condition of the TLH books and yet it too was a long and slow process so that they did not open the doors on Sunday morning to find a surprise awaiting them.  Even in my second parish, where there was some liturgical tradition, my parts changed more than the parts of the people and it was a very slow and sometimes tedious process to address everything from weekly Eucharist to chanted liturgy to reverence as the byword of what we do in worship.  Along with these things were the issues of lay leadership within the Divine Service and particularly of the role then of women leading parts of that Divine Service.  The end result was that the changes became solidly incorporated into the congregation's faith, life, and identity and were not simply dismissed as worship whims or pastoral preference.  These guiding principles helped us through LW through HS98 and into LSB without much of a ripple.  Generous presiding along with reverent liturgical leadership is a plus.

That said, it is too often the case where, like this bishop, people are given orders or encounter rather sudden changes that disregard longstanding tradition.  Even when that is not the preference of the new guy it does not have to be changed and it certainly does not have to be changed right away.  Where there is urgency is when doctrinal issues are at stake, when bad practices must be rectified, and when continuing such practices would give people the idea that there is nothing wrong with them (except not my preference).  Even in these cases, teaching is the means to make change.  Before anything changes on Sunday morning, the people need to know what is going to change and why and if they are brought on board early, such changes will not be as conflicted as those which catch people by surprise.  Other changes not necessitated by wrong doctrine or practice should be handled even more discreetly and with a very slow pace, always accompanied by instruction.  

Oftentimes, the new guy (which I have been!) has a heads up to the things that need to be dealt with early.  Those are the priority lists for the attention of the pastor as well as taking the time to get to know the people, earn their trust, and be accepted as a leader.  A few early successes in old problems within the congregation can well serve the pastor as he moves forward.  The bishop should have learned this by the time he became bishop, apparently he did not.  But sometimes pastors forget that the parish is not a blank canvas on which they paint their picture of perfection.  Every pastor makes changes but incremental changes over time last longer than sudden lane changes without announcement, explanation, or justification.  Every new pastor seems to presume the guys who went before them were idiots or incompetents and every old pastor presumes the guys who follow them don't know anything.  The truth is not quite true on either extreme.  Unless the sheep are in extreme danger, the gentle path is the wiser one.  It is hard to reestablish trust after conflict erupts but not impossible.  I made a million mistakes and found people generally forgiving if they knew you were trying to work in their best interest.  The unforgivable ones are generally the ones that hit them in the face without any teaching, direction, or explanation of what is to come.  I will never say not to make any changes but I will always say to be generous, overly catechetical, and patient when making those changes -- it does not matter if you are a pastor or a bishop.

 

What is worse, germs or sins?

I thought it might be time to revisit the chalice issue.  It has been now five years since Covid came upon the scene and exploited the fears in people to drive them from the cup to the cups.  It seems that enough time should have passed so that people would return to the cup and stop turning up their noses at the prospect of germs.  But, of course, that would presume that people were more concerned about sins than germs and I am sad to say that it is probably not the case.

We are squeamish people at least when it comes to germs.  Sins have become normal, usual, comfortable, and so we hardly notice them anymore.  Germs, on the other hand, are still worrisome and even though Covid is not quite on our radars, some do not want to take chances.  It would seem that it is easier to take a chance that God is not as serious about sin as He says He is than to presume that the cup is better than cups.  We are easy to spook.  A germ will set us off (or at least the prospect of one) far more than sin enters the conscience to make us concerned about our salvation.

For this reason, it is easier for us to swallow the things we know are wrong and God's Word says are wrong than it is for us to put the chalice to our lips.  I wish I understood this.  It happens even among good and decent Christian people.  We are so traumatized by germs that we will gladly accept sin without complaint more than we will swallow our fears and taste of the cup.  Perhaps the time will come when our itching ears no longer are tuned into the threats and fears of this mortal life most of all.  Perhaps the time will come when we will trust so in the Lord that we gladly and willingly confess privately our sins so that we may publicly feast upon the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation.  Perhaps the time will arrive when no fear can push us away from His cup but sins are taken so seriously that we must deal with them as soon as possible.

But why would God expect more of us than from every age and people before us?  Sin has always been too easy on the eye and so we get into trouble and germs have always made us nervous and so we invent ways of hiding behind our fears.  The worst thing about individual cups at the altar is what they imply -- that we are more concerned about germs than sins.  Until we fix this one, the cross will always be less about atonement than inspiration -- oh, that we loved with a love stronger than death, too!  Jesus did not die as an example.  He died as a Savior for a people who needed saving or they would die forever.  Germs did not prevent Him nor did the ick factor detour Him.  He set His face like flint for the cross because He knew what we really needed -- not an answer for the germs around us or in us but a Savior and salvation from the sins that will kill us eternally.

Heart and head. . .

One of the fruits of the overwhelming influence of Evangelicalism upon worship and the Charismatic Movement as it has affected all the churches is a decided tilt toward sincerity over content.  The worship of God has become more about the attitude and posture of the heart than just about anything else.  In so doing, the great sin of the Pharisees has become their lack of sincerity and desire and this has painted with board brush across the once vibrant doctrines and confessions of American churches.  What is often forgotten is that Jesus was not choosing between heart and head but insisting that one cannot be without the other.  Proper worship requires proper belief.  Anything less than this is to worship something other than the true God.  Historically, right worship and right belief are always found together or either is suspect.  Orthodoxy is maintained because salvation is only under the true Name and not in pursuit of small truths.  Heresy automatically betrays this Name plus it does not matter how sincere a heretic is in his or her heresy, the error in belief cannot be rectified by sincerity or passion.  

The goal of Nicaea was not to preserve merely a philosophical expression of what is right belief but to ensure right worship.  The adoption of the creed was then only part of its solution.  They developed the creed both to summarize the basic beliefs of orthodox Christianity as revealed in Scripture and to condemn any other beliefs.  It was not some ethereal or picky unpacking of the relationship of the Father to the Son but the preservation of right worship by maintaining boundaries of right belief.  Salvation is found in no other God than this God whom the creed confesses.  Everything else is excluded.  Whether Arius or not, anything else cannot be the true God nor can the worship be true worship.  These boundary lines were not simply for the sake of belief but directly practical to worship.

Interestingly, Luther has not much to say about the Nicene Creed.  That is because it was not in dispute.  The errors were not Trinitarian.  The right God was being worshiped but not with the right worship (sacrificial vs sacramental).  To those who insist that simple agreement on the Nicene Creed is or ought to be sufficient for church fellowship (altar fellowship), remember that the principle is the same.  Other doctrines were not in dispute but the core or central doctrine of who God is was disputed in the early church and more extensive creedal statements might have been adopted had they been.  Luther's chief contribution here is to put the creed into singable form so that it might be more easily memorized and confessed in the catechetical hymn Wir glauben all an einen Gott.

So the question remains.  What ought to be the proper boundaries for worship?  Here the standard of Nicea remains as it has for nearly 1700 years.  From the sixth century down through the present, the creed insists that right worship must worship the right God.  As unequivocal as this is, it is not exhaustive.  Where other doctrines or truths are denied, other mechanisms must be employed as boundaries against those who believe falsely and therefore do not worship rightly.  The Athanasian Creed makes this painfully true -- whoever would be saved must confess that catholic faith.  This is not some bare essential of Trinitarian economy but that which has always been believed everywhere.  Oddly enough, our problems today are not in the fringes of belief but remain in the core.  Who God is remains a current issue.  In a world where significant numbers of people within orthodox Trinitarian churches are still confessing that Jesus is not God, was not incarnate of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, and did not die in atonement for the sins of the whole world and rise for the sake of those for whom He died.   All of this is connected.  Confess the right God and confess rightly that this God works through one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.  Nobody but a fool would say that this right belief is inseparable from right worship but no one but a fool would also insist that this is all that need be believed.

How odd it is. . .

Many years ago I had a parishioner who wondered about evolution and Genesis and indicated that he found it hard to believe the Scriptures against the evidence of evolution.  I did not argue with him but I did observe that if he found Genesis a skandalon, why not the whole idea of the mighty and eternal God enfleshed in the womb of the Virgin, born to live among us as one of us but not, who dies as the innocent for the guilty, rises on the third day, and promises those who believe in Him that they will rise to everlasting life.  Is that not a skandalon of majestic porportion?

That is the problem.  We have made the Gospel humble and normal by reducing it to some idea of love or some principle of compassion or some act of charity.  We have tried to tame Aslan and in so doing have washed out the skandalon from the that which is meant to be scandalous.  Jesus insists that this Gospel of His death and resurrection is a stumbling block, a rock of offense, and by smoothing its rough edges and making it seem normal we have effectively disarmed it of any real power or authority.  We preach nearly everything but Christ crucified and risen and in so doing have made people forget the skandalon of the Gospel and made it easier for them to swallow the scandalous ideals of modernity as replacements for the cross and empty tomb.

So it is curious that we presume the skandalon which prevents people from joining the Church or coming to worship is the sound of music different from their playlist or the arcane rituals that have served Christianity since the get go.  People will not be scandalized by the real Gospel because we have rendered it tame and harmless so they can be scandalized by architecture that is different from other public spaces or liturgy that is timeless but untimely or vestments that seem like ancient dresses or incense that offends the sanitary smell of lemon or clorox or music that does not sound like what their Spotify favorites list.  Really?  Are they as shallow as that?

Oddly enough, Lifeway surveyed those who do not have anything to do with the Church and found they prefer to have churches that look, act, smell, and sound like church.  They do but we don't.  We are so afraid of offending anyone that we will dream up the foolishness of chosen pronouns of men who think they are women or same sex marriage the same as the estate God created but we will not allow for worship which is not contemporary (whatever that means) or music that does not sound like today?  People don't care a whit about that stuff.  We do -- those inside the Church (or who claim to be) care about it and so we lie and cheat in order to make it seem that people are not flocking to churches because of music or vestments or reverence.  Those outside the faith know the real scandal -- God incarnate, Christ crucified, the dead raised, and life forever bigger and better than life now.  Even Genesis pales in comparison to these things guaranteed to choke everyone who is not swallowing it all by means of the Spirit.

We say it all the time and so we have come to believe it.  We do not legislate music or liturgy because we are afraid of offending those who know the real offense is not the style but the substance of what is believed.  We do not smoke up the chancel because we are fearful of offending people who no longer find the real skandalon Christ and Him crucified.  We have tamed the preaching to make it seem like forgiveness is nice enough for those who need it but the rest of us are here for the camaraderie.  God gave us meat to chew on and we put it all in a blender and ended up with nothing recognizable at all.  We have decided that mother's milk is better than hearty food and so we have turned the solid food of God's Word into mere sentiment or pious platitudes but still people are not coming -- not even those who insist they are still Christian.  So we have to blame something.  It must be the architecture or the music or the reverence or something like that.  I know what it cannot be -- it cannot be that we have failed to preach the scandal of the cross or live it out.  The Gospel has become trite and easy and so those not yet of the Kingdom have rightly decided it is not worth it to swallow or to believe such mush.  Let us hope that the new pope knows the truth that sets us free and that the rest of us also know it and are not afraid anymore to preach it, worship in unworldly ways, and keep it a skandalon.  I seem to recall that it is the lukewarm who received the worst from Jesus -- chewed up and spit it as not even man enough to disagree and certainly not man enough to believe with all their heart, soul, body, and strength.

Development. . . or not

 

 

 

 

 

 

We hear a lot about doctrinal development from all kinds of people and with respect to all kinds of doctrines. We have to admit the obvious.  The development of doctrine has become the calling card for those who wish to change the faith once delivered to the saints.  Times change.  Doctrine changes.  While some might practice some restraint with respect to the development of doctrine and limit this to its elucidation, sharpened like iron in times of controversy, but not changing into something different, this is obviously not what either liberal Protestants or Roman Catholics think.  They have tended to view doctrine and everything into some sort of process or progress.  Indeed, reality itself is evolutionary. 

On the one hand, we hear it articulated by the fifth-century French priest and monk, St. Vincent of Lerins. In his Commonitorium , St. Vincent speaks of a very conservative development and insists that what to be catholic: “One must be careful to hold what has been believed everywhere, always and by all. … That is what is Catholic in the true and proper sense.”  The faith does not evolve or develop or progress but that which our Lord has revealed is unalterable.  In this sense, we do not grow in understanding beyond what the faithful have believed, taught, and confessed down from the apostles and through the ages. 

Dom Prosper Gueranger, Abbot of Solesmes, expands this understanding of doctrinal development.   “It is a fundamental principle of theology, that all revealed truths were confided to the Church at the beginning; that some were explicitly proposed for our belief from the start, whereas others, although contained implicitly in the first set of truths, only emerged from them with the passage of time, by means of formal definitions rendered by the Church with the assistance of the Holy Ghost, through Whom she is infallible.”

Now things appear to get interesting.  For added to the mix is both the understanding that the Spirit is still guiding the Church past what is written in Scripture but the whole idea that the Church is infallible.  What originally was about an unchanging deposit of faith has now left room for the Church to depart not only from Scripture but from the articulations of the early Church.  Now is it not simply our understanding that becomes deeper but the possibility for things to be added to the faith which were not first present with the apostles and taught by our Lord.

Rome depends upon this expanded understanding of doctrinal development.  Without it there could be no purgatory or papacy, no transubstantiation or treasury of merits, etc...  Rome requires for its very existence that doctrines develop from nothing or at least from something other than Scripture.  Luther's rejection of Rome was not in cardinal doctrines of the faith but in precisely those areas to which was added that which was not there from the beginning nor in Scripture and that which is, often, a contradiction of the Scriptures themselves.  Who can deny that the movement for historical criticism of Scripture has become a movement also for the development of understandings and doctrines different from the ones espoused or expected by that Word of God?

This is not simply about the Church’s ever-growing understanding, its ever-developing defense, and its ever-clearer proclamation of the mysteries of faith fostered by the Spirit but about the Church growing up and growing out of these mysteries claiming the same guidance of the Spirit. What Rome requires to hold up the rafters of its very house is what Protestantism has been using for years to justify departure from that faith.  It is time for all of us to admit this and to begin to deal with this difference.  Inherent in this argument is the presumption on the part of Rome (with is corollary in liberal Protestantism) that the Scriptures themselves are a creation of the Church, by the Church, and for the Church.  The movement past sharpening the words in the face of heresy to the actual development of doctrine from one thing into something else is a Word problem, a Scripture problem.  In this presumption the Church knows better than Paul what Paul wrote, better than the Gospel writers what they penned, and better than the apostles an understanding of who Jesus is and what He came to accomplish.  In this respect, it sounds more Gnostic than Christian.

If there is a reason for the misunderstanding of Lutheranism, it is because we insist that we have nothing new to offer, believe in nothing new, and will not advocate for that which is new but only for that which has always been believed everywhere at every time.  We keep up the mantra of catholicity, apostolicity, and historicity in the face of each new thing that is proposed -- from the way we describe the Trinity and its internal relationships to the invention of genders.  Indeed, Lutherans are tiresome (or at least they should be) in asking where was that written?

 

More shameless PR

I have been asked to teach a continuing ed course in August in two locations.  The information is listed below.  Take a gander and if you are interested, sign up and join us.  It is not only for pastors but also for lay folks as well.

August 4–6, 2025 in Auburn, MI &

August, 12-14 in Cupertino, CA 

The Rev. Larry A. Peters is a native of Nebraska and graduated from St. John’s College, Winfield, Kansas, Concordia Senior College, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne (1980). He vicared on Long Island and served his first call in Cairo, New York, before moving to Clarksville, Tennessee, where he served Grace Lutheran Church as senior pastor for thirty-two years. He is now pastor emeritus of Grace. In 2017 Concordia Theological Seminary recognized him as alumnus of the year. He has served as a circuit visitor in the Atlantic and Mid-South districts, is currently chairman of the Synod’s Commission on Constitutional Matters, sits on the Synod’s Commission on Handbook, and is also secretary of the Mid-South district. He has also served on the planning committees for the Synod’s Institute for Liturgy, Preaching, and Church Music for the last ten years. Pastor Peters has published many periodical articles and served as a contributor to a number of CPH volumes. He is the author of the popular blog, Pastoral Meanderings. Pastor Peters has been married to his wife, Amy, for more than forty-six years, and they have three adult children and two grandchildren. He is currently trying to figure out what retirement means.  

At All Times and in All Places: All God's People Pray 

More words about prayer can be found in the Scriptures than about most other topics, and yet God’s people struggle with what it means to pray. This course will examine the practice of prayer among God’s Old Testament people, through the time of Christ, through the history of Christianity, and down to the present day. What is prayer? What does it mean to pray? How do we pray? How did the people of God order their prayer lives before us? What is the difference between and what is the connection with the individhttps://witness.lcms.org/the-magazine/ual prayer lives of God’s people and the common prayers of God’s people together? What does God’s Word teach us about prayer? This course will help participants learn and appreciate the lessons of the past on the practice and discipline of prayer both as individuals and as a people gathered together for worship and prayer. All of us are both amateurs and professionals when it comes to praying, and this course is both for those who lead and teach God’s people to pray and for the people of God in their discipline of prayer throughout the circumstances and places of life.  

Location:    Grace Lutheran Church 303 Ruth St. Auburn, MI 48611 To download the registration form, click here.  

Lutheran Church of Our Savior 5825 Bollinger Rd. Cupertino, CA 95014  To download the registration form, click here.

Coordinators:  Rev. Aaron T. Schian Email: aaronschian@yahoo.com Phone: (607) 972-5792  & Rev. John Bestul Phone: 408.252.0345 Email: pastorjbestul@lcos.org 

Schedule is available from the Seminary or from the pastors who are coordinating.  See you there!

 

 

Conservative churches grow... liberal ones die...

Conservative churches are not growing because they are conservative.  Liberal churches are not dying because they are not conservative.  It is the nature of liberality that it does not require nor does it compel one to join.  One can merely agree not to challenge as well as fundamentally agree with liberalism and that is enough.  The primary virtue of liberalism is tolerance -- not that the liberals tolerate all but that all tolerate liberal ideas.  Such assent does not require union or participation and can be enjoyed at a distance without requiring affiliation.

Conservative churches grow because they believe it is essential to belong and to attend and to support.  Yes, they challenge all that contradicts what they believe, they encounter all people with their cherished beliefs, and insist their truth is true for all people but this is not something the lives merely in the imagination.  It is a way of life.  Conservative churches are generally organized around their beliefs -- beliefs held not for the sake of the few but in trust for all.  It is the holy calling of conservative churches to make sure that all know and receive what it is that they hold in trust for the sake of all.

Liberal Muslims like liberal Christians seem to be a dying breed.  They seem unable to muster the confidence or courage to suggest that their truth must be held by all, that it is worth the fuss of conversion, or that it is worth the investment of attendance.  They merely want to be tolerated.  They extend their influence not by adherents so much as by consent.  Their nature is not so much fervor as it is intellectual agreement, a liberal view of life that they extend to Christianity and not a Christian view that they extend to their liberalism.

Conservative Muslims and conservative Christians are not content to sit on their hands while people disagree.  Both have a missionary purpose and goal.  They want all to believe as they believe and to live as they live.  Now, to be sure, I am not at all equating Islam and Christianity.  There is a wide world of difference between conservative Christians and Muslims in what is believed and confessed.  Islam seems uncontent with the idea that people can disagree without consequence and are enforcers of their orthodoxy.  Even sectarian Christian groups can be militant (think in the past of Westboro Baptist Church) -- though nearly all without taking up arms as the radical Muslims have done.  Most conservative Christians believe that God will deal with those who have rejected the truth and that their cause is to give witness to the Gospel.  Unlike the Islam who act to enforce God's judgment, the conservative Christians act to preserve the faith and to proclaim it for the sake of all who will sit under God's final judgment.

There is a huge group of Christians who are conservative in faith, doctrine, and practice, but who speak of those who reject the truth less in terms of retribution than loss.  Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Confessional Lutherans are intentional in their faith.  They all believe that they hold in trust the evangelical and catholic faith of the Apostles.  But their missionary import is inclusive.  They have what God intends for all, not simply as a refuge from the terror but as the positive gift of peace, life, and hope.  Rome insists that there is no salvation outside of the Church but by the Church they mean Rome.  Orthodoxy is perhaps more generous but likewise has a narrow view of communion all the while expecting its truth is not for the few.  Confessional Lutherans believe that what we espouse in our Concordia is not our own version of the faith but the truth confessed for the sake of all.  My point is not to parse the conflicts between Rome, Constantinople, and Wittenberg but to illustrate how they understand their role and purpose as guardians of the truth for all not to condemn but to preserve. 

Liberalism is not simply an aspect of Christianity.  The same tolerance they insist upon for doctrine and practice is itself the principle for all of life -- except when it comes to tolerating conservative dissent.  They insist upon a tolerance which accepts nearly all the diversity liberalism espouses but refuses to condone the narrowness of the conservative.  Oddly enough, this is somewhat personal.  There is a strange willingness to be more charitable toward the Muslim conservative than the Christian.  It is, of course, their own discomfort with the whole of Christian history and the whole idea that Christianity has been a force for good.  They not only disown individual doctrines of the Christian faith but Christian history and influence over culture and life as a whole.  Liberal churches are less united in their affirmation of what they believe but in their condemnation of what they reject.  In essence, there is little reason to join a liberal group since you can reject nearly everything and accept everything else without the bother of joining.  In other words, liberals have yet to develop and apply a compelling reason for joining anything.  As an example, when was the last time you saw the parking lot full at a Unitarian Universalist congregation?

Who is Missouri?

While it is true that those within Missouri have their own ideas about what the real Missouri Synod is, there are those on the outside of Missouri who also have ideas about the Synod.  In many respects, the boundaries of the body are the same -- from the evangelical wannabes on one side to the catholic folk on the other and with a few old fashioned liberals thrown in while the muddy middle embodies a little bit of everything.  The difference is not in the facets they note are there but which facet predominates.  What is even more curious is how the critics lump the facets of Missouri they do not like together to make it appear that is all Missouri is.

Missouri's critics seem to have a rather broad contempt for the theology and practice of the LCMS.  They do not like an inerrant and authoritative Scripture, the presumption of historicity in the Scriptures, the practices of closed communion, ecumenical relationships that will not presume we believe the same but with different words, and any form the liturgy prior to 1978.  But they take all of these things they do not like, they lump together as if the evangelical wannabes and the liturgical crowd somehow are different sides of the same coin.  They seem to forget that the evangelicals in Missouri have more in common with progressive Lutherans outside Missouri than with the catholics in Missouri. 

The other thing is that the liberal Lutherans presume that those who are liturgical are located in very small, struggling, parishes made up of aging folk waiting to die.  They seem to delight in their estimation that this side of Missouri is statistically insignificant.  So, for example, what do they do with the parish I have served for 32 years?  It is growing, filled with young people, has tons of adult baptisms and confirmations, attracts new people every week and is as high as a kite.  And we are not alone.  In fact, there are plenty of us in Missouri.  We have high quality church musicians and church music and strong Law/Gospel preaching and teaching.  In fact, Lyman Stone suggests that this is the very kind of Missouri congregation that is actually growing.  The evangelicals may be somewhat stable but the catholics are growing -- at least according to folk like Lyman Stone.  Furthermore, the heart of the Missouri has never been evangelical and this is a modern temptation and not an historic identity.  If you do not believe me, read some of Walther on the liturgy and his critique of the Lutherans he found when coming to America.

Parish wise, the vast majority of Missouri is liturgical and confessional though perhaps to varying degree.  If you count the congregations, Missouri is predominantly liturgical and confessional -- weekly Eucharists, more ceremonial, chasubles, etc...  As with most church bodies, the actual numbers of people are not equally represented across Missouri's parishes but tilt toward the larger ones.  There again, the stereotype is that these larger congregations are all evangelical wannabes who idealize the mega churches with big personalities and cult-like following.  That would also be false.  Though the majority of evangelical wannabes in Missouri are found in larger congregations, those larger congregations are more equally distributed between liturgical and not than most think.  So who is Missouri?  Lutheran.  Liturgical.  Creedal.  Confessional.  Oriented more toward a fuller ceremonial than less.  Committed to schools (from preschool to university).  Dedicated to more catechesis rather than less.  Missouri is all these things though loathe to regulate this identity with laws and rules.  While liberal and progressive Lutherans wonder how anyone can believe and worship and confess as they did in the past, Missouri wonders why anyone would leave this behind.

I will say this.  Compared to other Lutheran options, Missouri has more theological and liturgical integrity than most.  The ELCA may be slighty more liturgical on the surface but you have to throw in there the congregations in which the Trinity is fuzzy, God may be addressed in female terms and pronouns, and nearly every Sunday explores some aspect of the LGBTQ+ freedom to be.  Wisconsin is a bit of a head scratcher.  It is scrupulously orthodox on paper but leans evangelical and low church and their last two hymnals have gone their own way on a number of fronts.  The reality is that Lutherans find a pop goes the weasel approach to liturgy in most places (especially in those looser confederations like the LCMC).  So while the critics within and outside of Missouri have a lot to complaint about, the reality is that we are in a far better place than other Lutherans -- though still not very good.  Sometimes I wish we put as much energy into working to build up the churches as we do tearing down the church. 

Evidence of and evidence for. . .

Another Elaine Pagels' book or another one from the pen of anyone of her like (Bart Ehrman for example) and pretty soon everything gets stirred up again.  It is the typical premise that orthodox Christianity was the result of a power play and those without power (Gnostics and other heretics) lost out and were suppressed.  Inevitably, someone will dredge up evidence of Gnostics (or others) whose writings were not immediately quashed and then use that as proof of their pet theory of Constantinian interference and a concocted orthodoxy that was the fruit of a dispute and conflict among the earliest witnesses to Christ.  It is a tiresome thing.  It is a foolish one, as well.

Heresies and heretics did not spontaneously develop into the false and pernicious doctrines they were but generally begin with a kernel of truth that becomes the thing by which all truth is judged.  They were not rejected instantaneously but as the errors were known and developed into a threat.  The threat was not against the powers that be but the Scriptures themselves.  They were rejected not because the people with standing did not like them but because they contradicted the apostolic witness.  Evidence of something is not evidence for it.  Certainly there is evidence of Gnosticism long before Christ and it continued after Christ and still lives (do heresies ever die?).  But evidence of something in existence is not evidence for it in support of it being tolerated or accepted or condoned.  That is a fool's detour.

Historians have a job to find out things.  Some of those are unpleasant to the truth and some of those are shocking according to their standards of the day.  But everything they find out is not automatically a finding in support of these beliefs or these practices.  Historians are not quite theologians.  It is a disservice to amplify the oddities that they discover to make them normative and it is an error to presume the normative was itself an oddity at one time.  This is certainly true of doctrinal orthodoxy but it is also true of many other things (things liturgical, for example).  Just because you can find evidence that some strange thing was tried or existed somewhere for a time does not give than strange thing standing as normative or orthodox.  It is what it is -- an oddity that sooner or later is stamped down and, we hope, out never to raise its ugly head of error again.  But as we all know, heresy and error seems impervious to the efforts of the orthodox to kill and so orthodoxy must be ever vigilant in pursuit of the truth.  Doctrine does not quite develop but in its confession and in its refutation of error, doctrine is sharpened -- like the point on a pencil.

Perhaps the worst error of all is the presumption that nothing is wrong until the people in power say it is.  That is behind all of these errors.  If orthodoxy is merely a power play by the powerful to defeat the weak, then it is not itself anything but what the powerful propose.  But if orthodoxy is itself a reflection of what Scriptures teach and have always taught and are judged not simply by the opinion of men but the rule and canon of Scripture, then orthodoxy is something unchanging over time.  Which, of course, finally leads us to the cornerstone on which all heresy stands or falls -- Scripture itself is nothing but a fabrication and choice of the powerful over the powerless.  In this foolish lie, there were no Scriptures at all until the Church (with the help of that terrible Constantine again) in the fourth century decided what the Scriptures were and made that definitive claim because they were the powers that be.  This is a foolish lie because it ignores all the evidence of books and early church fathers who listed them as canon with authority because they were catholic and apostolic long before the 300s.  The Church did not decide what Scripture was but awoke to what God had said and, in weeding out that which God did not say, affirmed what God had always said.  With a very few exceptions, this is true of every book in the New Testament (unless you read Elaine Pagels or Bart Ehrman).