Distract or prevent. . .

The invasive nature of the screens in our lives has been labeled a distraction from the interpersonal and face to face relationships once nearly universal in society.  While that is certainly true and the statistics report the decline in the amount of time we actually spend in the company of another, there may be something more at work here.  Screens may not simply be a distraction but may actually prevent us from either desiring or experiencing the direct socialization across the age spans of most people.  Remember that even if the screen is not the dominant force it is in other generations, those for whom it is merely an occasional distraction also must live with those for whom it is a constant activity.  So, for example, those for whom a phone call or personal visit would be normative live and work with those for whom at text suffices and for whom the screen is a constant activity.

The fruits of all of this are seen not only in the distance experienced across American society but also in the rise of loneliness and the painful isolation of people from each other.  The younger the age bracket, the more significant the loss of these face to face interactions and the more profound the experience of such loneliness and isolation.  I posted before of how this affects dating and courtship but it is not only felt in romantic relationships.  More and more people are reporting fewer and fewer real friendships and their circle of acquaintances that involves face to face contact is similarly reducing -- not simply due to the screen but prevented by those screens.

Virtual relationships are becoming the norm and in person relationships -- from romance to friendship -- are becoming the exception.  Again, as I mentioned above, this may not have its source in older age groups not typically so wedded to the screen but those in those generations still suffer from an increase of loneliness and isolation due to the screen replacing the way the younger people in their lives communicate and interact.  For the youth, this is reflected in the increase of virtual communication after school in place of the in person time spent together.  For the aged, this is reflected in the dominance of the screen for everything from medical visits to regular communication from their children and grandchildren and the shift to online sources of supply instead of the social character of shopping in stores.  Across the spectrum of ages and generations, the trajectory toward the virtual in place of the personal only increases with each passing year.  While the pandemic may have accelerated this shift or caused some of it, the direction of our social relationships was already headed this way long before anyone ever heard of Covid.

The screens have also had an influence over church, particularly in worship.  The Church is the gathered people of God, sharing a common baptismal identity, confessing their sins and being absolved, addressed by the voice of God in His Word, hearing together the sermon which applies that Word, and keeling together at the rail to receive the body and blood of Christ in His Holy Sacrament.  Corporate worship is by nature a social activity.  Unless you think of the people in the pews as inhabiting their own personal space (like the now passe phone booth), everything -- from the pronouns to the liturgy to the hymnody to the communion -- is not accidentally but intentionally social.  When the screen at home replaces the place in the pew among the gathered in one place, it does not simply affect the person at home but the whole church.  When the Church dares to presume that something online is a fitting or even adequate substitute for the common gathering of God's people around His Word and Table, we betray what worship is and allow those who opt for the screen the false comfort and idea that it is all the same, equal, and equally salutary.

Another arena in which our common life is lost when we no longer come together is the life of prayer.  Today the prayer life of God's people is almost solely seen in individual terms.  While we are forced to remember that we pray Our Father even when we are alone, it becomes almost an irrelevant remembrance when our prayers are solely about our selves and our wants or needs.  The Prayer of the Church, like the Collect of the Day, are not simply built upon the foundation of an assembly but direct the assembly to their common concerns when we can be consumed by our individual ones.  Sadly, the request for prayers on social media has replaced the prayer list of the congregation in which we were given names to be included in the intercessions of the faithful at home as well as in God's House.  The reduction of the services of God's House to the Divine Service has left us without a memory of or a need for the prayer services of the various hours.  There was a time when God's people knew not only the Divine Service by heart but also Matins and Vespers -- because, of course, they prayed them together and often. 

I for one am disappointed at the ease at which some churches, even sacramental ones, have rushed to embrace technology and to use the screen to replace or even supplement what happens in person.  For one thing it smacks of desperation.  For another, it means we did not fully understand or appreciate what was happening even before there were such screens.  In this case, the virtual has only revealed how shallow we treated going to church and what happened there.  If those of us in the clergy had done a better job of catechesis, fewer folks in the pews would have accepted the digital in place of the real as the new norm of their lives as the people of God.  I wish I could say that this is merely a problem in worship but it also affects so many other areas of our life together.  Gone are the days when you would expect more than a smattering of the whole at teaching activities or potluck meals or work days or fellowship activities.  While certainly not the reason for our being, the secondary benefits of our life together are both the fruits of our common life in worship and a reinforcement of that common life around altar, font, and altar.  Surely no one expects a digital connection to replace any of these but, sadly, too many have found in them an acceptable substitute.

Take down the ubiquitous screens mounted up front to compete with the attention of the altar or pulpit (or even stained glass and crucifix) and return the attention of the people to liturgy, hymnal, and those around them.  Such screens might be tolerable if they merely distracted us but when they compete for the things that should have our attention, they prevent what is meant to be.  The books in the pews are not there for decorative purposes but so that we might sing from them together as one.  The appointments of the chancel and nave are not merely for show but as the things that point us to what God is doing among us and our response to His gifts.  Even the offering, now more likely digital thanks to technology, is a common act whereby the plate comes to each and all give as they have been blessed for the common work of church and mission.  These are just some of the things we have done that hastened the loneliness and isolation even within the Church among those who need to be together as well as need to hear the Word and receive the Supper.

Choosing makes our choices. . .

For too long the old debate over freedom to choose good or evil has missed part of the point.  The choice of evil brings with along its own set of new choices that end up confirming the evil until it becomes the only choice left.  There is something more at work here than simple culpability for a choice we have made, our guilt or innocence, and our judgment before God over that choice.  Our moral choices leave us with another set of moral choices, limited to more good or more evil.  In this way, we are not only the choices we make but the choices we make shape the options before us down the road.  The fatal flaw of Eden was not to gain the knowledge  of good and evil but to be set upon a path of evil so that we end up choosing evil only.  We are shaped by our choices and our choices shape our future and its choices.

It is not that sin becomes easier, which it does, but that the sins we choose present us with a more narrow set of choices down the road.  This does not mean to suggest at all that we are neutral or without sin until we choose to sin but that the sins we choose predict the sinful choices we face down the road in life.  The old expression is you are what you eat and, well, that is exactly what sin does.  It makes us what we choose until the only choices left to us are defined by those first choices.  When once we find ourselves at ease with sin and evil, it eventually leaves us without a thought about making those same choices again until we no longer see things in terms of evil and good but in the context of what we know and have chosen previously against what we do not know.  Good becomes the stranger to even the Christian caught up in besetting sin and evil becomes that which is most familiar and even friendly to us.

To the sinner by nature, virtue is always the stranger but when vice becomes that which we know best, we end up in bondage to the choices of vice alone.  The lie and deception which we have come to call normal is that only certain thoughts, words, and deeds dwell in the realm of morality and the rest are amoral.  The truth is that every thought, word, and deed is the domain of morality.  By our decisions we are always revealing who we are -- the thoughts we choose to entertain, the words we choose to speak, and the actions we choose to take.  This is radical but not new and it goes back to Gregory of Nyssa.  Whereas the age is always telling us to become comfortable with who we are, how we think, what we say, and what we do,  the Scriptures and the work of the Spirit is leading us on a path of recreation, making ever new by daily contrition and repentance the person created in Christ Jesus for good works.  While the age is telling us to become comfortable with all that we are in the moment, God is at work in us fitting us for His Kingdom and forming us for holiness that reflects and has its source in His own goodness and mercy and purity.  The world has no higher purpose for us than becoming ourselves, even if that is our worst selves, but God is making us into His own, the new that will not become complete until the end of the age or our own end in death.  Then what was begun in us is revealed not simply for the rest to see but so that we can see ourselves -- something we struggle to do in this mortal life but will see plainly in the life to come.

This is why what we do matters, why forgiveness is not for big sins but for every sin, and why the remembrance of our baptism is not the observance of an anniversary or birthday but the daily path to progress toward the future already planned out for us before the foundation of the world.  Choosing ends up making our choices.  By the power of the Holy Spirit, the choices for good teach us to desire and become comfortable in the realm of virtue and goodness.  By the power of the evil one, the choices for evil teach us to desire sin and become comfortable in the realm of evil and corruption.  No one is saying that our actions earn God's favor but living in God's favor defines our actions.  No one is saying that we contribute to our salvation but living as the saved reveals that we are children of God.  Our neighbor needs to see this, to be sure, but so do we.

What do we expect from leaders?

Perhaps there was a time when religious leaders were presumed to be men of faith.  That time has passed, at least for Seven Sisters who were the mainstream of American churches. The denominations which comprised mainline Protestantism were the United Methodist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church, American Baptist Churches, United Church of Christ, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).  Until the mid-to-late twentieth century, the vast majority of Protestants in America belonged to one of the Seven Sisters of Mainline Protestantism.  That term is no longer used in the same way today.  It refers instead to an historic designation and the seven are in various states of decline and disrepair today.  We are not talking about problems here and there but the wholesale loss of members, influence, and, at least among their leaders, faith.

According to the National Survey of Religious Leaders this year, the clergy of what remains of the seven sisters are much more likely to have doubts about the existence of God, the veracity of Scripture, Jesus' bodily resurrection, the existence of heaven, the historicity of Adam and Eve, and a host of other benchmarks of Christian orthodoxy.  This doubt, skepticism, and denial stands in stark contrast to the beliefs of evangelicals, fundamentalists, and Roman Catholics.  Furthermore, these same clergy who are unsure about core Christian beliefs have also admitted not praying regularly, accepting cultural changes (especially in the area of sexuality and gender), to embrace the changing views of marriage and family expressed in society around them, to promote the end of life for people who suffer, and to see abortion in a positive light.  In short, clergy from these mainline churches have led the way in their denominations toward the uncertainty and even rejection of those things that once defined them as Christian.

Though many Americans were raised in these churches, they have left in droves leaving each of the seven a shell of their former selves.  They do not attract new people, lose the people they had, and are graying faster than any other churches in America.  The United Methodists divided and on top of that have lost a third of their members since 2000.  American Baptists have lost more than a quarter of their members, the Episcopal Church a third, the ELCA and UCC four out of ten, Presbyterians half, and the Christian Church 60%.  While there are many reasons for these losses, the distance between pew and pulpit in terms of what is believed, taught, and confessed is a prominent explanation for the exodus away from those groups that once defined Protestantism in America.

The least we should be able to expect of our clergy is that they are guardians of the faith once delivered to the saints and agents of preservation of the voice of the Word and the hope within us.  While some expect the clergy to be prophetic voices of change to lead the churches where they have not gone before, the effects of this distance between the people in the pew and the pulpits across Protestantism, in particular in the mainline denominations, has been to gut the faith and empty the congregations.  What is even more peculiar is that on the whole the clergy in the mainline churches in decline are paid more than the average for the rest of Christianity in America (mega churches excluded).  So the folks in those congregations which have watched so many leave and so few enter is to pay their clergy even more -- perhaps a reward for the doubts, skepticism, and denials of those same pastors.  It is indeed a strange day for Christianity in America.  

I wish this were merely about sex and gender problems but these reflect decay and corruption in the core of those who are supposed to be leaders and guardians of the faith in these denominations.  I wish this were merely about worship styles but this goes to the basic foundations of the faith itself.  I wish this were merely about translation and interpretation differences but this has at its heart doubts about the God and the creed that have been settled doctrines since the earliest of days.  I wish this were merely about the common challenges of churches facing the challenges of the culture, the world, and detractors outside but this is closer to home and in the studies and parsonages of those called to lead the church from within.  No one should be gloating at this turn of events for every parish and every pastor face the same challenges to maintain the faith once delivered and it is too easy for either to lose their way.  It is a warning call to the clergy and a call to be watchful of those whom the Spirit has placed among them as shepherds and leaders. 

Liturgical professionalism. . .

We are always warned about a little bit of knowledge making one dangerous.  Could it be that the opposite is also true?  Could it be that there is also danger when a particular subject becomes the domain of the professional alone?  I have long experienced the inability of some medical professionals to speak in terminology that enables understanding.  Even prescriptions are sometimes written in medical code that does not immediately lend itself to knowledge on the part of the person who takes the medicine.  So what good is professionalism in the cause of medicine if the people are not well served by their medical professionals?  The same is true of any other profession or occupation.  The same is true also of theology a and of worship.

Yes, we thank God for the professionals who labor to know in depth what most of us must know only in part.  Yes, we thank God for those whose academic careers provide rich fruits to be applied in the parish and in the lives of our parishioners.  But.  Yes, there is always a but.  But, when such becomes solely the domain of the professional, there is great danger to both the academic hall and the local nave. Then Cardinal Ratzinger once put it like this: “popular piety is the soil without which the liturgy cannot thrive,” and so rightly noted that distance or disdain for that piety can cause manifold abuse in the church.  In a more poetic way, Martin Franzmann said about theology that it must also be doxology -- it must sing -- noting exactly the same connection between popular piety and the profession.

On the one hand, the folks in the pew have left the business of worship to the professional and seem to enjoy being more spectators than participants in the liturgy.  They do not know but even more importantly often do not seem curious or interested in why things are done as they are, the rhythm of worship, the cycle of the church year, and the pattern of prayer.  They show up and expect to go home with something they can use in their daily lives -- the practical test of liturgy and sermon.  Worship is not about getting a choice little tidbit that you can apply at work or home.  It is our encounter with the Lord of heaven who visits us with grace beyond our imagination and delivers to us the fruits of Christ's redeeming work and the power of the Spirit that we might become holy as He is holy.  It is this entrance into the mystery that is the liturgy.  Relevance and practicality are individual concerns that seem to predominate but in so doing the majestic opening of heaven on earth is less in interest or desire.  That is a problem.  Could it be that we as liturgists and catechists have exacerbated this problem?

On the other hand, pastors treat Sunday morning and its liturgy as a warm up for their sermon and spend more time preparing what they are going to preach than how to lead God's people in worship and prayer.  The pastors have relegated the liturgy to the professionals and simply open the book and do what is there without paying much attention to it.  Or, worse, they lack their own understanding of the liturgical shape of worship and look at it all as a menu from which they pick and choose what they like, what they think the people will like, what will sell, and what will not.  In the end, the radical effect of this choice is to become aliturgical -- to make worship a program and succumb to the failing of entertaining God's people instead of delivering to them His gifts and drawing then into God's holiness.  All the knowledge in the world is useless unless it leads you into God's fullness as St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Camaraderie. . .

The online dictionary says the word (whose spelling can be one of two ways) means:  

1. Goodwill and lighthearted rapport between or among friends; comradeship.
2. Comradeship and loyalty.
3. Close friendship in a group of friends or teammates.

Part of the task of pastoral formation is to encourage camaraderie among the clergy.  It is not the chief goal or aim of such formation but it is an essential one, nonetheless.  Yet how do you do it?  One idea used by St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver is this.  Former vice rector Fr. John Nepil, formator, professor, and (allegedly) moral compass, organized a 2024 ski trip that included a charming little ritual involving daggers, fake blood, and secret society LARPing.  Apparently, Fr. Nepil issued a heartfelt apology for being misunderstood -- of course, he did not mean it to come off the way it appeared.  But the question remains.  How do you develop a real and genuine sense of camaraderie among priests or pastors?

Just in case you have endured, as I have, the playful icebreakers used at the start of some meetings or in place of introductions, camaraderie among the clergy is not established by keeping balloons in the air or passing around an apple under the chin or playing charades or other common activity.  It is formed by our common life around the Word of God and in prayer.  Sadly, we lack this camaraderie largely because other activities have stolen our time and attention and replaced our time together in worship and prayer with trivial things that cannot deliver what our common life together around the Word and Sacraments do.

I cannot tell you how disappointing it is when pastors decide to skip the opening devotions or worship scheduled at the beginning of everything from convention to conference to winkel but show up for the main draw of the speaker or controversial topic.  Our time together in God's Word and prayer is not some precursor to the real reason we gather -- it is the real reason.  By the way, I can tell you that you see the same thing when folks will skip the Sunday worship but show up for fellowship, potluck, congregational meeting or other event that follows the Divine Service.  In effect, we are saying either these things are not important or real enough in their own right and something else is more important or more real.

Almost fifty years ago, I spent a week at Three Rivers Priory in Michigan on a spiritual retreat between college and seminary.  We did not have much opportunity for casual conversation but there were so many opportunities for worship together that I had not quite expected.  From the early morning hours before sunrise to the late afternoon hours when I was too tired to do much more than show up, I learned the power of formation for those gathered around the Word and Table of the Lord.  For this reason, the center of any seminary campus is not the campus center or commons area but the chapel.  This is not only the beating heart of the seminary but the place where we are formed together for our common life and work as the pastors for God's people.  Camaraderie is formed here on knees bent, hands folded, voices raised, and attention given to the voice of God speaking through His Word and our response in worship and prayer.  This kind of fellowship of worship and prayer accomplishes what scheduled activities and play time do not. 

 

 

Contributing to dysphoria?

In what amounts to overkill, a Roman Catholic priest said, "Gender confusion is exacerbated by confusion in gender roles. Girls serving at the altar with boys contributes to this problem."  Now I am sure that there are some, perhaps even many, in Missouri who would wholeheartedly agree.  By tolerating female acolytes we are allowing or even promoting gender confusion.  Maybe there was a day when that statement could have been made without crossing your fingers behind your back but not now.

Even Rome no longer has officially recognized minor clerical offices like they once did.  Lutherans never did.  The tie between acolyte and altar server and ordination is relatively weak.  Not that this is a good thing but the folks in the pews do not see this service as growing up to be a priest or a pastor.  If they did, there would surely have been a jump in the number of vocations to the priesthood or parish ministry.  Alas, there are not.  The folks making this important tie between the roles are largely clergy talking to other clergy and they have forgotten to tell the folks in the pews.

Worse than confusing the poor kids, we have done greater damage by suggesting that this service is not important and does not matter.  Some see it as a duty of youth and others as a burden of catechism years and others as something to get them out of the family pew and satisfy the parents.  But the parents do not see this as leading anywhere and the kids do not either.  That is our problem and it is obvious. 

The decline in the numbers of church workers has been significant but it now borders on a crisis which cannot be averted.  We are not simply suffering a drop of numbers bit in esteem and value of church work vocations and, in particular, for pastors.  It takes at least 8 years from high school graduations to produce a new vocation yet most are agreed nothing is heralding a dramatic turn around.  Furthermore, the length of service for second career fellows works against this option from becoming the sole solution to the dilemma (though I do not mean to discourage or devalue such later in life decisions).   We have for too long set the example for both boys and girls that such service leads nowhere.  Limiting such service to males only will not itself do anything but cut the numbers of altar servers.

As I have said before and will not stop saying, the crisis began when we no longer believed and so no more treated this vocation to the office of the holy ministry as noble and essential and valuable.  We have become preoccupied with large congregations in which the relationship between the clergy and everyone else is more distant.  We have seen the numbers of mid-size congregations decline (and the space between small and large grow even larger).  We have also seen the numbers of small congregations increase while also seeing the numbers of those small congregations that actually have their own pastor drop.  Let me say this.  For a very long time, at least in Lutheranism, smaller congregations have contributed more full-time church workers than the large ones.  My own small home church barely ever broke a hundred communicants and yet has sent many pastors and commission church workers into the LCMS.  I know a few large parishes that have raised up none.  I know of many clergy who cannot say that they have ever baptized or confirmed or communed as a child or youth anyone who has entered the full-time service of the Lord.  Sadly, I know of many who were turned off by their pastors from even the consideration of such service.

Don't be a fool.  Having females serve at the altar is not contributing to gender confusion anymore than anyone sitting in the pew is confused over whether I am the pastor (in vestments, chanting, serving, and preaching) or a layperson making an announcement or reading a lesson or even assisting in the distribution is the pastor.  Our people are not stupid.  They are not, however, as certain as they once were that the pastoral office is noble, honorable, essential, and valuable.  Perhaps pastors contribute some to this decline in esteem and perhaps the culture has too much influence and perhaps parents are not as supportive as they once were in this regard.  But it is overkill to presume that a girl acolyte contributes much to either gender confusion or to the decline in numbers of new pastors.  There are bigger reasons for this than a girl carrying a torch or cross or picking up the offering plates.

Idolatry. . .

It seems to have gained public voice through the former President of the LCMS who saw a problem in Missouri of those who worshiped worship.  It has been a hidden complaint, although not that well hidden, from many who believe that worship, liturgy, ceremonies, and ritual are becoming idols in our church body.  Usually it comes from those who have embraced a more evangelical style on Sunday mornings and who raise up the cause of reaching those who have not been reached as a higher value than conforming to tradition or even confession on Sunday morning.  If Luther suggested that something must be dared in the Name of Christ when addressing worship and hymnody, then today the new Luthers among us seem to be saying something must be dared in the name of Christ to innovate and reach the lost.

No one in their right mind would dispute the charge that worship and its related forms and ceremonies can become idols.  One has only to look at the history of Israel to see how the external replaced the internal.  Israel adhered more closely to the ceremonial laws of worship than to the prophetic calls to repentance.  Duh.  That is not news.  But the fix does not come in jettisoning the external for the sake of the internal.  If that were the case, then the spiritual but not religious would be the faithful and the rest of us mere hypocrites.  Or, perhaps, that is what some in the churches really think.  Jesus by practice does not abandon the worship of the Temple or the services of the synagogue.  Instead, these were His custom, as Scripture says, and that which He learned from childhood.  He certainly spends some time cleansing the Temple and fulfilling the voice of the Word in the synagogue and He also does not fail to call the people to repentance and faith.  At the very same time, He addresses those outside the pale and heralds faith He has not seen in Israel.  It is for Jesus a both, not a choice between.

Growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, I was sure there was some hidden (Gnostic) knowledge imparted to pastors for they seemed to stand in the same places and do the same things week after week no matter who that pastor was.  We were formally liturgical but I would not say that the liturgy was the heart of the faith or the faithful.  It was just what Lutherans did.  Along with Holy Communion four times a year or eventually monthly, these lived on the fringes of our piety and lives in Christ.  I do not blame these pastors but if ever there was a time when the liturgy might become an idol it was when we kept the form but did not understand, appreciate, or pay much attention to its words.  Even the sermon texts were not drawn from the liturgy or church year but from a cycle of preaching texts.  Sermons mattered for piety but the keeping of the liturgy was the Lutheran law we were meant to keep.  At least that is how it seemed.  Maybe I am being too harsh.  Perhaps those who complain about the idolizing of the liturgy and worship are being too harsh.

We do not need some sort of police to watch how we are worshiping and write out tickets when we are veering away from the rites and forms that belong to catholic identity.  We do not need such police to question our motives when we use those rites and forms.  We do not need innovators to find out what works or what people want but should pay attention to what God wants and what gifts He has bestowed.  We do need prophets to accompany the liturgy with the call to repentance, to a real and lively faith, and to good works.  This is what Word and Liturgy are joined together to accomplish.  The liturgy is mostly Gospel -- the telling of what God has done for us and our salvation.  It is extravagantly and lavishly overflowing with grace and mercy.  The sermon will always sound like the Law to us in part because it calls us to live worthy of what God has done and to reflect in our thoughts, words, and deeds the righteousness of Christ placed upon us in our baptism.  The funny thing is that for all the talk about Law and Gospel in preaching, Luther and the classic Lutherans did not at all shy away from this call to repentance, to live holy, upright and godly lives, and to the works of love which glorify God and help our neighbor even if they do not add to Christ's work that saves us.

Anything can become an idol.  Even the worship forms of typical American Protestantism or the seeker or entertainment services of evangelical style churches.  But if we spend all our time trying to figure out what might become or has become an idol, we will not have any time left to practice the Mass of the ages and to preach the unchanging Word of the Lord.  If we are diligent in doing these, idolatry will be the least of our problems.  If we don't, we need more than an error pointed out to us; we need to be called to repentance, confession and absolution.

 

The demoniac. . .

A blog reader sent this link to me and I was put on this video by Archbishop Fulton Sheen speaking on the account of the Garasene demoniac -- an account we heard in the 3 year series just weeks ago.  Undoubtedly, we have all heard many sermons on this text as it appears in the synoptic Gospels but I found Sheen's presentation somewhat different from most of the sermons I have heard or preached on the subject.

 

What Sheen does that is to interesting to me is how he summarizes the effects of the demon upon the man and upon the world as a whole.   There are three characteristics of the demoniac:

1. Love of Nudity – For a long time this man had not worn clothes.  Here the connection is not simply to the man or his nakedness (nudity is not itself evil or wrong) but to his refusal to be modest, to act with concern for those around him.  The modern day applications here are abundant.  We live in immodest times, to be sure, when sensuality is rampant and nudity is flaunted in everything from the media to parades to comedic monologues.  Is this not evidence of the demonic and its power at work among us?
2. Violence – … though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains. The Mark account has more vivid detail: For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him.  No matter what side of the gun debate you are on, only a fool would suggest that we do not live in a time of heightened violence.  From road rage to abuse to video games to media to schools, violence is so routine that it does not even capture the headlines for very long.  It is irrational violence, not out of a cause but simply to be violent.  Is this not evidence of the demonic and its power at work among us?
3. Division (split personalities, disjointed minds, contentiousness against others and society as a whole) – … many demons had gone into him. Again in Mark, the demoniac replies, My name is Legion, for we are many (Mk 5:9). Is he one or many -- there is conflict even within the man.  All of the versions say that the demoniac lived a life devoid of community -- apart from others and solitary.  We live in a world with constant division -- not simply in the realm of politics but everywhere.  From churches to Facebook, we stir up such conflict and refuse to tolerate disagreement.  We have become such a conflicted society that basic functions of the community are made even more difficult -- from governing to education to family gatherings to church.  Is this not evidence of the demonic and its power at work among us?

I am not saying that this is definitive but it is certainly an application which is both credible and timely for the conditions we find ourselves in at home, in the community and nation, and in the world.  Surely this is not simply an coincidence but the evidence of just what Sheen (and others) have suggested.  At a time when Christians seem to downplay the whole idea of the devil and demons and organized evil and hell, the world rapidly deteriorating from its moral foundations and Christian influence is less than it was.  While Christians are not perfect, Christianity has surely been a leavening agent in the world over the last two millenium.  Though some have chosen to foist violence in the name of Christianity, the reality is that the violence was not really Christian at all but a corruption.  At other times, Christian responses were singled out for condemnation while the instigators got off.  Christianity has been an agent on behalf of the unborn, the child, the wife, the woman in society, marriage, family, the plight of the poor and oppressed, and so many other positive ways so the decline of Christianity is sure to allow the rise of much of what Christianity countered.  Surely the devil knows this better than we do. 

    
    

Performance. . .

When people are watching, we sometimes are more conscious of what we are doing than when only God is.  That is certainly how it works with morality.  We use all sorts of means to hide our immoral thoughts and actions and keep up a good face in public for our righteousness but that seems to have little effect upon us in private.  Consider, for example, the idea of anonymous porn and its appeal versus having to login with an identity and admit to what you are watching.  

I read a while ago a Roman complaint that celebrating facing the people put the celebrant in performance mode while facing the altar did not.  Perhaps.  It certainly could.  From my experience, however, there is another point that could be made.  Because people are watching our ceremony and piety could be better than if only God was.  Now I am not at all equating the example of private porn above with the presiding at the altar here, but merely providing a radical example of how the fact that people are watching influences what we do.

If people are watching during the consecration, it could be an influence for a more pious and reverential posture and piety on the part of the one celebrating.  For my part, having almost always had a free standing altar where I have served, I do not pay attention to the people who are watching, do not look at them, and have a small crucifix facing me to remind where I need to focus.  That said, it is not possible to get away with anything when the congregation is watching -- not an irreverent act or forgetting something or even a spill.  While this could certainly lead to a performance mode on the part of the celebrant, it could also force a man to clean up sloppy practice and to act with more integrity because the people are watching.  I only wish we were as concerned with only God watching as we are others but we all know that this is true.  

For what it is worth, I am not defending or posturing for either ad orientem or versus populum.  I am not sure it matters all that much.  What does matter is the reverence that befits the faith.  It might be that knowing people are watching us will force us to do a better job of displaying that reverence that proceeds from faith.  How we handle the holy things of God is not incidental but very important.  Why would we be more careless with the things of God than our favorite possessions or grandma's china or a piece of art?  Indeed.  I will say this.  If versus populum forces us to be better celebrants, that is a good outcome in the end.  If knowing no one but God is watching allows us to be careless or thoughtless, then we have a bigger problem than reverence.

Ecumenical or not

I recently encountered a statement comparing the Council of Nicaea, whose 1700th anniversary we just celebrated, and the Second Vatican Council, which was described as the last of the twenty-one councils recognised as ecumenical, which finally ended 8 December 1965.  For what it is worth, no one but a fool would class Vatican II in the same league as Nicea.  Oops.  I guess I just called Paul VI a fool.  After all Pope Paul VI stated that “the Second Vatican Council is no less authoritative, indeed in some respects it is even more important, than the Council of Nicaea” (cf. La Doc. Catholique, 58 (1976) p. 34).  Really?  I don't think so.  But what really sounded the alarm was the statement that it was the last of the twenty-one councils recognised as ecumenical.  Well, there.  

Who recognises Vatican II as an ecumenical council?  Would it be the Protestants who were there in figurehead roles as observers or not there at all?  Would it be the Lutherans who supplied official observers but were really spectators?  Would it be the Orthodox who also watched and listened from the cheap seats?  This is the hubris of Rome.  Call a Roman Catholic meeting of 2600 of its own bishops and invite a few outsiders to sit and watch and then you call it an ecumenical council of the status of, say, Nicea?!  Well, that is hubris.  It is as if the author of that statement was taunting every non-Roman Christian and saying, we are the Church and you are not.  Oh, wait, that is what they are saying.

On the whole, Vatican II was much better in real content than in the post-conciliar things which were promulgated in its name.  Even saying that does not vitiate against the reality that Vatican II was more like a regional council than an ecumenical one.  Oddly enough, many Roman Catholics would love to forget that John XXIII had the idea in the first place and wake up, like Bobby Ewing in Dallas, and find out it was all a dream.  Except it wasn't a dream and might possible have been a nightmare.  I am not trying to say that the Council was all bad.  But it was certainly not ecumenical and neither was it the equivalent of Nicea.

Rome sees everything through its own insular glasses -- including the definition of ecumenical.  Because Rome says that the Council is an ecumenical one, they have made it so.  I just don't know who outside of Rome and some in Rome who would agree.  I live in a denomination which many love to call insular but so far as I can see we have never claimed that one of our synodical conventions (synodol no but synodical yes) is an ecumenical council.   Rome is as Rome does but it might be this that keeps the Orthodox at a distance and Lutherans like me from taking their claims more seriously.  

By the way, eBay has a ring from Vatican II listed for sale for about $500.  Would somebody buy it for me so that I can claim to have been there?  It would be the ecumenical thing to do.

Too brand specific. . .

By now the Cracker Barrel dust up is old news but not without its own issues.  It would seem that those in charge thought that Uncle Hershel and the whole restaurant had become too brand specific.  In essence, they thought that markets had done too good a job in carving out the Cracker Barrel brand and was preventing it from appealing to others and growing.  The answer was to erase some of the distinctiveness of the brand and make it more generic, more like the other guys, and more modern.  The end result was that there were some who thought that had already been tried to no success -- letting go of old menu favorites or making them seasonal as well as adding liquor to the menu.  But the question remains.  Is there such a thing as being too brand specific?

What Cracker Barrel found out was that there is a fine line between tinkering with things and alienating their consumer base.  There was no progress in rebranding into one more nameless and faceless bland restaurant.  Who wants to eat there?  Those who never walked through the door still won't and those who had were thinking they weren't anymore and those who like the aura but did not eat there often were also disillusioned.  The more modern vibe to appeal to a newer and younger demographic became a sure way to drop stock price and tick off those who pay the bills.  Cracker Barrel will have to eat some crow in order to survive and will probably never shake off the idea that the big wigs in the boardroom do not have an inkling of an understanding who the down-home cooking, front-porch rocking chairs, and nostalgic Americana phenomenon really is.  No news in that, is there.

There are those in religion who have wondered the same thing.  Is Rome too brand specific?  That might have been on the minds of some in the post-Vatican II days when everything was being made new.  It might have been on the mind of Francis in his upsy-daisy tenure at the helm of the ship called Rome.  In either case the same result applied.  Those outside were not attracted to Rome lite or Mass lite and those inside wondered why they were there and those who never attended but thought themselves Roman had another reason not to attend.  We have all seen where that ended up.  The Latin Mass crowd became the whipping boy for all that had been bungled in the rebranding of Rome -- despite a couple of attempts from JPII and BXVI to regain control of the narrative and walk back the excesses.  Now Leo has a mess.

Lest we Lutherans get to smug, we are in the same boat.  Some blame the liturgical movement for everything bad but, in many respects, the fruits of that movement in Lutheranism have not be bad at all.  More frequent communion, restoring our own old ceremonies and rituals, pulling some vestments out of the forgotten closet, renewing private confession, restoration of the Psalm and Old Testament to the Sunday lections, flourishing of new hymn writers and hymns, and a host of other things are the not so bad fruits of our own liturgical movement.  Sadly, however, the danger did not come from things too Roman or catholic but the other flavors of Lutheranism.  We were becoming more brand specific in distinguishing Lutheranism from a slightly more liturgical flavor of Protestantism but then things got complicated.

On the one hand, some began to complain that we were too brand specific and people were not being brought to Jesus because our Lutheranism had gotten in the way.  They opted for less liturgical worship, more contemporary Christian music, a pop culture uniform instead of vestments, and a warehouse or stadium style of church building.  It did not bring in the numbers of new folk but shuffled the deck with people hopping from one new thing to another.  In the end, it muddied the idea of Lutheranism until nobody knew what to expect on Sunday morning.  There was no brand.  There was only an imagined ideal of belief that manifested itself very differently on the ground.  Like Cracker Barrel, when we lost the accoutrements of liturgy, hymnody, sacraments, vestments, and piety, we found ourselves angering those who paid the bills and still offering little or nothing to those who had never darkened our door before.  The worship wars were never between degrees of ceremony but always between those who thought that Lutheranism had a face on Sunday morning and those who thought it did not matter as long as the seats were full.  The church of Johann Sebastian Bach ended up with an image of an aging praise band singing yesterdays hits off key.  Talk about messing up a brand!

On the other hand, some began to complain that we were too brand specific because our Lutheran doctrine had gotten in the way.  They opted to be more friendly toward culture -- even if that meant distancing yourself from God and His Word.  They may peace with the sexual revolution, embraced all sexual desires, blessed every imagined gender, tolerated and then promoted abortion and birth control, took up the cause of social justice, and warned against climate change.  The problem was they forgot the cross in all of this and Jesus became a logo for their newly adopted social posture instead of a Savior who died for sin to raise sinners to heaven.  They kept the worship forms and words but did not believe what they symbolized or said.  So they talked about a Virgin birth they did not believe happened and stopped talking about Adam and Eve at all.  They talked about systemic sin but not personal sin.  They set the communion table for Methodists and Presbyterians and all sorts of others who did not agree on what was being served there and they pushed out those who did.  They muddied the Lutheran brand doctrinally while keeping the liturgical look of it all.  They kept the menu but changed what the food tasted like.  It was disastrous as well.  These liberal leaning Lutherans bled off members until they were a shell of their former size and joined those who danced with the evangelicals on Sunday morning while presuming they still bled red in what they believed and all Lutheran churches were diminished in size, identity, and meaning.  The rocking chairs were still on the front porch but the merch inside was woke and people did not know what to think -- especially with those who said they kept the merch but replaced the rocking chairs with modern lawn furniture.  Nobody know what to think.

Brand specific Lutheranism was our strength -- or so TIME magazine thought in 1958.  We did, too.  But not now.  We are therefore in a position of trying to recover the brand while getting all the franchisees on board so that we can present ourselves to the world again.  That is not as easy as we imagined.  It is not going well or fast.  In the meantime, we aged, stopped marrying, had no kids, and found that this life was good without Jesus in the mix.  In other words, we began to act less like Lutherans and more like the people around us who did not go to church.  The work is still going on but brand recovery is not easy.  Just ask the folks at Cracker Barrel. 

As Finland turns. . .

In a case that seems to go on and on and on, the Finnish parliamentarian who publicly shared her Christian views on marriage by quoting Scripture has entered its next, and hopefully final, chapter.  Seven years of ongoing persecution of Päivi Räsänen might finally come to a close when the case will be heard by the country’s Supreme Court in October of this year.

Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen will have her case heard by the highest court in Finland after two lower courts acquitted her of the charges of “hate speech.”  Räsänen, a devout Lutheran, is well known to the Missouri Synod and politically well connected.  She had served Finland’s interior minister and has been a parliamentarian since 1995 and is currently a Member of Parliament. 

Tweeting Bible verses and speaking in a public debate from a Christian perspective have become "hate speech" in Europe today and it shows how intolerant the tolerant really are.  Though Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola, who published the pamphlet in 2004, and Räsänen have been acquitted twice, the secular woke world has continued to appeal the case all the way up to Finland's Supreme Court.

You missed it. . .

Once again I attended the Henkel Conference at Ascension Lutheran Church in Madison, TN.  I was once again blown away by the talent and thought provoking speakers and how relevant their words to the changing landscape of America.  Kudos to Pastor Greg Bauch for heading this conference up and for the many whose support enables it to continue.  This year was absolutly amazing!  I witnessed the courage and expertise of people in a variety of areas confronting me with facts to help me make sense of the changing world around me.  In particular, I was blown away by Mrs. Katie Coblentz, Chad Jackson, and Dr. Peter McCullough.  That and the stellar preaching and worship made this a conference worth your every moment of attention.  Thank you, Pr. Bauch.

The whole schedule looked like this:

• Andrew Walker, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), and Managing Editor of WORLD Opinions
  
• Peter McCullough, MD, internist, cardiologist, and epidemiologist, who manages common infectious diseases as well as the cardiovascular complications of both the viral infection and the injuries developing after the COVID-19 vaccine
  
• Chad O. Jackson, a Dallas-based entrepreneur and researcher who starred in the Uncle Tom films and makes the case for moral Christian ethics, family values, independence and intentional citizenship
• Joy Pullmann, Executive Editor of The Federalist and an 18-year education and politics reporter, as well as cofounder of a Christian classical school and author of classical curricula
• Nathanael Blake, Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC)
  
• Katie Coblentz, Christian wife
  
• Jeffrey Hemmer, Pastor at Bethany Lutheran Church
  
• Willie Grills, Pastor at Zion Lutheran Church and co-host of A Word Fitly Spoken and A Brief History of Power

Stay tuned because the presentations from this conference will soon join the previous conferences because of the nimble fingers and technical skills of Gene Wilken at the Flaneur Record.  As good as that is, it is not worth skipping the chance to be there.  Look for another installment in August of 2026.   Thank you to ALL who made this possible.

Life is not only work but it is not without it. . .

I read not long ago the prediction that by 2030 (less than five years away), 80% of all working will be without jobs because of AI.  It is an exuberant prediction and will surely fail -- though perhaps less so in the presumption of what AI will do than in the timing of it.  Imagine that, we will all live the life of leisure that is the goal and hope for us all.  Or, will we?  What will it do for us when work is stolen from us?

God created man for work.  It seems odd that this needs to be said.  But we must.  Work has become a bad word or a word to describe what you put up with to get what you really want.  Until sin distorted the gift of work and added its cost to what must be done to provide food and shelter, this labor was only a gift.  Today is a day to remember that even with sin's stain upon our labor, it is still a gift.  If you do not believe this, ask the many who are searching for gainful employment, those who are underemployed and just want to work, those who were retired against their will or due to injury, and those who have given up searching for a job.  Ask the 80% after they have had five years or so to contemplate what it means to live without work.

As you take your leisure today (unless you are one of those for whom this not a holiday), stop to thank God for your job, for the vocation that you live out in the work you have chosen because of skill, aptitude, or training, and for the fruits of that labor.  God is behind it all.  And it is a precious thing.  Work is a gift not simply when it is rewarding or fun or we like it.  Work is a gift because we were not created for leisure.  God made us to take care of His creation and to have dominion over it, to use it to provide for those in our care.  There is something wrong when we run from this purpose or find it demeaning.  Remember the words of poet James Russell: No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him.

I do know that there are unpleasant jobs.  Work is not glamorous.  My dad was a plumber and worked like a dog to provide for his family.  He put in long hours and endured distasteful duties for the goal of doing his best for God and his best for his family and his best for his neighbor.  On my way through college and seminary I had a few unpleasant jobs.  I was thankful for the work and for the money it provided to help me pay for school.  The jobs and my employers taught me a great deal.  Although at the time I was not sure the labor was good, I am more than grateful for the jobs when they came.  As a pastor I looked out on people who struggled with their jobs, to find good jobs that will provide for their families, or to find better jobs.

And let us not forget those who labor without a paycheck -- to the moms and dads whose vocation is parenthood and whose calling is seldom appreciated outside the home.  This is work, too.  And it is godly and good.  Though the world may not herald such labor or value it without financial compensation to commend it, God knows and the church dare not forget the work that it takes to turn a place into a home.  Remember how Archbishop Fulton Sheen put the dignity of work:  Let those who think their work has no value recognize that by fulfilling their insignificant tasks out of love for God, those tasks assume supernatural worth. The aged who bear the taunts of the young, the sick crucified to their beds, the street cleaner and the garbage collector, the chorus girl who never had a line, the unemployed carpenter – all these will be enthroned above dictators, presidents, kings, and Cardinals if a greater love of God inspires their humbler tasks than inspires those who play nobler roles with less love.

On this day let us not forget to give thanks for the opportunity to work and for the fruits of those labors.  Only then let us enjoy the time off (if we have it).  Even God took a rest on the seventh day after all His splendid work of creation! Just as the rejection of work is a rejection of who God created us to be, so rejection of His rest places ourselves above God and turns labor into a competing idol for God's attention and worship.  Work was not meant to be without cost, not something we love doing so much that we cannot cease its labors for any purpose.  No, even work as good and godly as it is must yield its activity before the Lord and so that we might enter into His rest, now in hope and one day face to face.

An irrational fear, perhaps?

Perhaps Luther was so consumed by the almost exclusive character of the Roman Canon that he saw everything through that lens.  His reform of the canon was more to excise that canon, removing it as if it were a malignancy destroying the faith.  So it might have been but Luther's answer was to remove other parts not cancerous in and of themselves and to leave the patient, in this case the Mass, distorted and scarred by this surgery.  I do not mean at all to suggest that Luther was acting irrationally but in the throes of a conflict, actions intended to eliminate an abuse have become almost intolerable even in the communion that bears his name.

It is rather easy, of course, 500 years later to suggest that a more careful scalpel could or should have been applied.  Yet that is exactly what I am doing.  Surely we have some advantage from being five centuries removed from the events of the Reformation to reclaim what was lost without surrendering the whole of the evangelical cause.  The work behind the Common Service was not the work of reform or restoration but one rite, itself cut and pasted from various rites, in an effort to bring some order to the liturgical chaos among Lutherans of that day.  So we are not justified in expecting the Common Service to provide a counter to Luther's omission of the entire canon and his abrogation of the offertory.  This is not merely then about Luther but about Lutherans and what we do and why we do it.

It seems odd to call "Create in me..." an offertory.  It is not a proper as it was before and has literally nothing to do with an offering at all.  It has become something very different and Lutherans have been adept at using later justification for its transformation.  It is as if the congregation which has just heard a rip roaring sermon rushes then to stand up and say "Message received!"  I suppose that it is not so bad to do so but it hardly lives up to an "offertory."

Luther, oddly enough, would have treated the taking of an offering sort of like showing up for private confession -- it is a good thing to do but it is best if no one sees you doing it and it would be better if you forgot about it yourself on the way home.  Thankfully we have forgotten what Luther said in this regard.  The exigent financial urgencies of every congregation have made it easy to leave Luther behind.  We are more than glad to pick up the cash, checks, ACHs, credit card payments, or every other tangible form of money and do so every week -- even more often than some congregations offer the Sacrament!  We rise as the holy mammon is brought forward to God and consider it all good, right, and salutary.  So why do we have such an aversion to a real offertory, to bread and wine brought forward to the altar and to the formal setting of the table.  Irrational fear, anyone?

With our aversion to the sacramental side of the offertory, we are also adverse to praying Eucharistically.  We pray about everything except in thanksgiving for God's good creation and His ordering of all things, His provision for us still, and His mighty acts for our salvation -- the very context of the first Lord's Supper.  Maybe we learned this from Rome whose canon has and remains more like a Prayer of the Church than a real Eucharistic prayer -- some of which we see in the Eastern variety.  So our loss of a real offertory becomes an even larger deficit when placed in the context of an anaphora absent all but the essentials of the Verba Christi and Our Father.

Modern liturgical renewal tried to fix that.  In the Divine Services 1 and 2, we gather the offering, prepare the table, and sing Psalm 116 as an ordinary (not quite a proper but at least a real offertory).  Interestingly, the subject of offertory and Eucharistic prayer seem to be governed by more a consideration of how long they take than what they mean.  Now we should make an effort to restore the offertory as a proper, allowing even more of the Psalms to be woven into the liturgy, and perhaps give a liturgical choir something more to do.  I would love that.  It will not hurt the people to see the altar reverently prepared for the Sacrament and it can be done without any reintroduction of any adverse sacrificial emphasis.  Without these, we will invent ways that ultimately highlight the money part of it and do all the liturgical prep of the altar beforehand.

While we are at it, we might work on recalling what the rightful sacrifice of the Mass ought to be -- a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving from those who receive the fruits of the one all sufficient sacrifice here in this bread and cup.  Perhaps we could formalize this whole idea by turning the Roman Canon into the Prayer of the Church (it would not be that hard) and learning from the East how to actually pray Eucharistically with a hearty voice of praise and thanksgiving.  Well, a man can dream, can't he?

 

The Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist

Sermon preached on the Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, 28 August 2025, at Grace Lutheran Church, Clarksville, TN.

John has fulfilled His calling as a prophet and witness to the Lord Jesus.  His life in this world is complete and hidden with Christ.  The last of his duties are not unlike that of any pastor at the end of his ministry.  He has sent his disciples to ask if Jesus is the One so that they might know in whom is their hope.  Now Christ increase and John decreases.  It seems like an ignoble end for a mighty man of God.  Where we expect earthly glory, there is a shameful death at the behest of a corrupt girl and her conniving mother.  Anyone of us would be right to ask if this is all there is.  But there is more.

All around the account of John’s death is life.  Herod is confused.  Who is Jesus?  Is John not dead?  Could Jesus be John risen from the dead and come to torment him still?  The disciples of John are not confused.  They act in quiet and silence to place the body of the prophet in a tomb because they believe John in the resurrection.  But between these is a tawdry scene.

Herod did not know what to do with John.  Believing him to be a prophet sent from God, Herod knew the truth of his words.  He was cut to the quick by the warning John made that if Herod remained in sin without repentance, Herod’s soul was under God’s judgment.  He had arrested John not so much to punish him as to silence him.  We all prefer silence to verbal warnings about our sins.  That is why we want our pastors to be silent with the accusing voice of the Law and stick to the Gospel.  The best we can hope for, however, is not silence but a man of God with the courage of John to call us to repentance from our pet sins and our unsubdued desires.  Herod should have listened and heeded the prophet who spoke God’s Word to him.  We should too.  

The issue was sex and lust and immorality.  It has been since Eden and it remains our weakness.  We all know this.  Our oversexed world of pornography and perversion of God’s gift is all around us.  I wish it were only in the initials of those who practice the unrestrained pursuit of their desires but it lives here in me and in you, the good people of God who show up in Church on a Thursday or a Sunday. People are not marrying, children are not being born, and those who marry are divorcing, and children are being sexualized both as the victims of and those who seek out what is violent, unnatural to us as God’s creation, and degrading.  This inhabits the pews and not just the internet.  We think we are safe because we are here but each of us wears a target and the devil works against us all.

I rather like to watch Father Brown and although not every thing religious is kosher on that series, I am struck by how the good Father is concerned less about justice than the soul of the one who perpetuates the crimes.  While cops are rushing to find suspects and prosecute, Father Brown has the concern for the eternal soul of the one who is not repentant.  There is something there.

Herod did not listen but God did not write off Herod.  He sent John.  John was the voice to call Herod to repentance just as our pastors call each of us to repentance.  We are thankful for them because they tell us what none of us wants to hear but what we must hear if we are to be saved.  John warned Herod at great cost to himself.  He did not speak as one who hated Herod but as one who loved the Lord and therefore loved those whom God loved and for whom Christ would die.  That included Herod and all kinds of obvious sinners as well as you and me in our quiet and hidden sins we have so successfully kept from others.  But not from God.  God does not desire the death of any but that all come to the knowledge of His Son, are saved by His grace, and bear in their lives the fruits of repentance by the Spirit.  

Will you listen?  John is preaching to you from his prison, preaching to you from his darkened cell, preaching to you from his martyrdom and death.  His voice is spoken by those who you call pastor.  But you must also preach.  You are the one who preach to your spouses and children, to your family and friends, to your neighbors and leaders.  It will cost you something.  Maybe not the bars of a jail but the prison of unpopularity and rejection.  We preach not as the perfect who need no repentance but as those who have found a merciful God who welcomes our repentance so that He might lavish upon us forgiveness, life, and salvation.

While we are at it, we attend to those who suffer for the sake of the kingdom, for the sake of Jesus.  We salve their wounds, comfort their tears, bind up their broken  hearts, and encourage them.  Do not fear those who can kill body but not the soul.  God is with us.  He is not the pat on the back of the righteous but the key to open the doors of all our prisons and set us free – free from doubt, from fear, from anger, from bitterness, from shame, from guilt, and from disappointment.  Death isi the final enemy but its sting is already removed and can hurt us no more.  We confess the crucified and risen Lord Jesus.  We honor the body not as a dirty old trash can that has no value but as God’s creation.  We bury the dead but expect to see them again.  We know not when we die but we know that we shall live and death shall not claim us.

John knew this.  John’s disciples knew this.  Herod could have known this.  You know this.  Repent.  Believe in Jesus Christ.  Confess your sins and confess your faith in Him who died for sin and rose for sinners that they might be set free from death to live forever more.  Washed water, the table awaits you.  Here is the taste of eternity.  The repentant come to eat and live now and with John forever.  Amen. 

High school sweethearts. . .

In the old days of log cabin high schools, there was this thing called a high school sweetheart.  There were some in my high school class -- couples who dated all the way through high school and even college, married, had kids, and remained married until one of them died.  It did not happen often enough to be typical but it definitely was normal.  Perhaps no more.

Several websites that track such things are saying that only one out of every three teens today has even dated in high school and that most of those relationships lasted weeks or months rather than years.  Wow.  One of out every three.  It is no wonder that we are having trouble convincing folks to marry.  Dating and courtship rituals have gotten rather rusty along the way.  In 1990, seven out of every eight seniors had gone on a date.  That number has switched.  About 2% of all those dating in high school would qualify as high school sweethearts and, sadly, more than half of those do not make it to their tenth anniversary (ordinarily I would say wedding anniversary but in this age of long term cohabitation they may not have married at all).  Apparently half of those high schoolers have flirted with someone by social media but that has not always nor regularly led to in person relationships. Teens are spending more time learning about themselves, entertaining themselves, thinking about careers, and figuring out what they want out of life --- something that may not necessarily be a romantic relationship or marriage.

On the good side, teen pregnancy is down.  On the bad side, abortions of any kind for women older than teens is up.  Gone is the proverbial young teen girl who finds herself pregnant and the father is also a teenager not ready for marriage.  Instead, abortion customers are repeat customers and older -- those for whom marriage is not in the cards and certainly not motherhood.  Another surprising turn from the stereotype of old.  That is in part due to the lack of dating and romantic relationships among those teen girls.  Birth rates are down across the spectrum of ages but a pronounced decline among teen girls. 

Apparently we as a culture and a church are not modeling healthy marital relationships in a way that appeals to youth and would interest them in dating or in marriage.  The opposite may be true.  We may be giving them a poor example of love and marriage and one which the youth are turning down as not worth the trouble.  Strange.  For all the emphasis on happiness, it would seem that among those married and those who could be dating, happiness and fulfillment are not quite related to marriage and family.  Among those who saw marriage as the hallmark of maturity and adulthood, this is not an appeal to the younger crowd either.  The statistics tell us that among the religious, marriage is held in higher esteem but not necessarily radically higher and not enough to make Christians stand out from the rest of the culture.  That ought to make us sad.  It ought to encourage us to be more deliberate in the home and in the congregation as we support and encourage our youth to the courtship rituals designed to find a spouse and the shape of their lives within marriage and a family.  High school sweethearts are becoming folklore and mythology and this is a signal of some tough times ahead.   

Borderline heretical. . .

Peter Leithart had a rather elegant line in an article about religion in America.  Our churchy national soul weirdly inhabits a body of peculiar, borderline-heretical actual churches.  It says out loud what few people dare to admit.  Many of those churches on the landscape of our cities and towns are neither orthodox nor Biblical but live on the very fringes of the faith.  From non-denominational churches without creed or confession or doctrinal oversight to those denominations who have kept the structure but no longer seem to care about what is preached or taught, churches in America are filled with a thin veneer of Christianity and not a real and historic Christian faith and identity.  While it seems uncharitable to say this about our neighbors down the block, it must be said.

What passes for gospel in these borderline heretical churches is nothing that the gospel writers or the great preachers of the New Testament (like St. Paul) would recognize.  In fact, just the opposite, they might expect some rather blunt words from a guy like St. Paul about what they are passing off as Christian and the rest of us be given a warning about being unequally yoked with those of faulty confession and errant creed.  I am certainly not happy about this but the days when someone could presume that a congregation down the road was mostly orthodox at least on the matter of Christ and salvation are long gone.  

I once heard a podcast where it was said that Presbyterians were close to Lutherans, for example.  The problem here is that Presbyterians are not Presbyterian anymore -- not in any confessional sense.  Most of them have readily abandoned the things that once defined them.  In fact, in our own larger identity as Lutherans, we must live side by side those who seem to have forgotten that Lutherans wrote down what they believed, taught, and confessed or that these Confessions had normative definition for what Lutherans were supposed to believe and practice.  The odd thing is that among denominationals you never quite know what you are getting when you show up at a congregation that has a name and belongs to a certain jurisdiction.  That is also a problem for Rome.  Although the worship wars of Roman Catholics are the news, the preaching and teaching is also in conflict.  There are Roman Catholic parishes in which the official stances with respect to the role of women, LGBTQIA+, marriage, family planning, and sin routinely flaunt the official doctrine espoused in the Catholic Catechism.  So, it would seem, Lutherans and Presbyterians are not quite alone in this conundrum.

Those who leave for the non-denominational "churches" or those who welcome home their kids from the same are not simply leaving behind a name or a style of worship.  They are abandoning the faith of the Scriptures and the faithful deposit once delivered.  It is not a mere matter of giving up water that does something or bread that is body or the Word which is God speaking, they are leaving in the dust the very red thread that connects us with the saints of old and marks our fidelity down through the generations.  Rome is surely the fool for presuming that popes or bishops can suffice to keep this apostolic unity in tact but the rest of us are the fools for presuming that holding to the idea of a book called the Bible can do the same.  "We believe the Bible" was never sufficient but now it is even less a definition of the faith.  Lutherans knew this in the sixteenth century when we practically begged our Roman opponents to show us where we had departed from Scripture, apostolic custom, catholic doctrine and practice.  

In my own community, odd names have replaced old ones (named of saints or doctrines like the Trinity).  Life something or other or edgy names designed to say "we are not your grandfather's church" are being more obvious than once thought.  They are not your grandfather's church -- not in doctrine, teaching, preaching, or practice.  Entrepreneurial Christianity in America has succeeded in learning the wrong lessons and has become peculiarly comfortable giving up what those who went before held sacred in favor of a Christianity that is hardly Christian at all.  It would be easy to dismiss or to laugh about were it not that those in the comfortable padded seats with their designer coffees in their hands do not know that the gospel they are hearing is borderline heretical and has no power to answer the guilt of sin or raise the dead.  The sooner we admit this, the better.

Private judgment or conscience. . .

Luther famously said,  “Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason, my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience would be neither right nor safe. God help me. Here I stand, I can do no other.”  It was a profound moment.  Summoned to the Diet of Worms in 1521 A.D., he was not merely asked to recant his teaching and writings but commanded to and he knew what was at stake.  It was nothing less than his own life.

Scripture and plain reason were not here equated as equal authorities but Scripture as the lens through which reason sees the truth God has written.  So also conscience was not personal or private judgment but the conscience informed by the Scriptures, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and through reason transformed by the Spirit who enlightens mind and heart.  I only wish we remembered this about Luther rather than charging him with personal and private judgment that reigns over everything else -- something that has sort of become the Protestant way of things.  So, for example, you cannot appeal to conscience as if it were over Scripture -- how can it be wrong when it feels so right.  Lutherans have been all over the page with Luther's words about conscience and yet the Reformer was not exactly plowing new ground here.  Luther was attempting to stand in the long line of those who were being compelled to conform to something other than Scripture and clear reason.

Existentialism has certainly explored more fully the nature of individual existence and freedom.  It has highlighted the importance of authentic personal choice and authentic responsibility and living and this has taken Luther's words as support for the duty and responsibility of individuals to shape their own lives, to have ownership of their actions and to be in charge of their own decisions. No one in their right mind, however, would place Luther in the modern camp of supreme personal autonomy.  Luther was a child of this age in which there was no such political, moral, or existential ideal of such personal and individual autonomy.  Indeed, Luther by his actions sided with order and would readily agree with the Scriptural condemnation of every person doing what is right in his own eyes — the charge God laid against His people (Deuteronomy 12:8; Judges 17:6; 21:25).  Indeed, Luther would find no cause in common with those who opine today that few things are really black and white and that doctrinal issues, moral questions, and Christian principles are almost indistinguishable in a sea of gray.

While politicians love the idea of personal judgment and individual conscience apart from governing authority as a whole, Luther would not countenance it.  From Mario Cuomo at Notre Dame to Biden, Roman Catholics have appealed to conscience while refusing to let clear and consistent church teaching inform their governance, especially with respect to abortion but not only so.  In the UK a priest actually had the gall to refuse the Sacrament to a politician who voted for assisted suicide.  It seems that few recall the example of St Ambrose's excommunication of the Emperor Theodosius.   Truth to power has become a political thing and less a pastoral concern for the soul.  That is a sad statement but true no less.

Some today will cite the Roman Catholic Church's Catechism that would seem to insist that conscience must be followed even when it is in error.  Of course, such a statement does not stand outside of the Spirit's own formation of conscience through Word and reason -- as Luther certainly would insist.  Conscience is an internal witness not of the autonomous self or reason apart from the Spirit but as testament to both the the working of the Spirit and the voice of God's Word.  How quickly we forget that conscience cannot approve what God's Word has condemned no matter how well reasoned such approval or how deep the desire of the heart for it.  Where Roman Catholics would insert the Church and the pope, Lutherans well remember that John Henry Newman do not fail to insist that Scripture as the unchanging voice of God still speaking the truth that saves is the foundation for the Church and for those who would be called her leaders. In our time, the danger is less that people will listen to the pope as the true authoritative voice but that popes and church leaders will appeal themselves to something other than Scripture and thereby enshrine private judgment with a status neither Luther nor the Church has meant to give it.  You cannot appeal to conscience over Scripture or to reason apart from the inspiration of the Spirit and end up where Luther did before the Diet at Worms.  No matter how attractive, it will always end up with tyranny of feelings or individual autonomy over any moral or dogmatic truth and this cannot be claimed in the name of God.