What Is Article XIV?

[This post is essentially inside baseball for The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, although it certainly has implications for the Church as a whole, since the Book of Concord is a confession for the sake of the Church.]

It is only one sentence in the English translation of the Latin: “Concerning church order they teach that no one should teach publicly in the church or administer the sacraments unless properly called.”¹ In the English translation of the German, it reads: “Concerning church government it is taught that no one should publicly teach, preach, or administer the sacraments without a proper [public] call.”²

The controverted terms today are “no one” (German: niemand; Latin: nemo); “publicly” (German: öffentlich; Latin: publice); and “proper call” [translated “regularly called” by the Triglotta] (German: ordentlichen Beruf; Latin: rite vocatus) (Concordia Triglotta 38-39).

Current controversies in the LCMS seem to revolve primarily around semantics: what does rite vocatus mean? It is often used as shorthand for AC XIV, but no word means anything apart from its context. That fact led to this question: Why did Melanchthon (affirmed by the Confessors) find it necessary to confess just this statement on the public preaching and teaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments? None of the notes on the translations of these words clarifies anything for our modern problems and controversies over who should exercise the Office of the Ministry (or, perhaps better: who should be exercised in the Office). For example, with reference to the Kolb/Wengert edition, what does it mean to be called in a “regular manner by a proper public authority”? (See the note on rite vocatus.) Certainly, the Lutheran Church has historically left it an open question what constitutes a “proper public authority,”³ whether secular officials, consistories, bishops, or synods. “Regular” (and rite seems to bear this out) appears to be “simply the way things are done.” If “the way things are done” has changed from the time of the Augsburg Confession, the words rite vocatus, in and of themselves, cannot bear the weight that we try to put upon them.

Since neither the Augsburg Confession nor the other Confessions confess every possible teaching of the Scriptures, the first significant question is: “To whom or at what practice is this statement directed?” In other words: what is being confessed here and for what reason? It is clear that in the case of the Augsburg Confession and its Apology, the statements are presented to the Holy Roman Emperor and they are confessions of practice in the face of Roman accusations that the Evangelicals had departed from historic doctrine and practice, i.e., that the Evangelicals had separated themselves from the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. The Evangelicals’ defense is always that they had not departed from the true teaching of the Church (meaning that wherever the Church—including the Roman Church—had correctly explicated the Scriptures and had not contravened or made ecclesiastical law beyond what the Scriptures commanded or forbade, the Evangelicals confessed nothing more or less).

An Entirely Wrong Scriptural Sermon

C.F.W. Walther gives us some insight into why not every sermon (or song, for that matter) that is built from the Scriptures is a true or orthodox sermon.

That is the litmus test of a proper sermon.  The value of a sermon depends not only on whether every statement in it is taken from the Word of God and on whether it is in agreement with the same but also on whether Law and Gospel have been rightly distinguished.  If the same building materials are provided to two different architects, sometimes one will construct a magnificent building, while the other, using the same materials, will make a mess of it.  Because he is dim-witted, the latter may want to begin with the roof, or place all the windows in one room, or stack layers of stone or brick in such a way that the wall will be crooked.  One house will be out of plumb and such a bungled piece of work that it will collapse, while the other will stand firm and be a habitable and pleasant place to live.  In like manner, two different sermons might contain all the various doctrines–and while the one sermon may be a glorious and precious piece of work, the other may be wrong throughout.  …

This frequently happens when students give sermons. [Walther is giving lectures to seminary students.]  You will hear comforting remarks such as “It is all by grace,” only to be followed by “We must do good works,” which are then followed by statements such as “With our works we cannot gain salvation.”  There is no order to such sermons.  Nobody understands them–least of all the person who needs one of these doctrines most.

C.F.W. Walther, Law and Gospel, 37-38

Extra Stanzas

It is a travesty that so many hymns in Lutheran hymnals end–against the overwhelming testimony of the Scriptures–with stanzas about dying and going to heaven.  So I’m rewriting them.  No doubt improvements can be made, and if you don’t like mine, no big deal; write your own.  Here’s what I’m going to sing, unless you give me something better in the comments!

Lutheran Service Book (LSB) 524 (“How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds”), stanza 7:

And then when I awake in life,
Body and soul unite!
Your good creation put to rights,
And make us whole again.

LSB 563 (“Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness”), alternate stanza 5:

When from the dust of death I rise
To greet my Savior in the skies,
Then on new earth my feet will stand,
I will live still from His good hand.

LSB 609 (“Jesus Sinners Doth Receive”), alternate stanza 7:

Jesus sinners doth receive;
Also I have been forgiven;
And when I this life must leave,
I shall find an open heaven.
But my hope is even more:
Jesus bodies doth restore.

LSB 686 (“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”), alternate stanza 4:

On that day when freed from sinning,
Lay my body in the grave.
But my soul shall cry out louder:
“Lord, how long?” and “Lord, please save!”
But we will not wait forever;
Christ the Life will hear our prayer!
And He will, our dear Lord Jesus,
Come and bring the Day to us.

LSB 702 (“My Faith Looks Up to Thee”), stanza 5:

My faith looks up to Thee,
In Christ, my life I see
Hidden in Him.
And when that life appears,
I’ll see Him as He is,
And at His Word I will
Be made like Him.

LSB 730 (“What Is the World to Me”), stanza 5:

What is the world to me?
When will it cease its groaning?
It longs in labor pains
For Christ and His revealing.
And when true children see
The world made new and free,
It ever shall be so:
Creation is my home. 

LSB 733 (“O God, Our Help in Ages Past”), alternate stanza 6:

And we, when Jesus calls us forth,
From graves as from our beds,
Will wake and live forevermore
Bright, glorious as our Head.

LSB 761 (“Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me”), stanza 5:

I will rest my soul in Thee
While my body lies in dust;
Even so, my hope is this,
On Your Word my faith insists:
That my bones shall not remain
In the ground but live again.

LSB 763 (“When Peace, like a River”), stanza 5:

Because in that day mine own eyes shall see
Creation restored and renewed.
I’ll see Christ my Lord, and my body like His.
In that day, finally, all is well. 

Advent 1

“Rejoice, daughter of Zion!  Behold, thy King cometh unto thee!”  Again we hear the glad Advent-message and read how the King of mercy and of truth, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, fulfils the age-old prophecy with His triumphant entry into Jerusalem, and how the rejoicing multitudes welcome HIm as their King with loud acclaim.  “Hosanna,” they cry, that is, “Save now, O Lord!  Send now prosperity!”  And the Lord God did send prosperity.  David’s Son, yet greater Lord, finishes victoriously His divine work of redemption and forever sets His captive and mourning people free from their cruel enemies–Satan, sin, and death.  Now at His saving name every knee must bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  We have also vowed allegiance to Him, our only King and Savior, in life, in death, through all eternity.  But, alas, we must all confess with deep contrition that we have been most neglectful in our homage ever so often.  We need pardon for our sin, more faith, more love, more hope, more devotion in His sacred service.  And now the glad Advent-message tells us that “He comes the broken heart to bind, The bleeding soul to cure, And with the treasures of His grace To enrich the humble poor.”  Should we not sing our glad hosannas to such a faithful and unwearied Savior?”  [F.W. Herzberger, Family Altar, December 1]

[Timotheos]

What is Clericalism?

It seems the ugly Stephanite beast has reared its head in The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.  From all the letters, blog posts, and Facebook comments in the past six months, you’d think that a cabal of clergy in cope and chasuble had stormed the International Center, thrown out every layperson, abolished voters’ assemblies, and made it a crime for non-clergy to talk about Jesus or even be in His presence.  But now a popular rebellion has arisen from the very roots of the grass [led, oops, by a bunch of clergy] to tear down the clerical elite with their bishops and Article XIVs.

The latest salvo aimed at priestcraft in all its forms comes from a former president (down with bishops!) of the LCMS (which, technically, makes him more bureaucrat than clergy).  Since the moderator is a little slow to approve comments, I post my response here:

President Kieschnick, with all due respect, I think this ought to be retracted. It is unproductive and divisive, especially following a convention that was perhaps the most unified we’ve seen in decades. You smear, by implication, every pastor who wears a clerical collar as wanting to dominate and be served, rather than to serve. I confess that my old sinful flesh would rather be served, but I doubt that temptation comes more easily to one in a collar than it does to one who wears a suit and tie, or jeans and a t-shirt.

Did you speak to any of those pastors in clerical collars? Do you know them? Or are you assuming the worst of them, because this is an easy card to play?

I have seen this “clergy-focused” canard thrown around recently, but I have yet to see any real evidence of it. The fact that seven of the ten Concordias have clergy as presidents doesn’t really tell us anything, nor does the fact that our president and vice-presidents are clergy. What about Boards of Regents? The laity are always represented, according to our bylaws. Voters at Synod conventions are equally divided between clergy and lay, and voters at district conventions are equal, as well (despite recent attempts to increase lay voters at conventions).

But those things are really beside the point, since the one standing out front is, as you say, to be a servant, rather than to lord it over those in his care. Therefore, if you have evidence that those in leadership positions have been lording it over those whom they ought to be serving, you should speak to them, rather than making vague accusations on a blog.

Further, the idea that we might somehow return to a sort of “Herr Pastor” culture in the Missouri Synod is laughable. If, after Stephan, such an LCMS existed, it certainly does not exist now. In what congregation of the Synod could a pastor, abusing his authority in the Gospel, ram his opinions and his way down the throats of his congregation, and not be run out of town on the slickest rail? Pastors don’t even have the authority to implement evangelical, Scriptural practices such as communion every Lord’s day without the fiercest opposition.

For every example of clergy attempting to exercise an unbiblical and unevangelical power, I could give you two of unbiblical and unevangelical lay domineering. But what does that prove, except that we’re all a bunch of damned sinners, pastors and lay alike?

Please don’t increase the unnecessary strife between pastors and people; each member of the Body has his or her own vocation, and it does not help to tear down the pastoral vocation in order to elevate the vocations of the laity.

I went searching for actual examples of clergy dominance, and the Facebook had this to say:  

I don’t know how the first person counts, but from this page, it looks to me like there are 35 lay people to 34 pastors (LCMS career missionaries).  Of the 1-2 year and other short-term missionaries, I highly doubt that they are even primarily clergy.  And if lay people have been removed from serving as missionaries, where is the evidence that it was because they weren’t pastors?  The above are not concrete examples; they are vague insinuations that require hard evidence.  Without such evidence, they just serve to stir up division and distrust between pastors and people.  And where is a degree needed for deacon or lay minister?  The LCMS doesn’t even have uniform language for these positions, let alone required degrees.

Further, cops who don’t wear uniforms don’t want people to know they’re cops.  I doubt that’s what the commenter wanted to say about pastors not wearing collars.  And I categorically deny that there is a special class of person called “theologian.”  Everyone who talks about God is a theologian, whether informed or uninformed, good or bad.  To preserve a class of theologian, above and apart from every Christian, is to denigrate lay people who study the Scriptures and give articulate and well-formed witness to Christ.  Not only that, but I find it hard to understand how a shepherd is supposed to shepherd the flock of God if he is not a theologian.

I don’t know about anyone else, but what I, as a pastor, want more than anything else is a theologically well-educated laity.  No, I don’t mean a seminary education.  I mean knowing the Scriptures and the Confessions, in order that they might do exactly what the above commenters want: to present the Gospel clearly and succinctly to their unbelieving family, friends, and neighbors within their vocations.  I want that.  And guess what?  They don’t have to be pastors to do it!  The cry of “clericalism!” (besides coming, strangely, from clergy) often comes from those who are, in practice, the most hyper-clerical of all.  Because they seem to think that lay people who are living out their vocations as Christians in the world are somehow not enough.  Instead of bearing witness within the places where God has put them, these anti-anti-clericalists want lay people to be “ministers.”  We’ve had this modernization of medieval monasticism feuchted on us for long enough.  (That is, unless you’re engaged in “ministry,” you’re not doing “Christian” work.)  If everyone is a minister, no one is.  And I wonder if that’s not what the end goal is.  There are more than a few people in the LCMS who think that the role/goal of pastors is to “work themselves out of a job.”  In other words, from a false translation of Ephesians 4 (see here, here, and here [as well as another essay by Hamann: “Church and Ministry: An Exegesis of Ephesians 4:1-16,” Lutheran Theological Journal 16:3 (December 1982)] for the technical evidence) has come a false idea of what a pastor is and is for.

A pastor is indeed given to the Church for the equipment of Christ’s saints, but not for the purpose of making them into little ministers.  He equips them for their life in the world (to do what they’ve been given to do) by doing what he’s been given to do: preach, teach, baptize, absolve, and give them Jesus’ Body and Blood.  This has nothing to do with pride, arrogance, or lording it over the flock of God which the pastor has been put there to serve; nor is it even about ability or education (but why would any congregation want a pastor who does not have the aptitude to teach and who can go no further in the Scriptures than the latest English translation combined with his feelings?).  This is simply about an Office, which–Lutherans confess–Jesus Himself has established, for the giving out of the forgiveness of sins.  Can lay people forgive sins?  Absolutely: within their vocations.  Can lay people preach the Gospel (as they clearly do in Acts 8:4)?  Absolutely: within their vocations.  Can lay people baptize?  Absolutely: within their vocations, as emergencies arise.

The whole “clergy-focused” argument is a denial of vocation and a return to what Luther vociferously opposed: the elevating of a certain vocation above all others.  It says to pastors: don’t do your vocation, we want to do it.  It says to lay people: don’t do your vocations, do the pastor’s.  When I as a pastor insist on doing my own vocation, it is exactly the opposite of clericalism: it is the upholding of every vocation as holy in Christ, including the pastor’s.

Is it clericalism to insist that the correct interpretation of the Scriptural Office of the Ministry is found in Articles V and XIV (as well as XXVIII) of the Augsburg Confession?  Then every single pastor in the LCMS and every single congregation of the LCMS is “clergy-focused,” because it is exactly these articles pastors vow to uphold in their ordinations and which congregations uphold in their constitutions.

Is it clericalism to want, as far as possible, the best trained pastors for every congregation in the Synod?  Then what is it to insist on giving congregations (who could otherwise have a fully trained pastor) pastors who don’t know the Biblical languages?

Is it clericalism to ask that our congregations abide by the Confessions they claim to, well, confess, and for them to put lay people who are publicly preaching and administering the Sacraments into the Office which was created by God for that purpose?  How would this deprive them of anything?  In fact, it would assure them that the man who is giving out the gifts of God in Christ is indeed put there to do exactly that.  No further degree necessary (although, again, is learning the Scriptures more deeply a bad thing?), no further cost.  Simply prayer and the laying on of hands to signify that this man is put into the one Office by God.  Instead of making up new terms, such as “licensing,” why not simply do what the Church has always done, and ordain them?  (And what is ordination, but a “license” to preach and teach according to AC XIV?  What’s with the neologisms?)

Is it clericalism to ask that churches that are planted have a man in the Office to do the AC V things?  How does this limit the missionary activity of lay people?

Vocation, vocation, vocation!  If we could get this straight, the struggles over and between pastors and lay people would essentially dry up (except, of course, for the peccator that remains in every pastor and every lay person!).  Pastors, you have a vocation partially outlined by your ordination vows and your Diploma of Vocation(!).  Do it.  If you don’t want to do it, don’t be a pastor.  Laymen, you have a vocation outlined by your relationships and what various people require from you.  Do it.  If you want to be a pastor, go through the process and be put into the Office.  Live your vocation.  It’s holy in Christ.  You don’t have to be a “professional church worker,” or even a non-professional church worker.  God has put the Body together in the way He wants it, and all the parts work together.  Let’s stop tearing down certain parts of the Body to elevate others, and let’s stop implying that certain members of the Body are less important because they’re not “doing ministry.”

Timotheos 

On Synod Conventions

From the first president of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod:

Here in America, we also use the arrangement of a synod [or council] to carry on the business of the Church; God forbid that we ever get to the point where we merely put on a big show and then have a convention in which we discuss all sorts of peripheral piffle about ceremonies, rules, and insignificant trifles.  Instead of that, may we always concentrate on the study of doctrine. …

To be sure, many synods have tried to imitate us in this practice….But how do they go about it?  One particular synod presented more than a hundred theses for discussion! … You see, whenever they got to the point where the synod had to make a decision, they repeatedly postponed a decision until the next year.  The only proper procedure is that you do not rest until you have achieved a clear and complete agreement.  When you then go home, you go your separate ways only in a physical sense, but spiritually you remain totally unified so that the devil cannot stir up any divisions. …

Therefore a synod’s primary purposes are 1) unity of confession and 2) integrity of practices.

Thank God, there is hardly a single primary doctrine that we have not thoroughly discussed in our Synod during the past thirty years.  And that is what we must continue to do.  That this is so important is evident from, among other things, the fact that more laypeople attend our doctrinal discussions than attend our business sessions[!].  It is our doctrine that makes our Synod so dear to their hearts. …

If the study of doctrine is not the number one priority at synodical conventions, then one of two things will happen: Either the convention will be manufacturing laws, or even worse, it will degenerate into an affair of mutual praise, love, assurance, and life insurance.

(C.F.W Walther, “Duties of an Evangelical Lutheran Synod,” At Home In The House of My Fathers, 299, 300, 301.)

May God preserve an Evangelical Lutheran Synod this week, and keep the convention from being “an affair of mutual praise, love, assurance, and life insurance”!

Timotheos

 

Actions and Words, Again

[See here for the first part]

So it seems that many people do not care that the treasures of the liturgy and the hymns are lost, and along with them any sustained relevance in the lives of sinners who, essentially, are exactly the same as sinners, say, 1700 years ago.

(Aside: It seems to me, in fact, that our current cultural situation is very near the situation of people like Ambrose and Augustine, following the legalization and then the State sponsorship of Christianity: i.e., very soon–if not already–there will be an influx of people into the Church or the sphere of those who belong to the Church, who have been pagans their entire lives.  They will not have been baptized and they will be approaching the Church from a position of nearly complete ignorance.  What will we do with them?  Will we pretend we can dumb down the Gospel to the level of unbelief, and that this will somehow appeal to them enough that they will gladly join Christian congregations?  Or will we be secure enough in our liturgical and apostolic heritage to assimilate them into the life of the Church, with the fullness of its ancient doctrine and practices (see Acts 2:42)?  This will obviously require much more work than what we’re currently doing, and a complete reworking of our present process of catechesis.  We will be starting at the ground floor, hoping to make life-long Christians.  That cannot happen in six weeks, or even two years.  Perhaps the early catechumenate, mutatis mutandis, can help us here if we are willing.)

But for those who do think the liturgy has something to offer, if only as a vestigial memory from childhood, what can we do?  I do not pretend to have the answers to a problem that has been in the making for probably 300+ years.  However, I will offer some tentative ideas, to begin or continue a discussion, especially in the LCMS (since that is my context).

1. Parents, as I said in the first part of this, must be committed to what happens on the Lord’s Day.  Not only those who are parents of those particular children, but other members of the congregation who also have a vested interest in whether children grow up in the fear and instruction of the Lord.  Sunday School teachers cannot teach a class, and then absent themselves from the Divine Service without a very compelling reason.  Even if you think people don’t notice, it sends a strong message to children not to see their Sunday School teachers in the Divine Service.  It says you’re only putting in your time, and no more.  The other members of the congregation, surrounding the children, cannot sing and say everything half-heartedly or no-heartedly.
2. When you are present in the Divine Service, and when you are at home, you must be willing to teach your children about the various parts of the liturgy (e.g., show them where things are in the hymnal), and connect the liturgy to the various concerns that arise in day to day life.  The Nunc Dimittis, for example, is especially appropriate for night time singing before bed.  (If you don’t know how it connects, ask your pastor!  He, if he’s anything like me, would love to tell you, almost more than anything.)  In the Service itself, you have to participate yourself and help your children to do so according to their ages.  Children will memorize the words if they hear the people around them singing them.  They do it with everything else you say; why not with the Divine Service?  Participate and sing the hymns, even if you don’t like that particular one!
3. Related to that, realizing that the words are pure Gospel, sing them like you mean them.  If your children see you mumbling the words, or sitting there without your hymnal open, or glazedly looking out the window, they will quickly realize that these things are not important.  Guess where they won’t want to be next week?
4. This presence and this participation will not only impact your children.  Here, we’ve come back around to unbelievers.  Imagine, first, this scenario: someone who is not a member of a congregation, who maybe has no connection with a congregation, who finds the Divine Service foreign, visits your congregation.  This person sits in a pew, sees people socializing right up until the beginning of the second stanza of the opening hymn, and singing the liturgy and reading the responses as if they were reading a manual on how to correctly install the flush mechanism of a modern toilet.  The hymns sound how Lutherans are always accused of sounding: like funeral dirges, not necessarily musically, but in the manner and appearance of the people singing them.  Death cometh, hopefully sooner rather than later.   At least, that’s what I’d be thinking.  Now, ask yourself this question: why in the world would that person ever want to return to your congregation for a Divine Service?  The fact is, we are the cause of the things we complain about.  The pastor can only do so much to speak and sing his parts with passion (especially if he’s an introvert like me); the people have to do a little work.  And if they do: if they sing with joy, if they appear to actually believe what they are singing and saying, might that not cause someone to take a second look at what appears at first to be an hour completely removed from the twenty-first century?  Maybe there’s something more here than meets my first glance.  Maybe still waters run deep.  Maybe…

Now, obviously none of these things, or anyone else’s ideas, will guarantee that churches will stop shrinking, that kids will start to love and treasure the liturgy more than their parents, that we can reverse a decades-long trend of apathy toward the liturgy that the Christian Church has developed over 2000 years.  Proverbs 22:6 is a proverb–the way things generally go–not a promise.  But the guarantee of continued falling away from God’s promises in baptism is much more likely if parents do not carry out their God-given responsibilities and bring their children to the services of the Lord’s House, teach them the stories of God’s salvation in Christ, and sing to them the songs that the Church has sanctified by long use.

On the other hand, if you want your children to keep looking for a church that will “fit their needs” and give them what they think they want, eventually they will just do what they always wanted anyway, and treat the Lord’s Day as just another day in the weekend.  If that’s what you want, I’d suggest we all just keep doing what we’re doing and kill off the liturgy, and with it the Faith that it instills.  I’m not willing to give up just yet.

Timotheos

Actions and Words

I know this is going to sound harsher than I mean it but, believe me, this is more a lament than a rant.

I often hear worried words and see much hand-wringing over the fact that “young people” are not going to church anymore.  That is usually connected to the worry about the “unchurched” and I’m sure it comes up often in evangelism or outreach committees.  We worry and we cast our anxious looks around at empty pews, but I’m not sure we really believe what we say; or if we do believe it, our actions don’t bear out our confession.

Let me put it this way: if we were really worried about youth and unbelievers, what are the sorts of things we would do?  Do we want them to go to church on Sunday to hear God’s Word and receive His gifts, and not just as an obligation or as a burden of the Law (there is that pesky Third Commandment)?  What would show that?  Maybe going to the Lord’s House on the Lord’s Day and whenever else the services of the Lord’s House are held?  Not just when we don’t have anything else going on, but every single week (barring sickness or death).  We would make it clear from the very beginning of their baptismal life that the Lord’s House is where the Lord’s people are found on the Lord’s Day.  Full stop.  Yes, you can play sports; yes, you can have friends over.  But believe this: those things, and all things, will give way to the Word of God given to us for our forgiveness and edification.

If not, the exception swiftly becomes the rule.  In fact, it takes about three generations, as far as I can tell.  The first generation attends the Divine Service weekly, even if they are farmers and it’s a nice day for plowing or spraying the fields.  There are no exceptions to this, or if there are, they come about once every ten years.  That’s just how it is.  The second generation learned this from their parents, and by mere force of habit they follow this pattern–pretty much.  But maybe they’re not so happy with some pastor or the way the service always stays the same.  So even though they go every week, or at least twice a month, their children hear them complain about various aspects of church.  Their children also see them become a little more lax about when they go, and when they make their children go.  Because they want their children to go “for the right reasons, not because they have to, like I did.”  The problem is that the little sinners often don’t want to go.  They’d rather travel with their sports team or stay overnight with their non-church-going friend on Saturday night.  And the parents find themselves, in spite of their better desires, not wanting to “deprive” their children of those experiences.  And, anyway, what does it hurt not to go to church every single Sunday?  I mean, it’s not like going to church makes you a Christian, or that everyone who goes to church is a Christian.  Sure, they want their children to be Christians and to go to church–at least, they know they’re supposed to want that–and they still want them to do their confirmation homework and go to Sunday School (though they drop them off and don’t go to Bible study).  Finally, their children learn their lessons better than their parents teach it: church is something we should do, probably, but it’s not something absolutely necessary, so if we have “better” things to do, we will do them.  And we’ll still put in our appearances once a month or so.  We’re still Christians, because we say we believe in God (though we’re not quite sure who that God is, or how he/she/it is different from the Muslim’s or the Jew’s or the Mormon’s god), and we believe that Jesus died for our sins (though we’re not quite sure why we need that, or what it means to believe it).

So we come to the third generation, the members of which know that their parents think going to church is important, and their grandparents thought it was really important, but have a lot of trouble coming up with even one good reason why it’s important for them (except, maybe, when they have children, and the pressure from the parents becomes a little more intense, especially about baptism).  And they essentially, and consciously, don’t think being in the Lord’s House is any more important than the atheist down the street thinks it is.  (Of course, they don’t really know any atheists, because in small, rural communities everyone is a member of some church.  Right?  Aren’t they?  Well, they were baptized there, at least.)  And when they do come to the Divine Service, they find it irrelevant and boring.  Which is sort of like saying it’s irrelevant and boring to weed your garden when the weeds have already killed off all the flowers and vegetables.

Sort of bleak, isn’t it?  But the quicker we realize that this is our situation in at least the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the better off we’ll be.  As Charlie Peacock put it in a song, “Cheer up Church/you’re worse off than you think.”

Actions speak louder than words, and the actions of parents (despite what they say) with their children for 20 or 30 years has been teaching them that what happens on the Lord’s Day is unimportant, irrelevant, boring, and unrealistic.  Why are we surprised when they believe it?  And then, once we’ve thoroughly inculcated in them this apathy toward the liturgy, we complain that it’s not meeting their needs and we need to do something else.  So maybe the Baby Boomers got their way after all, not by actively teaching the destruction of the liturgy, but by the inertia of the sinful nature.

I’d like to offer some possibilities toward a solution to this problem and how we might recover the beauty and the pure Gospel power of the liturgy, even without proficient cantors and choirs and instrumentalists, even in a rural congregation, but I’m beginning to think, even as I write this, that that’s just not what people want.  They don’t want to discover the depths of the catholic Divine Service, as it’s been handed down and refined through the centuries.  They’ve already convinced themselves that the liturgy, along with the strong, orthodox hymns, have outlived their usefulness.  So then: damn the torpedoes!  Full speed ahead (into faddishness–which will certainly mean irrelevance, not after 2000 years, but as quickly as worship innovators sense any new, cutting-edge entertainment to engage the cynical and jaded “youth”)!

But if you’re interested….hold on….

Timotheos

Defending Syncretism: You’re Doing It Wrong

I’m going to try, as Pres. Matt Harrison asked, not to mention the main actors or the events which have been boiling among members of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod this past week, as well as, unfortunately, in the national press.  Perhaps the whole saga, taken up as a “for/against,” “conservative/liberal” rallying cry by the usual suspects, can become an opportunity for discernment and a fuller searching of the Scriptures on what it means to bear witness in an age that is, by nature, syncretistic.

I’m not holding my breath.

On the other hand, I’ve noticed that those who want to defend events where many people are praying and/or worshiping, each from his or her “faith tradition” (gah, that phrase makes me want to break something), often do use Scriptural accounts to bolster their cases.  (That is in contradistinction to those unbelievers or crypto-unbelievers who use half-formed, quasi-scriptural, emotivistic opinions to advance their case one way or the other.)

The problem with the Scriptural accounts that are chosen to encourage a given situation of praying/worshiping is that they often seem to move in the opposite direction from how the person seems to want it to be used.  Take Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal, and the 400 prophets of Asherah.  I suppose Elijah prays in their presence (not quite sure he’s praying “with” them), but while they are praying, he mocks them, even suggesting that Baal might be taking a bathroom break.  And then he proceeds to make sure not a single one of them escapes with his life.  Do the people who use this passage want to appear biblically illiterate, or were they all, like, “Elijah prayed and there were people from other religions there…what happened after that?  TLDR“?  I don’t really know.  I admit, mocking false prophets, calling down fire from heaven, telling the people to worship only the true God–all pretty cool.  Just not sure that’s what the people who use this verse mean when they use it.

I want to know if there is an actual, real place where Jesus, His Prophets or His Apostles, or any Christian until the Enlightenment, actually worshiped (or even prayed, for that matter) with unbelievers or believers in another god?  Not where they preached to unbelievers, not where they ate with unbelievers, not where they served or helped unbelievers.  Is that too much to ask?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Timotheos

 

When a Lutheran candidate of theology is assigned to a parish

Today is not only the anniversary of my wedding, but it is the anniversary of my ordination into the Office of the Holy Ministry and installation as pastor in my current parish.

This is the first thing that came to mind:

My friends: When a Lutheran candidate of theology is assigned to a parish where he is to discharge the office of a Lutheran preacher, for him that place ought to be the dearest, most beautiful, and most precious spot on earth.  He should be unwilling to exchange it for a kingdom.  Whether it is in a metropolis or in a small town [yes], on a bleak prairie [yes–well, not so bleak] or in a clearing in the forest, in a flourishing settlement or in a desert–for him that place should be a miniature paradise.  Do not the blessed angels descend from heaven with great joy whenever the Father in heaven sends them to minister to those who are to inherit salvation?  Why, then, should we poor sinners be unwilling to hurry after them with great joy to a place where we can lead other people–fellow sinners–to salvation?  [C.F.W. Walther, Law and Gospel, 20th Evening Lecture (St. Louis: Concordia, 2010), 225]

Timotheos