President Obama has come out in support of gay marriage today in an interview with ABC news. Well, that’s not quite right. He actually was in support of it back in 1996 before his position then “evolved” toward opposition. Today the dissembling ended, which may be good for the president’s conscience, but what importance it should hold for the rest of us I fail to see.

President Obama, for all his accomplishments, is not a moral theologian, a religious leader, or even (whatever some have thought) a prophet. He is a politican responding, reasonably enough, to political pressures. The impatience of the well-connected and wealthy gay lobby in the Democratic party forced the president’s hand. To call his move “courageous”—or to call the gay citizens whose outsize purchasing power and political influence has propelled their cause “oppressed”—is a long stretch indeed.

The courageous stand would have been to buck the ossifying, self-complimenting elite consensus and come out strongly for marriage, but Obama, here as on most matters, very sincerely agrees with the establishment. The correct opinion is not always the courageous one, and when it comes to gay marriage the President’s view is neither.

Beneath this political circus, of course, a real moral and philosophical question lies. What is marriage? Is it merely a way of signaling our social approval of committed love between any ordering of two (or more) people? Or is it a definite institution ordered toward the rearing of children and defined by permanence, exclusivity, and sexual complementarity? I think the latter. President Obama, barring further evolutions, thinks the former.

via President Obama is Wrong on Gay Marriage » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog.

Read the rest.

First, the authority of the state derives from the home, i.e. the governmental authorities are doing what is given first to the father by the Father, e.g. protection, education, welfare, and other social norms. The father is also the spiritual head of the household, e.g. Adam was the first father, governor, and pastor.

Therefore, the state recognition of marriage comes from the fatherly authority as governor and pastor. If the state becomes independent of the home (and household of faith), we must obey God rather than man. The father is not given liberty to recognize what God has not.

Second, Dr. Veith said on Issues that the relationship of parents to children is forever. This certainly jives with the resurrection of the dead and the restoration of this body. Even our resurrected body will carry the combination of genetic material of our parents. Thus, heaven will be ordered magnificently as family, all adopted with Christ as head.

We might struggle here with the abolition of marriage in heaven (Matthew 22:23-33; Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-38.) Of course, there will be no need for our earthly marriage or be given into marriage for complete number of saints will be numbered. That is, the chief aim of earthly marriage is the begetting and rearing of children. This command ceases into eternity.

Yet, in reflecting on Dr. Veith’s comment perhaps this does not mean we cease to be parents to our earthly children nor our spousal relationships cease in heaven. For example, we honor our parents (4th commandment) even after they have departed. All families are assumed into Christ’s marriage to the church and the procreative aim is completed. Our earthly marriages are perfected in Christ’s and our marriages and begetting become part of the wonderful ordering of heaven.

What is the cross of barrenness? Surely it is one of loss and death and grief, but many in the church don’t realize that the cross of barrenness is also one of warring against the world’s religion of control. The world expects us to manage and control our fertility, so, naturally, that same world also expects us to manage and control our infertility – never mind whether or not we really can.

It is not uncommon for friends, even strangers, to school me in this art of control, this “sure science” of making a baby. A woman standing behind a school lunch counter once told me, “Be sure to keep your cervix lifted for at least thirty minutes after intercourse.” A lady at a party said to me in front of a circle of friends, “Your husband could be shooting blanks. Get his sperm’s motility checked out.” A stranger sitting to my left at a women’s luncheon leaned over and announced during the main course, “My daughter was infertile, but she finally had a baby last spring through In Vitro Fertilization. You should go to her doctor.” A woman at a local farmer’s market stopped me to tell me that taking her suggested brand of vitamin supplements would even out my hormone levels and result in a pregnancy.

I don’t know what to say in return to those who publicly offer advice on sexual techniques or medically misdiagnose my husband’s fertility or tell me to engage in medical procedures that break the First and Fifth Commandments of my Lord. Giving a verbal response to those comments feels like I am somehow validating the very existence of them. If I share with the woman at the market that my hormone levels are already stable, then I am engaging her in conversation about something that is so personal and painful. I am inviting her to continue making suggestions and diagnoses and comments about my barrenness. I am giving her permission to continue trying to find a fix for my problem. I am handing her the salt well and telling her to rub it in my open wound. So, instead of telling her the truth, I simply thank her for her advice, and I keep walking. Then, I go home, and I cry.

I cry, because every time a well-meaning person tells me how to make a baby, I am tempted to believe that I can control my barrenness, that my present childlessness is my own doing, my own fault. I must be doing something wrong. I must be missing a key nutrient in my diet; I must be exercising too much or too little; I must have high levels of prolactin or low levels of progesterone; I must not be producing enough Type E mucus to sustain the lives of the sperm in my uterus; I must not be going to the right doctor. I must, I must, I must. When a well-meaning person makes suggestions to me in my pain and grief, I feel the weight, the burden, the law of my barrenness fully on my own shoulders.

Yet, I cannot control my barrenness. I know this, because God tells me in His Word that children are a heritage from Him – a gift – and that good gift is received, not manufactured or made. God is the Giver, and I am the receiver. And, at the end of the day, my faith must believe what God tells me in His Word, not what the woman tells me at the market.

via The Cross of Barrenness « He Remembers the Barren.

Both presentations were excellent. Pr. Curtis in particular gave much food for thought. One of the challenges of the “Gottesdienst crowd” is the almost dogged insistence upon reverent practice in the conduct of the Divine Service. Internet forum users mock their Dürer-style hand folding, their affinity for bishop hats, and prostration during the Tre Ore.

The criticism is largely based on history. The last hundred years or so of Missouri Synod history has seen the entrenchment of occasional communion, eighth grade confirmation, Protestant praise anthems, and generic Christian piety. I know because this was what I received. It was not until my last parish as a layperson that I witnessed Lutherans making the sign of the cross (despite Luther’s instruction in the Small Catechism.) Not until the Seminary did I hear the Lord’s Prayer chanted during the Divine Service (despite Luther’s notation for the church in American Edition volume 53.) Nor had I witnessed the elevation of the body and blood of Christ until my time at Redeemer and Bethany in Fort Wayne.

Some would say this is a matter of personal preference. Pr. Peters struggled with this question in his post: Pastoral Meanderings: Role models and personal preference. I know my role models are few for edifying practice of the Divine Service. That is not to say the services of my youth were not conducted reverently. Far from it. Yet, they also did not emulate the historic practice of our church in its fullness.

It is a matter of history and not dogma. Pr. Curtis’s presentation successfully argued that our contemporary understanding of adiaphora (as confessed in Formula of Concord Article X) is faulty. We wrongly assume that because the church rites largely fall into the realm of that which is neither commanded nor forbidden, they are unimportant. This is not the intent of the article. Rather, church rites are not dogmatic, that is, necessary for salvation.

The Formula says it this way:

We believe, teach, and confess also that no Church should condemn another because one has less or more external ceremonies not commanded by God than the other, if otherwise there is agreement among them in doctrine and all its articles, as also in the right use of the holy Sacraments, according to the well-known saying: Dissonantia ieiunii non dissolvit consonantiam fidei, Disagreement in fasting does not destroy agreement in faith.

While we cannot insist that there be uniformity in all places, church practices are not indifferent. Uniformity of practice is both helpful and intended where possible. This is the confessors’ position. How can we say this? Doesn’t FC X say practices cannot be commanded? Certainly. Yet, where possible, we should seek uniformity around the best practices we have received from our fathers in the faith. Pr. Curtis demonstrated the confessors intent by highlighting Chemnitz and Andrae’s Braunschweig-Woelfenbuettel Church Order of 1569.

What we find is not indifference to church practices but a highly prescriptive agenda for the pastors of the church. While it describes the practice, it also charges the supervisors to twice yearly evaluate the pastors’ practices. As Pr. Curtis suggests, this is the same duty our Synodical constitution prescribes for our District Presidents and Circuit Visitors. I urge you to listen to Pr. Curtis’s presentation as you have opportunity. He offers other suggestions that our Synod would do well to consider. These would help us break the tyranny of preference and the chaos of indifference for unity of doctrine and practice. We can overcome the hubris of modernity and reclaim the best of Lutheran church practices.

Hardly anything you see or we do on Sunday morning is practical.  Not the vestments or the liturgy, not the organ or the choir, not the paraments and painting or the wooden pews and kneelers.  But that is the point.  It was practicality that got us in trouble in the first place.  We sought a short cut to achieving our dreams of glory and it came with a price tag of death, disorder, and disappointment.  We don’t need a better life now as much as we need a life that is stronger than death, mercy to forgive our sins, and hope to carry us through a life too filled with suffering, disappointment, and pain.  Christian faith does not guarantee a path void of mountains or valleys.  This is not some great interstate highway to heaven in which the deep places of life have been filled in and the hills cut down to make it all easier on us.  Oh, sure, somebody will throw Isaiah and John the Baptizer at me here and say but…  Well, I don’t think that is exactly what those words mean.

Hardly any of the good stuff of life is practical.  From the smell and feel of a new car to the tempting taste of food they say is no good for you, we find ourselves moved from the realm of the practical to the most impractical of things.  Marriage is not practical — it is work and hard work at that.  Children are not practical — they take and do not return much for the investment we place in them.  Work is seldom glorious and rewarding and often is endured only because we need the paycheck.  Illness comes at all the wrong times and catches us in our worst moments.  I don’t need to go on…. you can continue the theme.

So Christian faith is not practical — at least not in the sense of the world’s definition of what is practical.  I am convinced we do not need more pragmatic individuals in the Church but dreamers who dream the dream of Christ — of blood that flows red into the cup of blessing…. of water that churns with life that is hidden in its transparency… of words that forgive the guilty in the marvel of absolution… of preaching that is not there to make us happy but to confront us with the Holy One who makes us holy by grace through faith…

via Pastoral Meanderings: Glorifying the Practical….

In the early years of the twentieth century, the Catholic Church put its weight behind many of the key goals of the progressive movement. Fr. John A. Ryan played an important role, making the arguments that linked Catholic teaching to the then ascendant confidence that we could scientifically manage the problems of modern industrial societies.

Private charity is not enough, the earlier Ryan argued. Today’s world is complex, and the gospel rightly understood involves using the power of government when local communities and free markets fail to adequately provide for the needs of the poor and vulnerable. His arguments prevailed. In 1919 the program outlined by the bishops called for minimum wage laws, housing for workers, insurances for illness and disability, as well as support for the unemployed and elderly.

The Church was right to listen to Fr. Ryan. Modern industrialization caused vast social changes that made old modes of solidarity obsolete, or if not obsolete at least ineffective. As men migrated to the cities to work in factories, the old networks of families and small town life were not longer there to provide a social safety net. Put crudely, the weal and woe of many came to depend on wages rather than relationships. In that context the bureaucratic and legal solutions culminating in the New Deal made sense.

However, there are no lasting solutions to any fundamental political and social challenges. “The poor you shall always have with you,” Jesus teaches. And it has been so. The New Deal reached its high-water mark with Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, which turned out to be a domestic quagmire. As Charles Murray documented in his important book, Losing Ground, our welfare policies had the effect of subsidizing a culture of poverty.

via Paul Ryan and the Angry Catholic Left | First Things.

Not without consequence.

It’s not just the tests. No Child Left Behind has created a system of public-funded charter schools, a growing number of which are run by for-profit companies. Some of them are completely online, with kids getting their lessons at home via computer. The academic results can be abysmal, but on the plus side — definitely no classroom crowding issues.

Pearson is just one part of the picture, albeit a part about the size of Mount Rushmore. Its lobbyists include the guy who served as the top White House liaison with Congress on drafting the No Child law. It has its own nonprofit foundation that sends state education commissioners on free trips overseas to contemplate school reform.

An American child could go to a public school run by Pearson, studying from books produced by Pearson, while his or her progress is evaluated by Pearson standardized tests. The only public participant in the show would be the taxpayer.

If all else fails, the kid could always drop out and try to get a diploma via the good old G.E.D. The General Educational Development test program used to be operated by the nonprofit American Council on Education, but last year the Council and Pearson announced that they were going into a partnership to redevelop the G.E.D. — a nationally used near-monopoly — as a profit-making enterprise.

“We’re a capitalist system, but this is worrisome,” said New York Education Commissioner King.

via A Very Pricey Pineapple – NYTimes.com.

I continue to struggle with this in practice. For example, I participate in a limited way with the local “ministerial alliance.” By limited, I abstain from joint worship or public prayer services. Yet, when we join together, I’ve reluctantly receive their prayers before our monthly meal. My conscience does not allow me to give the appearance that we are in agreement on what Jesus taught, preached, and accomplished for our salvation. (No, we don’t agree even on these chief points of doctrine—despite sharing the name Christian.)

Why do I participate in this group if my conscience prohibits me from joining them in prayer and worship? The chief work of this group is financial assistance for transients through food, gas, or hotel vouchers. They also have an fund to benefit safety workers and their family in their need. Finally, they sponsor an Intervarsity “missionary” to Purdue Calumet. With regards to the first two, these are almost entirely left-hand kingdom issues. The last is most definitely a conflict of interest.

Why? Because it gives the appearance of unity where there is not. We cannot co-sponsor a missionary to share the “Gospel” when we don’t even agree what the “Gospel” is. Nor do we agree on the church, justification, sanctification, atonement, righteousness before God, original sin, and more. This gives me pause to reconsider my role. I have my reservations yielding dues to an organization who (with good intentions) sponsors a missionary and yet falsely teaches (in part.)

My ministerial alliance is an outgrowth of the 20th century ecumenical project—the fallacy that we can agree as Christians to disagree. Either we’re all wrong or one of us is right. We can’t all be right teaching (orthodox). To give the appearance there is no functional difference between the Reformed down the street, the Pentecostal on the street around the corner, the Presbyterian on the edge of town, or the ELCA down south is ignorant at best and heretical at worst. While sharing in the work of the poor or safety workers is noble, is even this appropriate?

The irony of all our talk of peace, love, and harmony is that in reality there is none. The ELCA outfit enticed members away during our previous pastorate. If a member attends the Reformed outfit around the corner, we are never notified and there is no attempt to reconcile this conflict. To say that we’re all peacefully coexisting is a lie. If this were true, we would communicate when members float between our congregations and encourage them to commit to the confession of their conviction. No, instead, fellow “Christians” covet each others flock, steal sheep as opportunity presents itself, and never for noble reasons. Budgets are tight, sanctuaries are emptying, and programs are limited. We even make all sorts of pious blather about personal taste, a good fit, and difference in style. Lies to cover the lie. The worst scandal? Churches of our own confession do the same.

Is there fellowship? Is there a true alliance between these ministers? No. Why not? Because each has at his core a different confession. We each believe the Scriptures teach differently than the next. This conviction forces us to consider the others wolves in sheep’s clothing. We cannot mix error with the truth. Where false leaven is added, the whole loaf is spoiled. If we didn’t have this conviction, then we would encourage members to return to their congregation and do their duty.

I don’t fault my brother (and sister?!) pastors of different confession for embracing the exiles from this congregation. They believe we (Lutherans) are believing, teaching, and worshiping in error. They believe our doctrine and practice is false and harmful. They would warn a wandering sheep from returning to our sheepfold. And honestly, we’d do the same towards an exile from them. We believe, teach, and confess according to our Concordia (1580). We are only in alliance (“synod”) with those who share this confession. To give the appearance otherwise would be a lie even if for noble ends of campus evangelism, caring for the poor, or prayers for our nation.

This sort of listlessness is not helpful. Take that wasted energy and put it to good use. In Pr. Fiene’s manifesto below, he offers a helpful vision of how to reclaim and rebuild a truly Lutheran identity in our midst. Its a big task but Jesus is up to it.

No. If we want to stop the false teachers in our midst from digging their fingers into the toilets of Willow Creek and passing off their findings as compatible with the Book of Concord, then we must teach the people around us to recognize the lie of evangelical form and Lutheran substance. And in order to teach them to recognize that lie, then, when it comes to those who sell it, we must out-confess them, out-proclaim them, out-evangelize them, out-outreach them. We must simply out-work them, both inside and outside of our congregations.

So when they sing vague, meaningless, mantra-driven,spiritualistic blech, we sing the best of our hymns and we sing them right in the face of the word. We pour those hymns out in concert halls, in youtube videos, at our dinner tables and anywhere else we can fit them until the world knows what Lutheran music sounds like and knows that Lutheran music doesn’t sound like a horrible, husky voiced U2 sound alike.

When they teach purpose-driven poppycock, we teach Law and Gospel and we teach this to any set of ears we can find in this world. We teach it, with the aid of the internet, to people starving for the Gospel halfway across the country and on the other side of the world. We teach it in conversations with our friends. We teach it to our neighbors when a couple of Mormons come knocking on their door and we insert ourselves into the discussion in order to show them that our Gospel is so awesome it just swallowed Joseph Smith’s gospel in one bite and crapped it out the other end.

When they teach their youth to talk like hipster-evangelicals, we teach our youth to talk like Lutherans. We brand the Catechism into their memories. We give them the vocabulary of the Scriptures. And we train them to know their theology so well that the pastors of the other churches in town secretly hope their youth group members don’t bring any of their Lutheran friends to the next Bible study, lest another 14 year old respond to their denial of baptismal regeneration by tearing them apart in a fury of theological evisceration so bloody it would make Quentin Tarantino nauseous.

And when they embark on gimmicky outreach programs riddled with a theology of glory and a denial of original sin, we respond by reaching out further with our hands filled with big, fat chunks of Lutheran bread. So when they build sleek websites that boast of their faithfulness to God, we build equally sleek websites that make it very clear to people in half a second that Lutherans aren’t interested in marketing themselves but in confessing Christ and His forgiveness. When they build coffee shops for seekers where one can learn how to have a proactive faith walk, we build shelters for the needy where sinners can say to themselves, man, when those Lutherans feed me and clothe me and care for me and pray with me and talk with me, they don’t tell me about how my suffering will be gone if I just believe more or trust more or obey more. Instead, they tell me about Jesus and His love for me in the midst of my suffering, even as they’re trying to take my suffering away.

via The High Mid Life: A Lutheran Manifesto.

I think of our daughter. While we value the classroom situation, we value her interaction with her siblings and parents more. In a classroom of disabled children, it is not surprising that she would make important and yet small strides. The social setting at home probably is as much a benefit to her language development as the classroom. Here’s a snippet of Pr. Petersen’s post:

Don’t get me wrong. This is evil. It breaks my heart to think of those kids enduring this. I believe that they did hurt Aiken and others even though Aiken and the others couldn’t express it. Words have power. They hurt. They should be fired, absolutely. But I can understand how they fell, how easy it would be. And in the

editted audio there were a few glimpses that indicated they were trying some. We heard some stuff about what day it is and an attempt to be excited and to communicate with difficult children.Similar incidents have been recorded in nursing homes and with coma patients.

The error, it seems to me, was to create a classroom of all autistics. I don’t know but I’d be surprised if the teacher and aide didn’t have a fair amount of training and experience. Once again, we see that education doesn’t overcome evil. But I don’t think this would have happened in a class room of Down Syndrome

children. Because Down Syndrome kids are sweet. They hug, they smile,etc. It was particularly foolish to put all autistics into one room.

The question always comes up regarding the concentration camps. Howcould this happen? How could men do this to one another? I think the answer is this: it always happens when we think we can get away with

it. The guards so no consequences to their inhumanity. They were in power and there was no threat to the power anywhere. So they fell to their baser desires, they became what we all are in our fallen hearts.

This is why we need the first use of the Law and why the Law is good for us. We need the threat of punishment and shame to keep us from acting out our baser desires. God spare us from every being students in that classroom, in a nursing home without someone looking out after us, to be prisoners, or, worst of all, to be the guards/teachers/aides who do those things.

via Gottesdienst Online: The Auschwitz Syndrome or What is to be a Man.

If you haven’t seen the video, here it is. I’m not in favor of this man’s very public approach. I wouldn’t advice defaming anyone’s character in this manner:

Beware of Christians.

A pastor who understands and loves the Gospel as the open heart of God in Christ — by which sinners are forgiven and the ungodly are justified by grace, by the Atonement of the Lord’s own Cross and Passion — such a pastor cannot help but preach and teach in harmony with that Gospel. A pastor who knows the beauty and benefit of Holy Absolution will be engaged in genuine pastoral care, in conversation as in the confessional; because the Office of the Keys defines the entire Office of the Holy Ministry, which is not only what the pastor does, but who he is. A pastor who has realized and perceives that Holy Baptism is fundamental and foundational to the entire Christian faith and life, and that the Holy Communion is the beating heart and center of the Church, cannot help but orientate himself and everything he does in relation to those Holy Sacraments. His whole bearing and demeanor will bend and gravitate toward those means of grace, like a plant finding the sunlight; whether he finds himself able to elevate the Sacrament or bend the knee before it; with or without traditional vestments.

Where there is the attitude of which I speak, there will be the ambiance I have in mind: an ambiance that exudes the most reverent High Church Liturgy and the most ancient catholicity of the Lord’s Bride, fully adorned as a Queen by His Gospel, even when she must content herself with the simple attire of a humble peasant in her life on earth.

Where there is that attitude and ambiance, a new pastor is likely to pay for it, even as he bends over backwards to accommodate the people of his congregation with gentleness and patient care. He may give up and do without godly human ceremonies, and move ever so slowly with respect to any changes in practice. And yet, the people will perceive that there is something about this new pastor and his practice, something that still says “catholic.” They will feel the ambiance, even though they can’t identify the source or cause of it. Many of the people may be uncomfortable at first, but, given time, most of them will grow into it and learn to love it, because, in their faithful pastor’s preaching and teaching, they will learn to discover its source in the Gospel. Others will continue to chafe at the catholic ambiance they feel, and they will continue to agitate against it. Sadly, in some cases, those people will succeed in driving their pastor into the ground, or driving him away. In other cases, also sadly, they will give up and go away themselves, refusing to receive the good gifts that God would give them through their pastor.

But the pastor who really knows and loves the Gospel, who knows its heart and center in the Sacrament, cannot do away with the ambiance that undergirds his every move and permeates his every word. He may not even realize what it is that’s making people respond in the way they are, especially when he’s doing everything he can to put them at ease and to earn their trust and confidence as a tender shepherd of the Lord’s sheep, as a loving father of the Lord’s children. It may well break his heart at times, to see people get frustrated with him, to get angry at him, and even to leave the Church because of what he’s “doing.” But, in truth, it isn’t anything he’s “doing,” so much as it is simply who and what he is: a man of the Gospel.

The ambiance of the Gospel is the warp and woof of true catholicity, and it neither can nor should be done away with. It is neither artifice nor affectation, but comprises an attitude of genuine affection for Christ Jesus.

via Gottesdienst Online: Paying for the Ambiance.

In our Church we are still experiencing a lack of pastors, and so every Easter there is a great challenge for many of them.  Many of our clergymen after they served the liturgy in one parish travel to another, sometimes for several hundred miles.

Q: In your memoir The Pastor, you [Eugene Peterson] talk about your concerns that the Christian church is becoming too market-driven, and that Christians need “a sacred imagination strong enough to reject and resist the relentlessly secularized and ghettoized one-dimensional caricature that assigned American pastors to jobs in a workplace that markets religion.”

A:  What concerns me is that it kind of turns the gospel and the Christian faith into a consumer product. And instead of training people in acts of worship and to listen to God, we’ve trained pastors and professors to listen to people, more or less using their judgment and their desires and their imaginations to shape the way the gospel comes to them. But this is a huge reversal of the kingdom of God. We don’t define it; it defines us.

The larger the church, the more that kind of marketing thing takes over. You suddenly have a large staff of pastors that have to be paid, and a huge parking lot to maintain. You’re constantly thinking about the bottom line. That’s not a good way to develop a biblical imagination, or a listening imagination.

What we used to call common worship, with people worshiping together in a common way, has now been replaced by noise. Can you imagine doing lectio divina in a congregation of 10,000 people? You can’t. It’s impossible to do that. Silence, waiting, patience—those are all cultivated responses of the spirit when we’re dealing with the transcendent. I think we’ve been robbed of something that is very basic to a healthy spiritual life.

via Pastoral Meanderings: Make a joyful noise…???.

Coming out of Easter Sunday, the bi-annual critiques float to the surface regarding the conduct of the Divine Service. Similar issues are voiced during Christmastide. The critiques revolve around specific inherited traditions, canticles, liturgies, and hymnody of these high festival seasons. Our recent resources of Lutheran Service Book and the LSB Altar Book are helpful resources to help restore a congregation to the liturgical norm of “the Church” (AC XV). Unfortunately, what is expected of “the Church” and her pastors is not always consistent with either the Scriptural mandate (Matthew 28:19-20, et al) or the confession of the church (AC VII & VIII). When it comes to the confessional practices of liturgy and hymnody (AC XV & Ap XV), we’re even more confused.

Before going into the holiday, I blogged about the false expectations of the pastor. The people in the pew can be driven by false expectations. The pastor’s motive is often misunderstood in striving for the richest of the liturgical and hymnody tradition. Some assume the pastor is trying to stroke his ego. Others think that this is a move toward Roman Catholicism (or generic Protestantism in the case of so-called “contemporary” resources.) And for others, pastor is doing whatever suits his fancy and is insensitive to the abilities or wants of the people.

To this last point, Eugene Peterson speaks. Whether Easter/Christmas Christians or faithful attenders, too often we consider the local congregation as a store-front for the market of religion. The pastor is the shopkeeper who packages the product to appeal to the consumers who walk through the doors. This is done when both the Word of God preached, confessed, sung, and liturgized needs to tailored to fit the felt-needs of the people. The reception and confession of the Gospel becomes all about me, intra now and navel gazing. Peterson fears this “kind of turns the gospel and the Christian faith into a consumer product.”

Why is the service not more familiar? Why is it not more emotionally uplifting or more relevant to my day-to-day life? A similar critique is the lack of practical life lessons. How do I live my life now? Do I take the job? Do I pay my taxes? How can I love my children and spouse more fully? Certainly these are helpful things to know and the Scriptures are not devoid of them. But they are not the central thread running through and through, Jesus Christ crucified, dead, and risen for your justification. That theme is the central content of every New Testament sermon and every Christian sermon. Life lessons have their place but are secondary to the main theme. Nowhere is this more true than on the chief festivals of the church.

The pastor does well to address both the musical character of the hymnody using the resources at his disposal. The use of instrumentation, church choirs, or even cantor/pastor solo singing can greatly ease the transition into a more rich use of our common hymnody and liturgy. There’s no good reason for a difficult hymn to be the source of angst. Even if it falls flat the first few times it is used, this shouldn’t dampen the spirits of the faithful. That is, of course, if they don’t have a consumeristic attitude and are rather striving for the best and richest of our tradition.

The practical application of the Scriptures is a weak point for pastors and laity alike. Shepherds rightly focus on the long-term spiritual health of the sheep in their charge. They’re really not concerned as much about the day-to-day minutia of each parishioner’s life. They are interested, to be sure, but it isn’t their chief concern. Pastors want you to be weekly and even daily prepared to die a holy death, trusting in Christ until the end. The practical advice might have a bearing on this or not. The onus to apply the Scriptures to the minutia falls on the conscience of the individual Christian. The pastor cannot hand-hold you through every decision and challenge. He can and will bring the Scriptures to bear in a specific way for you individual pastoral care, especially in Confession and Absolution. From the pulpit, he will speak in a broad and comprehensive way so that no one escapes the condemnation of the Law or the cool shower of the Gospel. Don’t expect your pastor to talk specifically to you each week.

False expectations lead to false practices. If you want music that principally serves push your emotional buttons, there are better choices that our common hymnody. If you want practical life lessons, there are many better resources from books, websites, and Christian counselors. In keeping with the Scriptures and our confession, emotions and and life lessons take a back seat in our practice. They’re certainly in for the ride but aren’t driving the car. Instead, Jesus Christ crucified is our central theme. Our liturgies and hymns rest upon this foundation. If one is uplifted and edified in their daily life, it will come by the Spirit through the Word. If one is not emotionally recharged or still has doubts about their life, rest in the assurance of the Gospel. Receive the gifts of Word and Sacrament, knowing that come what may, you are prepared for the life to come. And don’t be afraid to talk to your pastor personally. He expects it.

Demographic Winter – the decline of the human family (Full Movie) – YouTube.

Liturgical experimentation was threatening liturgical unity.  Liturgical lunacy was creating a fringe liturgical identity that would push the Church further and further away from its roots.  They could not go back to the beginning, so that did they best they could with what they had — a fair restoration that was workable and responsible at the same time.  The only problem for Missouri is that we had no mechanism to enforce liturgical practice and we ended up losing a significant number of larger congregations to an evangelical identity on Sunday morning that would not be altered even by a great book at a great price.  So we have a church body in which 90% of our parishes own the book but perhaps a quarter of our people on Sunday morning experience a “liturgy” that bears little or no resemblance to that book and whose piety is hardly shaped by the means of grace of the Divine Service.

via Pastoral Meanderings: What a restoration. . ..

A great frustration of pastors is when our people don’t call us to them – sometimes even don’t want us with them – when suffering, pain, grief, or even celebration comes. I know personally of too many events which I find out about two, three, or even more days after they’ve taken place! I don’t believe it’s anything malicious, or personal, and I don’t take it that way. It seems to me that we’ve lost so much understanding of what the office of Pastor truly is. In reality, we’ve lost the whole notion of who a pastor is for his people. Is a pastor an administrator, a motivator, a counselor, an equipper, a leader? Perhaps, but none of these truly fall within his office – his vocation – proper. These may be necessary roles that he must fill, but they aren’t the chief task he’s called to do. These aren’t the reasons that Christ has given the pastor to His people.

Here’s what Jesus says, to the seventy-two that He sends out to preach His message to the people. “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” That’s from Luke 10:16, and it says a lot. The pastor is the stand-in, the steward, of Jesus. Wherever the pastor is, carrying out his marching orders from our Lord Jesus Christ, we can squint our eyes a little bit and see Jesus there. Because He is. Jesus says so.

Because of this reality – the pastor is there in Christ’s stead – then we should think about all the events in our lives and ask ourselves, “Do I want Jesus here for this?” If we are sick, would we like Jesus to be there? If we’ve lost a loved one, do we desire Jesus to be there holding our hand? Do we face an uncertain future, as we’ve lost a job or a loved one has walked out on us, with or without Jesus? Insert any situation in life here – shall we go through it with our Lord and Savior there with us? I think the answer is “yes.” I don’t imagine any Christian is going to say “no” to his Savior being at his side through thick and thin – that just doesn’t make any sense.

So why don’t we want our pastor there? He’s there in the stead of Jesus. The pastor speaks Jesus’ words, He pronounces Jesus’ forgiveness and blessing. In short, where the pastor is, there is Jesus. My pastoral plea is that all Christians would seek to bring their pastor to their side, in good and bad, day in and day out, until the Lord calls them to Himself or He comes again. I think this is just how Jesus set things up, for the benefit of His dear family.

via Do we want Jesus around or not? | Daring Lutheran.

I share in Michael’s observation. The blame lies all over the place. Pastoral neglect. Misunderstanding. Distrust of the Word. Laziness. Lack of piety.

All are corrected by Jesus, preaching and teaching. Listen to Him.

This week is called Holy Week not simply because the events of Christ’s life are holy in themselves. It is called Holy Week because it is kept holy among us also. It is holy because we faithfully hear his Word each day of this week in His sanctuary. It is holy because we receive His body and blood under bread and wine. It is holy because we renounce the ways of sin and receive His absolution. It is holy because our tombs are sanctified by His three day rest. Easter is a holiday (holy day) because we receive the fruits of Christ’s passion and resurrection—declared, preached, administered.

The week is holy not just in itself but because it kept holy among us also. We hold our Lord’s passion sacred and gladly hear and learn it. His Word is kept holy this week as it is taught in truth and purity and we lead holy lives according to it. A Holy Week hears the Holy Gospel, receives Holy Absolution, renews Holy Baptism, feasts on the Holy Supper, and is prepared for a holy death. The events of Christ’s passion are certainly holy in themselves but are kept holy among us as we receive them. Holy Week is holy receiving.

Which reminds me of my final complaint about the current War on Easter. For liturgical Christians, Easter begins on Easter and lasts for seven full weeks. This season includes celebrations of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension.

The week preceding Easter, which we’re in now, is Holy Week. It includes the most solemn days of the Christian liturgical calendar, the Triduum. And prior to Holy Week is the season of Lent, a time of penitence, prayer and fasting.

Where am I going with all this? Well, our culture seems to have limited ability to understand that Easter egg hunts should not be taking place, as they increasingly do all over the country, during Lent or the Triduum. You have seven full weeks of Easter to hold as many Easter egg hunts and rolls as you want. There is no need to jump the gun and start celebrating Easter before Easter happens. Particularly considering the solemnity and fasting of the days prior to Easter.

One notable exception to this trend? You may be surprised: The White House. At least during the Obama presidency, the White House Easter Egg Roll has always taken place after the first day of Easter.

via Hey America, It’s Not Easter Yet — It’s Holy Week | Fox News.

On another forum a topic about vitalized congregations was posted.  I am not sure what vitalized was supposed to mean.  I took it to mean healthy, vigorous, active… anyway, this is what I posted — the dream I have had for the parishes I have and continue to serve and for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod…

• a Lutheranism that folks can be rightly proud of…
• one which is confident in the Scriptures and their message of Christ crucified…
• one which is sacramentally vibrant with the Divine Service as the regular Sunday gathering, with baptism regularly a part of that Divine Service, with private confession encouraged as gift and blessing, and with an appreciation for the Word that is efficacious — doing what it says…
• one which welcomes the stranger in a healthy atmosphere of dignified but not rigid formality…
• one which both expects and encourages full participation in the worship and study life of the parish so that the baptismal life of witness, mercy, prayer, and service may be fully lived outside the building…
• one which is interested and invested in mission beyond the shores and down the block (by mission I mean one that names Jesus and spreads the Gospel by word)…
• one which knows and addresses the poor and those in need or threatened (whether the name of Jesus is mentioned or not — food pantry, feeding the hungry meals, caring for children, etc.)…
• one that sees life as lifelong catechesis and which provides regular opportunity to grow in what it means to be a LUTHERAN Christian (read that catechisms and Confessions)… and
• one that lives in partnership with others congregations yoked through circuit and district and does not go it alone…

So mark me a dreamer… but this is what I hope and pray for… here in Clarksville, Tennessee, and throughout our nation where Lutheran Christians gather around the means of grace so they may gather others into the flock through the living voice of the Gospel witnessed in word and deed…  Dream big… or not at all.

via Pastoral Meanderings: A healthy, vital church…..

We pastors form cliques around our own expectations. I tend to social network with people I would respect or appreciate as my pastor. My pastoral friendships are intertwined with my expectations of pastoral ministry. I have a difficult time fraternizing with those who have what I consider unreasonable or false expectations of their work as pastor.

Perhaps this is the same for the church. Our expectations of Christ’s church guides our involvement in a particular fellowship. If we expect bands and entertainment, we will eventually settle on a church with them. If we expect a vibrant sacramental life, we will pursue a congregation with this character. Whether its preaching, pastors, or congregations, our expectations guide the relationships we pursue and build.

Unlike worldly expectations, the hopes and dreams of the Christian are not founded from within but from without. We don’t look within to determine our expectations of pastors, preaching, churches, or even Jesus. If we do, we’ll ultimately be disappointed, confused, and mislead. From the heart of flesh comes idolatry, false expectations, and self-love. Instead we look to Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith, to guide, establish, and build our expectations.

What should we expect of our church? Exactly what Christ himself commanded and equipped her to deliver—forgiveness of sins in Word and Sacrament. What should we expect of our pastors? Exactly what Christ authorized them to do—preach the Word, catechize the young and old, absolve sins for the penitent, bind sins to the unrepentant, wash the sinner in Christ’s blood, and place His body and blood in their mouths. What should we expect of Christian preaching? Christ. Christ giving. Christ forgiving. Christ destroying death, the restraints of hell, and crushing the devil’s head.

When our expectations are different from what Jesus would have them be, then we are swimming in dangerous waters. These waters are bound to drown us to death. Remember your catechism. Remember Jesus’ own expectations of the church, her pastors, and preaching. Rest in these realistic and eternally helpful expectations. And for you pastors, calm down. Be faithful and Jesus will do exactly what He promises. Nothing more and nothing less.

In his fine recent biography of Constantine, Paul Stephenson explains the growth of Christianity as a result of “sex, health, and arithmetic.”  The sex part has partly to do with abortion and infanticide, but more deeply with the basic family structure of ancient Rome: “If the population of the Roman Empire was sixty million at the time of Constantine’s birth, only around twenty-four million of these were women.  Given that boys are more problematic in the womb, more sickly and more inclined to die at a young age in military activity or by violence, this figure is quite remarkable and can be explained only by the fact that baby girls were frequently murdered.”

He goes on: “It was rare for all but the wealthiest families to raise more than one daughter, however many were born . . .

“and infanticide was the surest way to dispose of unwanted girls. It was legal, philosophically justified and widely practiced.  An infamous letter sent by a man to his pregnant wife in 1 BC instructs her: ‘if it’s a boy keep it, if it’s a girl throw it away.’ . . . far fewer girls than boys were allowed to grow to maturity, that is to child-bearing age, and consequently the general rate of reproduction in the late Roman world was kept artificially low.”

Abortion was widely practiced too, even though the procedure was dangerous and gruesome.  The reason, Stephenson says, “was men. “Roman husbands and fathers had complete control over their wives’ and daughters’ fates, and could order that abortion be carried out as surely as they could order the exposure of a healthy baby girl.”

via Peter J. Leithart » Blog Archive » The original feminism and the rise of Christianity.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Please
turn the page to continue with the Service of the Sacrament.

This
rubric always reminds me of a choose your own adventure book.

Classic rubric comedy.

The Body Is Telling Us Life Is a Gift

Mar 4th, 2012

by Dan.

Nature and its Creator have given us a gift. Take a step back and look at what has been given to us. Our bodies are built so that one man and one woman are to be together, and that pleasure in being together produces children. Pleasure of course can be obtained in other ways that don’t lead to children, but biology tells us the highest purpose of how our complex equipment works together.

Sadly we regard this gift as law. We don’t like law; we like license. We want to plug our ears, cover our eyes, and shout down the consequences of our actions, and therefore because we perceive no consequences, it doesn’t matter to us what we do.

There is no situation, though, in which there are no consequences. Even when there’s no kid, there’s still consequence. We become loving tools for each other to relieve the needs our bodies tell us we have, or worse, we seek our needs elsewhere or deny those needs altogether. With the snip, the ligation, or the Pill, sex is just sex, and we’re accustomed to think the denial of gift is good just because we have control of it.

In assuming this control, then, we condition ourselves to view the highest purpose of the gift as something that must be governed or restricted. We delay it, willing that we’re going to spend some time together alone before the kids come along, and then when we decide kids are actually a good thing, we’re too old to have sufficient energy to be good fathers and mothers. Worse, we look at the family with four or more kids and joke, “You know what causes those kids, right?” We look at mom or dad changing diapers, cooking, cleaning, and doing ten-plus loads of laundry, and we see a hassle.

So we delay it, or abdicate it all together. What wants that nonsense?

Yet we were born for it. Seriously. We were born to have kids and train them so that they can have kids, et cetera. Don’t believe me? Ask your body. It’s a good thing. It’s a natural vocation that stops when your body is good and ready to stop. It’s a gift.

If your body or your spouse doesn’t have this gift, whether or not by choice, know that there is mercy. We have all sinned terribly. We all deserve damnation, but we have a Savior who provides sufficient atonement and justice to cover everyone, no matter what the sin and its effects. There is forgiveness of sins in the Word, in baptism, and in the Lord’s Supper for you and for me. This forgiveness frees us to deal with the matters of this temporal world.

Tune: Tallis’ Canon.

All thanks to God who gives us life
Through marriage of a man and wife,
What You have joined together here
Gives labor love and duty cheer.

In Your creation we may see
The love within Your liberty,
How we are formed to serve and give,
That others through our love might live.

What blessings come from woman’s womb,
Through which our God did once assume
Our flesh and blood and sanctified
The life of every human child!

Forgive us if we go astray
And leave the one and narrow way;
Call us with words of comfort sure,
Which pardon sin and make us pure.

Grant that as Christ so loved his Bride
He gave himself for her and died,
To cleanse her from her sin and shame
And give to her His holy name,

So may each man of Christian faith
Cling kindly to his wife till death,
So that in every family
We see Your love’s pure mystery.

Grant that as now the Church receives
The glory that her Savior gives,
As Sarah called her husband lord,
Let every wife embrace this word.

Let every man provide for them
Whom you have given unto him,
Give every mother strength and prayer
For those You put within her care.

Drive far from us adultery,
Lest we Your wrath and anger see,
Drive from our hearts all lusts perverse
That would Your pure design reverse.

Keep well our children chaste and pure,
And when the world and flesh allure,
Grant them repentance, guard their faith,
Return them to Your Spirit’s bath.

And give to each a Christian spouse,
And keep Your Word within their house,
And if it be Your gracious will,
Their home with many children fill.

All thanks to God the Father, Son,
And Holy Spirit, Three in One,
To Him in whom we live and move
Be all our praise and all our love.

I find it unconscionable that a president, who just days previously had made it clear that he would mandate that religious organizations violate their consciences, stood before hundreds at the National Prayer Breakfast and said (1) that he is a Christian, and (2) that somehow the teachings of holy scripture in general and, in particular, Jesus’ teaching in the gospels, have a direct correlation to his presidency and moreover to the mandates he has put into place (whether healthcare-related, economic, or otherwise). Simply put, it is hard to see how Mr. Obama can mandate a violation of conscience one day, and say the following with a straight face just days later, while remaining an honest man:

It’s also about the biblical call to care for the least of these”

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