The Gottesdienst Crowd

TGC 125 — Persuasiveness and Pervasiveness of Feminism

This episode is devoted to the persuasiveness and pervasiveness of feminism in the church. My guest, Adriane Heins (my sister-in-law and former Editor of The Lutheran Witness) and I explore just how pervasive, even in the most subtle of ways, feminism has been in the church, and why it has been so persuasive to those in the church. 

Host: Fr. Jason Braaten

Special Guest: Mrs. Adriane Heins

 

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[Gottesblog] The Future is Now — Larry Beane

The Future is Now

“Based upon the logic I’ve heard from other pastors over the past 15 months, if experts & elected officials declare Climate Change a global emergency, pastors will close their churches again. After all, “gathering isn’t essential”, “we’re not climatologists”, “love your neighbour”, “it’s life or death”, “zoom church is suitable”, “the $ fines will be too high”, & “Rom 13”.
”

— THE REV. AARON ROCK

Pastor Aaron Rock, a Neo-Evangelical minister who serves Harvest Bible Church in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, who wrote the above on Facebook, seems to understand ecclesiology better than a lot of Lutherans - even lacking the belief that what happens at the altar and in the sanctuary during Holy Communion is a literal miracle in which Christ is truly present in His body and blood.

Canada is becoming quite an oppressive state. One recent example is the severe lockdown that went into effect just hours before Easter Sunday this year. On Good Friday, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau acknowledged the “long weekend” (a wonderful euphemism for the holiest day of the year to some two billion people) and that “we’re all going to have to do things differently again this year.”

Article Two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees that “Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: freedom of conscience and religion; freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication; freedom of peaceful assembly; and freedom of association.” Well, sort of. For Article One preemptively takes away those freedoms when the State decides citizens don’t have freedom of religion, thought, belief, opinion, expression, press, assembly and association: “only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the first ten amendments of which are known as the Bill of Rights) does not include such a disclaimer - such a disclaimer implying that one’s “rights” are not rights at all - which come from God - but are actually State grants of privilege. That said, we have seen our governments - federal, state, and local - act as though they did have the Canadian Loophole in them. In fact, many countries - including Communist China - also “guarantee” religious freedom, albeit with the Canadian Loophole. And this shows the real value of such lofty government “guarantees.”

The past couple years caught the Church by surprise, and we learned not only a lot about our governmental leaders, but also about our church leaders. We have learned a lot about ourselves, and what we really believe, teach, and confess regardless of what we say on paper: in Scripture and in the confessions.

Whether or not you agree with Pastor Rock regarding the danger of government overreach related to “climate change,” it is hard to be so Pollyannish as to believe that we will not have future conflicts with the State in whether or not our services are “essential,” whether our God-given rights trump positive law, whether their constitutional limitations are real or only theoretical, and whether or not the Ekklesia (Church) can long exist where there is no ekklesia (assembly). Sadly, some people will never return to assemble with the saints again, seeking instead convenient Zoom sessions that they can watch in their pajamas. We have opened the proverbial can.

But as for future government “emergencies,” we need to start talking about this now. At what point do we comply? And for how long? At what point do we resist openly? At what point do we take the Divine Service underground in defiance of the State? These are questions for individual believers, families, congregations, districts, synods, and the church catholic.

And we confessional Lutherans need to crush underfoot any and all heretical and oxymoronic suggestions such as lay-communion or remote electronic consecration, not to mention granting the State unconditional authority based on a flawed reading of Romans 13. The time to wrestle with these issues is not in the middle of a crisis when pastors, congregations, and families have a window of opportunity to do whatever they want with impunity - whether out of well-intentioned ignorance, or by carefully planned stealth. After all, as the saying goes, never let a crisis go to waste.

Thank you to Pastor Rock for calling Christians to deal with future “emergencies” by talking about them now.

TGC 124 —Trinity 12 Sermon Prep

We’re trying something new on top of our normal podcast episodes. Editors will be having discussions about the upcoming Gospel reading and themes for preaching. The editors taking part will have done some work, but they’re not finished. It’s a sounding board session to help generate ideas, themes, and applications for preaching. It’s a way to get the juices flowing just before we sit down to write. 

This episode is devoted to the Gospel reading for The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, Mark 7:31-37.

We hope you enjoy it. Let us know what you think. 

Host: Fr. Jason Braaten

Regular Guest: Fr. David Petersen

 

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[Gottesblog] Luecke Contra Baptism — Larry Beane

Luecke Contra Baptism

I would like to thank the Rev. Dr. David S. Luecke for providing a stark contrast between his Church Growth Movement (CGM) approach to liturgy and sacraments vs. what Gottesdienst has been not only advocating, but putting into practice for going on thirty years.

His undated piece “Avoid Sacramentalism in Ministry” from his What Happened to our Churches? blog is a case in point. This article is a valuable example of why Gottesdienst exists, and why the work of pastors and the laity in the ongoing restoration of biblical theology and reverence in worship is not only needed, but is making a difference.

He begins his piece by pointing out that the local Baptist Moody radio station “dropped broadcasts of the Lutheran hour” because of The Lutheran Hour’s emphasis on “Baptism as a key to salvation.” He laments this as a “first-class communications problem,” and the fault for this “error” was “with Lutheran preachers.” He accuses Lutheran pastors of holding to an ex opere operato theology of Holy Baptism divorced from the Word and from the Holy Spirit. Luecke sums up his explanation of how salvation works, that the Holy Spirit works through the Word, and the water merely “visualizes” the Word. He never mentions Jesus or the cross in his mini-presentation of the ordo salutis in his own words.

In fact, Dr. Luecke has a strange articulation of his confession of the Holy Trinity:

All Protestants affirm the Trinity of Three Persons in One God, a concept very hard to understand. Calvinist focus on the First-Person God the Father. Lutherans emphasize the Second-Person God the Son. God the Spirit has been much neglected mostly because his role as Lord and Giver of church life was not needed when lively church life was heavily institutionalized. The rapidly growing Pentecostal movement of the last 100 years features the Third-Person Spirit. For Paul Christ and the Holy Spirit are inter-changeable. He attributes the same function in one place to Christ and another place to the Spirit. For Paul the Spirit is Christ present with us now [emphasis added].

Dr. Luecke’s assertion of Lutheran pastors severing faith from Holy Baptism is a straw man argument. He never sites any source of this apparently rampant false doctrine among Lutheran clergy, in which Baptism is treated as a magic ceremony independent of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, and presumably, our Lord Jesus Christ who told us to “make disciples” by baptizing them in the first place.

And Dr. Luecke blames the Lutherans (Walt Kowalsky was right!) and acts as if being removed from the Moody radio station is a bad thing. In reality, The Lutheran Hour deserves kudos for not being afraid to confess our theology. Were a Baptist to read the Small Catechism’s seven questions and answers on the Chief Part of Holy Baptism, he would reject it as false doctrine. I was raised in the Baptist Church. I’m grateful for the biblical instruction that I had as a child, as well as learning who Jesus is and why the cross matters. The people of my little Baptist congregation were confessors of the Gospel. That said, Baptists and Lutherans believe entirely different things about Holy Baptism. Moody’s doctrinal statement is utterly silent about the sacraments.

Dr. Luecke admits that Baptists reject infant baptism, mirroring their snarky tone about “sprinkling water on a baby” having nothing to do with one’s “relationship with God.” Dr. Luecke also uses the curious term “water baptism” - a distinction often used among charismatics to distinguish actual baptism from a laying on of hands that accompanies “speaking in tongues” (which they call “baptism of the Spirit”).

As an aside, Dr. Luecke says that he doesn’t have the “gift of tongues,” but he recognizes modern glossolalia as valid in a response to a person who claims to “speak in tongues”:

I did not intend to belittle something that has been a defining feature for millions of enthusiastic believers. I intended just to say that I have not been given that gift. I am appealing to a much broader audience than those who have had the experience of speaking in tongues. I gave my understanding of it as an emotional expression. Many Lutheran pastors have hostility toward charismatics from the conflicts involving charismatics in congregations in the 60s and 70s. I respect charismatics for their energy. Yours is the first expression of your prayer language being very rational. God bless your gift and the Giver.

Moody is also to be commended for their faithfulness to their theology. They recognize what Luecke doesn’t want to: that neo-Evangelicals and Lutherans have incompatible theologies of baptism, and of the sacraments in general. Dr. Luecke longs for a kind of faux unity by having The Lutheran Hour either compromise our theology, or dishonestly put it under a bushel.

Dr. Luecke recognizes the inroads of the liturgical renewal that began in the middle of the twentieth century, as North American Lutherans began to dig out of the Pietist hole that their forbears, trying to fit in with a contemporary Protestant culture, fell into decades earlier - a cultural upheaval when the English language displaced the German during and after World War One. He describes his discomfort with “young pastors” and their “tendency toward sacramentalism” - which he defines as “treating the sacraments as more important than the Word.”

Again, this is a straw man. The problem is actually the opposite of Dr. Luecke’s complaint. While it is still not uncommon for a Lutheran congregation to have a Service of the Word without Holy Communion, I have never heard of a Service of the Sacrament without the Word. Can Dr. Luecke point to a single example of a Lutheran Divine Service that skips the Bible readings, omits the sermon, and heads right into the Eucharist? But we do see, again and again, especially in non-liturgical “church growth” congregations, the omission of the Sacrament rather than the omission of the Word. In some cases, non-liturgical churches boast about their “seeker sensitive” approach that pushes the Sacrament of the Altar to the fringes, perhaps only celebrating it once a month. I cannot imagine how malnourishing such a bland diet would be. It is a repudiation of our confession that Holy Communion strengthens our faith. And this is why Christians from time immemorial gathered on the Lord’s Day for the “breaking of bread” - that is until men of Dr. Luecke’s generation and inclination decided that what we needed was less Holy Communion.

As to the accusation of “treating the sacraments as more important than the Word,” Gottesdienst’s print journal is immersed in the Word of God. I’ve been the sermons editor for more than a decade. Every issue includes sermons. We insist that preaching be bound by, and centered on, the biblical text, the Word of God, as opposed to anecdotes, cutesy stories, emotional glurge, object lessons, or pop culture commentary. We also have regular columns devoted to the exegesis of Scripture. I have been to many Divine Services and other prayer offices at Gottesdienst events. The Word is always powerfully preached and proclaimed. I have never seen Dr. Luecke in attendance at any of them.

This is a common straw man among our critics, that we - as I heard recently - pay more attention to “the proper form of a stole to proclaiming the pure Gospel” - and that this explains the decline of Christianity in our country, in the west, and around the world. This mirrors Dr. Luecke’s Theology of Glory, in which he asserts that the number of the butts in the pews is in direct proportion to the faithfulness of the preacher and the correctness of the church’s method of worship.

The fact of the matter is that the editors and bloggers of Gottesdienst are parish pastors, some having been for decades - not primarily professors, experts in industrial organization, bureaucrats, theorists, academicians, or consultants about how to grow a church. And in the course of years of actual parish ministry, one sees the power of the Word of God, through preaching, through Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, through Confession and Absolution, through praying the Psalms, through the liturgy, on deathbeds, in times of personal and family angst, in tragedy, in bringing Christ to bear in the midst of the Culture of Death and a world that is repulsed by the cross. Actual parish pastors baptize the babies - sometimes with an eye dropper. They also bury the babies and console the grieving parents who are comforted by our emphasis on baptism. They also baptize adults, and in some cases, the elderly. They teach the Word in Bible classes, in youth catechesis, and in sermons - week in and week out. They bring both Word and Sacrament to shut-ins and to the hospitalized. They proclaim the Word of God as their parishioners breathe out their final breath on this side of the grave.

And in fact, we are so focused on the Word of God, we use the traditional liturgy!

Your Lutheran Service Book (LSB) has the biblical references embedded in the liturgy on every page. The Church has used the liturgy for well over 1,500 years precisely because the liturgy is grounded in the living Word of God. In fact, the deviants from the liturgy are those who move away from the Word into the realm of either reason (as many of the Reformed do), emotion (as many neo-Evangelicals do), phony signs and wonders (as many Pentecostals and Charismatics do), or magisterial mysticism (as many Roman Catholics do).

Dr. Luecke suffers from the Grass Is Always Greener syndrome - as do many cradle Lutherans who take their treasure for granted. As a convert, I see the futility of lusting after popularity by adopting worship alien to our confessions. I have been there, and done that - with all of its strengths and weaknesses. The reality is that we have the best of both worlds in our Lutheran confession: a rigorous cruciform theology informed not by direct revelation, the magisterium, or by a complex matrix of popes and councils, not by logic and reason, not by ginned up emotion and navel-gazing, but by the Word of God, sola scriptura. And we retain the biblical practice of baptismal regeneration and of the Lord’s own words concerning His Supper (as the great I AM proclaims the great THIS IS), as well as retaining the biblical practice of Holy Absolution according to our Lord’s institution. Dr. Luecke presents a false either/or dichotomy that offers us only option A) The Word or option B) the sacraments, without an option C) all of the above. And in fact, the real, fully-lived Christian life is not a multiple choice quiz, but rather an essay, a narrative, that is, the Gospel of Jesus Christ: His incarnation, birth, ministry, passion, death, resurrection, ascension, and the consummation of His coming again in glory.

I would agree with Dr. Luecke if his critique were a caution against the danger falling into ex opere operato (seeing baptism and all other liturgical acts as a work severed from faith). For this warning is strewn about the Book of Concord. It is one of the chief criticisms of Rome. And where I see it is in the good intention of grandparents whose faithless children will not baptize or raise their own children in the faith. And so pious grandparents, lovingly desperate for the salvation of their grandchildren, will sometimes inquire about bringing their grandchildren to church to baptize them independent of the parents’ wishes or intention to raise them as Christians. Sometimes grandparents will ask about doing a sort-of secret emergency baptism themselves (a situation so common that an episode of All in the Family depicted Archie Bunker doing this very thing). Their motivation is love. But we have to gently remind them that baptism is not a silver bullet, that faith matters, that like a seed that is watered, the ongoing life of the seedling requires ongoing care lest it die. Those with any time in the pastoral office has had to encounter this real-world situation.

But Dr. Luecke is instead condemning those who worship by means of the liturgy, in “traditional churches,” and especially in “highly liturgical churches” and their pastors who emphasize Holy Baptism in the life of the Christian.

Dr. Luecke refers back to Dr. Luther’s famous dictum that when he was tormented by the devil, he would made the good confession: “I am baptized.” Dr. Luecke cautions, “This can be taken to mean he relied on the act of water baptism for his identity as a believer.” This shows that Dr. Luecke doesn’t understand the Lutheran confession of Holy Baptism. Baptism is our identity as a believer. It is how disciples are made. It is the objective declaration of God of His objective work of regeneration. Otherwise, Dr. Luther would not refer back to it, but would rather exclaim, “I have faith.” The problem is that faith is subjective. It is impossible to quantify. Holy Baptism is objective. It is binary: you either are, or you are not. And Holy Baptism delivers faith. Nowhere in the Scriptures are we taught to sever the two, nor are we to treat baptism as a mere human act publicly acknowledging our faith (as is the Baptist confession). Rather, we confess baptism as “the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” To be baptized is to be born again. And in our first birth, we draw our first breath in the world. In our second birth, we draw our first breath in eternity. How can a Lutheran remove baptism from his identity? Baptism and faith are intertwined, but it is baptism that is the objective, extra nos reality to which a person whose faith may be tried and frayed can point. And that reality delivers faith as a gift. The remembrance of baptism strengthens our faith. Faith is not substitute for baptism. This is a theology alien to our Lutheran confession.

I remember listening to the radio on a long drive across the entire state of Pennsylvania and the only thing I could pick up was a religious station. A Baptist pastor was preaching a thunderous fire-and-brimstone sermon, but at one point in his preaching, he broke down in tears. He could not determine if his faith were sufficient. He was broken and demoralized, and had no objective means of faith, nothing outside of himself and his own sinful works to which to anchor himself. This is the crabgrass that Dr. Luecke is peering at over the fence, convincing himself that it is greener. And it is, like the “sign” of “speaking in tongues,” a navel-gazing subjective self-validation of one’s salvation as opposed to the objective, divinely-focused nature of Holy Baptism as a reality of the New Birth in a Christian’s life.

Dr. Luecke criticizes the mid twentieth century rediscovery of the liturgy as a blessing to the faith and life of the individual Christian and of the Church, as a “wrong turn.” He creates another straw man that emphasizing “renewing the forms and rituals of public worship” is antithetical to “the Word of God itself” and to “relationships.”

This is not only factually untrue, it is a weird display of mental gymnastics.

For ritual doesn’t take away from relationships. In fact, all forms of relationships involve ritual. For example, I don’t know if Dr. Lueke is married or not, but if so, I would be willing to wager that this entrance into a sacred relationship with his wife was accompanied by ritual, and it was probably quite traditional. She probably wore a wedding dress as opposed to a pair of blue jeans. Likewise, he was probably wearing, if not a tuxedo, some form of suit and tie (a form of male vesture dating back to the Pagan French Revolution). The wedding service was likely liturgical, as opposed to being ex corde. Interestingly, in my experience, weddings are an example in which Baptists actually follow a more liturgical form than the usual loosely-liturgical Sunday service. Words are read out of the book, and the couple and the pastor engage in a formal rote recitation.

And likewise, married- and family-life involves a lot of rituals. I don’t know if Dr. Luecke has children or not, but if so, I would bet that every year on the natal anniversary of his wife and children, the family would gather for a liturgy of sorts, a ritual involving a special meal, candles, and the singing of a particular traditional song. And far from standing in opposition to the idea of relationship, such rituals are like glue that bonds relationships. I wonder what Dr. Lueke thinks of the traditional ritual of celebrating one’s baptismal birthday with the lighting of a candle and saying certain prayers. And of course, there are many social liturgies, like the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem, fireworks on the fourth, handshakes, retirement dinners, clinking glasses together in a toast, the seventh-inning stretch, the starting pistol at the beginning of the race, clapping at the conclusion of a recital, eating popcorn at the movie theater, etc. All of these rituals foster relationships. They do not impede them.

In the Church, we often refer to the Lord’s Supper as “Holy Communion.” It is a “communion,” a ritual act of relationship between believers and God as well as believers to each other. How liturgy is seen in opposition to such relationships beggars belief. Nearly every act of human relationship involves rituals, formal and informal. Social iconoclasm leads only to the breakdown of civilization and the destruction of the faith - not to mention a destruction of relationships through deracination and atomization, creating a vacuum to be filled with a selfish desire for personal entertainment and the treating of “butts in the pews” as an impersonal, ego-driven barometer of faith and faithfulness.

Dr. Luecke displays a shocking ignorance of history and of the Bible itself by arguing that “the roots” of our liturgical rituals:

go back to the fourth century when the now-official Christian church began adopting special rituals, robes, and parades with incense of pagan worship. Pagan worship was meant to impress the gods, so they would look favorably on human efforts. Quality was important for that purpose. Emphasizing those rituals led to the sacramentalism that forms were more important than the Word of God itself.

And herein lies the heart of the matter of Dr. Luecke’s iconoclastic rebellion against the liturgy and the sacraments - and to be blunt, his rebellion against the Word of God itself. While some of our specific clerical vestments have their roots in the Greco-Roman world of our Lord, the apostles, and the Pagan (and later Christian) Roman Empire, the idea of liturgical vestments when ministering in the presence of God is an Old Testament idea. That which Dr. Luecke dismissively calls “robes” and other liturgical accoutrements are, per his argument, of Pagan origin to “impress the gods.” If Dr. Luecke were to read Exodus and Leviticus, he would learn what God’s preferences are.

When He appeared to Moses in the burning bush, God instructed Moses to remove his sandals, as this was a place of holiness - set apart from the ordinary because of the miraculous presence of God. He did not tell Moses “come as you are” or champion casualness as a virtue in the presence of God.

And our Lutheran confession of the Lord’s Supper is that it is a miracle, that Jesus is truly present in an incarnate, physical form occupying space and time. It is His same body born of the Virgin Mary, the same blood shed on the cross. It is not a symbol. It is not a “spiritual presence.” It is a miraculous manifestation of God in our midst: God in our sanctuary, God on our altar, God given to us to eat and drink and take into ourselves bodily, according to His Word and institution. This is why our churches are called “sanctuaries” - holy places - no less holy than the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle and temple. Why we would treat this most sublime gift and reality with anything less than complete awe and wonder and reverence can only be described by one word: disbelief.

When the time came for the Lord to dwell among His people by means of His miraculous presence, the Lord Himself instructed that a beautiful tabernacle be constructed, with specific instructions for top quality items of beauty to be used in a liturgical setting. The priests were to be vested as they carried out their ministry, with fine linen, gems, and colorful cloth of superlative workmanship. God’s house was to be adorned in the finest of silver and gold and other metals, with beautiful fabrics and artwork. And there are also liturgical instructions regarding ordinations, daily and weekly worship, and an annual calendric cycle. And it is impossible to read the Lord’s worship preferences and not come away convinced that God prefers liturgy, ritual, beauty, reverence, and yes, “quality” when it comes to His presence on earth. There are no examples in Scripture of the miraculous presence of God being accompanied by come-as-you-are casualness and an entertainment emphasis.

And there was also incense. Incense is a powerful image, the use of which is mandated in Old Testament worship, is referred to in Psalm 141 as symbolic of prayer, was presented to our Lord by the Magi, was part of our Lord’s ritual of His burial, and is also mentioned numerous times in the Book of Revelation. Incense is not of Pagan origin, but Pagans copied it from the worship of the true God. The words “incense” and “frankincense” appear 110 times in the ESV translation, including both God’s delight in it, as well as his condemnation of it being offered to false gods, or even to Himself by those who were not called to lead worship.

Dr. Luecke’s brand of de-emphasis of baptism, his anticlericalism and his innovationism is the real problem in the Church. It must be stamped out by constant and consistent catechesis (including by the teaching that happens by means of ceremonies), by a renewed biblical literacy, by a rediscovery of our Book of Concord and our Church History, by liturgical preaching, by embracing not American sectarianism but our Evangelical Catholic confession of the traditional, unchanging, apostolic faith, and by rejecting the idea that popularity is what determines righteousness. This latter one is the rotten fruits of the Church Growth Movement’s libido numerandi and lusting after the ego-stroke of big churches and big budgets. Can you imagine if we raised our children to cultivate a desire to be popular? Would we advise our sons to do drugs? Would we advise our daughters to be promiscuous? Why do CGM advocates embrace worldly popularity as a gage of “church success.” Have they not read our Lord’s words?

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

These two verses are a repudiation of Dr. Luecke’s entire career as a CGM advocate. I would posit that if he has baptized one baby in the course of his ministry, he has done more good for the growth of the kingdom than his entire corpus of books and articles. And when our Lord returns to this decimated, fallen world finding only a remnant of believers, He will not scold us for not being worldly enough, with our churches being too small, with not enough butts in the pews - but will commend His Bride for her faithfulness to His Word, promise, and command:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

TGC 123 — [Special] The Brotherhood of the Ministry

This is a special edition of the podcast. It is a recording of the second keynote presentation from The Bugenhagen Conference in Racine, Wisconsin given Tuesday, July 27. The title was The Brotherhood of the Ministry. 

 

Host: Fr. Ben Ball

 

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TGC 122 — [Special] Consider the Ant: Overcoming Sloth with Zeal

This is a special edition of the podcast. It is a recording of the final keynote presentation from The Bugenhagen Conference in Racine, Wisconsin given Wednesday, July 28. The title was Consider the Ant: Overcoming Sloth with Zeal. 

 

Host: Fr. Jason Braaten

 

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[Gottesblog] On Gran Torino — Larry Beane

On Gran Torino

I used to enjoy movies, that is, before they all became preachy and “woke,” eager to push a Critical Theory Neo-Marxist narrative, and turning Christians and other demographic groups, into villains.

In 2008, as the Hollywood Revolution was moving into overdrive, and as filmmaking was quickly descending into the septic tank, actor/director Clint Eastwood produced a gem of cultural iconoclasm: a movie truly worth watching, called Gran Torino.

Eastwood plays the main character, Walt Kowalski, a crotchety Korean War veteran who lives in a changing suburban neighborhood in Detroit. His once-white neighborhood is being repopulated by Hmongs, who are people of a stateless Southeast Asian nationality who live in Cambodia and Vietnam, and who allied themselves with South Vietnam and the Americans during the Vietnam War. Many Hmongs were resettled as refugees in the United States following the communist takeover of Vietnam after the US withdrawal. In fact, at my baptism in 1982, I was given the washing of regeneration and renewal with seven other adults: all Hmong.

There is an interesting conversation in the film between Kowalski and his neighbor Sue (the young adult Hmong woman whom he rescues from a dangerous situation). She explains to him about the Hmong, and said that “the Lutherans” resettled them in the United States. The Roman Catholic character Kowalski retorts with the memorable line: “Everybody blames the Lutherans.”

Without resorting to spoilers, the theme of the movie is sin and redemption - with clear and unmistakable Christological symbolism. The persistent Roman Catholic pastor is actually a heroic figure in the movie, unlike the usual Hollywood paradigm of presenting Christians and clergy as predators or criminals. Father Janovich, who recently buried Kowalski’s wife, nags Kowalski to unburden himself in confession, knowing that his soul is scarred by incidents that happened in the war. There is imagery of the baptismal font that Eastwood places into the picture at crucial moments. There is also the symbolism of the cross and of blood - though the movie is not gratuitously violent or gory (though it does have a good bit of profanity, just so you're aware).

The title comes from the name of the car that Kowalski not only owns, but had assembled in his days as a Detroit Ford auto worker. It symbolizes a kind of freedom and innocence of an era that has passed. The car becomes the object of an attempted crime, later, a symbol of friendship, trust, forgiveness, and love - and once more as the physical manifestation of redemption, of returning to the state of freedom and innocence.

The movie deals with racism, but not in the usual stilted, politically-correct, scoldy, cartoonish way that has become the norm, but rather in a refreshingly human and sympathetic way that allows for forgiveness and growth - one at odds with the current Social Justice Warrior approach of cancel culture, of the perpetually-offended, and the destruction of people’s lives.

Kowalski’s character is complex and authentic: a man who is brutally honest, bearing the scars of warfare, bigoted, but one whose bigotry is overcome by human contact and his own sense of honor. He finds common ground with his Hmong neighbors over and against the hypocrisy of his own kith and kin. The movie is also filled with ethnic humor, which shows the clear distinction between the playful and even affectionate acknowledgement of ethnic and cultural realities between friends vs actual racism. This honest portrayal of normal collegial banter has been panned by contemporary viewers who are scandalized by the words used in the film. Of course, they cry that the film is “racist” - when in fact, it is the diametric opposite. This misrepresentation is because our immediate culture is afraid of normal, human interaction and is on a hair-trigger looking for forbidden thoughts at every turn, even vilifying, if not criminalizing, normal interpersonal interaction. Of course, in the real world of sanity and normalcy, friends, colleagues, and co-workers recognize our differences, and we acknowledge them with humor across the board, equally, instead of the current politically-correct paradigm of banning all such humor and replacing it with genuine, targeted, and debilitating hatred against certain “acceptable” demographic targets for genuine racism and abuse.

Gran Torino cuts through all of that, and presents a normal, complex, lovable man underneath a gruff exterior while making use of clear imagery of the atonement and the sacraments to show God’s transformative mercy at work.

The movie is funny, touching, gritty, honest, and uplifting, but not in the usual contrived Hollywood way. The end of the film comes around to the beginning, as most great storytelling does. It is a master class for Social Justice Warriors to learn the difference between actual racism and healthy human banter and affectionate humor that naturally emerges where people are free. It is also a confession of the atonement, of redemption, of the forgiveness of sins, of love, and the peace that surpasses all understanding.

If you have not seen the film, I highly recommend it. And never forget the dictum: “Everybody blames the Lutherans.”

[Gottesblog] Libido Numerandi — Larry Beane

Libido Numerandi

In his masterpiece The City of God, St. Augustine uses the term libido dominandi, which might be translated as “the lust for domination.” It is Augustine’s term for fallen man’s inclination to lord over others, to play God by seeking to control other people.

There is a variation of this libido that seeks power and the praise of men by an appeal to numbers: libido numerandi. Even animals turn to this form of self-aggrandizement in making themselves look big - often as a defense mechanism to frighten away predators, or as an appeal to a potential mate. But especially among fallen men, there is a determination to dominate others by an assertion of self-promotion: be it physical size, strength, influence, wealth, or the number of people in one’s organization.

This libido numerandi is everywhere. Companies will routinely boast in their advertisements that they are the world’s largest this or that, the biggest such and such a firm in the country, or the Number One seller of widgets in the state.

And this libido is all too common in the church. It is the main lust displayed by the Church Growth Movement (CGM), and has become justification for a lot of mischief - even abolishing the Mass and the usual public ceremonies, like the order of the readings, vestments, etc. - all in the name of boosting numbers.

Of course, we are called upon to evangelize, but we are also called upon to seek and save even the single lost sheep, and not just make a play for ever larger numbers of people for the sake of numbers itself. In our Lord’s parable, the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine on the plain to find one of his flock that isn’t even a new “recruit,” but rather a member who has wondered off. This legacy maintenance approach to ministry must seem a strange strategy indeed to the CGM advocate, who would likely rather be leaving one behind to look for ninety-nine new members, not to mention the vault of heaven resounding over a mere net gain of only one member!

And this is part of the curse of the Church Growth Movement - people just become numbers, tallies on a spreadsheet, abstract targeted goals in a corporate jargon-filled mission statement. The now (thank God) defunct Ablaze!™ program, that was sold not a program but as a “movement”, created such a dehumanizing secular marketing approach by laying out a numerical goal of a hundred million “critical events” to be racked up (defined as telling people about Jesus, but not defined as actually baptizing someone). It was pure libido numerandi. It downplayed the means of grace, it reduced people and human interactions to the place of tick marks in a database and a number to be reported by the suits at meetings, and completely forgot about the Holy Spirit and the Doctrine of Election.

How different than our Lord’s Parable of the Sower, in which the seed is cast far and wide in a way that looks foolish to the world, unconcerned with numbers, and not reporting them to a website or to the bureaucrats in the home office. And the sower doesn’t research to find out the best place to cast. He doesn’t use the techniques of modern agribusiness to bump up the fertility of the soil. He doesn’t employ genetic modification to make his seeds more “effective.” He doesn’t even use the latest and greatest technology. He just tosses the seed everywhere, seemingly recklessly, and he just leaves the results up to God the Holy Spirit. The sower’s job is to be faithful.

And that is another thing that the lust for numbers ignores. Which church is more “successful”? Is it Joel Osteen’s stadium full of tens of thousands, or is it the little LCMS congregation that uses the liturgy, the hymns, and is normed by the Bible and the Confessions and has maybe a couple dozen people in attendance? Is the metric for success, for a “healthy church” (in CGM lingo) based on the number of people present, or the degree of fidelity to the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ?

One rank example of the libido numerandi was when a previous district president said that he hoped my congregation would grow to 900 members in a year. How he came up with that number is a mystery. Maybe it was a subconscious reference to Oral Roberts’s 900 foot Jesus. Our building holds a couple hundred. Why would we want to be that large? Why wouldn’t it make more sense to have another congregation or two (or more) - providing responsible pastoral care - if there were that many members? And why not focus on the kind of growth that sees our members grow in the maturity of their faith, in their Christian life, in their sanctification, in their knowledge of the Bible and the confessions of the church? In their love for the liturgy and their children’s growing up immersed in the means of grace? Why is success seen merely as numerical growth?

Another example is when pastors (and not just pastors) get together, one of the first questions is “How big is your church?” Or the really revealing way in which this question is often put: “How many do you worship?” If that isn’t not only libido numerandi, but outright idolatry, then nothing is! The object of our worship is the Most Holy Trinity, not the number of people in the pews.

There was even a well-known pastor who would get into discussions online about theological matters. You could tell when he was losing the argument, because he would look up his opponent’s congregation’s statistics (which are, inexplicably, published online) and then berate him if his church had a net loss of members over the past year or over the pastor’s tenure at that congregation - as if that had any validity as a theological argument. Well, according to libido numerandi, it makes perfect sense.

There is that nasty little libido in all of us to lord over others by an appeal to our own perceived greatness. And in our culture, size matters.

It calls to mind when David’s census did not go well, and God punished his libido numerandi: “Satan stood against Israel and incited David to number Israel…. But God was displeased with this thing, and He struck Israel…. So the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel, and 70,000 men of Israel fell” (1 Chron 21:1,7, 14). It also calls to mind the account of Gideon’s conquest of Midian with only 300 men. God deliberately shrunk Gideon’s army so as to conquer their libido numerandi: “The Lord said to Gideon, ‘The people with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over Me, saying, my own hand has saved me’“ (Jud 7:2).

But according to the Word of God, the Spirit blows where He wishes. The Church expands, the Church contracts, and in the long run, the Church will drastically shrink. Jesus Himself said so. There is not a direct relation between faithfulness and size, and to the contrary, when one lives in a hostile culture, there may well even be an inverse relationship. This is not to say that we should strive to make our churches small, or denigrate those whose churches are growing. These things are typically beyond our control. Contrary to the premises of the CGM, numerical growth is often related much more to the secular demographic increase or decrease of a local population than anything we do.

And that is also a temptation to the Church Growthers.

Many years ago, I received a beg letter from a proposed church plant. In making the pitch, it appealed to the fact that the target subdivision demographic was suburban, well-to-do, and comprised of many young families. The implication is that your money won’t go to waste, because there is a better chance of success among people with money and kids. So the older people, the less-fortunate, and other outcasts who are not as likely to be an attractive demographic for investment can just do without evangelism, I suppose. The sower went looking for good soil, and limited his planting there, it seems. Should we assume that God blesses such an approach to evangelism?

Bishop Vsevolod Lytkin commented on the monetary inefficiencies of mission work - especially in his milieu of the vast terrain of the Lutheran diaspora in Siberia:

Speaking pragmatically, mission work always brings financial losses for the church, but we do not go to collect offerings. We go to proclaim the Word.

The worldly considerations and calculations of gains and losses, financial, or in terms of numerical bragging rights, do not enter the picture in evangelism that is done out of love for the lost. If we were to spend a million dollars and not one member joins the congregation, it is not for us to call it a success or a failure. The Word of God does not return empty. “We go to proclaim the Word.” - and to do so faithfully. The rest is up to God. Our boast is not in “how many we worship” or the balance sheet of our latest building project. Our boast is in Christ our Lord.

We must strive to replace our lust with love. And true love is not concerned with such details as numbers, personal vainglory, prestige, or impressiveness in the eyes of the world.

TGC 121 — Throwdown: Our Father in the Mass

There’s always friendly disagreements among the editors. In this episode, we explore one: the Our Father in the Mass. What is it’s placement? What is it’s function? Who says it? These are the main points of disagreement between Fritz Eckardt and Rick Stuckwisch.

Host: Fr. Jason Braaten

Regular Guest: Fr. Fritz Eckardt, Fr. Rick Stuckwisch

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[Gottesblog] Mission Indecipherable — Larry Beane

Mission Indecipherable

This is funny because it’s true. All too often, churches sound like the worst that corporate, bureaucratic America has to offer. It is as though we could all have corporate-speak bingo cards during district conventions and when we read various church publications. And if it were made into a drinking game, it could cause the premiums for Concordia Plan Services to increase even more, especially as the demand for pastoral liver transplants were to increase dramatically.

Some of the gobbledygook that we hear from church bureaucrats sounds just like the above video. And that is what happens when we lose touch with the Scriptures and Confessions. Instead of using turns of phrase from the Bible and the Book of Concord and from the long and rich tradition of the Holy Church, we are often treated to something more akin to the jargon of a self-help book or bureaucratic babble from the latest work productivity guru.

Is it because they don’t read the Bible? Is it because the Book of Concord has become just another dusty volume on the shelf from seminary days? Is it because our “missional” brethren’s reading is normed by mission statements instead of the mission to spread the Gospel by means of sending pastors to serve at altars, fonts, and pulpits? Is it because they put more faith in the techniques of industrial organization, managerial leadership, and the Power of Positive Thinking than in the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the means of grace, and the Doctrine of Election?

Even our bureaucratic titles sound like a bad parody of the movie Office Space: District President (DP or sometimes DiP)? Mission and Ministry Facilitator (MMF)? That one is particularly begging for it. Mission Executive? Congregation Support Specialist? Coach? (Yes, some districts have titles that include “coach” - which may conjure up images of big hairy guys in shorts with a whistle and a clipboard). We have various directors, executives, and facilitators. The only saving grace is that the names for all of these titles aren’t still in German, or else it would sound like a World War II reenactors’ convention. We have task forces and blue ribbon commissions (which sounds like something to do with the prize heifer at the county fair). We have cheesy themes for this and that, and of course, the king of corporate argot, the Mission Statement. Sigh.

Wouldn’t it be nice if this all stopped in our churches, and instead of reflecting the world, our writing and speaking and even our polity were given fluency by the Word of God?