The Gottesdienst Crowd

[Gottesblog] Passiontide – Burnell Eckardt

Passiontide

The final stage in the journey of Lent toward Easter is Passiontide, which will begin this coming Sunday. Judica is the 5th Sunday in Lent, also called “Passion Sunday.” A review of the season, its special rubrics, and its significance follows.

During Passiontide the crosses and statues are veiled, and every instance of the Gloria Patri disappears. It is appropriate that even the Trinitarian doxologies of any hymns be omitted.

A question commonly asked is “Why do we drape and cover the crosses as we get closer to Good Friday, as our attention upon the last hours and the sufferings of Our Lord increases?” We do this in part to remember that we don’t deserve even to look upon the Holy Cross. We are not worthy of the Sacrifice. The crucifix has from the earliest days of Christendom been our greatest and most cherished symbol. So it is partially taken away from us for a short time, that we might learn the better to appreciate it when it returns. The crosses are not taken away completely. They are not removed; they are covered. We can see outlines of the crosses, but their beauty and details are fuzzy. This reminds us that in a way our grief itself prevents us from seeing clearly, until the Good Friday liturgy and, of course, Easter. It also reminds us of Our Lord’s actions in response to the violence of the people, in the Gospel for Judica Sunday: the Lord “Jesus hid Himself.” That is why it is customary to place these veils not before but during the Service directly after the reading of the Gospel.

The idea of removing the Gloria Patri is much the same. Jesus revealed for us the Holy Triune Name on the day of His Ascension: this is the fullest and complete revelation of God’s Name given to men. To take away the Gloria Patri for two weeks is a bit jarring. It is particularly awkward when we omit it at the end of the Nunc Dimittis. Because this removal is so stark, it has the counterintuitive effect of drawing our attention to it. All of this is that we would learn to mortify our own flesh and to depend ever more upon the grace of God in Christ. For never, even in our most somber of ceremonies, is the Church in doubt about the end. Jesus died but is not dead. Jesus lives. Easter is coming. We wait, as it were, with bated breath. The Alleluias (which we have not sung at all throughout Lent), the Gloria Patris, the crosses, the self-denied foods: all these shall return, and because they were removed for a short time, their return becomes all the more worthy of celebration. But even better than that, we shall have them all forever when our own resurrections occur at the Last Day.

Passiontide extends through Holy Week and the Triduum Sacrum (“three holy days”—which includes Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday). The single exception to these Passiontide rubrics is that at Maundy Thursday evening mass the Greater Gloria (Gloria in Excelsis) is sung.

Then comes the close of the Maundy Thursday evening Mass, which liturgically continues throughout the Triduum. For this reason it has no Benediction.

Immediately following the Benedicamus, therefore, the celebrant and attendants remove their Eucharistic Vestments, the Altar is stripped, and any remaining Sanctuary decorations are removed, while the congregation sings a Psalm (traditionally, Psalm 22, without Gloria). The only remaining items in the Sanctuary (chancel) are the immovable pieces of furniture, laid bare. The congregation departs in silence afterwards.

On Good Friday, all remains bare, although a minimal use of linens is acceptable and proper if the Sacrament is celebrated during this time; and indeed some parishes have an entire set of black paraments for this day. The presiding minister or celebrant and his attendants enter in silence and prostrate themselves before the entrance to the Sanctuary (chancel) while silently praying a psalm, such as Psalm 51. The silence is deep. The opening collect for Good Friday is appropriately a prayer for “this Thy family,” suggesting a funeral. During the Service even the customary introductions and responses are removed from the readings. The organ is not played; all singing is a capella. Silence is kept at various times throughout. The entire atmosphere is somber, as befits a solemn funeral. Afterwards the congregation departs in silence. The prevailing mood is one of utterly humble gratitude.

The intensity thus builds from Passion Sunday until the Great Vigil of Easter on Holy Saturday, when we finally arrive with the women at the empty tomb to observe, during the Service, the point at which Lent ends and Easter begins.

Throughout Passiontide, which leads intensely to its close, there are therefore additional modes of “fasting,” although we hasten to add that it is never appropriate to “fast” from the Blessed Sacrament, since we confess that even in our darkest moments Christ is always with us, especially when we arrive at the Altar. He is always there for us in His life-giving, sin-forgiving, holy Body and Blood.

At the very conclusion of Passiontide and of Lent itself, the lights are turned up and the announcement breaks forth, “Christ is risen!” to which comes the hearty reply, “He is risen indeed. Alleluia!” The special rubrics and detail of Passiontide serve to make this moment and all that follows the more heartfelt and festive.

TGC 104 - Responding to Roman Catholic Apologists

In this episode, Korey Maas (professor of history at Hillsdale College and on the clergy roster of The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod) helps us navigate the most common anti-Lutheran and Pro-Roman Catholic arguments from Roman Catholic apologists. 

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[Gottesblog] On Genuflecting – Larry Beane

On Genuflecting

By Larry Beane,

 

The ceremony of genuflecting at the altar is a particular ceremony that some people deride as “Too Catholic.”

Genuflecting is what is commonly called “taking a knee.” It is a kind of kneeling in which one drops to only one knee, probably in the interest of time to be able to get back up quickly - especially for pastors who become long in the tooth often at a rate exceeding that of the laity. When it comes to kneeling, sometimes the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. For many of us d'un certain âge, bowing from the waist down is a more practical way of carrying out this ceremony. But you young guys should be able to genuflect and rise again with no trouble, or else you need to hit the glucosamine and chondroiten, if not the gym.

When I was the campus pastor of a high school, one of my duties was to lead the football team in the Lord’s Prayer in the end zone, after the coach called out the rubric: “Take a knee, guys!”. Kneeling is a posture of prayer, of humility, and of worship of God. It is a ceremony that is appropriate at certain times in our liturgy.

According to our shared confession in the Book of Concord, the purpose of ceremonies is that people may be “taught what they need to know about Christ” (AC 24:3).

And if Roman Catholics and Anglicans genuflect before the altar, but Baptists, Methodists, the Reformed, and Non-Denominational Christians do not, what is the ceremony (or lack of ceremony) teaching?

Indeed, it would be incongruent for a Baptist minister to pronounce the Words of Institution and then genuflect after the words pertaining to each element. This is because Baptists believe that Christ is not present, that the elements are only symbolic.

Roman Catholics and (at least some) Anglicans believe that Jesus is miraculously and physically present in the Sacrament.

So which ceremony (genuflecting or not genuflecting) makes more sense for the Lutheran consecration? What does genuflecting during the consecration teach about Christ? Kneeling is an act of worship. Angels forbade kneeling before them because they are not worthy of worship (Rev 19:10, 22:8-9). We are to worship God alone (Matt 9:10). The wise men “fell down and worshipped” the baby Jesus (Matt 2:11) - with the word for worship (προσκυνὲω) being more than just an intellectual acknowledgement of his divinity. The word means to worship with the body, by kneeling or prostrating oneself, in the presence of God.

A Baptist minister who confesses that the elements are only symbolic would - in his own mind and confession - be guilty of idolatry were he to genuflect before that which is merely a creature and not the Creator.

Lutherans - along with Roman Catholics and (some) Anglicans (and the Orthodox Christians), confess the Real Presence, that Jesus is physically (not merely symbolically or spiritually) present. So our piety concerning the Lord’s Supper is traditionally quite different than that of a Baptist or Presbyterian or Non-Denominational pastor or layman. For instance, most Lutherans kneel to receive the Sacrament, and our church architecture typically encourages this by virtue of a communion rail with kneelers. Again, this would not make sense in a Baptist context. (I’m not picking on Baptists here, it’s just that they are the largest confession of Christians in our context in North America who confess the symbolic nature of their communion elements).

So, is it also incongruent for Lutherans to genuflect during the consecration?

Interestingly, during the Reformation, the Reformed accused the Lutherans of “bread worship” because of our confession of the Physical Presence. They considered such things as bowing or genuflecting during the consecration to be idolatry. Calvinistic rulers ordered the Lutherans to stop doing it. Obviously, we Lutherans disagree with them on this. And in fact, many editions of the Book of Concord include quotes from the early church fathers - largely to respond to the accusations of the Reformed - in a section called the Catalog of Testimonies. One such quote comes from St. Augustine, and it involves acts of worship toward Christ in the Sacrament:

Of the Words of the Lord, Discourse 58 (t. 10, p. 217): “If Christ is not God by nature, but a creature, He is neither to be worshiped nor adored as God. But to these things they will reply and say: Why, then, is it that you adore with His divinity His flesh, which you do not deny to be a creature, and are no less devoted to it than to Deity?”

The same, on Ps. 99:5 (t. 8, p. 1103): “‘Worship His footstool.’ His footstool is the earth, and Christ took upon Him earth of earth, because flesh is of earth; and He received flesh of the flesh of Mary. And because He walked here in this very flesh, he also gave this very flesh to be eaten by us for salvation. But no one eats that flesh unless He has first worshiped it. Therefore the way has been found how such footstool of the Lord may be worshiped, so that we not only do not sin by worshiping, but sin by not worshiping.”

The celebrant, deacon, and acolyte customarily have genuflected together in my parish’s celebration. I had a devout parishioner who moved away who would also genuflect in the pew. This is not just a ceremony that only the pastor may participate in.

We Lutherans also confess the freedom in the Gospel regarding ceremonies.

For example, it is customary to make the sign of the cross at certain points in our personal prayer life (as we are instructed in the Small Catechism), and in our liturgical worship. Again, this ceremony teaches us about Christ - it is a confession of His divinity as the Son in the confession of the Holy Trinity, and it links His crucifixion to Holy Baptism by means of the Trinitarian invocation. Tracing the large sign of the cross from our heads, hearts, and shoulders began as a confession against the Arians, who did not confess the Lord’s divinity. This way of making the sign of the cross was a modification of the earlier practice of crossing oneself on the forehead as a reminder of Holy Baptism.

But no member of the parish should pressure anyone to either make the sign of the cross or not. That is a matter of personal piety.

The pastor is also a member of the congregation with Christian freedom. He may choose to cross Himself at certain points in the service, or he may choose not to. No other member of the parish has the right to pressure, bully, or force him to do so, or to stop doing so, any more than anyone has the right to compel a layman to either do so or not.

Genuflecting is a similar act of personal piety (as are things like bowing for the Gloria Patri, nodding the head at the name of Jesus, or folding one’s hands to pray). So a parishioner has no more right to demand that a pastor cease to genuflect at the altar than he has to demand that the pastor cross himself at the beginning of the sermon.

Luther was actually appalled to learn that some parishioners did not genuflect in the pew during the chanting of the Nicene Creed (there is an ancient custom to genuflect at the words “and was made man”). He said:

And when the congregation came to the words, “from the Virgin Mary and was made man,” every one genuflected and removed his hat. It would still be proper and appropriate to kneel at the words “and was made man,” to sing them with long notes as formerly, to listen with happy hearts to the message the Divine Majesty abased Himself and became like us poor bags of worms, and to thank God for the ineffable mercy and compassion reflected in the incarnation of the Deity. But who can ever do justice to that theme?...The following tale is told about a course and brutal lout. While the words, “And was made man” were being sung in church, he remained standing, neither genuflecting nor removing his hat. He showed no reverence, but just stood there like a clod. All the others dropped to their knees when the Nicene Creed was prayed and chanted devoutly. Then the devil stepped up to him and hit him so hard it made his head spin. He cursed him gruesomely and said: “May hell consume you, you boorish ass! If God had become an angel like me and the congregation sang: ‘God was made an angel,’ I would bend not only my knees but my whole body to the ground! Yes, I would crawl ten ells down into the ground. And you vile human creature, you stand there like a stick or a stone. You hear that God did not become an angel but a man like you, and you just stand there like a stick of wood!” Whether this story is true or not, it is nevertheless in accordance with the faith (Rom. 12:6). With this illustrative story the holy fathers wished to admonish the youth to revere the indescribably great miracle of the incarnation; they wanted us to open our eyes wide and ponder these words as well.

~ Luther’s Works, Vol. 22, pp.102-103, 105-106

Everything that we do during worship is a ceremony - even refraining from certain ceremonies.

As the late Atheist philosopher Neal Peart put it in a lyrical poem entitled Free Will (some of our readers may even know this entire work from memory): “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” And before you tap out that hate-letter to Father Eckardt and contact my District President for a heresy trial, I’m not endorsing everything in the song. I’m only using it as an analogy that refraining from a given ceremony is also a ceremony. So we should be deliberate of what confession we are making by either partaking of a ceremonial act, or opting not to.

But again, we do so in the realm of Christian liberty. And yes, we should teach, while being mindful that conducting ceremonies - like genuflecting at the altar - is part of that pastoral pedagogy that we are called to do. We should humbly be willing to be taught - especially by the man who has been sent by the Holy Spirit to teach us. And teaching is done in the liturgy as well as in the classroom. What we do in the presence of the altar, font, and pulpit is a powerful confession and explication of what we say that we believe.

And if anyone believes genuflecting to be wrong, sinful, or incongruent with our confession, he should be prepared to quote the Bible and the Confessions to make a case for why our ceremonies should resemble those who confess the Real Absence in the Lord’s Supper, as well as for making a case that earlier centuries of Lutheran practice has also been wrong.

[Gottesblog] "If You Need Electricity to Have Church . . . " – B.T. Ball

"If You Need Electricity to Have Church...

By B.T. Ball

 

…then you are doing it wrong.” That is what I told my fieldworkers yesterday morning as the power was out in Hamel. The entirety of the first Divine Service was without electricity. During the second Divine Service the lights came on toward the end of Pastor Weedon’s sermon. We did have full juice at the third Divine Service of the day. Before the first Divine Service, as the chairman of the board of elders was preparing the altar, he said, “well, we have done this before.” I said, “yep, for the first 19 centuries or so.” Of course he was speaking of our specific parish, and we have had church without electricity a few times since I have been here, but I responded thinking of all the saints who have gone before us who were able to gather without electric light and certainly without electric instrumentation.

The pipe organ is the king of the instruments, and I would never want to serve without one. Of course modern organs are dependent on electricity, with some notable exceptions like this one at my vicarage church. So when the power goes down, so does the organ. But that doesn’t mean that the church’s song stops. Parishes, Christians, who have learned the Lutheran Liturgy and the Hymnody of the Evangelical Lutheran Church can simply open their hymnals and then their mouths and sing, no instruments needed. We still had some yesterday though. We are blessed with many talented musicians in our congregation, so on short notice (about 45 minutes, I think) we had violin, cello, viola, oboe and more put to use to support the congregation’s song. It was great. It was even greater to have the instruments join in support of the organ when the juice came back on - all without rehearsal. It was something. But then again, we can do without. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should, but if the Church is in a pinch the Divine Service and the hymns can be sung or spoken without instruments.

Lately, Kantor has taken to not accompanying the Agnus Dei as she comes down to receive the Sacrament at the beginning of the distribution in order to head right back up to play the distribution hymns. Hearing Bugenhagen’s Agnus Dei sung in harmony a capella by the Christian Congregation about to receive the Very Body and Blood of the Lamb of God is sublime. The people of God praise the incarnate Christ, truly present under the bread and wine; praising him with the divinely created instrument - the human voice. We were made to sing, and the Scriptures direct us to do that very thing - “God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our King, sing praises! For God is the King of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm!” Psalm 47:5-7

Of course what we sing makes all the difference. How we praise Him with our voices is a confession of Who He is, what He has done, and what He is doing. Along with who we are, what we are to be believing, and what we are to do. So we have hymnals, and in the LCMS, we are to exclusively use doctrinally pure ones. Just like incandescent light bulbs or LEDs, hymnals are products of advances in technology. The Church did without hymnals in the hands of people for centuries. Christians had to learn to sing by memory, but all too often they did not. The Lutheran Reformation not only put the Bible in the hands of the people, but it put hymnals in their hands too. The Pure, Scriptural Faith was to be sung, and so the True Faith was put to tune and on paper to be in every church, school and home of the Church of the Augsburg Confession. So not only are family Bibles treasures passed down, but so are the hymnals of the saints who have gone before. I have The Lutheran Hymnal my uncle Denny received on his confirmation day. It is one of the most treasured books I have. Many in our congregations have the hymnals of their ancestors. They could be a very small Kirchengesangbuch in fraktur with the name of the saint in gold on the front, or maybe a little Evangelical Lutheran Hymn-Book also without any musical notation, or maybe an old TLH like my uncle’s. They are treasures, connecting us to the saints in a tangible way. The books were held in their hands, the saints touched them and used them to open their mouths to sing praise to the Blessed Trinity. That praise is eternal, which gets us back to not having electricity.

After the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, I went down to Louisiana with some men of my congregation. We assisted for a week mucking out homes. Speaking with the pastor loci, he mentioned that they could still have church for those who either hadn’t evacuated or were starting to come back to begin the long cleanup and restoration. They could do this because they had their hymnals. They didn’t need electricity. In the face of great devastation the people of God gathered, just as Lutherans had for centuries, hymnals in hand to hear, receive, and sing. It goes without saying that if the service is run by sound board, high-def video display and an amped up band there will be some difficulty. So if you need electricity to have church, you are doing it wrong. Being able to have church without electricity not only ties us to the saints of the past who gathered by the light of the sun, oil or beeswax, it also prepares us for the future. What we face in the future on this earth as a cross-bearing, Church Militant remains to be revealed. We might go without many things, maybe even electricity (may God grant it not to be so), but we will have our hymnals, (perhaps not, which is why, like the ancient saints, we memorize our hymns). We will have the Bible. We will have the Divine Service. We will have our hymns. Whatever we face in this vale of tears we will still be the Church. And then, after this vale of tears, we will still be the the Church, but one without any need nor desire for electricity for the Lamb will be our Light. And of course we will have no need of hymnals either. Then and there in the glory, we will use our resurrected voices in praise, singing in full the hymn of heaven we now only know in part - Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus! It will be like that, without electricity, but even better; the Angels will be our Kantors. Until then, let’s do it right.

[Gottesblog] "Jesus Albus Non Est" – Larry Beane

Jesus Albus Non Est

By Larry Beane

“Jesus ain’t white”

— GRAFFITO IN NEW ORLEANS

A friend of mine sent the above picture of a bit of urban art on a trashcan on display in the Crescent City, the Big Easy, the City that Care Forgot, Chocolate City, Crawfish Town, Hollywood South, yes, the City of New Orleans.

I would like to commend the artist for a couple things: first, for mentioning the name of Jesus, the name that is above every name, the name before which every knee shall bow (Phil 2:9-10). Whether He is proclaimed in pretense or truth, we rejoice with St. Paul that Christ is proclaimed (Phil 1:8).

Second, the grammar is correct. Often this statement is made in the past tense: “Jesus wasn’t white.” This implies either that Jesus is dead, or that He used to be non-white at some point, but is now white. The present tense is a confession that Jesus is risen and lives. I would use the A-word in praise of this confession that Jesus lives, but it is still Lent, so let’s just respond, “Amen” instead.

As far as the use of “ain’t,” I know this will cause scandal to some of my fellow LCMS homeschoolers and Lutheran teachers, but a little scandal is good for people from time to time - especially midwestern Germans. And if you all are honest with yourselves, this is why you enjoy coming to New Orleans for youth gatherings. Some of you like strolling along Bourbon Street with plastic beads around your neck. And that is certainly a more innocent scandal than some of the stuff that has gone on in worship services at the youth gathering - especially in years past.

My point, however, is not so much the grammar, but this latest obsession with our Lord’s ethnicity and skin tone. For decades, the secular world has typically scorned Jesus and His followers, or taken His teachings out of context, or turned Him into some kind of Social Justice Warrior. But at least in currently arguing about His flesh and blood existence, we are at least speaking to the incarnation.

Historians will hopefully look back on our crazy times with awe bordering on disbelief. Our culture seems to be living some kind of mass delusion, as we go about our lives in a kind of Alice’s Wonderland, a Clown World, a dystopia where nothing makes sense. Having successfully eliminated slavery, segregation, and apartheid among civilized countries around the world, having elected (and re-elected) a black president thirteen years ago, having people of every race and ethnicity serving at the highest levels of government and commerce, academia and society - one would think that we would declare victory over racial bigotry and get on with our lives.

Instead, we have a strange new iteration of racism: open hatred of white people, as the recent Coca-Cola employee training to “be less white” illustrates.

And so there has been renewed interest in our Lord Jesus Christ. Not in His atoning death for the life of the world, not even in His ethical teachings, but now our culture is really interested in His physical appearance and the assertion that He “ain’t white.” And given that “whiteness” is equated with systemic evil, who could possibly worship a Jesus who is the member of an ethnicity that has been arbitrarily designated to be made up of Untermenschen - like as if He were historically Jewish or something.

While artistic renderings of Jesus run the gamut of every shade of human skin on the planet, to illustrate Jesus as white is now seen as systemic racism. But the problem is one of definition. The popular depiction of Jesus from 1940 called the Sallman Head is a case in point. Jesus is clearly not black or Asian in appearance. But neither does He look Scandinavian or Germanic. He has brown eyes and olive-colored skin - not unlike people of the middle east today.

And since our Lord is of Middle Eastern origins, is this really that far from reality?

An amusing Tweet says that we rubes out in “Jesusland” are going to be shocked that Jesus has dark skin. I don’t know where this adorable little lad is from, but he seems to have lived a sheltered life, and certainly doesn’t seem to have many Christian friends. One of his commenters replied: “Wait until they find out he's Jewish too. Oy Vey.” In addition to living in Alice’s Wonderland and Clown World, we have also officially transitioned from “Idiocracy as Comedy” to “Idiocracy as Documentary,” and we have now progressed to “Idiocracy as Quaint Nostalgia.” If only our culture were merely as stupid and debased as the 2006 Mike Judge film. Idiocracy has become our generation’s Little House on the Prairie, especially after Laura Ingalls Wilder’s cancellation down the Memory Hole.

In fact, the oldest icon that we have of Jesus (Christ the Pantocrator - from the 500s AD) actually comes from the Middle East - a monastery in Sinai. And in this artistic rendering of our Lord - which represents His two natures - we see a man who looks Middle Eastern, with brown hair and eyes and a skin-tone that is likewise not Northern European. But neither does He look Sub-Saharan nor Far-Eastern.

In short, the earliest depiction that we have of Jesus seems to be of a clearly Middle Eastern man. And this rather makes sense, doesn’t it?

Again, part of the problem is how we define “white.” If “whiteness” is defined as evil and even inhuman (“White people are born into not being human… to be demons”) - as a certain sensitivity trainer that some corporations hire asserts, then yes, “Jesus ain’t white.” Jesus is human and Jesus is neither evil nor a demon. But if being white refers to the traditional (if somewhat outdated) taxonomy of the races of man, then a Middle Eastern Jew is indeed white. To complicate matters, there are people (both Jews themselves and people who really don’t like them) who classify even blond haired and blued eyed Jews as “non-white.”

The U.S. Census bureau categorizes Jesus as white, as for their purposes, “white” refers to:

A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.

There are some writers who claim that Jesus is black, and that there has only been a conspiracy to cast Him as a Middle Eastern Jew. But if one believes the Bible, Jesus was born in Judea of Jewish heritage; there is no biblical data to support that He was either of Ethiopia or Norway or Japan.

So maybe the issue isn’t really about our Lord’s physical appearance as He walked the earth, but more about wrangling over definitions of “whiteness” and viewing our Lord as just another pawn in the great game of Intersectional Critical Theory Chess.

It would be better to focus on our Lord's physical appearance in the Eucharist, where He comes to His beloved and redeemed people “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev 7:9) and where we all kneel together without regard to melanin or eye color or hair texture. For though we are not all of the same ethnicity and appearance, we are all truly sinners in need of restoration. And that is why our Lord took on our flesh - our human flesh - to begin with.

Instead of worrying about whether Jesus looks like us, we would do better to strive to make ourselves look like Jesus in His mercy and in carrying out the Father’s will by doing what we are called to do for the sake of the kingdom and in love for our neighbor. And it isn’t a bad thing to try to be historically accurate in our art - whether icons or movies (my congregation had our statue of our Lord repainted after 50 years, and we did indeed tan Him up a bit), we must retain our humility and not fall for the idol of seeing our value in terms of our ethnicity - whether it is the promotion of a Jesus that satisfies either the National Socialists or Louis Farrakhan.

The question of whether Jesus is white or not depends on a somewhat arbitrary human definition and taxonomy. But the reality of who Jesus is - God, Man, Creator, Sacrifice, Lord, and Savior, the Light of the World, the Bread of Life, the Lamb of God - does not depend on linguistic definitions or politically popular agendas.

Jesus is human. Jesus is divine. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Savior. And that is what is important.

[Gottesblog] "Lamentation for the Face" – Burnell Eckardt

Lamentation for the Face

By Burnell Eckardt

 

Because of smiles that often play

Upon your lively face

And frowns, and what they have to say,

Expressions I can trace

 

That now are hidden ear to ear

With varied kinds of threads,

Of colors or with patterned cheer,

Or blacks or blues or reds,

 

I’m still disheartened when I glance

At you in this disguise

Because it hides your countenance

And so affronts my eyes.

 

Yet here I sadly must confess

I wear one when I must

But still and only, nonetheless

In utter self-disgust!

 

How long, alas, must we abide

This sad, grotesque charade

That masquerades, I shan’t deny,

A pitiful parade?

 

To say the least, I hesitate

To think that this must be,

To save from some sorry fate,

Some new necessity.

 

But more than that do I abhor

The sad attempt to claim

That this could yet be something more,

Some new designer’s aim.

 

How lovely, how desirable

This mask, you’d have me think,

Could be if just perhaps I will

Accept it and its ink,

 

Coordinated with the clothes

You chose to wear today,

As if it were a thing you chose

To complement, you say.

 

And thus you’d wish that I believed

Your mask is better than

The lovely visage you received

From God’s almighty hand.

 

O mask, by this you’re telling lies!

You lie! You falsely guide!

So now and ever I’ll despise

That you are wont to hide

 

The image on a human face

That man from God received:

His own! the cherished human race!

No threads were better weaved.

 

The face of God and man is one:

The beauty of the Lord,

The splendor of the only Son,

The Incarnated Word.

 

But now instead a mask I see

In every public place.

It fails, and that, so miserably,

To stand in for your face.

TGC 103 - The Exodus of the Practice of Private Confession in the Lutheran Church

As pastors, we have all been there. We're reviewing the Small Catechism with the Adult Bible Class, and you get to the Fifth Chief part on Confession, and someone says, "when did they add this to the catechism? Isn't it a little Catholic?" Our episode today takes up what happened through the lens of Paul H.D. Lang. Lang gave a paper at a district pastors' conference covering the topic "The Exodus of the Practice of Private Confession in the Lutheran Church." Mark Braden (pastor of Zion Ev. Lutheran Church, Detroit, MI, and Departmental Editor for Gottesdienst: the Journal of Lutheran Liturgy) walks us through the document and expands on some of the themes contained within it. 

You can download the paper from the CTSFW media site HERE.  

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[Gottesblog] TaX tHe ChUrChEs!!!1! by Larry Beane

TaX tHe ChUrChEs!!!1!

By Larry Beane

 

“If a church isn’t open to shelter people experiencing homelessness during a blizzard then it isn’t a church, it’s a business.””

— STEPHANIE DRURY

The above quote is from a self-described “Agnostic, but practicing Christian.” Her quote was shared by the political Facebook page called “Being Liberal.”

Any excuse to start the drumbeat of “Tax the Churches!” will do. The recent tragedy in Texas was just the latest. Many people on this discussion thread argued that any church that doesn’t open its doors to homeless people is not a church, but a business - and should be taxed. Many of the most self-righteous, bitter, and angry comments came from people blasting Joel Osteen for not opening the doors of his megachurch during the storms. The only problem is, he did. I’m no fan of Osteen, but I’m also no fan of people lying and then using their lie to beat up all Christians. Nope. Not a fan.

And of course, many commenters piled on about what a great idea taxing the churches is.

I remember many years ago the comedian George Carlin bellowing out “Tax the _______ s!” employing an idiom involving one’s female parent. Another progressive political comedian, Bill Maher, forcefully argues for taxing the churches - and does so with a bitterness that would make Gollum’s face light up. The hatred in his argument isn’t even couched. The folks at Bigthink.com say that taxing the churches could make the rest of us a cool $71 billion a year. And they are not only arguing for doing so based on the economic windfall, they also just so happen to believe that the world would be better without religion. I know that must sound like a shocking coincidence. Former progressive presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke argued for a policy of selectively only taxing churches whose doctrine does not permit same sex “marriage” - because the founders most certainly imagined the federal government pressuring members of churches into adopting doctrines that the politicians think are important. The comedian Frank Zappa was also a fan of taxing churches, along with making sure politicians have access to prostitutes. Don’t they get enough benefits? Republican politician Mike Huckabee suggested that churches give up their tax exemption so as to become openly political organizations and endorse candidates… you know, like him, I suppose. Maybe that’s what our Lord meant when He said, “My kingdom is of this world.” Wait, did I mess that quote up somehow? Maybe that’s from the NIV or something.

At any rate, the salivating enemies of the Church understand what Chief Justice John Marshall was getting at when he said, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” And they make no bones about their dream to destroy the Christian Church.

Of course, our churches are 501c3 organizations - the exact same category as the Clinton Foundation. Our progressive friends never say: “TaX tHe ClInToN fOuNdAtIoN!!!1!” I don’t know whether or not the Clinton Foundation campus opens its doors to the homeless in periods of inclement weather, but I have my suspicions.

I took part in an interesting discussion about this topic. The hatred for Christians was not even hidden a little bit. One person said that if churches keep any money at all - including for salaries, they are a business and should be taxed. I pointed out that the CEO of the 501c3 Clinton Foundation, Kevin Thurm, makes $394,089 per year - not counting bennies. I asked if the Clinton Foundation should be taxed as well. So far, I have heard only crickets.

As tax exempt organizations go, the Clinton Foundation is actually small potatoes. Its annual revenue is about $20 million, and its endowment is about $300 million. It has 2,000 employees. The world’s largest tax exempt charity is the Novo Nordisk Foundation in Denmark with an endowment of $49 billion, followed by the Gates Foundation from the USA, which has an endowment of $46.8 billion - which has a massive corporate headquarters in Seattle and nearly 1,500 employees. Again, I don’t know if the Gates Foundation headquarters is open for the myriad homeless of Seattle or not. I have never seen any media reports that this is the case.

Moreover, there are many non-profit clubs that are 501c3 organizations. I have never heard a progressive argue that a a group of guys in a model airplane group should have to pay taxes unless they were housing the homeless during inclement weather.

Many people have the impression that the church exists for the sake of doing charitable acts. And if you don’t open your building to the poor and homeless - especially after a tragedy of some sort, you are not doing what churches “are supposed to be doing.”

I replied in one place: “The Church is not a homeless shelter or a hospital. We preach the Word of God and administer Sacraments - for the forgiveness of sins and for the resurrection of the dead. That’s not a business. What we offer is free. You can’t buy eternal life, but you can receive it by grace.”

In response to the fact that the Clinton foundation is also a 501c3, one lady replied: “Clinton doesn’t have a church that goes around saying help the poor and feed the hungry, but churches do. Guess they say that without meaning it.” The Clinton Foundation’s “about” tab is pretty vague on what they actually do. It is as evasive as President Clinton answering questions under oath.

I replied:

I don’t have the Clinton Foundation’s gazillions of dollars, but my little congregation supports our local food bank by buying extra food and bringing it to church. Every week, I drive it to the food bank in my city. I think we’ve been doing this since 2007. Time flies. Not sexy work like the Clintons, but we do what we can with what we’ve got.

I don’t think our little food bank gets a dime from the Clinton Foundation.

So we don’t ‘go around saying’ we do this or that. We just do what we do out of love for our neighbor.

That said, the church is not primarily about such things. We do them out of love. But the purpose of the church is to proclaim the Word of God and to administer sacraments. We charge for nothing. Everything we do is free. I baptize, absolve, give communion, preach, and teach. I am with my parishioners on their deathbeds. I am with them in the hospital. I am with them in good times and in tragedies.

Christians believe that in spite of our sinfulness and unworthiness, that Christ died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead.

By His grace and mercy, through the proclamation of this Good News, and in receiving Him in His gifts, we have eternal life - and that our bodies will literally be raised from the dead.

We believe this message of hope is for all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, or socioeconomic status. All are welcome.

Again, nothing is bought or sold. There is no profit. I am able to serve my congregation based on their offerings in the plate - from their incomes that have already been taxed.

Our Lord told us that we would be hated, and so we are. And I have no doubt that your wish will come true, that we will be taxed, and those of us on the margins will lose our meager buildings. But if and when that happens, my work will continue in private homes: preaching, teaching, baptizing, absolving, communing.

We will continue to proclaim the good news and do what we can to love and serve our neighbor even after George Carlin’s advice to “tax the you-know-whats” comes true and your dream is realized.

We won’t go away. We may even win you, your children and grandchildren to Christ and give them the gift of eternal life.

And we still won’t charge them.

TGC 102 - On Resisting the Government, Part 3

In this episode, David Ramirez (pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church, Union Grove, WI, and co-founder of the annual Bugenhagen Conference, Racine, WI) and I pick up from the previous three episodes On Resisting the Government, to discuss Bible references that help us to build a framework for understanding when it is necessary to resist and in what form that might take. We also discuss the necessity of the Christian being prepared for resistance, not just physically and mentally, but especially spiritually as it relates to the Christian conscience. We must know what our conscience can bear and act accordingly. 

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[Gottesblog] An Assault on Language, by Burnell Eckardt

An Assault on Language

By Burnell Eckardt

 

Critical race theory has reached a critical point. Now they want to re-examine our language, the better to comply with a radical agenda demanding that our culture needs to be wiped clean of “systemic racism.” Even President Biden is on board with this agenda, as he made clear in his inaugural speech and since then. The language police will fit in well with the prophetic George Orwell’s 1984. What we are looking at is the real possibility of the coming of a draconian assault on language, such as Orwell’s protagonist Winston Smith endured: a governmental research department dedicated to the perfection of what in 1984 was dubbed “newspeak,” the Eleventh Edition of whose dictionary will have definitively scrubbed all words from vocabulary that could lend themselves to thought that is out of conformity with the aims of the Party. When that happens, the ubiquitous Thought Police, as Orwell called them, will no longer be necessary, because Big Brother’s aims will have been fully realized. It’s remarkable that 1984 was written in 1948, in the aftermath of World War II. Already seeded in those days, the saplings of thought control have wound their way like weeds through the American university system, into the malleable minds of the students of the rebellious mid-to-late 20th century, and now into the streets of American cities. The riots that began in 2020 are fueled by hatred: hatred of police, hatred of wealth, hatred of American culture, hatred of private property. Orwell seems to have foreseen this in his depiction of a dystopian society fueled “the Hate,” and especially “Hate Week,” an occasional event to which the fictional children would look forward with glee.

It has taken a bit longer than 36 years, but the monstrous weed has nevertheless reached fruition. And now we must address the ghastly incursion of a very real version of newspeak into our culture. Author and critical race activist Ibram X. Kendi is among the leaders of the new philosophy who recommend various ways in which this so-called systemic racism might be eliminated, and the sycophantic media are all too eager to spread the ideas. We must now look, they are saying, at the changing of words, of language, to eliminate the damaging negativity that our white forebears have embedded into the way we talk and think. Words like black Monday, black sheep, blackballing, blacklisting, and blackmail are offered as evidence to support this theory. How long before new iterations of newspeak meant to correct this “systemic racism” present themselves in our dictionaries?

It will not do simply to laugh this off as ridiculous, to scoff at it, or to suppose that simply by exposing it as fraudulent the tide of popular opinion will turn so swiftly against it as to render it oblivious, although the temptation to make this our first and perhaps only line of defense is great. Mockery, to be sure, is often a fitting immediate response, and has its place in this endeavor, even as the cutting off of weeds provides some relief to crops they are choking. But we must also have stronger fertilization than that. We must apply weed killer to the roots.

Language is not meant to be unilaterally bowdlerized. It is not one-dimensional. It is elastic, as every poet understands well. Even humor relies on this elasticity, and it should come as no surprise that the apostles of critical race theory seem to have no sense of humor at all. Language, because it is elastic, is a thing of beauty. Orwell’s newspeak developers had as a major function and aim the reduction of language to fewer words, to a greater economy of language. No need for a word like ‘bad’, because ‘ungood’ will provide a more exact meaning. Words like ‘excellent’ or ‘splendid’ can be eliminated as well, replaced in newspeak by ‘plusgood’ and ‘doubleplusgood’. Synonyms become unnecessary, and the elasticity of language is thereby removed, as it becomes hardened and precise. And thereby beauty is removed, and man ceases to be creative.

This is exactly the problem with such a singleness of definition of the word ‘black’, of changing its every usage so that it always connotes goodness. Black, as it happens, is sometimes used with evil connotations, but sometimes not. Context, as ever, determines the meaning and usage. Black sometimes connotes trouble or evil, as is the case with bblackballing, blacklisting, blackmail, and so forth. But sometimes black is merely a color, and sometimes a desirable color. Black may be chosen to highlight interior design. A black refrigerator, a black picture frame, a black countertop do not connote anything troublesome, because of context. Because of the elasticity of language.

But black is also invariably used to refer to utter darkness as well, whether figuratively or in physical space. A starless night is black. And this is not, in this case, literally interchangeable with whiteness. Light is white. And so the elasticity of language only goes so far. Daytime is never dark, except when an ominous storm approaches. And when light is removed, the result is darkness, utter darkness, black of night. This is embedded in the fabric of nature. Sometimes black means trouble or evil, but sometimes not. Yet black never means daylight. And this is not racist, it is simply language at work. If we worry that all ordinary usages of blackness might be charged with racism, and so must be reprogrammed somehow, we constrict language and mitigate its elasticity. A black man is not someone white people would instinctively call evil, because we all understand the elasticity of language. For all we know, Jesus may have been a black man, or at least of a dark complexion. Was he evil? Certainly not!

Indeed the very charge of systemic racism turns out to be sinful and wrong. It descends into the very pit that it would have us all avoid. It judges people by the sheer color of their skin, although in reverse. Whiteness, for the critical race theorist, is something to be repented of. In truth the original problem with racism was not even a distaste for the color black, but actually a kind of xenophobia. People were disliked because they were different in appearance, and that was unjust and wrong. And it still is to this day, which is a primary problem with critical race theory.

And the latest iteration of critical race theory is that it also fails to understand language. It fails to distinguish the usages and elasticity of language. When it comes to physical characteristics embedded differently and severally into the pigmentation of human skin, the language of black and white is innocuous, as innocuous as whether I say that I have a black or a white washing machine. But when it comes to poetic or figurative usage, we know that to blackmail or blacklist someone is to cheat him because the deed was done under the cover of secrecy, of darkness.

It’s fascinating that nature itself, with Scripture, bears out this elasticity of language even in the creation of the world and its account. God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  The darkness was dispersed. And this physical fact is often used to denote the difference between good and bad. “We know that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5). “I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering” (Isaiah 50:3). To the wicked “is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever” (Jude 13). Figuratively light is good, because physically it is also good. The way the world was made lends itself perfectly to the Biblical metaphoric language.

And beauty, including beautiful elastic language, is unquestionably good, because God is himself beautiful (Psalm 27:4). And so also, language is divine: God spoke and the world was created, before any man said a word. And because man was created in God’s image, man also spoke: whatsoever Adam called each creature, that was its name (Genesis 2:19). But when man fell, he did so because he believed the serpent’s lie (why the serpent was given leave to speak is a topic for another day), and so he began to lie himself. And among his lies now is this: that language must be constricted and lose its elasticity in order to correct “systemic racism.” To take away these things is to remove the beauty of the created order, and dreadfully to misunderstand the gift that language is.