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Episodes
Tuesday May 25, 2021
Tuesday May 25, 2021
It seems like every generation has had to deal with this question: Why are we losing people? And since Covid, the question is becoming all the more intense. In this episode, Larry Peters (pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Clarksville, TN) discusses what he sees from his vantage point . . . from the pulpit over the past forty years. Peters writes at http://pastoralmeanderings.blogspot.com.
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Tuesday May 18, 2021
Tuesday May 18, 2021
In this episode, Ben Ball (pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Chruch, Hamel, IL, and Sixth VP of LCMS) walks us through the history and import of the Feast of Pentecost. We begin in the Old Testament where the feast is first commanded and its connection to the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai and how the giving of the Spirit by the Word of the Gospel is the fulfillment of this. Ben then takes us through the connections to the Tower of Babel and the Gospel reading. This feast, as Ben describes it, is a feast for our times, for it teaches us that Jesus reigns by his Word over all things.
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Monday May 17, 2021
Monday May 17, 2021
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
When I first became a Lutheran at age 18 in 1982, our congregation had two hymnals in the pew: The elder statesman of the Lutheran world: The Lutheran Hymnal (1941) and a little red new generation paperback volume called Worship Supplement (1969). We would soon ditch the TLH for the green Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) - the joint project with the churches that became the ELCA, and which was rejected by the Missouri Synod - over the objection of the congregation’s Worship Committee, which recommended the adoption of the LCMS-approved variation of LBW, the blue Lutheran Worship (1982). I don’t know all of the political machinations of the congregation, but I did later learn that the senior pastor had authored a resolution that the Missouri Synod join the ELCA. Maybe that had something to do with the congregation being strapped with the ***A hymnal for many years.
Being a new Lutheran, I actually read through the TLH and the WS. The rubrics in TLH, which more resembled Adam’s loincloth than the historic vestments of the church - were bolstered by more detail in WS as to how to worship as a Lutheran.
Like the 1966 Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, WS was a mixed bag: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. But in the interest of starting with the Law and ending with the Gospel, let’s look at them in reverse order…
The Ugly
The ugly would include things such as the horrible rewording of the Lord’s Prayer. This was, after all, the year of Woodstock. I think some of the folks on the Commission on Worship (COW) had been tripping on some bad acid while listening to Country Joe and the Fish’s “Vietnam Song.” This is an example of pure progressivism: change for change’s sake. Even the option for the version of the Our Father that English speakers of every liturgical denomination has said for 500 nearly years was excised. And our liturgical overlords were very determined on this point. The boomers tried for more years than the Beatles were together to foist this “New and Improved - Now How Much Would You Pay” verbiage on a church that didn’t want it. A modernized version of the Lord’s prayer made it to LBW and LW, as like unto cockroaches, it proved hard to exterminate, but was finally put out of our Missouri in the latest hymnal, Lutheran Service Book (2006). It seems like the Commission on Worship had, by this point, gone through rehab, kicked the habit, and had come to Jesus. The traditional wording hath won the victory. Thanks be to God.
The other “ugly” is the introduction of the Reformed ceremony of the fraction in The Holy Eucharist II (page 61). Again, LSD is the only reasonable explanation. Just say no, kids.
The Bad
The Bad parts include the goofy pictographs indicating the rubrics for when to sit, stand, or kneel. I think this was about the same time when international road signs with stick figures were making their grand debut, and who knows how confusing the words “sit” and “stand” and “kneel” would be as rubrics in a hymnal? Again, the modern COW - no longer on its dope bender - has seen the light, as these silly ideograms have been replaced by plain English in LSB. After all, if English was good enough for King James and Jesus…
Also, the COW aped the papacy and the Green New Deal, I mean, the Novus Ordo, by introducing the Holy Handshake ritual. Sometimes, this is called the “passing of the peace” - but to me, it is like passing a kidney stone.
Another Bad is more along the lines of inexplicable: there is no confession of the Creed in Holy Eucharist II and III. There is no explanation for this.
The Good
The Good includes the restoration of the word “catholic” in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds (which was deep-sixed by the Blue Hymnal Boys). Also a Good is the rubric for the sign of the cross at the crescendo of both creeds in which we boldly confess the resurrection. The Nicene Creed includes the restoration of the first person plural “We believe…” instead of the first person singular “I believe…” This is how the Creed was written, and how it was confessed by the Church for centuries. It is not our individual confession only, which is implied by our modern American penchant for “I believe…” but is rather the Church’s collective confession - “We believe.” This change did not survive the transition from LBW to LW - itself a mélange of Good, Bad, and Ugly.
The inclusion of the prayer offices of Prime, Noonday, and Compline are indeed very good. The COW renamed the Office of Sext to “Noonday.” This was, after all, the year after the Summer of Love. I suppose they didn’t want to give people ideas about some new form of contemporary worship. The Office of Compline is one of the greatest additions to our hymnals’ services - and LBW/LW rounded it out with its inclusion of traditional chant tones and extended rubrics. Compline got its toe in the door and was reintroduced into the North American Lutheran life by its inclusion in WS.
One of the best features is the “Suggestions for the Worshiper” on pages 15-16. It consists of rubrics for the laity, and goes into more detail than did its equivalent in TLH on page 4. This section explains the sign of the cross, and gives instructions for doing it. It encourages crossing oneself “at the Trinitarian Invocation, at the last phrase of the Creed, before and after receiving the elements of Holy Communion, and at the Benediction.” Such rubrics actually help in the restoration of liturgical practice in American Lutheranism, as it will placate some “concerns” that “people are having, pastor (but I can’t say who)” that this stuff is “too Catholic.” After all, if CPH says it’s okay, it must be okay. At least some people will accept the imprimatur of the Holy Office of the Publishing House from the Violet Vatican. Others will still demur, but a half glass is better than an empty glass, as Gottesblog’s whiskey-drinkers believe, teach, and confess.
This section also includes rubrics for bowing:
“on entering the church, during the first half of the Gloria Patri, on approaching the altar for Holy Communion, and on leaving the pew after the conclusion of the service. Bowing more deeply or kneeling is customary at the words of the Nicene Creed ‘he was born… and became man.’ Bowing only the head is appropriate at any mention of the sacred name of Jesus, especially where this occurs in the Creed.”
I learned the profound little prayer upon receiving the elements from this section, a variation of which I still say as the celebrant:
Lord, I am not worthy that You have come under my roof, but only say the word, and Your servant will be healed.
These rubrics also teach the reader to confess his “Amen” when receiving the elements after the pastor has said, “The body of Christ” and “The blood of Christ.”
This Worship Supplement’s rubrical catechesis shaped my piety as a new Lutheran attending Divine Service. Inexplicably to me, precious few in the pews actually followed these rubrics. But some did.
There is also “A Form of Private Confession and Absolution” including helpful rubrics. There was no such liturgy in TLH.
Another enhancement of TLH is the fact that the pastor’s chant tones are indicated, thus giving the celebrant “permission” to chant the liturgy - something that was missing in TLH. I’ve heard several theories, such as the World War II paper shortage or a hurried effort to publish the book, but people often make such assertions with no evidence. The TLH version of the Pastor’s Chant Tones did come out as a separate volume a couple years later, but by that time, the weird hybrid of the pastor speaking and the congregation chanting had already calcified, like clogged arteries. Some pastors are still accused of secret Romanism to this very day if they chant their parts of the liturgy - even though our hymnals have indicated these chant tones now since the days of John Cougar’s “Hurts So Good,” Asia’s “Heat of the Moment,” and Van Halen’s “Pretty Woman.” That’s almost 40 years, as long as the Israelites wandered in the desert. And we know what the purpose of that timeframe was.
Maybe some of our members of a certain age see LSB as a Russian conspiracy to put us back under the pope. OK boomers.
Perhaps the best Good of the Worship Supplement is the hymn section. So much of the hymnody that we now take for granted was introduced to North American Lutherans by this resource. And, believe it or not, many of these hymns are stronger versions than what eventually filtered its way into LSB - including some hymns that retain gendered language and even Elizabethan English. Apparently, not everyone was dropping acid. There were clearly a few Nixon voters in the old COW
Some of the “new” hymns include:
Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending
Creator of the Stars of Night
O Savior, Rend the Heavens Wide
O Come, All Ye Faithful
Angels We Have Heard on High
Let All Together Praise Our God
In Dulci Jubilo (in Latin and English)
Gentle Mary Laid Her Child
What Child is This
O Wondrous Type! O Vision Fair
My Song is Love Unknown
Sing, My Tongue, the Glorious Battle
At the Lamb’s High Feast We Sing
With High Delight, Let Us Unite
O Sons and Daughters of the King
The Victimae Paschali Celebration (LSB: Christians, to the Pascal Victim)
This Joyful Eastertide
I Bind Unto Myself Today
Thy Strong Word Did Cleave the Darkness
O Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High
Son of God, Eternal Savior
Holy Spirit, Ever Dwelling
From All Thy Saints in Warfare (LSB: For All Your Saints in Warfare)
In Adam We Have All Been One
Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence
In Thee is Gladness
Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise
God of Grace and God of Glory
Before the Ending of the Day
There are also improved tunes for some hymns, such as:
Hark! A Thrilling Voice is Sounding
The Royal Banners Forward Go
Come Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain
Lord God, Thy Praise We Sing (Luther’s antiphonal Te Deum)
One glorious hymn that was introduced in WS, made it to LW, but did not make the cut in LSB is:
O Kingly Love, That Faithfully
So although Worship Supplement is largely forgotten, like the fact that a band named Quill played Woodstock - there seems to be no relation to the eponymous Fort Wayne professor - it has been influential in the shaping of our worship in the LCMS. It has retired and sits on pastor’s shelves, only being thumbed through for the sake of nostalgia or research. And like the 1960s itself, it is a mixed bag.
And so as a tribute to Worship Supplement, here is a video of the earworm that we are all hearing right now.
You’re welcome.
Wednesday May 12, 2021
Wednesday May 12, 2021
In this episode, Fritz Eckardt (pastor of St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, Kewanee, IL, and Editor-in-Cheif of Gottesdienst: The Journal of Lutheran Liturugy) and I discuss his Easter 2021 Liturgical Observer column: Maskless: Seeing the Pastor as a Man. Scripture is clear that men are to fill the office of the ministry, but Fritz asks the question: Why? Here we look at the lex in search of a ratio.
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Wednesday May 05, 2021
Wednesday May 05, 2021
In this episode, we discuss The Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord. Why do we celebrate it? How is this feast pivotal to our lives as Christians waiting for and eagerly anticipating Christ's return in glory? Why did he go away? And in departing, does that mean he is truly absent? And if not, how is he with us now. You will see just how profound and glorious this feast is as Rick Stuckwisch (pastor of Emmaus Lutheran Church, South Bend, IN, and Departmental Editor of Gottesdienst: The Journal of Lutheran Liturgy) answers these questions and more.
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Monday May 03, 2021
Monday May 03, 2021
Congregation
Rod Dreher is either a genius or too much of a pessimist.
He writes for The American Conservative, and is also a prolific Christian philosopher. I’ve been reading his recently published Live Not by Lies, and I recommend it. I hope it’s not prophetic, because if it is, we’re in for a rough span of years, such as the Russians endured for some 70 years. I have to admit, I found myself nodding my head and grunting agreement to no one in particular. He has interviewed Russians who remember when the Bolshevik revolution was beginning to foment, and who then endured 1917, the Red Terror, and the ensuing oppressive years of the communist regime. And, looking at our culture, he sees remarkable similarities, while admitting that there are some key differences. I see the differences too, and we can hope they’re significant enough to keep us from sliding into a totalitarian abyss. Theirs was a hard totalitarianism, ours is creepingly soft—and creepy. He put it like this in an article I also recently read: “Unlike the Bolsheviks, who were hardened revolutionaries, SJWs get their way not by shedding blood but by shedding tears.” But maybe, hopefully, enough people today are awake than are woke, and can somehow stem the tide. Russia had suffered through some very real times of dreadful trouble leading up to the revolution, very much greater than the societal crises that we have been wading through of late. Today’s SJWs are manufacturing trouble we might be able to expose, if enough of us are willing. As I said, we can hope.
There are nevertheless some very troubling changes that have marked our society. One thing we have clearly been losing, and nobody seems to notice or care much, is community. The company of other people. Family. Congregation.
It’s been a long, slow erosion. One could say it began when families began to be taught that smaller is better. That goes back to the mid-20th century with the onset of birth control, with which came the great societal deception by which virtually everyone began to believe that if your family got too large, you’d be in for a world of hurt. You wouldn’t be able to afford it; you’d somehow find yourself in desperate need. And so the ideal family size shrank to four. Five was ok, but six was getting out of hand. The baby boom was really nothing of the kind; it was mostly a contrast from what followed. Families had shrunk, and it happened in such a way that large families—of Catholics, mostly—were looked upon with a subtle shaking of the head. That was the beginning.
Then came the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Engineered by widespread birth control, by now people had learned that maybe they didn’t need families at all. A libertine and hedonistic ideal began to grow on young people, though it was imperfect in the sense that sometimes you could get in trouble. Now, as never before, pregnancies were likely to be considered unwanted rather than celebrated. And along came Roe v. Wade, and the abortion floodgates opened. A culture of death had arrived, and it was scarcely noticed. Infants were being massacred, but it was hid in the antiseptic abortion mills that were kept largely out of the news.
And a sense of community continued to flag.
Then along came the Internet. So widely celebrated a thing it was, benefitting everyone, and without any of the strings of immorality attached. We all learned to love the Internet.
But there was a silent price to pay. Soon social media became the replacement for real gatherings, and a new wave of isolation so subtle washed over society that we didn’t even know we were drowning. Today’s electronics and technical advancements have brought us to the place where we enjoy our immersion in them. Not only ubiquitous TVs, but smart phones too.
And then came COVID. Now, somehow by a diabolical sleight of hand, community was suddenly considered immoral, by a soft totalitarianist inculcation in which great swatches of humanity began to believe. You must stay in your home. You must be socially distanced, or you might spread the disease! You might die! And you might be failing to love your neighbor, just by being with him. Yes, now loving your neighbor means staying away from him! And community is stamped out and lost.
I gasped the other day when I read a pitiful rationalization for online communion. We at Gottesdienst have already provided many reasons this is utterly unacceptable, but here’s another: It’s isolationist, if I may coin a term.
Here’s how the argument goes. Online communion can happen responsibly, by Zoom, because everyone is “in the room.” The pastor can see them all. The pastor speaks the words of consecration while you have your own personal bread and wine in your little square, your little part of the computer screen in front of you, and voila! - you can get your communion right there in your home. This is a Christian “gathering,” an internet gathering, don’t you know! It’s a chat room. We’re all together.
Only we’re not.
Everyone is entirely isolated. Everyone is alone. And there’s no congregation at all. And everyone is even fooled into thinking it’s desirable.
We seem to have forgotten what that word means: congregation. It’s a gathering, a real gathering of real people, physically, in the same room. It has to be. Cyber space is not real space. You might even be sitting there in your pajamas, though maybe with a decent shirt on, because that’s the part the other people will see on their screens. But more to the point, look at a Zoom screen. What do you see? Boxes, cubicles, and everyone is separate. Separated, more accurately.
How do we turn back this dreadful trend, this horrid new reality?
First, I’d suggest, by recognizing it for what it is. And then, I’d also suggest, by simply learning to treasure the real presence of real other people. Get off your cell phone and get out into your own backyard, even. Talk to the neighbor over the fence, whom maybe you haven’t seen since COVID began. Disregard the doomsday prognosticators who have fooled you into thinking that isolation is good. And gather.
And remember your family, too. Cherish them. Take time to be with them, physically, really.
Love one another. Live with one another. Even if only subtly, by small increments. Reject the “new normal,” even if only in this small way.
And come back to church.
Remember the marvelous Good Friday collect: “Almighty God, we beseech Thee graciously to behold this Thy family . . .” Whatever it takes, come back. And if the government should oppress you for doing so, then congregate secretly if you must (as they used to do in the first century). At least—at the very least—learn to yearn for this company, especially the company of your fellow Christians. They need you beside them in the pew, and you need them too.
I pray that Rod Dreher is not a prophet. But it’s abundantly clear to me that even without the dreadful depths into which our society could yet fall, we have already fallen in ways we haven’t even noticed. Well, then, let’s notice them. And let’s learn again to want to be together. And especially to believe in the congregation of saints.
Saturday May 01, 2021
Saturday May 01, 2021
The Age of First Communion, Questioning, and the Mouths of Babes
We commune children at Redeemer. Some people don’t like that. They think that children aren’t intellectually or spiritually capable of examining themselves before puberty. They think somewhere around the end of 8th grade is the best time the right time for first communion, a time that happens to be precisely the moment when most world cultures have some rite of passage to indicate that children are no longer children.
Some of these critics have explained to me the glory days. In those days, I am told, confirmation really meant something. It wasn’t the sort of thing that a 6 year old could master and recite the way that they do the Catechism. That being said, these critics themselves never seem to be able to recite the Catechism, even though the children are doing it, nor do they ever seem to know more than a few Bible passages by heart and maybe the 23rd Psalm.
I simply tell that however rigorous and demanding their instruction was, it doesn’t seem to have been very effective. After all, they learned other things in those years, like the long division and the capitals of the States, that they still remember, but they don’t remember much from Confirmation instruction except that it was a great feat and serious.
For my part, I have no desire for the children to remember the rigors of their instruction or how stern and demanding I was, or how much memory work they had. I just want them to remember the actual memory work beyond the day after Questioning and I want them to receive the benefits that Christ has promised to His children for their faith in the Holy Communion.
To that end, we held questioning about a week ago at Redeemer. One of the confirmands, who had already been admitted to the Altar in the rite of First Communion, has downs syndrome. Strangely, none of the critics of early communion ever seem to think that a down syndrome child should have the holy communion withheld from him when he reaches the appropriate age, that is, around the end of 8th grade, even though he might only have the spiritual, emotional, and intellectual maturity and capacity of a 6-year old. In any case, this young man stood with his brothers and sister as they recited the entire catechism, word-for-word, even though he never uttered a syllable until the very end when I asked him who, it is that we worship, since his answer to most every question in this context is “God.” This time he simply said: “Me. Tom Brady” as he pantomimed throwing a football.
But before that endearing response, while the other children recited, he stood statue-like and was silent, except for when I asked them what the Words of Institution were. Then, while the recited the words, without any coaching and by complete surprise, he pantomined the ceremony of the celebrant right in time with the words. When the children said “took bread” he moved his hands from the prayer position to point to a couple of places before him. When they said “this is My Body” he made the sign of the cross over those spaces. After they said “in remembrance of me” he pretended to elevate the host. Then when they said “too the cup” he again pointed to a couple of places and made the sign of the cross over them at the words “in My Blood,” and again elevated an imaginary chalice after “in remembrance of me” before he made the sign of the cross over us all.
Does that mean he can examine himself? Of course it does. What else could it mean?
Friday Apr 30, 2021
Friday Apr 30, 2021
The Sacred and the Profane
From time to time, Lutherans mock other Lutherans for being overly careful regarding dealing with consecrated elements so as to avoid their profanation. In one recent discussion, a Lutheran pastor wrote:
I understand being reverent, but some of the specific piety is overkill, to the point where the point of the meal is missed. Do you really think if a morsel of bread is dropped to the floor, God in heaven is angry?
Of course, it’s revealing that he sought to minimize the offense by describing the “morsel” not as the body of Christ, but as “bread.” As if we were talking about an errant crumb from a Subway Spicy Italian six-inch sub instead of the flesh of the Creator of the Universe - well, if you believe that sort of thing, I suppose. And for the record, nobody suggested that this had anything to do with God’s wrath.
I have often read mockery directed toward fastidiousness regarding the consecrated elements, as if such caution was something to be avoided or held up to ridicule.
How different from our fathers in the faith, including Drs. Luther and Bugenhagen (in an incident quoted by Edward Frederick Peters, The Origin and Meaning of the Axiom: “Nothing Has the Character of a Sacrament Outside of the Use” [Fort Wayne, Indiana: Concordia Theological Seminary Press, 1993], p. 191):
[In 1542, in Wittenberg] a woman wanted to go to the Lord’s Supper, and then as she was about to kneel on the bench before the altar and drink, she made a misstep and jostled the chalice of the Lord violently with her mouth, so that some of the Blood of Christ was spilled from it onto her lined jacket and coat and onto the rail of the bench on which she was kneeling. So then when the reverend Doctor Luther, who was standing at a bench opposite, saw this, he quickly ran to the altar (as did also the reverend Doctor Bugenhagen), and together with the curate, with all reverence licked up [the Blood of Christ from the rail] and helped wipe off this spilled Blood of Christ from the woman’s coat, and so on, as well as they could. And Doctor Luther took this catastrophe so seriously that he groaned over it and said, “O, God, help!” and his eyes were full of water.
I wonder how many modern pastors would mock Luther - or even one of their contemporary brethren - for licking the spilled blood of Christ from the communion rail.
And this was not the only time Dr. Luther licked up the spilled blood of the Lord. As Fr. William Weedon wrote back in 2007, referring to a sixteenth century account by Johann Hachenburg:
Or consider how, when he spilled the chalice and it fell to the floor, he carefully set the chalice back on the altar and got on his hands and knees and lapped it up off the floor like a dog - upon which the congregation burst into tears.
I believe that our sense of the separation between the sacred and the profane has degraded since the days of our fathers in the faith. And this is understandable. For us 21st century Americans, we routinely see churches that look less like churches and more like strip malls or concert halls. Church music is increasingly secularized. Vestments are often downplayed, and the sense that worship is “set apart” from the common, ordinary life is increasingly minimalized and marginalized, if not outright combined and conjoined.
It makes one cringe to hear pastors and well-catechized laity refer to the consecrated elements as “bread” and “wine” instead of what they are by virtue of the miracle of encountering our Lord’s Word: the very body and blood of Christ. Of course, they are also bread and wine. It is a both/and and not an either/or. But in the same way that one would speak of one’s own child as one’s “son” or “daughter” as opposed to describing him as “some kid.” Of course, your own child is “some kid,” but what would cause a parent to speak in this way, ignoring the more sublime reality to settle on a technically-true generality?
But I believe that we are seeing a much more general trend in the failure to discern the sacred from the profane.
I recently had a commenter on my Facebook timeline use a certain expression of profanity that was very crass and vulgar. When I asked him to refrain, given that I’m a pastor and that I do have ladies and children who will see it, he was rather agitated.
What I found most amazing is that he is a proud Southerner. And traditional Southern culture is one of chivalry. Southern men of every socioeconomic level are traditionally raised to show deference to ladies and to children - especially by a desire to assist and to refrain from giving offense. Southern men can indeed curse with the best of their Yankee counterparts - and they do. But it has always been a hallmark of our region to make a distinction in matters of speech and manners. And when a man doesn’t make such a distinction, it is supposed that he “wasn’t raised right.” And of course, I’m being a bit tongue-in-cheek, as all regions of the country used to display such deference. It has always been stressed in Southern culture.
And this sense of distinction is what holiness is - to set apart, to remove one’s sandals on holy ground, to bow to the ground before God, and to adorn the places where God physically appears differently than one would decorate a common, ordinary living area.
The distinction between the sacred and the profane has been muddled in our modern age, and especially in the last couple decades. Words that used to be off-limits on broadcast television are routinely used. Topics addressed in commercials are now wide-open, with no sense that some things should not be discussed in front of children.
My Southern friend worded his defense of using any level of profanity whenever and wherever he liked in a curious way. I asked him if he would use such language in front of his mother, or his children, or in church, or at Bible class. His response was telling:
If I had children I would encourage them to speak how they feel not what is excepted [sic], freedom of speech is freedom of speech there is no exception and I would expect my children and grown adults to be comfortable speaking their minds freely!! I’m not for everyone and as far as church is conscerned [sic] wherever my feet are planted is my church and God is always my guide.
Of course, if he had children, he might see things differently, but then again, maybe not. I often hear parents saying the most vulgar things in front of even very small children, and it is distressing that from a young age, children are not learning boundaries. They are taught that the way we conduct ourselves in the gym, the playground, or the locker-room is the same as we carry ourselves in church, at a funeral, or at a formal dinner.
Interestingly, he openly makes no distinction between a holy place, like a church, and “wherever [his] feet are planted.” In his worldview, God doesn’t make such distinctions either.
Moreover, in the larger culture, the way we treat women is the same way that we treat men - because after all, there is no distinction between the sexes. All religions are also the same. To most people, bread that has been consecrated is just like bread that hasn’t been. A church building is no holier than a parking garage (because God is everywhere).
On a side note, this downplaying of, and opposition to, distinctions is a hallmark of Gnosticism. This point is driven home in the Fr. Peter Burfeind’s book: Gnostic America: A Reading of Contemporary American Culture & Religion according to Christianity's Oldest Heresy.
We are increasingly unable to make distinctions and to discern between that which is common and that which is holy. For us Lutherans, as sacramental Christians whose confession is that Christ is physically present in the blessed elements, we really need to double down in what we say and do with regard to that which is holy, lest we contribute to the trend of profanation, and thereby give the impression that we don’t believe what our Lord clearly told us in the Words of Institution.
And if we’re not going to be cautious with the holy things - as much as we would be cautious with caustic chemicals or high voltage electricity - then what do we really believe about what holiness is? Or more basic than that, what do we believe regarding what Jesus teaches us?
Maybe that is the question we really need to be addressing: What do we believe?
Thursday Apr 29, 2021
Thursday Apr 29, 2021
Wrestling With the Saints
In a discussion about praying to the dead, a Roman Catholic FB friend was critical of a Protestant FB friend. They went back and forth while I scooped popcorn into my mouth and enjoyed the show. Full contact theology is way more entertaining than MMA fights that inevitably become grappling on the floor, and you don’t have to pay for cable. Real theological debate is more lively, like the old Big Time Wrestling that my cousins and I used to watch on Saturday mornings.
The Roman Catholic guy went for the takedown:
The Catholic [sic] Church endorses both prayer for the dead to get into heaven and to the righteous dead to make our case before God. I know this is anathema to you because it is not in your Bible. It used to be, but Luther kicked Maccabees out of the Protestant Bible and called it a nasty name --- Apocrypha--- thing about which there is doubt. It was part of scripture at the Time of Jesus. It appears to me that Luther did that because he disagreed with its teaching. Can a murderer get rid of the 7th commandment? No. So, I have Maccabees. You have Luther kicking it out. Not sure what else you have saying Maccabees is bad. I am confident we will find out who is right on the last day.
At this point, I threw down my tub of popcorn with yellow grease, grabbed a folding chair, and jumped into the ring. For a moment I was back to my childhood with my aunts and cousins in a smoke-filled Akron Armory, watching men in tights pretend to fight each other to the roar of the drunken crowd.
But I didn’t fight dirty, unless telling the truth is considered out of bounds. I replied:
2 Maccabees is quoted in our Confessions three times, and is explicitly called "Scripture." Our confessions also quote the Book of Tobit (four times). The Apocrypha was published in all Lutheran Bibles until they began to speak English and bought Bibles from the Protestants. Russian Lutheran Bibles also include these books, and the Russian Lutherans refer to them as deuterocanonical.
Moreover, the passage you are referring to (2 Macc 15:14) says that the dead pray - not that we pray to them. We Lutherans certainly confess that the dead pray for us (Apology 21:9). Our issue is that there is nothing in Scripture indicating that we are to pray to them or that they can even hear our prayers.
The early church - and indeed the Roman Church until Trent - made a distinction between the Greek Old Testament books (which we call the Apocrypha, and which you call Deuterocanon) and the Hebrew - just as the early church (as do Lutherans) distinguish between the New Testament books known as the Antilegomena and the Homolegoumena. The early church did not draw doctrine solely from the witness of the Antilegomena or the Greek OT books (Apocrypha/Deuterocanon), whether from the Old or New Testaments, but required additional witness.
It was only at the Council of Trent - which the papal church refused to call until after Luther's death - that the deuterocanonical books were received as equal witnesses to the rest of Scripture.
And so it is the Lutherans whose treatment of Scripture aligns with the fathers, and it is Rome who changed and innovated.
I get that we are in disagreement, but as Christians we are called to be honest in stating what our opponents believe. The great St. Thomas Aquinas is a stellar example of this kind of precision in argumentation.
And then, after making an appeal to fight fair, I cracked him over the head with my chair, smashed his face into the turnbuckle, and held him down for the pin - but of course, the referee was distracted, and I only got a two-count. Some guy called “The Inquisitor” climbed into the ring, snuck up on me, and knocked me out cold. That’s the last I remember.
But my aunts and cousins thought it was a good show.
Wednesday Apr 28, 2021
Wednesday Apr 28, 2021
In this episode, we discuss Rogation Days. We look at the history and practice of Rogation Days. We listen to Luther's advice on observing them rightly, and talk about how one might in our current context bring this practice back so that our people are instructed in prayer and faith to ask God for mercy, help, and protection from every calamity of body and soul and where we find this mercy, help, and protection. Mark Braden (pastor of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, Detroit, MI, and Departmental Editor of Gottesdienst: The Journal of Lutheran Liturgy) joins us for this discussion.
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