The Gottesdienst Crowd

[Gottesblog] Roy G Biv — Larry Beane

ROY G BIV

Now that it is June, we’re seeing a lot of so-called rainbow flags.

In the City of New Orleans, this is nothing new. We have an entire section of Bourbon Street in which nearly all of the bars fly the so-called rainbow flag year-round. Harrah’s Casino always displays the various flags that flew over New Orleans in her 300-year history. Well, almost. One is missing. It represented the period of Southern independence. That flag has been replaced by, you guessed it, the so-called rainbow flag. Not to be accused of insufficient praise for the June honorees (and I don’t mean blushing brides), the City does put up some extra so-called rainbow banners (now even more inclusive!) on Rampart Street for the month of June. One of the area’s hospitals used to fly the so-called rainbow flag beneath the state flag of Louisiana for the entire month. Last year, if memory serves, it was only up for a day and then disappeared. I don’t know what the plan is for 2021. But I imagine there is a lot of pressure to put it back up. After all, it is 2021.

At any rate, I keep saying “so-called rainbow” because this “rainbow” is deficient. It is actually an ideal symbol for sexuality that deviates from the natural biological kind as reflected in natural law and the revealed will of God. And it is also a matter of science, that is, if you believe in such things as biology. The symbol that has come to stand for The Acronym: (LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQ+, LGBTQIAA, LGBTTQQIAAP, LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP, and LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM) is actually not the rainbow. For hopefully we all remember the mnemonic ROY G BIV: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Seven colors. But take a look at the so-called rainbow flag. It only has six colors.

Seven is the biblical number of completeness. It represents the fullness of the week of creation. It represents six days of work plus a sabbath rest. But six falls short. Six is the biblical number of incompleteness. The triple six is the mark of the beast, a parody of the Trinity.

And there could be no more appropriate symbol for the various sexualities that fall short of how God created mankind. For God created mankind in His image in a beautiful binary of male and female, with a mandate to “be fruitful and multiply.” What binds together all of the various letters in The Acronym is that all fall short of the glory of God, insofar as none of them can bring children into the world, and none of them reflects the divine complementarity between male and female. All of these deviations from His order of creation fly in the face of biological science and nature.

Another name for the so-called rainbow flag is the “pride flag.” Pride is the first of the traditional Seven Deadly Sins. It was Satan’s pride that preceded his fall. It was his appeal to pride that led Adam and Eve astray. But Satan’s temptation to pride failed to cause our Lord to stumble. And in fact, Jesus “emptied Himself” and took “the form of a servant,” and “He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” His ultimate act of love was the very opposite of pride.

As the kids say, “Love wins.”

The real rainbow, not the parody, is truly a symbol of inclusion. For “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” All is the most inclusive word of all. And the passage continues that this same all “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” The rainbow was given as a sign of God’s mercy after His judgment of mankind at the flood. So the rainbow, the true rainbow, the seven-colored rainbow that appears in the clouds - is a sign of inclusion and acceptance by God of all sinners who confess their sins and cry out to the Lord for His absolution. The waters of the flood remind us of the Law that calls us to repent, and the rainbow that appeared at the end of the ordeal is a reminder of the Gospel, the Good News that Jesus died for us - for all of us.

Don’t let pride get in the way of God’s grace. And don’t be fooled into thinking that there is no consequence for sin. Rather ask for God’s mercy that you may be forgiven and given the grace to resist the devil, even as our Lord did.

While the rainbow is not, strictly speaking, a sacrament, it is a physical manifestation of God’s grace, and thus it is sacramental. Luther wrote:

[I]t is an error to hold that the sacraments of the New Law differ from those of the Old Law in the effectiveness of their signs. For in this respect they are the same. The same God who now saves us by baptism and the bread, saved Abel by his sacrifice, Noah by the rainbow, Abraham by circumcision, and all the others by their respective signs. So far as signs are concerned, there is no difference between a sacrament of the Old Law and one of the New, provided that by the Old Law you mean that which God did among the patriarchs and other fathers in the days of the Law. ~ AE 36:65

So in the month of June, look upon the so-called rainbow flag as representing an incompleteness, but look to the heavens for a sign of the completeness of God’s mercy. And then look to the Church’s confession of the Word of God, and gather with your fellow “poor miserable sinners” where we are forgiven, and where the same water that was an instrument of God’s wrath is now a sacrament of His grace.

May the seven colors of the rainbow remind us of the completeness of God’s love and mercy, and may this sign ever be an encouragement for us to live lives of gratitude in His grace.

[Gottesblog] Pop Goes the Liturgy — Larry Beane

Pop Goes the Liturgy

“it [sic] think it would be awesome to hear rap in [the] worship service, especially if the context calls for it and it communicates the Gospel in a way the community will hear it.”

— COMMENTER AT THE LCMS FACEBOOK PAGE

“I agree 100%. It would be awesome in a worship service. It’s communicating the gospel incarnationally in the cultural context of the community. However, it would need to be in the right context, because some congregations have shallow, exclusive, self-focused worship where their faith is a compartmentalized part of their life outside of the culture to which they belong.”

— REPLY TO THE ABOVE COMMENT

Modern pop music arguably began with jazz in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Jazz gave way to rock and roll in the 1950s. Rock music evolved quickly into many subgenres over the next few decades. Today’s pop music is dominated by rap. But one thing that remains constant is the fact that there are those who desire to bring pop music into the Divine Service.

Here in Louisiana, Jazz Masses (and even funerals) are popular among Roman Catholics. Among Lutherans in the Wisconsin, there are Lutheran churches that conduct Polka Services. And who can forget the pinnacle of Boomer Worship: the Chicago Folk Service? Rumor has it that the CIA had been using it to interrogate suspected terrorists. I don’t believe it, though. Not even the CIA would violate the Geneva Convention so brashly.

Kyrie eleison, indeed!

And then there are the Episcopalians leading the way with the Beatles Mass (complete with John Lennon’s ode to Communism and Atheism: “Imagine.” The Beatles Mass was championed by an ELCA “pastor” named Megan Rohrer, who has recently made headlines by being the first transgender “bishop.” He was formerly one of the pastors at Ebenezer Lutheran Church (Herchurch) in San Francisco, where God is addressed as the goddess, and where the Lord’s Prayer begins “Our Mother.”

For fans of U2, Episcopalian priestess Sarah Dylan Breuer has created a U2charist.

An Episcopal congregation, St. Mary’s - headed up by Mother Kim Culp, lists other services that they have done, including the above-mentioned U2charist and Beatles Mass, a Blue Grass Mass, Coldplay Mass, CASH Mass (featuring Johnny Cash music), and a Stevie Wonder Mass.

Of course, it goes without saying - which means I have to say it because there are always readers looking to tilt at straw men - that pop music is not in and of itself evil. Some of it is, some of it isn’t. It is what it is: entertainment. And it is entertainment that can indeed be thoughtful and intellectually stimulating. I remember many years ago one of our Gottesdienst editors - who is known for his intensity and excitability - waxing eloquent on how Led Zeppelin’s song “No Quarter” reflected themes related to the office of the holy ministry. Some of the early songs by the band Evanescence confessed Christian themes - as the former writer for the band was a Christian. The band Kansas’s Kerry Livgren is a Christian, and many of his compositions reflect the faith. He even fooled the unbeliever and dabbling Satanist Ronnie James Dio to record two songs with him in which the Christian confession is hard to miss: “To Live For the King” and “Mask of the Great Deceiver.” The Christian rock band Skillet gets airplay on secular stations as well. The list goes on.

There is nothing wrong with entertainment. It is a gift of God that brings families and friends closer together and brings joy to our lives. But our sinful flesh often corrupts things that are good, turning them into idols. Satan’s most effective tactics are those which blur the line between good and evil, or perhaps more accurately, introduce the leaven of the common into the loaf of the holy.

Holiness means separation.

Holiness is a wall that divides the divine from the ordinary. Christian worship is holy according to Scripture - that is, unless we have removed Exodus and Leviticus from the canon. God Himself teaches us about worship, how He would fill out His PIF if He were on the LCMS roster. There is indeed time in our daily lives for singing the glory of God “with trumpet sound… with lute and harp…. with tambourine and dance… with strings and pipe… with sounding cymbals” and “with loud clashing cymbals” - as we sing in Psalm 150. But then there are those times when God comes to us in His most holy presence, such as when Moses found himself at the burning bush, or Isaiah stood in the throne-room of God, the high priest’s entry into the Holy of Holies, and our Lord’s miraculous presence with us in His body and blood.

Can you imagine Moses holding up a lighter and screaming “Freebird!” when God revealed His name to him and told him to remove his sandals? Can you imagine Isaiah freestyling a hip-hop beat when the seraph approached him “having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar”? Can you imagine the high priest cheerfully whistling a hippy folk song while coming into proximity with the Ark of the Covenant on the Day of Atonement?

The reality is that we have lost touch with what holiness means. Most people would probably say that it means “being good” - however that is defined, whether by not drinking or dancing or playing cards, or by being appropriately politically-correct, sensitive, and concerned with “social justice.” And how often do we Lutherans take the Sacrament of the Altar for granted? How often do we fail to appreciate that a miracle happens at our altars? Of course, when pastors conduct the liturgy in a pedestrian or even slovenly way, when they behave like stand-up comedians or clowns, and when our churches schedule Sundays to not have the sacrament and then justify it because “it’s a lot of work for the volunteers” (I actually heard that as an explanation for deviating from our confessional standard of every-Sunday communion) - who can blame our laity for not considering the Divine Service to be a miracle?

And if it isn’t a real manifestation of God coming to us, why bother? Or to put it in the words of Flannery O’Connor, “If it’s only a symbol, to hell with it.” And when the people lose faith in what the plain Words of Institution teach us, that is when pastors and congregations (and even some in our hierarchy) turn to gimmicks, to rock and roll, rap, dancing, and other entertainments to hold the attention of the parishioners, to gin up emotion, and to “get the butts in the pews” with the kinds of things that draws a crowd in a stadium or concert hall.

We must not discount the power of entertainment, especially pop music. I have had several parishioners leave my congregation and join one of our local non-denominational churches that has a pop band and a stage instead of hymns and an altar. These former parishioners outright told me that they like the music better. There were no theological considerations driving them, no crisis of whether or not what we teach is true. One said, “I gotta have a beat to move my feet.” One parishioner - whom I had baptized along with her daughter - said that her daughter enjoyed “fun church” instead of our Divine Service. But in gaining entertainment, what did they give up? In other words, what was the cost of this Sunday morning rock show? These churches do not confess Baptismal regeneration. And for them, the Lord’s Supper (so-called) is indeed only a symbol. There is no confession and absolution. The giving up of these means through which God works miraculously in our lives was, to them, a price worth paying for a beat to move one’s feet.

In our culture, entertainment is king. It is our drug of choice. It is our 24-7 companion. It gives us the dopamine we need to get through life in these gray and latter days. It is as addictive as crack cocaine, but even easier to acquire. Even our news programs are entertainment. Our schools are entertainment. TV screens adorn the walls of our doctor’s offices, airports, banks, restaurants, auto-repair shops, and our phones. Why shouldn’t our churches likewise have screens on the sanctuary walls? Why shouldn’t our church services also be entertainment? If we are entertained 24-7, 365, why should there be a single hour on Sunday morning in which we aren’t being entertained?

At the heart of the matter, this is a First Commandment issue.

As George Thorogood famously posed the question - albeit with bad grammar: “Who do you love?”

[Gottesblog] The New Benedictines — Larry Beane

The New Benedictines

In 2017, author Rod Dreher wrote The Benedict Option: a Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation.

I’m not really a fan of Dreher. I find his writing to be whiny, his personality to be grating, and his claim to be a conservative to be dubious. One of my close friends refers to him seamlessly as The Insufferable Rod Dreher. I concur.

That said, I recommend The Benedict Option. I have also heard very good things about his latest offering, Live Not By Lies: a Manual for Christian Dissidents. In fact, Fr. Eckardt wrote about it recently.

When The Benedict Option came out, it was largely misunderstood by a lot of people in the LCMS. Some thought it was a kind of silver-bullet step-by-step program (proof of the LCMS’s tyranny of the bureaucracy). Others rolled their eyes at the idea of Christian community as an attempt to turn us into the Amish or a monastic community. Of course, many of these same moqueurs lived on a seminary campus for three years, immersed in the Bible, confessions, and patristic writings, with lives ordered by the centrality of the worship schedule of the chapel, study, time spent making lifelong bonds of brotherhood with seminarians and their families, and living a countercultural Logocentric and cruciform life, embracing biblical heteronormativity, an exclusively-male clergy, the order of creation in the family, and submission to the Word of God - not to mention putting on a black shirt with a white collar that confesses before the world that we who pursue this life are set apart from the world.

Seminary professors essentially live the Benedict Option, as their very homes, neighborhoods, employment, and day to day life are lived out in a tightly-knit Christian community that extends beyond the three years of campus life that is lived by the students. And this sense of community is a boon to both our professors and their students, which is to say, to our future pastors who are being formed for service.

Dreher came up with the title The Benedict Option based on philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s book After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory, in which the author calls to mind the lifestyle of Christians living in the days of the Roman Empire’s collapse - who essentially safeguarded and restarted civilization around the Rule of St. Benedict and the idea of Christian communities springing up in concentric circles around these Benedictine centers of Christian civilization, learning, worship, and community. In After Virtue, MacIntyre says that we in the present age are awaiting “another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.”

Dreher explains:

Today, a new post-Christian barbarism reigns. Many believers are blind to it, and their churches are too weak to resist. Politics offers little help in this spiritual crisis. What is needed is the Benedict Option, a strategy that draws on the authority of Scripture and the wisdom of the ancient church. The goal: to embrace exile from the mainstream culture and construct a resilient counterculture.

And so, he suggests that Christians should be more intentional about seeking out the likeminded, especially within the household of faith. He calls upon us to be more hospitable with one another, sharing our lives, withdrawing from the corrupted institutions of the world, and creating our own infrastructures (which is what our Lutheran forbears did by instituting parochial schools that taught the faith instead of undermining it). And contrary to some straw-man responses, Dreher is not suggesting political quietism or sticking our heads in the sand. He is not advocating a complete severance from the world, or a surrender from the idea of being salt and light. So stop typing that comment now, girlfriend. I know you’re out there.

This is hardly radical or new. We Lutherans have a strong heritage of this very thing. But we, alas, as we became more Americanized, we desired to become “like everyone else” - not unlike the Israelites in 1 Sam 8. And as the culture continues to degenerate, as Christians become increasingly marginalized - we would do well to be more proactive in how we live our lives, go about our work, raise our children, and contribute to civilization. We don’t know what the future holds. We may be facing centuries of a new dark age followed by the return of Christ when the Church may dwindle to a handful of people, or there may be a great backlash in our time that restores a sense of virtue to western society and the world.

We just don’t know.

But we do need to live in the here and now, in a world where Biblical Christianity is increasingly identified with hatred, where the idea that the freedom of religion is a preeminent natural right is increasingly seen as a retrograde and dangerous superstition, where the normal family is recast as evil, where deviancy is normalized, where there are now second- and third- generations of people in our country who have no idea who Jesus is, what the Bible is, or what the Church is. The abortion holocaust continues to rage, gender extremists are gaining ground every day, and our history is being rewritten by Neo-Orwellians. All of the major institutions of society, public and private sector alike, are increasingly pressuring conformity to a jackbooted antichristian agenda in the Gramscian juggernaut “march through the institutions “. It is becoming a problem as to how our children should be educated, for whom should they work, how they will find faithful spouses, and how much of the world’s entertainment they should ingest.

One trend that I have seen over the past several weeks is heartening.

I have run into a large number of the laity - mostly young couples - who are making life decisions based on where they can find a faithful congregation. This is not how things were when I was growing up. We went to school, and we got jobs. If the best pay and opportunity for advancement took us out of state, away from family, and even to a place where there were no faithful churches - so be it. We had to “make a living.” Our jobs were the top priority.

Early in my ministry, I had a young parishioner who nailed his dream job in another state. Some time after expressing his uncontainable excitement, he finally got around to asking me what church he should attend. Sadly, there was none anywhere nearby that I could recommend. The state he was moving to was a confessional wasteland. When I reported this to him and to his mother, they were utterly crestfallen. But he was not crestfallen enough to change his plans, not enough to decline the job. It reminded me of the tragic passage of the rich young man in Matt 19:16-22, who, upon being called to follow Jesus, “went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”

I too fell for this temptation in my twenties. I took a job with zero consideration about church attendance. In time, God pushed me around like a piece on a chessboard, and somehow, I ended up in the office of the holy ministry in spite of myself. I’m still scratching my head, but gratefully.

By contrast, I am finding more and more people who are deliberately and proactively moving to cities and towns that have solid, liturgical, confessional congregations and pastors. And I have also met people who have turned down lucrative work based on the lack of a church community to join. And in one sense, I think Covid-19 had a small silver lining to it: it has diminished the importance of physical location to one’s employment. Homeschooling has also made it possible for children to be educated anywhere. More and more people are able to work from home or run businesses over the Internet.

I have met numerous Christian people, living in these gray and latter days, who see how important belonging to a faithful Christian community is to them and to their children - who in some cases have not yet even been conceived. And it is not only young couples ordering their lives around the locus of altar, font, and pulpit instead of salary, benefits, and ambition. Retired people, and even the middle aged are now more likely than ever to be willing to pull up the stakes, sell the home, and seek out a likeminded community of brothers and sisters in Christ.

And this is really what the Benedict Option is all about. The days are long over when we could essentially locate anywhere, find a faithful confessional Lutheran church and a parochial school nearby, a church that uses the hymnal and worships according to the liturgy, one with a faithful pastor who handles the Word of God rightly - whether at the altar, in the pulpit, or while giving private pastoral care. And as our society has disintegrated, so too has the unity of our churches. One must now be discerning in deciding at what altar to commune and where one’s children will be born again of water and the Spirit.

And as we have all learned in the aftermath of the coronavirus, even introverts like me need community. After all, the Greek word for Church means “assembly.” And this doesn’t happen by Zoom or by simply calling oneself a Lutheran without having a congregation to be a part of. My hat is off to our faithful laity who have made the kingdom their top priority. This is something that we pastors should encourage and exhort our parishioners to. And for all of the bashing of the Benedict Option, that’s really all that it is.

TGC 114 —Why We’re Losing People

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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TGC 113 — The Feast of Pentecost

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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[Gottesblog] "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" – Larry Beane

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.

Larry BeaneMarch 5, 2021

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TGC 112 – Seeing the Pastor as a Man

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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TGC 111 – The Ascension

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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[Gottesblog] "Congregation" – Burnell Eckardt

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.

[Gottesblog] "The Age of First Communion, Questioning, and the Mouths of Babes" – David Petersen

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?