Serendipity

The new Lutheran Witness arrived the other day. I assume it is for the month of May. The President's page, which is now prominently featured in the front of the magazine, was all about the shortage of pastors in the Missouri Synod - how we will need more pastors each year in the next ten years than we have been producing in any year for the last 35. The arguments were true. The statistics were doubtless accurate. The appeal to action was as it has been for decades.

This week we also received notice that a number of men will graduate from the seminary and not be placed immediately because there are too few calls for graduates. I didn't write down the numbers, but it was something like 18 St. Louis Graduates and 13 from Fort Wayne that will wait for someone to need one of those hundreds of pastors that we will need each year (something like 280) badly enough to call them. Meanwhile, the roster of congregations designated as "vacant but being served" (and therefore NOT calling a pastor) continues to grow in almost every district.

Of course, we must also add to the list the four hundred (plus!) pastors still on the roster who have been removed from their calls by various mechanisms due to the unchristian actions of their congregations. Men are fired, their compensation reduced or eliminated in order to force them out without technically 'firing' them , they are harassed daily and endlessly until
they collapse physically, or emotionally, and finally resign for the sake of a) their health, b) their families, c) the well-being of the few Christians in their congregations, or d) simply to escape the pressure-cooker their office has become. All of this, of course, with the approval, and often the participation of their District Office. In one case in Missouri, a pastor was forced to resign with
a small severance package, or be terminated immediately with no severance package, and the district president announced to the Circuit Pastor's Conference that he had "never seen that sort of situation handled in such a Christian manner before". That begs the question, of course, "How can something so ungodly be done in a 'Christian manner'?".

This all follows the time tested principle that if you just keep saying the same old things, and act as though nothing is happening, nothing is changed, most people will never notice. Stories are told of Jews during World War Two who were moved from their homes to concentration camps, and did not actually understand what was happening to them until they were being herded
into the gas chambers themselves. They were told that things were fine, they were being resettled in a new place, that things were a little rough for a short while, but nothing was amiss. They didn't pay attention to much -- not that it would have helped them a great deal -- because they were constantly being reassured that things were just fine.

During the time of the Synod's greatest upheaval, the official line from the Synod was that we are united in confession and moving forward. Until the Seminex debacle in the 1970's, most everybody seemed to believe that line. Even conservatives deeply involved in the controversies considered their adversaries to be friends who had just gotten a little mis-guided. "Oh, yeah, Ott. He's always been a little like that!" And any attempt to hold one to their words or their actions that went against the official line of the Synod was labeled a violation of the Eighth Commandment, true or not! (Actually, that is still happening!)

So, this past week we heard about the sorry situation of men who trained for at least four years, sometimes eight, and found no call at the end of their training, and at the same time, and impassioned plea to encourage young men to consider training for the parish ministry because we are going to be so short-handed in the very near future. Talk about the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing!

Lord, have mercy upon us!

Another Start

I am always intending to blog, but I never seem to stop to do it. I am trying something new - ScribeFire - an add-on to my Mozilla Firefox. Perhaps I can find time while I await the other things on my browser. Dial-up (which is all that is available at this address) is a pain in the sitting parts!

So, here we go with another start.

The Wonder of It All

Luke 2:1-14

Now it came about in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all were proceeding to register for the census, everyone to his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register, along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child. And it came about that while they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her first-born son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

And in the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields, and keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. And the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths, and lying in a manger." And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased."

I have heard the Christmas story every year for the fifty-seven years of my life. As a child, I memorized parts of it each year for my place in the annual Christmas program of the Sunday School. I memorized different parts each year until I had committed to memory the entire passage, from Luke 2, verse one, to verse twenty. I have sung it, and shouted it, and cried my way through it. I have preached it for over twenty years, and written several Christmas programs for Sunday Schools of parishes I have been called to pastor. Through it all, I have never gotten tired of it, nor ever lost the sense of the Wonder of it all.

It almost seems like a faerie tale. It has so many legends built up around it that many people today think that it is a legend itself. The Archbishop of the world-wide Anglican fellowship declared the Christmas narrative to be legend and fiction just this past week. It has the best qualities of a legend it is oft repeated, generally known although not generally well known, and has characters larger than life and it is filled with elements almost too fantastic to believe. It is often called "The Christmas Story." I try to avoid that phrase because it permits people to go on thinking that it is fiction. I try to be careful to call it the Christmas Narrative or the Christmas account. This re-telling of the events of that night so long ago, events of such cosmic significance, are the focus of our attention this day. Our theme is, "The Wonder of It All".

One of the things that doesn't seem to naturally occur to people as they consider the Biblical account of the birth of Jesus is how this simple narrative separates the Christian faith from so many religions, and this account from all of those myths and legends. Have you ever noticed how myths and legends begin? "Once upon a time . . .". They have no historical particularity. You cannot place them in real time and you cannot place them among real people. You cannot ever say that they really happened, nor can you often assert that nothing like it ever did happen.

But Christianity is different. The Christmas account is filled with time and place and people data that gives our faith a firm rooting in real time and history. Christmas is the first, and a very vital step, in bringing God and our salvation down to earth and reality.

God became one of us. You are dust and to dust you shall return, so said God through the Scriptures. He took on that dust for us. He stepped down from the glory of heaven and from what it is to be God and took on our humanity. He did that in Bethlehem. He humbled Himself to the form of an infant. The Wonder of it all!

Think about it! Almighty God endured becoming a helpless infant. Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows! He bore every grief, not just the grief of death. On Christmas day, over two thousand years ago, God stepped out of His glory and into our humility. And there was nothing half-way about it. He did not simply become one of us, but He became a poor and helpless child, of poor and insignificant people. He was not born in a hospital, or a birthing room, or superintended by even a lowly midwife. He was born of a young girl in a stable. It puts me in mind of when I was a child and left a door open in my haste. My mother would ask, What? Were you born in a barn? Jesus would have had to answer, "Yes." Here he is, God in the flesh, born in a stable, cradled in a manger. Imagine the wonder of it all.

He had no glory that man could see. He was laid in a feed trough a hay-rack. The manger was no delightful nativity piece. It was a rough-hewn thing slapped together to hold hay or feed for the animals. The shepherds came because God could not contain Himself. Heaven burst with the joy and the glory of the plan of our salvation and the marvel of the Incarnation. "Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. "And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths, and lying in a manger." God announced it to mere shepherds, because He just had to tell someone. And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased." ! The wonder of it all! Not only did God come, as promised, to save His people from their sins, but He came so simple, and so humble, and so accessible. And you can bet that there were still shepherds alive who could hear someone read the words of Luke and say, "Yes, I was there!"

He not only humbled Himself to the point of flesh and poverty and ultimately suffering and dying for us, He left us the details. This is not a "Once Upon a Time" sort of yarn. This is an historical account filled with place and time and people identifiers. In those days there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus. We know of him! We know when he ruled, and how. We can place this man in history. We even know what his name was before he adopted the title Ceasar and called himself "Augustus". His name had been Gaius Octavius Thurinus, until Julius Caesar adopted him and he had been born in 63 B.C..

And this census was first taken when Quirinius was governing in Syria. Only a few people know today that Quirinius governed twice in Syria; once as a military governor and once as the official civil governor. One of those governings began in 8 A.D., so that would be too late for Jesus' birth. The other term was supposedly quite a while before Jesus could have been born. Some people thinks that means that the Bible is in error. Not so! The census (which the King James Version calls a tax because the census was for the purpose of assessing taxes from each region) was ordered originally while Quirinius served in his first term, which lasted until 5 B.C.. Things being what they were, it took a while for the order to be proclaimed and the actual census to happen, just in time for Jesus' birth in about 4 B.C. But many who first read or heard Luke's account would say, "Oh, the census ordered during the governorship of Quirinius in Syria. Yeah, I remember that!"

God has provided us with detail in time and place and people so that we can identify who and where and how in history. All of this was so that we might know for sure from this vantage in history, nearly two thousand years later, that it really happened. Jesus was born at an identifiable time in history, lived among people and through events we know about outside of our religion, walked in places you can visit today, if you wish. The details tell us that it is no myth, no legend, no work of fiction, but history that God came down to rescue us.

God got down to accomplishing that rescue three decades later. He took on our sins with all their shame and guilt, and suffered crucifixion. He was whipped and beaten, spit upon, cursed and mocked. He was nailed rudely to the cross and hung between heaven and earth betrayed and murdered by man, forsaken and punished by God. He endured it all for us and for our sins, to redeem us from sin and death, so that He might forgive us our sins and give us eternal life with Him. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.

"Peace" is the word the angels sang to the Shepherds on that Christmas night so long ago. The sang of peace with God and peace from our sins and the condemnation due to us because of them - given to us in Christ. That is why the angels sang of it. And the judgment of well-pleasing is the judgment that is ours in Christ. He was Well-pleasing to His Father at His Baptism, as He began His public ministry. And He was well-pleasing to His Father on the Mount of Transfiguration as He began the descent into Jerusalem and to the cross. When our sins are forgiven, that is when God declares us well-pleasing to Him in Christ, and we are at peace with Him and at peace with one another in Christ. The blessing sung by the angels was nothing other than the Gospel, only in words that those who do not know the Gospel could not decipher. That is why the world loved the "Peace on earth, goodwill toward men", but despise the Prince of Peace, and reject the gift of Peace which He brings.

But even with all the details provided and the wonderful message of the promises of the Gospel, it is hard to believe, and many do not. Even from within the church, many call this miracle of grace a myth, a legend, or, worse yet, a symbol, and they deny the saving reality of God come into the flesh and the reality of the need to be saved. Outside the church they often don't even pay Christ any attention. Christmas is, to them, a nuisance, or a holiday of human good will and good works, a holiday for children's stories about Santa and Rudolph, and a traditional occasion of gift-giving. Unbelievers either in the church or outside of it are in grave danger for only those who know the truth and place their trust in Jesus Christ have eternal life. Jesus has purchased that salvation for everyone, paying with His own life and His own sufferings and His own blood. Those who would be saved need only take God at His Word, and trust Him, but those who reject Jesus, or His historical reality, or their own need for salvation, are lost.

But we have heard the song of the angels, announcing the glory of God, that He has sent His Son to be born among us Immanuel, God with us. We have heard it through the ears of the shepherds, and have seen it all through the eyes of the Apostles to the bitter end. And tonight we rejoice in it. This is the good news of a great joy, our Savior has been born. Our sins have been lifted off from our shoulders. We have the assurance of God's love and abiding concern. Let us rejoice tonight and sing with the angels of the glory of God which is His indescribable love for us and His remarkable and glorious grace which worked our salvation! Oh, the wonder of it all!

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen

Just a Thought

I have great respect for the author of the blog. I agree with him on so many things, and I cannot really take issue with anything substantive at the moment. It just struck me tonight: "Cyberbrethren:A Lutheran Blog" is misnamed.

The blog is clearly the blog of a Lutheran, but it is not so clearly Lutheran itself. It represents the interests and opinions of a Lutheran, but it is audacious hubris to say that the blog itself is Lutheran.

Mind you, I named the web site I started well over a decade ago, "The Confessional Lutheran Web Page", so who is to talk? It may be similar to the pot referencing the carbon build-up on the lower surface of the kettle - presumably both having been well-used over an open fire.

Hmmmmm.

Preaching

The debate on how one goes about preaching has heated up just a little recently. There is really no reason for a debate. The man called to be the pastor, the seelsorger, of the congregation should be quite clear on the task. He is to think of what he does, what he has been called to do, as a seelsorger (a curate of souls) and a shepherd (for that is what the word “pastor” means).

When one begins to think that their job is to simply proclaim the naked law and the naked Gospel, they have ceased being a pastor and taken on the role of an evangelist, and that only in the modern sense of the word. A shepherd does not create sheep, and one who is the “curate of souls” does not go about creating patients, but taking care of the ones who are his assigned lot. His lot, of course, is assigned by the Lord, which Lutherans believe is accomplished by the call. The Lord, then, adds to or subtracts from the “cure” (an old word meaning the district or persons assigned to the spiritual care of a clergyman) by calling individuals into His family by conversion, and calling them home to Himself in eternity by what is known as death of the body.

Between those two events - the call into faith and the call to eternity - the pastor has the care of such souls as His responsibility. He is equipped with three tasks and two sets of tools with which to accomplish this care. The tasks are preaching, teaching, and administering the Sacraments. Note that these three tasks are intertwined, not individual and self-standing tasks. The tools with which these tasks, and the entire cure (or care) of the soul, is to be accomplished are The Word of God and the Holy Sacraments, namely Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and, whether you count it as Word or sacrament, Absolution. I left the word “holy” out of the names in order to avoid the modern offense of seeming to be too “catholic” and because there is little point in redundancy. If it is the Word of God, or worked by His Word, it is holy, and simply saying or not saying the word does not alter that condition.

When one considers the task of the pastor in the light of the call to be curate of souls, the issue of whether one preaches to teach or preaches to convert disappears. No proper sermon ignores the Gospel, and yet there is more to caring for the flock than simply announcing forgiveness. The flock of God needs to be armed against the devil, the world, and their own sinful flesh. That armor is applied by the Word, by knowing God’s good and gracious disposition toward man, and how far one may trust in God and for what one may count on Him - in short, the more that a believer knows of what God has revealed for his edification, the more he or she can believe and trust in the Lord, and understand their lives and circumstances as in the presence and care of God.

The preacher who is teaching his flock, and nurturing them in the Word with both Law and Gospel is also preaching that which converts. If He is not preaching the Gospel, he is not serving as shepherd or seelsorger for his flock. If he is preaching without teaching and warning his flock, he is not serving the shepherd duties either. Any individual who believes that they can do one without the other is not competent for the office.

Modern seminarians are taught to preach short sermons. Such a practice is often aimed at the short attention span of the modern listener. The problem with that approach is twofold: first, it short-changes the congregation, and second, it misunderstands the attention span of the average listener. First, the congregation comes to worship to receive God’s gifts. The Word proclaimed and taught is one of those gifts. The Sunday service is the chief contact time for the pastor with the congregation. More of his flock is present at that one time (even if it involves multiple services on a Sunday) than any other time. He must teach the dickens out of the time He has been given in the service.

Second, the congregation’s attention span, as a product of modern American culture, is significantly shorter than ten minutes. Some are able to discipline themselves and focus on the sermon for the ten minutes, or twenty, or thirty, depending on how long one preaches, and the discipline of the individual. On the other hand, some cannot actually focus as long as the reading of the text. There are a variety of reasons for their distraction; children, their health, the comfort of the seating, the temperature of the air, ambient noises, and how well they slept the night before, and the attire, behavior, or personal grooming of the people seated around them, including their perfumes, among other reasons. People tend to fade in and out of the sermon, despite their best intentions and efforts. The short sermon doesn’t give them time to fade in and out and still hear the message. It rudely demands that they be as capable and clear-headed as the preacher was when he wrote his sermon – and sometimes the sermon demonstrates that the preacher wasn’t all that capable or clear-headed.

There is no ideal length for a sermon. Each sermon should be as long as it takes to proclaim the Word of God, both Law and Gospel, and teach what the Word for the day teaches. Some sermons are shorter, and some will be longer. I have preached as short as fifteen minutes (rarely), and as long as forty-five (a couple of times). The shorter sermon was greeted with complaints that the congregation felt cheated, and were just settling down to listen when I finished, and the longer sermons have been met by several in the congregation noting that they were totally unaware that such an amount of time had passed. I imagine that the important thing is to say something worth listening to, however long or short your sermon may be.

The sermon might well be viewed as a public speech, with the purposes of informing, persuading, and moving to action, to use the categories I learned when studying public speaking as a youth. While the power of the sermon rests in the Word of God, the preacher does well to keep in mind that he is part of the process God has chosen to deliver that Word to his specific group of people. If the Word alone were sufficient, without regard to the deliverance of the Word, one could simply read the original language to the people and be done with it. Of course, that is silly.

The preacher must consider the message, and the audience, and his own abilities, and structure his sermon to inform the congregation of the meaning of the text, and to persuade them that it is true and applies also to their lives and faith, and that they might live in the light of the truth they have just heard. For some preachers, “Goal - Malady - Means” works just fine. For others, the old, ‘Tell them what you are going to say, then say it, and then tell them what you said’ is effective. For some a didactic style works and for others a more conversational approach is better. The style isn’t as important as the Word of God, nor as important as the preacher remembering who he is and why he is standing before a congregation on a Sunday morning.

He is the messenger of God, sent to proclaim the glories of salvation, the goodness of the grace of God, and to feed, nurture, comfort, strengthen, and encourage the people of God in faith and by means of the Word of God. He is not standing before them as a showman. He is not a great adviser. He is not the programmatic “vision-caster”. He is not here to win their respect or to be popular. He is there as the mouthpiece of God, like a radio-station repeater, speaking what God has given Him to speak in the text for the day.

If you can do that, the questions about where your focus is supposed to be in the sermon will fade away. The focus is on the Word of God being delivered, proclaimed, and taught to the people of God for their blessing, comfort, encouragement, and faith. If you cannot preach, teach, and administer the Sacraments, then you don’t belong in the pulpit to begin with. Seelsorger. “Curate of souls”, Pastor, Shepherd, all mean the same thing. If the pastor forgets what he is there for, his presence serves someone other that Christ.

An Age of Unbelief

We are living in an age of unbelief.

In the church, politics and power matter more to most than does truth, God, or salvation, although the majority of those rightly accused by these words would cry out that I am unjust in saying so. But that is just part of the game. You have to pretend to be about Christ and church and such, but in reality it is the advance of power and personal privilege that takes center stage.

In society, I see the very same dynamic. Our politicians, with precious few exceptions, play at national politics as though it were a game and the dangers of the world around us cannot possibly intrude. Logically, if the dangers of the world around us could not possibly intrude, we would have no need of government. But if the dangers are real, the "playing of politics" as a game, without an eye to the potential repercussions, is idiotic to the point of treason.

Today the enemies of our nation's elected leader have succeeded in finally acquiring the resignation of the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. He was hounded into resignation over the perfectly legitimate firing of eight Federal Prosecutors. They do serve at the pleasure of the President. The previous president fired every single one of them - ninety-three, I believe. That firing put an end to some troubling federal investigations - one into the President's own conduct. But that action was defended as entirely legitimate at the very same time the firing of eight men was called a presidential abuse of power. The only differences one can observe is that President Bush did not terminate any on-going investigations into his own conduct or that of another Republican, while President Clinton did, and President Bush only fired eight men, not ninety-three.

I carry no brief for Mr. Gonzales. I find the Democratic Party's attack on everything that they can possibly connect to President Bush to be irresponsible to the point of being treasonous. There are real-world dangers from which all of our elected representatives are charged with protecting this nation, and the wholesale assault on every effort of one party to do anything does not strengthen us. It is playing politics as though it is a game with no other consequence than winning a prize. But there are enemies looking to destroy us, and the Democrats are willing allies with those people in appearance, if not in fact. And I am none too sure about the fact in this case, either.

I do wish there was some way that the game players could reap the whirlwind without the destruction and misery that their behavior strives toward falling upon the whole nation of us. My greatest concern is that they will reap what they are sowing -- and so will we.

And in these times of turmoil and uncertainty, we should be able to look to the church for comfort and peace of mind. God offers it in Jesus Christ, and the knowledge that He is still (and always) in control, even when the world seems to be spinning out of it. Sadly, though, the institutional church is failing because its leaders are caught up in playing politics just like our national leaders. Like them, they also forget that there are real dangers and real enemies, and they play down and dirty to win the prize of position and power without thought or concern for the real-world consequences for those they are called to protect and shepherd.

With regard to the church leaders, at least I have the comfort of knowing that they shall reap what they sow, in the end. I, and others who continue to fight the good fight, will have to reach out to care for those forgotten by the ones who style themselves as "leaders" in this age of unbelief.

An Old-Fashioned Bully

I was watching Bill Maher on the Larry King show on CNN when it struck me, the man is a bully. He has the microphone, and says the most outrageous things, offensive and deliberately so, in situations where those he offends and insults cannot respond.

Sure, he doesn't kick them or punch them. He does something much worse. He wounds them with unreasonable attack while the ones he attacks are unable to either defend themselves or respond in any effective manner.

I was always told that bullies were cowards. I guess attacking faith and any opinion you don't like - and not just arguing a reasoned objection but pathetic name calling and ad-hominem of the most extreme sort - from the safety of the working end of the microphone qualifies one as a coward.

He makes a big deal of how unreasonable people like Rush Limbaugh are. I don't think his insults toward Rush are anything particularly bully-ish. Rush has a microphone and an audience. He can respond. It is when Mr. Maher spreads his contempt toward those - either individually or as a class - that hold opinions contrary to his own by ridicule and insult, rather than reasoned discourse, that he demonstrates the character of the big thug who can take your lunch money away, and there is nothing you can do about it! So there!

Bill Maher is just a bully. And he styles himself as a humorist. How sad.