Bishops Overseeing

When I was ordained, the COP had one duty as a body listed in the bylaws: Placement of candidates. Over the years of my ministry, they have added many other duties to their office that involve the work of the synod outside of their own district. For all the additional burdens we have placed on them, the only extra-district duty that qualifies as both mandated by the synod’s bylaws and supportable as a duty-of-office according to our confessions remains the placement of candidates.

It was described by one member of the synod’s Preasidium as “The Holy Spirit engages in the greatest horse trading scheme known to man.” And yet, through our many machinations, the Spirit is at work in the process. One President told me of a man who was placed firmly in California on Friday, only to be moved to Texas by the end of Saturday, and then returned to California first thing Sunday morning immediately before the service where the list of candidate calls is commended to our Lord with the Word of God and prayer, after which no changes are made. He always thought it amazing that the man’s future changed so dramatically three times in under 24 hours, and he would never know.

This weekend the bishops of our synod are meeting to place candidates. It is the most important and sacred task they are given: Taking those who have been declared fit for ministry by the seminaries (tasked with that preparation), and agreeing with the assessment of fitness by placing the men in parishes who have called for candidates. The testimony of the church in this matter is unanimous: Doctors of the church who have examined them in accordance with scripture, the overseers (acting on behalf of the clergy) who place them, and the congregations who issued the call. They speak with once voice before God, “This is the man to serve as shepherd of the flock in this place.” The lives of the men and the congregations they serve will be forever altered this weekend. And so we commend the entire process to our Lord with prayer, as He tells us to do.

If you have a moment, offer a prayer for our synod’s bishops, the men they will place, and the congregations those men will serve. It is a holy and wonderful time of the year. The Lord is answering, through the church, our prayer that he would send faithful laborers into the harvest.

Thanks be to God for his great mercies!

 

Sermon for Easter 2. On Forgiveness.

This is the pre-quel to today’s earlier post about repentance and forgiveness. My sermon from Sunday, which one of my members could not hear, because he had a cow that had fallen into a ditch on the Sabbath, and had to get it out. (Quite literally!)

He is Risen!

Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. It’s a lofty claim. Look around you. A 24,000 mile circumference rock in space. You overcome it. But John isn’t speaking of the globe itself, as if moving to another planet would require a new victory to overcome that world. John is speaking of overcoming everything in this plane of existence. Much of the nation is travelling this weekend to see the sun blotted out. It reminds us of 5 years ago, when we were the destination for the travelers. It makes us think of things beyond this planet – this blue dot in an almost unlimited universe. And yet, John says, if you are born of God you have overcome this world – this life. The victory that overcomes everything you see, touch, feel, have learned about in the world – our faith.

Such a claim sounds like ancient superstition – as if when the moon goes in front of the sun, we shout to chase the dragon away and stop him from eating it. It’s absurd that your faith can do so much. The world teaches that faith is what you believe, while I believe something different and there is not much difference between the two beliefs, whatever they might be. It’s just your own point of view, we are told constantly. John rejects that utterly. He instructs us today: Those who believe Jesus is the Son of God overcome the world. There is a reality to the word of Jesus, and to his battle with death on the cross. It is a reality we find nowhere else. Jesus is raised, the world is overcome by those who look to him. What does this overcoming look like, because there are bills to pay, things to do, (weather that cancels church services)

Ezekiel was given a vision of the reality of this victory. It isn’t just a thought or dream of something better. Ezekiel sees the dry, bleached bones of the dead armies of Israel, and God tells him to prophesy to the bones. And the bones are enfleshed. And then Ezekiel is told to prophesy to the wind, so that it comes into the corpses now littering the ground, and he does, and the breath of the Lord is breathed into them, and they are alive again. When John tells us that we overcome the world – what he really means is, we overcome death. There is nothing left for the world to either promise us or threaten us with. There is nothing we can be given that we are not already given by our Lord Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection. There is nothing this world can take from us that destroys the hope that is ours in Jesus, the gift given through Water and word: when the Word of God was spoken over you, when the minister of the Lord prophesied as Jesus commanded and spoke into you the Spirit of the living God by that water, and placed on you the name of God the Father almighty, and of Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, and of the Holy Spirit the Comforter.

In Holy Baptism those who are dead are made alive. Those who are dry bones on the valley floor are given flesh and the breath of God, and so are no longer dead. And how does this great conversion from death to life occur? By faith, which grabs hold of the promise. By faith you overcome the world, faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of the World. By his death and resurrection you are redeemed and set at liberty.

And what is the tool for this transformation from death to life, this resurrection – both of the soul now and the body when our Lord Jesus returns to judge the world? The difference is the forgiveness of sins. That is what the faith points to: Jesus earning us the forgiveness of sins by his death and resurrection, and God imputing that forgiveness to you – i.e. He declares it yours as if it always was yours, and was not earned by another and given to you by grace through faith. Now, when God looks at you, he sees Jesus work for you, not your work. And so the sin is truly taken away. The guilt is truly atoned for. The Redemption is truly accomplished. And death has truly been replaced with life.

The forgiveness of sins is so powerful that Satan rages against it and has since the beginning of the world. It is so powerful that the entire world has set itself against Christ and his church. Because in the church the forgiveness of sins is given. This is why the world hates the church and always has and always will. It is why the world continually tries – and fails – to overcome the church. But Christ’s church can not be overcome – in this world or any other. Just as Christ could not be overcome by death, but overcame it by his death, and now gives life to all those who believe on his name, all those who by faith overcome the world.

Do you think this is speaking too much, ascribing too much to the church and the forgiveness of sins? Let us examine our Gospel today, so that we would be strengthened and renewed in the promise, and so that we would believe in and desire – hunger and thirst after – the righteousness of God given in the forgiveness of sins.

Jesus appears to his disciples. Last week, we had the angelic promise to the women, we had the tomb empty, Jesus gone. But when we left, the women were trembling with astonishment and fear. And we had not yet seen the Lord. Today Jesus appears in the same upper room where he spoke to the disciples before his departure, where he washed their feet and commanded them to love one another, where he gave them his true body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. It is to this same room that the apostles now flee and lock themselves in. And so it is to this same upper room that Jesus appears to them and blesses them and speaks words of comfort to them.

When he appears, he begins with the blessing, “Peace be with you.” He shows them the wounds which he earned by his redemption sacrifice. No longer painful and a sign of weakness. Now the wounds of Jesus – along with the cross of Jesus – become symbols of his victory over death and the grave. Jesus breathes on them – that is gives them the Holy Spirit, who works through them in their apostolic ministry, and who works through the one holy Christian and apostolic church in all ages, by virtue of the same Spirit given through the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments. We now have the peace of God and the Spirit of God spoken into us by Jesus himself.

But Jesus does not end the blessing there. He gives something concrete – something necessary to us. He gives to his Holy Church the authority on earth to forgive and to retain sins in his name. If Jesus had not explicitly spoken to us, handing over the authority to forgive sins in his name – forgiven in heaven as surely as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us himself – if he had not said “I give you this authority to do this thing in my name”, we would never presume to speak a word of absolution, because it would be blaspheme. It is only by the command of Jesus that we dare. Only because he has told us to speak his word boldly, do we speak it boldly, and yet with fear and trembling, because it is a great word spoken to us, and given to us to speak.

We are dealing not with the things of this world, but with elemental forces, eternal things. Forgiveness is no laughing matter, nothing to be taken lightly. It is the centerpiece of Christ’s work on the cross, it is the centerpiece of the work of Christ through his church. It is the work of the Holy Spirit among us – the forgiveness of sins.

The world doubts and scoffs and tells us we believe in fairy tales, that we aren’t strong enough to make it without religion as crutch. The world tells us we don’t need a otherworldly spirit telling us our sins are forgiven. We just need to love and forgive ourselves. But then look at what happens in the world around us. We live in a world of consciences so damaged they have no feeling left in them, and the damage makes minds go mad.

We are all familiar with the conscience as that sinking feeling in the gut, the tightness in the chest when we know we have done something wrong, and we cry out quietly in our soul that the guilt would be taken from us. The conscience can cut like a knife – but it might be better described as a red hot knife – touching the metal itself can burn and cause us agony of spirit. But if we burn too deeply, too long, without removing the knife of sin, then the nerves die. We can no longer feel the sting of our own sin. The conscience becomes scarred, seared, non-responsive. And yet, such a deep burn is the most dangerous burn of all. All sense is lost, all ability to determine if we are dying or living. The seared conscience leaves us unable to determine what is right or wrong, and we end up more miserable than ever.

The world is ever feeling its guilt, and so ever giving rules for righteous living, while at the same time rejecting God’s law, saying we are the ones out of touch with ourselves and the reality of this world. But the world offers no absolution, no forgiveness for its made up rules. Instead there is a never ending stream of contrition – sorrow over sin, but it leads nowhere except to it’s own virtue over the sorrow itself. The world is going mad because it knows the sin is there, but is so desensitized to it that it can no longer separate real sin from imagined sin. And the world has no concept of forgiveness. With no forgiveness, there is no place for true repentance, only false repentance – eternal sorrow, unending guilt, without the chance to grab hold of forgiveness by faith in the crucified one. It is a delusion of absolute misery and horror.

Again, do you think this speaks too boldly about the condition of the world? What do we see in the world? We live in a world where instant gratification is the norm. We have more than any generation has ever had – and we have it more quickly and abundantly than any other. But has it lead to contentment, to happiness? No. It has lead to increasing misery year after year. Increasing sadness, increasing depression. Each year the results are worse, and if people aren’t actually more miserable, they report feeling that way. Why? Because we are seeking that which can never fulfill the longing in our soul. What we see around us are the classic signs of a guilty – even a seared conscience: Knee-jerk reactions against anyone who would dare to contradict the world’s delusions, constant repetition of the sins of ourselves and our fathers, with no plan no hope of ever truly repenting and turning away from our course. We see it in a thousand rules about how to properly worship the environment, how to acknowledge the theft of land by those long dead and impute that guilt to us, we are told to confess the sins that are genetically built into us, with no hope of ever being redeemed, no thought for repentance bearing fruit and amendment of life, and no means to receive absolution if we did. The world is always confessing, never receiving absolution. One false move against the world’s orthodoxy of madness might cancel you – permanently.

Jesus offers forgiveness for sin. He calls us to something far higher than eternal guilt and shame. He calls us to turn away from the sin – real sins, not invented and imaginary ones against the planet or the universe or some imagined enemy. Our sins – as you know, actions against the 10 commandments – are easy to determine according to those commandments. It’s why the world hates the commandments so much – because they give an objective measuring stick – a ruler – to evaluate our conduct. Yes, we find we are guilty. And so Jesus calls us to repent – to turn away from them, and seek them no more. And he also – blessed relief – He calls us to receive the Holy Absolution – forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness spoken in the here and now, but don’t be fooled by appearance. It is a forgiveness that reaches to the heavens. Your sin is truly wiped off the eternal ledger book, even if in this world you live with the consequences of your sins. Your sin is gone in the eyes of God. And so forgiven, the Chrisitan can also truly forgive others.

The guilt of sin is removed, and the burden of resentment over the sins committed against you is also taken away. The entire crushing burden of the Law is gone, and is replaced with the sweet fragrance of freedom in Christ Jesus. He has removed the burden of sin by his death and resurrection, and given you a life of freedom in the Spirit.

This is what it means to overcome the world. That we are a new creation, and we do not live according to the constant striving for perfection that can never be, judging those who don’t measure up, running away from invented sins, until we are finally caught up and overcome by our own conscience, our own guilt, and driven into madness.

Instead, we live forgiven lives each day. Freed from the chains and curse of the law, and now free to serve the living God. We are not longer dead in our trespasses. Instead in Christ we are alive. Bones joined together, flesh placed on us, and called to live with the breath – the Spirit of the Living God. The same God who came into the flesh to be our Savior, and who now gives us that salvation as he comes to us in the body and blood, in the water and the word. He is the one who gives us the promise, “Whoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven.”

This blessing of Jesus is truth beyond all understanding in this world, “Peace be with you.”

Amen.

He is Risen!

 

The Scandal of Forgiveness

Apparently, The Twitter is all abuzz about some folks who have lived a notorious and sinful lifestyle suddenly finding rest in Jesus. This is not strange. It has been happening since John chapter 4. A woman who was notorious for her many paramours found rest in Jesus, and responded by bringing her entire town to hear him speak. In John chapter 8, a woman whose life hung-in-the-balance found pardon only with Jesus. He encouraged her to go and sin no more.

And yet, many in The Twitterverse who are non-Christian suddenly find themselves experts on what the limits of Christian forgiveness should be. They have strong opinions about the level of repentance that must be displayed, the overall dynamic of sin/repentance/forgiveness as it relates to the life of the church. They are attempting to instruct the church on what we must do, what we must teach, if we are to survive this sudden storm of repentant sinners coming to Jesus.

Not to disappoint them all, but the church is well equipped to handle such a moment as this without their advice. We have been doing it for many-a-year: Ever since Jesus said in John 21, “Whoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven them, whoever sins you retain, they are retained.” We have a firm grasp of the nature of sin, and the destruction it causes. We understand the nature of scandal – indeed, we are the primary purveyors of it, and have been ever since our Lord attached himself to the shameful (one might even say scandalous!) death on the cross. He scorned that shame, embraced that scandal. And so Christians have been doing the same for 2 millennia. We are well equipped to handle reformed scandal-makers and need no advice from those outside of our scandal-society in how to handle such matters.

I’ve been saying for years the church will one day begin picking up the pieces of broken human beings who bought into the lies of the unchastity revolution. In the early days it was merely disease and broken homes (violence enough!) The lies have accelerated in their absurdity and their cruelty in recent years. We now have a generation who so hate their own bodies that they carve them up in search of meaning. We are crafting a generation of eunuchs – both male and female – who are crying out for salvation, and wandering blindly in the world looking for someone to save them. They will not find in self-mutilation. It’s a lie, and we honestly deserve whatever punishment God sends on us – up to fire and brimstone – for our barbaric deeds in this matter. And yet, God is gracious and merciful. He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He is showing his great patience with us, as he suffers-long our abominations.

Now, many are turning away from the lifestyle of unchastity and depravity that the world demanded they enter. And now, the same world is telling us what we must and must not do in regards to those who have turned their back on the world’s pleasures, and have turned again to our Lord Jesus.

Thank you for advice. We do appreciate it your care and concern for us. But we promise, we’ve got it handled. We understand sin. We know what repentance looks like. We continue to offer forgiveness, as we help sinners live with the consequences of their actions. For there are consequences, and no one escapes sin without them. And we have the tools to help the repentant with that aspect as well. Because is it not easy when you damaged your soul and body with sin. Your life in this world will likely never be what it could have been. That is why forgiveness – absolution – for sin is so necessary. It is why it is so freeing.

We don’t expect you to understand. We do understand that you find it scandalous. We’re actually ok with that. If you feel the need to persecute us for it, we won’t be surprised. But when you have spent your wrath against us, and begin to see clearly again, and your own soul cries out for absolution, stop in and see us. Because once we finish the bible class about the woman caught in adultery, we want to tell you the one about the guy who fell off his horse on the way to Damascus.

Maundy Thursday Sermon

The schedule for the tri-point gets complicated this time of year. A lot of services are offered, but they aren’t always at times that work out for people. So, if you couldn’t make it to our Maundy Thursday Service, here is the sermon. God Willing, we’ll see you tomorrow, or at least Sunday for the Festival of the Resurrection.

There are, in our Gospel, three little dots. “For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you” Then the three dots, followed by “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another”

What goes there? Jesus is troubled, because he knows Judas will betray him. Judas leaves, and then Jesus says, “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him.” Jesus thinks that one of his own betraying him, Jesus going to his own death, it God being glorified in Jesus.

If newspapers existed at the time, the headline the next day would have read, “Jesus executed!” The sub-headline would have been “Betrayed by one of his own!” With feature articles “Who was Judas Iscariot.” A little call out box “Betrayer dies by own hand”. The entire episode was a disaster for Jesus, publicly speaking. One of his own was a traitor and – it later turned out – a thief. He used to steal from the moneybag, which he carried. If Jesus had somehow survived, it would have been a scandal that might have torn his ministry apart. Protocols need to be put in place, accountability needs to be instituted. And even so, the inevitable drop in support. People drifting away when they realize the disciples are just human, and Jesus isn’t a very good judge of character. The overall arc of Jesus ministry takes a significant stumble here – if he weren’t dead already.

This – the moment of betrayal & scandal, is when Jesus says his glorification begins.

Because Jesus came to be glorified not in the usual manner: Titles and recognition and growing power and acclaim. Jesus came to be glorified when he is lifted up from this earth – and he means by that specifically the tree of the cross. Jesus is glorified specifically by going into death, even death on a cross. He scorns the shame, and takes the burden on himself, because the burden isn’t condemnation from Pilate. That is a means to an end. The burden is sin. He takes the sin on himself so that he can wash all those who have a part in him. Simon Peter, the other disciples, those who will one day hear their apostolic preaching and come to believe, and throughout the centuries all those who are a part of the one holy Chrisitan and apostolic church. Jesus will die for the sins of the whole world, and that forgiveness will be given to all those who believe on his name. This is the explicitly stated reason John writes his Gospel. “So that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, you might have life in His name.”

Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He came to do that by the shedding of his holy precious blood, and by his innocent suffering and death. And today we commemorate and celebrate Jesus instituting the Blessed Sacrament by which the forgiveness of sins is given to us in the body and blood which he sacrificed into death.

The Gospel on this day of the institution of the Most Holy Eucharist is the account of Jesus washing the disciples feet. Jesus will soon be taken from them, and Jesus gives final instructions in the upper room. John spends nearly ¼ of his Gospel on this upper room conversation, in which Jesus gives the command to the disciples that they love one another, and the promise that in so doing, we remain in him, and also the promise that our life in him comes from HIM to US – HE calls US friends and lays down his life for us. If we will not let him wash us, let him join us to himself in the waters of Baptism, we can have no part in him. Peter found this out the hard way. He thought he could spare Jesus the humiliation of washing feet, just as he wanted in the garden to spare Jesus the humiliation of arrest, trial and crucifixion. But it must happen in this way. This is how Jesus is glorified, because this is how God shows his steadfast love to a thousand generations of those that love him and keep his commands. The mercy of Jesus is the glory of Jesus. And so we are brought into the presence of Jesus by his body and blood, so that he can cleanse us from all wickedness. So that all sin is washed away by his blood. And so that we can love others as he has first loved us.

Jesus asks “Do you understand what I have done for you?” The same question could be asked about the institution of the sacrament. And the disciples – at this point, on the before side of the crucifixion and resurrection – would be just as clueless. Do you understand? No! They will not understand until after the resurrection, until after Jesus explains it to them, until after he sends the Spirit into their hearts so that they can grab hold of the incredible truth by faith.

So also for the giving of his body and blood to the church throughout the ages. Do WE understand what HE  has done for US in the Holy Sacrament? No! We can not grab hold of it by our reason. Our reason rejects that Jesus is present in his body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. We think its certainly enough if we just think about him, instead of heeding his word “take eat, take drink”. We think that our faith – just the inner condition of our heart – is sufficient, we need nothing more, because we tend to our hearts with great care. But our hearts wander from Christ. We need the promise of his body and blood. We need the strength that can only come from Jesus feeding us. This is why he gives it to us. And why we need to be careful not to neglect it.

Paul warns against such neglect – if we do not discern the body of the Lord in the sacrament, we can eat and drink to our harm. Physical harm can come to us in this world, as a judgment from God for receiving the sacrament without confessing the truth of Jesus presence.

And yet, there is more to the words than just a recognition of the real presence. The Corinthians weren’t denying the real presence by their confession. They weren’t saying “it’s only a symbol.” They were denying Christ’s presence by their actions. This they could not do and receive the sacrament rightly. As Paul shows throughout 1 Corinthians, they were acting lovelessly toward each other – denying the commandments by their practices. Later this became known as anti-nomianism, against the Law. Those who believe and teach that, now that the Gospel has come, the Law is done away with, and we can do whatever we want – the whatever we want being sin. A heart re-created by Christ, renewed according to the Holy Spirit, as we sing in the offertory, no longer desires the things of this world, but now the things of God. And so sin is put aside, lest we enter the holy of holies – the place where God is present in his body and blood for our salvation – unworthily.

The worthiness is entirely in Christ. His works, his merits, his worthiness. We come at his command specifically because we are unworthy, Peter wanted to do too much. Jesus needed to wash him. And yet, as Jesus says, “not all of you are clean.” The betrayer had turned himself back over to sin, had allowed himself to be overcome by his temptation to greed, and so gave an entry point to Satan to entirely overcome him. This is why Luther talks about our daily struggle against sin. Because if we just return to the old worldly ways, we will be overcome. It is a daily struggle, which is why we must be in the word, which is why we must come often to receive the body and blood in the sacrament, so that we are strengthened against the attacks of Satan, and against his temptations. We’ve heard about that all through Lent. Now, we see the true horrors of sin – what it leads to. Jesus betrayed by one of his own. Off to die the gruesome death of the cross. And yet, this wasn’t the path set before him by Judas, this was the path set before him back in the garden. The first sin always meant Jesus would have to die for forgiveness. Not only for Adam and Eve, but for your sin as well.

Today/tonight we see the final result of sin. We see the darkness coming, the betrayer approaches in the garden. But first, we have Jesus, cleansing the disciples, promising them salvation by his death, offering that salvation in his body and blood for them. And so we also receive the body and blood, now as we are on the final few steps of our journey to the cross, but most importantly, the empty tomb.

O Lord God, prepare our hearts to receive him who comes to us in his body and blood, that we would hear and believe the promise and so be made truly worthy. And let that salvation be given us now, on this day, so that it may endure to eternal life. Amen.

Appreciating the Seminex Generation

Preface: I wrote this before hearing of the death of The Reverend Professor Doctor David Stein. We were briefly pastoral colleagues in the same circuit. With the 50^th anniversary of the walkout, and the passing away of that generation, a brief truce seems in order. I am indebted in a way to those pastors who were so often in conflict with me. And the day of the Sacrament’s institution joined to the command to love each other seems a good time to reflect on these things. Requiem eaternam dona eis, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Appreciating the Seminex Generation

Over the years I have written and spoken many times about the unfaithfulness of Seminex professors and the pastors that forgot to walk out with them.

Now, more than 50 years on, with the battle lines most often arrows on a chart in a dusty-book, rather than men standing shoulder to shoulder for and against, I think the time has come – and perhaps more than come – to try and understand their point of view.

The truth is that heretical movements generally arise as a response to an abuse of some sort. Arianism (Jesus isn’t God) was a reactionary movement to Gnosticism (Jesus isn’t man.) The radical reformation arose in response to the corruption of Rome – history’s most egregious case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Pietism arises in response to the ossification of theology after the Age of Orthodoxy, and a doctrine that grew increasingly out of touch with the people (e.g. sermons on how to properly style your hair). Rationalism arises as a response to the emotionalism of Pietism, etc.

So, what was the abuse that gave rise to the Seminex era attempt at reform? What was it that gave them fertile ground for their heresy?

I was at a meeting recently, and a pastor mentioned that from the mid/late 19^th century well into the 20^th century most members of the LCMS received communion fewer than 3 times per year. In many cases, it was offered only quad-annually. Miss that Sunday because your horse threw a shoe, and you only have 3 chances left.

This arose from many causes – too numerous to list in a short online article. But they can be summarized in this: One of Satan’s favorite tricks is to get us to esteem a gift of God so highly that we never use it, for fear of misusing it. In Jesus day, the people thought God’s name was properly used when its use was forbidden. In the early church, Baptism was so highly prized that men put it off until they were on their death bed. Before the Reformation, piety regarding the blood of the Lord grew so strong that it was entirely withheld from the people. And so likewise, in our synod, a desire to properly prepare for the sacrament meant that people were ever preparing, but seldom receiving the gift which was the object of the preparation. Satan loves raising the piety around a thing so high, that the thing itself is despised out of love for it.

In addition, in the late 40s and early 50s, you had not so much doctrine classes, but classes that were doctrinaire. Parishes had their catechumens memorize the Aristotelean attributes of God, along with the Aquinine additions, in order to be confirmed into communicant membership on a non-Communion Sunday. (I once ministered to a lapsed ‘communicant member’ who had been confirmed, but never in his life received Holy Communion.) The doctrine classes in the seminary were similarly disconnected from reality, and exegetical classes consisted largely of memorizing figures of speech.

At the seminary, there were young professors digging into the writings of the Fathers. One of the Fathers who was newly translated into English was Luther: 53 volumes of his writings. His work was a breath of fresh sacramental air to a synod that had recently switched to English, and was taking most of their cues about how to run an English congregation from the Methodist church (flags and all). Exegetically, professors were espousing methods that involved actually digging into the text to try and find meaning. The “only” flaw was that the meaning was imported into it by the reader. A new scientific age meant that God was left out of the equation. These pastors graduated with a high respect for the sacrament of our Lord, but a low view of the Word of God. They were placed into congregations that, by and large, had a great respect for the Word of God, but a low view of the sacraments. That the two are inextricably linked – bound together by the command of our Lord – seemed to escape the notice of everyone involved. Congregations wanted weekly preaching about justification, but the means of that justification (Baptism, The Sacrament) was never mentioned in sermons, and The Sacrament was observed – at most – only monthly. The old ways – holding to exegesis that was barely more than sentence diagramming while abstaining from the sacrament for months at a time – seemed not only unfaithful, but impossibly out of date in the new age of rockets and computations.

Also at this time, the first serious dialogue in four centuries between Lutheran and Roman theologians was taking place. Unity could really be on the horizon. Rome was willing to concede we had the Sacrament, and so also the Holy Ministry! Roman theologians had no trouble with the new exegesis. Exegesis has never been a troublesome spot for Rome, because the Word was always subject to the Magisterium. Whatever trouble your exegetical method got you into was moderated by doctrinal decrees that were beyond question.

These eager young pastors could either follow the path that led to sacramental and incarnational piety, or they could follow the path of the old ways: Scripture means neither more nor less than the ink on the paper says. The effort to conserve the divinity of the ink was joined by a new movement: Fundamentalism. Fundamentalism despised sacramental piety, because they rejected the clear word of God, “Is”. They also had no use for, “Now saves you.” And yet it was this combined movement of deniers of the Word and abstainers from the sacrament who were calling The Young Theologians of the Future “unfaithful”. Even I would be unimpressed with such a collection of anthropologians. For they were not theologians in any scriptural sense. All glory seemed to fall on man: Man decided; Man prepared. Preaching was by default about man. Four times a year, The Lord descended from his throne and was present. Whether you felt you needed him on that day, was another question. Put bluntly: God was almost absent from the soteriology of the old ones. This made the young ones vulnerable to the false piety of those who denied the very thing that gives force to justification: The resurrection.

The exciting frontiers of liturgical renewal, ecumenical dialogue, and sacramental piety were all in one direction. Renewed interest in Lutheran Chorales instead of the soul-numbing ditties of Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley was inculcated in them. Possible agreement between Rome and Wittenberg was offered – and on the Lutherans own terms. A love for the Word of Jesus, “Take eat, take drink” was part of their inner being. How could they be wrong?

And yet, Lutheranism, divorced from the authority of the Word is all ship, no rudder. Rome can hold on longer, being founded on the magisterium instead of the Word of Christ. Lutherans without the Word are immediately adrift. And so it happened, as anyone with 20/20 hindsight can see from 50 years on. AELC became ELCA, which abandoned Christianity so fast, it may have set a historical record for speed.

It would fall to the post-Seminex generation to carry forward the love of Christ’s incarnational presence in the church, but also with a firm grasp of the importance of God’s Word as The Norm – the rule by which all things in the church must be judged.

Now, 50 years on, the debt we owe to the Seminex generation is starting to peek through the fog of war.

I have always respected the sacramental piety of the men I so often and vehemently disagreed with. Their love of Christ and his presence in the church through His Mysteries, profoundly shaped me. One of the formative moments in my ministry brought home the intersection of sacramental mystery and incarnational piety in a way that 4 years of seminary did not.

We were in Winkel. A pastor with a few years on him asked, “How do you keep from getting burned out through the holiday seasons, with all the extra duties, services, sermons to write? I just feel like I run dry.” The answer – from Pastor Stein – was revolutionary for me. 25 years on, I can’t quote it verbatim, but the words of significance are still there:

“I take the Eucharist to my shut-ins on Christmas Eve. Doing so directs me back to Christ. The incarnational presence of Jesus in the mysteries needs to be the foundation of our ministry.”

It was like an atomic bomb going off. For years I had heard about incarnation, sacrament, etc. Seminary was full of the language, but it was assumed we would absorb the concepts and figure out the implications by osmosis if surrounded by the speech long enough. There was never any practical advice about how to go about such an incarnational and sacramental ministry – other than “slowly & winsomely”. It could be I just wasn’t able to hear, but I had questions, I was listening for it, and never heard a how-to about integrating incarnational theology with pastoral practice. I think many of the professors of the day weren’t really sure. They were long on theory, but generally had little parish experience. Pastor Stein tied the mystery of incarnation to the flesh-of-this-world in a way I had never heard before.

It instantly changed my approach to holy days, and in time my entire approach to ministry. A few years later, when I myself was struggling with the load of Holy Week, I solved it by adding Eucharistic services on Holy Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. There is direct path between his comments and my solution to the problem of pastoral acedia. My ministry was never the same.  Years later there was a congregational dispute about pastoral care; it was a shut-in who defended me. The dispute didn’t so much die down as instantly vanish. My sacramental and incarnational approach to pastoral care made a difference. When Jesus talked about giving a cup of water, he wasn’t kidding. And looking back, I see now how comments from Pastor Stein and the others in the circuit at the time, formed my approach to sacrament, incarnation, caring for the “little children” (of all ages) under my care, and every aspect of my ministry.

In the end, we were obviously on different paths. 25 years on, with the drums of war no longer pounding, but instead getting ever more faint even in my own memories, I can appreciate a little bit better their struggle, and why it was they might have been impressed with the beauty of the truth in one aspect, while also being drawn away from it in another. Their own fathers in the faith led them both toward and away from Christ. The toward was beautiful and obvious, the away much more subtle, the disastrous effects still many years in the future. Their professors were Pied Pipers. The young men who listened to them tried to be faithful as best they could. But too much had been taken from them. There was no foundation, other than love of a beautiful thing. This we always shared, though in the heat of battle it could scarcely be admitted. Insofar as the beautiful thing is Christ crucified, it is the only truly beautiful thing worth caring about. Insofar as their love did not extended to the words spoken by Jesus in every book of the Holy Scriptures, we didn’t share enough. The gap was too great to be bridged in this world.

I have another memory from that time. It was a different group, one devoted to studying the confessions. A faithful pastor – from that earlier generation, who had been on different sides of the battle lines through the wars – finally recognized and desired a more sacramental piety in his ministry and in his preaching. He was a humble man, and was able to listen to the young generation and learn from them about a more robust sacramental and scriptural piety (at least as much as we were able to articulate it at the time). But he missed much in his ministry, and I am sad that Satan led astray so badly those who desired to return the body and blood of the Lord to its rightful place in the churches life and preaching. I am also sad the men in my circuit could not in humility learn respect from God’s word from the younger generation, the way that veteran pastor could learn love of the sacrament. But I suppose it came across to them as arrogance. It wasn’t, but, older now, I can understand why they would have seen it that way.

David Stein rests now. Many of them do. The fire of youth has faded somewhat from me, and there is a deeper wisdom at work in my thoughts than there was. I mourn for the division, that we were not able finally to celebrate as brothers in this world. Perhaps some day, the sin cleansed from us all, we will be able to sing together the praises of the Lord, without heresy or preconceptions clouding our judgment. I pray this is the case for the Seminex generation. I pray that, in the end, their love of Christ and his salvation overcame their disrespect for the Word which Christ gave to be written which proclaims that salvation. If true, the reunion in heaven will be a glorious one indeed.

The Gifts of the Sprit Reign Supreme

Recently, I have seen some in the church argue for the seven heavenly virtues: The 4 cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance) and the 3 theological virtues (faith, hope, and love). I have no problem with them in theory. They represent a blending of the best of pagan philosophy with portions of scripture (1 Cor 13). This is not necessarily a bad thing.

But it is an incomplete thing.

First, the three theological virtues (faith, hope, love), arise from a discourse on the importance of love above all else. Which is to say, faith and hope are inferior to love, because love is superior to them. If you disagree, you can take that up with Saint Paul, who was writing by inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

But while I owe a great deal to the fathers of western paganism – Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle – their work is inferior to the Holy Scriptures, and I am not a fan of trying to shoehorn their work into the scriptural testimony or the analogy of faith.

And scripture tells us what virtues we are to cultivate: Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.

Some of these overlap with Plato’s cardinal virtues. That’s not a surprise, for a couple of reasons: 1) Paul was trained in the leading philosophies of the day, and talked to philosophers on his missionary journeys. He knew their teachings, and so was conversant with the language. It’s not a surprise he used the language – though he is in no way indebted to them for the concepts. Those are taught only by the Holy Spirit.

2) The pagans were wise enough to figure some things out about the creation.

But ultimately, without the fear of the Lord, they were not able to move forward on the path of true wisdom. Their wisdom is lacking precisely because it is not begun in the fear of the Lord.

And so, in what I have read about the seven heavenly virtues, I have read tributes to the seven gifts of the Spirit. But I have not read what I would call “a substantial subscription to them.” I think especially missing are gentleness and meekness (the latter of which is praised by Jesus in his earliest extant sermon.)

And I think we need to encourage and cultivate those two things much more than we have. I don’t mean mealy-mouthedness. I mean true godly gentleness and meekness. I have spoken to some pastors who do get this, and who do exhibit and cultivate these gifts. And while I’ve heard a lot about hope and joy from synod leadership, I haven’t actually heard much about true, godly, steadfast gentleness. Maybe I’ve missed it. Maybe its because I am a blunt-force sort of personality, rather than a gentle one that I’ve missed the conversations about it.

But there is a place for gentleness – a growing place for it. We don’t need to be in everyone’s face about our faith and confession. There is a way to confess boldly, but gently. There is a way to speak truthfully, but gently and meekly. And if we want to survive the coming storm, I think we need to figure out how to do that. I’ve been sailing – when the wind picks up, sometimes the best course of action is to let the sail hang limp for a bit until you can get safely underway.

As just an example, it is important for the church to confess the reality of Gen 1:27. The world today has lost its mind in this. It is important to confess the reality of Genesis 2:23-24. We need to recognize what marriage is, and stress the important of marriage and family. But we don’t need to be jerks about it. We don’t need to go looking for fights. The chance to confess will find us soon enough. But there is a way to gently and meekly teach about the importance of fathers and mothers for our children. There is a way to gently confess the truth of God’s word regarding the loving necessity of closed communion. And the sooner we seek to cultivate those virtues, the better off we will be as members of the remnant in the world.

I have often been accused of taking the wrong tone in meetings of pastors, etc. Yeah, that’s probably a thing I did. I speak honestly and forthrightly to members of the clergy, because I always sort of assume clergy want straight talk about what the Word of God says. And I also rather naively assume that other pastors want full-strength Word of God talk without any beating around the bush. So, among the church gentry I’m known as sort of a jerk.

But when speaking in my community, and the topic comes up, and they ask a direct question, people are often shocked to discover how strident our teachings are and how much the law demands of us. This they do not expect from me. I speak with fear and trembling, with respect for their own thoughts, with gentleness and meekness, and I reserve my speech for opportune moments. I am not – as I think other pastors rather assume of me – the guy who runs about town shouting “REPENT SINNER!” at everyone I see. I have had friends over the years from all walks of life, and from all manner of religions, and in need of the same forgiveness which Christ offers. We can talk and enjoy each other’s company. And when the opportunity arises, I witness to them of the hope that is in me. The response is usually one of surprised joy, rather than rolled eyes or resistance.

With pastors, I just lay it out there. They know the word of God. They have the pattern of sound speech as part of their daily task. That’s a good time to speak more efficiently. Apparently, this is not as appreciated by others as it is with me.

It’s sort of like a person who knows how cars work. When speaking with mechanics, he uses the proper technical terms, “worn bearing, etc.” . When speaking with laymen, he likely uses more general language. “It’s broken.” So in the church I use the language of scripture – especially among pastors who are supposed to be studying it. And I don’t mince words.

Among the world, I still use the pattern of sound speech, but I do it much more gently.

What I’m seeing is an inversion. Many want to take up worldly concepts, speak in worldly ways, and change the church’s tone to match the world’s tone. This I will not do.

And then in the world, they have no idea how to relate to those outside of the church, nor can they speak in a way that doesn’t offend. They match the tone, but they have not learned gentleness, and so their speech does not invite further conversation.

I don’t know what the solution is, other than perhaps humility, and looking again at the gifts of the Spirit and seeking them out, rather than the teachings of Plato, moderated through the scholastics. I’ve never been a fan of that branch of theology / philosophy. I think it weakens the teachings of the pagans, rather than making them stronger. And it cripples the teaching of scripture. Luther I think would agree with me, along with a minority of the orthodox Lutheran Fathers. Melanchthon likely wouldn’t, along with most of the Orthodox Lutheran Fathers. That’s a different conversation. But I think I’m in better company.

Gentleness and meekness. I pray the church seeks them out.

Sermon for Reminiscere

Based on Matthew 15 (Jesus & the Cyro-Phoenician Woman). Why was Jesus mean? Because we don’t know what loving looks like. Sermon after the jump:

On the Dogma of Scientism

Writing a century ago, Chesterton managed to summarize (predict?) the world we live in now. This especially reminded me of the Covid era. (From Eugenics and Other Evils):

I am not frightened of the word “persecution” when it is attributed to the churches; nor is it in the least as a term of reproach that I attribute it to the men of science. It is as a term of legal fact. If it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory, incapable of final proof—then our priests are not now persecuting, but our doctors are. The imposition of such dogmas constitutes a State Church—in an older and stronger sense than any that can be applied to any supernatural Church to-day. There are still places where the religious minority is forbidden to assemble or to teach in this way or that; and yet more where it is excluded from this or that public post. But I cannot now recall any place where it is compelled by the criminal law to go through the rite of the official religion. Even the Young Turks did not insist on all Macedonians being circumcised.

Now here we find ourselves confronted with an amazing fact. When, in the past, opinions so arguable have been enforced by State violence, it has been [78]at the instigation of fanatics who held them for fixed and flaming certainties. If truths could not be evaded by their enemies, neither could they be altered even by their friends. But what are the certain truths that the secular arm must now lift the sword to enforce? Why, they are that very mass of bottomless questions and bewildered answers that we have been studying in the last chapters—questions whose only interest is that they are trackless and mysterious; answers whose only glory is that they are tentative and new. The devotee boasted that he would never abandon the faith; and therefore he persecuted for the faith. But the doctor of science actually boasts that he will always abandon a hypothesis; and yet he persecutes for the hypothesis. The Inquisitor violently enforced his creed, because it was unchangeable. The savant enforces it violently because he may change it the next day.

Now this is a new sort of persecution; and one may be permitted to ask if it is an improvement on the old. The difference, so far as one can see at first, seems rather favourable to the old. If we are to be at the merciless mercy of man, most of us would rather be racked for a creed that existed intensely in somebody’s head, rather than vivisected for a discovery that had not yet come into anyone’s head, and possibly never would. A man would rather be tortured with a thumbscrew until he chose to see reason than tortured with a vivisecting knife until the vivisector chose to see reason. Yet that is the real difference between the two types of legal enforcement. If I gave in to the Inquisitors, I should at least know what creed to profess. But even if I yelled out a credo when the Eugenists had me on the rack, I should not know what creed to yell. I might get an extra turn of the rack for confessing to the creed they confessed quite a week ago.

Seminex at 50: It looks Terrible!

It’s been 50 years since Seminary Majority Productions released “Walkout!” Initially hailed as a groundbreaking piece of theological filmmaking, the cast of characters considered themselves great artists, and thought they were introducing a new era. Over the years, it turned out that the so-called villains were actually the good guys. And the intervening years have shown the message of the film to be nothing so much as “beware of hubris”.

Since it’s been 50 years, many of the characters who once stood so tall on the screen have fallen into obscurity. So I thought a brief review of the main cast, in order of importance, would be helpful.

#1 Herman Otten: Say what you will, but without Pastor Otten pulling the fire alarm each week for a decade, the synod would not have awoken. Horribly scarred by the ordeal, he continued ministering faithfully to his flock each week, while being denied the right to exist by a synod that could not admit how grateful it was, or how much it owed him. Proof: 27 years after the walkout, Dean Wenthe didn’t visit New Heaven before the synod convention. 36 years after, Matthew Harrison did.

#2 Robert Preus & #3 Jacob Preus: Ranking these two is like asking, “What is more important in a sandwich, the bread or the filling?” Without Jacob, faithfulness would likely not have prevailed in 1974. But it was Robert who began the confessional doctrinal revival in the late 50s and early 60s among her pastors. It’s a revival still going strong, and without it, the LCMS would have won the day in ’74, only to be lost in the 80’s to the evangelical  neo-liberal conservatism of the synod leadership at the time. (The 80’s was crazy).

#4: The Other 4 Faithful Five. There were five professors who remained to teach classes. Ralph Bohlmann and Martin Scharlemann were the only two I can name off the top of my head. Bohlmann wrote “A Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Principles.” He went on to serve as President of the Seminary and later the synod, before losing his mind in the mid 80’s. His final years were devoted to undoing his earlier work, and he was so adamant about it, many have speculated that he only wrote A Statement because he correctly predicted that Seminex would fail. Scharlemann published a paper in favor of historical criticism, before recanting it and serving faithfully the rest of his life. What did he believe, and how repentant was he? The damage was done, but his remaining with the other four speaks well of him. These two are relegated to Supporting Player status.

#5: Alvin Jessen. You haven’t heard of him. He stands in for all the faithful laymen that weren’t taken in by lies about “Jonah”, when they were really denying the resurrection of Jesus. He was a member of one of my parishes. I never met him, though his wife was still alive when I arrived. He submitted the resolution to remove their unfaithful Seminex-loving pastor. Incidentally, he did it with only his knowledge of the small catechism, the bible, and the hymnal. I know he never read deeper theology, because he didn’t read anything. Orphaned a young age, he had to leave school and handle the family farm. He sang the hymns in TLH from memory. All of them. Why do we have kids memorize the Small Catechism, and sing the old hymns like “A Mighty Fortress”? Because you can literally take down Seminex with that knowledge.

#6: The cooks at the seminary (Uncredited). What would the walkout have been, if the folks walking out couldn’t have walked back in for lunch? They might have had to go out to eat at a restaurant or something. And since they were all unemployed, that would have been an expense too far. So thanks to the cooks for keeping the walk-outers well fed in their protest, and for living out our confession that God does indeed give food to all people, even the wicked.

#7: The local media. If there weren’t cameras to preen for, what would have been the point of preening? It was the one skill the Seminex leadership excelled at. Once the cameras were off, they faded into obscurity, eventually being twice-consumed by other institutions. “Jack was mean to me” turned out to be not a very good founding principle for a seminary. But without the cameras to capture the moment, the hour-long walkout-and-back-for-lunch wouldn’t even have been that.

#8: Richard Caemerererer: In the early 90’s, I overheard some pastors talking. One asked, “Why did he walk out?” The other said, “I asked him once. He said he thought he could get them to come back and salvage the situation.” This was the sort of Hubris you expect from that gang. But that’s not why he is listed here. He wrote the preaching text that, until recently, was considered the best how-to in English Lutheranism. It reduced scripture to a Law-Gospel dynamic and nothing else (despite his claims that he wasn’t doing it, he totally did.) It was a doctrinally reductionistic approach that you’d expect from the modern era of the mid 20^th century. And this doctrinal reductionism has proven to be the most difficult-to-dislodge part of seminex. His preaching model was like a nutrition pill on the Jetsons: one little capsule has everything you need to stay alive. But where is the bountiful feast, lovingly prepared? With the recent rediscovery of more Orthodox methods, I expect his influence to finally and deservedly wane.

#9: The rest of the walkout faculty. I had to mention them somewhere. They were less important than the illiterate farmers in our synod, or the people who made them lunch. They thought it was the path to a new and glorious church. The name they picked for their cause means, in Latin, “Half dead”. An appropriate moniker. They founded the most over-clergied church body in history. Most of the men who walked out so bravely with them, bravely came crawling back because there were no congregations to pastor in this New Eden. The church body they did found was absorbed into the “Incredible Shrinking ELCA” – a movie in its own right. What began with promise in 1988 as “The Largest Lutheran Church in America”, has now managed to cut itself in more than half, because they stand for nothing, and fall for everything. Breakoff groups from the ELCA that want to split the orthodox baby in half, think they are Solomon, but the point of Solomon was he didn’t split the baby in half.

Actual photo of John Teetgen… Teachin… Teedgen… ah, whatever.

#10 John Tietjen. You hate to even mention the guy. His one demonstrable talent seems to have been giving local television new interviews. He really thought he was a great revolutionary, in the mold of a… I don’t know, maybe Fidel Castro. Now that Google exists, you can easily find the once-obscure sources for his doctoral thesis. His theories are banal, his sources taken wildly out of context, and it’s nothing so much as an 8^th grade screed against his mean parents. He’s on the list at all only because he was considered the central figure for many years. But his previous revolutionary actions and “brave confessional stance” was poison to the get-along attitude of the ELCA. He died in obscurity in Texas, rejected by the same revolutionary movement he thought he was founding.

Meanwhile, the LCMS orthodox confessional revival continues. Someday, I’ll write a review of it. It’s a much better movie.

PS. I wrote more serious reflections for the 40th anniversary. You can read them here and here and here. More on the inadequacy of Teitjen-ism here. A eulogy for Herman Otten can be found here.

It’s Time 2020. Still Relevant in 2024

In 2020, I put together a brief document outlining a reform plan for the LCMS. It received little attention. A few pastors looked at it, I heard a couple of responses, but there was no official notice, so far as I can tell.

Since then, the LCMS has lost two more Concordias, the last convention was dedicated to trying to salvage a third, several district offices have been sold or consolidated with other buildings, the pastoral vacancy rate in the synod has topped 10% for the first time in history; the list of problems seems to grow, not shrink.

I believe my reform plan still has much to commend it. It’s too late now for 5 of 10 Concordias. We can’t get back a lot of what has been lost. But a comprehensive effort to save and nurture what remains would not be amiss.

I’ve been requested to do this for a while, but never managed to get it done. It isn’t pretty, I didn’t get to adding pictures or finding ‘the perfect font’, but here is the Reform proposal for anyone who would like to take a closer look.

Its Time 2020