Invite a Friend – Liturgy Isn’t Scary

I’d like to welcome any friends and neighbors who have joined us today. And I want to use this space, along with some of the space in the bulletin, to guide you through our Worship service. Which may or may not be familiar to you.

The first word I’d introduce to you would be liturgy. Now every church or denomination has a liturgy even if they don’t call it that. A liturgy is simply the normal order of how the worship proceeds. Things don’t even have to be overtly religious to have a liturgy. Pregame sporting events have a liturgy from low church simple singing of the anthem followed by kindly applause to high church presentation of the colors by fully uniformed officers, a soloist singing of the anthem, followed by a low altitude fly-over of the stadium by an American bomber. After which the appropriate reply is a full-throated cheer and chanting of USA USA. Life is full of liturgies.

Low church liturgies these days are modeled after the 18^th and 19^th century revival tents. Congregants gather. A band warms people up steadily increasing the volume and emotional pitch. The band then turns it down a notch for one last song. The Preacher comes out, reads a verse or a passage which will be the text of his preaching. He then proceeds to preach. There may or may not be an altar call. At the end the band comes back out for one wrap-up song. And then there is a dismissal. High Church liturgies – or what might today be called High Church but not long ago would have simply been church – all stem from a 2000 tradition that probably goes back to the Jewish Synagogue. You can get a bit of that flavor in the gospel of Luke when Jesus goes to his hometown Nazareth synagogue (Luke 4:16). The liturgy you will experience today in this Lutheran church would have been quite low church mid-century. It would have been called a simple service of the Word as we are not celebrating the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper today. This congregation follows a rhythm of the Sacrament on 2^nd, 4^th, any 5^th Sundays or any specific Holy Days. 1^st and 3^rd Sundays are for the Word alone. All of that following a church year calendar.

The service opens with a Hymn of Invocation. An invocation should tell you both what God is being worshipped here in this service and is the opening prayer of the gathered believers. Today that invocation is both specifically to the LORD Jesus Christ and a Trinitarian invocation. And the request is for His presence to move our hearts to continued faith. Immediately after the invocation is the Corporate Confession and Absolution. For most of church history, confession and absolution would have been private and would have been expected in the week prior if you wanted to receive communion. I’m just old enough to remember my parents having to declare for communion. Within the Lutheran Church corporate confession has become the standard.

The Lutheran Liturgy – today our simple Service of the Word – proceeds in three large steps: Scripture, Preaching and Prayer. The first step are the various readings of the Word of God and congregational responses. From the entrance Psalm (the Introit) with its response of the Gloria, to the assigned readings with the response of the public confession of the creed and the Hymn of the Day. The rhythm of the liturgy is often Call and Response in big ways and in small. You will see that Call and Response in a small way after each reading. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

We are gathered to hear God’s Word and we first do that in the Words of Scripture which are for all peoples of all times. Our specific readings are assigned. We follow something called a lectionary. That lectionary each week has a specific Old Testament, Epistle and Gospel reading. The use of a lectionary ensures that I the preacher don’t harp on the same thing every week but preach “the whole counsel of God.” The sermon or preaching is to be the Word of God for this people gathered today. And then in the simple service we turn to prayer and blessing. Other weeks we would celebrate the Sacrament before the sending.

That is a quick overview of how a Lutheran service flows. We hear the Word, we interpret and apply the Word for our lives, and we ask God for his care and blessing. It might seem a little formal, but not everything – maybe especially the things of God – has to be in an informal register. The vestments I wear are not meant to mark me personally out, but are the dress of the office. The colors of the various hangings that make the sanctuary beautiful follow the colors of the church year. Right now, being in the Season of Pentecost which is the season of the growth and mission of the church, they are green. Come back in Advent they are blue. Christmas is white. Festivals an audacious Red. What the liturgy and everything around it does is attempt to create a sacred time and place. A place to withdraw from the world and encounter God. To hear God in his word and his promise.

Thank you for worshipping with us today.

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Marriage Allegory

had the occasion recently to review the Wedding liturgy. I was once again reminded of what might be the best short sermon ever written. And also reminded of just how clever Satan can be. That best short sermon is what is typically labeled The Wedding Address. In reality that address is both deathly serious and full of deep kindness. Which brings up Satan’s cleverness. You know this address because of Hollywood’s various representations of absolutely silly Bishops in their bling stating either “Dearly beloved” or “Marriage” with full lisp. Usually in front of two people who absolutely should not be getting married.

That last bit – two people who should not be getting married – had me reflecting. Is Hollywood making fun of this because of the hypocrisy of the clergyman? Pronouncing the address while knowing he should not be doing the wedding. Every minister has at least one wedding that they look back on and grimace. And because we remember the mistakes, and not the much larger number of happy occasions, they are the ones that haunt. Or is Hollywood, and Satan, merely trying to cover up with farce the clarity of Thomas Cranmer’s statement on the purpose.

The first thing Cranmer’s address does is establish where marriage comes from. “This is an honorable estate instituted and blessed by God in paradise before humanity’s fall into sin.” This is the way God made the material world to be. Before anything messed it up. Before our sin. This institution was present. That leaves the question why? Why would God create this? What meaning does it have? And Cranmer’s address immediately tells us. In the material reality of marriage, “we see a picture of the communion between Christ and His bride, the church.” Marriage is a living allegory. The physical reality is the base, but Christological, Moral and Eschatological carry the meaning. The fundamental institution that most of us live our lives within is a reflection of Christ and His people. It is an expression of the love of God for his creation “proclaimed by his presence and first miracle at Cana in Galilee.”

The Address then moves on to the moral dimension. What does this institution require of us? And it includes four things that build on each other. The base of any marriage is the “union in heart, body and mind intended for the mutual companionship, help and support that each person ought to receive from the other, both in prosperity and adversity.” Marriage is hopefully more than a long-term contract, but it is never less than a long-term contract. Maybe contract is the wrong word, say alliance. That alliance has its physical dimension. “Marriage was ordained so that man and woman may find delight in one another.” As with all things planted by God – good trees – they are fruitful. “God established marriage for the procreation of children.” This often gets overlooked in our day, but be fruitful and multiply is a law that was never repealed. The last bit of the moral dimension is what to do with those kids. “Who are to be brought up in the fear and instruction of the Lord.” Marriage as an institution was created that our greatest heritage – The Word of God – might be preserved to generations’ generation.

And that leaves the eschatological. Where does this all go? “That they may offer Him [Christ] their praise.” Marriage – the image of Christ and the Church – is the institution that functions as the ark in this world. It is the institution that puts us in the boat, trusts the love of God to see that boat to shore, and populates that heavenly number that no one can count.

“For these reasons God has established the holy estate.” Marriage is a living allegory of our hope. Some particular marriages are better representations than others. There are those who absolutely should not be getting married. And sin makes all kinds of things eminently mockable. But as with all things of God, the reality – the love and the hope – are not erased. If we live into the faith that it requires. If we have the faith that Christ has blessed and honored this estate.

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Your Hair is On Fire

I’ve used it enough that I think our council is probably tired of it. But I call August around churches the annual Hair on Fire month. Why? There are a number of reasons. Attendance is often a bit depressed as people get in the last summer trips before school starts – the actual New Years Day. Leadership teams are usually turning to budget season. And they are turning to budget season usually at the lowest point. And this year is probably no different. If you haven’t looked, through the month of July we are reporting offerings of $118K against expenses of $163K for a deficit of -$45K. That is why I call it Hair on Fire. Almost every August in my experience you look at bad numbers at exactly the time you are thinking about next year.

Now I do want to call attention to something just under the covers of those top-line numbers. The first is that on the expense line, year to year comparison, we are running roughly -1.5% less. Our expenses are less than we said they would be. And that will continue for the foreseeable future. The iPad Organist is cheaper. I hate to say that. And it might not be good long term because I tend to think live music is important. But right now it is true. The live portion is going to be your voices and the person pressing play. And the iPad in my judgement is a lot better than it has any right to be. But, that reduction still would not solve that deficit. Not completely.

The real problem is the top line. Offerings year to year are down almost 18%. I can’t really blame attendance as it has been solid year to year. Collectively we managed to close in the black last year. Although that came late. In August our hair was on fire. Maybe the same thing happens. Maybe it doesn’t. The main point here is that you can’t make up an almost 20% decline in the top-line with stuff below it. Not really. Unless you want something that looks dramatically different.

And I think this really is the time of trial. Of course the answer is more people sharing the burden. Most people when they say that mean something like “we need more people in here.” And I’m not saying that is false, just that is not how God tends to work. Saying to God “you need to send more people because I don’t want to bear the cost of this church” is rarely a compelling argument with God. What He tends to say is something like Haggai. “These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD…Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruin?…Consider your ways, Go up to the hills and bring wood to build the house (Haggai 1:2-11).” Or God says something like Malachi. “Bring in the full tithe…and thereby put me to the test, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no need (Malachi 3:6-12).” Or if you want the New Testament and Jesus, he has no problem saying something like “give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you. (Luke. 6:38).” Or “Make friends for yourselves by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they may receive you into eternal dwellings (Luke 16:9).” Or, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt. 6:19-21).”

Stewardship is always the acid test of are you on mission with God. God wants people who are on mission with him. Budget problems are almost always spiritual mission problems. Do you believe the promises? Do you want to see the Kingdom grow? Prove it. Put God to the test.

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The Law and the Promise

In the Young Adult group that meets on Wednesday evenings, in between silly movies, we’ve been reading Galatians. And to Lutherans in the know Galatians is probably the most Lutheran book of the bible. It is a book about the proper distinction of law and gospel. And distinction is the right word. They are two separate covenants – Abraham and Moses. But the covenant with Abraham – “he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6, Galatians 3:6)” – is both prior to that with Moses and more direct. God speaks directly with Abraham. The covenant of Sinai with Israel is mediated by Moses. Exodus has Moses going up the mountain and down the mountain and up and down each time relaying parts of a negotiation. Down, I’ve met the LORD. Up, the people of Israel say you are scary. Down, tell them they are right and to back away from the mountain. Up, they’ve agreed and backed away. Let me bring down your word. You should go down first. Down, witnesses the golden calf. Breaks the law. Cleans up Israel. Up, yes, God, I’m sorry, I dropped the tablets. I’ll make a copy. Down, here is the law again, will you keep it? Up, they said they’d keep it. Down, we need to assemble the elders for a meal on the mountain. Up, a meal with the Elder and the LORD to celebrate the covenant of Moses. The covenant with Abraham is the promise – the gospel. Believe, God will do it, God has done it. The covenant with Moses is the law.

Isaiah 56, our Old Testament lesson for this Sunday, is an interesting mixture of the promise and the law. But I can’t help but hear the gospel predominate. “Thus says the LORD: Keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my righteousness be revealed (Isaiah 56:1).” Paul would say something like the law was given to us as guardian (Galatians 3:24). And there is nothing wrong with the law. The law is good and wise. It is justice. It is righteousness. It’s problem is that the law cannot make us righteous. It instead exposes that we are far from righteous and injustice is what sow. Often injustice is what we sow exactly when we think we are meeting it out. And so what we need is the promise. “My salvation will come, my righteousness be revealed.” God will act. And in the act of God we shall find our salvation, even victory over our sinful selves.

And this is the superiority of the Gospel – of the direct promise. It is available to all. It is available not to the offsprings of Abraham, the pure physical descent. It is available through the offspring – Christ (Galatians 3:16). Isaiah puts this in a different key. He calls out the foreigner, that is the gentile, and the eunuch, that one literally cut off. Our lesson cuts this line out. Probably because of squeamishness over eunuch. “Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say ‘The LORD will surely separate me from his people’; and let not the eunuch say ‘behold, I am a dry tree. (Isaiah 56:3)’” Isaiah implores both to “hold fast to my covenant.”

Which covenant? He mentions the Sabbath and the sacrifices. The sacrifices are clearly part of the law. But the Sabbath goes back to the beginning. On the seventh day, God rested. The toil of the law – the guardian – is felt. But he Sabbath rest comes. And yes, the necessities of the sacrifices of the law once filled the temple. And Christ cleared it saying “my house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples (Luke 19:46).” For Christ is the salvation of God. And Christ is the righteousness of God. It is not that the law is useless or contrary. It is that the promise is stronger. The law kills us, but God is the God of life.

And he gathers us all into his house of prayer. He promises the eunuch “I will give you a house within my walls, and a name that shall not be cut off.” He promises the foreigner, “I will gather others to him, besides those already gathered.” These I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in prayer. Paul would say in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. In Christ we are heirs of the promise. And we have seen his deliverance revealed.

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Job’s Answer – The Character of God

Note: I’ve been cajoled into including a reading of these Pastor’s Corner articles. I guess I’m going to include it in the podcast feed now.

Our Old Testament Lesson this Sunday (Job 38:4-18) is chosen for one specific line – “Have you entered into the spring of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?” – which lines up with the gospel lesson’s Jesus walking on the water. And the impact of the Old Testament lesson as it is read is exactly what Jesus walking on the water signals, what the disciples intone together at the close, “truly you are the Son of God.” God is always something completely beyond us. Even while being true man, he remains true God. And if that doesn’t scare you a little, instill a holy fear, check your heart to be sure you are still living.

But this Job passage in its larger context speaks to a deeper mystery than simply awe. If there can be such a thing. We roughly know the start of Job. He is describes as “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” This is better than the OT’s description of Noah who was “blameless in his generation.” Of course his generation is the one that God chose to wipe out with the flood. Job as described is more like Enoch who “walked with God and God took him (Genesis 5:24).” Enoch being the pre-history version of Moses whom God took and nobody knew where he was and Elijah who was taken up in the fire-y chariot. And if you are Roman Catholic or open to a bit of Marian devotion, like Mary assumed into heaven. Job both had faith in God Almighty and he walked it. Job was innocent, and yet Satan – the accuser – decides he wants to sift him. And God lets Satan do what he wants. Yet Job does not really sin. His wife comes out at one point and tells him to “curse God and die (Job 2:9).” To which Job replies, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?”” And the narrator tells us “in all this Job did not sin with his lips.”

Job, lying in a pile of his own pus and blood, has three friends arrive. And the three friends take turns telling Job in some way he had to have done something to deserve this. They rotate through all the arguments we know that we hope will keep tragedy from our doorstep. That will ensure the innocent receive justice and the guilty are punished correctly. And Job answers them all with three assertions. 1) I am innocent, 2) Yet my redeemer lives, and 3) That redeemer – God – owes me an answer. And Job has the best of the argument to such an extent that a fourth person shows up.burning with zeal to defend God’s honor. His argument is better than the first three. He doesn’t deny Job a superficial righteousness but blames Job for his heart “he does not regard any (i.e. you Job) who are wise in their own conceit.” And the conceit is that God owes Job an answer. God’s sovereignty exempts him from any explanation.

And it is here that God himself show up in the whirlwind. And as you read our lesson it might sound a bit like Job’s last visitor. God proclaiming his own majesty and glory and sovereignty. “Where you there when I laid the foundations of the earth?” And some of that is clearly there. But if all we are doing is pointing out God’s majesty it is a slander against the character of God. Borrowing a line from the greatest B movie ever – Constantine – “God is a kid with an ant farm.” If all we say about God is that he can shake it whenever he wants to we have “darkened counsel by words without knowledge.” For God goes on to call out all kinds of things, like the apparent idiocy of the ostrich who just leaves her eggs “that the wild beast may trample them.” Or how a variety of animals: goats and donkeys, and oxen and horses and hawks and eagles all seem to have their place. “Did you give this to them?” The character of God is not that he is a tyrant doing anything he wants without regard. But that the LORD orders all things mightily.

Job gets an answer of sorts. All these things that we see made by God’s majesty have a way of working, and we know not how. It is above our pay grade. It is beyond our ability. Yet we trust them daily. Should we not also trust that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. (Rom. 8:28).” That the God who has revealed himself is the God of steadfast love. And this is what is required. That we believe in who Christ has revealed the Father to be, not that we know.

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Robert Barnes and English Lutheranism

July 30^th on Church calendar is a remembrance of Robert Barnes, Confessor and Martyr. Now I know that most of us don’t pay any attention to the church calendar beyond Christmas, Easter and maybe a nip of green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. But Robert Barnes got me thinking about one of history’s great “what-ifs” and the history of Lutheranism in the English language. In the US it is always interesting looking at common languages at the turn of the 19^thand 20^th century. The US was much closer to a Canadian two-language reality – with the two being German and English – than any of us can imagine. The turn of the century naturalization laws and then two wars against Germany eradicated that fact. The LCMS had been so German right until the 20^th century that it kept The English Synod – which eventually became our English District – as a separate entity. The first English hymnal was by that English Synod in 1912. Which largely became the 1941 The Lutheran Hymnal (TLH) that I imagine many readers might still call “The Hymnal.”

And it is that which gets us on our way back to Robert Barnes. In translating the common service and all the prayers of the day and everything else that is part of liturgical worship the English Synod did what anyone not concerned about copyright would do. They stole Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s English. Which isn’t as big a stretch as you might imagine. Compared to today’s variance of service even within a body like the LCMS, most of the magisterial protestant churches had kept a liturgy that resembled the Common Service. The service in the Book of Common Prayer is quite close. Cranmer in his first edition of the BCP took from Luther’s reworking of the Mass (in our hymnal as the stub DS5). And so even today, many of the prayers and wording in our services bare a striking resemblance to that Anglican BCP.

And that leads to the great “what if?” In 1525 Robert Barnes brought the reformation formally to England. Cambridge educated and brother of the same Augustinian friars as Luther, he was a doctor of theology and prior of the Cambridge convent. And he preached the first public proclamation of the Reformation gospel from his pulpit in that year. He was arrested leaving the pulpit and charged with heresy. Somehow he escaped and made his way to Wittenberg and was a personal acquaintance with Luther. He returned to England in 1531 with the mission of converting Henry VIII. He rose in office and stature rather swiftly, until as with a lot of Henry’s advisors, he was tasked with getting someone to agree to Henry’s first divorce. Barnes was sent back to Germany to secure Luther and Lutheran theologians’ approval for the king’s divorce and remarriage. They would not agree. (Which is ironic compared to the response later given to Philip of Hesse over bigamy.) Barnes returned without what was desired and Henry soured on Lutheranism. The thought of a Lutheran England, which was quite possible, remains the what-if. What if the Virginia aristocrats (Washington, Jefferson, Madison) had been Lutheran-Anglicans? What would European history have looked like if England and the Northern Continent shared a church?

As it was, Robert Barnes would not recant his Lutheran confession and was burned at the stake for it, July 30^th, 1540. His final words were a prayer, ‘Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” Luther wrote upon hearing that news something that probably sounds strange. “It is a particular joy for me to hear that our good and pious guest has been so graciously called by God to pour out his blood and to become a holy martyr…Hope betrayed him. For he always hoped his king would be good in the end.” As the apostle Peter says, “Rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. (1 Pet. 4:13 ESV).” Hope in earthly kings and their glory is bound to fail, but we have a more sure and certain Hope in the resurrection of Christ the King.

Convention Reflections

The every three years LCMS National Convention finished up its business this week. There really isn’t that much to report. It went as scripted. This is what I mean by that. In the run-up to a convention individual members (pastors and congregations), voting circuits (groups of congregations that elect the representatives to the convention) and even entire districts in their conventions can send memorials to the national convention. And they Do! Hundreds of them. Those memorials are grouped and divided by something called floor committees. A floor committee is a working group of members of the Synod that receive memorials and reconcile them together into floor motions. Hundreds of memorials, many of them duplicative, are reduced to a number of motions that the floor committees deem important enough for the time of the roughly 1000 representatives gathered. This is important because it only meets every three years and the cost is thousands of dollars per minute. Not including the vacation time the delegates themselves use. The floor committees also tend to create a couple of Omnibus motions. Omnibus motions are like the Island of Misfit toys. There is something off about them. Some of them are just “not the current thing.” Others are perfectly fine but don’t have “the rizz.” There is usually an omnibus of motherhood and apple pie motions that nobody could be against. There is another one of this is so embarrassing we are going to table it and forget it exists. And there is usually one of things that all good people agree should be rejected and it is important to say so. When I say the convention went as scripted I mean nobody extracted anything from an omnibus onto the floor. Nobody extracted an original motion to replace the floor committee work. No offered amendments from the floor to a floor committee draft were accepted. The vast majority of the elected positions went to people on “the United List” which is a list of people who wink and nod have the Synod President’s endorsement. And most of these votes ended at about 60%-40% if not 90%-10%. For what was an interesting election for the Synodical President decided by 4 votes, the convention turned into a deep ratification of the president’s desires. Even if most of the votes that were taken tended to do things like “instruct a joint seminary panel to study and report in three years.” It was the rare motion that put money or teeth into something.

There are positives out of that. You could read this a broad agreement across the church on important things. You can read it as good alignment between the elected officials of the body and the body itself. At the very least you can read it as everyone knowing the pulse of those who care the most about the Synod, those who care enough to put the time into getting elected and spending a week away from home in downtown Phoenix in July. You can also read this as excellent leadership. Both at an election organization level, but more importantly at the handling of issues between conventions. You don’t really want to send coinflip issues to the full powered legislative and deliberative body of the church. You want leadership that has studied and experimented. Because if that body decides something 50.1%-49.9% we all know it really isn’t over. And you have made the 49.9% into scofflaws until they get another crack at it. When the vote is 65%-35%, the 35% tend to get into line, or at least not parade their non-compliance.

There are also some negatives. There is a simmering split between younger representatives and the larger body, and probably not in the way you might think. It was the 70+ retired majority on the floor that was content to place most things in the “study” bucket. Those who were younger – and this might be relative as 50 is young at these things – it was the younger delegates that would have put more money and teeth into certain motions. It is the younger delegates who would have liked to direct the officers of the synod to act with more haste and determination. To make some deeper changes. That simmering split goes back underground, or I should probably say online, for another three years. Maybe three more years will temper that desire for change. Or maybe three more years will give time for the various burrs under saddles to find resolutions. Or in three years it might be interesting times.

Looking at how the sausage is made church-politically is never encouraging. We are human and being human we are sinners. And being sinners requires ways to mediate disagreements. We call that politics. Unless you want to turn toward war – politics by other means. But in line with the Theology of the Cross, God is present, even most present in this world, in the rough places. “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).” Even church-politics and Synodical Conventions are working together for good. And nothing in how the sausage is made separates us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:39). Even if the least it might due is whet our appetite for the Return of the King.

Sower and Soils Redux

I have three purposes behind this “corner.” A) To offer a meaningful engagement with the Word of God for those who might not make Sunday service or one of the Bible Studies. B) To occasionally challenge or simply announce some activity or need of congregational life. C) To provide an example of Christian meditation. The word is a lamp to our feet and a guide to our path. What that means is that hopefully we are walking somewhere purposefully and not just aimlessly stumbling

The parable of the Sower and the Soils was the gospel reading last week. And I know in my sermon delivered that I encouraged more meditation in the Sower and less on the soils. More recognition that the Sower’s supply is inexhaustible, that He doesn’t care about the current soil status, and that sowing is not a once and done thing but moves in seasons. I think these are all the gospel elements Less concentration on discerning the soil, unless that discernment was turned toward the status of one’s own heart. Where have I been rocky soil, hard packed, shallow? What weeding or cultivation of my own heart might I do?

I usually do not have trouble leaving the prior lessons behind. Every Sunday before leaving the building I read the lessons for next Sunday. They can sit in my head and gut on my day off out of the office. Maybe they have germinated by the time I get back. But this week I could not shake the image of the soils. Many if not most of us give little thought to institutions. It is popular to be cynical about them. And many deserve it. Or if we are not cynical, we assume that they will be around forever even without our help. The seed sown is the Word of God. But the Word of God turns into a plant that is supposed to be fruitful. Maybe stretching the parable beyond what it is meant to take, but plants are planted somewhere. We are planted somewhere. We grow somewhere. And that somewhere is often various institutions.

At the most basic level we are all planted in specific families. We are citizens of specific nations. We are members of a specific church. And within those three estates – or broad institutions – we often have roles to play in other groups. And those groups are both shaped by us, but more often form us. I’ve been reading Vice President Vance’s recent memoir of his return to faith. My interest is professional. What type of faith did he have? What type of faith has he returned to? What spurred it? Who or what helped or hindered along the way? And his story is largely one of formation by various institutions. His family gave him a faith, but honestly not one set on a very secure foundation. He watched more televangelists with his memaw than Sundays he was in a church. He had developed something of a relationship with one pastor in one of the phases where his Dad was active in his life, but it could not have been that great, because when he tried to contact that pastor he was surprised the man had taken a call elsewhere. “I had no pastor that I could turn to…and I was too far away to stay in close touch. (p49).” Life in the Marines and especially in Iraq had given him both the best witnesses and a perfect storm of cynicism as waiting for his discharge he got sucked into an attempt to end a Sarge’s career.

In his story it isn’t the institutions of Ohio State and Yale Law that destroy his early ungrounded faith. That work had already largely been done. But the soil of those institutions grew something different. Ohio State drilled in the idea that “I deserved everything that came to me…any sense of community attachment – that we owe something to the people from whom we come – gave way (p67).” Yale put that on steroids and added pure status. “I wanted to go to a good law school because that is what other’s wanted (p72)…the belief system of places like Yale had a way of turning real vice into perceived virtue (p79).”

Vance’s loss of faith is a story of non-participation and weak institutions. His loss of faith is a story of his family absenting themselves from the institutions of that faith, and then stronger institutions stepping in to provide different ways for the plant to grow. Within his story I think is something for us in general. If you want good soil that produces 30, 60 even 100 fold, you’ve got to maintain it. It is those institutions that are often the soil. And we have not done the work to maintain them.

Dr. Luther and Summertime Sadness

Sure, you could pick up the Old Testament reading and mine it for something. This week’s is Isaiah 55:10-13 and it is perfectly paired with the Gospel lesson – the parable of the Sower and the Soils. The Isaiah passage is surely part of the understanding of the soils. We do not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And that word does go out. And that word does accomplish what it was sent to do. Now we might wonder at why some of it falls on hard soil and apparently does nothing, but that is about the human heart. The Word does do something. It reveals the state of our hearts. And maybe like the rain and snow of Isaiah’s passage, that Word can eventually crack even the hardest of hearts. Or maybe they are like Pharoah. Knowing our own heart is tough. Does it bring up thorns? Or shall it become a tree, a cypress, planted over the waters?

You could turn to the Romans passage. But that would be cannibalizing what you are going to say in Bible Study after worship. Sure, that is only 20% of the worship population, but they deserve something prepared and fresh. But supposedly 60% of the total roster opens this email. If on any given summer Sunday you are fortunate to cross 50% of the roster in worship. And you humor yourself into thinking that 80% who open might at least read the first paragraph. You get to the idea that this little article is probably the item of work most engaged with in the week. And besides, as the epistle says (Romans 8:12-17), “you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.” Oh, you could certainly come up with something that quickens the spirit from that. At least if you are willing to cut it off there and ignore Romans 8:17, “provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” Even then maybe you could invoke Tennyson’s Odyssey – “made weak by time and fate, yet strong in will…to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.” Unlike Odysseus who angered Poseidon and suffered, we have not angered God and so suffer. Our journey home through suffering is walking with God, with angels, with Jesus all the way.

But as you stare at the blank page, maybe stuck in a bit of summertime sadness, you hear something moving down the hall. What soul is it in need of solace that without knowing it is giving your soul purpose? And then you get the surprise. “Dr. Luther, it’s been a few years, I was beginning to think that we might not meet again in this realm. How is Leo X doing? Are you guys having a good chuckle over another Leo excommunicating another group (SSPX) that insists they are just preaching and teaching what the church has always taught?”

“Heh. Yes, that little episode has certainly come up. Although maybe I’d point out with a little too much pride, half of Christendom sided with me. Bishop Lefebvre’s group is smaller than even your little Synod.”

“You got me there Dr. Luther. Heaven doesn’t issues traveling passes lightly. What brings you to my small corner today? Why does the great man show up in this humble parish study?”

“What is that pungent phrase you just invoked? Summertime sadness?”

“Yes, well, I stole that, from the singer, Lana DelRey. It’s kinda her entire vibe. And it’s a little infectious.”

“Yes. I can understand that. All the best lines are stolen anyway. We are all just recycling the Word that went out from God originally. Although being German we never called it anything as trite as sadness. We called it anfechtung. There are so many different ways of suffering. Stealing someone else’s line, everyone you meet is engaged in a great struggle. Maybe not over half of Christendom. Maybe over a single soul. Maybe theirs. Maybe that single struggle engulfs all of the Kingdom with it.”

“Dr. Luther, you’ve never been indirect before. Is the sadness spreading, even in heaven? Make it clear, why are you here?’

“Read your Isaiah again. You know I called him the fifth evangelist.”

“Yes, who did you steal that line from?”

“That’s mine, or that’s my story. But focus now Herr Pastor. Does the Word fail?”

“No. But I know where you are going. Look at things. Does this look like success?”

“So are you now the judge? Were you there when he laid the foundations? Have you discerned all the purposes of almighty God? I remind you I’ve had 500 years in paradise and Leo and I are just starting to put some of our lives together.”

“Fine. No. I’m not. But what it your point.”

“You live by faith. God’s word goes out and it accomplishes his purposes. Whether you know them or not. You can go out and come back in in joy.”

And with that Dr. Luther must have been needed elsewhere. Although without a good bye, maybe I shall see him again.

Prisoners of Hope

Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of Hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double. – Zechariah 9:12

Some phrases just dwell in the imagination. Prisoners of Hope. That’s one of them. Two words that you wouldn’t normally put together. Prisoner and Hope. Prisons of various types are famed for the words put over their entry. The entry is Hell in Dante is “Abandon Hope All You Who Enter Here.” The entry to Auschwitz was “Work will set you free.” On Riker’s Island (NYS Prison) you will find the correction facility motto “New York’s Boldest.” On one Soviet Gulag it said, “Shock labor is the path to early release!” It is absurdly funny that Hell might have been the most honest. In most ways we might think of prison as being the opposite of Hope. Yet the prophet Zechariah ties these two things together to describe faithful Israel, prisoners of Hope.

Zechariah is prophesying to Israel in exile. Their kingdom gone, their temple destroyed, the reality of their covenant with God at least in question. Would any God with any reality allow this for his people? Israel’s exile for most of Christian history has been used as a metaphor for the church in this world. Wherever you find the church, that is not its native ground. That is a beachhead in Satan’s territory. The people of God an infiltrating Army in this old world. And often an army surrounded. Maybe an army in chains. Most of the apostles found themselves in various prisons. Yet they were always prisoners of Hope. As Paul once said, “it is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain. (Acts 28:20)”

And what is that hope?

That you would behold your King coming to you righteous and having salvation. That the chariot and the war horse would be cut off. That the battle bows would be broken. That your King would speak peace to the nations. That his rule would be from sea to sea, from The River to the ends of the earth.

That sounds great, by why is this my hope? Why would I endure chains now, for that hope? Why would I consider myself a prisoner held by this hope?

“Because of the blood of my covenant with you.”

Christ has shed his blood for you. Christ has given you his body and blood. He has marked you in your baptism as one redeemed. And these things – these sacraments – are the acts of his covenant with you. Now we might break contracts or covenants. We might be faithless, but God is faithful. God fulfills his promises, his covenant. And He has given us a covenant sealed with the blood of his Son. “I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.”

We have been washed in the waters of Holy Baptism. The Good Shepherd will lead us beside still waters. Today, we might find ourselves in chains of various kinds. Worldly chains of fame and status and want. We might find ourselves in personal chains of besetting sins. But God has set us prisoners free in the blood of his Son Jesus.

Today we might be prisoners of Hope. Tomorrow, God declares, “I will restore to you double.” As Jesus said last week. “You will not lose your reward.” We are prisoners of this hope. Even the shiniest and most gilded cage of the world’s prisons can’t promise this. They all lied, other than Hell which has no hope. But with Christ, we have hope.