A Pilgrim's Place

GOD TALK

2011-07-07T22:20:00.001-04:00

Some time ago I was at a meeting of religious leaders where the program was a group of high school students of Muslim, Jewish and Christian background. It was a great program. Given the way the young people talked, I have much more confidence for the future. All were able to talk about their own beliefs without tearing down others. That’s exactly what we could use in the world.

My only disappointment was when one of the religious leaders remarked that all the students had talked about God as a ”man.” What he meant was that they all used male pronouns to refer to God. This was not just an observation on his part, but a criticism. Male pronouns in reference to God are among his pet peeves. He–like a good many others–insist this is an important religious issue. Phooey, I say. And again, phooey!

When I preach, I don’t refer to God as “he” because it is problematic to some people, and I want to respect those who are might be unable to hear the Good News of Jesus because of a few pronouns. I think I am rather skilled at doing this without using obnoxious expressions like “God’s self.” Or God sent God’s Son (or it’s probably supposed to be “child,” but I won’t say that.) I do insist, however, that in worship we use the formula Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It’s what is in the Bible and the Creeds so t isn’t up to us to change it.

What bugs me, however, is that most of the fussing about male pronouns for God are a result of English having lost most of its grammatical gender. Unlike French, pens are not feminine in English. Unlike German, day is not masculine in English. Until recently ships in English were still feminine, but that seems to have been suppressed. The gender police also hunt out the word “man” when it is used for “person.” We aren’t supposed to say “chairman” any more, but “chairperson.” Actually, chairman refers to a man or a women. Read Roberts' Rules of Order where the form of address is either Mr. Chairman or Madame Chairman. The problem is that some dummy introduced the word “chairwoman” which goofed up the whole thing by assigning gender to the word chairman, hence the neologism “chairperson.” The silliest form that I have seen is “ombudsperson” for ombudsman. For goodness sakes, the word ombudsman isn’t even English. It’s taken directly from Danish. Anyway, I try to go with the flow so as not to ruffle too many feathers.

However, my feathers got ruffled when the young people were criticized for using male pronouns for God. The Muslim students referred to God as Allah. Now that’s an Arabic word masculine in gender. It would be entirely improper to refer to Allah except as “he.” The Hebrew word for God is usually Elohim which is also masculine. Even in English, the word god retains the masculine gender because we have a feminine form goddess.

The students tried to make it clear that they didn’t think of God as a male person. They were just speaking English in the natural way that English speakers do. It was bad manners to criticize them. It was intolerant, too. It is a curious thing that I note: some of the people who talk the loudest about the need to be tolerant of others are themselves intolerant of others who do not share their views. It all seems to depend on whose ox is being gored.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

17004

BEARING FALSE WITNESS

2011-06-17T09:00:00.001-04:00

I recently came across the following in a blog by Martin Marty, the leading light among American Lutheran church historians.

During our nation’s momentary fit of proposing that we exercise more civility in public life and before we turn back to our uncivil ways, we have time to reflect on the question: are there overlooked sources to which the public, or at least huge chunks of it, can respond and should put to work? The one I will offer will sound extremely particular, parochial, and sectarian. It asks: what if God, as revealed to the vast majority in this Judeo-and Christian culture, were called upon and listened to?

I will draw on the tradition in which I was brought up and still cherish, as I paddle in ecumenical waters and interfaith seas. That source is Martin Luther’s The Small Catechism, which we kids memorized, or his The Large Catechism, which remains an adult guide.

His explanation to the Eighth/Ninth Commandment . . .
Here it is, in modern translation: You are not to bear false witness against your neighbor, which means, We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light. Ow!, and again I say unto you, Ow!

Martin Marty

It’s a clever piece of writing. I wish all the people who claim the name of Christian would follow Luther on this point. In the heated atmosphere of our current controversial age, people seem prone to do anything but interpret everything in the best possible light. If party A proposes something, party B must oppose it because nothing party A does can possibly arise from good motives. This holds true even if ten years ago party B proposed the exact same thing. Each side condemns the other as being out to destroy the country.

I’ve seen churches torn apart by the same problem. People disagree on something. Each side becomes unable to credit the other side with any good intentions. Everything is twisted and distorted to make it look as bad as possible. And sometimes the issue is something as minor as whether the service should be at 10:00 or 10:30.

Then there is the part about slandering others or destroying their reputation. I once served on the board of a Christian School. A decision of the board met with opposition by some of the parents. One of the parents spread vile rumors about me in order to undermine the board’s decision. Fortunately, there were many parents who knew me personally and who did exactly what Luther instructs us–spoke well of me and came to my defense. The slander was silenced in a few days.

I don’t suppose telling all the Christians who have the public ear that telling lies about another person violates God’s commandment will have much affect on them. People seem to have become very selective about what constitutes sin. So twisted things have become that telling lies is justified by claiming it is the truth. Fiddlesticks! If we aren’t putting the best construction on others, we are breaking the commandment.

Ah well, time to get off the soap box. I’m going to take Candide’s advice: “we must cultivate our garden.” I have some lettuce and basil plants that need tending. They don’t stand up too well to all the heat we have had this spring. Come to think of it, people don’t stand up too well to the heat either.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

16907

KOFINK GENEALOGY UPDATE

2011-06-10T20:26:00.000-04:00

This is going to be of interest to relatives of Carl Kofink of Chicago. I have previously made some family pictures available here

http://a-pilgrims-place.blogspot.com/2008/08/kofink-family.html

and here

http://a-pilgrims-place.blogspot.com/search?q=Kofink

Today I am posting some documents and a bit of genealogy that I have uncovered.

Common knowledge in the family was that my great-grandfather Carl Kofink was born in Heidelberg, Germany October 8, 1858. Carl’s birth certificate has been passed down in the family to me. Here’s a copy of it.

It shows that he was born Karl Kallenberger son of Gottliebin Kallenberger. This is an indication of a birth out of wedlock.

On August 7. 1865 Karl was acknowledged as the natural son of Friedrich Kofink and was allowed to us the surname “Kofink.” Here’s the document.

Notice that the document misstates the date of Karl’s birth as October 7, 1858. A note on the side in pencil shows the name Gottliebin Steiss. I’ll come back to that in a bit.

I have finally discovered a bit more about Gottlieben Kallenberger. Her full name was Gottliebin Magdalena Kallenberger. She was born June 4, 1827. Her father was Johann Martin Kallenberger (known as Martin) and her mother was Maria Catharina Kraemer (know as Maria). Her parents were married August 17, 1823 in a protestant church in Klein Ingersheim, Neckarkreis, Wuerttemberg, Germany.

At some time she married Johann Theodor Steiss (known as Theodor). They had two children: Pauline Friederike Wilhelmine Steiss, born February 27, 1871, in Stuttgart, Wuertemberg, Germany and Christian Friedrich Ernst Steiss (known as Ernst) born March 23 1873 in Stuttgart, Wuertemberg, Germany. I have further information on descendants of Pauline Steiss.

Gottleibin Kallenberger Steiss died in Berg, on May 5. 1898. She was widowed at the time. Among the family papers are an accounting of her estate which was divided between Karl Kofink and Ernst Steiss. Here’s the document.

A comment on names that I may have made before. My grandfather, the son of Carl Kofink was named Johann Theodor after Carl’s step-father. I now see that several other family members take their names from this side of the family. Carl’s eldest son Paul Ernst Kofink combines the names of Carl’s step-sister and step-brother. Another son Ernst Wilhelm also takes a name from Carl’s step-brother. The name Ernst was passed on to John Kofink’s son Herbert John Ernst Kofink. I also see where the name Martin came into the family (in another of Carl’s sons Walter Jacob Martin) since that was Carl’s grandfather’s name.

Well, that’s what I have for now.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

18867

VISITATION

2011-06-05T16:43:00.001-04:00

Last week had two festivals in it–The Visitation on May 31 and The Ascension of Our Lord on June 2. Neither day was observed by any of the local Lutheran churches including my own. I grew up at a church that celebrated Ascension Day; of course the name of the church was Ascension Lutheran Church. I think I have tried once or twice to have Ascension Day services, but they were poorly attended. Nowadays even Good Friday is poorly attended so I don’t have much hope for observing the Ascension. Even most diocese of the Roman Catholic church transfer Ascension day to the following Sunday which doesn’t make much sense since the Ascension happened 40 days after Easter not 43. At my church no one asked about Ascension Day, though one person was upset that the church wouldn’t be open on Memorial Day. I have a hard time getting people to understand that the church observes the days of the liturgical calendar and not those of the civil calendar. Sometimes when Christmas Day falls on a Sunday some people want to know if services will be cancelled because it’s a holiday. Some churches actually did cancel services last time Christmas Day fell on Sunday, and I’ve seen some churches that call the Last Sunday in Advent Christmas Sunday. I suppose that’s the way things go.

As far as the Visitation (or the Visit of Mary to Elizabeth as Evangelical Lutheran Worship now calls it in its usual verbose manner), I don’t think I’ve ever had public worship on that day unless it might have happened to fall on a Sunday in a year when May 31 was after the Festival of the Holy Trinity. Fortunately the Gospel for the Visitation in also used on the last Sunday in Advent in year C of the three-year lectionary, so I get to preach on the topic at least once every three years.

The heart of the Visitation Gospel is the Magnificat, the song Mary sang. It’s something quite familiar to me since it is part of the order for Vespers, a service that was frequently used for evening services at the Lutheran Church where I was raised. I still remember it in the King James Version that we used.

My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in
God my Saviour.
For he hath regarded
the low estate of his handmaiden:
for, behold, from henceforth
all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath done to me great things;
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is on them that fear him
from generation to generation.
He hath shewed strength with his arm;
he hath scattered the proud
in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seats,
and exalted them of low degree.
He hath filled the hungry with good things;
the rich he hath sent empty away.
He hath holpen his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy;
As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham,
and to his seed for ever.

Alright, I confess I liked the archaic word “holpen” in this version. I also liked that the Gloria Patri used to be attached to the canticle.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

In the Service Book and Hymnal as well as the Common Service Book before it, the Gloria Patri was sung at least three times in Vespers–once with the opening versicles, once at the conclusion of each psalm, and once at the conclusion of the canticle. The first half of it also appeared in the responsory after the lesson, but that was never used where I attended. There was something comforting about the repetition, like returning home after a journey. With the Lutheran Book of Worship the Gloria Patri was dropped after the Psalm. With Evangelical Lutheran Worship it was dropped after the canticle and is sung only if Psalm 141 is sung. I believe the Gloria Patri was introduced into Christian worship as a response to the Arian heresy which denied that the Son Is truly God in the same was as the Father is God. Is it just a coincidence that the Gloria Patri is disappearing at the same time that there is a movement among some Lutherans to suppress the name of the Holy Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

In any case, this Magnificat is dear to Lutherans as it is to many Christians. Martin Luther wrote in his commentary on the Magnificat:

“The tender Mother of Christ . . . teaches us, with her words and by the example of her experience, how to know, love and praise God. For since she boasts, with heart leaping for joy and praising God, that He regarded her despite her low estate and nothingness.”

What a beautiful way to express this teaching.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

Ascension Window from the building of Ascension Lutheran Church, Chicago.

The Visitation by Fra Angelico

16836

MISSIONAL EVERYTHING

2011-05-27T09:00:00.059-04:00

This past week the Plain Writing Act went into effect. It requires the Federal government to write in simple, easy-to-understand language. Hurrah! Too bad that separation of church and state prevents the Federal Government from making church hierarchy write in plain language.

Yes, I am still carry on about “missional” this and that. I despise that word. It seems to be an adjective derived from the word “mission,” but it doesn’t function that way. Take the expression “missional church.” That should mean a church with a mission. Problem is that every church has a mission. I am aware that The-Sources-Of-All-Wisdom think that only some churches have a mission. Not true. Every church has a purpose, something it is trying to accomplish. The church might not be able to say what the mission is, or it might say it is one thing but act as if it were something else, or the members might disagree on the mission, but they certainly have a mission or perhaps several.

It is obvious, then, that the word “missional” has some other meaning than simply “having a mission.” My experience, however, is that many who use the term are quite vague about what it means. I’m not the only person who thinks so. Alan Hirsch writes the following in his article in Christianity Today “Defining Missional.”

"It has become increasingly difficult to open a ministry book or attend a church conference and not be accosted by the word missional. A quick search on Google uncovers the presence of 'missional communities,' 'missional leaders,' 'missional worship,' even 'missional seating,' and "missional coffee." Today, everyone wants to be missional."

Missional seating? That's a new one on me. Must be what you do when you’re around a missional table drinking missional coffee. Fortunately Hirsch is able to give an elaboration of the context of missional.

“A proper understanding of missional begins with recovering a missionary understanding of God. By his very nature God is a ‘sent on’ who takes the initiative to redeem his creation. . . . Because we are the ‘sent’ people of God, the church is the instrument of God's mission in the world. As things stand, many people see it the other way around. They believe mission is an instrument of the church; a means by which the church is grown. Although we frequently say ‘the church has a mission,’ according to missional theology a more correct statement would be ‘the mission has a church.’”

That is something I agree with. If the mission of a church is only to preserve the institution of the church, then it is a failure.

I also agree with an implication of this idea for the individual. “A missional theology is not content with mission being a church-based work. Rather, it applies to the whole life of every believer. Every disciple is to be an agent of the kingdom of God, and every disciple is to carry the mission of God into every sphere of life. We are all missionaries sent into a non-Christian culture.”

I'm beginning to comprehend. I found the brief powerpoint display prepared by the ELCA based on the book: Treasurers in Clay Jars edited by Lois Barrett a help. However, I'll need a lot more information to grasp the details.

So why am I still suspicious of the term missional? First, because it is so seldom defined in any compre- hensible manner. It’s just dropped in places with the expectation that everyone know what it means. I am not at all convinced of that. I’m not stupid, but I have difficulty in understanding it.

Second, I have my deep-seated mistrust of Higher-Ups. An old friend–let me change that–a friend of long acquaintance opined, “Missional is the jargon for ‘get out there and get more members so you can send more money to us.’” I’m sure Those-In-Authority would deny that, but what would happen if a congregation, as a result of becoming missional, decided to redirected its benevolence from the Synod to distribution of food to the poor? What if they sold the church building to give the money away to the homeless? What if the process of becoming missional meant that 75% of the members quit? I’d venture to say the Missional-Authorities would be down on that church like a ton of missional bricks.

This leads to a third point; every religion must become institutionalized if it is to survive past the days of its founder. This is always true. It was true in earliest Christianity in the formation of churches. But there is a danger in this process that preservation of the institution becomes more important that the purpose of the institution. This is the danger missional people rightfully point to. But how does the missional approach form and sustain the institution needed to support mission? Perhaps when I read some more I’ll understand how the missional approach intends to create or preserve the necessary institution, but I am skeptical.

Fourth, I suspect the whole missional movement is grounded in Post-modernism. I think Christians need to be as cautious about Post-modernism as any other “ism.” I fear that the missional movement will become caught in the relativist Post-modern view of the world and thus undermine the mission to make disciples for Jesus Christ.

Fifth, I need to learn how the missional movement understands the fullness of Baptism. Baptism is an incorporation into the death of Christ, it makes one part of Christ’s body, but it also brings one into a local community of believers who gather around word and sacrament. If that’s not essential to the missional movement, it is not centered in the Christ who commands us to baptize and “do this in remembrance of me.” In exploring the web I notice that I am not alone in wondering how missional and worship fit together.

The last thing, I am pretty sure all this missional talk is the just the latest form of church-babble. I’ve seen it all come and go before. When I started in the ministry 'goal-setting' was an absolute necessity for the church. Then we had to have a Mission Statement. Then that was considered passe as we really needed a Vision Statement.

Fifteen years from now I suspect almost no one will be talking missional anything because we will have moved on to some new concept with its own bizarre language. Maybe Multi-Emergent Transinclusivity will be the new thing. (I just made that up. If it happens, you read it here first.) I hope whatever is good in this missional talk will survive, but I just know that someday a new crowd of Powers-That-Be will be shaking their heads sadly at the backward clergy and churches that are still talking missional anything.

I am still critical of the sloppy way “missional” is thrown around without ever making its meaning clear. I am, however, open to the positive contribution it may make to the life of Christ’s followers.

The Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

NOTE ADDED 5/29 Just discovered that both Multi-emergent and Trans Inclusivity are terms already in use in English (I use the word 'English' loosely). Only a matter of time before the churches pick them up. It's a sign of doom when I can put together the silliest terms I can think of and then find that some yo-yos use them. To use a good Hebrew term taken over into Yiddish, OY!

16790

MISSIONAL TABLES

2011-05-20T09:00:00.003-04:00

So I’m reading through the materials for our assembly when I note that a new staff member will be responsible for “missional table conversations.” Now I am rather fond of mission-style furniture, so I imagined a group of well-fed folk sitting around a substantial mission-style table chatting and drinking the port provided by the new staff member. (Port is bound to stimulate conversation.) As inviting as that sounded, I knew it couldn’t be right. So what exactly is a missional table?

I poked around online and came across this gem: “Members of these missional tables will stir up, guide and stimulate imagination, vision, and activity in and through all kinds of congregations, ministries and settings.” Huh? That still sounds like a bunch of people sitting around a table yammering on about something, although since the term “missional table” seems to exclusively ELCA Lutheran, they’d be drinking beer instead of port.

I poked about a little more, but I knew I was in over my head when I found that one goal of a Stewardship and Mission Support Table is “Creating quadrant-based stewardship and mission support tables.” Well of course. That explains everything. “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’” Yes, quite. Well, reading church-speak often makes me feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.

I put out an appeal for help and one of my wiser colleagues gave me her interpretation. “My imagination tells me it's the way the synods are now trying to listen to congregations and work with a bottom up approach. We tell them what we want to do and hopefully work together (with cong. and synod) to get it done, pooling monies/resources to do ministries, out of these committees.”

Now that is helpful. I am a great believer in listening and pooling resources and bottom up planning. After almost 33 years in the business, though, I am skeptical of how much “bottom up” will be allowed. My impression is that bottom up is permitted as long as those on the bottom come up with the same answers that those on the top want them to have. More than a dozen years ago I was involved in a Mission Strategy Team (which now seems to be subsumed under one of the missional tables. It’s probably under the table because of all the beer that they were drinking. No, that’s not right. Cross that remark off.) Anyway, we spent months developing a local strategy only to be told we had broken the rules. We were not allowed to determine locally who among us should develop this strategy. We were supposed to wait until Higher Authority determined who should do the planning. Those 400 miles away knew much better than those of us on the scene what was needed. So we were summarily dismissed.

Even putting that aside, my real complaint is the endless gobledy-gook from the Higher Ups that passes for communication. I found this not-so-bad explanation of a “new and renewed congregations table.” It’s a group that identifies mission opportunities and assists in the development and redevelopment of congregations.” It’s what a century ago was called “Home Missions.” We could never use that term because it is only two words long whereas “new and renewed congregations table” is five words long and must therefor be 250% better. Sheesh! I going to send these people a copy of Elements of Style so they can learn to write plain English.

Another intelligent friend of mine asked: “Why is it the ELCA website and communications, including mission table, sound so corporate instead well, corporal?” Ah, there’s the problem. In the 1950s clergy became professionals. They in turn professionalized the denomination so that by the 1970s everything was modeled on the corporate world. You can’t tell ELCA from IBM, GM or any other of those other acronymed corporations. I read through descriptions of missional tables which never mention God or Jesus.

Sigh! I just don’t get it. As my friend satirically put it: “you did not push your flywheel hard enough, get off the bus to find where they moved your cheese to and maximize your earnings quotient while driving shareholder value.” It doesn’t make any sense in the corporate world. It doesn’t make any sense in the church, either. Run that up your flagpole and see who prays to it.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

16720

A USELESS WASTE

2011-01-15T12:53:00.000-05:00

A carpenter and his apprentice were walking together through a large forest. And when they came across a tall, huge, gnarled, old, beautiful tree, the carpenter asked his apprentice: "Do you know why this tree is so tall, so huge, so gnarled, so old and beautiful?" The apprentice looked at his master and said: "No ... why?"

"Well," the carpenter said, "because it is useless. If it had been useful it would have been cut long ago and made into tables and chairs, but because it is useless it could grow so tall and so beautiful that you can sit in its shade and relax."
—adapted from Chuang Tzu, The Inner Chapters. From Spiritual Formation by Henry Nouwen.

How our culture hates what is useless. I heard one of the radio blabber-mouths ranting on and on about the Army Corps of Engineers bringing a halt to paving a road because it would destroy three areas of wet lands. Can’t let that useless swamp stand in the way of progress. And National Parks? Why they are only useful as a source of timber and ore and oil. Rip it apart, tear it up, dig it out. The world is full of things to be used.

What is sadder is that so much of our culture sees people as things to be used as well. I have heard the tales of bosses who tell their underlings that they are nothing but costs, that monkeys could do their job, that the boss cares nothing about employee loyalty and in fact would rather get rid of the long-term employees.

I come to wonder sometimes if religion itself is only valued as a thing to be used. When I was studying personality theory for my doctoral dissertation I looked at the difference between who were intrinsically religious and those who were extrinsically religious, that is, those who were religious for its own sake and those who were religious because it was a means to some other end. The Agony Column Writers used to suggest that people join religious groups if they were seeking a spouse. Or insurance salesmen were encouraged to join churches because that was a good way to find clients.

And then comes the problem of prayer. I was taught in Sunday School about prayer–at least taught that I should pray. As I put it together prayer was about thanking and praising God, telling God you were sorry for doing bad things, and asking for a few things, mostly things for other people, but it would be all right to ask for yourself if it were something like doing well on a test. No praying for an ice cream cone or stuff like that.

This was typical Protestant prayer–talking to God. The notion that one listened to God in prayer was never hinted at. You listened to God in the Bible or in a sermon or perhaps in one’s conscience. Listening to God in prayer was not something we considered.

I have gotten beyond that limitation by learning other forms of prayer, particularly centering prayer. But that raises a whole new set of problems. I don’t mean the ones some fundamentalist Christians raise that if you do any form of contemplative or meditative prayer, you are opening yourself up to evil spirits. What nonsense. That attitude shows a real lack of trust in God as if the Holy Spirit could be overpowered by just any old evil spirit that comes floating around. The problem is that prayer still becomes a means to something else. There is a danger that I pray not just to pray but so that something else happens.

Here’s Henri Nouwen writing about this problem.

The world says, "If you are not making good use of your time, you are useless." Jesus says: "Come spend some useless time with me." If we think about prayer in terms of its usefulness to us—what prayer will do for us, what spiritual benefits we will gain, what insights we will gain, what divine presence we may feel from the idea of the usefulness of prayer and the results of prayer, we become free to "waste" a precious hour with God in prayer. Gradually, we may find, our "useless" time will transform us, and everything around us will be different.

There is the real purpose of prayer–wasting time with God. Being there with God. For a lot of people that is a silly thing. Religion ought to be accomplishing things–feeding the poor, saving the environment. Yes, these are good things we should work for, but they can’t be the sole purpose of religion, at least not of Christianity. There are a whole lot of organizations that do these sorts of things, but what other organization presses for a relationship with the living God? We need to waste time with God.

As you go on your journey may you pause from time to time to waste time with God and so blessed may you continue on until the Lord greets you on your arrival.

Wayne

15281

MERRY CHRISTMAS

2011-01-07T18:09:00.000-05:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE!

O.K. That’s it. He’s taken leave of his senses. It’s January 7 and he’s still celebrating Christmas. We’ve heard of the 12 days of Christmas, but he’s up to 13 or 14 or something. Christmas is OVER!

No it’s not. If you belong to one of the Eastern Orthodox churches still using the Julian calendar, Christmas doesn’t arrive until January 7. What an great excuse for one more cup of egg nog.

It’s a lot more than egg nog with me. (Besides, the stores are out of it now.) I have been distressed for a long time that the Winter Festival our society calls “Christmas” gets under way just after Labor Day and is done around December 24, except for Christmas Day itself which is an anticlimax to what precedes it. I am not one of those cranky Christians who makes lists of stores who say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” In fact, I’d prefer they did say Happy Holidays, because whatever they are sell-ebrating (a new word I just coined) with holiday spirits (in 750 ml bottles), it sure isn’t The Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord.

I am not concerned so much with what the secular society does with the Winter Festival. I am concerned that so many Christians have bought (literally bought) into it. It has swamped the Christian celebration even in our churches. Of course people in liturgical churches have been griping for years about why we don’t have the Christmas tree up on December 1, and where are the Poinsettias the Sunday before Christmas, and why do we have to sing Advent hymns instead of Christmas carols. Of late I have noticed that some people are counting the twelve days of Christmas as the 12 days before Christmas Day. And there is this weird practice that has emerged of it being bad luck to have a Christmas tree up after New Years Day. All that isn’t really very important, however.

I am a bit disturbed that there are clergy of the Lutheran persuasion that have reduced Advent to three weeks so they can get three weeks of Christmas in. And I have even seen some of our churches advertize the last Sunday of Advent as Christmas Sunday. It all adds to the destruction of Advent as a time of anticipation and awaiting that leads to a joyous celebration of the Incarnation of the Son of God. Everybody is so pooped from partying since Thanksgiving (or maybe since Halloween) that there is no energy left to contemplate the mystery of the Word made flesh. They miss the message of the Magi: "We have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him."

I love the celebration of Christmas, and it saddens me to see it die with a whimper by December 26 at the latest.

I’m running a one man campaign (is it all right in church circles to use the word “man” anymore? I’ve gotten the impression from the Powers-That-Be that “man” is a sexist term that simply seethes with privilege and patriarchy. Why, you can’t even sing “Hark! the Herald Angel Sings” with out noticing “Pleased as man with man to dwell” has been corrected to “Pleased as man with us to dwell.” And if they get to changing Jesus to Sophia as some so-called Christians are wont to do, they will be able to get rid of the first man in that line as well.” Now where was I? Oh yes,) a one man campaign to encourage the full celebration of Our Lord’s birth starting with first vespers on December 24 and not ending until the feast of the Epiphany on January 6. In fact, I may even go further and advocate for the continual celebration of Christmas until Candlemas (The Feast of the Presentation) on February 2.

To all who celebrated the whole twelve days of Christmas, a blessed new year. To those who only observed the Winter Festival from October 31 to December 24, Bah, Hum-Bug.

May the Lord born to us in Bethlehem, seen by the shepherds, visited by the Magi, bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

15246

GOOSE

2010-12-17T23:09:00.000-05:00

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat.
Won’t you please put a penny in the old man’s hat.

Actually, it’s the people selling the goose that are getting fat. It’s costing a pretty penny for a goose this year, 499 pennies a pound to be exact. My slightly over 8 pound goose cost $41.43. The lady behind me at the grocery store let out a “wow,” when the clerk rang up the total. It makes me feel a little guilty when you can buy turkey at 69 cents a pound, but nowadays you can have turkey year round. Besides, I don’t like turkey all that much. I use it ground to make meat load and stuff, but as for just roasting it, I’m not all that enthused. I don’t like white meat. It’s too dry. Geese have no white meat. It’s all dark and very fatty. That’s why I always make side dishes like cranberry orange relish and red cabbage. It cuts through the grease. So does the Korbel Brut Rose.

It still seems a lot to pay for much for one bird. People who know me can vouch that I do not part with my money easily. I expect change when I spend a nickel. I save up during the year so I’ll have enough money for my Christmas Dinner. It is one of my few extravagances.

I first ate goose at the Berghoff Restaurant in Chicago on a New Years Eve. The Berghoff always had a huge menu with several “special dishes” prepared each day. At the holidays goose was one of the special dishes. Since I had never tried goose, but was fond of duck, I decided to order the goose. It was wonderful. And for dessert I tried my first slice of mince pie. Delicious! Since then goose and mince pie have been on my Christmas menu every year. I won’t go anywhere for Christmas dinner because I don’t want to miss the goose. Only one year have I done with out. It was when on Christmas day I cut the plastic bag the goose was packaged in to be met by the stench of a spoiled goose. Yuck! I had to cook some pieces of frozen chicken for dinner.

My first encounter with a goose, however, was in a literary sense. Who can forget the goose the Cratchit family had on Christmas Day in A Christmas Carol? Eeked out by applesauce and potatoes it fed Bob’s entire family. The second literary mention of a goose in my experience was in the Sherlock Holmes Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. The whole solution to the stolen gem has to do with geese.

Interestingly, the price of the goose Holmes pursued is given as 12 shillings. Now, 12 shillings in1890 is worth about $73.56 in 2010 dollars. For how big a goose? Let’s say a really big goose, about 15 pounds. At 15 pounds that works out to $4.90 a pound, almost exactly what I paid for my goose. Turns out I’m not being so extravagant at all, just traditional.

The most important tradition is what has been handed on to us in the Scriptures.

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God." Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her. (Luke 1:26-38)

May the Lord, begotten of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

15117

SNOW HAD FALLEN, SNOW ON SNOW

2010-12-10T09:00:00.026-05:00

It has been the coldest December in Florida that I can remember. We are looking at a low of 18 for Monday. For those in northern climes, this is nothing. It seems quite normal, just like all the Christmas hymns with the word “snow” in it. Jesus probably wasn’t born on a Snowy December 25, but that’s when we celebrate his birth, and for northern Europeans and Americans, that means snow.

I have a penchant for Christmas Carols with snow in them. I am also very fond of impressionistic paintings of snowy scenes. Here’s a blog combining both.

Sisley, Snow at Louveciennes, 1874

The first snow carol I learned was “The Snow Lay on the Ground.” It’s a tradition macaronic carol. (That means it’s in two languages, in this case English and Latin.) I learned it in a Leo Sowerby arrangement in the church choir. The words are traditional.

The snow lay on the ground, the star shone bright,
When Christ our Lord was born, On Christmas night.
Venite adoremus Dominum;
Venite adoremus Dominum;

    Venite adoremus Dominum;
    Venite adoremus Dominum.

'Twas Mary, Virgin pure, Of holy Anne,
That brought into this world the God made man.
She laid Him in a stall At Bethlehem,
The ass and oxen share the roof with them.

    Venite adoremus Dominum;
    Venite adoremus Dominum.

Saint Joseph, too, was by To tend the child;
To guard Him and protect His Mother mild;
The angels hovered round And sang this song:
Venite adoremus Dominum;

    Venite adoremus Dominum;
    Venite adoremus Dominum.

And, thus, that manger poor became a throne;
For He whom Mary bore was God the Son.
O come then, let us join the heavenly host,
To praise the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

    Venite adoremus Dominum;
    Venite adoremus Dominum.

This is how I first learned the tradition of St. Anne being the mother of Mary.

John Henry Wachtman, House in Snow, 1890-94

The next one I learned was “In the Bleak Midwinter” with a text by Christina Rossetti with music by Gustav Holst.

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

This was in our old Service Book and Hymnal.

Gustave Caillebotte Rooftops with Snow

The last one I found in our even older Common Service Book, but I heard it sung by the King’s College Choir. The text is by Edward Caswall, tune by John Goss. The most breath-taking arrangement of this is by Sir David Wilcocks.

See amid the winter's snow,
Born for us on earth below,
See the tender Lamb appears,
Promised from eternal years.

        Chorus
        Hail, thou ever-blessed morn!
        Hail, redemption's happy dawn!
        Sing through all Jerusalem,
        Christ is born in Bethlehem.

Lo, within a manger lies
He who built the starry skies;
He, who throned in height sublime
Sits amid the cherubim. Chorus

Say, ye holy shepherds, say
What your joyful news today;
Wherefore have ye left your sheep
On the lonely mountain steep? Chorus

"As we watched at dead of night,
Lo, we saw a wondrous light;
Angels singing peace on earth
Told us of the Saviour's birth". Chorus

Sacred infant, all divine,
What a tender love was Thine,
Thus to come from highest bliss
Down to such a world as this. Chorus

Teach, O teach us , Holy Child,
By Thy Face so meek and mild,
Teach us to resemble Thee,
In Thy Sweet humility! Chorus

“Lo, within a manger lies He who built the starry skies.” There’s an image to meditate on.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

15073

ADVENT I

2010-12-03T10:38:00.000-05:00

Creator of the stars of night,
Thy people’s everlasting light,
Jesu, Redeemer, save us all,
And hear Thy servants when they call.

Thou, grieving that the ancient curse
Should doom to death a universe,
Hast found the medicine, full of grace,
To save and heal a ruined race.

Thou came, the Bridegroom of the bride,
As drew the world to evening-tide;
Proceeding from a virgin shrine,
The spotless Victim all divine.

At Whose dread Name, majestic now,
All knees must bend, all hearts must bow;
And things celestial Thee shall own,
And things terrestrial, Lord alone.

O Thou Whose coming is with dread
To judge and doom the quick and dead,
Preserve us, while we dwell below,
From every insult of the foe.

To God the Father, God the Son,
And God the Spirit, Three in One,
Laud, honor, might, and glory be
From age to age eternally.

Latin Hymn, 7th century
Conditor alme siderum
Translated by John Mason Neale

This is the vespers (evening) hymn sung every night during Advent, the season that precedes Christmas. I look forward to singing it in my private devotions every year.

The problem for me with Advent is that I practically miss it. Yes, I know when it begins (the Sunday closest to St. Andrew’s Day, November 30. What I mean is that I miss the spirit of Advent. Everything is in a mad, headlong dash to Christmas. It’s like that 1950s novelty song: “I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas.” Advent needs to be a time of reflection on the great mystery we are about to celebrate, the Word made flesh.

One of the things I like about this hymn is the opening emphasis on Jesus as the “creator of the stars of night.” There is a tendency for people to think of only the Father as the creator, but this is not true. We read in the Gospel of John (1:3): “All things came into being through him [the Word], and without him not one thing came into being.” And we confess in the Nicene Creed that we believe in “one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God . . . through him all things were made.” And so it is when we see the baby Jesus, as Dr. O.P Kretzmann wrote, “The mystery of the small hands which once had set the stars in firmament.”

This Advent is a time to meditate on this mystery. Make some time for that meditation. Make some silence to hear the Holy Word. Make some room for the One who didn’t even have a decent room in which to be born.

Jesu, Redeemer, save us all,
And hear Thy servants when they call.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival

Wayne

Apologies to those who have already read this in The Good Life.

1531

DUMB, DUMBER, DUMBERER

2010-11-26T12:19:00.001-05:00

I think whatever smarts I once had have leaked out of my brains.

I’ve just returned from the annual meeting of the Society for Biblical Literature. That’s a professional society for Biblical scholars, most of whom teach at colleges and seminaries. I am one of the few average parish pastors who go to these meetings. They are big time. Thousands of people attend.

On each of four days there are three blocks of time 2½ hours long during which 40 to 50 different group meetings are held on various topics. On the fifth day there is only one time block in the morning. So there are something like 500 different sessions over the course of the meeting. A session might present book reviews or have papers read and discussed. In addition most of the major publishers in the field have book exhibits with discounts of 20% to 50%.

So what did I attend? Sessions on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism, The Didache in Context (two sessions), Development of Early Trinitarian Theology, Redescribing Early Christianity, Jewish Christianity/Christian Judaism, Bible and Visual Arts, Cross, Resurrection, and Diversity in Earliest Christianity. I also stayed for a viewing of the film Son of Man done in South Africa and attended a couple of receptions.

My problem with all of this. Many of the presenters have such an enormous gasp of their field that I have trouble following their papers. For every topic there is a vast body of literature that has to be mastered. I just can’t keep up with everything–all the books, monographs, periodicals, and papers. I am a lot slower grasping things than I was, say 20 years ago when I was doing research.

Maybe the biggest problem is that I have no one to discuss these subjects with. I go to these meetings in order to be exposed to what’s going on in the scholarly fields, but when I return home, I don’t have a scholarly community to share with. Although most mainline clergy are very smart and well-educated, much of our interest has to be focused on the pastoral needs of our congregations. There isn’t a lot of time for abstract discussion of, say, whether the author of the Didache, was aware of the institution narratives for the Eucharist. In fact I can think of some clergy I have known who would shout, “Who cares?” if anyone tried to talk about these things.

There has been some fuss in the Society or Biblical Literature about whether the Society is allowing too many “faith-based” approaches to be involved rather than confining the Society to purely objective approaches. I detected elements of this in the Redescribing Early Christianity group. The intention of that group is to describe Early Christianity in objective terms rather than theologically. The feeling is that much of the reconstruction of Early Christianity has been done with a view to theological concerns while ignoring sociological forces involved. However, it was clear to me that the group was anything but objective. One of the elements of religion is religious experience. Many people were concerned about consideration of anything smacking of the supernatural such as visions. But that is part of the phenomena of Christianity whether they like it or not. It reminds me of the approach of Rudolf Bultmann to “demythologize” Christianity which to mind resulted in something other than Christianity.

In any case, I felt like a whole lot of stuff was flying over my head. Then again I did observe one professorial-looking person at the counter where they distributed free tote bags. He was shuffling through the four coupons sent with his registration material trying to figure out what he was supposed to give to the nice lady at the counter to get his free tote bag. This was pretty simple: it was the coupon that said “exchange this ticket for your free tote bag.” That one I got right the first time. Maybe there is hope for me yet.

As we approach the beginning of Advent on Sunday, November 28, may the Lord who came and is to come bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

14942

ANOTHER POLITICAL RANT

2010-11-19T09:00:00.011-05:00

The elections are long over, and the people are beginning to see what sort of crop will come from the seed that has been soon. I can see at least one weed for working people here in Florida. The incoming State Senate President recently remarked in regard to the former state senate: "The overall body was moderate. It was very sympathetic to unions.” Sympathy to unions is thought of as a bad thing. This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder why working people support these reactionary politicians who actually work against their best interests. Unions have been the protectors of working people. Without unions there wouldn’t be five-day work weeks, overtime, and other basic protections for working people.

Now my thinking on the subject is biased. Although I have never belonged to a union, my Father was a union man, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers; my father’s father was a union man, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America; and my mother’s father was a union man, Flat Janitor’s Union.

I am convinced that unions have provided the balance that makes capitalism work. I have seen what happens to employees in some non-union settings: they are treated like dirt. They are regarded as mere commodities, expenses to be controlled. If business had seen their employees as the valuable resource which allows the company to make money instead of a necessary evil, unions might never have been needed.

And it was American Labor Unions that stood up to the attempts of Marxists to subvert labor into supporting the communist movement. Unions have supported this country against its enemies.

Unions are not faultless. They were (and still are) slow to realize that the management they had to deal with had no stake in the survival of their companies. With the golden-parachute deals, CEOs could bailout of a company and still be ahead of the game. So what if a business lost money during a strike, the management wasn’t going to lose out.

The power of labor has diminished as manufacturing jobs have disappeared in the U.S. They really needed to see how the job market was changing and to encourage members to train for the new, technological fields that have emerged. That’s not a traditional function of unions, but it would have helped their members and perhaps opened new areas for organized labor.

Nevertheless, unions greatly improved the life of working people. I am, therefore, suspect of politicians who make anti-union comments. What have they got against working people banding together for better conditions and compensation? And why do working people vote against their own best interests.

I’ll probably lose some friends or get nasty comments about this blog, but dog-gone-it, it’s time for the decent people who do most of the working and paying to get a fair shake. They aren’t going to get it from politicians who try to undermine the ordinary working person.

Wayne

14880

JELL-O AGAIN

2010-11-12T09:00:00.015-05:00

I bought a set of dvds of the old Jack Benny television series. (For those who know me, yes I actually spent money. I know I usually expect to get change back when I spend a nickle, but these were 4 dvds for less that $7.00. Jack would have been proud of me.) The ones from the early 1950s are fascinating because it is obvious the technicians and performers were still working out how to do television. It was a cross between radio and theater. The pace was slow, the middle commercial was actually worked into the skit, and even Benny himself, who became a master of the medium, was occasionally bewildered. In one show he came out with a small piece of paper in his hand that he occasionally checked as if reminding himself what came next. At the end of one show he came out from behind the curtain, put on his glasses, and checked his watch trying to determine how much time he had. He was startled when the orchestra began playing. “Is that it?” he asked. “Are we out of time?”

Benny had a 15 year run on television. On the one hand, at 71 he had tired of the grind of doing a weekly show. On the other, the networks (CBS in 1964 and NBC in 1965) felt the show didn’t appeal to younger audiences anymore. Benny was squashed in the ratings by Gomer Pyle: USMC.

Jack Benny died while I was in my first year at seminary. I remember how one of my roommates, Wayne Walther, offered a prayer for Jack Benny “who taught us to laugh.” I wish I had thought to do that. For a number of years the Cultural Center in Chicago (the old Public Library) had a reproduction of Jack Benny’s famous vault. It was gone the last time I went there.

The Lutheran Magazine had Jack’s picture on it cover a couple of months back. Someone had to complain about using a image from a past generation which contemporary people won’t recognize. Well, they should. There are lessons to be learned from this great comedian. Jack Benny was never vulgar. There was no cursing or degrading language on his shows. He let himself be the object of jokes. He introduced an African-American character Rochester, played by Eddie Anderson, who was not stereotyped. He might have been a servant in the fictional Benny home, but he was treated as an equal often one-up on Benny.

I miss Jack and his style of humor. None of us who refuse to move beyond out 39th birthday will forget him.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

I can’t resist plugging myself. A Pilgrim’s Place has been listed in “The Top 50 Lutheran Blogs.” Of course this is a shameless attempt to increase traffic to a site about which I know nothing either positive or negative, but I’ll take any reinforcement I can get.

1805

HELLO LUXEMBOURG

2010-10-29T09:00:00.007-04:00

The other day I discovered this blog site tracks where all the visitors to my blog come from. In the last week 74 views came from the US. What country was number 2? Luxembourg. I thought this was a fluke so I checked to see how many view there have been since the beginning. 979 from US, 77 from the Netherlands and 59 from Luxembourg. This doesn’t make any sense to me. What do I write that is of such great interest to people in the Netherlands and Luxembourg. I mean they are very nice countries and very nice people, but still. I’m not sure if it is a bunch of people from those countries who are reading my blog, or just one person in each country who reads a lot of my blogs.

It’s even stranger when I notice that I had two page views each last week from Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Estonia, Slovenia, and Slovakia. These must be accidents, people looking for something and my blog just happens to appear on a Google search. For example, if you search for Wade Eichelberger, my blog comes up #2.

Back to Luxembourg. It sounds like a very nice place to live. I see from Wikipedia that Luxembourg has the highest gross domestic product per capita of any country in Eruope. I like that it is the only country with a Grand Duke as its head. I like its motto: "Mir wëlle bleiwe wat mir sinn." "We want to remain what we are," which I’d express: “Leave us alone.” Makes sense for a country that has constantly had to contend with the French, Germans, Belgians and Dutch. Yes, I could make that my motto: Bug Off!

From what I can tell, the national language, Luxembourgish, seems to be a lot like Dutch so I supposed an English-speaker could learn to read it or understand it. Just looking at the Grand Ducal Anthem De Wilhelmus, I see a few lines that I can understand.

Zwee Kinnékskanner, déi trei sech léif,
koumen ausenaaner, wäit an déif.
Zwee Kinnékskanner, déi trei sech léif,
hu gebaangt, op d'Gléck nach bléie géif.
Haut weisen si der ganzer Welt
an engem Feld
d'Goldlilie mat dem roude Krouneléif.
Haut steet ëm si voll Freed, Hand an Hand,
d'Vollék vun dem Lëtzebuerger Land.

Hand in hand, the folk of the Luxembourger Land.

I’ve listened to a recording of the anthem, and it is very stirring. They also have a national anthem, Ons Heemecht. In investigating the anthem, I discovered that there was an earlier anthem sung to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven.” Are you familiar with that? You should be. It’s the tune we use for “The Star-Spangled Banner.” They were much wiser than we in replacing it. (I’ve never understood why the United States can’t have an American tune for it’s anthem. How about, “This land is your land, this land is my land?”)

Now a funny coincidence is that the area of Chicago where I grew up once had a large Luxembourger community. They were primarily truck framers. They must have disappeared or blended in with the Germans as the area became urbanized.

Another coincidence. I was just reading an article about some sister of the Mount Benedict Monastery in Ogden Utah moving to Saint Benedict’s Monastery in St. Joseph, Minnesota.Intermountain Catholic It seems one of the sisters is now the director of faith formation at St. Wendelin’s Church, in Luxemburg. That caught my attention. I had no idea there was a town of Luxemburg in Minnesota. Turns out that there are also towns of that name in Wisconsin and Iowa. Shows you those industrious Luxembourgers got around in the Midwest. The only puzzle I have is how they let their church be named for St. Wendelin. He seems to be an obscure Scottish saint who was once a shepherd and who later founded the Benedictine Abbey of Tholey. Very mysterious.

Speaking of which, if you are one of the mysterious Luxembourgers who happened upon my site, add a comment so I know who you are and how you found me. I appreciate your patronage.

May the Lord bless you on your journey, wherever it takes you, and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

14713

I'M CONFUSED

2010-10-22T09:00:00.005-04:00

“The European American Lutheran Association (EALA) will hold its first biennial meeting Oct. 28-30 at the Wyndham Milwaukee Hotel and Conference Center, Milwaukee. The EALA is the newest and one of six ethnic associations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).”

In a denomination that is about 95% European American, I can’t help but wonder about the need for an association for European Americans Lutherans. Why would they need to have a separate group when most Lutheran Churches are full of European Americans? I understand the value of the other ethnic associations: African American Lutheran Association, American Indian and Alaska Native Lutheran Association, Association of Lutherans of Arab and Middle Eastern Heritage, Association of Asian and Pacific Islanders, and the Latino Lutheran Association. I am puzzled about the European American association.

The purpose of the group seems rather different from the other ethnic associations. The article I’ve quoted from continues: “‘The purpose of the EALA is to dismantle racism, white privilege and white power by recognizing and confessing our individual and corporate sin and addressing institutional racism in the church,’” said Kathy B. Long, EALA president, Redmond, Wash.” Dismantling racism is a noble goal, but when that includes “addressing institutional racism in the church,” I am forced to wonder why that isn’t a goal of the whole church. Maybe it is, but why then do we need a special association to do that, especially when it is a group that identifies itself as separate from all the other ethnic associations which probably includes most of the groups who have suffered from racism.

Maybe the explanation to all of this is about “confessing our individual and corporate sin.” I don’t think that refers the general confession we use most Sundays. It refers to the specific sin of racism. Confession of racism is a good thing. The problem is that it can be difficult for people to see that they are guilty of racism. There are a lot of people who are prejudiced, but lack the power to act on that prejudice in a way that could be considered racist. They don’t employ people, they don’t rent property, they don’t run public accommodations, etc. The power issue is important to look at. The way to combat racism is to keep an eye on misuse of power. It can be very, very difficult to change attitudes. Focusing on racism’s use of power can bring about real change. Look at what was accomplished by the U.S. Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts.

Ah, but there is something else to confess, “white privilege.” My pea-brain has more trouble understanding this one. I don’t deny that many, many “white people” have advantages that others do not have. I also think it is important for us European Americans to see where we have had these advantages simply because of our ethnicity. I want to be careful, however, in equating these advantages with sin that ought to be confessed. There is a complexity that needs to be considered.

The essential problem I have with “white privilege” is the assumption that some people are getting advantages they do not deserve. What I see is rather that some people are being deprived of rights or opportunities or freedoms that they should have. That is racism. That is the sin.

Allow an example. I have talked with several African Americans who tell of going to schools where they always received old, used text books. Years later they discovered that students in white schools received new text books and it was their used books that were being passed on. That is plainly the result of racist school policies. It was wrong, wrong, wrong. But what about the white students who received the new books. Did they do anything wrong by receiving them? No. They should acknowledge that an injustice was done toward the African-American students, but those white students had no power to control that situation. And I ask the question, was the injustice that some students received a privilege they did not deserve, or was the injustice that some students were denied what they had a right to expect? And what would have been a just remedy–taking away the white students' new books or making sure all students had new books?

I also have to bring up again the issue of class. How much of apparent privilege is due to class differences rather than race? When I was growing up in Chicago, there was no question that a person had more opportunities if they went to one of the suburban high schools like Maine Township East (where Hillary Rodham Clinton attended) than at a city school. There was a lot more money for schools in the suburbs. On the other hand my grandmother would have been surprised to be told how privileged she was as a European American since her family was so poor she was taken from school while in fifth-grade and sent to work as a servant.

I am concerned that making people feel guilty about privilege substitutes for the needed work of fixing problems. How do we overcome the racism that still holds so many back? How do we fix problems that keep the poor in poverty? What do we do for kids in families where the parents are drug addicts? What happens to kids at 18 who age out of the foster care system and have no adults to guide them? What do we do for the 1,700 homeless kids who live in my county? Some of these problems involve race, and some cut across racial lines.

I’d like to see a lot less shoveling on guilt and a lot more solving problems. If someone would like to send me a check equivalent to the money spent on 60 people attending the EALA meeting at the Wyndham Milwaukee Hotel ($293 X 60= $17,580) I’d be glad to send it on to Food4Kids. Around 700 European American, African American, Latino, Native American, Arab, and Asian children could have something to eat every weekend this month.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

14611

WARNING! POLITICAL RANT

2010-10-15T09:00:00.013-04:00

People are disgusted with politics as usual. I’m one of them. Here’s my latest rant. This week Peter Diamond was one of the winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics. That’s quite an accomplishment. His work led the other two winner to investigate and explain why employers and employees sometimes have difficulty connecting. Seems to me that’s an important piece of work right now with high levels of unemployment.

Dr. Diamond has been nominated by the President as a Governor on the Federal Reserve Board. At his hearing he explained: “In all my central research areas, I have thought about and written about the risks in the economy and how markets and government can combine to make the economy function better for individuals.” That sounds like the sort of knowledge we ought to have at high levels in the government. Oh yes, Paul Bernanke, the present head of the Federal Reserve was one of Dr. Diamond’s students.

The nomination still has not been voted on in the Senate because Senator Shelby put a “hold” on it. Here’s the explanation of a hold that I found. "hold - An informal practice by which a Senator informs his or her floor leader that he or she does not wish a particular bill or other measure to reach the floor for consideration. The Majority Leader need not follow the Senator's wishes, but is on notice that the opposing Senator may filibuster any motion to proceed to consider the measure." HOLD

So a hold is a threat to filibuster an action. And with that threat, one Senator can block any nominee. Earlier this year senator Shelby blocked 70 nominations.

I don’t know if Peter Diamond is a good candidate for the Federal Reserve. The Senate Banking Committee approved him by a vote of 16-7 back in July. So why can’t the Senate just vote yes or no on him? Why can one person tie up the work of the government like this? I heard that there are 200 nominees for various offices that are on “hold.”

I hate this political maneuvering that uses parliamentary tricks to prevent things from getting done. What is so bad about honest, out in the open votes yea or nay? I have the same reaction to these “ear marks” that get slipped into bills without going through proper hearings and waste millions of dollars on dumb stuff.

And I am also tired of the dingbat candidates for office who are talking about cutting a billion from prisons and a billion from schools, but refuse to say exactly how that is going to work. Whose going to guard the prisoners? Whose going to teach the kids? Maybe the prisoners are going to teach the kids. That would teach those prisoners to commit crimes. Stop talking in election slogans and give me some solid proposals that add up properly.

STOP PLAYING POLITICS AND GET THINGS DONE FOR THE SAKE OF THE PEOPLE, ALL THE PEOPLE, NOT JUST THE FEW ON TOP!!!!!!

Sorry. Got carried away. Election Season gets me worked up.

In all seasons, may the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

14535

GETTING ON AND ON AND ON

2010-10-07T17:50:00.000-04:00

I’m back. We’ll I haven’t been gone, just busy with many things. With September the church program gets under full swing and there are all the little details with the new building that’s going up.

I did have the opportunity to hear Dr. David Yeago of LTSS speak a few weeks ago. Among other topics, he talked about virtue which some of my readers might recall is an interest of mine. I won’t try to summarize what he said. Actually I can’t because I am getting a little slower digesting these heady theological matters. I’ve finally crossed that line where all the great theologians are younger than me.

As a matter of fact most people seem to be younger than me. I was ushering at the theater a few weeks ago and one of the youngsters in the orchestra notice my Golden Troupers shirt. I had to explain, “This is for old farts like me who can’t remember lines, so the only acting they let us do is while reading from a script . . . far away from the theater where hopefully no one will associate us with the real actors who perform here. (By the way, some of the actors on stage that night should consider joining us Golden Troupers since they couldn’t remember their lines either and most of them are a LOT younger than me. But as I say, most people are younger than I am.)

Still on the subject of the Troupers, we were rehearsing a skit for this week’s performance. One of the actors is performing the role of the crazy old professor. The director asked him to wear a white wig because he doesn’t look old enough. Wait a, minute, I thought. They never make me wear a wig to look older when I play that part. And I’m younger than everybody else.

Sigh. It’s been like that lately. A few weeks ago I got the senior discount at the pizza parlor without even asking. Then I got the free invitations to a luncheon where they sell you hearing aids.

The final insult came when my sister emailed me to ask about the pictures I had posted online with the ground breaking for the new building. She wrote: “Who was the pastor guy. Why didn't you do it?” I thought she had confused the acolyte with another pastor, and explained who he was. Turns out she didn’t mean the acolyte. She was looking at the picture of me and didn’t recognize me. “I thought it was some other old guy,” she wrote.

No, wait, that wasn’t the final insult. I just opened my mail. I got an invitation from someplace to a free dinner about protecting my estate from losses and probate. I also have another one I am not going to open from the Neptune Society. It says on the envelope, “Free Pre-Paid Cremation. Details inside.”

I’m not dead yet! I’m feeling much better!!! Except for this tendinitis in my heel. And the arthritis in my knees, hips and shoulders. Now if I could just remember where my glasses are I might be able to find that bottle of Tylenol. Or is they Tidy-Bowl I’m looking for? Or maybe it was my bowling ball. No, I just remembered. I’ve never owned a bowling ball. So maybe that round black thing over there is a cannon ball. Or a black cantaloupe. No, I haven’t bought a cantaloupe since last summer. Of course if that is the cantaloupe I bought last summer, it would be black by now.

Has anyone seen my what-a-ma-call-it? You, know, the thingamajig that you put the whosis into. Oh, forget it. I found the Port left over from Christmas. A little of that and some aged cheddar cheese and . . .

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

1448

CLASS

2010-09-11T21:35:00.006-04:00

Over on another site the Lutherans have been discussing quotas, whether the ELCA has them or not. The discussion revolves around these word from the denominational constitution: “Except as otherwise provided in this constitution and bylaws, the churchwide organization, through the Church Council, shall establish processes that will ensure that at least 60 percent of the members of its assemblies, councils, committees, boards, and other organizational units shall be laypersons; that as nearly as possible, 50 percent of the lay members of these councils, committees, boards, or other organizational units shall be female and 50 percent shall be male, and that, where possible, the representation of ordained ministers shall be both female and male. At least 10 percent of the members of these assemblies, councils, committees, boards, or other organizational units shall be persons of color and/or persons whose primary language is other than English. Processes shall be developed that will assure that in selecting staff there will be a balance of women and men, persons of color and persons whose primary language is other than English, laypersons, and persons on the roster of ordained ministers. This balance is to be evident in terms of both executive staff and support staff consistent with the inclusive policy of this church."

OK, you can call them quotas or not. It doesn’t matter to me. I think the object was to achieve a balance of representation in the governing bodies so there would be a range of views. That seems to me good in principle, though I am not sure the mechanism provided actually achieved this objective. Sometime people get rather creative in deciding who “persons of color and/or persons whose primary language is other than English” are. Does it count if your primary language is Norwegian? (No.) What about Spanish? (Yes, unless you were born in Spain.) How about if you’re 12.5% Cherokee? (Probably.) I have a young person in my congregation who is French, Italian, Irish, Portuguese, Cape Verdean, Syrian and Lebanese. I’ve been tempted to ask officially if any of that qualifies him. Then, of course, there is the legalism when a conference is told this is the year you get to nominate a lay woman for a certain office when maybe you think your most qualified candidate is an African-American man. That’s not allowed.

What really concerns me, however, has been the denomination’s failure to look at class in addition to gender, race, and linguistic heritage. My guess is that the most under represented group in all the governing bodies outside of the local congregation is working class people. How many people on the national Church Council work at minimum wage jobs? How may are airline reservationists, machinists, auto mechanics, grocery checkers, Walmart greeters, farm hands? Almost none, I think. First, they couldn’t afford to serve on governing boards and committees and the like because they can’t take off time from work without losing pay. Second, who is going to elect or appoint a person who has a G.E.D. rather than the person with the Ph.D. in Psychology? Who will elect or appoint a shoe salesman over a lawyer?

And yet it is the shoe salesman and the auto mechanic and the Walmart greeter who often serves on Congregation Councils and who lead many congregations. No wonder the Higher Up Leadership is often out of touch with the local church. The representational principles work against a wide variety of people serving at higher levels. I doubt that anyone in the highest echelons would admit it, but there is a reluctance to have these ordinary working class people in decision-making positions above the congregation because they just wouldn’t get it right.

What led me to see this problem was the difficulties I encountered in trying to get local groups of churches to work together. Differences in social class were almost insurmountable. Two examples. First, we tried to form an inter-church single’s group that included–let us say– St. Simon’s near the Country Club and St. Bob’s by the Gas Station. When a get-together was proposed the St. Bob’s people thought of snacks like potato chips and dip with everybody bringing something and pitching in to set up and clean up. The St. Simon’s crowd thought of a catered affair with a hired waitress to serve and a professional clean-up team. St. Bob’s soon dropped out of the group. The St. Simon’s people didn’t miss them.

Second example, two churches are talking about a merger. At a social gathering of the two church councils, members of one council were making small talk about the evils of labor unions and overpaid employees. Three-fourths of the members of the other church council were blue-collar union members. The merger never happened.

Now these are differences that would arise in many situations, so it is not surprising that they turn up among churches. What disturbs me is how seldom the class issue is brought up among Church Leaders in any meaningful way. It is the elephant in the room that no one mentions. I am not sure how to fix this problem without even more legalistic wrangling, but I’d like to hear concern expressed about it. I don’t suppose that will happen anytime soon. I don’t think we’ve understood the depth of St. Paul’s words. “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:27-28).

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

14227

DOING OUR LITTLE BIT

2010-08-27T20:57:00.003-04:00

I belong to a community organization where most meetings turn into gripe sessions. People complain constantly about things over which the organization has no power. On those occasions in which people might band together to get something done, the meeting falls silent. No one wants to do anything more strenuous than perhaps sign a petition. I was utterly ignored at one meeting where I suggested a few letters written by individuals would get more of a rise out of a politician than 50 names on a petition. Nobody wanted to hear that because it involved some effort. No, people wanted somebody else to do something to satisfy their demands.

It brought back memories of a church I once served. It had been a struggling congregation for 25 years. Most of that time it had been on mission support. In fact, that support had only ended a couple of years before I arrived. I had only been there a few months when a council member took me aside to suggest that I start the process of going back on mission support. I declined to do so arguing the reason the congregation was in such bad financial condition was that they had become dependent on someone else paying the bills–like a 47 year old “kid” who expects mommy and daddy to support him. It was time to sink or swim. We didn’t sink, but we didn’t exactly swim. It was more like treading water, but we did it for the next 20 years.

I believe that organizations–especially churches–have to become self reliant. I don’t know if my attitude is a virtue or a vice, but I find it objectionable when churches expect others to take care of their needs. Now I see nothing wrong with supporting new missions. They almost all need help getting started. And I am 100% in favor of churches banding together to tackle projects that are too big for one church alone. But I reject the idea that a church should depend on “something” outside their church to support the church's work.

My current church is in a building program. Our work, particu- larly in Christian education, has been hampered for years by lack of space. After several false starts, we got a plan put together which was within our grasp. Because of the generous contribution of the members and friends, we were able to put better than 40% down and borrow the rest to construct the new building. Oh, there were a few people who suggested that we write to certain famous people asking for money or that we have a Las Vegas night to raise cash, but we knew if we wanted to do something, we had to do it ourselves.

And lest it appear that we are only concerned about ourselves, I have another story or three. My church’s community has one of the highest concentrations of children receiving reduced or free lunch programs. With the leadership of the local Presbyterian church we provide school supplies and Thanksgiving baskets for as many people as we can. On our own we ran a free meal and employment workshop. We support Food4Kids, a program that sends backpacks of food home with kids so they have something to eat on weekends. OK, so I’m bragging, but these are examples of the church doing things to aid other people, one done on our own, one done with another church, one done with an inter-church agency, Interfaith Emergency Services (which never takes government money.)

And I should mention that our local Pinelands Conference of Lutheran churches is having its own appeal in October. We looked around and noticed the cut backs in funding for several ministries in our area. Rather than bemoan the injustice of the Powers-That-Be we decided to do something on our own to help a mission congregation, campus ministry, and our Lutheran camp. Back when I started in ministry a move like that would have been squashed mercilessly by the Higher-Ups. Local groups of churches were absolutely NOT to raise funds. Instead we were commended by our Bishop for trying to do something. I hope that is a sign of change. I can recall too many lectures from the Authorities that seemed to belittle local efforts for draining off funds for official projects.

Don’t get me wrong. I think programs like Lutheran Disaster Response and Lutheran World Relief are worthy of support. They are well managed and do a tremendous amount of good on behalf of the church. We always have special offerings for them. It’s just that big programs like that can miss the needs local congregations see. We can’t wait for Somebody Up There to do something. We need to do it ourselves. I know our efforts are rather puny, but 250 kids in Marion County will have something to eat this weekend because of one little church’s efforts. I keep wondering what would happen if the 31 churches in our immediate community did the same. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to interest any of them in this project.

I once heard German theologian Helmut Thielicke say, “We cannot make a Paradise on earth. We can only do a little bit to make things better, but we must do that little bit. With God’s blessings, we do our little bit.

May the Lord God bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

The pictures are from the Our Saviour Vacation Bible School

14121

WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS, MAYBE YOU SHOULD GO GET A HAMBURGER

2010-08-20T11:37:00.001-04:00

My apologies to the members of my church who will be reading most of this in my next Pastor’s Letter in The Good Life.

I shipped 22 boxes of stuff from my old home in Chicago to Florida recently. It was an odd collection of things ranging from a cemetery plot deed for a relative who died in 1905 to my notes from Music Theory I and II. There was also a file of papers with a letter I thought was long lost. The letter told me I wasn’t going to get a job I had applied for. It was one of the most significant letters in my life. That entails a story.

I was in my last year of college where I was a music major. My thoughts were turning toward a job which for most musicians always means teaching. There are only a few musicians like Jack Benny who can fiddle their way to fame and fortune. (By the way, I studied music at the same place Jack Benny studied for a time, Chicago Musical College.) I was reading The Lutheran magazine and discovered an ad from the Board of World Missions of the Lutheran Church in America. They were looking for short-term missioners for a variety of positions, one of which was a teacher for English and choral music at Nomensen University in Indonesia. Goodness, I had been speaking English all my life, and my area of specialization was in choral music. And I would be able to serve the church in some capacity. I pondered it for a day or two and was convinced this was what God meant me to do. I fired off a letter to the Board of World Missions, filled out endless applications. In January, 1971, I was interviewed by Pr. Norman Nuding, Secretary for Missionary Personnel.

The interview went pretty well, although there was a hitch in that they expected the teacher of English and choral music also to coach soccer. I didn’t even know the rules for soccer let alone have the ability to coach a team. On the other hand it turned out Pr. Nuding and I had two acquaintances in common, Dr. David Larson who was my professor of choral music and Pr. Marvin Tack, a Chicago pastor whom I greatly admired. I have since run across several other pastors who know Pr. Nuding and speak of him with great admiration.

I went home planning my future in Indonesia. It was as if my whole life up to that point had been leading me to this. A week later a letter arrived from Pr. Nuding. They had chosen another of the candidates for the position, although if he didn’t work out, I would be next on the list. One piece of paper can destroy your life in an instant–at least it feels that way.

But here is the last paragraph from Pr. Nuding’s letter. “God go with you as you make decisions regarding the future of your life. I trust that you will find an occupation which will give you the opportunity for service to your Lord.”

Those two sentences are what God used to give me the nudge to pursue ordained ministry. I had never considered becoming a pastor. Never. I was a good enough Lutheran to know that God can be served in any vocation, but there was just something in those words of Pr. Nuding that sent me in a new direction. Within a few months I was applying to a seminary and beginning the long process of being endorsed by a synodical church vocations committee. About the only person to be surprised by this decision was me. Other people had been able to see it coming for some time.

How strange it is that God uses a moment of crushing defeat and failure to send us in new and better directions. It shouldn’t be surprising since on Good Friday everyone thought that the Powers of Evil had destroyed Jesus. An empty tomb three days later showed the world how wrong it had been. “Jesus lives! The victory’s won!” the old hymn by Christian Gellert begins. And then declares: “God will be a sure defense. This shall be my confidence.”

There is a popular saying that when one door closes, another one opens. Sometimes it is said that God opens that new door. I don’t believe that. But I do believe that sometime God uses a situation to help us see where another door has always been.

I also learned a pastoral skill from the job I didn’t get: the need for encouragement. I became a pastor in part because of the encouragement of a man with whom I spent only a few hours of my life. When a person has suffered a set-back in life, the last thing they need is someone to berate them or tell them, “I told you so.” What I needed and what everyone needs is encouragement. As St: Paul wrote: “Therefore encourage one another and build up each other” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).

God is wonderful and will do wonderful things with us. I am sure of this because I have confidence in God who never forsakes us. No matter what happens, no mater what wrong turn life seems to take trust God, our Rock, our Fortress, our Sure Defense.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

Note: the picture at the head is from my ordination on May 29, 1977. You can tell it’s posed because I had my stole on which wouldn’t have been the case until after the laying on of hands. From left Dr. Robert H. Fisher, the Rev. Glen Ernst, the Rev Larry Pinnow, the Rev. Dennis Hallemeier.

14049

LETTER FROM AN UNGODLY, TROUBLEMAKER, UNRELIGIOUS HIJACKER

2010-08-13T13:35:00.006-04:00

I have long thought that part of our nation’s greatness lies in our freedom of religion as guaran- teed in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Even though the term isn’t used, I call this separation of church and state.

I am amazed at the number of Americans who hate the notion of separation of church and state. Some want the state to promote religion–at least their religion. I note with alarm the opposition to building a mosque in New York City because of its use by the Islamic faith. I am sure there wouldn’t have been the same opposition to a Christian church. Others want the church to be a sort of cheering section for the state, supporting the country in all things, right or wrong.

The latest issue that I have run into in my little corner of the world is opposition to the law that prohibits a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization from endorsing or opposing candidates for public office. One local cleric has spoken publicly against this prohibition several times. I have even been at an event at his church where the head of a woman’s group within the church was telling the members who they must support and who they must oppose in an upcoming election.

Recently a letter to the editor appeared in our local paper excoriating churches that didn’t take stands on political issues in order to protect their not-for-profit status. Ministers of such churches were called “unreligious hijackers” who have “discovered the ‘business of religion’ to be lucrative.” If they renounced their tax-exempt status, the only members they would lose would be “the 5 percent who are ungodly, liberal, socialist, trouble-makers.”

The letter warned that we would soon know who the “unreligious hijackers” are among the ministers because they would attack the letter. This ungodly, troublemaker, unreligious hijacker rose to the challenge. This is what I wrote.

Ocala Star Banner
August 11, 2010

To the Editor:

A letter to the editor, “The almighty 501(c)(3)”, declared: “In 1954, the ‘progressives' (aka liberals/socialists today) developed a gag order which baited churches with perks now known as the largest con job of that century.” The writer refers to a section of the Internal Revenue Act of 1954 which exempts specific types of nonprofit organizations from certain federal income taxes and, along with another provision, allows charitable contributions to be tax-deductible.

An organization that obtains 501(c)(3) status is prohibited from taking part in a campaign for or against a political candidate. The issue is fairness. Organizations should not be able to endorse or oppose candidates using tax-deductible funds.

The Act of 1954 was passed by a Republican-controlled Congress under the leadership of Joseph Martin and William Knowland and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. None of these leaders were socialists.

I am a Christian minister serving a church whose denomination has 501(c)(3) status. We benefit from that status, but I don't consider us in the “business of religion.”

The restriction against endorsing candidates is to our advantage. While all in our congregation share a common faith and work to relieve suffering in our community, we differ in political views. Endorsing candidates would divide us in a way that would severely diminish what we could accomplish. I trust the members to use their God-given wisdom in making political decisions.

I’m waiting for the response. A letter of mine to the editor about depression got me an angry email denouncing me as an agent of Satan.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

1395

THREE CUPS OF TEA

2010-08-06T19:28:00.000-04:00

A quick book recommendation this week: Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time by David Relin. It’s not exactly a work of literature, but the story of Greg Mortenson is inspiring.

Mortenson is the son of Lutheran missionaries. He grew up in Tanzania which unquestionably had a profound influence on how he saw the world around him. After serving a hitch in the U.S. Army and a degree from the University of South Dakota in nursing and chemistry, he was overtaken by the sport of mountain climbing. On a failed expedition to climb K2 in Northwest Pakistan, he became separated from his party and lost. He wandered into the village of Korphe was he was taken in and cared for. He promised that he would someday return and build a school for the village. And so he did, raising money, buying supplies, and supervising construction. With the financial support of Jean Hoerni, he established the Central Asia Institute which has now built 130 schools, primarily for girls, in the Pakistan and Afghanistan. The work has been accomplished at considerable risk to Mortenson. He has been kidnaped, his life threatened, and fatwas issued against him by angry mullahs. After all, he was working in the heartland of the Taliban.

The book title comes from a Balti proverb: “The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family.”

The story is impressive because of the example of what one determined person can accomplish. There have been a lot of people involved in the Central Asia Institute, but it is the vision of Greg Mortenson that guides it. I am in awe of people like Mortenson who really make a difference in the world.

There is also a lesson to be learned, one that we could all wish had been learned years ago. A person has to learn to appreciate and value the people they work with and their culture. We cannot impose their own views on others. I can’t help but wonder how much further along toward peace we would have been in Afghanistan if we had started 30 years ago to help people build schools and maybe dig wells or build simple bridges–all things that Mortenson has done.

If you have the time, read the book. Better yet, make the time to read it.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

13928

WHAT HAPPENED TO GROWTH IN GRACE?

2010-07-23T09:00:00.031-04:00

Back in the dark ages of 1963 b.c. (b.c.= before computers), I was confirmed at the English Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Ascension in Chicago. The Rev. Ralph Riedesel laid his paw (that’s the word he used) on my head and pronounced the blessing. “The Father in Heaven, for Jesus sake, renew and increase in thee the gift of the Holy Ghost, to thy strengthening in faith, to thy growth in grace, to thy patience in suffering, and to the blessed hope of everlasting life.” Those were the same words that had been used at the Confirmation of my father, uncle, two cousins, and would be used for my sister. When I became a pastor in 1977, I only got to use those words for one Confirmation. Then came the Lutheran Book of Worship and the words changed. Of course Holy Ghost gave way to Holy Spirit and the very personal but archaic “thee” was banished. Beyond that, however, the text as a whole was changed dramatically. “Father in heaven, for Jesus’ sake, stir up in name the gift of your Holy Spirit; confirm his/her faith guide his/her life, empower him/her in his/her serving, give him/her patience in suffering, and bring him/her to everlasting life.”

What happened to growth in grace? We still had faith and patience, but where was grace? Best as I can determine, guidance of life and empowerment of service had replaced growth in grace. Maybe there was a theological problem with growth in grace, something no one had noticed in 60 years. Whatever the reason, I sorely miss growth in grace.

I don’t interpret growth in grace as meaning getting more and more grace (that would be growth of grace). Rather growth in grace to me means a blossoming and maturing of life in grace. It would be what Luther describes in the Small Cathechism as the significance of baptism. “It signifies that the old Adam in us, together with all sins and evil lusts, should be drowned by daily sorrow and repentance, and be put to death; and that the new man should daily come forth and rise, to live before God in righteousness and holiness for ever.”

I’ve become curious about this section of the Confirmation rite. The Service Book and Hymnal reproduced this prayer from the Common Service Book: “Almighty and everlasting God, who hast vouchsafed to regenerate these thy servants by water and the Spirit, and hast forgiven them all their sins: Strengthen them, we beseech thee, with the Holy Ghost, the Comforter; and daily increase in them thy manifold gifts of grace: the spirit of wisdom and understanding; the spirit of counsel and might; the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, now and forever; through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.” The prayer was taken from the Book of Common Prayer. I can find it all the way back to the First Prayer Book of Edward VI (1549) which in turn was an adaptation of the Roman rite.

The blessing that followed this prayer, “The Father in heaven for Jesus sake,” must be unique to Lutherans. I don’t have the resources to discover if the blessing appeared for the first time in the Common Service Book or if it had been used somewhere else before that. Some liturgical scholar may please enlighten me.

In the Mid-1970s the Lutheran churches (ALC, LCA, LCMS, ELCC) began experimenting with revisions of the liturgy. In 1975 Contemporary Worship 8: Affirmation of the Baptismal Covenant was published. Confirmation as a unique rite disappeared to be replaced with an all-purpose rite of Affirmation. In this rite the traditional prayer before the blessing and the blessing itself were substantially reworked. The subsequent Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) restored an option for Confirmation within Affirmation of Baptism that included a laying on of hands, but the “Father in heaven” blessing was reworked into prayer.

Then in 2002 came the Renewing Worship series with Holy Baptism and Related Rites. Once more any distinctive elements for Confirmation were removed along with the blessing or prayer “Father in heaven.” There must have been griping about the proposed change because the prayer from the The Lutheran Book of Worship was brought back in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006), but only as an alternative to the part of the prayer that mentioned the gifts of the Spirit. There is nothing to distinguish Confirmation from any other form of Affirmation of Baptism.

Confirmation in general has been a problem for the Lutheran church. The Apology of the Augusburg Confession rightly denies it is a sacrament, although it is a rite “received from the Fathers.” Lutherans stopped doing Confirmations for a time, but the practice came back again. In his Examen of the Council of Trent Martin Chemnitz wrote: “Our theologians have often shown that the rite of confirmation, when the useless, superstitious, and unscriptural traditions respecting it have been laid aside, may be used piously and to the edification of the Church in this way: viz., that those who were baptized in infancy, when they come to years of discretion, should be diligently instructed by a clear and simple setting forth of the doctrines of the Church; and, when they seem moderately grounded in the rudiments, they should be presented before the bishop and the church . . . Public prayer should be made for these children . . . to which prayer, without superstition, the imposition of hands may be added. Nor would such prayer be fruitless, for it is supported by the promises concerning the gift of perseverance and the grace of confirmation.”

There we are back to grace again which along with Confirmation is missing from our present rite. Maybe I am just caught in nostalgia, but I am not convinced every change in liturgical texts is an improvement. Language can be fixed without being gutted. Maybe next time I do a Confirmation I’ll put my paw on the person’s head and say: “The Father in Heaven, for Jesus sake, renew and increase in you the gift of the Holy Spirit, to your strengthening in faith, to your growth in grace, to your patience in suffering, and to the blessed hope of everlasting life.” Don’t tell anybody about this. I don’t need the liturgical police knocking on my church door with a complaint about using an illicit rite. Of course, given that some of our churches are praying to Jesus/Sophia it seems to me that there are far more serious theological errors being committed than one old pastor using the words we used for most of the 20th century tocConfirm people. However, you never can tell.

The Father in heaven for Jesus’ sake bless you on your journey that you may grow in grace, and may the Lord greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

13801

THE ATTACK ON THE REV. LUTHER A. GOTWALD

2010-07-16T18:27:00.001-04:00

In investigating something else, I fell into the story of Pastor Luther Alexander Gotwald.* He came from a family of devoted pastors who served the Lutheran church with dedication and honor. Born in 1833 Adams County, Pennsylvania, he was baptized by that famous cleric Samuel Simon Schmucker, about whom more later. He was ordained in 1859 and faithfully served churches in Pennsylvania and Ohio before being elected Professor of Practical and Historical Theology at Wittenberg Theological Seminary in Springfield, Ohio in 1888. Five years later charges were brought by Alexander Gebhart, Joseph Gebhart, and Ernst E. Baker that Pastor Gotwald was disqualified to be a professor at Wittenberg College.

The first charge sets the basic issue. “His Dominant Attitude has been that of opposition to the Type of Lutheranism that dictated the establishment of Wittenberg College.” Essentially they complained that he wasn’t teaching the way they thought he should be teaching. If you find that pretty vague, so did the board of directors who wanted more specifics. Those making the charges refused to make any specifics.

We can understand what this was all about by reading the sixth charge that Pastor Gotwald was trying to change the spirit and doctrinal position of Wittenberg College “which does not make the Augsburg Confession binding as test of doctrine beyond its ‘exhibition of the fundamental doctrines of the Divine Word and of the faith of our Church founded upon that Word,’ in favor of the exclusive Type of Lutheranism characteristic of the General Council, which makes all the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession fundamental.” The Augsburg Confession is the central statement of faith of Lutherans (after the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds). So the charge was that Dr. Gotwald was just too Lutheran to be teaching at this Lutheran Institution.

The Trial of Luther A. Gotwald was one more incident in a long battle over the Americanization of Lutheranism. Lutherans struggled over the transition to English from their native Swedish and German. A good number of Lutherans became Episcopalians when the Lutheran churches didn’t make the transition quickly enough. Beyond language, however, serious questions were raised about theology and worship. Lutherans held to beliefs and practices that were different from those of their Calvinist and Methodist neighbors. Should Lutherans be more like their neighbors in order to be more American?

Into the debate came the Rev. Samuel Simon Schmucker. As a young man he worked to maintain the General Synod of the Lutheran Churches in America. He worked for the establishment of the first Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg and became its first professor in 1826. He wrote the oath of office for professors which affirmed the Augsburg Confession. And then the ground shifted under him. New Lutheran immigrants questioned how Lutheran the Lutherans already in America were. American pastors studying in Europe came back with a more Confessional view of Lutheranism. Schmucker and associates like his brother-in-law Samuel Sprecher, President of Wittenberg College, and Benjamin Kurtz, editor of the Lutheran Observer were appalled by the conservative direction of Lutheranism. They wanted a Lutheranism that was pretty much like other forms of American Protestantism. They didn’t like the distinctive positions of the Confessions one bit.

Battle was engaged. Wittenberg College in Springfield Ohio was founded in 1845 in large part as a rejection of the pro-confessional stance of the German Theological Seminary of the Ohio Synod. In 1855 Dr. Schmucker anonymously issued the Definite Synodical Platform as a basis for Lutheran belief. It maintained the Augsburg Confession as a statement of faith as long as certain “errors” contained in the Confession were rejected. These supposed errors were: “1. Approval of the Ceremonies of the Mass; 2. Private Confession and Absolution; 3. Denial of the Divine Obligation of the Christian Sabbath; 4. Baptismal Regeneration; 5. The Real Presence of the Body and Blood of the Savior in the Eucharist.” In short, Schmucker thought the Lutheran Reformers had gotten Lutheranism wrong, and he proposed to straighten it out.

Schmucker’s proposal caused a firestorm. In 1866 the Pennsylvania Ministerium withdrew from the General Synod and the next year became a leading force in the creation of the General Council. Although the General Synod never adopted Schmucker’s proposals, the constituent synods tended to lean toward the Schmucker-Sprecher-Kurtz form of American Lutheranism. The rival General Council embraced a far more Confessional approach.

All of this set the stage for the Trial of Luther Gotwald before the board of directors of Wittenberg College. For a year various attacks were made on Gotwald. The motivation for the attacks may not have been purely theological. Personal resentments and professional jealousies were woven into dynamics at work. One of the accusers Ernest Baker eventually left the Lutheran Church altogether. The Board of Directors was unable to find enough specifics in the charges to try the case and asked the accusers to clarify their position. They refused to do so. The Board tried to get beneath the accusations. They asked the accusers to call witnesses. They refused. In the end Gotwald was acquitted of all charges. After the trial Luther Gotwald published Trial of Luther Gotwald, D.D. in which he defended himself against the charges that had been made against him. In essence he held that there was no difference between the theological basis of the General Synod and the General Council as concerned the Augsburg Confession. History would prove him correct as in 1918 the General Synod, General Council and United Synod of the South would merge to form the United Lutheran Church in America.

So Dr. Gotwald was rightly vindicated, but it is far from clear that Confessional Lutheranism will survive in the successor to the General Synod and General Council: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Thirty-five years ago when I was a seminarian, I mentioned the Lutheran Confessions to my teaching parish supervisor. His response was that they should have been thrown into the trash can long ago. I am afraid that is a common attitude within the ELCA today. Although only a few may say aloud that they reject the Lutheran Confessions, many more reject them in practice without saying so. I recall the chilly reception the proposers of the 9.5 Theses received when they raised concerns about a Confessional Crisis in the ELCA with The-Powers-That-Be.

I doubt that anybody will be tried on charges that they are too Confessional (or too Lutheran). To do that would be to face the same problem as the accusers of Luther Gotwald–being specific about charges. Nobody wants to take an anti-Confessional stance officially. No, the approach will be much more subtle. Anyone who is too obviously an advocate of the Lutheran Confession will not be appointed to national or synodical committees. They will be unlikely to be called to faculty positions at a seminary or perhaps if they are, their application for tenure will be denied. Candidates for ministry who express too strongly an opinion supporting the Confessions may be sent for counseling because of their rigidity. Noisy advocates of the Confessions may discover a difficulty in being placed on call lists. And there is always the approach of not having an application for being on leave from call approved resulting in immediate removal from the roster. Impossible? I have seen all of these things happen.

Jesus said to his disciples: “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial” (Luke 22:46). Why, Lutheran Church, are you sleeping? Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

*Luther A. Gotwald was the brother of William H. Gotwald who started the Lutheran Church in Martin, Florida.

13765

LIBRARIES

2010-07-09T14:21:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago I was listening to a Public Radio talk show about libraries. One caller insisted libraries, by allowing people to check out videos, were engaged in socialism. They were depriving the video stores of revenue. I’m not sure why videos are a bigger issue than books, but there’s no accounting for such things. I passed it off as part of the latest fad of labeling anything that is disliked as socialism until I got a “Printers Row: Lit Links” email update from the Printer’s Row Literary Festival in Chicago. It seems Fox News aired a piece entitled “Are Libraries Necessary, or a Waste of Tax Money?” Here's an excerpt: “They eat up millions of your hard earned tax dollars. It's money that could be used to keep your child's school running.” Shocking to think we are undermining our children’s education by spending money on libraries. Why, children might learn something not on the approved curriculum in the library! They might read a book on the notorious radical Thomas Jefferson.

What really seems to irritate the anti-library crowd is that so many people come to the library to use the Internet. That’s true, but for the poor seeking a job the library may be the only access they have to the Internet. In case no one has noticed, today you have to search for apply for jobs online. The old days of walking into the personnel department of a company and filling out a form are long gone. Even clergy in the ELCA have been compelled to use the new online Mobility Papers. As someone who still uses fountain pens, I resent this reduction to electronic digital code, but what can you do?

I love libraries. I still remember my father taking me to the old Hamlin Park Library in Chicago when I had first learned to read. I think there hasn’t been a month since then that I haven’t used a library. Recently I was treated with uncommon courtesy by the Special Collections librarian at the University of Florida, and I’m not even a Gator.

The Internet is a wonderful research tool, and maybe someday it will replace physical libraries, but not yet. You can find all sorts of things poking around in libraries that just don’t turn up online. You discover these locally produced magazines and pamphlets or maybe the cookbook of the Littleburg Ladies Crocheting Society and Karate Club from 1964. You can’t find that stuff on the Internet.

The buildings themselves can be fascinating. The wonderful marble stairways and mosaics at the old main library in Chicago made it seem that you were truly entering a temple of knowledge. Maybe that’s what it was like in the great library of Alexandria before it burned.

And think of the role libraries play in literature. The Body in the Library by Agatha Christe. Or the library that is almost a character in Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose. And of course the library that forms the passage between the ordinary world and the magical world in Not All is as You See by–well, modesty prevents me from naming the author. (However it is available at Amazon.)

The old Benedictine monasteries had libraries. The Rule of St. Benedict directs the Abbot to assign each monk a book to read during Lent. I know some people who would think that was a terrible penance. I can hear certain people: “A book, how strange. Where do you plug it in?” Of course nowadays they do sell books that you plug in in order to recharge their batteries, but I’m not going there or buying one.

Well, it is Friday, my usual day for heading to the Library. I’m still researching old Lutheran churches and want to check the 1842 government survey of Marion County. I could get on line, but the last time I tried to download a section, my computer said it would take 1 day, 2 hours, and 17 minutes. It’s a lot faster to drive to the library.

Good reading.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

The picture of the Chicago Cultural Center, formally the Chicago Public Library.

13693

THE SHORT HISTORY OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCH AT MARTIN, FLORIDA

2010-07-01T18:30:00.002-04:00

The story of the Evangelical Lutheran Church at Martin, Florida, is brief, but not without it’s complexities. It starts with the Martin Family who moved to Marion County in the 1850s from Edgefield County, South Carolina. The Martins established a 3,000 acre plantation called Sugar Hammock about seven miles north of Ocala. While the Martins were a very influential family the local patriarch Col. John Marshall Martin (nephew of the U. S. Chief Justice John Marshall) moved from his plantation to the city of Ocala in 1881 and started subdividing and selling off his land. The unincorporated town that grew up in the area after a railroad depot was established was called Martin. According to a local history magazine “Salty Crackers,” among those purchasing land in the area between 1885 and 1900 were a group of Pennsylvanians who established orange groves. They also established the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Martin.

Several names among the purchasers of land could very well belong to Lutherans from Pennsylvannia: Mary Werner, West Kuhn. Priscilla Kaufmann, Bucher H. Geigerich, Wilbur Webb, Aaron Kroh, Mary and Sarah Gnagy.

There is this brief mention of the church in Martin in Old Salem in Lebanon by Theodore E. Schmauk: “About this time the congregation built a small frame mission in Martin, Florida.” “About this time” is terribly vague, but the context suggests sometime after 1884 which fits the time the Pennsylvanians arrived in Martin. Were they from Lebanon? Perhaps, but there is one more clue. Wikepedia has a lengthy article about the Rev. Luther Alexander Gotwald which includes a paragraph about his brother the Rev. William Henry Harrison Gotwald. “ He served as a Presbyterian minister in Ocala, Florida, where he had gone due to his health. However, he built a Lutheran church at Martin, Florida.” The move to Florida could not have happened before 1887. A curious thing is that while W. H Gotwald was serving in the Union army during the civil war, his brother Luther was a pastor in Lebanon. Was Gotwald the reason the Salem church constructed the building in Martin?

I found the following in The Ocala Banner for December 28, 1888. “Rev. W. H. Gotwald is again in our community to spend the winter. He has urgently been solicited to fill the Presbyterian Pulpit recently made vacant by the resignation of Rev. G. A. Hough.” This is very interesting. G. A. Hough had served as the Presbyterian pastor at Kanapaha, 1885, Reddick 1886-1887, and Ocala 1887-1888. (Each of these charges moves further south in Florida.) From 1881 to 1884 he was pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Lake City, Florida, the first Lutheran church in Florida. E. P Webber’s History of the Lutheran Church in Florida relates that Hough’s early ministry at Bethlehem had been quite successful, but conflict arose and he resigned the call. This would have marked his transition to the Presbyterian Church. We can see why the Presbyterian Church in Ocala might have been interested in Gotwald as a pastor, since they had already had experience with a Lutheran.

I don’t believe that Gotwald actually became a Presbyterian for at some point he became the founder of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Washington, D.C. I am still researching to discover how long Gotwald was in Ocala, but I suspect it was not long.

Now this story takes an odd turn because Martin became one of the preaching points for Missouri Synod Reiseprediger. In 1890 F. J. W Reinhardt was preacher on this circuit, in 1891 C. F. Brommer was preacher. The last preacher in 1894 was Ed Fischer. Investigations by Webber indicate this was the same group that moved from Pennsylvania “According to the Rev. Eagar Brammer, pastor of the Gainesville-Ocala parish from 1938-1941, a cornerstone was removed upon his request from a church in Martin which is now occupied by negroes. Pastor Brammer, with whom the writer was in correspondence, stated that the negroes gave him some torn documents taken from the cornerstone, on the basis of which he was inclined to believe that the Lutherans who originally occupied the building were German Lutherans from Pennsylvania, who Later moved back to the North. It seems that it was these Lutherans who were served by these early missionaries.”

This fits with local history that the Pennsylvanians returned home after the Big Freeze of 1894-1895 that destroyed the orange groves. The church came to be the school house and then was used by an African Methodist Episcopal Church. I have read a report that the derelict church was still standing in 1988, but my exploration of Martin has shown no evidence of it. I hope someday to discover a photo of the church. (Anybody who has a photo of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church that was in Martin, let me know.)

I’m continuing the local research. I believe I have identified the site of Pr. Bernheim’s Freestone Springs Academy, but I am not sure. If anyone has information about Cedar Grove Methodist Church, Marion County, let me know. Some research will have to wait until I can make a trip to the ELCA Archives in Columbia, South Carolina.

In the meantime, may the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

13655

DONE WELL

2010-06-25T12:42:00.002-04:00

I was on vacation in Chicago and had the opportunity of worshiping once again the Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Luke on Belmont Avenue. Although that was not my home church, I had often worshiped there from the early 60s and 70s before I moved to Florida and then from time to time when I vacationed in Chicago. St. Luke was a marvelous parish with a flourishing Christian Day School and some of best liturgy anywhere.

The great attraction was the pastor, A. R. Kretzmann, of blessed memory. The church was the epitome of what Lutheranism could and should be. Dr. Kretzmann was an important figure in Chicago and in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. As I recall he designed the official seal of the LC-MS. But Dr. Kretzmann never hesitated to commune non-Missouri Lutherans. He would happily converse with seminarians from the LCA’s Lutheran School of Theology. During the unpleasantness at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis started, Dr. Kretzmann sided with the moderates. I was at the church the Sunday the pastors and teachers resigned their calls to St. Luke’s formerly LC-MS and then were called once again by St. Luke’s now AELC.

Dr. Kretzmann retired in 1982 after 52 years as pastor. I saw him a few times after that, and was saddened by his death in 1987. It was as if an institution had died.

St. Luke continues to be an exemplary church under the expert leadership of Pastor David G. Abrahamson. It has expanded it’s out reach with senior citizen’s housing.

I attended Morning Prayer at 8:30 since I was on my way to the Printer’s Row Literary Fest. Anyone entering the church is immediately overwhelmed by the soaring height of the modern structure. It’s now 50 years old, but still gives the impression of being absolutely contemporary. It is the silence which still impresses me. My church tends to be rather talkative before services, but not St. Luke’s. The liturgy was perfectly led by Dr. Ruth Hamilton, the pastoral assistant. Organist Michel Wolniakowski plays the hymns i liturgy in a way that makes it easy to sing, yet always with variety. Whether it was a German Chorale or a Marty Haugen contemporary piece his playing was absolutely appropriate. The sermon came at the end, where it makes sense after the office liturgy. Pastor Abrahamson preached a solid, Biblically grounded sermon with a proper relationship of Law and Gospel. And then to finish with a flourish, the postlude was Sigfrid Karg-Elert’s “Nun danket alle Gott.” Wonderful!

St. Luke remains an example of what is possible in the Lutheran Church. I say example rather than model because I don’t think you can duplicate one church in another location, with a different congregation, and a different pastor. I certainly don’t have Pr. Abrahamson’s leadership qualities nor could I preach with his gravitas. Nevertheless, we need examples of church done well. “Done well” is a key. We should never settle for less that our best in the worship and service of God.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

13596

THE FORGOTTEN CHURCH AT MELROSE, FLORIDA

2010-06-18T09:00:00.003-04:00

Now an addendum to my investigations of Lutheranism in Marion County. I mentioned that one of the early missionary pastors to Marion County was W. A. Julian. Local records show that he had performed a wedding in Marion County on February 21, 1865, of John W. Randall and Louise B. Todd. (I am wondering if the bride was any relation to Pr. Bernheim’s wife, Jane Todd.) That’s the only evidence about his presence other than the fact that he isn’t listed in the 1860 census. I have now discovered that from 1854-1863 he was serving Beck’s, Pilgrim, and St. Luke’s churches in Lexington, NC. (Pr. Bernheim served the same churches in 1874-1878.) Pr. Julian was back in North Carolina at Zion, Coble from 1865-1870 which leaves the years between 1863 and 1865 when he could be in Marion County.

We know he was back in Florida serving Bethlehem in Columbia County, 1893-1898. There he had to contend with the great storm of 1896 which blew down the church. At that point I lost track of him until I found a reference to him living in Melrose, Florida in 1904. Melrose is a town straight north of Ocala in Putnam County near the Alachua-Putnam County line. As far as I knew, there weren’t any Lutheran churches in Alachua County until the 1930s. I wondered if Pastor Julian had given up on the Lutheran Church. Not so. The GainesvilleThe Daily Sun has several references to the Lutheran church in Melrose. There is certainly no mention of a Melrose church in the History of the Florida Synod and it wasn’t one of the preaching points for Missouri Synod Lutheran Pastors. Where did this one come from? The answer is the Pittsburgh Synod.

Why would a northern synod have a church in Florida? Perhaps there was a touch of “brand consciousness” involved. This Pittsburgh Synod belonged to the General Council. Three of the existing Lutheran Churches belonged to the Missouri Synod, and the other two to the United Synod, South.

Here’s most of the story taken directly from History of the Southern Conference of the Pittsburgh Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church by Wm. F. Ulery and Adolphus Le Roy Yount Adolphus Le Roy Yount, 1903.

In the autumn of 1890, Rev. A. H. Waters resigned his position as superintendent of the Soldiers' Orphans' School at Jumomille, Pa., and went, with his wife, to spend the winter in Florida. He settled in Melrose, where he found a few Lutherans, who, as well as himself, desired to have church service. At the request of these people he held services, and as the interest was awakened, they were continued, and on the l0th of February, 1894. a congregation was organized with eight members, under the title of "St. Luke's Evangelical Lutheran Church." A constitution was adopted in harmony with the doctrinal basis of the General Council and Mr. Francis Obenhoff and Mr. Wm. A. Vogelbach were elected as elder and deacon respectively. During the time when Rev. Waters has his residence in Melrose, he conducts regular services on every Lord's Day: during his absence in the summer months he provides for occasional supplies.

In 1894 a move was made to build a church. Plans and specificat1ons were secured and adopted, and the contract was let for the building. As soon as the foundation was completed the corner-stone was laid, the Services being conducted by Rev. Waters.

Early in 1895, the church was finished and was set apart to the worship of God. Rev. J. Bowman, D. D., was present on this occasion and preached the dedication sermon, and the pastor performed the act of consecration.

The church is a very neat frame building, 28x42 fact in size, gothic in its architecture, and is handsomely finished, and furnished in a corresponding manner. It has fine stained glass windows and beautiful chancel furniture. Two of the large windows are memorial; the one for the youngest son, and the other for the wife of the pastor. The one representing the Good Shepherd, and the other the Angel of Praise. Both are fine specimens of art. The church is beautifully situated, overlooking Lake Santa Fe, and presents a very phasing appearance. The lot on which this lovely church stands, was donated to the congregation by Rev. A. H. Walters, and, with the exception of a few donations from friends and some gifts of the Ladies' Aid Society of the First Lutheran church, Pittsburg, he paid for the building of the church. The membership is still small, but there has been a gradual increase in the last few years. It was organized with eight members, its present communicant membership is 23.

The church is deservedly popular in the town, and is exerting a good influence on the people who are associated with it, and has proved a source of great comfort to the Lutheran people who have taken up their residence in Melrose. It has had only one pastor, Rev. A. H. Waters, who founded it, and has had charge of it from its organization till the present time.

The final chapter to the story was soon to be written. Pastor Waters died May 24, 1903. It appears for a time Pr. Julian served the church, but a notice appeared in The Daily Sun, March 16 1904. “Rev Julian has accepted a charge at a Lutheran Church in Fitzgerald.“ I haven’t located Fitzgerald yet, let alone a Lutheran church. I find no further references to St. Luke church after this date, so I suppose that the church closed. I have to check with friends in Gainesville to see if they know where the building is (or was).

I am away on vacation next week, so there won’t be another blog until June 25.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

JUNE 22 UPDATE

I visited Melrose yesterday. St. Luke's Church was converted to a residence for John McLeod in 1925.

Here's a picture ca. 1910-1920

Here's a picture of it today.

THE MYSTERY OF LUTHERANISM IN MARION COUNTY, FLORIDA, PART 2

2010-06-04T09:00:00.001-04:00

Last week I was puzzling over the beginnings of the Lutheran Church Florida. Why did the first missionary pastor, Charles H. Bernheim, come to Marion County? The first clue lies in the way Lutherans developed missions: they looked for a place where there were Lutherans and then sent pastors. They didn’t go off into the middle of nowhere hoping to convert whoever they found. The first act was always to gather together Lutherans who were already present in an area.

Many of the early settlers in Marion county were from South Carolina, and one area of South Carolina in particular, Dutch Fork, was populated by Lutherans. So I needed to find people from that area in Ocala.

The break through I needed came from a recent article “Adam thought Pineapple would do well” in the Ocala Star-Banner, May 16, 2010, written by David Cook. Mr. Cook, a former editor of the Star-Banner, is an avid local historian who writes the most fascinating articles. The Adam mention in this article refers to Adam Eichelberger (pictured below). A German name immediately caught my attention. Was he a Lutheran, perhaps? The article mentioned that he was born in Newberry, South Carolina. That was a center of the Lutheran Church. When I later learned his full name was Adam Luther Eichelberger, I was convinced.

Doing some genealogical research, I learned that Adam was the son of Col. John Eichelberger, Jr. John Eichelberger is remembered for having donated the land in Pomaria, South Carolina, for what would become Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. Furthermore, Adam was not the only son who moved to Marion County. I found at least three of his brothers were here: Jacob Walter Franklin, John Bainbridge, and Wade S. Eichelberger. There were several other Eichelbergers in Marion County as well. Both Adam and Wade owned land near Long Swamp where the first Lutheran Church in Marion was organized in 1859 according to the report of Pastor Charles H. Bernheim.

Not far from Long Swamp lived another South Carolinian of Lutheran extraction, Colonel Adam G. Summer, a second cousin once removed of the Eichelbergers (if I have the relations worked out right). He was from Pomaria where the seminary had its first home. (By the way Summerfield in Marion County was named for him.)

Now we turn to the Rev. Charles Bernheim. I found this biographical sketch of him in a genealogy.

Charles Bernheim was born April 6, 1831 at Cologne, Germany. His parents were the Rev. John Herman and Lisette (Delmann) Bernbeim. His father of a distinguished Berlin Jewish family, was a convert from Judaism, and became a Lutheran minister. In the infancy of Charles Herman his family settled in western Pennsylvania. He was educated at the Theological Seminary. He was married to Jane Todd in 1855. They had several children. From 1868 to 1874 the Rev. Bernheim served Friedens, Guilford Co.; St. Paul, Alamance Co.; St. James, Concord and other churches in Davidson and Forsyth counties. Bernheim died January 20, 1901, and was buried near Conover.

Informative, but not very helpful in understanding his work in Florida. I know that Bernheim was an 1855 graduate of Southern Seminary. When he was at the Seminary, the president was Lewis Frederick Eichelberger. I haven’t worked out his relationship to the Florida Eichelbergers. What was Bernheim doing between his graduation in 1855 and his move to Florida in 1859? So far I have discovered only one clue.

Dec. 24th, by Rev. Charles H. Bernheim, Dr. Wm. T. McFall, to Miss Mary Ann, daughter of Jacob Singley, all of Newberry, S. C. Marriages and Deaths, Lutheran Observer and Southern Lutheran, Issue of January 29, 1858, p.174

So that puts his ordination not later than 1857 and places him in Newberry in December of that year. Of course, Newberry is where the Eichelbergers were from. I think the Eichelbergers and Summer could have provided the core for the Long Swamp Lutheran church.

One more deduction. In 1859 Bernheim reported to the South Carolina Synodical Missionary Society that “Three churches are about to be erected, and a school house large enough to answer as a temporary house of worship. Twenty-four white and twenty colored members have been received, and others are prepared for taking this step as soon as an opportunity is offered.” The South Carolina Synod minutes showed the reception of the Columbia County congregation with 23 members and the Long Swamp congregation with 18 members. Do the math and it is clear that both churches had African members–slaves. This is the unwritten chapter of Florida Lutheranism. The book Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord reaches the inevitable conclusion that nearly half the first Lutherans in Florida were slaves. This would fit with what we know about the Eichelbergs and Summer. They were all slave holders in Marion County.

One more surmise. Bernheim had mentioned a school house being built that could serve as a place of worship. I’d venture that the school house was used for Freestone Springs Academy which he established at Camp Izard. A look at the map in last week’s blog shows that both Long Swamp and Camp Izard were in the Southern part of Marion County. Although there was no direct road between the two locations in the 1850s, there were roads that would have allowed people to travel from one location to the other without going all the way into Ocala. I find it interesting that the first source I discovered for the school came from an oral report by W. E. McGahagin, a prominent resident of Long Swamp.

What happened to the church in Long Swamp? It probably closed after the Civil War. With emancipation the former slaves would not have remained in their former master’s church. Adam Summer died in 1866. Jacob Eichelberger moved to Sumter County between 1868 and 1871. Pastor Bernheim had moved to North Carolina by 1868. Bethlehem Church in Columbia County had no pastor between 1864 and 1869. When Pastor S. W. Bedenbaugh arrived there in 1872, his attentions were confined to expanding the work in Columbia County*.

My guess at this point is that Lutheran work in Marion county ended with the departure of Pr. Bernheim, not to be revived until a Missouri Synod Pastor, F. J. W. Reinhardt began preaching in Martin, north of Ocala, around 1890. That work came to nothing. Information gleaned by E. P. Weber from Edgar Brammer, Pastor in Gainesville 1938-1941, indicated that the church in Martin served a group of English-speaking Lutherans from Pennsylvania who eventually returned to the north. That's another chapter than needs investigating.

It intrigues me that a line drawn between Long Swamp and Camp Izard would pass very close to where my congregation, Our Saviour in Marion Oaks, is located. We don’t qualify as historic: the church was organized in 1979.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

*Note: In case anyone else reads this in working on Lutheran history, the mysterious reference in the Florida Synod history to an Ebenezer church served by the pastor of Bethlehem almost certainly refers to a Lutheran church in the community of Ebenezer, Columbia County. At the point of this writing I also know work was done at Ft. White (1885-1893) and Mt. Tabor, both in Columbia County.)

13437

THE MYSTERY OF LUTHERANISM IN MARION COUNTY, FLORIDA

2010-05-28T16:09:00.003-04:00

It’s fairly well known that the oldest Lutheran Church in Marion County, Florida, is St. John Lutheran Church in Summerfield, organized 1922. Oldest, however, doesn’t mean first. Lutheranism in Marion County dates back to the mid 19th century. Indeed, the first Lutheran Pastor in Florida was located in Ocala, the county seat of Marion County. And in that lies the great mystery of Lutheran Church history in Marion County.

The Florida Synod of the Lutheran Church in America published a history of the synod with this discussion of Lutheran beginnings.

The earliest record of Lutherans in Florida indicates that there were scattered groups of them in the north central part of the state. Settlers who had located in Columbia County a few miles south of Lake City had come there in the 1850's from South Carolina where they had been members of Lutheran congregations. Their names indicate that they were of German descent.

In 1858 the Evangelical Lutheran Synod and Ministerium of South Carolina and Adjacent States (cited hereafter as the Synod of South Carolina) appropriated $300 to send a missioner to Florida. By using this fund the Synod was able to send a pastor into Florida to investigate the need for pastoral services among the Lutherans who had settled there. This pastor, the newly ordained Charles H. Bernheim, made Ocala his headquarters. Having heard of Lutherans in Columbia County, he went to visit them and began holding services. In 1859 he organized a congregation with the name of Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church, a congregation still in existence.

This congregation, whose members were engaged in agriculture, was first related to the Synod of South Carolina, and later to the Evangelical Lutheran Synod and Ministerium of Georgia and Adjacent States (cited hereafter as the Synod of Georgia) which was organized July 28, 1860. The pastors of Bethlehem Church were members of these synods.

Meanwhile, Missionary Bernheim explored the territory surrounding his Ocala location. He reported to the Synodical Missionary Society, which held a meeting in connection with the Synod's convention in October, 1859, that he had organized two congregations, and was preparing to organize several others. “Three churches are about to be erected, and a school house large enough to answer as a temporary house of worship. Twenty-four white and twenty colored members have been received, and others are prepared for taking this step as soon as an opportunity is offered.”

The Minutes of Synod list Bernheim's parish as consisting of congregations at Long Swamp, Ocatee, and Columbia County, Florida. The Long Swamp congregation was in the process of erecting a building The Synod received a request signed by twenty-three members of the Columbia County congregation for admission to Synod, and a similar petition from eighteen persons of the Long Swamp group. The Synod accepted both congregations into its membership.

It is not clear why only Bethlehem Church in Columbia County survived, nor what became of the other congregations. For some time in the 1870's and 1880's the pastor of Bethlehem Church ministered also to Ebenezer Church, which is not otherwise identified, and also in 1883 to St. Stephen's Church whose location is not stated.

The members of Bethlehem Church preserved its life during the years of the Civil War and the Reconstruction Period when they had no pastor. Even a hurricane in 1896, which destroyed the church building and devastated the area, did not defeat them, for they rebuilt the edifice and continued the life of the congregation.

The whole story is curious. Why did Pastor Bernheim come to Ocala in the first place? There were other places less wild in Florida to work in. (The Seminole Wars had ended less than 20 years before.) I like solving mysteries, so I have started in on this one.

My first issue was where the information came from that is in this history. Always check your sources. Some of it was from Synodical minutes, the rest from a thesis: History of the Lutheran Church in Florida by E. P. Weber. It took me less than a week to track down the thesis and, $13 later, I have a copy of the pertinent pages before me. Where did Pastor Weber get his informtation? From “The Beginnings of Lutheranism in Florida, and an Outline of the History of Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Congregation, Columbia Country, Florida, 1859-1939” by the Rev. E. C. Witt. I need to get a copy of that to see what’s in it, but the source is first-hand information. E. C. Witt was not only the pastor of Bethlehem Church at three different times, he was a son of one of the founding families. The only problem with this is that the whole perspective is from that congregation. As far as I can tell, no one has investigated what was going on in Marion County other than looking at old maps to find out where Long Swamp was. (It’s near modern-day Belleview.)

So off I went to look in local histories for information. The name of Charles H. Bernheim does appear, but always in only one connection. Here’s what it says in "Ocala Prior to 1868" by Eloise Robinson Ott:

There were at this time several private schools, one of which was the Freestone Springs Academy a few miles southwest of Ocala, conducted by Chas. H. Bernheim, a Lutheran minister.

Several sources repeat the same information noting that the school was near Camp Izard,

situated in a strictly moral neighborhood where children and youths are free of the ruinous influence of evil company and the temptation of spending money.

I have confirmed that Pr. Bernheim was living in Marion County in 1860 as his name appears on the 1860 census. However, there is nothing in local records that I can find so far that confirms an establishment of Lutheran Churches here. The history shows that Pr. Bernheim resigned from Bethlehem church in 1861 to be replaced by the Rev. Festus Hickerson. My new discovery is that Charles Bernheim was still in Ocala in 1865 and 1866. I found records of marriages that he performed between January of 1865 and April 1866. Unfortunately the records before that date that are available to me do not record the name of the ministers. I also discovered one marriage performed in 1865 by William A. Julian, the other Lutheran pastor who was sent to Ocala and who would serve Bethlehem church as pastor from 1893-1898 and did subsequent work in Melrose, Florida.

I have some further speculations about Lutheranism in Marion County, but I’ll save them for a future blog.

May the Lord who holds past, present, and future together, bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

13339

LAW AND GOSPEL

2010-05-21T09:00:00.010-04:00

Here’s an issue that will surprise a lot of Christians. Can the Bible give us moral rules for life? Most Christians answer, well of course it does. Yet there are a growing number of Christians who reject such a use of Scripture. The roots of this attitude are in a view called “antinomianism” (against the law). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church defines antinomianism as “the view that Christians are by grace set free from the need of observing any moral law.” Some form of antinomianism crops up within Christianity every so often, but it was really in Lutheran Reformation that a battle over it took place.

The issue arises because of a fundamental belief that people are saved by grace through faith. It is based on the writings of Paul, for example Galatians 2:16: “we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.” At first this sounds antinomian, but it can’t be if taken with the whole of Paul’s theology. For example, Romans 7:12 says: “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.” That doesn’t sound anti-law at all. What’s going on here?

The question is how we are put right before God. Human beings sin and cannot rescue themselves from sin. They must receive forgiveness from God as a free gift. No one can do anything to deserve this gift. As a matter of fact, if we think we can do anything to deserve God’s forgiveness, we make our condition worse because we depend upon ourselves and not God. That is the root of sin.

This understanding of the law is evident in Jesus’ teachings. He shows again and again how those think they are keeping the law are deluding themselves. Take for example murder. Most people can say they haven’t murdered anybody, and therefore have kept at least that part of the law. But then there is Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire” (Mat 5:21-22). Given that interpretation, no one has kept the command against murder and therefore everyone deserves to be judged. A person’s only hope is in Jesus Christ which is what Paul was saying: “a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.”

If, then, we can’t be saved by our own obedience to the law, is the believer free to disregard all moral constraints? Of course not! Once again a quote from Paul. “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin” (Rom 6:1b-6).

This brings us to another important concept, the distinction between Law and Gospel in the Scripture. Here is how the Epitome of the Formula of Concord explains the difference. “We believe, teach, and confess that the Law is properly a divine doctrine, which teaches what is right and pleasing to God, and reproves everything that is sin and contrary to God's will” (V.3). “But the Gospel is properly such a doctrine as teaches what man who has not observed
the Law, and therefore is condemned by it, is to believe, namely, that Christ has expiated and made satisfaction for all sins, and has obtained and acquired for him, without any merit of his [no merit of the sinner intervening], forgiveness of sins, righteousness that avails before God, and eternal life” (V.5). So the Law points out what we should do and therefore shows us our sin. The Gospel is the Good News of Jesus Christ that tells us that we are forgiven and have received eternal life from God.

Classical Lutheran teaching is that we need both Law and Gospel. First, the Law tells us how to run civil society. It says things like it wrong to murder or steal. Second, it shows us our sins. That helps us to see how great God’s mercy is in forgiving us when we don’t deserve it. It seems obvious to me that without this use of the law, we would go about thinking we’re doing just fine and don’t really need forgiveness (or much of anything else) from God. But then comes the controversial third use of the law.

“We believe, teach, and confess that, although men truly believing [in Christ] and truly converted to God have been freed and exempted from the curse and coercion of the Law, they nevertheless are not on this account without Law, but have been redeemed by the Son of God in order that they should exercise themselves in it day and night” (VI. 2). The Law shows how those believe in Christ are to live. It doesn’t do it by threatening punishment (that’s the second use), but shows us what we willing do.

I agree with the orthodox Lutheran position that both Law and Gospel are necessary. Yet increasingly I hear versions of Law and Gospel that seem to turn the two against each other. The Gospel is regarded as the only thing worthwhile in Scripture while the Law is some nasty leftover to be ignored, like that stuff in the back of your refrigerator that turned fuzzy blue-green long about New Years Day. Those who buy into that version of things condemn as legalists and fundamentalists anyone who looks for the Scripture to condemn sin or to show what a Christian life should be like are.

I find this turn of thinking deeply troubling. It isn’t surprising, however. I keep hearing remarks from Christians, even Lutheran clergy, that the Bible is just a book of stories. I heard a remark made at a Synod Assembly that we shouldn’t be guided by some book thousands of years old. I am saddened, but not surprised.

I believe with all my mind and heart that people are saved solely by the grace of God. I also believe that receiving that grace in faith means we are changed. I ought to live as a different person. As Paul instructs the Romans: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:2). Scripture is the rule and guide for that new life in Christ. Both Law and Gospel are necessary lest we arrive at the condition H. Richard Niebuhr described in Kingdom of God in America “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”

Lord, have mercy.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

13284

INSPIRING

2010-05-14T19:13:00.000-04:00

This week I am writing about three wonderful days at “Inspiring Worship: The Third Annual University of Florida Sacred Music Workshop.” It started off with a bang-up carillon recital by Dr. Laura Ellis. It amazes me that a great big, heavy carillon can be played with such virtuosity.

Then there was a splendid concert by the Orlando Deanery Boychoir and Girls Choir. I really miss directing a children’s choir, but that is years and years in my past. In those good old days there were churches that had three or more children’s choirs. That is gone. Nowadays you hear groups called “youth choirs” that sing over a CD and haven’t got a clue about how to sing. But these Orlando choirs were a world apart from that. Terrific!

Next day started our learning. Claire Hodge was particularly noteworthy in talking about voice production. (She directs the Girls Choir). I wish I would have known about her a few years ago. She would be the perfect vocal coach for training some of the young people I have known locally. She emphasizes the need to concentrate on technique, which is what I would do if I were still teaching. Learning a lot of repertoire is useless if you don’t have the technique to perform it.

Next I chose a choral reading session which was led by graduate student Alyssa Rodgers (who has a marvelous voice). I like going through new choral music. I wouldn’t know what’s being done with out these sorts of things. After that I fumbled my way through Music Technology Class. In my day musical technology meant piano tuning or learning to fix broken clarinets. Not anymore. It’s all about computers. Part of time we learned about making computer slides for lyrics. If you’ve read my earlier blog http://a-pilgrims-place.blogspot.com/2010/02/let-us-sing-powerpoint-slide-2567.html you know I don’t think much about doing this. Then we learned a bit about Finale, a program for writing music. It certainly is easier to use than Noteworthy Composer, but it costs an arm and a leg. Given that no one ever performs anything I write, it’s hardly worth my spending money to buy the more costly program.

That night was Hymn Festival arranged by David Cherwien. Dr. Cherwien played the magnificent organ (and occasionally piano) and directed a choir put together for the occasion. (Thank you UofF students for sticking around to sing.) What I love about these festivals is that they show what could be done with hymn and congregational song with some imagination. I really wish I could have had a whole bunch of people I know present. It’s a thrilling experience. I think a lot of the push toward contemporary worship is a result of just plain dull traditional worship. It doesn’t have to be that way.

The next day Dr. Cherwien gave two presentations “Blended Styles: One Song” and “Sing through Choices” which were very helpful in clarifying some things I have been thinking of. I really think it has been a mistake to divide congregations by musical styles. We rob ourselves of forms of expression when we refuse to use the full musical riches that are available to us.

I didn’t stay for Dr. Ellis’s Organ Masterclass, though I am sure it was excellent, because my skills are so poor that I would need to have very basic instruction, like–this is a white key and this is a black key.

Anyway, thanks to Laura Ellis for organizing this workshop, thanks to Ayssa Rodgers for coordinating it, and thanks to the University of Florida hosting it.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

13248

BACK AGAIN

2010-05-07T19:07:00.001-04:00

Well, I’m back from our Synod’s Assembly. The worship was quite good and there were inspirational moments especially in connection with the work the church is doing in Haiti. It was a fairly quiet assembly with little of great controversy. I suspect a lot of people were happy about that, but it makes me wonder.

There was one resolution that would have required that social statements be adopted by congregational votes. The motion lost but, but there was still a substantial number of people (about one-third, I think) who voted for it. I think there are a good many people who feel frustrated and disenfranchised. I am really worried about what will happed to people who disagree with major decisions by the national church.

The only thing that really riled me was that clergy were scolded for not making sure the people in their congregations know what’s going on at national and synod level. The real problem is that the Powers-That-Be have shifted to electronic communication as a cost saving measure. Having information on web sites is all right if the driving force is people wanting to find information. It is useless if the driving force is people wanting to give information. Since people don’t care in the first place, they are not going to go looking for information. They don’t perceive a need. The Higher-Ups want to communicate things, but they expect their audience to come to them to receive it. It is exactly the same thing that churches do wrong in evangelism. They sit in their buildings expecting non-believers to wander in and convert themselves. What nonsense!

Our Synod is launching a big fund-raising campaign for 2.5 million. A half-million is for work in Haiti (something very much needed.) The other 2 million is for a variety of projects that are still a little murky, but we’re getting somewhat of a clearer picture. I am not sure the average person in the pew is going to understand what it's about. I have warned the Powers-That-Be to avoid jargon, but they can’t seem to part with it. For example, there is a reference to “missional congregation grants.” I have never been clear what a missional congregation is, or, for that matter, what a non-missional congregation would be. Missional seems to be the latest buzz word in many denominations. (By the way, my spell-check doesn’t like the word ‘missional’) It has something to do with “mission,” but I’d like to know exactly what mission.

As a Christian, I assume THE mission is the one Christ gave: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mat 28:19-20). I’m not sure, however, that the Lutheran church really understands that as the mission. My brand-new handy-dandy Lutheran Study Bible claims that these verse do “not mean make everyone disciples.” Huh? That’s what I was always taught the words meant. I thought we were supposed to make disciples of everyone. Evidently according to some Learned Person, I am wrong. That’s why I’m not sure what our mission really is and even less do I understand what it is to be missional.

The other Big Word is transformational as in “transformational leaders.” (Spell-check doesn’t like ‘transformational’ either.) Isn’t there a professor at Hogwarts who teaches transformation? Would she be a transformational leader. No, wait. Harry Potter learns Transfiguration, not Transformation. Sounds like a distinction without a difference. I want to know what the transformational leader is going transform and what it’s going to be transformed into. I guess a transformational leader transformationalizes the unmissional into the missional, or something. Bippity-boppity-boo!

That marvelous guide to writing, The Elements of Style declares in rule V,14: “Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Don’t be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able.”

Maybe I’ll send a copy to the Powers-That-Be at headquarters.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

13203

PREACHING

2010-04-30T09:00:00.002-04:00

I had planned on writing a blog on preaching for this week. In one of those happy coincidences–serendipity, as I have written about earlier–an added dimension to my thought was raised by my good Presbyterian colleague, Brady Seeley. Pastor Seeley and I are working on a training program for lay visitors. In our conversation, Pastor Seeley mentioned his own training in homiletics (preaching). His class used as a text book Design for Preaching. I knew the book at once, for it was used in my homiletics class. It was written by H. Grady Davis, Professor of Functional Theology at the Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary in Maywood, Illinois. It was the book that transformed preaching in the 20th century. Even though it was first published in 1958, it continues to influence preaching today.

I had the great good fortune to take the last class that Grady Davis taught before his death, “Ethnic Backgrounds of Liturgical Music.” The course had little to do with that title, but it didn’t matter. It was a tremendous experience to learn anything at the feet of the master preacher. He was also kind enough to sell me a copy of his book The Gospels in Study and Preaching. This was the first volume of a proposed series that examine the texts for the Sundays of the church year from an exegetical standpoint by New Testament professor Arthur Vööbus and preaching notes by H. Grady Davis. It was a tiny sample of what the five-day-a-week preaching seminar must have been like at Maywood with Vööbus, Davis, and theologian Joseph Sitler each speaking on the lessons. Unfortunately, Fortress Press did not continue the series even though they had the manuscript for ten more Sundays in hand. What a loss! I wonder if any Maywood grads still have notes from their presentations?

What was so great about Davis’s idea of preaching? Maybe this will give you an idea. He wrote:

A sermon should be like a tree. . . .
It should have deep roots:
As much unseen as above the surface
Roots spreading as widely as its branches spread
Roots deep underground
In the soil of life’s struggle
In the subsoil of the eternal Word.

Sounds like poetry. Or take this except.

The Word of God is a call to both these persons, to broken and divided selves who stand swaying giddily on the edge of life. It is a call both to mind and heart at once and equally. At such a time, the form which strikes directly and silently below all rational defense may make the difference between a hearer’s redemption and his despair. The truth can reach him best through its imagined forms: beauty and compassion, strength and courage, regret and forgiveness, faithfulness and love, pain and hope.

I doubt that I have come close to preaching with the depth that Davis imagined a sermon should achieve. I have never preached a sermon I have been totally satisfied with. Nevertheless, I strive to root my sermons in the “Soil of life’s struggle and in the subsoil of the Eternal Word.”

A brief story: I was in college when this happened–a music major, not a religion major. I had not the slightest inclination to be a pastor. The current pastor of the church had riled up a good many people in the church. I think in his view the church was mired in the past and he was going to drag it into the 20th century kicking and screaming. He was probably right, but he had no people skills. He tried to lead by demands and threats, which doesn’t work in the long term. Many of his sermons were nothing more than scoldings. Even when he preached on love, he scolded people. I couldn’t have explained then what was wrong, just that the preaching was completely ineffective. One Sunday morning I went to his office before the service to ask him something. He was at work at a table writing on a stack of paper, a large, old book open before him. When I got close enough, I saw what the books was–a collection of sermon illustrations. He was writing the sermon he was going to preach in less than an hour. Now maybe this was a one time occurrence. It can happen that a preacher isn’t ready on Sunday morning. But I got the sense that this was a regular practice. No wonder there was no depth to his preaching. It didn’t have any roots in the Word.

I have never used canned sermon illustrations. They would never work for me because they don’t come out of my experience. Davis wrote: “Only an idea that comes alive in the preacher has power to expand into a living sermon.” Absolutely right!

Many years ago as a seminary student I faced the dread Synod Examining Committee. This was the group that decided whether or not you should be recommended for ordination. I was worried and frightened and some of my examiners had serious doubts about my worthiness to be a pastor.
One of the questions put to me was, “How do you prepare a sermon?” Although I had never formally thought about that, there was a very clear pattern I always followed. Usually on Monday I read the texts for the next Sunday to let them simmer in my mind. Almost all of my sermons are text based. For me they have to be or else I risk talking about any old thing and not what God’s doing. As the days go on I check for variations in the text, read commentaries, and ask myself (if it is a Gospel) what did this mean when Jesus said (or did) this? What did those around him understand? How did people understand this story when it was told later? What did the Gospel writer see here? What does it say to me now and to the people I know, their experiences, their needs, their questions and struggles? I look for a germ of an idea that can grow the sermon. And if I don’t learn everything I should from the text, don’t say everything that I could say, that’s all right because it will come around again.

Late that afternoon I was informed that I had received an enthusiastic endorsement. Later it was explained to me that I was the only person examined who could explain how they wrote a sermon.

I am still learning how to preach. Over the years I have continued to read books on homiletics, Preaching by Fred B. Craddock, Homiletic: Moves and Structures by David Buttrick, The Witness of Preaching, by Thomas G. Long, and the seminal The Servant of the Word by H. H. Farmer, a book that strongly influenced H. Grady Davis. And currently I am reading a collection of Karl Barth’s early sermons–powerful stuff.

As helpful as these are, however, the real food for my preaching is my daily encounter with the Word of God, both in my devotional life and in study. I’m teaching an adult class on Acts, so I have had to study that book in much more detail than I ever have. Good thing, too, since this year’s Easter readings come from Acts. The Office of Readings that I pray every morning is taking me through Revelation as it took me through Exodus during Lent. That’s what I need.

From April 30 to May 2 I’ll be at the Florida-Bahamas Synod Assembly. (Please pray for us.) The important thing will be the sermons I hear because one of the greatest lacks a solo pastor has is hearing the Good News proclaimed. Listening to yourself on Sunday mornings is not enough and more than it is enough to hear yourself pronounce the absolution on others. You need to hear it said to you.

Well, this came out rather differently than I had anticipated, but that often happens in the sermons that I write.

May the Lord God bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

13124

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

2010-04-23T09:00:00.000-04:00

Last week I wrote about a somewhat dumb move my denomination made recently. This week I’m writing about something much more serious. A few years ago the Powers-That-Be produced a new service book and hymnal. Unlike the previous one, this book was done in house by staff at the publishing house and at headquarters rather than appointing a special commission. In many respect it’s not a bad book. It has lots of resources and option, ten musical settings, plenty of hymns–some of which are an improvement on earlier books–with a fairly wide range of styles. What slipped through, however, was a theological shift which endangers a fundamental principle of Christian theology. Here’s what I observe.

Our liturgy has an optional order for confession and forgiveness, something we have always had. It begins as have all our liturgies with an invocation: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” However, there is an alternative to these words: “Blessed be the holy Trinity, one God, who forgives all our sins, whose mercy endures forever.” Naturally a confession ends with an absolution. Here is the ending of one familiar to many: “I therefore declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins, in the name of the Father , and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” There is a alternative that ends “In the name of Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven. Almighty God strengthen you with power through the Holy Spirit, that Christ may live in your hearts through faith.”

There is a familiar Eucharistic prayer that ends: “To you, O God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be all honor and glory in your holy church, now and forever.” Again there are alternatives like this one: “All praise and glory are yours, Holy One of Israel, Word of God incarnate, Power of the Most High, one God, now and forever.” At the end of the service is a familiar benediction: “Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless you now and forever.” And a familiar option in a new form: “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord’s face shine on you with grace and mercy. The Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace.”

Anybody notice something odd about the alternatives? Every one is written so as to avoid the words “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” The only time those words can’t be avoided is in the Creeds, although use of the Creeds is optional. The Lord’s prayer is not optional and they haven’t substituted anything for “Father,” but give them time. Something terribly wrong has happened. It probably started with avoiding masculine pronouns for God (I have even heard some radicals tamper with the service so as to remove masculine pronouns referring to Jesus), but it has now progressed to removing masculine nouns. The result is to make optional the formula given in Scripture (Matthew 28:19) and used in the Creeds to describe the Holy Trinity–Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Is it just a coincidence that the options skip those word? No way. The book contains the orders for Morning and Evening Prayer also. Morning Prayer begins in the way it has for centuries: “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise,” followed by the Gloria Patri, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever.” Aha! There are there traditional words. Except there is an option: “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, O God, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Praise to the blest and holy Trinity, one God, who gives us life, salvation, and resurrection.” There we are: a way to avoid the dreaded language. Next comes the Venite which always ends with the Gloria Patri. Not any more. The Gloria has been banished here and with the psalms and with the canticle Benedictus. Father, Son and Holy Spirit do appear in the benediction, but one can choose to do the Thanksgiving for Baptism and avoid them. Now I don’t know how it happened, but the Gloria Patri IS included with Psalm 141 in Evening Prayer, but you can use something else if you want. There is also an alternative blessing at the end so as not to say “those” words. Compline also provides ways to avoid saying Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

As far as I can tell, the only time the words Father, Son and Holy Spirit have to be said is in Baptism, first in the Apostles’ Creed and then in the Baptism itself. As I recall some years back the Lutheran Bishops issued a statement in no uncertain terms that no other Name could be used in Baptism.

Oh, but we’re just talking words here, some protest. No we aren’t. We are talking about the words that express a central Christian doctrine. We are talking about language that goes back to the very beginning. Others whine, but it’s only in the worship service. The way we worship, the words of our prayer shapes and determines our belief. If we stop praying to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we will stop believing in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

So far including or excluding the Trinitarian formula is a matter of choice. I worry about the time when the choice will be taken away. Until then I am putting in the Holy Names every chance I get. I expect I’ll get dirty looks from the Powers-That-Be if they discover what I’m up to. Maybe not. They’ll probably just shake their heads at my stubbornness knowing that it can’t be too long before all us old traditionalist fuddy-duddies retire or die. Then they can get rid of that old junk and bring things up to date. Will we pray: “To whom it may concern wherever you might be, if you exist at all”? Think not? Just a reminder that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is already in full communion with another body that has congregations with dual membership in the Unitarian-Universalist Association. That went through with barely a whimper.

I consider myself an orthodox Christian, orthodox in the literal sense of “right-praise” for if you praise God rightly you must hold right beliefs. I hope I go forth from this vale of tears with the words of the last stanza of “For All the Saints” on my lips:

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gate of pearl stream in the countless host,
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: Alleluia! Alleluia!

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

12999

HERE THEY COME AGAIN

2010-04-16T09:00:00.005-04:00

I’m conducting a survey. Please list the top three concerns of members of your congregation. What did you put down? Spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ? Helping people in the current economic crisis? Teaching the faith to children? Making sure children have food, clothes, shelter, and health care? Anybody put down genetics? What! No one?

Or how about this. Suppose you had $140,000 to spend at a time when money was hard to come by. People are losing jobs. Their pensions are being taken away from them. Funding to church missions has fallen precipitously. What would you do with the money? Anybody put down a six year study for a statement on genetics?
What! No one?
Or how about this. It is Holy Week, the most solemn time of the Christian year. What would you send to the congregations? A devotional guide to the Passion of Jesus? A message of hope in the Resurrection? Anybody put down a 50 page “Draft Social Statement on Genetics”? What! No one?

From now until October 15 you are going to lead a study in your church. What will you choose as a topic? The Augsburg Confession? Paul’s Letter to the Romans? How to pray? What! Anybody put down the “Draft Social Statement on Genetics”? What! No one?

Boy, are you folks ever out of touch with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America leadership. (Or maybe it’s the other way around.) This Holy Week saw the arrival of the “Draft Statement of Genetics” prepared by the ELCA Task Force on Genetics, Church in Society, © 2010, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. And, yes, indeed, the final cost of this study is only $140,000 - $150,000, much less than most people think, I am told. That cost is about what my congregation has sent to the wider church in the last 20 years. Somehow, this is not what I imagined was the top priority for our benevolence dollars.

This is one of the most outrageous boondoggles I have seen from the ELCA in at least the last six-months. I think people stay up late at headquarters thinking of foolishness to get the church involved with. First, I am suspicious of any official church document with a glossary to explain the terms nucleotide, oncogenes, and single nucleotide polymorphism. What does the Church know about these things? Second, even after reading the document I have no idea what this church thinks about genetics. In side bars various issues are raised that are related to genetics. They are interesting problems sometimes posing moral dilemma. I would like to see how this Statement on Genetics helps a person decide the issues raised. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t. In fact, it warns that the side bars are for illustration only. That sounds like a lot of what I get from the powers-that-be, no clear guidance on issues.

There is this pomposity: “The Word became flesh, took on a human genome, and lived within the abundance and sorrow of the earth and human culture” (8). I liked it better the way St. John wrote it: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.” (I don’t think we’re allowed to say that anymore because it implies God is a Father.)

One of the few useful gems in this verbosity is this: “This church rejects the ‘technological imperative,’ that is, it rejects the prevalent practice of belief that we are free to use any knowledge that becomes available to create any technological application if the market will support it” (21). Well, I’m glad to hear that. It is the type of issue that you discuss in a beginning ethics class. In practice this means that this church rejects human cloning, although if we do it successfully, we will, of course, baptize the cloned individual like any child of God.

What I’d like to see is a few succinct statements of what the church teaches or proposes to teach and not 50 pages of impenetrable prose. I have no idea what we would be endorsing if we adopted this statement. Of course, that doesn’t matter because we always adopt Social Statements, usually by huge margins–and then they fall still-born to the ground. The exception was the statement on Human Sexuality which has created a division in the church that may not be healed for generations.

Oh, a warning. There is already ANOTHER Social statement in the works to follow this one.

From ghoulies and ghosties and church Social Statements, good Lord deliver us.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

12964

EASTER SERMON OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

2010-04-05T17:06:00.000-04:00

Is there anyone who is a devout lover of God?

Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival!

Is there anyone who is a grateful servant?

Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!

Are there any weary with fasting?

Let them now receive their wages!

If any have toiled from the first hour,

let them receive their due reward;

If any have come after the third hour,

let him with gratitude join in the Feast!

And he that arrived after the sixth hour,

let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.

And if any delayed until the ninth hour,

let him not hesitate; but let him come too.

And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour,

let him not be afraid by reason of her delay.

For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.

He gives rest to those who come at the eleventh hour,

as well as to those that toiled from the first.

To this one God gives, and upon another God bestows.

God accepts the works as God greets the endeavor.

The deed God honors and the intention God commends.

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!

First and last alike receive your reward;

rich and poor, rejoice together!

Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!

You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,

rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!

Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.

Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith.

Enjoy all the riches of God’s goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty,

for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn that se has fallen again and again;

for forgiveness has risen from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.

Christ has destroyed it by enduring it.

Christ destroyed Hades when He descended into it.

Christ put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.

Isaiah foretold this when he said,

"You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below."

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.

It was in an uproar because it is mocked.

It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.

It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.

It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.

Hell took a body, and discovered God.

It took earth, and encountered Heaven.

It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.

O death, where is thy sting?

O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!

Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!

Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!

Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!

Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;

for Christ having risen from the dead,

is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

GOOD FRIDAY

2010-03-30T19:35:00.000-04:00

Psalm 22

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
why art thou so far from helping me,
and from the words of my roaring?
O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not;
and in the night season, and am not silent.
But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.

Our fathers trusted in thee:
they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
They cried unto thee, and were delivered:
they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.

But I am a worm, and no man;
a reproach of men, and despised of the people.
All they that see me laugh me to scorn:
they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him:
let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.

But thou art he that took me out of the womb:
thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts.
I was cast upon thee from the womb:
thou art my God from my mother's belly.

Be not far from me;
for trouble is near;
for there is none to help.

Many bulls have compassed me:
strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
They gaped upon me with their mouths,
as a ravening and a roaring lion.

I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint:
my heart is like wax;
it is melted in the midst of my bowels.

My strength is dried up like a potsherd;
and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws;
and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.

For dogs have compassed me:
the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me:
they pierced my hands and my feet.

I may tell all my bones:
they look and stare upon me.

They part my garments among them,
and cast lots upon my vesture.

But be not thou far from me, O LORD:
O my strength, haste thee to help me.
Deliver my soul from the sword;
my darling from the power of the dog.
Save me from the lion's mouth:
for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.

I will declare thy name unto my brethren:
in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.

Ye that fear the LORD, praise him;
all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him;
and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.

For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;
neither hath he hid his face from him;
but when he cried unto him, he heard.

My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation:
I will pay my vows before them that fear him.

The meek shall eat and be satisfied:
they shall praise the LORD that seek him:
your heart shall live for ever.

All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD:
and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.

For the kingdom is the LORD's:
and he is the governor among the nations.

All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship:
all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him:
and none can keep alive his own soul.

A seed shall serve him;
it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.

They shall come,
and shall declare his righteousness unto a people
that shall be born,
that he hath done this.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

12912

HOSANNA! BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES!

2010-03-26T09:00:00.043-04:00

This Sunday is the Sunday of the Passion still subtitled by its older and better known name, Palm Sunday. It celebrates the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem and marks the beginning of Holy Week. This was always a big day in the church where I was raised. We didn’t process around as we don now, but everybody received a palm cross which was carefully preserved through the year.

I can’t remember any Palm Sunday when we didn’t sing the old hymn “All Glory, Laud, and Honor.”

All glory, laud and honor,
To Thee, Redeemer, King,
To Whom the lips of children
Made sweet hosannas ring.

Thou art the King of Israel,
Thou David’s royal Son,
Who in the Lord’s Name comest,
The King and Blessèd One.

Anglican clergyman John Mason Neale translated this hymn from the Latin poem of Theodulph of Orleans,

Gloria, laus et honor Tibi sit, Rex Christe Redemptor,
Cui puerile decus prompsit Hosanna pium.

Theodulph was and interesting cleric. He had come to prominence under the Emperor Charlemagne, rising from a Benedictine abbot to Bishop of Orleans. Unfortunately Louis the Pious, Charlemagne’s son and successor, came to distrust him and had him imprisoned. He wrote his hymn in 820 while a prisoner.

The company of angels
Are praising you on high;
Creation and all mortals
In chorus make reply.

A legend is told about the hymn. On Palm Sunday the King Louis, passed in procession before the cloister where Theodulph was imprisoned. The bishop raised his voice and sang his hymn; The king was delighted and released the singer restoring him to his see.

Another song that we sang while I was a youth was the anthem, Hosanna, Blessed is he who comes written by Moravian Bishop Christian Gregor in 1765. Arranged for two choirs–children and adult. It was a great joy for us kids to sing “Hosanna” at the top of our lungs. I don’t think it was quite “sweet hosanna” on the “lips of children” that old Theodulph imagined.

And then there was the beautiful anthem The Palms by Jean-Baptiste Faure.

O'er all the way, green palms and blossoms gay
Are strewn this day in festal preparation,
Where Jesus comes to wipe our tears away,
E'en now the throng to welcome Him prepare,
Join all and sing, His name declare,
Let ev'ry voice resound with acclamation.
Hosanna! Praised be the Lord!
Bless Him who cometh to bring us salvation!

I supposed this one really sounds hokey today, a relic of the Romantic age, but I miss it. I wonder what the chances are that just once more in my life I’ll attend a Palm Sunday Service and hear all three of my favorites again? Fortunately, I can pick up the musical scores and hear them again in my mind.

Hosanna! Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!

May the Lord who came to us bless you on your journey and bless you on your arrival.

Wayne

12875

ALL THE CHURCH IS A STAGE

2010-03-19T14:59:00.000-04:00

More than 25 years ago I attended a conference “Designing the Worship Environment” sponsored by the University of Florida College of Architecture and the Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture. It was a tremendous event. The best features were presentations by the late Nils Schweitzer, probably the number one church architect in Florida, and an intriguing lecture on historic synagogue design by Benjamin Hirsch. One presentation was slightly disturbing to me: “Worship–Evangelical Distinctiveness.” I wasn’t aware of what bothered me until the panel discussion that followed, but looking back even these many years later, I can see what troubled me.

One topic covered in the presentation dealt with elements of Evangelical worship. First off was “The Centrality of the Spoken Word.” Had it said the Centrality of the Word, I as a Lutheran would have agreed immediately. In Lutheran understanding Word means first of all Jesus Christ. Secondly, it means the Scripture. Thirdly, it means the proclaimed Word. Because of the first meaning we Lutherans would included the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion as expressions of the Word. They are sometimes called visible Words. Both Sacraments were instituted by Christ, commanded by him, and have a promise attached to them. If only the spoken Word is central to worship, my feeling is that the worship is impoverished.

Furthermore, while it is not impossible to have public worship without music, Lutherans would feel that such worship was quite strange, missing something almost essential. There is the famous quote from Martin Luther: “Next to the word of God, only music deserves being extolled as the mistress and governess of the feelings of the human heart.” And often the lyrics to what is sung during worship is taken straight from the Bible so that the Word of Scripture is sung as well as spoken.

This different view of what is central or important to worship dictates different expectations for design of the worship space. The triple foci of pulpit, altar, and font have to be taken into account. Provision has to be made for music, especially singing which leads to the architectural nightmare of designing a space that is dry enough acoustically for speech and lively enough for music. (Haven’t you noticed how much better your voice sounds singing in shower that elsewhere in the house? That’s the advantage of a live acoustic.)

During the panel discussion following the presentation, someone made a remark suggesting that the church building itself in some way communicates what worship was about. The presenter objected to this idea. I understand why. He was very much fixed on a rational understanding of the Word, so the possibility that the Word would be communicated non-verbally was foreign to him.

This brings me to something that has come up in several blogs lately, church as theater. This refers to both a concept of what the people of God at worship are about and what kind of building communicates what they are about. Let us say for a moment that worship is theater. Who is the audience? This is a critical question. If the audience is the congregation, then worship is primarily an activity in which some people perform while others watch the performance. But what if in worship God were the audience? Wouldn’t then the whole congregation (not just a select few) be the performers? Of course, that cannot be literally true because God does not need to be entertained. Maybe it would be better said that worship is an act (still a theatrical term) performed in the presence of God. If this is true about worship, then none of the people at worship are mere spectators. They are all performers, and the whole church building is the stage. That reminds me a bit of Jaques’ speech in As You Like It

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.

This is why I am sold on liturgical worship; the very word “liturgy” means “work of the people.” Worship is not something that is done on stage by a few, but is done by all who have gathered. When I was a choir director, I insisted that the primary task of the choir was not to perform anthems, but to support congregational song. The instrumentalists do not lead the singing, but support it. The pastor does not lead worship, but merely presides at it. I cringe when a worship leader invites me to join him or her in singing as if they were doing the singing and we are welcome to come along for the ride. The attitude that worship is being done “up front” arises in traditional and contemporary worship, in free worship and even in liturgical worship, although in that case I would insist it has ceased to be liturgical–the people’s work–at all.

What does this concept say about the worship space? For me it means that the worship space should communicate that worship is indeed the action of all people. One of the best examples I have seen of that is the Benedictine Mission House in Schuyler, Nebraska, designed by Astle, Ericson and Associates.

The congregation sits in a semi-circle around the altar and pulpit so they can see each other. The cross over the altar forms a focal point so that even when no one is in the building, one gets a sense of what this space is for. The whole design suggests community at worship. Of course, this is only a small chapel, but the basic plan can be used in a larger setting.

Here is St. Nicholas Church, Venlo, Netherlands, designed by G. J. Van der Grinten.

Straight off, I admit it is an ugly interior. It looks like a warehouse, but it is the seating that interests me. Here is the floor plan.

This building seats 800 people with no one more than 60 feet from the center. Maybe the greatest short-coming is the dreadful partial partition wall behind the altar. It reminds me of a badly done theater flat that makes you wonder what’s going on back there. Nevertheless, it isn't bad at including everyone as part of the worship

Why am I so concerned about how people worship and what the space is like? I’ll give you the Latin explanation. lex orandi, lex credendi, the rule of prayer is the rule of belief. How we worship shapes what we believe. If worship is done by a few people with everyone else as a spectator, then Christianity itself may become a spectator religion. It implies that a few people are supposed to be the “real” Christians while everyone else watches.

Well, this has gone on far longer than I originally intended. It’s something to think about next time you are at worship. Am I worshiping God or only watching others worship God?

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

12852

STORMY WEATHER . . . NOT AGAIN!

2010-03-12T10:18:00.001-05:00

I have often heard stories about General Patton. I knew someone who served in his tank corps. One famous story is about his request for a prayer from a chaplain. Here’s how Msgr James H. O’Neil tells the story.

“The incident of the now famous Patton Prayer commenced with a telephone call to the Third Army Chaplain on the morning of December 8, 1944, when the Third Army Headquarters were located in the Caserne Molifor in Nancy, France: "This is General Patton; do you have a good prayer for weather? We must do something about those rains if we are to win the war." My reply was that I know where to look for such a prayer, that I would locate, and report within the hour. As I hung up the telephone receiver, about eleven in the morning, I looked out on the steadily falling rain, "immoderate" I would call it -- the same rain that had plagued Patton's Army throughout the Moselle and Saar Campaigns from September until now, December 8. The few prayer books at hand contained no formal prayer on weather that might prove acceptable to the Army Commander. Keeping his immediate objective in mind, I typed an original and an improved copy on a 5" x 3" filing card:

“Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations.”

It’s a good thing I wasn’t the General’s Chaplain or I would have been court-martialed and maybe shot. I have absolutely no success with religious matters and the weather.

I first became aware of the problem almost 20 years ago. A family at my church in Miami asked me to bless their new house. I was delighted to do so. I don’t get to do a lot of house blessings. I blessed the house, and all were quite pleased. Four weeks later hurricane Andrew swept through and demolished the house. Not a good sign.

This week I was reminded of my limited abilities. I was invited to give a devotion at the start of a work day at a Habitat for Humanity build. That’s a wonderful program that I encourage people to look into. This week a team from the University of Pittsburgh were working. I came up with a clever idea of using a scripture from Genesis about Noah and the ark. That should produce a puzzled reaction for most people. Why would you tell the story of Noah? These people weren’t building a boat. Ah, but neither was Noah. You see, an ark is not a boat; it is a box. Indeed, when you read the description from Genesis there is very little that is boat-like about it–no rudder, no tiller, no sails, no oarlocks. Instead the description is more like a house–walls, roof, floors, interior rooms, a door, a window. What Noah builds is a house, albeit a floating house. Now you go into a floating house on faith. There’s not a lot you can do to control it. And so life should be lived in faith. And a house should be built in faith. I thought it was a clever approach.

I concluded with a prayer blessing everyone. Casting an eye at a darkening sky, I included a petition for favorable weather. I was pulling away in my car as the first drops of rain fell. As the day progress the rains got harder, the winds picked up, and tornado warnings were issued. Such is the curse of my prayers for blessing.

I’m scared to death to pray about the weather. I could probably cause a typhoon in North Dakota. Every once in a while someone will ask if I can do something about the weather. I always reply, “I’m just in sales, not in management. You’ll have to talk to the Boss.”

Whatever your way, may it be filled with many favorable days. And may the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

12812

GOING BANANAS

2010-03-05T16:12:00.001-05:00

Sorry, I have nothing insightful or enter- taining this week (as if I ever do). It’s been one of those mornings that I would have been better off staying in bed. Friday is laundry day (as it has been for 12 years now changing a longer tradition of Monday laundry that went back to at least my grandmother’s day.) For two weeks we have been unable to use the big laundry room because they were redecorating. That meant using the crummy little laundry where the driers don’t work, at least they haven’t in the 12 years I’ve lived here. For two weeks I played dryer roulette, lost, and had to hang my clothes all over the apartment to dry. Those days are over, I thought. New laundry room open today. I must say it looks nice with a new tile floor and fresh paint. The washers and driers, however, are the same old, beat-up equipment that has been there since Noah’s grandmother did laundry.

Washing went all right, but as I was taking things out, I heard a clunk from a pair of trousers. Trousers shouldn’t clunk. I discovered the cause: my cell phone was in the pocket. AUUUGGHHH!!!!! Since this was not the Lloyd Bridges model (extra points if you are old enough to understand that reference), it was deader than a door nail. (Which reminds me of Dicken’s remark in A Christmas Carol where he wonders why door nails and not coffin nails are the deadest piece of iron mongerry.) Well, I knew I’d have to replace it–the phone not the door nail.

I went online to check my phone account to see about a new phone, but I couldn’t connect. I was informed my account was already connected. How could this be, I wondered. A quick phone call to the church which produced a busy signal revealed the problem. Somehow I was still connected to the Internet at the church. But I knew I had signed off before I left the day before. I couldn’t call anyone at the church to tell them to check the computer, which meant I’d have to go down there to do it myself as soon as the clothes were dry.

Back to the laundry room to unload the dry clothes, only they were still wet, warm, but wet. Evidently the heating part of the drier worked, but not the part that tumbles the clothes. So for the third week in a row my apartment looks like Molly the Washerwoman runs a business here. Then it was down to the church where I discovered that the computer had frozen in the process of signing out and turning off. Now, most of the time when I am online the computer loses connection all by itself several times a session, but not this time. I shut the blamed thing off and went back home.

I tried for sometime to figure out how to order a new phone online, but was stymied. If I signed into my account, I couldn’t order a phone, only accessories. If I used the online store, I couldn’t associate the new phone with my account. I gave up and went to the phone kiosk at the mall. A very nice young man found me a phone that would suit my needs and he made it work with my old account and phone number. Not only that, but the phone was on sale. It has more features than my old phone and cost less. I brought it home and have begun trying to work through the instruction manual which is about as long as War and Peace and as hard to decipher as ancient Sumerian. I guess I’ll have to resort to my usual method of having a nine-year-old show me how to work the thing.

What disturbs me most about all this is that I was disturbed by all this. In the big scheme of things drowned cell phone, wet laundry, and stubborn computers are not very important. In a world filled with natural disasters, wars, and economic collapse, I let myself become discombobulated over nothing. Where is my sense of perspective? How can I profess myself to be a Christian, yet allow such tiny blips to trouble me? What will I do when something serious happens?

I think I need to study the Psalms some more, listen to them, pray them As the Psalmist says: Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope in God” (Psalm 42:5).

I must go now; it is difficult for me to type with this bandage in the way. I decided to do some more work on my model building to relax and stuck an X-ACTO knife in my thumb.

My the Lord God bless you on your journey over little hills and high mountains, down gentle valleys and deep chasms–helping you to understand the difference–and may he greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

12775

LET US SING POWERPOINT SLIDE 2567

2010-02-27T00:01:00.000-05:00

Well, I stuck my foot in it this time. Whether that means my mouth or something else is for you to decide. At a recent clergy meeting, one of the pastors remarked that they had stopped using bulletins and were using a screen instead. This means projecting words on large screen in a church. I just had to say that was too bad because now I wouldn’t be able to go to that church when I retire. I hate those screens in worship. It turns out most of the clergy present either used screens or wished they could or are planning to do so. This desire is in spite of the fact that many of the church’s members dislike the screens as much as I do. I guess this is one more sign that I am a dinosaur in the church. I suppose many are just waiting until I and my species become extinct so they can bring things up-to-date in the church.

Some of my objection to these screens replacing bulletins and hymnals and Bibles is practical. The durned screens are hard for us old fogies to read. I was at a service once where the “praise team” (that’s the neologism for combination worship leaders-musicians) blocked the screen on my side of the auditorium. I couldn’t read anything that was up there. When several of us mentioned this afterwards we were told out inability to read didn’t matter. I got the sense that our participation was confined to listening rapturously to the praise team’s performance and putting enough cash into the offering plate to pay for the show.

The practical problem is compounded for musicians like me. When we sing something, we like to have the music with the words. We’ve spent a lot of time learning to read music, after all. The screens never have musical notes with the words. And nine times out of ten what we are singing is unknown to us. Once again it seems to me that we are being discouraged from participating.

And then there is the problem of making the technology work right. Computers crash bringing everything to a halt. Or somebody pushes the button at the wrong time and you’ve got the wrong words.

But I have a more deep seated objection to the screens. They are out of place in church, at least churches with a liturgical tradition. Liturgy means the people’s work. It assumes that worship is something that worshipers do as active participants and not passive spectators. As best as I can determine, the use of projection screens for song lyrics first arose in mega-churches which are designed to look and function like theatres. As a matter of fact, it was in theaters as far back as magic lantern shows that words were projected for sing-a-longs. Even I seem to recall a projected version of “Let me call you Sweetheart” being sung in some auditorium with the words projected on a screen. Now as I learned from the book When Church Became Theatre there has been a 200 year tradition in American Protestantism of designing churches like theaters culminating in Willow Creek Church. There is absolutely nothing in that church to make it look like a place of Christian worship. It is devoid of Christian symbols or altar or anything that would suggest a traditional church. Projection screens are a natural for these settings which seemed to be aimed at entertaining or perhaps teaching, but certainly not worship in a context where the Word and Sacrament are central and worship really is the people’s work and not the paid staff’s work.

The picture at the head of this blog shows what happens when a screen is thumped into a liturgical church. The stained glass window is covered over and the altar and cross are overwhelmed. Frankly, it is an eyesore rather than an aid to worship. The screen becomes the focal point.

It’s worth paying attention to the observations of Marshall McLuhan in his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. A medium affects society not by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself. In other words, what is communicated is the video screen itself, not what’s on the screen. What is the effect of putting our song lyrics on the ephemeral medium of a projection screen? As soon as the image changes to a new lyric, the previous one has vanished, disappeared into cyber space. And what about putting Bible texts up there. At least with a book in your hands or even a piece of paper you can go back over something. But with the screen, it is gone in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for . . ." Oops! File deleted.

How different is that from a book that will last 20 years or more? Isn’t it strange that we can read manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls written 2,000 years ago, but the information from the 1960 census is largely unavailable because no modern computer can read the old data formats. I can sing the songs I learned in Sunday School and choir 50 years ago. They are lodged in my memory. I can pick up a hymnal prepared in 1960 and sing anything written there. Anybody out there got a collection of songs on eight-track? How about a good movie on Betamax?

A good screen and projector would be a wonderful adjunct in teaching, but as a worship aid it may prove counter productive. I think churches are being sold a technological bill of goods. I’m not buying.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

12749

MR. ELIOT

2010-02-18T20:22:00.000-05:00

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

So begins T. S. Eliot’s poem Ash Wednesday. I have read it many times. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand most of Eliot, but I keep reading it from time to time. I occasionally purchase books to explain Eliot to me. (I just bought two more of them on sale.) I can’t say I understand it any more. A good friend in seminary, Dennis, tried to explain it to me. I’m just too dense to get it. Or maybe the poetry is too dense. I try reading it any way.

My first experience of Elliot was in high school English class where we read The Hollow Men. (Goodness, that was so long ago. Eliot was still alive the first time I read his poem.)

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpieces filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar.

I love that image “rats’ feet over broken glass.” Can you hear the sound?

And then towards the end the absurd verse:

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

And the ending:

For Thine is
For life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Maybe I wouldn’t have continued reading Eliot if I hadn’t run across the beautiful poem Journey of the Magi.

This is its magnificent ending. The Magi who has told the story of going to see the infant Jesus says:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death
But had thought they were quite different; this birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Several times I have read that poem to people, but they respond with a grunt “Huh?”

Maybe it is that conversion that took place in Eliot from atheist (or maybe agnostic) to and Anglican Christian that intrigues me. Scholars can see the conversion in his poetry. Maybe what fascinates me is that the same man who wrote such deep poems also wrote the humorous Old ‘Possum’s Book of Practical Cats which became the basis for the musical Cats. Maybe it is that someone who hobnobbed with great thinkers like Bertrand Russell was also a friend of Groucho Marx. Maybe I keep reading what I don’t understand because I believe in the old adage that a man’s reach should surpass his grasp.

Maybe I just have Eliot on the brain lately because Eugene Peterson (see the blog on him) read this quote form Eliot’s poem Little Gidding:

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from . . .

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival which just might turn out to be where you started from.

Wayne

12718

NEW TESTAMENT

2010-02-12T09:00:00.001-05:00

A very intelligent friend of mine noting that so many books in the New Testament are credited to Paul asked: “Were there other things written besides what we have?” My answer: yes, and a little bit no. Like most Biblical questions, it’s complicated and it depends. So here is a more detailed reply.

For the first generation of Christians, Scripture mean roughly what we call the Old Testament. There’s complications to that, but one problem at a time. There probably wasn’t anything written by Christians in the first 20 years after death and resurrection of Jesus (around AD 30), at least nothing that has survived. During this time stories about Jesus and his sayings were probably passed on by word of mouth. There is a strong likelihood that a collection of sayings of Jesus was written down around the year 50. We don’t have a copy of that collection, but a lot of the material was probably used in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

About 50 Paul wrote the first letter to the Thessalonians. This is the earliest piece of writing we have by a Christian. Paul wrote more letters between the years 50 to 64 of which we have ten (or maybe only seven or maybe thirteen, there is a debate) in what becomes the New Testament. Paul didn’t think he was writing Scripture. He was writing letters, most of them to people in churches he had started. Certainly Paul was a man of profound faith and we could say that he was inspired in writing these letters. His recipients must have thought so because they kept his letters and even circulated copies of them. It’s possible that somewhere about the time Paul was writing, the books of James and 1 Peter were written and maybe Jude. These are trickier to date since they aren’t addressed to anyone in particular and might not be letters at all.

Sometime between about 66 and 70 Mark writes his Gospel. I am convinced this is the first Gospel ever written. Matthew is probably written around 75-85 and Luke about 80-85 with the book of Acts shortly after. Matthew and Luke knew about Mark’s Gospel since they copied parts of it, but they don’t seem to have known each other’s books. John’s Gospel is from about 90-100 with the letters 1, 2, 3 John a bit later.

What else? Hebrews, anytime between 65 and 80. Revelation around 94-96. 2 Peter–any date is controversial, but I go with those who think it could be as late as 110.

Now it gets complicated. Ten of Paul’s letters (not counting 1, 2 Timothy and Titus) were probably put together as a collection before the end of the first century. That suggests they received special regard from people. They were mentioned by other Christian writers. Maybe they were being regarded as like the (Old Testament) Scriptures. Something similar began to happen maybe in the middle of the second century with the Gospels. Christians writings were being treated as having a degree of authority for Christians. But which ones? What could you read at church like Scriptures? On this there was no agreement.

Late in the second century many Christians regarded the four Gospels, Acts, the letters of Paul, 1 Peter and 1 John as being authoritative books. There was disagreement over whether Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2,3 John, and Revelation were authoritative. Furthermore, some regarded additional books as being authoritative. Commonly mentioned were 1 Clement (written about 96), the Didache (about 100), The Shepherd of Hermas (150), The Epistle of Barnabas (130-140), The Apocalypse of Peter (130-150), and the Acts of Paul (180-190) . Although none of these books are in the present New Testament, you can still get copies of most them. Personally, I find the Didache the most interesting.

Then there were dozens of writings that people produced that a few people liked, but were generally rejected by most Christians such as, The Gospel of the Egyptians, The Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel of Thomas, and on and on. Some of these we have, some only exists as quotes in other writers. A lot of it sounds absolutely nutty.

And just for good measure, there were some writings from near the time of the New Testament writings that were never considered scripture, but were widely read as good, edifying material. These include the Letters of Ignatius, the Epistle of Polycarp, and the Martyrdom of Polycarp. They are very helpful in understanding early second-century Christianity.

In 367 Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of the books that matches what is in the present New Testament, nothing omitted, nothing added. That didn’t mean, however, that everyone, everywhere agreed. So how did the final decision get made? It didn’t. Over time there came to be widespread acceptance of what constituted the New Testament. We have to believe that the same Spirit that inspired the writing of these books also inspired the selection process.

Well, that’s all for now. Don’t forget February 17 is Ash Wednesday.

The Lord bless you on your Lenten journey and greet you on your Easter arrival,

Wayne

The picture is of Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 654 which contains a portion of the Gospel of Thomas. Reconstructed, it begins: 'These are the secret sayings which Jesus the Living spoke and Didymus Judas Thomas wrote.” The Gospel of Thomas was a collection of sayings of Jesus, many of which are nothing like the real words of Jesus. The collection reflects a twisting of Christianity into the religion of Gnosticism.

12689

Eugene Peterson

2010-02-05T14:41:00.000-05:00

Just back from a three day conference. I’m exhausted since the middle day ran from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., but it was a great time. The presenter was Eugene Peterson–pastor, professor, author–of whom I have written before. He is without doubt one of the most important teachers of Christian Spirituality in modern America. Almost everything he says gives you enough to think about for a month or two. I won’t go into any depth because for those of you who attend Our Saviour Church, I will be speaking on Peterson the first Wednesday in Lent, February 24. But here are a few golden nuggets from his talks.

“Birth receives more attention in our society than growing up. For parents growing up in marked by work and anxiety. Birth is easy. Growth is endlessly complex. . . . American churches know everything about being born again and nothing about growing in Christ.”

Comment. This is something I have felt for a long time. When I was confirmed, the pastor laid his hand on my head and said: “The Father in Heaven, for Jesus' sake, renew and increase in thee the gift of the Holy Ghost, to they strengthening in faith, to thy growth in grace, to thy patience in suffering, and to the blessed hope of everlasting life. Amen” Growth in grace is an important idea, but there isn’t a lot of growing that goes on in church. I don’t have time to help people grow in grace. I’m too busy keeping squirrels out of the church building. Maybe I should try confirming them. Most of the time after you confirm a teenager, you never see them again. Maybe if I confirmed all the squirrels they’d disappear, too.

“We pay attention to the good and the true, but not the beautiful.”

Comment: this is a continuation of the growth theme. Peterson thinks the church dwells on dogma (truth) and morality (the good), but ignores the beauty of holiness. This is the hardest concept to grasp for any church. It’s fairly easy to talk about what people ought to believe. We have creeds for that. Although it is controversial nowadays, we can tell people how to behave. It’s hard to get across to anyone (myself included) that there s more to the Christian life than just believing the right things and acting the right way. There is a undefinable, mystical quality of being “in Christ.” But what exactly is that like? You can’t say exactly. According to some common sense philosophers, if you can’t say exactly what you mean, you don’t mean anything at all. I prefer to say there are something you just can’t talk about precisely, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t important.

Not a quote this time but an invitation. Go through the Gospel stories of the Resurrection of Jesus and note the reactions: fear, joy, wonder, amazement, hearts burning. That’s what an encounter with the risen Christ is like. Now ask yourself if church is like that.

“The most important thing to do on a Sunday Morning is to give people one hour for doing nothing.”

Comment: this reminds be of Marva Dawn’s book on worship A Royal “Waste” of Time. (Marva Dawn has collaborated with Peterson on the book The Unnecessary Pastor. I will also be talking about Marva Dawn this Lent. Worship is an odd event in our goal-oriented society. What does it produce? What is the outcome? Nothing. Worship is worship of God and that is its purpose. Doing it is an end in itself. People have sometimes said to me: “I don’t get anything out of worship.” My reply is, “You’re not supposed to. This leads to another remark by Peterson.

“People are not called to church to be entertained, but to pay attention.”

Comment: Boy, this really seems to take a slap at the so-called “entertainment evangelism” where Sunday worship is supposed to be entertainmening. This is one of the dividing issues within Christianity today. Peterson isn’t saying that worship should be boring or poorly done, but that entertaining the gathering is not the purpose. One of by professors, Frank Senn, once remarked that the problem with entertainment evangelism was that it burdened worship with evangelism because people wouldn’t actually evangelize others. All my life I have been told we should invite people to church, meaning invite them to worship. I have told people to do that. But worship doesn’t make any sense to the non-believer. What we ought to be doing is inviting people to Christ. When they encounter him, worship makes sense.

Peterson is a great advocate of contemplation which requires silence. Does silence have a place in worship? He certainly thinks so. A member of the audience raised a question about this. The questioner remarked that he had been trained in theater where they were taught that there must never be any silence. He followed that practice in his contemporary worship services. Peterson commented:

“I love the theater, but the theater is not worship.”

Comment: I have often looked at worship as a performance–theater, dance, music, art. There is a lot of thought that goes into planning worship as if it were a performance. But in the end Peterson is right. It is not a performance. It is not being done for the sake of the audience, but for God. That means that unlike the theater, sometimes everybody has to shut up so that God can be heard. It was one of the things that drove me crazy during the conference worship. There was never any silence, none whatsoever. Every second was filled with someone making music or talking. It seemed to go on forever.

Finally, Peterson recommended one book as a must for all Pastors: Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos. I agree completely. I first read the book in seminary at the recommendation of Pr. Richard Neuhaus. I have read it several times since, once a few years back along with Peterson’s own book, Working the Angles. Diary is a great corrective for those who expect the pastorate to be a joy-filled, rewarding experience.

Well, that’s all–from Eugene Peterson’s first presentation. There were five more like it.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

12653

THREE THOUGHTS ON TEACHING

2010-01-29T15:54:00.000-05:00

First thought: The best way to learn anything is to teach it. This one I have discovered by long experience. Whenever I have taught anything, whether at church or at a university or a seminary, I have learned more about the subject. It’s one thing to know something, but another thing entirely to know it well enough to teach it to other people. There is another side to this, of course. No mater how well you know something, if you want to be able to teach it you have to know how to teach it. I have run into a good many experts who are masters of a subject, but haven’t a clue how to teach it. I first discovered this when some one tried to teach me how to play the card game euchre. They began, “now you have your right and left bower. . . “ and I was lost. You have to start by explaining the object of the game. I have seen brilliant physicists who are so deadly boring they can’t teach anything. I have experienced talented musicians who can’t help anyone perform. So there is a value in leaning how to teach. But it is absolutely necessary that you have mastery of a subject so that you have something worth teaching. That’s where the learning comes in. Thinking through how to teach something helps you to learn it better.

Second thought: A teacher always has to be open to questions. I was in third grade, I think, when I got a teacher who would always say, “No questions. I’ve explained everything.” Maybe she’s explained everything, but I didn’t always understand everything. Fortunately, a week later I was transferred to another teacher who actually invited questions. I flourished.

Some question is quite simple–missing factual information or procedural instructions. But sometime asking questions explores a subject in a different way. I could teach a Bible story, Jesus casting out a unclean spirit (Mark 1:22-24) and cover every thing. What would be better would be to leave a few things unsaid until a student asks a question like, “Why does Jesus tell the spirit to “be quiet’? That question shows great insight into the story because it observes a small detail that might otherwise be missed and in being missed a major theme of the Gospel would be lost. Asking questions helps a student to unlock secrets.

Third thought. The teacher should always be open to learning from the student. Many of the bad teachers I have experienced were not open to contributions from their students. I can think of two examples from my elementary school years. One was a teacher who insisted that the people in England ate so many fish because they were Catholic. That was just dumb. I knew that the people in England by the end of the 16th century were Anglican, not Roman Catholic. And besides, it was obvious to anyone with eyes to read a map that England was on an island, so there was plenty of places to catch fish. The second example was an eighth grade teacher who insisted that Martin Luther started the Reformation because he wanted worship services in German instead of Latin. Even at 13 I knew that wasn’t true. The issues that lead to the reformation had to do with theology and abuses in the church. Language of worship was a concern well after the Reformation had started and besides, Luther continued to conduct Latin services as well German. (From what I can tell, the use of Latin didn’t die out completely in the Lutheran Church until sometime in the middle of the eighteenth century.) The teacher didn’t want to hear about that, so she remained in ignorance and so did her students.

This point brings me to my Sunday morning adult discussion group. We were talking about everything but the announced subject. In the process I heard some interesting ideas that I immediately wrote down because I thought they were worth sharing. Here they are:

1. It is possible to dig yourself into a hole so deep that you can’t get out. You need help. Don’t be afraid to ask for it.

2. If you find you have dug yourself into a hole, the first rule is “stop digging.”

3. If you’re tightfisted in giving to others, remember that a closed fist can’t receive anything either.

See, you learn from your students.

Whether you’ve learned anything or not, may the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

12624

MLK Special Edition

2010-01-18T10:38:00.001-05:00

On this day when we remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., renewer of society and martyr, I would like to share this excerpt from a speech of his that appeared today in the Ocala Star Banner, Its message is a fresh and relevant as it was half a century ago. The drawing of Dr. King is by an elementary school student published in the Poughkeepsie Journal.

In recognition of the Rev. Martin Luther King Day, we offer the following, an excerpt from a sermon called "Rediscovering Lost Values" that King delivered in February 1954 in Detroit:

I want you to think with me this morning from the subject: rediscovering lost values. Rediscovering lost values. There is something wrong with our world, something fundamentally and basically wrong. I don't think we have to look too far to see that. I'm sure that most of you would agree with me in making that assertion. And when we stop to analyze the cause of our world's ills, many things come to mind.

We begin to wonder if it is due to the fact that we don't know enough. But it can't be that. Because in terms of accumulated knowledge, we know more today than men have known in any period of human history. We have the facts at our disposal. We know more about mathematics, about science, about social science and philosophy, than we've ever known in any period of the world's history. So it can't be because we don't know enough.

And then we wonder if it is due to the fact that our scientific genius lags behind. .... Well then, it can't be that. For our scientific progress over the past years has been amazing. Man through his scientific genius has been able to warp distance and place time in chains, so that today it's possible to eat breakfast in New York City and supper in London, England. ... It can't be because man is stagnant in his scientific progress. Man's scientific genius has been amazing.I think we have to look much deeper than that if we are to find the real cause of man's problems and the real cause of the world's ills today. If we are to really find it, I think we will have to look in the hearts and souls of men.

The trouble isn't so much that we don't know enough, but it's as if we aren't good enough. The trouble isn't so much that our scientific genius lags behind, but our moral genius lags behind. The great problem facing modern man is that, the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live. So we find ourselves caught in a messed-up world. The problem is with man himself and man's soul.

We haven't learned how to be just and honest and kind and true and loving. And that is the basis of our problem. The real problem is that, through our scientific genius, we've made of the world a neighborhood, but, through our moral and spiritual genius, we've failed to make of it a brotherhood. And the great danger facing us today is not so much the atomic bomb ... that you can put in an aeroplane and drop on the heads of hundreds and thousands of people ... But the real danger confronting civilization today is that atomic bomb which lies in the hearts and souls of men, capable of exploding into the vilest of hate and into the most damaging selfishness. That's the atomic bomb that we've got to fear today; the problem is with the men. Within the heart and the souls of men. That is the real basis of our problem.

AMEN!

May the Lord bless you on your journey, and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

15560

RANT!

2010-01-15T09:00:00.002-05:00

Time for a rant. This won’t be of interest to most people, but it’s bugging me.

First, I want to make it clear that I am doing well financially, better than 99.99% of the world’s population. I work for a church, and am satisfied with my salary and benefits. I hope to retire in a few years, although I have had to put off the anticipated date twice. All the clergy in our denomination participate in 403(b) pension programs which means our pension is tied to investments in the stock and bond markets. Of course that means all of us took a big hit in 2008. That’s life. You take the downs with the ups.

My concern is with those who are already retired, clergy, other church employees, and their spouses. Many of the retired clergy annuitized their pension accumulation when they retired. Most assumed (wrongly) that they had a guaranteed income throughout their retirement. Indeed, the information about the annuity was that there was an extremely low possibility of short term loss. 2008 proved to be that “extremely low” possibility. The retirees have been informed that their pension will be reduced 9% each year for the next three years. That’s their reward for faithful service. The head office sent out a sympathetic letter to retirees.

Recently a letter went out to retirees of our publishing house. They are under a different pension plan. They have been informed that they will receive no pension at all after March. Sorry, but there isn’t enough money to pay the pension. The head office made it clear it has no legal obligations for the publishing house pensions.

My discomfort is two-fold. First, I am aware that other denominations have not had this disaster befall their pensions. How did we get such bad financial advice? Second, I have yet to hear one word from the head office about what they are going to do to help the people who will wind up in a terrible financial bind as a result of these pension disasters. Now my congregation will be taking a special offering to help provide minimum pensions for some of the church employee retirees, but I am unaware of any concerted effort to do anything. The silence is deafening.

My denomination is very good at issuing all sorts of proclamations about issues of justice, but when it comes to dealing fairly with its own people, that seems to be another story. I thought we were supposed to lead by example. I must have gotten that wrong. “Do as I say, not as I do,” seems to be the message.

And we wonder why people don’t trust institutionalized religion.

Here endeth the rant for the day.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

15540

Stille Nacht, Heilege Nacht

2010-01-09T18:44:00.000-05:00

At Christmas, my sisters and I

learned to sing carols in German:

Grandpa would give us a quarter

apiece for performing, though

only Carol could carry a tune.

After the start of the War

Father forbade us to practice,

and when Grandpa asked for his songs

we told him they weren't allowed.

You are German, he shouted. Sing!

Singt, mein kinder, für mich!

We stood mute, unhappy, ashamed,

between father and son locking eyes

while the U-boats were nosing the currents

and propellers coughed in the skies

like angels clearing their throats.

"Stille Nacht, Heilege Nacht" by Peter Meinke, from Liquid Paper: New and Selected Poems. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992.

This poem appeared on Garison Keilor’s “The Writer’s Almanac” a brief daily radio program that is transcribed and emailed to me. There is a truly painful emotion displayed here between the immigrant German Grandpa and the first generation born in this country son. How that generation tried to erase its roots, especially when it was tied to the enemy as in the World Wars. I suspect it is no different with newer waves of immigrants.

There is a saying, however, that touches on the other relationship in the poem. The second generation tries to remember what the first generation tried to forget. Yeah, I get that.

I am frequently aware of my German roots. I am curious about where we come from. I am curious about the family I never knew. There are only a few people still alive who knew my Father’s grandparents. There are a good deal more who knew my mother’s grandparents–including me. I knew my great-grandma Angner even though she couldn’t speak English, and I as a toddler could do no more than count in German.

I sometimes wonder how much a people’s ancestral culture shapes them. I remember an experiment we did in college. We took tests to discover whether we were left brained (the rational part of the brain if a person is right handed) or right brained (the emotional-imaginative part of the brain.) Curiously, all three of the most left-brained people were of German descent.

Am I the way I am at least partly because of my ancestry? We weren’t overtly German in the sense of having German flags around the house or portraits of Bismark although I did have portraits of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. That was because they were great composers who happened to be German. (Or were they great composers because they were German?) And yet, there was an awareness that we were of German background. There were certain traits among us–hard work, thrift, suspicion of outsiders–that might have had cultural roots. But maybe not.

Enough musing about imponderables.

Although it’s a little late, Happy New Year to everyone.

May the Lord bless you on your journey through this new year and beyond, and may he welcome you at your final arriving.

12519

Christmas

2009-12-25T00:01:00.003-05:00

The Nativity of Our Lord
Christmas Day

Shepherds, Nativity at Our Saviour, Ocala

Beloved in Christ, in this Christmastide, let it be our care and delight to hear again the message of the Angels, and in heart and mind go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which has come to pass, and the Babe lying in the manger.

From "A Bidding Prayer" Festival of Lessons and Carols

Ia Orana Maria - Paul Gauguin

This little Babe, so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan's fold;
All heel doth at his presence quake,
Though he himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak, unarméd wise
The gates of hell he will surprise.

With tears he fights and wins the field
His named breast stands for a shield;
His battering shot are babish cries,
His arrows looks of weeping eyes,
His martial ensigns cold and need,
And feeble flesh his warrior's steed.

My soul, with Christ join thou in fight;
Stick to the tents that he hath pight;
Within his crib is surest ward,
This little Babe will be thy guard;
If though wilt foil thy foe with joy,
Then flit not from this Heavenly Boy.

From "New Heaven, New War" by Robert Southwell

The Holy Family, Nativity at Our Saviour

Of the three Wise Men
Who came to thy King
One was a brown man,
So they sing.

Of the three Wise Men
Who followed the Star,
One was a brown king
From afar.

They brought fine gifts
Of spices and gold
In jeweled boxes
Of beauty untold.

Unto his humble
Manger they came,
And bowed their heads
In Jesus' name,

Three Wise Men
One dark like me –
Part of his
Nativity.

"Carol of the Brown King" by Langston Hughes

The Magi, Nativity at Our Saviour, Ocala

May Christ, who by his incarnation gather into one things earthly and things heavenly, fill you with joy and peace.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

THE LAST OF ADVENT

2009-12-17T20:12:00.000-05:00

I’m posting a day early because Thursday, December 17 marks first of the last seven days of Advent. Since around the sixth century the Christian Church in the west has recognized these last days by using what are called the Great O Antiphons with the Magnificat at Vespers. Vespers is the evening prayer service. The Magnificat is the song Mary sang in Luke 1:46-55: “My soul doth magnify the Lord.” An antiphon is a short verse sung before and after a psalm or a canticle like the Magnificat. The seven for the ending of Advent are called the “O Antiphons” because each one starts with the word “O”.

Here are the seven antiphons in English translation with the Latin title which is the first two words of the antiphon.

17 December - O Sapientia - O Wisdom

O wisdom, coming forth from the Most High, filling all creation and reigning to the ends of the earth; come and teach us the way of truth.

18 December - O Adonai - O Lord of Lords

O Lord of Lords, and ruler of the House of Israel, you appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush, and gave him the law on Sinai: come with your outstretched arm and ransom us.

19 December - O Radix Jesse - O Root of Jesse

O root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the nations; kings will keep silence before you for whom the nations long; come and save us and delay no longer.

20 December - O Clavis David - O Key of David

O key of David and scepter of the House of Israel; you open and none can shut; you shut and none can open: come and free the captives from prison, and break down the walls of death.

21 December - O Oriens - O Morning Star

O morning star, splendour of the light eternal and bright sun of righteousness: come and bring light to those who dwell in darkness and walk in the shadow of death.

22 December - O Rex Gentium - O King of Nations

O king of the nations, you alone can fulfil their desires: cornerstone, binding all together: come and save the creature you fashioned from the dust of the earth.

23 December - O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, hope of the nations and their saviour: come and save us, O Lord our God.

Each antiphon address God by a different title and asks him to come–that’s what Advent means.

Recently I discovered something odd about the antiphons. If you arrange the Latin titles in reverse order, the first letters after the O forms a Latin acrostic

O Emmanuel

O Rex gentium

O Oriens

O Clavis

O Rex gentium

O Adonai

O Sapientia

ERO CRAS

Which means “I will be tomorrow” and indeed the day after the last antiphon is Christmas Eve.

Last comment. Some sharp people will have found the O Antiphons familiar even though they haven’t used them. In the middle ages they were arranged into a hymn with a refrain. We know it in English as O come, O come, Emmanuel.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,

And ransom captive Israel,

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

It’s time to pray now so I have to go. Maybe I’ll try singing the antiphon in Latin. Then again, it’s been a while since I had to read Gregorian chant notation.

Doesn’t matter. God understands every language and even no language.

May the Lord bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

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ADVENT MAN: JOHN THE BAPTIST

2009-12-11T20:30:00.003-05:00

John the Baptist has long been one of the figures associated with Advent since he was the one who pointed the way to Christ. This coming Sunday, the Third Sunday in Advent the story pf John baptizing in the Jordan will be read from Luke. While the same account appears in Mark and Matthew, it has a different context in Luke, for this Gospel tells us John’s background–how the angel Gabriel told Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth that they would have a son. No sooner is that story finished than another one begins. Once again Gabriel delivers the news of a coming birth, but this time the news comes to Mary the betrothed wife of Joseph. The child is Jesus. At the end of the story we learn that Elizabeth and Mary are relatives, so John and Jesus are also relatives.

The revelation changes the context for the Baptism of Jesus by John. As relatives John and Jesus must have known each other. And there’s the frustration of the Gospel account. We know absolutely nothing about the relationship between John and Jesus. Some scholars have wondered if Jesus were a disciple of John’s at some point since at least one of Jesus’ disciples, Andrew, had also been John’s disciple. That’s all speculation.

Human imagination being what it is, people have filled in the blanks in the relationship between Jesus and John with their own ideas. One of my favorite flights of fancy is Sir John Everett Millais’s painting “Christ in the House of His Parents (1850). Millais was one the nineteenth century English painters of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood–a group that rebelled against academic painting of their day. Modern artists often regard the Pre-Raphaelites as terribly quaint and old-fashioned, but they regarded themselves as the cutting edge of art. Here’s the famous painting.

A young Jesus stands at the center about to kiss his mother. Reaching out to him is Joseph and behind him Ann, the mother of Mary. A closer look reveals there is a puncture wound in Jesus’ hand. Some of the blood has fallen on his foot. Immediately, we see the symbolism of the crucifixion.

To the right is another child–John.

We recognize him because of the animal skin he’s wearing. He’s also carrying a basin of water, a symbol of baptism. Did John ever visit at Joseph’s carpenter shop? Who knows.

We do know something about Millais’s painting: it was vilified by the critics. They hated the realistic portrayal of something religious. Perhaps the most severe criticism came from none other than Charles Dickens:

You behold the interior of a carpenter’s shop. In the foreground of that carpenter’s shop is a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-headed boy, in a bed-gown, who appears to have received a poke in the hand, from the stick of another boy with whom he has been playing in an adjacent gutter, and to be holding it up for the contemplation of a kneeling woman, so horrible in her ugliness, that (supposing it were possible for any human creature to exist for a moment with that dislocated throat) she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest ginshop in England. Two almost naked carpenters, master and journeyman, worthy companions of this agreeable female, are working at their trade; a boy, with some small flavor of humanity in him, is entering with a vessel of water; and nobody is paying any attention to a snuffy old woman who seems to have mistaken that shop for the tobacconist’s next door, and to be hopelessly waiting at the counter to be served with half an ounce of her favourite mixture. Wherever it is possible to express ugliness of feature, limb, or attitude, you have it expressed. Such men as the carpenters might be undressed in any hospital where dirty drunkards, in a high state of varicose veins, are received. Their very toes have walked out of Saint Giles’s.
"Old Lamps for New Ones." Household Words 12 (15 Jun. 1850)

It strikes me odd that a man who could write with such gritty realism should be appalled by the realism of a painting. It might be comprehensible if Dickens had been a very traditional-minded Christian who took offense at portraying Jesus in such humble mein, but he wasn’t an orthodox Christian. To be sure he had respect for Jesus. Remember that wonderful scene in A Christmas Carol when Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim return from church on Christmas Day?

"And how did little Tim behave?'' asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content.

"As good as gold,'' said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.''

Yet the description of the Angel’s message to the shepherds in Dickens’s Life of Our Lord very much shows his Unitarian leanings.

There is a child born to-day in the city of Bethlehem near here, who will grow up to be so good that God will love him as his own son; and he will teach men to love one another, and not to quarrel and hurt one another; and his name will be Jesus Christ; and people will put that name in their prayers, because they will know God loves it, and will know that they should love it too.

Long, long ago after watching a movie version of A Christmas Carol, I realized how it skirted the essence of Christmas. To be sure there were themes of good-will, kindness, generosity and other commendable qualities. And Scrooge does put in an appearance at church on Christmas Day, but we are left to wonder what it is they are celebrating.

It is much like that favorite Christmas carol, “It came upon a Midnight Clear.” You sing through the whole song with almost no hint that it has something to do with the birth of Christ. The closest it gets is the first stanza, third line: “Peace on the earth, good will to men, From heaven’s all-gracious king.” Any surprise that the author Edward H. Sears was also a Unitarian, an American contemporary of Dickens?

Well, I started off on John the Baptist, and I’ll end there with the wonderful Advent hymn by Charles Coffin, Jordanis oras praevia translated “On Jordan’s Bank”

        1. On Jordan's bank the Baptist's cry
        Announces that the Lord is nigh;
        Come, then, and hearken, for he brings
        Glad tidings from the King of kings.

        2. Then cleansed by every Christian breast
        And furnished for so great a Guest.
        Yea, let us each our hearts prepare
        For Christ to come and enter there.

        3. For Thou art our Salvation, Lord,
        Our Refuge, and our great Reward.
        Without Thy grace our souls must fade
        And wither like a flower decayed.

        4. Lay on the sick Thy healing hand
        And make the fallen strong to stand;
        Show us the glory of Thy face
        Till beauty springs in every place.

        5. All praise, eternal Son, to Thee
        Who advent sets Thy people free,
        Whom, with the Father, we adore
        And Holy Ghost forevermore.

May the One who is to come bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

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