watersblogged!

The Bears finally win

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:33:29 PST

Where my sermons will be from now on

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:51:07 PST

Since I've put the blog Saint Mary links to and where I keep my sermons on Networked Blogs, and my sermons will now be published to Facebook from there, at least for now I'm going to stop publishing them here.

If anybody wants the URL, it's http://lutheransermons.wordpress.com

The real meaning of the Blessed Virgin's apparitions on the wall of a Chicago underpass, on a California griddle, and in an Arizona pancake

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:33:25 PST

TASHA YAR: Humans often imagine pictures in clouds, Data. Like the ship in that one over there.

DATA: That behavior seems quite irrational. And besides- that particular cloud is clearly a bunny rabbit.

--Star Trek: The Next Generation

The Blessed Virgin- last seen on a griddle in a Mexican restaurant in California after a holdover appearance at the Fullerton Avenue underpass in Chicago- has made yet another appearance: on an pancake in Arizona.

She certainly is well-traveled.

Meanwhile, Galle Crater in Agyre Planitia on Mars wants you to have a happy day. But beware of dead Communists inhabiting your shower curtain.!

I've blogged on Mary's travels before. The inappropriate places where her image is thought to appear are often quite humorous, and a little gentle fun probably should be poked at those who take such "miracles" too seriously. But what is in fact going on here is a phenomenon called pareidolia, from two Greek words translatable roughly as "false" and "image."

Pareidolia are generally dismissed as people's imaginations getting the better of them, or as purely subjective and utterly psychological phenomena. Obviously this is often the case, and I am not suggesting that there is necessarily much, if any, significance to the exceptions. While one person I showed it to thinks that the Virgin of the Underpass actually looks more like Edvard Munch's The Scream than like the Mother of God (and I have to admit that it's easier for me to see the former in it than the latter), the fact is that it takes quite a bit of imagination to see either one in that particular salt stain on the wall of an underpass where salt stains are far more common than either impressionist paintings or miraculous apparitions.

Hey, guys. It's a salt stain- and although it has a vaguely anthropomorphic shape, it really doesn't look like anything else.

However, I would suggest that the Galle Crater really falls into a completely different category. No imagination is required here. In fact, it's hard not to see the joke:

Or consider another actual feature the surface of the Red Planet. Is it even remotely possible not to see something here other than your average, run-of-the-mill graben in this?

The above are not your imagination. That doesn't mean that they are necessarily significant in any way other than being coincidences of form. But they are real. They are physical phenomena, not psychological ones, and the resemblance they bear to, respectively, a smiley face and a valentine heart exist are perfectly objective.

You might even say the same thing about an interesting feature of the asetroid Eros (of all the asteroids in the Solar System!), discovered (the feature, that is) by NASA's NEAR Shoemaker probe three days before Valentine's Day in 2000: The arrow points to the feature in question. And no, before anybody even suggests it, none of these pictures are faked or altered in any way. They are just as they came from NASA.

If you have either a sense of wonder or a sense of humor, such phenomena bring a smile to your face. Coincidences? Fine. They need be nothing more. In fact, the incongruity of the coincidence is funny. If this were merely a subjective, psychological phenomenon, we wouldn't be nearly so amused. But such coincidences are funny because they combine incongruity with the very objectivity of their resemblance to other- and wholly unrelated- things.

There is a nebula which seems rather clearly to resemble a naked man with a somewhat elongated waist, his back turned to us, making an... er, defiant gesture with his very oversized right hand lifted high above his head. It is actually known among astronomers as the "Rude Gesture Nebula." and I always dreaded having my junior high students from the astronomy course I used to teach for the Des Moines Public Schools Talented and Gifted Program find a picture of it while we were working on line. It obviously has no cosmic meaning. But when so many people see the same incongruous thing in such an unlikely place, how can it be dismissed as a purely subjective, psychological phenomenon?

Not everybody smiles, however. There are people of a materialistic bent who- not so much because they are of a materialistic bent as because they lack both a sense of humor and a sense of wonder- cannot bear for the incongruity to be real. Some years ago, the European Space Agency (ESA) undertook a determined assault on the Smiley Face aspect of the Galle creater, determined to prove that, like the better-known "Face on Mars" in Cydonia, it is nothing more than a trick of lighting or perspective.

So great was their determination to prove their point (in a manner just about diametrically opposed to anything that could reasonably be called scientific) that- perhaps without intending or even realizing it- they cooked the evidence. I did a lengthly post on the subject here. To summarize my point, this picture of the Galle crater- from so close and so shallow an angle that its features cannot be made out- proves that the "Smiley Face" isn't real about as much as taking a closeup of a man's nose and then pointing out that no mouth is seen proves that what was photographed was not part of a human face!

Lighten up, ESA. Coincidences can be both amusing and delightful. And whether you are comfortable with the idea or not, sometimes pareidolia are coincidences of objective resemblance rather than mere subjective perceptions or figments of the imagination. In fact, the more incongruously objective the resemblance- the more incongruously anything, really- the more amusing a pareidolion is.

So you can be an absolute materialist- a convinced atheist, even- and still both perceive and enjoy the incongruity of an objective resemblance between a natural phenomenon and something which is obviously unrelated to it. Moreover, the greater the incongruity, the more fun even a mere coincidence ends up being.. Not only is such a thing possible for a materialist and skeptic, but I would guess that when this increasingly lengthly post started, you may well have thought that I myself was treading on the border of disrespect for those who look for revelations of the divine in the created order.

But in fact, I am more than respectful of such people. I am one myself. I am- in case you don't realize it, or have lost sight of the fact in the course of reading this entry- a conservative Christian clergyman. But I don't look for Jesus on the walls of underpasses, or on griddles, or in pancakes. I recognize the fact that some of the pictures in the slide show linked to early in this post really do look like Jesus, or Mary, or Michael Jackson, or Lenin, and I enjoy the incongruity.

I see plenty of support for my religious beliefs in the phenomenal world. In fact, the very presence of life on this planet requires such an amazing number of happy coincidences that I find atheism implausible and even agnosticism eccentric. The presence of a planet the mass of Jupiter at a distance from Earth sufficient to allow it to so efficiently "play goalie" for us when comets come whizzing in from the Oort Cloud, for example, and the presence of a moon exactly the size of ours at the exact distance necessary to stabilize Earth's precession on its axis and keep us from temperature extremes which would make life impossible here, and our presence in the Solar System between Venus and Mars, exactly at the distance from the sun necessary for life, all speak to me of a Mind behind the universe. That it should all be an accident seems to me to be pretty much a matter of the classic monkey banging away on a typewriter a nd just happening to produce Shakespeare's Hamlet by accident. Except it seems to me to be a tad less likely.

I concede that, from a strictly scientific point of view, given the vastness of the universe it is not quite as surprising as one might think at first that some monkey somewhere might produce a fair copy of the play about the melancholy Dane, and why not here? I don't find this counter-argument especially convincing, but as an old debater I know the difference between something seeming unlikely and something being actually disproven.While it proves absolutely nothing, I see the Smiley Face on Mars as suggesting (not proving) the possibility (not the scientific certainty) that there is not only a Creator, but that He has a sense of humor.

No, pareidolia are not always a matter of mere, subjective imagination. But sometimes they are. Subjectively, they may, to a greater or lesser extent, be highly suggestive of many things. But they are not proof of anything. On the other hand, so powerful is the human imagination that people of faith, no less than people of science, need to insist on that distinction.

As a Christian, I base my faith on the teachings of Jesus and His apostles, whom I take for reliable guides as to the nature of God and of my relationship to Him. And being a Christian, I look for- and, I believe, find God in His definitive revelation in the person of Jesus Christ. But my imagination is both too active and too seductive for me to waste time reading meaning into incongruous resemblances between physical phenomena and my Lord and Savior- or any of His relations. If the resemblance is striking enough, I'll smile. But I won't regard as proving very much, whatever it may suggest. Nor will I describe it as a miracle without considerable collaborating evidence; God's sense of humor is too acute, pareidolia are too common, my imagination is too active, and the stakes are too high.

I do not look for the divine in subjective feelings, subjective "signs" that are susceptible to interpretation and manipulation, the vagaries of my own imagination- or on the walls of underpasses, on grills, or in pancakes.

In bread and wine, yes. But not in pancakes.

Texas chutzpah Kinky Friedman would be proud of

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:16:40 PST

Well, Tennessee chutzpah, actually. In Texas.

One of the TV movie networks has been showing the 1960 movie The Alamo, staring John Wayne as Davy Crockett (horrible casting, but hey- John Wayne!) quite a bit lately. I first saw it as a ten year old with my older cousin, Patsy, in the theatre shortly after it was released, and complained to her that it ended with the bad guys winning- that there was no reference to the fact that the Battle of San Jacinto was coming. Of course, it would have ruined a wonderful and poigniant ending to a fabuluous movie. But hey- I was ten.

Since then I've come to appreciate what a truly fine movie it was (even though it was mostly fiction; as history it's atrocious). The haunting score by Dimitri Tiomkin is among the most beautiful I can recall. Here's the Main Title (borrowed by Quentin Tarantino for his 2009 Inglourious Basterds), and here's the closing music- the latter played as the only survivors (Capt. Dickenson's widow, their two small children, and a burro) filed through the ranks of Santa Anna's victorious army at the beginning of their long trek toward the Texan lines. It didn't leave a dry eye in the house.

Of course, some might argue whether or not they really "fought to give us freedom." But what cannot be denied is that Santa Anna, in abrogating the Mexican Constitution and seizing power as a dictator, not only gave the Texans a plausible excuse for their revolt, but cast it in the light of a war of liberation for Tejanos (ethnic Mexicans living in Texas) and American settlers alike. And seven of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence were in fact Tejanos, rather than American immigrants.

Anyway, Disney made a new version of the story in 2004. I have yet to see the entire movie, though I badly want to. By reputation, it's historically a great deal more accurate than the Wayne version. Billy Bob Thornton- who looks a great deal more like the real Crockett (pictured at the left) than either John Wayne or Fess Parker- played the role. And of course, he got the accent right. The 2004 movie flopped at the box office, and received bad reviews in some quarters. But it contains several scenes which are absolutely priceless.

The two scenes below featuring Thornton as Crockett are cases in point. In the first, Santa Anna's band has been playing the Deguello- a tune which means "no quarter," a musical message that the enemy will not be allowed to surrender and that any survivors will be put to the sword. Crockett's (Thornton's) response is a piece of chutzpah for the ages:

How Crockett died is a matter of historical controversy. Both Mrs. Dickenson and Santa Anna's cook- who had met Crockett when the latter was a member of Congress and Santa Anna was visiting Washington- reported seeing Crockett's body near the main gate of the mission. The 1960 film follows their lead in assuming that he died during the fighting, but takes liberties with the details:

But several members of Santa Anna's army claimed that Crockett was recognized in battle, physically overcome, captured, and then first tortured and then executed. The 2004 movie chose to accept that version of Crockett's death. Again, we have Thornton's cheeky and very courageous Crockett, exhibiting the same kind of chutzpah as he did in the scene with the violin:

And then, there's always the option the classic Disney TV version of Davy Crockett, starring Fess Parker, took. Here, the question of how Crockett died was simply begged; in fact, when I first saw it (I was a big Crockett fan, and had a genuine coon skin cap that was the envy of every other five year-old in the neighborhood) I completely missed the point that Crockett had died, although I thought it was really too bad about his fictional side-kick, Georgie Russell (Buddy Ebsen). My mother had to break the news to me! It should be said, however, that what it implies about the circumstances of Crockett's death more closely accord with the testimony of Mrs. Dickinson and Santa Anna's cook than either of the subsequent versions:

One of the points which the 2004 version got right which both the John Wayne and the Fess Parker versions got wrong was the fact that the final assault took place at night. By dawn, the battle was all but over.

Historians say that Lawrence Harvey pretty much nailed the character of Col. Travis in the 1960 version. In actual fact, however, Travis did not die killing Mexicans right and left with his sword after heroically casting away his scabbard, as the 1960 film has it; he was rather anticlimactically shot in the forehead while standing on the wall early in the final assault. And while Jim Bowie, played in the 1960 version by Richard Widmark (an actor who actually bore some physical resemblance to Travis) was indeed an invalid confined to the bed in which he died, he was not confined there by wounds, as was Widmark's Bowie. He was deathly ill with an infectious disease, perhaps typhus and perhaps pneumonia. The Mexicans who killed him unjustly believed at the time that he was a coward who was simply hiding in his bed.

I've been thinking a lot about the Alamo (both the battle and the movies) lately, and may well have more to say on the subject in the near future.

Teaching a lizard to say 'please'

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:43:12 PST

There is a certain puppylike quality to a uromastyx that led me to seriously consider calling Atvar "Rover" and Muad'dib "Fido" when I first got them. Either would be an appropriate name for this dwarf maliensus:

A day in the life of an Ornate uromastyx

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:44:28 PST

Again, the color isn't what it should be, but I like this video- especially the very appropriate soundtrack. Although Atvar was much more colorful (he resembled Fountain Blue on this page, although more of a sky blue and with orange/brown and gray streaks and dots amid more prominent yellow ones), there was a moment in watching this video when a tear came to my eye.

Note the aborted "glass dance" as this guy attempts to escape into the cage's background. It's much funnier from the other side, and when they are actually standing on their back legs.

The uromastyx version of a diet

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:47:33 PST

The uromastyx is the clown of the reptile world. This characteristic (along with their resemblance to minature dinosaurs and their being, as I've heard several human females remark, "so ugly they're cute") is among the things which endear this particular lizard to those of us who share our lives with them. The "glass dance," for example, is standard uro behavior, and it's hilarious. They are simply unclear on the concept "glass," and their attempts to deal with the walls of their cages resemble people "getting down."

The uros in this video are Moroccans, not Rainbows like Muad'dib or Ornates like the late Atvar, and the color in the video is pretty bad (uros are much more attractive critters in true color). But this video is a hoot. In order to fully appreciate it, you should know that dandelions (carefully picked from places which for sure have not been sprayed) are considered delicacies by members of genus uromastyx, and that they like certain other flowers, too.

Bert is lucky the dog didn't turn that uro into lunch. And I hope neither Bert nor his dog got salmonella. Oral contact with reptiles is not recommended.

Once again, the clown of the reptile world does his act. Enjoy.

Advent I Midweek Lenten Sermon

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:42:18 PST

Three Ancestors Jesus Chose: Eve
Genesis 3:1-24
Midweek Advent Service
Wednesday, December 2, 2009

What part of “Don’t eat the fruit of that particular tree” did Eve not understand? She had God’s will laid out quite clearly before her. Eat from the fruit of any other tree you want. Just not that particular tree.

You’d think that with only one explicit commandment to worry about, Eve could have managed. But no. You would have thought that a reptile striking up a conversation with her out of a clear blue sky might have been enough to put Eve on guard. But all it took was the suggestion that God had been holding out on her and Adam, and all of a sudden the fruit of that one tree started looking really, really delicious. From there, it was a short step to picking one, and taking a bite-and all of Eve’s children have been paying for it ever since.

I have a friend- a very fine Lutheran lady down in Texas-who suffers from a rare form of MS that is slowly causing the muscles of her body to waste away. Everytime she finds herself unable to do something she’s been able to do all her life, she has a standard response: “Thanks a lot, Adam!” Now, being a man myself, I have to stick up for Adam a little bit. True, he let Eve talk him into taking a bite of the fruit, too. But wives tend to be more believable than talking snakes. And besides, Eve bit first.

Luther used to imagine the fights Adam and Eve had during all those nine centuries or so their marriage lasted: “You bit the apple!” “Yeah, but you gave it to me!” I have to admit, though, that in some ways Eve comes off a little better than her husband. True enough, neither Adam nor Eve was willing to take responsibility for his or her own actions. But while Eve blamed the snake, Adam not only blamed Eve, but God Himself: “The woman you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate.”

And so began the oldest of human games: the blame game. And not even God Himself was immune from being blamed because His creatures couldn’t seem to resist listening to that snake.

“On the day you eat of it,” God had said of the fruit of that tree, “you will surely die.” And die they did. Not physically, of course- though that might have been a blessing. No, they had to live out nearly a millennium of mutual blame for the fact that they were getting old and that they often fell ill and that life was nothing like the good old days in the Garden.

I was born by Caesarian section, - which my mother highly recommended to anybody interested in having a baby. But the woman whose bed was next to hers didn’t. As she went through a long and difficult labor, Mom told us, that lady called her husband names that Mom had never heard before, and rarely heard thereafter- and greatly enhanced Mom’s vocabulary, even though she didn’t ever use them herself.

Just think what names Eve must have called Adam. Childbirth wasn’t supposed to be that way. And as Adam spent those long days out in the hot sun, his muscles aching and his back breaking with seemingly so little to show for his efforts, I imagine Adam had some colorful thoughts about Eve, too.

And all for a piece of fruit.

Sneezes, coughs, and stomach cramps. The common cold. And the one thing God had never intended for His human creatures: death itself. Each of them would die one day. And the stomach flu, that was enough to make them wish for death. The broken hearts of parents who not only lost their own son to murder, but whose sorrow was compounded by the knowledge that his murderer was also their son.

There is no sorrow, no loss, no pain and no suffering that does not come even today from the invasion of God’s creation and the human soul of the debilitating disease of sin. The virus of rebellion had entered the body of creation, and the cancer of sin had entered the human soul.

That last was the worst of all. No, Adam and Eve did not die physically that day in the Garden. They died spiritually. They lost their ability to choose the good when they opted to sample the fruit of the tree which opened their souls to the knowledge of evil, too.

But one of my theology professors in college used to say that he didn’t think that the Fall really happened when Eve bit into the fruit. No, Professor Schaibley thought it happened when Eve listened to the snake, and entertained the thought that there might be another, better way than God’s.

Many, many years later, Saint Athanasius would say of human nature, “What has not been assumed has not been redeemed.” He wasn’t talking about sin, of course. As deeply as sin infects our humanity, it is not a part of human nature. God didn’t create it; man chose it back in the garden- and has been choosing it ever since.

But the capacity to choose, and with it the possibility of being tempted, is very much a part of what it is to be a human being. Any being created in the image of God would have to have the theoretical possibility of forfeiting that image. Whatever the exact moment was when the Fall took place, it involved a misuse of something essential to any creature made with a spiritual resemblance to its eternal Creator. And that’s why Eve- and for that matter, Adam- are such good examples of the kind of people Jesus chose to be His own ancestors. He came, after all, to redeem people who had misused and thus lost the free will which He Himself had given to His creatures.

Yes, Jesus came to die for our sin- to pay the price God’s justice demanded for Adam and Eve’s sin, and for all the sins that followed, including yours and mine. But that was only part of His mission. He came not only to die for us, but also to live for us- to be the Second Adam, the One Who was tempted as Adam and Eve were tempted, but who got it right.

And it is through the righteousness Jesus won by His perfectly righteous life that we, who are baptized and who believe, are declared by the Father to be righteous through justification, and actually made righteous in sanctification. Jesus’ righteousness is our righteousness, too. More than that, in living as well as dying on our behalf, Jesus Himself became our righteousness- the only righteousness any child of Adam can ever claim, and the only righteousness any child of Eve will ever need.

Yes, as we consider the human beings Jesus chose to be His own ancestors, Eve- the Mother of All Living- is a fitting place to begin. The One Whose coming we await, after all, fully satisfied the demands of God’s justice for every descendant of Eve. And to do that, He needed to be a descendant of Eve Himself. And because that Son of Eve came to die for our sin and to live for our justification, the spiritual death Adam and Eve brought upon themselves in the Fall can rise from spiritual death in Holy Baptism and live before God forever, just as God had in mind for Adam and Eve when He made them. Many and dire are the consequences of the Fall. There is no human pain or sorrow that does not flow from it. But the One Whose coming we await this Advent comes to share our every sorrow, or every sickness, our every pain and our every loss.

He comes as one of us, so that He might share our sorrow, suffer our pain, and die our death. He comes to take everything Adam and Eve got so wrong, and to make it right.

God comes to Earth and becomes one of His own creatures, so that we who are His creatures by birth may be reborn of water and the Spirit to be His children, and to live with Him in Paradise just as He intended Adam and Eve to do before Eve decided so blithely to have that fatal chat with a talking reptile, and to crush Satan’s head under His heal so that the work of that snake in the grass might be undone.

May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Official ELCA website explicitly endorses the universalist heresy

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:01:49 PST

Apparently it wasn't enough for the ELCA to reject the sexual ethics of both Testaments and two thousand years of Christian teaching last summer with its embrace of homosexuality, and to redefine the basic building block of human society- the divine, pre-political institution called Holy Matrimony- by equating human arrangements between individuals of the same sex with it. It appears from its website that this pseudo-Lutheran denomination has also finally gone ahead and made explicit what what effectively has been its position even before the 1988 merger. The ELCA has publicly embraced the ancient heresy of universalism, wilhlfuly ignoring the fact that both the writings of Paul and the sayings of Jesus to which universalists appeal elsewhere categorically exclude it.

The standard textbook for ELCA seminaries even before the 1988 merger, when they still belonged to the LCA and The ALC and the AELC, was Braaten and Jensen's Christian Dogmatics. Its universalism was frank and open. Many, if not most, professors of Systematic Theology in those seminaries agreed with that position. But even so, they had to concede that Scripture would not allow us to say with certainty that everyone would finally wind up being saved. Some of the more intellectually honest even conceded that we could not say for certain that anybody at all would be saved without what the New Testament in every stratum presents as an absolute requirement for salvation, namely faith in Christ. Of course, as with the revisionist "biblical" case for the acceptence of homosexuality, so with the notion that the New Testament, taken as a whole, leaves any room at all for universalism: when properly motivated, ELCA pastors and theologians seem capable of dismissing any quantity or quality of evidence in their determination to impose their preferences upon the content of the Faith Once Delivered to the Saints.

In those ways, when chided for the prevalence of universalist belief in ELCA theological circles by well-informed laypeople, many bishops, theologians and pastors simply lied about it. Others chose not to know, to seek to excuse their lack of candor through willful ignorance of the facts. Well, they've stopped lying, and the truth can no longer be rationalized away. It's all out there in the open, reaffirming exactly what the public confession is that any member of the ELCA makes by merely remaining in that apostate church body, and how far it is from the confession of the apostles and the martyrs and the Lutheran reformers.

Theologians, bishops and pastors were not the only ones who found it more convenient not to acknowledge what the church's future pastors were being taught. I tried to warn my own congregations about the vast gulf between their Catechism faith and the working theology of the church to which they belonged. By and large, they refused to believe me. I guess now they know better. But vindication is just as bitter when it comes to the ELCA's making explicit its apostacy with regard to the doctrine of justification as it was last summer when it made its contempt for Scriptural authority explicit in embracing homosexuality. Its trivialization of the Lutheran understanding of the Sacraments has been uncontroversial for a long time, since it has declared intercommunion with so many denominations which deny both the Real Presence and baptismal regeneration.

I wonder what the next move the ELCA will make to underscore the point that it is neither evangelical, nor Lutheran, nor the Church. Even more, I wonder how much longer anyone at all in the ELCA will be able to be sufficiently dishonest with themselves as to remain in denial about just what it is they belong to.

An unpalatable Dish indeed

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:40:58 PST

Blogger and journalist Andrew Sullivan is an openly homosexual Catholic of amazing perversity when it comes to 1) the obligation of a Catholic or an other Christian to conform not only his or her personal life but his or her political judgments to the substance of the Faith; and 2) the distinction between the Church insisting that believers believe the content of the Faith on one hand, and the Church seeking political power on the other.

His latest tirade on the subject labels the American Catholic hierarchy as something they most assuredly are not- Rovian conservatives- while somehow equating the confession of what the Christian faith has taught for two thousand years about the nature of marriage with the will to power. This to be contrasted with moral authority- defined as a failure on the part of the Church to condemn what the Faith has always taught was immoral, namely homosexual behavior and the pretense of arraingements other than those between one man and one woman to the legal and social status of marriage.

Got that?

Sullivan, whose invention of the concept "Christianism" to describe the quaint notion that one does not cease to be a Christian when one enters the voting booth can only be sustained by the most elaborate of intellectual contortions, shows himself to be something of an intellectual rubber man when he proclaims his confidence the power of something he calls "the Gospel" and which is not only distinct from, but apparently contradictory to, the teachings of the apostles and the Christian tradition, to overcome the craven power-hunger of those conniving old men who tell those committed to their spiritual care that they really ought to believe the substance of the religion they profess- as Sullivan himself, of course, does not.

Presumably because the Christian faith contradicts the Gospel.

And all this time I thought ELCA theologians and pastors were the only ones who went in for turning "Gospel" into a buzzword with which to authorize their own rejection of the content of the Faith in favor of their personal preferences and prejudices. Silly me. The practice seems to have spread to gay Catholic bloggers, too.

Sermon for Advent I

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:35:49 PST

THE LIBERATOR COMES!
Matthew 21:1-9
Advent I
November 29, 2009

There is a wonderful sequence in the film version of Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons in which Sir Thomas More and his wife are informed- with no notice at all, really- that King Henry VIII has decided on a whim to stop by on the way home for a visit.

A royal visit was not something one dared take lightly. Immediately the More household was flung into a frenzy of preparation. From somewhere, a huge banquet literally fit for a king was laid out. No trouble or expense was spared. The king, of course, would protest that no trouble was necessary, especially when the visit was on such short notice. But that, of course, was nonsense. Not to be prepared to receive the king would have been an insult to him, and insulting the king was not a good idea. And More knew this king in particular well enough to realize that for all his protests that elaborate preparations were unnecessary, it was a good thing for More and his family that they’d been able to prepare in time

Royal visits were an enormous hardship, and only the wealthiest of subjects could afford to have the king do him the honor of dropping by. But on the whole, they felt about it pretty much the way the man Abraham Lincoln told about felt about being tarred and feathered and carried out of town on a rail- that if it weren’t for the honor of the thing, he would just as soon have walked. A royal visit could easily bankrupt a man. It had happened more than once.

And so, the royal barge pulled up to Thomas More’s dock. Sir Thomas and his family made a great show of being surprised. The king chatted with More for few moments, tested More’s daughter, Meg, on her Latin- and after a few minutes left again, with even less warning than he’d given that he was coming, and not having tasted a bite of the huge and expensive feast that More had laid out for him.

The King is coming to us, to. That visit is far more of an unmixed blessing. He came in poverty and lowliness that first Christmas, and made his bed with the cattle. He walked the length and breadth of the Holy Land staying where He could and eating what was offered. He Himself had nowhere to lay His head.

He suffered. He died. He rose. He ascended. And all of that royal visit was more than simply an act of condescension. Where the visit of an earthly king might bankrupt a man, the visit of the King of Kings bought the greatest of all treasures for those to whom He came: forgiveness, life and salvation, purchased at the cost of His blood.

He comes again each Sunday in the Divine Service- again, as before, not to be served, but to serve; not so much to receive our homage as to give us that without which we cannot live. He is present in His Word and in His sacramental body and blood to nourish and sustain us. He is present in His body, the Church, and supports us in the trials and tribulations of this life by sharing them with us in the person of our Christian brother and sister , and helps us to bear our burdens.

No, it is no surprise that the King is coming. December brings Christmas every year, and late every November Advent comes again to bid us make ready. The King is coming. But how do we prepare for such a King? How do we greet Him?

For two thousand years wise and holy men have written of the spiritual preparations it is fitting for us to make. The Great Lakes could easily be filled with the ink that has been spilled on the subject. Sometimes we read a book or two, or undertake some special discipline to prepare our souls to meet the coming King. Lent is a penitential season; traditionally it’s a time to prepare by struggling extra hard against our own besetting sins. But if the truth be told, we’re generally so harried and harassed by the preparations we have to make for the giving and receiving of gifts, the throwing of parties, and the other social aspects of the Christmas season to spend nearly as much time as we should getting ready for the coming of the King.

Scripture tells us that when Jesus comes again in judgment, it will be like the lightning flashing from the east to the west. From that passage, the tradition developed of building churches in such a way that the altar was in the east, and the congregation worshipped facing the direction from which the Lord was expected to return. Inside a church, the compass ceases to count; whatever part of the church the altar is in is the east.

I’ve always been a little amused, though, by a pattern that held at Bethany in Webster Groves, Missouri when I was pastor there, and in both St. Paul’s in Kellogg and St. Andrew’s in. Sully. It’s repeated itself here at Saint Mary. Nobody planned it, of course, and it doesn’t really mean anything. But I get a chuckle every Christmas eve out of the symbolism of the fact that we worship that night facing a direction from which somebody else is expected momentarily: the north! It’s almost as if we’ve been given as a Christmas present an additional reminder of just how easy it us even at Christmas to forget that the Lord is coming.

Christmas comes every year. Whatever direction we face on Christmas Eve, a far more important question persists: how do we orient our souls so as to meet the coming King? Orient. There’s that business about direction again. The word “orient,” when used as a verb, means to align ourselves, or to get our bearings. But when used as a noun or an adjective, it’s a synonym for the word “east.” It entered the English language as a reminder of the importance of being prepared to meet the One Who is expected from that direction.

So how do we orient ourselves? How do we prepare ourselves for the visit of a King far greater than any earthly ruler, and due far more reverence? If the visit of an earthly king is a big deal, how much more important is the coming of the King of Kings?

And once again, how do we meet Him? The people of Jerusalem met Him with palm branches, and called on Him to save them. And perhaps we can take a hint from that as to how we might prepare.

We use purple paraments here at Saint Mary. Purple is the color of penitence- and penitence is surely a fitting way to meet the King. But in recent years it’s become a common practice for Lutheran churches (bearing in mind the fact that Lent, the greatest of penitential seasons, is not so very far away) to make a different choice. In order to suggest the difference between Advent and Lent, and to summon us to prepare for the coming of the King in the way that is most fitting, these churches use paraments of blue- the color of hope.

And hope is what Advent is all about. The enslaved people of Jerusalem, groaning under the Roman yoke, called upon Jesus to save them. And perhaps the most powerful Advent banner I’ve ever seen- the one that comes the closest to the real meaning of this season- is one we displayed every year at a church I once belonged to in Chicago, Park View Lutheran.

It was simply two hands, shackled at the wrists, raised imploringly upward. Above was that marvelous Syriac word, Maranatha- a word which means at the very same time “The Lord will come,” “the Lord is coming,” “The Lord has come,” and the special prayer of all of us who are in bondage to sin and to doubt and to worry and to all the other things which metaphorically shackle our hands as we lift them heavenward, and cry
out, “Come, O Lord!”

And come He does, to heal our infirmities, to free us from bondage, to forgive our sins, and to raise what is dead and dying within us to life. Our King comes to us as He came to the children of Israel that first Palm Sunday. He came as a liberator- that much, at least, they understood, even if they weren’t quite clear about what they needed to be saved from.

And perhaps we aren’t, either. Perhaps that’s a part of our own, personal bondage. But whatever form our bondage may take, he comes to us as a liberator, to strike the fetters from our wrists as we lift our hands to reach out and touch Him.

And that, I think, is the answer to the question of how one best prepares to meet the coming King. Unlike Thomas More, we need not go into debt to meet him; He comes to bestow His riches upon us, instead. He does not come to demand special disciplines or spiritual exercises. What pleases Him most is not so much our own weak and sorry struggles to free ourselves, but rather that we reach our hands out to him, showing Him our chains, and calling out, “Maranatha!-“ “Come, O Lord!-“ and “Hosanna-“ “Save us!-“ to the King Who comes to set us free.

Well do we sing this Advent the words of the great Paul Gerhardt,

I lay in fetters, groaning,
Thou com'st to set me free;
I stood, my shame bemoaning,
Thou com'st to honor me;
A glory Thou dost give me,
A treasure safe on high,
That will not fail or leave me
As earthly riches fly.

Love caused Thy incarnation,
Love brought Thee down to me;
Thy thirst for my salvation
Procured my liberty.
O love beyond all telling,
That led Thee to embrace,
In love all loves excelling
Our lost and fallen race!

Rejoice, then, ye sad-hearted,
Who sit in deepest gloom,
Who mourn o’er joys departed
And tremble at your doom.
Despair not; He is near you,
Yea, standing at the door
Who best can help and cheer you
And bids you weep no more.

May the peace of God, that passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

There is a rumor that the Bears are playing this afternoon...

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:10:53 PST

... against the Minnesota Vikings. But I don't want to know about it.

It figures to be a bloody mess. The Vikings are the most complete team in the NFC. The deficiencies of the Bears are, at this point in the season, all too well established.

As a Cub fan, I can identify with futility, and that gives me a certain amount of sympathy for the Vikings- a franchise which historically has had several good teams, but not a single Super Bowl victory to show for it. The Cubs at least have two World Series wins, even if you have to go back more than a century to find them.

Then, too, my former pastor- the Right On Reverend Christopher Esget- is a Vikings fan, and I'd like to see the Vikings win the Super Bowl (since the Bears obviously won't) for his sake.

On the negative side are my years in the ELCA, and the difficulty I have as consequence of that experience looking with favor on any team whose fans hail their successes with cries of "Skol." But here's hoping the Vikings win themselves a Super Bowl this year, and get it over with.

Maybe with a new coach, general manager, offensive line, and cornerback- and perhaps a receiver or two- the Bears can continue their pursuit of the only team with more NFL championships than they have (which team shall remain nameless, since I am not of a mind to post such a scandalous word on the Lord's Day, but whose fans have the odd habit of wearing dairy products on their heads) next season.

But like I said, as far as this afternoon's game is concerned... I'd really rather not acknowledge that it's even happening. It's not gonna be pretty.

Thanksgiving Eve sermon

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 01:43:03 PST

FOR GOD HIMSELF
I Timothy 2:1-8
Thanksgiving Eve

November 25, 2009

The Gospel appointed to be read on Thanksgiving fairly drips with Law. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Law. But good Lutherans know that the Law can’t save us. And there’s something else that the Law can’t do: it can’t make us thankful.

To be sure, it reproves ingratitude. It points out to us how much we have to be thankful for. But while the Law can accuse us and make us feel guilty for not being thankful, gratitude is beyond its power to create.

But as I said last year- as I’ve said Thanksgiving after Thanksgiving for years- there is Gospel in today’s Gospel.. Only one leper returned to give thanks. The other nine- the ones who stand for you and me, who fail so miserably to be grateful to God for clothing, shoes, meat drink, house, home, wife, children, and all His other blessings- went their merry way just as we do, with nary a thought to return and say thanks.

But nine lepers were healed- and nine lepers stayed healed! Grateful or not, there’s not a word in our Gospel lesson that suggests that their leprosy returned because they weren’t grateful. And the same is true of us: despite our massive failure to give God the gratitude He’s due for all His blessings, He continues to bless us.

And that, is where I’d like to pick the thought up this year, moving from the Gospel to the Epistle

I had a talk with Mark before church a view weeks ago about the bizarre doctrine of God the Eastern Orthodox church has. I won’t go into detail, beyond saying that they deny that God has attributes. They refuse to say, as we in the West do, that God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, or any of those other “omni’s” we learned back in confirmation class. He isn’t even merciful, or just, or good. He’s merely God. He is what He is. Heaven, in the Eastern view, is how those of a certain condition of soul experience His eternal presence. Hell is how others experience it. But to the Eastern church, heaven and hell are the same place. And God’s judgment, they believe, is nothing more or less than how, subjectively, each soul encounters the One Who once told Moses, “I AM THAT I AM.”

There’s a great many problems with this view from a Scriptural point of view. But there is one aspect of Eastern thought on this subject that is undeniably true, and absolutely valid. God, they point out, loves the damned as much as the saved. God, as the Apostle says in our text, is not willing that any should perish. He makes the rain fall on the just and the unjust alike.

As you’ve undoubtedly gathered by now, I’m very impressed with Dr. Steven Hein’s observation to our Christian Doctrine class at River Forest that what Christ will say to those on His Left on the day when, contrary to what our Eastern brothers and sisters teach, He comes precisely to judge the living and the dead can be paraphrased by the words of the hamburger commercial: “Have it your way.” Nobody will go to hell because God wants him there. People go to hell because they refuse to allow God to be merciful to them. God is a lover, not a rapist. Eastern theology aside, he will not force any unwilling soul to spend eternity with Him.

We may recognize ourselves in the person of the Nine. After all, we are no more adequately grateful for God’s blessings than they were. But do we recognize ourselves in Richard Dawkins, the obnoxious and snarky atheist, or in Osama bin Laden, or his Islamofascist cohorts? Do we see ourselves in those who not only don’t return to give thanks, but who refuse to be healed?

But God loves them as much as He loves us. He yearns for the salvation of those who refuse to be healed with a yearning that human words cannot express, and human minds cannot conceive.

I’d like to suggest tonight that we take a page from our Eastern brothers and sisters and meditate, not on the blessings which God showers upon us every day (and for which we are so ungrateful), nor even on the fact that He doesn’t take His blessings back in retaliation. I’d like to suggest that instead we contemplate, not God’s blessings, but God Himself. Yes, God judges. Yes, God condemns. But these, are, as Luther called them, His alien work. It’s foreign to Him. It’s not Who He is.

And who is God? The Eastern Christians are right in saying that human words and human thoughts cannot define Him. So how do we understand what Luther called His proper nature- God as He is in His heart?

Only in one way: by recognizing Him in the bloody mess of a man hanging on a Roman cross and literally experiencing the pangs of hell not only for ungrateful people like you and me, but even for those who refuse to allow His suffering and His death to matter.

God is beyond good. God is beyond gracious. We have more to be grateful for than merely God’s blessings or even His mercy.

We have God Himself. Despite the tragedies which afflict us in this life, and the sufferings and the sorrows, we have as a God One who deserves our love, as St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out, not for what He does, but rather for what He is.

He is love, and blessing, and goodness Himself.

What, Dr. Luther rhetorically asked, does it mean to have a god? A god, he wrote, is whatever we fear, love or trust the most. And it was basic to Luther's understanding of the Ten Commandments- the Law in its most familiar form- that God begins not by threatening the Israelites, but by identifying Himself precisel as "the Lord your God, Who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. What follows is a description of what it is like to be a person whom He has so delivered- of how it is fitting that such a person behave.

What does it mean, Luther continues, if the Lord is your God? It means that your enemies can no more stand against you than Pharoah and his hosts could stand against those who had the Lord as their God. It means that Satan and the world, sin and poverty, sickness and suffering, and all the things we so fear in this life are but empty forms whose threats against us are finally futile, because the Lord is our God- and if the Lord is our God, there is nothing we need to fear. If God is for us, who can be against us?

Guilt at our ingratitude does us little good. No, let Thanksgiving rather be a time to meditate, not on the things God does for us, but rather on the wonder of God Himself. It is that for which we have, after all, the most reason to be grateful: that our Creator, our Judge, and our Protector is the One Who was willing not only to put up with our ingratitude, but to suffer the torments of the damned not merely for us, whom His sacrifice saves, but even to lavish His love upon the ones who refuse to be loved.

There are those who do not have the Lord as their God. But Jesus was willing to suffer the pangs of hell even for those who, in the end, will insist on suffering them themselves. God loves them, too- loves them, and gave Himself for them. He makes the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous alike, and is not willing that any should perish. And even knowing that they would not let Him save them, He emptied Himself, and did all that needed to be done for the salvation even of the lost- those who finally will not let themselves be saved.

But the Lord is our God. We need look for no further reason to be thankful than that alone, because those words embrace all the other blessings of body and soul which He showers upon even ungrateful folk like us.

The Lord is our God- and for Jesus' sake, we, who so little deserve it, are His people despite our ingratitude and our sin. That is quite enough to be grateful for. In fact, in the face of love like that, what can we be but grateful?

Blackhawks 7, San Jose 2

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:32:10 PST

The Sharks still have two points more than the Blackhawks, but in beating them 7-2 last night (their second victory over the NHL's leading team in the past week), the Hawks have climbed to within those two points of claiming supremacy themselves.

Marian Hossa made his long-awaited Hawks debut, and scored twice.

The Hawks- whose only weakness going into the season was said to be goaltending- continue to lead the NHL in fewest goals allowed.

Whole lot of magic, ladies and gentlemen!

Just sayin'...

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:07:05 PST

I'm fascinated by the smugness of some Roman Catholics in the blogosphere and elsewhere over the ELCA's decision to ordain practicing homosexuals.

I mean, it's not as if when the ELCA ministerium reaches its highest point of saturation with homosexual pastors the Roman Catholic church won't still lead the Christian world in the percentage of its clergy who are gay. And despite the sexual incontinence of some of the student body at Wartburg Seminary during my time there, never at its worst did it approach the horrors described by Michael Rose in his hair-raising book on priestly formation, Good-Bye, Good Men.

That a nominally Lutheran denomination has taken this step outside the bounds of the Christian confession should sadden all who call themselves Lutherans, even among those of us with better claim to that label than the ELCA rightfully has. But one thing for which it definitely does not provide occasion is Roman Catholic triumphalism.

A great game and a spectacular Finn-ish

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:37:41 PST

Ending the game by doing a convincing impression of a brick wall against a barrage by a Vancouver team that had pulled its goalie and put six attackers on the ice, Blackhawks goalie Antti Niemi stood on his head tonight and registered his second shutout of the season, blanking Vancouver 1-0- even though the Hawks were outshot 30-17!

The Good Guys have now won seven in a row and have run their record to 15-5-2. This is the team's best start since the 1982-83 season- and Marian Hossa will be joining the team within days.

They have not even missed last year's best player, Martin Havlat.

The Hawks continue to lead the NHL Central Division. The team which opened the season with goaltending as their major question mark now has the best team GAA in the NHL.

Since there is still an hour left in the Last Sunday of the Church Year...

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:19:40 PST

HT: Gnesio

Losing ugly

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:43:23 PST

Eagles 24, Bears 20.

It wasn't as much of a blowout as I expected.

A new start for ELCA refugees- or another ELCA waiting to happen?

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:36:15 PST

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. --George Santayana

There's good news and there's bad news on the ELCA front.

The good news is that a group of ELCAns- those who comprise the group known as Lutheran CORE- has decided to go ahead and do the obvious: leave the apostate ELCA and form a new church body.

Obvious though this step may be in one sense, it continues to amaze me how long it has taken ELCA conservatives to realize not only that they never had a shot at influencing the direction of the ELCA, but that it's been probably a decade since that prospect has been even a particularly viable illusion. Moreover, conservative members of the ELCA continue in large numbers to talk about "staying and fighting-" most seeking to deceive themselves as well as others into believing the fiction that they have done any real fighting against the radical ELCA establishment in the past, or will do any in the future.

But the Lutheran CORE people (CORE apparently somehow stands for "Coalition for Renewal") have decided to do what every Christian is obligated to do the moment he or she realizes that it is not going to be possible to reform a heterodox denomination: leave. Leaving is an act of confession. Though comparatively few in the ELCA have hitherto understood this point, so is staying. By remaining in the ELCA, its members are publicly giving their blessing to the decision to embrace unrepentant homosexual activity, whether that is their intention or not. They are endorsing Bishop Hansen's absurd claim that endorsing a behavior which, according to Scripture, deprives one of justifying faith if persisted in and excludes one from the Kingdom of God can be anything other than inherently church-dividing.

So three cheers for the Lutheran CORE folks, who- after incomprehensibly planning to take a year or so to decide to take a step which should have followed immediately upon the ELCA's decision to leave the Great Tradition and endorse homosexuality, have changed their mind under pressure from the laity and decided that the time to act is now.

Well, two and a half cheers, anyway. Even now, they're planning to take until August of next year before actually forming their new church.

And maybe only two cheers. Or fewer. These would-be confessors apparently haven't learned nearly as much as one might have hoped from the experience of the ELCA. Prominent among its leaders are ordained women- who are forbidden the pastoral office by Scripture just as emphatically as are practicing homosexuals:

Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first,then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. (1 Timothy 2:11-14, ESV)

As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. (I Corinthians 14:33b-38, ESV)

In the first of the passages above, Paul himself answers the objection that the restrictions he places on the service of women are culturally conditioned by giving God's will as expressed in creation itself as his reason. In the second, Paul explicitly states that these restrictions are a dominical mandate- and while he does not expand upon his point that those who deny this "are not recognized," I, for one, don't like the sound of it! Certainly he anticipates the arguments of those who advocate women's ordination today, as well he might: he was addressing his arguments to those who espoused the same viewpoint in his own day!

Yes, that's what I said. The fact of the matter is that the argument that Paul's prohibition of leadership roles for women cannot have been culturally determined, because- contrary to the assumption of those who claim otherwise- female religious leadership was not only generally accepted in the Graeco-Roman world of the First Century, but the norm rather than the exception! Remember, Paul is not writing here to a primarily Jewish community, where role limitations based on gender might have been expected. Rather, his audience was a congregation consisting primarily of former pagans in Corinth, whose frame of reference was the cults of the various pagan gods and especially goddesses whose clergy were priestesses as often as priests. If Paul had wanted to accomodate the culture, he wouldn't have prohibited female leadership. He would have endorsed it.

"But God has blessed the ministry of women pastors!," some object. A subjective observation, that- and a claim one might also be made about gay pastors, were one so inclined. I'm afraid there's no way around it; the point which many Missouri Synod types have made is quite valid. There is no argument for disregarding what the New Testament says about women as pastors which cannot be, and in fact is not, also cited as an excuse for disregarding what it says about homosexuality. In fact, once the decision was made to set aside the teachings of Scripture in one case, there was no longer a consistent basis for excluding the other. Once the decision was made to ordain women, the decision to ordain practicing homosexuals was, as a practical matter, inevitable. That the Lutheran CORE folks do not realize this raises the great likelihood that the theological deterrioration which blighted the ELCA will also infect the new church body they are in the process of founding, and makes it unlikely that they will in the long run be able to defend the ground upon which they are leaving the ELCA. Their own theology contains within itself the very virus which killed the ELCA as a living branch of the Church catholic.

That virus is ultimately hermaneutical. The low view of Scripture which made it possible to rationalize away first what Paul wrote about women in leadership positions and then what he wrote about homosexuality appears, despite its best intentions, to remain as a practical matter in Lutheran CORE . The statement on Scripture on their website contains much that is praiseworthy, but it finally says nothing about the ontological nature of the authority it so fervently and sincerely attributes to it. The statement commendably cites the Formula of Concord (Epitome I, 3) in calling Scripture "the only judge, rule, and norm according to which all doctrines should and must be understood and judged,” but beyond commending the Confessions to the interpreter as a guide and endorsing certain themes in Lutheran biblical interpretation ("the centrality of Christ in Scripture, the plain sense of Scripture, the distinction between law and Gospel, the relationship between Scripture and church and between Scripture and Confession, the unity of the Bible as the inspired and written Word of God, Scripture as its own interpreter, and the authority of the Bible as sola Scriptura,") the statement is anything but specific in laying out precisely in what sense Scripture is the Word of God, and what that might mean for the presuppositions we bring to biblical interpretation. To use the example already cited, if it's OK to dismiss what Scripture teaches about gender roles and church leadership because it conflicts with our modern sensibilities and the contemporary zeitgeist, why not what it teaches about homosexuality? It should not have escaped the notice of the Lutheran CORE people that the sexual revisionists in the ELCA and elsewhere have in fact advanced precisely the argument that since the ELCA does not consider itself bound by what Scripture teaches about divorce and remarriage, as well as the ordination of women, it shouldn't feel bound by what Scripture says about homosexuality, either!

Perhaps it's unfair to be too harsh in judging an attempt to develop a workable theology of Scripture which is in fact still in its infancy. Certainly the hermaneutic at work in the ELCA was not viable for anyone who takes Scriptural authority seriously in any real sense, and in a very real sense the Lutheran CORE people are starting over from scratch. But at least at this point, other than their good intentions, it's hard to see how their practical presuppositions regarding the nature of scriptural authority at this point differ from those of the ELCA- presuppositions which led to the theological trainwreck in Minneapolis which will give the new church body its birth. The Lutheran CORE folks could do worse than to ponder the musings of the sainted Dr. Robert Preus on the subject.

Lutheran CORE's Common Confession raises as many questions as it answers. Its statement on the Confessions is depressingly weak. Historically, Lutherans have debated whether confessional subscription should be quatenus (i.e., insofar as the Confessions agree with Scripture) or quia (i.e., because they agree with Scripture). While many instictively prefer the quatenus position out of a commendable reverence for the principle of sola Scriptura, as a practical matter a quatenus subscription is utterly meaningless. There is no statement sufficiently heretical or just plain evil that the most devout and orthodox Christian cannot subscribe to it insofar as it agrees with Scripture. An orthodox Lutheran could cheerfully subscribe quatenus to Hitler's Mein Kampf, Marx's Das Kapital, The Book of Mormon, the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, and/or The Satanic Bible! Conversely, the Pope (any pope!) the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or even Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could with complete integrity subscribe quatenus to the Lutheran Confessions (though in the latter case the norming scripture would obviously be different!).

The confessional subscription Lutheran CORE offers at this time certainly seems, like that of the ELCA, to be quatenus. Unable to ascribe to the Confessions any truly normative status as a definitive summary of the teachings of Scripture on the subjects they address, the Lutheran CORE statement merely affirms that "we accept and uphold that the Lutheran Confessions reliably guide us as faithful interpretations of Scripture, and that we share a unity and fellowship in faith with others among whom the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached and the sacraments are administered in accordance with the Gospel." The first part is worrisome in its similarity to the weasel-worded "confessional subscription" in the ELCA constitution, which merely recognizes the Confessions as one "valid" interpretation of Scripture, presumably among others. The Lutheran Confessions are said to "reliably guide us" in the task of interpreting Scripture. Whether intentionally or not, the other shoe seems to be suspended in mid-air, just waiting to drop: might other standards, which perhaps might conflict with the Confessions at certain points, not also "reliably guide us?" In what sense, precisely, are the Confessions normative? In what sense are they confessions? How, exactly, are they unique? Or are they?

What does it mean to say that the Confessions are "living documents?" Does the term mean the same thing as is commonly meant when that description is given of the U.S. Constitution- that it is not the words and their native meaning, but some sort of interaction between the words and the issues which arise over time, which holds authority, so that the meaning of the words changes as time goes on? If so, it is hard to see any sort of subscription to such "living" documents as having any real or lasting substance beyond the fads and foibles of the moment.

These questions, of course, are not asked in a vacuum; the sorry history of the ELCA testifies to where such ambiguity can lead. In the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, the ELCA, together with the rest of the Lutheran World Federation, declared its essential agreement on the doctrine of justification with the Roman Catholic church- a church body whose own definitive doctrinal statements, including the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, still anathamatize the Lutheran and Pauline understanding of justification, and declare it to be heresy! This was, of course, possible in large measure because participants on both sides of the dialog found it convenient to simply ignore the rather telling fact that the words "justification," "grace," and "faith" all have different meanings in Lutheran and in Catholic theology, thereby rendering a mere agreement on a formula utilizing these words without defining them ultimately meaningless!

Having sold out on the doctrine of justification (a matter which is largely passe' for many in the ELCA, who have in any case adopted some form of the ancient heresy of universal salvation), the ELCA did the same with the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ's body and blood in the Lord's Supper. When it declared intercommunion with several church bodies which deny the Real Presence, at the very least it confessed by that action that the Real Presence isn't very important- and is not essential to the celebration of the Sacraments in conformity with the very Gospel which is embodied in the Sacrament of the Altar as nowhere else. Luther saw the Lord's Supper, in which Christ personally gives His body and blood to the sinner as a pledge of the efficacy of His sacrifice for the particular sins of that particular believer, as "the naked Gospel." It necessarily loses that quality where the bread and wine are seen as merely symbols of His absent body and blood, and human actions undertaken in obedience rather than the reception of an ineffible, divine gift of grace. Needless to say, the Sacrament of Holy Baptism is not administered in agreement with the Gospel where it is seen primarily as a human pledge of allegience to God, as it is in many of the churches with which the ELCA practices intercommunion, rather than as "the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5 ESV).

Apparently, then, in the ELCA view full communion with other church bodies is appropriate where the Sacraments are not celebrated in agreement with the pure Gospel, as AC VII requires!

Where does Lutheran CORE stand on intercommunion with those who deny the Real Presence and baptismal regeneration? Its confession doesn't say explicitly. The confession states that

We accept and uphold that the Lutheran Confessions reliably guide us as faithful interpretations of Scripture, and that we share a unity and fellowship in faith with others among whom the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached and the sacraments are administered in accordance with the Gospel

.
Its appeal to AC VII (from which the last part of the statement above is a direct quotation) seems logically a repudiation of the ELCA position on the matter. But then, the ELCA claims to subscribe to AC VII, too. If this is anything more than ELCA- style hypocrisy concerning the foul lines established by AC VII, the confession precludes pulpit and altar fellowship or any other fellowship in sacris with those who deny the Real Presence, baptimal regeneration, divine monergism in salvation, or other truths directly impinging upon the conformity of proclamation and practice to the substance of the Gospel. But it is by no means clear that individuals whose theological consciousness was formed in the ELCA necessarily think in terms of the theological consequences of confessionally promiscuous ecumenism, and the Lutheran CORE confession really doesn't provide any clues to whether or not its subscribers have thought through the implications of their committment to AC VII. Like the ordination of women, ecumenical involvments of questionable integrity are so much a part of the experience of those who make up Lutheran CORE that we probably won't know how this all plays out until the matter is officially addressed.

The group's statement on the doctrine of the Church (elucidated here) is certainly an improvement on the ecclesiological confusion of the ELCA's attempt to impose a "top down" polity with a theological tradition which by its very nature is "bottom up-" a confusion which once actually resulted in my own bishop making the outrageous claim that the ELCA as such was a divine institution! There are no synods or church bodies in the New Testament, and while as many in the ELCA as in the Roman Catholic or Anglican or Eastern Orthodox traditions would be surprised to hear it, the episkopoi or bishops spoken of in the New Testament are nothing other than local parish pastors. It wasn't until later that the Christian population grew to the point where the pastoral office had to be divided between those involved in the work of administration for all the churches within a geographical area, and actual Word and Sacrament ministry.The monarchial episcopate was a purely human, historical development which obscured the point that it is in the congregation that the Word is preached, the Sacraments celebrated, and where the Church subsists. The congregation is a divine institution; synods and church bodies are the inventions of human beings- useful and even perhaps necessary, but nevertheless purely human.

As the pastor of an independent Lutheran congregation I don't absolutely agree with Pastor Ulring's statement that "independent Lutheran is an oxymoron." The congregation is the Church- in fact, virtually the Church catholic in loci. Nevertheless I do agree that the present unaffiliated state of my own congregation is anomalous, regrettable- and hopefully temporary. But this is not the same thing as recognizing any sort of tension, de jure divino, between the authority of a divine institution- the individual congregation- and of the human hierarchies and alliances individual congregations cooperate in creating for the furtherance of their common mission. Certainly some sort of accountability among the congregations of a given fellowship is both necessary and proper. But although the Lutheran CORE statement is an improvement on the ELCA's hierarchy, it remains fuzzy on this point, and at least seems to imply that an entity created by individual congregations in the furtherance of their own missions might properly exercise an authority of its own over those congregations, rather than merely hold each accountable in the name of the others.

Probably the low point of my career as an ALC seminarian was the moment when I asked a professor who was tossing the word "Gospel" around with wild abandon to actually tell me the Gospel- only to have him prove unable to do so, beyond defining the term as "the good news of Jesus Christ." What that "good news" was, he couldn't or wouldn't say. The prevalence of a belief in universal salvation, or at least its acceptance as a legitimate theoretical possibility, in effect removed any necessity for the Gospel as the Lutheran tradition has historically defined the term. It seemed, as a practical matter, to turn out to be feminism, or Liberation Theology, or whatever agenda happened to be fashionable in the seminary community or the church itself at the time. So it is no small thing for me to discover, with joy, that the Lutheran CORE folks, despite the other shortcomings of their current position, at least realize what the Gospel is:

We believe and confess that all human beings are sinners, and that sinners are redeemed by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God alone justifies human beings by faith in Christ – a faith that God creates through the message of the Gospel. As ambassadors for Christ, God uses us to speak his Word and build his kingdom

The trouble is that all those years in the theological confusion of the ELCA and its predecessor bodies has crippled them in their ability to build upon that foundation. As things stand, sadly, the new church body stands to be born an ELCA waiting to happen. The very confusion with regard to the nature of Scriptural and confessional authority which left the ELCA epistomologically rudderless and tossing to and fro with every wind of doctrine and social or political fad seems, at least at present, to continue to infect the organization known as Lutheran CORE. As someone who fought the fight they are fighting for twelve years as a pastor first in The ALC and then in the ELCA before realizing that what happened in Minneapolis last summer was inevitable and that nothing I could do or say would change that, the fate of this new church body is a matter of no small concern to me personally. My fervent prayer is that adopts a theology of scripture which enables it to consistently apply the same standards to all other issues- including, conspicuously, the ordination of women to an office which God forbids them just as surely as He declares sexual relations between members of the same gender to be sin- that they have to the apostasy which culminated in the abomination the ELCA perpetrated in Minneapolis last summer.

There are other issues of concern, to be sure. Where will the new church stand on abortion and other end-of-life issues? Will its conservative inclinations overcome the dynamic of its present rather loosey-goosey concept of scriptural authority? But even that is not really the ultimate question.

My real question about the nascent church body the Lutheran CORE folks definitely plan to eventually get around to forming is whether, whatever commendable positions they may take at present, those positions will survive an epistomological foundation indistuguishable from the one which proved inadequate to keep the ELCA within the bounds of historic Christianity.

Sermon for the Last Sunday of the Church Year

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:28:36 PST

Dies Irae
Matthew 25:1-13
Last Sunday of the Church Year
November 22, 1963

Everyone in my parents' generation always remembered where they were on December 7, 1941, when they heard that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. For the current generation, it's September 11, 2001, otherwise known as "9/11." But for people of my generation, the date which sticks in our minds and on which we'll always remember where we were and what we were doing is forty-six years ago today- November 22, 1963.

Our teacher, Mr. Williams, was also the principal of Grace Lutheran School, so when the phone rang he had to leave the classroom to answer it. When he came back, he told us that somebody- whoever it was was too excited to identify himself- said that President Kennedy had been shot and killed.

Everybody laughed. That's the thing that stands out most clearly in my memory: everybody laughed. It wasn't that we found the idea of the President of the United States being assassinated funny. It was that we found it ridiculous. Presidential assassinations were things we read about in history textbooks. They might have happened back in the barbarous times when Lincoln was president. But the last time a president had been assassinated had been way back in the late Cretaceous era, when my father was four months old!

But John F. Kennedy being shot wasn't something Dad was expecting, either. It was a bolt out of the blue, something so unlikely that it seemed as if some fictional event had somehow escaped into reality. We laughed because the thought that someone would shoot the President was almost as unthinkable as the notion that our young, dynamic President could die for any reason.

But when the phone rang a second time, and this time it was the mother of one of the students, we stopped laughing. We went into shock. So did the whole country. So did the whole world. The unthinkable had happened, and nothing would ever be the same.

And a day will come- no one knows the day or the hour- where something even more unthinkable than a presidential assassination or a sneak attack on an American naval base or airliners being flown by terrorists into the Pentagon and both towers of the World Trade Center will happen. Nothing will ever be the same- and the change will be far more profound than the era of fear and chaos and tumult that began the day JFK was shot. There was a day when the whole Western world lived in constant expectation of that day. But no longer.

A few years ago I was in Chicago for a presentation by Dr. Stephen Hawking. In the course of the evening, a student asked the great physicist what the chances were of the earth being sucked into a black hole some day. He answered that they were 100%, if the sun didn't go nova and destroy it first. We are all, it seems, swirling down the galactic drain, spiraling closer and closer to the massive black hole at the center of our galaxy. But Dr. Hawking advised the student not to lose any sleep over it. After all, he said, we'll all be long dead by that time.

That might be a fitting slogan for our culture today: "We'll all be long dead by that time." We accept that the world will end some day. But that day is something we push into the distant future- so distant that we won't have to worry about it. We chuckled when people told us about the disasters which would supposedly befall our computer-driven world when Y2K came. We chuckle now at those who predict the world's end on the basis of the Mayan calendar, which starts in ancient times and ends with that year. And we're not a bit surprised when the slightly annoyed Mayans point out that while 2012 will, in their tradition, mark the end of an era, they have plenty of other ancient calendars which go on for hundreds of years after that.

The end will come "like a thief in the night," Paul says in our second lesson. Whenever Howard Camping or some Pentecostal prophesy monger predicts the Second Coming for a specific time, we certainly can take some sort of comfort in the fact that they're wrong. Jesus tells us that "no one knows the day or the hour."

"Dies iræ! dies illa/Solvet sæclum in favilla" "Day of wrath, that dreadful day/When all the world will melt away." So goes the Thirteenth Century hymn which was a part of the Tridentine Requiem Mass, which was used for every Catholic funeral right up until Vatican II. But the Fathers of Vatican II decided that it somehow didn't fit into the spirit of the modern age. They were right. Today we think of the end of the world as coming when our planet goes down the galactic drain, or the sun goes kabloey, all in the distant future. Or perhaps we worry about the planet turning inhospitable to life because of global warming. When I was in seminary, and nuclear war was the fashionable horror, the frozen mass extinction of nuclear winter was much discussed. At least that had some prospect of happening in our own lifetimes!

But the prophets of climate change tell us that we can stop the disaster by taking action, and that the way to prepare is to lower or carbon signature or refrain from dropping fusion bombs on each other. The idea of an end not only which might occur in our lifetimes, but over which we have no control, and which could possibly be followed by even worse events, is a notion comparatively few of us moderns take seriously. Even Christians seldom give a second thought to the very real possibility that the sun might not rise tomorrow morning- or set tonight- or that the pastor may never get to the end of his sermon, not because he's long-winded, but because the Lord might come first.

But all of us will die. Jack Kennedy died. A couple of weeks ago, when Barry from my former congregation visited, he told me that a young man whose youngest child I had baptized when I was at St. Andrews had died of cancer. Accidents happen. Aneurysms pop. Heart attacks and strokes take the lives of people far younger than Jeff. None of us are guaranteed the rest of the day. And a car could drive through that door and take several of us out before this sermon is over even if the Lord doesn't come first. It was not for nothing that the hymn Dies Irae was not sung only on the last Sunday of the church year, but as a standard part of the funeral Mass!

Whether we are among those here on earth when the Lord returns, or whether we are called from this life to face our judgment, no one knows the day or the hour.

Jesus once observed that if the householder had known the hour when the thief would come, he would not have let his house be broken into. But we don't know. And there are no guarantees. As a native Chicagoan, one other day I'll always remember is the day when I was in my twenties on which Richard J. Daley- the only mayor I had ever known, and one of the most powerful political leaders our nation has ever seen- dropped dead of a heart attack in the reception room of his doctor's office, on his way out the door after having had a thorough physical and having received a clean bill of health.

True, Jesus gave us- tongue in cheek, I personally believe- a set of warning signs that the end is near. They are signs which could have applied to literally any moment before or since, and people have been convincing themselves that the end was imminent ever since by taking note of how closely they were being fulfilled. I do not believe that to be an accident. I believe that Jesus intended that His disciples of all the ages, when they beheld an eclipse, remember that changes in the sun and the moon are a sign of the impending judgment, and that the same goes for famines and earthquakes, and wars, and rumors of wars.

The message, I believe, was simply this: be ready, because you won't get any more warning than these signs. And since the householder doesn't know the hour when the thief will come, and no one knows the day or the hour of his own death, much less that of the the Final Judgment, there can be no question of delaying our preparation until the proper warning signs appear.

The only way to be sure of being ready is to be ready now.

And how does one prepare for something as cataclysmic as the end of earthly life, whether for ourselves personally or for every living creature? Paul tells us.

One remembers who she is.. One remembers that he bears upon his brow the mark of the Crucified, traced there at his baptism. One bears in mind that the baptized are called to be sons and daughters of light, and not of darkness. One remembers that it is to faith, and not to cynicism, that we are called as children of the Kingdom; to love, and not to hate- and still less to indifference. One recalls that there are eternal stakes here, and ramifications to our every word and act which may well echo in eternity, or others if not for ourselves.

And those things being the case, one lives one's life in sober expectation that today might be that "day of wrath" of which the old Latin hymn speaks, and that we are appointed by our baptism to be found when the Lord returns- or when we are summoned to Him- not among those who have forgotten that He is coming, or who never expected Him in the first place, but rather among those who are waiting, our lamps trimmed and burning and full of oil.

I'm tempted to say that this is a sad thing, but it's not. It's tragic. It's tragic beyond words. There is nothing nearly as tragic in all the world, and there has been nothing nearly as tragic in all of history. But when the Bridegroom comes, most will be found asleep. Most people will not be waiting. Many who had lived their lives in expectation of the wedding feast will find themselves shut out. In the parable, there are five foolish virgins, and five wise ones. In reality, the foolish will always outnumber the wise. The way to destruction is broad, and the path to salvation is narrow. Jesus warns that there are few who find it.

There is nothing more important than to be among that few, and to have oil in our lamps when the Bridegroom comes. And that oil is faith.

One gets it in the Word. One receives it in the Sacraments. One hears the Word of the Law, summoning us who have been redeemed by the One Who first loved us to reflect our love to Him in our lives. One uses Holy Baptism, daily putting the Old Self to death so that the New Self may arise. One has his faith and confidence strengthened by the words of Holy Absolution, spoken by the pastor's lips but coming from Christ Himself. One eats the body and drinks the blood of the Savior, given and shed that her sins be forgiven, so that He might live in her and so that she might live in Him.

One journeys down the pathway of this life in the company of one's fellow redeemed, sustained and upheld by their encouragement and example. These are the places one goes to fill one's lamp, and the more faithfully we make use of them, the surer we will be that our flames will never go out, and that when the Bridegroom comes, He will find us awake and waiting, fit guests for the wedding feast that has no end.

We neglect them at our eternal peril. But we use them knowing that the confidence in the righteousness of Jesus that is ours by faith- the only righteousness which will avail before the throne of the Great Judge- is to be found there, and that no one who seeks what He offers there in sincerity and trust will ever be turned away- or ever have cause to fear the "Day of wrath, that dreadful day/When all the world will melt away."

May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

.

Climatologists begin to notice the globe's stubborn refusal to warm

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:58:39 PST

Der Spiegel- Germany's Newsweek- has noticed what some have been pointing out for quite a while now: that the globe hasn't been warming for the past decade or so.

But the climatologists it interviewed are confident that it will get the memo soon.

The possibility that solar activity (mentioned by the article as a possible contributing cause) may in fact be the primary cause of global warming, rather than the relatively small percentage of the greenhouse gasses which enter the atmosphere every year for which human beings are in any way responsible, is still apparently not getting much of a hearing in the circles which consider Al Gore to be a prophet.

HT: Drudge

The Hawks roll on

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:15:13 PST

The Blackhawks won their fifth in a row with a convincing 7-1 thrashing of a good Calgary Flames club tonight at the Saddledome. Two goals for Kris Versteeg.

Another victory for Cristobel Huet:

W-L-OTL 9-4-1
SV% .902
GAA 2.25
SO 1

Not too shabby. If, as conventional wisdom has it, the Hawks will go as far this year as their goaltending takes them, and if Huet and backup Antti Niemi continue to play as well as they have, they should go far.

Another disappointment?

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:32:40 PST

The Cubs want to host the 2014 All-Star Game in honor of Wrigley Field's centennial.

Personally, though, I think Rio will get it.

As much as I hate to admit it....

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:49:18 PST

...the Red Wings got hosed on this one.

Seven in a row

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Waters) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:36:10 PST

With their 4-3 overtime victory over the Pacific Division-leading San Jose Sharks at the United Center tonight, the Blackhawks have now won seven home games in a row. They had not done this since 2002.

The Hawks continue to lead the NHL Central by three points over the Red Wings.