An Excuse, or No Excuses

I apologize for the lack of posting this past week. I really did intend to, in fact I'd put off posting I was reasonably confident I could post regularly.  Look how that turned out.  This past week was spent in a leisurely journey from my homeland of Wisconsin back to my place of sojourn here at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  It was a lovely trip, during which I visited the Soprano in the Real World, A Round Unvarnish'd Tale, the Rebellious Pastor's Wife, the Elephant's Child, Excuses Excuses, Wit & Whim, Indiana Jane, the Scruffy Rube, and many other dear friends from high school, college, and beyond.  I attended the service of the installation of Reverend Matthew Harrison as my church body's president, and was blessed to hear the sermon delivered by Archbishop Walter Obare of the Lutheran Church of Kenya.  Does my personal life eerily mirror my blog following? Yeah, kinda.  Am I a ridiculous theology geek? Um, yupp.  No excuses.

Good Friday: Love Unknown

Ecce Homo ("Behold, the man"), by Antoni Ciseri 1821-91

My song is love unknown,
My Savior’s love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I, that for my sake
My Lord should take frail flesh and die?

He came from His blest throne
Salvation to bestow;
But men made strange, and none
The longed for Christ would know:
But O! my Friend, my Friend indeed,
Who at my need His life did spend.

Sometimes they strew His way,
And His sweet praises sing;
Resounding all the day
Hosannas to their King:
Then “Crucify!” is all their breath,
And for His death they thirst and cry.

Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
He gave the blind their sight,
Sweet injuries! Yet they at these
Themselves displease, and ’gainst Him rise.

They rise and needs will have
My dear Lord made away;
A murderer they saved,
The Prince of life they slay,
Yet cheerful He to suffering goes,
That He His foes from thence might free.

In life, no house, no home
My Lord on earth might have;
In death no friendly tomb
But what a stranger gave.
What may I say? Heav’n was His home;
But mine the tomb wherein He lay.

Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King!
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend, in Whose sweet praise
I all my days could gladly spend.

--Samuel Crossman, 1664

Ash Wednesday

The line I'd like share tonight isn't even properly a Lenten hymn, tho' the "Evening" section of the hymnal does seem ever more appropriate in this season:

Teach me to live that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed.
Teach me to die that so I may
Rise glorious at the awesome day.
--Thomas Ken, c. 1674

I really am a Dark Lutheran. There's no denying it.

Hope and Struggle

I just had a bit of a Eureka moment reading Susan's Pendulum reflecting on Romans 8:23-24 :

23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? (ESV).

As Susan points out, we will never escape from sin in this life; that's the whole point of this passage. We wait eagerly for that day, we hope for it, because we have not seen it. The Christian life is a daily struggle against the sinful nature, and it is a struggle we daily lose. The frustration that comes of this daily Fall, however, should not lead to despair (and this is what so struck me), for the blessed life free of the burdens of sin is precisely that which we eagerly await, for which we hope but cannot see. Too many voices in our lives tell us that we can achieve this blessedness on Earth, if only we were good enough, faithful enough, self-controlled enough. But there's no chicken-and-egg issue here, these virtues are fruits, not prerequisites. We will never earn them for ourselves, nor can we by willfully practicing them avoid facing the consequences of sin in our lives. Instead, we groan inwardly, we wait eagerly. In short, we hope.

Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

I just finished reading Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. It's a very good book, and its popularity gives me faith in the American book-reading public. I know he made his name with The Kite Runner, and they already made a movie and all, but this book is better. Hosseini's storytelling talent and incredibly, almost painfully honest portrayals of the guts and grit of human relationships, which made The Kite Runner so rightfully popular, are here refined even further. So, too, is the pain and torment, the heartbreak, the devastation of a whole country told through so many devastations of individual lives.

There was a particular point that caught me, though, in the midst of all the terror and destruction wrought by the waves of utopian revolutionaries, Soviet "liberators", counterrevolutionaries, and holy warriors of all stripes whose various crusades all but destroyed Afghanistan. At one point in the novel, a character is standing trial before a Taliban judge, who explains in the sentencing that while the circumstances of the crime tempted him to mercy, he was himself nearing death, and feared that he would be held to account for his failure to uphold God's law. He imagines God standing judgement upon him saying, "But it was not for you to forgive, Mullah". Probably the second-most common Muslim epithet for God is al-Rahman, the merciful. Every letter, every document, every memo in the devout Muslim world is headed by the phrase bismallah al-rahman wal-rahim. In the name of God, the Merciful, the Benificient. Islam hangs all hope of salvation on this, the mercy of God. Does God really then hold a monopoly on mercy?

This point struck me so because it is the complete reversal of a Christian understanding. My God is indeed not merciful, not in the sense of a pitying judge who pardons the truly guilty, for He is just, and justice demands payment for sin. This payment has been made. Our sins are not pardoned out of mercy, they are absolved by Christ's redeeming sacrifice. All of which allows us to leave divine judgement where it belongs, in God's hands. A judge, no matter his personal faith, does God's work when he rules wisely according to the law of the land. We ought not be so bound by the Law that we fear damnation for encroaching on God's mercy, for stepping on His toes.

My Grandfather's Church

I've refrained from commenting until now on this topic, when so many better-informed commenters are writing on it, but I couldn't keep from adding my own thoughts. Those of my readers who aren't confessional Lutherans are probably (blissfully) unaware of the current sturm und drang within the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, the church I was raised in and have embraced as an adult. The current round of controversy was set off by the summary cancellation by the Synod -- during Holy Week -- of a popular and theologically-conservative radio show which had at times been critical of the sort of "seeker-sensitive", "purpose-driven", and quite frankly Oprah-fied programs and congregations that are so beloved of the Synod's aggressively modernizing current leadership. The Synodical leadership's responses to the grassroots outcry have only solidified the impression among many that there is a concerted effort among the top leadership to change the face of the LC-MS forever. Indeed, the current president is quite fond of saying, "this is not your grandfather's church."

Why are you so intent on taking my grandfather's church from me, President Kieschnick? I like my grandfather's church, for a host of reasons, but one of which is that it is my grandfather's church. If I didn't like it, after all, there are a great many churches out there that aren't my grandfather's church; namely, every other church in the country. Where will I go, when my grandfather's church has been "improved" into something he wouldn't even recognize?

Thoughts on Augsburg

Sunday night, in quiet lonesome celebration of the Reformation, I read through the text of the Augsburg Confession. I realized, while I was reflecting on my Lutheranism, that I had never read the most accessible of its founding documents. Reflecting on it, what a phenomenal document, indeed! I could certainly spend a great deal of time reflecting on each article in turn, but I guess I'll just comment briefly on the remarkable prescience of the reformers. In Article XXIII: On Priestly Marriage, the Confession has this to say:

Many God-fearing and intelligent people in high station are known frequently to have expressed misgivings that such enforced celibacy and depriving men of marriage (which God Himself has instituted and left free to men) has never produced any good results, but has brought on many great and evil vices and much iniquity. [...] And it is to be expected that the churches shall at some time lack pastors if marriage is any longer forbidden.

This was written in 1530, mind you, just shy of 500 years ago. Granted, the Roman Catholic church has held off these twin threats for a shockingly long time, but both the fallout of "evil vices and iniquity" and a looming lack of priests are now dangerously threatening the future of the Catholic church in the West.

The other place where the reformer's vision struck me as particularly farsighted is in Article XXVIII: Of Ecclesiastical Power. I'd hate to be reading too much into this, but I don't think I'm the only one who has a hard time reading this sort of thing without making connection to the principles that underly the proper separation of church and state:

Since the power of the Church grants eternal things, and is exercised only by the ministry of the Word, it does not interfere with civil government; [...] For civil government deals with other things than does the Gospel. The civil rulers defend not minds, but bodies and bodily things. [...] Therefore the power of the Church and the civil power must not be confounded. The power of the Church has its own commission to teach the Gospel and to administer the Sacraments. Let it not beak into the office of another; let it not transfer the kingdoms of this world; let it not abrogate the laws of civil rulers; let it not abolish lawful obedience; let it not interfere with judgments concerning civil ordinances or contracts; let it not prescribe laws to civil rulers concerning the form of the Commonwealth.

It is telling, then, to notice that the reformers seemed adamant to keep the Church out of affairs of state for the Church's sake. So much debate on the 'original' purpose of the Founding Fathers in separating Church and State in America comes down to back-and-forth about who needs protecting from whom, as if the one could only be corrupted by malicious forces from the other. The reformers here demand the separation of the "power of the Church and the power of the sword" and condemn church interference in state not out of secularist outrage, but rather recognizing that wielding power in temporal things weakens the Church in regard to the "eternal things".

I realize I could go on all night about this document, teasing out the implications of each article as I see them. I don't, however, have the time or energy to do that; nor do you have the time and energy (or interest) to read it all.

Mind Your Doors, Papists! It's Reformation Day!

Happy Reformation Sunday, friends.

Today is a good day I think to reflect a bit on my Lutheran journey. It's certainly been eventful in the last few years. I was raised in the LCMS, and from Confirmation on have been committed to Lutheran theology, as well as I understood it at that point, anyway. The liturgy and practice of the church, however, were not something that particularly compelled me in my ignorant youth. In college, I experienced the beauty and comfort of Lutheran worship perfectly performed, yet the vapidity of sermons crafted to appeal to the broadest swath of idealistic and theologically-muddled youths kept me from ever feeling fed in chapel. As a result, I ended up attending the churches frequented by other members of the (generally excellent) Bible studies I attended during the week. While one of those churches lost me early when I found out I was hell-bound due to my infant baptism, through college I generally split my time between an American Baptist church and another from the Evangelical Free nebula. Both were solidly based in the Word, but I got the Word in Bible study as well, or for that matter, whenever I felt like opening my Bible. I couldn't put into these words at that time, but I know now that I was missing the Confession and Absolution, and the Sacrament more than anything. My time in college, then, was a split between learning about Lutheranism academically in class and chapel, and learning how much I yearned for it in those other churches.

I've known what my faith meant to me for a long time; better, I've continually been in the process of learning what my faith means to me. It wasn't until I joined the Army, though, that I've really begun to learn what my theology means to me, and been struck by how much Lutherans really are set apart. With the Army so heavily drawn from the deep South, Lutherans are rather poorly represented. In the Midwest, even the Evangelicals know what Lutheranism is and who Lutherans are. For many of my colleagues, though, the only committed believers they've ever met are Evangelicals or Mormons, and their expectations are based on that. It's been very eye-opening to me, then, to be such the odd-man-out, theologically. I'm starting to get better at explaining my beliefs, but more than anything it's made me realize how much more I ought to know about my faith and my theology. So, in celebration of this Reformation Sunday, I think I'll be staying in and reading the Augsburg Confession. It's a start, anyway.

For further Reformation Day reading, see this excellent commentary on praise music from Pagans and Lutherans, and an apology (in the original sense) of the liturgy from The Rebellious Pastor's Wife.