Church news: ELCA lost 500,000 members in first two years after accepting ordination of homosexuals

The ELCA voted in 2009 to begin ordaining noncelibate homosexuals.  The statistics reported by the ELCA indicate that during the next two years they lost 500,000 members.  At the same time the ELCA continues undaunted on this path as it just ordained its first homosexual bishop.

Sermon for First Sunday after Trinity

Trinity 1

                                                                                                Gen 15:1-6

                                                                                                6/2/13

            During the course of catechesis a basic truth has been drilled in our confirmands with the subtlety of a jack hammer.  They have heard it again, and again and again.  And as a result I am confident that it is something they will continue to remember during the coming years. 

            This truth is the basic distinction between Law and Gospel.  Again and again they have heard that the Law is what we must do and the Gospel is what God has done for us in Christ.  This basic distinction is of course a central insight into Scripture of the Lutheran Church and the Reformation.  It is also the basic truth that separates Christianity from every other religion in the world. 

Every other religion in the world is a religion of the Law.  They are all based on what human beings must do in order to achieve salvation with the god or gods.  Even Buddhism in which there is no god works in this way, because it calls upon each person to achieve the understanding that this is existence is nothingness.  Only in the Gospel of Christianity do we find that salvation is based solely on what God has done.  Only in Christianity is it a gift that cannot be earned.

            The catechumens have learned that the Gospel stands at the center of all that we believe. They have learned that the Gospel runs the show in the Lutheran Church.  And that brings us to an irony of the catechesis they have just finished.  You see, something that has been about teaching the centrality of the Gospel sure has involved many things they had to do. For something about the Gospel, it sure has involved a great deal of law. 

The confirmands had to come to catechesis and Learn by Heart for nine months, two years in a row. They had to learn by heart texts from Scripture and the Small Catechism and be able to say them in class.  They had to read the catechesis material and prepare for class by answering questions.  They had to pass quizzes.  Finally last week they had to go through their pastoral examination.  All of this is necessary because we are still fallen people with the old Adam in us.  And so catechesis is much like the seminary, which one of my professors once quipped is “an institution of the Law in the service of the Gospel.”

There has been much that the confirmands have had to do during catechesis as they learned about the Gospel.  Yet here on Confirmation Sunday, we have a text that once again emphasizes that the Gospel is not about our doing.  Instead, it is about what God does.  It is about the gift that God gives to us in Christ.

Our text finds Abram in the land of Canaan – the land that will eventually become Israel.  Originally Abram (whose name God would later change to Abraham) had set out with his father Terah as they made their way from Ur in modern day Iraq towards Canaan.  For some reason, they never made it to Canaan, and instead they settled in Haran in what is today southeastern Turkey.

Abram was in Haran, when God called him.  God said, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”  Abram believed and obeyed God’s word.  He set out for his original destination, Canaan. When he arrived there Yahweh appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” God promised to give the land of Canaan to Abram’s offspring, and then a little later God promised, “I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.”

Yahweh made a threefold promise to Abram. He promised to make Abram into a great nation – to give him numerous offspring.  He promised to give the land of Canaan to Abram’s offspring.  And he promised that in Abram’s offspring all nations of the earth would be blessed.

This all sounded great.  There was, however, one small problem: Abram and his wife Sarai were aged and had no children.  They were far beyond the point in life when they could ever hope to have children.  It did not appear that there was any way that what God said could be true.  And beyond this, Abram had just had an experience that reminded him of how dangerous his world could be.  His nephew Lot had been taken captive by one of the local kings in the area and Abram had to lead an armed rescue mission in order to free Lot and his household.

There was reason to fear about the future.  There was reason to fear about the present. After these things happened the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision saying; “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”

However, in response Abram pointed out the problem when he said, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?  Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” Abram had no child of his own, and so someone who was part of his broader household was going to be the heir – not Abram’s own offspring as God had promised.

 And then God responded: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” He brought Abram outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.  So shall your offspring be.” Then we are told that Abram “believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”  Abram trusted God’s promise and because of this trust – this faith – God considered Abram to be righteous.  God considered Abram to have a right standing before him.

God had made promises to Abraham – great and wonderful promises. He had promised him numerous descendants like the dust of the earth and the stars of the heavens.  He had promised to give the land of Canaan to his descendants. And he had promised that in his offspring all nations of the earth would be blessed.

Now the thing that tied all of these promises together was the fact that Abraham could not do anything to make them happen.  They were all promises about what God would do.  They were all promises that only God could make happen.  Abraham had only two choices.  Either he could believe and trust in God’s promises or he could choose not to believe them. Either he could wait in faith to receive these blessings or he could live in fear.

As our confirmands have learned, God’s promises to Abraham were fulfilled in the nation of Israel and the One who descended from Abraham, Israel, and King David. They were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He is the One in whom all nations of the earth are blessed because he died on the cross and rose from the dead in order to fulfill God’s first Gospel promise – his promise after the Fall to Adam and Eve that a descendent of Eve would defeat the devil.

He is the One who did it and there is nothing we can do.  All that we can “do” is to receive the forgiveness and salvation through faith in Christ.  In fact the apostle Paul wants us to know that faith is the opposite of doing.  Paul wrote in Romans, “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.’ Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” Faith is, as we said in catechesis, the open hand that simply receives what God gives.

Now, it’s not as if Abraham was perfect.  It’s not as if he was always faithful and trusted God.  Sometimes he decided to do things in his own way instead of God’s way.  In fact in the very  next chapter, when Abraham and Sarah had been in Canaan for ten years and still had no child, Sarah suggested that Abraha should take her servant Hagar and had a child with her.  Abraham did this and Ishmael was born.  It was an action bin which Abraham and Sarah decided to do things in their own way, and the result was pain and hardship in their family.

There are times when we do this too. We decide to do things in our own way, instead of trusting in God’s way.  We decide to live life in the way we see fit instead of the way that fits God’s ordering of his creation; the way described in the Ten Commandments. 

As I think about this on Confirmation Sunday when I have five young people in front of me who will start high school next year, one of the first areas of life that comes to mind is sex.  One of the single greatest challenges you will face as a Christian young person is the pressure and temptation to use sex in a number of ways outside of marriage.  The world will bombard you with the message that sex is just something to use in any way you want, especially in the pornography that now saturates our culture.  It will tell you that a virgin in high school, or college, or in the years after college is a loser – is someone to be mocked or pitied.

But you have learned that God is the Creator.  He is the One who set things up.  He is One who ordered how things work.  And in his word he tells us how to live according to that ordering; how to live well; how to live in ways that will be a blessing.  You have learned from God’s word that it is only in the one flesh union of husband and wife that sex can be the blessing that God intends and not a source of sorrow.

Like Abraham we fail to trust in God’s way.  Yet during his life the foundation, the center to which Abraham always returned was faith in God’s promise.  And like Abraham we do this too.  We repent.  We confess our sin and we return in faith to the forgiveness found in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In the face of our sin; in the face of the various challenges we continue to turn in faith to Jesus, because in him we have victory over sin, death and the devil.  Paul went on to say about Abraham: “In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was ‘counted to him as righteousness.’”

This is our faith too. We believe that because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we are forgiven and will be raised up on the Last Day.  We listen to our text today and hear that Abraham believed God’s promise and it was counted to him as righteousness.  Yet when we hear these words, we recognize that they aren’t only about Abraham.  Instead, as Paul tells us, “But the words ‘it was counted to him’ were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” This is our faith. This is the faith that our confirmands confess today.  And this is the faith in which we will share in Christ’s resurrection on the Last Day when we appear before the judgment seat and hear him declare the we are justified – counted as righteous before God.

           

 

      

    

Culture news: NYC app shows teens where to get abortion or talk about homosexuality

If you are a teen in New York City who wants to find out about where to have an abortion near you, or wants to talk about homosexuality, there is a tax payer funded app for that.   This is not in any way surprising, but it does provide a sad commentary on the lengths to which liberal culture will go in order to facilitate its sexual values.

Culture news: Powerful speech delivered at French protest of homosexual marriage

First Things Daily Square has posted the speech delivered by Ludovine de la Rochère, the president of La Manif Pour Tous, the movement opposed to France’s recently passed homosexual marriage law. This speech was delivered at a mass rally on May 26, 2013—France’s Mother’s Day—before hundreds of thousands of supporters.  It is fascinating to read because the movement in opposition to homosexual marriage includes homosexual leaders. The whole speech is worth reading, as indicated by this brief excerpt:


"We are neither a political movement, nor a faith-based movement, nor a coalition of hateful homophobes. Our adversaries have tried everything to paint us in such a way. But they have failed, because one cannot deny that our cause is open to all who worry about the rights and well-being of children. We are people who are but mindful of the interest, the balance, and the happiness of the family. 

We are here, all so numerous, because our fundamental and universal values unite us. 

The truth is that we do not have the same notion of equality as our opponents do. Our belief, held by most of the country, rests first on the equality of children, equality before the right to have a father and mother, that is to say, an origin and real heritage, rather than a false heritage. Based on that we have come together as atheists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, right, left, straight, gay. For all, the truth that we owe to the child is sacred. We do not want children’s lives to be woven around lies, nor do we want gender studies ideology to triumph."

Life news: Cultural attitudes don't change the facts about fertility

Our culture tells women that they should put off having children and "schedule" it for after other career and life goals have been achieved.  But these cultural attitudes don't change the biological factors which make it more difficult for women to have children as they get older.  There is also evidence that abortions increase the chance of miscarriages later in life.  These are inconvenient truths that our culture would prefer not to acknowledge.  

Mark's thoughts: Dismissing pastors, CRM and congregational polity

As the 2013 convention of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod approaches, there have been a number of posts on the internet regarding the problem of pastors who find themselves on CRM status.  Pastor Philip Hoppe has written an excellent piece about this entitled The Reality of Dismissed yet not Defrocked Pastors. He is honest in acknowledging that not every pastor on CRM should be in the parish as a pastor.  In other cases (more often the case in my own observations of events), the individual is a very good pastor who has been the victim of our synod's refusal to confront sin and practice what we claim to confess about the Office of the Holy Ministry.  

Pastor Hoppe succinctly and accurately summarizes the problem about CRM when he writes: 

 "We cannot dismiss a pastor 'lovingly' to seek another call when such a call will never come.  We must ask and determine the answer to this question, 'Is the man fit for the office or not?'  If so, he is not dismissed.  Issues are worked through.  Sin is confessed and absolved.  But the man called remains.  If not, he is removed from the clergy roster.  He is rendered aid in moving on to another suitable vocation.

 In this way we deal honestly and faithfully with the pastor.  He knows exactly where he stands and what the Church has deemed him fit to do in the Kingdom.  It deals with any sin he needs to confess.  It makes us able to help in his areas of weakness.

 Secondly, it is also the faithful way to deal with the congregation involved and its members.  We so often let congregations chew up pastor after pastor because sin and false understandings are never ultimately addressed.  We often never speak truth to them because we fear that they will react in a way that effects us, the district, or the synod in a negative way.  In this way, congregations spiritual dysfunction become habitual throughout the generations.  And this is not only bad for future pastors but it is also dangerous for the spiritual life of those persisting in unrepentant sin."

 As he suggests in his post, I pray that the convention can devise ways for men on CRM status to receive calls.  He is absolutely correct in his post about the way things should work.  Yet in the second paragraph of the quote above we see the reason why it is unlikely that it ever will.  The reason is that we have a congregational polity.  As I wrote in my post Brother Pastor, I've Got Your Back:

"Awhile back under the previous synodical administration there were a series of conferences about the ministry entitled 'Who’s in charge.'  You had already learned the answer to that question for the LCMS.  The congregation is in charge.  In a congregational polity, they write your pay check and therefore they are in charge.  They are in charge because you learn very quickly that from the district president’s perspective the pastor is expendable.  You can always get another one.  Congregations can’t be replaced.  Therefore the congregation can do almost anything because no one is going to remove it from synod.

And so here’s how it works.  Influential congregation members decide for any number of reasons that they don’t want you as pastor.  The reasons are not legitimate. But that doesn’t matter.  They begin to work in the congregation to stir up criticism and resentment.  They look for any opportunity to take offense at you.  They make life uncomfortable by refusing to give you a raise and by lowering your health care coverage.

If this doesn’t get rid of you fast enough, they start to contact your circuit counselor and district president.  They are still operating in the church and so they couch their accusations in the form of: 'He doesn’t have good people skills.'; “He’s lazy.”; 'He’s too rigid'  The circuit counselor and district president may share the same beliefs as the congregation.  They may not want to be biblical and Lutheran in practice, and so they are only too happy to take its side.  There is talk of 'synodical reconcilers' and the like, but the die has been cast.

Finally, the congregation just declares that after such and such a date, it will no longer pay you.  Perhaps the leaders have met with the district president and out of 'Christian love' they have agreed to give you a six month 'severance package.'  You learn that your divine call means nothing because the congregation writes the checks and the district doesn’t want to lose the congregation."

In our congregational polity, the only true tool that a district president has in dealing with a congregation who acts this way is the “nuclear option” of having the congregation removed from synod.  However, the reality is that this is not something district presidents will do for a number of reasons. Just as a parish pastor wants to gain members and not lose them, they want to gain congregations and not lose them – especially not as a result of their own action.  The very practice of requiring periodic re-election of district presidents provides a powerful disincentive.  Our congregational polity in synod provides only one blunt tool to the most faithful of district presidents as he deals with situations that can be extremely complex – sin has a way of twisting things up (I write this as someone who has such a district president). Faithful districts presidents bear the burden of having responsibility, but little real authority with which to act upon those responsibilities when dealing with congregations.

We need to raise these issues and talk about them, just as Pastor Hoppe has done in his outstanding post; just as I did in my earlier post. At the same time, we also need to understand that living in the land of American individualism, we are what we are as a synod - we are congregationalists at heart and this reality will always trump doctrine we claim to confess.  All too often, it is the idol we place before Christ and his Word. 

Culture news: Report on anti-Christian discrimination in Europe

One does not have to imagine what the future in the United States for Christians may look like if current trends summarized under the heading "tolerance" continue.  Europe provides a very good case study of the impact this has on Christianity.   The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination based in Austria has issued a report describing this. An introduction is provided along with a link to the full text of the report which is also available here.  It is worthwhile reading since it uses real examples to illustrate what discrimination against Christianity in Europe looks like.