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| Counterfeit trying to look legitimate |
The Importance of Being Vested is a provocative blog post from Wisconsin Synod layman and liturgical artist Jonathan Mayer.
It concerns liturgical vestment, not being vested in a church retirement program...
Just a couple morsels:
"Something is not counterfeited unless it has practical value."
"The church's motto 'Real, relevant, and relational,' which apparently means dressing like Larry the Cable Guy to deliver God's Word."
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| Legitimate trying to look counterfeit |
"While it seems that female clergy are almost universally vested, it is becoming more and more common in confessional Lutheran circles for male pastors to go unvested."
ReplyDeleteI suspect such trend would follow immediately and logically from a disordered notion of what the Office of Holy Ministry entails, among those charitably described here as "confessional." Blessed St. Paul strove mightily and jealously to establish his credentials as an Apostle, because it meant something grand and something chosen and ordained by God's own hand, to the sensibilities of the early Christians; but if indeed "everyone's a minister" in these our days, leave it to the "legitimate" ministers to see the man from Tarsus as something of a crazed and aloof fanatic, and insist rather on an absence of distinctions.
To take an entirely different (yet substantially related) tack from Mr. Mayer, I have not seen a called Christian Day School teacher wear a chasuble or a cinctured alb, in the normal course of his or her "functional" duties. So given the theories of ministerial equivalence within certain "conservative" Lutheran circles, it is not at all surprising for their "legitimate" ministers to shed the august look of the risen Alpha and Omega (Rev 1:13-16) ... whom they presumably represent as iconic stewards and ambassadors ... for the unassuming and unthreatening posture of Hee Haw's denimed Junior Samples; this, so as to be inoffensively one with the masses. Or at least inoffensively one, with the teachers.
After all, Junior's about as get-down real and comfortable as one can get; while the Christ (who Luther says calls forth fear, as well as love, from us) is "unseen," as testified straight from the mouth of the "confessional" WELS' version of the Nicene Creed.
Which word "unseen," I suppose, could mean that He's invisible. Or alternatively, it could mean that He's actively (and successfully) hiding His face from us.
If so, it's hard to blame Him.
Maybe He just doesn't like being reminded of Hee Haw.
Your (unworthy) servant,
Herr Doktor SSP
All your guests try to remember each gift everyone received, including food and stockings. become ordained online Gifts opened before Christmas Day do not have to be included in the game.
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