"Memento, homo...

... that you are dust, and you look fabulous!"

Here is a new rubric for Ash Wednesday.

It seems that they are missing the entire point of the ashes.  

The Big Easy Passion

By Larry Beane

On March 20, a major TV network aired a live two-hour musical special from the City of New Orleans, a sort-of pop-opera. The topic of this program was neither football, nor zombies, nor the Kardashians, nor homosexuality, nor the evils of Christianity, nor an advocacy of left-wing politics.  It was rather The Passion of Jesus - presented on Palm Sunday, the Sunday of the Passion.

As surprising as this was, like many people, I was not optimistic that the program would be faithful to the biblical narrative.  I fully expected a deliberately black, gay, or female Jesus – in line with the tenets of political correctness.  At very least, I expected Political Jesus, a Che Guevara figure – but only without the cigar.

Smoking cigars breaks the rules of network decency.

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to hear a faithful artistic representation of the narrative of Jesus from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday.  This Jesus was not politically correct (he was even white, as was His mother), nor was He politically incorrect (there were no “Make America Great” hats or NRA t-shirts).

Some critics made fun of Jesus’s “look” – being portrayed as a thirtysomething man of today wearing youthful clothes and sporting the haircut of a young guy.  We fiftysomethings would indeed look ridiculous wearing the fashions of a man in his thirties.  But after all, Jesus was not a baby-boomer or Gen-Xer.  His passion, death, and resurrection – the scope of the narrative – took place when He was in His thirties.

Some seemed shocked at the anachronistic nature of the portrayal of Jesus in “skinny jeans” and singing pop songs from the 21st century.  I do find this reaction odd, given that passion plays have taken place for centuries, and Bibles from the days of the Reformation often included woodcuts depicting biblical scenes populated by German peasants in medieval castles wearing 16th century attire.  Moreover, art often engages in license for the sake of communicating the truths of Christianity, such as the intentional unrealism of icons and the use of halos in Christian painting and sculpture.

Still others seemed amused at the lackluster ratings of the program.  Fair enough.  But 25,000 New Orleanians gathered at Woldenberg Park, and thousands of people around the country watched live on TV – again, not a basketball game or a Dr. Seuss musical, not a show of explicit sexuality, nor a celebration of the ugly – but rather a depiction of the passion narrative of Jesus.  To focus on the ratings calls to mind the technique of a prominent Lutheran with whom I was debating a point of theology.  He replied by pulling the statistics on my congregation and using the decline in our numbers to somehow bolster his argument.  It is a manifestation of the Theology of Glory, an implication that bigger is better, and that flagging numbers equates with something being wrong.  Whether one liked the program or not, one would think that Christians living in these dark times would be pulling for the program to be watched by many, rather than smugly applauding that its ratings were not all that great.

One critic complained of Hollywood’s “cynicism machine,” while we confessional Christians – (especially confessional Lutherans) are not without cynicism.  In fact, we confessional Lutherans have three main liturgical gestures: the sign of the cross (done at the mention of the Trinity and as a remembrance of baptism), genuflection (done when receiving Holy Communion and in confessing the incarnation in the Creed), and eye-rolling (done when we encounter non-Lutheran Christians and their piety).  The overall reaction of my confessional Lutheran brethren was a case in point.  Many boasted that they watched only a few minutes and then got on with the more important work of mind-numbing mainstream TV shows and ultimately meaningless basketball games.  Some of the commentary was oh-so-smug-and-superior – nearly calling to mind the reaction of Caiaphas in Jesus Christ Superstar as the disciples of Jesus were singing “Hosanna!”  Yes, indeed, “Thank you, Lord, for not making me like that Roman Catholic or that Protestant!” could well find its way into our prayer books along with the rubric: Here all may roll the eyes. Lutheranal correctness is our very own provincial form of PC.

And while I’m out of the loop on pop music (I did not know most of the songs), I think the musical selections were outstanding.  The frequent pans to the audience – which was diverse in age and ethnicity – revealed that overall they knew the words.  This was not a heavy-metal or country or rap production. Rather the songs – characterized as “elevator music” by one critic – were recent standards of pop culture and transcended the typical demographic boundaries.  Moreover, in using secular music, the often-sappy and shallow contemporary Christian music genre – with its embedded Pietism and bad theology – was avoided.  Secular music contains elements of the human fallen condition: pain, angst, loneliness, betrayal, grief, and death. It also contains themes that, while not explicitly Christian, reflect the Gospel: themes such as forgiveness, redemption, sacrifice, and unconditional love.

One critic lamented that the production could have used Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.  Confessional Lutherans would have preferred Bach chorales, Gerhardt hymns, ancient Gregorian chant, and organ fugues.  One critic actually suggested O Sacred Head Now Wounded.  I would have loved it, but again, how would those suggestions have been received by thousands of non-Lutheran people in 21st century New Orleans?  In matters of pop music, many of my colleagues (mostly middle-aged white guys from the Midwest) lamented that “our” music wasn’t used.  Again, as much as I might have enjoyed Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden singing a Bach chorale in the original German with a guitar solo for good measure – that might not have drawn 25,000 people and a nationwide TV audience (tepid as the response was).  And how is our beloved Missouri Synod doing when it comes to putting Christ in the public square?  How are the ratings for the equivalent LCMS efforts in this arena?

Other criticism was aimed at the emotional response of the people in the crowd.  Yes, hands raised in the air is not part of our piety.  I would not have behaved that way if I were present. But in this day and age, maybe a little tolerance wouldn’t be such a bad idea.  Our grandchildren may be surrounded not by Christians raising their hands in praise of Jesus, but rather by Muslims kneeling on a rug in preparation to behead Christians of all denominations.  Moreover, this was not a divine service, but rather street theater.  It was not a prayer office; it was a passion play. It seems bizarre to expect non-Lutherans attending an open-air concert to behave like Lutherans in the sanctuary.  As shocking as it may be to my colleagues, I don’t make it a habit to walk the French Quarter in a chasuble.  There is a separation between the holy sanctuary and a public park.

One thing that I thought worked well was Tyler Perry’s use of narration for the crucifixion and the resurrection. One critic complained that there was “no crucifixion.”  Well, it wasn’t depicted visually.  In this day and age of extreme movie violence and explicit zombie attacks, a Mel Gibsonish depiction of the crucifixion would not have worked as well in this context.  Instead, the narrator explained bluntly what happens in a crucifixion.  It was neither sugarcoated nor gratuitous.  One could see that most of the audience was genuinely and raptly listening and intensely reflecting on the words, not unlike the way that we clergy read long accounts of the passion narrative as the Gospel texts on Palm Sunday and Good Friday.  We are not used to listening to a narrative, and it is rather stunning to the modern ears to hear it without a visual prompt of some sort.  That contrast was palpable in the production.

Likewise for the resurrection.  There was no acting out of the resurrection, but rather it was described and explained within the context of its historicity and of the Lord’s victory over death that translates to our own resurrection through the forgiveness of sins won at the cross.

This was unexpectedly good stuff.

Moreover, Tyler Perry clearly referred to Christians as “millions of us” (thus personally confessing the faith) and also to “our personal salvation.”  In a nod to universal objective justification, he said that the “sacrifice is not for Himself but for the salvation of all mankind.”

Another point that was not raised by any eye-rolling critics, Lutheran or otherwise, was the eschatological vision of the cross as summed up by Tyler Perry: “A world without suffering, without death, without end.”

Who could have foreseen such a clear articulation of the Gospel?  Maybe the rubrics don’t call for the eye-roll, but rather the sign of the cross from grateful Lutherans.

There was also a remarkable procession in which a 20-foot illuminated cross was carried through the streets of the city – including through the sleaziest part of Bourbon Street.  Of course, one of the ironies of Bourbon Street is that it is almost entirely populated by tourists.  In other words, it’s not guys from Louisiana enticing girls from Louisiana with beads to try to get them to take off their tops.  Rather, these are typically college kids or conventioneers from Minnesota and Illinois and New York standing on balconies trying to get girls from Indiana and Iowa and South Dakota to disrobe.  Most of us locals avoid Bourbon Street – even as we do love strolling in “The Quarter.”

The program concluded with the resurrected Jesus singing to the crowds from atop the Westin Hotel on Iberville Street.  This is a storied avenue in the history of New Orleans – literally.  Iberville extends from the modern-day Westin at the Mississippi River, pressing north through the French Quarter, intersecting Bourbon Street at its seediest, the remnant and heir of Storyville.  Storyville was the red light district of New Orleans a century ago, where gambling and prostitution were permitted.  Iberville makes its way north of the French Quarter, traversing Basin Street (of the Basin Street Blues fame) and into the Storyville of old. There, Iberville Street boasted of brothels, with names and addresses published in a “Blue Book” – a guide that did not list the prices of cars, but rather the descriptions of the prostitutes.

Our beloved City of New Orleans has survived changes in government, riots, revolutions, military occupations, booms and busts, and hurricanes.  Through it all, we have risen from the ashes to new life.  We are a place of bordellos and churches, of nightclubs and convents. We know the meaning of simul iustus et peccator.  And while it is easy for most of the country to roll the eyes when Hurricane Katrina is mentioned, we still make the sign of the cross here.  We are a people of many cultures and languages, and we are a people with a heritage of traditional Christianity with a common history of bearing the cross. To have the risen Jesus portrayed as singing from the terminus of Iberville Street reflects a remarkable theme of final redemption and renewal and resurrection from sin and death.

The critics seemed to have missed that point.

As a sort-of epilogue to the resurrection, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band played When the Saints Go Marching In.  And rather than being a paean to pampered gazillionaire football players, this song was sung on this Palm Sunday night for its ecclesiastical eschatology.  The genre of jazz originated in New Orleans, as euphemistically-named “professors” played the piano and sang with abandon at the Storyville brothels.  Jazz melded with other musical forms to become rock, R&B, rap, country, and modern pop. There is something fitting in the music of brothels being transformed and renewed to be a vehicle for the narrative of the cross and the resurrection.

Thank you to all of the musicians, actors, and production team for achieving something incredible and remarkable.  And thank you to Tyler Perry for his stunning public confession of Christ, a bold and risky thing to do for someone in the modern entertainment industry.

But I do look forward to that forthcoming production from my eye-rolling brethren that will correct the deficiencies of The Passion and achieve better ratings.  Really, I do.

Here all may roll the eyes.

Restoring the Sacred!

St. John Cantius, Chicago

By Larry Beane

Here is a remarkable 30 minute, exquisitely beautiful video about restoring the sacred in Chicago's St. John Cantius Church.

In a decaying culture that celebrates death, embraces mediocrity, and revels in the perverse and ugly, this is a refreshing and inspiring respite.

Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Again, click here!  You will be inspired.

Ebola

  by Burnell F Eckardt Jr

  in collaboration with the editorial staff

          There’s been plenty of well-founded worry about the Ebola virus these days. As I write this, we’re already tracking the possibilities of its spread through two Dallas nurses who contracted the disease from the Liberian man who came here and has died. One of those nurses took a flight to and from Cleveland, and that plane has been to Florida. Some schools have closed as precautions. Who knows where this can go? By the time you read this it may have been stanched, or it may have become epidemic, official reassurances to the contrary notwithstanding.

            One cannot help but think of the plagues of the Middle Ages to find points of comparison, most especially the Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century in which over a third of all Europeans died. But we can also make a more recent comparison. Having just recently updated the chronicles of St. Paul’s in Kewanee, I happen to be somewhat versed in the ease with which a plague can suddenly sweep across even a nation that has the advantage of knowing more than medieval folk did about how disease is spread.

            In 1918, the Spanish Flu pandemic reached the shores of America, probably through the U.S. Government War Exhibition in Chicago, which opened in September of that year and brought a quarter of a million visitors. Chicago was the nation’s largest rail hub at the time.   As was the case across Illinois, Kewanee’s first announced victims were servicemen who were still away from home, but soon the ravages of the disease were felt by families here and across the nation.  By the end of October, over 40,000 new cases were reported in Chicago in one week alone. In the same month Kewanee noted its first local death of an influenza victim.

            Articles appearing in the Kewanee Star Courier appear to have been written with the aim of quelling people’s fears.  Weekly stories would announce the reported decline of new cases, or of good news on the flu front.  An often-reprinted article entitled “Spanish Influenza—What It Is and How It Should Be Treated,” confidently averred that it is “nothing new . . . simply the old ‘grippe’” of 1889-90, and insisted that there was “no occasion for panic.”  When the war ended in November, the newspaper declared that the city received the news with “unbridled joy.”   At year’s end a half-page artist’s sketch chronicled the year’s mostly significant events, and most of it was devoted to excitement about the war’s drawing to a close, while allowing only a small corner to note that “Uncle Sam got the flu.”

            But obituaries didn’t lie, and since the middle of October there had been a steady stream of reports of new local victims who had died of “the flu and pneumonia.” And since it was customary in those days to print obituaries on the front page of the paper, their daily appearance seemed almost to mock the newspaper’s valiant if pitiful attempts to maintain a bright outlook.

            One of the particularly odious facets of a plague—and this pandemic certainly qualified as a plague—is that spiritual care became difficult to obtain in a time when it was most sorely needed.  The city of Kewanee closed all its public places, and all the local churches had agreed to cooperate.  By the year’s end they had all ceased to conduct services, with the sole exception of the funerals, which of necessity were held away from the church, and at which attendance was kept to an absolute minimum. St. Paul’s closed its doors with an announcement that arrangements could be made with the pastor for private catechetical instruction.   The church stayed closed for thirteen weeks.

Usually the victims of influenza would die within a single week of their contraction of the disease.  Delirium was not uncommon.  People everywhere were getting sick.  The city of Chicago ran out of hearses.  Morgues were stacked to the ceiling with bodies.

The pandemic didn’t actually abate until the late spring and summer of 1919.  Researchers estimate that between 30 and 50 million people died worldwide, with an estimated 675,000 Americans being among the dead.

St. Paul’s was able to open its doors sometime early in 1919, though people were still dying.  In one week alone during that period there were five funerals.  The official church record puts the number of deaths from influenza at 11.  It took until sometime in the year 1920 for the horrendous chapter of the influenza plague to come, thankfully, to an end, and, as was the case in all of mankind’s previous plagues, an awareness began to settle in that it was not yet the end of the world.

So today we are facing the threat of Ebola. We have received word that some of our Liberian brothers have questions about our communion practice and we realize these questions might soon afflict us as well. What of the common cup? What of the reliquae (leftover elements)? Should this disease take on the marks of an actual pandemic among us, we may once again be in need of extraordinary measures, and history can guide us. Under extraordinary circumstances, it might be proper for churches to take extraordinary measures, to quell fears where possible. There will surely be a temptation to attempt a sterile distribution of the Lord's Supper. The pastor should wash his hands thoroughly before the Service, but extra care might be taken and public awareness of this precaution could be raised. Hand-shaking could be forbidden. And certainly, the idea that glass individual cups could be used, perhaps with vodka dampened purificators or other precautions, will be brought up as more sanitary than the chalice.

The editors have considered all these things, and it seems to us all that such precautions are really no guarantee of complete sterility and that our fathers felt that the best course was not to change the mode of distribution but to abstain from public communion services; and we think that if we do face an actual pandemic of plague proportions, this would still be the best and safest course. Pastoral care would have to be handled mostly in a private way and may even require at times, if the communicant is quarantined or some such thing, the use of rubber gloves and a face mask by the celebrant. Unless the pandemic shuts down the power grid and the internet, we will enjoy ways of preaching to and catechizing our people that our fathers did not have. If things do get out of hand, it might become necessary, once again, to close our churches altogether for awhile and rely solely on individualized pastoral care and electronic media.

We do have plenty of reason, however, even from a medical point of view, to be hopeful that no such thing will befall us in these days. It is certainly true that the Lord will provide and that He might well deliver us to Himself through Ebola or some other horrific disease. We trust, without flinching, that if the Lord deliver us to that fate through the Chalice or the Services of the Church that it is His good and gracious will to do so and that the forgiveness of sins that always comes to the faithful through the Lord's Supper will be what we truly need. Indeed, such an end, as all those that God gives, will be a blessing. But we should not shirk our duty to the 5th commandment in all of this or engage in extra-Biblical fantasy that the Lord never delivers crosses through the means of grace. The Lord never hurts or harms His children in any place or time and certainly He never harms them in the Lord's Supper, but the Lord does call His people home and allow them to suffer trials on this side of glory. We do not refuse medical care because the Lord provides and we should not ignore the dangers of plague if it is visited upon us. Again: extraordinary and temporary measures may be necessary. Meanwhile, like many before who have not only been threatened by plagues, but have actually suffered them, we can, and should, pray. For the prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

The Lutheran Church is Massional!

The Rev. Mark Surburg has written a helpful overview of celebrating the sacrament of the altar every Sunday: viewed in light of scripture, tradition, the Lutheran confessions, and contemporary American Lutheran practice.

You can read it here.

Women in Albs, Cinctures, and Stoles Appear to be Clergy

By Larry Beane

Here is yet another example of the witness to the world regarding the Christian doctrine of men and women and the theology of the Office of the Holy Ministry from a congregation of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, especially as evidenced by the caption under the picture in the article: "Pastor Roy Minnix and affiliated Clergy."

"and affiliated Clergy."

Women in albs, cinctures, and stoles appear to be clergy, even all the while, those who allowed, encouraged, or bullied (whatever the case may be) these women to dress in this way might protest with a shocked (shocked!) look on their faces that anybody could possibly be scandalized: "But, but, they're not pastors, but, but, the stole is not worn over the shoulder, but, but, they're deaconesses (or deacons), etc. etc.

Women in albs, cinctures, and stoles appear to be clergy.

And we will hear the following from confessional pastors and deaconesses: "But, but, that's the Atlantic District..."

Women in albs, cinctures, and stoles appear to be clergy.

We'll hear: "But, but, this is nothing new, it has been going on for years..."

Women in albs, cinctures, and stoles appear to be clergy.

We'll hear: "But, but, the alb, cincture and stole are adiaphora..."

Women in albs, cinctures, and stoles appear to be clergy.

We'll hear: "But, but, these women are just lay assistants who don't consecrate the elements..."

Women in albs, cinctures, and stoles appear to be clergy.

We'll hear: "But, but, they're not part of the Concordia Deaconess Conference..."

Women in albs, cinctures, and stoles appear to be clergy.

This is the confession made before the world when these pictures and articles are published, when no-one is reprimanded, when nobody in authority addresses the problem, when excuses are made by pastors and lay people all along the political spectrum, when our polity ensures that pastors and professors who even go so far as to openly advocate for women's "ordination" are protected by their district presidents, and where district presidents seemingly enjoy carte blanche because of our polity.

Is this the confession the pastors and congregations of the LCMS want to be placed before the Church and the world?  Is this how we respect our partner church bodies around the world who have suffered for making the good confession regarding the roles of man and woman in ministry and in the marital union?

Women in albs, cinctures, and stoles appear to be clergy.

Does that even matter any more?  Does anyone in a position of authority in our church body care?  Will they say anything about this?  Will they do anything about this?  Can they do anything about this?  Or is it just business as usual that LCMS women wear albs, cinctures, and stoles, and that women in albs, cinctures, and stoles appear to be clergy?

Is this what the response will be?

White Trash Christianity?

By Larry Beane

Here is an except from a cultural observation showing the state of modern America's dearth of understanding of the Christian faith.  The book is called When Did White Trash Become the New Normal: A Southern Lady Asks the Impertinent Question by Charlotte Hays.

There is some witty writing here, including:

Cultural illiteracy breeds White Trash behavior. If you don’t know who Adam and Eve were, you probably don’t have reasoned arguments as to whether Adam and Steve should get married. Indeed, I’ll go out on a limb and predict a day when a clergyman divorces his wife, comes out of the closet, takes a male lover, and then becomes the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire. Nah, that’s crazy. Things will never get that trashy. Sometimes I amuse myself by trying to picture my grandfather, a plain vanilla Episcopalian if ever there was one, “exchanging the peace.” No can do. But you know what I really can’t imagine? I really can’t imagine him—or any of his contemporaries—sitting in a pew at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine engaging in ritual howling. Back in the day, even Episcopalians had a grip on reality.

I have not read the book.  I have only read the above excerpt.  But I am intrigued by what I have read.

The author examines the relationship between the ignorance of religion and the decaying culture.  I think a more pertinent approach is for us, as Lutherans, to examine the culture's Biblical illiteracy, combined with a culture hostile to "organized religion," exclusive truth claims, and the critique of sin, in light of how we, as pastors and as lay people, preach, teach, and confess the faith.

Our culture is seeing a precipitous decline in not only knowledge about Christianity, but even in a curiosity of the same.  We're finding that our culture has rapidly become a mission field of people who are not merely unbelievers, they have no idea who Jesus of Nazareth is or what He had to do with anything in world history.  They are in large numbers intellectually and culturally adrift, with no sense of history, and no desire to learn.

This is especially an issue for Lutherans, being not only a manifestation of the catholic faith that is based on Holy Scripture, but which worships liturgically by definition and by confession, and has a rigorous view of theology.  All three of these constituent aspects of Lutheran Christianity are at odds with what the author calls the new "White Trash" religious culture we live in.

Some openly argue that in order to reach young people, we must ditch our liturgical tradition.  Usually those who argue in this way believe that we can somehow hold onto our theology and biblical grounding while tossing our liturgy to the lions in the arena, as though a tripod with a leg missing will work just fine.  The obvious issue here is if our culture rejects the exclusivity of the Bible, the traditional and un-entertaining nature of the liturgy, and theological truth (in fact objective truth of any kind) entirely, how can we "reach" them without getting rid of not only the rituals of the Mass, but also the church's doctrine and commitment to Scripture?

Indeed, we're seeing many bearing the name "Lutheran" - both within and without the LCMS - abandoning the catholic faith in search of mysticism, goddess-worship, feminism, entertainment-worship, the culture's fascination with homosexuality, the trivialization of sins that are increasingly culturally-acceptable, and other idolatrous practices designed to "reach out" to the "disaffected."

Written from the perspective of a disgruntled Episcopalian, knowing the fate of that particular erstwhile catholic tradition, Ms. Hays's book might serve as a sort-of Marley figure in our latter-day Christmas Carol, in which the Church has become miserly with her treasures of forgiveness, life, and salvation.

Dignity Matters!

By Larry Beane

Well, you've probably seen the video of the "dancing bishops."  In case you haven't, it's embedded above.  And yes, it is real.  It is part of a welcome to the bishop of Rome's visit to Rio.

Here is a well-written response from the point of view of an Eastern Orthodox cleric.

Much of his perspective will likely resonate with Lutherans, we likewise being historical, Catholic Christians who reject the lofty claims of the Roman see.  And setting aside the issue of our doctrinal differences with the Roman Catholic Church for the time being (see especially Articles 21-28 in the Augsburg Confession, Article 4 of the Apology, the Smalcald Articles and the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope to review these issues of doctrine and practice which for the most part remain divisive to this day), I think it is interesting to see how the Roman Catholic Church is perceived when she resorts to such frivolity and gimmickry.

And my purpose here is not to throw stones, for we in the LCMS live in our own glass houses, do we not?

As the author points out, what attracts a lot of people to Roman Catholicism is its antiquity, its gravitas, its, well, "Catholicism."  The Roman Church stands like the Rock of St. Peter over and against the rise and fall of nations and empires, of changing paradigms, of the modern storefront Protestant "churches" where women "bishops" govern over their "pastor" husbands, where thousands of organizations lay claim to being "the true church" when they have only recently been founded and incorporated, where a plethora of doctrines and personality cults compete in a cacophany of voices and confessions.

Over and against the noise stands the Church of Rome.  Any serious student of western history encounters her.  Like the ocean, like the sunrise, she is always there - sometimes acting nobly in her saints and martyrs, teachers and servants of mankind, and sometimes acting diabolically in her bureaucrats and popes, her money scams and torture chambers.  And in spite of the Borgias and the Inquisition, there is something compelling in her antiquity, in her chain of ordinations stretching back to the apostles.  Notwithstanding human sin and organizational depravity, there is dignity.

Or there was.

One might argue that the episcopal flashmob was not a worship service; this was just a bit of fun.  And that is true as far as it goes.  But these men are bishops, representatives of our Lord and the apostles, men consecrated into the Office of the Holy Ministry, clad in the uniform of their office, men whose ministry is to oversee dioceses of churches and dozens or even hundreds of pastors. Their presence for this youth event is intended to remind the young people of the treasure that is the Christian faith, the one true faith, the only thing of lasting importance in this fallen world. And while some may be amused and appreciative of this lighthearted display, there is also an outpouring of shock, revulsion, sadness, and anger among Roman Catholics.

This did indeed cause much offense.

I think we Lutherans should learn from this episode.  Peruse the responses from the blog readers.  And then think on our own narrative as 21st century Catholic Christians within the Lutheran tradition and confession, rooted deeply in history, whose own chain of ordinations extends likewise back through the ages to the apostles as well.  Think about the seriousness of the Reformation, when souls were imperiled by false doctrine, then the Word of God was re-emerging from darkness, when men and women gave their lives resisting religious tyranny, when hymnody, preaching, participation in the liturgy, daily prayer, and study of the Holy Scriptures - all in the common languages - were restored to the faithful!  What a treasure!

In my own case, I was drawn to Lutheranism because of this historical gravitas that did not throw out the baby of the gospel with the bathwater of medieval power politics and corruption.  In Lutheranism, I found liturgical, sacramental, Catholic Christians and Catholic congregations that were not beholden to papal decrees and human traditions over and against God's Word.  I found salvation and life, intelligent study of the Word, and dignified (yes, dignified!) traditional worship that connected me to the church of every age.  I could get rock music anywhere - even from the speakers mounted in the windshield of my motorcycle, even in my eccentric 11th grade teacher's classroom.  But there was something else in the Lutheran Church - something transcendent, something apostolic, something that communicated the only thing in this life that matters.

And the dignity of liturgical worship among us is a confession of that apostolicity, that gravitas, that serious centrality and constancy of the Church's proclamation and mission.

So what message do we send a world and a culture that is lost at sea in rapid change, in sarcasm, in 24/7 entertainment, in frivolity, in licentiousness, in boredom, and in skepticism, when we try to imitate the shallow cultural waters in which they swim?  Do visitors to our churches see us as yet another storefront fly-by-night denomination, or to they see us bound by doctrine and practice and history to the apostles - in our worship, in our confession, and in our dignity?  For dignity itself is a confession that we take our faith seriously.  In other words, we really believe this stuff!  The catch-phrase of today is "authenticity."  And ecclesiologically, authenticity is embedded in our creeds in the word "apostolic."

Ironically, those who push for drum kits in the chancel, drama teams, rock and roll, dancing girls, a lounge atmosphere, big screens, cup holders, lattes, and other elements of entertainment, are likely pushing the younger generation they claim to be seeking away from the church.  While young people tend to like dressing and acting casually in their day to day lives, has anyone considered that maybe they actually might be drawn to something transcendent, dignified, apostolic when it comes to their quest to find the True God?

I was 17 years old when I found a home in the Lutheran Church.  During the week, I rode my motorcycle and listened to heavy metal.  I was always clad in jeans and tee shirts.  I played basketball with my friends, attended concerts and parties and midnight movies, and lived well within the parameters of youth culture.  On Sundays, I appreciated the dignity, the gravitas, and the apostolicity of my rather low-church humble Lutheran congregation.  Even in its simplicity, the ancient liturgy proclaimed the church's authenticity.  When they introduced the "contemporary" service, I avoided it.  I think that puzzled some of the older, well-meaning folks.

Of course, that was a long time ago, and times have changed.  Maybe young people today see the world differently than I did when I was drawn to the Church of the Augsburg Confession.  But whether one is young or old, whether one is a pastor or a layman, if we believe the Nicene Creed that we (hopefully) recite publicly at every Sunday Mass, we owe it to everyone - to visitors to our church, to the faithful members of the body of Christ, to our fellow Christians around the world, and to those who came before us, including the apostles and our Lord Himself - to be reverent, to avoid frivolity, to steer clear of offense, to be dignified, authentic, and apostolic in our worship and in how we hold ourselves out to the world; to be Catholic in all that entails according to our Evangelical confession.

Dignity matters.

These Roman bishops, likely with all good intentions, surrendered the dignity of their Catholicism for the dark pottage of the ephemeral youth culture.  Let us ever be mindful of our confession of the Lamb and His Gospel, the Holy Scriptures, our blessed confessional symbols, our rich heritage and tradition, and how we are perceived by souls in need of salvation when we act as undignified as these men who likewise lay claim, with our common ancestors in the faith, to the confession of that "one holy catholic and apostolic church."

Dignus est Agnus.