Confessing Fashion

The Reformation can rightly be viewed as a movement to recover what had been forgotten or obscured. We often focus on Justification and the meaning of the Mass - and rightly so, for the Lutheran Reformation did indeed polish up what had become tarnished treasures of the Church.

But we would be remiss if we did not also think of the Ministry when thinking of Reformation-restored treasures. To be more exact, the unitary and indivisible nature of the Ministry was strongly asserted in contradiction to Rome's claims that only those who were designated bishops by the papal see possessed all the rights of the Office of the Ministry given by Christ to his Apostles. Read all about it in the Treatise - or better yet, read a much more detailed defense in this classic work by AC Piepkorn from the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue.

We confess this doctrine each time we have a parish pastor ordain a candidate. Yet we also view it as proper to retain, by human right, some division of the duties of the one office. Thus, by mutual agreement between all the presbyter-bishops and for good order in the Church, we agree not to use our authority to ordain without permission of the one presbyter-bishop we designate as District President.

Thus the Missouri Synod is a fellowship of congregation-sees and presbyter-bishops. The parish pastor, we confess, has all the rights of the One Office: he is a bishop. Yet, for the sake of good order, he is placed under the oversight of another holder of the One Office.

Which brings me, of course, to socks.

Apology XXIV.1 points out that we of the Augsburg Confession maintain the traditional vestments. This has implications for confessing our view of the Ministry in our liturgical dress. For example, many readers of Gottesdienst are aware that within the Western Rite, the priest wears his stole crossed beneath the chasuble while the bishop's stole is not crossed. Thus, a Lutheran presbyter-bishop may well wish to wear his stole uncrossed to confess the unitary nature of the Ministry. However, especially when celebrating a liturgy in the presence of the District President - the one to whom we have by human right given a certain amount of oversight over the other clergy - it would be appropriate to wear the stole crossed.



Socks...right. So also, traditionally the bishop's choir dress is composed of cassock and surplice - and violet socks (among a few other things).

So, before you you head out for the spring ordination season, make sure you pick up a pair. I'll try to get the R&D department at DK Brunner & Son Vestments going on it. Then, either wear them to confess your own episcopality or, more appropriately, lend them to chap who will actually be doing the ordaining. I know he'll appreciate it.

A depiction of a common medieval epithet for a less-than-faithful overseer.

+HRC

PS: And one more thing, at the time of the Reformation (and until 1870, quite a bit after the Reformation) choir dress was the normal everyday wear of the bishop. So you may want to trade in your black socks for purple: what an opportunity to witness to your Roman Catholic neighbors!

Why we do what we do

Driving to a shut-in communion call today I passed a billboard for Faith Fellowship in Alton, IL. The billboard (of which, alas, I cannot find a picture online) included imagery of a five piece band done in the style of the successful iPod advertising campaign, something like this:

Sweeeeeet........

The text superimposed over the image was: Casual - Contemporary - Creative - Church....Faith Fellowship.

Nice alliteration - too bad they couldn't think of another relevant word that started with a C to describe what their fellowship was all about. That omission is apparently not a one-off.

And that is both a condemnation of themselves and their modus operandi and a warning to us. Why do we do what we do? How do we describe it? The liturgy and traditional ceremonies that accompany it are not ends in themselves - though their beauty might tempt one to treat them that way.

We follow the traditional Western Mass in the form handed to us by the Lutheran Reformers because it constantly preaches Christ to us. We insist that our pastors use this form of worship to ensure that they will bring Christ to us. We bow the head and knee to display honor to Christ. We are very uncasual to remind the people in the sanctuary that they are in the presence of Christ.

And so, on this shut-in call. . . said shut-in's son says, pointing to the altar ware in the Mass kit: "Is that gold, Pastor?" Darn straight: because these vessels are for the real and true Body and Blood of Christ. There is nothing casual about that - and it deserves our best: not our bankrupt culture's regurgitated leftovers, not Crocks and cargo pants, not glass held by aluminum trays: but kneeling, chanting, gold, and brocade - and all of it to confess Christ.

Hence - Gottesdienst.

+HRC

Why It Really Does Matter, Actually

Faith lives by and from the Word of God. Faith loves the Word, delights in it and clings to it. And faith follows the Word, where it leads, to the Body of the Word-made-Flesh, to His Breaking of the Bread, to the fellowship of His Altar in His Church. If faith is prevented from that Table on earth, it will yet hope in the resurrection of the body, even as it is looks forward with eager expectation to the Marriage Feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom, which has no end. For as faith is never without the Word of God, so the Word, having become flesh, is nevermore without His Body.

The risen Lord Jesus is patient and persistent in demonstrating that He has risen bodily; that He is not a ghost or a disembodied spirit, but a man of flesh and blood, of bones and sinew. Not only that, but He catechizes His disciples on the way that leads to His Table, to eating and drinking with Him there. It is in His Sacrament that they see Him, according to faith in His Word, and know Him and love Him. For that is where He knows and loves them, and gives Himself to them, and pours Himself out for them, and feeds them with Himself, His Body and His Blood for their flesh as well as their souls, for the resurrection of their bodies to the life everlasting with God.

The goodness of the body is already established by the Creation of God; it is clarified and fulfilled in the Incarnation of God the Son; and it is gloriously perfected for us by His bodily death upon the Cross and His bodily resurrection from the dead. The giving of His Body, and the pouring out of His Blood, for us Christians bodily to eat and to drink in the Sacrament of the Altar, is not simply a further affirmation of these facts. It is the very living of the body in that goodness which is Christ, and thus to live, both body and soul, precisely that good divine life which the Holy Triune God intended when He created man in His own Image, after His own likeness.

Tertullian had it right when he said that the soul has no life or salvation apart from the body, as God Himself demonstrated when He breathed His life-giving Spirit into man through his nostrils. The soul hears and receives the Word of the Gospel through the ears of the body. The soul is cleansed before God in righteousness and purity by the washing of the body with water and the Word of Christ. And the soul is brought into the intimate fellowship of the Father with the Son in the Holy Spirit, by the bodily eating and drinking of the Body and Blood of Christ. So then does the soul confess the faith, pray, praise and give thanks to God, with the same mouth of the same body. And the soul loves and serves the neighbor in his or her body and life, with the hands and feet of the body, which are redeemed and sanctified for the resurrection and the life.

To be a human being, a man or woman, is to be both body and soul. Thus, with our bodies, we occupy space and time. We are in a place, and we have movement even when we are at rest. It is not possible for us to be otherwise; nor is it simply an accident or coincidence that we are this way, for it is the way that God has created us to be, to live and move and have our being in Him.

So, too, it is no accident or coincidence that the Sacrament of the Altar is a ceremony. Indeed, it is the fundamental ceremony of the Christian faith and life, of the Divine Liturgy and Christian worship. Ceremony is nothing else but life in the body. There is no question of whether or not we shall have ceremonies, but whether or not they will be ordered rightly by the Word of God in faith and love. Every godly ceremony will be a movement to or from the Ceremony of the Altar. All the freedom in the world is used rightly and well, when it finds its center in that eating and drinking of the Body and Blood of Christ at His Word.

Freedom there is, to be sure, and faith shall not relinquish it; for it is the glorious freedom of the risen Christ Jesus, the divine and blessed gift of His Gospel. But it is no more a freedom from ceremony than it is a freedom from Christ Himself. It is a freedom for such ceremony as lives in the Body of Christ. To be free of that would not be life but death. Since the children of man partake of flesh and blood, the Lord also partakes of the same, that man might partake of Him in flesh and blood; not to be saved from the body, but for life in the body (in the Body).

In our wonderful group conversation at Redeemer in Fort Wayne this past January, Pastor Petersen offered the comment that simplicity, or the absence of traditional ceremonies, is its own kind of ceremony. I understood what he said, and I agreed with him at the time, but I did not fully comprehend what a profound point he was making. I wonder if it went past others who were there, too.

There is no division between those who are ceremonial and those who are not. To live in the body is to be engaged in ceremony, even if we do not normally speak in such terms. If we should prefer to limit "ceremony" to the conduct of the Divine Service, that would be well and good; but whether it is simple or elaborate, elegant or ludicrous, reverent or a farce, there will be ceremony. The ceremony need not be the same from place to place, nor can it be, but it can be measured and evaluated as to whether or how it serves and supports the preaching of the Word of God, and as to whether or how it approaches the Ceremony of the Lord's Supper.

To take bread and wine and set them apart; to consecrate these earthly elements with the spoken Word of Christ our Lord; to distribute the Body and Blood Christ to His disciples, gathered together in His Name; and for those Christians to receive, to eat and drink the Holy Communion, it is all ceremony. Collectively, it is the Ceremony, as it is the Divine Liturgy, and it is most certainly not an adiaphoron. Nor is it possible for the Ministers of Christ and the members of His Church on earth to be so gathered in His Name, to give and receive His gifts with His Word, apart from other ceremonies that bring them to and from that place and that time.

The point being, again, that there is no division between those who are ceremonial and those who are not, but only between those ceremonies that freely approach the Ceremony of the Altar in faith and love, and those ceremonies that distract, detract, divert or drive away the disciples of Jesus from that central Ceremony. There are numerous varieties of particular ceremonies within each of these categories, and perhaps there are some ceremonies that may belong to both categories, depending on the temporal circumstances; for love may discern that what is helpful in one place is hurtful in another. By and large, however, any given ceremony will either be in harmony with the Ceremony of the Sacrament, or it will clash and compete with that Ceremony.

Let there be no argument over whether or not to have ceremonies. But let us reason together in faith and love, and consider how those ceremonies that we undertake in the conduct of the Divine Service, especially as stewards of the Mysteries of God, serve the faithful in their bodies and souls with the Body of the Word-made-Flesh. It does finally come down to this: The Lord Jesus desires to feed His Christians with His Body, and to give them drink of His Blood; so there needs to be a way to get those Holy Things into their mouths. Let us do so in such wise manner as confesses with our bodies what we believe in our heart and confess with our lips.

The Significance of Ceremonies

Reposting from the previous site, because I still think it's significant:

At a recent gathering of the "synod in this place," the Divine Service basically followed one of the settings from LSB. It was recognizably from the book, more or less; which was a welcome and refreshing change from too many past experiences. Thank God. Yet, there was still the cutting and pasting of parts and pieces; some omitting and substituting of the ordinary; and the ignoring or contradicting of various rubrics here and there. Nevertheless, despite these deviations in the ritual and rubrics of the service (some of them striking), most of the people in attendance remarked on how nice it was to do things by the book. That's telling on several fronts.

By contrast, at Emmaus we follow the book very closely throughout the year. In fact, we actually use the book (LSB), rather than printing things out in "service folders." Admittedly, we do omit the rites of preparation on festival days, when we begin with a processional hymn and go directly to the Introit. Otherwise, the only point at which we modify the rubrics (in using LSB Setting Three) is in gathering the offering before we sing the Offertory Psalm. In short, we do things by the book, conservatively and consistently.

However, the way that people typically describe the Liturgy at Emmaus focuses on how strikingly different it seems from this, that, or the other thing. "Everything has been changed," I have sometimes been told; even though we are about as conservative as it comes in following the order, rites and rubrics of the Divine Service.

What are such people talking about? It boils down to ceremony, and it adds up to not a lot of things, actually. And even some of that is simply following the book.

We chant most of the Service (as per the book), and many of our members make the sign of the cross at appropriate points (also as indicated in the book).

On festival days, the Gospel is read in the midst of the congregation, accompanied by the cross and torches. On a few occasions (less than half a dozen in a year) we use incense, but that is rare enough at Emmaus, it hardly counts for purposes of this post. The body and blood of Christ are elevated before the people at the Pax Domini; which may or may not be indicated in the rubrics (I don't have the Altar Book at hand), but it is recommended by Dr. Luther as an invitation to receive the Sacrament.

Perhaps the most obvious ceremony is that the clergy genuflect when first approaching and again when taking final leave of the Altar; also at the confession of the Incarnation in the Creed; and at the conclusion of the Sanctus in the eucharistic rite. The members of the congregation, by and large, kneel for the confession of sins (as per the LSB rubrics) and for the consecration of the Sacrament.

None of these ceremonies change the rite or deviate from the rubrics; they do not intrude at all upon the order of service. I maintain that they bodily confess what we believe concerning the Word and Sacrament of Christ, but I do not hold them as necessary; they are appropriate and helpful, but not required for the faithful administration of the Mysteries of God. They are neither prescribed nor proscribed; they are free to our use.

My point, however, is that such ceremonies do make a powerful impact and impression. The rank and file of the Missouri Synod have become accustomed to, and comfortable with, a casual approach to the conduct of the Divine Service. When that casual decorum is maintained, the actual order, rites and rubrics can be largely modified without any notice. But where there is a reverent increase in ceremonial, people are struck by the difference, even though everything is done according to the letter of the book. Ceremonies are that powerful.

Someone may say that such a powerful significance is a dangerous distraction; and I suppose that it can be that. By the same token, though, I would argue that it offers the potential to be a powerful confession and catechesis of the faith. Ceremony makes an impression on the hearts and minds of children and adults, in a way that lots and lots of didactice explanations never can and never will.

Personally, I find it far more distracting and unnerving when there are deviations from the familiar ritual and rubrics of the common service; and when the clergy are casual and sloppy in their conduct of the service. But even apart from that concern, here I simply want to commend the potential benefit of ceremonial as a powerful means of conveying the piety of faith, the reverence of fear, love and trust in God. For while the true worship of God is the inward prostration of the heart in repentant faith, such faith and worship are confessed with mind and mouth and the prostration of the body.

Specialization is for Bureaucrats

A couple of thoughts from listening to call day services at Concordia Seminary - St. Louis last week.

1. It's no wonder that many of our pastors simply do not understand church as a place for reverence. There was the usual mini-stand up routine from the sermon delivered by a DP. I'm almost numbed to that, so didn't really notice. But then during the actual calling forward of the candidates, it was one constant joke after another. While the names are changed, I am not making up the following.

dramatae personae: Candidati (duo), Director ponitendi subrusticus

Director: John Doe, assistant pastor for youth, California-Nevada-Hawaii District, St. Mark's Lutheran Church, Fremont, CA. . . . Well, John, looks like you won't be needing that snow blower! Maybe you can sell it to the guy behind you.

[pause a beat]

Director: Joe Schmoe, associate pastor for evangelism and assimilation, Rocky Mountain District.....[pause a beat]......Our Lady of the Reformation....[pause a beat].....Phoenix, AZ.

[chuckles throughout the crowd are audible.]

Director ponitendi subrusticus awaits the bus after the service.

Get it? You see, Joe had been told that he was probably going to Phoenix. He and his wife had been planning on that for weeks. Since he was looking for a call as an associate pastor, he had interviewed and he had discussed things with the Director and knew that he was slotted for Phoenix going into the DP placement meeting. But everyone knows that sometimes crazy things happen when those DP's get together and work it out like 10-year olds with baseball cards [Need him, got him, got two just like him, need him, trade you for that one....]. Hence the hilarity of the snowblower line. The wife back in the pew probably thought that was pretty funny! Being cruel to sem wives is always funny! Especially in church!

2. Specialization is for insects and other invertebrates. A great many of these calls were to associate positions "for assimilation," "for youth," "for left-handed ministry" etc. Big parishes need more than one pastor - check. But I think we should hope that they will be allowed to, well, be pastors. One church I looked up was calling their fourth pastor. They already have a senior pastor, a pastor for outreach, and a visitation pastor. How truncated will this fourth pastor's experience be? He won't have to go on many, if any, shut in and sick calls: there's a visitation pastor for that. He won't have to take many, if any, non-Lutherans through catechesis, there is an outreach pastor for that. With four pastors - how often will this new pastor get to preach? Celebrate the Lord's Supper? Baptize?

I've served as an associate at a large parish. I understand the pressure to specialize, to focus on one area. There is so much to be done that it appears that specialization is a necessity. But that's all the more reason that a special effort needs to be made at large parishes to ensure that each pastor is actually pastoring.

Fr. Locutus, Associate Pastor for Assimilation, sporting CPH's
new Ecclesia tab shirt. And no, I am not making that video up.

Why? Because a pastor needs the whole gamut to be good at any one aspect. How will you know how to teach your confirmands until you have seen their grandmothers alone with their thoughts in the nursing home? How will you know how to "assimilate" someone into the parish's life until you've gotten your hands dirty in a church council meeting and felt out the fissures of who is angry with whom? How will you know how to preach at a baptism until you have watched someone die alongside his family?

A pastor should be able to write a sermon, stop a meeting and reconcile warring parties, preach off the cuff, comfort a child whose dog has died, commune 12 people with the last thimble's worth of Blood in the chalice, drink a beer with the trustees, call a sinner to repentance, chant High Mass, say he is sorry, speak Low Mass, teach a youth group, plan a strategic vision, genuflect on the correct knee, hold the hand of a dying man, manage the parish alms, speak comfort to a woman who has miscarried, and build a wall.

+HRC