Should We Care About Gay Marriage?: Or "Who Is Jesus?"

by: Rev. Dr. Karl Fabrizius

The question that Jesus kept asking is: Who do you say that I am? That is always the question the Church must answer. After all, the entire Christian faith is centered upon the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the body. God who gave life at Creation, restores life to men who have fallen into death through the work of Christ, and breathes life out upon the world through the preaching of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. The Church’s wisdom is always foolishness to the world, but to those who are called by the Gospel it is a breath of life-giving fresh air. So, what does our answer to the “gay marriage” question have to do with answering Jesus’ question? How are we who have died with Christ and been raised in Christ to speak to the world?

Jesus is the revelation of the Father’s Truth in the flesh. He becomes the Man to reveal that the Father’s act of Creation is Good and to atone for the sins of all the descendants of that first man. That first man could only plant the seed of death in the womb of the woman even though he called her Eve. Jesus calls His mother Woman at Cana and again from the cross to reveal a new Mother, not only for John but for all the living. His first miracle is done at a wedding and connected to the third day because He is the God of the living from whom all life comes. That language of life is given in the context of the marriage of one man and one woman that they might be fruitful and multiply. In fact, Jesus is the Promised Seed who was first planted in Mary’s womb by the Spirit and now must be planted in the Womb of our Mother the Church so that new life might come forth. The Church is drawn from the side of Christ as His blood and water spill forth for the sprinkling of the nations. All this is so that the children of the heavenly Father might be filled with life as male and female in the Body of Christ.

Now what does that have to do with the question of “gay marriage?” Marriage is defined by the relationship of Christ to the Church and not by an arbitrary definition of man that can be changed to satisfy a popular opinion of the time. Jesus is the faithful Bridegroom who gives life to His Bride so that having been born of water and the Spirit we might becomes sons of God as He is the Son of God. The marriage of Adam and Eve is defined by the relationship of Christ and His Church as one man and one woman from whom comes new life. Thus, the definition of marriage cannot be changed unless you change your definition of Christ who confirms what is given in Creation.

Marriage is intimately bound up with giving life and nurturing life, but homosexuality is not capable of producing life or nurturing life as God ordained with a mother and father. Yet, some Christians have been seduced by the call to love by permitting the sin. Others feel they should not impose religious faith upon a so-called matter of the state. Society has been turned to support a culture of death that stands in opposition to stable families, procreation, and a nurturing environment for future children. Such a culture of death requires a god/goddess of death that gathers his/her disciples and indoctrinates others in such idolatry. This new god is really the old one: the sinful flesh of an individual seeking to taste whatever seems good in his own eyes. In this “christianity” Jesus becomes a generic god who simply encourages a personal expression of love and commitment, rather than releasing men from the captivity of sin that death may have no power over them. This generic Jesus is not raised in the body to raise the bodies of His followers to new life, but would have them taste all the fruits of the tree of death. Thus, to support gay marriage is to deny the cross and resurrection, that is, that Christ is our Life who died for our sins upon the tree. This Jesus calls His Bride to taste of the fruit of the Tree of Life in the Supper that we might be kept from sin and strengthened on the narrow Way that leads to eternal life.

On Pseudogamy

Anthony Esolen has a very fine essay on the topic.

+HRC

"High Church" Christology: A Working Hypothesis

As I'm preparing to advocate and analyze a "high church" attitude and approach to the Liturgy at the ACELC conference in Austin, Texas, later this month, I'm presently working with the following hypothesis:

"High Church" Liturgy goes hand-in-hand with a high Christology, which believes, teaches, and confesses that the Man Christ Jesus is the one true God; that St. Mary is the Mother of God, because the Son that she conceived in her womb and bore in her body is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity; and that it was, indeed, the Lord our God who was crucified, dead, and buried, under Pontius Pilate on Good Friday.

This high Christology recognizes, likewise, that Christ Jesus, the Son of the Living God, who is also true Man, crucified and risen from the dead, is actively present and at work in the Liturgy; that He is, in fact, the true and divine Liturgist, who speaks, does, and gives Himself and all good things to us by His preaching of the Gospel and His administration of the Sacraments in the Divine Service.  He is acknowledged and adored in the earthly and external means by which He serves His Church, because we affirm and confess the unity of His two natures in His one Person, even as He deals with us through humble instruments under the Cross.

A high view of Christ also affords a high regard for His Bride, the Church, who is adorned with His righteousness and holiness, His innocence and blessedness, His beauty and His grace.

It seems to me, at any rate, that a "high church" attitude and approach to the Liturgy has far more to do with Christology, first and foremost, before it has anything to do with ceremony.  Although it is meet, right, and salutary that appropriate bodily ceremonies should accompany and adorn the verbal confession of Christ, in practice, those ceremonies will differ in various ways from place to place, and from time to time; whereas Christ our Lord remains constant at all times and in all places, and so should our Christology.

In brief, I would describe a "high church" Christology as typically Alexandrian, following in the footsteps of Athanasius, Cyril, Aquinas, Luther, and Chemnitz.

In contrast to this "high church" attitude and approach, I would offer that a typical "middle-of-the-road" approach, in practice, adopts a more Antiochene Christology with respect to the life of the Church in the Divine Service.  By that I mean that there is a comparatively greater emphasis on the history of Christ's life, on the explanation of what He has done and taught in the past, and on the "humanity" of the minister and the means of grace, than on the active presence of the incarnate Son of God in the Office of the Holy Ministry, in the preaching and administration of the Gospel, and in the consecrated elements of the Sacrament.

What the MO Synod Means to Me

While on a post-Easter family trip I drove by the parish where a friend of mine, Fr. Brian Holle, serves. Father Holle is an asset to the ministerium - just a really good pastor and a really good guy. And something on the sign outside his parish spoke to my heart in a special way. It summed up to me everything I love about the MO Synod, everything I think it should be and, on its good days, everything it is. It was a natural, unintentional poem on the true meaning of MO. The sign read:

Easter Sunrise Service: 6:42 AM.

Now if only we could collectively take the words of AC XIV as seriously as Father Holle takes the word "sunrise."

+HRC

LCMS in the news

Juanita Sunday, Special Correspondent

Gottesdienst Press

Several years after her controversial revelation that she had imagined beloved character Albus Dumbledore as a homosexual in her bestselling Harry Potter series, author JK Rowling has again shocked fans by stating her agreement with the thesis of liturgiologian Jason Bretaan that the series was written as an allegory for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS).

Bretaan posited in a 2006 issue of Gottesdienst: A Journal of Lutheran Liturgy that characters and concepts from the Potter series corresponded too closely to the contemporaneous ecclesio-political scene of the LCMS to be a coincidence: "In Potter, the themes of power at all costs; journalistic disintegrity; and institutional incompetence, self-preservation, and denial of culpability cannot but call to mind Our Beloved Synod. We know what it is like to keep our heads down in fear of catching the attention of You Know Who and paying the ultimate price. The Reporter is our Daily Prophet, obscuring the realities we all fear and leaving us to a world of rumor. And who failed to see through the recent installation of all those fireplaces at the Purple Palace? It doesn't take a degree from the seminary OR Hogwarts to see that you can't spell Ministry of MagIC without IC. All the LCMS lacks, is, unfortunately, a Harry Potter. Instead we got a surplus of Xenophilius Lovegoods."

Bretaan's words were more than bold: Rowling herself has vouched for their accuracy. "The LCMS was always in my mind as I plotted the Potter series," she said. "The truth is stranger than fiction, even when fiction has people puking giant slugs out of their mouths for an hour. I got that idea while I read the minutes of a 1997 CTCR meeting."

Rowling's acknowledgement of indebtedness to the LCMS historical narrative has been a bonanza for armchair literary analysts. "Slughorn is one sherry party away from the first house on Seminary Terrace, and I can't remember now which Preus it was whose first call was to St. Catchpole LC in Ottery MN," posted Anthea Firth at the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau Forum online. Debate rages over whether evidence from the Potter corpus supports the identification of a curiously unGermanically-surnamed LCMS insider with the Half-Blood Prince. Early drafts of The Prisoner of Azkaban are rumored to have had Remus Lupin's first name as Karl. And radio producer Geoff Schwartz frankly admits, "I got goosebumps when I was reading Deathly Hallows to my kids and we got to Lee Jordan and Potterwatch. I did, I got goosebumps."

While the LCMS is THRILLED, THRILLED, THRILLED for the media attention Rowling's announcement has meant for the North American church body since there's no such thing as bad publicity and publicity=evangelism=more people in heaven, dissenters have made their voices heard from predictable quarters. Gottesdienst itself published a statement from editor Barry Leane, who argued, "The Harry Potter series glorifies the occult and takes a disappointingly weak position on house elf liberation. Seriously, you people think this is OK?" Bretaan rejoined, "Yeah, but Leane hates everything." 

In a strange twist, recent events again have the clock hands of LCMS clergy and parishioners twitching toward "mortal peril." Controversies in the last few months have people wondering if You Know Who could return to power. Was Rowling an historian, or a prophetess? If the latter, she may still get her chance.

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