Out of the Barn!

How long? cry the saints.

And the answer: no longer! At long last, the delayed Trinity issue of Gottesdienst is out of the barn, and on its way to a mailbox near you. Soon (if you are a subscriber) you will at last open that mailbox and upon opening this journal of the blessed Lutheran Liturgy may, if you wish, even see fit to repeat the words of Keats:

“Ah! dearest love, sweet home of all my fears,
and hopes, and joys, and panting miseries,
Tonight if I may guess, thy beauty wears a smile of such delight,
As brilliant and as bright
As when with ravished, aching, nassal eyes,
Lost in a soft amaze
I gaze, I gaze”

Wink, wink . . it is okay: It is a joke!

Uncle Screwtape says:

“Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence, it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is ‘mean,’ but if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer ‘mean’ but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humourous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful — unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man’s damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke.” — P.51-52

HT: Wolfmueller http://us13.campaign-archive2.com/?u=1b96d242af7bd7dfa5d097151&id=b9d278447a&e=06f84f5ca7

Dante Shrugged

by Larry Beane

How little things have changed since 1320, when the great poet Dante Alighieri complained about the worship wars in his own day and age in his Divine Comedy:

"Christ did not say to His first congregation:
'Go preach idle nonsense to the world,'
But gave them a sound foundation.

"And that alone resounded from their lips,
So that, in their warfare to ignite the faith,
they used the Gospel as their shield and lance.

"Now preachers ply their trade with buffoonery and jokes,
their cowls inflating if they get a laugh,
and the people ask for nothing more."

~ Dante (through the character Beatrice), Paradiso, 29:109-117

Cited by Rod Dreher in How Dante Can Save Your Life, p. 151

A Toast to the Milwaukee Reinstatement of Augsburg Confession Article XIV

The 2016 Milwaukee Convention of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod will likely be remembered as the convention that restored this august church body to its moorings in the Augsburg Confession, to wit, our churches confess that "no one should publicly teach or administer the sacraments without a regular call" (Article XIV). Such a simple confession, yet trampled underfoot by 27 years of misguided so-called 'emergencies' and other unscriptural reasons for pretending men are pastors who are actually not pastors, and expecting them to do what pastors do without the calling and ordination to do it (Baptists may get away with this kind of thing, but among Lutherans it certainly should not be so). Since the 1989 Wichita Convention that enacted this de facto amendment to the Augsburg Confession, we have had to endure life in a church that was at fundamental odds with itself in word and deed. No longer, deo gracias. Now the Synod has provided a way for these men to be trained, examined, and ordained. Now there is a deadline in 2018 after which all pastors will be pastors.

I had the opportunity to speak briefly with Synodical President Matthew Harrison, and to commend him for his work, and for his patience over the past several years, which has, as I put it to him, "paid off in spades."

Rightly should we all sing our Te Deums and celebrate this day!

Squandering the Treasure

by Larry Beane

One of our LCMS districts sent out the following advice for prayer:

1) Go to the Facebook Search Bar.
2) Close your eyes and hit a random letter.
3) Pray for the first three people on the list.

Yes, they actually sent this out. It's not a joke,

When it comes to prayers and devotions, think of all the richness of our Lutheran tradition, old and new.  Think about the plethora of resources for prayer that are available at CPH and from Lulu.  Think about the treasure that is the Psalter and the Daily Office - and how these are accessible to us modern Lutherans via the Treasury of Daily Prayer, which is even available on a smartphone app.  There is Oremus produced by Pastor David Kind, The Essential Lutheran Prayer Book and Lord, Teach Us to Pray by Deacon Latif Gaba, and Emmanuel Press's Brotherhood Prayer Book edited by Pastor Michael Frese and Dr. Benjamin Mayes.

The Minister's Prayer Book by John Doberstein is an often overlooked trove of treasure from our tradition that specifically has pastors in mind.  Although out of print, Herbert Lindemann's The Daily Office remains a gem.  Our own Dr. Burnell Eckardt has authored a devotional volume that plumbs the depths of Scripture and the meditations of the church fathers: Every Day Will I Bless Thee.

From the beautiful treasures of our Lutheran past come Emanuel Press's reprint of Johann Starck's Motherhood Prayers as well as their reprint of Wilhelm Loehe's Seed-Grains of Prayer.  Those who enjoy daily meditations by Dr. Luther can always find an old copy of Day By Day We Magnify Thee.

For a less rigorous approach to prayer from within our tradition, we have the prayers for morning and evening and the mealtime prayers enshrined within our Small Catechism, as well as a user-friendly devotional based on the Catechism called The Lord Will Answer.

Moreover, let's not forget about the richness of our hymns, our collects, our prayers for family devotions, and our litanies which are found in our hymnals.  And pastors will be particularly blessed with the Pastoral Care Companion, a wonderful resource for giving soul care in the parish - and which is also available as a phone app.

And if you want something more spontaneous, think about Luther's pamphlet in which he taught his barber to pray.  There is also the modern Portals of Prayer, which includes a light daily devotion and can be carried in the pocket.  For intercessory prayer, there are our congregational prayer lists of people in need.  There are also our persecuted brethren to pray for.

All of this richness and vast array of options expose the shallowness of what amounts to be a kind of Facebook game, a sort of "prayer roulette" that is not much different than the old canard of opening a Bible at random and pointing to a verse.  This is not too distantly removed from using a Magic 8-Ball or a Ouija Board as a prayer aid, or just plain hurling darts at a board.

How sad to disregard such rich treasure and trade it in for tawdry trinkets.