clair090

We made it through the anniversary year.  It was the 500th anniversary of 1517 to 2017 -- since we are not sure about the accuracy of the nail pounding in the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church it is an anniversary without a specific starting point.  And, I suppose, the same could be said about its ending point.  Nevertheless, we have made it through a year of beating our chests and parading about our pride at being Lutheran.  For what it is worth, I am not at all suggesting we should have ignored this anniversary nor am I saying that we should not have a little pride of place as Luther's heirs.  But this was not so much the start of the Reformation as June 25, 1530, might be, with its formal presentation of the Augsburg Confession that has binding doctrinal force (at least in theory) among nearly all Lutherans.  Yet the Reformation spark that burned into a great flame began inauspiciously enough with some words of challenge on a paper by a monk not...

501 years ago this week, a monk teaching at a fledgling university in Wittenberg had come to believe that a personal experience of God was more important than church tradition. . . or so it was said by one commentator this week.  But as surely as this is the popular reading of history, it is most assuredly a misreading of history and a rash judgment against a man who would not presume experience a pivotal magisterial role.  As neat and tidy as this explanation of Luther and the Reformation might be, it is so far from the truth as to perpetuate a great and damaging lie about Luther -- but more importantly about Lutheranism -- that continues to this day. It was a time of question and concern.  What was the right and true authority for the Christian?  Was it deposited in earthly men and earthly institutions or was it retained by God in the primacy of His Word as source and norm of all doctrine?  Authority seems a quaint concern in our modern era in which little is ...

Sermon for Reformation, observed, preached on Sunday, October 28, 2018, by the Rev. Daniel M. Ulrich.     Reformation Sunday is always a proud day for us Lutherans, and doubly so for us here at Grace as we get to witness the confession and confirmation of several of our youth.  Today we remember Martin Luther and all the reformers who worked to bring the eternal Gospel of Christ to light in the dark days of the Law oriented medieval church.  Today is a celebration, a celebration of shedding the chains of the Law and putting on the freedom of the Gospel.  We think of this freedom as a freedom from the Law, never having to look back at it again...but that’s not true.  The Reformation was never about getting rid of the Law.  It was about rightly understanding God’s Law and His Gospel.  I.     We hear the words of Paul in our Epistle reading saying, “by works of the law no human being will be justified in [God’s] sight,” (Rom 3:20...

Everyone knows Bill Belichick's coaching mantra:  'Do Your Job.' Roughly translated, "Do Your Job!" simply means being prepared, working hard, paying attention to the details and putting the team first. There must be something to it. Since Belichick took over the New England Patriots, his team has enjoyed 14 straight winning seasons, 12 playoff appearances, 6 AFC championships -- among other things. Many have taken up that mantle with respect to leadership in a variety of venues, even in the Church ( watch Pr Ben Ball here ).  I won't steal his thunder, though it is rather gentle thunder at that.  Yet I wonder if that is not the sum total of Luther's Table of Duties?  If it is, then it is applicable to all of us, from our baptismal vocations of worship, witness, intercession, and service, to our vocations as husbands, wives, sons, daughters, employers, employees, neighbors, and citizens.  Yet that is what makes it so difficult, isn't it? Is it ever...

You have heard the old expression, happy wife, happy life?   What about pastors and their parishes?  Take a gander at what Barna has surveyed and think about the results. Pastors seem somewhat content with their present church but much more happy about being pastors than where they pastor. Pastors love preaching most of all. . . surprise?  No, but it is a surprise that they are not so fond of pastoral care. Pastors are most frustrated by apathetic members.  Go figure!!!  People who tend to make pastors act like dads raising immature children, reminding them to go to church, to give to support the work of the Lord, to read the Bible, to grow in faith. . . yeah, that is frustrating but it is part and parcel of the pastoral vocation.  Read Hebrews or Paul. Pastors are good preachers.  At least those who are bald in the back.  Those who are bald in the front just think.  Those who are bald all over think they are good preachers.  Okay, pardo...

Most of my adult life has included an anticipatory wait for the latest from the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau'  Lutheran Forum and its supplement Forum.  A subscriber since 1972, it was one of those must read sources of information on the subjects of liturgy and worship, Lutheran unity, and, of course, As Missouri Turns .  No matter what side of those issues you were on, these publications were must read.  Before the advent of the information age, the internet, and a 24 hour news cycle, we were left pacing to see what was the latest from NYC or New Haven, MO.  We knew the names by heart -- Koenig, Neuhaus, Stone, Baily, Klein, etc...  We read while Missouri blew up, the AELC, ALC, and LCA came together, and the world marched on by caring little about either. I have to admit that I developed a certain fondness even for articles with which I was prone to disagree.  When I lived for a year on Long Island and later as a Lutheran pastor between Albany...

While some who have ditched nearly everything that identifies Lutherans as liturgical or dismissed it all as adiaphora and therefore matters indifferent and unimportant, pictures from the time around and after the Reformation show a very different spirit. The whole thing is available here.  Thanks to T. David Demerest and Matthew Carver for making the work of Helmut Schatz available in English.  You can flip to it here and read and look for yourself.  I have simply made some of the pictures available here.  I think they speak for themselves.  It is hard to dismiss the imagery of chasubles, copes, etc. and the dates that signify this was not simply some stage in a cleansing effort of Lutherans to ditch their catholic identity.  This is who we were, who we are, and, if we have a future, who we will be. So look and think about it all. . . . If Lutherans do not look like this today, what is the reason?

For many years the game was played and it was sufficiently beneficial to both sides that it appeared to work. . . for a while.  The game I am referring to is the way the church or church agencies were contracted and paid to do what was considered the work of the state.  From orphanages and adoption to hospitals and nursing homes to social services and refugee resettlement and on and on, the church did the actual work, being paid for or having the bulk of its expenses covered by tax dollar, on the state, local, and national level.  For a long time, things seem beneficial to both provider and the government paying the bills.  But then things changed.  The culture no longer was in a mood to allow church distinctives to prevail in this service for pay arrangement.  Churches had to distance the faith from the actions done because of the one paying the bills.  Eventually, some churches agreed to be nothing more than secular agencies acting as sub-contractors...

Popes are popes, it is true, but they are also men, flawed and sinful.  In this respect, they are like all of us -- we have our moments of great heroic strength and we have our moments of grave weakness.  Paul VI is no different from us in this way though none of the rest of us were ever called Pope. In the wake of Vatican II, it appears that Paul VI was not a pillar of strength but a bowl full of jell-o.  The Council did not mandate the liturgical changes that have become identified with it.  Nearly every one of these decisions were made post-Vatican II, promulgated by a small circle of liturgical pioneers who were given rather free reign by the Pope to implement the practical side of Vatican II's theory.  This included the stark changes of language, of tables set up as altars so priests might face the people, of translations that made trivial the great words of old (think here the collects), of vestments that introduced this rather stark modernity to the eye e...

Anthony Esolen recently used a sentence to describe the outrage of many against the McCarrick and  associated sex abuse scandals.   We are pigs in a sty, complaining that the boar stinks .  I thought about what he wrote and wondered if it was not exactly the situation, not simply for Rome and its scandals but for the wider story of abuse and sexual license.  We complain about what is wrong but we do nothing to repair the wrong except blame the wrongdoer.  We strive for the easy goal of trying to be good when goodness costs us nothing but we give it up as soon as it requires anything from us. In the McCarrick scandal the problem is not simply one bishop but many.  It is not that McCarrick is one bad apple but rather that Rome has labored under a denial of the problem and a denial of responsibility by those could have, should have, and probably did know something of it but denied it or ignored it.  Here I am not so much addressing the issue of celib...

In Remembrance + Rev. Dr. Charles John Evanson + 1936-2018 Charles John Evanson was born in Elmhurst, Illinois, the firstborn son of Dr. Charles Olaf and Louise Evanson. He was baptized and confirmed by Pastor Luther Yeager Seibert in St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Elmhurst. He was married to Lenore (nee Clark) in the Bronx by the Reverend Berthold F. von Schenk. They were blessed with three children: James August, Charles John III, and Anne Marie. Pastor Evanson earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Theology and Philosophy from Valparaiso University in 1959. He subsequently studied at Chicago Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago from whence he received a Bachelor’s of Divinity in 1964. He did post-graduate work at both Concordia Seminary in St. Louis and the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He served a vicarage at Lutheran Charities in Chicago and as part of his move to the Lutheran Church —Missouri Synod, he s...

Undoubtedly most folks using Divine Service 1 and 2 of LSB or the services of ELW will have grown accustomed to the phrase, Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might...   But it has not worn so well, at least in my mind.  The translation of the Sanctus was a nod to the ICEL and our attempt to be ecumenical.  We went along with the rest of the liturgical crowd in an attempt to render Hebrew into mundane English. It does not take much familiarity with Scripture to figure out where the original came from.  Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus Domine Deus Sabaoth  (Heilig, heilig, heilig, Herr Gott Zabaoth) pulls together Isaiah 6 since about the 5th century. The Greek text in Revelation 4 has παντοκρατωρ (pantokrator) instead of Σαβαώθ (Sabaoth).   Pantokrator does mean “powerful over all.”  He is YHWH God SBAOTH.  The Vulgate puts it rather awkwardly as 'God of armies,' referencing the great warrior tradition of the God who vanquished the enemi...

More goofiness parading as fact. . .  You may read here . . .  I have no idea who this Idan Dershowitz is but his invention published as scholarly wisdom is beyond belief.  Dershowitz is attempting to claim that among the many renditions of the text of Leviticus along its way to the version we know today, things changed.  What was first allowance for homosexual relations between men because a prohibition later on.  And how does he know this, textual evidence, he claims.  Textual criticism and those who practice it generally cannot accept the text as we have it and presume to unpack a history that is attested to not in evidence or in fact but in supposition.  We must be careful here.  We do not have the luxury of being able to press the undo button and see what went before.  Even if we did, there is no evidence whatsoever that the undo button would show us anything different than what we have.  In fact, every evidence we have sustains and...

    Sermon preached for Pentecost 22, Proper 24B, on Sunday, October 21, 2018.      We live in a different world than the world of Jesus and His disciples.  Perhaps that is rather obvious but here I am speaking about the way we view God and our status before Him.  Unlike the words of the Gospel this morning, we marvel not at who can be saved but who won’t be saved.  Ours is a God who shrugs His shoulders at sin, who welcomes even unbelievers, and in whom everyone shall be saved.  To think otherwise is offensive to us.  In our diversity loving culture in which everyone is included and no one excluded, the God of Mark’s Gospel has no place.     But it does not matter all that much what we think of God.  It does matter what God thinks of us.  And this will be the revelation of judgment day that will both surprise the world and cause no small amount of consternation.  It is shocking to us because we li...

The liturgical movement has been credited with the restoration of the sign of peace to accompany the Pax Domini.  If you want to stir up things, just ask folks Roman or Lutheran about the practice of stretching forth the hand with a smile and greetings which rage from the traditional Peace of the Lord to Howdy .  Some, usually extroverts, love the chance to say Hey to all the folks and others, usually introverts, abhor the idea of a formalized welcome time.  Of course, it is neither a how are ya moment nor is it a greeting time.  The peace remains Christ's to give and ours to mirror in His name and it is not a feeling or a greeting but a peace born of the gift of forgiveness and expressed most profoundly in the peace of the bread and cup that convey this grace. I learned that the sharing of the peace and the Pax Domini are, in essence, different things.  We do share the peace but it is shared immediately following the absolution.  The pastor absolves acc...

What do we make of all our division over abortion?  For surely the proxy fight that played out over Kavanagh's nomination to the SCOTUS was less about the man than about Roe v. Wade.  It would not have mattered if there were no charges to his character, there was something else that was going on.  Yet poll after poll show that at the edges about the same percentage of people want to ban it entirely (taking the choice away) also want to prevent any ban and leave no limits upon the choice.  In the middle are people who mostly wish it was a choice that no one ever made -- sort of the way many Christians look at hell and hope that it is mostly empty.  Americans are not so divided over other issues as they are over abortion.  The rhetoric has escalated to the point where it has come to define the political parties.  Is there such a thing as a real pro-life prominent Democrat or even the potential to be one, anymore?  Is there such a thing as a real pro...