When Mt. Zion recently initiated an Endowment Fund, they included four main “quadrants” to which donations might be designated. First, special congregational projects, second, Lutheran seminaries, third, Lutheran missions and finally, what they called “works of mercy.” Now, Endowment funds like this can take some time to build up value (though only “income” is distributed, not “principle”), but I’ve wondered to myself which of the four quadrants will grow fastest. I have my hunches.
To be honest, the one which might have the most potential is the one which, as a church, we have least devoted our energy and money up to this point, namely, “works of mercy.” A fair portion of the ordinary church budget is already devoted to the other three quadrants, but how much of our yearly budget have we carved out for giving to the needy, the marginalized and the neglected? The answer? 0%. None.
This might not surprise you. After all, is this the church’s job? If the church is supposed to feed the hungry or clothe the naked, then why do we have a government? And, after all, isn’t the church to concern itself merely with the Gospel and the holy things of God? In fact, what need is there for a specific section of the endowment for the poor?
Continue reading about Finding the Baby Jesus in Your Neighbor
The vote to pass the “social statement” required a 2/3rds majority. That is what it got, and not a vote more. The vote two days later to permit local congregations to “call” openly gay and lesbian pastors only required a simple majority. It passed easily. Regardless of the margins, the ELCA has made up its mind. Its collective devotion to the Bible as the Word of God is a façade. Notwithstanding individual members, as a church body, culture speaks to them louder than the Bible. In the LCMS, our prayers are two-fold: first, for repentance in the ELCA and second, for those lonely men and women who have remained in the ELCA and continue to fight these waves of false teaching.
Unfortunately, the news reports and papers are already lumping all Lutherans together with the ELCA. The Denver Post’s Thursday morning head-line is a good example: “Lutherans allow differing views on homosexuality.” It would be ambitious to expect the Denver Post to care about the differences between the ELCA and LCMS (to say nothing of WELS, ELS, AALC, etc.) Nevertheless, differences there are. So, once again, we are given the unenviable task of stating loud and clear that we are Lutherans that do not support the ELCA’s position on this issue. To put it in the simplest terms, this decision of the ELCA is a clear-cut refusal to heed the obvious, relevant Bible passages: Leviticus 18:22,24, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, to name the clearest. Evasion of these passages requires pages and pages of duplicitous, interpretational gymnastics, an obnoxious example of which is provided in the “social statement” just passed by ELCA convention delegates.
Continue reading about The ELCA Formally Endorses Homosexuality: How the Stage was Set 40 Years Ago
In our day and age people are more squeamish then ever. The Chalice is resisted not because people don’t like the symbolism it brings or because they want to receive the Sacrament differently than their fathers but because they are grossed out. They are afraid of germs and disease. They don’t want to share a cup, any cup, with other people.
And yet, Our Lord instituted the Sacrament with a single cup. A single cup strongly bears witness to the unity we confess in the Sacrament. A single cup can be a weighty and beautiful thing, a vessel more reverent and worthy of the Lord’s Blood than anything made of glass (or worse, plastic). As reverent as we try to be with individual glasses, it is hard to pull off. They aren’t historic (the first LCMS church to use them was in 1918!) and they are reminiscent of other things (shot glasses, toasting, etc.) It is hard to distribute them gracefully, and it is common-place for the trays to be sloppy and sticky with wine after the distribution. Plus, their historic origins lie firmly in the churches which rejected the real presence of the physical body and blood of Jesus in the Sacrament. To this day, outside of North America, there are few places where individual communion cups are common among those who confess the real presence.
