Gottesblog

The above video is, at the same time, funny, tragic, illustrative, and instructive.

We Lutherans sometimes fall victim to the “too Catholic” superstition. We are ashamed of our venerable traditions of blessing people and objects, even when they appear in our Small Catechism,

If we only had more koinonia and conversations…

The point of having a synod is that we “walk together.” We all confess the Bible and the Lutheran confessions. But this confession is more than a cerebral and intellectual acceptance of propositional truths. To be a synod requires unity of practice that binds us together. So in addition to the Bible and the Confessions, we have other agreed-upon conditions for being in the LCMS.

Here is a Lutheran setting of the Divine Service in Gregorian form, “authorized by the Commission on Worship.”

Also in the late 1990s, I was a layman in my young thirties in the Florida-Georgia District - which at the time was in open rebellion against closed communion by means of an adopted 1997 district convention resolution called “A Declaration of Eucharistic Understanding and Practice” (DEUP) - which was aptly acronymned if you sound it out. You can read about it here. Anyway, a big confab to rally the troops to the unbiblical practice was arranged. I naively went to one of their dog and pony shows - and as one would expect, dogs and ponies produce a plethora of excrement.

The desire for “conversation” seems innocent. And sometimes it is.

But sometimes it isn’t.

This calls for discernment and strategic self-awareness. For every error that has gotten a toehold in the church began with “conversation.” Now is a good time to review the trenchant and ever-relevant analysis by the Rev. Charles Porterfield Krauth, from back in 1871.

“Too often,” he said, voice becoming firmer, “the world mistakes Christian meekness for passivity. It assumes that turning the other cheek means closing one’s eyes to evil. It believes that loving our enemies is the same as forgetting justice.”

Our Lutheran identity is grounded not only in our biblical evangelical theology of justification but, also in our catholic practice of reverence and beauty in worship that is liturgical. The Real Presence means that we don’t serve the King with plastic forks and red solo cups. If there is ever an occasion to bring out the fine china, it is when God is physically present with us by means of a miracle. If the Mass is not the time and place for reverence and beauty, then what and when is?