BUT, MOMMY, I DON'T WANT TO GO TO CHURCH! DADDY, CAN'T WE JUST STAY HOME AND HAVE FUN?

In a minor news story, JUSTIN BIEBER remarked that he wanted to take his Christian faith more seriously.  Bieber talked about his Evangelical Christian upbringing.   Bieber says that he loves Jesus and wants to become more like Him.  But the kicker is Christians have left “a bad taste in people’s mouths” by being “overly pushy with the subject, overly churchy and religious.”  Bieber said, “It doesn’t make you a Christian just by going to church.”  Then Bieber made the analogy:   “You don’t need to go to church to be a Christian. If you go to Taco Bell that doesn’t make you a taco.”

Bieber got his big break in the music industry being discovered on YouTube.   He was all of 13 years old.  Millions of records sold later, he is now twenty-one.  His recent behavior of the last few years is exactly what one might expect of a young music star who has come into big money before becoming a real adult.  He wanted to be a tough bad boy emulating hard, dangerous, street-wise rap/hip-hop stars.  Several tattoos, vandalism, racing his Ferrari on city streets, intoxication, and arrests later, Bieber wants to change. He wants to grow up and change his public image into a serious recording artist and budding adult.

It is odd to compare going to church with going to Taco Bell—much less Christians and tacos.  But no one has ever said merely “going to church” turns you into a Christian.   It is actually the other way around.   The Christian comes together with his other brothers and sisters to worship, hear His Word, and keep the sacraments.

As Luther said of the sacraments, there are many ways God’s may be heard.  But baptism and communion are the visible Word of God.  And these are the only ways God can be touched.

It is a little unfair to expect Bieber to be different than his peers.  Indeed, the Millennial generation commonly identify themselves as spiritual but not religious.  Abjuring organized religion, the Church, they view worship as purely optional.  Or more exactly, being a part of living Christian congregation is not needed.  In fact, there may be more authenticity and graciousness in standing alone. 

We should always be suspicious of the “spiritual/not religious”.   Typically, it grants these individuals the license to pick and choose among features of the whole variety of the world’s religions in order to amass his own belief system.  Moreover, the foremost feature of building one’s own “religion” –one’s own Christianity—is that it is undemanding and won’t bring discomfort.  No call to die and take up the Cross.

One of the central insight of Luther is that despite one’s own best efforts, the sinner will never be righteous enough to stand before a holy God.  No unrighteousness, no impurity can possibly live, be admitted into the presence of the holy God.  Truly, one finds that even his best efforts sinks him deeper into depravity.  Nevertheless, our natural inclination is to try to be so good in order to justify ourselves before God.  

We can’t help ourselves.  Even knowing the project fails before we even start, we do it anyway.   Christ meets us…when we are called by the Father…and calls us to trust in Him instead.   The Christian is graced to stand before our Holy Father because we are clothed in Christ righteous.   But the creature the “old man” in us still lives.   We still are sickened by unbelief which can overtake us once again.  There is a powerful temptation to shun with faith in Christ and go back to the way we were. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that we have be constantly reminded of who we are.  We must come to worship to be taught over and over again the work of Jesus.  We have to hear the call of the Father often and continuously for faith to live.   This will not happen standing alone.   We have to be a part of the company of believers, worship with our brothers and sisters, listen to the Word of God, bare the sufferings of our brothers and sisters, and receive the sacraments.  

As far as it goes, Bieber is right.  We Christians are a pretty icky bunch.  The older I get, often sitting in the pew, before the altar, I understand that I am inescapably a pretty rotten guy.   In spite of the words of my mouth, I am a hypocrite.   I will always be a hypocrite one way or another.   Maybe the world sees me as a good guy and, by those standards, I am.    But, before a holy God, there is a completely different truth. 

There is nowhere else where we confess and receive absolution but in the Church.

As the old confession is spoken:

O God, our Heavenly Father, I confess unto Thee that I have grievously sinned against Thee in many ways; not only by outward transgression, but also by secret thoughts and desires, which I cannot fully understand, but which are all known unto Thee.  I do earnestly repent, and am heartily sorry for these my offences, and I beseech Thee of Thy great goodness to have mercy upon me, and for the sake of Thy dear Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, to forgive my sins, and graciously to help my infirmities.  Amen

This confession is hard.  It is not easy to speak with our whole hearts.  It is in worship, before God, with our brothers and sisters, where we can truly make this confession.

Likewise, it is in worship, before God, with our brothers and sisters, where we hear the absolution:

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, hath had mercy upon thee, and for the sake of the sufferings, death, and resurrection of His dear Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, forgiveth thee all thy sins.  Upon the confession which thou hast made, and in obedience to our Lords’ command, I declare unto thee the entire forgiveness of all thy sins:  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

The blessing of Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be with thee always.   Amen

GOD THE MOTHER AND RETHINKING THE NICENE CREED

In the letters section of the recent issue of the Lutheran [July, 2015], Pastor George S. Johnson advocated openness to rethinking the Nicene Creed to reflect the feminine nature of God.  He wasn’t exactly specific; but one may suppose a revisionist formulation like ‘I believe in God the Mother”.    (Perhaps “God the Father” and “God the Mother” would alternate from service to service).  Maybe some way would be found simultaneously identify both genders without emphasis to one or the other.   In any event, the charge is that, by refusing to put a feminine face on the divine, we put God in a very small box when limiting the Creator to male imagery. 

This call to recognize the “womanlike” facet of our Lord is made now and again—often times in periods of intensity followed by episodes of drought in which there is nary a breath devoted to such a transformation.  The problem for the modernizers is that Lutherans and the greater Church are and have been loath to fiddle around with the creeds. 

(Exception being the Church at large did annoyingly shifted “He descended into Hell” to “He descended into the dead” in the Apostles Creed.  But that’s a story for another time.)

For Lutherans (Let’s be honest.  We mean the ELCA here—the party most likely.)  to go it alone and change the Nicene Creed according to their lights would do irreparable damage to ecumenical relations the Catholic and Orthodox Churches—not mention other creedal Churches.  In spite of the predictions of the “sunshine and sugarplums” Christians in our midst, The Catholic Church is not likely to follow Protestant trailblazing—and let’s not delve in science fiction and even talk about groundbreaking departures from tradition by the Orthodox.

Nevertheless, Pastor Johnson cites Martin Luther himself to justify writing:  “As Martin Luther said, ‘Everything we teach needs to be open for examination and possible revision.’”.

Actually, I have some sympathy for Pastor Johnson’s suggestion.   After all, in both Sunday School and Confirmation, we little Lutherans were told that God was neither male nor female in spite of the fact God is usually addressed as “Father” and Jesus Himself was and is a man.  (For some reason, the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of Christ-- is often referred to as “it”)  If God is neither gender but we call Him “Father”, then it seems entirely reasonable that we may also refer to God as mother.  This seems, even absent Biblical precedent, reasonably coherent.  And herein lies the problem.

While Luther did advocate examination and possible revision, he also had a grave mistrust of reason:

“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”

 More specifically, Luther abhorred theological/philosophical speculation in matters of faith.  Christian teaching should only be grounded in the Scriptures.    As he saw it, the Church had been plagued by the violent invasion of philosophical reasoning through the centuries and such reasoning had worked to obscure the Gospel and the plain meaning of the Scriptural text.   In light of this hazard, Christian teaching should not go beyond what is revealed in Scripture.

It is frequently objected that the Bible does in fact use feminine metaphors in describing God acting in some maternal role .   Many of the examples cited are quite a stretch; but such images are there.   One only has to remember Jesus’ lament:    “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!  (Matthew 23:37)

 

The critical flaw in the conjecture that such images warrant the use of such appellatives as “God the Mother” is that these images are precisely that:  metaphors.  They describe actions—not persons.  They are not proper names.   That Father and Jesus are proper names is, yes, the point.   They are the names revealed to us in the Gospels.  It is by Jesus’ instruction in the Lord’s Prayer we are told ‘this is how you should pray…our Father.’

The Father is literally Father of His only the Son, but he becomes our Father by adoption, by grace, by union with Christ by the Spirit so that Christ’s relationship with the Father becomes ours by participation. So if God is the Father of Jesus, and we are in Christ by the Spirit, then his Father is our Father.   Father is thus not a gender, nor is it a function, it is a pure relation of a person to another person.   God is not distant and impersonal.  He is a personal relationship with us for which names are essential.  When we are in close relationships, names are vital and exact—not optional, metaphorical, or flexible

As Luther would say, it is not safe to stray beyond the revealed Word of God.   Truths which are not discoverable by reason.   While the revealed Word of God confounds us and are a scandal to the ideals of our time, we must trust beyond understanding our Lord has His own purposes.