The liberal Lutheran denomination know as the ELCA, has lost members at a sharply increasing rate, concurrent with their recent decision to ordain openly homosexual pastors, culminating in the the election of its first openly homosexual bishop.
Liberal "lutherans" from the ELCA, which has recently considered merging with the liberal Episcopal Church (see my blog below on their openly gay bishop) often cop out on taking communion openly and unrepentant homosexuals by saying, "hey not my problem it's between them and God". This attitude goes to the most interest point made in the comments of this article in First Thoughts. To wit, communing, ordaining and electing as high officers folks who are embracing a sinful lifestyle is not the cause but rather the symptom of a long, deep slide from scriptural orthodoxy in the ELCA.
Lutheran historians more astute than I will point out that it started with redefining communion itself, ordaining women as pastors and moving to less doctrinal hymnal. At each pivotal juncture in this long slide into contemporary secular humanism, the ELCA has suffered a hemorrhage of members.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
The Sins of the Father/Faithful Servants for Unfaithful Ones...
Perhaps most of you don't know that I am an avid fan of Mad Men.
Why?
So many reasons. I spent the first twenty years of my professional career selling radio advertising, calling on ad agencies in San Francisco and around the big ad markets of the country on behalf of the San Francisco stations that I represented. Mad Men invokes the culture of mid-century Madison Avenue.... the ad scene, the mad scene of big time commercial advertising.
Reaching deeper into my past, the adult characters in Mad Men are exactly my parent's age. Therefore I am around the same age as there kids, like Sally, who is building up a head of steam to launch the same rebellion against her parents as I did against mine.
Why?
Because like the Mad Men characters, my parents, whose lifestyle and mannerisms resembled the Mad Men characters were inwardly sinful people who maintained a veil of outward respectability, just like we all do to one extent or another. In other words.... sinners.... big sinners and little sinners.... just like all of us.
In this final episode of the current season, Don, steeped in the shame of a cluster of sins that are coming to a festering and undeniable head, finds himself alone, downing tumblers of straight scotch in a dive bar. A barroom street pastor (I did not know there was such a creature!) approaches Don and begins preaching the Gospel. Don flashes back to his teenage childhood, spent in a depression-era brothel run by his father, and his teenage confrontation with a similar street preacher, who upon his being 86'd by Don's father, admonishes the teen Don Draper on his way out... "the greatest sin is to believe that you can't be forgiven by God".
In this instant and throughout other scenes is transmitted amidst all of the pop-culture/pop-theology of Mad Men, is a kernel of deep, Gospel truth. The only way we can absolutely separate ourselves from God and eternal life in Him is by rejecting the gift of salvation through His Son Jesus Christ. Later Don begins to shed his outward layer of respectability and taps into remorse and truth. See it. You'll see.
We are left to wonder if there is faith in that repentance or just ego gratification of being "real". One can be deeply remorseful, repentant and still not be saved. Faith and repentance are inseparable, after all.
Guilty enjoyment of indulgent sins, rational deployment of survival mechanisms in the knowledge that they are not pleasing to God pale in comparison to the resolute utter rejection of God and his Gift of faith and salvation. For once one makes that choice, his or her entire life, already one of sin, becomes one of sin for sin's sake and death is assured. But, amazingly, while one is alive it is never too late to have faith as well as to \ repent.
And, so, prompted by Mad Men and conscious of six weeks of neglect, we come we at last to the topic of Pastor Lassman's brilliantly delivered May 12th sermon on Acts 1: 12-16 where Judas, who betrayed Our Savior commits the greatest sin of all. Everyone knows of "Judas Priest" (a common curse phrase during the Mad Men era, at least in my household) and his betrayal of Christ. And most of us when prompted would count that betrayal as Judas's greatest sin.
Yet it was not. Again, as that preacher told the teenage Dick Whitman, aka Don Draper, "the greatest sin is believe that you cannot be forgiven". Remember?
Judas's greatest sin occurred at the last moment of his earthly life. And it was committed not in the mirthful, indulgent manner of an adulterer reaching out to his paramour or a conniving account executive manipulating his way into a juicy piece of new business but rather by an utterly shamed and broken man ... rejected in reality by the Pharisees who egged him onto his ultimate betrayal and then, in their hypocrisy refused to take back the filthy blood money they had paid Judas to commit his heinous act.
Just as everyone in this last episode of Mad Men is steeped in regret, remorse and scrambling to find some sort of human redemption, a faithless repentance offers no salvation and, in fact seals condemnation. As Christ intones in John 17, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word..." If you turn aside the word of salvation in Christ so will He turn you aside as chaff from the wheat kernel. Whether you are in despite or in delight of yourself.
Judas then repaired to a lonely dead tree on a forsaken plot of land to hang himself and reject himself as a child of Christ, who would have accepted even His betrayer Judas had his remorse been coupled with a faith in God's power to forgive him. Even in selling out Jesus into the hands of Pilate and the Pharisees, Judas had not out-sinned God. Tragically, he had only out-sinned himself.
For, although it makes no sense, defies logical and will remain a mystery until that Last Day of Judgment, we cannot out-sin God and the Son. We can only out sin ourselves. And by rejecting God's salvation in Jesus Christ we only reject ourselves. God cannot, will not reject us. But we can reject ourselves.
Salvation, therefore is a passive thing, utterly given unto us. Everyone reading this has read and knows the saving Word of Christ and is therefore saved. You can only be unsaved by your own hand. And whether you do it blithely, deliberately, ploddingly, in misery, in shame or in joy YOU do it. Just as we are saved in mirth, in misery, in joy and in all places in between. Jesus saves you but you condemn yourself.
Even a crabby old Lutheran.
Amen.
Why?
So many reasons. I spent the first twenty years of my professional career selling radio advertising, calling on ad agencies in San Francisco and around the big ad markets of the country on behalf of the San Francisco stations that I represented. Mad Men invokes the culture of mid-century Madison Avenue.... the ad scene, the mad scene of big time commercial advertising.
Reaching deeper into my past, the adult characters in Mad Men are exactly my parent's age. Therefore I am around the same age as there kids, like Sally, who is building up a head of steam to launch the same rebellion against her parents as I did against mine.
Why?
Because like the Mad Men characters, my parents, whose lifestyle and mannerisms resembled the Mad Men characters were inwardly sinful people who maintained a veil of outward respectability, just like we all do to one extent or another. In other words.... sinners.... big sinners and little sinners.... just like all of us.
In this final episode of the current season, Don, steeped in the shame of a cluster of sins that are coming to a festering and undeniable head, finds himself alone, downing tumblers of straight scotch in a dive bar. A barroom street pastor (I did not know there was such a creature!) approaches Don and begins preaching the Gospel. Don flashes back to his teenage childhood, spent in a depression-era brothel run by his father, and his teenage confrontation with a similar street preacher, who upon his being 86'd by Don's father, admonishes the teen Don Draper on his way out... "the greatest sin is to believe that you can't be forgiven by God".
In this instant and throughout other scenes is transmitted amidst all of the pop-culture/pop-theology of Mad Men, is a kernel of deep, Gospel truth. The only way we can absolutely separate ourselves from God and eternal life in Him is by rejecting the gift of salvation through His Son Jesus Christ. Later Don begins to shed his outward layer of respectability and taps into remorse and truth. See it. You'll see.
We are left to wonder if there is faith in that repentance or just ego gratification of being "real". One can be deeply remorseful, repentant and still not be saved. Faith and repentance are inseparable, after all.
Guilty enjoyment of indulgent sins, rational deployment of survival mechanisms in the knowledge that they are not pleasing to God pale in comparison to the resolute utter rejection of God and his Gift of faith and salvation. For once one makes that choice, his or her entire life, already one of sin, becomes one of sin for sin's sake and death is assured. But, amazingly, while one is alive it is never too late to have faith as well as to \ repent.
And, so, prompted by Mad Men and conscious of six weeks of neglect, we come we at last to the topic of Pastor Lassman's brilliantly delivered May 12th sermon on Acts 1: 12-16 where Judas, who betrayed Our Savior commits the greatest sin of all. Everyone knows of "Judas Priest" (a common curse phrase during the Mad Men era, at least in my household) and his betrayal of Christ. And most of us when prompted would count that betrayal as Judas's greatest sin.
Yet it was not. Again, as that preacher told the teenage Dick Whitman, aka Don Draper, "the greatest sin is believe that you cannot be forgiven". Remember?
Judas's greatest sin occurred at the last moment of his earthly life. And it was committed not in the mirthful, indulgent manner of an adulterer reaching out to his paramour or a conniving account executive manipulating his way into a juicy piece of new business but rather by an utterly shamed and broken man ... rejected in reality by the Pharisees who egged him onto his ultimate betrayal and then, in their hypocrisy refused to take back the filthy blood money they had paid Judas to commit his heinous act.
Just as everyone in this last episode of Mad Men is steeped in regret, remorse and scrambling to find some sort of human redemption, a faithless repentance offers no salvation and, in fact seals condemnation. As Christ intones in John 17, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word..." If you turn aside the word of salvation in Christ so will He turn you aside as chaff from the wheat kernel. Whether you are in despite or in delight of yourself.
Judas then repaired to a lonely dead tree on a forsaken plot of land to hang himself and reject himself as a child of Christ, who would have accepted even His betrayer Judas had his remorse been coupled with a faith in God's power to forgive him. Even in selling out Jesus into the hands of Pilate and the Pharisees, Judas had not out-sinned God. Tragically, he had only out-sinned himself.
For, although it makes no sense, defies logical and will remain a mystery until that Last Day of Judgment, we cannot out-sin God and the Son. We can only out sin ourselves. And by rejecting God's salvation in Jesus Christ we only reject ourselves. God cannot, will not reject us. But we can reject ourselves.
Salvation, therefore is a passive thing, utterly given unto us. Everyone reading this has read and knows the saving Word of Christ and is therefore saved. You can only be unsaved by your own hand. And whether you do it blithely, deliberately, ploddingly, in misery, in shame or in joy YOU do it. Just as we are saved in mirth, in misery, in joy and in all places in between. Jesus saves you but you condemn yourself.
Even a crabby old Lutheran.
Amen.
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