Xαρις και Eιρηνη is a blog written from the perspective of a Lutheran student studying for the pastoral ministry. It's title means Grace and Peace, a common greeting in St. Paul's letters and I think, a two-word summary of what Jesus Christ has won for me.
Ephesians 2:4-5
Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
Romans 5:1-3
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
Colossians 4:5-6
Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Art.XV, 21
The Fathers had these reasons for maintaining the rites, and for these reasons we also judge it to be right that traditions [good customs] be maintained. And we [Lutherans] are greatly surprised that our adversaries, contrary to the entire Scriptures of the Apostles, contrary to the Old and New Testaments contend for another design of traditions, namely, that they may merit the remission of sins, grace, or justification.
2.25.2008
A Quick Post & Vladimir Kush
Well, I'm here for a quick post despite what I need to prepare for tomorrow and a biggun' paper... OK, a moderatun' paper... for Philosophy that's due soon. Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm alive, and all the better for it. Some good news, some bad. I cleaned out a "new" computer for my little brother, both digitally and physically. I ordered some RAM off eBay, which is an early birthday present, and I'll be putting that in as soon as it gets here. I'm working on an MLC Meet Math T-shirt (any ideas anyone?) for the club and a poster for MLC Forum's Barber of Seville. In the meantime, my own motherboard fried (long time coming) and I've been looking into a very cheap upgrade in that area, all while fixing one eye on the Seminary requirement that I own a laptop next year. But I do enjoy my desktop, and I want to keep it because of the versatility and life-span. (Laptops are generally rated for a 3-year life... Better get 'em cheap.)
Anyway, here's a little essay I wrote for Spanish class on my favorite living artist, Vladimir Kush. You can look at some of his awesome works here and here. If you must know what it says, but don't know a stitch of Spanish, use Google Translator.
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Como un aficionado de arte, es fácil a veces generalizar y decir que no hay arte hoy-en-día como era en generaciones pasado. En edades modernas, la significa e importancia de arte han sido muy discutido, y todos formas de artistas han tenido sus opiniones. Solamente hay que buscar en el Internet las palabras « cita » y « arte », y va a descubrir muchas definiciones por muchas artistas en que es arte. En mi opinión, arte es todo que es creado por hombres. Pero tengo la opinión también que hay que distinguir entre arte y arte: Hay ciertas artistas (particularmente, parece, modernos) que deben ser abandonado por los museos. El arte de Vladimir Kush no es uno.
Vladimir Kush fue nacido en Mosco, Rusia en 1965 y viva hoy en Las Ángeles, EEUU. El habla de la estilo de su arte como « Realismo Metafórico, » y muchas personas creen que el nombre es uno bueno. Aunque la influencia de artistas surrealistas como Salvador Dalí es generalmente la primera cosa que personas notan en su arte, hay muchos elementos que conectan Kush a realistas, así como los impresionistas.
Kush cita a Monet, Botticelli, Bosch, van Gogh, Durer, Schinkel, Vermeer, y Dali como influencias. Es interesante que el tiene tan largas intereses, pero el hecho sirve también como un atestación a la universalidad de sus obras. Generalmente, sus pinturas representan la pasión de los artistas del Renacimiento, el color brillante que es evidente en las obras de los impresionistas, y el realismo con respecto a forma y matizando del moviendo a fines del siglo veinte. Lo que es mas mejor es el hecho que Vladimir Kush viva hoy, y su trabajo no ha terminado - ¿Posible va a tener usted un oportunidad poseer su propio Vladimir Kush?
Say a prayer of thanks that the justice system of California has stood up in defense of the right of Christians to practice their religion. This case, although having recieved very little national attention, was seen as pivitol in providing an example for similar cases, which will undoubtedly arise. The justice system is remarkably, although not universally consistent. The arguement of these girls against CLHS has theoretically been vetoed for good, and nobody can argue anymore that religious schools are merely "businesses," and therefore subject to anti-discrimination laws. ---------------------------- From the WELS Newsletter, ---------------------------- A Superior Court judge in Riverside County, Calif., has thrown out a lawsuit brought against California Lutheran High School (CLHS), Wildomar, Calif., that alleged the school discriminated against two female students by expelling them for their homosexual relationship. Judge Gloria Trask ruled last month that there was no legal basis for the claim that CLHS—operated by an association of WELS congregations in California—falls under the state's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation in business settings. Through its attorney, John McKay, CLHS argued the school is a private religious institution and can remove students for behavior that contradicts Christian values. "You can't infringe upon the basic rights of a religious group and their right of association by forcing them to accept people who don't believe in their values," McKay told the Riverside Press Enterprise. "How could the school teach that homosexuality is a sin, and at the same time allow these two girls to be students there?" The two girls were 11th-graders in September 2005. They were questioned by then-principal Rev. Gregory Bork after other students reported the girls had told them they were in a lesbian relationship—something they publicized on their own Web page. The girls then admitted the nature of their relationship to him. Rev. Bork says the school was forced to expel them after he lovingly worked with the families and the girls refused to repent and end their relationship. The ruling ends, for now, more than two years of legal proceedings; the plaintiffs are expected to appeal. Still, Mr. Steven Rosenbaum, the current principal, is expressing thanks for the ruling. "It's always humbling to step back and watch the Lord's hand at work in his time," he says. "He works everything out for the good of his people."
Lately, I've been busy writing a lot of papers. Not the big ones, just the little three-pagers that keep buzzing around my head like a daredevil mosquito. Annoying. But there is one good thing that has come from it: I've learned how much I like the Blues. Before this year, I never really listened to any of that stuff. Oh sure, I had heard Clapton songs, but that's not quite the same. (You Look Wonderful Tonight... meh.) Anyway, this past summer I was invited to go to Summerfest in Milwaukee with a friend to see B.B. King. It was an awesome concert! Being as unfamiliar as I was with that genre, what impressed me the most was that the whole concert was one big song. Each rhythm simply merged with the next, changing slightly, not too much, but not too little either. It was upbeat. Since then I've learned that I can listen to the Blues while doing homework, even while writing a paper in Spanish, which is something that I really couldn't do with other lyricized music. Anyway, I guess all I'm trying to say is that I'm a fan, and lately my listening has gravitated toward BB King, Memphis Slim and Buddy Guy. Here's a clip from the concert I attended in Milwaukee:
I remember back in high school when my Latin professor put forth his thoughts about the work of the Christian church in coming generations. He recalled how one of his seminary professors told his graduating class, with grave sincerity, that he did not envy them. Their work would be harder than his, he said, because of the progressive abandonmentment of religion in the general population. My professor verbalized the same sentiment to us. And I bet I'll be saying the same thing to a younger generation someday. As far as Biblical literacy goes, we've essentially given it up. The fact has implications in the work of pastors and teachers as well as laypeople with a desire to evangelize. If you've ever felt worried that you didn't know enough, let me reassure you. You know way more than most. Take a look at this article from National Public Radio:
Understanding the Gospel According to Huckabee By Barbara Bradley Hagerty
If you heard Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's victory speech on Super Tuesday, you may have noticed him speaking in what is almost a separate dialect. Some listeners have even asked us what he was talking about. So NPR headed off to the National Mall in search of people who understood Huckabee's biblical allusions. It proved almost as hard as getting a camel through the eye of a needle.
. . .
"Sometimes," the former Arkansas governor told his supporters, "one small smooth stone is even more effective than a whole lot of armor." "Maybe something to do with the war," guessed Dan Booth, who was visiting from Alabama.
"He's talking about peace, the resolution of peace?" ventured his friend Mike Allen.
Actually, Huckabee was comparing himself to the shepherd boy David, who slayed the giant Goliath with one smooth stone right in the forehead. Only one person knew that one — a disconcerting record as we moved into advanced "Huckabese."
. . .
"Half of Americans can't name any of the four Gospels, and that includes the Christians," Prothero says. "And half don't know that Genesis is the first book of the Bible. Those are much easier questions than things like, you know, 'what's the loaves and the fishes story?'"
My friend George and I have been actively involved in Men's Choir here at the college for a number of years. Last year, as we were discussing the fate of the choir due to declining membership numbers, we joked that we should hang posters based on a few good WWI and WWII military recruitment posters. One weekend when I was bored and expirimenting with my photo editing program, I did a little editing and came up with some funny posters. (Maybe I'll post a few of them later.) I never imagined that we would actually post them, but at the relentless encouragement of my roommate and a few friends, that's exactly what we did. It became a campus-wide joke, and I think it may have played a small part in keeping the choir around.
I like to be low-key. (Except for on my blog.) I never came out and told anyone, without being asked, that I had made the posters or put them up. But George admitted to helping - and he loved that people loved it. Since then, he has been a fearless leader of Men's Choir, constantly encouraging people to join and coming up with new ideas. (He is now our president.) He wrote a letter, promoting the choir and asked that it be included in recruitment materials. He resurrected the old posters this year and made some new ones, too. He encouraged the pastor of two local congregations to invite Men's Choir to edify their worship. His latest project has been choir T-shirts. I was involved in conceiving the design of the shirts and providing a translation, but George executed the design, ordered them and is overseeing distribution. He even ordered extras which have been available to the campus as a whole. (Part of his ongoing recruitment effort.)
Spoof T-shirts are nothing new on the MLC campus. The Senior SPaM track party-throwing organization, COS, of which I am a consientious objector, has been doing them for years. And they are always well-recieved. The formula is typical of SPaM track humor here at MLC: Take a professor that you respect immensely and portray them in a situation that is completely foreign to their personality. Examples include certain members of the SPaM faculty as the Little Rascals, Tranformers, etc.
Here is our take on Prof. Wagner, director of our Men's Choir, as Che Guevara:
Of all the religious differences that divide visible Christianity today, there are some that have been more or less serious than others. Serious differences, for one example, would be things like the Great Schism which divided Eastern and Western Christianity. Another would be the Reformation. In both of these examples, the differences spurred wars and contention that would last for generations.
But then there have also been less serious differences. For example, the modern differences between the WELS and LC-MS. The reality of the situation is that for most people, coming from the outside, the doctrinal differences of these synods would be a mere footnote in a tome. Provided, that is, that they spent enough time in either synod to become familiar with the differences.
But which of these two categories do you think is more dangerous to the message of Christianity? Certainly, they both are. But I submit that the first one is dangerous in a more immediate yet unlikely sense, and the latter is more dangerous in a daily sense. What do I mean by that? Simply that everyone knows the differences in the former situation, or at least that there are differences, and the latter sense that understanding is blurred.
This is complicated, because if you were to ask me, “Would you rather your sibling covert to Mormonism or another kind of Lutheranism?” I would always pick the closer one, because even the farthest Lutheranism still must, in many aspects, point to Christ. But the reality is that I would have neither, because we should seek to be as faithful to God's will and Scripture as possible.
It’s not hard to see how apostasy happens. Look at history. There’s a reason God ordered the Israelites to destroy the pagan nations in the land they were about to inherit. There’s a reason God told his people not to mix and marry with them. That reason was painfully obvious generations later when Baal and Asherah had become the prominent gods in Israel until, thanks to God’s grace, the Word was restored by King Josiah. (2 Kings 22)
We, too, often are faced with the temptation to marry our church to others of a different caliber. It seems like the convenient thing to do. “Is there really that much difference?” we ask. But history has taught us that there is, and the Bible teaches us that there is, and that’s why we are ordered to separate ourselves from other creeds. We’re not ordered to think that we’re better. We’re not ordered to be smug. Sometimes (OK, a lot of the time) our attitude is misinterpreted as smugness, snootiness or self-righteousness. Maybe our projection of that attitude is something that we should think about. But neither ought we to be moved by convenience or popular theological opinion, “a reed swayed by the wind.” (Matthew 11:7)
You’ll have to pardon me. There are areas of history that I know more than others, and so I often end up picking on the same example. But the most obvious example I can think of concerning the progressive deterioration of faith is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. I have a book on my shelf right now by a pastor named Joseph Stump, who was a scholarly man and a pastor/seminary president in the United Lutheran Church in America (a predecessor church of the ELCA). It was written in 1930, and I would call it a doctrinal book written at a level for informed laymen. The striking thing is that today, in 2008, the book could be read as a condemnation or contrast of many, many doctrines of the ELCA presented in their official teachings. What has changed? God? Jesus Christ? The Bible?
I’ll tell you what has changed: In the words of St. Paul, “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” The ELCA was founded, or merged more accurately, on the principle of “close enough” fellowship. What one church was lacking or denying in faithfulness to the Word, the others chose to ignore for the sake of merging. Of course, the inevitable result is that when the churches merge, there are no longer just one or two particular departures, but many. And they only grow. Divisions and arguments become pervasive, and the only way to maintain outward peace is to take an attitude of subjectivism.
An inerrant, inspired Bible isn’t conducive to many different interpretations, and therefore eventually Scripture itself falls by the wayside and becomes, to quote a pop movie, “More like guidelines than actual rules.” So in this case, similarities become the bait which lures us, and heresy becomes the hook which digs into us. No, we cannot associate religiously with those who do not agree with us in faith.
In a nutshell, that is the doctrine of church fellowship. Feel free to ask questions in the comment section if you’d like more Scripture, etc, since thus far there hasn’t been much by way of direct quotation.
Now, we all know that Christian doctrines, like many forms of idea, are often harder to apply in real life than in theory. Part of the responsibility and joy of living in New Testament faith as opposed to Old Testament faith is that we are free to make decisions for ourselves. We don’t have everything spelled out for us like they did in the Old Testament. We’re free to set up our own forms of public ministry, our own church calendars and liturgies, our own structures for administering the Gospel (e.g. PowerPoint sermons, Bible classes, hymns, concerts, devotions, Christian day schools), etc. In 1 Corinthians 10, and 2 Corinthians 3, Paul talks about these freedoms we have in Christ.
But in light of this freedom, how do we apply the doctrine of Fellowship to actual practice? That’s where it often gets sticky, even among our own members. As you probably know, people of other creeds and denominations are not allowed to participate in the ministry of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. If you go to a WELS church, the pastor there will be a WELS or ELS pastor. (The Evangelical Lutheran Synod, as well as several other churches of the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference, are in complete doctrinal fellowship with the WELS.) He will have years of training in the Word and he will teach and preach faithfully. At least he had better – he’s sworn to do it.
But if you’re familiar with the doctrine of the ministry in the WELS, you also know that pastors are not the only form of public ministry. There are teachers. There are staff ministers. Any office that has been set up by God’s people for the special task of administering the Means of Grace is rightly called public ministry. (Note: This is a difference between the WELS and the LC-MS, who would say that only pastors constitute the public ministry. That idea has had reverberating effects throughout that synod. However, it’s a whole different post.)
So, we have established that people who aren’t in agreement with our fellowship should not be welcomed as ministers. The question of how to apply fellowship then, and the answer, rely on distinguishing what a minister is. In a typical Sunday worship setting, that’s not too hard to do. The minister is the man at the front, the one who reads the liturgy, leads the prayers and presides over the distribution of Holy Communion. But what about at a wedding service, where there are traditionally more people involved? Is a soloist a minister? Is an organist a minister?
This is one of those areas where our system of doing things becomes somewhat interpretive when compared to the principals of Scripture. The thought has been echoed, “Well, the pastor is still in charge, right? He approved the hymns, so what’s the big deal if the instrumentalist is not part of our fellowship?” And there can be a level of legitimacy to that argument. But for that to be true, we must interpret the role of an instrumentalist as something purely coincidental to the worship service itself. That is, the instrumentalist or soloist cannot be interpreted as a leader in any sense. This is a very hard thing to do in real practice, and has never been a historical interpretation of the church.
That particular train of thought, which denies the leadership role of an instrumentalist, makes many in our little synod uncomfortable and understandably so. The fact is, that most people, and Lutherans in particular, view music as an integral part of the preaching and teaching ministry of the congregation. It is widely assumed that the instrumentalists are leading their particular ministry, a ministry of song. The Bible makes clear in many instances that instuments can be played as a way of worshiping God. Are we prepared to limit this beautiful form of ministry in our churches to something less, for the sake of convenience?
The lyrics of a hymn, in Lutheran circles, are full of doctrine and accurate to the Word. If we are not supposed to have false teachers preaching from the pulpit on Sunday – what’s the difference if they’re preaching from the balcony? Would you be comfortable with a Muslim reading the sermon on Sunday as long as your pastor wrote the text? I doubt it. But there is little difference in the argument. The efficacy of the Word does not depend on the faith of the one preaching it, but we still aren't supposed to tolerate errorists in our communion.
Like all things concerning sanctification in our New Testament church, what ought to concern us primarily is motivation. Why would we strive so hard to bend our interpretation of what is worship? Is it for the good of the church and for love of God? Or is it so that our buddies can feel special with us on a wedding day? How far are we willing to go with this? How far ought we bend the Word to accomodate people who don't wholly agree with it? Eventually, it may just break.
Perhaps we would even be tempted to do a disfavor to the instrumentalists themselves if we permitted them to go on with the impression that we are alright with whatever creed they hold to. If that happened, we would not only be doing a disservice to our fellowship principles, but our evangelism responsibilities as well.
From This We Believe, a WELS statement of faith:
We believe that those whose confession of faith reveals that they are united in the doctrines of Scripture will express their fellowship in Christ as occasion permits (Ephesians 4:3). They may express their fellowship by joint worship, by joint proclamation of the gospel, by joining in Holy Communion, by joint prayer, and by joint church work. God directs believers not to practice religious fellowship with those whose confession and actions reveal that they teach, tolerate, support, or defend error (2 John 10,11). When error appears in the church, Christians will try to preserve their fellowship by patiently admonishing the offenders, in the hope that they will turn from their error (2 Timothy 2:25,26; Titus 3:10). But the Lord commands believers not to practice church fellowship with people who persist in teaching or adhering to beliefs that are false (Romans 16:17,18).
