Tag Archives: Church

Doctor of Ministry, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Accountable To & Responsible For: Kings, Rulers, Presidents and Martin Luther

Leave a comment

If you look back at my sermons from 2015 to 2020, more of them subtly point to a certain American President than I care to admit. It has been less than two weeks since January 20th, and in that time, the psychological and emotional turmoil that was Donald Trump’s first term in office has come back in full force. Following his election last November, it seemed like much of the world went into denial, pretending that those awful days of his first term were just a nightmare that we thought was over. 

Then January 20th arrived, and the psychological turmoil and chaos landed on us like a ton of bricks. 

This time around, I am committed to not starting my mornings wondering what the President has done or said that is more outrageous than the day before. I am still following the news but in measured amounts. I am not reading every article of breathless analysis designed to keep my cortisol spiked. I am falling for the trap that I need to read every article to stay apprised of things. I am trying to stay on top of what is happening rather than what might happen. 

Some perspective is important too, even if it is a little unsettling. 

The reality is, for a lot more of human history than not, kings, rulers, emperors, presidents and heads of state have been more Trump-like than not. Perhaps not in his particularities but in his appeal to popular moods and sentiments. It is easier to see why his followers follow him with this perspective. It is the same reason why many societies long endured under cruel and exploitative rulers. The leaders offer the promise of not having to be accountable and responsible ourselves. Leaders like Trump talk about fixes and solutions to all our problems while rarely delivering any. Conversely, they rarely put boundaries on their own words, feelings, behaviours and actions. They offer an intoxicating cult to follow. When a seemingly strong and populist leader promises to fix our problems and then lets loose with their behaviour, it feels oddly liberating. We feel free to express our base desires AND free from being responsible for them. The leader is taking on our responsibility for the problems of our lives and world. 

This kind of ruler is one that was common in 16th century (yes, I am turning again to Luther). In one of Martin Luther’s most important Reformation writings, The Freedom of Christian, he addresses what it means to live a Christian life in this kind of world. In the treatise, Luther asserts two basic theses:

The Christian individual is a completely free lord of all, subject to none.

    The Christian individual is a completely dutiful servant of all, subject to all.

Luther scholar Paul R. Hinlicky argues that this is a frame of who we are accountable to and responsible for. 

We are free “lords of all” because we confess that there is but one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Lord to whom we are accountable. There is no other human Lord that we fear or to whom we owe our allegiance. Thus we are free in the world from subjugating ourselves to human powers and principalities. 

Yet, this one Lord Jesus Christ, to whom we are accountable, first frees us in love and mercy. Then, the one Lord calls us in that same love to care for our neighbour. That accountability to God means we are responsible for our neighbour. This freedom is not easy, but it is hard work. Looking for how our neighbour needs care requires getting past our own needs and concerns. It is the work of seeing and attending to the other. The freedom to love our neighbour means exactly what Jesus reminds us is the greatest commandment: To love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbour as ourselves. 

It is easy to see that this is the opposite of putting our trust in flawed human rulers and then absolving ourselves from living into our base desires. 

For me, in these past months of turmoil and chaos, returning to Luther’s theses of Christian Freedom has been a way to keep my sanity. I remind myself often, “Who am I accountable to? God. Not to any human power,” and “Who am I responsible for? For loving and caring for my neighbour.” I am not responsible for God (to my neighbour), or propping up any other systems and structures of human power and control. 

I am accountable TO the One Lord Jesus Christ and responsible FOR loving my neighbour. 

I hope that being reminded of this fundamental truth of faith can help you through the days, months, and years to come too. 

Photo: A community chest in Wittenberg, in which funds for those in need were kept. Accessible by two keys, one held by the mayor and the other by the pastor of the town church.

Doctor of Ministry, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Two Kingdoms: A Bishop and President

Leave a comment

This week, many of you might have seen or heard Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon from Washington National Cathedral, which was a part of the inauguration events for President Donald Trump. 

In the sermon, Bishop Budde (the Episcopal Bishop of Washington) preaches about unity, using the themes of humility and mercy. Near the end, she addressed President Trump directly, imploring him to have mercy on “scared kids.” The sermon is readily available on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwwaEuDeqM8&t=1s

It was a compelling moment for partisans on all sides, both positive and negative. Predictably, the President and his supporters did not like this and condemned Bishop Budde. Unfortunately, they have mostly succeeded in turning a sermon with Biblical foundations and moral clarity into a partisan issue, more about scoring points for or against Donald Trump. 

However, the sermon wasn’t a partisan act. As Lutherans, we know this because of Martin Luther’s Two Kingdoms Doctrine. Bishop Budde did precisely what we as Lutherans believe is the correct role of the church in relation to politics and the civil realm.

In Luther’s Two Kingdoms Doctrine, Luther (using St. Augustine as a foundation) describes two Kingdoms: The Kingdom or realm of the Church and the Kingdom or realm of Civil Authorities (Kings, Emperors, Democracies etc…).

The role of civil authorities is to protect society from outside threats, from non-Chrisians or those who would do evil, and, most importantly, to care for the vulnerable and needy in society. 

The role of the Church is to proclaim the gospel and to promote faith formation. In other words, to help shape and create people of faith. 

When the church steps outside of its realm, when it tries to claim more power than it should (such as how the Roman Catholic church of the 16th century was deeply involved in politics and wars), civil authorities step in to prevent the church from trying to be more than human, from trying to be God in God’s place. 

When civil authorities fail in their role and people are treated as less than human, it is the church’s responsibility to hold the civil authorities to account and to advocate that all are treated with dignity and humanity.

This, of course, is the role that the prophets and Jesus took on in scripture by holding kings, rulers and political authorities to account when they were not caring for the vulnerable and needy. It is the prophetic function of the church.

This function is rooted in our Baptismal calling and the calls given to deacons, pastors and bishops. As we are the church in the world, we do not belong to the world. Rather, we know that we belong to God. It is God who gives authority to both the civil realm and the church realm… and it is to God that we are all accountable to love and care for our neighbour. 

Photo: The town square and city hall in Wittenberg from where you can see the spires of St. Mary’s Church. Two Kingdoms side by side.

Doctor of Ministry, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Returning to the Small Catechism

Leave a comment

In my first call to ministry, I served a small farming congregation outside Edmonton. It was some of the most fertile farmland in Alberta, fed by the North Saskatchewan River. Since the mid-1800s, German immigrants had settled there having moved from the western parts of Russia. Serving that community was almost like stepping back in time, many members remembered when electric lights came to their farms. They recalled riding to church in horse, buggy, or horse and sleigh. 

The pastors of that community often served in a multiplicity of roles. They were also the local teacher, sometimes doctors, legal experts, and even postmasters! Confirmation was usually all day Saturday and included German language education, along with filling in the gaps that the local one-room grade school missed.

When I began serving, it was expected that I would attend the monthly Evangelical Lutheran Women’s (ELW) Bible Study. As we studied various things, I quickly discovered that many of the women could still recall much of the Small Catechism by heart, which they memorized in Confirmation classes. At the time, it felt like a curious artifact of history. 

Over the years in the ministry, I have continued to encounter Lutherans who could still recall the Small Catechism by heart (my mother is one of them!). I have come to see this less curious artifact of history and more blessing born in some brief teenage suffering in Confirmation class. 

The more and more I study Luther, and his theology, the more I am becoming convinced that despite those Lutherans of a certain vintage who can remember their catechism by heart, we, as clergy and church leaders, have mostly done a poor job of catechizing the people we serve. 

Last fall, as I prepared to teach the Lord’s Prayer to our confirmation class, I couldn’t help but wonder at how Luther’s explanation of the Lord’s Prayer is still so relevant today. 

‘People should know this!” was the constant refrain in my head.  As I have done Adult Study in the past and in the various other venues I have been privileged to teach, I have witnessed a hunger to know more and to go deeper. Even among confirmands — who might be the age where being interested in all this faith stuff is the most difficult — there has been an interest in learning the faith.

Before Christmas, I decided that teaching the catechism was something that I would do more. Starting on Sundays after worship, I will be inviting anyone who wants to join me, to grab a coffee following worship and have a brief discussion on one part of the Small Catechism. One of the commandments, one of the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, or one line of one of the articles of the creed. The conversations won’t be long, maybe ten or twenty minutes, depending on what depths we can mine together. I hope to do this most Sundays. 

For several weeks, I was very proud of myself for coming up with this “Coffee and Catechism” idea. Until last week, through study and research, I discovered that my idea was not original at all. During the Reformation, the reformers would regularly preach on the catechism during the week, expecting that the children of Wittenberg would attend – along with the parents that brought them! Catechetical teaching was an important means of teaching the faith to people. Even then, it was not an original Reformation idea either. In the first three hundred years of the Church, when most converts were adults, as converts prepared for baptism through the season of Lent, the local Bishop would come and unveil the mysteries of God by teaching the 10 Commandments, the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. 

So I might not be so original or brilliant, but I hope I am in good company. Most importantly, however, learning the faith is not something we do once in a couple of years when we are 13 years old, but something we continually come back to and learn again. 

covid-19, Doctor of Ministry, Pastor Thoughts

The Beginning of Faith – Pastor Thoughts

Leave a comment

If you hear enough Lutheran sermons, you *should* have some sense that Baptism is a cornerstone part of our understanding of faith. (I will have to talk with my pastor colleagues if they haven’t made clear that Baptism is pretty important). Martin Luther pushed for a renewal of the Christian understanding of Baptism as centrally important to how we understand our identity as people who belong to God and as members of the Body of Christ. 

This week we hear the story of the Baptism of Jesus, which is important to come back to each year. As we are implored regularly in the liturgy, remembering our Baptism is an important part of our worship. The irony is that most of us don’t remember our own Baptism. So what does remembering our Baptism look like? Well, it is something we do as we hear about and witness the Baptisms of others. 

In the story of Jesus going down into the waters of the Jordan to be baptized by John, God proclaims that Jesus is God’s Beloved Son. This proclamation is not just for that moment but the proclamation that God makes to all who are baptized. It was the proclamation made over Sutton who was baptized last Sunday at our church. And it is the proclamation made to each person we bring to the waters and who is washed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

But Baptism is still more than just a welcome for new babies and an entrance into the Church of Christ. The story of Jesus’ Baptism does not come to us in a vacuum. It comes to us in this season after Epiphany as we move toward Lent and Holy Week. The one who is baptized by John in the Jordan, whom God is well pleased with, will become the one who is crucified on Good Friday and who  rises again on Easter Sunday. 

St. Paul reminds us in Romans 6, “therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.”

In Baptism, God claims us as God’s own children. God names us beloved AND most importantly, God identifies us with the death and resurrection of Christ. God ties us to the in-breaking of God into the world with mercy and reconciliation. 

This essential part of Baptism is the beginning point of faith, that we die to sin and death in the baptismal waters with Christ and we are raised to new life by the resurrection of Christ. So when we gather together to witness a Baptism in our community, we are reminded that, just as this new Christian is now identified with Christ’s death and resurrection, so too are we, by virtue of the same Baptism with which we were baptized. 

As we hear this story of Christ’s Baptism this week, remember that it is the story of our Baptism, too.  

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Advent, Annunciation and Apoclaypse

Leave a comment

The arc of Advent can be frustrating to those who see Advent as a countdown or barrier to the season of Christmas—four weeks of doing things that are Christmas adjacent but decidedly not Christmas. At church, we don’t tend to sing Christmas music; we decorate with hints of what is come, and we tell Apocalyptic stories different from the familiar Christmas ones. Only on this Fourth Sunday of Advent, when we are introduced to Mary, do we finally meet a familiar character from the Christmas story. 

Advent in the Church can feel like a counter-example to Christmas. In public, we notice the Christmas muzzak blaring on radios and store speakers from November onward, the ubiquitous Christ decor, Christmas menus, Christmas concerts and parties. Advent in the Church is slower, quieter, more reverent and expectant. Christmas is all about joy and celebration. 

Yet, is a Christmas that starts November 1st all that different from Advent? Even with weeks and weeks of “Christmas stuff” going on, there is still a secular understanding that Christmas does not truly come until December 25. Even though we try to have two months of Christmas, it is more like two months of stressed consumerism, extra cooking, baking, cleaning, hosting, socializing and preparation. It is almost like all the worst parts of Advent—a mountain of preparation for something that we are trying to convince ourselves has arrived already.

That is why, even though we meet Mary and her cousin Elizabeth this week, they piercingly represent a different kind of Advent. This isn’t pregnant Mary bouncing down the road to Bethlehem on the back of a donkey; this is Mary at the beginning of her pregnancy. Pregnancy is one of the most Advent experiences of all, where preparing for a new child involves a complete transformation of the self—physically, psychologically and spiritually. I pregnancy there is nothing that can be done to hurry the process along, instead, we live by the adage that “things happen when they happen.” 

When we let our human desires and fears guide our approach to Christmas, we try to jump to the ending right away. Instead, we create two months of stress and extra chores for ourselves. Because we can feel like we are in control of that version of Christmas, at least we are the ones choosing what we do and when we do it. But the version of Christmas that needs Advent to come first forces us to admit that we are not in control, that we do not get to decide when the apocalyptic in-breaking of God in incarnate flesh happens. Rather, Advent is a process of letting go of our control, and the Spirit opening us up to the revealing of Emmanuel—God with us. 

As we come to the end of Advent, Mary models for us that experience of letting go. Certainly, her encounter with the Angel Gabriel and the news that she would bear Emmanuel was life-altering—in both good and terrible ways. Her recourse is to let go, for her to receive the gift of faith in the Spirit and to know that God’s intention for her and for us is mercy and goodness. This is something she would have heard about over and over again in her faith community and from her ancestors—just as her song declares. One almost wonders if she believes it herself yet; but that, too, is part of the process. Mary prays back to God the Word of Promise that a faithful God has first given to all of us, so that we continually hear the Gospel. 

In this way, Advent, Annunciation and Apocalypse are intertwined. In our waiting, God’s promises are revealed. God breaks into human history, breaks into our lives, and delivers news that changes our reality. God in flesh is coming, in the space of the love between unexpectedly pregnant cousins and the space of a child growing in a mother’s womb, preparing to enter our world. 

*** I am grateful to daughter/father podcasting team, of theologians Sarah Hinlicky-Wilson and Paul Hinlikcy for there articluation of Apocalypse (which of coruse, they would attribute ultimately to Paul!) Check out their podcast here: https://www.queenofthesciences.com ***

Photo: “The Vineyard of the Lord” from St. Mary’s Church in Wittenberg