Sermon for Epiphany 1C, January 10, 2016

Text: Luke 3:15-22

            Beloved in Christ, about a month ago we heard about John baptizing in the wilderness and calling people to repentance. He did so because He was trying to renew God’s people, especially since Christ was coming. But what John was doing was something that has been going on since the dawn of time and continues to this very day: he was calling God’s people to renewal because they had gone astray.

            You see, all humanity is by nature sinful. We have all rebelled against God. We all have at least part of us that would like to continue to do so. The heathen may have nothing but disgust for God or may disregard Him altogether, but even God’s people—people who have been taught about Him and have been called to faith in Him—still struggle with a side of their nature that wants to defy and disobey Him. To make matters worse, we have our ups and downs. Sometimes we are enthusiastic about God and all that He has done for us. Other times we are downright slovenly in our prayers, cold in our love, and sluggish in our works. This is one reason that we have several different seasons in the church year that call us out of our spiritual slumber and invite us to renew our faith.

            But sometimes there is a bigger cycle at work than merely having the spiritual blahs for a month or two. Sometimes God’s people backslide so much that they are indistinguishable from the heathen who do not fear God at all. If you read Old Testament history, you see that God’s people may start off being fervent for the Lord, but then they begin to neglect Him more and more until finally a generation arises that is nominally called God’s people but doesn’t really know Him. That is a disastrous situation. When the heathen believe and behave like heathen, it doesn’t blaspheme God’s name, but when Christians believe and behave like heathen, it dishonors Him and distorts Christian witness. The heathen then have no reason to reconsider the Christian faith, but remain in their hardened unbelief and unrepentance.

            That is why God has sent chosen individuals to call His people to be renewed in their faith. He sent the judges early on in Israel’s history every time that the Israelites lapsed into idolatry and then suffered as a consequence. Later he sent prophets. And then going into the New Testament age (our age) there have always been pastors who have seen the church languishing in ignorance and wickedness and called people to know the Lord once again. But not every person who has called the church to renewal has done so in a God-pleasing manner. Even some of the judges in the biblical days were not entirely faithful to God and did as much damage as they did good. And if you look at the history of the Christian church after the time of the apostles you will see that there were many would-be reformers who actually hurt the church’s renewal rather than helped it.

            John the Baptist, however, was not such an individual. And it might help us to consider why he was the greatest individual ever used by God to renew His people. That is all the more remarkable because there were plenty of people in his day who saw that the children of Israel were languishing and needed to be brought back to God. But none of their efforts made a difference.

            There were the Sadducees, who were mainly priests in the temple. They thought that by returning to the purest rituals they would ensure that Israel would be holy. Now it is true that we should pay attention to how we worship. God is holy, and He must be worshipped “in the splendor of holiness.” Worship should not be haphazard or based on what pleases us. But the Sadducees had no living faith in the LORD God. They rejected most of the Old Testament and denied the resurrection of the dead and other basic tenets. Now there is nothing better than when worship is done reverently and attentively because the pastor and people alike long to hear God’s Word and believe every last syllable of it. But there is nothing worse than when worship is done reverently, but merely covers the rank unbelief in the hearts of worshippers. So, liturgical renewal without a renewal in hearing God’s Word is pointless and even harmful.

            Then there were the Pharisees, who stressed ethical reform. They worked hard on getting the average person to hew closely to all the regulations found in Moses’s law, as well as in the traditions they had come up with over time. Similarly, we today have moral reformers, who believe that the best thing Christians can do is to change society or at least to get the church to obey their rules. Now it is true that when people delight in the Lord God again, they will be eager to do good works that please Him. But first comes the renewal and then the good works. Furthermore, these are not self-important good works, actions that we choose, but are rather the good works that are solidly based on God’s command.

            There were still others calling for renewal in John’s day. The Zealots stirred up revolution against the Roman Empire. They thought that violence was the only way by which God’s kingdom would come. And there were the Essenes who turned their backs on everyone and retreated to the wilderness where they didn’t have to interact with anyone. John didn’t choose any of those ways of calling people to renewal, either.

            So what did he do? He pointed people to Christ. He baptized because Christ was around the corner. He called people to come back to God because God had already come back to His people by taking on our flesh and blood and being one of us. He baptized because forgiveness of sins could truly be offered since the sacrifice for our sins would soon be made. But when people got excited about John’s ministry, he told them not to. It wasn’t about him, but about the Christ who would come soon.

            God’s people are renewed when they are pointed not back to themselves and their spiritual efforts nor to the preachers who call for renewal but to the LORD God, especially to Jesus Christ, God in human flesh. You see, we human being cannot renew ourselves but God has to do it for us. And that is why our eyes have to be turned to Him. In the New Testament era genuine renewal has always been connected with Christian baptism. When the church has been renewed, those who long despised baptism are brought to its waters, where they find the full and free salvation that God placed there. Meanwhile, those who had been baptized long ago embrace fully the gift that God had planted in their baptism. They take seriously as never before how baptism has connected them with the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

            You see, one of the most spiritual acts that ever occurred in human history was when Christ was baptized, as is described in today’s Gospel. Sure, He had previously united His divine nature with ours when He was conceived by the Virgin Mary and born in Bethlehem. That indicated the direction He was likely to go. But lest there be any doubt, He submitted Himself to baptism so that He could take on mankind’s sin and free humanity from its just condemnation. You see, He could have merely chosen to live His own righteous life as a perfect human being, showing mankind from a distance how it ought to be done. But instead He chose to get close to us sinners. He entered the baptismal waters made filthy by all our sins and He claimed those sins as His own, even though He would never do anything like them throughout His entire life.

            It is Christ’s baptism that gives power to ours. We could have every drop of the swollen Mississippi pass over us, and it would do nothing to make us holy. But even a few ounces of water can bring us eternal life and salvation if they are grounded in Christ Jesus and combined with His Word. Baptism renews us because Christ put that power in baptism. And it continues to renew us, for God does not stop the work He has begun.

            We also see that our Lord prayed as He was baptized. Now we know that we ought to pray too, but we never seem to pray as much as we ought. Our life would be changed if we talked as much to God about our troubles and hopes and outlook on life as we do with other people—and if we were willing to listen to His words on those subjects. But we should be encouraged to know that Christ prays for us more fervently and more often than we do. When I bring a particular problem before God, I should know that Christ has been praying about it for a lot longer than I have and that He understands dimensions of that problem that I cannot even see. I say this not to excuse our laziness in prayer or to tell you to forget about praying, but rather to encourage you all the more to renew your fervency in prayer, for you see that Christ is already doing the hardest work in prayer.

            Finally, we see in our Lord’s baptism that the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove and the Father proclaimed that He was pleased with Jesus and acknowledged Him as His Son. Christ wasn’t setting out on a venture all on His own without the knowledge or approval of His Father. Instead, the Father fully approved His Son taking on the task of redeeming us. By extension, therefore, when He approved of His Son’s baptism, He was approving of the sort of people that He was hanging out with—namely, you and me.

            Now when we understand that God is the one at work bringing us back to Him, true renewal takes place. We no longer just go through the motions of piety. We no longer let legalism take the place of a living faith. Instead, we acknowledge that we are sinners and that we have only one hope, our Savior Jesus Christ. We cling to Him and to His teachings. And that brings about a real change inside of us, and that in turn leads others to consider Christianity even though they had sworn it off for good. May God grant that His church would be renewed in this way and that the heathen would also come to faith! In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening, Part Three

Before reading this blog, the reader should look at the previous two blogs, especially the last one, which is a synopsis of Bishop Bo Giertz’s argument on the relationship between liturgy and spiritual awakening. Once we are familiar with Bishop Giertz’s argument, we can ask whether these words from mid-20th century Sweden have any relevance for us today.

We have to note the differences. Nearly every Swede of Giertz’s generation had been baptized and was a member of the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden, although many Swedes had but tenuous ties with the church. Giertz himself had been baptized as a child, even though both of his parents were atheists and he was raised in a largely secular environment. Thus, one of the major purposes of awakening movements in Sweden was to reconnect youth and adults with the church of their baptism that they knew little about. Now it still happens in the United States that children are baptized and then their spiritual growth is entirely neglected. But that is not as often the case here as in Sweden, since there is not the same social pressure to have children brought to baptism and made to belong to the one church that is integrated with the entire social fabric of the country. As the Church of Sweden has lost its standing in its society, there is a growing percentage of unbaptized Swedes. One can expect that future awakenings in Sweden (May God grant them!) will not be exclusively a re-conversion of the baptized, but also in large measure a conversion of the heathen.

In addition, awakening movements in Sweden had often been connected, sometimes rather tenuously and not altogether harmoniously, with the Church of Sweden. But in the United States, each awakening movement has turned its back on established churches and founded new ones. Revivalism itself has become an institution—and one spiritually impoverished by its substitution of new forms and a “new liturgy,” as well as its open hostility to creeds and liturgy. Consequently, each awakening movement is unable to pass on the faith to the next generation and the movement burns itself out—just as Giertz had so insightfully seen and warned.

Thus, we in the United States live in a situation where awakening and liturgy are not just rivals living in tension with each other, but where they have become bitter foes. We have evidence of where this leads, and it is just as Bishop Giertz had predicted. “Liturgy without awakening” has indeed become “the most dangerous of all church programs” (p. 28), as is evident in the Episcopal Church and in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), as well as many other mainline denominations. Churches that had never had lectionaries have adopted them. Liturgical worship has become more common in mainline churches, and there is a fascination with ritual. But at the same time orthodoxy and traditional Christian morality have never been so marginalized in those church bodies. The fascination with ritual has led not only to a recovery of ancient Christian rites, but also to the adoption of bizarre, half-pagan rites (such as labyrinth walks).

Meanwhile, American Evangelicalism has demonstrated the truth of Giertz’s contention that wherever the traditional liturgy has been discarded, “the new forms that grow up…are usually less attractive and more profane than the ancient liturgy” (pp. 17-18). Moreover, “they contain less of God’s Word, they pray and speak without Scriptural direction, they are not so much concerned about expressing the whole content of Scripture, but are satisfied with one thing or another that seems to be especially attractive or popular” (p. 18). Anyone who knows the history of American Evangelicalism knows how it has latched onto a particular idea in any given generation to the exclusion of the full counsel of God and how it has tended to be driven from one fad to another until finally the substantial theology of a Gresham Machen or a Carl F.H. Henry is replaced by that of a Robert Bell.

Where does that leave confessional Lutheranism, especially in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod? There have been several forces at work in the last decades. There was a liberal liturgical movement (much akin to what predominates in the ELCA now), but it failed to take over the synod and is largely a spent force now. But those who opposed the liberal liturgical movement were not all united as to how to move the synod forward, especially as it became apparent that the synod had stagnated in the late 1960’s and entered a stage of mild decline in the decades that followed. Some argued that the church needed an awakening to stem both liberalism and a decline in membership. These people saw American Evangelicalism as the antidote and embraced its trends—the charismatic craze, spiritual gifts inventories, the church growth movement, the seeker church paradigm, the megachurch phenomenon, contemporary Christian music, the house church trend, and the emergent church, to name a few. Granted, the Missouri Synod participants have tried to “Lutheranize” these movements, but (as their critics have rightly noted) they have tended to follow Evangelicalism as slavishly as the liberals followed mainline theology.

Others returned to the Lutheran confessions, which they saw as the antidote to the serious theological flaws of both liberalism and Evangelicalism. They tended to be mildly liturgical in the sense that they followed the Divine Service as printed in the hymnal but without any real interest in liturgical matters. But as the 1980’s and 1990’s unfolded, robust interest in theology was coupled with a robust interest in the riches of the liturgy. Unlike the liberal liturgical movement, where the rich liturgical language masked the unbelief of the celebrant, this conservative liturgical movement used the liturgy to express the fullness of its faith. And thus the most avowedly confessional people in the synod (those who can say what Solid Declaration Article III is about without having to look it up) are also the most likely to be very liturgically conscious. For them, those who have followed contemporary Evangelical trends are minimalists not only in worship, but in confessional commitment. But those who have followed more of Evangelicalism’s trends look at the confessional liturgical movement as aloof and unable to reach out to the lost who so desperately need the message of the gospel.

Bishop Giertz’s herdabrev may offer a fruitful proposal for dialogue between these two groups in our synod. He suggested that the liturgy of the common Divine Service held on Sundays and other festivals should be kept intact, but he allowed greater freedom for other, more informal gatherings of the church. The Divine Service is the common heritage for all Christians and is rich in biblical quotations and symbolism that give real sustenance to the mature. It should not be abandoned or drastically changed. But the church also needs to “speak to the children of the age in the language of the age about those things which have been forgotten but need to be heard again” (p. 14). This will take place outside of the Divine Service, in informal Bible studies and prayer groups and other activities that bring the unchurched, the de-churched, and the unbeliever into contact with God’s Word.

Bishop Giertz’s herdabrev will not end the worship wars, but it may serve as the basis for discussion that could lead to a just and lasting peace.

Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening, Part Two

In the comments below, I am quoting from Clifford Ansgar Nelson’s translation of Bishop Bo Giertz’s herdabrev, “Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening,” published by Augustana Book Concern in 1950.

Bishop Giertz begins his discussion of these matters by positing that “The Word of God creates the church” (p. 10). That Word appeared in two different forms—those “which seem to be more or less improvised and spontaneous and those which appear fixed and unchangeable”—or “awakening” and “liturgy,” as they are commonly called (p. 10).

Liturgy has deep roots in the apostolic age: “The altar is today the only place in our modern life where, with unbroken tradition, the vestments are still used which were worn by people in that olden day. Within the walls of the church one can still hear musical settings that preserve something of the very tones of that hymn of praise which our Lord and His disciples sang when they ate the paschal meal” (p. 12). And yet it is not the antiquity of the service that most commends itself, but “the fact that it is a form which the Spirit Himself has created to preserve and deepen the life which He has awakened in the church” (p. 13).

Awakening also has apostolic roots. But its language is different. “The instrument of awakening is the spoken Word, a word with prophetic authority, powerful to crush the hard rock of a soul and also appealing with all the inward warmth of the gospel. The language of awakening is often akin to everyday speech….Therefore, the words of awakening do not employ such phrases as, for the example, the Root of Jesse, or the Key of David. Rather do they speak to the children of the age in the language of the age about those things which have been forgotten but need to be heard again,” while liturgy “uses all the richness of the Scriptures, all the meaningful symbols and prefigurements of Christ in the Old Testament” (p. 14).

Both are necessary. “Awakening is always needed…because there is always the need for awakening even among the most faithful members of the church….The old Adam in each one of us is prone to fall asleep, to make the Christian life a dead routine, to use liturgical form to cloak his self-complacency and impenitence” (p. 16). “Liturgy is just as needful. There can be no normal church life without liturgy. Sacraments need form; the order of worship must have some definite pattern. It is possible to live for a short time on improvisations” but “in circles where people seek to live without any forms, new forms are nevertheless constantly taking shape….But it would not be wrong to say that the new forms that grow up in this way are usually less attractive and more profane than the ancient liturgy….The new liturgy that grows in this manner is poorer, less Biblical, and less nourishing to the soul than the discarded ancient order” (pp. 17-18).

Giertz notes that liturgy has many enemies, including “sluggish, dead passivity” (p. 19). But liturgy’s most formidable enemy is awakening, because few worldly sluggards count themselves as more spiritual than liturgy, but the awakened are tempted to count liturgy as an improper form of worship (p. 19). But as Giertz perceptively notes, “there is often a goodly portion of self-righteousness and egocentricity in [awakening’s] judgment. The old Adam is an unequalled opportunist” (p. 21). Awakening dismisses the liturgy because a person was not awakened in the liturgy but in some other manner and therefore, this manner “must be the proper way” or even “the only right way” (p. 21).

Giertz adds that there is another reason many oppose the liturgy, “humanly understandable but no more valid: There are people who find it difficult to feel at home in the liturgical forms” (p. 22). In other words, some people find liturgical forms “very natural, so that they immediately feel at home in them, while other people find it hard to become accustomed to them” (p. 23). A solution might be to abandon the liturgy in part or in total, but Giertz will have none of that: “All liturgy demands the submerging of self” (p. 22). A Christian “who will not subordinate himself in such fellowship is no Christian, because one cannot be a Christian by one’s self” (p. 23). “When revival piety in the church is unwilling to live in the framework of the liturgy in the common service of worship, it has placed itself outside the fellowship of the church and can no longer be counted as a living movement of the church of Christ” (p. 25).

Lest this seem too big of a burden for the non-liturgically oriented to bear, Giertz adds, “Outside the common worship service there must be freedom….There must be full freedom also for all those forms of worship which truly serve for edification; they may be services of prayer, inner circles of fellowship, liturgical orders of devotion, and many another type of worship” (p. 25). The only stipulation is that these worship forms “shall never displace or be a substitute for the great fellowship of the Sunday common service.”

Having spoken against awakening’s interference with the liturgy, Giertz warns about a false liturgy, which can “become an almost impregnable armor for the old Adam” (p. 26). He asks (p. 26), “What can the Holy Spirit do with a person who goes to Communion more faithfully than anyone else in the congregation, who for an hour a day prays beautiful prayers from the Psalter or from the classic prayer books of Christendom…but who through all these exercises only becomes more and more convinced that he is a better kind of person, a person…who loves no one except himself and his holy ceremonies?” Thus, “liturgy without awakening is probably the most dangerous of all church programs. It is possible to enrich and beautify the worship service, to add vestments and choirs, to plan lovely vespers, and even to arrange for more frequent communions, without a single person in earnestness asking himself, ‘How shall I, a sinner, be saved?’” (p. 28).

Giertz adds that “awakening needs liturgy” (p. 30), if it is going to be sound enough to pass on its heritage from one generation to the next. But “awakening, or revival, can also serve liturgy. When men are wakened, there is new life in the old forms of devotion….Ancient, beautiful custom becomes more than custom. It becomes an expression for the life which is born again” (p. 31).

Giertz concludes by positing that “the need for awakening will one day cease. It belongs to this world, where men still sleep the sleep of death….But liturgy will remain….a never ending thanksgiving to the Creator and Father of all things” (pp. 31-32).

Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening, Part One

I recently came across a booklet written a full two decades before the outbreak of the current “worship wars,” but a booklet which is full of wisdom for today. It is the herdabrev, the bishop’s inaugural letter, of the late Rev. Bishop Bo Giertz, Bishop of Gothenburg, Sweden. The title of the herdabrev is “Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening” and is an appeal for the church to take both liturgy and spiritual awakening seriously.

The context is different, but there is still much we can learn. Bishop Giertz became bishop of Gothenburg in 1949 in a country where “high church Pietist” or “sacramental Pietist” was not a contradiction in terms, where those fervent to save people’s souls did not disdain the church, the sacraments, and the liturgy. This was the legacy of such theologians as Henric Schartau and even to some extent Carl Rosenius, who did not separate from the Church of Sweden even as they called for a renewal of it. In the United States, however, we have followed a different path, where spiritual awakening has always seen itself as the mortal enemy of previously established churches and their liturgies and sacraments. Indeed, spiritual awakening is seen as a quasi-sacramental experience and liturgy as a hindrance to it. Add to it the American love of consumerism and individualism as well as the American disdain for history, and you can see why the awakening movements in the United States have tended to create schismatic and wildly heterodox churches that foster a Platonic (if not crypto-Gnostic) disdain for the fully sacramental and liturgical life of the church. Given this environment, it is difficult for anyone who cares about creeds, liturgy, and rich theology to give a fair hearing to anything that comes out of the American revivalist scene.

And yet now might be a moment for those in America to reconcile awakening and liturgy. The past three decades have seen a growing number of Evangelicals dissatisfied with Evangelicalism’s shallow Christology, fluffy theology, disembodied ecclesiology, and contempt for the visible created world. Evangelicalism has not responded to the current crisis by all going in one direction, but one avenue for Evangelicals to express their dissent has been to join the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox or Anglican Church. They have recovered creedal orthodoxy and liturgical sensibilities, but usually at the cost of a Reformation understanding of justification. Lutherans—especially confessional Lutherans—are such a tiny percentage of American Christianity that few Evangelicals recognize it as an option, especially since Evangelicals think that Lutherans are Zwinglian in their theology and liturgical style.

But what if a person could be both an heir to the broad catholic tradition (including the liturgy) and to the Reformation recovery of the gospel (with its emphasis on justification by grace through faith)? What if one could see that the liturgy is not the enemy of genuine spiritual awakening and vice versa, but that the one leads to the other? In other words, what if we could be good Lutherans and recognize that both liturgy and awakening are part of our apostolic inheritance and shall be ours until our Lord returns? That is the question Bishop Giertz in effect addressed in his brief monograph, “Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening.”

In the next post I’ll look at some specific things that Bishop Giertz had to say about awakening and liturgy.