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Christian
There is a commercial for Chase apps on television right now, there are two little girls walking around on opposite sides of the street with their mothers, each pair going door to door with a little wagon full of chocolate bars for some fundraiser. At the outset of the commercial, the mothers wave at each other, but the little girls give each other chin thrusts worthy of Joe Pesci in the movie “Goodfellas”. Background music is a song with the refrain, “I’m the champion, champion, I’m number one”. One girl is using the Chase mobile app and it appears this is why she is able to sell her wagon load of faster than the other girl. quickly, who is portrayed held back by neighbors, good customers who do not have the app and are giving her currency. At one point, a man is pulling some cash and change out of his pockets, which falls on his porch. The little girl, with her hand out, rolls her eyes and gives a look of pure loathing and contempt to this man and another, presumably to her mother, that seems to say “can you believe this guy?” Charming. You have come to this man’s home and asked him to buy some of your chocolate for your team, and he is doing just that, and this is how you behave towards him, to his face.
I wonder if anyone else sees this commercial through the same lens, or if there are whole generations of children who have not been brought up to interact with other people, kin or neighbor, friend or stranger, as anything other than a means to an end instead of a human being that God loves. Of course, we can’t expect children to know how to view other human beings unless we teach them, particularly by modeling that behavior for them.
Let me start from the place that we can no longer assume that anyone has sufficient cultural literacy (to say nothing of actual Christian catechesis) to know the very basics about Christianity. We humans are created by God in His image, and since the Fall, God has been reaching out to His people, to bring His people and all of His creation to back to Himself. He spoke to His people through the prophets, but in these latter days He has spoken to us through His Son, Jesus Christ. All who believe in the gospel will be God’ children and have eternal life. The Nicene Creed is at the bottom of this post.
As we confess in the creeds, we are all sinners, all have fallen short of the glory of God. We sin against God in thought, word and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We cannot free ourselves from our sinful condition, and that is why God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ to take our punishment, to die for the sins of the world, and rise from the dead on the third day. In baptism we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and become part of the body of Christ. God the Son, and all who believe in Him have forgiveness of their sins and eternal life, now and in His eternal kingdom. Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead, to bring all things back to Himself, and His Kingdom will have no end.
My parents met in their sophomore year of college in the 50’s, and married at ages 24 and 25 after a long courtship that lasted through college and my father’s required military service. My mom taught Sunday school, my father was a deacon and elder in the church, and to people who knew him best, he carried his faith with him into every aspect of life, although it was not always evident. Although he could gin up ribald jokes, and some of his phrases by today’s lights qualify as politically incorrect speech, Dad truly desired to serve the Lord. He took risks for, and stood up for (again, 21st century term) marginalized people. Not in a way that was for virtue signaling, but because it was right. And he didn’t draw attention to himself. If he saw a good professional, he would hire them no matter race, color or creed. If a Chicago-based congregation needed worship space and our sanctuary was available after our services, they could use it. He was sensitive to welcoming people, treating them like anyone else. These fellow Christians using our facilities happened to be all Black, but they were Christians first and foremost. In the early 1970’s, the civil rights movement still very active, and Dad was very attuned to the realities of modern life, especially the political and social realities and the racially charged atmosphere of Chicago and its suburbs. But Dad walked the talk: Christ is the Lord of all. And the church is not a political organization.
Over my life I have come to realize how well the under shepherds in the church of my childhood worked to form the people of God. When I was in my early 30’s, I joined the Lutheran church, and due to my baptism and formation in another mainline liturgical Protestant denomination, it was not a difficult transition spiritually. I was not aware there was a schism in the Lutheran Church that led to a split into two bodies. One day, around 1993 I think, someone casually mentioned that the body I was now a part of, the Missouri Synod, did not ordain women. Wait, what?
As a child growing up, I had seen maybe one or two female pastors. I only dimly remember it because they did a workmanlike job of leading worship and it didn’t cross my mind that it was remarkable. We were focused on the Scriptures – in that venerable that mainline denomination, in those days, from the time a child could competently read, about 3rd or 4th grade, they were presented with their own Bible. The importance of the Word of God was continuously reinforced at home, in church, in our lives. “The Kingdom of God is coming, indeed without our prayer, but we pray to be a part of it.” The characteristics of who is preaching the Word cannot overtake the Word.
Fast forward to today. That church that I grew up in was closed and the last service was held in 2024. The building that our congregation completed in 1971, after worshiping for a long time in the local middle school, was torn down shortly afterwards. Even though my folks had attended a different church in another town since the 1980’s until their deaths, and I had been a Missouri Synod Lutheran for decades, seeing that building demolished was still like a death, but a death that happened some years prior, and now the empty body, long devoid of its spirit, was also gone.
After Dad’s death in 2012, I went to a service at that old church. It was good to see a few familiar faces from very long ago, but it was disturbing to hear these same people being led in a service of what sounded like affirmations – “Lord, help us to become the people we want to be” – not the Word of God, not the Law, not the Gospel. I was confused from the start, maybe in denial – looking at the bulletin. It looked like it had the vague outlines of a liturgy, but that was it. The woman leading the service, I thought, she must be an interim or lay leader? Didn’t I hear there were interim clergy filling in at the local churches? Maybe this was an aberration.
There was a lot of talk about the food pantry, the clothing ministry, all of the good things they were doing for the community, but no mention of the Lord we serve. This is not the church. This is like Rotary, or Habitat for Humanity. The church performs charitable works in the name of our risen Lord and Savior. Without Him, “all of our righteous acts are like filthy rags, we wither like a leaf, we are carried away by our iniquities”. We have violated the First Commandment and made gods of ourselves.
Some time later, I went back to that church to an Advent service, thinking maybe that earlier visit was a fluke. There was no mention of the long-awaited Savior, or our need for one. Instead, the same woman talked about Mary and “the Patriarchy”. I waited. Jesus’ name came up in the hymns, but it seemed incidental. It was then that I realized, the church of my youth was absolutely gone. I was in a strange place.
I took some time to research what happened and learned that apparently this body had also split into two entities, and my old church had become of the type that religion writer Terry Mattingly might call “NPR at Prayer”, back in the 1980s when my parents decamped. This former church had become a place where , as H. Roland Neibuhr wrote, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/955337.The_Kingdom_of_God_in_America
I started this post with my sorrow and dismay over a commercial where little girls appear to be completely focused in on themselves, to the exclusion of others, and their mothers don’t seem to know they should be doing anything to countermand it. I mourn that our culture reinforces the ideas that only ‘champions’ are of value; that there are churches claiming to be Christian who preach that one can be saved by their own works – did Christ die for nothing? That it doesn’t matter what you actually do, or if it is a sin, or why (because you can justify yourself), what matters is that some people think you righteous by some current standard, and that you post about it, and you will live forever. See: First Commandment.
Decades ago I crossed over a then-short theological bridge from the church of my youth, to the safe harbor of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and I didn’t realize that bridge fell down, and the body behind it sunk into oblivion.
That building is gone, along with the false teaching that occurred when the body lost its way. But – the Gospel is still being proclaimed, in all of its truth and power, in other places. But – the Word of God is eternal. The Lord does not desire the destruction of the lost and the wicked. Faith is the work of God the Holy Spirit.
Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:6-7)
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10-11).
THE NICENE CREED
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is,
seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven,
was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.
Amen.
Purls Before Swine 