- [Lutheran pastor "M" in Western Australia]
Just a little thankyou from remote rural Western Australia. Mission Exec
"S" from New South Wales put us onto the Crossings method over here in the
West a few years ago at Pastor's Inservice, and I have found it very
helpful in thinking about texts and preparing for preaching. I also do a
little bit on our local Christian community radio station (Hope FM, here in
Esperance, W.A.) so maybe a couple of hundred people get a 120 second
analysis of the gospel text at 7.45 am on Tuesdays. Half way through I
always ask, "How does Jesus on the cross make a difference?" and then go
on to answer that. Good discipline trying to put it into a breakfast radio
timeslot, and answering that key question. God bless.
- [EHS forwarded these words to the NSW pastor mentioned. He then sent
this back to us:]
It's pleasing to know that Pastor M regularly shares his Crossing of the
Sunday text with people via radio. Last week I taught another small class
of four persons the method over five days. So let's hope there's good
fruit from that planting. Joy and peace in Christ.
- [From Pastor "B" in the upper Midwest]
I want you to know how much I appreciate your ThTh 74: "Measuring sermons
to see if they're Gospel." I remember when I was on sabbatical a few years
back in Pittsburgh. I made a point of visiting a different ELCA
congregation each week with a checklist (arguably, a kind of pharisaic
thing to do). At the top of my list were: 1) did the sermon I heard pass
the double-dipstick test [ = merits and benefits of Christ hyped and the
people offered the promise inherent there]; and 2) was communion
celebrated. Not a sermon I heard passed the double-dipstick test. Only
one of twelve of them even named the "Name."
Again, at the risk of sounding like a Pharisee, I find the quality of
preaching in our church to be simply deplorable. I've stopped attending
district meetings because the sermons I hear at them only make me angry. I
am being persuaded that in addition to not being taught critical thinking
skills, our sem grads aren't taught what the Gospel is. It is
heart-breaking.
Maybe your item, if read widely enough, will help. I'm going to make sure
my assistant reads it. She, too, is (alas) a recent grad of one of our
ELCA seminaries.
- [From "S," a prof at one of those seminaries. I'll summarize his
longish message.]
Responding to ThTh74 his main point was that EHS was way, way too
affirmative about the Lutheran-Roman Catholic consensus document, "Joint
Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification" [JDDJ] though he trusted that
I was not naive about it. He saw JDDJ as a sellout by the Lutherans, a
cave-in to RC notions of "fides caritate formata," namely, that faith when
furnished with works of love does indeed justify sinners, but not faith
alone. That even the justification-by-faith [JBF] presented in JDDJ was
flabby, and that there was no real justification-by-faith-ALONE at all in
JDDJ. He also thought that when it came to JBF as CRITERION for all
doctrine, there was serious fudging going on. He also copied to me the
statement of the 251 German theologians--a number of them friends of mine,
others whom I know and still others I don't--all of whom think JDDJ is bad
news.
- [Thereupon EHS sent him this]
Instead of saying "That's what JDDJ says," I should have said: "That's what
JDDJ (surely) wants to say--and here's a suggestion for how it might say
that even more clearly."
Of course, JDDJ is not what you or I wish "they" would have said. But the
days are gone when one guy (e.g., Melanchthon) will author an ecumenical
document. That doesn't mean you or I can't write a "declaration" of our
own. But if you cherish the word "joint" in the title--and I do--then
there'll likely be disagreement among co-confessors [you and me] on just
how cheered or saddened we should be by what "they" finally hammered out.
Any document by committee will never look like a "full glass" for
everybody. But even for those who see it unfilled, there are two ways to
read the data--half full, half empty. I can argue that the JDDJ glass is
half full. So I see the job of us confessors today to keep on trucking to
get it fuller.
E.g., that happened a bit today at the every Friday brownbag noon hour at
St. Louis University, where some of us Lutheran types talk shop with a few
Jesuits of SLU and some Dominicans of Aquinas Institute. Even if JDDJ is
at best only "one talent" and not 5 or 10 as last Sunday's Gospel
signalled, the dominical admonition is not to "bury it," but to "go for it"
and see what we can make happen with the one talent we've been given.
Remember, I'm just back from 13 straight weeks with fundie conservative
(American style) evangelicals--the whole shebang of my Bali congregation.
If you think JDDJ is too skimpy to capitalize upon, you should've seen the
glasses that the Lord set before me for my pastoral work down there--some
half empty, some upside down, some full of gosh-awful alien liquors.
Enough for now. About those 251 German theologians--well, some other time.
- [Whereupon he sends me this:]
"Half full, or half empty?"
Well, of course, but so is the Koran half-full and thus can be jointly
confessed quatenus. So one party can choose to have it one way and the
other can choose to have it the other way. Everything becomes a matter of
power regarding who can turn the wax nose. Under these conditions you'd be
hard pressed to identify anything as another gospel. Wait til more time
goes by and the Jesus Seminar makes its inroad on the ecumenical managers
(some slopes are slippery and just on the other side of the justification
slope is Jesus (see SA II,I).
"Burying or appropriating the 'one talent' that JDDJ at best may be."
That's, of course, great evangelical strategy (Paul in Acts 17) but we're
talking about teaching and confessing here, not missiology which is rooted
in the former. Why make a big deal about variata of various sorts. The
major hermeneutical heart of JDDJ is just some variata. The "Joint" is
fine but the first "D" stands for "Deconstruction" which is done with the
JBF "talent."
- [Whereupon EHS sent Prof "S" the jeremiad from Pastor "B"--item 3
above--along with these reflections.]
To debate about how bad JDDJ really is seems to me less important than what
Pastor B points to. Is the defective JDDJ or even a correctly improved one
really gonna make ANY difference for what this jeremiad bemoans? I think
not. What gets preached in the parishes (also in Luther's day) is not
shaped by what they did at Augsburg 1530 or 1999. That's just a fact of
life. What counts "for the free course of the Gospel being preached to the
joy and edification of Christ's people" is not JDDJ documents--or even the
original Augsburg Confession--but that people learn what really IS Gospel
and what really ISN'T. That comes--if and when it comes at all to supplant
the false gospels that abound in people's hearts--from the face-to-face
stuff (or cyber-interface) that you & I do when we are NOT writing
confessional statements for folks to sign, but rapping with our colleagues
and students and holding their feet to the fire. The fire here being not a
document but the Good News itself spoken so that they can hear it and cross
it over to their own lives. I can't escape the conclusion that the folks
who don't preach the gospel are folks who don't know the gospel. If they
did, as someone once said, they could not help but preach it when they got
a chance.
Maybe the Jesus Seminar is a threat to THE Gospel. But even if large
numbers of our clergy and laity were to go for it, it wouldn't make the bad
Gospel that Pastor B complains about much worse. So also "nailing" JDDJ
for its fallacies is irrelevant for what really gets preached in the ELCA,
I think. It's not JDDJ that is at the jugular, but what's getting
taught--or not taught--at the seminaries these pastors come from. That
must be at least one source for the lethal false gospels coming from the
mouths of our preachers regardless of what was publicly praised at Augsburg
on Oct. 31, 1999. Fiddling with JDDJ is at the very least Neronic (maybe
even moronic) whilst the ELCA city burns.
- [From second career seminary student "S."]
Re Thth 74. Though the context of your give and take with the ELCA pastor
was regarding sermons, I suspect your remarks are on target for other areas
as well. I also suspect that the widespread allergy to the Reformation
"dipstick" you mentioned is coincident with the widespread popularity
(explicit or implicit, conscious or sub-conscious) of Theology of Glory,
the growing popularity of non-Jesus-only theocentric views of religious
pluralism, just to name a few. I'm even starting to wonder if there isn't
a coincident allergy to the concept of original sin. Could all these
tendencies be working together to try to thwart the proclamation of the
only Gospel truly worth proclaiming?
- [From a retired LCMS pastor.]
Thanks for the "Measuring Sermons" document. I wonder why I find it so
reassuring and affirming of 48 years of my own preaching? I like your
response in the measuring sermon document: 'Where there is no promissio at
all present, we must add the promise," etc. It's truly great to live in
the promise.
- [From an ELCA pastor in the state of Washington]
Thanks for ThTh74. Something that often happens in so-called Christian
preaching is that we treat the methods of Biblical Exegesis that we learned
in the seminary as the final step in preparation for sermons. What I
remember from my exegesis classes is that we often isolated texts and did
all of the "critical" studies of them, tearing them apart, but then failing
to put the jigsaw puzzle back together again. And then we forgot to put
this put-together-puzzle back into the bigger puzzle called the Holy
Scriptures. As much as I enjoy exegesis . . . and the application of the
historical-critical method, we forget the context Often our context is too
narrow. Melanchthon was correct in supplying the promise, because we are
not supposed to interpret texts in a vacuum. We have to take into account
the "whole" of Scripture. Preaching a law text without the promise is
ignoring the context of the whole of Scripture. Each individual text links
to the whole of Scripture. And the main purpose of the Scriptures is to
point to Jesus Christ, the good news of salvation. Thanks again. Keep
feeding us with your ThTh. I read it off Lutherlink.
- [From an Anglican rector in BC, Canada]
I found your litmus test for sermons, THTh 74, excellent. I should enlarge
it and tack it up in my study. Three different sermons each Sunday is a
bit much, and I find I am tempted to apply the gospel superficially, accept
it as read, etc. for fear of using it to manipulate certain behaviour
("Jesus did this for you, so you better..."). Peccavi. But what would a
Lutheran expect from an Anglican?