The mess of IVF. . .

A gazillion years ago the Bionic Man appeared on TV.  Col. Steve Austin was created by technology better than he was created by God.  We have the technology.  We can do this.  And so it was that science began invading the area of reproduction.  It was no longer a matter of marital love or intimacy but technology.  In the beginning it seemed destined to offer real hope to those who have had trouble conceiving.  The costs were huge but eventually insurance paid the bills.  It seemed like a reasoned and solidly moral thing to do -- to help the childless reach their dream of a son or a daughter.  But along the way IVF and the rest of the tools in the reproductive technology toolbox began to leave questions unanswered and collateral damage along the way.  Part of this is the backdrop for the Alabama Supreme Court decision and this is the part that ought to make everyone of us -- Christian or non-Christian -- uncomfortable.  The rationale of we can does not answer the question of should we.

The IVF and reproductive technology industry is a mess.  While IVF affects a very small minority of live births each year (about 2 percent in the United States), it consumes a great deal of money and leaves us with difficult questions about the status of the fertilized eggs and frozen embryos that remain -- not to mention the number aborted in order to achieve a viable pregnancy. While those who oppose IVF may appear to be mean and unsympathetic folks, that is the opposite of the case.  The most unsympathetic view of such things believes the remains from IVF are banked for a future need or tossed out like yesterday's garbage.  Why would we spend so much and go through so much disappointment to conceive if none of this meant anything?  The question is not sympathy but a compassion big enough to encompass every side of this problem.

According to the CDC “IVF Success Estimator,” the odds of a successful live birth by IVF are affected by the mother’s age, weight, underlying fertility factors, and pregnancy history. So, for a 34-year-old female of average weight and height with no underlying pathologies, using her own (fresh, not frozen) egg, the success rate is high -- close to 50 percent.  The odds decline for someone older, or with a history of ovulatory or uterine disorders, or scar tissue.  These odds are the problem.  In order to achieve success, the lab must create of multiple embryos, choose the most robust, and stockpile 8 to 20 embryos for other attempts.  Those embryonic children not implanted are left to wait out their fate in a cryogenic limbo subject to lab integrity, care, and, of course, no acts of God.  Well over a million such embryos are stored in the United States.  We have no uniform plan or procedure for what happens to them and some will undoubtedly become scientific subjects for experimentation.  

Now the odds of a successful birth decline precipitously when using embryos previously frozen.  The American Society of Reproductive Medicine reports the pregnancy success rate is between 2 and 12 percent per frozen egg.  The mess we have created is a technology ahead of our moral values and labs and physicians acting on their own moral character.  How can any of us be comforted by the fact that so many frozen embryos are in labs across America with the most likely outcome of becoming medical waste or destroyed accidentally or by equipment failure?  Good grief, we have more rules about the cribs we place our infants in and the car seats they sit in and the toys they play with than we have about over 1Million frozen embryos!  Even if you are fully onboard IVF and supportive of all that reproductive technology is doing, do you believe that this is credible or that the programs in place are acting with sufficient integrity and oversight?  

The dust up over the Alabama case forgets that the suit was brought by proponents of IVF who had invested in the promise of the technology but who insisted the clinic keeping their embryonic children in cryopreservation had not provided adequate protection, thus allowing a patient to somehow wander in and remove several embryos, causing their deaths. The parents sued to hold the clinic accountable not for the wrongful care of their property but for the wrongful death of their children.  In its opinion, the Alabama Supreme Court held that a statute protecting minors (including, as precedent held, embryos in the womb) contained no exception for embryos outside the womb. Indeed, the whole point of this lawsuit was to claim that IVF is a mess, the care provided the embryos is lax and uneven, and the duty, morally and legally, was higher rather than less.  Oddly enough, the suit wanted IVF to continue but under more stringent supervision and held to a higher standard!

Christians often prefer not knowing over a fully formed awareness of how these things work.  It is high time that we marshal the same resources we have used so effectively in the cause of life to address the mess of IVF.  Just because we can does not mean we should.  Many things possible are not beneficial -- even in an emotionally charged debate over IVF and reproductive technology we must be prepared to say that some things are just plain wrong!

The problem of group think. . .

The liberals love to point to the flat earth idea or the idea that the earth is the center of the universe (or at least our solar system) and giggle about the foolishness of the Bible and of Christianity.  Why, nobody but a fool would take that at face value, right?  And, of course, the authority of the Roman Catholic Church made possible the continuation of a lie so obviously in conflict with the data (read science here), right?  Giggle, giggle.  Yes, how utterly stupid, naive, and foolish are those Christians who take the Scriptures at face value!  God gave us an intellect, didn't He?  That is why we need to use that intellect to correct the foolishness of the Bible.

Okay.  It was sarcastic and simplistic but it is pretty much the way people poo poo creationism and nearly everything else in Scripture that does not fit their worldview.  But could the very problem be the blinders of their worldview?  The interesting reality is not that people watched the sun rise in the East and set in the West and the stars cross through the night sky.  The interesting reality is that this idea of the earth at the center of our solar system was thoroughly attested by the data of the time.  It was not a lie jealously guarded by the Roman Catholic Church so much as it was the observable truth as people knew it.  So 500 years ago or more, there was one commonly held scientific phenomenon that gave credence to one commonly held scientific conclusion.  The earth was the center of the solar system (and perhaps the universe) and it did not move but everything around it did.  All of this was observable and noted by the great minds of the time all the way back to Ptolemy.

The very reason for the success of this geocentric model for so long wasn’t groupthink but the evidence which supported these conclusions -- better, in fact, than any alternatives including the truth. While some bemoan Christianity and its power to enforce groupthink as the reason for the mistaken, the reality is that the evidence people observed did fit this conclusion.  So, you pick the more reasonable conclusion:

1. Either the earth is stationary, and the heavens (and everything in them) rotate about the earth (rotating 360° every 24 hours) with the moon and planets almost also in motion, OR,
2. The stars and other heavenly bodies (except the earth) are all stationary, while the earth rotates about its axis 360° every 24 hours.

Practically everyone in the ancient, Christian, classical, and medieval world opted for the first explanation -- not the second.  The problem was not that there was no evidence for the first but that there was even less evidence for the second.  A false scientific principle was born: “absence of evidence” means “evidence of absence.”  It was the 17th century work of Lutheran Johannes Kepler to dismiss the Copernican assumption that planetary orbits must be reliant on circles and postulate the accurate heliocentric model.  He did overcome the dogma of the day with regard to this and did observe a great deal of skepticism and rejection but in the end he actually employed laws of planetary motion to prove the heliocentric model.  The problem was fixed not by rejecting the dogma of the day but by employing the laws to deal with the problems in the theory.

Groupthink today is doing the same thing -- now to discredit the Biblical integrity.  Absence of evidence has become evidence of absence in the hands of liberals and progressives.  They have become the dogmatic ones who insist that just about everything in the Biblical timeline and record must be suspect.  Archeology is proving to be the Kepler of the day, finding evidence where there was thought to be none and thus proving the Biblical timeline must be dealt with.  The example of the existence of Biblical peoples like the Hittites who were once thought to be myth until archeological record provided the evidence.  The same could be said about the Pontius Pilate's existence.  Groupthink today has marshaled the forces of a false science which is no longer open to challenge or question to insist that evolution must be the only explanation for the origins of life and all things.  We have a false science that refuses any challenge as opposed to the real science which does not automatically presume that a lack of evidence is evidence of the lack of truth.  Maybe we need a few Lutheran Keplers today to poke necessary holes in so many lines of thought that have become truth that must be held and dare not be questioned -- in everything from the origins of life and all things to sexual desire, from gender identity to the shape of marriage, from euthanasia to reproductive technology.  

Real science is never above the challenge and real science does not run away from any real confrontation.  The reality, however, is that we have in our culture, educational system, and government policy things that parade as science that are charlatans and liars.  Christianity is neither the source of this untruth nor is it the power behind it.  We are the victims of a conspiracy of lies, half-truths, and errors that have been half baked into unassailable truths that are now governing just about everything in our lives -- from the university to the legislature to the business domain.

Who controls the narrative. . .

In the months and weeks gone by we have seen political news, social commentary, and even what passes for religious reporting defined less by facts or truth than ideology.  While this is nothing new, the rarity of news that is given without commentary or slant is harder and harder to find and even more difficult to trust -- given the skepticism of our times.  The charge is laid against propaganda that masquerades as news and ideology that passes itself off as truth.  Where did we learn this?

There was a time in which the bias of media was well known and understood.  Even medium sized cities had two strong newspapers and media outlets so that the bias of one was offset by the bias of the other.  Even then, it is was less likely to bury the facts under commentary as much as it might be how the facts were treated.  When did that change?  Was it the loss of the newspapers as a powerful source of news and commentary?  Was it the invention of the news media?  Could it have been the government?  

Christopher Daly chronicles the government involvement in propaganda that substitutes as news or fact in the Smithsonian.  You can read it all there but in summary it tells the story of how President Woodrow Wilson's administration sought to control one of the pillars of democracy by implementing a plan to control, manipulate and censor all news coverage, on a scale never seen in U.S. history.  The freedom of the press is lauded as one of the most important pillars on which democracy rests but following the lead of the Germans and British, Wilson's administration used propaganda and censorship to effectively control what Americans heard and what they thought.  It ended up being an all-out war against the freedom of the press entered into because of a world war.  There have been plenty of recent articles on how ideology and governmental policy have constrained the opposition or challenge to the party line as well as become an effective wall to prevent certain truths or subjects from being openly discussed in the media.  You can read all about it but my concern is how the control of the narrative cedes this control to those who oppose you and how it affects the faith.

Christianity has done a pretty good job surrendering the narrative to those who oppose Biblical, creedal, and confessional doctrine and practice.  The only press space given to religious stories both in the public media and in social media is that which supports or extends the generally liberal or progressive view of things overall.  Consider the debate over Christian nationalism and how the media has chosen to portray not simply that subject but to define who fits under that umbrella.  Long ago the conservative Christian theological and moral position became a pariah on university campuses and among the intellectual elite in culture and politics.  It is not simply a matter of what is told but how it is told.  Consider how the Alabama Supreme Court ruling on the status of fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses created by reproductive technology has been covered.  Again, it is not simply a matter of whether we hear the story but the lens through which the story is told.

I realize that to many Christians this is a messy thing and they do not want to get their hands dirty.  Neither do I.  But I also realize that unless we reclaim the narrative and learn how to separate the ideology from the truth, we may end up not simply persona non grata but people without access to the public square at all.  Surely this is what is trying to happen in Finland with its persecution of MP Paivi Rasanen and Bishop Juhana Pohjola.  It is not enough to be acquitted when charged.  We must learn how to express ourselves and speak forth the truth in an age increasingly unfriendly to and without access to this Biblical truth and moral perspective.  By no means should we be mean or resentful.  We must be reasoned but no less passionate than the ideological enemies of the truth of God's Word against whom we are fighting.  We must proceed in full awareness that the media no longer guarantee a fair hearing to our cause and that they have become ideologically biased against the true Gospel and its practice.  But we must not surrender the narrative to their distortions or to the slant given them by the progressive worldview that underlies such opposition.  Perhaps this is exactly what Jesus meant in saying that the sons of darkness are shrewer than the children of Light or we must be wise as serpents while still as innocent as doves.  The time has long ago passed when we can could on any news outlet or social media to present the objective truth on just about anything and this also includes the objective truth of God's Word.

The Lord is my Shepherd...

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter (B), preached on Sunday, April 21, 2024.

There is hardly an image more precious to us than to call the Lord our Good Shepherd.  There are perhaps a dozen overt references to God as our Shepherd but there are another 50 or so indirect mentions that imply or infer the same. Can you imagine a funeral without the 23rd Psalm?  Or Sunday school children not singing “I am Jesus little lamb?”  No, we are pretty wedded to the Lord as our Good Shepherd but yet with that comes some difficult things for us to swallow.

In the world to call someone a sheep is to insult them.  It accuses them of not being individuals but herd animals who cannot think or act on their own.  It presumes that we are spoon fed people who cannot chew upon the real facts.  We are crowd people who find the safest place to be in the anonymous middle of a large group.  We accuse our enemies of being sheep.  We insist the people who belong to a different party or vote for a different candidate are sheep.  You name it.  Our enemies are always sheep but we are not.  We are independent thinkers and we are fully prepared to go it alone.  Hogwash.

How arrogant we are!  Look at the cars we drive and the clothing we wear and the movies we see and the food we eat.  None of us is unmoved by peer pressure.  We all like what the crowds like and think what the crowd thinks.  We are all sheep.  We take our cues from others.  Our enemies cannot help themselves but we are not that gullible or foolish or stupid.  We think we are God’s helpers, His sheep dogs, but not sheep.  Look at your sins.  We are sheeple.  We sin like sheeple.  We are not heros or guardians of virtue.  We are driven by lust and power.  We are gossips and hypocrites.  We are skeptics of truth and consumers of lies.  So the first truth of calling Jesus our Good Shepherd is admitting we are sheep and heeding His call to repent.  Stop trying to act like you are not who you are.

We love the image of Jesus as our Good Shepherd but we presume that this means long, slow walks in comfortable meadows with a lot of scratches behind our ears and hugs.  That is not the kind of Shepherd Jesus is.  It is not because He has no emotions or cannot show them.  It is because He shows them by dying for His sheep.  Greater love has no one than he lay down his life for his sheep.  Who does that?  Only Jesus.  Jesus does not call us sheep to put us down – our sins have already done that.  Jesus calls us sheep because it is sheep for whom He has come to die.  He calls us sheep out of love.  Out of love the Shepherd dies for His sheep.   So if you are not a sheep, Jesus is not your Good Shepherd; He has nothing for you
This sheep and shepherd business is not the romantic stuff of idyllic images.  The most pastorale setting we are given is a cross and a Shepherd who dies for stupid, selfish, herd animals like you and me.  To call Jesus our Good Shepherd is to admit we are sheep and that shepherding is not nice and easy but hard and costly – even to death upon a cross.  But if this is what the Good Shepherd will do so that you might belong to Him, then cry out a Thanks Be To God for the world has never seen such love before.  

This Good Shepherd not only dies for you but lives for you.  The grave could not contain Him and now He lives so that you and I will be shepherded into the presence of God.  He is still your shepherd.  He will watch over you the whole of your life.  He will protect you from all your enemies and sometimes that means even protecting you from yourself.  He will guide you to the rich and verdant pastures of His Word, through the still quiet waters of baptism, and set His table for you in the presence of all your enemies.  The shepherd’s job is not simply to guard the sheep but to bring them through the valley of the shadow and into the mountain of God’s presence where they will dwell in safety forever.  This is what Jesus does for you.

We all know, however, that just as there are false teachings about the Good Shepherd, there are also false shepherds teaching people lies for truth and stealing away those for whom Christ died.  You are sheep.  Don’t be stupid sheep.  Do not be blindly led to destruction because you do not know God’s Word well enough to separate the false from the true.  Do not be a stranger to God’s House so what it always feels like your first time here.  Do not forget what Jesus teaches you and remember whatever the world is ranting about or selling in this moment.  The Good Shepherd deals only in truth because only truth saves.

You are what you eat.  Feed on Christ and you will grow up into Christ, beginning to look like Him in the thoughts you think, the words you say, and the works you do.  God has not come to feed your fragile egos and tell you that you are just fine the way you are.  That is the lie.  The truth is that you are dead without your Good Shepherd and your truth and your feelings will betray you to destruction.  God has called you to be kind but do you know what kindness looks like?  It looks like Jesus.  It sounds like Jesus.  Forgive as you have been forgiven.  That is as kind as it gets.  If the Spirit has led you to green pasture, lead others also in Christ’s presence.  Kindness is not about being soft but about truth.  That is also Christ.

Have you ever noticed that lambs know who has the milk?  Why is it that we don’t?  We are sheep but we need to be wise and discerning sheep.  We need to long for the true spiritual milk of God’s Word and know where that food is found.  We need to grow up into Christ who is our head, imitating the godly as they imitate Christ but refusing to imitate sin.  We cannot remain children who are susceptible to lies and deception but wise to the ways of the world so that we may avoid them and recognize what is of Christ and what is not.

We may like the image of Jesus as Good Shepherd and the romance of little lambs but the reality is better than the imagination.  Jesus does not love us with words or little acts of kindness.  He loves us to the cross.  He has put Himself between us and our enemies.  He allows Himself to be ravaged in the pain of death so that we might be kept to everlasting life.  Yes, we are sheep and herd animals but let us at least know which herd is the right one, where God’s Word is preached in truth and purity and where Christ’s table is set in accordance with His Word and will.

The Lord is my shepherd.  And we are His sheep.  Each of us a lamb of His own redeeming, for whom He died and in whom we now live.  The Lord is my shepherd.  And we are His sheep.  His presence and His voice and His table is set among us beckoning us to come to Him and never depart.  The Lord is my shepherd.  Ans we are His sheep.  Now in the hills and valleys of this mortal life and in the hillside of His eternal grace on high, where death and darkness can no more confuse or destroy us.  Thanks be to God!  Christ is risen.

The Jesus we want. . .

I have read any number of attempts to define how Jesus was as a child.  Some would insist that He is the righteous and dutiful Son of Mary even as He is the righteous and dutiful Son of God.  Others like to speculate that there might have been a little bit of naughtiness in Jesus -- well, if not naughtiness then youthful indiscretion and playful spirit.  The point that people try to make is that we do not know.  Scripture says little to shed real light on the nature of Jesus' childhood or childish fantasy.  Or does it?

It would seem that we know all we need to.  He was subject to His parents (Luke 2:51), about His Father's business (Luke 2:49), grew in stature and knowledge (Luke 2:40), and even in stature before men (Luke 2:52).  Are these not enough to suggest that though our Lord's divinity remained hidden, it was not absent nor was it so hidden that it was not noticed?  We want to believe that Jesus was a boy like every other boy in large measure because that covers us from all sorts of boyish foolishness and error.  But the reality is that Jesus was not a boy like every other boy precisely because there was no boy like Him.  Even if we were not fully conscious of this from the beginning, He was.  Mary pondered all these things in her heart and as Mother of our Lord taught Him through her example and her pondering to know all that surrounded His conception and birth.  In this, she is no different than any other mother even if Jesus is not exactly the same as every other boy.

We also want to believe that Jesus was a snap at carpentry -- having learned from master carpenter Joseph and having the adeptness of a natural being the Son of God.  But as the earthly carpenter is concerned with earthly dwellings, our Lord was born to build a heavenly dwelling place, a mansion with many rooms, to be filled with all those who love His appearing.  He goes there to prepare a place for us that we may be where He is and He with us forever.  Jesus building is not for Habitat for Humanity -- as noble and laudable as their work might be.  No, He is come to build a new heavens and a new earth and not to fix the errors or tinker with the limitations of this one.  He tabernacles in the womb of Mary and in the dust of the earth so that we might tabernacle with Him as sons and daughters of the Most High and tabernacle not in a grave but in the resurrection of the body for the Marriage Feast of the Lamb.

We are always trying to make Jesus more like us.  Odd.  Jesus is always working by the Spirit to make us more like Him.  While Christianity has certainly been successful in trying to hide Jesus in the earthly clothing not only of His flesh but our image, He will prevail to make us into Him, wearing the image of our Savior placed upon us in Baptism to shine like the stars of heaven forevermore.  

But you won't what?

I read a great deal and write notes and then cannot recall where the little phrases which I wrote down actually came from.  Today is one of those days.  It is a great line for those who find worship boring.  Apparently the context was someone who was gung ho on Jesus but found most worship boring and so had stopped attending church.  In spite of this he insisted that he would gladly die for Jesus -- so deep was his faith and commitment.  But the responder asked why he would be willing to die for Jesus but refused to be bored for Him.  Yup.  Worth a laugh there but it is the kind of nervous laugh that hits you where you live.

We love action.  We love to be engaged in doing things.  We love to be the judges of what is true, relevant, and important.  What we do not love is waiting.  We do not want to wait on anyone and not even the Lord.  Going through Acts with a Bible study we were struck at the length of Paul's preaching -- well into the night.  That would never work here.  Sunday fits a schedule block.  It cannot go past its borders or it will infringe upon something else on our schedules.  Certainly those with small children could not have been expected to stay because responsible parenting means you get your kids home and tucked into bed at a reasonable hour.  But the real issue is that it would take an exceptional communicator to hold our attention for that long and either Paul was one and pastors today are not or they had nothing better to do.  In any case, it would not work here.

I get that from time to time and I expect every pastor does.  Our worship services are seldom less than 75 minutes and we do not have cup holders in the pew for a caffeine fix along the way.  My sermons are generally about 15 minutes and some longer.  Worship is an investment.  It is an investment of your time, of your attention, of your energy, and of your commitment.  Worship can seem boring in comparison to an action movie or a video game or even something that we find interesting but the rest of the world does not.  The problem is not making worship interesting.  The problem is working on the self-control to pay attention to what is taking place.

We have endeavored to make worship as painless as possible -- you can pick and choose a style that fits you, watch it at home in your pajamas, drink coffee or soda, exit for bathroom breaks, mute the sound, and surf the options like every other entertainment choice.  What these choices have not done is increased the numbers of the faithful or worship attendance overall.  For those who are quick to protest my judgement, I would suggest you look at the statistics and find out just how long your online viewers are actually watching.  My guess is that only a small percentage watch it all, about a third watch a significant chunk, and the rest are there for a few minutes and then gone.  We love Jesus but apparently we do not love Him enough to be bored.