Internet lies and its truth. . .

It was sad to see how many people jumped on the bandwagon of contempt and outrage at the seemingly authentic story of the Vatican providing a prayer room or chapel for Muslims using the Vatican Library.  It is false.  There is no special space set aside for them in the Vatican Library or elsewhere in the Vatican, it would seem.  The reality is that Muslims were allowed to use a room for their prayers.  That ought to be a slight relief to those who thought that the Vatican was actually making a dedicated room for Muslims to pray.  Even then, some might object.  After all, does this not in some way legitimate the idea that the god of the Muslims has the same claim to legitimacy as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who became flesh in Jesus born of Mary by the Holy Spirit?  Or does it remove the evidence of this claim by putting them behind a closed door and away from eyes and ears of others?  I guess it depends upon your perspective.

The whole idea of accommodation seems to be one way.  Secular governments are accommodating Muslims by providing everything from foot washing places in public restrooms to the acceptance of traditional attire in schools and workplaces.  In nearly every case, religious toleration is aimed at allowing non-Christian religions the same respect, authenticity, and access as those folks think Christianity has enjoyed.  Whether that perception of religious deference toward Christianity is right or wrong, something good or something not so good, Christians ought to be sensitive toward anything that would make Jesus stand on equal footing with other gods.  Truth is not the child of personal preference but of real claims of truth and authenticity.  Whether you believe it or not, the resurrection of Christ from the dead is what gives to Christianity its claim to place and not the enthusiasm of its adherents.

The more we adopt the idea that all truths are personal and that no truth is really objectively true for all, the harder it is to speak Christ to the nations.  The more we depend upon feelings over facts, the harder it will be to claim any sort of exclusivity for the truth of Christ crucified and risen.  I am less concerned about Muslims being allowed a room in which to pray than I am allowing them a place next to Christianity as a religion of truth.  The internet is good at fueling false stories in order get folks riled up but it is also very good at leveling the playing field and making all facts equally true and every religion equally authentic.  That is worse than a carpeted room for some folks to pray out of sight of the rest of folks.  Yet this is exactly the problem.

We find it less difficult to surrender to the press of religious tolerance than to speak the distinctive doctrinal claims of Christianity and give faithful witness to the truth of Scripture.  I am not at all suggesting that we need to be rude or arrogant.  Quite the opposite.  But we must not shrink from giving evidence of the hope that is within us through the clear claims of the orthodox and catholic Christian faith based upon revelation, fact, and truth and not feelings.  Prayer rooms will not sink us but allowing the impression that truth is beholden to feelings certainly will.  While I am no fan of a room for Muslims to pray I am offended by the routine idea that both religions are pretty much the same no matter its name.  I must say it gives me hope for Rome that for once a pope declined to pray at a mosque and, for whatever reason, give credence to the idea that this is the same deity in different flavors.

Fawning for attention. . .

With relevance deemed the highest and more urgent goal of Christianity by liberal and progressive Christians here and everywhere, it is not uncommon for those in charge to fawn all over current causes, fads, or trends in the hopes of being perceived relevant by youth.  So it was that when Canterbury was busy announcing their new female, non-theologically trained, and inexperienced with respect to the parish archbishop, another controversy was ready to unfold.  Somebody somewhere decided that subway-style graffiti plastered over Canterbury Cathedral would be a good way of showing how cool that church is and how in tune they are to current trend and fashion.  Except that it backfired with even the US VP complaining of the desecration.  He was not alone.  While the graffiti were merely stickers and a temporary installation of trendy art made at the behest of a dean and chapter that had not exactly thought it through, there is little to ease the fears except that the cost of removal is less and requires much less effort.

The real problem here is that the Cathedral and its leadership has joined the chorus of folks who believe that the biggest crisis facing Christianity is whether young folks think they are relevant.  Imagine a world in which Christians fear being written off by the youth vote even more than they fear repercussions from ignoring or contracting the Scriptures and the nearly uniform Christian witness of morality and truth since the earliest days of Christianity.  That ought to be identified as the real problem.  We tend to care more about what people outside the Church might think of us and what we believe and confess than we care about what God thinks.  The damage of this mistaken loyalty has unfolded in countless ways and they all seem to be nearly impossible to reverse.

The Anglicans led Christianity as a whole into the silence about birth control that gave birth also to the silence about abortion.  That was nearly 100 years ago and now it is such a scandal to say today what nearly everyone believed then on both subjects that a goodly number of Christians have made this contemporary stand a litmus test of a new orthodoxy rooted in what is acceptable to the masses more than what is faithful to God's Word.  Where do you hear anyone today suggesting that we ought to rethink the tacit approval once given to birth control?  Yet the reality of the success of this effort lies less in what people think about these than the increasing numbers of nations and nationalities in which deaths outnumber births and children seem to be going out of style faster than yesterdays fashions. You do not need to talk about something in order to triumph.  The proof is in the drop in birth rates across the West (except in the most recent immigrant groups in those countries).

Fawning for the attention of youth and those who had already written off Christianity is largely responsible for the foolishness that passes for worship among those who have adopted a contemporary style and the discardable nature of Christian music by those who have ditched the hymnal for a pop sound and content turning Jesus into your BFF.  We gave up architecture that identified a church as a church in favor of bland buildings that remind you more of a shopping mall or warehouse than God's house.  The once distinctive sound of the pipe organ and liturgical choir has been replaced by music rated more for its beat and that ability to dance to it than what the lyrics say. Maybe it is about time that the Christian Church stopped fawning for the attention of those outside and paying a bit more attention to what God thinks.

The reality is that the language of sin and death, life and hope, virtue and evil will always be relevant -- not because we make it so but because each and every age and generation must come to terms with what it means to live and die.  Jesus knew the relevance of the Kingdom and did not waste His time or ours by pandering to those who might be His allies in the quest for legitimacy.  Neither should we waste our time in the vain pursuit of approval from those who do not even know the Gospel.  Their need is the same as ours.  We need redemption more than relevance, truth more than feelings, a death that kills death more than our peace with death, and a life stronger than the grave more than a better or happier one today.  But as we all know, it is easier to slap some fake graffiti on our walls than to breech the walls of the world with the triumph of Jesus' death and resurrection.  So that is what we do.  For this, we ought to be the first to hear the call to repentance and fall to our knees.

Small and smaller. . .

Here and elsewhere have been stories of the decline of the once large and powerful Episcopal Church.  On the one hand, the vacuous nature of its doctrine and confession have emptied its integrity as a church while its pews have been emptied for a variety of reasons -- including its deviation from its own history and identity.  There have been thoughts that break away groups from this and other denominations which have leaned so far left as to be a shell of their former selves might be able to replace the progressive face of their tradition.  One of those was the Anglican Church in North America.

Founded in 2009, that denomination has turned back the clock a bit but not as much as hoped.  It retains nearly every doctrinal aberration except the embrace of the various sexual attractions and gender identities which have captured the parent.  It is conservativish but not close to what it was hoped to be or what the Episcopal church was sixty or seventy years ago.  More than this, the ACNA is small.  With churches that span some 49 states as well as in Canada and Mexico, it barely counts 128,000 members across more than 1,000 congregations.  While it has a few big congregations, the majority are small as it is small.  Now it appears that there are other challenges to this little group.  Confronting allegations by clergy and parishioners against two of its top leaders, its own integrity lies in question.  Their archbishop is accused of sexual misconduct and another bishop allegedly abused his power by allowing men with troubled histories into his diocese of 19 congregations.  The small gets smaller.

Five years ago an ACNA bishop plead guilty to ecclesiastical charges of “sexual immorality” and “conduct giving just cause for scandal” for his use of pornography and was removed.  One year ago another was defrocked for sending more than 11,000 text messages to a married woman- among other things.  Also last year a current and former rector of a prominent congregation near Washington, DC, were punished for their mishandling of sexual allegations by a youth minister there.  Less than 25 years old as a denomination and it has already acquired a dizzying track record of leaders in moral lapses.  The small gets smaller.

At some point I had harbored hopes for this fledgling attempt to breathe new life into the dead shell of the Episcopal Church on the shores of the US.  Other conservative bodies were quick to open talks in the hopes that a more solid friendship and relationship might evolve.  Now I am sad to say that perhaps we should be distancing ourselves from this church body instead.  Am I being too harsh?  Perhaps but it is clear that either this communion lacks the will or desire to rise above and is content to live in another kind of muck -- a different muck but still in need of cleansing.  I wish it were not the case but it is.   

The most useless season of all. . .

The world must not know what to do with Advent -- especially now.  We live in the moment, in an age of instant everything delivered to your door, and reviews written almost before we get it.  We know nothing of delayed gratification.  Even our corporations will gladly shoot themselves in the foot to get a profit today while suffering for it tomorrow.  We do not delay much of what we want, much of what we want to say, and much of what we have to have.  Our biggest complaint about the instant internet is that it takes too long (along with it giving us what we do not want to hear).  We cannot event take the time to learn a language but depend upon Google to translate for us, online education to compress and compact the learning that might take years, and AI to save us the bother of research into the subject for which we wish to be seen as an expert.  Then comes this season that simply says, wait. 

While we are in love with immediacy the Church speaks of a God who takes literally forever from the promise first given to Adam and Eve until the day His Son is incarnate in the womb of the Virgin and bears the Child of Promise who will redeem a fallen world.  Then this Jesus who promises thief today says to His apostles wait and His apostles tell us to the same thing.  Is it no wonder that the Church is behind the times.  We proclaim a God who is perennially late to a people who are not sure anything is worth waiting for.  I wish it were only about a delay in decorating but the whole of the Christian faith is summarized by the Advent call to wait upon the Lord.  Indeed, it is the one thing we are told to do and the one promise God has given us that we do not want fulfilled -- wait upon the Lord.

This is not a problem about when to shop or when to put up your holiday decor.  This is a problem that goes to the core of Christian faith and life -- we wait upon the Lord.  If faith is anything, it is patient.  We are a long suffering people who suffer long primarily because the Lord insists that we wait.  We are not to jump the gun or to presume upon the Lord but wait.  To be sure, this is not the impatient waiting of a people sitting on uncomfortable chairs for a doctor's appointment that is now running more than an hour overdue.  It is instead the waiting of a mother for a child who does not seem in any hurry to depart the safety and care of his mother's womb.  We are waiting not for the unknown but for the fulfillment of the promise, not for a surprise but for the ending to the story published for the ages in His Word.  We are not a hopeless people wondering about the good or bad news but a hopeful people who actually believe that the good He has promised awaits us even though we do not have a date or a time.

Our aversion to waiting is epidemic -- even inside the community of the faithful.  We would rather have bad news now over the good news for which we must wait.  That is a part of Advent's unpopularity.   The ten bridal virgins knew what was coming but did not know when.  They all fell asleep but two in the despair of a people sure that if the promise did not come when they demanded it, it was a waist.  We will all fall asleep but better to sleep dreaming of what is to come than to remain awake and bitter because it has not come quickly enough.  We all need to hear that.  It is better to wait upon the Lord than to put your trust in earthly rulers, kingdoms, king makers, or timekeepers.  Waiting may be good, right, and salutary but it will never sell in the marketplace of what we want and when we want it.  Sadly, for too many Christians God has already been judged not worth the wait.  Then you know why our Lord says the delayed glory to come is beyond all expectation and anticipation.  In this, the preaching and message of Advent is not any different for those went out to the hilltop because He is surely coming soon and those who fear He is not coming at all.  The posture of faith is not the answer machine with something for every question but the patient expectation of the mother who know the child will come but is turned away and told not yet.

If there is any consolation it is that in our realized eschatology, we gather to wait around the Table where the future is already but not yet.  Touching us in our waiting is the God who comes to fill the moment with the promise that there is so much more we cannot conceive.  Eating this hope and drinking in this promise, the Advent sacrament is the Eucharist.  Whether foretaste or glimpse, God knows what we need and Advent turns us to that moment where time and eternity intersect for a brief yet pregnant moment.  And the faithful breathe it all in, taste and savor it, rejoicing to know that it is enough for a people who want it all but are given just enough to keep us wanting at all.

Let us pray. . .

A litany is generally defined as a long prayer with a of a series of petitions or bidding led by the deacon, priest, or cantor to which the people sing a fixed response,  The litanies known and used today have their roots in eastern liturgies of the early centuries of the church (for example, the Kyrie litany).  It became most widely used in the West in the Middle Ages when it was relatively common in private devotions and in the public liturgies of the Church.  Sometimes they were sung in processions and sometimes they were associated with times of famine and need, during times of planting and harvest, and in times of war or the threat of war. The invocation of a long list of saints was part of the Great Litany during the Middle Ages. 

Before the Council of Trent, some eighty or so different forms of the Litany in use in the Roman Church, 
but the Council trimmed back these litanies considerably. It was less a standardized text than a form.  Lutheran liturgical scholar Wilhelm Loehe described this: “There are especially three litanies that have found the widest spread and acceptance in the Roman Church: the Litany of the Sweet Name of Jesus, the Litany of the Mother of God of Loreto, and above all what is called the ‘Great Litany.’ For fairly obvious reasons, Luther and those after him focused only on the Great Litany but, again, it was not yet a standardized text as much as a form.  After falling into disuse in the early years of the Reformation, Luther revised and published the Litany in German and Latin in 1529 -- minus, of course, the invocation of saints, but with some few petitions.  For a long time the Lutheran Church retained the singing of the Litany in Latin.

The Litany was even included in some editions of the Small Catechism.  It testifies to the esteem in which the Great Litany was held -- second only to the Our Father among the prayers of the Church according to Luther.  As Lutherans began publishing their Latin liturgical books, the Litany was invariably included. The sixteenth and seventeenth century Lutheran liturgical books include and presume the Litany, recited responsively, with a response by choir and congregation following each petition and not by groups of petitions as is more common today.  In 1544, Thomas Cranmer’s English revision of the Great Litany introduced the grouping of several petitions together followed by one response and it is this version that is most commonly used when Lutherans pray the Litany today.

Rubrics tell us that the Litany may replace the prayers in the Daily Office (Matins, Vespers, Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer) or the General Prayer in the Divine Service or it may serve as an entrance rite in the Divine Service, replacing the Introit, Kyrie, and Hymn of Praise (although I do not recommend such a sweeping replacement).  In penitential seasons, it can serve as a mark of the special devotion of such a time of the Church Year or as a stand alone prayer rite.  

As we are now in the season of Advent, penitential though not quite as markedly somber as Lent, it is fitting for the Litany to be used more regularly both in corporate setting in the congregation and in the individual prayer lives of God's people (or together as a family in the home).

 The Litany

 

L O Lord,

C have mercy.

L O Christ,

C have mercy.

L O Lord,

C have mercy.

L O Christ,

C hear us.

L God the Father in heaven,

C have mercy.

L God the Son, Redeemer of the world,

C have mercy.

L God the Holy Spirit,

C have mercy.

L Be gracious to us.

C Spare us, good Lord.

L Be gracious to us.

C Help us, good Lord.

 

L From all sin, from all error, from all evil;

From the crafts and assaults of the devil; from sudden and evil death;

From pestilence and famine; from war and bloodshed; from sedition and from rebellion;

From lightning and tempest; from all calamity by fire and water; and from everlasting death:

C Good Lord, deliver us.

L By the mystery of Your holy incarnation; by Your holy nativity;

By Your baptism, fasting, and temptation; by Your agony and bloody sweat; by Your cross and passion; by Your precious death and burial;

By Your glorious resurrection and ascension; and by the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter:

C Help us, good Lord.

L In all time of our tribulation; in all time of our prosperity; in the hour of death; and in the day of judgment:

C Help us, good Lord.

L We poor sinners implore You

C to hear us, O Lord.

L To rule and govern Your holy Christian Church; to preserve all pastors and ministers of Your Church in the true knowledge and understanding of Your wholesome Word and to sustain them in holy living;

To put an end to all schisms and causes of offense; to bring into the way of truth all who have erred and are deceived;

To beat down Satan under our feet; to send faithful laborers into Your harvest; and to accompany Your Word with Your grace and Spirit:

C We implore You to hear us, good Lord.

L To raise those who fall and to strengthen those who stand; and to comfort and help the weakhearted and the distressed:

C We implore You to hear us, good Lord.

L To give to all peoples concord and peace; to preserve our land from discord and strife; to give our country Your protection in every time of need;

To direct and defend our [president/queen/king] and all in authority; to bless and protect our magistrates and all our people;

To watch over and help all who are in danger, necessity, and tribulation; to protect and guide all who travel;

To grant all women with child, and all mothers with infant children, increasing happiness in their blessings; to defend all orphans and widows and provide for them;

To strengthen and keep all sick persons and young children; to free those in bondage; and to have mercy on us all:

C We implore You to hear us, good Lord.

L To forgive our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers and to turn their hearts; to give and preserve for our use the kindly fruits of the earth; and graciously to hear our prayers:

C We implore You to hear us, good Lord.

L Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,

C we implore You to hear us.

 

L Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,

C have mercy.

L Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,

C have mercy.

L Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,

C grant us Your peace.

 

L O Christ,

C hear us.

L O Lord,

C have mercy.

L O Christ,

C have mercy.

L O Lord,

C have mercy. Amen.