LCMS President Harrison de-nounces "disturbing ideologies"

Statement from Pastor Cris:

Over the last few weeks I have mentioned some troubling things, like friends of mine who are active LCMS Pastors have been openly threatened by people online who have “disturbing ideologies.”

This statement from President Harrison addresses some of these issues and gives encouragement in Christ.

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Statement on recent online unchristian teachings

Feb. 21, 2023

Dear friends in Christ,

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, its president, vice-presidents and all 35 district presidents, along with its ministerium and congregations, categorically reject the horrible and racist teachings of the so-called “alt-right” in toto (including white supremacy, Nazism, pro-slavery, anti-interracial marriage, women as property, fascism, death for homosexuals, even genocide).

The Synodical explanation of Luther’s Small Catechism teaches that the Fifth Commandment, “You shall not murder,” includes the prohibition of “hating, despising, or slandering other groups of people (prejudice, racism, and so forth).” The Scriptures agree: “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15). Every human being is precious to God and as valuable as the very blood of Jesus Christ shed for all, “for God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16).

We were shocked to learn recently that a few members of LCMS congregations have been propagating radical and unchristian “alt-right” views via Twitter and other social media. They are causing local disruption and consternation for their pastors, congregations and district presidents. They have publicly stated that they seek the destruction of the LCMS leadership. They have made serious online threats to individuals and scandalously attacked several faithful LCMS members. Through these social media posts, even our wonderful deaconesses have been threatened and attacked.

This is evil. We condemn it in the name of Christ.

These “alt-right” individuals were at the genesis of a recent controversy surrounding essays accompanying a new publication of Luther’s Large Catechism. This group used that opportunity to produce not only scandalous attacks and widespread falsehoods, but also to promote their own absolutist ideologies.

Anyone trying to sully the reputation of the LCMS based on comments from a small number of online provocateurs does not know the loving, faithful, generous, kind and welcoming Synod that I have met all across the nation. Our people are delighted to gather with sinners of every stripe to receive full and free forgiveness from our crucified Savior and are not represented by these few men with their sinful agenda.

I am not speaking about the individuals who may have expressed theological concerns about the essays published alongside the Catechism. I’m talking about a small number of men who based their opposition upon racist and supremacist ideologies. The former we welcome. The latter we condemn.

The LCMS is a robust Christian community under the absolute authority of the inerrant Scriptures as the very Word of God and bound together in subscription to our Lutheran Confessions. Theological dialogue is good. We have clear processes for registering concerns over published materials, and we encourage such theological critique. The biblical confession of the LCMS on doctrine and life is true and unchangeable.

LCMS congregations agree to uphold our biblical standards. We are not a top-down institution. That said, I will work together with our pastors and district presidents to address this matter wherever it arises among us and reject it. We issue the cry of Jesus: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). We are confident that the same Law and Gospel that broke the hard heart of St. Paul, himself a murderer and blasphemer, can and will do the same today. We are all called to repentance daily. “The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Where that call to repentance is not heeded, there must be excommunication.

Of all the things I’ve seen as LCMS president, this is the most bizarre. I am informed that other conservative denominations are experiencing similar challenges. This horrid attack of the devil drives us to be firm in our confession. Our message of Christ the Savior for all, our local and global mission that serves the entire human race with forgiveness and joy stands firmly opposed to Satan and all evil. Our steadfast message of love and biblical fidelity on the cultural issues of marriage, sexuality, race, and life is an assault on the devil and his minions to no end. Our steadfast witness and assistance to our global Lutheran friends has the devil fuming.

Do not be discouraged! Stand firm! Speak of Christ and His Gospel! “We preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23). And if Jesus so carried our sins and the sins of the world, though He never sinned, shall we expect not to bear a few splinters of the cross in this age?

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:31–39).

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

Yours in Christ,

Pastor Matthew C. Harrison
President, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

When Justice is UnJust: The Death of Jesus in First Corinthians

The Article is from When Justice is Unjust: The Death of Jesus in First Corinthians - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

New Testament scholar, John Barclay, on the foolishness of the cross to the Gentiles:

To hail Jesus the crucified as the Christ, the Son of God, was even more an outrage [than the death of Gavius]. If he was executed as a criminal by legitimate authorities, he was rightly degraded to the rank of human trash, and could not possibly be honored, still less associated with the divine. If he was properly to be honored as divine, then one of two conclusions had to be drawn. Either his death was the most monstrous miscarriage of justice … or the whole system of values that made crucifixion a symbol and enactment of abject worthlessness was itself completely worthless, mistaken to the core. Paul takes the latter course. He makes no attempt to exonerate the executioners of Jesus, nor to pass off his crucifixion as a temporary error in the otherwise sound practice of Roman justice […]

If the crucifixion of a Roman citizen is an outrage, for which Cicero wants Verres humiliated and exiled, the crucifixion of the Lord of glory by “the rulers of this age” is the clearest possible indication that this age understands nothing of the divine system of value. The crucifixion is not just a temporary aberration in an otherwise well-functioning system: it is the clearest possible proof that the norms which pass for ‘wisdom’ are completely unable to grasp what God is doing in the world. To read the crucifixion with the eyes of Paul is like reading the systems of justice in the old American South with the eyes of Harper Lee (author of To Kill a Mockingbird): it is to expose a whole system of evaluation, a matrix of norms and judgments that prides itself on its advanced state of civilization, as blind, corrupt, and barbaric, utterly worthless in its judgment of worth.

Quoted from “Crucifixion as Wisdom: Exploring the Ideology of a Disreputable Movement” in The Wisdom and Foolishness of God: First Corinthians in Theological Exploration, (emphasis added).

The Urgency of Grace - Family Relationships [Video]

I Like It, So God Would Too

Egocentrism in Believers’ Estimates of God

Read The Whole Article at I Like It, So God Would Too - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

eligion is often seen as a moral compass — it is frequently used by believers as a guide to doing and believing the right thing. People may disagree on social issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and the death penalty and back their opinions by invoking God as the ultimate advocate of their beliefs. But how do people reason about God’s beliefs? In an interesting set of six studies by Nick Epley and colleagues, it was argued that people are remarkably egocentric when asked to infer about God’s beliefs — that is, people seem to draw on their own beliefs about these issues when asked to infer what God’s beli……………………………………..

Read The Whole Article at I Like It, So God Would Too - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

Mark Driscoll and My Desert Temptation

Read the rest at Mark Driscoll and My Desert Temptation - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

We were driving our rental car around cactus-lined streets on the first day of our snowbird getaway to Scottsdale, Arizona when we realized exactly where we were. We were only a few blocks away from a place of podcast infamy and evangelical intrigue: Trinity Church — AKA, Mark Driscoll’s new church.

It’s not every day that I am near the church of a man whose rise (and fall) was the topic of thousands of Twitter threads, blog posts, and podcast episodes about podcast episodes. That Sunday, we learned, Driscoll was starting a new sermon series titled “Real Romance: Sex in Song of Songs.” Perfect…………………………….

Read the rest at Mark Driscoll and My Desert Temptation - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

Philip Yancey on Facing the Canon [Good]

Philip Yancey, author of Vanishing Grace is a great interview about his love of Grace.

Ringing in the New Me

Read whole article at Ringing in the New Me - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

t’s the time of year when our New Year’s resolutions slowly begin to unravel. It doesn’t usually happen all at once, of course. A cheat day here, a provoked outburst there, compounded by the multiplication of days and weeks, and what once felt possible eventually becomes fanciful. Even my best intentions can’t always hold up to the temptation of a Chick-fil-A milkshake. 

Every new year is filled with hopeless optimism that I can truly change. At the beginning of this year, I took time to look back and reflect on all the ways that my life is different than it was just 365 days ago. I moved to a new state, I got a new job, I got engaged. Life has changed in some sizab………………………

Jesus in a Tuxedo T-shirt

Read the whole article at Jesus in a Tuxedo T-Shirt - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

In the place you least expect, Jesus finds you.

One of my all-time favorite movie scenes comes from the 2006 Will Ferrell movie “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” You probably know the one. The scene is at a dinner table and Ricky Bobby, a successful if aloof, NASCAR driver, says the prayer before everyone eats. A disagreement breaks out between Ricky and his wife because Ricky repeatedly prays to “Sweet Baby Jesus.” She doesn’t think he always has to pray to a baby; “it’s a bit odd and off-putting to pray to a baby” she tells him.

He responds, “Well look, I like the Christmas Jesus best and I’m saying grace. When you say grace, you can say it to grown-up Jesus or teenage Jesus or bearded Jesus or whoever you want.” Later, Ricky’s friend and teammate, Cal, chimes in, “I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo t-shirt because it says like, I want to be formal, but I’m here to party too. Cause I like to party, so I like my Jesus to party too.”…………………………

Love's Pure Light: Christmas With The Herdmans

Read the full article at Love's Pure Light: Christmas with the Herdmans - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

In the nights leading up to last Christmas, I read Barbara Robinson’s The Best Christmas Pageant Ever to my daughter. She was in third grade, and I had fond memories of my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Koenigs, reading it to our class almost thirty years prior. Though I remember being skeptical when she announced the title. I’d been in Christmas pageants. What could possibly be worth writing a book about? Harried parents herding miniature bathrobe-clad shepherds and sobbing tinsel-haloed angels to the front of the church to sing “Away in a Manger” before returning to the pews for a droning, by-the-numbers message followed by more Christmas music? In my mind, a book called The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, written by an adult, was going to be a slog. I had it in my head that “best” in the eyes of an adult meant perfect, as “being good” seemed to elicit praise from adults,…………………..

Ready or Not, Here He Comes

You haven’t been left behind. You’ve been chosen, elected, hand-picked.

Read the whole article at Ready or Not, Here He Comes - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

ere we are with Thanksgiving gone past in a flash. November is ending and the December holiday craze has begun. Are you ready? I know I’m not. I don’t do Black Friday and haven’t purchased a single gift. I have my mind elsewhere, with only two weeks left in fall semester. That’s fifteen hundred minutes of class time until finals. Six classes and I still have some month-old papers to get graded. And don’t get me started on Christmas plans. On second thought, maybe you should get me started, because I might just be ready in 25 days.

I tried to warn my students about this when we first looked the syllabus back in August. I told them there would come a day when they look at the list of course work and papers and test they would have come the end of the semester and wonder how they ever got to that place. Well, both those students and their professor have landed in that spot. Who in the world plans to fall behind? Who puts together a to-do list that will be completed two weeks after a dead…………………………..

Lord of All

Read the Whole Article at Lord of All (1517.org)

In Rome, the mausoleum of Caesar Augustus has recently been reopened to the public after many years of neglect. This place of the dead, located north of the old city along the Tiber River, is once again on the tourist map and alive with activity.

Augustus, whose real name was Gaius Octavius (or Octavion), was a man of great ambition. This is evidenced by the fact that he began designing his own mausoleum even before he was named the emperor! It is the largest cylindrical tomb in the world, originally crowned with a large bronze statue of the great leader, and surrounded by pillars and a plaque listing all of his accomplishments.

Octavion’s career began after the betrayal and murder of his famous great-uncle Julius Caesar by Brutus on March 15th (the Ides of March) in 44 BC. At the time, a comet appeared in the sky that was so bright, it could be seen …………………………

Sleeping in Church

Read whole article at From Issue 21: Sleeping in Church (https_mbird.com)

As a preacher, I can proudly say that I’ve never bored an audience so thoroughly that someone fell asleep and fell out a window. (“Fell asleep,” okay, yes. But never “fell out a window.” I know, it’s a low bar.) I plan to give the apostle Paul a little dig about that if, as I hope, I get to meet him someday………………….

Rethinking Luther, Rethinking Myself

I Was Sure of my Self-Righteousness, and Grace Sounded Too Easy

In college, I liked to trash-talk Lutherans when I was drinking. I didn’t do this all the time, but it certainly wasn’t an isolated incident. 

“The guy who wrote On the Jews and Their Lies is the guy you want to rally behind?” I would ask with a self-satisfied smirk on my face. Reader, I don’t blame you for wanting to get in a time machine and punch 22-year-old me square in the jaw.

I was sure of my self-righteousness. I thought sola gratia and sola fide sounded too easy. I wanted to work for my sanctification. I wish I could say that I didn’t actually have such a reactionary stance towards grace, but I did. I was drunk on a cocktail of works righteousness…………………………………………………..

Read the whole article at
Rethinking Luther, Rethinking Myself - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

Finding Grace Within The Walls Of Leagalism

Read whole article at Finding Grace within the Walls of Legalism - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

He leaned back in his chair, its squeak distracting him from what he wanted to say. He leaned forward, his hands folded on his desk next to his little sign: President So And So. He was that important, I don’t even remember his name.

Gosh this is formal, I thought.

“Well Janell, I called you in here because I’m concerned about what kind of Bible you’re using.”

Oh. Right. This again.

Fresh out of my private Christian high school in the fall of 2001, I willingly and knowingly admitted myself into an Independent……………………………………………………………

It's Not Just Me (It's Everybody)

Read the full article at It's Not Just Me (It's Everybody) - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

The car radio can be a dangerous thing. You’ll be running errands or about to pick your children up at school when, all of a sudden, a song takes you by the hand and says, “It’s time for a good cry, don’t you think?” For me, the latest song to do such a thing is the new single from Weyes Blood, “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody.” 

Sitting at this party
Wondering if anyone knows me
Really sees who I am
Oh it’s been so long since I felt really known…………………………………………….

ONE BIG (UNHAPPY) FAMILY?

Let me tell you the one line that will send me screaming from any new church I visit.

It’s not: “Would you like to join the property committee?”

Nor is it: “Our organist Ethel has been with the church for eighty years and she’s still going strong!”

It isn’t even: “We went through a kind of split lately but it’s really OK because those people were saying and doing these things and honestly we’re better off without them.” (Well, I might run from this church, too.)

The one line that raises my hackles and sets me on high alert is to all appearances innocuous, innocent, and charming.

It’s this: “Our church is one big family.”

Noooooooooo!

What’s wrong with this? Let me count the ways………………………..

Where We Were Always Meant To Be

Read whole article Here at Mbird.com

my book group spent this past summer reading through Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow, a fictional book of strung-together memories and reflections of a wizened old barber in the small town of Port William, Kentucky. The book is filled to the brim with thoughts on “rootedness” and “place.” Jayber Crow hasn’t ever left the state, and he’s barely left the small town, but the story should serve as a reminder that you don’t have to travel the world to think deep thoughts and reflect on what it is to love……………………..

Rise and Fall of Mars Hill Podcast

I have talked about this Podcast a few times now. For the last year we have talked about power. This podcast is about that and its corruption in one of the biggest churches in the world. Its very interesting.

The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill | Podcasts | Christianity Today

Founded in 1996, Seattle’s Mars Hill Church was poised to be an influential, undeniable force in evangelicalism—that is until its spiraling collapse in 2014. The church and its charismatic founder, Mark Driscoll, had a promising start. But the perils of power, conflict, and Christian celebrity eroded and eventually shipwrecked both the preacher and his multimillion-dollar platform.

God For The Skeptic

I don’t want to be bound by anything. I want my boundaries limitless. I don’t want anything to stop me, hinder me, or throw a wrench in my affairs. And when God demands that he will be God and I must remain human, fallible, and perishable, I react as if someone is coming after me with a straitjacket — buckles waving in the air, sleeves ready to bind me, and a locked and padded cell awaiting me. I fear that being a Christian will imprison me. Like St. Augustine, I pray, “God grant me chastity, but not yet. Grant me religious fervor, but not if people will think I’m weird. Grant me a clean heart, but let me giggle at something smutty now and then. God, give me a future, but let it be on my own terms. And keep that damn straitjacket of religion far away.”

DNF

Read whole article at DNF - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

I came to with a blur of faces standing over me. “Let me finish,” I mumbled. “Please, please let me finish.” I tried to get up from the stretcher but was gently pushed back down.

“We need to make sure you’re okay first,” someone told me. “We need a doctor to clear you.” I nodded and lay back down. I told myself that I would be fine, that I just needed to start running again.

A man who I assumed was the doctor came over to my stretcher. He looked me over. He asked the nurses, “She threw up?”