Is Your Church Catholic Enough?

Presented by
Pastor J.P. Winsor
To the
Denver Area Pastor's Conference
March 7, 2002

Now, of course, we all try, I'm sure, to get people off our cases by getting them to think about their cases, that is their lower cases and their upper cases. Catholic with a lower case "c," we tell them, is a good thing that Lutherans are fine with. Catholic with an uppercase "c", we say, "is worth watching out for." We hope we've helped.

But the fact of the matter is that when people think something stinks, it isn't always because it smells of garlic to them. They just don't like how it smells. In fact, they would most often be hard pressed to tell you exactly what Roman Catholic error they think a particular practice conveys or reflects. The thing just feels too catholic/Catholic to them. It's more like prejudice than discernment.

Lutherans, of course, didn't use to talk this way at all. And nobody had to clarify his cases. When you meant something bad, you said "popish" or "Roman." And when you meant something good, you said "catholic."

My experience indicates that most of the time when people call something "catholic," they're exactly right. It is catholic, though not in the least bit popish or Romanizing. And some people just don't like catholic things. In fact, by nature sinners don't like catholic things. It's just that simple. Anti-catholic protesters do not mean to knock some other denomination, really. If Roman Catholics want to be catholic, that's their business. To each his own. But we Lutherans don't have to put up with that catholic stuff. Luther freed us from all that catholic stuff.

A few years ago a couple in their early sixties left our congregation because we had installed and dedicated a crucifix which is suspended over our altar. They felt it was too catholic. When asked what Roman Catholic doctrine they felt it communicated, they were stumped. That didn't matter. The crucifix didn't teach any thing Roman; it was just too catholic.

Maybe it was too catholic because it makes you feel guilty, and Catholics make you feel guilty. Or maybe it was too Catholic because it makes you wonder how God could save the world by dying; it's mysterious, and Catholics are mysterious. Or maybe it's too catholic because people kneel in front of things like that and pray, as if God were really right there on the altar, and Catholics think God is really right there on the altar.

Of course Lutherans know you shouldn't feel guilty, and there aren't any mysteries because the Bible is inspired and every layman has complete access to its obvious plain meaning, or at least its meaning for them, which is what's important. And Lutherans also know that you shouldn't kneel down and pray in front of a statue, because God is in heaven or in your heart but not right over there in this room here on that table there.

Or maybe the crucifix is too catholic because it's too old. Soft doves and rainbows aren't old, but crucifixes are. Soft doves and rainbows just fit better with where people are coming from nowadays. Crucifixes don't. Catholic means old, past, dead, gone. We're a contemporary church meeting the needs of people today, reaching out to our generation. The crucifix doesn't support that vision of ministry. The crucifix is at odds with our mission statement.

One begins to wonder whether "catholic" just means something I don't like that Roman Catholics do like. If you like it and they like it and I don't like it, I win because they're the bad guys and you like what the bad guys like and I don't.

Never mind that the bad guys are the only other ones left towing the line on women's ordination, homosexuality, and abortion - all at once. Never mind that the bad guys are the only other ones left who take the Real Presence seriously enough to refuse to concelebrate the sacrament with religious bodies who deny the Real Presence.

And never mind the fact that Lutherans used to look, smell, taste, and feel, though not sound, just like those bad guys so that if you were time warped backward and woke up in a Lutheran Church any where in Europe in 1580, you would swear you were in a Roman Catholic Church, especially when you saw the crucifix, the kneelers, the elevation of the host, the priestly garb, the confessional, the incense, the use of the sign of the cross, the use of statuary, and when you heard the chanting of nearly every part of the service except the sermon.

The bad guys do that stuff, or at least they have been until recently. The pope worshippers. The self righteous good works crowd. They do that stuff. We don't do that stuff. We used to originally, back when our confessions were written, but we've evolved since then thanks to the influences of Pietism and Rationalism.

I hope by this point in this paper, you can see what I mean when I say that the objection, "That's too Catholic" has nothing to do with any particular errors of any particular denomination. It's bigger than that and deeper than that. It goes way beyond brand loyalty. It cuts to the heart of how sinners feel when they sense that suddenly the customer is not always right. Catholic things, whether creedal or liturgical, whether from the world of dogma or the world of practice, offend the self-willed autonomous spirit of our age. The modern church insists upon being a Peanuts comic strip, that is, a set of characters among whom there are no parents. Things catholic imply that antiquity has a certain authority that can't be easily manipulated by the shrewd preacher the way the Bible can be. Things catholic connote a community bigger and far less fluid than the one we've been carefully designing and reshaping over the years. Things catholic necessitate that evangelism begin to involve the conversion of the unbeliever rather than simply his discovery of a set of things for which he already felt a need. This conversion into things catholic is slow, painful, unlikely, and neither numerically nor financially rewarding. It does not affirm the self. It does not exalt the individual. It is not "the next level." Rather it slays and resurrects. One does not mature into it. One dies into it. This is a big problem for people inclined toward success, a problem, I might add, on both sides of the pulpit.

The thing that's identified as too catholic, most often, actually is catholic. It is often also something Papists do, but that's not really the problem. In fact, some of these things have fallen into disuse even among many papists, but they're still catholic. The pure Gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone is one such catholic thing, but unfortunately it is one which the Papists gave up a long time ago. Communion in two kinds is another catholic thing that Papists gave up for about 800 years. Lately, thankfully, if you were to ask that famous question, "Is the Pope catholic?," we'd could say with respect to communion in two kinds, "Yes. On this matter the pope is once again catholic." If the pope were catholic on every matter, he'd invite the Lutherans to come home or he'd come home to them, and the real Lutherans would welcome the reunion without the slightest need to "agree to disagree," because we would all be catholic together. But unfortunately the pope isn't catholic enough for any of that to happen. If he were, he wouldn't be pope, at least not a pope by divine right.

And unfortunately much of Lutheranism isn't catholic enough either.

Now "catholic" is a hard word to get a grip on. Dictionaries try but don't come close. Church fathers are a better source. The father of the term, Ignatius, I think understood it as well as anyone since his time, and his time was early, 110AD or so. He coined the term by jamming together the word "kata" - according to - and the word "holay," - whole. The "according to the whole" church. "Wherever Christ is," Ignatius tells us, "There is the catholic church." You can find the catholic church in Smyrna or Antioch or Rome or Alexandria. The whole catholic church is present in each assembly. When a bishop of a church shows up in your town, his whole church shows up in him. Where Christ is, there is the catholic church. Now, of course, Christ is - for St. Ignatius - not hanging around willy nilly everywhere two or three have gathered themselves for a Home Bible Study Fellowship Meeting, or a LifeLight meeting for that matter. No. Christ is present where the bishop is present and the altar is present and the church is gathered around that one bishop and that one altar and that one bread. That's where Christ is. Hence, Ignatius wrote, "Let nothing be done without the bishop."

Now this wasn't during the middle ages when bishops were huge powerful lords. No this was when there were only house churches and bishops were the first ones the Roman guards hauled away to their death.

In this little bit from Ignatius we already have what one might list as three key ingredients of "catholic." I shall call these three ingredients history, mystery, and consistory.

Ignatius was big on history. Jesus came in real space and time, not in some spiritual way as the Gnostics were claiming. Jesus had real flesh, was really born, really died, really rose. The history was critical.

And the history of the transmission of the faith from the apostles to the early church fathers was also important to these early catholics. Ignatius understood that Jesus hadn't gone into the printing business. He had sent out men to be heard, not books to be read. He understood that the life of Jesus in the church was just that, life, not merely information. The Gospel always has skin on it. It always enters you through your ear.

Now of course by "history" I don't mean that I'm a history bug; i.e. that I happen to get into old stuff. The church's commitment to history is a dogmatic reality, not a matter of taste or preference. The church is by nature historic and historical and is just as neccesarily so as Mary's Son is. Caesar Augustus. Pontius Pilate. Jerusalem. Nicea. Chalcedon. Augsburg. And all the dates and people and writings that go along with those places.

Catholicity is not about being a history bug. It's about being bugged by history, annoyed by it's ever present buzzing about your soul as it reminds you what a catholic is, and bugged also in the sense of being listened in on by spies, angels, archangels, the whole church of God which, as Paul says, "has no other custom." Yes. Catholics are bugged by history whether they're history bugs or not. And catholics are not ecclesiastical museum curates who keep history under glass to be observed. No. This is history like "When we came out of Egypt..." This is history like "I can see a lot of your Grandpa in you. It' nice." You gather around the table and light the candelabra. It's not enough to just switch on the light bulb even though you could tell the same story around the table under a light bulb as you could around the candelabra. The candelabra is not a relic. Nor is the birthday cake. It's tradition. And tradition, while from history and out of history, is not history. It's tradition. It's alive still.

Which brings us, of course, to mystery, which was important to Ignatius as well. At the communion one is "kindled in the blood of God." Just the phrase "blood of God" is pregnant with Christological and Trinitarian meaning, not to mention an obviously eucharistic locale. The eucharist is "the medicine of immortality." It conquers death. The bishop is Christ to the people. Satan is defeated by the unity of the church as it agrees in one confession under one bishop.

Mysteries abound here. One does not merely contemplate them. One steps into them. One does not seek to decode them or unravel them. One enjoys them, is swept away by them, is enlightened more by not understanding than by understanding. As Augustine put it, We understand because we believe. We do not believe because we understand. Or as Tertullian put it, "It is by all means to be believed because it is absurd." Do not think that when you get to heaven you will look at the Blessed Trinity and say, "Oh. Now I get it. Clear as day. What's next?" No, rather you will spend eternity wowed by an awesome mystery whose contours and more wild and beautiful and inexplicable than you had been able to tell. Yet we are not left to be agnostics. These mysteries are revealed, uncovered, in the church even now, even here.

History. Mystery. And consistory. A consistory is an ecclesiastical council or tribunal. Ignatius writes, "Do ye all follow your bishop, as Jesus Christ followed the Father, and the presbytery the Apostles; and to the deacons pay respect, as to God's commandment. Let no man do aught of things pertaining to the Church apart from the bishop...He that doeth aught without the knowledge of the bishop rendereth service to the devil." (Tral. 8-9).

Ignatius pictures a sort of consistory, a meeting of the minds, involving the Father, the Son, the Apostles, the Bishops, and the rest of the church. One would be utterly rebellious and hopelessly arrogant, as were the Gnostics, to dare to go on one's own when one could go with this visible assembly whose head is Jesus Christ active on earth in the office of the bishop.

Well, our time is fleeting. We can not do Ignatius justice. Perhaps you have already decided that you are more orthodox than this honored father who is next to the apostles themselves in antiquity. You may even dare to simply dismiss this ancient bishop and martyr in your trendy successful 21st century arrogance. Why Ignatius probably didn't even own a laptop or go to Starbucks. And he clearly knew nothing about communicating in the heart language of disenfranchised people groups!

Nevertheless it is Ignatius, at any rate, who gave us the word catholic and no one since has understood it any better than he.

Much later St. Vincent gave us something to ponder in his famous statement that: "Every care must be taken that we may hold fast to that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all. For this is, then, truly and properly catholic." That gets at "consistory" pretty well, and certainly entails "history," but doesn't do much to get at "mystery."

At any rate, these are the three things I believe we mean by "catholic." They are good things because they are full of Christ instead of me or us. Christ's history. Christ's presence in Christ's church throughout the ages. Christ's mysterious washing. Christ's mysterious meal. Christ's mysterious office in our midst. Christ's presence in the consistory of catholic consensus, creeds, councils, catechisms, confessions, and the ever consistent construct called "the mass." It can be in D Minor or A Major. It can be by Mozart or Bach or a dozen others, but it always has the same texts. It is what it is and what it is is known to us. We may wish to relativize it, soften it and twist it, muddy it up, and make it come out looking like Amy Grant. But it won't actually budge. It is what it is. It is the mass. Just ask the composers over hundreds of years. They know what it is and we should not pretend that we do not know what it is. And our confession states that we do it every Sunday and holy day. It is what it is.

But that's the way catholic things are. They are what they are. They are bigger and older and grander than us. And we don't much care for that. It leaves little room for our creativity, our ingenuity, or our self serving manipulation of the facts.

History. Mystery. Consistory. I strongly suspect that everyone knows that this is pretty much what we all mean when we say "catholic," whether we mean to capitalize the word and thereby condemn it, or capitalize on the word and thereby be justified by it. We all mean history, mystery, and consistory whether we like these things or not.

Now, of course, I've used positive words to describe catholic because "catholic," for me, as for Ignatius and our Lutheran fathers and all other catholics, is a very positive word with no negative connotations whatsoever.

But Lutheran history has seen the spinning off of a number of movements who are only questionably tethered to the axis of catholicity: Zwingli's sect, Calvinism, the Philippists, Pietism, Rationalism, and neo-orthodoxy Unless history does not actually repeat itself, we should expect to fine in our own midst more than a few who do not feel positively about catholicity. Whether they openly admit it or not, I suspect that there may be some among us who reject the church catholic. They hate it. In some cases they are worldly liberals steeped in psycho-babble. In other cases they are glowing Evangelicals steeped in personal piety and what seems to them to be evangelistic success. Either way, they would be incredibly uncomfortable if they were time warped back into any of the first fifteen centuries of Christian history. For them Lutheranism is a cross they must bear, like one's family history may be. They are perfectly content to divorce themselves from the "the noble army of martyrs...the holy Church throughout all the world...the glorious company of the apostles...the goodly fellowship of the prophets." They'd be much more at home at Fuller Theological Seminary, some of them, and others of them, at a meeting of the NEA. They believe their mission is to bring the Lutheran church up to speed either with other churches or with the world.

They are always looking for loop holes that let them out of the catholic noose. They show up at the church's family meal and announce that they don't want to eat off the family's fine china. They want a paper plate. The food is the same either way, they insist. Who cares how the table has been set for them or who has sat at it before them. They are different. They "have a heart for the lost." They're "on fire for the Lord." They've been liberated from tradition. They're "more Biblical than confessional."

They have a keen interest in that word "adiaphora." That's their great loop hole word. It lets them believe that they can have catholic doctrine while they blow off catholic life. It gives them permission to look, taste, smell, and feel non-denominational, so long as some technically Lutheran words come out of their mouth on a fairly regular basis, at least in formal confirmation classes.

So they would no doubt choose different words than I have chosen here. I think the words I'm going to put into their mouths should match mine perfectly and, just to be fair, they should rhyme. I'd like to suggest these three words as the anti-catholic's description of things that are catholic: dusty, musty, and crusty.

History is dusty to anti-catholics. They want a clean fresh Scotch Guarded NOW, a Teflon present. Their worship will be of course be "contemporary" and "indigenous." They may also claim that it is "liturgical," whatever that means to them, but it will by no means be "historic" except in some abstract sense. "This is like a Kyrie. This is like a Gloria in Excelsis. Etc. Etc." Convince the composers who wrote masses. Liturgical? Maybe. But clearly not catholic, not historic, not the stuff that has been done in the church "everywhere, always, and by all." No. Not that dusty stuff. We are not everywhere. We are in suburbia. We are not always. We are early 21st century. Count us out of the "all." We have escaped the "all." We're us, uniquely us. We have local color. We have our mission statement. So skip the dusty stuff of history. We're movin' on. We're a happening thing.

And none of that musty stuff for us either. The air is not thick with mysterious odors here. There may be a presence of something or Someone in the hotel of my five star heart, but not out there in the air. Perhaps even "in the room tonight," that is in all of our hearts, but not in the air. No musty scents here. It's fresh. We like the open airy clarity. It's right for us. We're not afraid of it. Even unbelievers like it, right away they like it, and they come back the next week too for another whiff of mountain freshness. We're on a Rocky Mountain high. No musty ritual for us, no spooky priestcraft for us.

Your musty old "Real Presence," just isn't marketable. People don't go for that sort of superstitious behavior nowadays. O fine, you can teach it as doctrine, but please, don't act like you believe it in the way you carry yourself in church! Quit bowing at that bread! Keep it below your elbows. And give me a bite too if I want it. The question is just whether I want it. I want my own cup too for the juice. I don't want your germs. Yes. A clear glass cup, something I can see through. I want to know what's in there ahead of time. I want to understand everything. And I want it to be safe and under my control. Give me some nice music too. This seems like it should be meaningful. Make it meaningful for me. Talk about our love and our oneness. Yes. We are the body of Christ, but each with his own germs and his own cup. We are the body of Christ. We are nice people who get along really well and scratch each other's itches, especially the itching ears. We are the body of Christ. Let's each do our part!.

No. Don't tell me THAT is the body of Christ. I want to be the body of Christ, thank you. I am the church. You are the church. We are the church together! I'll do my part. A finger. An elbow. I'm good at this group volunteer stuff. I was a scout leader before I came over here. Yes, mutually dependent. It's nice. But leave your musty ritual in the past where things like that belong. You act like we'd die without that bread, like it was given for the life of the world. No. We'll take good care of each other here. We're good folk here. No more musty.

I don't want dusty. I don't want musty. And I definitely do not want crusty.

That's what all your creed babble is to me. Crusty. And your doctrine books and your fine distinctions and your narrow minded exclusiveness and all your stupid petty political battles allegedly over doctrine or practice. I'm just above all that. I'm an adult. I can decide these things for myself. If I want to believe in a second baptism or a spirit guide or an ecumenical arrangement or a national Charismatic men's group or the Prayer of Jabbez or some other theology of glory, who are you and your church bureaucrats to tell me otherwise? Can't you tell that your perspective on the faith is just that, a perspective? I have mine too, and it's evolving. And I'm happy with it. It works for me. Knock off the crusty doctrinaire theological correctness stuff.

Your history, mystery, and consistory are dusty, musty, and crusty.

Well, now that you all know I understand you, let's take a look at the catholicity of the Lutheran Confessions, or as I would prefer to call them, along with Dr. Kenneth Korby, "the catholic Book of Concord." Allegedly, we here today all subscribe to this book. I wish I could believe that we subscribe not merely as a legally binding agreement we have with one another, so we can as it were "walk together." I hope we can do better than that. I hope we're saying, "Yeah. What he said." Or "I wish I had said that." This is not supposed to merely be an agreement we have with one another. It's supposed to be agreement God has made with us, an agreement God has worked in us by His gracious self revealing. We confess with Him. We fess up to the truth He has already spoken. We do so as an act of faith and worship, with delighted joy, not with a Philadelphia lawyer's list of conditions, hesitations, and other sophistries that will allow us to be autonomous and modern or post modern at the end of the day. Ideally, this would be our confession solely because it is what we believe is the truth.

This catholic Book of Concord is full of light and life and the love of God. It's not a rule book for beating each other up. It's not a synodical handbook. It's a teaching book, a Good News book, and a sweet fellowship diary and a precious family history that tells us who our family is. It is also a log from the battlefield. It warns us about our perpetual enemies. It gives us the battle strategy we must use to combat them and defend souls from them. In every article it has one goal, that we have communion with God in Christ by the Spirit.

The first thing I must point out about the Book of Concord is that it is self consciously catholic. There is nothing of the parochial tone used to describe it today. It is not Lutheran. It does not represent the teaching of some subset of the whole church. It is the teaching of the whole church and it presents itself as just that, nothing less, nothing more.

Referring to the reformation churches' reception of the Augsburg Confession, the 1580 Preface to the Book of Concord states:

Subsequently many churches and schools committed themselves to this confession as the contemporary symbol of their faith in the chief articles in controversy over against both the papacy and all sorts of factions. They referred and appealed to it without either controversy or doubt in a Christian and unanimous interpretation thereof. They have held fast and loyally to the doctrine that is contained in it, that is based solidly on the divine Scriptures, and that is also briefly summarized in the approved ancient symbols, recognizing the doctrine as the ancient consensus which the universal and orthodox church of Christ has believed, fought for against many heresies and errors, and repeatedly affirmed.

It is worthy of note that the confession is said to be not merely "based solidly on the divine Scriptures" but also "the ancient consensus which the universal and orthodox church of Christ has believed, fought for against many heresies, and repeatedly affirmed." That's catholicity. Catholicity has come on hard times in our midst since today it is not uncommon at gatherings like this for pastors to imply that our confession is merely our confession. It is also common for pastors in this assembly to pit our confession against the Bible and demand that unless something can be demonstrated quickly from a few proof texts, it doesn't matter what our confession plainly says. That's not catholicity. That's too Protestant!

The Apology to the Augsburg Confession repeatedly understands itself as catholic. Article II states that "In reference to original sin we therefore hold nothing differing either from Scripture or from the Church catholic." It claims to "restore to light most important declarations from the Scripture and of the Fathers." (paragraph 32) Later we have this, "For we know that we believe aright and in harmony with the church catholic of Christ." (paragraph 51)

Article XIV states, "we know that our confession is true, godly, and catholic." (paragraph 3).

Article XX states, "This strong testimony of all the holy prophets may duly be called a decree of the catholic Christian Church...To this Church of the prophets we would rather assent than to these abandoned writers of the Confutation, who so impudently blaspheme Christ."

Article XXIV defends the reformers' lack of private masses by pointing out that in the Greek churches private masses are not held, so also in the monasteries. These customs are said to be "traces of former customs. For nowhere do the ancient writers before Gregory make mention of private Masses." (paragraph 6).

Throughout the Augsburg Confession and the Apology the theological methodology is catholic. That is to say the argument is made first on the basis of Holy Scripture and then on the basis of historic churchly teaching and practice. All of the ancient heresies that were condemned in the ancient councils are again condemned by name, along with the Anabaptists, the 16th century Evangelicals. Article two appeals to Scripture and the Fathers. Article IV appeals to Scripture and, in the Apology, also to the fathers. Article VII of the Apology appeals to church history. Apology X appeals to Scripture, Vulgarius and Cyril and wishes to "make clear to all our readers that we defend the doctrine received in the whole church..." Apology XII appeals to Scripture, Chrysostom, Gratian, Tertullian, and Ambrose. Article XIII appeals to Scripture, "the Fathers," and Augustine.

The Augsburg Confession has a natural break between articles XXI and XXII. Everything before that point is about doctrine. Everything after that point is about practice. These words appear during the transition from the one section to the other: "Since this teaching is grounded clearly on the Holy Scriptures and is not contrary or opposed to that of the universal Christian church...we think that our opponents cannot disagree with the articles set forth above....From the above it is manifest that nothing is taught in our churches concerning articles of faith that is contrary to the Holy Scriptures or what is common to the Christian Church."

I submit to you that this concern for agreement with not only the Holy Scriptures but with the church catholic has fallen on very hard times in our midst. It is a distinctly catholic impulse that the Reformers clearly had in their blood but that many in our midst today clearly do not have. This impulse is rejected in at least two specific ways:

First, and perhaps most seriously, there has arisen in our midst a multiculturalist approach to church history. Church history is viewed as pluralistic, diverse, unsettled, undeterminable. There is no concept here of a consensus of church history or even of the existence of a church catholic except perhaps in some Platonic invisible sense of being united by faith in the heart. But the reformers and the catholic Book of Concord simply did not think that way. There was no question in their minds as to whether or not a catholic consensus existed. And they had a humble and passionate desire to believe, teach, confess, and practice in complete accord with that church catholic.

Secondly, the catholic Book of Concord was not generally content to argue from Scripture alone. There was a humble awareness that two heads are better than one, and there was a confidence that one could have as the other head this catholic consensus of biblical interpretation. I myself once pointed out to this very body (at Faith Lutheran Church in Denver) that there are several Scriptures central to the church and ministry debate in Missouri which our confessions consistently utilize in a manner utterly opposite their common use in much of the Missouri Synod today. I said, "Gentlemen, this should concern us." But it clearly concerned no one at that meeting and does not seem to generally concern us in the least. It would have concerned the Reformers. And the catholic Book of Concord simply would not hear of such a thing. Biblical interpretation and doctrinal assertion was something one did manifestly in concert with the church catholic. It simply was not enough to present sound cogent arguments based upon the original text of Holy Writ. One needed to demonstrate that his understanding was in accord with the voice of the church. Such a voice was believed to exist and was believed to be heard in the writings of the Fathers, the liturgies of the church, and at least the first four ecumenical councils.

If you have any healthy idea of how good you are at lying to yourself, you will humbly embrace this catholic methodology. It will become your primary hermeneutic. You will distrust innovation. You will become conscious of your modern individualistic experience based psycho-socio democratic egalitarian Gnostic predispositions. You will tremble at the thought of teaching things that modern people seem to flock toward without any strain on the perverse fallen soul.

But despite what I have pointed out here from our confession, you will likely leave here as you arrived. What you have been doing works fine. People like it. It pays the bills. The feedback is all positive. But of course we trust the visible feedback and forget about the invisible assembly of saints and martyrs, fathers and confessors. Their feedback may not be as positive. In fact, were they to be timewarped forward into your pew, they may wonder what religion, or what sect, they have visited. Nevertheless, the growth and income figures are good, so why change anything?

As we move further into the Augsburg Confession and the Apology, we note that a disproportionate amount of ink is spent on matters of practice, or rather, as the Reformers put it, Roman abuses in practice. Things that were merely a couple hundred years old and not in accord with the article on justification had to go. So the Reformers had reformed practice. But they did so very apologetically, very hesitantly, very circumspectly and with considerable defensiveness. They did not merely announce, "Well, all of this stuff is adiophora anyway so we changed it." They simply knew that changes in practice should be rare and are dangerous and require considerable explanation.

These articles are generally much longer than the previous doctrinal ones and have a distinctively defensive tone.

Today I doubt this would be the case in our midst. We seem to imagine that, while doctrine is important and weighty, practice is to be determined locally, congregation by congregation, week by week, without any dogged commitment to the past and without any bondage to consensus. And furthermore, it hardly need be explained or defended. One need not even consult with his circuit brethren. It's about what people want, or like, or find meaningful, or about what works, what brings more folk in the door. It is rarely seen to have implications for the soul or for the health and well being of the whole church. The Reformers simply did not think that way. They thought that practice always teaches doctrine and should result from it. They thought that consensus of practice was very very important and desirable even if it was not absolutely necessary for the unity of the church. And they approached matters of practice with humility and with catholicity, that is, with a commitment to history, mystery, and the consistory.

Now perhaps you're fixing to quote to me from your last Reformation Day sermon: Sola Scriptura! Sola Fide! Sola Gratia!

But let me simply point something out to you. Faith alone, yes, when it comes to how we are saved. But faith is never alone when it comes to how we live. It produces works of love. Similarly, grace is never alone. It always comes through the means of grace, preaching, water, bread, wine. The same is true of Holy Scripture. Yes, it alone is the ultimate truth source or norming principle. But Scripture is never alone. It always produces a confessing church. And as we read Scripture, we do so as members of that confessing church and in accord with that confessing church - by which I do not mean the Missouri Synod, but rather the church catholic. The most ancient Christians understood this. They criticized the heretics of their day for failing to understand Scripture in concert with "the rule of faith," which was essentially the baptismal creed. Yet the "rule of faith" was not merely something codified as text, reduced to information. It was the living apostolic voice. It could be traced back to the apostles in each of the apostolicly founded churches such as Ephesus or Rome, and it was so traced in terms of a precise apostolic succession of teachers and teachings.

In conclusion, the time has come for us to seriously consider this question: "Is my church catholic enough?" I am certain that my own parish is not there yet. But we keep studying and reforming and restoring historic Christianity. Our "mission statement," if we have one, is "resurrecting historic Christianity." I think the Reformers would be pleased at least with the intention.

Is your church catholic enough? Would a second or fourth or sixth century believer be at home there if he knew English? Would the service be familiar to him? Would it be user friendly to catholic users? How user friendly is it to modern Evangelicals? I hope they are jolted when they come in. I hope it's foreign to them, because most assuredly the church catholic is unmistakably foreign to them and they to it. Can modern Evangelicals float comfortably between your church and the local Evangelical or Charismatic megachurch? Do they? When your parish leaders look for ministry models, where do they turn? Are you and they reading the same books the Evangelicals are reading, adopting the same essential methodologies, setting essentially the same goals, singing a lot of the same vacuous self centered ditties?

What are your pastoral goals for those who are willing to stick around and mature in your midst? Are they basically production goals centered on how the individual can benefit the numerical growth of the whole? Do you do anything to help your members sing and mean "Let all mortal flesh keep silence?" Is baptism part of the active piety, their favorite arrow in their quiver? Do you offer Holy Communion at each service each Sunday? The church catholic does that. Our confession says we do that. Is private confession and absolution part of the spiritual care for a growing number of members? Are your communicants aware of, as Hebrews puts it, "the souls of righteous men made perfect" who gather at the altar with you? Does this matter as much to them or to you as the visible attendance figure for the day? How many extra-biblical Christian martyrs could your Sunday School children list and describe? Do you teach the liturgy, do soul care with the liturgy, pray and repent and praise and adore with the liturgy? Or do you just put up with it for the time being. Do you think of it as a CPH product, as a Lutheran cultural tradition, or do you rather think of it as the life of the church catholic? Where do you and your members locate Christ? Is He primarily Someone who lives in the believer's heart, or is He primarily the Word made flesh who has saved us in history and saves us now in sacrament and preaching. Do the Adult Bible Classes in your church center on sound catholic teaching of Christ and His Gospel or do they often degenerate into a sharing of personal perspectives and principles for Christian living, i.e. do-able Pharisaic law that pumps of the egos of some participants while sending the others away in a private despair. Do your members have any concept that a catholic church exists at all? Do they have any inclination to or ability to read the Bible with a catholic lens on? Are they even aware of what lens they are wearing now as the read the Bible?

Well these kinds of questions could go on and on of course. I hope you get the idea to some extent. And please do not think that I imagine that I could answer these questions the way I would like to be able to answer them. I cannot. We're in the process of reformation, restoration, and, if I may coin an awkward term, "catholization."

At any rate, I firmly and passionately believe that the question is worth asking and asking and asking until we meet up with the church catholic in glory, "Is my church catholic enough?"

In the mean time, yes you and I are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone.

Thank you for your attention and patience.