OK, Boomer, Part Deux

Once again, a picture of an LCMS pastor on Super Bowl Sunday mugging in the chancel with a football jersey on made the rounds. I thought about sharing the pic with the perp’s face blocked out, but decided against it. It would set off the usual faux wailing and gnashing of teeth and the typical tactic of playing the Eighth Commandment and Matthew 18 (“do not pass go, do not collect $200”) cards - in spite of the fact that this scandalous behavior is public (thanks to the church’s own social media) and this is part of our own fellowship’s acts of public worship - something that reflects on the rest of us.

So to avoid all of the distractions, I’ll not publish any pics.

But I’m not going to shut up about this topic. And any attempt from the Usual Suspects to stifle discussion about this will result in a series of articles - and maybe some pictures - in response. So just don’t even, as the kids say.

Speaking to my fellow pastors: this is a scandal. This behavior is really disgusting and disheartening.

We pastors are “servants of the Word.” Servant is a euphemism for slave. You are a slave of Christ, as St. Paul calls himself. The job of the slave is to do what he is told, to obey and serve one’s Master, to call attention to Him and not yourself. John the Baptist had it right when he confessed: “He must increase and I must decrease.” When we minister, we are, well, “ministers” - another word for servants. Are you getting the picture yet?

But along comes the Me-Generation, born in the post-WW2 prosperity boom, the youth culture generation, the revolutionaries, the narcissists, the ground troops of the sexual revolution - you know what I’m talking about. And then come the “folk services,” the guitars, the monkeying with texts, the spawn of syncretistic worship of the Lord God with the false god of Entertainment. Along comes “creative worship” and “creative communications for the parish” with changes in the liturgical rites and texts, all in the name of “reaching out to the youth.”

Funny, that.

It’s almost always boomers putting on jerseys and cheese hats, clowning around shamefully and acting the buffoon in the church, and engaging in liturgical monkeyshines. And the audience licks it up like ice cream cones laced with arsenic - typically pastor and people all with silver locks still holding onto the promise that this kind of thing is for “the youth.”

We see it especially in the Roman Catholic Church, where the Vatican II Mass: Father Boomer’s Variety Show Shuck and Jive Folksy Hour - often featuring gimmicks, bad pop music, dancing girls, and diddling with the texts - is attended by the remnant of the Lava Lamp crowd. We see endless videos of cringey dancing pastors, pastors riding boogie boards, pastors flying the elements in on drones, and crooning pop tunes. Meanwhile, “the youth” are at the Latin Mass, which is usually packed with young families and presided over not by a Rogaine-encrusted Father Boomer, but rather by someone who actually believes that Jesus is there, who takes the liturgy seriously. And these pastors are often younger as well.

Time is not on the side of the Me-Generation.

I recently had an interesting discussion with an 82-year old man who assured me that he had no reason to be concerned about the words of institution used in his own baptism, because we should “look at the promises attached to Baptism and then trust those beautiful promises.”

This is a true and beautiful confession of the Holy Sacrament. But it is a luxury that he can afford. For 82 years ago, Pastor Boomer wasn’t innovating with texts. The church bulletin didn’t list “the people” as “the ministers” of the congregation (isn’t that special?). There was zero chance that the pastor was using “creative worship” or winging it. The pastors of 82 years ago were not egomaniacal boomers who believed that they could do everything better than two millennia of their fathers, because, you know, “the youth” and stuff. The pastors of 82 years ago were all men, they did not dress up as drag queens to officiate, and if they had homosexual inclinations, they understood it as sinful and didn’t parade it around and call it pride. The pastors of 82 years ago likewise humbly submitted to the baptismal formula and did not accuse the Most Holy Trinity of “sexism” by reimagining the words of institution as “in the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier.”

The pastors of 82 years ago were not perfect. They were more than capable of flubbing the words of institution, and they were also sinners. But they were not a generation of narcissists, convinced that creativity is better than fidelity. That was to come later. And we are still digging our way out of this mess.

Why don’t Muslim imams wear football jerseys in the mosque? Why don’t orthodox Jewish rabbis wear football jerseys in the synagogue? Why don’t Roman Catholic priests who celebrate the Tridentine Mass wear football jerseys in the sanctuary? For that matter, why don’t “Gottesdienst Crowd” pastors wear sports swag at the altar, at the font, and in the pulpit? Because all of the above actually believe their respective religions. It is a confession. Not being a buffoon or a clown is a way to tell the world that you believe that what you are doing and saying is sacred and matters eternally. It’s not a show. It’s something that is real.

There is a time and a place to wear jerseys, to joke around, to have fun, and to even clown around. And I have had more laughs with “Gottesdienst Crowd” pastors and laity - many of whom are boomers - way more so than the showmen who turn the church into the set of SNL. The difference is that we know when and where marks sacred time and place versus what is common. That is the very concept of “holiness” that the boomers seem to have lost at some point between I Can’t Get no Satisfaction and Honky Tonk Women.

If you don’t actually believe that Christ is present, if you don’t believe that God speaks through you as a slave, as a minister, as a steward of the mysteries, if you don’t think absolution is important, if you think making people subjectively feel good is better than giving them the objective gifts that Christ has entrusted to you - well, then by all means, be a clown. Act like a buffoon. Be folksy and act like a fool - because that’s just what you are. You are a fool, and not a fool for Christ. You are the world’s darling, and we know who the prince of this world is.

And I am encouraged both by the younger pastors and the younger laity. They hunger and thirst for righteousness, for the presence of Christ, for the sacred, for the transcendent, for the reverence of Word and Sacrament, for our Biblical confession - and they are willing to pay a price for it. I often hear from laity who drive an hour or more, bypassing big-box LCMS showboat megachurches, as well as churches in our fellowship who offer a buffet table of “worship styles,” and even congregations that are liturgical but where the pastors don’t know how to preside with reverence. I hear from young families who are even moving from one city to another to get away from Pastor Boomer’s You-Know-What-Show.

That is indeed encouraging. Pastors and laity alike need this kind of faith. For we don’t know exactly what is coming down the pike, but from every indication, we are seeing the rise of a state and society that is increasingly aggressive against our holy faith. The days of the lukewarm Christian may well be screeching to a halt. We need pastors to be men of integrity and faith, and laity who confess in the face of hardship.

The good news is that Christ has died even for those who make a mockery of Him. There is forgiveness for turning the sacred into the profane. And as the days grow darker, as the world becomes ever more hostile to the faith, as the flock is culled by persecution and the increasing cost of discipleship, we will need pastors who display personal courage, integrity, and sincerity, true confessors and true slaves of Christ the Word. And if nothing else, God will use the sands of time to accomplish the generational change just as he did with the children of Israel who were condemned to wander the desert for forty years. By God’s grace, the Me-Generation that heckled Moses will give way to a generation of faithful men and women who will follow Joshua to the promised land. And by God’s grace, there will be boomers who reject their generational culture, and there will be men who used to clown around who will repent and will serve faithfully.