Lifeboats in Australia
In wartime, there are always casualties and losses. So it is in the church militant. The Rev. Dr. Peter Scaer offers sobering comments on the sinking of the Australia. Lord, have mercy.
Down With The Ship?
That's the noble calling of captains, who perform their duties onboard until the very last crew member, the final passenger makes it on to the lifeboat. But how about the church down under? The Australian Lutherans, as I have seen, just ordained their first woman pastor, something that could be said truly only from a human perspective, not God's.
What to do? Bless be the tie that binds? So it is, some would be faithful remain. But the problem is this. When church leaders stay aboard, they are actually abandoning the ship, which now comes in the form of little lifeboats. The Australian Lutheran church has much to remember, much for which to give thanks, but that church is no longer. Whatever goodness and truth still afloat will be found in the little lifeboats, the perhaps tiny congregations that form a body, small and vulnerable, but not hopelessly diseased.
The Australian Lutheran church is movie we have seen before, an ending we know all too well. Having chosen the path of faithlessness, the way may for a while seem similar, not all that different from what was known and practiced. But it is, as the Didachist would say, the way of death, the easy path that leads to destruction.
To stay may indeed be to minister to those still there, but it is also to leave a legacy for children and grandchildren, or rather to pass down a rotten inheritance. True love can be maintained through separation. Phone calls, emails, visits, and meals together are still possible. But fellowship at the altar is not. To get off the ship is a gift of prophecy, a word to the wise who are still trapped, who don't get it.
Women's ordination was sold many years ago to the unsuspecting. Father, forgive them. But now the evidence is in, and we see where it has all led, such is our world not only of so-called gay marriage, but a world in which a boy thinks he is a girl, a girl a boy, and they are even given the gruesome medical help to make it appear so. But no, putting a dress on Jim does not make him Janet, and the woman who wears the stole will no more be a pastor than a man might give birth to a child.
On Monday of Holy Week, the Temple is cleansed, the Fig Tree cursed. And so it must be, from time to time, among us.
God bless the faithful, bless them onto the lifeboats, and let them know that we join them, be one with them, as the church still struggling, still fighting for the truth, so that the one who is the Truth may have his way with us.