Lutheran Airlines

After a week of professorial and pastoral duties, I was ready for a little humor. My colleague, George Heider, who also serves as the chair of my department in the university, sent the following to me. I'm passing it along to my readers in the hope that it will bring you a smile/laugh as it did to me.

The Daystar Journal

After much trial and error, I have finally launched the new Daystar website. It is most definitely a work-in-progress, but at least it is started. It is a very, very simple site, but one that I hope folks will visit from time to time.

In the coming weeks, I will be uploading all of the past Daystar essays and articles
(at least the ones that pass the test of time). I will also be adding links to other
important websites (Such as the Creator's Tapestry, Crossings, the main Lutheran
church bodies, etc.).

The web address is:

http://thedaystarjournal.com/

Please add this to your favorites and tell others about it. Those of you who are Lutheran will probably be most interested in reading its contents, but others of you may find a tidbit here and there as well.

If you know of a blog or a web site that should be added to the links, let me know.

I will continue to work with Bob Schmidt to identify topics and authors for upcoming issues of The Daystar Journal. But meanwhile, if the Spirit moves you to write something of theological importance and you're willing to let it stand out there for all the world to see, send it my way.

Any advice on how to improve the site will be greatly appreciated.

Pericopes of the Week: Watanabe



Sadao Watanabe (1913-1996)
The Wedding at Cana, 1984
Hand colored Kappazuri dyed stencil print on Momigami (crumpled) paper, 32/100
University Fund Purchase, Watanabe honorary degree campus visit
Brauer Museum of Art, 87.17.001

 Last Friday marked the end of a truly fine exhibition of biblical stencil prints by the legendary Japanese artist Watanabe Sadeo (1913-1996) at Valparaiso University's Brauer Museum of Art. Richard H. W. Brauer, after whom the museum is named and who taught art at VU for many years, served as the curator for this exhibit, "Heeding the Voice of Heaven: Sadao Watanabe Biblical Stencil Prints." The accompanying catalogue, which also tells the story of Watanabe's connection to Valparaiso University, is edited by my colleague, Gregg Hertzlieb, who directs the museum.  The book reminds us that Watanabe received an honorary doctorate from VU in 1987. At that time he said, "I owe my life to Christ and the gospel. My way of expressing my gratitude is to witness to my faith through the medium of biblical scenes." Gregg was kind to allow me to use in today's blog a few images of these biblical prints from the catalogue. These pictures will serve as this week's pericopes.

The story of Watanabe takes us back to my post of a few weeks ago, when I reported that the current president of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod has threatened to sever his church body's ties to the Japan Lutheran Church (the NRK--Nihon Ryuteru Kyodan), all because the latter is poised to allow women to serve as pastors. Watanabe became a Christian in Japan, was an active member in the United Church in Japan, was a close friend of key LCMS missionary to Japan, Bill Danker (about whom I wrote in the earlier blog), and has influenced many in the Christian churches here in this country. While the LCMS is threatening to break ties with the NRK, thankfully it will be unable to break its own members' connections to Christians in Japan. Watanabe's artwork helps to remind us of these important connections.

A friend of mine emailed me today to share his thoughts on this situation between the NRK and the LCMS. (I should add that he, too, owns a wonderful stencil print, signed by Watanabe, that hangs in his office.) Here's what he wrote:

"I am aware of the JLC (usually called the NRK – Nihon Ryuteru Kyodan) situation and it is unfortunate that the LCMS is not looking at the entire picture/challenge that is currently facing and has been facing the NRK for decades. Simply, an already small and fragile church body is  losing members and is enduring a decades long shortage of pastors. It is well known that less than 1% of the Japanese population is Christian, let alone Lutheran. And, without the work of missionaries in Japan, people like my wife may not have come into contact with the Lutheran/Christian faith, would not have been baptized, etc.. Surely the Great Commission includes all those, men and women, who are called and capable to preach and/or share the Gospel message."

Sadao Watanabe (1913-1996)
Adam and Eve, 1980
Hand colored Kappazuri dyed stencil print on Washi paper, 16/100
Gift of Josephine L. Ferguson (VU 1946) and Byron L. Ferguson (VU 1948)
Acquired from Rev. Dr. William Danker
Brauer Museum of Art, 86.07.002

Today I am grateful for those Christian/Lutheran missionaries who were instrumental in helping Watanabe Sadeo to come to faith in Christ, to be baptized, and to join that small community of Christian believers in Japan. I am grateful for the Christian witness that Mr. Watanabe makes through his beautiful art.

Martin Marty notes in his essay that appears in the catalogue that Watanabe's prints "make the familar strange, and the strange familiar." Marty describes an experience I had, too, when I first came across a Watanabe print, "What's that all about?" "Once grasped by a Watanabe work, alerted or inquisitive viewers linger and muse, for they know how important it is to give new visual art experiences their chance, much as one must be open, curious, and patient with new music" (Martin Marty, "The Masks of Watanabe," in Heeding the Voice of Heaven: Stories from Genesis to Revelation Envisioned by Sadao Watanabe [Valparaiso, Ind.: Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso University, 2010], 16)

Watabe has himself said, "Theology will not take deep root in Japanese soil if it is merely an import. I feel it is my mission to create Christian art for the Japanese people."

Thankfully the art has not remained confined in Japan. Dr. Danker helped to make Watanabe and his work more well-known in this country. Many of the pieces on display at the Brauer Museum normally hang in the homes and offices of several of my friends, colleagues and acquantances, people like Jim and Joanne Albers, the family of Bill Danker, Arlin and Sharon Meyer, Ed and Marie Schroeder, and the family of Robert Schnabel. (My wife, who will not read today's blog, doesn't know that she's receiving a Watanabe signed print for Christmas. So "Jonah and the Whale" [1979] will soon hang in our living room.)




Sadao Watanabe (1913-1996)
Listening, 1960
Hand colored Kappazuri dyed stencil print on Momigami (crumpled) paper, edition of 520
University Fund Purchase
Brauer Museum of Art, 2010.01

  "I have always aspired to portray stories and episodes from the Bible. In this disturbed world, I would like to heed the voice of heaven" (Sadao Watanabe, "The Artist's Comment," in The Modern Japanese Print: An Appreciation, by James A. Michener [Rutland, VT and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1962], 30).

A Further Sign of LCMS Times

A close friend and fellow-LCMS clergyman, who is in good standing in the LCMS, recently served as the keynote speaker at a joint LCMS-ELCA national theological conference. Yes, such conferences still exist, but they may be a dying breed, given the current LCMS leadership and the actions it has been taking toward other church bodies in the world.

My friend, who has spoken at a previous conference of this group, was invited partly because he is indeed an LCMS theologian. The tradition of the group, whose annual meetings go back forty-three years, is to invite speakers from the two major Lutheran church bodies. Partially funded by Thrivent, these annual conferences have "focused on and celebrated the importance of ministries in chaplaincy, pastoral counseling, and clinical pastoral education in the Lutheran church" (to quote from the conference brochure).

The planners for this conference, which was held in October, had invited the President of the LCMS, who at the time of the invitation was President Kieschnick, to address a plenary session. The presiding bishop of the ELCA was also invited to address the group, which he did. But with the change of leadership in the Missouri Synod, the new Synod President, Rev. Matthew Harrison, chose not to attend. Instead he asked an LCMS chaplain who did attend to inform the group as to why he, Rev. Harrison, could not attend.


The reason? Answer: Because Rev. Harrison did not want to appear at a conference where my friend was the keynote speaker. According to the chaplain, Rev. Harrison could not be on the same podium as my friend because the latter had expressed public support for some preliminary documents that led up to the ELCA's decision last summer to ordain gays and lesbians who are in committed, life-long, publicly-accountable relationships.

Please note, my friend and Rev. Harrison would not have been on the same podium at the same time. Even if they had been, Rev. Harrison would have been speaking for himself and would have brought greetings and comments separately from my friend. Instead, Rev. Harrison chose to avoid the conference altogether, merely because my scholarly friend was the keynote speaker.

This behavior, which one expects to observe on a grade-school playground but not at the administrative level of a Christian church body, strikes me as founded on fear, the fear of appearing to endorse perceived "uncleanness" among others. Because my friend has spoken out in support of another church body's decision about homosexual clergy, he is now deemed doctrinally and ethically "unclean" by the Synod President. The implication of this view, of course, is that the President of the Synod is righteous and right and that he does not want to make himself "impure" by coming into contact with my "impure" friend.

Apparently, for the time being anyway, the issues of women's ordination (as in Japan) and homosexuality (as in the ELCA) have become the litmus tests of orthodoxy in the LCMS. The doctrine on which the church stands or falls is no longer the gospel of Christ Jesus, but rules and regulations. It is almost as if one could say, paraphrasing an LCMS scholar of an earlier time (Walter Bartling), "If a woman is ordained to the pastoral office, Christ is not raised and your faith is futile and you are still in your sins" or "If a practicing homosexual is ordained to the pastoral office, Christ is not raised and your faith is futile and you are still in your sins."


Has the fear of "impurity" become so great that one cannot even risk being seen "in the company of sinners"? In an earlier time, and still in some places today, LCMSers have taken risks for the sake of the gospel and Christian love. They haven't worried too much, if at all, about "purity" and "impurity," about "clean" and "unclean," but have sought to become all things to all people so that they might by all means save some.


Then again, maybe it was a good thing that Rev. Harrison didn't attend this inter-Lutheran conference. One can imagine what he might have said to "the impure" in his midst. Surely saying nothing is better than saying that.

Pericope of the Week: Wangerin

One of the great blessings of teaching at Valparaiso University is that one occasionally crosses paths with Professor Walter Wangerin Jr. In the years since I joined the faculty he and his wife, Thanne, have become friends. We have shared many meals together and I have enjoyed interloping several Friday-afternoon theological sessions between Walt and my other close colleague, Fred Niedner Jr. These two "juniors," both sons of Missouri-Synod pastors ("A wandering cleric was my father," is how Walt puts it), who have met regularly on Fridays for seventeen years, have helped me to expand my theological and intellectual horizons in so many ways, and for that I am grateful.

Long before I ever met Walt or Fred I had learned of and from them. In Walt's case, first was The Book of the Dun Cow, which won the American Book Award for Best Science Fiction Paperback in 1980 and was the New York Times' choice for best children's book that year. Then there was Ragman and Other Cries of Faith, from which I generously borrowed and often cited during my first years of pastoral ministry in West Dundee, Illinois. These great books were followed by others: Miz Lill and the Chronicles of Grace, which tells of Walt's first pastorate, The Book of Sorrows, among the best of our beast fables, The Orphean Passages, which is yet another story of a pastor and the drama of his faith, and As for Me and My House, which I think is the best book on love and marriage that I have read. (If you can believe this, I actually took a copy of it on my honeymoon to Antigua, many, many moons ago! I later used it with the young-couples group in my congregation in that first year of marriage.)

If you have kept up with news about Walt's health during the past years, you know that he suffers from lung cancer. Thankfully the cancer is now pretty much in check, although he must occasionally use oxygen and stop to catch his breath. While he has had to retire officially from the university, he continues to show up periodically at his office two floors down from mine. He still writes quarterly for The Lutheran, the magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the church body in which he is a rostered pastor. I recently learned from him that he plans to teach a masters-level course on campus next semester. And he continues to write. And write. And write. In fact, he's probably written more during the time of his chronic illness than before the cancer's onslaught. Just a few months ago he passed on to me drafts of some new poetry and fiction about which he has invited my response. (Likewise, he has been very gracious to give me feedback on my own attempts at non-fiction.)

This past weekend I was privileged to co-lead a spiritual retreat with Walt for 28 of our Christian students. We were out at a local Roman Catholic retreat center on Saturday and Sunday. He did the two presentations on "friendship" and "intimacy" and I served as facilitator of discussions and preached and presided at Sunday's eucharist. Driving to and from the retreat center gave us some time to catch up on our families and the latest about our respective writing projects.

So I thought it would be fitting this week to select the pericope from one of his books, the one from which he himself drew this past weekend. He spoke on three of "the characteristics of the marriage contract": (1) it is one's total commitment unto the other, its comprehensiveness ("I promise you my faithfulness..."); (2) it is one's timeless commitment unto another, one that is not affected or changed by time ("Until death parts us..."); and (3) it is grounded in faith ("that we have faith in the God who loves the both of us, who encourages such a relationship as marriage, and who is above time..."). And then he spoke on a fourth:

(4) Forgiveness. This is the single most significant tool we have for meeting and for healing the troubles which marriage shall surely breed between us. What those troubles will be, we do not know. But that they will be, we may be assured. And nothing--neither our love, our effective communication with each other, our talents, our money, nor all the good will in the world--no, nothing can make right again the wrongs as can forgiveness. This tool, so practical and so unequivocally necessary to the healthy future of the marriage, must have its own chapter, and shall (As for Me and My House [Thomas Nelson, 1990], 24).

And what is forgiveness? It involves "giving up," "giving notice," and "giving gifts." For these "givings," you'll have to read the book... Or go to his website to listen to his presentations:

http://walterwangerinjr.org/new_web/index.php