Two Practices - one Church, Bishop Juhana Pohjola Speaks in Australia

This is an interview Pastor David Wear and Pastor Heath Pukallus recorded with Reverend Doctor Juhana Pohjola, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, and the chair of the International Lutheran Council (ILC) at The Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, Hamilton, Victoria, on December 1 2023.

“Queerness as the redemptive message of Christianity”

Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ.

I have received Gene Veith’s permission to forward to the Parish an article from his blog.  See below.

Gene is a convert to the Lutheran Church, who is a retired English Professor.  His daughter is married to Pastor Adam Hensley, one of the Seminary Lecturers in Australia who had his call terminated and offered a half call, without any consultation with the Seminary board.  He has since moved to the USA and taken up a teaching role in a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) seminary.

What is reported below is a picture of what happens when one no longer sits under the word of God but sits in authority over the word of God.  Where feelings and ideas of humanity are the lens through which God’s word is examined.  This is not new.  In the Garden of Eden, the devil worked on the emotions of humanity asking, “did God really say?”

Ever since then the rights and glory of God has been usurped by man.  Today in the church the sacredness of God is being replace with the sacredness of the self, which is finding expression in rejection of authority, put in place by God for good order. 

Nevertheless, this authority has been found lacking in the past, due to sin!  But now the pendulum has swung to the polar extreme as all authority is rejected, God, family (community), and the human body’s own ordered code.

What has this to do with the Warrnambool Lutheran Parish, you and me?

Already in the LCANZ anti biblical variety is being celebrated in its auxiliaries.  Same sex relationships and gender diversity are being publicly supported more and more by our schools and welfare sectors.  As Christians we are called to forgive and care for them, but at the same time we do not support them as being normal or okay in the eyes of God.

It may surprise you to know that this is not in the fringes of the LCANZ, but many you know in the mainstream of the church are openly supporting these movements.

Some congregations of the LCA are beginning services with a welcome to country ceremony, encouraging racial sanctification and denying that creation is God’s gift for all people to care for and share. 

Climate change is the new law preached by politicians and is being welcomed in our denomination.  

God tells us in his word that the world will die and end.  Climate change is happening!  But its reality is occurring because of human greed and selfishness.  God calls all people to a climate change of the heart, and not to wantonly pillage creation for profit, nor fix what he is allowing to perish by forcing others to pay.

We are all students of the age.  Individualism leads us to point the finger at others while permitting ourselves to do the very thing we are calling others to stop. 

In the church the word of God is being used to bash others over the head and at the same time used to allow us to enforce our own freedoms and righteousness.

This is what happens when we sit in authority over the word of God. 

But when we sit under the word of God it calls every one of us to repentance. 

Feeling and ideas don’t interpret the word of God, but the hearts and thoughts of people are interpreted by the word of God.

I can no longer say evil is over there, or if we do the right thing evil will not exist.  But rather, I am capable of evil, it lives within and therefore I flee to the cross and  live under the forgiveness of God.

Therefore, we need to qualify the direction of love,  “Is God’s love coming to life in the LCANZ, or is my love coming to life in the LCANZ?”

Or to put it another way, see which way the glory is going, “Are we glorifying God, or is it coming to us, or someone/thing else?” 

Suspicions dealing in the LCANZ, put the church in a position of being drawn into a situation where our biblical submission will be undermined and diluted.  God calls us not to capitulate to these anti biblical human ways, nor does he call us to be marauding zealots. 

He calls you and me to “stand” on the authority of his word, and faithfully confess his word as unhidden truth.

Pastor Heath

23/06/2023

Note:  Underlined text have links one can click on to see more information.

“Queerness as the redemptive message of Christianity”

June 21 2023 by Gene Veith

We often assume that if we give in just a little, the other side will be satisfied.  But it never is, pushing for more and more and more, going to ever greater extremes.

The issue in progressive churches is no longer gay rights, or accepting LGBTQ+ members and pastors, or performing same-sex weddings, or being inclusive of transgendered individuals.  Rather, all of this is only preparatory to Queer Theology, according to which Christianity itself is all about homosexuality and transgenderism.

In order to know what is happening in mainline churches and liberal seminaries, you must read  Queering Jesus: How It’s Going Mainstream at Progressive Churches and Top Divinity Schools.  The article, by John Murawski of RealClearInvestigations, shows just how pervasive “queer theology” has become in these  ostensibly Christian circles.  Here is an excerpt, with my bolds:

Progressive churches are moving beyond gay rights, even beyond transgender acceptance, and venturing into the realm of “queer theology.”  Rather than merely settling for the acceptance of gender-nonconforming people within existing marital norms and social expectations, queer theology questions heterosexual assumptions and binary gender norms as limiting, oppressive and anti-biblical, and centers queerness as the redemptive message of Christianity.  

In this form of worship, “queering” encourages the faithful to problematize, disrupt, and destabilize the assumptions behind heteronormativity and related social structures such as monogamy, marriage, and capitalism. These provocative theologians and ministers assert that queerness is not only natural and healthy but biblically celebrated. They assert that God is not the patron deity of the respectable, the privileged, and the comfortable, but rather God has a “preferential option” for the promiscuous, the outcast, the excluded and the impure. . . .

Queer theology presents itself as an apocalyptic, revival movement, rendering queer people as angels and saints who are a living foretaste of what’s to come, when all binaries and man-made social constructs fall away as remnants of heterosexual oppression and European colonialism. There is a sense in which to be queer is to be the chosen people, those favored by God to spread the good news. 

I can’t bring myself to quote any more of what Murawski describes and critiques on this blog.  Read it yourself.

This is not just the speculations of academic theologians.  Murawski shows how this is showing up everywhere in mainline churches.

We keep hearing that the split in the United Methodist Church, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) breaking away from the Episcopal Church, the North American Lutheran Church (NALC) breaking away from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the revolt of global Anglicans against Canterbury are all about “accepting gay pastors” or the like.  But the bigger issue is surely the rise of Queer Theology and whether it will be allowed to replace actual Christianity.

Back when the main issue with liberal theology was the higher critical approach to the Bible, as accompanied with the “social gospel,” J. Gresham Machen wrote Christianity and Liberalism,

 in which he argued that liberal theology was not just a strain of Christianity or a theological option in the church universal.  Rather, liberal theology is a different religion than Christianity.

He was right then in 1923.  And Queer Theology, as the decaying fruit of that rebellion against the authority of Scripture, is certainly a different religion than actual Christianity.

Reverend Calvin Robinson | Christianity SHOULD NOT allow Gay Marriage

Come, O Sinner

 

Blessed Forgiven Covered - Convention of General Synod 2023 LCANZ Australia

 Psalm 32:1(ESV)  Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 

Blessed, forgiven, covered. 

In a world of chaos, confusion, and fear these three words stand out as beacons for true peace.

Since the year two thousand it has been difficult to identify peace within the Lutheran Church of Australia.

A lack of good-will has been allowed to fester, causing division that’s giving way to suspicion, treachery, and a promotion of personal agendas that’s only served to further division between God’s people.

We have struggled with division as a Lutheran Church in Australia since not long after the first Lutherans arrived here from Germany in the eighteen-thirties.  Karvel and Fritzsche parted company in 1846, and with the arrival of others in following years, the Lutheran Church remained splintered in separate synods till 1966.

But even today still the threads of separation continue to simmer and cause suspicion. 

It may or may not be due to faithfulness towards Karvel or Fritzsche, with the former ELCA or UELCA synods.  

The separation may or may not be whether one should be or shouldn’t be immunised with the latest Covid vaccination. 

It may or may not be whether you believe or disbelieve women should be ordained into the office of preaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments.

Whatever it is that causes your suspicion and ill will, though, we all must acknowledge that with suspicion, holy fellowship cannot truly exist.  And no matter how much we work to put suspicion and ill will aside, things will only continue to get worse. 

What will remove suspicion and ill-will from the Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand?

 Chaos, confusion, and corruption are an everyday part of life in these days.   And the reality is that it is getting worse in all areas of life.  This makes it all the more important that we remain blessed, forgiven, and covered by God.

If we as church do not remain blessed, forgiven, and covered by God there is zero chance of unity in the Lutheran Church of Australia and there will never be any assurance of sincere good will amongst us as a fellowship of believers.

Any unity built on our love of the LCANZ, desire for unity’s sake, for the good name of the LCANZ, or for any other human ideology or love needs to fail!  Indeed, it must fail, so the love of Jesus Christ can find us debased and rebase us in the loving forgiveness and faithfulness of Jesus Christ, where we can continue to receive the Holy Spirit and confess our sin before the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-hearing, and all-powerfully forgiving and faithful Almighty God our Father.

You and I together with every other human being struggles with trusting and fearing God.  All of us for a myriad of reasons desires to replace this fear and trust in God with a knowledge of our own good and evil.  In essence, when we do this, we replace a singular ultimate knowledge of good and evil, found only in God the Father, with a pantheon of ideas of what is good and what is evil.

All these goods and evils are the chaos, confusion, and corruption in which we live.  Today we live in a society that sees the biblical goods God has given us as evils, and God’s evils are now identified as good. 

Five years ago, we as a country voted to legalise gay and lesbian marriage.  Three fifths of the country voted yes but two fifths voted no.  Five years on, the evolution of the love that has grown from the plebiscite is one of legalism and intolerance towards anyone raising and teaching children about an objective right and wrong in submission to an ultimate source of good and evil identified by God and his Word, and as God and his Word made flesh.

Our society will continue to crumble and disintegrate through chaos, confusion, and corruption without trust and fear in an Almighty Triune God.  Individualistic desire and ideas of what is good, and evil, will continue to divide and conquer community. 

This disintegration at the hands of chaos, confusion, and corruption is happening in the church too.  

At our upcoming Synod the LCANZ have a number of proposals before us as church. 

The debate on women’s ordination, safe place manipulation and its impact on congregational supply, the theological and pastoral training of ordained pastors in the LCANZ, the function of the pastorate, the function of the college of bishops, the function of the districts, the function of boards in the LCANZ, the function of our education and welfare sectors, all under the umbrella of our synodical function, together with discerning the function of the face to face administration of God’s word and sacraments, as opposed to an undifferentiating use of multimedia, is the multifaceted storm of dysfunction into which the LCANZ is sailing. 

We have not been watching where we have been sailing, nor have we kept before us the purpose for which we sail.  We have been so focused on ourselves seeking to control the ship, throw sinners overboard, and have failed to allow the winds of the Holy Spirit to fill the sails and move us to those whom God wants us to minister his forgiveness.

In fact, there has been a type of mutiny against our Lord’s Headship in the LCANZ through the confusion between the priesthood of all believes and those called and ordained to prepare the priesthood for ministry in the vocations in which God has placed each of us. 

We have sought to wrangle the word of God from him and use it to our own advantage, we have sought to use it for our own desire and selfish love.

In the women’s ordination debate both sides have sought to use God’s word for their own gain.  Both sides standing in authority over God’s word, rather than kneeling in submission to it.

The function of the LCANZ stands on the brink of dysfunction, church boards are usurping their authority, while those called to function with theological authority have not.

But this does not have to be the crisis it’s growing to be!  We are a church that has stopped listening and watching. 

The Holy Spirit is being grieved.

Jesus is still in the midst of his church.  He is ready to be woken, to calm the storm, so we continue to be blessed, forgiven, and covered.

We all agree that we cannot come to agreement on what the scriptures say regarding the ordination of women. 

We know that other denominations and Lutheran churches ordain women.  We also know that God has spoken through our synodical process four time saying “no” to the ordination of women in the LCANZ.  Only in the fulness of time will we understand this.

In synods at Tanunda in 2000, Toowoomba in 2006, Brisbane in 2015, and Sydney in 2018 delegates trusted God in the process of synod, prayed accordingly, voted, and God spoke through the result saying, “no”.

If we have not trusted God in the past, why should anyone trust him working through the forthcoming 2023 synod and beyond?  Are we not opening the way for further chaos, confusion, and corruption?  If we continue to go the way of subjective knowledge of good and evil, can we expect any type of functional unity in Jesus Christ to come from this?  Only the worst kind of love will come to life from a pseudo unity or trust in God!

We can engage in emotionalism in questioning why God has said, “no”.  But it does not dismiss the fact that God has said “no” in the process we trust in which he works. 

When God says no in scripture, he calls us to listen.  When he says something three times, yes or no, God is calling us to stop, turn, and follow him, listen to him, and trust him.

Four times God has spoken to us.  He has been faithful to us through synod.  God calls us to suffer under his righteousness just as Jesus did.  For pastors, in the office in which he has called them as mediators, to suffer, as Jesus suffered.  For all in the office of the priesthood of all believers to suffer as servants as Jesus did.

When we suffer or endure in what Christ has called us to, the Holy Spirit will enable peace within, as  he leads us. 

As the psalmist says in Psalm 32 we will be blessed or balanced or made level before God and be caused to be seen balanced and blessed before a chaotic world. 

We will be affirmed in Christ’s forgiveness and led by the Holy Spirit in the mega work of confessing sin to God, and the confession before the world of God’s forgiveness of our sin.  Nevertheless, we will suffer in doing so.  But praise God, we will continue being covered by the forgiveness of Jesus Christ and holiness worked by God the Holy Spirit.

Be blessed, forgiven, and covered by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Psalm 32 is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  Jesus is your confessor before God the Father, he also instructs and counsels you with the Holy Spirit who proceeds from him and our Father in Heaven.

Just as Jesus listened to God the Father and bore our transgression for our forgiven and was covered and raised by the Spirit and the Father, we too are blessed, forgiven, and covered, when we remain in Jesus Christ, listening to the will of God our Father. 

Jesus is in our midst, let’s join him in prayer, listening to God, asking him to forgive us and cover us in his blessed knowledge and holiness.

Psalm 32 (ESV)

A MASKIL OF DAVID. 

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 

Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity,

and in whose spirit there is no deceit. 

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. 

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;

my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah 

I acknowledged my sin to you,

and I did not cover my iniquity;

I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,”

and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah 

Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you

at a time when you may be found;

surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. 

You are a hiding place for me;

you preserve me from trouble;

you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah 

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;

I will counsel you with my eye upon you. 

Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding,

which must be curbed with bit and bridle,

or it will not stay near you. 

Many are the sorrows of the wicked,

but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the LORD. 

Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice,

O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!

 

Pastor Heath Pukallus

January 2023