TOP TEN REASONS YOUR PARISHIONERS MIGHT CONSIDER ON
THEIR WAY TO CALLING YOU “FATHER”
10. Well,
you do have children.
9. The VBS “ditty” (aka ‘child-action song’) is “Father
Abraham” and not Pastor
Abraham. AND, if hades
occupant
Dives can use the term, so can
Grandma
Schmitt [c.f. Luke 16.24].
8. German-American Lutherans who are also
conservative GOP-types, are always so eager
to follow Scandinavian practices.
7. Your detractors can spit it out at you
with the certitude
that it might hasten your “swimming of the Tiber.”
6. It will give “Carl Vehse” more grist for his
Voter
Assembly Quest posts.
5. Gottesdienst
does it….and EVERYONE knows how
much weight & influence it has in
the Synod (sic)!
4. It will get you free cups of coffee when
you make
hospital visits to Saint Charles
Borromeo Medical Center.
3. “P”r….”F”r…what’s one small letter among
friends?
2. Luthers Large Catechism Part I. The Ten
Commandments
4th Commandment, section
416, paragraph 158, Jacobs
page 415 BOOK OF CONCORD (you know,
our
Symbols!)
And the NUMER
ONE REASON your parishioner might consider
on their way to
calling you “Father”……………
1. That ELCA priestitute down the street?
Sure she does a
whole lot of stuff better than you
do, but ain’t NO WAY
she’s ever going to be “Father!”
Concerning Reason Primum: it's powerful and compelling ... but sorry to say, there's always surgery.
ReplyDeleteBut on second thought, appearances alone do not necessarily furnish a functional endorsement or blessing.
I relish No. 8. Or maybe my genes do. The Gesellschaft of the Saxons was originally quite taken with the Swedish episcopacy, praising it highly in several of its documents and decretals, as historian Forster documents In "Zion on the Mississippi." Once breaking the seal of confidentiality in their Absolution sacrament, rioting, and excommunicating a fallen human being through the dubious means of a shadowy "Council," however, the Saxons became ever-confused, ill, starved and discouraged ... and a bit crazed, necessarily. The results Dr. Keys' Minnesota Semi-Starvation Study at the close of WWII, provides a scientific basis for such failing. Thence, the troubled and frightened Saxons came to heed the voice of an officious layman, a bully who castigated the clergy and actively cheer-leaded the riot, mentioned above.
The layman, predictably, eventually came to abandon the collegially starving and despairing immigrant-nation, for a one-way return ticket to Saxony (an entity once seen by him as Godless, and beyond hope and redemption); and thus to secure a job, financial ease and an eventual veneration, if not deification, amongst the rabid patrons of Voters'AssemblyJest.
Of course, I digress. However, Lutherans may well recall that on his very deathbed, blessed Martin Luther did not blanch for one moment from being addressed "reverend father," by Dr. Jonas ("Life of Luther," Gustav Just, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, 1903, p. 94) . This again, accepted mere moments before Luther was scheduled to meet his Maker, Redeemer and Son of the Father! If rambunctious Mr. Vehse's Council (or Jest) were really sincere in its beliefs, they would dismiss Jonas and the dying Reformer for a disturbing disobedience to the Lord's advisory of Mt 23 ... at least, as the glowering pietists interpret such.
I enjoyed the rich dessert, Fr. Jay! It keeps me laughing, and not incidentally, from starving.