Quibbling is better than not Knowing

This is off-color, but there is often pointed truth in ribald humor.

A man asks a woman if she will sleep with him for a million dollars.  She says she will.  He asks, “How about for 100?”  She remonstrates, “What kind of a woman do you think I am?”  He replies, “We’ve already established that; now we’re just quibbling about price.”

 

Mercifully, I have forgotten which LCMS church in Missouri is doing this.  On their website they offer members the opportunity to take Communion to shut-ins.  The one requirement that struck me was that you must be a tither.

 

This church has established what they are.  They’ve also established what they think of the Holy Communion.  Only RN’s are allowed to give certain medications in the hospital, but in that church any tither can give the Medicine of Immortality.  Some medicine requires RN’s to administer because those medicines given to the wrong person can kill.  But the Medicine of Immortality which a person can eat and drink to their condemnation or in such a way as to result in weakness, sickness or even death, “ain’t no big thing.”  Any Tom, Dick, or Jane as long as they are tither will do.  This church, these pastors, have established what they are, but they aren’t quibbling about price.  It’s 10%.

 

This is a meretricious practice.  Meretricious means attractive or plausible in a vulgar or deceitful way.  The dictionary offers the sentence, “The meretricious excitement of a gambling casino.”  It comes from the Latin meretricius ­which means  relating to a harlot.  The Latin word for harlot is meretrix.  Our word prostitute comes from prostitutus the past participle of  prostituere to expose publicly, dishonor.

 

The practice of allowing tithers to administer the Lord’s Supper is attractive in a vulgar way.  It’s a “selling” of an ecclesiastical privilege.  This, however, is worse than simony because they don’t own that which they are selling.  The vulgarity, however, is on the part of the pastors not the pious lay people who “just want to help.” The clergy are dangling before lay people the extraordinary privilege of administering, and perhaps celebrating (It’s not clear what they are actually doing from the website.), the Lord’s Supper.  What person who longs for Christ’s Body and Blood to “be for my soul the highest good,” would not be attracted? But they don’t know they are being attracted to something they should not be.

 

That makes this practice meretricious, attractive not only in a vulgar but in a deceitful way.  It is has not been given to lay persons to administer and certainly not to celebrate The Mysteries.  It has been given to them to receive them.  To the clergy, it has been given to administer and celebrate them, but how meretricious it is for the clergy to humble themselves to share this privilege with lay people.  It is as alluring and seductive as a scantily glad trollop is even to a pious Christian man.  The difference is it is clear to him what she is even if the price isn’t while in this Missouri church the price is clear while what is being prostituted is not.

About Paul Harris

Pastor Harris retired from congregational ministry after 40 years in office on 31 December 2023. He is now devoting himself to being a husband, father, and grandfather. He still thinks cenobitic monasticism is overrated and cave dwelling under.
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One Response to Quibbling is better than not Knowing

  1. Anonymous says:

    This is an official question posted on the LCMS pages for those inquiring about the nature and practice of closed communion. It seems our harlots are receiving their instructions and guidance from Papa Synod.

    Q. Being raised in the LCMS, I was surprised today when I was visiting a LCMS church that had a pamphlet explaining their beliefs about communion. It went on to say that if the visitor believed these things also then they could commune at that church. I thought that only LCMS members could commune at LCMS churches. Has this changed?

    A. The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod has never understood or applied the historic practice of close[d] Communion in such a way as to mean that only LCMS members are permitted to commune at LCMS altars. The official position of the Synod is that not only are members of other Lutheran churches with whom we are in altar and pulpit fellowship invited to commune with us, but also that in certain extraordinary cases of pastoral care and in emergencies members of churches not in fellowship with us may be given Communion. The Synod stated, for example, in 1986 “that pastors and congregations of The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod continue to abide by the practice of close communion, which includes the necessity of exercising responsible pastoral care in extraordinary situations and circumstances” (1986 Res. 3-08 “To Maintain Practice of Close Communion”).

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