Last Sunday here at Our Savior’s we used the worship liturgy from the Service Book and Hymnal (SBH). The SBH entered the world about the same time OSLC was born. The SBH remained the basic liturgical source for worship until 1978 when the Lutheran Book of Worship arrived.

So much for worship book history. What I really want to note is how archaic the language sounded as we followed the SBH order of worship.

On the fun side, the musical side of the old liturgy brought back some great memories. I found that some of those musical responses might be welcomed in worship today.

But not the language. The sexism inherent in the SBH had me wavering between laughter and revulsion. The absolution requested that we would become sons of God. Are there no daughters in heaven? Of course this language fit the ethos of the 1950s and slowly became uncomfortable in the 60s and finally abhorrent by the time we got to the LBW. The SBH assumed that all ministers were men (music for presiding was in the bass clef), that the lessons would be read by clergy, and that God is a male in gender.

Yes, language does change. We have moved to an equality of gender in our language that hopefully matches the equality of gender we have in commerce and relationships. Language does matter. The words we use to convey our thoughts often betray the prejudices of our thoughts. Although no one is every free of prejudices, our language in liturgy and public discourse should, in so far as possible, reflect the best of our present cultural attitudes.

This Sunday was certainly a blast from the past. It also reminded me that I have no desire to go back to those old red book days. As language changes it reflects the changes in our world of understanding ourselves and God. Sometimes the small steps we take along the way give us discomfort. We don’t like change. When we see the big step of change like we did this last Sunday, we see how important it is to take the little steps.

Change. It’s in our language.

Pastor B.

Just got back from the Bishop’s Convocation in Fontana. Wonderful fellowship, some inspiring, thought provoking lectures, and a beautiful day on Monday to walk along Lake Geneva.

Did you know that the California Angels beat the New York Yankees on Monday night? My Twins lost three straight to the Yanks, the Angels had dropped two in a row. The Yankees, of course, are the team to hate in the American League. So my favorite AL baseball team is the Minnesota Twins - or whoever is playing the Yankees.

Thus we arrive at one of the few place of friction in my household. Susan, who would be hard pressed to name a Yankee player, loves her Bronx Bombers and defends them against any assault on any side. She gloated when the Twins folded so quickly, and she was on top of the world before Monday’s loss. Like Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, she doesn’t expect her team to every lose. Any season short of 162 - 0 is failure.

These playoff games that are played on cold, wet weather conditions are proof once again, to me anyway, that the season is too long. I think all professional sports seasons are too long.

Anyway, play ball. Go Angels.

Pastor B.

This middle point of October offers several interesting topics worthy of a blog.  Our President won the Nobel Peace Prize, and yet a vociferous minority in our nation cannot seem to celebrate the prestigious award but would rather find a thousand ways to tarnish it.

The baseball playoff season has witnessed the end of major league use of the Metrodome in Minneapolis as those d**n Yankees brought an inglorious end to the Twins season. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Angels swept the Bosox – surprise. And the Dodgers also from Los Angeles swept away mighty St. Louis – huge surprise.

Today is Columbus Day in the United States and I’d like to take a few paragraphs to comment on this fading superhero.

I heard recently that fewer and fewer schools bother to say anything about Christopher Columbus. Certainly outside of the school system, only the closing of some government offices (remember, no mail today) gives even a hint of something going on. Public schools, it seems, have relagated the explorer to the back pages because as this generation re-writes history in its image, Columbus comes away as a mean spirited man who, for the most part, was lost at sea.

Now, I don’t advocate going back to treating the Genoan with the kind of romanticism that makes him look like Mr. Rogers in tights. Columbus was not the first to discover, from the European point of view, a new continent. His voyage and landing in the “new” world opened the way for ongoing trade and colonization in new ways.

So what’s to learn? Should we simply shelve the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria? I think to deny history and important events of history is just as much a mistake as overly romanticizing an event.

It’s true that Columbus probably was no Florence Nightengale in demeanor or ambition. Let’s teach about courage and risk taking no matter what your personality. Let’s teach about the work it takes to make a vision come true. Columbus didn’t just hop on a boat and head west. It took years of work to get the financial backing to make it happen.

Was Columbus actually lost? Well, yes. So here’s more teaching fodder. By the late 15^th century most wise men and women recognized that the earth was spherical. Yet, among the uneducated – the kind of men who would constitute a ship’s crew – the sense that sooner or later a direct route west would fall off the end of the earth was fact. Here we can teach about using experience and reason to overcome prejudices and lies.

Lost? For sure. Christopher Columbus, who along with others severely miscalculated the circumference of the Earth, set sail with navigational aids that could only chart a position north and south. He could not plot an east or west position with any accuracy. Of course he was lost. He expected to run smack dab into India (when Columbus spotted land, he was on a parallel - north-south navigation - very similar to northern India’s). Let’s teach about how mistakes and miscalculations in our plans may lead to inventions and discoveries we never dreamed of.

The history that followed Columbus landing in the western hemisphere is mixed. Still, the voyage of 1492 needs recognition and celebration not for its politeness, but for its reality.

Pastor B

Okay, at the risk of ticking off the monster National Rifle Association and every cowboy who feels less than human without his six-shooter at his side, I’ll be frank. We have go to get control of our guns.

Last week another gun incident happened in Sun Prairie. A drive by shooting didn’t kill anyone, but it appears that it was meant to. A 17 year old is in custody. Seventeen, mind you. Not old enough to vote. Certainly not old enough to drink alcohol. Just plain not old enough. I don’t know his story, but I’ll bet there’s a girl involved. Maybe drugs involved. Lots of anger seething in a youth who sees everywhere that the way to answer anger is with violence. Preferably, gun violence.

But this incident doesn’t really stand out in a country where people deaths may soon surpass deer kills in the fall hunting season. I mean, really. What is going on here?

There just is no legitimate reason for a civilized society to have so many guns, especially handguns, floating around. Get a grip. An abundance of guns does not deter violence. Putting more gasoline on a fire doesn’t help put it out.

Yes, there are many other contributing factors to the shootings that petrify us. We have allowed ourselves to denigrate into a world controlled by the theme of violence. Video games, the most popular ones, don’t have Mario jumping over barrels anymore. Lifelike animation puts a gun into the hands of a young operator who knows who the bad guys are because the game set tells him. But he has no sense of decision making about right and wrong, about why some are good and some are bad, or about the complexity of real life. Just shoot. And of course there are many, many more factors. We increasingly expect our schools to take care of it, but schools are not equipped. Churches? A few hours a week, if that, will not offer ways to better social behavior.

I am not vilifying every gun owner and seller. I do believe that the knee jerk negative reaction to every idea that might rein in the exploding number of guns on our streets stems from an evil within us. The bumper sticker euphemisms of the NRA only lead me to discern that there is no substance behind their arguments other that let’s all be gunslingers.

In my mind nobody should be allowed to carry a handgun in public. No open rifles or shotguns either. Every gun should be registered and accounted for once a year. Nobody under the age of 15 should be allowed to touch a gun (and then only for legitimate hunting), and nobody under the age of 30 should be able to touch a handgun. Video games should be locked up until the user has a course in community building and anger management, separating fiction from reality. And there should be required refresher courses every time a new game is purchased.

But I suppose we will continue, as a country, to allow every idiot with a credit card and a picture ID to get a gun. The bullies in the NRA, after all, have both guns and money to intimidate us all.

Pastor B.