The Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (Place of Jesus) has severed all ties with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), according to an ELCA press release.

The Mekane Yesus action came during their general convocation meeting in Addis Ababa January 27-February 2, ratifying a July 2012 initiative of the church council. While they were at it the Mekane Yesus included the Church of Sweden (Lutheran) and, for good measure, other “churches who have openly accepted same-sex marriage.” The decision specifically bans Eucharistic hospitality. Mekane Yesus pastors may not receive Holy Communion from ELCA pastors, nor are they permitted to commune them.

The action has been long in coming but was not entirely unexpected. Most observers weren’t wondering “if” but “when.” Mekane Yesus, a church whose membership out-matches the ELCA, complained repeatedly about the sexuality directions the ELCA appeared headed throughout most of the last decade. The ELCA reaction was a kumbaya “can’t we all just get along?” The 2009 ELCA decision permitting ordination of gay pastors started a countdown of sorts: Ethiopian immigrant missions in the United States, largely ELCA-affiliated, started backing away immediately. The Rev. Dr. Gemechis Buba, who had been the ELCA’s point man in ethnic ministries, resigned and became mission director for the North American Lutheran Church. The NALC has several Ethiopian candidates slated for ordination.

Gay sexuality, though, is only the latest presenting issue, as it has been for some one thousand congregations that have left the ELCA to form new associations. On an array of issues from abortion to the authority and role of scripture in church life the ELCA has been dismissive of everything that once marked it as a stable, orthodox denomination. Lutheran church life in Ethiopia compared to the ELCA can be summarized simply: On any given Sunday there are more Ethiopian Lutherans at worship than ELCA Lutherans in any one month.

The Mekane Yesus consisted of perhaps twenty thousand Lutherans in 1970. During a decade of persecution in the 1970s by the communist Derg the church grew enormously, while enduring church burnings, arrests of pastors, forced closings of church properties and, most notoriously, the abduction and murder of the sainted general secretary, Gudina Tumsa. By 1997, the Mekane Yesus reported 2.3 million members; the latest figures place the membership at 5.3 million.

It is a brass brothel token, complete with phallic on the reverse side, good for “One Brechqu Knacker.” (I rather hope the lady never figured out what it was.)

The Channel Islands were occupied by Germany in World War II. It’s spooky seeing old photos of German officers asking directions from Bobbies, but there you go. More startling, there may be a Lutheran connection to the token. This from Online Catholics out of Australia on the occupation history:

[Leslie] Sinel became friendly with a “very decent” Lutheran padre who was appalled when ordered by a senior [German] officer to supervise the running of brothels (staffed by women brought in from France) set up for the convenience of German troops.

I thought I’d share this for my multi-tasking fellow clergy of all denominations who find themselves asked to do things they’d rather not.

I made of mention of him in one of my “On the Square” essays some while back:

The class at the Josephinum that really rocked was Sacramentology. It was taught by Fr. William D. Lynn, S.J. As a teacher, pastor, and friend, he was a very gentle guy and a very good lecturer. We corresponded from time to time thereafter, and as a gift I once bought him a subscription to Forum Letter, a Lutheran publication then edited by Richard Neuhaus. I recall a post card from Lynn: “I wrote to Neuhaus. He wrote back!”

The funeral mass is 11 a.m., Wernersville Jesuit Center, Pennsylvania, January 4.  As our prayer book says, “Surrounded by saints and angels, may Christ come to greet you as you go forth from this life.”

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

That is all true of course. This comes to me this week having placed within the space of ten months yet a second family member on home medical care, now awaiting the doctor’s “six months, probably less” assessment to reach its conclusion. Someone old getting out of the way; not really as dramatic as Mr. Jobs said. Another has remarked on it from a different angle.

Yet beware, I think, of those who tell us death is only this, or life is only that. Far from “life’s best” invention, death is and remains St. Paul’s “final enemy.” God must say “rise” to defeat it. I’ve always harbored a little uncertainty that he will, yet it is a hope I know, and as St. Paul would remind us, we grasp it only by the certainty of faith.

Among us both kinds of the sacrament are given to the laity for the following reason. There is clear order and command of Christ in Matthew 26:27: ‘Drink from it, all of you.’ Concerning the cup Christ here commands with clear words that they all should drink from it.

Catholics got one kind, Lutherans got both. I don’t mean to suggest we Lutherans were smug about it. No, I’ll just say it straight out: We were smug. Why else call our Mass a “reform”?

Alas, all that went away in 1975 when distribution of the cup was permitted at the Catholic Mass. Since the 1500’s communion in one kind was hard lined in Roman circles, largely I suspect because Lutherans did both kinds so Catholics would not. 1975 was a real blow to Lutheran exceptionalism.

But at least on one point both of us—Lutherans and Catholic together—ignored Martin Luther completely. He proposed that altars should be turned around “so the priest could face the people as Christ undoubtedly faced the disciples.” Most of us do that now but it was another blow to Lutheran smugness that we never got around to it until Catholics started it.

Lutheran smugness may be coming back in fashion, however. The Phoenix diocese announced, based on Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted’s understanding of the new translation of the Mass and the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, the chalice for the laity is going, going, almost gone. The cup is once again to be withheld from the laity, in Phoenix at any rate. A spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said she is unaware of another U.S. diocese enacting such a restriction.

I can’t really think this is a good thing. Ecumenically-minded pastors like me have for years tried to dampen the Lutheran penchant for sacramental self-righteousness. This is a real set-back in our effort toward achieving Lutheran humility.

The coaster—about a three minute ride—spends two minutes taking the soon-deceased to a height of 1,600 feet (there is an opt-out button before reaching the apex should the individual chicken out). The last minute is a colossal fall rushing through seven increasingly tighter loops and reaching a speed of 200-plus mph. The accumulating g-forces peak at 10gs, but that will likely pass unnoticed because the rider will be dead upon reaching the third one. This says Urbonas, “is a hypothetic euthanasia machine . . . engineered to humanely—with elegance and euphoria—take the life of a human being.” He foresees this becoming a possible attraction in places where voluntary euthanasia is legal—Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington—all without the accompanying paperwork dealing with medical issues and the like frequently delaying someone’s death wish.

This probably isn’t suited for quadriplegics or amputees, we’re told. Since their bodies lack substantial volume in the lower extremities to pool the blood their brains might not suffer the indispensable life-killing lack of oxygen that 10gs would ordinarily generate. That, just a passing note, would seem to undermine equal accessibility laws but I’m not an expert in that area and I don’t like roller coasters anyway.

I cannot say I like the label “primitive.” There may be questions of material efficiency (stone vs. copper, say) or ergonomic design or whether you can get one from a TV offer for only $19.95, but if it chopped what needed chopping, “primitive” becomes an insensitive pejorative used by archeologists to show their superiority. Anyway, the adze, as the thing is called, was found in an Arabian archaeological dig in Jebel Faya, east of Dubai.

Now if scientists can figure out how DNA from a Siberian species of hominids, neither Neanderthals nor Homo sapiens, ended up among some New Guinea people, I figure most of what’s worth knowing about the world will have been solved. That incidentally includes any questions around the human condition. Happily, the World Transformation Movement has that in hand, so I’m just not bothered by it anymore.

L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer back in the days when science fiction was worth about two cents a word, is said to have decreed to a gathering of fellow writers that religion was where the real money could be found. Dianetics was the result, promoted in part by the otherwise legendary editor of Astounding Science Fiction, John Campbell. Dianetics was published in 1950, the same year as another pseudoscience work, Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky.

Despite the thorough thrashing the two books received at the hand of critics, both became best sellers—which raises the not insensitive question of why Americans pay so much attention to the New York Times best sellers list.

It’s the “like the earth” part that always annoys me. From the description of this extrasolar planet, it is nothing like the Earth. Kepler 10b, as it is called, is forty percent larger than Earth and almost five times denser, about the same density as iron. It spins around its star in a dizzy orbital “year” that measures just twenty hours in length at a distance of only one-twentieth as that separating Mercury from the Sun. One of the discoverers, Natalie Batalha, calls it a “scorched world.” You think? This suggests to me a planet that is more like a colossal red hot ball bearing going very, very, like really, fast than anything remotely “like the Earth.”

Yet Kepler 10b is called exactly that and hailed by University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Geoffrey Marcy as a discovery that “will be marked as among the most profound in human history.” I actually think the wheel and agriculture rank a little higher, but then I don’t live in Berkeley.

Okay, yes, I admit to being pretty earth-centric (if not earth-chauvinistic) in my thinking about the cosmos and all. I subscribe to the “rare earth” notion. I didn’t always. Once upon a time I could recite the Drake Equation from memory. Much to my family’s regret, I enjoy watching History Channel’s Ancient Aliens. They hate it, but the “Aliens and the Third Reich” episode is way cool, I think. Once, in my present parish which has guys here who’d like to start a MUFON chapter, I pulled together a bible class on UFOs. But, honestly, I am tired of waiting for aliens and Earth-like planets. I will not discount the likelihood of discovering a real Earth-like planet some day, one that is strategically located (one might say miraculously, if you don’t mean anything theological by the word) within a stable solar habitable zone that comes complete with rocks, liquid water, biologic gases, and, oh, one that has a moon to keep it all gravitationally agitated just right. That, I do confess, might just belong up there with agriculture and the wheel.

Meanwhile, though, I think Dr. Marcy would do well to lower his gushy school-girl hyperbole a little bit.