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Response to Charges (Continued from page 2) Sunday, September 23 Travel and transit did turn out to be an adventure; first of all, it took almost two hours to get through the web of security with our bus into Yankee Stadium, even though we were pre-screened. The religious participants were held in the Yankee locker room, while the politicians and celebrities were in the visitors' quarters. Then the FBI representative read off the list of approved participants, and my name was not on it - whoops! I went to the Protestant portion leader, who thought that maybe I should just wait in the dugout when the rest went out and they would call me later. I started to laugh, because I had this vision of being kind of the pinch-hitter's pinch-hitter, strolling out to pray with a bat in my hands. But I resolved that I would need to accompany the rest up to the bleacher area out on the field. I spent some time with Roman Catholic friends Bishop Daley and Cardinal Egan, discussing Pro-Life issues (Cardinal O'Connor and I had co-founded a crisis pregnancy center in Manhattan under the great direction of a team of Roman Catholic and Lutheran laywomen). Then I took the Cardinal's arm and walked out from the dugout onto the playing field. What were they going to do, throw me off the field? As the celebrities and politicians emerged, the usually congealed situation took place, and we all inched out toward second base. Eventually they found me a chair, sitting next to the Commander of the Atlantic Fleet. The event went off absolutely as billed from one perspective. It was a civic program with religious participation, no questions asked. I will describe and demonstrate that with greater precision in the next section. But in this chronology, it needs to be stated that the event from this New Yorker's perspective FELT like a patriotic and civil program with prayers and remarks from religious figures. The songs were moving and uplifting. The constant visual reminder of so many people with pictures of their loved ones sitting right in front of us was absolutely overwhelming. Knots of police, firefighters, EMS and rescue workers in the stands stood out in blue and red and orange. Virtually every performer who sang cried openly through their performance. The back-up singers and the orchestra members were weeping openly. It was in a sense too much too soon and yet it was without question an invaluable emotional outlet from a strictly human perspective. Listen to this description about Mayor Rudy Giuliani's September 23 Yankee Stadium experience, taken from his Time Magazine "Person of the
Year" article: I was caught up in it in much the same way from the very beginning. I had my prayer with me folded in my pocket. It was "good to go." But the speaker who preceded me, Dr. Calvin Butts, galvanized the crowd as no one else had all day with his powerful rhetorical skills and his consciousness of civil responsibility. I decided on the spot to say a few sentences before praying, swept up just then in the high emotion of the afternoon. These few sentences have come in for the most intense scrutiny I could never have imagined from a select group of Lutherans, mostly clergy. I am going to quote those words and then give you the reasons I spoke them in this chronology. "Oh, we're stronger now than we were an hour ago. And you know my sisters and brothers, we're not nearly as strong as we're going to be. And the strength we have is the power of love. And the power of love you have received is from God, for God is love. So take the hand of one next to you now and join me in prayer on this field of dreams turned into God's house of prayer." This was the sequence of my thoughts: 1) Connect emotionally with 20000 people all of whom, especially following some of the songs and the speech of Calvin Butts, emotionally filled.
Therefore, the meaning of the first two sentences, a meaning perceived immediately by those there at Yankee Stadium, is as follows: That was the idea. People were not parsing these few words as theological observers at a tea party symposium. They were drinking in the same emotions as I was through the afternoon, and I simply reflected them back toward the direction of the prayer. There are two other comments at this point based on questions received. First of all, to use the term "brothers and sisters" of those at Yankee Stadium after referencing the commonality of the emotional experience was to me natural and normal. I have spent much of my pastoral ministry in mission outreach, often in homes where those present were not only Christian but Muslim and Hindu in religious background. "Brothers and sisters" is not a term uniquely owned by the Christian church. In point of fact all human beings are children of Adam. We have a common human ancestry that makes us all brothers and sisters. Indeed,
NOT to make the primary human connections at a time of civic, national and global tragedy would be a great pastoral error. In the same way NOT to invite all to understand the love of God anew as a Tower of strength during a time of crisis by failure to participate would have been a tremendous error of pastoral judgment. Secondly, the imagery of the field of dreams turned into God's house of prayer became the lead quote in many of the public press stories on the Yankee Stadium event. As I walked to the podium, I realized that no one during the previous two hours of the event had mentioned that we were in Yankee Stadium, the most famous baseball field in the world. It seemed good to reference it in conjunction with Mayor Giuliani's designated use of it for prayer on that day, most particularly prior to my own prayer, which was to be in the Name of Jesus. President Bush desired us to raise the flag in hope and pride. The Admiral of the Atlantic Fleet, who sat next to me the whole afternoon, spoke at length about not losing hope, about holding onto the American dream and vision. To connect that dream and hope for the future of country and world to God and prayer seemed only fitting to me. It still does. Was all of this a good idea? Did it work? The reaction of the people there then at Yankee Stadium would have been in the very strong affirmative. The written and spoken reaction of thousands and thousands of people across the country and globally has been in the affirmative. Yet there are inherent potential weaknesses in the approach and in my introductory words a) Because it does not lead from doctrine but from a shared experience to doctrine expressed through prayer, people might get aligned at the
wrong spiritual spot Finally these were all pastoral judgment calls, made in the heat and brightness of the moment. Certainly before I went to the stadium and when I went home that night I prayed that the words from my mouth might have good use for both the edification of Christ's holy people as well as for those who did not know Him yet, and besought God to remove from any heart any obstacles to either end that my words might raise. The body of the prayer is another matter, and has also been the basis for first of all tremendous thanksgivings as well as a much lesser but virulent dose of excoriating criticism. I have a hard time believing that any primarily ex corde ("from the heart") prayer since Biblical times has received the kind of analysis to which this prayer has been subjected, up to and including the pressing of doctrinal charges that could lead to expulsion from the clergy roster. I did not pray the prayer as it was written. The reason that did not happen is that when I set it on the podium and spoke the opening words and said "Join me in prayer" I did what I often do in homes or at the altar - I closed my eyes. Therefore it was, more or less, an "ex corde" prayer, although the themes and direction of the prayer matched the one on the podium. I didn't open my eyes until about halfway through because - I was busy praying. That's the only way to express it. So specific words did not come out exactly as on the page. The two areas of greatest concern have been use of the indefinite article - "sent A Son" - and the words "extend Jacob's ladder for those who ascended the stairways to save us." For any offense caused by those inexact phrasings, I am truly sorry. The original version (attached above) has the better and intended phrasing. Great numbers of people, thousands of people often with tears in their eyes or their voices or on the paper, have written and called and run to meet me saying "Thanks, thanks, thanks! Yours was prayer I was waiting for - it brought Jesus to Yankee Stadium." Most of these were lay people. Most of them were Lutheran. Some were from other Christian backgrounds. Some of those people were non-Christians. I can state that unequivocally because these Muslims, Hindus or Jews are either attending St. Peter's church since September 23 or have spoken to others. (Attachment 15) This is not surprising to me, because the Christian apologetic (defense of the faith) begins from the simple yet exclusive claim that Jesus is Lord (I Corinthians 12). Non-Christians, especially religious leaders, are confronted by that claim in prayer when it is ended "In the Name of Jesus." (A PBS TV show in late 2001 gave strong evidence of that from the perspective of a top Jewish rabbi.) I am not going to dismiss either the heartfelt thanks and appreciation of Christians or the expressed understanding of non-Christians of the apologetic and evangelical strength of the Name of Jesus easily in this response. I believe that thanks and appreciation have been linked inextricably to the course of the prayer from its Tower of Strength thematic through to the end "in the precious Name of Jesus." I have written an Advent essay on the topic of Jesus' Name that kind of says it all, and is attached. (Attachment 16) His is the Name above all names. Indeed as Peter preached it on Pentecost day "there is no other Name under heaven given among men whereby we may be saved." (Acts 4:12) And it is powerful in prayer. I can tell you that from the responses. It is not a weak or insignificant thing to pray in the Name of Jesus. And it is what has been sufficient cause for great rejoicing among so many Lutherans and other Christians. However, I made a pledge very early on to take seriously those who differed with me. So in the area of specific wording, to whoever has had problems and criticisms, I am sorry that I didn't get the words out more clearly or accurately or completely. Although it was never intentional, I know that my words have offended some I want to share with everyone, but most especially those who have filed charges against me seeking to remove me from the pastoral roster of the
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, a passage about prayer that has brought me comfort and strength since childhood. I have shared and taught it with fellow travelers in Christ who pray for many decades. "In the
same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness. What follows is a statement of personal fact - and by now you have walked in some regard alongside me for twelve days. You take a fifty-five year old man one and a half months subsequent to suffering a heart attack and still getting used to his medications, and you give him twelve consecutive days of three hours sleep or less, the pastoral responsibilities of a parish, a district, pastors and missionaries on enormous overload, staff and friends pushing way beyond their limits, and a multi-million dollar disaster response program (overnight), and then you put him face front of thousands of families' personal grief and tragedy on top of the hundreds of stories he's already heard and add some incredibly stirring music and great speeches, and put him up there to pray and see what you get. What you got was me. And those brief remarks. And that prayer. Now, to conclude the day. There were a couple of cameras on us during the whole afternoon, but we had no information about the coverage. I thought the program might have been carried on a local channel, with a few minutes covered on the national news. When we left the Stadium, the first message on my cell phone was from California, with the sound of people jumping around and yelling, "It's Benke on TV, and he's praying!!" (They were happy people, by the way.) This let me know that the coverage was more than local. So when I returned home late that night I wrote out from recollection what I thought I had prayed and put it out on an email that eventually ended up at the Office of the President of the LCMS. Several weeks later I got information about the actual wording and some differences. By that time, the person who had been putting our letters and information on our website had resigned, and it wasn't until nearly Thanksgiving that we regained the office ability to change things on the website. By this time, what had been questions in a few people's minds about the wording discrepancies in the prayer had escalated to some kind of conspiracy theory. There never has been any reason much less attempt to deceive people about the wording of this prayer - even if you assume the worst, how could I argue against the videotape? If you want reasons for the delay in the prayer wording posting, think of me on September 11 through 23, and then walk that out for three additional months. My strength is in the grace and mercy of God who allows me to continue the commitments He has entrusted to me. Those commitments begin and end in the hearts and lives of New Yorkers. My strength is in the connection to men and women of great courage and heart from around the world who are bringing Christ to the nations in languages and cultures so diverse we cannot keep up with it at "headquarters." My strength is in a pastoral and lay leadership team dedicated to making "every congregation a mission station" in the Atlantic District. 4) The Specific Charge of Syncretism I've tried my best to address prayer-wording issues above. I will speak to them no further in this response. Syncretism is a serious charge, one that portends that a Christian is playing around with false gods and false religions as though they were on equal footing. I am deeply offended by this charge. I will begin with a point-by-point set of statements. 1) I asked permission to pray at Yankee Stadium from the doctrinal supervisor of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, its President, Dr. Gerald Kieschnick. I received that permission on September 21, 2001, prior to attending or praying at Yankee Stadium. I did not go in a "wanton" manner to that event, but with the blessing of both local and national spiritual leadership. 2) I did not pray to false gods. I never have. I never will. I have spent my entire ministry trying to BRING the Gospel to people of other
religions or with no saving faith. In the past several years I have been the President of the District of the Missouri Synod committed to the maximum level to bringing the Gospel to people of other faiths - we
have missionaries working among Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Jewish background people to a level not matched in the Missouri Synod on these shores. Those in the Atlantic District and those who know me know about
my passion for Gospel outreach to the lost. It is not only I who have been offended by these charges, therefore. It is all under my direct supervision and pastoral care, and then some. This point is crucial. At civic events and once-in-a-lifetime situations, and, I will posit below, in the changed world situation now emerging, pastors of the church must continue, as I was, to be ENCOURAGED to participate in any and all settings in which they can pray of proclaim the Name of Jesus. To do any less is to "quench the Spirit," in contradiction to the expressed command of St. Paul in I Thessalonians 5:19. It is furthermore to contravene the apostolic credo and directive, "I am NOT ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation.." Romans 1:16. People have asked me since September 23 whether I believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. One has asked that question stating that it would settle things if I answered it straightforwardly. So I did. That statement is attached (attachment 16). And still the charges fly. |
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