Christianity, Culture, Vocation
Tip of the hat to my former student Nathan Martin, who is involved with this program in Louisiana that teaches students in troubled high schools to be electricians, welders, or other well-paid skilled technicians. Read about it after the jump and then consider my questions. [Read more...]
Yesterday was Trinity Sunday, in which we reflect on the One true God who consists of three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That God is a unity of distinct persons means that we can accurately say that He is love, love being at the very essence of God, since love–even human love–can be defined as a unity of distinct persons. Christians worship the Triune God, a very different kind of deity from that of all other religions.
On Trinity Sunday, churches that follow the classic liturgy recite The Athanasian Creed. [Read more...]
Yesterday was Ascension Sunday. (The actual Ascension Day, 40 days after Easter, the time the risen Christ remained on earth, was last Thursday.) It commemorates something important and profound: the now-and-still Incarnate Son of God, His work of redemption complete, returning to His Father and assuming His eternal place in the Holy Trinity.
Some people think Ascension Day means that Jesus isn’t here anymore. (I have heard that put forward as a way to deny His presence in Holy Communion!) But what it really means is that now He can be present in all times and places (particularly Holy Communion!) because the Ascended Christ fills all things (Ephesians 1:20-23).
Christ’s Ascension has to do with His Incarnation, which, according to the Athanasian Creed, was “not by conversion of the divinity into flesh, but by “the assumption of the humanity into God.” Think of that! Our human nature, taken on by Christ, has been taken “into God.” This is why, in connection to Holy Communion, Christ’s body and blood, elements of his and our physical human nature, can be distributed to us human beings in our own times and places. What are some other implications of “the assumption of the humanity into God”?
Last Sunday the epiphany being celebrated was the baptism of Jesus. John’s baptism was for sinners, so when Jesus was baptized, He began His work as our substitute. In our baptism, we are united with Him in His death, burial, and resurrection (Romans 6:3-11). Thus, the Holy Spirit descends on us. We have by adoption what Jesus has as the Father’s only begotten son, so that the Father can say of us, “You are my beloved son.” And because Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, the Father can say of us, “with you I am well-pleased.” [Read more...]
Pastor Douthwaite’s sermon last Sunday was based on the assigned text for that day, about the widow’s mite (Mark 12: 38-44). He began with a useful survey of what the Church Year means and shows what it means to live in light of the End Times:
With the Festival of the Reformation and the Feast of All Saints now in the rear view mirror of the Church Year, our thoughts are turned these last three Sundays to the end times, the return of Christ, the last days, judgment day . . . or, to use the fancy theological word for it: eschatology. Our Church Year takes us from the expectation and promises of a Messiah in Advent, to the days of His birth at Christmas, to the revealing of His divinity in Epiphany, to His suffering and death in Lent, the joy of the resurrection in the Easter season, the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and that same Spirit working now in the life of the Church through the Pentecost season. But now we are at the end, and we look forward to the end, and the return of our Saviour to raise the dead and take us, all who believe and are baptized into in Christ Jesus (Mk 16:16), home. To the rest and pure joy of heaven.
And so (you may be thinking) that focus must start next week, because this week we didn’t hear end times or eschatology readings – we heard about a widow and her two mites in the Holy Gospel. . . .
And so, it seems to me, there is more to this reading than meets the eye. Something more than just about how much she – and we – put into the offering box or the offering plate. It’s about eschatology. It’s about how we live this life with a view toward the end. For, we believe, ever since Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension, we are living in the end times, the last days. Once Jesus ascended, He could return at any time, and we don’t know when. So how do we live in these days, these last days? It’s good to take stock of that and consider.
And there are two examples presented to us today: the scribes and the widow. Of the scribes, Jesus says, beware. Beware not (this time) of their teaching, but of how they are living. For their lives are all about the here and now. What honor they receive now, what glory is bestowed now, what advantages they get now. There seems to be no mercy or compassion in them, for they even devour widows’ houses. And their religion is a scam too, Jesus says. Their long prayers are a pretense – something they do to look holy, while going after the things of this world. . . .
But then there is the widow. How utterly different is she. For her the here and now is a hardship. Unlike the scribes, there is no honor for her now, no glory for her now, no advantages for her now. Maybe she still had her house because she was so poor and her house so humble that it wasn’t worth the scribes’ effort to devour it! And yet what little she had, those two small copper coins, she doesn’t keep, she doesn’t spend on food, she doesn’t hold on to for future needs – she drops them into the Temple treasury. They didn’t really make a difference. Her offering was like dumping a glass of water into the ocean. Or (to use my fiscal cliff example) like me sending in a dollar to the US Treasury – it’s not really going to make a difference in paying down the national debt!
But that’s not why she did it. She gave those two coins because she was living with a fundamentally different outlook than the scribes. Her “here and now” wasn’t even worth two small copper coins; but her future was. She did what she did because she was living her life with a view toward the end. Others may laugh at her for putting in so little, they might come and devour her house next, she might not have food the next day or the next week. But her life wasn’t in these things. These things were not her utmost concern. For, Jesus said, she put in everything she had, all her life. That’s what it really says: all her life. She put her life into the Temple that day; into the place where God dwells. [Read more...]
Yesterday was Trinity Sunday, the traditional festival–now that Ascension and Pentecost are over–to honor and contemplate the one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As we confess in the Athanasian Creed that is customarily confessed on that Sunday, God Himself is a unity of distinct persons.
That is to say, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Love is a unity of distinct persons. The doctrine of the Trinity shows how love is inherent in the very essence of the Godhead.
Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis’s friend, suggested that just as there are heresies in regards to the being of God, there are related heresies of love. Some heretics affirm the unity of God and deny the distinctness of the Persons. Similarly, in relationships, some, in the name of love, demand utter conformity, often manifesting itself in one of the lovers dominating or even obliterating the other person. There is unity in the relationship, but no distinct persons. This is heretical love.
Other theological heretics teach the separateness of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, denying their essential unity. Similarly, in relationships, sometimes the people in them go completely in their separate ways. The persons are affirmed, but not the unity that love needs.
Only God, of course, gets love exactly right. And, indeed, His love is not just self-contained in the Godhead, but it extends to us. And He doesn’t obliterate our persons, even as He brings us into a unity with Himself, through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son. May God’s love shape all of our loves!
Yesterday was Ascension Day, marking the resurrected Christ’s return to His Father. Pastor Reeder quotes the classic Bible scholar Paul E. Kretzmann on what the Ascension means:
“By His exaltation and ascension the Son of Man, also according to His human body, has entered into the full and unlimited use of His divine omnipresence. His gracious presence is therefore assured to His congregation on earth. He is now nearer to His believers than He was to His disciples in the days of His flesh.
He is now sitting at the right hand of His heavenly Father. As our Brother He has assumed the full use of the divine power and majesty. He reigns with omnipotence over all things, but especially also over His Church. God has put all things under His feet, and has given Him to be the Head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all, Eph. 1, 22. 23.
By His Word and Sacrament He gathers unto Himself a congregation and Church upon earth. He works in and with His servants; He governs in the midst of His enemies. He preserves and protects His Church against all the enmity of the hostile world and against the very portals of hell. And His intercession before His heavenly Father makes our salvation a certainty, Rom. 8, 34.”
via On the Lord’s Ascension « Pastor Reeder’s Blog.
Strangely, the Reformed use the Ascension as an argument against the presence of Christ in the sacrament. (“Jesus isn’t here any more. He’s in Heaven.”) But Lutherans use the Ascension as an argument for the Real Presence, since now the Son of God, having taken His place in the Godhead, is omnipresent.
We had yet another good Easter sermon from Pastor Douthwaite, with the texts Luke 24:36-49 (1 John 3:1-7; Acts 3:11-21). (Remember that it is still Easter. The lectionary focuses on the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, the season ending with Ascension and then Pentecost, which ushers in a new season.)
The thinking of the world and the thinking of the church don’t often agree, and it seems as if they are agreeing less and less these days, about all kinds of issues. But one thing we agree on is that Easter is for children. Yes, for children . . . we just disagree about who the children are! In the thinking of the world, Easter is for children because it’s about candy and bunnies and egg hunts and things like that. But for the church, Easter is for children because Easter is about baptism, and baptism – no matter what age you are – is where we are born anew as children of God. St. Paul tells us in Romans (chapter 6) that baptism unites us to Jesus’ death and resurrection – to Good Friday and to Easter – so that dying with Him, dying to sin, we rise with Him, to a new life of grace. A new life as children of God. And so as we heard from St. John today: “what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” And so we are. Children of God, loved by God.
But good parents don’t just have children, they raise children. And so it is with our Father in heaven. And so these weeks following our celebration of Easter are about what our baptism means for us; how we live and grow as children of God. Last Sunday in the Introit, we sang: “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation.” Being a child of God is not the end of the story, but the beginning, of growing up to salvation; of growing in faith and love and righteousness; of not growing away from God – in independence, in freedom, in self-sufficiency – but rather into Him. To be like Him. Like Father, like son.
via St. Athanasius Lutheran Church: Easter 3 Sermon.
Pastor Douthwaite then goes on to explain how that happens.
I hope you had a glorious Easter. I also hope that your joy in Christ’s resurrection continues. Easter is not just a day but a season, as we now remember the days that the risen Christ spent with His disciples. That was a period of 40 days until His Ascension, but the Easter season goes on for 50 days until we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Of course, every Sunday recalls Christ’s resurrection, and Jesus promises to be with us “always” (Matthew 28:20). But for now, let’s keep Easter going.
If you had any epiphanies, sudden realizations, new insights, or really good sermons or services yesterday, tell us about them here.
LCMS president Matthew Harrison challenges everyone to join him in a Lenten project that is not giving something up, that is doing something very positive for others, and that will benefit your spiritual life: Praying the Litany every day.
The Litany is an ancient structure for prayer that builds on Biblical texts and that covers EVERYTHING we are to pray for, in vivid and piercing language. Yes, Catholics have a version, but it goes back before the rise of what we would recognize as Roman Catholicism, all the way to the early church of the 6th century. The Reformation made good use of it. (We Lutherans and hangers on at Patrick Henry College had been getting together to pray the Litany every week, though this semester we’ve been doing Vespers.) Here are President Harrison’s comments on why the Litany is so helpful:
Left to ourselves, bereft of texts as the foundation of our prayers, we are often left praying “Dear God, give me a mini-bike,” as I was wont to pray as a 12 year old – and am prone to pray even today!!!!!! Texts of the scriptures Lords Prayer, Ten Commandments and scriptural texts Creed, Litany! lay down Gods thoughts as the foundation of prayer, the tarmac if you will, from which our meditations may gently or quickly rise, aided by the Holy Spirit. The fulsome petitions of the Litany take us out of ourselves, to pray for the church, pastors and teachers, our enemies, women with children, the poor, the imprisoned and much much more. And all for mercy, growing out of the great petitions of the blind, the lame and the ill who comes to Jesus in the New Testament, “Lord have mercy!” “Kyrie eleison!” The Lord loves to have mercy. The Lord came to have mercy. The Lord continues to have mercy.
You’ll find the litany in any standard Lutheran hymnal worth its salt. Pray it daily with me for Lent won’t you?
via Mercy Journeys with Pastor Harrison: Lets Pray the Litany Daily: Kyrie Eleison!.
Here it is. (Other versions going around have what must be an accidental omission, the grounding of the prayer in Christ — “by the mystery of your holy incarnation. . . .by your agony and bloody sweat.” The version in the Lutheran Service Book is even better to use because it adds the Lord’s Prayer and closes with a collect, which can be a time for individual petitions. Also, the format is really good and easy to use,whether with a group, your family, or individually.)
P: O Lord,
C: Have mercy.P: O Christ,
C: Have mercy.P: O Lord,
C: Have mercy.P: O Christ,
C: Hear us.P: God the Father, in heaven,
C: have mercy.P: God the Son, Redeemer of the world,
C: Have mercy.P: God the Holy Spirit.
C: Have mercy.P: Be gracious to us.
C: Spare us, good Lord.P: Be gracious to us.
C: Help us, good Lord.P: From all sin, from all error, from all evil; from the crafts and assaults of the devil; from sudden and evil death; from pestilence and famine; from war and bloodshed; from sedition and from rebellion; from lightning and tempest; from all calamity by fire and water; and from everlasting death;
C: Good Lord, deliver us.P: By the mystery of Your holy incarnation; by Your holy nativity; by Your baptism, fasting, and temptation; by Your agony and bloody sweat; by Your cross and Passion; by Your precious death and burial; by Your glorious resurrection and ascension; and by the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter;
C: Help us, good Lord.P: In all time of our tribulation, in all time of our prosperity, in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment,
C: Help us, good Lord.P: We poor sinners implore You
C: To hear us, O Lord.P: To rule and govern Your holy Christian Church, to preserve all pastors and ministers of Your Church in the true knowledge and understanding of Your wholesome Word and to sustain them in holy living, to put an end to all schisms and causes of offense, to bring into the way of truth all who have erred and are deceived, to bless the Church’s life-giving message that Jesus is Lord, to bring comfort to the sorrowing and hope to those living in fear, to beat down Satan under our feet, to send faithful laborers into Your harvest, and to accompany Your Word with Your grace and Spirit,
C: We implore You to hear us, good Lord.P: To raise those that fall and to strengthen those that stand, and to comfort and help the weakhearted and the distressed,
C: We implore You to hear us, good Lord.P: To give to all peoples concord and peace, to preserve our land from discord and strife, to give our country Your protection in every time of need, to direct and defend our president and all in authority, to bless and protect our magistrates and all our people, to keep in safety the members of our armed forces and to give wisdom to those in command,
C: We implore You to hear us, good Lord.P: To forgive our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers and to turn their hearts; to give and preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth; and graciously to hear our prayers;
C: We implore You to hear us, good Lord.P: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,
C: We implore You to hear us.P: Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,
C: Have mercy.P: Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,
C: Have mercy.P: Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,
C: Grant us Your peace.P: O Christ,
C: Hear us.P: O Lord,
C: Have mercy.P: O Christ,
C: Have mercy.P: O Lord,
C: Have mercy. Amen
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