February 2020 – What Does This Mean?

Fear, Love and Trust God

“You will have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3)

In a previous post, we considered what it means to have a god. What it really is all about, Martin Luther tells us, is who or what are you going to trust. As Christians, we know that well. After all, the Holy Spirit planted trust — faith — in our hearts. So, we love God. We also remember that God is holy and know that sin has its consequences. So, we respect and fear him too. What challenges us is the “above all things” part.

There are many precious things that claim a place in our hearts. We love our spouses. We love our children. Perhaps we love our country, our home, our hobbies or possessions. These are great blessings that do have a proper place in our lives. The trouble comes when they compete with God. We can easily come to invest a trust in them. We build our lives around them, invest time and money in them. It is easy to come to trust them as much if not more than God.

The problem is that, no matter how precious these things are, they cannot bear the weight of our trust. Spouses and children become ill and die. Our nation may turn on us and make us choose between it and God. Possessions break, fade away and are lost. The only thing that endures forever is God’s word. God made the world by his word, his Word became flesh and lived with us. His suffering, death and resurrection earned for us forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. Because he lives forever, we know that we will rise to live with him forever.

So we fear, love and trust God above all others. Then other blessings fall into their proper place as we thank God for them. This love and trust, then, in turn, leads to obey the rest of the commands as well.

Meet Georg Spalatin

Georg Burkhardt, the son of a Bavarian tanner, was born in 1484, a year after his friend Martin Luther, and died in 1545, the year before the reformer. Like Luther, his father sent him to school, first in Nuremberg, and later in Erfurt, about the same time Luther attended the same university. He became a humanist scholar and changed his name to Spalatin, after the small town near Nuremberg in which he grew up.

He was ordained a priest in 1508. Frederick the Wise appointed him first as a tutor to his nephew, John Frederick, then the court librarian and later the court chaplain and his secretary. In these positions he would function much the same way a chief of staff serves the President of the United States. He would serve three Electors of Saxony during his lifetime.

In Wittenberg, Spalatin became friends with Dr. Luther and whole-heartedly embraced the theology he came to teach. From the very beginning of the indulgence controversy, Spalatin advocated for Luther with his sovereigns and communicated the will of the Electors to Luther. His diplomatic skills made him a key figure in the Lutheran Reformation, although not very well known.

Spalatin often counseled Luther on which works to write, which ones not to write and which ones to tone down. He was responsible for the successful plan to “kidnap” Luther after the Diet of Worms and put him in the Castle Wartburg while controversy cooled a bit and where the Reformer could have a much needed sabbatical.

Five Hundred years ago, in February of 1520, Spalatin reminded Martin Luther that he had promised the Elector to write a sermon, a treatise really, on the subject of good works. Now that the doctrine of salvation by faith alone was becoming known, the Elector and other rulers sympathetic to Luther’s theology were concerned their subjects would believe they did not have to do good works at all, including obeying their rulers!

The Treatise on Good Works would take until summer to complete. More about that later this year. It isn’t often talked about, since three other major works were published that year. Yet in it the familiar understanding of good works taught by Lutherans is first stated in detail. Christians do not do good works to become Christians and be saved, but do good works because they are Christians, are saved and want to please God.

The Ten Commandments

Encore Post: Etched in stone, framed as a print in calligraphy, the Ten Commandments appear in many places throughout the Western world. As the foundation of the English and French legal systems, they still define the basic moral framework of our society, even though they have been under attack for the last fifty years.

Like the two great commandments, the Ten Commandments sum up all of God’s law, spelling out in a bit of detail what it means to love God and neighbor. Yet they are not quite what we would expect from commandments. First, the original Hebrew calls them the Ten Words, not commands. In fact, Judaism counts “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the Land of Egypt..” (Exodus 20:2) as the First Word. Second, God does not number them, so Judaism, Lutherans and Catholics, Protestants and Eastern Orthodox all number them differently. Third, most of the verbs have a simple future sense to them. In short, the Commandments explain how God wants his people to live.

In the Small Catechism, Martin Luther divides the commandments into two tables. The first table is about the way God’s people should relate to God. The second table is about the way they should relate to their neighbors. He also looks not only at what each command forbids, but also what it implies we should do.

While for Christians all three uses of the law apply, the primary use that they focus on is the third use. As God’s children, we love God because he freed us from slavery to sin and want to do his will.

The Law of God is Good and Wise

Encore Post: The natural world often calls to us with beautiful sunrises and sunsets, filled with colors that contrast with snow during the winter, complement in spring and summer the green of forests and fields and the green-blue of lakes and oceans, and that complete the wide range of colors in northern mountains, clothed with fall foliage. Even in our world damaged by the fall, there is order, symmetry and rhythm. All of these things are ordered by our Creator with unseen and often unknown principles — laws — that provide for us a place to call home and allow us to plan our lives in it.

The law of God is knowledge of God’s will and the way he wants his children to live. When God formed Adam from the dust of the earth, God built into him was the law of God, written into his heart. Adam loved God, wanted to serve him and knew what pleased the Father. When God formed Eve, this knowledge of God’s law passed down to her as well. Only a few of God’s commandments were spoken to him: be fruitful and multiply, rule over the living things on the Earth and eat plants (Genesis 1:29-30), work in and keep the Garden of Eden and do not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and of Evil. (Genesis 2:15-17)

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and brought sin into the world, the image of God within them was destroyed. Some knowledge of his law remains written in our hearts, but it is very distorted, so that, ironically, we no longer know good from evil. When God in his love and mercy promised that the Messiah would come one day to crush the head of Satan, (Genesis 3:15) he began to reveal his law, giving it in detail to Moses. It now serves three purposes, which we will take up in another post.

To:Child and Pupil of the Catechism

Like Father, Like Son, Like Us

Sermon on Matthew 5:43, 48
Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
Our Hope Lutheran Church
Huntertown, Indiana
February 16^th and 17^th, 2020

“Love your enemies and pray for the one who persecutes you … You will then be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43, 48)

Intro: “Like Father, like son…” As Christians, we don’t need to seek out God and form a personal relationship with him. He sought us, bought us, made us his children in baptism and give us faith so that we trust him. We do not do good works to become Christians; We do good works because we are Christians. We want to please our Heavenly Father so…

Jesus urges Christians to be like their Heavenly Father
1. Forgive like your father forgives you
2. Be merciful like your father is merciful
3. Love your enemies
4. Perfect like your father is perfect
As both saints and sinners at the same time, we cannot do this perfectly
1. We can often manage outward obedience
2. Yet inside our emotions can sneak up on us without warning.
3. The result is we are constantly at war with ourselves.
Jesus lived like his father for us.
1. Jesus was born as the exact image of God.
2. He lived a life of perfect obedience to his father heart and soul.
3. He died to pay for our sins.
4. We are now being made over in his image

Discipleship: Following Where Jesus Goes

Encore Post: So just where does Jesus go? Well he goes to places that are pretty messy sometimes. If we just consider the 12 disciples who Jesus called to himself at the beginning of his ministry, we see a man in Matthew who was a tax collector. We see a zealot in Simon, we see a couple of brothers who want honor and glory. And that’s just a few of them! What we see in the 12 disciples are sinners! And all the disciples of Jesus including us are sinners! Jesus preaches to sinners like the 12 and still to you and me.

A term that comes from the bible is that of disciple. And that is a great thing to recall. We who follow Jesus as taught in the Bible according to the words of the apostles are disciples of Jesus. We believe the teaching that was handed down by Jesus to the first disciples who were later called apostles who then wrote their Gospels, Epistles, and Prophetic books that make up the New Testament.

The season of Epiphany is a great time to be talking about the disciples because we just heard the reading of Peter, James and John being called to be “fishers of men” and soon we will be hearing the words from the Mount of Transfiguration, “Listen to Him!” Disciples are and to follow and to listen to their master, their Lord Jesus. Peter on the mount shows a desire to stay on the mountain and bask in the glory, but that is not where Jesus stays. No, he goes, setting his face like flint towards Jerusalem, getting ready for the Cross, where He would atone for the sins of the world. Many people, even Peter, don’t want this to be the case, but it must be so. That is why Jesus was sent.

A disciple then follows Jesus to the cross. That is where our journey takes us, the place where our salvation is won. The place from which comes all our blessings including the blessing of being able to tell others about Jesus’ wonderful work there for all humanity. Disciples then don’t just keep this message of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to themselves, but rather disciples tell others who do not know about Jesus to follow Jesus unto that Promised Land which he has entered and will ultimately gather us together with all the faithful disciples who have gone before us.

Rev. Jacob Hercamp
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
La Grange, MO

The Parable of the Vineyard Workers

There is a vineyard, and it needs to be worked. Its owner goes and calls workers into his vineyard. Throughout the day, he continues to go out and call others in. At the end of the day, the wages are to be given. And when they are, it is those who worked only an hour who come first. They are given a full days’ wages. In fact, everyone gets the same. No matter if you worked an hour or the full day. All are made equal. To no one’s surprise, those who worked a long day are upset. But the master reminds them that they are receiving exactly what they were promised. Exactly what they agreed to.

Like work in a vineyard, the Christian life is not a life of leisure or sloth. We are not called to loiter around and simply wait for heaven. We have been called into the vineyard. Christ has come to you and for you. He has chosen you to work in his vineyard; to be a part of his church. He has redeemed and saved you by grace.

This parable speaks of God’s goodness and his grace. The workers receive out of the generosity and goodness of the master. They have work because they are invited. Their calling into the vineyard is by grace. So also, for us. We are brought into our Lord’s vineyard by grace and grace alone. And we receive life and forgiveness of sins out of His mercy and grace.

Rev. Brent Keller
Peace Lutheran Church
Alcester, SD

Pre-Lent

For churches that use the historic, one year lectionary (cycle of readings), Epiphany has passed and, last week, they celebrated our Lord’s Transfiguration. They now focus on our Lord’s Resurrection, the victory Christ won for us as he died on the cross and then triumphantly rose from the dead. They do this in stages: Pre-Lent, Lent, and the Passion. Today, they are in Pre-Lent (nicknamed the ‘gesima’ Sundays for the Latin titles of the Sundays). For churches using the three year lectionary, Epiphany lasts a few more weeks. When Lent comes, all of the churches will be on the same calendar again.

In the early church, catechumens (learners) were baptized on Easter, and Lent was a sort of final and intense preparation. And so, the Sundays before Lent aim to equip the students for Easter and to remind the baptized of what is to come. The Epistle texts will present the Christian life as a race, as a contest that requires constant self-discipline and self-control, as a demanding life filled with labor and suffering. In a few weeks, Lent will teach that the Christian life is selfless and motivated only by love. Our Gospel texts speak of God’s call for us to be laborers, of the education and training in God’s ‘school of life,’ of the enlightenment of God’s rich grace upon all who seek it. Pre-Lent seeks to prepare for Lent and Easter in this way because the new life we are raised to live is one that lasts forever.

This summer the world will turn their eyes to Tokyo. Some of the most elite athletes in their various sports will take the field or arena or ring. They were born with natural gifts in whatever their sport is. Yet despite this natural gift, they have still had to prepare for this moment since they were young children. They are always laser-focused not just on qualifying and competing, but on bringing home gold. They will have trained and competed with little to no regard for their body. All that matters is being on top of that podium in July and August.

The Olympic games were centuries old when St. Paul writes his first letter to the Corinthians. That said, they were a much different event then than they are now. What isn’t different, however, is the effort put in. And Paul knows it.We each have a race to run, and none of us knows how long it will last. This is why continual training is required. Why self-discipline and focus are paramount. Lent is a time of battle. It is a time of preparation and repentance. But it is also about grace. About hearing what Jesus has done for us in his coming, culminating in his death, burial, and resurrection that all your sins are put away and forgiven.

Rev. Brent Keller
Peace Lutheran Church
Alcester, SD

Theology of the Cross

Martin Luther described two ways to think or talk about God. One starts with what people do — how can we please God? It begins below with us and climbs up a staircase to heaven by our own efforts. The other starts with what God does: the Father sending his Son to save the world, the Son dying so we might live and the Holy Spirit bringing the gifts to sinners. The theology of glory is from below and gives glory to people, the theology of the Cross and is from about, focusing on Chris who died of us all.

These two approaches to understanding God end up in two very different ways of thinking. The theology of glory is not satisfied with what the Bible says about him, salvation and they way we should live our lives. It peers into the unknown things of God, using human logic and experience to form theories about him and believe them as if they were facts. Ironically, the result is making God over in our own image rather than in allowing God to remake us in the image of his Son. In reality, it makes us into god and god into our servant.

The theology of the cross, instead, knows nothing but Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2) It is the theology that begins with the way that God has revealed himself to us in his word, in the cradle and on the cross. It begins with the mindset of Jesus, who did not hold onto his glory as God, but emptied himself of it, became man for us, suffered and died for us. (Philippians 2:5-11)

Rather than look for our own glory, taking credit for our works, our understanding and looks for rewards in this life, the theology of the cross calls on us to think like Jesus thinks, to set aside our interests to serve God and our neighbor. It is content to take up its own cross and follow Jesus, through suffering, to death and to life eternal.

Is the Crucifix too Catholic?

From the earliest days of the Christian faith, Christians have used the sign of the cross to remember the sufferings and death of her Lord and Savior. Not only did they use the sign to identify each other and during worship, they hung artistic versions of the cross. On the wall of a large room in Herculaneum, destroyed with Pompeii in 79 A.D., a cross-shaped mark was found in one of their walls.

Beginning at the end of the Fifth Century (400s AD), representations of the body of the dying Jesus began to appear on crosses. These became known as crucifixes. Churches throughout Christianity used crucifixes universally. It wasn’t until the 16th Century (1500s AD) that anyone objected to them. During the Reformation, the Reformed and Anabaptist traditions objected to them, thinking that crucifixes and Christian art in general were idols. Luther and the Lutheran tradition rejected this charge, contending that such depictions were an aid to devotion. No one was worshiping them. They were inspired by their art and their imagination turned to the events they represented.

So Lutherans continue use crucifixes until this day. Many of the great artists and musicians since that day were Lutherans and used their talents to enhance their churches and worship. Only in the last century, and in the United States, when Lutherans began to worship in English, did this begin to change. Their friends, families and neighbors accused them of being “too catholic,” not realizing that they were out of step with a sixteen hundred year old practice of the Christian Church.

There is, however, a deeper theological issue. When asked why they feel the empty cross is better than a crucifix, our non-Lutheran friends often object that Jesus did not stay on the cross, but is now risen from the dead. They think we need to focus on the Resurrection. Yet this is not what St. Paul tells the Corinthians, who said, among other things, ” I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2) The focus of Christian preaching is to be on the cross. The crucifixes do just that. Christ is indeed risen from the dead, but he retained his wounds eternally to proclaim that sacrifice. And because he is risen, that sacrifice is now wherever Christians gather in his name.

So, far from apologizing for crucifixes, Lutherans are proud of them. For they are a symbol, pointing to the sacrifice that won our salvation. They remind us of the Lamb-who-was-slain for our sins and sins of the whole world.