October 2022 – What Does This Mean?

As the head of my household, can I commune my family?

No, you should not. And the why matters here. The notion of community enjoyed by Christians in fellowship together is governed by the Law of Christian love for my neighbor. Yes, love is a function of God’s Law. God’s love for you is purely the Gospel of undeserved forgiveness through the blood of Jesus. But, His command for you to love your neighbor and your compliance with it is purely a function of God’s Law.

Fourth commandment – “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” (Exodus 20:12 ESV) “Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” (Deuteronomy 5:16)

“What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents and other authorities, but honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them.” (Luther’s Small Catechism, section 1:4)

Luther’s expansion of the commandments in the small catechism is taken directly from Jesus’s teaching of the commandments in Matt 5. Jesus condemns lust just as adultery and hatred just as murder. We are right to understand all of the commandments in a similar way.

As the head of a household, you bring your family into a church. By joining fellowship with that church, you are submitting yourself to her authority. You may only resist or reject, if that church operates in a way that is contrary to God’s Word. If your conscience so compels you, you ought also to leave that church and find a faithful one.

However, under the authority of that church, you are bound to her governance. This is not different than children, who are bound to the governance of their parents. The voluntary nature of our submission is the only unique feature here. If we are Christians in a particular place, then we are bound by God’s law to that body unless or until we sever ourselves from it.

This is also true of a congregation’s relationship to District and Synod. We do not have the moral authority to disregard synodical doctrine and practice. In our voluntary association with a synod, we are bound by the 4th Commandment to submit ourselves to that governance. If we are to deviate from it, we are also bound to separate ourselves from that synod.

Now, getting back home, my household is a member of a local congregation. This congregation is a member congregation of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. We believe teach and confess that the institution of the Lord’s Supper belongs to the church as a whole and ought to be governed and conducted in good order.

Our teaching springs from Jesus’s institution of the Lord’s Supper among the twelve disciples (Matthew 26, Mark 16, Luke 22). It’s important to recognize that there were other groupings of followers throughout Jesus’s ministry. Jesus sent out seventy-two to proclaim the nearness of the Kingdom of God (Luke 10). St. Paul also reports that there were over 500 witnesses to the resurrection in the 40 days Jesus walked the earth before the Ascension (1 Corinthians 15).

Yet, none of these received the institution of the Lord’s Supper or the command to go and make disciples of all nations. That work, the governance of it, and passing of it to others was left for the disciples to manage. That’s the work of the church. We are to conduct ourselves in good order and submit ourselves to faithful governance within the church.

The particular articles governing us as members of member congregations of the LC–MS are these. “Our churches teach that the one holy Christian Church is to remain forever. The church is the congregation of Saints in which the Gospel is purely taught and the sacraments are correctly administered…” (Augsburg Confession, Article: VII). “Our churches teach that no one should publicly teach in the church, or administer the sacraments, without a rightly ordered call” (AC XIV).

In voluntary Fourth Commandment submission to the authority of our congregations and their synodical governance, we cannot practice the Lord’s Supper apart from the administration of those pastors, who are rightly called to do so. We are certainly free to leave the fellowship in search of a faithful one, if we are so driven by our conscience. But, we cannot pretend to submit to the church’s authority publicly, and privately rebel against her.

That would be unfaithful to God’s commands for us. God’s Word requires that we hear and obey. That includes submitting to those authorities He has given us. As we each confessed in our confirmations, I will suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from this faith.

As we confess, so let us do.

Rev. Jason M. Kaspar
Sole Pastor
Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool
La Grange, TX
and
Mission planting pastoral team:
Epiphany Lutheran Church
Bastrop, TX

Sunday School: Parable of the Lost Sheep

Sheep are not the cuddly, fluffy, pure white creatures we see in paintings
and picture books. They are dirty, smelly, noisy and interested in only one thing –
food. They wander wherever they want to go and do not pay attention to the
dangers of world around them. They often walk off cliffs, in the path of wolves and
other predators and are easily separated from the flock.

For this reason, shepherds often took their flocks out together. If one got
lost, then, helpers would watch those that did not wander while the shepherd.
Shepherds often loved their sheep the way we love our pets. If a sheep or a lamb
was too weak to walk, they would carry the sheep on their shoulders. If a lost
sheep was found, everyone would rejoice.

Shepherds and sheep appear often in the pages of the Bible. Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and David were shepherds. The Bible calls God our
shepherd. He feeds us, guides us safely through the wilderness, finds us when we
are lost, binds up our wounds and carries us home. Jesus calls Himself the Good
Shepherd. We hear His voice, we follow Him and He lays down His life for us. The
Christian Church from the very beginning called its leaders pastors, which comes
from the Latin word for shepherd. God calls pastors to care for His people – His
sheep – the way He cares for them.

Rev. Robert E. Smith
Concordia Theological Seminary
Fort Wayne, Indiana

Sunday School: The Parable of the Lost Son

The Parable of the Lost Son is one the most loved of the stories Jesus told. Everyone can relate to it. We see a very strong love shown by the Father to both His sons – the responsible one as much as the wasteful one. In the time of Jesus’ ministry, a father normally did not divide his property while he was alive. In the story, when the younger son asked for his inheritance, he was saying “I wish you were dead.” Still the father did what his son wanted. The father so loved his son that he kept looking for him to return.

When the younger son came back, the father saw him and did what men at that time did not do – he ran to meet his son. He would have to pull up his robes to do so and would be embarrassing. He did not wait for the younger son to apologize. Instead, he dressed his son as one of his own heirs and threw a very big party to celebrate his return.

When the older son was so angry that he did not come to the party, he was insulting his father. Yet his father came out to plead with him. The older son continued to show disrespect when he lectured his father. Yet the father still speaks to him tenderly. “All I have is yours,” he said, “but we have to rejoice, for your brother who was dead is now alive, was lost has now been found.”

Rev. Robert E. Smith
Concordia Theological Seminary
Fort Wayne, Indiana