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Why Do Some Churches Use Blue For Advent Rather Than Violet?

Encore Post: It’s true that some churches use blue for Advent and some use violet. Which one is right, which is better?

First, neither is right and the other wrong. In Christian freedom, we have options of saying the creed before or after the sermon, collecting the offering before or after the prayer of the church, and using blue or violet in advent.

The use of blue for Advent is often attributed to European Marianist cultish worship or pseudo-worship of St. Mary, the Mother of our Lord. To some degree, that may contain truth. But I suspect the source is a little deeper than that. Some will also point to a Byzantine tradition of blue signifying the empress. But, there may be a deeper meaning still.

[Light blue paraments are used Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Rite Catholic, and Russian Orthodox Churches. Their use dates back into antiquity. This significantly precedes the Modern Oxford movement in England, which is sometimes maligned as a Marianist source, or an exclusively medieval Marianist origin to the use of blue in Advent.] (2023 Update)

There’s a specific reference in Numbers to the color of the skins on the Ark of the Covenant as the congregation of Israel carried it from place to place. “When the camp is to set out, Aaron and his sons shall go in and take down the veil of the screen and cover the ark of the testimony with it. Then they shall put on it a covering of goatskin and spread on top of that a cloth all of blue, and shall put in its poles.” (Numbers 4:5-6)

For our benefit, Christian artists will often depict the Ark of the Covenant moving uncovered. They do this so that we can see the gold, the cherubim, and the mercy seat, and know what it is. But, in reality, the ark was always covered from our eyes while in transit. The coverings were of an unclear material (ram, goat, porpoise, or maybe dugong) that was certainly blue in color. Moreover, no one was to touch the ark. The unmitigated holiness of God is dangerous to us in our sinful state and uncleanness.

When King David sought to move the ark back to Jerusalem, he and his men saw the holiness of God in action. Uzzah died when he touched the ark to steady it after the oxen stumbled. “So David was not willing to take the ark of the Lord into the city of David. But David took it aside to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite. And the ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-edom the Gittite for three months, and the Lord blessed Obed-edom and all his household. And it was told King David, ‘The Lord has blessed the household of Obed-edom and all that belongs to him, because of the ark of God.’” (2 Samuel 6:10-12)

In his commentary on Luke, Dr. Arthur Just of Concordia Theological Seminary points out the parallel between 2 Samuel and Luke 1. Both show a going up into the hill country. The Israelites greet the ark with shouts of joys as does Elizabeth to Mary. The blessing of the house of Obed-Edom is reflected in Elizabeth’s being filled with the Holy Spirit, implying blessings for her and her home. Both the Ark and Mary remain for three months (Arthur A. Jr Just, Luke, Concordia Commentary (St. Louis: Concordia Pub. House, 1996, 1:72)).

St. Luke reports, “In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.’” (Luke 1:39-45)

In the Western Christian tradition, we call St. Mary “the mother of our Lord.” The Eastern Christian church uses the term: “Theotokos.” Theotokos is a Greek term meaning: “God-bearer.” The Greek term is also a spectacular image for us to have in our minds. It pictures something like the Ark of the Covenant.

The ark was nothing but an acacia wood box, covered in gold and finely decorated. The presence of God upon the ark made it unique. The virgin Mary also had no special attributes compared with other Israelite women. Yet, the presence of the Lord within her caused great joy for Elizabeth and her unborn son, John.

The presence of God in the ark looked to the ecclesia of Israel like a clump of blue animal skins skewered on a pair of poles, and carried about. Artists have depicted Mary in a blue mantle. The blue doesn’t show her specialty. The blue shows us what’s in there: Christ the Lord, the Holy One of Israel. Advent blue shows us what’s coming.

[While violet and blue are certainly both acceptable, I think blue better serves our Christology in Advent. The two penitential seasons, Advent and Lent, are not the same. We treat them differently in our liturgy and hymnody. Lent is more austere. In it we put away our alleluias. This is not the case for Advent. A variation in the colors can reinforce the distinction between the penitence of Advent and the penitence of Lent.] (2022 update)

Blue serves to show us a new thing. While we prepare our hearts in the penitential season of Advent, God is delivering His Son. The Son of Man is born to die for our sins. Unlike the unmitigated holiness of God in the ark, God in human flesh is fully like us in flesh. He has the power to heal, even by the hem of His garment. But His touch does not strike down sinners. This blue points us not to Mary, the God-bearer, but to the God she bore.

Let the blue of Advent fill us with hope.

Rev. Jason M. Kaspar
Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool
La Grange, TX

Savior of the Nations, Come

Savior of the Nations, come,
Virgin’s Son, make here Your home!
Marvel now, O heav’n and earth,
That the Lord chose such a birth.

Jesus is the Savior of the nations. From the very first line, we realize that Jesus comes for more than Israel, but also for the Gentiles, also for sinners. The virgin birth is the miracle of Christmas. Though we do not understand it in our ways of thinking, we most certainly believe that God became man.

Not by human flesh and blood,
By the Spirit of our God,
Was the Word of God made flesh—
Woman’s offspring, pure and fresh.

Walking through the Apostles’ Creed, we find the following line, that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. This “Word made flesh” language is taken right from John 1, the Gospel reading for Christmas Day.

Here a maid was found with child,
Yet remained a virgin mild.
In her womb this truth was shown:
God was there upon His throne.

Jesus’ birth appeared to the world like a peasant’s birth or a servant’s birth. But this stanza reminds us that Jesus is the King of all creation coming to redeem all creation.

Then stepped forth the Lord of all
From His pure and kingly hall;
God of God, yet fully man,
His heroic course began.

Where is Christ the King? Firstly, in heaven with God the Father, the Son lived and reigned. So for Him to step forth from heaven to earth, we realize He has come to wage war for us against sin, death, and the devil.

God the Father was His source,
Back to God He ran His course.
Into hell His road went down,
Back then to His throne and crown.

Now this verse refers to the descent into hell. If we consider this in terms of location, we might think that the descent is part of Christ’s humiliation, “going down.” But the descent into hell is the first act of the exaltation, that Christ declares the victory over the devil forever and it is finished and can never be changed.

For You are the Father’s Son
Who in flesh the vict’ry won.
By Your mighty pow’r make whole
All our ills of flesh and soul.

This verse shifts toward us. It almost sounds like the prayer of the people, that by His suffering, He sympathizes with our suffering. But by His resurrection, we have the promise of redeemed and glorified bodies without suffering.

From the manger newborn light
Shines in glory through the night.
Darkness there no more resides;
In this light faith now abides.

This verse makes clear that Jesus Christ is the Light of the World, and that darkness has no power anymore. Faith now abides in us.

Glory to the Father sing,
Glory to the Son, our king,
Glory to the Spirit be
Now and through eternity.

Rev. James Peterson
St. John Lutheran Church
Curtis, Nebraska

It’s Not Almost Christmas

Encore Post: I’ve been reading articles and watching spots most of my life, lamenting the earliness of Christmas-ish stuff every year. It doesn’t just seem as if the pre-Christmas shopping season has gobbled up all dates and times preceding it. The shopping season has done exactly that.

In the foggy early reaches of my growing memory, I recall days before there was a Black Friday shopping spree (the week of Black Friday, Cyber Monday/Weekend, Giving Tuesday…). The phenomenon appeared in the 1980s. I’m quite certain there was consternation in the decades before 1980 over the encroaching commercialization of Christmas. Those earlier and earlier mercantile sales dates scheduled on their way toward Black Friday weren’t welcome then either.

We, Christians, habitually grouse about symptoms. It’s as if symptomatic abatement cures the underlying illness. See my articles about fathers and the children’s future attendance here, here, here, and here. Christmas cheer getting sucked up before “the holidays” is a symptom, not the illness.

The illness is this: we are seeing civic festivals and pagan consumerism crossing the boundaries into the life of the church. Instead, let’s reset those boundaries and get our minds around the days of the church. Dear Christians, we are to be in the world, but not of it.

Halloween and Thanksgiving are not church festivals.

Halloween falls on the official church day of All Hallows Eve, October thirty-first. Lutherans more commonly celebrate Reformation Day on the same day, commemorating Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg castle church, sparking the reformation.

All Saints’ Day is November First. Christians will often observe All Hallows Eve/Reformation and All Saints’ Day by shifting the former back and/or the latter forward to the nearest Sunday. Both days fall within the season of Trinity (Pentecost in the three-year lectionary) just ahead of the end of the church year.

Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November and can fall between November twenty-second and twenty-eighth. That makes for seven variable relationships between Thanksgiving and Christmas being twenty-seven and thirty-three days apart. 2023 was an infrequent occasion, with Thanksgiving falling before the last Sunday of the church year. Thanksgiving is still always before the beginning of the new church year.

The pagan world would have us believe all of those holidays are part of the Christmas season. They are not. Those days and commemorations are not even in the same church year as the seasons of Advent or Christmas.

The church year ends with the last Sunday of the church year and the week following it. The day can also be called Ultima Sunday, after the last syllable of a Koine Greek word, or Christ the King Sunday, commemorating Jesus’s second Advent at the end of days. The last Sunday of the church year is always the fifth Sunday before Christmas Day.

After the first two civic holidays, the church year begins on the first Sunday of Advent, always the fourth Sunday before Christmas. Advent can consist of between twenty-two and twenty-eight days. It begins between November twenty-seventh and December third, always containing four Sundays. Advent contains three or four Wednesdays. The three Wednesdays are slightly more common, occurring in four of the seven variations, excluding Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve is a day of Advent. It is not typically celebrated as a Wednesday of Advent, when falling on Wednesday. When the fourth Sunday of Advent is December 24^th, like in 2023, we observe Memento Nostri/Rorate Coeli (Advent 4) in the morning and Christmas Eve in the evening.

This means that those cute, pre-made, every-year advent calendars are seldom actually right. It’s a lot of fun to open the doors for the little prizes. But, Advent rarely has exactly 24 days. 2019, 2024, & 2030 are years in which Advent does have exactly 24 days.

So, a better Advent calendar would have 28 days, with six indicated as days that may not be in Advent (2023 & 2028), or may be in Advent (2022 & 2033). The same calendar could include the twelve days of Christmas, making an even 40 days, encouraging us to celebrate Christmas in its time. Perhaps something like this:

Like the Advent Calendars, Christians used to decorate progressively. By adding a bit each week heading into Christmas it adds to the excitement of preparation. This is opposite of the Christmas fatigue caused by all decorations going up the day after Halloween or Thanksgiving, before Advent even started.

The twelve days of the Christmas feast begin on December 25. They can contain two Sundays, but more commonly just one. The days of Christmas are December 25th through January 5th. On December 26th, we also celebrate the feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr. We celebrate the feast of St. John, the only apostle to die a natural death, on December 27th. December 28th marks the feast of the Holy Innocents, killed by Herod upon the magi’s visit to Bethlehem. The celebration of the Circumcision and Naming of Jesus on January first is also a named feast within the twelve days. Christmas ends on Twelfth Night/the Vigil of Epiphany, preceding the Epiphany of Our Lord, which is celebrated on January 6th.

It is suitable for Christians to decorate and sing seasonal hymns beginning on Christmas Eve. In decades past, we would have it no other way. Now, it may be impossible to forego all of the civic festivities around us. We should at least save the bulk of our revelry for the actual celebration of the incarnation of our Lord. We should not allow the pagan world to suck all of our Christmas cheer before we’ve even begun the Christmas feast.

The exceptionally short Advent of 2023 gave us a great example of our modern distortion of the Christmas season. In trying to cram all of the programs, “family Christmases,” professional parties, and church social activities into the Advent weeks preceding Christmas, how many of us considered for even a moment displacing the festivities into the eleven days of Christmas following Christmas day? Probably very few did. I’m also guilty of missing this consideration.

This year and in years to come, spend some time in thought and prayer concerning the harrowing of the End of Days, the preparation of our hearts in Advent, and the joyous gift of Christmas (the whole season of Christmas). There’s more to it than the Christmas shopping season. Beyond just thought and prayer, avail yourself of the Lord’s house, receiving His gifts for you.

Blessèd Advent preparation!

Rev. Jason M. Kaspar
Sole Pastor
Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool
La Grange, TX

Once He Came in Blessing

Once He came in blessing,
All our sins redressing;
Came in likeness lowly,
Son of God most holy;
Bore the cross to save us;
Hope and freedom gave us.

This verse speaks of Christmas, the First Coming of our Lord, born of the virgin Mary. He came in blessing, but how did He bless us? He blessed us by dying on the cross for us and forgiving all of our sins. Perhaps we do not often think of “bless” and “death” in the same sentence. But this is grace, that God died for us instead of us, and this is a blessing we could never accomplish on our own. This is why Jesus came to us on earth in the first place. He came in likeness lowly, like us, but was God most holy. There is no other god that would come so humbly and die so terribly. What a blessing this truly is for all of us!

Now He gently leads us;
With Himself He feeds us
Precious food from heaven,
Pledge of peace here given,
Manna that will nourish
Souls that they may flourish.

Here we see the Good Shepherd language, that He gently leads us. This is what Christ does for the Church now, for each of us now. He leads us and He feeds us, not only with the things we need for body and soul, but even with something greater than the manna from heaven in the wilderness. Jesus Christ offers to us His very own Body and Blood at this altar, not as a re-sacrifice, but as the cross and Passion of our Lord personally applied to us and granted to us. While the first verse retold Christmas and Good Friday, this verse applies what Christ did to us, that Christ is still doing among us this work of forgiveness. The cross is only past, but present, received and believed in our life as the Church.

Soon will come that hour
When with mighty power
Christ will come in splendor
And will judgment render,
With the faithful sharing
Joy beyond comparing.

The first verse was set in the past. The second verse was set in the present. This third verse is set in the future. Here we sing of the Last Day, of the Second Coming of our Lord. Jesus regularly referred to “that hour” as the hour when He would die for the sins of the world. But we know that there is another “hour” that awaits us. And now the Lord comes not to forgive sins nor to defeat the devil, but He comes in splendor for judgment. As Christians, we do not need to fear this judgment, for we believe in the first verse of this hymn and we receive the Lord’s Supper that the second verse mentions. The judgment that we shall receive is simply this: “Not guilty!” And that is most certainly “joy beyond comparing.”

Come, then, O Lord Jesus,
From our sins release us.
Keep our hearts believing,
That we, grace receiving,
Ever may confess You
Till in heaven we bless You.

This final verse is not a doxology like we have seen in the past. But the writer of this hymn has reversed the thought he began with. In the first verse, he sang of Christ’s First Coming, and that this was a blessing. But in this verse, he encourages us to confess the Lord until we bless the Lord. Once again, this “blessing” word shows up, and this is eternal worship of the Lamb on the throne. This we even do witness on Sunday mornings. After receiving the Sacrament, toward the end of the Divine Service, we sing, “Bless we the Lord.” Perhaps we say it without faith. But in reality, this then is what Christianity seeks in the end of days, to “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless His holy name!” It doesn’t get any better than that!

Rev. James Peterson
St. John Lutheran Church
Curtis, Nebraska

The Advent of our King

The advent of our King
Our prayers must now employ,
And we must hymns of welcome sing
In strains of holy joy.

“Advent” means “to come toward.” When we use the word Advent, we speak about Jesus’ first coming toward earth and His Second Coming on the Last Day. In this verse and during this season, we recall when Jesus first came to earth as a baby in Bethlehem.

The everlasting Son
Incarnate deigns to be,
Himself a servant’s form puts on
To set His servants free.

Jesus is the Son of God. This verse reminds us that Jesus is “everlasting,” both before the creation of the world and after He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. The Son became flesh as a servant, the opposite of King, to set His servants, all of us, free from sin, death, and the devil.

O Zion’s daughter, rise
To meet your lowly King,
Nor let your faithless heart despise
The peace He comes to bring.

“Zion’s daughter” is an Old Testament phrase for the Church. And here there are two meanings for the word “rise.” The obvious meaning is to stand up while we sing for “the King is coming.” But here also, the hymn means for us to consider the resurrection, that the Church shall rise from the graves on the Last Day and see the King, our Lord Most High.

The Advent of our King
As judge, on clouds of light,
He soon will come again
And His true members all unite
With Him in heaven to reign.

Suddenly, the hymn shifts from the First Coming to the Second Coming of our Lord. Now the Lord Jesus, the Judge of the living and the dead, comes on the clouds as the Scriptures testify. This verse puts the hymn in our own context, for we await the Last Day with patience and joy in the midst of suffering.

Before the dawning day
Let sin’s dark deeds be gone,
The sinful self be put away,
The new self now put on.

What can we do while we wait for the Last Day? We put the new self on. While we worship, we ask for God’s forgiveness of our sins, and He forgives them. This He has promised to us. Then we hear the Word of God, which works faith in us. Finally, we receive the Sacrament, the foretaste of the feast to come.

All glory to the Son,
Who comes to set us free,
With Father, Spirit, ever one
Through all eternity.

The triangle reminds us that this is a doxology. “Dox” means “glory.” These final verses of some hymns give glory to God. In this particular hymn, the doxology serves as a profound conclusion that our lives in heaven on the Last Day will be endless refrains of giving glory to God forever and ever.

Rev. James Peterson
St. John Lutheran Church
Curtis, Nebraska

Kindle and Print Copies of Post Series

Dear Friends,

Over the past month, I’ve received feedback that readers would love to have all the posts in a particular series all in one file for future reference. At the urging of my sons, I’ve experimented with producing Kindle and print booklet form through Amazon’s publishing service.

I’ve created a Kindle Book of my Preparation for the Gospel series, which will run on the blog this month. Ironically, it is too short to offer as a booklet, so I will have to say more in it to flesh it out. (Imagine telling a pastor to talk more!) I will price these inexpensively, mostly covering cost, but truth in advertizing, I’ll make a little money with each one bought.

To follow how I’m doing on this, my Amazon Author page is:

Amazon.com: Robert E. Smith: books, biography, latest update

If you like this idea, please leave a comment.

In the peace of God in man made manifest,

Pastor Robert E. Smith
Pastor Emeritus
Publisher of blog What Does This Mean?

It’s barely past Halloween—Why the Christmas decorations and music?

Encore Post: We’ve been reading articles and watching spots most of my life lamenting the earliness of Christmas-ish stuff every year. It doesn’t just seem as if the pre-Christmas shopping season has gobbled-up all dates and times preceding it. The shopping season has done exactly that.

In the foggy early reaches of my growing memory, I recall days before there was a Black Friday shopping spree. The phenomenon appeared in the 1980s. I’m quite certain there was consternation in the decades before 1980 over the encroaching commercialization of Christmas. Those earlier and earlier mercantile sales dates scheduled on their way toward Black Friday weren’t welcome then either.

We Christians habitually grouse about symptoms. It’s as if symptomatic abatement cures the underlying illness. See my articles about fathers and the children’s future attendance here, here, here, and here. Christmas cheer getting sucked up before “the holidays” is a symptom, not the illness.

The illness is this: we are seeing civic festivals and pagan consumerism crossing the boundaries into the life of the church. Instead, let’s reset those boundaries and get our minds around the days of the church. Dear Christians, we are to be in the world, but not of it.

Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day are not church festivals.

Halloween falls on the official church day of All Hallows Eve, October thirty-first. Lutherans more commonly celebrate Reformation Day on the same day, commemorating Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg castle church, sparking the reformation.

All Saints’ Day is November First. Christians will often observe All Hallows Eve/Reformation and All Saints’ Day by shifting the former back and/or the latter forward to the nearest Sunday. Both days fall within the season of Trinity (Pentecost on the Pope’s lectionary) just ahead of the end of the church year.

Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November and can fall between November twenty-second and twenty-eighth. That makes for seven variable relationships between Thanksgiving and Christmas, between twenty-seven and thirty-three days apart. 2023 will be an infrequent occasion, with Thanksgiving falling before the last Sunday of the church year. However, Thanksgiving is still always before the beginning of the new church year.

The pagan world would have us believe all of those holidays are part of the Christmas season. They are not. Those days and commemorations are not even in the same church year as the seasons of Advent of Christmas, which follow them.

The church year ends with the last Sunday of the church year and the week following it. The day can also be called Ultima Sunday, after the last syllable of a Koine Greek word, or Christ the King Sunday, commemorating Jesus’s second Advent at the end of days. The last Sunday of the church year is always the fifth Sunday before Christmas Day.

After the first two civic holidays, the church year begins on the first Sunday of Advent, always the fourth Sunday before Christmas. Advent can consist of between twenty-two and twenty-eight days. It begins between November twenty-seventh and December third. And, Advent contains three or four Wednesdays. The three Wednesdays are slightly more common, occurring in four of the seven variations, excluding Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve is a day of Advent. It is not typically celebrated as a Wednesday of Advent, when falling on Wednesday.

This means that those cute, pre-made, every-year advent calendars are seldom actually right. It’s a lot of fun to open the doors for the little prizes. But, Advent rarely has exactly twenty-four days.

Like the Advent Calendars, Christians used to decorate progressively. By adding a bit each week heading into Christmas it adds to the excitement of preparation for the incarnation of Our Lord. This is the opposite of the Christmas fatigue caused by all decorations going up the day after Halloween or Thanksgiving, before Advent even started.

The twelve days of the Christmas feast begin on December 25. They can contain two Sundays, but more commonly just one. The days of Christmas are December twenty-fifth through January fifth. On December twenty-sixth, we also celebrate the feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr. We celebrate the feast of St. John, the only apostle to die a natural death, on December twenty-seventh. December twenty-eighth marks the feast of the Holy Innocents, killed by Herod upon the magi’s visit to Bethlehem. The celebration of the Circumcision and Naming of Jesus on January first is also a named feast within the twelve days. Christmas ends on Twelfth Night, preceding the Epiphany of Our Lord. The latter of which is celebrated on January 6.

It is suitable for Christians to decorate and sing seasonal hymns beginning on Christmas Eve. In decades past, we would have it no other way. Now, it may be impossible to forego all of the civic festivities around us. But, we should at least save the bulk of our revelry for the actual celebration of the incarnation of our Lord. We should not allow the pagan world to suck all of our Christmas cheer before we’ve even begun the Christmas feast.

This year and in years to come, spend some time in thought and prayer concerning the harrowing of the End of Days, preparing our hearts in Advent, and the joyous gift of Christmas (the entire season of Christmas). There’s more to it than the Christmas shopping season. Our Lord took on human flesh, being born in the lowliest state to bear our sins and be our Savior! Beyond just thought and prayer, avail yourself of the Lord’s house, receiving His gifts of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation for you.

Blessèd Advent preparation!

Rev. Jason M. Kaspar
Sole Pastor
Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool
La Grange, TX

An End and A Beginning

Encore Post: The congregations I serve uses the One-Year Lectionary, or also called the Historic Lectionary. For us, the final three weeks of the church year focus on the end of this age and the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We hear of the coming destruction of Jerusalem, the Sheep/Goat Judgment, and the parable of the Ten Virgins. God’s holy and perfect Law is clearly seen in these lessons.

The terrible consequence of sin and unbelief are unmistakable. The unbelief of the Jews and the reliance on a power other than God will see Rome ransack Jerusalem and destroy the Temple. The goats, who found their righteousness not in faith but in themselves, enter the lake of fire prepared not for man but for the devil and his angels. And finally, unwise virgins are invited to a wedding. But when they have no oil, that is, have no faith, they are left out of the celebration.

But even more powerful in these final weeks are the mercy and grace that God has for us in His holy Gospel. While Jerusalem will be destroyed, God warns and protects His Christians. Even if one of them is caught up in the siege and destroyed in body, God delivers them through that death into eternal life. The sheep, who have faith and bear fruit by the work of the Holy Spirit, are welcomed into the heavenly kingdom. And the wise virgins, filled with faith, enter the eternal wedding feast.

We are in troublesome times, no doubt. But your God is still King. He still watches over you, provides for all your needs in body and soul, and delivers you from every evil.

Which is why we begin a new church year with the season of Advent. We prepare not only for our Lord’s birth and incarnation, but we prepare for His second advent, His second coming. We begin this new year and this waiting with His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem during Holy Week.

Indeed, our church year begins with the account of why Jesus came in the first place: to save His people from their sins. Not with the blood of goats and bulls, but with His holy, innocent, and precious blood.

As we close one year and enter another, may you always remember your deliverance from sin, death, and the devil as your Lord, your Mighty Fortress, comes to rescue with through His death.

Rev. Brent Keller
Trinity Lutheran Church
Guttenberg, Iowa
and
St. Paul Lutheran Church
McGregor, Iowa

Saints’ Days and Commemorations

Encore Post: During Martin Luther’s lifetime, the Church Year was filled with Saints’ Days. Thousands of saints were remembered — and venerated. Some of the pressure on time was controlled by celebrating All Saints’ Day, so the ones without a day could be remembered. The day after was remembered as All Souls’ Day, to pray for the rest of us!

The Lutheran Reformers solved the crowding of the calendar by removing almost all the non-Biblical saints. A few like St. Valentine, St. Nicholas — and, curiously, St. Lawrence, remain to this day. Local congregations are, of course, free to celebrate others.

Some church bodies, like the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod have recognized the desire to remember figures from church history. They provide a list of commemorations for figures like Wilhelm Löhe, C. F. W. Walther, Martin Luther and so on. Commemorations, unlike saints’ days, do not have their own propers — special readings, a prayer of the day, psalms, etc.

The point of both kinds of days is to thank God for these faithful men and women. We remember their lives, the way they lived their lives in faith and to pray that we, too, may be faithful. After all, their suffering is over, their tears are gone, and their sorrows turned to joy. And it will not be very long before our Lord comes to bring us home, too. With them numbered may we be here and in eternity.

Rev. Robert E. Smith
Pastpr Emeritus
Fort Wayne, Indiana

Did Martin Luther Write Sin Boldly?

Encore Post: When I was a reference librarian, I frequently get asked whether (and where!) Martin Luther said a quotation people claim he said. Most of the time when I am asked to do so, I cannot find a place where he is recorded as saying or writing such a thing. That is not the case with the Luther quote “sin boldly,” which is often used by his opponents to claim Luther rejects God’s law for Christians. The short answer is: yes, he wrote this phrase, but, no, it does not mean what his opponents think it means.

Over Five hundred years ago, Luther was living in the Wartburg Castle — kind of as a safe house of sorts — under the name of Junker Jorg. At first, he had a difficult time adjusting — his diet switched from that of a monk to that fit for a noble. By August, he was settling in. He was far from idle there. Among the things he did was write an incredible number of letters to friends, allies, his prince and others. Few people knew exactly where he was — the letters all went to his friend Georg Spalatin, who was the chancellor for his prince Frederick the Wise. Spalatin then sent them on.

Soon Luther’s friends used the same channel to reply and to ask advice as to how to proceed in his absence. The letter where Luther writes — in Latin — “sin boldly” was penned August 1st, 1521. In it, Luther addresses the questions of whether monks should be held to their monastic vows and whether priests should be allowed to marry. Luther criticized these vows — among other things — as man-made laws. That these were to be valued more highly than God’s Word was a false commandment. To violate them was not a sin but an imaginary sin.

Serious Christians, such as Luther himself, had tortured themselves trying to observe such traditions. They felt great burdens of guilt for breaking these. Apparently, Philip Melanchthon and Luther’s allies couldn’t decide whether to set these aside. Luther’s advice was not to worry about these so-called sins. Be bold to just live your lives, but believe in Christ, who forgives sins even more boldly.

In this sinful world, Christians will never be free of sin. As another so-called Luther quote (this one he didn’t likely say) goes: “the Old Adam is a good swimmer.” He is drowning in baptism, but doesn’t give up without a good fight! As Christians, we need to remember to look to Jesus. He bore all our real sins to the cross. There he paid the full price due for our sin and the sins it performs and removes them forever. In Christ, we die to rise again on the last day without sin.

So, Luther’s advice to Melanchthon is good. Here is how he put it: “If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. It suffices that through God’s glory, we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner.”