What Does This Mean?

Jesus’s First Miracle: Water and Wine

Encore Post: “Our Lord blessed and honored marriage with his presence and first miracle at Cana in Galilee” begins the traditional wedding service in most Lutheran churches. Weddings are very joyful occasions. Everyone dresses their best. There is music, dancing and feasting. The bride and groom are excited because their life together will soon begin. Weddings today are very different today than they were during the earthly life of Jesus.

Weddings were seven days long, most of it eating, drinking, dancing, reciting wedding poetry and eating. On the first day, the bride and her wedding party would walk from her house to her groom’s house. They would say their vows in his house or under a tent that stood for the house. Then the party would begin.

Hospitality was very important at weddings. The groom would have to be sure there was plenty to eat and drink. At the wedding of Cana, Jesus saved the couple a lot of embarrassment. More than that, He showed His mother and His disciples that He was God and cared for people in their everyday lives. The church believes the fact that Jesus attended this wedding and blessed all marriages by making wine for the celebration.

Marriage is important, not only as the foundation of the family, but as a picture of the relationship between Christ and the Church. A beloved hymn sums it up well: “from heaven he came and sought her, to be his holy bride. With his own blood he bought her and for her life he died.” Marriage pictures for Christ’s self-sacrificing love for us and our response to his love. For this reason, what God has put together, let no one separate.

C. F. W. Walther Publishes Der Lutheraner

Lutheranism in America was in disarray one hundred seventy-five years ago. That surprised few people at the time. The Lutheran Confessions were nearly forgotten under the twin theologies of rationalism and pietism. Rationalism insisted that the supernatural is not real, only things which can be observed with the senses are real. It downplayed the role of God in the world and sought to promote morality. Pietism focused on a personal relationship with Jesus, a true conversion to Christian faith, a focus on heart religion and promoted strict religious standards. Both turned sacraments into symbols and downplayed doctrine. Eastern Lutheran Churches by and large sought to be “American” Lutherans, adopting the theology and practices of the revivalist religion of the frontier.

Beginning in the early 1840s, the stream of German immigrants turned into a flood. American Lutheran Churches had transitioned to English language and did not have more than a few pastors that could care for them. Very few pastors came with the immigrants. Several denominations, such as the Methodist, sought to fill the gap by evangelizing them.

Friedrich Wyneken had just returned from a successful trip to recruit pastors for the American frontier. They began almost immediately to make their way across the Atlantic. Having become committed to return to Confessional Lutheran theology and to bring his congregations along with him, he found himself in an extended conflict with people committed to pietist practice.

In Germany, Wilhelm Löhe and his friends began to raise money and recruit candidates for pastoral ministry in America. He tried to form a relationship with the existing Ohio Synod and its seminary in Columbus, Ohio, which was not going well. Full of energy, he also became convinced to form a Christian community that would establish a colony in Michigan to witness to the Chippewa Indians. The effort resulted in the Franconian colonies of the Saginaw Valley, the best known being Frankenmuth.

In Perry County Missouri and St. Louis, a confessional Saxon Lutheran Utopian community emerged from a harrowing sexual abuse scandal, which resulted in the expulsion of the charismatic bishop Martin Stephan. Under the leadership of C. F. W. Walther, they had begun to heal and wondered if they were alone as confessional Lutherans in America.

At the considerable financial sacrifice of Walther’s Trinity Congregation in St. Louis, Walther began to publish a newspaper, Der Lutheraner (The Lutheran) on September 7, 1844. The hope was to explain Lutheran theology to the German American immigrants in the United States. The paper succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Der Lutheraner would help scattered Lutherans organize a new fellowship — a synod — of confessional churches– now known as the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.

Sunday School #29: God made the World

“Tell me a story!” a young child asks. You get a pile of books and you read one or another classics to them. A good story draws you in and makes you a part of the action. When we think of stories, we often assume they are fiction. Yet some of the best stories are true. Great newspaper reporters call their articles, “stories” that are not only gripping but true.

In most cultures, the most told stories tell you how the world was made, what went wrong with it and what will happen to make it better. These are called “salvation histories.” The Bible is a salvation history and today’s lesson starts at the very beginning. How did God make the world?

There are two stories about creation in the beginning of Bible. The first one is an overview of how God made the world and everything in it. The second one tells the story of how God made Adam and Eve.

The first story has a rhythm to it. It begins when there was nothing at all but God. When God speaks, it happens. The world was made because when he spoke, something was made. Every day of creation, we hear that “God said let… and it was so” and “God saw that it was good.” Every day ends: “evening and morning was the ___ day.” God made everything in a very orderly fashion. First He made the land, sea and sky. Then He filled it with living creatures. On the sixth day, He made men and women in His own image. When God had finished creation, He called it very good.

The world is far from very good today. The sin of Adam and Eve brought sin, suffering, grief and death into the world. Yet the beauty and wonder of creation is still there. One day Jesus will return and take away this curse once and for all. Then we all will see the work God has done and say with Him, it is very good.

Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, Lost Son

Pharisees were the good people. They studied God’s word constantly. The worshiped every sabbath in synagogues. They worked hard to keep every commandment, including pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the festivals, they made every sacrifice without fail. They even kept good company, avoiding people who didn’t take keeping the law as seriously as they did. They called those people, “sinners.” They didn’t need to be found. They were never lost in the first place. They didn’t take kindly to Jesus associating with the lost — tax collectors (one of those was even his disciple), prostitutes and sinners. Jesus doesn’t often have very nice things to say to them. But on the day St. Luke talks about in chapter 15, he is kind to them and tries gentle persuasion instead.

The lost parables are perhaps the most beloved of all of Jesus’ stories — the Shepherd who leaves Ninety-Nine sheep to find one lost sheep, the woman who sweeps out the house to find one lost coin (OK — it was a Denarii and worth a day’s wage (you’d sweep out the house if you lost one) and the Prodigal or Lost Son. Such stories almost always make just one point and so it is with these. But that point is not what you might think. These stories are not about the lost, or the one looking for them. It is about those in heaven that rejoice, the angels in heaven that sing with joy and the older brother.

While we were once lost and now found, we are not the lost of the parables. We were found long ago. It is not strictly about our Lord Jesus. He came to seek and to save the lost, suffering and dying for our sins and for forgiveness. The place of a hired worker won’t do. From heaven he came and sought us, to be his holy bride, with his own blood he bought us and for our life he died. He washed us with water and the word and presents us spotless. We are already in his house when he brings his lost ones home. He wants us to rejoice when he finds them.

There is room in the kingdom for more. They may not dress the way we do, lived life recklessly, ignoring the law of God and man. They may have had other things to do, thinking they didn’t have time for church. They may even be from other cultures, languages and lands. Yet the Father’s words call us to see them as the Father wants his older son to see his young brother: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.”

God’s Gift of Science

Our modern world is filled with many wonders. Machines make the chores of everyday life easy to manage. The speed us from one place to another. The make our homes and work places cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The feed us with a wide variety of foods, conquer diseases the killed whole populations in the past. All of these blessings God has given us in large part through a powerful technique known as science. One of the reasons we very much want to have harmony between science, opinions based on it and our faith is that we enjoy these wonders.

Human thought, reasoning, logic and its fruits are gifts from God. When we use them to serve God and each other, they are in harmony with our faith. Theologians call this use the ministerial use of reason. Yet often, as did our first parents, Adam and Eve, (Genesis 3) we decide that we know better than God what is best, right and true. We buy Satan’s lies and act on what we think we should do, directly disobeying God. Like the ancient people of Babylon, we use technology to make a name for ourselves. (Genesis 11) Theologians call this the magisterial use of reason. As you might imagine, this puts us in direct conflict with God and with our faith.

When it comes to using science as our servant and not our master, it helps to understand that it, like all our knowledge, has its limits. To begin with, it helps to know what science is. Science is, at its basic nature, is a method of observation. While not directly saying that supernatural things are not real, science, for the most part, sets them aside. It concentrates on what we can see, touch, taste, hear and smell, and using instruments that extend our senses, what we can measure and record. It seeks to create conditions that can be controlled and investigated in these ways and that can be repeated over and over again. When it sees the same results happen over and over again, it explains why it thinks this is so. As long as these experiments continue to produce effect that fit the theory, it accepts them as true.

So, strictly speaking, science really can’t learn about creation. By definition, you can’t repeat the beginning of all things. No one today can be at the time when humans first walked on earth. No one can observe it, measure it and record it. So, then, theories of our origins have no data support them. We need someone who was there. That someone, of course, is God.

God Saw That it was Good — Very Good!

For six days, God spoke and the universe came to be. At the end of each day, he looked at what he made and saw it was good. On the sixth day, the persons of the Holy Trinity decided to do something completely different. They made humanity — male and female — in the image of God — perfectly holy. Then he finished his work, saw all that he had made. It was good — very good.

Christians believe God made the world this way for a very simple reason. We believe that the Bible is God’s Word and he was the only one present at creation. For us, this is a first person observation, not just a story. The way God inspired Moses to write the first words of Genesis is very simple, yet majestic Hebrew. Nearly every word and the way they are assembled are learned in the first week or two of studying the language. While not poetry, it is as close to it as Hebrew prose gets.

Hebrew writers weave their prose and poetry using repetition, an “echo” effect, saying the same thing multiple times with differing words, telling stories multiple times while changing up details with each telling and similar techniques. Genesis One sounds almost like a litany in effect.

In the telling of each day’s work, Moses says, “and God said, let there be… and there was… he saw that it was good… there was evening and there was morning, day…” The result is much like a litany used in formal worship. Hear the great mystery of God’s creative work is said simply, so simply that a young child can understand it. And yet, because God is our creator, we never will fully understand it. We wonder, believe him and praise God for his wondrous world.

Other views of creation, some based upon scientific study disagree with this account. Sadly, they cannot be put together. In another post, we will examine why and why that is OK.

Creation out of Nothing

A common game we play with children doesn’t have a name, but we can call it, “Where did it come from?” For example, we might ask where do eggs come from? A young child will say, the store. Where did the store get it, we ask. From truck, to farm to chicken we go. When we ask where did the chicken get the eggs? We get giggles. What we are teaching is that everything has a cause. The principle is called “cause and effect.” But where does that chain begin? Or end? Human logic breaks down at this puzzle. Which came first: the chicken or the egg? That riddle goes. Christians have an answer to the question: God!

In theology, we call God the First Cause or the Prime Mover. It was first clearly explained by Thomas Aquinas, a theologian of the Middle Ages. He began with Aristotle’s idea that the Universe doesn’t explain itself. There must be Someone that got the chain of cause and effect started. Scripture answers the question of who that it is when it tells us — God created the Heavens and Earth. (Genesis 1:1) The word Moses used for “created” (בָּרָא=bara’) is used only for this act of God. What did he use to make all things? Nothing at all. God’s work was creatio ex nihilo — creation out of nothing.

So, far, so good. Yet logically it doesn’t make sense. Logic asks: “but where did God come from?” The most common answer from non-Christian philosophers is to explain where the creator god comes from or do not believe in a god at all. Everything has always been an eternal chain of cause and effects. Mormons answer it by claiming God the Father is really a flesh and blood man who has grown to be a god. He has a father, who, in turn, has a father and so on. Others maintain that creation was formed from God’s spirit itself or from the eternal material universe. Modern philosophers, beginning with scientific theories, do not answer the question at all.

Some well-meaning Christians, who want to accept creation theories based on science, have tried to harmonize them with the truths of Scripture. What they fail to realize is that the two ideas do not fit together. To take up a theory that has no first cause destroys the teachings that God is the creator, that he is necessary to hold it all together and that he can save us. This is why the Church confesses that God created the world out of nothing at all.

Creator of Heaven and Earth

“In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” are the first words in the Bible. “I believe in God the Father almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth …” we confess in our creeds. At the heart and center of all we believe is the fact that God made the universe — including us. This teaching is the foundation of everything else that we believe. The whole structure of Christian faith depends upon it, from the authority of God’s word to the doctrine of salvation by grace. Because God is the Creator and he loves us, we can live at peace. Nothing can harm us eternally because He protects us. If he is not the Creator, than we are on our own in the face of evil.

Like much of the Christian Faith, the conviction that God is the Creator of all things is a axiom — an idea that is assumed to be true. Strictly speaking, we do not try to prove that the God of Holy Scripture is the Creator. We take God’s word for it. We might argue from the evidence of the orderliness of the universe that a Creator exists, but we cannot use the evidence in the material world to identify his as the God we trust.

Some non-Christians will argue that this faith is a weakness. It is not based upon observation of the physical world and logical explanations of the data found there. (In other words, we do not use science to prove it) Yet everyone who tries to explain how the world came to be also use axioms. For example, those who trust scientific theories assume: that the world is an orderly place, that experiments repeated in precisely the same way over and over again will respond with more or less the same results. It assumes that nothing that cannot be seen, touched, tasted, smelled or heard is real.

Everyone, then, relies on beliefs that they conclude explain the world. While we may disagree with each other, discussion requires a certain amount of respect for those with very different faiths,

Friedrich Wyneken’s Indiana Ministry

Settling down to serve St. Paul’s Lutheran Church of Fort Wayne and Zion Lutheran Church of Decatur (Nicknamed “Friedheim”) in Northeast Indiana did not stop Friedrich Wyneken, full of zeal, from preaching, teaching and organizing congregations whenever he had the time. He visit other settlements on weekdays and preached in them. The circuit rider felt he could not organize these stations into congregations because mostly they lacked either the sufficient knowledge of the faith or piety (at the time, Friedrich was a pietist — but that’s another story!) and because he simply could not properly care for them.

It broke his heart to have to ignore the many pleas to come and prepare children for confirmation and to meet many desperate needs. In September of 1839, one hundred and eighty years ago, the very frustrated circuit rider reported to Friedrich Schmidt of Pittsburgh that at least five preaching stations lay within forty miles of Fort Wayne. These he visited more or less regularly. In addition, he planned to make at least two larger trips a year to do what he could throughout the region. He could see whole villages sinking back into paganism. He could only promise to return from time to time and tell them of his many letters to Germany, begging for help. On his longer trips, sometimes four to six weeks from home, Wyneken had to depart settlement after settlement, sick with the knowledge that not even a survey missionary would minister in these places for the next few years.

In January of 1840, the circuit rider reported to the American Home Missionary Society that he served two stations beyond his parishes on a regular basis, one nineteen miles and the other thirty miles distant. Sometime during 1840, Wyneken set out for Chicago to help Lutherans who had asked for his help. Weather prevented him from traveling further than Elkhart, where he ministered for a time before returning to Fort Wayne. In 1841, Wyneken reported to his friend Friedrich Schmidt that he so wanted to bring the joy of the Easter season to settlements to his west that he traveled so often that he couldn’t even correspond until he returned to his little Fort Wayne “Elijah’s Room.”

In addition to the congregations and places documented above, the oral traditions in the Northeast corner of Indiana credit Wyneken with ministering at preaching stations that would one day become congregations throughout Allen and Adams Counties, Avilla, Bremen, Corunna, Elkhart, Huntington, Kendallville, Mishawaka and South Whitley in Indiana and Wilshire (“Schumm”) and Wapakoneta, Ohio.

Doctor Luther Publishes his Galatians Lectures

As a professor of theology at Wittenberg University, Luther lectured on the Letter of St. Paul to the Galatians from October of 1516 to March of 1517. With the help of his young friend Philip Melanchthon, working from student notes of the lectures, Luther began to convert the lectures into a proper commentary in March of 1519. Five Hundred years ago this month, Luther’s first commentary on Galatians was published.

The work was very popular. Unlike other commentaries of the time, Luther did not make much use of the four-fold method of understanding Scripture. He tried to determine the meaning intended by St. Paul in each passage. Rather than be content with working from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate generally used by the church, he returned to the original Greek. Like a sermon, he applied the text to the church of the day, not being especially kind to his theological opponents. Yet immediately Luther expressed his dissatisfaction with the work. Over the next decade, Luther would revise the commentary several times. When he lectured on Galatians in 1531, he started from scratch. The result was one of his best works, the Galatians Commentary of 1535.

Luther’s greatest insight in both commentaries have to do with reading the words of the letter with Christ as focus of its message. All of Scripture is about Christ, his work to redeem us by his sufferings and death on the cross. By our own works we cannot save ourselves because we are sinners and deserve damnation. But by God’s grace for the sake of Christ, we are forgiven our sins and granted salvation. With this commentary, Luther came closer to fully understanding the Gospel. Within a few short months, he would write three works in which he fully explains Lutheran theology for the first time.