The Lutheran Review

A Yellow Balloon on the Ceiling

 

A yellow balloon rests on the ceiling of Immanuel Lutheran Chapel.  I put it there, but credit Becky with the idea.

Thursday is Ascension Day which remembers the awesome sight of Jesus ascending to the right hand of the Father.  There is also a theme of waiting running through the Day.

Sunday I stood before the children holding a yellow helium filled latex balloon.  “How can I get this balloon to go up?” I asked.  “Let go of it,” Hannah said.  So I let go and it rose to the ceiling of the sanctuary.

I introduced Ascension Day, saying that when Jesus ascended his disciples had to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.  We also have to wait for Jesus to return.

“When will that balloon come down?” I asked.  Elisha suggested that we could shoot needles at it.  “You wouldn’t to shoot needles of Jesus, would you?” I asked in return.  Well, no they wouldn’t want to do that.  “So we are just going to have to wait.  It may be up there next Sunday. We don’t know when it will come down, just like we don’t know when Jesus will return.  Not even Jesus knows that.  One day the Father will say, ‘It’s time’ and then Jesus will come.”

In the first lesson Paul had to wait.  He was trying to go north into Bithynia along the southern shores of the Black Sea, but the Holy Spirit prevented them.  It must have been a frustrating time as they continued west to Troas on the eastern shores of the Aegean Sea.  There, one night the Holy Spirit gave Paul a vision of a man from Macedonia beckoning him to come and help them.  Paul and his companions cross the Aegean and came to the banks of a river near Philippi, where they found some women worshipping and started a Christian Church.

Sometimes we have to wait until the Holy Spirit reveals where he wants us to go, and it may be to an entirely new, unexpected and even unwelcome direction.

When will the balloon come down?  When is Jesus returning?  Where will the Holy Spirit lead me next?  Those are the questions that still await an answer.    

Don't Fall out of the Pulpit

Chris, our fieldworker preached this morning.  After seminary students complete their first course in Homilectics, they are supposed to preach in their field work church.  So this was Chris's morning.  When I was at Holy Cross in Collinsville, Il. with its pulpit that was reached by several steps, I told the fieldworkers that if they didn't fall out of the pulpit, I and the congregation would be satisfied.

That wasn't the fear with Chris since he came to the seminary with time spent at Boston University School of Theology and a year at a Methodist Seminary.  I had had him preach three previous times already.

However, today, May 5 is also the day to commemorate Frederick the Wise, the protector of Martin Luther.

Frederick the Wise

 

Prince Frederick needed to be wise in his position as Elector of Saxony.  An elector voted on who would become the next Holy Roman Emperor.  The title was first created by Charlemagne in the 9^th century.  By the 16^th century the title Emperor held little more than prestige and might determine who would be the most influential family in Europe.  The two leading candidates were Charles I of Spain and Francis I of France.  The papacy also had an interest in who was elected emperor.  Since the pope feared the rising power of France, he supported Frederick the Wise.  However, Frederick turned down the candidacy because he realized his limitations. 

Frederick was also interested in maintaining a measure of freedom and power in the face of pressures from Rome.  The Germans resented their money going to Rome to rebuild that city.  Though he never met Luther personally, when Luther asked for Frederick’s protection, he granted it.

Frederick was born in Torgau in 1463.  He was elector of Saxony from 1486 to 1525. 

We might argue that had it not been for Frederick, there might not have been a Lutheran  Reformation.  In 1518 he refused to send Luther to Rome for a heresy trial.  John Hus, a hundred years earlier, had not had such protection and was executed when he traveled to Rome at the bidding of the pope.  Again when Emperor Charles V declared Luther to be an outlaw at the Diet of Worms in 1521 Frederick provided a sanctuary for Luther at Wartburg Castle.

He allowed Communion under 2 kinds (both bread and wine) in his territory in 1521-22.  A year later he abandoned the veneration of relics.  Most of his lands became Lutheran.  For political reasons he did not declare either in favor of or in opposition to the Reformation.  On his deathbed he did take Communion involving both the bread and the wine – a clear declaration of his agreement with the confession of the evangelical faith.      

 In 1520 he wrote a letter to his brother, Duke John, that accompanied a book by Martin Luther.  He writes that in this book, “You will find many wonderful things.  God Almighty, grant that it turn out well, for truly things are coming to light which many people conceal. …I am informed that the cardinals and Romanists with their followers are taking counsel against Dr. Luther to put him under the ban of the Empire and persecute him to the uttermost.  But there are many other people who wish him well.  God grant graciously that it be for our good.”

 

 

Friedrich Wyneken, Pastor and Missionary

 

“Forgiveness of sin surrounds you like the air; yes, it is spread out around you like the sky.  He is faithful, the one who has called you.  He will do it for you.  You just hold on to His Word and Sacrament.”

Wyneken was one of the founding fathers of the LCMS.  Born in Germany in 1810, he came to Baltimore in 1838 and shortly thereafter was called to congregations in the Fort Wayne Indiana area.  Supported by Wm Loehe’s mission society he served as a traveling missionary to Native American’s in Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan.  On a speaking trip to Germany he motivated young men like Friedrich Lochner to come to America.  Lochner was the first pastor in Pleasant Ridge and Collinsville, IL.

Wyneken founded Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne in 1846, together with Loehe and C. Sihler.  He served as the second president of the LCMS during a period of great growth (1850-1864).

The first lesson (Acts 16:9-16) for the Sixth Sunday of Easter reminds us that God uses the urging of the Holy Spirit to break new ground for the gospel. In verses 6-7, that Paul had intended to travel north into the province of Asia and up to Bithynia which would have taken him to the southern shores of the Black Sea.  However, the Holy Spirit prevented them from going.  Was it on account of hostility or illness, we aren’t told?  Instead, they continue westward to Troas on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea.  In Troas, Paul had a vision of a man from Macedonia beckoning him to come and help the people in northern Greece.

The Holy Spirit continues to the church and you and me individually into the ways He would have us go.  A fitting prayer is found in psalm 67, “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, THAT your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.”

 

 

 

 

Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria

 

 Athanasius is a most appropriate person to remember during the Easter season.  Born in 296 he died on May 2, 373.  His name means “deathless one,” though as one biography puts it,  "He lived in threat of his life because of his theological stand.  Because of his defense of the divinity of Christ, he was considered a trouble maker and was exiled five different times."

His life span includes the Council of Nicea in 325, where the first draft of the Nicene Creed was developed.  Athanasius stood strong against the Arians who believed that the son of God was less than the heavenly Father.  (That’s an over simplification of the controversy).

He writes in “On the Incarnation.”

“For God has not only made us out of nothing; but he gave us freely, by the grace of the Word, a life in correspondence with God.  But men, having rejected things eternal, and, by counsel of the devil, turned to the things of corruption, became the cause of their own corruption in death.”

“The word disguised himself by appearing in a body, that he might, as man, transfer men to himself, and…men seeing him thenceforth as a man, persuade them by the works he did that he is not man only, but also God, and the Word and wisdom of the true God.”

“…Nor while present in the body, was he absent elsewhere; nor, while he moved the body, was the universe left void of his working and providence… he rather contained all things in himself.”

Athanasius’ writing has inspired one of the finest expressions of prayer which is used in the prayer of the Day for the first Sunday after Christmas.

O God, our Maker and Redeemer, You wonderfully created us and in the incarnation of Your Son yet more wondrously restored our human nature.  Grant that we may ever be alive in Him who made Himself to be like us; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

It should also be noted that though he did not write the Athanasian Creed, it confesses the faith he championed.  

Baptism Brilliance

 

It’s May 2^nd, a foot or more of snow has fallen on the Upper Midwest.  In St. Louis are getting the southern portion of the storm with several inches of rain possible.  However, the precip. is coming down I’m led to share some thoughts on Baptism from fourth century preacher and Bishop, John Chrysostom.

“As soon as they come forth from those sacred waters, all who are present embrace them, greet them, kiss them, rejoice with them, and congratulate them, because those who were heretofore slaves and captives have suddenly become free people and children and have been invited to the royal table.  For straightway after they come up from the waters, they are led to the awesome table heavy laden with countless favors, where they taste of the Master’s body and blood, and become a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit.  Since they have .put on Christ himself, wherever they go they are like angels on earth, rivaling the brilliance of the rays of the sun.”

Philip and James, Apostles

 

We learn about Philip in the Gospel of John.  In 1:43-51 Jesus found Philip and invited/commanded him to follow.  Philip was from Bethsaida on the northern tip of the Sea of Galilee, the home town of Andrew and Peter.  Philip immediately establishes a model for all disciples of Jesus.  He told Nathaniel.  He invited the reluctant Nathaniel to “Come and see,” which in John’s gospel means, come and believe. Later >Peter will say, “To whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life.  Jesus not only has the word but he is the Word.  He does signs which points to him as the Messiah.

 When Jesus and the disciples faced a crowd of hungry people, (6:5) Jesus asks Philip where to buy bread for 5,000 people. Philip doesn’t have a clue, because 6 months wages would buy only enough for each to get a crumb.

 Following Jesus’ Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem, some Greeks wanted to see Jesus, so Philip brought them to Jesus.  On Maundy Thursday, Philip asked Jesus to show them the Father and they will be satisfied.  Of course, that gave Jesus an opportunity to tell the disciples that whoever has seen him has seen the Father.  But it was Philip who ended up holding a bible Class in an Ethiopian’s chariot along the Gaza road.  After he taught the man everything he knew he baptized the Ethiopian

James is the son of Alphaeus to distinguish him from James the brother of John and son of Zebedee.  He is also called “the younger.”  His mother was named Mary and was among the women who had followed and ministered to Jesus throughout his ministry.  They were among the women looking on from a distance at Jesus crucifixion.

Philip and James are commemorated on the same day because the remains of the two saints were placed in the Church of the Apostles in Rome on this day in 561.

Hymn Stanza:

518 LSB By all Your Saints in Warfare

We praise You, Lord, for Philip,

Blest guide to Greek and Jew,

And for young James the faithful,

Who heard and followed You.

O grant us grace to know You,

The way, the truth, the life,

To wrestle with temptation,

To triumph in the strife.        

Catherine of Siena

 

Because of sin

You would not enter into your glory

In the way your truth had intended.

Your garden was locked up,

And so we could not receive your fruits.

This is why you made the Word,

Your only begotten Son,

A gatekeeper.

O gentle gatekeeper!

O humble lamb!

You are the gardener,

And once you have opened the gate of the heavenly

Garden,

Paradise,

You offer us the flowers

And the fruits

Of the eternal Godhead.

Catherine of Siena lived from 1347 to 1380.  She was a member of the order of Preachers (Dominicans), and she was the first woman in the Roman Catholic Church to receive the title Doctor of the Church.  Her gift of mysticism extended back into her childhood.  She was the 23^rd of 25 children and her parents were dismayed at their unusual daughter.   They wanted her to be like other children.  As an adult she worked to alleviate the suffering of the poor and imprisoned.  She was concerned for the conversion of sinners.  She lived during the time of the “Babylonian Captivity” when the popes resided in Avignon.  She urged the pope to return to Rome,  ”Come, and you will see the wolves become sheep…Come like the lamb who, unarmed, lays low his enemies, making use of the arms of love…come with the cross in your hand like a gentle lamb.” 

 

Sing a New Song

The sermon is based on the Old Tstament lesson for Cantate Sunday in the One Year Series.

Easter 5, 2013 Isaiah 12:1-6, Ps. 98:1-2

“Oh, sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things!” Those words of the Introit leave little wonder why Psalm 98 is used at Christmas as we sing “Joy to the world the Lord has come, let earth receive her king.”  Little wonder the Psalm is the basis for the Easter hymn, “Jesus Christ, is ris’n today, Alleluia!”  The Psalm then leads us to the marvelous thing God has done through Jesus’ cross, “His right hand and holy arm have worked salvation for Him!”  Whose right hand and holy arm could that be except our Lord, “who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven?” He was crucified, died and buried and on the third day rose from the dead.  So we come to our text for today confessing, “Though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me.”  When God turned his anger away from us He turned it loose on His own innocent Son, therefore, “The Lord God is my strength and he has become my salvation.”   “Praise to God” is the theme song God gives to our life.

            If only we could make our life sing according to the theme of life and salvation; but often we sing a song of pessimism in the face of God’s promise; as if God is not dwelling with us and in that promise tears are already being wiped away; and death is already dying, and mourning and crying and pain can’t even be compared with the glory that lies ahead.  Our life’s song too often is written by the plight of humanity and our interaction with one another, rather than Jesus promise that we will see him again and we will rejoice and no one will take our joy from us.  Even our self pity and simmering angers will be no more.

            As Christians we take sin seriously.  The failures of humanity are not merely disappointments, or dysfunctions.  They are part of the sickness of sin which afflicts us all.  We, who are redeemed, though, find a perverse enjoyment in seeing things go bad.  Now this isn’t an exclusive sin of God’s children.  All people seem to be like this.  It’s baseball season again. And when the manager brings in a “closer” who doesn’t seem to be able to close out the game, we take a certain enjoyment in telling the manager through our TV screen, “I told you so.”

When it comes to singing the song of God’s life sometimes we are tone deaf and don’t hear the music at all.  I wonder how many sermons we have heard about the love and forgiveness of Christ and our responsibility to do the same.  How hard it is to say, “I’m sorry” or “I forgive you.”  Could it be that we take sin too seriously, acting toward one another as if there is no forgiveness, as if Jesus death and resurrection was a complete waste of his life; as if we are functional pagans?  No wonder God gets angry with us.  But we are not living at the hand of blind fate.  We don’t have a capricious God.  We have a good and gracious God who gives long after we stop thanking Him or even thinking of Him.

Jesus encountered such tone deafness.  He said, and maybe he was talking to us, “How can I describe this generation?  They are like children sitting in the market-place and shouting at each other, ‘We danced for you and you would not dance.’ ‘We wept and wailed, and you would not mourn.’”  Jesus came and socialized with people.  John brought a message of doom and lived like a hermit.  They didn’t like either way of life.  What does God have to do for us before we will make our life one of joy and thanksgiving?  Die for us?  Jesus already took care of that.  Make us believe in Him?  The Holy Spirit leads us to faith.  Receive more material blessings? God has given more to us than to any other civilization in history.  As Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”  So let’s hear the wonderful symphony of God’s deliverance in Jesus Christ.

            The situation for our text is that the people of Israel are in exile.  Assyria has conquered their land and carried them into captivity.  The Israelites had stopped singing praises to God.  They became more concerned with the beat of life that neighboring nations lived to.  So God was teaching them that He was the choirmaster.  He held the music for the song of life and salvation, safety and security.  When we join our world today in its hopeless song of hope, it’s just as false as always.  The Israelites looked to protection from Egypt.  We place our security in treaties, technology and sophisticated weaponry.  However, God has written the lasting peace treaty.  God has defeated our real enemies, sin, death, and the devil with the mightiest of all weapons, His Son Jesus Christ.

            We are able to take comfort in God’s deliverance.  In fact, the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, comes to us as the comforter.  The road from deliverance from sin to eternal life is not easy.  It is strewn with much discord because sin, death and the devil are still operating in this world.  But with the Spirit with us, we need not fear.  The song we sing along the way can be the confident song that we will reach our destination safely.  Indeed, the more we count on the preservation of the Father, the deliverance of the Son, and the comfort and strength of the Spirit the more confident we become.  Because our confidence is not in ourselves, but in God.

            We have been baptized.  We in our faith are on the way to life with God.  The call of our text comes to us along the way to the new heaven and new earth.  Don’t walk in silence. Don’t worship in silence.  Don’t keep your faith a secret.  Rather “Praise the Lord,“ “Give thanks to the Lord.” “Cry out, shout aloud.”  But how?  How can my weak praise be heard amid the loud noise the world makes?  How can I a sinner who has enough trouble keeping my faith, be expected to let God’s praise pour out in stereophonic sound?

            You are not alone.  Besides the Holy Spirit, you have all your fellow Christians.  When a choir sings it takes practice.  Choirs don’t just grab music off the shelf and sing it as well as they do.  At first some of the notes are flat and others are missed altogether.  Yet slowly out of the disharmony comes beautiful music.  The singers catch on.  And when a difficult selection is learned and done well there is a sense of joy and satisfaction.  A looking forward to singing it again.  God turns to us in our blundering efforts at singing the song of joy and salvation.  He works with us through His Spirit.  Through faith He brings us into harmony with himself.  He gives us the faith to believe that in this chaotic and dissonant world, God still rules in harmony.  Our text compares God to a faithful and deep well of salvation into which we can dip and drink the water of life.

            “Sing unto the Lord a new song; for he has done marvelous things.”  The Lord has made known his salvation.  Let us strive to make our life a song of praise and thanksgiving to God.  Throw God’s praises around.  Let the world know that you worship our Lord Jesus Christ.  Depend on the Holy Spirit to comfort and strengthen when you are tempted to place hope and security in the world or in yourself.  Teach the song of life to others. 

              Sometimes married couples have a song they call, “our song.”  We are the Bride of Christ and God has written “our song.” It’s called “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.”  Praise the Lord for His lyrics.              

At the Center of the Earth

 

Lying on one of the orange shelves at the Concordia Seminary Library was a book was a book entitled “Wine and Bread” an excerpt from a larger work by Amalie “Photina” Rech, a German Benedictine sister who died in 1983.  (The orange shelves are for books that need to be reshelved by the staff.)

An old Jewish legend found its way into Christian tradition that the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden was a grapevine.  It was probably viewed as entwined on a wooden cross.  An unattended grape vine on my grandparents homestead grew into the branches of a tree and onto the roof of a nearby building.

The vine was viewed as an equal partner to the Tree of Life.  In Noah’s time, the flood uprooted the vine and swept it away from the center of the garden.  Eventually Noah found the vine and followed God’s instruction to replant it in its original location.  He planted it at the summit and center of the earth.

That same spot is identified as the center of lost paradise and the place where Adam was created, where he disobeyed God and where he was buried.  The rock of Golgotha (The skull) was also located there.  Also according to legend an angel placed a seed of the vine of death into the mouth of the now dead Adam, buried at spot.  In the fullness of time the cross of the Savior, Jesus, the Tree of Death would stand over the skull of Adam.  In Jesus the Tree of Death would be wondrously transformed into the Tree of Life.  The wood of the cross came from the tree in the Garden of Eden.

The blood of Christ flowed down like the juice of a crushed grape soaking into the soil that high Adam’s skull.  And there the first-born of the new vineyard later grew from the true vine-the wood of the cross.

  Thus according to the Apocalypse of Baruch, the bitterness of the cursed vines become sweet and the curse becomes a blessing.  The harvest is the blood of Christ.  As humanity was condemned by it, now humanity through and in Christ receives its call to enter Paradise.

The early church fathers then took these themes and attached them to Jesus the True Vine into whom Christians are grafted.  Thus when we take Holy Communion, we are drinking the fruit of the Vine whose death on the Tree of Death overcomes the need for us to drink to the dregs the fruit of our rebellion in Eden.

I will conclude with a quote from Augustine, “The Vine and the vines are one nature.  Because we cannot take on God’s nature, Jesus took on human nature, so that he him we too can be grafted onto the one true vine.

 

 

 

St. Mark

 

Martin Franzmann characterizes Mark’s Gospel as a “Gospel of action.”  Mark is a gospel of action indeed. Read the opening chapter of Mark and consider what Christmas would be like if we only had his gospel.

Jesus bursts on the scene in Mark fully grown.  “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.”  Mark does not record any conversation between John and Jesus.  Jesus comes up out of the water and immediately the heavens are ripped open.  The spirit descends as a dove.  A voice from heaven speaks directly to Jesus, “You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.”

 Before he can even catch his breath the Spirit drives him, not leads Jesus, but drives him into the desert.  Satan tempts him.  The wild animals keep him company and angels serve him.

John is arrested.  Jesus returns to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God.  He immediately calls his first disciples from their fishing.  “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  Those disciples had better be in good shape, because Jesus is taking them along on a marathon.  So frenetic is his pace that when he returns home his family is afraid he has lost his mind.  Jesus might be compared to someone who is in a manic state.

Throughout the gospel people are amazed.  “Who is this?” is a common question.  The unspoken answer is that this is God, who never slumbers nor sleeps.

Mark’s gospel ends so abruptly that later writers added what they thought was a more complete and satisfying ending.  16:8 is the original ending, “And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  We are left hanging on the resurrection.  The question arises for you and me, “What will we now do with this news that, “He is not here.  He has risen.”  After all, Mark’s account begins, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  His gospel makes a good beginning to recounting the good news of the Son of God.  We are the continuation.

So what are you sitting around reading this on your computer?  Get up and get busy.  You are now the “Gospel of Action.”