Commemoration of J. K. Wilhelm Loehe, Pastor

Although he never left Germany, Johann Konrad Wilhelm Loehe, born in Fuerth in 1808, had a profound impact on the development of Lutheranism in North America. Serving as pastor in the Bavarian village of Neuendettelsau, he recognized the need for workers in developing lands and assisted in training emergency helpers to be sent as missionary pastors to North America, Brazil, and Australia. A number of the men he sent to the United States became founders of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Through his financial support, a theological school was established in Fort Wayne, Ind., and a teachers' institute in Saginaw, Mich. Loehe was known for his confessional integrity and his interest in liturgy and catechetics. His devotion to works of Christian charity led to the establishment of a deaconess training house and homes for the aged. [Commission on Worship of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod]

Collect of the Day

Most glorious Trinity, in Your mercy we commit to You this day our bodies and souls, all our ways and going, all our deeds and purposes, We pray You, so open our hearts and mouths that we may praise Your name, which above all names is holy. And since You have created for us the praise of Your holy name, grant that our lives may be for Your honor and that we may serve You in love and fear; for You, O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, live and reign, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Circumcision and Name of Jesus

Already on the eighth day of Jesus’ life, His destiny of atonement is revealed in His name and in His circumcision. At that moment, His blood is first shed and Jesus receives the name given to Him by the angel: “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). In the circumcision of Jesus, all people are circumcised once and for all, because He represents all humanity. In the Old Testament, for the believers who looked to God’s promise to be fulfilled in the Messiah, the benefits of circumcision included the forgiveness of sins, justification, and incorporation into the people of God. In the New Testament, St. Paul speaks of its counterpart, Holy Baptism, as a “circumcision made without hands” and as “the circumcision of Christ” (Colossians 2:11). [Commission on Worship of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod]

Collect of the Day

Lord God, You made Your beloved Son, our Savior, subject to the Law and caused Him to shed His blood on our behalf. Grant us the true circumcision of the Spirit that our hearts may be made pure from all sins; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Created for Purpose

Sunday after Christmas

December 30, 2012

Luke 2:33–40

You have some things in common with Jesus. You have a purpose. He did as well. You were born. He was as well. Unless He returns in glory first, you will die some day. Jesus died as well. You will be raised on the Last Day. He was raised from His tomb.

But there are important differences. You are a human being. While Jesus became a human being, He is God. You are sinful. Jesus is holy. You were created. Jesus, as Simeon says in the Gospel reading for today, was appointed.

It’s in this last difference that you meet up with Jesus in the first similarity you have with Him. You were created for purpose. He was appointed for purpose. The similarity here is not just that you have purpose even as your Lord has purpose. You have purpose because He carried out His purpose. That’s why He carried out His purpose, because He created you for purpose. He called you to eternal life so He brought eternal life to you by carrying out the purpose for which He was sent.

Simeon alluded to this: “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” The cross has since become the chief sign of Christianity. It is nearly universally recognizable as the symbol for Christianity. So when Simeon pointed to a sign off in the distance in which people would oppose it, we see how extraordinary it is that Jesus carried out His purpose for which He was appointed.

It is all love and mercy toward you. You were created for purpose and He accomplished what was necessary for you to carry out your purpose. The Collect gives guidance here. First there is listening to God. Then there is doing what He has called and given you to do. You were created for purpose. This is what we prayed in the Collect: “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.”

You were created for purpose, but the Fall changed all that. In Romans 5:12 Paul says that “just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” You have veered away from you purpose to which God has called you by your sin. You have rejected His purpose for you by sinning against Him. In the Collect we prayed that just as God has created us for purpose, He has “wondrously restored our human nature.” How He has done this is “in the incarnation of [His] Son.” Our prayer is that He “grant that we may ever be alive in Him who made Himself to be like us.”

He became like you in all respects except for your sin. He took on human flesh but not sinful nature. On the cross He took on Himself all of your sin. This is the purpose for which He was appointed. It is the thing that gives you a re-creation. You are created anew for purpose. This purpose is “that [you] may ever be alive in Him.”

The events after Jesus’ birth are revealing as to what it means in the Collect praying our God to grant “that we may ever be alive in Him.” When Simeon talked of Jesus being appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed, so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed, we are shown how the Law and Gospel do their work. It is clear from the way Luke and the other Gospel writers present the coming of Jesus that He came for the Gospel. He came to bring salvation. He came to bring life.

What this means is that you first must die. When the thoughts of your heart are revealed you are exposed. You are seen for what you are. This is why Jesus came. He knows what is in your heart. At the cross every heart is exposed. Every person is shown for who they are. You are sinful from birth. Your life is one in which you daily live in your sinful flesh. You fall short every day.

This is the work of the Law, and Jesus does not come except for the Law having done its work. He must come with His sword of the Law to pierce you through, otherwise you will die in your sin. When you are pierced through by the Law you are called to repentance. You still die, but you don’t die in your sin. You die to it. Your sinful nature is drowned, crucified, slain in Baptism. When Simeon had spoken his wonderful words of his eyes having seen salvation because he now held the infant Jesus in his arms, Luke says that “his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him.” When an infant is Baptized we, too, ought to marvel at what is said about that little baby. “I Baptize you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” That baby is joined with Christ in His death and resurrection, the baby’s little life drowned to sin and raised to new life. That is something truly to marvel at.

And so along with the piercing of the Law He brings His precious sweet Gospel. This is, after all, the purpose for which He came! It is what He was appointed for. To bring salvation. To bring forgiveness and life. Even there in the temple when Simeon and Anna were speaking of His glory and His grace, Jesus was in the very act of bringing about salvation. It all culminated in the cross and the empty tomb. But it wasn’t just death and resurrection, it was an entire life, joining our human flesh, fulfilling the holy will and Law of God, bringing about restoration to fallen humanity, and ultimately, taking upon Himself the sin and guilt of fallen humanity.

All of that is the basis for the wonderful prayer we prayed, that our God “grant that we may ever be alive in Him who made Himself to be like us.” You were created for purpose. You were restored in the incarnation of His Son. You now live out this purpose. How? You are ever alive in Him. The Church down through the ages gives us great wisdom. There’s certainly freedom to pray from your heart. There’s also an immense blessing in going back to these prayers, these brief Collects, and being shown the rich wisdom the Church has drawn from the Scriptures in handing down these prayers to us.

Yes, you do good works. Yes, you serve others. Yes, you think and calm down before reacting in anger. Yes, you love and cherish those God has given you to take care of. Yes, you do all of these things and you beat down your sinful flesh instead of giving into it. All of this is good, right, and salutary. It’s also good to be reminded of it now and then; perhaps often. It’s good to be exhorted to these things. And so here you have.

Now hear the wisdom of the Collect of the Day. You don’t just do things. You don’t just strive to carry out your purpose. You don’t even simply try to get better and better. You pray your gracious God to grant you to ever be alive in your Lord, He who made Himself to be like us. This is your purpose! To be alive in Christ! You were crucified to your sinful flesh so that you could be raised to new life in Him. Live in that new life! Don’t just do stuff, live according to your purpose, which your Lord Himself has given you.

This is why you always go back to you Baptism. It’s why you need to partake of the Lord’s Supper often. It’s why you continue to hear the Gospel proclaimed to you. It’s why you confess your sins and receive Absolution of those sins. Without these you will fall back into your sinful flesh. You will be living in death. Your new life in Christ is something you live—He has given you new life—but it’s not something you sustain. The Means of Grace do that. The Gospel and the Sacraments, the very life-giving means He uses, are what brings you continually to new life from your sin.

Paul beautifully brings this out in a tightly-wrapped presentation in the Epistle reading, saying that we were “enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”

You were created for purpose. You were redeemed in order to be restored to this purpose. You now live in it here on earth and will forever in heaven. Amen.

SDG

Sunday After Christmas

The Christmas season begins with the celebration of Christmas. It continues in the twelve days following that. The celebration of the birth of Jesus continues with the celebration of the infant Jesus and all that He has done for us and for our salvation. As everything in the Church Year delivers Christ to us and points us to the cross, so in the Christmas season we are drawn to the cross with the words of Simeon concerning the Christ Child. He was born and He lived a life that we could not, without sin, yet suffering for our sin so that we may have life.

Collect of the Day

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. Amen.

Why God Was Born

The Nativity of Our Lord

Christmas Day

December 25, 2012

John 1:1–14

In the Nicene Creed we declare that the Son of God was begotten, not made. Jesus is true God. He is eternal. He has never had a beginning. He was not created, He is the Creator.

When we think of Christmas we think of Jesus being born. We think of God coming to earth as a man, and that by being born as a baby.

But we usually don’t think in terms of God being born. Jesus was born. But God? How could God be born when God had no beginning; when He’s eternal? We all have been born. We’re not eternal. We all have had a beginning.

Jesus was born in the same we were. But He was begotten, not made. He was conceived, hanging out in Mary’s womb for nine months, and born—and yet was God through it all. God was born.

In the Gospel reading for Christmas Day the apostle John, inspired by the Holy Spirit, makes no attempt to explain this. Simply to declare it. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word was God; the Word became flesh. The eternal God was born.

God did not tell us this with a need to explain it to us. He has no compulsion to tell us how. But He delights in telling us why. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, and the Creed goes on to tell us why: He suffered, died, and was buried.

God was born in order to die. God became a man to deliver man. God who has no beginning entered the creation He brought into being. God was born.

And something we really can’t wrap our minds around, God died. This is why He came, why He was born at Christmas. In order to go to Jerusalem, where there was a cross. He was born in order to die.

And even as God has no beginning, He also has no end. He is eternal. So how could it be that on the cross God died? We say and hear all the time that Jesus died on the cross. Jesus is God and He is man. He was nailed to a cross and He died. His life was snuffed out of Him.

But if it is hard to grasp that God was born, how much harder that God died? When we deal with the things of God, the things He has given us in His Word, we are always a step away from going against what He has given us to believe. To believe that God was born could easily lead you into the error that God had a beginning. That Jesus is not true God.

That’s why we must not seek out how to understand it but simply rejoice in it. Jesus is God and He was born. Think in terms of how Mary and Joseph saw it on that night Mary gave birth to Jesus. Undoubtedly they knew that He was no ordinary boy. That they didn’t fully understand exactly what it meant that He was no ordinary boy is safe to assume.

But the point here is that Mary’s Son was born. She and Joseph were not marveling that God was born. But they were marveling at God’s grace. They were rejoicing in new life and that they were privileged to be part of it. Later on that night after a visit from some shepherds who told them amazing things about just who this little baby was, Mary pondered all these things in her heart.

Not long after that she would learn from Simeon that He would be pierced and no doubt Mary pondered long and hard about her child given to her from God.

God was born and Mary was one recipient of the grace that came about through this birth from her very own womb. As she many years later would stand and watch her Son give His life on the cross she would witness the very reason her Son was born. She would eventually come to see that her Son was the very Son of God, as the Gospel reading says, “The only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

This is where what John has told us in the Gospel reading is so valuable. Mary and Joseph didn’t need to understand everything as it was unfolding. As it unfolded they saw more and more who Jesus was, how God had come in the flesh. We look back now upon the birth, upon the suffering, upon the death, upon the resurrection of Jesus, and we see more and more who He is, why He was born, why He did all of that.

And we fill our lives up with that, because that’s what our lives will be filled up with for eternity. God will be there. In fact, God, in the flesh, will be there. Jesus, the one who is true God and true man, will be there, in the flesh. Full of grace and truth. The one who is eternal and who was born. The one who died and the one who rose. The one who did all of this for you.

Which brings us to one more thing on Christmas Day. On this day we obviously celebrate the birth of Christ. But even as we marvel that God was born; and as we rejoice in why, that God the Son died on the cross for all our sins; that’s not all. On Christmas Day we celebrate something else as well. We celebrate another birth. This is the birth that was brought about through God being born. As the Gospel reading says, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

Why was God born? So that you could be born. The Creator, the one who brought you into existence, is your Savior, the one who gives you new birth. God, who is a spiritual being, became flesh, so that you who are flesh could be born of God.

And even though you had a beginning, you will have no end. You will live eternally because you have been born of God. You have been brought into the life of God through the amazing events of God being born, living, dying, and rising, all for you, all for your eternal life. Amen.

SDG

Literally? Figuratively? Definitely.

The Nativity of Our Lord

Christmas Eve

December 24, 2012

Luke 2:1–14

Non-Christians view the Bible as just another book. A very good book, but just a book, nonetheless. There are also those who take issue with the Bible because there are many things in there offensive to them. For Christians, the Bible is a book, but more than a book. It’s the Word of God.

But how does one interpret the Word of God? Literally? Figuratively? Some will take, for example, the six days Genesis tells us in which God created the world, literally, whereas others will take it figuratively. Those who take it literally say that the words say what they mean, but those who take it figuratively say the words are meant to symbolize something else. So how do we take it? Literally? Figuratively?

The Christian Church believes that the Word of God is the written words of God, using language as it is normally used. There is narrative, there is statement, there is exhortation, there is poetry, there is history, and there is metaphor. Different parts of Scripture need to be interpreted according to the kind language that is being used. For example, in the case of the Genesis account of creation, this is language that is used in a straightforward manner, telling us what happened, and even describing what each day consisted of—there was evening and there was morning, the first day. In other words, each day was a twenty-four hour time period.

There’s an example on perhaps a less serious scale and may perhaps take a little of the romance out of your picture of how the Christmas event unfolded. “Hark! The Herald, Angels Sing” is a beloved Christmas hymn. However, this is what the words in the Gospel According to Luke actually say: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest.’”

Does that mean we’re wrong in singing in the hymn that the angels sang? Does it, in fact, mean that the angels didn’t sing, but rather spoke? Most people know of the theologian Joseph Ratzinger, although most don’t know him by this name. They know him, rather, as Pope Benedict XVI. Joseph Ratzinger, in a book he has written about Jesus’ birth and infancy, made this wonderful observation: “Christianity has always understood that the speech of angels is actually song.”

To be literal is not to be so literal that you miss the point that is being made. An article in the New York Times stated that “most evangelicals describe the Bible as literally true. Yet for many, ‘literally’ often means ‘keep what’s there and add details to make it vivid.’” Some explain how to ‘live the experience’ of Scripture: ‘Smell the sea. Hear the lap of water against the shore. See the crowd. Feel the sun on your head and the hunger in your stomach. Taste the salt in the air. Touch the hem of his garment.’ But is this the point of the words of Scripture?

Language is wonderful and we use it to communicate. That people interpret the Bible in so many different ways shows that it can be tough to understand what someone means when they say something or write something. The Bible is God’s communication to us of who He is and what He has done. While some would take the account of Jesus’ birth as just a story, the way God tells it it is a true story. The details are literally true. The way God works is not mystically but very real and in physical ways. Thus, God came to us as a baby. Mary actually gave birth to a Son. Mary wrapped Him up in actual swaddling cloths. He literally cuddled up in her arms.

The reason all of this happened is because God wanted to actually, literally save us. We, every person, are actually separated from God by our sin. He came to restore us back into an eternal relationship with Him. He came to deal with our sin, to put it away, to forgive us of our sin. The way He did that was by becoming man. And He did it the long, drawn-out way. By being in a womb for nine months. By being born and needing to bed fed and cared for by His mother and by His adoptive father, Joseph. He went through the painful years of adolescence.

He actually traversed places on the map teaching and preaching and healing people. He forgave people of their sins. He taught and called apostles into ministry. At the heart of God’s actions in sending His Son was the cross. Jesus was born, but it was His death thirty-three years later where we see the fruition of God sending His Son. It wasn’t just that He died, He took upon Himself the sin of every person. He died in our place. There is no figurative or metaphorical message here. Jesus actually paid for the sins of the world in His suffering, death, and resurrection.

In the birth of Christ we are shown an important thing about God. That is that the way He comes to us is by actually coming to us. The way He brings salvation to us is by bringing Christ to us. The way He forgives us is by delivering His Son to us.

If all we got were God coming in the flesh, Jesus being born, Jesus going to the cross and walking away from His grave, well, that certainly would have been enough. That would be as much as we need. It would be more than we could ever ask or hope for. But with God, well, He’s not done. It’s not enough for Him. He keeps giving us more Jesus. As He gave His Son at Christmas, He gives Him to us also in our lives. In the same way the birth of Christ, Jesus coming in the flesh, is actual, literal, so is His coming to us in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Rather than attempting to feel the mist of the waves washing up on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, the waters of Baptism flow down our head. Instead of placing ourselves in the shoes of the 5,000 people who sat listening to Jesus and feeling the pains of hunger, we are actually given bread and wine in which our Lord gives to us Himself, His body and blood in and with that bread and wine.

This is the reason for the Gospel. The Gospel is the way God brings His Son to you. The way He did it the first time was through the womb of the Virgin Mary. The way He does it now is by delivering the Gospel to you. When the Gospel is proclaimed, Jesus is delivered to you. When you are Baptized, you are united with Christ. When you receive the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper, your Lord comes to you.

There are parts to the Bible that are literal. There are parts that are figurative. We interpret them accordingly. The essential point is that it is all true. It is definite. It is definitely true.

If you want to get a feel for what it felt like that night in Bethlehem, in that stable, what Joseph and Mary were experiencing, consider that you actually experience what they did. Not that you can smell the hay or the animals. But God in the flesh was given to them on that night. They were in His presence, they were given God. In Baptism and the Lord’s Supper it is the same thing, God in the flesh is given to you, you are in the presence of God. When the Gospel is proclaimed and is applied to you in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, Jesus is delivered to you. The one who was born, who lived, who died, who rose, is the same one who definitely continues to come to you in the means in which He has directed you to.

As for the message of the angels, whether spoken or sung, what they proclaimed is the truth for all time and eternity—that it is the glory of God to bring true peace to you. Peace in the midst of your sins that plague you; peace in the midst of sorrow and pain and hurt. Peace in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

SDG