Author: Higher Things

Monica Berndt

I am not entirely comfortable in unfamiliar situations or in situations where I don’t know exactly what is going to happen.

I was recently on a train, which I had only ridden once before, and suddenly, upon discovering I was hungry, I realized I was going to have to walk through two train cars to the dining car before I could get anything to eat. I did not feel very comfortable walking on the train nor did I want to have other passengers on the train witness my shaky attempts to move about, so I continued to sit and fiddle with my purse letting pride and my intellect get in the way of my physical hunger. Finally, the desire to have something to eat prevailed and I managed to get out of my seat in order to return with a sandwich and hot cup of tea. Sure, I almost fell over and I noticed other passengers were watching me, but it was worth swallowing my pride just to be able to eat.

The first time I went to private confession, I felt exactly the same way that I felt on that train. I knew that if I went to confession I could receive the forgiveness of God which would relieve my stricken conscience, but right up until the pastor showed up I was fighting the urge to turn and run back out the door. I knew I was going to feel a bit uncomfortable talking to the pastor about what was bothering me, and I nearly let that feeling get in the way of receiving God’s free and relieving grace.

The Old Adam has a tremendous sense of pride and shame and constantly uses those against us to drive us away from those very things we need. Those feelings such as “Well, that sin wasn’t really that bad so I just wait until I have a bigger problem,” or “I am much too embarrassed to tell Pastor this,” are feelings the Old Adam uses to keep us from hearing the Gospel of forgiveness. Yet at the same time, our New, baptized Adam pokes our conscience and says, “It’s not about how you feel! It’s about letting the forgiveness that comes through Jesus Christ heal you and cleanse you of your guilt.”

That constant fight between the Old and New Adam will never go away until Jesus comes again, or until we pass from the earth. The Old Adam will continue to try and keep us away from the Gospel and away from the promises of Jesus. He will never stop trying to keep himself from being drowned in the baptismal font, and will grab hold of anything he can use to keep us looking inward at our sins. He builds up shame and pride in our hearts and tries to convince us that the last thing we want to do is confess our sins.

But countering his attempts to triumph, there stands the promise of Jesus: baptism! The Old Adam has already been drowned and the New Adam turns our eyes away from our pride and shame and points us back to our baptism and to the cross. God knows all our sins, and yet in Jesus, He has graciously forgiven us all things. He has given us confession and absolution as a wonderful remedy for the guilt that plagues our consciences and He invites us to come and hear His Gospel: the forgiveness of sins.

When the pastor showed up and I sat down in a chair and read the order of private confession, I was nervous and a bit scared. Yet in that order, there are some wonderful words: “In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins.” In confession, God Himself comes to us through the words of the pastor to give us peace and forgiveness for everything we have committed against Him. He gives us relief-true spiritual relief-of the conscience. It may not feel comfortable or easy at first because the Old Adam still kicks and sputters inside of us, but because we are God’s children in our Baptism that drowned the Old Adam, we can rest assured in the grace of God. Thanks be to God for His mercy!

Monica Berndt is a member of Christ the Savior in George, WA and studies music at the University of Washington. She can be reached at marb2@uw.edu.

Chris Vecera

“How was worship?” It’s a question that sounds fairly innocent. Most of us have probably asked our friends this question on a Sunday afternoon. We ask, “How was church,” sort of like we ask, “How was your day?” We want to know what happened. We want to know what they think. What songs did the musicians play? Was the sermon good? How many people were there? How did the service make you feel? Did the pastor that you like preach? Were the hymns easy to sing? Was it “authentic”? Did you connect with it? These are all genuine questions, but they bring up two problems with the way we view worship. What happens in church isn’t about your actions, and it isn’t a surprise. It’s unbelievable, but it isn’t a surprise.

The word “worship” has to do with acknowledging worth in something. Worship often is about people ascribing value to an object. In church, people acknowledge God’s worth through their worship: “We give God our worship… God is worthy of our worship.” It’s anthropocentric (man centered) in its movement from the worshiper to God. This takes many forms, but basically has one theme: Worship is about people offering something to God “in response” to His worthiness. This is why people ask, “How was church?” They really mean something like, “How did you acknowledge God’s worth in church today? Did your actions show that He is worthy? Did the sermon, songs, and creative elements help you acknowledge God?”

This understanding of worship takes God’s work out of church. God becomes a passive agent on Sunday mornings, watching His worshipers perform. This is the problem. Believers don’t gather because of the things they want to do for God. They gather because of what God has done for the church and for the world. They gather to receive the promises of God, and His promises are always the same. Church isn’t about giving God your best effort, singing your favorite songs, listening to your favorite preacher, or participating in your favorite style. The church meets because God has made promises. He has promised to deliver His gifts, His grace, in real places for your benefit. God’s favor is not an abstract idea. It’s about real things. It has flesh and blood. It’s audible. It marks you. The gospel is good news that comes from outside of your sinful heart-good news from God for you.

This means true worship isn’t about wondering which pastor is gong to preach on any given Sunday. It’s not about wondering if the band will play your favorite song, or if the organist will play a song that you know how to sing. Church isn’t about making sure that the worship service stays under an hour and incorporates a couple of “creative” elements. Church isn’t a movement from you to God.

In the end, worship really isn’t a good name for what happens on a Sunday morning in Christian churches. In true worship, God does things for you. He serves you His gifts. It’s an act of service by God, not your spiritual acknowledgement of His worth. God is not on a pedestal awaiting your praise. As Luther said, “God is with us in the muck and in the work that makes his skin steam.” He doesn’t stand in the distance. For Luther, this is the meaning of Immanuel – God is with us. In Jesus, the Crucified One, God enters the muck of this world and delivers His gifts to you himself.

The early church used a different word for their church gatherings. The Ancient Greeks used it to describe the generous donation of a wealthy person to complete a public project in the city. It was a public work at a private expense, a public service. The church used this secular word, leitourgia, and applied it to a Christian context. In church, God does a public service, His liturgy.

Liturgy is a public work of God, a Divine Service, where Jesus gives you His gifts. These gifts are true gift because they were bought for you at God’s expense. There is no work to be done. No penance or acknowledgement of God’s worth qualifies you for this service. If that’s how it worked, then church wouldn’t be a public service at God’s expense-it would be a job where you receive your due reward.

God serves you the gifts of Christ’s death. In church, Jesus serves His Word and Sacrament. He serves the good news that God justifies you, an ungodly sinner. This is the public service pronouncement: You are not guilty. Jesus has taken your sin and given you His righteousness. He serves you the Baptismal promises of death and new life, cleansing, and salvation. He serves you His Body and Nlood for the forgiveness of sins in a foretaste of the feast to come-a feast where God’s favor lasts forever, a new creation and a world without end. Come to the Savior’s liturgy. All is ready. Jesus has paid for everything. It costs you nothing.

Chris Vecera is a Theology Teacher at Orange Lutheran High School in Orange California, and he can be reached at promissio5611@gmail.com.

Rev. Christopher Raffa

You know it by many names-Communion, the Breaking of the Bread, the Last Supper, the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper, the Sacrament of the Altar-but it has a singular gift: forgiveness of sins. And where this forgiveness of sins is eaten and swallowed so also death is buried. This life meal has sprung you unto eternity with its immortal yet visible cook, Jesus the embodied One, for broken bodies.

Without this new flesh, we are carried along by the flesh of the Old Adam. This flesh always fails to deliver the goods. This flesh may talk about grace and mercy, yet it is a tease; it fails to actually deliver the gifts of the justifying God to the poor sinner. This flesh talks a good game as it turns the table of grace for sinners into an exclusive table for the apparently already righteous. This flesh wants to build the church with moral scaffolding, with a works-based paint that tries to cover the blemishes of failure and sin, and leave it with an outward veneer that venerates those who achieve shiny, spiritual lives. But it is all so fake. It is deceptive and deceiving of oneself and one’s neighbor. And those who have lived in trench warfare with the devil, their own flesh, and the world, can spot this fake and pretentious Christianity a mile away.

The fallout of this is that often we limit in scope the recipients of the table of grace and mercy to an arbitrary age or grade. We have created and continued to foster in many respects a churchly culture that devalues the suffering of the young. We have become blind to the fact that long before high school, children experience great suffering. They are tormented as outcasts adrift in the ocean of their peers. They are bullied through wireless machines. They are afflicted with depression and self-injury, and given over to suicidal thoughts as the evil one seeks to sift them like wheat. We have lived long in this land attending to the needs of the adolescent, but we have routinely failed to understand that they, too, need their Savior’s Body and Blood for the forgiveness of their sins.

The irony of the Lord’s Supper is always this: Those who think themselves worthy of this meal are not and those who think themselves unworthy are worthy of this sacred meal. The young must understand as well as adults that in order that we are to believe ourselves unworthy of the gifts that we receive in the Lord’s Supper the Scriptures say, “Let a person examine himself…” This is also something we have lost. Sadly, however, this is something we rarely, if ever, do. But this is something that must be done by both adolescents and adults. This is something that, while hard and humbling to do, is the pathway to the Lord’s Table of Grace. Why? Because if you don’t, if you deny that you are a sinner you deceive yourself and the truth comes not from your lips. You only speak the truth when you confess, “I am a liar.” No one speaks the whole truth except Yahweh, the Lord. His Word is Truth. His Son is Truth. His Spirit is Truth. If you fail to grasp the fall into sin, you also fail to grasp the truth of the blood that runs from the cross of Christ to the Table of Christ.

You come to the Lord’s Supper not because you are righteous, nor better or less bad than others, but only because you are a poor miserable sinner. The young know this just as well as the old. Again irony comes to the table: faithful communicants often believe themselves greater sinners than anyone else. It’s for this reason that the child of Bethlehem’s chalice should, under pastoral care, be given to the lips of adolescents even as they sing, “Hosanna, loud hosanna.” Jesus has blessed His children; He has folded them to His breast through Holy Baptism. And as they cry out “save us,” as they know and feel their brokenness and sin, may their lips be granted the chalice brought forth by the child of Bethlehem that shall lead them and all God’s children into the promised land of eternal rest.

Rev. Christopher Raffa is Associate Pastor of Pilgrim Evangelical Lutheran Church in West Bend, Wisconsin. You can email him at revcraffa@att.net.

Rev. Michael Keith

Have you noticed that when you go to Divine Service there are usually at least three readings from the Bible? One of them is a reading from the Old Testament. Another is a reading from one of the Epistles (creatively referred to as the Epistle reading). The last reading is from one of the Gospels. Have you ever wondered why those readings are read on that Sunday?

Your pastor does not pick the readings on Saturday night. In fact, your pastor does not pick the readings at all. And that’s the point.

There is a long explanation about how the readings that show up on any given Sunday have arrived there-I am not going to give you that long explanation here because I don’t want to-so just very briefly: The system of appointed readings we use on Sundays throughout the Church year is called the Lectionary. The Lectionary has been passed down to us in various forms, over the long history of the Church–in fact even going back to the synagogue. The Lectionary is the way the Church protects you from your pastor.

You need to be protected from your pastor. Why? Because he is self-centered. He is egotistical. He is arrogant. He thinks he knows it all and therefore you need to sit down and listen to him tell you it all. You see, I am a pastor. I speak from experience here. I have a lot of things to say. I have a lot of opinions and I am pretty sure they are the right opinions and I am really sure that you ought to have the same opinions as I do. I have some ideas on politics as well and boy, you really need to hear those! I have a couple axes that need grinding and a few hobby horses that need riding. I also have a few other clichés that need to be used…

But you know, the funny thing is, it turns out that you don’t come to church to hear my opinions and thoughts on things. I’m a little put out about that because I have a lot of good thoughts-but apparently you come to see Jesus. The Lectionary protects you from me and my brilliant thoughts and opinions and political insights and directs me to preach to you from the Word of God. It also forces me to preach from the entire bible and not just my favourite verses that deal with topics I feel are important. The Lectionary protects you from me. That’s a good thing.

Okay, let’s have full disclosure here. Sometimes the Lectionary is hard. Sometimes when I look up the texts I am supposed to preach on for the next Sunday I get the cold sweats. I don’t like that text! It makes me bring up some uncomfortable topics. The people may not like what the Word of God says. And if they don’t like what the Word of God says and I am the one saying those things then…they might not like me. And I like when people like me. A lot. I much prefer it when people are shaking my hand and patting me on my back for being such a swell guy. I don’t like it when people are grumpy and angry with me. The Lectionary protects you from me here as well. It protects you from my cowardice. It forces the pastor and people to be confronted with the Word of God-whether it is comfortable or not. That’s a good thing.

Now, I have a challenge for you. The next time you are in church before Service, look up the appointed readings for that Sunday. Read them. And then see if you can identify a theme that runs through them. See if you can guess what your pastor might be preaching about during the sermon. See if you can guess why the hymns for that Sunday were selected. Then, discuss it with your pastor after divine service. Ask why he went where he did in the sermon. Tell him where you thought you might have gone with the texts. Ask questions about the texts and the hymns. Your pastor will be blown away that you noticed that the service wasn’t just thrown together willy-nilly but it has a coherent theme and that he was trying to actually, you know, do something with it. You will make his day. Let him know that you are glad that he has enough sense to use the Lectionary to protect you from him.

Rev. Michael Keith serves as pastor at St. Matthew Lutheran Church and SML Christian Academy in Stony Plain, Alberta, Canada. He can be reached at keith@st-matthew.com