Category: Catechesis

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

Monica Berndt

Have you ever heard of the phrase “cheap grace” in reference to Lutherans, or had someone accuse you of simply being a “lazy Catholic?” Grace is NOT cheap. The grace of God towards us came at a price-a huge price. The price was so large that the immortal God, who rules over every last centimeter of the cosmos, had to take on the form of us measly human beings and then die. We like to think that we are quite large and influential here on our planet Earth, but in comparison to the vastness of the universe, we are even smaller than a speck of dust. Yet, God Himself came down and became smaller than a speck of dust so that He could pick up all the others and bring them back to Heaven.

Simply becoming a speck of dust was not enough to save us from ourselves, the world, and Satan; God had to die. He had to take on the entire wrath of God against sin onto Himself and suffer in agony until He had died to pay for everything we have done. There have been millions of people who have lived and died and who will live on this earth and yet God died for all of them-every last one.

That is a huge price and thanks be to God that He has paid the massive debt we owe so that we can simply live by the grace of God. It should be pretty easy, right? Yet, the Old Adam in us constantly keeps popping up and causing us trouble by trying to push our lives under grace to one of two extremes. The one is the familiar “I can do whatever I want” attitude. You just live your life however you please and God will handle it so you don’t have to worry. Yet this extreme causes harm to both us and to our neighbor, because honestly loving our neighbor is not the priority on our to-do list of living however we desire. We will not want to love our neighbor, we will constantly put ourselves first, and we will always seek to defend our actions by passing the blame onto our neighbor.

There is another extreme we turn to when trying to live by grace, and that’s just it. We start to try. We start to worry that grace is not enough, that what we have done cannot be forgiven. We repent of our sins, but then guilt and shame come knocking at the door of our consciences and we are unsure what to tell them. They ask “How can you be sure that you are really and truly forgiven?” “How do you know that the sins you committed are not being held against you by your neighbor?” “Have you tried hard to fix what you did?” They then bind you to the Law: “If you don’t do better next time, you must not have been trying hard enough and you only get a few chances to get it right.” This leaves us to wrestle with guilt, which will wear and tear at our faith just as much as the first extreme will-leaving us feeling like God will never be able to forgive everything we have done.

However, we confess that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent so He is more than capable of forgiving our sins. In fact, that is the entire reason He came to die in the first place. If we could get to Heaven on our own, the death of Jesus Christ would be the most pointless death in all of history. Yet clearly we cannot make it on our own; we cannot make it at all. That’s why God had to become a smaller than a speck of dust. That’s why He had to die. He did all of that because we cannot do it and all of our attempts to try leave us guilt-ridden and afraid.

So we don’t believe in “cheap grace.” We believe in very expensive, very precious grace through Jesus Christ. Even though we daily commit sins, we rejoice in the fact that God has already forgiven us our sins, even as we daily come to Him in repentance and trust in His promise of grace.

Monica Berndt is a member of Christ the Savior in George, Washington and studies music at the University of Washington.

Timothy Sheridan

I vividly remember the morning during one of my high school years when, before class, a friend closed a classroom door behind us. He told me his parents were probably going to get a divorce and then tearfully said, “But I believe in the power of prayer.” I prayed with him then and there, even though I don’t believe in the power of prayer. Shortly thereafter his parents were divorced anyway. I hope he reads this.

Too many times Christians (even some Lutherans) very piously talk about this “power,” by which they seem to mean that the more heartfelt and spontaneous your petition, the more likely it is God will answer you. Prayer certainly seems powerful in Scripture. After the children of Israel fall into idolatry while Moses is receiving the divine Law by which God’s people are to live, Moses intercedes for them. In reply, “the LORD relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened” (Exodus 32:14). As James says, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (5:16). Even Jesus tells His disciples, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13).

But really, how many times have you prayed in the name of Jesus for something you didn’t receive, even though He commands us to ask and attaches His promises to that asking (Matthew 7:7-8)? Maybe it’s that we truly don’t know how to pray, and James is actually right when he says, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly” (4:3).

What we have to remember is that prayer isn’t our lifeline-Jesus is. True prayer verbalizes His promises to us and our faith which receives them. The Father hears Jesus’ prayers because Jesus is the Word Himself. God’s Word accomplishes that for which it is sent (Isaiah 55:11), and Jesus was sent for the salvation of the world. God heard Moses’ prayer at Sinai, only because Moses possessed the power of God’s promise. He reminded God of His own words: “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven…'” (Exodus 32:13).

If we are to be honest, we often feel that the Church’s formal prayers which direct us to the promises of God’s Word seem stilted, rote, and mechanistic. We think that the more creative and spontaneous the prayer, the more sincere we are. I for one confess that too many times I am insincere in my prayers, regardless of what “type” of prayer I’m praying. I have no problem confessing that, because sincerity doesn’t save us. Jesus said we won’t be heard for our many words (Matthew 6:7), no matter how much sincerity we try to conjure up within ourselves. But God is faithful. Many Christians still mistrust written prayers. But because “the heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9), we can’t depend on spontaneous prayers from our hearts (ex chorde), to be filled with sincerity. We can’t afford to rely on our hearts when we pray.

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, the Psalms, or the ordinaries of the liturgy, we’re praying the inspired and life-giving Word of God. The power behind prayer is the power of God’s Word, living and active (Hebrews 4:12).

You can try to simply pour out your heart to God as it is. But after you’ve bargained, then pleaded with God, clenched your fists and threatened Him, you’ll be empty. When your road is dark and your cross is heavy, flowery prayers won’t exactly roll off the tongue. Some of those days I’ve been so bitter, weary, and exhausted that my only prayer for the day has been, “Make haste, O God, to deliver me. Make haste to help me, O Lord” (Psalm 70:1). Sometimes it has just been, “Jesus, help me!” The liturgy taught me to pray that way.

At the end of the day, even with the treasury of devotion that we have in God’s Word and His people’s worship, we still don’t always know how to pray (Romans 8:26). But the good news is the responsibility of approaching our heavenly Father according to His required perfection is taken right out of our hands and is put in the nail-pierced hands of our Savior, His dear Son in whom He delights. We know our Father hears the intercessions of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, so we can confidently pray the words they have given to us. God-pleasing prayers will also direct us to Christ in His Word and Sacraments, in which all our petitions are fulfilled.

Don’t feel that you should never pray from the heart. But first, let the Word inform your heart. Make your daily prayers the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Psalms, the Creed, the prayers in the Catechism, and the other prayers of the faithful that have been composed in accordance with these words and have stood the test of time. These will teach you how to pray, and will radically alter your spontaneous requests and thanksgivings.

Timothy Sheridan is a member of Our Savior Lutheran in Raleigh, NC. he can be reached at timothysheridan12@gmail.com.

Bethany Woelmer

The camera lens moves back and forth, in and out, adjusting with every scene to produce a clear image that portrays a picture of what is being captured. It focuses on the object, channeling everything that it has been made to be into that one picture. It is built with a need for a focus, because without it, the picture would always be blurry.

Our lives are filled with much blurriness. It is as if life is a camera, always losing its focus, trying to find more answers, failing to capture everything at once, bringing in much clutter in a frame that is still seeking focus. Sin blurs our vision of truth, gives us false images of redemption, and presents to us a raw image of our Old Adam. No edits, no real focus, no clear picture of salvation. We are poor, miserable sinners, daily in need of the forgiveness that only Christ can give. We are blurred in sin, daily in need of the focus found on the cross.

My view of Higher Things this past conference season was from the camera. Between the worship services, plenary sectionals, breakaway sectionals, and even the entertainment, I saw it all. I saw the called and ordained servants of God’s Word preaching Christ crucified for sinners, the wonderful choir and instrumentalists accompanying the music of our faith, the fellowship of believers around prayer, the a cappella singing of “Holy, Holy, Holy” during the plenary session, and the list goes on. I moved my camera in every direction to capture the pictures of life in the Church, and at the end of every step, there was a need to push the button for focus, otherwise the picture would not be clear.

The image of focusing made me think about what the true focus is in the Christian’s life. When everything is blurry, how do we focus? When everything is cluttered with sin, where do we “zoom in” to find the object of our strength? When we look and find our brokenness within us, where do we turn?

As I video-recorded Matins, I looked around the church and noticed that the slanted pillars meet in the center at one point at the top. From that point hung the crucifix, the focus of the church, the sign of life and salvation, the clearness to our mess of sin. I took advantage of the opportunity of this crucifix on display by turning the camera toward it during the live-streaming of Matins and the Divine Service. When we sang the “Venite,” we focused on “the rock of our salvation.” When we sang the “Te Deum,” we focused on the crucifixion of Christ as stated in the middle of the canticle, proclaiming His victory against the “sharpness of death.” When we sang “This is the Feast,” we sang about the “Lamb who was slain” as we joined in the “hymn of all creation.” This Lamb, who “takes away the sin of the world,” as proclaimed in the “Agnus Dei,” gives us peace. And finally, as we sang in the closing hymn, “We Praise You and Acknowledge You, O God,” we proclaimed, “You, Christ, are King of glory, the everlasting Son, yet You, with boundless love, sought to rescue everyone; You laid aside Your glory, were born of virgin’s womb, were crucified for us and were placed into a tomb; Then by Your resurrection You won for us reprieve. You opened heaven’s kingdom to all who would believe.”

Without the focus of Christ, we have nowhere to turn. We are blind in sin, always squinting to find a way to fix this impediment, yet God has brought us from death to life, from the blurriness of sin to the focus of His Son, and from our lost and fallen nature to a forgiven sinner in Christ. With one click of a button, the picture focuses into clarity; so also with one word, God came into the world as the light of our salvation. We proclaim this truth and praise Him with all the heavenly host, singing “Te Deum Laudamus” in unending songs of faith as we live in His grace.

Bethany Woelmer is from Faith Lutheran in Plano, TX, and is pursuing a Master’s degree in church music at the University of Kansas this fall.

Rev. Eric Brown

Is everyone in the world angry about something except for me? It’s come to the point where I almost dread scrolling through social media in the morning. See, I have friends on all sides of the political spectrum. They are people I love; they are my friends. But they – like me will often click on that little “share” button, and out will go the political posts. Not calm, rational discussion, but harsh, angry political posts. I think for five days in a row I’ve been told how I need to be worried about a new “war” on something.

When Jesus rides into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, He weeps. He cries out, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!” (Luke 19:43) That seems to be an apt description, sadly, of what we see today. Peace is far from anyone’s mind; instead, there’s the new social or political war to fight where we must rally our troops to crush the enemy.

The very same Jesus who weeps is Himself the One who makes for peace. He is the One who goes to the Cross and dies for peace. He is the One who rises and appears to the disciples and speaks to them over and over again, “Peace be with you.” He is the one who comes to you in bread and wine so that the Peace of the Lord would be with you always.

Always! Even when the news feed is full of angry messages telling you who you ought to be hating now, Jesus has made peace. He has died and is risen for you. He has died and is risen for those people telling you to be angry, and He has died and is risen for the people they want you to be angry at. He makes for peace – peace that flies in the face of everything we see in the world, peace that surpasses all human understanding.

The world will call out for battles. People with the best intentions will warn of the latest war. Some of these you might even think are worth fighting. Even then, the truth of Christ Jesus and the peace He won for you and for the person you’re fighting against still remains and shapes everything. Even then, the great battle is the one Jesus waged for you upon the Cross against Satan and sin and death. In Him you have peace – now and forever.

Rev. Eric Brown is pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Herscher, IL.

Timothy Sheridan

I’ve always had a problem with confession. Night after night, staring up at the dark ceiling from my bed, I took upon myself the exhausting work of trying to enumerate the sins I’d committed over the past day and then attempted to conjure up sufficient sorrow for what I’d done. Assuming that I reached the point at which I had recalled as many wrongdoings from the past 12, 13, or 14 hours, I would then try to feel the forgiveness that supposedly belonged to me. But the ceiling always stared back at me, indifferent. Was this torturous exercise-an effort most often half-hearted on my part-really what it meant to find rest in Jesus? I coveted physical and spiritual rest, but the yoke felt anything but easy and light. Many nights, I would forego at least some of this agony by falling asleep mid-prayer, giving me one more misstep to confess the following morning or night. As I lingered on the edge of sleep, I felt the old twinge of guilt (more acute some times than at others), because I knew my nocturnal liturgy was really just me hedging my bets. This was not what it meant to receive God’s free gift of forgiveness.

When I became a Lutheran, it was hard to resist the temptation to crack an eyelid when my pastor spoke the words of Absolution. It was a marvelous: objective, full, and free forgiveness of all my sins, accomplished by Christ and applied to me by His own Word. I half-expected to see some ray of glory emanating from the pastor’s hand as he traced the sign of my forgiveness in the air before him and us. I knew all the proof texts given in the Small Catechism concerning Confession and the Office of the Keys, but the horribly familiar gnawing was never far from me, even as I knelt in the pew.

Even though I would sometimes feel as though the Confession and Absolution combination was just as transactional as my desperate nighttime prayers, I was struck by the marked differences between how the liturgy taught me how to confess my sins and how I had always confessed in private. First, it isn’t really just my confession. The Divine Service doesn’t allow for anything like an altar call during which members of the congregation would “do business with God,” confessing the particular sins that ensnared them. Instead, everyone speaks the same words of confession without giving pause to verbalize the specifics. A general form of confession without any sweat, tears, or brooding introspection. At first, this practice seemed rote, insincere, effortless. But the effortless nature of Confession and Absolution is exactly the point. For us, our salvation is just that: We don’t have to work; we do not climb the ladder of piety to gain the approval of God. Kneeling there every Sunday-hearing that I was forgiven simply because Christ, through His called and ordained servant, said so-was the beginning of my consolation.

But I still wanted to know how to better confess my sins daily, outside Divine Service. Article XI of the Augsburg Confession offered peace of mind: “[I]n confession it is not necessary to enumerate all trespasses and sins, for this is impossible. Ps. 19:12, ‘Who can discern his errors?'” (AC XI 2, Tappert p. 34). Trying to discern my errors was a huge part of my problem. Those nights when the ceiling would begin to swim with oncoming sleep, I would hurriedly pray something like, “Forgive me all my sins. Amen.” It’s not the same principle as corporate Confession. My mumbled prayer was just me covering my bases in a different way, but I wasn’t sure how.

Reflecting on Luther’s explanation of the Ten Commandments in the Catechism and being absolved every Sunday gave me perspective that I had never before had on the issue of confession. My personal practice consisted of naming the violations I had committed against God’s Law, but I never used the Law itself to reflect on my sins. My harsh words to a friend meant that I had committed murder in my heart, my lusting entailed that I had committed adultery, so the commandments weren’t completely neglected. But my way of confessing led me to believe that I was only guilty of certain sins and not others. I knew the Epistle of James says that “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it” (James 2:10). In my mind, I really only transgressed the Law on a handful of discrete points. The evangelical subculture in which I was raised only stigmatized certain sins and applauded certain virtues. I’d been conditioned to know I was accountable for all the Law, but only because I hadn’t kept it perfectly on a couple of points. Some sins didn’t need forgiving because I hadn’t committed them.

But then I began to pray the Ten Commandments daily. I saw my tortured way of confession for what it really was: a feeble attempt at self-justification. So I stopped beating myself up. There was no need: all my sins were right there, numbered one to ten, staring up at me from the Catechism, in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy. Confession and Absolution taught me just what the Law incessantly declares: don’t argue your sinfulness. Confess it. The Decalogue will show you, as it showed me, that sinners break every single commandment God gave to the children of Israel. All the time. There are no exceptions. A person’s pet sins are only those that he or she commits happily and knowingly. Just because you aren’t aware of the times you offend God’s eternal will doesn’t mean you’re thereby acquitted (I Corinthians 4:4). When the commandments showed me that I was guilty of breaking every letter of the Law, I began to repent by verbalizing each commandment and praying to the Lord for mercy.

For this reason, I love the Kyrie Eleison. It is the prayer of every sinner, like the Canaanite woman whose daughter is possessed by a demon beseeches Jesus, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David” (Matt. 15:22). When Jesus seems to brush off her petition, she simply pleads, “Lord, help me” (v. 25). On another occasion, another parent among the crowd pleads for the Lord to cast out an evil spirit from his son. His petition is also spoken in the spirit of the Kyrie: “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) Two blind men on Jericho’s outskirts would not be silenced by the masses who think Jesus’ time is better spent on other things, but twice called after Jesus, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” (Matthew 15:31) In Jesus’ own parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, the latter knows that he brings only his sinfulness before God when he prays, downcast and dejected, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner” (Luke 18:13). Predating all of these are the words of the penitent King David, whose groanings, part of which have become the verse the Church sings as she moves from the service of the Word to the service of the Eucharist, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions” (Psalm 51:1).

We know the stories. The sinners receive the Lord’s mercy, just as He promised. Jesus forgives them and heals them of all infirmities, spiritual and physical. Despite His comments to the Canaanite woman or His innocent question of the blind men, “What do you want me to do for you?” He doesn’t fool us. “Well, of course Jesus forgave them,” we say. It’s as the Scripture promises, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).

The rub is believing that Jesus gives the same forgiveness to us, here and now. But we are forgiven and made whole because of Jesus’ own petition for us to His Father, when as He hung, mutilated and disgraced upon the cross, He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Do we dare to think that God does not hear the prayer of His own Son, or that same prayer when we pray in His name, the name He put on us in Baptism?

We know the end of those stories, when the demons flee, vision is restored, and the chains of sin are broken. We’re in good company then when He extends the same promise to us. Our forgiveness is just as much a done deal as the ones in the passages we read in personal devotion and hear read in worship year after year, as done and finished as the agony and victory of Calvary (John 19:30) and just as final as His resurrection from the dead on Easter morning. We’ve been crucified and drowned with the One whose greatest delight is to be merciful to us who are just as desperate, depraved, and doubting as the sinners of old. We’re fed by with the very Body and Blood by the very hands that touched sinners and were stretched out on the beam of the cross.

The story of our salvation is just as certain as those other stories because it’s all Christ’s story. God’s love for us in Christ Jesus is just as certain and unshakable as it was for David, the publican, Bartimaeus, and all the other legions of sinner-saints who have gone before us. Jesus answers our doubt-ridden petitions with mercy, not as if He were some tyrant who demands to see us grovel, but as One radiant and joyful, living in the power of His resurrection, who laughs, “But of course I forgive you! That’s what I promised, didn’t I?” If Jesus has taken care of their sin and accepts their confession by His pure grace, then He won’t have any qualms with yours. Or mine.

Timothy Sheridan is a member of Our Savior Lutheran in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Rev. Jacob Ehrhard

You bite your tongue just before you let loose with some scathing snarky remark intended to cut down the weird girl who sits a couple of rows over. It was a close one, but you remembered what you learned in catechism class about defending other people’s reputations and speaking well of them. You caught yourself just in time. Whew! You didn’t sin.


But you wanted to. In your heart-deep down beneath your polished Christian exterior-you really wanted to. It would have felt good, actually. Insults always come much more naturally than compliments, as if cruelty is sort of hard-wired into you. It’s a good thing that you’re a Law-abiding Christian. At least, well, you were this time.

But just because you didn’t sin doesn’t mean that you didn’t sin. Before you could even think of sinning, the desire to sin, the inclination to sin already existed. It’s the part of your sin that you can’t control. It’s the sin that precedes all sin. We call it “concupiscence.” “Our churches teach that since the fall of Adam, all who are naturally born are born with sin, that is, without the fear of God, without trust in God, and with the inclination to sin, called concupiscence. Concupiscence is a disease and original vice that is truly sin. It damns and brings eternal death on those who are not born anew through Baptism and the Holy Spirit” (Augsburg Confession, Article II.1-2).

Even the desire to sin is truly sin. Even if you bite your tongue, you’re still guilty of the sin you really wanted to commit. The world’s narrative is that whatever comes naturally is good and right – it should be encouraged and celebrated. But by nature you don’t fear God, you don’t trust God. By nature, you’re His enemy.

The solution for those born in the natural way lies with One who was born in a most unnatural way, One who was conceived by God’s Spirit of a virgin mother. Jesus Christ alone is without concupiscence and so only has the inclination to do His Father’s will. It’s for this reason that He became the sacrifice for sinners. On the cross, He bore your sin and your inclination to sin.

And what’s more, He also offers you the cure to your concupiscence. He offers a new birth – a birth from above, a birth by water and the Spirit (John 3:1-16). With this new birth comes a new nature, a nature quite distinct from the nature inclined to sin. This new birth is your baptismal identity, marked by the cross as one redeemed by Christ the crucified one. Because of this water and Spirit, your inclination is now toward the things that are above – the things of God.

Rev. Jacob Ehrhard is pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in New Haven, Missouri. He can be contacted at pastor.ehrhard@gmail.com.

Deaconess Ellie Corrow

Forgiveness doesn’t look like much. In fact it’s down-right ugly. We expect that when God does something for it to be beautiful, spectacular even. This is the God of TV who sends gorgeous angels to intercede, while flooding onlookers with a soft, gentle light that does not reveal the flaws in anyone’s complexion. Rarely do the mystics speak of finding God in the mundane, much less the ugly, rather they will speak of finding God in a beautiful landscape, sunset, fields of rainbows, butterflies, and kittens. This is because our Old Adam is programmed to never really see the things of God, instead he defines himself as God, so what he sees as good, right, and beautiful, must then be God. The Old Adam cannot afford to see the things of God, to see the reconciliation wrought only by bloody hands and feet on a hillside outside Jerusalem, because there is no room for him in that reconciliation, instead he must die. To fallen human senses, forgiveness smells like death.

The trouble with looking for Christ with our eyes is that the Kingdom He reigns is entirely backwards. If we stood on a hillside outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago, and witnessed the death of the Author of Life, we would not have seen much of anything at all. Just another dead Jewish man, bearing a punishment foisted on Him by the ruling authorities. Our eyes would not see it for what it was. When we witness a baptism, our eyes only see a sprinkle of water and few words – little else. No visible angels, no halos, nothing but a forehead stained with baptismal water. Similarly, when we approach the Lord’s altar to receive His gifts, we are the company of angels and archangels, yet all we can really see is a wafer, a sip of wine, and a few words uttered by your pastor. It seems less holy still when you consider the sins of the annoying neighbor kneeling next to you at the communion rail.

We think the Kingdom of God should come signs and wonders, visible to something other than the eyes of faith, and though that day will come, today this is not how we’re given to see. Instead we’re invited by Christ to see the backwardsness of His kingdom. A Kingdom where children, whores, and tax collectors are the greatest in heaven, and the holy priest is the least. A Kingdom where the prodigal son is celebrated and the “good” son is whining over his father’s mercy.

The Gospel defies all logic in who it welcomes and how it is delivered, so it’s no surprise that many reject the humble signposts establishing His reign on Earth. But this simple backwardsness of Christ’s reign is good news for us. This means the baptized do not look for the holy ways in which they may serve Christ, instead their ordinary work for their neighbors is sanctified. It means we need not worry if God has forsaken us in our crosses and trials, instead we can bear them in faith, knowing our lives are marked by the hiddenness of Christ’s cross. Most of all it means that however great our sins, how frightening this world, there is One who fights for us, who reigns in His body broken, given, for you.

Dcs. Ellie Corrow serves as the Missionary Care Coordinator for the Office of International Mission.

Rev. Donavon Riley

When Lutherans talk about law and Gospel stuff we talk about two kingdoms stuff at the same time. What is “two kingdoms stuff”? That’s the way Martin Luther talked to distinguish between the two different ways God works in and for His creation. One kingdom comes when Jesus’ death and resurrection is preached. In this kingdom sin, death, and the devil are ruled over by God yesterday, today, and all the way until the Last Day. This happens “when God gives us His Holy Spirit so that we may believe His Word and live godly lives…”, as Luther writes in the Small Catechism. Today we receive this in hope but at the resurrection it will come “in heaven forever,” when all the powers of the devil are destroyed once for all.

In the other “kingdom,” God works in and for His creation through relationships, organizations, culture, and all the different ways we’ve set up so we can live side by side with each other in the world. While these ways in which God works cannot bring “the new age,” as the New Testament calls it, they’re necessary for life as we know it. Through the stuff of this world God works to make sure His creation enjoys justice and peace. In this way Lutherans distinguish between God’s Gospel-kingdom and God’s law-kingdom, between heavenly and earthly stuff.

We can also distinguish between these two kingdoms by the things God uses in them. God rules in Christ through the Gospel. Wherever the Gospel is “preached in its truth and purity, and the sacraments rightly administered,” as the Augsburg Confession says, Christians are under the authority and rule of grace and truth. All other earthly relationships and organizations depend on the law to accomplish their plans. In our families, churches, in the different organizations and institutions, even the economy, are the ways which God rules to maintain obedience, cooperation, and mutual support amongst His creatures. The old Adam and the devil love to confuse these two kingdoms, heavenly things and earthly things, law stuff and Gospel stuff, Moses and Christ.

Christians serve freely in both kingdoms. We tell people what Jesus has done in his sacrificial death for “the sins of the world” and we love our neighbors as ourselves. Whether at home, in church, our in our communities, Christians are free to hope in Christ and trust that God is at work in creation for everyone’s good, even when we can’t see it. Even when you buy a jug of milk God is at work for your neighbor’s benefit. The dairy farmer, the creamery, the store and the clerks, the family who gather around their table to drink milk with dinner. God turns all these people and things towards the good of creation with or without our help.

But what happens when things don’t work out the way we expect? What happens when our relationships break down. Abuse shatters a family. Friends accuse us of hatred or bigotry. Our culture suffers moral bankruptcy. Then what? St. Paul says that when the law gets ahold of people it tends to have the effect that we make excuses or accuse other people to justify ourselves. When that happens we go from bad to worse in no time, until we see ourselves or other people as demonic. We accuse them of being allies with sin and death. As St. Paul put it, “The law works wrath” (Romans 4:15). The law can regulate outward behavior but it can’t change the human heart.

Our heart never stops wanting stuff. And our mind never stops justifying what our heart wants. That’s why we can use something as simple as love to turn our relationships upside and down and backwards. Who doesn’t want to live in a house rent free, to eat whatever you want out of the fridge, and let your parents pay for Higher Things conference each Summer? But, then Mom says not this year and our heart treats her as enemy. Then your mind justifies all the ways she’s never loved you, never helped you, never really supported you, and on and on it goes. We do this all the time, not just at home. When the political candidate we voted for loses we vilify the other guy. When the new pastor doesn’t pick the hymns we like we think he didn’t pick those hymns just to teach us a lesson. Whatever our heart wants our mind always justifies for us.

In the fourth question on baptism in the Small Catechism, Luther offers us some help with this. Luther asks what baptism has to do with day to day life. “It means that the old Adam in us with all sins and evil desires is to be drowned and die through day to day contrition and repentance, and on the other hand that day to day a new man is to come out and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” (trans. mine)

The old Adam loves his projects as much as he loves to be rewarded for the successful completion of his projects. He loves to make God’s commands do-able. He even tries to do it with Luther’s explanation of baptism. He says, “Wait, I have to be contrite and repent every day, then I will be rewarded with righteousness and purity forever? I will do it!” As if he could take charge of his own death. If this were true then what Luther wrote would lead us to throw up our hands in defeat or point at ourselves as the new measure for what it means to be a Christian.

But what Luther says again and again is that we do not choose our crosses. When God comes near to speak to us the cross is always nearby too. You don’t find the cross, the cross finds you. When God lays the cross on you, you receive your limits as a person. With the cross comes built-in repentance. Contrition is built into everything you do in the world. Go to school. Get married. Find a job. Buy a house. Go on a trip. Volunteer at the local shelter. Baptize your baby. And on and on it goes. All this stuff is the cross laid on you. And that’s why, sinner that you are, you will cry out, “I’m sick of this!” “You never help me!” “Why can’t I get away from you people!” “I don’t want to do this anymore!” “I didn’t sign up for this!” “I don’t want to be married in this way anymore!” For the old Adam, all the gifts of God – even love between a man and woman that culminates in marriage – eventually become curses. That’s why the old Lutheran marriage service included these words: “nevertheless our gracious Father in heaven does not forsake his children in an estate so holy and acceptable to him.”

In marriage, God works the death of the old Adam and the resurrection of the new man in Christ. The cross God lays on people in marriage brings them to their knees, to the brink of giving up, even to the point of divorce. Then he brings the Gospel of Christ and faith to restore joy and hope. In marriage, the forgiveness of sins doesn’t come in the form of a moral necessity – do this, or the marriage is over – but as a foretaste of the new creation where we will be in union with our Bridegroom, Christ Jesus, in joy and peace forever. The Gospel opens up the giftedness of marriage to the deepest promises of freedom possible in this life.

In God’s left hand kingdom we bear the cross, suffer, and die in the stuff of day to day life. God’s commands compel us to produce good works for our neighbor’s benefit. In God’s right hand kingdom we are resurrected every day. Through his Gospel the Spirit produces the fruits of freedom, hope, and joy in us, so that sin and death don’t get the last word about our destiny. All this happens to us at the same time, everyday, whether we like it or not.

Don’t try to run away from the cross God lays on you. You can’t. Don’t try to get free from under of it or change the laws to serve your hearts’ desires. That only results in self-destructive relationships and self-serving organizations. Instead, revel in the tension that you are fully sinful and fully righteous at the same time. That your sinful flesh is under the authority of God’s good and holy law and your heart is under the authority of God’s freeing, comforting Gospel at the same time. So then, when things don’t go your way, don’t panic. That’s how stuff goes in this sinful, evil world. That’s our cross. And when things open up in front of us, when forgiveness, grace, and freedom raise us up to a new life to see and hear that all is good gift from our Father in heaven, even our cross, say, “Amen.” Christ is still Lord of heaven and earth. He will never leave you or forsake you. When you are faithless he is faithful, because he cannot break his word: “I am with you always, even until the ends of the ages.”

Rev. Donavon Riley is pastor at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Webster, MN. He is also plenary speaker at Te Deum 2015 in Las Vegas, NV.