Category: Articles

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.