Be Not Terrified by Ocean and Whale

From Luther’s lectures on Jonah in 1526, here discussing chapter 4, verses 1 and 2:

That Jonah is sent from the land of the Jews into a foreign country symbolizes that the Spirit and God’s Word were to be taken from the Jewish people and bestowed on the Gentiles. Thus Christ says in Matt. 21:43: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it, etc.” Jonah’s flight and the perils he encountered on the sea represent the cross and the persecution which the Gospel will experience in the world. It appears as though the Christian ministry were taking to flight, perishing, and vanishing from the scene. It seems so frail over against the fury of the world, since the persons administering the office are fugitives, that is, feeble and insignificant people. The ocean is the world, vast and mighty with its raging billows. The whale is gruesome and terrifying with its jaws and teeth. This animal represents the prince and god of the world, the devil, who ruthlessly murders and kills through his princes and great lords, etc. But despite all of these, Jonah is preserved mightily by God’s power, and his message cannot be frustrated either by his own flight or by the ocean’s fury, but it makes its way and penetrates into Nineveh. Thus, though pastors may be weak and the world powerful, God’s Word, the holy Gospel, is still mightier, and no obstacles can impede its progress. And even if all pastors were to be devoured, the Gospel will make its way into the world all the better and transform the world. It is consoling for us to observe that this was the experience of the apostles. And we, too, must not be terrified by ocean and whale, convinced that our Word or Gospel is mightier than all else.

Martin Luther, Luther's Works, Vol. 19: Minor Prophets II: Jonah and Habakkuk, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald and Helmut T. Lehmann, Luther's Works (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999, c1974). 19:97.

What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate

Michael Weatherly

The CBS hit television show NCIS is a “cop show” featuring the Naval Criminal Investigative Service that often has more twists and turns than San Francisco’s famous Lombard Street. The show’s most recognizable star is Mark Harmon, who plays the lead investigator, and it frequently has well known guest stars, such as last week’s appearance of Robert Wagner.

The November 15 episode of NCIS had an amazing 19.9 million viewers. The episode, titled “Engaged, Part II,” includes an interesting scene featuring the always entertaining Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, played by actor Michael Weatherly. The witty, confident, skirt chasing Tony has a usually hidden insecure side as well. In this episode, Tony enters the Navy base chapel looking for the Chaplain, Lieutenant Commander Melanie Burke, played by Jaime Ray Newman (to discuss business, not spiritual matters). The chapel is empty, affording Tony a rather quizzical conversation with a god that’s familiar to a lot of people – Satan wearing the mask of God:

Commander? Chaplain Burke? Hello? Anybody here?

And then, in his best Cool Hand Luke voice:

“Anybody here?” Cool Hand Luke. Of course you knew that. You know I could have used you a couple of months ago. I got my head scrambled pretty good. Of course I understand you’re a busy guy. We haven’t talked much. It’s my bad. [Picks up a Bible that’s lying on the floor.] I’m doing the best I can down here you know… for a DiNozzo. Hopefully living up to my end of the bargain. You do remember our bargain? Be nice to hear from you. So you have a plan? Anything you wanna share with me? How ‘bout you let me know I’m on the right track. How ‘bout you let me know I’m not talking to myself. You are so predictable.

And once again, Cool Hand Luke:

“Well I guess what we have here is a failure to communicate.”

Tony isn’t on the right track. He’s been duped by Satan. The devil loves to preach a compelling Gospel of works, and he’s a very effective preacher. He can preach with the best of them. He’ll be more than happy to tell you all about how you should help the little old lady across the street and give to your favorite charity - just as long as you’re not relying on Jesus Christ.

Satan is the god of this world. He blinds the minds of unbelievers with a clever deception, one that is very believable, and Tony is buying into it. If you’re good, you’ll get to heaven. If you just try, do your best, everything will be all right. Satan leans over you as he tucks you into bed at night, wearing God’s mask, but his lullaby is fatal. Putting your trust in your own works cannot save. You really aren’t good enough, because God expects perfection. As the saying goes, God doesn’t grade on a curve.

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Funerals—“Everyone a Preacher”

The following post is written by my good friend Joe Strieter.  He addresses a topic that isn't brought up all that frequently, the funeral, and specifically the funeral sermon.  I'm sure you'll enjoy Joe's insightful comments, on this, the First Monday in Advent.

On his 76th birthday, my friend Tom died. We had enjoyed a warm relationship that went back ten years to the building of a major addition to his church (Lutheran), he as chairman of the building committee, I as the builder’s representative. My wife and I attended his funeral in the church that he had helped to plan and that I had helped to get built, even down to the details necessary for funerals. I once heard a pastor say about funerals, “This is where the Lutheran Church shines.” Our expectations were high.

As we entered the nearly-full nave, we heard a piano being masterfully played. Tom had a rich baritone voice, and he had done a lot of solo work, some in our church. The pre-service music consisted of songs he had sung over the years, concluding with “The Lord’s Prayer,” and the pianist did the music more than justice. The service began as the pastors processed. “Christ is arisen!” the senior pastor proclaimed. “He is risen, indeed! Hallelujah!” thundered the thrilling response. We heard the comforting words of Romans 6: “When we were baptized in Christ Jesus, we were baptized into His death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death” “It wouldn’t have been a proper funeral without those words,” I thought, and looked forward to hearing more.

Then we sang “You Have Come Down to the Lakeshore,” a song that seemed somewhat out of place at a funeral service. But I thought that perhaps it was one of Tom’s favorites—he had probably chosen it himself, and it had a pleasant melody, so why not? There were still more readings: from John 14, “Do not let your hearts be troubled…” and from Revelation 21, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth…” The pastor then asked us to join him in reciting the twenty-third psalm, a very moving experience, as the packed church said the familiar words from the King James: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…”

After “On Eagles Wings” the pastor began: “Every place I look around in here, I see Tom.” So did I. We had worked together for two years, as he led, directed, pushed, and cajoled the building project into completion. It was fitting to begin there. Tom had left his mark in that very place in many ways. The pastor continued for a few minutes then said, “It would be a comfort to me, and I’m sure to you, if anyone would like to say a few words about Tom.” He then left the pulpit.

After hearing those profound words of Scripture, was this to be the comfort we were to receive? One after another, people got up and “shared”: some from the pews, some stepping to the front, one person speaking from the pulpit, another even leaning on the altar as he spoke. (We were even treated to two “encores.”) A few were serious, but it seemed that most of the sharing was supposed to make us laugh—comic relief, rather than comfort for grief. I remember but one person who talked about Tom’s faith and none who spoke of the hope of the resurrection, not even the pastor. The proceedings had a “one-upmanship” quality, as it seemed each speaker tried to outdo the previous one. (Upon reflection, this sharing seemed more a “roast” than a eulogy.) 

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Smile, It's Friday

Put three marshmallows on your forehead and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of your day, because of course, you'll be too busy keeping those marshmallows up there.

photo credit: image415

Thanksgiving 2011

    "O Lord God, Heavenly Father, from whom without ceasing we receive exceeding abundantly all good gifts, and who daily of Thy pure grace guardest us against all evil: grant us, we beseech Thee, Thy Holy Spirit, that, acknowledging with our whole heart all this Thy goodness, we may now and evermore thank and praise Thy loving-kindness and tender mercy; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord. Amen."

Quoted from Liturgy andAgenda: Abridged Edition (St. Louis: CPH, 1918) 37.

Getting Rid of Those Stuffy “Liturgy Books”

I stumbled across this article at BixbyBulletin.com while looking for something a little more edifying. The article is the third in a series about storefront churches in Bixby, Oklahoma, written by Jo-Ann Jennings. This one is about Lord of Life Lutheran Church (LCMS). I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. Here’s the opening two paragraphs of the article:

If the word Lutheran causes you to think “black suit, white shirt, and polished shoes,” banish the thought. Vicar Jonathan Schultz has brought Lord of Life Lutheran Church to Bixby with praise and song. The once well-known liturgy books have been tucked away, and any reading or singing which needs to be done is on the wall in front of the congregation. “We want people with their heads up, worshipping Christ!” Schultz says with a huge smile. Not only that, but during the week, the church, in Cross Creek Shopping Center behind Bill and Ruth’s, is a coffee shop. One of Schultz biggest dreams-in-progress would be the ability to pick up a bus load of kids from a nearby trailer park and take them to the church in summer where they would be cool and have [sic] supervisor.

Schultz came to Bixby because of a vision of a Lutheran synod president who wanted to reach 100 million people by the year 2017. He looked at the globe to determine where to start. The US was to have 2,000 new Lutheran churches; Oklahoma, 12; Tulsa, six. “I am the second one,” Schultz said.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Confession and Absolution: Is It Optional?

Quoting from Pastor David H. Petersen's article titled "Renewal" in the Michaelmas 2011 Gottesdienst:

Private confession and absolution may be optional for the laity, but it is certainly not optional for the clergy.  No one can teach the Small Catechism and abstain from this gift without being a hypocrite, any more than he can teach the Small Catechism and abstain from the Lord's Supper or from having his children baptized.  But beyond the obvious goodness of being absolved, the preacher learns something of humility and sorrow in confession.  He remembers what it is to be on the other side, to be at someone else's mercy, to need someone else to say the words, to not have the answers and to depend on someone else.  Preachers who forget this, and we are all prone to forgetting this, preach in generalities.

Our preachers also need to hear confession.  Hearing confession is more humbling than making confession.  It changes the character of the pastoral relationship.  It deepens it.  God makes us pastors by the call and ordination.  But nothing "makes" us, in our minds, the pastor of an individual like this most intimate and pastoral relationship.  It changes the way we think about our people.  Parishioners might be surprised by this: no father confessor hearing the sins of his people becomes disgusted or angry.  I repeat: the penitent's sins do not disgust or anger the confessor.  Rather, hearing confession makes pastors sympathetic.  It puts the preacher on the penitent's side.

Whether the people come or not, the pastor should have regularly scheduled, published times for confession.  Even if the people don't come, the pastor is forced to contemplate his office and to pray for the people.  And eventually, they will come.

photo credit: loafingcoot

Darwin vs. Beauty: The End of the Argument

Psalm 104:24 "O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures."


Dr. Jonathan Witt, in his article in the latest Christian Research Journal (v. 34/no. 05) titled “Darwin vs. Beauty: Explaining Away the Butterfly,” points out the absurdity of Charles Darwin’s attempt to explain “instances of extravagant natural beauty” through his theory of sexual selection. “There Darwin argued, in essence, that the peacock has an extravagant tail, Shakespeare an extravagant gift for spinning tales, and Mozart an extravagant ability to compose, the better to attract a mate.”

Later on in the article, Dr. Witt comments that

A second and more wide-ranging way that Darwinian reductionism* is less than fully rational is in its commitment to the principle of methodological materialism. This is the investigative rule that says that investigators may consider only theories fully consistent with atheism. (It’s not usually described this starkly, but that’s what it boils down to.) According to the dictates of methodological materialism, if the extravagant beauty of butterflies or birds, if the origin of life or the universe or the fine tuning of the laws and constants of nature, if any of these features of our world points strongly toward a creative intelligence beyond the purely material, the flow of the evidence must be resisted.

This is what passes for scientific rationality in our age. But it isn’t hard-nosed realism at all. It’s priggish dogmatism. It’s the man in the seat beside you at a Beethoven concert insisting that everything you’re hearing is only so many notes, which are only so many sound waves, which are only so many perturbations among so many gaseous molecules amidst the machinery of your eardrum, the whole experience a curious stew of physics and sexual selection working its soulless magic on a delusional audience. The prig has talked all about the parts but has missed the whole—has missed the genius.

Fortunately, there aren’t that many people in the world who are so obtuse that they can’t appreciate the butterfly metamorphosing from creepy crawler into winged marvel. While 39% of Americans believe in evolution, 92% of Americans believe there is a God. We simply need roll back in our cubicle and glance out the window to know that this is so. No amount of methodological materialism can prevent this discovery of God, because God Himself reveals it to us:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. Romans 1:19-20 ESV

In the face of theories of evolution or the big bang, Christians need not feel inadequate because we don’t have “all the answers” in an empirically demonstrable way. Modern science is no threat to Christianity, and is in fact an ally. In some ways, the further we dig scientifically the less we find we know. Our explanatory power as creatures can’t hold up against God’s creation. We still can’t explain the nature of light, a verity which was pointed out by the Lord God Almighty to Job millennia ago:

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Lovely Las Vegas

Here's a few photos from a recent layover in Las Vegas.  Maybe not quite as glamorous as the TV commercials would have you believe.

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Pastoral Care for Former Evangelicals by Pastor Jeremy Rhode

The recently concluded series on pastoral care for former evangelicals with Pastor Jeremy Rhode on Issues, Etc. was one of the best series ever to grace the airwaves. It doesn’t matter who you are, Evangelical, Lutheran, Catholic, Pentecostal, Reformed, or other, these six segments are top notch. They delve into Evangelical theology, explaining the differences between Evangelicalism and Lutheranism, all the while highlighting the liberating doctrine that Lutheranism offers. You’ll be richly rewarded for your time.

Part 1: Discerning the Will of God, 8-3-11

http://issuesetc.org/2011/08/03/wednesday-august-3-2011/

Part 2: In Remembrance of Me, discussing the Lord’s Supper, 8-17-11

http://issuesetc.org/2011/08/17/wednesday-august-17-2011/

Part 3: The Office of the Pastor, 8-24-11

http://issuesetc.org/2011/08/24/14543/

Part 4: This is My Body, 9-14-11

http://issuesetc.org/2011/09/14/wednesday-september-14-2011/

Part5: The Christian Life, 9-21-11

http://issuesetc.org/2011/09/21/wednesday-september-21-2011/

Part 6: The Divine Service, 10-26-11

http://issuesetc.org/2011/10/26/the-gospel-for-former-evangelicals-the-divine-service-with-pr-jeremy-rhode-10262011/