As Christ Submits to the Church: a Biblical Understanding of Leadership and Mutual Submission. By Alan G. Padgett. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011. Paper. 151 + xviii pages. Review by John G. Nordling.

Unwary Lutherans might at first suppose that Padgett presents here a Christ who serves sinners humbly through [...]]]> A book review of:

As Christ Submits to the Church: a Biblical Understanding of Leadership and Mutual Submission. By Alan G. Padgett. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011. Paper. 151 + xviii pages. Review by John G. Nordling.

Unwary Lutherans might at first suppose that Padgett presents here a Christ who serves sinners humbly through the means of grace, rather the way God himself does at the Divine Service (cf. P. Brunner, Worship in the Name of Jesus [St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1968] 126-196).  One quickly realizes, however, that the “submission” Padgett envisions is of a rather different sort.  To be sure, Padgett does pay brief lip service to the gospel in the narrow sense: “evangelical is contrasted with moralistic or legalistic religion” (16 n. 22).  Mainly what Padgett has in mind, however, is a profoundly moralistic Christ who models a type of mutual submission that all Christians should be about in their day-to-day lives.  Thus, on almost every page is presented an extremely meek, servile, and even pusillanimous Christ who serves admirably as “the standard and moral exemplar” (46) of strong, empowered Christians serving weaker sisters and brothers—which may be a noble objective, admittedly.  This ethic of mutual submission, moreover, is the whole point of Jesus’ washing of Peter’s feet (John 13:13-14; cf. 54-55, 64, 126, 130), an eighth-century mural of which quite handsomely adorns the book’s front cover.  Hence, I think it safe to say that Padgett’s Christ is at some remove from the one assumed by most Lutheran readers of Logia.  But this should not surprise: Padgett is an ordained minister of the United Methodist Church, serving as professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary (dust cover).

Padgett supposes that the ethic of mutual submission has the potential of freeing the church from oppressive gender roles.   Gender hierarchy derives not from Scripture itself, but rather the patriarchal philosophies of Greece and Rome (2, 88).  Three lengthy chapters wrestle exegetically with the type of passages Padgett thinks have been wrongly used over time to keep women down:

Chapter 3: Mutual Submission or Male Dominion?: Christ and Gender Roles in Ephesians and 1 Corinthians (57-77);

Chapter 4: Mission and Submission: 1 Peter and the Pastoral Epistles (79-101);

Chapter 5: Headship and Head-Coverings: 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 from the Bottom Up (103-124).

A first chapter documents Evangelical approaches to gender roles since the Reformation (1-30), and in a second Padgett advances his thesis that mutual submission and the form of “servant leadership” that Christ exemplified are virtually one and the same (31-56).  A final chapter (125-131) attempts to apply the ethic of mutual submission to the contemporary situation: those who are weak (women, the poor, the oppressed, etc.) should not have to submit to those in power (abusive husbands, male senior pastors in large congregations).  So the overall message of the book and its concerns are not particularly surprising, given where Padgett is coming from.

What truly is remarkable and so should be addressed here is how Padgett engages Scripture and uses the traditional passages to advance a quite radical agenda.  In his opinion, mere biblical exegesis is “not enough” to determine meaning (3, 14, 21), provide the mind of an author (19-20), nor can one single verse ever decide an issue (30).  Nevertheless, Padgett devotes the bulk of the book (chapters 3-5) to the relevant texts of Scripture and thereby tries to provide biblical affirmations of equality.

The passage upon which so much depends is Eph 5:21ff.: “Being subject to one another [ὑποτασσόμενοι ἀλλήλοις] in the fear of Christ, [let] the wives [be subject] to their own husbands as to the Lord…” (my own translation, paying attention to the NRSV which Padgett prefers).  Padgett’s translation “submitting yourselves one to another” (41) for ὑποτασσόμενοι ἀλλήλοις already favors mutual submission.  After all, the present participle ὑποτασσόμενοι does indeed occur in the middle voice (“submitting yourselves”) and Padgett makes much of the reflexive pronoun ἀλλήλοις: “the term one another (allēlois) in Ephesians (4:2, 32) and in Paul’s letters in general indicates something that applies to each member of the church and not merely to a few” (41, original emphasis).  So, reasons Padgett, husbands should “submit” to their wives out of “self-sacrificial love and voluntary self-submission” (41) and the wives should “return the same” (42), just as Christ willingly and joyfully submits to the Church.  The reasoning here seems cogent enough, and I predict many well-intended Christians will enthusiastically accept Padgett’s arguments without a second thought.

Observation reveals, however, that Eph 5:21 is not complete in itself but functions as a kind of “general heading” (so A.T. Lincoln, Ephesians [Dallas, TX: Word, 1990] 365) for the specific callings of Christians that follow in the household code of 5:22-6:9 (wives/husbands, children/parents, slaves/masters).  Padgett would do well, therefore, to heed the following arguments (distilled from P.T. O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians [Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 1999]401-405): first, in the NT ὑποτάσσω (“to submit”) regularly describes the submission of someone in an ordered arrangement to another who is above the first—that is, in authority over that person.[1]  In the many passages listed in the preceding footnote, none of the relationships wherein this verb appears is ever reversed—that is, husbands are not subject to their wives (as Padgett himself admits, 60, 66), nor parents to children, nor the government to citizens, nor the disciples to demons, nor God the Father to Christ the Son.  Therefore, ὑποτάσσω does not describe “symmetrical” relationships at all, but rather ordered relationships wherein some persons are “over” and others “under.”

Second, the pronoun ἀλλήλοις (“to one another”) is not always reciprocal as Padgett imagines.  Sometimes it is, so the translation “everyone to everyone” is in order (so John 13:34, 35; 15:12, 17; Rom 1:12; Eph 4:25, etc).  But as is often the case with words that occur frequently in Scripture, context determines meaning and one size does not necessarily fit all.  Thus, elsewhere in the NT symmetrical relationships cannot possibly be in view even though the pronoun “one another” occurs.[2]  In the passage at hand, therefore, “submitting to one another” does not indicate mutual submission because—as has already been demonstrated above—the submission is not reciprocal but one-directional.

Third, the flow of Paul’s argument as expressed in the Greek text does not permit the reciprocal interpretation.  Eph 5:21 (“being subject to one another in the fear of Christ”) introduces programmatically the notion of “submission” in the letter, and this is unpacked in the household code of 5:22-6:9.  The “general heading” (as Lincoln calls 5:21) is closely connected to what follows immediately in 5:22: there is no verb in the latter passage, so accurate readers of Greek will naturally carry forward the idea of “submit” (a second or third person imperative would do nicely) from the ὑποτασσόμενοι in 5:21.[3]  In 5:24 where ὑποτάσσεται does indeed occur (“as the church submits to Christ”) Paul adds, “so also the wives [submit] to their husbands in everything” (οὕτως καὶ αἱ γυναῖκες τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἐν παντί).  Again, Paul does not have to add the verb “submit” to clarify what already is quite clear.  This is a stylistic matter, and so Paul—like all other writers of Greek and Latin—never adds a superfluous word to clarify his thinking, even though (to be sure!) many writers of English do so routinely.  But Paul cannot be subject to English style: he thinks and writes in Greek, an accommodation to which any adequate interpretation pays heed.  A stupid argument (that Padgett does not actually make) would be that because ὑποτάσσω is not actually paired with “women” in Eph 5:21, 22, and 24b Paul could not be thinking of wives submitting to their husbands in the overall passage.  But that he does have such submission in mind is clear enough from context (and he makes the point about wives submitting to their husbands explicitly in Col 3:18 and Titus 2:5; cf. also 1 Pet 3:5).

Preceding arguments should scupper any notion of “mutual submission” that Padgett may think Paul is establishing in Eph 5:21ff.  Instead, it is as though Paul were saying: “Submit to one another, and what I mean is, wives submit to your husbands, children to your parents, and slaves to your masters” (O’Brien, Ephesians, 403).  Another worthy interpreter has written: “Let each of you subordinate himself or herself to the one he or she should be subordinate to” (S.B. Clark, Man and Woman in Christ [Ann Arbor, MI: Servant, 1980] 76).

An even more radical interpretation comes to light in Padgett’s treatment of 1 Cor 11:2-16 (women’s head-covering, deportment during worship), which he attempts to read “from the bottom up”—that is, starting from the end of Paul’s argument and working toward the beginning (103-124).  Padgett believes Paul is taking on an unfortunate custom at Corinth that women should not pray or prophesy “with uncovered head” (ἀκατακαλύπτῳ τῇ κεφαλῇ, 11:5).  That this was the errant Corinthian custom (so not Paul’s own teaching) is supported, Padgett believes, by taking 11:13b as a statement (which, however, is punctuated in the UBS, Nestle-Aland, and most English versions as a question).  Thus, “judge for yourselves: it is proper for an uncovered woman to pray to God” (Padgett’s translation of 11:13b).  This exegetical sleight-of-hand allows Padgett to argue that there is no shame in a man with long hair at worship (which argues against traditional interpretations of 11:14 [cf. 11:7a]), and that nature herself has given women long hair instead of head coverings (which argues against traditional interpretations of 11:5, 6, 15a).  So, reasons Padgett, “women ought to have freedom to wear their hair however they want in church” (112).  Furthermore, the “authority” (ἐξουσίαν, 11:10) that a woman has “over her head” (ἐπὶ τῆς κεφαλῆς, 11:10)—far from being a symbol of any type of head-covering (κάλυμα is a variant for ἐξουσίαν in many versions)—is a type of warrant early Christian women had to spread the gospel publicly and without hindrance: “Should not such a ‘messenger’ have the freedom to wear her hair however she wishes in church?” (113).  Thus, what Paul really means throughout this vexed passage—which has suffered centuries of abuse by mistranslation and “man-centered” interpretation—is that

…gender distinctions were of no importance.  This is where the saying “of the Lord” [ἐν κυρίῳ, 11:11] comes in: Jesus teaches that in the resurrection, sexuality as we know it will be no more.  So sexual distinctions, like head-coverings, should, in the Lord, be of no importance.  Therefore, “because of the angels” women should not have to cover themselves when men do not.  They should have freedom (to cover or not to cover) over their heads (115).

What shall we make of Padgett’s interpretation?  Well, we shall have to say, first, that it is nothing short of magnificent on many levels, and one’s sneaking suspicion is that such reasoning is destined to persuade many.  Padgett has been working on 1 Cor 11:2-16 “for over twenty years” (103) and has generated the impressive scholarship to demonstrate competency.[4]  Nevertheless, and speaking only for myself, I shall have to confess that I am not persuaded by most of Padgett’s arguments here, ingenious though they are.  The possibility that Paul is opposing a Corinthian custom (instead of giving vent to his own authoritative teaching) almost entirely depends on interpreting 11:13b as a statement instead of as a question, as demonstrated above.  However, it seems entirely natural to interpret the passage as Paul’s incredulous question with respect to what was routinely going on at Corinth during worship: “Is it proper for an uncovered woman [γυναῖκα ἀκατακάλυπτον] to pray to God?” (my added emphasis).  And the answer, though not actually stated, would be: “No, such deportment is not proper!” (cf. G.J. Lockwood, 1 Corinthians [St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 2000], 376).  So Paul is a bit perturbed by the Corinthian license in this respect: “Surely it cannot be right for a woman to participate in public worship without the appropriate head-covering” (Lockwood, 1 Corinthians, 376).  Paul’s sense of incredulity continues in 11:14-15b which, as all acknowledge (including Padgett, 108), is another question: “Does not nature herself teach you that if a man has long hair it is a disgrace to him, but if a woman has long hair it is her glory?”  Here the answer to the question must be, “Yes, nature herself does teach that such activity is a disgrace!” (positive answer expected in response to the particle οὐδέ in 11:14a).  Padgett stumbles here by interpreting the οὐδέ negatively: “The clear and sensible answer to this question is no” (109).  But Padgett’s interpretation violates an important principle of Greek grammar whereby questions introduced by the negative particles οὐ/οὐκ, οὐδείς, οὐδέ, etc. invariably expect the answer yes (so H.W. Smyth, Greek Grammar [Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1920] 598, §2651).  With this prop out of the way Padgett’s argument quickly falls.  The idea that a woman brings “shame” on herself while praying “uncovered” is clearly repeated in 11:5 and 6; likewise, the idea that a man ought not be covered with respect to his head is repeated in 11:7: “since he is the image and glory of God [εἰκὼν καὶ δόξα θεοῦ ὑπαρχων]; but the woman is the glory of man [ἡ γυνὴ δὲ δόξα ἀνδρός ἐστιν].”

Just what is Paul driving at here?  The special relationship that obtained between Adam and Eve at the beginning? (this could be suggested by 11:8-9).  The special relationship that also obtains between a Christian husband who exercises godly authority over his wife and family, and a wife who willingly submits to her husband in this matter? (so Lockwood, 1 Corinthians, 372).  I shall refrain from answering the question dogmatically because, as I think, a certain mystery pervades the entire passage: Paul here provides various intimations regarding the glorious relationship that can potentially exist between a man and woman in Christ, so the question is not easily reduced to a single, binding answer (which is the problem with much rather legalistically “conservative” interpretation on the Reformed side, as Padgett rightly notes [10]).  But what I would argue at the very least is that Paul suggests that there are certain undeniable, God-given, and created differences between the two genders that are not supposed to be overlooked, minimized, or denied.  And this precisely is what Padgett’s scholarship routinely does.  By “gender balance” (111, 112, 118, 119) Padgett means that there just are no appreciable differences between man and woman; in the name of “equality” the two sexes ought simply to be blended together, and so what emerges is a kind of benign unisexuality: “the distinguishing marks of short hair on men and head-coverings for women are of no consequence in the Lord or in church” (111).  Well, perhaps not at the resurrection of all flesh, or at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Last Day.  But until then and “here below” where we live now, I submit, sexuality and the type of ordering that God intends to exist between the two genders continues to matter a great deal.  Here I defer to scholars who have written at greater length on these matters than have I:

The created distinction between man and woman should be honored in the church.  Symbolic “gender-bending” actions in which women and men seek to reject their specific sexual identities are a sign not of authentic spirituality but of an adolescent impatience with the world in which God has placed us.  We are not disembodied spirits; consequently, spiritual maturity in Christ will lead us to become mature women and men in Christ.  Our dress and outward appearance should appropriately reflect our gender identity; to blur these distinctions is to bring needless shame upon the community.  In a time of rampant confusion about gender identity in our culture, Paul’s teaching on this matter is timely for us.  A healthy community needs men and women together ([11:]11), not a group of people striving for sexless neutrality (R.B. Hays, First Corinthians [Louisville, KY: John Knox, 1997] 191; in Lockwood, 1 Corinthians, 378-379; original emphasis).

Padgett is familiar with the work of much traditional scholarship but routinely dismisses it as evocative of “man-centered leadership” (so 2, 10, 27, 57, 68, 101, 130), “traditional Christian patriarchy” (4), or the type of “complementarian” positions (2, 11, 32, 39, 43, 130) he supposes have been outmoded by the “Gospel” as he defines it.  Padgett is no slouch exegetically but, unfortunately, uses his powers to undermine traditional positions and (as the ancient rhetoricians used to say) “make the worse appear the better cause.”  So anyone reading this book needs constantly to be on guard and prepared to wage battle exegetically.  Space does not permit me to expose everything, though another book of equal length could well be written to engage Padgett’s faulty interpretations of the other passages and set matters straight.  In this review I have managed to engage Padgett’s substandard interpretations of Eph 5:21ff. and 1 Cor 11:2-16.  It goes without saying that much more of this work could and should be done.  So perhaps pastors who have the time and training could purchase the book and engage it deeply with each other before instructing their laypersons suitably.  Gender confusion runs rampant in our churches and pastors are needed who can confront this growing menace, yet do so without alienating the godly women who comprise more than half of our congregations.  I would like to see our pastors engage such scholarship as Padgett has produced, and get to work in this matter.

John G. Nordling
Department of Exegetical Theology
Concordia Theological Seminary
Fort Wayne, IN

“And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56).

Today is the Feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr [...]]]> A sermon by Rev. Ronald  F. Marshall, proclaimed to his flock at First Lutheran Church of West Seattle, December 26, 2010.

“And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56).

Today is the Feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr of the Church – who died because he spoke out for Christ (Acts 7:51-53). But “what a difference a day makes” – as Dinah Washington sang on her Grammy award winning record back in 1959! For this transition from Christmas day to today – the second day in the twelve days of Christmas – is anything but smooth! For we have gone from singing, “Repeat the sounding joy,” to killing (Acts 7:57-58). So what’s up? Why this “most glaring contrast” between these two days of Christmas [Kaj Munk, Four Sermons (1944) p. 20]?

Delaying Peace

Now it is precisely because we heard yesterday those heavenly, angelic words, “Peace on earth!” (Luke 2:8), that we wonder why, all of a sudden, St. Stephen is being stoned to death by an angry mob. Have we missed something? The Christmas decorations are still up – but to no avail, for this wretched brutality still befalls us!

Well, in fact, the sad truth is that we have missed something. And what we’ve failed to consider sufficiently is that our Lord didn’t come to bring peace on earth right away (Luke 12:51)! For on earth, for now, we must instead endure tribulation (John 16:33; Acts 14:22). But that doesn’t mean that we won’t have a peace of mind which the world cannot give (John 14:27). All it means is that we’ll be the “off-scourging” of the world because we follow Christ (1 Corinthians 4:13). So having a peace of mind rooted in knowing to whom we belong, and the blessedness that awaits us when we die (Philippians 4:4-7) – that will not and cannot keep us from running the risk of being tortured, mocked, imprisoned, wandering over deserts and mountains, living in dens and caves, and even being “sawn in two” or stoned to death (Hebrews 11:35-38).

Slogging in the Bog

Now that being said, how in the world can we live with the threats in these tribulations? How can we, as Martin Luther said – who is our most eminent teacher [The Book of Concord (1580), ed. T. Tappert (1959) p. 576] – how can we put up with this “vexation of life,” a life which is so “horribly wretched, difficult, and troubled” (Luther’s Works 8:114)? In his Large Catechism (1529) he even goes on to say that when we do follow Christ, we will never “have peace” – even though God “faithfully provides for our daily existence” (BC pp. 429, 431). And if we eke out some worldly peace anyway, that can only be because we – as Luther’s relentless logic again has it – have abandoned Christ [LW 13:415; 51:112; 52:117-119; Luther’s House Postils, 3 vol. ed. E. Klug (1996) 1:163] – by avoiding the “hard knots” intrinsic to Christianity (LW 21:62; 23:402), like self-denial, eternal damnation and the uniqueness of Christ. So Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) – who thought preachers could do no better than read aloud Luther’s sermons every Sunday in church rather than writing their own [Journals & Papers, 7 vols, trans. Howard V. Hong & Edna H. Hong, 3:3496] – he felt that we were left, because of this tribulation, to “slog along as if in a bog” (JP 3:6503), finding our help from God, as Luther said, “in the midst of opposites” (LW 4:232). Lord have mercy!

Because of this trouble, Luther believed that “there is no life… on earth more wretched than that of a Christian” (LW 28:106) – and the stoning of St. Stephen underscores that most emphatically. And Kierkegaard, for one, took Luther’s insight to heart. For he argued that it would be a bad “slogan” for the Christian life, to think that if you are loving and kind, then “it will go well with you in this world” (JP 3:3527; Hebrews 10:34)! So by including St. Stephen’s stoning at the start of the season of Christmas, the point is made that the birth of Christ means “that the natural man should die,” and that, to die in this way means, “to be born” (JP 1:568).

Abounding in Adversity

To be able to rejoice in this redefined birth of the Savior, we will have to follow the wisdom of God. But if we do, as Kierkegaard warned, we will run the risk of “fanaticism” (JP 3:2379). Even so, Luther is fearless and says that the Biblical message holds that the Christian “knows how to rejoice in sadness and to mourn in happiness” (LW 25:347; Psalm 90:15). For the true Christian is “uplifted in adversity, because he trusts in God” and is “downcast in prosperity, because he fears God” (LW 27:403)! Kierkegaard called this strange flip-flop an “inverted dialectic” (JP 4:4680).

But it is just this inverted dialectic that gives us the calm to face any situation in life and to learn to be “content,” as was the Apostle Paul when he suffered adversity (Philippians 4:10). So the secret to enduring tribulation is in this very inversion or flip-flop – whereby adversity becomes a blessing, or as Luther said, we learn by it to be uplifted in adversity – following Romans 5:3. By so doing, Kierkegaard notes, Luther doesn’t put us to sleep spiritually but instead preaches us “farther out” (JP 3:2462) – out on a limb, if you will – beyond a mere “human cause,” whereby we are busy about only “finite matters” (JP 3:2570). Moving out into a realm where, if one were stoned to death for the truth, it wouldn’t be the end of what matters most, but it’s beginning. For when the world shuts its doors on us, “heaven opens up” (JP 4:4508). That’s why we are to rejoice in our adversity and not collapse under it – being only “struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:12).

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed…. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory,… [for] we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

This is what St. Stephen knew! No wonder, then, that when the thief on the cross cried out to Jesus, “Are you not the Christ? [Then] save yourself and us!” (Luke 23:39), it fell on deaf, albeit divine, ears. And that was because “in Christianity everything is aimed at eternity – therefore a lifetime of suffering, therefore no help in this life, no victory in this life” (JP 3:3098). Or as Jesus said: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28)! So Kierkegaard writes that if this earthly tribulation and anguish is lost, then we might as well “lock the churches and convert them into dance halls,” because that higher divine cause of spiritual renewal and salvation will have been lost, for it is what prepares us for that eternal weight of glory (JP 3:2461). To guard against this, Kierkegaard says that the human skull is the most fitting object for “prolonged mediation” on the meaning of Christian living, because it symbolizes “that to love God is: to die, to die to the world, the most agonizing of all agonies” (JP 3:2455).

Seeing Jesus

Therefore we will surely need help if we are ever going to turn our anxieties and tribulations into blessings, like St. Stephen did. Somehow we’ll need to know that God is “swift to help,” even if everything is to be rendered futile, is to be blown away like a fantasy, even if nothing, nothing whatever, is to be achieved and the suffering is the one and only actuality, even if the unremitting sacrifice of a long life is to become meaningless like shadowboxing in the air… (Kierkegaard’s Writings 5:334).

We cannot come by such knowledge intellectually. But we are told in no uncertain terms that God has “delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13), that we might go “through life to life” (KW 15:217)! And these words are good-as-gold, for in them we hear, Kierkegaard would say, the very “voice of God” (KW 21:39), and not some human interpretation (1 Thessalonians 2:13) of an old, disputed text. All of this happens through faith in the sacrifice of Jesus whereby he cancels what’s against us (Colossians 1:14).

This sterling sacrifice, Kierkegaard notes, reveals that “Christianity is the divine combat of divine passion with itself” (JP 1:532). For the very blood shed in the sacrifice of the Son of God, saves us from the wrath of God (Romans 5:9)! In that salvation we are shocked by the internal combat of God “recoiling” within (Hosea 11:8). But in this sacrifice is life. And so when St. Stephen is stoned to death, he sees the heavens open, with Christ standing – not sitting as usual – to welcome him (Acts 7:56) because “dangers threaten” (JP 1:300). In death, then, Christ “strangles” death for us, so that our death – strangely – is in him and not in us (LW 42:105)! Therefore our reward comes after we die (Luke 14:14). So we are to struggle to remain faithful unto death, that we might then receive “the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10), since Jesus refuses to magically turn “mortal life into worldly delight” (KW 15:233). And to remain faithful to this promise, receive the Lord’s Supper today, for it’s “new strength and refreshment” (BC p. 449).

Being Angelic

And then, in thanksgiving for our salvation (Colossians 2:7), may we also “walk as children of light,” holding on to what’s “good and right and true” (Ephesians 5:8-9)! So be angelic under attack, as St. Stephen was (Acts 6:15). Don’t seek suffering (LW 30:110), but don’t flee from it either (LW 35:56). And pray for your enemies, after you rebuke them, as St. Stephen did, and so show that love is “like a nut with a hard shell and a sweet kernel” [Sermons of Martin Luther, 8 vols (1988), ed. J. N. Lenker, 6:208]. Amen.

 Luke 21:25-26

            “There shall be signs in the sun, moon, and stars.”—says the Lord. So far it hasn’t happened yet. Certainly at times a new show takes place in the night sky. There a comet ascends and after a time disappears again. A few [...]]]> An Advent Sermon from Werner Elert translated Adam Koontz

 Luke 21:25-26

            “There shall be signs in the sun, moon, and stars.”—says the Lord. So far it hasn’t happened yet. Certainly at times a new show takes place in the night sky. There a comet ascends and after a time disappears again. A few months ago a new star in the sky was discovered, but after a few days, it became small again. Or an unusually long drought or long wet period prevails. Or once a great storm on the sea—“the sea and the waves will roar”—yes, all this occurs also in our times. But it has often been so before. Comets have often stood in the sky. And all manner of horrors at sea have disturbed men. In all these and the like, our time does not distinguish itself from other times.

Certainly one thing does apply to our day in a special way: “On Earth people will be afraid, and they shall say”… “And men will die off for fear and for awaiting the things that shall come on the Earth.” There is a monstrous restlessness among our people and seemingly also among all other peoples. One lives in the anticipation of great things. One hopes and fears. One waits.

“But when this begins to happen, look up and lift up your heads, for your salvation draws near.” When what begins? The sky’s activities? They have not changed, so long as the thoughts of men stretch into the past. Therefore we come to the other option: when the angst and restlessness of men and the restless anticipating becomes ever greater—then lift up your eyes. Lift your heads, for your salvation draws near.

And so the appeal is addressed also to us today. Lift up your heads, for your salvation draws near. From this and the following words of the Lord comes an essentially different picture of the imminent end-times from that which most Christians among us maintain. Usually the matter is put forth as if horrible things are the most certain mark of the future coming of Christ, as though one must await a dreadful upheaval in all earthly conditions, indeed in all the conditions of the stars, the heavenly bodies among them, and finally, as though the best preparation were to hide oneself warily at one’s own hearth. Though all these things and opinions have a certain truth to them—this speech of the Lord shows that the matter also has another aspect. From this announcement comes much that is in contrast to this widespread opinion:

1. The signs of the future coming of Christ shall be not only terrible but also full of hope.
2. One should fix his eyes not on the ephemeral, but on the everlasting.
3. One should be not worried, but watchful and worthy.

I.

            One should certainly not overlook that in the proclamations of Jesus the description of events in the sky is by no means the only thing. It says, “He told them a parable, ‘Look at the fig tree, and all the trees—as soon as they leaf out, you look for yourselves and know the summer is near. So also, when you see all this going on, know that the kingdom of God is near.’” Had the Lord thought only of downfall and destruction at his future coming, he would have likened the time of preparation not to the spring but to the autumn. That he likened it to the spring, bright budding and the greening of the trees, so we may definitely expect that the end of time will also mean a bright budding and greening in his kingdom.

Is such budding and blooming something to be perceived in the present? Before the war, we received the reports of our missionaries every year. Who among us read them? Who was at all interested in them?—Yes, there was something of blooming in the kingdom of God to notice, when the heathens pressed in to hear the Gospel. How happy we would be today, if that happened again! But if also in this time some consoling news arrives, in general a monstrous reversal has come. It is autumn there instead of spring, and the young congregations of Christians there are far more like not to a greening fig tree, but to a fading one. The leaves for the most part are fallen. So here the Lord’s condition is not fulfilled.

And in Christianity here at home?—Some believed strongly during the rush to arms in the first months of the war that a rush to arms brought with it the chance to behold a greening fig tree in the area of prayer meetings for the war, of prayer, and of a penitent attitude. Granting there may have been something true in that—today we are in any case farther from a conversion of the entire people than ever. Here also no blooming, but a falling of barren leaves—for that reason we will not hold the horrible things of the present for more important than they actually are. Therefore they are not decisive, says the fact that the trees still are not green.

II.

Not the ephemeral, but the everlasting.

            When many Christians busy themselves much more readily with the outward signs of the coming of Jesus than with the inward signs, it is presumably because above all the ephemeral is more important to them than the everlasting. You remember that the last Sundays of the church year preach the everlasting in ever-new phrases. And out of the prayers of those weeks rings out the tone: “Prepare our minds for the end.” But do not think, fellow-Christians, that that is a special cemetery-mood or autumn-mood that is again finished once happy Advent promises hopes and joys again. The season of Advent also in its way directs its vision to the everlasting.

Proof v. 33, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” That is: away with all thoughts of the temporal, but also with all thoughts and musings on the downfall of the world, etc. It all passes away—what does it matter to you? Think still more on that which will be saved, yes, what then will still be, and then always will rule all life. Those are his words.

The Lord’s words—they are not dead and gone like other people’s words. Some among us can only speak smartly; they give first-rate advice in all political and business affairs. But do not think, fellow-Christians, that such has eternal worth…. That Christ’s words have eternal worth, that is because he himself is an eternal being.

And let us apply these predictions of the Lord to some of his words. “Come unto me…” “The Son of Man—that he should give his life as a ransom for many.” “I am the Good Shepherd—I give them eternal life, and they shall nevermore perish.” These words have validity also in the eternal world, and to that let us turn our attention.

III.

Not anxious, but watchful and worthy.

            From this follows—and that is for us the most important thing—how we should conduct ourselves in these hard times (which should however, as the season of Advent, lose all that is comfortless). First: not anxious. If we were to be anxious, fearful, then certainly it would be never be set there: “Lift up your heads.” So not a sunken head, but an uplifted one. Not fearful, but inwardly free and full of trust in a very strong Helper.

But beside that: watchful, v. 34-36. The day comes like a trap. Not as if someone has an interest in bringing us to a fall. The Lord, who brings it, wants rather the opposite. But he wants to preclude all hypocrisy. Were the preparation of the fulfillment such that no man could anymore doubt it, then the temptation would lie near that many would repent at last out of so-called smartness. What do you think, fellow-Christian? Oh, how many good Christians lean upon the possibility to still repent before the gate is closed and to still be able to come home. It doesn’t work that way with the Lord. The end comes unexpectedly like a trap.

So watchful. And further “worthy.” Oh, of worth among us we cannot speak, still less of worthiness. Namely then, not when this is connected to it: “Worthy to stand before the Son of Man.” Therefore there is only one way out. That is the begging outstretch of the hand to him: Lord, take me as I am. Forgive me my sins, and save me. I cannot. That strikes some among us not as worthy but as unworthy. That we still thereafter must humble ourselves is because the human measure of worthiness is generally invested in hypocrisy. Not with the Lord. And above this: it is not about humility before men but about humility before God. …

Amen.

The editors of LOGIA: A Journal of Lutheran Theology had a productive annual meeting in West Saint Paul, Minnesota in June. Meeting at the church of Senior Editor, Dr. Michael Albrecht, we all became a little bit nostalgic as we made plans for our forthcoming issue “LOGIA After Twenty Years” (Holy [...]]]> By Martin R. Noland

The editors of LOGIA: A Journal of Lutheran Theology had a productive annual meeting in West Saint Paul, Minnesota in June. Meeting at the church of Senior Editor, Dr. Michael Albrecht, we all became a little bit nostalgic as we made plans for our forthcoming issue “LOGIA After Twenty Years” (Holy Trinity 2012). If you are not a subscriber, it isn’t too late to receive that issue by subscribing at our website ($20 for one year of the online PDF version; $30 for one year of the print version to USA address; to order, see website at: www.logia.org.)

When I got home, I started rummaging through my library and files for anything pertaining to the first years of LOGIA. By chance, I found the “Theological Observer” article authored by David P. Scaer titled “LOGIA: A Journal of Lutheran Theology” in Concordia Theological Quarterly 57 #1-2 (January-April 1993): 113-116. If you have a copy of that issue, it is worth pulling out and reading Scaer’s evaluations of LOGIA.

Overall, Scaer was impressed by the first issue of LOGIA. The editors knew that they could win him over with that Dürer woodcut of God the Father wearing a papal tiara! In the first paragraph, Scaer gave the highest praise: “Among those periodicals claiming to present the confessional Lutheran position, however, none is as impressive as LOGIA!”

Scaer noted the churches of the contributing editors: Lutheran (State) Church of Hanover, Lutheran Church of Australia, Lutheran Church-Canada, Evangelical Lutheran Synod, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany (SELK), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He overlooked the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, but not intentionally. Since then LOGIA has added contributing editors who are members of Lutheran churches in Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Sweden, Madagascar, and South Africa.

Scaer observed that the working editors belong to the “younger generation of pastors.” As I looked around the table this June in Minneapolis, that is still true, but we are working now with a second generation of younger pastor-editors, with a few “grey-heads” left like me and Dr. Albrecht.

Scaer understood the significance of LOGIA when he observed, “Perhaps the message here is that Lutheran theology of the confessional sort is not the possession of one church body and a younger generation wants to be involved” and “In any event LOGIA tells us that theology is still alive among the non-professionals.” I might add that the LOGIA editors want the younger generation of pastors and other “non-professionals” to be involved.

One paragraph in Scaer’s review had a dark tone. He wrote: “Unstated in LOGIA is the premise that additional channels are needed to do justice to confessional, and presumably, biblical theology. We shall see how courageous the editors are” (my emphasis). Scaer had survived spurious charges of false doctrine filed by a CTS staff member, but his defender, Robert Preus, did not survive that affair. Scaer wrote his review of LOGIA while he and the faculty at Fort Wayne were still under an interim presidency following the firing of Robert Preus. So he knew what this meant from personal experience.

In order to see “how courageous the editors” were, I took a sampling based on my own contributions to LOGIA for the years 1995 (my first piece) to 2007, a mix of articles and Logia Forum pieces. In those fourteen articles and pieces I was critical of events and trends in Lutheranism such as: “church growth,” Evangelical-style worship, secular methods of marketing and manipulation, “creative worship,” “entertainment evangelism,” the secularization of Lutheran colleges, the CCM ruling to expel congregations that oppose woman’s suffrage for theological reasons (an LCMS issue), CCM power in general (an LCMS issue), “Lutherans Alive” (an LCMS political group), modernism in the ELCA, the ecumenical movement, the Porvoo Statement and Declaration (1996), the Formula of Agreement (1997), Called to Common Mission (1999), the Joint Declaration on Doctrine of Justification (1999), and the Lutheran World Federation.

If that wasn’t enough to offend some folks, in those fourteen articles and pieces I actually named persons whose writings or theology I disagreed with: Jaroslav Pelikan, David Luecke, Waldo Werning, Alan Klaas, George Lindbeck, First Things, Richard John Neuhaus, James Neuchterlein, Francis Schaeffer, Walter Bouman, Arthur Carl Piepkorn, Carl Braaten, Robert Jenson, and Gerhard Forde. I was hardly the only theological critic writing in LOGIA nor was I the most frequent or most trenchant. Whether you judge our criticisms to be “courageous” or “foolhardy,” you can’t say that LOGIA has been manned by a bunch of milquetoasts.

Toward the end of his review, Scaer noted, “The editors are off to a good start, but whether they can maintain an adequate level of scholarship, enthusiasm, editorial work, and financial support is another matter.” Our readers will have to be the judge of the first three qualities, while financial support is always welcome.

In the support department, pastors can, at the very least, encourage their brother pastors at circuit meetings to subscribe and those so encouraged can put LOGIA on their “book allowance.” At $5 an issue (online PDF version), that is less than a lunch at McDonald’s these days.

Our hearty thanks and best wishes to Dr. Scaer, and to many others, for their support and encouragement through these past twenty years!

Editors Note–This is a greatly abbreviated version of a full-length article from the Epiphany 2011 issue of the same name.

Germany: the homeland of the (Lutheran) Reformation. Is it a Christian country? Forget it. What about a Lutheran nation? Not at all. If this was ever the case, it certainly [...]]]> by Jobst Schöne, Berlin, Germany

Editors Note–This is a greatly abbreviated version of a full-length article from the Epiphany 2011 issue of the same name.

Germany: the homeland of the (Lutheran) Reformation. Is it a Christian country? Forget it. What about a Lutheran nation? Not at all. If this was ever the case, it certainly is no longer so. Today Germany has a largely secularized and unchurched population. Some fifty years ago, ninety-six percent of Germans belonged to one of two predominant churches, the Roman Catholic Church or the Protestant Church (the latter being partly of Lutheran, of Reformed, and of United traditions). Nowadays, less than two-thirds of Germany’s citizens still hold a church membership, at least on paper, and their numbers are constantly shrinking. In the last eighteen years, the Protestants lost 3.8 million members and the Roman Catholics 2.2 million. Church attendance on an average Sunday is down to 3.8 percent of the members in the Protestant churches, while the Roman Catholics are only slightly better off. As a whole, Christians in Germany are losing ground dramatically, moving quickly toward a shrinking minority.

Statistics, however, demonstrate only part of the changes taking place. Germany’s foremost newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, recently published a lengthy article entitled “What is Going to Happen to the Churches?” by Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, a Protestant systematician at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich.¹ He deplored the almost complete lack of intellectual integrity among church leaders, along with their poverty of realistic self-perception and theological seriousness. This crisis is a very deep one. What characterizes German churches, according to Graf, are feelings of well-being, emotions, moralism, and the attitude of the “prophetic know-it-all,” confronting the poor churchgoer with all the misery of the Third World and making him feel responsible for it. Sadly, this is typical of legalistic preaching that cannot properly distinguish law and gospel.

It is no wonder that this sort of church environment has created a widespread and growing attitude of “believing without belonging,” now found all over Europe. This phenomenon is perhaps better understood as an unwillingness to support a church that does not know how to communicate the gospel—how to preach salvation—and that has no better message to proclaim than the one illustrated above. The situation is bleak enough even without the numerous cases of child abuse in churches and Christian schools and homes that have recently been disclosed. These and various other scandals are altogether undermining confidence in the representatives of the church (and not only in those of the Roman Catholic Church).

Lutheranism in Germany has been totally marginalized. Certainly a few Lutheran remnants with a number of “conservative” and faithful pastors and their congregations can still be found in the Landeskirchen (that is, the former state churches), and within a church like the SELK (the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church), but mainstream Protestantism has lost its confessional orientation almost completely. Churches are generally considered to be nothing but assemblies of like-minded fellow believers, brooding over shared needs and problems that they experience in this world, but lacking a focus on eternal salvation. The inherited order of worship is almost gone; ancient hymns and the songs of our fathers are no longer sung. These have been replaced by contemporary forms, songs, and music that in the meantime have proven to be more destructive than helpful.

Among the upper circles a widespread feeling of helplessness is to be found, as the leadership does not know how to fight the church’s decline. In 2006, the EKD (Evangelical Church in Germany, comprising all former Protestant state churches) published an “impulse paper” outlining the outlook for the twenty-first century. The experts who wrote this lengthy statement had a clear vision of what is to come: decline in membership by one-third in the next twenty years, a loss of half of the church taxes (the foremost financial basis for EKD member churches) from the current four billion Euros to only two billion, and a necessary cut in the number of clergy by one-third. Overall it is a rather depressing scenario, revealing the depth of the crisis and calling for repentance and a change of heart. But what do the experts recommend? They call for the churches “to risk and cultivate more freedom,” to praise “inward plurality” as a “simultaneous temptation and blessing of Protestantism”; they strive after a “church of freedom and individuality.”² One may wonder if it will still be the church of the apostles, the martyrs, and the great teachers of the past—the church Luther sought to cleanse, the church that Löhe and Walther had in mind.

With such a document in hand, it is easy to lose confidence in the future of an Evangelical church in Germany, not to mention the future of a Lutheran one. Once the Scriptures and the Confessions are no longer needed to clarify the church’s identity, their confessional profile is indeed lost and surrendered to modern pluralism. Thus we might have to accept that Christian churches in general, and a Lutheran church in particular, will gradually disappear from the public scene in Germany. There seems to be no need for the church any longer. A few years ago Johannes Gross, a well-known and brilliant German journalist and editor, and an accurate observer of public life (also, by the way, a member of the Lutheran Church), made a remarkable assertion. He claimed that the Protestant and Lutheran churches would not survive the twenty-first century; only the Roman Catholic Church will be left. Perhaps he was too negative or even altogether wrong with his prognosis; perhaps some small groups, some small churches will remain. So, too, the Lutherans, though marginalized.

Does Luther have a future in Germany? There is reason enough for skepticism. Yet on the other hand we are reminded of what Luther himself once expressed so clearly: “It is not we who can preserve the church, neither could our ancestors do so, nor will our descendents. Instead, it was and still is and will be he who speaks: ‘I am with you always, even to the end of the world.’”³ Does Luther have a future in Germany? If God desires it, he will have one—in Germany and elsewhere.

John 16:23-30

Leaving a legacy! Yes, Christ has gathered his disciples into the upper room. It is farewell time. I’m leaving the world and going to the Father. This is the final session together. They have travelled a long time [...]]]> Call service
28.5.2011
Christ Lutheran church, St Catharines, Ontario
Rev. Juhana Pohjola

John 16:23-30

Leaving a legacy! Yes, Christ has gathered his disciples into the upper room. It is farewell time. I’m leaving the world and going to the Father. This is the final session together. They have travelled a long time together. Now the hour has come. It is time for Jesus to leave his legacy to his disciples and then walk alone the path from Gethsemane.

And what is the legacy that Christi is leaving to his disciples and to his church? He is leaving them, he is leaving you three promises.

The first one is his name. Truly I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. What was the greatest gift that Moses received and through him the people of Israe? Was it the law, the 10 commandments, the collection of rules that we can read about it the second Book of Moses? No. What was it, then? If I come to the people of Israel and say to them: The God of your Fathers has sent me to you’ and they ask me, What is his name? What shall I say to them? Yes, Moses received the name of God. The name which guaranteed access to God, not only access but a gracious access! The holy name of God was the great gift for his people. They were taken under his name. The holy name dwelled among them in the tabernacle. And that is why the second commandment deals with the Holy Name: we should not profane it.

What is the greatest gift that Christ is giving to the pillars of the New Testament people, not to the twelve tribes but to the twelve apostles? His name. And he adds a promise to his name: whatever you ask in my name, he will give it to you. Does this not sound like a golden heavenly credit card given at your disposal?! Like something too good to be true. But Christ really means what he is saying. This is not any cheap pre-election promise. No he stands behind this promise also today.

What would you then ask in his name? Think big here. Not only good health, a bigger house, a permanent job and all the good things we ask for in the petition for daily bread! What was the biggest thing Moses could come up with? Do you remember what he asked God! Show me your Glory! Moses asked to see God! To have unhindered, open access to God’s holy presence! To see God, that is beyond our comprehension, but it is what heaven is all about! Moses got the answer: You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live!

From this perspective it is amazing to hear what Jesus says to Philip in the upper room: Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father! Whoever has Jesus, has unlimited access to God’s gracious presence, And whoever has Jesus name has Jesus himself. And whoever has Jesus has the Holy Spirit who makes the name known to us through the word. When Christ gives his name to the disciples, it is not a sign that he is abandoning them, that his name is to remind them that he once was with then. No! The given name is a reality that guarantees to the disciples that he is with them to the end of the age!

His promise was not only for the apostles but also for you. You have received his name. You were taken under his name’s protection when the pastor took water and said: I baptize you in the name… What a joy, what a privilege it is for you say boldly today to God : I have the holy name: You are my Father, I’m your child! I belong to you! And what does this mean for a called and soon to be ordained servant of Christ? It means: I’m not dependent on my name, my strength, my wisdom but it is for me to bring his holy name, God gracious presence to those who by nature have no access to God’s holy presence. In his name forgive sins, in his name baptize, in his name consecrate the life giving bread and wine, in his name pray for God people!

This is his legacy! What about the two other promises? What more can you still ask if you have received God himself in his name! Jesus says that two things necessarily come out it.

The second part of the legacy is the cross. In the world you will have tribulation. Jesus does not say you might have some hard times, it is possible that you might face persecution. No. It is a given fact. And this means not only the hardship of life. This is tribulation because of his name. We must take our cross. Why? Because the world does not recognize Christ’s name. The world opposes and your flesh fights against his name. Are you prepared for tribulations as a Christian? Or do these words of Jesus apply to you: You will be scattered and will leave me alone? What is the point when you are done with Jesus? I’m not asking what is the point when you stop paying tax-deductable donations for the church? I’m asking you when it gets too costly for you to confess his name in word and deed? When do you keep quiet although you know you should speak up? When do you step on the sunny side of the majority, when you know you should defend the biblical truth and be in a minority? Don’t think that pastors are free from this temptation. How often we are more interested in our good name than Christ’s name. How often we are more concerned that people like us than that they hear what God has to say to them in his word. How often it is more important for us to be successful in the eyes of men than to be faithful in the eyes of God. Tribulations. This is a part of Christ’s legacy that we do not need to go looking for, but at the same time we cannot escape and avoid them in this world.

But did you hear what goes together with tribulations? I have said these things that in me you may have peace! This is the third promise. Peace in him. Dr Luther tells about a man in Wittenberg who fell down from the roof. Miraculously he did not hurt himself. When he was back on his feet, he said: Now I know that God loves me! Yes this is the natural wisdom of you and me. When life goes smoothly, when business is running well, the kids are getting good grades at school, the grandparents are in good health, your favourite team is winning, and even your neighbour’s dog is not barking at you! Then you have peace, then you can say: Yes, after all somebody up there seems to like me! It is good to be grateful to God for his protection and for all the gifts that he gives us. But this is not the peace Christ is talking about. This is the peace that the world can give. The peace of this world consists in happy days, healthy days, peaceful days. No sorrows, no distress, no pain, no cross. This is peace according to our understanding, but his peace passes all our understanding. His peace you can see at the deathbed of a Christian, who is scared by his ruined body but at the same time also comforted by the everlasting word. It is the peace that you see when you meet a Christian who has lost his job and the future looks gloomy, but you can hear the silent words of hope: But I still have you, dear Jesus! The peace Christ gives is not only a happy face and calm heart, but also assurance of his love and of his gracious presence in the midst of tears and a broken heart. It is the peace that can say: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me! His legacy is not peace before or after the tribulations but peace in the midst of the tribulations. And that is why you can say even with a broken leg and arm, I know that God loves me because he has given me his saving name. His saving name, his sacramental presence in his name is our peace also in tribulations!

His name, his cross, his peace. This is the legacy. But only during our earthly journey. At the moment his name, his presence is hidden under lowly earthly forms, his cross feels sometimes heavy to carry and the peace of our heart is often challenged. But our true inheritance is waiting us in glory. My question to you as a Christians, as students prepared for vicarage and as a called servant to be ordained to the office of the Holy Ministry: Is Christ’s legacy enough for you or is it too much or too little?

Maybe it is common here also but I know that it is common in Finland to say, that to all other places the devil sends his assistants but when the election of a pastor or the reading of the will of the deceased takes place, then the devil himself comes in person. When the question is about Christ’s legacy, then then the devil will be there. Christ’s testament, his will, his word is challenged again and again in this world, in your life, in your journey, in your ministry.

That is I want leave you with the words that I saw when I was walking along Church Street in St Catharines and passed City Hall. There I found these Latin words written. They were new to me but are familiar to you: A Mari usque ad Mare (From Sea to Sea). As Psalm 72:8 says: May he have dominion from sea to sea. Do you hear? Not the devil, not tribulations, not even yourself but He, Christ, has dominion in your life from the waters of your baptism through all the storms of your life till the end, when there is a new heaven and new earth and the sea is no more. From sea to sea under his name. Not only across Canada. But all the way home. This is your legacy in Christ, he is your true inheritance!

Isa 52:7-10; 1 The 2:2-12; St Matthew 28:16-20

Patrick, it’s his day today, the day the Church remembers a saint who by God’s rich grace brought Jesus to the Irish. Patrick, a servant of Christ, captured at [...]]]> The Commemoration of St. Patrick
Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church
Kurtzville, Ontario
Rev. Kurt E. Reinhardt

Isa 52:7-10; 1 The 2:2-12; St Matthew 28:16-20

Patrick, it’s his day today, the day the Church remembers a saint who by God’s rich grace brought Jesus to the Irish. Patrick, a servant of Christ, captured at 16 that he might one day set his captors free; enslaved in a foreign land that he might one day lead his slave-masters home; a herdsman to pigs that he might one day shepherd the sheep of Christ.

The luck of the Irish has little to do with the fact that Patrick’s day happens to be the same day that we his fellow servants have gathered here. Although I can claim to be 1/8 Irish, my ¾-plus German content, I am sure, overrules it. Fortunate? Providential? Fortuitous? Whatever it may be, it is noteworthy. As we gather to ponder the work of the Church with her young people, how helpful to have such an example to reflect on, to learn from, to imitate.

This stalwart missionary heading back into not only a foreign culture but an enemy culture to teach them about Christ has something to say to all of us as we consider work with youth. They too at times can seem like a foreign culture to many of us, even though we too were once a part of it, and perhaps in a rather delusional kind of way think it was not so long ago that we left it behind.

Six years of slavery amongst the Irish without a doubt prepared Patrick for true service to the people of the fair green isle. He learned their language. He learned their thoughts. He learned their ways. Our recollections of our own journey through our difficult teen years, as well as careful observation and study of today’s youth, in a similar way can help us to serve the young sheep of Christ.

Yet while Patrick’s knowledge of the Irish was a help to him, it was not what brought him back to his captors’ land or gave power to his work amongst them. What drove Patrick back to Ireland and empowered him to drive the Great Serpent from her shores was not a love and knowledge of their smiling Irish eyes, since they smiled little on him in his time there.

What drove Patrick back to Ireland, what empowered him for the great work he accomplished there, was the authoritative sending word that our Lord Jesus Christ spoke to the Eleven… “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

Patrick was drawn into that great sending out that began in the heart of the Father, took on flesh in the incarnation of the Son, flowed out in the giving of the Spirit, and flooded the world in the life of the Church. As Patrick returned to the land of his captivity he was part of that great sending out that the nations might be caught up and returned to the Lord. He was drawn into God’s glorious work of drawing back and binding up again what sin had broken and torn apart.

As Patrick went to the nation of the Irish he went as a part of that sending ministry, that apostolic ministry whose work is to bind the children of man back to God and to one another through the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The sending ministry, the gathering ministry, is always centered and focused on the Sent One, the Gathering One; it is always about Jesus.

And so that ministry is always a baptismal ministry, where Jesus is given and shared so that through Him poor sinners may be brought back into life with the Triune God. The baptismal ministry then unfolds in the life of the disciple in nurturing, nourishing, building up the disciple in the communal life of Christ through His life-renewing forgiveness, His life-creating Word, and His life-imparting flesh and blood.

Although Patrick’s day has been hijacked to be a celebration of those he was sent to return to the Lord, the Irish, what this day is actually about is the ministry accomplished by God through this poor miserable sinner, who wasn’t even Irish himself. In a similar way the Lord wants to keep us mindful that our work amongst the youth is about God’s ministry to them. As Patrick’s day has come to be about all things Irish, so too our work amongst the youth can be in danger of becoming about all things youthful instead of all things Jesus.

In our rapidly changing world, in an increasingly hostile culture, we have a great task, what sometimes can seem an insurmountable task, to serve the young people of today, and to help them to remain faithful to Christ. The temptation is ever there to look to other things, to other means—other than those that Christ has given to us—to try and keep what so often seems like such a feeble grip on our young people. Yet if the ministry of the Church is to be the ministry of Christ, it must do the things that Christ has given it to do.

Undoubtedly as Patrick looked to those shores where he had been cruelly enslaved and mistreated, I am sure he had misgivings about the task that the Lord had given to him. Yet what propelled him forward, and what is here to propel us forward, is the beautiful bookends that our Lord gives to His sending mandate. All authority in heaven on earth has been given to me… and behold I am with you always, to the end of the age. The sending ministry is not only all about Jesus but it is carried out with Jesus; it is carried out in and through Jesus.

The all-authoritative Christ is always with us, brothers, to do His work for His people. He has promised to be with us always until the end, until the work is finished. In confirmation of this truth He stands before us today in His flesh and blood, the flesh and blood in which He suffered and died to save us, the flesh and blood in which He rose from the grave that we might have life in His name, the flesh and blood in which He stood on the mountain and spoke those powerful words to the Eleven.

In this flesh and blood He speaks to us today also in the midst of our fears and failures, our worries and our doubts, and says, “Behold, see, all authority has been given to Me, and I am with you always; and so do not fear, go in peace, and in Me you will bear abundant fruit.” Amen.

Dame Vera Lynn, the “Forces’ sweetheart,” is famous for assuring her fellow countrymen, in the darkest days of World War II, of their nation’s survival of the deadly threat posed by Nazi Germany. The memorable refrain of Dame Vera’s song was uttered most emphatically as an assertion, not as [...]]]> There’ll always be an England—won’t there?

Dame Vera Lynn, the “Forces’ sweetheart,” is famous for assuring her fellow countrymen, in the darkest days of World War II, of their nation’s survival of the deadly threat posed by Nazi Germany. The memorable refrain of Dame Vera’s song was uttered most emphatically as an assertion, not as a question. View “There’ll always be an England” on You Tube

As a bald topographical assertion, the title of Dame Vera’s trademark song will likely remain an incontestable statement till the Last Day dawns. But as she toiled under George VI and Churchill to rally the British nation in the aftermath of the evacuation of Dunkirk, Dame Vera—who is still alive at the grand old age of 94—was patently dealing in the genre of civilization, not geography, when she sang “There’ll always be an England” with such superb defiance into the Führer’s face.

Remarkably, although he saw himself as a buttress supporting the Church from outside rather than a pillar propping her up from within, in his famous “Finest Hour” radio address delivered shortly after he took over as Prime Minister, the agnostic Winston Churchill declared that “Upon this [just starting] battle [of Britain] depends the survival of Christian civilization.”

Secularization, using as its tools such characteristically twentieth-century phenomena as Communism, Nazism, Fascism, and—especially during the half century of unprecedented prosperity that followed the Second World War—good old utilitarian hedonism, has done its work so thoroughly across the ocean that we must wonder how, in a book published in 1920, Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) could seriously state, “The Faith is Europe, and Europe is the Faith.” For by the turn of the third millennium the European Union would define its cultural origins in terms of ancient pagan Greece and Rome, on the one hand, and of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment on the other, resolutely omitting all mention of Christianity in this context, despite persistent prodding from the papacy to do this very thing.

Considered in the wider context of long-term cultural trends, the three nights of rioting, looting, and arson that broke out in London on 6 August 2011 and began to spread to other major English cities, where they continued into a fourth night of disturbances, justify our placing a sombre question mark behind Dame Vera’s song. Will there in fact always be an England, if by this proper noun we understand the Christian civilization that was planted in Roman times already, that overcame the shock of Anglo-Saxon and Viking invasion, and that endured in large measure into the middle of the last century? Humanly speaking, the answer to this rhetorical question can only be a trembling No.

Over the years I have dimly remembered reading somewhere in Hermann Sasse the claim that no Christian nation has survived after turning its back on Christ. Try as I might, I have been unable to locate such a crisp statement anywhere in Sasse’s writings. The closest I have come has been to a lengthy essay of 1932, penned in the shadow of the imminent Nazi takeover. As he dealt with “The People” (das Volk) in “Vom Sinn des Staates” (= On the Meaning of the State), Sasse argued that “peoples” arise on the face of the earth in response to a call from God:

The Christian faith maintains that what makes a people a people is the call of God who, in the ups and downs [Schicksale] of history, calls men, families, races [Geschlechter], and tribes into the community of a specific people [Volkstum] (In Statu Confessionis II: 346f.).

Sasse concluded this section of his 1932 essay by speaking of the “death sentence” in store for all nations who turn a deaf ear to the divine call that once forged their existence—“where this call is no longer heard by anyone in a people, where no one any longer has a clue about the connection between God and people, there people and their distinctive characteristics [Volk und Volkstum] perish” (ISC II: 348). Sasse’s bold testimony against the Third Reich (he was one of the only German Lutherans to join Pius XI in calling a spade a spade with respect to Nazism) might fitly be (a) Christologically sharpened and (b) applied to the current state of Europe in general and Britain in particular (bearing in mind that Canada and the US do not lag so far behind old Europe!).

Is it not significant that “England” emerged as a single conceptual entity only simultaneously with Bede’s account of its definitive Christianization in his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation? Until well into the twentieth century one could distinguish between, but not separate, the English nation and Church from each other. This statement holds good for English history throughout the confessional upheavals that produced Anglicanism, “English Dissent” (=Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists), and Methodism. By the nineteenth century Roman Catholicism was able once again to take a modest place in English public life. In this wide context English (and British) public culture was confessionally pluriform indeed, but distinctly Christian nonetheless.

To cut a long story short, the 1960s and their after-effects have changed all of that, overturning the heritage of almost two millennia. Anyone who wishes to understand the “anti-cultural revolution” that has marked the ensuing decades is advised to peruse with care the essays of the retired English physician who writes under the nom de plume of Theodore Dalrymple. His Our Culture: What’s Left of It is a particularly eye-opening piece of work.

As they issued a judgment effectively barring a devoutly Christian middle-aged black couple from fostering children (they would teach the sixth commandment, after all, and we couldn’t have that, could we?), on 28 February of this year two High Court judges issued a lengthy ruling that contained the following stunning sentence: “But the laws and usages of the realm do not include Christianity, in whatever form.” http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/375.html

The learned gentlemen might have done well to cast a glance at the Coronation Service, at whose last observance, in 1953, Queen Elizabeth II responded in the affirmative to Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher’s question, “Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel?” See http://oremus.org/liturgy/coronation/cor1953b.html

Moreover, they might have considered how the 1944 Education Act, which still remains on the statute book, lays down that each State-funded school must begin each day with a “broadly Christian” act of public worship. This provision having fallen into abeyance in recent years, it can no longer count on much public support, especially among the younger generation. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8743072/Most-schools-shunning-law-on-Christian-assemblies.html

And they might have done well to reflect that England and Scotland each still have “churches established by law,” a fact indicating that “the laws and usages of the realm do include Christianity,” in many and various ways!

It would be hard, indeed almost impossible, to exaggerate the collapse of Christian religious practice among all confessions in England in particular and in the UK in general over recent decades. The old parish system, which predated the Reformation, is everywhere in a state of collapse and, with very few exceptions, doctrinal substance has been diluted beyond recognition. Pagan generations have therefore grown up on formerly Christian territory, a facile utilitarianism their only spiritual armour, unbridled hedonism their only pursuit. The UK now “boasts” an abortion rate of 200,000 slaughtered infants per annum (189, 574 in 2010, to be precise). Following the ways of the ancient Canaanites and of the Israelites who joined their bandwagon can only result in Britain’s sharing their ineluctable fate. Which preachers in the British Isles are currently pointing out these sorry facts to their benighted compatriots?

The recent disturbances in London and other major cities took place against the dual background of the realm’s slipping into a spiritual dark age of secularization and of its succumbing to tidal waves of Islamization. In earlier ages Islamist aggressors ran into stout resistance from such rulers as Charles Martel, Charles V, and Jan Sobieski. This time around, though, they can only prevail against the effete ruling elite in the manner of knives slicing through hot butter.

North Americans do not have the luxury of beholding the cultural collapse of Europe in general and England in particular from the safe distance of a secure haven. Weakened by runaway debt and sinking under the costs of a decade of war, the US economy is tottering close to the abyss into which the Eurozone has plunged. Moreover, Christian religious practice has taken a nosedive on this continent also, not only in Canada, which has followed European patterns for some time already, but also in the US. Here in Canada the ruling elites increasingly enforce a “soft” totalitarianism of secularist utilitarianism—the final volume of novelist Michael O’Brien’s Canadian trilogy seems not so sensational to a soberly realistic analyst of the times. Marriage no longer exists as such, and the lives of the weakest in society have less and less status in public law—babies have none, and the rights of the old and the sick are increasingly precarious. Let’s not forget how “Dr” Morgenthaler, the “father” of abortion provision in this country, received in succession an honorary doctorate from the University of Western Ontario and the Order of Canada from our last Governor General. It seems that Hitler lost one war only to change shape and win another.

Thinking with Sasse, we might picture the US as called into being by the voice of God through the events of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, forming a religiously and confessionally pluriform society, but coming together nevertheless as a preponderantly Christian nation. As it relegated the native peoples to the margins and contended with the tensions between the French and the English, Canada’s call to nationhood was likewise confessionally pluriform, and yet came together into an overwhelmingly Christian nation, where many native Canadians freely embraced the Gospel and where Jews have rightly enjoyed security and felt at home. But can the US and Canada endure in, with, under, and after breaking their bonds of allegiance to Christ the King? I very much doubt it.

It remains to be seen how the British Government and society will deal with the aftermath of the London riots, which are but the tip of an immense iceberg of social decay that has formed in tandem with the radical dechristianization of England and the other nations of the British Isles. But the ruling elites of all the major parties could not possibly put the 1960s into reverse gear—God the Holy Trinity, the Decalogue, and Christian dogma are definitively out: just ask the judges of the High Court.

At all events, though, there will only be an England in Dame Vera’s sense of the word if the land returns to the obedience and gentle rule of Christ the King. May it please God, using the clergymen of whichever confession He pleases, to grant a mighty revival of English Christendom at this time through a prolonged and resounding proclamation of His Word that must begin with the boldest imaginable call to repentance. Oremus pro Anglia—Let us pray for England.

By John Stephenson

has been published as a rally-cry-educational-let’s-work-together piece by Dr. Albert Collver and the [...]]]> A new Bible study and DVD presentation, Witness, Mercy, Life Together [Witness Mercy Life Together Bible Study by Albert B. Collver, Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2011. 64 pages. $5.99.]

has been published as a rally-cry-educational-let’s-work-together piece by Dr. Albert Collver and the LCMS President Matthew Harrison. Many pastors who receive it in the mail will have a conditioned response, ‘we’ve seen this before.’ Every publishing house, every administration, and (it seems) most pastors seek to build the church into a savvy social organization using marketing surveys, demographic insights, and the effective use of technology. Slogans and catch phrases inform believers about the church’s core competencies, strategic goals, and mission. Books and “Bible Studies” show how theirs is really the Lord’s plan updated and informed by the insights of the modern mind. How strange and welcome therefore is the new Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod theme and emphasis, which is built on something altogether different. “Witness, Mercy, Life Together” is the new Synodical emphasis put forward by LCMS President Matthew Harrison and his administrative staff.  The emphasis is not a focus-group-tested slogan set forth to move forward with strategic objectives. “Witness,” “Mercy,” and “Life Together” are words the Lord has spoken describing the work of His church. The church is purest and most beautiful when she is defined and described by the Lord. Through his eyes she stands as “a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Ephesians 5:27). It is indescribably refreshing to the weary to hear those words applied to us. That is the point of the new study by Dr. Albert Collver: to hear what the Lord has said about his church and embrace it as a gift. From the start one can tell this theme and Bible study are much different than the usual “grow more, give more, get more” fare.

The difference becomes obvious in Lesson One, “Witness.” In the church-speak world the word witness has become shorthand for an intentional conversation by which believers help an unbeliever make a decision for Christ and therefore grow the kingdom. “Lesson One” should really be called “Round One” because Collver gently wrestles the word back to its biblical intent: “The Lord saves souls, but He locates His saving Gospel in the Church, and He uses people within the Church as his instruments to proclaim the Gospel” (p.14). The leader’s guide, the accompanying Steven Starke hymn, and the impressive concordance of biblical usage thoroughly equip students and leaders to complete the journey that brings the word “witness” back from law to gospel.

“Round Two,” builds on this gift and extends it. Throughout history, well-intended but misguided people have declared that pure doctrine and the desire to save the lost are antagonistic goals. Systematicians have sometimes made doctrine devoid of proclamation. Mysticism, pietism, and the theological descendants of Dwight Moody decry doctrinal and confessional subscription as anti-missional. The LCMS is certainly no stranger to this battle. Collver however beautifully and convincingly demonstrates that these two stand together in the Lord’s church: “A witness that does not confess what Jesus taught is not a Christian witness. Likewise, a confession that does not witness is not a New Testament confession. . .Telling about Jesus and doctrine go together” (p.18). The leaders’ guide to this section is especially strong. As Collver presents a precisely written and beautiful summary of how true doctrine is manifest in Christ coming to us according to his promise—which is the only hope of the world. With very little modification the leader’s guide could become a great Christmas sermon.

Lesson three wrestles the word “mercy” (his translation of the Greek word diakonia) back into its biblical sense: “Being rooted in the forgiveness of sins that Jesus won for us on the cross, mercy means feeding the poor, taking care of the sick, and caring for the orphans and widows. Diakonia, then is caring for our neighbor in concrete and effective ways because of what Jesus has done for us” (p.22). Collver does not speak of himself, but his experience as a parish pastor and as an executive in LCMS World Relief and Human Care fills this far-too-brief study with an authenticity and understanding that is known by one who has “done the hard work” (Proverbs 14:23).

Lesson four, “Life Together” leads through a study of the biblical word koinonia. Once again the word is rescued and revived from its more unworthy uses. In common usage koinonia and its common translation “fellowship” have lost their biblical, sacramental foundation and have come to refer to donuts. Collver’s study and leader’s guide demonstrates with great skill that our fellowship and unity are not founded on liking each other (think of St. Paul and Barnabas) but on a doctrinal and sacramental unity that transcends men, personalities, and time. If the LCMS (or any denomination) would escape their bondage to bickering and infighting it will only be as people who have a bond that is deeper than human affronts and leadership cults. “Life Together” rightly teaches divine fellowship that flows from the gospel as the hope and substance of churchly interaction. Reconciliation with Christ through His cross enables reconciliation with others. Individual gifts find their fruit and proper use through their incorporation in the Body of Christ.

Lesson five, “Witness, Mercy, Life Together” speaks of the history of conflict in the days of the apostles. The obvious conclusion is that the unity of the church has always been under assault from without and from within. The only proper response and the only faithful response of the church is to return to the mission that can be summarized by the Bible’s words witness, mercy, and life together.  It is indeed commendable that the author would take this approach to a topic so important at this stage of the LCMS’s life. The approach is biblical, evangelical, and draws us to the gospel and the need for the faithful administration of the word and sacraments.

The accompanying DVD shows LCMS President Harrison presenting these same doctrines in a way that is winsome, pastoral, and humorous. He demonstrates a tremendous grasp of the practical application of Lutheran theology. While the production quality is not wonderful, it is hard to imagine a faithful non-partisan who could fail to be edified and delighted by Harrison’s presentations.

The study is designed to be used in any adult or teen level Bible class and can be used with great profit. Pastors may find that its most enduring value will be as a “new member’s” class or a follow-up to Catechism and confirmation classes. Many congregations offer special classes for those who wish to join by transfer or reaffirmation of faith; it is hard to imagine a better study for such use.

The Bible studies, leader’s guide, and DVD are not fundraising, team building, or leadership training devices that use pop psychology and marketing techniques to win hearts. They are biblical, sacramental, genuine, doctrinally solid studies on the nature of the church. It is easily the most useful item to come out of the Synodical Office Building since the sainted A. L. Barry’s What About series; and in many ways, it is more important. One can pray that the biblical emphases in these studies will come to mark President Harrison’s term of office. If so, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod is entering a period of great importance in this dark and fallen world. “The world is longing for what we have,” Harrison cries out in the presentation. If the LCMS and her leaders can maintain a strong biblical witness, shown forth in mercy and lived out in our life together, she will truly be, “a radiant church.”

Robert Zagore is Senior Pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church and School, Traverse City, MI.