“At the Last Trump”–1 Corinthians 15:52 King James Version

As a pastor, I need to comment on Mr. Donald Trump’s answer to an interview question by Mr. Frank Luntz about Mr. Trump’s religious faith.  Here is the salient portion, from a CNN article:

“People are so shocked when they find … out I am Protestant. I am Presbyterian. And I go to church and I love God and I love my church,” he said.

Moderator Frank Luntz asked Trump whether he has ever asked God for forgiveness for his actions.

“I am not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don’t think so,” he said. “I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”

Trump said that while he hasn’t asked God for forgiveness, he does participate in Holy Communion.

“When I drink my little wine — which is about the only wine I drink — and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed,” he said. “I think in terms of ‘let’s go on and let’s make it right.'”

First, I am glad Mr. Trump loves God and his church, that is, his congregation, but loving God and your congregation is not salvation.  The emphasis is on me, not on the Lord who is the Savior.  Basing everything on the self is as old as Adam.  Again, as old as Adam when the serpent dealt with Adam and Eve:  eat and you will be like God.   Mr. Trump sounds likes he has imported into the Christian faith his best-selling book title, The Art of the Deal.   Mr. Trump eats Holy Communion as a bargain base salvation:  eat the “little cracker”  and be saved and feeling “cleansed” is ex opere operatum, the work working the work.  The Reformers used that Latin phrase to describe the mechanical view of the sacrament without faith and repentance, and so the Lord’s forgiveness. Such a mechanical view is just an easier and nicer version of Islam’s five pillars of the faith:  Just do it. I will call it “little cracker” theology but Holy Communion is about the totality of the faith in the Lord, the blessed and holy Trinity. With our own religious reasoning, the old Adam is in the driver seat and the devil has his foot on the accelerator.   

Second, and more importantly, how did Mr. Trump come to these terrible conclusions?  My speculation is from poor Christian education, or catechesis, or a total lack of it, and I tend toward the latter conclusion.  If I were the minister welcoming Mr. Trump into the congregation, I surely would be teaching him tithing plus “proportional giving”!  And to forget about the rest of the Bible, that is most of it because it would just turn him off. This temptation has become part and parcel in congregational life as a response to decreased membership.  I uncritically bought into the slogan:  Get them involved before they join.  I found out in so many Lutheran congregations (ELCA) that people from other congregations never had an adult catechism class before joining…and most likely not in their previous church bodies as well.  This then describes the crisis of the Church in the 21st Century that has been well documented, that so many do not know the doctrines, even deriding doctrine as an impediment to church growth. Doctrine is not an impediment to church growth, but it is essential for growth in the love and knowledge of the Lord.  In a sense, I do not blame Mr. Trump for his conclusions if he has not been taught even the rudiments of Christian doctrine.  Mr. Trump is exhibiting the Old Adam: salvation by works, without grace, that is without Christ.

Third, without proper teaching of Law and Promise, Mr. Trump’s answer belies the lack of any understanding of sin and guilt.  Without the Law, then truly, per Mr. Trump, why bring God into it?  Another king, a real one, when he realized by God’s law, the depth of his sin, in committing adultery with Bathsheba, cried out and prayed,

  Against you, you only, have I sinned
    and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
    and blameless in your judgment. Psalm 51

King David avoided God and obviously did not bring “God into it”!  David had not asked God for forgiveness.  Thankfully, King David was found out and the Lord found him. Sadly, in Mr. Trump’s answer the Law has already  convicted him but the old Adam knows the art of the deal…and the dodge, I am not really guilty, I do my best.  You can only dodge the Lord’s just death sentence for so long. I was afraid and so I hid-Adam (Genesis 3).  No conviction from the Law in body and soul, that we are dead in our trespasses, and so no repentance…and finally no forgiveness, that is, no Jesus Christ, who is there from the beginning for the sinner: “Come to Me” (see Matthew 11:28.   Matthew 19:14 John 5:40  John 6:37  John 7:37 ) The Lord desires all to be saved, see 1 Timothy 2:4.

Finally, the difficulty in evangelization in our day and time is so many people, including many Christians will be satisified by Mr. Trump’s answer.  A great difficulty in evangelizing in our day is that so many people think they know what Christianity is but really don’t have a clue as does Mr. Trump.  This should challenge pastors and congregations in the Church, the Lord’s Body, to be ever be apt to teach and preach.

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Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Lent (Year B)

St. Mark 8:  “And He began to teach them that the Son of  Man must suffer many things…” 

One of the words that has become used a whole lot more in the computer age is “template”. 

noun:  1..  pattern, mold, or the like, usually consisting of a thin plate of wood or metal, serving as a gauge or guide in mechanical work

 2. anything that determines or serves as a pattern; a model 

Jesus is pointing His disciples to His Cross looming in the future and in the distance.  The Gospel of His prophecy of His death and resurrection will be the template of salvation. His cross, His suffering many things is the things of God, God’s mind and His mind is made-up:  He saved you and will. 

His Word is the template for your salvation, the joyous word of your forgiveness in Jesus Christ, the way of the Cross is the baptismal path.  And in the way that is just and so justifies, makes us right by faith.  This Gospel, in fact all the  Gospel, written and taught and preached and administered in the Sacraments is the template of His Cross.  I know I have pointed out before the floor plans of the Gothic Cathedrals of Europe and America is cross-shaped.  The cross is the template of the Church, His Temple, His Body.  This is the template of each life within Christ’s Body.  In today’s Gospel is the precise moment in which the Lord began to teach His suffering:   rejected, killed, buried and risen. 

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? Our Lord asked a rhetorical question which begs no answer because it is self-evident that the question itself is  the answer:  when a man wants the whole world, he will lose his own soul in forfeit to get it. Satan certainly knows the Faustian bargain which is no deal!   We all get it.  Even folks who are not “religious” or spiritual get it.  We see it played out, repeatedly, in the courts of public media and opinion. It is the Faustian bargain.  Losing one’s soul for gaining the whole world is Satan’s real deal and the soul lost is hell…or even a piece of that pie. This is piously lamented as the succession of sports figures, movie and television stars, politicians and the like rise and fall is played out, shaking heads in self-righteous indignation thinking Oh it’s not me.  Yet, we know it can be. 

 “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”  John 16:  33.   Jesus triumphs over Satan and the world. He teaches them He must suffer many things…the must is a must, it is a divine necessity. Why?!  Sin must be accounted for and the judgment of it.  God is the just judge.  And the suffering begins almost in the next verse:  His own disciple, Peter, who had just confessed Him as the Christ, rebuked the Lord. Rejected, killed, shamed is no way for a Messiah to act!  You are thinking like men that a glorious escape, which leaves iniquity, unaccounted. Therefore, Jesus suffers the torment of temptation from a disciple, a friend. He must for He must save Peter, you, and me. He has, you can count on that more than anyone can count on the stock market or the weather forecast. 

What is the world?  Answer:  it is God’s good creation, pulsating with His life and love.  Nevertheless, the “world” in the hands of  man bent on being God as Satan promised, the world became something else:

“In this creation, life is received in faith as the sheer unmerited gift of God and then shared as freely as it is given in love for the neighbor. If you take creation, subtract faith, and love from it, the remainder is “the world.” Take away faith and love and the creation becomes clueless about God and itself and ends up looking to itself and when it “gets religion”, as the saying goes, the world makes itself into a god. “A god,” says Luther “is whatever you look to as the source of your good.” In addition, what creation, minus faith and love, looks to for its good is itself. And just so, creation becomes “the world”. The “world”, theologically is the creation bent on being its own god.” (Pr. Louis Smith). 

“I’ve given you everything, the best years of my life” “I’ve scrimped and saved and what thanks I do I get?”  “Oh, this is to die for” And each one of us will but that is not the final chapter. 

God entered fully into the world, the Greek word for world is cosmos.  As in “cosmetics”.  The world apart from God, its Creator, knows how to look good, enticing, well, tempting; it is said we are “self-made” men and women.  But it is death. We look for easier and less astounding ways, the easy way out, but that is not just.  A trade-off, If I do this, then you will HAVE it all, that is the template of the world, and that is bartering, dealing not saving grace. God’s law kills us with that truth concerning iniquity.  Thinking the things of man, like Peter, our minds are made up. We want it all and want it now. You can, says someone, for a price, a steep price that looks like a deal at the start. However, the price is the soul.  Then one is sold. What can a man do?   For what can a man give in return for his soul? Another question, which is its own answer, a man can do nothing.  However, God can and has.  Bought for a price, a steep price.  What’s teh price, as the Elizabethans would say, “God’s blood”.  He became sin and died, a must.  The template of His Cross and Resurrection is not only seen but also first heard, Scripture is summed up by the Catechism and for us today, look at the back of the bulletin please, the 2^nd article of the Creed:

What does this mean?  Answer:  I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord.  He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and delivered me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death; in order that I may be wholly His own, and live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, even as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.

This template is our daily life in Jesus Christ and it is baptismal and related to the 4^th Chief part of the Catechisms, especially this Q and A:

What does such baptizing with water signify?–Answer.It signifies that the old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lusts, and, again, a new man daily come forth and arise; who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Where is this written?–Answer.  St. Paul says Romans, chapter 6: We are buried with Christ by Baptism into death, that, like as He was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Another Elizabethan, Shakespeare wrote:

“Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once.”

The brave in Christ Jesus do die many deaths and will taste of life forever:  Jesus Christ.  Dying and rising is our wet walk in Baptism and not to be ashamed of it, but  proud of His love which has loved us to the end and will forever. His blood teaches us we are His.    St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York: unmistakably a cross, a cross in the midst of Vanity Fair, unashamed. Around it buildings tower over that church.  Cathedrals have spires:  and the cross points us to heaven. And as tall as the skyscrapers are in NYC round about finally only point to themselves.  Many of the cathedrals have at the entrance a baptismal font:  the way we enter and are His people.  Our cruciform lives pointing others to heaven:  Jesus died and rose for you.  Plainly.

 

 

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Lenten Catechetical Instruction: the 10 Commandments, 2/25/2,015, @ Concordia Lutheran Mission

Text:  Exodus 20: 1-21

For our Wednesdays in Lent, the option in Evening Prayer is Sermon or Catechetical Instruction.  We will have catechetical instruction on the chief parts of Dr. Luther’s Small and Large Catetchisms.  We begin where Luther began:  the 10 Commandments. 

There are laws of nature and there is the moral law of God.  It is difficult to disobey, say, the law of gravity.  We can escape gravity only with a whole lot of help, as with the help of a jet or a helicopter.  We have to go out of the way to disobey the laws of nature.  Note: there really can not be disobedience of the laws of nature.   This would mean there are repercussions to such disobedience, that is, punishment and it is deserved. It would imply there is right and wrong gravity, but there is not.  In contrast to the Laws of Nature, it is quite easy to disobey the Law of God.  We tend to do that quite a bit.  For the Law of God is about right and wrong in this fallen world. There are repercussions, such as punishment, deserved, both temporal and eternal.  His Law is the only law that keeps society and culture from veering off a cliff.  His Law alone shows us our sin.  His Law alone shows us the good we can do. 

We live in an era that violently believes that man is the measure of all things and so believes in relativism. C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity in his first section on the Law of God: 

“Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to—whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.”

Well, until now. Putting our self first is a cottage industry in our day and time.  In fact, putting the self first is praised.  “I did it my way”.  Having any woman, or man that you liked?  See TV, see movies.   In our days, in our zeitgeist, literally “the spirit of an age”, we are taught there is no absolute moral law as the basis of right and wrong. Right and wrong are mere human constructs brought together by human agreement.  It’s all relative.  But is it right ever to rape a woman?  If there is no absolute moral law, then the difficulty of parenting becomes impossible, but it is not as there is right and wrong.  A child needs limits, his behavior in word and deed circumscribed and so do adults!  The Law of God is summed up by God’s only begotten Son: You shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart, soul and mind and the second is liken unto it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  We were made for God and each other, in relation to the Lord and in each other. This is clear as the nose on your face. We all do have the moral compass of the Law of God.  God’s law is even more concrete than a compass:  it was initially written on two stone tablets, hard as rock. 

Lewis’ Mere Christianity were originally radio talks on BBC during World War II, when the Nazis were trying to bomb Britain out of existence: 

“What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practiced? If they had had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that than for the color of their hair.

 “Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining “It’s not fair” before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter, but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong— in other words, if there is no “Law of God”—what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? 

            Now the first Table of the Law can not be legislated into civil laws of nations, when it has been, the result has been tyranny of the worse type:  see Sharia Law;  see ISIS.  The first table of the law is, though, the beating heart of the Law.   God’s first commandment is not that He is the Lord, but that you shall have no other gods before Him. The first three commandments are all about worship and what or who we worship.  Every atheist has a god he or she believes in:  reason, talent, fame, self, money.  So do Christians have those other gods, and those gods are at the whimsy of fallen flesh.  The Lord our God is not.  He is the only true God because He alone teaches honor and love, as embodied in the 10 commandments.  The second table of the Law flows from the first, and some of Second Table is the basis of civil law, such as not stealing, no murder.  The last commandment is about coveting, the inordinate loves of things, people and devils above the Lord.  No earthly government can legislate the mind nor the heart nor the soul.  It has been tried and the result is tyranny of the worse sort.  

With the last commandment we are back at the first.  As it is written, covetousness is idolatry. The Law shows us that sin is one vicious circle. We cannot get out of that vicious circle on our own by any stretch.  This is reason Luther begins the Catechisms with the Law:  so we know the absolute Law of God which we can not fulfill in a thousand life times. “It was a false, misleading dream that God his Law had given that sinners could themselves redeem and by their works gain heaven. The Law is but a mirror bright to bring the inbred sin to light that lurks within our nature”  It was for this world Christ died. Into this vicious circle, came the Christ.   In this zeitgeist, we tend to be soft in the head with hardness of heart. 

Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? (Jeremiah 23: 29) It breaks the stony ground of the heart. His Hammer is the Law.  Into this hardhearted world came Jesus Christ.  Here is the beating heart of the Law, perfect love.  The only One who has perfectly kept the Law fulfilled the Law.  Harder than even the rock of the law is the rock of our salvation:  Jesus Christ.  When the Law shows you your sin, don’t look to the Law for help, it offers none.  When the Law shows you your sin, look to Jesus Christ, the beating heart of God and every word and deed of Christ, finally and fully Good Friday, who did for all the world atone.  He is our mediator.

 “Outside Jerusalem, there is a hill of yellow, naked stone, ugly and hard as a dead man’s skull. Long ago men bored a socket in this rocky hill and planted a cross there, and on that cross they hanged the only one of our race who was righteous and had perfectly fulfilled the law. God permitted this to happen because, although he had tolerated sin in former ages, he wanted once and for all to show that he was righteous and that sin is followed by condemnation and punishment, and that he will not countenance any tampering with his standards of holiness. But so wonderful is God that he let all the curse and penalty of sin fall upon the Innocent One, who freely gave of himself in death for us. He was made a curse for our sakes. Thus he redeemed us from the condemnation of the law. He was made sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God. He bore our sins in his own body on the tree, and by his stripes we are healed.”(The Hammer of God, novel by Bp. Bo Giertz)

We have heard what is the Lord’s will and  next week, we look again at the second chief part of the Catechism, the Apostles’ Creed, by  which we confess the faith in the Lord so that we may gladly hear His Word and do it, as He has done all for us in creating, redeeming and sanctifying us.

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A Comic Strip for Lent? Yes!

This comic strip is B.C. by Johnny Hart of blessed memory.  He was devout Christian.  It is the bottom half that is pertinent during Lent.  

Peter’s Delivery Service can not deliver his customer from evil. Duh!  Yet people  are superstitious by using 4 leaf clovers to reading the horoscopes that somehow they will deliver from evil.  Hardly.  People still turn to Peter, as in the apostle, and all the apostles, and all the saints and pray to them and dead popes for deliverance from evil. Or give money to some televangelist who promises deliverance from evil, such as poverty.   They can’t deliver. It should be plainly obvious what I am getting at:  Peter, Paul, Lydia, Mary, Joseph, Onesimus, etc., did not turn to dead saints in prayer, but with the whole Church  turned to the One, crucified and risen, who commands, gives, and inspires our prayer.  He alone  has and can deliver us from evil:  the One who delivered Himself to evil,  tempted by the prince of evil and so bearing the sin of the world.  The Lord’s Prayer petition can also be translated, Deliver us from the evil one.  Jesus Christ is your delivery Man.

From Dr. Luther’s teaching on the Lord’s Prayer, “Deliver us from evil”, The Large Catechism.  “…there is nothing for us to do upon earth but to pray against this arch-enemy without ceasing. For unless God preserved us, we would not be safe from him even for an hour.                                                         Hence you see again how God wishes us to pray to Him also for all the things which affect our bodily interests, so that we seek and expect help nowhere else except in Him.  But this matter He has put last; for if we are to be preserved and delivered from all evil, the name of God must first be hallowed in us, His kingdom must be with us, and His will be done. After that He will finally preserve us from sin and shame, and, besides, from everything that may hurt or injure us.

From The Small Catechism:

Amen.

What does this mean?–Answer.

That I should be certain that these petitions are acceptable to our Father in heaven and heard; for He Himself has commanded us so to pray, and has promised that He will hear us. Amen, Amen; that is, Yea, yea, it shall be so.

 

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Worship Matters: Confession and Absolution

In the first centuries of the Church, after Ascension and Pentecost, when a person was reborn a Christian in the waters of Holy Baptism, she left the futile ways of her forefathers. She ceased being a pagan. She ceased being an idolater worshiping many gods and began to worship the true and living God who sent His Son into the world to save us in this world for the life of the world to come.  (1 Peter 1:17-19; 1 Thessalonians 1:8-10;   1 Corinthians 6: 9-11) 

Worship was and is the line of demarcation between the world and the life of the world to come.  In the Orthodox Church, their liturgy begins

Blessed is the kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages.

Crossing the border from the world as it is into world as is shall be, the Kingdom coming into the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The foretaste of the reign of God first accomplished by Him, when the People of Israel crossed the Jordan, after bondage in Egypt, and 40 years of the journey through the desert into the land of Promise:  crossing the Jordan.

At a border, there is a border check, customs.  In many countries, as our own, a visitor, or a returning citizen cannot bring in contraband, items considered dangerous to the welfare of the nation.    We have a border check in the Lutheran Church called Confession and Absolution, which begins the Divine Service. “Absolution” is from the word “absolve” and its synonym is “forgiveness”.  But I think it is important, even crucial,  to use “absolution” because His absolution is absolute, as real as the nails piercing His sinless hands and feet for your purification.

In the Old Testament, when Isaiah saw the Lord in glory, Isaiah cried out I am a man of unclean lips.  He knew he could not so stand in the Presence with such a dangerous tongue.  The Lord purified Isaiah.  (Isaiah 6: 4-8) As it was to Israel, sin is dangerous to the welfare of His Church, which is, “…a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”  (1 Peter 2: 9) We lay aside the sin that so easily entangles our selves, our families, the various countries the Church dwells at the confessional border crossing.  (Hebrews 12:1-3) He disentangled us not easily in His crucifixion. He frees us in His forgiveness to live as freed citizens of the Kingdom of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

When I went in the ‘70s to Eastern Europe and the then Soviet Union, on a  trip from Concordia Senior College, as we crossed from Poland into the USSR in the dead of night, the train was stopped to change the undercarriage of the train because Poland had a different track gate.  It was a convenient time for the Soviet soldiers to come on board, with automatic weapons, to rifle through our baggage, lift up our compartments seats and look us over.

• A pastor is no Soviet border guard!  The Lord already has found you out and does so to find you in His all-encompassing forgiveness. He found you out in His Law, from Him no secrets are hid, nothing we can hide.  We cannot bring the dearest souvenir of hell into heaven. This is why we begin with Confession and Absolution.
• A pastor’s vocation is also to hear private confession, when the burden is great for the penitent.  A pastor’s vocation is to hear confession but not to talk at all about what he has heard.  He is not tell anyone about the confession’s content, even his wife, so that you may again live as the Lord’s freed citizen, His son or daughter.
• When the Israelites crossed the Jordan the first thing they were commanded to do was celebrate the Passover, and we do in the once and for all Passover of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world: This is My Body, this is My Blood.  The Lord Jesus has so commanded the new Passover for the forgiveness of sins, in communion with Him and His people.

Confession and Absolution is crossing the boundary, the Jordan and it is a return to the forgiveness granted in Holy Baptism, the washing and regeneration in the Word, the Lord’s Name, Father, Son and Holy Spirit (St. Matthew 28:18-20).  This is why the sign of the cross is encouraged at the beginning of Confession and Absolution with the Invocation, In the Name of the Father, and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit, because it is in His Name we are baptized.  Further, it is encouraged that Confession and Absolution be led from the Baptismal Font.   We see this in Dr. Luther’s ordering in The Small and Large Catechisms:  his explanation of Holy Baptism is followed immediately by the doctrine of Confession and Absolution.  From The Large Catechism:

…here you see that Baptism, both in its power and signification, comprehends also the third Sacrament, which has been called repentance, (i.e. Confession and Absolution) as it is really nothing else than Baptism. For what else is repentance but an earnest attack upon the old man [that his lusts be restrained] and entering upon a new life? Therefore, if you live in repentance, you walk in Baptism, which not only signifies such a new life, but also produces, begins, and exercises it. For therein are given grace, the Spirit, and power to suppress the old man, so that the new man may come forth and become strong.

Almighty God, by our baptism into the death and resurrection
of your Son Jesus Christ, you turn us from the old life of sin:
Grant that we, being reborn to new life in him, may live in
righteousness and holiness all our days; through Jesus Christ
our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Addendum:

The sections from Luther’s Small Catechism are reproduced below from The Book of Concord website.

IV. The Sacrament of Holy Baptism

As the head of the family should teach it in a simple way to his household.

First.

What is Baptism?–Answer.

Baptism is not simple water only, but it is the water comprehended in God’s command and connected with God’s Word.

Which is that word of God?–Answer.

Christ, our Lord, says in the last chapter of Matthew: Go ye into all the world and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

Secondly.

What does Baptism give or profit?–Answer.

It works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.

Which are such words and promises of God? Answer.

Christ, our Lord, says in the last chapter of Mark: He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

 Thirdly.

How can water do such great things?–Answer.

It is not the water indeed that does them, but the word of God which is in and with the water, and faith, which trusts such word of God in the water. For without the word of God the water is simple water and no baptism. But with the word of God it is a baptism, that is, a gracious water of life and a washing of regeneration in the Holy Ghost, as St. Paul says, Titus, chapter three: By the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our Savior, that, being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This is afaithful saying.

Fourthly.

What does such baptizing with water signify?–Answer.

It signifies that the old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lusts, and, again, a new man daily come forth and arise; who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Where is this written?–Answer.

St. Paul says Romans, chapter 6: We are buried with Christ by Baptism into death, that, like as He was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father,even so we also should walk in newness of life.

---

V. Confession

How Christians should be taught to confess.

What is Confession?*

Confession embraces two parts: the one is, that we confess our sins; the other, that we receive absolution, or forgiveness, from the confessor, as from God Himself, and in no wise doubt, but firmly believe, that our sins are thereby forgiven before God in heaven.

What sins should we confess?

Before God we should plead guilty of all sins, even of those which we do not know, as we do in the Lord’s Prayer. But before the confessor we should confess those sins alone which we know and feel in our hearts.

Which are these?

Here consider your station according to the Ten Commandments, whether you are a father, mother, son, daughter, master, mistress, a man-servant or maid-servant; whether you have been disobedient, unfaithful, slothful; whether you have grieved any one by words or deeds; whether you have stolen, neglected, or wasted aught, or done other injury.

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Aargh! Indeed! What about the 3rd Commandment?

Indeed, how did ‘our‘ Sundays get so crazy?!  This article in the 8/28/11 Parade magazine has  7 or so steps you can do to “take back YOUR weekend” (emphases my own).  The article points out that so many activities and chores are shoved into Saturday and Sunday. ‘Church’ is even listed at the end of the list as one of the activities. And of course, that is the last mention of ‘church’ in the article.

This article points to  the 3rd Commandment:

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

In his teaching on the Commandment, Martin Luther says that the general worker needs a day of rest, but that’s all it becomes.  Even worse for all sorts of folks who, “…sin against this commandment who grossly misuse and desecrate the holy day, as those who on account of their greed or frivolity neglect to hear God’s Word or lie in taverns and are dead drunk like swine.”  Sadly, the difference between the 16th and 21th centuries are not all that difference due to the sloth of the Old Adam. I have a copy of a New York Times ad which states (from memory): The New York Times :  What Sundays are Made For. AARGH!  No. Truly, then ‘our’ Sundays become crazy, all upside down, not right in the head or the heart.

But Luther asks and answers the question:  What makes Sunday holy?  Answer:  the Word of God.  The Lord’s Word is the only way that Sundays do not become crazy!  For this article, the opposite of crazy is holy. It is His Word that makes holy the day but even more, by faith, the Word of God makes holy, or sanctifies you and I.

• Personally, I think it significant that in other languages, such as Spanish, the 1st day of the week is called Domingo, the Lord’s Day. But Luther points out that during the week, as the Lord’s Church, we can come together for instruction in the Scripture and those hours are also Sabbath, rest, resting in His Word. Nevertheless, I think something is amiss when a day is considered ‘mine’, as in, “my Sunday”. It’s a day to remember that “without aid He did make us” (hymn verse)  and without our aid He did  redeem us.
• I also think it is significant that the Lord’s Day, the Third Day in which He rose again from the dead, is the 1st day of the week, NOT MONDAY!  First things first to properly put into peace, not craziness, the work week:  His Word of Law and Promise.
• I think it is significant that the commandment right after the 3rd (yeah, I know the 4th!) is “Honor your father and your mother”.  The Lord’s day is for the family in Christ and all the households therein.
• It is also significant that  on the first day of the week, the same day the Lord rose again, the Lord created light by the light of His Word. If it’s own ‘lights’ by which we think we see then the darkness is great indeed! (see Luke 11:34-36)  But by the light of His Word we walk: “Thy Word is lamp unto feet, and a light unto my path”.  (Psalm 119:105)

And there is another level craziness to “what happened to OUR Sundays” when, as Luther taught, “… that other crowd, who listen to God’s Word as to any other trifle, and only from custom come to preaching, and go away again, and at the end of the year know as little of it as at the beginning.”  And again from the Large Catechism:  “Likewise those fastidious spirits are to be reproved who, when they have heard a sermon or two, find it tedious and dull, thinking that they know all that well enough, and need no more instruction. “  In our day and time those fastidious spirits want religious entertainment on a Sunday, not engagement. We want to satisfy the flesh, not have it crucified and so all the contemporary worship mania (see the funny video below).  And Luther calls this  need for no more instruction by the deadly sin of  sloth.  “…a malignant, pernicious plague with which the devil bewitches and befuddles the hearts of many so that he may take us by surprise and take the Word of God away from us.”  The Church becomes a religious club in which the Word is read but then ignored or debated or “dialogued”.  Sundays have become crazy in many churches looking calm.   From the conclusion of Luther’s explanation of the 3rd Commandment:

For let me tell you this, even though you know (the Word) perfectly and be already master in all things, still you are daily in the dominion of the devil, who ceases neither day nor night to steal unawares upon you, to kindle in your heart unbelief and wicked thoughts against the foregoing and all the commandments. Therefore you must always have God’s Word in your heart, upon your lips, and in your ears. But where the heart is idle, and the Word does not sound, he breaks in and has done the damage before we are aware.101] On the other hand, such is the efficacy of the Word, whenever it is seriously contemplated, heard, and used, that it is bound never to be without fruit, but always awakens new understanding, pleasure, and devoutness, and produces a pure heart and pure thoughts. For these words are not inoperative or dead, but creative, living words. 102] And even though no other interest or necessity impel us, yet this ought to urge every one thereunto, because thereby the devil is put to flight  and driven away, and, besides, this commandment is fulfilled, and [this exercise in the Word] is more pleasing to God than any work of hypocrisy, however brilliant.

“And celebrate the worship day                                                                                                    That peace may fill your home, and pray,                                                                              And put aside the work you do                                                                                                     so that God may work in you.                                                                                                      Have mercy, Lord!”

(“Here is the Tenfold Sure Command, by Martin Luther, #331, Lutheran Worship

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