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January 2007 Newsletter Contents [Newsletter Archive] |
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| Pastor's Article | Vicar's Article |
| Christian Education | Parish Notes |
| Portals of Prayer |
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January 2007 Newsletter Contents [Newsletter Archive] |
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| Pastor's Article | Vicar's Article |
| Christian Education | Parish Notes |
| Portals of Prayer |
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Hearing the Gospels during the Christmas and Epiphany seasons is an exciting thing for the Christian. He hears again the wonderful account of salvation as it began with John the Baptizer. He hears how the angel Gabriel announced the births of John and Jesus to Elizabeth and Mary respectively. Then there is Joseph. There are the shepherds. And in Epiphany there are the Magi. In all these cases [Zechariah is the exception], all of them simply followed the Word of God spoken through the angel. The Magi don't have a spoken word, but they have a visible sign, the star. Luther calls the star the word that points to Christ.
What wonderful examples for us! In our modern day sophistication we are always tempted to doubt what God has spoken. We are certainly tempted because plenty of people today talk about the Word, but never really get to the Word. Here we are speaking of the Word who is Jesus. John opens his Gospel by calling Jesus the Word made flesh [John 1.14].
Christ does not want to be found apart from his Word. Those who deny this were called "fanatics" by Luther, Schwärmerei in the German. They do not find Christ in his Word, in Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion. For them, these are simply empty rights with no real content. Instead, they "scramble up above the clouds and seek him in heaven," says Luther. But they don't find him there because he has not promised to be there.
Christ has promised to be in his Word and in the Holy Sacraments. Of course the Word of God is integral to the Sacraments. To be a Sacrament there must be a word of God which promises grace or forgiveness so that the Sacraments are never divorced or apart from the Word. Find the Word and the Sacraments and you have found Christ.
The devil seeks to get us unglued from this Word. It is his greatest deceit. It is the same deceit he used with Adam and Eve: "Did God really say . . .?" Separate us from the Word and we have been separated from Christ. Everything that Christ does is here in the Word, and in and through this Word he gives us all things. Apart from his Word he gives nothing.
Once the Magi get the Word officially, when the chief priests and scribes told them that the Christ was to be born in Bethlehem, they simply follow the Word and go straight to Bethlehem. In Bethlehem they find the Christ. The temple was at Jerusalem but the Christ wasn't found there; he was found exactly where the Word said he would be. The Christ was found where the star pointed.
The important thing, then, is to follow the Word, to listen to it carefully, to digest it inwardly, as the old collect says, and take it to heart. That's what Christians do because that's where they find Christ. The Word teaches us what kind of Savior we have and how his heart is disposed toward us in love. This Word proclaims to us that God has done everything necessary for our salvation and that he offers it to us in Word and Sacrament.
Follow the Word! Get back into it if you haven't been paying attention to it. Be present as often as the Word is presented in the Divine Service in both Word and Sacrament. Receive Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar! Receive Christ also in Holy Absolution! Many opportunities present themselves for you in our congregation. Holy Absolution is offered twice a month on a scheduled basis. Appointments may be made for those whose schedules don't allow the regular times. The Sacrament of the Altar is offered every Sunday. The Word is offered also at the Office of Matins on Wednesday mornings at 7:00 AM. You will find Christ in every one of these opportunities.
Pastor Meyer
"WHO ARE OUR ENEMIES AND HOW SHOULD WE LOVE THEM?"
In the fifth chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel, Jesus speaks these famous words: You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to you love your enemies Even if we earnestly desired to follow our Lord's command and love our enemies, doing so can be quite difficult-mainly because we don't always know who our enemies actually are. And even if we do manage to discern our enemies, we don't always know what it means to love them.
While there may be people in our daily lives who irritate or annoy us, I doubt that many of us could classify anyone as an enemy. Enemy has historically carried a much more nationalistic inflection than an individualistic one. Generally speaking, your enemies were whoever belonged to the nation that was opposed to your nation. The Samaritans, for example, were seen as the enemies of the Jews because their sinful culture continually influenced the Jews away from the godly living of their culture.
As baptized Christians, our true nation is not America but Christ's Church. Because of this, our true enemies are those who, like the Samaritans, stand in opposition to God and His Word and seek to influence us away from His Truth. Such influence comes in many forms. Those who would condone drug abuse are certainly our enemies. But, on the other end of the spectrum, those who decry any use of alcohol or cigarettes as sinful reveal themselves as the enemies of Christian freedom. The enemy teachings of Mormonism, Islam, Buddhism and atheism are threats to draw Christians away from the faith of their baptism. Yet the greatest enemy that God's truth faces continues to come from the deceptive lips of those who call their false teachings Christian.
With sin coming from all angles in our lives, discerning our enemies is no easy task. It is even more difficult to know how to follow Christ's command to love our enemies. With the issue of homosexuality, we often see two extremist approaches. On one hand, moral relativists would say we are being unloving if we state that homosexuality is sinful. On the other hand, someone such as Fred Phelps, an independent Baptist minister and proprietor of the "God Hates Fags" website, would argue that our "love" should be shown by picketing funerals of fallen US soldiers, guilty in his eyes of defending a "sodomite nation", and proclaiming how happy God is that this person is burning in Hell. (Side note: While they were touring near Phelps' congregation in Topeka Kansas recently, Phelps published a flyer referring to our beloved seminary Kantorei as a "sodomite choir." Apparently God hates Lutherans, too.)
Neither ignoring sin nor vilely berating sinners in any way reflects the love of Christ. And if we wish to understand what it means to love our enemies, we need to look no further than to how Christ loves us. By virtue of being born into sin, we were born as enemies of God. Our sinful nature is entirely opposed to both obeying His Law and believing His Gospel. Knowing that our sin is what makes us God's enemy, Christ never treats it as though it doesn't exist. However, the reason Christ addresses the problem of our sin is to solve it. By calling us to repentance, He is not rubbing His moral superiority in the face of His enemies. He is preparing them to be changed from God's enemies to God's children through His death and resurrection.
There is probably an old axiom that states it more poetically, but people are far more willing to listen to you when they know that you care about them. Christ's call to repentance is effective for so many tax collectors and sinners because they saw Christ's care through actions as simple as His willingness to eat with them. Like Christ, when we encounter those who live as enemies of God, we shouldn't refuse to speak with them or insult them. And while we must be careful not to participate with them in sin or indulge them in false belief, we should always be willing to talk with them and listen to them, so that when we echo Christ's call for all men (including ourselves) to repent, they may see this as an action born from love and not as an arrogant, condescending declaration of our supposed moral superiority.
There will undoubtedly be times that, even after showing the greatest example of Christian love to our enemies, they will not be swayed. Yet Christ's command is not conditional. He does not say, "Love your enemies until their impenitence and unbelief drives you nuts." Just as Christ doesn't kick us out of His Kingdom when we continue to sin, but retains us in it through repentance and forgiveness, so we shouldn't act as though Christ eternally revokes His invitation to His enemies the moment the reject His Word. Even when our enemies reject that message and despise us for it, we should continue to love them as Christ continues to love us. We should continue to confess Christ before them as Christ continues to confess us before His Father in Heaven. Just as we pray that God would take not His Holy Spirit from us, we should always pray that His Holy Spirit will destroy the resolve of those enemies who have hardened their hearts against His call.
Vicar Hans Fiene
[Note: each month we shall endeavor to include a quote from the Lutheran Confessions about important items.]
Confession has not been abolished by the preachers on our side. The custom has been retained among us of not administering the sacrament to those who have not previously been examined and absolved. 2 At the same time the people are carefully instructed concerning the consolation of the Word of absolution so that they may esteem absolution as a great and precious thing. 3 It is not the voice or word of the man who speaks it, but it is the Word of God, who forgives sin, for it is spoken in God's stead and by God's command. 4 We teach with great diligence about this command and power of keys and how comforting and necessary it is for terrified consciences.1
1Tappert, T.G. (2000, c1959). The book of concord : The confessions of the evangelical Lutheran church (61). Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
2007 OFFERING ENVELOPES
Offering envelopes can be found on a table in the narthex. Please pick yours up so we can avoid the extra cost of mailing them. If you do not find your envelopes, please call the church office.
WE NEED RECIPES!!!
A cookbook is in the works for Immanuel's 150th celebration. Please give any recipes to Kari Cress or email her at: Painter1963@ma.rr.com
SCHEDULE OF DIVINE LITURGIES
06 January The Epiphany of Our Lord, 7:00 PM Divine Service 07 January The Baptism of Our Lord, 10:30 AM Divine Service 10 January Wednesday, 7:00 AM Office of Matins 14 January Epiphany 2, 10:30 AM Divine Service 21 January Epiphany 3, 10:30 AM Divine Service 24 January Wednesday, 7:00 AM Office of Matins 28 January Epiphany 4, 10:30 AM Divine Service 31 January Wednesday, 7:00 AM Office of Matins |
TABLE TALK
The editor has considered that this segment of each Esprit called "AND SO IT GOES . . ." was not really Lutheran enough! It could be anybody's title. Martin Luther used to sit around the dinner table and talk for hours with his friends about all kinds of topics, some of them merely reflections on what was happening in their society. In Luther's Works, American Edition, this is called "Table Talk," from the German Tischreden, which can be translated as "after dinner talk." In that spirit we have renamed this monthly column.