A visit to the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod)

~~ Christ is in thee, and thou in Him; knit together inseparably. Neither canst thou be damned, except Christ be damned with thee: neither can Christ be saved, except thou be saved with Him~~ William Tyndale

Recently, because of much of the studying of scripture and history I've been doing, I visited a Lutheran Church, specifically a Missouri Synod church. For those who don't know the difference, there is the mainline Lutheran World Federation, but there are several smaller "synods" that are autonomous from the Mainline churches.

I did a bit of research, looking for a church whose practice was as close to what it would have been like back in the reformation times. They have a liturgy, an old testament reading, a gospel reading, an epistle reading, a sermon, a reading of the Nicene creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Lord's supper... Every sunday!

Without getting into detail about the church itself, I thought I'd describe the way thier service goes. The first thing I noticed that's different is once the service starts, they don't stop for any reason. Kids get up and run around? The pastor continues the service. Lighting problems? They go on anyway. The second thing I noticed is in the liturgy, they have a heavy definition of sin. Just read this...

Forgive my sins.
Forgive me the sins of my present and the sins of
my past,The sins of my soul and the sins of my body; the sins I have done to
please myself and the sins which I have done to please other.
Forgive me my careless and idle sins;
forgive me my serious and deliberate sins.
Forgive me those which I know and those sins
which I know not, the sins which I have so labored to hide from others that I
have hid them from my own memory.
Forgive them all, O Lord, and of Your great mercy
let me be absolved.
By the power of Your Holy Name, deliver me from
the bonds of all that by my frailty I have committed, for the sake of Christ
Jesus, our Lord. Amen

This is way different than what I hear in my own church. Sins that we have blotted from our memory? Desparate to hide them?

The old testament reading was from 1 Kings 3:5-12. The epistle reading was from Romans 8:28-30...

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those
who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom
He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so
that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He
predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and
these whom He justified, He also glorified.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against
us?

With this and Matthew 13:44-52, the sermon was on God's larger purpose. The message was clean and pure, no testimonies by the pastor about what movies he's seen or books he'd read. No lecturing or disecting the text into strongs definitions. Just a pure word given as comfort to those struggling as Job struggled with the why's and wherefore's of God's redemptive purposes.

Then came "the long prayers". This consisted of the pastor praying for the various requests... With something added that I really came to like. In between each prayer for each person's need, the pastor would say "Lord, in your mercy", and the congregation would reply, "hear our prayer". This ensured that at least I was paying attention, and I'm sure that's one of the reasons for this.

After the offering was collected, came the service of Holy communion. Now, what immediately stood out here was that the pastor spoke God's word over the service...

Luke the Evangelist wrote of our risen Savior
that when he was at the table with the disciple from Emmaus, he took bread and
blessed it, broke it and gave it to them. Then thier eyes were opened and
they recognized him, that they may share in the feast he had
prepared...

On the night when HE was betrayed, our Lord took
bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take, eat;
this is my Body, which is broken for you. Do this in rememberance of
me." In the same way he also took the cup after supper, and when he had
given thanks he gave it to them saying, "drink of it, all of you; this cup is
the new testament in my Blood, which is poured out for the forgiveness of
sins. Do this, as often as you drink it, in rememberance of me."
Therefore, remembering his death, believing in his rising from the grave,
affirming his presence no, in this place, we obey his command and wait the gift
of himself...

The Lord's prayer is recited, and the distribution begins. First helpers, ushers and the like go up and take the supper, then they in turn help distribute to the rest of the congregation. As each row recieves the bread and wine, the pastor tells them, "recieve the body of Christ" and "recieve the blood of Christ, poured out for the remission of sins"... Then he says this: "
The body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ strengthen and preserve you in
body and soul unto life everlasting. Depart in peace.."

The last person to take the supper is the pastor, who steps down and is given the supper by the first elder to recieve... signifying, I believe, that the pastor needs the supper as much as everyone else.

But what's interesting here after the supper was "the benediction"... the declaration that our sins are forgiven.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, Keep
our hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God and of His Son Jesus
Christ, our Lord; And the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you alway.

That last word isn't a typo. It's saying that your path shall continue on the narrow way, rather than "all ways".

I like this type of service. It's very focused, is WAY shorter than at my church, which tops out on sunday mornings at 2 plus hours. After the service, they always adjourn to the fellowship hall for coffee and cakes (or fresh veggies!), and everyone has a great time.

And I had a great time. Some people might call this "quaint". But it was refreshing.

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Objective Truth or Subjective truth?

~~ Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging ~~ Martin Luther

Objective Truth or Subjective Truth?

One subject, or category, that seems to be missing today is Objective Truth. Lately, I’ve been embroiled in issues at work and at church, concerning what’s true and what isn’t. Rather than get into politics at work, I’ll start with church.

It came to the Pastor’s attention that people had many questions concerning the issue of “generational curses”. My Pastor’s good, but being a first generation pastor with little or no background in church history… He isn’t even familiar with the Brahman hymnal… He sometimes struggles with some things that are basic. One place he struggles with is “Law and Gospel”. There’s been a movement in our church towards “deliverance”, meaning people are looking for deliverance from demonic entanglements and other perceived spiritual threats. Now I, like most of you, believe in demons and the devil, but most Christians with some background know that demonic possession is impossible in an individual who is indwelt with the Holy Spirit. Light, afterall, cannot have a place with darkness, right.

But many of these folks, in their desire to receive the blessings of God but frustrated that they haven’t received the blessings they think they should be getting, have bought into the notion that it’s the powers and principalities that be that are preventing them from receiving their blessings. They point to a “generational curse” of poverty or what have you, and go around from one deliverance gathering to another looking to have that spirit removed.

My Pastor wisely took a stand against that. But in doing so, he had to take a path that took him directly into the area of the difference between the Law of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He had to talk about the original curse in the Garden of Eden, and talk about the two trees (tree of life, tree of the knowledge of good and evil) in terms of law and gospel. In his first sermon, he got flustered in the end because he didn’t know how to say “the law is what brings a curse, and the gospel delivers us from that curse”.

It’s a simple truth… One that seems to be hard for the congregation to grasp. By the next sermon, after a little bit of talking with him by some of us more mature Christians, he came back with the truth in a clarity that’s rare for any pastor, let alone our pastor. (Needless to say, I’m very proud of him). He explained how the “curse” of the law came to us through our first father, then our own fathers sin through the generations, since each generation “to the third and fourth generation” continues to sin and passes the curse on to the next generation… The cycle goes on forever unless something breaks the cycle. Then he explained how the gospel… How Jesus’ death and blood dispels that curse forever! Like it says in the Decalogue, “but showing mercy to the hundredth that loves me and keeps my commandments”. No need for deliverance, just a dire need of Jesus’ person and work. Then… The moment of profound clarity.

He said, “Now that you are in Christ, who is your father?” The congregation stammered here and there, “God”. Then the Pastor said, “So, if your father is our Heavenly Father, God himself, then what CURSE can befall you? What curse does God pass on, since in him there is no sin?”

Now, many in the congregation immediately saw that this is true. Of course, Jesus’ sacrifice does away with the curse of the law, and of course the generational curse is the curse of the law. But, there are still many in the church who are hanging onto the “generational curse” theory, saying that the pastor got it wrong.

So, what is true? Who is getting it right? The pastor? The people who disagree with him?

The reformers believed that scripture was the sole authority that norms our lives, and they believed that scripture is in plain language and means what it says. If God makes a promise to us, and since he is not a man that he would like, it follows that God’s promises are bankable and true. But many in the congregation are taking the plain language of scripture and twisting it to say what Paul said would happen… “They will heap up teachers who will say what their itching ears want to hear. They will stop listening to the truth and be turned aside to fables”.

It’s no accident that the New Testament was written in common street Greek rather than classical Greek. After all, Jesus was born in a feed trough. Is common language really this hard to understand?
Is truth only ever subjective? Or is God’s word Objective?

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"Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out!"~~
Hugh Latimer to his friend and colleague, Nicholas Ridley, on the occasion of their martyrdom at Oxford on 16 October 1555, at the hands of Mary, Queen of England…

The Protestant Reformation, unlike the times we live in today, was a time of great upheaval for Christians. While we get up each day, eat, do our chores and go to work, the reformers were discussing the prepositional truths of Christianity, often at the risk of their own lives. The Gospel had been let out of the Medieval Church’s closet like a cat out of a bag, and this Holy Word would not return void.

Today, the church is no longer threatened in the manner that it was threatened in those days. Today our perception is based on what our culture is doing, and when the culture encroaches upon our sense of moral outrage, we say we are being “persecuted”. But the truth is, we are only outraged when it is convenient, and the “truth” that we say we have is only as concrete as our meal plans for the day or our vacation plans. God’s word has been reduced to one great big, long proverb; a timeless plan for our lives rather than a specific history of the work of God in his creation, and the revelation of his Son, Jesus Christ. We are jealous of the culture that offends us precisely because we want the culture to like us, much like the ancient Israelites wanted their pagan gentile neighbors to like them. We, like them, hate being a pecular people.

As a result, we tone down the rhetoric of Christianity, hiding the message of truth in psychobabble and fluff, hoping that our neighbors will make that decision to see things our way… When the truth is what they really need to hear. The gospel isn’t about therapeutic claims like the other world religions and mystic new age sciences make; Rather the gospel is God’s declaration that his one and only Son has completed the task of redemption himself in our behalf. To offer one’s life for a message that the world absolutely and definitively hates is utter foolishness.

But a few have stood in the wilderness of error in the history of Christianity and have done exactly that. They were more than “culturally” persecuted. They were tortured and burned at the stake, beheaded, hung… And today’s Christian is afraid of offending thier neighbors.

We absolutely MUST reclaim the truths of the reformation. To do so is to reclaim the apostolic proclamation of the gospel. Only by standing on the shoulders of those who came before us, studied before us, prayed before us… and many times died before us... Only then can we make a difference in this world. May God’s spirit open our eyes and ears again to the truth.

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