Mark's thoughts: The foolish failure of a pastoral ministry success story

In the first chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul describes how God has acted in an unexpected way in order to save us.  He writes: 

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”  Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God    made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek           wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of   God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Corinthians 1:18-25 ESV)

This description of God’s “folly” and “foolishness” tells us about more than just the fact that Jesus died on the cross for our sins.  It reveals the manner in which God works.  God works in ways that don’t appear to be what they really are.  He works under opposites.

Martin Luther captured this profound truth in his theses for the 1518 Heidelberg Disputation.  There he wrote:

 19. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the   invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible I those things which have actually happened [Rom. 1:20].

 20. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross. [1]

This truth is something that often gets overlooked when people consider individual congregations and pastors.  Here we often look at the visible things and conclude that we learn from them what is really happening.  So it is assumed that if a congregation is growing, then it is doing things well and God is at work.  Likewise it is assumed that the pastor of this congregation is an effective and capable leader who is doing a good job.  In the same way, it is assumed that a congregation that is seeing no growth or is declining in numbers is doing things poorly.  It is assumed that the pastor of such a congregation is not doing a good job.

Recently Good Shepherd has been experiencing a time when we have seen new members come into the congregation.  The circumstances of two families caused me to reflect upon this topic of God’s cruciform ways, and the manner in which we often perceive them.  The first couple is transferring into the congregation with their two children, and the second couple will be entering the Catechumenate in the fall and will be received as members along with their three children at the Vigil of Easter.  We are blessed to have them with us.

Any time a congregation receives nine members in two families it is a good thing.  It becomes even better when they bring with them that highly prized “ecclesiastical commodity”: young children.   In viewing these developments, the usual way of perceiving them is that Good Shepherd and her pastor are doing a good job. Where the smaller congregation Our Redeemer, Golconda, IL gets yet smaller and loses members, the assumption is that this congregation and her pastor are not doing a good job.

Yet this conclusion based on outward appearances is all wrong.  Good Shepherd has not received these members because of anything the congregation or pastor has done.  Their decision to attend Good Shepherd is largely a matter of location.  The fact that one family left Our Redeemer is not a result of failure by the congregation or pastor.  Instead, the ministry of Pastor Tyler Holt at Our Redeemer is the means that God has used to bring both families to a full understanding of the Gospel and the manner in which Christ gives us his forgiveness through the sacraments.

Pastor Holt’s prison ministry introduced him to the husband of the first couple at the boot camp where he works.  Circumstances provided other opportunities for informal interaction outside of work.  In the course of that dialogue and the study of the Scriptures, the first couple became convinced that what the Lutheran church teaches is true.  They went through catechesis and joined Our Redeemer.  The husband began talking with his good friend about what he had learned.  The second couple also studied the Scriptures and eventually arrived at the same conclusion.

It’s a great story … until you learn how it turns out.  The second couple lives north of Marion and the husband commutes to work, so attending Our Redeemer, Golconda was not a possibility.  Instead, on Pastor Holt’s suggestion they began to attend at Good Shepherd.  The desire to get out of a rental property and into a home they own also prompted the first couple to move north of Marion and so they now attend Good Shepherd for the same reason.

Pastor Holt does the work of sharing the truth and this will result in nine Lutherans and four baptisms but none of them attend his church.  Good Shepherd does nothing, but because we are located located in Marion, we receive the blessing of nine new members and five small children.

The wisdom of the world looks at the outcome – the numbers of the congregational report - and says that one congregation and pastor are doing a “good job” while the other congregation is “stagnant” and so clearly her pastor is not doing a good job.  Yet when we are willing to look at things in the way of the cross – the way of God’s “foolishness” – we see that God has been at work in the faithful ministry of Pastor Holt and the people of God gathered around the Means of Grace at Our Redeemer, Golconda.   Faithfulness has borne fruit, even though we don’t see it there. The numbers don’t tell the whole story.  In fact, they don’t tell the real story because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

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[1] Luther’s Works 31:40

Presentation of the Augsburg Confession

Today is the anniversary of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession.  In late 1517 when Martin Luther initiated the events that would result in the Reformation, he had no idea regarding what was about to take place.  Luther’s Ninety-five Theses were a call for academic discussion – not for thoroughgoing reformation of the Church.  However the discussions and debates that ensued prompted Luther to further study.  This process continued to reveal the extent to which the Church’s faulty practice was based upon theology which was not true to God’s Word.

Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X in 1520.  He was then summoned to appear before the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521.  There Luther refused to recant and in the Edict of Worms Luther was declared to be “a manifest heretic.”  The edict declared that no one was to give assistance to Luther, but instead they were to take him prisoner and deliver him to the emperor.  The reading and distribution of Luther’s writings was forbidden.  It was Charles’ intention to deliver Luther over to Pope Leo X for the purpose of burning Luther at the stake.

In 1526 at the Diet of Speyer, an ambiguous edit was passed in which the German princes promised to carry out the Edict of Worms according to their own consciences.  This provided the setting in which Elector John continued his support of the Reformation in Saxony.  However, at the Diet of Speyer in 1529 Charles V corrected the ambiguity of the1526 edict and forbade expansion of the Reformation.  This led the German princes to issue a formal appeal or “protest” (it is from this event that the term “Protestant” arose). 

However, Charles V found himself limited in his ability to act against princes and areas that supported the Reformation.  In 1529 the Turkish army had laid siege to Vienna before being turned back.  Charles faced this threat from the east, and he also was engaged in a struggle with France.  He needed the German part of his empire to be united in order to assist him.  He also had a genuine concern about the condition of the Church in the areas that he ruled.

           

Charles V called for the Lutheran princes and cities to explain their religious reforms at an imperial diet that was to meet in the southern German city of Augsburg in 1530.  Luther was not able to travel to the diet because of edict passed against him in 1521and the Lutherans were led by his colleague, Phillip Melanchthon.  When the Lutherans arrived they found that a Roman Catholic opponent, John Eck, had produced a work entitled Four Hundred Four Propositions.  This work contained quotes from Luther and Melanchthon and mixed them in with heretical statements in the attempt to give the impression that the Lutherans supported most heresies known to the Church.

In the face of this, Melanchthon and the Lutherans realized that they would need to do more than just explain their reforms.  They needed to demonstrate that the theology they taught was true to the catholic (universal) tradition of the Church.  They need to state the biblical truth while condemning the false teachings that the Roman Catholics also rejected.

Melanchthon was able to draw upon some previous doctrinal articles that the Lutherans had written.  He produced the Augsburg Confession which has twenty one articles on doctrinal topics and seven articles on reform efforts.  Latin and German editions of the confession were prepared.  The Latin text was presented to Charles V and the German edition was read aloud to the diet on June 25, 1530.  

           

At Augsburg, the Lutherans confessed the truth of the Gospel in the face of a very real threat to their possessions and lives.  We continue to share in this confession as the Augsburg Confession is the foundational statement of what the Lutheran Church believes and teaches.  In the Augsburg Confession we confess the biblical and catholic (universal) faith before the world.

Collect of the Day:

Lord God, heavenly Father, You preserved the teaching of the apostolic Church through the confession of the true faith at Augsburg.  Continue to cast the bright beams of Your light upon Your Church that we, being instructed by the doctrine of the blessed apostles, may walk in the light of Your truth and finally attain to the light of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one  God, now and forever.

Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist

Today is the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist.  St. John the Baptist, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, was born into a priestly family.  His birth was miraculously announced to his father by an angel of the Lord (Luke 1:5-23), and on the occasion of his birth, his aged father proclaimed a hymn of praise (Luke 1:67-79).  This hymn is entitled the Benedictus and serves as a Gospel Canticle in the service of Matins. Events of John’s life and his teachings are known from accounts in all four of the Gospels.  In the wilderness of Judea, near the Jordan River, John began to preach a call to repentance  and a baptismal washing, and he told the crowds, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has arrived” (Matthew 3:2).  John denounced the immoral life of King Herod Antipas, with the result that Antipas had him imprisoned in the fortress of Machaerus near the Dead Sea.  There he had John beheaded (Mark 6:17-29).  John is remembered and honored as the one who with his preaching prepared the way for Jesus Christ (Matthew 3:3) and pointed to “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

Collect of the Day:

Almighty God, through John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, You once proclaimed salvation. Now grant that we may know this salvation and serve You in holiness and righteousness all the days of our life; through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Culture news: The transgender movement - more than meets the eye

Stella Morabito has written a thought provoking piece about the real implications of the transgender movement.  She argues that what appears on the surface to be an issue that deals with a very small minority is in fact an important part of a movement to redefine and control life.

Sermon for First Sunday after Trinity

                                                                                    Trinity 1

                                                                                    1Jn 4:16-21

                                                                                    6/22/14

            This summer our family will take its first vacation to Florida.  We will be going to the Gulf Coast area near Pensacola.  Now while I am looking forward to a chance to get away and spend some time at the beach, what really excites me is the opportunity to go to some places I haven’t seen for thirty years. 

            The first seven years of my life that I can actually remember were spent in Pensacola.  There are a couple of places I would like to see if time permits, but in particular I am hoping that we will be able to attend the Divine Service at Redeemer Lutheran Church.  I attended church there and also went to the parochial school from first to third grade, when we then moved to Indiana.

            It was while I was in the setting of Redeemer and her school that I became sure that I wanted to become a pastor.  While there were certainly family examples and influences – I’m not exactly the first person during the last six generations to do this – it was at Redeemer that I came to recognize that I just liked being at church; that it just felt right.

            As many of you know, my experience in school only served to confirm that the ministry was the right choice for me.  Math and science were not my thing.  Now don’t get me wrong – I got all A’s – but I didn’t enjoy it and I knew that I would never excel at it.  Foreign languages, history and literature – the humanities in general – was what I enjoyed and was really good at.

            And so in the fall of 1988 I went off to Concordia College in Ann Arbor, MI as a pre-seminary student. There, in addition to Greek and Hebrew, I got my first real taste of studying theology and church history.  And it was a rush.  I had never encountered anything that fired my mind like this – not even trains.  The subject was both intellectually stimulating and spiritually important because it was about God and his salvation for us.

            Studying theology was like a drug – it provided a kind of spiritual and intellectual high.  I was hooked … and I still am.  The day I stop studying and writing about theology is the day I am dead or just mentally incapable of doing it anymore.

            But along the way, some things have changed.  To this day I appreciate learning things that are new, interesting and profound.  But there was a time when I would have sort of turned up my nose at a text like our epistle lesson for this morning.  It’s really very straightforward.  Its focus is rather mundane.

            However, along the way I got married; and had children; and became a parish pastor for a decade.  And in those experiences I learned that frankly, this is what the Christian faith and life is all about.  In the midst of its simplicity, there is a profundity here that we spend our whole lives trying to understand and to put into practice.  It is a message that we need to hear again and again because of who we are and because of what God has done for us in his Son, Jesus Christ.

            The first words of our text this morning say, “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”  Unfortunately, this drops us right into the middle of the conversation.  John is talking about knowing and believing God’s love for us. He does so because of what he said just prior to the start of our text.

            There John wrote, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

            John is going to talk a lot about love.  He is going to talk a lot about loving one another. But the starting point for this whole discussion is the love that God that has shown for us in Christ.  In our text John says, “We love because he first loved us.” We see that he is summarizing what he had just said.  John tells us that God is love.  But this love is not some abstract principle.  It is not some kind of divine warm fuzzy. Instead, God is love and this love is made known in action.

            God made known his love for us by sending his Son into the world in the incarnation.  He sent him to die on the cross as the sacrifice – as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. By his death, God executed his judgment against our sin.  And by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, God has conquered death and brought us life.  As those who have been born again through water and the Spirit in Holy Baptism, we have come to share in this life.  Eternal life is already ours now, and we will share in its consummation when Christ raises and transforms our bodies to live with him forever.  As John said in the previous chapter, “Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”

            This is the love we have received from God.  As we believe in the Son of God, we remain in this love and God remains in us.  John says in our text, “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

            This love from God is not an aimless thing.  It has a goal.  It has a purpose.  The love of God in Christ reached its goal when our Lord died on the cross and rose from the dead.  And now God wants that same love to reach its goal in us.  In our text John writes, “By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment.”   The word translated here as “perfected” here means to accomplish or complete.  Because of baptism and faith, God’s love in Christ has reached its goal with us and so we have confidence for the day of judgment. We know that we are the forgiven children of God who will enjoy the fullness of resurrection life in the new creation.

            But God wants his love in Christ to be perfected – to reach its goal - in another way as well.  Just before our text John wrote, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”  God’s love is perfected – it reaches its goal – when we love one another.

            Now the opposite of love, is of course, hate.  And so John goes on to say in our text, “We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

            The Christian life is very simple.  The Gospel says that because God has loved you in Christ, you don’t get to hate other people.  You can’t choose to stay angry with other people. You can’t harm other people by what you do and say.

            And likewise, because God has loved you in Christ – because he acted to help you – now you act to help other people.  John says in the previous chapter, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” 

            John says that talk is cheap.  Instead, love acts in ways that serve and help the brother or sister.  And you know who is first on that list?  The members of your family – your husband or wife; your son or daughter; you mother and father; your brother or sister.  You know who is next on that list? The members of this congregation and the other Christians you know, because those are the ones to whom John refers first and foremost when he uses the term “brothers.”  And you know who else is on the list? All of the other people you encounter in your various vocations, because God’s love is a love that extends to the whole world.

            The Gospel that John shares with us today is a message that is profoundly simple.  It is simple because it says this: God loved you in Christ, and so now as those born again by this love, you love others.  It is profound because the entire basis for the Gospel is the fact that the creator of the cosmos became flesh and served us.  It is profound because God’s Spirit has acted upon you to change you – to give you new life and make this life of love possible.

            And it is also the same message that you hear every single week.  It is the same message that you need to hear every week, because while you do see this love present and at work in our life, you don’t see it all the time.  And in fact, at the beginning of the letter John says that this is the way things are.  In words that are so familiar to you he writes, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

            The old man, the sinful nature remains and it battles against the new man who has been born through water and the Word.  In that struggle this past week, you know the times and ways that the old man got the upper hand. You know those times when rather than struggling against the old man, you in fact embraced him.

            And that is why every week we need to hear this good news: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  In that forgiveness – in that love – we find peace and strength to go forth as we start a new week.  We go forth strengthened by the Spirit of God with this knowledge from our text: “We love because he first loved us.”