The Liturgy and Life

For those who asked, and for anyone else who may be interested, here are the audio-video recordings of the presentation I gave this past month at Calvary Lutheran Church in Wray, Colorado, on the Liturgy and Life. Thanks to my friend and college, Rev. Timothy Davis, and to the members of Calvary, for their gracious hospitality and for the opportunity to consider the life that is ours together in Christ, in the Liturgy of His Gospel, as fellow members of His Church.

The Liturgy and Life: Part One of Four



The Liturgy and Life: Part Two of Four



The Liturgy and Life: Part Three of Four



The Liturgy and Life: Part Four of Four

Living the Sacramental Life

The Fulfillment of Creation in the Baptized and Eucharistic Life

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  He created all things out of nothing by His Word and Holy Spirit.  All things are His, therefore, and whatever He has created is very good.  It is good because it is the work of God.  It is good because the Word of God, by whom all things are made, has Himself become flesh, true Man, conceived and born of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  And in spite of man’s fall into sin, all of creation has been redeemed and sanctified, and it is made brand new, in the Body of Christ Jesus, the incarnate Son, crucified and risen from the dead.

So is the goodness of creation confirmed and sealed unto you by the fact that Christ administers His grace, His Gospel, His forgiveness, life, and salvation, through the creaturely means of water, bread, and wine.  As God creates and gives new life through holy marriage, by the bodily union of husband and wife, so does He create and give new life in body and soul through Christ and His Bride, the Church, in Holy Baptism.  And as He opens His hand to satisfy and sustain every living thing, so does He feed and nourish His children with the Body and Blood of Christ at His Altar.

In responding to those who demonically oppose the goodness of marriage and forbid various kinds of food, St. Paul affirms that God has created these very things “to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.  For everything created by God is good,” he writes, “and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by means of the Word of God and prayer” (1Timothy 4:3b–5).  That is a comprehensive and inclusive statement, to be sure.  But it is instructive to note how precisely it pertains to the Holy Sacraments.

The waters of Holy Baptism and the bread and wine of the Holy Communion are indeed sanctified by the Word of God and prayer, not only in theory but in practice, according to the institution of our Lord Jesus Christ.  And these good gifts are received in faith and with thanksgiving to God.  Not simply as a matter of course, but as the preeminent example of creation made new in Christ.

All of creation is fulfilled and perfected in the flesh and blood of the incarnate Son, Christ Jesus, crucified and risen from the dead.  It is redeemed and sanctified for you in His Holy Sacraments.  You are baptized into His New Creation, by way of His Cross and Resurrection.  You belong to His holy Body, and you live a new life to and from His holy Altar.  So do you receive and use the good things of God’s creation in faith and with thanksgiving, and you become a living sacrament of Christ in relation to your neighbors in the world, within your own callings and stations in life.

The Fulfillment and Fruition of God’s Good Creation

As creatures of God, water, bread, and wine are good, even outside of their use in the Sacraments.  Indeed, they are fundamental to this body and life on earth, and for that reason alone they should not be despised but received with thanksgiving.  Even so, the fact that our Lord has chosen to use these particular elements in Holy Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar also distinguishes water, bread, and wine in the midst of His good creation.  They are significant on account of that usage.

When God created the heavens and the earth, He started with water.  And when He recreates and makes all things new, He starts with water.  “The earth was formed out of water and by water,” and then, in the days of Noah, the world “was destroyed, being flooded with water” (2 Peter 3:5–6).  And just as righteous Noah and his family, eight persons in all, “were brought safely through the water,” so it is the case that “Baptism now saves you” (1 Peter 3:20–21).  So water itself is a sign of the way that you are put to death and raised to new life as a new creation in Holy Baptism.

As Luther says in his Flood Prayer, by the Baptism of His beloved Son, Christ Jesus, God sanctified the Jordan and all water to be a salutary flood and a rich and full washing away of sins.

So, as you go about your day and you encounter water as refreshment and cleansing, and as basic to life in this world, you are called to remember that with water and His Word the Lord your God has forgiven your sins, rescued you from death and the devil, and given you everlasting salvation.

When you eat bread — which is so basic that “daily bread” includes everything that pertains to this body and life — remember and give thanks that God also feeds you with the living Bread from heaven, the flesh of Jesus Christ, that you should not perish but have everlasting life in His Body.  After all, He reveals Himself and gives Himself to His disciples in “the Breaking of the Bread.”

And when you drink wine, rejoice, not only in the goodness of that gift, but in the fact that God uses wine to give you the precious Blood of Christ.  None of this is accidental or incidental.  It is by God’s design from the beginning, from before the foundation of the world, that He should love you and give Himself to you by the means of His good creation.  And now, as He does so in the Holy Sacraments, He shapes the way you look at the rest of the world and your life in the world.

A sacramentally shaped life is one that exercises reverence for the goodness of God’s creation, and a profound appreciation and respect for the body.  Such good things are holy in themselves, because they are God’s work and His gift.  And they are made holy for you by God’s Word, as you receive them and make use of them with prayer and thanksgiving in His Name.  Your own body is likewise redeemed and sanctified by the Word and Spirit of God.  For your body is washed with pure water, and your body is fed with the Body and Blood of Christ (Hebrews 10:22–26).  By these creaturely means of grace, you are raised up with Christ to live with Him, both body and soul, in the New Creation.  Not that God takes something bad and makes it good.  He rather takes the good that He has made, and He brings it to its proper fulfillment and perfection by the Word of Christ.

Instead of succumbing to pride or despair, consider yourself according to the Word that God has spoken concerning you.  You are His creature, to begin with.  So are you His workmanship in Christ Jesus, as He has baptized you in His Name, and as He feeds you with His Body and Blood.

As creation is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer, and as the Sacraments are what they are because God’s Word comes to the elements of water, bread, and wine, so is your life in the world also governed and sanctified by the ongoing catechesis of the Word of God.  Even the winds and the waves, so also bread and wine and all His creatures, are subject to the authority of His Word.  For He is the Author and Giver of Life and the Fulfiller of Creation.  How much more so, then, are you to live by faith in His Word, and according to His Word, in the place where He stations you.

Luther calls the Word of God the most holy Relic of all, which sanctifies your whole life.  In the Holy Sacraments, it is the Word of God that takes water and makes it a Baptism, and the Word of God that takes bread and wine and makes them the Body and Blood of Christ for you.  So it is that your body and life are made holy by the Word of God, which you hear and confess in daily prayer, in catechesis with your family, and with all the people of God gathered around the Lord’s Altar.  By the prayer and preaching of His Word, your apparently mundane life is sacred and significant.

As all things are made by and for the Word of God, your life in Christ is a verbal life, which hears, confesses, and prays the Word that God the Father speaks to you by His Son.  Indeed, you speak, as you are spoken to, the language of the Church and of the Gospel of Christ Jesus.  That is the new tongue of the New Creation, which is rehearsed and handed over in the Holy Sacraments.

First and foremost is the Name of the Lord, with which He has named you in your Holy Baptism.  He has written it on your body and soul, on your forehead and your heart, along with the sign of the Holy Cross.  You are baptized in and with the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  And His Name is hallowed in you by the preaching of His Word and by the life that you live according to His Word.  So do you also confess and call upon His Name in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, because He has named you with His Name and adopted you to be His child in Holy Baptism.

In the Lord’s Supper, there are the Words of Christ: “Take, eat, this is My Body, given for you.  Drink of it, all of you, this Cup is the New Testament in My Blood, which is shed for you, for the forgiveness of all your sins.”  To live by faith in those Words, and to receive what they give you, is central to the Christian life.  But these gifts of Christ are administered “in remembrance of Him.”  Which is to say, first of all, that the Lord remembers you in the Sacrament by the Ministry of His Word, by the preaching of His Cross and Resurrection.  For as often as we eat this Bread and drink this Cup, it is necessary that the death of the Lord Jesus Christ be proclaimed until He comes.  The catechesis of His Word thus brings you in repentant faith to the Feast of the Word-made-Flesh.

So also in your whole body and life, the Word that sanctifies all your days is the remembrance of Christ Jesus, which is the confession of His Name, the confession of His Cross and Resurrection, the confession of what He does for you, and says to you, and gives to you.  That is what defines and determines your life as a Christian, and it is rooted in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.  For the preaching of Christ is always pointing to His Supper, and His Supper is always celebrated with the preaching of His Word.  So it is that you are always living to and from His Holy Supper.

Not only in the Liturgy, but as you make your way to and from the Liturgy throughout the week, the Name of the Lord that you have received in Holy Baptism and the remembrance of the Lord Jesus in the Holy Communion are shaping your life in relation to God and your neighbor.  These Holy Sacraments set you within the Body of Christ, wherein you live by faith in His Word and not by human sight or sense.  You perceive your parents, your spouse, your children, and your place in the world according to the hidden majesty of the Word, just as the true glory of the Sacraments is likewise hidden under apparent frailty and weakness.  Both your sins and your righteousness are determined by the Word and Spirit of Truth, by the Law and the Gospel, and not by your feelings.

The sacramentally shaped life, as your Baptism signifies from the outset, is one of repentance and faith, of dying and rising with Christ Jesus.  Which is also to say that, in relation to the Lord and one another, it is a life of confession and absolution.  You confess your sins and receive absolution, that is forgiveness, from your pastor as from God Himself.  You likewise acknowledge your sins, apologize for them, seek your neighbor’s forgiveness, and make amends as you are able.  And for your part, you readily forgive and gladly do good to those who sin against you (even repeatedly).  That is the rhythm of your life from the Font to the Altar, and from the Altar through the week.  And by the Cross and Resurrection of Christ Jesus, it is already to live within the New Creation.

Your First, Foremost, and Forever Vocation

To speak of Creation (both old and new) is also to speak of your vocation in the world.  That is not so much your job or what you do and accomplish.  Your vocation is chiefly a matter of who and what God has called you and created you to be.  You are a human being, male or female.  You are a son or daughter.  Perhaps you are also a husband or wife, a father or mother, a brother or sister.  These are permanent or lifelong callings, which set you in lifelong relationships.  The Divine Call to the Office of the Holy Ministry is likewise a life-changing, permanent vocation, which sets a man into a new relationship and responsibility with respect to the Lord and His Church on earth.

By contrast, your offices and stations in life — your particular posts or positions with their duties and responsibilities at any given time — are subject to choices and changes within the freedom of the Gospel.  You won’t always be a student.  You won’t always be changing diapers.  You won’t always be flipping burgers at McDonalds or greeting shoppers at Wal-Mart.  In Christian faith and love all of these endeavors are holy and pleasing to God.  They glorify His Name, and they benefit your neighbors.  But they are not permanent callings, and they do not define your identity or value.

Beyond all of these temporal callings and stations in life, there is yet one vocation that is not just permanent for this body and life, but is actually eternal.  That is the vocation of your Holy Baptism, in which the Lord God has called you to be His child, a son of God in Christ, and a member of His Bride, the Church.  Note the similarities to the most basic earthly vocations of marriage and family.  And yet, you have become a child of God, not just for a time, but for eternity.  And you are united to Christ, your heavenly Bridegroom, in such a way that even death shall never be able to part you.

It is from the vocation of your Baptism that you fulfill all of your other vocations in life, and that you serve your various offices and stations in this world as a Christian.  You live and you love as a child of God, because you are a child of God, by virtue of your Baptism into Christ Jesus.  It is in your Baptism that God the Father has named you with His Name and thereby adopted you as a beloved and well-pleasing son in Christ Jesus.  It is in your Baptism that Christ has cleansed you, and sanctified you, and dressed you in His righteousness, as a Bride made ready for her Husband.  It is in your Holy Baptism that God has called you into His own household and family forever.

Thus bearing His Name, beloved of God and beautiful in Christ, the vocation of your Baptism governs and defines all of your relationships, especially those of marriage and family, of parents and children, of brothers and sisters, all of which point beyond themselves to the household and family of God.  For how you live in the world is determined by who and what you are in Christ.

As a husband and father, myself, and as a pastor, having baptized many of my own children, and having witnessed the marriage of several of my own children (with another one on the horizon), I have been very aware of the intimate link between Holy Baptism and these holy vocations.  As marriage and family are the crowning glory of the first creation, so is the glory of the New Creation found in the marriage and family of Christ and His Bride, the Church.  It is for this glory that you are baptized, and it is to this glory that your familial vocations in this world are pointing.  By the same significance, you learn how to live as a child, by faith, by your Baptism into Christ Jesus.  You learn how to be a husband from Him who loves you, who has given Himself for you, who has betrothed you to Himself as a Bride in Holy Baptism.  You learn how to be a father, to love and care for children, from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has called you by His Son to be His very own in Holy Baptism.  And you learn how to be a wife and mother from the Church, who cleaves to Christ, her Head, who gives birth to the children of God by the washing of water with His Word and Holy Spirit, and feeds them at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom.

Whether married or unmarried, whether fruitful or barren, young, old, or in between, your whole body and life, your flesh and blood, your soul and spirit, the space and time in which you live and move, your words and actions, all are redeemed and sanctified by your Baptism into Christ Jesus.  God has thereby called you out of the nothingness of sin and death into the Life and Light of His eternal Day, into the somethingness of the incarnate Word.  Thus do you live and abide in Christ, and He in you, and all your days and nights, now and forever, are lived in the presence of God.

In the Old Testament, once a year, the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies, and in him all of Israel would stand in the presence of God.  But Christ has entered the Sanctuary made without hands, eternal in the heavens, where He stands forever as your merciful and great High Priest.  His Body, crucified, risen, and ascended, is your Anchor behind the veil.  You are anchored to God by the flesh and blood of Christ, even as you go about your life in this world.  For your body, soul, and spirit have been washed with pure water in His Name.  He has bound you to Himself forever.  And as surely as He feeds you with His Body and His Blood at His Table, so surely do you live and abide in the House of the Lord, as a beloved child of His God and Father, unto eternal Life.

Living as the Household and Family of God in the One Body of Christ Jesus

The preaching and catechesis of Christ have brought you to the Font, named you with His Name, adopted you as a child of His God and Father, and anointed you with His Holy Spirit.  So do His preaching and catechesis henceforth bring you to and from His Altar in repentance and faith, that you might receive His forgiveness of all your sins, and that you might live and abide in His Body and Blood, as a living and active member of His Body and Bride, the Church.

To eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ is to be united with Him in the most intimate union possible.  It is surely nothing less than the consummation of His baptismal betrothal, whereby the Bridegroom and His Bride become one Flesh.  It is the fulfillment of the Image and Likeness of God, in which the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, were created, that man should not be alone but live in love, in fellowship with the Holy Trinity, in a community of many sons and daughters.

To have such profound communion with Christ Jesus in His Marriage Feast, is to have communion with His whole Church in heaven and on earth, as surely as He is the Head of one Body and the Husband of one Wife.  You belong to your brothers and sisters in Christ, and they belong to you.  You are all one Body in Christ, because you all eat of the one Bread which is the Body of Christ, and you all drink of the one Cup which is the New Testament in His Blood.  You are bodied and blooded together in Him.  You are among the countless grains that have been gathered from a thousand hills and baked together into a single Loaf.  In the Holy Communion it is, therefore, as St. Augustine says: You receive what you are, and you are what you receive, the Body of Christ.

You love and care for your brothers and sisters in Christ, as members of one household and family of God, because you have one and the same God and Father in Christ Jesus, you share the same divine Name, you are all anointed by one Holy Spirit, and you are bound to each other by the flesh and blood of one Lord.  You do not have the option of turning your back on those who belong to this Body of Christ, but you are obliged to them, and they to you, for His Name’s sake.  This, too, belongs to your vocation as a child of God, as a member of the Bride of Christ, which is forever.

Within your own family, if any of the children failed to show up for a meal, and you had no idea where they were, you would not say, “Oh, well, I guess they’re just not here.”  No, if one of your children were missing, you would not rest until you found her.  So, too, there ought to be a similar care and concern for all of the children of God, who are your brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.

I realize that you are constrained by your callings and stations in life.  There is a limit to what you are able to do.  You are finite.  And your finitude does not belong to the curse and consequences of sin, but to the fact that you are a creature of God.  You are not God.  You are created and called to live by faith in Him, in love for your neighbors within your own proper place.  So, of course, it is not possible for you to be friends with everyone, nor to give everyone your full and equal time and attention.  You cannot love everyone the same way, nor should you try.  But in so far as you are able, as opportunity permits, you are called to love your brothers and sisters in Christ.

The household and family of God is not secondary (or incidental) to your own earthly household and family.  The community of Christ’s Church, the communion of saints in His Body and Blood, is the primary thing.  All of your other relationships take their cues from that holy fellowship, which is with the Father and His Son in the Holy Spirit.  You do not favor your husband or wife, your parents or children, over the Bride of Christ and the children of God.  You love your nearest and dearest in this life as the Father loves you in Christ, His Son, and as Christ Jesus loves you in the Holy Spirit.  Likewise, as you go about your week from day to day, it is with care and concern for all who eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ.  He is the Firstborn of many brothers, and you belong to those many brothers, because you are named by God and forgiven by God in Christ.

As previously noted, the fellowship and life of the Church are characterized by repentance and reconciliation, as each and all Christians are forgiven by Christ Jesus and called to forgive each other in His Name.  That is to live by faith in the significance of your Holy Baptism, and to bear the good fruits of a worthy participation in the Holy Communion of Jesus’ Body and Blood.

As you are forgiven by the grace of God, and reconciled to God in Christ, you are also reconciled to one another in Him.  You forgive those who trespass against you.  You do not harbor bitterness or resentment against anyone.  But if anyone has anything against you, then you are to leave your gift at the Altar until you are reconciled with your brother.  Where things stand between you and your neighbor impinges directly upon your life in the Lord’s Liturgy.  Your relationship with God, tangibly expressed in your offerings and gifts, is inextricably connected to your relationship with your neighbor.  Your approach to the Lord’s Altar has both a vertical and horizontal dimension.

Reconciliation with your neighbor is no mere token or formality.  It is more than a handshake and greeting of “peace.”  It means that you actually bear the fruits of repentance in relation to your neighbor.  You die to yourself and rise to newness of life in Christ, as a new creature in Christ, in the way that you relate to your husband or wife, in the way that you relate to your children, in the way that you relate to your coworkers, and in the way that you relate to friends and foes alike.  You take up the Cross and follow after Christ in the way that He has walked, in holy faith and love.

The Pattern of Life in Christ by Participation in His Holy Sacraments

To live as a disciple of Christ Jesus, to live and walk in the way that He does, is to live with Him in Holy Baptism and the Holy Communion.  For disciples are made and sustained by the Baptism and catechesis of Christ, and it is to His disciples that He gives His Body and Blood.  It is in these Holy Sacraments that you are forgiven all your sins and given the life of Christ in body and soul.

In the Old Testament (Exodus 24 and following), the Lord reveals to Moses the Pattern by which he is to construct the Tabernacle, and by which he is to arrange the Priesthood and the Sacrifices.  So the Tabernacle is made according to God’s direction, and afterwards the Temple in Jerusalem is built on the same Pattern.  The Pattern itself is the Lord’s own divine, eternal life in heaven, which God shows to Moses in order to make it available to His people on earth in the Tabernacle.

That divine Pattern is the incarnate Christ, crucified and risen from the dead.  It is His own Body, which is the Temple of God.  It is His Priesthood, by which He sacrifices Himself once for all, and by which He enters with His own Blood into the Holy of Holies made without hands, eternal in the heavens, in order to establish a place for you and all His people in the presence of God the Father.

That same Pattern — the incarnate Christ, crucified and risen, and His Body the Temple of God — that same heavenly reality is revealed and given to you in the New Testament Tabernacle, which is the Body of Christ, His Church, in Holy Baptism and the Holy Communion.  That is where the Lord dwells with His people.  That is where His Name and His Glory are found, on earth as in heaven, that you might draw near to Him, derive your life from Him, and dwell with Him in peace.

And that is the Pattern which is also formed in you, which shapes your body and life in Christ, as you are crucified, put to death, and buried with Him by the ongoing significance of your Baptism, and as you are given to eat and to drink the Fruits of His Cross and Passion, His Body and Blood.

The Pattern of this sacramental life is laid out for you by the Word of God in the basic catechesis of the Small Catechism, and it is exercised for you and given to you in the Divine Liturgy.

The Ten Commandments, to begin with, reveal the good and acceptable will of God for what a life of faith and love looks like.  They describe the life of Christ, first of all, which is also how you are to live in Christ, in faith toward God and in love toward your neighbor.  Certainly that is true with respect to the Second Table of the Law, as well.  But here I’m going to focus on the First Table.

The First Commandment commands you to worship the Lord, the one true God.  That is to kneel and bow down before Him in your heart, mind, body, and soul.  The Second Commandment directs you to sanctify His Name and use it rightly, which is to confess and call upon His Name at all times and in all places with prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.  And the Third Commandment calls you to rest from your own words and works, in order to give attention to His Word and to rest in His good works.  All three of these Commandments are thus fulfilled in the Liturgy, in which you worship God rightly by hearing His Word, receiving His good Gifts, calling on His holy Name, and resting yourself in the Body of Christ Jesus, the Sabbath who remains for the people of God.

In the Catechism the Creed comes next.  It is the Word of God, which He places on your lips to confess.  By speaking as He has spoken, not only do you praise and glorify His Name, but you also serve your neighbor, and you strengthen your own faith and life in Christ Jesus, by rehearsing what is most true and sure and certain.  You confess who God is and what He has done for the life and salvation of sinners, thereby echoing the Word of the Gospel that He has preached to you.  That is the Pattern of your Christian life, not only in the Liturgy, but throughout your days and weeks.

Likewise, in the Our Father, as a baptized child of God, you are taught and invited to pray to Him as your own dear Father.  So has He given you the very words with which to call upon His Name in Christ, the Son.  This, too, is a fundamental prayer of the Liturgy, and of the entire Christian life.

Then we have the Sacraments of Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and the Holy Communion, which are the foundation, heart, and soul of the entire Liturgy.  It is instructive that the Lutheran Church has identified these means of grace as being among the Chief Parts of the Christian faith and life.  They are fundamental to what it means to be a Christian, fundamental to who we are as the Church.  From your Baptism to and from the Lord’s Supper in the confession and forgiveness of your sins, that is the rhythm of the sacramental life, the structure of your life with God in Christ Jesus.

So the Pattern of the Christian life is set forth and taught in the Catechism.  But it is lived in the Liturgy.  That is where you are invited and drawn into the Pattern by the Word and Spirit of Christ.

The first part of the Liturgy mirrors the first three Commandments.  You come into the presence of God, in order to worship Him, because He is the Lord your God.  You pray, praise, and give thanks.  You kneel and bow down.  You call upon His Name in the rites of preparation, that is, the Invocation, Confession, and Absolution.  You call upon His Name in the Gloria in Excelsis and the Kyrie, the Introit, and the Collect.  And then you begin to find your Sabbath Rest in the Word that is read to you from the Holy Scriptures, which is preached to you in the Name and stead of Christ Jesus.  And it is the catechesis of that Word which brings you in repentant faith to the Table, where you actually do recline on Jesus, and you receive and eat and drink His Body and Blood.

Now, within this scope and sequence of the Liturgy, the Offertory Rites come between the Service of the Word and the Service of the Holy Communion.  It is the baptized faithful who thus confess the Creed, who pray and intercede for the Church and the world, who offer themselves and their substance for the glory of God and the good of their neighbor, and who then offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving as they approach the Lord’s Altar to receive all good things in His Body and Blood.

In these Offertory Rites, you are already doing those very things which you also continue to do as a Christian living in the world.  You confess the Word of God that you have heard.  You pray for your neighbors, for your family and friends, and even for your enemies and those who persecute you.  You dedicate and give yourself, your body and life, in service to God and your neighbors.  And you offer to the Lord your thanks and praise, in view of the fact that He gives you every good thing and all that you need in the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus.

All of these activities, both within the Liturgy on the Lord’s Day and throughout the days of your week from Sunday to Sunday, are offered as a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the One who comes to visit you, who serves you and feeds you with Himself at His Table.  The Catechism and the Liturgy both culminate in the Sacrament of the Altar, in the eating and drinking of the Body and Blood of Christ.  The Holy Communion is also the high point of your Christian life.  You live to and from the Lord’s Altar, and everything you do and say is a sacrifice of thanksgiving for His Sacrament.

Think about it.  The Kingdom of God is already yours in the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus.  So, it is in that confidence, in the gratitude that arises in response to that glorious grace of the Gospel, that you live your life to the glory of God and for the benefit of your neighbors.  You glorify God by keeping His Commandments, and you love and serve your neighbor according to God’s Word, because you lack no good thing in Christ Jesus.  You have nothing to prove.  You have no need to compete with anyone for anything.  You have it all in the Word and Flesh of the incarnate Son.

Eucharistia

From the earliest days of the Church, Christians have called the Lord’s Supper “the Eucharist,” the Greek word for thanksgiving, first of all because Jesus Himself gives thanks in His institution of the Sacrament, and then also because this Holy Supper is the greatest and best Gift, the fulfillment and fruition of God’s good creation in the flesh and blood of the incarnate Son.

It is not simply that the Church gives thanks in the celebration of the Sacrament.  It is rather that all thanksgiving finds its true beginning and its culmination in the Eucharist, because the Life of the New Creation finds its center there in the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus.  It is, after all, the gift of God Himself in the flesh.  Throughout the heavens and the earth, there is no other part of creation that is also the Creator, given and poured out for His creatures, that He should live and abide in them, and they in Him.  Nothing else can even begin to compare to this most excellent and priceless Treasure.  But the Eucharist does not result in the despising or rejecting of creation!  No, it is the Eucharist that makes this poor life of labor, not only tolerable, but a wonderful blessing.

As you are given to eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ — no matter what else may come your way or happen — you are able to say and to sing, “Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endures forever,” because the pledge and promise of that reality is given to you in the Holy Communion.  Indeed, the Church gives thanks in the celebration of the Sacrament, not only because it is meet and right so to do, but in order to exercise and practice the giving of thanks at all other times and in all other places.  You learn to look at all of life, and to receive it, as a gift of God’s grace in Christ Jesus.  For that is what it surely is.  And when everything is a gift, then there is nothing left for you to do, except to be giving thanks to the Giver of all good things.

It is thanksgiving that is always overflowing from the Eucharist into your whole week and the whole world.  And then it is always returning to the Eucharist, because that is where the Lord, the great Good Shepherd, has prepared His Table for you, His lavish Feast of the finest Wine and the choicest Meat, that you should there have joy and gladness in Him, in the presence of God, and in the face of all your enemies.  What can sin, death, the devil, or hell do to you, when the Blood of the Lamb not only marks your door but fills your body and soul with His own divine Life and every grace and blessing of God?  And what can man do to you, when you are fed with the Body of Christ, the incarnate God, as a pledge and a down payment on the resurrection of your body?

The eucharistic life that you live in and from the Sacrament of the Altar is firmly grounded in the confidence that everything is yours in Christ Jesus.  For the Lord your God has not only pledged Himself to you with His sure and certain Word, but He actually feeds you with His own holy Body and His precious Blood.  Thus do you stride forward with the bold courage of Joshua taking the Promised Land, knowing that the Lord is with you, that He fights for you, and that He withholds no good thing from you.  Thus are you absolutely and utterly free to live and to love without fear.

You are free to give yourself to and for others.  You are free to pour yourself out, even unto death.  You are free to lay down your body and life as a sacrifice.  You are free to forgive and gladly to do good to those who sin against you.  You are free to give up your ambitions in order to care for your family, to care for the stranger at your door, and to care for the Lazarus laid at your gate.

It is in such confidence and freedom that you give thanks to God in all that you do and say, at all times and in all places, because you discover in the Eucharist that all of creation is God’s good gift to you in Christ.  As you receive His Body and Blood with thanksgiving, so do you receive all things with thanksgiving, and you happily enjoy them and put them to use in faith and love.  Your fasting and prayer, your confession of God’s Word, your tithes and almsgiving, and all of your good works, all flow from the fact that you are in Christ, and Christ Jesus lives and abides in you.

You live this eucharistic life in the Cross and Resurrection of the same Lord Jesus Christ, not simply as historical events and intellectual facts, but by way of your Holy Baptism, by Confession and Absolution, and by participation in the Lord’s Supper.  It is the life of discipleship, which is to bear the Cross and to follow after Christ, sharing in His Baptism and drinking from His Cup.

Which is to say that living a eucharistic life is a daily practice for a faithful martyrdom, however that may come, as God so wills.  Perhaps not with a gun to your head or a sword at your neck, but yet by the daily drowning and dying of repentance, by the bearing of the Cross in faith and love.  Your thanksgiving to God is exercised and put into practice by dying to yourself and living unto Christ.  You cling to His Gospel, and you willingly let go of everything else, even your life in this world, as needs may be.  You love and forgive your neighbor, as the Lord Jesus does for you.

All of this you do and suffer in the hope and promise of the Resurrection, the pledge of which you have received in your Holy Baptism and in the Holy Communion.  Though you die with Christ, you know that you shall be raised with Him, as well, and glorified with Him in body and soul.  That is your comfort and your peace in the midst of all adversity.  And that is the comfort you are also then able to confess, by word and deed, to and for your neighbors in the world.

Living Sacrifice and Living Sacrament

As you receive Christ Jesus in His Word and Holy Sacraments, so do others receive the Love of God in Christ through you.  On the one hand you become a living sacrifice to God (Romans 12), and on the other hand you are a living sacrament of His grace, mercy, and peace to your neighbor.

If one considers the Old Testament, it becomes obvious that sacrifice is broader than offering and death.  It is also fellowship and life in the gifts of God, as that which has been offered is shared with the Lord, with His ministers, and with His people.  The Peace Offerings, in particular, were sacrifices of thanksgiving, which acknowledged and confessed the grace of God and the peace that He has obtained and bestows by His Gospel.  And those sacrifices always included a festive meal, in which family, friends, and neighbors were invited to participate in the good gifts of God.  Those gifts were sanctified by His Word and prayer; they were received and shared with thanksgiving.

So also for you, thanksgiving to the Lord is manifest, not only in the prayer and confession of His Word, the fruit of lips that praise His Name, but also in love for your neighbor.  To know and trust that everything you have is a gift from God, is also to understand that He provides for you so that you are able to love and serve the people He places alongside you in the world.  As you return thanks to the Lord and offer yourself in faith to Him, you also share what you have received with your neighbors in love.  You live and work for your neighbors in the peace that God has given you in Christ Jesus.  In particular, as you give thanks for the salutary Gift of the Body and Blood of Christ, you are strengthened by that Gift in faith toward God and in love for your neighbor.  And so is your neighbor served and strengthened by your love, unto faith and life with God in Christ.

You can see it exemplified in St. Polycarp of Smyrna, a beloved bishop and martyr of the second century.  His life and ministry, and especially his faithful martyrdom, are described in sacramental terms, as though he were becoming the Sacrament itself, that is, the Body and Blood of Christ, in his martyrdom.  It is clearly understood and expressed that he is not Christ, nor could he ever take the place of Christ, which is not the point at all.  It is rather that his entire life and ministry have been rooted in the giving and receiving of the Sacrament.  So, as he goes to his martyrdom in faith and love, he does so abiding in Christ, and Christ in him.  The Lord is with him in his death, so that he is sustained in his confession and witness, and countless others are strengthened by him.

Your own life, as well, is lived to and from the Liturgy of the Lord’s Supper, in such a way that you also become a living sacrifice of faith and thanksgiving, and a living sacrament of peace and love, as your body and life are conformed to the Pattern of Christ Jesus.  As He has given Himself for you on the Cross, and as He gives Himself to you in the Sacrament of the Altar, so does He offer you to the Father (in Himself) as an acceptable and pleasing sacrifice, and so does He give you to your neighbor as an instrument of His grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

To be sure, you speak the Word of the Gospel to your neighbor, as you are given opportunity to do so.  And as a Christian, you forgive your neighbor his trespasses against you.  But your love and forgiveness are demonstrated, and the love of God is confessed and demonstrated, in all the ways that you serve and care for your neighbor in this body and life.  As you fulfill your stations in life, and as you provide for your neighbor’s needs, you are among the gifts of God for your neighbor.  All of this in spite of the fact that neither you nor your neighbor are worthy of these good things.

It is not unlike the way that St. Mary becomes a living sacrament of Christ when the Word of God is conceived in her womb and becomes true Man.  God the Father gives to us His only-begotten Son by this Woman through conception and birth.  And He gives Himself to your neighbor through you, through your words, through your hands and feet, through your callings and stations in life.
Such love for your neighbor is the fruit of Christ’s love for you in His Holy Supper.  As He serves you at His Table with His Body and Blood, so do you love and serve your neighbors in the world.

He says to His disciples, and so also to you: “I Am here at the Table to serve you.  I am with you as the One who serves.  So, you also serve one another.  As I have loved you, so love one another.”  So the very things that Christ Jesus does for you and gives to you in the Holy Communion, you in turn do for your brothers and sisters in Christ, for your neighbors in the world, because it is now Christ who lives in you, shaping and filling your entire life by the means of His Holy Sacrament.

“I Am the Vine, you are My branches,” says the Lord.  “He who abides in Me bears much fruit.”  As you abide in Him, therefore, by abiding in His Sacrament, He bears His good fruits in you.  As His Cup overflows for you, so does His Cup overflow in you for your neighbor.  For there is no end to the grace of God in Christ and the Gifts that He freely gives to you in love by His Word.

As the Church and the ministers of Christ administer the Sacrament in the Name and remembrance of Jesus, you likewise do what He does in remembrance of Him.  Not that you would presume to administer the Lord’s Supper apart from His Divine Call and Ordination to the Office of the Holy Ministry, but that you do for you neighbor what Christ Jesus does for you.  He washes your feet.  He feeds you with His Body and Blood.  So you also love your neighbor.  You do wash his feet, as needs may be, and there are those neighbors who need such help and assistance.  You love your neighbor by taking care of his body, and by taking care of his spiritual life through the confession of Christ’s holy Name.  You feed him when he’s hungry, you give him to drink when he’s thirsty.  You give your time and energy, and you pour out your body and life, in service to your neighbor.

Now, consider the various ways that Christ deals with you in the Sacraments: He visits you in mercy.  He sets you free from the bondage of your sin and death.  He reconciles you to Himself and to His Father.  He brings you into His House and clothes you with His righteousness and holiness, His innocence and blessedness.  He shelters you and feeds you at His own Table.  He heals you.

If you think about those things that He does and gives in Holy Baptism, in Holy Absolution, and in the Holy Communion — He visits you with charity, He covers your nakedness, He feeds and shelters you, He gives you drink, He heals and gives you life — what does all of that sound like?  Are these not the very things that Christ describes in St. Matthew 25, when He addresses His sheep and testifies to all that they have done for even the least of these, His brothers?  You live that life and do those works of love for your neighbor, because Christ Jesus does all of these things for you.

It is in this way that God takes His creation to Himself, and He redeems it and sanctifies it.  All of creation longs for the revealing of the sons of God.  And even now, though hidden under the Cross, the sons of God are being revealed, as Christ gives Himself to them in His Gospel, and as He then lives in them by grace.  It is a flesh and blood life that He lives in them, and they in Him.  It is real.  It is not just a message, but a life that is lived in the Body of Christ, to and from His Altar into the world.  For not only Christ, but His Body, the Church, is revealed in the Breaking of the Bread.

When a Christian lives faithfully, and suffers patiently, and does good for his neighbor, Christ be praised that He is thereby establishing and extending His Kingdom in this world, albeit hidden under His Cross.  So it is that Christ Jesus, who reigns over you in love from the Tree of His Cross, and whose Kingdom comes to you in your Baptism and in the Eucharist, comes with His Kingdom in the life of faith and love that you and all of His Christians now live in Him within the world.

The Grain of Wheat has died and bears abundant fruit.  Not only for you, but so also in your body and life.  In the confidence of your Baptism, dying and rising with Christ Jesus by His Word and Holy Spirit, you live a heavenly life within your place on earth.  You anticipate the Resurrection of the body, and you dwell by faith in the new heavens and new earth where righteousness dwells, even as you live and serve, and suffer and die, in your mortal body here and now. 

That is no pretense.  For Paradise is reestablished within the Church on earth, the Tree of Life at its center in the Sacrament of the Altar.  As you eat and drink the Fruits of that Tree, the Medicine of Immortality, the Body and Blood of Christ, so do you bear good fruits after His own kind to the glory of His holy Name, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is one God, now and forever.

Where Do We Go From Here?

{A presentation at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Granger, Indiana, following an earlier presentation at Trinity Lutheran Church in Elkhart, Indiana, by Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Fort Wayne - South Bend Diocese, on the present day significance of the Reformation for Lutherans and Roman Catholics} 

It was an eye-opening experience, which left a deep and lasting impression upon me, even these 27 years later.  As a young seminary student in Fort Wayne, doing institutional visitations at a local nursing home, I found the little old lady Protestants boasting about all their years of service to the church, all their good works and contributions, whereas the little old lady Catholics spoke of their unworthiness, their faults and failings, and their hope in the mercy and forgiveness of Christ Jesus.  Somehow things were not adding up in the way I would ever have guessed or expected, and I had to ask myself why.  It has seemed to me that those little old lady Catholics, and no doubt many others, too, knew themselves to be sinners, but they had also learned to know Christ Jesus as their Savior through the Holy Gospels, the Creeds of the Church, and the Sacrament of the Altar.  And I would suggest that their experience and their faith were not so different from Martin Luther’s.

My own family and growing up years were not divided between different confessions.  We were deeply dyed-in-the-wool Lutherans, so that is something I have always known firsthand.  As an adult, however, my contacts and connections with Roman Catholic Christians have been close to home at times.  One of my own dear sisters married into a Roman Catholic family, and she and her husband are bringing up their children within the Roman Church.  In recent years, several of the young people I have been privileged to care for at Emmaus have since become Roman Catholics.  In these situations, I have known the painful sense of distance and separation that many of you have also experienced within your extended families.  But I have also had the opportunity, then, to see things from their perspective, and to gain a greater understanding of my brothers and sisters in Christ within the Roman Church.  Of course, as a doctoral student at Notre Dame, I spent a number of years working within a Roman Catholic academic environment and gaining a great respect for my professors and classmates across confessional lines.  Ironically, in my course work at Notre Dame I was often viewed as being “too Lutheran,” but as a Lutheran pastor I have more than once been told that I am “too Catholic.”  I’m inclined to wear both labels as compliments.

In considering the Reformation and what it means for us today, I should say that, throughout my twenty-two years as a Lutheran pastor, it has always been my preference to remember and give thanks for the Lutheran reformers and those events of the sixteenth century in close connection with the Feast of All Saints.  That is to understand the Reformation as it was intended, not as a division of the Church on earth, nor as a separation from the Church catholic, but as a call for the Church to be faithful in hearing, receiving, trusting, and confessing the Gospel of Christ Jesus.  In Him we are united as fellow members of one Body, as the children of one God and Father.  And within that holy communion of all saints, we are called to live and work together in faith and love.

Is the Reformation a cause for celebration or sorrow?  Or is it rather both?  A tragic necessity, as some have described it.  As Bishop Rhoades noted this past month, Lutherans have celebrated the Reformation as a recovery of the Gospel, whereas Roman Catholics have mourned the divisions of the Church on earth that developed and increased in the course of the sixteenth century.  Few if any would deny that there were abuses and errors that needed to be addressed and reformed.  It is no surprise that different answers and solutions were offered in response to those concerns, and it is to the credit of our fathers and mothers in the faith that they were passionate in their resolve.  We celebrate their convictions and commitments, while we do indeed grieve the animosities.

We dare not suppose that the only real issues and errors of the sixteenth century Reformation were volatile temperaments and mutual ill treatment of opponents.  It was not just a battle over words and semantic nuances.  There were those things, to be sure, which made it more difficult to address and resolve the real issues and errors.  But real issues and errors there were, which did not go away but solidified and calcified and entrenched themselves in the decades and centuries that followed.  What will help us now to address those real issues and errors is a willingness to speak and listen to one another, especially as we listen carefully (together) to the Word of the Lord and to the historic witness of His Church from the beginning.  We pray and trust the Holy Spirit to guide us.

Let us be honest with ourselves.  The Church on earth is never going to be flawless, infallible, or perfect, though she is indeed the Body and Bride of Christ Jesus.  His Church is a queen, even when she is dressed in the humility of beggar’s rags, because she is clothed and adorned with the righteousness and holiness of Christ, who loved her and gave Himself for her, even unto death.

In this life there will always be divisions, even within the Lord’s Church, just as there have been from the beginning — among the twelve disciples, between the Jewish and Gentile Christians, in Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, and beyond, and so throughout the centuries.  The East and West were divided centuries before the Reformation.  Nevertheless, we do not resign ourselves to accept these divisions, as though they were of no consequence, but we address them with the Word of God and prayer, in the humility of repentance, in the confidence of faith, and with real charity.

Indeed, we are called to do in our own day what Martin Luther and many others (on all sides) sought to do in the sixteenth century, which is to heal and strengthen the Church on earth in the unity of the Gospel of Christ Jesus.  For it is certain that no other unity than that of Christ will do!  Which necessarily means bearing His Cross in faith toward God, and in love for the Lord and for each other in His Name.  We ought to suffer willingly all manner of wrongs against ourselves, to the extent that we can do so without ever compromising the truth of the Gospel.  And in that Truth, we must obey God rather than man, and suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from it.

Certainly, the aims of the Reformation were not the divisions that resulted.  But even those sad and painful divisions can help to clarify the Truth, much as the controversies of the early church served to clarify the confession of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of the Son of God.

Where, then, do we go from here?  Already it is the case that we Lutherans and Roman Catholics do share a great deal in common, as the recipients of a common heritage.  When I visited St. Pius on a Saturday evening earlier this month, although your musical settings were unfamiliar to me, I was easily able to follow and participate in the Liturgy because we share the same order and ordinary of the Mass.  On any given Sunday, we are likely to hear the same Holy Scriptures.  We confess the same Creeds and pray the same Our Father.  We celebrate the Sacrament of the Altar with the same Words of our Lord, just as we baptize in the Name of the same Holy Triune God.  We have similar architecture and furnishings, similar vestments and other adornments, similar rites and ceremonies.  We look and sound alike.  Where, then, do we differ?  What is it that divides us?

It is clear that we cannot hope to address, even briefly, all of the differences between Lutherans and Roman Catholics in our time together this evening.  The challenge, I suppose, is to identify some of those areas of greatest concern and of the greatest potential for mutual conversation and growth.  So, as a Lutheran pastor and theologian, let me simply point to some of those key areas:

Areas of lingering concern and/or continuing significance

Foundationally, we have differed from each other in the ordering of the Church and Ministry, that is to say, in the way the pastors of the Church relate to each other and to the people.  Lutherans have generally not had the structured hierarchy that the Roman Church does, though there are some exceptions to that observation.  In any case, Lutherans have viewed apostolic succession, the office of the pope, and the magisterium of bishops quite differently than Roman Catholics.  We hold the office of preaching and teaching in high regard, as a divine institution, but we locate the authority and certainty of the Church’s teaching and practice in the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures.  We are not able to affirm or confess as an article of faith what is not clearly taught in the Scriptures.

The Roman Catholic teaching on Purgatory is a case in point, along with indulgences and prayers for the dead.  These matters clearly touch upon the fundamental matters of faith and justification, which are key to almost all of the differences between our churches.  But in the case of Purgatory, it is not set forth with any clarity from the Scriptures but from the teaching and traditions of the Church.  Lutherans understand the testing and purifying of each man’s work by fire (1 Cor. 3:13), not as a place or a process between death and the final judgment, but as the dying of the old man that is worked in us through Holy Baptism and daily repentance and is finally completed in death.

In other words, the “purging” of our sins, the cleansing of all unrighteousness in us, and the purification of body and soul without which no one will see God, occurs in the course of this life under the Cross, as we are confronted with the fact of our mortality.  And, again, it is completed with the actual dying of our mortal flesh, for the one who has died is freed from sin (Rom. 6:7).  It is the process of learning to live, not by our own works and efforts, but in faith and love within the household and family of God — within which we already live, and to which we already belong as beloved children of God in Christ Jesus, even now in much frailty and weakness.

In the Resurrection of Christ Jesus we are justified (Rom. 4:25), and in the resurrection of all flesh on the last day we shall be holy and righteous in body and soul, glorified like unto the glorious Body of Christ Himself (Phil. 3:21).  For now, we do not yet see things as they are, but then we shall see Him as He is, and we shall be like Him (1 John 3:2).  As our bodies shall be made new and perfected, with all sickness, suffering, and death forgotten like a dream that is past, so shall we also be purified, perfected, and made entirely new in heart, mind, soul, and spirit (Rev. 21:5).

Another area of significant concern and disagreement between Lutherans and Roman Catholics is the sacrifice of the Mass.  That was one of the most volatile points of controversy at the time of the Reformation, and it remains somewhat beclouded and confusing even now.  I am aware of developments in the way the Roman Church describes and teaches this sacrifice, and I applaud those efforts to clarify and correct some of the bold and extravagant assertions of the past.  But in my estimation, the underlying issue has yet to be resolved.  God grant that, by His grace, we might finally arrive at a more consistent and common confession of Christ the Crucified in this area.

As I have mentioned, all of the differences between us center in the doctrine of justification, in the way we understand the relationship of faith and love.  Though there is probably more agreement in this area than many have supposed over the past five centuries, there do remain key points of disagreement, as the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999) has demonstrated.  I’ll have more to say about this point momentarily, as it truly is foundational to everything else.

What is probably more obvious to many Lutheran lay people, as they consider the piety of their Roman Catholic friends and neighbors, is the place and importance of St. Mary and the saints in the Christian faith and life.  Honestly, Lutherans have often not given the attention to the saints that our Confessions recommend: that we should remember them with thanksgiving to God, learn from the example of their faith and life, and be encouraged by the mercies of the Lord upon them.  At Emmaus, we celebrate the saints throughout the year to the praise and glory of Christ Jesus, just as we have celebrated the Feast of All Saints on the 1st of November.  But where we differ from Roman Catholics in practice is that we find no command or promise attached to the invocation of the saints.  We acknowledge that the saints in heaven pray and intercede for the Church on earth, but we have no certainty from the Scriptures that we can or should call upon them for assistance.  We are even more cautious and skeptical concerning the appearances and miracles of the saints.  And we object to making the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of St. Mary into articles of faith, on the grounds that neither of these traditions are clearly taught in the Holy Scriptures.

Who We Lutherans Are, and What We Lutherans Are About

For the sake of our conversation and discussion, it is important that you know who we Lutherans are and what we are about.  Despite popular impressions, we are defined and identified, not only vis-à-vis the Roman Church, but also vis-à-vis the Protestant churches of various stripes.  Indeed, from their perspective (and ours) we are, in many ways, closer to Rome than we are to them!  As Luther once quipped in his arguments with the Protestant reformers on the Lord’s Supper, “Better to drink Blood with the pope than wine with Zwingli!”  It was a polemical comment, to be sure, but also a positive affirmation of what the Sacrament is, and of what we share with Rome.

The Lutheran Reformation was not simply a “protest” against the errors and excesses in the piety and practices of the Church at that time.  It was very much pro-Gospel and pro-Sacraments.  It was positively for the glory of Christ Jesus, and for the comforting of consciences with His Gospel of forgiveness.  And it was positively for the glorious freedom and the confident certainty that faith receives and finds in the solid, objective Word and promises of God in the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the present day, especially, it is also necessary to distinguish the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (to which Trinity in Elkhart and my congregation, Emmaus in South Bend, both belong) in contrast to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran World Federation, with whom we are not in fellowship due to some rather sharp disagreements on many points of doctrine and practice.  Sadly, those disagreement have increased in recent years, rather than declining.

The Missouri Synod (LCMS) is more conservative in both doctrine and practice; in its approach to both the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions; in its engagement with other churches; and in its posture and position on such things as abortion, homosexuality, and women’s ordination.

Whereas the ELCA and the LWF have been aggressively involved in ecumenism on numerous fronts, their own more “liberal” and “progressive” attitudes toward abortion, homosexuality, and the ordination of women have presented a strong impediment to ecumenical dialogue with Roman Catholics, as Bishop Rhoades indicated in his presentation at Trinity this past month.

Though the Missouri Synod (LCMS) has been more reticent about the ecumenical movement, it is very much a kindred spirit with the Roman Church in the defense of marriage, sexuality, and life.  It has also been eager to cooperate, where possible, in external works of mercy on every level.

The differences between the Missouri Synod (LCMS) and the ELCA/LWF are especially germane in considering the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, as that Declaration was between the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church.  The Missouri Synod has not endorsed the Joint Declaration, in view of a number of weaknesses and unresolved issues.

The discussion and the desire for unity in the doctrine of justification are commendable, for that doctrine is foundational to the Church and central to the Christian faith and life.  However, it is premature to suggest that the matter has been resolved between us, or that the real issues and concerns of the sixteenth century have been more or less overcome by way of clarifications.

In my estimation, the Joint Declaration has helped to clarify the positions of the Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches, and has helpfully identified areas of agreement and disagreement.  It has done so with a friendly and fraternal spirit, no doubt with the sincerest intentions.  I appreciate all of these contributions, even though I believe that it is overly optimistic in its conclusions.

The Joint Declaration itself indicates differences of understanding, which go beyond differences in emphasis and nuance.  It also notes that other doctrines and practices of real consequence, such as Purgatory, are simply not addressed, though they clearly touch upon the doctrine of justification.  Even in signing the Joint Declaration, the Vatican issued an Addendum of “Clarifications,” which identifies several points of disagreement in decisive aspects of justification.  I can only agree with their assessment, that these several points remain divisive at the very heart of the matter at hand.

What these various points of disagreement come down to is whether or not our righteousness in the presence of God is located in us or in Christ Jesus; whether the new and holy life that we now possess and live in Christ is the cause or the consequence of our justification and righteousness before God; and whether we love God and our neighbor in order to become righteous or because we are accounted righteous by faith in God’s Word and promise of forgiveness in Christ Jesus.

The Righteousness of Faith and the Holiness of Life in Christ

As the Vatican pointed out in its “Clarifications” of the Joint Declaration, the distinctive Lutheran teaching of “Simul iustus et peccator” is a point of significant disagreement, which highlights the fundamental difference between Lutherans and Roman Catholics in the doctrine of justification.

For Lutherans, the notion that we are simultaneously justified and yet still sinful, both saints and sinners at the same time — Simul iustus et peccator — addresses the experiential reality that every Christian faces (along with St. Paul in Romans 7).  It embraces the seemingly contradictory Word of God, which confronts us with the demands, threats, and punishments of the Law, and yet it also comforts and consoles us with the free and full forgiveness of the Gospel.

In response to the arguments of the Roman Church that concupiscence is not truly sin, but simply the temptation to sin and the potential for actual sin, Lutherans would say that such a position fails to account for the serious depths of covetous lust, which St. Paul identifies as idolatry (Col. 3:5).  These arguments go back to the Reformation and demonstrate the real disagreement that remains.

For me, these differences in doctrine are not academic, semantic, or theoretical, but of pastoral and practical concern.  As Christians committed to my pastoral care come to me with their confession of sins and temptations, how shall I comfort and console them?  How shall I strengthen and sustain their faith in Christ?  How shall I instruct them to live?  To what (or whom) shall I point them?  In themselves they find both sin and death, from which they cannot set themselves free.  But in Christ Jesus they find and receive the forgiveness of their sins and the gift of life and salvation.

Saving faith, which is to say, not simply knowledge and assent, but confident trust in the Lord, is called into being and nurtured by the Word and promise of the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins.  This faith is worked in us by the Word and Spirit of God (Rom. 10:17), as He creates all things out of nothing by His Word, and as He calls the Light out of the darkness with His Word (2 Cor. 4:6).  Such faith lays hold of Christ as it hears and receives Him in the Word of the Gospel and in the Holy Sacraments.  And in Christ it receives and possesses all righteousness, holiness, innocence and blessedness in the presence of God.  This is the comfort of consciences that glorifies Christ.

Having made this point, it is also the case that saving faith in Christ, which receives all things and possesses all things in Him, is itself the beginning of the new life in Christ.  Such faith is the first and foremost good work, the fulfillment of the first and greatest Commandment.  It is not in virtue of this work, nor by the quality of this good work, that faith justifies; for that is by Christ Himself, whose Righteousness and Holiness are credited to us by grace.  But the same faith that lays hold of Him and trusts Him for all things, also lives in love for Him and in love for others for His sake.

Thus, faith and love, righteousness and holiness can be distinguished and theologically separated, but they do not exist in practice apart from one another.  Faith alone justifies, but such faith is never alone.  It is a living, busy, active embracing of Christ, which is always working in love for God and man in Christ and in the neighbor.  Precisely because it is a fearless confidence in Christ.

When both justification and sanctification, faith and life, forgiveness and renewal, the Law and the Gospel are all located and centered in Christ Jesus, any tensions between these points are resolved in Him, in whom righteousness and peace, mercy and sacrifice kiss each other in perfect harmony.

He is all of these things for us, in the first place.  And He is all of these things in us by His grace through faith in His Word and promise of the Gospel — in and with the Holy Spirit, who lays Christ upon our hearts and brings us to the Father as beloved and well-pleasing children in Him.  The Righteousness of faith in Christ thus becomes the Holiness of life in Christ, as it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us (Galatians 2:20).  But as soon as we attempt to begin with ourselves, with what is happening in us, with our believing, living, loving, and working, then we inevitably shift, not only the focal point but the entire center of gravity, from Christ to ourselves. He is and remains ever for us, our merciful and great High Priest at all times and in all places, from beginning to end, unto the life everlasting.  He is not simply the starting point, but the entire story, both the Subject and the Object of our faith and life, the Source and the Summit of our salvation.

It is in Christ Jesus, and especially by way of our Baptism into Him, that we have received the gracious adoption of sons (Galatians 4:4–7).  In Him, we are beloved and well-pleasing children of God, named with His Name and anointed with His Spirit.  We are members of His household and family, of the One who knows how to give good gifts to His children, by whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named.  And I have found this to be a particularly helpful way in which to understand the relationship of justification and sanctification, to speak in Lutheran terms.

As a child of God in Christ Jesus, you already belong to the Father; you already have a place in His home, at His Table, a place of Peace and Sabbath Rest which the Lord Jesus has prepared for you.  Within that place, as a member of the family, you are disciplined by the Father who loves you, as you are taught to live in love for Him and for your brothers and sisters in Christ.  But your growth in wisdom and stature, in faith, hope, and charity, in righteousness and holiness of life, is growth within the place that is already yours within the household and family of God.  You’re not earning the right to become a child of God, but learning to live as the child of God that you already are.  Your place in the family is your justification.  Your life within the household is your sanctification.

Areas of mutual concern in the faith and life of the Church on earth

Now, as the children of one God and Father in Christ Jesus, we are also the children of one holy Mother, the Church, conceived and born of her by the grace of God through His Word and Spirit.

We are thus called by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel to live in communion with the one Body of Christ, on earth as it is in heaven.  In practice, therefore, now as in the sixteenth century, we are called to nurture an evangelical catholicity, which is to find the fellowship of the Church in the exercise of the Gospel.  That is a fellowship of pastoral care, encompassing catechesis and Holy Baptism, the consistent preaching and teaching of Christ, mutual accountability and assistance, confession of faith, confession and absolution of sins, and the regular celebration of the Lord’s Supper with reverence and thanksgiving in the unity of a common confession of Christ Jesus.

Though we are not yet able to do many of these things together, we nevertheless share a unity in Christ in these ways and means of the Gospel.  The same communion that is ours in Holy Baptism is also strengthened as we participate in the Body and Blood of Christ within our own respective churches.  As the sparrow has found her home and made her nest in the altars of the Lord, and as the faithful departed now rest under His Altar in heaven, awaiting the consummation of all things, so do we shelter in the Lord’s Altar on earth, even as we pray, “How long, O Lord, how long?”  That very point at which our divisions are most painfully obvious is nevertheless the place where we are united in the one Body of Christ with each other and all His saints in heaven and on earth.

Within the life of the Church on earth, across confessional lines, there is a need for a reformation of reverence in the celebration and conduct of the Liturgy.  That includes a reverence for the Holy Scriptures in teaching and practice, and a reverence for the Sacrament in teaching and practice.  These sacred things are not in competition with each other; on the contrary, they belong intimately to each other.  The Holy Scriptures and the Holy Sacrament stand and fall together (in practice).

On that note, I must commend Pope Benedict’s Spirit of the Liturgy and his three little volumes on Jesus of Nazareth, which are so beautifully written and so helpful to the faith and life of the Church.  His writing is thoroughly scriptural, consistently Christocentric, and deeply evangelical.  His witness to the Gospel has more than once given me pause and a degree of optimism for the future, that Lutherans and Roman Catholics might find greater unity in our confession of Christ.

If we are to have that kind of unity as members of the Church, the Body of Christ, we must by all means resist the temptation to substitute politics, programs, or pop culture paradigms for genuine pastoral care and eucharistic life.  Where it has declined or been lost altogether, we must recover and nurture a sacramental piety and practice.  To do so is not an intellectual exercise, an academic achievement, or an emotional experience, but an active passivity, one might say, which receives, lays hold of, clings to, and trusts the Word-made-Flesh in the Liturgy of His Gospel.  It is in the hearing of His Word and the receiving of His Sacrament that we enter into the eucharistic sacrifice of faith and love, not only in the celebration of the Liturgy, but throughout our life in the world.

Our life as Christians, as individuals belonging to the communion of the Body of Christ, is to be offered up as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God (Rom. 12:1–2).  At work, at school, at home, in the community, up in the stands or out on the field: How we speak and how we live is determined and shaped by the Liturgy, in which the Lord gives Himself to us in love, His Body and His Blood, that we might live unto God in Him, in righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.

That life in Christ is what governs (or ought to govern) our thinking and example in the arenas of marriage, sexuality, procreation, and family.  Within those arenas, it seems to me that Lutherans and Roman Catholics ought to be talking and listening to each other in addressing such rampant challenges as divorce and the reigning birth control mentality that has become so entrenched within our culture, and which permeates the thinking of many Christians, as well.  Here is where John Paul’s Theology of the Body has made such a profound contribution to the benefit of us all.

These are but a couple examples of where we ought to be working together, learning together, and confessing together.  No doubt there are many other such places where we ought to stand together in common cause, to give witness to the one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, in the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3–6).  But it is easier said than done.  Not only because of the doctrinal differences between Lutherans and Roman Catholics, but also because of the diversity and disunity that exist within our respective communions in teaching and practice.  And as we have too often found it difficult to speak to one another, it is all the more challenging to speak together with one voice.  Not only because of the differences in the way our churches are structured and ordered, but also because of the distance between official positions and statements, the academic teachers of the church, the preaching and practice of parish pastors, and the piety, understanding, faith, and life of the laity at home and in the world.

The Roman Church has some advantages over the diversity of Lutheran churches, in that there is a clearly defined hierarchy of teaching authority, although it seems to me that a great deal of latitude is permitted among Roman Catholic theologians.  Among Lutherans, it has increasingly been the case that every parish pastor perceives himself to be a pope unto himself in his own parish.  There is not the kind of mutual accountability and responsibility between our pastors that would serve to strengthen and support our common confession of the faith in preaching and practice.  That concerns me deeply, and it is an area where I believe the Lutheran Church is in need of reformation in our own day.  If only the answers and solutions were as obvious as the critique.

Compounding these challenges, there is also the tension that exists between Lutherans and Roman Catholics with respect to the relationship and the relative authority of the Holy Scriptures and the teachers and traditions of the Church.  Caricatures are not helpful, but there are differences between us here.  It is clear that Roman Catholics hold the Scriptures sacred and, especially since Vatican II, they have increased their emphasis on the reading and preaching of the Holy Scriptures in the Liturgy.  It is likewise clear that Lutherans have historically held the teachers and traditions of the Church in high esteem, and have desired to honor them and to hold fast to that heritage in harmony with the Holy Scriptures.  But as we do not perceive or regard the relationship between Scripture and Tradition in the same way, it often hinders our ability to speak together in response to the present day challenges we face in the world.  The conversation concerning Purgatory in the Q&A with Bishop Rhoades at Trinity this past month was a case in point.  All the more reason that we must continue to engage one another in honest debate and fraternal dialogue, so that we might be taught by God to confess the Word of Christ with one voice, in one Spirit.

Lutheran contributions to the faith and life of the Church catholic

It is my belief that we can and should be listening to and learning from each other.  For example, the Lutheran Reformation and the Lutheran Church have contributed to a greater appreciation of Holy Baptism and its ongoing, lifelong, daily significance.  Luther’s clarion call, already on the Eve of All Saints in 1517, that the entire Christian life is to be one of daily repentance, was really a call to remember and return to the dying and rising of repentance and faith in Holy Baptism.  That was not to abolish the practice of penance, but to encourage Confession and Absolution as an exercise of faith in the Gospel.  Luther himself heard and received the Gospel from his father confessor, Johannes von Staupitz, and he knew well the pastoral care of the confessional.  (We commemorated Johannes von Staupitz with thanksgiving this past week, on November the 8th).

Luther also contributed a passion for the Lord’s Supper at the heart of the Church’s life, as the very embodiment of the Gospel.  His zeal in opposing the sacrifice of the Mass, on the one hand, and in defending the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament, on the other hand, seemed odd and over the top to many of his opponents.  But for Luther it was a matter of clinging to the Word of Christ and not allowing anything within or without to dissuade him from the profound simplicity of what the Lord has spoken.  He understood that faith and the Sacraments go together, hand in glove, as do the Holy Spirit and the Holy Church.  And it all depends upon the Word of Christ.  Hence the strong Lutheran emphasis, from the start and to the present day, on the necessity and value of preaching and teaching, on the importance of thorough catechesis, and on the writing and singing of sturdy hymns that praise God, proclaim the Gospel, and clearly confess Christ Jesus.  No one could doubt the Lutheran contribution to the musical heritage of the Church catholic.

The Lutheran Reformation did bring comfort and peace to many troubled consciences through the preaching of the Gospel of Christ.  That is the Church’s greatest treasure, and still is ours today.  And far from discouraging good works, it is by faith in the free and full forgiveness of sins that the Commandments are kept and callings are fulfilled in loving service for the neighbor.  For it is in the certainty of the Word and promises of God that faith lives and abides in hope; and it is in the freedom of the Gospel that faith abounds in thanksgiving to God and in charity for all people.

These are Lutheran contributions which nobody can deny.  But so do these very treasures of the Reformation call for an ongoing self-critique on the part of Lutherans in our own day.  Where and how have we become a caricature of ourselves, emphasizing clichés at the expense of the Truth?  And in what ways have we jettisoned the evangelical catholicity of historic Lutheran theology and practice in favor of formulaic slogans and idiosyncratic sectarian “Protestantism”?

In the centuries since the Reformation, the actual practice of Confession & Absolution among Lutherans has languished and fallen by the wayside.  It has been largely unknown in many places, to such an extent that many Lutherans go to their graves without ever going to Confession; and where it is recommended or encouraged, it is resisted and decried as “too Catholic.”  Such attitudes and neglect are contrary to our Lutheran teaching and detrimental to the Christian faith and life.

The celebration of the Lord’s Supper has likewise suffered in a variety of ways.  The frequency of celebration has at times been dismal.  Thankfully, that has improved in recent decades, but it is still not understood that the Lord’s Supper on the Lord’s Day is to be the norm.  Even where it may be celebrated more frequently, there is a lack of reverence for the Sacrament in many of our congregations, in which a casual and careless handling of the Body and Blood of Christ denies the very Word we claim to confess.  There is also a widespread practice of open communion, even in the Missouri Synod (LCMS), despite the consistent teaching and official position of our church.

I’ve already touched upon another area in which we Lutherans are in need of reformation in our own day, that is, with respect to the ordering of the Holy Ministry, the relationship of pastors to one another and to the Church at large.  I would be very glad to see our “bishops” able to function as pastors, rather than bogged down and consumed with administrative duties.  And I would like to see our congregations demonstrate and exercise a greater sense of fellowship and love, a real connection to one another in the common confession of Christ and in the Holy Communion, instead of living as islands unto themselves and acting as though they were in competition.

It is certain that the Christian faith is not a do-it-yourself or go-it-alone religion, and none of us should live as though it were, neither as individual Christians, nor as pastors and congregations.  Nor as church bodies, as Lutherans and Roman Catholics.  Though we are separated by differences in doctrine and practice, we are brothers and sisters in the washing of the water with the Word and in the confessing of the Holy Trinity in the baptismal and eucharistic Creeds of the Church.

Roman Catholic contributions to the faith and life of the Church catholic

From the Roman Catholic Church, to cite just a few examples, I believe that we Lutherans have much to learn, as well, as disciples of Christ Jesus called to carry the Cross in faith and love.

Though we have done somewhat better in recent years, we still have much to learn in the giving of alms and in works of mercy for our neighbors in the world.  In our emphasis on the Gospel, and in our distinction of faith and love with respect to our justification before God, we have at times been too slow to encourage, facilitate, and teach the activities, works, and sacrifices of love that our Lord Himself and His Apostles both taught and exemplified.  That is not a matter of doctrine but of our own sinfulness, laziness, and neglect, for which we need to repent and do better.

It is similar in the case of the other cardinal disciplines of fasting and prayer.  Lutherans have not neglected to pray — though none of us prays as he should — but we have generally not been as good about coming together for the daily prayer of the Church as such.  Perhaps that is a place in which both Lutherans and Roman Catholics have allowed the pace of the world to pull us away from the Body of Christ.  But my sense is that Roman Catholics have been more consistent and persistent in maintaining the daily rhythms of the Church’s liturgical life.  We can learn from that.  And all the more so when it comes to fasting, to which many Lutherans seem to be allergic.  Our Catechism affirms that fasting is fine outward training, but we have generally not encouraged or practiced it.  We have feared that fasting may become legalistic or contribute to self-righteousness, without realizing the dangers to be found in never fasting, in never denying our own selfishness.

Roman Catholics also have something to teach us about the place of penance in the Christian life.  First of all in actually going to confession, as (again) our Catechism clearly teaches us to do.  And then also in bearing the fruits of repentance and exercising the discipline of the Christian life.  These are matters of pastoral care which too many Lutherans do not receive because they do not rely on their pastors or confide in them as father confessors.

If it is not too daring, I suggest that we might also learn from Roman Catholics to appreciate and support the vocation of celibacy for those who are so gifted, for the sake of serving the Church and the neighbor, as St. Paul describes.  Not to disparage the goodness and holiness of marriage and family, but to encourage and assist the unmarried in the goodness and holiness of their callings.

The Need for ongoing Repentance and Reformation

For all of us, in every case, we are in a precarious position when doctrine and practice, faith and life are pitted against each other, or when any one of these are valued at the expense of any other.  But I fear that too many Christians, both Lutherans and Roman Catholics, are not only ignorant of their own history and theology, but are rather ambivalent and cavalier about it all.  They have been taught by the world to prize and follow their own thoughts and feelings, their own opinions and experiences, over against the Word of God and the Church’s doctrine.  That should not be.

Perhaps it is true, as we Lutherans have suspected, that Roman Catholics are tempted to go through the motions, relying on a mechanical administration of the Sacraments.  But Lutherans, for their part, have sometimes marginalized the Ministry of the Gospel and the means of grace as though they were incidental to the Christian faith and life, perhaps even irrelevant, or simply supplemental “vitamins,” as it were, instead of the real meat and potatoes of the Meal.  The Gospel calls forth faith, and faith clings to the Gospel, and maintaining that connection requires constant vigilance.

The fact is that the Church on earth, her ministers and all her members, are constantly being called to repentance, to faith, and to newness of life in Christ — both individually and collectively — on the basis of the Holy Scriptures.  We are called back to the foundation of the Law and the Prophets, the Apostles and Evangelists, to the faith fulfilled in Christ Jesus and once delivered to the saints.  And that faith and life are found in the Font and at the Altar of the Lord’s Cross and Resurrection, in His Body given and His Blood poured out.  The Church lives in and from the Liturgy, defined and constituted by her Lord in and with His Word and Flesh.  This Divine Liturgy is appropriately adorned and confessed with a cornucopia of beautiful traditions from across the ages and from around the globe.  But the Liturgy itself is from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

In thinking about the past, and in approaching each other now and in the future, let us do so in the humility of mutual repentance and forgiveness, with the confidence of faith in Christ Jesus, and with a gentleness and peace that are born of God.  Let us be instructed by the Holy Spirit through the Word and within the liturgical life of the Body and Bride of Christ, which is indeed, by His grace alone, the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, on earth as it is in heaven.

To engage one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, charity of heart and clarity of thought require the consistent definition and use of key theological terms, such as grace, faith, forgiveness of sins, justification and sanctification, holiness and righteousness, love, works, and salvation.  Agreeing to disagree on such fundamental matters would be untenable as a basis for fellowship.  But it is no less untenable to be so intent on our disagreements that we refuse to agree on anything.  God grant that we not fall back into those tired old patterns of animosity.

I have been encouraged by an example I have recently discovered in the group, Evangelicals and Catholics Together.  I’m in the process of reading the statements they have drafted over the past twenty-some years (since forming in 1994). What I’ve encountered so far has been very positive and instructive, and I would be very glad to see some Lutheran pastors and theologians involved in that effort, or in similar ventures with our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters in Christ.

While speaking of encouraging and positive examples, I would be quite remiss if I did not express my delight in learning something of Pope St. Pius X, for whom this parish is named.  I find it quite interesting, even exciting, to discover that he was a truly pastoral reformer of the Church in his day.  And in particular, the areas in which he focused his attention and energies coincide with my own foremost concerns, as he emphasized catechesis, pastoral care, and the holy Eucharist.

Indeed, Pope St. Pius X is reminiscent of one of my personal Lutheran heroes of the faith, Wilhelm Löhe (a 19th century German Lutheran pastor), who emphasized preaching and the Sacrament, missions and works of mercy, the training of pastors and teachers for the Church, and the reverent celebration of the Liturgy.  He also saw the need for ongoing reformation in the life of the Church.

So, where do we go from here?  As I have said, the sixteenth century Lutheran Reformation was about glorifying Christ and comforting consciences with the Gospel.  And to be sure, to glorify Christ by caring for His people with His Word is what the Church is always about.  To those ends, I suggest that we take our cues from Pastor Wilhelm Löhe and Pope St. Pius X in focusing on the pastoral care and catechesis of the Church, on Holy Baptism and the Divine Eucharist, and on the Life that is given and received in the Liturgy of the Gospel.  For therein do the people of God find Peace and Sabbath Rest in the Lamb upon His Throne, to the praise and glory of His Holy Name, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is one God, now and forever.

Steadfast in His Word and Faith Until We Die

How the Head of the Household Teaches His Children to Pray and Confess

This is the Work of God

It is important to stress from the outset that God is our Father, and that He has made Christ Jesus the Head of His Household and Family, the Church.  He is the One who teaches His children to pray and confess, and He is the One who preserves them steadfast in this Word and Faith, even until death, according to His good and gracious will.

On the one hand, He breaks and hinders every evil will and purpose of the devil, the world, and our own fallen flesh, which do not want His Name to be hallowed or His Kingdom to come.  And on the other hand, He uses the ways and means of His good creation to accomplish His purposes.

Significantly, He uses pastors and parents to care for His children, to teach them His Word, and to preserve them in the Christian faith and life.  But He is not dependent on us.  Rather, we depend on Him.  He will in fact accomplish His purposes, with or without any of us, where and when it pleases Him.  We thus approach the task at hand with faith and confidence in His Word and work, neither lazy nor negligent, but encouraged that our labors in the Lord are not in vain.

Like Father, Like Son

We know and love the Father in Christ Jesus by His grace.  And by faith we become like our God and Father, also in Christ Jesus, in love and mercy for our neighbors, including our own children.

As Adam begat sons in his image and likeness — with respect to his sin and death, to be sure, but also with respect to his faith in the promise, at least in the case of Abel and Seth and his line — so does the Christ beget sons of God, in His Image and Likeness, by His Word and Holy Spirit.  Much as the Lord Jesus Christ Himself was conceived and born of St. Mary by the Word and Spirit of His Father, and in His own human flesh and blood He is the very Image and Likeness of God.

We who are born of Adam, inheritors of sin and death, are born again of water, Word, and Spirit as the children of God, forgiven all our sins and raised from death to life in the righteousness of Christ.  It is likewise by the Word and Spirit of Christ that we are instructed to live by faith in Him, and to live in love like His for the Father and for others.  This legacy that we have received from our Lord Jesus Christ is far and away the most important thing that we pass on to our children.

The Testing and Trying of Faith

The Lord clarifies, strengthens, and trains our faith by testing us, and by allowing us to be tempted and tried, thereby purifying us in body and soul, as gold and silver are purified by fire.  He does not tempt anyone to sin, but He does put us to the test in various ways, in order that we learn to fear, love, and trust in Him, to obey His Commandments, and to pray to Him at all times.

We have only to think of examples such as Adam & Eve, tested by the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil, and tempted by the devil to doubt and disobey God’s Word concerning the Tree.  And Job, whose faith and righteousness were tried and tempted by Satan, in order to be clarified and proven by God in the hope and promise of the Redeemer, Jesus Christ — who was in turn also tempted, tried, and tested as our merciful and great High Priest in all things pertaining to God.

Abraham was tested by God when he was commanded to sacrifice his son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loved, as a confession of his faith in the Lord who had promised to bless him and all the nations through that same son.  And the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel were also tested in the wilderness, for the sake of repentance and the strengthening of their faith in the Word of God.

To cite one other example from the New Testament Scriptures, consider the Canaanite woman, who was tested and tried when she sought the healing of her demon possessed daughter.  The Lord Jesus was silent, apparently dismissive, and seemingly insulting to that woman, before fulfilling her request, in order that her strong faith be confessed and her persistence set forth as an example.

Establishing the Rhythm and Way of Life

The story arc of the Exodus from Egypt offers a paradigm and pattern of the way the Lord begets and bears His children, preserves them in His faith and life, and brings them home to Himself.

He calls His people (His Son) out of Egypt.  He rescues and saves them, and makes them His own, by sending Moses with His Word, by bringing them through the water with His Spirit, and by leading them through the wilderness with His ways and means of grace.

He gives them the Passover, the first of several primary types of the Lord’s Supper.  He tells them to “Do This,” to celebrate this meal annually in commemoration of the Exodus (and in anticipation of the coming Lamb of God), and to teach their children what it means, all by and with His Word.

Indeed, preaching, teaching, and the sacramental life are to shape and characterize God’s people, His children.  As with Moses the Prophet and Aaron the Priest for all the people, assisted by the Elders of Israel and the Levites, in particular, so also with the father in each household and family.

As Moses does, and as the kings were later to do, fathers are given to teach and rehearse the Law of the Lord with their children.  To pray and confess it with them on a daily basis, as they get up and go about their day, and as they go to bed each night.  Ritually, ceremonially, and practically.

The Manna in the wilderness is the second primary type of the Lord’s Supper, and of the Lord Jesus Himself.  It is the Lord’s provision, and at the same time a teaching and testing of faith, that the people be trained to trust Him, to obey His Word, and to live by His grace.  Not unlike the way that Luther explains the Our Father, especially the first four Petitions.  There is more than simple politeness involved in teaching our children to say please and thank you, and to be faithful in their stewardship of what the Lord provides.  We teach them to live by faith, to pray, and to be grateful.

The Covenant at Mt. Sinai is the third primary type of the Lord’s Supper.  It provides the basis and the context for the giving of the Book of the Law and the Ten Commandments, which are not given as a means of gaining life or becoming God’s children, but as direction for and description of that life, which He has given them by grace and seals unto them by His gifts, by His Word and Spirit.

His rules and prohibitions, His promises of reward and every blessing, and His threats of punish-ment and death, serve as a training in the way of righteousness — which is to say, in faith and love — so that He is honored and sanctified by His people, and the nations see His Glory in them.  This is not a case of legalism or works righteousness, but of God’s guiding and guarding His people in a way of life that preserves and protects their faith in Him and their love for Him and each other.

Where the Second Table of the Law protects the people from harming each other, the First Table protects them from their own native idolatry and unbelief by calling them constantly back to God and His Word.  To His honor and glory, yes, but also to their own great benefit and well-being.

The keeping of the Law does not create faith or give life to the one who keeps it — though it may do so for the neighbor who is thereby served in love!  But to depart from the Law is destructive of faith and life, whereas to live according to the Ten Commandments is conducive to protecting, serving, and supporting the faith and life that God has established and bestowed by His Gospel.

Both as a gracious gift of heaven on earth, a proclamation and promise of the incarnate Christ, and in view of the people’s sinfulness and hardness of heart, the Lord gives the Tabernacle (later the Temple), the Priesthood, the Sacrifices, and His Old Testament Liturgy, to preserve His people in His presence.  These are the ways and means by which He abides among them in peace, in spite of their sin, and by which He keeps them in His faith and love on their journey through this life.

It is His daily and yearly and ongoing forgiveness of sins that really defines His Church and saves His people from false worship, unbelief, and eternal death.  And the Law of the Lord serves that Gospel of forgiveness by requiring His people to give attention to it and to avail themselves of it.

By means of sacrifice, offerings, and almsgiving, the people are taught to fear, love, and trust in God, to live by faith and love, and to fix their eyes, their hearts, and their hope on Christ Jesus, the Lord’s anointed great High Priest, who would sacrifice Himself and shed His Blood to atone for their sins, to sanctify them, and to bring them to God.  And again, like Father, like Son, the people learn to sacrifice themselves — in faith and love — to the glory of God and for the good of their neighbors.  Such a life both confesses and confirms their faith and love in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We also take note of the Priesthood itself, the sons of Aaron and the Levites, who are types of the New Testament ministers of the Gospel, entrusted with the keeping and conduct of the Liturgy.

As already in the case of the Passover, the Lord establishes a Church Year, a calendar of annual festivals, to root the people in the sacred history of His Word and work.  Not simply as a memory, but as a continuation of His work among them.  To sanctify times and places with His Word and promises and gifts, as the means by which He remembers His people in grace, mercy, and peace.

The New Testament Church Year, which we have inherited across the generations, although not divinely commanded per se, is constituted by Christ’s fulfillment of the Old Testament calendar.  And aside from the basic piety of the Church Year, there could hardly be a more powerful means of teaching and preserving the Word of God and the story of Christ among His people.

There is also the very basic rhythm of weekly work and Sabbath Rest.  In fact, the Sabbath is not only rooted in Creation, but it permeates the Law as a fundamental principle of God’s dealing with His people (and of the way that they, in turn, are to deal with others).  They have their work to do, but He gives them rest — finally, fully, and forever in Christ Jesus.  Justification by grace alone, through faith alone, apart from the works of the Law, is found already in the Sabbath Day, even though it would ironically and tragically become a most burdensome thing in the legalism of the people’s hearts and lives, and a frequent target of accusations against the Lord Jesus.  God gives life, preserves faith, and provides people with peace and rest by His Word and His work, not theirs.

Pedagogical Discipline

In these various ways, the Lord uses the Law as a Tutor leading the people to Christ, to faith in Christ, and to the life and love of God in Christ.  His Commandments, His warnings, and His promises identify our needs and point us to His gracious provision, so that we learn to fear, love, and trust in Him.  Let me offer and describe four key components of this Pedagogy of the Law.

Prayer is fundamental to life as a child of God.  It is the voice of faith, which confesses and calls upon the Name of the Lord.  And by such faith we call upon Him as our “Abba! Father!” in Christ.

We can rightly distinguish prayer from the means of grace, but we should be careful in doing so that we not deny or downplay the essential role and purpose of prayer in the Christian faith and life.  God commands it and promises to hear and answer, for which reason Luther praises prayer highly.  It is of twofold benefit in preserving our faith in the Word of God: First of all, that we pray for such preservation, as in the Our Father.  And second, that prayer is an exercise of faith and a confession of the Word of God.  So it is that whoever calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved.

As already mentioned and discussed, the Law also points us to the Peace and Sabbath Rest, the Safety and Security that are given and received within the Household and Family of God, in His Word and work of forgiveness.  Not unlike parents requiring their children to drink their milk, to eat their vegetables, and to go to bed at night, the Lord God requires His children to rest from their labors and to avail themselves of His good gifts.  The Law does not aim at instilling the right attitude in the hearts of the people, but at directing them to the times and places where the Spirit of God lays the Lord Jesus upon their hearts by the preaching and administration of the Gospel.

So is it also the case, as previously noted, that the Law disciplines and trains the children of God in the way of righteousness.  Not to justify themselves by their own works of the Law, but to live righteously by faith and in love.  Learning that way of life involves correction and guidance, rewards and punishments, trials and errors, but also progress and maturing.  The pattern is found in Christ Himself, though of course He was without sin from the start and made no mistakes.  He did learn and grow in wisdom and knowledge.  And though He was a Son, He learned obedience by the things that He suffered on our behalf.  The Cross itself was a discipline, which He bore and experienced in faith and love, in order to bear our sins and to bear the fruits of righteousness for us.  So does the Cross discipline us unto repentance, and bring forth in us the fruits of repentance.

Thus, to be a disciple of Jesus, to be disciplined in love by His God and Father, is to take up the Cross and follow Him, to learn from Him how to live and how to die in holy faith and holy love.

This brings us to the fourth basic component of the Law’s pedagogical direction: As it is fulfilled for us by Christ in His perfect faith and divine love, so does it teach us the heart of the Father, His good and gracious will, and the mind and Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ.  It describes the divine life that we are called to live by faith in Him, so that we should be sons of our Father in heaven.

The Law is training us in this direction even before we are capable of perceiving or embracing such a divine and holy life in our hearts and minds and souls.  But as we are brought to repentance and faith in Christ, we no longer approach the Law as a means of self-righteousness, but as an instrument of love and mercy for our neighbor.  Not the Law but our perspective and attitude are changed.  In faith toward God, as sons and daughters of the Father, the Law teaches us how to live with mercy and love, patience and forgiveness for others, even as the Lord our God deals with us in His mercy and His love, with His long-suffering patience and His free forgiveness of our sins.

Nowhere is that more true or more significant than it is for us who are called to be fathers on earth — whether of our own households and families, or of the Household and Family of God.

By Whom All Fatherhood on Earth Is Named

A.  The Church of God as the pattern for the Home and Family

Just as the Marriage of Christ and His Bride, the Church, is the true Model upon which all human marriage ought to be based, and just as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the Father by whom all fatherhood on earth is named, so is the Household and Family of God the true Paradigm for our human homes and families, and for the way that we are to care for them in love.

Within their own homes, fathers are to serve their families as pastors, priests, and presidents — or, we might say, as princes under the true King.  That is to say, they are to preach and teach the Word of God, hear and answer their children’s petitions, and govern them with justice and truth.  The family home does not substitute for the Church, but it does emulate the life of the Church, and in this way it also participates in the coming of the Kingdom of God (on earth as it is in heaven).

A father is to love and honor his children’s mother, as the Lord cares for His Church.  And he is to teach his children how to be sons and daughters of God, to grow up into responsible men and women of faith, to fear the Lord, to love and trust His Word, and to speak and act with wisdom.  The Table of Duties in the Epistles and in the Small Catechism provides a summary of this work.

Obviously, fathers are responsible for teaching their children — or having them taught — many things pertaining to their life in the world, to their relationships and responsibilities.  All of these matters are pertinent to their faith and life as Christians and should not be neglected, especially as they help to shape and form the love they are called to exercise for their neighbors.  But here our primary focus is on their piety and religious life, that is, on their prayer and confession of Christ.

B.  The Teaching and Example of Fathers

Fathers teach the Word of God explicitly by reading it and speaking it to their children.  They teach them to confess by confessing it themselves, much as they teach their children to pray by praying with them and for them.  Luther’s guidance is still quite sound and foundational to this process: Establish the basic primary texts and have the children repeat and rehearse them verbatim, in order to fix the Word of God in their hearts and minds.  Then see to it that they are in Church to hear the preaching of the Word, to be catechized by their pastors.  And the home should be permeated with the Word of God and prayer, as well, beyond the basic chief parts of the Small Catechism.  The Scriptures should be read, the stories of the Bible told and discussed, and the Psalms, hymns, and Spiritual songs of the Church chanted and sung.  Fathers should also lead their families in praying and interceding for the Church and her ministers, for the world and its leaders, near and far, and for local neighbors and their pressing needs.  Nothing teaches love like prayer in Jesus’ Name.

It should be self-evident that fathers should practice what they preach and teach their children.  They also need to be in Church, to hear and learn the Scriptures, to confess their sins and receive absolution, to pray daily for themselves, their families, and their neighbors.  We find excellent examples in Elkanah, the father of Samuel, and in St. Joseph of Nazareth, who had the remarkable privilege and responsibility of teaching and training the Lord Jesus in God’s Word and prayer!

Fathers likewise teach their children by the discipline of their own lives in the world — by the language they use, the love they show, and the way they spend their time, invest their energies, and use their talents & treasures.  Fathers should both teach and demonstrate the priority of the Church and the Ministry of the Gospel by supporting them with their offerings and personal efforts, and by valuing the Liturgy and means of grace over and above the perishing pastimes of this world.

Children will certainly be aware of their father’s shortcomings, weaknesses, sins, and failures, at least to some extent.  So should they also be aware of their father’s confidence in and reliance upon the forgiveness of Christ, that he lives by repentance and faith, and that the Gospel is in fact the heart and center of his life, and not of his life only, but of life itself.  Really, nothing is more crucial to the passing on of God’s Word and faith than for fathers to be living by faith in the Word, not only in theory but in actual practice, both at home and in the Life and Liturgy of the Church.

C.  Training in Piety and Righteousness

Training children in piety and righteousness, repentance and faith, is accomplished by catechesis as a comprehensive way of life.  It is an apprenticeship of sorts, a kind of boot camp, a daily and ongoing discipline that is practiced by fathers and mothers along with their entire households and families.  They establish and live within an environment that is shaped and filled and characterized by the Word of God and prayer.  Not in isolation from the liturgical life of the Church, but in the closest connection and continuity with it.  Not just the pastor’s family, but every Christian family, to the extent that opportunity permits.   To live in this way is not extreme but normal and right.

As the Passover, the Manna, and the Covenant at Sinai were central to the Lord’s catechesis and preservation of His children, the sons of Israel, in the Exodus from Egypt, so is the Lord’s Supper central to the catechesis and preservation of Christians in His Word and faith, in the life and love of God.  Not only is ongoing catechesis necessary to an ongoing worthy and fruitful communion in repentant faith, but participation in the Holy Communion is itself a fundamental and formative catechesis in the Way of the Lord.  It is the New Testament in the Body and Blood of Christ, the Living Bread from heaven on the journey, and the true Passover in the Household and Family of God.  It is the primary locus and means by which God cares for His children with forgiveness, life, and salvation.  And by this I refer not simply to the Sacrament, as though in any kind of isolation, but to the full Liturgy of the Gospel, comprising both the preaching of the Word of Christ and the faithful celebration of the Lord’s Supper according to His Word.

Pastors, as spiritual fathers of the Lord’s Church on earth, are responsible for “Doing This” for His remembrance of and among His people.  Earthly fathers are responsible for bringing their children to their pastors and to the Lord’s Table within His Church.

A father should certainly be in Church with his children for the Divine Service every Lord’s Day, barring severe illness or incapacity — and he should send them with their mother, adult siblings, or other Christians, if ever he cannot accompany them himself.  And not only on the Lord’s Day, but at other times, as well, where possible, whether for the festivals of the Church Year or for the Church’s prayer offices.  This is the normal and normative pattern of the Christian faith and life.

Where it is not possible to be gathered with the pastor and congregation for daily prayer through the week — which work and/or school may prevent — then a father should establish and maintain a rhythm of daily prayer at home with his family.  The Treasury of Daily Prayer is a great resource for doing so, but there are other ways and means available, as well, not least of all the sort of materials that the Concordia Catechetical Academy has produced and provided over the years.

The Christian home and family ought to echo and reflect the seasons and contours of the Church Year, so that it is Advent or Lent, Christmas, Epiphany, or Easter, at home as at Church.  There should not be a compartmentalization of piety, but a confession of the Church’s Life that permeates the entirety of the family’s daily and weekly routines.  It need not be extravagant, but it should be deliberate and significant, enough to be noticeable, to provide the reference points for all of life.

Similarly, there ought to be a seriousness about the father’s discipline of his children.  Not in anger or rage, nor with harshness of words and punishments, but in love, in a firm but gentle way that again demonstrates by example the self-discipline and reverence of a Christian.  The goal of all such discipline is to teach right and wrong, and to train children in the righteousness of life and love in this world.  It prepares them to care for their own families in due time, and to love and serve their neighbors according to their own proper stations in life.  It teaches them to live under the authority of God, within the good order of His creation, and to exercise whatever authority and responsibility He entrusts to them over the course of their lives with the self-discipline of love.

Such discipline does not aim at any self-justification, but rather at a life that is shaped by the Love of God and lived in the fear of the Lord, to the Glory of His Name, and for the benefit of His people, for the Church on earth, and for all our neighbors in the world.

D.  Law and Gospel, Two Kingdoms, and the Keys

Fathers (and mothers) face an especially challenging task, because they are called to teach and administer both the Law and the Gospel within both of God’s “Kingdoms,” so to speak, that is, both as members of His Church and as citizens of the human community within His good creation.  Fathers are, again, pastors and priests, presidents and princes, within their own homes and families.  Such roles and responsibilities require real wisdom, discernment, and deliberate care.

Of particular importance is a clear recognition of the difference between life in the world and in relation to other people, and life before God in heart, mind, and conscience.  Fathers teach their children the Word of God and faith without presuming any control of their hearts and minds, where the Spirit of God works by His Word, where and when it pleases Him, according to His grace.

Fathers are called to live by faith in the Gospel, and to convey, demonstrate, and exercise the Gospel in dealing with their children in love.  They forgive, as they are forgiven.  But mercy and forgiveness do not equate to a lack of discipline, for discipline aims not at justification before God but at justice and peace among men.  Appropriate discipline does not lead to legalism any more than genuine forgiveness promotes licentiousness.  It is far more likely that permissiveness will lead to promiscuity and unbelief, and that a lack of forgiveness will result in a hardness of heart.

Following the example of God Himself, and heeding His direction, fathers train their children in the ways of life and love on earth by the use of promises and warnings, rewards and punishments, to identify and confirm what is good and bad, right and wrong.  Standards are determined and maintained, not arbitrarily, but in harmony with God’s Word and in keeping with the basic law of love for the neighbor.  To these ends, it is necessary that expectations be clearly and consistently established and expressed, and that corresponding consequences be applied with similar clarity and consistency when those expectations are either met or violated.

All of these things will change and develop over time as children grow and mature, while basic premises and principles remain constant.  Fathers must require and insist upon fairness and love in their children’s behavior, and they must demonstrate fairness and love in their own exercise of discipline.  But love should not be confused with permissiveness, which teaches not love for others but self-indulgence and the reckless pursuit of sinful passions at the expense of the neighbor.

At the same time, in their exercise of faith in the Gospel, fathers do also demonstrate and in a sense embody for their children the forgiveness of sins.  That’s not to speak of any compromise in discipline or fudging of the consequences for bad behavior, but of persistent love, provision, and care.  That is to say, even in the midst of punishment, fathers continue to love their children and provide for their needs.  Their identity and place in the home and family are not contingent upon their good behavior, but are a fact established by grace.  So they are clothed and fed, even if and when they don’t get dessert.  And they have a roof over their heads and beds to sleep in, even if and when they are sent to those beds early.  They still have their father’s and mother’s affection.

This is what the Prodigal Son remembered when he hit rock bottom and began to come back to himself.  He recalled his Father’s kindness and providential care for his household.  And it is this character of the Father that first of all begins to draw his wayward child home, and then actually moves him to go out to him and welcome him back.  This is a portrait of God the Father’s heart, which we know in Christ Jesus, His Son.  And it provides an example of the way that earthly fathers are to live as men after God’s own heart in relation to their children.  It also provides an encouragement to all of us men who have surely fallen short in our exercise of love and mercy, not unlike the older brother in the Parable, and yet our Father continues to pursue us with His Love.

As we teach our sons and daughters to examine their hearts and lives, to confess their sins, to apologize and seek absolution, and to bear the fruits of repentance in their lives and relationships, so do we also examine ourselves against the standard of God’s Word, confess our sins, live by faith in the forgiveness of the Gospel, and bear the fruits of love for our children and other neighbors.  None of this is child’s play.  It is the way that every Christian, both young and old, is called to live in Christ Jesus, in relation to their families, friends, enemies, and others.

Among other things, this standard of Christian faith and life means that fathers will acknowledge their own faults and apologize to their children where they have done wrong, dealt with them harshly or unfairly, or otherwise sinned against them.  Such humility and honesty, under God the Father in heaven, does not weaken or undo their authority as fathers, but rather strengthens their integrity, their position, and their teaching and confession of the Truth.  The alternative would be a denial of the very Word of God and the Christian faith which they are supposed to be teaching.  Children will hardly take it seriously for themselves, nor persist in it as they grow up and become adults, if they perceive that their fathers (and mothers) do not take it seriously in their own lives.

E.  Communication and Care, Clarity and Consistency, Charity and Compassion

As daunting and challenging as all of this parenting is, fathers and mothers should not despair, give up hope, or become cynical.  They should rather be confident and courageous in their callings and in caring for their children.  For God Himself has given them this task, entrusted their children to their stewardship, authority, and care, and is with them in this good work.  So there is this bold confidence in Him, which is coupled with genuine humility under His divine authority.  Not by any merit or worthiness, wisdom, reason, or strength of our own, but by His grace, mercy, and peace do we care for our children and bring them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, steadfast in His Word and faith until they die.  Indeed, it is His good and gracious will to bring this about.

In repentance and faith, we speak to our children, care for them, and deal with them with clear and consistent words and actions.  It is much like the clarity and consistency of Luther’s Catechism.  Not shifting and uncertain, but steady and solid and straightforward.  We speak the Truth in love, and we do as we say, even as we listen to the Lord and rely upon His Word and promises to us.

As we are called to have charity and compassion for all others, since we have received and depend upon the charity and compassion of our God and Father in Christ Jesus, all the more so do we exercise charity and compassion for our children.  Especially because their weaknesses, short-comings, and frailties derive from us in the first place, both by nature and by nurture.  Which also adds further impetus to the most basic rule, that we do unto others as we would have done to us.  Surely we can empathize with our children, and we rejoice to share in the Gospel along with them.

Conclusion

When God declared to Moses that He would not go up with the sons of Israel into Canaan, because they were so sinful and stubborn, and He would only destroy them in His righteous wrath, Moses interceded for Israel and pleaded with God that He must abide with them and go up with them, else they would perish — because they were so sinful and stubborn!

Thus, the Lord, the Lord, patient and long-suffering, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, provided the means by which He would dwell with His children and lead them forward all the way.  He established ways and means of grace and forgiveness in the Tabernacle, Priesthood, and Sacrifices, so that the people could be cleansed and preserved in His Word and faith and survive in His presence and His peace.  All of which He has fulfilled for us in the only-begotten Son, the Word who became Flesh and tabernacles with us, our merciful and great High Priest, who has sacrificed Himself once-and-for-all to atone for our sins and redeem us.  In Him do we and our children live by grace, through faith, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, both now and forever.

This is how the Head of the Household sustains us through the wilderness and keeps us steadfast in His Word and faith, even until death.  Thus, we look to Him, both for us and for our children, and for our children’s children yet to come.  The first and foremost thing is that we not make gods out of our children, nor presume to be our children’s gods, but that we live with them by faith in the true and only God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who speaks to us and cares for us in the Word and Flesh of Christ Jesus.  So do we live and love in Him, the beloved and well-pleasing Son of God, as the dear children of our dear God and Father in heaven.  We daily receive and rest ourselves in His daily divine providence for body and soul, the forgiveness of all our sins, and the Daily Bread that we need for this life and forever.  And in this faith and confidence, we confess and call upon His Holy Name, knowing that His Answer is a resounding “Yes” and “Amen” in Christ Jesus, and that we shall be saved by His grace unto the Resurrection and Life everlasting.