Questions and Catechesis

“If churches do not aim to help children, youth and adults become sensitive, compassionate persons who possess the knowledge, attitudes and capacity to act responsibly alone and institutionally in relation to the changing needs of society, we will have failed our children, ourselves - and God . . . To facilitate the development of this kind of persons, the community of faith needs to meet at least three conditions: first, shared meaningful celebrations . . . second, reflected-upon experiences . . . third, opportunities for political and social action.”
- John Westerhoff

This is the Quote of the Month for the October 2010 LCMS Youth Bulletin. I had some difficulty parsing it out, so I went to the source. Westerhoff was ordained UCC, but currently serves in the Episcopalian Church. He has an article online that is quite revealing, and explains much of what this quote is about: Church Education for Tomorrow. It’s well worth the read as an exposition of the quote above. While the quote itself is not found in the article, all the notes are present.

What does this mean for us? It simply begs the question: Whatever happened to “As the head of the household should teach them in a simple way to his household”?

Luther was frustrated with his people: "[M]any see the catechism as a poor, common teaching, which they can read through once and immediately understand. They can throw the book into a corner and be ashamed to read it again" (LC, Preface:2, Kolb-Wengert). We relate to that in our own way. “How do you get rid of bats in the belfry? Answer: Catechize and confirm them and you’ll never see them again.”

The problem isn’t that the material itself, or that rote memorization is antithetical to faith-building. Quite the opposite in fact. One could just as easily say that memorizing basic Math facts is useless—until that faculty is needed in daily life. Technology aside, the ability to compute mathematically will not absent itself from our various vocations. Every time, in every place, 2+2=4, and 5X5=25. When that fails, whole systems will fall apart. We learned those basic facts through rote memorization, and then we learned to apply them. We believe in them. They are, if you will permit me, the lex orandi, lex credendi of arithmetic. The same is true of the catechism. Luther explains:

Besides, catechism study is a most effective help against the devil, the world, the flesh, and all evil thoughts. It helps to be occupied with God’s Word, to speak it, and meditate on it, just as the first Psalm declares people blessed who meditate on God’s Law day and night (Psalm 1:2). Certainly you will not release a stronger incense or other repellant against the devil than to be engaged by God’s commandments and words, and speak, sing, or think them [Colossians 3:16]. For this is indeed the true “holy water” and “holy sign” from which the devil runs and by which he may be driven away [James 4:7]. (LC, Preface: 10, Kolb-Wengert)

Furthermore, Luther saw no such thing as delaying catechetical study until a child was in puberty. For him, the catechism was for “children and for simple folk” (LC, Short Preface: 1, Kolb-Wengert). “It teaches what every Christian must know. . . Therefore, we must have the young learn well and fluently the parts of the catechism or instruction for children, diligently exercise themselves in them, and keep them busy in them.” (LC, Short Preface: 2-3, Kolb-Wengert). This is faith bearing fruit through catechized vocation.

It begins first in the Divine Service, for Luther’s admonitions regarding the catechism and its use starts there.

We have no small reasons for constantly preaching the catechism and for both desiring and begging others to teach it. For sadly we see that many pastors and preachers are very negligent in this matter and slight both their office and this teaching. Some neglect the catechism because of great and high art ‹giving their mind, as they imagine, to much “higher” matters›. But others neglect it from sheer laziness and care for their bellies. They take no other stand in this business than to act as pastors and preachers for their bellies’ sake. (LC, Preface, 1, Kolb-Wengert)

And again:

O bishops! What answer will you ever give to Christ for having so shamefully neglected the people and never for a moment fulfilled your office [James 3:1]? May all misfortune run from you! 5 ‹I do not wish at this place to call down evil on your heads.› You . . . insist on your human laws, and yet at the same time you do not care at all whether the people know the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, or any part of God’s Word. Woe, woe to you forever! [See Matthew 23.] (SC, Preface: 4, Kolb-Wengert)

According to Luther, pastors and preachers who do not know their catechism should “have nothing given [them]to eat, but [they] should also be driven, baited with dogs, and pelted with dung” (LC, Preface: 13, Kolb-Wengert). That’ll get your dander up! Yet he backs his words by God’s own command, Deu 6:6-8,

that we should always meditate on His precepts, sitting, walking, standing, lying down, and rising. We should have them before our eyes and in our hands as a constant mark and sign. Clearly He did not solemnly require and command this without a purpose. For He knows our danger and need, as well as the constant and furious assaults and temptations of the devils (LC, Preface: 14, Kolb-Wengert).

This is an example for the family, as pastors are to be in their parishes. So Luther commends this responsibility to the head of the household: “Therefore, it is the duty of every father of a family to question and examine his children and servants at least once a week and see what they are learning from the catechism” (LC, Short Preface: 4, Kolb-Wengert).

Yet in the above-mentioned article, Westerhoff, critical of the catechetical method, writes:

Characteristically, Christian faith was understood in terms of nurture, which functionally corresponded to a gradual process of schooling. Church educators proceeded to develop a program of education that moved from baptism through instruction to confirmation—or, more accurately, to institutional initiation. At the same time evangelical Protestant churches, also enamored of the “schooling-instructional” paradigm, described personal conversion as their purpose and designed educational programs that used instruction to move persons to an early faith commitment. Neither side could affirm the other’s purpose though both depended upon the same paradigm. Both, I contend, have made a serious error.

The error he contends is that this is merely “institutionalized incorporation” into religion. It is not mature faith. And here is the key: “The Christian faith by its very nature demands conversion. We do not gradually educate persons to be Christian. Of course, conversion can and indeed often has been misunderstood and overemphasized, but that does not justify our disregarding it as one necessary purpose of Christian education.”

What Westerhoff misses is that faith is Sacramentally given in Baptism and nurtured in catechesis (as well as the Word preached, Absolution, and the Holy Supper). This is according to Christ’s command that the church is to be baptizing and teaching (Mt 28:19-20) to keep all that He commanded. This is not imparted as if a history lesson, but according to the work of the Holy Spirit through human agents. Catechesis is teaching. Luther writes, “So a person who does not know this catechism could not be counted as a Christian or be admitted to any Sacrament, just as a mechanic who does not understand the rules and customs of his trade is expelled and considered incapable” (LC, Short Preface: 1, Kolb-Wengert). Conversion is not a learned experience; it is a given. It is given by the work of the Holy Spirit. We do not struggle in order to say “I believe.” The opposite is true, as the Third Article confesses.

Westerhoff’s answer to Luther’s form of catechesis is

Persons need to be nurtured into a community’s faith and life. There is a basic need for religious experience. But persons also need, if they are to grow in faith, to be aided and encouraged to judge, question and even doubt that faith, to be given the opportunity to experiment with and reflect upon alternative understandings and to learn what it means to commit their lives to causes and persons. We must never depreciate the important intellectual aspect of Christian faith. Only after a long adolescent struggle with doubt and an honest consideration of alternatives can a person truly say, “I believe.” And only then is a person enabled to live the radical political, economic and social life of the Christian in the world.

In other words, it is not enough that the devil has his “darts, and arrows are every moment aimed at you.” (LC, Lord’s Supper: 82, Kolb-Wengert), Westerhoff encourages a dance with the devil in order to arrive at a hearty, heartfelt “I believe.” So much for lex cedendi, lex orandi! Let’s not forget something here. Lutherans don’t run from the struggles of doubt; rather, we embrace them as life under the cross. The Lord disciplines His sons, and struggles and doubt are a part of that. But to be “encouraged to judge, question and even doubt that faith” is not what makes Christian growth. When a Christian faces the doubts that come as they may, he places them in the wounds of Christ where they belong and simply says, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief (Mk 9:24). He doesn’t go seeking them intentionally.

It is through the struggles (tentatio), being constantly driven to the cross, and ever living out the life of Baptism that the faith matures. This is sanctification, is it not, and it is not an outgrowth of intentional head-butts with the devil. Sanctification is the Holy Spirit’s own working out of faith in Christ in and through us. Even our feeble confession “I believe” is wrought within us by what the Holy Spirit has given, not through what we have done by what we have come through. One who is baptized is never alone, but is a member of the Body of Christ, His Church. Of this growth in faith our confessions say

So, until the Last Day, the Holy Spirit abides with the holy congregation or Christendom [John 14:17]. Through this congregation He brings us to Christ and He teaches and preaches to us the Word [John 14:26]. By the Word He works and promotes sanctification, causing this congregation daily to grow and to become strong in the faith and its fruit, which He produces [Galatians 5]. (LC, II, art. 3: 52 Kolb-Wengert)

I’m not as smart as Dr. Luther. Never will be. So I take his advice to heart. He used his catechism daily, thinking himself as a child in need of it that often.

I must still read and study the Catechism daily, yet I cannot master it as I wish, but must remain a child and pupil of the Catechism, and I do it gladly. These dainty, fastidious fellows would like quickly, with one reading, to become doctors above all doctors, to know all there is to be known. Well, this, too, is a sure sign that they despise both their office and the people’s souls, yes, even God and his Word. They need not fear a fall, for they have already fallen all too horribly. What they need is to become children and begin learning their ABC’s, which they think they have outgrown long ago. (LC, Preface: 7, Tappert)

He gives this advice to us all:

Look at these bored, presumptuous saints who will not or cannot read and study the Catechism daily. They evidently consider themselves much wiser than God himself, and wiser than all his holy angels, prophets, apostles, and all Christians! God himself is not ashamed to teach it daily, for he knows of nothing better to teach, and he always keeps on teaching this one thing without varying it with anything new or different. All the saints know of nothing better or different to learn, though they cannot learn it to perfection. Are we not most marvelous fellows, therefore, if we imagine, after reading or hearing it once, that we know it all and need not read or study it any more? Most marvelous fellows, to think we can finish learning in one hour what God himself cannot finish teaching! Actually, he is busy teaching it from the beginning of the world to the end, and all prophets and saints have been busy learning it and have always remained pupils, and must continue to do so. (LC, Preface: par. 15, Kolb-Wengert)

If God has so much to teach us in the catechism that we have not yet learned, then what I am wondering now is: Instead promoting a man who encourages youth to doubt what He has given, shouldn't we instead make better use of our own precious resources, which begin in and retain the things of God?

Grades and Shades of Feminism

Two items of note recently circulated through Facebook. The first was the video testimony of a saline abortion survivor, Gianna Jessen. The second was a newspaper article by Rebecca Walker, the daughter of Alice Walker the author of The Color Purple. Both bore witness to the backlash effects of feminism. It would have been easy to pass of either woman as the victim of radical-feminism.

Let’s be honest for once. We can sugar-coat feminism with any number of labels and degrees—moderate-, conservative-, Christian-, radical-, —but we’ll still find ourselves with the same fundamental error: feminism. Granted, these labels serve some purpose. They help to identify authors and time periods within the Feminist Movement itself. However, let's not use them as sort of "scale for acceptability;" e.g., radical-feminism goes too far, while Christian-feminism is comfortably OK.

Not all feminists will pursue abortion or abandon their children, this is true. Still, feminism is the ideology that pursues the social and political equal rights for women. That is its premise. However, “In the beginning. . .,” before the deception of the first woman, these things were “a given.” They were total gift and a grace from God, the Father Creator. She was, after all, created in the same image and likeness of God as was her mate, the man. That she was called his helpmeet is no reflection on her status of equality, but is a reference to her vocation. “[T]he Lord God is pleased to be called a ‘helper.’ Ezer is the Hebrew word, and the name ‘Eliezer’ means ‘God is my helper’ (Numbers 3:32).” (A Little Book of Joy, Matthew C. Harrison, 58) God is our helper, for He is our salvation. The woman would be the source of salvation for the man, for Jesus would be born of Mary (Ge 3:15;1Cor 11:13).

Moreover, when speaking of God’s creative acts, Man is a binary that includes the male and female (Ge 1:27). This does not mean “humanity” as a general classification of all peoples whether males or females or combinations thereof. Feminism presents women with a false dichotomy: “they can either be women or they can be humans” (Why is Feminism So Hard to Resist? Paul R. Harris, 149.) This leaves women—and men, who can also be feminist—perpetually searching to be human above being what they are created to be, women and men, through striving for the things they for which they were not created. It’s about vocation, and vocation is always what is God-created and God-given.

Man, male and female, were created in God’s image. Genesis 5:1-3 reiterates that fact, but then switches, stating that Adam’s sons were born in his image. Adam lost the image of God when he fell into sin. At the end of Genesis 3, the gates to the Garden of Eden were closed by God’s angels holding flaming swords, “lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever” (Ge 3:22). Jesus called Satan “that murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44). Throughout Genesis 5 the refrain “and he died” is repeated. Paul exposits the truth of this when he states, “The wages of sin is death,” (Ro 6:23).

Satan’s deception of the first woman and Adam’s lack of protection for his wife resulted in the first sin. Adam failed her when he listened to her instead of paying heed to God's word. In Adam’s sin all men fell, but that does not mean women are any less culpable. Thanks be to God for that, for Jesus only came for sinners (Mt 9:13). Satan murdered not with a knife or gun or any other such weapon. Satan’s weapon was God’s own words twisted to his desires and intentions. But Satan’s victim was not merely Man, Adam and his wife. Satan’s target was the Son of the Father, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8). Satan’s deception of the woman was an attack on God the Father. She overthrew her head, and he in turn, overthrew his (1Co 11:3). This set in motion the Father’s plan of salvation wherein His own Son would die for the sins of Man (Ro 5:8; 12-20; Eph 1:4; Jn 3:16). Feminism, because it reconditions and reinvents God’s word for its own purposes, is a return to original sin and its slavery (Jn 8:31-35; Ro 6:6; Ga 5:1.) It is Rachel stealing her father’s household gods in order to take them into her husband’s home (Ge 31:19). She would not completely let go of her old ways and let her husband be her head, thus having the one true God be her Head. It is paganism.

And here is where we must begin to get truly honest with feminism. Feminism began with the first deception, and has grown from that. If feminism is anything it is paganism socially legitimized through Supreme Court rulings, Hollywood, the media, and Madison Avenue. It is nothing new (Ecc 1:9). Feminism demands human rights for women at the expense of their own unborn children: my body, my rights. Feminism demands human rights for same-sex relationships at the expense of the family and society. Lutheran CORE recently posted this entry. It demonstrates the same pattern from the ancient deceiver: A twist and a turn from God’s word is all it takes to turn mankind away from the worship of the one true God to worship of something and someone other.

Feminism with a gradient label attached to it is akin to someone claiming he is only mildly addicted to cocaine (“But I can kick it anytime I want to.”) The addiction “sticks” for a lifetime, whether one wants to admit it or not. So it is with feminism. Feminism and original sin are so closely aligned they are a part of the human condition. To be feminist is to overthrow one’s headship for the sake of another’s vocation. This was the woman’s deception, and males fall victim to it was well as females. One cannot claim to be mildly feminist and be proud of it any more than to retain pride in being a sinner. It would be the same as pride in breaking the First Commandment. For, in overthrowing headship, one becomes his or her own god; and, taking up a vocation that does not belong to oneself breaks the Second Table of the Law.

There are those who will object, pointing out all the “good” the Feminist Movement has brought to women: equality in society, better pay in the work place, more jobs. Shall we praise sin because there happens to be a good outcome? The fundamental premise of the movement is still feminism and it not only is contrary to God’s word, it also moves to separate women from God's salvific acts in Christ to her own work. Better yet we confess the fact that we are feminist and rejoice in the Gospel to come from that confession of sin; for, Jesus only came for sinners, and there is more than enough forgiveness in Him for feminists.

The truth is that there is nothing in the Scriptures that prevents women from entering the marketplace and doing business. The Good Wife of Proverbs 31 is one example, as is Lydia (Ac 16:14). Luther writes

Thus the church is the pupil of Christ. It sits at His feet and listens to His Word, that it may know how to judge everything—how to serve in one’s vocation and to fill civil offices, yes, how to eat, drink, and sleep—so that there is no doubt about any area of life, but that we, surrounded on all sides by the rays of the Word, may continually walk in joy and in the most beautiful light. (LW: 2:353-354)

Guided by God’s word with Christ as their Head, men are to care for and love their wives and families. Guided by God’s word with Christ as their Head, women submit to such love and protection. Still, Luther continues,

But alas, we are not aware of our gifts. Only those who are spiritual rejoice and give thanks to God. Because the rest are carnal, ungrateful, greedy, and proud, they will be deprived even of what they have; and the punishment will befall them that they will listen to Satan instead of Christ and to heretics instead of the apostles, namely, to men who seek in the Word their own wisdom and glory and everything else except the joy and the heavenly blessings the Word brings us. (LW: 2:353-354)

And so we have the division in which we live. There is the feminism which belongs to all that is common or profane in this temporal life, and there is the way of Godly vocation which belongs to the sacred and holy. Godly vocation is still known by nature and written as Law upon man’s heart (Ro 1:20-25; 2:14-15). We struggle midst the two planes, the profane and the sacred. There should be no surprise in this. We are at once sinner and saint, are we not? But let us not fall prey to justifying sin based on a perceived good outcome. An error at the beginning is still fundamentally an error at the end—one to be confessed so that Christ’s forgiveness may be received.

A Bit From Walther

Let us picture to ourselves as vividly as we can the situation that would have been created in the early Church, when errorists like Arius, Nestorius, and Pelagius arose, if men like Athanasius, Cyril, and Augustine had not earnestly opposed them. As far back as in the fourth and fifth centuries the Church would have lost the primary article of the Christian faith; the foundation would have been removed from beneath it, and it would have had to collapse. That was, indeed, impossible in view of the eternal counsel of God concerning the Church; however, because of that very counsel, God had to raise up instruments such as those teachers were. True, while they lived, they were hated and persecuted as malicious disturbers of Christendom, but for more than a thousand years their names have been beacon-lights, as names of great witnesses to the saving truth, and in eternity they will shine as the brightness of the firmament and as the stars forever and ever. Dan. 12:3. Let no one, then, be deterred from giving his testimony in behalf of the truth by the charge that he has a false spirit. That charge emanates only from unbelief.

Again, suppose Luther, after learning the truth, had indeed borne testimony for it to his immediate associates, but had not entered into conflict with the Papacy because of the great abominations which it had introduced into the Church, what would have happened? Christianity would have to remain under the soultyranny of the Roman Antichrist, and we all should still be subjects of it.

There is no question, then, but that both, yes, both these efforts are necessary: to defend the truth and to oppose every doctrinal error.

Walther, C. F. W., Dau, W. H. T., & Eckhardt, E. (2000, c1929, c1986). The proper distinction between law and gospel : 39 evening lectures. Forward by Jaroslav Pelikan. Includes index. (electronic ed.) (350). Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House.

Of Rust and Tattoos

I just tried to salvage the front door to our house. I'd started noticing rust coming through the paint a while back, but with all my other concerns couldn't do anything about it. I'm finally well enough to do something. So I stripped it of all its extraneous hardware. Numbers were placed elsewhere. They're more noticeable in their new location anyway. The door knocker I packed away. That meant I have a few holes to patch, but a bit of car putty and sandpaper would take care of that.

I took some 150 grit to the worst of the rust. It flaked. Not a good sign. Sure enough, the rust was worse than I'd thought. It'd eaten clean through the steel of the door. So I looked over the door more closely, and with my fingers. Sure enough, there was a large bubble to the left. That means the surface rust just revealed a greater cancer lying beneath the paint.

Now, I could spend a great deal of man hours and supplies and wind up with a door that looked like it had been repaired (one hole was in the detailing), or I could bite the bullet and buy a new one and have it installed. Priming and painting I can do. Installation is another thing altogether.

The point is, before we bought the house someone painted that sucker with rust already on it. We changed the color of that paint, giving it even more protection. It's taken seven years for the rust to finally eat through the coats of paint. So now we are at the point we are. A bit of prevention at the first would have solved this.

It's not really about the money we are shoveling out for the door and the installation, although there is that. It's about that lack of care for the things given us. It's about stewardship. It's like that commercial of that kid destroying his toys just to prove that one certain car gets a load of testing. My kids wouldn't have had any toys for a while had they treated theirs like that.

There are basics and essentials that need to be taken care of up front. It has been the setting aside of the Confessions and through that the Word of God that has turned synod into the bureaucratic nightmare that it is, instead of the supportive institution to its pastors and congregations that it was meant to be.

We slap the paint on top of paint through all sorts of commissions and reports to cover the fact that the Confessions are being eroded like rust on steel. In countless congregations what can be seen is there is no unity in practice according to the Word of God and the Confessions. Moreover, the demand that we depart further from the Confessions increases. The rust spreads no matter how quickly we slap that paint on it.

Furthermore, because of the rust and the coats of paint to cover it up, significant dialog on the issues that matter by using the Confessions and the Word of God is getting to be well nigh to impossible. The issues are no longer the focus, the paint and rust (rulings by commissions and reports) are!


A friend got himself a Luther Rose tattoo in honor of the installation of Matt Harrison as President. “Big deal!” I thought, “That’s an honorific? Better yet, study more the Confessions.” Of course, to cut this one some slack, I’m not a tattoo person, and he already does spend a good deal of time with his nose in the Confessions, which he honors in his practice.

The local Methodist church proudly displayed Luther’s Rose in front of their church for several months. It isn’t “ours” anymore. It also belongs to the place of “Open hearts, Open minds, Open doors.” Their demonstration of Luther’s Reformation symbol at a place which rejects so much of what the Reformation won demonstrates that merely slapping a Luther Rose on a thing is no indication of unity in doctrine and practice. Two hours after the installation of Harrison on Sept. 11, St. Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral in downtown Jackson, MS, is having a come-one-come-all Eucharist in memory of 9-11. Christ’s Supper isn’t His anymore. That same practice is observed and encouraged among many of our own LC-MS churches, too.

The LC-MS is on the cusp of repentance or rejection. She can either stand as the true repository of Luther's Reformation inheritance, in which her Confession is that of the Apostolic Church, or she can slide into conformity with those around her. A few more coats of paint and who would know the difference, anyway? I pray my friend didn’t waste a good tattoo. There is much to celebrate this Saturday, but there is also much work ahead.

A Bit from Luther Based on Luke 2:42-52

This is a Gospel that presents to us an example of the holy cross, showing us what experiences those who have to pass who are Christians, and how they ought to bear their sorrow. For he who desires to be a Christian must expect to help to bear the cross. For God will place him between the spurs and thoroughly test him that he may be humble and no one will come to Christ without suffering. Of this we have here an example, which we ought to imitate and shall now consider.

Although the holy mother Mary, who was highly blessed and upon whom many favors were bestowed, had undoubtedly the greatest delight in her child, yet the Lord so ruled that that her joy was not without sorrow and like all others she did not attain complete blessedness until she entered heaven. For this reason she had to suffer so much sorrow, pain and anguish on earth. It was her first great sorrow to give birth to her child in Bethlehem, in a strange town, where she found no room with her babe except in a stable. Then her second sad experience was that soon after the six weeks of purification she was compelled to flee with her child into Egypt, a strange country, which was indeed a poor consolation. She undoubtedly experienced many more like trials, which have not been recorded.

One of them is related here, when her Son caused her so much anxiety, by tarrying behind in the temple and letting her seek Him so long, and she could not find Him. This alarmed and grieved her so that she almost despaired, as her words indicate: “Behold, thy father and I sought thee sorrowing.” For we may well imagine that thoughts like these may have passed through her mind: “Behold this child is only mine, this I know very well, and I know God has entrusted Him to me and has commanded me to take care of Him; why is it then He is taken from me? It is my fault, for I have not sufficiently taken care of Him and guarded Him. Perhaps God does not deem me worthy to watch over this child and will take Him from me again.” She was undoubtedly greatly frightened and her heart trembled and was filled with grief.

Here you see what she experienced. Although she is the mother of a child in whom she might have gloried before all mothers, and although her joy was immeasurably greater than any she had ever felt, yet you perceive how God deprives her of all happiness, in that she can no longer call herself the mother of Jesus. In her great dismay she probably wished she had never known her child and was tempted to greater sins than any mother had ever committed.

In the same manner the Lord our God can take from us our joy and comfort, if He so desires, and cause us the greatest sorrow with the very things that are our greatest joy, and, on the other hand, give us the greatest delight in the things that terrify us the most. For it was the greatest joy of Mary that she was the mother of this child, but now He has become the cause of her greatest sorrow. Thus we are afraid of nothing more than sin and death, yet God can comfort us so that we may boast, as St. Paul says in Rom. 7, that sin served to the end that we became justified and that we longed for death and desire to die.

The great sorrow of the mother of Christ, who was deprived of her child, came upon her in order that even her trust in God might be taken from her. For she had reason to fear that God was angry with her and would no longer have her be the mother of His Son. Nobody will understand what she suffered who has not passed through her experiences. Therefore we should apply this example to ourselves, for it was not recorded for her sake, but for our benefit. She is now at the end of her sorrows; therefore we should profit by her example and be prepared to bear our sorrow if a similar affliction befall us.

When God vouchsafes to us a strong faith and a firm trust in Him, so that we are assured He is our gracious God and we can depend on Him, then we are in paradise. But when God permits our hearts to be discouraged and that He takes from us Christ our Lord; when our conscience feels that we have lost Him amidst trembling and despair our confidence is gone, then we are truly in misery and distress. For even if we are not conscious of any special sin, yet in such a condition we tremble and doubt whether God still cares for us; just as Mary here doubts and knows not whether God still deems her worthy to be the mother of His Son. Our heart thinks in the time of trial thus: God has indeed given me a strong faith, but perhaps He will take it from me and will no longer want me as His child. Only strong minds can endure such temptations and there are not many people whom God tests to this degree. Yet we must be prepared, so that we may not despair if such trials come upon us.

. . . God does all this out of His superabundant grace and goodness in order that we might perceive on every hand how kindly and lovingly the Father deals with us and tries us, so that our faith may be developed and become continually stronger and stronger. And He does this especially so as to guard His children against a twofold danger which might otherwise threaten them. In the first place, being strong in their own mind and arrogant, they might ultimately depend upon themselves and believe they are able to accomplish everything in their own strength. For this reason God sometimes permits their faith to grow weak and to be prostrated, so that they might see who they are and be forced to confess: Even if I would be believe, I cannot. Thus the omnipotent God humbles His saints and keeps them in their true knowledge. For nature and reason will always boast of the gifts of God and depend upon them. Therefore God must lead us to a recognition of the fact that it is He who puts faith in our heart and that we cannot produce it ourselves. Thus the fear of God and trust in Him must not be separated from one another, for we need them both, in order that we not become presumptuous and overconfident depending on ourselves. This is one of the reasons God leads His saints through such great trials.

First Sunday after Epiphany, Wittenberg, 1523

Timing Among the Non-Peripheral Things

Two years ago this past July a friend of mine opened her house to my granddaughter and me for a couple days. They were on their last leg of a trip to Europe. We were in town for a wedding and the Higher Things Conference. I was busy preparing a welcome home dinner for her when I suddenly had a tightening in my chest and pain in my right jaw. I did what any right thinking person would do. I called the expert, my husband. He advised me to wait it out. If it subsided quickly, all was well. It did, and I went on with my business.

Good thing, too. The timing was all wrong. We were several miles away from a hospital, and hundred miles away from home. I didn’t have time for any serious illness. Higher Things started the next day. I had a presentation to make. I had my granddaughter to care for.

During the next week I proved that all was well with me. I trekked that long walk up and down the hill from our lodging to the chapel services and any sessions, for meals, etc. I was just fine. Nothing even to mention to anyone, so I didn’t.

The Saturday before school opened that year the pain returned. This time John and I went so far as to drive to the hospital, only to decide not to do anything. Our reasoning was simple: I’d be in the hospital over the weekend. No tests would be done until Monday. I’d miss the first day of school. What would that accomplish? Besides, we could talk to a doctor friend in the congregation the next day. He’s a cardiac surgeon.

We did just that. He called me mid morning Monday at school and said I had an appointment with a cardiologist and I wasn’t to miss it. I didn’t. After an EKG the cardiologist wouldn’t let me go home. My heart had tried and might still try to have an attack. That’s just what it had done in July.

The next morning a simple procedure fixed things. He placed a stent in the partially blocked artery. Then he told me what I didn’t want to hear: change your lifestyle.

I don’t like bad news from doctors. I’ve heard it before. I heard it in 1993 when the doctor said, “Malignant? Oh, most definitely.” I don’t suppose he considered whether it was bad timing for me to hear that news or not. Maybe I was too busy with other things going on and didn’t have time for the radiation treatment, and the week long trip the Philadelphia away from my family to receive it. Maybe I didn’t want to be bothered with it at that time. “No thank you, doctor. I’ll deal with this another day. Cancer can wait for me.” Just like that heart attack could wait for my good timing instead of me seeking treatment for it while the warning signs were clearly there!

It's the Felix in us, who when confronted by the Word of God "about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment,"--things rightly exercised in and among the community of believers as per 1 Cor. 5:12-13--wants to exercise self-righteousness and control based upon his own personal desires and considerations instead. Felix responded to Paul: “Go away for the present, and when I find time, I will summon you” (Acts 24:25). Putting off medical care is breaking the First and Fifth Commandment. It does harm to ourselves. It is putting ourselves in the place of God, and not allowing others to fulfill their God-given vocations for our sakes. That is what we do when others call us to repentance and we say the timing is not right.

Timing, good timing, bad timing which timing? One of the criticisms leveled against the ACELC is that the timing of their Admonitions is poor, coming so soon after the election of Matt Harrison as president of the LC-MS.

What the ACELC is pointing out are those things that have become matters of unrepentant false practice that have not been admonished. Therefore they have become entrenched in the heart of synod as if they are good and salutary.

It wasn’t that long ago that a man passing through these parts inquired about our communion practice. When the Christ-ordained, church-honored practice of Closed Communion was explained to him, he refused to participate with us. His reasoning was simple: He could not in good conscience practice in one place what his home pastor did not teach and practice in another. He recognized there was no unity where there ought to be, and did not for himself cry peace where there was no peace.

So I ask: How soon is too soon to seek recovery from the illness that pervades our synod? How long is too long to ignore the illness that infests her?

Rather than unhinge ourselves on such peripheral piffle (such as timing), shouldn’t we instead be more mindful of the merits of what the ACELC is saying and doing?

Disclaimers on Altars

A good friend reminded me that this altar does have a disclaimer over it. The last photo didn't reveal it. This one does. Here the "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus" is clearly visible. After all, it doesn't say "Hagios, Hagios, Hagios." (Thanks, Dave.)

Sitting Solidly on an Inerrant Two-Legged Stool

In a recent entry on his blog, (The Inerrancy of Scripture: The Fifty Years’ War . . . and Counting) Paul McCain praised the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Albert Mohler, and his blog. McCain urged his readers “I recommend you add [Mohler’s blog] to your regular blog reading.” What apparently excited McCain about this particular blog entry was the topic, inerrancy. Kathy S tried to point out that we ought to be more careful of our reading, being concerned with who we let into our heads. She tried to point out the matter of efficacy, which is missing in the minds of Baptists with regard to the Sacraments, but didn’t gain much traction. McCain’s response was that Good News doesn’t put disclaimers over the artwork it uses, some of which is decidedly non-Lutheran. He wasn’t going to do the same.

On August 13, 2008, Rev. Wm. Weedon gave accolades to the newly dedicated altar at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Brandon, MS. While others joined in to praise its design, not everyone was so disposed.

Paul McCain said...
I'm not really comfortable making Lutheran altars look like Eastern altars.

Here's my favorite Lutheran altar!

http://cyberbrethren.typepad.com/cranachinweimar/
6:15 PM

Does that mean we at Good Shepherd ought to put up a disclaimer over our altar?

In other words, McCain was really making the same assertion about our altar that Kathy was trying to make about Mohler’s piece. According to McCain, Orthodox art doesn’t speak the same language as Western art. And, as Kathy tried to point out, Mohler does not mean inerrancy the same way we Lutherans do—especially, as she pointed out, when inerrancy and inspiration are absent efficacy.

That doesn’t mean Lutherans can’t use Orthodox art. Catechized Lutherans can “handle” altars with icons because they have been taught that the art is merely an earthly reminder of heavenly things. Nothing more. An icon is not the thing itself. It is no more to be worshiped and adored than one having this on it.



And in Good News magazine, the art is used as a jumping off point to explain a theological point. It never stands alone. Selection of pieces is so careful that art is rejected if even the title is inappropriate to the theological point being made to the reader. The reader is not left to his subjective opinion. A decidedly Lutheran catechesis is drawn from every piece of artwork used in Good News.

So in truth, the argument about the use of Orthodox art vs. Western art is actually a weak one. Orthodox art and Western art have their well known connotations for use in worship, and they are known to be different. Art is received subjectively. It can mean different things to different viewers. This is not so easily true with words. Words mean things, generally the same thing time and again. The inerrancy of scripture is a word known by theologians to mean the scriptures are without errors because they are God’s words breathed by the Holy Spirit into human authors to be written down for our sakes (2Ti 3:16). This carries with it certain implications with what the word actually is and does for our sakes (Is 55:11). When any part of that that is denied, then inerrancy takes a huge hit. How can inerrancy stand when its very usefulness as God intended it is denied because the men who handle it say, “That’s impossible!”? At that point a different connotation of the word inerrancy—perhaps it could be said even a whole other word being named “inerrancy”—is being used. One thing is certain; we aren’t speaking with the same terminology. To not deal with the text as it is given for our sakes is an indication that one is rejecting inerrancy at that point. Thus, inspiration and efficacy are sacrificed as well.

Inerrancy and inspiration absent efficacy is like a two-legged stool: just try to sit on it. But Baptist inerrancy is just that, a two-legged stool. They’ll tout inerrancy because of inspiration and shout out a good belief in creation or the flood story. Then they’ll look you straight in the eye and swear “Yes, ma’am, you and I, we believe the same thing.”

That’s when it’s time to get down to where things really count. Now it’s time to set that stool on the floor and see if she’ll set still and hold a body up. “Do you baptize babies? Do you believe what 1Peter 3:21 says?” Simply put, deal with the text: Does Baptism save now?

And that’s where the derrier hits the dust. That’s where inerrency is shown to be just another pretty word batted ‘round. Baptists deny baptismal regeneration. That kicks the stuffing out of inerrancy. Inerrency is certain because God inspired (God breathed) the word to His authors, therefore it does what He says it will do; it is efficacious.

But get a Baptist to grasp that when it comes time to baptize an infant; or set out wine for the Lord’s Supper; or even agree what’s in that Precious Water or Meal. It’s not happening without some very, very careful catechesis and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Most of the children enrolled in our school are non-Lutheran. Yet it is not uncommon a number of these children to come to desire Baptism for themselves. They hear of their Lord’s desire of it for them and its benefits daily in chapel.

One of my students waged an ongoing battle with his mother and grandparents for a good two years before he was given permission by them to go to the font and receive what our Lord would give him, forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. It was a respectful battle, to be sure. He was armed only with God’s word. For every one of their protests he simply pointed to one of any several texts and said, now what do you have to say? He was told he didn’t need baptism because he wasn’t of the age of accountability; well, babies die don’t they, proving Paul correct, Rom 6:23. And then there is Ps 51:5. Heaven must be filled with a lot of sinners, those babies who die without baptism. He was told baptism doesn’t save. So he’d point to 1Pe 3:21. Get around that one, he’d reply. That’s God talking. God says baptism saves now. They’d have to deny God was talking through Peter, thus sacrificing their own belief in the inerrancy of scripture, in order to deny that baptism doesn’t save now.

He’s not alone. Our students, either those of the school or those of the congregation find they must be prepared to defend their Baptism against the onslaughts of their neighbors and friends. This is Baptist Country. Inerrancy only goes so far in the mind of a Baptist. That’s because efficacy has no place in their thinking with regard to the Sacraments Christ instituted for their sakes.

Mohler is a great read, up only to a point. Kathy would agree to that, I am certain. But he’s to be read critically, with Lutheran sensibilities. We do this with the Fathers. We do read them not as is if we are idle-minded sponges. We read as if in dialogue with them, saying “Amen” here, and rejecting what is written there.

Mohler simply doesn’t mean inerrancy the same way we mean inerrancy. If he did, he would agree to baptismal regeneration, and Christ’s very real body and blood presence in the bread and wine at the Holy Supper. But then he’d be a Lutheran, not a Baptist, wouldn’t he?

A Bit More

There is another truly wonderful bit to pull from that icon of Adam I like so much.

Just as the Ancient of Days calls Adam to life with His breath of life and gives him a name and vocation, standing by his side as he fulfills it, so too the Ancient of Days calls us to life in Baptism. We then are all “Little Christs,” growing from His vine going about our vocations with Him beside and in us. We are remade in His image as God’s own sons (Eph 1:5; Col 3:10).

Wherever there is such faith and assurance of grace in Christ, you can also confidently conclude with regard to your vocation and works that these are pleasing to God and are true and good Christian fruits. Furthermore, such temporal and physical works as governing a land and people, managing a house, rearing and teaching children, serving, toiling, etc., also develop into fruit that endures unto life everlasting. Thus the holy patriarch Abraham and our holy ancestress Sarah will be commended and praised on Judgment Day for their marital life. Although the married estate will come to an end and be no more, as will all the life and activity of this world, yet this holy Sarah, and others with her, will receive their little crowns because they were pious spouses and mothers, not by reason of their works per se—for these had to cease—but because they did these works in faith. In like manner, the works of all Christians are performed to God’s everlasting pleasure; they will not be despised, as will those of non-Christians, but will have their eternal reward also in yonder life, because they are works done in Christ and grow from the Vine. (LW, 24, 220-221)

Adding Woman to the Narrative

One of my favorite icons depicts the Ancient of Days bringing Adam to life in the upper right portion, while Adam is naming the animals with God by his side in the lower, major portion of the work. The former work preceded the latter; God’s single work of breathing life into the clay that would become Adam is prior to Adam’s given work of naming the animals. Adam’s features are evocative of those of Christ’s own in other icons. This is to signify that Adam is God’s own son as Luke names him in Chapter 3 of his Gospel. 1Cor 15:45 makes the connection between Adam and the Last Adam. Christ took on Adam’s image for our sakes, as this icon makes clear for us to see. This is an icon of Adam before the fall, of Adam in his purest state. It is not a depiction of Adam when God declared that all was “Very good.”

For that a woman was required. And for that Adam was put into a deep sleep. This icon demonstrates Christ as the Agent of Creation, taking the woman from Adam’s side as he sleeps. After this was accomplished, God would say that His created world was “Very good,” and rest.



Now, feminists are not happy with this tale and even accuse Christianity of “not touching” the woman’s side of the story in this. In the first, Adam not only names the animals, he also, after the fall, names his wife. In their eyes, this reduces the woman to the same status as the animals because she isn’t allowed to choose her own name—ignoring the fact that Adam didn’t choose his own name either. That name was given him by God. The headship progression is already established: God names Adam, husband names wife. It’s Trinitarian. Jesus’ Head is His Father (as is demonstrated abundantly by the Gospel John; the husband’s head is Christ; the wife’s head is her husband. Paul lays this out for us in Ephesians 5:

23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Even Peter, speaking to the baptized, gives witness to this when he writes of Sarah.

1 Peter 3:5 For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their husbands, 6 as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.

However, 1 Corinthians 11:4 makes the case the clearest, “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.”

When we speak of the work of God’s creating and of either man’s or woman’s part in it, we are also speaking of the work of the Trinity behind them. Therefore, when we speak of Creation prior to the fall, we may also look at God’s work as a view of paradise. There is no reason to call anything God does in His act of creation either on His own or through His agent, the man Adam, as evil, inappropriate or improper. What God calls “Good” and “Very good” is beyond our standards of those labels.

Far from never examining the role of the woman in this narrative (as Aileen Kraditor claims), the church went forward from the time of the fall and built herself around the story of Eve. It was the woman who was deceived in the fall (Ge 3:13). Yet, it was upon Adam, as head of the race, that the burden for the sin fell. This did not relieve the woman of her sin. Adam, as the first of all mankind, pointed to Christ, who would bear his image to rescue all of mankind in by taking on all mankind's sin in His flesh. He would not be deceived as the woman was. He would protect His wife, as Adam ought to have done (Mt 4; Mk 1).

Having been found in sin, Adam blamed God for “the woman whom you gave to be with me” (Ge 3:12). As for the woman, the serpent was to blame. She was deceived into not being able to keep to God’s word. Now, an easy solution would have been to place each in a hemisphere and let them go their separate ways. The world was large enough. Adam was essentially asking for separation from the woman anyway. It was her fault, and none of his own. He wanted out. The woman might have agreed.

God would have none of it. Married they were, married they’d remain. Their lives would be hard, but He gave them hope. He gave them a promise. One day His own Son would be born, and that One would crush the head of the serpent, their enemy (Ge 3:15). It is at that time Adam names his wife Eve, Mother of all living. This is a play on words. Sin has not taken everything from them. They will still have the blessing of children. Not only that, one of those children will save them from their sins. Eve is the prototype of the Church, even taken from her husband’s side while he slept.

That Adam and Eve trusted in God’s Promise is indicated by the fact that they came together as husband and wife. Eve rejoiced in the birth of her firstborn, even thinking he was the Promised One, exclaiming (as the Hebrew makes clearer), “I have gotten a man, the Lord!” (Ge 4:1). It wouldn’t take long before Adam and Eve knew that Cain was not the Promised One. One of the remarkable things of Ge 5 is the constant refrain “and he died,” reinforcing the fact Paul makes clear in Ro 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.”

Eve, the Mother of all Living, is the mother of Mary, who bore the Second Adam, the Son of God. The Second Adam is the sinless Son of God, just as Adam, the created son of God was sinless before he fell in the Garden. However, the Son Mary bore was not created, but existed from eternity, conceived of the Holy Spirit, not by any human father. The God of Creation becomes our Father also when the Second Person of the Trinity takes on human flesh and becomes a Son whose sole purpose is to take on our sins and lead us back to His Father as sons (Jo 14:6). This is the Son of Mary’s womb, the one before whom John leapt inside his own mother’s womb.



Eve is the prototype, the foreshadow, of the church. Mary, as the Theotokos, is the Christbearer, the type. In Mary we see Christ within her, just as Christ is within the church. It is in the womb of the church that Christians are born by water and Word, and sustained by Christ's own Body and Blood in the bread and wine and the Word He serves us through His agents through preaching and Absolution. We can speak of Mary in a way that is healthy, without it becoming Mariolatry, and we should. Tying the threads of scripture unites the One Voice by which it was written. Eve leads to Mary, and there are a lot of women along the path that serve as a part of the story, too.

Far from women being the neglected or untouchable as feminists are wont to claim, God knew that Man needed a helper. His creation was incomplete without a woman. God built one for Adam in the Garden while he slept. While Christ, the WOrd of God, slept a tomb in another garden, the Church was being built from the blood and water that flowed from His side. The Christbearer, as the one who bore the Last Adam into the world, makes that proclamation of “Very good” ring even more joyfully now. The angels sang it so when Jesus was born, “Peace on earth, good will to men!” It is so even now when the chosen agents of Christ speak His word of Peace to us in the liturgy from the womb that is the church where Christ is present in His Word and Sacraments.

Honesty in Choices

Many thanks to my good friend the Rev. Mark Schlamann for alerting me to this blog posting. My position has long been “return to the source,” and here is a prime example of why this should always be done in the case of feminism.

In his blog article Albert Mohler identifies the problem as this, according to Antonia Senior:

If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too." That statement, published for all the world to see, perfectly distills the inescapable logic of the abortion rights argument. It is based on a willingness to kill - and on the horrifying audacity to call this killing "the lesser evil."

Feminists for Life make a brave front in their contention for both feminism and pro-life issues. They will even boast Elizabeth Cady Stanton as their hero, claiming she was staunchly against abortion. That she was against abortion and for feminism may be true. But there is a greater dichotomy undergirding Stanton’s position that eventually leads to where Antonia Senor goes, that of sacrificing the Greater Good for the lesser good.

I am not saying that those who are of the FFL would all (or any) agree with Antonia Senior. What I am saying is that feminism shares a common root with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and that root bears both a vine and branches which are connected. That there could be similar ideas from both is not beyond the bounds of coincidence. Elizabeth Cady Stanton worked to destroy the very foundation of motherhood in women's lives. With what has it been replaced? What does the world now catechize its women with regard to the sanctity of life and choices?

In other words, one evil is accommodated by another, so one must choose which evil should be in support of the other. It's application is seen in all walks of our life, whether one is pro-choice or against abortion. However, there is truly only one way to walk in this life, truly, and that is catechetically. But we will get to that later.

Senior, even though she admits the contents of the womb is a child from the point of conception, is willing to kill for her cause, feminism. She is a mother, and still supports abortion rights. Mohler contends,

In this essay, published in one of the world's most venerable newspapers, Antonia Senior goes public with the argument that feminists should just admit that abortion is the killing of a human life, and then they should go on to assert that the right to kill an unborn human life is just the price that must be paid if feminism is to be defended.

Well, how did we get to this point, and so casually that the world didn’t explode with such news?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton saw her life’s work as the removal of scripture from women’s hands and the dependence of religion from their lives. She wrote in “The Degraded State of Women, 1896:”

I have endeavoured to dissipate these religious superstitions from the minds of women, and base their faith on science and reason, where I found for myself at last peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church. I saw the first step to this was to convince them that the Bible was neither written nor inspired by the Creator of the Universe, the Infinite intelligence, the soul and center of Life, Love and Light; but that the Bible emanated, in common with all church literature, from the brain of man. Seeing in just proportion as women are devout believers in the dogmas of the church their lives arte shadowed with fears of the unknown, the less women believe, the better for their own happiness and development. . .

The honor and worship accorded the ideal mother, if the ideal man, has done naught to elevate the real mother of the real man. So far from woman owing what liberty she does enjoy, to the Bible and the church, they have been a greater blocking the way of her development. The vantage ground woman holds today is due to all the forces of civilization, to science, discovery, invention, rationalism, the religion of humanity chanted in the golden rule round the globe centuries before the Christian religion was known. It is not to Bibles, prayer books catechisms, liturgies, the canon law and church creeds and organizations, that woman owes one step in her progress, for all these alike have been hostile, and still are, to her freedom and development. . .

In her own efforts to teach, Stanton stepped up to the dinner plate.

I often saw weary little women coming to the table after most exhausting labors, and large bumptious husbands spreading out their hands and thanking the Lord for the meals that the dear women had prepared, as if the whole came down like manna from heaven. So I preached a sermon in the blessing I gave. You will not notice that it has three heresies in it: ‘Heavenly Father and Mother, make us thankful for all the blessings of this life, and make us ever mindful of the patient hands that oft in weariness spread our tables and prepare our daily food For humanity’s sake. Amen.” (Lutz, Created Equal, 201)

Such words are not unfamiliar to our ears, for they are the very words of feminist or inclusive prayers heard in many churches in our communities.

The language of choice rings well in our ears and throughout the land. We can’t get away from it. It is in our nature. Stanton was calling us back to it. Feminism thrives from that nature, clings to it. It is why Antionia Senior can hold on to two opposing dichotomies and yet be satisfied. She has her choices; her primal nature is being fed.

Scripture-less catechesis, as Stanton has already informed us, is one of those things of which we must rid our lives. The irony, of course, is that she set in motion her own form of catechesis. Consider this insight by Ravi Zacharias, “The establishment of new orthodoxies by the intellectual elite and the dismantling of others is not as formidable a task when the desired change propelled by scholars appeals to the common person’s autonomy while enthroning the elite at the same time.” (Deliver Us From Evil, 45). Granted, Stanton was no elite scholar. However, by systematically undermining the authority of scripture in the view of women, Stanton catechized women with a whole new set of ethics by which to live. There are no absolutes.

The “Woman’s Bible” comes to the ordinary reader like a real benediction. It tells her the Lord did not write the Book; that the garden scene is a fable; that she is in no way responsible for the laws of the Universe. The Christian scholars and scientists will not tell her this, for they see she is the key to the situation. Take the snake, the fruit tree and the woman from the tableau, and we have no fall, no frowning Judge, no inferno, no everlasting punishment, —hence no need of a Savior. Thus the bottom falls out of the whole Christian theology. Here is the reason why in all the Biblical researches and higher criticism, the scholars never touch the position of the women. (Aileen S. Kraditor, Up From the Pedestal, 119)

In fact, it is the absolutes of the Scriptures that give us the foundation of Christianity, of which the woman plays a major role. Feminism recognizes this, and yet, in her demand for choice, rejects what her Savior gives. Choice was the offer of the serpent, see Ge 3.

Of course, The Women’s Bible is not alone in catechizing women in choice. Choice is the airwaves we breathe. We are inundated with information overload that rips us away from the sacred and into the profane. There is hardly a TV show, radio station, commercial, movie, magazine, or internet site that doesn’t have an overtly feminist theme to it. And by feminist, I mean overtly sexual, choice-oriented, OMG-driven, sexually-oriented. Our lives are constantly driven to choose between the Greater Good and the lesser things, and in fact justify our choices and entitlement to the lesser things over and against the Greater Gifts from God.



At how many tables would it be clearly understood that even through much fuss and bluster, even though the pizza was delivered or the chicken brought home, God is the Giver of the meal? Only through catechesis can these things come to light to our children and ourselves.

The July, 2010, issue of For the Life of the World featured articles by Rev. John Pless, What does This Mean? Pastoral Forman: Thoughts About the Future), and Re. Brian Mosemann, (Forming Servants into the Future). Both articles were directed toward the formation of pastors. However, much insight can be gathered for a much younger set, and another sex.

This age seems to have adopted the Simone de Beauvoir ideology of childrearing: bear the child, and then outsource the raising. Underlying this system is the fact that the child will necessarily adopt the core values of his or her caregivers. If he or she goes through multiple caregivers, then he or she will have a multiplicity of catechetical choices already formed by the time he or she is ready for school (usually public), another major catechetical factory. It is rare today to find a child of seven who knows his Catechism as well as his ABCs, and yet, as the Jesuits would say, “Give me a child for seven years and I will show you the man.” Sounds an awful lot like Pr 22: 6.

Luther would have had it so.

These are the most necessary parts of Christian instruction. We should learn to repeat them word for word. Our children should be taught the habit of reciting them daily when they rise in the morning, when they go to their meals, and they go to bed at night; until they repeat them they should not be given anything to eat or drink. (LC, Short Preface)

That is where Luther would have us start. Here is where he suggests one stops learning the Catechism:

But this I say for myself: I am also a doctor and a preacher, just as learned and experienced as all of them who are so high and mighty. Nevertheless, each morning, and whenever else I have time, I do as a child who is being taught the catechism and I read and recite word for word the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Psalms, etc. I must still read and study the catechism daily, and yet I cannot master it as I wish, but must remain a child and pupil of the catechism—and I also do so gladly. These fussy, fastidious fellows would like quickly, with one reading, to be doctors above all doctors, to know it all and to need nothing more. Well this, too, is a sure sign that they despise both their office and the people’s souls, yes, even God and his Word. They do not need to fall, for they have already fallen all too horribly. What they need, however, is to become children and begin to learn the ABCs, which they think they have long since outgrown. (LC, P. 6)

The liturgical life of a seminarian can help to inform us how our own liturgical lives are meant to be. This is the liturgical life Stanton strove so hard to and, with others, in many ways successfully ripped away from both women and men who are also now caught the feminism that rules our age. Mosemann writes:

From the chapel. . . out into their daily lives where they die to self and serve the Lord by loving their neighbor. This rhythm of being filled with the Lord’s grace and living in that grace toward others forms servants in Jesus Christ who

• are strengthened in the Lord’s forgiveness and daily prayer,
• daily meditate on Scripture,
• grow in charitable ways in character and behavior,
• learn to live by the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s prayer, which will sustain them in their service an
• develop a healthy balance among all aspects of life: prayer4, worship, study, service, family and relaxation. (FTLOTW, July, 2010, 13)

The life of the Christian ebbs and flows from the liturgy of the Divine Service itself. This is where Mother Church feeds her young, and men and women alike first learn what God's design for motherhood is.

So what does FFL offer us in response to the pro-choice movement? Motherhood, yes, but what sort? Motherhood shared with fatherhood? Or that which is also considered smashingly wonderful between two mommies? And what of the Motherhood that can be received only from the womb that is the Church through the waters of Baptism? Absent the very foundation of which motherhood is in God's eyes, the FFL sacrifices the Greater Good for the lesser, for it springs from the same root as does all feminism.

The lesser of two evils is still an evil. Luther says to “sin boldly,” but he does not by that invite us to sin. We therefore do not rejoice in sin as the support for one’s chosen cause! The Fifth Commandment in Senior’s hands is a mere plaything. The lesser evil, killing one’s own child, as she would call it, is permissible for the sake of the Greater Good, feminism. However, abortion strikes at the heart of the Incarnation, for every child conceived is yet a reminder of the Babe born of Mary. Satan’s head is still bruised by the heel of that One’s foot! Still, if all sin is removed, as it is for women in feminism, then of what need is there for a Savior? No sin, no Savior. Yet Jesus only came for sinners (Mt 9:13). What then of mercy? Mercy is known only by what God gives through Christ. Oh, dear. What a Catch-22 we have here.

What a lost race we are when we decide what is we are to be or not to be.

Honesty and Fathers Part 2

“Why can’t anyone just get over the fact that I’m not perfect?!”

Bingo! That’s the whole point, buddy! That’s where we can start to rejoice.

If even our repentance is that for which we must finally repent, then we must at last admit that we are, as Luther would say, beggars before God. Then, and only then do we have Christ as our Savior and God as our Father. For, it is through His Son that God becomes a Father to us.

Still, as Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans, we cannot rejoice in our sin as if to say, “I’m forgiven; I’ll be forgiven.” Christ’s forgiveness is the very essence of the Christian and his life. We aren’t forgiven so that we may go on sinning. Neither do we rejoice in Christ’s forgiveness so that we may sin with freedom. As Steven Hein would say, “Now that you are forgiven, what is it that you want to do?” That is, Christ paid for your sins with His flesh and blood as the price. What is it you want to do for your neighbor? Faith in Christ is enacted as love for neighbor.

Pr. 26:11 likens a fool returning to his folly as a dog to his vomit. The fool in this case is the one who refuses to heed, listen to, or live in God’s word. Dogs are not often used as examples of uprightness in the Scriptures. Consider Dt 23:18; 1Sm 17:43; 2Sm 16:9; Jb 18:11; Ps 22:20. So when the Canaanite woman responds to Jesus, “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table,”she is confessing both her utter unworthiness and her faith-wrought hunger for the food only Christ can give. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4). Her daughter could be healed no other way than through the restoration Jesus could provide. This satisfied her immediate need. However, Jesus is the Bread of Life come down from heaven (Jn 6:33). To eat that Bread is to live forever; to be healed forever; to live forever. “Remain in Me and I will remain in you” (Jn15:4).

And then fruit will be borne.

Honesty and Fathers

It was a light week as far as attendance goes. One was on vacation, and another was battling the “bug.” On another day one has difficulties with her eyes. On one day even I was absent for pre-surgical work ups. So it wasn’t a week for introducing new material. I had to keep up with the Math lessons, though. We did that in the morning, reviewed History in the afternoon, and then watched some history videos. There was plenty of time for getting work completed, especially their weekly packet called Daily Work.

Daily Work is Geography, Handwriting, and Vocabulary in small chunks for every day. The students are expected to work on these assignments during free time or at home each day. Each assignment takes less than 10 minutes, tops–if they daydream between questions.

Throughout the week, with all the gift of free time, I reminded the students that this was prime opportunity for working on Daily Work. By one chose to read a book or do whatever else instead. “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?” Oh, he was certain. He even promised that by Friday his completed Daily Work would be on my desk. He knew the consequences: Daily Work is graded.

On Friday we again had a large amount of free time after tests were completed, so I suggested once more he complete his Daily Work. He refused. Did he realize the consequence would be zeroes? He glared at me, then went on to some other work of his choosing.

By the end of the day his Daily Work was not on my desk. I reminded him of his promise to me earlier in the week, and told him I was now going to put those zeroes on his grades. “Thanks for making me feel bad!”

We like to do that, blame others for the misfortune of our own making. I didn’t let him remain there, but rather called him to be honest with himself. I asked him if he thought he’d tried his best to get his work completed. He at first said he had. So I reminded him of his responsibility to the assignment; his promise to me; and, the choices he’d made. It was tough to face. As he put it, “You just want me to say what you want to hear.” We don’t want to be honest even with ourselves. Finally, though, he admitted that he’d made the wrong choices and that he had not done his best to get his work completed.

It’s not easy calling children to be honest with themselves. They get angry and start tossing the blame around. It’s like dodging stray balls in a T-ball game. It’s all a part of their manipulation: Wait a sec. Let’s change the subject and make it about you!

All God’s children do that with their Heavenly Father. It’s a part of our Old Adam. Adam did it when God asked Him “Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” His response was to blame God for the woman God had given him, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” So it was God’s fault Adam ate of the tree, not his own. One of the consequences of sin is we cannot be honest even with ourselves.

Satan offered Eve what she already had, to be in the image of God, and the result was Man is not in the image of another, the father of lies. Ken Korby used to say that the confessional is the only place a liar can tell the truth. However much truth there may be in that, it is still certain as Norman Nagel teaches that when we are finished with our confession, even for that there is much that requires repentance.

Offenses and Celebrations

He wanted to chatter about this-n-that. I’d asked him to get to his work. So I reminded him that his work needed his attention more than I needed his.

“I’m sorry if I offended you!” He said with as much attitude as a nine-year-old could muster.

So the manipulation war was on. That’s what it was. The focus was now on me for what I was doing and feeling. At first I was going to slough it off, “You didn’t offend me. Just get your work completed.” He growled at me.

Then I thought the better of it.

“You know what, you did offend me.” Now I had his attention completely, and it wasn’t pretty.

He hadn’t done what I asked him to do. It was a simple request: Do your work. At its completion, there would have been plenty of time for me to focus on what he wanted to tell me. But he chose to postpone his work by reversing the order, (a habit of his), causing me to issue a reminder to do his work. That irritated him, which made him lash out at me.

So yes, I was offended. For that, I forgave him.

He looked at me a full second. Then he smiled and said, “Thank you.” He went back to his work without another word.

This one needs to be prodded firmly. He’s so very bright that he sometimes out-manipulates himself. We are practicing Psalm 139 for the school closing. For whatever reason he can come up with, he won’t speak up with the rest of the group. He generally mumbles through. I know he knows the psalm. With only six in the class, they needed his help. Usually he says he’s afraid if he speaks too loudly he’ll drown out everyone else. We tell him to go ahead and be the leader of the pack! Yet, he’s still the silent one.

Yesterday he returned after a day’s absence with the “bug.” As we were walking to practice, he said he’d not be able to speak loudly because his stomach hurt still. To my mind I couldn’t see what the difference would be. The practice was dreadful. It seemed none of the children could recall the lines. So I decided to have another go after chapel. They agreed to “do their best.”

That’s all well and fine. I’m sure they all think they are doing their best, and I told them that. But there are other dimensions to doing and giving our best.

My disease is such that my future is not pretty. One day I will most likely wind up in a wheel chair or bedridden with someone changing my diapers. I told my students this. The day before we had planted some lilies, and they all worried about me bending over so much. I am in a “use it or loose it” situation. I have choices to make. I can choose to plant trees and lilies in gardens knowing full well that for days afterward I will hurt; I can exercise my body knowing that it hurts to do so; I can take long walks knowing that it hurts to do it; or I can do none of these things and lose the functions of my body more quickly even if I have my surgery. My not-too-pretty future comes sooner or later depending on whether or not I am willing to work through what hurts me now. And I can still say, “Well, I did my best.”

The beauty of the Christian life is that we don’t live it for ourselves, we live it for others. We aren’t reciting the psalm just to say words for ourselves, but for all those people who will be sitting in the pews. If legs ache, if tummies hurt, if throats are dry–all these things are just a teensy bit that will fly by and go away as soon as the psalm is said. What is important is that the people hear what God wants them to hear in the psalm. When we do our best for others, that’s a different kind of “best.”

It was the same thing for Jesus. He knew how much it would hurt to die, but He didn’t do it for Himself, He did it for you.

The children recited the psalm again, and excelled. This time, all six of them rang out with their voices. I asked my formerly silent one how it felt. “Not so good,” he said, “but great.” He was beaming.

They were all rewarded with special prize pencils.

Pains and Decisions

Several weeks ago I made a radical discovery: the drugs prescribed to treat my various physical conditions were actually my worst enemies. If Satan hadn’t enough slings and arrows in his arsenal on his own with which to assail me, he now had several man-made ones to rip through my soul and mind.

My body reads pain as depression. That is my first sign of a major migraine. I have what is known as intractable migraines. What this means is that I am fighting a low-grade migraine at all times, with the knock-out punch waiting in the background for the right opportunity to take me down. So, after much trial-and-error, the neurologist prescribed a painkiller alongside the anti-seizure meds to be taken as a prophylactic measure. It worked well. All I needed to do then was take an arthritis anti-inflammatory when that knock-out punch came along, and I was good to go. It seemed to be a good system. I’d wait for that time when I’d feel a sudden drop in mood or a sharp pain in my head, and then pop one of the anti-inflammatory pills. Perhaps the pain wasn’t completely gone, but I could at least function. I did notice that I increasing didn’t feel like “myself,” though. That I attributed to another reason.

Depression is a part of the spectrum of symptoms for scoliosis and spondylosis. Satan had a heyday there. There has the chronic pain and the sleep deprivation because of the pain. Then there are feelings of worthlessness: Formerly active individuals now have others making decisions for them (“Well, we didn’t ask you to be involved because thought you’d not be able to do it.); then there is loss of function that increases as time goes on.

The standing wisdom is, “Don’t do the surgery until you absolutely cannot live with your pain.” So I was on pain meds for the scoliosis, too. Nothing heavy. Just enough so I could continue to be active and be in the classroom. But even on top of the pain med for the migraine, both of which were mild narcotics, nothing relieved the pain completely.

My doctors wanted to be kind and treat me for the depression, and I accepted it as if daily bread. Depression for me isn’t only associated with the sciliosis and migraines. Not even a deaconess placement would have taken me to locations of long winters and great periods of rain. I crave the sun for relief. I am predisposed to depression in the first place, and the physical problems just exacerbate it. Drug therapies might help for a while. One sort even helped relieve the pain–for about six weeks. Perhaps for some people these drugs work well and can be received as if daily bread. In me I’m finding a different effect: they increase my anxiety. They drive me inward and upon myself.

Discovering that the drugs were causing me harm came by way of a different problem. The UTI was the catalyst. I’ve been suffering them in frequency, but not in tenacity until this one hit at Thanksgiving. It wasn’t cured even by January. so I went to the urologist. The bacteria that ails me is a nasty little bugger that will take months to cure, maybe even a year. The urologist also found a minor physical problem, and wanted to treat it with a drug. Half of the lowest dose of a drug used for hyper-tension. Sounds easy, right? The drug is also used for PTSD and ADHD sufferers. In me it was like poison. Instead of release, I was rewound!

That sent me to researching all my drugs. The end result is that I asked my doctors to take me nearly off all my pain meds. (I take one of the pain meds I formerly took for break-through migraines as needed, but not daily.) By the time I made the decision to go this route I was becoming nearly paranoid with just enough sanity to know I was and to also know the slings and arrows of my mind were not reality. I had to do it cold-turkey. I tried to ease off as the doctor wanted me to, but to remain that mental cell any longer was too awful. I’ll take the physical pain over the mental pain any day. I don’t know how addicts to real narcotics do it. I know how much I hurt in those days, and it was a trip I don’t want to go on again. Would I recommend this to others? Not at all. And certainly not without consulting the prescribing physician of any medication, as I did.

The truth is, I will be going on it again. With my various doctors’ clearances, I’ll be undergoing the same surgery Aaron Nemoyer had recently. I was scheduled for this procedure last year, but the heart stent was not ready for it. Now I need a clearance not only from my cardiologist, but also from the urologist. The last time I saw my surgeon he told me the surgery was no longer elective. The curvature was such that nerves were being pinched off. This time the surgery won’t be postponed “until school lets out next May.” My husband won’t go for that. Surgery will happen as soon as I have all my clearances. I’m currently scheduled for May 26.

I suppose I could have gone to a therapist, but I don’t do therapy. I do confession and absolution. I don’t have a Bev Yahnke near me. I do have a Pr. Rick Sawyer, whose ear is always open. And I have a husband who loves me as Christ loves the Church.

Psalm 101 became precious to me. God hates a slanderer. God keeps His own Eighth Commandment in Christ for our sakes in His Son’s blood–not only for others, but also for us. To pull back that blood, to look under it again, is to become a prosecuting attorney. Repeating Christ’s words to Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” often became an exercise aimed at myself as well the Accuser himself. And yet, “I am baptized,” was the constant comforting refrain when I feared that I would be stuck in that gear while in this lifetime.

I’ve said to pastors before, and I’ll say once more: Whatever else Paul’s advice to husbands and wives may be in Ephesians 5, first and foremost submitting to each other is also that which involves confessing sins and absolving each other. We get it wrong when we speak only to who does what job in the marriage. The love with which Christ bought His Bride is that of giving up His Body and Blood for the sake of her sins. “Wife, are you still mine even through this for the sake of Christ who bought you?”; “Husband, will you love me even through this for the sake of Christ who bought you?” John is a man whose Head is Christ.

Priorities become sharper at the end of such a journey. I am as before: wife, mother, grandmother, deaconess. Of greatest importance, I am John’s wife.

Tebow and Elbows and Jane

I don’t follow football, so I don’t know a Tebow from an elbow. I’m told he has a great one, and that football is better by far because of it. So Tebow and I don’t have much in common except elbows. More precisely, Pam Tebow and I have not a lot in common except a couple: we’re both mothers of children with great elbows who’s doctors recommended they brought into the world.

I don't know why Gloria Allred should feel it fit to have such a hyssie fit over this sort of information, that a woman would be told to have an abortion and she then raises an amazing child. I’m suspecting it happens more frequently than is told. In my case, should I have chosen it, in 1971, abortions were not readily available in “Mormon Country,” were still considered therapeutic, but not a “woman’s right.” Therapeutic to whom?

Within days, maybe hours after being told I was pregnant with Jane I became ill with a virus. The doctor was perplexed by its tenacity and intensity. What should have been a simple localized thing, took over my body, ravaged it, and didn’t let go. It wasn’t life-threatening to me, but my OB was concerned for my child. The virus repeated over the course of my pregnancy. In fact, I still take drugs (once they were developed years later) to prevent its recurrence.



The doctor recommended abortion. Was it self-preservation because she feared post-delivery litigation? Or was it real concern for me, that she didn’t want me tethered to a “damaged” child? Was it concern for the child based on this new term being batted about, quality of life? Who knows. She told me that in her opinion the pregnancy would not end well. Throughout my pregnancy she would say things like, “Well, at least it has a good heartbeat.” She was clearly in disagreement with my decision. I didn’t have a choice. Jane was born in perfect health, to the entire surprise of the doctor. But that is entirely God’s gift to this tale. No matter the circumstances of her birth and condition, Jane is and ever will be the joy and delight of her father and me. She was my child from the moment of her conception. I was her mother even before she was conceived.

Vocation is what God puts into your hand to do. That includes many choices, all of them for the sake of the neighbor. My child, my neighbor, does not require murdering for the sake of my comfort. No child born after 1971 lives free from the shadow of abortion. Feminism likes to think abortion is the premier jewel in her tiara of rights. Strip that away and she whines she has nothing left: “My body, my choice.” That’s because she even denies the God by whom she receives her body, and the Body and Blood by which her body is redeemed and sanctified. Early feminists, even while working for the cessation of abortions and better conditions for women, nevertheless ushered in this present era when they “killed” God and His authority in women’s lives with their anti-religion stance.

Feminism’s (Allred’s hyssie fit) position is not so much anti-abortion as it is the same as Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s: anti-religion. Strip it all away and get to the heart of it abortion is about the right of a woman to control the influence of 1. man’s influence upon her body; and, 2. God’s control of her life. Kill the sperm and it’s product and God is contained; kill God and His word and men are controllable.

Pam Tebow followed her God-given vocation of motherhood after doctors told her not to. Is that so hard to believe? We don’t find it incredulous. However, Christianity and the claims of Christians will become increasingly under attack. Perhaps more of us who faced similar circumstances, even though we gave birth to children with less notable elbows, should speak up and let the Allreds realize that it isn’t such a rare feat after all. should feel it fit to have such a hyssie fit over this sort of information, that a woman would be told to have an abortion and she doesn’t then raises an amazing child. I’m suspecting it happens more frequently than is told. In my case, should I have chosen it, in 1971 abortions were not readily available in Utah. In “Mormon Country” they were still considered therapeutic, but not a “woman’s right.”

We follow the trail fairly easily: Eve is the icon of the Church, Christ's Body. We know this because Jesus said the "Scriptures everywhere testify of Me" (Jn 5:39). Can we not also follow the trail backwards and conclude that anything that attempts to destroy Christ's Body and otherwise deny Him thereby is an icon of sin, death, and the devil? Motherhood is sacred. Jesus' life from womb to tomb is guarantee of that. Women's lives are identified by the life of Christ: His in theirs, theirs in His through Baptism. Yet until feminism can abandon all other reasons than this one as an opposition to abortion, it is still advancing the agenda of all that is destructive to to women and to the Woman who is Christ's Body, the Church.

Christianity and the claims of Christians will become increasingly under attack. Perhaps more of us who faced similar circumstances, even though we gave birth to children with less notable elbows, should speak up and let the Allreds realize that it isn’t such a rare feat after all.

Gifts and Satan and Candles and Menorahs

Christmas Break is here. I can finally sit back and take a breather myself for a few moments before things get nicely hectic with my children and four grandchildren in Little Rock. My “Second Family” of six children are off with their own families by now. We had a half-day at school yesterday following the annual Christmas Program, party, and gift exchange.

While having all the usual elements of a school Christmas Program, Pastor Sawyer’s sermon makes this rather something closer to a “Lutheran altar call.” He misses no chance to catechize parents in infant baptism, and this year presented a prime opportunity. Three of our students became older siblings recently. One of these infants is headed for Baptism; the other is sadly going to wait until he makes his own decision.

As pastor pointed out yesterday, the one thing that makes a gift a gift is that it is given. It surely can be accepted, rejected, exchanged, or returned, but the one thing a gift must be to be a gift is GIVEN. Even these tiny newborns will be given gifts this Christmas, some even from Santa.




Imagine a note from Santa:

“Dear Baby,

I have a gift for you, but you are too young to accept it or even understand why it is given to you or what it means. So I can’t give it to you until you are older.

Love,
Santa”

Such a “Santa” might soon be known as “Satan.”

God through parents gives babies their first gift ever without them deciding that it should be theirs by accepting it. This is the gift of life. Babies are conceived and born without their permission. Can you imagine the poor mother whose child is slow in understanding what being born is all about or is not ready to accept his place in the world? “Mornin’ ma’am. How long’s it been you’ve rented that womb to your child? Eight years now?”

My Second Family understands this so clearly, primarily because they’ve been catechized every school day in the foundations of the Christian Faith, and by Christian I mean Lutheran. We pray the Catechism; we apply it to our lives in what we say and do. It becomes a part of who we are. By that it is the ABC’s of what we do and be.



The first week of Advent began as always. A young girl lights the menorah. In years when I have only boys, I will lights the candles. We read the passages to explain why we used this practice. In Jewish homes even now, Seder candles are lit by a female.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined, Is 9:2.

God promised His Seed would come through a woman (Ge 3:15), so the darkness would be overcome by that Seed.



The continuity of the Old and New Testaments is made certain by Christ who said, You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, Jn 5:39. So, the Advent candle is lit from the menorah. John 1 identifies the Life who is Light of Men, (4-5); He is Creator (3,10); He is the Word of God(1); He is the Son of God who tabernacled among us(14).

And yet this Gift of God the Father was and is today rejected. John 1 says “the light shines forth and the darkness has not overcome it,” (5). Furthermore, even though He was in the world the world He created, His own creation and creatures “did not know did not recognize their own Creator (10). He came to His own people, and His own people did not receive Him, (11). Jesus spoke to the Jews of His day who claimed to be Children of Abraham doing what Abraham would do. “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life,”(8:11). Jesus told them that Abraham saw His day and rejoiced in it. There are some who have yet to do the same, but still claim to be Abraham’s Children. Others continue to lift up and look to Israel as a place of salvation for the world.

It is Christ who was lifted up for our sins. His Body and Blood is fed to us in the bread and wine He by which gives us Himself, and into our ears through which He comes by way of His words of forgiveness in the Absolution and preaching, and upon our heads in the water and Word. Rejection of God’s gift, or exchanging it for another results in a different way of salvation. “No thanks. No Jesus. I have another way.” Jesus told his hearers that those who rejected Him were of another father (8:44). My Second Family has no trouble at all understanding that anyone who does not have Christ as his Savior cannot have God as His Father; and where God the Father and His Son are, there the Holy Spirit is, too.

That took care of the first week. The second week dawned icon and one of my students asked, “What next? We need more.” So we searched about and one of them looked at the display of icons on the wall and said, “That one! We need to know that one means.” It was the Tree of Jesse icon. Jesse sleeps at the root, the Theotokos and her Son rest in the middle of the tree which springs from him. Twelve prophets sit in four branches, each holding an item identifying himself and his prophesy of Christ.

In the next few days I hope to write for you what was presented to my Second Family. A blessed Advent to you all!