Posts tagged “Hermann Sasse”

Reformation Sunday 2011 sermon

Posted on November 2nd, 2011

From October 30, 2011. There was a baptism at the beginning of the Divine Service for this day. It’s lonely being a Lutheran. One of the great twentieth century theologians, Hermann Sasse, resisted the Nazis and was forced to flee to Australia. A collection of his essays has been published under the title The Lonely Way. It’s called The Lonely Way because of this quote from a 1943 essay: As Luther once went the lonely way between Rome and Spiritualism, so the Lutheran Church today stands alone between the world powers of Roman Catholicism on the one hand and modern Protestantism on the other. Her doctrine which teaches that the Spirit is bound to the means of grace is as inconceivable to modern people…

Categories: Sermons

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Commemoration of Martin Luther, Doctor and Confessor (Observed): Sermon for Circuits 9A and 9B Pastoral Conference

Posted on February 17th, 2011

Note: Portions adapted from  “Luther and the Teaching of the Reformation,” Part 2, Hermann Sasse, The Lonely Way —- Tomorrow is the anniversary of Dr. Luther’s death; he died on Feb. 18, 1546, in Eisleben, the town where he was born. Luther’s life and theology are well-known to us, but the difference in his times and our own makes it tempting to think of him, and our Reformation confessions, as being irrelevant to the modern questions. But I would submit this: The problem with the church today is that Luther’s problem has stopped being our problem. Luther’s problem was the original problem of all true theology: How can mankind be redeemed – rescued from his sins, and the death and hell they have merited? For…

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A story about Sasse (and about preaching)

Posted on September 29th, 2010

One of the enjoyable fringe benefits of studying with John Kleinig is getting to hear stories about Hermann Sasse. Yesterday, he recounted this one: In chapel, a creative student preached a creative sermon. He was not vested, he had props and puppets, and he rearranged the chapel so that he was the center. Everyone was entertained … except Sasse. Sasse stomped out at the end. After morning tea, Sasse came into class, stomping in. He raised his finger and started shaking it. When he raised his finger, a pronouncement was going to be made. “Some of you blokes preach as if you were speaking to cows in a paddock.” Lesson to preachers: You’re not preaching in a field, but in a holy place. You’re…

Categories: Theology

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The only task of Christian theology

Posted on July 1st, 2010

Kyrios Jesous Christos, “Jesus Christ is Lord.” This is the original confession of the church. With it the Christian faith once entered world history. To understand the sense of this confession ever more deeply is the great, yes, basically the only task of all Christian theology. To repeat this confession, to speak it in ever new forms, to translate it into the language of all times and peoples, to protect it against misunderstandings and reinterpretations, and to understand its meaning for all areas of life—that is the task of all confession building within Christendom. No later confession of the church can and wants to be anything else than a renewal of the original confession to Jesus as Christ and Lord. This is true of…

Categories: Theology

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The Lord and the Church

Posted on June 30th, 2010

Jesus is Lord first for His church and then for His servant. Jesus is “my Lord” only because He is “our Lord.” Only as members of the church do we belong to Him. The Lord and the church belong so much together that the one is unthinkable without the other. One cannot speak of the Lord without also speaking of the church; and conversely, as soon as I speak of the church, I speak of the Lord. They belong together as head and body, as cornerstone and house, as vine and branches. –Herman Sasse, “Jesus Christ Is Lord: The Church’s Original Confession” in We Confess Jesus Christ

Categories: Theology

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Should We Train “Soul-Winners”?

Posted on June 15th, 2010

Immanuel’s by-laws have a strange reference to “soul-winning.” I’ve always wondered how that crept into our governing documents. The following section from Sasse is enlightening: The optimism and synergism prevalent in America have made such inroads into American Lutheranism that the Augsburg Confession’s ‘where and when it pleases God’ has for practical purposes been given up. Evidence of this is the uncritical taking over of ideas and programs of stewardship and evangelism from such groups as the Seventh Day Adventists. The pastor schools the people so that with the right kind of pious talk they will then be equipped to win other people for the church. In place of the office of preaching reconciliation comes the training of  ‘soul-winners,’ teaching them just the right…

Categories: Theology

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Piepkorn on the sanctorum communionem

Posted on May 20th, 2010

When I read Sasse on the sanctorum communionem as a reference to the Sacrament of the Altar, I was convinced. I was troubled, however, by the seeming discrepancy with Luther’s Large Catechism. My colleague, Rev. Charles McClean, showed me this passage after I mentioned to him my concern. “If a later symbol misunderstands an earlier symbol, we are not committed to such a misunderstanding as far as the earlier symbol is concerned, but we are committed to the doctrinal content of both symbols. Thus the Large Catechism interprets the words sanctorum communionem in the Apostolicum as an explanatory apposition to sanctam ecclesiam catholicam and proposes to render them “a holy community” (LC II 49). But it is becoming increasingly clear that sanctorum communionem originally…

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Luther, the Roman Mass, and the Lutheran Liturgy

Posted on October 26th, 2009

Another gem from Sasse, as we reflect this week on the Reformation: Although in his book on the Babylonian captivity of the church and in the Smalcald Articles, [Luther] unmasked and condemned the idolatry which had crept into the Mass, he admitted that the Roman Mass was still a valid Eucharist. And so he did not, like Zwingli and Calvin, introduce a new liturgy. The Lutheran liturgy was merely a Mass without the invocation of the saints and [without] the Roman conception of sacrifice. To Luther it was unthinkable that the unity of the Western church might be forever destroyed. He wanted to recall this church to what he was convinced was the pure teaching of the Gospel and, at the same time, the…

Categories: Theology

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Reformation

Posted on October 25th, 2009

Text: Romans 3:19-28 +++ An adult was also confirmed at this service. The problem with the church today is that Luther’s problem has stopped being our problem. Luther’s problem was the original problem of all true theology: How can mankind be redeemed – rescued from his sins, and the death and hell they have merited? For Luther, the question became a very personal one: “How can I be redeemed?” This question is really a question about God: “How can I find a God of mercy?” Today’s questions about God – if they are about God at all – are throughly self-absorbed: How can I find a God who can give me my best life now? How can I have a life of purpose? How…

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The modern man's conception of God, compared to Luther's

Posted on October 24th, 2009

The God of Kant, Schleiermacher, and Ritschl is no longer a consuming fire. If the modern man believes in God at all, he believes in him as the guarantor of his happiness. And so the thought of the existence of God has become, since the eighteenth century, a comforting thought. For Luther it was a most disturbing one. In bitter moments of grave temptation he often wished that God did not exist. For if God exists, and if he really is God, then man is lost. Created to do God’s will, and incapable of its fulfillment, he is guilty of the judgment [of God]. And how can man hope to stand before the God of heaven and his unerring judgment? –Hermann Sasse, from “Luther…

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