Posts tagged “Reformation”

Colorful bickering [updated]

Posted on November 23rd, 2011

I find the kerfluffle over colors among the guardians of the Reformation to be positively hilarious. (See here, and then here.) LCMS pastor Joshua Genig suggests using purple instead of red for Reformation, and the poor fellow gets his shins kicked repeatedly. (Genig’s got a few things seriously wrong, mind you – I won’t defend his position.) It’s no fun being on the receiving end when the ecclesial brute squad takes issue with your colors. Or so I’ve been told. But what’s so terribly humorous about the whole thing is this is the same crowd that thinks nothing of changing the color for a whole season (Advent) to follow—whom again? oh yeah—the Papists! Snigger. Of course, anybody who digs just a smidge into the…

Categories: Humor, Liturgy

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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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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…

Categories: Sermons

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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…

Categories: Theology

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Reformation sermon

Posted on November 17th, 2008

  For those of you new to Lutheranism, it is our custom to celebrate Reformation Sunday on the last Sunday in October. Despite the fact that we have a picture of Luther preaching on the cover of the service folder, the Reformation really isn’t about Luther, and the Lutheran Church isn’t about Luther. Luther was merely – well, there really isn’t anything “mere” about Luther. His personality was larger than life, which can overshadow his real importance: that he was merely a humble instrument of God, a preacher of the kingdom of heaven. On Oct. 31, 1517, Luther nailed the Ninety-five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. These theses begin, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ He…

Categories: Sermons

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A Reformation thought from the sainted Dr. Barry

Posted on October 31st, 2008

With great joy, we Lutherans have never understood ourselves to be a ‘new church,’ but the church of the Apostles, restored, cleansed, and reformed.  Luther realized that the Roman Church had departed from the church catholic. -Rev. A. L. Barry, late president of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod

Categories: Theology

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Extracting teeth from hymns

Posted on October 20th, 2008

I love LSB. It’s better than LW in just about every way. And I wouldn’t exchange it for TLH even if I could. But the hymn texts in LSB are in many cases stripped of their vigor from the earlier translations, and I am continually discovering “new” stanzas that were omitted from the modern books. This Sunday, in honor of the Reformation, we will sing all nine stanzas of “Lord Jesus Christ, with Us Abide” from TLH. Here is the text:

Categories: Theology

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Martin Chemnitz

Posted on November 9th, 2007

Today, one day before the birth of Dr. Luther, we commemorate the birth of the “Second Martin,” Martin Chemnitz. From Synod’s website: Martin Chemnitz (1522–1586) is regarded after Martin Luther as the most important theologian in the history of the Lutheran Church. Chemnitz combined a penetrating intellect and an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Scripture and the church fathers with a genuine love for the church. When various doctrinal disagreements broke out after Luther’s death in 1546, Chemnitz determined to give himself fully to the restoration of unity in the Lutheran Church. He became the leading spirit and principal author of the 1577 Formula of Concord, which settled the doctrinal disputes on the basis of the Scriptures and largely succeeded in restoring unity among Lutherans.…

Categories: Theology

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Reformation Sermon

Posted on October 29th, 2007

Someone once summarized the entire Lutheran Reformation in the sixteenth century as a reformation of the Sacrament of Penance. Today, Reformation Sunday, we should ask ourselves, “Why are we Lutheran?” But along with that question, we should ask another: “Are we Lutheran?” If it is true that the entire Reformation can be seen as really a reformation of the Sacrament of Penance, we should look at our own church life, family life, and personal life in that light. The theology of Penance to which Luther and the Reformers were responding was one that saw Penance as an action to be performed. Going to the priest for confession had become a mechanistic act where the mouth confessed but the heart was not changed. The sale…

Categories: Sermons

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