Gottesblog

Pastors on the LCMS roster should have received a letter from CPH advertising the first in what will be 20 new volumes (vols. 56-75) of Luther in English: American Edition, vol. 69, Sermons on the Gospel of St. John, Chapters 17-20. These new volumes are under the general editorship of Christopher B. Brown - a classmate of mine who was ABD in Reformation studies at Harvard while he was working on his MDiv in St. Louis. Yeah, that kind of smart. He's now teaching at Boston U and no doubt keeping the separated brethren on their toes.

I recently attended a graveside service for a family member of a parishioner. It took place at a national cemetery and a US Army chaplain officiated. In my first call out of seminary I served under a man who was a National Guard chaplain and was always amazed at the faithful service and Word he brought to men under arms and in harm's way (he served in Balad for over a year). I gained a great appreciation for just how hard that job is and how much pressure there is in that occupation to buckle under (his stories about the higher ups "encouraging" the chaplains to keep prayers "ecumenical," and therefore devoid of Trinitarian formulae, are really something).

So there I am sitting in Saint Louis University hospital's third floor surgical waiting room with a parishioner's family. You know the score: big surgery, long wait, annoying TV. Said TV is always hard to ignore. Others round about are laughing at it, which causes one to look up from one's reading to see what was so funny. It was some sitcom from the Disney Network. A basic teen sitcom. Here is what I learned.

"Nor is it necessary that human traditions, rites, or ceremonies instituted by men should be alike everywhere." So says AC VII - and we all say Amen. Uniformity in the ceremonies of the Mass that are neither commanded nor forbidden by God is certainly not necessary for the true unity of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

I'm sure I'm late to the game in noticing this one – but just yesterday while confessing the Creed I realized what a bulwark of sola scriptura it is. In our confession of the Holy Spirit we say that he “spoke by the prophets” - not through a majority vote of bishops, or a supposed consensus of the faithful, or anything else. The Spirit speaks by the prophets. Best to listen to them.

Two years ago our district's pastoral conference dealt with worship. We had an excellent panel of pastors representing all sides of the divisions among us. At the end of it, putting on my best churchmanly behavior I asked if the panelists would each consider the following proposal. Use whatever instrumentation, whatever songs, whatever state of unvestedness, whatever PowerPoint slides you prefer in your congregation's worship: but for the actual words, the order of the service, use one of the services as printed in LSB, TLH, or LW.

What would we do without Acts 2? You can piece together a definition of the Church from other Scriptures, of course - but nowhere else is it all laid out so clearly and in such detail. The Church is the baptized people of God (who have been called to baptism through the preaching of the Word) now gathered around the apostles' teaching and fellowship, the Lord's Supper, and the liturgy.

I had the joy of authoring the text for CPH's new illustrated introduction to the Church's year, Ordering Our Days in His Peace. It's a sequel to Scot Kinnaman's Worshiping with Angels and Archangels, which focused on the Divine Service. A third volume by Pam Nielsen, Behold the Lamb, deals with the symbolism of the Church and is due out shortly.