Always something more

to; lalh'san dia; tw'n Profhtw'n

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.

This is another example of the depth of the church's liturgy. There is always something more to learn and see. Even if you've already noticed this treasure (which was new to me), there will be more treasures for you to mine.

How impoverished those Christians are who make up their own liturgies, creeds, and lectionaries! Just think of what they are missing. They spend their time only on what they recognize as important and so unwittingly neglect the whole counsel of God.

Which reminds me of anything thing about the liturgy. . . We are accustomed to point out how the liturgy kept the Church alive with the Word of the Gospel through the long "Babylonian Captivity" of the medieval period. Today I thank the Lord for the liturgy and lectionary for keeping the Church alive amongst us by guarding us against our great temptation: anti-nomianism. Last week's collect and yesterday's epistle lesson were very good for that.

Trinity XIII Collect

Almighty and everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith, hope, and charity, and as we do obtain that which You promise, make us to love that which You command; through Jesus Christ, your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end.

Trinity XIIII Epistle

Galatians 5:16-24

¹⁶ But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. ¹⁷ For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. ¹⁹ Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, ²⁰ idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, ²¹ envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. ²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. ²⁴ And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

+HRC

A Serious Proposal

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.

I think this would be a great step toward unity in worship among us. Given the rhetoric from the advocates of contemporary worship, I also thought that this would be an acceptable middle road for them. After all, they would still have all the accoutrements they claim necessary to reaching out in today's world.

But, oddly enough, the chief proponent of contemporary worship on the panel reacted negatively. It seems that there really is more to it than the externalities: he wanted control over the words, too. He wanted the opportunity to tell his congregation what to say each week and in what order to say it.

Well, his reaction aside, I still think the proposal is a good one. I think men of good will who have an honest disagreement with TGC (The Gottesdienst Crowd) would find this acceptable. And I think it would redound to the whole Synod's benefit. One small step, and all that.

+HRC

Exceptional Indeed

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.

An attack on any of those things - preaching, baptism, apostolic teaching, apostolic fellowship, the Lord's Supper, or the prayers - is an attack at the heart of who we are as the Church. In the Missouri Synod the chief attack comes at the apostles' fellowship - that is, at the Ministry. Our Synod has endorsed communities of the baptized where there is no apostolic fellowship - but how can you have anything else on the list without that? How could you do without any one item in that list? Can the Church just be a cabal of ministers to the exclusion of all the baptized? Well then, how can the Church be a cabal of the baptized to the exclusion of those who stand in the apostolic office?

All that came to mind as I read in the President's Leadership News (who is paying for this by the way?) that the Synod is "exceptionally united in what we believe, teach, and confess." I wrote this letter to the editor of the Reporter, with which the President's Leadership News was delivered. The editor responded and said that he won't print it because the PLN has no editorial relationship with the Reporter. Right: it just rides on the same mailing permit and costs. . .

Dear Editor,

I would like to humbly take exception to Pres. Kieschnick's comments
included in the latest Reporter that the Synod is "exceptionally
united in what we believe, teach, and confess." For twenty years now
the Missouri Synod has been deeply divided over our confessional
subscription to Article XIV of the Augsburg Confession - which states
that no one should publicly preach or administer the Sacraments unless
he has a "regular, public call" (rite vocatus) - that is, unless he is
a pastor, a man called to the Office of the Ministry. In 1989, the
Synod in Convention introduced a resolution (1989 Resolution 3-05B)
that allowed for laymen to preach and conduct the sacraments without
receiving a valid call and being placed into this Office ("lay
ministry").

That the Synod is deeply divided on this topic is shown in that 1)
both seminary systematics faculties issued a joint statement in July
2007 against the Synod's current understanding and practice saying,
"[T]he Treatise [on the Power and Primacy of the Pope] does not
imagine churches without ordained ministers of some kind, even in
emergency situations or when no one else will call and ordain men for
the office. As confessors of the same doctrine, neither should we."
and 2) The Northern, Central, and Southern Illinois districts all
passed resolutions in 2009 memorializing the 2010 Synod in Convention
to retract this violation of our confessions.

I hope and pray that the next Synod Convention will have the courage
to follow the guidance of our seminary faculties and undo what was
done in 1989. That would be a great step toward making Pres.
Kieschnick's headline true.

+HRC

Worship and Spiritual Care Workshop

For those within a few hours of the Indianapolis area, please take note of the annual Worship Workshop next month, hosted by the Indiana District Worship & Spiritual Care Committee at Advent Lutheran Church in Zionsville, Indiana (a northwest suburb of Indy). It will take place on Saturday the 19th of September, beginning with Matins at 9:30 a.m. and concluding around 3:00 p.m. with a hymn festival on the Nicene Creed. Information on the workshop and the registration form are available from the Indiana District Website here.

Pastor Rick Stuckwisch will be giving the plenary presentation on the Freedom and Fundamentals of Faith in Worship. The goal will be to address the criteria by which adiaphorous rites and ceremonies are received, evaluated, selected and practiced in the service and support of the Word of God, in faith and love.

Also at the workshop, Dr. Paul Grime will be leading sectionals on the Church Year and on the criteria for the selection of choral music. Kantor Kevin Hildebrand will do a sectional on the criteria for the selection of organ music. Pastor David Koeneman will speak on Communion practice. Another sectional will address parish prayer life. And Mrs. Lois Prahlow will do a sectional presentation on child-friendly ideas for visually adorning the church's worship.

The modest cost of the workshop ($25) includes lunch in the middle of the day. Again, more information and the registration form are avaible as a pdf from the Indiana District website. one and all are cordially invited and welcome to join us. Mail the registration by Holy Cross Day (14 September); or else, just show up on the 19th.

Melanchthon's Dustbuster

by Larry Beane

In going through some of my old folders with articles in them the other day, I happened upon John R. Stephenson's 1995 LOGIA piece entitled "Reflections on the Appropriate Vessels for Consecrating and Distributing the Precious Blood of Christ" (LOGIA, Epiphany 1995).

Any day is a good day to reread Dr. Stephenson, and so I did.

Though the topic under consideration was mainly the propriety of the use of individualist shooters for the reception of Holy Communion, the essay quickly moved into a discussion of the infiltration of Reformed theology into Lutheran churches - especially insofar as how these Reformed doctrinal incursions have affected Lutheran eucharistic practice.

Stephenson reminds us that:

"[S]ecretly during Luther's lifetime and openly after his death, [Melanchthon] departed most radically from the Reformer's conception of the real presence. In his regrettably yet unpublished ThD dissertation [Which has since become available through Concordia Theological Seminary Press +LB], Edward F. Peters tells how eight years after Luther's demise Melanchthon coined the term artolatreia (bread worship) in disparagement of the eucharistic adoration practiced by the Reformer and his Gnesio-Lutheran followers. This sacrilegious term of ridicule was employed first of all in a letter to John Calvin, being repeated in a communication with Henry Bullinger, who had succeeded Zwingli in Zurich.... First privately and after 1546 publicly, Melanchthon denied the efficacy of the consecration reducing the sacramental usus or actio to nothing more than the sumptio" (p. 12).

Melanchthon's deviation from the Lutheran understanding of the consecration and the real presence resulted in further Melanchthonian mockery of the Gnesio-Lutherans.

Stephenson:

"[T]he following information [is] offered by Chemnitz, Kirchner, and Selneccer in their exhaustive Histori des Sacramentstreits, where these doctors of the church point out with pain that an attack Melanchthon launched ostensibly on the Gnesio-Lutherans Joachim Moerlin and Erasmus Sarcerius was in fact none too subtly directed at blessed Martin Luther himself. The three confessors stoutly maintain that reverent treatment of spilled consecrated wine occurs within the parameters of the Nihil Rule:

.... Philip takes Dr. Moelin and Sacerius to task with the words: 'Moerlin at Braunschweig has said, "You mustn't mumble incoherently but rather say precisely what the priest has in his hand." Sarcerius will have it that particles of hosts that have fallen to the ground should be carefully recovered, with the surrounding earth being shaved and burned, etc.'"

Melanchthon's mockery of the Gnesio-Lutherans for wishing to be very clear in their confession about what the consecrated elements truly are (doctrine), as well as how even the particles of these consecrated elements are to be treated (practice) is being repeated today.

I could not help but think of this blogpost that pointed to similar mockery of the real presence in our own day and age and in our own synod (including the suggestion that the particles of hosts that have fallen to the ground be sucked up into a dustbuster. Just as in the sixteenth century, there is a modern-day gainsaying of both the doctrine and the practice of those who believe the Lord is physically and substantially present from the time of the consecration until the elements have been consumed, along with the resulting practice of fastidiousness about the reliquiae. The suggestion that "particles of hosts that have fallen to the ground should be carefully recovered" as being something to be a source of mockery does indeed come right from the mouth of Melanchthon in the tragically Reformed view of the Holy Sacrament that he seemed to develop.

Had there been dustbusters in the 16th century, Melanchthon would no doubt have used that invention as part of his mockery as well.

Here (per Stephenson's translation of the original German, also published in the article) is how the Gnesio-Lutherans saw Melanchthon's mockery, also from the Histori des Sacramentstreits:

"Many good pious folks were also disturbed by these words of Philip, for they take aim at none other than Dr. Luther, who (as we heard above, in the year 1533) directed these words to the Frankfurt Council: 'It is not in order here to slosh the broth around in one's mouth and mumble incoherently, but to spit out the broth and be done with incoherent speech and say forthrightly what the bread and wine in the sacrament are.'

Thus Sacerius merely wants to say that this Sacrament is to be treated with all reverence and that one should not act frivolously with the external signs to which the word of Christ has been added, but should distinguish [between them and ordinary elements] as Luther and Pomeranus did in Wittenberg. When a little drop [of wine] from the consecrated chalice spilled on the altar they went up with all reverence and saw to it that [the spilled wine] should not be trodden underfoot."

Dr. Stephenson's article is a must-read in its entirety. The Epiphany 1995 issue of LOGIA is available at no charge as a PDF download, and can be ordered here.