Joy and Pentecost

Pentecost is the feast of joy, for "the Holy Spirit turns to joy whatever He touches" (Seraphim of Sarov). This is so because the Spirit anchors our joy solidly in the hope of the Age to come which will attend our Lord Jesus' appearing. To give into pessimism, discouragement or despair is to fixate upon the horrors and troubles of this fallen age where death is always the seeming victor. But the Holy Spirit comes to lift our eyes beyond the rock bottom reality of a fallen world and proclaim to us that in our beloved Lord Jesus there is a deeper, truer and more certain reality: for Love Himself will be the end, and in the certainty of His triumph lies the courage to face all the despair and darkness that would devour us with a joy they cannot conquer. Rather, weeping with those who weep, our one prayer, our constant Pentecost inspired prayer, is Marantha!

Homily at Evening Prayer (last night)

Text: Romans 8:12–17

The Holy Spirit is no spirit of bondage, no spirit of fear. That’s another spirit and he’s anything but holy. The unclean spirit, the evil spirit, Satan and his minions, they thrive on you being bound to sin and filled with fear. You know, what I mean. You can’t sleep at night and suddenly, there he is, plopping the old DVD into the player and making you see your sin. Showing you the lies, the hurt look on the faces of the people you’ve treated shamefully (most of all those who might be sleeping under the same roof at the moment), the words that you’ve used to leave other cut and bleeding, the times you’ve failed to confess Christ and slunk away in silence, shamed like Peter. He’s got them all recorded and he loves to watch them with you. All the while saying: “So you are bound. Bound to me. Bound to be with me forever in the fires. You can’t even pretend that you belong to HIM. He wouldn’t have the likes of you, and you know it. You feel it in your bones.”

Ah, you know what I speak of, don’t you? There’s a reason our Lord revealed him as the accuser. For that’s what the devil loves to do. To accuse. And he doesn’t even need to use lies. He can devastate you with the truth.

But against this one God sends a helper for you, an advocate for you, one who pleads for you, but in you. The gift of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit doesn’t lead you to fear. He leads you to peace. He does this because He doesn’t come to accuse, but to proclaim, to testify, to announce that you are not a slave, but a child. A beloved child. That you have a Father who loves you. A Father who gave His Son to spill His blood to blot out your every offense. All those true things that Satan shows you in the middle of the night when you lie awake?  The Spirit shows you that every last one of them has been lifted. Has been carried. Has been taken by the Son of God to His cross and answered for.

Pastor Wolfmueller brought me this joy some months ago: what your Lord does right now in the presence of the Father, to plead for you as your advocate, your paraclete, your defense attorney, never ceasing to plead His own atoning sacrifice on your behalf (1 John 2 stuff!); what Jesus does for you before the Father, this Jesus sends His Spirit to do within you. To testify, to bear withness with your spirit, that you are a child of God, and if a child then an heir. An heir of God and so co-heir with Jesus. Suffering with Him that you also may be glorified with Him. All that’s His by virtue of His being the Beloved Son of the Father, the Spirit proclaims within you, is forked over to you as yours. Everything. You even get to join Him in His “Abba.”

And so the Spirit of Holiness, the Spirit of God, leads you away from slavery to sin, away from the constant fretting and fear that fill anyone if they fixate upon themselves and see the truth about themselves unvarnished. He puts his finger (for He is the finger of God) beneath your chin and lifts your head up from yourself to see your Savior. He leads you to your Jesus, to look upon Him, to see in Him your perfect righteousness as the very gift of divine love poured out on you, proclaimed to you as yours. The Spirit discloses to you the gifts that God freely gives you and says: “Listen not to the evil one. For there is a truth deeper than anything he would ever be able to show you. It is the truth that you have been loved with a love immeasureable, deep and divine. Be at peace. You have a Father, you have a Savior, and you have Me to constantly remind you of the fact.”

As you, people loved by God, begin your work tonight, ask for the grace of the Holy Spirit that you may renounce the way of being accusers of our brothers – the way of the evil spirit – and join in the joy of the Holy Spirit, proclaiming in every resolution you craft: “Rejoice, children of God! You are loved in Jesus! Fear not!” For all this we send up glory and praise to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and to the ages of ages! Amen.

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

It would have been better to understand the sacraments in this way as anticipation of the redemption of the end time instead of forcing them into the scheme of the sign theory.—Hermann Sasse, We Confess: The Sacraments, p. 146.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

Each sin, a transgression of the divine Law, is an offense to the high majesty of the eternal, holy, and just God and thus merits eternal rejection by God. Nevertheless, there are degrees of offense. A person who is continually plagued by certain sins can still receive forgiveness and stand in God's grace, while other sins necessarily exclude a person from God's kingdom and holy fellowship.—C. F. W. Walther, God Grant It!, p. 440.

Patristic Quote of the Day

Therefore be the more earnest always to be followers first of God and then of the Saints; that after death they also may receive you as well-known friends into the eternal habitations.—St. Anthony as cited by St. Athanasius in the Life of St. Anthony, par. 91.

A good read...

...on the Gosnell case here from LCMS Life Ministries.

Patristic Quote of the Day

But assuredly that which the sacred Psalm sings in our ears, is true; “Because my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord has taken me up.” Then if our parents have forsaken us, how take they part in our cares and affairs? But if parents do not, who else are there of the dead who should know what we are doing, or what we suffer? Isaiah the Prophet says, “For You are our Father: because Abraham has not known us, and Israel is not cognizant of us.” If so great Patriarchs were ignorant what was doing towards the People of them begotten, they to whom, believing God, the People itself to spring from their stock was promised; how are the dead mixed up with affairs and doings of the living, either for cognizance or help? How say we that those were favored who deceased ere the evils came which followed hard upon the decease, if also after death they feel whatever things befall in the calamitousness of human life? Or haply do we err in saying this, and in accounting them to be quietly at rest whom the unquiet life of the living makes solicitous? What then is that which to the most godly king Josias God promised as a great benefit, that he should first die, that he might not see the evils which He threatened should come to that place and People? Which words of God are these: “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: concerning My words which you have heard, and feared before My face when you heard what I have spoken concerning this place and them which dwell therein, that it should be forsaken and under a curse; and hast rent your garments, and wept before Me, and I have heard you, says the Lord of Sabaoth: not so; behold, I will add you unto your fathers, and you shall be added unto them in peace; and your eyes shall not see all the evils which I am bringing upon this place and upon them that dwell therein.” He, frightened by God's comminations, had wept, and rent his garments, and is made, by hastening on of his death, to be without care of all future evils, because he should so rest in peace, that all those things he should not see. There then are the spirits of the departed, where they see not whatever things are doing, or events happening, in this life to men. Then how do they see their own graves, or their own bodies, whether they lie cast away, or buried? How do they take part in the misery of the living, when they are either suffering their own evils, if they have contracted such merits; or do rest in peace, as was promised to this Josiah, where they undergo no evils, either by suffering themselves, or by compassionate suffering with others, freed from all evils which by suffering themselves or with others while they lived here they did undergo?—St. Augustine, Care of the Dead, par. 16

Issues Etc. Interview

on the great hymn "Christians to the Paschal Victim." You can listen here.

Ascension Day Divine Service

I honestly never could understand WHY folks didn't want to come church after a day at work...BEFORE. I can definitely understand it now. I come home in the evening and want to crash. To sit in my chair, to read or surf the net, or do anything but go out again.

Yet I'm so glad that I did go out tonight. Went to the Mass at St. Paul's. A beautiful service.

Though a midweek, it was treated as the feast it is. Crucifer and candle bearers. Incense. Full order of Divine Service. Tonight, though, instead of our usual Divine Service 3, we had Divine Service 4. The congregation numbered about 40 or so, I think, but the singing was loud and joyful.

Bede headed off the day (A Hymn of Glory) and the Vajda/Gerike piece was the Hymn of the Day (Up Through Endless Ranks of Angels). Distribution was the Reformation piece On Christ's Ascension. The close of the service was the Anglican hymn, See the Conqueror Mounts in Triumph. Great joy indeed.

Pr. Anderson and Staci were in attendance with their children. It was good to meet them in the flesh (I don't think I'd had the privilege before). Pr. Gleason read with his usual grace. Pr. Ball preached the joy of Ascension into our hearts: the cloud that hid our Lord then was likened unto the elements that hide Him now, but still with us, still giving to us all that is His. And the ever-refreshing gift of the Savior's Body and Blood: our forgiveness, life, and resurrection!

Thank you, Lord, for a faithful pastor who never tires of dishing out to Your sinful and weary people the gifts Your Son won for us, doing so with joy at His behest and by His Spirit's power!

Catching up...

...whew! Whirlwind. Drove down to Falls Creek Falls State Park in Tennessee for Midsouth Pastoral Conference (Wilken did apologetics; I did Liturgy and Mission: Enemies or Allies?). It was an eight hour drive there. The moral of the story is: never trust your Apple GPS when out in the wilds! It directed me to a farm lane and instructed me to walk the rest of the way!!! Drove 7 + hours home yesterday and was very proud of myself: ONE potty break, mind you, at the 3.5 hour point. Coffee finally insists on going somewhere else; can't keep it, only borrow it. But I tried my darndest to keep it for as long as I possibly could! Home to find Bekah working on the lawn (what a gem of a child!) and with dinner on and ready (did I mention she was a gem?). This morning had chapel at LCEF and chapel here at IC in about 25 minutes, then to study up for my presentation on Compline on Issues, Etc. this afternoon. Church tonight for the joys of our Lord's Ascension!

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

Those who wish to argue that there is no cooperation by the new man in new obedience need to be candid in acknowledging that they are proposing a reading of the Lutheran Confessions that contradicts the Lutheran dogmatic tradition.  The great burden of proof falls on them because they are advancing a reading that contradicts the plain statements of the Confessions themselves, and of the way Lutherans have historically read them.—Pr. Mark Surburg, http://surburg.blogspot.com/2013/04/sanctification-issues-in-question-and.html

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

For what is asserted without the Scriptures or proven revelation may be held as an opinion but need not be believed.—Blessed Martin Luther, AE 36:29.

Patristic Quote of the Day

Will you deem Him little on this account, that He humbled Himself for your sake, and because to seek for that which had wandered the Good Shepherd, He who lays down His life for the sheep, John 10:11 came upon the mountains and hills upon which you used to sacrifice, John 5:35 and found the wandering one; and having found it, took it upon His shoulders, Hosea 4:13 on which He also bore the wood; and having borne it, brought it back to the life above; and having brought it back, numbered it among those who have never strayed. That He lit a candle, Luke 15:4-5 His own flesh, and swept the house, by cleansing away the sin of the world, and sought for the coin, the Royal Image that was all covered up with passions, and calls together His friends, the Angelic Powers, at the finding of the coin, and makes them sharers of His joy, as He had before made them sharers of the secret of His Incarnation?—St. Gregory Nazianzus, Oration 45

A Schmemann Gem

"For through the cross joy has come into all the world." This joy is pure joy because it does not depend on anything in this world, and is not the reward of anything in us. It is totally and absolutely a gift, the "charis," the grace. And being pure gift, this joy has a transformative power, the only real transformative power in this world. It is "seal" of the Holy Spirit on the life of the Church—on its faith, hope and love.—For the Life of the World, p. 55.