...statements in the Lutheran Symbols (Confessions):
"They abolish true divine services (i.e., the exercises of faith struggling with despair)." Tr. 44
True worship = exercising faith [to strengthen it] as it struggles with despair.
Welcome to the Christian life! Faith struggles to hold tight to (and live from) the promises of God in the face of what appears to be their utter foolishness and negation by this world.
You are holy? Sure, you are! God will provide for all your needs? You have GOT to be kidding! You know that your rotting flesh is going to rise from the dead in glory? What have you been smoking! You believe that there is plan, meaning, and purpose behind the events of this world and your life? Baby, you are just a speck of dust on this speck of dust we call earth floating in the middle of one vast, cold and empty universe - and there is NO meaning to your life or to any of this. Deal! Bread and wine are the body and blood from some dude who walked this earth 2,000 years ago and give you a life that never ends? Uh, huh. Where are the men in the white suits, already?!
And so on and on the battle goes. The Christian will come to live by the story told by the promises of God's Word and so be transformed by them (and of course find them utterly and blessedly true) or he will succumb to the enemies design's and despair of the promises by believing Satan's lies.
Divine worship is a battle to strengthen faith for holding onto the promises. We know faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word of God. Faith comes from the promises - they are what the Holy Spirit uses to give and to strengthen faith! So we hurl the promises at each other, drench each other in them, wrap each other up in them to help one another in the struggle as we live in this very broken and damaged world, stumbling on, crawling toward the joys of the Age that is to come - where everything that is not Love will at last and blessedly be history!
5 comments:
How beautiful and how true. Thank you for that.
Tom Fast
You're welcome, Thomas. Pax Christi!
hmmm.. might just have to reprint this in certain Lutheran church newsletters in greater Evansville, IL.
Dear brother, fight the good fight in pursuit of righteousness, love and gentleness (1 Timothy 6:11-12, from today's funeral and Sunday's other feast.)
"This doctrine of faith and salvation is the crucial one, and it cannot be mastered in a moment, but must rather be continuously taught and nurtured. For grace and its blessings are so great that the human heart is terrified when it hears that God wants to open the gates of heaven so wide, and that when you believe in Christ there no longer is any sin or wrath of God, nothing but pure righteousness. That is why the doctrine of faith must be constantly reviewed, constantly emphasized, so that, as St Paul says in Ephesians 4:15, 'we may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.' For that reason faith is not the trifling thing that the pope and the enthusiasts imagine it to be. I am a doctor of Holy Scripture, have studied it for twenty years, and have taught it to others. In spite of that, it is still my experience that in the midst of severe temptation I get limp and wilted, just as grass wilts in the heat of a summer drought. And if God would not refresh me with his rain and dew--that is, with his Word and spirit--I would simply dry up and blow away. That is why the proclamation of faith must be continuously emphasized. You see, God did not give the Scriptures in such a way that you can understand and grasp them right off the bat." Martin Luther, Ascension Day (Second Sermon), Luther's House Postils, Ed. Eugene Klug, vol. 2, p.134.
I thought this Luther quote fit your statement quite well.
Thanks for this posting Rev Weedon. Believe it or not, once upon a time, I had this very conversation with myself. I suspect it is true for many that are baptized as adults like myself.
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