I think it must be

one of the most beautiful churches in the LCMS:  Grace Tulsa.

Today these words

from the funeral liturgy have been echoing in heart and mind:

Help us, we pray, in the midst of things we cannot understand to believe and find comfort in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

"Things we cannot understand."  Yes, there is faith and comfort smack dab in the middle of utter bewilderment, anger, and frustration.

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

The koinonia of the mystical body of Christ finds its supreme objective expression in the koinonia of His sacramental body.—Prof. Kurt Marquart, The Church, p. 45.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

This refutation of heretics is a very necessary and very difficult part of the ecclesiastical office, especially in these exhausted latter days of the world, which are so ripe with various heresies.—Blessed Johann Gerhard, The Ministry II, p. 279.

Patristic Quote of the Day

Repentance is good. If there were no opportunity for it, everyone would defer until they were old the grace of cleansing by Baptism. A sufficient reason is that it is better to have a robe to mend, than none to put on.—St. Ambrose, On Repentance, 2.11.98

Axios!

Was privileged to play last night for the Ordination into the Office of the Holy Ministry of James Ambrose Lee. Pastor Lee will serve as an assistant pastor at Trinity and Zion Lutheran Churches (Worden/Carpenter Illinois). Pr. David Petersen preached a stunning homily that was dripping in grace and I especially appreciated his contrast between an angel (the devil) coming with words to deceive Eve and lead her away from God with God's inversion of this in the Office of the Holy Ministry: sending His messengers (angels in Revelation) with words to speak God's gracious and surprising truth and to lead His beloved bride to receive as a gift the very thing Eve reached for in the Garden: to be like God, only better, to be one with God in the Holy Eucharist. I'm not saying it nearly so well as he did. It was powerful, comforting and utterly right on. 

Apocrypha Gem

God did not make death and He does not delight in the death of the living.—Wisdom 1:13

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

Because the Sacrament of the Altar is the communion of Christ's body and blood, the very Holy of Holies of the New Testament, it expresses the communion or fellowship of the church par excellence.—Prof. Kurt Marquart, The Church, p. 43.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

When the faithful minister of the church sees that the hearts of his hearers have become so alienated from him that they hold in contempt his very teaching because of their hatred of his person, it is better, after publicly and solemnly explaining the reasons for his departure, that he resign rather than be worn out by the difficulties and daily annoyances caused by the loathing of his hearers. Thus God Himself led Lot out of Sodom, "for his hearers vexed his righteous soul day after day with their lawless deeds." (2 Pet. 2:8) Yet all rashness and haste must be avoided in the matter of a voluntary departure.—Blessed Johann Gerhard, The Ministry II:144.

Patristic Quote of the Day

Where he [the devil] received outwardly the power of slaying the Lord in the flesh, there his inward power, by which he held us, was slain. For it was brought to pass that the bonds of many sins in many deaths were loosed, through the one death of One, which no sin had preceded.—St. Augustine, On the Trinity, 4.17.

Gem from Apocrypha

For the sins I have committed are more in number than the sand of the sea; my transgressions are multiplied, O Lord, they are multiplied! I am unworthy to look up and see the height of heaven because of the multitude of my iniquities.—Prayer of Manasseh, vs. 9.

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

It is through the Word-made-flesh, full of grace and truth (Jn 1:14) and in Whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9), that we actually become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4) Since God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), the fellowship of the church arises out of the divine love and grows toward ever fuller participation in it and ever greater exercise in that responding love, which the divine love kindles in us.—Prof. Kurt Marquart, The Church, p. 42.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

This preservation [of rites] is correctly assigned to ministers, lest they either change or abrogate the rites accepted by the public authority of the church on the basis of their personal whim. Rather, they should preserve them in order to protect harmony and good order. For though church rituals by nature are adiaphora, since God's Word neither commands nor forbids them, and though they do not of themselves constitute a part of divine worship, nevertheless they should not be abrogated merely by one part of the church.—Blessed Johann Gerhard, The Ministry, Part II, p. 137.

Patristic Quote of the Day

Like a good servant, Job counted the will of his Lord his great possession, by obedience to which his soul was enriched; nor did it grieve him to lose, while yet living, those goods which he must shortly leave at his death.—St. Augustine, City of God, 1.10

Theological Education

An observation that my good friend Heath Curtis has made lately more than once needs to be underscored: our theological education had huge gaps, and if you are looking to fill those gaps, there is hardly a better person to be reading than Johann Gerhard (and above all his Loci that CPH is now publishing).

There is literally almost NO controversy that we think of as "modern," no crisis in practice, no challenge from the polemics of others, that he has not already visited, prayerfully thought through, listened to the Sacred Scriptures, the Church Fathers, and canon law on, and provided a genuinely Lutheran answer to. Seriously. He continually blows me away.

Pastors and theologians: put some more Gerhard in your diet. You will be utterly amazed. Just a page or two a day! It's the education in God's Word, Church History, and practical application that you've been looking for.

And I'd add that one thing I LOVE about Gerhard is that his rich dogmatics do not come unglued from a fervent commitment to prayer and to clear, practical preaching. Pious, yes, without "pietism." Profound insight, with no sense of theological showmanship. You just can't do much better than reading him and let him bring you into the depths of Scripture!

Special thanks to Bishop Heiser's Repristination Press and to our own Concordia Publishing House for making so many of his works accessible to this generation!  May it continue the renewal among us English speakers that began with the bringing of the great works of Chemnitz into our language a generation or two ago.

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

Unlike all the relationships and sociabilities we know from human nature and culture, the fellowship of the church is uniquely shaped by the unity of the Divine Persons within the Holy Trinity.—Prof. Kurt Marquart, The Church, pp. 41,42.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

Of course, the application of Scripture, explained legitimately and with a sound meaning, is either theoretical or practical. The theoretical application involves the knowledge of the truth, from which there is "teaching," and a refutation of falsehood, from which there is "reproof." The practical application involves: doing good, from which there is "training"; fleeing the evil of fault, from which there is "correction"; and enduring the evil of punishment, from there is "consolation."—Blessed Johann Gerhard, On the Ministry II, p. 104.

Patristic Quote of the Day

Therefore holy leisure is longed for by love of truth, but it is the necessity of love to undertake necessary business.—St. Augustine, City of God, 19.19

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

Church fellowship is the fellowship of the church. It is first of all a "vertical" but then also a "horizontal" relationship among holy persons, mediated by "holy things."—Prof. Kurt Marquart, The Church, p. 41.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

In the exercise of divine worship, certain solemn, public rites should be preserved that aim at good order and decorum and were introduced by the pious consensus of the whole church. Therefore the protection of ecclesiastical rites, which were approved by serious consideration and which give useful instruction concerning many topics in public assemblies, also pertains to the ecclesiastical ministry. Nor should a minister change them, leading to scandal in the church, because of some private desire of his mind. Consequently, the sixth duty of ministers is the preservation of ecclesiastical rites.—Blessed Johann Gerhard, On the Ministry II, p. 101.