Concordia Journal Fall 2015 Volume 41 | Number 4 Concordia Concordia Seminary 801 Seminary Place St

4 number | 41

Fall 2015 volume No “Lions of Gory Mane” Tending Our Common Home Tending God’s Dwelling Place A. Maier (1893–1950) Walter ournal J COncordia

Concordia Journal Fall 2015 volume 41 | number 4 Concordia Concordia Seminary 801 Seminary Place St. Louis, MO 63105 COncordia n e v e r b e f o r e i n e n g l i s h Journal (ISSN 0145-7233) Martin CheMnitz and Never before has there been a full-scale English translation of a publisher Faculty JaCob andreae, ChurCh Reformation-era Lutheran church Dale A. Meyer David Adams Erik Herrmann Victor Raj order (the governing documents Order (1569) CheMnitz’s President Charles Arand Todd Jones Paul Robinson and liturgy for a regional church). Andrew Bartelt Jeffrey Kloha Mark Rockenbach Works, VoluMe 9 Now, for the first time, the 1569 Executive EDITOR Church Order by Chemnitz and Joel Biermann David Lewis Robert Rosin Charles Arand Andreae is available. Gerhard Bode Richard Marrs Timothy Saleska Dean of Theological Kent Burreson David Maxwell Leopoldo Sánchez M. • Written by authors of the Research and Publication Anthony Cook Dale Meyer David Schmitt Formula of Concord (1577), EDITOR Timothy Dost Glenn Nielsen Bruce Schuchard the capstone of the Lutheran Travis J. Scholl Thomas Egger Joel Okamoto William Schumacher Confessions. Managing Editor of Joel Elowsky Jeffrey Oschwald Mark Seifrid • Regulates worship practices Theological Publications Jeffrey Gibbs David Peter Kou Seying for an entire region, assistant editor Benjamin Haupt Paul Raabe James Voelz showing how ceremonies and “adiaphora” are to Melanie Appelbaum be understood and how assistant individuality in worship Exclusive subscriber digital access is limited for the sake of Andrew Jones All correspondence should be sent to: via ATLAS to Concordia Journal & Christian harmony. CONCORDIA JOURNAL Concordia Theology Monthly: graphic designer 801 Seminary Place http://search.ebscohost.com • Sets forth the customary, Michelle Meier St. Louis, Missouri 63105 User ID: ATL0102231ps liturgical form of worship 314-505-7117 Password: subscriber that was inherited from cj @csl.edu Technical problems? the Medieval and Ancient Email [email protected] Church, including Gregorian chant and the use of Latin together with the common Issued by the faculty of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, the Concordia Journal is the successor of Lehre language of the people. und Wehre (1855-1929), begun by C. F. W. Walther, a founder of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Lehre und Wehre was absorbed by the Concordia Theological Monthly (1930-1974) which was also published by the faculty of Concordia Seminary as the official theological periodical of the Synod. The Church Order shows how faith was put into Concordia Journal is abstracted in Internationale Zeitschriftenschau für Bibelwissenschaft unde Grenzgebiete, New action in churches and schools in areas such as: Testament Abstracts, Old Testament Abstracts, and Religious and Theological Abstracts. It is indexed in ATLA Religion Database/ATLAS and Christian Periodicals Index. Article and issue photocopies in 16mm microfilm, • Welfare for the poor • Doctrinal standards 35mm microfilm, and 105mm microfiche are available from National Archive Publishing (www.napubco.com). • Education and school • Doctrinal supervision Books submitted for review should be sent to the editor. Manuscripts submitted for publication should governance • Marriage and divorce conform to a Chicago Manual of Style. Email submission ([email protected]) as a Word attachment is preferred. Editorial decisions about submissions include peer review. Manuscripts that display Greek or Hebrew text • Dispute resolution • Worship style and uniformity should utilize BibleWorks fonts (www.bibleworks.com/fonts.html). Copyright © 1994-2009 BibleWorks, LLC. All rights reserved. Used with permission. VISIT CPH.ORG/CHURCHORDER The Concordia Journal (ISSN 0145-7233) is published quarterly (Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall). The annual subscription rate is $25 (individuals) and $75 (institutions) payable to Concordia Seminary, 801 Seminary Place, St. Louis, MO 63105. New subscriptions and renewals also available at http://store.csl.edu. Periodicals postage paid at St. Louis, MO and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Concordia Journal, Concordia Seminary, 801 Seminary Place, St. Louis, MO 63105-3199.

COncordia Journal CONTENTS EDITORIALs

285 Editor’s Note

286 Living and Active Dale A. Meyer

ARTICLES

293 No “Lions of Gory Mane”: Persecution or Loss of Predominance in American Christianity Michael Knippa

307 Tending Our Common Home: Reflections on Laudato Si’ Charles P. Arand

319 God’s Dwelling Place Richard Davenport

329 Walter A. Maier (1893–1950): Sixty-five Years into the Historical Record Paul L. Maier

337 HOMILETICAL HELPS

363 BOOK REVIEWS

Fall 2015 volume 41 | number 4 editoRIALS

COncordia Journal

Editor’s Note

If anyone still wonders whether religion still makes its presence felt in our public life, the long summer-into-fall of 2015 should have erased any lingering doubt. Religion not only made its own instant headlines (Pope Francis’s encyclical then his trip to the United States, the shooting at Mother Emanuel in Charleston, Kim Davis . . . to name just a few), but it also inflected nearly all the major news stories (the ongoing executions and desecration of sacred sites by ISIS, Planned Parenthood, the migrant crisis out of Syria . . . to name a few more). So, what is a Christian to do with all this? There are no easy answers, at least not for those who (supposedly) hold Christ and culture in paradox. But a few page turns away from here, Michael Knippa begins to shine a light on a way forward. He begins in the careful distinction between persecution and what he calls the loss of Christian “predominance” in American society, opting for the latter as the more accurate description of what North American Christians now face. We could alternatively call it the loss of “privilege” or a “post-Christendom” era, but I think Knippa’s term carries less baggage, and hence moves us further down the road. I will leave the rest of his nuanced argument for you to discern for yourself. It is well worth the reading, and we have simultaneously published his article on ConcordiaTheology.org to continue the conversation. If anything, this is a time for such careful, collective “discernment” (another important word for Knippa). Knee-jerk reactions rarely get anyone very far. But in bewildering times such as these, they get us even less. Wisdom takes its time and doesn’t bother looking for its answers on Facebook. Fortunately, winter is close upon us, and we enter into the slow time of the calendar. Long nights make for slow time, for deep breaths, for deeper reflection. So, it is a good time once again to enter into Advent time. Waiting. Expectation. Surprise. God has yet something to do with this world. And with us. Travis J. Scholl Managing Editor of Theological Publications

On the cover: the image is the logo for Concordia Seminary’s Center for the Care of Creation, led by Professor Charles Arand. The center offers a range of resources for pastors and congregations at www.togetherwithallcreatures.org.

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 285 Living and Active

President Meyer preached the following for the opening of the 2015–2016 academic year. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Heb 4:12–13) “And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” Look at the people sitting around you. All creatures, especially you and I, are naked and exposed before God. That’s not a pretty sight, all of us here naked and exposed; it is, as they say, “too much information.” But that is the way the eternal judge sees us and that should put the fear of God into us all. Now you certainly don’t hear about the fear of God in contemporary American culture, our culture with its omnipresent media reinforcing our self-centered quest for happiness. But you and I are to be different. We are baptized. When you entered the chapel, you may have noticed a small square of granite in the sidewalk right before the door. That granite inlay cryptically says, “Ecclesiastes 5:1.” That’s code, a reminder that you and I must give an account to the eternal Judge. Ecclesiastes 5:1–2 says: Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. Honestly, I also don’t hear the fear of God talked about much in church. I suspect that’s why mainline American denominations are not growing. To be sure, the global Christian church is growing. I’m told the Mekane Yesus Lutheran Church in Ethiopia is baptizing nine hundred people a day, but in America it’s a different story. The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod has lost 18 percent of its members in the last forty years. Don’t you think the devil has his hand in this decline? If the devil can tempt us into indifference about the coming judgment, why would we have a passion- ate love for the only One who can deliver us from eternal death? If we are indifferent to the fear of God, how can we truly love our God and Savior? You can be sure there will be no indifference when Jesus comes back to judge us, naked and exposed. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling; Naked, come to Thee for dress; Helpless, look to Thee for grace; Foul, I to the fountain fly—Wash me, Savior, or I die.

286 There are many temptations the devil uses to make Americans indifferent to the fear and love of God. Let me identify three that “the old evil foe” uses to our harm.1 The first is what I’ve already been talking about, indifference to the coming judgment, and therefore, no fear and love of our God and Savior. When we are indifferent or only give lip service to judgment, the result is that Jesus and the gospel are confined to the past. That’s so important; let me repeat it. When we are indifferent or only give lip service to judgment, the result is that Jesus and the gospel are confined to the past. Now to be sure, what Jesus did during his visible ministry is the source and essence of our salvation, but if we only talk about it as a first-century event, we end up being cura- tors of a museum instead of proclaimers of something awesome now and for eternity. Do you think it’s possible that people may not be coming to our churches because they don’t like going to museums? I do know people who like to go to museums but most of them don’t go every week. The devil doesn’t mind us saying that Jesus died for our sins so long as we leave it in the past, in the museum, and are indifferent to his return in judgment. That’s the devil’s first way of weakening the church. The second temptation is the word “church.” What pops into your mind when I say the word “church”? Maybe you think of the building. Maybe you think of a church service. “I’m going to eight o’clock church.” Maybe you think of a congregation called “Trinity Lutheran Church” with its school, its properties, its employees, its bylaws and constitution, its groups and its members. When we hear the word “church,” we tend to think of a Christian institution. Guess what? There was no institutional Christian church in the decades after Jesus died, rose and ascended, not in the way we think of it. There was no institutional Christian church that first Pentecost when thousands and thousands of believers were added. In fact, the word “Christian” didn’t exist at Pentecost. The word “Christian” came later, in Antioch in Acts 11:26. At Pentecost, the people who followed Jesus were known as “people of the Way” because they followed him who is “the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6). They were a small group within Judaism. Judaism had various groups, like the Pharisees and Sadducees and Essenes and now this little group of people who had started to follow Jesus of Nazareth, the “people of the Way.” It wasn’t until after AD 70, some forty years after Pentecost, that the church was generally considered something separate from Judaism. Now what does this mean? That’s the great Lutheran question, what does this mean? It means what we confess in the explanation to the Third Article of the Apostle’s Creed: I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. There’s nothing there about the church being buildings and budgets, institutional things. The church in its essence is people who publicly confess and follow the One who is the way, the truth and the life.

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 287 In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian Church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers. On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ. This is most certainly true. The third temptation of the devil concerns this book, the Bible. Guess what? Most people in the early church couldn’t read or write. It’s estimated that only 10 percent of the people in the Roman Empire were literate.2 John 8:6 tells us that Jesus could write. Paul was a scholar; he could read and write. Peter? I’m not so sure. They were as intelligent as we are but most people couldn’t read or write. It’s interesting to watch people in worship when the Bible lessons are read. Many look down and follow along in the bulletin or look up and follow the words on the screen. That’s not the way it was back at the time of Pentecost. Why would they have a bulletin? Most of them couldn’t read! The Holy Spirit got Jesus into their hearts when church people spoke about Jesus, about who Jesus is, what Jesus did, what he does, how he fulfills the prophecies and the wonderful promises he makes to his followers. When Paul said, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ,” he was speaking literally (Rom 10:17). And so our text from Hebrews says: The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. What does this mean? Martin Luther said, “God be praised, a seven-year-old child knows what the church is: holy believers and ‘the little sheep who hear the voice of their shepherd.’”3 Again, Luther says in the Small Catechism, “We should fear and love God that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.”4 And so the devil tempts us to confine Jesus to the past and to sup- pose that the church is just another institution. We easily fall to those temptations when we forget that the word is the viva vox evangelii, the “living and active” word of the gospel. Therefore we pray, “Almighty God, grant to your church your Holy Spirit and the wisdom that comes down from above, that your word may not be bound (and put on a shelf) but have free course and be preached to the joy and edifying of Christ’s holy people.”5 All this points to the living and active word spoken in church by people who will soon see Jesus in judgment. All of this points to the importance of connections and conversations.6 I love taking walks and I love walking through Washington University. Wash U is a world-class school, but people don’t acknowledge you when you meet on the sidewalk. They don’t have the friendly culture of Concordia Seminary. So I thought it was strange the other day when I was looking at construction at their athletic complex. A man, maybe sixty years old, smiled and greeted me. He introduced himself as the head football coach. I said, “I’m Dale Meyer and I work at Concordia Seminary.”

288 He said, “I’m a Christian, too. I try to bring it to bear on what I do here. I’d love to talk more with you.” You see, connections and conversations! A pastor needs a study where he obviously studies, but the pastor’s office should be where you connect and converse with people. I’ve noticed that the pastors of healthy and growing churches aren’t in the institutional office as much as they are out with people, out with church members, and out in the community. Their offices are their feet, their cars, and their cell phones. God intends his word to be alive in connections and conversations. And about this book, the Bible? Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type is a great blessing. We are doubly blessed to speak, hear, and read the living voice of the gospel. But when you open the Bible and when you study theology, take it as the Spirit intends it for you, the living and active word of God that will transform you. When you prepare to minister to others, lift the words off the page, get your head out of the book and manuscript. Speak the living and active word from your heart to their hearts. The word alive through connections and conversations is like fireworks. Pop, pop, pop, pop. Sometimes it is just one pop and “ah” from the crowd. Sometimes several pops, but oh, the finale! Pop, pop, pop, pop, ah, ah, ah, awe, awe, awe. That’s the way the word of God should be, living and active. Sometimes simple insights. Ah! Other times, more insights. “Ah” becomes increasing awe. And oh, when the finale comes! Pop, pop, pop, living and active, living and active. Pop, pop, pop, word alive, word alive, “light from above.” And that day you and I won’t appear “naked and exposed before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress; Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed, With joy shall I lift up my head.7 The finale is coming and the Spirit of our Lord Jesus is getting us ready by his word, his word alive, living and active through connections and conversations. Amen. Dale A. Meyer President

Endnotes 1 Martin Luther, “A Mighty Fortress,” Lutheran Service Book, 656, 1. 2 William Harris in Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 4, 7. 3 Smalcald Articles, XII. 4 Luther’s Small Catechism, The Third Commandment. 5 Lutheran Service Book, Collect 102. 6 “Connections and conversations” comes from Nancy Ammerman. “Connections and conversations are the building blocks of the new kinds of religious communities our best students will learn to lead.” Theological Education, 49, no. 1 (2014): 33. 7 Lutheran Service Book, 563, 1.

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 289

ARTICLES

COncordia Journal

No “Lions of Gory Mane” Persecution or Loss of Predominance in American Christianity Michael Knippa

Early in his career, well before the posting of the 95 Theses, Martin Luther lec- tured on the Psalms at the University of Wittenberg. When he came to Psalm 69, he (following Augustine) noted “the words of the Psalm . . . hardly touch us, for we do not see in ourselves such things as were in the martyrs, when those words were read with relish.”1 What concerns us here is not so much the interpretive principles at work in Luther’s exegesis but rather Luther’s evaluation of his contemporary setting: the church, so far as he could see it from Wittenberg somewhere between 1513‒1515, did not face the threat of martyrdom or persecution. Instead, the danger facing the church, Luther argued, was spiritual apathy.2 The beginning of the Reformation, though, radically reshaped Luther’s assessment of the challenges facing the church, so much so that in 1522 he could comment, “It is the nature of the divine word to be heartily received by a few, but to be persecuted ruthlessly by many.”3 Today some voices in the United States are calling for American Christians to make a similar shift in their thinking.4 In addition to movies and books that are solely based upon the premise of the persecution of Christians in the United States, several politicians and political commentators are suggesting that the church in America is being persecuted.5 Very recently the decision in the Supreme Court Case Obergefell v. Hodges led several prominent Christian leaders to predict that persecution will soon come upon the church in America en masse.6 Other Christian leaders are not just warning of, but actually stating privately and publicly, that the church in the United States is being persecuted.7 All of this forces us to consider this contentious, but deeply important, question: is the church in the United States being persecuted? Writing in 1984, Father Richard John Neuhaus remarked, “What has happened in recent decades is a redefinition of what constitutes ‘the real world.’”8 Certainly many of the trends that Neuhaus observed in 1984 have continued and even, accelerated in recent years. The “real world” of America’s “public square” in 2015 is a vastly different arena than it was in the 1950s, the 1980s, or even the early 2000s.9 However, this paper will argue that Neuhaus’s assertion that “lions of gory mane are not in prospect” for the Christian church in the United States remains a valid assessment of our contempo-

Michael Knippa is a PhD candidate at Concordia Seminary and teaches theology at Lutheran High School South in St. Louis, Missouri. He studies systematic theology with a primary research focus on the interaction between politics and theology.

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 293 rary situation.10 The “lions of gory mane” (a line Neuhaus takes from a hymn) and the Roman amphitheaters of antiquity that housed them, are a long way from Washington, DC.11 Of course, the intention of this argument is not to deny the experience of persecution that some Christians in American do in fact endure.12 Rather, our argument is that the Christian church must carefully discern whether these individual experiences are normative for the entire church, and accordingly, whether or not the church in the United States should publically claim that it is enduring persecution. Certain tools will be proposed to aid in this process of discernment and a case will be made that endorses the continued validity of Neuhaus’s assessment. Finally, an alternative understanding of the challenges currently faced by the church in America, namely the loss of predominance, will be briefly proposed.

Discerning, Not Defining Accounts of martyrdom and stories of persecution have received wide attention and circulation throughout the history of the church. From the Te Deum, to the various individual and collected Acts of the Martyrs, to the modern day organization The Voice of the Martyrs, the Christian tradition has and continues to remember those who have suffered and those who have been killed for the faith. Most people have an intuitive grasp of what persecution is: the unjust application of coercive violence against a person or group of people because of their beliefs. However, Christian theology has never settled on a strict, universal definition of what persecution is and what it is not. That is to say, the meaning of persecution has largely been assumed rather than thoroughly, and finally, articulated.13 This can be seen in Epitome of Article X of the Formula of Concord, which turns upon the issue of adiaphora “in a time of persecution” but does not define what exactly constitutes “a time of persecution.”14 The Solid Declaration of the Formula is more explicit in explaining that a time of persecution is “particularly when the opponents are striving either through violence and coercion or through craft and deceit to suppress pure teaching and subtly to slip their false teachings back into our churches.”15 It is important to recognize, though, that even this articulation of persecution is tailored to the circumstance that Article X is considering—namely the danger posed to the gospel in Germany by the re-introduction of certain medieval rites under the Augsburg and Leipzig Interims after the defeat of the Smalcald League by the Catholic Emperor Charles V.16 It does not have in view individual Christians who might experience persecution in the public or private spheres, but rather is concerned with the institution of the church, its liturgical practice, and the liturgical calendar.17 It, like almost all definitions of persecution, is incomplete.18 The lack of an absolutely precise, universally valid Christian definition of persecution actually ought to be seen as a virtue to be maintained rather than as a deficiency that ought to be corrected. The historical circumstances, dangers, intensity, and dura- tion of any particular incident of persecution are always dependent upon the localized, personal experiences of those facing the coercion. Sometimes persecution is sporadic and regional; other times it is systematic and sustained on a national or imperial scale.19 Sometimes persecution can be linked with certain doctrines or religious symbols; other

294 times it might coalesce around ethnic or socio-economic lines. Sometimes persecution is carried out through brutal mob violence (we remember what Paul endured on several occasions) and at other times it is insidiously methodical and bureaucratic (we think of the Christians under some recent Communist regimes). Trying to draw a precise definition of persecution is thus not only difficult but also counter-productive. Persecution is not universal, uniform, or simplistic; it is rather particular, amorphous, and complex. One strict definition, one list where one needs to “check all the boxes” in order to be called “persecution,” simply will not do. What is, and what is not, persecution will always be a matter of careful discernment for the church to prayerfully conduct in the specific times and locations to which God has called it. Discernment, though, is tricky business.20 Two extremes must be avoided. The first is to make our measure of persecution so extreme (i.e., you are persecuted only if you are a martyr), or the topic of persecution so politically incorrect, as to rule it out of existence or consideration.21 The other extreme is to elide the historic division between suffering as a Christian and being persecuted as a Christian.22 The danger here is that we end up calling all Christian suffering “persecution” and, in so doing, make the term into nothing more than a synonym. The Scriptures (not to mention the tradition of Lutheran theology itself23) call us to distinguish between suffering and persecution. As Jeffrey Gibbs notes in his discussion of the final part of the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, “the dependent clause ‘whenever people insult you’ in 5:11 makes it clear that, unlike the first seven beatitudes (5:3‒9), the final two Beatitudes (5:10‒12) will not always apply to every disciple, nor will all experience such reproach in the same way. . . . It will not always be the case that all of Jesus’ disciples are persecuted at all times.”24 The church must reject both of these errors; the church is not always and everywhere persecuted but it has, does, and will face persecution. How are we to discern the difference, the way between these two dangerous extremes?

Learning to Be Discerning The first, and foremost, thing for the church to understand about persecution is that its presence or absence is a fact that the church has to determine for itself. Christians, in other words, should never depend upon other people telling them that they are being persecuted.25 Related to this is the critical reality that the church must ground discussion and comprehension of persecution not primarily in any sociological or political account, but rather squarely and thoroughly in the scriptural story—both in the discussion about and response to persecution. While the latter point will be addressed below, the former point must never slip from Christian’s minds: when persecution is discussed, or even claimed, the conversation should never be rooted in apprehension, surprise, fear, or panic.26 The New Testament repeatedly warns Christians that persecution is quite possible, while at the same time assuring Christians that there is nothing in persecution—not even death itself—that needs to be feared. As Jesus Christ says three times in his sending of the disciples in Matthew 10: “Do not be afraid.”27 Accordingly, Christians should view with alarm claims or warnings of persecution that have no consolation or promise of the gospel attached to them, for such a manner of speaking of

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 295 persecution is foreign to the scriptural witness. Instead, when Christians speak of persecution with one another, they should be able to recognize both the dreadful reality of the persecution at hand while also acknowledging, joyfully, that there is nothing that shall separate them from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, their Lord (Rom 8:35‒39). Another consideration to use in discernment is for the church to look across its experience throughout the world in this time. As Saint Paul reminds us, the church is the body of Christ and in our day God has arranged for the body of Christ to come into greater global awareness. Christians now have a much broader understanding of the worldwide character of those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord: they are indeed from every tribe, language, nation, and family of the earth. Attendant to this growing awareness has been an increased knowledge that many Christians in other parts of the world routinely experience oppression, threats, violent coercion, and death on account of their confession of Christ.28 This persecution is of deepest concern to the body of Christ, for “if one part suffers, every part suffers with it” (1 Cor 12:26). The church must understand the struggles and challenges in one place in light of suffering in another part of the world, for in so doing the church honors the body of Christ. In addition to looking across the world, the church can also look back through its pilgrimage on earth to discern persecution in the present day.29 This exercise can cut two ways. First, the church can question whether claims of persecution in a previous era were as sound or grounded as they were, or are, popularly imagined. For instance, it might be tempting to think that the early church faced violent persecution right up to the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, when, according to Eusebius, there were several Roman emperors before that time that did not persecute Christians.30 While the “blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church” that blood was not shed continuously.31 Similarly, Dean Zweck has recently taken a fresh look at the persecution that drove some German Lutherans to immigrate to Australia in the nineteenth century. While he notes that the persecution in Germany was real he also concludes that the telling of that history “needs to be nuanced.”32 Second, though, we are also able to look historically into the darkest days and times of Christian persecution—perhaps even finding that they were worse than we could have imagined. Both of these realities should invoke in us a strong sense of humility, a great sense of duty, and perhaps even a little trepidation, before we apply the word persecution to our contemporary experience. Finally, the Lutheran distinction of the two reigns of God (that is, that Christ reigns in the church through the gospel and in the world through law and reason) can be of great service to the church as it seeks to discern if, and where, persecution is occurring. Take, for example, the Catholic Archdiocese of New Jersey, which in 2013, began to sell gravestones and mausoleums to bereaved families who were burying their deceased in its cemetery. Soon, local sellers of headstones and mausoleums noticed a drop in their business, banded together, and got the government of New Jersey to pass new restrictions that forbade the Archdiocese (or any other religious cemetery, for that matter) from operating a funeral home or selling monuments, grave headers, or mausoleums.33 What can be made of this? Is it persecution or simply blatant economic protec- tionism? Certainly, it is the latter.34

296 To take things a step further, consider a proposal put forward by the religious scholar Stephen Prothero in a recent essay. After noting that the state of New York had added two days of Muslim observance to the public school holiday calendar, Prothero asks where this practice will end in a religiously diverse society. Why shouldn’t Hindu holidays also be added? After pressing his ad absurdum argument, he contends that, “these [religious] holidays cannot be endlessly multiplied without subtracting from the core mission of public schools.”35 As such, he counsels that the school calendar of public education institutions should be wiped clean of any religious holidays—whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or “other.” If this proposal were adopted would it be persecution? Here, admittedly, Christians would have more to “lose” than other faith communities but only because they have more holidays on the public calendar than others do. Such a rearrangement, as Prothero’s argument runs at least, would not be persecution but merely represent the loss of Christian predominance in determining the public school calendar. As these two examples help illustrate, the doctrine of the two reigns of God keeps us from confusing a loss of Christian influence in the political realm or upon a particular secular issue with being persecuted for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The reign of Christ through the gospel has little to do with the church’s business interests or with the arrangement of the secular calendar.36 The two reigns also help us notice the reverse situation, which is when governments are directly targeting Christians with violent coercion precisely because of their confession of Jesus Christ or their proclamation of his message. Of course, it must be recognized that sometimes the borders between the two reigns of God can be murky, and Christians will sometimes have different readings of the political situations that they are in. Yet such difficulties should not discount the importance that the teaching of the two reigns of God should have in the church’s discernment of persecution.

No “Lions of Gory Mane” Having laid out some guides for discernment, it is now possible to argue more fully that the Christian church in America should not publically claim persecution. It is perhaps beneficial to focus upon one story that might be used to argue for the church claiming persecution in the United States. One of the most well-known, ongoing, and widely covered is that of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an evangelical Christian college ministry. In 2000, Tufts University de-recognized InterVarsity because it required its student leaders to agree to a statement of faith and certain behavioral standards.37 Tufts created a policy that “all comers” to any campus organization and organization leadership posts had to be accepted.38 In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the university’s policy. As long as the all-comers rule was evenly applied to every campus organization, it was legal and universities with an all-comers policy could de-recognize InterVarsity.39 InterVarsity has since been de-recognized by many other colleges and universities, most notably the California State University system (which is composed of twenty-three schools).40 Is this persecution? It is easy for many to say “yes” in this case. It seems rather clear that this group,

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 297 and not others, was targeted specifically for its Christian beliefs. And yet, despite all this, InterVarsity does not claim persecution for itself. “We were marginalized, not persecuted,” one InterVarsity worker has stated.41 The unwillingness on the part of InterVarsity to claim persecution ought to be instructive for the Christian church at large in the United States. Certainly, there are instances of persecution of Christians in the United States, and the church has, is, and will face obstacles, challenges, and even hostility. However, the Christian church in the United States has traditionally discerned, and should continue to, that these instances of hostility and persecution are not normative for the entire experience of American Christians and therefore claims of general persecution should not be made. The church in the American “public square” should not claim public persecution for several reasons. First, most warnings and claims of the church in the United States are either politically oriented or lack scriptural consolation. In other words, they mostly appear to be fear mongering in tone and design. As such, they perhaps point more to the political captivity of the church than they do to the actual state of the bride of Christ.42 Second, as the church in America looks to the historical pilgrimage of the people of God, Christians in the United State must honestly admit their prosperous, even privileged, position. Christians in America have built some of the most extensive church organizations (denominations and parachurch organizations) and infrastruc- tures (church complexes and church buildings, schools, colleges, seminaries, retirement homes, nursing homes, retreat camps, radio networks, and more) that Christian history has ever witnessed. The church in the United States continues to have tax-exempt status and receive various other forms of preferable treatment (as do other religious groups in America) from local, state, and federal government. Furthermore, the government of the United State has rarely, if ever, tried to directly and unabashedly interfere or oppose the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ or otherwise regulate the preaching and teaching of the Christian church. Such a position would have been unimaginable to the early Christians. Third, any public claim by the church in the United States to general persecution would be a failure to demonstrate love, concern, and proper respect towards Christian brothers and sisters throughout the world who daily face coercive persecution and death. To claim that the opposition or challenges present in our context is persecution is to equivocate and trivialize the experience of the “noble army of martyrs” and to ignore the parts of Christ’s body that are suffering violence, forced exile, and death.43 Furthermore, claiming persecution would deeply damage the credibility of our public witness in the world and in America’s public square.44 The warning and challenge of Alan Noble’s recent words should be taken seriously: “If evangelicals want to have a persuasive voice in a pluralist society, a voice that can defend Christians from serious persecution, then we must be able to discern accurately when we are truly victims of oppression—and when this victimization is only imagined.”45 Finally, the tendency to think one is being persecuted can often lead to a soft or hard “confirmation bias” in which a “narrative of persecution” is developed that begins to see every decision and every political move as another instance of Christians being

298 persecuted. In short, in claiming persecution the church is always in danger of becoming consumed with the idea of persecution rather than proclaiming the Lord Jesus Christ until he comes again.46 An obsession with persecution likely is, or at the very least can become, idolatrous. This is a reality that the church has long recognized and sought to combat; it would be foolish for us to not similarly be aware of, and vigilantly guard against, this temptation.47

An Alternative Understanding for Our Contemporary Situations Rather than being persecuted, Christianity in the United States is losing the rather absolute predominance that it once held in America.48 Although the sources of this loss are complex, at least two can be briefly explored here: change in America and the political captivity of the American church. First, America continues to change, as it always has (and always will). Specifically, the number of Americans reporting no religious affiliation continues to climb while the number of Christians, though still a majority, is shrinking.49 In order to understand the effect that these religious shifts are having on the American public the analysis of Philip Gorski is helpful.50 Gorski contends that the American constitution “establishes two opposing principles—religious freedom and civic inclusion—that must be continually rebalanced.”51 Each time America has gone through a major cultural or religious shift, it has sought to rebalance the relationship between these two competing aims.52 Thus, the “wall of separation” between church and state “is higher in some places, lower in others; it is well defended at certain spots but virtually unmanned in others; and it is really more serpentine than straight. As a result, the boundaries between the two great estates [church and state] are not always clear-cut. There are zones of loud contestation marked by red lines, settled boundaries that are rarely frequented, and also points of quiet cooperation.”53 If Gorski’s analysis is correct, then the United States is in the midst of a rebalancing between religious liberty and civil inclusion.54 In this shift, Christians occupy less space (i.e., there are fewer of them) than they once did. As a result, Christians and the Christian church might lose some of the political accommodations that previously accompanied their dominance. On this note we could return to the case of InterVarsity. Clearly, the all-comers policy that several universities are enacting favors the principle of “civic inclusion” over the “religious freedom” principle.55 The wall of separation is being adjusted and as a result InterVarsity lost some of the accommodations that it had previously enjoyed. However, even this re-adjustment did not stop InterVarsity from being able to be present and operate at the various universities that de-recognized it. It has made their work more costly, both organizationally and personally, but not impossible. InterVarsity continues its mission.56 To return to Gorski’s account, even though “civil inclusion” expanded its domain, it did not entirely eliminate “religious freedom.” It is interesting, also, that the one of the largest concerns that Christian institutions have expressed in light of the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling is that they might lose their tax-exempt status.57 This may indeed one day be the case, and the loss of preferable tax arrangements might be a very difficult thing for some Christian institutions to endure. Yet, it remains

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 299 highly unlikely, even rather inconceivable, that Christians in the United States will lose everything. As Neuhaus observed long ago, “even if, as some fear, we were by domestic madness or external forces to succumb to a form of totalitarianism, it would likely be marked by a measure of tolerance for the expression of religion.”58 Despite the changing public square, it is important to recognize that America remains a very religious country that will likely continue to deeply value religious freedom for a long time to come. The second phenomenon leading to a loss of Christian predominance is the political captivity of the American church. Stanley Hauerwas expresses the problem this way: “I believe that we are in a mess because as Christians in America we are more American than Christian.”59 In other words, in our pluralistic age partisan political thinking and American national/cultural identity have more pervasive and persuasive formative power than does religion in general, or Christianity in particular. As Robert Putnam found in his study of religion in America, “When religion and politics were initially inconsistent [in those studied], religious commitment, not political commitment, was more likely to change.”60 As Putnam memorably exposed in his visit to Concordia Seminary’s theological symposium in 2007, this tendency occurs not just in political opinion, but even appears in the area of doctrinal belief.61 William Cavanaugh calls this a “migration of the holy” since “the kinds of public devotion formerly associated with Christianity in the West never did go away, but largely migrated to a new realm defined by the nation state.”62 This phenomenon further helps us to understand the loss of Christians’ predominance in America: a Christian ethic and public witness is by no means guaranteed even among those who identify as “Christian.” If this truly is the case, it should not surprise us if the Christian church continues to find itself in a less predominant position and if, as a result of this, it loses some of the accommodations and privileges that were once attendant to its more dominant position. Perhaps if anything, the church in the United States should be thankful that even in the face of the decline of its power in the public arena, the church has experienced very little direct challenge to the continued proclamation of gospel in our society at large: the message of Christ continues to be proclaimed daily through innumerable mediums and messengers. This should neither be taken for granted nor assumed to be the “normal” condition in which most of followers of Christ have, or ever will, live.

But, “What If . . .” Of course, one could always contend that this could all change tomorrow, just as it did for Luther and the Reformers. Indeed, it could; the Scriptures give no promise of worldly stability. What if persecution were to swiftly befall the Christian church in America all at once? Would the work of the Holy Spirit cease? Would the body of Christ fail? Would the purposes of God be thwarted? “No” is the only answer that the scriptural witness knows to these question.63 This question gives us an opportunity to return to a point made, but not elabo- rated, above: the Christian experience of persecution must be grounded in the scriptural story. It is important to notice how easy it is for our cultural or political outlook to control our response to persecution. Speaking broadly, one of the first moves that American

300 Christians tend to make when they see persecution in the rest of the world is to appeal to the right of religious freedom and demand an end to the persecution.64 Although this might be a justified response in the American political context, and the freedom of religion a cherished good, this is not the primary response that the Scriptures, or the history of the Christian tradition, teach. When Luther responded to persecution in his own day, he relied heavily upon Christ’s words: “Pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44). For instance, when Luther spoke about Duke George of Saxony (a “bitter foe of the Reformation”) he said, “Certainly I have prayed for him with all my heart. . . . I ask you and yours to commend him to the Lord in your prayers.”65 In 1527 Luther wrote a letter to the Christians in Halle after the murder of their pastor, George Winkler. The circumstances of the murder were unclear, but there were some strong suspicions that the church authorities might have been involved since George was killed returning to Halle after being summoned to an ecclesiastical hearing for his administration of both bread and wine in communion.66 Even in these uncertain and tragic circumstances, though, Luther did not change his counsel for prayer and forgiveness: But forgive your enemies and pray for them and do good to them, that is the true Christian’s virtue. . . . Accordingly, I beg you and exhort you, my dear brothers and friends, to do as Christ did and leave this disturb- ing matter, which rightly pains and grieves you so, to him who is the just Judge, as St. Peter teaches us. Take care that you do not become hostile to anyone because of it, or engender hatred or spread evil gossip, or curse and desire revenge. You would do wrong to be so hard hearted as not to be stirred by this murder, or if you acceded to it and did not wholeheart- edly condemn it. It would be equally wrong to curse the murderers, desire revenge, or nurse hostility rather than pray for them . . . we are to have mercy on these persons and, so long as there is hope that they may come to know and to better themselves, pray that God may mercifully enable them to repent of their murder and evil. We would not be helped by their condemnation but would greatly rejoice if they would be saved through our prayers and kindness.67 When persecution does come upon Christians, it is not a call to hatred, vindic- tiveness, revenge, malice, pettiness, or victimhood. Instead, it is yet another opportunity to call upon the Lord in every circumstance.68

Conclusion This article has argued that rather than claiming or warning of imminent and impending persecution, it is more accurate and helpful to understand that the church is losing predominance in the United States and, as a result of this, that Christians in America may face more challenges in the public square than they have been accustomed to in the past. Within a prayerful, ongoing process of discernment the church (wherever and whenever it may be) must listen carefully, look both across and throughout the body of Christ, and use the two reigns of God to help recognize the presence or absence

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 301 of persecution. Implicit in this argument is an acknowledgement that the current political and cultural environment that Christians in America find themselves is not, by a long shot, the most challenging, threatening, or dangerous circumstance in which the church has sought to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord. This reality could change one day. Yet even if it does, even if the worst worries of some come true, there is still nothing to fear—for the church has the promises of Christ.69

Endnotes 1 Luther’s Works eds. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann, 56 vols. American Edition (St. Louis and Philadelphia: Concordia Publishing House and Fortress Press, 1958‒1986), 10:353. 2 Ibid.: “For now peace attacks more than the sword did formerly, clothing more than nakedness, food more than hunger, security more than difficulty, abundance more than poverty, and the opposite of everything the apostle lists in Romans 8:35 . . . Therefore, as the apostles applied the psalms to their own time against the Jews, their enemies, the martyrs to their own time against the persecutors, the teachers to their own time against the heretics (as blessed Augustine does nearly everywhere), so we, too, must now pray and apply them against the half- Christians and those who serve the Lord only in a carnal and formal way. Especially should we pray for the princes and priests of the church, where this evil is particularly prevalent. This does not mean that we must rage and be indig- nant against them, blaspheme and disparage them, since this would have no constructive result. But we must grieve and have compassion and commiserate with the church and pray with and for them” (italics added). 3 LW 43:62. The resistance, and outright persecution, that the evangelical cause encountered caused Luther and others too look back upon the travails of Jan Hus and other Christian martyrs for inspiration and consolation. See Robert Kolb, “‘Saint John Hus’ and ‘Jerome Savonarola, Confessor of God’: The Lutheran “Canonization” of Late Medieval Martyrs,” Concordia Journal 17 (1991): 404‒418. 4 Susan Stabile has identified some of the conflicts that have contributed to the increased discussion of persecution in the United States among Christians over recent years. See Susan J. Stabile, “What is Religious ‘Persecution’ in a Pluralist Society?” Villanova Law Review 59 (2014): 753‒770. 5 See the movie Persecuted, directed by Daniel Lusko, (2014, Millennium Entertainment). Perhaps the most well-known book on the topic is David Limbaugh, Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity (New York: Harper Perennial, 2004). See also Stabile, 753. 6 For example: Jay Gota, “Christian leaders slam US Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, warn Christians of looming persecution,” Christianity Today, June 27, 2015 http://www.christiantoday.com/article/christian.leaders.slam.us.supreme.court.ruling.on.gay.marriage.warn.christians.of.looming.persecution/57301.htm 7 For instance, in 2014 Dr. Jim Garlow declared that evangelical Christians in America are experiencing “full-blown persecution like we have not seen previously in America. . . . The kind of persecution we find in the rest of the world, we are now experiencing here.” See the podcasts: http://www.wallbuilderslive.com/listen.asp?cs=h igh&mf=mp3&fileName=WBLive2014-01-06. 8 Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 99. 9 The pace of societal change has even surprised social liberals. See, for instance, “Marriage Equality in America: So far, so fast” The Economist, October 11, 2014, http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21623671- week-americas-supreme-court-dealt-supporters-gay-marriage-great-victory-we-look. 10 Neuhaus, 129. Persecution, and especially martyrdom, often brings great clarity to the church; our contemporary situation, it will be argued, is more opaque. 11 “The Son of God Goes Forth to War” (see the Lutheran Service Book, hymn 661). Damnatio ad bestias (condemnation to the beasts) was a common form of Roman punishment that was particularly popular with the crowds. See Boris A. Paschke, “The Roman ad bestias Execution as a Possible Historical Background for 1 Peter 5:8,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 28 no. 4 (2006): 489‒500. Paschke’s argument is adopted and strengthened by David G. Horrell, Bradley Arnold, and Travis B. Williams, “Visuality, Vivid Description, and the Message of 1 Peter: The Significance of the Roaring Lion (1 Peter 5:8),” Journal of Biblical Literature 132 no. 3 (2013): 697–716. 12 Undoubtedly, there are Christians in the United States who have, do, and will suffer coercive pressure or violence precisely because they are following Christ in their particular vocations. 13 This is also the case with many legal, philosophical, and political documents that discuss the topic of persecution. See Jaakko Kuoanen, “What’s So Special about Persecution?” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (2014): 129‒140. Kuoanen arrives at the following definition of persecution: “an asymmetrical and systemic threat

302 of severe and sustained harm that is inflicted discriminatorily and unjustly” (ibid., 138). 14 Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert, eds., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 515‒516. 15 Ibid., 636.3 16 See Irene Dingel, “The Culture of Conflict in the Controversies Leading to the Formula of Concord (1548‒1580),” Lutheran Ecclesiastical Culture, 1550‒1675, Robert Kolb ed. (Boston: Brill, 2008), 18‒22 and 34‒39. 17 The article ends “Dissonantia ieiunii non dissolvit conconantiam fidei,” that is, “Dissimilarity in fasting shall not destroy the unity of faith.” 18 In 2010 a group of Evangelical scholars released Bad Urach Statement: Towards an evangelical theology of suffering, persecution, and martyrdom for the global church in mission (available online: http://www.iirf.eu/filead- min/user_upload/PDFs/Bad_Urach_Statement.pdf) in which a definition and theology of persecution is developed. This statement, though, has not received much attention in the church at large. 19 “We know of no persecution by the Roman Government until 64 [AD], and there was no general persecution until Decius. Between 64 and 250 there were only isolated, local persecutions; and even if the total number of victims was quite considerable (as I think it probably was), most individual outbreaks must usually have been quite brief. Even the general persecution of Decius lasted little more than a year, and the second general persecution, that of Valerian in 257‒9, less than three years. The third and last general persecution, by Diocletian and his colleagues from 303 onwards (the so-called ‘Great Persecution’), continued for only about two years in the West, although it went on a good deal longer in the East. In the intervals between these general persecutions . . . Christians enjoyed something like complete peace over most of the empire and in addition the capacity of the Christian churches to own property was recognized, at least under some emperors.” G. E. M. De Ste Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, ed. Michael Whitby and Joseph Streeter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 106‒107 (emphasis added). 20 The controversy surrounding FC X demonstrates this well. One party, Philip Melanchthon and his followers, “believed that secular authorities had a right to play a role in the externals of church life” (Dingel, 38). For them, then, the imposition of certain rites was not persecution, but rather the rightful exercise of the authorities’ power. For Matius Flacius and his followers, on the other hand, secular authorities did not have such a right and, therefore, the church was indisputably in a state of persecution. See Dingel, 38‒39. 21 See Candida Moss, The Myth of Christian Persecution (New York: Harper One, 2013) and James A. Kelhoffer, “Withstanding Persecution as a Corroboration of Legitimacy in the New Testament: Reflections on the Resulting Ethical and Hermeneutical Quandary,” Dialog: A Journal of Theology 50 no. 2 (Summer 2011): 120‒132. 22 “Are Christians in America persecuted? The short answer is ‘Yes, all the time’. . . Persecution is the normal experience of every Christian everywhere.” Kevin DeYoung, “Are Christians in America Persecuted?” The Gospel Coalition, April 15, 2014, http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2014/04/15/are-christians-in-america-persecuted/. 23 When Luther discuss “bearing the sacred cross” as a mark of the church, he makes suffering and persecution distinct categories that fall under the theology of the cross (LW 41:164). 24 Jeffrey Gibbs, Matthew 1:1‒11:1, Concordia Commentary (St. Louis: CPH, 2006), 253‒254. 25 In fact, when this does occur the church should be deeply wary of being co-opted by any particular political party or specific ideological narrative. As R. R. Reno recently remarked, “Sadly, our faith is often manipu- lated, perverted, and betrayed for the sake of worldly ambitions. In those instances, brotherly love requires strong criticism.” R. R. Reno, “Letters,” First Things (August/September 2015): 10. 26 As Greensburg notes, many early church fathers taught that “martyrdom is not to be sought out; neither is it to be feared.” L. A. Greenberg, “My Share of God’s Reward”: Exploring the Roles and Formulations of the Afterlife in Early Christian Martyrdom (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009), 119. 27 See Gibbs, 527‒532. 28 See “Religious Hostilities Reach Six-Year High” PEW Research Center, January 14, 2014, http://www. pewforum.org/2014/01/14/religious-hostilities-reach-six-year-high/. 29 See Hebrews 11‒12. 30 Toward the later part of the third century Christians could be found at very high levels in Roman society. See William Tabbernee, “Eusebius’s ‘Theology of Persecution’: As Seen in the Various Editions of his Church History,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 no. 3 (1997): 319‒334. See also emphasis added in endnote xvi. 31 The Bad Urach Statement rightly cautions the church against using this oft-cited quotation of Tertullian in a formulaic or overly-triumphalist manner: “The ‘fruit’ of martyrdom remains a grace from God (Jn 12:24). We must therefore avoid a triumphalistic use of the popular saying of church father Tertullian from North Africa that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed for new Christians” (p. 23). On a similar vein, it is important to

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 303 remember that just because the church sometimes thrives in times of persecution does not mean that it will auto- matically thrive whenever it faces persecution. 32 He continues: “The reality is that the king was no ogre, no Hitler, and the Lutherans who stayed in Prussia ended up gaining the concessions they needed to stay truly Lutheran. The reality is that Kavel and the Old- Lutherans were uncharitable in designating the Reformed church and the union as ‘heathen,’ they were stubborn in spurning the king’s attempts to grant them concessions and meet their objections, they were unorthodox in insisting that there is only one form of church government that is scriptural, and they were unjustified in regarding themselves as the only true Lutheran church.” Rev. Dr. Dean Zweck, “Suffering and Persecution as a Mark of the Church: A Perspective from Australia,” Lutheran Theological Journal 47 no. 3 (December 2013): 166‒167. 33 “A Grave Business,” The Economist, July 25, 2015, http://www.economist.com/news/united- states/21659737-tussle-over-headstones-new-jersey-may-end-up-supreme-court-grave-business. The Archdiocese is now suing to overturn the law. See James Barron, “Archdiocese Disputes Ban on It Selling Headstones,” New York Times, July 20, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/nyregion/archdiocese-disputes-ban-on-it-selling- headstones.html?_r=0. 34 The disruption of the Archdiocese’s gravestone business is not the same thing as the upending of the silversmiths guild in the city of Ephesus in Acts 19. 35 Stephen Prothero, “When Every Day is a Religious Holiday: In the name of ‘inclusivity,’ the school year is becoming off-limits to teaching. How about zero holidays?” Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2015, http:// www.wsj.com/articles/stephen-prothero-when-every-day-is-a-religious-holiday-1425943088. 36 Or, for that matter, with the so-called blue laws that mainly restrict the commerce of certain businesses on Sundays that are common in many states and counties. 37 David French, “Ready Always to Give an Answer: Campus Christians flourish amid adversity” National Review (September 7, 2015): 32‒34. 38 Hypothetically, under this policy a socialist could lead the campus Republicans and an avid hunter the PETA campus chapter. 39 For a critique of the court’s ruling, see Harvey A. Silverman, “A Campus Crusade against the Constitution: Limiting First Amendment rights for Christians undercuts rights for everyone else.” Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/harvey-a-silverglate-a-campus-crusade-against-the-constitution-1411081302. 40 See Brook Mertz, “Cal State retracts recognition for InterVarsity on all 23 campuses,” USA Today, September 18, 2014, http://college.usatoday.com/2014/09/18/cal-state-retracts-recognition-for-intervarsity-on-all- 23-campuses/ 41 French, 34. 42 On this problem, see James Davidson Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), esp. essay II, chap. 6. 43 “In societies such as ours, which place no formal liabilities upon being Christian, the contriving of persecution can only trivialize the very real persecution of Christians elsewhere.” Neuhaus, 129. 44 Even some opponents of the church in the United State recognize the extreme suffering of Christians in other parts of the world and are unimpressed by any American Christian claim to persecution. See Robert Boston, “Persecution Complex,” Church & State (March 2014): 13‒16. 45 Alan Noble, “The Evangelical Persecution Complex,” The Atlantic, August 4, 2014, http://www.the- atlantic.com/national/archive/2014/08/the-evangelical-persecution-complex/375506/ 46 Luther was insistent that “Christians must resist being preoccupied with the affliction itself because it ren- ders no sense of its transitory nature. According to Jesus’s words in John 16:16‒22, and 16:33 affliction will last but ‘a little while.’ Luther commented on verses 20‒22 of this text as follows. ‘Sadness will not last forever; it will turn into joy.’” John C. Clark, “Martin Luther’s View of Cross-Bearing,” Bibliotheca Sacra 163 (July-September 2006): 343. 47 There is evidence that the early church struggled with what to do about the enthusiasm of many Christians for martyrdom. This can be seen in the different recensions of the Martyrdom of Carpus and Papylus. In the Greek recension, a woman named Agathonice sees two Christian martyrs being burned to death, has a vision, and then jumps upon the flames herself. In the Latin version of the Acta Agathonice does not throw herself upon the fire voluntarily but is brought before the proconsul and ordered to sacrifice to the emperor; after refusing, she is burned to death. See Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 27‒36. The tension between seeking out martyrdom and unsolicited persecution/martyrdom is also evident in the writings of several early church fathers. As Bowersock notes, the rush toward a voluntary martyrdom “became so alarming that they [the church fathers] gradually developed a sharp discrimination between solicited martyrdom and the more traditional kind that came as a result of persecution. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian, and

304 Lactantius, all great spokesman of the early church, attempted to stop this enthusiasm and reserve the ranks of the martyrs for those who endured suffering and death in the face of persecution.” G. W. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 4. 48 While the language used by InterVarsity is appropriate for their circumstance, calling the Christian church in America “marginalized” is not (yet) an accurate description. Although Christianity is losing some of its influence, the United States remains a deeply religious country and the Christian church retains deep political influence in America (especially when compared to the position of the church in other Western nations and our closet neighbor, Canada). See Anna Grzymala-Busse, Nations Under God: How Churches use Moral Authority to Influence Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), esp. chap. 5. 49 See Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites US (New York: Simon &Schuster, 2010), chap. 1. See also “‘Nones’ on the Rise,” PEW Research Center, Oct. 9, 2012, http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/; and Michael Lipka, “A Closer Look at America’s Rapidly Growing Religious ‘Nones,’” PEW Research Center, May 13, 2015, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2015/05/13/a-closer-look-at-americas-rapidly-growing-religious-nones/. 50 Philip Gorski, “Religious Pluralism and Democratic Inclusion: The American Recipe for Peace,” Society 51 (2014): 623‒635. 51 Ibid., 623. 52 Ibid., 624. “In truth, the American Formula is better compared to a family recipe, handed down from generation to generation, with adjustments made along the way, often on the fly, so as to include new ‘ingredients’ or respond to changing conditions. Adjustments have been necessitated by the formation of new religious communities and/or the arrival of new immigrant groups, whether Methodists and Baptists in the 18th century, Catholics and Jews in the 19th century, or Hindus and Muslims in the present day. Adjustments have also been spurred by institutional changes, notably, the expansion of public education or the creation of the welfare state. Successful adjustments have maintained a rough balance between religious freedom (‘free exercise’) and civic inclusion (‘no establishment,’ ‘no test’), with the scales tipping slightly towards the former. Unsuccessful ones have tipped the balance too far in one direction (‘total separationism’) or the other (‘Christian nationalism’).” 53 Ibid., 625. 54 To use Gorski’s analogy, the “serpentine” wall between church and state might be raised higher in some places, built up in new places, and relocated in others. 55 The case of a Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses since the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling is illuminated very well by Gorski’s analysis. The value of civil inclusion is being championed by the court system as it refuses Kim Davis’s legal petitions to not issue marriage licenses because of her religious convic- tion. Since this case is ongoing, it is difficult to analyze adequately. Yet it is interesting to note that even Neuhaus, who openly advocated participation in the “public square,” recognized that “The sectarian option, seriously pur- sued, is one honorable alternative to the politics of compromise. . . . As strange as it may seem, it may happen at times that the church is most influential when it is indifferent to exercising influence.” Neuhaus, 119. 56 “Since InterVarsity is no longer recognized by California State as an official student organization, the group no longer receives as high of a discount on renting rooms for weekly meetings and other regular events as it would if it were still recognized. At Sonoma State, for example, costs may reach up to $30,000 for the year, according to InterVarsity area director Jenny Klouse.” Mertz. See also French. 57 Laurie Goodstein and Adam Lipak, “Schools Fear Gay Marriage Ruling Could End Tax Exemptions,” New York Times, June 24, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/schools-fear-impact-of-gay-marriage- ruling-on-tax-status.html?_r=1. 58 Neuhaus, 129. Putnam’s study also supports this contention: “By a wide margin, Americans see the value in religious diversity for its own sake” (520). Gorski, however, is more ambivalent: “Whether the rebalancing act that is currently underway will ultimately succeed is an open question” (624). 59 Stanley Hauerwas, A Cross Shattered Church: Reclaiming the Theological Heart of Preaching (Brazos Press, 2009), 137. 60 Putnam, 145. 61 Ibid., 540. 62 William Cavanaugh, Migrations of the Holy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), 2. 63 As the old hymn reminds us, “The kingdom ours remaineth.” 64 See Nik Ripkin, “The Perplexities of Persecution Require a Very Different Kind of Prayer,” USA Today (March 2014): 52‒53. 65 LW 43:64. See also note 2, emphasis added. 66 In his discussion of the case, Luther uses the two-reigns distinction to note that George “was not just

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 305 murdered in service and obedience to secular authority, but also for the sake of the gospel, most of all because he wanted to teach and administer communion in both kinds.” LW 43:149. 67 LW 43:164‒165. 68 Cf. Revelation 6:10. 69 This insight is borrowed and modified from an interview with Rowan Williams: Justin Brierley: Does Christianity have anything to fear from a sort of secularization/atheism? Rowan Williams: Christianity has, I think, first of all, nothing to fear. I do take that absolutely seriously. It is a fundamental biblical principle. One of the first things that Jesus says to the apostles is “Don’t be afraid.” So let’s not cast it in terms of what Christianity has to fear. We have the promises of God. It’s as basic as that. . . . And what’s the future? Can we be confident that the church will be respected, influential, taken seriously? Well, no actually. There is no guarantee of that in the Bible or anywhere else. So let’s not imagine that the welfare, the wellbeing, the advance of the kingdom of God is bound up with our being popular or influential. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. It comes and goes, historically. See “In Conversation with Rowan Williams,” Premier Christian Radio, March 19, 2013, http://www.pre- mierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/In-Conversation-with-Rowan-Williams.

306 Tending Our Common Home Reflections on Laudato Si’ Charles P. Arand

Francis of Assisi’s famous “Canticle of Brother Sun,” or “Canticle of the Creatures,” opens with the line, “Praised be you, my Lord, through all your creatures.”1 This famous canticle praises God by extolling the wonders of his creation. Over the centuries, it has provided the inspiration for hymns such as “All Creatures of Our God and King.” And now, the opening words, “Blessed be” supply the title for the first encyclical issued by Pope Francis that can be considered entirely his. The much anticipated papal encyclical, Laudato Si’, made its appearance on June 18, 2015. But should conservative Lutherans pay any attention to it, and if so, why? I would suggest that we should for several reasons. First, the pope is the one person in the world who is able to attract a hearing from both Christians and non-Christians alike. This is in part because he shepherds a flock of nearly 1.2 billion people worldwide. And it is in part because he is recognized as a person who carries a great deal of moral authority. And in Francis’s particular case, he carries a great deal of personal respect with his humility and generosity. Second, an encyclical is one of the more authoritative teaching documents that a pope can issue (only an Apostolic Constitution ranks higher). Popes usually issue an encyclical to provide a moral foundation on topics of great significance. So when Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio adopted the name Francis in honor of Francis of Assisi, it soon became rumored that he might issue an encyclical on the environment. Third, we are a church that confesses and adheres to all three articles of the creed. We have irreconcilable differences with Rome on the second and third articles related to the work of Christ and justification by faith alone that date back to the sixteenth century. But we share a number of common convictions regarding the first article of the creed as it relates to the moral issues of society and God’s continuing work in creation (creatio continua). Finally, the encyclical has received widespread publicity in the media and around the world. The themes and issues of this encyclical have especially resonated with many in the southern hemisphere. As one of my colleagues put it, many of the young people in Latin America have cheered Laudato Si’ for here was a pope who was addressing

Charles P. Arand is the Eugene E. and Nell S. Fincke Graduate Professor of Theology, director of the Center for the Care of Creation, and dean of theological research and publication at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 307 their concerns and issues. And on top of that, he was doing so in language that they understand and with a smile rather than out of anger. In the United States, its reception has been more of a mixed bag as the document is frequently viewed through the lens of Democratic and Republican politics. It would be wrong, however, to evaluate the document in this way; Laudato Si’ cannot easily be cast into the camp of liberal or conservative politics.2 If one side finds support on the issue of climate change, it should also take to heart what the pope says about life issues. And if one side grimaces at the pope’s critique of an unfettered free market, one can welcome his arguments for life issues. In addition, it would be a mistake to think the document signals a significant shift in Roman Catholic teaching. It is true that it may be the first encyclical that focuses entirely on the stewardship of creation. But as Francis indicates at the outset, he is building on statements of his immediate predecessors. The document reflects a long tradition of catholic social teaching as it draws upon principles such as the dignity of work, the common good, subsidiarity, and the preferential option for the poor.3 But what is new is the way Francis brings all of these together as interconnected issues while addressing matters related to the environment. So what might we take away from the document? I would suggest several things. First, Francis provides a way of engaging those who do not share our beliefs in a post- Christian world. Second, the document provides some helpful lines of direction toward a more robust theology of creation and its use within the church. Finally, Francis encourages us to expand our horizons and embrace a comprehensive vision of the world. He challenges the church to take a global perspective in which a practical commitment to human beings and the environment take priority over a commitment to nationalities, ideologies, economic theories, and politics.

Our Common Home: Theme and Strategy When Apollo 8 orbited the moon in 1968, the astronauts snapped what became one of most iconic photographs ever taken. It was the earth rising over the barren landscape of the moon set against the vast blackness of space. We may not realize it (because we are so accustomed to seeing it) but this photo forever altered humanity’s vision of itself and our planet. This was the first time in all of human history that we saw the earth from outside the earth. This was our home. The subtitle for Laudato Si,’ “Our Common Home,” provides a helpful lens to consider the document and with it, our life in this world. Now, Francis is not the first to employ the metaphor of a home with respect to creation. In the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa referred to creation as a “royal lodging.”4 In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther similarly employed the metaphor of a house to describe God’s construction of creation in his great commentary on Genesis. And now in the twenty-first century, Francis takes the metaphor a step further by speaking of “Our Common Home.” Francis uses the metaphor of a common home in order to bring into the discus-

308 sion all people, Christian and non-Christian alike. You might say that he calls for a family meeting to deal with issues that impact our entire household. In this, he provides a helpful way to move beyond an “us-them” approach.5 What might such a conversation entail? We need to begin by listening to the needs and concerns of everyone in the house. This is a consistent theme throughout the document. We need to not only hear “the cry of the earth” but also “the cry of the poor” (§49). We also need to listen to the insights of science as it diagnoses the condition of our common home. And yet Francis, a trained scientist himself (chemistry), cautions that science does not offer a complete explanation of life. And so, Francis invites non-Christians to consider the wisdom of the Christian tradition. He asks, “Why should this document, addressed to all people of good will, include a chapter dealing with the convictions of believers?” Francis is well aware that in politics and philosophy “there are those who firmly reject the idea of a Creator, or consider it irrelevant, and consequently dismiss as irrational the rich contribution which religions can make towards an integral ecology and the full development of humanity” (§62). He argues that we cannot afford to ignore other forms of wisdom when dealing with large and complex issues related to our common home. And so he invites non-Christians to consider what Christianity has to offer. In addition, he addresses his Christian flock about the Christian relation to creation. He hopes to encourage them to live in ways that not only helps creation but witnesses to the Christian message.

What Is the Condition of Our Common Home? Many communities require a home inspection before the house is trans- ferred to another party. The inspector’s job is to evaluate the structure. Is it up to code? Does it have methane gas detectors and fire detectors? Are there hidden problems that may cause harm (sick home . . . sick life)? In other words, is the house in shape so as to be a home in which people can live and flourish? One of Francis’s concerns has to do with the condition of the home that we are handing on to the generations that come after us. What kind of a home will they inherit? And so Francis enlists the help of inspectors to assess the state of our home in light of our impact upon it during the last couple hundred years. The results are sober- ing. Francis summarizes the results in pretty stark terms, “we’ve turned our home into ‘an immense pile of filth’” (§21). He identifies several issues. First, will the home we bequeath our descendants include a climate that sustains the life and health of all? Here, Francis observes (and which everyone expected) that most scientists claim that it is changing for the worse due to human activity. But it is not only climate change that poses a danger, but all forms of pollution that cause damage to the environment and human health (§23). Second, will the home we bequeath our descendants include clean water for all? Currently, large numbers on the planet suffer from what he calls “water poverty.” This

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 309 especially “affects Africa where large sectors of the population have no access to safe drinking water” (§28). Once again, he argues that access to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right that is essential “to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights” (§30). Third, will the home we bequeath our descendants be emptied of many of God’s creatures? Here Francis addresses the rapid loss of biodiversity especially in the oceans. Here he quotes the Filipino bishops, “Who turned the wonderworld of the seas into underwater cemeteries bereft of colour and life?” As a result, “thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence” (§41). And Francis notes in the best tradition of Frederick Olmstead Law (designer of Central Park) that the privatiza- tion of certain spaces restricts people’s access to places of particular beauty. He laments, “We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves” (§34). Fourth, will the home we bequeath our descendants provide economic opportunity for all? It may seem surprising that Francis includes in a document on the environment the issue of global inequality. But people are part of the environment as well. And here he casts an eye (I suspect) toward the United Nations when he notes that devel- oping countries “face forms of international pressure which make economic assistance contingent on certain policies of ‘reproductive health’” (§50). Francis criticizes the current response to these problems as “weak.” For example, at one extreme, “we find those who doggedly uphold the myth of progress” and believe that problems of our home can simply be solved “with the application of new technology and without any need for ethical considerations or deep change.” On the other end of the spectrum are “those who view men and women and all their interventions as no more than a threat, jeopardizing the global ecosystem, and consequently the presence of human beings on the planet should be reduced and all forms of intervention prohib- ited” (§60). Francis finds these responses lacking because they are beholden to the technocratic mindset of modernity when our problems are not primarily technological, but anthropological. And so the issues about our environment are really questions about us: Why are we here? What is the purpose of our life in this world? What is the goal of our work and all our efforts? Apart from these “deeper issues,” he doubts (and I agree) that “our concern for ecology will produce significant results” (§160).

Why Have We Not Taken Care of Our Common Home? Why do people not take care of their homes and maintain them? Some of the reasons may be a lack of money or a lack of time. But one important reason might be that if we don’t feel that it is really “our” home, then why care about it? If we are not “at home” in it then it simply becomes a tem- porary shelter not a home. Francis entitled chapter 3 “The Human Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” as perhaps an indirect critique of the famous 1967 article by Lynn White entitled, “The

310 Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis.”6 White argued that the Christian doctrine of dominion gave rise to the ecological problems of today. Francis acknowledges that Christianity has at times presented an “inadequate anthropology” that provided a “wrong understanding of the relationship between human beings and the world” (§116). But he argues that the roots of our problems ultimately lie in a “‘certain way of understanding human life and activity’ that has gone awry” (§101). So what has happened? He argues that our situation today is unique within history when it comes to the influence of the human role within creation. He calls it “rapidification” (§18). The rate of change as a result of a techno-science society exceeds in scope, scale, and speed any change that occurs naturally within creation. In other words, our adoption of a technocratic mindset has given rise to a “Promethean vision of mastery over the world” (§116). Francis pulls few punches in criticizing what he refers to as the “dominant technocratic paradigm” of our modern world. This is the tendency to view the world only through the lens of empirical science with the goal of acquiring control over the world and then transforming it through technology. Francis rejects the use of this paradigm to understand the whole of reality—especially all of human life and society. Reducing all human understanding to this paradigm is ultimately responsible for “the deterioration of the environment” (§107). Now, Francis is no Luddite when it comes to advances in science and technology. He welcomes the ways in which science and technology have improved human wellbeing over the past two centuries. This includes everything from advances in medicine to the use of technology for cultivating the arts. He even praises the beauty of airplanes and skyscrapers as examples that highlight the nobility of humans and how God has enabled them to participate in his own creativity. Francis’s concern is thus not with science and technology as such. It is rather with the adoption of a technocratic mindset that blinds us to the intrinsic value of other creatures and beings. It places human beings at the center and gives “absolute priority to immediate convenience” in which everything else becomes relative to one’s individual concerns. We assess the value of everything in terms of whether or not we find it useful to us. Francis calls this a “practical relativism,” a disorder that “drives one person to take advantage of another, to treat others as mere objects” (§122). Such thinking results in a “use it and throw it away” culture. It “leads to the sexual exploitation of children and abandonment of the elderly who no longer serve our interests” (§123). It blames population growth for environmental problems rather than “extreme and selective consumerism” (§50). And it results in a “constant schizophrenia, wherein a technocracy which sees no intrinsic value in lesser beings coexists with the other extreme, which sees no special value in human beings” (§118). Again, Francis does not reject science as a paradigm for understanding aspects of our world. What he contends, however, is that rationality and empiricism alone cannot offer a complete explanation of life nor provide a solution that can “counter the destructive consequences on the environment” of our actions. So rather than continuing the dominance of a technocratic paradigm to life, Francis argues that we need “a dis-

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 311 tinctive way of looking at things” that results in a lifestyle and a spirituality which can “generate resistance to the assault of the technocratic paradigm” (§111). In other words, what we need is a better anthropology. He asserts, “There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself. There can be no ecology without an adequate anthropology” (§118). To expand on Francis’s thought, what we need is an anthropology that fits our status as creatures and that respects the home for which we were made. This arises only from a theology of creation.

Our Common Home Precedes Us and Defines Us “Oh, you’re from Wisconsin.” As my childhood home, Wisconsin defined me. It gave me my ethnicity, shaped my accent, fostered my loyalty to sports teams (Packers, etc.), cultivated my preference in foods, and accli- mated me to a particular climate. Even when we move away for decades, we can’t entirely escape our home’s influence upon us. This is the point that Francis wishes to make about our common home. We do not live apart from it; we are part of it. The earth precedes us, defines us, and limits us. We are Earthlings, not Martians. Its natural history and human history (Western society, etc.) form us. And so, a proper anthropology that does not separate us from the world needs to be situated within the world (see Psalm 104). Francis goes about this in two ways. First, Francis points out to people of good will that we need to observe and study the interconnections and interdependencies of our world. It has a “relative autonomy” to which the various human disciplines have access. And we should seek to accept those realities and live lives consistent with those connections. He emphasizes this especially with respect to moral issues. If everything is connected, we must be consistent in our faithful care for all of life.7 Second, while the world possesses relative autonomy, it is ultimately dependent upon God. And so Francis will bring in the theological connections (primary causes) that undergird and define this world. In other words, he stresses that “our relationship with the environment can never be isolated from our relationship with others and with God. Otherwise, it would be nothing more than romantic individualism dressed up in ecological garb, locking us into a stifling immanence” (§119). So, what kind of anthropology is needed that fits us and our home? It is one that is defined by the doctrine of creation and the incarnation. Here Francis takes us through biblical narratives that highlight the human relationship to creation. This includes Cain and Abel, and others. In brief, we can highlight several theological principles or touchstones on which Francis draws and which point the way to a more robust theology of creation. First, Francis helpfully warns that “a spirituality which forgets God as all-powerful and Creator is not acceptable. That is how we end up worshipping earthly powers, or ourselves usurping the place of God, even to the point of claiming an unlimited

312 right to trample his creation underfoot” (§75). Luther made a similar point in the Large Catechism, what does it mean to confess God as creator? It means that “I am God’s creature!” (LC II, 13).8 When we take into account God as creator, we cannot place ourselves at the center. Nor can we claim an “absolute ownership” (§67) of the world. Instead, as creatures, we always remain accountable to God. Second, Francis draws on Psalm 33:6 and points out that the world came about as the result of a “decision, not from chaos or chance.” The creating word expresses a “free choice. The universe did not emerge as the result of arbitrary omnipotence, a show of force or a desire for self-assertion.” Instead, “creation is the order of love. God’s love is the fundamental moving force in all created things” (§77). Again, in Lutheran terms, God does all this “out of fatherly goodness and mercy.” This means that we need to broaden our language beyond the talk of “nature” and reclaim the language of creation for creation has to do “with God’s loving plan in which every creature has its own value and significance” rather than simply a “system which can be studied, understood, and controlled” (§76). To speak of creation as an act of love by God further means that we cannot simply view it as a pile of raw materials or treat it as a machine. It is more like a work of art with God as the artist.9 God created it for the sheer love of it. As such, it cannot be reduced to an analysis of chemistry, physics, and mathematics. It will always remain (in important ways) beyond our understanding. In other words, the world will always remain somewhat of a mystery and evoke wonder beyond our knowledge. The doctrine of creation provides a larger vision of reality within which this can be integrated. Third, as human creatures made from the earth for life on the earth, we are constituted by and defined by our world (what Francis calls “reality”). Even though humans are not confined to one ecological niche (as, for example, cranes in wetlands) and can live anywhere, we are still defined and shaped by our home. This is not an insignificant point. To be defined by our world is to acknowledge limits of creatureliness. Yet as fallen creatures, we resist this in our quest to free ourselves from any depen- dency upon the world or the limitations imposed upon us by it. One way we seek to free ourselves from creation and our creatureliness, according to Francis, is by prizing “technical thought over reality” (§115). A Cartesian world view (“I think therefore I am”) reduces me to rationality and views “nature as an insen- sate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere ‘given,’ as an object of utility, as raw material to be hammered into useful shape” (§115). But Francis argues, the “time has come to pay renewed attention to reality and the limits it imposes” (§116). He continues, “When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities—to offer just a few examples —it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected” (§117). What applies to the world applies also to us. Just as nature is not simply a store- house of raw materials for us to manipulate however we wish, so “man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will” (§155). We live in an era when many seek to free themselves from the constraints of gender, race, and ethnicity that come with our bodies. Francis writes,

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 313 Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology. Also, valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment. It is not a healthy attitude which would seek to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it. (§155) Fourth, as humans we possess a special dignity and worth within creation. Humans are unique (even evolutionists will argue) within creation and play a uniquely influential rule. In this regard, Francis clearly rejects biocentrism which sees no differences in value between human and nonhuman creatures. As humans made in the image of God, we participate in God’s willful creativity. And so, “we cannot presume to heal our relationship with nature and the environment without healing all fundamental human relationships. Christian thought sees human beings as possessing a particular dignity above other creatures” (§119). Finally, Francis helpfully links together God’s works of creation and redemption. Francis points out that for Christians, the “God who liberates and saves is the same God who created the universe, and these two divine ways of acting are intimately and inseparably connected” (Jer 32:17, 21; Is 40:28b‒2) (§73).10 For Francis, the connection between redemption and creation allows us to find comfort and hope in the confession of a creator. For example, the Babylonian captivity of Israel “provoked a spiritual crisis which led to deeper faith in God.” In that context, Francis argues, God’s “creative omnipotence was given pride of place in order to exhort the people to regain their hope in the midst of their wretched predicament.” Similarly, centuries later, when the Roman Empire persecuted the church “the faithful would once again find consolation and hope in a growing trust in the all-powerful God: “Great and wonderful are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways!” (Rv 15:3) (§74). I would add that the connection between the two great works of God11 means that Christians cannot be concerned about redemption without being concerned about creation and vice versa. Christians are not only concerned about redemption, but are concerned about God’s creation. For they come from the same God. And when it comes to creation care, the Christian account of redemption offers an approach, motivation, and critique that can make a fruitful contribution for addressing our issues.

Our Common Home Is a Household Economy A household deals with the running or managing of the home. It pertains to the various roles, responsibilities, and chores of parents and children within a home. Hence ecology is the study of the household of the planet. We take care of a home so that it can continue to provide beauty, safety, and nourishment for all—human and non-human—creatures who live within it.

314 One of the major takeaways from Laudato Si’, in my opinion, has to do with Francis’s comprehensive vision of the world and our life within it, especially when he calls for an “integral ecology” (chapter 4). Pope Francis takes the concept of ecology (as the study of the interaction of living organisms with the inorganic creation) and extends this insight to include the entire world. In other words, since everything is connected to everything else, no issue can be considered in isolation. And so we cannot consider the problems of nature and society apart from one another. This has several implications. First, Francis calls us away from a fragmented approach to understanding life and to a holistic vision of life. He notes that “the fragmentation of knowledge and the isolation of bits of information can actually become a form of ignorance, unless they are integrated into a broader vision of reality” (§110). No one avenue of learning can solve the issues that we face. Thus science needs to be open to other forms of wisdom including religion, aesthetics, and philosophy. Second, environmental issues cannot be considered in isolation from all other issues of life in this world. Thus concern for the protection of nature is incompatible with the justification of abortion. How “can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be?” (§120). Similarly, advocacy for restrictions on inhumane research on animals is incompatible with the advocacy for research on human embryos. At the same time, we cannot ignore the intrinsic value of nonhuman creatures or the effects of our actions on the poor. Third, the world “is a gift which we have freely received and must share with others” (§159). Here Francis draws on the Catholic principle of the “common good,” which he argues, summons us to “solidarity and a preferential option for the poorest of our brothers and sisters” (§158). Fourth, Francis argues that we need to reject a growing homogenization that is “making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey. . . . We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves” (§34). In a statement that might surprise some, he contends, “The disappearance of a culture can be just as serious, or even more serious, than the disappearance of a species of plant or animal. The imposition of a dominant lifestyle linked to a single form of production can be just as harmful as the altering of ecosystems” (§145). And so he argues that we need to “show special care for indigenous communities and their cultural traditions” (§146).

Home Is Where the Heart Is Life happens at home. Homes are places of conversation, laughter, rest, and enjoyment. Our homes are reflections of our lives as we make them our own. We raise our families in them, we hang pictures, we remodel, and we plant gardens. One might be tempted to ask—since the issues facing the world are so large and requiring national or international solutions—what can any one person do? In final

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 315 analysis, Francis argues, the answers are not simply technological or economic policies. It is we who have to change. And so Francis calls for an ecological conversion, which entails a conversion of the heart. And so in the last chapter of Laudato Si’ Francis turns his attention to the importance of spiritual habits of daily life. He argues that the “rich heritage of Christian spirituality, the fruit of twenty centuries of personal and communal experience, has a precious contribution to make to the renewal of humanity” (§216). This renewal begins by asking how our relationship with Jesus affects our relationships with each other and with the world. He mentions two habits that especially merit our consideration. First, Francis contends that the renewal of the heart begins with a reverence for life—all life—human and nonhuman alike. Francis repeats Benedict’s call for a new reverence of life. “As never before in history, common destiny beckons us to seek a new beginning. . . . Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life” (§207). Second, we need to cultivate the habit of gratitude for the gifts of the world, our connection to all living creatures, and the order and dynamism that God built into the world (§220‒221). Habits of gratitude can overcome an “unhealthy anxiety which makes us superficial, aggressive and compulsive consumers” (§203). Reverence for life and gratitude for our world are cultivated by a “contemplative rest” (time that we take to rest and ponder the works of God) (§237). This requires an “attitude of the heart by which a person approaches life with serene attentiveness, which is capable of being fully present to someone without thinking of what comes next, which accepts each moment as a gift from God to be lived to the full” (§226). Where can such habits be cultivated? Francis argues (and I would say in the best tradition of the Reformation) that the family is key. It is within the family that life as the gift of God can be “properly welcomed and protected” (§213). It is in the family that “we first learn how to show love and respect for life; we are taught the proper use of things, order and cleanliness, respect for the local ecosystem and care for all creatures” (§213). And then in a marvelous statement, he declares, “In the face of the so-called culture of death, the family is the heart of the culture of life” (§213). It is also within the family that we learn to be grateful for life. Francis states, “In the family we learn to ask without demanding, to say “thank you” as an expression of “genuine gratitude” for what we have been given (§213). To this end, Francis urges Christians to once again develop the habit of giving thanks before and after meals. He writes, “I ask all believers to return to this beautiful and meaningful custom. That moment of blessing, however brief, reminds us of our dependence on God for life; it strengthens our feeling of gratitude for the gifts of creation; it acknowledges those who by their labours provide us with these goods” (§227). Finally, it is in the family that we learn that little deeds and actions matter. “There is a nobility in the duty to care for creation through little daily actions.” These include such things as recycling, reduction of food waste and water use, carpooling, and

316 so forth. “All of these reflect a generous and worthy creativity which brings out the best in human beings” (§211). Similarly, we “ask forgiveness when we have caused harm. These simple gestures of heartfelt courtesy help to create a culture of shared life and respect for our surroundings” (§213).

Evaluation While there is much that we can appropriate from Laudato Si’ the text is not without its weaknesses or omissions from a Lutheran standpoint. Perhaps my concerns need to take into account that Francis is addressing an audience that extends beyond the Christian world. First, the document does a good job of highlighting the effects of sin (without using that word) by the way in which Francis addresses an extreme anthropocentrism that seeks to free ourselves from the constraints of creation, an addiction to “compulsive consumerism” that leaves us discontent. But what is most striking is the absence or lack of any mention or discussion about God’s judgement on our refusal to live as his creatures. Now it can be tricky to discuss the wrath of God without devolving into an arbitrary and capricious approach. But there are several ways by which it could have been brought in. For example, Romans 2 provides direction to speaking of God’s wrath in terms of God handing people over to their sinful desires. And what about God’s curse upon the earth? Pope Francis does not emphasize the curse by which God subjected creation to corruption and futility. In fact, he had a good opportunity to do so when he cited Romans 8. But he then gave it a very different interpretation. He writes, Creating a world in need of development, God in some way sought to limit himself in such a way that many of the things we think of as evils, dangers or sources of suffering, are in reality part of the pains of childbirth which he uses to draw us into the act of cooperation with the Creator. (§80) For this, he refers to the Catechism of the Catholic Church which states that “God wished to create a world which is ‘journeying towards its ultimate perfection,’ and that this implies the presence of imperfection and physical evil” (§80).12 Second, it seems to me that Christian eschatology could have been more strongly emphasized in the document as a basis for our hope and motivation for our work. That is to say that it isn’t present. Francis refers to the resurrection as the “‘first day’ of the new creation, whose first fruits are the Lord’s risen humanity, the pledge of the final transfiguration of all created reality” (§237). And Francis argues that the resurrection does proclaim “man’s eternal rest in God” (§237). But in many respects, these affirmations do not shape much of the document’s content, particularly when it comes to our motivation for caring for creation or the assured hope that our “labor is not in vain” (1 Cor 15). Finally, there are a number of distinctively Roman Catholic themes that are incompatible with Lutheran theology, but in my opinion, are not key to the document’s argument. The most notable one is a brief section about Mary as “queen of all Creation” (§241). But hopefully such statements will be obvious to Lutherans.

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 317 Conclusion Overall, I appreciated Francis’s metaphor of a “common home” as a framework for the document Laudato Si’. It gives us a mental picture for envisioning our life in this world. In that regard, I like the Cranach workshop’s painting of creation that appeared in Luther’s 1534 Bible. It depicts creation as a circle (if not yet a globe) with God standing behind it, smiling and blessing it. Within it we see the stars, sky, clouds, and birds. Beneath them we see the creation filled with various creatures (including a crane . . . probably a common crane!) living in forests, mountains, rivers, and so on. And then there is Adam and Eve. Interestingly, they stand slightly off-center in the painting as they converse with each other and look about them. This is significant. We are preeminent within creation, but creation is not all (or only) about us.

Endnotes 1 Robert D. Sorrell, St. Francis of Assisi and Nature: Tradition and Innovation in Western Christian Attitudes toward the Environment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 118–22. 2 This is not unusual as such an approach goes back to the encyclical “Rerum novarum” (1891), which affirmed private property even as it critiqued both socialism and capitalism. In this regard, it reminds me of another writer, namely, Wendell Berry. 3 See “Key Principles of Catholic Social Teaching,” by Catholic Charities Office for Social Justice, St. Paul, MN: http://www.cctwincities.org/document.doc?id=12. See also: http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what- we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/seven-themes-of-catholic-social-teaching.cfm. 4 Gregory of Nyssa, “On the Making of Man,” in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series: Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, Etc., ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Henry Austin Wilson, vol. 5 (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1893), 390. See Davenport’s article in this issue. 5 The entire spring 2015 issue of the Concordia Journal was devoted to exploring similar themes. See especially, Charles P. Arand and Erik H. Herrmann, “Living in the Promises and Places of God,” 101‒110. 6 Lynn White Jr, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” Science 155, no. 3767 (10 March 1967): 1203‒1207. See also his further reflections, “Continuing the Conversation,” in I. Barbour, ed., Western Man and Environmental Ethics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1973) and “Future of Compassion,” Ecumenical Review 30, no. 2 (April 1, 1978): 99‒109. 7 I am indebted to Joel Okamoto for this insight. He reminded me that there is a sense (to use Lutheran terms) that we can talk about the world primarily in terms of secondary causes without resorting to mention of a creator. But of course, that does not exhaust all that needs to be said. 8 Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 432. 9 I am indebted to Joel Okamoto for this helpful metaphor. 10 I don’t know if we have always done a good job of connecting (versus separating those two) or of drawing the implications of that connection (in echoes of John Gerhard; FC: Jesus as Creator and Redeemer). 11 Johann Gerhard, On Creation and Predestination. Theological Commonplaces: VIII‒XI (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2013), 10. 12 cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 310. This could be understood either within an evolutionary framework or the Roman Catholic theme of grace perfecting nature.

318 God’s Dwelling Place Richard Davenport

As Christians, we have a unique understanding of our place in the world. We know we have a Creator who made all things and who gave us a purpose in his creation. We also know that we brought sin into creation and now everything suffers under its corruption. Scripture teaches us about the salvation earned for us through Christ, and we proclaim this message to the world. We tell everyone that this is why Christ came into the world and that salvation is the goal for which we are fervently waiting. We tell everyone that God loves us and wants to save us so that we will not be condemned. All of this is true and can be found in the clear teachings of Scripture. The Christian church today wrestles with its relationship to creation. For some Christians, Scripture is a roadmap to heaven. The work Christians are called to carry out in the world is important for helping the individual Christian grow in faith, but has little further purpose. The sinful world will pass away anyway, so little effort is expend- ed to care for it any more than what is necessary for survival. Little thought is given to how God relates to the world he created that is now burdened by sin and whether creation itself has any value to him. Another direction that is embodied by some, particularly those who subscribe to a social justice theology, is that serving our neighbor is of paramount importance. The work the church does in the world in caring for others and tending to their needs is part of vocation of the church and cannot be ignored. On the surface that sounds appropriate, however the emphasis in this sort of theological structure is in caring for the neighbor and the neighbor is the only recipient of this work. Here again, little thought is given to how God relates to the world and how he is a part of this caring activity. However, salvation is only part of the overall story. Christ’s death and resurrection save us from sin, but do not tell us what God intends for us after that. The eschatology drawn from Scripture teaches us about the new creation in which we will dwell after the resurrection. But even this is part of the larger story. Each of these ideas tells us something about how God accomplishes his goal for us and for creation, but not what that goal is. When the goal of God’s work is looked for within the broad scope of Scripture and doctrine, it becomes a unifying theme for many other major doctrines. Salvation, for instance, becomes not the end result, but

Richard Davenport serves as pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received his MDiv and PhD from Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis, Missouri.

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 319 the means by which God re-creates a state in which he is able to dwell with his people. Creation, salvation, and eschatology are not compartmentalized topics but all parts of the larger story: how God comes to dwell in creation with those he loves.

Creation The creation account given in the book of Genesis does not go into the particulars of why God chose to call the world into being and why he placed Adam and Eve within it. However, it does give us a foundation by which we can begin to see what God is accomplishing throughout the rest of history. The six days of creation show God calling the world into being out of nothing and crafting the first humans with his own hands. To begin making sense of the scope of God’s actions in history, we first examine what is taking place in the creation account and how God relates to the creation he makes. In his treatise, “On the Making of Man,” Gregory of Nyssa shares his insights of the creation event. God’s creation of man on the last of the six days is due, in part, to man being the pinnacle of creation, but also because the events that preceded man’s creation were necessary to set the stage. Gregory looks at the sixth day and notes: When, then, the Maker of all had prepared beforehand, as it were, a royal lodging for the future king (and this was the land, and islands, and sea, and the heaven arching like a roof over them), and when all kinds of wealth had been stored in this palace (and by wealth I mean the whole creation, all that is in plants and trees, and all that has sense, and breath, and life . . .)1 The Creator did not create random or arbitrary things. He built a dwelling place, filled with every kind of beauty and everything necessary for life. Gregory goes on to say that the Maker builds the house for the human creatures who will rule as kings, but they do not own this house. Rather, the king himself is a guest in the house that has been built and has been invited there by the host. The host takes time to prepare the house so that is adorned with every comfort.2 God builds his house and takes the time to ensure everything is perfect and then creates the resident who will preside over creation as its caretaker. This explains the need for the work of the previous days. Creation needed to be made ready for the chief resident.3 The making of the dwelling place is not the only detail that alludes to God’s purpose in creation. God’s special work in the creation of man demonstrates a desire to be close to his unique human creatures. Gregory shares a further thought: O marvelous! A sun is made, and no counsel precedes; a heaven likewise; and to these no single thing in creation is equal. So great a wonder is formed by a word alone, and the saying indicates neither when, nor how, nor any such detail. So too in all particular cases, the ether, the stars, the intermediate air, the sea, the earth, the animals, the plants—all are brought into being with a word, while only to the making of man does the Maker of all draw near with circumspection, so as to prepare beforehand for him material for his formation.4

320 While everything else in creation is brought into being by the mere utterance of a word, God enters into his creation to form the first man with his own hands. This special act of creation shows humanity’s distinctive place within creation, but even more, it shows God’s desire to be near to this new creature he has made. The proximity of God to this particular creature sets it apart from the rest of creation. The Creator does not just create man, he shares a special connection with him. He creates Adam and Eve in his own image, as a reflection of himself. The Creator looks at his creation and calls it “very good.” He delights in what he has made and is no stranger to it. God himself is seen walking in the garden in Genesis 3, looking for Adam and Eve. Rather than bringing them up to heaven, he comes down to be with them. But Adam and Eve have given in to sin. God’s holiness demands that he either destroy them outright or create a way to dwell with his sinful people while still maintaining his holiness. Even with the taint of sin, God does not abandon creation. His presence still permeates all things and creation could not continue without that presence. Luther notes: Therefore when the text says: “And God saw that it was very good,” it refers to the preservation itself, because the creature could not continue in existence unless the Holy Spirit delighted in it and preserved the work through this delight of God in His work. God did not create things with the idea of abandoning them after they had been created, but He loves them and expresses His approval of them. Therefore He is together with them. He sets in motion, He moves, and He preserves each according to its own manner.5 God’s presence in creation is ongoing and must be for creation to continue. This diffuse sort of omnipresence is different from the presence of God found in the beginning of Genesis or in varying forms later in Scripture. In those places, God can be seen and people can interact with him. God participates directly in the lives of his people in the places he makes his special presence known. In the rest of creation, God is there but is unseen. People cannot connect with him in any direct way and so must look for those places where God chooses to continue the interaction he once had with his people in the garden.

Tabernacle and Temple The book of Leviticus contains an extensive discourse on God’s dwelling place. He details to the Israelites numerous sacrifices and how they must be carried out. Aaron and his sons are consecrated so they may serve without infringing on God’s holiness. Through these laws and regulations, God establishes a place where he can dwell in the midst of his people without harming them. God’s holiness is a major theme in Leviticus. The sacrifices and other ritual laws are there so that the Israelites may approach God without immediately suffering the consequences of their sinfulness. Sin prevents creatures from having direct and unmedi- ated access to God without harm. John Kleinig notes, “Ever since the fall into sin nothing in creation has been inherently and naturally holy. Yet God condescended to enter

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 321 his creation and live among his people, and his sanctifying presence created various degrees of holiness and impurity.”6 The tabernacle establishes a place where God dwells and can continue to interact with his people in a close and personal way. This personal contact that God undertakes goes beyond simply speaking to his people and giving them signs. As Moses expresses, it is the very fact that God is present in a unique and special way in the midst of his people that sets them apart (Ex 33:15‒16). God gives his presence form and shape. He gives his people ways to interact with him that go beyond talking. He invites them into his presence and shares in their lives and allows them to share in his ongoing activity. The divine activity that takes place in Exodus 24, as Moses, Aaron, and the elders of Israel share a meal that God hosts for them, continues as God establishes the tabernacle. The sacrifices are not simply about ensuring safe access to God, but also giving the Israelites something to share in. Regarding the peace offerings of Leviticus 3, Kleinig explains: In his love he established a holy meal for his people by the institution of the peace offerings. He was their divine host at this meal; the Israelites were his honored guests. In it he provided holy meat for them. He, however, did not eat with them; they ate this meal in his presence. God himself provided this meal—a festive meal that was not necessary for his nourishment or the survival of his people, a joyful meal that celebrated the generous, royal patronage of God for his people and his lavish provision for them. The Israelites who were his guests enjoyed his divine hospitality. As his guests, they came under his care and protection. Admission to his meal meant admission to his peace and protection.7 God does more than simply exist with his people. He lives with them and shares in their lives. The sacrifice of lambs and bulls does not bring them salvation, but it does give the Israelites a point of contact with God, something they can share and enjoy together.

Incarnation Even more wondrous than God’s dwelling place in the temple is his incarnation in the flesh. Everything that God did with his people before, he does here in the person of Christ, but to an even greater degree. He walked with Adam and Eve in the garden, here he walks with his people, he talks to them, he sits with them, and he shares in their joys and their sorrows. He shares a meal with his people at the temple in ancient days, again sharing in their joys and sorrows. He is a part of the exciting times during feast days and when his people wish to offer thanksgiving. He is a part of the difficult times as well, when his people humble themselves and come before him seeking forgiveness. Christ does all of this and more. He shares in the lives of his people, from birth to death and beyond. The Gospel of John begins with the extraordinary announcement that the God who created the world is dwelling in our midst in the flesh. God himself lives among us. Through Christ, God shares in our lives in a way sinful human beings never had

322 experienced before. We have seen the glory of God and received his grace and truth because he came to dwell with us. Luther looks at what this means: When the evangelist declared that Christ dwelt among us, he meant to say: “He did not appear like the angel Gabriel, who came to Mary with God’s command and then soon departed from her; for angels do not tarry long in visible form among mankind. Christ, however, remained with us according to his human nature, which was inseparably united with the divine since his incarnation. Into his thirty-fourth year he ate and drank with us, he was angry and sad, he prayed and he wept. He executed His Father’s mission, suffered persecution and death in the end at the hands of His own people. And thus the Jews crucified the true Son of God, the Lord of Glory (1 Cor 2:8); and we saw his blood oozing forth and flowing to the ground.”8 During the Old Testament age, the times when sinful people were able to be in God’s presence were confined to visits to the temple. With the incarnation, God does not confine himself to the temple any longer. Now God lives with his people and does everything they do. He is a part of every aspect of his people’s lives. As Luther said, he did not come into the world as the angels do. They are rarely visible and rarely interact with people. Instead, the Creator came to where his people are, right in their midst, and shared creation together with them. John has further insights into the incarnation as well. He relates a scene where Jesus cleanses the temple and is asked for a sign, for an indication of his authority. Jesus responds, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (Jn 2:21). John explains that Jesus is referring not to the temple building but to his own body. Though Jesus is clearly upset at the Jews’ mistreatment of the Father’s house, his ministry will soon demonstrate that the temple no longer fills the role it once did. Luther speaks to this as well: The evangelist himself interprets the words of the Lord and adds that Jesus was speaking of his body. For his body was the true temple where God would henceforth be and reside; all other temples belonged to this temple, that is, to the humanity of Christ, assumed from the Virgin Mary. This same body was God’s temple, his castle and palace, his royal hall. This must be carefully noted. Until now God had restricted his presence to the temple in Jerusalem; that was to terminate now. God had done this, not for his own but for his people’s sake, in order that they might have a definite place where they could find him. For this reason he was not found elsewhere. Whoever wished to call upon God or come before him had to come to the temple in Jerusalem or turn his face toward it, regardless of where he might be at the time; for in Jerusalem was the temple and the abode of God. But today, in the New Testament, God has established another temple for his residence: the precious humanity of our Lord Jesus

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 323 Christ. There, and nowhere else, God wants to be found. Christ’s body is called the temple of God, in which he dwells.9 It is not simply that God has changed locations, but also that he is dwelling with his people in an even closer and more intimate way. Rather than drawing back from sinful creation, God enters it even more fully, lives with his people even more completely. God does not draw people out of world. Rather, he comes to them where they are. God loves his creation so much that he comes to live in it as we do.

Sacraments The sacraments are an important part of the ongoing activity of God during the post-ascension age. In particular, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist demonstrates a continuing and personal relationship to his people. The emphasis on the Eucharist as a means by which God gives grace and forgiveness to his people is often the focus in dis- cussions about the Eucharist. However, that grace flows through God’s word of promise that Christ truly is there in the bread and wine, as Luther makes clear: It is true, indeed, that if you take the word away from the elements or view them apart from the word, you have nothing but ordinary bread and wine. But if the words remain, as is right and necessary, then in virtue of them they are truly the body and blood of Christ. For as we have it from the lips of Christ, so it is; he cannot lie or deceive.10 We know Christ is there because God assures us that it is so. Though he ascended into heaven and we no longer see him in the traditional sense, he has not really left at all. Like the sacrifices in Leviticus, the Eucharist meal is one that is shared with God and celebrated in his presence. The various eschatologically oriented terms we use for the Eucharist, such as marriage feast or feast of victory which draw on passages such as Matthew 25 or Revelation 19, illustrate that we are connected to God’s triumph over sin and death already. Through the Eucharist we are experiencing now, in our own time, the victory that Christ has already achieved. We are getting a glimpse of Christ’s kingdom established on earth, the foretaste of the feast to come. God is never separated from his creation. He may show himself in different ways throughout history, but he is always there, always present. Gerhard Forde discusses Christ’s presence in the Eucharist by noting: God is never absent from his creation. He is always present in it as the power which sustains it. Creation—and in this instance that means things like bread and wine—is neither unworthy nor does it have to be changed to be a bearer of God’s presence. He is already there. It is his good creation.11 Though we know and acknowledge that God is always present in creation in a general sense, the fact that he makes himself present in a special, gracious sense in the Eucharist demonstrates that God cares for his creation. He involves himself in creation and uses it to tend to his people. God carries on the same work that began in the tabernacle here

324 in the Eucharist, yet in an even fuller way as he works through the blood of Christ. Through the Eucharist, God still dwells with his people. The concern regarding God’s holiness in the tabernacle and temple is no longer the problem it was. Through baptism, Christians are made holy and prepared to enter into his presence. They are made worthy to see God and share a meal with him, just as the Israelites did. Though the Eucharist is a divine act, that activity takes place within creation, using creation itself as the means by which God grants his blessings. God is not bringing creation into heaven. Rather, he continues to enter into creation to redeem and restore it. Forde shares a further thought for those who look to the heavens for signs of God’s favor: So it was that on the night in which he was betrayed, the night on which he was beaten, broken and killed by men like us, he took a piece of earthly bread and a cup of wine and said “This is my body broken for you. This is my blood shed for you.” It is as if to say, “Here! Can’t you see what it’s all about? Come down out of the clouds; come down to earth, to the stuff of earth! Come have communion with men, real men!”12 In the Eucharist, God shows that he does not want to take people out of the world to his spiritual domain. He wants to come to us here, to be a part of our lives here, and to redeem the world here. God, in Christ, dwells here in our midst and spends time with us, just as he always has.

Eschaton The entire discussion of God’s presence culminates in one glorious scene at the very end of the biblical narrative. As the book comes to a close, God reigns triumphant. Satan and all of the enemies of God are locked away in the abyss forever. Sin and death have come to an end, and yet, the book doesn’t stop there. Now that sin is at an end, one might expect God to whisk his people out of sinful creation to dwell with him in heaven. Instead, quite the opposite happens. God’s personal dwelling place comes down into creation to stay. Louis Brighton discusses the scene in Revelation 21: God’s heavenly tabernacle here in 21:3 in the vision of the new heaven and earth signifies the actual presence of God with his people. But when the new heaven and earth will actually be created, no visual tabernacle will be present. Its presence will not be necessary, for God’s actual and personal presence among his people, which was represented by the tabernacle in the OT and which the tabernacle represents here in John’s vision of the new heaven and earth, will have become a permanent reality. . . . God himself will dwell directly and personally with his people as visually represented by the tabernacle as a result of the covenant that he had made with them through the Lamb.13 Here the precedent set by the tabernacle in the Old Testament finds its fulfillment. It is able to carry out the purpose it was originally created to accomplish. God again dwells

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 325 with his people and without the sacrifices that were necessary to prevent the people from transgressing against God’s holiness. It is only at this point, after John sees Jerusalem descending from heaven and is given a description of what it contains, that the narrative finally comes to a close. It is here that we see the end result of everything God has been working toward. It is not just that we are saved from our sin, nor is it just that creation is restored and death is no more. God again enters into the lives of his people in a direct and personal way.

An Exception? There are a couple of scriptural caveats to the curse of Genesis 3, “for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Enoch and Elijah are taken out of the world without physical death. This could be seen as an indication that God intends us to dwell in our bodies in heaven in some fashion. There is little said about Enoch and there is little in the fiery ascent of Elijah from which to draw any eschatological conclusion. However, Elijah is in the unique position of being the only one in Scripture who both avoids death and also comes back within the scriptural narrative. Prior to the return of Christ, we find Elijah again briefly meeting with Christ on the mountaintop during the transfiguration. The focus here is on Christ as the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, but the image that is presented goes beyond that. Christ stands on the mountain transformed, with his glory visible to all. There can be no doubt here that he is God. Yet, instead of transforming his surroundings into a vision of heaven, he brings a bit of heaven down to earth. Moses and Elijah, who are both awaiting the resurrection, are brought down for a brief visit with the incarnate Lord. For this short period, we are given a glimpse of the eschaton. The kingdom of God is made visible in the midst of the disciples. They see Christ in his glory spending time with his people. The kingdom is brought to earth and Christ is seen as Lord of creation.

Outcome When we connect this theme to the life of the church, there are a couple of points that become apparent. The first is that the personal relationship each Christian has with God takes on greater shape. As the church, we pray to God on a regular basis. We hear him speaking to us through Scripture and the sacraments. We know that, because we are saved, we will live with him in his kingdom one day. However, the disciples are not the only ones who will get to walk and talk with God. They will not be the only ones who will get to share a meal with him, to laugh with him, to race through a field with him, or to do any of the other things Christ might have done during his earthly ministry. Our interaction with God right now is rather limited. Though he sees and knows all things, we do not see him much during the course of daily life. When God comes again to dwell with us in creation, all aspects of our lives will be marked with the presence of God as they were for the disciples. Secondly, our stewardship of creation takes on a greater dimension. Gregory of Nyssa pointed out that creation is God’s house. He is the host and we are the guests. He gives us dominion over his creation, but it is still his house and where he will dwell. Our

326 duty to care for the world around us exists not only for our own benefit, so that we may have a pleasant world in which to live, but also because it is God’s house and where he will one day live again.14 This further explains why our care of creation is pleasing to God. We are not the only ones who enjoy creation. God made it and delights in it as well. This also has implications for all of the other things that God created. The days of creation show God delighting in the sun and stars, the grass and trees, the birds, the fish, and the beasts of the field. The eschatological imagery from Scripture brings these things back into the picture and shows how they all share in God’s gracious presence and will receive the benefits of his restoration of creation as well. New Jerusalem in Revelation 22 shows the tree of life featured prominently carrying out the work God gave to it in Genesis. The messianic and eschatological scene displayed in Isaiah 11 shows animals of different kinds all living in peace together on God’s holy mountain; the place where he makes his special presence known. The picture painted is one of plants, animals, and people all living together in joy with God at the center of them all, delighting in all of them and sharing in their lives.

Conclusion When we look at these major events in Scripture and see how God is acting, God’s intentions in creation come through. Christians often see God as one who is personal and who desires a close relationship with his people. However, many Christians do not realize the full extent of what God wants to share with his people. Christians share time with God in prayer, studying Scripture, in worship, or in a number of other ways. God does indicate that he enjoys this time his people spend with him, but he has so much more in mind. The image John describes before Jerusalem descends from the heavens is one of a wedding feast. Christ, the groom, is eternally joined to his bride, the church. The relationship this describes is not one of people who just talk to each other now and then or who share a meal once in a while. The groom and the bride share the entirety of their lives with one another. This is the extent to which God wishes to share the lives of his people. This becomes the overarching narrative for all of Scripture. God created a place for us to dwell together. With their sin, Adam and Eve brought the house that God created to ruin. God was host, they were the guests, and they destroyed the creation God built to share with them. From that point forward, God works to undo the damage they have done. He remakes the guests and remakes creation. He makes a place fit for his people to dwell together with him again. He completes his goal at the end of the scriptural narrative, where all of this comes to fruition. Thus, God dwelling with his people forms the beginning and end of the whole story, as well as many of the major points in between. With this in mind, salvation is not seen as the end in itself. We are not saved, only to be sent off to go play in creation. We are saved so that we are once again able to live together with God in his creation. We are again able to share that relationship of bride and groom. As Christians, we are privileged to hear the message of salvation won through

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 327 Christ’s death and resurrection. The gospel is proclaimed through preaching and found all throughout Scripture. The good news that Christ has paid for sins and offers forgiveness needs to be heard by everyone. But that is not the end of the story. God saves us so that we may live together with him, to share in the joys of the creation he built as a place for us to dwell.

Endnotes 1 Gregory of Nyssa, “On the Making of Man,” in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series: Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, Etc., ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Henry Austin Wilson, vol. 5 (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1893), 390. 2 Ibid. 3 Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 1: Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 1‒5, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 35‒36. Luther also describes the initial acts of creation as God building a house where the chief resident will live. The distinction between Luther’s description and Gregory’s is that Luther’s focus is God’s grace and providence in creating the perfect world for mankind to live, whereas Gregory reflects on how God will share in creation with his creatures. 4 Gregory of Nyssa, 390. 5 LW 1:50–51. 6 John W. Kleinig, Leviticus (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2003), 9. 7 Ibid, 93. 8 LW 22: 113. 9 Ibid., 248–249. 10 Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), 448. 11 Gerhard O. Forde, Where God Meets Man: Luther’s Down-to-Earth Approach to the Gospel (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972), 82. 12 Ibid., 85 (emphasis in original). 13 Louis A. Brighton, Revelation (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 598‒599 (emphasis in original). 14 That is not to say we will perfect the world. The eschatological promise that God will recreate the world free from sin still holds.

328 Walter A. Maier (1893–1950) Sixty-five Years into the Historical Record Paul L. Maier

In the sixty-five years since his death, several books and an interesting series of articles and dissertations have examined the career of Dr. Walter A. Maier.1 He was founder and first speaker of The Lutheran Hour, professor of Old Testament interpretation and history at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, author of twenty-six books, and editor of The Walther League Messenger for a quarter century. Correspondence from listeners to The Lutheran Hour from 1930 to 1950 has supplied colorful recollec- tions and anecdotes that I hope to include in a future edition of my A Man Spoke, A World Listened. Inquiries for recordings of Maier’s Lutheran Hour sermons will also be answered with future audio files.

Radio Then and Now The years since Maier’s death in January, 1950, provide fresh perspectives in viewing his ministry. While the electronics of radio have remained essentially the same, the broadcasting techniques and the listening audience have changed dramatically. Although electrical transcription disks, for example, arrived later in Maier’s radio ministry, all his earlier broadcasts were live, enabling him to provide an immediate response to current events and crises. For many, the first news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came via Maier’s Lutheran Hour sermon on Sunday, December 7, 1941. Today, the radio frequencies are jammed with competitive programs from many different stations, each slight turn of the radio dial bringing in a different broadcast. This also was not the case in the early years of The Lutheran Hour, when radio was new and the dial much less crowded. As for the listening—or viewing—audience today, its options are virtually limit- less. Radio itself has competition from television, the Internet, media streaming, DVDs, podcasting, and other forms of communication. Radio, at the time, had a greater impact on society and a more enthusiastic reception from the listening public than all the media just cited put together. Whole families listened to The Lutheran Hour on Sunday afternoons, gathered around a tall radio console in the living room—a scene that would be nearly impossible today. Or, if the radio were on, dad and mom would

Paul L. Maier is the Russell H. Seibert Professor Emeritus of Ancient History at Western Michigan University, a former vice-president of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and a much published author.

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 329 be using their separate smart phones, while their children would be texting. Current claims as to the extent of the listening audience are often exaggerated by radio and television evangelists today. Nor was The Lutheran Hour exempt from such criticism in its founding years. However, when a half-million letters arrived at its headquarters each year by the time of Maier’s death, the claims of an audience of some twenty million listeners to The Lutheran Hour could hardly have been overstated. Broadcasting authorities estimated that only one out of forty listeners would bother to write in response to a radio program. Accordingly, Maier had the privilege of using radio broadcasting at the height of its impact on the pubic, with an uncluttered radio dial and in absence of intense competition for listeners. Sadly, he just missed out on the powerful medium of television. He did several inaugural telecasts on station KSD-TV in St. Louis, but the kinescope recordings of these have been lost.

Studies of the Maier Ministry Scholarship on Maier has been mostly accurate and favorable. A number of dissertations have explored Maier’s influence on Christianity across the world, including a doctoral dissertation by Richard J. Shuta. He has provided a condensation of his research at various symposia and in an article, “Water A. Maier as Evangelical Preacher,” in the Concordia Theological Quarterly.2 It is a worthy demonstration of research done on the basis of primary materials at the Concordia Historical Institute in St. Louis. Nearly all of his findings are reliable, and he has done superior work in setting Maier into the context and climate of American history from 1920 to 1950. Several additional studies are in progress, including a comparison of Maier with Fulton J. Sheen, of The Catholic Hour.3 Unfortunately, however, Dr. Shuta made a significant but mistaken claim in this work, as well as a theological criticism that is not supported in scripture or the Lutheran Confessions, that must be corrected for the historical record.

The Historical Error Later in Maier’s career, Shuta writes, Maier came under fire from some in the LCMS who accused him of religious “unionism”—the old Missouri Synod shibbo- leth—for his outreach to Christian groups with which the LCMS was not in fellowship. This statement is true enough. But as a result, Shuta claims, “the LCMS Board of Directors may have removed him [Maier] from his position as Lutheran Hour speaker had not his unexpected death in 1950 come first.”4 This statement has created a stir in LCMS circles, but it is absolutely incorrect. The author did not provide documentation for this claim, and, in fact, there could be none for several reasons.5 Synod’s Board of Directors would have had no jurisdiction in this matter, which would have been under the purview of the Board of Governors of the Lutheran Laymen’s League, sponsors of The Lutheran Hour. Furthermore, the Board of Governors had warm admiration for Maier and would never have thought to remove him as speaker, since he and his broadcast messages were at the very height of their

330 Spirit-driven effectiveness and popularity in service to Christendom at the time of his death, both inside the LCMS and far beyond.6 A search of the records of the LCMS Board of Directors as well as those of the Concordia Seminary Board of Control (as the Board of Regents was called at the time) reveals no evidence to support Shuta’s sup- position. All statements regarding Maier in these minutes have to do with his leave of absence from the Concordia Seminary faculty and his use of house 11 on the seminary campus.7 It may well be argued that this is an overreaction to one sentence in an otherwise worthy article. I would plead guilty but for the fact that this is the one claim everyone remembers who heard Dr. Shuta deliver his paper at the symposium in Fort Wayne or who read it subsequently in the CTQ. Historical truth is at stake here. In referring to Shuta’s article at an Ohio pastoral conference in 2012, a young seminary graduate asked me what sort of misbehavior Maier was involved in that he should have been fired from the Lutheran Hour. Accordingly, the mistaken assumption that Maier would have been dismissed had his death not intervened casts an unwarranted shadow over the culmination of Maier’s ministry and should be corrected. This is not to say, however, that Maier was universally supported by synodical authorities. Shuta is clearly on-target in showing how Maier was opposed by ultracon- servatives in the synod, as well as by several of his campus colleagues. In A Man Spoke, A World Listened, I commented on this opposition, which included a member of the Concordia Seminary Board of Control. As Maier’s most implacable foe, he tried to have him moved out of house 11 on the seminary campus. But even he could not have removed him from the Lutheran Hour, and a subsequent LCMS convention in Fort Wayne voted overwhelmingly that Maier remain in house 11. The plain, objective fact is that it would not have been manifestly possible for the LCMS Board of Directors to have fired Maier as speaker of the Lutheran Hour, nor would they have wanted to do so. Had Shuta interviewed my brother, Dr. Walter A. Maier II, or myself—as have other Maier scholars—this error could easily have been avoided.

A Justified Theological Opinion? One of Dr. Shuta’s criticisms of Maier’s ministry resurrects the old dispute over justification and synergism. He terms Maier’s sermonic appeals to “accept Christ” and similar gospel invitations and imperatives as “one of the most controversial and dangerous parts of the Maier sermons, in light of Luther’s Bondage of the Will and Lutheran opposition to synergism.”8 Shuta further explains: “The grammar of the Maier sermons was full of imperatives and exhortations—grammatical forms that lend themselves to the area of ethics and sanctification. Objective justification, the center of gospel proclamation, typically uses the indicative form of verbs to stress the gift-nature of salvation.”9 He also faults former LCMS president John W. Behnken as an example of how “some in the LCMS leadership were no longer sensitive to the theological implications implicit in the use of such ‘accept Jesus’ language and the theological synergism implicit in such invitations.”10

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 331 First, The Lutheran Hour radio audience consisted of both believers and unbeliev- ers, so Maier had to address both. In the case of the former, “imperatives and exhortations” for the sanctified were certainly appropriate, even in Shuta’s view. As for the latter group, Maier stated many times that all positive responses to his appeals were the work of the Holy Spirit and not any synergistic cooperation on the part of the potential convert. That theological truth, however, did not have to be part of the initial appeal but would be explained subsequently when the person was instructed in the faith. And what, ultimately, is wrong with exhortations? Did the thundering prophets in the Old Testament ever resort to imperatives? Were Isaiah or John the Baptist Arminians inviting synergism with the cry, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt 3:2)? Or did Jesus himself avoid directives in his Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere? And what do synergism-sensitive sorts do with Peter’s imperatives at Pentecost? “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 2:38). Or those of Paul and Barnabas at Antioch-in-Pisidia, who urged their hearers to “continue in the grace of God” (Acts 13:43). Later, at Philippi, when the suicide- bent jailor asked, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul and Silas responded with a strong imperative: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31). This was a gospel imperative; the power to convert was in the imperative itself, as it is with all gospel imperatives. In both Scripture and church history, God’s prophets and representatives have always used imperatives and exhortations. Against this background, Maier’s invitations to “accept Christ” or “believe the gospel” surely have apostolic sanction. Simple sermonic indicatives with the gospel message may indeed prompt some to conversion through the Holy Spirit. Others, however, might respond to that gospel message with a “Well, that’s nice,” and do nothing further. For such, the gospel message might indeed be followed by some exhortation to respond before potential conversion takes place, again, through the Holy Spirit. Clearly, this does not evoke synergism, but was the approach used by the apostles—and used by Maier as well. Perhaps the raising of Lazarus provides an appropriate analogy for this discussion. Surely Jesus’s imperative to the dead man, “Lazarus, come forth!” (Jn 11:43) could not possibly have invited any synergism from a lifeless corpse. Clearly, then, Christ’s command also carried with it the supernatural power to obey that command for Lazarus to return to life. To be sure, preachers are not Jesus, and listeners today are alive, not dead. Or are they? Those without Christ are indeed dead spiritually, and the power of God’s good news similarly restores them to true life even as it accompanies the exhortations and imperatives by his representatives today. Augustine comes to mind in his famous statement, “Give what you command, O Lord, and then command what you will.” Accordingly, when a preacher invites people to accept the Christ whose gospel he has proclaimed, this does not evoke synergism on their part in the case of a positive response. Even if the new convert may at first be under the impression that he has “decided for Christ,” he will soon learn that “no man can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3). Elsewhere, also, Paul explains it with pristine clarity and using the imperative: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” he

332 writes—and how synergistic and Arminian is that?—but then he instantly qualifies it: “for God is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:12‒13). Similarly, C. F. W. Walther firmly opposed synergism in Thesis 13 of his Law and Gospel and yet explained that this thesis does not score as an error the demand on the part of the pastor, be it ever so urgent, that his hearers believe the Gospel. That demand [i.e., imperative] has been made by all the prophets, all the apostles, yes, by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. When demanding faith, we do not lay down a demand of the Law, but issue the sweetest invitation, practically saying to our hearers, “Come, for all things are now ready” (Lk 14:17). . . Even so, the demand to believe is to be understood not as an order of the Law, but as an invitation to the gospel.11 Extremism in Doctrine and Practice In their campaign for theological purity, some Protestant scholars, past and present, have indulged in a veritable rabies theologorum (“madness of theologians”) which often exceeds the bounds of plain reason or even common sense. For Calvin, it was double predestination, and the claim among many of his followers that those not elected were “damned for the greater glory of God.” Among Gnesio-Lutherans of the sixteenth century, it was the opinion that “Good works are harmful for salvation.” In the present case, then, a rather extremist heritage of synergism-phobia has occasioned a criticism of preaching that was based squarely on biblical and apostolic precedents, and sanctioned by synodical founders. To borrow Paul’s analogy between the human body and the body of Christ, the church, one might say that much as our physical bodies require a careful balance between their regulatory hormones and secre- tions—too much sugar: diabetes; too little: insulin shock—so the corpus doctrinae, our body of doctrine, must also be kept in careful balance and measured by Scripture. Any excessive emphasis on one or another doctrine to the diminution or exclusion of others can lead to caricatures that militate against common sense. While this is likely more than need be said on this matter, the issue of synergism has reverberated in the church across the centuries, especially since the Reformation, and has prompted unbalanced opinions that lead not only to logical cul-de-sacs, but also outright heresy. It need not have done so.

Conclusion But for the two exceptions noted in this response, Dr. Richard Shuta is to be commended for putting the Walter A. Maier archives to excellent use. In fact, he was the first to do a thorough examination of the Maier papers since I did so myself in writing A Man Spoke, a World Listened, both of us doing our research prior to Concordia Historical Institute acquiring the archives. Located on the campus of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, the Maier archives at CHI await further research and scholarship.

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 333 Endnotes 1 James L. Anderson, “An Evaluation of the Communicative Factors in the Radio Preaching of Walter A. Maier on the Tenth Lutheran Hour Series in 1942‒1943” (ThD dissertation, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1976). Andrew W. Blackwood, ed., The Protestant Pulpit: An Anthology of Master Sermons from the Reformation to Our Own Day, repr. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1977). Guy C. Carter, “Walter A. Maier,” in Twentieth-Century Shapers of American Popular Religion, ed. Charles H. Lippy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989), 270‒277. Clyde E. Fant Jr. and William M. Pinson Jr., 20 Centuries of Great Preaching: Maier to Sangster, vol. 11 of 20 Centuries of Great Preaching: An Encyclopedia of Preaching (Waco, TX: Word Books, Publisher, 1971). Kirk D. Farney, “Bringing Christ to the Nations: Walter A. Maier, The Lutheran Hour and Global Christian Broadcasting,” Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 86 (Part I, Summer, 2013): 48‒61; (Part 2, Fall, 2013): 6‒30. Tona J. Hangen, “Man of the Hour: Walter A. Maier and Religion by Radio on the Lutheran Hour” Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio, ed. Michele Hilmes and Jason Loviglio (New York: Routledge, 2002), 113‒134. Paul L. Maier, A Man Spoke, a World Listened: The Story of Walter A. Maier (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963; St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1980). Paul L. Maier, The Best of Walter A. Maier (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1981). Paul L. Maier, “Walter A. Maier (1893‒1950)” (address, annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Chicago, IL, November 3, 2008). Milton L.Rudnick, “Walter A. Maier—Ambassador to Fundamentalism” chap. 9 in “Fundamentalism and the Missouri Synod” (ThD dissertation, Concordia Seminary, 1963). Richard Joseph Shuta, “The Militant Evangelicalist of Missouri: Walter Arthur Maier and His Theological Orientation” (PhD dissertation, Drew University, 1990). Richard Joseph Shuta, “Walter A. Maier as Evangelical Preacher,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 74, no. 1‒2 (January-April, 2010): 4‒22. Kenneth Sulston, “A Rhetorical Criticism of the Radio Preaching of Walter A. Maier” (PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, 1958). Erik L. Swanson, “Walter Maier as a Model for Ministry: The Radio Preaching of Walter Arthur Maier” (Master’s thesis, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN, 2008). David T. Volz, “The Rhetoric of Walter A. Maier” (Master’s thesis, Florida Atlantic University, 1994). Mark Ward Sr., Air of Salvation—The Story of Christian Broadcasting (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994). 2 Richard J. Shuta, “Water A. Maier as Evangelical Preacher” in Concordia Theological Quarterly, 74 (January-April, 2010). 3 Kirk D. Farney, “Golden Mouths, Ethereal Pulpits: The Remarkable Radio Success of Rev. Walter A. Maier, PhD and Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen, PhD” (PhD dissertation in progress under Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame). 4 Ibid., 18. 5 For several years now, I have asked Dr. Shuta for documentation regarding this claim, but have received nothing relevant in response. Alleged interviews with people, all of whom are now dead, is hardly acceptable evidence. 6 The search of LLL records was kindly done by Dr. Laurence Lumpe, former president of the LLL and subsequently director of the Concordia Historical Institute. 7 The search of LCMS Board of Directors’ minutes, as well as those of the Concordia Seminary Board of Control, was kindly done by Dr. Raymond L. Hartwig, secretary of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. 8 Richard J. Shuta, “Water A. Maier as Evangelical Preacher,” 19. 9 Ibid., 20. 10 Ibid. 11 C. F. W. Walther, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel, trans. W. H. T. Dau (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1929, 1986), 200. I am grateful to the Rev. Stephen C. Lee for reminding me of this passage, which is essential to our discussion.

334 Homiletical Helps

COncordia Journal

Homiletical Helps on LSB Series B—Epistle to Series C—Gospel

Proper 27 • Hebrews 9:24–28 • November 8, 2015

Text and Grammar Notes 9:24: εἰσῆλθεν: the aorist verb emphasizes the central point of this text that, unlike the OT sacrifices, Christ’s sacrifice was “once and for all.” ἅγια: The author of Hebrews commonly uses both the plural and the singular, ἅγιον, without distinction to refer to the sanctuary (BDAG). ἀντίτυπα τῶν ἀληθινῶν: The author continues to use the plural nouns to refer to the sanctuary. Here, ἀντίτυπος means “copy,” or “represen- tation” (BDAG) and refers to the lesser of two counterparts. “The true” is heaven itself, which has its reflection in the earthly sanctuary with its sacrifices and rituals. εἰς αὐτὸν τὸν οὐρανόν: The verse appears to refer to Christ’s ascension, following his death and resurrection. νῦν ἐμφανισθῆναι τῷ προσώπῳ τοῦ θεοῦ ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν: the author describes Christ’s intercessory function, which is part of his heavenly priesthood. The text makes clear that what Christ does not do is continue to offer himself as a sacrifice or continue to sprinkle his own blood. That sacrifice is finished. What he does do is “appear before God on our behalf.” The language reflects OT usage. Here τῷ προσώπῳ τοῦ θεοῦ refers to the personal presence of God (BDAG). Unlike the OT priests, Christ has true access to the presence of God. 9:25: εἰσέρχεται: the present tense describes habitual or customary action in the OT. (Contrast the aorist εἰσῆλθεν in v. 24). The author has in mind the yearly ritual of the Day of Atonement, when the High Priest entered the Most Holy Place (τὰ ἅγια) only after offering the proper sacrifices, undergoing the appropriate purification rituals and only by means of sprinkled blood of animals (Lv 16). κατ᾿ ἐνιαυτὸν has a distribu- tive sense, “every year,” or “annually” (BDAG; BD 224). 9:26: ἐπεὶ ἔδει αὐτὸν πολλάκις παθεῖν: the phrase describes an unreal situation. ἐπεὶ can be translated “if that were so” (but it is not). The imperfect of the impersonal verb ἔδει with an accusative and infinitive indicates past obligation or necessity, “If that were so (but it is not) he would have needed to suffer often from the foundation of the world” (Smyth, 1776; BD 358). νυνὶ δὲ: “but in fact” contrasts with the previous unreal statement. ἅπαξ occurs here and again in vv. 27 and 28, to highlight the difference between Christ’s sacrifice and the sacrifices of the earthly sanctuary. 9:27: ἀπόκειται is another impersonal verb with an infinitive that functions as the subject (Smyth 1984‒1985). The phrase can be translated, “and just as it is certain for humans once to die (BDAG).”

Theological Notes In his explanation of Christ’s work in 9:24‒28, readers can see that the author of Hebrews is working with at least two critical assumptions. First, like the rest of the Bible, The author assumes that all of us live in a “two-tiered” or “two-story” universe. As Psalm 2 pictures it, on the “lower track” we humans think we make our own plans

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 337 and chart our own destiny. But the one who sits in the heavens above is the one who actually rules and controls all things (Ps 2:4). The two parallel tracks can be described as first diverging at the fall and finally converging again at the second coming of our Lord (Rv 21).1 Another assumption that the author of Hebrews uses to interpret the work of Christ is the assumption that there are type-antitype (latent-patent) relationships between Christ and the people/institutions/events in the OT. Therefore, the one must be interpreted and understood in light of the other. In other words, he interprets the significance of the sanctuary and the sacrifices in the light of Christ and his work. And in turn he understands the deep significance of Christ’s redeeming work in light of the purpose and function of the OT sanctuary and sacrifices. Both assumptions helped produce the author’s interpretation of Christ’s work that we read in 9:24‒28. On the horizontal plane (moving between OT sanctuary and Christ), the sacrifices foreshadowed Christ’s sacrifice on the cross (10:1‒2). The author explains that Christ’s sacrifice is much superior to those offered by OT priests. Unlike them, he put away sin once and for all by the sacrifice of himself (vv. 25‒26). The OT sacrifices only hinted at the fullness of what was to come in Christ. The OT sacrifices or sanctuary are no longer needed. Christ has dealt with sin once and for all. But the author also looks at the work of Christ along the vertical plane (moving between heaven and earth). First, he reminds us that the earthly sanctuary was to be built according to the pattern God showed Moses and later on, Solomon (Heb 8:5; cf., Ex 25:8‒9, 40; 1 Chron 28:19; Acts 7:44). More importantly, it was from the heavens themselves that Yhwh came down and was actually present in the earthly sanctuary. Yhwh’s Presence and promise made his sanctuary more than just another worship place or earthly dwelling. The ark was both the throne and the footstool of Yhwh (Ps 99:1‒5). Here is where Israel could find their gracious and forgiving God. God had come down and “allowed himself to be found” (Ps 46) here as in no other place. Throughout the pages of the OT, we read about many other occasions when God came down from the heavens and visited his people. This was all preparation for the coming of Christ, God himself, who “made his tent” (Jn 1:14) among us and who is the “high priest of a better covenant” as the author of Hebrews says (Heb 7‒8). As the text reminds us, this high priest does not continually go in and out of the earthly sanctuary, but has entered into heaven itself to appear continually in the presence of God on our behalf (9:24). (The high priest who came down from heaven has returned to heaven and remains in that temple for us.) Now, as the text says, we are waiting for Christ to come again and save us (9:28). Again, at that time, the parallel realities, the earthly and the heavenly, will merge as they were before that fall. But what happens in the meantime, to those of us who live in the “end of the ages” (9:26), while we wait for the Son to appear again? Truly, God does not leave us alone, but in the means of Grace, for example, he is constantly “coming down” to minister to us. He is truly present in word and sacrament assuring us of his word of forgiveness and salvation. Before he went back to the one who sent him, Jesus promised

338 to send his Spirit to guide us in the truth and bring forth his fruits in us (Jn 14:25‒26; 16:5‒15; Gal 5:22‒25). Paul says that our bodies are “members of Christ” and “temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:15, 19), and the church is “the body of Christ” (1 Cor 12). This metaphor ought to be taken seriously in the meantime as we await Christ’s return. Tim Saleska

1 For the ideas on vertical typology summarized in this study, I am indebted to notes from a presentation given by my former teacher, Dr. Horace Hummel.

Proper 28 • Hebrews 10:11–25 • November 15, 2015

Textual Notes This reading captures a moment in Hebrews when the author moves from proclamation to exhortation. 10:11‒18: These verses capture the close of the writer’s proclamation of the work of Jesus. Jesus is the great high priest, who has offered a sacrifice once for all sin for all time and now is seated at the right hand of God. The construction of the sentence emphasizes the contrast between the priest who daily stands and offers sacrifices (v. 11) and Jesus who sat down at the right hand of God (v. 12b), after he offered his sacrifice (v. 12a) and while he waits for the subjugation of his enemies (v. 13). 10:19‒25: These verses draw out the implications of Christ’s work for God’s people. Having two sources of confidence (1) boldness into the entrance of the holy things (v. 19‒20) and (2) Jesus, their great high priest (v. 21), God’s people engage in three kinds of behavior: drawing near to God (v. 22); holding fast their confession (v. 23); and drawing near to one another in various ways (v. 24‒25). Thus, the reading offers a proclamation of forgiveness through the metaphor of priestly sacrifice and an exhortation to holy living, touching upon relationships with both God and others.

Homiletical Notes This densely constructed text with its central sacrificial metaphor offers more than could be adequately covered in any sermon. For that reason, the following material focuses upon the theme of drawing near to God, on the basis of the sacrificial work of Christ, who encourages his people to draw near to one another.

Drawing Near to God To draw near to God is never easy. Our sins and the sins of others get in the way. In his memoir of pastoral service in a country church, Richard Lischer tells the story of Teri, a woman who would routinely break into the church to pray.1 What pre-

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 339 vented her from coming before God was not fear of his holiness but fear of his people. Her mother had been cast aside from the church when it was discovered that she was pregnant outside of marriage and that one of the sons of a prominent family had been involved. In gathering to protect their own, the Christians at this church left both mother and child outside. Now that her mother is gone and she is grown up, Teri is having a crisis of her own: another pregnancy outside of marriage. This time, however, rather than pushed out of the church, she is pushed out of her family as her stepfather responds to the news with physical abuse. With nowhere to go, she goes to the church. Not to the people but to the building. She breaks into the building in the middle of the night, trusting that God is there even though she could not see him. When Lischer first discovers her in the church in the middle of the night, he sees her sitting in the sanctuary in the pastor’s chair. Teri was obviously good at breaking things: social expectations, legal regulations, and even symbolic codes. Lischer tells Teri’s story to reveal how we live as broken individuals in broken communities, seeking to draw near to God. For such people, our reading from Hebrews offers hope.

On the Basis of the Sacrificial Work of Christ In this section of the letter, the writer offers us a vision of Jesus, seated at the right hand of God. Jesus has come to his church on earth and opened it up for the sake of broken people. In contrast to priests who daily stand and offer sacrifices, Jesus has come and offered one sacrifice for all people for all time. Jesus has fulfilled the order of priestly temple service and sacrifice. His work has torn open the curtain that separated people from God’s sacred presence and place. He is now seated in the most holy place, at the right hand of God, and hears the prayers of his people. This work of Jesus offers his people access to the holy things of God. Because of the blood of Jesus, we draw near to God with a true heart and bring our sins and our sufferings, indeed all of our lives before him. Teri had a lot of things wrong in her life but she got one thing right. There was space for her in the sanctuary of God. She could draw near to God on the basis of the sacrificial work of Christ.

Who Encourages Us to Draw Near to One Another The writer of Hebrews encourages us not only to draw near to God but to draw near to one another. As Lischer tells the story of Teri, he reveals how God worked to bring Teri and her daughter into the church. At first, it was slow and secret. Members began to share resources with the pastor to share with her. Envelopes with cash were dropped off at the door. Then, it became more public. A few women of the church cared for Teri during her pregnancy and after her baby was born. Finally, Lischer tells of the day when her daughter, Asia, was baptized. After the baptism, Teri and Asia turned to face the con-

340 gregation and were welcomed as part of the community in Christ’s name. One who sought to draw near to God by breaking in late at night was now drawn near to God and to his people by the work of Jesus. The waters of baptism opened the door. Rather than ostracize one another, God’s people learned to forgive. They, and we, draw near to one another and to God on the basis of the sacrificial work of Christ. David Schmitt

1 For the story of Teri, see Richard Lischer, Open Secrets (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 103‒115.

Proper 29 • Revelation 1:4b–8 • November 22, 2015

Sermon Suggestion Recent events here in our own country and elsewhere in the world may have more than a few of the faithful reeling in horror over the seemingly evident advance in the world of every evil influence and power. The experiences of the recent past may even have some wondering if the end, if the return of Jesus and the final judgment of the living and the dead, isn’t in fact near. After all, has it ever been as troubling in the history of God’s people in this world of ours as it seems to be now? Isn’t it actually sup- posed to be just as bad as it has been and continues to be before Jesus comes again to make all things right? How much worse does it need to be, or will it be, before Jesus comes again in glory? Well, if history is any indication, if John’s letters to the seven churches in chapters two and three of the Apocalypse, are any indication, then “worse” is a significantly relative consideration. For worse depends, of course, on things like location, occasion, the recent past, and more. Worse comes and goes in a seemingly endless circuit of cycles. Not to be too dismissive––for the times are most certainly increasingly fraught with a troubling abundance of foreboding signs. But, as bad as it all may seem to us now, life was probably never more challenging for the faithful than it was for the apostle and evangelist John and his contemporaries. For they lived in the last days of the first century in the brutal cesspool of idolatry that was the experience, the empire, of Rome and its caesars. To be sure, as the conspicuously ancient saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. In other words, this is most certainly not the first time the devil has seemed expansively, extraordinarily, globally all powerful––economically, militarily, socio-cul- turally, and otherwise. The behemoth, the beast, that was Rome and its emperors, ruled in John’s day and for centuries after that over everything, wielded its seemingly invincible iron hand in all things, in every aspect of life, and did not take “No, thank you” as an answer from any of its citizens, let alone its vassals. Instead, Rome had its own effective ways of bringing all things, all people, and every aspect of life, into alignment with its own way of viewing and of living in the world. No, today is certainly not the

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 341 first time that the faithful have had to fear for their very lives, have in fact been made to die for their faith, have wondered where God was in the world, or if God really is an all-powerful God. This is not the first time that the faithful have cried out “How much longer must we wait for thee?” to their God. This is not the first time that the faithful have been made to see that what we really are likely in for is a very long haul, a centuries-long, millennia-long, marathon. So how’s your endurance? Not so good? Running out of gas? Running out of hope? Hanging on for dear life in the fervent hope of an imminent Parousia? Not sure how much more you can take? What’s fundamentally necessary to the faithful in times like these are not trite answers, or flavor of the month formulas for personal success in the world, or the like. What’s fundamentally necessary is a grounded realism, a steadfast hope founded upon the substance of who Christ is and what he has done and why that matters, which then informs every person’s understanding of his or her own purpose for living in this world in the stead, in the love, of the one who was first to love. In the last days of the first century, with Jesus gone, the Roman claim to exclusive truth, to peace and prosperity, even to all things immortal and celestial seemed incontrovertible, immovable, and invincible. There was nowhere else in the world to go, nowhere to hide, nothing for a child of God to do than to abide in faith and hope and love for all with one’s eyes on the prize, on the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting in a world where not Caesar but the ruler of the kings of the earth defines all things. Thus, John exhorts not a life of resignation to every evil influence and power, but to the life-giving love of the one who loved us first, to steadfast confidence and hope regardless of the externalities of life, for our hope is in heaven above. Our hope is in him who came, who comes, and who most certainly will come again as he has sol- emnly promised to make all things new. “When I saw him,” writes the apostle, “I fell at his feet as though dead.” For that is what we––apart from him, that is––are. But in his compassion, because he desires not the death of his beloved, “he laid his right hand on me, saying, ‘Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades’” (1:17–18). Blessed is he “who is and who was and who is to come” (1:4), whose sevenfold Spirit he bestows upon a sevenfold church of his own creating, “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead” (1:5), the sole, true “ruler of the kings of the earth” (1:5), who “loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood” (1:5). “He has made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father; to him be the glory and the power in the age that is to come” (1:6). For “behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him,” namely, the sum total of “those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn greatly on account of him” (1:7). For by his lashes, by his wounds, suffered in our place and on our account, are we poor wretches healed. For he is “the alpha and the omega . . . the one who is and who was and who is to come, the almighty” (1:8). Therefore, “blessed is the one who reads aloud the words . . . and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written . . . for the time, for the end, [has been and so still] is near” (1:3). He who testifies to these things says, “Behold, I am coming soon, the alpha and

342 the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end, the root and the descen- dant of David, the bright morning star” (22:7, 12, 20, 13, 16). Even so, come Lord Jesus! “Blessed are those who wash their robes and make them white in the blood of the Lamb” (22:14). Preserve and protect your own, O Lord, till the day of your glorious returning. “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘come.’ Let the one who hears say, ‘come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come” (22:17). Amen. Come, Lord Jesus (22:20). The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with us all (22:21). We can be a bundle of woe, or we can get back to the business, back to the mission, of the one who loved us first, focused upon him and devoted to those whom he leaves to our care. Bruce Schuchard

Advent 1 • Luke 19:28–40 • November 29, 2015

Two gospel lessons are offered for this day: Both were recorded by Luke and so both are clearly Series C. They have complimentary emphasis as one, Luke 19:28‒40, is Luke’s account of Christ’s triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, and the second, Luke 21:25‒36, is about the times and seasons pointing to the coming of the son of man (the lesson of the fig tree and the call to watch yourselves). Clearly these are “third Advent” lessons about Jesus coming again in glory. The tension here, as always at this time of year, is that we are expecting to celebrate his “first” coming as the Savior of the world, and we want to rejoice over his present coming among us in our daily lives. That last part isn’t so hard to see (daily presence also has an “end time” feel), but what should be our emphasis this Sunday? And which text shall we use? It depends . . . not just on what you want to say, but also, to some extent, on which Gospel you used for the last Sunday of the church year. The choices for that Sunday are: Mark 13:24‒37 and John 18:23‒27. The John lesson talks of Jesus before Pilate, Peter’s denial (to fulfill what Jesus had said about that) and Jesus telling Pilate “My kingdom is not of this world.” Mark’s gospel, on the other hand, is (like Luke’s lesson for this Sunday) about the times and seasons pointing to the coming of the son of man—a parallel passage to today’s offering in Luke 21:25‒36. And then there is the final consideration that next Sunday’s gospel (Advent 2) is the story of John the Baptist crying, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” And so we ask, with the crowds that came out to be baptized, “What then shall we do?” For me, it is time to jump with both feet into that part of Advent which emphasizes Christ’s “first” coming as King: the time of his birth and beginning of his visible, physical presence in our world. There are several reasons for this: First is fact that for the Christian church, this is our New Year. It is a time for new beginnings. And so we are reminded of the need for confession of sins and abso-

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 343 lution as the year ends and the celebration/remembrance of Christian history begins again. In response to our confession, then, we join with “the whole multitude of his disciples” as they “began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!’” (Lk 19:37‒38). The second reason I am ready to jump with full force into this emphasis is found in that line of the Nicene Creed which confesses: He “was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man.” I experience a thrill each time we confess that fact. God became man, for us and so, on the cross God is forsaken of God for your sake and mine. (What a marvel, and what a gift.) Thirdly is the fact that the events which this season celebrates are the answer to and fulfillment of the Lord’s eternal covenant with David as stated in today’s epistle (1 Thes 3:9‒13): His promises are fulfilled (and continue to be fulfilled today), the righteous branch is here and we are saved. “And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness’” (Jer 33:16). Our response to these events is to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all his mighty works (v. 37). Our response is to go to work—untie the colt and take it to Jesus, spread our cloaks before him in joyful procession and give praise saying “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.” St. Paul says this best: “For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel . . . before our God, as we pray most earnestly night and day” (1 Thes 3:9). “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom 10:13), and Advent gives us the opportunity to call on his name and tell others about him so that they too may believe. David Wollenburg

Advent 2 • Luke 3:1–14 (15–20) • December 6, 2015

Straightforward and familiar, this easy text isn’t easy. John the Baptist, “brood of vipers,” “wrath to come,” “bear fruits . . . and do not say to yourselves,” and the like are a routine Advent reading and its theme of repentance is what we do Sunday after Sunday, but familiarity with church ritual about sin doesn’t necessarily breed contempt for sin. Why waste the people’s time if your sermon doesn’t make sin a fresh hurt, con- temptible, so that their confession is a yearning anew for Christ’s forgiveness? The goal of this sermon should not be to imply that your people are a “brood of vipers” but for them to hear their Savior. “The word of absolution, I say, is what you should concen- trate on, magnifying and cherishing it as a great and wonderful treasure to be accepted with all praise and gratitude.”1 What Thomas Winger says about Bible study applies to your thinking about this sermon. “Most of what we do in serious Bible study has to do with overcoming the gaps that separate us from the original audience of the scriptural documents.”2 Ponder

344 the gaps between then and now. You’re not a curiously clad prophet who has gone viral; you’re one of your people. The crowds flocked to John; how are your church attendance numbers running? John thundered, but in our society—“You have your opinion; I have mine. Who are you to tell me I’m wrong?”—thundering doesn’t work. And here’s a telling difference in contexts, then and now. When the people asked, “Teacher, what shall we do?” John didn’t say, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:27‒38). John’s answer tarried in the law, tarried until he had shown them how amendment of life comes from true sorrow over sin. Share what you have with the person who has not. “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” “Do not extort money . . . be content with your wages.” “Seek the solution from the text,” said a Homeric text critic. When John the Baptizer spoke amendment of life to his hearers back then, he gave us direction to get into the hearts of our hearers today. Talking about confession, the Small Catechism says, “Consider your place in life according to the Ten Commandments: Are you a father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, or worker? Have you been disobedient, unfaithful, or lazy? Have you been hot-tempered, rude, or quarrelsome? Have you hurt someone by your words or deeds? Have you stolen, been negligent, wasted anything, or done any harm?” You make calls; you visit with your people. Do you pick up what’s going on in their life situations? “How’s work going?” “Things okay at home?” Our Sunday talk about sin goes easily into one ear and out the other, but people do talk seriously about their daily lives, and in that talking we can sniff traces of how they are sinning. Get to that in your preaching, grub around in their hearts about how sin is mucking up their daily lives with one another and before God, and they’ll ask, “What shall we do?” Confession has two parts, our confession and God’s absolution, and the goal of this sermon should clearly be God’s word of forgiveness. John did give the promise of the gospel. “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” “So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people.” Today’s context is not Christ’s first coming as much as his Advent coming in word and sacrament (“your sins are forgiven”) and his coming to take us home (Acts 1:11; 1 Pt 1:8‒9). The promise remains the same but we see it from different vantage points. Ask your hearers if they’re bearing the fruits of repentance. Are you? Then talk about it. Dale A. Meyer

Endnotes 1 Large Catechism, “A Brief Exhortation to Confession,” 22. 2 Thomas Winger, “The Spoken Word: What’s Up with Orality?” Concordia Journal 29 (2003): 136.

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 345 Advent 3 • Luke 7:18–28 (29–35) • December 13, 2015

Luke 7:18‒35 presents the preacher with a challenge: although unified by refer- ences to John, the three subsections are diverse in topic and style. As Fitzmyer notes, the passage deals with (1) John’s question and Jesus’s answer, (2) Jesus’s testimony concerning John, and (3) Jesus’s judgment of his generation’s assessment of himself and of John. “As a group, they spell out the relation of John and Jesus to the execution of God’s plan of salvation and recount the reaction of John’s disciples and of Jesus’s own generation to him.”1 That is a lot for a single sermon, especially if the preacher hopes to tie in Advent themes, too. Still, the passage does build to its climax in the enigmatic v. 35, and the preacher would do well to work with the whole section, vv. 18‒35. The previous two Sundays have provided an opportunity to reflect on watch- fulness for the (final) coming of the Son of Man and on the appearance and mission of John the Baptist. This third gospel brings these two figures together and addresses the matter of expectations from a variety of perspectives: John’s expectations of the Messiah, the crowds’ expectations of John, and this generation’s expectations of Jesus. This strong sense of expectation and the underlying threat of disappointment make this passage particularly well suited for the encouragement of God’s Advent people. The three subsections of the text form the most natural outline for its proclamation. Verses 18‒23 are probably the most familiar. Luke’s reader has been given no reason to think that John has lost faith, and yet, there is also no reason to think this is not John’s question—as if he were asking it for the sake of his disciples. The question is honest and straightforward, sincere and genuine. Neither does our Lord’s response condemn or call to repentance, warn or chastise. It is an equally honest and straightforward listing of the evidence by which the question may be answered. The response closes with a blessing, personal and direct, in the singular, for the one who finds in Jesus no stumbling block, no reason to lose faith, hope, or heart. John’s one-line “captivity epistle” finds its response in living testimony to the identity of Jesus and a promise of blessing for his faithful follower. The middle section addresses the crowd’s assessment of John. We could summa- rize by borrowing John’s own question: “What do you think of John? Was he a prophet sent by God, or should you have looked for another?” After showing how John was not less than a prophet, Jesus proceeds to state why he was more than a prophet. Here was the messenger sent by God to prepare the way for God himself (cf. Mal 3:1), and the prophecy now becomes a promise spoken by the Father that Jesus claims for himself. Finally, “the least one” (sg.) in the kingdom: is this a reference to Jesus himself or to the little one who believes in him? Reference to the people and the tax collectors in v. 29 might seem to favor the latter, but a stronger case can be made for the former. The whole passage intertwines the identities and missions of John and Jesus. John pre- pares the way for Jesus. John’s baptism, which these people had accepted, was one for repentance because the kingdom was at hand. And the passage will conclude with a strong word of warning to those who couldn’t accept either John or Jesus. Who then are “Wisdom’s children”? Had Jesus said only “Wisdom is justified by

346 her children,” the most natural reading would be to take that as a reference to John and Jesus. But our Lord adds “all”—“by all her children.” Clearly, then, he must mean to include not only the more-than-a-prophet John and himself, the “littlest one,” but also all those who have come to believe the messenger and believe in the coming one. This is the chorus of voices who know and proclaim that God is both just and justifier—and justified. Jeffrey A. Oschwald

1 Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel according to Luke (I–IX) The Anchor Bible, Vol. 28; New York: Doubleday, 1970), 662.

Advent 4 • Luke 1:39–45 (46–56) • December 20, 2015 [Advent’s historical] character was that of a joyous looking forward to the Parousia. . . . The fact that Christ has come does not quench this hope; it intensifies it. The historical life and work of the Christ gives us all the more reason for expressing a lively and joyful hope.1 Is there a more emblematic moment of Advent hope than this encounter between Elizabeth and Mary? Two unexpectedly expectant mothers give voice to all that had gone before and all that is yet to come, even as the Savior of the world and his prophet are being knit together with the tissues of their own DNA in their wombs. Their conversation, and Mary’s subsequent soliloquy, simultaneously looks back to salvation history and its fulfillment in the Christ child, while looking forward to the making of all things new in the coming reign of God, an already-not yet moment if ever there was one. There is something profoundly full of grace in the genuine friendship between women. Anyone who has spent time at an LWML convention knows exactly what I’m talking about. There is a sense of empowerment to it, solidarity, a knowing coun- tenance, a generosity of spirit. We hear it in the exclamation of the elder Elizabeth to Mary, her junior: “And why has this happened to me that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” (v. 43). Already, God is lifting up the lowly, in the perceptive wisdom of one woman to another. It is enough to make one wonder what all was shared between these two women in the three months Mary spent in Elizabeth’s hill-country home, with nary a mansplaining word from the struck-dumb Zechariah to interrupt them. Of course, for both women, their words are stunning expressions of sheer faith, the leap of any human heart at the hearing of good news. No small wonder that it finds its ultimate voice in the hum of song. Mary’s song echoes the Old Testament song of another unexpectedly expectant mother, Hannah (1 Sm 2:1‒10), but the true mag- nificence of the Magnificat is in how it brings to culmination the various vocabularies of the Psalms, the Prophets, even the recorded history of ancient Israel, “according to the promise he made to our ancestors, / to Abraham and to his descendants forever” (v. 55). Is it too much to say that Mary’s song is the culmination of the whole lexicon

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 347 of the Hebrew Bible, giving first expression to how the subsequent New Testament will interpret its Hebrew scriptures in the light of the One she bears in her womb, our Savior and Lord? And is this not the sublime expression of our Advent hope in the God of great reversals, who “scattered the proud” and “filled the hungry with good things” (v. 51, 53). Mary’s faith is so sure that she can express this hope in the past tense, speaking of what God will yet do as something he has already accomplished. The lectionary gives us a choice as to whether or not Mary’s song is included in this week’s reading of the Gospel. But it strikes me that the lectionary gives us a unique liturgical opportunity. It gives us the chance to sing Mary’s song together. There are so many great adaptations and settings of the Magnificat for congregational singing (LSB 933‒935 give us but a glimpse) that it would seem a lost opportunity to not sing it here together, our voices joining with Mary in a leap of faith at the hearing of good news. For the assembly to break into song at just this moment in the reading of the gospel would mimic how it breaks forth in the pages of Luke’s own Gospel, how poetry breaks forth from the pages of its prose history. For us to sing Mary’s song together not only gives communal voice to her words of promise. The singing “intensifies it” into “a lively and joyful hope” of all that is yet to come. Travis Scholl

1 Frank C. Senn, “The Meaning of Advent: Implications for Preaching,” Concordia Theological Monthly 42, no.10 (November 1971): 657, 659.

Christmas 1 • Luke 2:22–40 • December 27, 2015

Joy to the world, Christmas has come! For many, the joy of this holiday season is in the opened gifts and the abundant food and beverage options. The glow of that Christmas is fading fast. Our text today challenges us to rediscover the joy that gave a song of love for the ages, Joy to the World, the Lord has come! The joy of the things of this world is as empty as the packages strewn around our floors and the platter of Aunt Bessie’s pumpkin pie. In contrast, our Christ fills us with a joy that cannot be contained, a joy that can redefine our lives, from those who are waiting to those who are witnessing.

Textual Notes 2:22: The purification requirements referenced in the text are found in Leviticus 12 and the redemption laws for the firstborn are found in Exodus 13 and Numbers 3:47‒51. Note that they came to the temple for two reasons, the purification of Mary and the redemption (presentation) of their firstborn son, Jesus. With this passage Luke demonstrates the integrity of Joseph and Mary. Their integrity and the integrity of Simeon and Anna stood in contrast to the corruption of the opportunistic money

348 changers, the greedy priests, and Pharisees who bent religion to serve their needs. 2:24: Redemption of the firstborn. A quick search online found that you can spend about $10‒$80 per bird, depending on the variety, and a lamb would cost about $100 if purchased today. 2:25: Notice that Simeon is just a man. He is not a prophet or one of the priesthood, he is just a man. However, he is a man that is righteous before God and upright before man. 2:26: Revelation and light are important cues in this text. Jesus, the Christ, was revealed to Simeon by the Holy Spirit and Jesus would be the light for the Gentiles and the glory, the brilliance for the Jews. 2:29: Some interpret Simeon’s words as an expression of relief from a burden lifted. Not unlike countless people who struggle with depression or lingering illness that cry out, “why doesn’t the Lord just take me.” However, a closer look at the text reveals that Simeon and Anna’s celebration is not from a burden lifted but a gift given. Both Anna and Simeon came to the temple with nothing but a promise. Both leave with a heart full of hope and a message so wonderful that it transforms the tired fixtures of the temple into bold witnesses of God’s promise fulfilled. 2:32: Notice the order of Simeon’s words. One would expect the Israelites to be mentioned first. At the very least, the Gentiles should be totally subdued and humili- ated before Israel is exalted. But that is not the case. Jesus will bring truth, and the freedom it gives to the Gentiles. The fulfillment God made to Abraham, Moses, and David brings glory to the nation of Israel. The salvation of the Gentiles is to Israel’s glory. It vindicates their long wait. Exegetical idea: Luke reveals the true mission of Jesus the Messiah. Through Simeon and Anna we see the transformative power of Christ on the lives of God’s people. Homiletic idea: Jesus and his mission challenge us to redefine joy in our lives. Malady: Too often we see joy as freedom from a burden. The burden might be obedience to God’s word, or lingering in this life without one we love, or struggling with an illness that leaves us begging for a quick passage to heaven. Means: Joy is found, not in having empty hands, but having hands and a heart that are full of the right things. Things like: the gift of salvation given to us in baptism, the promise that we will never be alone, the truth that the gospel light really does change people even as it changes the world. Todd Jones

Christmas 2 • Luke 2:40–52 • January 3, 2016

This story shows the holy family in Jerusalem at the feast of Passover. According to Deuteronomy 16:16, all male Israelites were obligated (though the women were not forbidden to show devotion in this way also) to come to the Lord’s house to celebrate

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 349 the feasts of Passover, Weeks, and Booths. The young Jesus, having reaching the age of a “son of the commandment” (as described in the rabbinic Talmud),1 accompanied his parents. While returning home, Mary and Joseph became increasingly distressed to be unable to find him among their kinsmen and acquaintances. They finally found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers and greatly astonishing them with his questions and answers. On feast days and Sabbaths it was customary for the rabbis of the Sanhedrin to hold instruction sessions for the people on religious matters and the meaning of Scripture passages,2 and it is likely that such was the setting in which the anxious searchers found him. This is a well-known and loved Bible story, one that has been beautifully depicted in pictures and poetry. But what does it mean? Is it simply a story about parental concerns? Or about a child prodigy? Or something more? Let us ask: To what does Jesus draw attention here?

Suggested Outline Jesus in the Temple—Amazing and Uplifting! I. Jesus in the temple—the center of the gospel A. Jesus’s divine Sonship When Jesus’s mother said to him, “Son, why did you do this to us? See how anxiously we have been looking for you!” he candidly but respectfully answered that he had a unique relationship with the God who was worshipped in the temple, calling him “my Father.” Luther’s Bible literally translated the Greek here: Wisset ihr nicht, dass ich sein muss in dem, dass meines Vaters ist? (Don’t you know that it is necessary for me to be engaged in that which is my Father’s?) They should have known that it was completely appropriate for the Son of God to be in his Father’s house, discussing the word of God. Most translators today capture part of this truth: “I must be in my Father’s house.” The Lutheran Confessions observe that his dialog with the learned in the temple showed the divine nature of his Sonship, including it among his incarnation in the womb, his miracle at Cana, and his dazzling of his foes in Gethsemane, John 18:6 (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, VIII, 24‒25). His human nature did not always use his divine powers, as when it grew in stature and wisdom, Luke 2:52 (Epitome of Formula of Concord, VIII, 16), but in his communication in the temple he was not expressing what he had learned from others, for the teachers of Israel were amazed by it and his parents did not fully understand it. His questions, filled with profound understanding (vv. 46‒47), may well have included the kind described by Edersheim,3 that is, penetrating inquiries to clarify the meaning of religious speakers, such as he often used in later life (e.g., Mt 15:3; 21:21; 22:42, 45). We note that it is likely, in the time setting of the Luke 2 story, that the meaning of the Passover sacrifice and related messianic prophecies came up for discussion (cf. Is 53:5‒7; Jn 1:29).

350 B. Jesus, the center of the gospel While Luke tells us nothing specific of the content of Jesus’s discourse, he does relate it to the truth that he is the Son of the Father. This foreshadows his assertions throughout his ministry about his work for the salvation of sinners, done in full communion with his Father who had sent him for this very purpose (cf., for example, Jn 5:23, 24, 30, 36; 6:29, 38, 39, 57; 7:16, 29; 8:18, 26, 29; 9:4; 12:49; 17:2‒3; Lk 10:21‒22; 22:29, 42; 24:49). The Father’s redemptive work through the Son is especially reflected in today’s epistle (Eph 1:6, 7, 11). II. Remember, then, who he is Jesus’s reply to his mother’s scolding may seem harsh and unreasonable: “Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know . . . ? But it was in fact a gentle, respectful (as the perfect Messiah was always respectful toward his parents [cf. v. 51]) reminder of the truths that they had been given about him and his destiny, so that they were neglecting, or forgetting, what should have guided and helped them (Lk 1:31‒33, 35, 42‒43; 2:9‒19, 27‒36; Mt 16:24). He was lovingly pointing out the help for such distress. We also may take all this to heart, now that the glorious promises of the Christmas season are still fresh in our minds, as we face the troubles of our own lives. His answer to Mary was in perfect accord with his common practice of lovingly chiding confused and troubled people, directing them to truths about him that need to be known and remembered. For example, he pointed out to the disciples their “little faith” when they in the storm (Mt 8:24‒26) forgot that he was Lord of creation and that he had already begun to tell them of the great work which he and they would do in the future, or failed to consider the implications of the miracles of the loaves (Mt 16:5‒12). Or think of his loving and helpful rebuke of Thomas (Jn 20:27) when that doubting apostle neglected to think of his prediction, three times, that he would rise from the dead, and his claims to be the true Messiah and the resurrection and the life (Jn 11:25), etc. In our own times we continually face problems and plagu- ing questions of faith (Where is the Lord now? Does he really love us?) and often grieve him by neglecting the truths and promises of his word (which is, to put it bluntly, sinful). And so by complaining and doubting we rob ourselves of the comfort and uplift which he wants us to have. He patiently continues to urge us in our weakness and confused thinking, to seek the reviving, encouraging truth in his word, and when we have found it, not to forget to remember it. For his mercy and forgiveness are freely offered (Jn 6:37; Heb 4:16). Thomas Manteufel

Endnotes 1 Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (Grand Rapids: Associated Publishers and Authors, n.d.), 182. 2 Ibid., 191. 3 Ibid., 346, 349.

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 351 Baptism of Our Lord • Luke 3:15–22 • January 10, 2016

I am not particularly fond of John the Baptist. It is not his strange clothes or his strange diet that puts me off. I know lots of people with strange clothing eating strange foods. His threatening me with fire is the reason I would rather avoid John. Fire hurts, a long time. 3:17: For two or three hundred years Western Christians have been attempting to avoid the topic of God’s wrath. The more our cultures have tried to place human beings in charge of at least daily life and the more we have tried to hold God at arm’s length—nice to have gotten us started, God!—the less personal God has become in our thinking, the weaker our conception of his personality. He has turned from the medieval Father who is angry with us for sinning into a modern Father who is forget- ful, neglectful, largely absent in fact from the hours of our foibles and failures. John the Baptist reminds us that God does not like us to be sinning, and that he is as angry as hellfire about our failure to fear, love, and trust in him above all else. He abhors the mess we make of our own lives because he is a loving Father, according to his very essence, Martin Luther believed. Therefore, the Old Testament is filled with the stories of his recalling his people to himself through expressions of his distaste for their sins in the form of the visitations of the cruelties of their neighbors, which mirrored the self- centeredness that grasped the Israelites’ own hearts. The cracking and creaking of our lives at times demonstrates to us that whatever we have used to hold life together is not a worthy substitute for the Creator. And God does not like being slighted by his children. 3:15‒16, 18: John also had a message that appeals to me. He recognized that one mightier than he was coming. He pointed to that Jesus, his cousin, as one who was going to come to be the Lamb of God (Jn 1:29). He was coming as the atoning sacrifice for that which arouses the Father’s wrath, as one who was indeed mightier than he and all other human beings. He was already present as the one who would, with the weak and foolish power of his suffering, death and resurrection, take away our rejection of his lordship. He was there to restore us to being trusting children in conversation with our heavenly Father, our Creator. John reacted to what he had heard and seen: that the Father and the Holy Spirit made themselves known as he baptized Jesus and identified him as his Son, the one with whom he is just positively delighted. John did lay it on the line, with his own fellow Jews who came to hear him and with Herod. His confession of faith earned him imprisonment and death. That happens. Like Herod, we would often like to get rid of his uncomfortable message. But John stuck to the Creator’s wrathful guns. We will find doing that more delightful than we usually imagine in our world, simply because a lot of our friends and acquaintances need to hear it.

And so . . . Jesus shares his baptism with us. In Mark 10:38 he is already hinting at the association of baptism with death, an association that Paul makes clear in Romans 6:3‒11

352 and Colossians 2:11‒15. Thus, the apostle tells us that our baptisms have done our sinful identities to death and hidden our sins in his tomb. At the same time he is raising us up with himself to triumph over our enemies and to spend our lives walking in his footsteps, arousing the delight of the Father in us as well. God wants sinners dead, so that he can raise them up—create them anew—to be his children again. He gets a real kick out of reclaiming lost coins and lost sheep (Lk 15:3‒10). That is why Jesus came, and that is why the Father and the Son met at the Jordan with the Holy Spirit, who plays a vital role in the completion of the work the Father commissions and the Son carries out. That mission he accomplishes by sending us the Holy Spirit to stand by us, to dwell within us, to empower the God-pleasing life in us.

Conclusion Perhaps it is no so bad to stop to listen to John after all. We, too, need to recognize the Father’s anger at our sinfulness and to recognize that he is angry with good reason since our sins do nothing else but gnaw at the wholeness of our being and threaten us with death, temporal and eternal. And John’s final word emphasized the delight of the Father in his only-begotten Son, which delight Jesus shares with us. His delight gives us delight as well. Robert Kolb

Epiphany 2 • John 2:1–11 • January 17, 2016

Introduction Today’s gospel lesson records the beginning of the miraculous signs (avrch. tw/n shmei,wn) which Jesus did as recorded in the Gospel of John: Jesus changes gallons of water into excellent wine (kalo.j oi=noj). How preachers and commentators have interpreted the significance of this event has varied. For instance, some argue that this miracle proves Jesus’s divinity, it shows his approval of the institution of marriage, or it shows his genuine concern for others in sparing his host public embarrassment. According to the narrator, however, the significance of this miraculous sign is summarized in 2:11, and so a sermon on this text should focus especially on what is said there.

Literary Context According to 2:1 this event took place “on the third day” (th/| h`me,ra| th/| tri,th|). Beginning with John 1:19 (where the narrative of John’s account begins after the pro- logue of 1:1‒18) there are a series of four days that follow in progression. One the first day John (the Baptist) gives testimony before some priests and Levites. The next day John testifies that Jesus is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” On the next day Jesus calls Andrew, another disciple (John the Apostle), and Simon Peter. And on the next day Jesus calls Philip and Nathanael. Already Jesus’s disciples recognize

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 353 that he is the Christ (1:41) and that he is the Son of God and King of Israel (1:49). If this is the third day after the calling of Philip and Nathanael, then it is the seventh day of this progression of days. This “week” will reach its glorious conclusion on the seventh day at the wedding in Cana when Jesus performs the first miraculous sign.

The Text Jesus, his disciples, and his mother attend a wedding feast in the village of Cana. A problem arises when the hosts run out of wine, a circumstance that would bring great embarrassment to the bridegroom. When Jesus’s mother tries to involve him, he initially rebukes her because “[his] hour has not yet come” (2:4). Nevertheless he tells the servants to fill six stone water jars (used for purification) with water and then to draw some of this and serve it to the master of the feast. Not only has the water become wine, but it is such excellent wine that the master of the feast is compelled to comment to the bridegroom that he has atypically saved the best wine for last. Apparently no one else knew about this miracle except for Jesus, the disciples, and the servants who drew the water. The significance of this event is then summarized by the narrator in 2:11: “This, the beginning of the miraculous signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him.” This is the first time John uses the term shmei/ on (“miraculous sign”) in his account. As “signs” the miracles in John’s Gospel point to who Jesus is—the Christ and the Son of God (20:30‒31), the only One from the Father whose glory the disciples beheld (1:14). This “sign” led the disciples to believe in Jesus. In this same way this sign is to direct the hearers of this account to Jesus that they too would believe in him. In his commentary Don Carson argues that when Jesus refers to “his hour” (2:4) and then when the narrator later speaks of Jesus “manifesting his glory” (2:11), a literary connection is made between this miracle and Jesus’s glorification in his death and resurrection.1 Thus within the narrative of John this first miracle is a prolepsis and foretaste of the conclusion of Jesus’s ministry. The interpreter may then further see that this miracle is also proleptic of the end of the age, for, according to the prophet Amos, that time will be marked by an abundance of wine (see Am 9:13‒14). In this miracle we see that the end times have come ahead of time in Jesus. This event also gives us a foretaste of things to come both later in Jesus’s earthly ministry (his resurrection) and then when he returns (the fulfillment of the messianic age).

Considerations for Preaching One important theme during the season of Epiphany is that divinity was revealed and manifested in the flesh in the person of Jesus. The turning of water into wine in this lesson does point to Jesus as the one/unique God from the Father who has made all things known (1:18). As the first disciples were, we too are invited in this text to witness Jesus performing this miraculous sign—willing water into excellent wine—to believe in him, and to experience life in his name. With this miracle we also are given a foretaste of Jesus’s ultimate glory revealed in his death and resurrection and then finally

354 when he will return to restore all things. Blessed with life given by Jesus today (Jn 10:10), we anticipate further blessings on the last day when, among other things, there will be an abundance of excellent wine as we celebrate the marriage feast of the Lamb in his reign that has no end. David I. Lewis

1 D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 171.

Epiphany 3 • Luke 4:16–30 • January 24, 2016

This text is appropriate for reflection early in the Epiphany season for several reasons. First, it reports one of Jesus’s first acts of his public ministry. Second, it is one of the first times that Jesus publicly identifies himself as the Messiah. Third, it sets him clearly on the path to rejection by the people, ultimately leading to the cross. An exposition of this text can be organized into three foci: • The Proclamation of the Messiah: Revelation. • The Purpose of the Messiah: Restoration. • The Path for the Messiah: Rejection.

The Proclamation of the Messiah: Revelation Jesus is introduced to the people as a preacher and a teacher. Proclamation is a key component of his public ministry, and through this proclamation Jesus reveals who he is and what he has come to do. He begins his ministry of proclamation, appropriately enough, in his hometown of Nazareth. On the Sabbath he enters the synagogue and is extended the opportunity to expound on the sacred writings. Jesus opens the scroll of Isaiah to chapter 61 and reads (Is 61:1‒2). This passage was recognized as a messianic prophecy (v. 18 refers to one who is “anointed”) and was associated with the series of messianic Servant Songs in Isaiah. It is significant that this passage emphasizes the role of the Messiah as one of proclaimer: “to preach the good news” (v. 18), “to proclaim release” (v. 18), and “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (v. 19). But what is most remarkable is Jesus’s comment on this passage: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk 4:21). By this radical statement Jesus identifies himself as the fulfillment of this scripture and thereby claims to be the Messiah. Thus his proclamation becomes robust revelation; Jesus reveals himself to be the promised deliverer and Servant of Yahweh.

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 355 The Purpose of the Messiah: Restoration Jesus announces that he fulfills this scripture. But since the passage in Isaiah describes the mission of the Messiah, Jesus in effect is announcing the purpose for which he has come. And that mission is one of restoration. The Messiah is “anointed” and “sent” to deliver these ends: • “Good news to the poor,” which is the restoration of wellbeing to those impoverished by the debt of sin. • “Release of captives,” which is restoration of freedom from the bondage of the broken law of God. • “Recovery of sight to the blind,” which is the restoration of the beatific vision by faith. • “Deliverance of the downtrodden,” which is the restoration of dignity to those who were debased by Satan. • “The year of the Lord’s favor,” which is the restoration of the eternal inheri- tance realized in the ultimate Jubilee.

It is to deliver each of these blessings that the Messiah has come. That is his purpose. That is his mission. But walking that path which will cost much.

The Path for the Messiah: Rejection The response of the townsfolk to Jesus’s announcement at first is one of confu- sion. “Is this not Joseph’s son?” (v. 22) they ask. In other words, they wonder: “We know who he is! How can he make such a claim?” Jesus diagnoses their reception of his words as nothing less than unbelief: “No prophet is welcome in his town home” (v. 24). Just as Elijah and Elisha were not recognized as true prophets from God by the Israelites of their day, so also Jesus is not recognized as being the One sent by God by the Jews of his day. And so, like Elijah and Elisha, he will deliver his message of revelation and restoration to the Gentiles (vv. 24‒27). The epiphany of the Lord will be manifested to others in foreign lands who will welcome it with faith. The response to these words by the residents of Nazareth changes from ambiva- lence to anger. They demonstrate an intention to harm and kill Jesus. Nevertheless, he passes from their grasp and out of their midst, for his time had not yet come. But it would come three years hence. This rejection by the hometown crowd por- tends the final rejection by the crowds who will cry “Crucify him!” That is the pathway which Jesus now trods. Appropriately, the text concludes with the words, “He jour- neyed on his way” (v. 30), which will be the way to the cross. David Peter

356 Epiphany 4 • Luke 4:31–44 • January 31, 2016

This gospel lesson records part of Jesus’s Galilean ministry, after he went down from Nazareth to Capernaum. Here we see Jesus teaching, casting out demons, and healing the sick. It is important when preaching on this text to put it into the right slot or category. Here the malady is not human guilt. Rather, the text displays two other maladies. One is physical death, of which physical sickness is a preliminary condition. Throughout the Scriptures sickness and death belong together. The second problem is demonic possession. The kingdom of Satan has usurped control of people. One gets the impression that when Jesus, the incarnate Son of God showed up and began his public ministry, the gates of hell were opened and many satanic angels attacked God’s human creatures. In the Old Testament the defeat of death and Satan and the coming of the glorious kingdom of God were depicted as eschatological events, to happen at the end of days. Now with Jesus the end-time kingdom of God entered into Galilee. The noun “kingdom” (βασιλεία) denotes more activity than a sphere (v. 43). It refers to the kingly rule and reign of God the Father. And this is good news. The future end-time kingly reign of the holy God broke into human history ahead of time; it invaded the human world in advance. The actions of Jesus manifest and actualize its presence. Thus he casts out demons, heals the sick, and preaches the good news of the kingdom.

Notes on the Text 4:32: The “teaching/word” spoken by Jesus was “in authority.” This refers to the causative authority of his word. It is clarified in v. 36, that “with authority and power” Jesus gives a command to unclean spirits, and they come out. His two imperatives addressed to the demon, “Be muzzled and come out,” brought about what they said (v. 35). The demon promptly came out and did not injure the man. 4:33: The genitive “a spirit of an unclean demon” is epexegetical, a spirit which was an unclean demon. In the Old Testament “uncleanness” is the opposite of “holy.” The two were incompatible; persisting uncleanness would drive the holy God away from his dwelling with Israel (Lv 11‒15; note Lv 10:10; 15:31). Here by his authoritative word Jesus, “the Holy One of God” (Lk 4:34), drives the unclean demon away. 4:34: The unclean demon speaks for all the demons at that time, “Ah, what to us and to you, Jesus of Nazareth? Did you come to destroy us?” 4:37: Word about Jesus “was continuously going out (imperfect) into every place of the neighborhood.” While Jesus attends to a specific matter at a specific place and time, the report about him spreads from place to place. The people could not contain themselves as they were so amazed and astounded (vv. 32, 36). 4:39: Jesus “rebuked” the unclean spirit in the synagogue of Capernaum (v. 35), and he “rebuked” the demons from many others (v. 41). Just as Jesus “rebuked” demons, so he also “rebuked” the fever that had seized Simon’s mother-in-law (vv. 38‒39). Both demons and sickness unto death are alien intrusions into God’s created world, and as such they need to be driven out. Jesus’s rebuke had causative power to do just that.

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 357 4:41: The text explains why Jesus silenced the demon in the synagogue of Capernaum and many other demons; they knew that he is “the Holy One of God” (v. 34), “the Son of God” and “the Christ” (v. 41). News about Jesus’s identity was not to be spread until what was written about him from Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms was fulfilled, and until the Spirit came mightily upon his disciples (24:44-49; Acts 1‒2). 4:43: Jesus says “it is necessary that I evangelize (ευ͗αγγελίζομαι) the kingdom of God to the other cities because for this purpose I was sent.” “The kingdom of God” is good news, and it was “necessary” for it to be preached to the other towns of Israel.

Sermon Idea “The Future Has Begun” One sermon idea is to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom of God. Through the first-century work of Jesus, climaxing in his death and resurrection, the end-time kingly reign of God has broken into history ahead of time. Through his word and sacraments we now by faith enjoy the benefits of God’s victorious rule. And we trust the promise that one day Jesus will come again in glory and remove far away from us Satan and sickness and death. The promise is sure. For that promised future has already begun. Paul R. Raabe

Transfiguration of Our Lord • Luke 9:28–36 • February 7, 2016

In the beginning God said, “Let there be light” (Gn 1:3) and there was light. The voice of God called into existence not only light, but also water, land, vegetation, and living creatures. Once all was created God did not go silent but he continued to speak. God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gn 1:26). God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; ‘I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gn 2:18). God said, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die (Gn 2:16‒17).” But Adam and Eve did not listen to the voice of God. Instead they were persuaded by another voice; another voice that would lead them into the captivity of sin, death, and the power of the devil. Notice how many voices are speaking to us today: the voices of newscasters, the voices of government leaders, the voices of song writers, the voices of YouTubers, the voices of bloggers, the voices of political candidates, and the voices of television and movie actors. There are assorted voices speaking to us each day. Therefore, take a moment and account for the voices you hear each day and consider what they are saying. In addition, consider where the voice is coming from. Is this the voice of God, or is this a voice that will lead you into the captivity of sin, death, and the power of the devil? Discerning between the array of voices that are encouraging us to think, feel, behave, and believe in certain ways is important. Consider the scene of Peter, John, and

358 James with Jesus on the mount. There is much to see, the appearance of Jesus’s face is altered, his clothes are sparkling with light, and with him are Moses and Elijah. But listen; listen carefully to what is being said and who is saying it. Notice the contrast between Peter, who wants to build huts and the voice from heaven proclaiming Jesus to be the chosen one. These are two very different reactions. Peter’s reaction is filled with misunderstandings. Peter thinks it is good to stay on the mount, he suggests that three huts be built. (You could make a connection to the Feast of Booths during your sermon.) Yet, while Peter is speaking he is interrupted by another voice. “This is my Son, my chosen One; listen to him!” There is a special connection between the one speaking and the present imperative of listening. God demands an emphatic continued activity when he says, “listen to him!” You could translate it “continue without ceasing to listen to him!” The voices from the Old Testament are important but Jesus speaks with greater authority. Jesus is the chosen one that was foretold (Dt 18:15‒20). Jesus is the light to the nations (Is 42:1‒7). Jesus is the word made flesh (Jn 1:5). The voice from the cloud clearly states that they are to listen to Jesus and only to Jesus, “And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone” (Lk 9:36). The Old Testament figures are gone; they had completed their service of pointing to Christ. The kingdom of God was now here in Jesus as the voice of God proclaimed. And notice the response of the three disciples: silence. They did not speak but they listened. And maybe that is the point. Do more listening to God’s voice and less talking. We are tempted to talk when maybe we should be listening. Peter was tempted to say something but what he desired was not God’s desire, he misunderstood what was taking place because he was so quick to speak. Instead, “be still, and know that I am God” (Ps 46:10) for what is going to happen next is life changing. (A note: consider using a Lenten sermon series that identifies the many voices of Lent. The voices of Peter, Pilate, Herod, and so on and then on Good Friday: the voice of silence. Weave through all these voices the voice of God.) Mark Rockenbach

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 359

BOOK REVIEWS

COncordia Journal

WALKING THE LABYRINTH: A let go of the notion that we can find our Place to Pray and Seek God. By Travis purpose only when we have gone from Scholl. InterVarsity Press, 2014. 240 whatever is here to whatever we think we pages. Paper. $16.00. can find over there” (126). The labyrinth calls forth a closer attentiveness to the Jesus identified himself as the way (or place where the presence and work of path) in response to Thomas’s puzzled Christ meet the particularities of our liv- rejoinder, “Lord, we do not know where ing. The labyrinth beckons awareness to you are going. How can we know the the splendor and suffering of Creation, as way?” (Jn 14:5). For those who know much as to God’s labor of healing within that Jesus is the path taking us to the it, so the common etymological root Father but have forgotten (or never takes us to the place where the “chaotic known) that his route is cruciferous and disorders of our own lives” intersect with circuitous rather than lazily linear, this the cross of Christ and make the “sacred book is both needed corrective and wise geometry” of a square transformed into a companion. circle (191). Born out of Scholl’s Lenten disci- This book invites its readers into a pline walking a churchyard labyrinth near close and mindful reading of Mark’s gos- his home, the pages lead insightfully into pel, to find and ponder riches not seen the circularity of Mark’s gospel and the or stopped for before. But it also does baptized existence of Christ’s travelers. the same for the unfolding existence of Far from being a confusing maze one the crucified, risen, and living followers has to figure out, the labyrinth is “a liv- of Christ who’ve grown too comfort- ing symbol of the journey of faith in a able with easy answers or personal and sinful, broken world” (15)—a path one cultural certainties. It is as beautiful in its prays and walks, step by step, in trust. writing as it is brutal in its honest assess- Especially instructive is Scholl’s extended ments. Provocative discoveries abound reflection on the first three steps of bear- for one to meditate upon and walk ing one’s cross: facing failure, being made through every twist and turn along the last, and facing rejection. If the labyrinth way. The accompanying Daily Scripture is a curved way of the cross, then it takes Readings Index serves as a helpful tool us to the center where Christ’s resurrec- for grounding the discipline of prayerful tion meets us and leads us back out more walking within the context of Jesus’s own fully aware of rising after dying daily. labyrinthine pilgrimage from Galilee back Those unfamiliar with the histori- to Galilee. cal origin or literary significance of the I often return to and recite to others labyrinth will find enlightening details a couple sayings about the pilgrimage of scattered throughout, but the heart of the faith and the presence of the Holy One: book centers on the Christian spiritual- “He who walks has not arrived. Teach ity encapsulated by the labyrinth—what your body to die walking. Teach it, step Scholl articulates as opening one “to the by step, the nature of everything, which newness of life we can only find when is to pass” (Lanza del Vasto), along with we are standing still for a moment, to these words of Hermes Trismegistus

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 363 which were well-loved by Luther: “God On-Ground. The related blog offers is the circle whose center is everywhere opportunities for ongoing conversation but whose circumference is nowhere.” about teaching and writing. In addition, now I will be recommend- President George Bush proclaimed ing and returning to this book also. Part the 1990s to be the “Decade of the of IVP’s Formatio series, which seeks to Brain” with this: foster the church’s rich tradition of spiri- The human brain, a 3-pound mass tual formation through transformation of interwoven nerve cells that controls by Christ and conformity to his image, our activity, is one of the most mag- Walking the Labyrinth makes a worthy nificent—and mysterious—wonders of and welcome contribution. creation. The seat of human intelligence, Joel R. Kurz interpreter of senses, and controller of Bethlehem Lutheran Church movement, this incredible organ con- Warrensburg, Missouri tinues to intrigue scientists and layman alike. (Proclamation 6158, July 17, 1990) STICKY LEARNING: How In April 2013, President Obama Neuroscience Supports Teaching announced an ambitious $100 million That’s Remembered. By Holly J. Inglis program—The Brain Research through with Kathy L. Dawson and Rodger Y. Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Nishioka. Fortress Press, 2014. 115 (BRAIN) Initiative—to accelerate our pages. Softcover. $24.00. understanding of the brain at the level of its neural circuitry. Then, in early March “Seminarium: The Elements of 2015, President Obama announced his Great Teaching” is a series published by proposal to double the federal investment Fortress Press. The series is described in in the BRAIN Initiative to approximately the following way: “Written by religious $200 million in fiscal year 2015 (accessed studies and seminary professors for reli- electronically at i3 Mindware, June 4, 2015). gious studies and seminary professors, The Year of the Brain—Europe was the Seminarium Elements series bridges announced in 2015 with the following: the pedagogical aspirations of seminari- “Understanding the human brain and umblog.org with practical solutions for the diseases that can affect it is one of the today’s seminary and religious studies greatest scientific and philosophical chal- educators” (taken from the advertisement lenges we face today” (accessed electroni- for Seminarium Elements). cally June 4, 2015). Sticky Learning is one of five books Brain research is front and center, in this series that includes Understanding much research is being done and much Bible by Design: Create Courses with writing is coming forth. Using this brain Purpose, Interreligious Learning and research for the good of the church Teaching: A Christian Rationale for a would seem to be a self-evident task. Transformative Praxis, Effective Social Some work in this field is now being Learning: A Collaborative Globally- published, with Inglis’s book being a Networked Pedagogy, and Pedagogies for wonderful example. Inglis takes on the Student-Centered Learning: OnLine and task of how brain theory can help us

364 teach better. She does an extraordinary MISSION AT NUREMBERG: An and clear job of doing so. American Army Chaplain and the Exploring the physiological structure Trial of the Nazis. By Tim Townsend. of the brain, Inglis and her colleagues William Morrow, 2014. 388 Pages. take the reader into the development of Hardcover. $28.99. memory making clear that, among other things, emotional memory pre-empts With our society so enthralled with any other form of memory so that “the the horrors and drama that were the stronger the feeling, the more readily the Third Reich and the Second World War, memory is recalled and the more durable it seems that there is little of note left to the memory” (43). She encourages a say. Often what is put forward today is teacher to “find your core message and full of titillation or macabre depictions of repeat it with increasing depth” (70), the evils of Hitler’s regime. This includes likely a remarkable prescription for a the yearlong trial of two dozen high rank- preacher as well as a teacher. ing Nazis at Nuremberg after the defeat She contrasts the older style of of Nazi Germany. However, in the midst teaching (imparting factual data) with of all of this drama, three-time Religion the newer and neurologically informed Newswriters Association Religion Reporter style of “sticky learning” which is really of the Year, Tim Towsend has found facilitating constructive integration of a worthwhile story of compassion and content and meaning. Her chart on page Christian care to relate. 94 contrasting these two approaches is In Mission at Nuremberg, Townsend pure gold. tells the story of LCMS Army Chaplain Inglis is correct that “when teachers Henry Gerecke and his work as chaplain teach and students learn in accordance to the Lutheran prisoners, including with how our brain is designed, the learn- Hermann Goering and Joachim von ing is more effective and stands a greater Ribbentrop, at the infamous Nuremberg chance of being long lasting, memorable, trials. The book is something of a cross and sticky. . . . Education at all levels is in between a biography and an account need of reform, not merely from a political of the ministry of Gerecke to the Nazis or financial viewpoint, but from a peda- being tried for crimes against humanity. gogical and structural perspective” (91). Throughout the book Townsend has Too bad Inglis apparently was not interesting digressions that fill in back- aware of the work of the LCMS’s own ground information about numerous top- Allen Nauss (Brain Research and Its ics relevant to Gerecke’s work. The mix Implications for the Church) or his editing makes for a very readable and interesting of the forthcoming The Brain Manual. book but not without its weaknesses. Nonetheless, this is a book to be When reading the book it must be read and its teachings implemented by all remembered that Townsend is neither a of us who teach. Perhaps, even, we can theologian nor historian, but a journalist all get together with other readers of all who has specialized in religion. He writes these books on seminariumblog.org. with flare and empathy, from painting a Bruce M. Hartung touching picture of Gereke from his mar-

Concordia Journal/Fall 2015 365 riage to his beloved Alma Bender to his universally anathema within the LCMS willingness to bring the gospel of Christ of the 1930s. to some of the authors of the holocaust. With these issues noted, do not A writer from St. Louis, Townsend even assume that this is a book without value. inserts some interesting local history. The story of Gereke’s pastoral care is However, Townsend struggles when he warmly and compellingly retold. Gereke moves too far off of his primary topic: comes through as an example of the the work of Chaplain Henry Gerecke. power of the gospel and a pastor’s com- In his attempt to give background passion for sinners. The heart of this and color to the life and times of Henry book focuses on the work of Gereke with Gereke, Townsend gives explanations some of the world’s most infamous trial and descriptions that range from the defendants. Townsend does an excellent helpful to oversimplification and out- job of showing these men not as inhu- right misunderstandings. One excursus man monsters, but as real men who were into Old Testament source criticism to varying degrees guilty of committing leaves the reader wondering why it was heinous crimes. What makes this book included. Some of the issues are minor, especially valuable is how Townsend such as treating the Prussian Union as an paints the picture of a dedicated pas- event that governed all of Germany, and tor wrestling with his own revulsion yet repeating the common mistake of over- working to bring these men to repen- emphasizing the importance of Luther’s tance for their sins. Townsend relates regrettable work “On the Jews and their Gereke’s work with these defendants and Lies” on later German anti-Semitism. even their families in a compelling and The most concerning problem is compassionate manner. Townsend’s contention that “The Nazis Some of the stories of the had worked hard to crush the Christian Nuremberg defendants are not too churches, but found it too difficult” surprising, others are. It is of little sur- (112). While crushing the Christian prise that despite Gereke’s patient work churches was part of Hitler’s long-term Goering tried to manipulate him and goals, the Nazi government never tried ultimately was consistent in his rejection to crush the churches. It attempted to of Christ. Likewise, considering Albert co-opt the Landeskirchen in the early to Speer’s later writings in prison, it was not mid-1930s through internal church poli- shocking to learn that he fairly quickly tics and a group known as the “German repented and sought absolution from Christians,” but it never openly attacked Gereke. The result of Gereke’s work that the churches knowing that the party is probably the most surprising is that would immediately lose public support. of Baldur von Shirach. Von Shirach was The most puzzling digression is in the leader of the Hitler Youth and the chapter 9 where Townsend expounds one tasked with removing all vestiges of the JEDP source theory of Genesis. This Christianity and Christian morality from move leaves the reader scratching his or the next generation of Germans. To hear her head as to why Townsend included of how Gereke, through patient preach- it as it adds nothing to the story and was ing and teaching, brought von Shirach

366 back to the faith to the point that Gereke was willing to administer the Lord’s Supper to him is both shocking and rewarding to read. While the topic of this book is scin- tillating, in fact it can be seen as a case- study of a dedicated pastor working to administer God’s law and gospel to sinners. This book provides a compassionate look at pastoral care, even while placed within the high-drama of the Nuremberg trials. While there are some factual issues with some of Townsend’s background explanations, what makes this book worthwhile for a pastor’s library is the touching account of pastoral care that is really the center of the story. John Hellwege Concordia Lutheran Seminary Edmonton, Alberta

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Fall 2015 volume No “Lions of Gory Mane” Our Common Home Tending God’s Dwelling Place A. Maier (1893–1950) Walter ournal J COncordia

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