Pastor Mark's Blog

To put the so-called coronavirus pandemic into perspective, compare current speculation in the media about its “devastating” effect with the statistics below from the Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT). Obviously, we care about all with injuries, illness, and loss of life, but in light of the statistics in the excerpt below, why are international, federal, state, and local politicians not issuing “drive in place” directives to protect the global population from the more devastating effects of road crashes each year?

“Annual Global Road Crash Statistics

View the WHO’s infographics on road safety facts.

• Nearly 1.25 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day.
• An additional 20-50 million are injured or disabled.
• More than half of all road traffic deaths occur among young adults ages 15-44.
• Road traffic crashes rank as the 9th leading cause of death and account for 2.2% of all deaths globally.
• Road crashes are the leading cause of death among young people ages 15-29, and the second leading cause of death worldwide among young people ages 5-14.
• Each year nearly 400,000 people under 25 die on the world’s roads, on average over 1,000 a day.
• Over 90% of all road fatalities occur in low and middle-income countries, which have less than half of the world’s vehicles.
• Road crashes cost USD $518 billion globally, costing individual countries from 1-2% of their annual GDP.
• Road crashes cost low and middle-income countries USD $65 billion annually, exceeding the total amount received in developmental assistance.
• Unless action is taken, road traffic injuries are predicted to become the fifth leading cause of death by 2030.

Annual United States Road Crash Statistics

• Over 37,000 people die in road crashes each year
• An additional 2.35 million are injured or disabled
• Over 1,600 children under 15 years of age die each year
• Nearly 8,000 people are killed in crashes involving drivers ages 16-20
• Road crashes cost the U.S. $230.6 billion per year, or an average of $820 per person
• Road crashes are the single greatest annual cause of death of healthy U.S. citizens traveling abroad”

https://www.asirt.org/safe-travel/road-safety-facts/

So, in light of the above and in order to protect yourself from car crashes and the coronavirus, you should “logically” be advised to park your car in the garage and then to lock yourself and your family in your car until the politicians give you the “green light.”

Alternatively, you could carry on with life as normally as possible and use some of your extra time delving deeper into scripture. Remember that the coronavirus “panic-demic” is the global reaction of a world without faith, either in God or even in the existence of God; a faithless world suddenly and collectively confronted with its finitude, its mortality. People are rightly scared.

Christians, however, know that people turning away from Jesus Christ, even his followers, is nothing new. In relation to Jesus teaching about unbelief, St. John records that “many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God'” (John 6:66-69 – ESV).

In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and thereafter in scripture, baptism, the Lord’s supper, and teaching and preaching, God in Christ has given all of us mortal sinners the words of eternal life. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 – ESV). As those ordained into the priesthood of all believes through baptism, let us share these eternal life giving words with others as Christ has given them to us.

The last book of the Bible is the Revelation of John. The first word in the book of Revelation transliterated from the Greek is apokalypsis. It means “revelation” or “revelatory unveiling.” The Revelation of John and other similar writings often portray end times events with all manner of symbolism and are often filled with great battles between forces of good and evil. Because of these characteristics, the word “apocalypse” in popular culture is often used to describe surreal stories of humanity’s self-destruction. In recent days, the coronavirus, a small bit of genetic material in a capsid (a protein shell), has given rise to a “great battle,” or more accurately, to a global, panic-filled, media, governmental, and corporate explosion. This unprecedented response to the “novel” corona virus dwarves humanity’s previous reactions to MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), and Ebola, which are much more dangerous. In the blink of an eye, the world has gone coronavirus crazy.

Contributing to or perhaps even driving the hysteria and panic surrounding this novel coronavirus are the media, as the following contrasts detail. As of 16 March 2020, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the USA estimates “that so far this season there have been at least 36 million flu illnesses, 370,000 hospitalizations and 22,000 deaths from flu.” Meanwhile, the novel coronavirus, called COVID-19, has only 3,487 total cases with 68 deaths. So, why were the media not going hysterical for most of the flu season? Where was the panic shopping and hoarding when the general population was faced with the flu? While the flu was spreading, why were schools, bars, and nearly all other social activities and gatherings not closed or curtailed? When thousands were dying of the flu, where were the politicians with their draconian declarations and partisan in-fighting? Plainly, a lethal flu cannot compete with the 2020 political primaries.

Speculation says that COVID-19 may have a three percent (3%) mortality rate. According to the CDC figures above, that rate is only 2.0% at the moment. So, the recovery rate for contracting COVID-19 is over 97%. If you were guaranteed to receive over 97% on every exam which you would ever take in life, would you panic and quite school? If you knew that 97% of all your lottery tickets were “winners,” would you go to work any longer? Despite having an estimated 97% recovery rate, it seems as if the coronavirus has caused 97% of the world to shut down.

Instead of remaining reasonable and rational, the media, ever in search of another sensational story to sell, has gone mad. Furthermore, politicians, needing to attend to their political aspirations, want to be seen to be “doing something.” So, the rest of the population is now discouraged from doing anything. Caught between the media’s madness and the politicians’ politicking, the defenseless, general populace has resorted to panic shopping. Furthermore, to restrict people from congregating, schools are closed. Colleges have moved classes online. Bars are barred from opening, and restaurants are running on zero occupancy. Nonetheless, thousands of fearful customers can still overrun retail outlets unrestricted in search of any- and everything available on the shelves whether such things are actually needed or not.

So, what are people hoarding? Think about this for a moment. Some stores are completely sold out of just about everything, including items like mustard. How often do you use mustard? Take a moment to check any or all the mustard containers in your refrigerator. Is your mustard even in date? Whatever the case, what is the likelihood that your mustard consumption will increase so dramatically over the next few weeks that you will need to hoard it? While people are hoarding mustard, are they also hoarding corresponding amounts of hotdogs and hamburgers? Think about it for a moment; somebody, please!

Seeking to rival the media’s madness, retailers have overwhelmed customers with email, especially online retailers, informing customers about their extra efforts at increased sanitation to assure their customers of their concern for their customers’ health and well-being. I am glad to hear that retailers are wiping their various surfaces more diligently, but why are online retailers telling me about such efforts when I only deal with them electronically? Meanwhile, not a single oil company nor a single petrol station has informed me that their employees are wiping clean any of the handles on their fuel pumps. Maybe, under the guise of reduced demand, the oil companies are sublimely fueling the spread of the coronavirus, although no one is quite sure if even they have a handle on the situation.

Perhaps the most baffling of all the hoarded commodities is toilet paper (TP). For completely unknown and irrational reasons, it seems that toilet paper was one of the first items to tantalize the eye of panic shoppers, like the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. People started queuing for hours, overcrowding themselves into shops, exposing themselves and their families to coronaviral infection to buy more TP than one family could use for a month of food poisoning; never mind that COVID-19 causes a respiratory condition. What has caused this compelling need to stock up on TP? Whatever the reason, it is nigh on impossible to square it with plain reason.

So, what is happening to humanity? What are we really witnessing? Through a confluence of epidemiological, social, commercial, and interpersonal dynamics, a single virus has brought humanity’s vulnerability, fragility, and mortality clearly and globally into focus. Although death could come for any of us at any moment, through the coronavirus we are witnessing the global reaction of a world without God, a world with no promise of eternal life, desperately clinging to things like hoarded toilet paper, in hope of being “saved.”

This reaction is compounded by the fact that almost all the societal distractions which we use to distract ourselves from our human fragility and mortality are now being closed or shut down by powerless politicians and corporate concerns about a potential pandemic of post-coronaviral litigation. As a result, we sit and wait in anxious apprehension for the coronavirus apocalypse to unfold. Wretched human beings that we are, who will save us from these bodies of death (see Romans 7:24).

St. Paul writes, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:3-11 – ESV).

Through baptism, Christians have already died and are already raised from the dead. Through the promises of God given to us in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our sins are forgiven. We are promised the gift of eternal life. Through baptism, we lead a diametrically opposed, new, dual existence. Whereas our mortal bodies are vulnerable and fragile, we live each day not only in newness of life but also boldly in defiance of death! In that spirit, we love in when faced with fear. We give when surrounded by hoarding. We open our hearts when all else is closing. We pray and give thanks to God when our world is overwhelmed with uncertainty and despair.

Most importantly, we love and pray for non-believers. To whom or to what does their heart cling to save them from the ever present reality of death, whenever and however it comes? We pray that one day and forever it will be Jesus, the crucified and resurrected Christ, the son of the living God.

“In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).

The book of Judges in the Old Testament was written many centuries ago and closes with the verse above. That such words could be written so long ago in the history of the people of Israel would seem to indicate that our modern or post-modern experience with selfish relativism is not particularly new. If fact, this state of affairs has its roots in humanity’s first parents, Adam and Eve, who ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in order to be like God (Genesis 3:1-5). Instead of becoming like God, however, they became like the devil. Ever since, whatever sinful human beings consider to be right in their own eyes is only ever seen from the standpoint of their sin, which is anything but right. Tragically, every human being is born blinded by sin.

A member of the church recently gave me an article from the “Houses of Worship” column in The Wall Street Journal (06 December 2019) written by a Jewish psychoanalyst named Erica Komisar. Entitled, “Don’t Believe in God? Lie to Your Children,” Ms. Komisar cites a 2018 study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology which found, “Children or teens who reported attending a religious service at least once per week scored higher on psychological well-being measurements and had lower risks of mental illness. Weekly attendance was associated with higher rates of volunteering, a sense of mission, forgiveness, and lower probabilities of drug use and early sexual initiation.” She also reports that “nearly half of adults under 30 do not identify with any religion.” Her advice to parents with no formal belief system who want to help their children prepare for the brutality and barbarism (my words) of our modern/post-modern world is to lie to their children, if necessary, about the benefits of participating in religion so that their children will acquire the goodness which religion can instill. That is a remarkable strategy.

As well intended as this advice might be, it seems fundamentally flawed. First, as the title, “Psychoanalysis: A Servant of Truth,” of opening chapter in Neville Symington’s book, The Analytic Experience (London: Free Association Books, 1986), would seem to indicate, truth is foundational for psychoanalysis in the pursuit of mental health. Second, trying to raise children to be well-adjusted, upright, contributing, moral citizens through lies seems self-contradictory at best. Third, it can be traumatic enough for children as they mature to become cognizant of their parents’ own flaws and hypocrisies. To discover also that their good religious upbringing was merely a parental ploy could potentially destroy their world view and leave them abandoned to themselves. In her own eyes, however, Ms. Komisar believes that she is doing right.

Another Jewish religious leader remarkably adept at analyzing the human psyche and the sinful state of human affairs offered a more radical proposal when he asserted, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). This radical proposal sought not to make better parents or to achieve more well-adjusted children. Tinkering with human sin along moral or psychological or societal or religious lines always ends in failure, the death of every living man, woman, and child. Instead, this proposal sought to penetrate to the core of human sin and its fruits by assuming the sin of every man, woman, and child and in exchange granting every one of us moribund sinners true righteousness, new life, and the promise of eternal life, apart from the efforts of human religion.

The truth is that all human religions are sinful human constructs devised and designed to gain favour with the gods and to justify one’s own sin through one’s own efforts. In religion “everyone [does] what [is] right in his own eyes” collectively and then projects this collective self-righteousness onto some “god” or “gods.” Such was the case too in Jesus’ day. “It was Caiaphas [the high priest] who had advised the Jews that it would be expedient that one man should die for the people” (John 18:14). So, sinful humanity, Jew and Gentile together, brutally crucified the son of man who was not only perfectly one with his father but who gave himself not to adjust or to improve sinful humanity but to save it from itself.

Truth be told, the greatest gift that a parent can give a child is the gift that God the Father gives to all his lost children. That gift is his only begotten son who by virtue of his cross and resurrection justifies us sinners in the eyes of God and thereby frees us from the powers of sin and death. This liberation from sin and death is accomplished by faith alone in the word of Christ alone, because “if the Son should set you free (eleutheroo), you will truly be free (eleutheroi)” (John 8:36).

On 31 October 1517, as many of us know, Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses against indulgences. The reproduction and dissemination thereof started a firestorm of controversy which fractured the Roman Church into a myriad of splinter groups, most of them calling themselves Protestant. Many view this as a catastrophe for the church, at least those who think that manmade, legalistic, institutional, hierarchical understandings of the church actually have something to do with what the church is, and nowadays this includes many so-called Lutherans. Many of these so-called Lutherans are so ignorant of both Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism that they think nothing church-dividing is left to prevent a quick jaunt “home to Rome,” life back under the papacy, one big happy family.

Luther’s theses against indulgences were an attempt to address not only an abuse of church practice but also of church teaching. Indulgences supposedly helped those “less than holy” have their time reduced in a place or state called Purgatory. Well, of course, any Protestant in his or her right mind would never believe that such a place or state even exists. Protestants know that believers are “justified by grace alone through faith alone created by the word alone in Christ alone.”

Since Protestants do not believe in such purgatorial falderal, they wrongly assume that Roman Catholics no longer do either. So, it comes as quite a surprise for many Protestants to find what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches on the topic:

“III. THE FINAL PURIFICATION, OR PURGATORY

1030 All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.

1031 The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. The Church formulated her doctrine of faith on Purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence and Trent. The tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire (1 Cor 3:15; 1 Pet 1:7):

As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that, before the Final Judgment, there is a purifying fire. He who is truth says that whoever utters blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will be pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to come (cf. Mt 12:31). From this sentence we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come.

1032 This teaching is also based on the practice of prayer for the dead, already mentioned in Sacred Scripture: “Therefore [Judas Maccabeus] made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin” (2 Macc 12:46). From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God. The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead:

Let us help and commemorate them. If Job’s sons were purified by their father’s sacrifice, why would we doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some consolation? Let us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them.”*

Furthermore, the Roman Church teaches that those who do not believe in a place or state like purgatory are anathema which is nothing more than a fancy theological word for “toast,” very burnt toast.

Such teachings not only blaspheme God the Holy Spirit, but also God the Father and God the Son. Maintaining a place or a state where sin is purged (removed) from dead sinners by the religious efforts of living sinners means that Christ died on the cross for no reason, completely in vain. If the prayers, almsgiving, indulgences and works of penance of the living effect the salvation of the dead, then nothing salvific happened in the life, death, or resurrection of Jesus Christ. In short, thereby the cross of Christ becomes laughing stocks.

To Protestants, especially Lutherans, the whole notion of purgatory seems wholly unbelievable, According to the Roman Church, however, if one does not believe in purgatory, then it is, “GO DIRECTLY TO HELL. DO NOT PASS GOD. DO NOT COLLECT $200.”

So, why are so many so-called Protestants, and especially so-called Lutherans, who would never believe in purgatory falling all over themselves in their ecumenical efforts to go “home to Rome,” to be back under the papacy? Who knows. Whatever the case, however, it seems pretty certain, at least to everyone of these but themselves, that they must wittingly or unwittingly believe much more in the papacy and in his purgatory than they believe in the God, who revealed his saving will to forgive us hell-bound sinners through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

*http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a12.htm

St. Paul writes to the church in Rome:

“8 But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); 9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

Reading this, we all need to ask ourselves, “Is the word near to me or not?” If so, how would we determine that it is or whether it is not near? How do we know that the words which we receive contain or communicate the word of God, both the law of God and gospel of Jesus Christ, the latter alone which creates the faith by which we are justified?

Since the earliest days of the church, the word of God has been adulterated by sinful human beings. Even with the best of intentions, in the hope of evangelism and mission, the word becomes obscured. Not infrequently when quoting scripture, amazingly enough, the word, the gospel of Jesus Christ, often gets lost, a favourite trick of the devil. Scripture itself warns us of this, “3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (II Timothy 4:3-4). The ever present danger in the church is that the church seeks to attract people by appealing to “itchy ears” and by finding teachers to suit our own passions.

So, what do we sinners like to hear? Plainly enough, we like to hear that we are basically just fine, just as we are, or “Just as I am,” as the old hymn puts it. Whereas it is true that God comes to us “just as we are,” he does not want to leave us there. “Just as we are” does not mean that we are justified, i.e. made holy by faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone through the word alone. If we were “just fine” just as we are, then we would have no need of a saviour, and Jesus could have spared himself his death on the cross.

Arguably, the most insidious aspect of humanity’s sinful nature is our individual and collective self-righteousness. Everywhere we turn we encounter such self-righteousness. It is that which unites us and divides all of us as sinners. None of us likes to hear that we are fallible, feeble, frail, full of folly, or false. Of course, we know it deep on our hearts, but to hear it from others is often unbearable because thereby our self-delusions are ripped from us. We are exposed, left to stew in our shame. Secular society tries to attenuate or eliminate this by changing laws and morals to accommodate seemingly every sin known to humanity. The hope is that by making sinful deeds legal, one makes them right, and thus the committing of sins is not merely right but even righteous.

Scripture does not allow that, even when people use the its words to justify their thoughts, words, and deeds contrary to the will of God. The Bible contains account after account of people deviating from God’s word. Whether in ancient Israel or secular society, this Bible verse still hold true, “Everyone [does] what [is] right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6), and there is hell to pay if anyone tries to tell us differently.

Because the word of God comes to us as both law and gospel, the church and its mission literally face an almighty conundrum. We self-righteous sinners do not want to hear or acknowledge that we are sinners. Similarly, we self-righteous sinners believing that we are already alright, just, good, and righteous see no real need for God or his righteousness. Since sinful, self-righteous sinners perceive no need for what God has to offer, churches all too frequently seek to give sinners what sinners perceive that they need or want. So, churches descend into all manner of self-righteous activities believing that they are full of good people doing good things for the betterment of society. Sadly, from a superficial point of view, secular atheists are often better at bettering society than Christians.

Luther writes that “the true function and the chief and proper use of the Law is to reveal to man his sin, blindness, misery, wickedness, ignorance, hate and contempt of God, death, hell, judgment, and the well-deserved wrath of God” (LW 26:309). Well, what sinner in his or her self-righteous mind wants to hear that? If the church goes about preaching the law, surely it will drive people straight back out the front door, and who wants that? Church growth committees certainly do not! What is the church to do? How can it overcome this nightmarish public relations fiasco?

Luther continues, “This does not mean that it was the chief purpose of God in giving the Law only to cause death and damnation; … For the Law is a Word that shows life and drives us toward it. Therefore it was not given only for the sake of death. But this is its chief use and end: to reveal death, in order that the nature and enormity of sin might thus become apparent… When God saw that the most widespread pestilence in the whole world, that is, hypocrisy and confidence in one’s own saintliness, could not be restrained and crushed in any other way, He decided to kill it by means of the Law. This was not to be permanent; but it had as its purpose that when this pestilence was killed, man would be raised up again and would hear this voice beyond the Law” (LW 26:335). The law drives us though death beyond our self-righteousness to hear the voice of the gospel, the voice of Jesus Christ, who does not want to leave us where we are, just as we are. For that, God delivers the gospel to remove us from the grips of sin, death, and terminal self-righteousness.

“[T]he Gospel is a light that illumines hearts and makes them alive. It discloses what grace and the mercy of God are; what the forgiveness of sins, blessing, righteousness, life, and eternal salvation are; and how we are to attain to these. When we distinguish the Law from the Gospel this way, we attribute to each its proper use and function. You will not find anything about this distinction between the Law and the Gospel in the books of the monks, the canonists, and the recent and ancient theologians. Augustine taught and expressed it to some extent. Jerome and others like him knew nothing at all about it. In other words, for many centuries there has been a remarkable silence about this in all the schools and churches. This situation has produced a very dangerous condition for consciences; for unless the Gospel is clearly distinguished from the Law, Christian doctrine cannot be kept sound. But when this distinction is recognized, the true meaning of justification is recognized” (LW 26:313).

Lutherans are they only Christians who, in theory, should know how to distinguish the law from the gospel. In distinguishing the law from the gospel, the word of God as law and gospel becomes crystal clear and ever so near. The law cuts to the quick. It kills the self-righteous sinner. Then, the gospel proclaims the forgiveness of sins to ears dying to hear. The gospel raises us to newness of life. By faith alone it justifies the sinner who is freed from the tyrannical delusion of self-righteousness and liberated to live with God in God’s gift of holiness. Law and gospel, the cross and the resurrection, are God’s almighty conundrum to save sinners. So, what are the church and its mission to do? Be forgiven through Jesus Christ in thought, word, and deed!

Mother’s Day arrives in May, at least for mothers in the USA. Mothering Sunday in Britain is already spent, having arrived on the fourth Sunday in Lent.

If you are reading this little article, you were most likely born of a woman and have or have had a mother or mother figure. If you were not born of woman, you might still have a mother, although you may not be a human being. If you are not a human being, you may still continue reading. If you cannot read, ask your mother for help.

Most of us take being here, i.e. being alive, for granted, and so it is. We are all here because someone has given us the gift of life. We were conceived by the efforts of others. We were gestated in the body of a mother who with her own body gave us food and oxygen, protection and shelter. Likewise, with her own body she collected and removed the biological waste associated with our fetal development. Giving of life and removing what could become deathly toxic is a marvelous phenomenon to behold, regardless of the species.

Further, as children we often took or take the lives of our mothers for granted. It is a given. Mothers have seemingly always been there, unless they were not. Whereas all of us have been given birth by a mother, whether surgically assisted or not, not all of us have mothers, and not all of us have cordial relationships with our mothers. Some mothers die giving birth. Some mothers cannot care for their babies and put them up for adoption. Some mothers have their children removed. Some mothers are removed from their children. So many mother-child relationships can become strained and broken because so many events, dynamics, and other matters can interfere, interrupt, inhibit, and even terminate a mother-child relationship. Even if our mothers are not here, i.e. are no longer present for some reason, we are here because of them. No matter what, even if everything in the relationship has gone to hell, we have still been given the gift of life by a mother.

The mother-child relationship is part of the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Scripture relays to us that the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, entered into human flesh and human life the same way as we all do, through a mother. When Jesus was conceived in the Virgin Mary of the Holy Spirit, that conception was a gift. Mary received that gift, and then in her womb she gave the gestating Jesus food and oxygen, protection and shelter. Her body absorbed and carried biological waste away from her fetus so that her son would live to be born. When Jesus was born, he was given by God, his father, and by Mary, his mother, as a gift to the world. In his article “Christ was Born a Jew,” Martin Luther describes this relationship as follows,

“Thus the word, by which God promises that Christ will be the seed of Abraham, requires that Christ be born of a woman and be her natural child. He does not come from the earth like Adam [Gen. 2:7]; neither is he from Adam’s rib like Eve [Gen. 2:21–22]. He comes rather like any woman’s child, from her seed. The earth was not the natural seed for Adam’s body; neither was Adam’s rib the natural seed for Eve’s body. But the virgin’s flesh and blood, from which children come in the case of all other women, was the natural seed of Christ’s body. And she too was of the seed of Abraham” (LW 45:204)

The relationship between God the Father, and Mary, Jesus’ mother, also symbolically reflects our lives in Christ. Jesus is given to us by the Father and his mother, and we take Jesus for granted. The word of God is the womb of Christ in which we are conceived in the faith, gestated in the faith, reborn through baptism in the faith, raised to newness of life in the faith, and fed at the Lord’s Supper in the faith. As Mary carried Jesus, fed him, and protected him with her own body, so too Jesus carries us, feeds us, and protects us by his word having made us through baptism a part of his body. That body was given on the cross to take away the deathly toxicity of the sin of whole world, to save us from all our sin-filled relationships going or gone to hell.

For some, mother’s Day can be a time of delight and thanksgiving. For others, it can be another reminder of strain, conflict, heartache, damage, and loss. For most of us, it is probably a mixture of both in different ways at different times. Although Jesus was born of a woman, like the rest of us, he was not born into sinful flesh, like the rest of us. As John’s gospel portrays, the word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). Jesus was born of a woman in order to heal our relationship with God which we human beings through Adam broke by disregarding and disbelieving his word (Galatians 4:4-7). Jesus was given to us sinners so that we could hand him over to a death on the cross, for him to be raised by his Father, in order that he might give us sinners, declared righteous and holy by faith alone, to his Father. Mother’s Day is a given giving.

Regardless of the state or vitality of our relationships with our own mothers, on Mother’s Day we can thank God for those who have granted us life because God has given us his Son who gives us the gift of eternal life already in this life.

Luther lectured on the book of Galatians in 1531. Notes were taken of his lectures by various individuals, and these were used to publish a commentary on Galatians by Luther in 1535. The extensive notes taken by Georg Rörer were so good that his have been included in the Weimar Edition of Luther’s works along with the published commentary from 1535. Imagine not only hearing Luther lecture, but then having your notes published alongside his commentary. It must have been quite an honour.

Anyway, Rörer records Luther making some rather interesting comments about religion and religions. Here are two examples:

“There is no difference between a Jew, Papist, Turk. Of course, the rites are diverse, but it is the same heart and thoughts … because it is as follows: if I do thus, God will be merciful to me. It is the same passion of all men in their souls (hearts), [but] there is no middle way between the knowledge of Christ and human activity. Thereafter, it doesn’t matter, whether one is a Papist, Turk, Jew, one faith is as the other. For that reason, they are very much fools, because they fight each other on account of religion.” (WA 40, 1; 603-604,3).

“Every religion is idolatry, and whoever is more prayerful, more spiritual, … this is more pestilent that one averts one’s gaze (eye) from faith in Christ and what is his … Outside of Christ all the religions are idols.” (WA 40, 2: 110,6-111,1)

In short, Luther is saying that all religions are based on the law, i.e. following rules to gain God’s favour, as cited above, “If I do thus, God will be merciful to me.” Over against vain human efforts to gain God’s grace stands Jesus Christ and his gift of salvation given to all sinful human beings. This gift cannot be not earned or achieved. Instead, by God’s grace alone it is received by faith alone. That Jesus has won this gift for us sinners on the cross and in the resurrection and that Jesus has given this gift to us “for free” is unbelievably “good news.” In English, the theological word for good news” is “gospel.”

For Luther, the law and the gospel are diametrically opposed. As we all know through our own experience, our best efforts to fulfil the commandments in the Bible, i.e. the law, fail miserably. Furthermore, when we do manage to fulfil some of them, our sin calls us to bask in the glory of our achievements. In other words, our “good works” are inevitably undermined by the sins of pride and self-righteousness. Round and round and round we go … Maybe that is why St. Augustine defined sin as being turned in on ourselves (incuravatus in se).

That, however, is only the half of it. Luther goes on to declare that all religions outside of Christ are idols. Those are strong words, but the theology behind them is really quite simple. If one’s religion requires one to be busy trying to achieve salvation by winning God’s favour, and if the one true God has given sinners salvation as a gift through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, then the gods which demand fulfilment of the law are not truly God. Such gods reveal themselves to be what all false gods are, namely idols.
In our modern, ecumenical, and politically correct age, people who are “religious” frequently succumb to the notion that the different religions offer different ways to get to the one God. Luther claims the opposite. All religions lead to false gods, to idols. Consequently, all religions lead their adherents not only away from the one true God but through their various religious practices lead their adherents to a dead end. For Luther, religion is a diabolical road to nowhere.

For this reason, the season of Lent can mislead many into a false observance. In some denominations, the idea of “giving up something for Lent” would be deemed a “good work” which would merit favour with God. Typically, people “punish” themselves by giving up something which they enjoy, like chocolate or cake or some other similar, superhuman sacrifice. Much more rarely are those who try to give up something truly sinful, and depending on the sin, that could make telling others about one’s Lenten sacrifice a little bit tricky. So, is “religiously” attending midweek Lenten services an idolatrous “good work” or a burdensome act of contrition, which in the end is still an idolatrous good work?

For Lutherans, extra Lenten services offer something diametrically opposed to religion and its various idols. At midweek Lenten serves, we gather to hear God’s word in both law and gospel. That is to hear that we are sinners prey to idolatry of all kinds and descriptions and then to hear that through faith alone in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection we are truly forgiven of our sins by the one true God. Lenten services, like Sunday services, are not something which we do. Instead, they are opportunities in which God does something to us. He reminds us of our fallen nature, he calls us to acknowledge and confess such sins, and then he declares that we are forgiven, even righteous, as a gift, through faith alone. So, this Lenten season, have a few extra slices of chocolate cake and celebrate the gift of your forgiveness with others.

The Old Testament book of Proverbs is just that, a collection of sayings that speak a general truth or offer advice. When was the last time that you read any of the Proverbs? Whence do you get your advice in times of trouble or strife?

Traditionally, most of us seeking advice turn to family or friends. Further from home, there are always the “agony aunt” columns in the newspapers. Today, many “Google” questions hoping to be given useful answers or log on to social media or read blogs or the like to obtain advice from self-proclaimed experts. In comparison, randomly or systematically reading the Proverbs for tips on life seems more like sifting through the haystack in search of the proverbial needle, i.e. much of it seems not to apply to any given concern or issue.

That raises the question why we tend to want advice in times of trouble when we could seek out such advice in advance. Instead of flipping through the pages of the Bible in a crisis, what if we read the Bible regularly, i.e. in advance of life’s dilemmas and concerns? Rather than searching the haystack for the proverbial needle, what if we knew the haystack so well that finding the needle was not a concern in addressing our concerns because the needle was never lost?

Part of the problem with life’s problems is that they seem to introduce hindrances, obstacles, and even dead ends into the course of life. Imagine watching an old film, and instead of it ending with the words “The End” shining on the screen, somewhere in the middle of a scene in the middle of the film the screen suddenly goes black, and then the words “Dead End” appear. That may seem a terribly contrived example because as we know in real life the film will not usually end without a warning, such as problems with the projector bulb or the film jumping out of sync or the like. The really upsetting aspect in this hypothetical crisis would be accidently knocking the popcorn all over the floor, most of which could not be consumed within the five second rule.

More pertinent examples of hindrances, obstacles, and mayhem from real life, however, might include waking up from the anesthesia and realizing that the sermon is not yet over, having a flat tire on the way to work, having the seam in one’s trousers split in the middle of a job interview, getting lost in a strange town, receiving a call from the police about one of your children, discovering that your spouse is having an affair, or being told by the doctor that the condition is terminal.

Hindrances, obstacles, and dead ends place a question mark over what we expect, or expected, to be the future. Our sense of hope in life is inextricably tied to our prospects for a future which we generally take for granted. When our future becomes uncertain or nonexistent, despair can easily overtake us, compounding what may already be a dire situation. Despair itself feels like a dead end. In such times, we may find ourselves looking longingly at those around us whose fortunes seem certain. Meanwhile, in contrast, we may not have the time, energy, desire, or hope to look for the needle in our haystack set alight by the trials of life.

In such times of crisis, it may seem nothing short of futile to search the Bible and, if lucky, be to find, “Let not your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day. Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off” (Proverbs 23:17-18 – ESV). With such a proverb, we are already carrying with us the proverbial needle everyday and hopefully doing so completely unconcerned that the whole haystack could go up in flames. Furthermore, with such a needle to hand, we are much more ready to be able to stitch our lives back together in times of crisis.

Amidst all the hindrances, obstacles, mayhem, and dead ends in life, we Christians always have something which non-believers do not have, namely a future. That future is the promise in this life of the gift of eternal life given to each one of us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We hear that promise proclaimed to us. We become part of that promise in baptism. We taste that promise at the Lord’s table. Listen to St. Paul describe the reality of this promise, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-29 – ESV). Jesus Christ, our crucified Lord, is our future, is our hope, and is our life in all the shadows of death because God the Father raised him from the dead. When life’s problems arise, remember that in baptism you have been raised with Christ, and “surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off.”

Scripture says, “And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true’” (Revelation 21:5 – ESV). Wouldn’t that be nice? We read passages like this, particularly when our old, sinful world seems to be a bit depressive, if not oppressive, especially when facing tragedy or death. Would it not be grand if everything were new, fresh, and pristine? Think of a world without distress, disease, hunger, pollution or the like. Imagine what kind of a song John Lennon might compose on that notion. Why do people of all times, nations, and religions seem to share this same dream of all things being new?

Plainly, we all learn very early in life that there is something wrong not just with our planet but particularly with us human beings. On the lighter side of things, children or siblings are heard very often to complain, “It’s not fair!” to which the reply is often, “Life’s not fair.” So, why is life not fair? On the more heinous side, some children are abused and killed before they have the words to utter, “It’s not fair,” because someone no longer wanted to hear them cry. “Luckily” for many or most of us, we are oblivious to the suffering that so many in our world endure until they cannot endure any longer. In relation to the massive plight of so many at any given time in human history, complaining that “it’s not fair” seems trite, if not self-absorbed at best.

In light of, or in the shadow of, our sinful human reality, the juxtaposition of “I am making all things new” and “these words are trustworthy and true” seems to underscore our human experience that nothing is new or true and thus that neither statement is much more than “pie in the sky.” Such is the criticism of those who discount the Bible and the Christian faith. This disregard, if not disdain, seems to arise from the discrepancy between these words and our reality. Such critics, however, fail to understand our human reality. Although they seem to recognize the symptoms of humanity’s plight, they fail to grasp that humanity’s primary predicament is not merely symptom but sin, something over which critics of the faith have no power either to address or remedy. It would be interesting to research whether and why critics of scripture and the Christian faith make “New Year’s resolutions,” and if so, whether they are any better than the rest of the world at keeping them? Even if they are better, are they able to keep all of them all the time? Even the idealists fall into the reality and hypocrisy of human sin, whether or not they can or will acknowledge it.

As most of humanity cannot grasp the reality of human sin, they are not only unable to address it but even more unable to grasp or believe that God has done exactly that. Viewed more broadly, the modern day rejection of Christians and their faith is nothing more that the continuing rejection of Jesus Christ. By disregarding and disdaining the Son of God, sinful human beings triumphantly declared that they had solved a problem, but in reality they only demonstrated again that they had failed to understand the problem or even its symptoms. More poignantly, they failed to understand that the crucifixion of Jesus is God’s solution to human sin. How so?

As indicated above, when human beings think of making “all things new,” we imagine everything to be new, fresh, and pristine. For that to happen, though, everything existing would been to be destroyed in order to give way to the new. Instead of destroying all, or nearly all like in the flood in Noah’s time, God instead sent his Son, the word made flesh, into our human sinful existence to call us out of the darkness and destructiveness of sin and death. Taking on human flesh, God let darkness and death overshadow the light of his word in Jesus on the cross. Three days later, God called for the darkness of sin and death to be obliterated by the light of the word of Jesus’ resurrection. The juxtaposition of the cross and the resurrection comprise and compose the words which are trustworthy and true. The proclamation of these words makes everything new because it creates in sinners dead to God a living faith in the living God. That is not something which the human mind can grasp. Instead, with these words God grasps the human heart and holds it fast in his love and forgiveness forever. The faith created by this word in us sinners is not merely to mimic a resolution for a new year, but rather this faith is a whole and holy new way of being every minute of every day until time passes away.

In the church, one hears a lot about the topic of love, and with good reason. In the Old Testament, one reads, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy, 6:4-5). This verse is repeated with slight variations by Matthew (22:37), Mark (12:30), and Luke (10:27). In John’s gospel, Jesus gives his disciples a “new commandment” that they love one another not just as they love themselves but as Jesus loved them (13:34). In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul famously says, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love”( I Corinthians 13:13). In that light, it would seem that love is the be all and end all, or is it?

In his lectures on Galatians in 1535, Martin Luther rather surprisingly writes,

“Thus there are many others today who want to be counted as evangelical [i.e. Protestant] theologians and who, so far as their words are concerned, do teach that men are delivered from their sins by the death of Christ. Meanwhile, however, they insult Christ most grievously by distorting and overthrowing His Word in a villainous and wicked manner. In addition, they teach faith in a way that attributes more to love than to faith; for they imagine that God regards and accepts us on account of the love with which we love God and our neighbor after we have already been reconciled. If this is true, then we have no need whatever of Christ. In this way they serve, not the true God but an idol of their own heart—an idol which they have made up for themselves. For the true God does not regard or accept us on account of our love, virtue, or newness of life (Rom. 6:4); He does so on account of Christ. But they raise the objection: “Yet He commands that we love Him with all our heart.” All right, but it does not follow: “God has commanded; therefore we do so.” If we loved God with all our heart, etc., then, of course, we would be justified and would live on account of that obedience, according to the statement (Lev. 18:5): “By doing this a man shall live.” But the Gospel says: “You are not doing this; therefore you shall not live on account of it.” For the statement, “You shall love the Lord,” requires perfect obedience, perfect fear, trust, and love toward God. In the corruption of their nature men neither do nor can produce this. Therefore the Law, “You shall love the Lord,” does not justify but accuses and damns all men, in accordance with the statement (Rom. 4:15): “The Law brings wrath.” But “Christ is the end of the Law, that everyone who has faith may be justified” (Rom. 10:4)” (LW 26:398).

You may need to read that through a second time. After being reconciled to God it is “villainous and wicked” to teach that our love for God makes us acceptable to God. In fact, to teach and to do so serves “not the true God but an idol of [one’s] own heart,” an idol made up by oneself for oneself. But, but, but … On second thought, who does Luther think that he is to contradict the Bible?

All appearances aside, Luther does not contradict Scripture. He merely does what few before and few after him seem insightful enough to do on a regular basis. He views Scripture as the word of God given in both law and gospel. The law tells sinful human beings what they must do to avoid sin and tells that they have sinned after the fact. In the end, the law convicts and condemns guilty sinners before God, declaring them unredeemably unrighteous. As Romans, 3:23 says, “… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, …” The gospel, however, promises the forgiveness of sins by faith alone in the crucified and resurrected Christ, the son of God. The proclamation of that promise creates faith in the hearers. That faith is the restoration of the broken relationship with God, which brings this discussion to the nature of relationships.

Love, as either an emotion or an action, is not the basis for or foundation of a relationship. It may be the driving force and manifest expression thereof, but love is only the materials and energy, so to speak, to build the bridge. The bridge itself is trust or faith. It is possible to love someone deeply, but not trust him or her. Without trust, a relationship is at best impaired. The bridge is weak and wobbly, unable to hold or support those wishing to traverse it. Although it is true that “God is love” (I John 4:8), when Adam and Eve stopped trusting God and his word as much as they trusted the serpent, their relationship with God was not only impaired. It was broken. Theologians call this condition “Sin” followed by ungodly deeds called “sins.”

In contrast to Luther’s day, it is increasingly the case today that “evangelical [i.e. Protestant] theologians” cite “love” as the reason to excuse or to justify or even to celebrate just about any or every human sin imaginable, despite being contrary to God’s will as clearly given in the Bible. If “love” is the reason, some argue, then whatever sinners do must be not only acceptable but right, right? What, however, do sinners love to do more than sin? In the end, the vague, carnal notion of “love” propounded by sinners is just another idol of the human heart, better known as lust in all its expressions.

So, commanding sinners in a broken relationship with God to love God with their whole being, or commanding them to love one another as Jesus loved them simply does not make it happen. It expresses wishful thinking and wastes breath. In reality, such commands only show how much we sinners love neither God nor one another either as we love ourselves or as Jesus loves us.

“When God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, …” (John 3:16), he entrusted the love of his life (and the life of his love) into the hands of sinners unable and unwilling to love him in return. It was, thus, a gift of love unto certain death. At his incarnation, Jesus stepped into the breach, and that he was broken on the cross, to be laid in a tomb forever.

Nonetheless, God the Father’s faithfulness to God the Son remained whole and thus holy. By entering into the depths of death in humanity’s broken relationship with God, Jesus filled the void with an eternal life-giving power and promise able to create anew the light of life in the darkness of sinful human hearts. The word of this promise creates the faith needed to heal humanity’s broken relationship with God. Believing (trusting) that we sinners are accepted and forgiven by God for Christ’s sake becomes our new relationship with God because God so loved the world, and “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).