The Lutheran Review

New Year's Eve

St. Sylvester’s Day

When I was Assist. Pastor at St. Martin’s in Winona MN. from 1967-1970, the New Year’s Eve service was named for St. Sylvester.  Who was St. Sylvester, I wondered.  I went to school with a guy named Sylvester.  I was familiar with Sylvester the cat of cartoon fame.  Of course the internet wasn’t even on the horizon.  However, even with the internet there are more legends than facts about Sylvester who became a saint.

In 313 Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan granting Christians the same rights as those practicing any other religion.  This occurred only a few years after the severe persecutions of Diocletian and Galerius that lasted from 306-311.

Sylvester became pope in 314.  His pontificate lasted until his death on December 31, 335.

What we do know is that he used the freedom granted by Constantine to build several churches in Rome.  In 325, he sent two legates to the Church council in Nicaea, which was called to deal with the Arian controversy.  An over simplified view is that Arius taught that Jesus was the son of God, but not the Son of God.  (Perhaps it was out of the condemnation of Arius, that Dan Brown created the fiction in his book the Divinci Code, which it was at the Council of Nicaea that Christ was first called the Son of God and this at the insistence of Constantine.  There was plenty of politics at the council without creating something out of whole cloth.  But I digress).

Out of the Council of Nicaea we now have the Nicene Creed which emphasizes that Jesus is then Son of God.   However, according to Butler’s Lives of the Saints, there is no record of Sylvester formally confirming the signature of his legates to the acts of the council.

In my high school church history textbook there is a print of a painting by Raphael (d. 1520) of Pope Sylvester baptizing Constantine in the Vatican.  Sylvester did build the first church on the site we call the Vatican.  However, Constantine was not baptized until he was on his deathbed in 337.  Sylvester died in 335.  Furthermore, Constantine removed the capital from Rome and rebuilt the city of Byzantium renaming it, Constantinople, making it the capital of the Roman Empire.  Added to the legend that Sylvester baptized Constantine is the story that he was cured of leprosy.

Even after 399 words I still don’t know why we honored Sylvester on New Year’s Eve.

The Collect for the Day

Eternal God, we commit to Your mercy and forgiveness the year now ending and commend to Your blessing and love the times yet to come.  In the New Year, abide among us with Your Holy Spirit that we may always trust in the saving name of our Lord Jesus Christ, one God, now and forever.

 

          

 

Companions of Christ IV

David

The LSB lists David as a person to be remembered today.  I have been writing in the last few days about Companions of Christ.  David could well be listed in that group. 

The shepherds in the fields were selected to be a two person (so Luther) audience for the “Christmas concert” performed by the chorus of the myriads and myriads of angels the night of Jesus birth.  They must have been stunned and awed by what they saw and heard.  However, the most important reaction was that they responded by going to Bethlehem to see this thing of which they had been told.  The shepherds then went back to their tasks of “watching over their flocks by night.”  We never hear of them again.

David too was a shepherd in the field when, through the prophet Samuel, the Lord selected him for the blessing and privilege of being God’s princely ruler of His own people Israel.   His beginning was small.  He was the eighth son of Jesse, not even invited in from the field on draft day, when Samuel came to make his pick to be king of Israel.  In fact, it turned out David wasn’t chosen until the eighth round.

David turned out to be a great choice.  Everything about him was great.  He was a great musician, singer and poet.  In battle he slew the great giant Goliath with a fist sized rock and sling and finished him off with Goliath’s own oversized sword.  David was also a great sinner stealing Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, because he liked was he saw and, after all, because he was king and he could.   The sin was compounded when he engineered Uriah’s death in battle, the plan carried out by David’s right hand man, General Joab.

However, David also experienced God’s great mercy and grace.  Despite his weakness he was chosen to be the ancestor of Jesus Christ, who himself would die as the result of a plot by those in power.  But his death would be for the redemption of all from slavery to sin and salvation from the ultimate plot, by Satan, to use our sin to drag the human race in to permanent death and separation from God.

Jesus is the son of David, who did slay the lion and the bear nor the giant goliath, but slew sin, death and hell that we might live in his kingdom forever and ever.  He is the good shepherd who lays down his life for you and me, the sheep of his pasture.

 

Companions of Christ III

Holy Innocents

Rachel, the beloved wife of Jacob, died in childbirth and was buried just north of Jerusalem.  When the people of Israel, during the time of the prophet Jeremiah, were taken into captivity in Babylon (587 BC), the prophet wrote of Rachel weeping in her grave as her descendants were carried off.

Matthew quotes Jeremiah as he seeks to portray the suffering caused by Herod’s slaughter of the infant boys in Bethlehem.

“A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”

In the fifth century after the birth of Christ, Prudentius wrote the following.

The tyrant broods uneasily:

A prince is born who shall be king

And rule the house of Israel

And occupy great David’s throne.

Witless, he raves, “We are dep.osed:

He that shall oust us is at hand.

Go, guard, and draw your skillful sword,

And foul his little next with blood.”

So fell those flowers of martyrdom

When life was at its dawn for them:

To pluck Christ up he dashed them down,

as wild winds dash the new-born roses.

Are these the first blood-offerings

To come before the Christ-a band

Of babies playing on the altar steps

With palms and coronets?

What use this rash enormity?

What profit in this wasteful wrong?

So many deaths, and Christ alone

Escapes from Herod’s questing hand.

 

Companions of Christ II

John, Apostle and Evangelist

The remembrance of John goes back to the fourth century in the Eastern Church.  Originally, it was connected to the commemoration of his brother, James the Greater.  John one of Zebedee’s sons was a fisherman and one of the twelve disciples.  He along with his brother James, and Peter and Andrew were fisherman until Jesus called them away from their nets to  cast the net of the Gospel.

John, together with his brother and Peter were the three who witnessed the light of Jesus’ Transfiguration.  At another time, when Jesus and the disciples were turned away from a Samaritan village, the brothers suggested that, with Jesus approval, they would call down a bit of fire and brimstone upon the village, just to let them know who they were dealing with.  Jesus response showed that His reign was not about power but service to others.  John is credited with writing the fourth gospel, as well the three letters near the back of the New Testament.  The Lord also granted him a vision that he wrote down in the book of Revelation.

John’s version of the Christmas story does not described Jesus birth, but speaks of the Word becoming flesh and living among us.  The Word made flesh is the light of God that shines in the darkness.  John writes of God’s love for the world that led him to give His only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish.  Later, he records Jesus words in the upper room in which He commands the disciples that they should love one another as He has loved them.

John is a fitting companion for Christ in the days after we celebrate Jesus birth.  Stephen demonstrated charity to those in need and in his death he emulated His Lord.  John was the Beloved disciples who emphasized the love of Christ for the world.  Whereas Stephen was the first Christian martyr; John was the only disciple to die a natural death.  According to tradition he was banished to the island of Patmos by the Roman emperor Domitian.  He died at Ephesus around 100 A.D.  Thus, there were Christians who either knew John or knew those who had been his students well into the second century.

Prayer of the Day

Merciful Lord, cast the bright beans of Your light upon Your Church that we, being instructed in the doctrine of Your blessed apostle and evangelist John, may come to the light of everlasting life; for You live reign with the Father and the holy spirit, one God, now and forever.

 

Companions of Christ

Since the most ancient times, the Church has connected a series of days honoring saints during the Christmastide.  In the middle Ages, a churchman named Durandus called the days accompanying Christ, comites Christi, the “companions of Christ.” These companions are Stephen the first martyr on December 26, John the Apostle and Evangelist on December 27 and the children whom Herod slew in Bethlehem who are remembed on December 28.  Others, that could be added to the list are Thomas a Beckett, archbishop of Canterbury, (December 29) who was martyred in 1170, and Sylvester (December 31), who was pope immediately following Constantine’s legalization of Christianity in 313.  In the coming days I will write about each of these “companions of Christ.”

Step.hen, “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit” was among seven deacons chosen by the disciples to oversee the distribution of food and goods to the Christian widows in the church at Jerusalem.  Stephen also began proclaiming the resurrection of Christ.  When members of a synagogue began to dispute with him, he defended the faith.  He was brought before the high priest where he recounted how God had a saved Israel under Moses and had brought them to the Promised Land.  But the people mistreated the prophets who God sent to call them back to faithfulness.  They had consistently broken the law.  Now they had killed Jesus, the righteous One, whom God had sent.  His opponents became infuriated and threw him out of the city and stoned him to death.  Emulating Christ in his death, he spoke his last words, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.  Do hold this sin against them.”  Then he fell asleep in death in the sure and certain of the resurrection.

The Christmas carol, “Good King Wenceslas,“ takes place on the feast of St. Stephen.  The king sees a peasant gathering wood near the forest and sends his page to invite the peasant to a feast.  The song with its theme of charity to the poor remembers Stephen, who cared for the widows and those in need.

Prayer of the Day

Heavenly father, in the midst of our sufferings for the sake of Christ grant us grace to follow the example of the first martyr, Stephen, that we also may look to the One who suffered and was crucified on our behalf and pray for those who do us wrong; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy spirit, one God, now and forever.

 

 

Bonheoffer's 1943 Christmas Letter

Christmas Day, 2009

On this Christmas Day much of the nation is “suffering” through blizzard, rain and sleet.  We only received a dusting of snow in St. Louis after about 3 inches of rain.  Today, the winds have shifted to the northwest driving the damp cold air through to the bone.  Since for many of us the romantic ideal of Christmas fell far short this year, we might feel sorry for ourselves.  We might be down not just because of the weather, but for reason of the events that have occured in our life since Christmas last.

If such is your situation, then Pastor Dietrich Bonheoffer’s   letter to his parents on December 17, 1943, might help put things into perspective.  He writes from prison in Germany

“For a Christian there is nothing peculiarly difficult about Christmas in a prison cell.  I daresay it will have more meaning and will be observed with greater sincerity here in this prison than in places where all that survives of the feast is its name.  That misery, suffering, poverty, loneliness, helplessness, and guilt look very different to the eyes of God from what they do to man, that God should come down to the very place which men usually abhor, that Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for them in the inn-these are things which a prisoner can understand better than anyone else.  For the prisoner the Christmas story is glad tidings in a very real sense.  And that faith gives the prisoner a part in the communion of saints, a fellowship transcending bounds of time and space and reducing the months of confinement here to insignificance.  On Christmas Eve I shall be thinking of you all very much, and I want you to believe that I tool shall have a few hours of real joy and that I am not allowing my troubles to get the better of me…

It will certainly be a quiet Christmas for everybody, and the children will look back on it for long afterwards.  But for the first time, perhaps, many will learn the true meaning of Christmas.”

Even prison cells, whatever form they might take, stand no chance against the change that came upon humanity through Christ.  A writing from the sixth century shares such a view.

“A marvelous change was wrought in our nature at it s restoration.  This truth flashed on the world when from the old stock the new humanity was born, from mortality came immortality, from human nature the remedy was drawn for human nature’s healing, from a race of sinners sprang a child who was innocent of sin.  When your Word took to himself this frail nature of ours, it was honored with the gift of eternity and we ourselves, sharing its wonderful destiny, were made eternal also."

    

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve

The cows were fed, milked and bedded down on mattresses of straw.  We five, Mom and Dad, Laurin, Wayne and me huddled bundled into the bronze-wood-sided-plastic-seat covered 1950 Ford station wagon.  No matter how long Dad warmed up the car it was never warm for the three mile drive to church.  Christ Lutheran Church, white and clapboard sided, stood sentinel in the snow near the intersection of T and G.

Though my mother was organist and children’s program director, we were often near the last to arrive, which had caused a less than Christmassy atmosphere as we had waited in the car for Dad to change from barn to church clothes.  Among the cars waiting in the churchyard for their owners to appear, was Martin Vogt’s auto which always had a little motor running under the hood designed, so I was told, to keep the engine block warm.  Without tarrying over man’s ingenuity or of God’s design of the starry sky, we crunched our way into His house.

There was gathered Christ Lutheran Church, not white clapboard sided, but clad in multilayered coats, shirts, long underwear and overshoes, five buckled or zippered.  Their names cling fuzzily to the memory, Catlin, Falb, Helbig, Pett, Richter, Byrd, Hansen, Jansen, Soldner, Strenke, Becker, Doster, Danniger, Glaubitz and Dague. 

We children had survived the boot camp Christmas practices that had made up our Saturday mornings since the week after Thanksgiving.  Now the question was would we call out the good news of the Christ’s birth we were to have memorized from the mimeographed slips of paper on which our “pieces” were printed? Would we sing “Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming”?

We did.  I believe we did, speak our piece of the Gospel proclaiming all the way to the back of eight pewed deep sanctuary that, “This day in the city of David, a Savior is born, Christ the Lord.”  We sang, with opened mouthed praise, that a Rose of Jesse’s lineage did, indeed, bloom from tender stem sprung, even while the deepening ice on Pipe Lake boomed its own carol into the silent night.

When we, seated in pews set right angles to the families of Christ Lutheran, had completed our task of leading His people in worshipping the babe sleeping away in the manger, then came the time for the Christmas bags.  I hoped each year for the large red apple and an orange without seeds, and if it were topped off with a popcorn ball, then heaven had come to earth in more than “Christ, our God Most high.”

Then, out into the crunching snow and frigid cars to go home where presents, under the tree cut from the Christmas tree swamp waited their opening.  However, Christmas had only begun. We would feast the next day and the on second Christmas Day, too.

However, we remember the festival now or those in the past; we do well to heed the invitation of the angel in Luther’s Christmas hymn,

Come here my friends; lift up your eyes,

And see what in the manger lies.

Who is this child, so young and fair?

It is the Christ child lying there.

 

 

 

    

 

Say and Sing

 

 

I was walking in the Crestwood mall yesterday when I heard the notes from a stringed instrument flowing over the incessant “Christmas muzak” that accompanies shoppersand walkers.

I followed the strains of the stringed instrument to a young man seated in the middle of the mall walkway playing a viola.  He didn’t have a container out to collect money.  He played purely for our joy.  As I continued my walk, I thought, “Voila a viola.”  Well, that anagram led me to thinking about music and Martin Luther’s love of music.

In his most well known Christmas hymn, the angels declares that it will both say and sing the news of Jesus’ birth.  

From heaven above to earth I come

To bear good news to ev’ry home;

Glad tidings of great joy I bring,

Where-of I now will say and sing:

For Luther, the presentation of the Gospel via music was on a par with the preaching from pulpits.  He said, “God has preached the gospel through music.”  In commenting on psalm 118, he wrote, “They {the righteous} praise only god’s grace, works, words, and power as they are revealed to them in Christ.  This is their sermon and song, their hymn of praise.

Thus in the response to the angel’s sermon in the hymn, we earthlings who have received our Lord from heaven respond with our own sermon of praise.

My heart for very joy must leap;

My lips no more can silence keep.

I, too, must sing with joyful tongue

That sweetest ancient cradlesong:

Glory to God in highest heav’n ,

Who unto us His Son has giv’n!

While angels sing with pious mirth

A glad new year to all the earth.

The Great “O” for today:

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver, the anointed of the nations and their Savior: Come and save us, Lord our God.

St. Thomas, Apostle

The Introit for the Day of St. Thomas begins, “I trust in you, O Lord; I say, “You are my God” (Ps. 89:1).  However, before Thomas, ‘the Twin,” confess along with the Psalmist, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28), He had some growing to do in matters of trusting God.  On evening of Jesus resurrection, when Thomas rejoined the disciples he was late for the party.  “We have seen the Lord,” the disciples told him.  Thomas would have none of such nonsense.  He could have been a native of Missouri, “The show me state.”    He wasn’t about to believe unless he saw and touched Jesus’ nail scarred hands and sword pierced side. (John 20:24-29)

He had to wait for another week.  Now let’s be clear, the other disciples weren’t exactly emboldened by Jesus first appearance.  They still had the door locked.  The locked door may have kept their enemies out, but Jesus had already busted through death and the tomb.  So a door, made of the wood He created in the beginning, was no match.  Suddenly there he was standing among them, repeating his, “Peace be with you.”  Then he turned his attention to Thomas inviting him to see and touch.  Most of all, he was to leave disbelief and enter into belief.  Then Thomas confesses, “My Lord and my God.”

Jesus next turns his attention to you and me, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

We are only days from Christmas.  There is always much in the news about making sure that everyone has gifts so they can have Christmas.  If weather prevents someone getting home for Christmas, then their Christmas will be ruined or nonexistent.  Well, I wouldn’t want to spend Christmas in an airport.  However, Christmas is about celebrating the coming of Jesus, whom we have not seen.  Our blessing comes in believing the unseen Christ.  He is the God to whom the Psalmist declared, “I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’”

Prayer of the Day

Almighty and everlasting God, You strengthened Your apostle Thomas with firm and certain faith in the resurrection of Your Son.  Grant that such faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God, that we may never be found wanting in Your sight, through the same Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

After Pentecost, Thomas traveled east, eventually reaching India.  There is still a group of Christians there who call themselves, “Christians of St. Thomas.”  According to tradition he was martyred by being speared to death.    

"My Lord Katie"

Katharina von Bora Luther, 1499-1552

I’m a day late in remembering Martin Luther’s wife, Katharina, “Katie.” Born to an impoverished nobleman, she was five when her mother died and she was sent to a convent.  In 1515 she took vows as a nun, but 1523, she along with seven other nuns were rescued from the convent and taken to Wittenberg.  Some were returned to their families, while others were placed in good homes.  Katharina and Martin were married on June 13, 1525.  They were blessed with six children.  Katharina needed to be a skilled manager of the household, for the home was often filled with people enjoying Luther’s hospitality.  Luther also gave away household items as gifts.

She was so influential that Luther took to calling her, “my Lord Katie.”

The Treasury of Daily Prayer includes quotes from Luther regarding his wife.

In a letter to Katharina, Luther writes in part,

“Most holy Ms. Doctor, We thank you very kindly for your great concern that kept you awake.  For from the day you (started) worrying about us, a fire right outside of our quarters’ door was eager to consume us.”  He goes on to write of a stone that almost fell of his head from a weakness in the ceiling of the chamber in which he was staying.   “I am concerned that if you do not stop worrying, the earth might swallow us up at the end and all the elements pursuing us…As it says in Psalm 55 and other places, ‘Cast your  burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you.’”

He also wrote, “The Letter to the Galatians is my beloved epistle; I trust it.  It is my Kate von Bora…

In his Table Talks he is quoted, “To have grace and peace in marriage is a gift second only to the knowledge of the Gospel….Kate; you have a god-fearing man who loves you.  You are an empress, realize and thank God for it.”

 She continued to in Wittenberg after Luther’s death in 1546, though her state was one of impoverishment much of the time.  In 1552, while traveling with her children to escape the plague, she died as the result of an accident.

The Great “O” Antiphon for the day is,

“O Dayspring, splendor of light everlasting; come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.”