“You shall not steal.”

What does this mean?

“We should fear and love God, and so we should not rob our neighbor of his money or property, nor bring them into our possession by dishonest trade or by dealing in shoddy wares, but help him to improve and protect his income and property”

(Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, Tappert edition).

One of my favorite older dark comedies (1978), “The End,” stars Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise. Reynolds’ character has just learned he has a terminal illness. Leaving the doctor’s office, he stops at a Catholic Church to make his first confession in 35 years. A very baby-faced Robby Benson, “Fr. Dave,” is the only available confessor; he insists on being called “Dave.” The confession begins: “Bless me, Dave, for I have sinned…I think I would rather call you ‘Father.’” He continues, “I sell real estate for a living.” Fr. Dave asks, “It’s a sin to sell real estate?” Reynolds’ character responds: “It is the way I do it.”

Writing almost 500 years ago, Luther gets at this in the Large Catechism where he writes, “…a person steals not only when he robs a man’s strongbox or his pocket, but also when he takes advantage of his neighbor at the market, in a grocery shop, butcher stall, wine-and-beer-cellar, work-shop, and, in short, wherever business is transacted and money is exchanged for goods or labor” (Tappert 395:224). He adds: “The same must be said of artisans, workmen, and day-laborers who act high-handedly and never know enough ways to overcharge people and yet are careless and unreliable in their work” (395:226). With just a slight change in vocabulary, these words still apply today.

One wonders what Luther would have to say about thieves on Wall Street or those that purposely bankrupt a company to deprive retirees of their earned pensions and benefits. Luther warns: “A person who willfully disregards this commandment may indeed get by and escape the hangman, but he will not escape God’s wrath and punishment” (397:234). Luther reminds us that the Christian story does include theHighest Courtfrom which there is no appeal.

How does one positively strive to do God’s good and gracious will in this regard? Luther explains: “…help him [your earthly neighbor] to improve and protect his income and property.” One thinks of helping to build a Habitat for Humanity house or doing home repairs for the elderly poor as accessible mission projects for Christians of a wide variety of ages. Those involved in disaster relief or retirees helping to build a church are two more significant examples. Because, as Harry Wendt of Crossways Bible Study says, money is stored labor, Christians can always contribute to Lutheran World Relief (lwr.org) or others on the front lines as a way of being there without doing the work.

Christians involved in teaching English as a second language here in the USor tutoring those that cannot read can also be part of helping the neighbor improve and protect his income. If you can help someone become literate or assist them as they prepare to earn a GED, then you have captured the spirit of the 7^th commandment. The grandparent or godparent or teacher that urges someone to develop and hone their skills and talents is likewise doing the Father’s good and gracious will.

It is more challenging, at times, to be a supervisor or boss who has the painful task of firing someone or reassigning them to a different position. You also are doing God’s work as you hold someone accountable for poor performance and help them to find or point them towards work that they could more likely embrace with enthusiasm and diligence. We do no one any favor, indeed it is irresponsible, when we allow them to continue to “steal” from others by not performing their job adequately. Because we are all frightened by the thought of losing income, we sometimes have to try to reason with someone who is anxious and unable to accurately assess her or his own performance.

Pain is a great teacher. Indeed our best lessons are learned through pain. Many an unhappy, underperforming worker has, in time, been able to say that the loss of a job they hated turned out to be the best thing that ever happened. Sometimes the worker chooses retraining for new work or uses the same skills but in a new environment, and that person actually thrives in a new setting. There is, after all, a word for someone who takes money to do things that violate both body and soul, and no one really wants to see him- or herself in that way.

Pain is also a great teacher for those that hire, fire, and reassign. Most pastors do not have adequate training before they become heads of staff. Sadly, pastors learn from their mistakes, and those mistakes are always painful for the employee, the pastor, and the congregation. Invariably, when a church employee is fired, hurt extends outwards into many relationships in the congregation in a way that would never happen in most workplace settings. It becomes emotional gasoline that feeds fires that are slow to put out and leave long-term damage. Pain is a great teacher, and pastors become better but not infallible bosses. Most pastors in larger churches would gladly have an administrator to serve as a buffer precisely because they have lived either with keeping an employee too long or have been vilified for letting go someone who was not a good fit in that parish.

Theft is, then, much more than the wrongful acquisition of some thing that is not one’s own. It is lying to God and neighbor about the basic stuff of day-to-day living. Mostly the thief steals from him- or herself by pretending to have a right where one has no right. As the Lord Jesus explained in John 10:10, the thief (Satan) comes to steal, kill, and destroy. So, then, the source of all theft is the one who tempts and seeks to deliver us into evil.

The gifts of Scripture and scriptural prayer are essential resources for keeping the 7^th commandment. Christians live under God’s command and judgment as we manage God’s things and God’s people in this life, and we need God’s Word and prayer to help us to be wiser stewards. As with all the commandments, the 7^th convicts us of sin and drives us to the cross of Christ for repentance and forgiveness. We live in God’s presence. He has given us our lives and all that entails as the witness stand where we respond to God’s providence and grace. We have been created to serve the neighbor as God wills!

 You shall not commit adultery.

 What does this mean?

 We should fear and love God and so we should lead a chaste and pure life in word and deed, each one living and honoring his wife or her husband. (Tappert edition)

[Many thanks to the Rev. Dr. Nathan Yoder for his helpful presentation: "The Orders of Creation in Lutheran Theological Discourse." The forthcoming publication of Dr. Yoder's dissertation will be a gift to thoughtful Christians.]

 At the heart of the sixth commandment is God’s good and gracious will for men and women. The marriage of one man and one woman is the fundamental human institution for which people were created and from which new people are intended to originate. Sex is, first and foremost, something very different from gender (a linguistic construct that, in our day, implies that we create ourselves in our own image). God created humans male and female, both created in the image of God, both created to yearn for one another and to be fruitful and multiply. The Lord Jesus reaffirms His Father’s good and gracious will by quoting Genesis 2: “for this reason a man leaves father and mother and a woman her home and the two become one flesh. What God has joined together humans must not separate” (Matthew 19:4-6). The normative sexual desire is for the opposite sex. God’s original gift of sexual desire is in order that men are drawn to women and vice versa in marriage – to say, “This one and no other.”

 In the Large Catechism, Martin Luther writes that Christians do not divorce. He reflects the Lord Jesus’ own clarity about His Father’s good and gracious will: divorce is a sin. It violates God’s good and gracious will that one man and one woman live in a lifelong covenant of faithfulness – reflect God’s own faithfulness to His people. So, then, why is there divorce? Why are some marriages so abusive and ungodly? Why do so many governments and courts want to change the meaning of marriage in our day? Why are so many children born out of wedlock and forced to live in poverty? Why are pornography and prostitution and sexual assault so pervasive? Why do so many people engage in sexual acts outside of the marriage of one man and one woman in a lifelong covenant of faithfulness? Why are so many people afraid to commit? And why do some people have desires and longings that are not for the opposite sex?

 The answer is sin, our age-old rebellion against God. The traditional reading of Scripture understands that the brokenness of creation even affects the object of our desires and longings. Harry Wendt, author of the Crossways Bible study program, says sin is not so much that we break God’s Law as it is that we break God’s heart! After centuries of post-Enlightenment “progress,” even many that call themselves Christians no longer hold fast to the biblical teaching of God’s good and gracious will for men and women and the families they create. Euphemisms abound. Sexual sins are promoted as “liberation,” “women’s health,” and “human rights.” In our day, many assume that even Christians cannot resist temptation and cannot control what they do with their sexual yearnings and longings. This has lead to biblically indefensible changes to moral theology.

 Bible scholar David Instone-Brewer has written two books (“Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible” and “Divorce and Remarriage in the Church”) in which he argues that many Christians do not know how to deal with the sin of divorce. Brewer leads his readers through a careful examination of biblical texts within the context of Judaism and early Christianity and offers some helpful pastoral advice for dealing with Christians that have, for whatever reasons, been divorced. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has also produced a very helpful study on divorce and remarriage with some particular attention given to pastoral divorce (see www.lcms.org). The Catechism of the Catholic Church lends clarity also about marriage as a sacrament and why the Roman church has such an extensive annulment process for divorced Roman Catholics.

 Caroline Simon, professor of philosophy at Hope College inMichigan, has written a new book: “Bringing Sex into Focus: The Quest for Sexual Integrity.” In a recent interview in Christianity Today magazine, Simon differentiates between sexual incontinence, continence, and chastity. She says, “In the case of continence, one successfully struggles and does the right thing even in the face of strong temptation. In the case of incontinence, a person might have exactly the same desires as a person who is continent, and struggle just as hard, but lose the struggle with their desires. This element of internal struggle is what differentiates incontinence from the vice of lust. The lustful don’t struggle. They just find using other people for their own purposes and following their own desires so natural and habitual that they don’t even know that there should be some restraint exercised, but the difference between the first two states, continence and incontinence, and full sexual integrity (chastity) is that a virtuous person in any kind of realm, including the sexual realm, is habitually, naturally, and without struggle acting in the right way” (February 2012, 51).

 During the Lenten season, the Church reminds us that God’s Son Jesus was like us in every way without sin (Hebrews 4) and is able to help us resist temptation as He did (Mark 1:9-13). The Lord Jesus’ sinless death on the cross means there is forgiveness for those that commit sexual sins of any sort; however, our Baptism into Christ means daily repentance, daily turning from our age-old rebellion against God. The first of Luther’s 95 Theses quotes Mark 1:14, “Repent” (metanoiete – change your heart and mind). When we repent, it is the Holy Spirit’s work in us. We cannot repent on our own without the Holy Spirit’s call working through God’s Word. We cannot be made right before God on our own. Only God’s sinless Son can take our sin and death to His cross and give us His life and righteousness (total obedience) to the Father as a free gift in the washing of Holy Baptism.

 So, then, how can our Lenten discipline impact our maleness and femaleness? If married, Christian men and women can practice confession, daily repentance, and forgiveness (the living of their Baptism). Our conversations about marriage and family will be shaped by the biblical narrative: marriage is the primary relationship; it is intended to reflect God’s faithfulness to His people. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians challenges men to love their wives as Christ loved the Church by giving His life for her. Wives are to submit (give themselves completely) to husbands as if to Christ. Children, if a married couple has been blessed with fertility, are gifts from God to be nurtured in faith and faithfulness, schooled in a Christian understanding of sexuality, and taught how to be husbands and wives. As children leave home to form their own families, Christian parents renegotiate the meaning of parenthood as priests (blessing and offering up prayers for them) and as encouragers for their married children. Because of sin our age-old rebellion, Christian spouses and Christian parents are constantly confessing, repenting and forgiving, modeling discipleship, and teaching devotion to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 Single persons, whether never married or widowed or divorced, are called to faithfulness to God within the context of their singleness. The discipline of Lent likewise impacts single persons’ maleness and femaleness as bearers and embodiments of the image of God. Paul reminds the Corinthians that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and that what we do with our bodies we do to the Lord Jesus precisely because we are members of His body. Daily repentance, the living of our Baptism, entails examining what we do with our desires and longings knowing that Scripture teaches that sexual acts belong within the context of the lifelong faithfulness of one man and one woman to each other. Spiritual friendships (the Greek word is koinonia) are especially helpful for single Christians to encourage one another to faithful stewardship of their bodies and their relationships. If Christians fail to be chaste, there is both forgiveness and the opportunity to learn from failure – particularly when Christians are self-consciously practicing daily Baptism in the Christian community.

 When we get to Luther’s teaching on confession, we will notice how he encourages Christians to read through the Ten Commandments and to hear God’s Law afflicting us where we have grown comfortable with our rebellion against God’s good and gracious will. The gift of private confession with a pastor is a right place to deal with appropriate guilt or shame because of sin, a right place to hear God’s Word of forgiveness, and a right place to begin a new accountability and honesty before God and others.

 Finally, the witness of Scripture is clear about what is normative behavior for men and women. That polygamy occurs in Scripture is not an affirmation. That all kinds of sexual relationships outside of marriage occur in Scripture is not an affirmation. That all sin and fall short of the glory of God is not a biblical excuse for faithlessness! Men and women are made in God’s image and are precious, lovable, and valuable quite apart from what our brokenness has done to the desires and longings that God originally intended us to have. When we do not fear, love, and trust in God above all else, we disobey God in thought, word, and deed. The rightful response to our knowledge that we have not loved God with heart, soul, and mind or our neighbor as ourselves is to confess our sins, repent of them, and to ask God’s help to amend our sinful lives. That is what Lent is all about.

 [Non-Roman Catholic Christians and RC Christians alike may be surprised at how beautifully and thoughtfully both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have written on the gift of the body, the gift of sexuality, and the gift of human love. Look for JPII’s “Theology of the Body” and BXVI’s encyclical on love.]

The Fifth Commandment

“You shall not kill.”

What does this mean?

We should fear and love God, and so we should not endanger our neighbor’s life, nor cause him any harm, but help and befriend him in every necessity of life. [Luther's Small Catechism, Tappert ed.]

Our four-year-old has a love for drawing and painting. She loves bright colors and uses them exuberantly. Her mother is constantly buying more crayons or colored pencils or paint and books and paper upon which daughter can create. Even as she has discovered her own love to create, daughter is asking questions about how God creates. Wisely, her mother tells her that God is the first artist.

Daughter raises other questions about how God creates us male and female. We answer simply that God creates us male or female in our mother’s tummies. She asks if our puppy was created in her doggy mother’s tummy. We answer: “Yes.” When she asks when she will be a Mommy, we tell her when she grows up and marries the right man who loves God and her.

The psalmist says to God: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them” (Psalm 139:13-16).

As the late John Paul II taught incessantly, God is pro-lifelong. God values our lives from conception to the grave. Our value is not based upon our usefulness. Even when our lives began from violence, even when our bodies are different, and even when our bodies have begun to waste away from disease or illness, God still looks at His good creation and says: “Very good!” We Christians teach that each life is more precious, lovable, and valuable than God’s own life. We can say that, because God’s Son Jesus suffered and died in a human body for the sin of the world! God is pro-lifelong.

Because creation is broken since the rebellion of the first parents, human life doesn’t always begin with the loving desire to nurture a child within the normative husband-wife relationship of lifelong faithfulness. Broken humans place ourselves in the center, the place that rightly belongs to God alone. Because of this ongoing rebellion against God, we assert everything in terms of our rights. It’s a very popular notion easily sold by politicians that it’s about what we want to do with “our” bodies. Rebellious women and men tell God: “Keep your laws off ‘my’ body!” More than 53 million Americans have been legally killed in the womb by rebellious men and women. Some insist it isn’t murder…as if the reality of human life were a matter of choice.

More than 53 million Americans won’t be there to be raised by parents who would have willingly adopted them. More than 53 million Americans won’t be there to provide for the retirement years of those generations that threw them away as “unwanted cells.” Our bodies know when we have lied to ourselves in order to commit evil legally or not. How many women and men have stayed awake entire nights living with remorse and sorrow over that legal choice to kill their child – one of the more than 53 million?

One Roman Catholic priest said that murder is objective moral evil. This does not mean that there is no forgiveness for those that kill. It means that she or he must confess the sin of murder when she or he has taken a life precious to God. In the case of murder not sanctioned by a government, there are always legal consequences. The deeper consequences of unconfessed sin before God is that God cannot forgive the one who refuses to admit sin. It is not that God is unwilling. It is that the murderer is unwilling to face the truth about her or himself. She or he will not listen to or admit the truth about the self.

Martin Luther recognizes that the command against murder is not all that God has to say about the value of each life. This command is about valuing life outside the womb. This command encompasses the Lord Jesus’ own command to welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned (Matthew 25). Christians of good will can disagree about a government’s role in providing for the needs of those that do not have, but they cannot disagree about what God expects of those that are His own through the washing of Holy Baptism. We are still called to heed the prophet’s message: “Do justice; love kindness; walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

Many Christian denominations have their own social service providers. We Lutherans have the widely respected Lutheran World Relief (lwr.org) that reaches out to those places in the world where human life is threatened and discounted. Around theUnited States, Lutheran Social Service agencies are involved in adoption, care for abused children and those caught up in substance abuse, in disaster relief, and in care for the profoundly disabled and for the elderly. With our dollars, gifts in kind, and our service hours, we answer the Lord’s call to care for the least of these His sisters and brothers.

Because evil is so pervasive in the world, we Lutherans are typically not pacifists. We place ordained pastors in military chaplaincies and support and encourage those that serve in the military as a type of love for the neighbor threatened by evil. Even though the taking of life in a military conflict (or law enforcement action) is a type of legal murder, we recognize that the child of God who kills in the service of his or her country knows that she or he has taken a life precious to God. The confession of sin and the pastoral care of souls is part of the Church’s ministry to those who answer God’s call to love and protect the weak neighbor from evil by taking up arms in the military or law enforcement.

 Humans caught up in rebellion against God invariably insist that there is no such thing as “normative relationships” or no such thing as a metanarrative (a story that explains the meaning and goal of human life). Not so curiously they rail against traditional Christians as a threat to life as they know it. Of course, they are partly right. Christians that stand for the value of each life bother greatly those that insist that life is a choice rather than a gift. History is a great teacher about which worldview is more dangerous. Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot are just a few of the monsters that have taught that life is a choice and not a gift.

 For a thought-provoking 33 minutes of your life, check out the sometimes shocking and graphic video at:  http://www.180movie.com. 

Don’t let small children watch this!

What does this mean?

We should fear and love God, and so we should not despise our parents and superiors, nor provoke them to anger, but honor, serve, obey, love, and esteem them.

Our Roman Catholic siblings in the faith talk about the domestic church. It’s a nice turn of phrase that captures the importance of having Christian parents. As co-creators with God, parents not only bring children into the world. In obedience to God’s command to make disciples of all people by baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, parents bring their children for Holy Baptism and make promises to raise them as children of the Light.

As we will discuss in a later blog, Luther quotes the warning from Exodus and Deuteronomy that the sins of the fathers and mothers are visited to the third and fourth generation. This means that bad behavior modeled by the previous generations of parents tends to get repeated until, by God’s grace and mercy, someone finally says: “Enough!”

Which takes us back to the promises made on the baptismal day when parents promise to bring the child to the services of God’s house, teach the child the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the 10 commandments, to place in the child’s hands the Holy Scriptures, and to provide for the child’s instruction in the Christian faith, so that living in communion with the Church, the child may lead a godly life until the day of Jesus Christ!

The antidote to bad parental behavior is Jesus Christ, the firstborn from the dead. When a parent or parents have had bad parental modeling (abuse, infidelity, indifference to God) or bad genes (the tendency to addiction, chemical imbalance affecting mood and behavior), that parent may well need the reparenting guidance of a self-consciously Christian (or Jewish) counselor. But the key is the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ regularly sustaining and strengthening that parent through Word and Sacrament. The parent may well benefit from the regular use of private confession with a pastor who self-consciously practices the care of souls. She or he may also greatly benefit from the mutual conversation and consolation of the brothers and the sisters that happens in self-consciouly Christian friendships (koinonia). In the case of addictions, participation in a 12 step group may be a good supplemental kind of reparenting (not all 12 step groups do a good job of that; one must be selective).

Having said all of that as a way of answering in advance the “yes, buts”, God intends parents to be godly and not rebellious parents. This is sadly why marriages often collapse. Some people persist in their rebellion against God. Of course, rebellion against God spills over into all areas of life and especially marriage and family. Sin is, as Luther said, the heart curved in upon itself. The rebellious spouse is selfish. The rebellious parents are selfish. They are too much in the center to let God be God, and they deprive their children of spiritual development and nurture. This is why a godly spouse rarely sees the conversion of her or his spouse and risks having children that follow the modeling and example of the rebellious parent.

God wants parents to be godly. This means that it matters who we are, and it matters who we marry. People do not come from identical backgrounds. But in choosing a spouse, one should look for someone with a complimentary background. Parents need to create a common culture, so it matters that one’s spouse is able to have a shared culture. Keeping God as center means that having an interfaith marriage is highly problematic and frustrating. Coming from such different worlds, it is impossible to create a shared culture in which God is center particularly because they cannot agree on who God is!

We learn through pain. I learned in my 20s that you can love someone passionately, but if she does not want to share a culture in which God is the center, the relationship will not work. I learned in my 40s that you can love someone deeply, but if she does not want to share a culture in which God is the center, the marriage will not work. It’s heart-breaking stuff that can best be avoided in advance by seeking out carefully and slowly a person who is capable of creating a shared culture in which God is the center, because, after all, that is the family culture from which she or he has come.

Godly parents teach us how to be godly people. Rebellious parents teach us how to be rebellious people. Because we are simultaneously saints and sinners, we are all, at best, works in progress; however, living within the communion of the Church we have the Word and Sacraments, and the encouragement of the saints (living and living with God) to help us with our old Adams and Eves.

Godly parents are God’s representatives in the domestic church. They teach us by word and deed how to be godly people. They model for us growth in discipleship. They show us how to ask for and to give forgiveness. They show us how to be godly spouses. They show us the necessity of godly authority and help us to recognize rebellious and ungodly authority. Godly parents do not pretend to be their children’s friends, an abdication of parental authority. Godly parents teach us how to grow up to form our own godly families.

Christians know that all authority belongs to Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:16). Godly authority recognizes Christ’s ultimate authority. Rebellious or ungodly authority is demonic. It denies that God is God, and, thus, its source is located in the old enemy who asks, “Did God really say?”

Godly parents teach their children to be street-smart and wise in the ways of the world. Along the way, children will spend more and more time away from home under the authority of others. Wise Christians learn to grant authority, even when the people in authority are rebellious and ungodly. This is a necessary bit of learning so that naive Christians do not sabotage their well-being by foolishly refusing to recognize the authority even of those that are rebellious and ungodly.  Wise Christians remember that God will be God, and the rebellious and ungodly will have to answer for their poor stewardship of God’s people and things! Occasionally, we all get a bit of schadenfreude, when bad authority gets its just rewards.

Elsewhere Luther reminds us that this is the only commandment with a promise attached (that you may live long in the land). The history of Israel is, as with the history of the Church, a history of rebellion. Because Israel failed to honor godly parents and authorities, they rebelled against God and lost the land (the Assyrian dismantling of the northern kingdom of Israel and the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and ensuing exile). By not heeding Moses’ final sermon in Deuteronomy, the Israelites did not keep the covenant God graciously made with them at Sinai (Horeb). In the words of the old rock-n-roll song, they had fun, fun, fun til Daddy took the T-bird away.  God owned the land, and He took it away.

It should be noted that Jesus’ parable of the wicked vineyard tenants makes the same point. If Christians persist in rebellion, God will take what is His own and give it to those who will be faithful. This is a warning that too many bishops, pastors, professors, parents, and other Christians are presently failing to heed. Rebellion against God’s good and gracious will clearly expressed in Scripture will result in the loss of authority, churches, and life itself. Again, James warns that not many should aspire to be Christian teachers for they will be judged more severely. Caveat emptor!

God wants us to obey godly parents and authorities, because they are His servants who shape and mold present and future generations to do His good and gracious will. Godly parents and godly authorities are gifts to be treasured. Through their faithful witness and modeling, we learn who and Whose we are as children of God!

What does this mean?

We should fear and love God, and so we should not despise his Word and the preaching of the same, but deem it holy and gladly hear and learn it.

Martin Luther called the church a “Mundhaus,” a mouth house, where God’s Word is spoken. Luther’s emphasis in the Small Catechism is not on which day the Sabbath is or what ought not to be done on the Sabbath. Rather Luther emphasizes what the Sabbath is for: the assembly gathered to gladly hear and learn the Word of God.

Because the Greek word we translate church (ekklesia) means literally those called out of the world to assemble around the Word, the primary purpose of the assembly is to gladly hear and learn the Word of God.

Preaching is singled out as integral to gladly hearing and learning the Word of God. Faith comes from what is heard, and preaching that is faithful to God’s Word is not to be despised. Preachers are necessary, and the Lutherans make clear in the Augsburg Confession that preachers are set apart from the rest of the assembly to speak God’s Word. The priesthood of believers does not mean that all are called or authorized to preach.

Later in the Small Catechism in the sections on the sacraments, we see how Luther emphasizes the Word of God joined with earthly stuff of water, bread, and wine accomplishes great things by forgiving sins and giving life and salvation. Jesus, the Incarnate Word, is the Promissor, the only way to the Father.

The Word of God is first and foremost the Incarnate Son of God, Jesus (John 1:14) in whose name and in whose presence the assembly gathers. Scripture is the written Word of God that norms all preaching and theology. Preaching is the spoken Word of God that demonstrates God’s Word is a lively Word that kills and makes alive (Hebrews 4:12). 

God’s lively Word is No and Yes, no to sin, and yes to sinners. God’s lively Word shows that the wages of sin is death but Christ crucified and risen gives freely the eternal life and love shared by Father, Son, and Spirit.

And so it is that the Sabbath is made for man, so that women and men, boys and girls, can be drawn from the rebellion that leads to eternal night into the Light of God’s eternal life and love!

Luther emphasizes what God does on the Sabbath when people answer the Holy Spirit’s call to gather around the Word. Gladly hearing and learning God’s Word, Christians are called out of the rebellion of sin, death, and evil to trust in Christ, who offers freely the forgiveness of sins, and the promise of life and salvation.

Luther, the conservative reformer, was not enamored of those that wanted to change the Church’s worship life away from liturgy, creeds, and sacraments. His first liturgical reform was a Latin mass purged of the elements of medieval works-righteousness. Secondly, Luther wrote a German mass with new hymns replacing the major sections of the liturgy. He came out of hiding to stop his most radical followers from destroying ecclesiastical art that helped to teach the Word of God. Luther led the way in hymn-writing that carefully demonstrated the difference between God’s No to sin and God’s Yes to sinner.

All of which is to say that the phrase “evangelical catholic” is the most fitting description of what happens in self-consciously Lutheran churches on the Sabbath. Lutherans are evangelical — devoted to the good news of God’s crucified and risen Son Jesus. The Word is preached as no and yes. Sinners are killed and made alive by the living Word of God. Lutherans are also catholic, confessing the historic creeds of the Church and gathering around the Lord’s Table for the blessed sacrament of the altar. Christ Himself is truly present there in the bread and wine by His Word of promise: “This my body and this my blood is given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. In the third commandment, God exposes all things that do not belong on the Sabbath. As with the 2nd commandment, God has only in mind what is best for all of us. When we gladly hear and learn His Word, we receive from God what can be gotten nowhere else.

Finally, it calls into question why gnostic practices are s0 commonly found among many calling themselves Christian. Why is the emphasis not on God’s Word spoken and enacted in the sacraments but rather on the performance and experience of those who have gathered together?

What does this mean?

We should fear and love God, and so we should not use his name to curse, swear, practice magic, lie, or deceive, but in every time of need call upon him, praise him, and give him thanks.       (Luther’s Small Catechism, Tappert translation)

Martin Luther called this the friendly commandment, because God wants us to use His name rightly by praying to Him.

In the Lord Jesus’ first discourse in Matthew’s Gospel, also known as the Sermon on the Mount, He tells His disciples their heavenly Father knows their needs before they ask (see Matthew 6). Clearly, prayer becomes a gift to His children from the One who bestows the blessing of rain on both the just and the unjust.

Doubtless God loves to hear the prayers of little children who offer such poignant and often heartfelt cries of the heart for those they love. And, in the next minute, they must provide comic relief by some of the things for which they also pray. But it’s the relationship that they often get better than adults: their heavenly Father loves them and wants to hear from them.

I confess that in my younger years my prayers were a combination of King James English with a shout out on behalf of all my kinfolk and other loved ones. There were the frequent intercessions: “forgive me for” and  ”help me do well in school” and “help me to forgive (whoever had hurt me)” and “help her (the girlfriend du jour) to love me.” All in all, my prayers were usually a cross of childish piety and teenage angst.

 Frankly, my prayers began to gain depth as they included pleas for loved ones who were suffering or grieving. Watching childhood friends lose parents prepared me for the day I learned my Dad had lung cancer. The most unselfish prayer I ever prayed at that phase of my life was the prayer to let my father depart this life when he had wasted away to about 50 lbs and could no longer breathe without struggling.

Because my Lutheran church background was rural and very low church, I had very little encouragement in early years to pray the psalms or to pray the daily prayer of the Church (other than midweek Vespers in Lent).

When I went to seminary, a new liturgical world opened up to me with opportunities to receive the Eucharist, at least, twice weekly and to make a private confession by appointment. Early on, the Dean of the Chapel and Dean of Community Life took first year students on a weekend spiritual retreat that, looking back, was a noble attempt to do spiritual formation with us. 

On internship, I had nine college students living with me in the Lutheran Student House in Kirksville MO. We formed a wonderful community that welcomed other students in for 10pm Compline each night. Doubtless, my supervisor Dr. Mark Appold’s fondness for Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together was the genesis for this student community.

Because the Lutheran Book of Worship was brand new that year, we invited a worship professor from my seminary and a group of fellow seminary students to lead us in a 24-hour spiritual retreat using the daily prayer offices in LBW.

Little did I know that someday I could have all of that and much more by joining the Society of the Holy Trinity (www.societyholytrinity.org). It only took me about 30 years to get there.

The life of a parish pastor can be extremely lonely even when one seeks out collegial relationships. Sadly, most of those collegial conversations are often a combination of group therapy, denominational sales meeting, and theological one-ups-personship. In short, they do not encourage or form pastors in lives of prayer and faithfulness.

I had learned to pray the psalms as a 24-year-old hospital chaplain. My supervisor taught me that the prayerbook of the Bible was an amazing tutor for how to open one’s whole life in prayer to the One who already knew it all anyway.

But, the community of disciplined prayer was missing from my life other than the parish gathered around Word and Sacrament. And so it was that for many years, I prayed Morning Prayer alone every day, occasionally prayed Evening Prayer and the Responsive Prayer (suffrages) offices, and sometimes used Compline (often missing the student community’s nightly practice from my vicarage year). But there was no accountability or encouragement in that solo practitioner prayer life.

When I first heard about the Society of the Holy Trinity in 1997, I knew this was what I had been looking for and probably would have subscribed to the rule right away. But those were dark days in my personal life with an unwanted divorce brewing and the heartbreak of trying to be a single father. My shame over this great failure kept me from accepting invitations to subscribe to the rule of the society and participate in its life together. Sadly, because I did not subscribe, I cut myself off from the very spiritual fellowship and friendship for which I had been yearning. Looking back, I would have healed much faster and could have benefited from private confession on a regular basis.

During Lent of 2000, I finally got around to reading Susan Howatch’s novels set within the Church of England (the series begins with “Glittering Images”). The late Paul Nelson, an amazing worship guru in the ELCA, had recommended the books to me a few years earlier. The prominence of Benedictine monks in Howatch’s novels reminded me what was missing from my spiritual life: direction and confession.

It was my sweet wife, a wonderfully deep person of prayer, who finally said to me: “You need what the Society of the Holy Trinity has to offer.”

At the General Retreat of the Society of the Holy Trinity in September 2009, I subscribed to the rule and began in earnest a more disciplined prayer life. As I have written elsewhere, the genius of the society is the discipline of spiritual retreats once each quarter. By having the accountability and encouragement of brothers and sisters in the Lutheran ministry, one is drawn, again and again, to the friendly commandment: call upon the Lord God in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving!

If you are interested in attending a Society of the Holy Trinity retreat, you can attend as a visitor even if you are not a pastor. If you are a Lutheran pastor, who, like me, has been yearning for the fellowship of those that take seriously their ordination vows, then you should check out the Society’s website and look for the nearest quarterly chapter retreat. Our Carolina’s STS chapter has a December retreat in Hickory NC, an early Lenten retreat outside Charleston SC, and an early June retreat in Hickory NC.  The fall STS General Retreat is (almost) always held in Mundelein IL at St. Mary’s of the Lake University Retreat Center.

So…what’s missing from this blog? I haven’t spoken about cussin’, swearin’, and the like.

This is a friendly command that beckons the baptized child of God to grow deeper in conversation with the Triune God who speaks in Word and Sacrament.

I will close with a reminder that Christian prayer is addressed to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. How very different from the type of rambling monologue: “Lord, we just want to say, Lord, that we….”

That’s enough for now. I need to hear God’s Word and say my prayers.

“What does this mean? We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things” (Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, Tappert edition).

            The Ten Commandments (the ten words) are found in Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. Because we read from different places, Jews and Christians number the words differently. Indeed Christians and Christians often disagree on both the numbering and the wording of the commandments.

Some editions of Luther’s Small Catechism include “I am the Lord your God” as part of the first commandment. Others, like Theodore Tappert’s translation do not. Many editions use “I am the Lord your God” as the introduction to the commandments.

Looking at the text of Exodus 2, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2) serves as God’s indicative prologue to the commandments. Because God has acted graciously to free Israel, His chosen, from slavery through no effort or merit of their own,Israel ought to respond to God’s grace by keeping the covenant He made with them at Mount Sinai. The commandments are the stipulations of the Sinai covenant. These are the ways that God’s people respond to His steadfast love and mercy for His wayward and disobedient people.

God’s Incarnate Son Jesus says that the first and greatest commandment is: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). This is from the famous Shema of Judaism from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (6:4, ‘Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God is one’ is literally printed on paper found in a mezuzah on a doorpost and in the phylacteries tied on the forearms and foreheads of orthodox Jewish males).

Old Testament scholars often compare the form of the 10 commandments to that of a Hittite suzerainty treaty where the greater power imposes on the lesser power certain stipulations in response to what the greater power has done for (or to) them.

“You shall have no other gods” is the command of the one true and only God. He declares who He is by what He has done for Israel. The sense is not that Israel can’t have other gods. They can. They have. And they do. These sense is that when Israel puts her trust in other gods the logical consequence of that choice is they are asking the one true and only God to step back and let them have their own will. And He does, then and now. Having other gods is a stupid choice with logical consequences (smart people do stupid things daily and end up with stupid looks on our faces).

Luther argues in the Large Catechism there are no atheists. Everyone has a god, that to which her or his heart clings. Whatever is most important to a person is their god. Surprisingly, our other gods can look like ourselves, our loved ones, and our toys.

The late Lutheran theologian Walter Bouman once preached a sermon entitled “Yes and No in a Taxicab.” As the conversation with the driver progresses, the pastor tries to help the driver to see his fear  of losing his son in the Vietnam War has turned his son into a false god. Everything depends on what happens to the man’s son. The meaning of the man’s life is all wrapped up in a type of selfish love for his son.

Congregations often have their own false gods: a particular pastor or staff person, the building and its furnishings, the music and musicians, who’s there, and the size and prominence of the congregation in the community. The old enemy, Satan, loves to take God’s gifts and turn them into idols that are substitutes for the one true and only God.

A pastor once said that he could take a person’s checkbook (today he would say look online at their bank account) and tell in five minutes what their gods were. The same experiment could be done with one’s calendar. Our behavior reveals what we love.

Luther reminds us in the “what does this mean” that God expects us to fear, love, and trust in Him above all things. God is God, the Alpha and the Omega, the One from whom all things come and the One to whom all people must give an account.

When someone misuses God’s name, avoids worship, has no love or respect for parents or those in authority, has no regard for human life, misuses God’s gift of sex, has no love or respect for a neighbor’s needs or reputation or relationships or things – in short, when one breaks any one of the subsequent commandments – it all flows from not fearing, loving, or trusting God above all things!

The first commandment, as the Hebrews writer puts it, shows us “…all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13).

The reason it’s dreadfully convenient to claim to be an atheist or an agnostic (perhaps the surest sign that someone suffers with a great addiction) is one is then free to misbehave without a sense of good and godly guilt or shame. As someone once said, when you’ve done wrong and have behaved atrociously, you ought to feel guilt or shame (something that is lost on those in the sway of therapeutic preaching).

In the worst case scenario, the sociopath or psychopath has no empathy (think here of pedophiles, con artists, and mass murderers) for anyone else because he or she has no soul and is indeed a kind of embodied demon who brings misery into the world.

We ought to fear God (more than simply be in awe of Him), because He will be God when our life in this world has ended, and we will give an account to Him!

[You will notice that I keep using capitals and the masculine gender for God, because God is God, and I am not, and because Scripture and Scripture’s Lord Jesus calls God “Father” and “He.”]

I can and do fear, love, and trust in other gods repeatedly. God steps back and asks, “How’s that working for you?” Most days, I can probably answer, “Just fine.” But at the end of my life and on more than a few days, my false gods will always let me down. Whether I wear a Rolex or Timex, drive a Mercedes or a Mazda, wear designer or discount, my body will end up naked and dead. God will still be God.

When I cling to the one true and only God, then He can help me. That’s why I keep saying the words that father said to Jesus: “I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). And, with St. Paul, I can hear the one true and only God answer: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

For Martin Luther, basic catechesis (doctrinal instruction) in the Christian faith refers to teaching children (and their parents!) the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the biblical basis for Baptism, Eucharist, and Confession. Luther also includes morning and evening prayers, table grace, and a table of duties.

As one reads, learns, and commits to memory Luther’s Small Catechism, it becomes a devotional discipline through which the Holy Spirit can work to kill the old Adam or Eve (daily drowning in baptismal waters) and to raise up daily the new child of God created in Holy Baptism.

Luther envisioned parents as the popes, bishops, and pastors of their homes teaching their children who and whose they are as children of God by grace through the washing of Holy Baptism. Reading the catechism, one begins to get a picture of the Christian home as a house of prayer from which the family goes into the world to fulfill their vocations in daily life (think here of the “in but not of” in Romans 12:1-2).

Luther’s hymns are didactic in nature, and Luther urged parents to teach their children both the catechism and hymns. Indeed the Lutheran chorales in both text and tune are strong meat in comparison to the spiritual pabulum of much contemporary Christian music. Father Martin or Doctor Martin, as he was called, was a creative genius whose interests included biblical translation and exegesis, theology and philosophy, worship and the arts, the practice of pastoral ministry, and the care of souls.

Over the next days and weeks, I intend to blog on the various parts and sections of Luther’s Small Catechism. As always, my hope is to encourage those who read these words to think, pray, and to practice, with the help of God, a self-consciously Lutheran Christianity. As the grandson of a Sicilian Roman Catholic paternal grandmother, a fundamentalist Baptist paternal grandfather, and of Muehlenberg Lutheran maternal grandparents, I am more than a little aware that there are many ways to be Christian. While I admire and respect C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity,” I have come to believe that there is no such thing as a generic Christian in the actual practice of the faith.

 The Christian life is lived out in particular faith communities shaped most of all by how they worship. Lex orandi, lex credendi – the way we worship says what we believe. Lutheran Christians are, whether we admit it or not, evangelical catholics. Our worship and theology, indeed the way we read Scripture, is evangelical – shaped by the Good News of the free gift of God’s Son Jesus crucified for the salvation of the world. Our worship and theology, indeed the way we read Scripture, is catholic – shaped by the ancient creeds and first seven ecumenical councils of the whole Church.

Typically, we lose from our worshiping communities those that have not been properly catechized in the great tradition of the Christian faith, which is not the same thing as having gone through Confirmation instruction. As Luther well knew, what does and does not happen in the home has everything to do with the people that go out into the world. Two or three hours a week hardly do more than lift up an alternative vision to the prevailing Zeitgeist (spirit of the age). The more narcissistic the home life (yes, even good parents can be both narcissistic and raise narcissists) the more that children and parents seek out communities that are built on highly successful marketing plans that appeal to peoples’ narcissism. As I have unkindly said before, there are thousands of people yelling “Jesus!” at a Cowboys’ or Rangers’ game, and it ain’t Christian worship.

 Conversely, we tend to gain those that are hungering and thirsting for a deeply incarnational encounter with the Living God, the Triune God who acts through Word and Sacrament to save and redeem lost and condemned sinners and to shape the children of God into the likeness of the Servant King Jesus. In the words of a dear older pastor, our worship is about the life of the Triune God seeking to works its way into us and to overcome the narcissistic life of the old Adams and Eves, the old sinful selves, which have gathered for worship.

 By way of illustration, Lutheran writer Marva Dawn tells the story of the person sitting next to her in worship who commented: “I didn’t like that last hymn.” Dawn replied: “Well, we weren’t singing to you!”

If this blog tweaks, bothers, and perhaps even angers the reader who insists she or he is a Lutheran despite all evidence to the contrary (I’m thinking here of those that worship elsewhere and yet insist that they are still Lutheran Christians!), then I’m succeeding in the pastoral task of a Lutheran pastor and faithful to the promises made on my ordination day. My goal is to challenge people to be Lutheran Christians and to keep the promises parents made at the baptism of their children and that they affirmed on the day of their Confirmation.

And, if I challenge a Lutheran parent or pastor to get back into Luther’s Small Catechism, then so much the better! Who knows? You, dear reader, may discover (as Garrison Keillor would say) that you’re on your way to becoming a Lutheran Christian and just didn’t know about it until now!

            The oldest baby boomers wanted what all adolescents want: the freedom to be different from their parents. They dropped out, tuned in, and turned on. Growing out their hair and eschewing their parents’ mores, they flocked toSan Franciscoin ’67 for the summer of love, toChicagoin ’68 to change the world, and toWoodstockin ’69 to sing about peace while enjoying unbridled sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

            The middle baby boomers watched all that from public schools run mostly by people terrified that revolution would break out. The boys in this group were the last to have their names in the draft lottery forViet Nam. With the deaths of Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison, this group increasingly turned to singer-songwriters like Wonder, King,Taylor, Mitchell, Stevens, among others. The middle boomers experienced the integration of schools, the end of the war, and the right to vote and drink at 18. They wanted freedom of a much more personal nature. This was the beginning of the Me Generation.

            The youngest baby boomers were increasingly taught by teachers from the oldest baby boomers. They grew up as the Me Generation with parents born during WWII. Many of their parents got into disco, got out of church, got out of marriage, and, looked for simpler lives. The youngest baby boomers really bled over into the oldest Gen Xers. Freedom became doing your own thing. Freedom meant: keep your laws off my body. The youngest baby boomers got the first legal abortions in high school. AIDS hadn’t been discovered yet; easy access to birth control didn’t stop herpes and other STDs.

            Freedom was, and is still today, for many baby boomers (and those that have come of age since) a matter of freedom from the authority, the rules, and regulations of others. Even among evangelical Christians who claim a personal relationship with Jesus, one finds a huge tilt towards freedom from teaching or preaching about with whom and when one can have sex and most of God’s other “thou shalt nots.” In short, even those Christians that call themselves evangelicals hardly look different than their unchurched peers and usually seek out easy-listening churches where the preaching evokes no sense of guilt or shame, little challenge to change, and, of course, music you could dance to!

            Biblical Christianity is countercultural. It turns the worlds of those that follow Jesus completely upside down. Why? The freedom that God’s incarnate Son preaches is a freedom to die to oneself and a freedom to become the person God envisioned when He gave each person the unique (nascent) gifts and talents, and particular relationships into which one was born. Biblical Christianity is a muscular faith that loves and welcomes everyone but never leaves them as they are. In short, Mary the Mother of God, Peter, James, John, Matthew, Lazarus, Mary, Martha, Mary Magdalene, and all the others including Judas Iscariot had their worlds turned upside down by Jesus. And most but not all became very little like those today that want a freedom to do what they damn well please in Jesus’ name or not!

 No surprise, then, that the psalmist says: “Thou hast made him (man) little lower than the angels” (Psalm 8).

 In the midst of the cold war, in 1957, psychologist Erich Fromm wrote that because men cannot create like gods we destroy like gods.  He was partly right. Contra Fromm, humans are co-creators with God. We can create like God; that is integral to being made in God’s image. But because of sin, our age-old rebellion, we can turn our gifts to the dark side and often choose to destroy rather than to create.

 One of my former professors liked to play with words. He would write “Response-ability” to make the point that God gives us the ability to respond to His good and gracious will. The rebellion against God that began with our first parents is much more than a fall. It is a choice to respond to God’s goodness with: “Hell, no, we won’t go!”

  I began to realize at thirty that I didn’t know as much as I thought I did, and I started going to see a pastoral counselor. One day when I was whining about my life, he stopped me with some “new” information. He said, “When you were a child, you had a right to expect your parents to know your needs and to provide for them. Now that you are an adult (I think he was being generous), it is your responsibility to ask for what you need.” What a radical concept! I needed to take responsibility for my life.

 Having listened to myself now for almost 58 years, and having listened to others as a pastor for more than 30 years, I can’t even count the number of times that I’ve seen my childish self in others. Someone will say, “My husband just doesn’t get what I need.” Another will say, “My wife just doesn’t understand me.” Someone will say, “You never came to see me when I was in the hospital.” Another will ask, “Why weren’t you there when I needed you?” Still another says, “That person just didn’t do what I wanted.”

 Anger is a gift from God to let out our pain. Behind the anger, there is usually either fear or hurt. These emotions are powerful. Feelings are powerful. They can spur us to take greater responsibility for our lives, or they can seduce us into destructive and even self-destructive behaviors. As I wrote before, feelings can seduce us away from the true God to false gospels and false gods that offer us something other than the one true God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! Our feelings can also lead us to destroy our relationships.

 Paul writes, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up away childish ways” (1 Corinthians 13:11).

Just as I had to learn that as long as I was taking money from my parents, I wasn’t really living as an adult. So I had to learn that being an adult means taking responsibility for my own life and my own feelings.

 I don’t expect my wife to read my mind, and I don’t want her to try to read mine. I don’t expect our congregation to tell me they know what I need, and I don’t want to even try to pretend that I know what others need when they need it. God didn’t give us omniscience.

 When I feel angry, I have learned to stop to ask what I am afraid of or how have I been hurt. When I feel depressed, I have learned to ask what I am angry about or why I am angry with God. Asking questions of myself about my feelings is a way to keep me from being seduced into destructive and self-destructive behaviors. As Paul says, “When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” Praying about these things is the better way.

 Relationships are hard. As we take greater responsibility for ourselves, what God expects us adults to do, we learn to ask for what we want. Part of being an adult is recognizing that someone may respond in a way we don’t want or like. The tougher part of being an adult is that we have zero control over what others choose to do. To which God says, “Welcome to my world!” The pain of childrearing can give great insights to God’s heart.

 It’s a matter of tough love to teach children how to take responsibility for their own lives. And the best way to teach responsibility is to model it. No adult, and certainly no spouse or parent, is going to achieve perfection in this life. So, then, what better way to teach responsibility than for an adult to say: “I was wrong. Forgive me?” Next to that, what better way to teach responsibility than to say, “No, I cannot give you what you want?”

 Indeed, God withholds the tree of life from our first parents, because He knows that we can choose wrongly and could end up eternally separated from Him. Again, this is a model of adulthood, God says no to us before He says yes in the gift of His own Son.

 Above all the other creatures, God made us humans in His image, gave us great gifts, and gave the ability to respond to Him. When we are irresponsible, it’s a matter of sin. God shows His love and mercy for us in that while we were yet sinners He sent His Son Jesus to die for the ungodly, you and me. Having spared not even the death of His own Son in order to free us from sin, death, and evil, God offers the free gift of forgiveness, life, and salvation. In other words, God doesn’t let our irresponsibility change who He is!

 That some continue to turn their back on God and His great mercy breaks God’s heart, but He never forces Himself on us. God lets us take responsibility even for our own stupid choices. His Holy Spirit keeps calling and trying to gather everyone into God’s eternal life and love. That some insist on saying a prideful no makes them no less responsible for themselves even unto eternity. It doesn’t have to be that way!