Frohes Reformationstag!

HAPPY REFORMATION DAY!

"To the only wise God be glory for evermore through Jesus Christ! Amen." (Romans 16:27)

On Oct. 31, 1517, a young monk and professor at the University of Wittenberg, Martin Luther, nailed his 95 theses to the bulletin board on the door of the Castle Church. In this document he invited his fellow professors to a debate. The Reformation historian, Myconius, wrote that the contents spread throughout Germany in 14 days and in a month throughout all Christendom.

In challenging the indulgence traffic, Luther was convinced that the answer to the problem of sin lay in God’s Word. While preparing lectures on the Psalms and on Romans, he discovered God as his merciful Father. The key to the Scriptures was God’s promise of forgiveness, to be accepted by faith in the redemptive grace of Jesus Christ. Luther noted that we must be truly humble before God and sincerely penitent to receive God’s forgiveness. In his theses he stressed that the Gospel is the real treasure of the church, stating that we "should not rely on the treasury of indulgences, but upon the real treasury of God’s wonderful grace, the holy Gospel."

This is what the Reformation message is still all about today. To God be all glory!

(From the LCMS daily devotion found here.)

Though the earth give way

About half an hour ago I was sitting at our "dining room" table, reading, when all of a sudden I noticed that everything began to . . . shake. At first I thought that one of my roommates snuck up behind me and was shaking my chair, but then I saw the bookshelf rattling against the wall. This went on for about fifteen seconds. My friend Clarissa, who was sitting on the floor in her flat, said "It felt like our apartment was made of nothing."

As it turns out, there was an earthquake of 5.2 magnitude on the Richter scale in the town of Gemlik, some 100-plus miles from us on the southeast corner of the Sea of Marmara. Couple this with Friday's 5.2 quake in the not-so-distant city of Balıkesir, and it can't help but make me slightly uneasy. While speaking with a civil engineering professor at a local university last year about the general lack of quality and adherence to codes in construction, he commented, "When--not if--a major earthquake hits here, it could be the costliest natural disaster in history."

For a while last year, honestly I was gripped with a bit of paranoia and fear regarding the possibility of a severe quake. But standing over and against that is Psalm 46 and the God Most High who holds the world in his hands:

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging. (vv. 1-3)

Teens in trouble?

A recent article in the New York Times comments on a seeming downward trend in the number of teens who are "Bible-believing Christians." (However, the article writes entirely about evangelical Christians. Are our Catholic and Orthodox brothers not Bible-believing Christians?) Having spent a year teaching high school and hopefully beginning soon a career in science education, this is of no little importance to me. Tons of questions swirl in my mind regarding what I can do, what churches and pastors ought to do, what teens are seeking, etc.

I was blessed to have known some people in my own high school who invited me to their youth group, and in a few of them I saw something different: being a Christian meant something. But even then I couldn't help but be involved with this youth group simply because I felt good to be doing something "right" and to be part of something that others were involved in. Not to knock Teen Mania, Acquire the Fire, or many youth groups, but it's no secret that teens (like most adults) seek approval and inclusion. They want to be popular and liked. But is some hip, cool youth group meeting the answer? How many teens are involved in big gatherings like "See You at the Pole" simply because others are there and they want to show that they, too, are "good kids"?

I thankfully don't lose much sleep over the future of today's teens regarding Christian faith. I don't take it lightly at all, but wherever the sacraments are administered and the Word of God is preached in truth and in such a way that no one is left thinking that she can stand upon the law and her own goodness, but Jesus' alone, there the Holy Spirit will create and establish faith. (Though it is worth considering that in many such evangelical churches, baptism is a mere "ordinance" pushed off by students until they believe they have enough faith or personal merit to warrant it. How can the Spirit use that to promote the message of grace?)

And if by some random chance you're reading this, Carly, Alison, Emily, and Tim -- keep the faith and keep running (literally). I'm proud of your devotion to the Lord and rejoice in the evidence of his redeeming grace in your lives.

"This mystery is profound"

With Reformation Day coming up soon (October 31), yesterday I began reading Martin Luther's treatise On Christian Liberty (also known as The Freedom of the Christian).* In it he develops the following theses: "A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none" and "A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all" (p. 2). I wish to relay a discourse concerning the role of Christ to his Church as that of a bridegroom to his bride, because it's simply so beautiful. (If you wish to save time, the first paragraph contains the essence.)

The third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united to her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh [Eph. 5:31-32]. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage--indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage--it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own. Let us compare these and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ's, while grace, life, and salvation will the soul's; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride's a bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?

Here we have a most pleasing vision not only of communion but of a blessed struggle and victory and salvation and redemption. Christ is God and man in one person. He has neither sinned nor died, and is not condemned, and he cannot sin, die, or be condemned; his righteousness, life, and salvation are unconquerable, eternal, omnipotent. By the wedding ring of faith he shares in the sins, death, and pains of hell which are his bride's. As a matter of fact, he makes them his own and as if he himself had sinned; he suffered, died, and descended into hell that he might overcome them all. Now since it was such a one who did all this, and death and hell could not swallow him up, these were necessarily swallowed up by him in a mighty duel; for his righteousness is greater than the sins of all men, his life stronger than death, his salvation more invincible than hell. Thus the believing soul by means of the pledge of its faith is free in Christ, its bridegroom, free from all sins, secure against death and hell, and is endowed with the eternal righteousness, life, and salvation of Christ its bridegroom. So he takes to himself a glorious bride, "without spot or wrinkle, cleansing her by the washing of water with the word" [cf. Eph. 5:26-27] of life, that is, by faith in the Word of life, righteousness, and salvation. In this way he marries her in faith, steadfast love, and in mercies, righteousness, and justice, as Hos. 2[:19-20] says.

Who then can fully appreciate what this royal marriage means? Who can understand the riches of the glory of this grace? Here this rich and divine bridegroom marries this poor, wicked harlot, redeems her from all her evil, and adorns her with all his goodness. Her sins cannot now destroy her, since they are laid upon Christ and swallowed up by him. And she has that righteousness in Christ, her husband, of which she may boast as of her own and which she can confidently display alongside her sins in the face of death and hell and say, "If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his is mine all mine is his," as the bride in the Song of Solomon [2:16] says, "My beloved is mine and I am his." This is what Paul means when he says in 1 Cor. 15[:57], "Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ," that is, the victory over sin and death, as he also says there, "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law" [1 Cor. 15:56]. (pp. 18-22)
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*Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty, tr. W. A. Lambert (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 2003).

"They actually kicked our ass."

Boo-yah! "Where is the Big Unit? Where is the touted offense? Where is the $25-million superstar? Where is the critic? Has not Jim Leyland made foolish the predictions of the nay-sayers?" (1 Corinthians 1:20, New Dee-troit Version)

That's right, the unstoppable Yankees got flogged by the Tigers, whom everyone else had written off weeks ago. Led by outstanding efforts from Kenny Rogers and Jeremy Bonderman (left), Detroit's pitching staff held the Bronx Bloopers to batting only .095 with runners in scoring position and held them to 20 consecutive scoreless innings . I couldn't put it any better than New York third-sacker Alex Rodriguez: "Plain and simple, they dominated us. It's not like we lost by one or two runs. They actually kicked our ass."

All I've gotta say is: Bring it on. We're not losing the pennant to Baked Ziti and the Oakland Unathletics. (What the heck is an "Athletic"? And why is their logo an elephant?)

Congratulations, boys. Thanks for restoring the roar. Keep it going!