Löhe devotional for 10. January

Perhaps those involved in the events surrounding February 19, 1974 should have read more Löhe and less Elert. 

The following is from the blog "Wilhelm's space" http://kwaweber.org/2014/01/10/lohe-on-2-timothy-316/

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. (2Ti 3:16 NAS)

The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament  are like the starry skies at night. Whoever lifts up his eyes from the dark earth up to the bright stars above sees the shiniest first – the big ones and those in the milky way. Yet as the eye is accustomed to the sight, it begins to see more and more. Finally even the dark blue of the night seems to be interwoven with light and shining brightness. So it also for the reader of the holy Bible. At first you perceive the strong and catchy verses, which are obviously clear and impressive at first sight. Yet as you continue reading more and more verses light up until you don’t just get the flow of the story, but rather comprehend the perfect harmony, which makes up the whole entirety.

So it’s not just a wise crack to get over the difficulties of some parts, if it is suggested to let the light and insight of the clear and main parts, which make up the rule of faith and guide all exegesis, light up the obscure and darker passages.

Holy Scripture has always proven itself as comprehensible and clear. All supposed obscurity and darkness is not so much its own drawback, but rather rests in the eyes and heart of the reader. All misconceptions, contradictions and heresies projected into God’s Word – and even the most drastic lie, that God’s Holy Spirit did not reveal his truth aptly and comprehensibly in the holy Bible – are not to be blamed against God and his Holy Spirit, but rather fair and square at the doorstep of our human blindness and sinful rebellion, which impede our insight into God’s will and prompt us to disobey his clear commandments and doubt his gracious promises. The holy Word of God suffers the same predicament as the Son of God himself: For the faithful it is faithful and true, for the holy it is holy and sanctified, with the pure it is pure and salvific; yet with the wrongful it is wrong and for the children of darkness it is utter darkness and obscurity. Praise be to God, the Lord, who is the living source of goodness and in whose light we see the light + Amen.

Lord, our God! We thank you for your most holy Word, which shows us the way to you and can save us eternally. Grant that we respect, honour and love your holy Word in such a way, that we trust and believe it, gladly hear, read and learn it and thus be guided from one truth to the other until we see you from face to face, hear you yourself and thus come to the blessed peace you have promised us. Amen.  

God’s Word is our great heritage And shall be ours forever; To spread its light from age to age Shall be our chief endeavor. Through life it guides our way, In death it is our stay. Lord, grant, while worlds endure, We keep its teachings pure. Throughout all generations. (Nikolai F. S. Grundtvig, 1783-1872 tr Ole G. Belsheim, 1861-1925)

This is a rather free translation of Wilhelm Löhe’s devotion for the 10th January during the high holiday of Epiphany. It is found on Pg. 51 in Lob sei Dir ewig, o Jesu!   (Eternal Praise to you o Jesus!) edited by A. Schuster and published in the Freimund Verlag, Neuendettelsau 1949.

Löhe on 1. Peter 2,11

»Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul« (1. Peter 2,11 ESV).

from http://kwaweber.org/2013/04/23/lohe-on-1-peter-211-2/

The Apostle encourages the Christians to live chaste and pure lives. This does not only relate to the 6^th commandment, but goes further than that. Even the fifth and seventh commandments are directed against sinful desires, which war against our souls. Anger, revenge, theft, corruption and many other sinful desires war against our souls. They destroy the joy and gladness in our hearts. They work like frost in a spring night – destroying the blossoming fruits of the season in no time.

The word “war against your soul” can be understood in more than one way, but all will agree that the happiness of our souls and the associated holy lives are severely damaged by these sinful desires. How is the pilgrim to make his way home steadily if these things preoccupy him and keep him from going about his real business. Where is the joy and courage to come from to reach out to heaven if these things are pulling him back and holding him down? That is why we should concentrate our energy, strength and capacities to abstain from sinful desires, to rid ourselves of sinful ways and to put off all that holds us back and makes us sluggish in our Christian pilgrimage.

O holy God, who will be perceived only by those with clean hearts, grant us your Holy Spirit, that he cleanse our hearts from all sin and sanctify us through and through. Work in us both the will to do and the doing of good works. Strengthen, empower, confirm and capacitate us that we will be found pure and without blame on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Whoever strives to accommodate himself to this world, will be put to shame. The sinful world does not hold its promises. It is not dependable.

Whoever depends on God and the world, will limp on both sides. His heart will remain divided and won’t find peace. It’ll have trouble and pain – no end.

On God alone – that’s how it should be – he is the true sanctuary. Who trusts in God, builds on him alone, is blessed here and saved eternally. (Julius Sturm, 1816-1896)

This is a rather free translation of Wilhelm Löhe’s devotion for Tuesday after the third Sunday after Easter: Jubilate. It is found on Pg. 182 in Lob sei Dir ewig, o Jesu!   (Eternal Praise to you o Jesus!) edited by A. Schuster and published in the Freimund Verlag, Neuendettelsau 1949.

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Learning from Löhe. John 16,5-15

The following is the opening paragraph to Löhe's sermon on Cantate Sunday (The 4. Sunday after Easter):

1. This Gospel also moves us beyond the night when the Lord was betrayed, and we hear in it that the Lord as He announced His departure to the disciples, and interprets its blessed fruits. These words sounded in the ears of the disciples as an announcement of His sufferings and His death. What they did not understand and took from it only the conscience awareness of an impending separation, it could also be in that nothing but the un-loving message to recognize the separation that they had avoided at all happy. Therefore, they are the words of Jesus, sad and remain so, He may now just talking about the beginning of His departure, by His suffering, He may or blessed by the target and tell the end of it. They're like mourning people who were sitting not the eternal happiness of their dead, but only the separation and the loss of their own eye. Just as the disciples did not even ask: "Where are you going?" But their heart was full of sorrow, since they could not get over the one thought. "You go away from us, You forsake Your people" Of course, one can sympathize with their sadness, for it represents what they feel, the light before God: we cannot behave in such a selfishness manner and should rid ourselves of such sadness that Jesus' announcement evokes.

Learning from Löhe

Loehe has an awesome Holy Trinity Sunday sermon on John 3,1-15. Here is the seventh paragraph from his sermon:


"7. Praise God that we will not be dismissed by our ardent desire! The Lord calls the new birth from the Holy Spirit a new birth from the water, and that He relieve us of all embarrassment. For what we certainly meant by the new water birth is: it is the water of Baptism, the grace-filled water of life, the washing of rebirth in the Holy Spirit. This, water is available – and because we now know that the Holy Spirit works through the water, thus we know where the hem of the garments of Christ are that makes us recover from all of our diseases. Or about the water Baptism would it not be the Baptism of the Spirit? Are those people right, who tear apart the two things that Christ has joined , namely is it correct to separate Spirit Baptism from water Baptism and thusmake this thing unapproachable and but those times unapproachable and completely useless? Or vice versa: The Lord said that one must be born again of water and of the Spirit: Does He teach here about a double path of regeneration, one by water and another one by the Spirit, so that He who ascribes what is attributed to the Spirit, also the water? What kind of teaching should this be? No! Not vain the water and the Spirit is not treated, but the Lord sets together water and Spirit, because the child water belongs to the omnipotent Spirit, because water and the Spirit are together only one Baptism, a gracious water of life and a washing of new birth in the Holy Spirit. If we seek the Spirit by whom we are born anew: He’s in the water of Baptism. Where the water is, there the Spirit is. The water Baptism cannot be divorced from the Spirit Baptism. There is only one Baptism – of water and spirit. Whoever wants to be born again must be baptized. Here the path of regeneration is clearly described. This impossible, hidden secret has become for a man a sweet, easy road, for what is easier for people than the new birth, when one is baptized? The angels sing of this Baptism as the greatest act of God: but how easily do we come to this? How beautiful, how gently, the Lord moves along with His powerful water bath gives birth so that one is born anew, and He scarcely wakes a sleeping child from his bodily sleep!"

Learning from Löhe

Here is a brief paragraph (and Löhe's paragraphs are rarely this short!) from Wilhelm Löhe's sermon on Cantate Sunday for John 16,5-15:

,,3. Our congregations' mood might be different from the mood of Jesus' disciples of Jesus and so few also echo the comforting speech which the Lord has directed at His disciples, so that most Christians in our day might find: so I want to my do my duty, but you don't draw from the text the comfort that it administers nor do you include the outstanding thought of the near to present. The Lord, the Holy Spirit, knows your hearts, and He can lead you to a spiritual meal whereupon you dine on the sweet words of Jesus who is your Savior. He has recommended it with devout supplication!"

Long-awaited internet search strikes gold!

For several years, I have been searching the internet for sermons preached by Wilhelm Loehe. This morning I found a book that Google Books scanned into their online library of Loehe's Gospel sermons. I took a brief look at it, and was happy to have found it. Even more difficult to find on the internet are English translations of Loehe's sermons.

The only challenge with Google's scan is that the book used the old German typescript, which, if you aren't familiar with it takes some work figuring out some of the letters. I haven't read German texts using the old typescript for some time, but after a few minutes it became more familiar.

I'm interested in reading Loehe's sermons. One website dedicated to him describes him as a preacher in the style of Martin Luther. Loehe was known to preach without notes, only writing his sermon down after he had preached it. This is much different from Norman Nagel's style of reading his sermon verbatim from the pulpit. Nevertheless, Nagel is a great preacher.

Miracles and Prophecies

Wilhelm Loehe has a chapter in his book, Three Books Concerning the Church, entitled ,,Miracles and Prophecies are not a Mark of the Church". Loehe writes,

,,IT is certainly true that the miracles and prophecies of the prophets and apostles of the Truth have helped to show the poor children of men the way in which they ought to go. Of course, the Truth stood in no need of miracles and prophecies; it is superior to both; and eyes that are open recognize it in its proper being and in the mode of speech, which belongs to it alone, even without knowing it. But the simple, the prejudiced, the indolent and weak, do not lend their ear to the Truth unless they be aroused in some way. Such miracles and prophecies are especial gifts of the grace of God, and therefore we admit with the old Church-Fathers that the rapid progress of the Gospel without the signs and wonders that accompanied it would be impossible, except by a miracle which would have surpassed all other miracles.

,,After the Truth and the Church of the Truth had once been introduced into the world and had so demonstrated its truth to men for eighteen hundred years, neither miracles nor prophecies were needed any more; therefore miracles and prophecies have become less frequent. The preservation of the Church in spite the attacks of the devil and all his hordes, her un-weakened, fresh and ever-youthful continuance these eighteen hundred years, is miracle enough, if anyone were to think that the voice of the Truth in and for itself were not impressive and convincing enough. We must ever guard ourselves against being too easy misled by miracles, for there are Occurrences which happen quite like miracles and yet are not miracles, and therefore we must be able to distinguish miracles from wonderful and inexplicable events. Miracles in the proper sense are done by God only, either immediately, or mediately through His servants: Blessed is the Lord God, the God of Israel, Who alone does wondrous things (Psalm 72:18). On the other hand, false prophets, Antichrist, the beast, do wonderful things that resemble miracles and are called miracles in a wider sense (Matthew 24:24 ss; 2 Thessalonians 2:9; Revelation 13:13). If we admit that the arm of the Lord is not shortened; that He, wherever He sees best, in order to establish His heavenly Truth, can still do wonders; if we admit that there is nothing in Holy Scripture which says that miracles no longer can happen; yet it is very necessary to try the things which happen before our eyes, and to hold the universal rule that true miracles can occur only in the service of the true doctrine, and that without the true doctrine of God’s Word which is well known to us, they prove nothing at all (Deuteronomy 13:1-5).

,,And it is so with prophecies. We do not deny that the spirit of prophecy still lives, that He rules and works, that the gift of prophecy is still in the Church; but we hold that all prophecy must be according to the analogy of faith,—namely, in the New Testament, must be related to the Word of the Lord as the particular to the universal, as the conclusion to the proposition, as the bud to the plant. A prophecy that does not confirm the true doctrine, or that is not in connection with it, is empty and worthless (Deuteronomy 13:1-5). Further, a prophecy that rests on merely human foundations, or does not proceed from the Holy Spirit, even though it be ever so correct a conjecture, is not a prophecy; as, for instance, Balaam’s, Numbers 24, or Caiaphas’s, John 11:51, is no testimony to the man that said it. Therefore we must be just as critical of prophecies as of miracles, and must hold firmly that all prophecies must accord with the faith once delivered to the saints (Romans 12:7).

,,This distinction, which has to be made with reference to miracles and prophecies, shows that they cannot be characteristic marks of the Church. They need to be sifted and tried by the pure Word and the Scriptural Confession of the Church; they do not give a clear testimony; they, according to their nature, call to inquiry,—and this so much the more because it is not the Church only that has these uncertain witnesses; but heretics too, heathen, and Antichrist, boast and will boast of them" (Three Books 146-49).

The Lutheran Confessions in Augsburg Confession VII and VIII list the following as the true marks of the Church:

Preaching of the gospel (which is Christ crucified for us and our sins)

The Sacraments (which are Baptism and the Lord's Supper, but the Apology also allows for Absolution (Apology XIII.4) and Ordination (Apology XIII.11) to be acknowledged as sacraments).

The Practice of Weekly Communion

I was quickly browsing an article on Lutherische Beitraege last night (and wondering if my copy was in the mail -- today it arrived from Germany with a bonus: a copy of Martti Vaahtoranta's ,,Mission der Liebe" [Mission of Love]). The article is by Gottfried Martens and is called ,,The Practice of Weekly Communionion in the SELK". Here is a link the the original German and a Google translation into English. The english translation is not great, but it allows you to get the basic gist of Martens' essay.

Martens' second through fourth paragraphs focus on a practical issue regarding the Lord's Supper. How does a Lutheran pastor/church bring communion frequency into compliance with Apology XXIV.1 (For among us masses are celebrated every Lord's Day and on the other festivals, in which the Sacrament is offered to those who wish to use it, after they have been examined and absolved.)? Martens notes that in the SELK there are a number of Lutheran churches which only offer the Lord's Supper once a month, usually on the 2nd or 3rd Sunday of the month. I find the same in the LCMS: many churches do not offer the Lord's Supper each Sunday.

It is a long and patient process to move a congregation from its current practice to the confessional practice of every Sunday communion. At my church, the process has been going on for at least twenty years and by three different pastors. It involves lots of teaching and dealing with misconceptions and straw men arguments.

I suspect that the modern disdain for every Sunday communion comes from a latent Pietism among Lutherans. Most, but not all, pietistic Lutherans emphasized a knowledge of Jesus based on subjective experiences over objective doctrine and tended to demphasize the Sacraments, especially the Lord's Supper. As such, Pietism encouraged infrequent communion. This lead to some churches only celebrating the Sacrament at Christmas and Easter, while others celebrated it quarterly or once a month. The one person who bucked this trend was The Rev. Wilhelm Loehe. He held Pietism and Confessional Lutheranism in balance. He probably isn't the only Lutheran to have done so, and I suspect it was not an easy balance to maintain at times.

In the LCMS, pastors, theologians, and lay people have been trying for the past 30 years to steer attitudes back to the proper and confessional understanding of the frequency of the Lord's Supper. At times it seems to be like molasses rolling up a hill in January, but it is a task that is worth undertaking. Like the SELK, previous LCMS conventions have passed resolutions that commend congregations to celebrate the Lord's Supper every Sunday. I commend Dr. Martens for his insightful and hard-hitting article about the frequency of the Lord's Supper.

For more, check out:

St. James the Hoosier

The Blessings of Weekly Communion, The Rev. James Woelmer

The Fortunate and the Unfortunate

I was skimming through a few pages of Wilhelm Loehe's Three Books Concerning the Church (which, btw, Concordia Fort Wayne sells an English translation). I have Edward T. Horn's 1908 translation. His profound words on pages 120-21 are just as insightful today as they were 150 years ago. Loehe writes:

"The extension of the Church is just like everything that is spoken of as either fortunate or unfortunate. What man of experience, what man who ever has read the thirty-seventh or seventy-third Psalms, what Christian who, ripening under the Cross, has learned to understand the trials of Job and the words of Ecclesiastes, would ever draw a conclusion as to the worth or unworthiness of a man, a people, or a Church from their good or bad fortune? In that way he would condemn all the children of God from the beginning of the world. The Ever-blessed One upon the Cross and the Emperor Augustus of Rome, the martyrs and their tyrants,—these would have to change places with each other in the estimation of the world! The righteousness of God goes through life, and at the end His sentence is declared concerning everyone; but what man ever makes a completely right judgment here upon earth?—To have the majority of voices is accounted fortunate; to be in the minority, is considered a misfortune but both are in the hand of the Lord;—or should we not rather say, a wide extension of the Church is a gift of God’s grace to the world,—a decrease of her numbers is a misfortune to the world? The way of the Lord is to us dark, but His judgments are at the same time just and inscrutable; it is in His power to give to His Church in our days again victory and hosts of evangelists and confessors; He can lift up His lonely and lowly followers whom He has chastened and humbled, so that they can join in the song of the Mother of God. “Who is like unto the Lord our God Who dwells on high, Who humbles Himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth? He raises up the poor out of the dust and lifts the needy out of the dunghill; that He may set him with princes, even the princes of His people; He makes the barren woman to keep house and to be a joyful mother of children. Hallelujah!” (Psalm 113:5 ss.) “He is a God Who sets the solitary in families: He brings out those who are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land.” (Psalm 68:6) Who knows whether He has not already girded His sword upon His thigh with His glory and majesty? In His majesty will He ride prosperously, because of truth and meekness and righteousness, and His right hand shall teach us terrible things.” (Psalm 45:3,4.)"


Here are a few Loehe links you might find interesting:

Cyberbrethren

Wikipedia

Project Wittenberg