“Farewell” – St Philip and St James, Apostles

This sermon was preached by Dr Thomas Winger in Martin Luther Chapel of CLTS on 1 May 2013 for the festival of St Philip and St James, Apostles, with John 14:1-14 as its text.

Dear brothers and sisters of our Lord, Jesus Christ: “Farewell!” We have arrived at the last day of our academic year. We may see each other again—in fact, it’s almost certain, God willing, as you have exams to write, short term courses to complete, and a Call Service to attend. But this final Communion service of the year is a fitting place to bid you farewell. It marks out the parting of our ways. “Farewell” comes from the same root as the German word fahren “to travel”—and both, as your ears might tell you, come from the Greek word πόρος that means “ferry, or river crossing”. As a close friend or family member departed from your home, you might have walked with him for a while out of town. But the first river crossing on the route would draw a line between you. On the banks of the river the hugs and kisses were exchanged, the tears flowed, and as he embarked on the ferry you cried out to him, “ferry well”, “Farewell”—may God grant you a safe journey and good health while we are separated from each other.

We’re standing on those banks today, even if the ferry’s departure is delayed for a few weeks. Some of you will see each other again in September, but many will be separated for at least the next year, if not longer. Who knows what the Lord’s plans have in store for us? Perhaps today is the last time we’ll commune together on this earth. We face the near future with considerable anxiety. Vicarages in unknown places, summer jobs, a new marriage. Children returning from university, or perhaps leaving home for good. “We walk in danger all the way”, as the hymns sings. Anxiety about the future is a powerful factor in our lives. How will we pay off our debt? Will we have enough students to make the seminary viable? Will we get through our ATS visit next year? Will I get hit by a car on my way down the hill today—I tend to cause my wife more anxiety than she causes me. But I worry about her and her health, and I’m concerned about my children’s future. What about you? There are greater things to fear than your next exam.

For most people the most powerful fear is the death of a loved one. We’ve faced an emotionally draining month, as a friend recently put it. Two pastors lost their wives to cancer at far too young an age. An even younger woman in a nearby congregation lost her husband to sudden cancer and then was bereft of her grandmother within a week. An elderly pastor’s frail body breathed its last and was buried by his own parishioners. Those were farewells of a different sort, farewells with no thought of earthly reunions. And yet there was a definitive sort of joy that was exuded by those funerals—the joy of Easter, the joy of knowing the future, the joy of certainty that comes with the promise that those bodies so tenderly and tearfully laid in the ground will rise again, that Christ will call them forth as he called Lazarus from his tomb to reunite him with Mary and Martha, his sisters. The grief of separation was tempered by a confident faith in the Gospel promises. Jesus’ words and deeds were proclaimed to the gathered congregations, so that when they said “farewell”, it was more than a wish. It was a certain blessing rooted in Jesus’ pledge.

The lengthy sermon of Jesus that begins with today’s Gospel in John 14 and carries on through four chapters is often called His “farewell discourse”. He’d reached a river crossing that was hidden from their eyes, but painfully visible to Him. They didn’t understand what He was saying. “A little while and you are no longer seeing Me, and again a little while and you will see Me” (Jn 16:16), as we heard in last Sunday’s Gospel. What was He on about? Perhaps they recalled His passion predictions and feared that the time had now come when He would be separated from them by that great river of death. He caused them much grief with those words. Peter once before had rejected all thought of Jesus’ willing submission to suffering and death. Jesus’ rebuke, “Get behind Me, Satan!” (Mt. 16:23), had stung him painfully. Now Peter is more valiant, proclaiming fearlessly just before our text that he’d gladly lay down his life in order to follow Jesus where He was going (Jn 13:37). Were his words ironic? Did he realise that laying down his life was indeed the only way that he could follow Jesus on this journey? In any case, he was offering something he couldn’t give—and Jesus stung him again by predicting his threefold denial of his Lord on the eve of His crucifixion.

We often forget that that exchange with Jesus came immediately before these very familiar words from our text: “Let not your heart(s) be troubled; you trust in God, trust also in Me” (14:1). They were troubled by His farewell; they were troubled by the coming separation; they were troubled by His insistence that no human devotion could keep them together, and that Peter would deny the One whom he loved most deeply. They were troubled by the magnitude of that sin. And yet, even in the midst of such anxiety, Jesus proclaims that their hearts ought not be agitated. How can that be? “Believe in the Father; believe also in Me!” Is this His answer: trust Me, trust God? Perhaps. But there must be a reason to trust Him. So He doesn’t stop there. He opens the door ever so slightly to give them a glimpse of the Father’s plan. He goes to prepare a mansion for them in His Father’s house—well, not a “mansion” in the way we always imagined when we heard it from the Authorised Version, but a μονή, a “resting place”, where the heart can stop racing and the brain can stop worrying and the feet can stop running and we can enjoy what the Sabbath only faintly pictured on this earth. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord … , that they may rest from their labours” (Rev. 14:13)—the words of John’s Revelation that form the most poignant moment in the requiem masses of old. Like the Good Samaritan who picks up the dying man and takes him to an inn for rest and healing, promising to return for him later, Jesus goes forth to ready our resting place—and He promises to return for us.

Don’t let go of the second part of that promise. His departure to prepare a place for us with the Father in heaven gives us an incomplete hope. By itself it might simply mean that when we die, our souls will go to rest there, too. “He’s gone to be with Jesus”, we hear in many a funeral sermon. But that faint comfort falls far short of the robust claim Jesus makes in His farewell sermon. Jesus would not be comforted on the eve of His crucifixion merely by the knowledge that in death His human soul and His divine nature would rest with His heavenly Father, for without the promise of His living and life-giving, triumphant exit from the tomb His death would be a defeat. And so He also promises to us. He not only departs, but He will return for us. We not only die and rest with God, but He will come back to raise our mortal bodies to be like His immortal flesh. His promise to take us to be where He is doesn’t apply just to our souls; but as He rose and ascended bodily into heaven, so He promises to lift up our bodies to join Him and see His Father in the flesh. And in the meantime He promises that He will not be so far ahead of us on the road that we lose sight of Him. Thanks to the probing questions of the faint-hearted disciples Thomas and Philip, Jesus calls us to fix our eyes on Him, promising, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. … He who has seen Me, has seen the Father” (14:6, 9). That’s what we’re doing here—we’re fixing our eyes on Jesus, and in Him we’re seeing our heavenly end. He went away, but He also came back. He isn’t absent, but is with us on the path, calling us with His words and feeding us with His Body and Blood. “For Christ goes with us all the way—Today, tomorrow, ev’ry day!” (LSB 395:5). Those memorable words of Philip Nicolai were written by a pastor who’d seen his town devastated by the plague and who buried as many as 30 parishioners a day in his church cemetery. And yet he could still sing of such joy; for he knew that Christ, the resurrected One was with them in their suffering, had Himself died as they were dying, had risen as they would rise, and was coming back to claim them as His own:

What joy to know, when life is past, The Lord we love is first and last,
The end and the beginning!
He will one day, Oh, glorious grace, Transport us to that happy place
Beyond all tears and sinning!
Amen! Amen! Come, Lord Jesus! Crown of gladness! We are yearning
For the day of Your returning!” (LSB 395:6).

Paschal Candle Donated

A “Paschal Candle” could also be called an “Easter Candle”. The word “paschal” comes from “Passover [πάσχα]“, the great event of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt that reached a greater fulfilment when Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead. Jesus is our paschal lamb (I Cor. 5:7).

When Christ died upon the cross on the first Good Friday, the world was plunged into darkness for three hours. He rose on Easter morning at first light. Candles have always symbolised the light that Christ brought into the world (Jn 1:9), but at Easter they particularly recall the light of His resurrection life.

Many churches strip the altar at the end of the service on Holy Thursday and hold their Good Friday services without paraments or candles on the altar. At the Saturday service called the Easter Vigil it was traditional to bring “new fire” to a candle in the darkness of that most holy night while waiting for the resurrection of Christ on Easter morn. This new candle was known as the Paschal Candle. Some medieval examples were monumental, celebrating Easter with great exuberance: a candle at Salisbury Cathedral was 12 metres tall, and one at Westminister Abbey weighed over 700 kg. It should, in any case, tower above all other candles in the church to highlight this central mystery of our faith.

The Paschal Candle is traditionally decorated with symbols to remind us of Christ: the Alpha and Omega (Rev. 1:8; 21:6; 22:13), the year of our Lord to remind us that our times are always in His hands (Heb. 13:8), and a cross with five nails to represent His death and wounds for us. The candle is lit for the Easter season, from the Vigil until Pentecost, to symbolise the resurrected life of Christ, and placed at the north end of the altar. Subsequently it is placed by the font and lit at each Baptism to remind us that in Baptism we die and rise with Christ. Finally, it is placed at the head of the casket and lit for funerals to remind us that our bodies will rise because of their unity with Christ.

President Winger with Dr Torgerson

The seminary’s new paschal candle and stand were donated by Rev. Dr Wilhelm Torgerson and his sisters Susan and Anneliese in memory of their parents Anneliese and Ralph Torgerson. The oak stand was handcrafted by Mr Wally Reinhardt to match the existing seminary furniture. The candle chosen for this year includes the image of sheep to remind us of Christ’s resurrection appearance to Peter, saying, “Feed My sheep” (Jn 21:17).

Guild Day 2013

The CLTS Seminary Guild is by nature dedicated exlusively to supporting the students and mission of Concordia, St. Catharines. Each year they manage to renew their entire membership, collecting $5 from nearly 1000 people in the Lutheran churches of, primarily, Ontario and Western New York. This represents an enormous dedication, for which we are immensely thankful.

Twice a year the Guild members meet at the seminary for business, worship, edification, and a common meal. Over 100 filled the chapel for Matins, listened to the seminary choir, and were introduced to the current crop of students (above). Rev Kurt Reinhardt, of Trinity Lutheran Church, Kurtzville, was their special guest on Saturday, 13 April 2013. He captivated the audience with readings of his pastoral poetry and the stories that stand behind his growing body of hymnody. One of his hymns was included in Lutheran Service Book (616), and five other hymns were sung from a draft collection. Recollection of Christian suffering and Gospel comfort brought tears to many an eye.

The Guild carries out its projects almost entirely from membership fees. In the past year they have replaced the fridge in the student kitchen, contributed to 20 kneeling cushions for the chapel, and purchased a set of vestments in the five liturgical colours. They also give grocery gift cards and bookstore vouchers to the students each year.

At Saturday’s meeting the Guild adopted an ambitious plan to refurbish the furniture in the student lounge at a cost of about $8000. Although the resolution allow up to three years to pay for it, Guild members hope to raise the money much sooner through selling sponsorships of individual items of furniture. For $750 you can provide a couch, or for $250 provide an armchair. We’ll even take $375 for half a couch! Please contact Bonnie Stephenson (bstephenson@brocku.ca) if you would like to donate.

More pictures of Guild Day are in our photo album here.

Vicars’ Dinner with the LWMLC

“I didn’t know what a big deal this was,” was soon-to-be Vicar James Preus’s comment as he entered the fellowship hall at Pilgrim Lutheran Church in Hamilton, Ontario, last Friday evening (22 March). He and classmate, Basil Christoforidis, were guests of honour at this year’s Vicars’ Dinner sponsored by Lutheran Women’s Missionary League–Canada and prepared by women from at the Waterloo and Niagara zones.

The purpose of the dinner is to alert these future pastors to the wide range of activities and involvement that the LWML members are engaged in and to make them aware of opportunities for additional resources, such as devotional material, and support. Sample materials are provided for the students, their wives and children.

Iris Barta, the current LWMLC president, was on hand to illustrate ways in which their ladies  work with pastors, local congregations, districts and even the synod itself in providing funding, collected in “mite” boxes for various evangelism, mission, and social ministry opportunities.

Presentations to the students included clergy shirts, a gift certificate. and an additional $250 for the seminary food pantry.

James Preus with fiancée Theresa Stephenson; Iris Barta; Basil and Rebecca Christoforidis, Alexander and Angel

More photos are available here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/103000629941768945067/VicarsDinner2013

Lutheran Laymen’s League Presents Gifts

(l to r) Stephen Klinck, Andrew Cottrill, Paul Schulz, Shaun Grohn (absent: Christian MacLeod)

The cost of books is one of the weightier burdens in a seminary education. That’s why our students are grateful for the annual visit of Mr Stephen Klinck, managing director of the Lutheran Laymen’s League of Canada. Each year, courtesy of LLLC, he provides entering students with a copy of the standard critical edition of the Greek New Testament, and a name plate to remind them of the gift. This is vital for their biblical studies, and is needed by every student.

While at the seminary, Mr Klinck educates the students about the work of Lutheran Hour Ministries and the many resources they provide, both in print and online. We are grateful for their support of the seminary and of the church’s ministry. And the students always look forward to his visit for another weighty reason: pizza lunch!

The Conversion of St Paul

The Conversion of St Paul 2013 – Acts 9:1-22

The following sermon was preached in CLTS Chapel by Dr Thomas Winger on Friday, 25 January 2013.

Dear brothers and sisters of our risen Lord Jesus Christ: Today we celebrate “The Conversion of St Paul”—but we could as easily observe it as “The Call of St Paul” or “The Ordination of St Paul”. Precisely what is it that happened to him on the road to Damascus? Our adjunct prof, Dr Keller, once published an article on “The Conversion of Saul as Religious Experience”. He went so far as to dig up the opinion of Sigmund Freud, who saw the event not so much as a “conversion” but as a psychological reaction to the impossible legal demands of observant Judaism. Paul cracked under the pressure, so to speak—and Dr Keller remarks that Freud was not entirely wrong. Paul himself later wrote that his zealous attention to every detail of the OT Law was an abject failure. He couldn’t keep it perfectly, despite his credentials as a “Hebrew of Hebrews”. But Freud was wrong if he believed that Paul’s experience came from the inside, as if it were perhaps just a lightning storm that blinded him temporarily and made him reassess his spiritual direction. Both Paul the apostle and Luke, his Dr Watson, are adamant that it was Jesus Christ, the Lord, who appeared to him on the road to Damascus. Jesus called him to repentance for his vicious attacks on the disciples, which were, indeed, attacks on Jesus Himself: “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5). Those words must have wounded Paul deeply. As he spent three days in utter darkness, refusing to take any food or drink, he must have wrestled feverishly with the consequences of that revelation. He had been wrong. Jesus wasn’t a false teacher, but the very Son of God. What had he done?

This is the very definition of μετανοία “repentance, turning of the mind”. It wasn’t his idea, but something thrust upon him. He looked with horror on his own life. The Lord whom he’d rejected and persecuted grabbed hold of Paul with His Word and Spirit and turned him round to face the consequences. He led him through a three-day spiritual death and then raised him to life in the waters of Holy Baptism. Romans 6 arose from Paul’s personal experience. He knew what it meant to die and to rise with Christ. And the Lord also gave him the gift of blindness. A few years ago, preaching on a related text in Ephesians one, I noted the remarkable parallels between Acts 9 and John 9. In the Gospel Jesus met a man born blind and opened his eyes with water. He made mud from spit and clay and rubbed it on his eyes. He sent the man to the pool of Siloam to wash it off, and through the washing of water he was made to see. But more important than his newfound eyesight was the gift of spiritual seeing. He saw Jesus as the light of life, his Redeemer, the true Messiah. When the Pharisees excommunicated him from the synagogue for this spiritual crime, the man who’d been healed remarked with delicious irony that they were the ones who were truly blind. Their physical eyes were blocking the vision of their hearts. Though they could see the man Jesus, they couldn’t see their Messiah. And so Jesus told them that their guilt remained. “Blind guides”, they were. Those who wished to be the spiritual leaders of Israel couldn’t even find their own path to God.

Perhaps Jesus wanted Paul to think of that event when He struck him blind on the road to Damascus. Paul, the Pharisee, needed to be laid low. He needed to know that he was walking entirely in the wrong direction, heading away from God, persecuting his own Lord. Even the action of the disciples leading Paul away by the hand seems to be rich in meaning. He was totally helpless, unable to find his own way, needing to be brought to the Lord. He needed Ananias, the reluctant and terrified prophet, to come to him with the simple gift of the laying on of hands, the Word of promise and forgiveness, the washing of holy water that removed the scales from his eyes and let him see His God. Paul looked back on that event as a spiritual miscarriage, calling himself “one untimely born” (I Cor. 15:8), as we euphemistically translate it. He was killed in order to make him alive. He who had persecuted his Lord, he who was “the leastest of all the saints” (Eph. 3:8), was redeemed. And this, too, is μετανοία. This is conversion.

But another thing happened to Paul on that road to Damascus. He was given a mandate from the Lord Jesus, who said to him:

I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and bear witness to the things in which you have seen Me and to those in which I will appear to you, delivering you from the people and from the Gentiles—to whom I send you to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. (Acts 26:16-18)

In “light” of Paul’s own conversion experience, his marching orders as an apostle are full of double meanings. He whose eyes had been opened was to open the eyes of the Gentiles. He who had been forgiven for the most heinous of crimes was to proclaim forgiveness to the rebellious peoples of the world. He who was a Hebrew of Hebrews was sent to the Greeks. He who had disbelieved was to proclaim faith.

We cannot play off Paul’s conversion and his call into the apostolic ministry, as if we could have just one or the other. The faith he had received was the faith he was to hand on. And so it is also with you and me. Although Luther once quipped that the Word and sacraments would retain their power even if the devil stood in the pulpit and at the altar, we try not to call and ordain the devil’s servants. The conversion of St Paul is a remarkable tale of redemption that gives hope to the most rebellious sinner with its promise that God can call and forgive even such a one. But the story also teaches those of you who seek the office of the holy ministry that there are no spiritual shortcuts into the pulpit. Without discounting his immense intellect, his knowledge of the Scriptures, and his direct call from the risen Jesus, I think it’s fair to say that Paul’s own spiritual experiences deeply affected and moulded his proclamation of the Gospel. Justification by the very grace of God, through faith alone, apart from any obedience to the Law that we can muster, was for him an autobiographical reality. Is it also for you? Have you, like Luther, learnt the foolishness of self-confidence? Have you stopped trusting your own eyesight, and allowed the Word of Christ to expose you for what you are: a helplessly weak creature who desperately needs God’s help, who needs your heart opened to know that unfathomable power of the God who raised Jesus from the dead (Eph. 1:18-20)? If the Lord wished to use parrots in the pastoral office, he could have done so. But instead of automatons who merely say the words and deliver the goods, who know the liturgy by rote and can say mass in fifteen minutes flat, He wants men who have been St Pauled, who have had their pride pierced and their eyes opened to see Him. This is why these daily services of Word and Sacrament are at the heart of the seminary’s life and aren’t merely vocational training. We want you to know deeply the faith that you would proclaim. As the airplane safety drill tells the parents to put on their own oxygen masks before helping their children, as the pastor studies the Word of God and prays upon it before he dares preach it, as he communes himself before he communes his flock, so you must first be nourished by God’s gifts before you can presume to offer them to others.

Whether or not you are headed for the pastoral office, the Pauline pattern is for you. Although there will never be another St Paul, and there will never be a story quite like his, we don’t commemorate his conversion as a wholly foreign experience. You, too, have been struck blind by the light of the Lord’s glory; and you, too, have been given sight by the power of His Spirit. You, too, have died with Christ in your Baptism, have lain three days with Him in the tomb, and have risen to new life in Him. Arise, then, take food, and be strengthened (Acts 9:18b-19). Amen.

CLTS Welcomes Reformation Scholar, Dr Robert Kolb

For a fortnight in January Dr Robert Kolb has been our guest. If he was wary of a winter visit to Canada, he need not have been, after record warmth melted all the snow on the ground last weekend. Let’s call it a warm welcome!

Dr Kolb is not only the co-editor of the most recent critical translation of the Book of Concord, but also the author of nearly 20 books and more than 100 articles on Luther and the 16th-century Reformation theologians of our church. Retired from his post as Missions Professor of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, he still manages to spend a few months every year researching in the great library of Wolfenbüttel, Germany.

We are grateful that he agreed to visit St. Catharines to offer an elective course to our students on the exegetical work (biblical commentaries) of Luther and Melanchthon. The course not only had ten students around the table, but was joined over live internet video-conferencing by five students in Edmonton, a colloquy student in BC, two vicars in Saskatchewan, and a pastor from northern Ontario!

Dr Kolb also graciously offered a seminar on Luther’s Small Catechism for local pastors, parents, and catechumens, held at Resurrection Lutheran Church on Saturday. His warm personality, lively stories, and profound theological insights were well received.

We give thanks for our brother Lutheran from the LCMS (and Germany), and pray God grants him a safe return to his wife in St. Louis.

Support Us by Shopping at Amazon (really!)

The seminary’s bookstore is not seeing as much traffic as it used to, as students are increasingly choosing to shop online for the best prices. All our stock is currently 30-40% off as we seek to reduce our inventory. We plan in future to hold mainly hard-to-get textbooks for our students and second-hand books.

But there is a way for us to benefit still from this modern trend. We have created a virtual shop for both Amazon Canada and Amazon USA. Students are asked to purchase their textbooks through our shop so that the seminary receives a financial benefit from their purchases without the student paying any more for the book.

If you shop at Amazon, you can put your shopping to work for us as well. Anything you buy at Amazon can be credited to us if you enter Amazon through our seminary link. This applies to books, electronics, housewares, anything they sell. The price doesn’t go up; it costs you nothing more. But Amazon pays a portion of the proceeds to the seminary just for the referral.

So please, as you buy books, gifts, household supplies, think of how you can use this offer to the church’s advantage. Enter through our virtual bookstores:

Amazon Canada:  http://astore.amazon.ca/concoluthethe-20

Amazon USA: http://astore.amazon.com/concoluthet07-20

Or simply go straight to Amazon through these links:

These links will be permanently available on the bookstore page of our website:

http://www.brocku.ca/concordiaseminary/bookstore.php

Advent Newsletter 2012

The seminary’s Advent newsletter has just been published and is on its way to all congregations in Lutheran Church–Canada, as well to as our regular supporters here and in the US. You can jump the queue and read it online here.

Advent Lessons and Carols 2012

“I look from afar,” the officiant said as Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary began its annual service of Advent Lessons and Carols. “And lo, I see the power of God coming and a cloud covering the whole earth,” the 76 worshippers and musicians responded. In so doing they were literally “setting the tone” for the service which seeks to turn our attention away from all the ordinary holiday preparations and frustrations of the season and refocus them on the coming of our Lord, both in His incarnation and in His glory.

The lessons, read by members of the seminary community, were interspersed with selections of Advent music sung by a cantor, the Seminary Choir, the choir of Resurrection Lutheran Church, St. Catharines, and the assembled worshippers. Violin, brass, and even a few bells accompanied the hymns. The high point of the service is the Gospel read from the altar by the presiding minister, Dr John Stephenson this year, followed by the collect for Christmas Eve.

Although the emphasis is on awaiting Christ’s coming, the closing responsory also called for other actions from His people: “Stand still, and you shall see the salvation of the Lord,” may have been yet another reminder neither to rush the Christmas celebrations nor to overlook the real reason for this season. And the worshippers’ response reminded us that God does not lose sight of us, either, in this holiday season: “Tomorrow, go forth, and the Lord, He will be with you.”

Special thanks to all who participated and attended in person and to the many people who tuned in to the live-stream broadcast. If you missed it, you can still enjoy it by clicking on this link:  https://new.livestream.com/accounts/771825/events/1690201 (available until 20/12/12)–and make sure to put in on your calendar for next year (either the first or second Sunday in Advent, TBC).

Blessed Advent and Christmas to all!