Third-last Sunday in the Church Year

“The first thing necessary then, especially for those who are cold and negligent, is for them to reflect seriously and to awake. For this is undoubtedly true,—as I have indeed experienced in myself, and as everyone will discover in himself,—that if we thus separate ourselves from the enjoyment of the Sacrament, we daily become the more careless and cold, and finally neglect it altogether. But if the Eucharist is more frequently used, we may examine our hearts and our consciences, and conduct ourselves as persons who sincerely desire to be in favor with God: yes, the more frequently we enjoy it the more the heart is warmed and animated, so that it may not grow entirely cold” (LC V, 53-54, Henkel p. 539-540).

Reformation Day / All Saints Day

“Now if Christ can suffer and die on earth, even though he is at the same time in the Godhead and is one person with God, why should he not much more be able to suffer on earth, though he is at the same time in heaven? If heaven prevented it, much more would the Godhead prevent it. Indeed, what if I said that not only Christ was in heaven when he walked on earth, but also the apostles and all the rest of us mortals on earth, insofar as we believe in Christ? That would kick up a rumpus in Zwingli’s magician’s kit! He would start drawing conclusions and ask, “Is there also sin in heaven? Is there error in heaven? Does the devil assail us in heaven? Does the world persecute us in heaven? Do flesh and blood tempt us in heaven? And so forth. For we sin and err constantly, as we learn from the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Forgive us our trespasses’ [Matt. 6:12], and we are continually being assailed by the devil, the world, and the flesh. In this way you would place the devil and the world and flesh and blood in heaven. See what you have got yourself into, you mad Luther! Phooey! Won’t you ever learn that our spirit is no buffoon? Now, there you have it!”

What shall I do with him? St. Paul has misled me when he said, Ephesians 1[:3], “God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,” and again, chapter 2[:5 f.], “He has made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places,” and in Colossians 3[:3] he says, “Our life is hid with Christ in God,” which certainly means in heaven” (Luther’s Works, vol. 37, p.223).

In response to the fanatics who claimed the Christ’s Body was at the right hand in heaven, and thus couldn’t be in the Lord’s Supper on earth: “This is a lofty subject,” you say, “and I do not understand it.” Yes, this is my complaint too, that these fleshly spirits who scarcely know how to crawl on the earth, untested in faith, inexperienced in spiritual matters, wish to fly aloft above the clouds and measure and judge these profound, mysterious, incomprehensible matters not according to God’s words but according to their crawling and walking on the earth. They will fare as Icarus did in the poet’s story. For they too have stolen others’ feathers—i.e. texts of Scripture—and fastened them on with wax—i.e. adjusted them to their own interpretation with reason—and now they fly aloft. But the wax melts, and they fall into the sea and drown in all kinds of errors.

Christ says, “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe me, how can you believe it if I tell you heavenly things?” [John 3:12]. Behold, this is entirely an earthly and bodily thing, when Christ’s body passes through the stone and the door. For his body is an object which can be laid hold of, as much so as the stone and the door. Still, no reason can grasp how his body and the stone are in one place at the same time when he passes through it, and yet neither does the stone become larger or expand more, nor Christ’s body smaller or more compressed. Here faith must blind reason and lift it out of the physical, circumscribed mode into the second, uncircumscribed mode which it does not understand but cannot deny” (Luther’s Works, vol. 37, p.220-221).

november-december-2016-newsletter