Martin Luther was a man who was a theologian and a pastor at the same time.  He wrote with that heart of a man who is communicating to real people struggling in a real world.  He wrote as a man who knew his own struggles so powerfully.  So it is fitting that this book on his theology comes to a close with a topic that provides such comfort- prayer.

We can talk about God all we want, but theology doesn’t become real until we talk to God.  And Luther finds incredible comfort in the way his theology,what he’s learned about God, helps him feel like he can actually talk to God with hope.

What is the core of Luther’s theology- the idea of gift, of promise, that God wants to save.  You’ve probably heard of the unequal exchange, that God exchanges his righteosuness for our sin.  Here’s how Bayer applies this core of Luther’s theology to prayer.

‘The unequal exchange implies a concept about God, which thereby indentifies the nature of God as that which participates in the troubles of human beings.  His authority is not dstant from the world, without emotion; instead, it is of the type that encourages and empowers one to pray in Christ.”

This is what is so powerful about our God and our prayers.  He is not some distant force, but he is a person who truly loves us and wants to talk to us.  Take the person you know who loves you more than anyone else in the world and multiply that a hundredfold, then keep going, that’s how much God wants to care for you and talk to you.

And because of his sacrifice in Christ, we know we can go before him, not as scared peons, but as his beloved children, ones who really can expect a heartfelt response.

Go ahead, do it right now.  Take what you’ve learned about God, and now use it to talk to him. . .

“But the triune nature of God can be comprehended only as an unfolding of the pure gospel…”

This is good stuff.  Think about it.  God reveals himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  He always has been these three persons in one God and he always will be.  But the fact that he always has, is now, and always will be these three-in-one says something really important.

It says that from the very beginning the Gospel was written into God.  He created out of grace, that’s the nature of God.  While Son and Spirit are huge in creation, we still speak about it centrally as the work fo the Father.  Yet there are two other persons.  And what’s the “central” work of the Son- redemption.  So in the fact that Jesus exists as part of the trinity, that means that from the beginning, from the very nature of God, we can assume grace and redemption.  It’s not just a plan God comes up with after he creates humans, it’s something that is part of his very nature.  You can continue that thought with the Holy Spirit.  His “central” work is that of sanctification.  Again, this is about bringing us to faith today, but also about the consummation and completion of our holiness on the last day.  The work of the Trinity is about Gospel from creation, to redemption, to the end of this age. 

Isn’t that kind of cool? . . .   To think that from before creation- Gospel, creation, redemption, sanctification, and the end/new creation is written into the nature of God.  That’s who he is by definition.  That’s what Trinity is.

Well, I thought this was interesting.  I hope it does something for some of you as well.

Have you ever compared yourself to the Sermon on the Mount?  I remember really struggling with these texts as I was growing up.  In particular for some reason I remember a time in Middle School.  The angst of adolesence combined with burgeoning Biblical knowledge.  I guess we’d been studying the Sermon on the Mount and concepts like “turn the other cheeck”, “love your enemy”, and “lend without expecting repayment” were floating in my head.  What’s that look like for a middle schooler?  I remember wondering if that meant I needed to keep giving money to the kid who would always ask in the cafeteria so he could buy another bag of chips?  He never paid anyone back, but did I need to keep lending anyway?  Would about bullies.  As the kid dumped my books, should I be speaking some kind of blessing to him?  It seemed I definitely shouldn’t report such incidents.

Those were real struggles for meI don’t think I ever quite resolved them in my head.  I’m not sure if they were unique to me or not.  And I’m not sure I’ve completely resolved them yet, but Martin Luther’s theology of the two realms does help some.  To put it quite simply, Luther says that God rules over both the spiritual and the temporal, but he does so in different ways.  He rules the temporal with the law and authority.  He rules over the Spiritual with grace and the Word.  The Christian lives in both simultaneously.  He is a Christian and called to live in the world as a Christian, sacrificing, but he is also a person who holds offices and roles, in which he may have to use authority and law.

So what’s this have to do with lending money?  Well, the Christian is in a difficult situation there.  On one end, my adolescent self should be willing to sacrifice for others, forgive them their sins, etc.  To conquer evil with good.  At the same time, my adolscent self did have a role in that world.  I was a student in a school and had a responsibility within that school toward my fellow students and even the authorities in that school to report misdeeds or prevent students from being cruel or taking advantage of others.

So what should I have done?  Well, walk the tight rope I guess.  There are places there for being somewhat of a martyr, and letting your grace and forgiveness be a witness.  But at the same time, my responsibilty toward others needed to move me at some point to stand up and not allow the misdeeds or irreponsibility to continue into perpetuity.  That wouldn’t be good for any of my neighbors.  So I suppose lending once or twice without repayment isn’t so bad, but letting that person continue to do so isn’t fair to them or others they might try to take advantage of.  Letting one book dumping go with silence and forgiveness maybe, but not allowing the person to become a bully emboldened to hurt others.

Now that’s 13 year old Dan.  Obviously our problems today are even more complicated.  From how we individually deal with pan handlers to how we deal with poverty as a society.  From how we deal with misdeeds within our places of work to how we as a society deal with criminals and even foreign countries.  It all escalates in level of difficulty but essentially the same principles apply.

Hopefully an interesting thing to get you thinking as we approach National Day of Prayer tomorrow.  Please pray for our country and our leaders as they seek to apply this wisdom.

But what about what Jesus said in Mk 7:9-13, specifically, “Honor your father and mother, and anyone who curses father or mother must be put to death.”

So which is the best form of good works? Where is true discipleship to be found?

Luther admits that there is a tension in these passages and in the discipleship of a Christian.  One must walk the “mountain ridge” as Bayer describes Luther’s handling of this issue.  What Luther does well to help guide us, however, is in the way he drives us to view it all through the lens of the 10 Commandments.  The commandments are all God’s will. They are given to us and thus should govern normal life.  As you explore the second table of the commandments, we see God’s will involves honoring family, taking care of possessions, our bodies, spouses, etc, not abandoning them.  Yet there may be places in life where second table and first table come into conflict.  If there is someone calling us to violate the first table, our duty to honor God above all things, then that person or thing must be cast aside.  That’s what he means by “hating father and mother”.  As much as you should love your family. As much as you should treasure those things God has called you to steward in this world, if they are getting in the way of faith in God, they are to be set aside.

But Luther insists this is not the normal way of things.  In fact, he states that the first table flows into the second table of the commandments.  You can see this in the way he explains every commandment.  How do they all start?

“We should fear, love, and trust in God, so that we. . . “. 

Isn’t that beautiful?  Christians aren’t called to either be real disciples who abandom earthly stuff so we can be true spiritual heroes, or just regular folks who have trouble hanging onto God.  That’s a false dichotomy.  Instread we are called to love God so much that we are then moved into doing the good works called for in normal daily life.  Our praise of God on Sunday and on a daily basis should move us into love of spouse, children, coworker, etc.

Such are the good works and discipleship of a Christian.

There was quote by Bayer early on that seemed to do a great job of getting the discussion going in the right direction.  “The church is neither as visible as the Republic of Venice nor just “internally” hidden within the individual, which is a widely held misunderstanding in neo Protestantism.”

Again, the Lutheran view here holds the two sides in tension!  It’s so much easier to understand it if we go to one extreme or the other, but we have to resist this because it plays out in some very problematic ways.

Think, if the church is all about the visible, what happens.  Well, this is the easy thing to criticize and our world today likes to do so.  We criticize communities that are more focused on buildings than people. We criticize churches that say they’re the only way to God.  We criticize churches that insist the only path to God is within their walls. We criticize churches where the people seemingly leave thier faith at the door and have little impact on people or their communities.

And so we fly in the other direction.  Church is what’s inside you.  It’s hidden.  No one can know where the church is or isn’t people say.  I have my own faith and so that’s good enough.  I don’t need to go to church to be a Christian.  We know all these statements, but the reality is that these are off base as well.  There are nuggets of truth inside, but the church isn’t this invisible either.  Scripture insists that people gather together.  Scripture insists that God wants a community of believers, not just some lone rangers.  Scripture insists that there are some signs that show us where the church is.  So what’s the answer you ask?

Luther does a great job of walking the line and tension between the visible and the invisible.  Foundationally speaking, he emphasizes that the Church is the place where people are gathered in the Word.  He would add the sacrments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but really he states that these are just really visible applications of the Word, so the Church is where the Word is.  We can see the Word.  We can hear it. We can see people gathered around it.  That’s not invisible. And God promises that he will be where his Word is being taught and preached.  So yes, we can see where the Church is.  Interestingly, while Luther focuses on Word and sacraments as the chief marks, he’s even willing to say that one could probably add other marks or characteristics that help us define church.  He adds confession and absolution, offices (pastoral office and other church leadership positions), prayer and praise of God, and also cross and suffering.

While these marks don’t tell us with certainty who’s part of the Church and who isn’t, they do give us something solid on which to stand.  If the Word is being preached purely.  If the sacraments are there.  If we see these other characteristics as well, we know God promises to be there.  That’s important.  If we fly toward the individualism of today and just try to rest on the hidden church, you leave yourself with all kinds of doubt.  You lose many of these marks.  And why would you do that?  Why wouldn’t you want to have the fullness of Church.  The great thing is that when we’re talking with others about church and they bring up the criticisms of church, we again simply go to the marks.  You can agree that there are churches where these things aren’t happening, and then you recommend that they find a church that is active in the Word, giving the sacraments, preaching forgiveness, praying and praising, and taking up the cross to care for the world.

In this way, we live in the tension.

The Holy Spirit comes through physical means.  He comes through external things.  Things like words in a Bible.  Things like water. Things like wine and bread.  This week I was at a conference and someone noted, “he comes in physical things that are all pretty cheap even.”  Isn’t that amazing.  That God would pick these humble things to bear the Holy Spirit to us.

We’re kind of used to wanting to find God in the big.  We want him to be in the most beautiful sunrise.  In the mountain heights.  In some kind of inward spiritual experience.  Well, God can be present in such things in a way, but when you read Scripture Luther points out that the only places God promises to be found, at least found in a way that saves a person, is in the Word and in his sacraments.  After all, nonChristians can sense there is a god in the sunrise, but they don’t know that to be the God.  In fact, their sense of godliness in nature has led many to worship nature itself as god rather than to realize the true God behind it’s creation.  That may not be our temptation today, but what we find in the modern world is just as dangerous.  Today, there seems to be a feeling, and you can find this within Christianity as well, that physical things like words in the Bible or simple water just isn’t good enough.  We want the spiritual high.  We want to “feel” something stirring inside.  We need some kind of spiritual experience to know the Holy Spirit is with us.

God doesn’t promise that.  What God promises is that we will find him in these physical means.  And he does that for a reason.  While our experiences, spiritual feelings, highs, etc, can be called into doubt, my baptism cannot.  The Lord’s Supper cannot.  The words of the Bible are there and I heard them and what they said. 

So Luther says don’t play the game.  Don’t try to play the spiritual vs. physical game where our culture today seems to feel like “spiritual is better”.  Don’t do it!!!  Our God created both and he celebrates both, as he conveys to us spiritual reality in the physical.

“For human love comes for ones who hold another worthy of love already.”

This is true.  Think about how you pick a potential spouse.  You look for someone with the traits you want.  You look for someone who you want to love.  Someone who loves you in a deep and profound way.

But would about God’s love and grace?  ”. . . that happy exchange, in which the rich, noble, righteous bridegroom Christ takes as spouse the poor, shamed, evil little whore [cf  Hos 1-3] and acquits her of all evil, decorating her with all good things.  Thus it is not possible that the sins will damn her; now they lie upon Christ and have beeen swallowed up by him.  She thus has such a rich righteousness from her bridegroom that she can survive once again against all sins- even if they would lie upon her.  Pual speaks about this in 1 Cor. 15 “Praise and thanks be to God, who has given us such a conquest inChrist Jesus, in which death is swallowed up, togethr with sin.’”

That’s the beauty of Lenten reflection on Jesus’ passion and Easter resurrection.  To realize God’s love for you and how far away you were, far enough away from Christ that Luther is bold to call us “whores”. 

One day we’re looking at Jesus on the cross and realizing just how much sin, my sin, that he’s bearing up there.  This Good Friday I watched as image after image showed Jesus as he was praying in agony, betrayed, arrested, beaten, and crucified. And I sat there and thought about how he had to do it because of my sins.  That’s a load.  Why does he do that for me?

Becuase he is going to recreate me on Easter.  We look for the loveable to show love, but Jesus takes those who throw their sins on his back and he loves them so that he can create something new out of them on Easter morning.  We’re moved from thinking about our sin, to how the love of Jesus creates something new. 

That’s what Jesus’ love and grace is.  His is the love that loves those who hate him.  On the night of the passion he’s loving those who betray him and mock him.  He’s loving me thousands of years later as I betray him with my sins.  And he does it so he can create something new out of those people and myself.

As Luther’s hymn states-

Dear Christians, one and all rejoice, with exulatation springing,

and with united heart and voice and holy rapture singing,

Proclaim the wonders God has done, how his right arm the victory won. What price our ransom cost Him!

Yes.  I guess I do.  As things lay out actually, this week we get God’s wrath and evil and next week his mercy and love.  That works pretty good for pre and post Easter reflection on Luther.

To speak about God’s wrath and evil Luther starts by distinguishing between two types of wrath. First, there’s the understandable wrath of God.  People do bad things and they meet punishment.  Often we see God pursuing punishment as a means to wake them up and turn them back to him.  We see this all over the Bible.  Great examples are found in Jonah or constantly througout Judges and the Kings.

But there’s another side to wrath.  There’s the fact that we deal with wrath and evil even when we seemingly haven’t brought it upon ourselves.  Think Job.  What do we do with those hard questions that come up over and over for us as Christians?  Is God at work in sinners?  Does God work thorugh evil?  Is there predestination to hell?

Most theologians answer this question in some kind of a logical fashion.  To simplify, God is all-loving so he can’t have anything to do with evil.  Or on the opposite end, God is all-powerful so he must be behind it all including sending some to hell.  Double predestination.

Luther refuses to be backed into such corners.  He won’t give up any truth within Scripture.  He knows God is all-powerful.  He knows God is all-loving.  He knows God must be in all and work through all.  So what does Luther do?

He distinguishes between two sides of God. There is the revealed side of God.  That is the God we know in Jesus. That’s the God we see saving Abraham and delivering Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt.  This is the God who speaks to us and helps us understand his love. But there is also another side of God, the hidden side of God.  This is the side of that doesn’t answer our big questions about evil.  This is the side of God that doesn’t say why it exists, where it came from, why he would allow it, why it happens to me, etc.  We don’t like that.  The temptation when we see and are dealing with evil is to question God, much like Job.  Is it you God?  Are you the one behind this?  It can push one to even get so far as to ask something like, “Are you really God or are you actually the Devil too?”  (If you’re a fan of Lost these questions are kind of being raised and it will be interesting to see where they go)

So what do we do?  Well, for Luther the answer is that we don’t deal with the hidden side of God.  When we come to these questions, and we will, Luther certainly did, we do what our characters in the Bible did.  We lament. We pray the psalms.  We confess that we don’t get it rather than trying to speak for God about this and almost certianly getting it wrong.  And after we lament, we flee to the revealed God.  We go to God who creates out of love.  We know that. We pray to the God who saves people over and over and seemingly is constantly reachout out. We go to the God who calls himself Father and says he wants our prayers.  We go the God who said you will know me best in Jesus, Jesus who was willing to die for us. 

So yes, there is a side of God we don’t understand, but that’s the reality.  It’s not for us to understand this side of heaven. 

So think on this as you worship this week. As you come to Good Friday, think on Jesus’ words from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Even Jesus dealt with the hidden side of God through lament.  And as you think on what Jesus did on the cross, remember that’s the side of God he wants you to see and know.  Our God is willing to die for us.  For our sins.  That’s what we need to know.  It is finished!

“Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him
endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Himself,
so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.”
Hebrews 12:2-3

Let us meditate a moment on the passion of Christ. Some do so falsely in that they merely rail against Judas and the Jews. Some carry crucifixes to protect themselves from water, fire, and sword, and turn the suffering of Christ into an amulet against suffering. Some weep, and that is the end of it. The true contemplation is that in which the heart is crushed and the conscience smitten. You must be overwhelmed by the frightful wrath of God who so hated sin that he spared not his only begotten Son. What can the sinner expect if the beloved Son was so afflicted? It must be an inexpressible and unendurable yearning that causes God’s Son himself so to suffer. Ponder this and you will tremble, and the more you ponder, the deeper you will tremble.

Take this to heart and doubt not that you are the one who killed Christ. Your sins certainly did, and when you see the nails driven through his hands, be sure that you are pounding, and when the thorns pierce his brow, know that they are your evil thoughts. Consider that if one thorn pierced Christ you deserve one hundred thousand.

The whole value of the meditation of the suffering of Christ lies in this, that man should come to the knowledge of himself and sink and tremble. If you are so hardened that you do not tremble, then you have reason to tremble. Pray to God that he may soften your heart and make fruitful your meditation upon the suffering of Christ, for we of ourselves are incapable of proper reflection unless God instills it.

But if one does meditate rightly on the suffering of Christ for a day, an hour, or even a quarter of an hour, this we may confidently say is better than a whole year of fasting, days of psalm singing, yes, than even one hundred masses, because this reflection changes the whole man and makes him new, as once he was in baptism.

If, then, Christ is so firmly planted in your heart, and if you are become an enemy to sin out of love and not fear, then henceforth the suffering of Christ, which began as a sacrament, may continue lifelong as an example. When tribulation and sickness assail you, think how slight these are compared to the thorns and the nails of Christ. If you are thwarted, remember how he was bound and dragged. If pride besets you, see how the Lord was mocked and with robbers despised. If unchastity incites your flesh, recall how his flesh was scourged, pierced, and smitten. If hate, envy, and vengeance tempt you, think how Christ for you and all his enemies interceded with tears, though he might rather have avenged himself. If you are afflicted and cannot have your way, take heart and say, “Why should I not suffer when my Lord sweat blood for very anguish?”

Astounding it is that the cross of Christ has so fallen into forgetfulness, for is it not forgetfulness of cross when no one wishes to suffer but rather to enjoy himself and evade the cross? You must personally experience suffering with Christ. He suffered for your sake, and should you not suffer for his sake, as well as for your own?

Two texts in the Old Testament apply to Christ. The first is, “Thou art fairer than the children of men” (Ps. 45:2), and the second is, “He hath no form nor comeliness” (Isa. 53:2).

Evidently these passages must be understood in differing sense. To the eyes of the flesh, he was the lowest among the sons of men, a derision, of the suffering and to the eyes of the spirit there was none fairer of Christ lies in than he. The eyes of the flesh cannot see this. What, then is the nature of this beauty? It is wisdom and love, light for the understanding, and power for the soul, for in suffering and dying Christ displayed all the wisdom and the truth with which the understanding can be adorned. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in him, and they are hidden because they are visible only to the eye of the spirit.

The greater and the more wonderful is the excellence of his love by contrast with the lowliness of his form, the hate and pain of passion. Herein we come to know both God and ourselves. His beauty is his own, and through it we learn to know him. His uncomeliness and passion are ours, and in them we know ourselves, for what he suffered in the flesh, we must inwardly suffer in the spirit. He has in truth borne our stripes. Here, then, in an unspeakably clear mirror you see yourself. You must know that through your sins you are as uncomely and mangled as you see him here.

If we consider the persons, we ought to suffer a thousand and again a thousand times more than Christ because he is God and we are dust and ashes, yet it is the reverse. He who had a thousand and again a thousand times less need, has taken upon himself a thousand and again a thousand times more than we. No understanding can fathom nor tongue can express, no writing can record, but only the inward feeling can grasp what is involved in the suffering of Christ.

One.  What would your reaction be to that number?

Well, this is kind of a trick question. Clearly there are many different types of sin, whether they’re of the 7 Deadly category or something else, but as we read Luther he does a good job of helping us understand that when you boil it down, there is one real sin- unbelief.  Wrath, lust, pride, envy, etc can all be traced to a heart that has broken away from God.  And in reality, all these sins can also be avoided on a purely legalistic basis.  Not that a person will utterly avoid them, but there are many examples of people who lead seemingly upright lives when you evaluate them by the basis of the obvious sins.

But when we’re talking in God terms, we need to think about sin as faith or unfaith.  When God speaks his, “I love you in Christ” to you, if you believe and trust that promise, you are a loved one.  If you don’t believe and trust, then you are not.  You are a sinner.  And when you think about it on that stark of a level, the reality is that you’re one or the other.  You can be fighting through many sins, but if you’re a loved one, that’s what defines you.  You can look to all the world like a saint, but if you will not trust God’s promise, then you are a sinner.

Now a person can take that too far.  Certainly God wants his loved ones to be moved by his love to avoid sin.  And he certainly tries to restrain evil in the world, even amongst those who are not his children, but there is something very confrontational when we think about sin at this level.

You know what you are.  You likely know what those around you are.  You can take that two ways.  One, you can be inspired to save them from a life of sin.  And two, you can deeply desire for others to know what it is to be a loved and forigven one of God.  Let’s pray that both instincts would inspire us in our daily lives and witness.