Surviving the flood of the Pandemic in the Nave, part 3

 

Part III.

We left off with the promise that our heavenly bridegroom, Jesus Christ, has given to his bride, the Church, what is necessary to understand the Law of God as well as (and more importantly) his precious gifts of the Gospel in the Word and Sacrament.  So what are the Churches through the United States and the World going to do with this awesome responsibility?

When the pestilence started churches across the United States had a clear opportunity to proclaim Christ.  We were given the opportunity to stand up to the fear that the devil was leaking into our culture and too many capitulated and did nothing.  We said, “Okay, let’s close our doors and we will wait for the world to tell us it is okay to open our doors again.”  Even in our LCMS there was a surrendering of the gifts and sadly many have still defended the situation with “we were living in the unknown.” 

When our churches needed guidance, very few of our leaders encouraged us.  Our synod even misused Luther’s writing on the plague and whether one may flee and said that Luther permits us to flee, which was only a half truth. 

So many churches ran and continue to run to science and said “See, we are doing the right thing.”  They then appeal to technology and said, “We can hold church this way.”  Too many have used the current pestilence to think we need to come up with new ways to stay relevant in society.  To reach the lost they have claimed we need to put all of our church services online.  Sadly, some have even errantly invented new practices by which our local churches will continue to suffer from for years to come. 

In so doing we have dismissed the very words of Scripture, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.  By treating the Church as the rest of the world, our local churches have made common the holy things of God.  They have thrown the pearls before the swine and ignore the very essence of what the Church is, the gathering together of saints.  We are called to gather together physically as Hebrews 10:24-25 teaches, “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

Churches have taught their people to ignore and downplay the very medicine of immortality. Some false proclaimed a “Eucharistic fast” (Despite Scripture never saying we should fast from the life giving and sustaining food of Jesus.)  We have allowed commercialism to take over and turn the Holy Supper of our Lord into Lunchables.  Ad worse yet, have dared to reconstruct the Lord’s Supper into something anyone can do from the comfort of their living room couches or anywhere they can get internet connection.

Human reason has taken over how to deal with the pestilence rather than the holy Word of God.  The flock is full of weak and sick sheep and when they needed most to be fed the Holy Word and Sacrament, too many pastors have pretended as though we didn’t have the answer or were to paralyzed with fear of sickness or of offending the people. So they made stuff up on the fly, we engaged in virtual church, and sadly as I already stated, some have even attempted to promote and engage in virtual consecration and when called to question, rather than repent, they defended themselves in the typical blame game begun with Adam and Eve. 

True enough, this is the natural regression, for we are conceived in sin.  But rather than the Church call us to repent.  The Church has relied on the superiority of our medical technology and man was not prepared for a global pandemic.  Too many have placed their trust in princes and showed that blind trust by obeying man rather than God closing our doors and our Altar and have received our due reward.  We have forgotten that we are led astray not just by the devil but also by the world and our own sinful flesh.  We have refused to believe God’s Word and we have made the world our pastor and it teaches the way of the devil.

The Corona Virus taught us to trust ourselves and our own reason and strength, thus completely undermining the blessed return to Word AND Sacrament ministry that our Lutheran forefathers have fought for by literally bleeding and dying for the truth.  The faithful Churches have become like Noah preaching to a world blinded by the fear of succumbing to disease and cow-towing to a false teacher with the misappropriation of Bible passages to our governments.  

The Government and science has shown us that it wants to be god by threatening to close our doors, and fine or imprison our pastors and people if we do not do what it says.   Especially now they seek to hurt our people by affecting their very means of living, by taking away their jobs by fining businesses into submission or out of business.  Or as this woke nation  makes everyone fear that if they do not walk the line they will be next to be driven through scandal or destruction of property for not doing what they demand.

            Medicine too, through this, has been shown as the god whom we adore as we seek its opinion. Don’t get me wrong, medicine is a tool to help preserve the body and therefore is part of the fifth commandment, but again without being firmly rooted in loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind, we have instead allowed “science” to control us as we attempt to play god by forestalling death at ALL costs.  The science behind this very disease and how to cure it is lost in the pharmaceutical power grab to control your very life as governments bow to mammon and the actual story has become convoluted and people are conned into believing that there is only one narrative and mistreating anyone who says there is another way.  The ever prevalent, almighty dollar, has consumed our beliefs as we seek to pad our pockets and be able to live a lie luxury with bigger barns and a life of ease.

It is not wrong to use the gifts of our God to help keep us alive, as Paul even tells Timothy to drink a little wine to help calm his stomach. Yet when the only goal is to forestall death for the sake of keeping grandma alive at all costs, even at our inability to see them or to have other disease worst than this cause them great suffering and harm that we cannot cure we have clearly let the fear of disease and the fear of death and a heathen culture run our decision making. 

Even as I edit this post for publication hospitals and the CDC are beginning to admit that they admit patients and call their diagnosis “covid” rather than the actual cause, out of the desire to create scare tactics and to get more money from the government to run their hospitals!  Additionally, we see that the so-called “vaccinations” are not even doing the job but rather the goal posts keep getting moved from “this is to eradicate the disease” to “if you get the vaccination it will lessen the hospitalizations,” to now even threats, if you don’t get this you only care about yourself.

Christians are taught to abandon the Word of God, but now more than ever, let us rather flock to use the pure Word of God, through by which our great physician sent us the Holy Spirit to create and sustain faith.  We have taught our people to fear disease and death rather than to fear the Lord and this is antithetical to what Jesus teaches us.  In Matthew 6, Jesus teaches us to not be anxious.  Then again in Matthew 10, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”  We fear what others may think or do rather than hear and believe God’s holy Word.  Especially in light of what Jesus says in Matthew 6:25-27, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷ And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?”

The Lord, YOUR God, who has chosen you and declared you HIS people will continue to preserve your life, and even if you might die by this pestilence, this does not mean your God hates you or is send you into hell.  For this life is way more than food, clothing, or health, it is about the new life created in you through the washing of rebirth in the Holy Spirit through Holy Baptism!   You are of more value than anything else in all of his creation.  He has sent his very Son, Jesus Christ, to die for your sins. 

And even if the devil concocts a disease to kill half of mankind, nothing he does can tear you from God. “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord,” Paul says in Romans 8:38-39.  The only thing that tears us away from God is the rejection of God and putting in its place the worship of others things. Thus, the devil’s only goal is to give you a new god and the pandemic has served this purpose.

Technology has become one of those seductive gods.  Do not begin to say that we have solved the closure of our churches by giving them church over the internet.  For we have created a new, and false, definition of church as well!  The Church by definition is a gathering of believers in physical space and time.  By creating the phenomenon of internet church we have lost the reason for Church as the place where Christ gathers his children to feed and nourish them. 

Acts shows us how the Church became strong.  It was not by claiming to be a church, but by these newly created disciples devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  When the Church suffers it gathers.  When her children hurt, the Church prays for them and provides as best they can.  The Devil’s greatest desire is to keep each of you apart, to drive a wedge by whatever means he can.

True, we do not need our beautiful churches, but we do need the gathering.  There is no such thing as a virtual Lord’s Supper.  There is no virtual absolution.  There is no virtual washing of water for the forgiveness of sins.  How do you sing together and confess the faith to one another across the internet?  Have you really tried to participate in the Divine Service with everyone at the same time on the internet?  It comes out a garbled mess, exactly how the devil wants it.  He wants the church to be a confusing mess.  No, the word Church, by definition, requires a physical gathering. 

The Greek word, ekklesia, means a physical assembly of people, a person to person assembly.  Even as Jesus teaches us that where two or three gather in my name (by God—in an ordered place) there the Church is.  (Matthew 18:20) Or as Paul describes throughout 1 Corinthians, it is a body and we cannot ever sever a part off this body. 

There are certainly helpful aspects to the internet, for example, you wouldn’t be reading this right now if we didn’t have this form of communication, but a devotional prayer life, a proper pastor, will always teach you go to your local church.  They always direct you back to Christ’s gifts in the gathering of his people. For an additional article on this I commend to you read: https://www.gottesdienst.org/gottesblog/2020/4/6/a-guest-essay-by-the-rev-dr-alexey-streltsov-the-covid-19-pandemic-and-the-digitization-of-the-church

Oh how Screwtape (C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters”) would have been proud of the demon who discovered that disease and death is what we fear most.  In the whole history of Christianity never has mankind been so afraid of going to Church!  The world is experiencing a new flood, a flood of misinformation that is leading many believers astray.  Let the Church be rescued by gathering together in the ark of the Church.

There should be no surprise that the place where you sit as you gather to worship is called the Nave.  This is Latin for boat.  As you gather to worship you are gathered with Noah and all the faithful by the Word of God.  Let us comfort one another in this deluge that Satan has rained down upon us by devoting ourselves to the hearing of the Word of God. 

Part II: The Flood and Christ for You

Part II.

The Flood, and Christ for You.

Picking up from where we left off (see Part I) since the beginning of the pandemic I have contended often that we have approached the pestilence of the corona virus incorrectly.  Too many of our churches, I have argued, capitulated and allowed the government to dictate how we confess Christ and how we practice the faith.  To justify such a position, the ones who have submitted to the government flocked to the second table of the Law.  But herein lies the problem, this most well intentioned plan, while seeming all well and good, is still false because it cannot be concocted to the exclusion of the first table of the Law, in fact one cannot even truly know and fulfill the second table of the Law without knowing and living in the first table.

Certainly many have seen how such a surrendering of their inalienable rights is not good and I give thanks for those pastors and churches who are now seeking to right the ship and reverse course.  While we seek to right the ship we must understand why it was so wrong in the first place and here is where the Flood will help us greatly, especially the reason for why the flood took place.

            First we need to recall and hold before our faces the two tables of the Law, and with that come back to the greatest concern, how could we give up the Church and the gathering here?  Let us go to Scripture.   We read in Matthew 22:35-40, “But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.’

            Did you notice which table of the Law comes first? The first table consists of commandments one through three which speak to how we love God.  These are: 1. You shall have no other Gods.  2. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.  3. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.  The second table of the Law teaches you how to love your neighbor. 

So first, what does it mean to have no other Gods?  It is to fear, love, and trust in him above all things.  While the meaning is deep it is also quite simple as any little child can answer: what is the most important part of your life and how is that lived?  And every little God fearing child knows Jesus is the most important and the child want to go to church to learn about Jesus. 

The second commandment teaches us not only how to speak his holy name but how to use it rightly as well. The World has turned the Holy use of God’s name from right and reverent ways into a profane and irreverent use of the most precious name, as we are taught to carelessly use it: OMG, jeez, for gosh sakes, damn you, and so many other blasphemed words that come flowing out of our mouths without a second thought.  This is compounded by us fathers and mothers permitting false teaching to exist in our homes and churches amongst family and friends.  They excuse false teaching by saying “If I know what the Bible teaches, I will not be concerned with what others believe.”  This pious excuse is even used by Pastors who refuse to chastise other congregations because “it is a waste of time” or “none of their concern”.  Full churches fall into complete abomination (don’t believe me?  Look at the website www.exposingtheecla.com) while God fearing churches stick their heads in the sand in the hopes that their congregation and family will not see such wickedness.  All this succeeds in doing is leading our children (and adults) away from the faith.

The Third commandment teaches us where we receive God’s gifts.  So many churches have turned the holy Divine Service into a mockery of entertainment and have lost the profound mystery of the deliverance of the forgiveness of sins from our holy and righteous God to sinful and unworthy people.  Nor let us be ignorant that the simple percentage of people who claim membership in the church (let alone the godless community) and attend the Divine Service regularly (here read more three or more times a month) continues to quickly decline in lower and lower numbers.  (See this article for the disturbing reality!)

            So many have lost sight of the most important things.  My desire is that worship for you dear reader is still important.  Why is the Divine Service so important?  To worship is to show honor and reverence to someone or something and there is a lot of worshiping.  Our communities have definitely made sure that we have not forgotten the need to worship, but rather then worship him who created all things, our society has decided to worship that which is created: shopping, service organizations, sports, entertainment, nature, pets, health, science, race, even children.  These things have become the gods of the 21^st century. 

Having lost the clarity of what the first table teaches us we then have no understanding of the rest of the commandments.  In this flip-flopping of what is to be worshiped we then will justify all our behavior as being acceptable in the sight of the second table of the Law to the detriment of the first.    In light of the corona virus what has become the worshiped things?

In Genesis 6, we see the consequences of the fall of man coming to a head.  Luther, in volume 2 of his Genesis lectures explains how the second table is cast aside.  The Sons of God have lost sight of the most important things:

“It may seem odd that among the sins Moses appears to be counting the begetting of daughters, even though he had praised the fathers for it earlier and even though it is a blessing of God also in the ungodly. Why, then, does he count it among the sins? My answer is: He does not condemn the begetting of children in itself; he condemns its abuse, which stems from original sin. Royal rank, wisdom, riches, and physical strength are good things; having them is also something good, for they are bestowed upon men by God.

But when men who have these gifts break away from the First Table and, equipped with these gifts, contend against the First Table and then offend more flagrantly against the Second Table also—that is damnable wickedness. For this reason Moses makes use of unusual expressions here. He says: “The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose,” namely, without any regard for God or for natural and positive law.”

Thus, after the First Table has been cast aside, the Second Table, too, is cast aside, and lust takes over the first or principal position. Lust becomes utterly bestial and looks down upon the procreation of children, but God has established marriage as an aid for our weak nature and especially as a means for begetting children. When lust becomes supreme in this way, the preceding and the following Commandments are undermined and lose their power. Respect for parents is violated, murder is committed, the property of others is seized, false testimony is given, and so forth.

The word, “they saw,” denotes not simply “to look at” but “to observe with satisfaction and pleasure.” In the psalms the expression often occurs: “My eye has looked upon my enemies,” that is, “with satisfaction have I seen the punishment of my enemies.”

In this passage, therefore, it means that after they had turned their eyes away from God and His Word, they turned them lustfully toward the daughters of men. There follows the unfailing result: from the infraction of the First Table men go on to violate the Second. When they despised God, they also despised the laws of nature and, according to their pleasure, took to wife whomever they chose. (Luther’s Works, AE, vol. 2, pp 8-9)

 

            An honest appraisal of Luther’s commentary on Genesis 6, shows that we are undergoing what Luther addresses.  This is true as we come to verse four, in Luther’s discussion of the Nephilim, the mighty men of old.  To understand the Nephilim we must understand who the world sees as most important.  The important ones are those who “stood in high repute and enjoyed the extraordinary admiration of the whole world.”  (vol. 2, pg. 38)  Who holds our admiration today?  It is those who control medicine and technology.  It is sports figures, actors, singers, and other celebrities, media, and even the government.  Yet why?  It is because the world has been diligently teaching us who to worship.  We are taught to worship ourselves; we value our lives above God. 

What is the solution?  Let us hear Noah’s preaching!  Let us return to the Church.  Where do I find comfort in the midst of trial and tribulation? It is not in the things of this world.  It is not in me and my reason.  It is not in making more money.  It is definitely not in the fear of a disease.  It is in hearing the truth found within God’s Word.  Our hope is in Christ alone and the gifts he distributes to you through his holy bride the Church.

What will the Church do?  Will she stand ready to give the gifts given to her by the bridegroom the Church?  It is time for the Church to be steadfast in her confession to give direction to a world lost in sin and to her children who are in dire need of comfort.  Moreover, will the people be ready to enter into the eternal feast? Will the holy people of God be the wise virgins prepared to enter in, or will they be foolish virgins who refused to be ready? (Matthew 25:1-13)  Let us be bold in our confession and hold fast to Christ’s precious gift of forgiveness given to us under the cross.

What the Church offers is invaluable.  For here alone is life and salvation: the forgiveness of sins.  God does not tell you to figure out how to save yourself, he provides the very means: Word and Sacrament.  The preached word overcomes every fear.  In John 11 We learn Jesus’ dear friend Lazarus was ill, Lazarus’ sisters said, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”  But when Jesus hear it he said, “This illness does not lead to death.  It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”  And what did Jesus do upon learning of his friends illness?  He stayed two days longer.  And we think, “well I guess he didn’t love him so much.” But Martha knew the Word of God, better than anyone there. 

Martha confessed that she knew Jesus could do all things, even raise her brother from the dead.  Martha professed, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”  She was grieved but she at least had hope.  And to this Jesus responds, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” 

Now you know the end of the account, Lazarus was raised from the dead.  But that is not the point.  Lazarus died in faith and Mary and Martha, while grieved, did not flee from him in terror of the illness, but rather they believed.  Jesus did not flee from disease and death, but rather the Word made flesh came to be with his people. 

Dear people, we need not fear disease and death.  Even one that takes millions of people we need not fear.  But what has this to do with Noah and the flood?  The people lost the right fear, the fear of the Lord.  Their concern was about the one who could kill flesh and blood and they did not fear the one who could kill the soul.  Their desire was for evil continually.  Let us not be like the unbeliever, but rather let us turn to where there is sure and certain hope.  The bridegroom is coming at a time and hour we do not know.  It is time, right now, to live not indulging in the things of the world but in the forgiveness of sins, in Word and Sacrament.  Let us stand watch and live in the light of Christ, receive the Word and Sacrament and be comforted by the means he has given to us for the assurance of faith as we await Christ’s return.