Congregation at Prayer

Catechesis Notes for the Week —Christ Is Fulfillment—This week begins another academic year in which we pray through the Small Catechism sequentially, beginning with the Ten Commandments and concluding the last eleven weeks of school with the Table of Duties (descriptions of what faith in Christ looks like in our several stations and callings in life). The year begins with Bible stories that move from the giving of the Law upon Mount Sinai to the Monarchy of David. This year will also include eight weeks of “Catechism Stories” highlighting the Sacraments and the annual “Church Year Stories” clustered around Christmas, Passion, Easter, and Pentecost. When we speak of Christ as the One who fulfills the Law, we most often think only of the moral Law given in the Ten Commandments. But the Law of Moses also includes all of the ceremonial Law in the Old Testament Divine liturgy. The year begins with a description of that liturgy in the Ark of the Covenant, the priestly garments, the ransom money, and the Sabbath law. As you read those stories, ask yourself the question, “How is this fulfilled in Christ?” or “How does the description of this ceremony, vestment, or Tabernacle appointment point to the person and work of Jesus?” Answering these questions is what gives this portion of the Old Testament relevance for us today as it deepens our understanding of Jesus’ work and the gifts that flow to us from Him in the New Testament Sacraments. In this sense, the Old Testament ceremonial Law was both provisional and catechetical as it taught Old Testament believers their need for Christ. Along with these readings from the Old Testament we will take up readings from the book of Hebrews. This book was written to Hebrew Christians to catechize them in how the Old Testament Law with all of its sacrifices and rites was fulfilled in Jesus’ sacrifice upon the cross. He became for us the greatest High Priest and the greatest sacrifice for sin. He is the Tabernacle of God on earth, and in Him we receive true Sabbath rest.CP230827

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Prepared for Christ’s Coming — We conclude our summertime readings from Matthew this week by looking forward to Christ’s Second Coming. The Parable of the Fig Tree teaches us that the signs of the times (false Christ’s, false prophets, earthquakes, famine, pestilence, wars, persecution, etc.) teach us that the new and better life in Christ is about to dawn, like the budding leaves of the fig tree that teach us that summer is near. “Heaven and earth will pass away” but Jesus’ Word will never pass away. Who is the Faithful Servant but that minister or Christian that is living faithfully according to Christ’s Word. Ministers faithfully preach, teach, and administer the Sacraments. Christians live in the station in life, confessing Jesus with faith in Him and love to the neighbor. The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins teaches us that we are prepared for Christ’s return in glory as our heavenly bridegroom if our hearts are filled with the Holy Spirit and faith in Christ. This preparedness only comes through the ongoing reception of Christ’s Word and Sacrament. The Parable of the Talents teaches us that the Lord has committed His Gospel and sacraments to His servants, that they might preach and administer them faithfully in His stead until His return. All ministers will be called to account on the Last Day for the administration of His gifts. In the Second Coming in Judgment, Jesus will separate believers and unbelievers. The works of mercy and compassion that are cited in the sheep are the works of love that flow from faith in Christ and which identify Christians as followers of Jesus. The fact that the sheep are amazed that Jesus cited such things, shows that their faith is not in such works, but that such works are the sign of living faith in Christ. When Jesus’ returns again in glory, we will hear His sweet word of comfort, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”CP230820

Catechesis Notes for the Week — The Final Challenges to Jesus’ Ministry and the Signs of the End — Should we honor and obey the government, or should we honor and obey Christ? The answer is YES to both! When Jesus says, Render to Caesar the Things that Are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s, He teaches us the sublime doctrine of how God rules and governs in two kingdoms. In the secular kingdom, represented by Caesar, God rules through the force of Law to protect the innocent, maintain order in society, and to punish law-breakers. God stands behind the authority of all civil rulers and they are to be honored because of this, but their authority stops at what God’s Word allows. Civil authorities have no right to bind our conscience or to demand something of us that is against God’s Word and our faith in Christ. In the spiritual kingdom, God governs the heart by faith through the ministry of the Lord’s Word and Sacraments. Here the Gospel reigns supreme and the heart is not governed by the coercion of the Law, but by faith in Christ created by the Gospel. In Questions About the Resurrection, the Sadducees, who do not believe in the resurrection or in life after death, challenge Jesus with a snarky question about a woman who had multiple husbands saying, “in the resurrection whose wife will she be?” Here Jesus reprimands them by clarifying that marriage does not exist in the resurrection as we know it today, but rather we will all worship the Lord in the life to come as the angels of heaven do so now. In the Greatest Commandment, Jesus teaches us that the foundation of the Ten Commandments rests upon love for God above all things and love for the neighbor as oneself. When Jesus speaks Woe to the Scribes and Pharisees, He upbraids them for what is the greatest sin of all, namely, to reject the mercy of God in the Gospel of Christ in the self-righteousness of impenitence. In Jesus Predicts the Signs of the End, He weeps over the impenitence of Jerusalem for rejecting Him and He foretells both the destruction of the Temple as God’s judgment for unbelief and the rise of false prophets and lawlessness as His Second Coming approaches. “This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.”CP230813

Catechesis Notes for the Week — “I Desire to Show Mercy and Not to Receive Your Sacrifices” (Hosea 6:6/Matthew 9:13) The hatred that Jesus experienced by many throughout His earthly ministry was centered in a rejection of the Gospel of God’s mercy. The impenitent and the self-righteous despised Jesus’ mercy for the sinner. They did not believe that sinners were worthy; and if you were suffering an affliction of the body, they believed that you had done something to deserve it. The truth is: all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The call to repentance and faith in Jesus is a call to reject all self-reliance, confess your sins, and cling to Jesus for the gift of mercy that comes by grace alone. He desires to show mercy to us all and not to receive our sacrifices. None of us could atone for our sin or make up for what we have done. Christian faith clings to Jesus and His love for us. Out of this repentant faith, all good fruits flow. The irony concerning those who hated Jesus for His ministry of mercy, is that they hated the one who truly loved them and desired to be their Savior. This week’s Bible readings from Matthew highlight the Lord’s mercy and the phenomena of impenitence that rejects His mercy. In Two Blind Men Receive Their Sight, we hear the simple prayer of the penitent, “Have mercy on us, O Lord, Son of David!” When Jesus Cleanses the Temple, He does so because the Jews had turned the order of salvation upside down. Instead of God providing for them through the sacrifices that He made for their salvation upon the cross, they adopted the works-righteous view that they could pay for their sins by their own sacrifices. Instead of the Temple sacrifices pointing to their fulfillment in Christ, they believed that they were a liturgy of salvation by works. The Fruitless Fig Tree is an illustration of how this “works-righteous faith” of Israel resulted in no true fruit of repentance and faith in God’s mercy. Therefore, they were under the curse. The Parable of the Two Sons contrasts faith in the Father’s mercy in Christ in the reception of the call to repentance versus impenitence and unbelief that refuses the call to repentance. The Parable of the Wicked Vinedressers is an illustration of Israel’s history in the Old Testament. He sent them prophet after prophet to call them to repentance and faith in His mercy, but they rejected and persecuted them all. In the end, they persecuted and martyred the Father’s Son. “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” Finally, our week ends with The Parable of the Wedding Feast. In this parable we see the idolatry of setting one’s affections on the things of this world, rather than the free gift of salvation in the King’s Son. The ministers of the King go out into the highways and byways to call both “bad and good” to the wedding feast of salvation. It must be received as a gift of God’s mercy in Christ, or it cannot be received at all. Only those who are clothed with the wedding garment of Christ’s righteousness can enter into the feast.CP230806

Catechesis Notes for the Week — The Strength and Comfort of the Grace of God — “How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seen times?” This is the question that Peter asks Jesus which inspires the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. The liberality with which Jesus forgave sin and received sinners demonstrated the kind of grace that Peter had never seen in any other teacher. Jesus’ answer drives the disciples to understand that the grace of God in Christ is even greater than we can imagine. In the parable, the kingdom of God’s grace is represented by forgiveness for a debt that is impossible for the servant to ever repay. Our sin is an impossible debt before God. But in Christ it has been forgiven! If, therefore, we refuse forgiveness to a brother (who owes us far less than we have been forgiven by God) we deny the grace of God and reject the forgiveness that we ourselves have received from Christ. God’s grace in Christ is our only strength and comfort. When Jesus Teaches on Marriage and Divorce, we are to understand that it is the strength and comfort of God’s forgiving grace in Christ that alone makes it possible for us to be faithful in marriage. It is God’s grace that is on display when Jesus Blesses the Children. They could do nothing to receive His blessing but were given the blessing of forgiveness and life with Jesus as a pure gift. The kingdom of God must be received as a gift by all of us, or it cannot be received at all. The “gift character” of the Christian faith is something that the Rich Young Ruler could not grasp because he trusted in his own works for salvation. The one thing he lacked was repentant faith in Christ that trusted in Him alone for salvation. The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard is a parable of pure grace as illustrated in the various “workers in the vineyard” who are all “paid” exactly the same wage. Since Christ has paid the debt of salvation for each of us, it can only be received as a gift. In Jesus Predicts His Passion a Third Time, we learn that it is the atonement for sin by Christ upon the cross that is the foundation for the grace of God. Christ died in sacrificial love for us. His atonement won forgiveness for all our sin, and it is this forgiving grace of God in Christ that is at the center of all Christian theology and our only strength and comfort in life and in death.CP2307300

Catechesis Notes for the Week — “Take Up Your Cross and Follow Me” – When Jesus speaks these words to the disciples, He calls them and us to live the baptismal life. The cross always means death. When we become a Christian, we die to our sinful self in the call to “contrition and repentance that the new man might come forth and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” Our lives, as baptized Christians, are patterned after Christ’s life of death and resurrection. In the Transfiguration we not only see the deity of Christ shining through His humanity, but we also see the glory that waits us all in the resurrection. St. James the Elder, Apostle is celebrated this Tuesday. He is the first of the Twelve to be martyred for His faith. The reading from Acts 11 highlights his martyrdom, but also God’s providence that spared Peter until another day. The call to follow Jesus resulted in James’ literal martyrdom, but by it he gave witness to the suffering and death of Jesus for our salvation. When a Boy Is Healed after the Transfiguration, we see the violence that is often associated with the miracle of faith. The old nature must die; the new nature must rise. But in the end, there is peace. Jesus Predicts His Death and Resurrection more frequently as He draws near to Jerusalem to suffer. The disciples would later remember these words which would be a source of strength as well as a catechesis on what is at the center of all Apostolic doctrine. Finally, we see in the question In Who Is the Greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus sets forth a dependent child as the picture of what it is to be a Christian. His most severe condemnation is for anyone who would cause one of His little ones who believe in Him to stumble. It would be better if they had never been born. God’s love and desire to save is the motivation for going to an impenitent brother in If Your Brother Sins. Ultimately such encounters are to serve the sole purpose of bringing about repentance and restoring those who have gone astray from the faith.CP230723

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Jesus Is the Great “I AM”—The Christ, the Son of the Living God—This week’s Bible narratives from the Gospel according to St. Matthew show forth the divinity of Jesus. The confession of the Church is that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. As Jesus Walks on the Water, the disciples are afraid and think that He is a ghost. Jesus reply is poorly translated in most English Bibles. Instead of the typical translation, “It is I” Jesus actually said, “I AM”— the name God gave Moses at the burning bush. Jesus demonstrated that He is the Son of God, the great “I AM” not only with His words, but also by the miracle of walking on the water. In this miracle, the raging seas are under His feet proclaiming Him the Lord and Savior from divine judgment, sin, and death. In Out of Man’s Heart Proceed Evil Thoughts, Jesus teaches us the all-pervasive nature of the corruption of sin we inherited from Adam. In a Canaanite Woman Trusts Jesus’ Word, we see the miracle of faith that the Word of the Gospel produced in a Gentile woman whose daughter was demon-possessed. Though her experiences spoke against her with the false message that Jesus was not for her and that He did not care, she held fast to the promise of the Gospel spoken to Abraham, namely that Abraham’s Seed was the Savior of all nations. Jesus commends her faith because her faith was exclusively in Him and the promise of salvation in Jesus’ name. In the Feeding of the 4,000, the second of Jesus’ great feeding miracles, we again see that Jesus is the bread of life, but not for the Jews only (the feeding of the 5,000), but also for all nations (the feeding of the 4,000). In this miracle it is the third day (an allusion to the resurrection). There are seven loaves (the number for the Lord and the seven nations that had surrounded Israel). The number 4 is associated with “the four-winds” or “the four corners” of the earth, signifying that the Gospel will go out into all the world to draw all sinners to the feast of salvation. In the Pharisees and Sadducees Seek a Sign, Jesus warns the disciples concerning their “works-righteous doctrine” and lays out for us that the only “sign” that will be given to prove that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God, is the sign of Jonah, namely, Jesus’ death and resurrection. In the Confession of Peter and His Rebuke, we learn that the confession that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God” is not only the foundation of the Church’s confession, but it is also why Peter is rebuked by Jesus when He denies that Jesus’ suffering and death is at the center of that confession.CP230716

Catechesis Notes for the Week — The Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven — What are parables? Are they stories or illustrations that make the complex easier to understand? Not necessarily. Even Jesus’ disciples had difficulty understanding the parables. “Why do You speak to them in parables?” they asked Jesus. To this Jesus replied, “because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.” The parables of Jesus so often describe the grace of God in the Gospel of Christ which is otherwise hidden from those who do not believe. Even Christians can have a difficult time understanding the parables. Parables are intended to help us ponder the mysteries of God’s grace in Christ which is very different from the world’s way of thinking. This helps to explain why parables often take strange twists and turns that are unexpected, like a sower who sows seed all over the place and not just on the good soil. The Parable of the Tares and the Wheat teaches us that believers and unbelievers will coexist in the world until the Judgment, and that the identity of the sons of the kingdom and the sons of the wicked one is often hidden and will not be revealed until the end of the age. In the Parables of the Kingdom, the mustard seed is Christ planted in this world by the Gospel—it is a Word that looks to be the most insignificant word in all the earth, yet He produces a mighty congregation of believers. The Gospel of Christ is like leaven that spreads faith in Christ often imperceptibly. Redemption in Christ is taught by the man who buys the entire field in order to obtain the treasure, or the merchant that pays the ultimate price to obtain the pearl. Our value is in the price that Christ paid for our redemption. The Parable of the Dragnet teaches us that on the Last Day the angels of God will gather together all people, separating unbelievers from believers, and casting unbelievers into hell. This week concludes with events in Jesus’ ministry that both follow and illustrate the kingdom parables. In John the Baptist Is Beheaded we see the depths of human depravity among those who reject the call to repentance and violently oppose the Gospel. In the Feeding of the 5,000 Jesus shows Himself to be the bread of life and the One who will provide His ministers with all that they need to feed the sheep with manna from heaven. CP230709

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Faith in the Midst of Unbelief — This week’s biblical narratives from Matthew and Luke illustrate the dramatic contrast between faith in Christ and unbelief. The week begins with the story of the Visitation in which Mary, newly pregnant with Jesus, visits her cousin Elizabeth who is six months pregnant with John the Baptist. Both women are filled with the Holy Spirit and joyful penitent faith in the Lord. Mary’s famous greeting, the Magnificat, confesses her total devotion to the Lord, her Savior. Elizabeth’s prophecy, “Blessed are you among women…” and the infant John leaping for joy in her womb, highlight not only the presence of faith in Christ, but also the joy and peace that such faith brings to sinners. In contrast, the ongoing stories from Matthew begin with Jesus’ call out of unbelief to faith, in Jesus Preaches Repentance and Faith. The woes spoken to Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum warn of the impending doom for those who reject Jesus. Yet the Gospel teaches that the sinner who is burdened and heavy laden finds his comfort and rest in Jesus’ mercy. In Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus teaches the self-righteous Pharisees that true rest is found in what He does for sinners, rather than in what sinners do for God. Jesus desires to give God’s mercy and not to receive our sacrifices. In Jesus Heals on the Sabbath, He not only teaches that it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, but that God’s divine service of goodness and mercy to us is the source of true Sabbath rest. The unbelief and hardness of heart toward Jesus is on display in the accusation levelled against Jesus that He cast out demons by the power of Satan rather than by the power of God. But Jesus’ reply, a House Divided Cannot Stand, teaches us that it is by the Spirit of God that Jesus delivers from the power of Satan and establishes God’s kingdom of grace. To use the Words of the Catechism, “I cannot by my own reason or strength believe, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel…” Where is true faith found? According to Jesus, a Tree is Known by its Fruit, and the fruit of true repentance and faith is in the words of a sincere confession of sin and faith in God’s mercy. The week concludes with the Parable of the Sower and the Seed in which Jesus teaches us that the miracle of faith is made possible by the Word of God alone which He, the faithful Sower, plants in the soil of our hearts.CP230702

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Jesus’ Pastoral Care and the Ministry—The ministry of the Gospel and Sacraments is about Jesus coming to us with His Word and Spirit both personally and corporately. When the disciples questioned Jesus about fasting, He spoke to them about how He was the bridegroom sent from heaven and by the “new Gospel” of His love there is cause for great rejoicing by those who follow Him. In a Girl Is Raised and a Woman Is Healed the personal character of Jesus’ ministry is revealed. The woman’s flow of blood was dried up by the touch of His garment. Similarly, by the ordinary earthly elements of water, bread, and wine Jesus comes with healing to each of us. Jesus’ raising of the little girl not only indicates His power over death, but also His love in the comfort He brought to the little girl’s family as they were reunited in life. Two Blind Men Are Healed shows us the confession of faith in Jesus that every Christian has. They were beggars. They had nothing and were totally dependent upon Christ. He was the object of their faith, and His mercy delivered them. This personal ministry for sinners in need of God’s grace is seen in the Sending Out of the Twelve who, by Jesus’ authority, are called to demonstrate His compassion for those who are “like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus the Good Shepherd provides His under-shepherds to care for all the sheep of His flock. This faithful pastoral care carries with it the Promise of Persecution as ministers go out on His behalf. They are called to depend upon the Lord’s provisions alone, and when they suffer persecution, they testify to Him whose persecution brought about the salvation of those to whom they preach. Confessing Christ Before Men carries the comforting promise that Jesus will confess us before His Father who is in heaven. When John the Baptist Sends Disciples to Jesus for comfort and assurance that Jesus is the Christ, Jesus directs them to His saving ministry of Word and deed whereby He fulfilled the Old Testament Scriptures. Jesus’ ministry is also celebrated this week in the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, Apostles. By the Gospel of Jesus, these two sinners were made faithful apostles of Christ, proclaiming His forgiving grace to individuals and congregations alike. CP230625