2012 Texas District Results and Thoughts

The following is a bit of rambling and thoughts concerning the 2012 Convention of the Texas District of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

The main election results were as follows: President, reelected, Rev. Ken Hennings; First Vice President (area D, which is our area), Rev. Ralph Hobratschk; Second Vice President (area A), Rev. Dale Snyder; Third Vice President (area B), Rev. Eloy Gonzalez; Fourth Vice President (area C), Rev. Mark Barz.

Not only do we do business, we also have someone called an essayist who leads us in a Bible Study of sorts, more like a lecture. All I can say about the essayist was that his theology left a lot to be desired and that is putting the best construction on everything.

Our Synod President,Rev. Matt Harrison presented matters in synod such as what was going on with the changes voted in at the last synodical convention. Following his presentation, unlike previous years when delegates were allowed to submit questions for the former president to answer, this year the President simply entertained questions from the floor.

Some telling points of the convention came in the form of two wonderful questions from the floor, again, questions not submitted, nor scripted but simply asked by delegates. One question asked of President Harrison had to do with the fact that he has decided to accept a call to a local congregation in order to continue to serve as a pastor, which is considered the highest calling in our church. Even President Harrison understands that he took a step down in taking the role as the President of Synod. Anyway the question was asked if he sought the call as opposed to our understanding that the office of the pastor seeks the man, not the man seeking the office. The answer our president gave was an answer of a theologian, not a pragmatist. Rev. Harrision explained from CFW Walther and Martin Luther that when a man has the gifts and abilities to serve he may offer those gifts and abilities and a congregation may call him to serve.

A second and what I think is a more telling question was asked; “When it comes to selecting people to serve in various positions in the Synod, are you giving preference to confessional pastors?” This question seems to deny that this goes on with presidents on both sides of the discussion and has only pertained to our current president, but more importantly, this question is an admission that the one asking the questions and others are not confessional, which has been the contention by many for some time.

Finally, unlike years past, the convention this year was rather calm. The reason for this calmness, in my thinking, is that the confessional Lutherans of Texas have simply decided that the battle is best taken on at the Synod level at this time rather than the district level which has been a losing proposition over the past number of years. The votes spoke the divide about 65% to 35%.

Prometheus, the Movie *Spoiler Alert*

Prometheus, the Greek word meaning “forethinker.” From Greek Mythology he is the being who is credited with creating humans from clay and from stealing fire for the humans. He is a titan who was sentenced to eternal torment by Zeus for his transgressions. And so, we base and build a movie on this mythology, somewhat.
 

But what about the movie, Prometheus? Did you get the opening scene? According to the opening scene the evolutionary, Darwinian, Atheist, Richard Dawkins is right, as he explained to Ben Stein in the movie Expelled, the earth was seeded by aliens from another planet. Interestingly enough, whether intended or not, there were a couple of implications from the opening scene that give credence to the fact that all life on earth came from one creator; thus, there is similar DNA in all living creatures. A second implication is that all cells have been “preprogramed” with all the DNA information necessary for life. Of course, none of this explains, as Dawkins could not explain either, where the aliens came from and so we keep pushing back the origins of man. And yet, according to Dawkins, some of the characters in the movie and many other faithful believers in evolution is the fact that even though they cannot give a definitive answer for the origins they know Creationists are wrong and so mock them as being unintelligent.
 

One of the biggest problems with this movie, however, is the attempt to juxtapose science and religion. You either believe science or you believe religion. Dr. Elizabeth Shaw had that problem as well, but she was willing to search for answers. She was a scientist who believed in a Savior, thus the cross of Christ.
 

The truth is, and what science will not tell you is, that God created science and the first scientists were Christians. The “scientific” community believes there is a separation, that science and religion cannot coexist, unless religion compromises. Of course, what happens is that when religion compromises, atheism follows. As Christians, we know that true wisdom, true knowledge, indeed truth itself cannot be known apart from Christ.
 

To use an analogy to help understand the problem and perhaps the solution think about this example. When you have something that breaks, your first thought is to take it back to the manufacturer because if anyone should know how to repair what is broken it, should be the one who made it. It would be deemed unintelligent to take your broken washing machine to your barber to have him repair it. It is amazing that so-called “scientists” today even attempt to explain the world without regard for the One who created it. In other words, to use our analogy, scientists today attempt to explain the workings of the world by asking their barber.
 

If we begin with the Creator and what He tells us, just think of how many discoveries we might make. Just think of how much more we might be able to understand and explain. But I have digressed from the movie.
 

Dr. Elizabeth Shaw has made the mistake too many have made in our world today. She has failed to begin looking at the evidence and explaining it using the Word of the Creator. She has been so mislead by so much false evidence and explanations that she believes the failed human explanations rather than the sound truth of God’s Word. Fortunately we live in a world where we do not have to take the word of those who shout loud and long on television or on the internet. We can actually search and find more and better explanations of the evidence. Yes, there has been research that has found other dating methods that give the earth a young age. There are other and better explanations of the origins of the Grand Canyon (a lot of water in a short amount of time).
 

Dr. Elizabeth Shaw will continue her search, probably in a sequel. Unfortunately, if she continues to follow the road she is on, what she will find is a never-ending backing up with no explanation for where it all began. Thankfully we have the word of the One who Created it all, and we can depend on His Word.

In the Family - June 10, 2012 - Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 05) - Text: Mark 3:20-35

Things are not always what they seem. Several weeks ago, on Picnic Sunday you had a bulletin insert which looked like an ink blot. After staring at the four dots in the middle of the insert and then closing your eyes you could see the face of Jesus appear. There is a saying in our world that goes something like, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” We live in a world in which we understand that things are not always what they first seem to be and too often what once was perceived as good is now said to be bad and what once was perceived as bad is now said to be good. It’s a crazy, mixed-up world in which we live today, but the same can be said about the world in the time of Jesus.
 

Our text for this morning is the Gospel reading and if we look real close at our text we will notice something interesting. The texts begins with Jesus’ own family who believes He is out of His mind. It is possible that they have come to this conclusion because Jesus has become so popular, so much so that He travels around a lot and has little time to eat, and possibly, they are thinking, this is causing Him to be delusional, thinking He is God.
 

Our text moves from this accusation from His own family to the accusation by the Pharisees that Jesus is of the devil. Certainly, if the family believes Jesus is “crazy” because He thinks He is God, it naturally follows that the Pharisees would accuse Jesus of blasphemy and the greatest blasphemy comes from the devil.
 

Our text then concludes with the seeking of Jesus by His mother and brothers. Which brings us back to where our text began. In other words, Mark brackets this confrontation of Jesus by the Pharisees and their accusations with Jesus having problems with His own family believing in Him. Of course, we are looking back at these events with 20-20 hindsight and we know how things really are, that Jesus really is God in human flesh.
 

Our text concludes with Jesus answering the question concerning His family seeking Him, and in essence, our text begs the question of “who is Jesus’ family?” Jesus answers that question by stating that all those who believe in Him, “who do God’s will,” are a part of His family. As we can see, the discussion of the identity of Jesus was going on before Jesus was born, during His life on earth, and that discussion continues still today. As the world today looks at Jesus’ life there is still the question of “are things what they seem to be?”
 

The Pharisees argued that Jesus was not God and thus was blaspheming by putting Himself forward as God. They cannot, however, deny the miracles, the signs and wonders that Jesus is performing. You might remember that last week one of the Pharisees, Nicodemus recognized, from the signs, wonders and miracles Jesus performed, that He was from God, because no one could do what Jesus was doing except that He was from God. As for the rest of the Pharisees, instead of recognizing Jesus as the Messiah, they twisted what He was doing and contended that Jesus had to be a servant of the devil and that is how He can cast out demons and do the signs, wonders and miracles He is doing. Notice that at least they recognized that Jesus was doing signs, wonders and miracles.
 

The Pharisees are not unlike many religious groups, cults and sects today. They will say, or do, or try anything to discredit Jesus. If Jesus is who He says He is, that means the end of their power, fame and fortunes, thus it is imperative to discredit Him. And they attempt to discredit Him in the same way as the Pharisees and teachers of the law, attempting to explain away the evidence as being something it is not.
 

Interestingly enough, Jesus has to defend Himself and He defends Himself by pointing out the fact that a house divided cannot stand. We know the old saying, in trying to defeat an opponent, the best way to defeat an opponent is to “divide and conquer.” Jesus is simply pointing out that the argument of the Pharisees is illogical. A house divide, and in this instance, the house of the devil divided against himself, cannot stand. Even the devil is smarter than that.
  

  In order for a person to overtake a house, the overtaker must overpower the owner. Of course, this overtaking is what Jesus has done to the devil himself. Jesus has overpowered the devil, He has overtaken Him through His death and resurrection. The eternal spiritual death penalty for our sins, the price, the cost for our sins, which the devil wants to hold against us so that we are his, the price has been paid by Jesus through His suffering and death. Thus, the devil no longer has any hold on us or power over us.
 

Finally, Jesus speaks about the unforgivable sin. The unforgivable sin is the sin against the Holy Spirit and really, Jesus is accusing the Pharisees of this sin. What is the unforgivable sin? What is the sin against the Holy Spirit? To break it down into its simplest terms, “the unforgivable sin, the sin against the Holy Spirit, is dying in unbelief.” To die in unbelief is to deny the Holy Spirit because the work of the Holy Spirit is to work in us and give us faith. The Pharisees saw, first hand, the signs, wonders, and miracles Jesus’ performed. They knew their Bible through and through. If anyone should have made the connection that this was the promised Messiah, it should have been them, and yet they continued to deny that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, all except Nicodemus and Joseph of Aramathea, again as we noted last week. The Pharisess even went so far as to accuse Jesus of blasphemy. The truth of the matter is that it is the Pharisees who are denying Jesus, denying the Holy Spirit, and are blaspheming against God.
 

As I mentioned earlier, this “attack” by the Pharisees is bracketed by an attack by Jesus’ own family. Here we see the struggle of answering the question of “Who is this Jesus?” “Are things what they seem to be?” Mary, Jesus’ own mother, had been told about Jesus, by the angel who announced His birth, who He was and is and what He would be and do and yet the text indicates that she was still “fuzzy” on the details. Perhaps she was still pondering all these things in hear heart. I would suppose that all of us understand a little about the competition among siblings, however, what we are seeing is that Jesus’ own family, at this time, is not so much competing with Jesus as they simply did not believe Him, that He was the Messiah.
 

Speaking of families, the Pharisees and Jesus had this discussion during one of their times of confrontation. The discussion was that Jesus told them the truth would set them free and they argued that they we children of Abraham and were never slaves of anyone or anything. The Pharisees were depending on being a part of God’s kingdom simply by blood, by genetics, by DNA, by being a member of the physical family of the line of Abraham. That, however, is not the way in which we are a part of God’s family. We are members of God’s family, not by blood, at least not by our own blood, nor through genetics, but by grace, by God’s grace, through faith, which is given to us by the Holy Spirit working through the means of grace, especially Holy Scripture and Holy Baptism.
 

Jesus’ answer to the question of family was, “here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” And we only do God’s will as a result of being filled with His Holy Spirit and by the spirit moving and working in us. We are members of God’s family by God’s grace, through faith in Jesus alone, worked in us and given to us by the Holy Spirit. Yes, we are blood relatives of Jesus, but it is not our blood, but His blood which makes us blood relatives. It is because He gave His life, He shed His blood, He died that we might have life. Our Old Testament lesson for today reminds us of our sin and of God’s promise to send a Savior. God’s promise was and still is to all people. God’s promise was made first even before there was a Jew and a Gentile, while there was simply people, Adam and Eve. Jesus is the Offspring who was crushed as He died on the cross, but in being crushed, in His dying on the cross He crushed the devil so that we might have forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
 

In our Epistle lesson Paul encourages us to look to Jesus and even more, to focus our attention, not on this world, but on the world to come, on our eternal glory. Paul is writing to people who are very much like us today. Too often we have our eyes fixed, not on the world to come, but on this world and on our lives in this world and we have become oblivious to the world to come or on getting ourselves prepared for the world to come. This world is temporary. This world is fast and fleeting. Our time in this world is but a breath compared to our time in eternity. The older you get the more you realize how temporary this world and our time in this world really is. Thus it is important that we fix our eyes heavenward and that we have an urgency about sharing the good news of salvation with others, so that they too might have a part in God’s kingdom. Yes, as Paul reminds us in Ephesians, we are saved by God’s grace, through faith alone, and we are also saved to do the good works which God has for us to do. We are members of God’s family, we are priests in the priesthood of all believers. We live our lives as living sacrifices, doing the things which He would have us to do. And what He would have us do is to be excited about being a part of the family, so much so that we would want others to be a part of the family as well.
 

You are part of Jesus’ family! By God’s Grace, through faith worked in us and given to us by the Holy Spirit, we are all a part of Jesus’ family! We are His brothers and sisters, because, and by faith, we do God’s will. May the Lord continue to strengthen and keep you in faith so that you might continue to do God’s will, so that ultimately we may all together stand before the Lord’s throne and say, to Him be the glory, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Two Phrases to Win Any Argument

I am amazed at foolishness of our world. Solomon was right when he said, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself ” (Proverbs 26:4). Of course we have not acquired this foolishness overnight but through the dumbing down of our education system as George Santayana stated, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner’s, 1905, page 284). And so today we have a whole generation, or two, who have no real understanding of the history of this country, what makes this country great, what makes this country distinct, and how quickly we can lose what we have had, giving up our freedom and becoming like many nations of the world who are less fortunate than we.

But even more amazing is the argumentation of those who are so foolish. In my opinion there are two phrases very common today that a person who is losing any argument will put forth in order to say, “Aha!, I gotcha. I win the argument.” I want to expose you to these two phrases and the fallacies behind them.

The first fallacious “Aha! I gotcha!” phrase is to say, “You’re a racist.” Personally, this phrase does not work on me because I do not believe in “races.” I am a culturalist. The whole idea of races springs from the Darwinian evolutionary theory which suggests that different “races” have evolved at different rates and so some “races” are not as equal as other races. If I were a “racist,” I would not allow anyone below my evolutionary station to even speak with me. There is only one race of people, the human race. The cultures that we see in our world have come about because of God confusing the languages of the people at the Tower of Babel. When God confused the languages of the people, as they found those with similar languages, those groups moved to the various parts of the world, and they took with them certain dominant genetic information in their DNA. They also took with them Biblical stories, and as their cultures grew, they developed certain cultural proclivities and biases. Over time some culture groups either lost or denied their Christian faith and developed other religions to take their place. Thus, there are good and bad traits within any and all cultures. The bottom line, however, is that calling someone a racist shows the foolishness of the one making the accusation and their own lack of understanding from where that accusation originates. One simple way to disarm the accusation of, “You’re a racist,” is to ask the questions, “What do you mean by calling me a racist? What is a racist?”

If the first fallacious phrase does not work, then the second may be offered, “I’m offended.” We live in a society that seeks ways to be offended. We look to take offense. This seeking to take offense springs from our sinful human nature and a passive aggressive attempt at foiling our foe through deception. More often than not people are not trying to be offensive, yet anyone wanting to cease any conversation or argumentation will seek to do so through throwing down the accusation of offense. This accusation of offense is meant to disarm the so-called offender because if one is offended, then the offender, it is presumed, must immediately cease the offense and apologize for the wrong they inflicted. The whole fallacy of this is, as stated, offense is not being given so offense should not be taken. One simple way to disarm the accusation of offense is to ask, “How did I offend you? My intent is simply to offer information to persuade you to understand, believe and accept my position.”

Of course all this leads us back to the question of whether or not we should engage the fool in the first place!