The Burr in the Burgh

Thanks to Rev. Paul McCain for bringing this fine article by Pastor William Weedon to light. Did Lutheranism exist before there was a Martin Luther? In other words, did the Lutheran Reformers innovate a new doctrine or are the standards of the Reformation truly catholic? Read and enjoy.

UPDATE: Here it is as a pdf.

February 1, 2008 .................... LCMSNews -- No. 11

World Mission re-evaluating situation in Kenya

By Paula Schlueter Ross

LCMS World Mission has asked its missionaries to Kenya to remain indefinitely in Ethiopia after they attend regularly scheduled meetings there, according to Travis Torblaa, the mission board's personnel care manager.

The move came in the wake of post-election rioting in the East African country that has left more than 600 dead, hundreds of thousands displaced, and widespread destruction of property, including as many as 10 churches of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya (ELCK), an LCMS partner.

LCMS World Mission decided Jan. 30 to temporarily relocate the missionaries -- Dr. Paul and Joy Mueller and Rev. Claude and Rhoda Houge -- after receiving a recommendation to do so from its crisis-response management service. The two couples will remain in Ethiopia "while we re-evaluate the situation" in Kenya, Torblaa said.

"We are hopeful that it will be for a very short time," he added.

Dr. Carlos Walter Winterle, former president of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil who has been serving for more than a year as pastor of an international congregation in downtown Nairobi, also is leaving Kenya, according to Torblaa. Winterle's ministry is a partnership of LCMS World Mission and its partner churches in Kenya and Brazil.

Two days earlier, on Jan. 28, Joy Mueller had said via e-mail that the missionaries had no plans to leave, but were taking precautions, especially regarding their travel within the country. She said U.S. embassy officials there were "very optimistic that the [peace] talks will go well and reconciliation and peace will be restored." Some ethnic fighting is still taking place in isolated areas, she said.

Mueller said that Bishop Walter Obare of the Kenyan church body met Jan. 25 with political, community, and gang leaders in Kibera, and the group is "working together to bring peace into Kibera and restore harmony in the community."

In a Jan. 29 telephone interview with LCMS World Relief and Human Care staff, Mueller described the Kenyan people as "very resilient."

"The people have gathered their strength in the Gospel and they've gathered to worship in His name," she said. "They aren't waiting for outside help to come in and solve their problems, but they're getting together, they're praying together, and they're going into communities and they're serving each other out of the love of Christ."

LCMS World Relief and Human Care has sent $60,000 in emergency grants to the ELCK to help people in need. Mueller said the Kenyan church body is using the funds "to help restore lives, homes, churches" and to "share God's love with all."

Contributions to help Kenyans may be sent to LCMS World Relief and Human Care, P.O. Box 66861, St. Louis, MO 63166-6861 -- please make checks payable to "LCMS World Relief and Human Care" and note "Kenya Relief Effort" on the memo line. Or, to make a donation by phone, call the toll-free gift line at (888) 930-4438.

To hear the audio interview with Joy Mueller, visit the Web site of LCMS World Relief and Human Care at http://www.lcms.org/?12981.

Comment on ELCA’s Action by Dr. Dean O. Wenthe, President
Concordia Theological Seminary

Sacred Scripture is the living voice of Jesus. Here the Risen and Ascended Lord speaks to us through His prophets and apostles. His voice is pure, holy, and healing. He names those evils that consume human lives. He offers Himself as the atoning sacrifice that brings forgiveness and new life.

It is, therefore, simply tragic that the majority at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly, Saturday, August 11, 2007, has refused to discipline those willfully engaged in that which Sacred Scripture identifies as “intrinsically sinful”, namely, homosexual behavior. Such a step is a radical departure from two thousand years of Christian teaching across churches and denominations. A physician can only assist a patient by naming the disease. By denying its existence the physician harms the patient.

Concordia Theological Seminary prepares pastors faithful to Jesus’ living voice in Sacred Scriptures. Pastors who will name the evils and sins that destroy human beings and then present the healing, forgiving, life-giving words of the great, good physician Jesus.

We are grateful for the clear witness of President Gerald B. Kieschnick and the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in support of Sacred Scripture. It is a privilege to prepare pastors for such a church even as we pray that all may return to, and hear, the pure voice of Jesus and be healed by His presence.

In The Freedom of a Christian, Martin Luther expounds on how the sinner is justified and united with Christ.

The third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. By this mystery, the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh (Eph. 5:31-32). And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage - indeed the most perfect of all marriages. . . it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own.

Let us compared these and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ's, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul's; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride's and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?