This morning’s sermon during Matins at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Tshwane (LTS) on Acts 17:22-32 can be read here: Ac17,22-33 Matins 2016.4.21 and heard here:
We sang the baptismal hymn “All Christians who have been baptised…”. You can listen to us singing that also here:
This year 2016 it is seventy-five years ago that Superintendent Christoph Johannes started a seminary in Salem (Mpumalanga) to train evangelists and assistants. Due to the great war it took some time, before the following report was given about this start-up: Seminary Anniversary 75 years Salem 2016
During Matins I preached on the first epistle of the apostle St.Peter the fifth chapter verses 1-4. Here it is to read (1Pt5,1-4 Matins 2016.4.14) and here it is to listen to:
(Sadly it’s only the first part, somewhere along the line I got a call and pressed the wrong button, that put the rest of the story on hold and we only hear Dumisane continuing with the liturgy once I pressed the button again. I thought to stop, but obviously it was to continue…Well, here goes anyway.)
Jubilate Sunday is the third Sunday after Easter. It is called this because in the liturgy the first line of the introit is “Jubilate Deo omnis terra” (“Shout with joy to God, all the earth”) from Psalm 66 (65).
Watchword for the 4th Sunday in Easter called “Jubilate” from 2 Corinthians 5:17. The apostle St.Paul writes: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
Old Testament reading from the first book of Moses (Genesis) 1:1-4a. 26-31a.2,1-4a: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good… 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” 29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground– everything that has the breath of life in it– I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good… Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. 4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
First letter of St. John the 5th chapter: Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3 This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.
Gospel of St. John the 15th chapter: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. 5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. (Joh 15:1-8 NIV)
Here’s this morning’s confessional address by Professor Dr. John G. Nordling (CTS Ft.Wayne) as held in the chapel of St.Timothy at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Tshwane: John 21.15-19 JN 2016.4.13
Here’s the promised sermon by Rev. Dr. Karl Böhmer on the gospel of Matthew chapter 14:22-27:
“It all started just before WW2 – the superhero craze, I mean. Oh, there had been heroes before, popular heroes, superheroes even, champions of legend and mythology like Hercules and Thor and Neptune/Poseidon, the god of the sea. But fictional heroes waned in western culture until just before WW2. That’s when Superman and his fellow superheroes made their first appearance, back in 1938, followed by Captain Marvel, Batman, The Phantom, and all the rest. Recently, the superhero genre has experienced a massive boom in the film industry. X-Men. Spiderman. Batman vs. Superman. And there is a whole whack of superhero movies in the making.
What does this phenomenon tell us about the human psyche? It tells us that there is a connection between the weal and woe of the times, and what people want. Consider the connection between the turmoil of WW2 – and the creation of the superheroes. Or the connection between the rise in terrorism, Islamism, the economic collapse, and the global uncertainty of the present. It seems to me that when people face great difficulty or uncertain times, they instinctively resonate with stories of superhuman saviours who are generally benevolent, extremely powerful, and willing to intervene in world history for the benefit of mankind. One might almost think that we are programmed that way. That when danger threatens, we look to the skies for help, for help to come from above, to neutralize evil, make things safe, and ensure a nice, satisfying “happily ever after…” Could it be that this yearning was planted in us? We read in Acts that the God who made the world and everything in it … made from one man every nation of mankind… that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us… (Acts 17:24-27) God has made all people so that they would seek Him, but you find God only where He comes to find you. That’s what’s going on in our reading. The events we hear about today happen immediately after the feeding of the 5,000. This is the second time in Mt that Jesus is with the disciples out on the water at night in adverse conditions. But this is not just another stilling of the storm.
First, Jesus is personally responsible for the separation between disciples and himself. They are out on the water in a boat at night, away from him, because he sent them there. He made the disciples get into the boat and go before him while he dismisses the crowd and goes up on the mountain to find rest in prayer. Jesus is clearly in charge of the scene. Why send them out like this into a headwind? Sailing in a headwind can be done, but it takes hard work. Now, the lake is big, and the night is long, but it’s not as if they are in great danger. It’s not life-threatening – it’s just difficult. These are experienced sailors. So Jesus lets them go until they are about halfway. And then he comes to them walking on the lake between 3 am and 6 am. The men are not afraid – until Jesus shows up. Why?
The way Mt tells the story, you have to notice that Jesus is doing all of the verbs. He created the situation, he is in charge of it, and he is showing himself in this way to make a point. He is doing what God does whenever He offers a theophany, God showing Himself. Think about the time Moses asks to see God. Moses has to hide in the cleft of a rock – and God passes by, demonstrating who He is. What Jesus is doing is a demonstration of deity. Forget superhuman. Forget superhero. This is a manifestation of supreme authority, this is the amazing truth that he, the man from Galilee, is the master of the storm. Forget Neptune and Poseidon. Jesus is the God of the storm. That’s the first point. Jesus sends the disciples out and he comes to them in this amazing way because he wants to show who he is. But the thing is – they don’t get it. They didn’t recognize him for who he is the first time he stilled a storm. They didn’t recognize him for who he is earlier at the feeding of the 5,000, and they don’t recognize him now. Try for a moment to see Jesus the way they would have. The wind is blowing in your face, hard. It’s been doing that all night, and you’re really tired of it. In fact, you’re tired, period. You’re just about halfway, it’s 3 am, and it’s not smooth sailing. You keep having to duck as the sail snaps past to the other side and the boat changes direction, yet again. Back and forth, back and forth. Nobody gets to sleep. The wind is blowing something awful. And then suddenly, you notice a figure inserting himself into the situation, approaching the boat, walking over the waves, straight into the wind. A vision that is out of this world. But what really gets you is that this figure is absolutely calm, absolutely in control, even as the wind whips at him, and he’s headed in a fixed direction while you struggle to maintain any direction at all. He’s resolutely striding, very determined, a picture of total control. It’s totally eerie. It’s incredible, unbelievable. The sailors think he’s some kind of apparition, something like Neptune riding on the roiling sea. Here their Lord who stunningly mastered the storm, now walks on the storm. In him the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, and that body walks on the water. They are totally freaked out. And so they cry out, in fear.
So the demonstration isn’t working – because of their unbelief. And so Jesus identifies himself. He comes right to his exhausted, terrified followers and he speaks those bracing words: Take heart. Ego eimi! That is how the Lord identified Himself to Moses, it is the name of God. It is the presence of the eternal God, it is how Jesus identifies himself: I am the bread of life, the light of the world, the door for the sheep, the Good Shepherd, the way, the truth, the life. The words of Jesus are never empty phrases. They are always connected with who he is and what he does. And just like the disciples, when you are being battered and you have the wind head-on, when it’s dark and it seems things couldn’t be worse, this same voice that you know and recognize speaks out of the water of your baptism, right beside you: Take heart; Ego eimi. Your Lord is right there, the great “I am”, who chose you, who called you, who has been guiding you, who has given you proofs of his power and love. Do not be afraid. Now with these water stories in the Gospels, pastors love allegorizing and drawing parallels to the storms of life. But that’s really dangerous, because you often end up saying something that’s not true. It’s not true that Jesus calms the storms of life, or at least, by no means all of them. Here, he has sent his people into the wind and weather! He is testing them. Every believer knows that Jesus sometimes sends you into raging headwind. The events of our reading tells you something about Jesus, something that blows your socks off and puts even the best superhero movie to absolute shame. It is this: Jesus is in fact the Creator. He is the Word through whom all things were made (John 1). He is the image of the invisible God (Col. 1). He has absolute power over the whole creation. But more: This Jesus graciously identifies himself to disciples who don’t get it when they should. So who is Jesus? He is the good shepherd – not some willowy figure wending his way through woolly landscapes, but the powerful defender of the sheep, the expert smasher-in of wolf skulls. Jesus is not your warm and fuzzy buddy, or always gentle Jesus meek and mild. He is God. Not merely a superhuman being born on a different planet, but the Creator who made all the planets and the solar systems and who came here to be born in this one. He is God, so powerful and so majestic that his own disciples don’t even recognize him and cry out in fear. There are times when we need to remind ourselves, especially in today’s culture, where everything is casual and we’re all buddy-buddy and we have lost the ability to distinguish between occasions that are formal and those which are informal: This is not healthy for human beings. There are things we ought to fear, and there are times and places when we ought to be silent and to show respect.
Now, here’s the deal: That same Jesus, that God, is willing to come and reveal himself patiently and repeatedly. He does not reject his followers when they don’t get it. He does not reject you when you don’t get it. He is willing to come to you and bear with you and reveal himself to you for who he is. The greatest event of course when our Saviour does this is when he cloaks his majesty, hides his power and reveals himself in the unexpected death – unexpected for us – death on the cross, only to have it revealed when he is raised from the tomb and shows himself yet again to these same disciples. It seems to me that we need to recapture the wonder, and the shock, and the surprise, and the joy in this promise that Jesus is who he is, he is who he says he is, and graciously reveals himself to us. Because in the long night of your headwind and struggle you get angry at God for sending you this distress, and demand that He prove himself to you and explain Himself to you. But this is the height of pride, the height of hubris and idolatry. Set your pride and hubris aside and repent. God is God – you are not. The Lord does not deign to explain everything He does, every difficult event that takes place in the creation, in your life; you do not know the ways of God. He has not revealed his hidden ways to you. But he has condescended to reveal to you his identity in Jesus Christ, and he invites you to believe in him, the powerful Good Shepherd of the resurrection. The disciples didn’t yet. They couldn’t understand him. But in light of his self-revelation and Good Friday and Easter, and the Word that comes to you week after week, day after day, you can marvel that the great, amazing, incredible, superhuman, all-powerful Creator God would be so kind, and so patient, and so loving as to reveal himself to you in his cross and in his empty tomb and resurrection presence. When the headwind rages, do not look to any superhero or human creation. Their power is nothing. Look to Him who created you. The injustice of his death spells the death of injustice, and you receive the power of his life for the triumph of righteousness and the real happily ever after. Amen.
“… zwei Junge heiraten sich; – das ist so ziemlich alles, was auf 500 Seiten geschieht, hat Theodor Fontane über seinen letzten Roman “Der Stechlin” gesagt. Da kann man sogar reinhören: Das erste Kapitel vorgelesen. Und hier ist noch mehr dazu nach Wikepedia zB dieses “Im Roman enthalten ist eine Kritik an Friedrich Nietzsches Konzept des Übermenschen, wenn der alte Stechlin sagt: „Jetzt hat man statt des wirklichen Menschen den sogenannten Übermenschen etabliert; eigentlich gibt es aber bloß noch Untermenschen, und mitunter sind es gerade die, die man durchaus zu einem „Über“ machen will. Ich habe von solchen Leuten gelesen und auch welche gesehn. Ein Glück, daß es, nach meiner Wahrnehmung, immer entschieden komische Figuren sind, sonst könnte man verzweifeln.“[6]
Watchword for the 3rd Sunday in Easter from the gospel of John 10:11a; 10:27-28: Jesus Christ says: “I am the good shepherd…My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.” That is why this Sunday is also called “Good Shepherd Sunday!
Ezekiel 34:1-16.31 The word of the LORD came to me: 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? 3 You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. 4 You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. 5 So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. 6 My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them. 7 “‘Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: 8 As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, 9 therefore, O shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: 10 This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them. 11 “‘For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. 12 As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. 13 I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land. 14 I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. 15 I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign LORD. 16 I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice…31 You my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, are people, and I am your God, declares the Sovereign LORD.'”
1 Peter 2:21b-25 Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. 22 “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” 23 When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
John 10:11-16.27-30 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. 14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me– 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father– and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd… 27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.
This morning’s sermon during Matins in St.Timothy’s chapel at the Lutheran Theological Seminary was on the apostle St. Paul’s first letter to the very same name’s patron St. Timothy chapter 1 verses 12-17. You can read it here (1Ti1,12-17 Matins 2016.4.7) or listen to it here:
Today Professor Dr. John G. Nordling preached during the confessional service in the chapel of St.Timothy at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Tshwane. Here is his sermon for your edification: 2016.4.6 LTS 2 Tim 1.6-10 JN
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