Lutheran Ping!
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
Posted on 05/21/2014 8:09:52 PM PDT by lightman
Primary Election Day--.like almost every Tuesday throughout the academic year---began in its customary manner of assembling with other Lutheran clergy of various judicatories to pray Matins.
The lessons for that day, the Fifth Tuesday of Paschaltide had a penitential tone. Leviticus 16:20-34 details the ritual for the annual Day of Atonement, in which the sins of the people were laid on the head of a goat which was to be banished from the camp, and the holocaust offerings.
Then the Epistle to the Thessalonians warned of the sudden snare of the day of the Lord, with the exhortation to take up the divine armor. The Gospel detailed one aspect of that armor, the Our Father. The preface to the prayer is part of the Gospel text for Ash Wednesday.
So yes, the day began with an Ash Wednesday feel.
That proved to be quite fitting, for hours later Federal Judge John Jones III struck down Pennsylvania's Defense of Marriage Act, stating ascerbically that "We are a better people than what these [marriage] laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history."
But is the ash heap really such a bad place?
It is from the ash heap that the people of Nineveh--from the greatest to the least--turned their hearts to the Lord, who then turned from his plan to destroy that great city.
It is from the ash heap that the righteous Job cried out in faith “I know that my Redeemer lives”
And it was from the personal experience of having sat penitentially in ashes that the Psalmist David could declare “[God] lifts the needy from ashes to sit with the princes of the people”.
The laws despised by Judge Jones are human attempts to enshrine the Divine command given at the dawn of creation “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and a woman her home, and the two shall become one flesh”.
They are laws which which build upon the foundation of faith; faith which led the Ninevites to the ash heap of resentence; faith which inspired confidence on the ash heap in Job; faith which caused the ash maid to assent to the angelic message.
Fort no one brings redemption to the ash heap more than the lowly maid of Nazareth, who was lifted by God to bear God. Luther described the Theotokos Mary as being a “lowly Cinderella”--the ash maid, who would bear, and carry, and tend God made ashes and dust for us and for our salvation.
Lowly and humble of heart, the pure maiden would be exalted “higher than the Cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim” and thus called “blessed” in every generation.
And for those of every generation who are meek and humble of heart, the ash heap is a wonderful place to be.
Thank you, Judge Jones!
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
Ping.
Federal Judge John Jones III is an ELCA Lutheran—a member of Trinity Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.
http://www.alpb.org/forum/index.php?topic=5474.msg336940
Meanwhile, obama and his minions are busy throwing spitballs at the Constantine of our own day—You Know Who!!!!
Is it due to the Emperor Constantine’s “adopting” Christianity that the earthly headquarters of the Christian religion acquired the form of an ecclesiastical simulacrum of an earthly court of Middle Ages Europe, replete with ecclesiastical equivalents of Emperor, Princes, Earls, Barons, Dukes, etc., etc.; the whole presumptively purporting to serve as a substitutionary, vice-Christ mediator between the Heavenly Father and Judge, on one hand, and sin-burdened humanity on the other?
It is.
As you note, the legalization of Christianity proved to be a very mixed blessing.
Now it appears that we may be headed back to the catacombs, and that may not be such a bad thing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.