The Life of the Liturgy
By Aaron Schian
He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.
--Luther's Heidelberg Disputation
In the liturgy God gives to us sacramentally and we receive these heavenly treasures in faith. The liturgy after the liturgy is our vocations where we give ourselves sacrificially to our neighbor in love. Our vocations leads us to forgiveness which is found in the liturgy and the liturgy leads us to our calling in our vocations and so the two are connected.
Faith receives the gifts from God in the liturgy and then takes on flesh and bone to serve our neighbor in love. Here a relationship is established between the liturgy and vocation that gives us an understanding of how God's sacramental relationship with us leads us to a sacrificial relationship with our neighbor. The hinge between liturgy and vocation is Luther's post communion collect: "We give thanks to thee, Almighty God, that thou hast refreshed us through this salutary gift; and we beseech Thee that of Thy mercy Thou wouldst strengthen us through the same in faith toward Thee and in fervent love toward one another."
The Wisdom of Man is Blind to Worship
The ideas of mankind concerning God, the true worship of God, and God's will, are altogether stark blindness and darkness. For the light of human wisdom, reason, and understanding, which alone is given to man, comprehends only what is good and profitable outwardly. And although we see that the heathen philosophers now and then discoursed touching God and his wisdom very pertinently, so that some have made prophets of Socrates, of Xenophon, of Plato, etc., yet, because they knew not that God sent his Son Christ to save sinners, such fair, glorious, and wise-seeming speeches and disputations are nothing but mere blindness and ignorance.
--Martin Luther
Saint and Sinner
Ever wonder what the relationship is between the new man and the old man as they are both felt to be present in the life of a Christian? Luther explains thus:
If here upon earth, the body is unwilling, not capable of grace and Christ's leading, it must bear the Spirit, upon which Christ rides, who trains it and leads it along by the power of greace, received through Christ. The colt, ridden by Christ, upon which no on ever rode, is the willing spirit, whom no one before could make willing, tame or ready, save Christ by his grace. However the sack-carrier, the burden-bearer, the old Adam, is the flesh, which goes riderless without Christ; it must for this reason bear the cross and remain a beast of burden.
On the Legends of the Saints
We read of St Vincent, that, about to die, and seeing death at his feet, he said: Death! what wilt thou? Thinkest thou to gain anything of a Christian? Knowest thou not that I am a Christian? Even so should we learn to condemn, scorn, and deride death. Likewise, it is written in the history of St Martin, that being near his death, he saw the devil standing at his bed's feet, and boldly said: Why standest thou there, thou horrible beast? thou hast nothing to do with me. These were right words of faith. Such and the like ought we to cull out of the legends of the saints, wholly omitting the fooleries that the papists have stuffed therein.
--Martin Luther
Music Ain’t Got No Sorrow
Singing has nothing to do with the affairs of this world, it is not for the law; singers are merry and free from sorrows and cares
--Martin Luther
Wonder what he would think of Country music.
Conceit of Speculation
It is the most ungodly and dangerous business to abandon the certain and revealed will of God in order to search into the hidden mysteries of God.
--Martin Luther
To Drink or Not to Drink
Tacitus wrote, that by the ancient Germans it was held no shame at all to drink and swill four and twenty hours together. A gentleman of the court asked: How long ago it was since Tacitus wrote this? He was answered, about fifteen hundred years. Whereupon the gentleman said: Forasmuch as drunkenness has been so ancient a custom, and of such a long descent, let us not abolish it.
-- Martin Luther
And just when I thought living on a college campus had made me privy to every imaginable justification for drunkenness!
Procrastination
Procrastination is as bad as overhastiness. There is my servant Wolf: when four or five birds fall upon the bird net, he will not draw it, but says: O, I will stay until more come, then they all fly away, and he gets none.
-- Martin Luther
Let’s All Be Goats!…
When two goats meet upon a narrow bridge over deep water, how do they behave? neither of them can turn back again, neither can pass the other, because the bridge is too narrow; if they should thrust one another, they might both fall into the water and be drowned; nature, then, has taught them, that if the one lays himself down and permits the other to go over him, both remain without hurt. Even so people should rather endure to be trod upon, than to fall into debate and discord one with another.
-- Martin Luther
I though we were supposed to be sheep...?
Depression Prescription
When you are assailed by gloom, despair, or a troubled conscience you should eat, drink, and talk with others. If you can find help for yourself by thinking of a girl, do so.
--Martin Luther