Guilt is more than a feeling. You can be guilty whether you feel it or not. Preachers often think that guilt is a feeling that we are supposed to eradicate. Well, yes and no. A lot of the time, it is our job to make people feel guilty. And that’s a good thing. We comfort the terrified and terrify the comfortable.

The fact is that every person stands guilty before God. We are all – apart from Christ- objects of God’s wrath (Ephesians 2:3). Though this is not a popular message in our churches, it is the truth.

Some popular diluters of the faith, such as Rick Warren, will say that “God doesn’t expect you to be perfect (Purpose Driven Life, p.92).” But that contradicts the clear words of Jesus Himself. “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48).” It is part of our fallen nature that we want to reduce the demands of God’s law, to soften it. Why? To make it seem like we can attain God’s favor on our own – even if we still give lip service to sin and grace.

“Gloom, despair and agony on me…” (a special prize to whomever is able to identify the source of this line w/o Google).

Ash Wednesday is useful because it graphically proclaims our mortality. “I am nothing but dust and ashes,” Abraham said (Genesis 18:27). Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. All who sin must die. This is the curse on the Adam in all of us.

We are sinners not because we commit sins. But rather, we commit sins because we are born sinful. Unless we drive this point home, the crucifixion of Jesus seems like overkill. Why did Jesus have to die? Because at that moment, bearing your sin and mine, he deserved to die. Was the Father unjust by slaying an innocent man? No. Jesus had to die because on the cross He became the vilest sinner on earth. “He who knew no sin became sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).”

Your justification is not just a legal fiction. You are righteous and holy on account of Christ. But in this life, you are also a sinner. It’s a paradox, I know. I’m cool with that. So let’s have a good lent. No one likes to consider his sinfulness and mortality. But we need to do that so that we can make sense of the cross. Not that your self-mortifications make you holy. But the Crucified One is your holiness.

Here is a link to a sermon preached a couple weeks ago by Rev. Jason Braaten here in Kramer Chapel:

Audio // Text

Sometimes there are those sermons that stick with you. They stand out either because they taught you something, struck your stubborn conscience with God’s law, or soothed an aching heart with the sweet Gospel of forgiveness. Rev. Braaten certainly proclaimed law and gospel, and I was duly comforted with the forgiveness of sins, but additionally, his preaching was also a lesson in how to read scripture.

“For the crucified and risen man Jesus is the key to unlock the Scriptures, and only with this key in hand, only with him in mind, do we rightly understand them. “

That is how you should read scripture: look through the lens of the incarnation and see Jesus as the plan and purpose for everything that God does leading up to, and flowing from, the death and resurrection of His beloved Son for your salvation.

The names of the sons of Israel find their meaning and fulfillment as Jesus is the praise and glory of God (which we have beheld, full of grace and truth) and Jesus is the increase as all things earthly decrease. Jesus is the fulfillment of all the law and the prophets as He Himself demonstrates in Luke 24:25-27 (ESV).

In the new curriculum here at CTS we do not have a formal class in hermeneutics. We have received some criticism for this, perhaps because the critic believes studying the abstract theories of how to read scripture are vital to the work of the pastor, or it could be a misunderstanding that for some reason we are not teaching the students how to read scripture. By no means!

As demonstrated in this sermon our students are daily taught applied hermeneutics as they hear the proclamation of the Word of God as they gather for chapel. At the foundation of the new curriculum is an interdisciplinary approach to theology which demands the study of scripture in every aspect of pastoral formation, whether in a course on scripture, doctrine, history, or pastoral practice.

Every class, every chapel service, every opportunity to discuss theology then becomes a lesson in how to read and interpret scripture, and how to teach it and proclaim it. This is ultimately the work of a servant of the church, and that is why Concordia Theological Seminary exists, to form servants in Jesus Christ who will teach the faithful, reach the lost, and care for all.

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Saint Paul once instructed a young pastor, “Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching” (1 Timothy 4:13).This apostolic direction is hard to follow today. If someone is to read, preach and teach, then the rest of us are to listen and hear. But we live in an age of seriously short attention spans. We grumble if the preacher is long-winded. A friend once said of my preaching, “Verbosity is an atrocity.” Or as one professor here has been known to demand, “Get to the point.” O.K. Fair enough. It is important to be concise. However, it is tempting for the church to mirror the unwholesome values of the culture and resort to soundbite theology, to reduce the Ministry of the Word to repetition of religious-sounding slogans or principles or steps. Many people today, deeply shaped by the rapidly flashing images of a TV screen, have virtually lost their ability to listen and hear the spoken word unless it is as brief as a hamburger commercial. What shall we make of the words of Jesus today, “He who has ears, let him hear”?

Christianity is counter-cultural in the sense of being highly verbal, oriented around authoritative speech and texts. The Church cares about words, specifically God’s Word. As the Savior said, “Man shall . . . [live] on every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4).

But God’s Word is never mere chat. It is alive and active. The Divine Speech which long ago brought all things into being from nothingness still today brings order to chaos and reverberates in the Divine Service to create new life and usher us into a renewed fellowship with God. Each day we recall that “the Word became flesh.” Never a mere intellectual abstraction, God’s Word entered the concreteness of our existence through Mary, the virgin, for our redemption. His incarnation speaks new realities into being.

Because of this emphasis on the Word of God, we also assign great importance to the Office of the Ministry of the Word of God. Speaking God’s speech is constitutive of the Holy Office. CTS, as a place where pastors are formed, is devoted to Divine Speech. Our community life is structured around the Word of God. We devote ourselves as seminarians and pastors to the intensive and reflective study of the Sacred Texts. We mine these treasures in the classroom using the original languages, and we gather daily to hear the Scriptures read and proclaimed in public worship. We receive Him weekly in the Holy Supper. All of this is part of a program that molds the seminarian into a Servant of the Word.

As pastors, chief among our tasks is to bring people into communion with the Body of Jesus Christ. This we do through administering God’s Word in oral proclamation (reading, preaching and teaching) and Sacrament. In this Ministry, the blessings of Divine Speech are conveyed, namely, life and forgiveness. May Christ bless you as you pray and consider entering this life of speaking God’s speech.

The Lord be with you.

From Volume 2, Issue 1, January/February 1998 of Pilgrimage