Saint Matthew's

Michelle Malkin asks a very interesting question: Does anyone care yet?

Twenty-three Korean Christians were kidnapped by the Islamofascist Taliban in Afghanistan and are being held hostage. They’ve already killed two of them.

The mainstream media has been relatively silent on this horrific issue. Thankfully, the New York Times has at least started reporting about the kidnapping.

We should pray for the release of these missionaries, whose only goal is to tell the Gospel of Jesus Christ and help the needy. And we should remember the martyrs who have given their lives for Christ.

A Pace University student has been charged with a hate crime for putting a Koran in the toilet.

Stanislav Shmulevich, a Ukrainian immigrant, was arraigned Sunday in New York Criminal Court on two charges of criminal mischief in the fourth degree as a hate crime.

“The defendant, as a hate crime, intentionally damaged property of another while having no right to do so nor any reasonable grounds to believe that he had such a right,” said the complaint filed by the New York County District Attorney’s Office.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Throw a Bible in the toilet and take a picture of it, it’s free speech.

Submerge a crucifix in urine, it’s art.

But put a Koran in the toilet, you’re going to jail.

As a Christian I am insulted that the New York County District Attorney (hello, Robert Morganthau) is trying to put a dopey college kid in jail over this dumb act, but when Christianity is insulted over and over again by “artists,” no one in the Manhattan DA’s office runs off to file charges. Nor should they. This is America and free speech, though at times can be repugnant, is supposed to be protected.

This is political correctness gone way too far.

More: Hot Air

This morning as I walked the distance from the parsonage to the church, I realized that our pigeon friends were back in great numbers.

Yes, they’ve been around, one or two or even three at a time.

But this morning – birds hanging out on the church roof, on the lawn in the back, sitting on the bird feeder in the parsonage back yard, sitting on the fence, ah! They were all over the place.

I was only able to snap a few pictures of our flying friends when I came back to church around 8:30am.

As I sit here in my office in the church, I hear them cooing.

Remembering last year, it seems that when it gets hot, the pigeons with attitudes land here at Saint Matthew’s. And sure enough – with today’s weather, they have made their triumphant return.

I should be mad. They do make a mess. They hang out in the windows around the church and coo during church service. But I’ve always like pigeons. I missed them when I was away in the Midwest. The birds in Fort Wayne didn’t have the same attitude that they have here in the New York City area. Our pigeons are tough and arrogant. I like that!

Concordia Publishing House has updated their website … and it’s laid out well! I can actually find stuff, which is not a good thing. I’ll be broke by 5pm.

Found the story in this morning’s Record about a study that blames New York City for traffic on the George Washington Bridge, all of which causes traffic headaches in Fort Lee (where the GWB sits on the New Jersey side) a little funny. What’s funny – they spent money on a study. Most of the problems of traffic on the GWB can be answered by saying three words:

Cross Bronx Expressway.

The Cross Bronx is not an expressway most of the day. It is a parking lot. When coming out from under the apartment buildings, the Alexander Hamilton Bridge is a joke. The roadway is filled with holes and in many spots is uneven and wavy. Add to the problems of people who take the upper level who come out from under the apartments and try and move over to get to the right hand lanes in order to take the Major Deegan, while those who took the lower level are trying to move over to the left hand lanes to take the Cross Bronx.

It is a mix of headaches that, believe it or not, causes traffic.

And when the bridge backs up into New Jersey from the New York side, who gets hurt? Fort Lee. And drivers like me who always seem to sit in traffic at the bridge.

I don’t think a study was need to figure this one out. All you need to do is drive in this area of Bergen County once or twice, and you know that GWB traffic is caused by New York City.

I have one complaint to add to the “Cross Bronx stinks” study mentioned in today’s Record: the Deegan south at the Alexander Hamilton. Ugh! It is a rare day when anyone who takes this ramp from the Deegan up to the Alexander Hamilton to the GWB doesn’t sit in at least 30 – 45 minutes worth of traffic. And that is just to get from the Deegan up to the Alexander Hamilton so you can have the pleasure of driving under the apartments towards the bridge.

Today is a busy one:

1. I have a meeting at the district office at 11:00am with President Klettke.

2. I am attending the Woodcrest Health Care Center resident memorial program at 2:00pm.

3. I’ll be at Hackensack University Medical Center beginning at 3:00pm.

4. Finally, at 7:00pm, I’ll be at a district meeting at Zion Lutheran in Maywood. The meeting is going to detail the roll out of the Synod’s “Fan Into Flame” program here in the New Jersey District starting in the fall. I’m going by to check out what is going to happen.

5. Hopefully by 11:00pm, I’ll be home and resting.

Gotta go – heading out to the district office. If I am needed, I am on my cell phone. Need the number? Call the parsonage.

First, the Holy Father reiterates Roman Catholic theology that anyone outside of the RCC (read: every other Christian denomination) is not going to be saved. While we shake our heads, what would we expect from the leader of the world’s Roman Catholic Church?

Now the Pope makes another interesting statement- or a dopey statement, depending on your opinion.

Pope Benedict XVI says that evolution and creationism co-exist.

Ugh.

Let’s take this down to a prime point. I don’t want to waste all day explaining why he’s wrong.

When God creates the world, He does it in six days and rests on the seventh. If God creates in six days, when did one of those days become something other than 24-hours?

Scripture says God creates in days, not hundreds of millions of years.

If you trust God’s Word, then you trust what Scripture says. You don’t pick and choose what to believe. Either you believe Scripture in its entirety or not.

Obviously, the Holy Father is having some trouble with trusting God’s Word.

Shocking…(read the last word sarcastically, from a Lutheran point of view).

Boy, did I have a weird dream last night. I woke up in a daze. After spending an hour trying to figure out what the dream was about, I got out of bed and started my day. And the day has been going along well, except for the daze that I am still in over that dream.

To prove it: I am sitting in my church office reading the Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions (Formula of Concord, Article IV: Good Works) when I hear a knocking. And what do you do when you hear someone knock? You say, “Hello, come in.” Well, no one came in. I got up and walked to the door – no one is there. I go back into the office, sit down, and hear the knocking again. Annoyed, I get up and look out the door again. No one.

As I come back inside, I hear the knocking again.

It is a woodpecker outside pecking on the side of the church overhang.

Ugh. I need more coffee.

OK. Maybe not. Last night, Dan Abrams on MSNBC announced that Weekly World News – that lovely supermarket "newspaper" that has given us Batboy, aliens endorsing political candidates, and the news that the angel of death has visted earth – has decided to close up shop.

Sad.

The WWN always made standing on line in the supermarket a little easier.

Especially as we come close to a presidential year. Where else are we going to find the news that Mother Nature has endorsed former Vice President Al Gore?

A little while ago, I was catching up on email and came across one from a Roman Catholic friend of mine. His topic centered around good works and what his church states are a necessity for salvation (the RCC says that we are justified by faith through acts of love, meaning good works). He wondered why us Lutherans didn’t like good works.

My response:

“Lutherans LOVE good works. But Scripture leads us to a different and more solid understanding of doing good to and for others. Saint Paul writes that faith alone is what saves. Romans 3:28 – “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” We are saved not because we have a list of good things on our side, but because of our faith in Christ Jesus. We can’t ignore this blessed verse of Holy Scripture.

“The problem with an emphasis on good works – it takes our eye off the ball. And the ball is Christ. He humbled Himself to take on human flesh in order to die for the sins of the world. He fulfilled the Law because we couldn’t — read: we couldn’t to all the good works that the Law required. Jesus did! And it is by faith alone that saves us. Re-read Romans 3:28. We are justified (declared innocent of our sin) because of faith in Jesus.

“It really isn’t that hard.

“But that doesn’t mean we ignore good works. We do them BECAUSE we are faithful believers in Christ. Read John 15:5 – “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” Those words tell us clearly that if we aren’t a part of Christ (by faith) all of our good works are for naught. “…for apart from me you can do nothing.”

“Our faith compels us to embrace and understand these words.”

A very interesting set of maps are up on the Valparaiso University website – the percentage of the population for each major religion in the counties throughout America.

The LC-MS map is below.

What makes this map interesting (as is the one for the ELCA), both of the largest conglomerations of Lutherans come from what is considered a fairly theologically conservative region – the Midwest and Upper Midwest. However, both the LC-MS and ELCA are facing theological battles that challenge the traditional, confessional centers of Lutheranism.

But the reason for this posting shows the amount of evangelism that is ahead of us. We believe, as Lutherans, that our doctrine and understanding of Holy Scripture is proper and right. We believe that God’s Word is His Word. We believe that we are saved by the work of our Lord Jesus Christ at the cross – and by the graciousness of God the Father, He grants us faith by the Holy Spirit to believe. We believe that there is a loving freedom in this proper and right understanding of Holy Scripture.

And still, if you click on the map and peer towards our Bergen County home, less than 1.7 percent of the population even considers themselves LC-MS members.

Right evangelism spreads the Word in love and truth and Baptizes unbelievers. We tell the Good News strongly, boldly, and proudly. We stand firm in what our Confessions tell us about our proper and right understanding of Holy Scripture and the doctrine that comes from it. And our Lord will bless us and those we touch.

(Thanks to Rev. Paul Gregory Alms over at incarnatus est for posting the maps and links to the Valpo site).

Yes, I’ve pushed blogging to the back burner during the past several weeks. No particular reason – just had a lot of little things that needed attention.

Now that they’ve been accomplished, back to the blog.

It is weird.

I didn’t sleep last night or this morning. I complained about the terrible conditions of the hotel room at the Wingate in Vineland in a post below.

But if I wasn’t awake, I would probably have missed an emergency telephone call to me from a family back here in New Milford. They were having a health crisis with one of their children and they wanted some spiritual guidance.

I got in my car, after checking out the Wingate, at around 3:12am and drove up the Turnpike back to Bergen County. Getting into the area around 5:30am (I made good time from Vineland; guess the lack of vehicular and truck traffic is always a good thing), I went to see the family.

I don’t know if I helped, but I will be with them for some time this Saturday.

It is 2:40am.

I am in my room at the Wingate Inn in Vineland, New Jersey. I am attending my bi-monthly PALS meeting.

Why am I writing at 2:40 in the morning? I am trying to prevent myself from getting an ulcer.

The room they put me in is terrible. My PALS director makes the reservations several months in advance. My usual room request is simple – non-smoking; King-sized bed (the only bed size they offer). This time, the front desk messed up. I am in one of their handicapped accessible rooms that stinks of cigarette smoke.

And anyone who knows me knows that I hate cigarette smoke.

To describe the bed, writing that it is lumpy is doing it a disservice. No matter how I turn, the mattress pokes and prods me. I can’t sleep. I won’t sleep.

The bathroom has a wand-like shower head. Not that I hate wand-like shower heads, but it set on the shower stall at waist level. There is no other shower head. And the hose for the wand is only a foot long. Ahhhh!

Finally, not that this bothers me since I got to the room at 11:00pm, but the remote control is broken.

Does the front desk help? No. There are no other rooms available in the hotel. A couple of youth teams from Pelham Bay and Bronxville are staying here, as are a number of people involved in a Friday evening wedding.

All I want is two hours of sleep so I can drive later on this morning. But I won’t get it. This room is hideous.

The Rev. Gerald Kieschnick was re-elected as president of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod this weekend at our convention in Houston. He received a 52 percent majority of the total delegate votes, a number that some are touting as being one of the lowest for a re-elected president on his third term.

But they forget – a win is a win. Whether it is by a landslide or one-vote, he’s the guy with the title of “President” and he will lead our LC-MS for the next three years.

Saint Matthew’s and I do congratulate President Kieschnick on his re-election, as well as newly re-elected First Vice President Rev. William Diekelman and the other vice presidential winners include Rev. Paul Meier (2nd VP), Rev. Dr. Wohlrabe (3rd VP), Rev. Dean Nadasd (4th VP), and Rev. David D. Buegler (5th VP).

My reaction to the election? Eh…It doesn’t change a thing of what we’re doing here at Saint Matthew’s. Whether Kieschnick or Rev. Dr. John Wohlrabe is president of our Synod, here at Saint Matthew’s our subscription to our Confessions and to proclaiming Christ crucified to the masses doesn’t change.

The one thing about these conventions is that many times serious issues are wrapped up in a political process. Debating theology is not what a convention is all about. But that is what our Synod really needs – a church council to truly discuss and debate the theological drift our Synod is experiencing and how it can be fixed.

Don’t get me wrong – I love the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. This church body has meant the world to me since I was a tot at the former Saint John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Yonkers, New York. I am a member of this church body because I firmly believe that our Confessions are THE right understanding of doctrine as based in God’s Word.

However, our Synod has been drifting for years – drifting away from a stern adherence to our Confessions to a looser understanding of what being Lutheran means. Nowadays, it seems that a number of LC-MS churches can put one of those asterisk * after the word “Lutheran” in church names. It seems that the move within a number of our Synodical churches is pressing  to be more like those Protestant churches that allows anything in doctrine, as long as it makes people feel good. Why? It is believed that is what people want from church.

That’s just phony religious junk. 

We need a chance as a church body to come together in brotherly love to truly debate and discuss the theological issues that are impacting the LC-MS.