A Beggar At The Table

Got home from the Lutheran Preaching Retreat late last night, as I had to do a side-tour to the Peg to visit one of our beloved saints in the congregations I serve. It was a very good retreat, content-wise, and it’ll be a lot of fun, and rather informative, to go back through the recordings and do whatever processing and cleaning up is necessary to put them up on the Lutheran Preaching Retreat website. Might do some more blogging on that as I work on the files. I’m kind of bleary-eyed this morning!

More than that, it was excellent to get to know Pastor William Weedon. He is an interesting speaker and one who really has spent a lot of time digesting the Scriptures and the Confessions, not to mention the Church Fathers. All in all, a good time, and in honour of meeting Pr. Weedon at last, I’m adding him to my blogroll.

As promised, here’s my little devotion for the LCC Convention. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but it seemed to go over well. NB: Give Jesus Glory is our convention theme for this cycle.

---

Give Jesus Glory— for Peace
Romans 5:1-5
LCC Convention 2008–Sunday Afternoon Devotion

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God. Or let us have peace with God. Whether you read the verb in Romans 5:1 as a subjunctive or as an indicative (the manuscript evidence could lean either way), the point is the same, ultimately. Through Jesus Christ we sinners are now forgiven, at peace with God. That peace is ours through God’s declaration of grace, received through faith.

That peace is why we can gather as a convention this weekend. That peace is why we joined together in the Lord’s Supper on Thursday evening as a convention, hosted by Immanuel, the oldest LCC congregation in Winnipeg, the congregation which was the mother of the parish I serve in Winkler and Morden. That peace is why we have gone to various LCC congregations in the greater Winnipeg area this morning and heard and received once again the precious Gospel. That peace is why we wish to be a synod—a group of congregations and pastors walking together in the light and truth of the pure Gospel, united by the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions, seeking to be one in word and deed.

This oneness we seek is not always as present as it should be. It is easy to allow our human opinions to get in the way of simply hearing God’s Word and submitting to what the Lord says. Our overtures and resolutions speak to the fact that the unity which Jesus desires of His Church and which we desire to have as Synod are not always present. We need these convention times to speak the Word to one another, both in-session and in our informal gatherings, to listen to each other, and to work through our differences constructively, being normed by the Scriptures and the Confessions, taking rebuke and reproof where necessary, but always and only with the goal of proclaiming the Gospel in all its truth and purity to our communities and to our world.

For we stand as a church in and by God’s grace alone. Any human efforts we propose will falter and fail. Any stance we take which is not grounded in God’s Word is doomed to fall. But where God is working through His means of grace, those means by which we have peace with Him, the gates of hell cannot and will not prevail.

As such, whatever may come upon our little band of believers—and what is the 75000 of LCC compared to the 6 billion people of this world?— we rejoice! We rejoice because Jesus has taken our sins upon Himself and given us His righteousness. We rejoice because the sufferings, afflictions, struggles and trials we face are there to produce endurance, character, and hope. This hope will never fail or disappoint because “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5)

Give Jesus glory, for He is the one who has made peace for us with God, who gives us His peace through His death on the cross and resurrection from the dead on the third day. Give Jesus glory, for He has sent His Spirit to call you by the Gospel, enlighten you with His gifts, sanctify and keep you in the one true faith. Give Jesus glory, for He is your hope, your peace, and your life. God grant you His peace this day and forevermore! Amen.

I’ve decided not to post any public reflections on the resolutions and so forth, simply because there are official channels for such things and, as I said in my last post, LCC seems to be in pretty good shape at the moment. Please email me if you’d like my 6-page report on the convention. There’s nothing particularly private about the report; it is verbatim what I am sharing with the pastors and congregations of our circuit. I simply prefer to not post it as a blog.

However, I would like to bring the following to your attention:
Photos from the Convention
Note especially the first few photos on Sunday… that’s me, preaching to the convention. I’ll post the mini-sermon later, when I get a chance.

The acceptance speech by our new president
Note especially his comment on the lack of politicking within LCC. “As far as I am personally aware, this election was not marked by the sort of partisan politics which advances one candidate by discrediting another, something that has become commonplace in many churches these days, including some who are very dear to us.”

I had the privilege of being the clergy delegate for my circuit at our recent synodical convention. Just some thoughts and observations:

• Dr. Gene Veith’s keynote speeches were very good at explaining the concept of vocation as being central to the life of a Christian
• Our newly elected President, Robert Bugbee, is going to be an asset to our synod for years to come, if his acceptance speech is any indication.
• It’s a lot of work sitting in a convention and engaging with the resolutions. It’s a really good reminder of the power and importance of words.
• It was more-than-mildly frustrating that the Winnipeg Gay Pride parade was going by our convention hotel right when everyone was trying to return for Sunday’s afternoon sessions. The resulting traffic jams prevented several of us from being able to get into the parking garage until quite literally the last moment.
• I had the privilege of doing the opening devotion for Sunday’s afternoon session. As I was hurrying back to the convention from my car the second time (I had to run back when I realized I had forgotten to lock it!), I also had the honour of meeting Pres. Kieschnick of the LCMS. (He came up to me and introduced himself to me while we were waiting to take the elevator.) This means that I thus preached my short 5-minute sermon to the past, current, and newly elected presidents of LCC, as well as to the president of the LCMS, not to mention all the district presidents of LCC and a bunch of other important lay and clergy of our synod. If you think I was nervous, you’d be precisely right.
• Gene Veith is a lot of fun in person.
• I’m very glad to be part of the LCC. We’re not perfect, but I still can’t think of any other church body I would want to call my own.
• It was good to see that despite the pointed, and even heated disagreements on several of the resolutions, people were generally quite respectful and friendly to each other—even those with exactly opposing views on things. We behaved like a church should in convention, more-or-less.
• People start getting really punchy after sitting in session too long.
• It was good to meet some of the laypeople from around the synod and to reacquaint myself with a number of the brothers within the ministerium of our synod.
• I’m glad I wasn’t elected to the CTCR, as it looks like they have a bit of work ahead of them.
• If I had it to do over again, I think I might have stayed up at the convention instead of coming home. Not that I regret coming home so much as that I was so played out I wasn’t much company to Kelly or BabyK on Saturday night.

That’s it for that. I might run through some of my thoughts on the resolutions at another time.

So Kelly and I were in the supermarket last week and one of our fellow shoppers was genuinely excited about a price on some bologna. This immediately made me think of what I take for granted, as far as how I live and my own spending/saving habits. I think sometimes we’ve gotten used to a lifestyle which is just slightly bigger than our family income can really support, in the long run. We need to learn how to “celebrate bologna”, so to speak, to celebrate good deals where we can get them and not necessarily just go for the nice or the fancy stuff. We need to be a little more firm to the budget and not just assume we can spend now and make it up later.

I’m pretty sure we’re not the only ones in this boat. Hopefully a little discipline and a little bit more concern for our finances will mean that we won’t have to “celebrate bologna” somewhere down the road. But for now, I think we’ll be the sort of people who celebrate bologna.

Lutheran Public Radio.
Pirate Christian Radio.
Whatever you call it, it’s nice to see that Issues Etc. will be back, even if under an assumed name.

It’s been a busy three months. Well, four months. From having a call to three funerals, it just hasn’t stopped. I look around at a lot of the hobbies I used to do when I was single or even in our first three years of marriage before BabyK stopped in to join us and I wonder if I’ll ever have the time to do them again. Even blogging has taken a hit, as it’s a matter of grabbing a couple minutes rather than the hour or so I used to spend on a post. Right now, the little one’s asleep, so I have a little time. I’ve learned that it’s only a little time, however. Soon she will awake and it’ll be time to play again (as today’s Victoria Day, I thought I’d take it off to enjoy some family time).

So, apologies to anyone who was holding out hope for a substantial blog post over here. It’s not going to happen until little one’s a little older, I think. It’s more important for me to be daddy than to be anything on the net, I should think.

Here’s BabyK:

gggggggggggggg vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv 6.06…………………………….. //////////////// , mn ‘[ p/ ,m.ds\\\\\\\\]
00

It seems so strange now, what happened a year ago today. The terrible suffering and bleeding that Kelly endured, seeing my baby whisked away into the nursery for immediate intensive observation, that nagging fear that Kelly might even die, not just for my mother or me, but seeing the hospital staff also fearing for Kelly’s life… but now all is well. The events are still vividly seared into my mind, but healing has come. Kelly is well. Our little girl, even as I type this, is happily bashing keys and playing with the mouse.

As I reflect on her birthday and on one year of being a dad in the fullest sense, I’m also reminded of the great love and care my Mom and Dad have given their children. 34 years and still happily married. Today’s also their anniversary. Sure, it hasn’t been a perfect 34 years, but that’s life in this fallen world. By any human standard, they’ve been successful parents. 6 children all now out of the house and on their own, two married, two grandchildren, one on the way. A pastor, a physicist, a teacher, a doctor, a professional church worker, and a city planning staffer numbered among the children. But most important is simply how they love us and brought Jesus to us.

I only hope I can parent as well as I have been parented. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for reading to and with me, for praying with me, for playing with me, for singing to and with me, for telling me stories, for encouraging me, for bringing me to church every Sunday without fail, for living lives of faith that brought Sunday into the rest of the week, for always being there when I needed you and especially in those times I thought I didn’t! God grant you many more years!

Well, kind of live. Kelly and I went to see the North American premiere of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring as a movie with live choral and orchestral accompaniment last night. I’ll let her post the greater and more detailed review, as she is more aware of the soundtrack and such in general, having seen LOTR:FOTR probably twice as much as I have. But I do have to say that it was a really awesome experience. The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra played very well, and the Manitoba Mass Choir covered all the vocal bits with great agility and style. The men’s choir could have stood to be louder in spots, but other than that it was just like having a remix of the film with the score pushed up to the front of the mix and the dialogue mixed down somewhat. The entire film was subtitled, for that reason, which also meant that we caught nuances of the script in spots which we hadn’t before.

A wonderful evening out, and certainly a once-in-a-lifetime event. It was at the Winnipeg hockey arena (the MTS Centre) so it was a pretty big, and expensive, show to mount. I’m glad we went.