Welcome to the Twenty-First edition of the Lutheran Carnival. I hope you enjoy the brief spiel on the church festival, the church father of this carnival, and finally the good posts submitted and drafted into the Carnival. May you find it entertaining and informative.
Palm Sunday
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
behold, your king is coming to you;
righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
-Zechariah 9:9
The Entry Into Jerusalem
Orrente, Pedro
Thanks to the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Our Lord Jesus Christ comes humbly amidst all the Hosannas. He knows what’s coming. He’s already foretold his death three times in the Gospel of Matthew. While the sinners throw down their coats and cut down the palm branches, the Messiah sits.
The crowd says all the right things: “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.” (Matthew 21:9-11) “. We can guess that they were mindful of Jeremiah 23 and 33:
| Jeremiah 23:5-6 | Jeremiah 33:15-16 |
|---|---|
| “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’ | In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’ |
It’s easy to take one passage about the Messiah and fixate on it, shutting out all the other prophecies. They had Psalms, Isaiah, even Zechariah, telling them what would happen with this prophet from Galilee. For whatever reason, most likely Divine intervention, portions of scripture were ignored. If they had known who He really was, would they have crucified Him? Given His desire to be known to just a few, it doesn’t seem that way.
Would you pierce His hands and side? Would you hang him to suffocate, if you knew who He was?
The GOOD NEWS is that we have. You nailed him to that cross. So did I. So did my family. We all did. We may not have held the spike like Mel Gibson to Jim Caviezel, but our sins are upon the cross. Every time we disobey God’s Law is another sin we heap on Him.
Instead of doing requirements to score points with a deity, Christ tells us, “Repent and believe the gospel.” (Mark 1:15). Repent, meaning there is still God’s Law to keep and sin to turn away from. We’re only free from its curse. If we ignore scripture and deny parts of the Law, how can we repent of those sins?
It is good to say our sins—all of them—are on that cross. It is good to say, “Jesus died for me,” because Christ Jesus is not what our sinful selves want Him to be and as the Jews on that day wanted Him to be. God wants our sins on the cross. Not only does Jesus want our sins; He doesn’t want to give them back. He takes them from us in His word and sacraments.
Our sinful nature desires the Christ on the donkey instead of the cross. We’d love to be able to put the palms and the coats down to make his travels comfortable. We’d love for him to come in a physical manifestation and execute justice and righteousness in our land, right now. We, like the Jews of that day, would like to be able to do things to benefit Him so that he would desire to address our temporal needs. What can anybody do, though, for an omnipotent?
We use Palm Sunday instead to look forward to what Christ has done. He gave us His supper. He was crucified. He rose from the dead. All this, that we may be his own. Holy Week—indeed, Christianity—is about what the Omnipotent did for us.
Church Father: Abraham Calov
 Abraham Calov (1612-1670) was born in East Prussia. He was a professor and pastor in Königsberg, served as superintendent of schools and churches, and eventually became head professor and dean of faculty in Wittenburg.Calov produced the Biblia illustrata in four years, an extensive Biblical commentary of which Johann Sebastian Bach had a copy. The Biblia illustrata spread over three volumes.
As professor he would lecture to as many as 500 students at a time. He studied math, philosophy, law, Hebrew, and the writings of the Church fathers. The professor argued tirelessly and produced many polemic works against syncretism with both the Roman Catholic and Reformed churches, especially against the efforts of Georg Calixt to dismiss “pure doctrine” in the name of unity. Calixt wanted to concede primacy to the Pope and to refer to the Mass as a sacrifice. (Sources: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, LCMS Christian Cyclopedia) |
Carnival Posts
Everyone gets a signal. Some fit better than others.
| Our first post comes via the “Special Consideration” rule. A non-blogger submitted Theology for the dying and the dead from Love & Blunder. Rob discusses the paradox of entering the kingdom of eternal life through dying. The precious life of his daughter in this world brings him to focus on their lives in the next world. The post will ring with the dads out there. |  |
| The first of several posts representing Ohio comes from Die Schreriben von Schreiber. Scott had the privilege of seeing his daughter confirmed in her faith and his son receive First Communion on the same Sunday. He notes the differences between the rites and warns of Confirmation becoming a graduation from Sunday School in Confirmation, Communion, Tradition, etc. |  |
Vicar Charles Lehmann was the first to max out his quota. On Drowning Myself Whenever I Can you can find sermons on:
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| The writings of Chris Atwood at Three Hierarchies are always packed with analysis and well-written. In Luther, Theologian of Filiality, he argues that it is filiality—love of parents, our heavenly Father and earthly mother and father—that gives Lutheran theology its distinctive “flavor.” His second submission, Samuel Johnson, Justification by Faith Alone, and the True Church, illustrates how one great Christian who rejected the idea of justification by faith alone in his life, came to embrace it in his death. |  |
| As Lutherans we can hammer so hard on the “grace alone, without our works” part of being saved that it sounds like we are saying good works don’t need to be done. On his blog Wretched of the Earth, Ryan, a missionary to Thailand, frames this in terms of how we use some English grammatical constructs in Modals, thunder, and loving your neighbor. In his email he stated that he made illegal contact with “Goodworksville,” but this ref is telling him to play on. Thanks, Ryan. |  |
| From across the pond we have three from Confessing Evangelical.In Of Mice and Elephants, medieval notions about elephants may not have been zoologically correct, but they led to some great illustrations of gospel truth.
The BC/AD dating system is not merely convenient-it reflects the biblical view of history, in which “the coming of Christ was not the beginning of our consciousness, but the culmination of a centuries-old development”, and “the whole of earlier history is, in effect, a countdown to that glorious event.” Read more at Getting Back into Christian Dating. John also submitted Jesus’ Baptism and Ours, in which our correspondent makes another valiant attempt to “out” NT Wright as an unconscious Lutheran, as the Bishop of Durham calls for Baptism to be placed at the center of our self-understanding as Christians. |
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| As feminism, syncretism, and the will to sacrifice the Word in order to gain members tempt the Church today, what happens when a congregation doesn’t wish to participate in promoted behavior that the congregation sees as contrary to God’s Word? What happens when leadership in a Lutheran synod doesn’t seem to a congregation, well, Lutheran? Some congregations leave. Others stay and announce themselves In Statu Confessionis. In his first post to the Lutheran carnival, Jason the TheologyGeek details what is involved with this announcement and why some congregations make the decision. He offers A brief look at “In Statu Confessionis” (link dead). |  |
| Lutheran Jargon submitted “One True God…ONLY Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (link now down). Minister2B takes a slightly different look at the debate over whether the Lutheran Confessions believe Jews, Turks, and heathens also believe in the “one true God.” Dissecting the wording of the sentence and the rest of the paragraph, he denies that the “we all worship one God” crowd has a leg to stand on. |  |
| Random Dan scores two points with his entries from Random Thoughts of a Confessional Lutheran. In The Joy of Christian Radio, he discusses something he heard that morning that made him want to take a rock hammer to his radio. Daniel also comments on the funeral and burial of his great aunt, a lifelong Roman Catholic, in My Great Aunt’s Funeral. | |
| The co-founder of the Lutheran Carnival has requested a “special dispensation” for an ELCA missionary’s post on Drinking Europe. The ELCA and LCMS can be in total agreement about beer. Chris gives his thoughts on beer, and drinking in general, in Europe. |  |
 “What does it mean for Jesus to be ‘lifted up’?” Is it our doing? Jesus lifted up…two takes asserts that “Jesus lifted up” is not, contrary to pop Christianity, about power, glory, and our own efforts. Kelly’s Blog tells us that “Jesus lifted up” is about the cross. |
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| Jeremy of Living Among Mysteries goes old school on us. When he was A Bookish Child, Jeremy collected Christian books; today he gives a couple he still likes. Jeremy’s parents bought him the same Student Handbook set my parents bought me. |  |
| Pastor Snyder remains busy answering new questions and editing and expanding responses from his Ask the Pastor column archives. One curious soul wondered about the proper response to God in the Christian’s life: Is it Fear or Love? Snyder then showed the origin, construction wood, and uses of Scripture’s various Arks and Tabernacles.Unwilling to let sleeping iconoclasts lie, Ask the Pastor then posted yet another defense of the portrayal of the crucified savior in church art in Crucifixes and Graven Images. He also compared unregenerate, natural man with the new creation we are in Christ in a pair of posts, including The Old Man. |  |
| Hot Lutheran on Lutheran Action is a blog run by Sean, a Kantor from Michigan. Non-Lutheran Art and Entertainment is a fun, somewhat tongue-in-cheek read. Sparked by the heated talk over listening to rap and other lewd music, Sean considers the potential trouble in listening to any music from a non-Lutheran point of view. In addition, he ponders the use of non-Lutheran art in the context of the Divine Service. His second post, Excellence And/Or Voluntary Participation in Church Music, was on the list to be drafted (see below) before he submitted it himself. After a frustrating night at choir practice, Sean wonders where the lines cross between participation and quality in church choirs. He offers some thoughts and even solutions on the subject, and either turns frustration into positive thinking, or complaints into pipe dreams. | |
| Following the furor about the change in doctrinal review status for the new Concordia Publishing House edition of the Book of Concord, Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, Aardvark Alley responded with Concordia Discordia, which covered some of the basics in the dispute and linked to others who were also blogging on the subject. He followed this post with Intercepts from the Death Star, which reprinted anti-Concordia material from the secretive DayStar organization.Of course, the Aardvark didn’t neglect the Church calendar and his regular hagiographical posts. On 1 April, he commemorated Saint Fere Verus—who never actually existed. Make sure you find a good online or print Latin-English dictionary (Aardie used SunSITE) so as to catch the jokes hidden in some of the names. For instance, “Fere” means “almost” or “nearly.” The Aardvark also included some real remembrances, including one dedicated to Albrecht Duerer and Others. Illustrated with self portraits, the post gives background on three of Christendom’s noted artists. |  |
| Pursuant to the Peer Pressure rule, I have been asked to submit One More Saved. It is the first of two posts about my newly sainted grandmother, the other being Highlights of This Past Weekend. The Lutheran Blogosphere got a lot smaller for me when I found out that my grandmother had Random Dan’s recently sainted uncle for a pastor. | |
| At Luther Library, the entire staff remains busy with all the other parts of their lives, but entries are slowly being added. Children received their due over the past few weeks-see Coloring Books! and He Is Risen, Indeed! as possible gifts for younger Christians. Meanwhile, electronic resources will continue to be a part of the Library’s analysis. Recent reviews include Sermons of Martin Luther: Church Postils and the film Bonhoeffer. |  |
| Line Drive Down the Right Side submits a post for the first time. The Designated Knitter recalls her senior year in high school and her freshman year in college, when she sang portions of Mendelssohn’s Elijah. In Music is not neutral…, she opines that certain musical genres carry cultural nuances no matter what positive lyrics the songs contain. | |
The Draft
These are posts that I thought deserved to make the Carnival, but the posters for health, duties, or other reasons were unable to submit them.
| Three-year-olds can make good theologians. If you don’t believe my daughter who is “glad Jesus died for my sin” and knows “God protects us”, you can ask Jon Ledetroit’s son on Beggars All. Jon gives us a dose of Three Year Old Theology. | |
| Bob Waters, hosting watersblogged!, produced a thoughtful post on Calls, regular and otherwise. He concludes that the main issue behind the debates of lay ministers, ordination of women, and close/closed communion are matters of obedience-nothing to do with whether or not people are qualified. Waters also reminds us that “God is nobody’s butler” in People not clear on the concept may get a little clearer because of this. | |
| A relative newcomer to the Lutheran blogosphere, Pastor Paul Beisel on One Lutheran…Ablog!™ reminds us that God’s command for us to be holy is also an invitation to share in the holiness he provides. Check out Sanctification by Grace Alone. |  |
Lutheran Carnival XXII
Pastor Walter Snyder will be hosting the 22nd edition of the Carnival on Ask the Pastor two weeks from today. Send in your posts as you make them; he can spread out his work over more days that way. Thanks to the posters for your submissions, and thanks to everyone else for your time.
iggyantiochus on 
Dan
