February 1st, 2007 at 12:11 am
If names were grace points, then going to Messiah Lutheran Church in Corpus Christi tonight would have earned me at least a couple of indulgences. 
Pastor Dale Brynestad led a discussion of Law and Gospel in an attempt to get into a prepared Bible study. We didn’t get to the study because the discussion was quite lively. Yes, I behaved. Sort of. 
Pastor started off by emphasizing the focus of Law — man, or what man does — and Gospel, or what God does for us. Most religions — and most Christian denominations — focus very heavily on the Law (or a law, if non-Christian). Lutherans emphasize the Gospel: this is what God did for us so that we may gain entrance into heaven.
When a church only preaches Law, two things can happen to hearers. A person can look at his own deeds, see that he is sinful, and despair that he is not going to heaven. A person may also get angry because he sees all these people in church who are supposedly perfect, and he knows they are lying.
A question was then asked, do Roman Catholics believe in forgiveness. Yes, but they place obligations on that forgiveness in the form of penance, replied the pastor. Can a Roman Catholic priest retain sins if the penance isn’t performed? I said he could retain sins regardless, through the power in the Office of the Keys.
Pastor Brynestad then offered an explanation. The power to forgive and retain sins has been given to the church (Matthew 16:18-19). If sins are retained, that person is “bound in heaven.” This is not a responsibility to be given lightly. The church sends men to seminary to learn Hebrew and Greek so they can read the original text of Scripture. Otherwise, anyone could accuse another person of anything and retain sins when they were unqualified to judge. God has stern warnings for bad shepherds (Jeremiah 23:1, Matthew 23).
Another question was asked, if this person knows she has hasn’t forgiven someone yet and she is feeling really angry, should she refrain from taking Holy Communion? 1 Corinthians 11:27-29 contains Paul’s warnings about taking communion improperly. Since she recognizes what is in the Lord’s Supper and that it is for the forgiveness of sins, she shouldn’t deny herself to the Lord’s Table. I wanted to ask the pastor about Matthew 5:23-24, but I didn’t get the chance at the time and had forgotten the question when I had the chance to ask it.
Finally someone had asked about differences between the ELCA and LCMS. Because we were nearing the end of the class, Pastor focused on the official views of biblical inerrancy, the Bible containing the Word of God vs. the Bible is the Word of God.
Pastor promised to actually crack the Bible study next week. At least he was still teaching.
Class ended, and Pastor Brynestad and I chatted for another half-hour outside. I discovered that after Pastor Gary Childs of Duncan retired last September, he and his wife moved to Corpus Christi where they attend this church. Small world.
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February 1st, 2007 at 4:59 pm
There acan be two sides on that, really.
I think Matthew 5 is an encouragement to make sure that if we know that there is a problem that we deal with it before we go to the altar. To ignore a problem and hold a grudge is not right, and it should be resolved as quickly as possible. When my husband and I married, we agreed that we would not commune if we were in the middle of a fight on Sunday.
However, forgiveness is not a simple process. This solution seemed so good when I was freshly married and nieve. Often, if we are in an argument and it has gone overnight, we are both hurt and feeling misunderstood and a bit lonely. It’s not that we don’t WANT to forgive, we just can’t get there yet, and for that, we need Christ’s help. The gifts that the Holy Spirit gives when we partake of Holy Communion strengthen us, feed us, and remind us of what He did for us. I’ve often found that after we take communion together, we have the strength to resolve our differences, and that we truly needed that.
Luther says that Holy Communion is there to strengthen those who are weak, hurting….in that situation, it would be wrong to stay away and deny its comfort.
Most often, when a person is really hurting, they would love to forgive, to let go. I think Christ was telling people to resolve differences, when they would rather ignore that they are there or are determined to hold on to it. That can tear apart a family and a congregation, and it would be a lie to say “amen” when the pastor says “The peace of Christ be with you all” and to kneel at the altar, knowing you have no intention of doing anything about the conflicts that are there. When we commune, we are not only confessing that we are not only one with Christ, we are one with each other.