“Keep your life free from the love from the love of money, and be content with what you have…” Heb. 13:5a

This morning our economic stimulus check arrived from the IRS via direct deposit to my bank account. I don’t know what to think about that in terms of economics or politics. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to feel about it.
I could feel happy. Why not? Free money! Who wouldn’t be happy about that? I could feel guilty. After all, it is money I did not earn and I’m not among the people who have lost their jobs and businesses. I could feel outraged about the strange set of government decisions leading up to such an odd circumstance, which seems to violate much of what I normally consider to be responsible fiscal and regulatory policy. Confused? Cynical? Thrilled? I could feel a lot of things. So might you.

But of all the things I might have felt, you know how I did feel? Embarrassing as it is to admit, the first, fleeting feeling (thankfully it only lasted half a moment until I was able to laugh at myself over it) was disappointment. You know why? Because it was Because it was less than I thought it would be. I thought four of our children would be eligible, but it turns out only three them were. I quickly chided myself for reacting so selfishly, but if I’m honest I can’t claim I never had that fleeting reaction.

That’s how quickly inflated expectations and a sense of being owed something can rob us of contentment. Gratitude, by contrast, brings with is instant contentment. The Hebrews verse quoted above is not just some law that is there is show us how greedy we are (though it can do that!); it is practical advice to those who know their God and want the good gifts He gives. Contentment with little is a greater gift than possession of much.

Even more so than a check from the IRS, everything in all of creation is a gift. Your body, your time, your story—you didn’t earn it. It was just given to you. Receive it with gratitude, and contentment will follow no matter your circumstance. Think of it all as something you have coming to you by rights and disappointment and bitterness will follow, again no matter your circumstance.

The truth of God’s Word apply to normal and abnormal circumstances. The Commandments and Creed cannot be temporarily suspended by order of the governor or replaced by the largesse of the federal treasury. What we learn in “normal” times applies to difficult, extreme, uniquely challenging times. Conversely, the lessons we learn by enduring those challenging times apply even to normal times. No matter what the circumstance, knowing that God is for you leads to a sense of security and contentment, even where such feelings might seem most out of place.

​Greed and complaining are always out of place, no matter how naturally they come to us. I’ve heard lots of good ideas from people about what they plan to do with the stimulus checks. Some focus on the secular purpose—stimulating the economy in the short term. Some focus on just making it through by paying their own bills. Some focus on spiritual things and charity. My goal is not to tell you what to do with it. My goal is to continue to teach by word and by example the truth of God’s Word during this shutdown. And I know that contentment is a gift God wants for you, and that you have an innate tendency to rob yourself of it with ingratitude.

Here’s an assignment. Look up the rest of verse 5 quoted above from Hebrews and keep reading the next few verses. I guarantee they apply to you whether you are sick, unemployed, overworked, irritated, lonely, or anything in between. A reminder that God is on your side does wonders for your day.
In Christ, Pastor Speckhard

It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the Gospel. Phil. 1:7

Sometimes we merely skim or even skip over the little introductory parts of Paul’s letters, which can feel a bit like chit-chat, in order to get to the real spiritual meat of what he has to say. But those opening sections contain excellent examples of practical Christian living and encouragement for Christians, too. In this case, we see how a congregation can hold each other in each other’s hearts even when for a time they cannot come together as they would like.

Despite being apart, they remain “mutual partaker of grace.” They share with each other the faith and life God has granted to each one of them. St. Paul identifies a worldly side and a spiritual side to this grace they share. The worldly side of it is St. Paul’s imprisonment, which brings real hardship, deprivation, and, if people let it, shame. The spiritual side is the defense and confirmation of the Gospel, the mission of the Church that goes on no matter what happens.

When this lockdown is long past and people get together maybe year from now, or ten years from now, everyone will have a different remembrance. It might not be an imprisonment strictly speaking, but it is certainly a time of separation and isolation. For some among us, this lockdown has not changed things that much; it has perhaps shifted shopping patterns or affected meals, but for the most part it has been merely an annoyance. For others, it has been absolutely life-changing—jobs lost, major events cancelled, careers redirected, etc. For others it has been terrifying, and will primarily be remembered in terms of hospital rooms and machines and masks. For some, it has been pure grief. For others, perhaps, though they might feel a bit guilty admitting it, this time has been a pleasant respite from the rat-race, a time of togetherness and adventure. We all have a different CoVid-19 story to tell. But when we hold each other in our heart, the personal stories of everyone at St. Paul’s became part of our story. We pray for one another, call one another, help one another, and laugh and cry with one another. We remain family despite being apart.

On the spiritual side, we all share a mission at St. Paul’s, and that mission hasn’t changed. We do the same things in different circumstances, but we don’t do any of them alone. We’re all still committed to shining the light of the Gospel wherever we go, with the oil in our lamps that God gives us through His Word and Sacraments at St. Paul’s. And when this all ends and things open up, we’ll still be committed to that same mission when the circumstances change again, whether things back to the way things were before in your story or whether they move on to something very different as a result of all this.

St. Paul’s imprisonment became part of the whole story of the Christian Church. None of us can expect our own time of “imprisonment” to change the world. But it can change someone’s world. When you hold God’s people in your heart even as you live your own unique story, God works through you in ways you don’t even know. This time is not wasted. God is at work. Hold us in your heart as you shine the light of God’s love in whatever “prison” (hopefully your house is nicer than a prison!) you are living today.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
In Him, Pastor Speckhard ​

​“O Lord, You have searched me and known me.” Ps. 139:1

Yesterday morning we were talking in the office about how the sudden surge in online services for schools, churches, businesses, meetings, and taxes (and stimulus checks) has also caused an explosion of online identity theft. Unscrupulous opportunists prey on people who need to have their personal information online. Sure enough, yesterday afternoon I heard that many people got an email seemingly from me asking for an urgent favor. It wasn’t from me, though. It was spam from an identity thief. I hope it did no harm, but my apologies (along with my thanks for your concern) to those who opened it.

The idea of someone else stealing our identity can infuriate us. It declares the real you to be nobody, while a thief, a fake you, calmly and in broad daylight takes away whatever goods and good will you might have earned. Trying to prove who you are to someone who doesn’t know you can be almost impossible.

In one of the most under-appreciated episodes in the Bible, a woman whose baby has died tries to steal the identity, in a way, of another young mother by claiming the other woman’s child as her own. Thus, two women come before King Solomon claiming to be the mother of the baby. Without any DNA tests or fingerprinting or anything, what would you do if someone simply claimed to be you? How was Solomon supposed to know who was who or what to do about the baby? Surprisingly, he ordered the baby cut in half so each woman could have a share. One woman said fine. The other offered to give up her share to save the baby’s life. Then Solomon ordered the live baby given to the second woman. Her self-sacrificial love proved her identity as the real mother. What wonderful wisdom! But imagine if instead of some secret list of usernames and passwords, your only way to prove who you were was to show self-sacrificial love.

The amazing thing about all of salvation history is how much of it, in story after story, is based on mistaken identity, fake identity, hidden identity, and even stolen identity. How did Israel inherit the covenant in the first place? Israel (at the time called Jacob) fooled his father Isaac into thinking he was his brother Esau. With his wily mother’s help, he used hairy goat skin and tasty meat from the kitchen like a stolen password.

In the New Covenant, we trust utterly that God never forgets who we are. We have not earned our place in His family at His table. For Christ’s sake God has issued us an identity as His children. We might forget who we are, but He never will. Never. We don’t have to prove who we are to God anymore. He is the only one who knows.

One of my biggest concerns during this lockdown, apart from the obvious health threat to those who have contracted or been exposed to CoVid-19, has been the intense isolation for people who already may be living in a borderland of confusion due to memory loss. In even on a good day you have a hard time remembering who you are, who loves you, and how you relate to the world around you, and then suddenly (and inexplicably if you can’t remember it) you find yourself alone all day every day, it would be hard not to feel like nobody at all. We might lose our sense of identity, but God never will.

When we place our trust in the promises God makes to us, we put the burden on Him to remember who we are. We can’t guarantee we’ll remember. Even as Christians we can’t reliably produce credentials of our own self-sacrificial love. But we have the credentials of Christ’s self-sacrificial love for us. The identity the world gives you, comprised of taxpayer ID #’s, SSN#’s, DL #’s, Passport #’s, etc., is part of your treasure on earth, where thieves break in and steal. The identity God gives you in Christ is treasure in heaven and can never be ruined, lost, or stolen. God has searched you and known you. You never have to prove it to Him. He will always know you as His beloved child. 
In Christ,
​Pastor Speckhard

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…” I Cor. 13:4-5

This morning as I was making the daily catechism review video for the Confirmation class (you can access them from the website if you want to review the catechism, too, which you should) I emphasized the point from the close of the Commandments that God demands perfection. Keeping the Law pretty well doesn’t cut it in terms of justification. Salvation is an all or nothing deal, which is why salvation by works will never….work.

In my high school journalism class, we could not turn in any article that had even a single error in it. If anything was misspelled, if there were any grammatical errors, even punctuation in the wrong spot, the teacher would simply hand the paper back and say, “Turn it back in when it is fixed and I will grade it.” He didn’t even tell us what or where the error was. The goal of that persnickety approach, of course, was to make us good proofreaders. Remember, back in the days of print journalism you couldn’t fix an error once things literally went to press, at least not without incredible effort and expense.

Different world, different story today. Even major newspapers put out articles online that haven’t been proofread very thoroughly. If anyone points out an error, they fix it with a click. Typos matter less because they aren’t nearly so permanent, but speed of getting things out there matters more. You’ve probably noticed these daily updates have had plenty of typos in them day after day. I’ve become accustomed to the modern, online, speed-rather-than-precision way of writing. But I’ve always been glad I took that merciless journalism class. In one personal triumph of my high school years, I found an error in the teacher’s handout that even he didn’t know about. The article covered a tennis match, and the author had spelled it “tennis racket.” The preferred spelling is/was “tennis racquet.” If only salvation had been by works for just that one moment! Alas, for every triumph there were ten disasters.

Take it out of the realm of old school journalism and into life. God is Love. If you perfectly exemplified His Love in your life, you would NEVER be even a little bit impatient, unkind, envious, boastful, arrogant, rude, irritable, resentful, or insistent on getting things your way. Does that sound like you? Or do you need a Savior?

The shutdown can help us learn the importance of being patience and kind and not being irritable or rude. We find ourselves with strangers in annoying lines, or living for such an extended period at home with people whose habits we can’t escape. Suddenly we see the need. But we also see how far short of the glory of God we consistently fall.

As we look toward opening things back up and easing back into church attendance in the coming weeks and months, we’ll also have plenty of chances to exercise the need for patience. There will be irritations and disagreements, I’m sure, in terms of when and how we should be doing this or that. Rest assured we will be looking at it from every angle and trying our very best. Will it be perfect? No, it will probably not be perfect. It will be a new era, but with the same old story of Christ crucified and risen, proclaimed, taught, given and shed for those gathered in faith around the Word and Sacraments.
​
In Christ,
Pastor Speckhard 

Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses. Prov. 10:12
Sometime around the beginning of Advent late in 2017, when I was still on Facebook and learned the hard way that social media didn’t always bring out the best and wisest in people, I embarked on an ambitious plan to post a short reflection each day on a single verse of Proverbs, from chapters 10:1—22:16. Some of you may remember reading them (or least having to scroll past them). Each verse in that section of the book contains a single, self-contained proverb by King Solomon. I figured Wisdom Literature would be just the thing to counteract so much of the nastiness and nonsense that swirls around in cyberspace. 

I thought of that project recently when I was trying to address some of the frustrations that can boil to the surface in stressful times. People can endure a lot, but time wears us down and uncertainty unsettles us. Nerves fray and tempers flare when frustration gets the best of us. Those are the very times when the Word of God can lead us to examine ourselves and drive us to the foot of the cross and the joyous new life of unconquerable love in Christ. One of the very shortest posts in that project happens to be about Prov. 10:12, so I’ve included it in italics below.

If you string together the synonyms used in the various translations, you get something like “Hatred stirs up strife/quarrels/dissension/contention/judgment/conflict, but love covers all offenses/transgressions/sins/wrongs/evil things.”

In both cases, something on the inside, an attitude of the heart and mind, transforms the outside in its own image. Hatred is simply enmity existing on the inside, which is made manifest in conflict on the outside. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus makes this point about hatred, anger, and lust—it isn’t just the outward action that the Law condemns, but the inner, sinful heart-source of that action.

Luther called original sin “self curved in on itself.” We’re supposed to be outwardly focused in love, like the God who made us in His image. But the essential self-centeredness of our sin makes the inner conflict between the self and others unavoidable. Lust, envy, hatred, revenge—they are simply the self-centered objectification of other people for the purposes of the self, which expresses itself in strife and conflict.

Love does the same thing in reverse, in a healing way. This is the lesson of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree or Beauty and the Beast—when an ugly, bad thing is loved anyway, which happens via forgiveness and charity—in time it can become beautiful and good. Love is inherently selfless and forgiving, which also makes it transformative. As the Psalm 32 says, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”

As this shut down continues, if at any time frustration, impatience, irritation, or hopelessness seem to overwhelm you, remember that such things comes from inside people and are part of the human condition always. More importantly, remember that you are blessed because you are forgiven. And in light of the Proverb, realize that such forgiveness from Christ calls and empowers you to be a force for Love in your home, community, and world. Your mission is not to get your way, vent, or put people in their place, but to bring peace where there is strife, joy where there is gloom, and comfort where there is hurt. Your old sinful nature won’t be inclined to do that, but Christ in you certainly will! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
In Christ,
Pastor Speckhard 

When Latin was in the process of evolving into modern Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian, the word “quarantine” was born in Venice. The root of the word means “forty.” (You can probably see many other possible derivatives that have to do with the number four or forty, like quad or quarter, or maybe I’m just sheltering in place with a Latin teacher). In seafaring Venice, a quarantine referred to a forty day period of separation for sailors who had ventured to plague-ridden ports. The choice of forty days for such things, though, has a much longer pedigree.

Forty days, forty years—Biblically these are times of testing and cleansing, be it the Israelites wandering in the wilderness or Jesus fasting in the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. It’s one of the reasons Lent is forty days (technically the Sundays don’t count) and there are forty days from Easter to Ascension, just like in the New Testament.

Here at St. Paul’s, we’ve been using the idea of forty years as a Biblical generation in our Rededicated campaign that started last year. We’ve been at our current site forty years (forty-one years now) and want to do whatever it takes to help people in Munster in A.D. 2059 inherit from us all the gifts we inherited from the previous generation. In the midst of that campaign, we’ve come upon a genuine time of testing. I don’t know if it will be literally forty days or not, but the purpose can remain the same.

When we think of a time of testing, of some message or opportunity from God that actually shows up on our calendars, questions naturally arise. How do you know God intends this time for this or that purpose? What is the meaning of this pandemic? Is it God’s wrath? A call to repentance? If so, to whom? How do we know what global events really mean?

Over the weekend, I read an article by a well-known intellectual, Andrew Sullivan, which made the following claim: "The truth, of course, is that plagues have no meaning. All they are is a virus perpetuating itself inside and alongside us. Period. We know this now — unlike many of our ancestors — because of science." Is that true? How can science prove or disprove meaning? It can’t, not even theoretically. Meaning is outside the realm of science, in the realm of philosophy and religion. Science can describe viruses and explain how they spread and what they do to us. Science can, with limited success, attempt to predict how a pandemic will develop. But science cannot tell us what such a pandemic means or doesn’t mean, and anyone who thinks science can do that doesn’t understand the parameters within which scientific investigation works. You may as well ask a chemist to examine the molecular structure of the water in the font and tell us what Baptism means.

By the same token, apart from a clear Word of Scripture (or some direct revelation from God, which no Christian should expect, since we’ve been promised that Scripture is sufficient for us) pastors cannot declare with any degree of certainty what exactly this pandemic means, either. We cannot go beyond what God has revealed. We can only go by what we know, and we don’t know why exactly God allows this pandemic to happen. Preachers (usually on tv) who proclaim that they know why this is happening are similarly going way beyond the parameters of their office, which is to preach and teach the Word of God, not put God’s signature on their own opinions.

But just because we don’t know for sure where exactly God is going with this pandemic doesn’t mean we cannot take away edifying lessons from it. We could understand it as a forty day call to repentance, and we would not be wrong. We couldn’t say, “Thus saith the Lord” about that interpretation. We couldn’t use it to call someone else to repentance. But we can be called to repentance ourselves. As long as we don’t bind anyone else to our own interpretations of events, we are free to interpret them for ourselves in any way that is in keeping with what we know of our God incarnate in Jesus Christ.

With that in mind, how has this whole, surreal experience of the nation shutting down changed you? How will you let it change you? What will be your new focus, your new priorities when we come out of this? What will you seek to cease doing, and to what will you rededicate yourself? If you have edifying answers to those questions, then it is true to say for you that this time is a time of testing and cleansing. It certainly can be. Hopefully it will be. If so, it has meaning. No experiment or cocksure declaration about the powers of science can take that away from you.

Many people are trying to predict what this pandemic will mean for the future of the Church. It is all guesswork, because it is God’s future and God’s Church, and He hasn’t told us. Anything He allows to happen invites somehow closer to Christ and His bride the Church. So whatever else may happen out in the world, in your life I pray that this “quarantine” of a sort may clarify your resolve, strengthen your faith, and render you a more committed Christian than you were at the beginning of the year. After all, He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
​In Christ, Pastor Speckhard

All things are wearisome, more than one can say. Eccl. 1:8

Sigh. A gray, snowy morning, which would be such a welcome, exciting thing on, say, the day after Thanksgiving or the Friday before Christmas, can be just wearisome in the second half of April. It seems like this winter has been all length and no depth. We had snow for Halloween and All Saints’ Day, and now again almost six months later, but not very much in between, when people might have enjoyed it with Christmas lights or gone sledding. I’ve always been impatient with uncooperative, irksome weather. It seems like everything would go such so much better if I were in charge of such things. Sigh.

Sometimes the little things get us down more than the big things. Have you ever noticed that the moment when people finally get angry or start crying or give up is usually when some minor setback happens? In a movie, the heroin will endure unimaginable suffering and loss with stoic resolve, but start crying when her grocery bag breaks and everything falls out and makes a mess. Or the guy will get fired and find out his wife is leaving him and just grit his teeth, but then go nuts on the fast food employee that got his order wrong. It isn’t that the little setbacks add so much to the big burdens we carry. It is that such minor irritations added to all the big things make it seem like the universe is just taunting you.

So it is for everyone who is going through this pandemic. Some people are afraid for their lives. Others aren’t afraid at all, and wondering why they had to lose their jobs. Some are losing hope. Others are losing patience. People are enduring major, major problems and disruptions, compared to which crazy weather, or a broken dishwasher, or the internet going out in the middle of an online assignment, seem petty and paltry. But when added to all the big burdens, it is those little thing that might drive us anger or tears.

Today the Confirmation class is finding out that their big day is being rescheduled and remains tentative. Today someone is trying to celebrate a birthday without any friends able to come over. Today someone is cancelling the family reunion they’ve been planning for years. It seems a tad crass to compare such things to the major suffering people are enduring out there. But such things are still crosses to bear, even if they aren’t so dramatic. Yours is the only life you can live. Your happiness and sadness matter as much as anyone’s.

Nothing is too little or too big to pray about. Pray for an end to the Coronavirus. Pray also for a good spelling test or for a good meal together with the family. If it matters to you, it matters to God. He is your loving Father. Never be ashamed to take your little burdens as well as you big burdens to the foot of the cross and lay them down, or lift them up to the throne of grace in prayer. God won’t necessarily give you your way, but He will remind you that what you are enduring, be it little or big, is not the universe taunting you, nor you being forgotten about. He knows your hopes and disappointments, and He loves you more than you know.

All things are wearisome? On their own, maybe. But not in the context of redemption and the victory of Christ. Today is a gift. It is an opportunity. Your Lord is with you even as this frustration grows and the shutdown drags on. Take everything, no matter the size of it, to the Lord in prayer. He would give anything—He did give everything—to have that relationship with you! Secure in that knowledge, you can handle anything with His help, even another day like this.
​
In Christ,
Pastor Speckhard