April 26, 2017
Lenten Devotions – Paschasius Radbertus

Paschasius Radbertus died on this date April 26, 856 at Corbie, France. He is celebrated as the first person to write a book exclusively on the Eucharist in 831. The book was called On the Body and Blood of the Lord.

Paschasius (785-865) was a Carolingian theologian, and the abbot of Corbie, a monastery in Picardy founded in 657 or 660. “His book, On the Body and Blood of the Lord was originally written as an instructional manual for the monks under his care at Corbie, and is the first lengthy treatise on the sacrament of the Eucharist in the Western world. In it, Paschasius agrees with Ambrose (better known in English as Saint Ambrose – he was bishop of Milan circa 374) in affirming that the Eucharist contains the true, historical body of Jesus Christ. According to Paschasius, God is truth itself, and therefore, his words and actions must be true. Christ’s proclamation at the Last Supper that the bread and wine were his body and blood must be taken literally, since God is truth. He believes that transubstantiation (the Catholic teaching of how the bread and wine of communion become the body and blood of Christ) of the bread and wine to be used at the Eucharist occurs literally. Only if the Eucharist is the actual body and blood of Christ can a Christian know it is salvific.” (wikipedia and christianity.com, Paschachius Wrote on Christ’s Body & Blood)

“But in giving this instruction, I do not praise you, because you come together not for the better but for the worse. For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you; and in part, I believe it. For there must also be factions among you, in order that those who are approved may have become evident among you. Therefore when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper, for in your eating each one takes his own supper first; and one is hungry and another is drunk. What! Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God, and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this I will not praise you. For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way He took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” 1 Corinthians 11:17-26

To write a book on the way and the manner that the bread and wine of communion becomes the body and blood of Christ, you must first have an honest appreciation of the “real presence of Jesus” in the elements. As Lutherans, we believe that Jesus is truly present in, under and through the bread and wine, but you will not find a book that explains how. Luther believed that when the Word of Christ is joined with the elements of bread and wine, then Christ is truly present “in, under and through” – there is no need for a fancy explanation like the Catholic “Transubstantiation”. We trust the promise, and rest on the Word of G-d.

This week please collect bottles of house cleaner for Trinity’s Table.

Pastor Dave

April 25, 2017
Lenten Devotions – Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe’s fictional work “The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” is published on this day, April 25, 1719. The book, about a shipwrecked sailor who spends 28 years on a deserted island, is based on the experiences of shipwreck victims and of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who spent four years on a small island off the coast of South America in the early 1700s. Like his hero Crusoe, Daniel Defoe was an ordinary, middle-class Englishman, not an educated member of the nobility like most writers at the time. Defoe established himself as a small merchant but went bankrupt in 1692 and turned to political pamphleteering to support himself. A pamphlet he published in 1702 satirizing members of the High Church led to his arrest and trial for seditious libel in 1703. He appealed to powerful politician Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, who had him freed from Newgate prison and who hired him as a political writer and spy to support his own views. To this end, Defoe set up the Review, which he edited and wrote from 1704 to 1713. It wasn’t until he was nearly 60 that he began writing fiction. His other works include Moll Flanders (1722) and Roxana (1724). He died in London in 1731, one day before the 12th anniversary of Robinson Crusoe’s publication.

“And he (Paul) found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, having recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. He came to them, and because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and they were working, for by trade they were tent-makers.” Acts 18:2-3

Like Paul, Aquila and Priscilla were also tentmakers…This characterization of Paul as an artisan who worked with his hands coheres with the picture Paul paints of himself in his letters (I Corinthians 4:12; I Thessalonians 2:9). If the Paul of the letters viewed such manual labor negatively, there is no indication he does so in Acts. Paul stayed and worked with Aquila and Priscilla. Paul moves from intellectual debate with Athenian philosophers to manual labor with Corinthian artisans, and in so doing “becomes all things to all people” ( I Corinthians 9:22).
His economic self-sufficiency was no doubt important, not only given the length of his stay (eighteen months), but also because of Corinth’s reputation for hosting philosophical charlatans and other “peddlers” who sold their intellectual “wares” to the highest bidders…It is little wonder…for an audience familiar with such practices that Luke would characterize Paul as engaging in work for self-support in order to distinguish himself from these hucksters in much the same way that Paul in writing to the Corinthians would seek to distance himself from “so many who are peddlers of God’s word” (II Corinthians 2:17). (Parsons, Acts (Paideia: Commentaries on the New Testament), 250-51) (A Trivial Devotion, July 9, 2014)

Like Paul was an ordinary tent maker, Daniel Defoe was “…an ordinary, middle-class Englishman, not an educated member of the nobility like most writers at the time.” But both men used their experiences, skills and trades to have a huge influence on people. Yes Paul was a Pharisee of the “highest degree”, but once Jesus helped him to “see the light”, he too began to use his writing skills to encourage others in the faith. We do not always need to be highly educated to influence people, we simply need to take our life experiences and share them with the world – whether the world is a small town like Lemoyne, or the literary world of fiction. It is in understanding our vocation, our call, and our passion where we have the best chance to make a difference in people’s lives.

This week please collect bottles of house cleaner for Trinity’s Table.

Pastor Dave