“Thinking that we can find some lasting pleasure and avoid pain is…a hopeless cycle that goes round and round endlessly and causes us to suffer greatly.” (Chodron, Pema. When Things Fall Apart (Shambhala Classics) (p. 15). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.)

Having the gift of cheerfulness is truly a gift. It doesn’t matter when you have lived, whether it was in times of prosperity or depression, in times of good or bad, “dust bowl” or “roaring twenties”, there have always been the cheerful – the truly cheerful people who could always find the good and always felt the need to share their happiness.

I have tried in my life to be cheerful – but it is difficult to always be cheerful. But as Pema Chodron says above, if we live only to avoid pain, we live a life of eventual suffering – because no one can always be cheerful. It truly is a gift to be cheerful in many aspects of living, but it is not a continual state of being. Cheerfulness can only be looked at as a gift – one that we cannot hoard but should share with others when we are experiencing that gift. As people who have received an abundance of blessings from G-d, why shouldn’t we be cheerful? We have every reason to live with joy in our hearts, smiles on our faces, and words of praise on our lips. But life is not that simple — relationships go bad, jobs cause us stress, families face troubles. Let me end with a quote on cheerfulness that I like:

“Cheerfulness is among the most laudable virtues. It gains you the good will and friendship of others. It blesses those who practice it and those upon whom it is bestowed.” ― B.C. Forbes

I think that says it all.

Pastor Dave

February 26, 2021 — The Smalcald Articles

Martin Luther was ill for much of his later years. He died in 1546 on the 18^th of February at the age of 63. It was 1555 and the Peace of Augsburg that officially ended the religious struggle and allowed a permanent and legal division of Protestant and Catholic areas of Germany within the Holy Roman Empire. However, Pope Paul III had previously, in June 1536, called for a general council to meet in Mantua in May 1537, and launched a diplomatic offensive to bring German princes and their theologians to that council. The opening of the council was delayed until December 1545, when it was convened in the episcopal city of Trent. 

The Saxon elector, John Frederick, had wanted Martin Luther to put into writing a sort of doctrinal “last will and testament”, a clear statement of his positions on the critical issues of the time. Thus began the writing of what would be called the Smalcald Articles. The document was structured to present Luther’s teaching to the council. The Smalcald Articles were presented to Lutheran princes in February 1537, at the meeting of the defensive league they had organized in Smalcald in 1531. Ultimately they decided to use the Augsburg Confession and its Apology as the basis of their presentation at the council rather than Luther’s Articles.

Luther wrote a preface outlining his program for reform the following year (1538), and the Articles were printed, with a translation of Melanchthon‘s “Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope” attached.  During the 1550s the Articles were used increasingly as an authoritative confessional document, and so they were to be included in the Book of Concord (1580).

What makes the Smalcald Articles so important to me are the mention of what Luther called the 5 “means of Grace”. 

[4.] Concerning the Gospel: We now want to return to the gospel, which gives guidance and help against sin in more than one way, because God is extravagantly rich in his grace: first, through the spoken word, in which the forgiveness of sins is preached to the whole world (which is the proper function of the gospel); second, through baptism; third, through the holy Sacrament of the Altar; fourth, through the power of the keys and also (fifth) through the mutual conversation and consolation of brothers and sisters.

Again, it is important to know the confessional writings of our Lutheran faith, even the more obscure ones – obscure but still vital to our Lutheran understanding of G-d’s Grace.

Pastor Dave