ALMOST HERE: SESQUICENTENNIAL BASH
Oktoberfest!
Sunday- Tuesday, October 7-9
Everything’s falling into place for the great celebration of our 150th anniversary. We expect a good turnout, and maybe even good
weather. Volunteers have stepped forward
(and if you can volunteer too but haven’t yet, please do! the more we have, the
easier it gets on everyone)
Our special guest speaker is Rev. Dr. Lawrence Rast, President of
Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort
Wayne, a church historian specializing in American
Lutheranism. That will work well with
our sesquicentennial celebration, as his theme will be
Can
Anything Good Come Out of the Nineteenth Century?
Other special guests include CID President Mark Miller, Monday’s
preacher and former St. Paul’s
Pastor Kenneth Wegener, who will
preach at the Sunday Vespers.
Members of St. Paul’s
special rate: $15.00, $25 per couple
(children free), includes all meals.
Register ahead, so we have a better idea who’s coming. Bring a friend too: the fee for friends
coming with members is only $10.00!
Support your congregation! Set
aside Sunday and Monday, October 7th and 8th for
Oktoberfest! And Tuesday too, if you can do it!
Available now!
A
Sesquicentennial Commemorative History (1862-2012)
They’re here! Get your copy in the cafeteria.
Only $10.00, cash or a check made out to St. Paul’s.
This is the history presented in the series of newsletters through the
first half of this year, with a special appendix: “Memos to Pastors and
Parishes in Trouble,” containing some personal reflections published in 2006 in
Gottesdienst.
Get your copy today!
October Ushers
Steve Peart, Grant Andresen, Larry Campbell
October Birthdays
10/1 Richard Melchin
10/1 Sue Murphy
10/2 Diana Shreck
10/3 Matthew Fisher
10/9 Mary Hamilton
10/9 Kevin Thompson
10/20 Ed Woller
10/24 Robert Jones
10/24 Corey Peart
10/28 Carmen Sovanski
10/30 Sharon Hartz
October
Anniversaries
10/4 Linda and Larry Rowe
10/23 Otis and Deanne Anderson
Altar Guild News
Notes for October:
All Sunday mornings are green except for the last Sunday in October, the
28th, which is Reformation Sunday (with Saturday the 27th). Color for that is red.
For Oktoberfest: Sunday evening (but not morning!), October 7th,
and Monday morning, October 8th: congregational anniversary, color
is red. Monday vespers and following, color is green.
Wednesday the 3rd and 10th are green, but the rest
of the Wednesdays in October are red: Wednesday the 17th (St. Luke),
Wednesday the 24th (St. James of Jerusalem), and Wednesday the 31st
(All Saints).
Tuesday the 30th is red, also for Reformation.
Shut ins
Mary Hamilton at home; Mark Baker at home; Anna Baker at home; Mirilda
Greiert at Kewanee Care; Ruth Snider at Hillcrest Home in Geneseo; Emmy Wear at
Williamsfield Home in Williamsfield.
First Tuesday
First Tuesday Altar Guild and Elders meetings will
be held on October 2nd. Altar
Guild at 6 p.m. will include a review of basic duties and training. Vespers is at 6:45, and Elders meet at 7:15.
The
Lighter Side
The NFL is using replacement officials while the regulars are on
strike. As you may have figured, your
Packers fan-pastor is keenly aware of
this.
Here’s how, I think, things might work out if we had replacement pastors
of the same caliber:
“After further review, the original ruling of the law stands. Your sins are not forgiven. You lose the
game . . .”
The New Testament in His Blood
The New Testament in His Blood
This series contains brief
liturgical explanations which appear in Pastor Eckardt’s book The New Testament in His
Blood (Gottesdienst, 2010).
Creed
The Creed, for at least the reason that it did not even
exist until the fourth century, was a late-comer to the Divine Liturgy. The
recitation of the Creed at the Eucharist may not have begun until the late
fifth
century. It was employed at Constantinople
in 511, but not until the eleventh century in Rome.1 The Western Church has
never regarded it as a necessary ingredient, and it is not included in daily
Masses.
But since the fourth century the
Church has confessed the Nicene Creed as her declaration of what she believes,
teaches and confesses, and its routine use at solemn Mass did finally become a
venerable and salutary practice. The Creed did not arise in a vacuum. The
ecumenical councils which gave rise to the Creed were stormy events, in which
truth and error struggled against each other with sometimes sharp invective and
vitriol.
Many sects and heterodox groups
were reframing the Gospel in terms contrary to the revealed truths of the
faith. In ad 325 the primary
bishops from all of Christendom, approximately 300, met
together in Nicaea, a city in what is now Turkey,
to deal with the growing threat of error. At that council the first version of
the Creed was drawn up and agreed upon by all the catholic bishops. In doing so
they rejected in particular the false views of the heretic Arius, who denied
the full divinity of Jesus. Of all the bishops present, all but two rejected
Arius.
The Arian heresy did not die away, however. In many ways it
gained headway and even the support of the government. The Emperor granted
amnesty to the Arian leaders and even sent St. Athanasius, champion of the
faith confessed at Nicaea,
into exile. The catholic bishops suffered great losses through the course of
the fourth century. But by the year 381 the political climate had changed sufficiently
to permit their meeting in Constantinople for
the second
ecumenical council, which reaffirmed the faith of the Nicene
fathers and to expand the Creed into the form in which we now have it.
The Creed in its original form is
in the first person plural: “We believe in God . . .” This is because it
was an expression of unanimity among
the bishops present at the Council. When the Creed began to
be confessed in the churches while at Mass, the form was altered into the singular,
as we have it now: “I believe in God.” When people at worship make this
confession, they are declaring their personal
agreement with the ecumenical Christian faith as it was
insisted upon by these assembled bishops who made their stand against the Arian
errors. The use of the singular also suggests a baptismal reference, as
it is found in the Apostles’ Creed (which is confessed at
Baptism). That is to say, it is because of Baptism in Christ that we declare
our allegiance with those who rejected the Arian errors. The errors of Arius
and his followers were regarded as a most serious breach in the faith because
they amounted to a denial of Jesus. Arius had said that there was a time before
Jesus existed; Arius’ followers had tried to blend their false views with those
of the Christians, saying that Jesus is “God” in a manner of speaking, or that
He was of like
substance with the Father. The Nicene fathers rejected all refusals to see Jesus for who He
truly is, and this is why the Creed is so emphatic about His divinity: “God of
God, Light of Light, very God of very God,” and then the following clause,
“begotten, not made,” a declared rejection of Arius, and then this,
“being of one substance with the Father,” a declared rejection of any who
attempted the compromising
view, and finally this, “by whom all things were made,” a
confession which no Arian could stomach. Thus the Creed is the mark of an unyielding
Church Militant, making its stand against all error.
At Mass, the placement of the Creed
immediately after the hearing of the Gospel is itself a sort of confession as
well. It is an implicit declaration as to the source of our faith, namely the
Gospel. As soon as the Gospel is heard, the Gospel is confessed.
In addition, it is traditionally appropriate to genuflect at
the words “and was made man,” to mark our acknowledgment of His deep humility.
The term man here implies more than simply His union with our humanity,
but His state of humiliation under the curse of the Law.
In the Creed’s third article, it is
also appropriate to make a profound bow (from the waist) in honor of the Holy
Ghost, at the words “who with the Father is worshipped and glorified.”
An open letter
Reprinted below is an open letter from a good number of
religious leaders across the spectrum of faith in the US, including our own
Synodical President Matthew Harrison, pertaining to the free exercise of
religion, in response to the Federal Government’s Health and Human Services
mandate requiring religious hospitals to provide contraceptive services and
abortifacients to their employees. I
encourage you to read it. - Pastor
FREE
EXERCISE OF RELIGION:
Putting
Beliefs into Practice
An
Open Letter from Religious Leaders in the United States to All Americans
Dear
Friends,
Religious
institutions are established because of religious beliefs and convictions. Such
institutions include not only churches, synagogues, mosques, and other places
of worship, but also schools and colleges, shelters and community kitchens,
adoption agencies and hospitals, organizations that provide care and services
during natural disasters, and countless other organizations that exist to put
specific religious beliefs into practice. Many such organizations have provided
services and care to both members and non-members of their religious
communities since before the Revolutionary War, saving and improving the lives
of countless American citizens.
As
religious leaders from a variety of perspectives and communities, we are
compelled to make known our protest against the incursion of the United States
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) into the realm of religious
liberty. HHS has mandated that religious institutions, with only a narrow
religious exception, must provide access to certain contraceptive benefits,
even if the covered medications or procedures are contradictory to their
beliefs. We who oppose the application of this mandate to religious
institutions include not only the leaders of religious groups morally opposed
to contraception, but also leaders of other religious groups that do not share
that particular moral conviction.
That we
share an opposition to the mandate to religious institutions while disagreeing
about specific moral teachings is a crucial fact. Religious freedom is the
principle on which we stand. Because of differing understandings of moral and
religious authority, people of good will can and often do come to different
conclusions about moral questions. Yet, even we who hold differing convictions
on specific moral issues are united in the conviction that no religious
institution should be penalized for refusing to go against its beliefs. The
issue is the First Amendment, not specific moral teachings or specific products
or services.
The HHS
mandate implicitly acknowledged that an incursion into religion is involved in
the mandate. However, the narrowness of the proposed exemption is revealing for
it applies only to religious organizations that serve or support their own
members. In so doing, the government is establishing favored and disfavored
religious organizations: a privatized religious organization that serves only
itself is exempted from regulation, while one that believes it should also
serve the public beyond its membership is denied a religious exemption. The
so-called accommodation and the subsequent Advance Notice of Proposed
Rulemaking (ANPRM) do little or nothing to alleviate the problem.
No
government should tell religious organizations either what to believe or how to
put their beliefs into practice. We indeed hold this to be an unalienable,
constitutional right. If freedom of religion is a constitutional value to be
protected, then institutions developed by religious groups to implement their
core beliefs in education, in care for the sick or suffering, and in other
tasks must also be protected. Only by doing so can the free exercise
of
religion have any meaning. The HHS mandate prevents this free exercise. For the
well-being of our country, we oppose the application of the contraceptive
mandate to religious institutions and plead for its retraction.
Sincerely
yours, [signatories are listed on the back page of the newsletter]
The
signatories of the open letter on the Free Exercise of Religion
Leith
Anderson President National Association of Evangelicals; The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison
President The Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod; Sister Loraine Marie Maguire,
l.s.p. Provincial Superior, Baltimore Province Little Sisters of the
Poor; Gary M. Benedict President The Christian and
Missionary Alliance U.S. Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr. Senior
Pastor, Hope Christian Church ,Bishop, Fellowship of International Churches; The
Rev. John A. Moldstad President Evangelical Lutheran Synod.Bishop
John F. Bradosky North American Lutheran Church; The
Very Rev. Dr. John A. Jillions Chancellor Orthodox Church in America; Deaconess Cheryl D. Naumann President Concordia Deaconess Conference,
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod; The Most Rev. Robert J. Carlson Archbishop
of St. Louis; The Most Blessed Jonah Archbishop
of Washington Metropolitan of All American and Canada Orthodox Church in America;
The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez President
NHCLC Hispanic Evangelical Association; Cardinal
Timothy M. Dolan Archbishop of New York, President, United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops; Imam Faizul R. Khan Founder
and Leader, Islamic Society of Washington Area; Sister
Joseph Marie Ruessmann, R.S.M., J.D., J.C.D., M.B.A. Generalate
Secretary, Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan; Mother
Agnes Mary Donovan, S.V. Superior General of the Sisters of Life; The
Very Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky Director of External Affairs and
Interchurch Relations Orthodox Church in America; The
Rev. Mark Schroeder President, Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran
Synod; Sister Barbara Anne Gooding,R.S.M. Director,
Department of Religion; Saint Francis Health System; The
Most Rev. William E. Lori Archbishop of Baltimore, Chairman; USCCB
Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty; L. Roy
Taylor Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church
in America; Sister Margaret Regina
Halloran,l.s.p. Provincial Superior, Brooklyn Province Little Sisters of the
Poor; Sister Maria Christine Lynch, l.s.p; Provincial
Superior, Chicago Province Little Sisters of the Poor; Sister
Constance Carolyn Veit, l.s.p. Communications Director, Little Sisters of
the Poor; Dr. George O. Wood General
Superintendent The General Council of the Assemblies of God
St. Paul’s Ev. Lutheran
Church
109
S. Elm Street
Kewanee,
IL 61443
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