Luther on the Protestant work ethic

It is often claimed that Luther defended the value of all vocation by saying:

The maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays -- not because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps but because God loves clean floors. The Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.

I've tried tracing this quotation in Luther to no avail. It's all over the internet mind you as one of Luther's sayings but no one ever sources where in Luther it comes from. Anyway I midst my searching I did come across something good that Luther did actually say regarding vocation:

The prince should think: Christ has served me and made everything to follow him; therefore, I should also serve my neighbour, protect him and everything that belongs to him. That is why God has given me this office, and I have it that I might serve him. That would be a good prince and ruler. When a prince sees his neighbour oppressed, he should think: That concerns me! I must protect and shield my neighbour. . . . The same is true for shoemaker, tailor, scribe, or reader. If he is a Christian tailor, he will say: I make these clothes because God has bidden me do so, so that I can earn a living, so that I can help and serve my neighbour. When a Christian does not serve the other, God is not present; that is not Christian living. 

– Martin Luther, “Sermon in the Castle Church at Weimar” (25 October 1522, Saturday after the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity)

In other words, Christians have such great liberty (and should be the most productive) because whatever lawful work they embark on - beer making, child rearing, road sweeping, chimney cleaning, love making, all that (and more!) can be considered the Lord's work. Praise be to our God and His Christ, for designing His world and our work in it to carry with such immense value. As Herbert put it: the world is charged with the grandeur of God. Indeed. And our labours therefore last into eternity.

Q & A on discipling/disciplining little children

The q and a video below, though an hour long has a ton of winsome biblical advice. If you're a parent, about to become a parent or know any parents make sure you/they get to watch this. The questions they cover include:

• Is there ever a good time to ask your child: "How do you think this makes me feel?"

• Is there a way to use Scripture effectively without embittering your children towards it?

• How do you become a house of "Yes" without spoiling your children?

• Can using Scripture to teach and admonish become abused or done wrongly?

• What steps did you take to both be on the same page when it came to disciplining your children?

For my money probably the most helpful answers were those given to the questions: How do you consistently discipline your child and at the same time show them liberty and freedom? (from 08:39 onwards); How involved should you be in your child's private devotions? (from 36:16 onwards); How do you apologise to your kids (from 48:39 onwards). Their answers, were at once challenging, edifying and liberating. As I said above if you have any ongoing interaction with children and especially if you are a parent, find the 60 minutes somewhere to watch this video. Go to be late if you have to - your discipleship of the little ones will be markedly improved after watching it.

Why Children Matter | 1st Q&A with Doug and Nancy from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

To celebrate Martin Luther - the Reformation Polka

It's 496 years today since Martin Luther pinned his 95 thesis to the door of the castle church at Wittenberg thereby adding fuel to the Reformation fire began by men like Erasmus and Jan Hus. Anyway as a momento of this momentous deed here is an animated video of the life and times of Martin Luther including an inimitable and humuorous song, sung to the tune of Mary Poppins' “Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious” (PS. if I was overseeing a Sunday School, this is what we would be learning this weekend)

[Words to the song below]

When I was ein younger man I studied canon law;

though Erfurt was a challenge it was just to please my pa.

Then came the storm, the lightning struck; I called upon Saint Anne:

I shaved my head, I took my vows – an Augustinian.

Refrain:

Papal bulls, indulgences and transubstantiation:

speak your mind against them and face excommunication.

Nail your theses to the door, let’s start a reformation,

papal bulls, indulgences and transubstantiation.

Refrain:

When Tetzel came near Wittenberg, St Peter’s profits soared,

so I wrote a little message for the All Saints’ bulletin board;

‘you cannot purchase merit for we’re justified by grace;

here’s ninety-five more reasons, Brother Tetzel, in your face!

Refrain

They loved my tracts, adored my wit; all were ex empleror;

the pope, however, hauled me up before the emperor.

‘Are these your books? Will you recant?” King Charles did demand;

“I will not change my diet sir, God help me, here I stand.’

Refrain

Duke Frederick took the wise approach, responding to my words

by knighting George a hostage in the kingdom of the birds.

‘Use Brother Martin’s model as the languages you seek,

stay locked inside the castle with your Hebrew and your Greek.’

Refrain

Now let’s raise our steins and concord books together in this place

and spread the word that ‘catholic’ is spelled with lower-case;

the word remains unfettered when the Spirit gets a chance,

so come on, Katie, drop your lute and join us in our dance.

Refrain

What they left and what they kept - life lessons on what's valuable

Art of Manliness posts a list of things that Shackelton and Co. left back + what they took when that dreadful moment came for them to abandon their ship (ironically named Endurance) So what did they leave behind?

- Money/Jewellery/Gold

- Clothes

- Scientific instruments

- Books

- Suitcases

And what did they take?

- Toothbrushes

- Religious items (Shackleton took with him the Bible he'd been given by Queen Alexandra)

- Photographs

- Medical supplies and instruments

- Banjo

- Diaries

Interesting that they opted for the Banjo and not the Books but on reflection this kind of makes sense (singing/music/The Psalms are guaranteed to lift up the soul when one is downbeat and discouraged). The thing that took me most by surprise though was that they prioritised toothbrushes but again this makes complete sense when you think of it. There was no chance of a root canal or a scale + polish out in the dreary wild of the Antarctic. These guys from a different age where valour, honour and courage ruled, point us (men especially) to consider what matters and what shatters. Read the AoM post in full to glean what these wise men of yonder can teach us.

How to improve your preaching

Wise words from John Wesley:

“What has exceedingly hurt you in time past, nay, and I fear to this day, is want of reading. I scarce ever knew a preacher read so little. And perhaps, by neglecting it, you have lost the taste for it. Hence your talent in preaching does not increase. It is just the same as it was seven years ago. It is lively, but not deep; there is little variety, there is no compass of thought. Reading only can supply this, with meditation and daily prayer. You wrong yourself greatly by omitting this. O begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercises. You may acquire the taste which you have not: what is tedious at first, will afterwards be pleasant. Whether you like it or no, read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days, and a petty, superficial preacher.”

John Wesley, letter to John Pemboth, August 17, 1760.

Romans 12:15 applied

And I will gladly share with you your pain,
If it turn out I can no comfort bring;
For 'tis a friend's right, please let me explain,
To share in woeful as in joyful things
— Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, I, 85

A Biblical view of democracy

Here's Doug Wilson riffing off C.S Lewis on democracy - tis very good...

Did Jesus ever laugh?

So asks Karl Bath in a letter:

"It is puzzling that in the Gospels there is hardly a passage where one can think of Jesus having laughed. There must be a reason for this but off-hand I could not name it."

So class how would you answer him?

An honest answer re the vicious God of the OT

Having previously repudiated God's wrath as barbaric and completely unworthy of a God of love, Miroslav Volf later changed his tune (partly I think given the horrible things he'd witnessed in his country of birth). Volf wrote:

Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God's wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn't wrathful at the sight of the world's evil. God isn't wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.

In other words, encountering reality can sometimes be a good corrective to faulty doctrine. It's like the comedian who once confessed to being very liberal, until he was burgled, whereupon, he found himself a supporter of capital punishment! When you think of some of the recent horrific stories in the Church (e.g. Cardinal O'Brien's confessions about inappropriate sexual behaviour) and outside it (e.g. the BBC and the Jimmy Savile debacle) you would have to be frigid soul to not want justice to be done and the perpetrators punished. When God encounters gross wickedness and perverse sinfulness, He doesn't respond by doting on the perpetrators in a grandfatherly fashion. No! God's fierce anger is kindled. As Psalm 7 says:

God is a righteous judge,

    a God who displays his wrath every day.

¹² 

If he does not relent,

    he will sharpen his sword;

    he will bend and string his bow.

¹³ 

He has prepared his deadly weapons;

    he makes ready his flaming arrows.

Miroslav Volf is right: God isn't wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.

Saturday Smiles: Nothing to do with dogs

"That the term dogmatician has nothing to do with dogs does not, I trust, need saying. But when exegetes and dogmaticians get together it is noticeable that they tend to sniff suspiciously at each other, as dogs do, uncertain whether they can be friends." 

--J. I. Packer, "The 'Wretched Man' Revisited: Another Look at Romans 7:14-25," in Romans and the People of God: Essays in Honor of Gordon D. Fee on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (ed. Sven Soderlund and N. T. Wright; Eerdmans, 1999), 70

Becoming a Christian is like a Copernican revolution

There are a few "aha" moments in this...

Christians should have good manners

The person with the excellent manners may not necessarily be a Christian. But the Christian should have excellent manners.

HT: Femina

Pierces with a joy that brings tears

J R R Tolkien writing to his son (Christopher) explains why the Resurrection is the best and greatest story. The context is that Tolkien has just heard a sermon on the healing of Jairus' daughter and is reflecting on another healing, that of a young boy which Tolkien had witnessed in 1927. He writes:

But at the story of the little boy (which is a fully attested fact of course) with its apparent sad ending and then its sudden unhoped-for happy ending, I was deeply moved and had that peculiar emotion we all have--though not often. It is quite unlike any other sensation. 

And all of a sudden I realised what it was: the very thing that I have been trying to write about and explain--in that fairy-story essay that I so much wish you had read that I think I shall send it to you. For it I coined the word 'eucatastrophe': the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce). 

And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint has suddenly snapped back. It perceives--if the story has literary 'truth'--that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest 'eucatastrophe' possible in the greatest Fairy Story--and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love. 

Of course I do not mean that the Gospels tell what is only a fairy-story; but I do mean very strongly that they do tell a fairy-story: the greatest. . . . So that in the Primary Miracle (the Resurrection) and the lesser Christian miracles too though less, you have not only that sudden glimpse of truth behind the apparent ananke of our world, but a glimpse that is actually a ray of light through the very chinks of the universe about us.

The only fitting conclusion to this vignette of Tolkein's profound mind is to repeat what Jesus says to Martha moments before raising Lazarus from the dead.. Jesus says:

"I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?