Sermon Tone Analysis

I hate it when I see an old person…and then realize we went to high school together.

I’m staring my 45th high school reunion in the face this October.

I won’t be attending.

Each reunion that I have gone to—the fifth, tenth, and the 20th—became increasingly depressing and annoying.

Oh, people got good jobs.

My classmates were no slouches.

But too many of them didn’t seem very happy—if drunkenness and hookups from days gone by were any evidence.

Then there’s the whole glory days thing.

Our football team was not very good but every reunion celebrates that team.

I don’t get it.

Maybe drinking does cause memory loss.

Or maybe, we just want to remember something as being better than it actually was.

We tend to look back on days gone by, if not as glory days then, as the good old days.

I suspect that in many cases it’s because we don’t have to live them any more.

Right now, the American Church looks back on the 50s and early 60s as their glory days, the good old days when lots of people were coming to church.

I remember.

I grew up at St. Luke, a small Lutheran Church just across the creek from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio.

That little church, that could probably seat 125 people, was fairly full every Sunday.

It had a Luther League and a Boy Scout troupe…and if I recall, a new pastor every few years, confirmation classes that couldn’t keep a teacher, and students who were already leaving the church as soon as they were confirmed.

They had things to do: important things!

Oh, I don’t know: anything but worship, I guess.

St. Luke closed about the time I graduated from high school.

Ah…those were the good old days.

And we’re still living them.

These are those days.

The Lutheran Church continues to decimate itself from the inside out.

Way back then, Scripture and prayer were heard on Sunday mornings and largely ignored for the rest of the week.

Nothing has changed, even though God tells us to pray without ceasing and promises blessing to the one whose “delight is in the law of the LORD,” who “meditates [on it] day and night” ().

Way back then, we were already figuring out how to get by without learning the Catechism.

Now Lutheran churches are starting to throw out the catechism altogether, stating as their reason that it isn’t relevant in a modern society.

I never heard of the Book of Concord, the Lutheran Confessions back then.

Maybe I wasn’t listening.

Today, it’s worse.

Why?

Because there is no King in the land and people are doing what seems right in their own eyes.

In fact, back in the good old days, we had a saying for that; you could buy it printed on posters at Spencer’s Gifts.

The saying? “If it feels good, do it.”

The good ol’ days?

More like a recipe for disaster.

It’s way past time to wake up and strengthen what remains before we die out altogether.

But how do you do that?

In another time that we consider the good old days, half a millennia ago, Martin Luther conducted what is know as the Saxon Visitation.

He and others toured the churches throughout Saxony and discovered a total decay of all Christian knowledge and of Christian instruction.

Even Luther had not anticipated such widespread ignorance and corruption in the churches.

The Saxon Visitation brought to light such a total decay of all Christian knowledge and of Christian instruction as even Luther had not anticipated.

Aside from other evils (clergymen cohabiting with their cooks, addicted to drink, or even conducting taverns, etc.), the people, especially in the villages, were found to be grossly ignorant of even the simplest rudiments of Christian doctrine and most unwilling to learn anything, while many pastors were utterly incompetent to teach.

According to the official records, one priest, who enjoyed a great reputation as an exorcist, could not even recite the Lord's Prayer and the Creed fluently.

(Koestlin, Martin Luther, 2, 41.) Luther took part in the visitation of the Electoral circuit from the end of October till after the middle of November, 1528, and again from the end of December, 1528, till January, 1529, and on April 26, 1529, at Torgau, he, too, signed the report on visitation.

When Luther therefore describes the decay of instruction in Popery, he speaks from personal experience.

About the middle of January, 1529, he wrote to Spalatin, "Moreover, conditions in the congregations everywhere are pitiable, inasmuch as the peasants learn nothing, know nothing, never pray, do nothing but abuse their liberty, make no confession, receive no communion, as if they had been altogether emancipated from religion.

They have neglected their papistical affairs (ours they despise) to such extent that it is terrible to contemplate the administration of the papal bishops."

(Enders 7, 45.)

The intense heartache and mingled feelings which came over Luther when he thought of the ignorance which he found during the visitation, are described in the Preface to the Small Catechism as follows: "The deplorable, miserable condition which I discovered lately when I, too, was a visitor, has forced and urged me to prepare this Catechism, or Christian doctrine, in this small, plain, simple form.

Mercy!

Good God! what manifold misery I beheld!

The common people, especially in the villages, have no knowledge whatever of Christian doctrine, and, alas! many pastors are altogether incapable, and incompetent to teach.

Nevertheless, all maintain that they are Christians, all have been baptized and receive the holy Sacrament.

Yet they cannot recite either the Lord's Prayer, or the Creed, or the Ten Commandments; they live like dumb brutes and irrational swine; and yet now that the Gospel has come, they have nicely learned to abuse alI liberty like experts.

0 ye bishops!

what will ye ever answer to Christ for having so shamefully neglected the people and never for a moment discharged your office?

May all misfortune flee you!

You command the Sacrament in one form and insist on your human laws, and yet at the same time you do not care in the least whether the people know the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, or any part of the Word of God.