This post comes from Synod President Harrison's blog. It contains some good, relevant stuff. It is both comforting and disturbing in that, while we suffer no more than has already been - still we have not learned from our past. Please read here, or at Synod Pres Harrison's Blog: Mercy Journeys:
The following paragraphs are taken from an article written by Dr. Franz Pieper (LCMS President 1899-1911), at the assassination of William McKinley in 1901.
Pastor H.
In our country, labor and capital are for the most part enemies of each other. Workers join together. But they are not satisfied merely to unite. In many cases they use their union in order to harm their neighbors. They demand that workers who do not belong to their union should be given no work. To achieve this end, people often grab hold of stones, knives, revolvers, and dynamite. That is the murderous spirit of anarchy.
On the other side, the capitalists join together. But they are not satisfied merely with such unity. In many cases they use it to ruin the businesses of and trample neighbors who are not in the “trust.” That is the murderous anarchical spirit of the capitalists.
Furthermore, in recent decades, the number of children, particularly among the American-born population, has taken a dive. The chief cause is that hundreds of thousands of American women consistently murder their unborn children, with and without the consent of their husbands. This murderous spirit has become so prevalent that the well-known preacher Parkhurst [Charles Henry Parkhurst, 1842–1932] has accused a portion of American women of seeking to save the children of heathen while they murder their own progeny. This year a well-known professor of medicine admonished a class of beginning doctors that they reject abortion, which is commonly practiced.
...Enough of the examples taken from the life of our nation. Let’s take a look at ourselves. If we also—which is certainly not the case—were entirely free of the particular manifestation of the murderous spirit that we find among the capitalists and workers, the abortionists and the secret societies, the lynchers, etc., we still stand before the Law of God judged as murderers. The Scriptures say (1 John 3:15): “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer.” Indeed, the wrath that rises in our hearts against the neighbor is murder before God. The desires that we have to harm our neighbor are murderous in God’s sight. Luther is quite right in his explication of the Gospel on the Sixth Sunday after Trinity regarding the sin against the Fifth Commandment: “Now whether indeed one grade is worse than another, still all of it—the lowest as much as the highest—is sin against this (Fifth) commandment. Thus whoever merely bears loathing in his heart, anger or disfavor against another, is a murderer before God.” May this act of murder, which has thrown all of us citizens of this land into horror and travail, remind us all precisely of this. And may we recognize and confess that we all would burn in hell as murderers if the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, did not cleanse us also from the sin of murder.
A completely wretched spectacle has played out right before our eyes in the murder of our president. Something that should humble and lead a people to repentance is used for self-glorification. “You have struck them down, but they felt no anguish; You have consumed them, but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to repent” (Jeremiah 5:3). But we throw ourselves in the dust before God and say:
Christ, Thou Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us! Christ, Thou Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us! Christ, Thou Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, grant us Thy peace!
Amen.
"At Home in the House of My Fathers," p. 612
I wanted to share some comments about our church, from a letter I received from a recent visitor:
