Almighty God, You chose Your servant Matthias to be numbered among the Twelve. Grant that Your Church, ever preserved from false teachers, may be taught and guided by faithful and true pastors; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. (Lutheran Service Book:F13)

Acts 1:12-26: Matthias Chosen to Replace Judas

¹²Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. ¹³And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. ¹⁴All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

¹⁵In those days Peter stood up among the brothers (the company of persons was in all about 120) and said, ¹⁶“Brothers, the Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus. ¹⁷For he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.” ¹⁸(Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. ¹⁹And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their own language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.) ²⁰“For it is written in the Book of Psalms,

“‘May his camp become desolate,
and let there be no one to dwell in it’;

and

“‘Let another take his office.’

²¹So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, ²² beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us-one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” ²³And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus, and Matthias. ²⁴And they prayed and said, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen ²⁵to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” ²⁶And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles. (ESV^TM)

PRAYER: O God, the maker of heaven and earth, You gave boldness to confess Jesus Christ as King and Savior and steadfastness to die for the faith to Your venerable servant, the holy and gentle Polycarp. Grant us grace to follow his example in sharing the cup of Christ’s suffering so that we may also share in His glorious resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. (Treasury of Daily Prayer:1150)

Polycarp to the Philippians:

If then we entreat the Lord that He would forgive us, we also ought to forgive: for we are before the eyes of our Lord and God, and we must all stand at the judgment-seat of Christ, and each man must give an account of himself.

Let us therefore so serve Him with fear and all reverence, as He himself gave commandment and the Apostles who preached the Gospel to us and the prophets who proclaimed beforehand the coming of our Lord; being zealous as touching that which is good, abstaining from offenses and from the false brethren and from them that bear the name of the Lord in hypocrisy, who lead foolish men astray.

For every one who shall not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is antichrist: and whosoever shall not confess the testimony of the Cross, is of the devil; and whosoever shall pervert the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts and say that there is neither resurrection nor judgment, that man is the firstborn of Satan.

Wherefore let us forsake the vain doing of the many and their false teachings, and turn unto the word which was delivered unto us from the beginning, being sober unto prayer and constant in fastings, entreating the all-seeing God with supplications that He bring us not into temptation, according as the Lord said, The Spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak. (THE EPISTLE OF POLYCARP, Translated by J.B. Lightfoot; 6:2–7:3)

Among the most enjoyable aspects of the Lutheran Hymnal Project, for me, was the work of the Lectionary Committee on an expanded sanctoral cycle, that is, the calendar of festivals and commemorations that occur in the course of each year. There was some friendly debate, to begin with, as to whether we should develop a list of commemorations in addition to the small cycle of festivals the LCMS already had, but, by and large, the Committee was keen to do so. Then there was some vigorous discussion of the parameters to be followed and the extent to which we would expand the sanctoral cycle. The healthy give and take of our deliberations resulted in a solid list of commemorations and a couple new festivals, which, so far as I can tell, have been well received and really appreciated by the people of the Missouri Synod. I’m glad.

Read the rest of this informative post at his blog thinking out loud.

No matter where they came from the devotional writings had to be scripturally sound and apply the message of Law and Gospel to the life of the reader. We wanted in every writing a clear statement of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the first place, that is what our readers need. But so also we believe that this what our writers would want presented and preserved.

On top of that we wanted the writings to serve the Word. The main component of the Treasury is the Daily Lectionary. Wherever possible we chose writings that expounded the day’s lection directly. That wasn’t always possible. Some of the writings are related indirectly to the lection, commenting not on those exact passages but on the same topic or parallel passages. If that wasn’t possible we connected the writings to the Church Year using seasonal themes such as repentance in Lent and the Incarnation in Christmas.

Timeless

The writings are meant to be read again and again every year. So they had to be substantial, to wear well, and to have something to say even after multiple readings. For that to work the writings needed to be timeless. That is why we chose to use no author who hadn’t entered into glory by 1950 and tried to avoid addressing current faddish topics. It is not that there haven’t been things written since 1950 that would fit the bill. It is simply that we aren’t in a position to yet identify those things. Let the next generation judge the last, for we are far better judges of our grandfathers than we are of our fathers. But every rule has an exception or two, and so did ours. We bent our rule for the sake of Herman Sasse, guessing that future Christians will count him as one of the most significant and profound voices of the 20th and century. We also let Dietrich Bonhoefer, who was 11 years younger than Sasse, in on a technicality. He met the letter of the law, he died in 1944, but that is only because the Nazis martyred him. Still martyrdom ought to count for something. And so also do we expect that Bonhoefer will be embraced by future generations and still serve us today.

It should also be noted that we received a large number of original translations from our contributors. As a result, many of the writings in the Treasury are not available anywhere else in English.

Procedure

To meet our goals we made up categories of eras. Then we assigned target percentages to each. The content of the categories and the percentages are given and explained below. We solicited contributors from a wide slice of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod including professors, parish pastors, deaconesses, teachers, district presidents, and lay people. As well we solicited members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, and the Lutheran Church of Canada, to help us find the best of the writings from the fathers of the Church. Many of these people had special skills, knowledge, or interest. Some went searching for us in works of writers they’d never heard of before, some within a corpus of which they had special knowledge. Each of our contributors donated their time and effort, and as already pointed out, many also donated translation work.

Categories of Writings

The Confessions

As you might guess from talk of Sasse and Bonhoefer, the Treasury was prepared with a distinct and deliberate Lutheran identity. This book was not to be simply a Lutheranized breviary. It was to be a Lutheran prayer book overflowing with Lutheran devotional writings. Nothing has worn so well, or so badly needed a way into the devotional lives of our people, as the Lutheran Confessions. Thus our first category, and highest target percentage, was the Lutheran Confessions. Our goal was to have 30% of the writings be from the Lutheran Confessions. We also took pains to make sure every word of the Small Catechism made it into the Treasury at least once, and that all the confessional documents were represented. Of the 400 days in the main body of the Treasury, 113 writings are from our Lutheran Confessions, or 28.25 %.

Luther

Our next concern was assuring the liberal inclusion of the writings of Martin Luther. He is our chief teacher. We set the target at 25%. Then we made a list of Luther’s most significant writings. We wanted them all to be represented in the Treasury. That proved tougher than expected. Certainly it was easy to find suitable material in Luther’s sermons and exegetical works. But some of his most important works are heavily polemic and not in the least bit devotional. Nonetheless, we managed to get at least one selection that met our criteria from each of the following works: The Bondage of the Will, The Freedom of the Christian, Against the Heavenly Prophets, Adoration of the Sacrament, To the Christian Nobility, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, A Simple Way to Pray, Heidelburg Disputation, The Marburg Articles, and The Invocabit Sermons. Our count is 95 writings from Luther, or 24% of the 400 total days.

Early Church

The next largest category was what we thought of as early Church. This category included writers up through the 4th century. We set the target of 20%. A gem from the early Church on average appears every 5th day. This will be a new experience for most of our people. It was natural for us to run after Augustine and John Chrysostom, but we wanted more breadth than that, so we established a list of what we considered the most important writers from that era and managed again to get at least one from each. Our early Church writers include: Ambrose, Athanasius, Augustine, Basil, Clement, Cyril of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzus, Gregory the Great, Hilary of Poitiers, Ignatius of Antioch, Ireaneus, Jerome, John Cassian, John Chrysostom, John Damascene, Leo the Great, Origen, Tertullian, and Ephrem the Syrian. Our actual number of early Church writings is 68 of the 400, or 17%.

The Medieval Church

We also wanted writings that spanned the era from the early Church to the time of Luther. Even though this encompassed 1100 years, it wasn’t the most productive era of the Church. We set our target at a modest 10%. Again we felt there were writers that should be represented, chief of these was Thomas Aquinas and Anselm of Canterbury. But of all Christian literature nothing has been so influential on the life of the Church as St. Benedict’s rule. You will find Benedict’s advice for singing and prayer on September 23. Dante’s Divine Comedy also hails from the middle ages. It is probably the greatest piece of literature from its time. His imaginative depiction of Hell is still how most picture it. For all the power of Dante’s poetry, it wasn’t easy to find something suitable for the Treasury, but we did find a superb description of faith which you will find on September 9. Besides those four authors we also provided at least one writing from Hugh of St. Victor, Peter Chrysologus, Vincent of Lerin, Thomas Kempis, Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, John Donne, John Bunyon, and St. John of the Cross. Our actual number from this era is 25, 6% of the total 400 days.

The Lutheran Fathers

Our next category was Lutheran fathers of the 16th and 17th centuries. We hoped to have 10% of our 400 writings be from this era. We certainly wanted Martin Chemnitz, David Chytraeus, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Gerhard, and Johannes Bugenahage. But we thanks to our contributors we also got: Valerius Herberger, Veit Dietrich, Lucas Lossius, Meister Eckhart, Georg von Anhalt, Nicolaus Selnecker, and Timotheus Kirchner. So also we have Jacob Andrea, C.C. Schmidt, Joseph Seis, and Phillip Nicolai. Though he is not a Lutheran father, we included a reading from Thomas Cranmer who was of the same era. This category proved richer than we imagined: 54 writings, or 13.5%.

Missouri Fathers

We also wanted a little taste of our own nearer history and established a category of Missouri fathers. This we set at 4%. We provided writings from C. F. W. Walther, Wilhelm Loehe, Paul Kretzmann, and Francis Pieper. Again, we found this richer than expected. Our actual number is 22 writings, or 5.5%.

The 20th Century

Finally, we wanted a taste of the best of the early part of the 20th century and set a target of 2%. We provided readings from Bo Giertz, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Werner Elert, Herman Sasse, Pius Parsch, and G. K. Chesterton. Here we far exceeded our target. We ended up with 15 writings for 5.75%.

Full list of contributors to the Writings included in Treasury of Daily Prayer:

Contributors: Scott T. Adle, Paul Gregory Alms, Eric Robert Andrae, John W. Berg, Sara Bielby, Jason M. Braaten, Kent J. Burreson, Emily K. Carder, David Coles, Shane R. Cota, H. R. Curtis, William M. Cwirla, Adriane Dorr, Burnell F. Eckardt Jr., Joel C. Elowsky, Karl F. Fabrizius, Thomas E. Fast, Erich R. Fickel, Ryan T. Fouts, William E. Foy, James A. Frey, Joshua D. Genig, Erik M. Heen, Erich J. Heidenreich, Gregg Hein, David Juhl, Aaron Koch, James A. Lee II, Mark A. Loest, Larry K. Loree Jr., Kevin W. Martin, Benjamin T. G. Mayes, Paul T. McCain, Aaron Moldenhauer, Herbert C. Mueller Jr., David C. Mumme, Paul G. Mumme, Jonathan Naumann, Pamela J. Nielsen, Preston A. Paul, David C. Ratke, Jody A. Rinas, John W. Sias, Robert E. Smith, Edward J. Steeh, Julie Stiegemeyer, D. Richard Stuckwisch, Ralph G. Tausz, Chad D. Trouten, Jon D. Vieker, David Jay Webber, Larry D. Wright, and Luke T. Zimmerman.

In 1521 Martin Luther came to the town of Worms, in Germany, to explain his attacks on the Catholic Church to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and the gathered dignitaries of the German lands. What happened at that meeting, called the Diet of Worms, tore countries apart, set nation against nation, felled kings and plunged dynasties into suicidal bouts of infighting. But why did Martin Luther risk execution to go to the Diet, what was at stake for the big players of medieval Europe and how did events at the Diet of Worms irrevocably change the history of Europe?

More info: www.bbc.co.uk