Dear Friends in Christ,

November starts with All Saints' Day and ends with Thanksgiving. One of the many things I'm thankful for is learning from great teachers in the church. Below are a few quotes from an LCMS professor (Dr. Norman Nagel) that I consider “great.” If I haven't quoted him directly before (and I have!), more often you have heard his teaching and articulations through me. He now is one of the saints in heaven.

In the last week a pastor friend, who wasn't as fortunate as I to have Dr. Nagel as a teacher, sent me a recorded sermon that Dr. Nagel preached at the St. Louis seminary chapel many years ago. I was appreciative! Last month was also pastor appreciation month. Thank you for all the cards and notes of appreciation, and all that you dear Saints do. I too am appreciative of pastors, like my father, and all the faithful men who have pointed us to the one and only Savior Jesus throughout the years. Here are, and hear now, a few quotes from Dr. Nagel, a Saint for whom I am appreciative, and one of the many blessings given to us by God for which to give thanks.

            “Calvary is for you, from Him, a gift. Blessed are those who are given to. They are “the poor in spirit” of the first Beatitude. If there is any hope of deliverance, it can only come from God. The poor in spirit wait on the Lord. As He gives, they are given to. His giving to them is not blocked or hindered by what they have crammed together and would use for bargaining. 'God gives into empty hands,' says Augustine, not into hands full of what we would boast of before God. There is no room for the gifts to be given into. Sometimes, with drastic mercy, our Father empties our hands so there may be room for His gifts. Blessed are those who are given to by God. Blessed are they who receive their death as a gift from His hands. Nothing is outside His hands. Despite the pain and perplexity of any way of dying, we are never outside His hands, and within His hands and from His hands our deaths are a gift by way of which He brings us to the fullness of His promises. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).

            In the Gospel this word 'blessed' is always in relation to Jesus. It rings with gladness, as is pointed to by the translation that says, “Happy are those who know their need of God.” But happiness is often something so fleeting or shallow, and here is something from our Lord, a lively, joyful gift for all our living and all our dying. Not spoonfuls, not bucketfuls, but the “river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Revelation 22:1). “And of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace” (John 1:16). You were “buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead” (Colossians 2:12). You who were dead in sin God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our sins, having blotted out the charges of the Law against us. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross. “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory” (Colossians 3:3-4). (from a Sermon for All Saints Day (Matthew 5:1-12), from Selected Sermons of Norman Nagel, page 317.)

             “As Doctor Luther says, “The Gospel is not Christ.” The Gospel is the proclamation of Christ. The proclamation of Christ is the proclamation of the cross, the proclamation of the cross for you. Thus the delivery of the cross and with it all that was there achieved for you that day long ago. We are not back there. Nor need we attempt to get back there with some sort of getting contemporary with it.

Our Lord is not back there today, but here, where He is having His words spoken, the words that deliver Him. Doctor Luther said if you want your sins forgiven, don’t go to Calvary. There forgiveness was won for you, but there it is not given out. You go to the Lord’s Supper. There forgiveness is not won for you, but there it is given out. The Lord’s Supper has always a specific place and time. For there to be a delivery to us, it cannot be otherwise. We go on only as we are located at a particular place and time. The Lord has appointed the place and time for the delivery of His gifts, means of grace, 'externum verbum' (external word). And so gifts, that is, from Him to you by way of located words, water, wine, and (bread.” (Sermon for Holy Cross Day, 1992)

             “The Christian life is shaped by the giving love of Christ and in the Scripture we have his bidding and descriptions of that shape. We would please him. Yet in nothing of our achievements, in no factor of us, do we place our final reliance. That is in his body and blood given and shed for us, in our Baptism, and in his forgiving and life-giving word of the Gospel which does not merely tell but bestows what it says. This is all from him and as sure as he is sure. There is nothing anterior to him which makes him sure. At no point may we insert some factor of ourselves as decisive or guaranteeing. Our competence does not rise above the ability to reject him. He suffers himself to be rejected. His saving way is the gracious giving way which is the way of his Spirit with the means of grace. Outside the means of grace his working with his power is irresistible. He makes no one alive as his forgiven child by use of his irresistible power. From creation and our own faculties we cannot know God as Savior. From these we can at most know him as powerful and just. Only in Christ and his cross do we know the heart of God toward us. The most incredible thing is that God should love us, and love us so much as to go through Calvary for us.

 Here is a love beyond the limits of our understanding. We cannot explain it. It derives solely from the heart of God before time and beyond time. From the cross I know God thus loves me. That redeeming love is not only for me or a limited number of men.” (Norman Nagel, “The Gospel Is What Lutherans Care About”)

 Blessings to All the Saints, in heaven and earth—in our Lord Jesus!                                                                                                    

                                    Pastor Engler