The impacts are on the day-to-day lives of people, affecting their resources and disrupting earning sources, and delays in service delivery, poor health status, and loss of assets contributing significantly to acute food insecurity, inadequate access to safe water, sanitation, and hygienic conditions, loss of shelter, and settlements with increased health care risks.

Attendees of the humanitarian response training in Sidhikalang, Indonesia

Women and girls are always disproportionately affected, as in most disasters, loss to women/girls’ lives is greater. Lack of opportunities to learn, poor access to engage in the planning process, lack of care at the family level, gender-based violence(GBV), discrimination to exercise their human rights in different platforms, and overall recognition of gender roles in nation-building initiatives, increase their exposure to disasters. In our counts of countries in Asia that are hit by disasters every year, Indonesia is always in the news due to high frequency and multiple occurrences of hydro-geo-meteorological hazards.

As these recurring events target communities multiple times, it is very difficult for people to recover their losses and improve their resilience. Without strategic support, it becomes more challenging for the communities to plan for their future needs. When a disaster strikes in Indonesia, it depletes economic assets and breaks the sociocultural fabric of the society.

Subhashis Roy and Chandran Martin teaching in Sidhikalang, Indonesia

In such difficult situations where we witness the loss of life, livelihood, infrastructure, household assets, and environment, the role of Lutheran Churches in Indonesia has been widened being first responders to disasters. Lutheran Churches are strategically placed to address “people in need.” High risk with low coping capacity makes Indonesia more exposed to disasters and demands a strategic move to increase resilience toward disaster impacts.

Lutheran Disaster Response (LDR) is one unique flagship program of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America(ELCA) that contributes to global, regional and national efforts in reducing the suffering and enhancing accountability for those affected by disasters.

Attendees from the humanitarian response training in Mentawai, Indonesia

ELCA acknowledges the role of Lutheran churches in Indonesia in saving lives, spiritual care, and leading life with dignity. Recognizing the role of Lutheran Churches in Indonesia, the ELCA contributes to increasing capacity through its multi-faceted and multi-sectoral support that help ELCA companion churches and ecumenical partners response to immediate and medium-term needs and spreads God’s love to people most in need.

Since 2023, ELCA has been accompanying the Komite Nasional Lutheran World Federation (KNLWF) in Indonesia to reach some of the most remote areas and increase their capacity to prevent, prepare, mitigate, recover, and build back better from disasters. In this journey, a successful accompaniment model has emerged that truly shares, learns, spreads, and transfers knowledge and resources for people to recover early. Based on the positive feedback and recognition of ELCA-supported capacity-building events in Indonesia, ELCA-KNLWF organized the 2nd phase of the training events in November 2024 in the Sidhikalang and Mentawai islands of Indonesia. More than 40 participants have actively engaged in such sharing and learning events.

Participants expressed very positive and overwhelming views on the significance of such events and preparing church members with tools and techniques that ease their role in disaster management.

ELCA Blogs

The *world* even the *churches* speak of love, as if all it needs is love. This is true. But only God *is* love. Only God *is* Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is no other independent category of “love,” that is not first a predicate of God’s eternal life within itself. So, when the world, and even the churches, speak of love, they ironically bear witness against themselves; that is, if they claim that all we need is love, but are thinking of that in purely horizontal, human, and profane ways (which they are). The world’s only salvation is to be 𝑖𝑛ℎ𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜 𝐷𝑒𝑖 (inhabiting God); this is, finally, to inhabit true love; this is what the world, and even the churches need. They speak this word over themselves, as the high-priest prophesied about Jesus and didn’t know it. The world’s hope, our only hope, is to be unioned with the Father’s “love child” for us; even so, as He came as a babe in a manager.

Athanasian Reformed

The impacts are on the day-to-day lives of people, affecting their resources and disrupting earning sources, and delays in service delivery, poor health status, and loss of assets contributing significantly to acute food insecurity, inadequate access to safe water, sanitation, and hygienic conditions, loss of shelter, and settlements with increased health care risks.

Attendees of the humanitarian response training in Sidhikalang, Indonesia

Women and girls are always disproportionately affected, as in most disasters, loss to women/girls’ lives is greater. Lack of opportunities to learn, poor access to engage in the planning process, lack of care at the family level, gender-based violence(GBV), discrimination to exercise their human rights in different platforms, and overall recognition of gender roles in nation-building initiatives, increase their exposure to disasters. In our counts of countries in Asia that are hit by disasters every year, Indonesia is always in the news due to high frequency and multiple occurrences of hydro-geo-meteorological hazards.

As these recurring events target communities multiple times, it is very difficult for people to recover their losses and improve their resilience. Without strategic support, it becomes more challenging for the communities to plan for their future needs. When a disaster strikes in Indonesia, it depletes economic assets and breaks the sociocultural fabric of the society.

Subhashis Roy and Chandran Martin teaching in Sidhikalang, Indonesia

In such difficult situations where we witness the loss of life, livelihood, infrastructure, household assets, and environment, the role of Lutheran Churches in Indonesia has been widened being first responders to disasters. Lutheran Churches are strategically placed to address “people in need.” High risk with low coping capacity makes Indonesia more exposed to disasters and demands a strategic move to increase resilience toward disaster impacts.

Lutheran Disaster Response (LDR) is one unique flagship program of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America(ELCA) that contributes to global, regional and national efforts in reducing the suffering and enhancing accountability for those affected by disasters.

Attendees from the humanitarian response training in Mentawai, Indonesia

ELCA acknowledges the role of Lutheran churches in Indonesia in saving lives, spiritual care, and leading life with dignity. Recognizing the role of Lutheran Churches in Indonesia, the ELCA contributes to increasing capacity through its multi-faceted and multi-sectoral support that help ELCA companion churches and ecumenical partners response to immediate and medium-term needs and spreads God’s love to people most in need.

Since 2023, ELCA has been accompanying the Komite Nasional Lutheran World Federation (KNLWF) in Indonesia to reach some of the most remote areas and increase their capacity to prevent, prepare, mitigate, recover, and build back better from disasters. In this journey, a successful accompaniment model has emerged that truly shares, learns, spreads, and transfers knowledge and resources for people to recover early. Based on the positive feedback and recognition of ELCA-supported capacity-building events in Indonesia, ELCA-KNLWF organized the 2nd phase of the training events in November 2024 in the Sidhikalang and Mentawai islands of Indonesia. More than 40 participants have actively engaged in such sharing and learning events.

Participants expressed very positive and overwhelming views on the significance of such events and preparing church members with tools and techniques that ease their role in disaster management.

ELCA Blogs

“For what shall we pray?” is a weekly post inviting individuals, groups, and congregations to lift up our world in prayer. This resource is prepared by a variety of leaders in the ELCA and includes prayer prompts, upcoming events and observances, and prayer suggestions from existing denominational worship materials. You are encouraged to use these resources as a starting point, and to adapt and add other concerns from your local context. More information about this resource can be found here.

 
Prayer prompts:
For Syria and all nations facing conflict, transition, and uncertainty…
For victims of gun violence, especially in Madison, WI…
For political stability in South Korea, France, and Germany…
For post-earthquake recovery and rebuilding efforts in Vanuatu…
For victims of Cyclone Chido in south-east Africa…
For access to healthcare, food, and shelter for those most vulnerable…
For health and safety in areas where avian flu has been identified…
For the many world religions celebrating holidays in this season…

Events and observances:
Monthly Observances in December: World HIV/AIDS Month, Universal Human Rights Month

Katharina von Bora Luther, renewer of the church, died 1552 (Dec 20)
Winter Solstice (Dec 21)
Yule (Dec 21-Jan)
Nativity of Our Lord (I), Christmas Eve (Dec 24)
Nativity of Our Lord (II & III), Christmas Day (Dec 25)
Stephen, Deacon and Martyr (Dec 26)
Hanukkah (Judaism, Dec 26-Jan 2)
Kwanzaa (Dec 26-Jan 1)
John, Apostle and Evangelist (Dec 27)
The Holy Innocents, Martyrs (Dec 28)

Prayers from ELCA resources:
Resources for responding to gun violence
Prayer for Lament (ACS p. 61)
Service After a Violent Event (ACS p. 64)

A prayer for time of conflict, crisis, or disaster (ACS p. 49)
God most mighty, God most merciful, our sacred stories tell us that you help and save your people. You are the fortress: may there be no more war. You are the harvest: may there be no more hunger. You are the light: may no one die alone or in despair. God most majestic, God most motherly, grant us your life, the life that flows from your Son and the Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

A prayer for interreligious cooperation and understanding (ACS p. 51)
O God, whose name is above all names, your grace cannot be contained within human limits. We offer our thanks for holy wisdom that comes in other voices, in religions and worldviews different from our own, and in prayers offered in the wideness of your love. Move us more deeply into understanding and partnership, willing to work together in mutual respect, always open to the grace that we have experienced in Christ Jesus, our light and our life. Amen.

A set of worship resources for the crisis in the Holy Land is available on ELCA.org. Several prayers are provided that could be used during the prayers of intercession or at other times, in public worship or for devotional use at home or in other settings. PDF DOC

A set of worship resources for national elections is available on ELCA.org. Scripture readings, prayers, and assembly song suggestions are offered, to be used in settings such as prayer vigils, Morning or Evening Prayer, regular weekly worship or personal devotion in the weeks preceding or following an election. PDF DOC

—

ELW = Evangelical Lutheran Worship
ACS = All Creation Sings: Evangelical Lutheran Worship Supplement

Additional topical prayers are found in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (pp. 72–87) and All Creation Sings (pp. 46–55), as well as in other resources provided in print and online at sundaysandseasons.com.

Crafted intercessions for every Sunday and festival are provided in the Sundays and Seasons worship planning guide published in-print and online by Augsburg Fortress. Further assistance for composing prayers of intercession can be found here: Resources for Crafting Prayers of Intercession

Prayer Ventures, a daily prayer resource, is a guide to prayer for the global, social and outreach ministries of the ELCA, as well as for the needs and circumstances of our neighbors, communities and world.

ELCA Blogs

Christians don’t believe in an abstract ethereal god. Christians believe in the triune God who has Self-revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. Period. This should be an unremarkable assertion. There should be zero pushback to this. But in the so-called Great Tradition of the Church, and those who are ostensibly “retrieving” it, this isn’t the case. Classical theism, so-called, as a contemporary way to identify certain expressions of the antique past, especially with reference to a theology proper, have so synthesized, say, the Aristotelian categories with an ecclesiastical doctrine of God, that it is nay impossible to make a distinction, in substance (pun intended), between the philosopher’s unmoved mover of pure act, and the God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. In other words, there is such a conflation between the god of the philosophers, and the Christian God in this instance, that the god of the philosophers in fact becomes the Christian God in substance. Indeed, most of contemporary theology today, especially on the Latin side (i.e., Catholic and Protestant), traffics on the highway that the philosophers, and their theologians, respectively, have constructed for them. That is to say, contemporary theology, especially in certain iterations of Protestant theology, have so imbibed the cathedral of the Protestant development, that is primarily through the ‘schoolmen,’ or the scholastics, that to do theology, for them, requires a straight repristination; an outright and absolute reception of whatever the Protestant fathers said; a total gleaning, a harvesting, if you will, of whatever golden apples the oldmen of Protestant yesteryear planted in their gardens of theological delight.

But what if they were simply squished by their sitz im leben (situation in life); what if they were just doing the best they could with what they had available to them, intellectually, at that time? What if what they did was rather imaginative and forward thinking for their times, respectively, but in the end wasn’t the last or final word? I’m here to say it wasn’t; it wasn’t the last or final, or not even the best word. Karl Barth writes the following in his own analysis of those theological times. What you will find is that he agrees with me (or more correctly, that I agree with him).

Unfortunately the connexion between the belief in providence and belief in Christ had not been worked out and demonstrated theologically by the Reformers themselves. Only occasionally and from afar, if at all, had they seen the problem of natural theology and the necessity of a radical application to all theology of their recognition of the free grace of God in Christ. In their case, to be sure, we almost always feel and detect, even though it is so seldom palpable theologically, that when they speak of the world dominion of God they are in fact speaking with Christian content and on the basis of the Gospel, not abstractly in terms of a neutral God of Jews, Turks, pagans and Christians. And this is what gives warmth and force to the matter in P. Gerhardt. But if in him there is an unmistakable movement away from the Word of God to the experience of the Christian subject, this was to some extent a reaction against the dominant and self-evident abstraction with which the orthodoxy of his day followed another self-evident rut in these matters. This was the rut of a general theism which, apart from the mention of the Deus triunus [triune God], occasional quotations from the Bible and references to Church history, lacked any distinctive Christian content, being primarily concerned to distinguish itself from atheism, and limiting its consideration of the Gospel to the establishment and development of Christology and resultant doctrines. As if this were the real way to treat that primarium caput fidei et religionis [chief cornerstone of faith and religion].[1]

Surely, what Barth is explicating is the more sure word; relatively speaking. The Christian God is not neutral, He is not general, and He is not discoverable in some leftover vestiges of His presence in the fallen created order. That is to say, the fallen heart and mind of the fallen humanity has no access into the inner sanctum of God’s eternal life; that is, not without God first becoming us that we might become Him in Christ (by grace not nature). Isn’t there an infinitely qualitative distance between God and humanity?, as Kierkegaard so rightly identified. Aren’t human beings, us, born dead in our trespasses and sins with an ugly ditch between us and the holy God of triune wonder? This is all Barth is getting at. This is all I’m getting at, with reference to Barth. Selah

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3 §48 [032] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 31.

Athanasian Reformed

In some situations in life, we know the right thing to do and yet don’t do it, even in the simplest of circumstances. What do you think prevents us from taking action to do the right thing?

Active Waiting

Sometimes Advent can seem a bit boring. People can treat this powerful season of life like it’s the waiting room for Christmas. They endure these four weeks as though there’s nothing to do but scroll through the lectionary until the heavenly doctor arrives.

That approach clearly doesn’t take the Advent readings seriously, especially this week’s Gospel. In Luke 3:7-18, John the Baptist tells his followers that Christ is arriving soon. With Jesus on the way, John suggests, there’s no time like the present to make the necessary changes they’ve been avoiding in their lives. Have you been greedy? Stop it. Have you been selfish? Stop that too. Have you used your position of power to take advantage of others? Definitely quit that nonsense.

Advent isn’t a boring waiting room. This waiting for the Messiah is the months or years of intentional practice that lead up to a major performance. Advent is active waiting.

Consider the 2026 Winter Olympics, scheduled for Italy. Athletes have already been training to give themselves a chance to win. Amateur and professional athletes are competing against their national teammates for an opportunity to represent their country. At the same time, Olympic officials are scheduling backup locations in case of facility problems or weather interruptions.

Waiting without changing isn’t at all what the Advent season is about. Advent is the season where we wait on God while both listening to God’s call for justice and shaping our lives around that call. While this season is defined by waiting for Christmas, it is not a season that waits on change. It is a season that expects change without delay.

Ask Yourself: What are three things I can do to live God’s justice in my own life?

Ask a Friend: What is something we can do together to help change the church or our community so it better reflects God’s love?

One last reminder: please take this survey and give your feedback about Faith Lens as we consider the path ahead for this devotional resource!

ELCA Blogs

Being a human coram Deo (before or in the presence of the living God), in regard to its telos or purposefulness, is underwritten by being a worshipper of the triune God rather than an as an idolater of a self-projected god of a unitarian and individualistic origination. So-called classical liberalism, much of which was in fact Teutonic or German in orientation, of the Enlightenment/ -post higher critical ilk, is of the latter instance. That is to say, higher critics of the New Testament so demythologized the NT of its reality in the Theandric person of Jesus Christ, that all that was left for Jesus to be, at best, was as an exemplar for others to find in themselves; in mimicry of Jesus’ example of what it meant to operate with a Father-God consciousness; in Schleiermacher’s zeitgeist, having a “feeling” of dependence upon a Father-God. To the point, the classical liberal was necessarily turned inward to the inward curvature of the soul, wherein all that was left to fill the gap between God and humanity, wasn’t the divine personhood of the Godman in Jesus Christ, but instead, the divine personhood resident in each human being as they cultivated the feeling they had for Godness; indeed, as that godness was resident within the environ of their own human being. In other words, once the classical liberal denuded Jesus of His eternal and triune deity, all they had left was some type of Arian-unitarian notion of God wherein the mediator between God and man, was a naked humanity purely predicated by being an abstract human enmeshed in the world processes of existential existence among the other animals alongside us.

James B. Torrance (brother of Thomas F. Torrance) describes this type of unitarian way, with reference to Adolf Von Harnack and John Hick:

Model 1: The Harnack (Hick) Model. The first model . . . is that of nineteenth-century Protestant liberalism, given classical expression by Adolf Harnack [sic] in his 1900 Berlin lectures Das Wesen des Christentums, or What is Christianity? Recently Professor John Hick has sought to revive it in an adapted form. According to this, the heart of religion is the soul’s immediate relationship to God. What God the Father was to Old Testament Israel, he was to Jesus, and what he was to Jesus, he was to Paul and still is the same to us and all men and women today. We, with Jesus, stand as men and women, as brothers and sisters, worshiping the one Father but not worshiping any incarnate Son. Jesus is the man but not God. We do not need any mediator, or “myth of God incarnate.”

In Harnack’s own words: “The Gospel, as Jesus proclaimed it, has to do with the Father only and not with the Son.” Jesus’ purpose was to confront men and women with the Father, not with himself. He proclaimed the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of mankind, but not himself. “The Christian religion is something simple and sublime.” It means “God and the soul, the soul and its God” and this, he says, must be kept “free from the intrusion of any alien element.” Nothing must come between the child and his heavenly Father, be it priest, or Bible, or law, or doctrine, or Jesus Christ himself! The major “alien element” which Harnack has in mind is belief in the incarnation, a doctrine which he regarded as emerging from the hellenizing of the simple message of Jesus.

This view is clearly unitarian and individualistic. The center of everything is our immediate relationship with God, our present-day experience. The Father-Son relationship is generic, not unique. With this interpretation, all the great dogma of the church disappear:

• • The doctrine of the Trinity. We are all sons and daughters of God and the Spirit is the spirit of brotherly love.
  • The incarnation. Jesus Christ is not “his only [unicus] Son, our Lord,” but one of the class of creaturely sons of God. Sonship is not unique to Christ.
  • The doctrines of the Spirit, union with Christ, the Church as the body of Christ and the sacraments. Jesus did not found a church. He proclaimed the kingdom of God as a fellowship of love.

This liberal reconstruction made deep inroads and accounts in measure for the moralistic view of Christianity—where Jesus is the teacher of ethical principles, and where the religious life is our attempt to follow the example of Jesus, living by the golden rule, “doing to others as you would be done by.” With this moralistic, individualistic understanding of God and the Christian life, the doctrine of the Trinity loses its meaning, in fact disappears—and with it all doctrines of atonement and unconditional free grace, held out to us in Christ.[1]

For students of theological history what should be evident is the way that history repeats itself; albeit in different dress and grammar. At base, there is only so much space for the human wit to innovate ‘under the Sun.’ In other words, the issues the Protestant or classical liberals presented the Enlightened and post-Enlightened world with were, by and large, the same issues the early church Fathers, like Athanasius, Irenaeus, Cyril et al. were faced with by the Arians, Eunomians, and the many other traditional heretics we know of today.

The key to genuine worship of the triune God is that first the person must confess the fact that there is a triune God. Once this confession has been made, not in abstraction, but from within the depths of Christ’s vicarious confession for us—as He lamented with and worshipped the Father for us, in the breath of Holy Spirit—the potential worshipper can simply repose in the bosom of the Father, and worship from within the center of God’s life as that is the Only Begotten. Once this move is understood, indeed as the move of God for the world in the Theandric person of the eternal Son, Jesus Christ, we are no longer thrown upon ourselves (as TFT was wont to phraseize), but upon the mercies and graciousness of the living God; indeed, the living God who truly is, Immanuel, God with us. The classical liberals were too taken by their own moment in history, indeed an Arianizing and Eunomianizing moment, and as such, like the Vienna Positivists, lived and breathed in a vacuous turmoil of their own making. To be sure, they would have had it no other way; that is, until they went to stand before the living God. Now like the Rich Man they gnash their teeth as they remember the poor man, Lazarus, and realize that he had found and been found by the narrow way of the living God’s kingdom in the risen Christ.

All that is left for the unitarian, the Arian and Eunomian, the classical liberal worshipper of God is to first worship their own innards, and then attempt to project those onto the feelings they themselves discern as the Holy drip of God’s Fatherly life built into the immanent frame of their own deified lives, as it were. What a tragedy indeed.

[1] James B. Torrance, Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic Press, 1996), 25–6.

Athanasian Reformed

“For what shall we pray?” is a weekly post inviting individuals, groups, and congregations to lift up our world in prayer. This resource is prepared by a variety of leaders in the ELCA and includes prayer prompts, upcoming events and observances, and prayer suggestions from existing denominational worship materials. You are encouraged to use these resources as a starting point, and to adapt and add other concerns from your local context. More information about this resource can be found here.

 
Prayer prompts:
For the nation of Syria of conflict, transition, and uncertainty…
For peace among nations of the world…
For all victims of gun violence…
For victims of gang violence in Haiti and for grieving families…
For those struggling to afford or access healthcare…
For safety and advocacy for those without stable housing…
For those affected by earthquakes in California and Nevada, and for those affected by brush fires in southwestern California…
For continued political stability in South Korea and France, and for the safety of political protesters in the nation of Georgia…

Events and observances:
Monthly Observances in November: World HIV/AIDS Month, Universal Human Rights Month

Human Rights Day (Dec 10)
Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Dec 12)
Lucy, martyr, died 304 (Dec 13)
John of the Cross, renewer of the church, died 1591 (Dec 14)
Bill of Rights Day (Dec 15)

Prayers from ELCA resources:
A prayer for peace (ELW p.76)
Gracious and holy God, lead us from death to life, from falsehood to truth. Lead us from despair to hope, from fear to trust. Lead us from hate to love, from war to peace. Let peace fill our hearts, our world, our universe through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, Amen.

A prayer for refugees, migrants, immigrants (ACS p.51):
Holy God, as you have accompanied your people through times of captivity, wilderness, and exile, shelter and sustain all those who flee persecution, oppression, warfare, violence, hunger, and poverty. Open our hearts and homes, our gates and doors, so that they find safety, peace, and welcome—a place to live in freedom and without fear; through Jesus Christ, our refuge and hope. Amen.

A set of worship resources for the crisis in the Holy Land is available on ELCA.org. Several prayers are provided that could be used during the prayers of intercession or at other times, in public worship or for devotional use at home or in other settings. PDF DOC

A set of worship resources for national elections is available on ELCA.org. Scripture readings, prayers, and assembly song suggestions are offered, to be used in settings such as prayer vigils, Morning or Evening Prayer, regular weekly worship or personal devotion in the weeks preceding or following an election. PDF DOC

—

ELW = Evangelical Lutheran Worship
ACS = All Creation Sings: Evangelical Lutheran Worship Supplement

Additional topical prayers are found in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (pp. 72–87) and All Creation Sings (pp. 46–55), as well as in other resources provided in print and online at sundaysandseasons.com.

Crafted intercessions for every Sunday and festival are provided in the Sundays and Seasons worship planning guide published in-print and online by Augsburg Fortress. Further assistance for composing prayers of intercession can be found here: Resources for Crafting Prayers of Intercession

Prayer Ventures, a daily prayer resource, is a guide to prayer for the global, social and outreach ministries of the ELCA, as well as for the needs and circumstances of our neighbors, communities and world.

ELCA Blogs

As anyone knows who has read me for any amount of time, you will notice how these themes are the themes I often opine upon as I engage the theological wormwood present in the forests of the correlationists and logic-choppers.

Objector. One has to wonder: when Aristotle and Plato were available to Jesus, why he didn’t use their respective philosophical categories to explain Himself to the world. Indeed, He was (is) Jewish; and He came first for the house of Israel, as the Jew from Nazareth. Even so, Philo was a Jew too.

Response. My conclusion: He considered the god of the philosophers as antiHim, even if some of their grammar might be commandeered and evangelized in non-correlationist ways later.

I think the response to this will be that He came for the Jews first, and was the Son of David, indeed. As the Gospel spread it had to be translated into different languages and conceptual frameworks. It had to subvert those languages and frameworks, disrupt even, for its own triune purposes (i.e., not colonial). His missio Dei, in the economy, was to mediate salvation to the Jews first, as a Jew, and then to the Gentiles. Which is why He was such a skandalon, a stumbling block, to both the Jews and the Greeks. He resisted the categories of this profane world, by irrupting within it, from the world He inhabited in the triune life; as the Bread of Heaven. He brought what the world was created to be (so a fittingness), in His incarnation and atonement; in the manger and the cross (as synecdoche). A world (from Heaven) of ostensible foolishness and weakness, particularly because He was just one man; a Jew even.

_____________

P.S. One of my respondents even condemned me to hell for writing such words contra Aristotle and Plato. Hopefully these poor souls will ultimately come to know the joy of the Lord. I fear that its absence in their lives intimates a deeper delirium, beyond what they currently perceive of themselves coram Deo.

Athanasian Reformed

“For what shall we pray?” is a weekly post inviting individuals, groups, and congregations to lift up our world in prayer. This resource is prepared by a variety of leaders in the ELCA and includes prayer prompts, upcoming events and observances, and prayer suggestions from existing denominational worship materials. You are encouraged to use these resources as a starting point, and to adapt and add other concerns from your local context. More information about this resource can be found here.

 
Prayer prompts:
For lasting peace in Gaza, for Syria, and for all nations affected by ongoing warfare or conflict…
For political stability in South Korea and in France…
For Leonard Peltier and others seeking justice from the U.S. legal system…
For the U.S Supreme Court as it hears arguments surrounding transgender healthcare…
For the International Court of Justice as it prepares for a case on climate change…
In celebration of the renovations to the Notre Dame Cathedral…
For retail workers during the holiday season…
For those who are grieving during the holiday season…

Events and observances:
Monthly Observances in November: World HIV/AIDS Month, Universal Human Rights Month

International Day of People with Disabilities (Dec 3)
Francis Xavier, missionary to Asia, died 1552 (Dec 3)
John of Damascus, theologian and hymnwriter, died around 749 (Dec 4)
Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, died around 342 (Dec 6)
Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, died 397 (Dec 7)
Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day (Dec 7)
Feast of the Immaculate Conception (Dec 9)
Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Dec 12)

Prayers from ELCA resources:
A prayer for those in trouble or bereavement (ELW)
Almighty God, your love never fails, and you can turn the shadow of death into daybreak. Help us to receive your word with believing hearts, so that, confident in your promises, we may have hope and be lifted out of sorrow into the joy and peace of your presence; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.

A prayer for public church (ACS):
Mighty and merciful God, lover of justice and equity, you call us to support the weak, to help those who suffer, and to honor all people. By the power of your Holy Spirit, make us advocates for your justice and instruments of your peace, so that all may be reconciled in your beloved community; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

A set of worship resources for the crisis in the Holy Land is available on ELCA.org. Several prayers are provided that could be used during the prayers of intercession or at other times, in public worship or for devotional use at home or in other settings. PDF DOC

A set of worship resources for national elections is available on ELCA.org. Scripture readings, prayers, and assembly song suggestions are offered, to be used in settings such as prayer vigils, Morning or Evening Prayer, regular weekly worship or personal devotion in the weeks preceding or following an election. PDF DOC

—

ELW = Evangelical Lutheran Worship
ACS = All Creation Sings: Evangelical Lutheran Worship Supplement

Additional topical prayers are found in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (pp. 72–87) and All Creation Sings (pp. 46–55), as well as in other resources provided in print and online at sundaysandseasons.com.

Crafted intercessions for every Sunday and festival are provided in the Sundays and Seasons worship planning guide published in-print and online by Augsburg Fortress. Further assistance for composing prayers of intercession can be found here: Resources for Crafting Prayers of Intercession

Prayer Ventures, a daily prayer resource, is a guide to prayer for the global, social and outreach ministries of the ELCA, as well as for the needs and circumstances of our neighbors, communities and world.

ELCA Blogs