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The Church shall never perish!
— TLH 473, “The Church’s One Foundation,” v. 5
Her dear Lord, to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish,
Is with her to the end.
Tho’ there be those that hate her,
False sons within her pale,
Against both foe and traitor
She ever shall prevail.
Do you like Math?
Here’s some church calendar math. My comments below.
Look at the bottom half of the page, “A Table of the Movable Feasts and Festivals.” Look at the column labeled “Sundays after Epiphany”; note the asterisk (*). Go down to the bottom of the column where it says “6” (it’s boxed in red). Note that a liturgical “Sixth Sunday after Epiphany” only occurs when…
- Easter falls on April 22, 23, 24, or 25
- exceptionally, Easter falls on April 21 in a leap year
Well, how often does any of that happen? Go ahead and look the table in the second quartile from the top, “Table of the Days on which Easter will Fall from 1941–2000.” Late April Easters are rare. (As a matter of fact, April 25 is the latest possible date for Easter.) This table is a small sample, though, and if you’re not an autistic savant, it’s exceeding difficult to extrapolate frequency on the spot.
Well, the United States Census Bureau is here to help. The dates of Easter during the lifetime of the American body politic are relevant census data for reasons which are, if not immediately obvious, not terribly difficult to infer. So the USCB has a page called “Easter Dates from 1600 to 2099.” Uhhhh…based?? Ironically, the USCCB (note the extra “C”) does not have such a page. Also ironically, the USCCB has a way higher homosexual quotient than the USCB, but who’s counting? Well, the USCB is, because counting is very much their thing. You can imagine the office parties.
We can now answer the question that has been vexing you:
If the Lord tarries until His Year 2099, how many years will have had six Sundays after Epiphany since 1600 inclusive?
You’re not the only one who has been wondering.
Thirty-three out of a total of 500 years. That’s 6.6%. If you doubt the accuracy of these figures, you can check Sanctus.org, the work of Mr. Stan Lemon. For example here is February 2052. 2052 is slotted to be a leap year. It’s one of those rarities highlighted in red: April 21 Easter in a leap year. So what do we see in February of 2052? The black swan of the liturgical calendar: five Sundays after Epiphany followed by the Feast of the Transfiguration for a full six.
Time was when the Transfiguration had no fixed date of observance in the Western Church. Then John Hunyadi defeated the Turks at the Battle of Belgrade on August 6, 1456. To give thanks to God for the victory — and honor Hunyadi, who succumbed to plague only five days after his victory — Pope Callixtus III standardized the date. For this reason you will not find any references to “Transfiguration Sunday” in sixteenth-century Lutheranism. There was no such Sunday. While the seventeenth century did see a gradual shift toward the current custom of celebrating Transfiguration at the end of Epiphanytide, this change in use was not universal. By way of example: J. S. Bach (1685-1750) never wrote a cantata for Transfiguration.
But gradual shifts being what they are, in contemporary Lutheran liturgical usage the last Sunday of Epiphanytide always gives way to the Feast of the Transfiguration.
Which brings us, at last, to the point:
Because of all this, unless there are a full six Sundays after Epiphany, the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany will not be observed. Scroll back up and look at the dates boxed in green and red again. That’s what those green boxes mean. The last time rad trad Lutherans (guys who use the One-Year Lectionary) heard the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares read and preached on in church was in 2011; it will be 2038 before it comes up again.
Is it a coincidence that this same group has a high quotient of Romanizers who love to disdain utterly Biblical, orthodox Lutheran articles of doctrine like the “Invisible Church,” which they ignorantly regard as an idiosyncrasy that originated with C. F. W. Walther so that they can dump on it along with the rest of his oeuvre?
Remember the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares? It’s short.
Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn. (Matthew 13:24-30)
“Invisible Church”? You might need a reminder. Here’s a good one from Bente:
The Christian Church is the sum total of all Christians, all true believers in the Gospel of salvation by Christ and His merits alone. Faith always, and it alone, makes one a Christian, a member of the Church. Essentially, then, the Church, is invisible, because faith is a divine gift within the heart of man, hence beyond human observation. Dr. Walther: “The Church is invisible because we cannot see faith, the work of the Holy Spirit, which the members of this Church have in their hearts; for we can never with certainty distinguish the true Christians, who, properly, alone constitute the Church, from the hypocrites.” (Lutheraner, 1, 21.) Luther: “This part, ‘I believe a holy Christian Church,’ is an article of faith just as well as the others. Hence Reason, even when putting on ever so many spectacles, cannot know her. She wants to be known not by seeing, but by believing; faith, however, deals with things which are not seen. Heb. 11, 1. A Christian may even be hidden from himself, so that he does not see his own holiness and virtue, but observes in himself only fault and unholiness.” (Luther’s Works. St. Louis, XIV, 139.) In order to belong to the Church, it is essential to believe; but it is essential neither to faith nor to the Church consciously to know yourself that you believe. Nor would it render the Church essentially visible, if, by special revelation or otherwise, we infallibly knew of a man that he is a believer indeed. Even the Word and the Sacraments are infallible marks of the Church only because, according to God’s promise, the preaching of the Gospel shall not return without fruit. Wherever and only where the Gospel is preached are we justified in assuming the existence of Christians. Yet the Church remains essentially invisible, because neither the external act of preaching nor the external act of hearing, but inward, invisible believing alone makes one a Christian, a member of the Church. Inasmuch, however, as faith manifests itself in the confession of the Christian truths and in outward works of love, the Church, in a way, becomes visible and subject to human observation. Yet we dare not infer that the Church is essentially visible because its effects are visible. The human soul, though its effects may be seen, remains essentially invisible. God is invisible, though the manifestations of His invisible power and wisdom can be observed in the world. Thus also faith and the Church remain essentially invisible, even where they manifest their reality in visible effects and works. Apart from the confession and proclamation of the Gospel and a corresponding Christian conversation, the chief visible effects and works of the Church are the foundation of local congregations, the calling of ministers, the organization of representative bodies, etc. And when these manifestations and visible works of the Church are also called churches, the effects receive the name of the cause, or the whole, the mixed body, is given the name which properly belongs to a part, the true believers, only. Visible congregations are called churches as quartz is called gold, and a field is called wheat.
How do we fix this? Well, first you need to read your Bible. If you are LARPing as an illiterate sixteenth-century German peasant and limiting your weekly intake of the Word of God to the Sunday pericopes, yet without the benefit of a comparatively wholesome sixteenth-century German peasant existence, you are seriously NGMI.
Secondly, you could switch to the Three-Year Lectionary. Then you’d hear the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares once every three years at “Proper 11.” There are drawbacks to this plan which I’m not going to get into here. All in all I’m not sure I’d recommend using the Three-Year just so that you can hear this parable in church more often.
There is in fact another way. A way that is quite a bit radder and very much tradder:
Put Transfiguration back where it belongs on August 6. It is meet, right, and salutary. God was glorified by John Hunyadi’s victory over the Turk, whom the Lutheran Confessions rightly call “that most atrocious, hereditary, and ancient enemy of the Christian name and religion.” Most of the time the Body of Christ lives a humdrum existence of unremarkable mutual neighborly service. This is glorious. But sometimes, when He deems it needful, God transfigures a Christian nation into a Man of War and deals death to the armies of the heathen, as He did through Ancient Israel under Joshua and Gideon and David. That is glorious, too. If you cannot affirm this, it is to be doubted whether yours is the religion of the Bible.
Not only is the August 6 observance of Transfiguration an especially worthy confession to make in a day and age when the multitude of “false sons within her pale” bring disgrace to Mother Church, but it puts the vital teaching regarding her essential invisibility back into rotation with the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. (If this seems like a paradox to you, that means it’s working.) When Easter falls on April 15 or later and each Sunday after Epiphany gets to keep its propers — because we’re celebrating Transfiguration in August now, remember? — it happens a lot more often.
How much more often? I’m so glad you asked.
Lutherans clearly heard the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares a lot more frequently back in the day, especially if they were somewhere like Leipzig where the transfer of Transfiguration to the end of Epiphany caught on late. Clearly this, and this alone, is why the Old Lutherans were more orthodox than we and why Bach’s music is so incomparably glorious.
Obviously not. But I hope this serves to illustrate an important point about liturgical catechesis. About every three or four years, right before the decrescendo into Lent, the Old Lutherans were reminded of this sobering truth:
It is not enough to simply be a member of the visible church; you have to have faith in Christ, and true faith bears the fruit of a holy life.
If you claim to have faith but live and think like a denizen of this present evil world, your faith is false. You love to gaze into the Baptismal font, see your reflection, dip your fingers in the water, and mark yourself with the sign of the cross, but in so doing you are like a man observing his natural face in a mirror who observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was recreated in Christ to be. Repent, lest the Son of Man return and find no faith in you and the reaping angels gather you into the heap of unbelievers and cast you into the lake of unquenchable fire.
No amount of screeching and hand-flapping about irrelevant theological loci (e.g., wellackshually this is how faith is created and sustained; even Christians are sinners; muh “in great weakness”; the “Two Kingdoms” justifies hypocrisy; etc.) or chimping out about the bogeyman of “Pietism” can overturn this. No, I’m not saying that these loci are irrelevant per se. But they are certainly irrelevant — and worse than irrelevant — when neckbeards in fedoras mount up and try to weaponize them in their Reddit-tier foreverwar against Christianity 101. (For outsiders reading this: this is basically the LCMS varsity sport. Think of it as the theological equivalent of polo at the Special Olympics. Maybe you have the same kind of thing going on in your church. If so, my condolences; it’s tough out there.)
The oldest Old Lutherans didn’t sing “The Church’s One Foundation,” since it’s a nineteenth-century Anglican hymn (and a rare CoE banger, if we’re honest), but they certainly would have resonated with that fervent fifth verse (conspicuously absent from LSB, because of course) featured at the top of this piece. So for a nice chiasmus, we’ll close with it.
Thanks for reading Old Lutherans.
The Church shall never perish!
— TLH 473, “The Church’s One Foundation,” v. 5
Her dear Lord, to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish,
Is with her to the end.
Tho’ there be those that hate her,
False sons within her pale,
Against both foe and traitor
She ever shall prevail.
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