Concordia Journal | Winter 2012

Let’s be honest. Christians don’t know in some scientific or mathematical or logical sense that we can enter age with confidence because we have proof that there is life after death. That heritage of the Enlightenment was discredited by the events of the twentieth century with the result that the igitur, the “therefore,” is agnosticism about aging and death for many Americans, many Christians included. Christians do talk about knowing the truth but this is a different kind of knowing, knowing based upon belief, “faith seeking understanding,” as Augustine put it. For all its unwelcome aspects, postmodernism has created an environment in which we can gain a new understanding of faith and the certainty that flows from faith, or better said, has put us in an environment in which we can regain that confidence of believing that made first century Christians such a presence in society. “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7).

“Faith” is a slippery word, meaning, for many Americans, whatever makes you feel good inside. That subjective element surely is a part of faith but we understand Christian believing to be based upon the external, objective promises God makes. Faith is trusting that we have been claimed by one particular story, the biblical promises of God that find their “yea” and “amen” in Jesus Christ (2 Cor 1:20). Baptism puts our individual stories under the story of Christ and his people. Although there are many stories out there, as De Senectute and Losing It and others show, it is this particular story of God entering our world, living and redeeming human life, and now—“now” is the little word that gets such short-shrift when we limit our good news to only Calvary— now God’s Spirit is working the efficacious word on our personal stories with the result that we grow up into the “stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13). All the wisdom of this world, including all the volumes in a seminary library, does not change the fact that we enter age and eternity with our hope in some story…or despairing.

Another reason occurs to me why I may not read Losing It, at least not now while I have so much to do and limited time to do it. Right now I’ve got to put as much time as I can into reading the book of my story, our story, the Bible. For all the good human wisdom out there about aging, I need more light as evening comes, and I need a lamp to guide me on this journey to the other side of the Jordan. I need the Bible to give me at this time of life, now, the igitur, the “therefore” that enables me to rejoice now as God’s Spirit grows my confidence and anticipation of what is coming.

Early in his commentary on 1 Peter, Martin Luther wrote, “When one wants to preach the gospel, one must treat only of the resurrection of Christ. He who does not preach this is no apostle. For this is the chief article of our faith.”6 Christ’s innocent death was redemptive (1 Pt 1:18) and a substitutionary suffering for sin (1 Pt 2:21; 3:18), but must be seen through the prism of the resurrection (1 Pt 1:21) and ascension (1 Pt 3:22).

It’s not just the promise of heaven that flows out of the resurrection but rather a wealth of ministry resources, a many-course feast for the aging and for all of us. For one thing, giving the resurrection more focus changes how we use the law. If we keep rehearsing the law to tell believers that they are sinners for whom Christ died, we’re saying something that is true but doesn’t fit our hearers’ situations as well as it might.

Honestly, don’t they confess almost every Sunday that they are the sinners for whom Christ died and receive with Spirit-wrought conviction the Good News that Jesus died 10