Tuesday, February 8, 2005
Luke 10:20 "Rejoice because your names are written in heaven."
YOU ARE SHRIVEN!
Have you "gotten shriven yet?" The three day pre-Lent season of "Shrovetide" and the custom of "getting shriven" are forgotten customs most everywhere, though once in a while you might hear the day before Ash Wednesday called "Shrove Tuesday."
"Shrive" and "shrove" go back to a Latin word which means something written down -- words like "scribe," "description," and "prescription" have the same root. But "Shrovetide" and "shriven" denote a perversion of what was originally scripted.
During the Middle Ages, going to confession was compulsory. Then, instead of the penitent receiving the full pardon scripted in Holy Scripture, the priest pronounced a prescription of tasks to be performed in order for the absolution to be valid. To "get shriven" was to go to confession and receive such a conditional and uncertain absolution. Over half of all present-day Christian congregations still subscribe to this idea. And in the rest many believe that something still has to be done "by us" in order to make God more willing to forgive.
Perhaps even you feel that you have to do something in order to alter God's attitude toward you! You might even have your very own list or "prescription" -- to get yourself shriven by yourself! The flesh has always been strongly in favor of this.
In the 16th century Martin Luther soon discovered that what was scripted in what he called "Die Heilige Schrift" was thus nullified! The Gospel clearly says that the Lamb of God takes away all the sins of the world, full and free. Nothing remains to be paid for or worked off -- by you or anyone else. It is written!
"Holy Script" tells all believers that you are now part of "the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven" (Heb. 12:23)! You can say that you are among those "whose names are written in the Book of Life" (Php. 4:3), and among those who "are in the Lamb's Books of Life" (Rev. 21:27). You are shriven there, by God, in the Word!
Our Lutheran Confessions show that to be in Christ means to be written up in the Book of Life, inscribed there. Christ did all work necessary for your salvation. It is also scripted what works we gladly and freely do upon becoming believers in Jesus. Eph 2:8-10 clearly spells it all out for us. God prepared our salvation beforehand, plus a prescription for service. It is all a gift, not a bit of it our doing. It is all down in writing for you to see and believe. For you are shriven! "Rejoice because your names are written in heaven" (Lk. 10:20).
The Lutheran Spokesman, March 1996, adapted 