Presentation of the Augsburg Confession (observed)
John 15:1-11
It was with the words of the antiphon to our Psalm this morning that the Augsburg Confession was presented to Emperor Charles the V on June 25, 1530: "I will speak of thy testimonies also before kings, and will not be ashamed." (Psalm 119:46)
There was a time when to the world the meaning of the Gospel had been lost. To the church, God was preached as a vengeful and merciless God, always watching for a way to condemn man, and exacting justice (seen and heard almost always as punishment) for each and every sin committed. For centuries, the world had seen cultural and economic decline. The differences in the haves and the have-nots was staggering. Only a few men were educated and knew how to read, and very few of those ever read the Bible. What the church said of God was not true, and almost no one knew any better to say anything otherwise—those that did were executed as heretics.