A Wedding Sermon – August 31, 2014

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buetow, sermon, wedding

The wonderful, Christ-filled, sermon preached at Anna and my wedding by her father Rev. Mark Buetow.

The Marriage of Jon Kohlmeier and Anna Buetow

August 31, 2014

Ephesians 5:22-33

For a long time, it seemed to me that the mission of Higher Things was to assist parents, congregations, and pastors in cultivating, encouraging, and promoting a distinctively Lutheran identity among their youth and young adults, and to find a girl for Jon Kohlmeier. But, as difficult as it is to admit, we have to acknowledge that Jon and Anna are not here today to be united in holy marriage because of the hard work and effort of the staff of Higher Things. They are here to be joined together in marriage because…Jesus. Jon and Anna are being married today because Yahweh loves Israel like a bride. They are here today because of Jesus who has made the church His holy bride. They are here because of Cana, where Jesus showed to His disciples that He came to be the bridegroom of God’s people. They are here today because of Good Friday on which the New Adam’s bride, the church, was born from His side in water and blood. Jon and Anna are here today because their Father in heaven has given to them the gift of one another. And in their marriage, He once again gives the world this gift: a picture of Jesus Christ and His bride, the church, for whom He gave everything, to wash her and make her spotless and perfect in His sight. It is a holy union held together by Jesus’ love for His church, and by the forgiveness of sins which makes it all possible in the first place.

So, dear daughter Anna, through meeting Jon at Higher Things and Skyping as friends for several years, when your mother and I thought you were doing your homework, you are here today because your heavenly Father is giving you as a gift to Jon. You are to look to him like the church looks to Jesus. And how is that? The church looks to Jesus to be her Savior and forgive her sins. We expect that from Jesus. And so you expect that from Jon. Submitting to Jon isn’t about making him a sandwich whenever he demands one, even if he does have superuser privileges. Submitting as St. Paul uses the word means that there is no one else in the whole world you should go to to take care of you, protect you, love you, forgive you, cherish you, and put you above everything else. Expect that from Jon. You see, that is WHY you are a gift to him. Jon needs to learn to love someone beside himself, someone more than himself. Your calling as a wife is to be someone Jon needs to love and forgive. Your being Jon’s wife is one of the ways the Lord will teach him to die to himself every day and to love and forgive you as Christ loves and forgives all of us. The church rejoices and is happy to be served by Jesus and to let him be her Savior from sin, death and the devil. So there you go, Anna: That’s your wifely vocation: to enjoy being served by Jon with love and forgiveness just like when you come to church and rejoice in Jesus’ forgiveness!

And you, Jon, are the Lord’s gift to Anna. For you are to love her as Jesus loves His church. He died for His church. He washed His church at the font. You and Anna and all of His church have no spots or wrinkles or stains or blemishes in God’s eyes. So you are a gift to Anna to remind her of that. In your forgiving her, not counting her faults against her; in your seeing not a single spot, wrinkle, or blemish in her, you are at once both reminding her of Christ’s love for her and all sinners as well as confessing that’s what you believe too. In your absolute refusal to ever see her mistakes, to be upset by her shortcomings, to be mad at her for anything she does, you’ll be testifying that’s exactly how Jesus deals with His bride, the church. In your putting her up on a pedestal as the most important person in your life under the Lord Himself, you are showing what care Christ has for His bride. And just as it was not good for Adam to be alone, so Eve was made as a companion for him, so Anna is given to you as your companion. And this is WHY you are a gift to her. Because when she sins, messes up, makes mistakes, and fails, YOU are the one person in her whole life she will count upon to treat her not as if she messed up or is imperfect but as perfect and holy. No sins. No blemishes. No spots, wrinkles, warts, zits, or anything like that. You are her gift from the Lord Himself.

Now, marriage is not easy. It’s always a dangerous proposition when two sinners get together to share their lives. Everything we’ve said so far sounds really good…on the day of your wedding. But give life some time. You’ll see. When the devil, the world, your sinful nature…and Stan…seek to meddle with your happiness as husband and wife, then know this: it is the very thing that marriage pictures that will save you. Jesus loves His church. He gave His life for her. For you. He loves her. He loves you. He forgives her. He forgives you. Because I know you, Jon. And I know you, Anna. And therefore I know that your marriage is going to have abundant opportunities to learn what forgiveness is all about. The preparation for your marriage began a long time before we were trying to figure out where to have the reception. Long before the ring was picked out. It began on the days when you were both baptized and clothed with Christ. That very washing that St. Paul talks about in which every spot, wrinkle, blemish and stain of sin was removed by your Savior. And you have grown up hearing the blessed Good News that yours sins are forgiven because of Jesus Christ and Him crucified and risen. And you have eaten at the wedding feast of His body and blood. And it is a great comfort to know that you have a church here where that same Jesus will be preached and served to you every week. Because here from this pulpit and at this altar, your sins will be forgiven. Here, everything you do to show that you are still sinners as husband and wife will be covered up and forgiven. And that forgiveness doesn’t stop here and just with each of you. It’s that very forgiveness of Jesus that you will pass on to Anna, Jon, in covering up her faults. It’s that very forgiveness of Jesus, Anna, that you will give to Jon when he is not the husband he is vowing to be today. It’s forgiveness not just for Jon and Anna but for all of you, too. In your lives and marriages, that same Bridegroom who has made Jon and Anna a part of His bride, the church, has made you His bride as well.

So go now and be united in marriage, Jon and Anna. Live your lives in Christ. He has arranged the marriage. He has prepared the bride. He has given Himself for her. She is spotless and holy. But, of course I’m talking about Jesus and the church. But that’s what we see here pictured in the union of Jon and Anna. Have a blessed and joyous life together in Him who has made you perfect by His death and resurrection, His washing and His Supper. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

And that is that.

In short, we can stand the loss of our possessions, our name, our life, and everything else; but we will not let ourselves be deprived of the Gospel, our faith, and Jesus Christ. And that is that.

-Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1535.

Luther Quote: We do nothing even when we do much

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gospel, law, luther, lutheran, quote, righteousness, theology

“We set forth two worlds, as it were, one of them heavenly and the other earthly. Into these we place these two kinds of righteousness, which are distinct and separated from each other. The righteousness of the Law is earthly and deals with earthly things; by it we perform good works. But as the earth does not bring forth fruit unless it has first been watered and made fruitful from above – for the earth cannot judge, renew, rule, and fructify the earth, so that it may do what the Lord has commanded – so also by the righteousness of the Law we do nothing even when we do much; we do not fulfill the Law even when we fulfill it. Without any merit or work of our own, we must first be justified by Christian righteousness, which has nothing to do with the righteousness of the Law or with earthly and active righteousness. But this righteousness is heavenly and passive. We do not have it of ourselves; we receive it from heaven. We do not perform it; we accept it by faith, through which we ascend beyond all laws and words. “As, therefore, we have borne the image of the earthly Adam,” as Paul says, “let us bear the image of the heavenly one” (1 Cor. 15:49), who is a new man in a new world, where there is no Law, no sin, no conscience, no death, but perfect joy, righteousness, grace, peace, life, salvation, and glory.”

-Luther’s Works. Volume 26. Lectures on Galatians. p. 8

The Greatest Scene in LotR

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frodo, lord of the rings, lotr, sam, stories, tales

‘I don’t like anything here at all,’ said Frodo, ‘step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But so our path is laid.’

‘Yes, that’s so,’ said Sam. ‘And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before it started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually — their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect that they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all at a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end; at least not to what folk inside a story it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same – like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of tale we’ve fallen into?’

‘I wonder’, said Frodo. ‘But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in don’t know. And you don’t want them to.”

‘No, sir, of course not. Beren now, he never thought he was going to get that Silmaril from the Iron Crown in Thangorodrim, and yet he did, and that was a worse place and a blacker danger than ours. But that’s a long tale, of course, and goes on past the happiness and into grief and beyond it – and the Silmaril went on and came to Eärendil. And, why, sir, I never thought of that before! We’ve got – you’ve got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why, to think of it, we’re in the same tale still! It’s going on. Don’t great tales never end?’

‘No, they never end as tales,’ said Frodo, ‘But the people in them come, and go when their part’s ended. Our part will end later – or sooner.’

‘And then we can have a rest and some sleep,’ said Sam. He laughed grimly. ‘And I mean just that, Mr. Frodo. I mean plain ordinary rest, and sleep, and waking up to a morning’s work in the garden. I’m afraid that’s all I’m hoping for all the time. All the big important plans are not for my sort. Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We’re in one, of course; but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: “Let’s hear about Frodo and the Ring!” And they’ll say: “Yes, that’s one of my favourite stories. Frodo was very brave, wasn’t he, dad?” “Yes, my boy, the famousest of the hobbits, and that’s saying a lot.”’

‘It’s saying a lot too much,’ said Frodo, and he laughed, a long clear laugh from his heart. Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth. To Sam suddenly it seemed as if all the stones were listening and the tall rocks leaning over them. But Frodo did not heed them; he laughed again. ‘Why, Sam,’ he said, ‘to hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you’ve left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted. “I want to hear more about Sam, dad. Why didn’t they put in more of his talk, dad? That’s what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam, would he, dad?”

‘Now Mr. Frodo,’ said Sam, ‘you shouldn’t make fun. I was serious.’

So was I,’ said Frodo, ‘and so I am. We’re going on a bit too fast. You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point: “Shut the book now, dad; we don’t want to read any more.”‘

5 Easy Ways to be Respectful

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people, respect, work

It really surprises me that I have to write something like this, but I’ve been seeing it happen with increased frequency in my personal and professional circles. These are things which I strive to do and that annoy me when they aren’t done. Really, they are fairly easy ways to show respect to people who you work with or interact with on a regular basis.

1. Show up on time. Actually on time. If you have an appointment set with someone at 3pm be ready to start the meeting at 3pm. You shouldn’t just pulling into the parking lot or walking in the door. Your coat should be off and any notes or resources ready to go. Same goes for when your workday starts. Same goes for when class starts whether your a teacher or student. But I understand that sometimes unexpected things come up which means you should….
2. Call if you’re going to be late. Let whoever you’re meeting with know that you’re running a little late. Give them an idea of when you’re going to be there and if your idea ends up being wrong, call them again to let them know. You should call before your scheduled meeting time. If you’re scheduled to meet at 9:00 and you call at 9:01 they probably have a pretty good idea that you’re running late already. Give them a heads up. Give them an idea of when you’re going to be there.
3. Respond to emails. This one really amazes me when it doesn’t happen. Most people are either sitting in front of their computer most of the work day or have their emails going directly to their phone. You should respond to emails within 24 hours of receiving them. If the email requires more time than you have to respond right now, let the sender know that and give them an idea of when you’ll be able to respond. (The exception to this is over weekends. If I send an email late Friday night, I generally won’t expect a response until Monday. I also try to catch up on any emails that I received over the weekend by lunch on Monday.)
4. Don’t interrupt other people while they’re talking. Seriously. You were taught this since you learned to speak in sentences. It’s rude. It’s disrespectful. Don’t do it.
5. Listen. The key to effective communication and productivity is listening. If your boss is giving you instructions as to what to do, listen and take notes. Don’t make them repeat it. If someone who usually doesn’t speak up during meetings starts to say something, make a conscious effort not to talk over them even though you weren’t expecting them to say anything. If someone is criticizing your work, don’t be quick to speak up and defend yourself. Listen to what they have to say, take it constructively, formulate a response and then respond.

So, there you have it, five ways to show respect to the people you work with and interact with regularly. If do these maybe those around you will start doing them too!

Facebook Problems

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facebook, marketing, reach, social media, technology, video

The video above is very good for the most part. You should watch it.

I’ve noticed more and more that the Facebook reach of posts on the pages that I manage, keeps getting smaller and smaller. On the Higher Things page we have just under 4,400 Likes. The average organic Facebook reach on the page is around 800 people. That’s less than 20% of people who have actively indicated that they like our content who actually see it. It is basically the same with the other pages that I manage. What’s up with that?

To be fair, Facebook posting on behalf of an organization is a giant marketing game. Pick the right times to post to maximize people that see it. Write engaging content so that people interact with it and it gets passed on to their friends who might not like your page. Not to mention Facebook making it even harder by weighing different types of posts differently. Pictures and plain text posts tend to get the most love from Facebook and appear in the most feeds.

While pictures might engage the user more, I can post the exact same thing that includes a link and if I don’t have the link embedded in the post it reaches a greater number of people than if the link is embedded. It’s about 12% more of the people who like the page.

I don’t think the trend among personal friends is that bad (yet!). If you make sure your feed shows you the most recent posts and you have selected to see all updates on a friend by friend basis you can still see most if not all of your friends posts if you so desire. But, as the video mentions, you can also pay to promote your own personal posts posts. So, who knows how long that will be the case.

I think my friend Stan touches on part of the problem in this post about the Demise of Posterous. When Facebook was created, it was really cool. But it didn’t have any way to make money to support it. They’ve tried to incorporate ways to make money by introducing ads and providing user’s information to companies to target ads toward them. They’ve allowed Pages to send ads targeted at specific groups of people. They allow users to pay to send gifts to people and other small strategies here and there. But none of it seems to work as well as they would like. The pressure to make money increased when Facebook became a publicly traded company.

So what do we, the Facebook users, do?

I think it will come down to one of two things:

1. The users revert to using Facebook the way I did before the introduction of the News Feed (introduced late-2006). I actively went to my friends profile pages to see new posts on their Wall. So we can still actively go to someone’s or some company’s Timeline and see everything that they post. This will leave lots of advertisers out of luck though.

2. (and perhaps the most likely) we find other places to keep in contact with our friends, family and favorite organizations. The decline in Facebook usage among high school students today should be very telling. Facebook isn’t cool anymore. It’s where teen’s parents and grandparents are. It’s where they are subjected to cat pictures, political arguments and advertisements. So, what I think will happen is that people will leave Facebook and go to other social media sites like Twitter, Tumblr, or Instagram where posts aren’t filtered (yet) by the service effectively telling their users what they want to see.

Recently. I have seen myself spending more time and posting on Twitter. (@jonkohlmeier) It will be interesting to see where this next age of social media takes us.

What are your thoughts? Is there any hope left for Facebook, or are we in the early stages of watching it kill itself?

When evening in the Shire was grey

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frodo, gandalf, poem, song, tolkien

It used to be that when I came across a song or a poem within a novel, I would just skip over it. Thankfully, that is no longer the case. In fact, the songs included in The Lord of the Rings are some of the most beautiful portions of the book.

When evening in the Shire was grey
his footsteps on the Hill were heard;
before the dawn he went away
on journey long without a word.

From Wilderland to Western shore,
form northern waste to southern hill
through dragon-lair and hidden door
and darkling woods he walked at will.

With Dwarves and Hobbits, Elves and Men,
with mortal and immortal folk,
with bird on bough and beast in den,
in their own secret tounges he spoke.

A deadly sword, a healing hand,
a back that bent beneath its load;
a trumpet-voice, a burning brand,
a weary pilgrim on the road.

A lord of wisdom throned he sat,
swift in anger, quick to laugh;
an old man in a battered hat
who leaned upon a thorny staff.

He stood upon the bridge alone
and Fire and Shadow both defied;
his staff was broken on the stone,
in Khazad-dûm his wisdom died.

Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings
Fellowship of the Ring. Book II Ch. VII.

Password Security

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computer security, passwords, security

On December 3rd, the Information Security Company, Trustwave Holdings, published their findings of a massive data breach where hackers successfully stole about 2 million usernames and passwords. These credentials were stolen from more than 93,000 websites including many popular sites like:

• Facebook
• Google (Gmail, YouTube, Google+)
• Yahoo
• Twitter
• LinkedIn 
• ADP

This was announced just weeks after Adobe announced the data breach of e-mail addresses and passwords on their systems.

Why Should I Care?

Even if you aren’t worried about people accessing your personal data (name, address, banking information, etc.) that is kept on your computer or any of the websites you use, there are a couple reasons that you want to make your computer as secure as possible.

1. Your Computer Itself – The number one thing that hackers want is your computer. They link a bunch of computers together in what is called a botnet and use that botnet to attack more lucrative targets like Google or government data centers.

2. Your Contacts – You have access to many names and addresses in your contacts. To an attacker, these are other easy targets.

3. Organization Data – If an attacker is able to compromise your account they can gain access to your work database and other company data. There they can find more personal information of people on your servers, intellectual property, and most of the files that make things run smoothly in the organization.

What Can I Do?

There are several things that you can do to be more secure in your personal and work computing:

1. Change your passwords – Chances are that if you haven’t changed your password in over a year it has been compromised.

2. Use a unique password for each website on which you have an account – This protects you when your password files are taken from a website’s server. If the attacker gets your information from one site he doesn’t automatically have access to all of your other accounts if you are using unique passwords.

3. Use separate e-mail addresses for personal computing and work computing – In addition to that, use your work email address when you sign up for work related accounts and your personal email address when you sign up for personal accounts.

How Do I Create a Strong Password?

Strong passwords:

• Contain most or all of the following character classes:

o Lower-case letters
o Upper-case letters
o Numbers
o Punctuation
o “Special Characters” (e.g. @#$%^&*(){}[]/ etc.)

• Contain at least ten (10) characters.

• Do not contain a word found in a dictionary (English or foreign).

• Do not contain common usage words such as: o Names of family, pets, friends, co-workers, fantasy characters, etc.

o Birthdays, addresses, phone numbers, or other personal information.
o Any words or derivation of the company name.
o Any of the above spelled backwards.
o Any of the above preceded or followed by a digit (e.g. “password1”, “1password”).

How Am I Supposed to Remember Passwords Like That?

There are a couple ways to make remembering strong passwords a little easier.

1. Create passwords that can easily be remembered. One way to do this is to create a password based on the first line of your favorite song, poem, book, etc. For example, the phrase might be: “A Mighty Fortress is our God” (LSB 656). The password could then be “@mfioG#656”, “AMFioG-LSB656”, or some other variation.

(Note: Do not use either of the above examples as a password!) 

2. Use a Password Vault – There are services like LastPass and 1Password that will generate strong random passwords for each account that you have and keep them in an encrypted vault that you gain access to with a single strong password.

Information Security is an ongoing and evolving task. The above suggestions are just the beginning steps to take in the fight against hackers and other cyber-attackers. By using strong and unique passwords you begin your task in being more secure in your personal computing and help to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of digital resources that you have access to.

Fridays

I woke up this morning wondering why everyone thinks Fridays are so awesome. It’s harder to wake up in the morning, especially when it’s still dark as night outside. Work seems to take forever. By the time you get home you’re exhausted. On Mondays I’m usually well rested and the most productive.

Then I looked out the window and saw snow on the ground! I also remembered that today is the anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis (one of my favorite authors) so there will be all sorts of quotes and articles remembering and celebrating his works and life throughout the day.

And now it’s time to enjoy a fresh, hot cup of coffee. It’s the little things.

So, yeah. Fridays are awesome. At least this one is so far.

What’s in a name?

…that which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet.

Roses smell the same. Bloggers blog the same. But as the young Montague and Capulet realized the hard way, names do mean something.

My name Jonathan Daniel Kohlmeier means “gift of God – God is my judge – cabbage farmer.”

The name of this blog has always had meaning. When it was first created back in 2006 the name was “Libertatum.” A couple years later it changed to Monk of Mequon said something about me. Then my location changed and Monk of Milwaukee has been the name for the last nearly 4 years.

Since my last post, I was offered a job in the Iowa East District Office, I accepted that job, moved to Iowa, and started my first full time job. So, Monk of Milwaukee no longer fits.

Now I have a couple choices. I live in Hiawatha and work in Marion. So my first instinct is to change the name to Monk of Hiawatha. In order to keep the alliteration Monk of Marion is also an option.

The third choice is to come up with a new name all together.

Same blog… new name coming soon.

But what is the name?