Exaudi 2021

in

You need help. You probably know this already. You need spiritual help, because your mind and heart are not conformed to God’s will. You need bodily help, because you are dying. You need help.

Jesus ascended in order to send you the Helper. But pride says, “I need no help. I can do it on my own. I’ve compared myself to others, and I’m pretty good. My job gives me money, my doctor gives me pills, the black rectangle gives me entertainment. I don’t need help.” O foolish of heart and slow to believe! For you are a slave to your money, your doctor cannot avert your doom, and your black rectangle leaves you numb and empty.

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The Ascension of Our Lord

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“At what time of day do you think Jesus ascended?” That’s what a parishioner asked me earlier today. I’d never thought about the question before, but I quickly had a guess: 9am or 3pm. Those are the appointed times for the morning and evening sacrifices.

In the Ascension, Jesus performs a priestly act. Luke tells us that Jesus lifted up His hands and blessed them. Perhaps the sun illuminated the scars where the nails had pierced Him. What did Jesus say in His blessing?

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Cantate 2021

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The Church’s “new song” has nothing to do with musical style or instrumentation. We are a people who are liberated from the world’s “old song” of hatred, despair, and lust, the funeral dirges and anthems of kingdoms passing away. The new song is the song of the new kingdom that the LORD has inaugurated in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The Church’s liturgy is the new song.

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Confidence in Confession

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Walking briskly through the hospital corridor, my thoughts were interrupted by the man calling out to me. “Father! Thank God you’re here. Right this way.” He told me they’d been waiting for hours for a priest to visit his dying wife. I explained that I’d be happy to visit, but he should know I’m a Lutheran pastor. “Just a minute,” he said, and disappeared into the room. After a hushed conversation, he came back out and said, “Close enough!”

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Here I Stand

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We’re not Lutherans because of Luther. We’re labeled that because it’s our stand too. Five centuries later we are still called to this confession: “I am bound by the Scriptures,” “My conscience is captive to the Word of God.”

Today we have to get ready to confess. Christians are now a minority in America. We are about to find out if we really believe the Creed we just said. Jesus warned in today’s Gospel that the wolf is coming. “The wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.”

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Sadness and the Resurrection

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The fall steeped the world in corruption. Since then our entire race has been walking in sadness. Picture Adam weeping as the blood of his son seeped into the earth. And Eve sobbing as her firstborn stormed off into exile. The sadness continues in every age, in every family.

Disciples of Jesus are not exempt. Sadness, suffering, even persecution awaits them. Sadness comes in the church’s struggle for faithfulness and charity. Sadness comes in the death of those we love. Sadness comes in the many times we have succumbed to the weakness of our fallen nature.

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Messiah Is the Telos of Torah: Easter Sunday 2021

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What is happening in Jesus? The Narrator—God Himself—the One who made the world entered the world. It was His world, but gone wrong. It became filled with snakes, and death, and tears. He becomes one of us in the womb of a virgin. He does nothing wrong, but is accused of everything. And He suffers everything – every indignity, every humiliation, every pain. Along the way He begins reshaping creation. Storms are quieted, flows of blood cease. He rescues children, sets prostitutes on a new path, flips the tables on religious peddlers. Meeting Him, thieves confess, extortioners make restitution. He gives vision to the blind, He calls a corpse from its tomb.

He comes before corrupt priests and cowardly politicians, and submits to their judgment. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. The insurrectionist goes free, and the Lord of Life is executed. Where’s the justice in that?

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Good Friday Passion Vespers

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We can think about the death of Jesus in two ways. The first is cosmic. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son….” On Palm Sunday the Pharisees lamented, “Look, the world has gone after Him!” When Jesus is crucified, the whole world is judged.

So what are we still doing here? With two millennia nearly passed since the death and resurrection of Jesus, why does the world go on, with things seeming to get worse, not better? Why not end this world and get on with the new one?

The reason is that God also wants to deal with each one of us personally. The death of Jesus is cosmic, but it is also personal. You, in all your uniqueness, are part of the story.

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Unworthy Guests

Immanuel Evangelical-Lutheran Church
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The words of the great Swedish bishop Bo Giertz damn us all: “There are no worthy guests at the Lord's table. None has deserved to come.” Those words damn us all – yet they are also filled with grace. For tonight, despite our unworthiness, we are invited guests to the Lord’s table. This is not my table or your table, my meal or your meal, but it belongs to our Lord, and we are unfit to come.

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Invocabit 2021

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Max Lucado— a prominent evangelical author and preacher—recently apologized for a sermon years ago where he said that homosexuality is a sin. Actress Gina Carano was fired from her show for saying that hating people for their political views is dangerous, likening it to the complicity of the German people in the holocaust.

The views expressed by Lucado and Carano are judged to be on the “wrong side of history.” That kind of language—being on the wrong or right side of history—reflects the idea that the world is inevitably moving towards the progressive utopia.

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