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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Quinquagesima 2021

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If you want to understand how medieval Roman theology became so corrupted, look at how it became captive to philosophy. Luther was a law student who became a monk, then a doctoral student, and finally a university professor. He knew the system inherited from Aristotle and Aquinas inside and out. And here was his conclusion: “He who without danger wants to be a philosopher in Aristotle ought to have become first a good fool in Christ.”

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So That Our Joy May Be Complete

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All the stuff we buy ends up eventually discarded. There’s no joy there. Our own bodies return to the dust. The things we think will make us happy are only temporary. But to be joined to the communion of Jesus and His Church – there is life, and light, and joy. Which is why John wants us to join not his church, but Christ’s Church. Being part of that one, holy, catholic and apostolic church is to enter into communion with the One who is Life. That’s our only path to joy. That’s why John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writes his Gospel and letters: “And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”

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Dogmas Worldly and Divine

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The cultural revolution upheaving the Western world is intensely dogmatic. Each day a new dogma is decreed. Bake the cake, wear the mask, close your church, stay at home, check your privilege, shout your abortion, don't use those pronouns, gender is a social construct, the baby will be made comfortable as we abandon it to death. In the New Inquisition, expect no mercy. Fierce and unforgiving are the world’s dogmas.

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Trinity 7 sermon 2020

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The Washington Redskins announced recently that they’re changing their name. For this season, they’ll be known as the Washington Football Team, which is actually more creative than their style of play.

The name change comes amid the destruction of statues across the land. Stoking the fires of racial and religious division, Shaun King called for the destruction of statues and stained glass images of Jesus and His mother. These Christian symbols are “tools of oppression” and “racist propaganda.”

The fervor behind such iconoclasm is rooted in a new fundamentalism….

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Septuagesima 2020

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Attempts at equality among people often fall far short. In Orwell’s Animal Farm, the Communist system is summed up in one of the “Seven Commandments”: “All are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

Men treat each other unequally. But the Word of God tells us that we are all equal in this respect: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We are all equally mortal. And we all stand before God as sinners.

But we prefer inequality. That’s what today’s Gospel reading reveals.

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