There can be no neutrality with respect to Jesus. “He who is not with Me is against Me.” Still some want it both ways. They want to think of themselves as Christians, but they refuse to make a real break from the Old Adam, the sinful nature. C.F.W. Walther, nineteenth-century German pastor who came to America, he called those who want it both ways “half-Christians”: …
Read MoreA strange piety the Psalms give us, because they invite us to complain to God, even to accuse God. He is not acting in the way we expected. And the only hope, the only reliable thing, is to return to the foundational character of God, expressed in the final line of the Psalm: “Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.”
The people of God don’t expect God to act because of something they are offering Him; in fact, they don’t even try. There is no bargaining.
And they don’t expect Him to act because of their accusations of His not being fair, as though He could be shamed into acting.
They simply appeal to God to be who He is….
Read MoreFlabbergasted are the disciples at the way Jesus is behaving. This woman wants help. She keeps on crying out, yet He answers her not a word. How can Jesus be so cruel? “Send her away!” the disciples say to Jesus. They don’t mean, “Get rid of her”; the words mean, “Release her!” In other words, “Help her! Answer her prayer.”
But He doesn’t. Isn’t that about what we expect, if we bother to pray? Nothing seems to come of it.
Why doesn’t Jesus answer this woman right away? …
Read MoreLamentation doesn’t fit the American religion. We are inculcated to seek success. Prosperity comes from work.
In the Psalter, however, we have genres that do not fit the American mindset. The Psalms address not only thanksgiving and praise, but desolation and grief, guilt and loss.
The Psalms of Lament teach us to see ourselves, in the words of Jürgen Moltmann, “Limping, but blessed”…
Read MoreYou’re a sinner, it’s true. David says in Ps. 51, “Surely I was sinful from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” Confessing this entails the danger of acceptance. Why change? Why even try?
In today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus shows us how to fight sin. But that would not be enough, if we were left to our own strength….
Read MoreToday’s Gospel starts with a success story: “And when a great multitude had gathered, and they had come to [Jesus] from every city, He spoke by a parable….” A great multitude from every city! Jesus Christ Superstar. They throng to Him. They want to make Him king.
What should you do with a great multitude? Get their mobile numbers, text them updates, turn them into donors. A crowd draws a crowd. On to Jerusalem, and then perhaps, to Rome itself. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere….
Read MoreThis parable has long been called The Laborers in the Vineyard. But it would be better to call it The Parable of the Landowner. He is the key figure here, and as in so many of the sayings of Jesus, it borders on the absurd. No landowner would do what this one does, just like in the parable of the sower you have a farmer who just throws the seed wherever, not seeming to care where it goes. This landowner doesn’t follow any customary business practices….
Read MoreChristianity rests entirely on certain objective persons and events. It they didn’t happen, then it’s not true.
A man named Jesus, born of a virgin, suffering under a Roman governor named Pontius Pilate, crucified, died, buried, rising again on the third day, all seen by hundreds of eye-witnesses: did that happen? That question matters. If it’s not true, then the opening of Ecclesiastes is the only truth: Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless.
Today’s Epistle lesson addresses that fundamental question: “Is it true?”
Read MoreThe Bible begins and ends with a wedding: At the beginning, the marriage of our first parents; and at the end, the marriage of Christ and the Church, inaugurating the new creation.
In between these two weddings is the fall, and all the messed-up marriages, with rebellious children and false worship. The joy is gone; the wine seems to have run out, and what’s left isn’t sitting so well inside us.
The wine running out symbolizes the thorns creeping up from the ground, the betrayal of a friend, the death that comes to all in the end….
Read MoreA four year-old boy climbed the steps to see his sick grandmother. She was in great pain, and soon to die. The little boy said, “Don’t worry, Grandma. You are going to be with Jesus.”
That little boy was James Edwin Shaw, who would not want this sermon to be about him. But we have to say a little….
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