Beloved, Devote Yourselves to Holy Conduct and Piety

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“Beloved.” That’s how the Apostle Peter addresses his hearers. And it’s how God addresses you. Even when He reproves you—through me, the preacher whom He also reproves—He reproves you as His beloved.

“Beloved, do not forget this one thing.” It would be better to say, “Don’t let this escape your notice.” The Holy Spirit in the Holy Scriptures is telling us a hidden truth. He’s revealing to us a secret, or a mystery. It is the mystery of how time with God is not at all as we experience time….

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Populus Zion – The Second Sunday of Advent 2024

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From Adam and the tree, to David with Bathsheba, to Judas grasping his 30 pieces of silver, it’s the entire story of mankind: man desires, and the object of his desire turns and devours him, like Gollum grasping the ring and in so doing falling into the fire. Our desires kill us.

The prodigal son is paradigmatic for man's condition; he leaves his father to satisfy his cravings. Augustine imagines the Lord saying to us, “You were hoping that if you left Me you would have something more.” …

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Men and Women Zealous for Good Works (Advent 1 Midweek Evening Prayer)

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The first thing to note about tonight’s Epistle is that men and women are addressed differently. Men and women are equal in dignity and worth. Men and women are not the same in terms of callings and duties, temperaments and responsibilities. First, the older men are called to actions befitting their station, to love as they lead, and to be patient with those who are led.

The older women are called away from gossip and wine toward the teaching of the younger women. The woman is to be, the NKJ says, a “homemaker.” I don’t think it means a woman cannot have a job; the term literally means “busy at home” or “energetic at home.” The idea is that she is not lazy but working, within her own sphere, for the good of the family. And this is done under the leadership of the man….

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The Festival of the Reformation 2024

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The history in Europe is of church decline through tyrannical governments.

But the church in America has declined with only mild hostility from the state. What has caused the decline here? Americans view church membership with less loyalty than a gym, supermarket, or airline preference. Convenience and amenities triumph over doctrine. The politics of the community matter more than the confession of faith. In the middle ages, backs were whipped in penance, and we call it darkness. Today votes are whipped, and we call it democracy. This is not reformation.

We cannot celebrate the Reformation today without acknowledging the need for reformation in our own congregation, and for each of us to confess the need for reformation in his own life….

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Trinity 20, 2024

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Last Sunday we heard about nakedness and clothing. There is the nakedness of man’s sin and shame, and the clothing of Christ’s righteousness, given in Holy Baptism. What we have at the end of today’s parable is a man who rejects that clothing. He refuses the wedding garment, he refuses Christ’s righteousness. He wants life, he wants the kingdom on his own terms.

The same thing is going on at the beginning of the parable. What is a parable? It’s a story with you in it. And in the Bible, it’s a story with Christ in it. If you get those wrong—if you mistake yourself for Christ—you’ll end up with a different kind of religion altogether….

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The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity 2024

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“I renounce Satan, and his works, and his pomps, and his worships, and his angels, and his inventions, and all things that are under him.” And after his renunciation let him in his consociation say: “And I associate myself to Christ, and believe, and am baptized into one unbegotten Being….”

“I associate myself with Christ.” Disciples of Jesus do not leave the world, but we renounce its prince—the devil—and we renounce its principles. We renounce lies, we renounce lust, we renounce licentiousness. We confess Christ, we practice charity, and we defy the demands of the world to worship the image of the beast....

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St. Michael and All Angels 2024

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Demons are real. One-third of the spirits, or angels, rebelled along with Lucifer, the “light-bearer.” The light-bearer turned to the darkness. Some of these demons in the course of time gained a very strong influence over certain nations and governments. By mastering the rulers, they control the governments. In antiquity, they developed rituals to worship the demons, which we call idolatry. In the modern Western world, the worship of demons takes a different form. The demons have turned mankind to celebrate in our own destruction. And that demonic influence is at work in the government and primary cultural institutions of our nation....

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Robert Kreinheder Funeral

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What impressed me immediately when I first met Bob were the books. Shelves and shelves of glorious books, and more piled nearby. Yet while Bob was a reader, he didn’t boast about what he’d read or what he knew. He asked questions.

He cared about this city. What it is supposed to do and be, what it represented, and who played baseball for it. Retired more than a decade by the time I met him, he and Hazel both had careers protecting the interests of our nation. He wouldn’t talk about it, despite my occasional prodding. He also didn’t like to talk about himself. But we should note he was a graduate with honors from Cornell, and that same year went to work for the NSA as a cryptologist and language analyst. He was humble; he loved and was proud of his family, and he cared about America, the shining city on the hill....

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Trinity 17, 2024

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Do you want to be the donkey, or the master? Turned in on ourselves, we don’t merely want to be the master of one donkey. We would like to own a thousand donkeys, a thousand beasts of burden to do my work – a valet to prepare my clothing, an army of lawyers to solve my problems. But in the language of today’s parable, we are not the master. We are the donkey, the one in the pit.

“Which of you,” Jesus addresses the Pharisees at their Sabbath dinner, “Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?” We are the donkey fallen into a pit. Look at your life! We’re in a pit of problems, sins of our own and the world’s corruption pushing us down. To adapt the story of Sisyphus, we try and try and try to climb out, but just as we reach the top, slide back down again. ...

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Trinity 16, 2024

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We cannot say, “Mine is the true religion; yours isn’t true.” That’s what the bishop of Rome, Pope Francis, said on Friday. He continued,

All religions are a path to reach God. They are, to use a comparison, like different languages, different dialects to get there…. There is only one God, and we, our religions are languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some Hindu, some Christian, but they are different paths.

To assert one’s religion is true, the Pope said, this leads to destruction. With these words, the pope places himself outside the Christian faith. It’s a tragedy that goes back nearly a thousand years. The claims of the bishop of Rome split the church in two in 1054, and Rome’s continued false teachings led to the fragmentation of Christianity in the West in the sixteenth century. This is a tragedy, and we must long for unity. But we cannot allow false teaching about salvation. That is not loving. Truth matters. The Word of God matters. The Gospel matters. ...

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