Jesus is the Good Samaritan, and He comes to you, in your ditch. He comes to you with your heart problems, and to you with your heartbrokenness. He comes to you with your struggling child, and to you with your family strife. He comes to you in the darkness of the night, and to you at the end of your life.
At the heart of God is mercy. He will not leave man in the ditch.
Read MoreThrough the testing, the Holy Spirit creates in you a holy love that passes the shallow romanticism and eroticism of our culture. This is a love that flows from being loved by God. This love lives each moment as a gift from God. In this marriage, Molly and Shawn, God makes you participants in His own work of creation, pro-creation, of unmerited love, and the joy of giving and receiving gifts.
Read MoreHere's a great passage from St. John Chrysostom on the Parable of the Unrighteous Steward that shaped my thinking in preparing yesterday's sermon:
You are an administrator of things that are another's ... Upon you has been bestowed but the right of their brief and passing use. Cast then from your soul the pride of dominion, and put on instead the modesty and humility of a steward.
Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, vol. III, p321
This parable has a surprise. If you’ve heard the parable before, you lose the surprise. But imagine you’re hearing it for the first time. There’s a manager who has been cooking the books. He’s been caught, and the CEO has told him to clean out his office. But instead, he quickly alters the records even more, so that the people who owe the company money get a big reduction. He’s hoping that the people he helps will in turn help him once he’s out on the street.
Now right at that moment, when the evil person has been exposed, many of Jesus’ parables will conclude with condemnation, something like, “It would be better for that man to have a millstone hung around his neck and cast into the depths of the sea”; or, “Bind him and cast him into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth”; or, “Assuredly I say to you, that man will be cast into prison and not get out until he has repaid the last penny.”
We expect to hear a pithy ending to the story that promises justice in the end. But instead, Jesus surprises us with a radically different kind of ending: the embezzling, wasteful, dishonest manager gets praised. So what’s going on?
Read MoreThe Lord Jesus sees the need of the people in the wilderness, and gives them the free gift of His compassion. In the same way, the Lord Jesus sees your need, and has compassion. In today’s Gospel, the LORD wants you to see that He will not abandon His people; He will not send them away hungry. But the timing of His help is not as we would suspect; it comes when everything else is exhausted. It comes when the disciples can see no hope, no resource, no solution. It comes when the people are starving and in the wilderness. But it does come, at the Lord’s command, on account of His compassion.
Read MoreWe are very familiar with Psalm 141, since it is a fixed part of our Evening Prayer liturgy. “Let my prayer rise before You as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”
The lifting up of hands in prayer at the evening sacrifice betokened the Lamb of God, who was offered up as our sacrifice at the evening of the world – and whose death itself came about at the time of the evening sacrifice. There on the cross, His arms were lifted up, as He offered prayers for the world’s forgiveness.
Read MoreAll we have to offer the world is the cross of Jesus. The greatness of Luther is in his pointing to Jesus and His cross. There is the One who lays down His life for friends and enemies alike. You are by God’s grace called to be His disciples; by God’s grace you will become His disciples; and by God’s grace He will prune us to bring forth fruit – confessing His name to the world, and bearing evil with patience.
Read MoreJesus placed Himself entirely in the hands of the Father. Jesus was confident that the Father would judge rightly. He was confident that He would be vindicated.
This is likewise how the Psalm teaches us to live. We are surrounded by those “who plan evil things in their heart.” But the way of Jesus is shown in this Psalm. We do not plot against them in return, but entrust ourselves to Him who judges justly.
Read MoreMusic not only helps us memorize the text of hymns and the words of stories but it also reminds us of the content of those hymns and stories by way of a simple melody. And the remembrance of those hymns and stories leads us to contemplate their subject, in this case the object of our worship and devotion—Christ.
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