Posts tagged “Blessed Virgin Mary”

Sermo Dei: The Annunciation of Our Lord

Posted on April 10th, 2013

Delivered at the LCMS Evening Prayer service at the Lutheran Service Association conference in Washington, D.C., April 10. The theme of the conference was Service Speaks.   Dear Christian friends, your theme for this conference is Service Speaks. It’s a good one – so long as we get the order right. In the beginning, God speaks. He speaks creation into being: “Let there be light”; “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters”; “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together”; and on and on. God speaks. And the entire purpose of His speaking was love. God created the world from nothing in order to bestow His gifts, His love, His life upon the man. The entire world was given…

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McClean on Kieschnick on the Papacy as Antichrist

Posted on April 4th, 2013

My colleague and friend, Charles McClean (who will be installed as Pastor of Our Saviour Church in Baltimore next month) wrote a lengthy reply to a previous post on Esgetology highlighting Gerald Kieschnick’s remarks on the papacy. You can read the original post here.     Once again Dr. Kieschnick demonstrates ignorance of the Lutheran Symbols when he deplores the emphasis on private confession and suggests that the perpetual virginity of the Mother of God is purely Roman Catholic doctrine. Confessional Lutherans differ on the latter but, given the fact that Lutherans from Luther through Pieper to this very day (e.g. John Stephenson, Charles McClean) have accepted the perpetual virginity, it can scarcely be seen as uniquely Roman Catholic teaching. Confessional Lutherans have also differed on the identification…

Categories: Theology

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Sermo Dei: The Resurrection of Our Lord

Posted on April 1st, 2013

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!   The dirt was still wet with blood as a mother wept. How had everything gone so wrong? Not many decades earlier, the world was innocent. Not the way we look back on earlier times and think, “Things were simpler then.” No, the world once truly was innocent, and this mother remembered it. It seemed like a dream now, or rather her life had become a nightmare. She had met her husband while still a little girl. Now, as she sobbed, she leaned against that husband for support. When she had first seen him, those many years ago, it was love at first sight. He was perfect for her, the only man in the world.…

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The proper definition of God

Posted on January 11th, 2013

Still more Luther on God’s regard for Leah, commenting on Genesis 29:32: This is the title and the most proper definition of God: “He who regards the despised and the humble.” He also has regard for the proud and the great men in the world. But they have no need of His grace and mercy; they despise His regard. Therefore He must disregard them, as it is stated in Ps. 138:6: “The haughty He knows from afar.” Moreover, it seems that the verse in Mary’s song (Luke 1:48)—“He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden”—was taken from this source, because they are the same words that are found in this passage.

Categories: Theology

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Sermo Dei: Dormition of the Mother of God

Posted on August 15th, 2012

It is my joy to gather with you, dear brothers and sisters, on this day of great joy. Today we remember that most blessed of women, the holy virgin Mary, who was chosen above all women to be the bearer of God. For truly it was God in her womb. This is the great mystery hidden from the wise and powerful, yet revealed to a young girl in Galilee: that God would become flesh, God was a foetus, God was an unborn baby conceived in the virgin’s womb. Truly it was God whom she cradled in her loving arms, God who nursed at Mary’s breast, God who grew up beneath her feet. It was God whom she took to Jerusalem, to visit the Temple…

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Sermo Dei: Annunciation 2012

Posted on March 29th, 2012

Joy to the world! The LORD is come! This message is a great paradox, coming when it does. Christmas is on no one’s mind. We are late in Lent, soon to enter Holy Week. From Ash Wednesday through Judica, we have been hammered repeatedly with reminders of our mortality, of the frightening power of the devil, of the threatening peril of our sins. And now, the Annunciation interrupts our sobriety, Joy to the world! bursting forth as seemingly inappropriate as a Sousa march would be, parading through the cemetery interrupting a committal. But there is nothing inappropriate here. Our funerals need an interruption. All the accumulated frustration and fear, anger and betrayal, lack of respect and lack of tender compassion you have experienced this…

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Atheism and the virgin birth

Posted on December 16th, 2010

Atheists, of course, mock the idea of Mary, a virgin, giving birth to Jesus. Yet at the same time they believe in a far greater miracle, a cosmos which sprang into being on its own, all manner of life which by chance evolved from the sludge. In short, atheism (and its sister, evolutionism) believes not in a virgin birth of Jesus, but in the virgin birth of the whole universe. A virgin birth without father OR mother. Now that’s faith.

Categories: Theology

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St Mary, Mother of God

Posted on August 15th, 2010

Gospel: St. Luke 1.39-55 It’s great having Pastor McClean and Vicar Kieselowsky here, but sharing in the ministry with them also means they discover my weaknesses and inadequacies. Recently the Vicar and I were driving somewhere and he discovered a scandalous secret about me. Sometimes, I listen to R.C. Sproul. {He’s a Calvinist. Not Lutheran.} While we discussed the matter, the Vicar made a brilliant observation: the danger in that kind of theology is that God becomes so Sovereign, so Above-It-All, that the incarnate Christ, the Immanuel, becomes forgotten. And in the same vein, Pr. McClean told me about a former District President who was promoting a slogan for his district: “Proclaiming a Crucified God.” Apparently this disturbed a few people. It’s a bold…

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I don’t think I’m going too far

Posted on August 14th, 2010

when I say that Mary was a means of grace. What are the means of grace, but earthly things joined with divine, given for our salvation? The Word comes to water and it is a Baptism, a life-giving water, rich in grace and a washing of the Holy Spirit. The Word comes to bread and wine and it is the Communion in Christ’s body and blood, life-giving and rich in grace. The Word comes to Mary and she conceives God. Christ’s body and blood is literally one with her, the boundless One contained within her womb, in her waters, He who is life-giving and rich in grace.

Categories: Theology

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All glorious is the princess in her chamber

Posted on August 12th, 2010

I’m working through the Psalter at our Wednesday Evening services; last night we arrived at Psalm 45, which I preached as a wedding hymn for Christ and His bride the church. I just noticed that the Gradual for the Feast of St. Mary (which falls this coming Sunday, August 15) is taken from that same psalm: All glorious is the princess in her chamber, With robes interwoven with gold. In many-colored robes she is led to the king, With her virgin companions following behind her. ~~~ The longer I live in the liturgy, the more it opens up to me. Mary the Mother of God is the princess of Ps. 45. Like a little child eager to show a drawing to his parents, I…

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