Faith

Korby, Löhe, and "Faith-Sharing Moments"

May 28, 2009

There is something disconcerting about the modern emphasis on “faith-sharing moments” as the essence of mission. Faith is so quickly identified as a subjective thing. The exhortation, “Share your faith” may be understood quite differently than, “Share the faith.” The Christian message is always an objective one: the announcement of what Jesus of Nazareth, the [...]

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Reminiscere (Lent 2) – Mt. 15.21-28

March 8, 2009

  Our prayers are too nice. In fact, they are so polite, they are rude. What else do you call it when our prayer before meals is rattled off like an auctioneer, the Lord’s Prayer said with the enthusiasm of a funeral director reading the phone book, and our private prayers too often employed like [...]

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Lent I midweek Vespers sermon – Romans 4

March 5, 2009

  Lent is a serious time, calling us to serious reflection on our sins. Such a reflection also demands a changed life, a growth in holiness, a newness of life. On Sunday I asked you to consider what things in your life were temptations for you. Are the causes of temptation something tangible that you [...]

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Faith as pure receptivity

August 21, 2008

Dr. David Scaer makes a point that should have been obvious to me, but wasn’t, in his piece “Flights from the Atonement” in the latest Concordia Theological Quarterly (July 2008): by denying the ability of infants to have faith, they thus deny justification by faith. Children who have not yet reached the maturity to make [...]

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When he has tried thy soul with sadness

May 24, 2008

Several years ago, friend and former parishioner Bob Waters gently cautioned me about something I said about depression in a sermon. I have not stopped thinking about what he said, and the issue in general. I have come to very much agree with him. Telling a person suffering from depression to “cheer up” – or [...]

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Faith as commodity

April 25, 2008

Last month, I noted the teaching of our Confessions that faith is believing the promises offered in the Sacraments. Dominant today is an alternative view of faith as some quality within a person, usually without an object. Thus we can have “people of faith” grouped together, even though the objects of their trust are different [...]

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Quasimodo Geniti – sermon for Wednesday Evening Prayer

April 3, 2008

Text: 1 John 5.4b – “This is the victory that has overcome the world–our faith.” After His baptism, Jesus was tempted. You will be too. You will be tempted to despair. You will be tempted by the lusts of your flesh – sensational lusts that land politicians on the front page; but also more acceptable [...]

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Believing the effects of the history

March 20, 2008

Yesterday’s Book of Concord reading made this important point in AC XX: “People are also warned that the term faith does not mean simply a knowledge of a history, such as the ungodly and devil have (James 2:19). Rather, it means a faith that believes, not merely the history, but also the effect of the [...]

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What is faith?

March 17, 2008

Faith believes the promises offered through the Sacraments.I think that will be one of my chief definitions of “faith” henceforth, drawn from Article XIII of the Augsburg Confession, part of today’s Book of Concord reading (according to the reading schedule in Concordia, the recent translation published by CPH). The sentence from which I drew this [...]

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On Making Reflective Faith a Requirement

January 9, 2008

I recently discovered Confessing Evangelical, and from what little I’ve read, it’s quite good. Lunch time is for blog reading, and today I read his “Why Justification by Faith is ‘Not Quite Protestant.’” I like how the post draws out the distinctions between Lutheran and Reformed approaches to faith. For example: Cary summarises the usual [...]

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