Posts tagged “Jesus Christ”

Fisk deconstructs the “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” video

Posted on January 20th, 2012

Watching the ridiculous “Why I hate religion but love Jesus” video that has been all the rage distressed me such that I felt I need to write a sermon or essay or something to address the ridiculous logic and judgmental attitude of the maker. But then I realized Jonathan Fisk had already done it. Fisk’s style is, for me, hard to watch—I guess I’m getting old—but he absolutely nails it in this running commentary:

Categories: Theology

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Christmas Eve 2011 Solemn Vespers

Posted on January 17th, 2012

December 24, 2011: Christmas Eve (Early) Solemn Vespers Matthew 1:18-25 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Joseph is the father of Jesus. Does that scandalize you? Joseph is the father of Jesus. That is the point St. Matthew is making in the first chapter of his gospel.  He begins this way: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” Genealogies were important to the Jews. The first book of the Bible, Genesis, is filled with them. And not just genealogies—lists of fathers and sons—for the sake of nostalgia. The biblical genealogies are the record of a promise, a promise made by God, long ago, to our first parents,…

Categories: Sermons

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Christianity stands or falls on the reality of specific events

Posted on May 10th, 2011

I try to emphasize this in my preaching, particularly on the important feasts: Christianity stands or falls on the reality of specific events, namely, the virgin birth, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Peter J. Elliott in Ceremonies of the Liturgical Year observes: The first Christians knew what some of us tend to forget, that Christianity stands or falls on the reality of specific events that occurred in the first century…. Through the temporal cycle they relived and proclaimed the saving events of the Lord.

Categories: Liturgy

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Irenaeus on the Incarnation, sin and death

Posted on March 16th, 2011

I am rereading On the Apostolic Preaching, this time very slowly (I read it in haste back, I think, in 1999). The first time I read it I was disappointed by its simplicity. I see now how much I missed; the work is brilliant in packing so much into so few words. I now give this work my highest recommendation. Here’s a great bit on the incarnation, original sin, the passion, and the overcoming of death: So He united man with God and wrought a communion of God and man, we being unable to have any participation in incorruptibility if it were not for His coming to us, for incorruptibility, whilst being invisible, benefitted us nothing: so He became visible, that we might, in…

Categories: Theology

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The power of the Name

Posted on March 15th, 2011

Irenaeus interprets the renaming of Hoshea son of Nun to Joshua (Greek “Iesous,” i.e., Jesus) in Num. 13:16 as a revelation of the power of the name of Jesus: And when [the Israelites] were near to the land, which God had promised to Abraham and his seed, Moses, choosing one from each tribe, sent them to spy out that land and the cities in it and the inhabitants of the cities. Then God revealed to him the Name which alone is able to save those who believe in it; and Moses, renaming Osee, the son of Nave, one of the envoys, called him Jesus; and thus sent him with the power of the Name, believing that he would receive them back safe because of…

Categories: Theology

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Just a shell?

Posted on November 5th, 2010

Thomas Long’s wonderful Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral has a chapter on the disturbing trend of “memorial services” (without a body) displacing funeral services, even among Christians. Long cites Thomas Lynch, a funeral director, on the insidious “just a shell” theory of dead bodies. He remembers a time when an Episcopal deacon said something of this sort to the mother of a teenager, dead of leukemia, and promptly received a swift slap. “I’ll tell you when it’s ‘just a shell,’” she retorted. “For now and until I tell you otherwise, she’s my daughter.” Lynch goes on to say, So to suggest in the early going of grief that the dead body is “just” anything rings as tinny in its attempt to minimalize…

Categories: Theology

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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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The only task of Christian theology

Posted on July 1st, 2010

Kyrios Jesous Christos, “Jesus Christ is Lord.” This is the original confession of the church. With it the Christian faith once entered world history. To understand the sense of this confession ever more deeply is the great, yes, basically the only task of all Christian theology. To repeat this confession, to speak it in ever new forms, to translate it into the language of all times and peoples, to protect it against misunderstandings and reinterpretations, and to understand its meaning for all areas of life—that is the task of all confession building within Christendom. No later confession of the church can and wants to be anything else than a renewal of the original confession to Jesus as Christ and Lord. This is true of…

Categories: Theology

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The Lord and the Church

Posted on June 30th, 2010

Jesus is Lord first for His church and then for His servant. Jesus is “my Lord” only because He is “our Lord.” Only as members of the church do we belong to Him. The Lord and the church belong so much together that the one is unthinkable without the other. One cannot speak of the Lord without also speaking of the church; and conversely, as soon as I speak of the church, I speak of the Lord. They belong together as head and body, as cornerstone and house, as vine and branches. –Herman Sasse, “Jesus Christ Is Lord: The Church’s Original Confession” in We Confess Jesus Christ

Categories: Theology

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The Circumcision and Name of Jesus

Posted on January 1st, 2010

As we review the year coming to a close – how have we used it? “Is there one commandment we have not transgressed? Is there one day in which we have not sinned?” Is there one gift for which we have been perfectly thankful and used as God intended? “Is there one rescue from trouble for which we have offered the proper priase to God” (Walther)? Is there one sermon we have heard (or preached) that we have fully applied and taken to heart? As this year comes to a close, we can only cry out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” And for those good things we have done, we can only say, “We are but unprofitable servants; we have only done…

Categories: Sermons

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