Sadness and the Resurrection

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The fall steeped the world in corruption. Since then our entire race has been walking in sadness. Picture Adam weeping as the blood of his son seeped into the earth. And Eve sobbing as her firstborn stormed off into exile. The sadness continues in every age, in every family.

Disciples of Jesus are not exempt. Sadness, suffering, even persecution awaits them. Sadness comes in the church’s struggle for faithfulness and charity. Sadness comes in the death of those we love. Sadness comes in the many times we have succumbed to the weakness of our fallen nature.

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Messiah Is the Telos of Torah: Easter Sunday 2021

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What is happening in Jesus? The Narrator—God Himself—the One who made the world entered the world. It was His world, but gone wrong. It became filled with snakes, and death, and tears. He becomes one of us in the womb of a virgin. He does nothing wrong, but is accused of everything. And He suffers everything – every indignity, every humiliation, every pain. Along the way He begins reshaping creation. Storms are quieted, flows of blood cease. He rescues children, sets prostitutes on a new path, flips the tables on religious peddlers. Meeting Him, thieves confess, extortioners make restitution. He gives vision to the blind, He calls a corpse from its tomb.

He comes before corrupt priests and cowardly politicians, and submits to their judgment. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. The insurrectionist goes free, and the Lord of Life is executed. Where’s the justice in that?

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Good Friday Passion Vespers

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We can think about the death of Jesus in two ways. The first is cosmic. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son….” On Palm Sunday the Pharisees lamented, “Look, the world has gone after Him!” When Jesus is crucified, the whole world is judged.

So what are we still doing here? With two millennia nearly passed since the death and resurrection of Jesus, why does the world go on, with things seeming to get worse, not better? Why not end this world and get on with the new one?

The reason is that God also wants to deal with each one of us personally. The death of Jesus is cosmic, but it is also personal. You, in all your uniqueness, are part of the story.

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Unworthy Guests

Immanuel Evangelical-Lutheran Church
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The words of the great Swedish bishop Bo Giertz damn us all: “There are no worthy guests at the Lord's table. None has deserved to come.” Those words damn us all – yet they are also filled with grace. For tonight, despite our unworthiness, we are invited guests to the Lord’s table. This is not my table or your table, my meal or your meal, but it belongs to our Lord, and we are unfit to come.

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Invocabit 2021

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Max Lucado— a prominent evangelical author and preacher—recently apologized for a sermon years ago where he said that homosexuality is a sin. Actress Gina Carano was fired from her show for saying that hating people for their political views is dangerous, likening it to the complicity of the German people in the holocaust.

The views expressed by Lucado and Carano are judged to be on the “wrong side of history.” That kind of language—being on the wrong or right side of history—reflects the idea that the world is inevitably moving towards the progressive utopia.

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Quinquagesima 2021

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If you want to understand how medieval Roman theology became so corrupted, look at how it became captive to philosophy. Luther was a law student who became a monk, then a doctoral student, and finally a university professor. He knew the system inherited from Aristotle and Aquinas inside and out. And here was his conclusion: “He who without danger wants to be a philosopher in Aristotle ought to have become first a good fool in Christ.”

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So That Our Joy May Be Complete

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All the stuff we buy ends up eventually discarded. There’s no joy there. Our own bodies return to the dust. The things we think will make us happy are only temporary. But to be joined to the communion of Jesus and His Church – there is life, and light, and joy. Which is why John wants us to join not his church, but Christ’s Church. Being part of that one, holy, catholic and apostolic church is to enter into communion with the One who is Life. That’s our only path to joy. That’s why John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writes his Gospel and letters: “And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”

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Dogmas Worldly and Divine

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The cultural revolution upheaving the Western world is intensely dogmatic. Each day a new dogma is decreed. Bake the cake, wear the mask, close your church, stay at home, check your privilege, shout your abortion, don't use those pronouns, gender is a social construct, the baby will be made comfortable as we abandon it to death. In the New Inquisition, expect no mercy. Fierce and unforgiving are the world’s dogmas.

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