All Saints Day 2026

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An angel arises in the east. He bears “the seal of the living God,” the authority to stamp with the Lord’s mark, protecting them from danger.

That’s how the first reading for All Saints Day begins. It’s from the book of Revelation. The Greek name is The Apokalypse. Elections generate apocalyptic talk. All my lifetime the apocalypse has been imminent. First it was the coming ice age. Then global warming. The cold war. Red Dawn. Blackhawk Down. Apocalypse Now. Heart of Darkness. The Berlin Wall fell, but socialism is on the rise.

The apocalypse may be at our door, but it won’t be the one everyone is talking about. …

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Dolores Hardtke Funeral Sermon

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When I would read the Bible to Dee, it was like she was hearing it for the first time. And her reactions to it put me to shame. Around Epiphany I read to her the account of the magi bringing gold, frankincense, and myrrh to Jesus. “Gold?” she said? “Wow!” On another visit, I read her a resurrection account. Jesus raises someone from the dead? “Wow!”

But one day she expressed some frustration. She couldn’t remember things or people. I told her that God also doesn’t remember some things. He says He forgets our sins, remembering them no more. This time she didn’t say, “Wow!” Instead, she said …

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Reformation 2026

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For the catholics of the Augsburg Confession, for the catholics at St. Mary’s Church in Wittenberg, the Reformation was not an act of rebellion. The Reformation was not schismatic. The Reformation was all about putting Jesus back in the center. Stripping away all accretions, the Reformation went back to the sources. The Reformers showed that medieval councils and popes had departed from the Bible, and departed from the teachings of the fathers. New doctrines had been added, definitions were changed, the Gospel obscured….

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Trinity 18, 2026

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Theologians enjoy abstract questions. But theology is not abstract. It’s darkness and light. Joy and despair. Life and death. Drowning and emerging.

Theologians ask Jesus an abstract question. “What’s the greatest commandment?” They had numbered them, you see. The Books of Moses had 613 commandments. 365 positive, 248 negative. And then comes the question: How are they ranked? Which one’s most important?

This level of abstraction is folly. The problem isn’t the ranking. It’s the doing….

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Trinity 15, 2026

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The most important detail in the parable is in the summary: he laid up treasure for himself. And that is the heart of anxiety: we are looking to the self for stability, we seek a place of rest for and within the self.

What’s beneath that? We have forgotten we are creatures. Creatures have a Creator. Man is in the passive position in that equation. He depends upon Another. …

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The Marriage of Rey Ramos & Ruth Tesfai

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Modern theories of relationships rest on ideas like compatibility. But this is the compatibility that matters: a common god, a common worship.

Personality quirks, thermostat preferences, the degree of melanin in the skin, no difference matters if you confess together the Nicene Creed, believe in the forgiveness of sins, and agree to submit to your husband and love your wife as Christ loved the church….

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Matins to Begin the First Day of School 2026

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This man, the Lord Jesus, is the center of all human history. You can learn every fact about Alexander the Great, about Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire, about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the founding of our great nation - but without Jesus at the center, you won’t really understand any of it.

Because human history isn’t the story of empires and generals, wars and constitutions, musicians and poets. Human history is the story of man who lost his way, and the God who entered our history, became Himself a man, and descended into our darkness.

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Trinity 13, 2026

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When God made man, He outlined man’s purpose: Get married, have babies, cultivate the world into an ordered and beautiful garden, essentially expanding Eden.

That purpose doesn’t go away. But it becomes horribly hindered. Our desires are corrupted, and death like a weed is choking all life east of Eden.

That catastrophic fall is embedded in the parable….

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