The Passion According to St. Luke, Part Two

What He did not assume, He did not redeem. This was said about the necessity of Christ taking on our human nature. But perhaps we could even suggest it about the experience of sorrow, fear, dread. “He must thus also undertake the grief in order to overcome the sorrow and not exclude it” [Ambrose]. The Lord Jesus experiences all of our difficulties and troubles. And in all of it, He teaches us also how to bear up in the hour of trial: “Not My will, but Yours, be done.”

At this time, such a notion is incomprehensible to the disciples. So when the soldiers come, they think this is the long-awaited moment when the war for liberation begins….

Read More

Baccalaureate Vespers 2025 – Immanuel Lutheran School

In the ancient church, the renunciations at the time of baptism were more robust. Today, in many churches, when a person is baptized, he is asked if he renounces the devil, and all his works, and all his ways. But in the ancient church, there were often more extensive renunciations. One of these was the word “pomp.” “Do you renounce the devil’s pomps?”

“Pomp” comes for the Latin pompa - an ostentatious procession or display. A popular piece of music at secular graduations is called “Pomp and Circumstance.”…

Read More

Trinity 18, 2023

There are many congregations, but one church. The one, holy, catholic and apostolic church finds its expression in local assemblies. That’s what the word church means: assembly. Today’s Epistle reading is a letter to one of those local assemblies: “To the church of God that is in Corinth.”

We tend to think of Christianity in individual terms, a private faith, a personal experience or decision. Certainly the individual is involved, but Paul writes to Corinth as he does to all the other local congregations: collectively…

Read More