The so-called thief on the cross is called a criminal in Luke’s Gospel. Other gospels use a word for rebels, violent insurrectionists. In Luke, he is a κακοῦργος - evil-doer, malefactor.
One of these criminals mocks Jesus. The other, whom tradition names Dismas, has been observing Jesus. It has changed him.
Read MoreYou and I – we’re not living; not all the way, not as we should. Part of us yearns to return to the strong man. We’re like Lot’s wife, looking back to Sodom. Or the Israelites talking about the good food back in Egypt. We’d like a foot in both camps. Be a disciple of Jesus, but not too much. Leave a little room for a bit of hedonism….
Read MoreMan is held in the thrall of grief. It is an anticipated grief. We see the world perishing. We love, and see we will lose that love.
And we cannot control this. We can try. We can write contracts and pass bylaws but people are sinful, people are fickle. Friends betray us….
Read More“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” [Gen 2.25]. So ends the creation narrative. Our first parents did not know evil. They knew only the good.
They fell. And in falling, they hid. From God, and from each other.
“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings” [Gen 3.7].
It was insufficient. They blamed each other. They hid from God. But you cannot hide from Him. He sees. He hears. He knows….
Read MoreSt. Matthew’s Gospel ends with well-known words, the so-called Great Commission. Jesus says, “Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations.”
There’s been a tremendous tension in American Christianity for the last half-century or more about the purpose of the church. The tension is sometimes presented as “mission” versus “maintenance.” Some churches and pastors are “missional,” meaning they want to make disciples. “Maintenance” churches and pastors don’t care about that, they just want to exist for themselves. Those are the caricatures.
The mistake in this way of thinking is that being a disciple is a binary thing, either you are or you aren’t. The switch is on or off.
It’s more complicated than that. The words St. Matthew put at the end of his Gospel say a little more: “Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the close of the age.”
Baptism begins the life of the disciple, and it is accompanied by a continual teaching, an ongoing catechesis to observe everything Jesus commanded….
Read MoreThe epistle of James has always been controversial. One of the earliest lists of canonical (or, accepted) books of the NT comes from the end of the second century, in Rome. James is not mentioned. Put differently, the Roman church did not accept James in the first centuries of Christianity. James gained widespread acceptance when Jerome included it in his Latin translation of the Bible, called the Vulgate, early in the fifth century.
It’s not uncommon today to find papal apologists slandering Luther by saying he removed James and other books from the Bible. This is not true. Luther, whose doctorate was in Biblical studies and patristics, was well aware of the controversial history of James. And he was aware of how the Roman priests pitted James against Paul. You really cannot understand Luther unless you’ve had a learned professor who says outrageous things to force you to reevaluate everything you believe. …
Read More“Receive the sign of the holy cross on both your forehead and your heart to mark you as one redeemed by Christ the crucified.”
These words from the liturgy of Holy Baptism should be on our hearts this night, when we are marked again by the sign of the holy cross, and reminded of our own impending death.
Yet aren’t we doing the very thing Jesus condemns? In the Gospel for Ash Wednesday, Jesus tells us not to disfigure our faces, not to appear to men to be fasting, and that we should wash our faces. Are we the hypocrites Jesus warns about?
Read MoreWe do not worship saints, nor pray to them. These things clearly contradict God’s Word. We do, however, remember the saints and give them honor. The Augsburg Confession says,
Concerning the cult of the saints our people teach that the saints are to be remembered so that we may strengthen our faith when we see how they experienced grace and how they were helped by faith. Moreover, it is taught that each person, according to his or her calling, should take the saints’ good works as an example….
Read MoreDescending into the waters, the sinless One becomes sinner. For that was the content of the water. All the transgressions of all those coming to John, they were all in the water. And in that water, too, were the drowned bodies of Pharaoh’s army. And the sad horror of the infants Pharaoh cast there. The stench of corruption from Noah’s flood. The blood of the Nile. The blood of Abel. The rotting core of the fruit Eve tasted. It’s all there, in water unfit for bathing….
Read MoreIn today’s Gospel we see demonic, malevolent power seek to snuff out the Light kindled in Bethlehem. Fear and suspicion corrupt man’s will with a hatred for God’s good will. What is truly senseless is our belief that technology or government or education or regulation can scatter the darkness. Our globe is illumined with artificial lights, yet the darkness has only grown deeper.
Herod has absolutely nothing on Planned Parenthood. No society that discards its offspring as rubbish can be called civilized. Today there are thousands of Herods, some with MDs, and others with PhDs, in prestigious universities of the lowest kind of education….
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