Children are “offered,” committed, handed over in Baptism. We hand our children over when we need help, when they need something we can’t do for them ourselves. You ever handed your child over to a surgeon? You hope you get him back, but there are no guarantees. In suffering and trial, God is teaching us to relinquish control, to hand over all our cares to Him….
Read MoreTemptations are rarely grandiose. On occasion temptation to a front-page-headline kind of sin comes along. Most of our temptations appear as innocuous choices. Small, daily things tempt us to take baby steps away from God’s Word.
Frequently we should pray the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus teaches us there to ask for help: “Lead us not into temptation.” This takes on urgency once we realize we are constantly under spiritual assault….
Read MoreWhen the Scriptures describe us as being in bondage to sin, it certainly includes the sins we commit - the twisted lusts within us and the things we do contrary to the commandments. But often the sins committed against us also hold us in bondage: when someone betrays us, when a friend you trusted doesn’t keep his word or is working against you. Perhaps you remember a cutting remark spoken against you even decades ago, but still it lingers in the mind, making you bitter, cynical. And so it’s not only the sins that we have committed, but also the sins committed against us, that need to be dealt with.
We would like justice. We want things put right. And sometimes, we want more than justice: we want revenge. For the person whose betrayal still stings, misfortune upon them would, we imagine, taste sweet to us….
Read MoreI’ve been listening to a lot of Miles Davis the last few years. He was a brilliant jazz trumpeter and composer who kept reinventing himself from bebop to cool jazz to funk to fusion. The seminal sound of film noir came from his score to Elevator to the Gallows, which he and his group played by just jamming while the film was playing. As far as music goes, he didn’t have many natural limitations.
I used to want to be a jazz musician. I can understand what’s happening, but to actually perform it like the pros, you need a mind that runs about 20x faster than mine. I spent years practicing, but I have too many natural limitations….
Read More“You are of your father the devil.” If we want the comforting words of Jesus to apply to us, we must first wrestle with the confrontational ones. “You are of your father the devil.” The words address the entire human race.
The first three Sundays of Lent show Jesus in combat with the devil, first in the wilderness temptations, then in two exorcisms. The fourth Sunday is a kind of interlude, with rose vestments and food in the wilderness. Now the fifth Sunday of Lent holds up a mirror and says, “If you want to know where the devil is busy, take a look at your own life.” …
Read MoreJesus is the only real Somebody. The incredible scandal of His baptism is how He identifies with the nobodies, the bums, the morons, the sinners.
How can there be division—which is really competition—when there’s only one Somebody, one Lord, one Christ? Descending into the water, He is teaching us not to boast. There is no need for our worldly desires; no need to be counted wise by other people. No need for power, no need to be nobility, royalty – or in our context, celebrity….
Read More“Eight days were completed.” Completed … or better, fulfilled. For this is no mere random passage of time. “The days were fulfilled” reveals the jurisdiction of God over all things. God is sovereign over time itself. This event, and every event recorded in Scripture, is governed by His plan.
We track the passage of time with calendars. Modern life requires us to juggle multiple calendars: civil holidays and tax deadlines; work calendars, school calendars, family birthdays and anniversaries. We Christians have our own calendar, often out of step with what everyone else is doing. The liturgical calendar reminds us that Christians are to be different.
We learn from the Gospels something about Joseph and Mary: they are pious. They follow the liturgical calendar, and they also conform their personal lives to what the Law of Moses expected, down to the day. “And when eight days were completed for the circumcision of the Child, His name was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb.”
Read More“From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.” Thus the Apostles’ Creed summarizes what God’s Word says about the end of the world, the Day of Judgment.
Be not deceived: The judgment of Jesus is coming. On that day, your thoughts will be revealed. The things done in darkness will be brought to light; there is nothing secret that will not be exposed.
As Jesus approaches Jerusalem in today’s Gospel, He anticipates the coming judgment on that city. In less than four decades, Jerusalem would be burned, her stones toppled, the temple looted and razed, blood running through the streets as water. Jesus’ prophecy came to pass in the year 70 when Titus conquered Jerusalem.
Read MoreMax 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.
Read MoreThe thief on the cross is typically cited as an argument against baptism’s necessity. “He was saved, and he wasn’t baptized,” the argument goes, “therefore no one needs to be baptized.”
With this seeming exception, the Lord’s words, “Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved, but whoever does not believe shall be condemned” (Mk. 16:16) are set aside, along with the other commands and promises concerning baptism.
But the good thief, whom tradition names Dismas, is not the exception. He’s the rule. Baptism gives through means what Dismas received directly.
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