Holy Spirit, Holy People

in

Dear Brothers and Sisters: In the Divine Service we have received from our fathers, just before communion the Celebrant holds up the Body and Blood of Jesus and says, “The peace of the Lord be with you always.” Then we sing to Christ the Lamb of God and approach.

In the earliest recorded Divine Service, at that spot, the pastor says, “May grace come and may this world pass away. Hosanna to the God of David. If anyone is holy, let him approach; if anyone is not, let him repent” (Didache 10.6). “If anyone is holy, let him approach.” Who qualifies? Are you holy? …

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Vigil of Easter 2019

Immanuel Lutheran Church
in

When a child is adopted, he gets a new family and also a new story, the family’s story, with its history, and hardships, and heroes. 

You who are baptized learn the story, your story. It’s the story of all mankind. But the unbaptized, and those who have wandered away from their baptism, have forgotten the story, the family history. Some have even developed competing stories, a falsified account. It is as though they came upon a beautiful mosaic, depicting with glittering tiles the image of a king. With malice they rearrange those tiles into the image of a fox.

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