“Your boasting is not good.” So opens today’s Epistle. Boasting—or pride—is the fundamental human problem. So we must be told, even on Easter, “Your boasting is not good.” The broader context is a scandal in the Corinthian church. But the problem of pride, of boasting, is universal….
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A gem from Luther:
We have Easter as often as we celebrate the Mass, preach, and administer the holy Sacrament. With us Christians every day is Easter, except that for ancient memory’s sake we observe a special Easter once a year. And that is not wrong but good and laudable, to observe the time when Christ died and rose again, even though our remembrance of His suffering and resurrection is not restricted to such a time but may be done on any day. As He says: “As often as you do this, do it in remembrance of Me” (1 Cor. 11:25).
LW 13, pp355–356
Easter is about a risen body. If that isn’t true, then everything really is meaningless. But the words, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”, those words were spoken to people who then saw the Lord Jesus risen in His body….
Read MoreJesus says, “human being,” (anthropos in Greek), and not “child” or “baby” or “infant.” Why? Because in this little parable Jesus is referring to Himself. Jesus is the human being, the man, the anthropos; He is the One born of a woman, born of a virgin, born under the law that He might redeem those who were under the law.
The whole story of mankind, our fall, our death, and our salvation, is here, in these little words, “joy that a human being—[a man]—has been born into the world.” …
Read MoreThe T in LGBTQIA+ has overwhelmed all the other letters. The T, of course, is for transgender. Transgenderism rejects biological reality, the givenness of creation. There is also another T, another trans, that is somewhat less known: Transhumanism. Transhumanism, at the risk of oversimplifying, proposes joining technology to humans for the purpose of enhancing and lengthening life. For many, this includes a goal of achieving immortality.
Both of these contemporary trans movements seek to address real human problems: dysphoria, discomfort, disability, dissolution, death. There is something wrong with us. There is something wrong with the world. A trans movement seeks to change the problem. That’s what trans means: change. It can also mean cross, like to cross a barrier or a distance. Hence, transportation. Or, transformation.
These contemporary trans movements, like others that have come before (such as Transcendentalism), are all doomed to fail, because they have the wrong starting point….
Read MoreWhat is happening in Jesus? The Narrator—God Himself—the One who made the world entered the world. It was His world, but gone wrong. It became filled with snakes, and death, and tears. He becomes one of us in the womb of a virgin. He does nothing wrong, but is accused of everything. And He suffers everything – every indignity, every humiliation, every pain. Along the way He begins reshaping creation. Storms are quieted, flows of blood cease. He rescues children, sets prostitutes on a new path, flips the tables on religious peddlers. Meeting Him, thieves confess, extortioners make restitution. He gives vision to the blind, He calls a corpse from its tomb.
He comes before corrupt priests and cowardly politicians, and submits to their judgment. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. The insurrectionist goes free, and the Lord of Life is executed. Where’s the justice in that?
Read More“The hireling,” Jesus says, “does not own the sheep.” But the Good Shepherd—the true and perfect shepherd—sees the sheep as belonging to Him. “I know My sheep, and am known by My own.”
The sheep, Jesus says, are His – His own. Here Jesus expresses more than mere ownership. This hymnbook is mine; it has my name on it. But more is happening here than just possession. I suppose that’s at the heart of what we call sin – seeing possessions, positions, and even other people as ours, such that we are masters, and everyone else is there to serve us.
But not so with Jesus. When He calls the sheep His own, two realities are coalescing in that one little phrase “My own”: The first is creation, and the second is incarnation.
Read MoreWhen 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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