Have We Failed?

Christians are now a minority in America. When I mentioned this somewhere else I was speaking, someone asked me afterwards, “Does this mean we’ve failed?”

What do you think? If you look at our statistics, the Missouri Synod is in decline, and doesn’t seem to be turning around. How’s the Ohio District doing? What about your own congregation? If the answer is, “Not great,” then does that mean you failed? Have we failed? …

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Sanctity of Human Life 2022

The March for Life, however others view it, is a march behind the cross. The liturgical statement of the crucifix leading us both towards the altar and later out of the church is the statement that this alone is the good that overcomes the world’s evil….

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Here I Stand

We’re not Lutherans because of Luther. We’re labeled that because it’s our stand too. Five centuries later we are still called to this confession: “I am bound by the Scriptures,” “My conscience is captive to the Word of God.”

Today we have to get ready to confess. Christians are now a minority in America. We are about to find out if we really believe the Creed we just said. Jesus warned in today’s Gospel that the wolf is coming. “The wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.”

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March for Life sermon 2019

Everything that lives has life from God. St. Paul told the pagan philosophers on Mars Hill, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

That doctrine undergirds our confession at the nation’s high court today. All human beings are created equal – because all human beings are created. The limbs that God has joined together, let no abortion tear asunder. That baby is living, no matter how small. To be pro-life is also then to embrace that life. Thus we also confess, “That baby, no matter his color, no matter what drugs or alcohol have done to his brain, that baby is loved by God and so by the people of God. He is welcome in our churches, and in our homes. And the teenager who is pregnant, and scared: she is welcome in our churches, and in our homes.”

We are not here to protest. We are here to confess. And we leave here ready to live in, with, and under that confession.

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