Proper 8:Gospel, Matthew 10:34-42 “Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). Now that’s a picture of Jesus I really like. Enough with all this mamby-pamby, peace on earth, Hallmark Christmas card...
Proper 8: Epistle, Romans 7:1-13 Law and order. “The rule of law.” These are phrases that have been catapulted to the very front lines of American society in the past few weeks. It used to be that the great consensus among Americans was that law and order was a good thing. A...
Proper 8: Old Testament, Jeremiah 28:5-9 This week’s Old Testament reading is brief. I will try to accommodate myself to that as well. Do you ever remember as a child being caught in a lie? Fudging. White lies. Bending the truth. Unfortunately that practice doesn’t find a limit when...
Proper 7: Gospel, Matthew 10:5a, 21-33 I apologize for the dangling participle at the title’s end, but that is such a common question in our day and age that I hoped it wouldn’t hurt anyone’s grammatical sensitivities. We’ve all asked that question. I do it all the time...
Proper 7: Epistle, Romans 6:12-23 Romans makes me nervous. Not the reading of it, per se. But commenting on it. Who am I after all? I don’t have a collar or a diploma with the ministerial degree from an LCMS seminary or university. I’m a theological “mutt” I guess you...
Proper 7: OT, Jeremiah 20:7-13 Having years ago been influenced by a book on the prophet Jeremiah, Kim and I gave that name to our first-born. Characterized often by weeping and lamenting over his people, there was no greater champion of the Old Covenant. In our Old Testament reading this week...
Proper 6: Gospel, Matthew 9:35-10:8 Matthew is a tough gospel for me. It’s a Jew writing to Jews about THE JEW, and no matter how much one reads and studies it, there is that “inside track” where not knowing and understanding language, culture and history leaves an outsider...
Proper 6: Epistle, Romans 5:6-15 Romans is the great exposition of the gospel from a legal mind that even moderns admit to be one of history’s greats. Nowhere else in all of Holy Scripture is the gospel so well explained. And just so the blessing doesn’t stop with bare explanation...
Proper 6: OT, Exodus 19:2-8 Most of us are familiar with the fact that the number 40 figures prominently in the Bible. I’m not going to list all the “40’s” and I’m not even going to deal directly with any of them in extended fashion other than the “40&rdquo...
Trinity Sunday: Gospel, Matthew 28:16-20 It’s that passage again. The one that can bring a sense of challenge and perhaps guilt. “The Great Commission” given to the eleven before Jesus’ ascension. For many of us it might better be called “the great omission.&rdquo...
