The Promised Land invites us to laugh at how relatable it is to be exhausted and exasperated by all the people, and the egos and opinions they bring with them, that come with living.
Christians can pursue projects of justice free of the burden of being the justifier of the world; that office belongs to Christ and Christ alone.
When Dostoevsky died on February 9, 1881, he left behind novels that refuse to flatter the reader or simplify the human condition.

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The word which justifies by bringing faith in baptism is the same powerful word that recreates, regenerates, and re-births a human being in baptism.
Paul is thinking of the cross and empty tomb, but the liturgical calendar places us at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, not the end: Jesus standing waist deep in the Jordan River.
Golgotha is the point where not only Mary and John’s family life assumed a new character, but it is the point of orientation for all human community that uses the cross to straighten out the lives of individuals turned in upon themselves.
Faithful preachers should remain steadfast in the biblical categories and terminology and preach the reality of death.
This text explicates the Christian life in light of the reality of Christ’s lordship and the gift of the Holy Spirit amidst a world and a Church which has not experienced the fullness of redemption and recreation itself.
Having Romans 6 as the Epistle for the Baptism of our Lord, and paired with Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism and Isaiah’s prophetically rich baptismal language in Isaiah 43, allows preaches to proclaim Romans 6 in a more appropriate liturgical context. It could only be better, were someone in your congregation to be baptized on this day. If that’s your situation, the sermon will almost write itself.