“The Church exists to tell anyone and everyone who knocks on her door wondering what’s inside: Come and see” (pg. 58). Such reminders make The Church a worthwhile read.
The way of the cross is the actual way of victory. Jesus absorbs the worst of what humanity and even the devil can do to him, and he spurns the shame of it all.
The IRS says churches can endorse candidates from the pulpit. But just because they can doesn’t mean they should.

All Articles

What he says in this parable has significance for us today, and needs to be preached. But the application is not direct and therefore should be done carefully.
Where contrition is evident, the conscience has already been prodded, piqued, finally terrified. More Law only serves to confirm the lie this person is already at risk of believing: that the last work of the conscience is also God’s last word. But God’s last word is the word of absolution, not the confirmation of the conscience’s testimony, but now its contradiction.
In our own lives, we might find that the Law is not an alien word, whether we call it our conscience or our values, our Holy Writ, or our municipality’s laws and regulations
No matter what happens, whether failure, pain, or discouragement, Jesus says, “Come to me... and I will give you rest"
Lenten meditation is the one time Luther might advise us to be turning in on ourselves--and taking a cold, honest glance. For only in the shadow of the Cross can we look honsetly into the cause of the death of the man from Nazareth, the second person of the Trinity.
As you preach this week, you’re at it again, announcing the free forgiveness won by Christ, handing over the inheritance of eternal life, and distributing into their mouths the blood of the covenant and the foretaste of the Feast to come. The Father’s arms are wide open. His promises are irrevocable.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son is a familiar story. This creates a challenge for the preacher.
The lack of Gospel or abundance of Gospel and Christ’s gifts, more than anything else, determines whether we’ll be overrun by sin, death, and hell
To be textual in our preaching, we ought to do as Paul does, and drag our people through the Old Testament narratives. We ought to let the Holy Spirit do the illustrations. Of course, Paul’s illustrating too, but he’s doing it in the Spirit and using the Holy Spirit’s own vocabulary.
We’re tempted to try and connect the dots. Something bad happens to someone and we can’t help but wonder about the cause. Even if we don’t say it out loud, we are tempted to think they must have done something to deserve it. They must be guilty of something. God must be punishing them for something we don’t know about. But Jesus stops this thinking in its tracks.
Pastors are built from the same stuff as everyone else. That’s good, and that’s bad.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy works for me, not because it substitutes a temporal and flimsy antidote to my problems but because it points me to the God who has adopted and baptized me