“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.

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With this declaration of peace, Jesus was telling His disciples, ‘Because I died for you, you are now justified.’
After teaching his disciples many things about himself, the world, and the things to come, Jesus concluded his last evening with his disciples in prayer to the Father. And he concluded his prayer with the words in this text. As the old saying goes, you can learn a lot about a man by listening in on his prayers.
For Luther, Jesus does something much better for those who grieve than simply identify with them: He brings suffering and evil to an end in His own death.
Death is quite the undertaking. To die when one wants desperately to go on living is the most gruesome kind of labor any of us will ever know. It’s painful and bloody and empties our pockets of the fortune we think is ours. But we must do it.
I know some of us get excited to show that faith and reason are like oil and water, and natural theology is the death of a theologian of the cross. But there’s a bit of nonsense in that. If we teach our people only to suffer (which they will do anyway), and to expect nothing more than suffering, we are sometimes unintentionally teaching them to want less. But Christ is more. His resurrection means there’s more.
When you are not experiencing this kind of tribulation, the promise of “you will” hardly seems comforting. But when you are in the midst of it—when the pressure of this world is bearing down on you—it is comforting to know it has not caught God unawares.
As usual, Luther took what he received and turned it inside-out, so that it shifted from a series of demands and became a bestowal of God’s gracious promise.
We can take comfort in the knowledge that He kills the sinner so we can get a new shot at life and life eternal.
In these two stories - one ending and the other beginning just a day apart - we find many ingredients that are uniquely American. We find grit, determination, and conquest.
Do you remember fairy tales? Tales of magical creatures and far away fantasy lands? They were legends of lore that included dragons, magic, a moral to the story or a hero saving the day.
Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.
My wife and I have a nighttime routine for putting our 3-year-old son to bed that involves praying Martin Luther’s Evening Prayer.