The “further up and further in” we go, the table keeps getting bigger, the guest list keeps getting longer, and the grace keeps on flowing.
Christianity does not locate freedom in radical autonomy. It does not tell either men or women that happiness consists in escaping obligations arising from relationships we did not entirely choose.
Jesus never promised me a World Series championship. He never promised that my children would always succeed or that life would go according to plan. He promised something better.

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In Luke 24:1-12 we don’t get a carefully constructed theology of the resurrection. The evangelist doesn’t work out all the implications of Easter for our life and faith. He doesn’t offer a logical argument for why we should believe Jesus rose physically from the dead. Instead, he simply describes what happened.
Have you ever read the Old Testament book of Lamentations? It’s not one of those Bible books that tend to make it too often onto devotional lists, sermon schedules or motivational posters.
This day was a day of choosing. On this day, Jewish households would select their Passover lambs (Ex. 12:3-6). The lambs had to be without blemish, the best of the best.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” We hear those words on the lips of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. But, too often we misunderstand what he’s saying.
Being a member of a church connects people to the whole reason the church has for existing: that we might obtain justifying faith in Jesus Christ through Word and Sacrament.
To keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.
You have heard that after his sufferings and death Christ our Lord arose from the dead and entered upon, and was enthroned in, an immortal existence.
The Gospel restores us to our true humanity, embeds us in the body of Christ, feeds us with Christ’s own body, and offers us a community.
How many of you Christians out there are barely holding it together? I know the inclination should be towards joy and hope, but for some of us, it's not.
The pain of God’s silence strikes Jesus harsher than any nail ever could. “For you are the God in whom I take refuge; why have you rejected me?
It is an ineffable mystery that God suffers, and our preaching must bear out that mystery. One can only emphasize that God is truly man and that God suffers and dies on account of the personal union. But we do not emphasize the suffering apart from the divine nature, or as if the divine nature was not fully His at particular moments. The personal union causes us to deal with the whole Christ.
It’s the following that caught my attention this week. It seems especially appropriate to consider this Sunday, for Holy Week is designed to help Christians follow Jesus through his last and consequential days.