One great thing about our post-denominational age is that it has opened up opportunities to make common cause with other Lutherans who, despite their differences and eccentricities, can agree on some of the most important things.
Pride builds identities that leave no room for grace.
We can willingly admit the fact that we're just like tax collectors and thieves.

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We must be careful in how we are answering this question. So often we fall into the trap of basing on our assurance on what we are currently doing or not doing.
Jesus doesn’t talk about God’s love for us; he embodies it.
This is the God of the Holy Scriptures. He is the one who repeatedly saves, always preserving his people by providing rescue in situation after situation...
Pain is our birthright, but Jesus’ resurrection is our irrevocable end.
Death can make us feel like tourists or strangers traveling across the landscape of someone else’s life.
We’re messed up people with messed up bodies. All of us. Even Miss America gets hemorrhoids. The Fall mocks us in our own skin. We’re all walking sermons.
I'm having one of those days. You know, the kind where you're filled with confusion, guilt, and fear? If you don't know what I'm talking about, just stop reading now.
Today’s advice for the anxious and worried would have likely horrified Luther.
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.
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.
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.