God can handle grief, rage, and cries for justice. God can handle the victim who cannot yet forgive. God can handle the prayer that comes out jagged and wounded. The good news is that God is holy and merciful enough to handle all our prayers.
But while scholars are right to focus on the bond between Martin and Hans, the evidence of Martin’s own words suggests their relationship may not have been as troubled as some suppose. For Hans Luther was not a cartoon villain but a normal human being attempting to make his way in the world and raise his children to the best of his ability.
Jesus offers something infinitely better. He tells us to put down our gavel—not because sin isn't real, but because the only Judge who has the right to condemn is the very One who was condemned for us.

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When we come to God with our faithful obedience to make a case for our just cause, we expect to hear his deliverance in the form of a "yes."
People are searching for connection, direction, and hope in a troubled world, and we can use their star-shaped questions to point them to the shape of the cross.
Just as the grave could not hold the Lord of Life, neither could the calendar contain Easter to just one Sunday.
For those of us who recognize the disciples’ despair in ourselves, Jesus comes with the same word: “Relax, it’s me. Peace be with you.”
What kind of shepherd does God provide? The answer, of course, starts and ends with Christ.
Tomorrow Jesus will laugh his way out of the tomb, spit in the face of death, and kick the devil in the throat as he dances to the clapping glee of angelic masses. But today he just rests.
You can’t bear your own sins, to say nothing of getting rid of them.
Good Friday encompasses the silence of God, even as it focuses on our salvation in the cross of Christ.
Each day gives us occasion to die to our sinful identities of all kinds and to live out a life in Christ’s footsteps as children of God.
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.
The cross does not remain on a hill far away. It pursues us into the valleys, the ravines, the crevices in which we get trapped as we wander in search of a fixed point for our lives.
Like the women who came despite their questions, your hearers will gather despite their uncertainties, and they will be looking for a word of honest hope.