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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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.
In the resurrection Jesus transcended time, space, and death; those things which limit human existence. So, the stone was not rolled away for Jesus, but for the disciples and for us.
This is the feast, the banquet to end all banquets. The LORD God is the maker and provider of this great feast which takes place for the resurrected faithful in the courts of Heaven.
The petition not to be led into temptation is found in just the right place within the seven petitions.
Ash Wednesday, is meant to remind us we have a death problem. All living things made from the soil shall return to it.
Jesus Christ is our peace because he doesn't criticize us. He declares us freed from our perceptions to accept the truth about ourselves.
The paradoxical Puritan doctrines of an inability to convert oneself and the command to work out one’s salvation with fear and trembling placed would-be converts like Mather in quite a bind.
So, what do we pray? What do we say? In times of fear, in times of chaos, in unprecedented times, we pray and say the words that have been written on our hearts.
And because Jesus on the cross was sin in its entirety, God cannot look at him. He turns his face away, causing Jesus to cry out in utmost agony, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
Out of great pain and suffering often comes goodness, beauty, and truth. John Donne, born on the 22nd of January in 1573, is an excellent example of that for us in his masterful work, Death Be Not Proud.
Perhaps this past year has prompted the recognition that God is not the tame projection of our highest hopes and dreams. Instead, he is the one who uses even his foes to make a point.
As we close out an old year, Saint Silvester can remind us God is the Lord of history and He has used and is using even people whose lives sink largely or totally into obscurity to keep the confession of our faith in Jesus Christ alive.