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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I grew up playing baseball – mostly “street” baseball, with a bunch of friends. It was one of my passions in life.
When bishops err we must not follow...We must obey God before man.
The celebration of He who came in humility, who would upend the Kingdoms of this world, was eclipsed by men grasping at the power of each other’s supposed kingdoms.
Christmas wrecks all attempts to penetrate God's hiddenness and seek him out in Heaven. He comes to us clothed in our humanity.
The Pope Leo X used the psalm description of a boar uprooting grape vines in a vineyard as a metaphor for what the upstart German monk had been doing at that backwater university.
Luther’s theology lets the believer in Christ dwell under the cerulean sky of God’s unchanging grace.
“Whatever you do, don’t share the Gospel with me?” Those were my exact words to my slightly mystified seminary professor. As he set his coffee down, I could tell that he was holding back in an effort to allow me to process what I was thinking.
God’s gifts are received, and the faithful heart offers gratias, and thanks are given in return.
The Gospel is our freedom from sin. It is Christ in the mirror, Christ for me and for you.
The more that we hear the law, the more we recognize others as those who, like us, are torn and tattered by the wounds of sin and brokenness.
Jesus is the Word of God. God’s Word—on two legs (John 1:14). I’d read it in the first chapter of John’s Gospel many, many times.
Rather than calling me to pick burrs off my coat, God’s love strips me of my delusions and cuts to the heart of my disease.