As soon as people understand what crucifixion means, the cross becomes offensive.
This is the third installment in the 1517 articles series, “What Makes a Saint?”
The Church speaks not with the cleverness of men, but with the breath of God.

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Freedom and reconciliation were significant themes for both of the Martin Luthers.
The kingdom of Christ consists in finding all our praise and boast in grace. Other works should be free, not to be urged, nor should we wish by them to become Christians, but condescend with them to our neighbor.
Jesus knows you and everybody else come from a long line of life wasters going all the way back to Adam. Jesus died for life wasters! Let go of your bootstraps. Stand back up. Your Father loves you.
Salvation is not simply transactional; it is fundamentally relational. Not anemic, but full-blooded. Not disembodied, but bodied.
Jesus is our sympathizer, our propitiation, and our advocate. We will be tempted but God will provide the way out, the way out is Jesus, the one who died for our sins.
Any good work we perform among you; any doctrine we write upon your heart – that is God’s own work.
The setting for Luke 2 is the first century analog to my backyard. The stage is dressed with rust and decay, guilt and shame, sin and death.
Fred Rogers did not teach children how to live through a pandemic, but he had many profound things to say about loving our neighbors and finding our identity in that calling.
Luther’s Christmas sermons remind us that unless Christ is proclaimed FOR YOU, He is not preached.
The well-meaning advice “time heals all wounds” is offensively false when we confront the overwhelming evidence that the constants in our lives are death, taxes, and suffering.
This is Christmas. It is Jesus becoming all sin from generation to generation.
He assumed the weakest form to do his greatest work.