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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Jesus is the heart of the Gospel, and the Gospel is Good News. But it is always Good News that comes to us best on the lips of another.
He comes to fill our old, stony heart with the new wine of his forgiveness.
Just as we believe ourselves to be forgiven because God sees us in Christ, so to forgive others is to see them as God sees them in Christ. To forgive, in other words, is to put God’s eyes in our eyes and our eyes in God’s eyes.
Any and all failure is re-written to portray us as either victor or victim.
Blood is the thing. In the Scriptures, sin must be covered or "atoned for" as it's called, by blood.
Some things, once they are deemed disgusting or contaminated, permanently carry that quality with them. These things are even thought to be “contagious,” negatively affecting whatever they come into contact with.
Our sinful nature is ever present this side of eternity. We need a constant reminder of what a friend of mine once said, “Jesus is the reason. Period."
At the Passover, when Jesus said, "Take, eat, this is my body... take, drink, this is the New Testament in my blood, which is given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins," he wasn't inventing a "new" thing.
When people are baptized, time is transcended. They go back to the Jordan and the Jordan comes forward to them. In a single splash, or a single dunk, they enter the war.
Having Romans 6 as the Epistle for the Baptism of our Lord, and paired with Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism and Isaiah’s prophetically rich baptismal language in Isaiah 43, allows preaches to proclaim Romans 6 in a more appropriate liturgical context. It could only be better, were someone in your congregation to be baptized on this day. If that’s your situation, the sermon will almost write itself.
On Epiphany, we celebrate the day when men, made wise for salvation through the Word, met their righteousness.
But the Creator of life and breath does not wait for Moses to identify with worthiness.