When we consider our own end, it will not bring us into a final wrestling match with the messenger of God, but into the embrace of the Messiah of God.
What do such callings look like? They are ordinary and everyday.
This is the third in a series meant to let the Christian tradition speak for itself, the way it has carried Christians through long winters, confusion, and joy for centuries.

All Articles

Our first mistake in thinking about the blessed life is we expect to experience it fully in this life.
Above all, pastors must aim their preaching at the people God has placed in the care of the pastor rather than airing pious ideas that did not speak to their situations.
This is the wonder which is present in the calling of the disciples. Not how they drop their nets to follow Jesus, but that Jesus does not need to go far to find disciples. He chooses the people He lives among.
Indeed, the law said, “You shall love the Lord your God,” but the law cannot give me such love, nor can it take my hand to grasp on to Christ.
We all long to be in a community of believers that gives us life and makes us feel loved and where we experience real, fruitful community. This comes as we announce the gospel to one another.
Throughout the Old Testament, the seas and fish were symbols of the Gentiles. When Jesus ate fish, and called fishermen, he showed us that the mission to the Gentiles was about to begin in earnest.
This is what makes the reading from John so frightening and yet so exciting. Notice how Jesus appears. Not in miracles, not in marvels, but in relationships.
Jesus did not need to be baptized. But he did it. Why?
It is the words the pastor speaks that send the dead out alive.
God reveals Himself to us in Word and Sacrament but sometimes these revelations happen in unexpected ways.
On the other side of Christmas, we find (1) senseless suffering and (2) unstoppable salvation. A sermon on these verses should be honest about both.
In some measure, if Luther had any success during his last two decades, it happened because of the woman who’d insisted on him as her bridegroom.