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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Death is quite the undertaking. To die when one wants desperately to go on living is the most gruesome kind of labor any of us will ever know. It’s painful and bloody and empties our pockets of the fortune we think is ours. But we must do it.
Do you remember fairy tales? Tales of magical creatures and far away fantasy lands? They were legends of lore that included dragons, magic, a moral to the story or a hero saving the day.
We're going to worry about what people think of us. It's going to get in the way of our relationship with Jesus. We're going to fear God's judgment. But, we're also baptized into Christ. So we don't give up hope. Jesus will help us and strengthen us. He will guide us in his Baptismal grace and peace.
The wizard stares into Billy Batson’s eyes. “Speak my name so my powers may flow through you.”
If I don't preach Christ, then there's really no reason anyone should roll out of bed on Sunday to hear anything I have to say.
I love the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. So much is communicated in those few verses.
We would rather be God ourselves. But, being God is always beyond our grasp.
Infamy allows us the opportunity to hone one of our favorite skills: to shrink a 343-page life story down to a single paragraph that narrates what happened on one day, at a certain hour, and in a certain location. We can whittle an entire biography down to a single Tweet.
As I sit here on Easter Sunday, the light is coming into my living room. My dog is sitting sweetly in my lap, enjoy the light scratches on her ear and getting in my face as to stop me from writing.
All family trees and genealogies reveal awkward knots and twists. But through the root of Jesse, and the line of Israel, came Jesus to offer us a new name.
Around Easter my mind often drifts back to all of the annual ‘Revival Services’ I attended when I was growing up. Every year they began the revival with the Easter service.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” We hear those words on the lips of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. But, too often we misunderstand what he’s saying.