John Bombaro

Throughout the Gospels there is no quality more closely identified by Jesus with the life of His people than humility which echoes His own.

It is the Word of the Lord and His Word accomplishes what it says. Our favorable or unfavorable circumstances neither help nor hinder the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our forefathers dedicated Holy Cross Day to jolt the Church into remembrance that Christianity is not principally about ethics.

Paul attempts to break down the walls which the early Christians effortlessly erected between those of different ethnic origins — specifically Jews and Gentiles — to drive them to the will and mind of Christ: Worship together as one body.

No good will come to the cause of the Gospel by followers of Jesus being regarded as crazy dissidents who will not cooperate with the most basic social mechanisms.

When it comes to the sermon, a Christian congregation should not expect a conversation from a friend or a TED Talk from an expert. Instead, they should anticipate a royal proclamation from the King’s ambassador.

Any note on its own can be perfectly fine. But bring it together with others and they will strike a chord or a discord – harmony or disharmony. It is the same with us.

We have been reconciled to the King by the King because of the King so we may be for the King—not when it is convenient and more tasteful and fashionable, but as a bold and confident proclamation.

We may never even get the opportunity to eat meat offered to idols, but a lot of things hinge on this test case: Is it permissible to eat the meat offered to idols or not?

God’s newly reconstituted Israel occurs in and around Jesus to include both Jew and Gentile, not by ethnic association but by faith and water (baptism) and blood (atonement and Eucharist).

Here we have the other major theme within Romans: God will have mercy on whom He has mercy, and He will have compassion on whom He has compassion

The lifeblood of Christ is the treasury that defines personal worth – your worth, my worth. Preach that; the price tag on your soul.

Our stories, be they ever so inspiring or worthy of emulation, should never be equated with proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Gospel Jesus Christ commissioned to be proclaimed.

It is that love, finally, which comes back again and again, not as an afterthought, but as the underlying theme of the entire section.

The Earth itself, into which the blood of Christ seeped, will be redeemed and renewed, just like our spirits in Holy Baptism, just like our bodies on the day of the resurrection.

Our passage from Romans steers us between these two dangerous misconceptions: The mythical monster Scylla of believing the body to be evil on the one shore, and the beast Charybdis of believing the body constitutes all there is on the other.

In the Church, the cry is, “He loves,” and it is that message which transforms our worldviews from taking to giving, from radical individualism to trans-demographic inclusivism, from selfishness to selflessness, from “tolerate my rights” to “loving rightly together.”

Paul has gone through all this explanation to belabor the point: The incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ changes everything.

St. Paul asserts the baptized have died in Christ but this death then makes them free to live unto Christ. Complicated? Yes, a little. Let us try to clarify things a bit.

The lordship of sin and its reign have been deposed by Jesus Christ. Nothing can stand to oppose those who are in Him.

You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.

This is the unique love of God. Where does it come from? It does not arise from the qualities of the person who is loved. It simply comes from God Himself.

Peter’s monumental sermon on Pentecost declares the kingdom purposes and divine saving work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit which culminate in the new world order with Christ in charge, governing in the power of the Spirit.

It is through the locatedness of the Church that one anchors faith in Christ and the sure hope we are not alone, and God is for us and with us through Jesus.

If God was going to save the world, and reclaim His global kingdom, then the exiling, the confusion, the ignorance and scattering had to be ended. Pentecost signals this dramatic reversal in a spectacular way.