John Bombaro

To base and entrust your life on what can be seen in this world is to commit oneself to unreality. The reality of things, indeed, the way, the truth and the life of the world is in what is not readily seen: Christ as Lord.

The pastor, then, possesses the prerogative of calling the children to himself, in the stead of Christ and after the manner of Christ, to particularly bless them with the Word.

Vilification of the other is married to the justification of the self.

Preaching the Word made flesh liberates the imagination from this world’s false and crippling vision of reality, and once again brings the imagination into an encounter with the one and only true and living God through Immanuel: “God with us.”

In Jesus, the most totalizing summary of the law becomes the gospel of the one made perfect through obedience.

According to the Law, everyone will be judged by their own deeds, on his own work. So, before the judgment of God we only have our own works to boast in and not our neighbor’s. But the Gospel shows us a wonderful exception.

If Easter is about Jesus as the prototype of the new creation, then the Ascension is about His enthronement as the One who rules forevermore on Earth as it is in Heaven.

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.”

Jerusalem, temple, and king, all three bespoke of Yahweh’s kingship, as well as of His Kingdom and presence on earth and all the blessings bound up with it.

Preaching the inseparability of Jesus and Jerusalem is to proclaim God’s Messiah and the fulfillment of the Scriptures.

Perhaps this year we shall see Lent reaching more toward Easter and tethered to the resurrection then the economy-car style tradition which simply terminates in Good Friday.

Lent is a gift to the Church from the Church. It belongs to all Christians who desire to be conformed to the likeness of our Lord.

If we think God’s power, love and beauty are reserved merely for the glories of Transfiguration, then we have not understood the Father; we have not understood divine revelation.

Justification and regeneration are, therefore, necessarily connected and have profound implications upon the craft of preaching.

Christ is present in the pure preaching of the gospel. And if Christ is present, then we have entered into the domain of the sacraments.

Meeting the crown prince is one thing; meeting God in the flesh, as the Light of the Gentiles and the Savior of the world is another.

Your delivery may be perceived as an asset or an obstacle to heralding the message of our Lord. What may help your delivery is a touch of theatrics.

Love turns out to be not simply a thing or action, but a characteristic of God himself.

In preaching, auditors are informed and instructed on hearing the voice of the Other, not themselves or contemporary resonances.

What would the world be like without Christmas? That is, what would it be like without the declaration of Christmas: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord”?

The Advents of Christ (past, present, and future) elicit faith in the word of Christ, confirmed by his presence.

The Magnificat invites us to enter into, consider, and embrace the worldview of a teenaged Jewish girl and her geriatric aunt: The one bearing the prophet Elijah which was to come and the other carrying within her womb the God whom she and her nation worshipped and feared.

There is no other transitionary event in human history that warrants three full months of focused attention and persistent acknowledgment than the incarnation of the Son of God.

Advent is a time of expectation, it is a time of remembrance, it is a time of hope, and it is especially a time of preparation by faith for all His comings.

Preaching is the first line of defense and catechetical offensive against these corrosive falsehoods.