What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? In this episode, we gather for a post-Christmas, post-New Year pastoral debrief. We talk about symbols and meaning, Christmas and holidays, signs and seasons, and how modern churches quietly cleared the path for culture to push Christ out of Christmas without much resistance. We explore the strange and largely arbitrary ways the world measures time, along with the old Adam’s never-ending pyramid project. That is, his need to build meaning upward by effort, progress, and control rather than receive it as a gift. From there, we return to symbol and meaning. We ask why ancient liturgy’s nostalgia or ornamentation, but the distilled shape of reality itself, why the Lord’s Supper isn’t a side practice, but the beating heart of the Church, of worship, and of the Christian life. And why stories’ decorations for faith, but the way truth takes on flesh and finds us where we actually live. This is a conversation about time, worship, memory, and why the Church invents meaning but receives it again and again at the table.

Mass Effect. In this episode, we continue our reading of The Smalcald Articles, focusing on Luther’s critique of the Roman Mass and all its consequences for the churches and Christian life. We discuss mimetic desire, sacrificial religion, the exclusive work of Jesus.

An Arm-Twisting Confession. In this episode, we read Martin Luther’s Smalcald Articles on the gospel, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. Why did he have to have “his arm twisted” to write them? What is he trying to teach the churches about the gospel? How does the gospel circumscribe and define the Church, worship, and Christian life? Why does something written in the 1530s matter today? We look to answer all these questions and more on this episode of the Banned Books podcast.

Wetly All the Way. In this episode, we visit with author Kathryn Morales about her new book, Remembering Your Baptism. We discuss who should be baptized and why. How many times does someone need to be baptized? Can someone fall away from baptism, and what if someone doubts that baptism saves them from judgment and death? This and much, much more on today’s episode of the podcast.

We don’t need another brand. We need a people who remember who they are. And that’s us, Gen-X.

The Church needs mystics again. Not fringe figures, but saints ablaze with love.

Sunday Bloody Sunday In this episode, we read Martin Luther’s sermon for Maundy Thursday (1534), discussing the Lord’s Supper, polity, sacramental piety, fellowship, election and all the rabbit trails we follow…

Reign in Blood. In this episode of Banned Books, we discuss the Lord’s Supper while reading The Last Supper: The Testament of Jesus by Reinhard Schwarz. We discuss why the distinction between a covenant and a testament is of utmost importance for exegesis, sacramental theology, and Christian life, why promise and gift are central to Luther’s understanding of the sacrament, and how rejecting the sacrament leads to a denial of Christ.

The gospel is his weapon that beats back the darkness — “I AM the Resurrection and the Life. Bow your head, bend the knee when I walk by.”

Ramble Tamble. In this episode, we do a pastor’s table talk that centers on inculcating a deeper appreciation for heavenly mystery and earthly reality: prayer at home, worship on vacation, the connection of the land to God’s judgment and salvation of his people, the early church’s exegesis, Genesis snd Revelation, and Logos theology that binds the Trinity and Creeds.

Plug In, Baby. In this episode, we read St. Ambrose’s work, On the Mysteries, enjoying his exegesis and defense of the body and blood of Jesus. We also discuss recognizing patterns in the Bible, testing the spirits who want to separate out the heavenly from the earthly, and the importance of symbol and meaning for Christian comfort.

It would serve us well to embrace the beauty of our diversity within the unity of the body of Christ.