There’s a lot of ways we might be tempted to spruce up the Christian message. Emphasize that God loves you, and minimize the parts about what God wants from you. Highlight the promises of health, wealth, and prosperity, and put the tough parts of following Jesus in the fine print. We can grow the church…

Wherever the Kingdom of Heaven is, there is redemption and new life. Jesus’ ministry brought the Kingdom of Heaven because Jesus Himself is the King! We see life in the Kingdom as Jesus calls Peter, Andrew, James, and John to follow him in this adventure. We see life in the Kingdom as Jesus teaches in…

Paul had many reasons to be upset and concerned with the Church in Corinth. In many ways this was a dysfunctional congregation that was not following God’s will. Nonetheless, Paul opens the letter writing, “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with…

“I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing this for you.” Today we remember Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan. John the Baptist is confused saying Jesus should be baptizing him! Jesus reminds him that it isn’t for himself he does this, but for us. In Baptism, we are united to Christ. He takes on our…

The word epiphany means a sudden realization or revelation. On this festival of Epiphany, we celebrate the revelation or epiphany of Jesus to the Gentiles, that is, the non-Jews. The magi came from the east to bring presents to Jesus and bowed down and worshipped him. In our Epistle text, Paul further reflects on the…

Happy New Year! It’s a great time to reflect on the previous year and look forward to the year to come. Oftentimes, our thoughts shift to years past. We can think about time, and how it may seem like our best years are behind us.

We live in a world whose Christmas joy has begun to subside. While the world is over the Christmas joy, we continue to rejoice as those who know the true joy that Christmas brought into the world. Christ our Savior was born to bring to us salvation. Our Gospel reading today shows us some of…

Jesus is fully God and fully man. The clearest teaching of this is in John’s Gospel wherein John teaches the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. What is the result of this? From His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace (verse 16). This tells us the reason for Christ’s birth on Christmas,…

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone” (Isaiah 9:2). You don’t realize how helpful light is until you try to walk around without it. No, you can’t cheat, you can’t use your cell phone or the glint…

As we prepare for Christmas, we probably have travel plans, gifts, and meal preparation on our minds. As we examine our appointed Epistle lesson for today, Paul wants to re-focus us on something more important than any of those things. In the beginning of his letter to the Church in Rome, he describes the two…