Posts with the category “feast-day”

It is amazing how everyone in the gospel accounts of the resurrection seems completely floored that Jesus actually rose from the dead. They heard his promise many times, he openly told them in three d...  Read More

St. John mentions several times that Jesus dies on the Jewish Day of Preparation. What is the day of Preparation? Well, when God created the heavens and the earth, he created in six days and on the se...  Read More

What’s the point of the Lord’s Supper? Why do we come here and partake? We know this bread is the very body of the Lord, and this wine is the very blood of the Lord. We know that in these we have forg...  Read More

“Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’” If the people of the city of Jerusalem had known scriptur...  Read More

Monarchies have a singular worry that we never experience in our modern democracies – the stress over the king’s heir - especially traditionally when the birth of a son was needed to continue the fami...  Read More

Why not be a hypocrite when you fast? Of course, no one wants to be known as a hypocrite, but Jesus doesn’t give instructions about hypocrisy for everything. Matthew speaks about hypocrisy in prayer, ...  Read More

Jesus is made manifest in His Transfiguration. The Transfiguration is the final Epiphany on the final Sunday of the Epiphany season. Peter, James, and John, led to the top of the high mountain, see Je...  Read More

JESUS comes to John in the wilderness to be baptized by him. John refuses. He has been giving a baptism for repentance of sins. John knows that Jesus has no sins to repent of. John knows that Jesus h...  Read More

Tonight’s sermon, is the last sermon you will probably hear in the year of our Lord 2021, as tomorrow begins the year of our Lord 2022. That is what A.D. means on our calendar, the Year of Our Lord. F...  Read More

The problem when we read a great martyrdom account like that of St. Stephen, is that we think we cannot relate, as we have never been persecuted for our faith. Our lives can seem petty and insignifica...  Read More

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This creation of God in the very beginning, God’s absolute creation from nothing, was formless, empty, and dark. It was uninhabitable by anythin...  Read More

After 400 years of silence, 400 years of no words from the prophets, the Savior is here, Christ the Lord. This Christ was foretold from the very beginning, the seed of the woman who would crush the se...  Read More

Four hundred years ago this year the Pilgrims at Plymouth colony held their harvest feast which came to be known as the first Thanksgiving. With the help of the local Indians, their settlement began t...  Read More

Today we remember all those who have died in Christ and passed from this valley of sorrow into the arms of their savior. ...  Read More

What does the freedom and slavery have to do with Reformation? Well, everything. What Luther did was to bring the truth that sets you free back to the center of the church’s life. That truth being to ...  Read More

Our gospel reading for the Martyrdom of John the Baptist is one of the few passages in the gospels that does not feature Jesus. Even though today we remember the death of John the Baptist, and this is...  Read More

As Jesus taught, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the Wo...  Read More

Did James not love God enough? Was there something lacking in him that God did not work together all things for his good? When you suffer, do you ever think this? Does it seem like God is not working ...  Read More

Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the undivided Unity! While every other feast of the church year refers to an event – Jesus’ birth, baptism, resurrection, etc., the day of the Holy Trinity is one where...  Read More

You see how quickly Christian faith can be lost in a place in only a generation or two. Man in his sin has no interest in Christ, which is why the laborers in the harvest are so important. Certainly l...  Read More

The people were supposed to divide and fill the earth from the ark, even before Babel. This was the Lord’s original desire. Had they followed the Lord’s will, the dividing of the languages would have ...  Read More

Jesus was not the first man to ascend into heaven. As we heard in our office hymn this evening, a man named Enoch was translated into heaven. As Genesis tells us, after walking with God for 365 years ...  Read More

Weeping tarried for the night. The women at the cross wept. The disciples fled. Peter denied Christ three times. In the midst of all this, the Father poured out all of His wrath on Jesus for your guil...  Read More

Jesus also crossed the brook Kidron, leaving Jerusalem with his disciples. His betrayer, Judas, had already left to gather the forces who will come to arrest Jesus. There, on the Mount of Olives with ...  Read More

Memorials are an important part of our lives. It is not an exaggeration to say that the practice of gathering to remember, to memorialize things has been devastated in the past year. Perhaps this has ...  Read More

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This creation of God in the very beginning, God’s absolute creation from nothing, was formless, empty, and dark. It was a formless mass uninhabi...  Read More

We often think of Peter’s first sermon as the one at Pentecost. After the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples, they see tongues of fire above them and begin to speak in many languages. Peter then pre...  Read More

Some of the best stories in the Bible involve fasting and ashes. In the book of Esther, before Esther goes to speak to her husband, the king, she fasts, and her cousin Mordecai sits in sackcloth and a...  Read More

This day, exactly forty days after Christmas, brings us a great lesson capping off the very end of the Christmas season. In this final account of Jesus’ birth and early years, the scriptures give us a...  Read More

After six days, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John to a high mountain by themselves. Like the six days which led to the culmination of creation, this sixth day leads to the culmination of Jesus’ earth...  Read More

The baptism of Jesus is recounted in three of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and in John it is mentioned after already having happened. You can be sure that when an event in Jesus’ life is in a...  Read More

How much did the wise men know? Well, being astrologers, they looked at the stars for signs, but the sign didn’t tell them a whole lot. It’s likely that if they were from Babylon, where God’s people w...  Read More

There is an odd trend of people treating the year 2020 itself as if it were a person who brought about all these problems....  Read More

Long before He became man and was born as a baby in Bethlehem and laid in a manger, the Son of God created heaven and earth. ...  Read More

“Fear not!” Cries the angel appearing before the shepherds. Why does the angel cry this? What is there to fear with angels?...  Read More

When old traditions stop it can make us uncomfortable. So here’s something traditional, something always associated with Thanksgiving – the Pilgrims - those hardy Englishmen and women who came to the ...  Read More

This is a day of great comfort, for we see that Christ our Good Shepherd cares individually for each Christian, and in the end those who are sealed by his Word shall never again face suffering, but wo...  Read More

The gospel writers give almost no information about Sts. Simon and Jude besides Simon’s name and Jude’s brief mention in John. The extrabiblical traditions about these apostles are also rather mixed a...  Read More

“A Mighty Fortress is Our God” is probably Luther’s best-known hymn across all denominations and one of the most well-loved by Lutherans. We identify it with Reformation Day, calling it “The Battle-Hy...  Read More

Two of the readings for today describe names being written – one in the book, and one in heaven. These are one in the same. Those whose names are written in heaven, in the book of life, are those who ...  Read More