Hope

[This is my Faith Post for June 2025.] 
[Edited from my Ascension Day Sermon, May 29, 2025]

Past, present, and future, together all play a role in defining our lives and who we are and what we will be. God’s Word speaks clearly to all three and what God is doing for us in our lives.  When it comes to our past, we might look at this with guilt and shame.  We have memories of poor choices and sins of our own making.  We might also bear sorrow and loss when we think of our past. Hopefully we also have a few joyful memories to treasure in our past as well.  But when God looks at our past, He does so with forgiveness and mercy.  This is the benefit of Baptism and being an adopted child of God.  Our past sins are forgiven and we enter each new day of the present with a clean slate, washed by the blood of the Lamb.

Bring This Man's Blood Upon Us

 [This is my Faith Post for May 2025.] 

In my congregation this past weekend we read Acts 5:12-32, a passage which recounts the preaching and teaching of the Apostles Peter and John in Jerusalem.  They are preaching in a post-resurrection and post-Pentecost context.  That gives Peter and John plenty of life-saving content to share and also supreme confidence and hope in what they are doing.  They get to preach about the Author of Life.  They get to heal the sick, drive out demons, and enjoy a front-row seat at being a part of the Kingdom of God ushering into this world.  They get to see the full power and authority of Jesus on display through their own fingertips and words.

Babies & Baptism

 [This is my Faith Post for April 2025.] 

I've been blessed to get some baby time lately. I have a new niece and our family spent spring break getting to meet her.  While I've been through my fair share of baby time in my years (*ahem* 5 kids) my youngest is now 3+ and those days are increasingly behind us. Still, there is nothing quite like holding a newborn in your arms.

I've also spent a fair amount of time thinking about baptism lately.  I've been in the midst of several new member classes at my church and with each of them the topic of baptism comes up. I also met with a younger couple at my church preparing for the baptism of their first-born and we went through the nice review of Baptism and its ins and outs. 

Babies and baptism make a great combination, without a doubt.  Being a Lutheran pastor I spend a fair amount of time teaching and preaching on this very thing.  The Scriptures are quite clear on what a wonderful thing it is to baptize, and babies are surely a part of it.  Nonetheless, not all of Christianity agrees with this sentiment.  That's unfortunate.

What If ... Joseph?

 [This is my Faith Post for March 2025.] 

I am always moved by the words of Genesis 45:3 "I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?”  These words come from the great reunion of Joseph and his brothers.  After many years of Joseph living in Egypt, having been sold off as a slave, and then imprisoned and forgotten, there is a moment of reckoning and reconciliation.  In those words Joseph reveals his true identity to the brothers who for all intents and purposes thought him dead.  No doubt the brothers are shocked ... and likely mortally afraid.  But Joseph comes at it from a different emotion.  He is full of joy.  He is full of tears.  He is ready to be reconciled to these brothers who had wronged him terribly.

In the conversation that ensues Joseph makes a pretty spectacular claim about all the events that have transpired to this moment.  In Genesis 45:7 he says "God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God."

Release

[This is my Faith Post for February 2025.] 

It was early in his earthly ministry that Jesus makes a public return to His hometown of Nazareth.  One must certainly wonder what that relationship looked like with these citizens who had witnessed the growth and maturity of Jesus as He went from infant to boyhood and eventually manhood.  They got to see the teenage Jesus, something the Scriptures leave out for the rest of us.  What did they think of Him now that He returns as a man.  And not just any man.  He has a reputation with Him already.  He is a miracle-worker, a great teacher.  And for those of us who know the whole story, He is also the Messiah, the Christ, God in the flesh.  Will the Nazarenes see that?

The Great Exchange

[This is my Faith Post for January 2025.] 

This post is adapted from my Christmas Eve Sermon from 2024.

The year was 1867.  The Russian Empire was deciding what to do with the great Territory of Alaska.  The land was thought to be mostly barren and uninhabitable.  There was little interest in settling it further and so they looked to sell it off.  Enter US Secretary of State William Seward.  He began negotiations with the Russian diplomat and eventually a treaty was signed for the sale of Alaska to the United States. It was sold for the sum of $7.2 million which amounted to about $0.02 per acre. Many in America thought the purchase to be useless and a fool’s bargain, it was called by some Seward’s Folly.