As God had foretold, John was born to be the forerunner of Jesus. Zechariah learned firsthand that God indeed keeps His promises to all people. While you and I may not experience God the way Zechariah did, we do have God’s sure and certain Word to show us God’s love for us and that He
I came across this little explanation of why Christians need formal creeds via Facebook and Paul McCain’s Cyberbrethren blog. I was especially delighted by point 4. Point 4 mentions that Creeds “relativize the present.” To us, the present seems to be the culmination of all of human history. But the Creeds help us remember that
I thought you might enjoy this; it is from Lutheran Satire. Their motto is: “Learning the faith by making fun of stuff.” As always, subscribers to my blog can see the YouTube video by clicking on the title of today’s blog.
When I confess the creeds during worship, I say them as I was taught: with my head up, my eyes open,and my shoulders back. I was taught during Confirmation to remember I am confessing the faith that people have died to preserve, and that I should be willing to die to preserve this faith we
The Processional for this week is: “Open Now, Thy Gates of Beauty” (Those of you who are subscribers to my blog can see and hear the YouTube videos of these hymns by clicking on the title of this blog.) The words to the first verse are” “Open now thy gates of beauty, Zion, let me
Jesus’ work as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity is that of redemption. That work includes the forgiving of sins. Jesus forgives the sins of repentant people. He forgives because of his love of us. He needs no other motivation or help in his redemptive work. We truly have a loving God and a
With this Sunday the Church begins “the long Green Season.” Sometimes it’s called “Ordinary Time” or “the season of the propers” because the Sundays are simply numbered and there are no major festivals comparable with Christmas, Easter, Pentecost or Trinity. In the words of Wendy Wright, this is a time “to become attentive to the
Nowhere. But when Jesus walked out of the tomb on Easter morning? His followers – who had never really understood who Jesus was or why He was crucified — had to answer the question, “Who WAS this guy?” Clearly, he wasn’t the political leader or earthly king they had all been hoping the promised Messiah
This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, a day that has been set aside for the worshiping Church to consider and celebrate the Trinitarian nature of God. The only thing that can faithfully be said to explain the Trinity is what Christians confess in the Athanasian Creed: namely, that we worship one God in Trinity and the
This Sunday is Holy Trinity Sunday. Explaining the Holy Trinity is very difficult, as generations of pastors, theologians, and Sunday School teachers have learned. Below you will find a conversation among Donal, Conal, and St. Patrick himself (many thanks to the Lutherans who put this together). In this conversation, St. Patrick uses all of the
