Luke 2:22-40 Dear Partner in Preaching, It’s amazing how quickly Christmas passes, isn’t it? After all the preparations – both in church and at home – after four weeks of Advent, after carols and service projects, special music and Christmas Eve services…. After all this, it’s suddenly done. The presents are opened, the wrapping paper put in the recycling bin, needles are falling from the tree, and it’s 364 more days until next year’s celebration. Of course, Christmas isn’t done. The church knew that there was no way you could really celebrate, let alone comprehend, the Incarnation in a day, so it recognized twelve days of...
Adv 4B/Christmas Eve: God’s Surprising Choic...
posted by DJL
Luke 1:26-38 Luke 2:1-20 Dear Partner in Preaching, Martin Luther loved Mary. You may already have known that. As a life-long Lutheran pastor, I have regularly been surprised by how few Lutherans know that. I suspect that’s because, while Lutherans often know too little about their Roman Catholic kindred, one of the things they do know is that Mary has a significant place in Roman Catholic piety and so assume Luther would not have been a fan. But he was; indeed, he was a huge fan. To Luther, Mary represented the typical pattern of God’s interaction with humans. Indeed, not just interaction, but election. That is, it wasn’t Mary’s...
Advent 2 B: Just the Beginning
posted by DJL
Mark 1:1-8 Dear Partner in Preaching, I don’t know about you, but I find myself, during these weeks leading up to Christmas, simultaneously filled by the joy and anticipation of the season and…running pell-mell from one activity to another, barely on top of what’s coming next. This was somewhat true when I was a seminary prof, more true as a sem. president, and is even more the case now that I’m back in a parish. (I trust I’m not alone in this experience and that you probably know just what I mean!) And while it’s easy to forget amid all our various responsibilities, this combination of joyful celebration and slightly frenetic...
The Divine Exchange
posted by DJL
In this manner Christ takes to himself our birth and absorbs it in his birth; he presents us with his birth so that we become pure and new in it, as if it were our own, so that every Christian might rejoice in this birth of Christ and glory in it no less than if he, too, like Christ, had been...
Hallowing Creation
posted by DJL
The more we draw Christ down into nature and into the flesh, the more consolation accrues for us…. [Indeed,] how could God have demonstrated his goodness more powerfully than by stepping down so deep into flesh and blood, that he does not despise that which is kept secret by nature, but...