Pilate and Jesus circle around the question of Pilate's power to condemn him or release him, and Jesus' refusal to play the power game with him. Instead, Jesus holds out the ultimate value of Truth for Pilate's consideration, but Pilate refuses to give up...
The Lord's Supper – the body and blood of Jesus in, with, and under the bread and wine – unites holy God and forgiven humanity through a Jesus-shaped, vertical connection. But the Lord's Supper also creates a Jesus-shaped, horizontal connection...
Legalism is the belief that humans flourish best when they have order, structure, and rules to guide them. The opposite philosophy is liberty – the belief that humans need freedom from restrictions to flourish. Christianity, while definitely promising freedom...
The crowd who has just witnessed Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead follow Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday – the impossibility of the dead being raised irresistibly pulling all toward Jesus. But when some Greeks are pulled by the possibility of resurrection...
The new covenant happens when God acts to forgive his people's sins, create a fresh community of people who have all experienced the power of this new covenant, and pour out his Holy Spirit into his people's hearts so that his good Law can be internalized and...
The preacher of Hebrews argues that the ministry of Jesus is far greater than the ministry of the Old Testament high priests, that Jesus has been chosen by God to be a priest according to the order of Melchizedek, that he mediates perfectly between God and humanity,...
Humans have searched for ways to deal with the reality of death – everything from medical advances, psychological therapy, and existential fatalism have been used to try, however unsuccessfully, to deal with the fact that everyone dies. But when death is seen...
Is Christianity merely a crutch for those who believe – a sort of whistling-in-the-graveyard, a head game naive and superstitious people play to avoid the hard reality of materialistic realism? The rise of the psychological sciences in the late 19th and early...
In John 3, Jesus claims to be like the bronze snake Moses put up on a pole for the people of Israel to look at and be healed, but how is this possible? What's the connection? Jesus goes on to explain by connecting the realities of judgment and grace together in...
The temptation for many is to view the Ten Commandments as an ethical standard for living in a good society, God's rules for living a moral life, or (in many Lutheran churches) an impossible standard meant to stir up the guilt that can drive us to Jesus. And while...
