Author Joel Biermann assessing our bloodlet culture with some zing #bibleclassprep

We believe, teach, and confess that our righteousness before God is this: that God forgives us our sins out of pure grace, without any regard to our antecedent, present, or subsequent works, merit, or worthiness. FC III, as translated in the Appalachian Christian Book of Concord

Play is the affirmation that we humans are not so important or life so deadly serious that every human action must be justified as worthwhile and productive. -Day 7 by Joel Biermann #biblestudyprep #FirstArticle #FirstArticleWorksRighteousness #goms #IStillDoHashtags

I'm seeing a lot of stuff on FB and YT about how the LCMS is dying and what we should do about it. It starts with honest reflection and repentance:

my five-year-old has made up a new word to pooze on: to blow a raspberry on someone Example sentence "I'm going to pooze on you."

too often we don't leave work to pursue being truly human we spurn work to devote ourselves to entertaining and amusing ourselves that’s not rest that’s idleness adapted from day 7: for work, rest, or play

There are times God’s Word calls us to kill sacred cows and break down the cultural barriers to people receiving Christ’s completion. My sermon for yesterday:

Call me old fashioned, but this is the Missouri Synod I want back (Una Sancta, Volume XIII, 1956) #sermonprep #StMatthewsDay #whiteflight

Clara Bow understanding social media back in 1926

"Because of the second Adam, Christ, the cross is now the tree of life. Eat of its fruit and you will live. Eat of its fruit and you will matter, now and forever." My sermon for Holy Cross yesterday:

he shouldn't have been killed the HS shooting the same day likewise should not have been but also... 4 HBCUs received terrorist threats last week in reaction to the assassination like, how it is that multiple people see a white man shoot another white man and think, "Black people!" ya know?

Today is a great day to sing the Litany

If we were but part of nature, death would be as "natural" as life, but we have been awakened out of the meaningless cycle of nature to believe in and be a part of One who leads us into a new world. Lesslie Newbegin. Exposition of the Fourth Gospel

On the cross, the kaleidoscopic Unity of humankind is openly displayed in the Person of Jesus Christ. #Roodmas #HolyCrossDay #sermonprep #fullyhuman

Why does there have to be a point to everything? Why does everything have to have a purpose or serve a greater cause? That’s works-righteousness! God is the one who matters! Christ is the one who matters and gives meaning to our lives! #LaVidaReceptiva

a book I'm reading just used the term "kaleidoscopic unity" and I'm obsessed

Nephew and godson of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Grandson of composer and N@zi resister Ernst von Dohnányi

We incomplete human beings consumed with guilt and the fear of death do not need only more condemnation or to be gaslit that our sin doesn’t really exist. Give us Christ's completion! Give us Christ’s witness! Give us Christ’s mercy! My sermon for yesterday

When the voice of the Law is stilled for us, and the sweet sound of the Gospel fills us with faith, the spirit of the new life in Christ abides. Lenski

All 10 commandments are about what it means to be human as God intended.

It is not a question of duplicating the high personal gifts of the apostle or the features which made his ministry an apostleship. It is a matter of keeping faithfully in the true ministerial succession, ever true and fully devoted to the Gospel Word.

The preacher who plays fast and loose with the Word and the Confessions cannot be ranked as an able minister of the New Testament. RCH Lenski on 2 Corinthians 3:4-11

Neighborliness is life organized around the forgiveness of sins.

Whereas we usually associate the golden calf incident only with idolatry, St. Paul also sees it as a corruption of the sabbath. This insight helps expose unhealthy views of work and worth that we have in the West. My sermon for yesterday

to make wars to cease in all the world; to give to all nations unity, peace, and concord;

Glad we settled this

Back home in Kentucky

“We can also show our neighbors, who live for little yet yearn for much, what it looks like to celebrate a true festival that delights in both the Creator and his creation.” Joel Biermann, Day 7

No, I hadn’t noticed I’ve never picked What a Friend We Have in Jesus. I’ll have to write that down so I don’t keep forgetting.

yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

In the Church of God, the seeing is at all times bound up with the hearing. God never directs only to what he has done in the past, but always for the sake of trust in what he is doing now. Hengstenberg on Psalm 48:8, "What we have heard of old, we now have also seen."

Sometimes suffering doesn't matter. Sometimes there is no reason for the trouble we face. "Creation is subjected to futility." And so the Gospel consolation and comfort is not "it served a purpose" but "this too Christ has ransomed." A midweek thought on Romans 8:20-21.

A pastor's opinion: no responsible/faithful pastor would even consider endorsing a politician from the pulpit.

Injustice may indeed be the way of this world, violence may be this world’s mother tongue, “I’ll get what’s mine… and a little bit of his” may indeed be this world’s mantra, but the Christian does not let Satan’s narrative win out! We are the Holy Catholic Church. My sermon for yesterday:

Happy 4th!

Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural, but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness. —Walter Brueggemann

On Tuesday, Iranian asylum-seekers who fled persecution for their Christian faith were detained by ICE in Los Angeles. The arrests add to a growing number of church members taken despite lawful status.

Words spelled out with scrabble letters is the stock photo equivalent of "the dictionary defines X as Y."

Grant peace, we pray, in mercy, Lord. In our time peace, O send us. For there is none on earth but thee, none other to defend us, but thou only, Lord, canst fight for us. Text: Latin 500-600s, para. Martin Luther, 1483-1586 Music: Felix Mendelssohn, 1809-1847 LSB 777

Gotta receive if you ever hope to give. My sermon for yesterday:

There's a lottttttt of dehumanization coming through to us on social media. Thanks be to God who sent his Son to make us fully human again.

Let God’s love lead you by the arm to the judgment seat, and you shall not be judged. Lenski on 1 John 4:17

Who are you when you're life hasn't worked out the way you thought it would? My sermon for Pentecost/Confirmation 2025:

A little devotion on what remaining connected to the Vine means in 2025:

The Gospel is so great a doctrine, to seek anything lesser- like our own glory- is absurd. Luther

Mercy triumphs over judgment. James 2:13

"To speak about a possible gnomic perfect is the solution of despair." Lenski on translating the different verbs in James 1:24. When arguing over verbs, Lutherans get very dramatic!