Sometimes in life you only get one chance to do certain things. One chance to speak to someone, or about something. One chance to take an exam, for example. And most preachers get only one chance to speak about the Holy Spirit, and that is at Pentecost. The only day of the year (unfortunately) when we remember the third Person of the Trinity. And this means, of course, that preachers often cannot say everything there is to say about the Spirit, and today, I fear, will be no e

One of the things that makes us Lutherans famous is the emphasis we place on how difficult it is to put faith in the Gospel with all our heart, even as Christians. Our unbelieving nature recoils; it refuses to believe that God has manifested such love for me and sends us new graces every day. Even the non-Christians here in the West, who chatter so much about God's love, don’t truly believe it. When they talk about God, prayer, or the afterlife, they immediately start explain

Forty days after the resurrection, the disciples stand on the Mount of Olives and witness Jesus ascending into heaven. As He blesses them, He is taken from their sight. Yet the Day of the Ascension is not about Christ abandoning His Church. It is about Christ taking His throne. The One who was crucified now reigns. The One who was rejected by the world now sits at the right hand of the Father. The One who humbled Himself unto death is exalted above all things. And this is of

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.” This is how our Lord begins in the Gospel. And if we are honest, this phrase already reveals something about us. Because our hearts are troubled. We are troubled when the Church appears divided, as in the Acts of the Apostles: complaints, neglect, tension between groups. We are troubled when we feel overlooked, unheard, or burdened by responsibilities that seem too heavy. We are troubled when suffering comes, when death draws near, when t

Many of us surely know people who have advised us, guided us through difficult choices, and in whom we have placed our trust. And sometimes, those people have left us. Perhaps a wise parent, an older friend, a mentor, or a professor. And that separation is hard. When our parent is no longer there, when we graduate and leave our faculty behind, it can be disorienting to realize that now, to a greater or lesser extent, we have to manage things on our own. Perhaps you know that