[Click here for video] In a liturgy class during my first year at seminary Dr. Gordon Lathrop told us about a bell that hung in the tower of a northern Wisconsin church founded in 1873, until it was destroyed by fire in 1985. The bell bore the following inscription: to bath and table, to prayer […]

On this 4th Sunday of Easter each year – often called Good Shepherd Sunday – we turn to a portion of John Chapter 10 for our Gospel text, and we read a bit of the Good Shepherd discourse.   It’s really wonderful to read this today as we’ve already celebrated the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, […]

[Click here for video] We’re in the Gospel of John again this week, even though this is year C in the lectionary cycle – the year of Luke. And though I usually don’t care for harmonizing the Gospel accounts – in other words, mixing up the different details from the different Gospels – I’m going […]

[Click here for video] Power is a tricky thing. John is clearly showing in the resurrection story we read today, from John chapter 20, that Jesus is powerful, and that his desire is to share that power with his followers – faithful, fearful, questioning, wherever they are on this journey of discovering the truth of […]

[Click here for video] Alleluia! Christ is Risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! At this the heavenly choirs of angels rejoice, the earth exults, and the church is glad!   But that’s not where we begin today, is it?   We begin in verse 1 of Luke 24 with the conjunction “but” which is used, […]

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Buried with him? United with him in a death like his?   Do you not know that your old self – The old Adam or old Eve in you – was crucified with him? That […]

In his explanation of the 2nd article of the Creed, in the Small Catechism, Luther writes: Jesus Christ, true God… has redeemed me, a lost and condemned human being. He has purchased and freed me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver but with his […]

At Passover, our Jewish friends and neighbors remember the central story of their formation as a people, as God’s people. It was in their deliverance from slavery, in the protection provided by God  from the plague of the death of the firstborn, in the passing through the Red Sea, in the giving of the law […]

[Click here for video] Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! It’s a common and familiar phrase in our religious experience. It was so for the Jewish pilgrims, as well, making their way to the Temple for the feast of Passover, in Jesus’ day. They would greet one another with […]

The sense of smell is a powerful thing. Those who study such things have found incredible links between the sense of smell and memory, and not only in humans, but also bees and rodents. I did some research into this this week and read the following in an article on Sciencedaily.com this week: Researchers at […]