Hebrews 9:24-28

A Sermon for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

We’re coming to the end of the church year and in these final Sundays, we ask the big questions of what it all means: What is salvation? Who is saved? Where does it all go?

Today we ask: Who is saved? Everyone? A few? Many? Perhaps the common view today is that everybody is going to be saved. Everybody goes to heaven. There is no judgment and nothing is really at stake in this world. While nobody is perfect, and everybody is good enough in some way to be saved. Death is simply transitioning from this world to the next. There is no judgment, nothing at stake.

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Revelation 21:1-4

A Sermon for the Season of Pentecost

We are in a festival season. Last week was the Festival of the Reformation. Today is the Festival of All Saints. In three weeks, we will celebrate Christ the King Sunday, the final Sunday of the church year.

In reflecting on this Festival of All Saints, there are three clarifications that need to be brought in front of us.
First, what does it mean to be a saint?

A church-going Lutheran asked her pastor: “How can I celebrate All Saint’s Day? I’m not a saint. I’m not a good person.”

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John 8:31-36

A Sermon for Reformation Sunday

This is the Festival of the Reformation, the Sunday before October 31st, when in 1517 a monk named Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses against the sale of indulgences to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. This long list of points to be debated was written in Latin and intended for discussion among his fellow scholars, but the Theses were quickly translated into German, made into cartoons and drawings, and soon everybody was talking about them.

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Galatians 5:1, John 8:32, 36

A Sermon for a Sunday in October

Eighteen years ago, in September 2006, then Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech in Germany at the University of Regensburg. It came to be known as the Regensburg Address, or simply Regensburg.
Before we get into what he said, I want to note the honorifics he used to address the audience: “Your Eminences, Your Magnificences, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen.”

A salutation that perks one’s ears.

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Hebrews 3:1-4:16

A Sermon for the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

In 1937 in Germany, the Nazis threw a Lutheran pastor named Ernst Käsemann in prison. He was one of the most important New Testament scholars of the Twentieth Century. Why did they do it?

At the time, Käsemann was serving a congregation in Gelsenkirchen, a coal mining town. He told about how during the Sunday morning worship services the Nazi soldiers sat up in the balcony with guns, but his miners, as he called them, sat downstairs with clubs in their hands. They had no fear of the Nazis because they faced death every day in the mines.

How did Käsemann handle the whole situation? He said: “So I preached the Gospel.” And then the Nazis threw him in prison.

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