This week we bring you the second half Bishop Marcus C. Lohrmann’s “Full Communion Relationships: An Ecumenical Way Forward,” which he presented earlier this year in an ecumenical lecture series at Lourdes University in Sylvania, Ohio. As you’ll recall from last week, the first half of Marcus’s lecture presents the rationale behind the ELCA’s various “full communion” agreements. In …
#773 “Full Communion” Relationships and the Mission of Christ
Colleagues, Last Sunday we celebrated the resurrection of the Person who, among so much else, offered up the magisterial prayer of John 17. In his honor we choose this week to pass along some reflections by a Lutheran bishop who takes both the Person and the prayer with all the gravity that his Easter calls for. Marcus C. …
#772 Where is Jesus in the “Talents” Parables? An Angle on the Passion
Colleagues, By rights all Holy Week sermons will be ready to go by the time you get this. And that’s too bad either for you or for the preacher you like to bless with the latest stuff from Thursday Theology. Tonight’s post showed up in our editors’ mailbox about five days ago. It came from Pr. Ted Schroeder, …
#771 Idolatry and the Gun Debate
This week’s Thursday Theology came to us several weeks ago from Dr. Peter Keyel, an immunologist and Crossings board member whose theological writings appear throughout the Crossings website. In this piece, Peter responds to Thursday Theology #767, in which Pr. Richard Gahl reviewed America and its Guns: A Theological Exposé by James E. Atwood. Although Peter hasn’t read the book itself, …
#770 The Preacher’s Audience
Colleagues, Dare one take it for granted that everyone who reads this will be in church more than once over Holy Week? That’s less than two weeks in the offing, by the way. I say that for the sake of those of you who aren’t the designated preacher for this or that assembly of the saints. We who …
#769 Judgment Day (Part 2)
As promised, here is Steve Albertin’s sermon on Mark 13:1-8, which he introduced with the dramatic scene (still of unknown authorship) that we brought you last week. In the sermon, Steve delves into the meaning of Jesus’ prediction of a day when buildings will fall, and a time when nation will rise against nation. Peace and Joy, Carol Braun, …
#768 Judgment Day (Part 1)
Today’s Thursday Theology is short dramatic scene by the Rev. Dr. Steve Albertin, a frequent Crossings writer and my fellow editor on the ThTheol tem. Steve composed this scene in December 2012, as an introduction to a sermon on Mark 13:1-8. In that gospel text, Jesus discusses the end times and the impending destruction of the temple. Next …
#767 The Deified Gun
Colleagues, This week we send you a “must read” book review by occasional contributor Richard Gahl. Dick’s piece speaks for itself, so I won’t bother with introductory embellishments. Read, mark, learn—and prepare to weep, especially when you get to the end. I do note that Dick touches on something that got a mention in last week’s post, Luther’s notion …
#766 Ash Wednesday Musings, with a Nudge from Machiavelli
Colleagues, I’m sticking my neck out this week with a piece that will either please or appall, I don’t know which. I write with Christ’s glory in mind. May you read it in the same light. If there should be argument, let it be about that. What else is there to vaunt? A reminder that any and all …
#765 God’s deadly diagnosis
This week we bring you a piece that the Rev. Dr. Steve Albertin presented at the Crossings Seminar last month in Belleville, Illinois. In making his point about the importance of God’s “deadly diagnosis” of our sinfulness, Steve includes one of his own sermons from 2009 on the proclamation of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34. (By the …