- “When God is Silent.” A Sermon
“When God is Silent.”
Co-Missioners,
Those in the middle latitudes of the northern hemisphere—the majority of you, we imagine—are enduring the early winter miseries of long nights and raw, bitter days. These somehow heighten the contrast between our experience of the world as it currently is and the promises of the age to come that the texts ...
- On the Thanks We Render Today
On the Thanks We Render Today: A Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln
Co-Missioners,
This Thursday we send you a copy of the presidential proclamation that launched America’s national Thanksgiving Day, the holiday most of you are busy observing at the moment—with delight and contentment, we pray. May the turkey be succulent, the pies enticing, the conversation spiced with ...
- “How Can I ‘See’ Jesus?”
Biblical Depiction as Judgment and Promise
Co-Missioners,
“Christ for you, Christ for us.” Call this the bumper sticker version of God’s key message to the world, entrusted for delivery to folks strangely called “the saints,” the strangeness arising from the fact that no one save God would think to label them as such. How ordinary they look. ...
- Christian Decline in America: The Pew Report
Co-Missioners,
The first step in a Crossing analysis, be it of a Scriptural text or a present reality, is to identify a problem that demands attention.
Our mission correspondent, Richard Gahl, does this today in a follow-up to his reflection last week about culture shifts in the U.S. His focus now is on a recent report from ...
- Gospel Agents as “Trackers”
Co-Missioners,
“Tracking” is a term Crossings practitioners use for a process that examines the contents of an everyday life for signs of correlation with issues surfaced in Scriptural texts. It starts and ends with careful listening to people the Word of God aims to address in today’s moment.
Such listening is more important than ever in 2019—assuming, ...
- Why Luther’s First Thesis Still Matters
Co-Missioners,
On this 502nd anniversary of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, we remind you of the first of them:
“When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Mt. 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”
Such is the speck of a pebble that launched the continental rockslide we know in retrospect as ...
- Talking Faithfully About Justification
Co-Missioners,
Lutherans in America, if not elsewhere in the world, will celebrate Reformation Sunday three days from now. We will do so as usual in several rival camps, each with its set of gripes about the others, each with its distinct penchant for obscuring the Gospel we all claim to celebrate. Not that any camp would ...
- A Dose of Bertram in Anticipation of Reformation Sunday
Co-Missioners,
Some of us are already starting to slip our Reformation caps on. This year’s annual Lutheran observance, on October 27, is but three Sundays hence. The day’s Epistle, Romans 3:21-28, ends with the resounding declaration that “a person is justified by faith.” So really, what does that mean?
With this in mind, we take you today ...
- “Shut Up, Already!” Part Two
Co-Missioners,
“Let all mortal flesh keep silence / and in fear and trembling stand….”
See below for the second and final installment of Fred Niedner’s presentation at the Crossings’ conference this past January. Last week’s first installment closed with a reflection on Job which bears reviewing as you step into this.
A reminder that we’re taking registrations for ...
- “Shut Up, Already!” Part One
Co-Missioners,
The dates are January 26-29. That’s when the 2020 Crossings Conference is set to unfold. The venue as always is the Shrine of our Lady of the Snows in Belleville, Illinois. The lineup of speakers is, dare we say, dynamic. One of them is traveling all the way from Melbourne, Australia. Another was born and ...