Thursday Theology

Co-missioners,    In anticipation of next week’s conference on “Christian Behavior” i.e. on the relationship between faith and works – much debated, yet ever requiring clarification – here is the first part of a lecture by Prof. Robert Kolb. It …

Co-missioners, Last night a lot of us joined the world in its annual New Year’s Eve exercise of hoping against hope. This morning we woke up to one of the Church’s annual celebrations of the Hope Worth Hoping, Christ Jesus is …

Co-missioners, This week, just in time for the season celebrating our Lord’s nativity, we have for you the manuscript of a sermon preached by our friend and fellow-Crossings traveler Fred Niedner at Valparaiso University’s Chapel of the Resurrection on Christmas Eve, 2014.  Reading this, …

Co-missioners, I haven’t preached on Christmas since 2021. That was halfway through my final year of fulltime pastoral ministry. Since then I’ve sat in pews on Christmas Eve listening to others preach. It’s been enough to prompt today’s screed, a few dollops of unsought advice to this year’s set of Christmas preachers. …

Co-missioners,  We are headed towards the Third Sunday of Advent. In the old lectionary (used by most Lutherans up until the retirement of the Service Book and Hymnal and The Lutheran Hymnal, and even today among some Missourians and Germans), this Sunday was …

Co-missioners,  A colleague was poking around in old publications recently and unearthed the item we’re sharing today. It’s an essay by the Rev. Stephen Krueger that appeared in a Crossings newsletter in late 2009. The opening paragraphs will tell you everything you need to know about the author except that he died three months after this was published. In the week following his death, his …

Co-missioners,  Firstly, we apologize for the delay in getting this post out. Holiday weeks will sometimes cause unforeseen interruptions!On this day observed by US-Americans as a Day of Thanksgiving, I give thanks for the gift that is the Crossings Community. Over …

Co-missioners,  Six weeks ago, a letter from bishops of ELCA synods began making the usual cyber-rounds by which such things get conveyed these days. The letter was about Christian Nationalism. The bishops quite rightly opposed it. Even so, today’s writer, Mike Hoy, asks questions about whether the letter, however well-intentioned it …

Co-missioners,  This week I offer a few of my own thoughts on the sort of language I hear myself and others using about the Holy Spirit, wondering out loud if we might not have gone a little bit too far in our confident declarations. I covet …

Co-missioners,  When Matt Metevelis was in high school his parents transferred to the congregation I was serving in a western suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. That’s when I met Matt. I got to watch him graduate from a top-flight Jesuit academy, scoot through a demanding college in …