Talking About the Passion: Sermons from Holy Cross Lutheran Church

In our baptism, God has joined us to all of humanity. But he has also initiated us, through our baptism, into a NEW humanity. 

Our call, as baptized people of God, is to MANIFEST to others the new humanity that we know in Jesus-- to make this way of life known, so that ALL people might be drawn into the life of forgiveness and radical love that God has made possible through Jesus.

The magi are spiritual seekers, much like the spiritual seekers of our own day. Though they genuinely intuit much of the truth about who the newborn king Jesus…they do not fully arrive at the truth until they hear the message about the King to be born in Bethlehem from God’s word. All their intuitions. All their longings.  All their wisdom finds its completion and fulfillment in the scriptures. 

As people of God, we're called to meet our neighbors who long for God, genuinely hear their desires, and, above all, share something of the God we know through the scriptures…Jesus Christ, in whom we find all our longings fulfilled. 

In Jesus, God took on flesh, lived a human life in a body like ours. So that God would share with us our griefs and sorrows and limitations. Yes. But also so that HIS body would convey to OUR bodies the mercy and healing power that alone belongs to God.

Prophecy is a central theme of Luke's gospel. Unexpected women & men are raised up to tell of the amazing works of God in Jesus Christ. Foremost among these prophets is Mary, from whom we have much to learn.

Paul writes words of profound hope and reassurance from prison, to a community facing division and conflict and scarce resources to carry out their mission.

Do not worry about anything.

How can we do such a thing? 

In our gospel lesson for today, Jesus doesn’t offer a doctrine to be affirmed, an action plan to be embraced, a goal to be strived after. Jesus offers himself.  And in embracing him. In following after him. Peter and the other disciples are not claiming to have all the answers. What they’re saying is that “Lord, following you is hard. But we don’t know where else we’d go to find life.” 

Christians live with an eschatological horizon, our eyes on the prize that only God can deliver to us fully on the last day.

Christians are called to be brutally honest about our pain, even as we remember that our gracious God invites us into a larger story.

God promises not just to be with us in the midst of cataclysm and disaster, but to work in and through our struggles, leading us to hope in the fulfillment and joy that only God can bring.

(Mark 10:35-45) The prizes that the world would have us strive for are all too often empty. Jesus offers us the cup of eternal life. Will we share the cup he offers?