Talking About the Passion: Sermons from Holy Cross Lutheran Church

But Paul calls the church in Philippi. And he calls you and me. To live sacrificially.  To become friends of the cross.

This isn’t a word of legalism, as if we had to earn our seat at God’s banqueting table, or as if God’s gifts to us were conditional on us working hard.

Sacrificial living. 
Dying to self. 
Bearing the cross. 

This is simply the FORM,  the SHAPE that our lives take when we live in hopeful expectation of Jesus.

Repentance means acknowledging our past failures. But it ALSO means embracing the opportunities that our gracious God is putting before us TODAY. 

The path toward holiness leads through places of confusion and bewilderment. The road to glory involves many a dark night of the soul. From Abraham to Paul to Martin Luther to Mother Teresa, we see that God’s promised salvation 

unfolds over time and includes many twists and turns, 

ups and downs, 

peaks and valleys.

The disciplines of Lent are an opportunity to look up from our less important pursuits, so that we can focus our eyes and our hearts on the Lord.

In the transfiguration, Jesus shows us the fullness of his divine nature. But he also shows us our destiny as his disciples: To shine with the radiance of the divine nature. To live with eternal purpose and divine significance.

Joseph offers us a glimpse of a person who fully inhabits a world in which the character of a loving and trustworthy God makes possible the redemption of the most broken lives and the most desperate circumstances.

The church’s continuing mission is to ensure that our lives are congruent with the bedrock Christian conviction that Jesus is raised from the dead! All of us are called to participate in the ongoing power of Jesus’ resurrection, trusting that one day we will be raised up to live with him.

Our brokenness is no barrier to God’s divine purpose.  
It is a doorway into deeper faithfulness, allowing us to depend NOT on our own power, but on the infinite grace of God alone.

People HUNGER in their heart of hearts for a story to which they can belong. That shapes and directs them toward an ultimate purpose. That gives meaning and purpose to their everyday lives, and helps to sustain them in their suffering and put it their lives in a larger, cosmic context. 

Such a story is PRECISELY the gift that we have been given as Christians. 

So our calling, people of God, is to KNOW our story. To inhabit it. To treasure it. To know its nuances and mysteries, its challenges and ambiguities. And to share that story with OTHERS.

To imbibe the wine that Jesus gives means, as it does whenever we enjoy a few good glasses of wine, the RISK of opening up and speaking freely in ways we otherwise would not.