Wow! 140 years old. There aren’t very many congregations in this synod where I can say “you are twice as old as I am.” But you are...

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for you, Lord, have looked with favor on your lowly servant” (Luke 1:46-48, Evangelical Lutheran Worship). This is the beginning of today’s reading known as the Magnificat. It’s a song of praise sung by Jesus’s mother. It’s Mary’s bold declaration of faith. And, it seems oddly out of place to me. But first, let’s set the biblical scene...

Good morning, Wicker Park. I am thankful to be among you once more, to share a Word from the Triune God, to commensurate, in our common fears, worries and yes, even anger. To gather at the table, to be fed, forgiven and then, to actually do the work that Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord left for us. That’s what it means, in that spiritual to keep our lamps trimmed and burning, because there is still a fight before us...

“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity,” are some of the first things we hear from our Scripture readings today. Hopefully, you picked up on the fact that the author of Ecclesiastes is not speaking about a bathroom remodeling project. Rather, the author is getting us settled in for what is going to be a really tough set of readings. If you hadn’t pre-read today’s readings in the e-newsletter, then with those words, you might have wondered if you could sneak out before you were seen. For today, is going to be a challenging exploration for all of us, myself included...

An ancient rumor has it that she was a prostitute. A medieval rumor says that she was Jesus’s concubine. A twentieth century rumor notes that she conceived Jesus’s child. Rumors, imaginative history, and slanderous stories have veiled the image of Mary Magdalene for thousands of years. Yet, as professor Chilton puts it, “history reveals a stronger Mary Magdalene than the predominately male projections that have reigned from the time of Jesus’ critics to her sexualized portraits in New Age fantasies.” And, this all makes me wonder: how did we get here? How did we take a beloved disciple and apostle and turn her life and witness into a sexualized story of slander...

When I came to United States for the first time in 2016, my advisor invited me for lunch and we went to a restaurant. I saw the menu card and I absolutely had no idea what I wanted to eat. There were so many choices, but still I was not able to choose because I was not aware of any of those. However, if I go to an Indian restaurant, even though I haven’t tasted all the dishes in that particular restaurant, I am quite confident in what I want to eat...

There’s a class in seminary called “homiletics.” It’s a fancy term for the exploration of the art of preaching and writing sermons. As a pastor, one of the more common questions I am asked is how I can come up with something to say every single week. While I sometimes explain this whole sermon thing as a weekly TED Talk of sorts, the homiletician, or the one who prepares to preach, always begins with the Scriptures and then lets the Scripture speak to the context...

In today’s gospel, James and John asked, “Do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luke 9:54) The question was a visceral human respond. It embodied the law of retaliation which demands “an eye for an eye” or a “tooth for a tooth.” It says, if you’re going to reject me, be rude to me, or embarrass me, then you best watch out because you’re going to be eviscerated.

We are, finally, back in the gospel of Luke! And, we start off with a busy story. I think, the key to understanding it, is to look at the context. Now, directly before today’s story, Jesus decided to go to the other side of the lake – a place that was not Jewish (and remember, Jesus is Jewish) and a place that was probably unknown to him. So, Jesus was in the boat with his disciples, and after a storm raged, Jesus calmed the storm. That scene ends with the disciples asking each other, “Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?” (Luke 8:25). This question about Jesus’s identity is what frames today’s reading...

“Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?” This is the question that begins today’s poetic excerpt from Proverbs. And, if you’re anything like me, you probably haven’t spent too much time in Proverbs. The book is part of the Hebrew Scriptures, and its purpose is to teach the reader how to embody wisdom and avoid folly. That is, to move away from ignorance, arrogance, and stupidity, and to move toward understanding, knowledge, and good sense. What fascinates me about today’s passage is that in that male-centric society, wisdom is personified as a woman...