Today’s gospel reading is challenging. While much of the reading was the focus of my Annual Meeting report earlier this month, I found myself in a different social location this time around. You see, instead of looking at this passage through the lens of the institution that this is Wicker Park Lutheran Church, I entered it in a more personal manner. This time, I saw it through a lens of the powerless...

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Wicker Park Lutheran Church Vicar Kornelius Koppel February 16, 2025 So it begins. Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. “ (Luke 6:20) Jesus called his disciples, but the calling of the twelve was not the beginning of discipleship. Jesus had many more followers than the 12 apostles. But the question at issue is how things should continue now. With the new people of Israel? And […]

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Listen along to Rev. Chrisida's sermon here!

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Listen to Vicar Kornelius' sermon here!

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Wicker Park Lutheran Church Rev. Jason S. Glombicki January 26, 2025 Every year on the final Sunday of January is “Reconciling in Christ” Sunday or RIC Sunday for short. It’s a day when Lutheran congregations throughout the United States and Canada celebrate the affirmation and full inclusion of those of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities along with their commitments to racial equity. As our staff prepared for today’s service, my phone kept buzzing with new information: presidential Executive Order […]

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It's been a while since I saw a short film that I still remember today. The title: Validation. (by Kurt Koenne) In any case, I can only recommend that you watch this 15-minute movie - you can do that on YouTube. It's a very humorous movie that also makes you think...

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The magi have fascinated Christians for thousands of years. They are depicted in 3rd century frescos in the catacombs of Rome and were carved into the façades of Chartres Cathedral in the 13th century. They were the subject of great artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, and Dürer. And most church nativity scenes, as well as at-home devotional nativities, would look incomplete without them. But’s it’s only twelve verses and two mentions in one gospel that have sparked our fixation...

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Several weeks back, within these very pews actually, I heard a sermon that re-shaped the way I approached the Christmas season. It was Vicar Kornelius’s sermon about the classic Christmas movie “The Grinch,” perhaps some of you remember it. It was so rich and thought-provoking a sermon that it had me analyzing all of my favorite classic Christmas movies as I watched them this year and examining their theological implications...

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Last week’s gospel introduced us to John the Baptist. We heard John’s message of repentance and its connection to the prophet Isaiah. But there wasn’t much meat about what repentance looks like, how it functions, or the purpose of it. But, this week is different as the story continued. We that heard the substance of John’s message was, as one colleague put it, “harsh, urgent, and concrete.”...

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Today’s gospel reading has at least two parts – (1) a list of leaders and rulers and (2) the beginning of John the Baptist’s teaching. If you’re anything like me, I often want to skim past lists of names to get to the good part. A lot of times I cannot contextualize the names and frankly, I often fumble the pronunciation of their names as well. But these three short verses are not ones we want to zoom past. While they certainly give us some historical context to the environment in which John began his ministry, they also make a key theological claim...

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