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Text: Matthew 14:22-33 Date: Pentecost VIII + Proper 14 + 8/7/11 What is frightening you of late? What is it that causes your deepest fears? Is it the state of the economy and your sincere doubt that those currently in control of it have the first clue as to how to turn it around? What [...]

Text: Matthew 13:44-52 Date: Pentecost VI + Proper 12 + 7/24/11 Dearly Beloved, God loves you. Now, that may not strike you as being any big, new news. And that would be unfortunate. God loves you. But you’ve heard it before. Don’t we already know that? John 3:16 and all; ‘God so loved the world,’ [...]

Text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 Date: Pentecost V + Proper 11 + 7/17/11 This is the way the kingdom of heaven is, the way God rules His Church and His world for now. “For now” is all the days between our Lord’s earthly ministry and the Last Day of His return in judgment. We’re not there [...]

Text: Matthew 13:1-23 Date: Pentecost IV + Proper 10 + 7/10/11 Up to now Jesus had been teaching the people and His disciples in a pretty straightforward manner. Today, suddenly something changed. And His disciples noticed. He got into a boat when the crowds gathered, and He sat down in the boat, the crowd standing [...]

Text: Matthew 11:25-30 Date: Pentecost III + Proper 9 + 7/3/11 In the first half of Matthew’s Gospel the Evangelist tells of Jesus, Israel’s Messiah promised of old, and His rapidly developing reputation. “His fame spread throughout all Syria” and he healed many sick people. “Great crowds followed him from Galilee…and from Jerusalem and Judea, [...]

Text: Matthew 10:34-42 Date: Pentecost II + Proper 8 + 6/26/11 Our Lord Jesus Christ chose twelve men whom He appointed to follow Him, learn from Him, and tell others what they had learned. They were to be the eye- and ear-witnesses of “all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among [...]

Text: Matthew 28:16-20 Date: The Holy Trinity + Pentecost I + 6/19/11 Back in “the day” when I began my studies at the seminary it was the tradition for each incoming class to adopt a motto or quote from the Bible as their class theme. I don’t remember who made the choice but ours, the [...]

Text: John 7:37-39 Date: Day of Pentecost + 6/12/11 Of all the other feasts appointed by the Lord in the Old Testament two alone are fulfilled, completed and included in the Christian calendar, that is, they have achieved the goal for which they were created and commanded only with regard to the earthly ministry of [...]