Luke 2:22-40 When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. (As it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male will be called holy to the Lord.”) And they came to offer a sacrifice according…
Luke 2:8-14; Isaiah 9:2-7 EXORDIUM: Christ is born! Let us glorify him! Today is the festival of the Nativity of Our Lord. It recalls the day in Bethlehem, so many centuries ago, when God’s Son entered into this world, and set out on his life’s journey as humanity’s Savior. God’s Son had, of course, been…
One of the lessons that we will read in tomorrow’s Christmas Day service, from the Prophet Isaiah, says this: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.” And on Epiphany, which is sometimes called the…
Matthew 11:2-15 John the Baptist was a prophet – and even more than a prophet. So says Jesus, in today’s text from St. Matthew’s Gospel. He was the immediate forerunner of the Messiah, preparing the people of Israel for his arrival. He called them to repentance, and administered to them a baptism of repentance for…
Luke 21:5-36 In today’s Gospel from St. Luke, Jesus tells his disciples about the future. And I’m sure that they are listening very attentively. There is a built-in curiosity in all of us about what the future holds. This arises in part because of the innate sinful desire that we all have – inherited from…
Psalm 118:26 Today we are entering the season of Advent. The word “advent” comes from the Latin language, and means “coming.” It refers to the coming of Christ. On the first Palm Sunday, which we heard about in today’s Gospel from St. Matthew, one of the exclamations that the crowds called out to Jesus as…
“Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.” Tomorrow is our country’s national Day of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving became a national holiday in 1863, during the American Civil War, but the roots of this observance go back much further in American history. What is often referred to as the…
Matthew 25:31-46 “And He shall come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead.” With these words, or words like them, we regularly confess in the Creed our expectation that the momentous and sobering events described in today’s Gospel from St. Matthew will indeed happen. Christ will visibly descend to the earth…
Trinity 23 – Matthew 22:15-22 “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” These words of our Lord, in today’s text from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, have always been seen as one of the chief proof passages in Scripture for the distinction we make…
Romans 8:23b-25 Please listen with me to these words from the 8th chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, beginning in the 23rd verse: “We also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in…